Читать книгу The Azure Rose - Reginald Wright Kauffman - Страница 5

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Je ne connais point la nature des anges, parce que je ne suis qu’homme; il n’y a que les théologiens qui la connaissent.—Voltaire: Dictionnaire Philosophique.

He did not know why he headed toward his own room—it could hold nothing that he guessed of to welcome him, except further tokens of the dejection and misery he carried in his heart—but thither he went, and, as he drew nearer, his step quickened. By the time that he entered the rue du Val de Grâce, he was moving at something close upon a run.

He hurried up the rising stairs and into the dark hall, and, as he did so, was possessed by the sense that somebody had as hurriedly ascended just ahead of him. The door to his room was never locked, and now he flung it wide.

The last of the afterglow had all but faded from the sky, and only the faintest twilight, a rose-pink twilight, came into the studio. Rose-pink: he thought of that at once and thought, too, that these sky-roses had a sweeter scent than the roses of earth, for there was about this once-familiar place an odor more delicate and tender than any he had ever known before. It was dim, illusive; it was like a musical poem in an unknown tongue, and yet, unlike French scents and hot-house flowers, it subtly suggested open spaces and mountain-peaks. Cartaret had a quick vision of sunlight upon snow-crests. He wondered how such a perfume could find its way through the narrow, dirty streets of the Latin Quarter and into his poor room.

And then, in the dim light, he saw a figure standing there.

Cartaret stopped short.

An hour ago he had left the place empty. Now, when he so wanted solitude, it had been invaded. There was an intruder. It was—— yes, the Lord have mercy on him, it was a girl!

“Who’s there?” demanded Cartaret.

He was so startled that he asked the question in English and with his native American accent. The next moment, he was more startled when the strange girl answered him in English, though an English oddly precise.

“It is I,” she said.

“It is I,” was what she said first, and, as she said it, Cartaret noted that her voice was a wonderfully soft contralto. What she next said was uttered as he further discovered himself to her by an involuntary movement that brought him within the rear window’s shaft of afterglow. It was:

“What are you doing here?”

She spoke with patent amazement, and there were, between the words, four perceptible pauses.

What was he doing there? What was she? What light there was came from behind her: he could not at all make out her features; he had only her voice to go by—only her voice and her manner of regal possession—and with neither was he acquainted. Good Heavens, hadn’t he a right to come unannounced into the one place in Paris that he might still call his own? It surely was his own. He looked distractedly about him.

“I thought,” said Cartaret, “that this was my room.”

His glance, bewildered as it was, nevertheless assured him that he had not been mistaken. His accustomed eye detected everything that the twilight might hide from the eye of a stranger.

Here was all his student-litter. Here were the good photographs of good pictures, bought second-hand; the bad copies of good pictures, made by Cartaret himself during long mornings in the Louvre, where impudent tourists, staring at his work, jolted his elbow and craned their necks beside his cheek; there were the plaster-casts on brackets—casts of antiques more mutilated than the antiques themselves; and here, too, were the rows of lost endeavors in the shape of discarded canvases banked on the floor along the walls and sometimes jutting far out into the room. Two or three chairs were scattered about, one with a broken leg—he remembered the party at which it was broken; across from the fire-place was Cartaret’s bed that a tarnished Oriental cover (made in Lyons) converted by day into a divan; and close beside the rear window, flanked by the table on which he mixed his colors, stood, almost at the elbow of this imperious intruder, Cartaret’s own easel with a virgin canvas in position, waiting to receive the successor to that picture which he had sold for a song a few hours ago.

What was he doing here, indeed! He liked that.

And she was still at it:

“How dare you think so?” she persisted.

The slight pauses between her words lent them more weight than, even in his ears, they otherwise would have possessed. She came a step nearer, and Cartaret saw that she was breathing quickly and that the bit of lace above her heart rose and fell irregularly.

“How dare you?” she repeated.

She was close enough now for him to decide that she was quite the most striking girl he had ever seen. Her figure, without a touch of exaggeration, was full and yet lithe: it moved with the grace of the athlete. Her skin was rosy and white—the rose of health and the clear cream of sane living.

It was, however, her manner that had led Cartaret first to doubt his own senses, and then to doubt hers. This girl spoke like a queen resenting a next-to-impossible familiarity. He had half a mind to leave the place and allow her to discover her own mistake, the nature of which—his room ran the length of the old house and half its width, being separated from a similar room by only a dark and draughty hallway—now suddenly revealed itself to him. He seriously considered leaving her alone to the advent of her humiliation.

