“She chucked you?” In moments of emotion it is the simplest language that comes to the lips.
He nodded.
“And married Captain Bassett?”
He nodded again.
“And your uncle?” I said. “How did he take it?”
He sighed.
“There was once more,” he said, “blooming row, monsieur.”
“He washed his hands of you?”
“Not altogether. He was angry, but he gave me one more chance. I am still ‘is dear brother’s child, and he cannot forget it. An acquaintance of his, a man of letters, a M. Paul Sartines, was in need of a secretary. The post was not well paid, but it was permanent. My uncle insist that I take it. What choice? I took it. It is the post which I still ‘old.”
He ordered another liqueur brandy and gulped it down.
“The name is familiar to you, monsieur? You ‘ave ‘eard of M. Sartines?”
“I don’t think I have. Who is he?”
“He is a man of letters, a savant. For five years he has been occupied upon a great work. It is with that that I assist him by collecting facts for ‘is use. I ‘ave spent this afternoon in the British Museum collecting facts. To-morrow I go again. And the next day. And again after that. The book will occupy yet another ten years before it is completed. It is his great work.”
“It sounds as if it was,” I said. “What’s it about?”
He signalled to the waiter.
“Garçon, one other liqueur brandy. The book, monsieur, is a ”Istory of the Cat in Ancient Egypt.’ ”
Ruth in Exile
The clock struck five-briskly, as if time were money. Ruth Warden got up from her desk and, having put on her hat, emerged into the outer office where M. Gandinot received visitors. M. Gandinot, the ugliest man in Roville-sur-Mer, presided over the local mont-de-piété, and Ruth served him, from ten to five, as a sort of secretary-clerk. Her duties, if monotonous, were simple. They consisted of sitting, detached and invisible, behind a ground-glass screen, and entering details of loans in a fat book. She was kept busy as a rule, for Roville possesses two casinos, each offering the attraction of petits chevaux, and just round the corner is Monte Carlo. Very brisk was the business done by M. Gandinot, the pawnbroker, and very frequent were the pitying shakes of the head and clicks of the tongue of M. Gandinot, the man; for in his unofficial capacity Ruth’s employer had a gentle soul, and winced at the evidences of tragedy which presented themselves before his official eyes.
He blinked up at Ruth as she appeared, and Ruth, as she looked at him, was conscious, as usual, of a lightening of the depression which, nowadays, seemed to have settled permanently upon her. The peculiar quality of M. Gandinot’s extraordinary countenance was that it induced mirth-not mocking laughter, but a kind of smiling happiness. It possessed that indefinable quality which characterises the Billiken, due, perhaps, to the unquenchable optimism which shone through the irregular features; for M. Gandinot, despite his calling, believed in his fellow-man.
“You are going, mademoiselle?”
As Ruth was wearing her hat and making for the door, and as she always left at this hour, a purist might have considered the question superfluous; but M. Gandinot was a man who seized every opportunity of practising his English.
“You will not wait for the good papa who calls so regularly for you?”
“I think I won’t to-day, M. Gandinot. I want to get out into the air. I have rather a headache. Will you tell my father I have gone to the Promenade?”
M. Gandinot sighed as the door closed behind her. Ruth’s depression had not escaped his notice. He was sorry for her. And not without cause, for Fate had not dealt too kindly with Ruth.
It would have amazed Mr. Eugene Warden, that genial old gentleman, if, on one of those occasions of manly emotion when he was in the habit of observing that he had been nobody’s enemy but his own, somebody had hinted that he had spoiled his daughter’s life. Such a thought had never entered his head. He was one of those delightful, irresponsible, erratic persons whose heads thoughts of this kind do not enter, and who are about as deadly to those whose lives are bound up with theirs as a Upas tree.