CHAPTER XVII
Spike sat wearily on the edge of the green iron bed under the unshaded glare of a single electric bulb. The moment had come at last.
Thumb and forefinger carefully on the magic ring he took a deep breath and opened his mouth to say slowly, "One mil-lion dol-lars!"
The clock of the Ecole de St. Sulpice started slowly tolling midnight. Flecker relaxed and waited.
Again he set himself. This time he said aloud, "I wish for one mil—" and there was a muffled knock at his door. It was the fat boy from Luxembourg who could not sleep and wanted to borrow a book.
Again Spike took a deep breath, and—decided to wish for two millions!...
The clock of St. Sulpice tolled the hour. Flecker straightened his back with a grin of weariness. His head ached.
He could not believe the bell as it counted one, two, three—the hours had gone so swiftly. When he decided to wish for two millions of dollars, instead of one million, another thought came running, frantic lest it be ignored, and this thought was:
Why Not Wish for Ten Millions? Why not one hundred millions?
He walked the rue Vavin past the escargots place knowing he had great wealth. In the Dome he ordered champagne and his friends grouped around him—Rosie Rosenberg, Belash, the French poet, the engraver from Peru. They exclaimed and he ordered another bottle!
"Rosie thought I was crazy," Flecker said, laughing good-naturedly at the bearded lad from Tennessee. "You don't think so now, do you? Well, it's all right...." Spike looked at Belash. "I've staked Rosie to a year's rent of that big studio in the rue de Lambre," he said gayly. "Let's all go to Montmartre for dinner!" Before nightfall the entire Quartier knew of his good fortune.
The concierge complained that his mail over-flowed the pension postbox. Madame urged him to buy the building. Bond salesmen lounged all day in the entry.... Oh, he had to give up the little triangular room after a day or two and take an apartment on the Avenue President Wilson. The man he hired as secretary was so awed by Spike's great wealth that he bowed every time Spike said anything. "Yes, yes, yes!" murmured the secretary. "Certainly. Immediately, m'sieu, this very instant." There were a dozen servants, dependents with whom he must deal justly, and whose presence denied him the right to conduct himself as he pleased.
When he ate in student table d'hôtes on the Boul' Mich', hoping thus to stay in the world of his friends, he was uncomfortable, feeling that they thought he was being ostentatiously democratic. When he went to the restaurants of the rich they would rarely accompany him. With a chemical accuracy his money separated him from the friends he wanted to keep, and brought closer those he would have preferred to lose.
On Montparnasse he was a wealthy visitor. If he lost himself in an interesting conversation with a former comrade he was almost certain to be shocked into recollection of his new position by some such phrase as, "My rent is two months' over-due," or "I can't work because I have no money for materials," or "My old aunt died, and now I don't know how the devil I am going to stick it out...." Presently when men cordially shook his hand, he looked at them coldly and thought—"If you want to borrow money to go South, you're using the wrong technic, old chap!"
When he went to Nice he traveled incognito, and spent a dull week playing roulette and talking to strangers. He was suspicious of every one. People only pretended to like him. They wanted his money. Candid equality was gone. He gave generously, and with every gift generosity dwindled from his life. It was hard to achieve a mood for painting, the hundred million weighed so heavily. Like bees his thoughts swarmed around his possessions.
He was constantly discovering that his money had trickled into some enterprise of brutal exploitation of his fellows. His hundred million insisted on working, and what was far more serious they forced him to work. Because his money was invested in them he had to learn about tobacco and oil and explosives and newspapers and banks and governments. Fat, oratorical persons with political schemes bothered him daily.
Spike was relieved to remember that he had yet to make the wish. One hundred million was a fantastic sum.... He might better wish for ten thousand! He could hide ten thousand and it would give him security for five years of Paris. It was not too much, and it was not too—well, he thought it might be just a mite too little to ask when one could have exactly as much as one wanted.
He said aloud in a coaxing voice: "Well, then, twenty thousand!"
Again he tried to turn the ring. His mind filled with a rush of protective, greedy thoughts. How he would regret not wishing for more! How ill he was treating his future self, robbing it of wealth! He raised the figure to a hundred thousand, and the weary cycle began turning again, round and round and round.