The Azure Rose Part 7

Cartaret went on toward the scene of his dinner-party. He wished he did not have to go. On the other hand, he was sure he had thrown Refrogne a franc to no purpose: the Lady of the Rose was little likely to seek him! He found the evening cold and his rain-coat inadequate.

He began humming the drinking-song again.

They were singing it outright, in a full chorus, when he entered the little room on the first floor of the Cafe Des Deux Colombes. The table was already spread, the feast already started. The unventilated room was flooded with light and full of the steam of hot viands.

Maurice Houdon, his red cheeks shining, his black mustache stiffly waxed, sat at the head of the table as he had promised to do, performing the honors with a regal grace and playing imaginary themes with every flourish of address to every guest: a different theme for each. On his right was a vacant place, the sole apparent reference to the host of the evening; on his left, Armand Garnier, the poet, very thin and cadaverous, with long dank locks and tangled beard, his skin waxen, his lantern-jaw emitting no words, but working l.u.s.tily upon the food. Next to Cartaret's place bobbed the pear-shaped Devignes, leading the chorus, as became the only professional singer in the company. Across from him was Philippe Varachon, the sculptor, whose nose always reminded Cartaret of an antique and long lost bit of statuary, badly damaged in exhumation; and at the foot Seraphin was seated, the first to note Cartaret's arrival and the only one to apologize for not having delayed the dinner.

He got up immediately, and his whiskers tickled the American's cheek with the whisper:

"It was ready to serve, and Madame swore that it would perish. My faith, what would you?"

Pasbeaucoup was darting among the guests, wiping fresh plates with a napkin and his dripping forehead with his bare hand. Cartaret felt certain that the little man would soon confuse the functions of the two.

"Ah-h-h!" cried Houdon. He rose from his place and endeavored to restore order by beating with a fork upon an empty tumbler, as an orchestral conductor taps his baton--at the same time nodding fiercely at Pasbeaucoup to refill the tumbler with red wine. He was the sole member of the company not long known to their host, but he said: "Messieurs, I have the happiness to present to you our distinguished American fellow-student, M. Charles Cartar_ette_. Be seated among us, M. Cartarette," he graciously added; "pray be seated."

Cartaret sat down in the place kindly reserved for him, and the interruption of his appearance was so politely forgotten that he wished he had not been such a fool as to make it. The song was resumed. It was not until the salad was served and Pasbeaucoup had retired below-stairs to a.s.sist in preparing the coffee, that Houdon turned again to Cartaret and executed what was clearly to be the Cartaret theme.

"We had despaired of your arrival, Monsieur," said he.

Cartaret said he had observed signs of something of the sort.

"Truly," nodded Houdon. His tongue rolled a ball of salad into his cheek and out of the track of speech. "Doubtless you had the one living excuse, however."

"I don't follow you," said Cartaret.

Houdon leered. His fingers performed on the table-cloth something that might have been the _motif_ of Isolde.

"I have heard," said he, "your American proverb that there are but two adequate excuses for tardiness at dinner--death and a lady--and I am charmed, monsieur, to observe that you are altogether alive."

If Cartaret's glance indicated that he would like to throttle the composer, Cartaret's glance did not misinterpret.

"We won't discuss that, if you please," said he.

But Houdon was incapable of understanding such glances in such a connection. He tapped for the attention of his orchestra and got it.

"Messieurs," he announced, "our good friend of the America of the North has been having an adventure."

Everybody looked at Cartaret and everybody smiled.

"Delicious," squeaked Varachon through his broken nose.

"Superb," trilled the pear-shaped singer Devignes.

Garnier's lantern-jaws went on eating. Seraphin Dieudonne caught Cartaret's glance imploringly and then shifted, in ineffectual warning, to Houdon.

"But that was only what was to be expected, my children," the musician continued. "What can we poor Frenchmen look for when a blond Hercules of an American comes, rich and handsome, to our dear Paris? Only to-day I observed, renting an abode in the house that Monsieur and I have the honor to share, a young mademoiselle, the most gracious and beautiful, accompanied by a _tuteur_, the most ferocious; and I noted well that they went to inhabit the room but across the landing from that of M. Cartarette. Behold all! At once I said to myself: 'Alas, how long will it be before this confiding----'"

He stopped short and looked at Cartaret, for Cartaret had grasped the performing hand of the composer and, in a steady grip, forced it quietly to the table.

