Chapter IX

[Being a further instalment of the Story from the pen of Paddy O’Connell.]

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

Dear Clara,--I address this to you from the Hôtel St. Paul, but I would have you to know that I am these two days at Poissy, which is a riverside hamlet at the gates of Paris. Harry is here with me, looking all his old self, and the little witch of a Greuze girl. We fish all day and catch nothing, and at night we listen to the singing when there is any. But, oh, my dear Clara, ’tis the oddest folk in the world which comes to this place, and no people for the back drawing-room at all. But that is between you and me, and need not be told to our neighbours at Glendalough.

Ye should know that the Seine winds about Paris, and is here a pretty river enough, with a bit of a feathery island and an inn, to which the Bohemians come when they are not playing at the theatres. Such a company they are! The prettiest women of Paris, dressed in collars and straw hats (and not always so much as that upon them), and the drollest figures of men that I ever clapped eyes upon. They spend the mornings upon the river bank or in their barges, fishing for gudgeons which they do not catch; but in the afternoons they go off to make love in the woods, and come back as brazen as the colleens from a fair. In the evenings we have dinner and music; and pretty enough it is to sit out in the moonlight and listen to these merry nightingales when they are in the mood to amuse us.

This is the outside of the platter, Clara; but the inside is not so pleasing by a long way. For one thing, I have discovered that the little simpleton Mimi is head over ears in love with my friend Harry, and he is not far short of that with her. And if this was not the worst of it, what should happen but that he had a visit last night from the very last person in Paris who ought to be seen with him, and she none other than the Captain’s wife, Lea d’Alençon.

Oh, ’tis a pretty business entirely, and enough to drive a sane man silly. I had believed that he was done with Madame Lea for good (as he ought to be, for her folly has got him into trouble enough). The weeks that have passed since the duel have hardly brought her name up betwixt us. I said that she was back with her husband, who would learn to treat her better; when what should happen but that she turns up at dusk last night, in a fine automobile with a nigger man driving, and is closeted a full hour with Harry to my certain knowledge. To say that I was angry is but to express my feelings poorly. You will be my judge in that.

It would have been about eight when Lea came. Harry had gone up from the boat to the hotel, and I was helping Mimi to carry up the tea things, for we had been for a bit of a picnic, and a merry one, forsooth. I saw the automobile and a veiled woman getting out of it; but the child was the first to recognise Lea, and she had no pleasure of the meeting, you may be sure.

“That is Madame d’Alençon,” says she, as pale as a little ghost when she said it.

“Madame who?” asked I, not wishing to believe it.

“Madame Lea,” cried she. “How could it be anyone else?”

“Oh, come,” says I, “there’s more than one Madame whom he knows in Paris.”

She stamped her foot, just like a wild beast scenting its prey.

“You know it is Madame d’Alençon, Mr. Paddy. Why do you not prevent it?”

“What! Shall I bundle her into the car and send her back to Paris? Pretty talk if I did that, my dear.”

“She has come here to beg money of him, Mr. Paddy. You know she would not come for anything else.”

“What!” cried I. “Don’t you think she is in love with him?”

She laughed at this, long and drolly, the laugh of a woman who is shaken by a passion she cannot express otherwise.

“Love--love--oh, what is all this talk of love? Go to her and offer money, and then come back and speak to me of love.”

“My dear,” says I, “’tis plain you will never be the friend of Madame Lea, in spite of what she’s done for you.”

“Done for me, Mr. Paddy! Oh, yes, yes, yes--she tried to prevent me seeing Monsieur Henry again. I remember that, and the English pension where I was to be locked up and treated like a school-girl, that she might be with him--her lover--while I was away.”

“Her lover! I’ll not have Harry called that.”

“It is true, true,” she said, “and I--I am nothing when she is here. Why did he call himself my friend at all? Why did he take me from the Fête? I was happy then--yes, happy, Mr. Paddy. Why did he not leave me where I was?”

She turned away from me and sobbed just for all the world like a grown woman who has come upon the supreme sorrow of her life. To be sure, Clara, I was much taken aback, and hardly knew what to say to her. Never until this moment had I understood how deeply she loved my friend, Henry Gastonard; but here was all her love written down in glittering tears which a child would have understood. No longer did I doubt the story of her virtue in a society where virtue is never much more than a jest. All that had happened up at the Butte and afterwards at the Hôtel St. Paul became as clear as the day. Mimi the Simpleton was ready to die for the devil-may-care English boy. I had guessed it before, but to-day I was sure of it.

