Madame Bohemia

Chapter I

BATTISTA GUARINI'S dive was a warm cellar near Bleeker Street, down a flight of eight narrow steps to swinging doors on the top step of a shorter flight ; the doors, opening, showed a room which, though sixty feet long and thirty broad, was less than eight feet high; on each side were seven tables, and each table was flanked by four chairs. In the centre of the room stood a large stove, the pipe from which, suspended by wires, ran back half the length of the room to the kitchen chimney.

Guarini said the ceiling was already black when he turned the cellar into a restaurant. Caricatures of political notorieties and of celebrated artists, and curious anatomical studies, were sketched by the aid of sticks and umbrellas on the ceiling, which in consequence had a reputation equal to that of Guarini's famous dinner.

Twelve years ago, in New York, this was the favourite rendezvous of the hungry subjects of the Nine. Guarini said he was a descendant of the Italian poet who wrote "The Faithful Swain." No one doubted this, for Battista was worthy of any ancestor, poet or otherwise.

New Year's night, 188 — , will not be forgotten by

Guarini's customers. It had been snowing all day; night brought a biting frost. Few were abroad that night, and the few that were seemed to be like dead things the old year had left. But the stove in Guarini's cellar was burning brightly, and it warmed the almost empty place, waiting in silence for its customers, who had stayed away through fear of the storm.

Two men were partaking of the celebrated dinner. One was drunk and noisy, not a regular customer; the other, by his appearance and conversation, seemed to be out of place there, though he chatted familiarly and pleasantly with Guarini. Near the stove Garibaldi, the cat, sat watching the rowdy, who cursed at the storm, swore at Battista, and damned mankind.

Cyril Gower, who, having thoroughly enjoyed his dinner, was now chatting in Italian to Guarini about Mascagni and the new school of Italian composers, was about twenty-three years old, five feet eleven inches high, thin and fair, with blue eyes which seemed ever to be looking and reaching for the indefinable. Gower made most things suit him ; he seldom adapted himself to conditions. A superb indifference gave him the appearance of a modern Stoic, but all this was acquired of hard experience.

He was a musical prodigy at the age of seven. Having been a spoiled child, he became a wearied youth, and was now a disappointed man.

For five years he had eaten the bitter fruit of early triumphs. He did not complain, but he hated the instrument which had been the means of his early renown. He regarded it as the bane of music, one of the modern infantile vices, an adjunct of sciolism, and a thing to be avoided. After hearing a recital by Joseph Raphael, Gower said it was dreadful to think that every school-girl was pounding the key-board just because her papa had been foolish enough to buy a piano to furnish the drawing-room.

Gower and Guarini continued their conversation, and forgot the drunken fellow across the room.

The drunken fellow pushed away his spaghetti.

" It is too lonesome to eat," he roared, " and that lingo is enough to drive a mule mad. Hey, speak English and be sociable."

" What can I get you?" asked Guarini, going to the rowdy's table.

"Have a drink?"

" No, thank you, I never drink."

" Well, ask your stuck-up friend to have one."

" The gentleman has half a bottle of wine before him," Guarini replied, casting a furtive glance at Gower.

" Well, I'm damned if this isn't a nice world ! New Year's night, and not a soul to say ' How are you?'"

Guarini collected the plates and disappeared behind the partition which screened the kitchen. The rowdy began to sing an obscene song. Gower's mouth betrayed a smile of disgust, and his eyes turned to the sketches on the ceiling.

" I'd talk to the cat, but he's used to Italian," said the disconsolate fellow. " Come here, puss, and purr. What ! You won't ? Now I come to think of it, you haven't purred since I sat down."

The door was thrown open and a man entered. His clothes were covered with snow.

The appearance of another human being, after so many vain attempts to get into conversation with Guarini and Gower, caused the rowdy to belch out an exclamation of joy.

" A friend, — at last a friend !" and his face beamed.

