by Grant Allen
“Instead of the cognac, monsieur?” the waiter asked, hesitating.
“Instead of the cognac!” the newcomer replied angrily. “Who countermanded the cognac, I should like to know? No, jackanapes, no; with the cognac, with it — all three of them together! Why don’t you go and get them when you’re told, you fool, instead of standing there and grinning like a laughing jackass?”
The waiter drew back, surprised at the unwonted vigor of his customer’s language. “Oui, monsieur! Merci, monsieur!” he answered, taken aback, but official as ever.
The boisterous stranger turned with an inane and placid smile to Hubert. “The image doesn’t know his work,” he observed, with military swagger. “Never heard of absinthe and brandy before, apparently. Makes a splendid drink. Has a singular effect on the epigastrium, that mixture. Warms a man when he’s cold; cools him when he’s hot: seems to act sympathetically on the peripheral nerve-terminals.”
Hubert caught at the word. “Peripheral nerve-terminals?” he said. “Epigastrium! Why, you speak like a physiologist!”
The stranger vaulted on to the table with a bound. He was not without a strange sort of clumsy agility. He sat there, smiling. “Well, I’m a military man by trade,” he said, after a pause; “in point of fact, a colonel. But I’m a little bit of most things in an amateur way — from a hoary old reprobate to a man of science. Especially in the direction of the hoary old reprobate. I pride myself on that. I can give points, as a reprobate, to any man of my age and weight in the service — and beat him easily.”
“So I should think,” Hubert said, with a curl of the lips, half rising to go, yet restrained by the curious interest of the man’s degraded personality. “You look the character.”
“Ha, you’re a good one for judging at first sight,” the Colonel answered, unoffended by Hubert’s perfect frankness. “You put your finger on the place. That touches the spot, sir; that touches the spot, as they say in the advertisement. This is not mere make-up. It runs in the blood with all my family to be hoary old reprobates.” He bit his thumb. “We’ve been hoary old reprobates, now, for five generations.”
“You bear the obvious traces of it,” Hubert answered, with quiet confidence. For the stranger’s face was both red and swollen.
“That’s so,” the Colonel continued, slapping one flabby thigh with his open hand; “you’re a man of a penetration, sir. You know what’s what when you see it. We’re citizens of Bohemia, root and stock, my family. We go to the dogs with accelerated speed in each new century.”
As he spoke, the waiter returned with the brandy and absinthe. “Shall I pour them out, monsieur?” he asked, holding up a liqueur glass.
The Colonel drew out a single eyeglass, fixed it solemnly in its place, and regarded him through it for some minutes with the attentive air with which one regards some curious but noxious insect. “Je vous remercie,” he said at last, with quaint mock politeness; “je verse moimeme, imbecile!” He glanced at Hubert.
“A petit verre for me!” he cried. “What rot! This is how I take it!” He seized the small glass of cognac and emptied it into a tumbler. Then he poured out about three times as much more from the decanter on top of it. After that, he lifted the vermouth bottle and the absinthe and poured a wine-glassful or so of each on top of the brandy. He looked at it all admiringly against the dying light in the western sky. “That’s the sort of thing,” he said at last, “to put the blood in circulation.”
“But you can’t like it so,” Hubert cried. “Such a nasty mixture.”
“I beg your pardon,” the Colonel replied, tossing it off at a gulp. “I don’t like it. I love it. I’m a modest man in most ways, and I admit I have my faults; but on the question of my own likes and dislikes, I submit, I can claim to be the first living authority in Europe.” He turned the glass upside down, and laid it empty on the marble table. “That’s wonderful,” Hubert said, “wonderful! How long do you reckon to live at that rate, may I venture to ask you?”
The Colonel’s good-humor was absolutely imperturbable. “Well, my grandfather died of it at eighty,” he answered, in a most cheerful voice, “and my father at seventy. I reckon myself to last, with luck, till sixty or thereabouts. Though, having been deucedly ill-treated by an unnatural wife, I may go even sooner. It’s an interesting example of what Darwin calls the law of accelerated inheritance.” And he poured himself out another small glass of brandy.
