Of Time and the River (119 page)

“Oui! C’est ça, monsieur!”

“Ah-h!” the little Frenchman cried again with a dry little cackle of satisfaction—”--an’ ven one drink—espeecialEE, monsieur, ven ve are yong,” he laughed ingratiatingly again, “—he sometime do an’ say some t’ings zat he regret—eh?”

“But of course!” cried Elinor at this point, quickly, impatiently, eagerly. “That’s just the point! Frank was drinking—the whole thing happened like a flash—it’s all over now—we’re sorry— everyone is sorry:—it was a regrettable mistake—we’re sorry for it—we apologize!”

“But not at all!” cried Starwick, reddening angrily, and looking resentfully towards Elinor. “Not at all! I do NOT agree with you!”

“Oh, Frank, you idiot, be quiet! Let me handle this,” she cried. Turning to the little Frenchman, she said swiftly, smoothly, with all her coaxing and formidable persuasiveness:

“Monsieur, what can we do to remedy this regrettable mistake?”

“Comment?” said the Frenchman, in a puzzled tone.

“Monsieur Starwick,” Elinor went on with coaxing persuasion, “—Monsieur Starwick—comme vous voyez, monsieur—est trčs jeune. Il a toutes les fautes de la jeunesse. Mais il est aussi un homme de grand esprit; de grand talent. Il a le tempérament d’un artiste: d’un homme de génie. Comme un Français, monsieur, vous,” she went on flatteringly “—VOUS connaissez cette espčce d’hommes. Vous savez qu’ils ne sont pas toujours responsables de leurs actes. C’est comme ça avec Monsieur Starwick. Il est de bonne coeur, de bonne volonté: il est honnęte, généreux et sincčre, mais il est aussi plein de tempérament—impulsif:—il manque de jugement. Hier soir nous avons tous—comme on dit—fait la noce ensemble. Monsieur Starwick a bu beaucoup—a bu trop—et il a été coupable d’une chose regrettable. Mais aujourd’hui il se repent trčs sincčrement de sa conduite.

“Il vous offre ses apologies les plus profondes. Il a déjŕ souffert assez. Dans ces circonstances, monsieur,” she concluded, with an air of charming persuasiveness, “on peut excuser le jeune homme, n’est-ce pas?—on peut pardonner une faute si honnętement et sincčrement regrettée.”

And she paused, smiling at him with an air of hopeful finality, as if to say: “There! You agree with me, don’t you? I knew you would!”

But the Frenchman was not to be so easily persuaded. Waving thin fingers sideways in the air, and shaking his head without conviction, he laughed a dry, dubious laugh, and said:

“Ah-h! I don’t know—mademoiselle! Zese apologies!—”--again he waved thin dubious fingers—“eet ees all ver-ree well to meck apologies bot ze—vat you say?—ze dom-mage!—ze dom-mage is done. . . . Monsieur,” he said gravely, turning to Starwick, “you have been coupable of a ver-ree gret offence. Ze—ze—vat you say?—ZE ASSAULT, monsieur—ze assault ees ‘ere in France—une chose trčs sérieuse! Vous comprenez?”

“Ace,” said Starwick coldly.

“Mon client,” the little Frenchman cleared his throat portentously— “—mon client, Monsieur Reynal, ‘as been terriblement blessé— insulté! monsieur!” he cried sharply. “Eeet ees necessaree zu meck des réparations, n’est-ce pas?”

“Ace,” said Starwick coldly. “Whatever reparation you desire.”

The Frenchman stared at him a moment in an astonished way and then, in an excited and eager tone, cried:

“Ah, bon! Zen you agree?”

“Perfectly,” said Starwick.

“Bon! Bon!” the little man said eagerly, rubbing his hands together with greedy satisfaction. “Monsieur est sage—ees, vat you say?—ees ver-ree wise. Monsieur est Américain—n’est-ce pas?— un étranger—comme vous, mademoiselle . . . et vous, monsieur . . . et vous, mademoiselle—you are ‘ere zu meck ze tour—zu be libre— free—n’est-ce pas—zu avoid ze complications—”

“But,” said Elinor, in a bewildered tone, “—what is—I don’t understand—”

“Alors,” the Frenchman said, “eet ees bettaire to avoid ze complications—oui! Ah,” he said, with an arching glance at Starwick, “mais Monsieur est sage . . . est trčs, trčs sage! C’est toujours mieux de faire des réparations . . . et éviter les conséquences plus sérieuses.”

“But!” cried Elinor again, her astonishment growing, “I don’t understand. What reparations are you talking about?”

