The Belovéd Vagabond by William J Locke (lightweight ebook reader .TXT) 📕

A week later, when I found my particular friend Ewing, whom as a tongue-tied Englishman I had relieved of many embarrassments, and for whom I had secured an easel, branding it myself in twenty places with his name, and for whom I had engineered a good position next to mine in the Life School--when I saw Ewing hugging Fanchette on the stairs, on the very landing sacred to my embraces, I knew that Paragot was right, and that Fanchette was just a fickle, naughty little model like the others. But if Paragot had not taken her measure before my eyes at Fontainebleau and made a figured drawing so to speak of her heart and soul, shewing their exiguous dimensions, I might have cast myself beneath the wheels of an omnibus like the pig Népomucène, or blacked the eyes of Ewing who was smaller than myself. As it was, I put my hands in my trousers' pockets and surveyed the abashed couple in Paragot's best manner.

"Amuse yourselves well, my children," I laughed, in French, and turned away heart-whole.

This is an instance of the wisdom of Paragot. He smiled on the vanity of my youth, and personally conducted me to the barrenness whither it led. In this particular case the result was more positive still. Ewing in admiration of my magnanimity at the time, and a fortnight later of my profound knowledge of women--for he in his turn witnessed the alien osculations of Fanchette--cultivated my friendship to the extent of urging me to spend some of the summer recess at his father's country vicarage in Somerset.

"But you'll have to get some other togs," said he, eyeing my attire dubiously. "If you come like that to church on Sunday, my governor would forget and want to baptise you. He was once a missionary, you know."

When I mentioned the invitation, Paragot insisted on acceptance.

"The Latin Quarter confers an exuberance of tone which conflicts with the reposeful ideal of manners required in the beau monde which I destined you to grace when I took you from the maternal soapsuds. You will find an English Parsonage exerts a repressive influence. But for Heaven's sake don't fall in love with Ewing's eldest sister, who, I am sure, is addicted to piety and good works. She will try to make a good work of you and thus all my labour will have been in vain."

In his heart, however, I believe he was immensely proud at having trained me to meet gentlefolk on more or less equal terms. Ewing's invitation was a tribute to himself. To fit me for church on Sunday and other functions of civilisation he took Ewing (as counsellor) and myself to a tailor's and plunged enthusiastically into the details of my outfit. I can see him now, shaggy and shabby, fingering stuffs with the anxious solicitude of a woman at a draper's counter.

"That's a nice country suiting. It expresses its purpose, suggests the right gaiety of mood. What says Arbiter elegantiarum?"

"Don't you think it might make the cart-horses shy?" says Ewing, and Paragot drops reluctantly the thunder-and-lightning check that has seized his unaccustomed fancy.

My wardrobe included a dress suit.

At Paragot's bidding, I donned it when it arrived, and on my way to him transfixed the Rue des Saladiers with awe and wonder. Upstairs, Paragot twirled me slowly round as if I were a mannequin on a pivot, and called Blanquette to admire, and uttered strange oaths in the dozen languages of which he was master. Was I not beautiful?

Blanquette admitted that I was. All that was most beautiful; without a doubt. I resembled the stylish people who went to expensive funerals. In fact, she added with a sigh, I was too beautiful.

She saw her brother Asticot transfigured into the resplendent gentleman beyond her sphere, and sighed womanlike at my apotheosis. She could no longer walk by my side, bareheaded, in the streets. The dress suit was a symbol of change detested by woman. She gave the matter however her practical attention.

"He ought to have patent-leather shoes," she observed.

"That's true," said Paragot, pulling his beard reflectively. "Ewing should have mentioned it; but I have noticed a singular lack of universality in the sons of English clergymen."

"And now my son," said he on the eve of my departure, "I too have the nostalgia of green fields and the smell of hay and manure and the fresh earth after rain. I have at last an inspiration. As this confounded ankle will not let me walk, I shall hire a donkey and let him take me whither he will. Narcisse shall accompany me."

"And Blanquette, will she trudge beside the donkey?"

"I have arranged for Blanquette to go into villégiatura at the farm of La Haye."

"With Monsieur and Madame Dubosc?"

"Your logical faculty does you credit, my son. They are most excellent people, although they could not tell me how many towers the Cathedral of Chartres possessed. You will remember an excursion we made on Sunday, and I lectured learnedly on the archæology of the fabric. My learning impressed them less than my skill in curing a pig according to a Dalmatian recipe. They will board and lodge Blanquette for ten francs a week and she will be as happy as Marie Antoinette while haymaking at the Petit Trianon. She will occupy herself with geese and turkeys while I shall be riding my donkey."