The curious gleams of science interested Hubert. “You are never drunk, I suppose?” he remarked, drawing back with some natural disgust, yet regarding him as a valuable object of study, like a germ under the microscope.
“Not often, you bet,” the Colonel answered, with candor. He spoke with deep regret. “It don’t often run to it,” he murmured quite sadly. “You see, it costs a good deal to make me drunk nowadays; and times being hard and women cruel, I seldom have cash in hand to spend upon a manful and resolute attempt in that direction — except about quarter-days, when my wife pays up my miserable pittance. Though now and then a friend is kind enough to defray the expense of the experiment; but it’s long — and costly.”
“And deadly,” Hubert added.
The Colonel acquiesced. “It’s killing me,” he admitted, “of course; but, as I often say, we must all of us die; and how can man die better than when he dies enjoying himself?”
“Alcoholic narcosis, I suppose?” Hubert murmured, looking hard at him with suppressed disgust.
“The very word,” the Colonel cried, holding out one hand with evident pride to show how it trembled. Alcholic narcosis. You hit it first time. Which will you take, a cigar or a cocoa-nut?”
His vulgar leer was hateful to Hubert; yet the scientific interest of the case retained him. “Well, you’re frank about it, any way,” he observed, half angry with himself for continuing to talk with so abject a creature.
The Colonel drew himself up. There were remnants of a gentleman and a handsome man about him. “A soldier,” he said, with a sort of malicious mock-dignity, “should always be frank. And I flatter myself I’ve served the country with distinction. I never quail under fire. Drink’s my worst enemy — and I face it daily.” He poured himself out a little more neat brandy.
The concierge motioned quietly to the waiter to remove the bottle. But the Colonel was too quick for him. He caught at it with a rapid clutch and clasped it to his bosom. “No, no, my friend,” he said smiling. “We are always told to love our enemies. Would you make me a heathen?” And he clung to it affectionately.
“You know you’re killing yourself?” Hubert put in.
The Colonel shrugged his shoulders. His manners, Hubert had noticed from the first, were much Italianate, as of a man who had spent many years in Italy. “Of course,” he said, “I’m killing myself. Tis a soldier’s business. I lead a forlorn hope against the enemy’s guns ten times a day.” He made a lunge with an imaginary sword at the brandy bottle. “What does that matter?” he went on. We’re all of us dying — all under sentence of death — you, and I, and the rest of us — and what difference does a year or two more or less make to us? I tell you what, my dear sir, it was a fine philosopher who first said those words. ‘A short life and a merry one.’ He summed up in one phrase the wisdom of centuries.”
Hubert looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. The stranger sat on the table still, and gazed across at them with a hateful smile of complacent degradation. His face was puffy. The eyes were red and bleared; the lips had the dark blue hue of the habitual sot’s. Hubert knew the type well; he had studied it carefully for two years at his hospital. As they sat and faced one another Rosa came down the steps with a message for a second. “Madame has left her bag, monsieur,” she said in French to Hubert, picking it up and taking it off. “She sent me to get it.” For Hubert had carried her little reticule home for her.
The Colonel, as he called himself, turned to the girl with that offensive and senile leer which no man can endure to see on the face of another. “By
Jove, that’s a good-looking young woman!” he observed in English to Hubert. Then he added, in tolerable German, “What is your name, my dear?” ogling her.
Rosa measured him with her eye from head to foot, severely. “My name’s the chambermaid,” she answered, with a toss of her pretty head. “Ring once for waiter; twice for boots; three times for chambermaid. And when I know your number — I’ll take care some other chambermaid answers it.”
The “hoary old reprobate” stared after her, astonished, as she tripped up the steps with an air of determination. “God bless my soul,” he cried, “what a smart young woman!” He jumped from the table and stood on tip-toe gazing after her.
The episode, however, seemed to recall to him the fact that he was in search of a lodging. “I want a room here to-night, by the way,” he said, turning at last to the concierge.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the concierge answered, in his most official tone, “but — we’re full up this evening.”
