CHAPTER X

DELAPINE INTERRUPTS A FIGHT

Madame Villebois had been brought up in a small country town, and as her parents had always lacked both the energy and the desire to travel a yard beyond Paris or Berck-sur-Mer, these were the only places outside her home that she had ever visited in her life. Of the rest of France she knew practically nothing, and as for England she only had an idea that it was a country of fogs and shopkeepers, where it was perpetually raining.

Her parents were profoundly ignorant of everything outside their own home-circle, and considered they had carried out their duty to the full by confiding the education of their only child after she left the convent to the tender mercies of the parish priest. This worthy gentleman had a sort of moral Index Purgatorius by which he regulated the conduct and instruction of all the children committed to his care, and, like Pope Paul IV., he not only forbade any thought or action which was forbidden in his index, but even prohibited everything that was not entered there-in as permissible. The result of this training was that Madame Villebois up to the end of her days considered everything absolutely wicked which had not been expressly sanctioned by her ghostly confessor. Still, with all her short-comings, she had a fair share of every-day common-sense, and her knowledge of dress and of cookery went a long way to make up for her dearth of mental qualifications. Dinner at the house of the Villebois was always a function of vast importance in the eyes of madame. The cuisine and wines were certainly above criticism, consequently an invitation to dine "chez les Villebois" was greatly prized by their large circle of friends, and the well-known bonhommie of the good-natured doctor made him an ideal host.

As for madame herself, that worthy dame was absolutely certain that her husband's extensive practice was entirely due to her own smart attire and her unflagging devotion to the culinary art, and from early morn till the afternoon, madame spent the most of her time between bargaining with the tradesmen over the details of purchases for the larder, and superintending the important culinary operations in the kitchen itself.

"A good cook," she used to say, "makes a good wife," and she was firmly convinced that the seat of her husband's affections was located somewhere in that portly and rotund region of his anatomy which was discreetly covered by the lower part of his waistcoat.

"Man is merely a civilised animal," she would remark to certain of her intimate female friends, "and if you feed the creature well, you can do almost anything with him."

As the guests took their places at the table, the sharp eyes of the hostess noticed a vacant seat--

"François," she asked, turning to the butler standing behind her, "who was that chair placed for?"

"Monsieur Pierre Duval, madame."

"Compose yourself, ma mie," said Villebois, "our learned friend left a note of apology stating that he had to return to his office, but that we might possibly see him later."

Doctor Riche gave an almost imperceptible glance at Céleste, who at once caught his eye and nodded significantly.

"If Pierre only knew what he is missing," said Riche, tasting the turtle soup, "no amount of business would prevent him from being at this dinner, eh, Marcel?"

"Oh, don't interrupt me, I beg of you, doctor, I have just swallowed a lovely piece of fat without tasting its flavour."

"Marcel, you are incorrigible, you ought to be made to stand up and say fifty paternosters before each meal. By the way, Delapine, we are very anxious for you to tell us your opinion on some of the fundamental points relating to spiritualism."

"Don't you answer him, professor," said Marcel, with his mouth half full of caviar sandwich. "Just try my recipe for eating caviar. It is positively entrancing, and consists of spreading it between this slice of brown bread and butter (it must be brown), with a trace of cayenne pepper and a few drops of vinegar, and then laying it on a rich green carpet of mustard and cress. By Jove, it is food for the gods. I consider a man who discovers a new dish renders a far greater service to mankind than one who discovers a new planet. We have planets enough already, but we can never have good dishes enough. If I were sufficiently rich I should select all my servants from chefs of renown. My valets, pages, butler, coachman, courier, and footman should all be cooks of the highest reputation, and each should be a specialist in some particular dish or entrée. For example, I should be undressed by an expert in curries, bathed by my connoisseur of wines, put to bed by a specialist in soups, and waited on by a man who had won eternal fame by his profound knowledge of Riz de veau à la Financière."

"What does that mean?" asked Céleste.

"A smile of a calf to the banker's wife, mademoiselle," replied Marcel, helping himself to some blue trout with sauce Madeire.

Renée looked up and smiled at Delapine who slipped his hand into hers under the table-cloth. She felt indescribably happy, but a glance at her father, who was looking directly at her, brought her eyes down, and her heart thumped violently as she let go her lover's hand. Had Payot seen her smile? She dared not look at Delapine again, much as she wanted to, and although a moment earlier she had been so happy, she now felt crushed like a wounded bird. "Oh, this cruel, cruel world," she said to herself, "why cannot they leave people alone to enjoy themselves?" And her appetite seemed to leave her all in a moment.

