Robert W. Service

“ Tense and panting, I stared at her; then, as the lamplight fell on her ghastly face I uttered a cry of amazement. Heavens above! it was the girl of the entomological meal-ticket, the persistent pedestrian of Tavistock Square.
There she cowered, looking at me with great, terror dilated eyes. There I glowered, regarding her grimly enough. At last I broke the silence.
“Child! Child! why did you do it? You’ve gone and spoilt my story. I should never have met you like this. It’s coincidence. Coincidence, you know, can’t happen in fiction, only in real life. You can’t be fiction now. ”

“ I have begun a series of articles on Paris, and have just finished the first two, bestowing on them a world of loving care. Never have I known such a steady glow of inspiration. A pure delight in form and colour thrills in me. I begin to see beauty in the commonest things, to find a joy in the simplest moments of living.
It is rather curious, this. For instance, I gaze in rapture at a shop where vegetables are for sale, charmed with its oasis of fresh colouring in the grey street, the globular gold of turnips, the rich ruby of radishes, the ivory white of parsnips. ”

“ So, recognising the genius of the race, I submitted meekly to Anastasia’s sense of economy. Her greatest delight was to spend the afternoon in the great Magasins that lie behind the Opera. She would spend three hours there, walking them from end to end, turning over enormous quantities of stuff which she would throw aside in the contemptuous way of the born shopper, swooping hawk-like, pressing intrepidly through crowds that appalled me, breathing air that gave me a headache, and in the end returning with six sous of riband, declaring that she had had a glorious day. ”

“ How radiant the sunshine seems as I emerge from our gloomy porch-way, with its prison-like gate! The gaunt rue Mazarin is a lane of light, and the ancient houses, with their inscriptions of honourable service seem to smile in every wrinkle. Each has a character of its own. There are some that step disdainfully back from their fellows, and there are quaint roofs and unexpected, pokey little windows, and a dilapidated irregularity that takes one back to the days of swashbuckling romance. ”

“ Unconsciously I had reverted to my yarn-spinning style, yet often in the white heat of inspiration I had hit on the master-word just as surely as if I had pondered half a day. However, the result as a whole I regarded with disfavour. The work was lacking in distinction, in reserve, in the fine art of understatement. Instead of keeping my story well in hand I had let it gallop away with me. Truly I was incorrigible.
“Anastasia,” I said one day, as I was about half through with my revision, “you’re always asking if there’s no way you can help me. I can suggest one.” ”

“ I leapt down the stairs; caught a taxi that was passing, shouted the number of the house and street, adding that it was a matter of life and death; leaped out before the taxi came to a stand; called to the concierge to follow me, and burst into Lorrimer’s studio. Not a moment too soon. The girl was in a dead faint, and it seemed as if every breath would be her last. In feverish haste I directed the concierge to unstrap her and wrap her up; then, carrying her downstairs, we lifted her into the taxi.
“The baths!” I cried to the chauffeur. ”

“ Even the most hardened London pawnbroker could hardly be more niggard in appraisal of my silver cigarette case than this polite Mont de Pietist who offers me twenty francs on it. Twenty! it is worth eighty; but my French is too rudimentary for argument, and as twenty francs is not enough for my purpose I draw forth with a sigh my precious meerschaum and realise another five francs on that.
“What does it matter?” I think dolefully. “’Til the tide turns no more smoking. After all, oh mighty Nicotine, am I thy slave? Never! Here do I defy thee! Oh, little pipe, farewell! ”

“ Anastasia lay silent on her bed. She did not move as I entered so I supposed she slept. Making as little noise as possible, I undressed. As I blew out the candle my last impression was of the exceeding cosiness of our little room. Particularly I noted our new dressing-table [323] of walnut, the armoire with mirror doors, and the fresh curtains of cream cretonne with a design of roses. “It’s home,” I thought, “and how glad I am to get back to it!” Then I crept between the sheets, and feeling as if I could sleep for ever and ever, I launched into a troubled sea of dreams. ”

