Bohemian Days Part 6

It was Master Simp who heard a bold step on the stairs that night, and a resolute knock upon his own door.

"Arrest for debt!" cried Mr. Simp, falling tearfully upon his bed; "I have expected the summons all day."

"The next man may come upon that errand," answered the ringing voice of Andy Plade. "Freckle sleeps in Clichy to-night; Risque cannot be found; the rest are as badly off; I have news for you."

"I am the man to be mocked," pleaded Simp; "but you must laugh at your own joke; I am too wretched to help you."

"The Yankees have opened the Mississippi River; Louisiana is subjugated, and communication re-established with your neighborhood; you can go home."

"What fraction of the way will this carry me?" said the other, holding up a five-franc piece. "My home is farther than the stars from me."

"It is a little sum," urged Mr. Plade; "one hundred dollars should pay the whole pa.s.sage."

Mr. Simp, in response, mimicked a man shovelling gold pieces, but was too weak to prolong the pleasantry, and sat down on his empty trunk and wept, as Plade thought, like a calf.

"Your case seems indeed hopeless," said the elder. "Suppose I should borrow five hundred dollars on your credit, would you give me two hundred for my trouble?"

Mr. Simp said, bitterly, that he would give four hundred and ninety-five dollars for five; but Plade pressed for a direct answer to his original proffer, and Simp cried "Yes," with an oath.

"Then listen to me! there is no reason to doubt that your neighbors have made full crops for two years--cotton, sugar, tobacco. All this remains at home unsold and uns.h.i.+pped--yours with the rest. Take the oath of allegiance to the Yankee Government before its _charge des affaires_ in Paris. That will save your crops from confiscation, and be your pa.s.sport to return. Then write to your former banker here, promising to consign your cotton to him, if he will advance five hundred dollars to take you to Louisiana. He knows you received of old ten thousand dollars per annum. He will risk so small a sum for a thing so plausible and profitable."

"I don't know what you have been saying," muttered Simp. "I cannot comprehend a scheme so intricate; you bewilder me! What is a consignment? How am I, bigad! to make that clear in a letter? Perhaps my speech in the case of Rutledge _vs._ Pinckney might come in well at this juncture."

"Write!" cried Plade, contemptuously; "write at my dictation."

That night the letter was mailed; Mr. Simp was summoned to his banker's the following noon, and at dusk he met Andy Plade in the Place Vendome, and paid over a thousand francs with a sigh.

On the third night succeeding, Messrs. Plade and Hugenot were smoking their cigars at Nice, and Mr. Simp, without the least idea of what he meant to do, was drinking c.o.c.ktails on the Atlantic Ocean.

"Francine," said Pisgah, with a woful glance at the dregs of absinthe in the tumbler, "give me a half franc, my dear; I am poorly to-day."

"Monsieur Pisgah," answered Madame Francine, "give me nine hundred and sixty-five francs, seventy-five centimes--that is your bill with me--and I am poorly also."

"My love," said Pisgah, rubbing his grizzled beard against the madame's fat cheek, "you are not hard-hearted. You will pity the poor old exile.

I love you very much, Francine."

"Stand off!" cried the madame; "_vous m'embate!_ You say you love me; then marry me!"

"Nonsense, my angel!"

"I say marry me!" repeated the madame, stamping her foot. "You are rich in America. You have slaves and land and houses and fine relatives. You will get all these when the war closes; but if you die of starvation in Paris, they amount to nothing. Marry me! I will keep you alive here; you will give me half of your possessions there! I shall be a grand lady, ride in my carriage, and have a nasty black woman to wash my fine clothes."

"That is impossible, Francine," answered Pisgah, not so utterly degraded but he felt the stigma of such a proposition from his _blanchisseuse_--and as he leaned his faded hairs upon his unnerved and quivering hands, the old pride fluttered in his heart a moment and painted rage upon his neck and temples.

"You are insulted, my lord count!" cried Madame Francine; "an alliance with a poor washerwoman would shame your great kin. Pay me my money, you beggar! or I shall put the fine gentleman in prison for debt."

"That would be a kindness to me, madame," said Pisgah, very humbly and piteously.

"You are right," she made answer, with a mocking laugh; "I will not save your life: you shall starve, sir! you shall starve!"

In truth, this consummation seemed very close, for as Pisgah entered his creamery soon afterward, the proprietor met him at the threshold.

"Monsieur Pisgah," he said, "you can have nothing to eat here, until you pay a part of your bill with me; I am a poor man, sir, and have children."

Pisgah kept up the street with heavy forebodings, and turned into the place of a clothes-merchant, to whom his face had long been familiar.

When he emerged, his handsome habits, the gift of Madame Francine, hung in the clothes-dealer's window, and Mr. Pisgah, wearing a common blouse, a cap, and coa.r.s.e hide shoes, repaired to the nearest wine-shop, and drank a dead man's portion of absinthe at the zinc counter. Then he returned to his own hotel, but as he reached to the rack for his key, the landlady laid her hand upon it and shook her head.

"You are properly dressed, Monsieur Pisgah," she said; "those who have no money should work; you cannot sleep in twenty-six to night, sir; I have shut up the chamber, and seized the little rubbish which you left."

