“A Great Romantic Passion!”

“A GREAT ROMANTIC PASSION”

There is no more difficult problem for the writer, no harder task than to decide how far he should allow himself to go in picturing human weakness. We have all come from the animal and can all without any assistance from books imagine easily enough the effects of unrestrained self-indulgence. Yet it is instructive and pregnant with warning to remark that, as soon as the sheet anchor of high resolve is gone, the frailties of man tend to become master-vices. All our civilisation is artificially built up by effort; all high humanity is the reward of constant striving against natural desires.

In the fall of this year, 1898, I sold The Saturday Review to Lord Hardwicke and his friends, and as soon as the purchase was completed, I think in November, I wired to Oscar that I should be in Paris in a short time, and ready to take him to the South for his holiday. I sent him some money to pave the way.

A few days later I crossed and wired to him from Calais to dine with me at Durand’s, and to begin dinner if I happened to be late.

While waiting for dinner, I said:

“I want to stay two or three days in Paris to see some pictures. Would you be ready to start South on Thursday next?” It was then Monday, I think.

“On Thursday?” he repeated. “Yes, Frank, I think so.”

“There is some money for anything you may want to buy,” I said and handed him a cheque I had made payable to self and signed, for he knew where he could cash it.

“How good of you, Frank, I cannot thank you enough. You start on Thursday,” he added, as if considering it.

“If you would rather wait a little,” I said, “say so: I’m quite willing.”

“No, Frank, I think Thursday will do. We are really going to the South for the whole winter. How wonderful; how gorgeous it will be.”

We had a great dinner and talked and talked. He spoke of some of the new Frenchmen, and at great length of Pierre Lou?s, whom he described as a disciple:

“It was I, Frank, who induced him to write his ‘Aphrodite’ in prose.” He spoke, too, of the Grand Guignol Theatre.

“Le Grand Guignol is the first theatre in Paris. It looks like a nonconformist chapel, a barn of a room with a gallery at the back and a little wooden stage. There you see the primitive tragedies of real life. They are as ugly and as fascinating as life itself. You must see it and we will go to Antoine’s as well: you must see Antoine’s new piece; he is doing great work.”

We kept dinner up to an unconscionable hour. I had much to tell of London and much to hear of Paris, and we talked and drank coffee till one o’clock, and when I proposed supper Oscar accepted the idea with enthusiasm.

“I have often lunched with you from two o’clock till nine, Frank, and now I am going to dine with you from nine o’clock till breakfast tomorrow morning.”

“What shall we drink?” I asked.

“The same champagne, Frank, don’t you think?” he said, pulling his jowl; “there is no wine so inspiring as that dry champagne with the exquisite bouquet. You were the first to say my plays were the champagne of literature.”

When we came out it was three o’clock and I was tired and sleepy with my journey, and Oscar had drunk perhaps more than was good for him. Knowing how he hated walking I got a voiture de cercle and told him to take it, and I would walk to my hotel. He thanked me and seemed to hesitate.

“What is it now?” I asked, wanting to get to bed.

“Just a word with you,” he said, and drew me away from the carriage where the chasseur was waiting with the rug. When he got me three or four paces away he said, hesitatingly:

“Frank, could you . . . can you let me have a few pounds? I’m very hard up.”

I stared at him; I had given him a cheque at the beginning of the dinner: had he forgotten? Or did he perchance want to keep the hundred pounds intact for some reason? Suddenly it occurred to me that he might be without even enough for the carriage. I took out a hundred franc note and gave it to him.

“Thank you, so much,” he said, thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket, “it’s very kind of you.”

“You will turn up tomorrow at lunch at one?” I said, as I put him into the little brougham.

“Yes, of course, yes,” he cried, and I turned away.

Next day at lunch he seemed to meet me with some embarrassment:

“Frank, I want to ask you something. I’m really confused about last night; we dined most wisely, if too well. This morning I found you had given me a cheque, and I found besides in my waistcoat pocket a note for a hundred francs. Did I ask you for it at the end? ‘Tap’ you, the French call it,” he added, trying to laugh.

I nodded.

“How dreadful!” he cried. “How dreadful poverty is! I had forgotten that you had given me a cheque, and I was so hard up, so afraid you might go away without giving me anything, that I asked you for it. Isn’t poverty dreadful?”

I nodded; I could not say a word: the fact told so much.

The chastened mood of self-condemnation did not last long with him or go deep; soon he was talking as merrily and gaily as ever.

Before parting I said to him:

“You won’t forget that you are going on Thursday night?”

“Oh, really!” he cried, to my surprise, “Thursday is very near; I don’t know whether I shall be able to come.”

