Of Time and the River (116 page)

In spite of its gay jigging lilt, that tune had a kind of mournful fatality. It was one of those songs which seem to evoke perfectly— it is impossible to know why—the whole colour, life, and fragrance of a place and time as nothing else on earth can do. For the boy, that song would haunt him ever after with the image of Paris and of his life that year, with the memory of Starwick, Elinor, and Ann.

The song had for him the fatality of something priceless, irrecoverably lost, full of that bitter joy and anguish we can feel at twenty-four, when the knowledge of man’s brevity first comes to us, when we first know ruin and defeat, when we first understand what we have never known before: that for us, as for every other man alive, all passes, all is lost, all melts before our grasp like smoke; when we know that the moment of beauty carries in it the seeds of its own instant death, that love is gone almost before we have it, that youth is gone before we know it, and that, like every other man, we must grow old and die.

The orchestra had finished playing this tune and the dancers were going to their tables from the polished little square of floor; in a moment Starwick called the leader of the orchestra over to the table and asked him to play Starwick’s favourite song. This was a piece called “My Chile Bon Bon”; it was not new, Starwick had first heard it several years before in Boston, but like the other piece this tune was pregnant with the mournful fatality of a place and period; in its grotesque words and haunting melody there was the sense of something irrevocable, an utter surrender and a deliberate loss, a consciousness of doom. These two pieces together evoked the whole image and quality of that year, and of the life of these four people: for Starwick, in fact, this “Chile Bon Bon” song somehow perfectly expressed the complete fatality that had now seized his life, the sensual inertia of his will.

The orchestra leader nodded smilingly when Starwick asked him to play the song, went back and conferred with his musicians for a moment, and, himself taking up a violin, began to play. As the orchestra played, the leader walked toward their table, and, bending and swaying with the infinite ductile grace which a violin seems to give to all its performers, he stood facing the two women, seeming to offer up the wailing, hauntingly mournful and exciting music as a kind of devotion to their loveliness.

Elinor, tapping the tune out with her fingers on the table-cloth, hummed the words lightly, absently, under her breath; Ann sat quietly, darkly, sullenly attentive; Starwick, at one end of the table, sat turned away, his legs indolently crossed, his ruddy face flushed with emotion, his eyes fixed in a blind stare, and a little wet.

Once, while the piece was being played, Starwick’s pleasant ruddy face was contorted again by the old bestial grimace of nameless anguish and bewilderment which Eugene had seen so many times before, and in which the sense of tragic defeat, frustration, the premonition of impending ruin was legible.

When the orchestra leader had finished with the tune, Starwick turned wearily, thrust his arm indolently across the table towards Ann and wiggling his fingers languidly and a trifle impatiently, said quietly:

“Give me some money.”

She flushed a little, opened her purse, and said sullenly:

“How much do you want?”

The weary impatience of his manner became more evident, he wiggled his languid fingers in a more peremptory command, and, burbling a little with laughter at sight of her sullen face, he said in a low tone of avaricious humour:

“Give, give, give. . . . Money, money, money,” he said in a low gloating tone, and burbled again, with a rich welling of humour, as he looked at her.

Red in the face, she flung a wad of banknotes down upon the table with almost vicious force; he accepted them languidly, stripped off 300 franc notes and handed them indolently to the orchestra leader, who responded with a bow eloquent with adoration; and then, without pausing to count them, Starwick thrust the remainder carelessly in his pocket.

“Ann!” he said reproachfully. “I am VERY hurt!” He paused a moment; the flow and burble of soft laughter came quickly, flushing his ruddy face, and he continued as before, with a mock gravity of reproachful humour.

“I had hoped—” his shoulders trembled slightly—“that by this time your FINER nature—” he trembled again with secret merriment—“your FINER nature would be ready to reveal itself.”

“My finer nature be damned!” Ann said angrily. “Whether you like it or not, I think it’s disgraceful the way you fling money around! Three hundred francs to a man for playing that damned song! And you’ve done the same thing at least a dozen times! God, I’m sick of hearing about your ‘Chile Bon Bon’!” she concluded bitterly. “I wish the damned thing had never been written.”

“Ann!” again the soft mockery of sounded reproach. “And this is the way you repay us, after all we’ve done for you! It’s not that I’m angry but I’m VERY, VERY hurt,” he said gently. “I really am, you know.”

