CHAPTER LVI
Wherein it is suspected that there has been Peeping through Windows
Augustand September passed, and the fever went out of the hot breath of the sun; October came into the city in cooler fashion and more russet habit. The scent of autumn in the air brought the students scrambling back from the country, and the Boule Miche knew their light gait and cheery voice once more.
With the return of his boon companions to their old haunts, Noll was out and away early and late again. The first day of October had seen him taken off by Horace Malahide, with a set of drawings to Gérôme—had seen him receive the letter which should admit him anouveauto the great man’satelierin the State schools of the Beaux Arts. He had only to wait until the fifteenth to be initiated into the riotous mysteries of the French studio where Latour and Malahide were not the least boisterous of its boisterous pupils.
As Noll came back, triumphant from his interview with the celebrated painter, Horace and Latour singing him in, he flung down his drawings upon the floor. Betty, glowing with delight at his delight, took them up one by one, and was somewhat surprised at their technical accomplishment. She had feared his days with Horace Malahide had been but idle days. Yet, even with this evidence before her eyes, she was not without shrinkings, for she knew the feverish energy which Noll could put into any effort to gain what he wanted for the time being—and she knew he had greatly fretted to get into Gérôme’satelier.
Beyond?
She knew his Beyond had been of the vaguest. The jovial comradeship of the schools had roused him to effort. And even whilst she went up to him and embraced him, she wondered whether his eyes had been fixed upon any Beyond. She glowed to the pressure of his jovial embrace; she felt the delight of his achievement—yet her clear-seeing eyes were afraid for him. He was so easily successful.
They all sallied out together with Betty, roused the Five Foolish Virgins (Moll Davenant’s door refused to open); and there was cackle and riot as they took a restaurant by storm. The crudewine had never seemed so mellow, the mystic dishes had not tasted finer at an emperor’s banquet—ah! the mysteries of the cooking-pot never yield such savour as to the palate of youth.
Early on the morning of the fifteenth, a fresh October day, Horace Malahide and Gaston Latour came for Noll; and he, in mighty high spirits, an easel over his shoulder and a couple of rush-bottomed stools dangling therefrom, hugged Betty and sallied out with the others to face the wild horseplay that greets the coming of thenouveauon the opening day in the art schools of Paris.
Betty, leaning over the balcony, kissed her hand to him as the three, looking up, waved their hats, and departed out of the court.
She smiled as she thought of the devilments that would ensue; and she smiled still more at the thought of Noll, returned from it all, helping her on with her jacket and hurrying her off to dinner, telling her of the amusing details in his rollicking humorous way, with his quaint eye for the quips and oddities of droll situations.
But the day was heavy upon her—she could not bend her will to her work—the hours passed with sullen tread....
As the sun set she began to listen for Noll’s footfall. The last sunset glow of the eastern heavens passed into the grey twilight; the chill breath of the evening warned her that her frequent roamings to the balcony must cease; she shut the shutters and the window. But the stairs echoed to no sound of Noll’s eager return.
It came to the girl for the first time—selfless as she was—that Noll was finding the sufficient delights of life very well without her; and the thought bit into her heart.
She sighed and arose wearily.
To-night she must dine alone, as she had so often dined alone of late—yet to-night, for the first time, she resented it—was stung by the whisper that it need not have been.
She took her way to the little street of l’Ancienne Comédie. She did not trespass into Noll’s noisier cafés—the noise and the disturbance and restlessness distressed her. Noll preferred “life” at the noisier cafés—the greetings were louder.
Betty betook herself languidly now to her dinner, through the white portals of the Café Procope. She stole into a quiet corner, where she was used to sit and think her sweet thoughts, where the pen was always busy. But her weary brain this night was branded with harsh truths from which she could find no hiding-place. She wondered what the great brooding brains that had known this ancient hostel had gnawed upon within these very walls—what petty little insolences had been thrust uponthemwhilst they were “thinking in continents.” And she felt it a relief when at last the old-world spirit of the place took possession of her, and she found her wits roaming from herself through the pageant of its past magnificence. The dark atmosphere of its sombre peacefulness was lit for awhile with the glory of its ancient days; and the dark corners of the Café Procope became haunted with the mighty breath of its Great Dead. These had been no mediocrities, whatever their faults and failings, but big full-blooded Men—their verysins preposterously magnificent passports to Hell. These were not content to play with the mere toys of life—juggling with echoes.
