Tales from Bohemia Part 21

At eight o'clock that evening he sent this note to her from the cafe where he was dining:

"Will be at stage door with carriage at eleven, as before."

He was there at eleven. So was the tenor. The little Tyrrell came out and looked from one to the other. Billy pointed to his waiting carriage.

The dancer took the tenor's arm and said:

"I'm sorry I can't accept your invitation, Mr. Folsom. Really I'm very much obliged to you, but I have an engagement."

She went off with the tenor, and Billy went off with the cab and made himself drunker than he had ever been in his life. At dawn his feet were seen protruding from the window of a coupe that was being driven up Broadway, and he was bawling forth, as best he could, the tune which had served indirectly to bring the little Tyrrell into his life.

After that night, it was the old story, a woman ridding herself of a man for whom she had never cared, and who indeed was not worth caring for.

But the operation was just as hard upon Folsom as if he had been. You know the stages of the process. She began by being not at home or just about to go out. He wrote pleading notes to her, in boyish phraseology, and she laughed over these with the tenor. He made the breaking off the more painful by going nightly to see her dance that fatal melody. He watched her from afar upon the street, and almost invariably saw the tenor by her side. He drank continually, and he begged Ted Clarke to tell her, in a casual way, that he was going to the dogs on account of her treatment of him. Whereupon she laughed and then looked scornful, saying: "If he's fool enough to drink himself to death because a woman didn't happen to fall in love with him, the sooner he finishes the work the better. I have no use for such a man."

No one has, and I told Billy so. But he kept up his pace toward the goal of confirmed drunkenness. He ceased his attendance at the theatre where she danced, only after he learned that the tenor had married her. But that dance of hers had become a part of his life. Its accompanying tune was now as necessary to his aural sensibilities as food to his stomach.

He therefore spent his evenings going to theatres and concert-halls where "La Gitana" was likely to be sung or played. He rarely sought in vain. The melody was to be found serving some purpose or other at almost every theatre that winter. It was the "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" of its time.

Some men who drink themselves to death require years and wit to complete the task. Others save time by catching pneumonia through exposure due to drink. Billy Folsom was one of the pneumonia cla.s.s. He "slept off" the effects of a long lark in an area-way belonging to a total stranger. A policeman took him to his lodgings by way of the station house, and a day later his landlord sent for a doctor. Five days after that I went over to see him. He was in bed, and one of his friends, a man of his own kind, but of stronger fibre, was keeping him company. Billy told us how it had come about:

"I wouldn't have gone on that racket if it hadn't been for one thing.

I'd made up my mind to turn over a new leaf, and I was walking along full of plans for reformation. Suddenly I heard the sound of a banjo, coming from an up-stairs window, playing a certain tune I've got somewhat attached to. I saw the place was a kind of a dive and I went in. I got the banjo-player to strum the piece over again, and I bought drinks for the crowd. Then I made him play once more, and there were other rounds of drinks, and the last I remember is that I was waltzing around the place to that air. Two days after that the officer found me trespa.s.sing on some one's property by sleeping on it. I dropped my overcoat and hat somewhere, and it seemed there must have been a draft around, for I caught this cold."

I told Folsom to stop talking, as he was manifestly much weaker than he or his friend supposed him to be. There ensued a few seconds of silence.

A loud noise broke upon the stillness with a shocking suddenness. It was the clamour of a band-piano in the street beneath Folsom's window, and of all the tunes in the world the tune that it shrieked out was "La Gitana." I looked at Folsom.

He rose in his bed and, clenching his teeth, he propelled through their interstices the word:

"d.a.m.n!"

He remained sitting for a time, his hair tumbled about, his eyes wide open but expressive of meditation as the notes continued to be thumped upward by the turbulent instrument. Presently he said, in a husky voice:

"How that thing pursues me! It's like a fiend. It has no let-up. It follows me even into the next world."

He sat for a moment more, intently listening. Then, with a quick, peevish sigh, he fell back from weakness. We by his side did not know it at the instant, but we discovered in a short time what had taken place when his head had touched the pillow, for he remained so still.

And that was the last of Billy Folsom, and up from the murmuring street below came the notes of the band-piano playing "La Gitana."

XVIII. -- TRANSITION

Three of us sat upon an upper deck, sailing to an island. The day was sunlit, the wind was gentle, and the faintest ripple pa.s.sed over the sea.

"Do you see the tremulous old man sitting over there by the pilot-house absorbing the suns.h.i.+ne? He reminds me of another old man, one whom I watched for six years, while he faded and died. He never knew me, but he walked by my house daily and I walked by his. It was an interesting study. The conclusion of the process was so inevitable. The time came when he did not pa.s.s my house. Then he took the sunlight in a bow-window on the second floor of his residence. So closely had I watched his decadence during the six years that I was able to say to myself one morning, 'There will be c.r.a.pe on his door before the day is out.' And so there was."

