CHAPTER IV
THE CITY OF LAUGHTER
The last few weeks have passed so swiftly I scarce can credit it. In the mornings my vitalising walks; in the afternoons my lapidary work in prose. I have begun a series of articles on Paris, and have just finished the first two, bestowing on them a world of loving care. Never have I known such a steady glow of inspiration. A pure delight in form and colour thrills in me. I begin to see beauty in the commonest things, to find a joy in the simplest moments of living.
It is rather curious, this. For instance, I gaze in rapture at a shop where vegetables are for sale, charmed with its oasis of fresh colouring in the grey street, the globular gold of turnips, the rich ruby of radishes, the ivory white of parsnips. Then a fish shop charms me, and I turn from the burning orange of the dories to the olive and pearl of the merlin; from the jewelled mail of the mackerel, to the silver cuirass of the herring. And every day seems fresh to me. I hail it with a newborn joy. I seem to have regained all the wonder and vital interest of the child point of view. In my work, especially, do I find such a delight that I shall be sorry to die chiefly because it will end my labour. “So much to do,” I sigh, “and only one little lifetime to do it in.”
Then there are long, serene evenings by the fire, where I ponder over my prose, while Anastasia sits absorbed in her work. What a passion she has for her needle! She plies it as an artist, delighting in difficulties, in intricate lacework, in elaborate embroidery. In little squares of fine net she works scenes from Fontaine; or else over a great frame on which a sheet of satin is tightly stretched, she makes wonderful designs in silks of delicate colouring. At such times she will forget everything else, and sit for hours tranquilly happy. So I write and dream; while she plies that exquisite needle, and perhaps dreams too.
“Oh, how good it is to be poor!” I said last night. “What a new interest life takes on when one has to fight for one’s bread! How much better to have nothing and want everything, than to have everything and want nothing! Just think, Little Thing, how pleased we are at the end of the week if we’ve spent five francs less than we thought! Here’s a month gone now and I’ve done four articles and a story, and we still have three hundred francs left.”
“When it will be that you will send them to the journals?”
“Oh, no hurry, I want to stack up a dozen, and then I’ll start shooting them in.”
“We have saved four francs and half last week.”
“The deuce we have! Then let’s go to Bullier to-night. We both want a touch of gay life. Come! we’ll watch Paris laugh.”
So we climbed the Boul’ Mich’, till at its head in a crescent of light we saw the name of the famous old dance-hall. Threading our way amid the little green tables, past the bowling alley and the bar, we found a place in the side-gallery.
We were looking down on a scene of the maddest gaiety. The great floor was dense with dancers and kaleidoscopic in colouring. In the wildest of spirits five hundred men and girls were capering, shuffling, jigging and contorting their bodies in time to tumultuous music. Some danced limb to limb, others were bent out like a bow; some sidled like a crab, others wriggled like an eel; some walked, some leaped, some slid, some merely kicked sideways: it was dancing in delirium, Bedlam in the ball-room.
And what conflicting colours! Here a girl in lobster pink galloped with another whose costume was like mayonnaise. There a negress in brilliant scarlet with a corsage of silver darted through the crowd like a flame. A hideous negro was dancing with a pretty grisette who with fluffy hair and flushed cheeks looked at him adoringly as he pawed her with his rubber-blue palms. An American girl in shirt waist and bicycle skirt zig-zagged in and out with a dashing Spaniard. A tall, bashful Englishman pranced awkwardly around with a midinette in citron and cerise, while a gentleman from China solemnly gyrated with a mannequin in pistachio and chocolate. Pretty girls nearly all; and where they lacked in looks, full of that sparkling Parisian charm.
“There’s your friend, Monsieur Livwir,” said Anastasia suddenly. Sure enough, there in that maelstrom of merriment I saw Lorrimer dancing with a girl of dazzling prettiness. Presently I caught his eye and after the dance he joined us.
“You haven’t been to see me yet,” I remarked.
