The pretender: A story of the Latin Quarter

by Robert W. Service

BOOK III—THE AWAKENING

CHAPTER I
THE STRESS OF THE STRUGGLE

“Look here, Madden, you really ought to try and shake off your melancholy,” said Helstern, as we sat in front of the Café Soufflet.

“To hear you call me melancholy,” I retorted, “is like hearing the pot call the kettle black. And anyway you’ve never lost an only child.”

“I believe you’re a little mad,” said the sculptor, observing me closely.

“Are we not all of us just a little mad? Would you have us entirely sane? What a humdrum world that would be! I hate people who are so egregiously sane.”

“But you’re letting this idea of yours altogether obsess you. You’ve created an imaginary child, just as you might have created one in fiction, only ten times more vividly. Then when the earthly frame into which it was to pass proves too frail to hold it you refuse to let it die. You keep on thinking: ‘My daughter! my daughter!’ And spiritually you reach out to a being that only exists in your imagination.”

“She doesn’t, Helstern; that’s where you’re wrong. I thought so at first, but now I know. She really exists, exists in that wonderful world we can only dimly conjecture. She sought for admission to this our world and it was denied her; but she lives in the spirit. She will grow up in the spirit; and, even as if she were a child of the flesh, I who loved her so well have her always.”

“Rubbish! Look here, I see what’s the matter with you. You’ve got the fictionists’ imagination. This is only a creature of your brain. Kill it, as Dickens killed little Dombey, as the female novelists kill their little Willies and little Evas. Kill it.”

“Man, would you make a parricide of me? Murder is not done with hands alone. I loved this child as never in my life have I loved any one. It’s strange—I don’t believe I ever did really love any one before. I’ve had an immense affection for people; but for Dorothy I would have died.”

“You make me tired, man. She’s not real.”

“She is—to me; and supposing for a moment that she isn’t, is it not the case that we can never care for real persons with their faults and follies as we can for our idealised abstractions? We never really love any one till we’ve lost them. But, as you say, I must rouse myself.”

“Why, of course. Granted that she really exists in the spirit, let her presence be a sweetness and an inspiration to you, not a gnawing sorrow. Buck up!”

“You’re right. I must get to my writing at once. After all I have my wife to think of. She loves me.”

“She surely does, devotedly. You have a treasure in her, and you don’t realise it.”

“I suppose not. My work takes so much of the power of feeling out of me. My emotional life is sacrificed to it. The world I create is more real to me than the world about me. I don’t think the creative artist should marry. He only makes an apology for a husband.”

“Well, I think a man with the artistic temperament ought to marry a woman who can look after him from the material side. She should be a buffer between him and the world, always willing to keep in the background and never be a constraint on him. A real genius, on the other hand, ought never to marry. He’s altogether too impossible a person. But then, Madden, you know you’re not a genius.”

He said this so oddly that I burst out laughing, and with that I felt my grey mood lifting.

“By the way,” said Helstern, just as we were parting, “I don’t like to mention it, but what with hospital expenses and so on you’ve been having a pretty hard time of it lately. I’ve just had my quarterly allowance—more money than I know what to do with. If a hundred francs would be of any use to you I’ll never miss it.”

I was going to refuse; but the thought that the offer was made in such a generous spirit made me hesitate; and the further thought that at the moment all the money I had was ten francs, made me accept. So Helstern handed me a pinkish bank note.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said. “But don’t be afraid, I’ll pay you back one of these days. You know I’ve got a novel knocking around the publishers. When it gets accepted I’ll be on velvet. In the meantime this will help to keep the pot a-boiling. That reminds me I must find a new place to hole up in. Do you know of any vacant rooms in your quarter?”

“In the famous Quartier Mouffetard? Come with me and we’ll have a look.”

The result was that for a rent of twenty francs a month I found myself the tenant of a spacious garret in the rue Gracieuse. So, feeling well pleased, I returned to the room in the rue D’Assas to gather together our few effects. I was so engaged when a knock came to the door and the little Breton bonne appeared.

“A lady to see Monsieur.”

I rose from the heap of soiled linen I was trying to compress into as small bulk as possible.

“Show her in,” I said with some surprise.

Then there entered one whom I had almost forgotten—Lucretia.

My first thought was: “Thank God! my wife isn’t here!” My second: “How can I get rid of her?” It is true I have always tried to make life more like fiction, to drench it with romance, to cultivate it in purple patches. Here, then, was a dramatic situation I might have used in one of my novels; here was a sentimental scene I might develop most artistically; and now my whole panting, perspiring anxiety was not to develop it. “Confound it!” I thought, “this should never have happened. Why can’t fiction stay where it belongs?”

Lucretia was dressed with some exaggeration. Her split skirt showed a wedge of purple stocking almost to the knee. Her blouse, too, was of purple, a colour that sets my teeth on edge. She wore a mantle of prune colour, and a toque of crushed strawberry velvet with an imitation aigrette. The gilt heels of her shoes were so high that she was obliged to walk in the mincing manner of the mannequin.

She offered me a languid hand and subsided unasked on the sofa. Her lips were Cupid’s bows of vermilion, and her complexion was a work of art. She regarded me with some defiance; then she spoke in excellent French.

“Well, mon ami, I have come. You thought to leave me there in Napoli, but I have followed you. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

“Do!” I said, astounded. “Why, you have no claim on me!”

“I have no claim on you. You say that—you who have stolen my heart, you who have made me suffer. You cannot deny that you have run away from me.”

“I don’t deny it. I did run away from you; but it was to save you, to save us both. I have done you no wrong.”

“Ah! you thought so. To leave one who loved you in that way. That is like the Englishman.”

“But good heavens!” I cried, half distracted, “I thought I acted for the best.”

“I love you still,” she went on; “I have traced you here; I am friendless, alone, in this great and cruel city. What must I do?”

As she said these words, Lucretia, after seeing that she possessed a handkerchief, applied it to her eyes so as not to disturb their cosmetic environment, and wept carefully. There was no doubting the genuineness of her grief. I was touched. After all had I not roused a romantic passion in this poor girl’s heart? Was she not the victim of my fatal charms? My heart ached for her. I would have sat down on the sofa by her side and tried to comfort her, but prudence forbade.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but how can I help you? I have no money, and my wife is in the hospital.”

“Your wife!”

“Yes; I’m married.”

“Not one of those girls I saw you with in the café that night?”

“Yes; the small one.”

“A—h.” She prolonged the exclamation. Then she delicately dried her eyes. “That is different. What if I tell your wife how you treated me?”

“But I’ve done you no harm.”

“Would she believe that, do you think?”

“Hum! no! I don’t think she would. But what good would it do? You would only cause suffering and estrangement, and you would gain nothing. I told you I had no money to give you.”

Looking around the shabby room she saw the soiled linen I was trying to do into a newspaper parcel. This evidently convinced her I was speaking the truth.

“Bah!” she said, “why do you insult me with offers of money? If you offered me ten thousand francs at this moment I would refuse them. What I want is help, sympathy.”

“Oh! If it’s sympathy you want,” I said eagerly, “I’m there. I’ve gallons of it on tap. But help—what can I do?”

“You have friends you can introduce me to. Can you not find me work of some kind? Anything at all that will bring me an honest living. Remember I am only a poor, weak woman, and I love you.”

Here she showed signs of weeping again.

“Well,” I said, touched once more, “I don’t know. The men I know are all artists.” Then an idea shot through me like a bullet. To cure a woman who is infatuated with you, introduce her to some man who is more fascinating than yourself. But to whom could I transfer this embarrassing affection? Helstern? He was out of the question. Lorrimer? Ah, there was the man. Handsome, debonnaire Lorrimer; Lorrimer who prided himself on being such a Lothario; whom I had heard say: “Why should I wrong the sex whose privilege it is to love me by permitting any one member to monopolise me?” Yes, Lorrimer should be the lucky one. So I said:

“Let me see: you would not care to pose for the artists, would you?”

“Ah, yes, I think that would suit me very well indeed.”

“Well, then, I’ll give you the address of an artist friend. He’s poor, but he knows every one. Perhaps he can help you. At least there will be no harm in trying.”

So I gave her Lorrimer’s address, and she seemed more than grateful.

“Thank you very much. Shall I see you again soon?”

“Perhaps; but remember, not a word of Napoli.”

“No; trust me. I am very discreet. Well, au revoir.”

With that she took her departure, and once more I felt that I had emerged successfully from a dangerous situation.

On the following day I hired a voiture à bras, and loading on it my few poor sticks of furniture I easily pulled the load to my new residence. Once there, it was surprising how soon I made the place homelike. Anastasia was coming out of the hospital the following day, and I was intensely eager that everything should be cheerful. Fortunately, the window admitted much sunlight, and the slope of the roof lent itself to quaint and snug effects of decoration. I really did wonders with drapings of cheap cotton, made a lounge and a cosy corner out of cushions, contrived a wardrobe (in view of an increase in our prosperity), and constructed two cunning cupboards within which all articles of mere utility were hid from sight.

Lorrimer dropped in and gave me a hand with the finishing touches. He also loaned me three lifesize paintings in oil to adorn my walls. They were studies for the forthcoming Salon picture that was to mark a crisis in his career, and showed Rougette in different poses of the nude. I did not think it worth while to say anything about Lucretia just then.

Helstern, too, came to see how things were progressing and contributed two clay figures, also of the nude; so that by the time everything was finished my garret had become quite a startling repository of feminine loveliness unadorned. The following morning I bought several bunches of flowers from a barrow, at two sous a bunch, and arranged them about the room. Then my two friends insisted on bringing up a supply of food and preparing lunch.

So I went off to the hospital to fetch Anastasia. I felt as excited as a child, and for the moment very happy. I had been to see her for a few moments every day, when she would hold my hand and sometimes carry it to her lips. She was of a deathly whiteness and more like a child than ever. As she came out leaning on my arm I saw another of those sobbing girls leaving the hospital with her baby.

“What an irony!” I said. “There’s a girl would give anything not to have that infant. It’s a reproach and a disgrace to her. It will only drag her down, prevent her making a living. It will be brought up in misery. And we who wanted one so much, and would have made it so happy, must go away empty-handed.”

“Yes,” she answered, with a sob in her throat; “the doctaire tell me nevaire must I have anuzzer. He tell me it will keel me. And I want so much—oh, I want leetle child!”

Hailing a cab, we were soon at our new home. She did not seem to take much interest; yet, when she heard the sounds of welcome from within, she brightened up. Then when the door was thrown open she gave a little gasp of pleasure.

“Oh, I’m glad, I’m glad.”

For Lorrimer had painted a banner, Welcome Home, above the fireplace; the sunshine flooded in; the flowers were everywhere, and a wondrous lunch was spread on the table. Then suddenly the two artists, standing on either side of the doorway, put mirlitons to their mouths and burst into the Marseillaise. They wrung her hand, and even (with my permission) saluted her on both cheeks; and she was so rarely glad to see them that her eyes shone with tears. So after all her homecoming was far from a sad one.

And after lunch and the good bottle of Pommard that Helstern had provided we discussed plans and prospects with the hope and enthusiasm of beginners; while she listened, but more housewife-like took stock of her new home and its practical possibilities.

Next day I began work again. My idea was to completely ignore my own ideals and turn out stuff according to magazine formula. I had made an analysis of some thirty magazine stories; it only remained to mix them according to recipe and serve hot. I continued to hire the rheumatic typewriter, and composed straight on to the machine, so that I accomplished at least one story a day.

Once more Anastasia took charge of the forwarding, but she seemed to have less enthusiasm now. It was as if her severe illness had taken something out of her. All the money I had been able to give her was seventy francs, and this was not very heartening. She got out her métier again; but she would often pause in her work as if her back pained her, and rub her eyes as if they too ached. Then with stubborn patience she would resume her toil.

One morning the manuscript of Tom, Dick and Harry was returned from the publisher, with a note to say that “at that time when the taste of the public was all for realistic fiction work of fancy stood little chance of success without a well-known name on the cover. As the policy of the firm was conservative they were obliged to return it.”

How I laughed over this letter. How bitterly, I thought, they would be chagrined when they found out who the unknown Silenus Starset was. I was even maliciously glad, and, chuckling, sent off the manuscript on another voyage of adventure.

I fairly bombarded the magazines with short stories. There was not one of any standing that was not holding a manuscript of mine. And such manuscripts, some of them! I was amazed at my cheek in offering them. I would select one of my twelve stock plots, alter the setting, give it a dexterous twist or two, and shoot it off. My mark was a minimum of a manuscript a day, and grimly I stuck to it.

For three weeks I kept pounding away on my clacking typewriter. It was costing us a small income in stamps, and economy of the most rigid kind had to be practised in other ways. We gave up eating ordinary meat and took to patronising the Boucherie Chevaline. I came to appreciate a choice mule steak, and considered an entrecôte of ass a special delicacy. We made salads of poiret, which is called the poor man’s asparagus. We drank vin ordinaire at eight sous a litre and our bread was of the coarsest. Down there in the rue Mouffetard it was no trouble to purchase with economy, for everything was sold from that standpoint.

I think the rue Mouffetard deserves a special page of description, because it contains the elements of all Paris slumdom. From the steep and ancient rue St. Geneviève de Montagne branches the dismal rue Descartes. It runs between tall, dreary houses, growing gradually more sordid; then suddenly, as if ashamed of itself, it changes its name to the rue Mouffetard, and continues its infamous way.

The street narrows to the width of a lane and the houses that flank it grow colder, blacker, more decrepit. The pavement on either side is a mere riband, and the cobbled way is overrun with the ratlike humanity spewed forth from the sinister houses. The sharp gables and raking roofs, out of which windows like gaping sores make jagged openings, notch themselves grotesquely against the sky. Their faces are gnawed by the teeth of time and grimy with the dust of ages. Their windows are like blind eyes, barred and repulsive. The doors that burrow into them are nothing but black holes, so narrow that two people passing have to turn sideways, so dark that it is like entering a charnel house.

Nearly every second shop is a chope, a buvette, a saloon. At one point there are four clustered together. Some of these drinking dens are so narrow they seem mere holes in the wall, scarcely any wider than the width of their own door, and running back like dark cupboards. And in them, with their heads together and their elbows on the tiny tables you can see the ferret-faced Poilo, and Gigolette, his gosse, of the greasy and elaborate coiffure. Hollow-cheeked, glittering of eye, light as a cat, cunning, cynical, cruel, he smokes a cigarette; while she, brazen, claw-fingered, rapacious, sips from his Pernod.

At the butchers’ only horse-meat is sold. A golden horse usually surmounts the door, overlooking a sign—Boucherie Chevaline, or sometimes Boucherie Hyppagique. The meat is very dark; the fat very yellow; and there are festoons of red sausages, very red and glossy. One shop bears the sign “House of Confidence.” There are other signs, such as “Mule of premier quality,” “Ass of first choice.”

As you descend the street you get passing glimpses of inner courts of hideous squalor, of side streets, narrow and resigned to misery. Daring odours pollute the air and the way is now packed with wretchedness. Grimy women, whose idea of a coiffure is to get their matted hair out of the way, trudge draggle-skirted by the side of husky-throated, undersized men whose beards bristle brutishly. Bands of younger men hang around the bars. They wear peaked caps and have woollen scarfs around their throats. They look at the well-dressed passer-by with furtive speculation. They live chiefly on the brazen girls who parade up and down, with their hair coiled over their ears, clawed down in front, sleek with brilliantine and studded with combs.

Then, as the narrow, tortuous street plunges down to the carrefour of the Gobelins it becomes violently commercial, a veritable market jammed with barrows, studded with stalls, strident with street cries of all kinds.

Here it is that Anastasia does her marketing. It is wonderful how much she can bring home for a franc, sometimes enough to fill the net bag she carries on her arm. She never wears a hat on these expeditions; it is safer without one.

Three weeks gone; twenty stories written. I throw myself back in weariness and despair. It is hard work doing three thousand words a day, especially when one has to make a second copy for the clean manuscript. I began at eight in the morning and worked till ten at night. My face was thin, my checks pale, my eyes full of fag and stress. How I despised the work I was doing! the shoddy, sentimental piffle, the anæmic twaddle, the pandering to the vulgar taste for stories of the upper circles. Ordinary folk not being sufficiently interesting for a snobbish public my heroes were seldom less than baronets. It got at last that every stroke of my typewriter jarred some sensitive nerve of pain in me—“Typewriter nerves” they call it. Then one night I gave up.

“I won’t do another of these wretched things,” I cried; “I’m worked out. I feel as if my brain was mush, just so much sloppy stuff.”

“You must take rest, darleen. You work too hard.”

“Yes, rest in some far South Sea Island where I can forget that books and typewriters exist. I’m heart-sick of the vampire trade. Well, I’ve reached my limit. To-morrow I’m just going out to the Luxembourg to loaf. Oh, that lovely word! I’m going to sit and watch the children watching the Guignol, and laugh when they laugh. That’s all I’m equal to—the Guignol.”

And I did. Full of sweet, tired melancholy I sat listlessly under the trees, gazing at that patch of eager, intense, serious, uproarious, utterly enchanted faces, planted in front of the immortal Punch and Judy show. Oh, to have written that little drama! Everything else could go. Oh, to play on the emotions like an instrument, as it played on the emotions of these little ones! What an audience! How I envied them their fresh keen joy of appreciation! I felt so jaded, so utterly indifferent to all things. Yet I reflected to some extent their enthusiasm. I gaped with them, I laughed with them, I applauded with them.

Then with a suddenness that is overwhelming came the thought of my own little dream-child, she who in years to come should have taken her place in that hilarious band. After all, the November afternoon was full of sadness. The withered leaves were underfoot, and the vague despondency of the waning year hung heavily around me. Suddenly all joy seemed to go clean out of life, and slowly I returned to the wretched quarter in which I lived.

These were the sad days for us both, grey days of rain and boding. Early and late she would work at her embroidery, yet often look at me with a sigh. Then my manuscripts began to come back. Luckily, two were accepted, one by a society weekly, the other by a woman’s journal. The latter was to be paid for on publication; but I wrote pleading necessity for the money and it was forthcoming. The two netted us three pounds ten, enough to pay the rent and tide us over for another month.

Once more Tom, Dick and Harry was returned, and once more gallantly despatched. About this time I began to lose all confidence in myself. On one occasion I said to her:

“See, Little Thing, what a poor husband you have. He can’t even support you.”

“I have the best husband in the world. Courage, darleen. Everything will come yet very right I know.”

“If only our child had lived,” I said moodily, gazing at the sodden, sullen sky.

Sitting with her hands folded in her lap she did not answer. I saw that she drew back from her beautiful embroidery so that a slow-falling tear would not stain it.

“You know,” I went on, “I can’t believe we’ve lost her. Seems to me she’s with us. I let myself think of her too much. I can’t help it. I loved her. God, how I loved her! I never loved any one else like that.”

She looked at me piteously, but I did not see.

And next day, in a pouring rain, I walked to the cemetery and stood for an hour by an almost indistinguishable little grave. I got back, as they say, “wet as the soup,” and contracted a severe chill. Anastasia made me stay in bed, and looked after me like a mother.

Yes, these were sad days; and there were times when I felt moved to own defeat, to acknowledge success, to accept, the fortune I had gained. Then I ground my teeth.

“No, I won’t. I’m hanged if I do. I’ll play the game, and in spite of it all I’ll win.”

CHAPTER II
THE DARKEST HOUR

The past month has been the hardest we have yet experienced. After paying the rent we had about fifty francs to keep the house going. Not that it mattered much; for we both had such listless appetites and ate next to nothing. I refused to do any more pot-boiling work. For distraction I turned again to the study of the Quartier, to my browsings in its ancient by-ways. Amid these old streets that, like a knot of worms, cluster around the Pantheon, I managed to conjure up many a ghost of bygone Bohemia. As a result I began a series of three papers which I called Demi-gods in the Dust. They were devoted to the last sad days of De Musset, Verlaine and Wilde, those strong souls whose liaisons with the powers of evil plunged them to the utter depths.

The rue Gracieuse, where we reside, is probably one of the least gracious streets of Paris. Its lower end is grubbily respectable, its upper, glaringly disreputable. It is in the latter we have our room. The houses are small, old, mean, dirty. There are four drinking dens, and the cobbles ring to the clang of wooden shoes. The most prominent building is a hôtel meublé, a low, leprous edifice with two windows real, and four false. The effect of these dummy windows painted on the stone is oddly sinister. Underneath is a drinking den of unsavoury size, and opposite an old junk shop. At night the street is feebly lit by two gas lamps that sprout from the wall.

Luckily, our window faces the rue Monge. If it fronted on the rue Saint-Médard we should be unable to live there, for the rue Saint-Médard, in spite of the apostolic nomenclature, is probably the most disgusting street in Paris.

It is old, three hundred years or more, and the houses that engloom it are black, corroded and decrepit. Its lower end is blocked by the aforesaid hostel of the blind windows, its upper is narrow and wry-necked where the Hôtel des Bons Garçons bulges into it. Between the two is a dim, verminous gulf of mildewed masonry. The timid, well-dressed person pauses on its threshold and turns back. For the police seldom trouble it, and the stranger parsing through has a sense of being in some desperate cul-de-sac, and at the mercy of a villainous, outlawed population. They crawl to their doors to stare resentfully at the intruder, often call harshly after him, and sometimes stand right in the way, with an insolent, provocative leer. A glance round shows that other figures have cut off the retreat from behind, and for a moment one has a sense of being trapped. It is quite a relief to gain the comparative security of the rue Mouffetard.

