The Beach of Dreams Part 34

"Quite," said Madame de Brie half-heartedly, "but my dear Cleo, you will excuse an old woman for suggesting it, your generosity must be on its guard, he placed his hand on your shoulder, quite familiarly it seemed to me."

"Well," said the choking Cleo, "why should he not? I have slept with my head on his chest on a rock and I have stabbed a man who was trying to kill him. Between us we fought a whole crowd of Chinamen. He had a harpoon and I had a knife and we beat them and took their ship. Do you mind having the window a wee bit open? I feel rather faint."

"That's better," said she to the speechless other ones, "I'm so used to fresh air that I can't bear to be closed in."

"But my dear Cleo," suddenly broke out the old lady, "what do you intend to do with him?"

"Do with him? Nothing. He's my friend, that's all. Ah, here we are."

The car had drawn up in the courtyard of the Hotel.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

THE LEPER

Dejeuner had been prepared for the party in a private room, a big room, for there were twelve guests all told, including not only Cleo's friends but the business men, and the friends of Prince Selm.

But before thinking of dejeuner or anything else she had to see about Raft.

She left him standing in the hall whilst she interviewed the manager.

Actually, the business would have been easier for her had she brought with her an animal, even of the largest pattern. The manager, when he had caught a glimpse of the intended guest, revolted; not openly, it is true, but with genuflexions and outstretching of hands.

Where could this man be put, what could be done with him? The valets and ladies' maids would certainly not eat with him, the visitors would object to his presence in the lounge, the servants in the servants'

quarters. He was a common sailor man. Heavens! What a problem that manager had to face, something quite new, quite illogical, yet quite logical. He had heard of the wreck of the _Gaston_ and he was as interested in Cleo as a hotel manager could be. He understood the whole case when she told him that Raft had saved her life; he was a man of broad mind, but he knew intimately the mental make up of his servants, his visitors and their servants. He discussed the matter with Cleo quite openly and she saw the reason of all he said. Raft was "impossible" in that hotel. His heroism did not count a bit; it did with the manager who would not have to sit at table with him, it did not with the waiters and valets and ladies' maids who would have to a.s.sociate with him, or the guests whose eyes would be offended by his presence.

"He belongs to a ship," said the manager. Then he solved the question with a burst.

"I will look after him myself." He ran into the hall and called Raft to come with him; then, followed by Cleo, he led the way to a sitting-room, a most elegant sitting-room upholstered in blue silk.

"Here," said he to the sea lion, "will you take your seat and dejeuner will be served to you."

"I have to leave you for a bit," said Cleo, putting her hand on his arm, "I won't be long."

"I'll wait for you," said Raft. He was a bit amazed at all the new things around him and blissfully unconscious of trouble. He threw his cap on a chair and took his pipe from his pocket, the same old pipe he had lit that night on the ledge of the sea-corridor, then he produced a plug of tobacco, the same tobacco whose pungent fume had comforted her there, with the sound of the hungry sea coming through the dark.

Then he sat down on a silk covered chair and the manager and the girl went out.

"I will serve him myself," said the manager. "I understand; he is a brave man but very rough; the servants do not understand these things.

It is a difficulty, but after--? Mademoiselle--after?"

"After what?"

"After he has had his meal?"

She understood. After he had been fed he was to go. He could go, say, to a sailors' lodging house; she had heard of such things. Or, he would walk about the streets; the thing was quite simple. It was only right to give him a good meal and some money, a good round sum, seeing all he had done for her.

She was scarcely heeding the manager. She was viewing, full face, the truth that the manager had demonstrated to her clearly. Raft was impossible. She had had vague ideas of bringing him to Paris and giving him a room for himself in her house on the Avenue Malakoff. She had never thought of the servants, she had thought of her friends and that they would think her conduct queer. But she saw everything now quite straight and in a dry light. Raft was shipwrecked on a social state; to keep company with him she would have to renounce everything and live on his level; she could not treat him as a servant; even if she could, servants would resent him. He was not of their type, much lower, a labouring man from the sea. Not to lose him as he was to her she would have to enter the absolutely impossible and absurd, she would have to give up social life and make a world of her own with Raft. With a man whose setting was the sea, the wilderness, whose life was action, who was ignorant of art, philosophy, the convenances, who was a figure of scorn to every educated eye when caught against the background of Civilisation.

In three beats of a pendulum all this pa.s.sed through her mind.

Then she said to the manager:

"Quite so. I understand. I must thank you very much for your real kindness. I shall give this man a sum of money, and this afternoon you will be free of him. He can find shelter at a sailors' home--I have heard of such places."

"Oh, Mon Dieu! Yes," said the manager, vastly relieved, "and either I or Fritz, my head waiter, will serve him with his food. Fritz is a man of temperament and knowledge and I will explain to him."

He hurried off and she was left alone in the corridor.

She opened the door of the little sitting-room. The leper was seated hunched on his chair just as she had seen him sitting often on a rock; he was surrounded with a cloud of tobacco smoke.

She had seen the loneliness of Kerguelen but that was nothing to this.

Poor Raft. The very chairs and tables shouted at him; he looked ridiculous. How in her wildest dreams could she have entertained the idea of holding him to her, here?

He would have looked more ridiculous only that he looked, what he felt, forlorn. The place was beginning to tell on him, used to the rough and the open; the smooth and the closed were getting at him.

When he saw her he took the pipe from his mouth and pressed the burning tobacco down with his finger nervously, the same finger she had sucked once when parched with thirst.

She saw, as a matter of fact, that he was nervous, if the term could apply to such a huge and powerful organism, and the fear came to her that if left alone he might bolt before she could conduct him in person to the Sailors' Home.

Standing with the door held half open she nodded to him.

"I want you to stay here," said she, "till I come back. I have to talk to all those people you saw and I may be a couple of hours. That man will bring you something to eat--you don't mind my leaving you here?"

"Oh, I don't mind," said Raft "but you'll be wanting something to eat yourself."

"I'll get it."

"You'll come back, sure?"

"Sure."

She laughed, nodded to him, and closed the door. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, she was strangely worked up; a touch might have sent her into a storm of anger or a burst of tears.

In the corridor she met Madame de Brie who had been hunting for her.

"Cleo, they are waiting dejeuner for you--but, my dear child, you have not changed, has no one shewn you to your room?"

The old lady had not only brought along Cleo's maid who, with the rest of the servants, had been on board wages during her mistress's absence, but a trunk full of clothes.

"I am not going to change," said Cleo, "I am too busy--and too hungry--"

A reporter from the _Gaulois_ stopped her as she was turning towards the room, indicated by Madame de Brie, where dejeuner was to be served.