CONTENTS

1. Being a letter from Henry Gastonard, of the Maison du bon Tabac at Paris, to his friend Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough, County Wicklow

2. The response of Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough, County Wicklow, to his friend, Henry Gastonard, of the Maison du bon Tabac at Paris

3. A letter from the same brief author addressed to the Reverend Arthur Warrington, of Beldon, Suffolk

4. Henry Gastonard continues the story in a letter to his friend Paddy O’Connell

5. Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell telling him the story of a dinner and a challenge

6. Being a telegram from Paddy O’Connell to his friend, Henry Gastonard

7. A letter from the Rev. Arthur Warrington, of Beldon, Suffolk, to Mrs. Arthur Warrington at Porchester Terrace, Bayswater

8. In which Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough, writes to his sister Clara a full account of the duel between Henry Gastonard and the Captain Bernard d’Alençon

9. Being a further instalment of the story from the pen of Paddy O’Connell

10. Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell a letter concerning his search for Mimi the Simpleton

11. Henry Gastonard informs Paddy O’Connell of his probable return to London

12. Henry Gastonard tells of a visit to his cousin, the Rev. Arthur Warrington, at Lowestoft

13. The Reverend Arthur Warrington writes in all haste to his Solicitor, Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, Strand

14. Paddy O’Connell apologises for his silence

15. “The Chimes” at Yarmouth, and what Henry Gastonard learned of them

16. Henry Gastonard gives a further account of his meeting with Mimi the Simpleton

17. Paddy O’Connell lays down the law

18. In which we hear something of the Pageant at Lowestoft

19. In which we translate a letter from Henry Gastonard, of the Maison du bon Tabac, at Hampstead, to Mimi the Simpleton, at Felixstowe

20. In which Mimi replies to Monsieur Henry

21. Being a telegram from Henry Gastonard to his friend Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough

22. Being a reply from Paddy O’Connell to Henry Gastonard’s telegram

23. Paddy O’Connell shares the news with his sister Clara

24. In which Henry Gastonard keeps his promise to Martha Warrington

25. Containing certain instructions to M. Jules Farman, ex-agent of police at 4 (bis), Rue de Quatre Septembre, Paris

26. Madame Mimi writes a letter to Paddy O’Connell

27. Paddy O’Connell replies to Mimi’s letter

28. The same author addresses Henry Gastonard at the Hotel Metropole, Brighton

29. Henry Gastonard makes an urgent appeal to Jules Farman, of the Rue de Quatre Septembre, Paris

30. Jules Farman sends to Henry Gastonard some account of his stewardship

31. Henry Gastonard sends Paddy O’Connell some account of his labours in Paris

32. In which Paddy O’Connell advised his friend Harry to pay a visit

33. The Reverend Arthur Warrington thanks Paddy O’Connell for services rendered

34. Henry Gastonard tells Paddy O’Connell of his visit to Madame Lea

35. We meet the Marquis de Saint Faur and another old friend

36. Paddy O’Connell writes a brief letter from Jack Straw’s Castle at Hampstead

37. In which we hear of Henry Gastonard at the Pavilion Henry Quatre, in the town of St. Germain by Paris

38. The Reverend Arthur Warrington rebukes his wife, Martha Warrington, upon a trivial account

39. We hear of Paddy O’Connell in a letter to Martha Warrington at Cambridge

40. A brief note from Jules Farman, in Paris, to Henry Gastonard, at St. Germain

41. In which Henry Gastonard receives a summons from the Marquis de Saint Faur

42. Paddy O’Connell hears that he may leave London, and is invited to take the first train to Paris

43. Martha Warrington, being returned to her home, receives there a letter from the Château of Bougival

44. Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, receives an unexpected answer to an expectant letter

45. Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, passes on the unpleasant news to the Reverend Arthur Warrington, of Beldon, Suffolk

46. The Reverend Arthur Warrington receives the news and makes some complaint of it

47. Paddy O’Connell informs his sister Clara that he is detained in London upon business of some importance

48. In which Henry Gastonard hears of Jules Farman again, and of the criminal known as Bedotte the valet

49. Madame Lea d’Alençon has really nothing to say; but she says it charmingly as ever

50. Mimi the Simpleton writes a brief note to Madame the Princess Hélène of Ilidze and we translate it

51. Mimi and Harry write to Paddy and advise him of their approaching visit to Ireland

CHAPTER I.

