BY GERALDINE BONNER
In January the darkness settles early in Paris. It was not yet five, and it was closing in, soft and sudden. This particular night it was rendered denser by the light rain that was falling—one of those needle-pointed, noiseless rains that come in the midst of a Paris winter and persist for days.
Celia Reardon came home through it, letting her skirts flap against her heels. The package of sketches she had not sold to the dealer on the Rue Bonaparte was under her arm. From beneath the dark tent of her umbrella she looked straight before her down the vista of the street, glistening and winking from its lamps and windows. The light, striking clearly on her face, revealed it as small, pale, and plain, with a tight line of lip, and eyes sombrely staring at nothing. She made no attempt to lift her sodden skirt or avoid puddles.
Walking heavily forward through the early dusk, she was advancing to meet the giant Despair.
This was on her mind, and, to the observant eye, in her face. Celia knew of only one way to evade the approaching giant. It was by the turn that led to the river. Many people, in their terror at his approach, took this turn. She had seen them in the morgue in the days when she was new to Paris, and went about seeing the sights like a tourist.
After the dealer on the Rue Bonaparte had given her back the sketches, telling her it was impossible to sell them, she had turned downward toward the quais, and came out there, under the skeleton trees, where the book-stalls line the wall. The dark, slumberous current of the river swept by under the gemmed arches of its bridges. It was carrying away all the foul and useless things of the day’s tumultuous life, all going helter-skelter, pell-mell, to the oblivion of the sea.
She thought of herself going with them, whirling about in the currents, serenely indifferent to everything that tortured her now. The thought had a creeping fascination. She drew nearer, staring down at the water, stabbed with hundreds of quivering lights, and saw herself—a face, a trail of hair, a few folds of eddying drapery—go floating by. A sudden gust of wind snatched at her umbrella, and shook a deluge from the tree boughs, fretting the surface of the pools. It roused her, and she turned away shuddering. She would wait and meet the Giant face to face.
As she turned into the impasse where her studio was, she felt that he was getting very near. The long walk had tired her. Since yesterday her only food had been the free tea at the Girls’ Club. Her door was the last on the left-hand side, and broke the face of what looked a blank wall. Near it a bell-handle hung on the end of a wire. On the fourth floor she opened a door that had her card nailed to it.
The studio was dark, only the large window showed a dim, gray square. She lit the lamp, and then, suddenly, in the recklessness of her desperation, the fire. There were eight pieces of wood and six briquettes in the box. She would burn them all. She would burn the bed and the chairs, but she would be warm to-night. To-morrow was twelve hours off.
The light showed the emptiness of the chill, barn-like room. The walls alone were furnished, decorated with a series of life-class studies, some made twenty years before, when she had been the star of one of the Julians. Now these spirited delineations of nakedness, unlovely and unabashed, offered silent testimony to the brilliant promise of Celia Reardon’s youth. To-night she only thought of the fire and cowered over it—a little, pale shadow of a woman, near upon middle age.
For hours she sat watching the flames dart up through the holes in the briquettes. The warmth consoled her. She grew dreamy and retrospective. Her thoughts went slipping back from point to point, in the glamourous past, when she had been hung in the Salon, and sold her pictures, and was an artist people spoke of who would some day “arrive.” From those radiant days of youth and hope, things had been gradually declining to this—one by one stand-bys failing and her old patrons leaving, rich Americans who ordered copies growing scarcer and scarcer. Finally no money to hire models, bad food, and, in consequence, declining health, poor work that failed to find a market; pride coming to her aid and withdrawing her from the help of friends; furtive visits to the Mont de Piete, and more dreaded ones to the dealers on the Rue Bonaparte; and to-night the end of all things.
It was late when she slept. Waking in the gray dawn she found herself lying cramped and cold in front of the white ashes of the fire, and crept shivering to bed. There she slept on till after midday. She felt weak and stupid when she rose, and her dressing took a long time. She began to realize that her state was nearly as bad physically as it was financially.
It was better to walk about the streets till the hour for tea than to freeze in the studio. She put on her hat and jacket, relics of better days to which she desperately clung, and went forth. In the night the thermometer had fallen and the rain had turned to snow. She buried her chin in her collar and tried to walk briskly. She thought she would go to the Louvre, which was warm, and sit there till four, when she could come back to the Girls’ Club. Both walks were long, but the hour’s rest at the Louvre would strengthen her, and there was still the faint possibility of meeting some one she knew who would order a copy.
