“We must get ready for Musseer,” she said. An ecstatic joy filled Louise’s being. The hour of her reward was at hand.
Getting ready for “Musseer” proved to be an appalling process. First they brewed what Mme. Rémy called a “teaze Ann.” After the tisane, a host of strange foreign drugs and cosmetics were marshalled in order. Then water was set to heat on a gas-stove. Then a little table was neatly set.
“Musseer has his dinner at half-past four,” Madame explained. “I don’t take mine till he’s laid down and I’ve got him off to the concert. There, he’s coming now. Sometimes he comes home pretty nervous. If he’s nervous, don’t you go and make a fuss, do you hear, child?”
The door opened, and Musseer entered, wrapped in a huge frogged overcoat. There was no doubt that he was nervous. He cast his hat upon the floor, as if he were Jove dashing a thunderbolt. Fire flashed from his eyes. He advanced upon his wife and thrust a newspaper in her face – a little pinky sheet, a notorious blackmailing publication.
“Zees,” he cried, “is your work!”
“What is it, now, Hipleet?” demanded Mme. Rémy.
“Vot it ees?” shrieked the tenor. “It ees ze history of how zey have heest me at Nice! It ees all zair – how I have been heest – in zis sacré sheet – in zis hankairchif of infamy! And it ees you zat have told it to zat devil of a Rastignac – traitresse!”
“Now, Hipleet,” pleaded his wife, “if I can’t learn enough French to talk with you, how am I going to tell Rastignac about your being hissed?”
This reasoning silenced Mr. Rémy for an instant – an instant only.
“You vood have done it!” he cried, sticking out his chin and thrusting his face forward.
“Well, I didn’t,” said Madame, “and nobody reads that thing, any way. Now, don’t you mind it, and let me get your things off, or you’ll be catching cold.”
Mr. Rémy yielded at last to the necessity of self-preservation, and permitted his wife to remove his frogged overcoat, and to unwind him from a system of silk wraps to which the Gordian knot was a slip-noose. This done, he sat down before the dressing-case, and Mme. Rémy, after tying a bib around his neck, proceeded to dress his hair and put brilliantine on his moustache. Her husband enlivened the operation by reading from the pinky paper.
“It ees not gen-air-al-lee known – zat zees dees-tin-guished tenor vos heest on ze pob-lic staidj at Nice – in ze year – “
Louise leaned against the wall, sick, faint and frightened, with a strange sense of shame and degradation at her heart. At last the tenor’s eye fell on her.
“Anozzair eediot?” he inquired.
“She ain’t very bright, Hipleet,” replied his wife; “but I guess she’ll do. Louise, open the door – there’s the caterer.”
Louise placed the dishes upon the table mechanically. The tenor sat himself at the board, and tucked a napkin in his neck.
“And how did the Benediction Song go this afternoon?” inquired his wife.
“Ze Bénédiction? Ah! One encore. One on-lee. Zese pigs of Américains. I t’row my pairls biffo’ swine. Chops once more! You vant to mordair me? Vat do zis mean, madame? You ar-r-r-re in lig wiz my enemies. All ze vorlt is against ze ar-r-r-teest!”
The storm that followed made the first seem a zephyr. The tenor exhausted his execratory vocabulary in French and English. At last, by way of a dramatic finale, he seized the plate of chops and flung it from him. He aimed at the wall; but Frenchmen do not pitch well. With a ring and a crash, plate and chops went through the broad window-pane. In the moment of stricken speechlessness that followed, the sound of the final smash came softly up from the sidewalk.
“Ah-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah!”
The tenor rose to his feet with the howl of an anguished hyena.
“Oh, good gracious!” cried his wife; “he’s going to have one of his creezes – his creezes de nare!”
He did have a crise de nerfs. “Ten dollair!” he yelled, “for ten dollair of glass!” He tore his pomaded hair; he tore off his bib and his neck-tie, and for three minutes without cessation he shrieked wildly and unintelligibly. It was possible to make out, however, that “arteest” and “ten dollair” were the themes of his improvisation. Finally he sank exhausted into the chair, and his white-faced wife rushed to his side.
“Louise!” she cried, “get the foot-tub out of the closet while I spray his throat, or he can’t sing a note. Fill it up with warm water – 102 degrees – there’s the thermometer – and bathe his feet.”
Trembling from head to foot, Louise obeyed her orders, and brought the foot-tub, full of steaming water. Then she knelt down and began to serve the maestro for the first time. She took off his shoes. Then she looked at his socks. Could she do it?
“Eediot!” gasped the sufferer, “make haste! I die!”
“Hold your mouth open, dear,” said Madame, “I haven’t half sprayed you.”
“Ah! you!” cried the tenor. “Cat! Devil! It ees you zat have killed me!” And moved by an access of blind rage, he extended his arm, and thrust his wife violently from him.
Louise rose to her feet, with a hard, set, good old New England look on her face. She lifted the tub of water to the level of her breast, and then she inverted it on the tenor’s head. For one instant she gazed at the deluge, and at the bath-tub balanced on the maestro’s skull like a helmet several sizes too large – then she fled like the wind.
Once in the servants’ quarters, she snatched her hat and jacket. From below came mad yells of rage.
“I kill hare! give me my knife – give me my rivvolvare! Au secours! Assassin!”
Miss Slattery appeared in the doorway, still polishing her nails.
“What have you done to His Tonsils?” she inquired. “He’s pretty hot, this trip.”
“How can I get away from here?” cried Louise.
Miss Slattery pointed to a small door. Louise rushed down a long stairway – another – and yet others – through a great room where there was a smell of cooking and a noise of fires – past white-capped cooks and scullions – through a long stone corridor, and out into the street. She cried aloud as she saw Esther’s face at the window of the coupé.
She drove home – cured.
COL. BRERETON’S AUNTY
The pleasant smell of freshly turned garden-mould and of young growing things came in through the open window of the Justice of the Peace. His nasturtiums were spreading, pale and weedy – I could distinguish their strange, acrid scent from the odor of the rest of the young vegetation. The tips of the morning-glory vines, already up their strings to the height of a man’s head, curled around the window-frame, and beckoned to me to come out and rejoice with them in the freshness of the mild June day. It was pleasant enough inside the Justice’s front parlor, with its bright ingrain carpet, its gilt clock, and its marble-topped centre-table. But the Justice and the five gentlemen who were paying him a business call – although it was Sunday morning – looked, the whole half dozen of them, ill in accord with the spirit of the Spring day. The Justice looked annoyed. The five assembled gentlemen looked stern.
“Well, as you say,” remarked the fat little Justice, who was an Irishman, “if this divilment goes on – “
“It’s not a question of going on, Mr. O’Brien,” broke in Alfred Winthrop; “it has gone on too long.”
Alfred is