“No, been too busy,—working every moment of my time.” Then realising that the present moment rather belied him he shrugged his shoulders.
To tell the truth I have been feeling a little hurt. We sentimentalists are so prone to measure others by our own standards. Our meeting, so interesting to me, had probably never given him another thought. Now I saw that while I was an egoist, Lorrimer was an egotist; but with one of his boyish smiles he banished my resentment.
“Let me introduce you to Rougette,” he said airily; “she’s my model.”
He beckoned to the tall blonde. Rarely have I seen a girl of more distracting prettiness. Her hair was of ashen gold; Parma violets might have borrowed their colour from her eyes; Nice roses might have copied their tint from her cheeks, and her tall figure was of a willowy grace. Her manner had all the winning charm of frank simplicity. She was indeed over pretty, one of those girls who draw eyes like a magnet, so that the poor devil who adores them has little peace.
“The belle of all Brittany,” said Lorrimer proudly. “I discovered her when I was sketching at Pont Aven last summer. I’m going to win the Prix de Rome with a picture of that girl. I’m the envy of the Quarter. Several Academicians have tried to get her away from me; but she’s loyal,—as good as she looks.”
I did not find it easy to talk to Rougette. Her French was the argot of the Quarter, grafted on to the patois of the Breton peasant; mine, of the school primer. Our conversation consisted chiefly of smiles, and circumspect ones at that, as Anastasia had her eye on me.
“After another dance,” suggested Lorrimer, “let’s go over to the Lilas. We’ll probably see Helstern there. I’d like you to meet him. Besides it’s the night the Parnassian crowd get together. Perhaps you’ll be amused.”
“Delighted.”
“All right.”
Off they went with their arms around each other’s necks, and I watched them swiftly mingle with the dancers. What a pretty couple they made!—Lorrimer so dashing and debonair, with his face of a sophisticated cherub, and his auburn hair that looked as if it might have been enamelled on his head, so smooth was it; Rougette with the mien of a goddess and the simple soul of a Breton fishwife.
But it was hard to follow them now, for the throng on the floor had doubled. In ranks that reached to the side galleries the spectators hemmed them in. The variety of costume grew more and more bewildering. Men were dressed as women, women as men. Four monks entered arm in arm with four devils; Death danced with Spring, an Incroyable with a stone-age man, an Apache with a Salomé. More and more négligé grew the costumes as models, mannequins, milliners, threw aside encumbering garments. Every one was getting wound up. Yells and shrieks punctuated the hilarity; then the great orchestra burst into a popular melody and every one took up the chorus:
As they finished men tossed their partners in the air and carried them off the floor. Every one was hot and dishevelled; the air reeked of pachouli and perspiration, and seeing Lorrimer signalling to us we made our escape.
I remember how deliciously pure seemed the outside air. The long tree-clad Avenue de l’Observatoire was blanched with hoar frost and gleamed whitely. The face of the sky was pitted with stars, and the crescent moon seemed to scratch it like the manicured nail-tip of a lovely woman. Across the street amid the trees beaconed the lights of a large corner café, and to this we made our way.
A long room, lined with tables, dim with tobacco smoke, clamorous with conversation. We found a vacant table, and Lorrimer, after consulting us, ordered “ham sandveeches et grog American.” In the meantime I was busy gazing at the human oddities around me. It seemed as if all the freaks of the Quarter had gathered here. Nearly all wore their hair of eccentric length. Some had it thrown back from the brow and falling over the collar in a cascade. Others parted it in the middle and let it stream down on either side, hiding their ears. Some had it cut square to the neck, and coming round in two flaps; with others again it was fuzzy and stood up like a nimbus. Many of the women, on the other hand, had it cut squarely in the Egyptian manner; so that it was difficult to tell them at a distance from their male companions.
“It’s really a fact,” said Lorrimer, “that long hair is an aid to inspiration. Every time I cut mine it’s good-bye work till it grows again. And as I really hate it long my work suffers horribly.”
