“Girl in there. Alone, so far as I could see. Beautiful girl, I remember, though I couldn’t say now what her face was like, because she was so beautifully dressed, and a servant isn’t supposed to stare, or even look anybody in the eye, unless asked. ‘Open it, please,’ she said. Soft voice; might have been French, I thought. So I opened and poured, and said, ‘Will that be all, madam?’ Because orders were that any lady had to be ‘madam’, not ‘miss’. ‘Wait a minute,’ said she. ‘I want to have a good look at you.’ And I still didn’t raise my eyes, you see, Frankie. I don’t know how long she looked. Might have been a minute. Might have been two. Then she says, very soft, ‘Do you ever go to the theatre?’ ‘Not much in my line, madam,’ said I. ‘Oh, you should,’ says she. ‘I’ve been and it’s perfectly wonderful. You haven’t seen Monsieur Beaucaire? ‘Don’t know the gentleman, madam,’ I said. ‘Of course you don’t,’ she said; ‘he’s imaginary. He’s in a play. He’s a valet who’s really a prince. And the actor who plays Monsieur Beaucaire is the most beautiful man in the world. His name is Mr. Lewis Waller,’ she said.
“Well, then I knew a little more. I’d heard of Lewis Waller. Matinee idol, they used to call him. A real swell. Then what she said really surprised me, and I had to look in her face.
“ ‘You’re the very image of him in Monsieur Beaucaire,’’ she said. ‘The costume, the white wig. It’s astonishing! You must have a glass of champagne.’
“ ‘Strictly against orders, miss,’ I said, forgetting myself when I called her that.
“ ‘But strictly according to my orders,’ said she, very much the little princess. ‘I’m lonely, and I don’t like to drink alone. So you must have a glass with me.’
“I knew that was just swank. She wasn’t used to drinking much any time, not to speak of alone. But I did what she said. And I made my glass last, but she had three. We talked. She did, that’s to say. I kept mum.
“There was something amiss with her. Don’t know what it was. All excited, and yet not happy, as if she’d lost a shilling and found a sixpence, if you follow me.
“Well, I soon saw what it was. I had seen something of life, and I’d seen a good deal of women, of all kinds. She wanted it. You know what I mean? Not like some old woman who’s crazy with vanity and foolishness and fear of her own age. She wanted it, and I swear, Frankie, I didn’t take advantage of her. I just lived in the present, so to speak, and after some more talk I did what she wanted—not that she asked bolt outright or even seemed to know much about how it was managed. And I swear to you I was perfectly respectful, because she was a sweet kiddie and I wouldn’t have harmed her for the world. It was lovely. Lovely! And when it was over she wasn’t crying or anything, but looked as if she was ready for bed, so I carried her into the bedroom and laid her down, and gave her one good kiss, and left.
“Frank, it was the sweetest thing that ever happened in my whole life! A dream! It’d be hard to tell it to most people. They’d grin and know best, and think badly of her, and that would be dead wrong, for it wasn’t that way at all.
“When I was out in the corridor I passed a big mirror, and saw myself, in the livery and the white wig. I looked hard. Maybe I was Monsieur Beaucaire, whoever he was. Anyhow, it did something wonderful for me. I was able to put the Army disgrace and the dishonourable discharge behind me, and try to get on in the world.
“Not that I did, not in any big way But after a while I decided to try my luck in Canada, and fetched up here. And now I’ve ended like this.
“No, I never saw her again. Never knew her name. A rum start, me dear. That’s all you can say about it. A rum start.”
Zadok was weary, and Francis rose to go. “Is there anything I can do for you, Zadok?”
“Nobody can do anything for me, me dear. Nothing at all.”
“That’s not like you. You’ll get well. You’ll see.”
“Kindly meant, Frankie, but I know better. Suppose I did get well? No legs—what’d that add up to? Old soldier with no legs, playing the mouth-organ in the street? Not me! Not for Joe! So it’s good-bye, me dear.”
Zadok smiled a gap-toothed, red-nosed smile, but his moustache, once proudly dyed and now a yellowish grey, had still a dandified twist.
Francis, moved by an impulse he had no time to consider, leaned over the bed and kissed the ruined man on the cheek. Then he hurried from the room, for fear Zadok should see that he was weeping.
The little hospital was at some distance from the town. As Francis emerged, one of Blairlogie’s two taxis had just set down a passenger and was about to drive away. But the driver pulled up suddenly, and shouted: “Hey, Chicken! D’yuh want a taxi?” It was Alexander Dagg.
“No, thanks. I’ll walk.”
“Where yuh been?”
“I haven’t lived here for a good many years.”
“I know that. I ast yuh where yuh been.”
Francis did not answer.
“Visiting somebody in the hospital? That old bum Hoyle, I’ll bet. He’s dying, isn’t he?”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it. Say—d’yuh know what I’m going to tell yuh? Nobody was surprised what happened. My Maw says what happened to him is a warning to all boozers.”
During his time at Colborne College and Spook, Francis had learned a few things in the gymnasium he had not known when he was at Carlyle Rural. He was now more than six feet tall, and strong. He walked to the taxi, reached through the window by the driver’s seat, seized Alexander Dagg by the front of his shirt, and yanked him sharply toward the door.
“Hey! Go easy. Chicken. That hurts!”
“It’ll hurt worse if you don’t shut your big, loud mouth, Dagg. Now you listen to me: I don’t give a good god-damn what you think or what your evil-minded old bitch of a Maw thinks. Now you be on your way, or I’ll beat the shit out of you!” Francis thrust Alexander very hard against the steering-wheel, then wiped his hands on his handkerchief.
“Oh, so that’s how it is! Oh, I’m very sorry, Mr. Cornish, very sorry indeed, your royal highness. Say—d’yuh know what I’m going to tell yuh? My Maw says the McRorys are all a bunch of bloodsuckers, just using this town for whatever they can get out of it. Bloodsuckers, the lot of yez!”
This was hurled bitterly from the window as Alexander Dagg drove away, his head dangerously twisted so that he could not see where he was going; he narrowly missed hitting a tree. Francis should have kept his dignity and his undoubted victory, but he was not quite old enough for that. He picked up a stone and hurled it at the flying car, and had the satisfaction of hearing it strike with a force that undoubtedly damaged the taxi’s paint.
“Oh dear, I had promised a duck for your last dinner, Francis, but this doesn’t seem to be a duck, does it? So what I said must have been un canard.”
“Certainly un canard, and this is un malard imaginaire, Mary-Ben. Look at this! The blood follows the knife as you cut it.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, J.A. Don’t eat it, Francis. You don’t have to be polite here.”
“I was brought up to be polite at this table by you, Aunt. I can’t stop now.”
“Yes, but not to the point of eating raw—what do you suppose it is, J.A.?”
“At a rough guess I should say that whatever is on our plates approached the oven believing itself to be a capon,” said the Doctor. “Mary-Ben, you can’t go on like this; Anna Lemenchick can’t cook and that’s all there is to it.”
“But J.A., she believes herself to be the cook.”
“Then you must shatter her illusion, before she kills you and Marie-Louise. I insist, on behalf of my patients. Ah, it was a sorry day when you let Victoria Cameron leave this house.”
“J.A., there was no help for it. She had become a tyrant—an utter tyrant. Kicked right over the traces if I made the slightest criticism—”