Surrounded by the daubs that marred what otherwise might have been a handsome room, I took Jessie into my confidence before the others arrived. She heard me through patiently and sympathetically.
“My poor Paddy, what a sombre tragedy! Won’t you tell me her name?”
“Millie,” said I.
“How fresh and innocent,” she rhapsodised, “how pretty, how sweet, how suggestive of buttercups and things.”
“Jessie, you are laughing at me,” I protested.
“Indeed, no. But what is her other name? Who is she?”
“Millie Dewbury.”
“Of Stollbridge?” she asked, looking up with what seemed a new interest.
“Why, yes. Do you know her?”
“No, I don’t know her,” she replied. Her eyes danced with an amusement that I could not understand, and from her parted lips came a soft, cooing laugh.
“What amuses you?” I asked a trifle sulkily, for although we realise that our sufferings may prove a source of entertainment to the rest of the world, we hardly care for the friend to whom we expose them to laugh in our face for answer.
“Paddy,” she said gravely, “I remember that you used to have a poor opinion of a woman’s wit. I am going to show you how very wrong you were. Be guided by me; follow my advice implicitly, and in a week your engagement to this Millie of yours shall receive her uncle’s sanction.”
I think that my stare was justified.
“How can you help me?” I asked at last, and then, before she could reply, the door was opened, and to my disgust her maid announced a visitor. On the heels of this one — a young man with a flowing necktie, straw-coloured hair and pince-nez — came a host of others, until her room was filled by as motley an assemblage of men and women as ever the gregariousness of human nature drew together. They were mostly Bohemians, some in stern reality, others mere make-believes like herself, and in a more placid frame of mind I might have found much to interest and amuse me in the observation of them. As it was I sat preoccupied, making abortive attempts at conversation with a fluffy-haired little girl — a musician, I think — who for her sins had been entrusted to me by our hostess. Jessie had told her that I was a young man of parts, a writer of some promise. From my general dullness she may have been justified in assuming me a humorist.
Of a sudden, however, my interest in my surroundings was vigorously aroused by the shock of surprise that I received when the maid announced— “Mr. Dewbury.” He was certainly the last man in the world I expected to see, and this was the last place in the world in which I expected to see him.
He came forward now, the very incarnation of geniality and eagerness — a sort of transfigured Dewbury whom hitherto I had never met — and as he shook hands with Jessie, I clearly heard her thank him for the flowers he had sent, whereat my wonder grew. She gave him some tea, and then leaving him in conversation with a struggling young painter — whether struggling to live or struggling to paint was not made clear to me — she came to sit beside me.
“Well?” she inquired, “Are you surprised?”
“Of course I am. I had no notion that he was in town, nor even that you knew him.”
“To the observer,” she murmured tritely, “life is a never-ending round of surprises. I may have one or two more for you before long. Paddy, I am your good angel.”
She was smiling at me with eyes so full of adoration that but for the memory of Mildred they might have proved my undoing. I looked across at Mildred’s uncle to find his glance riveted upon me. Where now was the geniality? Where now the eagerness? The Dewbury that sat there now was the Dewbury that I knew — scowling and malevolent. I smiled and nodded easily. He acknowledged my greeting without warmth, and turned to struggle into conversation with the struggling painter.
Jessie seemed to forget her guests. She drew me into a spirited conversation, consisting on my part of endless inquiries into the methods she intended to pursue to assist me, and on hers of endless, evasive persiflage, which, however amusing to her, was peculiarly trying to me. Ever and anon Dewbury would glance in our direction, his eyes eloquent with unrest. It occurred to me that he wished to speak to Jessie, but that my presence restrained him.
At last her guests began to depart, and little by little the number ebbed until only Dewbury and I were left. We carried on a conversation for some moments — that is to say, Jessie talked, addressing her remarks mainly to me — until with an unconscious sigh Mr. Dewbury rose and murmured that he must be going.
