[Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell telling him the story of a
dinner and a challenge.]
Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
May 30th, 1905.
Dear Paddy,--This is to tell you that I go out with Bernard d’Alençon
somewhere about daybreak to-morrow, and that when I write again, Paris
will be in possession of a pretty scandal.
I am not joking, my dear Paddy. A more serious human being than Henry
Gastonard does not exist in all this city to-night. I am to fight
Bernard d’Alençon, and I am to fight him somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the Bois at five o’clock to-morrow morning. The
affair is as irrevocable as the sunset I have just witnessed from the
Chalets du Cycle, where Mademoiselle Mimi has given me tea and
recited, to the great astonishment of waiters and cyclists alike, the
first lesson she received this morning from Pelletier, of the
Conservatoire.
So, if you please, has this great question of the hour been settled. A
woman’s shrewd opinion has backed up a mere man’s idea that something
may be made of Mimi the Simpleton, something at least ventured in her
interests. The suspicion that this chit of the _fêtes foraines_ may
yet startle Paris is so much an obsession where I am concerned that I
have willingly agreed to place her with Pelletier for twelve months
and to see what comes of it. He is too clever a man to try to make a
silk purse out of a sow’s ear. He will train her for the Vaudeville or
the Palais Royal, and if he cannot make a success of her, then is she
lost indeed. She lodges meanwhile in a little English pension near the
Louvre, and God help its inmates if she have the mind to misbehave
herself!
Be sure that for me this is a closed book, and that I am very
unlikely, when once this other folly is over, to see or hear of
Mistress Mimi again. The whim of a moment has given her a chance in
Paris; the whim of another will banish her from my recollection when,
as must be, if I am not killed to-morrow morning, I set out to save my
fortune from my cousin and to make those five hundred pounds per annum
which will enable me to hold it.
You will remember, Paddy, that when last I wrote to you, I was about
to dine in blessed seclusion with that amiable but charming woman Lea
d’Alençon. Providence and a far from belle Americaine saved me from
such an imprudence. The American lady, I understand, appeared just
when Lea was wrestling with a refractory hat and an equally obstinate
pyramid of her famous black hair. She carried a letter from Elise
d’Alençon, the Captain’s sister, who is now in New York, and could
not, in decency, be denied. What Lea said, or, better still, what she
thought, I leave you to guess; but she covered her retreat by asking
her cousin Emilie, who is madly in love with young Derogy of the
Chasseurs, and by sending post haste for the cavalryman to join us. So
we were five at the table instead of two, and we dined at Armenonville
and not at the Cascade.
I was glad of this--frankly glad. Lea is too good a friend of mine
that I should ever wish her to become anything else. And remember,
Paddy, that virtue is as much a matter of opportunity and of accident
as of the commandment, both written and unwritten. To you alone would
I confess my belief that it had been her intention to bring matters to
a crisis this night. Bernard was conveniently at Fort Valérien; her
mother had gone to Tours to let their chateau to a Yankee from
Vermont; I had come to her in a romantic mood and appealed to her upon
the score of my interest in another woman--a sure passport to
intimacy. And then upon the top of it all the lady from New York,
Jenny Middleton she called herself, with an accent to butter your
bread and the eye of the eagle as it soars. Oh, we were a merry party,
be sure; and even cousin Emilie (who is married to a man of sixty as
sour as vinegar and as yellow) made little of her cavalryman in such
a presence.
You know the dinner at the Armenonville, as good as it is dear, as
_chic_ as it is distant. We discussed London restaurants with our
soup; the Verney scandal with our fish; the character of the American
man with the entrée and Mimi the Simpleton with the ices. Mrs.
Middleton, I observed, was much interested in the character of my
_protégée_ and firm in her belief that I had made a fool of myself.
“She will go back to the lion-tamer in a month,” she said, “and leave
you with the bill for a keepsake.”
When Lea began her dissertation upon virtue, the lady from the West
joined in the merriment, and I perceived that here was an American
who, like others of her countrywomen, had no interest in Paris
virtuous but much in Paris of the vices. It was cheerful to be done
with it all at last, and to begin that momentous return which might
land me either in an infamy or, at the best, destroy my friendship
with the charming Lea.
