CHAPTER LVII
Which treats of what chanced at the Tavern ofThe Scarlet Jackass
AndNoll?
It was close on midnight. In the smoke-laden air that made a blue haze within the quaint tavern ofThe Scarlet Jackass, up and down the narrow gangway between the crowded tables paced restlessly the nervous figure of its artist-landlord, André Joyeux.
He wheeled round, and flung a phrase at the room; and a loud burst of laughter greeted the sally.
At the tables, smoking, chatting, their glasses of milky absinthe and tankards of ale before them, sat journalists, artists, poets, poetesses, students, bohemians, women, musicians, and a soldier or so.
At one table was a group of students from Gérôme’satelier, with Horace Malahide, Gaston Latour, Noll.
Early in the evening, as they dined, André Joyeux became possessed of all the latest news of the town—political moves, social happenings, scandals, theatrical gossip, literary events, before these things were yet in print, often before they were written; and as he now walked up and down, haranguing, he made his satiric comments upon it all.
He smiled at the roar of laughter and applause. As he turned on his heel at the end of the room, his glance fell on a wizened little old man in gold-rimmed spectacles, who sat bent, and huddled, and drowsing, his arms folded on the table before a glass of absinthe, a wreath of white roses with which he had been crowned earlier in the evening pulled slanting over one sleepy eye.
André Joyeux stopped in his stride:
“What, poet!” cried he, with a laugh, “thy wreath is awry.” He clapped it on the back of the old man’s head. “What, thou sleepest on the very steps of the altar of Fame! Thy brains are drowsy with the fumes of the incense in the very temple of Wit; so Genius, hiccupping with wine, misses his footing at the very threshold of Immortality!... Tsha!” He turned on his heels and continued his walk, striding down the room again. “Sleep if thou must—thou canst read during to-morrow, twenty-four hours late, and at thy leisure on the boulevards with the pot-bellied trader, the world’s news that will be stale here with the snuffing of to-night’s candles; and thou wilt get thy news, too, devoid of wit, without colour, stale anddull and flat as long-drawn small-beer, and twisted and distorted and debauched to the uses of each journal.”
But the vague eyes of the little old mad poet had closed, and he was nodding over his glass. André Joyeux laughed:
“Our old singer of tuneless songs comes from the Latin Quarter, across the river, comrades,” said he—“he has the drowsy habits of the academies—it is always so over there—on the flats across the river, with their vaunted universities and isms and ologies. The professors with dandruff on collar, and the students with talk of new ideas and of the new generation, what do they know of life?”
He flung out his arm as he strode to and fro:
“Tush! they have books down there, ridiculous printed things totellthem of life! to tell them what other people think of life!... They have museums, dry holes where bits of the dead past are stored in glass cases. They have talk of architecture that is dead and useless architecture—schools are endowed to teach it—nay, schools are endowed to tell of what it used to be.... They hang up armour, and write books about it—about armour!” He laughed loud and long. “They might as well write about cooking-pots and discarded tin cans with holes in them.... They will.... They talk of relics of the past—nay, they worship them—build churches to them. They collect things—coins, postage-stamps, what-not. They will collect spittoons next. They form societies—learned societies to pester each other with things that do not matter. They peer at old pictures that have lost their vital significance, completed their function—build public galleries for them, each room a nightmare of incongruous warring canvases, lost to their original intention over a church’s altar or what not, wrangling together, inadequate, foreign, out of place. As though by the looking upon Cromwell’s bones or Napoleon’s breeches they would learn to rule the world! Students pay to see these things—spend the precious years of youth poring over them, even copying them! The delirious years of youth!... They call it culture. Gods! culture!... To the Latin Quarter, to the professors, dandruff-collared, to the gaping student, life is this dusty dull study of what is dusty and dull and stupid and dead.... We of the Hill of Martyrs, it is we who know what is life. Stand at your doors in our steep streets, climb you up yonder to the top of the hill, up with you to the topmost scaffolding of the preposterous cathedral of the Sacred Heart that is a-building, topped with cupolas that shall stand like giant onions to acclaim the sins of garlic-eating burgess France, and look down—condescend to Paris. Between us and the river, with Latin Quarter beyond, glitter the lights of a different Paris, another world—a Paris that knows as little of us of the hill as of the professors of the Latin Quarter yonder—a Paris of the boulevards, a Paris of the aristocrat and of the burgess—a world that knows little of poetry or of learning, and tries to forget what it knows; a world that despises us as we despise it; that shuns us as we shun it. There the burgess, with sole ambition the desire to best his neighbour, plods in glum respectability his mean inglorious day, yet once in a blue moon struts his holiday, his limbs cramped with lack of use to live, his only law of life a fear of his neighbour’s opinion, his object in life to put a number of coins in a bank, to grow full-bodied in the doing, andmarry a wife and reproduce his ignoble species. His furthest ambition to grow very old. God! what a life! Yet is his end like ours who live one long holiday—to die and rot like any lousy beggar, or prince, or cardinal. For the avoidance of this his bank cannot serve—he can write no letter of credit that shall avail him beyond his length of earth.”