But what gives the rue Saint-Médard its character of supreme loathsomeness is because it is the headquarters of the chiffoniers. These hereditary scavengers, midden-rakers, ordure-sifters, monopolise its disease-ridden ruins, living in their immemorial dirt. They are creatures of the night, yet one may sometimes see a few of them shambling forth to blink with bleary eyes at the sun, their hair long and matted, the dirt grained into their skins, their clothes corroded, their boots agape at the seams—very spawn of the ashpit.

And oh, the odour of the street! The mere memory makes me feel a nausea. It is the acrid odour of decay, of ageless, indomitable squalor. It assails you the moment you enter that gap of ramshackle ruins, pungent, penetrating, almost palpable. It is the choking odour of an ash-bin, an ash-bin that is very old and is almost eaten away by its own putridity.

Then on a Sunday morning when the rue Mouffetard is such a carnival of sordid satisfactions the snake-like head of the rue Saint-Médard is devoted to the marché pouilleux. Here come the chiffoniers and spread out the treasures they have discovered during the week. Over a great array of his wares, all spread out on mildewed sheets of newspaper, stands an old chiffonier in a stove-pipe hat. He also wears a rusty frock coat, and with a cane points temptingly to his stock. His white beard and moustache are amber round the mouth, with the stain of tobacco, and in a hoarse alcoholic voice he draws our attention to a discarded corset, a pair of moth-eaten trousers, a frying-pan with a hole in it, an alarm-clock minus the minute hand, a hair brush almost innocent of bristles—any of which we may have for a sou or two.

Such then is the monstrous rue Saint-Médard, and on a dark, wet November day, when its characteristic odour is more than usually audacious; when the black, irregular houses, like rows of decayed teeth, seem to draw closer together; when the mildewed walls steam loathfully; when the jagged roofs are black against the sky and the sinister shadows crawl from the darkened doorways,—it is more like a horrible nightmare than a reality.

But the misery of others often makes us forget our own, and one day Helstern broke in on us looking grimmer than ever.

“Have you heard that our little Solonge is very ill?”

“No. What’s the matter?”

“Typhoid. Her mother is nursing her. You might go down and see her, Madam. It will be a comfort to her.”

Anastasia straightened herself from the métier over which she was stooping.

“Yes, yes, I go at once. Oh, poor Frosine! Poor Solonge!”

As I looked at her it suddenly struck me that she herself did not look much to brag about. But she put on her mantle and we followed Helstern to the rue Mazarin.

“It was like this,” he told us. “I had an idea of a statue to be called Bedtime. It was to be a little Solonge, clad in her chemise and hugging a doll to her breast. So I went to see the mother and found the child had been sick for some days. I fetched the doctor; none too soon. We’ve got to pull the kid through.”

We found the Môme lying in an apathetic way, her lovely hair streaming over the pillow, her face already hollow and strange-looking. She regarded us dully, but with no sign of recognition. Then she seemed to sleep, and her eyes, barely closed, showed the whites between the long lashes.

Frosine was calm and courageous, but her face was worn with long vigils, and her eyes, usually so cheerful, were now of a tragic seriousness. She turned to us eagerly.

“I can’t get her roused, my little one. Not even for her mother will she smile. She just lies there as if she were tired. If she begins to sleep, she twitches and opens her eyes again. It was a week ago I first noticed she was ailing. She could scarcely hold up her arms as I went to dress her. So I put her to bed again, and ever since she’s been sinking. She’s all I’ve got in the world and I’m afraid I’m going to lose her. Willingly would I go in her place.”

We arranged that Anastasia would remain there and take turns watching by the bedside of the Môme; then I returned to our garret alone.

It was more trying than ever now. Every day some of my manuscripts came back, and I had not the courage to send them out again. My novel, too, made its appearance one morning with the usual letter of regret. More sensitive than other men, it says much for authors that they bear up so well under successive blows of fate. With me a rejection meant a state of bitter gloom for the rest of the day; and as nearly every day brought its rejection, cheerful intervals were few and far between.

To get the proper working stimulus I drank immense quantities of strong black coffee. In my desperate mood I think I would have taken hasheesh if necessary. It was the awful brain nausea that distressed me most, the sense of having so much to say and being unable to say it. I had moods of rage and misery, and sometimes I wondered if it was not through these that men entered into the domain of madness.

But after about six cups of coffee I would brighten miraculously. My brain would be a gleaming, exulting, conquering thing. I would feel the direct vision, the power of forth-right expression. Thrilling with joy, I would rush to my typewriter, and no power could drag me away from it. If Anastasia approached me at such a moment I would wave my arm frantically:

“Oh, please go away. Don’t bother me.”

Then, holding my head clutched in both hands, and glaring at the machine, I would try to catch up the broken thread of my ideas.

What an unsatisfactory life! Dull as ditchwater for days, then suddenly a change, a bewildering sense of fecundity, a brilliant certainty of expression. Lo! in an hour I had accomplished the work of a week. But such hours were becoming more and more rare with me, and more and more had I recourse to the deadly black coffee. And if the return of my stories hurt my pride, that of my novel was like a savage, stunning blow. I ground my teeth and (carefully observing that there was no fire in the grate) I hurled it dramatically to the flames. Then Anastasia reverently picked it up, tenderly arranged it, and prepared it for another sally.

“This will be the last time,” I would swear. “You can send it one time more; then—to hell with it.”

And I would laugh bitterly as I thought of its far different fate if only I would sign it with the name I had a right to sign it with. What a difference a mere name made! Was it then that my work was only selling on account of my name? Was it then that in itself it had no merit? Was I really a poor, incompetent devil who had succeeded by a fluke? “I must win,” I cried in the emptiness of the garret. “My pride, my self-respect demand it. If I fail I swear I’ll never write again.”

There were times when I longed to go out and work with pick and shovel. Distressed with doubt I would gaze down at the dancing waters of the Seine and long to be one of those men steering the barges, a creature of healthy appetites with no thought beyond work, food and sleep. Oh, to get away on that merry, frolicsome water, somewhere far from this Paris, somewhere where trees were fluttering and fresh breezes blowing.

Ah! that was the grey Christmas. Everything the same as last—the booths, the toy-vendors, the holly and the mistletoe, the homeward-hurrying messengers of Santa Claus—everything the same, yet oh, how different! Where now was the singing of the heart, the thrilling to life’s glory? Did I dream it all? Or was I dreaming now? As I toiled, toiled within myself, how like a dream was all that happened without! Yes, all of the last year seemed so unreal that if I had awakened in America and had found this Paris and all it had meant an elaborate creation of the magician Sleep, I would not have been greatly surprised. It has always been like that with me, the inner life real, the outer a dream.

I walked the crowded Boulevards again, but with no Little Thing by my side. Ah! here was the very café where we sat a while and heard a woman sing a faded ballad. Poor Little Thing! She was not on my arm now. And, come to think of it, she too used to sing in those days, sing all the time. But not any more, never a single note.

At that moment she was watching by the bedside of the Môme, she who herself needed care and watching. She had been the good, good wife, yet I had never cared for her as I ought. I was always like that, longing for the things I had not, careless of what I had. Perhaps even if the child had lived I would have transferred my affections elsewhere. But I couldn’t bear to think of that. No, my love for the child would have been an ideal that nothing could dim.

But if Christmas was grey, New Year’s Day was black. Anastasia came back with bad news from the sick room. The Môme was gradually growing weaker. Helstern had brought her a golden-brown Teddy bear and had held it out to her, but she had looked at it with the heart-breaking indifference of one who had no more need to take an interest in such things. Her manner had that aloofness, that strange, wise calmness that makes the faces of dying children so much older, so much loftier than the faces of their elders. It is the pitying regard of those who are on the brink of freedom for us whom they leave in the prison of the flesh.

“Little Thing,” I said one day, gazing grimly at the tobacco tin that acted as our treasury, “what are we to do? We’ve only one franc seventy-five left us, and the rent is due to-morrow.”

She went over to her métier and held up the most beautiful piece of embroidery I had yet seen.

“Courage, darleen. The sun shine again very soon, I sink. Now we can sell this. I am so glad. It seem zaire is so leetle I can do.”

“No, no; I can’t let you sell it. I don’t want to part with any of your work. Let me take it to the Mont-de-Piété. Then we can get it back some day.”

“But zaire we only get half what we have if we sell it.”

“Never mind. Perhaps it will be enough to tide us over for a day or two.”

I realised thirty francs for the cushion cover, paid the rent, and was about seven francs to the good. “We can go on for another week anyway,” I said.

During this black month I only saw Lorrimer once. It was on the Boul’ Mich’ and he was in a great hurry, but he stopped a moment.

“I say, Madden, was it you who sent me the Dago skirt? Where did you dig her up? She’s a good type and makes a splendid foil to Rougette. I’ve changed my plans and begun a new Salon picture with both girls in it. Come up and see it soon. It’s great. I’m sure the crisis in my fortune has come at last. Well, good-bye now. Thanks for sending me the model.”

He was off before I could say a word; but in spite of the wondrous picture I did not go to his studio.

I had finished my Demi-gods in the Dust articles. As far as finish and force went I thought them the best work I had ever done. Now I began a series of genre stories of the Paris slums, called Chronicles of the Café Pas Chemise. I rarely went out. I worked all the time, or tried to work all the time. I might as well work, I thought, for I could not sleep. That worried me more than anything, my growing insomnia. For hours every night I would lie with nerves a-tingle, hearing the noctambules in the rue Monge, the thundering crash of the motor-buses, the shrill outcries from the boozing den below, the awakening of the chiffoniers in the rue Saint-Médard: all the thousand noises of nocturnal mystery, cruelty and crime. Then I would rise in the morning distracted and wretched, and not till I had disposed of two big cups of coffee would I feel able to begin work again.

Then one morning I arose and we had no more money—well, just a few sous, enough to buy a crust or so for déjeûner. She took it as she went on her way to the bedside of the dying Môme. She was a brave little soul, and usually made a valiant effort to cheer me, but this morning she could not conceal her dejection. She kissed me good-bye with tears coursing down her cheeks. Then I was alone. Never had the sky seemed so grey, so hopeless.

“I fear I’m beaten,” I said. “I’ve made a hard fight and I’ve been found wanting. I am supposed to be a capable writing man. I’m a fraud. I can’t earn my salt with my pen. The other was only an accident. It’s a good thing to know oneself at one’s true value. I might have gone on till the end of the chapter, lulled in my fatuous vanity. I’m humble now; I’m crushed.”

I sat there gazing at the dreary roofs.

“Well, I’ve had enough. Here’s where I throw up the sponge. I’m going to spend the rest of my life planting cabbages in New Jersey. If it was only for myself I’d never give in. I’ve got just enough mule spirit to fight on till I’m hurt, but I can’t let others get hurt too. Already I’ve gone too far. I’ve been a bit of a brute. But it’s all over. I’ve lost, I’ve lost.”

I threw myself back on my bed, unstrung, morbid, desperate. Then suddenly I sprang up, for there came a knocking at the door.

CHAPTER III
THE DAWN

It was the postman, not the usual bearer of dejected manuscripts; another, older, more distinguished.

“Registered letter, Monsieur.”

Wonderingly I signed for it. The man lingered, but I had no offering for the great god Pourboire. I regarded the letter curiously. It was from MacWaddy & Wedge, the last people to whom I had sent Tom, Dick and Harry. All I knew of them was that they were a new firm who had adopted the advertising methods of the Yankees, to the horror of the old and crusted British publisher. In consequence they had done well, and were disposed to take risks where new writers were concerned.

Well, what was in the letter? Like a man who stands before a closed door, which may open on Hell or Heaven, I hesitated. Then in fear and trembling I broke the seal. This is what I read:

“Dear Sir,—We have perused with interest your novel, Tom, Dick and Harry, and are minded to include it in our Frivolous Fiction Library. As your work is entirely unknown, and we will find it necessary to do a great deal of advertising in connection with it, we are thus incurring a considerable financial risk. Nevertheless, we are prepared to offer you a five per cent. royalty on all sales; or, if you prefer it, we will purchase the British and Colonial rights for one hundred pounds.

“Yours very truly,
“MacWaddy & Wedge.

“P.S.—Our Mr. Wedge is at present in Paris for a day or two, so if you call on him you might arrange details of publication. His address is the Hotel Cosmopolitan.”

I sat staring at the letter. It had come at last,—Success! One hundred pounds! Twenty-five hundred francs! Why, at the present rate of living it would keep us for two years; at the rate of the rue Mazarin, nearly twelve months. Never before had I realised that money meant so much. The prospect of living once more at the rate of two hundred and fifty francs a month intoxicated me. It meant chicken and champagne suppers; it meant evenings at the moving picture show; it even meant indulgence in a meerschaum pipe. Hurrah! How lovely everything would be again. As I executed a wild dance of delight I waved the letter triumphantly in the air. All the joy, the worth-whileness of life, surged back again. I wanted to rush away and tell Anastasia; then suddenly I sobered myself.

“I must contrive to see this Mr. Wedge at once. And I mustn’t go looking like an understudy for a scarecrow. Happy thought—Helstern.”

I found the sculptor in bed. “Hullo, old man!” I cried, “if you love me lend me a collar. I’ve got to interview a blooming publisher. Just sold a novel—a hundred quid.”

“Congratulations,” growled Helstern from the blankets. “Take anything you want. Light the gas when you go out, and put on my kettle.”

So I selected a collar; then a black satin tie tempted me; then a waistcoat seemed to match it so well; then a coat seemed to match the waistcoat; then I thought I might as well make a complete job and take a pair of trousers and a long cape-coat. As Helstern is bulkier than I, the clothes fitted where they touched, but the ensemble was artistic enough.

“I’m off, oh, sleepy one!” I called. “Be back in two hours or so. Your water’s nearly boiling. By the way, how did you leave the Môme?”

“Better, thank Heaven. I do believe the kid’s going to pull through. Last night she seemed to chirp up some. She actually deigned to notice her Teddy bear.”

“Good. I’m so glad. You know, I believe the New Year’s going to open up a new vein of happiness for us all.”

“We need it. Well, come back and we’ll drink to the healths of Publishers and Sinners.”

It seemed my luck was holding, for I caught Mr. Wedge just as he was leaving the luxurious hotel. I gave my name and stated my business.

“Come in,” said the publisher, leading the way to the gorgeous smoking-room. Mr. Wedge was a blonde, bland man, designed on a system of curves. He was the travelling partner, the entertainer, the upholder of the social end of the business. Immensely popular was Mr. Wedge. Mr. MacWaddy, I afterwards found, was equally the reverse. A meagre little man, spectacled and keen as a steel trap, he was so Scotch that it was said he did not dot his “i’s” in order to save the ink. However, with MacWaddy’s acumen and Wedge’s urbanity, the combination was a happy one.

“Yes,” said the latter affably, offering me a cigar with a gilt band, “we’ll be glad to publish your book, Mr. Madden. By the way, no connection of Madden, the well-known American novelist; writes under the name of Norman Dane?”

“Ye-es—only a distant one.”

“How interesting. Wish you could get him to throw something our way. We’d be awfully glad to show what we could do with his books. They’re just the sort of thing we go in for—light, sensational, easy-to-read novels. He’s a great writer, your cousin—I think you said your cousin?—knows how to hit the public taste. His books may not be literary, but they sell; and that’s how we publishers judge books. Well, I hope you’re going to follow in his footsteps. Seems to run in the family, the fiction gift. By the way, I’d better make out a contract form, and, while I think of it, I’ll give you an advance. Twenty pounds do?”

“You might make it forty, if it’s all the same.”

Mr. Wedge drew his cheque for that amount, and I signed a receipt.

“I’m just going round to the bank,” he continued. “Come with me, and I’ll get the cheque cashed for you.”

So in ten minutes’ time I said good-bye to him and was hurrying home with the money in my pocket. The sun was shining, the sky a dome of lapis lazuli, the Seine affable as ever. Once again it was the dear Paris I loved, the city of life and light. In a perfect effervescence of joy I bounded upstairs to the garret. Then quite suddenly and successfully I concealed my elation.

“Hullo, Little Thing!” I sighed. “What have you got for dinner? It’s foolish how I am hungry.”

“I have do the best I can, darleen,” Anastasia said sadly. “There was not much of money—only forty-five centimes. See, I have buy sausage and salad and some bread. That leave for supper to-night four sous. Go on. Eat, darleen. I don’t want anything.”

I looked at the glossy red saucissson-a-la-mulet, the stringy head of chicory, the stale bread. After all, spread out there and backed by a steaming jug of coffee, it didn’t look such a bad repast. I kissed her for the pains she had taken.

“Hold up your apron,” I said sadly.

Wonderingly she obeyed. Then I threw into it one by one ten crisp pink bank-notes, each for one hundred francs. I thought her eyes would drop out, they were so wide.

“Eight—nine—ten hundred. There, I guess we can afford to go out to déjeûner to-day. What do you say to our old friend, the café Soufflet?”

“It is not true, this money? You are not doing this for laughing?”

“You bet your life. It’s real money. There’s more of it coming up, fifteen more of these billets deux. So come on to the café, Little Thing, and I’ll tell you all the good tidings.”

Seated in the restaurant, I was in the dizziest heights of rapture, and bubbling over with plans. Such a dramatic plunge into prosperity dazzled me.

“First of all,” I said, “we must both from head to heel get a complete outfit of new clothes. We’ll each take a hundred francs and spend the afternoon buying things. Then I’ll get our stuff out of pawn. Then as soon as we get things straight we’ll find a new apartment.”

Suddenly she stopped me. “Mon Dieu! Where you get the clothes?”

“Oh, I quite forgot. They’re Helstern’s. I’ll just run round to his place to return them. He might want to go out. Here, give me one of those bits of paper and I’ll pay my debts.”

I found the sculptor in his underwear, philosophically smoking his Turk’s head pipe.

“Awfully obliged, old man, for the togs. I never could have ventured into that hotel in my old ones. Well, here’s the money you lent me, and a thousand thanks.”

“Sure you can spare it?”

“Yes, and another if you want it. Why, man, I’m a little Crœsus. I’m simply reeking with the stuff. I feel as if I could buy up the Bank of France. Just touched a thou’, and more coming up.”

“Well, I’m awfully glad for your sake. I’m glad to get this money, too. D’ye know what I’m going to do with it? I’m going to hire a nurse for Solonge. It will relieve the tension somewhat. What with watching and anxiety, we’re all worn out. And, Madden, excuse me mentioning it, but that little woman of yours wants looking after. She’s not overstrong, in any case, and she’s been working herself to death. I don’t know what we would have done without her down there, but there were times when I was on the point of sending her home.”

“All right. Thanks for telling me. I say, as far as the Môme is concerned. I’d like to do something. Let’s give you another hundred.”

“No, no, I don’t think it’s necessary in the meantime. If I want more I’ll call on you. You’re off? Well, good-bye just now.”

As far as they concerned Anastasia I thought a good deal over his words, and when I returned, after an afternoon spent in buying a new suit, hat, boots, I found her lying on her bed, her hundred intact.

When a woman is too sick to spend money in new clothes it’s time to call a doctor. This, in spite of her protestations, I promptly did, to be told as promptly that she was a very sick woman indeed. She had, said the medico, never fully recovered from her confinement, and had been running down ever since. For the present she must remain in bed.

Then he hesitated. “If your wife is not carefully looked after there is danger of her becoming poitrinaire.”

I was startled. In the tension of literary effort, in the egotism of art, I had paid little heed to her. If she had been less perfect, perhaps I should have thought more of her. But she just fitted in, made things smooth, effaced herself. She was of that race that make the best wives in the world. The instinct is implanted in them by long heredity. Anastasia was a born wife, just as she was a born mother. Yes, I had neglected her, and the doctor left me exceedingly pensive and remorseful.

“You must hurry up and get well, child,” I said, as she lay there looking frail and wistful. “Then we’re going away on a holiday. We’re going to Brittany by the sea. I’m tired of grey days. I want them all blue and gold. We’ll wander down lanes sweet with may, and sit on the yellow sands.”

She listened fondly, as I painted pictures, growing ever more in love with my vision.

“Yes, I try to get well, queek, just to please you, darleen. Excuse me, I geeve you too much trooble. I want so much to be good wife to you. That is the bestest thing for me. I don’t want ever you be sorry you marry me. If you was, I sink I die.”

Once I had conceived myself in the part of a nurse, I entered into it with patience and enthusiasm. I am not lavish in the display of affection; but in these days I was more tender and considerate than ever I had been, and Anastasia was duly grateful. So passed two weeks—the daily visits of the doctor, patient vigils on my part, hours of pain and ease on hers.

In Bohemia it never rains but it pours; so with cruel irony in the face of my good fortune other successes began to surprise me. Within two weeks I had seven of my stories accepted, and the total revenue from them was twelve pounds. I felt that the worst of the fight was over. I had enough now to carry me on till I had written another novel. I need not do this pot-boiling work any more.

