Mated from the Morgue Part 1

Mated from the Morgue.

by John Augustus O'Shea.

APOLOGETIC.

This tale, such as it is, has one merit. It is a study of manners, mainly made on the spot, not evolved from the shelves of the British Museum. There is in it, at least, a crude attempt at photography, a process in which sunlight and air have some part, and, therefore, liker to nature than the adumbrations of the reading-room. The localities are faithfully drawn, the persons are not dolls with stuffing of sawdust, but human animals who might have lived--and, mayhap, did live. If the volume does not kill an hour, the writer is murderer only in thought.

CHAPTER I.

A HOUSELESS DOG.

The scene is Paris, the Imperial Paris, but not a quarter that is fas.h.i.+onable, wealthy, or much frequented by the tourist. It is the wild, slovenly, buoyant quarter of the Paris of the left bank, known as _le Pays Latin_--the Land of Latin. The quarter of frolic and genius, of vaulting ambition and limp money-bags, of generosity and meanness, of truth and hypocrisy; the quarter which supplies the France of the future with its mighty thinkers, the France of the pa.s.sing with the forlorn hopes of its revolutions, the world--and the _demi monde_ too--very often with its most brilliant and erratic meteors.

The time is the spring of 1866. The chestnut-tree, called the Twentieth of March, in the Champs Elysees, has shown its first blossoms. But the weather is cold and damp in spite of these deceitful blossoms: the skies weep, and chill winds blow sullenly along the Seine. It is just the weather to make the blaze of a ruddy fire a cheerful sight, and the hiss of the crackling logs a cheerful sound; but there is neither fire nor, indeed, grate or stove wherein to put it, in the cabinet numbered 37, on the fifth story of the Hotel de Suez, in the Rue du Four, into which we ask the reader to penetrate. A portmanteau, whose half-opened lid betrays 'the poverty of the land,' lies in a corner, a shabby suit of man's wearing apparel hangs carelessly on a chair, and a head, thickly covered with hair, protrudes from the blankets in a little bed in a recess, and out of the mouth in this head protrudes a Turkish pipe of exaggerated length, and out of the same mouth at regular intervals filters a slender thread of smoke. The lips contract and open again, and no smoke comes. The head is elevated, the blankets thrown back, and the shoulders and torso of the smoker appear rising gradually from the bed till they are erect; the bowl of the Turkish pipe is regarded a moment deprecatingly (as if the pipe could have been kept alight without tobacco), and the lips move again, this time to soliloquy:

'Mr. Ma.n.u.s O'Hara, I have a great respect for your father's son: you come of a fine proud spend-thrift old Irish family; but I tell you what, my brilliant friend, if you don't replenish the exchequer I shall be obliged to cut your society. You're not in a position to pay any more visits to that interesting elderly female acquaintance of yours, your aunt.[1] Realize your position, sir, I beg of you. You're in a most confounded state of impecuniosity; you haven't a sou left, and I'm afraid your pipe is finally extinguished. Then, that delightful lady in the den of Cerberus below, who was one long smile when you and the sack,[2] now that you are _en deche_,[3] is an eternal snarl like a very dog of Hades. When you had money you had a room on the first floor at thirty francs a month; now that you are poor she stuffs you into a garret on the fourth at thirty-five. Perdition catch it, Mr. O'Hara, it's very expensive to be poor. Without cash or credit! Charming position for a young man of genius! If you had a good suit of clothes you might have a chance of getting into the _hotel des haricots_,[4] but with your present raiment there is no danger of your encouraging that horrible temptation of ingenuous youth known as running into debt. It's my private opinion you wouldn't get a box of matches on your solemn oath, let alone your word, at the present crisis in your chequered career. Good heavens! How cold it is! Without cash or credit. That's the burden of the litany. Shall I pray? Bah! Who could pray with hunger gnawing his vitals? Forty-two hours without food, and still without cash or credit to procure a bite.'

The head was dipped suddenly and violently under the blankets.

A long pause.

The bed-covering billows as if stirred by some strong agitation of the form beneath.

All is quiet again.

Now a stifled sound as of sobbing comes from under the blankets. They are forcibly flung back, and a pale face, one feverish flush on each cheek, emerges. The eyes flash with a sharp fitful light amid the quick-darting big tears, and the breast heaves with convulsive sobs. At length amid the sobs rise broken words:

'Too proud to beg, and not paid for working. Must I die, then? A hound is fed; 'tis only man is let perish by his fellow-beings!'

Silence again; and suddenly and startlingly on the air to the silence succeeds a mocking, hysterical laugh. The form springs from its rec.u.mbent position on to the bare floor, and approaches a small mirror fixed against the wall.

That laugh again.

'Ha, ha! Ma.n.u.s, my boy, die game!' and with the expression of this advice, or rather intention, calm seems to come to the troubled spirit of our poor friend. He takes his clothes off the chair and dresses himself, keeping up a jeering comment of self-ridicule, as he puts on each shabby article of attire.