"I tell you," said Cartaret, gently, "that I don't care to have you talk in this strain."

"How then?" bl.u.s.tered the amazed musician.

"If you go on," Cartaret warned him, "you will have to go on from the floor; I'll knock you there."

"Maurice!" cried Seraphin, rising from his chair.

"Messieurs!" piped Devignes.

Varachon growled at Houdon, and Garnier reached for a water-bottle as the handiest weapon of defense. Houdon and Cartaret were facing each other, erect, each waiting for the other to make a further move, the former red, the latter white, with anger. There followed that flashing pause of quiet which is the precursor of battle.

The battle, however, was not forthcoming. Instead, through the silence, there came a roar of voices that diverted the attention of even the chief combatants. It was a roar of voices from the cafe below: a heavy rumble that was unmistakably Madame's and a clatter of unintelligible shrieks and demands that were feminine but uncla.s.sifiable. Now one voice shouted and next the other. Then the two joined in a mighty explosion, and little Pasbeaucoup was shot up the stairs and among the diners as if he were the first rock from the crater of an emptying volcano.

He staggered against the table and jolted the water-bottle out of the poet's hand.

"Name of a Name!" he gasped. "She is a veritable tigress, that woman there!"

They had no time then to inquire whom he referred to, though they knew that, however justly he might think it, he would never, even in terror like the present, say such a thing of his wife. The words were no sooner free of his lips than a larger rock was vomited from the volcano, and a still larger, the largest rock of the three, came immediately after.

Everybody was afoot now. They saw that Pasbeaucoup cowered against the wall in a fear terrible because it was greater than his fear for Madame; they saw that Madame, who was the third rock, was clinging to the ap.r.o.n-strings of another woman, who was rock number two, and they saw that this other woman was a stocky figure, who carried in her hand a curious, wide head-dress, and who wore a parti-colored ap.r.o.n that began over her ample b.r.e.a.s.t.s and ended by brushing against her equally ample boots, and a black skirt of simple stuff and extravagant puffs, surmounted by a short-skirted blouse or basque of the same material.

Her face was round and wrinkled like a last winter's apple on the kitchen-shelf; but her eyes shone red, her hands beat the air vigorously, and from her lips poured a l.u.s.ty torrent of sounds that might have been protestations, appeals or curses, yet were certainly, considered as words, nothing that any one present had ever heard before.

She ran forward; Madame ran forward. The stranger shouldered Madame; Madame dragged her back. The stranger cried out more of her alien phrases; Madame shouted French denunciations. The Gallic diners formed a grinning circle, eager to lose no detail of the sort of wrangle that a Frenchman loves best to watch: a wrangle between women.

Cartaret made his way through the ring and put his hand on the stranger's shoulder. She seemed to understand, and relapsed into quiet, attentive but alert.

"Now," said Cartaret, "one at a time, please. Madame, what is the trouble?"

"Trouble?" roared Madame. Her face did not change expression, but she held her arms akimbo, pug-nose and strong chin poked defiantly at the strange interloper. "You may well say it, trouble!"

She put her position strongly and at length. She had been in the _caisse_, with no one of the world in the cafe, when, crying barbarous threats incomprehensible, this she-bandit, this--this _anarchiste infame_, had burst in from the street, disrupting the peace of the Deux Colombes and endangering its well-known quiet reputation with the police.

That was the gist of it. When it was delivered, Cartaret faced the stranger.

"And you, Madame?" he asked, in French.

The stranger strode forward as a pugilist steps from his corner for the round that he expects to win the fight for him. She clapped her wide head-dress upon her head, where it settled itself with a rakish tilt.

"Holy pipe!" cried Houdon. "In that I recognize her. It is the ferocious _tuteur_!"

Cartaret's interest became tense.

"What did you want here?" he urged, still speaking French.

The stranger said, twice over, something that sounded like "Kar-kar-tay."

"She is mad," squeaked Varachon.

"She is worse; she is German," vowed Madame.