CHAPTER LXXXIII
Which Essays the High Epic Note
Theday on which Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre got his freedom in the divorce-courts of France, he received a challenge from a hot young blood called Solignac, first cousin to Gabrielle.
Gaston Latour entered the room, grimly solemn in the conventional frock-coat and trim dress of the man of fashion, and holding a shining silk hat in his hand. He was very careful of the silk hat—he had borrowed it. It had the flattest brim he could find in Paris.
He was followed by another solemn youth. They marched in, clicked their heels together, bowed, and presented the letter that held the invitation to face death at daybreak. It was all done with a charm of manner devoid of all offence, and a desire to be referred to two of Mr. Myre’s “friends.”
Mr. Myre read the letter; and, as he read, his face became more like the hue of badly-made paste.
He was a long time reading it, Gaston Latour’s sleepy eyes never leaving him.
He burst into a harsh laugh, and flung the letter into the air:
“A challenge, eh? ... ha-ha! ho-ho-ho!... Tell your cousin, Monsieur Latour, that the duel is relegated to the limbo of opera-bouffe. Ho-ho-ho! We do not do these things in England.”
He prepared himself for a flight of oratory.
Gaston Latour nudged the other youth—they bowed solemnly and withdrew.
“Ho-ho! ha-ha-ha!” laughed Quogge Myre.
The following morning Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre’s name was posted in every club in Paris, and struck from the list of those to which he had belonged; so it came about that he had to live his day at cafés.
And it was as he stood at a table, giving authoritative utterance with loud yawing voice to a group of youths that sat about him, vowing that he had determined to shake the dust of Paris from off his splay feet and to start a great renaissance of theEnglish drama, when a handsome young woman, sister to Gaston Latour, entered the place, walked straight up to Mr. Myre, and struck him a sounding buffet on the ear that sent his hat flying from his head.
Quilliam O’Flaherty stooping down in confusion to search for the hat, she kicked him violently behind.
There was a roar of laughter from the students seated round about, and they tapped the handles of their knives upon the tables, singing:
“Opera-bouffe, bouffe, bouffe! Opera-bouffe, bouffe, bouffe! Hey-hey-hey! bouffe-bouffe-bouffe!”
Then the girl flogged Quilliam with a horse-whip, thrice:
Once for France.
Once for womanhood.
And once because she liked it.
The whip whistled.
It was said that he had been seen to strike at her—but she parried the blow with her left, and countered between his eyes with the butt-end of the whip—which was loaded.
He fell.
It was homeric.
It was at this stage, so the scandal went, that he scrambled under a table; but she lugged at his collar to get him out; and as he clung to the leg of the table she gripped him by the moustache so that she pulled off one side of it.
But she herself owned this to be as inartistic as it was unintentional, stamping her foot with annoyance at the mischance. Indeed, she apologized most handsomely; for, said she, pathetically, when she had got it she did not know what to do with it.
It was an anticlimax.
She threw down the whip and said he might now go home.
He now went home.
There is little reason to doubt that the horsewhipping by Gaston Latour’s sister hastened Mr. Myre’s desire to start the great renaissance of the English drama.
As he stood before the mirror in his rooms at his hotel and shaved off the remains of his drooping moustache by the candle’s light, and soothed the aching bumps that were risen upon his face, he sniffed loudly through a swollen nose—he had very tender places—and decided to go to Rouen until the hair grew.