Part 62 (1/2)
Andrews was drinking his coffee in little sips, looking out of the window at the people that pa.s.sed. An old woman with a stand of flowers sat on a small cane chair at the corner. The pink and yellow and blue-violet shades of the flowers seemed to intensify the misty straw color and azured grey of the wintry sun and shadow of the streets. A girl in a tight-fitting black dress and black hat stopped at the stand to buy a bunch of pale yellow daisies, and then walked slowly past the window of the restaurant in the direction of the gardens. Her ivory face and slender body and her very dark eyes sent a sudden flush through Andrews's whole frame as he looked at her. The black erect figure disappeared in the gate of the gardens.
Andrews got to his feet suddenly.
”I've got to go,” he said in a strange voice.... ”I just remember a man was waiting for me at the School Headquarters.”
”Let him wait.”
”Why, you haven't had a liqueur yet,” cried Heineman.
”No... but where can I meet you people later?”
”Cafe de Rohan at five... opposite the Palais Royal.”
”You'll never find it.”
”Yes I will,” said Andrews.
”Palais Royal metro station,” they shouted after him as he dashed out of the door.
He hurried into the gardens. Many people sat on benches in the frail sunlight. Children in bright-colored clothes ran about chasing hoops. A woman paraded a bunch of toy balloons in carmine and green and purple, like a huge bunch of parti-colored grapes inverted above her head.
Andrews walked up and down the alleys, scanning faces. The girl had disappeared. He leaned against a grey bal.u.s.trade and looked down into the empty pond where traces of the explosion of a Bertha still subsisted. He was telling himself that he was a fool. That even if he had found her he could not have spoken to her; just because he was free for a day or two from the army he needn't think the age of gold had come back to earth. Smiling at the thought, he walked across the gardens, wandered through some streets of old houses in grey and white stucco with slate mansard roofs and fantastic complications of chimney-pots till he came out in front of a church with a new cla.s.sic facade of huge columns that seemed toppling by their own weight.
He asked a woman selling newspapers what the church's name was. ”Mais, Monsieur, c'est Saint Sulpice,” said the woman in a surprised tone.
Saint Sulpice. Manon's songs came to his head, and the sentimental melancholy of eighteenth century Paris with its gambling houses in the Palais Royal where people dishonored themselves in the presence of their stern Catonian fathers, and its billets doux written at little gilt tables, and its coaches lumbering in covered with mud from the provinces through the Porte d'Orleans and the Porte de Versailles; the Paris of Diderot and Voltaire and Jean-Jacques, with its muddy streets and its ordinaries where one ate bisques and larded pullets and souffles; a Paris full of mouldy gilt magnificence, full of pompous ennui of the past and insane hope of the future.
He walked down a narrow, smoky street full of antique shops and old bookshops and came out unexpectedly on the river opposite the statue of Voltaire. The name on the corner was quai Malaquais. Andrews crossed and looked down for a long time at the river. Opposite, behind a lace-work of leafless trees, were the purplish roofs of the Louvre with their high peaks and their ranks and ranks of chimneys; behind him the old houses of the quai and the wing, topped by a bal.u.s.trade with great grey stone urns of a domed building of which he did not know the name. Barges were coming upstream, the dense green water spuming under their blunt bows, towed by a little black tugboat with its chimney bent back to pa.s.s under the bridges. The tug gave a thin shrill whistle. Andrews started walking downstream. He crossed by the bridge at the corner of the Louvre, turned his back on the arch Napoleon built to receive the famous horses from St. Marc's,--a pinkish pastry-like affair--and walked through the Tuileries which were full of people strolling about or sitting in the sun, of doll-like children and nursemaids with elaborate white caps, of fluffy little dogs straining at the ends of leashes. Suddenly a peaceful sleepiness came over him. He sat down in the sun on a bench, watching, hardly seeing them, the people who pa.s.sed to and fro casting long shadows. Voices and laughter came very softly to his ears above the distant stridency of traffic. From far away he heard for a few moments notes of a military band playing a march. The shadows of the trees were faint blue-grey in the ruddy yellow gravel. Shadows of people kept pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing across them. He felt very languid and happy.
Suddenly he started up; he had been dozing. He asked an old man with a beautifully pointed white beard the way to rue du Faubourg St. Honore.
After losing his way a couple of times, he walked listlessly up some marble steps where a great many men in khaki were talking. Leaning against the doorpost was Walters. As he drew near Andrews heard him saying to the man next to him:
”Why, the Eiffel tower was the first piece of complete girder construction ever built.... That's the first thing a feller who's wide awake ought to see.”
”Tell me the Opery's the grandest thing to look at,” said the man next it.
”If there's wine an' women there, me for it.”
”An' don't forget the song.”
”But that isn't interesting like the Eiffel tower is,” persisted Walters.
”Say, Walters, I hope you haven't been waiting for me,” stammered Andrews.
”No, I've been waiting in line to see the guy about courses.... I want to start this thing right.”
”I guess I'll see them tomorrow,” said Andrews.
”Say have you done anything about a room, Andy? Let's you and me be bunkies.”