Chapter II: Part 2

Suddenly there developed a terrific orchestration of chromatic odours: ambrosia, cassia, orange, peach-blossoms, and musk of Tonkin, magnolia, eglantine, hortensia, lilac, saffron, begonia, peau d'Espagne, acacia, carnation, liban, fleur de Takeoka, cypress, oil of almonds, benzoin, jacinth, rue, shrub, olea, clematis, the hediosma of Jamaica, olive, vanilla, cinnamon, petunia, lotus, frankincense, sorrel, neroli from Japan, jonquil, verbena, spikenard, thyme, hyssop, and decaying orchids. This quintessential medley was as the sonorous blasts of Berlioz, repugnant and exquisite; it swayed the soul of Baldur as the wind sways the flame. There were odours like wingèd dreams; odours as the plucked sounds of celestial harps; odours mystic and evil, corrupt and opulent; odours recalling the sweet, dense smell of chloroform; odours evil, angelic, and anonymous. They painted--painted by Satan!--upon his cerebellum more than music--music that merged into picture; and he was again in the glade of the Druids. The huge scent-symphony dissolved in a shower of black roses which covered the ground ankle-deep. An antique temple of exotic architecture had thrown open its bronze doors, and out there surged and rustled a throng of Bacchanalian beings who sported and shouted around a terminal god, which, with smiling, ironic lips, accepted their delirious homage. White nymphs and brown displayed in choric rhythms the dance of the Seven Deadly Sins, and their goat-hoofed mates gave vertiginous pursuit. At first the pagan gayety of the scene fired the fancy of the solitary spectator; but soon his nerves, disordered by the rout and fatigued by the spoor of so many odours, warned him that something disquieting was at hand. He felt a nameless horror as the sinister bitter odour of honeysuckle, sandalwood, and aloes echoed from the sacred grove. A score of seductive young witches pranced in upon their broomsticks, and without dismounting surrounded the garden god. A battalion of centaurs charged upon them. The vespertine hour was nigh, and over this iron landscape there floated the moon, an opal button in the sky. Then to his shame and fear he saw that the Satyr had vanished and in its place there reared the Black Venus, the vile shape of ancient Africa, and her face was the face of Lilith. The screaming lovely witches capered in fantastic spirals, each sporting a lighted candle. It was the diabolic Circus of the Candles, the infernal circus of the Witches' Sabbath. Rooted to the ground, Baldur realized with fresh amazement and vivid pain the fair beauty of Adam's prehistoric wife, her luxurious blond hair, her shapely shoulders, her stature of a goddess--he trembled, for she had turned her mordant gaze in his direction. And he strove in vain to bring back the comforting vision of the chamber. She smiled, and the odours of sandal, coreopsis, and aloes encircled his soul like the plaited strands of her glorious hair. She was that other Lilith, the only offspring of the old Serpent. On what storied fresco, limned by what worshipper of Satan, had these accursed lineaments, this lithe, seductive figure, been shown! Names of Satanic painters, from Hell-fire Breughel to Arnold Böcklin, from Felicien Rops to Franz Stuck, passed through the halls of Irving Baldur's memory.

The clangour of the feast was become maddening. He heard the Venus ballet music from Tannhäuser entwined with the acridities of aloes, sandal, and honeysuckle. Then the aroma of pitch, sulphur, and assafœtida cruelly strangled the other melodic emanations. Lilith, disdaining the shelter of her nymphs and their clowneries, stood forth in all the hideous majesty of Ænothea, the undulating priestess of the Abominable Shape. His nerves macerated by this sinful apparition, Baldur struggled to resist her mute command. What was it? He saw her wish streaming from her eyes. Despair! Despair! Despair! There is no hope for thee, wretched earthworm! No abode but the abysmal House of Satan! Despair, and you will be welcomed! By a violent act of volition, set in motion by his fingers fumbling a small gold cross he wore as a watch-guard, the heady fumes of the orgy dissipated....

He was sitting facing the bowl, and over it with her calm, confidential gaze was the figure of Lilith Whistler.

"Have I proved to you that perfume is the art of arts?" she demanded. He rushed from the room and was shaking the grilled gate in the hallway like a caged maniac, when with a pitying smile she released him. He reached the street at a bound....

* * * * *

... "the evil of perfume, I repeat, was one against which the venerable Fathers of the Church warned the faithful." The preacher's voice had sagged to a monotone. Baldur lifted his eyes in dismay. Near him sat the same woman, and she still stared at him as if to rebuke him for his abstraction. About her hovered the odour of iris. Had it been only a disturbing dream? Intoxicated by his escape from damnation, from the last of the Deadly Arts, he bowed his head in grateful prayer. What ecstasy to be once more in the arms of Mother Church! There, dipped in her lustral waters, and there alone would he find solace for his barren heart, pardon for his insane pride of intellect, and protection from the demons that waylaid his sluggish soul. The sermon ended as it began:--

"And the Seven Deadly Sins, beloved brethren, are: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth. _Oremus!_"

"Amen," fervently responded Baldur the Immoralist.

III

THE PURSE OF AHOLIBAH

Lo, this is that Aholibah
Whose name was blown among strange seas....

--SWINBURNE.