Then he looked at her again. Her hair, in sharp contrast to the tint of her face, was a shining blue-black; though her features were almost classical in their regularity, her mouth was generous and sensitive, and, under even black brows and through long, curling lashes, her eyes shone frank and blue. Cartaret decided to remain.

“You are an artist?” he inquired.

“Leave this room!” She stamped a little foot. “Leave this room instantly!”

Cartaret stooped to one of the canvases that were piled against the wall nearest him. He turned its face to her.

“And this is some of your work?” he asked.

He had meant to be only light and amusing, but when he saw the effect of his action, he cursed himself for a heavy-witted fool: the girl glanced first at the picture and then wildly about her. She had at last realized her mistake.

“Oh!” she cried. Her delicate hands went to her face. “I had just come in and I thought—I thought it was my room!”

He registered a memorandum to kick himself as soon as she had gone. He moved awkwardly forward, still between her and the door.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Everybody drops in here at one time or another, and I never lock my door.”

“But you do not understand!” She was still speaking through her unjeweled fingers: “Sir, we moved into this house only this morning. I went out for the first time ten minutes since. My maid did not want me to go, but I would do it. Our room—I understand now that our room is the other one: the one across the hallway. But I came back hurriedly, a little frightened by the streets, and I turned—Oh-h!” she ended, “I must go—I must go immediately!”

She dropped her hands and darted forward, turning to her right. Cartaret lost his head: he turned to his right. Each saw the mistake and sought the left; then darted to the right again.

“Let me pass!” commanded the girl.

Cartaret, inwardly condemning his stupidity, suddenly backed. He backed into the half open door; it shut behind him with a sharp snap.

“I’m not dancing,” he said. “I know it looks like it, but I’m not—truly.”

“Then stand aside and let me pass.”

He stood aside.

“Certainly,” said he; “that is what I was trying to do.”

With her head high, she walked by him to the door and turned the knob: the door would not open.

Than the scorn that she turned upon him then, he had never seen anything more magnificent—or more beautiful. “What is this?” she asked.

He did not know.

“It’s probably stuck,” he suggested. She was beginning to terrify him. “If you’ll allow me——”

He bent to the knob, his hand just brushing hers, which was quickly withdrawn. He pulled: the door would not give. He took the knob in both hands and raised it: no success. He bore all his weight down upon the knob: the door remained shut.

He looked up at her attempting the smile of apology, but her eyes, as soon as they encountered his, were raised to a calm regard of the panel above his head. Cartaret’s gaze returned to the door and, presently, encountered the old deadlatch that antedated his tenancy and that he had never once used: it was a deadlatch of a type antiquated even in the Latin Quarter, tough and enduring; years ago it had been pushed back and held open by a small catch; the knob whereby it was originally worked from inside the room had been broken off; and now the catch had slipped, the spring-bolt had shot home and, the knob being broken, the girl and Cartaret were as much prisoners in the room as if the lock had been on the other side of the door.

The American broke into a nervous laugh.

“What now?” asked the girl, her eyes hard.

“We’re caught,” said Cartaret.

She could only repeat the word:

“Caught?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. It was my stupidity; I suppose I jolted the door rather hard when I bumped into it, doing that tango just now. Anyhow, this old lock’s sprung into action and we’re fastened in.”

The girl looked at him sharply. A difficult red climbed her cheeks.

“Open that door,” she ordered.

“But I can’t—not right away. I’ll have to try to——”

“Open that door instantly.”

“But I tell you I can’t. Don’t you see?” He pointed to the offending deadlatch. In embarrassed sentences, he explained the situation.

She did not appear to listen. She had the air of one who has prejudged a case.

“You are trying to keep me in this room,” she said.

Her tone was steady, and her eyes were brave; but it was evident that she quite believed her statement.

Cartaret colored in his turn.

“Nonsense,” said he.

“Then open the door.”

“I tell you the lock has slipped.”

“If that is so, use your key.”

“I haven’t any key,” protested Cartaret. “And even if I had——”

“You have no key to your own room?” She raised her eyes scornfully. “I understood you to say very positively that I was trespassing in your room.”

