Max

by Katherine Cecil Thurston

  CHAPTER IX

  The ascent of the heights had been exciting, the descent held a sense ofsatisfaction. At a more sober pace, with a finer, less exuberant senseof comradeship, the two passed down the hundred-odd steps of theEscalier de Sainte-Marie, taking an occasional peep into some dark andsilent corner, halting here and there to glance into the dimly lightedhallway of some mysterious house. On the upward way they had been allanticipation; now, with appetites appeased, they toyed with theirsensations like diners with their dessert.

  "Who are the people living in these houses?" The boy put the question ina whisper, as if fearful of disturbing the strange silence, the closesecrecy that hung about them.

  "The people who live here? God knows! Probably you would find a_blanchisseuse_ on the ground floor, and on the fourth a poet or perhapsa musician, like our fiddler of _Louise_. This is the real Bohemia, youknow--not the conscious Bohemia, but the true one, that is lawlesssimply because it knows no laws."

  They had come to the end of the steps and were once again traversing thedim rue Andre de Sarte, the boy's eyes and ears awake to everyimpression.

  "Yes," he said in slow and meditative answer. "Yes, I think Iunderstand. It must be wonderful to be born unfettered."

  "I don't know about wonderful; it's a profoundly interesting condition.You get that blending of egoism and originality--daring andscepticism--that may produce the artist or may produce the criminal."

  "But you believe that the creature of temperament--of egoism andoriginality--may spring up in a lawful atmosphere as well as in alawless one?" The question came softly. Max had ceased to look abouthim, ceased to observe the streets that grew more crowded, more brightlylighted as they made their downward way.

  Blake smiled. "The tares among the wheat, eh?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, of course I admit the tares among the wheat; but such growths aremostly unsatisfactory. Forced fruit is never precisely the same as wildfruit."

  "Why not?"

  "Because, my boy, there is a self-consciousness about all forced things,and the hallmark of the Bohemian is an absolute ingenuousness."

  "But to return to your example. Suppose the tare among the wheat hadalways recognized itself--had always craved to be a tare with othertares--until at length its roots spread and spread and passed beyond theboundary of the wheat-field! Why should it not flourish and lift itshead among the weeds?"

  "Because, boy, it would have its traditions. It might live forever amongthe weeds, it might flourish and reign over them, but it would have areminiscence unknown to them--the knowledge of the years in which itstrove to mold itself to the likeness of the wheat before rebellion wokewithin it. I know! I know! I know Bohemia--love Bohemia--but at best Iam only a naturalized Bohemian. I can live on a crust with these goodcreatures, or I can send my gold flying with theirs, but I'm hanged if,for instance, I can sin in quite the delicious, child-like,whole-hearted way that is their prerogative! I have done most of thethings that they have done, but their disarming candor, their simple joyin their exploits, is something debarred to me. It isn't for nothing, Itell you, that I have countless God-fearing generations behind me!"

  He spoke jestingly, but his glance, when it met the eager impetuosity ofthe boy's, was quiet and observant.

  "I disagree with you!" Max cried, suddenly. "I disagree with you wholly!Individuality has nothing to do with environment--nothing to do withancestry."

  "Ah, that's not logical! Humanity is only a chain of which we are thelast links forged. I have had my own delusions, when I sent the ideal tothe right-about and made realism my god, but as time has gone on mytheories have gone back on me, and tradition has come into its own,until now I see the skeleton in every beautiful body, and the heart ofme craves something behind even the bones--the soul of the creature."

  "But that is different, because your desire and your theory have beenthe common desire and theory--the things that burn themselves out. Mytheory is not of the body, it is of the mind. I only contend that in allthe greater concerns of life I am a being perfectly competent to standalone."

  "My dear boy, by the mercy of God all the ideas of youth are reversible!My fire has been extinguished; your ice will hold until the sun is inthe zenith, and not one moment longer."

  "I deny it! I deny it!"

  He spoke with a fine defiance. He paused, the more convincingly toexpress himself; but even as he paused, his eyes and his mind weresuddenly opened to a fresh impression, were lured from the moment ofgravity, caught and held by the lights and crowds into which they hadabruptly emerged--lights and crowds through which the pervading senseof a pleasure-chase stole like a scent borne on a breeze.

  "Where are we?" he said, sharply. "What place is this?"

  "The Boulevard de Clichy. Come, boy! Discussions are over. The curtainis up; the play is on!" Without apology, Blake caught his shoulder andswung him out into the roadway, as he had swung him across the Esplanadedes Invalides that morning. "Come! I'm going to insist upon a newmedicine; my first prescription was not the right one. You're tootheoretical to-night for a place of traditions. We'll shelve our little_cabaret_ till some hour when genius burns, and instead I'll plunge youstraight into common frivolity, as though you were some Cockney touristgetting his week-end's worth! Have you ever heard of the Bal Tabarin?"

