On the way to the hotel, where he had left his light traveling baggage when passing through from Caen in the morning, Adrian alighted at the central post-office, in the rue Jeanne d'Arc, to claim his two-days' mail forwarded from Paris.
Coming out, he stood awhile at the edge of the pavement verifying the several items. Two consignments of proofs—this pleased him. A slim one from the office, containing, as he knew, his fortnightly chronique of current home and foreign politics for the forthcoming number of the Review. The other—and his glance settled upon it affectionately—was stouter, holding the slips of a story of some forty pages. Into that story he had put all the imaginative and verbal skill of which he, as yet, felt himself capable. It was a drama, at once pathetic and brutal, of the Paris underworld which he had this year so intimately investigated during his unsuccessful search for Bibby Smyrthwaite. He felt keen to know how it looked and read in print; for in the back of his mind lurked a hope that just conceivably it might prove a little masterpiece and assure his place among those writers of contemporary fiction whose literary output really counts.
And here for the moment it must be owned the lover was called upon to make room for the artist, while Adrian promised himself the best of good hours, after dinner to-night, in revising punctuation, correcting misprints, and leisurely making those carefully considered alterations in wording so absorbing to one emulous of combining grace and high finish with pungency and vivacity of style. Tenderly he laid the packet down on the seat of the waiting car, and raised his eyes as in invocation to the star-pierced blue of the summer sky roofing the perspective of silver-gray houses and silver-gilt street. For mightn't he take it as a fortunate omen that the proofs should come to hand on this so fortunate day? Omen that the story would strike home and its readers acclaim him as a doer of notable and living work?
He glanced rapidly at the envelopes of his private letters; and, while thus occupied, became aware that Martin, the chauffeur, was engaged—as not infrequently—in an altercation. The man was a clever driver, and to him, Adrian, a willing and trustworthy servant. But his temper was inconveniently inflammable, and he inclined to pick quarrels with half the men and make amorous overtures to more than half the women he met, thus involving both himself and his master in superfluously dramatic incidents. Under provocation his language became variegated and astonishingly ripe. Epithets of the latter description he was now in process of discharging upon some individual who had knocked up against him, in passing, as he stood at the edge of the pavement bending down to examine the tire of the near front wheel of the car.
"Martin, stop that, if you please," Adrian said, warningly, over his shoulder, and returned to the survey of his letters.
There was one from Anastasia Beauchamp. Bless the dear woman, wasn't she indeed a jewel of a friend! And there was one, black-bordered, and addressed, though less neatly than usual, in Joanna Smyrthwaite's small, scholarly handwriting. Adrian was conscious of impatience, of an unreasoning sense of injury. For why, of all days in the year, should he hear from Joanna to-day? He had thought of her seldom lately, owing to preoccupation with and anxiety regarding René Dax; and it struck him as a rather wanton smirching of his delightful day's record and subtle menace to the success of his precious little story that the rather unpleasant matter of poor Joanna should thus obtrude itself. Undefinable apprehension of coming trouble flashed through his mind.
All this was a matter of seconds; but during those seconds, the voice of the choleric chauffeur had risen from a gusty snarl into the screech of a blazing sky-rocket, bursting finally into a star-shower of unrecordable invective.
Adrian, imposingly tall in his long dust-colored frieze motor-coat, wheeled round upon the man angrily.
"Ah, par exemple! but this is intolerable!" he exclaimed. "Have I not already commanded you to be silent? Do you propose to disgrace me, as well as yourself, by fighting in the open street? Behave respectably, not like an idiot. Do you hear—get in behind your steering-wheel and keep quiet until I am ready to start."
"But, Monsieur, the fellow has grossly insulted me. He cannoned into me by design, the thrice filthy animal, the sodden ass, and would have rolled me in the gutter had I not skilfully braced myself. Clearly his intention was robbery. He is a danger to society, a thief, a pickpocket. Only let Monsieur look for himself, and declare whether a more verminous gaol-bird has ever been presented for his inspection?"