Basil sighed. "I wish I had the recipe," he said; "try to get it from her. It would be particularly useful just now."
"Are you depressed, dear?" the girl asked.
"Horribly; things seem worse than ever. Oh, Ethel, darling, it is dreadful to say so, but I do not think we shall ever be married!"
"You are not to talk like that, Basil; it is perfectly ridiculous, and I won"t have it. Look at me. Am I depressed?"
"No," the man answered, looking wonderingly at her. "You have caught your mother"s mood. But the last time we were out together, if you remember, you were as sad as I. We walked about the Luxembourg Gardens for an hour bewailing our lot."
"Yes, and after dinner we were as happy as possible, and made all sorts of plans. We furnished the drawing-room that evening, I think--or was it the dining-room?"
Basil laughed, but there was no mirth in his laughter. "It doesn"t matter much," he replied, "but to-night I do not think I could take any interest in the attics of our Castle in Spain. For that"s what it is, dearest, at present, and that"s what I am sure it will remain."
"I have told you before, Basil, that you are not to talk like that. I simply won"t have it. _Entend-tu?_ Has anything happened to make you feel more despondent than usual?"
"Well, not exactly, and yet in a way there has, though it is only a little thing."
"Tell me, dear."
"Oh, only that Deschamps has suddenly grown quite extraordinary in his manner. You know what absolute friends we were?"
"I know," she nodded. "Have I not been horribly jealous of you two at times, sitting correcting exercises in that dreadful school in the evening, and thinking of you two men talking away together without anyone to interrupt?"
Man-like, Basil Gregory did not quite appreciate the underlying feeling in this remark.
"It has simply kept me alive," he went on, "and kept hope burning within me to be with Emile Deschamps. You see, our invention is just as much his as mine. We have worked it out together as if with one mind. Our interests are absolutely identical."
"But I don"t exactly understand what has happened, Basil."
"His manner has absolutely changed ever since last night, when we had quite an adventure, he and I."
"An adventure?" she asked quickly. "And what was that?"
In reply Basil told her the whole history of the fantastic night. He told it well, warming to the work as he did so, and she saw the picture unfold itself--the queer, bird-like little men, the huge workshop with its strange implements, the welcome hospitality.
"And then," he concluded, "it turned out that they were hereditary makers of the roulette wheels for the gambling at Monte Carlo. They have made them for ever so many years, and they were just employed upon the last wheel of all on that very night. They are going to resign their position. They have made sufficient money upon which to live, and a young nephew of theirs, who gambled at Monte Carlo with money that was not his own, and afterwards committed suicide, has disgusted them, very naturally, with the whole thing."
Ethel"s reply amazed him.
They were approaching the Rue Crois de Pet.i.ts Champs, and she stopped upon the pavement and positively clutched his arm.
"And will the wheel you saw actually be used at Monte Carlo?" she asked in a voice that had suddenly become almost breathless.
He nodded, too surprised to speak.
"And you touched it?"
"Oh, yes; I twirled the beastly thing round, if that"s what you mean.
But why all this interest?"
Again for a moment she answered nothing, though her face had grown suddenly pale from excitement.
"I cannot tell you," she said at length, "though it may seem strange to you. It is a sudden thought, that is all. And, oh, Basil, dear, I somehow believe that it is a good omen, that it means fortune for both of us. Oh, I"m certain of it."
"What a queer little darling you are!" he said, with a laugh at her earnest manner. "But we must not block up the pavement like this. Come along."
They went onwards to their destination, a quaint little restaurant known as the "Restaurant de l"Universe et Portugal," which they had discovered some weeks before, and where one could get a really excellent dinner for two francs fifty a head.
For the remaining three minutes of their walk neither of them said anything. Every pulse in Ethel"s body was leaping with excitement.
The coincidence was too strange. She was not more superst.i.tious than most people, though like most people she had an undefined though real belief in premonitions and omens. And in this case the wish was indeed father to the thought. She had been so carried away by the minor success of the ticket in the first instance, and by her mother"s plan in the second, that Basil"s story seemed almost a direct and miraculous confirmation of her hopes. When they were seated at their accustomed table in the corner of the quiet little restaurant, and a delicious _pot au feu_ was before them, she began to ply her lover with eager questions, making him recount every detail of the previous evening. He told her all that she wished to know, but suddenly she noticed that his face was still sad, and his eyes dreamy and introspective.
She remembered with a pang of accusation what he had been saying about Emile Deschamps.
"Oh, Basil," she said with pretty penitence, "here am I bothering you about last night, and you have not even told me what you were going to about Monsieur Deschamps. You said something had depressed you--some change in him?"
"Well, it has," the young man replied. "When we got home in the early morning to our hotel we neither of us wanted to go to bed, so we lit the stove and sat up in my room. I could not get Emile to say a word. He absolutely refused to discuss the events in the Rue Pet.i.te Louise. He scowled at me when I tried to draw him into conversation, as if I were trying to do him some injury. I have never known him like that. After about an hour I lay down on the bed and went to sleep, till they brought our morning coffee.
"About ten we walked to the works together. We have been there all day till just before I came to fetch you. Upon the way Emile was just as moody and brusque as ever. As he did not want to talk about those two kindly little men, I thought I would try another tack, and I began to discuss a detail of our invention. It is an improvement upon what we have already done, and at ordinary times such a thing would never fail to interest him."
"And didn"t he rise to that?" Ethel asked.
"Never a bit. And that disturbed me more than ever, for it is so unlike him. All day he has been the same. We usually go to _dejeuner_ together at a little cafe close to the works. This morning he positively refused to come with me, and, when I asked why, he insulted me. He was like a bear with a sore head."
"And you went alone?"
"Yes, and I have been alone ever since, and have been brooding over the position and got myself into a thoroughly depressed state of mind."
"Well, never mind, dear," Ethel replied, "get out of it now. How good this omelette is! And the wine, too; really, I think the _vin ordinaire_ here is better than anywhere else in Paris. Cheer up, old boy, because I am perfectly certain that everything is going to come right, and more quickly than you have any idea of."
She spoke the last words with meaning, and Basil looked at her, trying to read her face.
"Have you got something at the back of your mind, sweetheart?" he asked.
She nodded. She could not help it.
"There is something," she said--"a little something. I cannot tell you now, because it is not my secret, but wait and see. You will know more before long. For my part, I feel more happy and hopeful than I have been since our engagement."
For a moment he caught something of her gaiety. He lifted his gla.s.s, and drank. "To the future," he said, but the momentary animation flickered out, and it was a silent and sorrowful young man who kissed her farewell about half-past nine, at the corner of the street in which was the establishment for young ladies of the Demoiselles de Custine-Seraphin.
CHAPTER V
Gregory arrived at his hotel in the Latin Quarter about ten. Loneliness oppressed him, and he went to the couple of attics upon the top floor tenanted by himself and Deschamps. He hoped that the latter was in, and in a better mood. He wanted an explanation from him, and he was haunted by some half-formed fear that the Frenchman knew of some calamity that might be about to overtake them--that something had gone wrong, perhaps, with the great invention, or that their positions at the Societe Generale Electrique were jeopardised.