Part 38

"Oh, yes; in a way," said the proprietary Briton.

"And her name?"

"Oh, she has a fool name--Fleurette. I wanted to call her Flossie, but she didn't like it."

"I should think not," said Aristide. "Fleurette is an adorable name."

"I suppose it's right enough," said Batterby. "But if I want to call her good old Flossie, why should she object? You married, old man? No? Well, wait till you are. You think women are angels all wrapped up in feathers and wings beneath their toggery, don't you? Well, they're just blooming porcupines, all bristling with objections."

"Mais, allons, donc!" cried Aristide. "You love her, your beautiful Finnish orphan brought up in France and romantically met in London, with the adorable name?"

"Oh, that's all right," said the easy Batterby, lifting his half-emptied glass. "Here's luck!"

"Ah--no!" said Aristide, leaning forward and clinking his wineglass against the other's tumbler. "Here is to madame."

When they returned to the vestibule they found Mrs. Batterby patiently awaiting her lord. She rose from her seat at the approach of the two men, a fragile flower of a girl, about three-and-twenty, pale as a lily, with exquisite though rather large features, and with eyes of the blue of the pervenche (in deference to Aristide I use the French name), which seemed to smile trustfully through perpetual tears. She was dressed in pale, shadowy blue--graceful, impalpable, like the smoke, said Aristide, curling upwards from a cigarette.

"Reggie has spoken of you many times, monsieur," said Fleurette, after the introduction had been effected.

Aristide was touched. "Fancy him remembering me! Ce bon vieux Reginald. Madame," said he, "your husband is the best fellow in the world."

"Feed him with sugar and he won't bite," said Batterby; whereat they all laughed, as if it had been a very good joke.

"Well, what about this Paris of yours?" he asked, after a while. "The missus knows as little of it as I do."

"Really?" asked Aristide.

"I lived all my life in Brest before I went to England," she said, modestly.

"She wants to see all the sights, the Louvre, the Morgue, the Cathedral of What's-its-name that you've got here. I've got to go round, too. Pleases her and don't hurt me. You must tote us about. We'll have a cab, old girl, as you can't do much walking, and good old Pujol will come with us."

"But that is ideal!" cried Aristide, flying to the door to order the cab; but before he could reach it he was stopped by three or four waiting tourists, who pointed, some to the clock, some to the wagonette standing outside, and asked the director when the personally-conducted party was to start. Aristide, who had totally forgotten the responsibilities attached to the directorship of the Agence Pujol and, but for this reminder, would have blissfully left his sheep to err and stray over Paris by themselves, returned crestfallen to his friends and explained the situation.

"But we'll join the party," said the cheery Batterby. "The more the merrier--good old bean-feast! Will there be room?"

"Plenty," replied Aristide, brightening. "But would it meet the wishes of madame?" Her pale face flushed ever so slightly and the soft eyes fluttered at him a half-astonished, half-grateful glance.

"With my husband and you, monsieur, I should love it," she said.

So Mr. and Mrs. Batterby joined the personally-conducted party, as they did the next morning, and the next, and several mornings after, and received esoteric information concerning the monuments of Paris that is hidden even from the erudite. The evenings, however, Aristide, being off duty, devoted to their especial entertainment. He took them to riotous and perspiring restaurants where they dined gorgeously for three francs fifty, wine included; to open-air cafés-concerts in the Champs Elysées, which Fleurette found infinitely diverting, but which bored Batterby, who knew not French, to stertorous slumber; to crowded brasseries on the Boulevard, where Batterby awakened, under a steady flow of whisky, to appreciative contemplation of Paris life. As in the old days of the Rusholme Road, Batterby flung his money about with unostentatious generosity. He was out for a beano, he declared, and hang the expense! Aristide, whose purse, scantily filled (truth to say) by the profits of the Agence Pujol, could contribute but modestly to this reckless expenditure, found himself forced to accept his friend's lavish hospitality. Once or twice, delicately, he suggested withdrawal from the evening's dissipation.

"But, my good M. Pujol," said Fleurette, with childish tragicality in her pervenche eyes, "without you we shall be lost. We shall not enjoy ourselves at all, at all."

So Aristide, out of love for his friend, and out of he knew not what for his friend's wife, continued to show them the sights of Paris. They went to the cabarets of Montmartre--the Ciel, where one is served by angels; the Enfer, where one is served by red devils in a Tartarean lighting; the Néant, where one has coffins for tables--than all of which vulgarity has imagined no more joy-killing dreariness, but which caused Fleurette to grip Aristide's hand tight in scared wonderment and Batterby to chuckle exceedingly. They went to the Bal Bullier and to various other balls undreamed of by the tourist, where Fleurette danced with Aristide, as light as an autumn leaf tossed by the wind, and Batterby absorbed a startling assortment of alcohols. In a word, Aristide procured for his friends prodigious diversion.

"How do you like this, old girl?" Batterby asked one night, at the Moulin de la Galette, a dizzying, not very decorous, and to the unsophisticated visitor a dangerous place of entertainment. "Better than Great Coram Street, isn't it?"

She smiled and laid her hand on his. She was a woman of few words but of many caressing actions.

"I ought to let you into a secret," said he. "This is our honeymoon."

"Who would have thought it?"

"A fortnight ago she was being killed in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. There were two of 'em--she and a girl called Carrie. I used to call 'em Fetch and Carrie. This one was Fetch. Well, she fetched me, didn't you, old girl? And now you're Mrs. Reginald Batterby, living at your ease, eh?"