Part 22 (1/2)

Cartaret was ashamed that his memory had been so tardy. Fourget had helped him in his heavy need; Fourget should be the first to know of his affluence....

The old dealer, his bushy brows drawn tight together, his spectacles gleaming, was trying to say ”No” to a lad with a picture under his arm--a crestfallen lad that was a stranger to Cartaret.

”Let me see the picture,” said Cartaret, without further preface. He put out a ready hand.

The boy blushed. Cartaret had been abrupt and did not present the appearance of a possible purchaser.

”If you please,” urged Cartaret. ”I may care to buy.”

Fourget gaped. The boy turned up his canvas--an execrable daub.

”I'll buy that,” said Cartaret.

”Are you mad?” asked Fourget.

”Bring back that picture to M. Fourget in half an hour,” pursued the heedless American, ”and he will give you for it two hundred francs that he will have lent me and that I shall have left with him.”

He pushed the stammering lad out of the shop and turned to Fourget.

”Are you drunk?” asked the dealer, changing the form of his suspicions.

”Fourget,” cried Cartaret, clapping his friend on the back, ”I shall never be hungry again--never--never--never! Look at that.” He produced the precious cable-message. ”That piece of paper will feed me all my life long. It will buy me houses, horses, motors, steams.h.i.+p-tickets. It looks like paper, Fourget.” He spread it under Fourget's nose. ”But it isn't; it's a dozen suits of clothes a year; it's a watch-and-chain, a diamond scarf-pin (if I'd wear one!); it's a yacht. It's an oil-well, Fourget--and a G.o.dsend!”

Fourget took it in his blue-veined hands. His hands trembled.

”Oh, I forgot,” said Cartaret. ”It is in English. Let me translate.”

He translated.

When Charlie looked up from his reading, he found Fourget busily engaged in polis.h.i.+ng his spectacles. Perhaps the old man's eyes were weak and could not bear to be without their gla.s.ses: they certainly were moist.

”I do not see so well as I once saw,” the dealer was explaining: his voice was very gruff indeed. ”You are wholly certain that this is no trick which one plays upon you?”

Cartaret was wholly certain.

Fourget made a valiant attempt at expressing his congratulations in a mere Anglo-Saxon handshake. He found it quite inadequate, and this annoyed him.

”The world,” he growled, ”loses a possibly fair artist and gets an idle millionaire.”

”You get a new shop,” vowed Cartaret. ”Don't shake your head! I'll make it a business proposition: I've had enough trouble by being suspected of charity. I'm going to buy an interest, and I shan't want my money sunk in anything dark and unsanitary.”

Fourget shook his gray head again.

”Thank you with all my heart, my friend,” he said; ”but no. This little shop meets my little needs and will last out my little remaining days. I would not leave it for the largest establishment on the boulevards.”

They talked until Cartaret again bethought him of the cafe in the rue Jacob.

”But you will lend me the two hundred francs,” he asked, ”and give it to that boy for his picture?” How much a boy that boy seemed now: he was just the boy that Cartaret had been in the long ago time that was yesterday!

”Since you insist; but truly, my dear monsieur, myself I was about to weaken and purchase the terrible thing when you interrupted and saved me.” ...