“That beast of a John,” he was thinking, “by forgetting to put my water ready last night will have made me ill for the rest of the day!”
Stumbling across the room, his eyes still only half open, Ascott made for the dressing room adjoining his bedroom, in which he felt sure—at least he hoped so—of finding a supply of clear, fresh water that should revive his energies depressed by the consumption of unlimited alcoholic liquors and liqueurs. He opened the door of his bathroom, but on the point of entering, he stopped dead on the threshold, dumbfounded by what he saw, albeit with a very vague and confused comprehension of the apparition that met his gaze! The room, generally so neat and tidy and meticulously ordered, every crystal phial and pomatum pot and toilet article in its appointed place on the dressing table, was this morning in the wildest disorder. There were bottles without stoppers giving out heady perfumes, brushes scattered about the floor, towels tossed at random over the backs of chairs.
But what above all else surprised the young man and filled him with the most intense amazement was to see on the Louis Seize settee, where he often threw himself after his bath to be massaged by his servant man to restore his numbed limbs to their proper suppleness, a woman lying there, half undressed and her hair undone, curled up on the couch buried in heavy, but restless slumbers. Her clothes, her skirt, her bodice lay about the floor, her shoes lay one in a corner cheek by jowl with a copper kettle, the other precariously perched on the shelf of a what-not!
Ascott had no need to look twice to recognize the sleeper. It was Nini Guinon, old Moche’s niece, the girl he had dined with yesterday evening in the private room ... who at the close of the entertainment when her uncle went away, had been left alone with him, ... whom he had made his mistress!
Ascott gazed long at the sleeping figure in utter bewilderment; he was still very tired and his mind was slow to understand, while an atrocious neuralgic headache tortured him. What had happened then, following the moment when he had found himself alone with Nini Guinon in the private room at the restaurant in the Place de la Bastille? He could remember nothing, he had forgotten everything. All the same his conscience told him that the history of subsequent events should not be very difficult to reconstruct. At the same time he was suffering atrociously, his head, his forehead, the nape of his neck were all seats of horrid pain. It felt as though every hair that bristled on his skull was a needle point painfully pricking the scalp. Putting off till later all thought of seriously considering his plight, Ascott, on tip-toe, moving carefully to avoid making the slightest noise, but as a first preliminary having drained at a draught half the contents of a water-jug, crept across the room, resolved to regain his bed and sleep off the last vestiges of his fatigue.
But hardly had he taken a couple of steps when he started and swore. A soft knock had sounded on the door. The tired man deemed no reply needful; no one surely would venture to come in without his permission, and that he was not disposed to give. But evidently it was ordained that the unfortunate young man should not be left in peace that morning to sleep off the effects of his last night’s indulgence. In defiance of the established customs of the house, hitherto invariably respected, the door, without leave given, was half opened. A head appeared, a face of consternation, the head and face of his servant John. Ascott, who at the moment was making for the bed, turned sharply round and sitting down on the coverlet, addressed the domestic in angry tones:
“What ever has come to you, John what do you want? I haven’t rung, that I know of.”
For all that the man pushed into the room and advanced some steps nearer his master.
“Forgive me, sir,” he murmured, “I should never have dared to come into your bedroom, sir, without being summoned, but there’s someone wishing to ...”