The most splendid moment of an adventure is not always the moment of fulfilment, not even the moment of conception, but the moment of first accomplishment, when the adventurer deliberately sets his face toward the new road, knowing that his boats are burned.
Nothing could have been less inspiring than the dreary Gare du Nord, nothing less inviting than the glimpse of Paris to be caught through its open doorways; but had the whole world laughed him a welcome, the young Russian's step could not have been more elastic, his courage higher, his heart more ready to pulse to the quick march of his thoughts, as he strode down the gray platform and out into the open.
In the open he paused to study his surroundings. As yet the full tale of passengers had not emerged, and only an occasional wayfarer, devoid of baggage as himself, had fared forth into the gloom. Outside, the artificial light of the station ceased to do battle with nature, and only an occasional street lamp gave challenge to the gloomy dawn. The damp mist that all night had enshrouded Paris still clung about the streets like ragged grave-clothes, and at the edge of the pavement half a dozenfiacreswere ranged in a melancholy line, the wretched horses dozing as they stood, the drivers huddled into their fur capes and numbed by the clinging cold. Everywhere was darkness and chill and the listless misery of a winter dawn, when vitality is at its lowest ebb and the passions of man are sunk in lethargy.
Only a creature infinitely young could have held firm in face of such dejection, only eyes as alert and wakeful as those of this wayfaring boy could possibly have looked undaunted at the shabby streets with their flaunting travesty of joy exhibited in the dripping awnings of the desertedcafés, that offeredBière, Billard, and yet againBièreto an impassive world.
But the eyes were wakeful, the soul of the adventurer was infinitely young. He looked at it all with a certain steadfastness that seemed to say, "Yes, I see you! You are hideous, slatternly, unfriendly; but through all the disguise I recognize you. Through the mask I trace the features—subtle, alluring, fascinating. You are Paris! Paris!"
The idea quickened action as a draught of wine might quicken thought; his hand involuntarily tightened upon his valise, his body braced itself afresh, and, as if resigning himself finally to chance, that deity loved of all true adventurers, he stepped from the pavement into the greasy roadway.
Seeing him move, a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him afiacre; but the boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he turned to the left, gazing up with eager interest at the many hotels that rub shoulders in that uninteresting region.
One after the other he reviewed and rejected them, moving onward with the excitement that is born of absolute uncertainty. Onward he went, without pause, until the pavement was intersected by a side-street, and peering up through the misty light he read the legend, "rue de Dunkerque."
Rue de Dunkerque! It conveyed nothing to his mind. But was he not seeking the unknown? Again his head went up, again his shoulders stiffened, and, smiling to himself at some secret thought, he swung round the corner and plunged into the unexplored.
Half way down the rue de Dunkerque stands the Hôtel Railleux. It is a tall and narrow house, somewhat dirty and entirely undistinguished; there is nothing to recommend it save perhaps an air of privacy, a certain insignificance that wedges it between the surrounding buildings in a manner tempting to one anxious to avoid his fellows.
This quality it was that caught the boy's attention. He paused and studied the Hôtel Railleux with an attention that he had denied to the large and common hostelries that front the station. He looked at it long and meditatively, then very slowly and thoughtfully he walked to the end of the street. At the end of the street he turned, his mind made up, and, hurrying back, went straight into the hall of the hotel as though thirsting to pledge himself irrevocably to his decision.
It is impossible for the sensible individual to see romance in this entry into a third-rate Parisian hotel—to see daring or to see danger—but the boy's heart was beating fast as the glass door swung behind him, and his tongue was dry as he stepped into the little office on the right of the poor hall.
Here in the office the story of the streets was repeated. A dingy gas-jet shed a faint light, as though reluctantly awake; behind a small partition, half counter, half desk, a wan and sleepy—looking man was cowering over a stove. As the boy entered he looked up uncertainly, then he rose and smiled, for your Parisian is exhausted indeed when he fails to conjure up a smile.
"Good-day, monsieur!"
The words were a travesty in view of the miserable dawn, but the boy took heart. There was greeting in the tone. He moistened his lips, which felt dry as his tongue in his momentary nervousness, then he stepped closer to the counter.
"Good-day, monsieur! I require a bedroom."
"A bedroom? But certainly, monsieur!" The shrewd though tired eyes of the man passed over his visitor's clothes and the valise in his hand. "We can give you a most excellent room at"—he raised his eyebrows in tactful hesitation—"at five francs?"
The boy's eyes opened in genuine, instant surprise. "For so little?" he exclaimed. Then, covered with confusion, he reddened furiously and stammered, "For—for so much, I mean?"
The man in the office was all smooth, politeness, anxious to cover a foreigner's slip of speech. 'But certainly, no! If five francs was more than monsieur cared to pay, then for three francs there was a most charming, a most agreeable room on the fifth floor. True, it did not look upon the street, but then perhaps monsieur preferred quiet. If monsieur would give himself the trouble of mounting—'
Monsieur, still confused by his own mistake, and nervously anxious to insist upon his position, repeated again that five francs was out of the question, and that, without giving himself the trouble of mounting, he would then and there decide upon the agreeable and quiet room at three francs.
'But certainly! It was understood!' The guardian of the office, now fully awake and aroused to interest in this princely transaction, disappeared from behind the counter into the back regions of the hotel, and could be heard calling "Jean! Jean!" in a high, insistent tone.
