Part 12

The piano ceased; there came a laugh, a double roll on a Tambour-Basque, and the clicking of castanets.

“Who’s that?” said Elliott morosely. Then with a sneer he paraphrased the last line of the song.

Clifford pricked up his ears but shook his head.

“Hear her laugh! I suppose she’s dined,” continued Elliott with a vicious eye on the birds. “Well, are we going to eat those cursed canaries?”

“I never heard you swear like that,” protested Clifford. “Has poverty weakened your intellect?”

“Yes,” said Elliott savagely.

“If we eat ’em our meal will cost five hundred francs.”

“Then you’ve got to sell them. They are no good,—yellow birds are always feeble-minded. Canaries are ridiculous.”

The castanets began again, and the voice took up the Spanish measure:

“My Picador! My Picador! Thy Spanish customs I adore, Thou garlic loving, Cattle shoving, Spick-and-spangled Picador! ... I hear the mottled heifer roar, My Picador! The people pounding on the floor, My Picador! The ring is clear! The cow is here! They’ve had to haul her by the ear; The Banderillos linger near! Oh, Picador! My Picador!”

“She’s very gay,” observed Clifford, after another silence broken only by the distant click! click! click! of the castanets. “Hm! I—er—I suppose we ought to call—”

“Call,” repeated Elliott; “when I’m hollow!”

“If we call,” said Clifford briskly, “we may be invited to dinner.” He smiled, whistled a bar or two, and poked the fire.

“Don’t,” said the other, “you waste fuel.”

The wind showered the sleet across the great windows; in the twilight a chill crept in over the rugs; a distant shutter banged, rattled, and banged again.

Elliott jumped up and paced the floor.

“We’ve got to do something,” he said, “and do it now. Where’s your watch?”

“You ought to know,” said Clifford reproachfully. “Yours is there too.”

After a moment he continued; “I’ve got those cuff-buttons you gave me—” He went into his bed-room and returned with the cuff-buttons. Elliott took them, jerked on his overcoat, nodded, and opened the door.

“I’ll be back in half an hour,—wait for me,” he said, and slammed the door behind him.

III.

“Now, what the mischief am I to do for half an hour,” mused Clifford, staring out of the blank window, both hands in his pockets, an empty pipe between his teeth. There was a vacancy in his stomach that bothered him, and the more he thought about it, the more it hurt. The canary birds were revelling in bird-seed; he eyed them enviously for a while, then walked up and down whistling. Every time he passed the big gilded cage he could hear the birds cracking and splitting the seeds, and the noise of the feast irritated him.

His neighbour on the floor above was singing away with heart and soul about bull-rings and toreadors, banging joyously upon the Basque drum or snapping and clicking the castanets.

“Dear! Dear!” he thought, “my neighbour is really very gay. She must have moved in to-day. I—I wonder what she’s like!”

He listened, sitting close to his dying fire. After a moment he heard her cross the room and open the piano again.

“Dear! Dear!” he said to himself, “what a musical young lady! Probably an embryo actress from the Conservatoire;—or—or—”

The piano began; it was scales this time. For an hour he sat huddled before the cold ashes, listening to the five-fingered acrobatic exercises, alternately yawning with hunger and cursing Elliott. When six o’clock struck from the concierge’s lodge he stood up, gazing dismally out into the night.

Suddenly he heard the scrape of feet outside, and he hurried to his door and opened it.

Through the lighted hallway a figure shuffled, carrying a large tray covered with a white napkin. It was a waiter from the Café Rose-Croix and Clifford knew him.

“Bon soir, Monsieur Clifford,” he said doubtfully.

“Good evening, Placide, Placide,—er—is that little banquet for me? Oh, it’s all right! I suppose Monsieur Elliott paid for it—”

“But, Monsieur,” said the waiter, “this dinner is for a lady.”

“What’s that?” said Clifford sharply. Then he buttonholed Placide and hauled him inside the studio.

“Who is the lady? The one upstairs?”

“Yes—Mademoiselle Plessis—she awaits her dinner—let me go, Monsieur Clifford,” pleaded Placide.

“Oh, I’m not going to play tricks on you,” said Clifford, “here! hold on!—if you move I’ll tip the tray. Now all I want you to do is—is—er—dear me!”

The odour of a nicely browned fowl disturbed his thoughts; his mind wandered with his eyes. Placide gaped at him. He knew Clifford and he dreaded him. “Here you!” said that young gentleman, removing his eyes from the fowl with an effort, “do you think that because I do you the honour of conversing with you that I wish to rob you? Do I look like a man to interfere with a lady’s dinner? Placide, you know me?”