She felt singularly tired when the long flank of Catharine de’ Medici’s part of the old palace came into view with the river sucking at the wall. All the surroundings were gray and motionless like a picture, and in the midst of this dead immobility the swift, turbulent tide rolled on, a thing of sinister life, calling to her as it sped. Midway across the bridge she stopped to look down on it, and then stood gazing, fascinated, unable to tear herself away.
Close to her, on the coping of the wall, an image-seller had set out his wares. They were a dream of fair women, classic and modern. The solemn majesty of the great Venus was contrasted with Phryne hiding her eyes in a spasm of modesty. Clytie, with the perfect fall of her shoulders, rising from the lily leaves that fold back as if unwilling to hide so much beauty, stood droopingly beside the proud nakedness of Falguière’s Diane. The boy who presided over this gallery of loveliness—a meagre Italian, his face nipped with frost—stood a hunched-up, wretched figure, his eyes questioning the passers-by.
Presently one of these halted in the hurrying march with an eye on Clytie. The boy drew his hands from his pockets, and with piteous eagerness held out the bust. The tones of his voice penetrated Celia’s dark musings, and she looked that way.
The buyer was a lady, young, and of a curiously soft and silly prettiness. She displayed all of a Parisienne’s flawless finish. Her cheek, by art or nature, was like a magnolia petal; her hair showed burnished on its loose ripples. Beneath the edge of her veil her uncovered mouth appeared, fresh as a child’s, serious, and charmingly foolish. Her chin rested on a fluff of white tulle and was a white of a warmer tint. There was dubious debate in her glance as it paused on the figures. She looked the incarnation of sweet indecision. Presently she decided on Clytie, and said she would take it with her. Celia knew she had bought the head from a sudden, careless pity for the boy’s red nose and chilblains. If she had peddled sketches on the bridge, with her nose red and her toes coming through her boots, she, too, would have made money, she thought, as she hungrily wondered how much the boy had made by his sale.
The lady unclasped the little bag that hung by a chain to her wrist, and searched for money. She was evidently careless, and carried many things therein. Suddenly she jerked out a whisp of pocket-handkerchief, and under it found the cache where the money had been secreted. She bent her face to search for the desired coin, and so did not see that with the handkerchief a five-franc piece had been twitched out.
Celia did see. She saw it spring out, and then drop into a bank of snow, noiselessly, as if purposely to avoid detection. She made a step forward to pick it up and return it. And then she stopped—a thought went through her like a zigzag of lightning. Cupidity, born of hunger, burst into life in her, and nailed her to the spot, her mouth dry, her eyes vacant of expression. For the first time in her life Temptation gripped her.
The traditions of generations of seemly New England forbears cried out upon her and struggled within her. But she stood her ground. The coin lying in the snow seemed of more importance to her than everything else in the world.
As the lady passed away, Celia drew near the images. The boy was rearranging them. When his back was turned she bent down and groped in the snow. Then rose with her face red.
She crushed down the shame that surged in her, and turned to leave the bridge. There is a Duval on the Boulevard St. Germain, and she almost ran to it, thinking as she went of what she would order. She would spend two francs and a half, allowing a twenty-five centime pourboire for the girl.
It was not the crowded hour, and she had no need to hurry. She ate sumptuously and slowly, and began to feel the revivifying tide of life flowing back into her starved body. The Giant began to look dim and distant. The river called no more. In the leisurely French fashion she sat a long time over her meal. The day was darkening to its early twilight as she emerged and fared down the boulevard.
She was walking slowly down the great street, her body warmed, the cries of her hunger stilled, when the enormity of her act began to force itself upon her. She refused to acknowledge it at first. Hunger was sufficient excuse. But not so much her conscience as her sense of dainty self-respect insisted on her shame. She was a thief. Her whiteness was stained forever. She had never before done anything for which to blush or to lie. Her poverty, her discouragement, her pitiful, proud struggles, had always been honest. She would as soon have thought of murdering some one as of stealing from them.
Now she had done it. One moment’s temptation had marked her forever. As the money had fallen into the snow something in her had fallen, never to rise.
Pursued by harassing thoughts, she half-unconsciously wended her way toward the river. Here, unencumbered by houses, daylight still lingered. The gray afternoon was dying with a frosty brilliance. In its death throes it exhaled a sudden, angry red which broke through the clouds in smoldering radiance. Its flush tinted the sky and touched the tops of the wavelets, and Celia felt it on her face like the color of shame.