“Great Scott!” cried Cartaret. “Of course it’s my room. You make me wish it wasn’t, but it is. It is my room, but you can see for yourself there’s no keyhole to the confounded lock on this side of the door, and never was. Look here.” Again he pointed to the deadlatch: “If you’ll only come a little nearer and look——”

“Thank you,” she said. “I shall remain where I am.” She had put her hand among the lace over her breast; now the hand, withdrawn, held an unsheathed knife. “And if you come one step nearer to me,” she calmly concluded, “I will kill you.”

It was the sole dream-touch needed to perfect his sense of the entire episode’s unreality. In his poor room, a princess that he had never seen before—that, surely, he was not seeing now!—some royal figure out of a lost Hellenic tragedy; her breast visibly cumbered by the heavy air of modern Paris, her wonderful eyes burning with the cold fire of resolution, she told him that she would kill him if he approached her. And she would do it; she would kill him with less compunction than she would feel in crushing an offending moth!

Cartaret had instinctively jumped at the first flash of the weapon. Now his laughter returned. A vision could not be impeded by a sprung lock.

“But you’re not here,” he said.

She did not shift by so much as a hairbreadth her position of defense, yet, ever so slightly, her eyes widened.

“And I’m not, either,” he persisted. “Don’t you see? Things like this don’t happen. One of us is asleep and dreaming—and I must be that one.”

Plainly she did not follow him, but his laughter had been so boyishly innocent as to make her patently doubtful of her own assumption. He crowded that advantage.

“Honestly,” he said, “I didn’t mean any harm——”

“You at least place yourself in a strange position,” the girl interrupted, though the hand that held the knife was lowered to her side.

“But if you really doubt me,” he continued, “and don’t want to wait until I pick this lock, let me call from the window and get somebody in the street to send up the concierge.”

“The street?” She evidently did not like this idea. “No, not the street. Why do you not ring for him?”

Cartaret’s gesture included the four walls of the room:

“There’s no bell.”

Still a little suspicious of him, her blue eyes scanned the room to confirm his statement.

“Then why not call him from the window in the back?”

“Because his quarters are at the front of the house, and he wouldn’t hear.”

“Would no one hear?”

“There’s nobody in the garden at this time of day. You had really better let me call to the first person that goes along the street. Somebody is always going along, you know.”

He made two strides toward the front window.

“Come back!”

He turned to find her with her face scarlet. She had raised the knife.

“Break the lock,” she said.

“But that will take time.”

“Break the lock.”

“All right; only why don’t you want me to call for help?”

“And humiliate me still further?” One small foot, cased in an absurdly light patent-leather slipper with a flashing buckle, tapped the floor angrily. “I have been foolish, and your folly has made me more foolish, but I will not have it known to all the world how foolish I have been. Break the lock at once—now—immediately.”

Cartaret divined that this was eminently a time for silence: she was alive, she was real, and she was human. He opened a drawer in the table, dived under the divan, plunged behind a curtain in one corner, and at last found a shaky hammer and a nicked chisel with which he returned to the locked door.

“I’m not much of a carpenter,” he said, by way of preparatory apology.

The girl said nothing.

He was angry at himself for having appeared to such heavy disadvantage. Consequently, he was unsteady. His first blow missed. His strength turned to mere violence, and he showered futile blows upon the butt of the chisel. Then a misdirected blow hit the thumb of his left hand. He swore softly and, having sworn, heard her laugh.

He looked up: the knife had disappeared. He was pleased at the change to merriment that her face discovered; but, as he looked, he realized that her mirth was launched against his efforts, and he was pleased no longer. His rage directed itself from him to her.

“I’m sorry you don’t approve,” he said sulkily. “For my part, I am quite willing to stop, I assure you.”

If an imperious person may be said to have tossed her head, then it should here be said that this imperious person now tossed hers.

“Now, shall I go to the window and yell into the street?” he savagely inquired.

Her high-tilted chin, her crimsoned cheeks and the studiously managed lack of expression in her eyes were proofs that she had heard him. Nevertheless, she persisted in her disregard of his suggestion.

Cartaret’s mood became more ugly. He resolved to make her pay attention.

“I’ll do it,” he said, and turned away from the door.

That brought the answer. She looked at him in angry horror.

“And make us the laughing-stock of the neighborhood?” she cried. “Is it not enough that you have shut me in here, that you have insulted me, that——”

“Insulted you?” He stood with the hammer in one hand and the chisel in the other, a rather unromantic figure of protest. “I never did anything of the sort.”

He made a flourish and dropped the hammer. When he picked it up, he saw that she stood there, looking over his bent head, with eyes sternly kept serene; but he saw also that her cheeks remained aglow and that her breath came short.