"Please do not pay any attention to me, or even notice me," she said sotto voce to Delapine. "I am so afraid you will betray our secret."

Delapine listened quietly while gazing vacantly at a stream bordered by very fuzzy willow trees in the Corot which was hanging on the wall opposite, and made some irrelevant remark to his right-hand neighbour (who happened to be Madame Villebois) about the way in which pigs are trained to dig up truffles. "Large iron rings are inserted through their noses," he said, "so that when the pigs dig up the truffles the rings prevent their eating them, and so the keeper is able to rescue the dainty morsels, and toss them into his basket."

"But is the poor pig never allowed to have any of them?" she enquired. "One would think he would soon get disheartened at this treatment, and refuse to dig any more. I know I should if I were a pig."

"That you certainly never will be," he answered gallantly. "But I assure you, madame, that piggy is allowed to have all the broken and spoilt tubers as his reward as soon as the task is finished."

"Well, I am very glad for piggy's sake that it is so," interposed Céleste. "It would be very unfair to let him be good for nothing," and she suddenly laughed at the little joke which she had unconsciously uttered.

"Have you been to see 'Les Fiançailles Forcées' which has just been put on at the Vaudeville?" said Riche to Payot.

"No, I confess I have not. What is the plot?"

"Oh, it is quite an amusing play. There is a man named Boucher who has a son, and another fellow named Vauban who possesses a charming daughter. Well, Boucher promises to give Vauban a very valuable railway concession if the latter will persuade his daughter to marry the other fellow's son. Of course the daughter is secretly in love with another chap, and when Vauban tries to persuade his daughter to marry young Boucher, there is a tremendous row. Oh, I forgot to add that Vauban is very wealthy, and of course his money is the chief attraction in Boucher's eyes, and the way these two old boys haggle over the amount of coin that is to change hands when the marriage comes off is a caution, I can tell you."

"Stop, father. Father, what are you doing? Oh, Henri, stop him," cried Renée. But Payot, blind to all reason and remonstrance, rushed again at the young man.

Payot's eyes flashed at the speaker with an angry look, as he poured out a large glass of champagne cup and drank it off with a shaky hand at a gulp.

"How stupid these plays are becoming," he said, trying to hide his embarrassment and fear lest the doctor should read what was passing through his mind. "I wonder how people can listen to such nonsense. Such plots can only happen in the morbid imagination of the playwright."

Payot was visibly working himself up into a terrible state of excitement, and in order to steady his nerves tossed off one glass of wine after another.

"I cannot altogether agree with you, sir," said Marcel. "I went to the play on the first night, and I thought it 'ripping.' The whole plot was so well carried out and so natural that I felt it must have been copied from real life."

Payot frowned at the speaker for daring to differ from him, while Céleste and Riche simultaneously looked at each other and smiled significantly.

The financier caught the glance and began working himself into a rage. At first he tried to turn the conversation, and muttered something incoherently, much to the amusement of Marcel who was watching him.

"The best of the joke was," continued Marcel, with a wink, "that young Mademoiselle Vauban's lover naturally objected to being discarded for another man, and endeavoured to stop the marriage by hook or by crook. Both father and son on their side try to get rid of Mademoiselle's lover, but reckon without their host, and find it a more difficult job than they imagine to get this lover out of the way."

This was too much for Payot; what with the wine getting into his head, and the extraordinary resemblance between Marcel's account of the plot and his own dastardly schemes, the financier, feeling his crime being brought home to him, lost all control of himself.

"Damn you!" he yelled, "how dare you insult me in this way," and upsetting his chair in his rage he clenched his fist, and rushing at Marcel aimed a tremendous blow at his face. Marcel, although by no means as powerful as his adversary, was as agile as a tiger-cat, and easily parried the blow.

"You villain," he cried, "this is a dastardly plot between you, the professor and Villebois to ruin me. Je suis un vieux, but I will show you I have not forgotten how to fight," and seizing Marcel by the throat he attempted to strangle him.

Madame Villebois screamed and fainted, and Céleste went to her assistance.

"Stop, father, stop, you'll kill him," cried Renée wringing her hand in terror, but Payot lent a deaf ear to her entreaties.

