Chapter V

[Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell telling him the story of a dinner and a challenge.]

Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
May 30th, 1905.

Dear Paddy,--This is to tell you that I go out with Bernard d’Alençon somewhere about daybreak to-morrow, and that when I write again, Paris will be in possession of a pretty scandal.

I am not joking, my dear Paddy. A more serious human being than Henry Gastonard does not exist in all this city to-night. I am to fight Bernard d’Alençon, and I am to fight him somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Bois at five o’clock to-morrow morning. The affair is as irrevocable as the sunset I have just witnessed from the Chalets du Cycle, where Mademoiselle Mimi has given me tea and recited, to the great astonishment of waiters and cyclists alike, the first lesson she received this morning from Pelletier, of the Conservatoire.

So, if you please, has this great question of the hour been settled. A woman’s shrewd opinion has backed up a mere man’s idea that something may be made of Mimi the Simpleton, something at least ventured in her interests. The suspicion that this chit of the _fêtes foraines_ may yet startle Paris is so much an obsession where I am concerned that I have willingly agreed to place her with Pelletier for twelve months and to see what comes of it. He is too clever a man to try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. He will train her for the Vaudeville or the Palais Royal, and if he cannot make a success of her, then is she lost indeed. She lodges meanwhile in a little English pension near the Louvre, and God help its inmates if she have the mind to misbehave herself!

Be sure that for me this is a closed book, and that I am very unlikely, when once this other folly is over, to see or hear of Mistress Mimi again. The whim of a moment has given her a chance in Paris; the whim of another will banish her from my recollection when, as must be, if I am not killed to-morrow morning, I set out to save my fortune from my cousin and to make those five hundred pounds per annum which will enable me to hold it.

You will remember, Paddy, that when last I wrote to you, I was about to dine in blessed seclusion with that amiable but charming woman Lea d’Alençon. Providence and a far from belle Americaine saved me from such an imprudence. The American lady, I understand, appeared just when Lea was wrestling with a refractory hat and an equally obstinate pyramid of her famous black hair. She carried a letter from Elise d’Alençon, the Captain’s sister, who is now in New York, and could not, in decency, be denied. What Lea said, or, better still, what she thought, I leave you to guess; but she covered her retreat by asking her cousin Emilie, who is madly in love with young Derogy of the Chasseurs, and by sending post haste for the cavalryman to join us. So we were five at the table instead of two, and we dined at Armenonville and not at the Cascade.

I was glad of this--frankly glad. Lea is too good a friend of mine that I should ever wish her to become anything else. And remember, Paddy, that virtue is as much a matter of opportunity and of accident as of the commandment, both written and unwritten. To you alone would I confess my belief that it had been her intention to bring matters to a crisis this night. Bernard was conveniently at Fort Valérien; her mother had gone to Tours to let their chateau to a Yankee from Vermont; I had come to her in a romantic mood and appealed to her upon the score of my interest in another woman--a sure passport to intimacy. And then upon the top of it all the lady from New York, Jenny Middleton she called herself, with an accent to butter your bread and the eye of the eagle as it soars. Oh, we were a merry party, be sure; and even cousin Emilie (who is married to a man of sixty as sour as vinegar and as yellow) made little of her cavalryman in such a presence.

You know the dinner at the Armenonville, as good as it is dear, as _chic_ as it is distant. We discussed London restaurants with our soup; the Verney scandal with our fish; the character of the American man with the entrée and Mimi the Simpleton with the ices. Mrs. Middleton, I observed, was much interested in the character of my _protégée_ and firm in her belief that I had made a fool of myself.

“She will go back to the lion-tamer in a month,” she said, “and leave you with the bill for a keepsake.”

When Lea began her dissertation upon virtue, the lady from the West joined in the merriment, and I perceived that here was an American who, like others of her countrywomen, had no interest in Paris virtuous but much in Paris of the vices. It was cheerful to be done with it all at last, and to begin that momentous return which might land me either in an infamy or, at the best, destroy my friendship with the charming Lea.

