The Man with the Double Heart Part 13

"You're sure it wasn't the top of a hat-pin?"

McTaggart's voice was studiously grave.

"Mais non! A b.u.t.ton. But I'm not _quite_ certain whether it came off a boot..."

The sad-looking porter, his back turned, relaxed into a sudden grin.

He saw the pair into their taxi and stood for a moment watching them.

"There goes a little bit of all right!"--he confided to the world at large. Then he solemnly spat on McTaggart's s.h.i.+lling "for luck" and burrowed back into the lift.

CHAPTER VIII

The Restaurant "Au Bon Bourgeois" faced on a dingy Soho street, the newly painted white door flanked by myrtle-trees in tubs. The entrance was through a narrow pa.s.sage which led to a low room in the rear, divided from the one in front by a part.i.tion of plate gla.s.s.

The latter place was reserved for the Cafe, where marble tables were closely packed on a red-tiled and sanded floor; and it boasted its own separate entrance, carefully remote from the other. It gave a Bohemian atmosphere to the newly opened Restaurant. For the diners in the room beyond could watch the ever-changing scene--undisturbed by smoke or chatter--like a slice of French life cut bodily from the gay capital over seas.

The proprietor had been head-waiter in a fas.h.i.+onable London hotel; a shrewd Swiss--known as "Monsieur Auguste"--he had learned the secret underlying the modern demand for catering.

He realized that the Englishman will readily pay an exorbitant price for rich food badly cooked in a first-cla.s.s Restaurant; impervious to a hurried service, to overcrowding and noise, provided that the place held a fixed reputation for "smartness."

But he knew, besides, that success waited at the other end of the long scale: that it tickled the average British mind to strike a bargain over dinner: to justify the national shrewdness and play the pauper (without discomfort)--with a hint, too, of mild Bohemia to salt its sense of respectability. The fact that he gave them well-cooked whiting instead of a tepid "Sole Normande"; "pot-au-feu" which was mainly stock, in place of a glue-like "Consomme" his clients manfully ignored. Conscious of the economy of dining "Au Bon Bourgeois," their virtue was rewarded, doubtless, by the after ease of their digestion.

No noisy band rent the air. The service was clean and prompt under the all-pervading eye of the busy proprietor. And for those who found no special interest in the Cafe life the place offered as a perpetual mise-en-scene, two rooms on the first floor were provided, where the tables ranged along the walls were screened by match-wood part.i.tions, offering a sanctuary for flirtation and isolation for the "Select."

McTaggart had reserved a table in the coveted angle of the room where no waiter could jar his chair by darting feverishly behind it. It allowed his guest a full view through the screen of plate-gla.s.s and, as Fantine took her place, under the cool, admiring eye of "Monsieur Auguste," in attendance, she gave a quick exclamation of mingled pleasure and surprise.

"Charming--quite Continental..."

A wistful note crept into her face. Absorbed by this travesty of the Boulevards, she peeled off her long suede gloves and smoothed her hair with an absent gesture.

Monsieur Auguste, in spotless white--linen coat and long ap.r.o.n--relieved by a huge black cravatte fastened with the famous pin (the present of a Grand Duke), glanced at McTaggart with the smile of a serene and confident host.

"Look at those men playing dominoes! and the long-haired creature with the cape--He's drinking absinthe ... oh! how nice...!" Fantine's eyes shone with golden lights.

"Madame is pleased?" Monsieur Auguste handed the Wine Carte to McTaggart, the page carelessly opened where the list of champagnes began. With a long nail cut into a point he underlined a special brand. "Madame would like this," he said, "not _too_ dry, a good vintage."

But "Madame" was not of his opinion. With all her artistic little soul she revelled in the atmosphere, recognizing the bourgeois note--"Red wine, n'est ce pas, Pierrot?--something that sings aloud of France."

And, suddenly, before her eyes, the scene blurred and, in its place, memory tricked her. She was back in a smoke-wreathed cabaret at Montmartre. She could hear the merry chorus rise and see Bruant, with his s.h.a.ggy mane, roaring out the "Song of the Grape"; while by her side, his arm about her, was the one man she had really loved.

Ah! those days ... She caught her breath and was conscious again of Auguste's stare.

He studied the white, piquante face and wondered if he had made a mistake. But he added a new shade of respect to his suave acknowledgment of her order. Not many ladies with such red lips, combined with a costume of faultless cut, carelessly dismissed champagne. He bowed himself away from her, and sent the pair his best waiter.

"I'm glad you approve of the little place." McTaggart took on an explorer's pride. "I found it by the merest chance and since then have come often. The food's not bad--well, you'll see for yourself!--and it always comes in piping hot. Now, what shall we have?" He gathered up the big card with its printed list.

"Pet.i.te Marmite,--d'you agree to that? and fish--you choose----" he handed it over.

"Skate," she said decidedly--"with 'black b.u.t.ter'" (she translated).