" Is this Battista Guarini's ?" asked the newcomer as he shook the snow off a threadbare spring overcoat, which he did not attempt to take off.

" Yes ! Come over here ! Sit down ! Have a drink !" shouted the overjoyed inebriate.

" No, thank you, I prefer to be alone — as much as possible," replied the man.

" Well, I have never seen anything like it," the fellow whined ; " it beats solitary confinement. Not even a confounded jailer to damn you." He was utterly crushed, and too disappointed to blaspheme.

Guarini came from the kitchen.

" What may I get for you ?" he asked, eyeing his new guest from his worn-out hat to his broken shoes.

" Franco Sacci told me I could get a good dinner here."

" Ah, Franco ? I have not seen him for months."

" I met him a week ago. He has been very ill."

" Indeed ? Poor Franco ! Ah, what a talent !"

" May I take off this coat? The heat is melting the snow."

" Of course, sir," Battista readily assented, surprised at the request.

" But I have no coat on under this. Your guests don't object to me eating dinner in my shirt-sleeves ?"

" No, no, no ! Take off the coat. I sail dry it at the stove. You look — hum — tired, sir. I go at once for ze soup."

The tired stranger gave his coat to Battista, who threw it over the back of a chair near the stove. The stranger drew up to his table and leaned his head upon his hands. His appearance, when he took off his coat, touched the well-spring of pity in Battista's heart, and he was brought face to face with hunger and suffering, summer and winter. The object of his sympathy now was a man of twenty-five years of age, tall, — fully six feet, — of large, athletic frame, but thin, pale, almost emaciated. So interesting was the man's face that one could not resist a second look at it, for the expression of the eyes sought other eyes, not for pity or admiration, as the eyes of beggars or beautiful women do, but for the soul-glance which stirs many a faint heart and revives a kindlier spirit when all seems awry and the fight not worth the exertion. A sensitive mouth, which sometimes seemed severe only to be changed by a gentle smile, for humour's expression was ever in parenthesis above his firm, round chin. His hair was dark and long, and his beard sadly needed trimming. He had been so busily employed trimming his mind that he had forgotten his appearance; what was on his back and what his stomach craved were secondary matters.

Gower had not taken his eyes off Lexham (the newcomer) since he entered the place. It was not often Gower let his mind go back to days when he was a celebrated youth, but he could not now resist the reviving past. He smoked his cigar, and through the quiescent dreaminess which its magic brought floating round him waited for recollection to flash a sudden illumination of this man, who, he felt, was linked with the long ago.

Guarini placed a large plate of soup before Lexham. The drunkard snored ; Garibaldi purred ; and Gower's unfettered mind was flying through the golden alleys of his past.

Suddenly the doors crashed open and something struck the floor and with great impetus rolled full against the feet of the sleeping drunkard. The noise and the collision awakened the sleeper, who sprang up, without looking down, and gathered his arms above his head as if he expected the cartooned ceiling to fall on him. Garibaldi jumped upon the drunkard's table, and with beautifully arched back and perpendicular tail glared at the twisting, wriggling form.

Lexham ran to assist the fallen one to rise. Gower for a moment was interested in the sudden appearance, but did not stir, and soon resumed his smoking as if nothing had happened.

Lexham helped to his feet the man who had broken the quiet by his noisy fall. The rowdy had had time to gather his scattered wits. They made a strange group, the three.

" Where am I ?" asked the one who had fallen in.

" Where in thunder did you come from?" inquired the rowdy.

"Heaven, I suppose — I was so long falling; and if it hadn't been for your small feet I should now be rolling off the end of the earth."

" I hope you are not hurt," said Lexham.

MADAME BOHEMIA g

" Hurt ! No ! One fall more or less doesn't bother me, though it is a deuced long time since I fell into the place I was looking for and could not find."

" This is Guarini's restaurant."

" Thanks ! I have come to get a dinner — on trust. Guarini knows me. I owe him nothing, so I don't think he will mind even giving away a meal on such a night."