After some moments of silence he returned, followed by a large and amiable individual in a dirty blue blouse, who had apparently but lately arisen from sleep.
'Now if monsieur would intrust his baggage to the valet—'
The guardian of the office took a key from a nail in the wall. Jean stepped forward, pleased and self-conscious, and took the valise from the boy's hand. Then all three smiled and bowed.
It was one of those foolish little comedies—utterly unnecessary, curiously pleasant—that occur twenty times a day in Parisian life. Involuntarily the adventurer's heart warmed to the pallid clerk and to the dirty hotel porter. He had arrived here without luggage, shabby, unrecommended, yet no princely compatriot of his own could have been made more sensible of welcome. He stepped out of the office and followed his guide, conscious that, if only for an instant, Paris had lifted her mask and smiled—the radiant, anticipated smile.
There is no such unnecessary luxury as a lift in the Hôtel Railleux. At the back of the hall the spiral staircase begins its steep ascent, mounting to unimagined heights.
Jean, breathing audibly, led the way, pausing at every landing to assure monsieur that the ascent was nothing—a mere nothing, and that before another thought could pass through monsieur's mind the fifth floor would be reached. The boy followed, climbing and ever climbing, until the meagre hand-rail appeared to lengthen into dream-like coils, and the threadbare, drab-hued carpet, with its vivid red border, to assume the proportions of some confusing scroll.
But at length the end was reached, and Jean, beaming and triumphant, announced their goal.
'This way! If monsieur would have the goodness to take two steps in this direction!' He dived into a long, dark corridor, illuminated by a single flickering gas-jet, twin brother to that which lighted the office below; and, still eager, still breathing loudly, he ushered the guest toward what in his humble soul he believed to be the luxurious, the impressive bedroom supplied by the Hôtel Railleux at three francs a night.
The boy looked about him as he passed down the dim corridor. Apparently he and Jean alone were awake in this gloomy maze of closed doors and sleeping passages. One sign of humanity—and one alone—came to his senses with a suggestion of sordid drama. On the floor, at the closed door of one of the rooms, stood a battered black tray on which reposed an empty champagne bottle and two soiled glasses.
Life! His quick imagination conjured a picture—conjured and shrank from it. He turned away with a sense of sharp disgust and almost ran down the corridor to where Jean was fitting a key into the door of his prospective bedroom.
"The room, monsieur!" Jean's voice was full of pride. He had lived for ten years in the Hôtel Railleux, working as six men and six women together would not have worked in the fashionable quarter, and he had never been shaken in his belief that Paris held no more inviting hostelry.
The boy obediently stepped forward into the tiny apartment, in which a big wooden bedstead loomed out of all proportion. His movements were hasty, as though he desired to escape from some impression; his voice, when he spoke, was vague.
"Very nice! Very nice!" he said. "And—and what is the view?"
"The view? Oh, but monsieur will like the view!" Jean stepped to the window, drew back the heavy cretonne curtains, and threw open the long window, admitting a breath of chilling cold. "The court-yard! See, monsieur! The court-yard!"
The boy came forward into the biting air and gazed down into the well-like depths of gloom, at the bottom of which could be discerned a small flagged court, ornamented by a couple of dwarfed and frost-bitten trees in painted tubs.
Jean, watchful of the visitor's face, broke forth anew with inexhaustible tact.
'It was a fine view—monsieur would admit that! But, naturally, it was not the street! Now No. 107, across the corridor—at five francs—?'
Monsieur was aroused. "No! No! certainly not. The view was of no consequence. The bed looked all right."
'The bed!' Here Jean spoke with deep feeling. 'There was no better bed in Paris. Had he not himself put clean sheets on it that day?' He turned from the window, and with the hand of an expert displayed the beauties of the sparse blankets, the cotton sheets, and the mountainous double mattress.
'But monsieur was anxious to retire? Doubtless monsieur would sleep untildéjeuner? A most excellentdéjeunerwas served in thesalle-à-mangeron the second floor.'
The words flowed forth in a stream—agreeable, monotonous, reminiscent of the far-away province that had long ago bred this good creature. Suddenly the exhaustion of the long journey, the sleep so long denied rose about the traveller like a misty vapor. He longed for solitude; he pined for rest.
"I am satisfied with everything," he said, abruptly. "Leave me. I have not been in bed for two nights."
A flood of sympathy overspread Jean's face: he threw up his hands. "Poor boy! Poor boy! What a terrible thing!" With a touch as light as a woman's his work-worn fingers smoothed the pillow invitingly, and, tiptoeing to the door, he disappeared in tactful and silent comprehension of the situation.
Vaguely the boy was conscious of his departure. A great lassitude was falling upon him, making him value the isolation of his three-franc room with a deep gratitude, turning his gaze toward the unpromising bed with an indescribable longing. Mechanically, as the door closed, he threw off his heavy overcoat, kicked off his high boots, discarded his coat and trousers, and, without waiting to search in his bag for another garment, stepped into bed and curled himself up in the flannel shirt he had worn all day.
The bed was uncomfortable with that extraordinary discomfort of the old-fashioned French bed, that feels as though it were padded with cotton wool of indescribable heaviness. The sheets were coarse, the multitudinous clothes were weighty without being warm, but no prince on his bed of roses ever rested with more luxury of repose than did this young adventurer as, drawing the blankets to his chin, he stretched his limbs with the slow, delicious enjoyment born of long travel.