“ It was one evening that Anastasia, who had been papering the dining-room, retired to bed quite early, that I decided to accept Lorrimer’s invitation and visit the Noctambules. This is a cabaret in a dark side-street that parallels the “Boul’ Mich’.” I found myself in a long, low room whose walls were covered with caricatures of artists who in their Bohemian days had been habitués of the place. There was an array of chairs, a shabby little platform, and a piano. As each chansonnier came on he was introduced by an irrepressible young man with a curly mop of hair and merry eyes. ”

“ THAT MUDDLE-HEADED SANTA CLAUS
In the morning Anastasia always has her ménage to do. She sweeps till the parquet is like a mirror, and dusts till not a speck can you find from floor to ceiling. No priest could take his ministrations more seriously than Anastasia her daily routine as a femme d’intérieur, and on these occasions she makes me feel negligible to the point of humility. ”

“ That dreadful breathing passes me, passes Lorrimer, comes to an arrest behind Rougette.
Then I hear a scream, shriek on shriek, such as I never dreamed within the gamut of human agony. And in the hush of panic that follows the lights go up.
Rougette is lying on the floor, her head buried in her arms, uttering heart-rending cries. Lorrimer, with a face of absolute horror, is bending over her, trying to raise her as she grovels there in agony.
What is it? A hundred faces are turned towards us, [270] each the mask of terror and dismay. ”

“ Marriage is a constraint to be good, against which the best of us feel moments of faint, futile rebellion.
Sometimes I wished that Anastasia was not so desperately practical. She seems to consider that I am a species of great child, and must be looked after accordingly. I am an ardent suffragist; I have always advocated the rights of woman; I have always believed [289] in her higher destiny; I scoff at the idea that woman’s sphere is the home, and desire to see her marching shoulder to shoulder with man in the ranks of progress. Yet, alas! I cannot make a convert of Anastasia. ”

“ And now to come to my novel, Tom, Dick and Harry.
Three cockney clerks on a ten days’ vacation, are tramping over a desolate moor in Wales. Tom is a dreamer with a turn for literature; Dick an adventurer who hates his desk; Harry an entertainer, with remote designs on the stage.
The scenery is wild and rugged. The road winds between great boulders that suggest a prehistoric race. The wind of the moor brings a glow to their cheeks, and their pipes are in full blast. ”

“ What a pretty couple they made!—Lorrimer so dashing and debonair, with his face of a sophisticated cherub, and his auburn hair that looked as if it might have been enamelled on his head, so smooth was it; Rougette with the mien of a goddess and the simple soul of a Breton fishwife.
But it was hard to follow them now, for the throng on the floor had doubled. In ranks that reached to the side galleries the spectators hemmed them in. The variety of costume grew more and more bewildering. Men were dressed as women, women as men. Four monks entered arm in arm with four devils ”

“ In my work, especially, do I find such a delight that I shall be sorry to die chiefly because it will end my labour. “So much to do,” I sigh, “and only one little lifetime to do it in.”
Then there are long, serene evenings by the fire, where I ponder over my prose, while Anastasia sits absorbed in her work. What a passion she has for her [134] needle! She plies it as an artist, delighting in difficulties, in intricate lacework, in elaborate embroidery. ”

“ My shibboleth at this time was a large bottle of ink which I bought and placed on my mantelpiece. Through a haze of cigarette smoke I would address it whimsically:
“Oh, exquisite fluid, what magic words are hidden in thine ebon heart! What lover’s raptures and what gems of thought! Let others turn to dusty ledgers your celestial stream, to bills of lading and to dull notorial deeds; to me you are the poet’s dream, the freaksome fancy of the essayist, the stuff that shapes itself in precious prose. In you, oh most divine elixir, fame and fortune are dissolved. ”

