"He"s spoofing you," said young Mr. Trotter.
"My G.o.d," groaned the messenger, "if I"d only knowed you was English I"d have saved my breath. Well, I guess I"ll be on my way. Is there an answer, Mr. Bramble?"
"Um--aw--I quite forgot the--" He tore open the envelope and held the missive to the light. ""Pon my soul!" he cried, after reading the first few lines and then jumping ahead to the signature. "This is most extraordinary." He was plainly agitated as he felt in his pocket for a coin. "No answer,--that is to say,--none at present. Ahem! That"s all, boy. Goodbye."
Mr. Ca.n.a.l shuffled out of the shop,--and out of this narrative as well.
"This will interest you," said Mr. Bramble, lowering his voice as he edged his chair closer to the young man. "It is from Lady Jane Thorne--I should say, Miss Emsdale. Bless my soul!"
Mr. Trotter"s British complacency was disturbed. He abandoned his careless sprawl in the chair and sat up very abruptly.
"What"s that? From Lady Jane? Don"t tell me it"s anything serious. One would think she was on her deathbed, judging by the face you"re--"
"Read it for yourself," said the other, thrusting the letter into Trotter"s hand. "It explains everything,--the whole blooming business.
Read it aloud. Don"t be uneasy," he added, noting the young man"s glance toward the door. "No customers on a day like this. Some one may drop in to get warm, but--aha, I see you are interested."
An angry flush darkened Trotter"s face as his eyes ran down the page.
""Dear Mr. Bramble: (she wrote) I am sending this to you by special messenger, hoping it may reach you before Mr. Trotter drops in. He has told me that he spends a good deal of his spare time in your dear old shop, browsing among the books. In the light of what may already have happened, I am quite sure you will see him today. I feel that I may write freely to you, for you are his friend and mine, and you will understand. I am greatly distressed. Yesterday I was informed that he is to be summarily dismissed by Mr. Carpenter. I prefer not to reveal the source of information. All I may say is that I am, in a way, responsible for his misfortune. If the blow has fallen, he is doubtless perplexed and puzzled, and, I fear, very unhappy.
Influence has been brought to bear upon Mr. Carpenter, who, you may not be by way of knowing, is a close personal friend of the people in whose home I am employed. Indeed, notwithstanding the difference in their ages, I may say that he is especially the friend of young Mr. S-P. Mr. Trotter probably knows something about the nature of this friendship, having been kept out till all hours of the morning in his capacity as chauffeur. My object in writing to you is two-fold: first, to ask you to prevail upon him to act with discretion for the present, at least, as I have reason to believe that there may be an attempt to carry out a threat to "run him out of town"; secondly, to advise him that I shall stop at your place at five o"clock this afternoon in quest of a little book that now is out of print. Please explain to him also that my uncertainty as to where a letter would reach him under these new conditions accounts for this message to you.
Sincerely your friend, "JANE EMSDALE.""
"Read it again, slowly," said Mr. Bramble, blinking harder than ever.
"What time is it now?" demanded Trotter, thrusting the letter into his own pocket. A quick glance at the watch on his wrist brought a groan of dismay from his lips. "Good Lord! A few minutes past ten. Seven hours!
Hold on! I can almost see the words on your lips. I"ll be discreet, so don"t begin prevailing, there"s a good chap. There"s nothing to be said or done till I see her. But,--seven hours!"
"Stop here and have a bite of lunch with me," said Mr. Bramble, soothingly.
"Nothing could be more discreet than that," said Trotter, getting up to pace the floor. He was frowning.
"It"s quite cosy in our little dining-room upstairs. If you prefer, I"ll ask Mirabeau to clear out and let us have the place to ourselves while--"
"Not at all. I"ll stop with you, but I will not have poor old Mirabeau evicted. We will show the letter to him. He is a Frenchman and he can read between the lines far better than either of us."
At twelve-thirty, Mr. Bramble stuck a long-used card in the front door and locked it from the inside. The world was informed, in bold type, that he had gone to lunch and would not return until one-thirty.
In the rear of the floor above the book-shop were the meagrely furnished bedrooms and kitchen shared by J. Bramble and Pierre Mirabeau, clock-maker and repairer. The kitchen was more than a kitchen. It was also a dining-room, a sitting-room and a scullery, and it was as clean and as neat as the proverbial pin. At the front was the work-shop of M.
Mirabeau, filled with clocks of all sizes, shapes and ages. Back of this, as a sort of buffer between the quiet bedrooms and the busy resting-place of a hundred sleepless chimes, was located the combination store-room, utilized by both merchants: a musty, dingy place crowded with intellectual rubbish and a lapse of Time.
Mirabeau, in response to a shout from the fat Irishwoman who came in by the day to cook, wash and clean up for the tenants, strode briskly into the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. He was a tall, spare old man with uncommonly bright eyes and a long grey beard.
His joy on beholding the young guest at their board was surpa.s.sed only by the dejection communicated to his sensitive understanding by the dismal expression on the faces of J. Bramble and Thomas Trotter.
He broke off in the middle of a sentence, and, still grasping the hand of the guest, allowed his gaze to dart from one to the other.
