Guy Thorne - Chance in Chains - A Story of Monte Carlo

This night in Paris was bitter cold. Moreover, an infrequent and dreaded occurrence in Paris, a dense fog lay over the city. These Parisian fogs are not the sulphurous, pea-soup discomforts of London, but they are almost as unpleasant, and quite as upsetting to ordinary life and comfort. A dank, grey mist, opaque and wet, seems to rise from the Seine, spread outwards in evergrowing density and chill, until all the central quarter of Paris is hidden and throttled by it.

" Diable! " Deschamps said, coughing, as they left the power station behind them. " Une vraie brume Anglaise ."

Gregory shrugged his shoulders. "It is pretty bad," he said, "and we can't see a yard in front of our noses. Still, if you had experienced a London 'particular,' Emile – well, then you would know!"

There was a silence between the young men as they tramped away to the Latin Quarter, where they shared a room in a little fifth-rate hotel not far from the Quai Voltaire. The night was bitterly cold, certainly not inviting conversation, and the thoughts of the pair were cold and bitter in harmony with the night. Genius is rarely unconscious of its power. Basil Gregory and Emile Deschamps were not in the least conceited, but each knew in his heart of hearts that already they approached those heights upon which Tesla and Edison dwelt. They saw the top of the mountain bathed in glorious sunshine, but between them and it there was a great gulf only to be bridged by money.

Basil Gregory's case was, perhaps, the worse of the two, for Basil was in love. Ethel McMahon, the pretty Irish girl, who was English mistress in a young ladies' school in the Fauberg St. Honoré, held all his heart, but she, like him, was poor and friendless, and out of her wretched salary supported an invalid mother, who was a martyr to one of the cruellest forms of arthritis.

The young man ground his teeth in fury against Fate, as he strode by his companion's side. Suddenly he began to talk rapidly, and with a true Parisian vehemence.

"I shouldn't mind so much, Emile, if we wanted money for the reason that such a lot of fellows of our age want it. But we don't. We don't want to play the giddy goat" — faire la bête was the French he used – "we don't want to enjoy ourselves in the usual silly way. We only want the world to recognise us for what we are. We want to benefit the whole world, Emile, and for ourselves all we ask is recognition and sufficient to live in comfort."

"It's true," Deschamps replied. "For myself, a flat in central Paris, a motor car to take me quickly to my experimental works, money to travel to America to see all the developments of electricity there – that is all I ask."

"It's much the same with me," the other returned, "except that I want to get married as well and give poor dear Ethel a happy life, and her mother the comforts that she needs. And yet – oh, I'd give anything, anything , to get the money for our experiments."

Deschamps shrugged his shoulders. "Well, we cannot rob a church," he said, "and the penalties for any sort of burglary are most unpleasant in France. We must even wait upon Fortune. After all, mon ami , our chance may yet come. Every day we read in the newspapers of strange strokes of fortune coming to people. I cannot believe that we shall never have our opportunity. Who knows!" – he threw out an arm with one of the theatrical gestures habitual to men of the South – "who knows but that this very night some very great thing will happen to us! Faith! faith! We must believe, and Fortune will be kind to us. She ever turns away coldly from a faint and despairing heart!"

He took his fancy and embroidered it in a stream of words so vivid, hopeful and full of fancy that he half persuaded the more phlegmatic Englishman by his side. Basil listened in silence, warmed a little, and was not quite so hopeless as he had been. Then, out of mere shame at his own feeling, he stemmed the other's torrent of words.

"That is all very well," he said grimly, "but meanwhile Dame Fortune seems to have deserted us worse than ever. While we have been talking nonsense we have missed our way, and if you can tell me where we are, or whereabouts the Hotel Buonaparte may be lying, I shall be extremely obliged to you, Monsieur Deschamps of the rosy hopes!"

The two men stopped. It was as Gregory had said. That they were near the Seine was obvious, because of the intenser thickness of the fog, but there was no doubt that they had entirely lost their direction. The white mist was as thick as wool, wet, motionless, and icy. Where they stood, upon the pavement, and half-way down a mean, narrow street, the blurred contours of which were perfectly unfamiliar, hardly a sound could be heard. Wheel traffic there was none. The hum of fog-gripped Paris came to them as if from an incredible distance; there was not even a footstep to be heard.

Once more Deschamps shrugged his shoulders. " Bien ," he said; "yes, we have certainly 'done it this time,' as you say. I have no notion where we are. I am as cold as an iceberg and as hungry as a goat."

They stood looking at each other, though the face of each was an indistinct, pale glimmer. They had gone a little too much to the west, and had lost themselves in the narrow network of mean streets somewhere behind the École Militaire. To reach the Latin Quarter would need considerable ingenuity upon a clear evening when the lamps shone brightly. At the moment it seemed a sheer impossibility.

"Shall we turn back?" Deschamps asked.

Gregory shook his head. "No," he replied. "You pretend to be so intimate with the habits of Fortune, and yet you ask a question like that! Let us go on. We are bound to find our way somehow into some street where there is more life and movement. And if we meet a gang of Apaches – well, we are neither of us weaklings, and we have got a couple of good walking-sticks. Forward, Emile Deschamps! We go to seek our fortune!" And as he said it he laughed with bitter cynicism.

They went on, but as they did so, and when they had walked a hundred and fifty yards or more, the street in which they were grew even narrower and more silent. Every now and then, at long distances, there was a gas lamp, but its yellow light was so muffled by the fog that it hardly penetrated for more than a yard or so, and if the prismatic colours the light made upon the mist were beautiful, they were quite useless to two young gentlemen hungry for supper and far from home.

Emile Deschamps took a box of matches from his pocket, wax ones, which burned immediately without the spectral blue flame of the more general Government article. He lit one – there was not a breath of wind – and held it above his head. The two men walked onwards for a few yards while the feeble light lasted, carefully scrutinising the tall houses which abutted on the pavement. They seemed to consist of small workshops and factories, now blind and deserted. Another match brought them to a stretch of wide wood paling, beyond which rose dim objects seeming like giant mounds or pyramids, and even as the match flickered out it threw its light upon a painted sign.

"Ah!" Deschamps said suddenly. "Now I know! We are in the wood quarter! This is a street of chantiers de bois ."

Basil groaned. "Good heavens!" he said, "then we have come out of our way," for he knew instantly that they had penetrated to that part of Paris where the huge wood-sheds were, where the firewood is cut and stored, and timber for all other purposes is kept. All around them were the great wood stacks and deserted yards. There was not a sound to be heard, and doubtless the few watchmen that were on guard were comfortably sleeping over the stoves in their huts.

"Go on, or turn back?" Deschamps said.

Gregory took a franc from his pocket, and spun it under a gas lamp to which they had just come up. "Heads we go on," he said, and as the coin fell upon the back of his hand, sure enough the figure of Liberty was uppermost.