The Cockaynes in Paris Part 11

I am no squeamish man, or I should have pa.s.sed a wretched life. The man who is perpetually travelling must bear with him a pliant nature that will adapt itself to any society, to various codes of morals, habits of thought, rules of conduct, and varieties of temperament. I can make myself at home in most places, but least in those regions which the progress of civilization, or the progress of something, has established in every capital of Europe, and to the description of which the younger Dumas has devoted his genius. The atmosphere of the _demi-monde_ never delighted me. I see why it charms; I guess why it has become the potent rival of good society; the reason why men of genius, scholars, statesmen, princes, and all the great of the earth take pleasure in it, is not far to seek; silly women at home are to blame in great part. This new state of the body social is very much to be regretted; but I am not yet of those who think that good, decent society--the converse of honourable men with honourable women--is come or coming to an end. I am of the old-fashioned, who have always been better pleased and more diverted with the society of ladies than with that of the free graces who allow smoke and indulge in it, and who have wit but lack wisdom. I was not in high glee at the prospect of accompanying Cos...o...b..rtram to his free dancing party.

They are all very much alike. The fifteen sous basket, to use Dumas'

fine ill.u.s.tration, in Paris, is very like the Vienna, the Berlin, or the London basket. The ladies are beautiful, exquisitely dressed, vivacious, and, early in the evening, well-mannered. At the outset you might think yourself at your emba.s.sy; at the close you catch yourself hoping you will get away safely. Shrill voices pipe in corners of the room. "_On sautera!_" People are jumping with a vengeance. The paint is disturbed upon your partner's face. Pretty lips speak ugly words. _Honi soit qui mal y pense;_ but then the gentleman is between two and three wines, and the lady is rallying him because he has sense enough left to be a little modest. A couple sprawl in a waltz. A gentleman roars a toast.

The hostess prays for less noise. An altercation breaks out in the antechamber. Two ladies exchange slaps on the face, and you thank madame for a charming evening.

The next morning you are besieged, at your club, for news about Aspasia's reception. She did the honours _en souveraine_; but it is really a pity she will not be less attentive to the champagne.

Everything would have gone off splendidly if that little _diablesse_ t.i.ti had not revived her feud with Fanchette. You are not surprised to hear that Aspasia's goods were seized this morning. The duke must have had more than enough of it by this time, and has, of course, discovered that he has been the laughing-stock of his friends for a long time past.

Over the absinthe tripping commentary Aspasia sinks from the Chasusee d'Antin to the porter's lodge. A little _creve_ taps his teeth with the end of his cane, blinks his tired, wicked eyes, like a monkey in the sun, through his _pince-nez_, and opines, with a sharp relish, that Aspasia is destined to sweep her five stories--well.

Pah! What kind of discourse is all this for born and bred gentlemen to hold in these days, when the portals of n.o.ble knowledge lie wide open, and every man may grace his humanity with some special wisdom of his own!

Bertram, a ribbon in his b.u.t.tonhole, and arrayed to justify his fame as one of the best-dressed men in Paris, came in haste for me.

"We are late, my dear Q.M. This is not carnival time, remember. We jump early."

The rooms were--but I cannot be at the pains of describing them. The reader knows what Sevres and Aubusson, St. Gobain, Barbedienne, Fourdinois, Jeanseline, Tahan, and the rest, can do for a first floor within a stone's throw of the Boulevard des Italiens. The fashion in all its most striking aspects is here. The presents lie thick as autumn leaves. The bonne says you might fill a portmanteau with madame's fans.

Bertram is recognised by a dozen ladies at once. The lady of the house receives me with the lowest curtsey. No amba.s.sadress could be more _gracieuse_. The toilettes are amazing. It is early, after all Bertram's impatience. The state is that of a d.u.c.h.esse for the present. Bertram leaves me and is lost in the crowd. The conversation is measured and orderly. The dancing begins, and I figure in the quadrille of honour. I am giving my partner--a dark-eyed, vivacious lady--an ice, when I am tapped upon the shoulder by Cos...o...b..rtram. Bertram has a lady on his arm. He turns to her, saying--

"Permit me to present my friend to you, Madame Trefoil----"

"What! Mrs. Daker!" I cried.

