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Wonderful Year

<div><h1>CHAPTER XIV</h1></div> THEY had further talk together the next afternoon. A lost remnant of golden autumn freakishly returned to warm the December air. The end of the terrace caught a flood of sunshine wherein Lucilla, wrapped in furs and rugs and seated in one of the bent-wood rocking-chairs brought out from winter quarters for the occasion, had established herself with a book. The little dog’s head appeared from under the rug, his strange Mongolian eyes staring unsympathetically at a draughty world. Martin sauntered out to breathe the beauty of the hour, which was that of his freedom. He explained the fact when she informed him that Félise and Bigourdin had both left her a few minutes before in order to return to their duties. Martin being free, she commanded him to stay and entertain her. “If I were a good American,” she said, “I should be racing about in the car doing the sights of the neighbourhood; but to sit lazily in the sun is too great a temptation. Besides,” she added, “I have explored the town this morning. I went round with Monsieur Bigourdin.” “He is very proud of Brantôme,” said Martin. She dismissed Brantôme. “I have lost my heart to him. He is so big and comfortable and honest, and he talks history like a poetical professor with the manners of an Embassy attaché. He’s unique among landlords.” “I love Bigourdin,” said Martin, “but the type is not uncommon in these old inns of France—especially those which have belonged to the same family for generations. There is the proprietor of the Hôtel du Commerce at Périgueux, for instance, who makes pâté de foie gras, just like Bigourdin, and is a well-known authority on the prehistoric antiquities of the Dordogne. He once went to London, for a day; and what do you think was his object? To inspect the collection of flint instruments at the Guildhall Museum. He told me so himself.” “That’s all very interesting,” said Lucilla, “but I’m sure he’s nothing like Bigourdin. He can’t be. And his hotel can’t be like this. It’s the queerest hotel I’ve ever struck. It’s run by such unimaginable people. I think I’ve lost my heart to all of you. There’s Bigourdin, there’s Félise, the dearest and most delicate little soul in the world, the daughter of a remarkable mystery of a man, there are Baptiste and Euphémie and Marie, the chambermaid, who seem to exude desire to fold me to their bosoms whenever I meet them, and there is yourself, an English University man, an exceedingly competent waiter and a perfectly agreeable companion.” The divinity crowned with a little sealskin motoring toque which left unhidden the fascination of her up-brushed hair, cooed on deliciously. The knees of Martin, leaning against the parapet, became as water. He had a crazy desire to kneel at her feet on the concrete floor of the terrace. Then he noticed that between her feet and the cold concrete floor there was no protecting footstool. He fetched one from the dining room and had the felicity of placing it for her and readjusting the rugs. “I suppose you’re not going to be a waiter here all your life,” she said. He signified that the hypothesis was correct. “What are you going to do?” It was in his awakened imagination to say: “Follow you to the ends of the earth,” but common sense replied that he did not know. He had made no plans. She suggested that he might travel about the wide world. He breathed an inward sigh. Why not the starry firmament? Why not, rainbow-winged and golden spear in hand, swoop, a bright Archangel, from planet to planet? “You ought to see Egypt,” she said, “and feel what a speck of time you are when the centuries look down on you. It’s wholesome. I’m going early in the New Year. I go there and try to paint the desert; and then I sit down and cry—which is wholesome too—for me.” Before Martin’s inner vision floated a blurred picture of camels and pyramids and sand and oleographic sunsets. He said, infatuated: “I would give my soul to go to Egypt.” “Egypt is well worth a soul,” she laughed. Words and reply were driven from his head by the sight of a great splotch of grease on the leg of his trousers. A dress suit worn daily for two or three months in pursuit of a waiter’s avocation, does not look its best in stark sunlight. Self-conscious, he crossed his legs, as he leaned against the parapet, in order to hide the splotch. Then he noticed that one of the studs of his shirt had escaped from the frayed and blackened buttonhole. Again he felt her humorous eyes upon him. For a few moments he dared not meet them. When he did look up he found them fixed caressingly on the Pekinese spaniel, which had slipped upon its back