To-morrow? Part 10

"It will make no difference," she murmured, and nothing more.

After all, I don't know that I cared very greatly about the letters. It was Lucia herself that I wanted--nothing less. It gives me very little pleasure to read a letter, and I never have understood the cherishing locks of hair and dead roses business.

The desire for the presence of the living personality is too sharp-edged to let me feel satisfaction in subst.i.tutory objects and vague a.s.sociations. To have put my hand round Lucia's living throat; yes, that would have been a keen delight, but I was not dead set on possessing myself of her handkerchief that I might kiss in private. I had one portrait of her--that was all--and that I rarely looked at.

The first thing I did in Paris was to find a translator for Howard's poem, which, after a time, appeared in one of the literary papers in its French dress, and returned to its original t.i.tle. He came to me suddenly one evening with a contemporary paper in his hand, and the flush of gratified talent, and the pride that is its first cousin, kindling in his face.

"Look here, Vic!" he said; "isn't this first-cla.s.s? Here's a critique on my verses, and just see how they crack them up!"

I took the paper and read the paragraph, Howard leaning over my shoulder and resting his knee on the arm of my chair. When I had finished I looked up at him.

"Not a word more than it deserves, old man!" I said. "Now you realise, don't you, what you can be and do if you choose!"

"Yes. Well, really, if all that's true, I ought to make some sort of a name some day, eh?"

And for a time it seemed that a lasting impression had been made upon him. He seemed to feel that elation and enthusiasm stir in him which makes it a joy to the genius to renounce all for his work. With regard to my own ma.n.u.scripts, I sent some of them, in English, to one of the French publishing firms, and there ensued a blank of three weeks. At the end of that time I received a peremptory note inviting me to call at their office. When I presented myself I was shown into a bare, square room, where an august little man was standing, using a silver toothpick. He was short, with a large-sized lower chest; bald, with a short, grey beard cut to a sharp point; waxed moustache ends, sticking out ferociously; and brown eyes, keen with intelligence. He bowed elaborately.

I could speak French, he supposed.

I a.s.sented, and the conversation then went on very fast.

Monsieur's works had been read by their Anglo-French reader and highly approved. There was no doubt that Monsieur possessed a talent, a talent that he would say was--colossal. At the same time, these works were all too English in tone to catch the taste of the Parisian world, and Monsieur had seemed to put a restraint upon his pen, that rendered his works a touch too cold.

Great heavens! how I raised my eyebrows at that; remembering that in England I had been always rejected on account of being too warm.

Now, his proposition was this:--If Monsieur felt disposed to write a ma.n.u.script, in which the scene should be laid in France, and some of the characters, at least, be French, and also allow himself a little greater lat.i.tude, then he should be delighted to put the ma.n.u.script in the hands of their very best translator, and give it out to an audience that, above all things, admired vigour.

I heard all this with satisfaction. The offer meant a lot more work for me, but I did not mind that, with success--dear success--in view. I closed with his proposition at once, and after some formalities and details had been gone into and settled, I rushed home to tell Howard.

So, for a time, settled into working intellectual grooves, our life ran on quietly from day to day with a fair prospect on ahead of us.

And then came an unlucky incident which jerked the wheels of Howard's existence out of the narrow, hard line of effort, and after that they ran along anyhow, sometimes on and sometimes off it, and kept me in dread of a total smash. The Champs Elysees were full of the late afternoon sunlight, and we sauntered slowly, criticising the occupants of the various carriages rolling up to the great arch of Napoleon, and arguing in a broken, desultory way on our usual subject of talk--literature.

Howard was on the outside, nearest the road, walking on the actual kerb, and flicking up the leaves in the gutter, as he talked, with the point of his cane. As we strolled, with our eyes more or less directed on the string of vehicles moving in the centre of the sunny road, we noticed one small, black brougham going the same way as ourselves, that seemed conspicuous by being closed amongst the rest of the open victorias. Suddenly it detached itself from the line of other carriages and dashed up alongside of the pavement where we were walking. Its wheels ground in the gutter, and I caught Howard's arm to draw him more on to the pavement.

"Look out!" I exclaimed. "What a way to drive!" I added, as the coachman whipped up his horses and drove on some fifty yards, close to the kerb. There he pulled up abruptly. The door of the brougham was pushed open and a woman got out. Such a figure it was that outlined itself in the sunny light, standing on the white trottoir, and with the vista of the Champs Elysees behind it--a form seductive in every line, with a fine hip, and a tiny arched foot that tapped the pavement impatiently.

"What's up?" I said to Howard. "Whom is she waiting for, I wonder?"

A few steps more brought us up to her, and then, to our astonishment, she turned fully towards me, and said in her own language,--

"Will you come and dine with me this evening, Monsieur? The carriage will take us home now!"

We both stopped short. There was a second of blank amaze, and the woman's face stamped itself on our startled vision;--the eyes, liquid and gleaming, behind a veil of black lashes; the smooth firm nose, with its raised and tremulous nostril; the oval of either cheek, with the damask glow in it; and the curled mouth of deepest crimson, with the essence of sensuous languor in its curve.

For a second we stared at it in the sunlight, and that second sufficed to let us take in the situation; and there was something in her words and tone of confidence, and something of authority in the way she pointed to her carriage, that annoyed me.

"Thank you! I only dine with my friends," I answered coldly.

I suppose she was not insensible to the contempt in my tone and eyes as I looked down on her, for her next words came in a more humble, ingratiating voice.

"Make me one of them, then, Monsieur!--at once;" and she smiled--a lovely smile on such a mouth. Howard stood in silence, staring at her.

I was very much amused and a little annoyed.

"You flatter me!" I returned, satirically; "but I have as many as I want already."

Howard broke in.

"Won't you extend your invitation to me?" he said, eagerly, and she threw a quick side-glance over him.

"I can't invite you both--at the same time!" she said, with a laugh and a little Parisian shrug; and then she looked at me again with a look that one would say was abominable or charming, according as one's particular mood at the moment was.

My mood was not such as to condemn it.

My next words were simply said for me, as it were, by my long habit of self-restraint.

"My presence is not in the question at all, to embarra.s.s you," I said, curtly, and added to Howard--

"We may as well go on."

But that was not at all his view.

"Ask me," he said, with his shaky French accent; "I'll come!" and he put his hand on her arm, with a glance that matched her own. She seemed pretty well indifferent which of us it should be, and she merely said imperiously,--

"Come, then!" and with a grimace over her shoulder at me, disappeared into her brougham again.

Howard would have followed instantly, but I seized his arm.

"What are you doing?" I said in English. "Is it worth it, Howard? You may regret it. She is probably some married woman!"

Howard wrenched himself free from me.

"Don't talk to me! I'm not the fellow to refuse a jolly good lark when it's offered to me!"

He flung himself into the brougham without another word, drew the door to after him, and they were gone, whirling up the Champs Elysees, leaving me standing on the kerb looking after the polished black back of the brougham receding and growing small in the distance.

"Well!" I thought, "if another fellow had told me this tale, I should have thought it a howler!"

The suddenness of the whole thing had taken my breath away, and I must have stood there many seconds in confused thought, in which a flexible form and arched foot took a prominent part.

When I roused myself I saw Nous was lying down beside me with the patience of a philosopher, and catching the flies that buzzed along the sunny pavement--to kill time.

I called him, and went on up toward the Arc.

"I couldn't have done otherwise," I thought. I knew I did not wish to have done otherwise. I knew I should say again exactly the same if the brougham were again before me, but yet--

"I want nothing now that I have my work on hand," I told myself, as the arched foot went on before me up the pavement.