Jean had drawn the cretonne curtains, but through their chinks streaks of bluish, shadowy light presaged the coming day. From his lair the boy looked out at these ghostly fingers of the morning, then his eyes travelled round the dark room until at last they rested upon his clothes lying, as he had thrown them, on the floor. He looked at them—the boots, the coat and trousers, the heavy overcoat—and suddenly some imperative thought banished sleep from his eyes. He sat up in bed; he shivered as the cold air nipped his shoulder; then, unhesitatingly, he slipped from between the sheets and slid out upon the floor.
The room was small; the clothes lay within an arm's length. He shivered again, stooped, and, picking up the overcoat, dived his hand into the deep pocket, and drew forth the packet that he had guarded so tenaciously in the train.
For a moment he stood looking at it in the blue light of the dawn—a thick brown packet, seven or eight inches long, tied with string and sealed. Once or twice he looked at it, seemingly lost in reflection; once or twice he turned it about in his hand as if to make certain it was intact; then, with a deep sigh indicative of satisfaction, he stepped back into bed, slipped the packet under his pillow and, with his fingers faithfully enlaced in the string, fell asleep.
IT was eleven o'clock when the boy woke. All the excitement of the past days had culminated in the great exhaustion of the night before.
He had slept as a child might sleep—dreamlessly, happily, unthinkingly. In that silent hour Nature had drawn him into her wide embrace, lulling him with a mother's gentleness; and now, in the moment of waking, it seemed that again the same beneficent agency was dispensing love and favor, for he opened his eyes upon a changed world. A magician's wand had been waved over the city during his hours of sleep; the mist and oppression of the night had disappeared with the darkness. Paris was under the dominion of the frost.
Instinctively, even before his eyelids lifted, the northern soul within him apprised him of this change. He inhaled the crisp coldness of the air with a vague familiarity; he opened his eyes slowly and stared about the unknown room in an instant of hesitating doubt; then, with a great leap of the spirit, he recognized his position. Last night—the days and nights that had preceded it—flooded his consciousness, and in a moment he was out of bed and pulling back the drab-hued curtains that hid the window.
Having freed the daylight, he leaned out, peering greedily down into the well-like court, where even the stunted trees in their painted tubs were coated white with rime; then, with another impulse, as quickly conceived, as quickly executed, he drew back into the room, fired with the desire to be out and about in this newly created world.
By day, the details of the room stood out with a prominence that had been denied them in the dim candle-light of the night before, and he realized now, what had escaped him then, that there was neither dressing-table, wardrobe, nor chest of drawers, that the entire space of the small apartment was filled by the clumsy bed, a folding wash-stand, and two ponderous arm-chairs covered in shabby red velvet. These, with a dingy gold-framed mirror hanging above the tiny corner fireplace, and a gilt clock under a glass shade, formed the comforts purchasable for three francs.
He studied it all solemnly and attentively, not omitting the gray wall-paper of melancholy design, and content that he had acquitted himself dutifully toward his surroundings, he unpacked his valise, and proceeded to dress for the day's happenings.
The contents of the valise were not imposing—a change of linen, a soft felt hat, a pair of shoes, and a well-worn blue serge suit. The boy looked at each article as he drew it forth with a quaint attentiveness quite disproportionate to either its appearance or its value. But the process seemed to please him, and he lingered over it, ceasing almost reluctantly to appraise his belongings, and beginning to dress.
This morning he discarded the high Russian boots and the fur cap of yesterday, and arrayed himself instead, and with much precision, in the serge suit. Worn as this suit was, it evidently retained a pristine value in its owner's eyes, for no sooner had he fastened the last button of the coat than he looked instinctively for the mirror in which to study the effect.
The mirror unfortunately was high and, crane his neck as he might, he could see nothing beyond the waves of his short, dark hair and his eager, questioning eyes. But the effect must be observed, and, with an anxiety in seeming contrast to his nature, he pulled one of the massive velvet chairs to the fireplace and, mounting upon it, surveyed himself at every angle with deep intentness. At last, satisfied, he jumped to the ground, and taking the brown-paper packet from the hiding-place where it had reposed all night, bestowed it again in the pocket of his overcoat and, picking up the felt hat, left the room.
The corridor, despite the advent of the day, was still dark, save where an occasional door stood ajar and a shaft of sun from the outer world shot across the drab carpet; but Jean had been over the floor with his broom while the hotel slept, and the battered tray with its suggestion of sordid festivity had been removed. Even here the electric air of the morning had made entry, and, yielding to its seduction, the boy gave rein to his eagerness as he hurried forward to the head of the stairs and laid his hand upon the meagre banister.
From the hall below the white light of the day ascended with subtle invitation, while outside the world hummed with possibilities. He began the descent, light as a Mercury, his feet scarcely touching the steps that last night had offered so toilsome a progress, and on the third floor he encountered Jean, bearing another tray laden with plates and covered dishes.
At sight of the young face, the good creature's smile broke forth irresistibly.
'Ah, but monsieur had slept!' The little eyes ran over the face and figure of the guest with visible pleasure.
The boy laughed—the full, light-hearted laugh that belongs to the beginning of things.