“Oh, come,” says I, “’tis hearts that are soon mended when two have the will to do it--and, see here,” says I, “will ye be leaving him to the black woman who will ruin him, or take a hand in that affair yourself? Come up with me to the house now and hear what the lady has to say. I’ll engage that neither of us will be behindhand in the civilities--and, Mimi,” says I “’tis your duty to go up.”

Well, she would not hear me, but went off in a tantrum down again toward the river and the boat. When I entered the house I discovered Harry to be closeted with Madame Lea in the little sitting-room upon the first floor, and far from pleased she was to see me, as you will imagine. A very beautiful, stately woman, as dark as the shadows upon a crimson rose and as full of passion as a caged Spaniard. I observed immediately that she had been telling the old story to my friend Harry, and with no mean success; for he paced up and down like a wild beast thinking of the country, and seemed to welcome my intrusion as though a special providence had sent me to watch over him.

“You know Madame Lea,” says he, with a wave of his hand toward her.

“If I know her,” says I--and then, “I’ll take leave to ask a word after Captain d’Alençon and his health.”

She laughed at this, saying something in French about “these droll Irishmen;” but she did not inform me that the Captain was well, and, be sure, I was over-anxious about him.

“Is he in Paris, Madame?” I asked her. “’Twould be good news that he was in Paris.”

“Monsieur d’Alençon is at Chalons,” says she, blazing up suddenly; “he has been transferred there at his own request.”

“Then ’tis to Chalons that you’ll be going presently, Madame?” says I.

She did not reply to this, while Harry looked as foolish as a man can look when a woman has put a question to him and he has no mind to answer it. For my part, I was never more at my ease, and I sat there watching the fair-haired lad and the grown woman, and thinking that but for my presence in that same hotel, she would carry him to Paris with her for pity’s sake.

“Are you fond of the fishing at Poissy, Madame?” I went on. “’Tis little that they seem to catch here and a long while in the catching of it. I have taken one gudgeon this day, and my friend two more--but you will not have come here for the fishing, perhaps?”--I put it to her.

She answered me with a commonplace. Harry appeared to be greatly troubled while I spoke, and presently he could stand it no longer.

“Madame d’Alençon is in trouble,” he said, “I am sure you do not understand that, Paddy.”

“In trouble?” says I, “then that’s the worst news I’ve heard this day. Would it be about the Captain’s going to Chalons?”

“Captain d’Alençon has behaved like a blackguard, Paddy.”

“I won’t doubt it. Let me meet him soon that I may tell him so.”

“He has gone to Chalons and left this poor lady almost penniless.”

“Then let her follow him immediately and see that someone else hears of it.”

“She cannot follow him, Paddy. You are talking nonsense. We must put ourselves in her position and try to help her. I’m sure that there is not a man in Paris, who would be readier to do so than my friend Paddy O’Connell.”

I answered this at once--

“If it’s to me that she’s come for advice, why here I am as ready with it as the best of them. For all that, her coming was an imprudence, Harry, and she’ll allow me to say that she’d have done better to have stayed away.”

I said this in English, for I thought that she had no knowledge of a Christian’s tongue--but here I must have been mistaken, for she blazed up immediately, and said aloud that I had insulted her.

“Who is this man?” she asked him. “Why do you permit him to say these things? Is he your friend? No; a friend would not insult your friends. I wish to speak to you alone, Harry--have I not the right to ask that?”

“Certainly you have, Lea--Paddy does not mean what he says. He will understand everything better when I tell him about it afterwards. Come, Paddy (this to me), now do be reasonable for once, and put your philosophy in your pocket. I am sure you are very sorry for Madame d’Alençon.”

“So sorry,” says I, “that if I could meet the Captain this night, I’d put him in the river to show the good opinion I have of him.”

They laughed together at this, and then, to change a subject which was not by way of being too delicate, Harry spoke of dinner, and the lady was quick enough to say “yes.” No one in this country does much without eating or drinking before and after they do it; and a better ornament for a dinner-table than Lea d’Alençon you would not be finding anywhere. She is a stately, vivacious lady, living chiefly for the glory of showing herself to the gentlemen of Paris, and of making love to such of them as captivate her fancy. Here, at this little inn at Poissy, she cut a fine figure enough, and sat down to the table as though she were a queen of a mountain kingdom come down from the heights to dine with pigmies below. We sat and listened to her talk as humble ministers to an acknowledged wit; all of us, that is, but little Mimi the Simpleton, and she was silent enough but for one or two words of repartee that by no means discredited her.