in the hope of a rubbed stomach, and was waving feathery paws in pursuit of her finger. A moment’s reflection brought heart of grace. Greasy suit and untidy stud-hole must have been obvious to her from his first appearance on the terrace—indeed they must have been obvious while he had waited on her at déjeuner. Her invitation to converse was proof that she disregarded outer trappings, that she recognised the man beneath the soup-stained raiment. He uncrossed his legs and stood upright. Then he remembered her remark. “The question is,” said he, “whether my soul would fetch enough to provide me with a ticket to Egypt.” She smiled lazily. The sunlight being full on her face, he noticed that her eyelashes were brown. Wondrous discovery! “Anyhow,” she replied, “where there’s a soul, there’s a way.” She took a cigarette from a gold case that lay on the little iron table beside her. Martin sprang forward with a match. She thanked him graciously. “It isn’t money that does the real things,” she said, after a few meditative puffs. “To hear an American say so must sound strange to your English ears. You believe, I know, that Americans make money an Almighty God that can work any miracles over man and natural forces that you please. But it isn’t so. The miracles, such as they are, that America has performed, have been due to the naked human soul. Money has come as an accident or an accretion and has helped things along. We have a saying which you may have heard: ‘Money talks.’ That’s just it. It talks. But the soul has had to act first. Money had nothing to do with American Independence. It was the soul of George Washington. It wasn’t money that invented the phonograph. It was the soul of the train newsboy Edison. It wasn’t money that brought into being the original Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was the soul of the old ferryman that divined the power of steam both on sea and land a hundred years ago, and accidentally or incidentally or logically or what you please, founded the Vanderbilt fortune. I could go on for ever with instances from my own country—instances that every school-child knows. In the eyes of the world the Almighty Dollar may seem to rule America —but every thinking American knows in his heart of hearts that the Almighty Dollar is but an accidental symbol of the Almighty soul of man. And it’s the soul that we’re proud of and that keeps the nation together. All this more or less was at the back of my mind when I said where there’s a soul there’s a way.” As this little speech progressed her face lost its expression of serene and humorous contentment with the world, and grew eager and her eyes shone and her voice quickened. He regarded her as some fainéant Homeric warrior might have regarded the goddess who had descended cloud-haste from Olympus to exhort him to noble deeds. The exhortation fluttered both pride and pulses. He saw in her a woman capable of great things and she had appealed to him as a man also capable. “You have pointed me out the way to Egypt,” he said. “I’m glad,” said Lucilla. “Look me up when you get there,” she added with a smile. “It seems a big place, but it isn’t. Cairo, Luxor, Assouan—and at any rate the Semiramis Hotel at Cairo.” And then she began to talk of that wonderful land, of the mystery of the desert, the inscrutable gods of granite and Karnac brooding over the ghost of Thebes. She spoke from wide knowledge and sympathy. An allusion here and there indicated how true a touch she had on far divergent aspects of life. Apart from her radiant adorableness which held him captive, she possessed a mind which stimulated his own so long lain sluggish. He had not met before the highly educated woman of the world. Instinctively he contrasted her with Corinna, who in the first days of their pilgrimage had dazzled him with her attainments. She had a quick intelligence, but in any matter of knowledge was soon out of her depth; yet she exhibited singular adroitness in regaining the shallows where she found safety in abiding. Lucilla, on the other hand, swam serenely out into deep blue water. From every point of view she was a goddess of bewildering attributes. After a while she shivered slightly. The sun had disappeared behind a corner of the hotel. Greyness overspread the terrace. The glory of the short winter afternoon had departed. She rose, Heliogabalus, also shivering, under her arm. Martin held the rugs. “I wonder,” said she, “whether you could possibly send up some tea to my quaint little salon. Perhaps you might induce Félise to join me.” That was all the talk he had with her. In the evening the arrival of an English motor party kept him busy, both during dinner and afterwards; for