All that night he lay awake, thinking. It was a weary bundle of nerves that came to the Parisian Café next morning. He was late in arriving, which was good in that it delayed the inevitable question as to the fate of the picture, but bad in every other respect. M. Bredin, squatting behind the cashdesk, grunted fiercely at him; and, worse, Jeanne, who, owing to his absence, had had to be busier than suited her disposition, was distant and haughty. A murky gloom settled upon Paul.
Now it so happened that M. Bredin, when things went well with him, was wont to be filled with a ponderous amiability. It was not often that this took a practical form, though it is on record that in an exuberant moment he once gave a small boy a halfpenny. More frequently it merely led him to soften the porcine austerity of his demeanour. To-day, business having been uncommonly good, he felt pleased with the world. He had left his cash-desk and was assailing a bowl of soup at one of the side-tables. Except for a belated luncher at the end of the room the place was empty. It was one of the hours when there was a lull in the proceedings at the Parisian Café. Paul was leaning, wrapped in gloom, against the wall. Jeanne was waiting on the proprietor.
M. Bredin finished his meal and rose. He felt content. All was well with the world. As he lumbered to his desk he passed Jeanne. He stopped. He wheezed a compliment. Then another. Paul, from his place by the wall, watched with jealous fury.
M. Bredin cnucked Jeanne under the chin.
As he did so, the belated luncher called "Waiter!" but Paul was otherwise engaged. His entire nervous system seemed to have been stirred up with a pole. With a hoarse cry he dashed forward. He would destroy this pig who chucked his Jeanne under the chin.
The first intimation M. Bredin had of the declaration of war was the impact of a French roll on his ear. It was one of those nobbly, chunky rolls with sharp corners, almost as deadly as a piece of shrapnel. M. Bredin was incapable of jumping, but he uttered a howl and his vast body quivered like a stricken jelly.
A second roll, whizzing by, slapped against the wall. A moment later a cream-bun burst in sticky ruin on the proprietor's left eye.
The belated luncher had been anxious to pay his bill and go, but he came swiftly to the conclusion that this was worth stopping on for. He leaned back in his chair and watched. M. Bredin had entrenched himself behind the cash-desk, peering nervously at Paul through the cream, and Paul, pouring forth abuse in his native tongue, was brandishing a chocolate éclair. The situation looked good to the spectator.
It was spoiled by Jeanne, who seized Paul by the arm and shook him, adding her own voice to the babel. It was enough. The éclair fell to the floor. Paul's voice died away. His face took on again its crushed, hunted expression. The voice of M. Bredin, freed from competition, rose shrill and wrathful.
"The marksman is getting sacked," mused the onlooker, diagnosing the situation.
He was right. The next moment Paul, limp and depressed, had retired to the kitchen passage, discharged. It was here, after a few minutes, that Jeanne found him.
"Fool! Idiot! Imbecile!" said Jeanne.
Paul stared at her without speaking.
"To throw rolls at the patron. Imbecile!"
"He-" began Paul.
"Bah! And what if he did? Must you then attack him like a mad dog? What is it to you?"
Paul was conscious of a dull longing for sympathy, a monstrous sense of oppression. Everything was going wrong. Surely Jeanne must be touched by his heroism? But no. She was scolding furiously. Suppose Andromeda had turned and scolded Perseus after he had slain the sea-monster! Paul mopped his forehead with his napkin. The bottom had dropped out of his world.
"Jeanne!"
"Bah! Do not talk to me, idiot of a little man. Almost you lost me my place also. The patron was in two minds. But I coaxed him. A fine thing that would have been, to lose my good place through your foolishness. To throw rolls. My goodness!"
She swept back into the room again, leaving Paul still standing by the Litchen door. Something seemed to have snapped inside him. How long he stood there he did not know, but presently from the dining- room came calls of "Waiter!" and automatically he fell once more into his work, as an actor takes up his part. A stranger would have noticed nothing remarkable in him. He bustled to and fro with undiminished energy.
At the end of the day M. Bredin paid him his eighteen shillings with a grunt, and Paul walked out of the restaurant a masterless man.
He went to his attic and sat down on the bed. Propped up against the wall was the picture. He looked at it with unseeing eyes. He stared dully before him.
Then thoughts came to him with a rush, leaping and dancing in his mind like imps in Hades. He had a curious sense of detachment. He seemed to be watching himself from a great distance.
This was the end. The little imps danced and leaped; and then one separated itself from the crowd, to grow bigger than the rest, to pirouette more energetically. He rose. His mind was made up. He would kill himself.
He went downstairs and out into the street. He thought hard as he walked. He would kill himself, but how?
His preoccupation was so great that an automobile, rounding a corner, missed him by inches as he crossed the road. The chauffeur shouted angrily at him as he leapt back.
Paul shook his fist at the retreating lights.
"Pig!" he shouted. "Assassin! Scoundrel! Villain! Would you kill me? I will take your number, rascal. I will inform the police. Villain!"
A policeman had strolled up and was eyeing him curiously. Paul turned to him, full of his wrongs.
"Officer," he cried, "I have a complaint. These pigs of chauffeurs! They are reckless. They drive so recklessly. Hence the great number of accidents."
"Awful!" said the policeman. "Pass along, sonny."
Paul walked on, fuming. It was abominable that these chauffeurs-And then an idea came to him. He had found a way.
It was quiet in the Park. He had chosen the Park because it was dark and there would be none to see and interfere. He waited long in the shadow by the roadside. Presently from the darkness there came the distant drone of powerful engines. Lights appeared, like the blazing eyes of a dragon swooping down to devour its prey.
He ran out into the road with a shout.
It was an error, that shout. He had intended it for an inarticulate farewell to his picture, to Jeanne, to life. It was excusable in the driver of the motor that he misinterpreted it. It seemed to him a cry of warning. There was a great jarring of brakes, a scuttering of locked wheels on the dry road, and the car came to a standstill a full yard from where he stood.
"What the deuce-" said a cool voice from behind the lights.
Paul struck his chest and folded his arms.
"I am here," he cried. "Destroy me!"
"Let George do it," said the voice, in a marked American accent. "I never murder on a Friday; it's unlucky. If it's not a rude question, which asylum are you from? Halloa!"
The exclamation was one of surprise, for Paul's nerves had finally given way, and he was now in a heap on the road, sobbing.
The man climbed down and came into the light. He was a tall young man with a pleasant, clean-cut face. He stopped and shook Paul.
"Quit that," he said. "Maybe it's not true. And if it is, there's always hope. Cut it out. What's the matter? All in?"
Paul sat up, gulping convulsively. He was thoroughly unstrung. The cold, desperate mood had passed. In its place came the old feeling of desolation. He was a child, aching for sympathy. He wanted to tell his troubles. Punctuating his narrative with many gestures and an occasional gulp, he proceeded to do so. The American listened attentively.
"So you can't sell your picture, and you've lost your job, and your girl has shaken you?" he said. "Pretty bad, but still you've no call to go mingling with automobile wheels. You come along with me to my hotel, and to-morrow we'll see if we can't fix up something."