“I do, Monsieur,” replied the waiter despondently.

“Then listen! I am going to make you my confidant! Think of that, Placide!”

The waiter looked at him obliquely and did not appear to appreciate the honour in store.

“Placide!”

“Monsieur!”

“I am in love!”

“Doubtless—if it is Monsieur’s pleasure—”

“Silence! Idiot! I am about to bestow gifts; I am about to—”

“The chicken, Monsieur, is becoming cold—”

“I am,” repeated Clifford majestically, “about to offer two dozen—twenty-four—canary birds to my adored. You may ask; what is that to you—”

“I do,” began Placide.

“Silence! Pig! These twenty-four canaries are to be carried to her by—think of it, Placide!—by you!”

Placide rolled his eyes, big with anguish. The chicken exhaled a delicious aroma.

Clifford drew in a long breath of the fragrance. Then he lifted the enormous gilt cage, and placed it in Placide’s hands. “Go upstairs and take these cursed birds with the compliments of Foxhall Clifford, artist, American, 70 rue Bara, first floor, door on the right.”

“But—but my tray—”

“Imbecile! Do you think I’m going to eat your tray? Come back for it and—tell me what the lady says.”

Placide shuffled sullenly to the door; Clifford opened it.

“My tray—” began the unwilling waiter.

“Placide,” said Clifford, “I have not dined—er—re—cently and my temper is uncertain. You are discreet. I wish to dine. Do you understand?”

Placide smirked.

“Then use your wits—and when I have ten francs—well—hasten, my good Placide.”

When the waiter had gone, Clifford tiptoed over to the tray and sniffed at the napkin.

“Dear! Dear!” he said, “what a wonderful congregation of perfumes. Now if she doesn’t shut the door on Placide’s nose—I—I hope—I delicately hope that I may receive my reward.”

He paced to and fro, whistling, but never taking his eyes from the tray. After a few minutes he heard Placide’s slippered tread on the stairs, and hastened to admit him.

“The young lady says,” began Placide, lifting the tray, “—the young lady says that Monsieur is too amiable—”

Clifford’s heart sank.

“And,” pursued Placide with dreary deliberation, edging toward the staircase, “the young lady says that she hopes to see you”—

“When?” blurted out Clifford.

“Some day,” grinned Placide, and escaped up the stairway, sneering, triumphant.

The blow staggered Clifford for a moment—but only for a moment. Before Placide had descended again, Clifford was changing his clothes; before Placide had passed the lodge-gate, Clifford had fastened a white neck-tie under a spotless collar. Then he tied a bit of crimson silk tightly around his forehead, inserted two feathers from a duster in the fillet where they waved like the plumes of a Sioux War-chief; and ten minutes later, radiant, patent-leathered, but starved, he rang gaily at the door of the studio overhead.

When Claire Plessis opened the door, Clifford bowed profoundly and skipped in, introducing himself with joyous abandon.

“It is the custom,” he said, bowing again and again with something of an Oriental salaam, “it is the custom in America—in far distant, sunny America,—to call at once upon distinguished strangers who come to lodge in the building. Therefore, Mademoiselle,”—and although he spoke French flawlessly he brutalised it now to suit his purpose,—“therefore, Mademoiselle,”—He salaamed again, rapidly and said:

“How! How! How!”

“Monsieur,” faltered the girl, not knowing whether to laugh or call for assistance,—“Monsieur, I am honoured—pray be—be seated.”

“Mademoiselle—it is too much honour!”

“Monsieur—”

They bowed again, and Clifford sank into a chair, his duster plumes nodding on his head.

The girl regarded him with undisguised amazement. She saw his eyes rolling toward the white-covered table and thought, “Oh dear, what shall I do with this foreign savage who sends me canary birds by the gross and who skips like a dancing dervish?”

“Monsieur,” she stammered.

“How! How! How!” grunted Clifford absently, sniffing the tablecloth.

“Nothing—nothing, Monsieur,” she said hastily; “I wish to thank you for the birds—”

“We eat them in America,” he said, and chattered his teeth.

“Like—like chickens?”

“What are chickens?”

She laughed and looked at the uncarved fowl on the table.

“Is that a chicken?” asked Clifford in his most awful French. “Is it good to eat?”

“If you would do me the honour to accept my hospitality, Monsieur, you could prove it for yourself,” she said laughing, and a little more at ease. “I have not yet dined,—I am quite alone—”

Clifford accepted, rising with oriental languor, and bowed magnificently. He led her to her place, seated her, drew up a chair opposite, and smiled upon her. His feathers bobbed with every movement.

