Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John - Страница 35

With that she retired into her lodge, shrugging her shoulders.

«It was, then,» cried Monsieur Dupres, «a plot, between her and that abominable Robert! I had better notify the police.»

He took the street car to the Chatelet, and, just as it was jolting along at its fastest, he thought he saw them, still drunk, in broad daylight, staggering round a corner in the Rue de Clichy. By the time he had stopped the car and hurried back, they had utterly disappeared.

Feeling completely overcome, Monsieur Dupres gave up his errand, and decided to go home and rest a little, and took a taxi-cab to get there the sooner. This taxi was halted in a traffic block, and from it Monsieur Dupres saw quite distinctly, in a cab passing across the very nose of his own taxi, his wife and his friend, locked in each other's arms, scandalously drunk, and quite oblivious of his existence. «Follow that cab!» cried he.

The driver did his best. They followed a cab all the way to the Porte de Neuilly, only to see an elderly gentleman, probably an ambassador, descend from it.

Monsieur Dupres paid the fare, which was no trifle, and made his way back on the Metro. He had just descended from the train, when he saw two people getting in at the very far end, who were experiencing some difficulty in negotiating the narrow door, for each had an arm around the other's waist. He started towards them but the doors slammed all along the train, and in a moment it had pulled out of the station.

Monsieur Dupres leaned against the wall. «Is it not my old friend, Dupres?» asked a man who had just come onto the platform. «I see it is. My dear fellow, are you ill?»

«Ill enough,» replied Monsieur Dupres, utterly shattered. «My wife has left me, my dear Labiche. She has left me for Robert Crespigny, and they are behaving abominably all over the town.»

«No. No, my dear friend,» replied the other. «Set your mind at rest, I implore you. We husbands are sometimes even more suspicious than we should be. Crespigny cannot have taken your wife, my dear fellow. I saw him only three months ago, back from Martinique and in hospital. He died a week later. Out there, their excesses are something formidable.»

THE FROG PRINCE

Two young men were discussing life. Said the richer of them to the poorer, «Paul, you had better marry my sister.»

«That is a very strange thing to say,» said Paul, «considering I have told you all about my debts.»

«I am not worldly, »replied Henry Vanhomry. «I should prefer my sister to marry a clean, decent, and kindly fellow like yourself, than some rich but blase roue, cynic, near-man, sub-man, or half-man.»

«I am certainly not blase,» said Paul. «On the other hand, I had not the pleasure of meeting your family when I was in Boston.»

«I am very fond of my sister,» said Henry, «in a way.»

«How delightful! No doubt she was a mother to you when you were small. A little mother!»

«No. No. She is ten years younger than I am; only twenty-eight, in fact.»

«Aha! She would have come into her fortune just in the rockiest year of our financial history.»

«Fortunately it is well invested, and yields her an income of forty thousand dollars.»

«An objection occurs to me. We are men of the world, Henry. If we were of the other sex, we might also make mistakes. Fond as I am of children —»

«That would be a matter entirely for you to decide.»

«Henry, your sister sounds charming. Tell me more about her. She is not by any chance a teeny little woman?» And Paul held his hand some thirty inches from the floor.

«Quite the reverse.»

«Quite the reverse, eh?»

«My dear Paul, I do not mean that she is six feet four.»

«Six feet three, perhaps?»

«And a half. But perhaps I should tell you she is rather plump. Disproportionately so, in fact.»

«Upon my word! I hope she is good-tempered.»

«Angelically. You should hear her petting her dolls.»

«Pardon me, Henry, but is she at all — backward?»

«A matter of opinion. She reads and writes admirably.»

«How delightful. We could correspond, if I happened to be away.»

«I will be frank with you, Paul; her letters to famous boxers are quite amazingly expressive, though by no means perfect in orthography.»

«Henry, she is capable of hero worship; she has an affectionate nature.»

«Almost embarrassingly so. It appears from these letters of hers, which we censor, that she would make a devoted wife. However, my family are old-fashioned, and the boxers are cowardly brutes. I should like to see her safely married.»

«But, as yet, if I understand you, she is pure as the driven snow? Charming!»

«Hers has been a cloistered girlhood. Yet there is something romantic in her nature which causes me alarm. Supposing one of the boxers responded. He might not treat her politely.»

«I, on the other hand, would write her the most devoted letters, and bow, with old-world courtesy, whenever we met. Hm! All I fear, to be perfectly candid, is that a certain confounded coldness, a defect of my nature, might be a cause of pain, dissatisfaction, or longing.»

«Well, my dear Paul, that is hardly a matter for me to speculate upon. I can only remind you that faint heart never won fair lady.»

«Very well, Henry. I will at least come with you and see your sister.»

«I am afraid I cannot accompany you. You forget that I am off to Europe next week. However, I'll give you a letter of introduction to the family.»

All this being arranged, our good Paul took leave of his friend, and after walking about for a little with an air of distraction, he paid a visit to the apartment of another friend of his.

«My dear Olga,» he said, after a time, «I'm afraid I have some very ridiculous news for you. I am going to be poor no longer.»

«Tell me only one thing, Paul. Is she beautiful?»

«Not very, it seems. I have not seen her, but she is over six feet three, and disproportionately fat.»

«My poor Paul! She is simply bound to have hair on her face. What will become of you?»

«Besides all this, she is not very bright, I hear.»

«And, now I come to think of it, what will become of me?»

«She has forty thousand a year, my dear Olga.»

«Paul, we women are given to incredible follies when we are jealous. I might refuse everything. I find myself capable of jealousy.»

«But, on the other hand, are you, or am I, capable of living any longer without a little of that forty thousand a year?»

«Or some other.»

«But what other, my dear Olga? Where is another forty thousand?»

«It is true, Paul. Am I right in believing that your gigantic bride-to-be is mentally nine years, or is it twelve years old?»

«Seven, I should think, by all that Henry told me of her. She has an exuberant innocence. She writes to boxers, but caresses dolls.»

«Really? That is very interesting. Dolls are so featureless. Now, is there any great hurry, Paul? I have still that bracelet you found at Palm Beach. It would provide us with a few last weeks together.»

«I was going to suggest, as a matter of fact, that it should be my present to the bride, for I like to do things in good style. However, something may turn up. I admit that I love you.»

«You shall promise me not to go near Boston for at least a month. I shall be busy; I have decided to wear my hair short, but at least we shall meet at week ends. In between, you may say farewell to all your bachelor life.»

«Yes, that is true, Olga. I shall have to do that, I suppose.»

Everything being agreed, this young couple spent the next month or so as Olga had suggested, and at the end of it, she saw him off to Boston, with a restraint that he found almost too admirable.