“Ay, André—they exist; they do not live,” cried a young fellow of pallid countenance, whose hand, thin, and white, and delicate as a woman’s, shook as he raised his glass of absinthe to his lips.
André Joyeux laughed in his stride:
“Ay, comrades,” said he—“it is we on the Hill of Martyrs wholive.... Climb Montmartre, and you are in a rare atmosphere—get you up amongst the scaffolding a-top of it, and you may touch the clouds—the air is light, vivacious, exciting as wine—solemn things and dull talk fall away from you—you must stoop if you would kiss the hand to Paris, stoop to hail her, stoop to see her. Here we condescend to the world. We are amongst the clouds—breathe the air the gods have breathed. We have here no rare inclinations to riot—herelifeis a riot. Down there they toil and moil all day through, all the months, to snatch infrequent glimpses of life, that they have not the habit to enjoy. Tush!” He laughed. “They call it aholiday! Ho, Ho, Ho! a holiday!... They lie down at the ticking of a clock—sleep at the bidding of their task-masters—awake at the striking of a clock to work their fingers to the bone for a shabby grave. Worse still, work others’ fingers to the bone, even the fingers of woman and child, this pitiful scourged crew, to make rich the brutish vulgarians whom they so fantastically serve. God! what a hell’s stew!... With the darkness they lie down and go to sleep—to awake with the daylight to further toil and moil again. A Russian grand-duke steals their prettiest daughter for a week or more, then takes another. The rich, who are their idols, misuse their beautiful women; so they look up to the rich.... But we! we live all the while. If we’ve a mind to it, we rejoice in the night—we sleep when we will—live whilst we may. Life’s but for a few flitting years at best. These others are so mad they think us mad who know them mad.... If we are mad——”
He stopped a waiter who passed with a tray of tumblers filled with absinthe. His hand shook so that he spilled some liquor as he raised a glass:
“If we are mad, then here’s to madness!”
They roared with laughter, banged their fists upon the board, raised their glasses and drank with him. He emptied the glass and flung it to a waiter.
“If theirs be sanity to huddle in foul dens, feed on the Mad Cow of Hunger, scowl sullenly at life from work-stunned eyes, all to fill the purse of pot-bellied tradesmen, to build with their blood and toil the vulgar habitations of their pretentious vulgarity, then ’twere better to be mad.... And no worse than Sanity.... We too have tasted the flesh of the Mad Cow, but we have not sold our souls for bread, nor our lives to be allowed to rummage on a dunghill.” He held out his hands and grasped the air, adding with hoarse passion: “We live, I say—we live.”
He stood proudly, and gazed at the applause.
They called to him to sing; and he stood there and sang the song that held Paris; and as he sang the refrain, they all burst into the chorus:
“Proud as kings and loud as carters,Live we who live on the Hill of Martyrs.”
“Proud as kings and loud as carters,Live we who live on the Hill of Martyrs.”
“Proud as kings and loud as carters,
Live we who live on the Hill of Martyrs.”
When the rousing chorus was done, amidst thunders of applause, fists banged upon the tables, André Joyeux mounted a chair:
“Our exquisite singer and friend, Adolphe St. Pierre, is unable to keep his engagement to-night,” said he. “But our ancient friend, Paul de Gattepoésie, will take his place,” he added.