Every day came Helstern with news of the growing prowess of the Môme. She was able to sit up a little. Her legs were like spindles, and she could not walk; but she looked rarely beautiful, almost angelic. In a few days he was going to get a chair on wheels, and take her out in the gardens.

“I can’t make this out,” I said, chaffingly. “You must have made an awful hit with Frosine. Why don’t you marry the girl?”

He looked startled.

“Don’t be absurd. Why, I’m twenty years older than she is. Besides, I’m a cripple. Besides, I’m a confirmed bachelor. Besides, she’s a confirmed widow.”

“No young woman’s ever a confirmed widow. Besides—she’s no widow.”

“Good Heavens! You don’t mean to tell me Solonge is—”

“Why, yes, I thought you knew. Anyway, there was no reason to tell you anything like that.”

Helstern rose slowly. My information seemed to be exceedingly painful to him. That firm mouth with its melancholy twist opened as if to speak. Then, without saying a word, he took his hat and went off.

“After all,” I thought, “why not? Frosine is as good as gold, a serene, sensible woman. I’d marry her myself if I wasn’t already married to Anastasia. I wonder....”

Thereupon I started upon my career as a matchmaker. Why is it that the married man is so anxious to induce others to embrace matrimony? Is it a sense of duty, a desire to prevent other men shirking their duty? Or (as no woman is perfect) is it a desire to see the flies in our ointment outnumbered by the flies in our neighbour’s? Or, as marriage is a meritorious compulsion to behave, is it a desire to promote merit among our bachelor friends by making them behave also? In any case, behold me as a bachelor stalker, Helstern my first quarry. I did not see him for a week, then one afternoon I came across him by the great gloomy pile of the Pantheon, gazing at Rodin’s statue of the Thinker.

How often have I stood in front of it myself! That figure fascinates me as does no other in modern sculpture. The essence of simplicity, it seems to say unutterable things. Arms of sledge-hammer force, a great back corded with muscle, legs banded as if with iron, could anything be more expressive of magnificent strength? Yet, oh, the pathos of it—the small, undeveloped skull, the pose of perplexed, desperate thought!

So must primitive man have crouched and agonised in that first dim dawn of intelligence. Within that brain of a child already glimmers the idea of something greater than physical force; within that brute man Mind is beginning its supreme struggle over Matter. Here is the birth of brain domination. Here is the savage, thwarted, mocked, impotent; yet trying with every fibre of his being to enter that world of thought which he is so conscious of, and cannot yet understand. Pathetic! Yes, it typifies the ceaseless struggle of man from the beginning, the agony of effort by which he has raised himself from the mire. Far from a Newton, a Darwin, a Goethe, this crude, elementary Thinker! Yet, with his brain of a child as he struggles for Light, who shall say he is not in his way as great. Salute him! He stands for the cumulative effort of the race.

Helstern himself, as he stood there in his black cloak, leaning on his stick with the gargoyle head, was no negligible figure. I was struck by a resemblance to a great actor, and the thought came that here, but for that misshapen foot, was a tragedian lost to the world. This was strengthened by the voice of the man. Helstern, in his deep vibrating tones, could have held a crowd spellbound while he told them how he missed his street car.

“Great,” I said, indicating the statue.

“Great, man! It’s a glory and a despair. To me it represents the vast striving of the spirit, and its impotence to express its dreams. I, too, think as greatly as a Rodin, but my efforts to give my thoughts a form are only a mockery and a pain. I, too, have agonised to do; yet what am I confronted with?—Failure. For twenty years I’ve studied, worked, dreamed of success, and to-day I am as far as ever from the goal. Yes, I realise my impotence. I have lived my life in vain. Old, grey, a cripple, a solitary. What is there left for me?”

He finished with a lofty gesture.

“Nothing left,” I said, “but to have a drink. Come on.”

But no. Helstern reposed on his dignity, and refused to throw off the mantle of gloom.

“I tell you what it is,” I suggested. “I think you’re in love.”

“Bah! I was never in love but once, and that was twenty years ago. We were going to be married. The day was fixed. Then on the marriage eve she went to try on the wedding gown. There was a large fire in the room, and suddenly as she was bending before the mirror to tie a riband, the flimsy robe caught the flame. In a moment she was ablaze. Screaming and panic-stricken she ran, only to fall unconscious. After three days of agony she died. I attended a funeral, not a wedding.”

I shuddered—not at his story, but because the incident occurred in my novel, The Cup and The Lip. Alas! How Life plagiarizes Fiction. I murmured huskily:

“Cheer up, old man!”

He laughed bitterly. “Twenty years! I might have had sons and daughters grown up by now. Perhaps even grandchildren like Solonge. How strange it seems! What a failure it’s all been! And now it’s too late. I’m a weary unloved old man.”

“Oh, rot,” I said. “Look here, be sensible. Why don’t you and Frosine hitch up? There’s a fine, home-loving woman, and she thinks you’re a little tin god.”

“How d’ye know that?” he demanded, eagerly.

“Isn’t she always saying so to my wife?” (This was a little exaggeration on my part.) “I tell you, Helstern, that woman adores you. Just think how different that unkempt studio of yours would be with such a bright soul to cheer it.”

“I’ve a good mind to ask her.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Well, to give you the truth, old man, I’ve been trying to, but I haven’t the courage. I’ve got the frame of a lion, Madden, with the heart of a mouse.”

“I’ll tell you what. If I go down and speak for you will you go through it?”

“Yes, I will; but—there’s no hurry, you know. To-morrow....”

“Come on. No time like the present. We’ll find her at work.”

“Yes, but ... will you go in and sound her first?”

“Yes, yes. Don’t be such a coward. You can wait outside.”

He stumped along beside me till we came to the rue Mazarin, and I left him while I went to interview Frosine.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said gladly. “Come in. It’s early, but I put Solonge to bed so that I could get a lot of work finished. See! it’s a wedding trousseau. How is Madame? Is everything well? Can I do anything for you? Solonge remembered you in her prayers. You may kiss her if you like.”

“How lovely she is,” I said, stooping over the child. I was trying to think of some way in which to lead up to my subject.

Frosine never left off working. Once more she was the bright, practical woman, capable of fighting for herself in the struggle of life.

“How hard you work! Do you never tire, never get despondent?”

She looked at me with a happy laugh. The fine wrinkles seemed to radiate from her eyes.

“No; why should I? I have my child. I am free. There’s no one on my back. You see I’m proud. I don’t like any one over me. Freedom is a passion with me.”

“Yes, but you can’t always work. You must think of the future. Some day you’ll grow old.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “There will still be Solonge.”

“Yes, but you must think of her too. Listen to me, Mademoiselle Frosine. I’m your friend. I would like to see you beyond the need of such toil as this. Well, I come to make you an offer of marriage.”

She stared at me.

“I mean, I come on behalf of a friend of mine. He is very lonely, and he wants you to be his wife. I refer to Monsieur Helstern.”

She continued to stare as if amazed.

“It is droll Monsieur Helstern cannot speak for himself,” she said at last.

“He has been trying to, but—well, you know Helstern. He’s as shy as a child.”

Her face changed oddly. The laughter went out of it. Her head drooped, and she gazed at her work in an unseeing way. She was silent so long that I became uncomfortable. Then suddenly she looked up, and her eyes were aglitter with tears.

“Listen, my friend. I want you to hear my story, then tell me if I ought to marry Monsieur Helstern.

“I’ve got to go back many years—fifteen. My father was in business, and I was sheltered as all French girls of that class are. Then father died, leaving mother with scarcely a sou. I had to work. Well, I was expert with my needle, and soon found employment with a dressmaker.

“You know how it is with us when one has no dot. It is nearly impossible to make a marriage in one’s own class. One young man loved me and wanted to marry me; but his mother would not hear of it because I was poor. She had another girl with a good dot picked out for him, and as children are not allowed to marry without their parents’ consent he became discouraged. I do not blame him. It was his duty to marry as his mother wished.

“Well, it was hard for me. It was indeed long before my smiles came back. But it makes no difference if one’s heart aches; one must work. I went on working to keep a roof over my mother’s head.

“By and by she died and I was alone. That was not very cheerful. I had to live by myself in a little room. Oh! I was so lonely and sad! Remember that I was not a girl of the working class. I had been educated. I could not bring myself to marry a workman who would come home drunk and beat me. No, I preferred to sit and sew in my garret. And the thought came to me that this was going to be my whole life—this garret, this sewing. What a destiny! To go on till I was old and worn out; then a pauper’s grave. My spirit was not broken. Can you wonder that I rebelled?

“When I was a little girl I was always playing with my dollies. When I got too old for them I took to nursing other little ones. It seemed an instinct. And so, whenever I thought of marriage it was with the idea of having children of my own to love and care for.

“Imagine me then with my hopes of marriage destroyed. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Is my life to be so barren? Am I to live like many other women, without hope or joy? Surely this is not intended. Surely I am meant to enjoy happiness.’

“Then,” she went on, “one evening I was standing before a print-shop looking at some drawings when a tall, fair man stopped to examine them too. He was an artist, an Englishman. Somehow he spoke to me, then walked with me as far as my home. Well, to make my story short, he was the father of Solonge.

“I never was so happy as then. I did not dream such happiness could be. If I was sorry for anything it was that my happiness came in this way. And I knew this great happiness could not last. In time he had to go. His home, his mother, called him. We were both very sad, for we loved one another. But what would you? We all know these things must have an end. It’s the life.

“The parting was so sad. I cried three days. But I told him he must go. He must think of his position, his family. I was only a poor little French girl who did not matter. He must forget me.

“I did not tell him I was going to have a child though. He would never have gone then. He would have made me marry him, and then I would have spoiled his career. No, I said nothing. But, oh, how the thought glowed in me! At last I would have a child, my own.

“He wanted to settle money on me, but I would not have it. Then, with tears in his eyes, he went away, swearing that he would come back. Perhaps he would have, I don’t know. He was killed in a railway accident. That is one reason I do not wish to be reminded of artists. He was a famous artist. You would know his name if I told it. But I never will. I am afraid his family would try to take away Solonge.

“You see I have worked away, and my garret has been full of sunshine. Oh, how different it was! I sang, I laughed, I was the happiest woman in Paris. I’m not sorry for anything. I think I did right. Now I’ve told you, do you still think Monsieur Helstern would be willing to marry me?”

“More so than ever,” I said. “As far as I know he has pretty much the same views as you have.”

“He says so little to me. But he has been so kind, so good. I believe I owe it to him that I still have my little one.”

“Yes, he’s not a bad old sort. I don’t think you’d ever regret it.”

“You may tell him my story, then, and if he doesn’t think I’m a bad woman....”

“He’ll understand. But let me go and tell him now. He’s waiting round the corner.”

“Stop! Stop!” she protested. But I hurried away and found the sculptor seated outside the nearest café, divided between anxiety and a glass of beer.

“It’s all right, old chap,” I cried. “I’ve squared it all for you. Now you must go right in and clinch things.”

“But I’m not prepared. I—”

“Come on. Strike while the iron’s hot. I’ve just been getting the sad story of her life, and she is in a sentimental mood. Now’s the time.”

So I dragged him to Frosine’s door and pushed him in.

Then this was what I heard, for Helstern’s voice would almost penetrate a steel safe.

“You know, Mademoiselle Frosine, I—I love your daughter.”

“Yes, Monsieur Helstern.”

“I love her so much that I want to ask you if you’ll let me be a father to her.”

“But do you love me?”

“I—I don’t know. I’ve never thought of that. But we both love Solonge. Won’t that be enough?”

“I don’t know. Let us wait awhile. Ask me some months from now. Perhaps you’ve made a mistake. I want you to be quite sure. If by then you find you’ve not made a mistake, I—I might let myself love you very easily.”

“You’ve made me strangely happy. Everything seems changed to me. I may hope then?”

“Yes.”

I did not hear any more. But a moment after Helstern joined me.

“Oh, Madden, how can I ever thank you! You’ve made me the happiest of men.”

Looking back at the lighted window we saw Frosine bent again over her work, trying to make up for lost time. Helstern gazed at the shadow and I could scarce draw him away. What fools these lovers be!

CHAPTER IV
A CHAPTER THAT BEGINS WELL AND ENDS BADLY

“J’aime Paimpol et sa falaise,

Son clocher et son grand pardon;

J’aime surtout la Paimpolaise

Qui m’attend au pays Breton.”

It is Little Thing singing as she sits by the poppy patch before the door. There are hundreds of poppies. They dance in gleeful glory and their scarlet is so luminous it seems about to burst into flame. Maybe the shell-pink in the girl’s cheeks is a reflexion of that radiant glow.

The coast of Brittany dimples as it smiles, and in its most charming dimple is tucked away our little village. The sea has all the glitter of crushed gems. It sparkles in amethyst and emerald; it glooms to garnet and sardonyx. There is a bow of golden sand, and the hill-side is ablaze with yellow brown.

“Dreamhaven” I call our house, and it stands between the poppies and the pines. A house of Breton granite, built to suffice a score of generations, it glimmers like some silvery grand-dame, and its roof is velvety with orange-coloured moss.

We have been here three weeks and Anastasia has responded wonderfully to the change. Nothing can exceed her delight. She sings all day, rivalling the merle that wakes us every morning with his flute-like run of melody.

She loves to sit in a corner of the old garden where a fig tree climbs the silvery wall. There she will knit tranquilly and watch the little lizards flicker over the sun-warmed stone, then pause with panting sides and bead-like eyes to peer around. But for me, I prefer the scented gloom of the pine coppice beyond the garden. Dearly do I love the sudden solitude of pines.

I have corrected the proofs of Tom, Dick and Harry there. I am relieved to find the story goes with vim. It is as light as a biscuit, and as easy of mental digestion. I have sent off the last batch of proofs; my part is done; the rest is Fate.

Now I turn to my jolly Bretons, so dirty and devout, so toilworn and so tranquil. My old women have the bright, clear eyes of children. Never have they worn hat or shoes, never left their native heaths. Yet they are happy—because it has never struck them that they are not happy.

My young women all want to marry sailors so that they may be left at home in tranquillity. They do not desire to see over-much of their lords and masters, who I fear, are fond of mixing eau-de-vie with their cider. If they go to live in cities they generally die of consumption. Their costume is hauntingly Elizabethan, and they are three hundred years behind the times.

---

About a week ago I had a curious conversation with Anastasia.

“Little Thing,” I began, “do you know that if I like I can go away and marry some other French girl?”

“What do you mean?” she said, somewhat startled.

“I mean that as far as France is concerned our marriage doesn’t hold.”

“Mon Dieu!”

“It’s all right by English law, but French law doesn’t recognise it.”

“How droll! But what does it matter? You don’t want marry other French girls?”

“No, but it’s interesting to know that one can.”

“But me, too. Have I not right to marry some other persons?”

“Hum! I never thought of that.”

“Another thing,” I continued, “under French law man and wife hold property in common. Now, supposing you came into fortune, I couldn’t touch it.”

“Ah! now you speak for laughing. I nevaire come into fortune.”

“Well, suppose I come into a fortune—but then that’s equally absurd; anyway, I just wanted to point out to you that by a curious vagary of the law we could repudiate our marriage and contract others—in France.”

Anastasia looked very thoughtful. Though I had spoken jestingly I might have known that with her serious imagination she would take it gravely. Surely enough, a few days after she brought up the subject.

“I sink I like very much, darleen, if we get marry once more, French way, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all; only—I don’t want to make a habit of it.”

“Excuse me, darleen; and please I like it very much if we get marry in Catolick church.”

“All right. We’ll get married in Notre Dame this time.”

“But....” Here she hesitated—“zere is one trouble.”

“Well, what is it?”

“In France it is necessaire by law I have consent of my fazzaire and my muzzaire.”

“Well, seeing that they’re in (we hope) heaven, it won’t be very easy to get it.”

“Oh, no! I nevaire say my muzzaire is dead.”

“But isn’t she?”

“I don’t know. I have not hear of her for many year. I leave wiz my fazzaire when I was leetle girls, before he put me in the couvent. My fazzaire get separation from my muzzaire. She’s very bad womans. She’s beat my fazzaire very cruel, so’s he get separation. My fazzaire was poet.”

“And your mother?”

“Oh, she was not at all chic. She was what we call ‘merchant of the four seasons.’”

“Good heavens! You don’t mean one of those women that hawk stuff in the street with hand barrows?”

Anastasia nodded gravely.

I shuddered. Father a cabaret poet; mother a street pedlar of cabbages and onions. Sacré mud! Then a sudden suspicion curdled my blood.

“Tell me,” I demanded, “is it not that your mother’s name is Séraphine?”

“Yes,” she exclaimed, amazedly.

“And she’s a very big woman with a large nose?”

“Yes, yes; how you know?”

“Well then, let me inform you that your respected parent is at present doing business in a rather flourishing way in the Halles. She imports escargots and wears seven diamond rings on one hand. Judging by that hand alone, there’s a respectable prospect of your becoming an heiress after all.”

“She’s terrible woman,” said Anastasia, after I had explained my meeting with her mother. “I’m afraid she’s make trooble. She’s behave very cruel to my fazzaire and she not like me, because when they separate I choose go wiz heem. She nevaire forgeeve me. I’m ’fraid she’s never consent to our marriage in France.”

“Wait till we get back to Paris and we’ll tackle her.”

“When we go back to Paris?”

“Next week. I can’t afford to rent the house after the end of the month.”

“I’m sorry to go. I love it here.”

“Yes, but I must get back to work again. We must bid our jolly Bretons good-bye.”

---

We bade them good-bye this morning; great, great grandfather Dagorn herding his cows on the velvety dune; Yyves swinging his scythe as he whisked down the heavy crimson clover; Marie stooped over her churn; Mother Dagorn whose withered cheeks are apple-bright; the rosy-faced children, the leaping dogs. We looked our last on that golden beach, that jewelled sea; we roamed our last amid the hedges of honeysuckle, the cherry-trees snowed with blossom, the stream where the embattled lilies brandished blades and flaunted starry banners. Last of all, and with something very like sadness, we bade good-bye to that old house I called Dreamhaven, which stands between the poppies and the pines.

---

Back in Paris. The dear sunny boulevards are once more embowered in tender green, and once more I am a dreamy Luxemburger, feeding my Bohemian sparrows in that cool, still grove where gleam the busts of Murger and Verlaine: once more I roam the old streets, seeking the spirit of the past; once more I am the apostle of the clear laugh and the joyous mind.

One of the first persons I met as I walked down the spinal column of the Quarter, the Boul’ Mich’, was Helstern. He had just come from a lecture by Bergson at the Sorbonne and was indignant because he had been obliged to stand near the door.

“Bergson’s a society craze just now. The place was crowded with wretched women that couldn’t understand a word of his lecture. They chattered and stared at one another through their lorgnettes. One wretched cocotte threw the old man a bunch of violets.”

“What did he do?”

“He took it up and after looking at it as if he didn’t know what it was he put it in his pocket.”

“Well, how’s every one? What have you been doing? Some symbolical group, I suppose?”

“No; I’ve decided to go in for simple things, the simpler the better. I’ve done a little head and bust of Solonge I want you to see. I’m rather pleased with it.”

“All right. I’ll come as soon as we get settled.”

“Where are you going this time?”

“I’ve taken a logement on the Passage d’Enfer; you know it—a right-angled street of quaint old houses that runs into the Boulevard Raspail.”

“I know. I once lived in the rue Boissonniere. What are you going to do now?”

“Another novel, I suppose. I have enough money to last me for five months. Just fancy! five months to write and not worry about anything at all. How’s Frosine and the Môme?”

Helstern beamed. Then for the first time I noticed a remarkable change in him. No longer could I call him the “melancholy Dane” (he was really a Swede, by the way). He had discarded his severe black stock for a polka-dot Lavallière, and he was actually wearing a check suit.

“Come with us on Sunday. We are all going to St. Cloud.”

“I’ll ask my wife. Thing’s going all right?”

“Yes, I think she’ll consent to name the day.”

“Well, I congratulate you. And how’s Lorrimer?”

“He seems to have taken up with a new girl, a dark, Italian kind of a type. I’ve seen him with her at the cafés. He’s fickle in his attachments.”

“That must be Lucretia,” I thought; and I congratulated myself on my adroit disentanglement. Then I felt some compunction as I thought of Rougette.

But I was reassured, for I saw the two together that very afternoon in front of the café du Panthéon. Rougette looked sweet and serene. Whatever might have been the philandering of Lorrimer it had not disturbed her Breton phlegm. Or, perhaps it was that in her simple faith she was incapable of believing him a gay deceiver. She was more than ever distractingly pretty, so that, looking at her, I could not imagine how any one could neglect her for the olive-skinned Lucretia.

Lorrimer, too, was the picture of prosperity. He wore a new Norfolk suit, and a wide-brimmed grey hat. He looked more faunesque and insouciant than ever, a being all nerves and energy and indomitable gaiety.

“Hullo,” he greeted me; “here’s old Daredeath Dick. Come and join us. Rougette wants to hear all about her ‘pays Breton.’ You’re looking very fit. How’s everything?”