“Now of course, I must carve,” she said, striving hard to repress an hysterical laugh; for Clifford, desiring to play his part of a foreign savage to perfection, was doing impossible things with his knife and fork.

“If she finds me out,” he was thinking, “it will not be very gay for me.” So he showed his teeth and muttered and salaamed occasionally, while the girl bowed to him over her slender glass of claret and helped him to more and more and more until the suffocating desire to laugh brought tears to her eyes.

“In America it is etiquette to eat until there is nothing left—at least I have read that in books,” she ventured.

“It is,” said Clifford, uncorking another bottle.

“You seem to like chicken,” she said.

“Ah,” he replied, “wait until you try my canary birds!”

“But,” she cried, “I am not going to eat them!”

Their eyes met across the table. He felt that he was going to laugh; he looked into her big grey eyes. Her dark-fringed lashes were trembling too; on each cheek a dimple deepened; between her scarlet lips the white teeth parted; then she sank back, her hands flung helplessly into her lap, and, looking into each other’s eyes, they burst into ringing peals of laughter.

Three times she dried the tears in her eyes, and, leaning forward, attempted to speak, but when her eyes met his again, she threw back her pretty head and laughed until the colour deepened to her throat. And so they sat there, trying to speak, but shrieking with laughter, until the glasses and bottles clinked and vibrated and the window panes sang again.

At last she murmured, “For shame, Monsieur! I—I ought to be very angry,—but I laugh—oh dear! oh! dear! I laugh and I should be furious! Fie! You play the foreigner—the—the untutored one who never saw chicken—oh dear! oh dear!—”

She rose, drying her eyes again on a dainty pocket handkerchief.

“Shame on you! How dared you come to my room and—oh dear—and tell me you eat canary birds—and walk like a dancing dervish, and do such things with your knife, and—what is your name?—mine is Claire.”

* * * * *

When, three hours later, he rose to go, he had told her all,—the whole wretched truth, and she had watched him with curious grey eyes, now brimming with laughter, now exquisite in their sympathy. She forgave him—not easily—but when he removed the feathers from his headdress and said he was sorry, she held out her hand to him with brilliant eyes and grave lips.

“So—you are forgiven,—not because you deserve it. Here in the Quarter we are like the leaves in the Luxembourg; we bud with the promise of summer,—we unfold, we nestle and whisper together,—we grow gorgeous and brilliant,—then we fall. Let us live in friendship while we may,—we of the Latin Quarter. I forgive you, mon ami.”

IV.

When Clifford reached his own door on the floor below, he heard voices in the studio. A hard world had driven some caution into his head and he listened for a moment to assure himself that the voices were not the voices of creditors.

“It’s Elliott and Colette,” he murmured, knocking discreetly. Elliott opened the door; on the piano-stool sat Colette demurely twisting the fur of her boa. Clifford bent over the extended hand, then looked at Elliott. The latter felt in his pocket, produced the cuff-buttons, and tossed them on the table.

“You can keep your jewellery,” he said, “I’ve got a better scheme; Colette proposed it—”

“You wouldn’t listen to the other plan,” she said shyly, “I don’t want that coupé—”

“You mustn’t say such things,” interposed Clifford gravely; then, turning to Elliott, “what are we going to do?”

“Let me tell,” cried Colette, fanning her flushed face with the end of the boa; “sit down and be very still,—you also, Monsieur Clifford,—there! Now listen! I, Colette, have a very beautiful plan.”

“How to become a millionaire in a week,—by Mademoiselle Colette,” began Clifford, and was beaten with the fur boa.

“Very well,” she cried; “then I shall not trouble myself,—oh! you had better say you are sorry! Now listen! It is my plan,—mine, Co-lette!”

She settled herself on the piano-stool, whirled around until her pointed shoes rested on the rug, smiled, buried her nose in the point of her boa, and said; “To begin, you are poor!—don’t interrupt! It is well to begin at the beginning. Then, you are poor. You have nothing to live on—you improvident ones,—for three more months. Comment faire! Paint and sell pictures? No. Why? Because you have not yet learned enough at the École des Beaux Arts! But yet you must live. How? Ah, Dick, if you would only let me return you that old coupé—there! I didn’t mean it! Now let us begin again!—You are poor—”

“We’re back where we started,” began Clifford but was snubbed.

“So,—you are poor. You must earn _something_. How? Why, with your cornets!”

“Eh?” stammered Clifford.

