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CHAPTER XXI

Paris again; Janot's; the organized confusion of the studio; the boisterous comradeship of my coevals; the Monday morning throng of models in all stages of non-attire crowding the staircases; the noisy café over the way; the Restaurant Didier where those of us, young men and maidens, who had princely incomes dined marvellously for one franc fifty, vin compris– such wine! – I writhe sympathetically at its memory; the squabbles, the new romances, the new slang on the tip of everyone's tongue; the studio in Menilmontant where the four of us slaved at never-to-be-purchased masterpieces; the dear, full-blooded, inspiring life again. Paris, too, which meant the Rue des Saladiers and Blanquette and Narcisse, and the grace of dear familiar things.

It must not be counted to me for ingratitude that I was glad to be back. I was still a boy, under twenty. My pockets bulged with the bank notes into which I had converted Mrs. Rushworth's cheque, and I found myself master of infinite delight. I presented Blanquette with a tortoise-shell comb and Narcisse with a collar, and I electrified my intimate and less fortunate friends by giving them a dinner in the dismal entresol at Didier's which was superbly styled the "Salle des Banquets." Fanchette and one or two of her colleagues being of the party, I fear we behaved in a disreputable manner. If Melford had looked on it would have blushed to the top of its decorated spire. We put the table aside and danced eccentric quadrilles. We shouted roystering songs. When Cazalet tried to sing a solo we held him down and gagged him with his own sandals. We flirted in corners. A goodly portion of Rosaria, a Spanish model born and bred in the Quartier Saint-Antoine, we washed in red wine. It was a memorable evening. The next day Blanquette listened with great interest to my expurgated account of the proceedings, and in her good unhumorous way prescribed for my headache. When one is young, such a night is worth a headache. I am unrepentant, even though I am old and the almond tree flourishes and the grasshopper is trying to be a nuisance. I don't like your oldsters who pretend to be ashamed of the follies of their youth. They are humbugs all. There is no respectable elderly gentleman in the land who does not inwardly chuckle over the chimes he has heard at midnight.

Though I always had Joanna's gracious personality at the back of my mind, and the love of my good master as part of my spiritual equipment, yet I must confess to concerning my thoughts very little with the progress of their romance. I took it for granted as I took many things in those unspeculative days. The actual whirl of Paris caught me and left me little time for conjecture. I wrote once or twice to Joanna; but my letters were egotistical outpourings; the mythological picture at Menilmontant inspired sheets of excited verbiage. She replied in her pretty sympathetic way, but gave me little news of Paragot. It was hardly to be expected that she should write romantically, like a young girl foolishly in love, gushing to a bosom friend. Paragot himself, who disliked pen, ink, and paper, merely sent me the casual messages of affection through Joanna. He took the view of the Duenna in "Ruy Blas" as to the adequacy of the King's epistle to the Queen: "Madame. It is very windy and I have killed six wolves. Carlos." What more was necessary? asked the Duenna. So did Paragot.

When I was with Blanquette I avoided the subject of the impending marriage as much as possible. She looked forward with dull fatalism to the day when another woman would take the master into her keeping and her own occupation would be gone.

"But, Blanquette, we shall go on living together just as we are doing now," I cried in the generosity of youth.

"And when a woman comes and takes you too?"

I swore insane vows of celibacy; but she laughed at me in her common-sense way, and uttered blunt truths concerning the weaknesses of my sex.

"Besides, my little Asticot," she added, "I love you very much; you know that well; but you are not the Master."

Once I suggested the possibility of her marrying some one else. There was a cheerful quincaillier at the corner of the street who, to my knowledge, paid her assiduous attentions. He was evidently a man of substance and refinement, for a zinc bath was prominently displayed among his hardware. But Blanquette's love laughed at tinsmiths. She who had lived on equal terms with the Master and myself (I bowed my acknowledgment of the tribute) to marry a person without education? Ah! mais non! Au grand nom! Merci! She was as scornful as you please, and without rhyme or reason plucked a bunch of Christmas roses from a jug on the table and threw them into the stove. Poor quincaillier! There was nothing for it but to se fich' à l'eau– to chuck herself into the river. That was the end of most of our conversations on the disastrous subject.

It was the end of a talk on one November evening, about three weeks after I had returned to Paris. I had dined at home with Blanquette, and was in the midst of a drawing which I blush to say I was doing for Le Fou Rire, an unprincipled comic paper fortunately long since defunct – (fortunately? Tartuffe that I am. Many a welcome louis did I get from it in those necessitous days) – when she looked up from her sewing and asked when the Master was coming back. The question led to an answer, the answer to an observation, and the observation to the discussion of the Subject.

"There is no way out of it, mon pauvre Asticot, je vais me fich' à l'eau, comme je l'ai dit."

"In the meanwhile, my dear," said I, throwing down the crow-quill pen and pushing my drawing away, "if you remain in this pestilential condition of morbidness, you will die without the necessity of drowning yourself. Instead of making ourselves miserable, let us go and dance at the Bal Jasmin. Veux-tu?"

"This evening?" she asked, startled. She had never grown accustomed to the suddenness of the artistic temperament.

"Of course this evening. You don't suppose I would ask you to dance next month so as to cure you of indigestion to-night."

"But nothing is wrong with my stomach, mon cher," said the literal Blanquette.

"It is indigestion of the heart," said I, after the manner of Paragot, "and dancing with me at the Bal Jasmin will be the best thing in the world for you."

"It would give you pleasure?"

This was charmingly said. It implied that she would sacrifice her feelings for my sake. But her eyes brightened and her cheeks flushed a little. Women are rank hypocrites on occasion.

Ten minutes later Blanquette, wearing her black Sunday gown set off by a blue silk scarf embroidered at the edges with a curious kind of pink forget-me-not, her hair tidily coiled on top and fixed with my tortoise-shell comb, announced that she was ready. We started. In those days I did not drive to balls in luxurious hired vehicles. I walked, pipe in mouth, correctly giving my arm to Blanquette. No doubt everybody thought us lovers. It is odd how wrong everybody can be sometimes.

The Bal Jasmin was situated in the Rue Mouffetard. It has long since disappeared with many a haunt of my youth's revelry. The tide of frolic has set northward, and Montmartre, which to us was but a geographical term, now dazzles the world with its venal splendour. But the Moulin de la Galette and the Bal Tabarin of the present day lack the gaiety of the Bal Jasmin. It was not well frequented; it gathered round its band-stand people with shocking reputations; the sight of a man in a dress coat would have transfixed the assembly like some blood-curdling ghost. The ladies would have huddled together in a circle round the wearer and gazed at him open-mouthed. He would subsequently have had to pay for the ball's liquid refreshment. The Bal Jasmin did not employ meretricious ornament to attract custom. A low gallery containing tables ran around the bare hall, the balustrade being of convenient elbow height from the floor, so that the dancers during intervals of rest could lounge and talk with the drinkers. In the middle was a circular bandstand where greasy musicians fiddled with perspiring zeal. At the doors a sergent de ville stood good-humouredly and nodded to the ladies and gentlemen with whom he had a professional acquaintance.

Everybody came to dance. If good fortune, such as a watch or a freshly subventioned student, fell into their mouths, they swallowed it like honest, sensible souls; but they did not make reprehensible adventure the main object of their evening. They danced the quadrilles, not for payment and the delectation of foreigners as at the Jardin de Paris, but for their own pleasure. A girl kicked off your hat out of sheer kindness of heart and animal spirits; and if you waltzed with her, she danced with her strange little soul throbbing in her feet. There were, I say, the most dreadfully shocking people at the Bal Jasmin; but they could teach the irreproachable a lesson in the art of enjoyment.

As I came with Blanquette, and danced only with Blanquette, and sat with Blanquette over bock or syrup in the gallery, the unwritten etiquette of the place caused us to be undisturbed. Like the rest of the assembly we enjoyed ourselves. Dancing was Blanquette's one supreme accomplishment. Old Père Paragot had taught her to play the zither indifferently well, but he had made her dance divinely: and Blanquette, I may here mention incidentally, had been my instructress in the art. Seeing her thick-set, coarse figure, and holding your arm around her solid waist as you waited for the bar, you would not have dreamed of the fairy lightness it assumed the moment feet moved in time with the music. If life had been a continuous waltz no partner of hers less awkward than a rhinoceros could have avoided falling in love with her. But waltzes ended all too soon and the thistle-down sylph of a woman became my plain homely Blanquette, uninspiring of romance save in the hardware bosom of the quincaillier at the corner of the Rue des Saladiers.

The bal was crowded. Gaunt ill-shaven men, each a parody of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, capered grotesquely with daughters of Rahab in cheap hats and feathers. Shop assistants and neat, bare-headed work-girls, students picturesquely long-haired and floppily trousered and cravated, and poorly clad models, a whole army of nondescripts, heaven knows with what means of livelihood, all dancing, drinking, eating, laughing, jesting, smoking, primitively love-making, moving, shouting, a phantasmagoria of souls making merry beyond the pale of reputable life; such were the frequenters of the Bal Jasmin. Gas flared in two concentric circles of flame around the hall and around the central bandstand. There was no ventilation. The bal sweltered in perspiration. Hollow-voiced abjects hawked penny paper fans between the dances, and the whole room was a-flutter.

Blanquette, who had forgotten tragedy for the time, sat with me at a table by the balustrade and alternately sipped her syrup and water and looked, full of interest, at the scene below, now and then clutching my arm to direct my attention to startling personalities. The light in her eyes and the colour in her coarse cheeks made her almost pretty. You have never seen ugliness in a happy face. And Blanquette was happy.

"Don't you want to go and dance with any other petite femme?" she asked generously. "I will wait for you here."

I declined with equal magnanimity to leave her alone.

"Suppose some rapscallion came up and asked you to dance?"

"I can take care of myself, mon petit Asticot," she laughed, bracing her strong arms. "And suppose I wanted to go off with him? They are amusing sometimes, people like that. There is one. Regarde-moi ce type-là."

The "type" in question was a fox-faced young man, unwashed and collarless, wearing the peaked cap of Paris villainy. He crossed the hall accompanied by two of the brazenest hussies that ever emerged from the shadow of the fortifications. As they passed the sergent de ville they all cocked themselves up with an air of braggadocio.

"He makes me shiver," said I. Blanquette shrugged her shoulders.

"One must have all sorts of people in the world, as there are so many things to make people different. It is only a chance that I have not become like those girls. It's no one's fault."

"'There, but by the grace of God, goes John Bunyan,'" I quoted reflectively. "You are developing philosophy, Blanquette chérie, and your gentle toleration of the infamous does you credit. But only the master would get what wasn't infamous out of them."

The band struck up a waltz. Blanquette drank her syrup quickly and rose.

"Come and dance."

We descended and soon were swept along in the whirl of ragamuffin, ill-conditioned couples dancing every step in the tradition of Paris. Steering was no easy matter. After a while, we were hemmed in near the side of the hall, and were just on the point of emerging from the crush when the sound of a voice brought us to a dead stop which caused us to be knocked about like a pair of footballs.

"My good Monsieur Bubu le Vainqueur, you do me infinite honour, but until I have devoured the proceeds of my last crime I lead a life of elegant leisure."

We escaped from danger and reaching the side stood and looked at each other in stupefaction. Blanquette was the first to see him. She seized my arm and pointed.

"It is he! Sainte Vierge, it is he!"

It was he. He was sitting at a table a few yards off, and his companions were the fox-faced youth and the two girls over whom Blanquette had philosophised. He wore his silk hat. Brandy was in front of him. He seemed to be on familiar terms with his friends. For a long time we watched him, fascinated, not daring to accost him and yet unwilling to edge away out of his sight and make our escape from the ball. I saw that he was incredibly dirty. His beard of some days growth gave him a peculiarly grim appearance. His hat had rolled in the mud and was everything a silk hat ought not to be. His linen was black. Never had the garb of respectability been so battered into the vesture of disrepute.

Suddenly he caught sight of us. He hesitated for a moment; then waved us a bland, unashamed salutation. We went up the nearest steps to the gallery and waited. After a polite leave-taking he bowed to his companions, and reeled towards us. I knew by the familiar gait that he had had many cognacs and absinthes during the day.

But what in the name of sanity was he doing here?

"Mon dieu, mon dieu, qu'est-ce qu'il fait ici?" asked Blanquette.

I shook my head. It was stupefying.

"Eh bien, mes enfants, you have come to amuse yourselves, eh? I too, in the company of my excellent friend Bubu le Vainqueur, whose acquaintance together with that of his fair companions I would not advise you to cultivate."

"But Master," I gasped, "what has happened?"

"I'll veil it, my son," said he, laying his hand on my shoulder, "in the decent obscurity of a learned language, 'Canis reversus ad suum vomitum et sus lota in volutabro luti.'"

"Oh, mon Dieu," sighed Blanquette again, as if it were something too appalling.

"But why, Master?" I entreated.

"Why wallow? Why not? And now, my little Blanquette, we will all go home and you shall make me some good coffee. Or do you want to stay longer and dance with Asticot?"

"Oh, let us go away, Master," said Blanquette, casting a scared glance at Bubu le Vainqueur, who was watching us with an interested air.

"Allons," said Paragot, blandly.

The dance stopped, and the thirsty crowd surged to the gallery. We threaded our way towards the door, and I thought with burning cheeks that the eyes of the whole assembly were turned to my master's mud-caked silk hat. It was a relief to escape from the noise and gas-light of the bal, which had suddenly lost its glamour, into the cool and quiet street. After we had walked a few yards in silence, he hooked his arms in Blanquette's and mine, and broke into a loud laugh.

"But it is astonishing, the age of you children! You might be fifty, each of you, and I your little boy whom you had discovered in an act of naughtiness and were bringing home! Really are you as displeased with me à ce point-là? C'est épatant! But laugh, my little Blanquette, are you not glad to see me?"

"But yes, Master," said Blanquette. "It is like a dream."

"And you, Asticot of my heart?"

"I find it a dream too. I can't understand. When did you leave Melford?"

"About five days ago. I would tell you the day of the week, if I had the habit of exactness."

"And Madame de Verneuil?"

"Is very well, thank you."

After this rebuff I asked no more questions. I remarked that the weather was still cold. Paragot laughed again.

"He has turned into a nice little bourgeois, hasn't he, Blanquette? He knows how to make polite conversation. He is tidy in his habits in the Rue des Saladiers, eh? He does not spit on the floor or spill absinthe over the counterpane. Ah! je suis un vieux salaud, hein? Don't say no. And Narcisse?"

"It is he who will be contented to see you," cried Blanquette. "And so are we all. Ah oui, en effet, je suis contente!" She heaved a great sigh as though she had awakened from the night-mare of seeing herself a dripping corpse in the Morgue. "It is no longer the same thing when you are not in the house. Truly I am happy, Master. You can't understand."

There was a little throb in her voice which Paragot seemed to notice, for as he bent down to her, his grip of my arm relaxed, and, I suppose, his grip of hers tightened.

"It gives you such pleasure that I come back, my little Blanquette?" he said tenderly.

I craned my head forward and saw her raise her faithful eyes to his and smile, as she pronounced her eternal "Oui, Maître."

"It is only Asticot who does not welcome the prodigal father."

I protested. He laughed away my protestations. Then suddenly he stopped and drew a long breath, and gazed at the tall houses whose lines cut the frosty sky into a straight strip.

"Ah! how good it smells. How good it is to be in Paris again!"

The door of a marchand de vin swung open just by our noses to give exit to a reveller, and the hot poisoned air streamed forth.

"And how good it is, the smell of alcohols. I could kiss the honest sot who has just reeled out and is skating across the road. A bas les bourgeois!"

He did not carry out his unpleasing desire, but when we reached the salon in the Rue des Saladiers, and we had lit the lamp, he kissed Blanquette on both cheeks, still crying out how good it was to be back. Narcisse, mad with delight, capered about him and barked his rapture. He did not in the least mind a master lapsed from grace.

Paragot threw himself on a chair, his hat still on his head. Oh, how dirty, dilapidated and unshaven he was! I felt too miserable with apprehension to emulate Narcisse's enthusiasm. It was cold. I opened the door of the stove to let the glowing heat come out into the room. Blanquette went to the kitchen to prepare the coffee.

Suddenly Paragot leaped to his feet, cast his silk hat on the floor and stamped it into a pancake. Then he thrust it into the stove and shut the door.

"Voilà!" he cried.

Before I could interfere he had taken off his frock-coat and holding one skirt in his hands and securing the other with his foot had ripped it from waist to neck. He was going to burn this also, when I stopped him.

"Laisse-moi!" said he impatiently.

"It will make such a horrid smell, Master," said I.

He threw the garment across the room with a laugh.

"It is true." He stretched himself and waved his arms. "Ah, now I am better. Now I am Paragot. Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot, again. Now I am free from the forms and symbols. Yes, my son. That hat has been to me Luke's iron crown. That coat has been the peine forte et dure crushing my infinite soul into my liver." He tore off his black tie and hurled it away from him. "This has been strangling every noble inspiration. I have been swathed in mummy bands of convention. I have been dead. I have come to life. My lungs are full. My soul regains its limitless horizons. My swollen tongue is cool, and nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu, I can talk again!"

He walked up and down the little salon vociferating his freedom, and kicking the remains of the frock-coat before him. With one of his sudden impulses he picked it up and threw it out of a quickly opened window.

"The sight of it offended me," he explained.

"Master," said I, "where are your other things?"

"What other things?"

"Your luggage – your great coat – your umbrella."

"Why, at Melford," said he with an air of surprise. "Where else should they be?"

I had thought that no action of Paragot could astonish me. I was wrong. I stared at him as stupefied as ever.

"Usually people travel with their luggage," said I, foolishly.

"They are usual people, my son. I am not one of them. It came to a point when I must either expire or go. I decided not to expire. These things are done all in a flash. I was walking in the garden. It was last Sunday afternoon – I remember now: a sodden November day. Imagine a sodden November Sunday afternoon English country-town garden. Joanna was at a children's service. Ah, mon Dieu! The desolation of that Sunday afternoon! The death, my son, that was in the air! Ah! I choked, I struggled. The garden-wall, the leaden sky closed in upon me. I walked out. I came back to Paris."

"Just like that?" I murmured.

"Just like that," said he. "You may have noticed, my son, that I am a man of swift decisions and prompt action. I walked to the Railway Station. A providential London train was expected in five minutes. I took it. Voilà."

"Did you stay long in London?" I asked by way of saying something; for he began to pace up and down the room.

"Did I see anything worth seeing at the theatres? And did I have a good crossing? My little Asticot, I perceive you have become an adept at conventional conversation. If you can't say something original I shall go back to Bubu le Vainqueur, whose society for the last three days has afforded me infinite delectation. Although his views of life may be what Melford would call depraved, at any rate they are first-hand. He does not waste his time in futile politeness." Suddenly he paused, and seized me by the shoulder and shook me, as he had often done before. "Creep out of that shell of gentility, you little hermit-crab," he cried, "and tell me how you would like to live in Melford for the rest of your natural life."

"I shouldn't like it at all," said I.

"Then, how do you expect me to have liked it?"

Blanquette entered with the great white coffee jug and some thick cups and set the tray on the oilskin-covered table. Seeing Paragot in his grubby shirt-sleeves, she looked around, with her housewifely instinct of tidiness, for the discarded garments.

"Where are – "

"Gone," he shouted, waving his arms. "Cast into the flames, and rent in twain, and scattered to the winds of Heaven."

He laughed, seeing that she did not understand, and poured out a jorum of coffee.

"The farcical comedy is over, Blanquette," said he gently, "I'm a Monsieur no longer, do you see? We are going to live just as we did before you went away in the summer, and I am not going to be married. I am going to live with my little Blanquette for ever and ever in sæculo sæculorum, amen."

She turned as white as the coffee jug. I thought she was about to faint and caught her in my arms. She did not faint, but burying her head against my shoulder burst into a passion of tears.

"What the devil's the matter?" asked Paragot. "Are you sorry I'm not going to be married?"

"Mais non, mais non!" Blanquette sobbed out vehemently.

"I think she's rather glad, Master," said I.

He put down his coffee-cup, and laid his hands on her as if to draw her comfortingly away from me.

"My dear child – " he began.

But she shrank back. "Ah non, laissez-moi," she cried, and bolted from the room.

Paragot looked at me inquiringly, and shrugged his shoulders.

"The eternal feminine, I suppose. Blanquette like the rest of them."

"It's odd you haven't noticed it before, Master."

"Noticed what?"

I lit a cigarette.

"The eternal feminine in Blanquette," I answered.

"What the deuce do you mean?"

"She was jealous even of my friendship with Madame de Verneuil," said I diplomatically, realising that I was on the point of betraying Blanquette's confidences.

"It never struck me that she was jealous," he remarked simply.

He took his coffee-cup to the rickety sofa and sat down with the sigh of a tired man. I took mine to the chair by the stove, and we drank silently. I have never felt so hopelessly miserable in my life as I did that night. I was old enough, or perhaps rather I had gathered experience enough, to feel a shock of disgust at Paragot's return in volutabro luti. In what sordid den had he found shelter these last days of reaction? I shuddered, and loving him I hated myself for shuddering. Yet I understood. He was a man of extremes. Having fled from the intolerable virtues of Melford, with the nostalgia of the vagabond life devouring him like a flame, he could not have been expected to return tamely to the Rue des Saladiers. He had plunged head foremost into the depths. But Bubu le Vainqueur! The Latin Quarter was not exactly a Sunday School; very probably it flirted with Bubu's lady companions; but between Bubu and itself it raised an impassable barrier.

The idyll too was over. He had left my dear lady Joanna without drum or trumpet. As my destiny hung with his, I should never behold her adored face again. All the graciousness seemed suddenly to be swept out of my life. I pictured her forsaken, heartbroken, for the second time, weeping bitterly over this repetition of history, and including me in her indictment of my master. At nineteen we are all presumptuous egotists: if I mixed pity for myself with sorrow for Joanna and dismay for my master, I am not too greatly to be blamed. The best emotions of older, wiser and better men than I are often blends of queer elements.

The romance was dead. There was no more Joanna. I broke down and shed tears into my coffee-cup.

Paragot snored.