“Ah-h!” She made a sudden exasperated movement as if she was going to push the table away from her and get up, and then said with angry warning: “Now, look here, Frank, don’t you start that again about how much you’ve done for me. Done for me!” she said furiously. “Done for me!” She laughed, short and hard, with angry exasperation, and was unable to find words to continue.

Starwick’s burble of soft laughter answered her:

“I KNOW!” he said, his face reddening a little as he spoke—“But, after all, you ARE a little TIGHT, Ann”—his shoulders trembled slightly, and his ruddy face grew deeper with its hue of humour. “I think,” he said gently, and paused again, trembling with quiet laughter—“I think it may be what is known as the Beacon Hill influence. And really,” he continued seriously, looking at her with grave eyes, “you really ought to try to get it out of you.”

“Now, Frank,” cried Ann angrily, half rising from the table, “if you start that again about my being stingy—” She sat down again abruptly, and burst out with bitter resentment, “I’m not stingy and you know it! . . . It’s not that I mind spending the money, giving it to you when I’ve got it. . . . It’s only that I think everyone ought to try to bear his own share. . . . If you think that’s my New England stinginess you’re welcome to your opinion. . . . But I’ve always felt that way and always will! . . . Stingy!” she muttered, “I’m not. . . . I’m just tired of being the goat all the time. . . . It seems to me the rest of you ought to share in the expense some time!”

“But not at ALL!” cried Starwick in a tone of astonished protest. “I can’t see that that makes the SLIGHTEST difference,” he went on gently. “After all, Ann, it’s not as if we were four old maids from Boston doing the grand tour and putting down every cent we spend in a mutual account-book,” he said a trifle sarcastically. “It’s not that kind of thing at all. When four people know each other the way we do, the last thing in the world that could POSSIBLY be of value is money. What belongs to one belongs to all. Really,” he said a trifle impatiently, “I should think you’d understand that. It’s QUITE astonishing to see a person of your quality with such a material—rather GRASPING—view of money. I shouldn’t think it would make the SLIGHTEST difference to you. You really ought to get it out of your system, Ann,” he said quietly. “You really must. Because you ARE a GRAND person—you really are, you know.”

She flushed, and then muttered sullenly:

“Ah! Grand person my eye! I’ve heard all that before! You can’t get around it that way!”

“But you ARE!” he said, with earnest insistence. “You are a VERY grand person—that’s what makes the whole thing such a pity.”

She flushed again, and then sat staring at the table in sullen embarrassment.

“And, Ann,” said Starwick gently, beginning to burble with his soft flow of wicked laughter, “you are really VERY beautiful in that red dress—” his sensuous mannered tone trembled again with its burble of wicked humour—“and VERY seductive—and VERY,” his shoulders trembled and his face trembled as he spoke—“You are really QUITE voluptuous,” he said with sensual relish, and suddenly choked with laughter. When he had composed himself, he turned his still laughter-reddened face towards Eugene, and said earnestly: “It’s QUITE astonishing! She really is, you know! She’s GLORIOUSLY beautiful!”

“Frank!” she looked at him for a moment with an expression of baffled exasperation. Then, suddenly she laughed her short and angry laugh: “God!” she cried sarcastically. “It’s a high price to pay for compliments, isn’t it?”

But that laugh, short and angry as it was, had made radiant, as it always did, her dark and noble beauty. Instantly her face had been lifted, transfigured from its customary expression of dark and almost heavy sullenness, her cheeks, which in repose had the pendulous sagging quality of a plump child, were suffused with rose, her sweet red mouth and white teeth suddenly shone with a radiant and lovely smile, and Eugene noticed now, as he had begun to notice, that her grey eyes when she looked at Starwick were no longer hard and angry, but smoky, luminous with a depthless tenderness.

“You ARE,” Starwick concluded quietly, seriously, his pleasant face still a trifle flushed with laughter. “You are one of the most GLORIOUSLY beautiful creatures that ever lived.”

