Part 64 (1/2)
”It is not to be refused. I am with you, comrade. At the sign of the 'Pinched Nose' we shall find the best of everything,” replied Anatole, heartily, and the pair pa.s.sed into the street.
It was barely a dozen yards to the wine-shop, and they walked there arm-in-arm in boisterous good-fellows.h.i.+p, elbowing their way through the crowd in a manner that was not exactly popular.
”Take care, imbecile!” cried one hulking fellow whom Anatole had shouldered off the path.
”Make room, then,” replied our friend, rudely.
”Would you dare--” began the other, in a menacing voice, adding some words in a lower tone.
”Excuse. I was in the wrong,” said Anatole, suddenly humbled.
”You are right to avoid a quarrel,” remarked Hyde, when they were seated at table. He had been quietly amused at his companion's easy surrender.
”I could have eaten him raw. But why should I? He is, perhaps, a father of a family--the support of a widowed mother: if I had destroyed him they might have come to want. No; let him go.”
”All the same, he does not seem inclined to go. There he is, still lurking about the front of the shop.”
”Truly? Where?” asked Anatole, in evident perturbation. ”Bah! we will tire him of that. By the time we have finished a second bottle--”
”Or a third, if you will!” cried Hyde, cheerfully.
They had their breakfast--the most savoury dishes; ham and sour crout, tripe after the mode of Caen, rich ripe Roquefort cheese, and had disposed of three bottles of a rather rough but potent red wine, before Anatole would speak on any but the most common-place topics. The Crimea, the dreadful winter, the punishment administered to their common enemy, occupied him exclusively.
But with the fourth bottle he became more communicative.
”You owe a long candle to your saint for your luck to-day in meeting me,” he said, with a slight hiccup.
”Ah! how so?”
”Had not I been there to give you protection you would now be under lock and key in the depot of the Prefecture.”
Hyde, in spite of himself, shuddered as he thought of his last detention in that unsavoury prison.
”What, then, have you done, my English friend?” went on Anatole, with drunken solemnity. ”Why should the police seek your arrest?”
”But do they? I cannot believe it.”
”It is as I tell you. I myself am in the 'cuisine' (the Prefecture).
Since my return from the war my ill.u.s.trious services have been rewarded by an appointment of great trust.”
”In other words, you are now a police-agent, and you were set to watch for some one like me.”
”Why not you?” asked Anatole, trying, but in vain, to fix him with his watery eyes. ”In any case,” he went on, ”I wish to serve a comrade--at risk to myself, perhaps.”
”You shall not suffer for it, never fear, in the long run. Count always upon me.”
”They may say that I have betrayed my trust; that I put friends.h.i.+p before duty. That has always been my error; I have too soft a heart.”
Anatole now began to cry with emotion at his own chivalrous self-sacrifice, which changed quickly into bravado as he cried, striking the table noisily--