[Being a letter from Henry Gastonard of the Maison du bon Tabac at Paris to his friend Paddy O’Connell of Glendalough, County Wicklow.]

Maison du bon Tabac, May 15th, 1905.

Dear Paddy,—You will have seen it in the papers, if papers still cross the pass to those ancient halls which enshroud the immortal glories of the clan O’Connell—but, my dear Paddy, you will have little idea of its meaning or be as far from the truth of it as Paul Delmet from a parson’s cassock or the Chevalier Honoré de Villefort from the castles in Spain which the entirely disinterested Baroness has lately bequeathed to him.

I can hear your comments, your wisdom, can imagine your displeasure. What—a man who should be riding his hack in the Row, putting a yacht into commission at Cowes—or at the worst buying a thousand guinea motor-car to carry his friends from their creditors—this man living in a hovel at Montmartre, spending his money upon chansonniers, grisettes, cocottes and all that paste-board riff-raff which has made the Quat-Z-Arts famous wherever the American language is not spoken. This is what you say, my dear Paddy—this is what my beloved cousin Arthur is saying when he tells himself that in twelve months’ time the curtain falls upon the play, and he, the patron, walks off with the proceeds.

Be sure that I forget this unpleasant truth whenever life will permit me to do so. The thought for to-morrow is not often the spectre at the feasts over which Marcelle presides, nor one which Mimi La Godiche—which is to say Mimi the Simpleton—long permits to remain in heads as empty as her own. I am to lose my fortune of seven thousand pounds a year if, at the mature age of twenty-five, I am not earning five hundred pounds a year by my own labour and talent. So be it, Paddy. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we will dine. This fortune may carry some little sunshine even to the benighted halls of the Agile Wolf. I make no complaint of destiny—nor of Mimi La Godiche, whose friends robbed me of a trumpery cigarette-box which is again upon my table while I write this letter.

I say that I make no complaint of destiny—why should I? Let me but open this window, upon which Gabriel de Math has drawn in the best French chalk an impassioned sketch of an empty champagne bottle—let me but open it and the world is at my feet—Paris of the golden domes, Paris of the dark eyes and the meaner streets—a great black Paris, a Paris of woods and gardens and river, of the mills which grind the grisettes’ corn, of the hives whence issue the noctambules and night hawks, whose prey has gossamer wings of greenbacks, whose morrow is never because of the eternal to-day. All this lies in the great bowl before me. I pour my fortune into the abyss and they strive for it far below, in a glitter of brass and spangles, in a flutter of white petticoats and silken hose and shirt fronts which would be better at the laundry. But none knows the truth—I am the mad Englishman who neither paints nor plays. And I am as poor as the rest of them—and God knows how poor that is.

So, you see, Paddy, I have my consolations, and among others, as the papers have told you, the friendship of Mimi La Godiche. What a fine old cardboard tragedy they have made of it all! Did I not sally forth at midnight, armed with a blunderbuss and a scimitar to cut down the apaches who lurk beneath the shadow of la Galette? Did I not enter a café which the police are afraid to enter? and did not these strong hands drag therefrom the brave fille who had returned my stolen diamonds to me and was in danger because of her honesty? News “fitting to the night,” upon my word, “black, fearful, comfortless and horrible.” Would for the sake of this Hector that it were the truth and nothing but the truth—but, my dear Paddy, there’s little of the truth in it at all, as these indentures shall bear witness. It’s as false as Fifine of the Alcazar, and not half as pretty.

You will remember that I have known Mimi La Godiche for some three months now. She is a pretty, round-limbed blonde, with a mop of tousled hair, eyes full of “fair speechless messages,” the reticence of Cleopatra, the youth of Cupid, the devilry of the whole Rue Champollion in the shape of her bewitching neck.

I saw her first at the Fête de Neuilly. She stood upon a platform with a strong man, a juggler and a clown; and when she sang I determined that she should come to the Quat-Z-Arts and sing to the Bohemians of the Butte. Montmartre gave her the cold shoulder. Can you wonder that an audience which has heard Odette Dulac sing “Je suis Bête” should decline to hear Mimi La Godiche warble “Toujours l’amour,” in a dress that makes her look like a kitchen-maid and a voice that would befit a Sunday-school? She came, she saw, she did not conquer. I offered to send her back to the lion-tamer, who is to her father, mother, uncle and brother—she declined the invitation, preferring to sit to Desmond Barrymore, the American, and not a little delighted to earn her bread at so light a task.

