CHAPTER LV
Wherein is Some Worship of the Moon
Itwas the national fête of the Republic—the Fourteenth of July.
All day, Paris had been a-rattle with tap of hammers. At every street corner, baggy-trousered carpenters had been putting the last nails into the pulpits of the lightly made bandstands; and now, as the flaring sun went down in golden glory over the edge of the city, bathing the decorated streets in amber light—the boarding of the bandstands being covered with the gay splendour of tricolour bunting, and gaudy coloured paper lanterns strung in gay festoons from lamp and tree and window—Paris felt herself arrayed in all her holiday attire as she took breath before her dancing.
At the end of the street where Noll and Betty had their lodging, the carpenters completed their task amidst wide-eyed wonder of inquisitive children and chatter of gossiping neighbours that stood at gaze along the pavement. The landlord of the little restaurant opposite called to the workmen to go and sit down at his tables and quench their thirst. The great slouching fellows needed no second bidding—indeed, they knew the liquor good, for the fat genial little host, Monsieur Charcot, had been plying them with tankards throughout the day, at every hint of heat or weariness, and the hints had not been few, urging them to push on, that he might get up his lanterns, and cover the stand with the red, white and blue stripes of France before darkness fell.
Beaming with hospitality, he now sallied across the road, two waiters at his side carrying paper lanterns and bundles of the nation’s flags; and the rickety bandstand was soon converted into as near a gorgeous opera-box as the limitations would allow.
Madame Charcot stood near, crying orders to the waiters, which nobody obeyed.
All the prettyblanchisseuses, bare-headed, were out along the curb, adding advice and merriment. The which brought out the shop-lads. There was kindly genial banter, and much talk and prophecy of dancing in the evening.
The old people stood about, smiling; and were raising reminiscences from the dead.
In the evening, Gaston Latour and Horace and the rest whooped to Noll and Betty to come down from their high lodging; and ina jovial party they wandered through the glowing streets of the illuminated city. All Paris was dancing. Under the gaudy paper lanterns the citizens were strolling, dancing, capering, laughing, singing—happy as children. And when the students, returning from their long evening’s promenading, came into the street where they lived, the bray and blare and shrill music of fiddle and trombone and cornet and flute, rending the rustling air with an old-time waltz-tune, told that the quarter was still dancing.
The youths and maids were dancing; the middle-aged were dancing; shop-folk and artisan; the old people were dancing.
Mine host, Monsieur Charcot, kicked a heel, blowing hard to keep the time with a young milliner to the pace of the ill-jigging waltz—the trombone being overfull of beer was inclined to sluggardy, whilst the fiddle had developed ambition under the heat of the wines of Italy to lead the music by more than an easy length. The trombone did well, doggedly thrashing the air with overwhelming beat of time, save when he hiccupped, when confusion would threaten. All the little sempstresses and washer-girls were stepping it, swinging round in the whirl with the grocer lads and the youths of the quarter, petticoats a-whirl. The pasty-faced and sullen young workman Hiéne, in his best clothes, was jumping through the measure with Madelaine, who had given old widow Snacheur the slip. And now the melancholy-visaged Gaston Latour seized the plump concierge about the height a waist had once been, and Madame Hodendouche, but mildly protesting, found herself flung off her feet and swept into the revolving whirl, well-pleased enough to be in the social eddy....
All in the street danced out the night, the same tune serving more than thrice—indeed, the call for new airs had started an unseemly brawl between the fiddle and the trombone on the art of Wagner, which had only been washed out in Chartreuse. So they got to jigging it again to the old limping harmonies. They were not over-critical. They had all grown up together, had danced out the national fête together through the warm summer evening in the ruddy glow of the orange-paper lanterns to the like halting music since they could well remember. Thus they now footed it, until the white light of the coming day crept over the eastern roofs and snuffed out the orange glow of the candles that guttered in the lanterns’ sockets, and sent them all to their beds. The early midsummer sun that came a-peeping into the town lit silent thoroughfares in a drowsy city.
The arisen sun ascending into the high firmament saw the students thronging to the railway-stations, with scanty baggage and uproarious souls, to spend the hot days in country places or by the sea—a cheery boisterous crew, good-tempered, chaffing, frankly jovial.