I

THE AVIARY

When the last breakfast guests had gone the waiters of the café began their most disagreeable daily task. All the silver was assembled on one of the long tables in an inner room, where, as at a solemn conclave, the servants took their seats, and, presided over by the major-domo of the establishment, they polished the knives and forks, spoons, and sugar-tongs, filled the salt-cellars, replenished the pepper-boxes and other paraphernalia of the dining art. The gabble in this close apartment was terrific. Joseph, the maître d'hôtel, rapped in vain a dozen times for silence. The chef poked his head of a truculent Gascon through the door and indulged in a war of wit with a long fellow from Marseilles,--called the "mast" because he was very tall and thin, and had cooked in the galley of a Mediterranean trading brig. From time to time one of the piccolos, a fat little boy from the South, carried in pitchers of flat beer, brewed in the suburbs. As it was a hot day, he was kept busy. The waiters had gone through a trying morning; there were many strangers in Paris. Outside, the Boulevard des Italiens, despite its shade trees, broiled under a torrid July sun that swam in a mercilessly blue sky.

The majority of the men were listening to gossip about their colleagues in the Café Cardinal across the way. Ambroise alone sat apart and patted and smoothed the salt in its receptacles. He was a young man from some little town in Alsace, a furious patriot, and the butt of his companions--for he was the latest comer in the Café Riche. Though he told his family name, Nettier, and declared that his father and mother were of French blood, he was called "the German." He was good-looking, very blond, with big, innocent blue eyes; and while he was never molested personally,--a short, sharp tussle with a cook had proved him to be a man of muscle,--behind his back his walk was mimicked, his precise attitudes were openly bantered. But Ambroise stood this torture gantlet equably. He had lived long enough among Germans to copy their impassive manner and, coupled with a natural contempt for his fellow-monkeys in the cage, he knew that perhaps in a day a new man would receive all these unwelcome attentions. Moreover, his work, clear-cut, unobtrusive, and capable, pleased M. Joseph. And when the patron himself dined at the café, Ambroise was the garçon selected to wait upon him. Hence the jealousy of his colleagues. Couple to this the fact that he was reported miserly, and had saved a large sum--which were all sufficient reasons for his unpopularity.

As the afternoon wore on little airs began to play in the tree-tops; the street watering carts had been assiduous, and before the terrace water had been sprinkled by the piccolos so effectively that at five o'clock, when the jaded stock-brokers, journalists, and business men began to flock in, each for his apéritif, the café was comparatively cool.

A few women's frocks relieved the picture with discreet or joyous shades of white and pink. Ambroise was diligent and served his regular customers, the men who grumbled if any one occupied their favourite corners. Absinthe nicely iced, dominoes, the evening papers--these he brought as he welcomed familiar faces. But his thoughts were not his own, and his pose when not in service was listless, even bored. Would _she_ return that evening with the same crowd--was the idea that had taken possession of his brain. He was very timid in the presence of women, and it diverted the waiters to see him blush when he waited upon the gorgeous birds that thronged the aviary at night, making its walls echo with their chattering, quarrels, laughter. This provincial, modest, sensitive, the only child of old-fashioned parents, was stupefied and shocked in the presence of the over-decorated and under-dressed creatures, daubed like idols, who began to flock in the café, with or without escorts, after eleven o'clock every night in the year. He knew them all by name. He knew their histories. He could detect at a glance whether they were unhappy or merely depressed by the rain, whether they drank champagne from happiness or desperation. Notwithstanding his dreamy disposition his temperament was ardent; his was an unspoiled soul; he felt himself a sort of moral barometer for the magnificent and feline women who treated him as if he were a wooden post when they were gossiping, harried him like an animal when they were thirsty. He noted that they were always thirsty. They smoked more than they ate, and whispered more, if no men were present, than they smoked. But then, men were seldom absent.

The night previous, Ambroise recalled the fact, she had not come in with a different set. This was not her custom, and he worried over it. Protected by princes and financiers, she nevertheless loved her liberty so much that one seldom caught her in the same company twice in succession. For this singular caprice Aholibah, oftener called the Woman from Morocco,--because she had lived in Algiers,--was the despair of her circle. Why, argued the other birds, why fly in the face of luck? To be sure, she was still young, still beautiful, with that sort of metallic beauty which reminded Ambroise of some priceless bronze blackened in the sun. She was meagre, diabolically graceful, dark, with huge saucer-like eyes that greedily drank in her surroundings. But her lashes were long, and she could veil her glance so that her brilliant face looked as if the shutters had been closed on her soul. Across her brows a bar of blue-black marked the passage of her eyebrows--which sable line was matched by her abundant hair, worn in overshadowing clusters. She dressed winter and summer in scarlet, and her stage name was Aholibah--bestowed upon her by some fantastic poet who had not read Ezekiel, but Swinburne. It was rumoured by her intimates that her real name was Clotilde Durval, that her mother had been a seamstress....

With a sinking at the heart Ambroise saw her enter in the company of the same gentleman she had brought the previous evening. The garçon did not analyze this strange, jealous feeling, for he was too busily employed in seating his guests and relieving the man of his hat and walking-stick. An insolent chap it was, with his air of an assured conqueror and the easy bearing of wealth. There was little discussion as to the order--a certain brand of wine, iced beyond recognition for any normal palate, was always served to Aholibah. She loved "needles on her tongue," she asseverated if any one offered her weaker stuff. That July night she looked like a piratical craft that had captured a sleek merchantman for prize. She was all smoothness; Ambroise alone detected the retracted claws of the leopardess. She blazed in the electric illumination, and her large hat, with its swelling plumes, threw her dusky features into shadow--her eyes seemed far away under its brim and glowed with unholy phosphorescence.

While he arranged the details of the silver wine-pail in the other room, the chef asked him if the Princess Comet had arrived. Ambroise almost snarled--much to the astonishment of the Gascon. And when the sommelier attempted to help him with the wine, he was elbowed vigorously. Ambroise must have been drinking too much, said the boys. Joseph rather curiously inspected his waiter as he made his accustomed round in the café. But, pale as usual, Ambroise stood near his table, his whole bearing an intent and thoroughly professional one. Joseph was satisfied and drove the chef back to the kitchen.

