[Henry Gastonard gives a further account of his meeting with Mimi the
Simpleton.]
The New Vicarage, Lowestoft,
August 8th, 1905.
Dear Paddy,--I was too seedy to write to you yesterday, nor did my
good cousin’s chatter concerning the things of this world help me to
get better. Arthur is the kind of man who buys in an earthly market
and would realise in a celestial. He began to talk of motor securities
this morning, and did not cease until he was called to the church for
Litany--but he went with thunder on his brow, for little Martha
insisted on shewing me the greenhouses meanwhile, and the man is as
jealous as Othello.
You will readily imagine that I linger in this house chiefly for the
comedy of it. I believe that Arthur would have told me to go this
morning if pretty Martha had not cut in before him. “Arthur is so
delighted to have you here,” says she, looking hard at him across the
table, “there are so few educated folk in these parts that it is a
real kindness for any friend to come and see him.” You should have
seen the black looks he cast back at her. I do believe the poor man
nearly choked himself with the toast he was eating.
I shall go over to the hotel at Yarmouth to-morrow, Paddy--later on,
perhaps, from there to Cromer, where Mimi goes with the troupe. So
much tells you in a word that I have not persuaded her to quit the
gentleman of the cockney accent, or to forsake the delights of posing
before an ignorant multitude as the Señorita Alphonsine. What is in
her mind I do not know for any certainty. She understands, she must
understand, that I have no interest in Lea d’Alençon, and never had.
But a jealous woman, more especially when the Butte has taught her to
be jealous, is one of the most incomprehensible of all mysteries, and
such, I begin to fear, will our little friend Mimi remain.
I talked to her very frankly the other evening, perhaps as frankly as
ever I spoke to her in all my life.
“You left me at Poissy because Madame Lea came there,” I said--and
then I asked her--“Was that just, Mimi? Could I prevent her coming?”
To which she answered:
“You could have prevented it, Monsieur Henry. No woman goes to a man
who does not wish to see her--she writes to him.”
I laughed at this. How like the Mimi of la Galette.
“Of course, old Georges Oleander taught you to say that. I remember it
was one of his great, also foolish, sayings. Those were famous days,
Mimi. I wonder what you would have said if I had forbidden you to see
Mr. Barrymore or Count Charles, or any of the friends you used to
know? Suppose I had been jealous, as I had the right to be----”
“But you, you, Monsieur Henry--you were not my lover; why should you
be jealous?”
“Mimi,” said I, “we are going to forget the past just as we would
forget a sad book that we have been reading. What is to prevent us? I
shall never see Madame Lea again. If I saw her a thousand times, it
would make no difference. You know that I love you, Mimi. How often
must I say it to make you believe?”
The words moved her to some emotion. There is no more intelligent face
in Europe than hers, none more beautiful; and I could see that the
child was wrestling with some great temptation, unknown to me, and
unconfessed.
“It would be folly to speak of it, Monsieur Henry,” she said
presently; “I am not fit to be your wife. You are rich, and we are no
longer at the Maison du bon Tabac. I tried to follow you out into the
world, Monsieur Henry, but I lost you there--and I shall never find
you again.”
“Mimi,” said I, “there has always been this between us. You call me
rich, but in a few months’ time I may be poorer even than these people
who employ you. Is not that enough for you? Shall I make myself poor
to-morrow because riches keep you from me? Is that your wish, Mimi?”
“I know the truth,” she said quietly; “your great Irlandais told it to
me. You are rich, and if you work you will remain rich. Do not believe
those who tell you that the poor are happy, Monsieur Henry. That is
what the rich say to defend themselves. Oh, do you think that I can be
happy so far away from France and among these strange people? Would I
not return to-morrow if I could do so?”
“You shall return, Mimi--we will go together.”
She laughed drolly, turning the pathos of it with the cleverness a
born actress alone could command.
“To the Butte,” she cried, “on the high road? We will sup at the Lapin
Agil and breakfast at the Capitol. That’s what I dream of when I dance
before the people--but you are not in my dreams, Monsieur Henry; I
think of a Paris which you have left--I do not see you any longer
among my friends.”
“Because you yourself have determined that it shall not be so.”
“No--because you were not born of us; because you are an Englishman
who has work to do in your own country. I am in my own world even in
this poor place. It is not your world--it must never be so.”
* * * * *
This was the sum of it, Paddy, often repeated. This child believes
that all my love for the Butte and its people is but a sham affection,
that it will pass, that I am born to riches and position. She is
clever enough to think that a marriage with me would be a false step,
leading neither to her happiness nor to mine. All this fine philosophy
of hers is no sounder than the bloom upon a flower. If I could conjure
up the old house in Paris, people it with the old figures, recall the
old precarious life, the days of poverty, the days of comparative
riches, the empty cupboards, the chiding corks--if I could do this,
and say, “Mimi, come back to me,” she would be in my arms in an
instant. But she is afraid of her new situation; London has chilled
her finest instincts--she can think of me but as the “great Monsieur
Henry, of the Hôtel St. Paul.” And between me and her a great barrier
is fixed.
How to combat this argument I know not. My threat to shed myself of my
money is both idle and impossible--it is the word one whispers to a
woman in an ecstasy of passion, and repeats with a shamed grin next
morning. I feel, Paddy, that I could not support poverty--and yet here
is poverty staring me already in the face, and promising, like the
Devil in “Faust,” that he will have me some day. To you I put the
problem, for God knows I can make little of it. Is there any way--any
sane way--by which I can win this child’s love and make her my wife?
Would it be a crime to do that? Am I a madman to be thinking of it at
all? Write to me, old friend, and speak in plain terms. The Paddy of
the old time was never ashamed to do that.
You may address your letter to the vicarage, for little Martha will
see that everything is forwarded. I am tired already of this
lantern-jawed cousin of mine, who nagged his wife for three hours last
night because she would not turn me out, and prayed before breakfast
this morning for charity. I heard them quarrelling; the wall was not
thick enough to keep those dread sounds out--but she silenced him in
the end, though how, I do not know. When next I saw her she was
wearing a bearskin on her shoulders, and her hair was the colour of a
terra-cotta house. They are to have the first dress rehearsal for the
Pageant to-morrow--and Arthur, who has just preached another sermon
against the theatre, is to be there with a megaphone.
God bless him! He is the poorest creature in Suffolk, though not in
the least aware of the fact.--Dear Paddy, yours dolefully,
Harry Gastonard.