Fallen into the faded relic of bygone days, this peaceful place has passed into the quietude of the neglected thoroughfare on the narrow footway of which stand its white portals. The strenuous world goes rattling past the end of the old road, unheeding of its one-time magnificence; turns but seldom into its neglected way. Its noisy history is now forgot, its splendid drama remembered by how few of them that live in all this vast splendid city—nay, even by how few of such as have their dingy habitation in this very street, or win the prizes of learning in the illustrious schools of its neighbourhood!
Heretofore had been the very heart of all France—her hot blood had leaped hottest here, sending the throb of its pulsing life to uttermost valley and hamlet of this vast realm. In this little coffee-house, now fallen into neglect, had met together the great wits of France, her master-minds. Nay, rumour hath it that here indeed was very name of coffee-house begotten, begun, made manifest; for here was first given, to France, coffee to chase the dinner and to comfort the stomach of France.
Hither wandering, our Orange William being just come to the throne of England, there had entered into possession, in curly long peruke and somewhat dandified exterior to his shrewd inner man, Master François Procope, in that same year that the Comedy of France took possession of the then Théâtre Français over the way; and, forthwith, glory and fame came to his Café Procope—the wits gathering there to the sipping of coffee and making of elaborate waggeries, not without wrangle, and swords whipped from sullen scabbards, and the like follies manifold. Here had descended from sedan-chair the bent lean figure of Voltaire, his playIrenebeing in rehearsal opposite, and sipped the cup of coffee that was now become the mode in France, the maker of mode. The keen eyes had roved over these panelled walls—here he had stood sneering away the tawdry pretence of popes and kings and laughing to death the diseased and putrid hereditary aristocracy of France. These walls knew the lean mocker well. In yonder sombre little room you shall see still the chair and table at which he was used to sit and write his vitriol jibes, that were the severe medicine for the corrupt body of the decayed nobility.
Here, in fantastic riot, had Rousseau been carried shoulder high after a dramatic triumph; here had Condorcet, in intervals of writing upon the Integral Calculus, been not above horseplay; here had sat Diderot, scheming his encyclopædic schemes, talking tomfool solemn travesties of dangerous talk with winking eye upon his fellow-wags, to lead on the over-zealous police agents to the fussy discovery of large mares’ nests of conspiracy.
Nor had jests and badinage been the only fare. In these ghostly dingy mirrors had passed the faces of the great actors in the world tragedy of France. Within these walls had intrigued the master conspirators of the seventeen hundreds. Here hadbeen put on the first bonnet rouge that was symbol of the coming earthquake of Europe. Here had sat, in yonder corner, fearless, massive great-souled Danton, shock-headed, black haired, playing at chess with the crooked blear-eyed horse-doctor Marat; here had stood, dark-browed, pock-marked, incontinent, bankrupt, the great resolute sane strong man of the Revolution, Mirabeau, the born ruler of men, destined to die of his youth’s vices at that very moment when bewildered France was at his feet and had the sorest need of him; here, too, that other pock-pitted fellow, the dandified sphinx of the madness, “seagreen” Robespierre, crafty, merciless; here had throbbed the heart of Camille Desmoulins, who lost his head in plea for mercifulness, bearding the bloody madness of the Terror with proposal for a Committee of Mercy that keeps his memory sweet as the mellow syllables of his name to all eternity—here with d’Holbach he had sat or paced, airing hot enthusiasms, plunging deeper into dangers their clean souls scarce realized—moving forward to high dramatic destinies none could foretell, godlike, to the guillotine and betrayal and death and broken illusions. Here, too, forger, thief, and liar, had stood Hébert, one of the foullest blots on the Revolution, stood at that door upon that table of Voltaire’s, and, mouthing his Sacred Right of Insurrection, harangued the fierce crowd that packed the narrow thoroughfare, exciting them to the black brutalities of the Terror, stamping his great vulgar foot in passionate frenzy of murderous blasphemies upon the table top so that the heel of his heavy boot split the marble across—he who most damnably lied away the fame of the poor doomed foolish queen where she stood at trial alone amongst her hellish enemies—he who “hated the word Mercy”—here he had sat, little dreaming that his filthy neck should be slit in agony of craven appeal by the very laws of his own planning.
