Fancies and Goodnights

NIGHT YOUTH PARIS AND THE MOON

Annoyed with the world, I took a large studio in Hampstead. Here I resolved to live in utter aloofness, until the world should approach me on its knees, whining its apologies.

The studio was large and high; so was the rent. Fortunately my suit was strongly made, and I had a tireless appetite for herrings. I lived here happily and frugally, pleased with the vast and shadowy room, and with the absurd little musicians' gallery, on which I set my phonograph a-playing. I approved also of the little kitchen, the bathroom, the tiny garden, and even the damp path, sad with evergreens, that led to the street beyond. I saw no one. My mood was that of a small bomb, but one which had no immediate intention of going off.

Although I had no immediate intention of going off, I was unable to resist buying a large trunk, which I saw standing outside a junkshop. I was attracted by its old-fashioned appearance, for I myself hoped to become old-fashioned; by its size, because I am rather small; by its curved lid, for I was always fond of curves, and most of all by a remark on the part of the dealer, who stood picking his nose in the disillusioned doorway of his shop. «A thing like that,» said he, «is always useful.»

I paid four pounds, and had the large black incubus taken to my studio on a hand-barrow. There I stood it on the little gallery, which, for no reason, ran along the farther end.

This transaction having left me without money, I felt it necessary to sublet my studio. This was a wrench. I telephoned the agents; soon they arranged to bring a client of theirs, one Stewart Musgrave, to inspect my harmless refuge. I agreed, with some reserve. «I propose to absent myself during this inspection. You will find the key in the door. Later you can inform me if my studio is taken.»

Later they informed me that my studio was taken. «I win leave,» I said, «at four o'clock on Friday. The interloper can come at four-thirty. He will find the key in the door.»

Just before four on Friday, I found myself confronted with a problem. On letting one's studio, one locks one's clothes in a press reserved for the purpose. This I did, but was then nude. One has to pack one's trunk. I had a trunk but nothing to put in it. I had bidden the world farewell. Here was my studio — sublet. There was the world. For practical purposes there is very little else anywhere.

The hour struck. I cut the Gordian knot, crossed the Rubicon, burned my boats, opened my trunk, and climbed inside. At four-thirty the interloper arrived. With bated breath I looked out through my little air-and-peep-hole. This was a surprise. I had bargained for a young man of no personal attractions. Stewart Musgrave was a young woman of many.

She had a good look around, pulled out every drawer, peeped into every corner. She bounced herself on the big divan-bed. She even came up onto the little useless gallery, leaned over, recited a line or two of Juliet, and then she approached my modest retreat. «I won't open you,» she said. «There might be a body in you.» I thought this showed a fine instinct. Her complexion was divine.

There is a great deal of interest in watching a handsome young woman who imagines herself to be alone in a large studio. One never knows what she will do next. Often, when lying there alone, I had not known what I would do next. But then I was alone. She, too, thought she was alone, but I knew better. This gave me a sense of mastery, of power.

On the other hand, I soon loved her to distraction. The hell of it was, I had a shrewd suspicion she did not love me. How could she?

At night, while she slept in an appealing attitude, I crept downstairs, and into the kitchen, where I cleaned up the crockery, her shoes, and some chicken I found in the icebox. «There is,» she said to a friend, «a pixie in this studio.» «Leave out some milk,» said her friend.

Everything went swimmingly. Nothing could have been more delicate than the unspoken love that grew up between the disillusioned world-weary poet and the beautiful young girl-artist, so fresh, so natural, and so utterly devoid of self-consciousness.

On one occasion, I must admit, I tripped over the corner of a rug. «Who is there?» she cried, waking suddenly from a dream of having her etchings lovingly appraised by a connoisseur.

«A mouse,» I telepathed squeakingly, standing very still. She sank into sleep again.

She was more rudely put to sleep some days later. She came in, after being absent most of the evening, accompanied by a man to whom I took an immediate dislike. My instinct never fails me; he had not been in the studio half an hour before he gave her occasion to say, «Pray don't!»

