CHAPTER LXXIV
Which sees the Day break in the Tavern ofThe Golden Sun
A mistydark night. The drizzle that slowly drenched the town met with but damp welcome the students and revellers as they poured out of the Bal Bullier at midnight; it sent them swarming into the genial warmth and cheery glitter of the cafés on the Boule Miche.
And the inhospitable rain, having emptied the streets, slyly took itself off into the outer darkness and passed out of the city, leaving the trees weeping in the blackness.
Noll, wearied by the frantic toolings of the students’ Bal Bullier, put up the collar of his coat, and finding that the drizzle no more wet his face, he strolled down the Boule Miche, struck across the cobbles of the riverside quays, and striding into the murk that hung about the river, he found himself on the bridge. He stood and leaned over the parapet, peering into the blackness of the foggy depths that swirled in pitchy fumes below.
The yeasty stillness yielded a sob.
A young woman’s voice near at hand spoke low.
Aubrey’s voice answered her, impatiently. The fog carried every inflection of his drawling irritation and peevish insolence. He pshawed:
“Women take love so seriously,” he said—“it is women who spoil it.... Love is the pastime of life, the gaiety of days, a thing to enrich the senses, to give man his recreation—and women filch it of the very essence of its charm by making it the sordid business of life. Robbed of its delicate mysteries, of its butterfly flitting from flower to flower, it becomes—marriage—and the begetting of children—and the clamour of household needs—and milk-bottles—and soiled linen.... Why are you not content to love many men, Hélène, as I have found the rhapsody of life in loving many women?... It is the spiritual——”
“The spiritual!”
She laughed a little harsh laugh; and added sharply:
“Come, master Aubrey—we know each other too well to make it worth while to lie—it deceives neither ourselves nor the other; wherefore then the intention of it?... I would only ask you not to love the other womanbeforeme——”
She was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
“Come,” she said hoarsely, “this air is killing me—I must have warmth—I am starving, body and soul.”
“The tavern ofThe Golden Sundoes not close till daybreak,” he said sullenly.
She laughed sadly:
“Yes,” she said—“they turn life upside down—the artists—like the religious....” She sighed consent. “All right. We will go there.”
They passed Noll, where he leaned against the parapet of the bridge, almost touching him.
He roused moodily and followed the sound of their footsteps in the pitchy murk.
He, too, would go to the tavern ofThe Golden Sun.
He turned to his left as he stepped off the bridge, and kept by the river-wall.
There came to him now and then through the clammy darkness ahead the sound of the girl’s coughing. This woman was Hélène, the fragile beauty whom Aubrey had filched from her easy-going husband, a young doctor of the commercial quarter across the river. In the letter she had written to bid the honest commonplace fellow farewell (Aubrey had told it at a tavern merry-making amidst the sly laughter of his fellows) she had complained that he had no romance, that the very soles of his thick and clumsy boots were like his own solid soul, an offence to her sense of the subtleties—that she must out into the world to seek romance and the colour of life. The blow had fallen out of a serene day in the face of the poor fellow, and it was matter of common report that he had reeled from it—he, being unpoetical and unappreciative of the picturesque glamour of wickedness, had not even appreciated that he was party to a romance—had taken instead to avoiding his fellows and was walking with Shame—furtively, unheroically. Paris had laughed. And the girl——
She was getting her fill of crude adventure now....
Out of the reek there came again to Noll the pitiful cough. The footsteps stopped for awhile. A quickly suppressed sob. Again footsteps.
In the sombre gliding river below, the green lights of vaguely looming blacknesses that were canal-boats, splashed emerald flames in the inky flood. Loomed now across the waters the massive solidity of the twin-towered cathedral, black against the black night; and beyond and low down upon the pitchy tide the pale lights that burn all night in the house of the dishonoured dead gleamed through the window-slats of the Morgue.
Noll, hearing the cough again, roused to the sound that the others had left the riverside. He crossed the drenched quays, and leaving the river behind him, struck into a narrow street that was possessed by the spectral wraithes flung down the grimy old walls by the ghostly lamps that hung thereon. Along the gloomy thoroughfare the chill airs, from the river hard by, set the lamp’s flame flickering, and sent dusky shadows moving stealthily out ofdingy doorways and black corners, shadows that stealthily stole back again. And amidst the silent spectres, flecked by the down-flung light of the creaking wall-lamps, flitted the figures of the man and woman; and back from amongst the ghostly wraithes came the pitiful harsh cough.
Their shadowy figures turned into the squalid street that is called the Rue Galande; and Noll closely followed them, they came to a halt before the low arch of a doorway and stepped out of sight.
