The Belovéd Vagabond

"I am responsible for his decorum, Joanna," said my Master, solemnly.

I noticed that he too had discarded hat, gloves and umbrella which lay forlorn on a distant table. Still his coat was buttoned, and he sat bolt upright on his chair. Madame de Verneuil's silvery voice rippled on. She was girlishly excited.

"I have persuaded Mr. de Nérac to lunch with me," she said happily. "And you must do the same. Will you ring the bell? We'll have it up here. And now tell me about Somerset."

Never was there a sweeter lady than mine. Yes, I call her mine; and with reason. Was she not the first vision of gracious womanhood that came into my childhood's world? Up to then woman to me was my mother and Mrs. Housekeeper. Joanna sprang magically, as in an Arabian Night, out of an old stocking. Never was there a sweeter lady than mine. She welcomed me as if such things as wash-tubs, tambourines, Café Delphines and absinthiated Paragots had never existed, and I were one of her own people.

"How I long to get back," she cried when I had told her of my modest exploits at the Ewings. "I have not been to Melford for five years. When will you come, Gaston?"

They had evidently made good use of their previous interviews.

"I am going to live in England," she explained. "At first I shall stay with my mother at Melford. She is an old friend of Mr. de Nérac's. Oh, Gaston, she does so want to see you – I have told her the whole story – of course she knew all my poor father's affairs. And I have a cousin whose people live at Melford too, Major Walters – I don't think you know him – a dear fellow. He has just been at Nevers helping me to settle up things. He is my trustee. You must be great friends."

"I remember the name," said Paragot.

"Why of course you ought to," she cried prettily with a laugh and a blush. "I had forgotten. You were pleased to be jealous of him. Mr. Asticot, you will have to forgive us for dragging memories out of the dust heap. It is all so very long ago. Dear me!" Her face grew pathetic. "It is very long ago, Gaston."

"Thirteen years," said he.

I calculated. Joanna was a grown-up woman about to be married when my age was six. I suddenly felt very young indeed.

The waiters set the lunch. Joanna, most perfect of hostesses, presided gaily, cracked little jokes for my entertainment and inspired me with the power of quite elegant conversation. Paragot preserved his correct demeanour and, to my puzzledom, spoke very little. I wondered whether the repressive influence lay in the spats or the purple cravat with the yellow spots. As a painter I didn't like the cravat. He drank a great deal of water with his wine. I noticed him once pause in the act of conveying to his mouth a bit of bread held in his fingers with which he had mopped up the sauce in his plate, and furtively conceal it between his cutlet bones – a manœuvre which, at the time, I could not understand. In the Quartier Latin we cleaned our plates to a bright polish with bits of bread. How else could you consume the sauce?

At the end of the meal Joanna gave us permission to smoke.

"I won't smoke, thank you," said Paragot politely.

"Rubbish!" laughed Joanna, whereupon Paragot produced a cigarette case from the breast pocket of his frock coat. Paragot and a cigarette-case! Once more it was abracadabrant! He also refused cognac with his coffee.

After a time, still feeling that I was very young, and that my seniors might have further confidential things to say to each other, I rose to take my leave. Paragot rose too.

"I would ask you to stay, Gaston, if I hadn't my wretched lawyer to see this afternoon. But you'll come in for an hour after dinner, won't you? No one knows I'm in Paris. Besides, at this time of year there is no one in Paris to know."

"Willingly," said Paragot, "but les convenances– "

Joanna's pretty lips parted in astonishment.

"You – preaching the proprieties? – My dear Gaston!"

I turned to the window and looked at the Tuileries Gardens which baked in the afternoon sun. The two spoke a little in low voices, but I could not help overhearing.

"Is it true, Gaston, that you have wanted me all these years?"

"I want you as much now as I did then."

"I, too," whispered Joanna.

CHAPTER XVI

As we emerged from the Hôtel Meurice I turned instinctively to the left. Paragot drew me to the right.

"Henceforward," said he, "I resume the Paris which is my birthright. We will forget for a moment that there are such places as the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue des Saladiers."

We walked along the Rue de Rivoli and taking the Rue Royale passed the Madeleine and arrived at the Café de la Paix. It was a broiling afternoon. The cool terrace of the café invited the hot wayfarer to repose.