The young Alsatian had never seen Aholibah look so radiant. She was in high spirits, and her pungent talk aroused her companion from incipient moroseness. After midnight the party grew--some actresses from a near-by theatre came in with their male friends, and another waiter was detailed to the aid of Ambroise. But he stuck to the first-comers and served so much wine to them that he had the satisfaction of seeing Aholibah's disagreeable protector collapse. She hardly noticed it, for she was talking vivaciously to Madeleine about the première of Donnay's comedy. Thrice Ambroise sought to fill her glass; but she repulsed him. He was sad. Something told him that Aholibah was farther away from him than ever; was she on the eve of forming one of those alliances that would rob him finally of her presence? He eyed the sleeping man--surely a monster, a millionnaire, with the tastes of a brute. It was all very trying to a man with fine nerves. Several times he caught Aholibah's eye upon him, and he vaguely wondered if he had omitted anything--or, had he betrayed his feelings? In Paris the waiter who shows that he has ears, or eyes, or a heart, except in the exercise of his functions, is lost. He is bound to be caught and his telltale humanity scourged by instant dismissal. So when those fathomless eyes glittered in his direction, his knees trembled, and a ball of copper invaded his throat. He could barely drag himself to her side and ask if he could help her. A burst of impertinent laughter greeted him, and Madeleine cried:--

"Your blond garçon seems smitten, Aholibah!" When Ambroise heard this awful phrase, his courage quite forsook him, and he withdrew into the obscurity of the hall. So white was he that the kindly Joseph asked solicitously if he were ill. Ambroise shook his head. The heat, he feebly explained, had made his head giddy. Better drink some iced mineral water, was suggested--the other man could look after the party! But Ambroise would not hear of this, and feeling once more the beckoning gaze of Aholibah he marched bravely to her and was rewarded by a tap on the wrist.

"There, loiterer! Go call a carriage. The Prince is sleepy--dear sheep!" This last was a tender apostrophe to her snoring friend. Ambroise helped them into a fiacre. When it drove away it was past two o'clock; the house had to be closed. He walked slowly home to his little chamber on the Rue Puteaux, just off the Batignolles. But he could not sleep until the street-cleaners began the work of another day.... The Woman from Morocco was the scarlet colour of his troubled dreams....

* * * * *

August had almost spent itself, and Aholibah remained in the arid and flavourless town. Her intimate friends had weeks earlier gone to Trouville, to Dinard, to Ostende, to Hombourg, even as far as Brighton; but she lingered, seemingly from perversity. She came regularly to the café about eleven, always in company with her Prince, and was untiringly served by Ambroise. He was rewarded for his fidelity with many valuable tips and latterly with gifts--for on being questioned he was forced to admit that gratuities had to be shared with the other waiters. He was so amiable, his smile so winning, his admiration so virginal, that Aholibah kept him near her. Her Prince drank, sulked, or grumbled as much as ever. He was bored by the general heat and the dulness, yet made no effort to escape either. One night they entered after twelve o'clock. Aholibah was in vicious humour and snapped at her garçon. Dog-like he waited upon her, an humble, devoted helot. He overheard her say to her companion that she must have lost the purse at the Folies-Bergères.

"Well, go to the Rue de la Paix to-morrow and buy another," was the reply.

"I can't replace that purse. Besides, it was a prized gift--"

"From your sainted mother in heaven!" he sneered.

Ambroise saw the windows of her eyes close with a snap, and he moved away, fearing to be present in the surely impending quarrel. He remembered the purse. It was a long gold affair, its tiny links crusted with precious pearls--emeralds, rubies, diamonds. And the top he saw before him with ease, for its pattern was odd--a snake's head with jaws distended by a large amethyst. Yes, it was unique, that purse. And its value must have been bewildering for any but the idle rich. Ah! how he hated all this money, coming from nowhere, pouring in golden streams nowhere. He was not a revolutionist,--not even a socialist,--but there were times when he could have taken the neck of the Prince between his strong fingers and choked out his worthless life. These attacks of envy were short-lived--he could not ascribe them to the reading of the little hornet-like anarchist sheet, _Père Peinard_, which the other waiters lent him; rather was it an excess of bile provoked by the coveted beauty of Aholibah.

She usurped his day dreams, his night reveries. He never took a step without keeping her memory in the foreground. When he closed his eyes, he saw scarlet. When he opened them, he felt her magnetic glance upon him, though she was far from the café. His one idea was to speak with her. His maddest wish assumed the shape of a couple walking slowly arm in arm through the Bois--_she_ was the woman! But this particular vision bordered on delirium, and he rarely indulged in it.... He stooped to look under the chairs, under the table, for the missing treasure. It was not to be seen. Indolently the Prince watched him as he peered all over the café, out on the terrace. Aholibah was deeply preoccupied. She sipped her wine without pleasure. Her brows were thunderous. The cart-wheel hat was tipped low over them. Several times Ambroise sought her glance. He could have sworn that she was regarding him steadily. So painful became the intensity of her eyes that he withdrew in confusion. His mind was made up at last.

The next day was for him a free one. He wandered up and down the Rue de la Paix staring moodily into the jewellers' windows. That night, though he could have stayed away from the café, he returned at ten o'clock, and luckily enough was needed. Joseph greeted him effusively. The "mast," the thin fellow from Marseilles, had gone home with a splitting headache. Would Ambroise stay and serve his usual table? To his immense astonishment and joy he saw her enter alone. He took her wraps and seated her on her favourite divan near an electric fan. Then he stared expectantly at the door. But her carriage had driven away. Was a part of his dream coming true? He closed his eyes, and straightway saw scarlet. Then he went for wine, without taking her order.

