“You have to be damn drunk,” he thought.
Zelli’s was closed, the bleak and sinister cheap hotels surrounding it were dark; up in the Rue Blanche there was more light and a local, colloquial French crowd. The Poet’s Cave had disappeared, but the two great mouths of the Cafe of Heaven and the Cafe of Hell still yawned—even devoured, as he watched, the meagre contents of a tourist bus—a German, a Japanese, and an American couple who glanced at him with frightened eyes.
So much for the effort and ingenuity of Montmartre. All the catering to vice and waste was on an utterly childish scale, and he suddenly realized the meaning of the word “dissipate”—to dissipate into thin air; to make nothing out of something. In the little hours of the night every move from place to place was an enormous human jump, an increase of paying for the privilege of slower and slower motion.
He remembered thousand-franc notes given to an orchestra for playing a single number, hundred-franc notes tossed to a doorman for calling a cab.
But it hadn’t been given for nothing.
It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might not remember the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would always remember—his child taken from his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont.
In the glare of a brasserie a woman spoke to him. He bought her some eggs and coffee, and then, eluding her encouraging stare, gave her a twenty-franc note and took a taxi to his hotel.
II
He woke upon a fine fall day—football weather. The depression of yesterday was gone and he liked the people on the streets. At noon he sat opposite Honoria at Le Grand Vatel, the only restaurant he could think of not reminiscent of champagne dinners and long luncheons that began at two and ended in a blurred and vague twilight.
“Now, how about vegetables? Oughtn’t you to have some vegetables?”
“Well, yes.”
“Here’s epinards and chou-fleur and carrots and haricots.”
“I’d like chou-fleur.”
“Wouldn’t you like to have two vegetables?”
“I usually only have one at lunch.”
The waiter was pretending to be inordinately fond of children. “Qu’elle est mignonne la petite? Elle parle exactement comme une Francaise.”
“How about dessert? Shall we wait and see?”
The waiter disappeared. Honoria looked at her father expectantly.
“What are we going to do?”
“First, we’re going to that toy store in the Rue Saint-Honore and buy you anything you like. And then we’re going to the vaudeville at the Empire.”
She hesitated. “I like it about the vaudeville, but not the toy store.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you brought me this doll.” She had it with her. “And I’ve got lots of things. And we’re not rich any more, are we?”
“We never were. But today you are to have anything you want.”
“All right,” she agreed resignedly.
When there had been her mother and a French nurse he had been inclined to be strict; now he extended himself, reached out for a new tolerance; he must be both parents to her and not shut any of her out of communication.
“I want to get to know you,” he said gravely. “First let me introduce myself. My name is Charles J. Wales, of Prague.”
“Oh, daddy!” her voice cracked with laughter.
“And who are you, please?” he persisted, and she accepted a role immediately: “Honoria Wales, Rue Palatine, Paris.”
“Married or single?”
“No, not married. Single.”
He indicated the doll. “But I see you have a child, madame.”
Unwilling to disinherit it, she took it to her heart and thought quickly: “Yes, I’ve been married, but I’m not married now. My husband is dead.”
He went on quickly, “And the child’s name?”
“Simone. That’s after my best friend at school.”
“I’m very pleased that you’re doing so well at school.”
“I’m third this month,” she boasted. “Elsie”—that was her cousin—“is only about eighteenth, and Richard is about at the bottom.”
“You like Richard and Elsie, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I like Richard quite well and I like her all right.”
Cautiously and casually he asked: “And Aunt Marion and Uncle Lincoln—which do you like best?”
“Oh, Uncle Lincoln, I guess.”
He was increasingly aware of her presence. As they came in, a murmur of “…adorable” followed them, and now the people at the next table bent all their silences upon her, staring as if she were something no more conscious than a flower.
“Why don’t I live with you?” she asked suddenly. “Because Mama’s dead?”
“You must stay here and learn more French. It would have been hard for daddy to take care of you so well.”
“I don’t really need much taking care of any more. I do everything for myself.”
Going out of the restaurant, a man and a woman unexpectedly hailed him.
“Well, the old Wales!”
“Hello there, Lorraine… Dunc.”
