However, the spectacle of Brighton on a fine Saturday afternoon in October had its effect on Edward Coe—the effect which it has on everybody. Little by little it inspired him with the joy of life, and straightened his back, and put a sparkle into his eyes. And he was filled with the consciousness of the fact that it is a fine thing to be well-dressed and to have loose gold in your pocket, and to eat, drink, and smoke well; and to be among crowds of people who are well-dressed and have loose gold in their pockets, and eat and drink and smoke well; and to know that a magnificent woman will be waiting for you at a certain place at a certain hour, and that upon catching sight of you her dark orbs will take on an enchanting expression reserved for you alone, and that she is utterly yours. In a word, he looked on the bright side of things again. It could not ultimately matter a bilberry whether his marriage was public or private.
He lit a cigarette gaily. He could not guess that untoward destiny was waiting for him close by the newspaper kiosque.
A little girl was leaning against the palisade there, and gazing somewhat restlessly about her. A quite little girl, aged, perhaps, eleven, dressed in blue serge, with a short frock and long legs, and a sailor hat (H.M.S.Formidable), and long hair down her back, and a mild, twinkling, trustful glance. Somewhat untidy, but nevertheless the image of grace.
She saw him first. Otherwise he might have fled. But he was right upon her before he saw her. Indeed, he heard her before he saw her.
"Good afternoon, Mr Coe."
"Mimi!"
The Vaillacs were in Brighton! He had chosen practically the other end of the world for his honeymoon, and lo! by some awful clumsiness of fate the Vaillacs were at the same end! The very people from whom he wished to conceal his honeymoon until it was over would know all about it at the very start! Relations between the two Olives would be still more strained and difficult! In brief, from optimism he swung violently back to darkest pessimism. What could be worse than to be caught red-handed in a surreptitious honeymoon?
She noticed his confusion, and he knew that she noticed it. She was a little girl. But she was also a little woman, a little Frenchwoman, who spoke English perfectly—and yet with a difference! They had flirted together, she and Mr Coe. She had a new mother now, but for years she had been without a mother, and she would receive callers at her father's house (if he happened to be out) with a delicious imitation of a practised hostess.
He raised his hat and shook hands and tried to play the game.
"What are you doing here, Mimi?" he asked.
"What areyoudoing here?" she parried, laughing. And then, perceiving his increased trouble, and that she was failing in tact, she went on rapidly, with a screwing up of the childish shoulders and something between a laugh and a grin: "It's my back. It seems it's not strong. And so we've taken an ever so jolly little house for the autumn, because of the air, you know. Didn't you know?"
No, he did not know. That was the worst of strained relations. You were not informed of events in advance.
"Where?" he asked.
"Oh!" she said, pointing. "That way. On the road to Rottingdean. Near the big girls' school. We came in on that lovely electric railway—along the beach. Have you been on it, Mr Coe?"
Terrible! Rottingdean was precisely the scene of his honeymoon. The hazard of fate was truly appalling. He and his wife might have walked one day straight into the arms of her sister! He went hot and cold.
"And where are the others?" he asked nervously.
"Mamma"—she coloured as she used this word, so strange on her lips—"mamma's at home. Father may come to-night. And Ada has brought us here so that Jean can have his hair cut. He didn't want to come without me."
"Ada?"
"Ada's a new servant. She's just gone in there again to see how long the barber will be." Mimi indicated a barber's shop opposite. "And I'm waiting here," she added.
"Mimi," he said, in a confidential tone, "can you keep a secret?"
She grew solemn. "Yes." She smiled seriously. "What?"
"About meeting me. Don't tell anybody you've met me to-day. See?"
"Not Jean?"
"No, not Jean. But later on you can tell—when I give you the tip. I don't want anybody to know just now."
It was a shame. He knew it was a shame. He deliberately flattered her by appealing to her as to a grown woman. He deliberately put a cajoling tone into his voice. He would not have done it if Mimi had not been Mimi—if she had been an ordinary sort of English girl. But she was Mimi. And the temptation was very strong. She promised, gravely. He knew that he could rely on her.
Hurrying away lest Jean and the servant might emerge from the barber's, he remembered with compunction that he had omitted to show any curiosity about Mimi's back.