"Master," said I, "isn't it almost time for your absinthe?"

He raised his lemon kids as if he would ban the place.

"My little Asticot, I have abjured absinthe and forsworn cafés. I have broken my new porcelain pipe and have cut my finger-nails. As I enter on the path of happiness, I scatter the dregs and shreds and clippings of the past behind me. I divest myself of all the crapulous years."

If he had divested himself of the superfluous trappings of respectability beneath which he was perspiring freely, I thought he would have been happier. The sight of the umbrella alone made one feel moist, to say nothing of the spats.

"We might have some grenadine syrup," I suggested ironically.

"Willingly," said he.

So we sat and drank grenadine syrup and water. He gave me the impression of a cropped lion sucking lollipops.

"It is peculiarly nasty and unsatisfying," he remarked after a sip, "but doubtless I shall get used to it. I shall have to get used to a devil of a lot of things, my son. As soon as the period of her widowhood has elapsed I hope to marry Madame de Verneuil."

"Marry Madame de Verneuil?" I cried, the possibility of such an occurrence never having crossed my mind.

"Why not? When two people of equal rank love and are free to marry, why should they not do so? Have you any objection?"

"No, Master," said I.

"I shall resume my profession," he announced, lighting a cigarette, "and in the course of a year or two regain the position to which an ancient Prix de Rome is entitled."

I was destined that day to go from astonishment to astonishment.

"You a Prix de Rome, Master?"

"Yes, my son, in Architecture."

He was clothed in a new and sudden radiance. To a Paris art student a Prix de Rome is what a Field Marshal is to a private soldier, a Lord Chancellor to the eater of dinners in the Temple. I must confess that though my passionate affection for him never wavered, yet my childish reverence had of late waned in intensity. I saw his faults, which is incompatible with true hero-worship. But now he sprang to cloud summits of veneration. I looked awe-stricken at him and beheld nothing but an ancient Prix de Rome. Then I remembered our enthusiasm over the Palace of Dipsomania.

"They said you were an architect that night at the Café Delphine," I exclaimed.

"I was a genius," said Paragot modestly. "I used to think in palaces. Most men's palaces are little buildings written big. My small buildings were palaces reduced. I could have roofed in the whole of Paris with a dome. My first commission was to put a new roof on a Baptist Chapel in Ireland. It was then that I met Madame de Verneuil after an interval of five years. We are second cousins. Her father and my mother were first cousins. I have known her since she was born. When I was at Rugby, I spent most of my holidays at her house. You must take all this into account, my little Asticot, before you begin to criticise my plans for the future."

By this time the nerve or brain cell whereby one experiences the sensation of amazement was numb. If Paragot had informed me that he had been a boon companion of King Qa and had built the pyramids of Egypt I should not have been surprised. I could only record the various facts.

Paragot was at Rugby.

Paragot was Joanna's second cousin.

Paragot was a Prix de Rome.

Paragot was a genius who had put a new roof to a Baptist Chapel in Ireland.

Paragot was going to marry Joanna.

How he proposed to start in practice at his age, with no connection, I did not at the moment enquire. Neither did Paragot. It was Paragot's easy way to leap to ends and let the means take care of themselves. He drained his glass meditatively and then with a wry face spat on the ground.

"If I don't have a cognac, my little Asticot," said he, "I shall be sick. To-morrow I may be able to swallow syrup without either salivation or the adventitious aid of alcohol."

He summoned the languid waiter and ordered fine champagne. Everything seemed languid this torrid afternoon, except the British or American tourists who passed by with Baedekers under their arms. The cab-horses in the file opposite us dropped their heads and the glazed-hatted cabmen regarded the baking Place de l'Opéra with more than their usual apathy. It looked more like the market place of a sleepy provincial town than the heart of Paris. When the waiter had brought the little glass in a saucer and the verseur had poured out the brandy, Paragot gulped it down and cleared his throat noisily. I drowsed in my chair, feeling comfortably tired after my all night journey. Suddenly I awakened to the fact that Paragot was telling me the story of Joanna and the Comte de Verneuil.