“I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at the Hampshire’s to-night,” said he. But Jessie shook her head.
“I am afraid not. Paddy has asked me to dinner,” she added in her breezy way, “and we are killing the fatted calf in honour of his return to town.”
Now I had done nothing of the sort, and I was aghast to hear her. But my feelings must have been as water to wine compared with Dewbury’s. His eyebrows went up until they threatened to join forces with his hair, and in tones of unmistakable horror —
“You are having dinner with Mr. Holford?” he gasped.
She laughed, and as if to explain —
“Why Paddy and I are old friends,” she cried, and he, forced to accept that explanation, withdrew.
She watched him depart, and her merry eyes became for a second quite serious. “Poor fellow,” she murmured in a voice that was like a caress, and which set me thinking. Then she turned to me —
“Run along now, Paddy, there’s a good child. You may come and see me in the morning. Eleven o’clock sharp. And if you would serve your interests you had better bring me some flowers.”
“But are you not coming to dinner?” I inquired, more and more puzzled.
“I have changed my mind.”
“Yes, but—”
The merriest of laughs rippled from her lips, and her grey eyes were a-dance with amusement.
“Oh, Paddy, Paddy, I always thought a writer was a professional observer. I am afraid you will never achieve greatness. But there — if you can’t see what I’m doing for you, I am not going to explain. It’s something I wouldn’t do for anyone else, Paddy; and, anyhow, it is something that is going to lead you to buy an engagement ring this week for your little, rustic Millie.”
It may be that I am, after all, a singularly dull-witted person; it certainly seems to me now that I should have understood it all along, but my mind was dense as a fog that evening. At least, however, the fog was pierced by the ray of hope she cast upon me with such encouraging assurance, and influenced by it, I grew sanguine and cheerful.
Eleven o’clock next morning found me on her doorstep, a bunch of red roses in my hand, and there, to my vast surprise, I was joined, as the maid admitted me, by Dewbury himself, also bearing a bouquet — a mass of orchids, any single bloom of which must have cost as much as all my roses put together. He appeared no less surprised to meet me, and his greeting could hardly have been more thorough in its surliness. It came to me then — as, indeed, it might have come to any fool — that Dewbury was in love with Jessie. And still I did not see light.
“She was all smiles to receive us. She took his bouquet first — he took excellent care that she should — and gushed over that costly collection of rare petals. Then she took up mine, and buried her face in the roses.
“I love roses,” she vowed. “They are so warm, so sweet, so — so generous. I could surround myself with roses. Couldn’t you, Mr. Dewbury?”
“I daresay,” he temporised, writhing visibly.
“A rose always appeals to me as a flower with a soul — a great soul. Do you never feel like that towards it?”
“I am afraid I have never thought about it,” he grunted.
“Haven’t you,” said she with as much horror as though he had confessed to never attending church. “Ah, but then you are not a poet,” she added — which after all was not a great discovery.
“Indeed no,” said I, seizing the opportunity to balance matters with him. “Mr. Dewbury follows
no such useless vocation. He is no dreamer — not he. He is a utilitarian; believes in being useful in the world and all that; manufactures things.”
St. Lawrence on the gridiron must have experienced sensations of positive delight when contrasted with Mr. Dewbury’s feelings at that moment. Jessie took pity on him, and putting down the roses began to extol the beauty of the orchids until the smiles returned to his face.
We stayed half an hour and left together. But before we left Jessie slipped a note into my hand.
As we walked away from the house, Dewbury turned to me.
“Miss Willoughby seems to be a great friend of yours,” he said sourly.
I nearly blurted out that we were “sort of brother and sister.” But intuition came to the rescue.
“Oh, dear, yes,” I assented, “Dear girl, Jessie, is she not?”
He looked at me in silence, and I thought there was a good deal of unnecessary contempt in his glance. Then he put up his hand to stop a passing hansom, and without displaying the manners to ask me whether he could give a lift, he bade me good morning.