Nay, within these very walls had been conspiracy within conspiracy—massacres planned—the killing beginning at these demure white doors.
Here, on that August day that the Monarchy fell, had sat Madame Roland and Lucille Desmoulins, the sweet and beautiful and rich mate of famed Camille, together with Madame Danton, their ears athrob with ringing of bells and roar of cannon—the shadow of the guillotine not flung as yet their way, unsuspected, their eyes as yet not seeing, their white necks not feeling, that harsh doom either for themselves or their lords.
Hence one day a genial, dreamy, kindly young officer of artillery they called Napoleon Buonaparte, that lived at a small lodging in a street hard by, walked out bare-headed, leaving his cocked hat as security for his reckoning, having forgotten his purse. Here, in days not so long past, Gambetta fumed and raved and swore and dreamed and spouted, holding the Republic together as best he could, a Republic broken with a dozen warring internecine strifes and petty interests.
Here, the old café having fallen on more peaceful days and slow decay in its neglected thoroughfare, the poor dirty shabby geniusthat was called Paul Verlaine sat at the dead Voltaire’s table, and wrote on scraps of paper his now world-famous lyrics.
The greatest of these had been mighty workers, men of iron toil. These had not been content to thrum little five-fingered echoes of the great music of the drama of life—these had created their own music, their own methods, their own art. No man shall come to greatness through juggling with echoes. These had made their own style to express themselves—had no need of the elaborate polishing of the tricks and ornaments of the mediocrities who, having nothing to express, filch little movements and sounds from the vasty music of the masters to cover their own little insignificance—who in toil to polish phrases miss the statement. Nay, these men had not been content with praise of mediocrities—had scorned even their approval.
When, an hour before midnight, Betty, going homewards, passed the house where Moll Davenant lived, she became aware of hoarse whispers; looking up the dark side street as she crossed the road, she saw a man standing on another’s shoulder peering into the lighted room within—the widow Snacheur’s room. The fellow leaped down, and the pair of them calmly sauntered down the alley.
Betty hurried on, vaguely wondering. She reached the house where she lodged, and found the great gates shut. It came to her that it was the first time she had felt a certain shrinking from ringing the bell in the concierge’s den—the first time she had felt alone; the first time she had tried to find an excuse for being alone.
She rang—the postern opened with a clank—she stepped in, shut it, called her name as she passed the concierge’s window, and climbed her stairs wearily.
It was very late, yet she had no fear that Noll had returned to find no welcome.
She laughed sadly.
It dawned upon her that it was she who had always returned unwelcomed to the empty hearth. He was probably leading the laugh at some fantastic tavern’s good-fellowship....
As she let herself into her room, her glance fell on a note that had been slipped under the door. She picked it up, lit her lamp, and opened the letter listlessly: it was from the Disturber of Funerals—her heart warmed to the genial handwriting, at the thought of the big-hearted kindly man. As she read, her own loneliness fell from her, her own affairs as usual became as naught. Her eyes grew serious. Dick Davenant was off to America, recalled by his people on urgent summons; he would catch the Atlantic liner from England—would Betty, like the good comrade she was, watch over Molly until he returned—she was grown full of strange moods and kept him from her—he was at a loss....
“I will go to her at daybreak,” Betty said; and languidly she undressed.
She lay down on her bed; and the pillow that had known so many bright dreams, ambitions, hopes, was for the first time wet with Betty’s scalding tears.