“Zese, madame!” the Frenchman said, and coughing portentously, he rattled the flimsy sheets of paper in his hand, held them up before his eyes, and began to read:

“Pour l’endommagement d’un veston du soir—trois cents francs!”

“What? WHAT?” said Elinor in a small, chilled tone. “For—WHAT?”

“Mais oui, madame!” the Frenchman now cried passionately, for the first time rising to the heights of moral indignation, “—un veston du soir complet—ruiné, madame!—COMPLČTEMENT, ABSOLUMENT ruiné! . . . Trois cents francs, monsieur,” he said cunningly, turning to Starwick, “—c’est pas cher! . . . Pour moi, oui!—c’est cher—mais pour vous—ah-h!” he waved his dirty fingers and laughed with scornful deprecation, “—c’est rien! Rien du tout.” He rattled the flimsy paper in his hands, cleared his throat, and went on:

“Pour l’endommagement d’une chemise—une chemise, n’est-ce pas, du soir?” he looked up inquiringly, “—cinquante francs”—

“But this,” gasped Elinor, “this is—” She looked at Starwick with an astounded face. Starwick said nothing.

“Pour l’angoisse mentale,” the Frenchman continued.

“What?” Elinor gasped and looked at Ann. “What did he say?”

“Mental anguish,” Ann answered curtly. “All right,” she turned to the Frenchman, “how much is the mental anguish?”

“C’est cinq cents francs, mademoiselle.”

“But this man?” cried Elinor, turning to Ann with an air of astounded enlightenment—“this man is—”

“He’s a shyster lawyer, yes!” Ann said bitterly. “Couldn’t you see it from the first?”

“Ah, mademoiselle,”—the Frenchman began with a reproachful grimace, and a little, deprecating movement of his fingers, “—you are—”

“How much?” Ann answered in her level, toneless French. “How much do you want?”

“Vous comprenez, mademoiselle—”

“How much?” she said harshly. “How much do you want?”

His furtive eyes gleamed with a sudden fox-glint of eager greed.

“Mille francs!” he said eagerly. “Mille francs pour tout ensemble! . . . Pour vous, mademoiselle”—he laughed again with scornful deprecation as he waved his grimy angers—“c’est rien— pour moi—”

She got up abruptly, went over to the shelf that ran around the wall and got her purse. She opened it, took out a roll of bills, and coming back tossed them on the table before him.

“But mademoiselle”—he stammered, unable to believe his good luck, his eyes glued upon the roll of bills in a stare of hypnotic fascination.

“Give me a receipt,” she said.

“Comment?” he looked puzzled for a moment, then cried, “Ah-h! Un reçu! Mais oui, mais oui, mademoiselle! Tout de suite!”

Trembling with frantic haste he scrawled out a receipt on a sheet of yellow paper, gave it to her, clutched the banknotes with a trembling claw, and stuffed them in his wallet.

“Now get out,” said Ann.

“Mademoiselle?” he scrambled hastily to his feet, clutched his briefcase and his hat, and looked nervously at her—“vous dites?”

“Get out of here,” she said, and began to move slowly towards him.

He scrambled for the door like a frightened cat, stammering:

“Mais oui . . . mais parfaitement . . . mais”—he almost stumbled going down the steps, glancing back with nervous apprehension as he went. She shut the door behind him, came back, sat down in her chair, and stared sullenly at her plate, saying nothing. Starwick was crimson in the face, but did not look at anyone and did not speak. Elinor was busy with her napkin: she had lifted it to her face and was holding it firmly across her mouth. From time to time her breast and stomach and her heavy shoulders trembled in a kind of shuddering convulsion, smothered and explosive snorts and gasps came from her.

It got too much for her: they heard a faint, choked shriek, she rose and rushed blindly across the room, entered the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. And then they heard peal after peal of laughter, shrieks and whoops and yells of it, and finally a dead silence, broken at times by exhausted gasps. Ann continued to look sullenly and miserably at her plate. As for Starwick, he sat there wearily detached, impassive, magnificent as always, but his face had the hue and colour of boiled lobster.

LXXXII

One night, in a small bar or bistro upon the hill of Montmartre, Starwick met a young Frenchman who was to become the companion of his adventures in many strange and devious ways thereafter. It was about four o’clock in the morning: after the usual nightly circuit of the gilded pleasure resorts, cafés and more unsavoury dives and stews of the district, Starwick had become very drunk and unruly, had quarrelled with Elinor and Ann when they tried to take him home, and since that time had been wandering aimlessly through the district, going from one cheap bar to another.