not only did they desire coffee and liqueurs served in the vestibule, but they gave indications to his experienced judgment of requiring relays of whiskies and sodas until bedtime. Again he did not visit the Café de l’Univers. The next morning she started for the Riviera. She was proceeding thither via Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne and the coast. To Martin’s astonishment Félise was accompanying her, on a visit for ten days or a fortnight to the South. It appeared that the matter had been arranged late the previous evening. Lucilla had made the proposal, swept away difficulty after difficulty with her air of a smiling, but irresistible providence and left Bigourdin and Félise not a leg save sheer churlishness to stand on. Clothes? She had ten times the amount she needed. The perils of the lonely and tedious return train journey? Never could Félise accomplish it. Bigourdin turned up an Indicateur des Chemins de Fer. There were changes, there were waits. Communications were arranged, with diabolical cunning, not to correspond. Perhaps it was to confound the Germans in case of invasion. As far as he could make out it would take seventy-four hours, forty-three minutes to get from Monte Carlo to Brantôme. It was far simpler to go from Paris to Moscow, which as every one knew was the end of the world. Félise would starve. Félise would perish of cold. Félise would get the wrong train and find herself at Copenhagen or Amsterdam or Naples, where she wouldn’t be able to speak the language. Lucilla laughed. There was such a thing as L’Agence Cook which moulded the Indicateur des Chemins de Fer to its will. She would engage a man from Cook’s before whose brass-buttoned coat and a gold-lettered cap band the Indicateur would fall to pieces, to transfer Félise personally, by easy stages, from house to house. Félise had pleaded her uncle’s need. Lucilla, in the most charming way imaginable, had deprecated as impossible any such colossal selfishness on the part of Monsieur Bigourdin. Overawed by the Olympian he had peremptorily ordered Félise to retire and pack her trunk. Then, obeying the dictates of his sound sense he had asked Lucilla what object she had in her magnificent invitation. His little girl, said he, would acquire a taste for celestial things which never afterwards would she be in a position to gratify. To which, Lucilla: “How do you know she won’t be able to gratify them? A girl of her beauty, charm and character, together with a little knowledge of the world of men, women and things, is in a position to command whatever she chooses. She has the beauty, charm and character and I want to add the little knowledge. I want to see a lovely human flower expand”—she had a graceful trick of restrained gesture which impressed Bigourdin. “I want to give a bruised little girl whom I’ve taken to my heart a good time. For myself, it’s some sort of way of finding a sanction for my otherwise useless existence.” And Bigourdin clutching at his bristles had plucked forth no adequately inspired reply. The will of the New World had triumphed over that of the Old. All the staff of the hotel witnessed the departure. “Monsieur Martin,” said Félise in French, about to step into the great car, a medley, to her mind, of fur rugs and dark golden dogs and grey cats and maids and chauffeurs and innumerable articles of luggage, “I have scarcely had two words with you. I no longer know where I have my head. But look after my uncle and see that the laundress does not return the table-linen black.” “Bien, Mademoiselle Félise,” said Martin. Lucilla, pink and white and leopard-coated, shook hands with Bigourdin, thanked him for his hospitality and reassured him as to the perfect safety of Félise. She stepped into the car. Martin arranged the rugs and closed the door. She held out her hand to him. “We meet in Egypt,” she said in a low voice. As the car drove off, she turned round and blew a gracious kiss to the little group. “Voilà une petite sorcière d’Américaine,” said Bigourdin. “Pif! Paf! and away goes Félise on her broomstick.” Martin stood shocked at hearing his Divinity maligned as a witch. “Here am I,” continued Bigourdin, “between pretty sheets. I have no longer a housekeeper, seeing that Madame Thuillier rendered herself unbearable. However”—he shrugged his shoulders resignedly—“we must get on by ourselves as best we can. The trip will be good for the health of Félise. It will also improve her mind. She will stay in many hotels and observe their organisation.” From the moment that Martin returned to his duties he felt unusual lack of zeal in their performance. Deprived of the Celestial Presence the Hôtel des Grottes seemed to be