The Azure Rose Part 11

"And may we take it to our room?"

"Eh? Oh, certainly," said Cartaret.

She held out her hand, the palm lowered.

"Good-night," she said.

Cartaret's heart bounded: this time she had not said "Good-by." He seized the hand. Chitta growled, and he released it with a conventional handshake.

The Girl smiled.

"Ah, yes," she said; "this afternoon it puzzled me, but now I recollect: you Americans, sir, shake one's hand, do you not?"

She was gone, and glowering Chitta with her, before he could answer.

Cartaret stood where she had left him, his brows knitted. He heard Chitta double-lock the door to their rooms. He was thinking thoughts that his brain was not accustomed to. It was some time before they became more familiar. Then he gasped:

"I wonder if my face is dirty!"

He took the lamp and sought the sole mirror that his room boasted. His face was dirty.

"d.a.m.n!" said Cartaret.

Down in the narrow street, an uncertain chorus was singing:

"There's nothing, friend, 'twixt you and me Except the best of company.

(There's just one bock 'twixt you and me, and I'll catch up full soon!) What woman's lips compare to this: This st.u.r.dy seidel's frothy kiss----"

His guests were coming to seek him. They had remembered him at last.

Cartaret's mind, however, was busy with other matters. He had not thought of the gallant thing that he might have said to The Girl, but he had thought of something equally surprising.

"Gee whiz!" he cried. "I understand now--it's probably the custom of her country: she expected me to kiss her hand. Kiss her hand--and I missed the chance!"

CHAPTER VI

CARTARET SETS UP HOUSEKEEPING

Que de femmes il y a dans une femme! Et c'est bien heureux.--Dumas, Fils: _La Dame Aux Perles_.

Cartaret did not see the Lady of the Rose next day, though his work suffered sadly through the worker's jumping from before his easel at the slightest sound on the landing, running to his door, and sometimes himself going to the hall and standing there for many minutes, trying, and not succeeding, to look as if he had just come in, or were just going out, on business of the first importance. He concluded, for the hundredth time, that he was a fool; but he persevered in his folly. He asked himself why he should feel such an odd interest in an unknown girl practically alone in Paris; but he found no satisfactory answer.

He declared that it was madness in him to suppose that she could want ever to see him again, and madness to suppose that a penniless failure had anything to gain by seeing her; but he continued to try.

On the night following the first day of his watch, Cartaret went to bed disappointed and slept heavily. On the second night he went to bed worried, and dreamed of scaling a terrible mountain in quest of a flower, and of falling into a hideous chasm just as the flower turned into a beautiful woman and smiled at him. On the third night, he surrendered to acute alarm and believed that he did not sleep at all.

The morning of the fourth day found him knocking on the panel of that magic door opposite. Chitta opened the door a crack, growled, and shut it in his face.

"I wonder," reflected Cartaret, "what would be the best means of killing this old woman. I wonder if the hyena would eat candy sent her by mail."

He had been watching, all the previous day, for the Lady of the Rose to go out, and she did not leave her room. Now it occurred to him to watch for Chitta's exit on a forage foray and to renew his attack during her absence. This he accomplished. From a front window, he had no sooner seen the duenna swing into the rue du Val de Grace, with her head-dress bobbing and a shopping-net on her arm, than he was again knocking at the door across the landing.

He knew now, did Cartaret, that, on whatever landing of life he had lived, there was always that door opposite, the handle of which he had never dared to turn, the key to which he had never yet found. He knew, on this morning--a clear, windy morning, for March had come in like a lion--that, for the door of every heart in the world, or high or low, or cruel or tender, there is a heart opposite with a door not inaccessible.

The pale yellow sun sang of it: Marvelous Door Opposite!--it seemed to sing--how, when they pa.s.s that portal, the commonplace becomes the unusual and reality is turned into romance. Lead becomes silver then, and copper--gold. Magical Door Opposite! All the possibilities of life--aye, and what is better, all life's impossibilities--are behind you, and all life's fears and hopes before. All our young dreams, our mature ambitions, our old regrets, curl in incense from our brains and struggle to pa.s.s that keyhole. Unhappy he for whom the door never opens; more unhappy, often, he for whom it does open; but most unhappy he who never sees that it is there: the Door across the Landing.

Cartaret knocked as if he were knocking at the gate of Paradise, and, perhaps again as if he were knocking at the gate of Paradise, he got no answer. He knocked a second time and heard the rustle of a woman's skirt.

"Who is there?"--She spoke in French now, but he would have known her voice had she talked the language of Grand Street.

"Cartaret," he answered.

She opened the door. A ray of light beat its way through a grimy window in the hall to welcome her--Cartaret was sure that no light had pa.s.sed that window for years and years--and rested on the beauty of her pure face, her calm eyes, her blue-black hair.

"Good morning," said the Lady of the Rose.

It sounded wonderful to him. When _he_ replied "Good morning"--and could think of nothing else to say--the phrase sounded less remarkable.

She waited a moment. She looked a little doubtful. She said:

"You perhaps wanted Chitta?"

Were her eyes laughing? Her lips were serious, but he was uncertain of her eyes.

"Certainly not," said he.

"Oh, you wanted me?"

"Yes!" said Cartaret, and blushed at the vehemence of the monosyllable.

"Why?"

For what, indeed, had he come there? He vividly realized that he should have prepared some excuse; but, having prepared none, he could offer only the truth--or so much of it as seemed expedient.

"I wanted to see if you were all right," he said.

"But certainly," she smiled. "I thank you, sir; but, yes, I am--all right."

She said no more; Cartaret felt as if he could never speak again.

However, speak he must.

"Well, you know," he said, "I hadn't seen you anywhere about, and I was rather worried."

"Chitta takes of me the best care."

"Yes, but, you see, I didn't know and I--Oh, yes: I wanted to see whether that turpentine worked."