Running Sands Part 33

"Dear," he enquired, "tell me quick: how do you p.r.o.nounce B-o-u-double s-i-n-g-a-u-l-t?"

Muriel did not lift the covers that concealed her face.

"Go away," she said.

"I am going, only, dearie----"

"Go away--_please_!"

Jim re-entered the sitting-room. Was it Bou-sing-go? He had his doubts about that French _in_. If he remembered rightly, it was a kind of _an_, and the _n_ ended somewhere in the nose. And who was M. Boussingault, anyhow?

"M. le docteur Boo-san-go," announced the servant.

"Wait. How was that?" asked Jim, and then found himself face to face with his visitor.

His visitor was a stocky man, of not more than five feet five or six inches in height, inclined to pugginess. He had a leathery complexion, and the point of his thin Van Dyck beard was in a straight line from the sharper point in which his close-clipped bristling hair ended above his nose. It was black hair, and it retreated precipitately on both sides.

He looked at Jim through eyegla.s.ses bearing a gold chain and bound together by a straight bar, which gave the effect of a continuous scowl to his heavy brows. He bowed deeply.

"M. James Stainton?" he enquired.

"Yes," said Jim. "Good-morning."

"Good-morning, monsieur. I have the honour to present the compliments of my brother, M. Henri Duperre Boussingault, and to ask that you will be so very good as me to command in the case I can be of any the slightest service to you and madame during your visit to Paris."

Stainton was at a loss.

"Your brother?" said he.

"M. Henri Boussingault," repeated the visitor. "He has to me written from Lyon to attend well to the appearance of your name among the distinguished arrivals in the _Daily Mail_."

The mention of Lyons aided Stainton's memory. He recalled now that the name of Henri Boussingault had appeared among those of the Lyonnaise syndicate that was interested in the purchase of the mine.

"Oh, yes," he said, and his broad teeth showed in a smile. "To be sure.

This is very kind of you. Won't you sit down?"

Paul Achille Boussingault arranged his coat-tails and sat down with a grunt that apparently always accompanied this action on his part. His knees were far apart, and his feet scarcely touched the parquet floor.

He was dressed completely in black, with the ribbon of an order fastened in the lapel of his frock-coat. His collar was low and round and upright, its junction with the s.h.i.+rt concealed by a small, prim black tie.

Stainton took a chair opposite him.

"Won't you have a cigar?" he asked.

"But thanks," said the visitor. "A cigarette only, if you do not object?" He produced a yellow packet of _Marylands_, and offered it to Jim.

"Thank you," said Stainton, lighting the cigarette. He did not like it, because, being an American, he did not care for American tobacco; but he tried to appear to like it. He wondered what he should talk about. "I shall be glad to make use of your kind offer."

"You will honour me," said the Frenchman.

"Um. And are you, too, interested in mining investments?"

The visitor dismissed mines and mining to his brother with a wave of his short hand. Stainton noticed that his fingers, though not long, were well shaped and tapering, in contradistinction to the spatulate thumbs, and that he wore a diamond set in a ring of thick gold.

"Those there are the avocation of my brother. I take no part in these affairs of the bourse. You will me forgive if I say, monsieur, that I have no traffic with such abominations of our society modern. I am a man of science."

"A doctor?" asked Jim.

"Of medicine."

For a moment Stainton revolved the idea of taking the visitor to see Muriel, but he divined Muriel's att.i.tude toward such an action and banished the thought. Her indisposition was, of course, but natural and pa.s.sing.

"What," asked Jim, "ought we to see first in Paris? We are strangers here, you know."

The doctor flung out his short arms. He indulged in an apostrophe to Paris that reminded Stainton of some of the orations he had read as having been delivered in the councils of the First Republic.

Boussingault's English was frequently cast in a French mould and sometimes so fused that it was mere alloyage; but he never paused for a word, and he spoke with a fervour that was almost vehemence. There were moments when Jim wondered if the Frenchman suspected him of some slur on Paris and conceived it a duty to defend the city. What Jim must see was, in brief, everything.

Nevertheless, so soon as the apostrophe ended, Boussingault appeared to forget all about it. His sharp eyes travelled over the hotel sitting-room, and his mind occupied itself therewith as devotedly as it had just been giving itself to the Gallic metropolis.

"Ah, you Americans," he sighed; "how you love the luxury!"

"Perhaps we do," said Jim, recalling certain negotiations that he had conducted at the hotel's _bureau_; "but if the price of these rooms is a criterion, you French make us pay well for it."

Dr. Boussingault's glance journeyed to the partly open doors of the bathroom, displaying a tiled whiteness.

"And without doubt a bath?" he enquired.

"A bath," nodded Stainton.

"And me"--Boussingault shook his bullet-like head--"I well recall when the water-carts stopped at the corners of the streets too narrow for their progress, and one called from the high window that one wished to buy so much and so much, because one bathed oneself or the servant washed the linen to-day."

He talked for a while, again rhapsodically, of the old city, the city of his youth, and, when he chanced to touch upon its restaurants, Stainton asked him if, that evening or the next, he would dine with Muriel and himself.

"Ah, no," said Boussingault. "It is that madame and you, monsieur, shall dine with me. To-night? To-morrow night?"

Stainton accepted for the following evening.

"And at what spot would you prefer, monsieur?"

"I don't know," said Jim. "I have eaten _sole a la Marguery_. We might catch that in its native waters: we might dine at Marguery's."

"Well," the Frenchman shrugged, "Marguery is not bad. At least the kitchen is tolerable. But you should eat your sole as she swims."

They were not, however, destined to keep the appointment on the day set, for, during that morning came a _pet.i.t bleu_ from Boussingault, postponing the dinner for a week, and followed by a letter overflowing with fine spencerian regrets to the effect that its writer had been imperatively summoned to Gren.o.ble for consultation in an illness "occurring in a family distinguished."

"I don't care if we never see him," said Muriel. "I could hear him through the door: he talks too loud."

They consoled themselves and wearied themselves with sightseeing, and often this tried Muriel's nerves. Secretly she still watched for the appearance of signs to indicate her condition and secretly she tightened her stays, long before any signs could appear. She was often sick in the mornings, though with decreasing recurrence, and, when she began to feel relief by the diminution, she became the more despondent upon realisation of its cause. Moreover, even the comfort of _pet.i.t dejeuner_ in bed did not compensate for those crumbs for which no one could be held responsible.

True to his policy to "let nature take her course," Stainton maintained a firm reticence upon the subject uppermost in the minds of both, but this reticence was applied only to his speech; and his solicitude, his patient but patent care, and his evident anxiety often annoyed her, since they kept her destiny before her and seemed to her apprehensive imagination--what they were far from being--no more than the expressions of a fear that she might make some physical revelation of her state in a public and embarra.s.sing manner.