stricken with a blight The rooms had grown smaller and barer, the furniture more common, and the terrace stretched outside a bleak concrete wilderness. Often he stood on the bridge and repeated the question of the memorable evening. What was he doing there when the wide world was illuminated by a radiant woman? Suddenly Bigourdin, Félise, the circle of the Café de l’Univers became alien in speech and point of view. He upbraided himself for base ingratitude. He realised, more from casual talk with Bigourdin, than from sense of something wanting, the truth of Félise’s last remark. In the usual intimate order of things she would have related her experiences of Chartres and Paris in which he would have manifested a more than brotherly interest. During her previous absence he had thought much of Félise and had anticipated her return with a throb of the heart. The dismissal of Lucien Viriot, much as he admired the gallant ex-cuirassier, pleased him mightily. He had shared Bigourdin’s excitement over the escape from Chartres, over Fortinbras’s prohibition of the marriage, over her return in motoring state. When she had freed herself from Bigourdin’s embrace, and turned to greet him, the clasp of her two little hands and the sight of her eager little face had thrilled him. He had told her, as though she belonged to him, of the things he knew she was dying to hear. . . . And then the figure of the American girl with her stately witchery had walked through the door of the salle-à-manger into his life. The days went on dully, shortening and darkening as they neared Christmas. Félise wrote letters to her uncle, artlessly filled with the magic of the South. Two letters from Lucilla Merriton decreed extension of her guest’s visit. Bigourdin began to lose his genial view of existence. He talked gloomily of France’s unreadiness for war. There were thieves and traitors in the Cabinet. Whole Army Corps were notoriously deficient in equipment and transport. It was enough, he declared, to make a patriotic Frenchman commit protesting suicide in the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies. And what news had Martin received of Mademoiselle Corinna? Martin knew little save that she was engaged in some mysterious work in London. “But what is she doing?” cried Bigourdin, at last. “I haven’t the remotest idea,” replied Martin. “Dites donc, mon ami,” said Bigourdin, the gloom of anxiety deepening on his brow. “You do not think, by any chance”—he hesitated before breathing the terrible surmise—“you do not think she has made herself a suffragette?” “How can I tell?” replied Martin. “With Corinna all things are possible.” “Except to take command of the Hôtel des Grottes,” said Bigourdin, and he sighed vastly. One evening he said: “My good friend Martin, I am feeling upset. Instead of going to the Café de l’Univers, let us have a glass of the vieille fine du Brigadier in the petit salon where I have ordered Marie to make a good fire.” The old Liqueur Brandy of the Brigadier was literally, from the market standpoint, worth its weight in gold. In the seventies Bigourdin’s father, during the course of reparations, had discovered, in a blocked and forgotten cellar, three almost evaporated casks bearing the inscription just decipherable beneath the mildew in Brigadier General Bigourdin’s old war-dog handwriting: “Cognac. 1812.” His grandson, who had lost a leg and an arm in 1870, knew what was due to the brandy of the Grande Armée. Instead of filling up the casks with newer brandy and selling the result at extravagant prices, he reverently bottled the remaining contents of the three casks and on each bottle stuck a printed label setting forth the great history of the brandy, and stored the lot in a dry bin which he charged his son to venerate as one of the sacred depositaries of France in the family of Bigourdin. Now in any first-class restaurant in Paris, Monte Carlo, Aix-les-Bains, you can get Napoleon Brandy. The bottle sealed with the still mind-stirring initial “N” on the neck, is uncorked solemnly before you by the silver-chained functionary. It is majestic liquid. But not a drop of the distillation of the Napoleonic grape is there. The casks once containing it have been filled and refilled for a hundred years. For brandy unlike port does not mature in bottle. The best 1812 brandy bottled that year would be to-day the same as it was then. But if it has remained for over sixty years in cask, you shall have a precious fluid such as it is given to few kings or even emperors to taste. I doubt whether there are a hundred gallons of it in the wide, wide world. The proposal to open a bottle of the Old Brandy of the Brigadier portended a state of affairs