Part 36

“Is it true you are out of money?” demanded Trent.

“Yes, I am,” sighed the other.

“That roast sucking pig on the rue St. Honoré,—is it there yet?” continued Trent.

“Wh—at?” stammered the feeble one.

“Ah—I thought so! I caught you in ecstasy before that sucking pig at least a dozen times!”

Then laughing, he presented Fallowby with a roll of twenty franc pieces saying: “If these go for luxuries you must live on your own flesh,” and went over to aid West, who sat beside the wash-basin binding up his hand.

West suffered him to tie the knot, and then said: “You remember, yesterday, when I left you and Braith to take the chicken to Colette.”

“Chicken! Good heavens!” moaned Fallowby.

“Chicken,” repeated West, enjoying Fallowby’s grief;—“I—that is, I must explain that things are changed. Colette and I—are to be married—”

“What—what about the chicken?” groaned Fallowby.

“Shut up!” laughed Trent, and slipping his arm through West’s, walked to the stairway.

“The poor little thing,” said West, “just think, not a splinter of firewood for a week and wouldn’t tell me because she thought I needed it for my clay figure. Whew! When I heard it I smashed that smirking clay nymph to pieces, and the rest can freeze and be hanged!” After a moment he added timidly: “Won’t you call on your way down and say bon soir? It’s No. 17.”

“Yes,” said Trent, and he went out softly closing the door behind.

He stopped on the third landing, lighted a match, scanned the numbers over the row of dingy doors, and knocked at No. 17.

“C’est toi Georges?” The door opened.

“Oh, pardon, Monsieur Jack, I thought it was Monsieur West,” then blushing furiously, “Oh, I see you have heard! Oh, thank you so much for your wishes, and I’m sure we love each other very much,—and I’m dying to see Sylvia and tell her and—”

“And what?” laughed Trent.

“I am very happy,” she sighed.

“He’s pure gold,” returned Trent, and then gaily: “I want you and George to come and dine with us to-night. It’s a little treat,—you see to-morrow is Sylvia’s fête. She will be nineteen. I have written to Thorne, and the Guernalecs will come with their cousin Odile. Fallowby has engaged not to bring anybody but himself.”

The girl accepted shyly, charging him with loads of loving messages to Sylvia, and he said good-night.

He started up the street, walking swiftly, for it was bitter cold, and cutting across the rue de la Lune he entered the rue de Seine. The early winter night had fallen, almost without warning, but the sky was clear and myriads of stars glittered in the heavens. The bombardment had become furious—a steady rolling thunder from the Prussian cannon punctuated by the heavy shocks from Mont Valérien.

The shells streamed across the sky leaving trails like shooting stars, and now, as he turned to look back, rockets blue and red flared above the horizon from the Fort of Issy, and the Fortress of the North flamed like a bonfire.

“Good news!” a man shouted over by the Boulevard St. Germain. As if by magic the streets were filled with people,—shivering, chattering people with shrunken eyes.

“Jacques!” cried one. “The Army of the Loire!”

“Eh! mon vieux, it has come then at last! I told thee! I told thee! To-morrow—to-night—who knows?”

“Is it true? Is it a sortie?”

Some one said: “Oh, God—a sortie—and my son?” Another cried: “To the Seine? They say one can see the signals of the Army of the Loire from the Pont Neuf.”

There was a child standing near Trent who kept repeating: “Mamma, Mamma, then to-morrow we may eat white bread?” and beside him, an old man swaying, stumbling, his shrivelled hands crushed to his breast, muttering as if insane.