Now, my dear Paddy, you must tell me, for by all the kingdoms of the grisettes, I swear that I do not know what my obligations to this waif and stray may be. Must I pose as the philanthropist of the books, and send her to a convent at Brussels or a finishing school at Brighton? Should I plod patiently beneath a soiled genealogical tree to discover if, in some remote slum of Paris, Lyons, or Marseilles, there may not be living a venerable kinswoman, perhaps newly released from prison, who will harbour her? Or shall I remember that the devil knows his own and will not forget her?

I cannot tell you. She is earning an honest living with Desmond Barrymore, and will come to no harm there. Life and laughter and the light of cities are her whole existence. And imagine the talk of the Rue Pigalle repeated in the cloister or the argot Montmartrois at church parade in that “fayre town of Brighton!” It can’t be done, Paddy. I am the victim of my own enthusiasm, and Mimi will return to her lion-tamer no more.

Meanwhile, there are the thieves. The papers have told you that I, a young English student, studying the sculptor’s art in the great ateliers of Montmartre, was robbed at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball of a gold and diamond cigarette-case worth a hundred pounds. At the best it is a half truth—at the worst an ignorant lie.

None knows better than yourself, Paddy, the deserved fame of the Quat-Z-Arts Ball. Here America does not come, nor Sir Lord Moneybags enter. There is no ticket more prized in all Paris than a ticket for the Quat-Z-Arts; there is not a festivity in any ballroom in Europe more decently conducted for those who see eye to eye with these Bohemians of the Butte, and understand them. True, Venus in many shapes rides sky-high upon the gilded floats; you sup upon the floor from the contents of paper bags thrown down to you from the galleries above; but of the vulgar things to be done in London or New York by those who are merely vulgarian, you do none at all. So, my dear Paddy, I certainly did not lose my pretty cigarette-case (given to me, you remember, by old Bardon, the banker, for dragging his beloved “cheeild” from the Solent) at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball; nor would anyone outside a lunatic asylum puzzle his head to say where I did lose it.

Perhaps it was in a cab on my way to the Abbaye de Thélème, that sordid supper-house of the Butte, to which one resorts in sheer despair of sleep and solitude; perhaps later on at the Capitol, to which, I remember, Mistress Mimi would be conducted with Amé Decroix, the poet; Honoré de Villefort, the Chevalier; and that bald-headed old rogue of a perpetual mendicant, Georges Oleander, who writes the revues. I neither know nor care; for my memories are of a night of life, and colour, and music; of a scene glittering with dresses and the pictures that great artists have given to their fellows—of music which should have moved the feet of every dancing faun that ever trod a pedestal—of wit and laughter, the veritable elixir vitæ.

This is no psalm-singing screed that I write to you, Paddy, nor are you the man for the pæans of self-righteousness. I will confess without shame to certain bons moments. Though I am not, and never have been, the lover of Mimi La Godiche, there have been instants of the madness in which I have played a madman’s part.

But Mimi neither misunderstands me nor is misled. Did I but drop the shabbiest of handkerchiefs, she would become my mistress to-morrow; but I have no intention of soiling fine linen in this way, nor do I contemplate such a charming ménage as she would certainly disgrace. When I embraced her at the Quat-Z-Arts, the floats of my Lady Venus were already sky-high and the parquet a sea of billowy chiffon—but I did not do so to give her an opportunity of stealing my cigarette-case (as that old blackguard Georges Oleander will have it), nor will all the avocats in Paris convince me that this was the moment of my loss. No, my dear friend, it was at the Abbaye, I repeat, and if not at the Abbaye, then at the Capitol.

I am asking you to keep this fact in mind that what follows after may be better understood. You know me too well to suppose that I would have cried to high Heaven for the loss of a twopenny-halfpenny diamond box, or even be complaining of it to any man. But it was my misfortune to be asked for a cigarette out of that same by the prince and father of all beggars, Maître Georges Oleander aforesaid, and so, in a moment of surprise, I discovered the loss.