" Come to my table," said Lexham, " I have enough money to pay for two dinners."

" Do you" — he paused and looked at Lexham in slow inquiry — " do you know me?"

" No, but I hope you will let me know you, and have the pleasure of your company."

" I used to be Dick Drake."

"Drake?"

" Yes, of course ; I see the name seems familiar. You read and write : I see all that in the colour of your eyes and the shape of your right hand. Yes, I am all that is mortal of Dick Drake. I don't represent a very healthy dividend, but you may make my acquaintance if you want it."

" I do."

" Well, I hope it will be more serviceable to you than it has been to me."

" Sit down."

Lexham turned to Guarini, who had brought the second course of the celebrated dinner.

" This gentleman will dine with me. Bring the soup."

The rowdy had stood watching Lexham and Drake during their conversation. When he saw the latter v

accept Lexham's invitation and seat himself at the table, his indignation knew no bounds. He tried to stammer out a new stock of oaths, but articulation failed him.

" Hey, you Drake ! Come over here. I'll stand you a dozen dinners." The rowdy lurched half-way across the room. " Hey, you without a coat, you, you long-haired pauper, what right have you to take my friend Drake? He fell at my feet. Providence sent him to me." With this the rowdy clutched at Drake and dragged him over to his table. Drake struggled to free himself, but his poor, frail form in the grasp of the rowdy seemed as powerless as a mouse in a cat's jaws.

" Sit there!" roared the ruffian. The indifference of Gower had turned his half-drunken joviality into a sullen brooding. To decline an invitation to drink on New Year's Day was an insult. Then when Lexham preferred another table to his, the rowdy took the action as a direct snub, and felt that Lexham had singled him out above all men as a thing to be shunned.

Drake was for a moment dumfounded by the force and ferocity of the rough. The poor, frail fellow crouched in the chair, afraid of the fierce stare of the stalwart bully who stood over him. The bully's wicked glance seemed to pin Drake to the chair.

" Now, damn you ! sit there. I must have something to talk to. Those cursed dudes don't need you. Have a drink?"

Drake shrank farther into the chair and blurted, " I don't want a drink."

" Yes, you do."

II

" I do not, and I object to sitting here and being bullied by you."

" What's the matter with me? Have I got a contagious disease?"

" I am not a health inspector ; besides, if you were the healthiest of mortals, that would be no inducement to know you."

Drake had got upon his feet, and was about to return to Lexham's table when the rowdy, who seemed to have enjoyed the few words which had passed between him and his victim, stretched out his arm, caught Drake before he was half-way across the room, pulled him back, and thrust him against the chair. The chair turned over and Drake along with it. His head struck a neighbouring table. In another moment Lexham was at his side. The rowdy tried to push Lexham away, but failed, for Lexham quickly dodged his outstretched hand. Drake, half-stunned by the fall, tottered when Lexham placed him on his feet. The room seemed to revolve and close in on him, and he raised his hands to wipe away the whirling sight. In so doing one hand brushed across a wound on his forehead, which began to bleed.

" You've hurt him !" cried Lexham.

" I'll hurt you in a minute !" roared the rowdy, " if you don't get to your own table. It was all your fault!"

"My fault?"

;' Yes, damn you !" and the rowdy struck fiercely at Lexham. There was a terrible crash of overturning chairs and tables. The great, hulking bully was struck between the eyes and sent rolling down the room.

Lexham had warded the rowdy's blow, returned it with a force which his physical condition in no way indicated, and huddled up his antagonist in an inextricable tangle of furniture.

Even Gower was astonished. He got up and walked down the room to see if it was really the bully who had fallen. Guarini, with Drake's plate of soup in one hand and Lexham's second course in the other, ran up the room, shouting, —

" Gentlemen ! Gentlemen !"