Mrs. Daker's still sweet eyes fell upon me; and she shook my hand; and by her commanding calmness smothered my astonishment, so that the bystanders should not see it.

Later in the evening she said--pa.s.sing me in the crowd--"Come and see me."

I did not--I could not--next morning, tell Lucy nor Mrs. Rowe.

CHAPTER XIII.

AT BOULOGNE-SUR-MER.

I had an unfortunate friend at Boulogne in the year 1865--then and many years before. He lived on the ramparts in the upper town; had put on that shabby military air, capped with a naval _couvre-chef_ (to use a Paris street word that is expressive, as street words often are), which distinguishes the British inhabitant of Boulogne-sur-mer; and was the companion of a group of majors and skippers, sprinkled with commercial men of erratic book-keeping tendencies. He had lost tone. He took me to his club; nothing more than a taproom, reserved to himself and men with whom he would not have exchanged a cigar light in London. The jokes were bad and flat. A laid-up captain of an old London boat--sad old rascal was he!--led the conversation. Who was drunk last night? How did the Major get the key into the lock? Who paid for Todger's last go? "My word," said I, to my friend, who had liquored himself out of one of the snuggest civil berths I know, "how you can spend your time with those blackguards, surpa.s.ses my comprehension." They amused him, he said. He must drink with them, or play whist with another set, whose cards--he emphatically added, giving me to understand much thereby--he did not like. It was only for a short time, and he would be quit of them. This was his day dream. My friend was always on the point of getting rid of Boulogne; everything was just settled; and so, buoyed with a hope that never staled, death caught him one summer's afternoon, in the Rue Siblequin, and it was the bibulous sea captain and the very shady major who shambled after him, when he was borne through those pretty _Pet.i.ts Arbres_ to the English section of the cemetery. Wrecks of many happy families lie around him in that narrow field of rest; and pa.s.sing through on my state errands, I have thought once or twice, what sermons indeed are there not in the headstones of Boulogne cemetery.

I was with my poor friend in the December of 1865. I was on way home to pa.s.s a cheery Christmas with my own people--a luxury which was not often reserved for me--and he had persuaded me to give him a couple of days.

It would have been hard to refuse Hanger, who had been gazing across Channel so many weary months, seeing friends off whither he might not follow; and wondering when he should trip down the ladder, and bustle with the steward in the cabin, and ask the sailors whether we shall have a fine pa.s.sage. To see men and women and children crowding home to their English Christmas from every corner of Europe, and to be left behind to eat plum-pudding in a back parlour of an imitation British tavern, with an obsolete skipper, and a ruined military man, whose family blushed whenever his name was mentioned, was trying. Hanger protested he had no sentiment about Christmas, but he nearly wrung my hand off when he took leave of me.

It was while we were sauntering along the port, pushing hard against a bl.u.s.tering northerly wind, and I was trying to get at the truth about Hanger's affairs, advising him at every turn to grasp the bull by the horns, adopt strong measures, look his creditors full in the face--the common counsel people give their friends, but so seldom apply in their own instance--that we were accosted by a man who had just landed from the Folkestone boat. He wanted a place--yes, a cheap place--where they spoke English and gave English fare. Hanger hastened to refer him to his own British tavern, and, turning to me, said, "Must give Cross a good turn--a useful fellow in an emergency."

I returned with Hanger to the tavern, much against my will; but he insisted I should not give myself airs, but consent to be his guest to the extent of some bitter ale. Cross's new client was before a joint of cold beef, on the merits of which, combined with pickled onions, pickled by the identical hands of Mrs. Cross, Cross could not be prevailed upon to be quiet.

"Not a bad bit of beef," said the stranger, helping himself to a prodigious slice. "Another pint of beer."

Cross carried off the tankard, and returned, still muttering--"Not bad beef, I should think not--nor bad ale neither. Had the beef over from the old country."

The stranger brought his fist with tremendous force upon the table, and roared--"That's right, landlord; that's it; stick to that."