The Colonel drew back and surveyed him admiringly. “Young fellow,” he said — though the concierge was forty—” you’re a first-class liar! That’s very well tried — very well tried indeed — for a beginner. If you go on like that, you ought to end by becoming a most accomplished diplomatist. Be ambassador to Russia. Do you expect me to believe that every bed in this house is full in the beginning of October? If so, I can only say you’ve mistaken my character.”
He strode up the steps and entered the hotel, humming. Hubert did not follow him. The concierge did — having his doubts as to the coats and umbrellas in the vestibule. When he reached the top flight, the Colonel turned to him. “No nonsense, my friend,” he said, in a severer tone than he had hitherto adopted. “I want a room in this hotel tonight, and I mean to have it. You have plenty vacant; and if luggage is in the way,” he glanced at his knapsack and slapped his pocket, “I’ll pay beforehand for bed and breakfast.”
The concierge hesitated. “I don’t know—” he began.
His interlocutor stopped him with an angry gesture. “Send me the proprietor,” he said, assuming the air of a great gentleman. “I propose to honor his hotel with my patronage.”
The concierge gave way. “We might put you in seventy-two,” he said, pretending to consult his books, and looking suspiciously at the hoary old reprobate. “What name shall I enter?”
“What’s that to you?” the Colonel answered, growing redder than before. “I pay in advance, I tell you. He pulled out a worn purse with a hole in its side, and counted a few francs into the concierge’s hand with the mien of a millionaire. “A gentleman is a gentleman, in spite of misfortunes,” he observed, sententiously, “and will not submit to be sat upon by a lackey.” He paused a moment, and reflected. Then he dropped his voice a little. “Anybody of the name of Egremont in the hotel?” he asked, in a confidential tone.
“Mrs. Egremont and her son,” the concierge replied, a trifle astonished. “They came a week ago. That was young Mr. Egremont you were speaking to just now — the gentleman by the table.”
The Colonel drew himself up and looked across at Hubert, who was still sitting on a chair beside the veranda. He observed him with interest. “Well, he’s a fine, well-grown young man,” he remarked, after a pause, surveying him deliberately. “A young man any father in England might be proud of! A chip of the old block, as far as body goes! But I’m afraid, after all, he’s a canting humbug. I hate hypocrisy! Drank beer, though, like a man! Hope his mother hasn’t succeeded in making a confounded Methodist of him!”
“Seventy-two is six francs,” the concierge said, returning strictly to business; “and plain breakfast three. I suppose you will go into table d’hote this evening. Table d’hote is five. Fourteen in all, sir.”
The Colonel eyed him severely. “There, young man,” he replied, “you make your blooming little error! I will not go in to table d’hote this evening. I will dine à la carte, unostentatiously and simply, in number seventy-two. I am traveling incognito.” He drew himself up again. “Mind,” he said, lowering his voice, “don’t mention to Mr. Egremont that I asked at all after him or his family. You are not paid by your master, young fellow, to carry tales about from one guest to another.”
The concierge nodded, and sent the boots to accompany the threadbare stranger to the room assigned him. The Colonel strode on with much military dignity. The concierge returned to the veranda to Hubert.
“Who is he?” the young man asked, with a certain languid curiosity.
“I’m sure I can’t say, sir,” the concierge answered; “but he can’t be anybody much, for he didn’t write for rooms beforehand. Though, to be sure, we have gentlemen come here in the climbing season who look more like chimney-sweeps than like people of position, through accidents on the mountains. But this isn’t one of those; his clothes are old and patched — premeditated poverty!”
“He’s a loathsome sight,” Hubert mused; “and yet, there are relics of a gentleman about him still.”
“It takes an opera-glass to see them, though,” the concierge added. “I should say by the look of him he lives on brandy.”
“He’ll die of it soon,” Hubert answered. “His is a very bad case. He hasn’t much more than six months of life, at most, left in him.”
“You think not?”
“I don’t think, I know. He has had delirium tremens, I can see, for years; and he’s well on his way now to alcoholic insanity and creeping paralysis.”
“That’s bad,” the concierge said.
