Читать книгу Harper of Heaven - Robert William Service - Страница 9

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Occasionally I am a man of resolution and, having conceived the idea of wedded bliss, behold me three months later nailed to the Cross of Matrimony.

My approach to marriage was peculiarly Scotch. It may be summed up in a sentence: I wanted a wife who would be willing to black my shoes of a morning. I remembered how my dear mother shone the boots of myself and four brothers before we went to school, spitting on them to make the blacking go further. Scotch girls would do that especially if they were humbly born. They had “siller sense.” I dreaded a wasteful woman. Yes, I wanted a wee Scotch lassie who would respect the bawbees.

Well, if I couldn’t have a Scotch mate a French one might do. It was claimed they made the best wives in the world—canny and sou-conscious. She must belong to the small bourgeoisie; better if she had known poverty, for then she would appreciate all I could give her. A Cinderella marriage—that was the stuff for me. But once I had made my choice I would abide by it. There has never been a divorce in our family. Such a horror would have made my Covenanting ancestors turn in their graves.

At heart I am a prig. I may mock morality and scoff at respectability, but au fond I adore them. We are all like that. We may talk of Free Love and Varietism but where our own families are concerned we are Puritans. The licence of the Quarter disgusted me and I wanted none of its loose living. Lights of Love gutter out miserably. But nice girls in our circle were rare and I did not know any. So I put myself in the hands of Fate, hoping for the best.

One day, having posted an article, lunched in a Duval and digested the morning paper I thought I would take my coffee on the Grand Boulevard. So, sauntering care-free as a butterfly, I came to the Place de la Madeleine only to find a milling mob that blocked my way. A parade of soldiers was due to pass, but I was not interested. I was going to take a side street when the idea came to me to push through the crowd and gain the Grand Boulevard. There, standing on the chair of a café terrace, I could see all that passed.

But the throng was denser than I thought, and soon I found myself in a jam. I was cursing my luck when, like an island in that human sea, I spied a hand-barrow. An enterprising hawker had hauled it there and was demanding a franc for a grand-stand view. Instantly I was up, looking with pity on the serried bodies and thinking how one little franc can relieve an awkward situation.

But presently I was conscious that two young girls in the crowd were having a tough time. Perhaps if they had not been pretty I might not have noticed them, but dolled up in dainty finery they made an attractive spot of colour. Now they were very unhappy, struggling to escape that jostling throng. Then I heard a scream as the pressure increased and I had an inspiration. “Do you think,” I said to the proprietor of the voiture à bras, “that these two young ladies would accept a polite invitation to join our fortunate franc payers?” He had no doubt at all. He was down in the crowd and before the astounded demoiselles knew what had happened he had hoisted them up on that ramp of refuge.

I thanked them for accepting my hospitality, but in spite of their embarrassment they seemed to appreciate their rescue. Then to my surprise the younger of the two spoke to me in English. An invitation to tea was hesitantly made and with more hesitation accepted. They were convent educated and belonged to the small bourgeoisie, worthiest of all French society. Though the tea was tepid the cakes were delicious and I enjoyed myself more than I had done since my arrival in Paris—which was saying a good deal.

A second invitation to tea was somewhat dubiously accepted, but I had to go very delicately. My little friends were invincibly comme il faut, and when they are respectable the French can be more so than any other people. An invitation to dinner and the theatre was unthinkable; but they wanted me to see the outskirts of Paris as well as its skirts, so a visit to Versailles was arranged. Then another Sunday to St. Cloud. I found myself looking forward to these jaunts all the week, but a trip to Fontainebleau clinched things. I visioned the younger sister in the frame of DREAM HAVEN, and thought I could not do better. I wanted a home, a settled life, respectability, convention. I viewed the Quarter with growing disgust. A bunch of lousy libertines lushing all day long! ... I had enough of that. I was due to play a new part. Why not a Benedict?

In real life I have always hated sentimentality. How can any man say: “I love you,” to a woman without feeling a silly ass? I may have been precipitate but some instinct told me I was right when I said to the younger sister: “Say, why don’t we take a chance? Columbus took a chance. I’ve only known you a few weeks but I feel it will work out all right. Let’s get hitched. I’m only a poet and as you know poets don’t make money, but I guess we can manage to rub along. If you’re not scared at the prospect of marrying a poor man let’s live in a garret with a loaf of bread and a jug of wine, and we’ll sing under the tiles.” ... And to my amazement she accepted.