  "Never. And I would much--- much rather--"

  "No, you wouldn't! I have spoken. Come along!"

  Before Max could resist he was swept across the wide roadway, round acorner, and through what looked to him like the entrance to a theatre.

  There were many people gathered about this entrance: men in eveningdress, men in shabby, insignificant clothes, women in varying types ofcostume. Max would have lingered to study the little crowd, but Blakelooked upon his hesitancy with distrust, and still retaining the gripupon his shoulder, half led, half pushed him through a short passagestraight into the dancing-hall, where on the instant his ears wereassailed by a flood of joyous sound in the form of a rhythmic, swingingwaltz--his eyes blinked before the flood of light to which the Parisianpins his faith for public pleasures--and his nostrils were assailed by apenetrating smell of scent and smoke. Dazed and a little frightened hedrew back against a wall, overwhelmed by the atmosphere. Superficiallythere was little astonishing in the Bal Tabarin; but to the uninitiatedbeing with wide eyes it seemed in very truth the gay world, with itsstirring music, its walls flaunting their mirrors and their paintings,its galleries with their palms and railed-in boxes, and beneath--subtlysuggestive adjunct--- the bars, with their countless bottles ofchampagne, bottles of every conceivable size built up in serried rows asthough Venus would raise an altar to Bacchus.

  Leaning back against the wall, Max surveyed the scene, fascinated andconfused. A thousand questions rose to his lips, but not one foundutterance. Again and yet again his bright glance ranged from the gay redof the bandsmen's coats to the lines of spectators sitting at the littletables under the galleries, returning inevitably and persistently to thepivot of the scene--a space of pale-colored, waxed floor in the centreof the hall, where innumerable couples whirled or glided to the tune ofthe waltz.

  He had seen many a ball in progress, but never had he seen dancing as hesaw it here, where grace rubbed shoulders with absolute _gaucherie_, andwild hilarity mingled unashamed with a curious seriousness--one hadalmost said iciness--of demeanor. The women, who formed the definiteinterest of the picture, were for the most part young, with a youth thatlent slimness and suppleness to the figure and permeated through thefreely used paint and powder like some unpurchasable essence. Among thiscrowd of women some were fair, some brown, a few red-haired, but thevast majority belonged to the type that was to become familiar to Max asthe true _Montmartroise_--the girl possessed of the dead white face, thered, sensual lips, the imperfectly chiselled nose, attractive in itsvery imperfection, and the eyes--black, brown, or gray--that see in asingle glance to the bottom of a man's soul. Richness of apparel wasnot conspicuous among them, but all wore their clothes wi
th the sense offitness that possesses the _Parisienne_. Each head was held at the anglethat best displayed the well-dressed hair and cleverly trimmed hat; eachlight skirt was held waist-high with a dexterity that allowed theelaborate petticoat to sweep out from the neat ankles in a whirl oflace.

  Some of these girls danced with pleasure-seeking young Englishmen orAmericans in conventional evening dress, others with little clerks inill-fitting clothes and bowler hats, while many chose each other forpartners, and glided over the waxed floor in a perfection of motiondifficult to excel.

  Leaning back against the wall, he watched the picture, gaining couragewith familiarity, and unconsciously a little gasp of regret parted hislips as the waltz crashed to a finish and the dancers moved in a bodytoward the tables and the bars. Then for the first time he rememberedBlake, and, looking round, saw his green eyes fixed upon him in aquizzical, satirical glance.

  "Well, the devil has a pleasant way with him, there's no denying it!Come and find a seat! The next will be one of the special dances--a_can-can_ or a Spanish dance. I'd like you to see it."

  "Who will dance it?"

  "Who? Oh, probably, if it's the _can-can,_ half a dozen of thebest-looking of those girls with the elaborate _lingerie_. They're paidto dance here. They're part of the show."

  "I see!" Max was interested, but his voice did not sound very certain."And the others?" he added. "That fair girl, for example, sitting at thetable with the hideous, untidy little man in the brown suit?"

  Blake's eyes sought out the couple. "What! The two smiling into eachother's eyes? Those, my boy, are true citizens of the true Bohemia. Sheis probably a little dressmaker's assistant, whose whole availablecapital is sunk in that Pierrot hat and those pretty shoes; andhe--well, he might be anything with that queer, clever head! But he'sprobably a poet, in the guise of a journalist, picking up a few francswhen he can and where he can. A precarious existence, but lived inElysium! Wish I were twenty--and unanalytical! Come along! It's to be aSpanish dance. You mustn't miss it!"

