Mlle. Fouchette Part 53

He answered by a pressure of the hand. That was all.

"And now, then, monsieur," she observed, abruptly and with playful satire, "I'm going to eat. I'm sorry you are not hungry, but----"

"Eat? Little one," he joyously cried, "I can eat a house and lot!" He took her bodily between his hands, he who a moment before had been so weak, and tossed her as one plays with a child.

"For shame! There is no house here for you, but I've got a lot to eat!

There! No more of that, Monsieur Jean, or you shall have no supper!"

As he threatened her again with his exuberant spirits, she wisely but laughingly put the table between them. But she looked a world of happiness from her eyes.

From the extreme of mental depression Jean Marot was thus suddenly transported to the extreme of happiness and hopefulness. Simply because the life of the man whom he would have done to death, in his insane jealousy of a successful rival, had become precious, priceless, as that of the brother of his beloved. The conditions were desperate enough as they were. To have slain her brother would not only have rendered them hopeless, it would have condemned the survivor to a lifetime of remorse, unless, indeed, that life had not been happily shortened by the guillotine.

So they laughed, talked, ate, drank, and made merry, these two, taking no thought of the morrow until both the supper and the time necessary to dispose of it were consumed.

Jean lighted a cigarette that she gave him, and threw himself on the couch. Meanwhile, the girl, with the a.s.sistance of Poupon, got some hot water and washed the dishes, putting them one by one carefully back on the shelves in the wall. Finally the empty bottle found its place under the couch.

Then she discovered that Jean was sleeping soundly. He had succ.u.mbed in spite of rattling dishes and her talk, and slept the heavy sleep of physical exhaustion. The cigarette had fallen from his fingers half finished. His throat was still m.u.f.fled in her silken scarf, but she tried to see if the marks were still there. For fully a minute she remained standing over him, buried in thought. The old clock in the Henri IV. tower behind the Pantheon chimed eleven. She sighed.

"Very well!" she murmured. "Monsieur is right. He has no money, no keys, and he is weary. He shall rest where he is. C'est egal!"

With this philosophical reflection she immediately began preparation for retiring on her own account, completing this as if the monsieur snoring on the couch had no material existence.

"Voila!" said she, when she had drawn her curtains.

And in two minutes more she was as oblivious to the world as was Jean Marot.

CHAPTER XV

It would not be easy to define the sentiments or state the expectations of Mlle. Fouchette. Whatever they were, she would have been unable to formulate them herself.

Mlle. Fouchette was simply and insensibly conforming to her manner of life. She was drifting. She did not know where. She never thought of towards what end or to what purpose.

Those who know woman best never a.s.sume to reduce her to the logical rules which govern the mathematical mind, but are always prepared for the little eccentricities which render her at once so charming and uncertain. The Frenchwoman perhaps carries this uncertainty to a higher state of perfection than her s.e.x of any other nationality.

That Mlle. Fouchette was the possessor of that indefinable something people call heart had never been so much as suspected by those with whom she had come in intimate contact. It had certainly never inconvenienced her up to this time. To have gone to her for sympathy would have been deemed absurd. Even in her intense enjoyment of "la vie joyeuse" her natural coldness did not endear her to those who shared her society for the moment. As a reigning favorite of the Bohemian set she would have earned the dislike of her s.e.x; but this was greatly accentuated by her repute as an honest girl. The worst of these "filles du quartier" observed the proprieties, were sticklers for the forms of respectability. And Mlle. Fouchette, who was really good, trampled upon everything and everybody that stood in her way.

As to her income from the studios, bah! and again bah!

Then what was Mlle. Fouchette?

That was the universal feminine inquiry.

Mlle. Fouchette appeared to Jean Marot in a vaguely kaleidoscopic way as a woman of no account possessing good points. Sometimes she appeared to be cold, sly, vicious, and wholly unconscionable; again, good-hearted, self-sacrificing, sympathetic. But he did not bother about her particularly, though he covertly watched her this morning preparing breakfast. It was true, her blonde hair did not look as if it had been touched by comb or brush, that she wore pantoufles that exposed holes in the heels of her stockings, that her wrapper was soiled and gaped horribly between b.u.t.tons on and off its frontage; but, then, what woman is perfect before breakfast?

All this did not seriously detract from the fact that she had gone out of her way to look after him the day before. Nor did it explain that she had this morning invested herself with these slovenly belongings, taken in the demi-litre of milk that ornamented her door-k.n.o.b, gone down into the street for additional "pet.i.ts pains," added a couple of eggs "a la coque" to the usual morning menu, set Poupon to work on the cafe-au-lait, and was now putting the finishing touches to her little table in antic.i.p.ation of the appet.i.te of her awaking guest.

"Bonjour, my little housekeeper."

"Ah! bonjour, Monsieur Jean. Have you rested well? What a lazy man!

You look well this morning, monsieur."

"Oh, yes; and why not, mon enfant?" said he, straightening up somewhat stiffly.

"And your poor bones?" she laughingly inquired, referring to the improvised couch. "It is not a comfortable bed for one like monsieur."

"It is luxury unspeakable compared to the bed I had antic.i.p.ated early last evening. I never slept better in all my life."

"Good!" said she.

"And I'm hungry."

"Better!" said she. "Here is a clean towel and here is water," showing him her modest toilet arrangement, "and here is pet.i.te Poupon scolding----"

"'Poupon'? 'scolding'?"

"Yes, monsieur. Have you, then, forgotten poor little Poupon? For shame!" With mock indignation.

She took the small blue teakettle, which had already begun to "scold,"

and, stooping over the hearth, made the coffee. She then dropped the two eggs in the same teakettle and consulted the clock.

"Hard or soft?" she asked.

"Minute and a half," he replied in the folds of the towel.

She was pouring the coffee back through the strainer in order to get the full strength of it, though it already looked as black as tar and strong enough to float an iron wedge. At the same time she saw him before her gla.s.s attentively examining the marks on his throat, now even more distinctly red than on the night before. But she knew instinctively that his thoughts were not of his own, but of another neck.

Breakfast was not the lively repast of the previous evening. In the best of circ.u.mstances breakfast is a pessimistic meal. The world never looks the same as it appeared at yesterday's dinner.

Jean had risen to a falling barometer. The first ebullition of joy at having been spared the slaughter of his friend and the brother of the girl he loved had pa.s.sed and the real future stared him in the face.

He began to entertain doubts as to whether a single glance from a pair of blue eyes was a solid foundation for the magnificent edifice he had erected thereon. But Jean Marot was intensely egoist and was p.r.o.ne to regard that which he wanted as already his.

Mlle. Fouchette was facing the same question on her own account,--a fact which she concealed from both as far as possible by making herself believe it was his affair exclusively. As it is always easier to grapple with the difficulties of others than with our own, she soon found means to encourage her illusion.

"Mademoiselle?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"You are not at all a woman----"

"What, then, monsieur, if I am not----"

"Wait! I mean not at all like other women," he hastily interposed.

"Par exemple?"