“Exactly!” cried Colette; “you shall play every evening in Bobinot’s orchestra and gain many many francs, industrious ones! Voilà!”

Clifford stared at her. She nodded her head at him and smiled.

“It’s an idea,” said Elliott; “Boissy told Colette that Bobinot’s two cornet players had gone, and old Bobinot is looking for two new ones. It’s a chance,—we need only play in the evenings—it will keep soul and body together—won’t it? Why don’t you say something?”

“It’s an idea,—isn’t it?” repeated Colette solemnly.

“What!” faltered Clifford, “play a cornet in that cheap Montparnasse Theatre,—Bobinot’s! Suppose they hear of it in New York?”

“Suppose we have to go to the American Consul and ask him to ship us home,” retorted Elliott.

Bobinot’s, the students’ theatre on Montparnasse, was not the Théâtre Français perhaps, but the acting was good,—indeed it was better than that seen in most New York theatres. Clifford had spent joyous evenings at this “Quarter” theatre; it was often better than the “Cluny”—even “Antonio, père et fils,” admitted that.

“Still,” he said, “the Quarter will never stop laughing—er—Colette in her coupé and you in the orchestra—”

“I shall not drive in my coupé until Dick wishes it!” cried Colette, crimson and white by turns. “For your bad taste I—I pardon you.”

Too utterly snubbed to have a mind of his own, Clifford meekly made his peace with Colette and opened the door for her and Elliott.

“Are you sure we can get the place?” he asked. “Perhaps Bobinot won’t want us.”

“Bobinot must!” said Colette; “I shall call upon Claire Plessis who is to sing the première rôles there. She is sweet; she is also from Tours. That is my country. And I love her very much.”

“Where does she live?” inquired Clifford with a guilty start.

“Upstairs. I shall call upon her to-morrow. Dick, are you coming? Then good night, wicked one! Come, Dick, dear! To your evil conscience I leave you, Monsieur Clifford”—and she laughed and gave him her gloved hand.

Clifford closed the door gently behind them. For a moment he stood staring at the panels, then raised his eyes to the ceiling.

“I wonder,” he thought, “I—I wonder whether Claire will tell Colette?”

He shivered. The Quarter is pitiless in ridicule.

Elliott came back late that night, but he was cheerful and he whistled as he shook the snow from hat and coat and stamped around the studio.

“We’ll see Bobinot to-morrow,” he said; “I tell you it’s not a bad idea—all Colette’s, too!”

“I thought you and Colette had agreed to disagree,” observed Clifford.

The other reddened a little. “We have,” he said—“for three months.”

Before he was ready for bed he missed the canary birds and questioned Clifford, but the latter told him to mind his business. This Elliott cheerfully complied with and went to bed.

“By the way, did you dine to-night?” he called out before he closed his door.

“Yes,” snapped Clifford.

V.

Thanks to Colette and Claire, through the medium of Boissy, the little snare-drummer, who lived on the top floor, Monsieur Bobinot consented to give Elliott and Clifford a trial.

Boissy presented them to Monsieur Bobinot as two eminent American virtuosi, but Bobinot sneered openly.

“Don’t try to stuff me,” he said; “they’re two students on their uppers. What do I care as long as they can play?”

“They—they are very eminent”—pleaded Boissy—“their—hm!—technique is so original, Monsieur Bobinot—”

Bobinot turned a pair of hard bright eyes on Clifford.

“En effet, Monsieur Bobinot, we are students,” said Clifford with magnificent condescension; “but we can blow harmony out of a broken bottle;—Elliott, kindly play ‘The Battle of Buena Vista’ for Monsieur Bobinot.”

Elliott drew his cornet from beneath his overcoat and gravely performed the stirring war march with hideous variations, while Clifford imitated a drum with his knuckles on the window pane.

“Cannon,” said Clifford, banging on a sheet of tin which lay on the floor.

“Let my properties alone!” shouted Bobinot.

“Drums,—the Mexicans retreating,” continued Clifford serenely, returning to the window.

“Humph!” snorted Bobinot.

“Cries of the wounded!” observed Clifford, and emitted a series of piercing screams while Elliott continued his variations.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” wailed Clifford, winking at Boissy who had sunk helpless on a chair, weak with laughter.

“Stop!” thundered Bobinot.

Elliott finished his variations and looked expectantly at the manager of the “Théâtre Bobinot.”

“It’s d—n fine,” said Monsieur Bobinot, “but I could manage to exist and earn an honest living without your artistic collaboration. I say I could dispense with your musical services, but I cannot, Messieurs, afford to lose from my personnel, two such splendid examples of human impudence. Consider yourselves engaged. Boissy, I’ll pay you for this!”