so momentous that Martin gaped at the back of Bigourdin on his way to the cellar. On the occasion of what high solemnity the last had been uncorked, Martin did not know: certainly not on the occasion of the dinner of ceremony to the Viriots, in spite of the fact that the father of the prospective bridegroom was marchand de vins en gros and was expected by Bigourdin to produce at the return dinner some of his famous Chambertin. “Come,” said Bigourdin, cobwebbed bottle in hand, and Martin followed him into the prim little salon. From a cupboard whose glass doors were veiled with green-pleated silk, he produced two mighty quart goblets which he set down on a small table, and into each poured about a sherry-glass of the precious brandy. “Like this,” he explained, “we do not lose the perfume.” Martin sipped; it was soft like wine and the delicate flavour lingered deliciously on tongue and palate. “I like to think,” said Bigourdin, “that it contains the soul of the Grande Armée.” They sat in stiff arm chairs covered in stamped velvet, one on each side of the wood fire. “My friend,” said Bigourdin, lighting a cigarette, “I am not as contented with the world as perhaps I ought to be. I had an interview with Monsieur Viriot to-day which distressed me a great deal. The two families have been friends and the Viriots have supplied us with wine on an honourable understanding for generations. But the understanding was purely mercantile and did not involve the sacrifice of a virgin. Le Père Viriot seems to think that it did. I exposed to him the disinclination of Félise, and the impossibility of obtaining that which is necessary, according to the law, the consent of her parents. He threw the parents to the four winds of heaven. He conducted himself like a man bereft of reason. Always beware of the obstinacy of a flat-headed man.” “What was the result of the interview?” asked Martin. “We quarrelled for good and all. We quitted each other as enemies. He sent round his clerk this afternoon with his account, and I paid it in cash down to the last centime. And now I shall have to go to the Maison Prunier of Périgueux, who are incapable of any honourable understanding and will try to supply me with abominable beverages which will poison and destroy my clientèle.” Recklessly he finished his brandy and poured himself out another portion. Then he passed the bottle to Martin. “Sers-toi,” said he, using for the first time the familiar second person singular. Martin was startled, but said nothing. Then he remembered that Bigourdin, contrary to his usual abstemious habits, had been supplied at dinner with a cradled quart of old Corton which awakens generosity of sentiment towards their fellows in the hearts of men. “Mon brave,” he remarked, after a pause, “my heart is full of problems which I cannot resolve and I have no one to turn to but yourself.” “I appreciate your saying so very much,” replied Martin; “but why not consult our wise and experienced friend Fortinbras?” “Voilà,” cried Bigourdin, waving a great hand. “It is he who sets me the greatest problem of all. Why do you think I have let Félise go away with that pretty whirlwind of an American?” Martin stiffened, not knowing whether this was a disparagement of Lucilla; but Bigourdin, heedless, continued: “It is because she is very unhappy, and it is out of human power to give her consolation. You are a gentleman and a man of honour. I will repose in you a sacred confidence. But that which I am going to tell you, you will swear never to reveal to a living soul.” Martin gave his word. Bigourdin, without touching on long-past sorrows, described the visit of Félise to the Rue Maugrabine. “It was my sister,” said he, “for years sunk in the degradation of drunkenness—so rare among Frenchwomen—it is madness, que veux-tu? Often she has gone away to be cured, with no effect. I have urged my brother-in-law to put her away permanently in a maison de santé; but he has not been willing. It was he, he maintains, who in far-off, unhappy days, when, pauvre garçon, he lifted his elbow too often himself, gave her the taste for alcohol. For that reason he treats her with consideration and even tenderness. Cest beau. And he himself, you must have remarked, has not drunk anything but water for many years.” “Of course,” said Martin, and his mind went back to his first meeting with Fortinbras in the lonely Petit Cornichon, when the latter imbibed such prodigious quantities of raspberry syrup and water. It seemed very long ago. Bigourdin went on talking. “And so,” said he, at last, “you see the unhappy situation which Fortinbras, like a true Don Quixote, has arranged between himself and Félise. She retains the sacred ideal