Had I been writing the story of another man I might have revelled in details of his domestic life, but as I am telling the history of my own I feel a certain restraint. And I have noticed that the best autobiographers handle themselves with discretion. Read Wells, Kipling, Maugham, and you will find they soft pedal on the family stuff. There are matters too sacred to be revealed even to the most sympathetic reader. Let the biographer chronicle them when one is dead. In the meantime let the writer present a fairly convincing portrait of himself and do not ask for more.

In these pages I will refer as little as possible to the problems of hearth and home, except to say that their joys far exceeded their sorrows. My marriage, so experimentally undertaken, was a huge success and after thirty-three years of self-consideration I still have the same wife. In all that term of matrimony I do not remember receiving a single black eye. Of course, every marriage is a compromise, and to make it successful the female must be a champion compromiser. She must learn to get her own way by letting the man have his. There’s an art in handling the male brute and lucky is the wench who has it.

I did not insist on the garret of which I have so often sung, but I compromised on an apartment that came mighty close to it. The Rabbit Hutch, I called it, and it consisted of two rooms barely big enough to swing the proverbial cat, with a cupboard kitchen whose sink was my bathroom. It was on the Boulevard Montparnasse and the rent was three hundred francs a year. I gave the wife a thousand francs to furnish it and she did so with taste and discretion. She was very clever with her needle—cushions, curtains, and so on she made with her own hands. Often she would ask my opinion and I would look wise and say: “Swell!” though half the time I never noticed any difference. Details bored me. As long as I was comfortable I was more than content.

And she certainly strove for my well-being. Under her ministrations I got so fat I scarcely knew myself. She would return from market with huge baskets of provisions—chickens, grapes, rich pastry—all absurdly cheap. She tried to show me her accounts but I brushed them aside. Then once in a while she would timidly ask me for more money. Perhaps I should have taken more interest in her home making but I was too preoccupied, for I had taken the plunge and was deep in A NEW NOVEL.

Writing a book is to me an all-time job which excludes other interests. Night and day I brood and bang at my Remington. I go round like a man demented, mumbling to myself with blank unseeing eyes. In such moods I am an impossible person—nervous, inattentive, boorishly silent. It takes a woman nine months to make a baby and it takes me ten to make a book, but my travail is in the first five. Of course, there are calm spells when I enjoy real life again, yet soon I feel the goad and return to that false life I live so intensely. Perhaps artists should never marry: their egotistic antics are so insufferable.

Many authors feel at some time they would like to do a Latin Quarter novel, but with me there was no such compulsion. My whole heart was in it, and I think I should have quit writing if I had not been able to achieve that book. Never the making of one gave me such happiness. I was so full of my subject it brimmed over into my pages, and I poured myself out as never before. When the end came I was flaccid as an empty laundry sack. I finished near midnight and sat for a long time filled with a joy too deep for words. There! A big job off my mind, a bit of my life expressed in glowing words....

Going to the window I looked over the sleeping city. A gentle breeze cooled my brow and kindly stars twinkled. A great peace seemed to reign, and suddenly I remembered it was Christmas Eve. Serene I stood, waiting for something to happen.... Then I heard it for the first time, that strange music I call Harps of Heaven. From beyond the stars it seemed to come, a celestial harmony that filled my heart with joy. It was so ineffably sweet I could scarce bear it. I wanted to weep. It was like an angel choir, more dulcet than any human music ever was. For some minutes I stood there entranced.... Then I knew that what I heard was the rapture of my own heart. I myself was the Heavenly Harper and the music was my song of gratitude to the Giver of all goodness and joy....

Well, another book was in the bag and once again I could laugh and sing. Sitting on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens I pored over it—polishing, abolishing, striking out adjectives or seeking the mot juste. From the first draft I made a second, still correcting and condensing, but it was jolly work for the strain and anxiety had gone out of it. Then I made my final copy and it gave me rare pleasure to read the clean finished type.

I thought it rather a bonny book, so vastly different from my first novel. That is perhaps why it was not a success. If an author gets tabbed for doing a certain type of work the public won’t let him do something different. I discovered this early and my failures have driven it in. Yet my Latin Quarter novel will always be my favourite, perhaps because I was so radiant when I wrote it. And though I romped and rollicked through it it contained passages that record my rapture.