" We shall have some quiet now," murmured Gower as he strolled back to his table. Lexham bathed the wound on Drake's brow and found his new friend was not much hurt. The rowdy emerged from his ignominious position and, to Guarini's amazement, began to set the tables and chairs in their proper upright positions. His conqueror and Drake were quietly finding their appetites overcoming the perturbation caused by the fracas.

"How is that?" asked the bully, pointing with grotesque pride to the part of the room he had set in order. " No damage done, eh, Guarini ?"

The Italian could not understand the change that had taken place. He had in a moment conjured up mental photographs of pistol-firing men, burly policemen, and all the frightful details of a brawl, an inquest, and an execution.

" Say, you're a wonder," remarked the bully, going to Lexham and looking with admiration on his late foe. " I have been looking and aching for a fight, but didn't know it till you smashed me. Now, have a drink."

" With pleasure. Sit down," and Lexham gave his chair to the bully turned man.

" Do you know there's many a man goes round with hell in him, and gets himself into trouble for want of a sharp, hard rap to knock the hell out of him and restore reason?"

" I'm glad you take it in that spirit."

" Why, I'd take anything from you, barring your valuables and character. I'm not such a bad kind, but this is the first time I've been East for fifteen years. I've been out in Wyoming, where I've got going a nice, refined euchre party, sort of continuous performance, with a good liquor business on the side. I came on here to see my old mother, but they told me she'd been dead these five years, and that's why I felt so damn lonesome. Say, a Western prairie during a drought seemed a highly populated, congenial garden party, compared to this dive, before you arrived."

Drake looked at the man and felt the spirit of forgiveness rise within his breast. The dull ache of the wound on his brow ceased to remind him of his fall. But an ugly lump above the bridge of the Wyoming man's nose seemed to frown at him and taunt him. The silent reproof was swelling and changing colour. Drake thought of Lexham's sympathetic touch, and of the cold, wet handkerchief which was now bound around his head. He quietly untied the handkerchief, dipped it in a tumbler of water, and handed it to his assailant.

" You have a bruise on your brow. Take this," said Drake. Lexham's attention was for the first time drawn to the place his blow had struck.

" Oh, I didn't mean to strike so hard," he cried in a tone of half-sorrow.

" Let it alone," said the man, with a smile, which seemed to soften the hard lines of his tanned face, " I'm proud of it."

Guarini brought a bottle of Chianti and filled three glasses.

" Bring another glass. You're in this, Guarini. Come on, now, just to show there's no ill-feeling," and the man grew warm, for he felt that Drake and Lexham had accepted him. Even his hoarse voice was changed; it was now not unpleasant to hear.

A silent toast was drunk.

Gower was forgotten.

He had not succeeded in identifying Lexham; indeed, he had forgotten the purpose for which he had let his mind explore the past. For Drake was now here and, for a time, seemed to be master of his thought. This man, he felt, had been connected with a great crisis in his life, when two terrible things happened which turned the tide of his future. He had never understood those incidents, though his young mind had been troubled by the affliction and distress they brought to persons near and once dear to him, and he could not visualise the vague, shadowy events which mystified him more now than they did when he was a boy. But Drake seemed to him to have been either an actor in those scenes, or a witness who could relate ^the circumstances.

Memory held full sway, and soon had Gower wholly under its influence; he could no longer resist its potency ; opium could not have so affected him ; he gave himself up to it and found a new delight in yielding to teeming visualisations.

As round an impregnable prison in which were hidden the events and persons he wished to call vividly to mind, hundreds of the acquaintances of his youth seemed to pass, without giving any clew to what he insatiably sought to discover. At last he realised that further striving would not unveil the tantalising secret. He cast off the clinging past, and with a sigh of dissatisfaction looked up the room, trying to read on Drake's and Lexham's faces all that the uncommunicative long ago would not disclose.

" I wonder if they would know me. I have not seen a look of recognition from either, and each has several times looked at me;" this he murmured almost aloud, and he tried to catch Lexham's eye.

He arose, paid his bill, and struggled into a warm common overcoat.

" Good-night, Mr. Gower," Guarini called.

Drake turned and looked at the owner of the name. Lexham raised his eyes and met those of the parting guest, who was moving towards him. Gower stopped. Drake and Lexham rose. For a moment each hesitated.

" Is your name Lexham ?"

"Yes. Are you Cyril Gower?"

"Yes. How are you?"

"Cyril Gower! Cyril Gower! Well, I'm damned if it isn't funny!" and Drake laughed; "why, you were one of the wonders of the age when I last saw you."

" Wonders and ages change, and Guarini's restaurant epitomises the world," said Gower.

" Yes, it is strange," Lexham remarked, " that we should first meet when we were lads at school in England, then as youths in Dresden, and now "

" Well, I have never in my life felt so inquisitive, and if it were not for Guarini's delicious spaghetti I should ask a thousand questions; but I see you do' not remember me," said Drake, and an amused smile lingered round his mouth.

" No, I am puzzled. In fact, I have been cudgelling my brains without success. I cannot place you, yet your face — no, not your face, but there is something— oh, I don't know what it is."

" Don't you remember Mr. Drake?"

"Drake?" Gower muttered.

" Yes, I was almost a foster-father to you. How unfilial of you wholly to forget one who shielded you from the ear-cuffing hand of your adoptive father!" and Drake heartily laughed at some reminiscence.

" Of course, now I remember you. The secretary" — this Gower said as if he snapped gladly at the words, though a moment after he learned the fact no beam of satisfaction lighted up his face; something like a sneer came and passed. Neither Drake nor Lexham noticed the expression, and Gower soon recovered his usual composure. Still, he felt that circumstance had played him a trick, for many references would surely be made to the time he had for so long shut out of his mind. It irritated him beyond measure to realise how little he really knew of the events which happened while he was imprisoned in the anteroom of youth. He had never known the history of those matters which it now seemed his right to learn, and that Drake should laugh when he spoke of his adoptive father incensed and stung him. His vanity was pierced by a laugh which he thought had the envenomed point of innuendo. It rankled and further increased the agitation of his mind.

Drake had taken more than his share of the Chianti, and his memory needed but that spur to set it speeding through the past. He lolled on his chair, stretched his thin legs, threw one foot over the other, thrust his hands into his trousers' pockets, and viewed the swiftmoving panorama of scenes in other lands. As he viewed he marvelled, and wondered why he had not dug up the splendid material and made history of it, so real, stirring, and full of the dramatic it all now seemed to him to be.

" Do you know I had the pleasure of seeing that drunken scoundrel of an adoptive father of yours soundly thrashed," said Drake with great zest, as if he had just turned his eyes from a mental reproduction of the scene.

" Did you ?" sneered Gower. " I thought he was a fine shot?"

"At clay pigeons. Plucking birds of rich plumage was more in his line. But you can't know much about his criminal accomplishments, for / had to turn nurse and take you for nice long walks. One day you did something which annoyed him; he chased you round and round the room; you were screaming, he was cursing and flinging articles of vertu at you when I entered and caught a vase on my head. See, here is the mark; I can almost bury the point of my finger in it," and Drake brushed back his hair and showed an ugly scar on his forehead.

Gower with compressed lips sat motionless, fearing the slightest movement would shake the fury now raging in his heart and almost on the point of bursting. The heat of his passion was distilling a fearful hatred for Drake. Gower felt an acute pain in the back of his head, a pain which seemed to come from the tightening of his jaws and the strain upon the cervical nerves. All this contributed to his vague sense of self-pity.

