Chapter XVI

[Henry Gastonard gives a further account of his meeting with Mimi the Simpleton.]

The New Vicarage, Lowestoft,
August 8th, 1905.

Dear Paddy,--I was too seedy to write to you yesterday, nor did my good cousin’s chatter concerning the things of this world help me to get better. Arthur is the kind of man who buys in an earthly market and would realise in a celestial. He began to talk of motor securities this morning, and did not cease until he was called to the church for Litany--but he went with thunder on his brow, for little Martha insisted on shewing me the greenhouses meanwhile, and the man is as jealous as Othello.

You will readily imagine that I linger in this house chiefly for the comedy of it. I believe that Arthur would have told me to go this morning if pretty Martha had not cut in before him. “Arthur is so delighted to have you here,” says she, looking hard at him across the table, “there are so few educated folk in these parts that it is a real kindness for any friend to come and see him.” You should have seen the black looks he cast back at her. I do believe the poor man nearly choked himself with the toast he was eating.

I shall go over to the hotel at Yarmouth to-morrow, Paddy--later on, perhaps, from there to Cromer, where Mimi goes with the troupe. So much tells you in a word that I have not persuaded her to quit the gentleman of the cockney accent, or to forsake the delights of posing before an ignorant multitude as the Señorita Alphonsine. What is in her mind I do not know for any certainty. She understands, she must understand, that I have no interest in Lea d’Alençon, and never had. But a jealous woman, more especially when the Butte has taught her to be jealous, is one of the most incomprehensible of all mysteries, and such, I begin to fear, will our little friend Mimi remain.

I talked to her very frankly the other evening, perhaps as frankly as ever I spoke to her in all my life.

“You left me at Poissy because Madame Lea came there,” I said--and then I asked her--“Was that just, Mimi? Could I prevent her coming?”

To which she answered:

“You could have prevented it, Monsieur Henry. No woman goes to a man who does not wish to see her--she writes to him.”

I laughed at this. How like the Mimi of la Galette.

“Of course, old Georges Oleander taught you to say that. I remember it was one of his great, also foolish, sayings. Those were famous days, Mimi. I wonder what you would have said if I had forbidden you to see Mr. Barrymore or Count Charles, or any of the friends you used to know? Suppose I had been jealous, as I had the right to be----”

“But you, you, Monsieur Henry--you were not my lover; why should you be jealous?”

“Mimi,” said I, “we are going to forget the past just as we would forget a sad book that we have been reading. What is to prevent us? I shall never see Madame Lea again. If I saw her a thousand times, it would make no difference. You know that I love you, Mimi. How often must I say it to make you believe?”

The words moved her to some emotion. There is no more intelligent face in Europe than hers, none more beautiful; and I could see that the child was wrestling with some great temptation, unknown to me, and unconfessed.

“It would be folly to speak of it, Monsieur Henry,” she said presently; “I am not fit to be your wife. You are rich, and we are no longer at the Maison du bon Tabac. I tried to follow you out into the world, Monsieur Henry, but I lost you there--and I shall never find you again.”

“Mimi,” said I, “there has always been this between us. You call me rich, but in a few months’ time I may be poorer even than these people who employ you. Is not that enough for you? Shall I make myself poor to-morrow because riches keep you from me? Is that your wish, Mimi?”

“I know the truth,” she said quietly; “your great Irlandais told it to me. You are rich, and if you work you will remain rich. Do not believe those who tell you that the poor are happy, Monsieur Henry. That is what the rich say to defend themselves. Oh, do you think that I can be happy so far away from France and among these strange people? Would I not return to-morrow if I could do so?”

“You shall return, Mimi--we will go together.”

She laughed drolly, turning the pathos of it with the cleverness a born actress alone could command.

“To the Butte,” she cried, “on the high road? We will sup at the Lapin Agil and breakfast at the Capitol. That’s what I dream of when I dance before the people--but you are not in my dreams, Monsieur Henry; I think of a Paris which you have left--I do not see you any longer among my friends.”

“Because you yourself have determined that it shall not be so.”

“No--because you were not born of us; because you are an Englishman who has work to do in your own country. I am in my own world even in this poor place. It is not your world--it must never be so.”

* * * * *

This was the sum of it, Paddy, often repeated. This child believes that all my love for the Butte and its people is but a sham affection, that it will pass, that I am born to riches and position. She is clever enough to think that a marriage with me would be a false step, leading neither to her happiness nor to mine. All this fine philosophy of hers is no sounder than the bloom upon a flower. If I could conjure up the old house in Paris, people it with the old figures, recall the old precarious life, the days of poverty, the days of comparative riches, the empty cupboards, the chiding corks--if I could do this, and say, “Mimi, come back to me,” she would be in my arms in an instant. But she is afraid of her new situation; London has chilled her finest instincts--she can think of me but as the “great Monsieur Henry, of the Hôtel St. Paul.” And between me and her a great barrier is fixed.

How to combat this argument I know not. My threat to shed myself of my money is both idle and impossible--it is the word one whispers to a woman in an ecstasy of passion, and repeats with a shamed grin next morning. I feel, Paddy, that I could not support poverty--and yet here is poverty staring me already in the face, and promising, like the Devil in “Faust,” that he will have me some day. To you I put the problem, for God knows I can make little of it. Is there any way--any sane way--by which I can win this child’s love and make her my wife? Would it be a crime to do that? Am I a madman to be thinking of it at all? Write to me, old friend, and speak in plain terms. The Paddy of the old time was never ashamed to do that.

You may address your letter to the vicarage, for little Martha will see that everything is forwarded. I am tired already of this lantern-jawed cousin of mine, who nagged his wife for three hours last night because she would not turn me out, and prayed before breakfast this morning for charity. I heard them quarrelling; the wall was not thick enough to keep those dread sounds out--but she silenced him in the end, though how, I do not know. When next I saw her she was wearing a bearskin on her shoulders, and her hair was the colour of a terra-cotta house. They are to have the first dress rehearsal for the Pageant to-morrow--and Arthur, who has just preached another sermon against the theatre, is to be there with a megaphone.

God bless him! He is the poorest creature in Suffolk, though not in the least aware of the fact.--Dear Paddy, yours dolefully,

Harry Gastonard.