"Yes, I have slept; and now, you may believe, I have an appetite!"
Jean echoed the laugh with a spontaneity that held no disrespect. He lingered, drawn, as the Irishman in the train had been drawn, by something original, something vital, in the youthful personality.
'His faith! But monsieur had the spirit as well as the appetite!'
"Ah, the spirit!" For a fleeting second the boy's eyes looked away beyond Jean—untidy, attentive, comprehending—beyond the neutral-tinted walls and the shabby carpet of the Hôtel Railleux, seeing in vision the things that were to come. Then, with his swift impulsiveness, he flung his dream from him. What mattered the future? What mattered the past? He was here in the present—in the moment; and the moment, great or small, demanded living.
"Never mind the spirit, Jean! Let us consider the flesh! Where is thesalle-à-manger?"
'Thesalle-à-mangerwas on the second floor.'
'The second floor? But of course! Had not Jean mentioned that fact last night?' With a nod and a smile, he was away down the intervening steps and at the door of the eating-room before Jean could balance his tray for his renewed ascent.
The room that the boy entered was in keeping with the rest of the house—old-fashioned and in ill-repair. The floor was devoid of covering, the ceiling low, the only furniture a dozen small tables meagrely set out fordéjeuner. On the moment of his entry eleven of these tables were unoccupied, but at the twelfth an eager young waiter attended upon a stout provincial Frenchwoman who was partaking heartily of a pungently smelling stew.
On the opening of the door the waiter glanced round in strained anticipation, and the lady of the stew looked up and bowed a greeting to the new-comer.
It struck the boy as curious—this welcome from a total stranger, but it woke anew the pleasant warmth, the agreeable sense of friendliness. With the tingling sensation of doing a daring deed, he glanced round the empty room, scanned the two long windows on which the cold, bright sun played laughingly, and through which the rattle and hum of the rue de Dunkerque penetrated like an exhilarating accompaniment, then, he walked straight to the table of the lady, smiled and, in his own turn, bowed.
'Would madame permit him to sit at her table? It was sad to be alone upon so fine a morning.'
A woman of any other nationality might have looked at him askance; but madame was French. She was fifty years of age, she was fat, she was ugly—but she was French. The sense of a pleasant encounter—the appreciation of romance was in her blood. She smiled at the debonair boy with as agreeable a self-consciousness as though she had been a young girl.
'But certainly, if monsieur desired. The pleasure was for her.'
Again an interchange of bows and smiles, sympathetically repeated by the interested young waiter. Then the boy, laying his hat and coat aside, seated himself at the table and entered upon the business of the hour, while madame became tactfully absorbed in her odoriferous stew.
'What did monsieur desire?' The waiter stood anxiously attentive, his head inclining gravely to one side, his dirty napkin swinging from his left hand.
The boy glanced up.
'What could the Hôtel Railleux offer?'
The waiter met his eye steadfastly. 'Anything that monsieur cared to order.'
The boy encountered the steadfast look, and a little gleam of humor shot into his eyes.
'Well, then, to begin with, should they saySole Waleska?'
The waiter's glance wavered, he threw the weight of his body from one foot to the other. Involuntarily madame looked up.
The boy buried himself behind an expression of profound seriousness.
"Yes!Sole Waleska! Or, perhaps,Coulibiac à la Russe!"
The waiter's mouth opened in a desperate resolve to meet the worst. Madame's eyes discreetly sought her plate.
The boy threw back his head and laughed aloud at his own small jest. "Bring me two eggsen cocotte," he substituted, and laughed again in sheer pleasure at the waiter's sudden smile, his sudden restoration to dignity, as he hurried away to put a seal upon an order that permitted the hotel to retain its self-respect.
Again madame looked up. 'Monsieur was fond of his little pleasantry! This waiter was a good boy, but slow. They did not keep a sufficiency of servants at the Hôtel Railleux. But doubtless monsieur had noticed that?'
The boy met her inquisitive glance with disarming frankness, but his words when he answered gave little information.
'No. He had not as yet had time to notice anything.'
'But of course! Monsieur was a new arrival? He had come—when was it—?' Madame appeared to search her memory.
'Yesterday.'
'But of course. Yesterday! And what a day it had been! What weather for a long journey! It had been a long journey, had it not?'
The boy looked vague. 'Oh, it had been of a sufficient length!'
Madame toyed with the remnants of her stew. 'It had, perhaps, been a journey from England? Monsieur was not French, although he had so charming a fluency in the language?' Her eyes, her whole provincial, inquisitive face begged for information, but the boy was firm.
'We are each of the country God has given us!' he informed her. Then he added with convincing certainty that madame was without doubtParisienne.
Madame bridled at the soothing little falsehood.
'Alas! nothing so interesting. She was of the provinces.'
'Provincial! Impossible!'
At once the ice was broken; at once they were on the footing of friends, and madame's soul poured forth its secret vanities.
'Monsieur was too kind. No, she was provincial—though, of a truth, Paris was so well known to her that she might almost claim to beParisienne.'
The boy's interest was undiminished. 'Might he venture to ask if it was pleasure alone that had brought madame to the capital—or had business—?' He left the sentence discreetly unfinished.
Madame pushed her empty plate away and took a toothpick from the table.