There was ironic applause.
The old man with wreath of roses on his head, rousing from his stupor at the nudgings of those that sat near, arose from his chair and, with a smile, shuffled towards the piano. He took his place in serious conceit as the player ran through the refrain of a lilt, and, in a broken voice, he began to utter the verse of his song. But he forgot the words, and the piano finished without him. There was a titter. His vague eyes lighted up again and he started to utter another mood, and again the piano finished without him. And thus, standing there, his straying wits roamed through the maze of the bewildering land of the mad—inconsequently, unabashed, pathetic, unashamed.... He had loved a maid that was red—and swore his allegiance—and she was very beautiful—but somehow he came to love a maid that was white—but she had a mother—and the maid that was red did not like it—so she drowned herself in the lake, a clammy, forbidding, ill-smelling lake—but it was the mother that, somehow, made him love a girl that was dark—but she had a brother—and—and—the magistrate asked him why he drank strong drinks—but he said he had but drunk the milk of the Mad Cow——
The rose garland slipped forward and came down over his eyes, when in the midst of the buffooning laughter that greeted the accident the doors of the tavern were flung open and several Salvation Army girls entered the room.
The old mad poet blinked at the interruption, sighed, and shuffled back to his seat and his absinthe.
André Joyeux rose and went forward to greet the Salvation lasses, received them gently, and asked them if they would sing. One of the girls nodded, ran a few notes on a droning concertina, a tambourine was struck and chinked, and the Salvation Army lass raised her voice in song—the strange sound of an English hymn sung in French with rough true notes, and with passionate eagerness declaring the glory of God and the gentleness of the Christ in this fantastic place of worn-out moods and critical art-sense. At the next verse the chant was taken up by the other women, to the threat of hell-fire, the dread of judgment, the fierce revelling in the blood of Christ, the promise of eternal life amidst the glory of the angels; the girls’ voices gave out a last hoarse shout of praise, and the tavern rang with the riot of applause. André Joyeux went and thanked them prettily.
When the girls had trooped out of the place he watched the door close upon them:
“God!” said he—“what enthusiasm!... It is very dramatic.”
The company rose to go, giving André good-night as they went out, and, it being near midnight, Noll and Horace, and the others with them from Gérôme’satelier, were about to go also and leave the regular frequenters of the place to their intimate gossip in the closed tavern, when André came down to them and asked them to stay. He took them round and showed a sketch of Noll’s framed amongst the many works of celebrities that hung upon the walls. “My friend, you are an artist,” said he.... They went and sat down at André’s table. The others all moved up about them. There was more beer, more absinthe. “The tavern is now closed,” said he—“you are my guests.”
The talk became more intimate.
André Joyeux would rise from his seat between the rallies, restlessly pacing the half-empty room, gesticulating, laughing, frowning, droll—bending his whole wits to the point at issue. His trenchant mind took on a lighter humour. Whatever topic came up, when he felt about it and did not let it pass him with uncaring eyes, he would get up from his seat and get to pacing the room again, playing with it, extolling or condemning, criticising, turning it over and inside out, his keen wit tearing it to shreds or weaving for it a wreath of bays—ever and anon moistening his throat, tilting his glass of absinthe in his shapely white hands.
An hour after midnight he was more than exhausted.
He called for supper....
He drank; none deeper. His talk was wild, his quick tongue and nimble brain were matched against some of the keenest wits of Paris, and his sharp satiric rallies, his rollicking and fantastic humour, never showed to greater advantage than on that night....
Some young fellow asked why Adolphe St. Pierre had not sung this night; it was a somewhat unhappy query, and André Joyeux’s quick ears caught it. It set him brooding; the laughter went out of his eyes:
“His nerves have gone,” he said—“this morning at daybreak he became violent—dangerous—about the double genitive.” He smiled sadly. “It took four poets and a journalist to hold him down, and a musician to pluck at the locked door and wring his hands and say how dreadful it was.... Poor Adolphe! he is gone quite mad.”