She was exquisite. She was fragrant. She was an English rosebud wet with morning-dew. She had all manner of attributes with which I was perfectly well acquainted. They loved with the ardour of two young and noble souls. (Your ordinary Englishman would not thus proclaim the nobility of his soul; but Paragot, remember, was half French – and Gascon to boot – and the other half Irish.) It was more than love – it was a consuming passion; which was odd in the case of an English rosebud wet with morning-dew. However, I suppose Paragot meant that he swept the beloved maiden off her feet with his own vehemence; and indeed she must have loved him truly. He was fresh from the Villa Medici, the Paradise where all the winners of the Prix de Rome in the various arts complete their training; he had won an important competition; fortune smiled on him; he had only to rule lines on drawing paper to become one of the great ones of the earth. He became engaged to Joanna.

Now, Joanna's father, Simon Rushworth, was a London solicitor in very fashionable practice; a man of false geniality, said Paragot, who smiled at you with lips but seemed always to be looking at some hell over your shoulder. He also promoted companies, and the Comte de Verneuil, an Anglo-French financier, stood ever by his elbow, using him as his tool and dupe and drawer in general of chestnuts from the fire. The Comte wanted to marry Joanna, "which was absurd, seeing that I was his rival," said Paragot simply.

One of Mr. Rushworth's companies failed. Mr. Rushworth's fashionable clients grew alarmed. He gave a party in honour of Joanna's engagement and invited all his clients. Ugly rumours spread among the guests. The presage of disaster was in the air. Paragot began to suspect the truth. It was a hateful party. The band in the garden played selections from "Orphée aux Enfers," and the mocking refrain accompanied the last words he was to have with Joanna. The Comte de Verneuil called him aside, explained Rushworth's position. Ten thousand pounds of his clients' money which he held in trust had gone in the failure of the company. If that amount was not at his disposal the next morning, he was finished, snuffed out. It appeared that no one in Paris or London would lend him the money, his credit being gone. Unless M. de Nérac could find the ten thousand pounds there was the gaol yawning with horrible certainty for M. de Nérac's prospective father-in-law. As Paragot's patrimony, invested in French government securities, was not a third of this sum, he could do nothing but wring his hands in despair and call on Providence and the Comte de Verneuil. The former turned a deaf ear. The latter declared himself a man of business and not a philanthropist; he was ready however to purchase an option on the young lady's affections. Did not M. de Nérac know what an option was? He would explain. He drafted the famous contract. In return for Paragot's signature he would hand him a cheque drawn in favour of Simon Rushworth.

"Nom de Dieu!" cried Paragot, banging the marble table, with his fist, "Do you see in what a vice he held me? He was a devil, that man! The only human trait about him was a passion for rare apes of which he had a collection at Nevers. Thank Heaven they are dead! Thank Heaven he is dead! Thank Heaven he lost most of the money for which he preyed on his kind. He was a vulture, a scaly-headed vulture. He was the carrion kite above every rotten financial concern in London and Paris. That which went near to ruin my poor vain fool of a father-in-law filled his bulging pockets. I hated him living and I hate him dead!"

He tore open his frock coat and pushed the flat brimmed silk hat to the back of his head and waved his lemon kids in his old extravagant gestures.

"What did the stolen ten thousand pounds matter to him? It mattered prison to Rushworth, Joanna's father – think of the horror of it! She would have died from the disgrace – her mother too. And the devil jested, Asticot. He talked of Rushworth being smitten with the slings and black arrows of outrageous fortune. Nom de Dieu, I could have strangled him! But what could I do? Two years! To go out of her life for two years as if I had been struck dead! Yet after two years I could come back and say what I chose. I signed the contract. I went out of the house. I kept my word. Noblesse oblige. I was Gaston de Nérac. I came back to Paris. I worked night and day for eighteen months. I had genius. I had hope. I had youth. I had faith. She would never marry the Comte de Verneuil. She would not marry anybody. I counted the days. Meanwhile he posed as the saviour of Simon Rushworth. He poisoned Joanna's mind against me. He lied, invented infamies. This I have heard lately. He confessed it all to her before the devil took him as a play-fellow. Of one who had so cruelly treated her all things were possible. She half believed them. At last he told her I was dead. An acquaintance had found me in a Paris hospital and had paid for my funeral. She had no reason for disbelief. He pressed his suit. Her father and mother urged her – the fool Rushworth soon afterwards came to another crisis, and de Verneuil again stepped in and demanded Joanna as the price. She is gentle. She has a heart tenderer than that of any woman who ever lived. One day I heard she had married him. My God! It is thirteen years ago."

