CHAPTER II
THE DARKEST HOUR
The past month has been the hardest we have yet experienced. After paying the rent we had about fifty francs to keep the house going. Not that it mattered much; for we both had such listless appetites and ate next to nothing. I refused to do any more pot-boiling work. For distraction I turned again to the study of the Quartier, to my browsings in its ancient by-ways. Amid these old streets that, like a knot of worms, cluster around the Pantheon, I managed to conjure up many a ghost of bygone Bohemia. As a result I began a series of three papers which I called Demi-gods in the Dust. They were devoted to the last sad days of De Musset, Verlaine and Wilde, those strong souls whose liaisons with the powers of evil plunged them to the utter depths.
The rue Gracieuse, where we reside, is probably one of the least gracious streets of Paris. Its lower end is grubbily respectable, its upper, glaringly disreputable. It is in the latter we have our room. The houses are small, old, mean, dirty. There are four drinking dens, and the cobbles ring to the clang of wooden shoes. The most prominent building is a hôtel meublé, a low, leprous edifice with two windows real, and four false. The effect of these dummy windows painted on the stone is oddly sinister. Underneath is a drinking den of unsavoury size, and opposite an old junk shop. At night the street is feebly lit by two gas lamps that sprout from the wall.
Luckily, our window faces the rue Monge. If it fronted on the rue Saint-Médard we should be unable to live there, for the rue Saint-Médard, in spite of the apostolic nomenclature, is probably the most disgusting street in Paris.
It is old, three hundred years or more, and the houses that engloom it are black, corroded and decrepit. Its lower end is blocked by the aforesaid hostel of the blind windows, its upper is narrow and wry-necked where the Hôtel des Bons Garçons bulges into it. Between the two is a dim, verminous gulf of mildewed masonry. The timid, well-dressed person pauses on its threshold and turns back. For the police seldom trouble it, and the stranger parsing through has a sense of being in some desperate cul-de-sac, and at the mercy of a villainous, outlawed population. They crawl to their doors to stare resentfully at the intruder, often call harshly after him, and sometimes stand right in the way, with an insolent, provocative leer. A glance round shows that other figures have cut off the retreat from behind, and for a moment one has a sense of being trapped. It is quite a relief to gain the comparative security of the rue Mouffetard.
But what gives the rue Saint-Médard its character of supreme loathsomeness is because it is the headquarters of the chiffoniers. These hereditary scavengers, midden-rakers, ordure-sifters, monopolise its disease-ridden ruins, living in their immemorial dirt. They are creatures of the night, yet one may sometimes see a few of them shambling forth to blink with bleary eyes at the sun, their hair long and matted, the dirt grained into their skins, their clothes corroded, their boots agape at the seams—very spawn of the ashpit.
And oh, the odour of the street! The mere memory makes me feel a nausea. It is the acrid odour of decay, of ageless, indomitable squalor. It assails you the moment you enter that gap of ramshackle ruins, pungent, penetrating, almost palpable. It is the choking odour of an ash-bin, an ash-bin that is very old and is almost eaten away by its own putridity.
Then on a Sunday morning when the rue Mouffetard is such a carnival of sordid satisfactions the snake-like head of the rue Saint-Médard is devoted to the marché pouilleux. Here come the chiffoniers and spread out the treasures they have discovered during the week. Over a great array of his wares, all spread out on mildewed sheets of newspaper, stands an old chiffonier in a stove-pipe hat. He also wears a rusty frock coat, and with a cane points temptingly to his stock. His white beard and moustache are amber round the mouth, with the stain of tobacco, and in a hoarse alcoholic voice he draws our attention to a discarded corset, a pair of moth-eaten trousers, a frying-pan with a hole in it, an alarm-clock minus the minute hand, a hair brush almost innocent of bristles—any of which we may have for a sou or two.
Such then is the monstrous rue Saint-Médard, and on a dark, wet November day, when its characteristic odour is more than usually audacious; when the black, irregular houses, like rows of decayed teeth, seem to draw closer together; when the mildewed walls steam loathfully; when the jagged roofs are black against the sky and the sinister shadows crawl from the darkened doorways,—it is more like a horrible nightmare than a reality.
But the misery of others often makes us forget our own, and one day Helstern broke in on us looking grimmer than ever.
“Have you heard that our little Solonge is very ill?”
“No. What’s the matter?”
“Typhoid. Her mother is nursing her. You might go down and see her, Madam. It will be a comfort to her.”
Anastasia straightened herself from the métier over which she was stooping.