«Yes,» said he.

«No,» said she.

«I must,» said he.

«You mustn't,» said she.

«I will,» said he.

«You won't,» said she.

A vestige of refined feeling would have assured him that there was no possibility of happiness between people so at variance on every point. There should be at least some zone of enthusiastic agreement between every couple; for example, the milk. But whatever his feelings were, they were not refined.

«Why did you bring me here?» said he with a sneer.

«To see my etchings,» she replied, biting her lip.

«Well, then — I thought you were a customer.»

«I am. A tough customer.» With that he struck her on the temple. She fell, mute, inanimate, crumpled.

«Damn it!» said he. «I've killed her. I've done her in. I shall swing. Unless — I escape.»

I was forced to admire the cold logic of it. It was, momentarily, the poet's unreasoning prostration before the man of action, the worldling.

Quickly he undressed her. «Gosh!» he said. «What a pity I hit so hard!» He flung her over his shoulder, retaining her legs in his grasp. He bore her up the stairs, onto the shadowy balcony. He opened the trunk and thrust her inside. «Here is a fine thing!» I thought. «Here she is, in her condition, alone with me, in my condition. If she knew she was dead she'd be glad.» The thought was bitter.

With the dawn he went for a taxi. The driver came in with him; together they bore the trunk to the vehicle waiting outside.

«Strewth, it's heavy!» said the driver. «What yer got in it?»

«Books,» said the murderer, with the utmost calm.

If I had thought of saying, «Paradise Lost, in two volumes,» I should have said it, then and there, and this story would have come to an end. As it was, we were hoisted on to the cab, which drove off in the direction of Victoria.

A jet of cool night air flowed through the air-hole. She, whom I had mourned as dead, inhaled it, and breathed a sigh. Soon she was fully conscious.

«Who are you?» she asked in alarm.

«My name,» I said tactfully, «is Emily.»

She said, «You are kidding me.»

I said, «What is your name?»

She said, «Stewart.»

I could not resist the reply, «Then I am Flora MacDonald.»

Thus by easy stages I approached the ticklish question of my hitherto hopeless love.

She said, «I would rather die.»

I said, «In a sense you have died already. Besides, I am your pixie. Or it may be only a dream, and you could hardly blame yourself for that. Anyway, I expect he will take us to Paris.»

«It is true,» she said, «that I have always dreamed of a honeymoon in Paris.»

«The Paris moon!» I said. «The bookstalls on the quais. The little restaurants on the Left Bank!»

«The Cirque Medrano!» she cried.

«L'Opéra!»

«Le Louvre! Le Petit Palais!»

«Le Bœuf sur le Toit!»

«Darling,» she cried, «if it were not so dark, I would show you my etchings, if I had them with me.»

We were in absolute raptures; we heard the ticket being taken, for Paris. We were registered; it was next door to being married, and we laughed at the rolling of the vessel. Soon, however, we were carried up an endless flight of stairs.

«Mon Dieu, mais que c'est lourd!» gasped the hotel porter. «Qu'est-ce qu'il y a dans cette malle?»

«Des livres,» said the murderer, with the utmost sang-froid.

«Paradis Retrouvé, édition complète,» I whispered, and was rewarded with a kiss.

Alone, as he thought, with his lifeless victim, the murderer sneered, «H'ya keeping?» said he coarsely, as he approached the trunk.

He lifted the lid a little, and thrust his head within. A rim ran round inside: while yet he blinked, we seized it, and brought the lid down with a crash.

«La guillotine?» I said cuttingly.

«La Defarge!» observed my adored one, knitting her brows.

«Vive la France!»

We stepped out; we put him inside. I retained his clothes. With a sheet from the bed, the bell rope, and a strip of carpet from before the washstand, she made a fetching Arab lass. Together we slipped out into the street.

Night! Youth! Paris! And the moon!