CHAPTER XIX
THEY dined with a full measure of satisfaction; for with his invitation to a feast, your Parisian accepts an obligation to bring forth his best in gayety, in conversation, in good-will; and it might well have happened that Blake, spending ten times as much money upon guests of his own world, might have lacked the glow, the sense of success, that filled him in the giving of this dinner to an unknown musician and a little blonde-haired Montmartroise.
They dined; and then, because the winds were still wintry and coffee could not yet be sipped outside café doors, they betook themselves to the little theatre of the 'Trianon Lyrique' on the Boulevard Rochechouart, where for an infinitesimal sum the bourgeoisie may sit in the stalls and hear light opera conscientiously sung.
As it was a gala evening, Blake reserved a box, and the little Jacqueline sat in the place of honor, neat and dainty to the point of perfection, with a small black jacket fitting closely to her figure, and a bunch of violets, costing ten centimes, pinned coquettishly into her lace jabot. They sat through the performance in a happy mood of toleration, applauding whenever applause might be bestowed, generously silent when anything tempted adverse criticism; and between the acts they smoked and drank liqueurs in company with the good Montmartre shopkeepers—the soldiers—the young clerks and the young girls who formed the crowd in the lounge.
But all things end; the curtain fell on the last act of Les Cloches de Corneville, and not without a pleasant, passing sigh, the four left the theatre.
The boulevard teemed with life as they made their way into the open; a certain intoxication seemed blown along the thoroughfare on the light spring wind; a restless energy tingled in the blood.
On the steps of the little theatre, Blake looked back at his party.
'The night was young! What would they say to supper?'
Jacqueline's eyes sparkled, but she looked at M. Cartel, and regretfully M. Cartel shook his head.
'Alas! He was expecting a friend—a composer, to call upon him before midnight.'
Jacqueline betrayed no disappointment; with a charming air she echoed the regret, the shake of the head, and slipped a confiding hand through M. Cartel's arm.
Then followed the leave-taking—the thanks and disclaimers—the promises of future meetings—and at last the lovers moved out into the crowd—M. Cartel, cheery and brisk, humming the tunes of 'Les Cloches,' the little Jacqueline clinging to his arm, smiling up into his ugly face.
Max watched them for a moment with a deep intentness, then wheeled round swiftly and caught Blake's arm.
"Ned! Take me somewhere! I would forget myself!"
"What troubles you, boy? Not the thought of the picture?"
"No! A something of no consequence. Do not question me. Be kind to me, and take me where I can see life and forget myself."
"Where will I take you?"
"To some place of gayety—where no one thinks."
"Very well! We'll go over and have supper at the Rat Mort. You won't be over-troubled with thought there. We can sit in a corner and observe, and I give you my word there will be no encounters with old friends this time! I'll be blind and deaf and dumb if anything is washed up from the past!"
Guiding the boy across the crowded roadway, he passed through the narrow door and up the steep stair that ends so abruptly into the long, low supper-room of the Rat Mort.
Max felt the abruptness of this entry, as so many climbers of the ladder-like stairs have felt it before him; and a dazed sensation seized upon him as the wild Ztigane music of the stringed orchestra beat suddenly upon his ears and the intense white light struck upon his sight.
He felt it as others have felt it—the excitement, the consciousness of an emotional atmosphere—as he followed Blake down the dazzingly bright room. It was in the air, as it had been at the Bal Tabarin.
As they seated themselves, the barbaric music ceased; the orchestra broke forth afresh with a light Parisian waltz, and down between the lines of tables came a negro and a negress—properties of the place, as were the glasses and the table linen—waltzing with the pliant suppleness, the conscious sensuality of their race, and close behind them followed a second couple—a Spaniard, restless and lithe, small of stature and pallid of face, and a young Spanish girl of splendid physique.
Max sat silent, attentive to this dance, while Blake ordered supper; but when the wine was brought, he lifted his glass and drank, as if some strong sensation had dried his throat.
Blake turned and looked at him.
"Well? Is it amusing?"
"It is—and it is not. Those black creatures are extraordinary. They are repulsive—like figures in a nightmare."
"Oh! Repulsive, are they? And what about a certain picture we once looked at—when I was swept off the face of the earth for using that same word? I believe, you know, that points of view are changing! I believe I'm coming to part two of my little book! These niggers aren't a bit more disgusting than the monkey sucking the fruit."
Max glanced at him, laughed a trifle self-consciously and drank some more wine. "Let us forget monkeys and little books and all such stupidities. There is a pretty woman over there! Make me a story concerning her." He nodded toward a table in the middle of the room.
