“Monsieur doctor—you came to see me! It is astonishing.”
Dr. Georges gently turned back the blanket.
“It is my work.”
“Monsieur, I apologize. I wish to withdraw——”
Said Dr. Georges:
“Let us see what the matter is.”
The matter was serious, a sudden flare of rebellion in that little vermiform appendage that man carries about with him in a smaller edition than does his brother the rabbit. Dr. Georges felt and stroked and tapped, and looking grave, announced the fact that Monsieur François could not stay in his van. An operation might be necessary; Monsieur François must be in bed.
But where? Madame, with a finger crooked against her chin, observed that they were homeless people.
Dr. Georges pulled a moustachio thoughtfully.
“We will take him to my house. There is a good, airy bedroom. I will send a telegram. I have a friend, a surgeon.”
Paradis had its sensation; for, next morning it became known the red van of the pill seller was standing in the yard at the back of Dr. Georges’ tall house, and that Monsieur François himself lay in one of the doctor’s beds. Surely this was magnanimity. And the doctor himself had driven off in his automobile to the station five kilometres away and he brought back another doctor with him.
Paradis held its breath, and gossipped under the lime trees. It saw Madame François enter the church. Doubtless she went to pray there, and when she emerged it was seen that she had been weeping.
Paradis waited. It might be full of tongues, but it was human; and when it was known some days later that an operation had been performed on Monsieur François, and that it had been successful, Paradis in the spirit saluted Dr. Georges. Paradis had pride. Its doctor might sometimes appear to be a rather fierce old curmudgeon, but it seemed that he had the grace of le bon Dieu.
But the heart of Monsieur François was troubled. He lay in bed and pondered, for life had become perplexing. He could not boast as he had boasted of yore, and somehow his electric pills had lost their potency. He had a bill to pay, and other liabilities.
He said to his wife:
“My dear, what shall we do? Something has happened in Paradis.”
Madame François looked thoughtful.
“I have some money in a stocking. And the pills are good pills. Perhaps, if we talked a little less. But then—people—do like a mystery. It seems to me that we shall have to go on selling pills, but not in Paradis.”
Such was their fate, but it was not to be final, for when Monsieur François had shaken hands with the doctor and made a little grimace, he knew in his heart of hearts that somehow the virtue was no longer in the business. He had had a shock. The little bladder of his gaillard boastfulness was shrunken.
For a year or so the red van wandered about the roads of northern France, but Monsieur François had ceased to flourish his sabre and to boast of eternal health. He advertised the virtues of his pills more soberly, and the sale of them dwindled.
But one day, the red van reappeared in Paradis. Its coat was the same, though its inwardness had changed. It glittered with crockery, hardware, and was gay with fabrics. It advertised sewing-machines; Monsieur François had obtained a travelling agency.
He stood up as of old and extolled the virtues of sewing-machines. He did it admirably and with conviction. His wife looked a little plumper, and quite happy. A little François inhabited the interior of the van.
Monsieur François called on Dr. Georges.
“Monsieur, my gratitude survives. I now sell sewing-machines. I know all about the inside of sewing-machines. I am a doctor to sick sewing-machines. No; it is not a boast.”
The doctor brought out a bottle of red wine.
“Let a man know what he knows. Monsieur, I salute you. I will with pleasure buy one of your sewing-machines.”
Said Monsieur François:
“Monsieur, let us be honest. Already I have sold a sewing-machine to your housekeeper.”
STOCKINGS
The sun was shining, and the sea bit a great blue curve into the rocky coast. From the tennis-courts of the Hôtel Bristol came the sharp “ping” of rackets striking white balls. The palms made a pleasant, crepitant murmuring. And Mr. Fothergill sat on a seat in the Beaulieu gardens where the stocks and the wallflowers smelt better than a perfume shop in the Rue de la Paix.
Yet Mr. Fothergill was depressed, more than depressed. He felt suicidal.
“What’s the use of sunlight?”
