"I call it a ripping tune," cried the young girl.
"I hate it more than any other tune in the world," said the lovely lady with a shiver.
Her voice was like a peal of bells or running water or whatever silvery sounding things you will.
"It is very absurd to have such prejudices," said the beaky-nosed man of forty. He spoke like a Frenchman, and like a very disagreeable Frenchman. How dared he address my princess in that tone?
I extended my tambourine.
"Qu'est-ce que vous désirez?" asked the straw-hatted young man in an accent as Britannic as the main deck of the Bellerophon.
"Anything that the ladies will kindly give me, Sir," I replied in our native tongue.
"Hullo! English? What are you knocking about France for?"
I glanced at the lovely lady. She was crumbling bread and not taking the least notice of me. I was piqued.
"My Master thinks it the best way to teach me philosophy, Sir," said I politely. If I had not learned much philosophy from him I had at least learned politeness. The lady looked up with a smile. The young girl exclaimed that either my remark or myself – I forget which – was ripping. I paid little heed to her. I have always disregarded the people of one adjective; they seem poverty-stricken to one who has sunned himself in the wealth of Paragot's epithets.
"Your master is the gentleman in the pearl buttons?" enquired the young man.
"Yes, Sir."
"What's his name?"
"Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot, Sir," said I so proudly that the lovely princess laughed.
"I must look at him," she said turning round in her chair.
I too glanced at the familiar group on the platform: Laripet with his back to us, working his arms and shoulders at the piano; Blanquette seated on the other side, thrumming away at the zither on her lap; Narcisse lolling his tongue in that cynical grin of his; and Paragot fiddling in front, like a fiddler possessed, his clear eyes fixed on the lady in a most uncanny stare.
When she turned again, she shivered once more. She did not look up but went on crumbling bread. It shocked me to notice that the pink of her sea-shell face had gone and that her fingers trembled. Then a wild conjecture danced through my brain and I forgot my tambourine.
"You still here?" laughed the young man. "What are you waiting for?"
I started. "I beg your pardon, Sir," said I moving away. He laughed and called me back.
"Here are two francs to buy a philosophy book."
"And here are five sous not to come and worry us again," said the older man in French. While I was wondering why they tolerated such a disagreeable man in the party my beautiful lady's fingers flew to the gilt chain purse by her side. "And here are five francs because you are English!" she exclaimed; and as she held me for a second with her eyes I saw in them infinite depths of sadness and longing.
When I returned to the platform the piece had just been brought to an end. Paragot poured his second brandy down his throat and sat with his head in his hands. I shed, as usual, my takings into Blanquette's lap. On seeing the five-franc piece her eyes equalled it in size.
"Tiens! Cent sous! who gave it you?"
I explained. The most beautiful lady in the world. Paragot raised his head and looked at me haggardly.
"Why did she give you five francs?"
"Because I was English, she said."
"Did she talk to you?"
"Yes, Master, and I have never heard anyone speak so beautifully."
Paragot made no answer, but began to tune his violin.
During the next interval my quartette left the restaurant. I ran to the gate, and bowed as they passed by.
The young fellow gave me a friendly nod, but the lovely lady swept out cold-eyed, looking neither to right nor left. A large two-horsed cab with a gay awning awaited them on the quay. As my lady entered, her skirt uplifted ever so little disclosed the most delicately shaped, tiny foot that has ever been attached to woman, and then I felt sure.
"Those little feet so adored." The haunting phrase leaped to my brain and I stood staring at the departing carriage athrill with excitement.
It was Joanna – lovelier than I had pictured her in my Lotus Club dreams, more gracious than Ingonde or Chlodoswinde or any of the belles dames du temps jadis whose ballade by Maître François Villon my master had but lately made me learn by heart and whose names were so many "sweet symphonies." It was Joanna, "pure and ravishing as an April dawn"; Joanna beloved of Paragot in those elusive days when I could not picture him, before he smashed his furniture with a crusader's mace and started on his wanderings under the guidance of Henri Quatre. It was Joanna whom he had an agonized desire to see in Madrid and whose silvery English voice he had longed to hear. And I, Asticot, had seen her and had heard her silvery voice. Among boys assuredly I was the most blessed.
