“Two days,” said I, answering her to the point. “I am yachting round the coast, and some good instinct compelled me to come here.”
She looked at me, I thought, a little searchingly. A woman’s curiosity was awake, in spite of her nineteen years. None the less she made a pretty picture enough; and the scene about stood for a worthy frame. Who does not know the summer aspect of a French watering-place—the fresh blue sea, the yellow beach, the white houses with the green jalousies, the old Gothic churches with their crazy towers—laughter and jest and motor-cars everywhere—Mademoiselle La France tripping over the shingle with well-poised ankle—her bathing dress a very miracle of ribbons and diminuendos—the life, the vivacity, the joy of it, and a thousand parasols to roof the whispers in. So I saw Mistress Joan amid such a scene. She, this shrewd little schemer of nineteen, began to suspect me.
“Who told you that I was at Dieppe?” she asked quickly.
“Instinct, the best of guides. Where else could you have been?”
“Why not at Trouville?”
“Because I am not there.”
“My, what a reason! Did you expect to find my father here?”
“Certainly not. He sailed in his yacht for Cherbourg three days ago.”
“Then I shall call you a wizard. Please tell me why you wanted to see me.”
“You interested me. Besides, did not I say that I would come? Would you have me at Eastbourne or Cromer, cooped up with women who talk in stares and men whose ambitions rot in bunkers? I came to see you. That is a compliment. I wished to say good-bye to you before you return to America.”
“But we are not going to Amer——that is, of course, my home is there. Did not father tell you that?”
“Possibly. I have a poor head for places. There are so many in America.”
“But I just love them,” she said quickly; and then, with mischief in her eyes, she added, “No one minds other people trying to find out all about them in America.”
It was a sly thrust and told me much. This child did not carry a secret, I said; she carried the fear that there might be a secret. I had need of all my tact. How fate would laugh at me if I fell in love with her! But that was a fool’s surmise, and not to be considered.
“Curiosity,” I said, “may have one of two purposes. It may desire to befriend or to injure. Please consider that when you have the time to consider anything. I perceive that there are at least a dozen young men waiting to tell you that you are very beautiful. Do not let me forbid them. As we are staying at the same hotel——”
“What? You have gone to the Palais?”
“Is there any other house while you are in Dieppe?”
She flushed a little and turned away her head. I saw that I had frightened her; and reflecting upon the many mistakes that so-called tact may make sometimes, I invented a poor excuse and left her to her friends.
Plainly, her eyes had challenged me. And the Man, I said, must not hesitate to pick up the glove which my Lady of Nineteen had thrown down so bravely.
CHAPTER VII.
MY FRIEND McSHANUS.
Dr. Fabos at Dieppe.
I thought that I knew no one in Dieppe, but I was wrong, as you shall see; and I had scarcely set foot in the hotel when I ran against no other than Timothy McShanus, the journalist of Fleet Street, and found myself in an instant listening to his odd medley of fact and fancy. For the first time for many years he was in no immediate need of a little loan.
“Faith,” says he, “’tis the best thing that ever ye heard. The Lord Mayor of this very place is dancing and feasting the County Councillors—and me, Timothy McShanus, is amongst ’em. Don’t ask how it came about. I’ll grant ye there is another McShanus in the Parlyment—a rare consated divil of a man that they may have meant to ask to the rejoicin’. Well, the letter came to worthier hands—and by the honour of ould Ireland, says I, ’tis this McShanus that will eat their victuals. So here I am, me bhoy, and ye’ll order what ye like, and my beautiful La France shall pay for it. Shovels of fire upon me head, if I shame their liquor——”
I managed to arrest his ardour, and, discovering that he had enjoyed the hospitality of Dieppe for three days upon another man’s invitation, and that the end of the pleasant tether had been reached, I asked him to dine with me, and he accepted like a shot.
“’Tis for the pleasure of me friend’s company. To-morrow ye shall dine with me and the Mayor—me old friend the Mayor—that I have known since Tuesday morning. We’ll have fine carriages afterwards, and do the woods and the forests. Ye came here, I’ll be saying, because ye heard that the star of Timothy McShanus was on high? ’Twould be that, no doubt. What the divil else should bring such an astronomer man to Dieppe?”
I kept it from him a little while; but when he rejoined me at the dinner table later on, the first person he clapped his eyes upon was little Joan Fordibras, sitting with a very formidable-looking chaperone three tables from our own. The expression upon his face at this passed all simile. I feared that every waiter in the room would overhear his truly Celtic outburst.
“Mother of me ancestors!” he cried; “but ’tis the little shepherdess herself. Ean Fabos, have shame to admit it. ’Twas neither the stars of the celestial heavens nor the beauty of the firmament that carried ye to this shore. And me that was naming it the wit and the beauty of me native counthry. Oh, Timothy McShanus, how are the mighty fallen! No longer——”
I hustled him to his seat and showed my displeasure very plainly. As for little Joan Fordibras, while she did not hear his words, his manner set her laughing, and in this she was imitated by French and English women round about. Indeed, I defy the greatest of professors to withstand this volatile Irishman, or to be other than amused by his amazing eccentricities.
“We’ll drink champagne to her, Fabos, me bhoy,” he whispered as the soup was served. “Sure, matrimony is very like that same wine—a good thing at the beginning, but not so good when you take overmuch of it. ’Twould be married I had been meself to the Lady Clara Lovenlow of Kildare, but for the blood of Saxons in her veins. Ay, and a poor divil of a man I would be this same time, if I had done it. Sure, think of Timothy McShanus with his feet in the family slippers and his daughters singing ‘The Lost Chord’ to him. Him that is the light of the Goldsmith Club. Who goeth home even with the milk! Contemplate it, me bhoy, and say what a narrow escape from that designing wench he has had.”
He rattled on, and I did not interrupt him. To be plain, I was glad of his company. Had it appeared to Joan Fordibras that I was quite alone in the hotel, that I knew no friends in Dieppe, and had no possible object in visiting the town but to renew acquaintance with her during her father’s absence—had this been so, then the difficulties of our intercourse were manifest. Now, however, I might shelter my intentions behind this burly Irishman. Indeed, I was delighted at the encounter.
“McShanus,” I said, “don’t be a fool. Or if you must be one, don’t include me in the family relationship. Do I look like a man whose daughters will be permitted to sing the ‘Lost Chord’ to him?”
“Ye can never judge by looks, Docthor. Me friend Luke O’Brien, him that wrote ‘The Philosophy of Loneliness’ in the newspapers, he’s seven children in County Cork and runs a gramophone store. ‘Luke,’ says I, ‘’tis a fine solitude ye have entirely.’ ‘Be d——d to that,’ says he—and we haven’t spoken since.”
“Scarcely