Aholibah was preoccupied. She played with the bracelet on her tawny left wrist. Occasionally she lifted her glass, or else tossed her hair from her eyes. If any stranger ventured near her, she began to hum insolently, or spoke earnestly with Ambroise. He was in the eleventh heaven of the Persians. Two Ambroises appeared to be in him: one served his lady, spoke with her; the other from afar contemplated with the ecstasy of a hasheesh eater his counterfeit brother. It was an exquisite sensation.

"The purse--has Mademoiselle--" He stammered.

"No," she crisply answered.

"Can it never be duplicated? Perhaps--"

"Never. It is impossible. It was made in Africa."

"But--but--" he persisted. His bearing was so peculiar that she bent upon him her dynamic gaze.

"What's the matter with you this evening, Ambroise? Have you come into a successful lottery ticket? Or--" She was suspiciously looking at him. "Or--you haven't found _it_?"

He nodded his head, his face beatific with joy. He resembled the youthful Saint George after slaying the dragon. She was startled. Her eyes positively lightened; he listened for the attendant peal of thunder.

"Speak out, you booby. Cornichon! Where did you find it? Let me see it--at once." All fire and imperiousness, she held out grasping fingers. He shook. And then carefully he drew from the inside pocket of his coat, the purse. She snatched it. Yes--it was her purse. And yet there was something strange about it. Had the stones been tampered with? She examined it searchingly. She boasted a jeweller's knowledge of diamonds and rubies. One of the stones had been transposed, that she could have sworn. And how different the expression of the serpent's eyes--small carbuncles. No--it was not her purse! She looked at Ambroise. He was paling and reddening in rapid succession.

"It is _not_ my purse! How did this come into your possession? It is very valuable, quite as valuable as mine. But the eyes of my serpent were not so large--I mean the carbuncles. Ambroise--look at me! I command you! Where did you find this treasure--cher ami!" Her seductive voice lingered on the last words as if they were a morsel of delicious fruit. He leaned heavily on the table and closed his eyes to shut out her face--but he only saw scarlet. He heard scarlet.

"I--I--bought the thing because--you missed the other--" He could get no further. She smiled, showing her celebrated teeth.

"You bought the thing--_hein_? You must be a prince in disguise--Ambroise! And I have just lost _my_ Prince! Perhaps--you thought--you audacious boy--"

He kept his eyes closed. She was in a corner of the room--quite empty--the other waiters were on the terrace. She weighed his appearance and smiled mysteriously; her smile, her glance, and her scarlet gowns were her dramatic assets. Then she spoke in a low voice--a contralto like the darker tones of an English horn:--

"I fancy I'll keep your thoughtful _gift_--Ambroise. And now, like a good boy, get a fiacre for me!" She went away, leaving him standing in the middle of the room, a pillar of burning ice. When Joseph spoke to him he did not answer. Then they took him by the arm, and he fell over in a seizure which, asserted the practical head waiter, was caused by indigestion.

II

ACROSS THE STYX

It was raining on the Left Bank. The chill of a November afternoon cut its way through the doors of the Café La Source in the Boul' Mich' and made shiver the groups of young medical students who were reading or playing dominos. Ambroise Nettier, older, thinner, paler, waited carefully on his patrons. He had been in the hospital with brain fever, and after he was cured, one of the students secured him a position at this café in the Quartier. He had been afraid to go back to the Café Riche; Joseph had harshly discharged him on that terrible night; alone, without a home, without a penny, his savings gone, his life insurance hypothecated,--it had been intended for the benefit of his parents,--his clothes, his very trunk gone, and plunged in debt to his fellow-waiters, his brain had succumbed to the shock. But Ambroise was young and strong; when he left the hospital he was relieved to find that he no longer saw scarlet. He was a healed man. He had intended to seek for a place at the Café Cardinal, but it was too near the Café Riche--he might meet old acquaintances, might be asked embarrassing questions. So he gladly accepted his present opportunity.

The dulness of the day waxed with its waning. It was nearly six o'clock when the door slowly opened and Aholibah entered. She was alone. Her scarlet plumage was wet, and she was painted like a Peruvian war-god. She did not appear so brilliant a bird of paradise--or elsewhere--as at the aviary across the water. Yet her gaze was as forthright as ever. She sat on a divan between two domino parties, and was hardly noticed by the fanatics of that bony diversion. Recognizing Ambroise, she made a sign to him. It was some minutes before he could reach her table; he had other orders. When he did, she said she wanted some absinthe. He stared at her. Yes, absinthe--she had discarded iced wines. The doctor told her that cold wine was dangerous. He still stared. Then she held up the purse. It was a mere shell; all the stones save the amethyst in the mouth of the serpent were gone. She laughed shrilly. He went for the drink. She lighted a cigarette....

Every night for six months she haunted the café. She was always unattended, always in excellent humour. She made few friends among the students. Her scarlet dress grew shabbier. Her gloves and boots were pitiful to Ambroise, who recalled her former splendours, her outrageous extravagances. Why had fortune flouted her! Why had she let it, like water, escape through her jewelled, indifferent fingers! He made no inquiries. She vouchsafed none. They were now on a different footing. Tantalizingly she dangled the purse under his nose as he brought her absinthe--always this opalescent absinthe. She drank it in the morning, in the afternoon, at night. She seldom spoke save to Ambroise. And he--he no longer saw scarlet, for the glorious tone of her hat and gown had vanished. They were rusty red, a carroty tint. Her face was like the mask of La Buveuse d'Absinthe, by Felicien Rops; her eyes, black wells of regard; her hair without lustre, and coarse as the mane of a horse. Aholibah no longer manifested interest in the life of Paris. She did not read or gossip. But she still had money to spend.