Cross, thus encouraged, would have treated the company to a copious dissertation on the merits of British fare, had not the company chorused him down with--"Now Cross is off! Cross on beef! Cross on beer!"

In a furious pa.s.sion Cross left the room, rowing that he would be even with "the captain" before the day was over. Hanger considered himself bound to ask the stranger whether he was satisfied with his recommendation.

"Couldn't be better, thankee," the stranger answered; "but the landlord doesn't seem to know much about the place. New comer, I suppose?"

"Was forty years ago," the old captain said, looking round for a laugh; "but he doesn't go out of the street once a month."

"I asked him where Marquise was, and be hanged if he could tell me. I want to know particularly."

The major glanced at the captain, and the captain at a third companion.

Was somebody wanted? Who was hiding at Marquise?

"Thought every fool knew that," the captain said, in the belief that he had made a palpable hit.

"Every fool who lives in these parts, leastwise," the stranger retorted.

"Perhaps you'll direct me?'

"Now, look you here, sir," the captain was proceeding, leisurely emphasizing each word with a puff of tobacco smoke.

But the stranger would not be patient. He changed his tone, and answered, fiercely--

"I'm in no mind for fun or chaff. I've got d----d serious business on hand; and if you can tell me how to get to Marquise, tell me straight off, and ha' done with it--and I shall be obliged to you." With this he finished his second tankard of ale.

Hanger, feeling some responsibility about the man he had introduced, approached him with marked urbanity, and offered his services--

"I know Marquise and Wimille."

"Wimille! that's it!" the stranger cried. "Right you are. That's my direction. This is business. Yes, between Marquise and Wimille."

"Precisely," Hanger continued, as we proceeded towards the door.

I heard the major growl between his teeth in our rear--"Hanger's got him well in tow."

I should have been glad to show the man his way, and leave him to follow it; but Hanger, who could not resist an adventure, drew me aside and said--"We may as well drive to Marquise as anywhere else. We shall be back easily for the _table d'hote_." The expedition was not to my taste; but I yielded. The stranger was glad of our company, for the reason, which he bluntly explained, that we might be of some use to him; for the place was not exactly at Marquise nor at Wimille. We hired a carriage, and were soon clattering along the Calais road, m.u.f.fled to our noses to face the icy wind.

The stranger soon communicated his name, saying, "My name is Reuben Sharp, and I don't care who knows it. Ask who Reuben Sharp is at Maidstone: they'll tell you."

Reuben Sharp was a respectable farmer--it was not necessary for him to tell us that. He was a man something over fifty: sharp eyes, round head, ruddy face, short hair flaked with white, which he matted over his forehead at intervals with a flaming bandanna; a voice built to call across a field or two; limbs equal to any country work or sport. In short, an individual as peculiar to England as her chalk cliffs. When he found that we knew something--and more than something--of the hunting-field, and that I knew his country, including Squire Lufton, to say nothing of the Lion at Farningham (one of the sweetest and most charming hostelries in all England), he took me to his heart, and told me his mission and his grief.

"I don't know how I shall meet him," Reuben Sharp said; "I'm not quite certain about myself. The man I'm going to see--this Matthew Glendore--has done me and mine a bitter wrong. The villain brought dishonour on my family. I knew he was in difficulties when he came into our parts, and took two rooms in Mother Gaselee's cottage. But he was a gentleman, every inch of it, in appearance. A d--d good shot; rode well; and--you know what fools girls are!"

I could only listen: any question might prove a most indiscreet one.

Hanger was not quite so sensitive. "Fools!" he cried--"they are answerable for more mischief in the world than all the men and children, and the rest of the animal creation put together."

"And yet no man's worth a woman's little finger, if you know what I mean," Reuben Sharp went on, struggling manfully to get clear expression for the tumult of painful feeling that was in him. "They don't know what the world is; you cannot make 'em understand. The best fall into the hands of the worst men. She was the best, and he was the worst: the best, that she was. And I sent him to her, where she was living like an honest woman, and learning to be a lady, in London."

"And who is this Matthew Glendore, whom you are going to see?"