He poured some water into the syrup glass and gulped it down. I remained silent. I had never seen him give way to violent emotion – save once – when he broke the fiddle over Mr. Pogson's head.

Presently he said with a whimsical twist of his lips:

"You may have heard me speak of a crusader's mace."

"Yes, Master."

"That's when I used it. I had an inspiration," he remarked quietly.

"Master," said I after a while, "if Madame de Verneuil believed you to be dead, it must have been a shock to her when she saw you alive at Aix-les-Bains."

"She learned soon after her marriage that her husband had been mistaken. Her mother had caught sight of me in Venice. Madame de Verneuil never forgave him the lie. She is gentle, my son, but she has character."

It was after that, I think, that the frozen look came into her eyes. Thenceforward she was ice to the Comte de Verneuil, who for pleasant, domestic companionship had to resort to his rare apes. No wonder his madness took the form of the fixed idea that he had murdered Paragot.

"After all," he mused, "there must have been some good in the man. He desired to make amends. He sent me the old contract, so that his wife should not find it after his death. He confessed everything to her before he died. There is a weak spot somewhere in the heart of the Devil himself. I shouldn't wonder if he were devoted to a canary."

"Master," said I, suddenly bethinking me of the canary in the Rue des Saladiers, "if you marry Madame de Verneuil, what will become of Blanquette?"

"She will come and live with us, of course."

"H'm!" said I.

Respect forbade downright contradiction. I could only marvel mutely at his pathetic ignorance of woman. Indeed, his reply gave me the shock of an unexpected stone wall. He, who had but recently taught me the chart of Fanchette's soul, to be unaware of elementary axioms! Did I not remember Joanna's iciness at Aix-les-Bains when I told her of his adoption of my zither-playing colleague? Was I not aware of poor Blanquette's miserable jealousy of the beautiful lady who enquired for her master? To bring these two together seemed, even to my boy's mind, a ludicrous impossibility. Yet Paragot spoke with the unhumorous gravity of a Methodist parson and the sincerity of a maiden lady with a mission to obtain good situations for deserving girls; a man, so please you, who had gone into the holes and corners of the Continent of Europe in search of Truth, who had come face to face with human nature naked and unashamed, who had run the gamut of femininity from our rare princess Joanna to the murderer's widow of Prague; a man who ought to have had so sensitive a perception that the most subtle and elusive harmonies of woman were as familiar to him as their providential love of babies or their ineradicable passion for new hats.

He lit another cigarette, having dallied in a somewhat youthful fashion with the newly acquired case, and blew two or three contented puffs.

"I believe in the Roman conception of the familia, my son. You and Blanquette are included in mine. You being a man must go outside the world and make your way; but Blanquette, being a woman, must remain under the roof of the paterfamilias which is myself."

I foresaw trouble.

When he left me after dinner to pay his promised visit to Joanna, I went in quest of Cazalet of the sandals, with whom I spent a profitable evening discussing the question of Subject in Art. Bringard and Bonnet and himself had rented a dilapidated stable in Menilmontant which they had fitted up as a studio, and, as his two colleagues were away, Cazalet had displayed his own horrific canvases all over the place. The argument, if I remember right, was chiefly concerned with Cazalet's subject in art over which we fought vehemently; but though the sabre of his father hung proudly on the wall, he did not challenge me to a duel. Instead, he invited me to join the trio in the rent of the studio, and I, suddenly struck with the advantage and importance of having a studio of my own, gladly accepted the proposal. When one can say "my studio," one feels that one is definitely beginning one's professional career. I left him to sleep on some contrivance of sacking which he called a bed, and trudged homewards to the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Curiosity tempted me to look into the Café Delphine. It was deserted. Madame Boin opened her fat arms wide and had it not been for the intervening counter would have clasped me to her bosom. What had become of Monsieur Paragot? It was more than a fortnight since he had been in the café. I lied, drank a glass of beer and went home. I could not take away Paragot's character by declaring his reversion to respectability.

CHAPTER XVI

My taking the share of the stable-studio in Menilmontant had one unlooked-for result.

