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

"What other things?"

"Your luggage--your great coat--your umbrella."

"Why, at Melford," said he with an air of surprise. "Where else should they be?"

I had thought that no action of Paragot could astonish me. I was wrong. I stared at him as stupefied as ever.

"Usually people travel with their luggage," said I, foolishly.

"They are usual people, my son. I am not one of them. It came to a point when I must either expire or go. I decided not to expire. These things are done all in a flash. I was walking in the garden. It was last Sunday afternoon--I remember now: a sodden November day. Imagine a sodden November Sunday afternoon English country-town garden. Joanna was at a children's service. Ah, mon Dieu! The desolation of that Sunday afternoon! The death, my son, that was in the air! Ah! I choked, I struggled. The garden-wall, the leaden sky closed in upon me. I walked out. I came back to Paris."

"Just like that?" I murmured.

"Just like that," said he. "You may have noticed, my son, that I am a man of swift decisions and prompt action. I walked to the Railway Station. A providential London train was expected in five minutes. I took it. Voilà."

"Did you stay long in London?" I asked by way of saying something; for he began to pace up and down the room.

"Did I see anything worth seeing at the theatres? And did I have a good crossing? My little Asticot, I perceive you have become an adept at conventional conversation. If you can't say something original I shall go back to Bubu le Vainqueur, whose society for the last three days has afforded me infinite delectation. Although his views of life may be what Melford would call depraved, at any rate they are first-hand. He does not waste his time in futile politeness." Suddenly he paused, and seized me by the shoulder and shook me, as he had often done before. "Creep out of that shell of gentility, you little hermit-crab," he cried, "and tell me how you would like to live in Melford for the rest of your natural life."

"I shouldn't like it at all," said I.

"Then, how do you expect me to have liked it?"

Blanquette entered with the great white coffee jug and some thick cups and set the tray on the oilskin-covered table. Seeing Paragot in his grubby shirt-sleeves, she looked around, with her housewifely instinct of tidiness, for the discarded garments.

"Where are--"

"Gone," he shouted, waving his arms. "Cast into the flames, and rent in twain, and scattered to the winds of Heaven."

He laughed, seeing that she did not understand, and poured out a jorum of coffee.

"The farcical comedy is over, Blanquette," said he gently, "I'm a Monsieur no longer, do you see? We are going to live just as we did before you went away in the summer, and I am not going to be married. I am going to live with my little Blanquette for ever and ever in sæculo sæculorum, amen."

She turned as white as the coffee jug. I thought she was about to faint and caught her in my arms. She did not faint, but burying her head against my shoulder burst into a passion of tears.

"What the devil's the matter?" asked Paragot. "Are you sorry I'm not going to be married?"

"Mais non, mais non!" Blanquette sobbed out vehemently.

"I think she's rather glad, Master," said I.

He put down his coffee-cup, and laid his hands on her as if to draw her comfortingly away from me.

"My dear child--" he began.

But she shrank back. "Ah non, laissez-moi," she cried, and bolted from the room.

Paragot looked at me inquiringly, and shrugged his shoulders.

"The eternal feminine, I suppose. Blanquette like the rest of them."

"It's odd you haven't noticed it before, Master."

"Noticed what?"

I lit a cigarette.

"The eternal feminine in Blanquette," I answered.

"What the deuce do you mean?"

"She was jealous even of my friendship with Madame de Verneuil," said I diplomatically, realising that I was on the point of betraying Blanquette's confidences.

"It never struck me that she was jealous," he remarked simply.

He took his coffee-cup to the rickety sofa and sat down with the sigh of a tired man. I took mine to the chair by the stove, and we drank silently. I have never felt so hopelessly miserable in my life as I did that night. I was old enough, or perhaps rather I had gathered experience enough, to feel a shock of disgust at Paragot's return in volutabro luti. In what sordid den had he found shelter these last days of reaction? I shuddered, and loving him I hated myself for shuddering. Yet I understood. He was a man of extremes. Having fled from the intolerable virtues of Melford, with the nostalgia of the vagabond life devouring him like a flame, he could not have been expected to return tamely to the Rue des Saladiers. He had plunged head foremost into the depths. But Bubu le Vainqueur! The Latin Quarter was not exactly a Sunday School; very probably it flirted with Bubu's lady companions; but between Bubu and itself it raised an impassable barrier.

The idyll too was over. He had left my dear lady Joanna without drum or trumpet. As my destiny hung with his, I should never behold her adored face again. All the graciousness seemed suddenly to be swept out of my life. I pictured her forsaken, heartbroken, for the second time, weeping bitterly over this repetition of history, and including me in her indictment of my master. At nineteen we are all presumptuous egotists: if I mixed pity for myself with sorrow for Joanna and dismay for my master, I am not too greatly to be blamed. The best emotions of older, wiser and better men than I are often blends of queer elements.

