“Sorry to wake you,” came the mutter of Conrad Masters from the open door. “Where are you staying?”
Through the front window I saw the door of the taxi close. Napier would tell Venice he had seen me, and she would be surprised I had not spoken with her. “You were asleep,” Napier would say, but she would still be surprised. …
“Look here,” Masters said persuasively, one foot on the footboard, “why not come to my place for a while? Come along, it won’t kill you. A nighthawk like you. My wife has a party of some sort. Dancing, bridge, Parisian-Americans. …”
Dancing, bridge, Parisian-Americans! The end of a perfect day. …
“It’s another form of septic poisoning,” I pleaded. “Take me to the Westminster, Masters, and let me sleep. And you’d better get a room there as well and spend the night in peace. …”
The taxi in front of us bumped and rattled away. Masters muttered wearily: “Well, I will probably have to take a hand if you don’t. Most of ’em dance, but I left three bridge maniacs stranded to come on here. They stay up to all hours, the blighters. …”
Smoothly the Renault picked its way among the pits and chasms of the fearful boulevards of outer Paris. “Their last chance of ever being mended,” Masters muttered, “went when the Germans lost the war. …”
“All right,” I said sulkily, “I’ll come. Bridge, dancing, Parisian-Americans. … What a monstrous life you lead, Masters. But what about that miracle?”
“Can’t tell,” he muttered. “Can’t tell. Seemed bucked up a bit, of course. Took notice, recognised him, and that’s something. But you can’t tell. …”
“She’ll live,” I said.
“I’m glad you’re so certain,” snapped the captain of men. “I’m so little certain that I put that young man on his honour to look round again tomorrow afternoon.”
“On his honour!” I said. “On his honour?”
“What’s the matter with his honour? Looks all right to me. …”
“But he’s going South in the morning!”
“He mustn’t go!” snapped Masters. “That’ll be your job. We must give her one more chance … one more piqûre. It’s essential that he shouldn’t go tomorrow. You must prevent him.”
“I’ll try,” I said. “But. …”
“But surely he won’t want to go!”
“Oh, he won’t want to go. …”
Masters stared at me thoughtfully. “Um,” he said. “Um.”
“Of course,” I said, “you never know. …”
“Well,” said Masters, “now she’s seen him once she’ll expect to see him again. It’s only natural.”
“Of course,” I said. “Naturally. …”
Smoothly ran the Renault with the scarlet wheels. The black lion found in us no little Citroën, cowered before us, slunk back into the jungle of nameless boulevards. Montparnasse showed lights to hold us, faces in cafés, singing groups of young men, little flashing women with lots of hair like dyed haloes. Artists. Swiftly we fled through the darkness, the stillness, the deep shadows of the phantom fortress of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, away we went from the ancien régime, the haute noblesse, across the river to the nouveau régime, the noblesse, down the stately slope of the Avenue Hoche into the sweet valley of the Parc Monceau, where lived the dashing Mrs. Conrad Masters, with bridge, dancing, Parisian-Americans. …
“You can’t,” that man muttered, “expect her to be reasonable. …”
“No,” I said, “I suppose not. …”
“Nice!” snapped Masters. “Good God, ‘nice’!”
VII
For Venice!
I
Fat white clouds hurried over the pale blue roof of the rue de la Paix. Spring, the first day before the first day of spring, the day that is not spring but is a voice of spring crying in the wilderness of the chilly heavens: “Here is spring, and lo! these are the clouds of winter fleeing before her, white as polar bears, and as stupid. Enjoy, enjoy le printemps!” Anxious the fat white clouds seemed, most anxious, hurrying from the vanities of the rue de la Paix towards the Cathedral of Our Lady, that they might pray, the poor clouds who know not that the pagan gods are dead, the poor clouds, who love the winter, against the return of Persephone from the arms of Plutus. The stormy brittle sunlight, eager to play with the pearls and diamonds of Van Cleef, Lacloche and Cartier, aye, and of Tecla also, chided away the fat white clouds, and now the sun would play with one window of the rue de la Paix, now with another, mortifying one, teasing another, but all in a very handsome way.
Early the next morning it was when I found myself looking upon these mighty diversions, but I had so much rather been asleep. My bedroom looked down on these things, but unfortunately not from a great height, for they are not tall, the hotels of Paris; and men are sent round the streets of Paris first thing in the morning, to the end that people may not fail to be aware of the beauty of shuttered shops, some of these men being directed to push along enormous tin barrels with which to make a carmagnole of dust, whilst others are placed on ancient taxicabs with especially adjusted gears and magnified horn-power. There is no peace in the world, that is what it is. There is no peace in Paris.
I lay in bed, staring through the lace curtains. What had happened, what were the alarums and excursions of that grey day yesterday, which had leapt at me from the darkness as I made to return to England after four months of pleasant wandering? Iris was ill unto death, Napier was enchanted. …
Men, some in shirtsleeves, were taking down the heavy, grey, burglarproof shutters of the
