"Have you always lived in Melford?"
"Oh no," replied the landlord, as if resenting the suggestion, "I was born and bred in Devizes."
"It must be a devil of a place, Devizes," said Paragot.
"It be none so bad," a.s.sented the landlord. A woman"s voice from the bar summoned him away. Paragot pushed his unfinished quart from him and rose. He shook his head sadly.
"I am disappointed in that man. He is a mere bucolic idiot. I shall waste my talents intellectual and bibulous on him no longer. Our excursion into the Bohemia of Melford is a failure, my little Asticot, and the beer is confoundedly sour. I am glad I did not vagabondise in rural England."
"Why?" I asked.
"To avoid an asylum for idiots I should have rushed into the dissenting ministry. I might have expected mine host to be a dullard. In this country the expected always happens, which paralyses the brain. Now let us go home to lunch."
He paid the bill, and as we issued from the door of the inn we fell into the arms of Joanna and Major Walters.
The latter regarded us superciliously, and Joanna catching his glance flushed to the wavy hair over her forehead. The ordinary greetings having been exchanged, she proudly and markedly drew Paragot ahead, leaving me to follow with Major Walters. As he made no remark of any kind during our little walk, I did not find him an exhilarating companion.
CHAPTER XX
I HAD worked till the last glimmer of daylight at the portrait, which was now approaching completion.
"That"s the end of it for to-day," said I, laying my palette and brushes aside, and regarding the picture.
Joanna rose from her chair by the fire where she had been sewing for the last hour and stood by my side. The morning-room, which had a clear north-east light through the French window leading into the garden, had been a.s.signed to me as a studio, and here, sometimes on a murky afternoon, Joanna, who preferred the bright, chintz-covered place to the gloomy drawing-room, honoured me with her company. Mrs. Rushworth was asleep upstairs, and Paragot had gone for a solitary walk. We were cosily alone.
It pleased my lady to be flattering.
"It is wonderful how a boy like you can do such work--for you _are_ a boy, Asticot," she said with one of her bright comrade-like smiles. "In a few years you will have the world at your feet imploring you to paint its portrait. You will fulfil the promise, won"t you?"
"What promise, Madame?" I asked.
"The promise of your life now. It is not everyone who does. You won"t allow outside things to send you away from it all."
She had slung the stole which she was embroidering for the vicar across her shoulders, and holding the two ends looked at me wistfully.
"I owe it to my master, Madame," said I, "to work with all my might."
"If only he had had a master in the old days!" she sighed, "He would have been by now a famous man full of honours, with all the world can give in his possession."
"Hasn"t he the best the world can give now that he has found you again?"
said I, somewhat shyly.
Joanna gave a short laugh. "You talk sometimes like one"s grandfather. I suppose that is because you became a student of philosophy at a tender age. Yes, your master has found me again; but after all, what is a woman? Just a speck of dust on top of the world."
She half seated herself on my painting stool, her back to the picture.
"Tell me, Asticot, is he at least happy?"
"Can you doubt it, Madame?" I cried warmly.
"I do so want him to be happy, Asticot. You see it was all through me that he gave up his career and took to the strange life he has been leading, and I feel doubly responsible for his future. Can you understand that?"
Her blue eyes were very childish and earnest. For all my love of Paragot, I suddenly felt something like pity for her, as for one who had undertaken a responsibility that weighed too heavily on slender shoulders. For the first time it struck me that Paragot and Joanna might not be a perfectly matched couple. Intuition prompted me to say:--
"My master is utterly happy, but you must give him a little time to accustom himself to the new order of things."
"That"s it," she said. Then there was a pause. "You are such a wise boy," she continued, "that perhaps you may be able to do something for me. I can"t do it myself--and it"s horrid of me to talk about it--but do you think you might suggest to him that people of our cla.s.s don"t visit the Black Boar? I don"t mind it a bit; but other people--my cousin Major Walters said something a day or two ago--and it hurt. They don"t understand Gaston"s Continental ways. It is natural for a man to go to a cafe in France; but in England, things are so different."
I promised to convey to Paragot the tabu of the Black Boar, and then I asked her which she preferred, England or France. She s.h.i.+vered, and a gleam of frost returned to her eyes.
"I never want to see France again. I was so unhappy there. I am trying to persuade Mr. de Nerac to live in London. He can find as much scope for his art there as in Paris, can"t he?"
"Surely," said I.
"And you"ll come too," she said with the flash of gaiety that was one of her charms. "You"ll have a beautiful studio near by and we"ll all be happy together."
She jumped off the painting stool and having bidden me light the gas, resumed her task of embroidering the stole, by the fireside.
"It"s pretty, isn"t it?" she asked, holding it up for my inspection.
I agreed. She had considerable talent for art needlework.
"Gaston doesn"t appreciate it," she remarked, laughing. "He disapproves of clergymen."
"They have scarcely been in his line," I answered apologetically.
"They will have to be. Oh, you"ll see. I"ll make him a model Englishman before very long."
"I"m afraid you will find it rather difficult, Madame," said I.
"Do you think I"m afraid of difficulties? Isn"t everything difficult? Is it easy for you to get everything to come out on that canvas just as you want it? If you could dash it off in a minute it wouldn"t be worth doing. As you yourself said, I"ll have to give Gaston time."
I seated myself on the fender-seat close by her chair, and for some minutes watched the clever needle work its golden way through the white silk. No one has ever had such dainty fingers and delicate wrists.
"You mustn"t think, because I have spoken about Mr. de Nerac, that I am discontented. I wouldn"t have him a bit altered integrally, for there is no one like him living. And I"m utterly happy in the fulfilment of the great romance of my life. Isn"t it wonderful, Asticot? Have you ever heard the like outside a story book? To meet again after thirteen years and to find the old--the old----"
"Love," I whispered, as I saw that she suddenly blushed at the word.
"As strong and true as ever. It is the inner things that matter, Asticot. The outside ones are nothing. Dreadful things have happened to each of us during those years, but they haven"t clouded the serenity of our souls."
"Ah, Madame," said I, with a smile--it strikes me now that I was slightly impertinent--"I am sure my master said that."
"Yes," she admitted, raising wide innocent eyes. "How did you guess?"
"You yourself once detected echoes in me!"