The pale youth touched André Joyeux on the sleeve with trembling fingers:
“Comrade,” said he—“your life is a furnace, burning night and day—you, too, will go mad.”
He laughed a rough laugh, boisterously unmirthful; raised his glass; tossed it off:
“That is what they used to say to Rodolph Salis,” said he hoarsely—“that is what they used to say to Rodolph Salis.... Ah, that was a man. He knew how to live....” He got up, his hands twitching, and paced the room again: “It was Rodolph Salis that broughtthe witsto Montmartre. It was Rodolph Salis who saw that Genius would condescend to roar at the tavern, not to snore at the academy—it was Rodolph Salis who saw that as artist he could only be one of many, but as tavern-keeper he might be immortal—so it came that Rodolph created the most renowned tavern of France—so it came that Rodolph Salis opened the tavern ofThe Black Cat; andto its artistic rooms, in the atmosphere of masterpieces hung on the walls round about amongst its old dark panelling, under the dim lights of its wrought-iron lamps, the wits fore-gathered to godlike entertainment. On those walls the pencil of Steinlen had traced a masterpiece, and Willette’s dainty fingers drawn the nervous laughing line; there, seated before his glass of absinthe, I have seen Paul Verlaine write the exquisite lyrics of France; there, among the splendid riot, have sat Daudet, and Zola, and Richepin, Meissonier and Puvis de Chavannes and the rest.... Hoho! Salis put his waiters into the livery of the Forty Immortals, green coats and green leaves and breeches and silk stockings and all—put his flunkies into the habit of them that drowse at the Academy down yonder across the river, each snoring in his seat, the fortieth part of Immortality, sleeping away the honour of France, between bouts of cudgelling their dullard wits to produce the printed book. Tshah! where are the Immortals, the gods? Outside. Outside and aloof they stand—Molière and Rabelais and Balzac, Diderot and Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Georges Sand, Montaigne and De Musset, Zola and Verlaine, Daudet and Flaubert and Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier.... And whilst the Fortieth parts of Immortality each slept, smugly overfilling his breeches’ girth, loading the Academy with dull breathing, Rodolph Salis called the wits together: and at his call the immortals flung the immortal phrase round about the board, tossed to and fro the splendid jest in his tavern ofThe Black Cat. Day and night, spontaneous, full-blooded, polished, they lived their scintillating life.... I can see Rodolph, orange-haired, orange-bearded, pale, green-eyed, his wondrous white hands restless with the leaping pulse and quick nerve, as he was wont to sit at dinner with the wits.Therewas the real Academy of France. Ay, his waiters most fitly wore the leafed green coats and breeches of the Fortieth part of Immortality!... Ah, how the wine glowed!... With the dessert, Rodolph, sipping his coffee, listened with furrowed brow to the latest news, weighing it, testing it—the most brilliant journalists of France at his elbow. The quips, the jests, the biting comment! It was the centre of the world!... I can hear their literary criticism destroy a life’s work in amot, fling immortal honour in a phrase, tossed in epigram across the table, and back again another as keen-edged—the last gossip of the stage—the loud hilarious scandal.... I can see Rodolph, the brows wrinkled in mighty furrows of keen attention as the poets read their lines—can hear his bravas that made men rich and set their blood tingling—can pluck out of the dead years the condemning thunders of his dispraise, can catch his deft wit polishing a blundering line.... But for Rodolph Salis many a poet, singer, artist had been this day in his garret, unknown—trudging, down at heels, the Undiscovered Country. But the artist in him! never forgetting his magnificence that he kept the tavern of France.... Hoho! I can hear the jovial laugh: ‘My lords,’ he’d cry, ‘the time has come for the nobility and self-respecting gentlemen to demand a fresh tankard of ale.’ Hoho! that was a king of tavern lords! Then the golden ale went round—the cloudy absinthe.... And when the room began to fill and the time for shadow-shows to begin, Salis was in full stride. Affable to his guests, always the good host, well-bred, polished, good-humoured,giving the stranger rank of nobility, he would show ‘monseigneur’ with pride of possession the cats that were limned upon the walls, the sketches, the glories of his ancient place; and lead the way to the shadow-show upstairs, sketches of France’s genius on the stair’s walls, hanging everywhere—and he so proud of it all! I can see him stride up and down the passage of the shadow theatre up there, as the witty pictures fell in black silhouette across the white sheet of the theatre’s round proscenium, his gay laugh, his running whimsical comment on affairs, his fierce biting denunciations, the flashing green eyes, the nervous white hand—God! what a fire burned there!... Ah, what songs, what poesie, what rhapsodies, what quaintly spoken words have sounded within those walls!... At midnight when the crowd was gone, as we sit here to-night, he was alone with the wits again—and the wine glowed, and the cloudy absinthe went round—and there was supper that the gods had envied to the tune of the wild badinage that was tossed about the board. And he, Rodolph Salis, the brightest star!... How the ghosts of the Great Dead have arisen at our summons, and walked there!... Tshah!therewas the Academy of the world.... But—he—one day—found his nerves were gone—he took to his bed.... Even amidst the rousing chorus in the wind that passed, his quick ears had heard the Old Reaper’s whetstone upon the sickle—he heard the whisper of Doom—and the nimble wit of Rodolph Salis had never missed the intention of the most subtle hint. He tossed his jibe to Death. And who with more weighty right to the insolence? He had known life——”
André Joyeux ceased speaking; stood brooding; roused; striding to his place, he raised a glass—his hand shook——
The room was deathly still.
“Rodolph Salis knew life,” he said hoarsely.
There was silence whilst he drank; and again he got to his restless pacing:
“There was one man in all this wide world,” said he, “who was glad when the sign ofThe Black Catwas taken down—that man was Rodolph’s brother, Gabriel Salis. They had been estranged from the time of Gabriel’s setting up this tavern ofThe Scarlet Jackass, hating each other’s successes, jealous that the same mother had endowed them with equal wit, resentful of each other’s magnificence....”
He strode up and down several times in silence.
“And Rodolph being dead,” said he—“Gabriel reigned in his stead.... Here within these walls his wit flashed.”
He swept his arm proudly round the room and strode off again:
“And—because his hand shook—and—his tongue wagged feverishly, speaking the fantastic thinkings of that teeming imagination, they cried out that he, too, would go mad; and he, raising his glass as Rodolph had done in trembling fingers, would laugh boisterously.... But—Gabriel, too, heard the whisper—he feared to die the death that Rodolph died—and the tavern ofThe Scarlet Jackasspassed to André Joyeux.”
He laughed, wheeled round, and swept his hand towards the flaring poster at the end of the room:
“There have I drawn Gabriel on his scarlet jackass, bags of goldabout him, trotting away to the fresh air of the fields to the country house he had bought——”
He moved down the room again, moodily:
“But he, too, took to his bed—he had lived his life—he missed his glass, his fellows, the rousing chorus, the jovial good fellowship. He was bored. He took to his bed——”
André Joyeux paced in moody silence a couple of turns up and down the room, went to his place, raised a glass and drained it to the dregs:
“And now the wits feast with me.... Steinlen, and thou, Toulouse Lautrec! ye drink in Joyeux’s tavern. And thou, Willette! though thou didst draw that red ass there in likeness of Rodolph Salis, because thou hadst thy quarrel with him—thou at least quarrelled with a man.... God! I have drunk wine here with Paul Verlaine, first lyric poet of France. Ay,” said he—“why poor Rodolph? why poor Gabriel? why poor St. Pierre?”
And he added hoarsely:
“I tell you these men were not afraid to live. They were men. They were not—afraid—to—live....”
In the smoky twilight that goes before the dawn, as the purple night moved westward over the city, sweeping the world with dusky train, the door-keeper in fantastic livery, his cocked hat on the back of his head, yawned, as beadles yawn at sermon-time, and unlocked the door of the tavern that is calledThe Scarlet Jackass, to let the revellers pass out into the street, Noll and the young students along with them.
They stood on the pavement in the chill air to make an end of their last gossip before parting on their separate ways.
Several were giddy with the haze of their potations, and, having lurched out into the open world, more than one stood with difficulty, though none were wanting in the desire for dignity.