of her mother, but holds in horror, very naturally, the father whom she has always adored. It is a bleeding wound in her innocent little soul. What can I do?” Martin was deeply moved by the pitifulness of the tale. Poor little Félise, how much she must have suffered. “Would it not be better,” said he, “to sacrifice a phantom mother—for that’s what it comes to—for the sake of a living father?” Bigourdin agreed, but Fortinbras expressly forbade such a disclosure. In this he sympathised with Fortinbras, although the mother was his own flesh and blood. Truly he had not been lucky in sisters—one a bigote and the other an alcoolique. He expressed sombre views as to the family of which he was the sole male survivor. Seeing that his wife had given him no children, and that he had not the heart to marry one of the damsels of the neighbourhood, he bewailed the end of the good old name of Bigourdin. But perhaps it were best. For who could tell, if he begat a couple of children, whether one would not be afflicted with alcoholic, and the other with religious mania? To beget brave children for France, a man, nom de Dieu! must put forth all the splendour and audacity of his soul. How could he do so, when the only woman who could conjure up within him the said splendour and audacity would have nothing to do with him? To fall in love with a woman was a droll affair. But if you loved her, you loved her, however little she responded. It was a species of malady which must be supported with courageous resignation. He sighed and poured out a third glass of the brandy of the Brigadier. Martin did likewise, thinking of the woman whose white fingers held the working of the splendour and audacity of the soul of Martin Overshaw. He felt drawn into brotherly sympathy with Bigourdin; but, for the life of him, he could not see how anybody could be dependent for soul provisions of splendour and audacity upon Corinna Hastings. The humbly aspiring fellow moved him to patronising pity. Martin strove to comfort him with specious words of hope. But Bigourdin’s mental condition was that of a man to whom wallowing in despair alone brings consolation. He had been suffering from a gathering avalanche of misfortunes. First had come his rejection, followed by the unsatisfied longing of the devout lover. It cannot be denied, however, that he had borne himself gallantly. Then the fading of his dream of the Viriot alliance had filled him with dismay. Félise’s adventure in the Rue Maugrabine and its resulting situation had caused him sleepless nights. Lucilla Merriton had taken him up between her fingers and twiddled him round, thereby depriving him of volition, and having put him down in a state of bewilderment, had carried off Félise. And to-day, last accretion that set the avalanche rolling, his old friend Viriot had called him a breaker of honourable understandings and had sent a clerk with his bill. The avalanche swept him into the Slough of Despond, wherein he lay solacing himself with hopeless imaginings and the old brandy of the Brigadier. But human instinct made him beckon to Martin, call him “tu” and bid him to keep an eye on the quagmire and stretch out a helping hand. He also had in view a subtle and daring scheme. “Mon brave ami,” said he, “when I die”—his broad face assumed an expression of infinite woe and he spoke as though he were seventy—“what will become of the Hôtel des Grottes? Félise will benefit principally, bien entendu, by my will; but she will marry one of these days and will follow her husband, who probably will not want to concern himself with hotel keeping.” He glanced shrewdly at Martin, who regarded him with unmoved placidity. “To think that the hotel will be sold and all its honourable traditions changed would break my heart. I should not like to die without any solution of continuity.” “But, my dear Bigourdin,” said Martin, “what are you thinking of? You’re a young man. You’re not stricken with a fatal malady. You’re not going to die. You have twenty, thirty, perhaps forty years before you in the course of which all kinds of things may happen.” Bigourdin leant forward and stretched out his great arm across the fireplace until his fingers touched Martin’s knee. “Do you know what is going to happen? War is going to happen. Next year—the year after—five years hence—que sais-je, moi?