When Noll reached the arch, the red maw of which yawned into the sordid street, he saw by the legend written upon the glass of the battered gas-lamp which hung awry overhead that he was at the threshold of the tavern ofThe Golden Sun. Across the dark stretch of rudely paved courtyard beyond, the two figures were passing blackly under the yellow flood of a gas-lamp, the restless flame of which showed a flight of steps leading underground. The twain descended into the gloom of the passage and were swallowed in the cellars from which came a gust of song and the sound of music as the doors opened and shut upon them.
Noll descended the steps, pushed open the doors at the bottom, and stepped into the tavern ofThe Golden Sun.
He blinked at the lighted room, dim as it was. The heavy air, laden with the fumes of beer, and hazy with the clouds of tobacco-smoke, met him with a pleasant warmth of welcome.
Through the haze he saw that the people sat, silently giving their whole attention to a slender youth who stood at the far end of the room declaiming verse, leaning upon a piano—a grey-haired musician touching mellow chords gently and running a light accompaniment of music atune with the speaker’s fine voice.
Noll was little in need of the superfluous pantomime of a burly thick-set waiter who made melodramatic signs to him to stand still—to make no sound.
As he stood there, listening to the telling accents of the young poet, his eyes ranged over the strange gathering of bohemians who sat about the little round tables. They were shabby enough, some of them, to have been the denizens of a thieves’ kitchen; but there was an atmosphere of culture abroad that took all incongruity from the noble sentiments and subtlety of accent that fell from the lips of the poet in that dingy place.
The women who sat at the tables were not the gay butterflies that flitted in silk and satin about the glittering cafés of the Boule Miche. Their picturesqueness was of a more subtle kind, and its daintiness shone through the pitiful simplicity of meagre apparel.
Here were no rollicking students; here was no frantic fooling; here was a note in the air that Noll had not yet heard sounding in gatherings that laid more strenuous claims to the pursuit of art.
His eyes ranging, caught signs from Aubrey to go and sit beside him; and, the poem ending in a dulcet pathetic sigh for the eternal tragedy of life, Noll took advantage of the resulting bravos andapplause to make his way to Aubrey’s table. The quick-eyed waiter was there as soon as he, and bawled Noll’s order for three bocks of beer to the patroness, who shrilly echoed it.
Aubrey was frankly glad to see him; and it was soon abundantly clear to Noll that he was as frankly glad to be relieved from the sole entertainment of the pallid woman beside him. Hélène, too, roused to interest in the fine young Englishman—the frown left her handsome brows.
The grey-haired musician ran his slender fingers over the keys of the piano; and there stepped on to the little platform on which it stood the only man who seemed out of place in that strange company of dreamers. Burly, powerful, big-headed, with cunning eyes that count profits, slits above baggy underlids, he was of the blonde breed that plans and orders—full-bellied, calculating, of those whose fat hands get money, and, with short grasping pointed fingers, hold it when got. He rang a little bell, and silence followed its tinklings.
Hélène leaned over to Noll:
“He isThe Golden Sun,” she whispered, and laughed low.
He had the honour to announce that Madame Hélène would declaim an apostrophe from her last written work.
The young woman arose simply, smiled to Noll, and making her way to the piano, took her place before it amidst a salvo of applause; and with a strange thrill in her husky voice, she spoke of the cruelty of Nature, the eyes glowing in the deep shadows of her fine brows that gleamed white amidst the masses of her tawny hair, where she stood below the light, gracefully poised against the piano. She uttered the exquisitely phrased sentences in a well modulated low voice that was vibrant with suppressed passion, without trick, without gesture.... The warfare of life was unceasing, unmerciful. Race struck at race, man lay in wait for man—on the mart, on the field of battle, in love, robbed the one the other of the simplest needs of life.... Everywhere was struggle—everywhere was strenuous rivalry—at the end of all, the grave.... The caged bird, what a thing of pity! Denied the range of life, destitute of its mate, its wings cramped, its functions atrophied—yet—open the door of its narrow prison, let it but fly across the sweet-scented meadows, and a hawk swings out of the heavens, falls from the splendid blue, and strikes with rending claws, and tears out with cruel well-contrived beak the little life from the delicately designed beauty of the songster.... Why flutter against the encaging bars? why struggle ever to be in the winds and the free airs? Tush! wherein was freedom but to flee from death? The little fragile thing had the gift of song; let it be glad that it had the gift of song.
She uttered the pity of it in the most caressing tongue that the nations have wrought; and when she had spoken the last word, she bowed to the thunder of applause, came back to the table, and seated herself by Noll with a freedom from conceit that touched him.
They came and clasped her hand, and gave her ungrudgingpraise, with all the airs and kindly dignity of France. And Noll noticed that Aubrey was gone....