The magnificent woman was to be waiting for him in the lounge of the Royal York Hotel at a quarter to four. She was coming in to Brighton by the Rottingdean omnibus, which function, unless the driver changes his mind, occurs once in every two or three hours. He, being under the necessity of telephoning to London on urgent business, had hired a bicycle and ridden in. Despite the accident to this prehistoric machine, he arrived at the Royal York half a minute before the Rottingdean omnibus passed through the Old Steine and set down the magnificent woman his wife. The sight of her stepping off the omnibus really did thrill him. They entered the hotel together, and, accustomed though the Royal York is to the reception of magnificent women, Olive made a sensation therein. As for him, he could not help feeling just as though he had eloped with her. He could not help fancying that all the brilliant company in the lounge was murmuring under the strains of the band: "That johnny there has certainly eloped with that splendid creature!"
"Ed," she asked, fixing her dark eyes upon him, "is anything the matter?"
They were having tea at a little Moorish table in the huge bay window of the lounge.
"No," he said. This was the first lie of his career as a husband. But truly he could not bring himself to give her the awful shock of telling her that the Vaillacs were close at hand, that their secret was discovered, and that their peace and security depended entirely upon the discretion of little Mimi and upon their not meeting other Vaillacs.
"Then it's having that puncture that has upset you," his wife insisted. You see her feelings towards him were so passionate that she could not leave him alone. She was utterly preoccupied by him.
"No," he said guiltily.
"I'm afraid you don't very much care for this place," she went on, because she knew now that he was not telling her the truth, and that something, indeed, was the matter.
"On the contrary," he replied, "I was informed that the finest tea and the most perfect toast in Brighton were to be had in this lounge, and upon my soul I feel as if I could keep on having tea here for ever and ever amen!"
He was trying to be gay, but not very successfully.
"I don't mean just here," she said. "I mean all this south coast."
"Well—" he began judicially.
"Oh! Ed!" she implored him. "Dosay you don't like it!"
"Why!" he exclaimed. "Don'tyou?"
She shook her head. "I much prefer the north," she remarked.
"Well," he said, "let's go. Say Scarborough."
"You're joking," she murmured. "You adore this south coast."
"Never!" he asserted positively.
"Well, darling," she said, "if you hadn't said first that you didn't care for it, of course I shouldn't have breathed a word—"
"Let's go to-morrow," he suggested.
"Yes." Her eyes shone.
"First train! We should have to leave Rottingdean at six o'clock a.m."
"How lovely!" she exclaimed. She was enchanted by this idea of a capricious change of programme. It gave such a sense of freedom, of irresponsibility, of romance!
"More toast, please," he said to the waiter, joyously.
It cost him no effort to be gay now. He could not have been sad. The world was suddenly transformed into the best of all possible worlds. He was saved! They were saved! Yes, he could trust Mimi. By no chance would they be caught. They would stick in their rooms all the evening, and on the morrow they would be away long before the Vaillacs were up. Papa and "mamma" Vaillac were terrible for late rising. And when he had got his magnificent Olive safe in Scarborough, or wherever their noses might lead them, then he would tell her of the risk they had run.
They both laughed from mere irrational glee, and Edward Coe nearly forgot to pay the bill. However, he did pay it. They departed from the Royal York. He put his Olive into the returning Rottingdean omnibus, and then hurried to get his repaired bicycle. He had momentarily quaked lest Mimi and company might be in the omnibus. But they were not. They must have left earlier, fortunately, or walked.
When he was still about a mile away from Rottingdean, and the hour was dusk, and he was walking up a hill, he caught sight of a girl leaning on a gate that led by a long path to a house near the cliffs. It was Mimi. She gave a cry of recognition. He did not care now—he was at ease now—but really, with that house so close to the road and so close to Rottingdean, he and his Olive had practically begun their honeymoon on the summit of a volcano!
Mimi was pensive. He felt remorse at having bound her to secrecy. She was so pensive, and so wistful, and her eyes were so loyal, that he felt he owed her a more complete confidence.
"I'm on my honeymoon, Mimi," he said. It gave him pleasure to tell her.
"Yes," she said simply, "I saw Auntie Olive go by in the omnibus."
