CHAPTER XIX
Spike awoke and his breakfast tray was on the table beside his bed. Then he was alive. Then he had slept. Then this was Saturday morning. His chair stood on all four legs as if it were ready to spring at him. The windows laughed. Spike looked at his chocolate pitcher. It had a fat belly, stained with a brown dripping of chocolate and stood jauntily, arm akimbo. Spike reached out and tenderly touched the handle. Beside the blue saucer bearing croissants was another bearing two brioches, and beside this a letter Spike knew immediately was from Waterville, Minn.
He tore open the envelope and found three green bills folded square—thirty dollars—446 francs. His uncle wrote in lead pencil on ruled paper torn from a ledger ... "been feeling a little poorly, but am all right now. Very sorry for this delay but it could not be helped. The two landscapes came and are hung up here in the store by the cash register and everybody says how wonderful they are. Mrs. Twirlingkrautz fell down and broke her wrist. Selma Olson has gone to Minneapolis to bus. college...." Gossip of people in a little town that seemed far away.
"I guess Paris is still proving pretty interesting and I guess you are not spending too much time in drinking places like you shouldn't but you should drink a big glass of real beer for me.... Everybody liked your last letter especially the undersigned...." Bless his uncle! Spike saw him standing before the tiers of cookie tins, his white apron tied under his armpits, reading the letter from "gay Paree." He was good. He never said, "Pretty soft for you, out looking at the big world, while I am tied to this store in a hole of a town...." Waterville was a hole of a town. Flecker half knew that now he would be a stranger in Waterville. And his uncle, extracting big ten-dollar bills from his scanty profits, sort of knew this too.
Spike went slowly downstairs, holding to the balustrade, feeling wan, as if he had been very sick. In the salon crowded with ragged brown furniture there was no one. Spike picked up Le Rire from the plush-covered table and leafed through it without seeing a picture or taking in a word. He looked round vaguely and slowly went out the front door whistling a song his uncle liked. The words popped into his mind, one by one, as he whistled:
Spike went slowly toward the Gardens. The day had a poignant clarity. With their upraised arms the motionless tall trees asked nothing from the clear sky. They stood in a gesture of ecstasy, complete, fearless, hopeless, living in a growing memory. Spike did not find the word, but in drawing he would have shown you tall, disillusioned trees.
"I feel," he exclaimed to himself, "as if I could paint like hell."
Not that he felt strong. A pale but exultant flame burned in him. He walked slowly because it seemed he must be careful of his legs. He felt innocent and frail, as if he had been born again, converted, cleansed, or as if he had been extremely drunk.... For a long moment in the deep dark of the night he had expected death. Now it was light. He was alive. He even had 446 francs in his pocket!
He would go to the Dome and pay the good patron the thirty francs he owed him.