  They made their way forward, pushing toward the open space, upon which ashaft of limelight had been thrown, the better to display the faces andfigures of eight Spanish women who, dressed in their national costume,stood preening themselves like vain birds, tossing their heads andshowing their white teeth in sudden smiles of recognition to theirfriends among the audience. While Max's interested eyes were travellingfrom one face to another, the signal was given, and with an electricspontaneity the dance began. It was a wonderful dance--a dance ofsensuous contortion crossed and arrested at every moment by the fierceflash of pride, the swift gesture of contempt indicative of the landthat had conceived it--a dance that would diminish to the merest sway ofthe body accompanied by the slow, hypnotic enticement of half-closedeyes, and then, as a fan might shut or open, leap back in an instant toa barbaric frenzy of motion in which loosened hair and flaming draperiescarried the beholder's senses upon a tide of intoxication.

  Max was conscious of quickened heart-beats and flushed cheeks as thedancers paused and the high, shrill call that indicated an encorepierced through the smoke-laden air; and without question he turned andfollowed Blake to one of the many tables standing in the shadow of thegalleries.

  The table was packed tightly between other tables, and in the moment ofintoxication he had no glance to spare for his neighbors. Even Blake'svoice when it came to him sounded far away and impersonal.

  "Sit down, boy! What will you drink?"

  "What you drink, _mon ami_, I will drink."

  He sat down and, with a new exuberance, threw himself back in his seat.It was a moment of bravado that reckoned not at all with circumstance;his gesture was imperiously reckless, the space about him was crowded tosuffocation; by a natural sequence of events his head came into sharpcontact with the waving plumes of a hat at the table behind him.

  With volubility and dispatch the owner of the hat expressed her opinionof his awkwardness; one or two people near them laughed, and, flushing adesperate red, he turned, raised his hat, and offered an apology.

  The possessor of the feathers was a woman of thirty who looked ten yearsolder than her age; her face was unhealthily pale even beneath its maskof powder, and her eyes were curiously lifeless, but her clothes werecostly and her figure fine, if a trifle robust. At sound of the boy'svoice she turned. Her movement was slow and deliberate; her gaze, inwhich a dull resentment smouldered, passed over his confused, flushedface, and rested upon Blake's; then a light, if light it might becalled, glimmered in her eyes, and her immobile face relaxed into asmile.

  "'_Allo, mon cher_! But I thought you had dropped out of life!"

  The boy, with a startled movement, turned his eyes on Blake; but Blakewas smiling at the woman with the same pleasant smile--half humorous,half satirical--that he had bestowed dispassionately upon the youngEnglishman in the train the night before, and upon the little _cafe_proprietress of the rue Fabert--the smile that all his life had been apassport to the world's byways.

  "What! you, Lize!" he was saying easily, and with only the faintestshadow of surprise. "Well, if I have been dead, I am now resurrected!Let's toast old times, since you are alone. _Garcon! Garcon!_"

  Out of the crowd a waiter answered his call. Wine was brought,three glasses were brought and filled, while Max watched theperformance--watched the ease and naturalness of it with absorbedwonder.

  "Lize," said Blake, as the waiter disappeared, "my friend who dared tointerfere with that marvellous hat is called Max. Won't you smile uponhim?"

  Max blushed again, he could not have told why, and the lady smiled--avague, detached smile.

  "A pretty boy!" she said. "He ought to have been a woman." Then,sensible of having discharged her duty, she turned again to Blake.

  "And the world, _mon cher_? It has been kind to you?"

  Blake laughed and drank some of his wine. "Oh, I can't complain! If itisn't quite the same world that it was, the fault's in me. I'm gettingold, Lize! Eight-and-thirty come next March!"

  A palpable chill touched the woman; she shivered, then laughed a littlehysterically, and finished her wine.

  "Ssh! Ssh! Don't say such things!"

  Blake refilled her glass. "I was jesting. A man is as old as he feels; awoman--" He lifted his own glass and smiled into her eyes with a certainkindliness of understanding. "Come, Lize! The old times aren't so farbehind us! 'Twas only yesterday that Jacques Aujet painted you as theBacchante in his 'Masque of Folly.' Do you remember how angry you werewhen he used to kiss you, and the grape juice used to run into yourhair and down your neck? Why, 'twas hardly yesterday!"

  The woman looked down, and for a moment a shadow seemed to rest uponher--a something tangible and even fearful, that lent to her mask-likeface a momentary humanity.

  "_Mon ami_," she said, in a toneless voice, "do you remember thatJacques is ten years dead?"

  Then suddenly, as if fleeing from her own fear, she looked up again,surfeiting her senses with the crowds, the lights, the smoke and scentand crashing music.

  "But what folly!" she cried. "Life goes on! The same round, is it notso? Life and love and jealousy! Come, little monsieur, what have you tosay?"

  She turned to Max, sitting silent and attentive; but even as she turned,there was a flutter of interest among the tables behind her, and a younggirl ran up, laying her hand upon her arm.

  "Lize!" she said, with a little gasp. "Lize! He is here--and I amafraid."