"You must paint my portrait," said Joanna.

"Madame," I cried, "if I only could!"

"What is your charge for portraits, Mr. Asticot?"

Paragot set down his tea-cup and looked at me with a shade of anxiety. We were having tea at the Hôtel Meurice.

"The pleasure of looking a long time at the sitter, Madame," said I.

"That is very well said, my son," Paragot remarked.

"You will not make a fortune that way. However, if you will play for love this time – "

She smiled and handed me the cakes.

"Where did you say your studio was?"

"But, Madame, you can't go there!" I expostulated. "It is in the slums of Menilmontant beyond the Cemetery of Père Lachaise. The place is all tumbling down – and Cazalet sleeps there."

"Who is Cazalet?"

"A yellow-haired Caliban in sandals," said Paragot.

Joanna clapped her hands like a child.

"I should love to go. Perhaps Mr. de Nérac would come with me, and protect me from Caliban. If you won't," she added seeing that Paragot was about to raise an objection, "I will go by myself."

"There are no chairs to sit upon," I said warningly.

"I will sit upon Caliban," she declared.

Thus it came to pass that I painted the portrait of Madame de Verneuil in periods of ecstatic happiness and trepidation. She came every day and sat with unwearying patience on what we called the model throne, the one comfortless wooden arm-chair the studio possessed, while Paragot mounted guard near by on an empty box. Everything delighted her – the approach through the unsavoury court-yard, the dirty children, the crazy interior, Cazalet's ghastly and unappreciated masterpieces, even Cazalet himself, who now and then would slouch awkwardly about the place trying to hide his toes. She expressed simple-hearted wonder at the mysteries of my art, and vowed she saw a speaking likeness in the first stages of chaotic pinks and blues. I have never seen a human being so inordinately contented with the world.

"I am like a prisoner who has been kept in the dark and is let out free into the sunshine," she said one day to Paragot, who had remarked on her gaiety. "I want to run about and dance and smell flowers and clap my hands."

In these moments of exuberance she seemed to cast off the shadow of the years and become a girl again. I regarded her as my contemporary; but Paragot with his lined time-beaten face looked prematurely old. Only now and then, when he got into fierce argument with Cazalet and swung his arms about and mingled his asseverations with the quaint oaths of the Latin Quarter, did he relax his portentous gravity.

"That is just how he used to go on," she laughed confidentially to me, her pink-shell face close to mine. "He was a whirlwind. He carried everybody off their feet."

She caught my eye, smiled and flushed. I quite understood that it was she who had been carried off her feet by my tempestuous master.

"Mais sacré mille cochons, tu n'y comprends rien du tout!" cried Paragot, at that moment. I, knowing that this was not a proper expression to use before ladies, kept up the confidential glance for a second.

"I hope he didn't use such dreadful language."

"You couldn't in English, could you? He always spoke English to me. In French it is different. I like it. What did he say? 'Sacré mille cochons'!"

She imitated him delightfully. You have no idea what a dainty musical phrase this peculiarly offensive expletive became when uttered by her lips.

"After all," she said, "it only means 'sacred thousand pigs' – but why aren't you painting, Mr. Asticot?"

"Because you have got entirely out of pose, Madame."

Whereupon it was necessary to fix her head again, and my silly fingers tingled as they touched her hair. It is a good thing for a boy of nineteen to be romantically in love with Joanna. He can thus live spiritually beyond his means, without much danger of bankruptcy, and his extravagance shall be counted to him for virtue. Also if he is painting the princess of his dreams, he has such an inspiration as is given but to the elect, and what skill he is possessed of must succeed in its purpose.

One morning she found on her arrival a bowl of roses, which I had bought in the markets, placed against her chair on the dais. She uttered a little cry of pleasure and came to me both hands outstretched. Taking mine, she turned her head, in an adorable attitude, half upwards to Paragot.

"I believe it is Mr. Asticot who is in love with me, Gaston. Aren't you jealous?"

I blushed furiously. Paragot smiled down on her.

"Hasn't every man you met fallen in love with you since you were two years old?"

"I forgive you," she cried, "because you still can make pretty speeches. Thank you for the roses, Mr. Asticot. If I wore one would you paint it in? Or would it spoil your colour scheme?"