...
V.
IT took Clifford a month to entirely
recover, although at the end of the first week he was pronounced convalescent
by Elliott, who was an authority, and his convalescence was aided by the
cordiality with which Rue Barrée acknowledged his solemn salutes.
Forty times a day he blessed Rue Barrée for her refusal and thanked
his lucky stars, and at the same time, oh wondrous heart of ours!---he
suffered the tortures of the blighted.
Elliott was annoyed, partly by Clifford's
reticence, partly by the unexplainable thaw in the frigidity of Rue Barrée.
At their frequent encounters, when she, tripping along the rue de Seine,
with music-roll and big straw hat would pass Clifford and his familiars
steering an easterly course to the Café Vachette, and at the respectful
uncovering of the band, would color and smile at Clifford, Elliott's slumbering
suspicions awoke. But he never found out anything and finally gave it up
as beyond his comprehension, merely qualifying Clifford as an idiot and
reserving his opinion of Rue Barrée. And all this time Selby was
jealous. At first he refused to acknowledge it to himself and cut the studio
for a day in the country, but the woods and fields of course aggravated
his case, and the brooks babbled of Rue Barrée and the mowers calling
to each other across the meadow ended in a quaveflng "Rue Bar-rée-e!"
That day spent in the country made him angry for a week, and he worked
sulkily at Julian's, all the time tormented by a desire to know where Clifford
was and what he might be doing. This culininated in an erratic stroll on
Sunday which ended at the flower-market on the Pont au Change, began again,
was gloomily extended to the morgue, and again ended at the marble bridge.
It would never do and Selby felt it, so he went to see Clifford who was
convalescing on mint juleps in his garden.
They sat down together and discussed
rnorals and human happiness, and each found the other most entertaining,
only Selby failed to pump Clifford to the other's unfeigned amusement.
But the juleps spread balm on the sting of jealousy, and trickled hope
to the blighted, and when Selby said he must go, Clifford went too, and
when Selby, not to be outdone, insisted on accompanying Clifford back to
his door, Clifford determined to see Selby back half way, and then finding
it hard to part they decided to dine together and "flit." To flit, a verb
applied to Clifford's nocturnal prowls, expressed, perhaps, as well as
anything, the gayety proposed. Dinner was ordered at Mignon's and while
Selby interviewed the chef, Clifford kept a fatherly eye on the butler.
The dinner was a success, or was of the sort generally termed a success.
Toward the dessert Selby heard some one say as at a great distance, "Kid
Selby, drunk as a lord."
A group of men passed near them
it seemed to him that he shook hands and laughed a great deal, and that
everybody was very witty. There was Clifford opposite swearing undying
confidence in his chum Selby, and there seemed to be others there, either
seated beside them or continually passing with the swish of skirts on the
polished floor. The perfume of roses, the rustle of fans, the touch of
rounded arms and the laughter grew vaguer and vaguer. The room seemed enveloped
in mist. Then, all in a moment each object stood out painfully distinct,
only forms and visages were distorted and voices piercing. He drew himself
up, calm, grave, for the moment master of himself, but very drunk.. He
knew he was drunk, and was as guarded and alert, as keenly suspicious of
himself as he would have been of a thief at his elbow. His self-command
enabled Clifford to hold his head safely under some running water, and
repair to the street considerably the worse for wear, but never suspecting
that his companion was drunk. For a time he kept his self-command. His
face was only a bit paler, a bit tighter than usual; he was only a trifle
slower and more fastidious in his speech. It was midnight when he left
Clifford peacefully slumbering in somebody's arm-chair, with a long suede
glove dangling in his hand and a plumy boa twisted about his neck to protect
his throat from drafts. He walked through the hall and down the stairs,
and found himself on the sidewalk in a quarter he did not know. Mechanically
he looked up at the name of the street. The name was not familiar. He turned
and steered his course toward some lights clustered at the end of the Street.
They proved farther away than he had anticipated and after a long quest
he came to the conclusion that his eyes had been mysteriously removed from
their proper places and had been reset on either side of his head like
those of a bird. It grieved him to think of the inconvenience this transformation
might occasion him, and he attempted to cock up his head, hen-like, to
test the mobility of his neck. Then an immense despair stole over him,---tears
gathered in the tear ducts, his heart melted, and he collided with a tree.
This shocked him into comprehension; he stifled the violent tenderness
in his breast, picked up his hat and moved on more briskly. His mouth was
white and drawn, his teeth tightly clinched. He held his course pretty
well and strayed but little, and after an apparently interminable length
of time found himself passing a line of cabs. The brilliant lamps, red,
yellow and green annoyed him, and he felt it might be pleasant to demolish
them with his cane, but mastering this impulse he passed on. Later an idea
struck him that it would save fatigue to take a cab, and he started back
with that intention but the cabs seemed already so far away and the lanterns
were so bright and confusing that he gave it up, and pulling himself together
looked around.
A shadow, a mass, huge, undefined,
rose to his right. He recognized the Arc de Triomphe and gravely shook
his cane at it. Its size annoyed him. He felt it was too big. Then he heard
something fall clattering to the pavement and thought probably it was his
cane but it didn't much matter. When he had mastered himself and regained
control of his right leg which betrayed symptoms of insubordination, he
found himself traversing the Place de la Concorde at a pace which threatened
to land him at the Madeleine. This would never do. He turned sharply to
the right and crossing the bridge passed the Palais Bourbon at a trot and
wheeled into the Boulevard St. Germain. He got on well enough although
the size of the War Office struck him as a personal insult, and he missed
his cane which it would have been pleasant to drag along the iron railings
as he passed. It occurred to him, however, to substitute his hat, but when
he found it, he forgot what he wanted it for and replaced it upon his head
with gravity. Then he was obliged to battle with a violent inclination
to sit down and weep. This lasted until he came to the rue de Rennes, but
there he became absorbed in contemplating the dragon on the balcony overhanging
the Cour de Dragon, and time slipped away until he remembered vaguely that
he had no business there, and marched off again. It was slow work. The
inclination to sit down and weep had given place to a desire for solitary
and deep reflection. Here his right leg forgot its obedience and attacking
the left, outflanked it and brought him up against a wooden board which
seemed to bar his path. He tried to walk around it, but found the street
closed. He tried to push it over, and found he couldn't. Then he noticed
a red lantern standing on a pile of paving stones inside the barrier. This
was pleasant. How was he to get home if the boulevard was blocked? But
he was not on the boulevard. His treacherous right leg had beguiled him
into a detour, for there, behind him lay the boulevard with its endless
line of lamps,---and here, what was this narrow dilapidated street piled
up with earth and mortar and heaps of stone? He looked up. Written in staring
black letters on the barrier was
RUE BARRÉE.
He sat down. Two policemen whom
he knew came by and advised him to get up, but he argued the question from
a standpoint of personal taste and they passed on, laughing. For he was
at that moment absorbed in a problem. It was, how to see Rue Barrée.
She was somewhere or other in that big house with the iron balconies, and
the door was locked, but what of that ? The simple idea struck him to shout
until she came. This idea was replaced by another equally lucid,---to hammer
on the door until she came; but finally rejecting both of these as too
uncertain, he decided to climb into the balcony, and opening a window politely
inquire for Rue Barrée. There was but one lighted window in the
house that he could see. It was on the second floor, and toward this he
cast his eyes. Then mounting the wooden barrier and clambering over the
piles of stones, he reached the sidewalk and looked up at the façade
for a foothold. It seemed impossible. But a sudden fury seized him, a blind,
drunken obstinacy, and the blood rushed to his head, leaping, beating in
his ears like the dull thunder of an ocean. He set his teeth, and springing
at a window-sill, dragged himself up and hung to the iron bars. Then reason
fled; there surged in his brain the sound of many voices, his heart leaped
up beating a mad tattoo, and gripping at cornice and ledge he worked his
way along the façade, clung to pipes and shutters, and dragged himself
up, over and into the balcony by the lighted window. His hat fell off and
rolled against the pane. For a moment he leaned breathless against the
railing,---then the window was slowly opened from within.
They stared at each other for some
time. Presently the girl took two unsteady steps back into the room. He
saw her face,--- all crimsoned now,--- he saw her sink into a chair by
the lamplit table, and without a word he followed her into the room, closing
the big door-like panes behind him. Then they looked at each other in silence.
The room was small and white; everything
was white about it,---the curtained bed, the little wash-stand in the corner,
the bare walls, the china lamp,---and his own face,--- had he known it,
but the face and neck of Rue were surging in the color that dyed the blossoming
rose-tree there on the hearth beside her. It did not occur to him to speak.
She seemed not to expect it. His mind was struggling with the impressions
of the room. The whiteness, the extreme purity of everything occupied him---began
to trouble him. As his eye became accustomed to the light, other objects
grew from the surroundings and took their places in the circle of lamplight.
There was a piano and a coal-scuttle and a little iron trunk and a bath-tub.
Then there was a row of wooden pegs against the door, with a white chintz
curtain covering the clothes underneath. On the bed lay an umbrella, and
a big straw hat, and on the table, a music-roll unfurled, an ink-stand,
and sheets of ruled paper. Behind him stood a wardrobe faced with a mirror,
but somehow he did not care to see his own face just then. He was sobering.
The girl sat looking at him without
a word. Her face was expressionless, yet the lips at times trembled almost
imperceptibly. Her eyes, so wonderfully blue in the daylight, seemed dark
and soft as velvet, and the color on her neck deepened and whitened with
every breath. She seemed smaller and rnore slender than when he had seen
her in the street, and there was now something in the curve of her cheek
almost infantine. When at last he turned and caught his own reflection
in the mirror behind him, a shock passed through him as though he had seen
a shameful thing, and his clouded mind and his clouded thoughts grew clearer.
For a moment their eyes met, then his sought the floor, his lips tightened,
and the struggle within him bowed his head and strained every nerve to
the breaking. And now it was over, for the voice within had spoken. He
listened, dully interested but already knowing the end,---indeed it little
mattered;---the end would always be the same for him;---he understood now,---always
the same for him, and he listened, dully interested, to a voice which grew
within him. After a while he stood up, and she rose at once, one small
hand resting on the table. Presently he opened the window, picked up his
hat, and shut it again. Then he went over to the rosebush and touched the
blossoms with his face. One was standing in a glass of water on the table,
and mechanically the girl drew it out, pressed it with her lips and laid
it on the table beside him. He took it without a word and crossing the
room, opened the door. The landing was dark and silent but the girl lifted
the lamp and gliding past him slipped down the polished stairs to the hallway.
Then unchaining the bolts, she drew open the iron wicket.
Through this he passed with his
rose.
FINIS