The centre of attraction seemed to be a tall man whose sallow face was framed in inky hair that detached itself in snaky locks. As if to accentuate the ravenish effect he wore an immense black silk stock, and his pince-nez dangled by a black riband. This was Paul Ford, the Prince of the Poets, the heritor of the mantle of Verlaine.
“There’s a futurist poet,” said Lorrimer, pointing to a man in a corner who had evidently let his comb fall behind the bureau and been too lazy to go after it. He had a peaked face overwhelmed by stringy hair, with which his beard and whiskers made such an intimate connection that all you could see was a wedge of nose and two pale-blue eyes gleaming through the tangle.
“See that man to the right,” went on my informer; “that’s the cubist sculptor, a Russian Jew.”
The sculptor looked indeed like a mujic, with coarse, spiky hair growing down over his forehead, eyebrows that made one arch over his fierce little eyes, up-turned nose, a beard and moustache, which, divided by his mouth, looked exactly like a scrubbing-brush the centre of which has been rubbed away by long usage.
“Look! There’s an Imagist releasing some of his inspirations.”
This was a meagre little man in evening dress, with a bony skull concealed by the usual mop of hair. He had a curiously elongated face, something like a horse, the eyes of a seraph, the shell-like colour of a consumptive, large, vividly-red lips, and an ineffable smile which exposed a small cemetery of decayed teeth.
“Ah!” said Lorrimer suddenly; “see that chap sitting lonely in the corner with his arms folded and a sort of Strindberg-Nietzsche-Ibsen expression? Well, that’s Helstern.”
I saw a tall, youngish-oldish sort of man with a face of distinguished taciturnity. His mouth was grimly clinched; two vertical lines were written between his eyebrows, and a very high forehead was further heightened by upstanding iron-grey hair. On the other hand his brown eyes were soft, velvety and shy. He was dressed in dead black, with a contrast of very white linen. Close to his elbow stood a great stein of beer, while he puffed slowly from a big wooden pipe carved into a fantastic Turk’s head.
“Poor old Helstern!” said Lorrimer; “he takes life so seriously. Take life seriously and you’re going to get it in the neck: laugh at it and it can never hurt you.”
This was his gay philosophy, as indeed it was of the careless and merry Quarter he seemed to epitomise. Treat everything in a cynical and mocking spirit, and you yourself are beyond the reach of irony. It is so much easier to destroy than to build up. Yet there was something tart and stimulating in his scorn of things as they are.
“Too bad to drag him from sublime heights of abstraction down to our common level. Doesn’t he look like a seer trying to discern through the anarchy of the present some hope for the future? Well, I’ll go over and see if he’ll join us. He’s shy with women.”
So the Cynic descended on the Seer, and the Seer listened, drank, smoked thoughtfully, looked covertly at the two girls, then rose and approached us. With a shock of pity I saw that one of his legs was shorter than the other, and terminated in a club foot. Otherwise he was splendidly developed, and had one of the deepest bass voices I have ever heard.
“Well, old man, alone as usual.”
Somewhat self-conscious and embarrassed, Helstern spoke rather stiffly.
“My dear Lorrimer, much as I appreciate your charming society there are moments when I prefer to be alone.”
“Oh, I understand. Great thoughts incubated in silence. Own up now, weren’t you thinking in nations?”
“As it happens,” answered the Seer in his grave, penetrating tones, “I was thinking in nations. As a matter of fact I was listening to the conversation of two Englishmen near me.”
He paused to light his pipe carefully, then went on in that deep, deliberate voice.
“They were talking of International Peace—fools!”
“Oh, come now! You believe in International Peace?”
He stared gloomily into the bowl of his pipe.
“Bah! a chimera! futile babble! No, no; there are too many old scores to settle, too many wrongs to right, too many blood feuds to be fought to a finish. But there will be International War such as the world has never seen. And why not? We are becoming a race of egotists, civilisation’s mollycoddles; we set far too high a value on our lives. Oh, I will hate to see the day when grand old war will cease, when we will have the hearts of women, and the splendid spirit of revenge will have passed away!”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Lorrimer; “he isn’t so bloodthirsty as he sounds. He wouldn’t harm a fly. He’s actually a vegetarian. What work are you doing now, you old fraud?”
