Begging me to stay where I was, she left me—profoundly cogitative, you may be sure. That obsession had entered my mind to stay. It was gratifying to contemplate the trust of me implied in that leave to travel; and yet, and yet—I could have thought she had no more delusions about me than I had about myself. Really it almost seemed as if Fifine’s fate was to her a matter of quite secondary importance; she was willing to confide it to such fortuitous happenings.
I went a long walk into the country that day, tramping by way of Sèvres and Bas Chaville to the little Trianon, with its atmosphere of ghosts and piteous things sighing and whispering among the yellowing leaves. Returning to Paris, late and somewhat exhausted, I dined, cheaply but delectably, at a little Café in the Rue Vivienne, and thence, according to my promise to myself of a late evening, made my way to the Opera-House, where I paid my three francs for a fauteuil de quatrième amphithéâtre (and a very good one) to hear Romeo and Juliet sung.
Now I was scanning the audience from my lofty eyrie, when, my glance roving to the orchestra, whose members were at that moment tuning their instruments, I positively started and sat transfixed. For there, seated behind a violoncello, along whose strings his white fingers hopped and scampered like white mice, was my old plaintive macaroni of the Rue de Fleurus. He had no chrysanthemum bud in his buttonhole now; but I knew him at once; my eyes, sufficiently penetrating at all times, could not be mistaken.
Well, for what he was worth he was identified; and what was he worth? Even were I to take the trouble to ascertain his name, how indeed would it bring me nearer a solution of the mystery of Fifine’s indebtedness to him? Besides, it was no affair of mine.
Fifine had gone obediently to bed when I returned home that night.
CHAPTER X
Fifine received her letter, containing a bulky enclosure, from Marion. I was present when she opened it, and I made no comment, preferring to leave to her the questioning which I foresaw, and which was indeed inevitable. She did not speak for a little, but sat with her velvety eyes fixed on my face, while I dipped, with what show of unconcern I could master, my petit-pain into my cup of coffee. Suddenly she thrust under my very nose a little rouleau of banknotes.
“They are to the value of two thousand francs,” she said. “I want you to keep them for me, to draw upon as occasion requires.”
“Good,” I said. “Behold your conscientious banker. It was unnecessary; but I ask no questions.”
“You have no need to,” she said; “nor to pretend ignorance of whence they have come and why.”