The river leaps at me in a blaze of glory. Under a sky of rosy cloud it is a triumph of jewelled vivacity. Exultantly it mirrors the radiance of the city, and the better to display its jewels it undulates in infinite unrest. Here the play of light is like the fluttering of a thousand argent-winged moths, there a weaving of silver foliage, traversed by wriggling emerald snakes. Near it is a wimpling of purest platinum; afar a billowing of beaten bronze. Bridge beyond bridge is jewel-hung, and corus-cates with shifting fires. 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. Yonder the great Magazins 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.

The City of Light. Is there another that flaunts so superbly the triumph of man over darkness? From the Mount of Parnassus to the Mount of the Martyrs all is a valley of light. The starry sky is mocked by the starry city, its milky way a river gleaming with gold, shimmering with silver, spangled with green and garnet. The Place de la Concorde is a very lily garden of light: up the jewelled sweep of the Champs Elysées the lights are like sheeny pearls with here and there the exquisite intrusion of a ruby; beneath a tremulous radiance of opals the trees are bathed in milky light, while amid the twinkling groves the night restaurants are sketched in fairy gold. The Grand Boulevards are fiery-walled canyons down which roar tumultuous rivers of light; the Place de l’Opera is a great eddy, flashing and myriad gemmed; the Magazins are blazing furnaces erupting light at every point. They are festooned with flame, they are crammed with golden lustre, they blaze their victorious refulgence in signs of light against the sky. And so night after night this city of sovereign splendour hurls in flashing light its gauntlet of defiance to the dark.

All this time I had stuck to my job with dogged tenacity. I had forsaken my usual haunts and while I lived in my imaginary Quarter the real Quarter faded into a vague background. I never passed the Dôme, though I could see from a discreet distance Peter sitting in his corner. Poor old chap! How lonely he looked! I wanted to hail him but that would have broken the spell. No, my sense of the dramatic never failed me. Let him wait till the moment was ripe.

Then one morning I sprang myself on him. He grew pale with pleasure. “Why, man,” he said, “where have you been all this time?” “Getting married,” I said laconically. He gasped with surprise. “Good God! You’ve been and done it. Is she Scotch?” “No, French.” “Well, that’s next best. Ach! I suppose you were bound to come to it. It takes a stout man to be a bachelor.”

“You must come up to the house and meet the wife. Come tomorrow evening and we’ll fix up a bite of supper. I mind you like to eat well, aye, and drink well. We’ll no’ forget the bottle. But what have you been doing all these months?”

“Oh, just chewing the cud—my novel—Youth and a City. It’s getting clear now. You know, the Scotch laddie he falls in love with a wee lassie of the Quarter, and they set up house in a garret and he nurses her. I haven’t decided yet whether she dies or not. I hate unhappy endings but maybe they’re more artistic.” “You must attack it soon,” I said, and he nodded mistily: “Yes, I will. One of these days. But have a drink....”

We sat awhile and he looked so shabby and forlorn I felt sorry for him. Then some of his drouthy cronies drew near, so I rose saying: “Well, don’t forget. Tomorrow night we expect to see you at the Rabbit Hutch. And by the way don’t say anything about me being solvent. I’m just a poor devil of a literary hack living in a glorified garret.”

“You’re playing the part of poverty?”

“Well, I’m supposed to be poor and I’m kidding myself that I really am. Don’t want wee wife to get any false ideas of grandeur. She’s so simple and unspoiled I want to keep her like that—for a while anyway.”

“You’ll have to break the news to her some time.”

“I will, but gently. It’s going to be quite a blow. When Prosperity comes in at the door Romance flies out the window.”

When I went home I said to the Missus: “I’m inviting my best friend to dinner tomorrow evening so let’s have a special feed. Don’t be scared. You’ll like him and he’ll like you, especially if you give him a swell feed. Remember the way to a man’s heart is through his tummy.”

Next day the Rabbit Hutch was the scene of huge activity. I was busy binding the manuscript of my new novel and she was preparing the big feast—such comings and goings, parcels and kitchen clutter! Feeling in the way I went to the Luxembourg Gardens where I smoked some quiet pipes. I was lazy, contented, relaxed. From time to time looked at my manuscript in its cardboard cover.... Here was my reward. I had given a rich slice of my life for it but it was well worth while. Gratitude welled up in me. I was the most favoured of mortals and my greatest good luck was that I was able to appreciate good luck.

Serenely I sauntered home. Suddenly I noticed I was no longer hugging my precious manuscript. I must have left it on the park bench! With my heart in my mouth I hurried back.... It was gone! Sick with despair I tried to realise my loss. Like a fool I had destroyed my rough draft. I had not even a carbon copy. I never could rewrite my book. After a horrid hour, stunned and weak I staggered home.