“Excellent, I’m to have a novel published next week, and I’ve got enough money to follow it up with another.”

“What a wonderful chap you are to be able to spread your money out like that! You know wealth would be my ruin. Poverty’s my best friend. Wealth really worries me. I never could work if I had lots of money. By the way, you must see my picture at the Salon des Independents. Rougette and the Neapolitaine are in it. It’s creating quite a sensation.”

“How is our dark friend?”

He shrugged his shoulders gaily. “Just a little embarrassing at times. She’s awfully jealous of Rougette. The other day in the studio she snatched up a knife, and I thought she was going to stick it into me; but she only proceeded to slash up a picture I had done called The Jolie Bretonne, for which Rougette had posed. After that we had a fuss, and I told her all was over between us. So we parted in wrath, and I haven’t spoken to her since. She has a devil of a temper; a good girl to keep away from.”

Poor unsuspecting Lorrimer! I felt guilty for a moment. Then I changed the subject.

“But you’re looking very spruce. Don’t tell me you’ve sold a picture.”

“No, but I’ve got a job, a steady job. I’m doing cartoons every night at the Noctambules. You must come round and see me.”

I promised I would, and returned to the Passage d’Enfer, where Anastasia was busy putting our new apartment in order. There was a bedroom, dining-room, and a kitchen, about the size of a packing-box; but she was greatly pleased with everything. We supplemented our old furniture with some new articles from the bazaars. A dressing-table of walnut, a wardrobe with mirror doors, and cretonne curtains with a design of little roses. Soon, we found ourselves installed with a degree of comfort we had not hitherto known.

It was one evening that Anastasia, who had been papering the dining-room, retired to bed quite early, that I decided to accept Lorrimer’s invitation and visit the Noctambules. This is a cabaret in a dark side-street that parallels the “Boul’ Mich’.” I found myself in a long, low room whose walls were covered with caricatures of artists who in their Bohemian days had been habitués of the place. There was an array of chairs, a shabby little platform, and a piano. As each chansonnier came on he was introduced by an irrepressible young man with a curly mop of hair and merry eyes. Then, as the singer finished, the volatile young man called for three rounds of hearty applause.

The cabaret chansonniers of Paris are unique in their way. They are a connecting-link between literature and the stage—hermaphrodites of the entertaining world. They write, compose, and sing their own songs, which, often, not only have a distinctive note that makes for art, but are sung inimitably well. Ex-poets, students with a turn for satiric diversion, journalists of Bohemia, all go to swell the ranks of these inheritors of the traditions of Beranger. From that laureate of the gutter, Aristide Bruant, down to the smallest of them, they portray with passionate fidelity the humour and tragedy of the street—irreverently Rabelaisian at one moment, pathetically passionate at the next.

As I enter, Marcel Legay is in the midst of a song of fervid patriotism. In spite of his poetic name, he is a rubicund little man with a voice and the mane of a lion. Then follows Vincent Hispy, with catlike eyes and droll, caustic wit. Then comes Zavier Privas, big and boisterous as the west wind, lover to his soul of the chansons he writes and sings. Finally, with a stick of charcoal and an eager smile, Lorrimer appears. A screen is wheeled up on which are great sheets of coarse paper. The artist announces that his first effort will be Sarah Bernhardt. He makes about five lightning lines, and there is the divine Sarah. Then follow in swift succession Polaire, Dranem, Mistinguette, Mayol, and other lights of the Paris stage.

And now the cartoonist turns to the audience and asks them to name some one high in politics. A voice shouts Clemenceau. In a moment the well-known features are on the board. Poincaré! It is done. And so on for a dozen others. Applause greets every new cartoon, and the artist retires covered with glory.

“How did you like it?” grins Lorrimer, as he joins me in the audience.

“Splendid! Why, man, you could make barrels of money in America doing that sort of thing.”

“I’d rather be a pauper in Paris than a money-changer in Chicago. But there’s Rougette at the back of the hall. Doesn’t she look stunning? Thanks to this job, I’ve been able to pay her for a good many sittings, and now she’s got a new gown and hat. By Jove! that girl will be the making of me yet. Her loveliness really inspires me. Nature leaves me cold, but woman, beautiful woman!—I could go on painting her eternally and not ask for other reward.”

And, indeed, the Breton girl, with her ash-gold hair and her complexion of roses and cream, was a delicate vision of beauty.

“Never let a woman see that you cannot be serenely happy without her,” says Lorrimer. “I’d do anything for Rougette (short of marrying her), yet I never let her know it. And so she’s faithful to me. Others have tried to steal her from me; have offered her luxury; but no, she’s the same devoted, unspoiled girl. Just look at her, Madden, a pure lustrous pearl. Think what a life such a girl might have in this Paris, where men make queens of beautiful women! What triumphs! what glories! Yet there she is, content to follow the fortunes of an obscure painter. But come on and join the girl. They’re going to do a little silhouette drama.”

As we sit by Rougette, who smiles radiantly, the lights go out, and beyond the stage a little curtain goes up, showing a fisher cottage in Brittany. The scene is early morning, the sea flooded with the coral light of dawn. Then across the face of the picture comes the tiny silhouettes of the fishermen carrying their nets. The cottage is next shown in the glow of noon, and, lastly, by night, with the fisher boats passing over the face of the moon.

Then the scene changes. We see the inside of the cabin—the bed, the wardrobe of oak and brass, the great stone fireplace, the ship hanging over it, the old grandmother sitting by her spinning-wheel. To her come the children begging for a story, and she tells them one from out the past—a story of her youth, the rising of the Vendée.

All this is made clear by three singers, who, somewhere in the darkness, tell it in sweet, wild strains of Breton melody. There is a soprano, a tenor, a bass; now one takes up the story, then another; then all three voices blend with beautiful effect. And as they sing we see the tiny silhouettes of the peasants, vivid and clear-cut, passing across the face of the changing scene. Those strong, melodious voices tell of how the farmer-soldiers rose and fought; how they marched in the snow; how they suffered; how they died. It is sad, sweet, beautiful; and now the music grows more dramatic; the action quickens; the climax draws near.

And as I sit there with eyes fixed on that luminous space, I feel that something else, also terrible, is about to happen. Surely some one is moving in the darkness behind us? Even in that black silence I am conscious of a shadow blacker still. Surely I can hear the sound of hard, panting breath? That dreadful breathing passes me, passes Lorrimer, comes to an arrest behind Rougette.

Then I hear a scream, shriek on shriek, such as I never dreamed within the gamut of human agony. And in the hush of panic that follows the lights go up.

Rougette is lying on the floor, her head buried in her arms, uttering heart-rending cries. Lorrimer, with a face of absolute horror, is bending over her, trying to raise her as she grovels there in agony.

What is it? A hundred faces are turned towards us, each the mask of terror and dismay. I will always remember those faces that suddenly flamed at us out of the dark, all so different, yet with the one awful expression.

Then I see a tiny bottle at my feet. Almost mechanically I stoop and pick it up; but I drop it as if I had been stung. I fall to rubbing my fingers in agony, and everywhere I rub there is a brown burn. Now I understand the poor, writhing, twisting girl on the floor, and a similar shudder of understanding seems to convulse the crowd. There comes a hoarse whisper—“Vitriol!”

Turning to the door, I am just in time to see a girl in black make her escape, an olive-skinned girl with beetle-black hair and the eyes of an odalisque. And Lorrimer looks at me in a ghastly way, and I know that he too has seen.

CHAPTER V
THE GREAT QUIETUS

“It’s terrible! It’s unspeakable!” I groaned, on arising next morning, as I thought of the events of the night before. “That poor girl, so good, so sweet! And to think that she should suffer so—through me, through me.”

There was a knock at the door, and Lorrimer appeared. “It’s horrible! It’s unthinkable!” he moaned. “Poor Rougette, who never harmed a living soul. And to think that I should have brought this calamity upon her.”

“It’s my fault,” I objected; “I introduced Lucretia to you.”

“No, no; it’s my fault,” he insisted. “I trifled with the girl’s feelings.”

“Well, any way,” I said, “what are we going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I’d marry her,” I suggested. “But I can’t, being married already.”

“I’ll marry her,” cried Lorrimer. “You know, last night on the way to the hospital, when I saw that beautiful face covered with those hideous bandages, I wept like a child. She told me not to mind. It was not my fault. She would enter a convent, become a nun. Just fancy, Madden, that lovely face eaten to the bone, a horrible sight....”

“Perhaps it won’t be so bad, old chap. Perhaps she’s only burned on one side; then the other side of her face will still be beautiful.”

“Yes, that’s one blessing. I told her as they took her away. ‘Rougette,’ I said, ‘the day you come out of the hospital is the day of our marriage. You must not think of anything else. I’ll devote my life to you.’ Could I do less, old man? We may talk cynically about women, but when it comes to the point, we’re all ready to die for ’em. I’d have given anything last night if it had been me. It’s always the innocent that suffer.”

“Every one is talking of it this morning,” I observed. “It’s in all the papers, but no one suspects who did it. Are you going to tell the police?”

“No, how can I? I’m indirectly to blame. But oh! if I can lay my hands on that girl!” He broke off with a harsh laugh that was more eloquent of vengeful rage than any words.

“Well, cheer up, old man. I applaud your action in marrying Rougette. And perhaps she won’t be so terribly disfigured after all.”

So I accompanied Lorrimer on his way to the hospital, and we were going down the Boul’ Mich’ when suddenly he turned.

“Let me leave you now. Here’s that blithering little Bébérose coming to buttonhole me and tell me of his love affairs. I’m not in a fit state to listen at present. You just talk to him, will you?”

So I was left to interview Monsieur Bébérose whom I had met once or twice in his capacity as art patron, and the proud purchaser (for an absurdly small price) of one of Lorrimer’s masterpieces. Monsieur Bébérose is a retired manufacturer of Arles sausages, a man of fifty, and reputed to be wealthy. He is a little, overfed man, not unremotely resembling the animal from whose succulence his money has been made. Besides the crimson button of the Legion, he wears as a watch-charm a large gall-stone that had been extracted from him by a skilful surgeon. On the fore-front of his head is a faint fringe of hair, trimmed and parted like an incipient moustache; otherwise his skull would make an excellent skating-rink for the flies. Add to this that he is a widower, on the look-out for a second wife.

“Well,” I hailed him, “you’re not married yet?”

Monsieur Bébérose shook his head mournfully. “No, things do not march at present. You remember I told you about Mademoiselle Juliette. Well, I like that girl very much. I have known her since she was a baby. I think I like to marry her. So I ask the mother. Well, she put me off. She say she decide in a week. Then in a week I go back and she tell me that she think Mademoiselle Juliette too young to marry me but she have a girl friend, Mademoiselle Lucille, who want to get married. Perhaps I would be pleased with the friend.”

Here Monsieur Bébérose sighed deeply.

“Well, she introduce me to Mademoiselle Lucille, and I give them all a dinner at Champeaux! It cost me over one hundred francs, that dinner. The way the mother of Mademoiselle Juliette drink champagne make me afraid for her. I am pleased with Mademoiselle Lucille very well, and I think I like to marry her. So I tell the mother if the girl, who is orphan, is willing, it goes with me, and she says she will speak with the girl and advise her.”

Here Monsieur Bébérose began to get indignant.

“So in a week I go back and say to the mother of Mademoiselle Juliette. ‘Well, how does it go with Mademoiselle Lucille?’ She shrug her shoulders.

“‘Lucille! Oh, yes; I have never asked her. I’ve been thinking it over, and I think I’ll give you Juliette after all.’

“Well, I like Lucille best now, but I like Juliette, too, so I say: ‘Very well, Madame, it goes with me. When may I have the pleasure of taking to the theatre my fiancée?’

“But Madame say it is not convenable if I go out alone with her daughter. She must accompany us. So when we go to the theatre she sit between us; when we have dinner she watch me all the time. Indeed, I have not been able to have one word in private with Mademoiselle Juliette. Perhaps I am not reasonable; but I think I ought to find out how she feels towards me before I become fiancé. I think marriage is better if there is a little affection with it, don’t you?”

“Yes, it’s preferable. I think.”

“Of course, I know Juliette will obey her mother and marry me; but me, I do not like the way they treat me about Lucille. Am I like a sheep that they shall pull about? Besides, Juliette is so young—just nineteen. It might be better if I find some nice young widow with a little money, don’t you think?”

I agreed with him that the matter was worthy of serious consideration, and that the belle-mère was likely to be a disturbing factor in his domestic equation. So, solemnly warning him to be careful, I left him more in doubt than before.

When I reached home Anastasia was awaiting me.

“Well, darleen, what is it that you have of news about Rougette?”

“I don’t know. Lorrimer thinks she’ll have a mask down one side of her face. He swears he’s going to marry her though. Fancy” (I shuddered) “marrying a medallion. Now, there’s a dramatic situation for you. Handsome, romantic, young artist—wife, supremely beautiful to port, a hideous mask to starboard. His increasing love of the beautiful side, his growing horror of the other. His guilty knowledge that he is himself responsible for the disfigurement ... why! what a stunning story it would make, and what a tragic dénouement! How mean of life to steal so brazenly the material of fiction!”

“Poor, poor girl,” sighed Anastasia. “I must go to the hospital and see her this afternoon. And I too I have some news for you.”

“Not bad, I hope?”

“No, I sink you are please. It is that Monsieur Helstern have call. He was so funny, so shy, so glad about somesing. Well, what you sink? He and Frosine get marry very soon and want you to be witness.”

“Good! It’ll be the best thing in the world for the old chap.”

“Yes, he seem very happy—quite different.”

“Funny,” I remarked, “how every one’s thoughts seem turning to marriage. It must be epidemic. There’s Helstern and Frosine. Here’s Lorrimer saying he’ll marry Rougette; and this morning, Monsieur Bébérose. By Jove! and weren’t we talking about it too! Ah, there’s an idea! Why shouldn’t we have our second marriage at the same time as Helstern and Lorrimer get tied up? You see four witnesses are needed at the ceremony, two male and two female. We can act as one another’s witnesses as well as get married ourselves. And just think of the money we’ll save on the carriages and the supper! Talk of killing three birds with one stone!”

“We must get my mother’s consentement first.”

“Ah, yes, my belligerent belle-mère. Well, we’ll go and interview her to-morrow.”

“I’m afraid,” said Anastasia, blanching at the prospect.

“You mustn’t be,” I said bravely; “you have me to protect you. Remember you’re my wife.”

“Not by French law. But I will go with you, darleen. I know you are strong.”

She looked at me with undisguised admiration. I think that Anastasia really thinks I am a hero.

In the afternoon she returned from the hospital with cheering news. It was not going so badly with Rougette after all. She had had a wonderful escape. A great deal of the acid had lodged in her veil, and what she had got began a little below the left ear. Her neck and breast were burned badly, and she was suffering agony, but her beauty had been spared. By wearing collars of an extra height scarcely any one would suspect.

“Monsieur Lorrimer was there too. He’s so change. I nevaire see a man so serious. Truly, I sink he mean marry Rougette all right.”

Next morning, bright and early, we sallied forth to tackle the redoubtable Madame Séraphine. After reconnoitring cautiously we located her in her stall in the fish pavilion throned high amid her crates of escargots. As with beating hearts we approached we heard her voice in angry argot berating a meek wisp of a porter. Against the grey of her surroundings her face loomed huge and ruddy, and her eyes had the hard brightness of a hawk’s. Again I wondered how she could ever have been the mother of my gentle Anastasia.

“Your father must have been the most angelic of little men,” I murmured.

“He was,” she answered breathlessly.

“You’d better go first,” I suggested nervously.

“No, you,” she protested, trying to get behind me.

“But you’ve got to introduce me,” I objected, trying to get behind her.

Then while we were rotating round each other suddenly the eyes of my belle-mère fell on us, and as they dwelt on Anastasia her mouth grew grimmer, and her nose more aggressive. Her whole manner bristled with pugnacity.

“Tiens! Tiens! if it isn’t, of all the world, my little Tasie.”

Anastasia went forward meekly; I followed sheepishly.

“Yes, Mémé,” she said; “I’ve come to visit you.”

The majestic woman relaxed not, nor did she make any motion to embrace her shrinking offspring.

“Well,” she said, after a long, severe silence, “I imagine that it is not all for pleasure you come to see your poor old mother. What is it?”

“Mémé, I want to present to you my husband.”

Here I bowed impressively. The big woman with the folded arms shifted her gaze to me. It was a searching, sneering, almost derisive gaze, and I hated her on the spot.

“So!” she said, more grimly than ever, “and how is it you can get married without your mother’s consent, if you please?”

“We were married in England, Madame,” I said politely; “but now we want to get married in France as well, and we are come to ask your consent.”

“Ah!” she said sharply; “you are not really married then. And what if I refuse my consent? I do not know you, young man. How do I know if you are a fit husband for my precious little cabbage? Are you rich?”

“No.”

“Are you a Catholic?”

“No.”

“Not rich! Not a Catholic! And this man expects me to let him marry my little chicken, I who am so good with the church and can afford to give her a handsome dot. What is your business?”

“I am a writer.”

“Quel toupet! Just the same as her worthless father, only he was worse—a poet. No, young man. I think I would prefer a different kind of husband for my sweet lamb.”

“I won’t marry any one else, Mémé.”

“Hold your tongue, girl! Do I not know my duty as a mother? You’ll marry whom I choose.”

“Then you refuse to give your consent?” I said with some heat.

Her manner changed cunningly.

“I do not say that. All I desire is to know you better. Will you come and have dinner with me some Sunday evening?”

After all, she was my belle-mère. I consented, and Anastasia seemed relieved. She promised to write and give us a date. Then I shook hands with her; Anastasia pecked at her in the French fashion, and there was, to some appearance, a little family reconciliation.

“Perhaps the old lady’s not so bad, after all,” I suggested; but Anastasia was sceptical.

“I do not trust her. She have some ruse. We must wait and see.”

That was a memorable day; for on reaching home I felt the sudden spur of inspiration, and sitting down before the ramshackle typewriter, I headed up a clean sheet:

THE GREAT QUIETUS

A Novel

“The scene is on the top of a peak that overlooks a vast plain. A majestic old man, bearded even as the prophets, stands there looking at the Western sky which the setting sun has turned into an ocean of gold. Island beyond island of cloud swims in that amber sea, each coral tinted and fringed with crimson foam. And as he gazes, the splendid old man is magnificently happy; for is he not the last man left alive on this bad, sad earth, and is he not about to close his eyes on it forever?

“In the twenty-first century, luxury and wickedness had increased to such an extent that the whole world became decadent. The art of flying, brought to such perfection that all travelled by the air, had annihilated space, and the world had become very small indeed. Instead of Switzerland, people went for a week-end skiing to the Pole; the unexplored places were Baedekerized, and the wild creatures that formerly roamed their valleys relegated to the alleys of zoological gardens.

“Behold then, a familiar world, shorn of all mystery; a tamed world, harnessed to the will of man; a sybaritic world, starred with splendid cities and caparisoned with limitless luxury. Its population had increased a thousand fold; its old religions were outgrown; its moral ideas engulfed in a general welter of cynicism and sensuality.

“And out of this dung-heap of degeneracy there arises a sect of pessimists who declare that human nature is innately bad; that under conditions of inordinate luxury, when the most exquisite refinements are within the reach of the poorest, conditions of idleness, when all the work of man is done by machinery, it is impossible for virtue to flourish. War, struggle, rigorous conditions make for moral vigour. Peace, security, enervating conditions result in weakness. The blessings that increase of knowledge had heaped on man were in their very plenitude proving a curse. But alas! it was too late. Never could man go back to the old life of virility. There was only one remedy. It was so easy. Even as far back as the benighted nineteenth century philosophers had pointed it out: let every one cease to have children. Let the race become extinct.

“For one hundred years had the promulgation of this doctrine gone on. From their very cradles the children had been trained to the idea that parenthood was shameful, was criminal, was a sin against the race. The highest moral duty of a couple was to die without issue. The doctrine was easy of dissemination; for even to the remotest parts of the earth all men were highly educated; all nations were gathered in world commonwealth with a world language.

“But accidents will happen; and it had taken a century to reduce the population of the world down to a mere handful. For a score of years all children born had been suppressed and now, as far as was known, only a dozen people remained. On a given day these had sworn to partake of a drug that would ensure them a painless and pleasant death. That day was past; there only remained the chief priest to close the account of humanity.

“He too held the drug that meant his release, and as he gazed his last on a depopulated world his heart was full of exultation. He cursed it, this iniquitous earth, where poor, weak man had been flung to serve his martyrdom. Well, man had outwitted nature; mind had triumphed over matter. Now the end....

“And raising the fatal drug to his lips the last man drained it to the dregs.”

Here ended my prologue: now the story.

“A poor woman, feeling the life stir within her, and loving it in spite of their teaching, had crawled away and hid in the depths of a forest. There she had given birth to a man-child; but, knowing that her boy would be killed, this woman-rebel lurked in the forest, living on its fruits and the milk of its deer. Then at last she ventured to leave her child and revisit the world. Lo! she found that the day of the Great Quietus has passed; there was no more human life on the earth. So she returned to the forest and soon she too perished.