When he was gone I opened Jessie’s note. It suggested that I should get myself a stall at the Haymarket that night. She would be there with her cousins, the Sutfields, and she urged me to go up to their box. All this I did, and, standing behind Jessie’s chair after the first act, I saw Dewbury’s glowering eye raised to us from the stalls.
Two days later I again took tea at her studio. There was more or less the same crowd, and the by now inevitable Mr. Dewbury. Of course I was beginning to see light, and when I perceived that she really did like Millie’s uncle — and, after all, I daresay that there was a great deal about him that was likeable and presentable — I understood what a thoroughly good sort Jessie was, and how deeply I stood in her debt.
It was a Saturday, and as I was leaving the studio, she audibly promised to meet me at Paddington at eleven o’clock next morning. Dewbury could not fail to hear and to gather, of course, that a day up the river had been planned. I left him there, and went out to dine with some friends that night. When later I got home there was a wire from Jessie commanding me not to leave my rooms on any account in the morning.
I puzzled over it, but the solution came at ten o’clock next day when Mr. Dewbury was announced.
He was very cold and very distant, and he addressed me as though I were one of the men whom he did business with.
“I have come to ask you, sir, whether you consider it consistent with honesty and dignity to write such letters as your last one to my niece while carrying on a very pronounced flirtation here with another lady.”
“And may I ask you, sir,” said I, in a tone that gave him back his iciness with interest, “whether you consider it consistent with the honesty and dignity to which you allude, to read letters that are addressed to somebody else?”
He bounded out of his chair at that.
“I did not read it,” he exclaimed.
“Are you not rash then in passing judgement upon its contents?”
“A fool could guess them knowing the relations that existed between yourself and my niece. You don’t doubt me?”
“Not for a moment,” said I in tones which were meant to convey the very opposite. “May I ask, sir, how my behaviour can further concern or interest you? You have closed your house against me; you have forbidden me to see Mildred; you take care that I shall not write to her. Are you not satisfied, or is it that, taking a keen interest in my welfare, and having some notion that a literary man should be wedded only to his art, you wish to ensure for me a future of aesthetic celibacy?”
He was thoughtful for a moment. Then, instead of the anger with which I had expected him to answer me —
“It has occurred to me, Paddy,” said he very mildly — and this return to the use of my sobriquet made me suddenly hopeful— “it has occurred to me that after all I may have been a trifle hasty over that Stollbridge affair.”
“I daresay it was for the best,” said I, whereat alarm spread itself upon his face.
“I mean that perhaps I had no right to separate you and Mildred. She will wait for you and — well, there’s always a danger attached to a woman’s waiting for a man. In a city like London there are so many distractions; so much may occur. I have been thinking it over, and do you know I have come to the conclusion that in matters of this kind perhaps young people themselves are the best judges, and that after all it might on the whole be wiser if I were to sanction your engagement.”
“That is very good of you, sir,” said I, in a perfectly colourless voice, which must have left him still uneasy.
“Supposing that I were to do so, Paddy — what course would you adopt?”
“I should return to Stollbridge and work there. As you say, there are rather many distractions in town, and a young man may find them militating against his work.”
He was visibly relieved.
“My dear boy,” said he, “if I have been hasty I am sure you will forgive me.”
Of course I forgave him, for who could have withheld pardon under the circumstances. That very afternoon I travelled down to Stollbridge to bear Mildred the good news.
In the middle of the following week she had a wire from her uncle announcing his engagement.
“Isn’t it droll?” she laughed, holding out the telegram to me, “Fancy the uncle being engaged! I shall be one of Jessie’s bridesmaids.”
“I think,” said I, “that that is about the least we can do for Jessie.”
THE BAKER OF ROUSILLON
It was in Brumaire of the year 2 of the French Republic, One and Indivisible — November of 1793 by the calendar of slaves — that, whilst on my way to rejoin my regiment — then before Toulon — I was detained in Rousillon by orders of no less a personage than Robespierre himself, and billeted for three days upon a baker and dealer in wines of the name of Bonchatel.