Imagine the depth of his gloom! A little man in a grey suit and biscuit-coloured spats, dismissing the Mediterranean sun so slightingly; and this after months of rain and a summer that had degenerated into a splendour of slime and slugs!
“That doctor of mine was a fool.”
He pulled his hat over his eyes, and stared at the silver-scaled sea. Someone was hoisting the sail of a small yacht, and a figure in a bright cerise jumper reminded Mr. Fothergill of the existence of artificial silk. He looked pathetic.
“There! It hits you everywhere. What’s the use of sunlight if you can’t leave your worries at home? Did that doctor of mine think I should leave them on the Channel boat—with—other things?”
He let himself sink deeper into pessimism.
“Tennis! He said I was to play tennis—and dance! Dashed fool. What did I come for? Waste of money.”
John Fothergill had been at the Hôtel Metropole for more than a week. It was a gem of an hotel, all rose and gold, with the blue of the sea filling its windows; but Fothergill was a domesticated man, and he could not forget the wife and two girls left behind in Shacklesfield.
“Poor Molly! Poor Bertha and Jean! I’m a failure.”
Someone else arrived to share the seat with him, and Fothergill recognized the rather pleasant and great-auntly person who sat at the next table in the salle à manger of the Metropole. They had exchanged confidences. They had praised or blamed the food, and held up hands of horror over the state of England!
“Isn’t this lovely?”
Miss Ferguson was all smiles and white hair under a youthful rose-coloured hat.
“Too hot—almost,” said Mr. Fothergill; feeling that it was his fate to disagree with anything and everything.
“Oh—no.”
“It gives me a—excuse me—a liver. Rather sudden, after Shacklesfield.”
“But contrasts are so good for one.”
“That’s what my doctor said. Unimaginative ass! Oh—I beg your pardon.”
Miss Ferguson laughed.
“It takes one a week or two to get acclimatized.”
“Does it? What about worry?”
“Worry?”
“Yes, worry. You can’t get acclimatized to that. At least, I can’t. Four years of it. Or rather, ever since the boom stopped. My business, you know.”
Miss Ferguson had a sympathetic nature.
“Strikes, and all that, and foreign competition, and the exchanges, and new fads—dead in three months.”
“It must be very worrying.”
“It’s like going round and round in a whirlpool, wondering how long it will be before you are sucked down. I got giddy.”
“I see. Overworked.”
“No, over-worried. I’m a serious fellow; I have a wife and children. One’s business going to pot, you know, and your wife making herself smile. ‘Your health is everything, John’—that’s my wife. Said—she—would cut her allowance. I—was—to have a holiday—at all costs. A—holiday——!”
He sat up straight and spread his hands like a Frenchman.
“Holiday! That confounded sun—regular Mark Tapley of a sun! Of all the offensive characters in fiction. And this last summer—all slush and slime, and nobody buying anything. A slump in sunlight. Suppose I’ve got a grievance.”
It was obvious that he had.
“I’m sorry,” said the lady in the rose-coloured hat; “one feels so helpless sometimes.”
“One—is—helpless. Th
at’s just it.”
For the next ten days John Fothergill’s sense of helplessness continued. All the blueness of sea and sky, these flowers, this happy glare of sunlight, what were they but stage scenery? His tragedy was too real, too sordid, too commercially urgent. His thoughts reverted to Shacklesfield—with its muck and its cobbled streets and its clogs. What did his health matter—anyway—if he had to go back to Shacklesfield and face bankruptcy?
The one active thing he did was to walk and to climb. He walked desperately, carrying an hotel lunch in a paper bag with a handle of red string, and poking the roads or the mule paths with a restless stick. He wore out his boots; but he did not wear out his worries.
But, by the grace of God, he was given an adventure.
He climbed to Eze. He had tea there at a café, and as he took the long mule-path that plunged down the hillside to the lower Corniche the setting sun flushed the Tête de Chien. It was a wonderful scene. Colour rushed to meet colour. It made John Fothergill think of Tree’s staging of Stephen Phillips’ Ulysses; he and Molly had seen the play on their honeymoon a hundred thousand years ago.
