The Cockaynes in Paris Part 9

A very decided "no" was the answer.

"I shall find some little sleepy Italian country-place, where we shall lay up like dormice, and just give King Frost the go-by for once. Are you bound south?"

"Only to Paris--as prosaic a journey as any cotton-spinner could desire."

"Always plenty to be done in Paris," Daker said; "at least I have never felt at a loss. But it's a bachelor's paradise."

"And a wife's," I interposed.

"Not a husband's, you think?" Daker asked, turning the end of his moustache very tight. "I agree with you."

"I have no experience; but I have an opinion, which I have been at some pains to gather--French society spoils our simple English women."

"Most decidedly," said Daker.

"They are too simple and too affectionate for the artificial, diplomatic--shall I say heartless?--society of the salons. Their ears burn at first at the conversation. They are presented to people who would barely be tolerated in the upper circles of South Bank, St. John's Wood."

"You are right; I know it well," said Daker, very earnestly, but resuming his normal air of liveliness in an instant. "It's a bad atmosphere, but decidedly amusing. The _esprit_ of a good salon is delicious--nothing short of it. I like to bathe in it: it just suits me, though I can't contribute much to it. We Englishmen are not alert enough in mind to hold our own against our nimble neighbours. We shall never fence, nor dance, nor rally one another as they can. We are men who don't know how to be children. It's a great pity!"

"I am not so sure of that," was the opinion I uttered. "We should lose something deeper and better. We don't enjoy life--that is, the art of living--as they do; but we reach deeper joys."

Daker smiled, and protested playfully--

"We are running into a subject that would carry us far, if we would let it. I only know I wish I were a Frenchman with all my heart, and I'm not the first Englishman who has said so. Proud of one's country, and all that sort of thing: plucky, strong, master race of the world. I know it.

But I have seen bitter life on that side"--pointing to the faint white line of Dover--"and I have enjoyed myself immensely on that"--pointing to the growing height of Cape Grisnez.

I thought, as he spoke, that he must be an ungrateful fellow to say one word against the country where he had found the sweet little lady whose head was then pillowed upon his rough coat. I understood him afterwards.

He started a fresh conversation, after having made a tender survey of the wraps and conveniences of Mrs. Daker, who followed him with the deep eyes as he returned to my side with his open cigar-case, to offer me a cheroot.

"Do you know anything of Amiens?" he said. "Is it a large place--busy, thriving?"

I gave him my impression--a ten-year old one.

"Not a place a man could lose himself in, evidently," he joked; "and they've been mowed down rather smartly by the cholera since you were there."

I could not quite like the tone of this; and yet what tenderness was in the man when he turned to his young wife! "St. Omer, Abbeville, Montreuil, and the rest of the places on the line, are dreary holes, I happen to know. You have been to Chantilly, of course?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PIC-NIC AT ENGHIEN]

I had lost a round sum of money in that delightful place, where our amba.s.sador was wont to refresh himself after his diplomatic labours and ceremonials.

"I know the place," Daker went on; "I know Chantilly well. It wakes up a curious dream of the long ago in my mind."

"And Enghien?"

"_Comme ma poche._" Daker knew his Enghien well--and Enghien was profoundly acquainted with Daker. Daker appeared to be a man not yet over his thirtieth year. He was fair, full-blooded, with a bright grey eye, a lithe shapely build, and distinguished in air and movement withal. There were no marks upon his face; his eyes were frank and direct; his speech was firm and of a cheery ring; and emotions seemed to come and go in him as in an unused nature. Yet his conversation, free as it was, and wholly unembarra.s.sed, cast out frequent hints at a copious history and an eventful one, in which he had acted a part. I concluded he was no common man, and that, until now, the world had not treated him over well; albeit he had just received ample compensation for the past in the girlish wife who had crept to his side, and who, the swiftest runner might have read, loved him with all her soul. We all pride ourselves on our skill in reading the characters of our fellow-creatures. A man will admit any dulness except that which closes the hearts of others to him. I was convinced that I had read the character of Daker before we touched the quay at Boulogne: he was a man of fine and delicate nature, whom the world had hit; who had been cheery under punishment; and who had at length got his rich reward in Mrs.

Daker. I repeat this confession, and to my cost; for it is necessary as part explanation of what follows.

My conversation with Daker was broken by the call of a sweet voice--"Herbert!" We were crossing the bar at the entrance of Boulogne harbour. The good ship rolled heavily, and Herbert was wanted! When the pa.s.sengers crowded to the side, pressing and jostling to effect an early landing, and the fishwives were scrambling from the paddles to the deck, I came upon Daker and his wife once more. She glanced shyly and not very good-humouredly at me, and seemed to say, "It was you who diverted the attention of my Herbert from me so long."

"Good morning," Daker said, meaning that there was an end of our fortuitous intercourse, and that he should be just as chatty and familiar with any man who might happen to be in the same carriage with him between Boulogne and Paris. I watched him hand his wife into a basket phaeton, smooth her dress, arrange her little parcels, satisfy her as to her dressing-case, and then seat himself triumphantly at her side, and call gaily to the saturnine Boulounais upon the box, "Allez!"

I confess that a pang of jealousy shot through me. It has been observed by La Rochefoucauld that it is astonishing how cheerfully we bear the ills of others; he might well have added that, on the other hand, it is remarkable how we fret over the happiness of our neighbours. I envied Daker when I saw him drive away to the station with the gentle girl at his side; I knew that she was nestling against him, and half her illness was only an excuse to get nearer to his heart. Why should I envy him?

Could I have seen through his face into his heart at that moment I should have thanked G.o.d, who made me of simpler mould--a lonely, but an honourable man.