Blake, looking, saw a slim woman in white, whose large hat threw a becoming shadow on auburn hair and red-brown eyes.
"Ah, now," he said, thoughtfully, "you've given me too much to do! At a first glance I'd say she's just the ordinary better-class cocotte; but at a second glance it seems to me I'd pause. There's something about the eyes—there's something about the mouth that puzzles me. You'll have to wait, my boy, and let fate tell you your fairy tale!"
Trained in the consciousness of regard, the woman they discussed looked across at them as Blake ceased, and the flicker of a smile touched her lips—a smile of interest in which there lurked no hint of invitation.
"Ah, wasn't I right! She discriminates—our auburn lady! We'll see something interesting before the night is out, mark my words!"
They half forgot her and her possible story in the hour that followed, though Max noted that the woman who wanders from party to party at the Rat Mort, distributing roses, paused twice by her table and spoke to her, each time departing without unburdening herself of her wares; also, he noted that the pallid little Spaniard, who had been scattering his attentions among the ladies unprovided with companions, came and bowed before her, and that, contrary to her impression of aloofness, she rose and danced a waltz with him.
At this episode of the dance, Blake's eyes as well as the boy's were attracted; and, as she glided up and down between the tables, cool, unmoved, seemingly indifferent to the world about her, his interest reawakened, and he cast a sidelong glance at Max.
"Wait!" he said. "When you see that guarded look in a woman's eyes, you may always know she's expecting something."
Even as he spoke, she returned to her solitary table, dismissing the Spaniard with an inclination of the head and, as she seated herself, both observers saw a change pass over her face—saw her gaze narrow and turn toward the door—saw a faint flush touch her cheeks and recede, leaving them paler than before.
It was a controlled emotion, almost imperceptible—differing in essence from either the latent violence of the woman Lize or the artless impulsiveness of the little Jacqueline; but with certain intuition it sent Max's glance winging to the door of the supper-room, assured that some issue in the subtle war of sex was about to be fought out.
A new party was entering the room—a small dark Parisienne, bringing in her wake two Englishmen—one brown—the other fair, with the accepted Saxon fairness.
Down the long room the little lady came, ushered by obsequious waiters, the recipient of many glances, admiring or envious; close behind her followed the brown-haired Englishman and, a little in the rear, her second cavalier—reserved of demeanor, distinguished of carriage, obviously upholding the tradition of sang-froid that clings to his countrymen.
Max's instinct was fully awake now; and when, in passing her table, the fair man inclined his head to the auburn-haired lady, the matter merely fitted with his expectations.
What brief emotional past lay in the mists of the unknown, linking this woman to this man? Nothing was to be read from her face—no expression of pleasure, none of chagrin; but in her half-veiled eyes a certain brilliance was observable and her long, white fingers began softly to drum upon the table in time to the music.
No explanation was demanded; in a clear, disconcerting flash, the situation was laid bare. Here was woman desiring the love of man; woman determined to reap her spoil. It was one issue in the deathless, relentless struggle—the struggle wherein the little Jacqueline clung to her M. Cartel, tenacious as the frail fern to the ungainly rock—wherein Madame Salas had fought sickness and neglect to protect a fading life. It was a truth—arresting as truth must ever be; and stricken with a tingling fear, the boy drove it from him, and turned his eyes from the fateful, shadowed face and the light, drumming fingers.
A new dance had begun: the grinning negro had seized upon the Spanish girl and was whirling her down the room to the laughter of the company, while her countryman looked round the tables in indifferent search for a partner.
His glance skimmed the white figure at the lonely table, the eyes of the woman were lifted for an instant, revealing a flash of their new light, and in a moment the two were dancing again, moving up and down the room, in and out between the tables with their original easy grace; but this time the woman's lips were parted and her eyelids drooped in a clever simulation of enjoyment.
Up and down they glided, passing and repassing the table where the little dark lady supped with her two cavaliers, but never once did the woman raise her eyes to the Englishman's or seem aware of the cold, close glance that followed her movements; but once, as the music faded to silence, and her white skirt swept past his table for the last time, she murmured something softly in Spanish to her partner, and allowed one level, effective glance to fall on his pallid face.
That was all; the waltz stopped, she disengaged herself gently, and walked back alone to her table.
This waltz was followed by another and yet another, and again she fell to her old attitude of lowered eyes and drumming fingers.
The Englishman at his table made pretence to eat his supper, poured himself out a fresh glass of champagne, drank it, and with a suddenly achieved decision, gave a cool laugh of excuse, rose and walked straight toward the solitary figure.