As she stood staring at it, her pallor glazed with an unnatural blush, an inspiration came to her which sent a tide of real color into her face. A manner of redeeming herself suddenly was revealed to her. She would give the rest of the money to the most needy person she met that evening. She would walk the city till she found some one more deserving of it than she. Then she would give all she had—share her theft with some other pauper to whom two francs would mean salvation.
She felt instantly stimulated and revived by a return of self-respect. Either side of the river would be rich in case of heartbreak and hunger. Standing in the middle of the bridge, she looked from the straight line of gray houses on the Quai Voltaire to the vast façade of the Louvre. Then some whim impelled her to choose the side of the city where wealth dwells, and she walked forward toward the guichets of the old palace.
The city had on the first phase of its evening aspect of brilliantly illumined gayety. People were dining; she caught glimpses of them over the half-curtains of restaurant windows. Women in voluminous wraps were making mincing exits from the hotel doorways to waiting fiacres. There was the frou-frou of skirts, whiffs of perfumery, the shifting of many feet under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli.
Passing the entrance of one of the largest hotels, she was arrested by a familiar voice, and a richly clad and rustling lady deflected her course from the carriage that awaited her at the curb toward the astonished artist. Celia felt a curious sensation of fatefulness when she saw in the face before her that of an old patron, long absent from Paris. The lady gave her a warm greeting; she wanted to see her to-morrow, apropos of some copies to be made. Had Celia time to make the copies? Well, then, would she come to lunch to-morrow and talk it over?
The little artist blinked in the glare of the doorway and the lady’s diamonds. She would.
And now would she go to the theatre with the lady? Only her niece was with her, and they had a box.
No—Celia could not do that. She had—er—business—business that might keep her up very late.
The carriage rolled away with the lady and the niece, and Celia turned up one of the side streets that lead to the great boulevard. So Fortune was going to smile on her once more. All the more reason to square things with her conscience. She grasped her purse tightly and looked about her as she passed up the narrow thoroughfare. Misery often lurked ashamed in corners. She knew just how and why.
A few moments more walking, with an occasional turn into cross-cuts, brought her into the spacious widening of the ways before the Gare St. Lazare. It was particularly lively inside the depot inclosure, as the boat train for Calais was soon to leave. There was an incessant rattling of carriages piled high with trunks, and a great disgorging of travelers, who ran staggering up the steps weighted with the amazing amount of hand luggage indispensable to the Continental tourist.
Certainly it did not look a promising place in which to seek distressed humanity. Celia turned away and began to walk upward toward the street which flanks the building on the left, and winds an ascending course toward Montmartre. It was badly lit, sheltered by the vast blank wall of the depot, and showed only an occasional passer-by, and the lamps of a long line of waiting fiacres.
As she advanced into the semi-obscurity of this dark byway, a carriage rattled up and stopped precipitately near the side entrance into the yard. A man sprang out and then turned with a sort of elaboration of gallantry and helped out a woman. Celia idly noted her trim foot as it felt for the step, her darkly clad, elegant figure, then her face. It came with a shock of familiarity on its smooth, rounded prettiness; now, however, no longer placid, but deeply disturbed. Under it unwonted currents of feeling were corrugating the brow and making the lips droop. Only an eye used to note faces would have recognized it as that of the woman who had bought the head of Clytie a few hours before.
Celia loitered, and then drew back into the shadow of the wall. The woman was evidently in the grip of mental distress. Apprehension, indecision, terror almost, were stamped on her mobile and childish countenance. The man stretched his hand inside the carriage and pulled out two valises. He spoke to her, shortly but with slightly veiled tenderness, and with a start like a frightened animal she drew back into the shadow. He paid the driver, and then, standing between the bags, he drew out his pocket-book and gave her some murmured instructions.
She suddenly interrupted him in a louder key.
“I have my ticket,” she said, “I bought it this afternoon. I passed Cook’s, and went in and bought it.”
“You bought it yourself?” giving her a fatuously loving look from under his hat-brim, “you were afraid we would perhaps be late? Dear one, how thoughtful!”
“I don’t know what I thought. Oh, yes, I do. I thought if I went in to buy it here with you I might see some one I knew. That would be so dreadful.”
“Of course, you must not go in with me. You must wait here. Keep back in the shadow there while I’m gone.”