'How observant was monsieur!' She eyed the bright young face with growing approval. 'Yes, business, alas, was the pivot of her visit! This terrible business—exacting so much, giving so little in return!' She heaved a weighty sigh, then her fat face melted into smiles. 'But after all, what would you?' She shrugged her ample shoulders, and the toothpick came into full play.
'What would you, indeed?' The boy began to feel a little disconcerted under her glance of slow approval, and a swift sense of relief passed through him as the door opened and the waiter reappeared, carrying the two eggs.
'What would you, indeed? One must live!' Madame, disregarding the waiter, continued to study the boyish face—the curious dark-gray eyes, in which the morning sun was discovering little flecks of gold. 'And every year conditions were becoming harder, as monsieur doubtless knew.'
Monsieur nodded his head sagely, and began to eat his eggs with keen zest.
Madame looked slowly round at the waiter and ordered coffee, then her glance returned to the boy.
'How good, how refreshing it was to see him eat! How easy to comprehend that he was young!' She sighed again, this time more softly. 'Youth was a marvellous thing—and Paris was the city of the young! Was monsieur making a long stay at the Hôtel Railleux?'
The waiter again appeared and placed the coffee upon the table. Monsieur, suddenly and unaccountably uneasy, finished his eggs hastily and pushed his plate aside.
'Did monsieur desire coffee?' Madame leaned forward. 'If so, it would be but the matter of a moment to procure a second cup; and, as her coffee-pot was quite full—' She raised the lid coquettishly, and again her eyes lingered upon the short dark hair and the straight brows above the gray eyes.
The waiter with ready tact departed in search of the second cup; madame replaced the lid of the coffee-pot.
'Now that they were alone, would it be an unpardonable liberty to ask how old monsieur really was?'
Monsieur blushed.
'How old would madame suppose?'
Madame laughed. 'Oh, it was difficult to say! One might imagine from those bright eyes that monsieur had nineteen years; but, again, it was impossible to suppose that a razor had ever touched that soft cheek.' There was another little laugh, lower this time and more subtle in tone; and madame, with a movement wonderfully swift considering her years and her proportions, leaned across the table and touched the boy's face.
The effect was instant. A tide of color rushed into his cheeks, he rose with an alacrity that was comic.
'He—he was much older than madame supposed!'
Madame laughed delightedly. 'How charming! How ingenuous! He positively must sit down again. It was assured that they would become friends! Where was that waiter? Where was that second coffee-cup?'
But monsieur remained standing.
Madame's eyes, now alive with interest, literally danced to her thoughts.
'Come! Come! They must not allow the coffee to become cold!'
But monsieur picked up his hat and coat.
'What! He was not going? Oh, it was impossible! He could not be so unkind!' Her face expressed dismay.
But her only answer was a stiff little bow, and a second later the door had closed and the boy was running down the stairs of the hotel as though some enemy were in hot pursuit.
THE mind of the boy was very full as he passed out of the hotel, so full that he scarcely noticed the whip of cold air that stung his face or the white mantle that lay upon the streets, wrapping in a silver sheath all that was sordid, all that was dirty and unpicturesque in that corner of Paris. The human note had been touched in that moment in thesalle-à-manger,and his ears still tingled to its sound. Alarm, disgust, and a strange exultant satisfaction warred within him in a manner to be comprehended by his own soul alone.
As he stepped out into the rue de Dunkerque he scarcely questioned in what direction his feet should carry him. North, south, east, or west were equal on that first day. Everywhere was promise—everywhere a call. Nonchalantly and without intention he turned to the left and found himself once more in face of the Gare du Nord.
It is a good thing to rejoice in spite of the world; it is an infinitely better thing to rejoice in company with it. With solitude and freedom, the alarm, the disgust receded, and as he went forward the exultation grew, until once again his mercurial spirits lifted him as upon wings.
The majority of passers-by at this morning hour were workers—work-girls out upon their errands, business men going to or from thecafés; but here and there was to be seen an artist, consciously indifferent to appearances; here and there an artisan, unconsciously picturesque in his coarse working-clothes; here and there a well-dressed woman, sunning herself in the cold, bright air like a bird of gay plumage. It was the world in miniature, and it stirred and piqued his interest. A wish to stop one of these people, and to pour forth his longings, his hopes, his dreams, surged within him in a glow of fellowship and, smiling to himself at the pleasant wildness of the thought, he made his way through the wider spaces of the Place Lafayette and the Square Montholon into the long, busy rue Lafayette.
Here, in the rue Lafayette, the gloomy aspects of the district he had made his own dropped behind him, and a wealth of bustle and gayety greeted and fascinated him. Here the sun seemed fuller, the traffic was more dense, and the shops offered visions to please every sense. Wine shops were here, curio shops, shops all golden and tempting with cheeses and butter, and hat shops that foretold the spring in a glitter of blues and greens. He passed on, jostling the crowd good-humoredly, being jostled in the same spirit, hugging his freedom with a silent joy.
Down the rue Halévy he went and on into the Place de l'Opéra; but here he slackened his pace, and something of hisinsouciancedropped from him. The wide space filled with its cosmopolitan crowd, the opera-house itself, so aloof in its dark splendor, spoke to him of another Paris—the Paris that might be Vienna, Petersburg, London, for all it has to say of individual life. His mood changed; he paused and looked back over his shoulder in the direction from whence he had come. But the hesitation was fleeting; a quick courage followed on the doubt. The adventurer must take life in every aspect—must face all questions, all moments! He turned up the collar of his coat, as though preparing to face a chillier region, and went forward boldly as before.