“I never did anything of the sort,” he went on. “How could I?”

“How could you?” She clenched her hands.

“I don’t mean that.” He could have bitten out his tongue. He floundered in a marsh of confusion. “I mean—I mean—Oh, I don’t know what I mean, except that I beg you to believe I am incapable of the impudence you charge! I came in here and found the most beautiful woman——”

She recoiled.

“You speak so to me?”

It was out: he had to go ahead now. He did not at all recognize himself: this was not American; it was wholly Gallic.

“I can’t help it,” he said, “you are.”

“Go to work,” said the girl.

“But I want you to understand——”

Two tears, twin diamonds of mortification, shone in her blue eyes.

“You have humiliated me, and mortified me, and insulted me!” she persisted. Her white throat swallowed the chagrin, and anger returned to take its place. “If you are what you pretend to be, you will go back to your work of opening that door. If I were the strong man that you are, I should have broken it open long ago.”

She had a handsome ferocity. Cartaret put one broad shoulder to the door and both hands to the knob. There was a tremendous wrenching and splitting: the door swung open. He turned and bowed.

“It’s open,” he said.

To his amazement, her mood had entirely changed. Whether his action had served as proof of his declared sincerity, or whether her brief reflection on his words had itself served him this good turn, he could not guess; but he saw now that her eyes had softened and that her underlip quivered.

“Good afternoon,” said Cartaret.

“Good-by,” said she.

She moved toward the door, then stopped.

“I hope that you will pardon me,” she said, and she spoke as if she were not accustomed to asking pardon. “I have been too quick and very foolish. You must know that I am new to Paris—new to France—new to cities—and that I have heard strange stories of Parisians and of the men of the large towns.”

Cartaret was more than mollified, but he took a grip upon his emotions and resolved to pursue this advantage.

“At least,” he said, “you should have seen that I was your own sort.”

“My own—my own sort?” She did not seem to comprehend.

“Well, of your own class, then.” This girl had an impish faculty for making him say things that sounded priggish: “You should have seen I was of your own class.”

Again her eyes widened. Then she tossed her head and laughed a little silvery laugh.

He fancied the laugh disdainful, and thought so the more when she seemed to detect his suspicion and tried to allay it by an alteration of tone.

“I mean exactly that,” he said.

She bit her red lip, and Cartaret noted that her teeth were even and white.

“Forgive me,” she begged.

She put out her hand so frankly that he would have forgiven her anything. He took the hand and, as it nestled softer than any satin in his, he felt his heart hammer in his breast.

“Forgive me,” she was repeating.

“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he muttered. “At any rate, you can’t forget me: you’ll have to remember me as the greatest boor you ever met.”

She shook her head.

“It was I that was foolish.”

“Oh, but it wasn’t! I——”

He stopped, for her eyes had fallen from his and rested on their clasped hands. He released her instantly.

“Good-by,” she said again.

“Good—— But surely I’m to see you once in a while!”

“I do not know.”

“Why, we’re neighbors! You can’t mean that you won’t let me——”

“I do not know,” she said. “Good-by.”

She went out, drawing-to the shattered door behind her.

Cartaret leaned against the panel and listened shamelessly.

He heard her cross the hall and open the door to the opposite room; he heard her suspiciously greeted by another voice—a voice that he gladly recognized as feminine—and in a language that was wholly unfamiliar to him: a language that sounded somehow Oriental. Then he heard the other door shut, and he turned to the comfortless gloom of his own quarters.

He sat down on the bed. He had forgotten a riotous dinner that was to have been his final Parisian folly, forgotten his poverty, forgotten his day of disappointment and his desire to go back to Ohio and the law. He remembered only the events of the last quarter-hour and the girl that had made them what they were.

As he sat there, there seemed to come again into the silent room the perfume he had noticed when he returned. It seemed to float in on the twilight, still dimly pink behind the roofs of the gray houses along the Boul’ Miche’: subtle, haunting, an odor more delicate and tender than any he had ever known before.

He raised his head. He saw something white lying on the floor—lying where, a few moments since, he had stood. He went forward and picked it up.

It was a flower like a rose—a white rose—but unlike any rose of which Cartaret had any knowledge. It was small, but perfect, its pure petals gathered tight against its heart, and from its heart came the perfume that had seemed to him like a musical poem in an unknown tongue.

For a second time Cartaret had that quick vision of the sunlight upon snow-crests and the virgin sheen of unattainable mountain tops....