Sudden ghosts out of the past: Duncan Schaeffer, a friend from college. Lorraine Quarrles, a lovely, pale blonde of thirty; one of a crowd who had helped them make months into days in the lavish times of three years ago.
“My husband couldn’t come this year,” she said, in answer to his question. “We’re poor as hell. So he gave me two hundred a month and told me I could do my worst on that… This your little girl?”
“What about coming back and sitting down?” Duncan asked.
“Can’t do it.” He was glad for an excuse. As always, he felt Lorraine’s passionate, provocative attraction, but his own rhythm was different now.
“Well, how about dinner?” she asked.
“I’m not free. Give me your address and let me call you.”
“Charlie, I believe you’re sober,” she said judicially. “I honestly believe he’s sober, Dunc. Pinch him and see if he’s sober.”
Charles indicated Honoria with his head. They both laughed.
“What’s your address?” said Duncan sceptically.
He hesitated, unwilling to give the name of his hotel.
“I’m not settled yet. I’d better call you. We’re going to see the vaudeville at the Empire.”
“There! That’s what I want to do,” Lorraine said. “I want to see some clowns and acrobats and jugglers. That’s just what we’ll do, Dunc.”
“We’ve got to do an errand first,” said Charlie. “Perhaps we’ll see you there.”
“All right, you snob… Good-by, beautiful little girl.”
“Good-by.”
Honoria bobbed politely.
Somehow, an unwelcome encounter. They liked him because he was functioning, because he was serious; they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now, because they wanted to draw a certain sustenance from his strength.
At the Empire, Honoria proudly refused to sit upon her father’s folded coat. She was already an individual with a code of her own, and Charlie was more and more absorbed by the desire of putting a little of himself into her before she crystallized utterly. It was hopeless to try to know her in so short a time.
Between the acts they came upon Duncan and Lorraine in the lobby where the band was playing.
“Have a drink?”
“All right, but not up at the bar. We’ll take a table.”
“The perfect father.”
Listening abstractedly to Lorraine, Charlie watched Honoria’s eyes leave their table, and he followed them wistfully about the room, wondering what they saw. He met her glance and she smiled.
“I liked that lemonade,” she said.
What had she said? What had he expected? Going home in a taxi afterward, he pulled her over until her head rested against his chest.
“Darling, do you ever think about your mother?”
“Yes, sometimes,” she answered vaguely.
“I don’t want you to forget her. Have you got a picture of her?”
“Yes, I think so. Anyhow, Aunt Marion has. Why don’t you want me to forget her?”
“She loved you very much.”
“I loved her too.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Daddy, I want to come and live with you,” she said suddenly.
His heart leaped; he had wanted it to come like this.
“Aren’t you perfectly happy?”
“Yes, but I love you better than anybody. And you love me better than anybody, don’t you, now that Mammy’s dead?”
“Of course I do. But you won’t always like me best, honey. You’ll grow up and meet somebody your own age and go marry him and forget you ever had a daddy.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she agreed tranquilly.
He didn’t go in. He was coming back at nine o’clock and he wanted to keep himself fresh and new for the thing he must say then.
“When you’re safe inside, just show yourself in that window.”
“All right. Good-by, dads, dads, dads, dads.”
He waited in the dark street until she appeared, all warm and glowing, in the window above and kissed her fingers out into the night.
III
They were waiting. Marion sat behind the coffee service in a dignified black dinner dress that just faintly suggested mourning. Lincoln was walking up and down with the animation of one who had already been talking. They were as anxious as he was to get into the question. He opened it almost immediately:
“I suppose you know what I want to see you about—why I really came to Paris.”
Marion played with the black stars on her necklace and frowned.
“I’m awfully anxious to have a home,” he continued. “And I’m awfully anxious to have Honoria in it. I appreciate your taking in Honoria for her mother’s sake, but things have changed now”—he hesitated and then continued more forcibly—“changed radically with me, and I want to ask you to reconsider the matter. It would be silly for me to deny that about three years ago I was acting badly——”
Marion looked up at him with hard eyes.
“—but all that’s over. As I told you, I haven’t had more than a drink a day for over a year, and I take that drink deliberately, so that the idea of alcohol won’t get too big in my imagination. You see the idea?”
“No,” said Marion succinctly.
“It’s a sort of