“The boy thrived wonderously. His mother had told him that he was the one human being on the planet. He had lived in a cave and fed of the simple fruits of the earth, so that he grew to be a young god of the wild-wood. But he was curious. He wanted to see the wonderful, wicked world of which his mother had told him so much. So he set out on his travels.

“Like a superb young savage he tramped through Europe. He tamed a horse to bear him; he explored the ruins of great cities—Vienna, Paris, Berlin. In the ivy-grown palaces and the weed-stifled courts of kings he killed lions and tigers; for all the wild animals had escaped from the menageries and had reverted to a savage state. He ached to know something of the histories of these places; but he could not read, and all was meaningless to him.

“He discovered how to use a boat, and in his experiments he was blown across the channel to Britain. Then one day he lit a bonfire amid the ruins of London. Nothing in the world but ruin, ruin.

“He was as one at the birth of things for he understood nothing. He knew of fire and knives, but not of wheels. He was a primitive man in a world that has perished of super-civilisation. Yet as he cowered by his fire in the centre of Trafalgar Square the vast silence of it all weighed him down, and he felt oh! so lonely. He caressed the dogs he had trained to follow and love him. His mother had been the only human being he had ever seen and she had died when he was so young. His memory of her was vague, but he could imagine no one different. He knew nothing of sex, only that vast consuming loneliness, those haunting desires he could not understand.

“Then as he sat there brooding, into his life there came the woman—a girl. Where she came from he never knew. Probably like himself she was a deserted child, and like him she, too, was a child of nature, superb, virile, unspoiled. She had tamed two leopards to defend her, and she was clad in the skin of another. With her leopards she saved his life, just as he was about to fall in battle against a pack of wolves.

“Their meeting was a wondrous idyll; their love an idyll still more wonderful. There in the lovely Kentish woodland they roamed, a new Adam and a new Eve. Then to them in that fresh and glowing world, glad as at the birth of things, a child was born.

“And here we leave them standing on a peak that overlooks a beautiful plain, in the glory of the rising sun. The world rejoices; the sky is full of song; the air is a-thrill with fate. There they stand bathed in that yellow glow and hold aloft their child, the beginners of a new race, a primal pair in a primal world.

“For nature is stronger than man, and the Master of Destiny is invincible.”

---

I was pounding away at my typewriter one morning, and Anastasia was out on a marketing expedition, when there came a violent knocking at my door. As I opened it Lorrimer almost fell into my arms. He was ghastly and seemed about to faint. Staggering to the nearest chair he buried his head in his hands.

“What’s the matter?”

He only groaned.

“Heavens, man! tell me what’s wrong.”

Suddenly he looked up at me with wild staring eyes.

“Don’t touch me, Madden; I’m accursed. Don’t you see the brand of Cain on me? I’m a murderer! Oh, God! a murderer.”

He rocked up and down, sobbing convulsively.

“What have you done?” I cried, horrified. “Tell me quick.”

“I’ve killed her,” he panted; “I’ve killed Lucretia. She’s dead now, dead in my studio. I’m on my way to give myself up to the police.”

“Killed Lucretia?”

“Yes, yes. I didn’t mean to do it. I was mad for revenge. I had her at my mercy. I thought of poor Rougette. Her moans have haunted me night and day. They’ve almost driven me mad. I can’t blot out the memory of that poor, bandaged face. Then when I saw that female devil before me something seemed to snap in my brain. So I’ve killed her. Now I’m sorry; but it’s too late, too late.”

“Don’t take it so badly, old chap. Nobody ever gets punished for murder in France. They’ll bring in a verdict of crime passionnel, and you’ll be acquitted. But tell me, quick. What’s happened?”

He went on in that broken, excited way.

“She did not know we had seen her that night. She came to me with the most brazen effrontery. Pretended to sympathise with Rougette; wanted me to take her back as a model. That was what maddened me, the smiling, damned hypocrisy of her. Oh! devil! devil!”

“Go on, quick; what did you do?”

“I told her I was going to paint a picture of Mazeppa and wanted her to pose for me.”

“But Mazeppa wasn’t a female.”

“She doesn’t know that. Well, on impulse I posed her on that dummy horse I have, and I bound her to its back with straps, bound her so strongly she could not move a muscle. She submitted till I had pulled the last buckle, then she got alarmed, but I snapped a gag in her mouth before she could scream.”

“Yes, yes, and then?”

Lorrimer drew a long, shuddering breath.

“And then, Madden, I—I varnished her.”

“Varnished her?”

“Yes. You see I read it in Pithy Paragraphs, an advertisement for Silkoline Soap. It began: ‘No person covered with a coating of varnish could live for more than half an hour.’ That gave me the idea. It closes all the pores, you see. Well, there she was at my mercy. There was a pot of shellac varnish handy. In a few minutes it was done. From toe to top I varnished her. Then threw a sheet over her. And now....”

“Good Heavens! How long ago?”

“I’ve come straight here.”

“Wait, man; perhaps it’s not too late yet. Perhaps—stay here till I get back.”

I leapt down the stairs; caught a taxi that was passing, shouted the number of the house and street, adding that it was a matter of life and death; leaped out before the taxi came to a stand; called to the concierge to follow me, and burst into Lorrimer’s studio. Not a moment too soon. The girl was in a dead faint, and it seemed as if every breath would be her last. In feverish haste I directed the concierge to unstrap her and wrap her up; then, carrying her downstairs, we lifted her into the taxi.

“The baths!” I cried to the chauffeur. “The baths behind the Closerie de Lilas. And hurry, for Heaven’s sake! A life’s at stake.”

In a few minutes we were there, and a nurse had the girl, who had now recovered consciousness, in a hot bath. Then for an hour of throbbing suspense, with aching muscles and dripping brows they fought for her life. As valiantly as ever hero fought with sword and shield they fought with soap and soda. In the end the nurse triumphed. Her skin was considerably damaged but Lucretia was saved.

CHAPTER VI
THE SHADOW OF SUCCESS

I was killing my chief priest in a blaze of glory when Anastasia invaded the room that between meals is called my bureau, at meals the salle-à-manger, in the evening the salon.

“Don’t speak to me,” I cried; “I’m at a critical point.”

With which I ran my fingers through my hair, took hold of my teeming skull with both hands, and glared fiercely at the blank sheet of paper in my typewriter. With a look almost of awe the wife of the great author tip-toed out again.

About an hour after, having duly been delivered of my great thoughts, I rejoined her. “What is it?” I asked kindly.

“Oh, darleen, I have letter from my muzzaire. She want us have dinner on Sunday. What must I say?”

“Say yes, of course. The old lady wants to give us her consent and her blessing. Incidentally, a handsome dot for you. Shouldn’t wonder if she’d taken a shine to me after all.”

“Any one take shine to such lovely sing like you, darleen; but I don’t know about my muzzaire. Well, I write and tell her we come. Oh, and anuzzer sing, I have seen Rougette this morning. She look so happy. She have come out of the hôpital, and she tell me she get married with Monsieur Lorrimer, July. You nevaire knew she have been burn. It is all down her neck and shoulder. You cannot see.”

“I’m so glad. They say beauty is only skin-deep, but it’s deep enough to change the destiny of nations. Who would not rather be born beautiful than good? Why was I not born beautiful?”

“You are, darleen. You are just beautiful, and what is better, you are great writer.”

(I’m afraid Anastasia sees me with the eyes of posterity.)

“Well, now,” I went on, “I must try and bring off that triangular marriage scheme of mine. We’ll fix it all up with my belle-mère on Sunday, and in the meantime I’ll go out and see the others.”

So I set forth in high spirits. Everything was going beautifully it seemed; and when a few moments later I happened on Monsieur Bébérose issuing from his apartment, I beamed on him, and he beamed in return. He was dressed with more care than usual; a hemispherical figure in a frock coat and tall hat. He was anxiously trying to get a new pair of lavender kid gloves on his podgy hands without splitting them, and the imperial that gave distinction to his series of crisp chins had been trimmed and brilliantined. Plainly Monsieur Bébérose had dressed for no ordinary occasion, and chaffingly I told him so.

“Ah, no! Ah, no!” he admitted coyly. “I go to give a déjeûner to my future belle-mère at the Café Anglais.”

“Ha! Who is it? Juliette or Lucille?”

“Oh, neither,” he said, with the archness of a baby elephant. “It is a new one. I think I will be satisfied this time.”

“Is she a widow?”

“No; but her mother is; and an old friend of mine.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Pretty; only twenty and with some money.”

“Ah! young, charming and with a comfortable dot; what could be more delightful? Allow me to congratulate you, my friend. How you must dream of her!”

“Truly, yes; day and night. She is adorable. She melts in the mouth.”

“What a lucky dog you are! I’m dying to see her.”

“But I have not seen her myself yet. I have just seen the mother. Ah! I will have that pleasure in a few days though. Then it is she return from the friend with whom she is visiting.”

“Well, I wish you luck. I hope your troubles are at an end.”

How pleasant it was, I thought, to see all these wild creatures of the ranges being rounded up into the blissful corral of matrimony! How comforting, after one’s own feathers have been trimmed, to see others joining the ranks of the wing-clipped! Love should not be represented as a rosy Cupid, but as a red-jowled recruiting sergeant. True, I have one of the best wives in the world; yet, what man is there, who, if he has ever roved the Barbary coasts of Philander Land, does not once in a while sigh for the old freedom? Marriage is a constraint to be good, against which the best of us feel moments of faint, futile rebellion.

Sometimes I wished that Anastasia was not so desperately practical. She seems to consider that I am a species of great child, and must be looked after accordingly. I am an ardent suffragist; I have always advocated the rights of woman; I have always believed in her higher destiny; I scoff at the idea that woman’s sphere is the home, and desire to see her marching shoulder to shoulder with man in the ranks of progress. Yet, alas! I cannot make a convert of Anastasia.

Often I have tried to interest her in the burning question; to inspire in her a sense of having a mission, of being oppressed; but Anastasia only laughs softly. She seems to have the ridiculous and old-fashioned idea that her duty is to make me happy, to surround me with comfortable routine, to remove from my daily path all irritating and distracting protuberances. I have left, with elaborate carelessness on her kitchen table, enough feminist literature to convert a dozen women. But Anastasia only rearranges it neatly, props an open cook-book against it, and studies some new recipe for stuffing duck.

“Ah, no,” she would say. “I must not waste my time reading. That is not serious of me. I have my ménage, my marketing, my sewing,— Oh, so much to do! If I threw away my time reading, my Lovely One might have holes in his socks; and just think what a shame that would be for me!”

Yes, it is sad to relate, but I believe if I had offered her the choice between a new hat and the vote she would take the hat.

How often have I wished she had more individuality! Her idea seems to be to mould her nature to mine, so that every day she becomes more like a faithful shadow. How anxiously she watches me as I eat my soup, so afraid it may not be to my taste! How cheerful, how patient, how eager to please she is! Oh, for a flare of temper sometimes, a sign of spirit, something to show that she is a woman of character, of originality! But no. Her duty, as she conceives it, is to minister to my material comfort, to see that I enjoy my food, to make me wrap up sufficiently. Yet in these things she is rather tyrannical, insisting on my coming home to my meals at the hour I have decided on, emphatic that I change my socks at least twice a week, indignant if I brush my hair after putting on my coat. However, she keeps my things in beautiful order, and although I feel at times that she is a little exacting I yield with good grace. After all, one ought to consider one’s wife sometimes.

On the other hand, I have insisted on some concessions on her part that are revolutionary to the French mind—that of sleeping with the window open, for instance. I over-ruled her objection that the snow and rain entering during the night, spoiled her parquet. She keeps it beautifully polished, by the way, and claims that the shining of it every day gives her enough exercise without the Swedish gymnastics I insist on her taking under my direction. But I am so anxious she should keep slim and lissom, and the exercises are certainly effective.

But another matter is beginning to occupy my mind and to give me a strange mixture of satisfaction and regret. This is the apparent success of Tom, Dick and Harry. About a month ago I received my six presentation copies. MacWaddy and Wedge had done their work well. The cover was stirring in the extreme. An American publicity man on his probation had seized on it as a medium for his first efforts. It was advertised in the weekly, and even in the daily papers; a royal princess was announced as having included it in her library, and more or less picturesque paragraphs about the author began to go the round of the press. The imaginative efforts of the publicity man were not stultified by any sordid knowledge of his subject.

Then press clippings began to come in. A great many of these were a repetition of the puff on the paper wrapper, which I had written myself, and therefore were favourable. But the reviewers who read the books they review did not let me down so easily. The Times was tolerant; The Academy acidulous; The Spectator severe. On the whole, however, my début was decidedly successful. Nearly all concluded by saying that “despite its obvious faults, the faults of a beginner, its crudeness, its obviousness, its thinness of character-drawing, this first book of Silenus Starset showed more than the average promise, and his future work should be looked forward to with some expectation.”

I gave copies to Helstern and Lorrimer, and they were both enthusiastic in that tolerant way one’s friends have of applauding one’s performances.

“For a first novel, it’s wonderful,” said the sculptor.

“You’re a marvel for a beginner,” said the artist.

These back-handed compliments rather discounted my pleasure. On the other hand, Anastasia, who read it with rapture, thought it the most wonderful production since “Les Misérables.” She hugged and treasured it as if it were something rarely precious, and verily I believe if she had been asked to choose between it and the Bible she would have chosen Tom, Dick and Harry.

Yes, it had all the appearance of success, and yet I was, in a way, disappointed. It was the equal of my other work—no better, no worse. It had the same fresh, impetuous spirit, the same wheedling, human quality, the same light-hearted ingenuity. It had the points that made for popularity: yet I had hoped to strike a truer note. I had a fatal faculty for success. I began to fear that I was doomed irrevocably to be a best-sellermonger.

Well, it must be as the public willed. I could only write in the way that was natural to me. Still I hoped that in The Great Quietus I would show that I could aspire to better things. There were opportunities in it for idyllic description, for the display of imagination. I would try to rise to this new occasion.

So I was deep in the book the following Sunday morning when Anastasia reminded me it was the day we had promised to dine with her mother. The old lady, she said, had asked her to go in the afternoon and help to prepare dinner. Would I follow about six in the evening? I promised, glad to get the extra time on my manuscript.

About six, then, I looked up from my work; suddenly remembered the important engagement, and rushed on my best garments. I called a taxi and told the chauffeur to stop at the beginning of the street. Anastasia, if she saw me, would give me a lecture on extravagance.

The house was in the rue Montgolfier, up five flights. I knocked and Anastasia answered the door. She looked as if she had been crying. There was a sound of conversation from an interior room, where I saw a table set for dinner, with the red checked table-cloth beloved of the bourgeois.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered.

“Oh, I’m so glad you come. Wat you think she want, that bad muzzaire of me? She ask another man here and she want that I leave you and marry him. He is quite rich, and she say she geeve me twenty tousand francs for dot. All afternoon she discute with me. She tell me I always am poor wiz you, and nevaire have much confort. And then she say you are stranger and some day you leave me. She tell me the uzzer man geeve me automobile and I will be very grand. And what you sink? When I say no, no, no, I nevaire, nevaire leeve you, she say she geeve you two tousand francs and you geeve me up like nothing. Oh, I ’ave awful, awful time.”

“I don’t care two pins for your mother,” I said. “But where’s the other party to this arrangement? Where’s the damned Frenchman? I’m going to knock his face in.”

Suddenly Madame Guinoval appeared, wearing a black satin robe that crackled on her and threatened to burst with every movement of her swelling muscles. The slightly moustached mouth was grim as a closed trap, and the red face was flushed and angry looking.

I was furious, but I tried to be calm.

“Madam,” I said, “Anastasia has just told me all. You are her mother so I do not express my opinion of you, but,” I added in a voice of thunder, “where is the sacred pig who wants to steal away my wife?”

There was a movement of alarm from the dining-room.

“Because here’s where I show,” I went on, “that an American is equal to two Frenchmen. Let me get at the brute.”

Anastasia clung to me, begging me to be calm, but Madame Guinoval was haughtily intrepid.

“Hegesippe! Hegesippe!” she cried, “come out and show this coquin you are a brave man.”

There was no alacrity on the part of Hegesippe, so the lady entered and fairly boosted him to the front. I stared; I gasped; my hands dropped; for the suitor, looking very much alarmed indeed, was little Monsieur Bébérose.

“Well,” I said, “you’re a fine man to try and steal a friend’s wife.”

It was now the turn of Anastasia and Madame Guinoval to gasp, for Monsieur Bébérose burst away from the grasp of the latter and rushing to me began to stammer a flood of apologies. He was so sorry; he had not known how things were; he had been deceived. “It was that woman had deceived him,” he said dramatically, pointing to Madame Guinoval.

“That woman” retorted by a terrible calm, a calm more menacing than any storm, a calm pregnant with withering contempt.

“Out of my house,” she said at last; “out, out, you sale goujat!” And Monsieur Bébérose needed no second bidding. He grabbed his hat from the rack and his cane from the stand and vanished. Then the virago turned to us. Going into the bedroom she brought Anastasia’s coat and hat. She ignored me utterly.

“Do you still,” she said, “intend to remain with this man?”

Anastasia nodded a determined head, at which the mother threw the coat and hat at her feet.

“Then go, and never let me see your face again. Never will I give my consent to your marriage in France. May my tongue wither if I ever give it.”

“Put on your hat outside,” I said to Anastasia, and pushed her out. Then I turned to the woman:

“It does not matter,” I hissed. “You’re a devil. You’ve tried to play a dirty game, but it won’t do. And now listen to me.”

Then I took a step towards her and adopted the manner of a stage villain. My face was apparently convulsed with rage, and my raised lips showed my teeth in a vicious snarl. It was most effective. I vow the woman shrank back a moment.

“I’ll pay you out, you harridan. I’ll make you smart for this. Nobody ever did me a bad turn but what I did them a worse. Beware, Madame, beware. I will have my revenge.”

I slammed the door in her face. Then I laughed loud and long.

“I say! it’s all awfully funny, Little Thing. Now let’s go and have some dinner in place of the one we should have had with your mother.”

When we got home that night, another matter claimed my attention. On opening The Bookman, which had arrived that morning, I found therein a well-displayed advertisement of Tom, Dick and Harry. There was half a column of press extracts carefully culled and pruned, the evil of them having in some inexplicable way evaporated. But, oh, wonderful fact that made me scratch my head thoughtfully! in bracketed italics was the announcement: Seventh Impression. There was no guessing how many copies went to an impression. If the publishers were boosting up the number of editions by printing only five hundred copies at a time this did not mean much. But it was hardly likely. In any case it did not look as if MacWaddy and Wedge were losing money over their venture.

The result was that next morning I read over my contract with them. Thank goodness! I still had the American rights; so by the first post I wrote to Widgeon & Co., the literary agents, putting the matter in their hands. There was a reply by return saying that there were several representatives of American firms in London at that time, and that they would get in touch with them without delay.

The following day there came a telegram: “Messrs. Liverwood & Son offer to publish book on fifteen per cent. royalty basis. Will we accept. Widgeon.”

I immediately wired back: “Accept for immediate publication.”

Well, that was off my mind anyway. A few days after, I got a letter from MacWaddy & Wedge saying that they hoped to have a new book from me soon. What were the prospects, they wanted to know, of me being able to let them have it for their autumn lists? In which case they would begin an advertising campaign right away. I wrote back that my affairs were now in the hands of Widgeon & Co. and that all business would be done through them.

A week went past. Every day I had new proof that Tom, Dick and Harry was going well. Then one morning I had a letter from my agents. They had, they said, an opportunity to place a good serial. Would I send them as much of my new book as I had finished and give a synopsis of the rest. I did so, and in three weeks’ time they wrote again to say that the American magazine Uplift had bought the serial rights for a thousand dollars.

That, too, was as satisfactory as it was unexpected. It was like finding the money. Once more I seemed to have entered on the avenue of success that seemed to open up before me in spite of myself. From now on, there would be nothing but monotonous vistas of smooth going. I was doomed to popular applause. Once more would I leap into the lists as a writer of best-sellers. So strongly had I the gift of interesting narrative that I could win half a dozen new reputations; of that I felt sure.

Yes, I had succeeded—no, I mean I had failed, failed by these later lights that Paris had kindled within me. Here, amid art that is eternal, art that means sacrifice, surrender, renunciation, I had learned to despise that work which merely serves the caprice of an hour. I had come to crave form, to strive for style. Yet what can one do? My efforts for art’s sake were artificial and stilted; it was only when I had a story to tell that I became entirely pleasing. Well, let me take my own measure. I would always be a bagman of letters. In that great division of scribes into sheep and goats I would never be other than a bleating and incorrigible goat.

CHAPTER VII
THE FATE OF FAME

Madame Séraphine had spoiled my plan of a triple marriage, but there was nothing to prevent a double one. It took place one midsummer morning in the Mairie, rue Grenelle. On the strength of my thousand dollars from the Uplift people, I offered to pay all expenses.

In the great gloomy chamber of the Mairie we occupied one of a series of benches. Frosine and Rougette were looking radiant, and Helstern and Lorrimer comported themselves as if getting married was part of their daily routine. I was the only person at all excited.

