So we removed ourselves to the cloak-room, where she put on her cloak, and exchanged her slippers for a pair of boots (you can guess, perhaps, who enjoyed the beatific privilege of buttoning them for her); and then we left the Closerie des Lilas, falsely so called, with its flaring gas, its stifling atmosphere, its boisterous merrymakers, and walked arm in arm—only this time it was my arm that was within hers—down the Boul’ Miche, past the Luxembourg gardens, where sweet airs blew in our faces, to the Gambrinus restaurant, in the Rue de Médicis. And there you should have seen P’tit-Bleu devouring écrevisses. Whatsoever this young woman’s hand found to do, she did it with her might. She attacked her écrevisses with the same jubilant abandon with which she had executed her bewildering single-step. She devoured them with an energy, an enthusiasm, a thoroughness, that it was invigorating to witness; smacking her lips, and smiling, and, from time to time, between the mouthfuls, breathing soft little interjections of content. When the last pink shell was emptied, she threw herself back, and sighed, and explained, with delectable unconsciousness, “I was hungry.” But at my venturing to protest, “Not really?” she broke into mirthful laughter, and added, “At least, I had the appearance.” Meanwhile, I must not fail to mention, she had done abundant honour to her share of a bottle of chablis.
Don’t be horrified—haven’t the Germans, who ought to know, a proverb that recommends it? “Wein auf Bier, das rath’ ich Dir.”
I have said that none of us mourned the absence of a soul in P’tit-Bleu. Nevertheless, as I looked at her to-night, and realised what a bright, joyous, good-humoured little thing she was, how healthy, and natural, and even, in a way, innocent she was, I suddenly felt a curious depression. She was all this, and yet... For just a moment, perhaps, I did vaguely mourn the lack of something. Oh, she was well enough for the present; she was joyous, and good-humoured, and innocent in a way; she was young and pretty, and the world smiled upon her. But—for the future? When it occurred to me to think of her future—of what it must almost certainly be like, of what she must almost inevitably become—I confess my jaw dropped, and the salt of our banquet lost its savour.
“What’s the matter? Why do you look at me like that?” P’tit-Bleu demanded.
So I had to pull myself up and be jolly again. It was not altogether difficult. In the early twenties, troublesome reflections are easily banished, I believe; and I had a lively comrade.
After her crayfish were disposed of, P’tit-Bleu called for coffee and lit a cigarette. And then, between whiffs and sips, she prattled gaily of the subject which, of all subjects, she was probably best qualified to treat, and which assuredly, for the time being, possessed most interest for her listener—P’tit-Bleu. She told me, as it were, the story of her birth, parentage, life, and exploits. It was the simplest story, the commonest story. Her mother (la recherche de la paternité est interdite), her mother had died when she was sixteen, and Jeanne (that was her baptismal name, Jeanne Mérois) had gone to work in the shop of a dressmaker, where, sewing hard from eight in the morning till seven at night, with an hour’s intermission at noon, she could earn, in good seasons, as much as two-francs-fifty a day. Two and a half francs a day—say twelve shillings a week—in good seasons; and one must eat, and lodge, and clothe one’s body, and pay one’s laundress, in good seasons and in bad. It scarcely satisfied her aspirations, and she took to dancing. Now she danced three nights a week at Bullier, and during the day gave lessons in her art to a score of pupils, by which means she contrived to keep the wolf at a respectful distance from her door. “Tiens, here’s my card,” she concluded, and handed me an oblong bit of pasteboard, on which was printed, “P’tit-Bleu, Professeur de Danse, 22, Rue Monsieur le Prince.”
“And you have no lover?” questioned I.
She flashed a look upon me that was quite inexpressibly arch, and responded instantly, with the charmingest little pout, “But yes—since I’m supping with him.”
During the winter that followed, P’tit-Bleu and I supped together somewhat frequently. She was a mere little animal, she had no soul; but she was the nicest little animal, and she had instincts. She was more than good-natured, she was kind-hearted; and, according to her unconventional standards, she was conscientious. It would have amused and touched you, for example, if you had been taking her about, to notice her intense solicitude lest you should conduct her entertainment upon a scale too lavish, her deprecating frowns, her expostulations, her restraining hand laid on your arm. And the ordinary run of Latin Quarter girls derive an incommunicable rapture from seeing their cavaliers wantonly, purposelessly prodigal. With her own funds, on the contrary, P’tit-Bleu was free-handed to a fault: Mimi and Zizette knew whom to go to, when they were hard-up. Neither did she confine her benefactions to gifts of money, nor limit their operation to her particular sex. More than one impecunious student owed it to her skilful needle that his clothes were whole, and his linen maintained in a habitable state. “Fie, Chalks! Your coat is torn, there are three buttons off your waistcoat, and your cuffs are frayed to a point that is disgraceful. I’ll come round to-morrow afternoon, and mend them for you.” And when poor Berthe Dumours was turned out of the hospital, in the dead of winter, half-cured, and without a penny in her purse, who took her in, and nursed her, and provided for her during her convalescence?
Oh, she was a good little thing. “P’tit-Bleu’s all right. There’s nothing the matter with P’tit-Bleu,” was Chalks’s method of phrasing it.