I say the fun began at Armenonville, and you will readily understand the nature of it. Lea did not disguise her intention to return in my cab--Emilie was equally insistent upon riding with the guardsman. For a little while we stood in the glitter of the lights, amid the most wonderfully dressed women in the world, scheming and planning to our different ends. First it would be Lea suggesting three cabs and a hurried departure--then the cavalryman gallantly volunteering to telephone for an automobile which would carry us all. Mrs. Middleton herself providentially had special designs upon me, and watched her prey with a feline patience beautiful to behold. When two cabs appeared, I put the agitated daughter of Venus in the first of them, and by a ruse got Lea and Emilie and the cavalryman into the second.

This was providential to be sure, if we may suppose Providence stoops to the mild intrigues of pretty Frenchwomen; for I may tell you that d’Alençon himself did not stop the night at Fort Valérien, but was back in his own apartment at half-past nine, and detected there by Lea just at the moment she was waiting for me to appear and take her to supper as I had promised. Ah, the dear soul, what a terrible five minutes she must have spent upon the pavement waiting for my cab! But a blessed destiny had sent me on with the Stars, to say nothing of the Stripes, to the gates of the Jardin de Paris, whence a messenger carried a hasty note back to Lea telling her of the impossibility of it.

Oh, these fair Americans! Do you know, Paddy, that if I were a man of genius, I would make the five hundred a year which my father’s Will demands just by catering for their naughtiness in Paris. Of course, the whole affair would have to be a sham, as unlike the true Paris as Bayswater is unlike London, and no more vicious than a magic-lantern show in a Sunday-school. Then I should catch the class which now visits that poor place the Jardin de Paris, net the fools who go to the Moulin Rouge because they ought not to go, and send them back to their native land as happy as a “week-ender” who has seen the Louvre.

Mrs. Middleton, I discovered, had come to Paris to write a book upon French social customs. She assured me that it was imperative upon her to visit the music-halls. “I want to see the people play,” she said. “I guess they work pretty well the same everywhere; but it’s the national games I’m set upon.” When I pointed out to her that the lady who displayed hose to her fellow-countrymen at the Jardin de Paris was a Spaniard, and not a Frenchwoman, she insisted immediately on going to verify the fact. It was two in the morning before I got rid of her, and then I had to tell her that if she were shut out of her hotel the police would want to know the reason why.

So you see, Paddy, I neither dined nor supped with the charming Lea; and, once more having escaped those fascinating toils, returned at length to a welcome bed. When I awoke on the following morning the valet at the hotel informed me that Captain Berton, of the Engineers, desired particularly to see me, and upon the fellow being shown up, I learned in ten words that he had come to arrange this pleasantry with d’Alençon.

Perhaps, had I been clothed and in my right mind I should have answered him as he deserved, offered to punch the Captain’s head, and told his ambassador not to make a fool of himself. This, unfortunately, did not happen. Berton caught me when I was both tired and irritable, and I sent him headlong to Honoré de Villefort, that old rascal of a Chevalier who will never cease to remind me of his obligation. What is even worse, Paddy, I named pistols--and that is just the maddest thing your friend Henry Gastonard has done since he was born.

I am a fool--I know it. Often as I have desired to play in one of those gigantic farces they call an “affair of honour in Paris,” never did I contemplate standing up to a man with a pistol in my hand. Of course, I had no real cause of quarrel with Bernard d’Alençon, nor he with me. He is madly jealous of the charming Lea, and hates me like poison; if he can shoot me to-morrrow morning, he will do so.

But, Paddy, I shall, in very truth, have finished my French education when this is over, and be prepared to return to England and a sober life. It is true that there might be an accident--you may say the same every time you call a hansom cab--but, Paddy, if the fun should be spoiled and this man hit me, then I call upon you, as the oldest friend I have, to do what you can for my little friend of the Butte, and to remember that there is no one else in all Christendom who would give her sixpence if not--

Your friend,
Harry.