The exodus from the Latin Quarter begun, the “boys” burst in upon Noll and Betty—Babette and Horace and the Disturber of Funerals and the rest, and Gaston Latour. They all helpedto pack, and dragged them off to join the mighty holiday stream, going down to the outskirts of Paris, to Enghien-les-Bains and Montmorency, by train, Gaston Latour rending the air with devilish din of French horn, and insisting on dancing the Arabdanse-de-ventrebefore railway officials and the police, his melancholy face seriously unsmiling as he stepped it, the others wailing the mournful Moorish music and beating time with tap of canes or beat of hands.... And all too fleetly the summer days went by in the pretty country places round about Paris.
Betty loved this summer time. Noll was with her all the day long, blithe of heart and in good spirits, sketching with her and a dozen others out of doors or writing by her side in their delightfully bare room in the primitive inn. The world was fragrant with the scent of flowers.
As the sunny daytime passed into the violet grey dusk, they would wander arm in arm along the pretty country roads—Babette and Horace, Noll and Betty, Gaston and the beautiful Liane, the Five Foolish Virgins and the rest—straying through the twilight carelessly, never wandering too far from civilization and the band and the casino’s paper lanterns—never too far to reach the merry dinner of an evening, lolling in pleasant fatigue round the table in the trim little bosquets of the courtyards of inns, where they all loitered over dinner to talk wondrous nonsense about the delights of a country life, mixed with criticisms of art and of books and of the world. And, the dinner done, they would stroll round the lake, and sit upon the banks, and gaze entranced at the moonlit fairyland—the lights that danced upon the waters and the stars that bespangled the sapphire heavens with a myriad winking mysteries—glad to be alive where all was beautiful.
And there would be sweet idle talk of the day when they should all have villas on the lake with lawns by the water’s edge, disdainful of the rough struggle of the world, watching the pigeons and the peacocks in the sun, listening to the coo of doves, and, when the day was done, content to sit at gaze with the wizard moon and myriad stars, fretting their souls with no stupid thought for fame or name—yet each one knowing in his heart that in most delicious idleness would be weariness beyond the weariness of toil.
There was one thorn only in all this summer delight—Moll Davenant, moody, a prey to odd whims, possessed now of strange reservations and sudden shrinkings, now frightened, now daring, now boisterous, now brooding, lived feverishly, crowding her life into its little span, her pathetic eyes on her doom, as one who knows how short a while she has to live. More than once, Betty had sold some trinket of her own to get the wherewithal to tempt the uncertain appetite; and Noll, too, was the poorer by more than one little possession which he cheerily said he did not want. Then the girl would disappear for days, returning fagged and troubled, like one drugged. Her flushed colour showed that the flames of her life were burning out the tissues of her frail body, and a feverish desire to live the night as well as the day urged her tofrantic bursts of work and of excitement, alternating with long hours of lassitude and a pathetic patience and humility and listless idleness. One day she disappeared and was not heard of for a week; then the news came from far away that she had been seen at the casino at Dieppe with Aubrey.
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At the doors of the Hotel Continental in Paris stood Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott, talking to Quogge Myre; Rupert Greppel and Lord Monty Askew stood at either hand; they gazed superciliously at the passers-by.
Ponsonby Ffolliott, blowing cigarette smoke through his nostrils, said, drawling:
“It’s an awful bore—but Lady Boone is throwing her girl at my head—an awfully pretty girl, she is, by Jove—but, you know, a fellow must have his fling first—or how is a fellow to know he loves the girl—and I am really quite too young——”
They slapped him on the back, and there was laughter.
Ponsonby Ffolliott felt the glory of a man of the world jumping in his marrow; he kicked out his legs:
“Yes,” he said affectedly. “The old trout made me swear to go down to Enghien-les-Bains for lunch. Such a silly hole—such a silly meal—but, you know, a fellow isn’t bound by a promise made under compulsion, is he?”
Ponsonby blew out smoke:
“By Jove,” he said, staring at a girl, one of a bevy that passed, who glanced a roguish eye at him—“what a very pretty girl!”
Ponsonby kicked out his legs jauntily; and followed the girl. And, as he walked, the long white laces of his stays hung down behind and swung to his strutting.