The women hung on doggedly; Starwick had refused to let them accompany him, and they had asked Eugene to stay with him and try to keep him out of trouble. Eugene, in fact, was only less drunk than his companion, but fortified by that sense of pride and duty which a trust imposed by two lovely women can give a young man, he hung on, keeping pace with Starwick, drink for drink, until the whole night fused into a drunken blur, a rout of evil faces, the whole to be remembered later as jags of splintered light upon a chain of darkness, as flying images, fixed, instant, and intolerably bright, in the great blank of memory. And out of all these blazing pictures of the night and the wild reel of their debauch, one would remain for ever after to haunt his vision mournfully. It was the memory—or rather the CONSCIOUSNESS—of the two women, Ann and Elinor, waiting in the dark, following the blind weave of their drunken path, all through the mad kaleidoscope of night, never approaching them, but always there. He had not seemed to look at them, to notice them, and yet later he had always known that they were there. And the memory fused to one final mournful image that was to return a thousand times to haunt him in the years to come. He and Starwick had come out of one of the bars that broke the darkness of the long steep hill, and were reeling down past shuttered stores and old dark houses towards the invitation of another blaze of light.

Suddenly he knew that Ann and Elinor were behind them. For a moment he turned, and saw the two women pacing slowly after them, alone, patient, curiously enduring. The image of that long silent street of night, walled steeply with old houses and shuttered shops, and of the figures of these two women pacing slowly behind them, in the darkness, seemed in later years to bear the sorrowful legend of what their lives—of what so much of life—was to become. And for this reason it burned for ever in his memory with a mournful, dark and haunting radiance, became, in fact, detached from names and personalities and identic histories—became something essential, everlasting and immutable in life. It was an image of fruitless love and lost devotion, of a love that would never come to anything, and of beautiful life that must be ruinously consumed in barren adoration of a lost soul, a cold and unresponding heart. And it was all wrought mournfully there into the scheme of night, made legible in the quiet and gracious loveliness of these two women, so strong, so patient, and so infinitely loyal, pacing slowly down behind two drunken boys in the slant steep street and emptiness of night.

Suddenly the image blazed to the structure of hard actuality: another bar, and all around hoarse laughter, high sanguinary voices, a sudden scheme of faces scarred with night, and vivid with night’s radiance—prostitutes, taxi-drivers, negroes, and those other nameless unmistakable ones—who come from somewhere—God knows where—and who live somehow—God knows how—and who recede again at morning into unknown cells—but who live here only, brief as moths, and balefully as a serpent’s eye, in the unwholesome chemistry of night.

He found himself leaning heavily on the zinc counter of the bar, staring at a pair of whited, flabby-looking arms, the soiled apron and shirt, the soiled night-time face and dark, mistrustful eyes of night’s soiled barman. The blur of hoarse voices, shouts and oaths and laughter fused around him, and suddenly beside him he heard Starwick’s voice, drunken, quiet, and immensely still.

“Monsieur,” it said—its very stillness cut like a knife through all the fog of sound about him—“monsieur, du feu, s’il vous plaît.”

“But sairtainlee, monsieur,” a droll and pleasant-sounding voice said quietly. “W’y not?”

He turned and saw Starwick, a cigarette between his lips, bending awkwardly to get the light from a proffered cigarette which a young Frenchman was holding carefully for him. At last he got it; puffing awkwardly, and straightening, he slightly raised his hat in salutation, and said with drunken gravity:

“Merci. Vous ętes bien gentil.”

“But,” said the young Frenchman again, drolly, and with a slight shrug of his shoulder, “not at all! Eet ees noz-zing!”

And as Starwick started to look at him with grave drunken eyes, the Frenchman returned his look with a glance that was perfectly composed, friendly, good-humoured, and drolly inquiring.

“Monsieur?” he said courteously, as Starwick continued to look at him.

“I think,” said Starwick slowly, with the strangely mannered and almost womanish intonation in his voice, “I think I like you VERY much. You are VERY kind, and VERY generous, and altogether a VERY grand person. I am ENORMOUSLY grateful to you.”

“But,” the Frenchman said, with droll surprise, and a slight astonished movement of his shoulders, “I ‘ave done noz-zing! You ask for du feu—a light—and I geev to you. I am glad eef you like—bot—” again he shrugged his shoulders with a cynical but immensely engaging humour—“eet ees not so ver-ree grand.”

He was a young man, not more than thirty years old, somewhat above middle height, with a thin, nervously active figure, and thin, pointedly Gallic features. It was a pleasant, most engaging face, full of a sharply cynical intelligence; the thin mouth was alive with humour—with the witty and politely cynical disbelief of his race, and his tone, his manner—everything about him—was eloquent with this racial quality of disbelief, a quality that was perfectly courteous, that would raise its pointed eyebrows and say politely, “You s’ink so”—but that accepted without assent, was politely non- committal without agreement.