Froth Part 31

And then Raimundo would amaze her by some inconceivably childish and innocent proceeding. One day, when she noiselessly entered their rooms--for each had a key--she found him industriously sweeping the floor. He blushed to the ears with confusion, at being discovered.

Clementina, in fits of laughter, covered his face with kisses.

"Really, child, you are too delightful!" she exclaimed.

CHAPTER X.

MATTERS OF BUSINESS.

It was a very busy morning in Salabert's counting-house. Some large payments had to be made. The Duke himself had presided over the transactions and helped the cas.h.i.+er to count the notes. In spite of the many years he had spent in handling money, he could never part with a large sum without his hand shaking a little. He was nervous now, and absorbed, nibbling his cigar, but not spitting as usual, for his throat was dry. More than once he checked the clerk, believing that he was allowing two notes to pa.s.s for one, but on each occasion he was in error; the man was very dexterous at his work. When it was all done, the Duke withdrew to his private room, where he found waiting M. de Fayolle, the great importer of foreign horses, which he supplied to all the aristocracy of Madrid.

"_Bon-jour, Monsieur_," said the Duke, clapping him roughly on the shoulder. "Have you got another screw you want me to take off your hands?"

"Oh, Monsieur le Duc, the horses I sold you are not screws, not a bit of it. You have the best cattle that ever pa.s.sed through my stables," said the Frenchman with a foreign accent and a servile smile.

"All the cast-off rubbish from Paris is what you sell to me. But do not suppose that I am taken in. I have known it a long time, Monsieur, a very long time. Only I can never look in your cherubic and smiling face without giving way."

M. Fayolle was smiling at the moment, showing his large yellow teeth from ear to ear.

"The face is the mirror of the soul, Monsieur le Duc; you may rely on me never to offer you anything but what is absolutely first-rate. Has Apollyon turned out badly?"

"Hm. So-so."

"You must surely be jesting! I saw him in the street the other day, in your phaeton. Every one turned round to look at him."

For some minutes they discussed various horses which Requena had bought of the Frenchman; he found fault with every one of them. Fayolle defended them with the enthusiasm of a dealer and a connoiseur.

Presently, at a pause, he looked at his watch, saying:

"I will not detain you any longer. I came for the settlement of that last little account."

The Duke's face clouded. Then he said half laughing and half angry:

"Why, my good man, you are never happy unless you are getting money out of me."

At the same time he put his hand in his pocket and took out his note-book. M. Fayolle still smiled, saying that he could not bear to ask for it, knowing that the Duke was such a pauper, and that it would be dreadful indeed to see him reduced to beggary, a delicate joke which Requena did not seem to hear, being absorbed in counting out the paper.

He laid out seven notes of one hundred dollars each and handed them to Fayolle, ringing a bell for a clerk to bring a form of receipt. Fayolle, on his part, counted them, and then said:

"You have made a mistake, Monsieur le Duc, the account is for eight hundred dollars, and you have only given me seven."

Salabert did not seem to have heard him. With his eyes half-closed, and s.h.i.+fting his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, he sat silent, looking at the pocket-book, after fastening it with an elastic band.

"This is one hundred dollars short," Fayolle reiterated.

"What? Short? Count once more. It is impossible!"

The horse-dealer counted.

"Three thousand five hundred pesetas."

"You see, I could not be wrong."

"But the horse was to cost four thousand. That was a bargain."

The Duke's face expressed the most candid surprise.

"What! Four thousand pesetas? No, my friend, no. The horse was to be three thousand five hundred. It was on that understanding that I bought it."

"Monsieur le Duc, you really are under a mistake," said Fayolle, now quite grave. "You must remember that we finally agreed on four thousand."

"I remember all about it. It is you who have a bad memory. Here," he added to a clerk who came in with the receipt-form, "go downstairs, one of you, to the stables, and ask Benigno how much I told him I was to give for Apollyon?"

And at the same time, taking advantage of the moment when Fayolle looked at the messenger, he made a significant grimace at the man. The coachman's answer by the clerk was that the horse was to be three thousand five hundred pesetas.

Thereupon the dealer grew angry. He was quite positive that the bargain had stood at eight hundred dollars, and it was in this belief that he had delivered it. Otherwise the horse should never have left his stable.

Requena allowed him to talk himself out, only uttering grunts of dissent, without exciting himself in the smallest degree. Only when Fayolle talked of having the horse back, he said in a lazy tone:

"Then you evidently have some one in your eye who will give you eight hundred, and you want to be off the bargain?"

"Monsieur le Duc, I swear to you that it is nothing of the kind. Only I am positive I am right."

The banker was seized by an opportune fit of coughing; his eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks turned purple. Then he deliberately wiped his mouth and rose, and said in his most boorish manner:

"Bless me, man! Don't put yourself out over a few miserable pesetas."

But he did not produce them.

The Frenchman was willing to take back the horse, but this again he failed to achieve. There was a short silence. Fayolle was within an ace of flying out, and making a fool of himself. But he restrained himself, reflecting that this would do no good, and that sueing the Duke would do even less. Who would be counsel for the plaintiff against such a man as Requena? So he resigned himself to his fate, and took his leave, the Duke escorting him to the door with much politeness, and clapping him affectionately on the shoulder.

When the banker returned to his seat at the table, his eyes glistened under his heavy eyelids with a smile of sarcastic triumph. A few minutes after he again rang the bell.

"Go and inquire whether the d.u.c.h.ess is alone, or if she has visitors,"

he said to the man who answered it. And while the servant went on the errand he sat motionless, leaning back in his chair, with his hands folded, meditating.

"Padre Ortega is with the d.u.c.h.ess," was the answer in a few minutes.

Salabert "pshawed" impatiently, and sank into thought once more. He had made up his mind to have a solemn discussion with his wife on ways and means. Dona Carmen had never mentioned money to him in her life, and he had never felt called upon to give her any account of his speculations and business matters. He regarded himself as absolute master of his fortune, and it never entered his head to think that she could make any claims on it. A friend, however, had lately enlightened him on this point. Speaking of Dona Carmen's feeble health, he had very naturally inquired whether she had made her will, and this friend, who was a lawyer, had at the same time mentioned the fact that, by the law of Spain, half of the business and fortune was hers.

This was a terrible shock to Salabert. He was frightened to watch his wife's decline; at her death her relations would claim half of all he had made, would poke their noses into his concerns, even the most private. Horror!

He consulted his lawyer. The simplest way of remedying the mischief, and depriving these relations of their rights, was to induce his wife to make a will in his favour. To the Duke this seemed the most natural thing in the world, and in the interview he proposed, he intended to suggest it to her as diplomatically as he could, so as not to alarm her as to her own state of health.

So he waited, arranging and looking over his papers, till he thought it was time to send again to inquire whether the priest was gone. But just as he was about to do so, the porter came in and told him that some gentlemen wanted to see him, and among them Calderon. The banker was much annoyed.

"Did you say I was at home?"