"By that dry, grey-whiskered gentleman who treats me as if I were a youth he would like to prepare for confirmation? And all these dreadful people to look on? My dear, doesn"t the thought of it chill you into the corpse of a Melfordian?"
"I should have imagined that so long as we were married the "how" would not matter to you."
"Quite so," said he. "Why does the "how" matter so much to you?"
"It is different," said Joanna. "It is right for me to be married here."
"We must do what is right at all costs," a.s.sented my master in an ironical note, which she was quick to detect. She swerved from his encircling arm.
"You would not be married under a bush like a beggar?" she quoted.
"I wish to heaven I could!" he exclaimed with sudden spirit. "It is the only way of mating. I would take you to a little village I know of in the Vosges, overhanging a precipice, with G.o.d"s mountains and sky above us, and not a schedule of regulations for human conduct within thirty miles, and Monsieur le Maire would tie his tricolor scarf around him and marry us, and we would go away arm in arm and the cow-bells overhead would ring the wedding peal, and there would be just you and I and the universe."
"We"ll compromise," said Joanna, smiling. "We"ll spend our honeymoon in your village in the Vosges after we are well and duly and respectably married in Melford. Don"t you think I am reasonable, Asticot?"
"My dear Joanna," said Paragot, "you have infatuated this boy to such an extent that he would agree with you in anything. Of course he will say that the Reverend and respectable Mr. Hawkfield is better than the picturesque Monsieur le Maire, and that a wedding cake from Gunter"s is preferable to the curdled cheese of Valdeauvau. He would perjure his little soul to atoms for your sake."
"I thought somebody else would too," whispered Joanna softly.
Paragot yielded as he looked down at her sea-sh.e.l.l face.
"So he would. For your sake he would go through h.e.l.l and the Church of England service for the Solemnization of Matrimony."
We were walking round and round the broad gravel path that enclosed the tennis lawn. Land was cheap in the days when the Georgian houses of the High Street were built, and people took as much for garden purposes as they desired. The gardens were the only truly s.p.a.cious things in Melford. There was a long silence. The lovers seemed to have forgotten my existence. Presently Joanna spoke.
"You must remember that I am still a member of the Church of England, and look at the religious side of marriage. It would be very pretty to be married by Monsieur le Maire, but I could not reconcile it to my conscience. So when you speak scoffingly of a marriage in church you rather hurt me, Gaston."
"You must forgive me, _ma cherie_," said he, humbly. "I am a happy Pagan and it is so long since I have met anyone who belonged to the Church of England that I thought the inst.i.tution had perished of inanition."
"Why, you went with me to church last Sunday."
"So I did," said he, "but I thought it was only to wors.h.i.+p the Great British G.o.d Respectability."
Joanna sighed and turned the conversation to the autumn tints and other impersonal things, and I noticed that she drew Paragot"s arm again around her waist, as if to rea.s.sure herself of something. As we pa.s.sed by the porch, I entered the house; but loving to look on my dear lady, I lingered, and saw her hold up her lips. He bent down and kissed them.
"Don"t think me foolish, Gaston," she said, "but I have starved for love for thirteen years."
By the gesture of his arm and the working of his features, I saw that he rhapsodised in reply.
To the sentimental youngster who looked on, this love-making seemed an idyll without a disturbing breath. Joanna, though she had lost the gay spontaneity of her Paris holiday, smiled none the less adorably on Paragot and myself. She wore a little air of defiant pride when she introduced him to her acquaintance as "my cousin, Monsieur de Nerac,"
which was very pretty to behold. Convention forbade the announcement of their engagement at so early a stage of her widowhood, but anyone of rudimentary intelligence could see that she was presenting her future husband. Few women can hide that triumphant sense of proprietors.h.i.+p in a man, especially if they have at the same time to hold themselves on the defensive against the possible fulminations of Lady Molyneux. Joanna proclaimed herself a champion. Even when Paragot forgot his social reformation and banged his fist down on the dinner table till the gla.s.ses rang again, with a great _nom de Dieu!_ her glance swept the company as if to defy them to find anything uncommon in the demeanour of her guest. It was only towards the end of my stay that she began to wince. And Paragot, save on occasion of outburst, went through the love-making and the social routine with the grave but contented face of a man who had found his real avocation.
Looking back on these idyllic days I realise the greatness of Paragot"s self-control. In his domestic habits he was less a human being than a mechanical toy. At half past eight every morning he entered the breakfast-room. At half past nine he went into the town to get shaved.