All night long, Noll and Horace Malahide had been stealthily exchanging their full glasses for the emptied glasses of beer-soaking bohemians; but, even so, the fumes of the place were in their brains, and the fresh air made them both for a moment light-headed. The old bibbers of the place, stupid and smoke-stained, and sphinx-like in reserve, stepped out of the tavern cautiously, pale, weary, and nerveless. As the old poet, with his wreath of wilted white roses, lurched out into the night, the door-keeper shut and locked the door from within. The old man tripped over his own feet, stumbled, and sat down suddenly on the footpath, whence he bade them all good-night repeatedly, and fervently recommended them to the care of God.
The pale youth, holding Noll’s arm, which he had seized, said, with a hiccup:
“Mon Dieu, what a night!”
“Ay,” said the frequenters, shivering with the cold, and drawing their thin cloaks about them—“what a night!”
The pale youth burst into tears, and made as though to fling his arms round Noll’s neck, but missed his calculation, and fell over the wreath-crowned old Gattepoésie. He tried to pick himself up; and, as he stood on all fours, he said, with a hiccup:
“He will go mad.”
“Ah, yes,” said an old bohemian—“they knew how to live—they knew how to live.”
They all sighed:
“Yes,” said they—“they knew how to live.”
The bell rang and clinked and swung, hoarsely complaining, over the bed in the little dark den of the concierge; and Madame Hodendouche, rousing sulkily, sat up amongst her bedclothes and pulled the string viciously that drew the bolt of the postern in the great gate outside, muttering a snuffling curse on the lateness of the night.
“Ring—ring—ring, thou pestilence!” she scolded savagely.
The gate outside shut with a slam, feet tramped past, a voice called, and all was silence again.
“Hodendouche,” she said sulkily to her snoring bedfellow—“the Englishman does not give madame too much of his company in these days—I had thought them lovers, but they are indeed married. He is ever more late now.”
She settled her fat little body down amongst the bedclothes:
“Yes, thou mayest well snore, Hodendouche, thou lazy hog—but I kept the Englishman ringing till he broke even thy sleep, and a good cooling will do the fine fellow no ill. He has rung off and on this good half-hour—I only fear he may have taken some varnish off the gate with his pestiferous kickings and knockings....”
In the smoky twilight Noll softly entered the shadows of the room, and as he gently closed the door, he heard Betty toss restlessly in troubled sleep.
He went and sat down upon the side of the bed:
“Betty,” said he, taking her hand, “can’t you sleep?”
She drew his hand into the warm bed, and folded it under her warm fingers against her breast:
“Have you had a happy day, Noll?” she asked.
Noll yawned—he was very weary....
All day he had forgotten Betty; he was now so occupied with his own weariness that he dully failed to see there was one in his life who was selflessly eager to hear of his doings. As he unlaced his boots and undressed, he told her baldly of his day’s adventures, but he scarcely troubled to recall the events—he was very sleepy, he said. Indeed, he had been shining all day, and, however attentive this single audience, it was not the same thing as the rousing applause that made his wits glitter in the midst of the wild good-fellowship. His adventures, robbed of the drolleries and stripped of the fantastic details that had made the laughter and the interest, sounded tedious enough.
Ah, Noll, thou numbskull! hath it not dawned upon thee, then, that thou canst kill this all so precious love for thee by these ignorings of it—just as much by neglect of her for the goodwill of thy rollicking so-called friends as by neglect of her for another woman? Indeed, the difference is but a toy of hypocrisy. If thou must drift off to selfish pursuits, what boots it that thy pursuit be this or that or the other? If thou must needs bawl thy share of the chorus in the night-haunts of the poetasters, why not have her dear companionship besidethee? Does it fulfil thy manhood the more to frequent the taverns at night in the boon fellowship of these little spendthrift intelligences? Hast thou more of magnificence in this killing of time than in the sweet comradeship of this one whose name is like to ring out over the four corners of the world wheresoever thy language is spoken? In the years to come the greatest will seek her companionship, treasure her smile; yet she will be the same woman then, is therefore the same now—if thou hadst but the world’s acclamation to point thee to it.