CHAPTER IV

’TWIXT DOG AND POET

Phil went his way, leaving the duke and Caracal behind him.

He was angry with himself for having come. Especially he was frightened at the feeling which had just been urging him to punish the singer on the stage. There was something more in it than the natural indignation of an upright heart in presence of a low action. He felt it a hundred times more than he would have done for a personal insult. He stood forth revealed to himself as the champion of Miss Rowrer.

On the whole, the verses were stupid rather than malignant; but it had been stronger than he—an explosion, in a way, of a growing passion. He resolved to stop short on this dangerous descent and not allow himself to be lured on by an impossible love, the very thought of which seemed to him worthy of blame.

Phil was not content with his evening, so well begun and so ill ended.

“They’ll not catch me again doing Montmartre with Caracal and the duke,” he said to himself. “I was wrong to go there to-night. I have become certain that Helia is letting herself be courted by Socrate. To have come down like that—she whom I knew so reserved and sweet! And I know something else, too. I have to stop flirting with Miss Rowrer—perhaps even stop seeing her, poor fool that I am!”

And Phil went his way with lowered head, absorbed in his own reflections.

Phil’s idea was right so far as Miss Rowrer was concerned. He might really have been in danger. But he was mistaken in his appreciation of Helia, for she had not quit the circus with Socrate. Socrate had followed her, that was all—Suzanne having taken away Sœurette immediately after the departure of the duke and Caracal. Helia, worn out with fatigue, went away much later on the arm of old Cemetery.

She was full of deference for the man who had made her an artiste, and she accompanied him back to his hotel. Socrate walked alongside, without the least emotion at the sight of this Antigone protecting her Œdipus; rather, he was furious that she should lose her time with such a doddard; but he had nothing to say about it! Helia would not have understood, and Socrate remembered spitefully that the duke and Caracal were cooling their heels in vain expectation of her.

Afterward Socrate saw her home. He had so many things to say to her—things he dared not utter.

However, at the moment of taking leave he expressed a wish to go in, in order to speak more freely.

“No, thank you!” said Helia; “you would wake Sœurette, who is already in bed.”

“But—”

“Besides, you have your own work.” And she shut the door in his face.

Socrate, in a rage, remained outside. What he could not say this evening he would say to-morrow; so be it! But that he—Socrate, poet, thinker, painter, sculptor, and musician—should be so treated by this little mountebank—what a humiliation! He felt that he wanted to break something. A wandering dog passed by, and with all his strength he gave him a kick in the ribs.

“There, put that in your pocket!”

“And you take that!” And Socrate received a heavy blow, with which he rolled to the ground.

It seemed to him as he fell that he flung out his arms to protect himself, and that his fist came in contact with a head. When he was stretched out on the pavement he saw standing on the curbstone a man, motionless and looking at him. They were both in the light of a street-lamp. Suddenly Socrate recognized Phil.

In fact, Phil had been coming down the street just as Socrate kicked the poor animal. In his indignation Phil punished the brute, and then immediately recognized in him Socrate, who, of course, so he thought, was coming from Helia.

Socrate would have jumped on Phil, but he had neither knife nor revolver. So he remained on the pavement, crazy with impotent rage. Phil, remaining calm, picked up his hat, which had fallen in the scuffle. He waited. But as the thinker contented himself with groaning, he went his way without even a look behind.

“Helia! Helia!” he thought within himself, “that you should receive such a creature!”