Part 46

Mrs. Ducksmith parted her smooth black hair in the middle and fastened it in a knob at the back of her head. Her clothes were good and new, but some desolate dressmaker had contrived to invest them with an air of hopeless dowdiness. At her bosom she wore a great brooch, containing intertwined locks of a grandfather and grandmother long since defunct. Her mind was as drearily equipped as her person. She had a vague idea that they were travelling in France; but if Aristide had told her that it was Japan she would have meekly accepted the information. She had no opinions. Still she was a woman, and Aristide, firm in his conviction that when it comes to love-making all women are the same, proceeded forthwith to make love to her.

"Madame," said he, one morning--she was knitting in the vestibule of the Hôtel du Faisan at Tours, Mr. Ducksmith being engaged, as usual, in the salon with his newspapers--"how much more charming that beautiful grey dress would be if it had a spot of colour."

His audacious hand placed a deep crimson rose against her corsage, and he stood away at arm's length, his head on one side, judging the effect.

"Magnificent! If madame would only do me the honour to wear it."

Mrs. Ducksmith took the flower hesitatingly.

"I'm afraid my husband does not like colour," she said.

"He must be taught," cried Aristide. "You must teach him. I must teach him. Let us begin at once. Here is a pin."

He held the pin delicately between finger and thumb, and controlled her with his roguish eyes. She took the pin and fixed the rose to her dress.

"I don't know what Mr. Ducksmith will say."

"What he ought to say, madame, is 'Bountiful Providence, I thank Thee for giving me such a beautiful wife.'"

Mrs. Ducksmith blushed and, to conceal her face, bent it over her resumed knitting. She made woman's time-honoured response.

"I don't think you ought to say such things, Mr. Pujol."

"Ah, madame," said he, lowering his voice; "I have tried not to; but, que voulez-vous, it was stronger than I. When I see you going about like a little grey mouse"--the lady weighed at least twelve stone--"you, who ought to be ravishing the eyes of mankind, I feel indignation here"--he thumped his chest; "my Provençal heart is stirred. It is enough to make one weep."

"I don't quite understand you, Mr. Pujol," she said, dropping stitches recklessly.

"Ah, madame," he whispered--and the rascal's whisper on such occasions could be very seductive--"that I will never believe."

"I am too old to dress myself up in fine clothes," she murmured.

"That's an illusion," said he, with a wide-flung gesture, "that will vanish at the first experiment."

Mr. Ducksmith emerged from the salon, Daily Telegraph in hand. Mrs. Ducksmith shot a timid glance at him and the knitting needles clicked together nervously. But the vacant eyes of the heavy man seemed no more to note the rose on her bosom than they noted any point of beauty in landscape or building.

Aristide went away chuckling, highly diverted by the success of his first effort. He had touched some hidden springs of feeling. Whatever might happen, at any rate, for the remainder of the tour he would not have to spend his emotional force in vain attempts to knock sparks out of a jelly-fish. He noticed with delight that at dinner that evening Mrs. Ducksmith, still wearing the rose, had modified the rigid sweep of her hair from the mid-parting. It gave just a wavy hint of coquetry. He made her a little bow and whispered, "Charming!" Whereupon she coloured and dropped her eyes. And during the meal, while Mr. Ducksmith discoursed on bounty-fed sugar, his wife and Aristide exchanged, across the table, the glances of conspirators. After dinner he approached her.

"Madame, may I have the privilege of showing you the moon of Touraine?"

She laid down her knitting. "Bartholomew, will you come out?"

He looked at her over his glasses and shook his head.

"What is the good of looking at moonshine? The moon itself I have already seen."

So Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat by themselves outside the hotel, and he expounded to her the beauty of moonlight and its intoxicating effect on folks in love.

"Wouldn't you like," said he, "to be lying on that white burnished cloud with your beloved kissing your feet?"

"What odd things you think of."

"But wouldn't you?" he insinuated.

Her bosom heaved and swelled on a sigh. She watched the strip of silver for a while and then murmured a wistful "Yes."