On the other benches were other bridal parties, a bridal party to a bench. On a platform facing us sat a tall man with an Assyrian beard. He wore evening dress traversed by a tricoloured sash. He took each couple in turn, looking down on them with no more interest than if they had been earwigs. Then he mumbled into his beard for about two minutes; finally he cleared his throat and for the first time we heard him distinctly: “The ceremony is terminated.”

After he had spoken this phrase about a dozen times our turn came. Joyfully I pushed forward my candidates and in a few minutes they were admitted into the matrimonial fold according to the law of France.

Then I whirled them off to Marguery’s where we had a lunch of uproarious jollity, punctuated with kisses, compliments and toasts. They would fain have lingered, but I whisked them off once more to the Place Denfort Rochereau where on every Saturday afternoon assembles the crowd of tourists that descends into the darkness of the Catacombs. I bought candles for all, showed my permit to the door-keeper, and we joined the long procession of candle-bearing cosmopolitans. The three women were delighted. It seemed so original for a Parisian to visit the Catacombs of Paris.

So for miles we followed these weird galleries hewn from the living rock and lined with the bones of their million dead. As we walked in single file the flickering candles gruesomely lit up the brown walls where the shank bones were piled with such meticulous neatness, knob dove-tailing into hollow, and the whole face of them decorated with fantastic frescoes of thousands of skulls. And behind these cordwood-like piles were vast heaps of indistinguishable débris, the bones of that mediæval myriad gutted from the graveyards when the great city had to have more room.

We were all emerging from a side-gallery when I pulled Anastasia back; for there, at the head of a party of Cook’s tourists, whom should I see but her enemy O’Flather. Luckily he did not notice her and she did not recognise him, so I held my tongue. But I thought:

“Ah, now if I were a writer of fantastic fiction, instead of a recorder of feeble fact, what a chance I should have here! Could I not in some way have left us in the darkness, all three together, our candles lost down one of those charnel pits? Then imagine: a battle in the dark between him and me, with the girl insensible between us. There in the black bowels of Paris how we smash at one another with naked femurs in our hands! How the bones and dust of death come toppling down on us! How, finally, I bowl him over with a chance-hurled skull. Then imagine how I wander there in the darkness with the girl in my arms! How we starve and nearly go mad! And how at last, on the following Saturday, the next batch of tourists finds us lying insensible at the foot of the great stairs!” As I thought of these things, by an absent-minded movement, I raised my candle. There was a fierce, frizzling noise. It was the feathers on the hat of the stout dame in front. They shrunk in a moment down to three weedy quills. Poor lady! she did not know, and I—I confess it with shame—had not the moral courage to tell her.

No sooner had we got into the open air again than I whirled my party off again to Montmartre. There was a matinée at the Grand Guignol, and I had taken seats in the low gallery. The pieces were more thrilling than usual and the three women screamed ecstatically.

For example: A father and son are left in charge of a solitary lighthouse. (You see the living-room of the lighthouse; you hear the howling of the storm.)

Then the son confesses to the father that he has been bitten by a rabid dog and that he feels the virus in his veins. He implores the father to kill him, but the old man refuses. The storm increases.

The son begins to go mad. He freezes, he burns, he raves, he weeps. Night is failing. It is time to light the lamps. The old man goes to do so: but the son is trying to kill himself and the father has to wrestle with him. The hoarse horn of a ship is heard in the growing storm.

There is no time to lose. The ship is close at hand, rushing on the rocks. The old man leaves his son and springs to the rope-ladder leading to the lights. He gets up it almost to the top, but the son is after him. With the blood-curdling snarl of a mad animal he seizes his father by the leg and buries his teeth in it. The old man kicks out, and the son, loosing his hold, tumbles crashing to the stage below. The curtain falls on the spectacle of the old man crouching over the dead body of his boy and the doomed ship crashing on the rocks.

This was one of the most cheerful pieces we saw, so that when we issued forth again we were all in excellent frame of mind for an apéritif at the Moulin Rouge. We had dinner at the Abbaye, and finished up by visiting those bizarre cabarets, Hell, Heaven and Annihilation.

“It’s been a lovely day you’ve arranged for us,” said Lorrimer as we broke up; “but one thing you missed to make it complete. Could you not have contrived a visit to the Morgue?”

“I tried,” I admitted mournfully, “but they’re not issuing permits any more.” However, I agreed with him; it had been one of the loveliest days I had ever spent.

So Lorrimer and Rougette went off to Brittany, and Helstern and Frosine to Normandy, and it seemed very lonely without them all. Yet the days passed serenely enough in our little apartment in that quiet by-street. I was becoming more and more absorbed in The Great Quietus which already was beginning to show signs of unruliness. My Pegasus, harnessed to imagination, is hard to keep in hand, and I perceived that, soon it would take the bit in its teeth. Anastasia was deeply interested in some tapestry she was trying to imitate from a design in the Cluny Museum. Sometimes for hours as we both worked you would not hear a sound in the tiny room.

Then when we were tired of toiling we would go out on, to me, the pleasantest of all the boulevards, Montparnasse. We would walk down as far as the Invalides, and, returning, sit in front of the Dome or the Rotando Café and sip Dubonnets while we watched the passing throng. We mixed with the groups of artists and students that thronged the rue de la Grand Chaumiere with its gleaming signs of Croquis schools, where for half a franc one may sketch for three hours some nude damsel with a wrist watch and very dirty feet. Or we spent a tranquil evening in a Cinema, halfway down the Boulevard Raspail, whose cherry-coloured lights saves the people on the apartments across the way a considerable sum yearly in gas bills.

Days of simple joys! What a world of difference a few extra francs make. Economy still, but self-respecting economy, not sordid striving to make ends meet. Anastasia would not waste anything. The remains of the gigot for dinner appeared as a ragoût at lunch. The morning milk left over must serve as the evening soup. Often I groaned in spirit, and suggested a little more recklessness. But no! I must not forget we were poor. We must cut our coat according to our cloth.

It was useless to try and change her. She was of that race of born house-wives who have made France the rich nation it is to-day. Early in the morning see their kimono-clad arms protruded from their windows to shake the energetic duster; a little later see them seated, trim and smiling at the cash-desks in their husband’s shops. Centuries of prudence are in their veins; industry is to them a religion, and the instinct of thrift is almost tyrannical. I know one of them who insisted on her daughter marrying an Englishman because she had sent her to a school in Brighton for a year, and did not want to see the money wasted.

So, recognising the genius of the race, I submitted meekly to Anastasia’s sense of economy. Her greatest delight was to spend the afternoon in the great Magasins that lie behind the Opera. She would spend three hours there, walking them from end to end, turning over enormous quantities of stuff which she would throw aside in the contemptuous way of the born shopper, swooping hawk-like, pressing intrepidly through crowds that appalled me, breathing air that gave me a headache, and in the end returning with six sous of riband, declaring that she had had a glorious day.

Often I wonder how a woman who is tired if she walks a mile in the open air can walk ten in a close, heated department store without fatigue. As I walk in the street Anastasia lags hopelessly in the rear, but the moment we enter the Louvre or the Bon Marché there is a mighty change. The enthusiasm of the bargain stalker gleams in her eyes; she becomes alert, a creature of fierce and predatory activity. It is I who am helpless now, I who try in vain to keep up, as in some marvellous way she threads in and out that packed mob of sister bargain-stalkers. She is still fresh when I am ready to drop with exhaustion, and she knows the Galerie and the Printemps as well as I know my pocket. Her only weakness is for special bargains. How often has she bought fancy boxes of note-paper and envelopes, just because they were too cheap to resist. I have enough rose and cream stationery to last me the balance of my life. I believe she buys them for the sake of the box.

As the days went on I found myself becoming more and more in love with the lotus life of Bohemia. I began to dread making an engagement; it weighed on me like a burden. I wanted to be free, free to do what I liked every moment of my time. An engagement was a constraint. The chances were that when the time came I did not feel in a sociable mood. Yet I would have to take part in conversation that did not interest me; I would have to adapt my thoughts to the thoughts of others. So Society became to me a form of spiritual tyranny, a state where I could not be myself, but had to play the complacent ape among people who were often uncongenial.

The fact of the matter was, I was overworking myself, living again that strange intense life of the maker of books, heedless of the outside world, and more and more vividly intent on the glowing world of my dreams. When I felt the force flag within me I would stimulate myself anew with draughts of strong black coffee. More and more was I the martyr to my moods, a prey to strange enthusiasms, strange depressions.

For hours I would sit tense over my typewriter, all nerves and desire; now attacking it in a frenzy of whirling phrases, now wrestling with the god of scribes for a few feeble fumbling words. Words—how I loved them! What a glory it was to twist and torture them, to marshall and command them, to work them like jewels into the gleaming fabric of a story!

As I walked the streets I had moments of wonderful exaltation; moments when my brain would be full of strange gleams and shadows. I would know the joy that is theirs who feel for a moment the inner spirit of things. I would have the reeling sense of intoxication as the Right Word shot into my consciousness. As I walked, the ground beneath my feet would seem billowy, the world around strangely, deliciously unreal, and the people would take on a new and marvellous aspect. So light I felt, that I imagined my feet must have some prehensible quality preventing me flying upward.

Particularly I favoured walking in an evening of soft-falling rain. It turned the boulevards into avenues of delight. The pavements were of beaten gold; down streets that were like plaques of silver shot ruby lights of taxicabs; the vivid leaves on the trees were clustered jewels. Perhaps I would see two people descending from a shining carriage, the lady in exquisite gown, held up to show silk-stockinged ankles, the man in evening dress. “They are going to dinner,” I would say; “to force themselves to be agreeable for three hours; to eat much rich, unnecessary food. Ah! how much better to be one’s own self and to walk and dream in the still, soft rain.”

So on I would go, and the world would become like a shadow beside the glow of my imagination. I would think of my work, thrill at its drama, chuckle over its humour, choke at its pathos. I would talk aloud my dialogues till people stared at me, even in Paris, this city of privileged eccentricity. I was more absent-minded than ever, and my nerves were often on edge. My manner became spasmodic, my temper uncertain. I avoided my friends, took almost no notice of Anastasia; in short, I was agonising in the travail of, alas! best-seller birth.

For my story had once more got out of hand. It was writing itself. I could not check it. I would rattle off page after page till the old typewriter seemed to curse me and my frenzy. Then, if perchance I was sitting mute and miserable before it, a few cups of that hot, black coffee till my heart began to thump, and I would be at it once more. I wanted to get it finished, to rid my mind of it, to send it away so that I would never see it again.

At last with a great spurt of effort I again wrote the sweetest word of all—The End. I leaned back with a vast sigh: “Thank God, I can rest now.”

Then I looked at the manuscript sadly.

“Another of them. I’ve no doubt it will sell in the tens of thousands. It will be a success; yet what a failure! What a chance I had to make art of it! What poetry! What romance! And I have sacrificed them for what?—adventure, exciting narrative, melodrama. I had to invent a villain, an educated super-ape who makes things hum. But I couldn’t help it. It was just the way it came to me and I could do no other.

“Oh, cursed Fate! I am doomed to success. Like a Nemesis it pursues me. If I could only achieve one glorious failure how happy I would be! But no. I am fated to become a writer with a vogue, a bloated bond-clipper.

“Alas! No more the joy of the struggle, the hope, the despair. Farewell, garrets and crusts! Farewell, light-hearted poverty! Farewell, the gay, hard life! Bohemia, Paris, Youth—farewell!”

And as I gazed at the manuscript that was to make for me a barrel of money there never was more miserable scribe than I.

CHAPTER VIII
THE MANUFACTURE OF A VILLAIN

“Here’s crime,” I said darkly, as I touched glasses with O’Flather.

The man with the bull-dog face and the brindled hair knotched his sandy eyebrows in interrogation.

“Down with the police,” I went on, taking a gloomy gulp of grenadine.

“Wot d’ye mean?” said my boon companion, suspending the operation of a syphon to regard me suspiciously.

“O’Flather,” I lowered my voice to a mysterious whisper—“have you never longed to revel in violence and blood? Have you never longed to be a villain?”

“Can’t say as I have,” said O’Flather, somewhat relieved, proceeding to sample the brandy and soda I had ordered for him.

“Is there no one you hate?” I suggested; “hate with a deadly hatred. No one you wish to be revenged on, terribly revenged on?”

“Can’t say as there is,” said the fat man thoughtfully. “But wait; yes, by the blasting blazes, there’s the skirt wot put my show on the blink. I’d give a month in chokey to get even with her.”

“What would you do if you met her?” I demanded.

“Wot would I do?” he snarled, and his cod-mouth opened to show those teeth like copper and verdigris clenched in venomous hate; “I’d do her up, that’s wot I would do.” He banged his big, fat fist down on the table. “I’d pound her face in. I’d beat her to a jelly. I’d leave about as much life in her as a sick fly.”

“Did you never find out where she went?” I asked.

“Nary a trace,” he said vindictively. “I hiked it over here to see if I could get on her tracks. They say if you wait long enough by the Caffay-day-la-Pay corner all the folks you’ve ever known will come along some day. Well, I’ve been waiting round there doing the guide business, but nary a trace.”

“What would you say if I told you where she is?”

“I should say you was a good pal.”

“Well, then, O’Flather, I saw her only this morning.”

“The blazes! Tell me where an’ I’ll start after her right now.”

“Easy on, my lad. Don’t get excited. Let’s talk the matter over coolly. I’m sure it’s the girl I saw in the doorway of your Exhibition that night. It struck me as so odd I inquired her name. Let me see; it was Guin ... Guin ... Ah! Guinoval.”

“By Christmas, that’s her; that’s her; curse her. Where is she?”

“Wait a bit; wait a bit, O’Flather. Revenge is a beautiful thing. I believe in it. If a man hits you hit him back, only harder. But while I approve your motive, I deprecate your method. It’s too primitive, my dear man, too brutally primitive.”

“Wot d’ye mean? D’ye think it’s too much to beat her up after the dirty trick she played me?”

“Keep cool, O’Flather. Have a little imagination. There are other ways that you could hurt her far more than by resorting to crude violence. She’s a very honest girl, I believe. Sets a great deal on her reputation. Well, then, instead of striking at the girl, strike at her reputation.”

“But how? Wotter you getting at?”

“It’s simple enough. These days the popular form of villainy is White Slavery. Become a White Slaver. What’s to prevent you abducting the girl, having her taken to that Establishment you so strenuously represent—your Crystal Palace? Once within those doors it’s pretty hard for her to get out again. You have her at your mercy and the Institution ought to pay you handsomely.”

“But it’s a risky business. You know them French judges have no mercy on a foreigner. If I was caught I’d get it in the neck.”

“Don’t do the actual abduction yourself. You’re too fat and too conspicuous to do the job yourself. Besides, she knows you. Get three of these bullies that hang around the Crystal Palace to do it for you. You wait there till they come with the girl.”

“But how would they know her?”

“That’s true. Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, O’Flather, being a bit of a villain myself, and ready to help a pal; I’ll go with your cadets, or whatever they are, and point out the girl. You engage your men. We’ll all go down in a taxi. The chauffeur must understand that he’s to ask no questions. When the girl comes along I point her out. Gaston rushes in with a chloroformed rag. Alphonse and Achille grab her arms. Presto! in a moment she’s in the taxi. In ten minutes she’s in your Crystal Palace. Is it not easy?”

“Seems so,” he said thoughtfully. “I think I could get the men for to-night. Won’t two do? Sure it needs three?”

“Yes,” I said thoughtfully; “it might be better even with four, but I think three will do. I’ve found that she goes to work every morning about two o’clock, and takes the same road always. It’s dark then, and the road’s almost deserted. I can be at the Place de l’Opera at half-past one, when you can meet me with your men and a taxi. How will that do?”

“Right O! I’ll be there. To-night then. Half-past one. And say! tell me before you go whereabouts this abduction business is going to be done. It don’t matter to me, but you might be a little more confidential. Where’s she working?”

“She’s working in the Halles and she goes by the name of Séraphine Guinoval.”

---

The night was come, and though I arrived punctually at the rendezvous O’Flather and his myrmidons were there before me. The fat man was tremendously excited and fearfully nervous. His hand shook so that he spoiled two cigarettes before he got one rolled decently. He sank his voice to a hoarse whisper.

His accomplices were of the usual type of souteneurs—little, dark, dapperly-dressed men with lantern-jawed faces, small black moustaches and cigarettes in their cynical mouths. Their manner was sullenly cool and contemptuous—a contempt that seemed to extend to their patron. There was no time to lose. We all bundled into the waiting taxi.

“Good luck to ye,” said O’Flather. “I’ll be off now and wait. The boys know where to take the jade. Once they get her into the taxi the rest is easy. I’ll be waiting there to give her the glad hand; and extend, so to say, the hospitality of the mansion. You’re sure you know where to drop on her?”

“Sure. She’s as regular as clock-work, passing the same corner and always alone. Rely on that part of it. The rest lies with your satellites and with you.”

“All right,” he chuckled malevolently. “The thing’s as good as done. So long now. See you to-morrow same place.”

The taxi darted off, and the last I saw of my villain was his immense bull-dog face lividly glowering in the up-turned fur collar of his coat, and his ham-like hand waved in farewell.

We were embarked on the venture now, and even I felt a thrill as I looked at the dark, dissolute faces of the men by my side. At that moment the affair began to seem far more serious than I had bargained for, and I almost wished myself out of it. But it was too late to turn back. I must play my part in the plot.

I had selected a narrow pavement and a dark doorway as the scene of operations. It would be very easy for three men lurking there to rush any passer-by into a taxi at the edge of the pavement without attracting attention. As I explained, I could see my three braves agreed with me. They shrugged their shoulders.

“Parbleu! It’s too easy,” they said, and retiring into the doorway they lit fresh cigarettes.

How slowly the time seemed to pass! I paced up and down the pavement anxiously. Several times I felt like bolting. The false beard I had donned was so uncomfortable; and, after all, I began to think, it was rather tough on my belle-mère. There in the darkened doorway I could see the glow of three cigarettes, and I could imagine the contemptuous, sneering eyes behind them. Hunching forward, the chauffeur seemed asleep. The street was silent, dark, deserted. Then suddenly I heard a step ... it was her.

Yes, there was no doubt. Passing under a distant lamp I had a convincing glimpse of her. I could not mistake the massive figure waddling along in the black serge costume of the market women, with the black shawl over her shoulders, the black umbrella in the hand. She was hatless too, and carried a satchel. All this I saw in a vivid moment ere I turned to my bullies and whispered huskily:

“Ready there, boys! She comes.”

My excitement seemed to communicate itself to them. Their cigarettes dropped, and Alphonse peered out almost nervously.

“Sapristi! that her?” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You are sure, Monsieur?”

“Yes, yes; sure, sure. She’s a large girl.”

He shrugged his shoulders as if to say: “Monsieur, our patron, he has a droll taste among the women, par exemple. But that is not our affair. Steady there Gaston and Alphonse! Get ready for the spring.”

The three men were tense and couchant; the chauffeur snored steadily; the unsuspecting footsteps drew nearer and nearer. Crossing the street, I stood in the shadow on the other side.

What happened in the next half minute I can only surmise. I saw three dark shadows launch themselves on another shadow. I heard a scream of surprise that was instantly choked by a hairy masculine hand. I heard another hoarse yell as a pair of strong teeth met in that masculine hand. I heard volleys of fierce profane Gallic expletives, grunts, groans, yelps of pain and the unmistakable whacking of an umbrella. Evidently my desperadoes weren’t having it all their own way. The bigger shadow seemed to be holding the smaller ones at bay, striking with whirling blows at them every time they tried to rush in. The smaller shadows seemed to be less and less inclined to rush in; each was evidently nursing some sore and grievous hurt, and the joy of battle did not glow in them. There is no doubt they would have retired discomfited had not their doughty antagonist suddenly tripped and fallen with a resounding thump backwards. Then with a mutual yell of triumph they all knelt on her chest.

She was down now, but not defeated. Still she fought from the ground, but their united weight was too much for her. She fell exhausted. Then with main strength they hauled, pushed, lifted her into the taxi, and piling in after her, panting and bleeding from a score of wounds, they sat on her as fearfully as one might sit on an exhausted wild cat. The taxi glided away, and I saw them no more.

As to the sequel, I found it all in the columns of the Matin two mornings after. Herewith is a general translation:

“Madame Séraphine Guinoval is a buxom brunette who carries on a flourishing business in Les Halles. To look at her no one would suspect her of inspiring an ardent and reckless passion; yet early yesterday morning Madame Guinoval was the victim of an abduction such as might have occurred in the pages of romance.

“It was while she was going to her work in the very early morning that the too fascinating fair one was set upon by three young apaches and conveyed to a well-known temple of Venus. Madame Guinoval appears to have given a good account of herself, judging from the condition of her assailants as they confronted the magistrate this morning. All three suffer from bites, one received as he sat on the lady’s head; their faces are scratched as by a vigorous young cougar; two have eyes in mourning, while each claims to have received severe bodily injuries. A more sorry trio of kidnappers never was seen.

“But their plight is nothing to that of the instigator of the plot—a certain Irish American, known as the Colonel Offlazaire, a well-known boulevardier. He, it seems, became so infatuated with the charms of the fair Marchande d’escargots that with the impetuous gallantry of his race he was determined to possess her at all costs. Alas! luckless, lovelorn swain! He is now being patched up in the hospital.

