CHAPTER XXVIII
"Do you like that tall boy with the wild red hair?"
"Yes, I like him," and this time, m'sieu, I told her the truth.
"He has imagination," the witch whispered. "Many big words are intimate realities to him. He has capacity for a greater hunger than you and me. In him live powerful resentments. He does not like his own Government; he does not like this one. I have heard him talk so passionately of the world's injustice, as if he had just discovered it—and I believe he has!
"He met a girl who was hungry—a little whore of the streets, merely—and he was pitying, and then angry, as if she were the first ever known.... Oh, Marie, one thinks of the girls who have suffered hunger and grief in the streets of the cities of the world, not only this week, but the past year and the years before—I see the vast army of them, wide as the very heavens, spirits made wholly of memories of grief and hunger, and shame ... and thinking of them one goes on, m'amselle, one drinks one's coffee. But he finds one, and cannot himself eat or sleep.
"I heard him say to that horse-faced Hungarian—'But I say she alone is enough to damn us all.... I say we deserve fire and pestilence for letting her go alone in the streets, hungry and sad....
"'Damn you,' he said to the Hungarian, who looked away and sort of yawned, 'you have never been hungry, or ashamed. Even at the front an orderly made your bed for you and you knew you were better than he!'"
The witch went on: "He has imagination—he has passion and faith.... And, Marie"—the witch brought her gray, wrinkled face near mine—"Marie, he has nothing else. Even the few dollars due from his uncle"—she closed her eyes and smiled, "are slightly delayed!
"He has much of what I have little, but materially, he has nothing. He is a walking aspiration, a dynamo running on hope alone.... I think I shall give the Magic Ring to him," the witch looked at me as if she expected me to exclaim my admiration of her wisdom.
"He could make himself the richest, the most powerful man in the world," she added.
"And how can I help you in this plan?" I asked.
"You can give him the ring!"
I was excited, thinking of being the one to bring you great riches, and power!
"But, Madame! why do you yourself not give him the ring?"
"You know why! You are young and pretty. If I offered him the ring he would be afraid of it. When he came to turn the ring in the ritual of the wish, he might remember me, and fear my magic.
"Here in the White Hen he tries not to look at me, though he looks at everyone else. He sees in me the reflection of the chaos he would eliminate! He has made a pattern that he calls truth and he will not let me into it. It is with me as with the little hungry whore of the streets. We do not belong. If we are true his plan of perfection, his brave Faith, are maladjusted, and too simply stated. He can see me, my dear, but he tries not to see me.... I could not myself give him the ring. Will you?"
"Yes," I said.
"When?"
"Tomorrow." I wondered what would come of my rashness. "Tomorrow is Monday. He will be here, doubtless."
The witch smiled knowingly. "Tomorrow he has an engagement at the Café de Lilas at about noon with another painter, who will not be there. You go to the Lilas a few minutes after noon.... Tell him that you are the witch! I will be in the shadow in the entrance of the Bal Bullier across the boulevard!"