Part 16 (2/2)

”And that she has been hungry?--Hungry?”

A violent negative. Chitta bobbed toward Cartaret's rifled stores and then toward the street, as if to include other stores in the same circle of depredation. She was also plainly indignant at the idea that she would permit her mistress to be hungry.

”Oh,” said Cartaret, ”I see! You are a consistent thief.”

This time Chitta's nod was a proud one; but she pointed again to the other room and shook her head violently; then to herself and nodded once more. Words could not more plainly have said that, although she had been supplementing her provisions by petty thefts, her employer knew nothing about them.

And she must not be told. Again Chitta began to bob and moan and weep.

She pointed across the hallway, put a finger to her lips, shook her old head and finally held out her clasped hands in supplication.

Cartaret emptied his pockets. He wished he had not been so extravagant as to buy that necktie. He handed to Chitta all the money left from the price that Fourget had paid him, to the last five-centime piece.

”Take this,” he said, ”and be sure you don't ever let your mistress know where it came from. I shan't tell anybody about you. When you want more, come direct to me.” He knew that he could paint marketable pot-boilers now.

She wanted to kiss his hand, but he hurried from the woman and left her groveling behind him....

”M. Refrogne,” he said to the concierge, ”I owe you an apology. I am sorry for the way I spoke to you a while ago. I have found those strawberries.”

”Bah!” said Refrogne. He added, when Cartaret had pa.s.sed: ”In his stomach, most likely.”

Slowly the horror of having had to use physical force against a woman left Cartaret. He started for a long walk and thought many things. He thought, as he trudged at last across L'Etoile, how the April stars.h.i.+ne was turning the Arc de Triomphe to silver, and how the lovers on the benches at the junction of the rue Lauriston and the avenue Kleber made Napoleon's arch in praise of war a monument to softer pa.s.sions. He thought, as he strolled from the avenue d'Eylan and across the Place Victor Hugo, how the heart of that poet, whose statue here represented him as so much the politician, must grow warm when, as now, boys and girls pa.s.sed arm in arm about the pediment. The night bore jonquils in her hands and wore a spray of wisteria in her hair. Brocaded ghosts of the old regime must be pacing a stately measure at Ranelagh, and all the elves of Spring were dancing in the Bois.

The Princess was poor. That brought her nearer to him: it gave him a chance to help her. Cartaret found it hard to be sorry that she was poor.

CHAPTER IX

BEING THE TRUE REPORT OF A CHAPERONED DeJEUNER

For she hath breathed celestial air, And heavenly food hath been her fare, And heavenly thought and feelings give her face That heavenly grace.

--Southey: _The Curse of Kehama_.

Sometimes a mattress is doubtless as efficient a means of pressing one's clothes as any other means, but doubtless always a good deal depends upon the mattress. By way of general rules, it may be laid down, for instance, that the mattress employed must not be too thin, must not be stuffed with a material so gregarious as to gather together in lumpy communities, and must not sag in the middle.

Cartaret's mattress failed to meet these fundamental requirements, and when he made his careful toilet on the morning that he was to take _dejeuner_ at the Room Across the Landing, he became uneasily aware that his clothes betrayed certain evidences of what had happened to them. He had been up half a dozen times in the night to rearrange the garments, in fear of just such a misfortune; but his activities were badly repaid; the front of the suit bore a series of peculiar wrinkles, rather like the complicated hatchments on an ancient family's escutcheon; he could not see how, when the coat was on him, its back looked, and he was afraid to speculate. With his mirror now hung high and now standing on the floor, he practiced before it until he happily discovered that the wrinkles could be given a more or less reasonable excuse if he could only remember to adopt and a.s.sume a mildly Pre-Raphaelite bearing.

Something else that his gla.s.s showed him gave him more anxiety and appeared beyond concealment: Chitta's claws had left two long scratches across his right cheek. He had no powder and no money to buy any. He did think of trying a touch of his own paint, but he feared that oils were not suited to the purpose and would only make the wound more noticeable. He would simply have to let it go.

He had wakened with the first ray of sunlight that set the birds to singing in the garden, and, Chitta's fall of the previous evening having spilled his coffee and devastated his supplies, he was forced to go without a _pet.i.t dejeuner_. He found a little tobacco in one of his coat-pockets and smoked that until the bells of St. Sulpice, after an unconscionable delay, rang the glad hour for which he waited.

Chitta opened the door to his knock, and he was at once aware of her mistress standing, in white, behind her; but the old duenna was aware of it too and ordered herself accordingly. Chitta bowed low enough to appease the watchful Lady of the Rose, but Chitta's eyes, as she lowered them, glowered at him suspiciously. It was clear that she by no means joined in the welcome that the Lady immediately accorded him.

The Lady, in clinging muslin and with a black lace scarf of delicate workmans.h.i.+p draped over her black hair, gave him her hand, and this time Cartaret was not slow to kiss it. The action was one to which he was scarcely accustomed, and he hesitated between the fear of being discourteously brief about it and the fear of being discourteously long. He could be certain only of how cool and firm her hand was and, as he looked up from it, how pink and fresh her cheeks.

It was then that the Lady saw the scratches.

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