"Master," said I, "I only have one fear. You will adopt that donkey and bring it to live in the Rue des Saladiers."

Paragot laughed, drained his glass of absinthe and ordered another.

THUS the three of us were again separated. Blanquette was enjoying herself amongst the pigs and ducks of La Haye, whence she wrote letters in which her joy in country things mingled with anxiety as to the neglected condition of the Master; I led a pleasant but somewhat nervous life in Somersetshire, spending hours in vain attempts to reconcile the cosmic views of Paragot and an English vicar, and learning sometimes with hot humiliation the correctitudes of English country vicarage behaviour; and Paragot, his long legs dangling on each side of his donkey, rode, as I thought, picturesquely vagrant, through the leafy byways of France.

A fortnight after my arrival, however, he informed me by letter of his resolve to stay in Paris. He had failed to find an ass of the true vagabond character. The ideal ass he sought should be a companion as well as a means of locomotion. He would not take an urban donkey into the country against its will. To force any creature, man, woman, or ass, out of the groove of its temperament were a crime of which he could not be guilty. Then, again, Narcisse did not enter into the spirit of the pilgrimage. He laid his head along his forepaws and glowered sullenly instead of barking with enthusiasm. Again, when he announced his intention of leaving Paris, Hercule groaned aloud and Madame Boin wept so profusely that sitting beneath her counter he had to put up a borrowed umbrella. Cazalet too, and a few others too poor for railway fares, were staying in town. Also the Café Delphine had spoiled him for the horrible alcohols of wayside cafés. And, lastly, what did it matter where the body found itself so long as the soul had its serene habitations?

The letter depressed me. I was beginning to see Paragot with the eyes of a man. I felt that this inability to carry out an inspiration was a sign of decay. The springs of action had weakened. Though the spirit thirsted for sweet things, habit chained him to the squalor of the Café Delphine. When the quiet Somersetshire household knelt around the drawing-room for evening prayers, I speculated on the stage of intoxication at which my lonely master had arrived.

I was a million miles from speculating on what was really happening, and when I received a curt uncharacteristic note from Paragot a fortnight later begging me to return to Paris at once, a day or two before the formal expiry of my visit, it only occurred to me that he might be ill.

* * * * *

The crowded train steamed into the Gare Saint-Lazare at half past seven in the morning. I was desperately anxious to get to Paragot, and bag in hand I stood with a sickening feeling of suspense by the open door, waiting for the train to slow down. I sprang out. In an instant the line of porters were odd dots of blue in the throng that swarmed out of the carriages. I became a mere ant in the heap, and struggled with the others towards the barrier. After giving up my ticket, I set down my bag to rest my strained arm for a minute, and looked around me. Then I noticed a stranger approaching whose smiling face had an air of uncanny familiarity. Where had I seen the long gaunt man before? He wore a silk hat and a frock coat. My acquaintance with silk-hatted gentlemen in Paris was limited. I picked up my bag.

"Ah! My little Asticot," cried the stranger. "How good it is to see you."

I dropped my bag. I dropped my jaw. I would have dropped my brains had they been loose. This cadaverous image of respectability was Paragot--but a Paragot transmogrified beyond recognition even by me. His hair was cropped short. His face was clean shaven. On his transfigured head shone a flat brimmed silk hat. He wore a villainously fitting frock coat buttoned across his chest, with long wrinkly creases stretching horizontally from each button. His hands were encased in lemon coloured gloves a size too large for him. When he extended his hand even my bewilderment did not blind me to the half-inch of flat dead tips to the fingers. Beneath his arm was an umbrella--on a broiling August morning! He wore spats--in mid-summer! His trousers were fawn coloured. I could only gape at him as he wrung me by the hand.

"You are surprised, my son."

"I did not expect you to meet my train, Master," said I.

"If one could anticipate all the happenings of life it would lose its fascination. My son, go your way and do your duty, but believe in the unexpected."

"But what has happened?" I asked, again surveying his ill-fitting glory.

"The Comte de Verneuil is dead," he answered.

"Are you going to his funeral?"

"In these?" he cried holding up the lemon kids, "and this cravat?"

I noticed that he wore a floppy purple tie adorned with yellow spots, outside the lapels of his coat. It required more than two glances to take in all his detail.

"Besides," he added, "my distinguished patient was buried a fortnight ago."

He looked at me with an amused smile, enjoying my mystification like a child.

"You didn't know me."

"No, Master." I rubbed my eyes. "In fact I scarcely recognise you now."

"That is because I am again Gaston de Nérac," said he magnificently.

I had an idea that he must have come into the family fortune. But what had the death of the Comte de Verneuil to do with it? I picked up my bag again and walked with him to the exit. The hurrying crowd of