That Boy Of Norcott's Part 13

While I strolled into the garden to select a table for our dinner, Eccles went in search of Mr. Delorme; and though he had affected to say that the important duty of devising the feast should be confided to the host, I could plainly see that my respected tutor accepted his share in that high responsibility.

I will only say of the feast in question, that, though I was daily accustomed to the admirable dinners of my father's table, I had no conception of what exquisite devices in cookery could be produced by the skill of an accomplished restaurateur, left free to his own fancy, and without limitation as to the bill.

One thing alone detracted from the perfect enjoyment of the banquet It was the appearance of Mr. Delorme himself, white-cravated and gloved, carrying in the soup. It was an attention that he usually reserved for great personages, royalties, or high dignitaries of the court; and I was shocked that he should have selected me for the honor, not the less as it was only a few hours before he and I had been drinking champagne with much clinking of gla.s.ses together, and interchanging the most affectionate vows of eternal friends.h.i.+p.

I arose from my chair to salute him; but, as he deposited the tureen upon the table, he stepped back and bowed low, and retreated in this fas.h.i.+on, with the same humble reverence at every step, till he was lost in the distance.

"Sit down," said Eccles, with a peculiar look, as though to warn me that I was forgetting my dignity; and then, to divert my attention, he added, "That green seal is an attention Delorme offers you,--a very rare favor, too,--a bottle of his own peculiar Johannisberg. Let us drink his health. Now, Digby, I call this something very nigh perfection."

It was a theme my tutor understood thoroughly, and there was not a dish nor a wine that he did not criticise.

"I was always begging your father to take this cook, Digby," said he, with half sigh. "Even with a first-rate artist you need change, otherwise your dinners become manneristic, as ours have become of late."

He then went on to show me that the domestic cook, always appealing to the small public of the family, gets narrowed in his views and bounded in his resources. He compared them, I remember, to the writers in certain religious newspapers, who must always go on spicing higher and higher as the palates of their clients grow more jaded. How he worked out his theme afterwards I cannot tell, for I was watching the windows of the house, and stealing glances down the alleys in the garden, longing for one look, ever so fleeting, of my lovely partner of the night before.

"I see, young gentleman," said he, evidently nettled at my inattention, "your thoughts are not with me."

"How long have we to stay, sir?" said I, reverting to the respect I tendered him at my lessons.

"You have thirty-eight minutes," said he, examining his watch: "which I purpose to apportion in this wise,--eight for the douceur, five for the cheese, fifteen for the dessert, five for coffee and a gla.s.s of curacoa.

The bill and our parting compliments will take the rest, giving us three minutes to walk across to the station."

These sort of pedantries were a pa.s.sion with him, and I did not interpose a word as he spoke.

"What a pineapple!" cried a young fellow from an adjoining table, as a waiter deposited a magnificent pine in the midst of the bouquet that adorned our table.

"Monsieur Delorme begs to say, sir, this has just arrived from Laeken."

"Don't you know who that is?" said a companion, in a low voice; but my hearing, ever acute, caught the words, "He's that boy of Norcott's."

I started as if I had received a blow. It was time to resent these insolences, and make an end of them forever.

"You heard what that man yonder has called me?" said I to Eccles.

"No; I was not minding him."

"The old impertinence,--'That boy of Norcott's.'"

I arose, and took the cane I had laid against a chair. What I was about to do I knew not. I felt I should launch some insolent provocation. As for what should follow, the event might decide _that_.

"I'd not mind him, Digby," said Eccles, carelessly, as he lit his cigarette, and stretched his legs on a vacant chair. I took no notice of his words, but walked on. Before, however, I had made three steps my eyes caught the flutter of a dress at the end of the alley. It was merely the last folds of some floating muslin, but it was enough to rout all other thoughts from my head, and I flew down the walk with lightning speed. I was right; it was Pauline. In an instant I was beside her.

"Dearest, darling Pauline," I cried, seizing her round the waist and kissing her cheek, before she well knew, "how happy it makes me to see you even for a few seconds."

"Ah, milord, I did not expect to see you here," said she, half distantly.

"I am not milord; I am your own Digby--Digby Nor-cott, who loves you, and will make you his wife."

"Ma foi! children don't marry,--at least demoiselles don't marry them,"

said she, with a saucy laugh.