What he said was the simple truth. The girl’s beauty that night was almost unbelievable. She had put on a new evening dress which had been made for her by a famous designer. The dress was a glorious red, that seemed almost to float with an aerial buoyancy of filmy gauze; no dress in the world could have suited her dark beauty or revealed the noble proportions of her figure half so well. Her hair, which was black, coarse, and fragrant, was parted simply in the middle: Eugene noted that there were already a few streaks of coarse grey in it, but her face had the dignity of her grand and honest character—the sullen plumpness of a child and the radiant sudden sweetness and happiness of her smile, combined.

And in every other respect Ann showed this strange and lovely union of delicacy and grandeur, of the child and the woman. Her hands were long, brown, and narrow, the fingers long and delicate, the bones as fine and small as a bird’s, and yet they were strong, sensitive, able-looking hands as well. Her arms were long and slender, as firm and delicate as a young girl’s, but Eugene noted that her breasts were not round and firm, but the long heavy sloping breasts of a big woman. When she got up to dance with Starwick she topped him by a head, and yet, radiant with a joy and happiness she had never known before, she seemed to float there in his arms, an Amazonian figure, great of thigh and limb and breast, and a creature of a loveliness as delicate and radiant as a child’s.

They danced superbly together: in deference to Starwick, the orchestra played his “Chile Bon Bon” song again; when they returned to the table Starwick’s ruddy face was flushed with the emotion the song always aroused in him, his eyes looked wet, and in a high, passionate, almost womanish tone, he cried to Eugene:

“God! Isn’t it grand! Isn’t it simply superb! It’s one of the great songs of the world; it really is, you know! The thing has the same quality as a great primitive—the same quality as a primitive Apollo or Cimabue’s Madonna, in the Louvre. Christ!” he cried in a high womanish tone, “the whole thing’s there—it really is! I think it’s the greatest song that was ever written!”

He poured out a glass of champagne, cold and sparkling, and drank it thirstily, his eyes wet, his face flushed deeply with his feeling.

LXXIX

In the dull grey light of the short and swiftly waning winter’s day, the two young men were leaving the museum, to spend the rest of the afternoon until the time of their appointed meeting with the women, in drink and talk at one of the innumerable and seductive cafés of the magic city. Outside the Louvre, they hailed a taxi and were driven swiftly over one of the bridges of the Seine, through the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, and at length stopped and got out before La Closerie des Lilas, where they were to meet the two women later on.

They spent the remainder of the afternoon in the chill wintry air of the terrace, warm with drink, with argument or discussion, and with the gaiety of life and voices of people all around them, the pageant of life that passed for ever on the street before them—all that priceless, rare, and uncostly pleasure and excitement of café life which seemed unbelievable and magical to these two young Americans. The dull grey air, which was at once chill and wintry, and yet languorous, filled them with the sense of some powerful, strange, and inhuman excitement that was impending for them.

And the bright gaiety of the colours, the constant flash and play of life about them and along the pavements, the smell and potent intoxication of the cognac, gave them the sensation of a whole world given over without reserve or shame to pleasure. All these elements, together with that incomparable fusion of odours—at once corrupt and sensual, subtle and obscene—which exudes from the very texture of the Paris life—odours which it is impossible to define exactly but which seem in the dull wintry air to be compacted of the smells of costly perfumes, of wine, beer, brandy, and of the acrid and nostalgic fumes of French tobacco, of roasted chestnuts, black French coffee, mysterious liquors of a hundred brilliant and intoxicating colours, and the luxurious flesh of scented women— smote the two young men instantly with the sensual impact of this strange and fascinating world.

But in spite of all the magic of the scene, and the assurance and security which Starwick’s presence always gave to him, the ghost of the old unquiet doubt would not wholly be laid at rest, the ache of the old hunger stirred in Eugene. Why was he here now? Why had he come? The lack of purpose in this present life, the dozing indolence of this existence in which no one worked, in which they sat constantly at tables in a café, and ate and drank and talked, and moved on to sit at other tables, other cafés—and, most of all, the strange dull faces of the Frenchmen, the strange and alien life of this magic city which was so seductive but so unalterably foreign to all that he had ever known—all this had now begun to weigh inexplicably upon a troubled spirit, to revive again the old feelings of naked homelessness, to stir in him the nameless sense of shame and guilt which an American feels at a life of indolence and pleasure, which is part of the very chemistry of his blood, and which he can never root out of him. And feeling the obscure but powerful insistence of these troubled thoughts within his mind, he turned suddenly to Starwick, and without a word of explanation said: