0169m
“I am in my second's hands,” I replied.
“And I think you've fought enough,” said Tonks. “How many cartridges did you fire, Lumme?”
“Thirty-two,” said he.
“Well, hang it, you've loosed seventy-nine cartridges between you, and that's more than any other duellists I ever heard of. Let's pull up the sticks * and come in to breakfast.”
* “Pull up sticks”—a football metaphor.—D'H.
“Is honor satisfied?” asked Dick, who had more appreciation of the delicacies of such a sentiment than my prosaic second.
Lumme and I glanced at each other, and we remembered now our past intimacy; also, perhaps, the strain of that fruitless search for each other among those thorny woods.
“Mine is,” said Lumme.
“Mine also,” said I.
And thus ended what so nearly was a fatal encounter.
8000
“Heed my words! Beware of women,
Shallowest when overbrimming
Deepest when they wish you well!
Tears and trifles, lace and laughter,
The Deuce alone knows what they're after—
And he's too much involved to tell.”
—Anon.
9171
E all walked back from the field of battle in a highly amicable frame of mind. Going across the park, Lumme and I fell a little behind our seconds and conversed with the friendliness of two men who have learned to respect each other. We had cordially shaken hands, we laughed, we even jested about the hazards we had escaped—one would think that no more complete understanding could be desired. Yet there was still a little thorn pricking us both, a thorn that did not come from the woods in which we had waged battle, but lived in the peaceful house before us. Our talk flagged; we were silent. Then Teddy abruptly remarked:
“I say, I don't want to rake up by-gones and that sort of thing, don't you know, but—er—you mustn't try to kiss her again, d'Haricot.”
“Try?” I replied, a little nettled at this aspersion on my abilities. “Why not say, 'You must not kiss her again'?”
“By Jove! did you?” cried Teddy, stopping.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“My dear Lumme, the successful man is he who lies about himself and holds his tongue about women.”
“Be hanged!” he exclaimed.
“Well, why not be?” I inquired, placidly.
“I don't believe it,” he asserted.
“Continue a sceptic,” I counselled.
“She told me she had never kissed any one else,” he blurted out.
It was now my turn to start.
“Except whom?” I asked.
“Me—if you must know,” said Teddy.
“You kissed her?” I cried.
“Well, it doesn't matter to you.”
“Nor does it matter to you that I did,” I retorted.
“But did you?” he asked, with such a painful look of inquiry that my indignation melted into humor.
“My dear friend,” I replied, “I see it all now. She has deceived us both! We are in the same ship, as you would say; two of those fools that women make to pass a wet afternoon.”
“You mean that she has been flirting with me?” he asked, with a woe-begone countenance.
“Also with me,” I answered, cheerfully. For a false woman, like spilled cream, is not a matter worth lament.
“I shall ask her,” he said, after a minute or two.
“Have you ever known a woman before?” I asked.
“I've known dozens of 'em,” he replied, with some indignation.
“And yet you propose to ask one whether she has been true to you?”
“Why shouldn't I?”
“Because, my friend, you will receive such an answer as a minister gives to a deputation.”
“But they might both tell the truth.”
“Neither ever lies,” I replied. “Diplomacy and Eve were invented to obviate the necessity'.”
This aphorism appeared to give him some food for reflection—or possibly he was merely silenced by a British disgust for anything that was not the roast beef of conversation.
We had come among the terraces and the trim yews and hollies of the garden. The long west wing of Seneschal Court with the high tower above it were close before us. Suddenly he stopped behind the shelter of a pruned and castellated hedge, and, with the air of a lost traveller seeking for guidance, asked me, “I say, what are you going to do?”
“Return to London this morning.”
0174m
“Why?”
“For the same reason that I leave the table when dinner is over.”
“You won't see her again?”
“See her? Yes, as I should see the remains of my meal were I to pass through the diningroom. But I shall not sit down again.”
I do not think Teddy quite appreciated this metaphor.
“Don't you think she is—” he began, but had some difficulty in finding a word.
“Well served?” I suggested.
“No.”
“Digestible, then? No, my friend. I do not think she is very digestible either for you or for me. We get pains inside and little nourishment.”
“I like her awfully,” said poor Teddy.
“Who would not?” I replied. “If a girl is beautiful, charming, not too chary of her favors, and yet not inartistically lavish; if she knows how to let a smile spring gently from an artless dimple, how to aim a bright eye and shake a light curl; and if she is not too fully occupied with others to spare one an hour or two of these charms, who would not like her? Personally, I should adore her—while it lasted.”
“Do you really think she isn't all she seems?” he asked, in a doleful voice.
“On the contrary, I think she is more; considerably more. My dear Lumme, I have studied this girl dispassionately, critically, as I would a work of art offered me for sale, and I pronounce my opinion in three words—she is false! I counsel you, my friend, to leave with me this morning.”
“And I should advise you to take thisgentleman'sadvice,” exclaimed a voice behind us, in a tone that I cannot call friendly. We turned, possibly with more precipitation than dignity, to see Miss Amy herself within five paces of us. Evidently she had just appeared round the edge of the castellated hedge, though how long she had been standing on the other side I cannot pretend to guess. Long enough, at any rate, to give her a very flushed face and an eye that sparkled more brightly than ever. Indeed, I never saw her to more advantage.
“How dare you!” she cried, tears threatening in her voice; “howdareyou—talk of me so!”
“Mademoiselle—” I began, with conciliatory humility.
“Don't speak to me!” she interrupted, and turned her brown eyes to Lumme. Undoubted tears glistened in them now.
“So you have been listening to this—thisperson'sslanders? And you are going away now because you have learned that I am false? I have been offered for sale like a work of art! He has studied me dispassionately!”
Here she gave me a look whose wrathful significance I will leave you to imagine.
“Go! Go with him! You may be sure thatIsha'n't ask either of you to stay!”
Never had two men a better case against a woman, and never. I am sure, have two men taken less advantage of it.
“Miss Hudson; I say—” began poor Teddy, in the tone rather of the condemned murderer than the inexorable judge.
“Don't answer me!” she cried, and turned the eyes back to me.
The tears still glistened, but anger shone through them.
“As for you—You—you—brute!”
“Pardon me,” I replied, in a reasonable tone, “the conversation you overheard was intended for another.”
“Yes,” she exclaimed, “while you are trying to force your odious attentions on me, you are attacking me all the time behind my back.”
“Behind a hedge,” I corrected, as pleasantly as possible.
But this did not appear to mollify her.
“You think every woman you meet is in love with you, I suppose,” she sneered. “Well, you may be interested to know that we all think you simply a ridiculous little Frenchman.”
0178m
“Little!” I exclaimed, justly incensed at this unprovoked and untrue attack. “What do you then call my friend?”
For Lumme was considerably smaller than I, and might indeed have been termed short.
“He knows what I think of him,” she answered; and with this ambiguous remark (accompanied by an equally ambiguous flash of her brown eyes at Teddy), she turned scornfully and hurried to the house.
For a moment we stood silent, looking somewhat foolishly at each other.
“You've done it now,” said Teddy, at length.
“I have,” I replied, my equanimity returning.
“I suppose I'll have to clear out too. Hang it, you needn't have got me into a mess like this,” said he, in an injured tone.
“Better a mess than a snare,” I retorted. “Let us look up a good train, eat some breakfast, and shake the dust of this house from our feet.”
He made no answer, and when we got to the house he tacitly agreed to accompany Shafthead and myself by the 11.25 train.
My things were packed. Halfred and a footman were even piling them on the carriage, and I was making my adieux, when I observed this dismissed suitor enter the hall with his customary cheerful air and no sign of departure about him.
“Are you ready? I asked him.
“They've asked me to stay till to-morrow,” he replied, with a conscious look he could not conceal, “and—er—well, there's really no necessity for going to-day. Good-bye—see you soon in town.”
“Good-bye,” said Amy, sweetly, but with a look in her eyes that belied her voice. “I am so glad we have been able to persuadeoneof you to stay a little longer.”
“Better a little fish than an empty dish,” I said to myself, and revolving this useful maxim in my mind I departed from Seneschal Court.
0179m
8000
“I tell thee in thine ear, he is a man 'Tis wiser thou shoutdst drink with than affront!”
—Ben Verulam.
9180
UT what is in it?”
“I don't know, sir,” said Mr. Titch. I had just got back to my rooms and stood facing a gigantic packing-case that had appeared in my absence. It was labelled, “For Mr. Balfour, care of M. d'Haricot. Not to be opened.” Not another word of explanation, not a letter, not a message, nothing to throw light on the mystery. The three Titches and Halfred stood beside me also gazing at this strange offering.
“Could it be fruit, sir?” suggested Mrs. Titch, in her foolishly wise fashion.
“Fruit!” said Aramatilda, scornfully. “It must weigh near on a ton.”
“You 'aven't ordered any furniture inadvertently, as it were, sir?” asked Halfred, scratching his head, sagely.
“If anybody has ordered this it is evidently Mr. Balfour,” I replied.
“Who is Mr. Balfour, sir?” said Aramatilda.
“Do you know?” I asked Mr. Titch.
My landlord looked solemn, as he always did when speaking of the great.
“There is the Right Honorable Arthur Balfour, nephew to the Marquis—”
“Yes, yes,” I interrupted; “but I do not think that admirable statesman would confide his purchases to me.”
“Then, sir,” said Mr. Titch, with an air of washing his hands of all lesser personages, “I give it up.”
“I wish you could,” I replied, “but I fear it must remain here for the present.”
They left my room casting lingering glances at the monstrosity, and once I was alone my curiosity quickly died away. I felt lonely and depressed. Parting from a houseful of guests and the cheerful air of a country-house, I realized how foreign, after all, this city was to me. I had acquaintances; I could find my way through the streets; but what else? Ah, if I were in Paris now! That name spelled Heaven as I said it over and over to myself.
I said it the oftener that I might not say “woman.” What mockery in that word! Yet I felt that I must find relief. I opened my journal and this is what I wrote:
“To d'Haricot from d'Haricot.—Foolish friend, beware of those things they call eyes, of that substance they term hair, of that abstraction known as a smile, and, above all, beware of those twin lies styled lips. They kiss but in the intervals of kissing others; they speak but to deceive. Nevermore shall I regard a woman more seriously than I do this pretty, revolving ring of cigarette smoke.
“I am twenty-five, and romance is over. Follow thou my counsel and my example.”
Outside it rained—hard, continuously, without room for a hope of sunshine, as it only rains in England, I think. Perhaps I may be unjust, but certainly never before have I been so wet through to the soul. I threw down my pen, I went to the piano, and I began to play “L'Air Bassinette” of Verdi. Gently at first I played, and then more loudly and yet more loudly. So carried away was I that I began to sing.
Now at last the rain is inaudible; my heart is growing light again, when above my melody I hear a most determined knocking on the door. Before I have time to rise, it opens, and there enters—my neighbor, the old General. Is it that he loves music so much? No, I scarcely think so. His face is not that of the ravished dolphin; on the contrary, his eyes are bright with an emotion that is not pleasure, his face is brilliant with a choleric flush. I turn and face him.
“Pray do not stop your pandemonium on my account,” he says, with sarcastic politeness. “I have endured it for half an hour, and I now purpose to leave this house and not return till you are exhausted, sir.”
“I am obliged to you for your permission,” I reply, with equal politeness, “and I shall now endeavor to win my bet.”
“Your bet, sir?” he inquires, with scarcely stifled indignation.
“I have made a bet that I shall play and sing for thirty-six consecutive hours,” I explain.
“Then, sir, I shall interdict you, as sure as there is law in England!”
“Have you now explained the object of this visit?” I inquire.
“No, sir, I have not. I came in here to request you to make yourself personally known to your disreputable confederates in order that they may not mistakemefor a damned Bulgarian anarchist—or whatever your country and profession happen to be.”
“May I askyouto explain this courteous yet ambiguous demand?”
“Certainly, sir; and I trust you may see fit to put an end to the nuisance. Two days ago I was accosted as I was leaving this house—leaving the door of my own house, sir, I would have you remark! A dashed half-hanged scoundrel came up to me and had the impudence to tell me he wanted to speak to me. 'Well,' I said, “what is your business, sir?'
“'My name is Hankey,' said he.”
“Hankey!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, sir, Hankey. You know him, then?”
“By name only.”
“Then, sir, I had the advantage over you,” said the General, irately. “I didn't know the scoundrel from Beelzebub—and I told him so. Upon that, sir, he had the audacity to throw out a hint that my friends—as he called his dashed gang of cut-throats—were keeping aneyeon me. I pass the hint on to you, sir, having no acquaintance myself with such gentry!”
“And was that all that passed?” I asked, feeling too amazed and too interested to take offence.
“No, sir, not all—but quite enough for my taste, I assure you. I said to him, 'Sir,' I said, 'I know your dashed name and I may now tell you that mine is General Sholto; that I am not the man to be humbugged like this, and that I propose to introduce you to the first policeman I see.' Gad, you should have seen the rogue jump! Then it seemed that he had done me the honor of mistaking me for you, sir, and I must ask you to have the kindness to take such steps as will enable your confederates to know you when they see you, or, by George! I'll put the whole business into the hands of the police!”
I felt strongly tempted to let my indignant fellow-lodger adopt this course, for my feelings towards the absentee tenant of Mount Olympus House could not be described as cordial, and the impudence of his attempt to threaten me took my breath away; but then the thought struck me, “This man is an agent—though I fear an unworthy one—of the Cause. I must sink my own grievances!” Accordingly, with a polite air, I endeavored to lull my neighbor's suspicions, assuring him that it was only a tailor's debt the conspiring Hankey sought from me, and that I would settle the account and abate the nuisance that very afternoon.
He seemed a little mollified; to the extent, at least, that his thunder became a more distant rumble.
“I don't want to ask too many favors at once, sir,” he said; “but I fear I must also request you to remove your piano to the basement for the next six-and-thirty hours. I shall not stand it, sir, I warn you!”
“My dear sir,” I cried, “that was but a—how does the immortal Shakespeare call it?—a countercheck quarrelsome—that was all. I should not have sung at all had I known you disliked music.”
“Music! music!” exclaimed my visitor, with an expressive blending of contempt and indignation. Then, in a milder tone, yet with the most crushing, irony, continued: “I go to every musical piece in London—and enjoy 'em sir; all of 'em. I've even sat out a concert in the Albert Hall; so if I'm not musical, what the deuce am I?”
“It is evident,” I replied.
“I might even appreciate your efforts, sir. Very possibly I would, very possibly, supposing I heard 'em at a reasonable hour,” said the General, with magnanimity that will one day send him to heaven. “But it is my habit, sir, to take a—ah—a rest in the afternoon, and—er—er—well, it's deuced disturbing.”
This is but the echo of the storm among the hills. The wrath of my gallant neighbor is evidently all but evaporated.
“A thousand apologies, sir. If you will be good enough to tell me at what hours my playing is disturbing to you, I shall regulate my melody accordingly.”
“Much obliged; much obliged. I don't want to stop you altogether, don't you know,” says my visitor, and abruptly inquires, “Professional musician, I presume?”
“Did I sound like it?”
“Beg pardon; being a foreigner, I fancied you'd probably be—er—” He evidently wants to say “a Bohemian,” but fears to wound my feelings.
“'A damned Bulgarian anarchist,'” I suggest.
He snorts, laughs, and apparently is already inclined to smile at his recent heat.
“I'm a bad-tempered old boy,” he says. “Pardon, mossoo.”
He is ashamed, I can see, that John Bull should have condescended to lose his temper with a mere foreigner. This point of view is not flattering; but the naïveté of the old boy amuses me.
“Take a seat, sir,” I now venture to suggest, “and allow me to offer you a little whiskey and a little soda water.”
He hesitates for a moment, for he has not intended that pacification should go to this length; but his kindness of heart prevails. He has erred and he feels he must do this penance for his lack of discretion. So he says, “Thank you,” and down he sits.
And that was the beginning of my acquaintance with my martial neighbor, General Sholto. In half an hour we were talking away like old friends; indeed, I soon began to suspect that the old gentleman felt as pleased as I did to have company on that wet afternoon.
“I understand that you adorn the British army,” I remark.
“I was a soldier, sir; I was a soldier. I would be now if I'd had the luck of some fellows. A superannuated fossil; that's what I am, mossoo; an old wreck, no use to any one.”
As he says this, he draws himself up to show that the wreck still contains beans, as the English proverb expresses it, but the next moment the fire dies out of his eyes and he sits meditatively, looking suddenly ten years older. He did not intend me to believe his words, but to himself they have a meaning.
I am silent.
“I am one of the unemployed,” he adds, in a minute.
“I also,” I reply.
I like my neighbor; I am in need of a companion; and I tell him frankly my story. His sympathies are entirely with me.
“I'm happy to meet a young man who sticks up for the decencies nowadays,” he says. “Bring back your King, sir, give him a free hand, and set us an example in veneration and respect and all the rest of it. You'll make a clean sweep, I suppose. Guillotine, eh? Not a bad thing if used on the proper people.”
I am ashamed to confess how half-hearted my own theories of restoration are, compared with this out-and-out suggestion. I can but twist my mustache, and, looking as truculent as possible, mutter:
“Well, well, we shall see when the time comes.”
When at last he rises to leave me, he repeats with emphasis his conviction that republicanism should be trodden out under a heavy boot, and so mollified is he by my tactful treatment that as we part he even invites me into that carefully guarded room of his. It is not yet a specific invitation.
“Some day soon I'll hope to see you in my own den, mossoo. Au revoir, sir; happy to have met you.”
Yet I cannot help thinking that even this is a triumph of diplomacy. My spirits rise; my ridiculous humors have been charmed quite away. As for woman, she seems not even worth cynical comment in my journal. “Give me man!” I say to myself.
8000
“A drop of water on a petal in the sunshine; that same drop down thy neck in a cavern. Both are woman; thy mood and the occasion make the sole difference.”
—Cervanto Y'Alvez.
9190
ECORD of an episode taken from my journal, and written upon the evening following my first meeting with the General:
“This afternoon I decide to go to the Temple and see Dick Shafthead. We shall dine together quietly, and I shall vent what is left of my humors and be refreshed by his good-humored raillery. The afternoon is fading into evening as I mount his stairs; the lamps are being lit; by this hour he should have returned. But no; I knock and knock again, and get no answer.
“'Well,' I say to myself, 'he cannot be long. I shall wait for him outside.'
“I descend again to wait in that quiet and soothing court, where the fountain plays and the goldfish swim and the autumn leaves tremble overhead. Now and then one of these drops stealthily upon the pavement; the pigeons flit by, settle, fly off again; people pass occasionally; but at first that is all that happens. At last there enters a woman, who does not pass through, but loiters on the farther side of the fountain as though she were meditating—or waiting for somebody. So far as I can judge in the half-light and at a little distance, she is young, and her outline is attractive; therefore I conclude she is not meditating.
“She does not see me, but I should like to see more of her. I walk round the fountain and come up behind her. She hears my step, turns sharply, and approaches, evidently prepared to greet me. Words are on the tip of her tongue, when abruptly she starts back. She does not know me, after all. But quickly, before she has time to recover herself, I raise my hat and say:
“'I cannot be mistaken. We have met at the bishop's?'”
0192m
“It is a happy inspiration, I think, to choose so respectable a host, and for a moment she is staggered. Probably she does actually know a bishop, and may have met a not ill-looking gentleman somewhat resembling myself at his house. In this moment I perceive that she is certainty young and very far removed, indeed, from being unattractive.
“To me, meeting her dark eyes for an instant, and then seeing the fair, full face turn to a fair profile as she looks away in some confusion, she seems beyond doubt very beautiful. A simple straw hat covers her dark coil of hair and slopes arrogantly forward over a luminous and brilliant eye; her nose is straight, her mouth small, suggesting decision and a little petulance, her chin deep and finely moulded, her complexion delicate as a rare piece of alabaster, while her figure matches these distracting charms.
“I make these notes so full that I may the better summon her to my memory. Also I note that the colors she wears are rich and bright; there is red and there is dark green; and they seem to make her beauty stand out with a boldness that corresponds to the dark glance of her eye. Not that she is anything but most modest in her demeanor, but, ah! that eye! Its glow betrays a fire deep underneath.
“Her eye meets mine again, then she says:
“'I—I don't know you. I thought you were—I mean I don't know why you spoke to me.'
“Evidently she does not quite know how to meet the situation.
“I decide that it is the duty of a gentleman to assist her.
“'I spoke because I thought I knew you, and hoped for an instant I was remembered.'
“'You had no business to,' she replies. Her air is haughty, but a little theatrical. I mean that she does not entirely convince me of her displeasure.
“'Mademoiselle, I offer you a thousand apologies. I see now that if I had really met you before I could not possibly confuse your face with another's. Doubtless I ought to have been more cautious, but as you perhaps guess, I am a foreigner, and I do not understand the English customs in these matters.'
“She receives this speech with so much complaisance that I feel emboldened to continue.
“'I am also solitary, and meeting with a face I thought I knew seemed providential. Do you grant me your pardon?'
“She gives a little laugh that is more than half friendly.
“'Of course—if it was a mistake.'
“'Such a pleasant mistake that I should like to continue in error,' I reply.
“But at this she draws back, and her expression changes a little. It does not become altogether hostile, but it undoubtedly changes.
“'May I ask you a favor?' I say, quickly, and with a modest air. 'I was looking for a friend and have become lost in this Temple. Can you tell me where number thirty-four is?'
“'Yes,' she replies, with a look that penetrates, and, I think, rather enjoys, this simple ruse, 'it is next to number thirty-three.' And with that she turns to go, so abruptly that I cannot help suspecting she also desires to hide a smile.
“But observing that I, too, shall not waste more time here, I also turn, and as she does not actually order me away, I walk by her side, studying her afresh from the corner of my eye. She is of middle height, or perhaps an inch above it; she walks with a peculiar swing that seems to say, 'I do not care one damn for anybody,' and the expression of her eyes and mouth bear out this sentiment.”
“Does she resent my conduct?”
“Yes, probably she does, though my demeanor is humility itself.”
“'You came to enjoy the quiet of the Temple, mademoiselle?'”
“'I was enjoying it—till I was interrupted,' she answers, still smiling, though not in my direction.”
“I notice that she again casts her eye round the court, and I make a reckless shot.
“'Perhaps you, too, expected to see a friend?'
“The eyes blaze at me for an instant.
“'No, I did not,' she says abruptly, and mends her pace still further.
“'I noticed another lady here before you came,' I say, mendaciously and with a careless air, as though I thought it most natural that two ladies should rendezvous at that hour in the Temple. She gives me a quick glance, which I meet unruffled.
“We pass through a gate and into a side street, and here, by the most evil fortune, a cab was standing.
“'Cabman,' says the lady, abruptly, 'are you engaged?'
“The next moment she has sprung into the cab, bade me a 'good-bye' that seems compounded of annoyance and of laughter, with perhaps a touch of kindness added, thrown me a swift glance of her brilliant eyes, and jingled out of my sight. And I have not even learned her name.
“This exit of the fair Miss Unknown is made so suddenly that for half a minute I stand with my hat in my hand still, foolishly smiling.
“Then I give an exclamation that might be deemed profane, rush round a corner and up a street, catch a glimpse of the back of a cab disappearing into the traffic of the Strand, leap into another, and bid my driver pursue that hansom in front.
“Well, I had a spirited chase while it lasted, for my quarry had a swift steed, and there were many other cabs in the Strand that would have confused the scent for any but the most relentless sleuth-hound. It ended in Pall Mall, where I had the satisfaction of seeing the flying chariot deposit a stout gentleman before a most respectable club.
“I drove to my rooms with my ardor cooled and my cynicism fast returning, and had almost landed at my door when a most surprising coincidence occurred, so surprising that I suspect it was the contrivance of either Providence or the devil. A cab left the door just as I drove up, and in it sat Miss Unknown! I was too dumfounded to turn in pursuit, and, besides, I was too curious to learn the reason of this visit.
“By the greatest good luck the door was opened by Halfred, who in his obliging way lent his services now and then when the maid was out.
“'Did she leave her name?' I cried.
“'Beg pardon, sir?' said Halfred, in astonishment.
“'I mean the lady who just called for me.'
“'She hasked for General Sholto, sir.'
“My face fell.
“'The devil she did!' I exclaimed.
“'Yes, sir,' said he; 'that's the lady as visits 'im sometimes.'
“I whistled.
“'Was the General at home?'
“'No, sir, but she left a message as 'ow she'd call again to-morrow morning.'
“'Halfred,' I said, 'do not deliver that message. I shall see to it myself.'
“And so Miss Unknown is the gay General's mysterious visitor. And I caught her at another rendezvous. But she denied this. Bah! I do not believe her. I trust no woman.
“On my mind is left a curious impression from this brief passage—an impression of a beautiful wild animal, half shy, half bold, dreading the cage, but not so much, I think, the chase. Yes, decidedly there was something untamed in her air, in her eye, in her devil-may-care walk. For myself a savage queen has few charms, especially if she have merely the cannibal habit without the simplicity of attire.
“Yet, mon Dieu, I have but seen her once! Come, to-morrow may show her in a better light. Ah, my gay dog of a General! It is unfortunate for you that you were so anxious to make my acquaintance!”
Here ends the entry in my journal. You shall now see with what tact and acumen I pursued this entertaining intrigue.
8000
“Introduce you to my mistress? I should as soon think of lending you my umbrella!”
—Hercule D'Enville.
9198
OOD-MORNING, General. I have come to return your call.”
The General stood in the door of his room, holding it half closed behind him. He wore a very old shooting-coat, smeared with many curious stains. Evidently he was engaged upon some unclean work, and evidently, also, he would have preferred me to call at some other hour. I remembered, now, Halfred's dark hints as to his occupation; but I remembered still more distinctly the dark eyes of Miss Unknown, and, whether he desired my company or not, I was determined to spend that morning in his room.
“Morning, mossoo,” he said. “Glad to see you, but—er—I'm afraid I'm rather in a mess at present.”
“You are the better company, then, for a conspirator who is never out of one,” I replied, gayly.
Still he hesitated.
“My dear General, positively I shall not permit you to treat me with such ceremony,” I insisted. “I shall empty your ink-pot over my coat to keep you company if you persist in considering me too respectable.”
Well, who could withstand so importunate a visitor? I entered the carefully guarded chamber, smiling at myself at the little dénouement that was to follow, and curious in the mean time to see what kind of a den it was that this amorous dragon dwelt in. The first glance solved the mystery of his labors. An easel stood in one corner, a palette and brushes lay on a table, a canvas rested upon the easel; in a word, my neighbor pursued the arts!
He looked at me a little awkwardly as I glanced round at these things.