“Yes, yes, I go at once. Oh, poor Frosine! Poor Solonge!”
As I looked at her it suddenly struck me that she herself did not look much to brag about. But she put on her mantle and we followed Helstern to the rue Mazarin.
“It was like this,” he told us. “I had an idea of a statue to be called Bedtime. It was to be a little Solonge, clad in her chemise and hugging a doll to her breast. So I went to see the mother and found the child had been sick for some days. I fetched the doctor; none too soon. We’ve got to pull the kid through.”
We found the Môme lying in an apathetic way, her lovely hair streaming over the pillow, her face already hollow and strange-looking. She regarded us dully, but with no sign of recognition. Then she seemed to sleep, and her eyes, barely closed, showed the whites between the long lashes.
Frosine was calm and courageous, but her face was worn with long vigils, and her eyes, usually so cheerful, were now of a tragic seriousness. She turned to us eagerly.
“I can’t get her roused, my little one. Not even for her mother will she smile. She just lies there as if she were tired. If she begins to sleep, she twitches and opens her eyes again. It was a week ago I first noticed she was ailing. She could scarcely hold up her arms as I went to dress her. So I put her to bed again, and ever since she’s been sinking. She’s all I’ve got in the world and I’m afraid I’m going to lose her. Willingly would I go in her place.”
We arranged that Anastasia would remain there and take turns watching by the bedside of the Môme; then I returned to our garret alone.
It was more trying than ever now. Every day some of my manuscripts came back, and I had not the courage to send them out again. My novel, too, made its appearance one morning with the usual letter of regret. More sensitive than other men, it says much for authors that they bear up so well under successive blows of fate. With me a rejection meant a state of bitter gloom for the rest of the day; and as nearly every day brought its rejection, cheerful intervals were few and far between.
To get the proper working stimulus I drank immense quantities of strong black coffee. In my desperate mood I think I would have taken hasheesh if necessary. It was the awful brain nausea that distressed me most, the sense of having so much to say and being unable to say it. I had moods of rage and misery, and sometimes I wondered if it was not through these that men entered into the domain of madness.
But after about six cups of coffee I would brighten miraculously. My brain would be a gleaming, exulting, conquering thing. I would feel the direct vision, the power of forth-right expression. Thrilling with joy, I would rush to my typewriter, and no power could drag me away from it. If Anastasia approached me at such a moment I would wave my arm frantically:
“Oh, please go away. Don’t bother me.”
Then, holding my head clutched in both hands, and glaring at the machine, I would try to catch up the broken thread of my ideas.
What an unsatisfactory life! Dull as ditchwater for days, then suddenly a change, a bewildering sense of fecundity, a brilliant certainty of expression. Lo! in an hour I had accomplished the work of a week. But such hours were becoming more and more rare with me, and more and more had I recourse to the deadly black coffee. And if the return of my stories hurt my pride, that of my novel was like a savage, stunning blow. I ground my teeth and (carefully observing that there was no fire in the grate) I hurled it dramatically to the flames. Then Anastasia reverently picked it up, tenderly arranged it, and prepared it for another sally.
“This will be the last time,” I would swear. “You can send it one time more; then—to hell with it.”
And I would laugh bitterly as I thought of its far different fate if only I would sign it with the name I had a right to sign it with. What a difference a mere name made! Was it then that my work was only selling on account of my name? Was it then that in itself it had no merit? Was I really a poor, incompetent devil who had succeeded by a fluke? “I must win,” I cried in the emptiness of the garret. “My pride, my self-respect demand it. If I fail I swear I’ll never write again.”
There were times when I longed to go out and work with pick and shovel. Distressed with doubt I would gaze down at the dancing waters of the Seine and long to be one of those men steering the barges, a creature of healthy appetites with no thought beyond work, food and sleep. Oh, to get away on that merry, frolicsome water, somewhere far from this Paris, somewhere where trees were fluttering and fresh breezes blowing.
Ah! that was the grey Christmas. Everything the same as last—the booths, the toy-vendors, the holly and the mistletoe, the homeward-hurrying messengers of Santa Claus—everything the same, yet oh, how different! Where now was the singing of the heart, the thrilling to life’s glory? Did I dream it all? Or was I dreaming now? As I toiled, toiled within myself, how like a dream was all that happened without! Yes, all of the last year seemed so unreal that if I had awakened in America and had found this Paris and all it had meant an elaborate creation of the magician Sleep, I would not have been greatly surprised. It has always been like that with me, the inner life real, the outer a dream.