What next is the tale, Paddy? You will guess it first time—that Mimi La Godiche had thrown her fair arms about me, not in an ecstasy of love or passion, but purely to pocket the case and enjoy the contents at her leisure. This I had from the Chevalier Villefort not a week ago. On Sunday I learned for the first time the true value of a mendacious tongue and what it may mean even here on the “mountain” whence you look down upon the domes of Paris.

The scandal was everywhere. Remember that there is in Montmartre a great colony of artists, musicians and writers, not less honest, not less clean-living than the inhabitants of many a sanctimonious town in the country of your oppressor. These may esteem the marriage-tie lightly; but they hold love to be a sacred thing, and they would no more think of robbing their neighbour than of shooting the Pope.

These had been good friends to Mimi La Godiche because of my patronage. But no sooner is the black word spoken than every door is shut upon her, skirts drawn aside, tables shifted, slander uttered in no mere whisper. They recalled her coming—the strong man of the Fête de Neuilly, the clown, the tights, the van, the vagrant’s life. A little more of it and they would have pushed her headlong over to the great congregation of grisettes, maquereaux and night-hawks who throng the cabarets of the Butte. In short, my dear Paddy, they would have made a criminal and something worse of her—and you know what that would mean among the savages of Montmartre. Let me tell you next how I have come to save her from such a fate—if it be but for the moment—for, as Richter has told us, woman is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice with which we are acquainted.

I have saved her. She is in this very room while I am writing this letter; but, Paddy, if she were to walk a hundred yards down the alley which has the honour to house me I would not answer for her life.

To make this clear, let me return to the Sunday after “the crime” and to my own recreation upon that innocent day. A morning with Sabine Monterey and old Villefort upon the Seine at Poissy; lunch in a frock coat and glory with Lea d’Alençon at her apartment in the Avenue de Malakoff; then to Longchamp; a little dinner at Armenonville, and afterwards the long journey home, the steep climb to the Butte and the card-box house which permits me to look down upon the sails of La Galette.

Why I went so far that Sunday night I cannot tell you. There is still my apartment in the Hôtel St. Paul open to me when I would return to civilisation. But I think the amorous Lea had put thoughts of Mimi into my head, and, wondering if all were well with her, I returned to the Maison du bon Tabac and to my bed. Ten minutes after I had entered the house, came Chocolat, the messenger from the old Café of the Assassins, knocking as the devil knocked on old Luther’s door at Weimar. Then I knew that all was not well with Mimi, and down I went, the black man upon my heels, vainly endeavouring in three languages to tell me what had happened.

What a jargon it was, what a medley of all the elusive argot of the cabarets! This much alone was clear—that Mimi La Godiche had got somehow into the Café of the Assassins (they call it the Lapin Agil to-day), and that if I did not get her out she certainly would be murdered.

True, there was a cipi, or municipal guard, to protect her from the immediate fury of her friends; but these would force her presently to the pavement, and then God help her! So much Chocolat, the messenger, declared as we hurried down the alley, passed Cerberus at the gate thereof, and plunged into the darkness of the labyrinth below. I could save Mimi La Godiche—the patron wished it; madame, his wife, was of like opinion. The danger lay in the alleys—not in any house, and certainly not at the famous cabaret of the Agile Wolf. Upon this point Chocolat was emphatic. They could look after their own—the streets were another affair.

Well, I reached the place at last, after as unpleasant a descent as ever led to Avernus, and entered the café just upon the stroke of midnight.

You know the place; the dirty courtyard before it; the rude benches in the shed that serves for a concert-room; the horrid unshaven faces of men who wear the mask of death; the savage ferocity in the women’s eyes. Of course, there are lights enough; lights and a rousing piano, and a chansonnier who lisps things we should be very sorry to repeat to-morrow. The fellow was singing nothing more virile than “Monsieur le Curé” when I came in, and, to be candid, not a soul there paid me a sou’s worth of attention. Remember that I was unknown in these places except as a poor devil of a sculptor trying to singe his wings in the candle of ambition. This reputation has been my protection hitherto, alike at the Maison du bon Tabac and in the alleys of the Butte.

Here at the Lapin Agil I must lose it, finally and irreparably, as all the omens seem to say—and losing it, have no longer a home upon the Butte of Montmartre.