Part 10 (1/2)

They used to spend an hour every day before dinner in a cafe on the great Boulevard, and Alphonse was getting impatient for his newspapers.

”Will you never have finished that letter?” he said, rather irritably.

Charles was silent a second or two, then he sprang up so that his chair fell over: ”Perhaps Alphonse imagined that he could do it better? Did he not know which of them was really the man of business?” And now the words streamed out with that incredible rapidity of which the French language is capable when it is used in fiery pa.s.sion.

But it was a turbid stream, carrying with it many ugly expressions, upbraidings and recriminations; and through the whole there sounded something like a suppressed sob.

As he strode up and down the room, with clenched hands and dishevelled hair, Charles looked like a little wiry-haired terrier barking at an elegant Italian greyhound. At last he seized his hat and rushed out.

Alphonse had stood looking at him with great wondering eyes. When he was gone, and there was once more silence in the room, it seemed as though the air was still quivering with the hot words. Alphonse recalled them one by one, as he stood motionless beside the desk.

”Did he not know which was the abler of the two?” Yes, a.s.suredly! he had never denied that Charles was by far his superior.

”He must not think that he would succeed in winning everything to himself with his smooth face.” Alphonse was not conscious of ever having deprived his friend of anything.

”I don't care for your _cocottes_,” Charles had said.

Could he really have been interested in the little Spanish dancer? If Alphonse had only had the faintest suspicion of such a thing he would never have looked at her. But that was nothing to get so wild about; there were plenty of women in Paris.

And at last: ”As sure as to-morrow comes, I will dissolve partners.h.i.+p!”

Alphonse did not understand it at all. He left the counting-house and walked moodily through the streets until he met an acquaintance. That put other thoughts into his head; but all day he had a feeling as if something gloomy and uncomfortable lay in wait, ready to seize him so soon as he was alone.

When he reached home, late at night, he found a letter from Charles.

He opened it hastily; but it contained, instead of the apology he had expected, only a coldly-worded request to M. Alphonse to attend at the counting-house early the next morning ”in order that the contemplated dissolution of partners.h.i.+p might be effected as quickly as possible.”

Now, for the first time, did Alphonse begin to understand that the scene in the counting-house had been more than a pa.s.sing outburst of pa.s.sion; but this only made the affair more inexplicable.

And the longer he thought it over, the more clearly did he feel that Charles had been unjust to him. He had never been angry with his friend, nor was he precisely angry even now. But as he repeated to himself all the insults Charles had heaped upon him, his good-natured heart hardened; and the next morning he took his place in silence, after a cold ”Good-morning.”

Although he arrived a whole hour earlier than usual, he could see that Charles had been working long and industriously. There they sat, each on his side of the desk; they spoke only the most indispensable words; now and then a paper pa.s.sed from hand to hand, but they never looked each other in the face.

In this way they both worked--each more busily than the other--until twelve o'clock, their usual luncheon-time.

This hour of dejeuner was the favorite time of both. Their custom was to have it served in their office, and when the old house-keeper announced that lunch was ready, they would both rise at once, even if they were in the midst of a sentence or of an account.

They used to eat standing by the fireplace or walking up and down in the warm, comfortable office. Alphonse had always some piquant stories to tell, and Charles laughed at them. These were his pleasantest hours.

But that day, when Madame said her friendly ”_Messieurs, on a servi_,”

they both remained sitting. She opened her eyes wide, and repeated the words as she went out, but neither moved.

At last Alphonse felt hungry, went to the table, poured out a gla.s.s of wine and began to eat his cutlet. But as he stood there eating, with his gla.s.s in his hand, and looked round the dear old office where they had spent so many pleasant hours, and then thought that they were to lose all this and imbitter their lives for a whim, a sudden burst of pa.s.sion, the whole situation appeared to him so preposterous that he almost burst out laughing.

”Look here, Charles,” he said, in the half-earnest, half-joking tone which always used to make Charles laugh, ”it will really be too absurd to advertise: 'According to an amicable agreement, from such and such a date the firm of--'”

”I have been thinking,” interrupted Charles, quietly, ”that we will put: 'According to mutual agreement.'”

Alphonse laughed no more; he put down his gla.s.s, and the cutlet tasted bitter in his mouth.

He understood that friends.h.i.+p was dead between them, why or wherefore he could not tell; but he thought that Charles was hard and unjust to him.