“Then,” said Clifford artlessly, “let’s cement the contract with a bottle!”

“Bottle of what?” demanded Elliott; “we haven’t any money! You mortify me!”

Clifford smiled blandly. “Come, Monsieur Bobinot, no hard feelings you know! What shall it be?”

“Whatever you like, Messieurs,” said Bobinot grimly; “I’ll take it out of your salary.”

But Monsieur Bobinot was better than his word. He saw at a glance that the young fellows were in earnest, and he not only acted the host very decently, but, as Boissy dragged the two young men away, he handed them each a week’s salary in advance.

“It’s for your infernal cheek!” he said; “come to rehearsal at ten!”

The first week passed without a hitch. Elliott played the orchestrated scores for Clifford, and the latter, being quick and instinctively musical, learned his part by heart, to the utter demoralisation of the tenants on the upper floors. Mademoiselle Plessis stood it as long as she possibly could and then sent for Clifford.

“Monsieur Clifford,” she said seriously, “this must stop.”

“If it stops _I_ stop,” said Clifford; “I can’t live on air.”

“No,” she said, “you are neither a chameleon nor an angel.”

“Not an angel yet, but on the floor below,” he said humbly.

Mademoiselle Plessis tapped her foot against the fender and brushed the leaves of her rôle with the tip of one white finger.

“Mon ami,” she said, “I cannot learn my rôle if you toot all day on that cornet.”

“What am I to do?” inquired Clifford miserably.

“You must have certain hours to practise. Monsieur Boissy plays on his drum from two until four; Monsieur Castro chooses that time for trombone exercise; why can _you_ not play your cornet during those hours?”

“I will,” said Clifford craftily, “but what shall I do from four until six?” He looked at her with eyes that appealed and languished.

“Do?”

“Ah, yes! It will be lonely up there on the floor above—won’t it?”

Mademoiselle Plessis raised her clear eyes to the ceiling.

“Is it so very lonely down there? It is not,—up here.”

“Very. I think of you all day.”

“Of me? How foolish!”

“Yes; I wish I were able to aid you to learn your parts.”

“But you can’t—”

“I could if you’d let me read your cues—”

—“I don’t need that—”

—“Don’t refuse—”

—“I must—”

—“Don’t—”

—“But I do! And you are very silly.—”

* * * * *

So it was arranged that Clifford should bleat on his cornet from two until four, during which time Claire would go out for a walk; and from four to six, when Claire was at home, he might aid her by his presence and advice and judiciously regulated sympathy.

“The idea!” she said, with a pretty gesture of disdain; “you will only bother me. You had much better write me a little play.”

“A ‘lever de rideau!’” exclaimed Clifford; “by Jove, I’ll do it!”

“Can you write French well enough, mon pauvre ami?”

“No, but you can supply all the localisms and wit. Will you?”

“We might try,” she said with a doubtful smile. She was very much interested, however, and when, a few days later, he brought her a rough sketch of the “Queen of Siam,” she read it with serious interest.

“It is a pretty idea,” she said, flushing with pleasure. Then, resting her chin on her hand, she invited him to sit beside her.

“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “if we are really going to collaborate, we must be very grave and serious for _you_ are not working for pleasure and _I_ am earning my bread—”

—“And honey,—oh! you’ll have woodcock on toast and champagne too if this play goes!”

“Then let us make it go,” she exclaimed enthusiastically.

“Let’s!” he cried with equal fervour.

There was a pause.

“The play won’t go if you don’t take your pen in hand,” she said.

—“But I will—”

“Then hadn’t you better release my hand?”

And so the afternoons wore away while with heads together over the manuscript they chattered about exits and entries, scenarios, cues and “pan coupé’s” and Clifford rose to the occasion, displaying a wit which matched her dainty cleverness and struck the quick warm spark of sympathy between them.

“Delicious!” she would laugh at some hastily pencilled bit of dialogue, and then, bending over the table: “Don’t you think that we might shorten the King’s lines just here? See, I only strike out these three words—ah! see how much better it reads!”

“Much better!—very much better!”

“Very much; it flows smoothly now—oh! oh! how funny to make the Queen threaten them! How did you ever think of that?”

“Why, it follows naturally—you see she is all in armour, and the spurs trip up the archbishop—”

And so the afternoons wore away.

This was all very pleasant, but it had its drawbacks and one winter evening toward six o’clock Clifford jumped up and stared at the clock horrified: