CHAPTER VI—SIR GALAHAD IN MONTMARTRE

Long after the curtain had fallen I sat on. I had seen Antoine Georges step before the footlights leading Fiesole. I had seen him alternately bend above her hand and bow his acknowledgments to the applause. I did not like him, this fat little Frenchman, with his thin beard and spindly legs. The polite proprietorship of his bearing towards her had impressed me as offensive. I felt sure that he was smacking his lips and saying, “They shall believe that it’s all true, this that they say about us.”

From the wings had come lackeys carrying garlands. They had built up a garden about her. The people had gone mad, standing up in their places and thunderously shouting. From all parts of the theatre flowers had rained on her. They had stormed her with flowers. Women had torn bouquets from their dresses and wreaths from their hair. It might have been a carnival; the air was dense with falling blossoms. And she had faced them with the smile of a pleased child, while Monsieur Georges bent double before her.

It was all over. Men were busy with brooms, sweeping up the litter of her triumph. This happened every night: they got used to it. Already in the fauteuils d’orchestre perfunctory faded women were adjusting linen coverings. The last stragglers of the audience were reluctantly going through the doors.

A man entered my box and tapped me on the shoulder. I stared up at him; his expression made me laugh. He evidently mistook me for a crank who was likely to give trouble. I reached for my hat and coat wearily; I felt that I had been beaten all over. As I folded my scarf about my neck I made bold to ask him where I could find Fiesole. He shrugged his shoulders, darting out his hands, palms upwards, as one who said, “Ah, it is beyond me! Who can tell?”

But it was important that I should see her, I urged; I was an old friend.

An old friend! These days La Fiesole had many old friends. Were it permitted to her old friends to see her, all the messieurs would cross the footlights. He eyed me with impatience, anxious to see the last of me, his waxlike face wickedly ironic.

I produced a fifty-franc note. Would it not be possible for him to deliver her a message?

If Monsieur would write out his message he would make certain that La Fiesole got it.

So I scribbled my address on the back of a card, asking her to allow me to speak with her.

I folded the fifty-franc note about it and handed it to my tyrant. From the lack of surprise with which he accepted I gathered that he had pocketed greater amounts for a like service.

In the street I paused irresolute. From my feet, could I follow it, a path led through crowded boulevards directly to her. I could not be very distant from her; a lucky choice of direction, the chance turning of a corner might bring us face to face. That I was in her mind was probable. She was remembering, as I was remembering, that day at Lido and that night at Venice. Was she satisfied with her revenge? She had always been generous. Somewhere in this passionate white night of Paris her car sped on through illumined gulleys; she lay back on cushions, her eyes half-shut, her mouth faintly smiling, picturing the past at my expense. I liked to think that she hated me; it was in keeping with her character; I respected her for it. The women who had loved me had made things too easy; it had always been I who had done the refusing. My blood was eager for the danger of pursuing. I longed for resistance that I might overcome her. I loved her with my body, I told myself, as I had never loved a woman; my cold, calculating intellectuality was in abeyance. That she should make my path of return difficult added a novel zest.

The human tide was drifting towards Montmartre; I fell in and followed. On the pavement before cafés at little round tables boulevardiers were seated, sipping their absinthe, their eyes questing for the first hint of adventure. Taxis flashed by, soaring up “the mountain” like comets, giving me glimpses as they passed of faces drawn near together, ravishing in their transient tenderness. How was it? What had happened? For the first time in my remembrance I had ceased to analyze; I had ceased to sadden my present with foreknowledge.

Far away the Place Pigalle beckoned. Up tortuous streets, between ancient houses, the traffic streamed like a fire-fly army on the march. As I neared the top I entered the pale-gold haze of its unreality. Electric signs of L’Abbaye, the Bal Tabarin, and the Rat Mort glittered on the night like paste jewels on the robe of a courtesan. Women trooped by me like blown petals, peering into my face and smiling invitation. I marked down their types in my mind by the names of flowers—jasmine, rose, poppy.

I was curiously transformed from that evening of long ago when I had watched these sights with horror, and had fled from Paris in the dawn to Florence. I felt no anger, no revulsion—only tolerance. I had finished with peeping beneath the surface. Fiesole had taught me to despise all that. Fiesole! Fiesole! I saw her always dancing on before me, mocking my sobriety. Yes, I told myself, she had made me kinder.

A couplet from Sir Galahad in Montmartre dinned in my brain and summed up my estimate of my former self


“He sees not the need in their faces;

‘Tis the sin and the lust that he traces.”


I had never looked for the need in any woman’s face. I had been absorbed in contemplation of my own chastity—had hurried through life with hands in pockets, fearful lest I might be robbed. Vi’s need, which I had recognized, I had made ten times more poignant. I had waited for her. What good had I done by it? I might go on waiting. Meanwhile there were Fiesole and Life knocking at my door. My constancy to Vi had become a luxury.

A girl slipped her arm in mine. “‘Allo! You zink I am pretty?”

She was a cocotte, little more than a child, so delicate and slight. Her hair was flaxen and blowy; her complexion a transparent china-white; her dress décolleté and cut in a deep V between the breasts. She pushed her small face up to mine with the red lips parted, clinging to me with the innocent familiarity of one who had asked no more than a roguish question.

“You’re pretty, but——”

“Zen we go togezer!”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Pourquoi non?”

“I’m hoping to meet someone.”

She released me at once with a good-natured smile. “La! La! I hopes you find ’er.”

She tripped away, turning before she was lost in the crowd to wave her hand. I told myself that her flower was the jonquil.

It was one o’clock when, after wandering about, I found myself back at the same place. I could not sleep; my brain was too active with excitement. Instead of being sad because of Fiesolè, I was unreasonably elated. I took a seat at a table on the pavement and ordered coffee and cognac. Every man and woman within sight was a lover, and I sat solitary. As the hour grew later men and women grew more frank in their embraces, and all with that na?ve assumption of privacy which makes the Frenchman, even in his vices, seem so much a child. The sex-instinct beat about “the mountain”—the air quivered and pulsated.

Girls rustled in the shadows. Lovers, chance-met, danced home together. Strange to say, I found nothing sinful in it—only romance. I had ceased to look beyond the immediate sensation.

“Poor boy! You not find ’er?”

I looked up; my lady of the jonquils was leaning over my shoulder.

“No.”

“Eh bien, peut-être, you find her to-morrow, hein! If not, zere are ozers.” She waved her small gloved hands in a circle, bringing them back to include herself. She looked a good little soul, standing there so bravely disguising her weariness.

“Tired?”

“It ees nozing.”

“Won’t you join me?”

Immediately we were in sympathy. She owned me with a playfulness which had no hint of indelicacy. Drawing off her gloves, she rested her chin on her knitted fingers and regarded me laughingly with her world-wise eyes. She was scarcely more than half my years, I suppose.

“Zere are ozers,” she repeated.

“Not for me,” I said; “not to-night.”

“Dieu! You are funny, my friend. You lofe like zat?” The waiter hovered nearer, flirting his napkin across the marble-tables.

I beckoned; he dashed up like a hen to which I had scattered grain.

“Cro?te au pot?”

“Bien, Monsieur.”

“Filet aux truffes.”

“Bien, Monsieur.”

“Salade romaine.”

“Bien, Monsieur.”

“Vouvray.”

“Bien, Monsieur.”

I turned to her. She had corn-flower eyes like Kitty—I had been wondering of whom I was reminded. I passed her my cigarette-case. She chose one fastidiously and tilted it between her lips with the smile of a gamine.

While we ate neither of us said much—she was hungry; but, as we sipped our coffee and the pile of cigarette ends grew, I found myself telling her—asking her if a man had refused her once, whether she could ever again love him.

“If he haf a great heart, oui. If he haf not——” She threw her cigarette away. “C’est la vie! Quoi?” She snapped her fingers and leant over and took my hand, this gay little Montmartroise. “But you haf; zo courage, my friend.”

I did not want to be left alone; she knew it. A fiacre, with a battered race-horse propped between the shafts, had drawn up against the curb. On the box a red-faced cocher nodded. We climbed in and she nestled beside me. The cocher looked across his shoulder, asking where to drive. “Straight on,” I told him.

We crawled away down “the mountain”; as we went, she sang contentedly just above her breath. When we reached the Madeleine the cocher halted, inquiring gruffly whither he should drive. “Tout droit. Tout droit”; we both cried impatiently. So again we moved slowly forward. There was no doubt in the man’s mind that we were mad.

She drew closer to me and cuddled into my coat; the foolish prettiness of her dress was no protection against the chill night air. We lay back, her head resting on my shoulder, gazing up at the star-scattered sky. The asphalt surface of the boulevard, polished by petrol and rubber-tires to the dull brightness of steel, glimmered in a long line before us reflecting the arc-lamps like a smooth waterway—like a slow canal in ancient Venice.

Where we went I do not know; I did not care to notice. The creaking fiacre had become a gondola and it was Fiesole who leant against me. Sometimes the cocher drew up to light a cigarette and to glance suspiciously down upon us. Then I was brought back to reality. We circled the Bastille and prowled through the Quartier Latin, where the night was not so late. We crossed the river once more and crept along the Quai des Tuileries; then again we climbed “the mountain” and plunged into the grimy purlieus of Les Halles. Market-carts were already creaking, in from the country with swinging lamps. Wagons piled high with vegetables, loomed mountainous under eaves of houses. From the market came grumbling voices of men unloading, and the occasional squealing of a stallion.

The cocher wriggled on his box and confronted me fretfully. Before he could ask his question, “Sacré nom d’un chien!” I shouted fiercely, “Allez. Allez.” Meekly he jerked at the reins, sinking his head between his obedient shoulders.

I looked down at the tiny face beside me—the face of a white flower whose petals are folding. She had ceased her singing an hour ago. Feeling me stir, she struggled to open her eyes and slipped her small hand into mine. When I drew my arm tighter about her she sighed happily.

Above the tottering roofs of Paris the night grew haggard. One by one stars were snuffed out. Wisps of clouds drove across the moon like witches riding homeward. It was the hour when even Paris grows quiet. Ragpickers were slinking through the shadows, raking over barrels set out on the curb. Women, shuddering in bedraggled finery—queens of Montmartre once, perhaps, whose only weariness had been too many lovers—dragged themselves to some sheltered doorway, thankful for a bed in the gutter, if it were undisturbed. In boulevards for lengthy pauses ours was the only sound of traffic.

My head jerked nearer hers. Her breath was on my cheek; I could feel the twitching of her supple body. Poor little lady of the jonquils—of what was she dreaming? What had she expected from me? She would tell often of this eccentric night and no one would credit her story.

When I awoke she was still sleeping. A spring breeze ruffled the trees; sparrows were chirping; a golden morning sparkled across the waters of the Seine. The sun, still ruddy from his rising, stood magnificently young among the chimney-pots, trailing his gleaming mantle beneath the bridges.

The battered race-horse had stumbled with us just beyond the Louvre and stood with his head sagging between his knees, his body lurching forward. The reins had fallen from the cocher’s hands; his thick neck was deep in his collar; and his face looked strangled. From across the road a waiter scattered sand between his newly set out tables and watched us with amused curiosity.

My body was cramped. As I attempted to uncrook my legs, my companion opened her eyes and stared at me in amazed confusion. She yawned and sat up laughing, patting her mouth. “Oh, la, la—-. Bonjour, toi!”

We examined ourselves—I in my crumpled evening-dress, and she in her flimsy gown and decorative high-heeled shoes. I had a glimpse of my face in imagination—pale and donnish; the very last face for such a situation. How ill-assorted! Then I laughed too; the cocher lumbered round on his box and burst into a hoarse guffaw at sight of us. We all laughed together, and the waiter ceased sanding his floor to laugh with us.

We left the racer to his well-earned rest and all three went across to the café. As we soaked bread in our bowls of coffee and plied our spoons, we chatted merrily like good comrades. Then we parted with the cocher, leaving him agreeably surprised, and sauntered down the Quai where workmen in blue blouses, hurrying from across the bridges, found time to nudge one another knowingly and to smile into our eyes with a glad intimacy which was not at all offensive.

In a narrow street where “the mountain” commenced, she halted and placed both her hands on my shoulders, tiptoeing against me.

“One ’as to go ’ome sometime, mon ami.” She was determined to be a sportsman to the end. “But remember, mon petit, if you do not find ’er, zere are ozers.”

I put my hand into my pocket. She examined what I gave her. “Mais, non!” she exclaimed, flushing.

“But yes—for remembrance.”

She tilted up her face and her happy eyes clouded; the tired cheeks turned whiter and the painted lips quivered. “Little one, keess me.”

So I parted from this chance-met waif with her brave and generous heart—— And this was what my madness and Fiesole had taught me. For the time the memory of Vi was entirely banished from my thoughts.