—but it has to come. All these pacifists and anti-militarists are either imbeciles or traitors—those that are not dreaming mad-house dreams of the millennium are filling their pockets—of the latter there are some in high places. There is going to be war, I tell you, and many people are going to die. And when the bugle sounds I put on my old uniform and march to the cannon’s mouth like my fathers before me. And why shouldn’t I die, like my brother in Morocco? Tell me that?” In spite of his intimacy with the sturdy thought of provincial France, Martin could not realise how the vague imminence of war could affect so closely the personal life of an individual Frenchman. “No matter,” said Bigourdin, after a short discussion. “I have to die some day. It was not to argue about the probable date of my decease that I have asked you to honour me with this special conversation. I have expressed to you quite frankly the motives which actuate me at the present moment. I have done so in order that you may understand why I desire to make you a business proposition.” “A business proposition?” echoed Martin. “Oui, mon ami.” He replenished Martin’s enormous beaker and his own and gave the toast. “A l’Entente Cordiale—between our nations and between our two selves.” Lest the uninitiated may regard this sitting as a dram drinking orgy, it must be borne in mind that in such brandy as that of the Brigadier, strength has melted into the gracious mellowness of old age. The fiery spirit that the cantinière or the vivandière of 1812 served out of her little waist-slung barrel to the warriors of the Grande Armée, was now but a fragrant memory of battles long ago. “A business proposition,” repeated Bigourdin, and forthwith began to develop it. It was the very simplest business proposition in the world. Why should not Martin invest all or part of his little heritage in the century-old and indubitably flourishing business of the Hôtel des Grottes, and become a partner with Bigourdin? Lawyers would arrange the business details. In this way, whether Bigourdin met with a gory death within the next two or three years or a peaceful one a quarter of a century hence, he would be reassured that there would be no solution of continuity in the honourable tradition of the Hôtel des Grottes. It was then that Martin fully understood the solemnity of the occasion—the petit salon with fire specially lit, the Brigadier brandy, the preparatory revelation of the soul-state of Bigourdin. The unexpectedness of the suggestion, however, dazed him. He said politely: “My dear friend, your proposal that I should associate myself with you in this business is a personal compliment, which I shall never cease to appreciate. But——” “But what?” “I must think over it.” “Naturally,” said Bigourdin. “One would be a linnet or a butterfly instead of a man if one took a step like that without thinking. But at least the idea is not disagreeable to you.” “Of course not,” replied Martin. “The only question is how should I get the money?” “Your little heritage, parbleu.” “But that is in Consols—rentes anglaises, and I only get my dividends twice a year.” “You could sell out to-morrow or the next day and get the whole in bank notes or golden sovereigns.” “I suppose I could,” said Martin. Not till then had he realised the simple fact that if he chose he could walk about with a sack of a thousand sovereigns over his shoulder. He had taken it in an unspeculative way for granted that the capital remained locked up behind impassable doors in the Bank of England. Instinct, however, restrained him from confessing to Bigourdin such innocence in business affairs. “If I did not think it would be as safe here as in the hands of the British Government, I would not make the suggestion.” Martin started upright in his chair. “My dear friend, I know that,” he cried ingenuously, horrified lest he should be thought to suspect Bigourdin’s good faith. “And you would no longer wear that costume.” Bigourdin smiled and waved a hand towards the dress-suit. “Which is beginning to show signs of wear,” said Martin. He glanced down and caught sight of the offending splotch of grease. The quick association of ideas caused a vision of Lucilla to pass before his eyes. He heard her rich, deep voice: “We meet in Egypt.” But how the deuce could they meet in Egypt or in any other Lucilla-lit spot on the earth if he started inn-keeping with Bigourdin, and tied himself down for life to Brantôme? A chill ran down his spine. “Eh, bien?” said Bigourdin, recalling him to the petit salon. Martin had an inspiration of despair. “I should like,” said he, “to talk the matter over with Fortinbras.” “It is what I should advise,” said Bigourdin heartily. “You can go to Paris whenever you like. And now n’en parlons plus. I feel much happier than at the beginning of the evening. It is the brandy of the brave old Brigadier. Let us empty the bottle and drink to the repose of his soul. He would ask nothing better.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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