Part 65

So he helped Miss Anne to lay the cloth on the gate-legged oak table in the parlour and to set it out with bread and butter and the end of a tinned tongue and a couple of bottles of stout. After which they went back to the little kitchen, where in a kind of giggling awe she watched him shred the bacon and break the eggs with his thin, skilful fingers and perform his magic with the frying-pan and turn out the great golden creation into the dish.

"Now," said he, pulling her in his enthusiasm, "to table while it is hot."

Miss Anne laughed. She lost her head ever so little. The days had been drab and hopeless of late and she was still young; so, if she felt excited at this unhoped for inrush of life and colour, who shall blame her? The light sparkled once more in her eyes and the pink of her naturally florid complexion shone on her cheek as they sat down to table.

"It is I who help it," said Aristide. "Taste that." He passed the plate and waited, with the artist's expectation for her approval.

"It's delicious."

It was indeed the perfection of omelette, all its suave juiciness contained in film as fine as goldbeater's skin.

"Yes, it's good." He was delighted, childlike, at the success of his cookery. His gaiety kept the careworn woman in rare laughter during the meal. She lost all consciousness that he was a strange man plunged down suddenly in the midst of her old maidish existence--and a strange man, too, who had once behaved in a most outrageous fashion. But that was ever the way of Aristide. The moment you yielded to his attraction he made you feel that you had known him for years. His fascination possessed you.

"Miss Anne," said he, smoking a cigarette, at her urgent invitation, "is there a poor woman in Beverly Stoke with whom I could lodge?"

She gasped. "You lodge in Beverly Stoke?"

"Why yes," said Aristide, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "I am engaged in the city from ten to five every day. I can't come here and go back to London every night, and I can't stay a whole week without my little Jean. And I have my duty to Jean. I stand to him in the relation of a father. I must help you to nurse him and make him better. I must give him soup and apples and ice cream and----"

"You would kill the darling in five minutes," interrupted Miss Anne.

He waved his forefinger in the air. "No, no, I have nursed the sick in my time. My dear friend," said he, with a change of tone, "when did you go to bed last?"

"I don't know," she answered in some confusion. "The district nurse has helped me--and the doctor has been very good. Jean has turned the corner now. Please don't worry. And as for your coming to live down here, it's absurd."

"Of course, if you formally forbid me to do so, mademoiselle, and if you don't want to see me----"

"How can you say a thing like that? Haven't I shown you to-day that you are welcome?"

"Dear Miss Anne," said he, "forgive me. But what is that great vast town of London to me who know nobody there? Here in this tiny spot is concentrated all I care for in the world. Why shouldn't I live in it?"

"You would be so dreadfully uncomfortable," said Miss Anne, weakly.

"Bah!" cried Aristide. "You talk of discomfort to an old client of L'Hôtel de la Belle Étoile?"

"The Hotel of the Beautiful Star? Where is that?" asked the innocent lady.

"Wherever you like," said Aristide. "Your bed is dry leaves and your bed-curtains, if you demand luxury, are a hedge, and your ceiling, if you are fortunate, is ornamented with stars."

She looked at him wide-eyed, in great concern.

"Do you mean that you have ever been homeless?"

He laughed. "I think I've been everything imaginable, except married."

"Hush!" she said. "Listen!" Her keen ear had caught a child's cry. "It's Jean. I must go."

She hurried out. Aristide prepared to light another cigarette. But a second before the application of the flaring match an idea struck him. He blew out the match, replaced the cigarette in his case, and with a dexterity that revealed the professional of years ago, began to clear the table. He took the things noiselessly into the kitchen, shut the door, and master of the kitchen and scullery washed up. Then, the most care-free creature in the world, he stole down the stone passage into the wilderness of Beverly Stoke.

An hour afterwards he knocked at the front door, Anne Honeywood admitted him.

"I have arranged with the good Mrs. Buttershaw. She lives a hundred yards down the road. I bring my baggage to-morrow evening."

Anne regarded him in a humorous, helpless way. "I can't prevent you," she said, "but I can give you a piece of advice."