A Chair on the Boulevard Part 35

"Gustave!"

"Well?" said Tricotrin, looking towards the other bed. "Not asleep yet?"

"I cannot sleep--hunger is gnawing at me."

"Ah, what a relentless realist is this hunger," complained the poet, "how it destroys one's illusions!"

"Is there nothing to eat in the cupboard?"

"Not a crumb--I am ravenous myself. But I recall a broken cigarette in my waistcoat pocket; let us cut it in halves!"

They strove, shivering, to appease their pangs by slow whiffs of a Caporal, and while they supped in this unsatisfactory fashion, there came an impetuous knocking at the street door.

"It must be that La Coupole has sent you a sack of gold to go on with!"

Tricotrin opined. "Put your head out and see."

"It is Lajeunie," announced the composer, withdrawing from the window with chattering teeth. "What the devil can he want? I suppose I must go down and let him in."

"Perhaps we can get some more cigarettes from him," said Tricotrin; "it might have been worse."

But when the novelist appeared, the first thing he stammered was, "Give me a cigarette, one of you fellows, or I shall die!"

"Well, then, dictate your last wishes to us!" returned Pitou. "Do you come here under the impression that the house is a tobacconist's? What is the matter with you, what is up?" "For three hours," snuffled Lajeunie, who looked half frozen and kept shuddering violently, "for three hours I have been pacing the streets, questioning whether I should break the news to you to-night or not. In one moment I told myself that it would be better to withhold it till the morning; in the next I felt that you had a right to hear it without delay. Hour after hour, in the snow, I turned the matter over in my mind, and--"

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Pitou, "is this an interminable serial at so much a column? Come to the point!"

Lajeunie beat his breast. "I am distracted," he faltered, "I am no longer master of myself. Listen! It occurred to me this evening that I might do worse than pay a visit to La Coupole and inquire if a date was fixed yet for the rehearsals to begin. Well, I went! For a long time I could obtain no interview, I could obtain no appointment--the messenger came back with evasive answers. I am naturally quick at smelling a rat --I have the detective's instinct--and I felt that there was something wrong. My heart began to fail me."

"For mercy's sake," groaned his unhappy collaborator, "explode the bomb and bury my fragments! Enough of these literary introductions. Did you see the manager, or didn't you?"

"I did see the miscreant, the bandit-king, I saw him in the street. For I was not to be put off--I waited till he came out. Well, my friend, to compress the tragedy into one act, our hope is shattered-- _Patatras_ is again refused!"

"Oh, heavens!" moaned Pitou, and fell back upon the mattress as white as death.

"What explanation did he make?" cried Tricotrin; "what is the reason?"

"The reason is that Blondette is an imbecile--she finds the part 'unworthy of her talents.' A part on which I have lavished all the wealth of my invention--she finds it beneath her, she said she would 'break her contract rather than play it.' Well, Blondette is the trump-card of his season--he would throw over the whole of the Academy sooner than lose Blondette. Since she objects to figuring in _Patatras, Patatras_ is waste-paper to him. Alas! who would be an author? I would rather shovel c.o.ke, or cut corns for a living. He himself admitted that there was no fault to find with the revue, but, 'You know well, monsieur, that we must humour Blondette!' I asked him if he would try to bring her to her senses, but it seems that there have been a dozen discussions already--he is sick of the subject. Now it is settled--our ma.n.u.script will be banged back at us and we may rip!"

"Oh, my mother!" moaned Pitou. "Oh, the peac.o.c.k and the deer!"

"What's that you say?" asked Lajeunie. "Are you positive that you haven't got a cigarette anywhere?"

"I am positive that I have nothing," proclaimed Pitou vehemently, "nothing in life but a broken heart! Oh, you did quite right to come to me, but now leave me--leave me to perish. I have no words, I am stricken. The next time you see me it will be in the Morgue. Mon Dieu, that beautiful wretch, that creature without conscience, or a note in her voice--by a shrug of her elegant shoulders she condemns me to the Seine!"