“ I would replace these with a great glorious Home, run by a beneficent State, where from the very cradle children would be developed and trained on scientific principles, where they would be taught that the noblest effort of man is the service of man; the most ignoble, the seeking of money. I would teach them to live for the spiritual, not the sensual benefits of life. Many private homes do not teach these things. Their influence is pernicious. How many men can look back on such homes and not declare them bungling makeshifts, either stupidly narrow, or actually unhappy? ”

“ To be a father is much; but to be a grandfather so infinitely nobler—and less trouble.”
The more I thought over it, the more I became impressed. My imminent paternity became almost an obsession with me. My marriage had surprised me. No time had I to embroider it with the flowers of fancy, but this was different. So engrossed did I become with a sense of my own importance that you would have thought no one had ever become a father before. In my enthusiasm I told Lorrimer of my interesting condition, but the faun-like young man rather damped my ardour. ”

“ If it fronted on the rue Saint-Médard we should be unable to live there, for the rue Saint-Médard, in spite of the apostolic nomenclature, is probably the most disgusting street in Paris.
It is old, three hundred years or more, and the houses that engloom it are black, corroded and decrepit. Its lower end is blocked by the aforesaid hostel of the blind windows, its upper is narrow and wry-necked where the Hôtel des Bons Garçons bulges into it. Between the two is a dim, verminous gulf of mildewed masonry. The timid, well-dressed person pauses on its threshold and turns back. ”

“ The little steamers drag their chains of trembling gold, their trains of rippling ruby; even the black quays seem to be supported on undulant pillars of amber.
[120] Over yonder on the right bank the great Magasins overspill their radiance. They are like huge honey-combs of light, nearly all window, and each window a square of molten gold. The roaring streets flame in fiery dust, and flakes of gold seem to quiver skyward. Oh, how it stirs me, this Paris! It moves me to delight and despair. To think that I can feel so intensely its wonder and beauty yet to be powerless to express it. ”

“ You’ve created an imaginary child, just as you might have created one in fiction, only ten times more vividly. Then when the earthly frame into which it was to pass proves too frail to hold it you refuse to let it die. You keep on thinking: ‘My daughter! my daughter!’ And spiritually you reach out to a being that only exists in your imagination.”
“She doesn’t, Helstern; that’s where you’re wrong. I thought so at first, but now I know. She really exists, exists in that wonderful world we can only dimly conjecture. ”

“ I dropped the paper with a groan. Captain Fitzbarrington dead! Mrs. Fitz free! My promise to marry her! The terrible twins! Oh, God....
“Alas!” I cried, “I am undone!—betrayed by an incurably romantic disposition; asphyxiated in the effervescence of my own folly; ignominiously undone!”
As if it were yesterday, I remembered the faded apartment in Harlem, my protests of undying devotion, the words that now seemed written in remorseless flame:
“If anything should happen to him, if by any chance we should find ourselves free, send for me, and I’ll come to you, even though the world lie between us. ”

“ And, indeed, the Breton girl, with her ash-gold hair and her complexion of roses and cream, was a delicate vision of beauty.
“Never let a woman see that you cannot be serenely happy without her,” says Lorrimer. “I’d do anything for Rougette (short of marrying her) , yet I never let her know it. And so she’s faithful to me. Others have tried to steal her from me; have offered her luxury; but no, she’s the same devoted, unspoiled girl. Just look at her, Madden, a pure lustrous pearl. Think what a life such a girl might have in this Paris, where men make queens of beautiful women! What triumphs! ”

“ And from the surrounding slums what a sea of misery seemed to wash up! At this time you may see human flotsam that is elsewhen invisible. In the bustling confusion of the dawn the human rats slink out of their holes to gain a few sous; not much—just four sous for soup and bread, four sous for a corner in the dosshouse, and a few sous for cognac. Here flourish all the métiers of misery. I saw five old women whose combined ages must have made up four hundred years, huddled together for warmth, and all sunk in twitching, shuddering sleep. ”