'Ha! my pretty paper collar, I must turn you. You'll never die a heretic. By Jove! paper collars were a great invention: they emanc.i.p.ate the lord of creation from the thraldom of the washerwoman. Better to face the free sky than to pine in this stuffy cell. Your toilette is finished, Ma.n.u.s, my friend, and now to pa.s.s under the Caudine forks.'

The Caudine forks was the term he applied to the pa.s.sage leading by the _concierge's_ narrow office to the open street--a humiliating pa.s.sage enough, it is made, to any man of proud spirit and slim purse by the voluble Parisian _concierge_, the warder of the entrance to the lodging-house. The _concierge_ is a perennial fountain of gossip, the demon of grasp personified, and is popularly supposed always to have a daughter at the Conservatory of Music. Watching his opportunity, crouched at the bottom of the dark stairs, O'Hara bolted at a mad rush through the hall, and never ceased running until he had gained the Boulevard St. Michel, after traversing the intervening Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine.

He stopped a minute, laughed, tightened the belt which supported his trousers, cried in a light voice, 'Blockade safely run!' and resumed his way rapidly along the boulevard till he came to the quay, then turned to the right, past Notre Dame, until he reached the Pont d'Archeveche, whereat he stopped. The Morgue was near--gloomy receptacle of the unclaimed dead, sent to their G.o.d before their time by crime, starvation, or despair, or by some of the accidents which often-times cut short the span of the happiest human life. He looked at it with a desperate, desponding, forlorn look for a little time, and then broke out as if in sequence of some train of thought:

'No; it's no use thinking of it. I couldn't do it. If it weren't for the immortality of the soul, and that inconvenient religious training I've got! Now if I were a Pagan, I could freely end my woes in that silent river; but I'm a Christian, and must suffer them, and curse my kind.'

A mournful yet affectionate whine at his feet attracted his attention.

He looked down. A lank, ugly cur, of una.s.signable breed, but unmistakably currish--a rank, unmitigated cur, with melancholy visage and moist eyes--returned the look.

'Poor dog, you, too, have hunger in your face. The world has deserted you!'

The dog whined again, and rubbed his thin sides familiarly and confidently against the bottom of O'Hara's trousers.

'Alas! friend, I am like yourself--a wretched, friendless dog. Your imploring looks are lost on me, though, Heaven knows, I would relieve you if I could. _Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco._ Faith! the gender is wrong there. My grammar is going with everything else. I suppose I should have said _ignarus_.'

He faintly smiled at the notion.

'But I have nothing--absolutely nothing,' running his hand expressively across his waistcoat-pockets. It stopped--his face lit up joyfully; then fell. 'Blessed,' continued he, 'are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed,' and slowly putting his hand into the pocket he extracted, with difficulty, a silver piece of ten sous. He looked at it steadily, almost incredulously, then at the dog. 'Come, my friend,'

he cried, 'companion in misfortune, you must share my luck.' And five minutes afterwards O'Hara and his dumb acquaintance might be seen in the nearest _cremerie_, O'Hara munching a roll of bread and the houseless dog greedily lapping a bowl of hot milk.

And both of them looked very happy dogs.

CHAPTER II.

A CRUSH AT THE MORGUE.

When the stray dog had finished his welcome repast, licking the sides of the bowl which had contained it with a gusto which many a dyspeptic favourite, fondled on the velvet cus.h.i.+on of my lady, and carried about by my lady's footman, would have envied, O'Hara began to talk with him; yes, to talk with him--and the dog answered him, as far as eyes and tail could speak.

'Well, my poor fellow, you seem to like that!'

The dog curled his tail and licked his lips.

'What's your name? You don't know, nor where you were born. You're as ignorant as Topsy.'

The dog sought the ground with his eyes.

'I must give you a name. Suppose I call you Chance, to mark how I found you; or Bran, like the dog in Ossian; or Hector--no, that's too b.u.mptious a name, and you're no bully.'

The dog wisely shook his head, as if he looked on the idea of bullyism with pity.

'Let me see; egad, I'll naturalize you! I think you have a very Irish face--an honest, open, grateful face--and I'll call you Pat.'

The dog wagged his tail joyfully, stood on his hind legs, and stretched out a paw.

'Wonderful creature! can it be that I have hit on your name? Well, Pat'--again the tail wagged--'if you belonged to a rich family you would be housed, perhaps, in that hospital for indisposed gentlemen of your breed I see advertised on a kiosk near the Palais Royal; but, because you really want a friend and a crust, you are left without either.

That's the way with the world, Pat,[5] and you're a vagabond, though goodness knows you're ugly enough to be a pet. I declare you're as ill-favoured as any pug I ever met sitting on a Brussels hearthrug, if it were not for that face.'

The dog gave an a.s.senting bark.

'But we mustn't be stopping here too long, Pat, though our time isn't very precious. George Francis Train says the next best thing to money is the suspicion of money, and I say the next best thing to occupation is the suspicion of occupation; and, by my word, they lock you up for having no occupation in England, though you may be wearing the soles off your feet to get one. In the great world they go to the theatre or the opera or the circus after dinner to promote digestion, and I think I know where we can enjoy ourselves cheaply after our banquet. Hi! Pat, come along.'