"Ah, do not give way!" exclaimed Tricotrin, leaping out of bed.

"Courage, my poor fellow, courage! Are there not other managers in Paris?"

"There are--and _Patatras_ has been refused by them. La Coupole was our last chance, and it has collapsed. We have no more to expect-- it is all over. Is it not so, Lajeunie?"

"All over," sobbed Lajeunie, bowing his head on the washhand-stand.

"_Patatras_ is dead!"

Then for some seconds the only sound to be heard in the attic was the laboured breathing of the three young men's despair.

At last Tricotrin, drawing himself upright in his tattered nightshirt, said, with a gesture of dignity, "Well, the case may justify me--in the present situation it appears to me that I have the right to use my influence with Blondette!"

A signal from Mars could not have caused a more profound sensation.

Pitou and Lajeunie regarded him with open mouths. "Your influence?"

echoed Pitou: "your influence? I was not aware that you had ever met her."

"No," rejoined the poet darkly; "I have not met her. But there are circ.u.mstances in my life which ent.i.tle me to demand a service of this triumphant woman. Do not question me, my friends--what I shall say to her must remain a secret even from you. I declare, however, that n.o.body has a stronger claim on her than Gustave Tricotrin, the poor penny-a- liner whom she does not know!"

The sudden intervention--to say nothing of its literary flavour--so excited the collaborators that they nearly wrung his hands off: and Lajeunie, who recognised a promising beginning for another serial, was athirst for further hints.

"She has perhaps committed a murder, that fair fiend?" he inquired rapturously.

"Perhaps," replied Tricotrin.

"In that case she dare refuse you nothing."

"Why not, since I have never heard of it?"

"I was only jesting," said the novelist. "In sober earnest, I conjecture that you are married to her, like Athos to Miladi. As you stand there, with that grave air, you strongly resemble Athos."

"Nevertheless, Athos did not marry a woman to whom he had not spoken, and I repeat that I have never spoken to Blondette in my life."

"Well," said Lajeunie, "I have too much respect for your wishes to show any curiosity. Besides, by an expert the mystery is to be divined-- before the story opens, you rendered her some silent aid, and your name will remind her of a great heroism?"

"I have never rendered her any aid at all," demurred Tricotrin, "and there is not the slightest reason to suppose that she has ever heard my name. But again, I have an incontestable right to demand a service of her, and for the sake of the affection I bear you both, I shall go and do it."

"When Tricotrin thinks that he is living in _The Three Musketeers_ it is useless to try to pump him," said Pitou; "let us content ourselves with what we are told! Is it not enough? Our fate is in Blondette's hands, and he is in a position to ask a favour of her. What more can we want?"

But he could not resist putting a question on his own account after Lajeunie had skipped downstairs.

"Gustave, why did you never mention to me that you knew Blondette?"

"Morbleu! how often must I say that I do _not_ know her?"

"Well--how shall I express it?--that some episode in your career gave you a claim on her consideration?"

"Because, by doing so, I should have both violated a confidence, and re-opened a wound which still burns," said Tricotrin, more like Athos than ever. "Only the urgency of your need, my comrade, could induce me to take the course that I project. Now let me sleep, for to-morrow I must have all my wits!"

It was, however, five o'clock already, and before either of them had slept long, the street was clattering with feet on their way to the laundries, and vendors of delicacies were bawling suggestions for appetising breakfasts.

"Not only do the shouts of these monsters disturb my slumber, but they taunt my starvation!" yawned the poet. "Yet, now I come to think of it, I have an appointment with a man who has sworn to lend me a franc, so perhaps I had better get up before he is likely to have spent it. I shall call upon Blondette in the afternoon, when she returns from her drive. What is your own programme?"

"My first attempt will be at a cremerie in the rue St. Rustique, where I am inclined to think I may get credit for milk and a roll if I swagger."