But Paragot seemed that day of all men the most miserable, and I more dog-like than Narcisse in my sympathy with his moods, almost lifted up my nose and whined for woe. All my thrill died away. I felt guilty, oddly ashamed of myself. I took a pessimistic view of life. What, thought I, are Joannas sent into the world for, save to play havoc with men's happiness? Maître François Villon was quite right. Samson, Sardanapalus, David, Maître François himself, all came to grief over Joannas. "Bien heureux qui rien n'y a." Happy is he who has nothing to do with 'em.
As soon as we were free Paragot left us, and went off by himself; whereupon I, mimetic as an ape, rejected the humble Blanquette's invitation to take a walk with her, and strolled moodily into the town with Narcisse at my heels. A dog fight or two and a Byronic talk with a little towheaded flower-seller who gave me a dusty bunch of cyclamen – as a porte-bonheur she said prettily – whiled away the time until the people began to drift out of the Wonder Houses to dress for dinner. I lingered at the gates, going from one to the other, in the unavowed hope, little idiot that I was, of seeing Joanna. At last, at the main entrance to the Villa des Fleurs I caught sight of Paragot. He had changed from the velveteens into his vagabond clothes, and was evidently on the same errand as myself. I did not venture near, respecting his desire for solitude, but lounged at the corner of the main street and the road leading down to the Villa, playing with Narcisse and longing for something to happen. You see it is not given every day to an impressionable youngster, his brain stuffed with poetry, pictures, and such like delusive visionary things, to tumble head first into the romance of the actual world. For the moment the romance was at a standstill. I longed for a further chapter. It was a pity, I reflected, that we did not live in Merovingian times. Then Paragot and I could have lain in wait with our horses – everyone had horses in knightly days – and when Joanna came near, we should have killed the beaky-nosed man, and Paragot would have swung her on his saddlebow and we should have galloped away to his castle in the next kingdom, where Paragot, and Joanna and I, with Blanquette to be tirewoman to our princess, would have lived happy ever after. What I expected to get for myself, heaven knows: it did not strike me that perennial contemplation of another's bliss might wear out the stoutest altruism.
Then suddenly out of the door of the Villa came two ladies, one of whom I recognised as Joanna and the other as the young girl of the luncheon party. The façade of the villa stretches across the road and is about a hundred yards from the corner. I saw Paragot stand rigid, and make no sign of recognition as she passed him by, with her head up, like a proud queen. I felt an odd pain at my heart. Why was she so cruel? Her eyes were of the blue of glaciers, but all the rest of her face had seemed tender and kind. I was aware, in a general way, that radiantly attired ladies do not shake hands with ragamuffins in public places, but you must please to remember that I no more considered Paragot a ragamuffin than I thought Blanquette the equal of Joanna. Paragot to me was the peer of kings.
I turned away sorrowing and sauntered up the little street that leads to the Etablissement des Bains. I was disappointed in Joanna and did not want to see her again. She should be punished for her cruelty. I sat down on one of the benches on the Place, and looking at the Mairie clock stolidly thought of supper. They made famous onion soup at the little auberge where we lodged, and Paragot, himself a connoisseur, had pronounced their tripes à la mode de Caen superior to anything that Mrs. Housekeeper had executed for the Lotus Club. Besides I was getting hungry. With youth a full heart rarely compensates an empty stomach, and now even my heart was growing empty.
Presently who should emerge into the Place but the two ladies. I sat on my bench and watched them cross. They were evidently going up the hill to one of the hotels behind the Etablissement. In her white dress and white tulle hat coloured by three great roses, with her beautiful hair and sea-shell face and swaying supple figure, she looked the incarnation of all that was worshipful in woman. I could have knelt and prayed to her. Why was she so cruel to my master? I regarded her with mingled reproach and adoration. But the mixed feeling gave place to one of amazement when I saw her separate from her companion, who continued her way up the hill, and strike straight across the Place in my direction.
She was coming to me.
I rose, took off my ragged hat and twirled it in my fingers, which was the way that Paragot had taught me to be polite in France.
"I want to speak to you," she said quickly. "You are the boy with the tambourine, aren't you?"
"Yes, Mademoiselle."
