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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sured him that the amethyst had disappeared. She was literally drinking _his_ gift away in absinthe. The spring pa.s.sed, 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 _ca_!--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 garcon 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 att.i.tude of his double a.s.sured 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 coupe 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 cafe"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 p.r.o.nounced in the purest English. Ambroise did not understand. Then followed some rapidly uttered jargon that might have been Moorish. He soothed her, and softly pa.s.sed 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 h.e.l.l. 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 gra.s.s.
"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 d.a.m.n 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 denouement. 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 G.o.d." 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, "s.e.xton 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!