He did not understand what I would be at; that, perhaps, was hardly wonderful.
"The music has affected me," he mumbled.
"Then come and let some champagne affect you," I advised him irritably.
"What, are you to spoil a pleasant evening?"
He looked at me with ponderous sorrowful reproach.
"A pleasant evening!" he groaned, as he blew his nose.
"Yes," I cried loudly. "A d.a.m.nably pleasant evening, M. Struboff," and I caught him by the arm, dragged him from his stool, and carried him off to the table with me. Here I set him down between Varvilliers and myself; Wetter and Coralie, deep in low-voiced conversation, paid no heed to him. He began to eat and drink eagerly and with appet.i.te.
"You perceive, Struboff," said I persuasively, "that while we have stomachs--and none, my friend, can deny that you have one--the world is not empty of delight. You and I may have our grazes--Varvilliers, have you a graze on the knee by chance?--but consider, I pray you, the case of the man who has no dinner."
"It would be very bad to have no dinner," said Struboff, in full-mouthed meditation.
"Besides that," said I lightly--I grew better tempered every moment--"what are these fine-spun miseries with which we afflict ourselves? To be empty, to be thirsty, to be cold--these are evils. Was ever any man, well-fed, well-drunk, and well-warmed, really miserable?
Reflect before you answer, Struboff."
He drained a gla.s.s of champagne, and, I suppose, reflected.
"If he had his piano also----" he began.
"Great Heavens!" I interrupted with a laugh.
Coralie turned from Wetter and fixed her eyes on her husband. He perceived her glance directly; his appet.i.te appeared to become enfeebled, and he drank his wine with apologetic slowness. She went on looking at him with a merciless amus.e.m.e.nt; his whole manner became expressive of a wish to be elsewhere. I saw Varvilliers smothering a smile; he sacrificed much to good manners. I myself laughed gently.
Suddenly, to my surprise, Wetter caught Coralie by the wrist.
"You see that man?" he asked, smiling and fixing his eyes on her.
"Oh, yes, I see my husband," said she.
"Your husband, yes. Shall I tell you something? You remember what I"ve been saying to you?"
"Very well; you"ve repeated it often. Are you going to repeat it now out loud?"
"Where"s the use? Everybody here knows. I"ll tell you another thing." He leaned forward, still holding her wrist tightly. "Look at Struboff," he said. "Look well at him."
"I am giving myself the pleasure of looking at M. Struboff," said Coralie.
"Very well. When you die--because you"ll grow old, and you"ll grow ugly, and at last, after you have become very ugly, you"ll die."
Coralie looked rather vexed, a little perturbed and protesting. Wetter had touched the one point on which she had troubled herself to criticise the order of the universe.
"When, I say, you die," pursued Wetter, "when, after growing extremely ugly, you die, you will be sent to h.e.l.l because you have not appreciated the virtues or repaid the devotion of my good friend M. Struboff. And, sire" (he turned to me), "when one considers that, it appears unreasonable to imagine that eternity will be in any degree less peculiar than this present life of ours."
"That"s all very well," said Coralie, "but after having grown ugly I don"t think I should mind anything else."
I clapped my hands.
"I think," said I, "if M. Struboff will pardon the supposition, that madame will be allowed to escape perdition. For, see, she will stand up and she will say quite calmly, with that adorable smile of hers----"
"They don"t mind smiles there, sire," put in Varvilliers.
"She"ll smile not to please them, but because she"s amused," said I.
"She"ll say with her adorable smile, "This and that I have done, this and that I have not done. Perhaps I did wrong, I have not studied your rules. But you can"t send me to h.e.l.l.""
They all appeared to be listening with attentive ears.
"Here"s a good advocate," said Wetter. "Let us hear the plea."
""You can"t send me to h.e.l.l because I have not pretended. I have been myself, and I didn"t make myself. I can"t go to h.e.l.l with the pretenders.""
"But to heaven with the kings?" asked Varvilliers.
"With the kings who have not also been pretenders," said I.
"_Nom de Dieu_," said she, "I believe that I shall escape, after all. So you and I will be separated, Wetter."
"No, no," he protested. "Unless you"re there the place won"t be itself to me."
We all laughed--Struboff not in appreciation, but with a nervous desire to make himself agreeable--and I rose from my seat. It was three o"clock in the morning. Struboff yawned mightily as he drank a final gla.s.s and patted his stomach. I think that we were all happier than when we sat down.
"And after the occasion, whither?" I asked them.
"I back to France," answered Varvilliers.
"We to Munich," said Coralie, with a shrug.
"I the deuce knows where," laughed Wetter.
"I also the deuce knows where. Come, then, to our next merry supper!" I poured out a gla.s.s of wine. They all followed my example, and we drank.
"But we shall have no more," said Wetter.
A moment"s silence fell on us all. Then Wetter spoke again. He turned to them and indicated me with a gesture.
"He"s a good fellow, our Augustin."
"Yes, a good fellow," said Varvilliers.
"A very good fellow," muttered Struboff, who was more than a little gone in liquor.
"A good fellow," said Coralie. Then she stepped up to me, put her hands on my shoulders, and kissed me on both cheeks. "A good fellow, our little Augustin," said she.
There was nothing much in this; casual phrases of goodwill, spoken at a moment of conviviality, the outcome of genuine but perhaps not very deep feeling, except for that trifle of the kisses almost an ordinary accompaniment or conclusion of an evening"s entertainment. I was a good fellow; the light praise had been lightly won. Yet even now as I write, looking back over the years, I can not, when I accuse myself of mawkishness, be altogether convinced by the self-denunciation. For what it was worth, the thing came home to me; for a moment it overleaped the barriers that were round me, the differences that made a hedge between me and them; for a moment they had forgotten that I was not merely their good comrade. I would not have people forget often what I am; but now and then it is pleasant to be no more than what I myself am. And the two there, Wetter and Varvilliers, were the nearest to friends that I have known. One went back to his country, the other the deuce knew where. I should be alone.
Alone I made my way back from Wetter"s house, alone and on foot. I had a fancy to walk thus through the decorated streets; alone to pause an instant before the Countess" door, recollecting many things; alone to tell myself that the stocking must be kept over the graze, and that the asking of sympathy was the betrayal of my soul"s confidence to me; alone to be weak, alone to be strong; alone to determine to do my work with my own life, alone to hope that I must not render too wretched the life of another. I had good from that walk of mine. For you see, when a man is alone, above all, I think, when he is alone in the truce of night, one day"s fight done and the new morning"s battle not yet joined, he can pause and stand and think. He can be still; then his worst and his best steal out, like mice from their holes (the cat of convention is asleep), and play their gambols and antics before his eyes: he knows them and himself, and reaches forth to know the world and his work in it, his life and the end of it, the difference, if any, that he has made by spending so much pains on living.