“Here—take it—Oh, I’m so nervous! Take it, and get yours, and then come back.”
She feverishly clawed off the little bag she wore on her wrist, and thrust it into his hand. Though less obviously so, the man was also nervous. He clutched up his valises, and put them down; then glanced uneasily up and down the street’s dim length.
“I’ll go alone and buy mine,” he said, “and put the bags in the compartment. I’ll be gone a few moments. You wait here, and don’t move till I come for you.”
“Oh, of course, not. I shouldn’t dare. And please hurry. I don’t see how I will ever be able to get in. At any moment I might meet some one I know. Think of what that would be! I had no idea this was going to be so terrible. It’s not easy to do wrong.”
“Do wrong?” echoed the man, in a tone of tender, though somewhat hurried, reproof. “Don’t say such foolish things. We have a right to happiness. Oh—er—haven’t you got a veil you could put on when you enter the Gare? It would be better.”
A bell rang within the building, and the woman gave a suppressed shriek.
“Oh, go—go!” she cried wildly. “Don’t stop to talk now. That may be the train. What would happen if we missed it?”
The bell struck him into action, too, and he hurried off, swaying between the two heavy valises.
Celia, from her station near the wall, was too smitten by the sudden revelation before her to have will to move. So she was eloping, this baby-cheeked creature, whose kindly impulse had prompted her to buy the Clytie from the frost-nipped boy on the bridge. Without any natural predisposition in that direction, she was going the way of the Devil, and even at this stage stood aghast, bemused, and terrified at what she had done.
The Frenchwoman moved forward into the light, and stood for a moment watching her departing lover. Then she began to send fearful glances up and down the street. Celia thought she could hear her breathing, and the thumping of her heart. It was not hard to see how she had been cajoled and overruled.
Suddenly, from the fullness of her heart her mouth spoke: “Oh, I want to go home.” She spoke aloud, making at the same moment a gesture of clasping her hands. Her face took on an expression as near to resolution as possible. Its flower-soft curves stiffened. Her lover was gone, and her hypnotized will was struggling to life.
She turned desperately toward the line of carriages and beckoned to the cocher of the nearest one, then dropped the raised hand to her wrist, where the bag had hung. It encountered nothing, and in a moment she remembered that her purse was with the man.
“Good God!” she said, and this time the violent Gallic ejaculation sounded appropriate.
As the carriage rattled up, Celia came out of the shadow. She spoke excellent French, and the Parisienne might have thought her a fellow-countrywoman. “What is the matter?” she said, quietly. “Do you feel sick?”
“No—no—but my money is gone. I gave my purse to my friend, and now I want to go back.”
“But he’ll be here again in a minute.”
“That’s just it—in a minute. And I must go before he comes back, and I have no money.”
“You can always pay the cocher at the house.”
“Not now—not to-night.”
She was far past a regard for the ordinary reticences of every-day life, but the humiliation of her admission was in her face. “My husband—he’s there, with only one old servant. He thinks I’m in the country with my mother. So I was till this afternoon. If I come home unexpectedly with no money to pay the cocher, he will be surprised. He will be angry. He will want to know all about it—I can’t explain it or tell more lies. I was mad when I said I’d go. I didn’t realize—Oh, good heavens!” with a sudden burst of agonized incoherence, “here he is! He’s coming and that will be the end of me.”
Celia turned. Against the bright background of the depot entrance she saw the Frenchman’s thick-set figure coming rapidly down the steps. He had got rid of the valises, and was almost running.
“Quick,” she said, and turning to the waiting carriage wrenched open the door.
“Get in,” she commanded. The terrified creature did so. She was ready to be dominated by any imperious will. Celia stretched her arm through the window, and into the little gloved hand pressed the two-franc piece, then cried:
“You can tell the cocher the address when you get started. Don’t stop him till you get some way off. Go,” she cried to the man, “down by the Rue Auber—don’t waste a minute. Fly!”
The cocher flicked his horse with the whip, and it started. At the window a pale face appeared, and Celia heard the cry: “But your name, your address? I must send the money back.”
“Never mind that,” cried Celia, “it isn’t mine. It’s conscience money.”
The fiacre rolled down the street, and, plunging into the mêlée of vehicles, wound its way through the press to the Rue Auber. A man standing on the sidewalk drew the stares of the passers-by as he gazed blankly this way and that. A woman quietly picked her way across the carrefour, toward the station where one takes the Vaugirard omnibus.