Helstern looked round in that shy self-conscious way of his:
“I’m working on an allegorical group for the Salon.”
“What’s the subject?”
“Well, if I must confess it, it’s International Peace. Of course, it’s absurd; but the only consolation for living in this execrable world is that one can dream of a better one. To dream of beauty and to create according to his dream, that is the divine privilege of the artist.”
“Yes, what dreamers are we artists!” said Lorrimer thoughtfully. “You, Helstern, dream of leaving the world a little better than you find it; I dream of Fame, of doing work that will win me applause; and you, Madden—what do you dream of?”
“Oh, I don’t take myself quite so grandiosely,” I said with a laugh. “I dream of making enough money to take me back to the States, to show them I’m not a failure.”
“Failure!” said Lorrimer with some feeling; “it’s those who stay at home that are the failures. Look at them—small country ministers, provincial lawyers, flourishing shopkeepers; such are the shining lights of our school-boy days. Tax-payers, pillars of respectability, good honest souls, but—failures all.”
“A few are drummers,” I said. “The rest are humdrummers.”
“Yes,” said Lorrimer. “By way of example, let me relate the true history of James and John.”
“James was the model boy. He studied his lessons, was conscientious and persevering. He held the top of the class so often that he came to consider he had an option on it. He nearly wore his books out with study, and on prize-giving days he was the star actor on the programme. Brilliant future prophesied for James.
“Twin brother John, on the other hand, as consistently held down the bottom of the class. He was lazy, unambitious, irreverent. He preferred play to study, and was the idol of the unregenerate. Direst failure prophesied for John.
“James went into the hardware store and commenced to save his earnings. Soon he was promoted to be salesman. He began to teach in the Sunday School. He was eager to work overtime, and spent his evenings studying the problems of the business.
“John began to take the downward path right away. He attended race-courses, boldly entered saloons, haunted low music-halls. The prophets looked wiser than ever. He lost his job and took to singing at smoking concerts. He spent his time trying to give comic imitations of his decent neighbours, and practising buck-and-wing dances till his legs seemed double-jointed.
“James at this period wore glossy clothes, and refused to recognise John on the street. John merely grinned.
“James stayed with the home town, married respectably, and had six children in rapid succession as every respectable married man should. He owned the house he lived in and at last became head of the hardware store.
“John one day disappeared; said the village was too small for him; wanted to get to a City where he could have scope for his talents. Said the prophets: ‘I told you so.’
“And to-day James, my friends, is a school trustee, an alderman, a deacon of the church. He is pointed out to the rising generation as a model of industry and success. But John—where is John?
“Alas! John is, I regret to say, at present touring in the Frobert & Schumann Vaudeville Circuit. He is a headliner, and makes five hundred dollars a week. All he does for it is to sing some half a dozen songs every night, in which he takes off his native townsmen, and to dance some eccentric steps of his own invention. He has a limousine, a house on Riverside Drive, and a box of securities in the Safety Deposit Vault that makes the clerk stagger every time he takes it out. He talks of buying up his native village some day and the prophets have gone out of business.
“And now, friends, let’s pry out the unmoral moral. Honest merit may cinch the boss job in the hardware store, but idle ignorance often cops the electric sign on Broadway. The lazy man spends his time scheming how to get the easy money—and often gets it. The ignorant man, unwarped by tradition, develops on original lines that make for fortune. Even laziness and ignorance can be factors of success. All of which isn’t according to the Sunday School story book, but it’s the world we live in. And now as I see Madam is tired, let’s bring the session to a close.”
That night, as I was going home, with Anastasia clinging on my arm, I said:
“And what is it you dream of, Little Thing?”
“Me! Oh, I dream all time I make good wife for the Beautiful One I have.”