The romance was dead. There was no more Joanna. I broke down and shed tears into my coffee-cup.

Paragot snored.

I SPENT the night on the sofa, as the only bed in the establishment belonged to Paragot. The next morning I took my scanty belongings to my old attic, which fortunately happened to be unlet, and left my master in undisturbed possession of his apartment. In the evening, calling to make polite inquiries as to his health, I found him still in bed looking grimier and bristlier than the night before.

"My son," said he, "the bread of liberty is sweet, but when you are starving you should not over-eat yourself. An old French writer says:

'Après le plaisir vient la peine, Après la peine la vertu.'

I've had the pain that follows pleasure, but whether I shall attain the consequential virtue I don't know. For the present, however, I am condemned to it against my will."

"How so?" I asked.

"I have a great desire to rise and seek the Nepenthe of the Café Delphine, but a whimsical fate keeps me coatless and hatless in a virtuous house. I am also comparatively shirtless, which does not so much matter."

"I'm afraid my things wouldn't fit you, Master," said I sitting on the edge of the bed.

"The only coat which the good Blanquette has preserved is the pearl-buttoned velveteen jacket in which I fiddled away so many happy hours."

"Why not wear it, until your bag arrives from Melford?"

"In Arcadian villages," he replied, "it commanded respect. In the Café Delphine I'm afraid it would only excite derision."

Presently a strong odour of onions gave promise of an approaching meal, and a little while afterwards Blanquette entered with the announcement that soup was on the table. Paragot rose, donned trousers and slippers and went forth into the salon to dine.

"Simplicity is one of the canons of high art. Life is an art, as I have endeavoured to teach you. Therefore in life we should aim at simplicity. To complicate existence into the intricacy of a steam-engine with white ties and red socks is an offence against art of which I will never again be guilty. It is also more comfortable to eat soup with your elbows on the table. N'est-ce pas, Blanquette?"

"Bien sûr," she replied, bending over her bowl, "where else could one put them?"

This pleased Paragot, who continued to talk in high good humour during the rest of the meal. Afterwards, he filled a new porcelain pipe, which Blanquette had purchased, and smoked contentedly the rest of the evening. Blanquette sat dutifully on a straight-backed chair, her hands in her lap, listening as she had so often done before to our inspiring conversation, and adding her word whenever it entered the area of her comprehension. If we had lectured each other alternately on the Integral Calculus, Blanquette would have given us her rapt and happy attention. This evening she would not have minded our talking English; the mere sound of the Master's voice was sweet: sweeter than ever, now that the other woman had been "planted there" (she thought of it with a fierce joy), and the master had come back to her for ever and ever, in sæculo sæculorum, amen. Like many peasant women of strong nature, she had the terrible passion of possession. In her soul she would rather have had the most degraded of Paragots in her arms, as her own unalienable property, than have seen him honourable and prosperous in the arms of another. Had she been of a nervous and emotional temperament there might have been tragedy in the Rue des Saladiers, and the newspapers of Paris might have chronicled yet another crime passionnel and the appearance of Blanquette before a weeping jury. But the days of tragedy were over. Paragot thundered invectives against insincerity in Art (we were discussing my famous mythological picture still on the easel at Menilmontant) and Blanquette beamed approval. She remarked, referring to my picture, that she didn't like so many unclad ladies. It was not decent. Besides, if they lay in the grass like that, they would catch cold.

"And they have no pocket-handkerchiefs to blow their noses," cried Paragot.

Whereat Blanquette's sense of humour being tickled she screamed with laughter. Narcisse sprang from sleep and barked, and there reigned great happiness, in which even I, still reproachful of my master, had my share.

"What a thing it is to be at home!" observed Paragot.

I had never heard him utter so domestic a sentiment.

"'After pleasure follows pain and after pain comes virtue.' This is virtue with a vengeance," I reflected cynically.

"Bien sûr," was Blanquette's inevitable response.

When she bade us good night, Paragot drew her down and kissed her cheek, which was an unprecedented mark of domesticity. Blanquette turned brick-red, and I suppose her foolish heart beat wildly. I have known my own heart to beat wildly for far less, and I am not a woman; but I have been in love.

"It is because you belong to me, my little Blanquette, and I am among mine own people. We understand one another, don't we? Et tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner."

When she had gone he smoked reflectively for a few moments.

"I never realised till now," said he, "the sense of stability and comfort that Blanquette affords me. She is unchangeable. God has given her a sense whereby she has pierced to the innermost thing that is I, and externals don't matter. She has got nearer the true Paragot than you, my son, although I