His head bowed itself forward, and he sat gazing regretfully on the ugly clock in the middle of the chimney-piece.
“All right, George!” laughed Rouvière; “you don’t say it, but I suspect that Madame Dupuis had a good deal to do with this final catastrophe!”
“It is true, Tom,” replied the other, his countenance lighting up for a moment; “and you may believe it or not, as you like, but I swear that she was a charming girl! Moreover, my dear old mother was living then, and it was a great pleasure to her to have me settle here where we were all born. The long and the short of it was that I married, bought my father-in-law’s office, and all was over—the die was cast! Take some of the Kirschwasser, Tom,” he added hurriedly, as if his remembrances were too painful to be dwelt on.
“Presently,” said Rouvière, a smile flickering over his worldly-wise face; “but tell me, first, you’ve not stayed walled up in Saint-Sauveur, I hope, all these thirty-five years? You take a run to Paris every once in a while, don’t you?”
“Don’t mention it,” groaned Dupuis. “I’ve not seen Paris since I said good-by to you in the Rue Montmartre!”
“Phew!” whistled Rouvière, helping himself to the Kirschwasser. The friends remained silent for a time, gazing at the fire.
“But you used to like to travel,” exclaimed Rouvière, at last.
“And so I do still, my dear Tom; my taste has not changed in that respect, I can assure you. But what could I do? When I married, my idea was to work steadily for fifteen years, and then sell my business and live on what I had saved. I intended then to take a trip to Paris with my wife, after that to the Pyrenees—I always wished so much to see the Pyrenees! But it was not to be; as the old women say, Man proposes and God disposes. We had been married just five years when our daughter was born....”
“What’s that you say—you have a daughter?” interrupted his friend.
“A daughter and a granddaughter, Tom,” replied George, with an inflection in his voice that sounded very like pride, and a soft look in his eyes; “so you understand that I had to stick to my business for ten years more, that I might get her a dowry; and then, when at last I did sell out—well, I was old ... and I couldn’t think of anything pleasanter than just to stay quietly in my arm-chair! Didn’t I tell you that my life has been nothing but a chapter of accidents from beginning to end? Come, shall we have some punch, Tom? I’ll make it.”