That was all she said. He was thunderstruck, as much by her calm simplicity as by anything else. Children were astounding creatures.
"Did Jean see her, or anyone?" he asked.
Mimi shook her head.
Then he told her they were leaving the next morning at six.
"Shall you be in a carriage?" she inquired.
"Yes."
"Oh! Do let me come out and see you go past," she pleaded. "Nobody else in our house will be up till hours afterwards!... Do!"
He was about to say "No," for it would mean revealing the whole affair to his wife at once. But after an instant he said "Yes." He would not refuse that exquisite, appealing gesture. Besides, why keep anything whatever from Olive, even for a day?
At dinner he told his wife, and was glad to learn that she also thought highly of Mimi and had confidence in her.
Mimi lay in bed in the nursery of the hired house on the way to Rottingdean, which, considering that it was not "home," was a fairly comfortable sort of abode. The nursery was immense, though an attic. The white blinds of the two windows were drawn, and a fire burned in the grate, lighting it pleasantly and behaving in a very friendly manner. At the other end of the room, in the deep shadow, was Jean's bed.
The door opened quietly and someone came into the room and pushed the door to without quite shutting it.
"Is that you, mamma?" Jean demanded in his shrill voice, from the distance of the bed in the corner. His age was exactly eight.
"Yes, dear," said the new stepmother.
The menial Ada had arranged the children for the night, and now the stepmother had come up to kiss them and be kind. She was a conscientious young woman, full of a desire to do right, and she had determined not to be like the traditional stepmother.
She kissed Jean, who had taken quite a fancy to her, and tickled him agreeably, and tucked him up anew, and then moved silently across the room to Mimi. Mimi could see her face in the twilight of the fire. A handsome, good-natured face; yet very determined, and perhaps a little too full of common sense. It had a responsible, somewhat grave look. After all, these two young children were a responsibility, especially Mimi with her back; and, moreover, Pierre Emile Vaillac had disappointed both her and her step-children by telegraphing that he could not arrive that night. Olive One, the bride of three months, had put on fine raiment for nothing.
"Well, Mimi," she said in her low, vibrating voice, as she stood over the bed, "I do hope you didn't overtire yourself this afternoon." Then she kissed Mimi.
"Oh no, mamma!" The little girl smiled.
"It seems you waited outside the barber's while Jeannot was having his hair cut."
"Yes, mamma. I didn't like to go in."
"Ada didn't stay with you all the time?"
"No, mamma. First of all she took Jeannot in, and then she came out to me, and then she went in again to see how long he would be."
"I'm sorry she left you alone in the street. She ought not to have done so, and I've told her.... The King's Road, with all kinds of people about!"
Mimi said nothing. The new Madame Vaillac moved a little towards the fire.
"Of course," the latter went on, "I know you're a regular little woman, and perhaps I needn't tell you but you must never speak to anyone in the street."
"No, mamma."
"Particularly in Brighton.... You never do, do you?"
"No, mamma."
"Good-night."
The stepmother left the room. Mimi could feel her heart beating. Then Jean called out:
"Mimi."
She made no reply. The fact was she was too disturbed to be able to reply.
Jean called again and then got out of bed and thudded across the room to her bedside.
"I say, Mimi," he screeched in his insistent treble, "whowasit you were talking to?"
Mimi's heart did not beat, it jumped.
"When? Where?"
"This afternoon, when I was having my hair cut."
"How do you know I was talking to anybody?"
"Ada saw you through the window of the barber's."
"When did she tell you?"
"She didn't. I heard her telling mamma."
There was a silence. Then Mimi hid her face, and Jean could hear sobbing.
"You might tell me!" Jean insisted. He was too absorbed by his own curiosity, and too upset by the full realization of the fact that she had kept something from him, to be touched by her tears.
"It's a secret," she muttered into the pillow.
"You might tell me!"
"Go away, Jeannot!" she burst out hysterically.
He gave an angry lunge against the bed.
"I tell you everything; and it's not fair.C'est pas juste!" he said savagely, but there were tears in his voice too. He was a creature at once sensitive and violent, passionately attached to Mimi.
He thudded back to his bed. But even before he had reached his bed Mimi could hear him weeping.