I say the fun began at Armenonville, and you will readily understand
the nature of it. Lea did not disguise her intention to return in my
cab--Emilie was equally insistent upon riding with the guardsman. For
a little while we stood in the glitter of the lights, amid the most
wonderfully dressed women in the world, scheming and planning to our
different ends. First it would be Lea suggesting three cabs and a
hurried departure--then the cavalryman gallantly volunteering to
telephone for an automobile which would carry us all. Mrs. Middleton
herself providentially had special designs upon me, and watched her
prey with a feline patience beautiful to behold. When two cabs
appeared, I put the agitated daughter of Venus in the first of them,
and by a ruse got Lea and Emilie and the cavalryman into the second.
This was providential to be sure, if we may suppose Providence stoops
to the mild intrigues of pretty Frenchwomen; for I may tell you that
d’Alençon himself did not stop the night at Fort Valérien, but was
back in his own apartment at half-past nine, and detected there by Lea
just at the moment she was waiting for me to appear and take her to
supper as I had promised. Ah, the dear soul, what a terrible five
minutes she must have spent upon the pavement waiting for my cab! But
a blessed destiny had sent me on with the Stars, to say nothing of the
Stripes, to the gates of the Jardin de Paris, whence a messenger
carried a hasty note back to Lea telling her of the impossibility of
it.
Oh, these fair Americans! Do you know, Paddy, that if I were a man of
genius, I would make the five hundred a year which my father’s Will
demands just by catering for their naughtiness in Paris. Of course,
the whole affair would have to be a sham, as unlike the true Paris as
Bayswater is unlike London, and no more vicious than a magic-lantern
show in a Sunday-school. Then I should catch the class which now
visits that poor place the Jardin de Paris, net the fools who go to
the Moulin Rouge because they ought not to go, and send them back to
their native land as happy as a “week-ender” who has seen the Louvre.
Mrs. Middleton, I discovered, had come to Paris to write a book upon
French social customs. She assured me that it was imperative upon her
to visit the music-halls. “I want to see the people play,” she said.
“I guess they work pretty well the same everywhere; but it’s the
national games I’m set upon.” When I pointed out to her that the lady
who displayed hose to her fellow-countrymen at the Jardin de Paris was
a Spaniard, and not a Frenchwoman, she insisted immediately on going
to verify the fact. It was two in the morning before I got rid of her,
and then I had to tell her that if she were shut out of her hotel the
police would want to know the reason why.
So you see, Paddy, I neither dined nor supped with the charming Lea;
and, once more having escaped those fascinating toils, returned at
length to a welcome bed. When I awoke on the following morning the
valet at the hotel informed me that Captain Berton, of the Engineers,
desired particularly to see me, and upon the fellow being shown up, I
learned in ten words that he had come to arrange this pleasantry with
d’Alençon.
Perhaps, had I been clothed and in my right mind I should have
answered him as he deserved, offered to punch the Captain’s head, and
told his ambassador not to make a fool of himself. This,
unfortunately, did not happen. Berton caught me when I was both tired
and irritable, and I sent him headlong to Honoré de Villefort, that
old rascal of a Chevalier who will never cease to remind me of his
obligation. What is even worse, Paddy, I named pistols--and that is
just the maddest thing your friend Henry Gastonard has done since he
was born.
I am a fool--I know it. Often as I have desired to play in one of
those gigantic farces they call an “affair of honour in Paris,” never
did I contemplate standing up to a man with a pistol in my hand. Of
course, I had no real cause of quarrel with Bernard d’Alençon, nor he
with me. He is madly jealous of the charming Lea, and hates me like
poison; if he can shoot me to-morrrow morning, he will do so.
But, Paddy, I shall, in very truth, have finished my French education
when this is over, and be prepared to return to England and a sober
life. It is true that there might be an accident--you may say the same
every time you call a hansom cab--but, Paddy, if the fun should be
spoiled and this man hit me, then I call upon you, as the oldest
friend I have, to do what you can for my little friend of the Butte,
and to remember that there is no one else in all Christendom who would
give her sixpence if not--
Your friend,
Harry.