The room was gay with banter and laughter, glasses clinked, the waiter sped about busily, bawling orders, and the smoke of cigarettes clouded the ceiling.
And, of a truth, the atmosphere of the place had a strange fascination for Noll.
Here were no longer the crude essayings, and the more crude aims of fledgling studenthood. He was weary of the fierce partisanship, the shifting foundations, the tentative idols of their passing frenzies, this taking of sides about things that did not matter.
These people were out of the years of their apprenticeship to the arts.
Here, on the other hand, was no posing at all costs for outrageous originality, no seeking for the eccentric aspect of things, none of the fantastic extravagances that marked the revels of the sordid gatherings in the taverns of Montmartre—for these people had no desire to the breaking of idols, the outraging of the decencies, the mocking at ideals.
Art, to these people, was the one serious aim of life.
There was scarce a line uttered this night, whether of recited poem or song or criticism, which was not perfect in the expression, exquisite and subtle in the phrasing. There was that air of tactful restraint and of rightness of statement which in manners are called good breeding. And if the emotions uttered were somewhat thin or exaggeratedly sad or tinged overmuch and disproportionately with the grey half-tones of the pathos of life, if vigour and the strenuous music of the bright days and the gaiety of life were almost wholly absent, there was at any rate a feeling for beauty and a sobbing appeal to the pity of the world for such as are overwhelmed by the destiny of tragedy that held something of nobility.
These men and women were content, if a neglectful world so ordered it, to live here in obscurity and poverty, their sole incentive to life the worship of beauty. Upon the workaday world they turned careless shoulders—and for them the workaday world, in grim retort, had no uses, no honours. The worst sin to them was to be Philistine. Here they met together at a time when drowsy citizens were getting into their unthinking beds—here they were happy in the companionship of their fellows throughout the long night, exchanging their ideas of the beautiful, their polished gentle wit, their praises—here, shrugging contemptuous shoulders at the conventions of the world, men and women lived and loved as they listed.
If the world should one day awaken to the works of their genius, so much the better for the world—if it should clamour for their poesy, their song, their works of art, well and good. They would be glad that the world had taste enough to give them fame. But the world must come to them.... It would make life easier—their clothes would be less shabby—hunger less biting, less insistent. But what had the world to give them better than the love of beauty or more pleasant than the comradeship of them thatknew beauty when they saw it? The generations perhaps would greedily seek the work of their brains; fame would come if it came.
So said they, gentle-mannered, shabbily attired, simple-hearted, warming their starved blood with brandy and bocks of beer and accursed brain-stealing absinthe, living on each other’s kindliness and praise and genial comradeship, living in dreams, walking on air, wayfarers in cloudland, scorning all meannesses, garnering with difficulty the poorest sustenance for daily bread, cheerful though the frost bit and the hunger thinned their already lean ribs, and penurious want made their blankets few—proud in their dignity, pitiful to every suffering thing.
Why heed the sensational events of the day? what mattered that a Minister had fallen? what did it matter that a scandal was washing dirty linen in the streets? Such things were dead and buried and forgot in nine days—but art and music and poetry remained, beauty was eternal. Why compete in the sordid money-grubbing race for wealth? We must all die. Why this strenuous hurrying to the open grave?
So they reasoned. And they brought to their meeting no sign or word of their hard struggle for daily bread. They brought to their comradeship only laughter and wit and gentle faces and smiles....
The small hours of the night passed.
It was nearing five o’clock, and the room began to thin of its frequenters. Noll called the waiter and paid the reckoning of saucers for himself and Hélène. She arose with him to go; and as they opened the doors and stepped out of the heavy air of the room, the grey dawn had broken and the dingy lamp ofThe Golden Sunwas paling into insignificance in the chill day.
As they reached the river, they found, swathed in multitudinous wraps, a stout woman who was selling hot milk and rolls. Noll did not ask the girl, but ordered a couple of bowls of the comforting stuff and a roll. The girl drank the milk gladly; and of the roll she was very careful not to lose the crumbs.
Noll took her to her poor room on the fifth story where was her threadbare home.
At the threshold she asked him in.
He smiled.
He took her pathetic face between his two hands, and kissed her upon the wan cheek:
“No, Hélène,” he said—“I love another woman.”
She turned and went into her room.
As he descended the stair she came out to him again:
“Will you be atThe Golden Sunto-night?” she asked—her lips a little anxious and apart—beautiful lips.
He hesitated—pondered—smiled:
“Yes,” he said.
As Noll crossed the Boule Miche a white mist hung over the river; at the far end of the students’ highway the heavens were chilly grey; all the stars were burnt out of the drab firmament.