She gradually stilled her own sobs, and after a time Jean's ceased. And then she guessed that Jean had gone to sleep. But Mimi did not go to sleep. She knew that chance, and Mr Coe, and that odious new servant, Ada, had combined to ruin her life. She saw the whole affair clearly. Ada was officious and fussy, also secretive and given to plotting. Ada's leading idea was that children had to be circumvented. Imagine the detestable woman spying on her from the window, and then saying nothing to her, but sneaking off to tell tales to her mamma! Imagine it! Mimi's strict sense of justice could not blame her mamma. She was sure that the new stepmother meant well by her. Her mamma had given her every opportunity to confess, to admit of her own accord that she had been talking to somebody in the street, and she had not confessed. On the contrary, she had lied. Her mamma would probably say nothing more on the matter, for she had a considerable sense of honour with children, and would not take an unfair advantage. Having tried to obtain a confession from Mimi by pretending that she knew nothing, and having failed, she was not the woman to turn round and say, "Now I know all about it. So just confess at once!" Her mamma would accept the situation, would try to behave as if nothing had happened, and would probably even say nothing to her father.
But Mimi knew that she was ruined for ever in her stepmother's esteem.
And she had quarrelled with Jean, which was exceedingly hateful and exceedingly rare. And there was also the private worry of her mysterious back. And there was another thing. The mere fact that her friend, Mr Coe, had gone and married somebody. For long she had had a weakness for Mr Coe. They had been intimate at times. Once, last year, in the stern of a large sailing-boat at Morecambe, while her friends were laughing and shouting at the prow, she and Mr Coe had had a most beautiful quiet conversation about her thoughts on the world in general; she had stroked his hand.... No! She had no dream whatever of growing up into a woman and then marrying Mr Coe! Certainly not. But still, that he should have gone and married, like that ... it was....
The fire died out into blackness, thus ceasing to be a friend. Still she did not sleep. Was it likely that she should sleep, with the tragedy and woe of the entire universe crushing her?
Mr Edward Coe and Olive Two arose from their bed the next morning in great spirits. Mr Coe had told both his wife and Mimi that the hour of departure from Rottingdean would be six o'clock. But this was an exaggeration. So far as his wife was concerned he had already found it well to exaggerate on such matters. A little judicious exaggeration lessened the risk of missing trains and other phenomena which cannot be missed without confusion and disappointment.
As a fact it was already six o'clock when Edward Coe looked forth from the bedroom window. He was completely dressed. His wife also was completely dressed. He therefore felt quite safe about the train. The window, which was fairly high up in the world, gave on the south-east, so that he had a view, not only of the vast naked downs billowing away towards Newhaven, but also of the Channel, which was calm, and upon which little parcels of fog rested. The sky was clear overhead, of a greenish sapphire colour, and the autumnal air bit and gnawed on the skin like some friendly domestic animal, and invigorated like an expensive tonic. On the dying foliage of a tree near the window millions of precious stones hung. Cocks were boasting. Cows were expressing a justifiable anxiety. And in the distance a small steamer was making a great deal of smoke about nothing, as it puffed out of Newhaven harbour.
"Olive," he said.
"What is it?"
She was putting hats into the top of her trunk. She had a special hat-box, but the hats were too large for it, and she packed minor trifles in the hat-box, such as skirts. This was one of the details which first indicated to an astounded Edward Coe that a woman is never less like a man than when travelling.
"Come here," he commanded her.
She obeyed.
"Look at that," he commanded her, pointing to the scene of which the window was the frame.
She obeyed. She also looked at him with her dark, passionate, and yet half-mocking eyes.
"Yes," she said, "and who's going to make that trunk lock?"
She snapped her fingers at the sweet morning influences of Nature, to which he was peculiarly sensitive. And yet he was delighted. He found it entirely delicious that she should say, when called upon to admire Nature: "Who's going to make that trunk lock?"
He stroked her hair.
"It's no use trying to keep your hair decent at the seaside," she remarked, pouting exquisitely.
He explained that his hand was offering no criticism of her hair. And then there was a knock at the bedroom door, and Olive Two jumped a little away from her husband.