“The real trouble began, it seems, when they got the Guinoval safely within that pension for young ladies kept by Madame Lebrun on the rue Montmartre. They put her in a dark room and turned the key in the door. Then to her entered the Chevalier Offlazaire, locked the door, and turned on the light. He then must have entered into a violent argument with the fair one, for presently were heard sounds of commotion from behind the closed door, a man’s voice pleading for mercy, and the smashing of furniture. So fierce, indeed, did the turmoil become, that presently the proprietress of the establishment, supported by a bodyguard of her fair pensionnaires, felt constrained to open the door with her private key.

“Not a moment too soon! For the unfortunate Chevalier Colonel was already hors de combat, while over him, the personification of outraged virtue, poised the amazonian Séraphine, whirling a chair around her head in a berserker rage. Terrified, Madame Lebrun and her protégées fled screaming; then the infuriated lady of the Halles proceeded to reduce the establishment to ruins. Very little that was breakable escaped that flail-like chair swung by outraged virtue. Particularly did she devote her attention to the room known as the Crystal Palace, where she smashed all the mirrors that compose the walls, and then ended by reducing to ruins the magnificent candelabra. Her frenzy of destruction was only interrupted by the arrival of the police.

“In consequence of the serio-comic character of the affair, and its disastrous effects on those who promoted it, the magistrate was inclined to be lenient. A nominal fine of fifty francs was imposed on each of the three accomplices, while the illustrious O’Flather was fined two hundred francs, and found himself so ridiculously notorious that he departed for pastures new.”

(As for Madame Guinoval, I think she enjoyed the whole thing immensely.)

CHAPTER IX
A CHEQUE AND A CHECK

One morning I received a cheque for nine hundred dollars from Widgeon & Co.—payment for The Great Quietus, now running serially in the Uplift. Did I wave it in the air? Did I do a war-dance of delight? No. I looked at it with sober sadness. The struggle was over. Henceforward it was the easy money, the work that brought in ten times its meed of reward. Alas! how I was doomed to prosperity! I banked the cheque with a heavy heart.

Always was it thus. I vowed each book would be my last. I would drop out of the best-seller writing game, take to the country and raise calves. Then, sooner or later the desire would come to leap into the lists once more. There was usually a month’s boredom between books, and I would go at it again. “Perhaps,” I would say, “I’ll be able to write a failure this time.”

So, having got The Great Quietus off my hands already, I was having this feeling of energy going to waste. One day then, as I walked along the Avenue de la Grande Armée, I happened to stop in front of an automobile agency. There in the window was displayed the neatest voiturette I had ever seen. It had motor-bicycle wheels, a tiny tonneau for two, an engine strong enough for ordinary touring. It was called the Baby Mignonne, and I fell in love with it on the spot.

As I was admiring the dainty midget two American women stopped in front of the window.

“Isn’t it just the cutest thing?” said one.

“Isn’t it just a perfect darling?” said the other.

Then they passed on, leaving me tingling with pride at their verdict; for on the spur of the moment I had made up my mind that this diminutive runabout should belong to me. Ha! that was it. I was seeking for a new character in which to express my energy. Well, I would become a dashing motorist in a leather cap and goggles, swishing along in my Baby Mignonne. Yet I hesitated a moment.

The price was thirty-eight hundred francs. That would not leave much out of my forty-five. It seemed a little indiscreet in a man who had been fighting the wolf so long to spend the first decent bit of money he made in an automobile; a man who lived in a garret, whose wardrobe was not any too extensive, and whose wife, that very morning, had finished a hat for winter wear with her own hands. Ah! now I came to think of it, she had looked so pale leaning over her cherry ribands. Now I understood my sudden impulse. It was for her I was buying it; so that I might drive her out; so that she might get lots of fresh air; so that the roses might bloom in her cheeks again. With a sense of splendid virtue, I said to the agent: “I’ll take it.”

Then I halted: “But I don’t know how to drive one,” I said prudently. “How do I know I can get a chauffeur’s certificate?”

“Ah,” said the agent, “that was easy. There was a school for chauffeurs next door, where for a hundred francs they qualified you for the licence.”

So I promised the man I would return when I could drive, and made arrangements to begin lessons on the following day.

I returned home full of my new hobby. At all costs I must keep it a secret from her. Her economical soul would rebel at my splendid sacrifice. Then again I wanted the surprise to be a dramatic one. I would tell her one day to meet me at the Place de l’Opera, and as she lingered, patiently waiting for me to come plodding along on “train onze,” up I would dash on my Baby Mignonne. Removing my goggles, I would laugh into her amazed face. Then I would remark in a casual way:

“I thought you might be too tired to walk home, so I brought you round your car. Jump in quickly. We’re blocking up the traffic.”

So clearly did I see the picture that I chuckled over my coffee and Camembert.

“What make you so amuse?” she asked curiously.

“Oh, nothing,” I said hurriedly. “I was just thinking of a little business I have in hand.”

I continued to chuckle throughout the day, and my wife continued to wonder at this change in her husband. (Here let me change for a moment from my view point to hers.) She never pryed into his affairs, but nevertheless she watched him curiously. And day by day his conduct was still more puzzling. Although an inveterate late riser, he sprang from bed at half-past seven and dressed quickly. Then after a hurried breakfast he said: “I’ve got an engagement at nine. Don’t wait for me.” She did not dare ask him where he was going, but she saw an eager glow in his eyes, a gladness as of one hastening to a tryst.

And when he returned how joyous he was! With what a hearty appetite he attacked his lunch! How demonstrative in his affection! (Wives, when husbands grow demonstrative in their affection, begin to get suspicious.)

She marked, too, his unusual preoccupation. He had something on his mind; something he was desperately anxious to keep from her. He seemed afraid to meet her eye. She began to be anxious, even afraid.

Next morning he arose at the same time and went off again on his mysterious business. She fretted: she worried. She knew he was wilful and headstrong; she knew he would always be an enigma to her; she loved him for that very quality of aloofness; yet over all she loved him because of his caprice, because some day she dreaded she might lose him. He had moods she feared, subtle, harsh moods; then again he was helpless and simple as a child.

Yes, she had never been able to fathom his whimsical changes, and he certainly was greatly excited about this affair. It could not be that he was incubating a new novel, for that only made him irritable. Now his eyes expressed a rare pleasure. What, O, what could this secret business be?

(So much for what I imagined to be the “Psychology of Anastasia” at this moment. To return to myself.)

I was certainly getting a great deal of fun out of my lessons. The change from book-making to machinery was a salutary one, and every day saw me more enthusiastic. There in the quiet roads of the Bois-de-Boulogne I practised turning and backing, accompanied by an instructor who controlled an extra set of brakes in case of accident. I was beginning to be very proud of myself as I bowled around the Bois, and was even becoming conceited when one morning my professor said to me:

“To-morrow, Monsieur, you must come in the afternoon instead of the morning. Then we will drive along the Champs Elysées and the boulevards, for it is necessary you have some experience in handling the automobile in the midst of traffic. On the morning after, the Inspector will come to examine you for your certificate.”

I was tremendously excited. Instead of rising early the following day I visibly astonished Anastasia by sleeping till ten o’clock. But after lunch I announced that I was going out and would not be back to supper.

I saw her face fall. Doubtless she thought: “His mysterious business has only been transferred from forenoon to afternoon. I thought this morning when he did not get up it was finished. It seems only the hour is changed. But I will say nothing.”

So she watched me from the window as I went away, and I believe the position must have been getting on my nerves for that afternoon, amid the bewildering traffic of Les Etoiles, I lost my head. Trying to avoid a hand-barrow, I crashed into a cab, and of course the emergency brakes refused to work. Considerable damage was done. There were two policemen taking down names, a huge crowd, much excited gesticulation. In the end I promised to call at the office of the cab proprietor and pay for the damage. Sadly I drove back to the garage. Never, I thought, should I pass my examination on the morrow. But my instructor cheered me up, and I began to look forward to it hopefully.

I arrived home trembling with excitement. I could hardly eat my supper, and rose soon after it was over.

“I’ve got an engagement this evening,” I said nervously; “I may be late; don’t wait up for me.”

I was conscious how furtive and suspicious my manner was. I turned away to avoid her straight, penetrating gaze.

“Won’t you tell me where you are going?” she said quietly.

“Oh, just out on business,” I said irritably. “I have a matter to attend to.”

With this illuminating information I went off. I had the impression that she was restraining herself with a great effort. Well, it was certainly trying.

I paid the proprietors of the cab a cheque for two hundred francs. Then it was necessary to go round and inform the police that everything had been settled. Then it seemed fit to promote a good feeling all round by ordering a bottle of champagne. Then one must drink to my success as a chauffeur in another bottle. When I reached home it was after midnight and I was terribly tired. The excitement of the day had worn me out; and, besides, there was the worry over the examination in the morning. The wine too had made me very drowsy.

Anastasia lay silent on her bed. She did not move as I entered so I supposed she slept. Making as little noise as possible, I undressed. As I blew out the candle my last impression was of the exceeding cosiness of our little room. Particularly I noted our new dressing-table of walnut, the armoire with mirror doors, and the fresh curtains of cream cretonne with a design of roses. “It’s home,” I thought, “and how glad I am to get back to it!” Then I crept between the sheets, and feeling as if I could sleep for ever and ever, I launched into a troubled sea of dreams.

---

“What’s the matter?”

It seemed as if some one was shaking me furiously. Opening my eyes I saw that it was Anastasia.

“What, is it? Fire? Burglars?” I exclaimed. I had always made up my mind in the case of the latter I would lock the bedroom door and interview them through the keyhole. I am not a coward, but I have a very strongly developed sense of self-preservation.

“No, no; something more serious than that,” she answered in a choking voice.

“What then? Are you sick?”

“Yes, yes, sick of everysing. I waken you up because you talk in your sleep.”

“Do I? Seems to me you needn’t waken me up just for that. What was I saying?”

“Saying? You talk all the time about her.”

“Her? Who?”

“Oh, do not try to deceive me any more. I know all.”

“You know more than I do,” I said, astonished. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, do I not know you have a maîtresse? Do I not know you go to see her every day? Do I not know you are spending all your money with her? For two weeks have I borne it, seeing you go every day to keep your shameful assignations with her. Though it was almost driving me mad I have said no word. Hoping that you would tire of her, that you would come back to me, I have tried to bear it patiently. Oh, I have borne so much! But when it comes to lying by your side, and hearing you cry out and murmur expressions of love for her, I can bear it no longer. Please excuse me for waking you, but you torture me so.”

I stared. This was an Anastasia altogether new to me. Her voice had a strange note of despair. Where had I heard it before? Ah! that night on the Embankment, when she was such a hunted, desperate thing. Never had I heard it since. Yet I knew the primal passion which lies deep in every woman had awakened. I was silent, and no doubt my silence seemed like guilt. But the fact was—her accusation had been launched in tumultuous French, and I was innocently trying to translate it into English.

“What was I saying?” I said at last.

“Oh, you cry all night, ‘Mignonne! Mignonne! Petite Mignonne!’ You say: ‘You are love; you are darleen.’ And sometimes you say: ‘You are cute little sing.’ What is ‘cute little sing’? Somesing very passionnante I know. You have nevaire call me zat. And nevaire since we marry you call me Mignonne.”

Suddenly it all burst upon me, and I laughed. It did not strike me how utterly heartless my laugh must have sounded.

“So that’s it. You’ve found out all about Mignonne?”

“Yes, yes. Who is this petite Mignonne? I kill her. I kill myself. Tell me who she is. I go to her. I beg her not to take you from me. I ’ave you first. You belong to me. No one shall ’ave you but me. Tell me who she is.”

“I cannot tell you,” I said, avoiding her gaze.

“Zen it is true? You have maîtresse? You have deceive me! Oh, what a poor, poor girl I am! Oh, God, help me!”

She was sobbing bitterly. Now, I am so constituted that though I am keenly sensitive to stage sobs and book sobs, domestic sobs only irritate me. Outside I can revel in sentiment, but at home I seem to resent anything that goes beyond the scope of everyday humdrum. I am tear-proof (which is often a mighty good thing for a husband); so my only answer was to pull the blankets over my head, and say in a rough voice:

“For goodness’ sake, shut up and let’s have a little sleep.”

But there was going to be no sleep for me that night, and to have one’s sleep invaded would make a lamb spit in the face of a lion.

“Are you going to see her to-morrow?” she demanded tragically.

“Yes,” I said, with a disgusted groan. Really the whole thing was becoming too ridiculous. All along I had been irritated at her jealousy, the more so as there had been certain grounds for it. It had been the only fault I had found with her, and often I had been stung to the point of protest. Now all my pent-up resentment surged to the surface.

“Oh, please, darleen, excuse me; please say you won’t go. Stay wiz your leetle wife, darleen.”

“I’ve got to go; it’s important.”

“Promise me zen you shall see her for the last time. Promise me you’ll say good-bye.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“You love her?”

“Ye—es. I love her.”

My mind was made up. There is no cure for jealousy like ridicule. It would be a little hard, but I would keep the thing up for another day. I would let matters come to a climax, then I would triumphantly drive round on my little voiturette and say, pointing to the blue and gold name plate:

“There! Allow me to introduce to you ‘Little Mignonne.’”

The whirl of the alarm-clock put an end to my efforts to get some sleep, so up I sprang in by no means the best of tempers. My examination at nine, and I had had a wretched night.

Anastasia got up meekly to prepare the coffee. I ate without saying a word, while she even excelled me in the eloquence of her silence. Never eating a mouthful, she sat there with her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes downcast. She seemed to be restraining herself very hard. The domestic atmosphere was decidedly tense.

At last I rose and put on my coat.

“Then you’re going?” she said, breathing hard.

“Yes, I’m going.”

At that her pent-up passion burst forth. She cried in French:

“If you go to her, if you see that woman again, I never want you to come back. I never want to see you again. You can go forever.”

“You forget,” I said, “this is my house.”

She bowed her head. “Yes, you are right. I am nothing in it but a housekeeper you do not have to give wages to, a convenience for you. But that will be all right; I will go.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Really, you’re too absurd.”

Suddenly she came to me and threw her arms around me, looking frantically into my eyes.

“Tell me, tell me, do you not love me?”

I softly unloosened her grasp. An actress on the stage can do justice to these emotional scenes. In real life, a little woman in a peignoir, with hair dishevelled, only makes a hash of them.

“Really,” I said with some annoyance, “I wish you would cease to play the injured wife. You’re saying the very things I’ve been putting into the mouths of my characters for the last five years. They don’t seem real to me.”

“Tell me. Do you love me?”

“Why verge on the sentimental? Have I ever, since we were married, been guilty of one word of love towards you?”

“You have not.”

“Yet we have been happy—at least I have. Then let us go on like sensible, married people and take things for granted.”

“If you do not love me, why did you marry me?”

“Well, you know very well why. I married you because having saved you from a watery grave, I was to a certain extent responsible for you. It was up to me to do something, and it seemed to be the easiest way out of the difficulty.”

“Was that all?”

“No, perhaps not all. I wanted some one to cook for me. You know how I loathe eating at restaurants.”

“Then you did not learn to care for me afterwards?”

“Why as to that I never stopped to consider. Really it never occurred to me. I was quite happy and contented. And I had my work to think of. You know that takes all emotional expression out of me.”

“And now you love this Mignonne?”

“Hum! Ye—es, I love Petite Mignonne.”

“Oh, I cannot bear it! I have come to love you so much. Try, try, to geeve her up, darleen. It will keel me if you do not.”

Here she sank on her knees, holding on to the skirts of my coat.

“I—It’s too late to give her up now.”

“Then, you’re going?” She still clung to me.

I disengaged myself. “Yes, I’m going.”

She rose to her feet. She was like a little Sarah Bernhardt, all passion, tragic intensity.

“Then go! shameful man. Go to the woman you love. I never want to see you again. But know that you have broken my heart! Know that however happy you may be there is never more happiness for me!”

With these words ringing in my ears I closed the door behind me. Poor little girl! Well, it was tough on her, but she must really learn to curb that emotional temperament. And after all, it was only for a few hours more. I would show her how foolish she had been, and she would forever after be cured of jealousy. With this thought I hurried off to my examination.

I found the Inspector to be a most genial individual who desired nothing more than that I should pass; so, profiting by my mishap of the day previous, I acquitted myself to admiration. Elated with success, I was returning merrily home when suddenly I remembered the domestic cloud of the morning. My conscience pricked me. Perhaps after all I had been a little harsh. Perhaps in the heat of the moment I had said things I did not mean. Well, she had never resented anything of the kind before. By the time I reached home she would have forgotten all about it. I would hear her hurried run to the door to greet me. “Hello! Little Thing,” I would say. And then she would kiss me, just as lovingly as ever. Oh, I was so confident of her desperate affection!

But, as I reached the door, there was an ominous stillness within.

“She is trying to frighten me,” I thought; yet my hand trembled as I put the key in the lock.

“Hello, Little Thing!”

No reply. A silence that somehow sickened me; then a sudden fear. Perhaps I would find her dead, killed by her own hand in a moment of despair. But, as I hurriedly hunted the rooms, the sickening feeling vanished, for nowhere could I find any trace of her. The breakfast things were on the table just as I had left them. Everything was the same ... yet stay! there was a note addressed to me.

Again that deadly sickness. I could scarce tear open the envelope. There was a long letter written in French in an unsteady hand, and blurred with many tears. Here is what I read:

“I am leaving your house, where I am only in the way. Now you may bring your Mignonne or any one else you wish. I would not stand for a moment between you and your happiness.

“For a long time I have felt keenly your coldness and indifference, but I have suffered it because I thought it was due to the difference of race between us. Now that I know you do not love me, I can remain no longer. I do not think you will ever make any one happy. You are too selfish. Your work is like a vampire. It sucks away all your emotions, and leaves you with no feeling for those who love you.

“I have tried to please you, to make you care for me, and I have failed. I can try no more. You will never see me again, for I am going away. I feel I cannot make you happy, and I do not want to be a drag on you. You must not fear for me. I can work for a living, as I did before. Do not try to seek me out. I am leaving Paris. You can get a divorce very easily, then you can marry some one more worthy of you. I will always love you, and bless you and bless you. For the last time,

“Your heart-broken Wife.”

I sat down and tried to collect my thoughts, I turned to the letter and read it again. No; there it was, pitilessly plain. I was paralysed, crushed by an immense self-pity. In fiction I would have made the deserted husband tear his hair, and cry, “Curse her; oh, curse her!” Then tear her picture down from the wall, and fall sobbing over it. If there had been a child to cling to him it would have been all the more effective. But this was reality. I did none of these things, I lit a cigarette.

“Well, if that’s not the limit!” I cried. “Who’d have thought she’d have so much spirit. But she’ll come back. Of course she’ll come back.”

So I sat down to await her homecoming, but oh! the house was very sad and still and lonely! Never before had I realised how much her presence in it had meant to me. I made some tea and ate some bread and butter, and that night I went to bed very early and did not sleep at all. Next morning I made some more tea and ate some more bread and butter, but I did not wash any dishes. I was too sad to do that.

The next day crawled past in the same lugubrious way. I went to the police and reported her disappearance, and they began to search for her. I approached the Morgue to make daily inquiries with fear and trembling. I spent my days in looking for her. Every one sympathised with me, as, wan and woebegone, I wandered round the Quarter. I did not speak of my trouble but the whole world seemed to know, and the general opinion seemed to be that she had gone off with some other man. They hinted at this, and advised me to forget her.

“I can’t forget her,” I cried to myself. “I never dreamed she meant so much to me. Over and over again I live the time we spent together. Looking back now, it seems so happy, the happiest time in my life. And to be separated all through a wretched misunderstanding!”

And every night I would sit all alone in the apartment, brooding miserably, and hoping every moment to hear a knock at the door, and to find that she had come back to me. But as time went on this hope faded. Once, when I saw them fishing a drowned girl out of the Seine, I had a moment of terrible fear. There in the boat it lay, a dripping, carrion thing, and with a thousand others I pressed to peer. With relief, I saw that the cadaver had fair hair.

I began to write again, but the old, gay, whimsical spirit had gone out of me, and in its place was one of bitterness. Yet I was prospering amazingly. Tom, Dick and Harry was selling among the popular books in the American market, and it looked as if the new book was going to be equally successful. Already had I received a royalty cheque for three thousand dollars, and I had spent most of it in hiring private detectives to search for Anastasia. For six months I believed I looked the most wretched man in Paris. You see, I was playing the part of the Deserted Husband as splendidly as I had played all my other parts. Yet never did I fail to minutely analyse and record my feelings, and even in my blackest woe I seemed to find a somewhat Byronic satisfaction. Never did I cease to be the egotistic artist.

But all my searchings were vain. The girl seemed to have disappeared as if the Seine had swallowed her. I was wasting my life in vain regrets, so after six months had gone I put my affairs into the hands of a divorce lawyer, and having fulfilled all the requirements of French law, I sailed for America.

CHAPTER X
PRINCE OF DREAMERS

I was lucky in getting a state-room on the Garguantuan, and on reading over the list of passengers I saw a name that seemed vaguely familiar, Miss B. Tevandale. Where had I heard it before?

