Later in the day she handed him a letter addressed to Batterby. It had no stamp.
“Will you post this for me, Aristide?”
Aristide put the letter in his pocket and turned sharply away, lest she should see a sudden rush of tears. He had not counted on this innocent trustfulness. He went to his room. The poor little letter! He had not the heart to destroy it. No; he would keep it till Batterby came; it was not his to destroy. So he threw it into a drawer.
Having once begun the deception, however, he thought it necessary to continue. Every week, therefore, he invented a letter from Batterby. To interest her he drew upon his Provençal imagination. He described combats with crocodiles, lion-hunts, feasts with terrific savages from the interior, who brought their lady wives chastely clad in petticoats made out of human teeth; he drew pictures of the town, a kind of palm-shaded Paris by the sea, where one ate ortolans and oysters as big as soup-plates, and where Chinamen with pigtails rode about the streets on camels. It was not a correct description of Honduras, but, all the same, an exotic atmosphere stimulating and captivating rose from the pages. With this it was necessary to combine expressions of affection. At first it was difficult. Essential delicacy restrained him. He had also to keep in mind Batterby’s vernacular. To address Fleurette, impalpable creation of fairyland, as “old girl” was particularly distasteful. By degrees, however, the artist prevailed. And then at last the man himself took to forgetting the imaginary writer and poured out words of love, warm, true, and passionate.
And every week Fleurette would smile and tell him the wondrous news, and would put into his hands an unstamped letter to post, which he, with a wrench of the heart, would add to the collection in the drawer.
Once she said, diffidently, with an unwonted blush and her pale blue eyes swimming: “I write English so badly. Won’t you read the letter and correct my mistakes?”
But Aristide laughed and licked the flap of the envelope and closed it. “What has love to do with spelling and grammar? The good Reginald would prefer your bad English to all the turned phrases of the Académie Française.”
“It is as you like, Aristide,” said Fleurette, with wistful eyes.
Yet, in spite of the weekly letters, Fleurette continued to droop. The winter came, and Fleurette was no longer able to stay among the cabbages of Mme. Bidoux. She lay on her bed in the little room, ten feet by seven, away, away at the top of the house in the Rue Saint Honoré. The doctor, informed of her comparative happiness, again shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing more to be done.
“She is dying, monsieur, for want of strength to live.”