"Come in," he cried, pretending to be as bold as a lion.
However, he had forgotten that the door was locked, and he had to go and open it.
A tray with coffee and milk and sugar and slices of bread-and-butter was in the doorway, and behind the tray the little parlour-maid of the little hotel. He greeted the girl and instructed her to carry the tray to the table by the window.
"You are prompt," said Olive Two, kindly. She had got up so miraculously early herself that she was startled to see any other woman up quite as early. And also she was a little surprised that the parlour-maid showed no surprise at these very unusual hours.
"Yes'm," replied the parlour-maid, wondering why Olive Two was so excited. The parlour-maid arose at five-thirty every morning of her life, except on special occasions, when she arose at four-thirty to assist in pastoral affairs.
"All right, this coffee, eh?" murmured Edward Coe as he put down the steaming cup after his first sip. They were alone again, seated opposite each other at the small table by the window.
Olive Two nodded.
It must not be supposed that this was the one unique dreamed-of hotel in England where the coffee is good of its own accord. No! In the matter of coffee this hotel was just like all other hotels. Only Olive Two had taken special precautions about that coffee. She had been into the hotel kitchen on the previous evening about that coffee.
"By the way," she asked, "where's the sun?"
"The sun doesn't happen to be up yet," said Edward. He looked at his diary and then at his watch. "Unless something goes wrong, you'll be seeing it inside of three minutes."
"Do you mean to say we shall see the sun rise?" she exclaimed.
He nodded.
"Well!" cried she, absurdly gleeful, "I never heard of such a thing!"
She watched the sunrise like a child who sees for the first time the inside of a watch. And when the sun had risen she glanced anxiously round the disordered room.
"For heaven's sake," she muttered, "don't let's forget these tooth-brushes!"
"You are so ridiculous," said he, "that I must kiss you."
The truth is that they were no better than two children out on an adventure.
It was the same when down in the hotel-yard they got into the small and decrepit victoria which was destined to take them and their luggage to Brighton. It was the same, but more so. They were both so pleased with themselves that their joy was bubbling continually out in manifestations that could only be described as infantile. The mere drive through the village, with the pony whisking his tail round corners, and the driver steadying the perilous hat-box with his left hand, was so funny that somehow they could not help laughing.
Then they had left the village and were climbing the exposed highroad, with the wavy blue-green downs on the right, and the immense glittering flat floor of the Channel on the left. And the mere sensation of being alive almost overwhelmed them.
And further on they passed a house that stood by itself away from the road towards the cliffs. It had a sloping garden and a small greenhouse. The gate leading to the road was ajar, but the blinds of all the windows were drawn, and there was no sign of life anywhere.
"That's the house," said Edward Coe, briefly.
"I might have known it," Olive Two replied. "Olive One is certainly the worst getter-up that I ever had anything to do with, and I believe Pierre Emile isn't much better."
"Well," said Edward, "it's no absolute proof of sluggardliness not to be up and about at six forty-five of a morning, you know."
"I was forgetting how early it was!" said Olive Two, and yawned. The yawn escaped her before she was aware of it. She pulled herself together and kissed her hands mockingly, quizzically, to the house. "Good-bye, house! Good-bye, house!"
They were saved now. They could not be caught now on their surreptitious honeymoon. And their spirits went even higher.
"I thought you said Mimi would be waiting for us?" Olive Two remarked.
Edward Coe shrugged his shoulders. "Probably overslept herself! Or she may have got tired of waiting. I told her six o'clock."
On the whole Olive Two was relieved that Mimi was invisible.
"It wouldn't really matter if shedidsplit on us, would it?" said the bride.
"Not a bit," the bridegroom agreed. Now that they had safely left the house behind them, they were both very valiant. It was as if they were both saying: "Who cares?" The bridegroom's mood was entirely different from his sombre apprehensiveness of the previous evening. And the early sunshine on the dew-drops was magnificent.
But a couple of hundred yards further on, at a bend of the road, they saw a little girl shading her eyes with her hand and gazing towards the sun. She wore a short blue serge frock, and she had long restless legs, and the wordFormidablewas on her forehead, and her eyes were all screwed up in the strong sunshine. And in her hand were flowers.