Pisgah was homeless--a vagabond, an outcast. He walked unsteadily along the street in the pleasant evening, and the film of tears that shut the world from his eyes was peopled with far-off and familiar scenes.

He saw his father's wide acres, with the sunset gilding the fleeces of his sheep and crowning with fire the stacks of grain and the vanes upon his granges. Then the twilight fell, and the slaves went homeward singing, while the logs on the bra.s.s andirons lit up the windows of the mansion, and every negro cabin was luminous, so that in the night the homestead looked like a village. Then the moon rose above the woods, making the lawn frosty, and s.h.i.+ning upon the long porch, where his mother came out to welcome him, attended by the two house-dogs, which barked so loudly in their glee that all the hen-coops were alarmed, and the peac.o.c.ks in the trees held their tails to the stars and trilled.

"Come in, my son," said the mother, looking proudly upon the tall, straight shape and glossy locks; "the supper is smoking upon the table; here is your familiar julep, without which you have no appet.i.te; the Maryland biscuit are unusually good this evening, and there is the yellow pone in the corner, with Sukey, your old nurse, behind it. Do you like much cream in your coffee, as you used to? Bless me! the partridge is plump as a duck; but here is your napkin, embroidered with your name; let us ask a blessing before we eat!"

While all this is going on, the cat, which has been purring by the fire, takes a wicked notion to frighten the canary bird, but the high old clock in the corner, imported from England before the celebrated Revolutionary war, impresses the cat as a very formidable object with its stately stride-stride-stride--so that the cat regarding it a moment, forgets the canary bird, and mews for a small portion of cream in a saucer.

"Halloo! halloo!" says the parrot, awakened by a leap of the fire; for, the back-log has broken in half, and Pisgah sees, by the increased light, the very hair-powder gleam on the portrait of General Was.h.i.+ngton.

But now the cloth is removed, and the old-fas.h.i.+oned table folds up its leaves; they sip some remarkable sherry, which grandfather regards with a wheezy sort of laugh, and after they have played one game of draughts, Mr. Pisgah looks at his gold chronometer, and asks if he has still the great room above the porch and plenty of bedclothes.

This is what Mr. Pisgah sees upon the film of his tears--wealth, happiness, manliness! When he dashes the tears themselves to the pavement with an oath, what rises upon his eye and his heart?

Paris--grand, luxurious, pitiless, and he, at twilight, flung upon the world, with neither kindred nor country--a thing unwilling to live, unfit to die!

He strolled along the quay to the Morgue; the beautiful water of St.

Michel fell sibilantly cold from the fountain, and Apollyon above, at the feet of the avenging angel, seemed a sermon and an allegory of his own prostration. How all the folks upon the bridge were stony faced! It had never before occurred to him that men were cold-blooded creatures.

He wondered if the Seine, das.h.i.+ng against the quays and piers beneath, were not their proper element? Ay! for here were three drowned people on the icy slabs of the Morgue, with half a hundred gazing wistfully at them, and their fixed eyes glaring fis.h.i.+ly at the skylight, as if it were the surface of the river and they were at rest below.

So seemed all the landscape as he kept down the quay--the lines of high houses were ridges only in the sea, and Notre Dame, lifting its towers and sculptured facade before, was merely a high-decked s.h.i.+p, with sailors crowding astern. The holy apostles above the portal were more like human men than ever, with their silicious eyes and pulseless bosoms; while the hideous gargoyles at the base of each crocheted pinnacle, seemed swimming in the dusky evening.

It may have been that this aqueous phenomenon was natural to one "half-seas over;" but not till he stood on the place of the Hotel de la Ville, did Pisgah have any consciousness whatever that he walked upon the solid world.

At this moment he was reminded, also, that he held a letter in his hand, his landlady's gift at parting; it was dated, "Clichy dungeon," and signed by Mr. Freckle.

"Dear Pisgah," read the text, "I am here at claim of restaurateur; shall die to-morrow at or before twelve o'clock, if Andy Plade don't fork over my subscription of two hundred francs. Andy Plade d.a.m.ned knave--no mistake! No living soul been to see me, except letter from Hon. Mr. Slidell. He has got sixteen thousand dollars in specie for Simp. Where's Simp, dogorn him! Hon. S. sent to Simp's house; understood he'd sailed for America. Requested Hon. S.

to give me small part of money as Simp's next friend. Hon. S.

declined. Population of prison very great. d.a.m.ned scrub stock!

Don't object to imprisonment as much as the fleas. Fleas bent on aiding my escape. If they crawl with me to-morrow night as far again as last night I'll be clear--no mistake! Live on soup, chiefly. Abhor soup. Had forty francs here first day, but debtor with one boot and spectacles won it at _picquet_. Restaurateur says bound to keep me here a thousand years if I don't sock--shall die--no mistake! Come see me, _toute suite_. Fetch pocket-comb, soap, and English Bible.

"Yours, in deep waters, FRECKLE."

"The whole world is in deep waters," said Pisgah, dismally. "So much the better for them; here goes for something stronger!"

He repaired to the nearest drinking-saloon, and demanded a gla.s.s brimful of absinthe, at which all the garcons and patrons held up their hands while he drank it to the dregs.

"Sacristie!" cried a man with mouth wide open, "that gentleman can drink clear laudanum."