The night he quarrelled with his new patron, Ambroise was not well. All the day his head had pained him. When he reached La Source, the dame at the cashier's desk told him that he was in for a scolding. He shrugged his thin shoulders. He didn't care very much. Later the prophesied event occurred. He had been much too attentive to the solitary woman who drank absinthe day and night. The patron did not propose to see his establishment, patronized as it was by the shining lights of medicine--!

Ambroise changed his clothes and went away without a word. He was weary of his existence, and a friend who shared his wretched room in the Rue Mouffetard had apprised him of a vacant job at a livelier resort, the Café Vachette, commonly known as the Café Rasta. There he would earn more tips, though the work would be more fatiguing. And--the Morocco Woman might not follow him. He hurried away.

III

AVERNUS

She sat on a divan in the corner when he entered the Vachette for the first time. He said nothing, nor did he experience either a thrill of pleasure or disgust. The other waiters assured him that she was an old customer, sometimes better dressed, yet never without money. And she was liberal. He took her usual order, but did not speak to her, though she played with the purse as if to tempt him--it had become for him a symbol of their lives. A quick glance assured him that the amethyst had disappeared. She was literally drinking _his_ gift away in absinthe. The spring passed, and Ambroise did not regain his former health. His limbs were leaden, his head always heavy. The alert waiter was transformed. He took his orders soberly, executed them soberly,--he was still a good routinier; but his early enthusiasm was absent. Something had gone from him that night; as she went to her carriage with her scornful, snapping, petulant _Ça_!--he felt that his life was over. Aholibah watched like a cat every night; he was not on for day duty. She never came to the Rasta before dark. The story of her infatuation for the well-bred, melancholy garçon was noised about; but it did not endanger his position, as at La Source. He paid little attention to the jesting, and was scrupulously exact in his work. But the sense of his double personality began to worry him again. He did not see scarlet as of old; he noticed when his eyes were closed that the apparition of a second Ambroise swam into the field of his vision. And he was positively certain that this spectre of himself saw scarlet--the attitude of his double assured him of the fact. Simple-minded, ignorant of cerebral disorders, loyal, and laborious, Ambroise could not speak of these disquieting things--indeed, he only worked the more....

At last, one night in late summer, she did not appear. It was after a day when she had sung more insolently than ever, drunk more than her accustomed allowance, and had shown Ambroise the purse--the sockets of the serpent's eyes untenanted by the beautiful carbuncles. Apathetic as he had become, he was surprised at her absence. It was either caprice or serious illness. She had dwindled to a skeleton, with a maleficent smile. Her teeth were yellow, her hands become claws, the scarlet of her clothes a drab hue, the plumes on her hat gone. Ambroise wondered. About midnight a mean-looking fellow entered and asked for him. A lady, a very ill lady, was in a coupé at the door. He hurried out. It was Aholibah. Her eyes were glazed and her lips black and cracked. She tried to croon, in a hoarse voice:--

"I am the Woman of Morocco!" But her head fell on the window-sill of the carriage. Ambroise lifted the weary head on his shoulder. His eyes were so dry that they seemed thirsty. The old glamour gripped him. The cabman held the reins and waited; it was an every-night occurrence for him. The starlight could not penetrate to the Boulevard through the harsh electric glare; and the whirring of wheels and laughter of the café's guests entered the soul of Ambroise like steel nails. She opened her eyes.

"I am that Aholibah ... a witness through waste Asia ... that the strong men and the Captains knew ..." This line of Swinburne's was pronounced in the purest English. Ambroise did not understand. Then followed some rapidly uttered jargon that might have been Moorish. He soothed her, and softly passed his hand over her rough and dishevelled hair. His heart was bursting. She was after all his Aholibah, his first love. A crowd gathered. He asked for a doctor. A dozen students ran in a dozen different directions. The tired horse stamped its feet impatiently, and once it whinnied. The coachman lighted his pipe and watched his dying fare. Some wag sang a drunken lyric, and Ambroise repeated at intervals:--

"Please not so close, Messieurs. She needs air." Then she moved her head and murmured:

"Where's--my Prince? My--Prince Ambroise--I have something--" Her head fell back on his shoulder with a rigid jerk. In her clenched fingers he recognized his purse--smudged, torn, the serpent mouth gaping, the eyes empty.... And for the last time Ambroise saw scarlet--saw scarlet double. His two personalities had separated, never to merge again.

IV

REBELS OF THE MOON

"On my honour, friend," Zarathustra answered, "what thou speakest
of doth not exist: there is no devil nor hell. Thy soul will be
dead even sooner than thy body: henceforth fear naught."

The moon, a spiritual gray wafer, fainted in the red wind of a summer morning as the two men leaped a ditch soft with mud. The wall was not high, the escape an easy one. Crouching, their clothes the colour of clay, they trod cautiously the trench, until opposite a wood whose trees blackened the slow dawn. Then, without a word, they ran across the road, and, in a few minutes, were lost in the thick underbrush of the little forest. It was past four o'clock and the dawn began to trill over the rim of night; the east burst into stinging sun rays, while the moving air awoke the birds and sent scurrying around the smooth green park a cloud of golden powdery dust....

Arved and Quell stood in a secret glade and looked at each other solemnly--but only for a moment. Laughter, unrestrained laughter, frightened the squirrels and warned them that they were still in danger.

"Well, we've escaped this time," said the poet.

