Part 26 (1/2)

There's the man who told me about a Registrar. See how easy it was. Where would you like to go?”

”Anywhere out of England.” She shuddered. ”Take me to Paris first. We can go on from there anywhere we like.”

”Certainly,” said Septimus, and he hailed a hansom.

Thus it fell out that the strangely married pair kept together during the long months that followed. Emmy's flat in London had been rented furnished.

The maid Edith had vanished, after the manner of many of her kind, into ancillary s.p.a.ce. The theater and all it signified to Emmy became a past dream. Her inner world was tragical enough, poor child. Her outer world was Septimus. In Paris, as she shrank from meeting possible acquaintances, he found her a furnished _appartement_ in the Boulevard Raspail, while he perched in a little hotel close by. The finding of the _appartement_ was an ill.u.s.tration of his newly invented, optimistic theory of getting things done.

He came back to the hotel where he had provisionally lodged her and informed her of his discovery. She naturally asked him how he had found it.

”A soldier told me,” he said.

”A soldier?”

”Yes. He had great baggy red trousers and a sash around his waist and a short blue jacket braided with red and a fez with a ta.s.sel and a shaven head. He saved me from being run over by a cab.”

Emmy s.h.i.+vered. ”Oh, don't talk of it in that calm way--suppose you had been killed!”

”I suppose the Zouave would have buried me--he's such a helpful creature, you know. He's been in Algiers. He says I ought to go there. His name is Hegisippe Cruchot.”

”But what about the flat?” asked Emmy.

”Oh, you see, I fell down in front of the cab and he dragged me away and brushed me down with a waiter's napkin--there was a cafe within a yard or two. And then I asked him to have a drink and gave him a cigarette. He drank absinthe, without water, and then I began to explain to him an idea for an invention which occurred to me to prevent people from being run over by cabs, and he was quite interested. I'll show you--”

”You won't,” said Emmy, with a laugh. She had her lighter moments. ”You'll do no such thing--not until you've told me about the flat.”

”Oh! the flat,” said Septimus in a disappointed tone, as if it were a secondary matter altogether. ”I gave him another absinthe and we became so friendly that I told him that I wanted a flat and didn't in the least know how to set about finding one. It turned out that there was an _appartement_ vacant in the house of which his mother is concierge. He took me along to see it, and introduced me to Madame, his mother. He has also got an aunt who can cook.”

”I should like to have seen you talking to the Zouave,” said Emmy. ”It would have made a pretty picture--the two of you hobn.o.bbing over a little marble table.”

”It was iron, painted yellow,” said Septimus. ”It wasn't a resplendent cafe.”

”I wonder what he thought of you.”

”Well, he introduced me to his mother,” replied Septimus gravely, whereat Emmy broke into merry laughter, for the first time for many days.

”I've taken the _appartement_ for a month and the aunt who can cook,” he remarked.

”What!” cried Emmy, who had not paid very serious regard to the narrative.

”Without knowing anything at all about it?”

She put on her hat and insisted on driving there incontinently, full of misgivings. But she found a well-appointed house, a deep-bosomed, broad-beamed concierge, who looked as if she might be the mother of twenty helpful Zouaves, and an equally matronly and kindly-faced sister, a Madame Bolivard, the aunt aforesaid who could cook.

Thus, as the ravens fed Elijah, so did Zouaves and other casual fowl aid Septimus on his way. Madame Bolivard in particular took them both under her ample wing, to the girl's unspeakable comfort. A _brav' femme_, Madame Bolivard, who not only could cook, but could darn stockings and mend linen, which Emmy's frivolous fingers had never learned to accomplish. She could also prescribe miraculous _tisanes_ for trivial ailments, could tell the cards, and could converse volubly on any subject under heaven; the less she knew about it, the more she had to say, which is a great gift. It spared the girl many desolate and despairing hours.

It was a lonely, monotonous life. Septimus she saw daily. Now and then, if Septimus were known to be upstairs, Hegisippe Cruchot, coming to pay his filial respects to his mother and his mother's _bouillabaisse_ (she was from Ma.r.s.eilles) and her _matelote_ of eels, luxuries which his halfpenny a day could not provide, would mount to inquire dutifully after his aunt and incidentally after the _belle dame du troisieme_. He was their only visitor from the outside world, and as he found a welcome and an ambrosial form of alcohol compounded of Scotch whiskey and Maraschino (whose subtlety Emmy had learned from an eminent London actor-manager at a far-away supper party), he came as often as his respectful ideas of propriety allowed.

They were quaint gatherings, these, in the stiffly furnished little salon: Emmy, fluffy-haired, sea-sh.e.l.l-cheeked, and softly raimented, lying indolently on the sofa amid a pile of cus.h.i.+ons--she had sent Septimus out to ”La Samaritaine” to buy some (in French furnished rooms they stuff the cus.h.i.+ons with cement), and he had brought back a dozen in a cab, so that the whole room heaved and swelled with them; Septimus, with his mild blue eyes and upstanding hair, looking like the conventional picture of one who sees a ghost; Hegisippe Cruchot, the outrageousness of whose piratical kit contrasted with his suavity of manner, sitting with military precision on a straight-backed chair; and Madame Bolivard standing in a far corner of the room; her bare arms crossed above her blue ap.r.o.n, and watching the scene with an air of kindly proprietors.h.i.+p. They spoke in French, for only one word of English had Hegisippe and his aunt between them, and that being ”HowdodoG.o.ddam” was the exclusive possession of the former. Emmy gave utterance now and then to peculiar vocables which she had learned at school, and which Hegisippe declared to be the purest Parisian he had ever heard an Englishwoman use, while Septimus spoke very fair French indeed.

Hegisippe would twirl his little brown mustache--he was all brown, skin and eyes and close-cropped hair, and even the skull under the hair--and tell of his military service and of the beautiful suns.h.i.+ne of Algiers and, when his aunt was out of the room, of his Arcadian love affairs. She served in a wine shop in the Rue des Francs-Bouchers. When was he going to get married?