The bon-vivant laughed rather mechanically, but the other, he who makes verses so dainty that the world does not heed them, smiled softly and sympathetically to me and said:

"You are right. Nothing is so fascinating as the study of a progress--a development or a decline. The inevitability of the end makes it more engrossing, for it relieves it of the undue eagerness of curiosity, the feverishness of uncertainty."

"Well, I am content rather to live than to contemplate life," said the bon-vivant. "It's true I have given myself up to observing anxiously such an advancement as you describe--a vulgar one you will say. When I was a very young man I was a very thin man. I determined to amplify my dimensions. I followed with careful interest my daily increase toward my present--let us not say obesity, but call it portliness."

"You are inclined to be easy upon yourself," I commented.

"Indeed I am--in all matters."

After a pause the verse-maker, throwing away his cigarette, took up again the theme that I had introduced.

"Yes, it is an engaging occupation to note any progression, even when it is toward a fatal or a horrible culmination. But when it is to some beautiful and happy outcome, this advancement is an ineffably charming spectacle. Such it is when it is the unfolding of a flower or the filling out of a poetic thought.

"But no growth nor transformation in the material world is more entrancing to observe than that by which a young girl becomes a lovely woman.

"This transition seems to be sudden. It is not so. It is rapid, perhaps, as life goes, but each stage is distinctly marked. All men have not time to watch the change, however, and so most men awaken to its occurrence only when it is completed. Such was the case of the young and lowborn lover of Consuelo in George Sand's romance. Do you remember that incomparable scene in which he suddenly begins to notice that some feature of Consuelo is handsome, and, with surprise, calls her attention to its comeliness? She, equally astonished and delighted, joins him in the visual examination of her charms, and the two pa.s.s from one attraction to the other, finally completing the discovery that she is a beautiful woman.

"The Italian gamin was not the sort of man to have antic.i.p.ated this transfiguration and to have watched its stages.

"You may argue that his delight at suddenly opening his eyes to the finished work was greater than would have been his pleasure at contemplating the alteration in process. Doubtless his was. As to whether yours would be in such a case, depends upon your temperament.

"I have experienced both of these pleasures. Perhaps it may be due to certain special circ.u.mstances that I cherish the memory of the more lasting delight, even though it was tempered by occasional doubts as to the end, more tenderly than I do the more sudden and keen awakening.

"There is a woman who first came under my observations when she was thirteen years old. She was then agreeable enough to the eye, more by reason of the gentleness of her expression than for any noteworthy attractions of face and figure. Her face, indeed, was plain and uninteresting; her figure unformed and too slim. Her hair, however, was charming, being soft and extremely light in colour. She seemed awkward, too, and timid, through fear of offending or making a bad impression.

"For a reason I was particularly interested in her. I knew, young as I then was, that plain girls, in many cases, develop into handsome women.

"At fourteen her hair showed indications of changing its tint.

Its tendency was unmistakably toward brown. This was temporarily unfavourable, but a brightening of the blue eyes and a newly acquired poise of the head, with a step toward self-confidence in manner, were compensating alterations.

"At fifteen there came an emanc.i.p.ation of mind and speech from schoolgirl habits. A defensive a.s.sumption of impertinent reserve, varied by fits of superficial garrulity, gave way to real thoughtfulness, to natural amiability. Then came, too, an emboldenment of the facial outline, a constancy to the colour of the cheeks, a certainty of gait, and the first perceptible roundness of contour beneath the neck.

"At sixteen she had adorable hands, and she could wear short sleeves with impunity. A rational, unforced, and coherent vivacity had now revealed itself as a characteristic of her mode and conversation. Her ankles had long before that grown too sightly to be exhibited. Such is so-called civilization! Her hair seemed to darken before one's eyes. The oval of her face attracted the attention of more than one of my artist friends.

"At seventeen she had learned what styles of attire, what arrangements of her hair, were best suited to display effectively her comeliness.

"This was one of the greatest steps of all.

"The simplest draperies, she found, the least complicated headgear, were most advantageous to her appearance.

"A taste for reading the most ideal and artistic of books, as well as her liking for poetry, the theatre, music, and pictures had implanted that exalted something in her face which cannot be otherwise acquired.

"When she was eighteen people on the street turned to look at her as she pa.s.sed.

"At nineteen her figure was unsurpa.s.sable. Indeed, I think there cannot be a more beautiful and charming woman in America. She is now twenty.

"It was my privilege to view closely the bursting of this bud into bloom."

The fin de siecle versewright became silent and lighted a fresh cigarette.

"Will you permit me to ask," said I, "what were the especial facilities that you had for observing this evolution?"