Then my memory sluggishly prompted me. Wasn’t there a Miss Boadicea Tevandale who had played some part in my life? Oh, Irony! when we recall our past loves and have difficulty in remembering their names!

For the first two days the weather was very unsettling and I decided that I would better sustain my dignity by remaining in my cabin. On the third, however, I ventured on deck, and there sure enough I saw a Junoesque female striding mannishly up and down. Yes, it was Boadicea. She was looking exasperatingly fit—I had almost written fat; but really, she seemed to have grown positively adipose.

“Miss Tevandale.”

“Mr. Madden.”

“Why, you look wretched,” she said, after the first greetings were over.

“Yes; I’m a little seedy,” I answered wanly. “Haven’t quite got my sea-legs yet. But you seem a good sailor?”

“Aggressively so. But where have you been all this time? What wild, strange land has been claiming you? All the world wondered. It seemed as if you had dropped off the earth.”

“I’ve been concealing myself in the heart of civilisation. And you? I thought you would have been Mrs. Jarraway Tope by now.”

“Why! Didn’t you get my letter? I wrote just after you left to say that I had broken off my engagement.”

“No; the letter never reached me. I suppose it got side-tracked somewhere. So you didn’t marry Jarraway after all. Well, well, it’s a funny world.”

“You don’t seem tremendously excited at the news.”

“Ah! You want me to ask why you broke it off. I beg your pardon. I did not think I had the right to ask that.”

“If you have no right, who has?”

“I—I don’t quite understand.”

“Don’t you remember the words you said when last we met?”

I blush to say I did not remember, but I answered emotionally:

“Yes; they are engraven on my memory forever.”

“Then can you wonder?”

“You don’t mean to say it was on my account you broke off your marriage with a millionaire?”

She answered me with a shade of bitterness.

“Listen, Horace; there need be no mincing of matters between us two. Since I saw you last I have been greatly interested in Woman’s Suffrage. In fact I have been devoting myself body and soul to the Cause. Even now I am returning from a series of meetings in England, which I attended as a delegate from New York, and mixing with these noble-minded women has completely cured me of that false modesty that so handicaps our sex. I believe now that it is a woman’s privilege, just as much as a man’s, to declare her affection. Horace, I love you. I have always loved you from that day. Will you be my husband?”

I grew pale. I hung my head. My lips trembled.

“Boadicea,” I faltered, “I cannot. It is too late. I am already married.”

I saw the strong woman shrink as if she had received a blow. Then quickly she recovered herself.

“How was it? Tell me about it,” she said quickly.

So there, as we watched the rolling of the whale-grey sea and each billow seemed part of a cosmic conspiracy to upset my equilibrium, I told her the story of Anastasia’s desertion.

“Of course,” I said brokenly, “I’ll never see her again. In fact, even now I am sueing for a divorce. In a few months I expect to be a free man.”

“My dearest friend, you have my sympathy.”

Under the cover of our rugs I felt her strong capable hand steal to meet mine. Here was a fine, lofty soul who could solace and understand me. This big, handsome woman, with the cool, crisp voice, with the clear, calm eye, with the features of confidence and command, was surely one on whom a heart-broken world-weary man could lean a little in his hour of weakness and trouble. I returned the pressure of that large firm hand, and, moved by an emotion I could no longer suppress, I turned and dived below.

There is no matchmaker like the Atlantic Ocean; and so as the days went on I grew more and more taken with the idea of espousing Boadicea. As we sat there in our steamer chairs and watched the shrill wind whip the billow peaks to spray, and the sudden rainbows gleam in the silvery spendrift I listened to her arguments in favour of the Suffrage and they seemed to me unanswerable. I, too, became inspired with a fierce passion to devote my life to the Cause, to enter and throw myself in the struggle of sex, to play my humble part in the Woman’s War. And in Boadicea I had found my Joan of Arc.

So as we shook hands on the New York pier we had every intention of seeing one another again.

“You have helped me greatly with your noble sympathy,” I said.

“You have cheered me greatly with your splendid understanding,” she answered.

“We are comrades.”

“Yes, we are good comrades—in the Cause.”

She had to go West on a lecturing tour, and it was some months before I saw her again. When I did, my first words were:

“Boadicea, I’m a free man.”

“Are you? How does it feel?”

“Not at all natural. I don’t believe I’ll ever be satisfied till I’m chained to the car again. Boadicea, do you remember those words you spoke that day we met on the Garguantuan? Does your proposition still hold good?”

“What proposition?”

“Let us unite our forces. Let us fight side by side. Boadicea, will you not change your name to Madden? You know my sad history. Here then I offer you the fragments of my heart.”

“Oh, don’t. You make me feel like a cannibal.”

“Here then I offer you my hand and name. I will try to make you the most devoted of husbands.”

“I am sure you will. Horace, we will work together for the good of the Cause.”

A month after we were married and spent our honeymoon in London, chiefly in attending Suffragette meetings. Very soon I began to discover that being wedded to a woman who is wedded to a Cause is like being the understudy of your wife’s husband. And if that rather militant suffragette happens to be a millionairess then one’s negligibility is humiliatingly accentuated. I was only a millionaire in francs, while Boadicea was a millionairess in dollars, and the disparity of values in national currency began to become more and more a painful fact to me.

I was not long, too, in discovering that my sympathy with the Cause was only skin-deep. Indeed, my suddenly discovered enthusiasm had surprised even myself. It was unlike me to become so interested in real, vital questions, that more than once I suspected myself of being a hypocrite. At long distance the idea of Woman finding herself fascinated me just as socialism fascinated me. I could dream and idealise and let my imagination paint wonderful pictures of a woman’s world, but once the matter became concrete, my enthusiasm took wings. Then it was I had my first tiff with Boadicea.

“Boa, I don’t want to march in the demonstration on Sunday,” I said peevishly.

“Why not, Horace?” demanded Boadicea with displeasure.

“Oh, well, I don’t like the male suffragettes. They look so like fowls. They remind me of vegetarians or temperance cranks. Some of the fellows in the club chaffed me awfully the last time I marched with them.”

“Oh, very well, Horace. Please yourself. Only I’m just a little disappointed in you.”

“I wouldn’t mind so much,” I went on, “if the women were inspiring, but they’re not. In the last demonstration I couldn’t help remarking that nearly all the women who marched were homely and unattractive, while those who watched the procession were often awfully pretty and interesting. Now, couldn’t you reverse the thing—let the homely ones line up and let the pretty ones march? Then I’d venture to bet you’d convert half the men on the spot.”

Boadicea stared. This was appalling heresy on my part; but I went on bravely.

“Another thing: why don’t they dress better? Do they think that the inspiration of a great cause justifies them in being dowdy? I tell you, well-fitting corsets and dainty shoes will do more for the freedom of woman than all the argument in the world. Coax the Vote from the men; don’t bully them. You’ll get it if you’re charming enough. Therein lies your real strength—not in your intellect, but in your charm.”

“Don’t tell me, Horace, you’re like all the rest of the men. A woman with a pretty face can turn you round her finger!”

“I’m sadly like most men, I find. I prefer charm and prettiness to character and intellect; just as in my youth I preferred bad boys to good. But, in any case, I refuse to march any more with these ‘vieux tableaux.’ Remember I have a sense of humour.”

“But all your enthusiasm? Your boiling indignation? Your thought of our wrongs?”

“Has all been overwhelmed by my sense of humour. One can only afford to take trivial things seriously, and serious things trivially.”

“So you are going to throw us over?”

“Not at all. I believe in the Cause, but I won’t march. The cause of woman would be all right if there were no women—I mean the chief enemy to women’s suffrage is the suffragette. No woman has more influence than the French woman. It is all the more powerful because it is indirect. It is based on love. A Frenchwoman knows that to coax is better than to bully.”

“Oh, you’re always praising up the French women. Why don’t you go over to Paris to live, if you are so fond of them?”

“I never want to set foot in Paris again.”

“But what about me? I’ve never been there. Am I never to see it?”

“No; I don’t think you would like it.”

“I think I would. I think we’d better go over there for the Spring.”

Any opposition on my part made her determined, so that if I wanted a thing very much I had to pretend the very opposite. On the other hand, if I had expressed a keen wish to go to Paris she would have objected strenuously. Her nature was very antagonistic. I admired her greatly for her intellect, for her character; but she was one of those self-possessed, logical, clear-brained women who get on your nerves, and every day she was getting more and more on mine.

We took an Italian Palace near the Parc Monceau, bought a limousine, kept a dozen servants, moved in the Embassy crowd and had our names in the Society column of the New York paper nearly every day. Life became one beastly nuisance after another—luncheons, balls, dinners, theatre parties. I, who had a Bohemian hatred of dressing, had to dress every evening. I, who dreaded making an engagement because it interfered with my liberty, found myself obliged to keep a book in which I recorded my too numerous engagements. I, who had so strenuously objected to the constraints of company, was obliged to force smiles and stroke people the right way for hours on end. Was there ever such a slavery? It seemed as if I never had a moment in which I could call my soul my own. I was bored, heart-sick, goaded to rebellion.

“Why can’t we be simple, even if we are rich?” I remonstrated. “It would be far less trouble and we’d be far happier. I’m tired of trying to live up to my valet. Let’s cut out this society racket and live naturally.”

“We can’t. We must live up to our position. It’s our duty. Besides, I like this ‘society racket’ as you so vulgarly call it. It gives me an opportunity to impress people with my views. And really, Horace, I think you’re too ungrateful. You should be glad of the opportunity of meeting so many nice people.”

“Like Hades I should! Do you call that Irish countess we had for lunch nice? She had a long face like a horse, blotched and covered with hair, and spoke with the accent of a washerwoman. And that stiff Englishman—”

“You can’t deny Sir Charles is awfully good form.”

“Good form be hanged! I think he’s a pig-headed ass. I couldn’t open my mouth without treading on his traditional corns. American Spread-eagleism isn’t in it with British Lionrampantism. We have a sense of humour that makes us laugh at our weaknesses, but the Englishman’s are sacred. That Englishman actually believed that the masses were being educated beyond their station, believed that they should be kept in the place they belonged.”

“Really you’re disgustingly democratic. What’s the use of having money if it doesn’t make one better than other people who haven’t? As for Sir Charles; I think he’s perfectly charming.”

“Oh, yes, of course. You’re aping the English, like all the Americans who come over here. Everything’s perfectly charming, or perfectly dreadful. You’ll soon be ashamed of your own nationality. Bah! of all snobs the Anglo-American one’s the most contemptible. Of all poses the cosmopolitan one’s the most disgusting.”

“Really your language is rather strong.”

“It’s going to be stronger before I’m finished. I’ve been sitting quiet in my little corner taking notes on you and your friends, and I’ve got the stuff for a book out of our little splurge in society. There’s a good many of your friends in it, Madam. I fear they’ll cut you dead after they read it.”

“If you publish such a work I’ll get a divorce.”

“Go and get one.”

“Oh, you’re a brute, a brute!”

Here Boadicea stamped a number six shoe furiously on the floor.

“Yes, and I’m glad of it. To woman’s duplicity let us men oppose our brutality. When the worst comes to the worst we can always fall back on the good old system of ‘spanking.’”

“Oh! Oh! You dare not. You are not physically capable.”

“Is that so? You’re a strong woman, Boa; but I still think I could use the flat of a nice broad slipper on you.”

She was speechless with wrath. Then, with another exclamation of “brute,” she marched from the room. Soon after I heard her order the car and go out.

“Yes,” I murmured bitterly to my cigarette, “seems like you’d caught a Tartar this time. Aren’t you sorry you ever married again? How different it was before. Let’s see. What’s on to-night?”

My little book showed me that I was due to dine with an ambassador.

“What a nuisance! I’ve got to dress. I’ve got to stoke my physical machine with food that isn’t suited to it. I’ve got to murmur inanities to some under-dressed female. How I hate it all! There was my old grandfather now. He died leaving a million, but up to his death he lived as simply as the day he began working for wages. Ah! there was a happy man. I remember when he used to come home for supper at night they would bring him two bowls, one full of hot mashed potatoes, the other of sweet, fresh milk. He would eat with a horn spoon, taking it half full of potatoes, then loading up with milk. And how he enjoyed it! What a glorious luxury it would be to sit down to-night to a bowl of potatoes and a bowl of milk!”

I stared drearily round the great room which we had sub-let from the mistress of a Grand Duke. Such lavish luxury of mirror and marble, of silk and satin-wood, furnished by an artist to satisfy an epicure! Sumptuous splendour I suppose you would call it. But oh, what would I not give to be back once more in the garret of the rue Gracieuse! Ay, even there with its calico curtains and its home-made furniture. Or sitting down to a dinner of roast chicken and Veuve Amiot with.... Oh, I can’t bear to mention even her name! The thought of her brings a choke to my throat and a mist to my eyes.... How happy I was then, and I didn’t know it! And how good she was! just a good little girl. I didn’t think half enough of her. What a mistake it’s all been!

I stared at the burnt-out cigarette, reflecting bitterly.

“I should never have come back to this Paris. It just makes me unhappy. At every turn of the street I expect to suddenly come face to face with her. I can’t bear to visit the rive gauche. It’s haunted for me. I see myself as I was then, swinging my old cherry-wood cane as I strode so buoyantly along the quays. Every foot of that old Latin Quarter has its memory. I can’t go there again. It’s too painful.”

I rose and paced up and down the room.

“God! wasn’t I happy though! Remember the afternoons in the Luxembourg and the Bal Bullier, and the Boul’ Mich’. How I loved it all! How I used to linger gazing at the old houses! How I used to dream, and thrill, and gladden! Oh, the wonder of the Seine by night, the work, the struggle, the visits to the Mont-de-Piété, the careless God-given Bohemian days! It hurts me now to think of them.... It hurts me....”

Going over to the mantelpiece I leaned one elbow on it, looking down drearily at the fire.

“Ah, Little Thing! How glad she always was when I came home! I can feel her arms round my neck as she welcomed me, feel her soft kisses, see the little room all bright and cheery. Oh, if these days would only come again! Where is she now, I wonder? Poor, poor Little Thing.”

As I stood there like a man stricken, miserable beyond all words, suddenly I started. All the blood seemed to leave my heart. Some one was talking to the butler in the hall.

“Is Madam in please? I have bring some leetle hem-broderie she want see. She tell me to come now.”

Just a tired, quiet, colourless voice, interrupted by a sudden cough, yet oh, how sweet, how heaven-sweet to me! Again I listened.

“Oh, she have gone out. I am so sorry. She have made appointment wiz me for now and I have not much time. I will leave my hem-broderie for Madam to regard. Then I will call again to-morrow.”

She was going, but I could not restrain myself.

“Thomas,” I said to the man, “call her back. I will make a selection of her work for Madam.”

As I stood there by the mantelpiece with head bent, waiting, I saw in the mirror the crimson curtains parted, and there stood a little, grey figure, shrinking, shabby, surprised. Then I turned slowly and once again we were face to face.

“Little Thing!”

She started. Her hand in its shabby, cotton glove went up to her throat, and she made a step as if she would throw herself in my arms.

“You?”

“Yes,” I said miserably. “I never thought to see you again.”

“And I did not, sink I evaire see you. It would have been better not.”

“It would; but I’m glad, I’m glad.”

“Yes, I am glad too, for I want to say how sorry I am I leave you like that. I was mad wiz jealousy. I could not help it. After, I want very much keel myself, but I have promised you I do not.”

“No, no, it was my fault. I could have explained everything so easily. But after all, it’s too late. What does it matter now?”

“No, it does not mattaire much now. I am so glad for you you have got divorce from me. I am very bad womans. Please excuse me.”

“Yes, yes; but forgive me. I never cared enough for you—or at least I never showed I cared. Now I know.”

“You care now. Oh, that will make me so happy. You know there is not much longer for me. The doctor tell me so. I am poitrinaire.”

She shrugged her shoulders with a resigned little grimace.

“But,” she went on, “now I shall be so glad. I don’t care for myself. You remember for laughing you used to call me ‘Poor leetle Sing,’ and I say: ‘No, I am not poor leetle sing, I am very, very, ’appy leetle sing.’ Ah! but now I am poor leetle sing indeed.”

“Can I not help you? I must.”

“No, I will take nussing from you. And anyway it would not help much. I make enough from my hem-broderie to leeve, and I don’t want any pleasure some more. Just to leeve. The sisters at the convent are very good to me. I see them often, and when I am sick at the last I know they will care for me. Really I am very well. Now I must go; I must work; I lose time.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, let me do something!”

“No, I am very good. I sink at you always, and I bless you. You see I have the good souvenirs.”

From the breast of her threadbare jacket she took a worn silver locket and showed me a little snapshot of myself.

“There, I have the souvenir of happy days. Now I must go.”

She looked very frail, and of a colour almost transparent. She tried hard to smile. Then she swayed as if she would faint, but recovered herself by clutching at a chair.

“Little Thing,” I said, “it’s too late, but we must at least shake hands.”

She pulled off a grey cotton glove and held out a hand all toilworn and needle-warped.

“Good-bye,” she said wearily.

I seized the little thin hand, conscious that my hot tears were falling on it. Looking up, I saw that her eyes too were a-stream with tears.

“Good-bye,” I said chokingly.

“Good-bye, darleen, good-bye for evaire....”

That was all. She turned and left me standing there. I heard her coughing as she went downstairs. Sinking down I sobbed as if my heart would break....

---

“What’s the mattaire, darleen?”

It seemed as if some one was shaking me violently. My pillow was wet with tears and the sobs still convulsed me. I opened staring eyes, eyes that fell on a dressing-table of walnut, an armoire with mirror doors, and cretonne curtains, with a design of little roses. Yet I stared more, for Anastasia, fresh and dainty, but with a face of great concern, was bending over me.

“What’s the mattaire, darleen? For ten minutes I try to wake you up. You have been having bad dream. You cry dreadful.”

“Dream! Dream! Am I mad?... Where am I now?... Tell me quick.”

“Oh, darleen, what’s the mattaire? You affrighten me....”

“No, no; what’s the address of this house?”

“Passage d’Enfer.”

“And the date...? What’s the date?”

“The twelve Novembre.”

“But the year, the year?”

“Why the year is Nineteen hundred thirteen.”

“Thank God! I thought it was nineteen fourteen.” Then the whole truth flashed on me. Prince of Dreamers! In a night I had dreamed the events of a whole year of life. Yesterday was the day of my accident, and this morning—why, I had to pass my examination for a chauffeur’s licence; this morning at nine o’clock, and it was now eleven. Too late.

Yet I did not care then for a thousand Inspectors. I was not married to Boadicea. I still had Little Thing. I vow I was the happiest man in the world.

“Pack everything up,” I said. “We leave for America to-morrow.”

---

Once more I sat in the favourite chair of my favourite club, surveying the incredible bank-book. Figures! Figures! More formidably than ever they loomed up. Useless indeed to try and cope with this flood of fortune.

And now that I had two reputations to keep up, the flood was more insistent than ever. Not only were there the best-sellers of Norman Dane to bargain with, but also the best-sellers of Silenus Starset. And for my own modest needs, with Anastasia’s careful management, my little patrimony more than sufficed. What then was I going to do with these senseless figures that insisted so in piling up, and yet meant nothing to me? Suddenly the solution flashed on me, and as if it were an illuminated banner I saw the words:

James Horace Madden, Philanthropist.

That was it. This wonderful gift of mine that made the acquisition of money so easy, what should I do with it but exercise it for the good of humanity?

Yes, I would be a philanthropist; but on whom would I philanthrope?

The answer was easy. Who better deserved my help than my fellow-scribes who had failed, those high and delicate souls who had scorned to commercialise their art, who were true to themselves and fought, for all that was best in literature? Even as there was a home for old actors, so I would found one for old authors, battered, beaten veterans of the pen, who in their declining years would find rest, shelter, sympathy under a generous roof.

Yes, writing popular fiction had become a habit with me, almost a vice. I was afraid I could never give it up. But here would be my extenuation. The money the public gave me for pleasing them I would spend on those others who, because they were artists, failed to please. And in this way at least I would indirectly be of some use to literature.

Then again; what a splendid example it would be to my brother best-seller makers, turning out their three books a year and their half dozen after they are dead. Let them, too, show their zeal for literature by devoting the bulk of their ill-gotten gains to its encouragement.

The club had changed very little. I saw the same members, looking a little more mutinous about the waist line. There was Vane and Quince, qualifying perhaps for my home. I greeted them cordially, aglow with altruism. After all, it was a day of paltry achievement. We were all small men, and none of us weighed on the scale. I felt very humble indeed. Quince had been right. I would never be one of those writers whom all the world admires—and doesn’t read. Truly I was one of the goats.

But that night at dinner in the Knickerbocker I threw back my head and laughed. And Anastasia in a new evening gown looked at me in surprise and demanded what was the matter. I surveyed her over a brimming glass of champagne.

“Extraordinary thing,” I thought; “isn’t it absurd? I’m actually falling in love with my own wife.”

THE END

FOOTNOTE:

[A] This was written in the Spring of 1914.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Archaic or variant spelling and hyphenation have been retained.