This Bonchatel proved an excellent host. He was a man of whimsical and none too loyal notions concerning the Republic, and to me he expressed those notions with an amusing and dangerous frankness, explaining his indiscretion in so trusting me by the statement that he knew an officer was not a mouchard.
Had not Fate decreed that Bonchatel should have an enemy who gave him some concern, it is likely I had found him a yet pleasanter host — though it is also likely that he had continued a baker to the end of his days. As it was, he would fall ever and anon into fits of abstraction; his brow would be clouded, and his good-humoured mouth screwed with concern. To the dullest it might have been clear that he nursed a secret sorrow.
“Citizen-Captain,” said he on the second day of my sojourn at his house, “you have the air of a kind-hearted man, and I will confide in you a matter that vexes me not a little, and fills me at times with the gravest apprehensions.”
And with that he proceeded to relate how a ruffianly cobbler, originally named Coupri, but now calling himself Scævola to advertise his patriotism, who — by one of the ludicrous turns in the machinery of the Revolution — had been elected President of the Committee of Public Safety of Rousillon, had cast the eyes of desire upon Amélie (Bonchatel’s only daughter) and sought her to wife. Ugly as the Father of Sin himself, old and misshapen, the girl had turned in loathing from his wooing, whilst old Bonchatel had approved her attitude, and bidden the one-time cobbler take his suit to the devil.
“I saved my child then,” my host concluded, “but I am much afraid that it was no more than a postponement. This Scævola swore that I should bitterly regret it, and since then he has spared no effort to visit trouble upon me. Should he succeed, and should the Committee decree my imprisonment, or my death even, upon some trumped-up charge, I shudder to think of what may befall my poor Amélie.”
I cheered the man as best I might, making light of his fears and endeavouring to prove them idle. Yet idle they were not. I realised it then, knowing the power that such a man as Scævola might wield, and I was to realise it yet more keenly upon the morrow.
&nbs
p; I was visited in the afternoon of the next day by a courier, who brought me a letter from “the Incorruptible,” wherein he informed me that he would be at Rousillon that night at ten o’clock. He bade me wait upon him at the Mairie, keeping his coming a secret from all without exception.
Now between my receipt of that letter and the advent in Rousillon of the all-powerful Robespierre there was played out in the house of Bonchatel a curious comedy that had tragedy for a setting.
Scarce was my courier departed, when into the shop lounged an unclean fellow in a carmagnole, who demanded a two-pound loaf of bread. Misliking his looks, Bonchatel asked to see his money, whereupon, with a curse upon all aristo-bakers who did not know a patriot and a true man when they saw one, the fellow produced a soiled and greasy assignat for twenty francs, out of which he bade him take payment. But Bonchatel shook his head.
“If you will have my bread, my friend, you must pay money for it.”
“Name of a name, citizen,” roared the other, “what am I offering you?”
“A filthy scrap of worthless paper,” returned Bonchatel, stung to so fittingly describe it by the other’s insolence.
There was an evil gleam in the patriot’s bloodshot eye.
“Now, by St. Guillotine, I would citizen Scævola had heard those words, and you would have done your future baking in another oven, wherein you would have played the rôle of the loaf,” he rejoined. “Do you, miserable federalist that you are, dare to apply such terms to an assignat of the French Republic?
“My friend,” said Bonchatel, endeavouring to hedge, “I spoke hastily, maybe. But tell me: to whom shall I tender that paper in my turn? Who will accept it as money?”
“Why, any man that is not a traitor to the Nation.”
“Then it must be that there are none but traitors in France. See you, my friend, I have upstairs a trunk full of these notes, which have been tendered me of late, and which I have taken, but which none will take from me.”
“The Republic will cash them, failing all others,” cried the customer.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 461