Paragot had threatened to shoot me if I called any young lady "Miss."
"What is the name of the – the gentleman who played the violin?"
"Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot."
"That is not his real name?"
"No, Mademoiselle," said I.
"What is it?"
"I don't know," said I. "This is a new name; he has only had it a week."
"How long have you known him?"
"A long, long time, Mademoiselle. He adopted me when I was quite small."
"You are not very big now," she said with a smile.
"I am nearly sixteen," said I proudly.
To herself she murmured, "I don't think I can be mistaken."
In a different tone she continued, "You spoke some nonsense about his being your master and teaching you philosophy."
"It wasn't nonsense," I replied stoutly. "He teaches me everything. He teaches me history and Shakespeare and François Villon, and painting and Schopenhauer and the tambourine."
Her pretty lips pouted in a little gasp of astonishment as she leaned on her long parasol and looked at me.
"You are the oddest little freak I have come across for a long time."
I smiled happily. She could have called me anything opprobrious in that silvery voice of hers and I should have smiled. Now I come to think of it "smile" is the wrong word. The man smiles, the boy grins. I grinned happily.
"Has your master always played the violin in orchestras like this?"
"Oh, no, Mademoiselle," said I. "Of course not. He only began four days ago."
"What was his employment till then?"
"Why, none," said I.
It seemed absurd for Paragot to have employment like a man behind a shop-counter. I remembered acquaintances of my mother's who were "out of employment" and their unspeakable vileness. Then, echo of Paragot (for what else could I be?), I added: "We just walk about Europe for the sake of my education. My master said I was to learn Life from the Book of the Universe."
The lovely lady sat down.
"I believe you are nothing more nor less than an amazing little parrot. I'm sure you speak exactly like your master."
"Oh, no, Mademoiselle," said I modestly, "I wish I could. There is no one who can talk like him in all the world."
She gave me a long, steady, half-frightened look out of her blue eyes. I know now that I had struck a chord of memory; that I had established beyond question in her mind Paragot's identity with the man who had loved her in days past; that old things sweet and terrifying surged within her heart. Even then, holding their secret, I saw that she had recognised Paragot.
"You must think me a very inquisitive lady," she said, with a forced smile; "but you must forgive me. What you said this morning about your master teaching you philosophy interested me greatly. One thing I should like to know," and she dug at the gravel with the point of her parasol, "and that I hardly like to ask. Is he – are you – very poor?"
"Poor?" It was a totally new idea. "Why, no, Mademoiselle; he has a great bank in London which sends him bank-notes whenever he wants them. I once went with him. He has heaps of money."
The lady rose. "So this going about as a mountebank is only a masquerade," she said, with a touch of scorn.
"He did it to help Blanquette," said I.
"Blanquette?"
"The girl who plays the zither. My master has adopted her too."
"Oh, has he?" said the lady, the blue of her eyes becoming frosty again. I dimly perceived that in mentioning Blanquette I had been indiscreet. In what respect, I know not. I had intended my remark to be a tribute to Paragot's wide-heartedness. She took it as if I had told her of a crime. Women, even the loveliest of dream Joannas, are a mystifying race. "Bien heureux qui rien n'y a."
"Goodbye," she said.
"Goodbye, Mademoiselle."
She must have read mortification in my face, for she turned after a step or two, and said more kindly.
"You're not responsible, anyway." Then she paused, as if hesitating, while I stood hat in hand, as I had done during our conversation.
"I wonder if I can trust you."
She took her purse from the bag hanging at her waist and drew out a gold piece.
"I will give you this if you promise not to tell your Master that you have spoken to me this afternoon."
I shrank back. Remember I had been for three years in the hourly companionship of a man of lofty soul for all his waywardness, and he had modelled me like wax to his liking. The gold piece was tempting. I had never owned a gold piece in my life – and all the frost had melted from Joanna's eyes. But I felt I should be dishonored in taking money.
"I promise without that," I said.
She put the coin back in her purse and held out her delicately gloved hand.
"Promise with this, then," she said.
And then I knew for the first time what an exquisite sensitive thing is a sweet, high-bred lady. Only such a one could have performed that act of grace. She converted me into a besotted little imbecile weltering in bliss. I would have pledged my soul's welfare to execute any phantasmagoric behest she had chosen to ordain.