One or two narrow streets brought him out upon the Place de Rivoli, where Joan of Arc sat astride her golden horse, and where great heaps of flowers were stacked at the street corners—mimosa, lilac, violets. He halted irresistibly to glance at these flowers breathing of the south, and to glance at the shining statue. Then he crossed the rue de Rivoli and, passing through the garden of the Tuileries, emerged upon the Place de la Concorde.
On the Place de la Concorde the cool, clean hand of the morning had drawn its most striking picture; here, in the great, unsheltered spaces, the frost had fallen heavily, softening and beautifying to an inconceivable degree. The suggestion of modernity that ordinarily hangs over the place was veiled, and the subtle hints of history stole forth, binding the imagination. It needed but a touch to materialize the dream as the boy crossed the white roadway, shadowed by the white statuary, and with an odd appropriateness the touch was given.
One moment his mind was a sea of shifting visions, the next it was caught and held by an inevitably thrilling sound—the sound of feet tramping to a martial tune. The touch had been given: the vague visions of tradition and history crystallized into a picture, and his heart leaped to the pulsing, steady tramp, to the clash of fife and drum ringing out upon the fine cold air.
All humanity is drawn by the sight of soldiers. There is a primitive exhilaration in the idea of marching men that will last while the nations live. Stung by the same impulse that affected every man and woman in the Place de la Concorde, the boy paused—his head up, his pulses quickened, his eyes and ears strained toward the sound.
It was a regiment of infantry marching down the Cours la Reine and defiling out upon the Place de la Concorde toward the rue de Rivoli. By a common impulse he paused, and by an equally common desire to be close to the object of interest, he ran forward to where a little crowd had gathered in the soldiers' route.
The French soldier is not individually interesting, and this body of men looked insignificant enough upon close inspection. Yet it was a regiment; it stirred the fancy; and the boy gazed with keen interest at the small figures in the ill-fitting uniforms and at the faces, many as young as his own, that denied past him in confusing numbers. On and on the regiment wound, a coiling line of dull red and bluish-gray against the frosty background, the feet tramping steadily, the fifes and drums beating out with an incessant clamor.
Then, without warning, a new interest touched the knot of watchers, a thrill passed from one member of the crowd to another, and hats were raised. The colors were being borne by: Frenchmen were saluting their flag.
The knowledge sprang to the boy's mind with the swiftness and poignancy of an inspiration. This body of men might be insignificant, but it represented the army of France—a thing of infinite tradition, of infinite romance. The blood mounted to his face, his heart beat faster, and with a strange, half-shy sense of participating in some fine moment, his hand went up to his hat.
Unconsciously he made a picture as he stood there, his dark hair stirred by the light, early air, his young face beautiful in its sudden enthusiasm; and to one pair of eyes in the little crowd it seemed better worth watching than the passing soldiers.
The owner of these eyes had been observant of him from the moment that he had run forward, drawn by the rattle of the drums; and now, as if in acceptance of an anticipated opportunity, he forced a way through the knot of people and, pausing behind the boy, addressed him in an easy, familiar voice, as one friend might address another.
"Isn't it odd," he said, "to look at those insignificant creatures, and to think that the soldiers of France have kissed the women and thrashed the men the world over?"
Had a gun been discharged close to his car the boy could not have started more violently. Fear leaped into his eyes, he wheeled round; then a sharp, nervous laugh of relief escaped him.
"How you frightened me!" he exclaimed. "Oh, how you frightened me!" Then he laughed again.
His travelling companion of the night before smiled down on him from his superior height, and the boy noted for the first time that this smile had a peculiarly attractive way of communicating itself from the clean-shaven lips to the grayish-green eyes of the stranger, banishing the slightly satirical look that marked his face in repose.
"Well?" The Irishman was still studying him.
"Well? We're all on the knees of the gods, you see! 'Twas written that we were to meet; you can't avoid me."
The flag had been carried past; the boy replaced his hat, glad of a moment in which to collect his thoughts. What must he do? The question beat in his brain. Wisdom whispered avoidance of this stranger. To-day was the first day; was it wise to bring into it anything from yesterday? No, it was not wise—reason upheld wisdom. He pulled his hat into place, his lips came together in an obstinate line, and he raised his eyes.
The sun was dancing on a silvery world, from the rue de Rivoli the fifes and drums still rattled out their march, close beside him the Irishman was looking at him with his pleasant smile.
Suddenly, as a daring horseman might give rein to a young horse, rejoicing in the risk, the boy discarded wisdom and its whispering curb; his nature leaped forth in sudden comradeship, and impulsively he held out his hand.
"Monsieur, forgive me!" he said. "The gods know best!"
He said the words in English, perfectly, easily, with that faintest of all foreign intonations—the intonation that clings to the Russian voice.
SO the step was taken, and two souls, drawn together from different countries, different races, touched in a first subtle fusion. With an ease kindled by the fine and stinging air, stimulated by the crisp summons of the flutes and the martial rattle of the drums, they bridged the thousand preliminaries that usually hedge a friendship, and arrived in a moment of intuition at that consciousness of fellowship that is the most divine of human gifts.
