The Azure Rose Part 6

Pasbeaucoup trotted to the cage, bringing back to Cartaret the long slip of paper that Madame had ready for him. Cartaret glanced at only the total and, though he flushed a little, paid without comment.

"And now," suggested Houdon, "now let us play a little game of dominoes."

Seraphin, from the musician's shoulder, frowned hard at Cartaret, but Cartaret was in no mood to heed the warning. He was angry at himself for his extravagance and decided that, having been such a fool as to fling away a great deal of his money, he might now as well be a greater fool and fling it all away. Besides, he might be able to win from Houdon, and, even if Houdon could not pay, there would be the satisfaction of revenge. So he sat down at one of the marble-topped tables and began, with a great clatter, to shuffle the dominoes that obsequious Pasbeaucoup hurriedly fetched. Within two hours, Seraphin was head over ears in the musician's debt, and the American was paying into Houdon's palm all but about ten francs of the money that he had so recently earned. He rose smilingly.

"You do not go?" inquired Houdon.

Cartaret nodded.

"But the dinner?"

"Don't you worry; I'll be back for that--I don't know when I'll get another."

"Then permit me," Houdon condescended, "to order a bock. For the three of us." He generously included the hungry Seraphin. "Come, we shall drink to your better fortune next time."

But Cartaret excused himself. He said that he had an engagement with a dealer, which was not true, and which was understood to be false, and he went into the street.

The last of the rain, unnoticed during Cartaret's fevered play, had pa.s.sed, and a red February sun was setting across the Seine, behind the higher ground that lies between L'Etoile and the Place du Trocadero. The river was hidden by the point of land that ends in the Quai D'Orsay, but, as Cartaret crossed the broad rue de Vaugirard, he could see the golden afterglow and, silhouetted against it, the high filaments of the Eiffel Tower.

What an a.s.s he had been, he bitterly reflected, as he pa.s.sed again through the Luxembourg Gardens, where now the statues glistened in the fading light of the dying afternoon. What a mad a.s.s! If a single stroke of almost pathetically small good luck made such a fool of him, it was as well that his uncle and not his father had come into a fortune.

His thought went back with a new tenderness to his father and to his own and his sister Cora's early life in that small Ohio town. He had hated the dull routine and narrow conventionality of the place. There the most daring romance of youth had been to walk with the daughter of a neighbor along the shaded streets in the Summer evenings, and to hang over the gate to the front yard of the house in which she lived, tremblingly hinting at a delicious tenderness, which one never dared more adequately to express, until a threatening parental voice called the girl to shelter. His life, since those days, had been more stirring, and sometimes more to be regretted; but he had loved it and thought it absurd sentiment on Cora's part to insist that their tiny income go to keeping up the little property--the three-story brick house and wide front and back-yard along Main Street--which had been their home. Yet now he felt, and was half ashamed of feeling, a strong desire to go back there, a pull at his heartstrings for a return to all that he was once so anxious to quit forever.

He wondered if it could be possible that he was tired of Paris. He even wondered if it were possible that he could not be a successful artist--he had never wanted to be a rich one--whether the sensible course would not be to go home and study law while there was yet time....

And then----

Then, in the rose-pink twilight, the beginning of the Dream Wonderful: that scent of the roses from the sky; that quick memory of sunlight upon snow-crests; that first revelation of the celestial Lady transfiguring the earthly commonplace of his room!

CHAPTER IV

A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

... Adowne They prayd him sit, and gave him for to feed.

--Spenser: _Faerie Queene_.

Charlie Cartaret would have told you--indeed, he frequently did tell his friends--that the mere fact of a man being an artist was no proof that he lacked in the uncommon sense commonly known as common.

Cartaret was quite insistent upon this and, as evidence in favor of his contention, he was accustomed to point to C. Cartaret, Esq. He, said Cartaret, was at once an artist and a practical man: it was wholly impossible, for instance, to imagine him capable of any silly romance.

