"No, dearie. I must go," said Martin.
"As you will. I'll take care of your friend." She yawned.
He kissed her and strode down the dark street, his nostrils full of the
smell of the rouge on her lips.
He walked a long while with his hat off, breathing deep of the sharp
night air. The streets were black and silent. Intemperate desires
prowled like cats in the darkness.
* * * * *
He woke up and stretched himself stiffly, smelling grass and damp earth.
A pearly lavender mist was all about him, through which loomed the
square towers of Notre Dame and the row of kings across the façade and
the sculpture about the darkness of the doorways. He had lain down on
his back on the little grass plot of the Parvis Notre Dame to look at
the stars, and had fallen asleep.
It must be nearly dawn. Words were droning importunately in his head.
"The poor beggar said 'Thank you' with a funny German accent and the
grenade blew him to hell." He remembered the man he had once helped to
pick up in whose pocket a grenade had exploded. Before that he had not
realised that torn flesh was such a black-red, like sausage meat.
"Get up, you can't lie there," cried a gendarme.
"Notre Dame is beautiful in the morning," said Martin, stepping across
the low rail on to the pavement.
"Ah, yes; it is beautiful."
Martin Howe sat on the rail of the bridge and looked. Before him, with
nothing distinct yet to be seen, were two square towers and the tracery
between them and the row of kings on the façade, and the long series of
flying buttresses of the flank, gleaming through the mist, and, barely
visible, the dark, slender spire soaring above the crossing. So had the
abbey in the forest gleamed tall in the misty moonlight; like mist, only
drab and dense, the dust had risen above the tall apse as the shells
tore it to pieces.
* * * * *
Amid a smell of new-roasted coffee he sat at a table and watched people
pass briskly through the ruddy sunlight. Waiters in shirt-sleeves were
rubbing off the other tables and putting out the chairs. He sat sipping
coffee, feeling languid and nerveless. After a while Tom Randolph,
looking very young and brown with his hat a little on one side, came
along. With him, plainly dressed in blue serge, was the girl. They sat
down and she dropped her head on his shoulder, covering her eyes with
her dark lashes.
"Oh, I am so tired."
"Poor child! You must go home and go back to bed."
"But I've got to go to work."
"Poor thing." They kissed each other tenderly and languidly.
The waiter came with coffee and hot milk and little crisp loaves of
bread.
"Oh, Paris is wonderful in the early morning!" said Martin.
"Indeed it is.... Good-bye, little girl, if you must go. We'll see each
other again."
"You must call me Yvonne." She pouted a little.
"All right, Yvonne." He got to his feet and pressed her two hands.
"Well, what sort of a time did you have, Howe?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account