"Yes; but how long?" was the sardonic rejoinder of the painter.

"See here, Quell, you're a pessimist. You are never satisfied; which, I take it, is a neat definition of pessimism."

"I don't propose to chop logic so early in the morning," was the surly reply. "I'm cold and nervous. Say, did you lift anything before we got away?" Arved smiled the significant smile of a drinking man.

"Yes, I did. I waited until Doc McKracken left his office, and then I sneaked _this_." The severe lines in Quell's face began to swim together. He reached out his hand, took the flask, and then threw back his head. Arved watched him with patient resignation.

"Hold on there! Leave a dozen drops for a poor maker of rhymes," he chuckled, and soon was himself gurgling the liquor.

They arose, and after despairing glances at their bespattered garments, trudged on. In an hour, the pair had reached the edge of the forest, and, as the sun sat high and warm, a rest was agreed upon. But this time they did not easily find a hiding-place. Fearing to venture nearer the turnpike, hearing human sounds, they finally retired from the clearing, and behind a moss-etched rock discovered a cool resting-place on the leafy floor.

At full length, hands under heads, brains mellowed by brandy, the men summed up the situation. Arved was the first to speak. He was tall, blond, heavy of figure, and his beard hung upon his chest. His dissatisfied eyes were cynical when he rallied his companion. A man of brains this, but careless as the grass.

"Quell, let us think this thing out carefully. It is nearly six o'clock. At six o'clock the cells will be unlocked, and then,--well, McKracken will damn our bones, for he gets a fat board fee from my people, and the table is not so cursed good at the Hermitage that he misses a margin of profit! What will he do? Set the dogs after us? No, he daren't; we're not convicts--we're only mad folk." He smiled good-humouredly, though his white brow was dented as if by harsh thoughts.

Quell's little bloodshot eyes stared up into a narrow channel of foliage, at the end of which was a splash of blue sky. He was mean-appearing, with a horselike head, his mustache twisted into a savage curl. His forehead was abnormal in breadth and the irritable flashes of fire in his eyes told the story of a restless soul. The nostrils expanded as he spoke:--

"We're only mad folk, as you say; nevertheless, the Lord High Keeper will send his police patrol wagon after us in a jiffy. He went to bed dead full last night, so his humour won't be any too sweet when he hears that several of his boarders have vanished. He'll miss you more than me; I'm not at the first table with you swells."

Quell ended his speech with so disagreeable an inflection that Arved was astonished. He looked around and spat at a beetle.

"What's wrong with you, my hearty? I believe you miss your soft iron couch. Or did you leave it this morning left foot foremost? Anyhow, Quell, don't get on your ear. We'll push to town as soon as it's twilight, and I know a little crib near the river where we can have all we want to eat and drink. Do you hear--drink!" Quell made no answer. The other continued:--

"Besides, I don't see why you've turned sulky simply because your family sent you up to the Hermitage. It's no disgrace. In fact, it steadies the nerves, and you can get plenty of booze."

"If you have the price," snapped his friend.

"Money or no money, McKracken's asylum--no, it's bad taste to call it that; his retreat, ah, there's the word!--is not so awful. I've a theory that our keepers are crazy as loons; though you can't blame them, watching us, as they must, from six o'clock in the morning until midnight. Say, why were you put away?"

"Crazy, like yourself, I suppose." Quell grinned.

"And now we're cured. We cured ourselves by flight. How can they call us crazy when we planned the job so neatly?"

Arved began to be interested in the sound of his own voice. He searched his pockets and after some vain fumbling found a half package of cigarettes.

"Take some and be happy, my boy. They are boon-sticks indeed." Quell suddenly arose.

"Arved, what were you sent up for, may I ask?"

The poet stretched his big legs, rolled over on his back again, and scratching his tangled beard, smoked the cigarette he had just lighted. In the hot hum of the woods there was heard the occasional dropping of pine cones as the wind fanned lazy music from the leaves. They could not see the sun; its power was felt. Perspiration beaded their shiny faces and presently they removed collars and coats, sitting at ease in shirt-sleeves.... Arved's tongue began to speed:--

"Though I've only known you twenty-four hours, my son, I feel impelled to tell you the history of my happy life--for happiness has its histories, no matter what the poets say. But the day is hot, our time limited. Wait until we are recaptured, then I'll spin you a yarn."

"You expect to get caught for sure?"

"I do. So do you. No need to argue--your face tells me that. But we'll have the time of our life before they gather us in. Anyhow, we'll want to go back. The whole world is crazy, but ashamed to acknowledge it. We are not. Pascal said men are so mad that he who would not be is a madman of a new kind. To escape ineffable dulness is the privilege of the lunatic; the lunatic, who is the true aristocrat of nature--the unique man in a tower of ivory, the elect, who, in samite robes, traverses moody gardens. Really, I shudder at the idea of ever living again in yonder stewpot of humanity, with all its bad smells. To struggle with the fools for their idiotic prizes is beyond me. The lunatic asylum--"

"Can't you find some other word?" asked Quell, dryly.

"--is the best modern equivalent for the tub of Diogenes--he who was the first Solitary, the first Individualist. To dream one's dreams, to be alone--"

"How about McKracken and the keepers?"

"From the volatile intellects of madmen are fashioned the truths of humanity. Mental repose is death. All our modern theocrats, politicians,--whose minds are sewers for the people,--and lawyers are corpses, their brains dead from feeding on dead ideas. Motion is life--mad minds are always in motion."

"Let up there! You talk like the doctor chaps over at the crazy crib," interrupted Quell.

"Ah, if we could only arrange our dreams in chapters--as in a novel. Sometimes Nature does it for us. There is really a beginning, a development, a dénouement. But, for the most of us, life is a crooked road with weeds so high that we can't see the turn of the path. Now, my case--I'm telling you my story after all--my case is a typical one of the artistic sort. I wrote prose, verse, and dissipated with true poetic regularity. It was after reading Nietzsche that I decided to quit my stupid, sinful ways. Yes, you may smile! It was Nietzsche who converted me. I left the old crowd, the old life in Paris, went to Brittany, studied new rhythms, new forms, studied the moon; and then people began to touch their foreheads knowingly. I was suspected simply because I did not want to turn out sweet sonnets about the pretty stars. Why, man, I have a star in my stomach! Every poet has. We are of the same stuff as the stars. It was Marlowe who said, 'A sound magician is a mighty god.' He was wrong. Only the mentally unsound are really wise. This the ancients knew. Even if Gerard de Nerval did walk the boulevards trolling a lobster by a blue ribbon--that is no reason for judging him crazy. As he truly said, 'Lobsters neither bark nor bite; and they know the secrets of the sea!' His dreams simply overflowed into his daily existence. He had the courage of his dreams. Do you remember his declaring that the sun never appears in dreams? How true! But the moon does, 'sexton of the planets,' as the crazy poet Lenau called it--the moon which is the patron sky-saint of men with brains. Ah, brains! What unhappiness they cause in this brainless world, a world rotten with hypocrisy. A poet polishes words until they glitter with beauty, charging them with fulminating meaning--straightway he is called mad by men who sweat and toil on the stock exchange. Have you ever, my dear Quell, watched those little, grotesque brokers on a busy day? No? Well, you will say that no lunatic grimacing beneath the horns of the moon ever made such ludicrous, such useless, gestures. And for what? Money! Money to spend as idiotically as it is garnered. The world is crazy, I tell you, crazy, to toil as it does. How much cleverer are the apes who won't talk, because, if they did, they would be forced to abandon their lovely free life, put on ugly garments, and work for a living. These animals, for which we have such contempt, are freer than men; they are the Supermen of Nietzsche--Nietzsche whose brain mirrored both a Prometheus and a Napoleon." Quell listened to this speech with indifference. Arved continued:--

"Nor was Nietzsche insane when he went to the asylum. His sanity was blinding in its brilliancy; he voluntarily renounced the world of foolish faces and had himself locked away where he would not hear its foolish clacking. O Silence! gift of the gods, deified by Carlyle in many volumes and praised by me in many silly words! My good fellow, society, which is always hypocritical, has to build lunatic asylums in self-defence. These polite jails keep the world in countenance; they give it a standard. If _you_ are behind the bars--"

"Speak for yourself," growled Quell.

"Then the world knows that you are crazy and that _it_ is not. There is no other way of telling the difference. So a conspiracy of fools, lawyers, and doctors is formed. If you do not live the life of the stupid: cheat, lie, steal, smirk, eat, dance, and drink--then you are crazy! That fact agreed upon, the hypocrites, who are quite mad, but cunning enough to dissemble, lock behind bolted doors those free souls, the poets, painters, musicians--artistic folk in general. They brand our gifts with fancy scientific names, such as Megalomania, Paranoia, _Folie des grandeurs_. Show me a genius and I'll show you a madman--according to the world's notion."

"There you go again," cried Quell, arising to his knees. "Genius, _I_ believe, is a disease of the nerves; and I don't mind telling you that I consider poets and musicians quite crazy."

Arved's eyes were blazing blue signals.

"But, my dear Quell, are not all men mad at some time or another? Madly in love, religiously mad, patriotically insane, and idiotic on the subject of clothes, blood, social precedence, handsome persons, money? And is it not a sign of insanity when one man claims sanity for his own particular art? Painting, I admit, is--"

"What the devil do you know about painting?" Quell roughly interposed; "you are a poet and, pretending to love all creation,--altruism, I think your sentimental philosophers call it,--have the conceit to believe you bear a star in your stomach when it is only a craving for rum. I've been through the game."

He began to pace the sward, chewing a blade of grass. He spoke in hurried, staccato phrases:--

"Why was I put away? Listen: I tried to paint the sun,--for I hate your moon and its misty madness. To put this glorious furnace on canvas is, as you will acknowledge, the task of a god. It never came to me in my dreams, so I wooed it by day. Above all, I wished to express truth; the sun is black. Think of an ebon sun fringed with its dazzling photosphere! I tried to paint sun-rhythms, the rhythms of the quivering sky, which is never still even when it seems most immobile; I tried to paint the rhythms of the atmosphere, shivering as it is with chords of sunlight and chromatic scales as yet unpainted. Like Oswald Alving in Ibsen's Ghosts, my last cry will be for 'the sun.' How did my friends act? What did the critics say? A black sun was too much for the world, though astronomers have proven my theory correct. The doctors swore I drank too much absinthe; the critics said a species of optical madness had set in; that I saw only the peripheral tints--I was yellow and blue crazy. Perhaps I was, perhaps I am. So is the fellow crazy who invented wireless telegraphy; so is the man off his base who invents a folding bird cage. We are all crazy, and the craziest gang are our doctors at the Hermitage." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Arved rolled his handsome head acquiescingly.

"You poets and musicians are trying to compass the inane. You are trying to duplicate your dreams, dreams without a hint of the sun. The painter at least copies or interprets real life; while the composer dips his finger in the air, making endless sound-scrolls--noises with long tails and whirligig decorations like foolish fireworks--though I think the art of the future will be pyrotechnics. Mad, mad, I tell you! But whether mad or not matters little in our land of freedom, where all men are born unequal, where only the artists are sad. They are useless beings, openly derided, and when one is caught napping, doing something that offends church or State or society, he is imprisoned. Mad, you know! No wonder anarchy is thriving, no wonder every true artist is an anarch, unavowed perhaps, yet an anarch, and an atheist."