As though the affair had been prearranged through countless ages, they turned by one accord and forced a way through the crowd that still encompassed them. Across the Place de la Concorde they went, past the white statues, past the open space through which the soldiers were still defiling like a dark stream in a snowbound country. Each was drawn instinctively toward the Cours la Reine—the point from whence the stream was pouring, the point where the crowd of loiterers was sparsest, where the bare and frosted trees caught the sun in a million dancing facets. Reaching it, the boy looked up into the stranger's face with his fascinating look of question and interest.
"Monsieur, tell me something! How did you know me again? And why did you speak to me?"
The question was grave, with the charming gravity that was wont to cross his gayety as shadows chase each other across a sunlit pool. His lips were parted naïvely, his curious slate-gray eyes demanded the truth.
TWO SOULS, DRAWN TOGETHER, TOUCHED IN A FIRST SUBTLE FUSION
TWO SOULS, DRAWN TOGETHER, TOUCHED IN A FIRST SUBTLE FUSION
The Irishman recognized the demand, and answered it.
"Now that you put it to me," he said, thoughtfully, "I'm not sure that I can tell you. There's something about you—" His thoughtfulness deepened, and he studied the boy through narrowed eyes. "It isn't that you're odd in any way."
The boy reddened.
"It isn't that you're odd," he insisted, "but somehow you're such a slip of a boy—" His voice grew meditative and he recurred to his native trick of phrasing, as he always did when interested or moved.
"But why did you speak to me? I'm not interesting."
"Oh yes, you are!"
"How am I interesting?" There was a flash in the gray eyes that revealed new flecks of gold.
The Irishman hesitated.
"Well, I can't explain it," he said, slowly, "unless I tell you that you throw a sort of spell—and that sounds absurd. You see, I've knocked about the world a bit, east and west, but at the back of everything I'm an Irishman; I have a fondness for the curious and the poetical and the mysterious, and somehow you seemed to me last night to be mystery itself, with your silence and your intentness." He dropped his voice to the meditative key, unconsciously enjoying its soft, half-melancholy cadences, and as he spoke the boy felt some chord in his own personality vibrate to the mind that had asked for no introduction, demanded no credentials, that had decreed their friendship and materialized it.
"No," the Irishman mused on, "there's no explaining it. You were mystery itself, and you fired my imagination, because I happen to come from a country of dreams. We Irish are born dreamers; sometimes we never wake up at all, and then we're counted failures. But, I tell you what, when all's said and done, we see what other men don't see. For instance, what do you think my two friends saw in you last night?"
The boy shook his head, and there was a tremor of nervousness about his mouth.
"They saw something dangerous—something to be avoided. Yet Mac is a millionaire several times over, and Billy is distinctly a diplomatist with a future."
The boy forced a smile; he was beginning to shrink from the pleasant scrutiny, to wish that the vaporous fog of last night might dim the searching light of the morning.
"What did they see?" he asked.
The Irishman looked at him humorously. "I hardly like to tell it to you," he said, "but they marked you for an anarchist. An anarchist, for all the world! As if any anarchist alive would travel first-class in third-class clothes! You see, I'm blunt."
The boy, studying him, half in fear, half in doubt, laughed suddenly in quick relief and amusement.
"An anarchist! How droll!"
"Wasn't it? I told them so. I also told them—"
"What?"
"My own beliefs."
"And your beliefs?"
"No! No! You won't draw me! But I'll tell you this much, for I've told it before. I knew you were no common creature of intrigue; I accepted you as mystery personified."
"And now you would solve me?" In his returning confidence the boy's eyes danced.
"God forbid!" The vehemence of the reply was comic, and the Irishman himself laughed as the words escaped him. "Oh no!" he added, soberly. "Keep your mask! I don't want to tear it from you. Later on, perhaps, I'll take a peep behind; but I can accept mysteries and miracles—I was born into the Roman Catholic Church."
"And I into the Greek."
"Ah! My first peep!"
"And what do you see?"
"Do you know, I see a queer thing. I see a boy who has thought. You have thought. Don't deny it!"
"On religion?"
"On religion—and other things; you acknowledge it in one look."
The boy laughed, like a child who has been caught at some forbidden game.
"Perhaps it was your imagination."
"Perhaps! But, look here, we can't stand all day discoursing in the Cours la Reine! Where shall we wander—left or right?" He nodded first in the direction of the river, then toward the large building that faced them on the right, from the roof of which an array of small flags fluttered an invitation.
The boy's eyes followed his movement. "Pictures!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know there was an exhibition open."
"Live and learn! Come along!"
Together they stepped into the roadway, where the frosty surface was scarred by the soldiers' feet, and together they reached the doorway of the large building and read the legend, "Soctiété Peintres et Sculpteurs Français."
The Irishman read the words with the faintly humorous, faintly sceptical glance that he seemed to bestow upon the world at large.
"Remember I'm throwing out no bait, but I expect 'twill be value for a couple of francs."
They entered the bare hall and, mounting a cold and rigid staircase, found themselves confronted by a turnstile.
The Irishman was in the act of laying a two-franc piece in the hand of the custodian when the boy plucked him by the sleeve and, turning, he saw the curious eyes full of a sudden anxiety.
"Monsieur, pardon me! You know Paris well?"
"I live here for five months out of the twelve."