We were on our way to Paris in due time. At Amiens, where we enjoyed the usual twenty minutes' rest, Daker offered me a light. I saw him making his way to the carriage in which his wife sat, with a basket of pears and some _caramels_. The bell rang, and we all hurried to our seats. I remarked that, at the point of starting, there was an unusual stir and noise on the platform. _Messieurs les voyageurs_ were not complete; somebody was missing from one of the carriages. The station-master and the guard kept up a brisk and angry conversation, which ended in an imperious wave of the hand to the engine-driver.

The guard and the commissioner (who travels in the interest of the general vagrant public from London to Paris, making himself generally useful by the way) shrugged their shoulders and got to their places, and we went forward to Creil. Here the carriages were all searched carefully. A lady was inquiring for the gentleman. My French companions laughed, and answered in their native light manner; and again we were _en route_ for Paris. Past Chantilly and Enghien and St. Denis we flew, to where the low line of the fortifications warned us to dust ourselves, fold our newspapers, roll up our rugs, and tell one another that which was obvious to all--that we were in the centre of civilization once more.

It was dark; and I was hungry, and out of humour, and impatient. I had fallen in with unsympathetic companions. That half-hour in the waiting-room, while the porters are arranging the luggage for examination, is trying to most tempers. I am usually free from it; but on this occasion I had some luggage belonging to a friend to look after.

I was waiting sulkily.

Presently the guard, the travelling commissioner, and half-a-dozen more in official costume, appeared, surrounding a lady, who was in deep distress. Had I seen a gentleman--fair, &c., &c.? I turned and beheld Mrs. Daker. She darted at me, and I can never forget the look which accompanied the question--

"You were with my husband on the boat. Where is he?"

He was not among the pa.s.sengers who reached Paris. We telegraphed back to Creil, and to Amiens. No English traveller, who had missed his train, made answer. We questioned all the pa.s.sengers in the waiting-room; one had seen the _blonde_ Englishman buying pears at Amiens; this was all we could hear. I say "we," because Mrs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXCURSIONISTS & EMIGRANTS. _Sketches in Paris_]

Daker at once fastened upon me: she implored my advice; she narrated all that had pa.s.sed between her husband and herself while the train was waiting at Amiens. He had begged her not to stir--kind fellow that he was--he had insisted upon fetching fruit and sweetmeats for her. I calmed her fears, for they were exaggerated beyond all reason. He would follow in the next train; I knew what Frenchmen were, and they would not remark a single traveller, unless he had some strong peculiarity in his appearance, and her husband had a travelled air which was cosmopolitan.

He spoke French like a Frenchman, she told me; and he had proved, on the boat, that he was familiar with its idioms. I begged her to get her luggage, go to her hotel, and leave me to watch and search. What hotel were they to use? She knew nothing about it. Her husband hadn't told her, for she was an utter stranger to Paris. I recommended the Windsor (I thought it prudent not to say Mrs. Rowe's); and she was a child in my hands. She looked even prettier in her distress than when her happy eyes were beaming, as I first caught sight of them, upon Herbert Daker.

The tears trickled down her cheek; the little white hands shook like flower bells in the wind. While the luggage was being searched (fortunately she had the ticket in her reticule), I stood by and helped her.

"But surely, madam, this is not all!" I remarked, when her two boxes had been lightly searched. She caught my meaning. Where was her husband's portmanteau?

"Mr. Baker's portmanteau was left behind at Boulogne--there was some mistake; I don't know what exactly. I----"

At this moment she marked an expression of anxiety in my face. She gave a sharp scream, that vibrated through the gloomy hall and startled the bystanders. "Was madame ill? Would she have some _eau sucree?_" She had fainted! and her head lay upon my arm!

Unhappy little head, why stir again?

CHAPTER XII.

MRS. DAKER.

"You must come, my dear fellow. You know, when I promise you a pleasant evening I don't disappoint you. You'll meet everybody. You dine with me.

_Sole Joinville_, at Philippe's--best to be had, I think--and a bird. In the cool, the Madrid for our coffee, and so gently back. I'll drop you at your door--leave you for an hour to paint the lily, and then fetch and take you. You shall not say me nay."

I protested a little, but I was won. I had a couple of days to spend in Paris, and, like a man on the wing, had no particular engagements.

We met, my host and I, at the _Napolitain_. He knew everybody, and was everybody's favourite. Cos...o...b..rtram, once guardsman, then fashionable saunterer wherever society was gayest, quietly extravagant and sentimentally dissipated, had, after much flitting about the sunny centres of the Continent, settled down to Paris and a happy place in the English society that has agglomerated in the west of Napoleon's capital.

Fortunately for his "little peace of mind"--as he described a shrewd, worldly head--he was put down by the dowagers, after some sharp discussions of his antecedents, as "no match." There was the orphan daughter of a Baronet who had some hundred and twenty a year, and tastes which she hoped one day to satisfy by annexing a creature wearing a hat, and a pocket with ten times that sum. She had thought for a moment of Cos...o...b..rtram when she had enjoyed her first half-hour of his amusing rattle; but she had been quickly undeceived--Bertram could not have added a chicken to her broth, a pair of gloves to her toilette; so she shut up the thing she called a heart, for lack of some fitter name, and cruised again through the ominous gold rings of her gla.s.ses round the _salons_, and hoped the growing taste for travel might send her some one for annexation at last.

"We're jigging on pretty much as usual," Bertram said at Philippe's.

"Plenty of scandal and plenty of reason for it. The demand creates the supply--is that sound political economy?"