"Mon dieu!" he exclaimed, swiftly altering his tone to one of the deepest concern. "What has happened? Has some one died? Don"t tell me it is your grandfather, my boy. Don"t tell me that the old villain has died at last and you will have to go back and step into his misguided boots.
Nothing else can--"
"Worse than that," interrupted Trotter, smiling. "I"ve lost my situation."
M. Mirabeau heaved a sigh of relief. "Ah! My heart beats again. Still,"
with a vastly different sigh, "he cannot go on living for ever. The time is bound to come when you--"
An admonitory cough from Mr. Bramble, and a significant jerk of the head in the direction of the kitchen-range, which was almost completely obscured by the person of Mrs. O"Leary, caused M. Mirabeau to bring his remarks to an abrupt close.
When he was twenty-five years younger, Monsieur Mirabeau, known to every one of consequence in Paris by his true and lawful name, Count Andre Drouillard, as handsome and as high-bred a gentleman as there was in all France, shot and killed, with all the necessary ceremony, a prominent though bourgeoise general in the French Army, satisfactorily ending a liaison in which the Countess and the aforesaid general were the princ.i.p.al characters. Notwithstanding the fact that the duel had been fought in the most approved French fashion, which almost invariably (except, in case of accident) provides for a few well-scattered shots and subsequent embraces on the part of the uninjured adversaries, the general fell with a bullet through his heart.
So great was the consternation of the Republic, and so unpardonable the accuracy of the Count, that the authorities deemed it advisable to make an example of the unfortunate n.o.bleman. He was court-martialled by the army and sentenced to be shot. On the eve of the execution he escaped and, with the aid of friends, made his way into Switzerland, where he found refuge in the home of a sequestered citizen who made antique clocks for a living. A price was put upon his head, and so relentless were the efforts to apprehend him that for months he did not dare show it outside the house of his protector.
He repaid the clockmaker with honest toil. In course of time he became an expert repairer. With the confiscation of his estates in France, he resigned himself to the inevitable. He became a man without a country.
One morning the newspapers in Paris announced the death, by suicide, of the long-sought pariah. A few days later he was on his way to the United States. His widow promptly re-married and, sad to relate, from all reports lived happily ever afterwards.
The bourgeoise general, in his tomb in France, was not more completely dead to the world than Count Andre Drouillard; on the other hand, no livelier, sprightlier person ever lived than Pierre Mirabeau, repairer of clocks in Lexington Avenue.
And so if you will look at it in quite the proper spirit, there is but one really morbid note in the story of M. Mirabeau: the melancholy snuffing-out of the poor general,--and even that was brightened to some extent by the most sumptuous military funeral in years.
"What do you make of it?" demanded Mr. Trotter, half-an-hour later in the crowded work-shop of the clockmaker.
M. Mirabeau held Miss Emsdale"s letter off at arm"s length, and squinted at it with great intensity, as if actually trying to read between the lines.
"I have an opinion," said M. Mirabeau, frowning. Whereupon he rendered his deductions into words, and of his two listeners Thomas Trotter was the most dumbfounded.
"But I don"t know the blooming bounder," he exclaimed,--"except by sight and reputation. And I have reason to know that Lady Jane loathes and detests him."
"Aha! There we have it! Why does she loathe and detest him?" cried M.
Mirabeau. "Because, my stupid friend, he has been annoying her with his attentions. It is not an uncommon thing for rich young men to lose their heads over pretty young maids and nurses, and even governesses."
""Gad, if I thought he was annoying her I"d--I"d--"
"There you go!" cried Mr. Bramble, nervously. "Just as she feared. She knew what she was about when she asked me to see that you did not do anything--"
"Hang it all, Bramble, I"m not _doing_ anything, am I? I"m only _saying_ things. Wait till I begin to do things before you preach."
"That"s just it!" cried Mr. Bramble. "You invariably do things when you get that look in your eyes. I knew you long before you knew yourself.
You looked like that when you were five years old and wanted to thump Bobby Morgan, who was thirteen. You--"
M. Mirabeau interrupted. He had not been following the discussion.
Leaning forward, he eyed the young man keenly, even disconcertingly.
"What is back of all this? Admitting that young Mr. S.-P. is enamoured of our lovely friend, what cause have you given him for jealousy? Have you--"
"Great Scot!" exclaimed Trotter, fairly bouncing off the work-bench on which he sat with his long legs dangling. "Why,--why, if _that"s_ the way he feels toward her he must have had a horrible jolt the other night. Good Lord!" A low whistle followed the exclamation.
"Aha! Now we are getting at the cause. We already have the effect. Out with it," cried M. Mirabeau, eager as a boy. His fine eyes danced with excitement.
"Now that I think of it, he saw me carry her up the steps the other night after we"d all been to the Marchioness"s. The night of the blizzard, you know. Oh, I say! It"s worse than I thought." He looked blankly from one to the other of the two old men.
"Carried her up the steps, eh? In your good strong arms, eh? And you say "_now_ that I think of it." Bless your heart, you scalawag, you"ve been thinking of nothing else since it happened. Ah!" sighed M. Mirabeau, "how wonderful it must have been! The feel of her in your arms, and the breath of her on your cheek, and--Ah! It is a sad thing not to grow old.