Running Sands Part 36

"Still, you didn't appear to hear,"--Stainton spoke with relief at thought of this,--"so it was as well as it could be."

"I must have shown it, Jim. I thought my face would burn away."

"At any rate, you didn't talk."

"How _could_ I?"

Stainton was silent for a few seconds. Then he asked:

"What did you mean by your question?"

Muriel took some time to reply:

"What question?"

"You know: the only one you asked--about--about children not being wanted?"

This time Muriel's answer was swift: she took her husband's broad shoulders in her arms and, as they rolled down the boulevard, began sobbing.

"I never want to see him again!" she vowed. "Never bring him to the hotel. I won't be at home if he comes. I won't see him. I won't!"

She suggested changing their hotel. She declared that, even if they did change, she could not sleep that night. She begged him to take her somewhere to amuse her and get her thoughts away from the dreadful Boussingault.

It was Stainton who proposed that they should see Montmartre--which term, when used by the travelling American, means to see two or three places in Montmartre conducted largely for Americans, which charge in strict accord with the French ideas of the average American's pocketbook, and are visible only between the hours of ten o'clock at night and four o'clock in the morning.

"Very well," said Jim; "we might go to Montmartre. I think we ought to see Montmartre."

"What's that?" asked Muriel.

"It's--oh, it's a part of Paris. You'll know when we get there."

"I don't remember hearing of it in our French course."

"I don't think it's included in the French course of a convent. I hope not."

"Why not?"

"For the very reason that we ought to go see it--now."

He was quite sure that he was sincere in his att.i.tude. They were sightseers, and he had always been told that Montmartre was one of the sights of Paris. They had seen everything else. They had seen Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, the markets, the Palais de Justice, the Chambre des Deputes, the tomb of Napoleon--everything. They had enjoyed the Jardins des Tuileries and the pictures and sculpture of the Luxembourg Museum, and they had walked through the weary miles of painted canvases in the Louvre, where Muriel lingered before the spot at which the Mona Lisa had long hung. They had even permitted themselves the horrors of the Morgue. Why should Stainton not complete his knowledge of Paris, and why should he not, like most other Americans, take his wife, however young she was, to Montmartre with him? Jim had once said to Holt that he had, all his life long, kept himself clean.

The curiosities of his youth had remained unsatisfied.

The strongest impulses are not infrequently those of which one is entirely unconscious. At Aiken, Stainton had yielded himself with the extravagance of the young man of twenty-five, which he thought he was, to the demands of the situation in which he found himself. At sea there had necessarily been a quieter period; but this had ended with the arrival of the Staintons in Paris. The tension of sightseeing had, alone, sufficed to wear them out, and now (though he persuaded himself that this was but the inevitable development of the novel into the commonplace) he began to fear that the high tide of his emotion might be sinking to the low level of habit and affection, that what was true of himself was also true of Muriel, and he drew the inference that another sort of sightseeing would be good for them both.

So they went to Montmartre.

At the advice of their chauffeur, they commenced with the Bal Tabarin.

From the motor-car that had hauled them up the long hills of dark and tortuous streets, they stepped into a blaze of yellow light, under which half a dozen men hurried to them. One held the door of the cab; another, as if it were his sole business in life, wielded a folded newspaper as a shield to protect Muriel's gown from contamination by the motor's muddy tires; two pointed to the scintillating doorway, and two more chattered enquiries that Jim could in no wise interpret.

He knew, however, that there was one answer to every question: he doled out a handful of francs, in true American fashion, and then handed a purple and white bill to his wife.

Curiously text-book French though it was, Muriel's French had proved really intelligible; she had rapidly acquired the power of comprehending a full third of the French addressed to her, and all this struck Stainton, who loved to follow the lips that were his, speaking a language that was not his and of which he was nearly ignorant, as a proof of her superiority. Therefore she now preceded him to the ticket window and made their purchase. A moment later a large man in a frock coat was ushering them, among capped and ap.r.o.ned maids that begged permission to check wraps, up to the double stairway at the end of the big ballroom and into a box twenty feet above the floor.

They sat down, conscious of themselves, and ordered a bottle of Ayala, presently served to them in goblets to play the role of wine-gla.s.ses--for one drinks champagne from goblets in Montmartre--and looked down at the dancers on the floor below. From its balcony at the other end of the hall a bra.s.s band was sending forth a whirlwind of quadrille music, and in the centre of the ballroom eight women danced the can-can. They were large women, some of them rather fat, and none of them rather young. They wore wide straw hats and simple tailored shirtwaists and dark skirts of a cut almost severe; but in sharp contrast to this exterior, when they danced, they displayed incredible yards and yards of lace petticoat and stockings that outshone the rainbow.

"What do you think of it?" asked Stainton.

Muriel condemned the Bal Tabarin as she had condemned Boussingault.

"I think it's horrid," she replied. "Aren't they ugly?" But she did not take her eyes from the dancers.

All about the dancing-floor, except in that large circular clearing for the performers, were little tables where men and women sat and drank beer and smoked cigarettes. Along one side was a long bar at which both s.e.xes were served. Everyone gave casual heed to the dancing; everyone applauded when he was pleased and hissed when he was not. Now and then a young woman would rush to a neighbouring table, seize upon a man and guide him madly about one corner of the floor in time to the music, and now and then it would be a young man that seized upon a woman, at which the patrons, if they paid any attention at all to it, smiled good-naturedly. At one of the most conspicuous tables were a couple kissing above their foaming beer-mugs, and n.o.body seemed to notice them.

Clearly, this was a world where one did as one pleased, and, so long as one did not trespa.s.s upon the individuality of another, none objected.

"Something new, isn't it?" asked Jim, rather dubiously.

"It's unbelievable," said Muriel, her face flushed.

"Shall we go?"

"No--we might as well wait a little while--until we've finished our champagne."

The quadrille ended. There were ten minutes during which the visitors to the place waltzed rapidly, with feet lifting high, about the floor. Down the centre two young girls were swaying together in a form of waltzing that neither of the Americans had ever seen before. A man and a woman, dancing, would embrace violently at every recurrence of a certain refrain.

Muriel slipped her hand along the rail of the box. Stainton, whose eyes were fixed on the dancers, started at her touch.

"Hold my hand," said Muriel.

He took her hand in his, lowering it from the view of the spectators.

"No," commanded Muriel: "on the rail, please."

"Certainly, but isn't that rather----"

"It seems to be the custom, Jim."

So he held her hand before them all, and soon found himself liking this.

A troupe of girls ran upon the floor and, to the music, began a performance in tumbling. The hair of one was loosened, the ribbon that held it fell at her slippered feet, and two men, from near-by tables, leaped upon it and struggled laughingly for possession of the trophy.

The Staintons were intent upon this when they heard a low laugh behind them. They looked about: three women with bright cheeks were peeping through the swinging doors of the box. Involuntarily, Jim smiled, and, since a smile in Montmartre pa.s.ses current for an invitation, the foremost of the girls entered, shutting out her companions.

"_Vous etes Americains?_" she enquired.

Stainton's French went as far as that. He nodded.

"_Du nord ou du sud?_"