"It sounds vile in English, somehow--what a difference language makes to things. Listen, now--'Raie au beurre noir'--Isn't there a charm about it?--and ... 'Veal Schnitzel' ... and 'Pet.i.ts Pois'--Yes, I know they're tinned----" she forestalled his objection--"but with plenty of b.u.t.ter and well cooked...." she flashed an expressive little gesture.

"What potatoes?" McTaggart asked.

"Fi donc!" She smiled indulgently--"a boiled potato for you, mon cher--the hall-mark of the English 'home.' And cabbage, perhaps, to make you happy!"

"No--I draw the line at that!--What do you say to a bird, to follow?"

"Comme tu veux!--For me it's enough--with a little fruit and good coffee ... and a 'pet.i.t verre.' Say, now, Pierrot, shall we come one day and sit there?" She pointed gaily through the screen to the crowded noisy room beyond.

"I should love that! To sip absinthe--dressed like a little milliner!

Look at that woman on the right with the shabby ulster and elegant boots. You rarely see that over here--It's a feathered hat in the latest fas.h.i.+on and no thought for the 'dessous.' And the hair all scrabbled up and _dull_--the gloves old or far too tight--everything squandered on the dress, with colors to make one's ... 'digestion'

turn!"

"Even the women in higher cla.s.ses don't seem 'soignees'--only smart.

And you call yourself a clean race! ... Because you walk through a cold bath."

For that sudden mirage of the Past had aroused in her the mal du pays.

She flogged the Present with a rod, pickled in salt experience.

McTaggart felt a trifle ruffled. He was English enough to hold the theory that nothing outside the little island--with a patronizing lesser degree of excellence for its colonies--could nearly approach the standard set by British prosperity--plus its morals.

"Oh, come, now"--he paused a moment as the waiter ladled out their soup. "I defy you to find anywhere a finer type than our English girls. Look at their skin--their teeth--their hair--the healthy, well-bred look of them. Oh, no--I grant, there's charm, and style and an inborn sense of dress in foreign women and they're generally witty and can talk fourteen to the dozen! But give me an English girl"--his thoughts flashed back to Cydonia---"unless," he added somewhat quickly--"unless, of course, I can have Fantine."

"Ah! merci----" she clapped her hands--"I'm the exception to prove the rule? But, seriously, I think you're bia.s.sed, though part of what you say is true. They've everything to make them perfect, these rose-leaf tinted, long-limbed girls--everything! That's what annoys me--save the wit to profit by Nature's gifts. It's such a prodigal waste of beauty ... Look at that girl at the end table----" she lowered her voice as she spoke--"with the colouring of t.i.tian's 'Flora.' And she wears--bon Dieu!--an orange blouse. Because she's taking Tango lessons! And with it a cheap amethyst necklace. Someone has told her--without doubt!--they're Queen Alexandra's favorite stones. Her hat? Yes--it cost two guineas. So she compromised with shoes from a Sale and last year's skirt, taken in rather badly round the ankles. What a hotch-potch!--bound about that divine figure--ruined by cheap corsets--and yes! I was sure of it--a hole in a pair of openwork thread stockings!"

"I give in!----" McTaggart laughed--"or I know you won't enjoy your dinner. You see I'm half-Italian, too, so it's not real disloyalty."

She looked up, interested.

"Tiens! Perhaps it explains your ... un-English charm? On your mother's side, I suppose?"

"Yes. She was a Maramonte. They've lived for centuries at Siena. I believe they've got a palace there a good bit older than the Tower!

But I've never met my relations. My uncle is the present marquis--with two sons and a second wife. So there's no chance for me as heir--beyond what was left me by my mother."

He laughed, happily unconcerned. "I can't picture myself, somehow, the lordly owner of feudal lands. You know Siena's quite mediaeval in many of its customs now. 'Il Palio,'--those weird races are still run twice a year. Every quarter of the city sends a horse to compete, and the jockeys wear historic clothes and tear round the market-place. It's a little bigger than Hanover Square and sloped on the side of a hill, so at the most dangerous angle they lay out a row of mattresses! Fact, I a.s.sure you"--he smiled. "I mean to see it myself some day. And, after the race is run, the jockey leads the winning horse, in gorgeous trappings with the banner of the victorious Quarter, right into the Cathedral! There it receives a solemn blessing and after that a feast is held in the market-place by torch light and the horse, if you please, presides--with his bin of corn--at the head of the table!

Isn't it quaint? In these days of 'wireless' and Zeppelins there's something rather refres.h.i.+ng about it--the glamour of a fairy-tale."

"Delightful. Take me with you, Pierrot." She sent him a mocking smile over the edge of her wine-gla.s.s.

"Will you come?" McTaggart's voice was low,

The "intime" atmosphere of the place, with the magnetism of Fantine, her strange and nameless charm, were not without effect on him.

"Per'aps..." She shrugged her shoulders lightly. "If you will promise to leave behind that rather alarming British half sacred to the 'English Miss.'"

His "Scotch heart!" Whimsically he studied the proposition. It seemed just now a small item beside the beat of his other organ.