Yes, he had heard; he gave the required promise, but absently, his eyes on the rug.
“And you must take good care of yourself, too. You mustn’t tire yourself out, and catch one of those horrid Paris fevers. If you did, though,” she added after a moment, “how I would fly to you!”
The words were nothing. But in the intonation, in the expression of anxiety her face took on, there was a tenderness, a solicitude, an affection so sincere and abiding that Nevius felt ashamed.
It was selfishness, he reflected, to wish her to accompany him on a disagreeable trip, and it was surly of him now that he saw the selfishness of the wish to sit staring at the intricacies of the rug. But still, though he said nothing, his face spoke for him and presently when he put his arm about her Mrs. Nevius felt that the battle was won.
VIII
Save in New York, and in the antipodes, the early winter is rarely pleasant. But when Nevius reached Paris the sky was white as tin and in the air that sparkle which Fifth Avenue knows in March.
He descended, to use an idiom of the land, at a small hotel in the Rue Castiglione, where he was greeted as only those are who are magnificent with small coin.
“Seigneur! I who dreamed of Monsieur the night of the day before yesterday. No, it does good to the eyes to again see Monsieur. And Madame? She carries herself always well? Ah, how I am content! God of gods, to say that I of it have dreamed!”
It was the janitress, obese and fulsome, welcoming him in the excesses of her tongue.
“And Baptiste? It is there he is. The trunks of Monsieur to the number 12, and let it not loiter. And hey!” she cried with much haughtiness to an interloper who had opened the cab-door and was now officious in the transfer of the luggage, “And hey, species of calf’s head marined in mud, go, I pray you, a little that way and see if I there am.”
Number 12, in which Nevius presently found himself, was a yellow suite, where he had brought his wife on each of their visits to Paris. Though two years had passed since the last trip, apparently nothing had happened to it, it was as ornate and trivial as before. He had but to close his eyes and fancy her calling to him, as she was wont to do from the room beyond, and, for a while, in an absurd, canary-covered armchair he sat reminiscent.
The journey over had been uneventful, as such journeys ever are. There was the usual number of merry commercial gentlemen in the smoking-room, and on deck, blanketed in sedan-chairs, the usual quota of unalluring dames. Apart from a man whom he remembered but whose name he could not recall, he had barely exchanged a word with anyone. But then, he had not been well. On the second day out the curious sensation of a lancinating burn had come and gone, leaving him perplexed as to the cause, yet mindful of an anterior, though less acute attack. On the morrow there was nothing, a heavy feeling merely, which he attributed to the effects of the sea, and which remained with him until the voyage was done.
And now, as he sat in the little sitting-room, he felt he was ill, yet after the fashion of men to whom illness exists only through hearsay, he refused to admit it. He would dine, he told himself, and look in at the Comédie. For though he objected to theatres in New York, there was no weariness to him in that home of perfect acting and perfect French.
Contrary to precedent, the prescription did him good. On the morrow he awoke, if not alert, at least refreshed, and after a breakfast of coffee and the Figaro—in which he learned that Mr. Cleveland had the Constitution of the United States tattooed on his back—he went to the corset woman, across the way to Doucet, afterward in search of gloves to the Louvre, and it was only these matters attended to, that he bethought him of the duties which had brought him to France.
Business in that country is not transacted with the same dash which has made the success of our own. The agents whom Nevius visited were not to be hurried. There was a preliminary plenitude of form to be observed, punctuated, it is true, with abundant promises. But the Canal Company, albeit in its quality of corporation, without a soul, had, nevertheless, a stomach, and Nevius was fully aware that that stomach was not to be fed and be filled on the faith of tomorrow’s baked meats. Yet beautifully clear was it made to him that it was precisely on food of that kind that the company would have to subsist until a general meeting could be called and terms arranged. Meanwhile, the agents would be only too glad to have him breakfast with them, dine with them and sup, as well.
Under the diligent supervision of friends encountered and recovered, a week was helped away without any abuse of these offers. The corset woman, he found, was not as dilatory as she had been represented; already a package of her wares had come, another from Doucet, too. As for the gloves, long since they had been in his keeping. The machinery in the agent’s office was at last at work, and in a fortnight, so far as he was then capable of determining, there would be nothing to prevent his return.
On the morning of the ninth day after his arrival there came to him, with the coffee and the Figaro, a batch of letters postmarked New York. Among them was one of blue paper, stamped with the Nevius crest, directed in his wife’s familiar hand. Oh, he had