Had he an appointment with Joanna, he was there to the minute. He clothed himself in what he considered were orthodox garments. He even folded up his trousers of nights. He limited his smoking to a definite number of cigarettes consumed at fixed hours. Apparently he had never heard of the reprehensible habit of drinking between meals. If he only went to church to wors.h.i.+p the British G.o.d Respectability, he did so with impeccable unction. No undertaker listened to the funeral service with more portentous solemnity than Paragot exhibited during the Vicar"s sermon. Indeed, sitting bolt upright in the pew, his lined, brown face set in a blank expression, his ill-fitting frock coat b.u.t.toned tight across his chest, his hair--despite the barber"s pains--struggling in vain to obey the rules of the unaccustomed parting, he bore considerable resemblance to an undertaker in moderate circ.u.mstances. Of the delectable vagabond in pearl-b.u.t.toned velveteens fiddling wildly to capering peasants; of the long-haired, unkempt Dictator of the Cafe Delphine roaring his absinthe-inspired judgments on art and philosophy for the delectation of his disciples, not a trace remained. He sang the hymns. It was a pity they did not invite him to go round with the plate.
Yet the signs of a rebellious spirit continued now and then to manifest themselves. He asked me, one day, with a groan whether he was condemned to a daily clean collar for the rest of his life. Another day he seized me by the arm, as we were lounging on the porch, and dragged me out of earshot of the house.
"My good Asticot," said he in a dramatic whisper, "if I don"t talk to a man, I shall go mad. I shall dance around the flower beds and scream. I have a yearning to converse with the host of the Black Boar, a fat Rabelaisian scoundrel who has piqued my imagination. And besides, if Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were cast into my throat this minute they would find it quite a different thing from Nebuchadnezzar"s ineffectual bonfire."
"There is no reason why we should not go to the Black Boar," said I.
He clapped me on the shoulder, calling me a Delphic oracle, and haled me from the premises through the garden gate, with the lightning rapidity of the familiar Paragot.
"Master," said I, as we hastened down the High Street--the Black Boar stood at the other end, by the bridge--"if you want a man to talk to, there is always Major Walters."
Paragot threw out his hand.
"He is a man, in that he is brave and masculine; in that he is intelligent, he is naught. He is a machine-gun. He fires off rounds of stereotyped conversation at the rate of one a minute, which is funereal.
I also have the misfortune, my little Asticot, to be under the ban of Major Walters" displeasure. Your British military man is prejudiced against anyone who is not cut out according to pattern."
"Madame de Verneuil is not cut out according to pattern," said I maliciously.
"Your infant eyes have noticed it too? But I, my son, am Gaston de Nerac, a vidame of Gascony, _nom de Dieu! et il aura affaire a moi, ce pantin-la! Sacredieu_! Do you know what he had the impertinence to ask me yesterday? What settlements I proposed to make on Madame de Verneuil.
Settlements, _mon pet.i.t_ Asticot! He spoke as trustee, whatever that may be, under her husband"s will. "Sir," said I, "I will settle my love and my genius upon her, and thereby insure her happiness and her prosperity.
Besides, Madame de Verneuil has a fortune which will suffice her needs and of which I will not touch a penny.""
I smiled, for I could see Paragot in his grand French manner, one hand thrust between the b.u.t.tons of his coat and the other waving magnificently, as he proclaimed himself to Major Walters.
"I explained," he continued, "in terms which I thought might reach his intelligence, that I only had to resume my profession and my financial position would equal that of Madame de Verneuil. "And, Sir," said I, "I will not suffer you to say another word." We bowed, and parted enemies.
Wherefore the conversation of the excellent Major Walters does not appeal to me as attractive."
At the time I thought this very n.o.ble of Paragot. In a way it was so, for my master, who had never committed a dishonourable action in his life, was genuine in his scorn of the insinuation that he proposed to live on Joanna"s money. He verily believed himself capable of reattaining fame and fortune. It was only the nuisance of having to do so that, at introspective times, disconcerted him. He knew that to break away from a thirteen-year-old habit of idleness would need considerable effort. But he was a man, _nom d"un chien_!
To prove it he called for a quart of ale in the bar-parlour of the Black Boar, an old coaching inn, set back from the road. The little eyes of the fleshy rubicond host, loafing comfortably in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, glistened as he received the Pantagruelian order and brought the great tankard with a modest half pint for me, and a jorum of rum for himself.
Paragot was worthy of a host"s attention.
Paragot pledged him and literally poured the contents of the tankard down his throat.
The landlord stared in an ecstasy of admiration.
"Well, I"m d.a.m.ned," said he.
"I"ll take another," said Paragot.
The landlord brought another tankard.
"How do you manage it?" he asked.
Paragot explained that he had learned the art in Germany. You open your throat to the good beer without moving the muscles whereby you swallow, and down it goes.
"Well, I"m jiggered," said mine host.
"Have you no pretty drinkers hereabouts?" asked my master, sipping the second quart.
"They lots of "em comes here and gets fuddled, if that"s what you mean."
Paragot waved an impatient hand. "To get fuddled on beer is not pretty drinking. Haven"t you any hard-headed topers who are famous in the neighborhood? Men who can carry their liquor like gentlemen and whose souls expand as they get more and more filled with the alcohol of human kindness? If so, I should like to meet them."
"There isn"t any as could toss off a quart like that."