I walked the crowded Boulevards again, but with no Little Thing by my side. Ah! here was the very café where we sat a while and heard a woman sing a faded ballad. Poor Little Thing! She was not on my arm now. And, come to think of it, she too used to sing in those days, sing all the time. But not any more, never a single note.
At that moment she was watching by the bedside of the Môme, she who herself needed care and watching. She had been the good, good wife, yet I had never cared for her as I ought. I was always like that, longing for the things I had not, careless of what I had. Perhaps even if the child had lived I would have transferred my affections elsewhere. But I couldn’t bear to think of that. No, my love for the child would have been an ideal that nothing could dim.
But if Christmas was grey, New Year’s Day was black. Anastasia came back with bad news from the sick room. The Môme was gradually growing weaker. Helstern had brought her a golden-brown Teddy bear and had held it out to her, but she had looked at it with the heart-breaking indifference of one who had no more need to take an interest in such things. Her manner had that aloofness, that strange, wise calmness that makes the faces of dying children so much older, so much loftier than the faces of their elders. It is the pitying regard of those who are on the brink of freedom for us whom they leave in the prison of the flesh.
“Little Thing,” I said one day, gazing grimly at the tobacco tin that acted as our treasury, “what are we to do? We’ve only one franc seventy-five left us, and the rent is due to-morrow.”
She went over to her métier and held up the most beautiful piece of embroidery I had yet seen.
“Courage, darleen. The sun shine again very soon, I sink. Now we can sell this. I am so glad. It seem zaire is so leetle I can do.”
“No, no; I can’t let you sell it. I don’t want to part with any of your work. Let me take it to the Mont-de-Piété. Then we can get it back some day.”
“But zaire we only get half what we have if we sell it.”
“Never mind. Perhaps it will be enough to tide us over for a day or two.”
I realised thirty francs for the cushion cover, paid the rent, and was about seven francs to the good. “We can go on for another week anyway,” I said.
During this black month I only saw Lorrimer once. It was on the Boul’ Mich’ and he was in a great hurry, but he stopped a moment.
“I say, Madden, was it you who sent me the Dago skirt? Where did you dig her up? She’s a good type and makes a splendid foil to Rougette. I’ve changed my plans and begun a new Salon picture with both girls in it. Come up and see it soon. It’s great. I’m sure the crisis in my fortune has come at last. Well, good-bye now. Thanks for sending me the model.”
He was off before I could say a word; but in spite of the wondrous picture I did not go to his studio.
I had finished my Demi-gods in the Dust articles. As far as finish and force went I thought them the best work I had ever done. Now I began a series of genre stories of the Paris slums, called Chronicles of the Café Pas Chemise. I rarely went out. I worked all the time, or tried to work all the time. I might as well work, I thought, for I could not sleep. That worried me more than anything, my growing insomnia. For hours every night I would lie with nerves a-tingle, hearing the noctambules in the rue Monge, the thundering crash of the motor-buses, the shrill outcries from the boozing den below, the awakening of the chiffoniers in the rue Saint-Médard: all the thousand noises of nocturnal mystery, cruelty and crime. Then I would rise in the morning distracted and wretched, and not till I had disposed of two big cups of coffee would I feel able to begin work again.
Then one morning I arose and we had no more money—well, just a few sous, enough to buy a crust or so for déjeûner. She took it as she went on her way to the bedside of the dying Môme. She was a brave little soul, and usually made a valiant effort to cheer me, but this morning she could not conceal her dejection. She kissed me good-bye with tears coursing down her cheeks. Then I was alone. Never had the sky seemed so grey, so hopeless.
“I fear I’m beaten,” I said. “I’ve made a hard fight and I’ve been found wanting. I am supposed to be a capable writing man. I’m a fraud. I can’t earn my salt with my pen. The other was only an accident. It’s a good thing to know oneself at one’s true value. I might have gone on till the end of the chapter, lulled in my fatuous vanity. I’m humble now; I’m crushed.”
I sat there gazing at the dreary roofs.
“Well, I’ve had enough. Here’s where I throw up the sponge. I’m going to spend the rest of my life planting cabbages in New Jersey. If it was only for myself I’d never give in. I’ve got just enough mule spirit to fight on till I’m hurt, but I can’t let others get hurt too. Already I’ve gone too far. I’ve been a bit of a brute. But it’s all over. I’ve lost, I’ve lost.”
I threw myself back on my bed, unstrung, morbid, desperate. Then suddenly I sprang up, for there came a knocking at the door.