“What on earth do you mean?” I asked.

“The truth is, you know, I have debts to pay, and I have not enough.”

“But I will give you more,” I cried, “what will clear you?”

“Fifty more I think will do. How good you are!”

“I will bring it with me tomorrow morning.”

“In notes please, will you? French money. I find I shall want it to pay some little things at once, and the time is short.”

I thought nothing of the matter. The next day at lunch I gave him the money in French notes. That night I said to him:

“You know we are going away tomorrow evening: I hope you’ll be ready? I have got the tickets for the Train de Luxe.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” he cried, “I can’t be ready.”

“What is it now?” I asked.

“Well, it’s money. Some more debts have come in.”

“Why will you not be frank with me, and tell me what you owe? I will give you a cheque for it. I don’t want to drag it out of you bit by bit. Tell me a sum that will make you free, and I will give it to you. I want you to have a perfect six months, and how can you if you are bothered with debts?”

“How kind you are to me! Do you really mean it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Really?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “tell me what it is.”

“I think, I believe . . . would another fifty be too much?”

“I will give it you tomorrow. Are you sure that will be enough?”

“Oh, yes, Frank; but let’s go on Sunday. Sunday is such a good day for travelling, and it’s always so dull everywhere, we might just as well spend it on the train. Besides, no one travels on Sunday in France, so we are sure to be able to take our ease in our train. Won’t Sunday do, Frank?”

“Of course it will,” I replied laughing; but a day or two later he was again embarrassed, and again told me it was money, and then he confessed to me that he was afraid at first I should not have paid all his debts, if I had known how much they were, and so he thought by telling me of them little by little, he would make sure at least of something. This pitiful, pitiable confession depressed me on his account. It showed practice in such petty tricks and all too little pride. Of course it did not alter my admiration of his qualities; nor weaken in any degree my resolve to give him a fair chance. If he could be saved, I was determined to save him.

We met at the Gare de Lyons on Sunday evening. I found he had dined at the buffet: there was a surprising number of empty bottles on the table; he seemed terribly depressed.

“Someone was dining with me, Frank, a friend,” he offered by way of explanation.

“Why did he not wait? I should like to have seen him.”

“Oh, he was no one you would have cared about, Frank,” he replied.

I sat with him and took a cup of coffee, whilst waiting for the train. He was wretchedly gloomy; scarcely spoke indeed; I could not make it out. From time to time he sighed heavily, and I noticed that his eyes were red, as if he had been crying.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“I will tell you later, perhaps. It is very hard; parting is like dying,” and his eyes filled with tears.

We were soon in the train running out into the night. I was as light-hearted as could be. At length I was free of journalism, I thought, and I was going to the South to write my Shakespeare book, and Oscar would work, too, when the conditions were pleasant. But I could not win a single smile from him; he sat downcast, sighing hopelessly from time to time.

“What on earth’s the matter?” I cried. “Here you are going to the sunshine, to blue skies, and the wine-tinted Mediterranean, and you’re not content. We shall stop in a hotel near a little sun-baked valley running down to the sea. You walk from the hotel over a carpet of pine needles, and when you get into the open, violets and anemones bloom about your feet, and the scent of rosemary and myrtle will be in your nostrils; yet instead of singing for joy the bird droops his feathers and hangs his head as if he had the ‘pip.’”

“Oh, don’t,” he cried, “don’t,” and he looked at me with tears filling his eyes; “you don’t know, Frank, what a great romantic passion is.”

“Is that what you are suffering from?”

“Yes, a great romantic passion.”

“Good God!” I laughed; “who has inspired this new devotion?”

“Don’t make fun of me, Frank, or I will not tell you; but if you will listen I will try to tell you all about it, for I think you should know, besides, I think telling it may ease my pain, so come into the cabin and listen.

“Do you remember once in the summer you wired me from Calais to meet you at Maire’s restaurant, meaning to go afterwards to Antoine’s Theatre, and I was very late? You remember, the evening Rostand was dining at the next table. Well, it was that evening. I drove up to Maire’s in time, and I was just getting out of the victoria when a little soldier passed, and our eyes met. My heart stood still; he had great dark eyes and an exquisite olive-dark face — a Florentine bronze, Frank, by a great master. He looked like Napoleon when he was first Consul, only — less imperious, more beautiful. . . .

“I got out hypnotised, and followed him down the Boulevard as in a dream; the cocher came running after me, I remember, and I gave him a five franc piece, and waved him off; I had no idea what I owed him; I did not want to hear his voice; it might break the spell; mutely I followed my fate. I overtook the boy in a short time and asked him to come and have a drink, and he said to me in his qua............