The Wonderful Year. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ that; otherwise who would listen sympathetically to them? And all art-students want a prodigious amount of sympathy, so uniquely constituted is each in genius and temperament.

      “You can’t go back to that dog’s life,” she said, after a while. “You must get a post in a good public-school.”

      Martin sighed. “Why not in the Kingdom of Heaven? It’s just as possible. Heads of Public Schools don’t engage as masters men who haven’t a degree and have hacked out their youth in low-class institutions like Margett’s. I know only too well. To have been at Margett’s damns me utterly with the public-schools. I must find another Margett’s!”

      “Why don’t you do something else?” asked the girl.

      “What else in the world can I do? You know very well what happened to me. My poor old father was just able to send me to Cambridge because I had a good scholarship. When he died there was nothing to supplement the scholarship which wasn’t enough to keep me at the University. I had to go down. My mother had nothing but my father’s life insurance money—a thousand pounds—and twenty pounds a year from the Freemasons. When she wrote to her relations about her distress, what do you think my damned set of Swiss uncles and aunts and cousins sent her? Two hundred francs! Eight pounds! And they’re all rolling in money got out of the English. I had to find work at once to support us both. My only equipment was a knowledge of French. I got a post at Margett’s through a scholastic agency. I thought it a miracle. When the letter came accepting my application I didn’t sleep all night. I remained there till a week or so ago, working twelve hours a day all the year round. I don’t say I had classes for twelve hours,” he admitted, conscientiously, “but when you see about a couple of hundred pupils a day and they all do written work which needs correcting, you’ll find you have as much work in class as out of class. Last night I dreamed I was confronted with a pile of exercise books eight feet high.”

      “It’s a dog’s life,” Corinna repeated.

      “It is,” said Martin. “Mais que veux-tu, ma pauvre Corinne. I detest it as much as one can detest anything. If even I was a successful teacher—passe encore. But I doubt whether I have taught anybody even the régime du participe passé save as a mathematical formula. It’s heart-rending. It has turned me into a brainless, soulless, heartless, bloodless machine.”

      For a moment or two the glamour of the Parisian meal faded away. He beheld himself—as he had wofully done in intervals between the raptures of the past few days—an anxious and despairing young man: terribly anxious to obtain another abhorred teachership, yet desperate at the prospect of lifelong, ineffectual drudgery. Corinna, her elbows on the table, poising in her hand a teaspoonful of tepid strawberry ice, regarded him earnestly.

      “I wish I were a man,” she declared.

      “What would you do?”

      She swallowed the morsel of ice and dropped her spoon with a clatter.

      “I would take life by the throat and choke something big out of it,” she cried dramatically.

      “Probably an ocean of tears or a Sahara of despair,” said a voice from the door.

      Both turned sharply. The speaker was a middle-aged man of a presence at once commanding and subservient. He had a shock of greyish hair brushed back from the forehead and terminating above the collar in a fashion suggestive of the late Abbé Liszt. His clean-shaven face was broad and massive; the features large: eyes grey and prominent; the mouth loose and fleshy. Many lines marked it, most noticeable of all a deep, vertical furrow between the brows. He was dressed, somewhat shabbily, in a black frock coat suit and wore the white tie of the French attorney. His voice was curiously musical.

      “Good Lord, Fortinbras, how you startled me!” exclaimed Corinna.

      “I couldn’t help it,” said he, coming forward. “When you turn the Petit Cornichon into the stage of the Odéon, what can I do but give you the reply? I came here to find our good friend Widdrington.”

      “Widdrington went back to England this morning,” she announced.

      “That’s a pity. I had good news for him. I have arranged his little affair. He should be here to profit by it. I love impulsiveness in youth,” he said addressing himself to Martin, “when it proceeds from noble ardour; but when it marks the feather-headed irresponsibility of the idiot, I cannot deprecate it too strongly.”

      Challenged, as it were, for a response, “I cordially agree with you, sir,” said Martin.

      “You two ought to know one another,” said Corinna. “This is my friend, Mr. Overshaw—Martin, let me introduce you to Mr. Daniel Fortinbras, Marchand de Bonheur.”

      Fortinbras extended a soft white hand and holding Martin’s benevolently:

      “Which being translated into our rougher speech,” said he, “means Dealer in Happiness.”

      “I wish you would provide me with some,” said Martin, laughingly.

      “And so do I,” said Corinna.

      Fortinbras drew a chair to the table and sat down.

      “My fee,” said he, “is five francs each, paid in advance.”

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      AT this unexpected announcement Martin exchanged a swift glance with Corinna. She smiled, drew a five franc piece from her purse and laid it on the table. Martin, wondering, did the same. The Marchand de Bonheur unbuttoned his frock coat and slipped the coins, with a professional air, into his waistcoat pocket.

      “Mr. Overshaw,” said he, “you must understand, as our charming friend Corinna Hastings and indeed half the Quartier Latin understand, that for such happiness as it may be my good fortune to provide I do not charge one penny. But having to eke out a precarious livelihood, I make a fixed charge of five francs for every consultation, no matter whether it be for ten minutes or ten hours. And for the matter of that, ten hours is not my limit. I am at your service for an indefinite period of time, provided it be continuous.”

      “That’s very good, indeed, of you,” said Martin. “I hope you’ll join us,” he added, as the waiter approached with three coffee cups.

      “No, I thank you. I have already had my after dinner coffee. But if I might take the liberty of ordering something else——?”

      “By all means,” said Martin hospitably. “What will you have? Cognac? Liqueur? Whisky and soda?”

      Fortinbras held up his hand—it was the hand of a comfortable, drowsy prelate—and smiled. “I have not touched alcohol for many years. I find it blunts the delicacy of perception which is essential to a Marchand de Bonheur in the exercise of his calling. Auguste will give me a syrop de framboises à l’eau.”

      “Bien, m’sieu,” said Auguste.

      “On the other hand, I shall smoke with pleasure one of your excellent English cigarettes. Thanks. Allow me.”

      With something of the grand manner he held a lighted match to Corinna’s cigarette and to Martin’s. СКАЧАТЬ