Mlle. Fouchette Part 51

"The miserable!"

"Oh, as for that----"

"Well, he's done for, anyhow."

"Wha-at?"

"His goose is cooked!"

"How is that? Not----"

"Dead."

"Dead!"

"As a mackerel!"

Jean paled perceptibly and almost staggered against his friend.

"Impossible!" he murmured. "It can't be! How----"

"Oh, easy enough," interrupted the other, lightly. "Some ruffian choked him to death, they say. Liable to occur, is it not? Sorry, of course, but----"

Fortunately for Jean's self-control, they were rudely separated by two angry opponents who wanted to fight it out then and there. He would have betrayed himself in another moment. And, wrought up to the present tension, it seemed as if he must go mad and shriek his guilt to all the world.

He sought an obscure corner and sat down on the floor with his back to the wall, his chin upon his knees.

In his own soul he was condemned already. He only awaited the guillotine.

When he was aroused the room was almost cleared. A couple of agents roughly hustled him before the busy commissaire. It was the old official the student had struck that morning. The red welt across his face gave it a sinister appearance. He glanced at the arraigned, then read from the blotter,--

"Jean Marot, student,--um, um, um!--charged with--with--let's see--with uttering seditious cries calculated to lead to a breach of the peace. What have you got to say for yourself, young man?"

The prisoner had nothing to say for himself,--at least, nothing better than that,--so he was speechless.

"Ah! evidently never been here before," said the old commissaire. "Go!

and never come here again. Discharged. Call the next."

"Monsieur le Commissaire," began a police agent who had here risen to his feet with an air of remonstrance,--"monsieur----"

"Call the next!" said the commissaire, waving the agent down peremptorily.

And thus Jean Marot, before he had recovered from his surprise, or could even realize what had happened, was again hustled through the corridor, this time to be unceremoniously thrust into the street--a free man.

"Hold, Monsieur Jean!" said the lively voice of Mlle. Fouchette. "What a precious long time you have been!"

"It might have been longer," he remarked, vaguely accepting her presence as not unnatural, and suffering himself to be led down the block.

"Oh, here it is," said she, going straight to a cab in waiting. "Now, don't stop to ask questions or I'll be wicked. Get in! Dinner is----"

"Dinner is, is it?" he repeated, almost hysterically.

He felt exhausted physically and mentally, indifferent as to what now befell him, prepared to accept anything. Nothing could be worse. He felt as if everything was crumbling beneath his feet. There was n.o.body to lean against, n.o.body to sympathize with him, n.o.body to care one way or the other, or----

Only this girl at his side.

He looked at her wonderingly, now that he came to think of her. The thin, insignificant figure, the pale face, the drooping blonde hair lying demurely on the cheeks, the bright steel-blue eyes, the p.u.s.s.ycat purr----

"How absurd you are, Monsieur Jean, with that awful face! One would think it was because of the prospect of my dinner!"

"I am thinking of you," he said.

"Oh, thanks, monsieur! And so savagely--I have fear!"

She laughed gleefully, and affected to move away from him, only, at that instant, the hind wheel of the voiture struck a stray bowlder, and the shock threw her bodily back against him.

Both laughed now.

"It is provoking," she said.

"It is the fatality," said he.

And he put his arm about her slender form and held her there without protest.

"I was thinking of you, mon enfant," he continued, "and of what a dear, good little thing you are. Mademoiselle, you are an angel!"

"Ah! no, monsieur!" she answered, in a voice that trembled a little,--"do not believe it! I'm a devil!"

It is easy for a man in deep trouble to accept the first sympathetic woman as something angelic. And now, in his grat.i.tude, it was perhaps natural that Jean should unhesitatingly supply Mlle. Fouchette with wings. He had humbled himself in the dust, from which point of view all virtues look beautiful and all good actions partake of heaven. His response to her self-depreciation was a human one. He drew her closer and kissed her lips.

In this he deceived neither himself nor the girl. She knew quite as well as he where his heart was. It was a kiss of grat.i.tude and of good-will, and was received as such without affectation. In his masculine egotism, however, he quite overlooked any possible good or ill to her in the matter,--his consideration began and ended in the gratification of her conduct towards him. And he would have been cold indeed not to feel the friendly glow which answers so eloquently the touch of womanly gentleness and sympathy.

As for Mlle. Fouchette, it must be admitted that this platonic caress created in her maidenly bosom a nervous thrill of pleasure not quite consistent in a young woman known to give the "savate" to young gentlemen who approached such familiarity, and who plumed herself on her invulnerability to the masculine wiles that beset her s.e.x. And what might have been deemed still more foreign to her nature, she never said a word from that moment until the voiture drew up in front of her place of residence in the venerable but not venerated Rue St.

Jacques.

"Voila!" she then exclaimed, though it had not the tone of entire satisfaction.

"Hold on, little one, I will pay----"

But he discovered that those who had cared for him had also benevolently relieved him of his valuables. He had not a sou.

"The wretches!" cried the girl.

"They might have left me my keys, at least," he muttered.

"And your watch, monsieur?" she asked, apprehensively.

"Gone, of course!"