The Wonderful Year. William John Locke

he certainly possessed no French qualifications which would have enabled him to set up a regular cabinet d’avoué and earn a professional livelihood. Nor did he presume to step within the avoué’s jealously guarded sphere. But his opinion on legal points was so sound, and his fee so moderate, that many consulted him in preference to an orthodox practitioner. That was all that Corinna knew of him in his legal aspect. The rest of his queer practice consisted in advising in all manner of complications. He arbitrated in disputes between man and man, woman and woman, lover and mistress, husband and wife, parent and child. He diverted the debtor from the path to bankruptcy. He rescued youths and maidens from disastrous nymphs and fauns. He hushed up scandal. Meanwhile his private life and even his address remained unknown. Twice a day he went the round of the cafés and restaurants of the quartier, so that those in need of his assistance had but to wait at their respective taverns in order to see him—for he appeared with the inevitability of the sun in its course.

      “There are all kinds of parasitical people,” said Corinna, “who try to sponge on students for drinks and meals and money—but Fortinbras isn’t that kind. Now and again, but not often, he will accept an invitation to lunch or dinner—and then it’s always for the purpose of discussing business. Whether it’s his cunning or his honesty I don’t know—but nobody’s afraid of him. That’s his great asset. You’re absolutely certain sure that he won’t stick you for anything. Consequently anybody in trouble or difficulty goes to him confident that his five francs consultation fee is the end of the financial side of the matter and that he will concentrate his whole mind and soul on the case. He’s an odd devil.”

      “The most remarkable man I’ve ever met,” said Martin.

      “You’ve not met many,” said Corinna.

      “I don’t know——” replied Martin reflectively. “I once came across a prize-fighter—a remarkable chap—in the bar-parlour of the pub at the corner of our street who was afterwards hanged for murdering his wife, and I once met a member of Parliament, another remarkable man—I forget his name now—and then of course there was Cyrus Margett.”

      “But none of them is in it with Fortinbras,” Corinna smiled with ironic indulgence.

      “None,” said Martin, “had his peculiar magnetic quality. Not even the member of Parliament. But,” he continued after a pause, “is that all that is known of him? He seems to be a very mysterious person.”

      “I shouldn’t mind betting you,” said Corinna, “that you and I are the only people in Paris who are aware of his daughter in Brantôme.”

      “Why should he single us out for such a confidence?” asked Martin. “He said last night that he was giving us a bit of his heart because we were good children—it was quite touching—but why should we be the only ones to have a bit of his heart?”

      “Would you like to know?” asked Corinna, meeting his eyes full.

      “I should.”

      “He told me before you turned up at the Petit Cornichon, this morning, that you interested him as a sort of celestial freak.”

      “I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not,” replied Martin, pausing in the act of rolling a cigarette. “It’s tantamount to calling me an infernal ass.”

      At this show of spirit the girl swiftly changed her tone.

      “You may take it from me that Fortinbras doesn’t give a bit of his heart to infernal asses. If I had gone to him, on my own, he would never—you heard him—he would never have touched on ‘things precious to him.’ It’s for your sake, not mine.”

      “But why?”

      “Because he’s fed up with the likes of me,” said Corinna, with sudden bitterness. “There are hundreds and thousands of us.”

      Martin knitted his brow. “I don’t understand.”

      “Better not try,” she said. “Let us pay for the cider and get on.”

      So they paid and went on and halted at the townlet of Rambouillet, where as Monsieur and Mademoiselle Overshaw, they engaged rooms at the most modest of terms. And to Martin’s infinite relief Corinna did not summon him to kiss her cheek in the presence of the landlady, before they retired for the night. He went to bed comforted by the thought that Corinna’s bark was worse than her bite.

      I have done my best to tell you that this was an unsentimental journey.

      So day after day they sped their innocent course, resting by night at tiny places where haughty automobiles halted not. They had but sixty pounds to their joint fortune, and it behoved them not to dissipate it in unwonted luxury. Through Chartres they went, and Corinna quite as eagerly as Martin drank in deep draughts of its Gothic mystery and its splendour of stained glass; through Châteaudun with its grim old castle; through Vendôme with the flaming west front of its cathedral; through Tours in the neighbourhood of which they lingered many days, seeing in familiar intimacy things of which they had but dreamed before—Chinon, Loches, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, perhaps the most delicate of all the châteaux of the Loire. And following the counsel of a sage Fortinbras they went but a few kilometres out of their way and visited Richelieu, the fascinating town known only to the wanderer, himself judicious or judiciously advised, that was built by the great Cardinal outside his palace gates for the accommodation of his court; and there it remains now untouched by time, priceless jewel of the art of Louis Treize, with its walls and gates and church and market square and stately central thoroughfare of hôtels for the nobles, each having its mansard roof and porte-cochère giving entrance to court and garden; and there it remains dozing in prosperity, for around it spread the vineyards which supply brandy to the wide, wide world.

      It was here that Martin, sitting with Corinna on a blistered bench beneath a plane tree in the little market-place, said for the first time:

      “I don’t seem to care whether I ever see England again.”

      “What about getting another billet?” asked Corinna.

      “England and billets are synonymous terms. The further I go the less important does it appear that I should get one. At any rate the more loathsome is the prospect of a return to slavery.”

      “Don’t let us talk of it,” she said, fanning herself with her hat. “The mere thought of going back turns the sun grey. Let us imagine we’re just going on and on for ever and ever.”

      “I’ve been doing so in a general way,” he replied. “I’ve been living in a sort of intoxication; but now and then I wake up and have a lucid interval. And then I feel that by not sitting on the doorstep of scholastic agents I’m doing something wrong, something almost immoral—and it gives me an unholy thrill of delight.”

      “When I was a small child,” said Corinna, “I used to take the Ten Commandments one by one and secretly break them, just to see what would happen. Some I didn’t know how to break—the seventh for instance, which worried me—and others referring to stealing and murder were rather too stiff propositions. But I chipped out with a nail on a tile a little graven image and I bowed down and worshipped it in great excitement; and as father used to tell us that the third commandment included all kinds of swearing, I used to bend over an old well we had in the garden and whisper ‘Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn,’ until the awful joy of it made my flesh creep. I think, Martin, you can’t be more than ten years old.”

      “Why do you spoil a bit of sympathetic comprehension by that last remark?” he asked.

      “Why do you jib at truth?” she retorted.

      “Truth?”

      “Aren’t you like a child revelling in naughtiness—naughtiness just for the sake of being naughty?”

      “Perhaps I am,” said he. “But why do you mock at me for it?”

      “I don’t think I’m mocking,” she answered more seriously. “When I said you were only ten years old