’Twas as good as the leaping at the Horse Show, Clara, to watch the woman and the child upon opposite sides of that table, and to see the love that went flying between them. First, it would be Madame Lea talking to Harry with the grand air of the woman who finds herself in the nursery; then my little Mimi making such a grimace behind the lady’s back that I must hold to the table with both hands to prevent the explosion that was within me. When Lea asks her quite affably what she came to Poissy to catch, Mimi answers as readily, “I came to catch myself”--and when Madame went on to say “That is a new kind of amusement”--says Mimi, “You are not too old to learn it.” None the less, I knew the child was all on fire because Harry talked so much to the other one, and I was not a bit surprised when she ran away to her own room directly dinner was done, and refused to come near us for the rest of the evening.

This would have been about nine o’clock; Madame left us at a quarter to eleven when Harry had told her for the twentieth time that he was not returning to Paris, and that she must go back alone. I saw that his refusal caused her much chagrin, but I will do him the credit to say that it was just what I had expected of him. When she was gone, and we sat together for a last pipe before turning in, he asked me frankly what were his responsibilities toward this woman, and what he ought to do for her.

“The man has left her, you see,” says he; “he has made my friendship for her the excuse, and gone off with himself to Chalons. None but a jealous Frenchman would have planned quite such a devilish revenge as that. He doesn’t divorce her, doesn’t talk of a separation; but he leaves her in Paris without a sixpence, and then practises the moralities. Confess, my dear Paddy, that there is something particularly French and subtle in all this. Lea has been accustomed to all the luxuries. She is a woman who cannot live without them. Poverty to her is something beyond the bounds of imagination--a shadow-land too woeful to contemplate. And now d’Alençon thrusts poverty on her. He leaves her in a house of glass, whence she can see the pleasures to which she is accustomed, but is forbidden to take part in them. Two or three chosen servants are there to spy upon her. What alternative has such a woman if it be not an alternative of dishonour?”

“Ye speak truly,” says I, “and yet, if I were asked to name the biggest fool in Paris to-night, ’twould be this same Captain d’Alençon. The man cannot see further than the end of his nose, and that, I am sure, is no famous spectacle. Of course, he has no love for the woman left, and may be trying to drive her to those devices which he suspects, but cannot prove. Your own course is clear, Harry--you may help her if you can help her honourably. But you’ll not see her again, and you’ll deny yourself because you are a man of honour to begin with, and a lover in the second place.”

“A lover, Paddy? What do you mean by that?”

“Just as much as I say, and not a word more. You are in love with little Mimi upstairs--I’d cry shame upon you if you were not.”

He was taken aback at this, and did not answer me for quite a long while. When he spoke, I knew that I had touched his heart-strings, and that he would deny it no more.

“If it’s true, Paddy, what then?” he put it to me.

“Why,” says I, “you’ll leave for London in three days’ time; get honourable employment, which will save your fortune, and then come back to Paris to marry her--she, meanwhile, having been at some good school to soften the manners of her.”

“Do you think they want softening, Paddy?”

“I’m sure of it. Put all this talk of play-actresses and opera singers out of your head and come down to the truth. Mimi will make you a good wife… but you’ll have to teach her how.”

“She’d never stop at any school, Paddy.”

“Try her and see; and, directly it’s done, go back to London and work for your living.”

“Ah,” says he, rising abruptly, “it’s a fine old philosopher come out of Ireland after all. Well, my boy, I’ll ask Mimi in the morning, and hear what she has to say about it.”

“And you’ll not see the other woman again?”

“Not of my own volition, Paddy… upon my honour, no.”

“Ah,” says I, “and a fine old friend is that same volition when ye begin to weigh it up and a pretty woman’s in the balance. But I’ll take what I can get,” says I, “and be thankful it’s no less.”

Upon which, Clara, we parted; but how the promise is to be carried out, or what the future of such a man may be, God only knows. Now, at the very minute of closing this letter, I learn that Mimi La Godiche has left the hotel early this morning, and is nowhere to be found. Such a thing was not wholly unexpected by me; but what it may mean to my friend Harry Gastonard, I prefer not to think.

Never was a man in such a state of misery and despair. I can do nothing for him, say nothing, think of nothing. The child has gone, and there’s an end of it. But God keep her wherever she may be is the prayer of, your affectionate brother,

Paddy.