Nevertheless, when left alone in his room by the departure of the Lady on that February evening, he sat for a long time with the strange rose between his fingers and a strange look in his eyes. He regarded the rose until the last ray of light had altogether faded from the West. Only then did he recall that he had invited sundry persons to dine with him at the Cafe Des Deux Colombes, and when he had made ready to go to them, the rose was still in his reluctant hand.

Cartaret looked about him stealthily. He had been in the room for some hours and he should have been thoroughly aware that he was alone in it; but he looked, as all guilty men do, to right and left to make sure. Then, like a naughty child, he turned his back to the street-window.

He stood thus a bare instant, yet in that instant his hand first raised something toward his lips, and then bestowed that same something somewhere inside his waistcoat, a considerable distance from his heart, but directly over the rib beneath which ill-informed people believe the heart to be. This accomplished, he exhibited a rigorously practical face to the room and swaggered out of it, ostentatiously humming a misogynistic drinking-song:

"There's nothing, friend, 'twixt you and me Except the best of company.

(There's just one bock 'twixt you and me, and I'll catch up full soon!) What woman's lips compare to this: This st.u.r.dy seidel's frothy kiss----"

Armand Garnier, one of the men that were to dine with Cartaret to-night, had written the words of which this is a free translation, and Houdon had composed the air--he composed it impromptu for Devignes over an absinthe, after laboring upon it in secret for an entire week--but Cartaret, when he reached the note that stood for the last word here given, came to an abrupt stop; he was facing the door of the room opposite his own. He continued facing it for quite a minute, but he heard nothing.

"M. Refrogne," he said, when he thrust his head into the concierge's box downstairs, "if--er--if anybody should inquire for me this evening, you will please tell them that I am dining at the Cafe Des Deux Colombes."

Nothing could be seen in the concierge's box, but from it came a grunt that might have been either a.s.sent or dissent.

"Yes," said Cartaret, "in the rue Jacob."

Again the ambiguous grunt.

"Exactly," Cartaret agreed; "the Cafe Des Deux Colombes, in the rue Jacob, close by the rue Bonaparte. You--you're quite sure you won't forget?"

The grunt changed to an ugly chuckle, and, after the chuckle, an ugly voice said:

"Monsieur expects something unusual: he expects an evening visitor?"

"Confound it, no!" snapped Cartaret. He had been wildly hoping that perhaps The Girl might need some aid or direction that evening and might seek it of him. "Not at all," he pursued, "but you see----"

"How then?" inquired the voice.

Cartaret's hand went to his pocket and drew forth one of the few franc-pieces that remained there.

"Just, please, remember what I've said," he requested.

In the darkness of the box into which it was extended, his hand was grasped by a larger and rougher hand, and the franc was deftly extracted.

"_Merci, monsieur._"

A barely appreciable softening of the tone encouraged Cartaret. He balanced himself from foot to foot and asked:

"Those people--the ones, you understand, that have rented the room opposite mine?"

Refrogne understood but truly.

"Well--in short, who are they, monsieur?"

"Who knows?" asked Refrogne in the darkness. Cartaret could feel him shrug.

"I rather thought you might," he ventured.

The darkness was silent; a good concierge answers questions, not general statements.

"Where--don't you know where they come from?"

There was speech once more. Refrogne, it said, neither knew nor cared. In the rue du Val de Grace people continually came and went--all manner of people from all manner of places--so long as they paid their rent, it was no concern of Refrogne's. For all the information that he possessed, the two people of whom monsieur inquired might be natives of Cochin-China. Mademoiselle evidently wanted to be an artist, as scores of other young women, and Madame, her guardian and sole companion, evidently wanted Mademoiselle to be nothing at all. There were but two of them, thank G.o.d! The younger spoke much French with an accent terrible; the elder understood French, but spoke only some pig of a language that no civilized man could comprehend. That was all that Refrogne had to tell.