"I am leaving Aix tomorrow morning – but if you are ever in any trouble – by the way what is your name?"
"Asticot Pradel," said I, reflecting for the first time that though Polydore Pradel had perished and Berzélius Nibbidard Paragot reigned in his stead, my own borrowed or invented name remained unaltered. Augustus Smith lingered in my memory as a vague, mythical creature of no account.
Joanna smiled. "You are a little masquerader too. Well – if you are ever in any trouble, and I can help you – remember the Comtesse de Verneuil, 7 Avenue de Messine, Paris."
This offer of friendship took my breath away. I grinned stupidly at her. I was also puzzled.
"What is the matter?" she laughed.
"The Comtesse de Verneuil? – but you are English," I stammered.
"Yes. But my husband is French. He is the Comte de Verneuil. Remember 7 Avenue de Messine."
She nodded graciously and turned away leaving a stupefied Asticot twirling his hat. Her husband! And I had been calling her Mademoiselle all the time! And I had been weaving fairy tales of our riding off with her to Paragot's castle! She was married. Her husband was the Comte de Verneuil! Worse than that. Her husband was the disagreeable beaky-nosed man who gave me five sous to go away.
A sense of desolation, disaster, disillusionment overwhelmed me. I sat on the bench and burst out crying and Narcisse jumped up and licked my face.
CHAPTER IX
It was nearly midnight when Paragot returned to our inn on the outskirts of the town. He reeled up to the doorstep where I sat in the moonlight awaiting his return.
"Why aren't you in bed?"
"It was too hot and I couldn't sleep, Master," said I. As a matter of fact I had been dismally failing to compose a poem on Joanna after the style of Maître François Villon. Just as youthful dramatists begin with a five act tragedy, so do youthful poets begin with a double ballade. In order to eke out the slender stock of rhymes to Joanna, I had to drag in Indianna which somehow didn't fit. I remember also that she showered her favours like manna, which was not very original.
Paragot seated himself heavily by my side.
"The moon has a baleful influence, my son," said he in a thick voice. "And you'll come under it if you sit too long beneath its effulgence. That's what has happened to me. It makes one talk unmentionable imbecility."
He just missed concertina-ing the last two words, and looked at me with an air of solemn triumph.
"It isn't the Man in the Moon's fault, my little Asticot," he continued. "I've been having a very interesting conversation with him. He is a most polite fellow. He said if I would go up and join him he would make room for me. It's all a lie, you know, about his having been sent there for gathering sticks on a Sunday. He went of his own accord, because it was the only place where he could be four thousand miles away from any woman. Think of it, little Asticot of my heart. There are lots of lies told about the moon, he says. He looks down on the earth and sees all of us little worms wriggling in and out and over one another and thinking ourselves so important and he cracks his sides with laughing; and your bald-headed idiots with spyglasses take the cracks for mountain ranges and volcanoes. I'm going to live in the moon, away from female feminine women, and if you are good my son, you shall come too."
I explained to him as delicately as I could that I should regard such a change rather as a punishment than as a reward. He broke into a laugh.
"You too – with the milk of the feeding-bottle still wet on your lips? The trail of the petticoat's over us all! What has been putting the sex feminine into your little turnip-head? Have you fallen in love with Blanquette?"
"No, Master," said I. "When I fall in love it will be with a very beautiful lady."
Paragot pointed upwards. "I see another crack in my friend's sides. We all fall in love with beautiful ladies, my poor Asticot, one after the other, plunging into destruction with the comic sheep-headedness of the muttons of Panurge. Another woolly one over? Ho! ho! laughs the man in the moon, and crack go his sides."
The door opened behind us and the proprietor of the auberge appeared on the threshold.
"Give me half a litre of red wine, Monsieur Bonnivard," cried Paragot. "I am the descendant of Maître Jehan Cotard whose throat was so dry that in this world he was never known to spit."
"Bien, Monsieur," said the patron.
Paragot filled his porcelain pipe and lit it with clumsy fingers, and did not speak till his wine was brought.
"My son, we are leaving Aix the first thing in the morning."