And as I miserably let myself in, there on the table was my manuscript. I could have kissed it. Faint with relief I sank into the big armchair and stared at it. How had it got there? Then the wife returned with a basket of groceries and I pointed to it. “That?” I gasped.

“Oh that,” she said, displaying a nice plump poulet. “An old man brought it half an hour ago. Such a fine looking old man with white hair and a Santa Claus beard. He gathers cigarette ends in the garden and he found it. He saw your address in it, so thinking you might be worried he hurried here.”

“Did you give him anything?”

“He wouldn’t take a sou. He drew himself up so proud: ‘Madame, we are fellow artists. Behold, I am an homme de lettres.’ Then he drew from his pocket a bit of paper and read me a poem and I thought it was lovely. In the end I gave him a bottle of Pinard and he went away looking so pleased.”

“Bless him! I wouldn’t have lost that manuscript for ten thousand francs.”

“Dear me! Such a lot of money! Will you make that much out of it!”

“Well, I may.” As a matter of fact I did make ten thousand—in dollars. But I did not conceal my joy as, holding it high, I danced wildly as far as space permitted. To me it was worth more than any money for it was part of myself. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” I cried. “We’ll take it to London tomorrow. I’ll pay you a holiday trip. Let’s call it a belated honeymoon. But don’t say anything to my friend about this book. He’s doing one on the same lines and I don’t want to discourage him....”

I never beheld the Rabbit Hutch so resplendent as it was that evening. I had been too busy to appreciate the way the Missus had fixed it up, but now I saw in a hundred small details her taste and cleverness. I had given her an extra twenty francs to provide the feast and she had made them go a long way. Ah! those were the days. One could have a roasting chicken for seven francs and a bottle of Barsac for five. And that evening, though I was supposed to be a starving scribe, no millionaire could have fared better.

When Peter arrived I saw with some dismay that he had dressed for the occasion. Instead of his old Harris tweed coat and his grey flannel slacks he had put on a blue serge suit and a bow tie. It’s true his suit was creased in spots and smelt of moth balls but it put to shame my old corduroy coat. My wife was looking stunning in a bright red dress she had made herself, sitting up half the night to finish it. Between the two I felt a hobo.

“There she is,” I said, “looking like a Scarlet Lady. But don’t mistake—we were properly hitched, Mairie and Church. I had to promise my progeny would be little Papists. If one has to accept religion I reckon one might as well go the whole hog, and the Catholic brand has its good points. My wife believes she’ll go to heaven when she dies and nothing could make her think otherwise. Well, she deserves it for she’s a pretty good sort.”

Peter thought so too for he insisted on kissing her three times, which I thought quite unnecessary. However, it was a way he had. The two seemed to hit it off from the start and the evening promised to be a big success. It was.... We began with Potage Julienne, followed by flaky pâtés of vol-au-vent, then that superb seven franc chicken with bacon trimmings, new potatoes and green peas. Then a bomb of Napolitan ice cream, Petits fours and a corbeille of pears, grapes and figs. With the food we had a bottle of Château Lafitte, and with the dessert a Veuve Cliquot. I don’t see how the wife managed it all but she did so beautifully. While two gorged males smoked Egyptian cigarettes over the coffee we heard her washing up in the kitchen.

“That’s a pretty dress,” said Peter, swishing the cognac round in his glass. “Yes,” I answered proudly. “She makes all her clothes. She has fairy fingers with a needle. I wanted to take her to the Galeries Lafayette to buy her a new gown, but she says it’s too expensive. Oh dear! It’s going to be very hard to break her of her economical habits.”

“She reminds me of my mother,” said Peter, and to his mind he could not have paid her a prettier compliment. “Well, you’ve struck it lucky as usual. You almost make me want to follow your example. Only I haven’t got the siller you have.”

“Two can live as cheaply as one,” I said airily. “Give up your Pernods, cut down your cigarettes and you’ll make it stick.” But at the thought of giving up booze and ‘baccy his face fell.

“I’ll think it over,” he said foggily. “But if you’re going to London I’ll give you a letter to a good friend of mine who is the editor of a big paper. You might tell him casually that old Peter is not going so strong financially and if he could offer me a half column of space in his Sunday edition it would help a lot.... As to wedlock, I’m afraid it might interfere with my work. I must think of my novel. Domestic worries might distract me. I might not be able to finish Youth and a City.”