Wonderful days those! And what a comfortable country England had been then. Poor Molly! He paused in a sort of a dream, staring down at the lapis lazuli of the sea. So absorbed was he that he might have missed and passed by his adventure.
Someone was shouting.
Mr. Fothergill became aware of the shouting. It penetrated his mood of self-absorption, and he realized that the voice was a woman’s, and that it was calling for help. It seemed to come from a group of scattered pines on a steep slope below the path.
“Hallo——!”
“Is anything the matter——?”
“Hallo! hallo! I’m here. Please be quick, will you.”
A somewhat peremptory call from a person who appeared to be in distress, but Mr. Fothergill’s soul leapt to the distraction, and he went in search of the owner of the voice. He found her half-seated and half-lying amid a jumble of rocks beyond the pines, one slim leg stretched out, a very graceful black leg.
“Have you hurt yourself?”
“Have I not?”
Mr. Fothergill stood and stared. The woman disconcerted him, for some instinct warned him that she belonged to that mysterious and notable world that suburbia glimpses in the illustrated papers. She was what was called a “striking-looking woman.” Her hair was the colour of amber, and her eyes looked black in the glow of her face. She was tall. She wore an apple-green silk knitted dress, and white shoes, and a black hat.
Mr. Fothergill looked awkward and shy.
“Is it your ankle——?”
“Yes; I scrambled down to look at this view, and I twisted my foot between two rocks.”
“Dear me——!”
The lady was much more emphatic. Dear me—indeed!
“My dear man, don’t stand and stare. Help me back to the path——”
Mr. Fothergill hesitated.
“But ought you——?”
“Damn it; but I—must—get back to Monte in time for dinner. It’s furiously important.”
Obviously, and for some reason, it was, and her fierceness appeared to energize Mr. Fothergill.
“There is quite a lot of path left——”
“I know.”
She held out a commanding hand.
“Come on. If you help me I expect I can hobble. Once down on the road——”
“A tram or a taxi.”
“Just so.”
“Or I can stop a car for you. Excuse me——”
As the Good Samaritan he was exceedingly polite. He raised his hat before presuming to stoop to that ministering embrace.
“Supposing you put one arm——”
She had no fool self-consciousness.
“Obviously. Hold on.”
Mr. Fothergill’s left arm encircled her, and her right arm clasped his shoulders. Movement hurt her, but she had been hurt often in the hunting-field; she was determined. She encouraged him to drag her along.
“That’s it.”
“I’m afraid—it is hurting you.”
“It is. Never mind. It’s necessary——”
Mr. Fothergill felt a glow of romantic admiration for her. Indeed—this was some adventure. He got her back to the mule-path and they began to descend, while the dusk threatened to make the descent still more difficult. Fothergill was a sturdy little man; there had been days when he had played a notable game as scrum-half for Shacklesfield.
“We are getting along.”
“Splendid!” said she. “I’ll do it.”
“You’ve got some pluck. Excuse me saying so.”
“I shall be—most damnably—in your debt.”
“Oh, not at all. Lucky I turned up. By the way, where in Monte——?”
“Oh—the Grand Hotel. My name’s Mandeville.”
And then Mr. Fothergill realized the uniqueness of the adventure.
“Lady Minerva?”
“That’s me.”
Domesticated creature though he was he thrilled. Lady Minerva Mandeville! That most illustrious and meteoric woman of the world! A romantic and a sensational figure—the goddess of fashion. And he—John Fothergill—had his arm round her waist, and she was leaning upon him!
His shyness returned.
“I feel quite important—your ladyship. Hallo, mind the stone——”
“Dash the stone,” said she; “the one important thing is that I should get back in time for dinner.”
It took them three-quarters of an hour to reach the road, but reach it they did, and here Lady Minerva sat down on a bank and said things under her breath. For her ankle felt like hot metal, and it was nearly dark, and she had smoked her last cigarette.