"There she is, after all!" said Edward, quickly.
Olive Two nodded. Olive Two also blushed, for Mimi was the first person acquainted with her to see her after her marriage. She blushed because she was now a married woman.
Mimi, who with much prudence had managed so that the meeting should not occur exactly in front of the house, came towards the carriage. The pony was walking up a slope. She bounded forward with her childish grace and with the awkwardness of her long legs, and her hair loose in the breeze, and she laughed nervously.
"Good morning, good morning," she cried. "Shall I jump on the step? Then the horse won't have to stop."
And she jumped lightly on to the step and giggled, still nervously, looking first at the bridegroom and then at the bride. The bridegroom held her securely by the shoulder.
"Well, Mimi," said Olive Two, whose shyness vanished in an instant before the shyness of the child. "Thisisnice of you."
The two women kissed. But Mimi did not offer her cheek to the bridegroom. He and she simply shook hands as well as they could with a due regard for Mimi's firmness on the step.
"And who woke you up, eh?" Edward Coe demanded.
"Nobody," said Mimi; "I got up by myself, and," turning to Olive Two, "I've made this bouquet for you, auntie. There aren't any flowers in the fields. But I got the chrysanthemum out of the greenhouse, and put some bits of ferns and things round it. You must excuse it being tied up with darning wool."
She offered the bouquet diffidently, and Olive Two accepted it with a warm smile.
"Well," said Mimi, "I don't think I'd better go any further, had I?"
There was another kiss and hand-shaking, and the next moment Mimi was standing in the road and waving a little crumpled handkerchief to the receding victoria, and the bride and bridegroom were cricking their necks to respond. She waved until the carriage was out of sight, and then she stood moveless, a blue and white spot on the green landscape, with the morning sun and the sea behind her.
"Exactly like a little woman, isn't she?" said Edward Coe, enchanted by the vision.
"Exactly!" Olive Two agreed. "Nice little thing! But how tired and unwell she looks! They did well to bring her away."
"Oh!" said Edward Coe, "she probably didn't sleep well because she was afraid of oversleeping herself. She looked perfectly all right yesterday."
Perhaps it was because I was in a state of excited annoyance that I did not recognize him until he came right across the large hall of the hotel and put his hand on my shoulder.
I had arrived in Paris that afternoon, and driven to that nice, reasonable little hotel which we all know, and whose name we all give in confidence to all our friends; and there was no room in that hotel. Nor in seven other haughtily-managed hotels that I visited! A kind of archduke, who guarded the last of the seven against possible customers, deigned to inform me that the season was at its fullest, half London being as usual in Paris, and that the only central hotels where I had a chance of reception were those monstrosities the Grand and the Hôtel Terminus at the Gare St Lazare. I chose the latter, and was accorded room 973 in the roof.
I thought my exasperations were over. But no! A magnificent porter within the gate had just consented to get my luggage off the cab, and was in the act of beginning to do so, when a savagely-dressed, ugly and ageing woman, followed by a maid, rushed neurotically down the steps and called him away to hold a parcel. He obeyed! At the same instant the barbaric and repulsive creature's automobile, about as large as a railway carriage, drove up and forced my frail cab down the street. I had to wait, humiliated and helpless, the taximeter of my cab industriously adding penny to penny, while that offensive hag installed herself, with the help of the maid, the porter and two page-boys, in her enormous vehicle. I should not have minded had she been young and pretty. If she had been young and pretty she would have had the right to be rude and domineering. But she was neither young nor pretty. Conceivably she had once been young; pretty she could never have been. And her eyes were hard—hard.
Hence my state of excited annoyance.
"Hullo! How goes it?" The perfect colloquial English was gently murmured at me with a French accent as the gentle hand patted my shoulder.
"Why," I said, cast violently out of a disagreeable excitement into an agreeable one, "I do believe you are Boissy Minor!"
I had not seen him for nearly twenty years, but I recognized in that soft and melancholy Jewish face, with the soft moustache and the soft beard, the wistful features of the boy of fifteen who had been my companion at an "international" school (a clever invention for inflicting exile upon patriots) with branches at Hastings, Dresden and Versailles.
Soon I was telling him, not without satisfaction, that, being a dramatic critic, and attached to a London daily paper which had decided to flatter its readers by giving special criticisms of the more important new French plays, I had come to Paris for the production ofNotre Dame de la Luneat the Vaudeville.
And as I told him the idea occurred to me for positively the first time:
"By the way, I suppose you aren't any relation of Octave Boissy?"
I rather hoped he was; for after all, say what you like, there is a certain pleasure in feeling that you have been to school with even a relative of so tremendous a European celebrity as Octave Boissy—the man who made a million and a half francs with his second play, which was nevertheless quite a good play. All the walls of Paris were shouting his name.
"I'm the johnny himself," he replied with timidity, naïvely proud of his Saxon slang.
I did not give an astoundedNo! An astoundedNo! would have been rude. Still, my fear is that I failed to conceal entirely my amazement. I had to fight desperately against the natural human tendency to assume that no boy with whom one has been to school can have developed into a great man.
"Really!" I remarked, as calmly as I could, and added a shocking lie: "Well, I'm not surprised!" And at the same time I could hear myself saying a few days later at the office of my paper: "I met Octave Boissy in Paris. Went to school with him, you know."
"You'd forgotten my Christian name, probably," he said.
"No, I hadn't," I answered. "Your Christian name was Minor. You never had any other!" He smiled kindly. "But what on earth are you doing here?"
Octave Boissy was a very wealthy man. He even looked a very wealthy man. He was one of the darlings of success and of an absurdly luxurious civilization. And he seemed singularly out of place in the vast, banal foyer of the Hôtel Terminus, among the shifting, bustling crowd of utterly ordinary, bourgeois, moderately well-off tourists and travellers and needy touts. He ought at least to have been in a very select private room at the Meurice or the Bristol, if in any hotel at all!
"The fact is, I'm neurasthenic," he said simply, just as if he had been saying, "The fact is, I've got a wooden leg."
"Oh!" I laughed, determined to treat him as Boissy Minor, and not as Octave Boissy.
"I have a morbid horror of walking in the open air. And yet I cannot bear being in a small enclosed space, especially when it's moving. This is extremely inconvenient.Mais que veux-tu?... Suis comme ça!"
"Je te plains" I put in, so as to return his familiar and flattering "thou" immediately.
"I was strongly advised to go and stay in the country," he went on, with the same serious, wistful simplicity, "and so I ordered a special saloon carriage on the railway, so as to have as much breathing room as possible; and I ventured from my house to this station in an auto. I thought I could surely manage that. But I couldn't! I had a terrible crisis on arriving at the station, and I had to sit on a luggage-truck for four hours. I couldn't have persuaded myself to get into the saloon carriage for a fortune! I couldn't go back home in the auto! I couldn't walk! So I stepped into the hotel. I've been here ever since."
"But when was this?"
"Three months ago. My doctors say that in another six weeks I shall be sufficiently recovered to leave. It is a most distressing malady.Mais que veux-tu?I have a suite in the hotel and my own servants. I walk out here into the hall because it's so large. The hotel people do the best they can, but of course—" He threw up his hands. His resigned, gentle smile was at once comic and tragic to me.
"But do you mean to say you couldn't walk out of that door and go home?" I questioned.
"Daren't!" he said, with finality. "Come to my rooms, will you, and have some tea."
A little later his own valet served us with tea in a large private drawing-room on the sixth or seventh floor, to reach which we had climbed a thousand and one stairs; it was impossible for Octave Boissy to use the lift, as he was convinced that he would die in it if he took such a liberty with himself. The room was hung with modern pictures, such as had certainly never been seen in any hotel before. Many knick-knacks and embroideries were also obviously foreign to the hotel.
"But how have you managed to attend the rehearsals of the new play?" I demanded.
"Oh!" said he, languidly, "I never attend any rehearsals of my plays. Mademoiselle Lemonnier sees to all that."
"She takes the leading part in this play, doesn't she, according to the posters?"
"She takes the leading part in all my plays," said he.
"A first-class artiste, no doubt? I've never seen her act."
"Neither have I!" said Octave Boissy. And as I now yielded frankly to my astonishment, he added: "You see, I am not interested in the theatre. Not only have I never attended a rehearsal, but I have never seen a performance of any of my plays. Don't you remember that it was engineering, above all else, that attracted me? I have a truly wonderful engineering shop in the basement of my house in the Avenue du Bois. I should very much have liked you to see it; but you comprehend, don't you, that I'm just as much cut off from the Avenue du Bois as I am from Timbuctoo. My malady is the most exasperating of all maladies."
"Well, Boissy Minor," I observed, "I suppose it has occurred to you that your case is calculated to excite wonder in the simple breast of a brutal Englishman."
He laughed, and I was glad that I had had the courage to reduce him definitely to the rank of Boissy Minor.
"And not only in the breast of an Englishman!" he said. "Mais que veux-tu?One must live."
"But I should have thought you could have made a comfortable living out of engineering. In England consulting engineers are princes."
"Oh yes!"
"And engineering might have cured your neurasthenia, if you had taken it in sufficiently large quantities."
"It would," he agreed quietly.
"Then why the theatre, seeing that the theatre doesn't interest you?"
"In order to live," he replied. "And when I say 'live,' I meanlive. It is not a question of money, it is a question ofliving."
"But as you never go near the theatre—"
"I write solely for Blanche Lemonnier," he said. I was at a loss. Perceiving this, he continued intimately: "Surely you know of my admiration for Blanche Lemonnier?"
I shook my head.
"I have never even heard of Blanche Lemonnier, save in connection with your plays," I said.
"She is only known in connection with my plays," he answered. "When I met her, a dozen years ago, she was touring the provinces, playing small parts in third-rate companies. I asked her what was her greatest ambition, and she said that it was to be applauded as a star on the Paris stage. I told her that I would satisfy her ambition, and that when I had done so I hoped she would satisfy mine. That was how I began to write plays. That was my sole reason. It is the sole reason why I keep on writing them. If she had desired to be a figure in Society I should have gone into politics."
"I am getting very anxious to see this lady," I said. "I feel as if I can scarcely wait till to-night."
"She will probably be here in a few minutes," said he.
"But how did you do it?" I asked. "What was your plan of campaign?"
"After the success of my first play I wrote the second specially for her, and I imposed her on the management. I made her a condition. The management kicked, but I was in a position to insist. I insisted."
"It sounds simple." I laughed uneasily.
"If you are a dramatic critic," he said, "you will guess that it was not at first quite so simple as it sounds. Of course it is simple enough now. Blanche Lemonnier is now completely identified with my plays. She is as well known as nearly any actress in Paris. She has the glory she desired." He smiled curiously. "Her ambition is satisfied—so is mine." He stopped.
"Well," I said, "I've never been so interested in any play before. And I shall expect Mademoiselle Lemonnier to be magnificent."
"Don't expect too much," he returned calmly. "Blanche's acting is not admired by everybody. And I cannot answer for her powers, as I've never seen her at work."
"It's that that's so extraordinary!"
"Not a bit! I could not bear to see her on the stage. I hate the idea of her acting in public. But it is her wish. And after all, it is not the actress that concerns me. It is the woman. It is the woman alone who makes my life worth living. So long as she exists and is kind to me my neurasthenia is a matter of indifference, and I do not even trouble about engineering."
He tried to laugh away the seriousness of his tone, but he did not quite succeed. Hitherto I had been amused at his singular plight and his fatalistic acceptance of it. But now I was touched.
"I'm talking very freely to you," he said.
"My dear fellow," I burst out, "do let me see her portrait."
He shook his head.
"Unfortunately her portrait is all over Paris. She likes it so. But I prefer to have no portrait myself. My feeling is—"
At that moment the valet opened the door and we heard vivacious voices in the corridor.
"She is here," said Octave Boissy, in a whisper suddenly dramatic. He stood up; I also. His expression had profoundly changed. He controlled his gestures and his attitude, but he could not control his eye. And when I saw that glance I understood what he meant by "living." I understood that, for him, neither fame nor artistic achievement nor wealth had any value in his life. His life consisted in one thing only.
"Eh bien, Blanche!" he murmured amorously.
Blanche Lemonnier invaded the room with arrogance. She was the odious creature whose departure in her automobile had so upset my arrival.