"I am no more an 'enfant,'" said I, with a pa.s.sionate stress on the word, "than I was last night, when you never left my arm except to sit at my side at supper."

"But you are going away," said she, pouting; "else why that travelling-dress, and that sack strapped at your side?"

"Only for a few weeks. A short tour up the Rhine, Pauline, to see the world, and complete my education; and then I will come back and marry you, and you shall be mistress of a beautiful house, and have everything you can think of."

"Vrai?" asked she, with a little laugh.

"I swear it by this kiss."

"Pardie, Monsieur? you are very adventurous," said she, repulsing me; "you will make me not regret that you are going so soon."

"Oh, Pauline! when you know that I adore you, that I only value wealth to share it with you; that all I ask of life is to devote it to you."

"And that you have n't got full thirty seconds left for that admirable object," broke in Eccles. "We must run for it like fury, boy, or we shall be late."

"I'll not go."

"Then I 'll be shot if I stay here and meet your father," said he, turning away.

"Oh, Pauline, dearest, dearest of my heart!" I sobbed out, as I fell upon her neck; and the vile bell of the railway rang out with its infernal discord as I clasped her to my heart.

"Come along, and confound you," cried Eccles; and with a porter on one side and Eccles on the other, I was hurried along down the garden, across a road, and along a platform, where the station-master, wild with pa.s.sion, stamped and swore in a very different mood from that in which he smiled at me across the supper-table the night before.

"We're waiting for that boy of Norcott's, I vow," said an old fellow with a gray moustache; and I marked him out for future recognition.

Unlike my first journey, where all seemed confusion, trouble, and annoyance, I now saw only pleasant faces, and people bent on enjoyment.

We were on the great tourist road of Europe, and it seemed as though every one was bound on some errand of amus.e.m.e.nt. Eccles, too, was a pleasant contrast to the courier who took charge of me on my first journey. Nothing could be more genial than his manner. He treated me with a perfect equality, and by that greatest of all flatteries to one of my age, induced me to believe that I was actually companionable to himself.

I will not pretend that he was an instructive companion.

He had neither knowledge of history nor feeling for art, and rather amused himself with sneering at both, and quizzing such of our fellow-travellers as the practice was safe with. But he was always gay, always in excellent spirits, ready to make light of the pa.s.sing annoyances of the road, and, as he said himself, he always carried a quart-bottle of condensed suns.h.i.+ne with him against a rainy day; and, of my own knowledge, I can say his supply seemed inexhaustible.

His cheery manner, his bright good looks, and his invariable good-humor won upon every one, and the sourest and least genial people thawed into some show of warmth under his contagious pleasantry.

He did not care in what direction we went, and would have left it entirely to me to decide, had I been able to determine. All he stipulated for was: "No barbarism, no Oberland or glacier humbug. No Saxon Switzerland abominations. So long as we travel in a crowd, and meet good cookery every day, you 'll find me charming."

Into this philosophy he inducted me. "Make life pleasant, Digby; never go in search of annoyances. Duns and disagreeables will come of themselves, and it's no bad fun dodging them. It's only a fool ever keeps their company."

A more shameless immorality might have revolted me, but this peddling sort of wickedness, this half-jesting with right and wrong,--giving to morals the aspect of a game in which a certain kind of address was practicable,--was very seductive to one of my age and temper. I fancied, too, that I was becoming a consummate man of the world, and his praises of my proficiency were unsparingly bestowed.

Attaching ourselves to this or that party of travellers, we would go off here or there, in any direction, for four or five days; and though I usually found myself growing fond of those I became more intimate with, and sorry to part from them, Eccles invariably wearied of the pleasant-est people after a day or two. Incessant change seemed essential to him, and his nature and his spirits flagged when denied it.

What I least liked about him, however, was a habit he had of "trotting"

me out--his own name for it--before strangers. My knowledge of languages, my skill at games, my little musical talents, he would parade in a way that I found positively offensive. Nor was this all, for I found he represented me as the son of a man of immense wealth and of a rank commensurate with his fortune.

One must have gone through the ordeal of such a representation to understand its vexations, to know all the impertinences it can evoke from some, all the slavish attentions from others. I feel a hot flush of shame on my cheek now, after long years, as I think of the mortifications I went through, as Eccles would suggest that I should buy some princely chateau that we saw in pa.s.sing, or some lordly park alongside of which our road was lying.