One thing La Chicot did not know, and that was that Mr. Desrolles had made the acquaintance of her admirer, and was being paid by Mr. Lemuel to plead his cause.
“You seem to be better off than you used to be, my friend,” she said to him one day. “Unless I deceive myself that is a new coat.”
“Yes,” answered the man of the world, without blushing. “I have been dabbling a little on the Stock Exchange, and have had better luck than usual.”
Desrolles stirred the heaped-up coals into a blaze, and filled himself a third glass of cognac.
“It’s as fine as a liqueur,” he said, smacking his lips. “It would be a sin to dilute such stuff. By-the-way, when do you expect your husband?”
“I never expect him,” answered La Chicot. “He goes and comes as he chooses. He is like the wandering Jew.”
“He is gone to Paris on business, I suppose?”
“On business or pleasure. I neither know nor care which. He earns his living. Those ridiculous pictures of his please both in London and Paris. See here!”
She tossed him over a crumpled heap of comic papers, English and French. Her husband’s name figured in all, affixed to the wildest caricatures—scenes theatrical and Bohemian, sketches full of life and humour.
“To judge from those you would suppose he was rather a cheerful companion,” said La Chicot, “and yet he is more dismal than a funeral.”
“He vents all his cheerfulness on his wood blocks,” suggested Desrolles.
Of late Jack Chicot had been a restless wanderer, spending very little of his life in the Cibber Street lodging. There was not even the pretence of union between his wife and him, and there never had been since La Chicot’s recovery. They were civil to each other, for the most part; but there were times when the wife’s tongue grew bitter, and her evil temper flashed out like a thin thread of forked lightning cleaving a dark summer sky. The husband was always civil. La Chicot could not exasperate him into retaliation.
“You hate me too much to lose your temper with me,” she said to him one day in the presence of the landlady; “you are afraid to trust yourself. If you gave way for a moment you might kill me. The temptation would be too strong for you.”
Jack Chicot said never a word, but stood with his arms folded, smiling at her, heaven knows how bitterly.
One day she stung him into speech.
“You are in love with some other woman,” she cried. “I know it.”
“I have seen a woman who is not like you,” he answered with a sigh.
“And you are in love with her.”
“For her unlikeness to you? That would be a charm, certainly.”
“Go to her. Go to your—”
The sentence ended in a foul epithet—one of the poison-flowers of Parisian argot.
“The journey is too long,” he said. “It is not easy to travel from hell to heaven.”
Jack Chicot had been once to the Prince Frederick Theatre since his wife’s return to the stage. He went on the first night of the grand spectacular burlesque which had brought Mr. Smolendo so much money. He sat looking on with a grave unchanging face while the audience round him grinned in ecstasy; and when La Chicot asked his opinion of the performance, he openly expressed his disgust.
“Are not my costumes beautiful,” she asked.
“Very. But I should prefer a little less beauty and a little more decency.”
The rest of the audience were easier to please. They saw no indecency in the dresses. No doubt they saw what they had paid to see, and that contented them.
Never had woman more of her own way than La Chicot after that wonderful recovery of hers. She went where she liked, drank as much as she liked, spent every sixpence of her liberal salary on her own pleasure, and was held accountable by no one. Her husband was a husband only in name. She saw more of Desrolles than of Jack Chicot.
There was only one person who ever ventured to reprove or expostulate with her, and that was the man who had saved her life, at so large a sacrifice of time and care. George Gerard called upon her now and then, and spoke to her plainly.
“You have been drinking again,” he would say, while they were shaking hands.
“I have had nothing since last night, when I took a glass of champagne with my supper.”
“You mean a bottle; and you have had half a bottle of brandy this morning to correct the champagne.”
She no longer attempted to deny the impeachment.
“Well, why should I not drink?” she exclaimed defiantly. “Who cares what becomes of me?”
“I care: I have saved your life once, against long odds. You owe me something for that. But I cannot save you if you make up your mind to drink yourself to death. Brandy is a slow suicide, but for a woman of your temperament it’s as certain as prussic acid.”
Upon this La Chicot would dissolve in maudlin tears. It was a pitiful sight, and wrung the student’s heart. He could have loved her so well, would have tried so hard to save her, had it been possible. He did not know how heartless a piece of beautiful clay she was. He put down her errors to her husband’s neglect.
“If she had been my wife she might have been a very different woman,” he said to himself, not believing the innate