"Not so fast!" interrupted Arved. "I'm an anarchist, but I don't believe in blowing up innocent policemen. Neither do you, Quell. You wouldn't hurt a bartender! Give an anarchist plenty to drink, and he sheds his anarchy like a shirt. There are, I have noticed, three stages in the career of a revolutionist: destruction, instruction, construction. He begins the first at twenty, at forty he is teaching, at sixty he believes in society--especially if he has money in the bank." Quell regarded the speaker sourly.

"You are a wonder, Arved. You fly off on a wild tangent stimulated by the mere sound of a word. Who said anything about dynamite-anarchy? There's another sort that men of brains--madmen if you will--believe and indirectly teach. Emerson was one, though he hardly knew it. Thoreau realized it for him, however. Don't you remember his stern rebuke when Emerson visited him in Concord jail: 'Henry, why art thou here?' meekly inquired the mystic man. 'Ralph, why art thou _not_ here?' was the counter-question. Thoreau had brave nerves. To live in peace in this malicious swamp of a world we must all wear iron masks until we are carted off to the _domino-park_; pious people call it the cemetery. Now, I'm going to sleep. I'm tired of all this jabbering. We are crazy for sure, or else we wouldn't talk so much."

Arved grumbled, "Yes, I've noticed that when a man in an asylum begins to suspect his keepers of madness he's mighty near lunacy himself."

"You have crazy blue eyes, Arved! Where's that flask--I'm dry again! Let's sleep."

They drained the bottle and were soon dozing, while about them buzzed the noon in all its torrid splendour.

When they awoke it was solid night. They yawned and damned the darkness, which smelt like stale india-rubber, so Quell said. They cursed life and the bitter taste in their mouths. Quell spoke of his thirst in words that startled the easy-going Arved, who confessed that if he could rid himself of the wool in his throat, he would be comparatively happy. Then they stumbled along, bumping into trees, feeling with outstretched arms, but finding nothing to guide them save the few thin stars in the torn foliage overhead. Without watches, they could catch no idea of the hour. The night was far spent, declared Arved; he discovered that he was very hungry. Suddenly, from the top of a steep, slippery bank they pitched forward into the highroad.

Arved put out his hand, searching for his comrade. "Quell, Quell!" he whispered. Quell rose darkly beside him, a narrow lath of humanity. Locking arms, both walked briskly until, turning a sharp, short corner, they beheld, all smiling in the night, a summer garden, well lighted and full of gay people, chattering, singing, eating, drinking--happy! The two fugitives were stunned for a moment by such a joyful prospect. Tears came slowly to their eyes, yet they never relaxed their gait. Arriving at an outlying table and seats, they bethought themselves of their appearance, of money, of other disquieting prospects; but, sitting down, they boldly called a waiter.

Luckily it was a country girl who timidly took their order for beer and sandwiches. And they drank eagerly, gobbling the food as soon as it came, ordering more so noisily that they attracted attention. The beer made them brave. As they poured down glass after glass, reckless of the reckoning, insolent to the servant, they began wrangling over the subject that had possessed their waking hours.

"Look here, Quell!" Arved exclaimed crustily, "you said I had crazy blue eyes. What about your own red ones? Crazy! Why, they glow now like a rat's. Poets may be music-mad, drunk with tone--"

"And other things," sneered the painter.

"--but at least their work is great when it endures; it does not fade away on rotten canvas."

"Now, I know you ought to be in the Brain-College, Arved, where your friends could take the little green car that goes by the grounds and see you on Sunday afternoons if weather permits."

His accent seemed deliberately insulting to Arved, who, however, let it pass because of their mutual plight. If they fell to fighting, detection would ensue. So he answered in placatory phrases:--

"Yes, my friend, we both belong to the same establishment, for we are men of genius. As the cat said to Alice, 'We must be mad or else we shouldn't be here.' I started to tell you why my people thought I had better take the cure. I loved the moon too much and loathed sunlight. If I had never tried to write lunar poetry--the tone quality of music combined with the pictorial evocation of painting--I might be in the bosom of my family now instead of--"

"Drinking with a crazy painter, eh?" Quell was very angry. He shouted for drinks so rapidly that he alarmed the more prudent Arved; and as they were now the last guests, the head waiter approached and curtly bade them leave. In an instant he was dripping with beer thrown at him--glass and all--by the irate Quell. A whistle sounded, two other waiters rushed out, and the battle began. Arved, aroused by the sight of his friend on the ground with three men hammering his head, gave a roar like the trumpeting of an elephant. A chair was smashed over a table, and, swinging one-half of it, he made a formidable onslaught. Two of the waiters were knocked senseless and the leader's nose and teeth crushed in by the rude cudgel. The morose moon started up, a tragic hieroglyph in the passionless sky. Quell, seeing its hated disk, howled, his face aflame with exaltation. Then he leaped like a hoarsely panting animal upon the poet; a moment and they were in the grass clawing each other. And the moon foamed down upon them its magnetic beams until darkness, caused by a coarse blanket, enveloped, pinioned, smothered them. When the light shone again, they were sitting in a wagon, their legs tightly bound....

They began singing. The attendant interrupted:--

"Will you fellows keep quiet? How can a man drive straight, listening to your cackle?"

Arved touched his temple significantly and nudged Quell.

"Another one of us. Another rebel of the moon!"