I started up in alarm. We had not finished our engagement at the Restaurant du Lac.
"I care no more for the Restaurant du Lac than for the rest of the idiot universe," he declared.
"But Blanquette – it would break her heart."
"All women's hearts can be mended for twopence."
"And men's?"
"They have to go about with them broken, my son, and the pieces clank and jangle and chink and jingle inside like a crate of broken crockery. We leave Aix tomorrow."
"But Master," I cried, "there is no necessity."
"What do you mean?"
"She is leaving Aix herself tomorrow."
"She!" he shouted, quite sober for the moment. "Who the devil do you mean by 'she'?"
I upbraided myself for a vain idiot. Here was I on the point of breaking my oath sworn on Joanna's hand. I felt ashamed and frightened. He grasped my shoulder roughly.
"Who do you mean by 'she'? Tell me."
"The Lady of the Lake, Master," said I.
He looked at me for a moment keenly, then relaxed his grip and shrugged his shoulders with the ghost of a laugh.
"If you see holes in ladders in this perspicacious fashion you'll have to forsake the paths of art for the higher walks of the Prefecture of Police."
He puffed silently at his pipe for a few moments and then turning his head away asked me in a low voice:
"How can you know that she is leaving tomorrow?"
I lied for the first time to Paragot.
"I overheard her say so while I was waiting with the tambourine."
"Sure?"
"Quite sure."
This seemed to satisfy him, to my great relief. How my poor little oath would have fared under cross examination I don't know. At any rate honour was saved. Paragot laid aside his pipe and looked wistfully into the past over his wine bowl.
"The Lady of the Lake," he murmured. "I have called her many things good and bad in my time, but never that. You are a genius, my little Asticot."
He finished his wine slowly, holding the bowl in both hands. The moon smiled at us in a friendly way, sailing high over the mountains. There entered my head the novel reflection that he was smiling on all men alike, the good and the bad, the just and the unjust. He was smiling just the same on Joanna's beaky-nosed husband.
Her husband! Something caught at my heart. Did Paragot know? I debated anxiously in my mind whether I should impart the disastrous information. If he knew that she was a married woman he would put foolish thoughts out of his head, for it was only in Merovingian and such like romantic epochs that men loved other men's wives. I touched him timidly on the arm.
"Master, – I overheard something else."
"Did you?"
"She is married, and that is her husband."
"Did he take off his hat?"
"No, Master."
"He is a scaly-headed vulture," said Paragot dreamily.
"He only gave me five sous," said I, relieved and yet disappointed at finding that my disclosure produced no agitation.
Paragot fumbled in his pocket. "We will not batten on his charity," said he, and he cast three or four coppers into the silent street. They crashed, rolled and fell over with little chinks. Narcisse who had hitherto been asleep trotted out and sniffed at them. Paragot laughed; then checked himself, and holding up a long-nailed forefinger looked at me with an air of awful solemnity.
"Listen to the wisdom of Paragot. There is not a woman worth a clean man that does not marry a scaly-headed vulture."
He murmured an incoherence or two, and there was then a long silence. Presently his head knocked sharply against the lintel. I roused him.
"Master, it won't be good for us to sit any longer in the moonshine."
He turned a glazed look on me. "Minerva's Owl," said he, "I am quite aware of it."
He rose and lumbered into the inn, and I, having guided him up the narrow staircase to his room, descended to my bunk in a corner of the tiny salon. My sleeping arrangements were always sketchy.
In the morning when I questioned him as to our departure from Aix, he affected not to understand, and told me that I had been dreaming and that the moonshine had affected my brain.
"Consider, my son," said he, "that when I returned last night, I found you fast asleep on the doorstep, and you never woke up till this morning."
From this I gathered that for the second time he had dosed the book of his life to my prying though innocent eyes. I also learned the peculiar difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober.
When our engagement at Aix was at an end, the proprietor of the restaurant desired to renew it, but Paragot declined. The sick violinist whom we had replaced had recovered and Paragot had seen him on the quay looking through the railings with the hungry eyes of a sort of musical Enoch Arden. Blanquette had some little difficulty in preventing him from rushing out there and then and delivering his fiddle into the other's hands. It was necessary to be reasonable, she said.