“Yes, inherited,” Hubert went on. “He has brought it on himself in large part, of course; but his ancestors had laid the seeds of it before him. His children will develop it sooner than he; and his grandchildren will be born idiots or epileptics.”
“You’re a doctor, sir?” the concierge asked, eyeing him hard.
“Not exactly a doctor; but next door to it — a physiologist. I’ve spent three years in watching and studying these cases at an hospital. I know the type well. You take my word for it — if that man has a son, the son is doomed to insanity before thirty!”
CHAPTER V.
LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY.
THE table d’hote that evening consisted of five people only — for the “hoary old reprobate,” persisted in his intention of dining alone in number seventy-two off a menu of his ordering.
The Marchese and Fede were the first to enter the salle à manger. They had only been seated a minute, however, when Hubert dropped in, not expecting to see them. He gave a start of surprise when his eyes lighted upon Fede.
“Why, signorina,” he cried, advancing to her with outstretched hand, “I didn’t know you were here. We were not expecting you till to-morrow morning.”
Fede took his hand timidly. Her eyes met his and dropped. “Oh, Hubert,” she said—” I — I mean, Mr. Egremont, how well you’re looking! Papa, allow me to introduce Mr. Egremont.”
“This is an unexpected pleasure,” Hubert cried — not searching about for a phrase like a modern novelist, but using the easy and convenient formula. “I’m delighted to meet you! When did you arrive? I’m afraid, Fede, your father doesn’t understand English; and my Italian, you know—”
The Marchese bowed impressively with Florentine politeness. He was carefully groomed, and his big black mustache looked extremely imposing. “English,” he answered, smiling, and showing two rows of pearly white teeth. “As well as you do, Mr. Egremont! We Florentines are nothing, you know, if not cosmopolitan. Besides, my mother was an Englishwoman, and so was my wife; and when I was a clerk in a merchant’s office in Fenchurch Street—”
Hubert’s preconceived notions of the proud Tuscan nobleman received a severe blow. “A merchant’s office in Fenchurch Street?” he repeated, bewildered. What had a Florentine Tornabuoni to do with Fenchurch Street?”
The Marchese stroked the ends of the big black mustache with evident amusement. He was overflowing with good humor. “Yes, a merchant’s office in Fenchurch Street,” he reiterated, delighted. “You see
, we Florentines are also nothing if not commercial; and as my ancestors, the Tornabuoni, had left us a Property,” — the Marchese always dropped his voice reverently at that sacred word, and pronounced it somehow with a capital initial— “a wine-growing estate in the valley of the Arno, which does a big export business in Chianti with England — my father thought it best for me, while I was young and plastic, to learn the ways of the English wine-market on the spot in London.”
“I see,” Hubert murmured, sitting down and feeling very much taken aback. This was not the haughty Florentine his fancy had pictured. The man before him was gentleman to the core, but he was distinctly commercial.
“You know my Chianti, I dare say,” the Marchese continued, with his expansive smile. “The Monte Riggioni brand. It’s making its way, I’m told, at Romano’s and Gatti’s.
“I — I don’t think I discriminate between vintages of Chianti,” Hubert answered, much surprised. But he noted mentally that the Italian aristocrat was not above turning an honest penny.
“When did you get here?” he went on, turning round to Fede. “How unkind you must have thought it of me not to have been waiting at the hotel to meet you! But your father wrote you wouldn’t arrive till to-morrow.”
“I didn’t wish to give you the trouble,” the Marchese answered, taking the words from Fede. “It was a lovely day, so I decided, on second thoughts, we had better push on to Rothenthal at once, instead of waiting over night at the inn at Goeschenen.”
“We are the gainers,” Hubert answered, still awkward and confused. “But I could have wished I had known it, Fede; my mother and I would have been on the road to meet you.”
The Marchese noticed that he called her plain Fede. These English have certainly the most precipitate ways of plunging into matrimony! But, being a shrewd and observant father, he had taken a preliminary survey of the young man whom Fede had picked up in an Oxford college, and he was pleased at first sight with his visible qualities. There was an air of solid coininess about his simple dinner-jacket, and his studs and sleeve-links were of a sterling kind that inspired confidence.
