V.
One day he was at work in his room, Marguerite and the parrot in the other room, the door between them shut. Marguerite had found a way of keeping the parrot quiet when Albert was at work. A family with small children had recently moved in on the floor below and their noises were irritating Albert beyond endurance, so Marguerite was taking pains to keep the parrot quiet. She was feeding him bonbons and carrying on a deaf-and-dumb conversation with the hook-nosed chatterer.
“You mustn’t make a sound,” she whispered in a soft lisp, as if talking to a babe, and waved an admonishing finger. “Not the least bit of sound, for we don’t want Albert to be angry, do we?”
The parrot buried his beak in the down under his left wing and muffled his suppressed laughter.
“There goes the postman! That fool, he rings the doorbell as if the house were on fire! Albert has told him a thousand times not to do it in the morning as it disturbs his thoughts——”
The door soon opened with an abrupt jerk and Albert, in a long Schlafrock (lounging robe) appeared in the doorway. His hair dishevelled, a look of unendurable annoyance on his face, his eyes contracted and intense, he clenched his fists and almost shouted—“Can’t you tell that fool to stop ringing? I can hear every bell in the neighborhood when that imbecile makes his rounds. I was in the midst of a sentence and, bah!—that fool comes along with his clamor and I forget what I was going to say—my whole drift of thought is lost—just when my writing was coming along so easily he comes along and kills my morning’s work—that idiot!”
“I told him a number of times not to ring so loud,” Marguerite struck in.
“You told him! You don’t think he is doing it to spite me! That postman and the parrot are a pair!”
“The parrot! He never opened his month. He was as quiet as a mouse all morning. You blame him for everything.—” Marguerite’s voice was becoming lachrymose. “You hate him because I love him so. Poor dear!” She nestled close to the parrot’s cage. “It is about time that both you and I go—Albert loves neither of us any longer——”
Marguerite’s chin began to quiver, the dimples in her cheeks appeared and disappeared, and presently the deluge. She dropped into a chair and the tears soon flowed through her fingers, with which she covered her eyes.
He rushed up to her with a gesture of helplessness.
“What are you crying about? It’s I who ought to cry—a fine morning’s work gone because that stupid postman rings the doorbell as if he were a Prussian officer. Am I blaming you?”
“If—you—loved—me—you—wouldn’t—talk—that—way—” Her words came between sobs.
He strode across the room and waved his arms in despair. He gnashed his teeth but said nothing.
“You see, you wouldn’t even deny it—you know you don’t love me any longer. I know, I know, yesterday at the Café des Ambassadeurs with those funny Germans of yours you sat at the table and talked of nothing but the Princess Pompani. You think because I don’t understand German you can talk of your other loves with impunity—but I understand what Prinzessin means—every minute it was Prinzessin this and Prinzessin that—”
She lapsed into convulsive sobbing.
Suddenly he burst out laughing.
“Yes, you laugh because you have no heart and because you make me suffer——”
The next moment he walked up to her, gently passed his hand over her hair and tried to embrace her but she pushed him away——
“Don’t touch me—I know when you touch me you are thinking you are passing your hands over the Princess—”
Albert was still laughing softly and trying to remove her hands from her face.
“Don’t you come near me—don’t——”
He had succeeded in pulling her hands away from her face and in giving her a grazing kiss on her lips.
“Aren’t you silly, my sweet little Nonette (one of his endearing nicknames)”. “Look at me!” He was holding her face between his hands, trying to make her look at him, but she tightened her eyelids and pulled away from him.
“No, I won’t look at you until you stop loving that Princess——”
He laughed indulgently.
“What a child you are. You know I don’t love anybody but my sweet little kitten with those dear little dimples”—he kissed her on both cheeks, and catching her unawares, pressed a kiss on her mouth.
“Aren’t you silly?” he continued as he wiped her gathered tears. “Here I am working so hard to get a little more money so that we may be able to move away from this clattering neighborhood to a cozy little apartment on Rue St. Honoré and you blame me for getting angry at that stupid postman!”
“I told the concierge only yesterday that unless she made the children behave we would have to move.” Her voice sounded half reconciled but her eyes were still averted from him.
“You sweet little monkey!”
He embraced her affectionately and she rested on his arms without resistance.
“Ha—ha! Ha—ha!—Ha—ha!”
“Shut up, you fool!” she turned angrily upon the laughing parrot.
“No one is a fool who can laugh,” Albert said wistfully, with a sad smile on his face. “Come on, let’s all laugh—Ha—ha! Ha—ha!” he mimicked the parrot, and Marguerite presently joined in the laughter.
“I am nearly through with my book” he presently consoled her, “and I think I can make that miserly publisher in Berlin advance me five thousand francs on my royalties, and I have my eye on a beautiful apartment on Rue St. Honoré overlooking a garden. I think I’ll be able to buy you the earrings you saw in the display window the other day and——”
There was a knock on the door and they both jumped up, Albert went to the door.
The concierge was standing with a packet of letters and newspapers.
Albert thanked the concierge profusely, tipped her liberally, and scanned the envelopes.
“Here is a letter from the publisher,” he exclaimed jubilantly. “I’ll bet the rascal offers me only three thousand francs as an advance for my next volume. He always likes to bargain. If I had asked for three thousand he would have offered me one——”
“Why didn’t you ask him for ten, he might have then offered you five,” she counselled.
“I didn’t want him to get apoplexy—” he laughed.
He tore the envelope and while removing the contents continued talking half to himself, half to Marguerite.
“What a long letter—I know—he is telling me, I suppose, how much he has lost on my other books. That rogue! He has grown rich on my sweat and blood and is always whining how little there is in the publishing business and throws me a pittance! Huh! What’s that!” His eyelids came close together as he continued turning the pages and there was a deep dent between his eyes. “The dogs!——”
“What’s the matter, my dear?” she looked up anxiously at Albert’s agitated countenance.
For a moment he did not answer her. Then, with the loose sheets of the letter in one hand, the large square envelope in the other, he paced up and down the room, frowning, uncontrollable rage in his eyes.
“Those vultures are trying to wrest the very bread from my mouth, but they shall see, I won’t sit idle either.” He still talked half to himself, half to the puzzled Marguerite.
He suddenly remained standing stock still in the middle of the room, his eyes barely open. Then, without saying a word, he rushed to the adjoining room, put the sheets of manuscript in order and stowed them safely into a drawer, exchanged his Schlafrock for a more fitting coat for the street, and was presently ready to leave, Marguerite following him attentively, almost mutely, and helping him with his toilet. She knew that something was irritating her Albert but he had often told her she could not understand his inner disturbances so she did not press him with further questions. But presently he volunteered enlightenment.
“They have forbidden my books in Prussia, and not only those I have published but even those I might publish. The publisher says he can’t send me a sou under the circumstances, and that he, too, will be ruined.”
The want of money was quite intelligible to Marguerite. She knew that without money they could not move to the cozy little apartment on Rue St. Honoré and she wouldn’t be able to get those coveted earrings.
“What’s the difference?” she soon consoled him, “you can write for the French papers. The Germans are queer anyhow.”
For a bare second Marguerite’s stupidity and simplicity irritated him but before his anger had gathered he glanced at her child-like face, her doting eyes, clasped her in his arms and dashed out of the house.
“Yes, I’ll be back in time for dinner. We’ll go to the Ambassadeurs tonight,” he comforted her as he closed the door.