" How that thing hated you ! I don't think a child was ever so hated by anything in human shape. I never cared for youngsters till I learned the anatomy of his hate. You were a prodigy, and prodigies were to me freaks of nature, most uncanny things. You, with your golden curls and pretty face, looked like a doll of high-class German workmanship enclosing a unique mechanism. But only a human toy could be so hated and terrible. Hate breeds pity in the beholder, and in your case pity was the husk of love. How strange it all was; for when I first met you I disliked you, you were so petted and spoiled by your adoptive mother "

" By God ! you leave her out of this. I'll not Have her name dragged through your cursed reminiscences," said Gower, whose fury burst like a fierce fire through the walls of a building. The iron bands of Stoicism he had spent years in welding were torn apart and twisted like girders after terrific heat. His face, which was cynically pleasant, was now furrowed and frightfully changed. Malignancy was stamped on every feature. He shook with uncontrollable anger. Lexham was astounded, for he had listened to Drake's reminiscences without any thought of how Gower would take them. What Drake had related seemed impersonal and in no way aspersive or aimed to taunt Gower.

" Well, Gower, I'm sorry you're offended. I thought you looked like one made impervious by such events as those I have recounted/' Drake explained in a halfapologetic tone.

" Impervious ! No, I have on my soul the scars of too many wounds, which have never sufficiently healed to let me think of that dreadful man without my heart quailing. I do not know why and how it happened. It is a Haunting mystery to me. It blunts the edge of my reason and stirs all my worst impulses ; I have never asked her to explain the loathsome past — no, no matter how much I craved to learn the cause of our careers suddenly terminating." Gower's voice now sank to a harsh whisper which anger made terribly distinct : " For five years my young mind knew no present or future ; the past, octopus-like, fastened tentacles on it and sucked out ambition and what little good was in me."

The apathy whicH Had possessed him at the time of which he spoke was now reproduced sympathetically in his voice as he spoke of it — his intent eyes seemed to be far away looking at it. And in and through this dull, hoarse tone of voice there was at the same time audible a fierce present anger at the recollection. The effect of the anger speaking through that obsessed voice was uncanny in the stillness of the cellar. Lexham looked at him with a curious wonder — the man had been so self-possessed, so calm, so cynical almost, when he accosted him at first.

The Wyoming man slept, half his form sprawling over the end of the table. Poor Drake's mind was surcharged with all Gower did not know, the why and wherefore of it all. Lexham's heart was flooded with pity for Gower, and a yearning came upon him to meet once again the woman who had adopted him — that beautiful woman he once saw when her name was on every music-lover's tongue.

Drake arose and went in search of his hat, which' he found under the table on which the sleeping man had eaten his dinner.

" I'm sorry, Gower, very sorry," said Drake, as He returned to Lexham's table.

Gower made no reply. Perhaps he did not hear Drake's voice.

"Are you going?" asked Lexham.

" Yes, I have a lot of work to do." Then He said to Lexham in almost a whisper, " I'm full of it, and must set it all down before the wheels get clogged. Good-night. Many thanks for the dinner. Hope I shall soon meet you again. I'll tell you about it Spiendid tragedy, and it's all mine. Good-night."

Gower stood near the stove in deep thought. Drake turned and looked at him, smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and said in a sympathetic tone, " Good-night."

Gower did not move. Lexham was almost tempted to make Drake stay and tell Gower the whole truth, for good or ill, for he thought there was something unjust in the knowledge of the one and the ignorance of the other, and that Drake should unhesitatingly show his pleasure in withholding the truth from Gower filled Lexham with feelings of pity and indignation. But Drake turned, and Lexham saw tears in his eyes.

" If you should be here when our Western friend awakes, tell him I thought sleep more to his purpose than my good-night," said Drake, and he went down the room.

The doors swung back, and Drake was soon hurrying to his garret, debating whether he should make short stories of it or a long novel.

Gower with a weary sigh turned to Lexham and stood at the foot of the table. He looked long and curiously at his old school-fellow. There was pain in the searching eyes, and there was nothing to set them at rest or ease his fretful mind. He shook his head in a slow, despondent way.

" Won't you sit down?" Lexham said.

" No, what's the good ? Come home with me, or I shall be tempted to refer to what Drake mentioned. Come ! I'm sure she will be glad to meet you again," pleaded Gower.