Mr. Fothergill was standing in the middle of the road, a dramatic and determined figure. He meant to stop the first car going in the direction of Monte Carlo.
“I say—Mr——”
“Fothergill——”
“Got such a thing as a cigarette?”
“I have. Virginian?”
“Top-hole. Thanks—awfully. Hallo, there are the lights of a car.”
“I’ll stop it,” said he, as though he were Horatius, planting himself in the middle of the road.
The lights blazed down on him, and he—waving his arms like a semaphore, dared the callousness of a French chauffeur who pulled up suspiciously. Mr. Fothergill had no French; Lady Minerva supplied the language.
“What—Marquis—is it you? What luck! I’ve sprained my ankle—and I must get back——”
A little fat man was being effusively sympathetic.
“How fortunate for me. Let me assist. Now, gently——”
Mr. Fothergill was not to be effaced by a Marquis, though he did come from Shacklesfield, and his business was going to pot. He, too, assisted.
“Thanks awfully; awfully sweet of you both. Oh, Mr. Fothergill, I’m most tremendously grateful. Do come and lunch with me to-morrow——”
Mr. Fothergill blushed in the darkness.
“I shall be delighted—your ladyship.”
“Half-past twelve at The Grand. So long! You have been a regular mascot.”
John Fothergill set out to tramp back to Beaulieu, thinking what a wonderful thing it was to have been a mascot to such a woman, and wishing that someone would play mascot to his poor, derelict business.
He turned up punctually next day at The Grand, a little nervous, and unsure about his tie. Would it be a formal and fashionable luncheon? A polite chasseur took his hat and coat, and conducted him to the lounge. Her ladyship was there, in a wheel chair, and looking what the newspaper gentlemen call “radiant.”
She received Mr. Fothergill with enthusiasm.
“Good morning, Mr. Mascot. Well, everything happened as I wanted it to happen, thanks to you. Now, what about the ‘eats’—as they say in Main Street?”
Mr. Fothergill found himself lunching alone with Lady Minerva. It was an excellent lunch; they drank
champagne, and she was kind and charming to him, for Mr. Fothergill made her think of a rather pathetic-looking little dog, a Pom that had lost its biscuit. He was worrying about something; he had a background of worry, and his troubled face looked out of it.
She made him talk, the champagne assisting, and he talked about himself.
“Out here for my health. Overworked—you know. I come from Shacklesfield. Has your ladyship ever visited Shacklesfield?”
No; Lady Minerva had missed that pleasure.
“Isn’t that where the ‘undies,’ come from?”
“Some of them,” said Mr. Fothergill coyly.
“The pretty-pretties. Of course.”
He did not tell her of his business worries, but it is possible that she divined them.
The wonderful meal was over, and Lady Minerva’s chair was wheeled into the lounge where, after coffee and cigarettes, Mr. Fothergill became so much part of the crowd that found it necessary to come and inquire about the great lady’s ankle, that he politely and regretfully slipped away. But she threw a smile and a few admonishing words at him over the fat back of an American film-merchant.
“Now—don’t worry—and come to see me again.”
Mr. Fothergill returned to Beaulieu, and gloom descended on him once more, a natural reaction no doubt after that glimpse into what had seemed to him a carefree world. Also, the champagne may have had something to do with it. He told himself that he would never see Lady Minerva again.
But he did see her again, or rather she saw him, a most desperately depressed-looking little man, sitting on a seat in the Casino gardens. His face shocked her. She was in a bath-chair, and she ordered the man who was pushing it to stop.
“The poor little thing is going to gamble. People who sit there—looking like the Day of Judgment——!”
Aloud, to the attendant—she said:
“Wheel me over to that seat where the gentleman in the grey suit is sitting, and then—go away for half an hour.”
She surprised Mr. Fothergill. He looked confused, disconcerted, standing hat in hand.
“Naughty Fido!” she said, wagging a finger at him; “you haven’t been to see me.”
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 43