“The comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more
tavern bills.”
The dame du comptoir beckoned a waiter, and delegated some portion of her supreme authority to him for the next quarter of an hour. She constituted as it were a Regency, and gave her subordinate command over her wine and liqueur bottles, her fine champagne, Bass and Guinness; and then she ushered Theodore Dalbrook into a very small sitting-room at the back of the counter, so small indeed that a large looking-glass, a porcelain stove, two arm-chairs, and one little table left hardly standing room.
Theodore followed with a sense of bewilderment. He had told himself that the Island of Jersey was a world so small that he could not have much difficulty in tracing any man who had lived and died there within the last ten years; but accident had been kinder to him than he had hoped.
The lady seated herself in one of the ruby velvet arm-chairs, and motioned him to the other.
“You have given me a shock, monsieur,” she said. “My friends in the island know that my marriage was unfortunate, and they never mention my husband. He is forgotten as if he had never been. I sometimes fancy that year of my life was only a troubled dream. Even my name is unchanged. I was called Mdlle. Coralie before I married. I am called Madame Coralie now.”
“I am sorry to have caused you painful emotion, madame, but it is most important to me to trace the history of your husband’s later years, and I deem myself very fortunate in having found you.”
“Is it about a property, a fortune left him, perhaps?” exclaimed Coralie, with sudden animation, her fine eyes lighting up with hope.
“Alas, no. Fortune had nothing in reserve for your unlucky husband.”
“Unlucky, indeed, but not so unlucky as I was in giving my heart to him. I knew that he was a drunkard. I knew that he had been turned out of the navy, and out of the mercantile marine on account of that dreadful vice,—but he—he was very fond of me, poor fellow, and he swore that he would never touch a glass of brandy again as long as he lived, if I would consent to marry him. He did turn over a new leaf for a time, and kept himself sober and steady, and would hang over that counter for a whole evening talking to me, and take nothing but black coffee. I thought I could reform him. I thought it would be a grand thing to reform a man like that, a gentleman bred and born, a man whose father had been a great landowner, and whose family name was one of the oldest in England. He was a gentleman in all his ways. He never forgot himself even when he had been drinking. He was a gentleman to the last. Such a fine-looking man too. While he was courting me and kept himself steady he got back his good looks. He looked ten years younger, and I was very proud of him the day we were married. He had taken a house for me, a nice little house on the hill near the Jesuits’ College, with a pretty little garden, and I had furnished the house out of my savings. I had saved a goodish bit since I came to Jersey, for my uncle is a generous man, and my situation here is a good one. I had over two hundred pounds in hand after I paid for the furniture—these chairs were in my drawing-room,—and he hadn’t much more than the clothes he stood upright in, poor fellow. But I wouldn’t have minded that if he had only kept himself steady. I was prepared to work for him. I knew I should have to keep him. He was too much of a gentleman to be able to work except in his profession, and that was gone from him for ever; so I knew it was incumbent on me to work for both, and I thought that by letting our drawing-room floor in the season, and by doing a little millinery all the year round—I’m a good milliner, monsieur—I thought I could manage to keep a comfortable home, without touching my two hundred pounds in the Savings Bank.”