Max, momentarily clairvoyant, felt the violent heartbeat, the caught breath, that told the woman of his presence—felt to a nicety the control of her expression, the rigidity of her body, as she slowly raised her head and met his eyes; then he saw the man bow, making some suggestion, and he leaned back in his seat with a little sigh of satisfaction as the woman smiled and rose and the two began to dance.
Both tall above the ordinary, they were a well-suited couple, and a certain pleasure filled the beholder's mind as they moved decorously up and down the long aisle formed by the double row of tables—the man entirely indifferent to his surroundings, dancing in this Parisian supper-place precisely as he would have danced in a London ball-room; the woman following his every movement with a passivity—a oneness—that gave no hint of the definite purpose at work within her brain.
The dance over, he led her back to her table, drew her chair forward with elaborate politeness, bowed and, with a murmured word, strolled back to his own table.
So sure had been her triumph, so abrupt its collapse, that Max—smoking his cigarette, sipping his coffee—turned, with a little exclamation, to Blake.
"Have you observed, mon ami? Oh, why was that?"
Blake was carefully lighting a cigar.
"'Twould be hard to say," he answered, meditatively. "In a matter of emotion, an Englishman has a way of getting frightened of himself. This particular specimen has come over to Paris to play—and he doesn't fancy fire for a toy!"
"And what will happen? What will be the end?" Max had laid his cigarette aside; his fingers were interlaced, sure sign that his emotions were running high; and his eyes, when he fixed them on Blake's, held a touch of their rare sombre fire.
"How will it end, you say? Guess, my child!"
Max shook his head.
"Well, boy, Eve will be Eve to the end of time—and Adam will be Adam!"
"You mean—? Oh, but look!"
This last was called forth by the rising from table of the trio—the quiet passing from the room of the fair man in the train of his friend and the little dark lady.
It seemed so final, so sharp an answer to his question, that Max could feel—as things personal and close—the sick sinking of the heart, the accompanying whiteness of cheek that must fall upon the woman sitting immovable and alone.
"I am sorry!" he cried. "Oh, but I am sorry!"
Blake looked thoughtfully at the tip of his cigar.
"Wait!"
Even as he said it, the fair man reappeared alone. "What did I say? Eve will be Eve—Adam will be Adam!"
But Max was not listening. Excited, lifted beyond himself, he was watching the Englishman thread a way between the tables—watching the woman thrill to his approach without lifting an eyelid, moving a muscle. Rigid as a statue she sat, until he was quite close; then, curiously, as if nature demanded some symbol of the fires within, her lips opened and she began to hum the tune the orchestra was playing.
It was a strange form of self-expression, and as she yielded to it her cheeks burned suddenly and her eyes shone between their narrowed lids.
She did not speak when the man seated himself at her table, she did not even look up; she went on humming in a strange ecstatic reverie, but she smiled—a very slow, a very subtle smile.
A waiter came, and wine was brought; she drank, laid down her glass and continued her strange song. The seller of flowers hovered about the table, smiling at the Englishman, and laid a sheaf of pink roses on the white cloth; still the humming continued, though mechanically the woman's long, white fingers gathered up the flowers and held them against her face. At last, unexpectedly, she raised her head, looked at the man whose eyes were now fixed in fascination upon her, looked away beyond him, and, lifting her voice from its murmuring note, began to sing aloud.
It was a scene curious beyond description—the hot, white room, the many painted faces, the many jewelled hands, the grotesque black forms of the negro dancers, and in the midst a woman hypnotized by her own triumph into absolute oblivion.
She sat with the roses in her hands, her eyes looking into space, while her voice, pure and singularly true, gathered strength until gradually the chattering of voices and the clinking of glasses lessened, and the musicians lowered their music to a deliberate accompaniment.
Nowhere but in Paris could such a scene take place; but here, although the faces turned toward the singer's were flushed with wine, they were touched with comprehension. The gathered roses—the high, sweet voice—the rapt face composed a picture, and even when his eyes are glazed, your Parisian is a connoisseur.
The last note quivered into silence; a little ripple of applause followed; and with the same concentrated, hypnotized gaze, the woman's eyes turned from space and rested again upon the man.
It was the glance ancient as tradition—significant as fate. At his distant table, Max rose and laid a trembling hand upon Blake's arm.
"Ned! May we go?"
"Oh, why? The night is young!"
"Please!"
"But why?"
"I desire it."
Blake looked more closely, and his expression changed.
"Why, you're ill, boy!" he said. "You're as white as a sheet!"
Max tried to laugh. "It is the heat—nothing more."
"Of course it is! The place is like a hot-house! You want a breath of air!"
Again Max tried to laugh, but it was a laugh oddly broken.
"That is it!" he said. "I want the air."