"Then you can tell me if—if this exhibition will be well attended. I want with all my heart to see the pictures, but I—I dislike crowds—fashionable crowds." His voice was agitated; it was as if he had suddenly awakened from his pleasant dream of Bohemian comradeship to a remembrance of the Paris that lay about him.
The Irishman expressed no surprise: his only reply was to move nearer to the guardian of the turnstile.
"Monsieur," he said in French, "have the goodness to inform me how many persons have passed through the turnstile this morning?"
The man looked at him without interest, though with some surprise. 'Not many of the world were to be seen at such an hour,' he informed him. 'So far, he had admitted two gentlemen—artists, and three ladies—American.'
The Irishman waved his hand toward the turnstile.
"In with you! The world forgetting, by the world forgot!"
His ease of manner was contagious. Whatever misgivings had assailed the boy were banished with this reassurance, and his confidence flowed back as the custodian took the two-franc piece and the turnstile clicked twice, making them free of the long, bare galleries that opened in front of them.
Inured as he was to cold, he shivered as they passed into the first of these long rooms, and involuntarily buried his chin in the collar of his coat. The chill of the place was vaultlike; the cold, gray light that penetrated it held nothing of the sun's comfort, while the small, black stove set in the middle of the room was a mere travesty of warmth.
"God bless my soul!" began the Irishman, "this is art for art's sake—"
But there he stopped, for his companion, with the impetuosity of his temperament, had suddenly caught sight of a picture that interested him, and had darted across the room, leaving him to his own reflections.
The boy was standing perfectly still, entirely engrossed, when he came silently up behind him, and paused to look over his shoulder. They were alone in the vast and chilly room save for one attendant who dozed over some knitting in a corner near the door. Away into the distance stretched the other rooms, bound one to the other like links in a chain. From the third of these came the penetrating voices of the American ladies, descanting unhesitatingly upon the pictures; while in the second the two artists could be seen flitting from one canvas to another with a restless, nervous activity.
These facts came subconsciously to the Irishman, for his eyes and his thoughts were for the boy and the subject of the boy's interest—a picture curiously repulsive, yet curiously binding in its realism of conception. It was a large canvas that formed one of a group of five or six studies by a particular artist. The details of the picture scarcely held the mind, for the imagination of the beholder was instantly caught and enchained by the central figure—the figure of a great ape, painted with cruel and extraordinary truth. The animal was squatting upon the ground, devouring a luscious fruit; its small and greedy eyes were alight with gluttony; in its unbridled appetite, its hairy fingers crushed the fruit against its sharp teeth, while the juice dripped from its mouth.
The intimate, undisguised portrayal of greed shocked the susceptibilities, but it was the hideous human attributes patent in the brute that disgusted the imagination. With a terrible cunning of mind and brush the artist had laid bare a vice that civilization cloaks.
For two or three minutes the boy stood immovable, then he looked back over his shoulder, and the man behind him was surprised at the expression that had overspread his face, the sombre light that glowed in his eyes. In a moment the adventurer was lost, another being had come uppermost—a strange, unexpected being.
"What do you think of this picture?"
The Irishman did not answer for a moment, then his eyes returned to the canvas and his tongue was loosed.
"If you want to know," he said, "I think it's the most damnable thing I've ever seen. When the Gallic mind runs to morbidity there's nothing to touch it for filth."
"Why filth?"
"Why filth? My dear boy, look at this—and this!" He pointed to the other pictures, each a study of monkey life, each a travesty of some human passion.
The boy obeyed, conscientiously and slowly, then once more his eyes challenged his companion's.
"I say again, why filth?"
"Because there is enough of the beast in every man without advertising it."
"You admit that there is something of the beast in every man?"
"Naturally."
"Then why fear to see it?" The boy's face was pale, his eyes still challenged.
The other made a gesture of impatience. "It isn't a question of fear; it is a question of—well, of taste."
"Taste!" The boy tossed the word to scorn.
"What would you substitute?"
"Truth." There was a tremor in his voice, a veil seemed to fall upon his youth, arresting its carelessness, sobering its vitality.
The Irishman raised his brows. "Truth, eh?"
"Yes. It is only possible to live when we know life truly, see it and value it truly."
"There may be perverted truth."
"You say that because this truth we speak of displeases you; yet this is no more a perversion of the truth than"—he glanced round the walls—"than that, for example; yet you would approve of that."
He waved his hand toward another painting, a delicate and charming conception of a half-clothed woman, a picture in which the flesh-tints, the drapery, the lights all harmonized with exquisite art.
"You would approve of that because it pleases your eye and soothes your senses, yet you know that all womankind is not slim and graciou—that all life is not lived in boudoirs."
"Neither is man all beast."
"Ah, that is it! If we are to be students of human nature we must not be swayed in one direction or the other; and that is the difficulty—to be dispassionate. Sometimes it is—very difficult!"
It came with a charm indescribable, this sudden admission of weakness, accompanied by a deprecating, pleading glance, and the Irishman was filled with a sudden sense of having recovered something personal and precious.
"What are you?" he cried. "It's my turn to seek the truth now. What are you, you incomprehensible being?"
The boy laughed, the old careless, light-hearted laugh of the creature infinitely free.
"Do not ask! Do not ask!" he said. "A riddle is only interesting while it is unsolved."