  Max looked up. It was the girl he had pointed out to Blake as sitting atthe table with the ugly, clever-looking man; and his eyes opened wide infresh surprise, fresh interest as he studied the details of herappearance. She was of that most attractive type, the fair _Parisienne_;her complexion was of wax-like paleness, her blonde hair broke intolittle waves and tendrils under her Pierrot hat, while her eyes, clearand blue, proclaimed her extreme youth. As she stood now, clinging tothe elder woman's arm, her mind showed itself in an utter naturalness,an utter disregard of the fact that she was observed. Max rememberedBlake's
words--"These are true citizens of the true Bohemia."

  But the woman Lize had turned at her cry, and laid a plump, jewelledhand over her slim, nervous fingers.

  "Jacqueline! My child, what is wrong?"

  "He is here! And Lucien is here! And I am afraid!"

  The words were vague, but the elder woman asked for no explanation.

  "Does Lucien know?"

  The girl shook her head.

  "And this beast--where is he?"

  The girl, silent from emotional excitement, nodded toward the oppositebar, and a light flickered up into Lize's eyes as she scanned the crowddivided from them by the space of waxed floor, from which the Spanishdancers had just retreated.

  Max raised his glass and drank some of his champagne. His first dread ofthe place was gripping him again--exciting him, confusing him. All abouthim, like the scent-laden atmosphere itself, moved the crowd--the girlsof Montmartre and their cavaliers. Everywhere was that sense ofconscious enjoyment--that grasping of the mere moment that the Parisianhas reduced to a science. It enveloped him like a veil--the artlessartificiality of Paris! Everywhere fans emblazoned with the words BalTabarin fluttered like butterflies, everywhere cigar smoke mingled withthe essences from the women's clothes, but beneath it all lurked asomething unanalyzed, dimly understood, that chained his imagination. Ithung about him; it crouched behind the women's expectant eyes; thensuddenly it sprang forth like an ugly beast into a perfumed garden.

  It came in a moment: a little scuffle at the bar opposite, as a heavy,fair-bearded man disengaged himself from the crowd about him, a littleflutter of interest as he made an unsteady way across the waxed floor, alittle smothered scream from the girl as he lurched up to the table andpaused, gazing at her with angry, bloodshot eyes.

  For a second of silence the two looked at each other--the girl with afrightened, fascinated gaze, the man with the slow insolence that drinkinduces. At last, muttering some words in a guttural tongue unknown tothe boy, he swayed forward and laid a heavy red hand upon her shoulder.

  The gesture was brutal, masterful, expressive. A sense of mentalsickness seized upon Max; while the woman Lize suddenly braced herself,changing from the inert, half-hypnotized creature of a moment beforeinto a being of fury.

  "_Sapristi_!" she cried aloud. "A pretty lover to come wooing!" And sheadded a phrase that had never found place in Max's vocabulary, and atwhich the surrounding people laughed.

  The words and the laugh were tow to the fire of the man's rage. He freedthe girl's arm and struck the table with a resounding violence that madethe glasses dance.

  It was the signal for a scene. In a second people at the neighboringtables rose to their feet, chairs were overturned, a torrent of wordspoured forth from both actors and spectators, while through everythingand above everything the band poured forth an intoxicating waltz.

  Max, forgetful of himself, stood with wide eyes and white, absorbedface. He saw the climax of the scene--saw the bearded man lean acrossthe table and seize the girl by the waist--saw, to his breathlessamazement, the woman Lize suddenly grasp the champagne bottle and flingit full into his face; then, abruptly, out of the maze of sensations, hefelt some one grip him by the shoulder and march him straight throughthe crowd, into the vestibule, on into the open air.

  Outside, in the glare of the lights, in the cold fresh air of thestreet, he turned, white and shaking, upon Blake.

  "Why did you do it?" he demanded. "I think you were a coward! I wouldnot have run away!"

  Blake laughed, though his own voice was a little uneven, his own facelooked a little pale. "There are some battle-fields, boy, wherediscretion is obviously the better part of valor! I'm sorry I broughtyou here, though they generally manage to avoid this sort of thing."

  Max still looked indignant.

  "But she was a friend of yours!"

  "A friend! My God!"

  "But she called you her friend!"

  "Friendship is a much-defaced coin that poverty-stricken humanity willalways pass! Our friendship, boy, consists in the fact that she onceloved and was loved by a man I knew. Poor Lize! She had a bit too muchheart for the game she played. And the heart is there still, for all thepaint and powder and morphine she fights the world with! Poor Lize!"

  Max's eyes were still wide, but the anger had died down.

  "And the girl?" he questioned. "The girl, and the brute, and the manwith the clever head? What have they all to do with each other and withher?"

  Blake's lips parted to reply, but closed again.

  "Never mind, boy!" he said, gently. "Come along back to your hotel;you've seen enough life for one night."