Meanwhile Marcel slipped on the polished floor, and the two combatants rolled over on the ground, locked together in a tight embrace. Marcel, with a sudden twist, managed to disentangle himself, and by means of a half-turn, rolled over, and springing up, stepped back flushed and panting, with his collar torn half off. Almost at the same instant Payot got up and made a rush at Marcel who stood on his guard. The financier lunged at him with his left, but the poet ducked under his right arm like a bantam cock, and caught Payot one on the right ear. Before he could recover Marcel was at him again. His blows were feeble compared with Payot's tremendous slogging ones. The latter rushed at him again, but Marcel danced and dodged and ducked, delivering a rain of small but effective blows, like a stream of shots from a three-inch quick-firer replying to the ponderous twelve-inch gun of a dreadnought. Payot drove him against the wall, and seized him by the throat with a deadly grip, which caused Marcel to turn livid, and he struggled to unclasp the financier's hold of his throat.

All this happened so quickly, and the guests were so petrified with amazement, that they had had barely time to interfere.

Payot was about to give Marcel the coup de grace, but Delapine was too quick for him. Stepping up he made a pass with his hand in front of Payot's face, and hypnotised him with a long steady gaze in his eyes. "Sleep," he said in a calm and penetrating voice. "Sleep on and banish all recollection of this deed from your mind for ever. Henceforth be friends with Marcel, control your temper, and devote yourself to your daughter whom you have so long neglected."

Immediately Payot dropped down as if he had been struck by lightning. When the other gentlemen bent over him, as they did an instant later, they found him fast asleep and snoring loudly.

"You may shake him as much as you please, gentlemen, but I defy you to wake him. Just try and do it, if it amuses you."

They all three shook him, and thumped him with their fists as hard as they could, but they might as well have tried to revive a corpse. Not a sign of life did he show beyond his rythmic stertorous breathing.

Villebois, Riche, and Marcel looked at one another in amazement.

"Now will two of you gentlemen kindly carry him into the next room and lay him on the sofa. You need not have the least anxiety about him, as he cannot wake up until I give him permission."

"And what will happen then?" asked Riche.

"Then he will wake up the moment I give the word."

"Do you have to shake him, or what do you do?" asked Marcel.

"I don't even need to be in the house," replied the professor. "He will be obliged to obey me wherever I may happen to be at the time. Even if I am a thousand miles away it will not make the slightest difference as regards the result."

"Great Scott!" replied Marcel, looking at Delapine in astonishment.

"I must ask you as a favour, gentlemen, not to speak of this painful incident to anyone again," said the professor, "as Monsieur Payot will not have the slightest inkling of it when he wakes up."

"Now," said Delapine, as Riche and Villebois returned from the adjoining room, "let us attend to the ladies."

By repeated applications of smelling salts Madame Villebois was soon brought round, and she was conveyed to her room by her husband.

During their absence the poet went to his room, and with Villebois' assistance, removed all traces of his recent fight, and putting on a fresh collar made himself presentable once more.

"I feel as fresh as a fiddle now, thanks to my wash and brush down."

"If you will not mind waiting for me in the library until I have fixed things up I should be awfully obliged," said Delapine, "as I must see after the two young ladies."

The professor went downstairs and proceeded to pacify Renée by assuring her that her father would wake up perfectly calm, and utterly oblivious of his terrible outburst of temper.

"Are you quite sure he will not remember what has occurred?" she asked.

"Perfectly," he replied.

Renée was by this time so accustomed to finding Delapine's forecasts prove correct, that she felt quite at ease, and even happy.

"Oh, how can I thank you, Henri, for what you have done," said Renée, smiling through her tears.

"By not referring to the incident to anybody," replied Delapine with a significant look which she thoroughly understood.

"And now, my dear mademoiselle," he said to Céleste, "go upstairs and stay with your mother; and you, Renée, go and tell her as soon as she has calmed down and is able to listen to you, that Monsieur Payot's outburst was entirely the result of the unexpected return of his hallucinations and delusions which he contracted when fighting the cannibals in Cochin-China."

"But, professor, father never was in Cochin-China, and he never suffered from hallucinations or delusions."

"My dear child, what does that matter? I am perfectly aware that your father was never in the East, that there are no cannibals there, and that he never had any delusions. My chief reason for asking you to tell the good lady that your father contracted the mental disease when he was in Cochin-China is because I am perfectly certain that she has not the remotest idea where that country is. I wish to convince her that Payot imagined he was fighting the cannibals when he was fighting Marcel. But now, owing to the treatment I have subjected him to, the delusions have entirely vanished, and he will wake up quite normal. So you must persuade her that she need not have the least fear that such a painful scene will ever happen again. Now you understand why I want you and Céleste to tell her this story, so that she may welcome Monsieur Payot with open arms next time. Besides, a man like Monsieur Payot will be a most useful addition to the circle as soon as I have convinced him of the reality of my powers, and made him believe in me implicitly. For, as I have already told you, until harmony and faith in my ability have been established among all the members of the circle, I shall not be able to obtain the necessary conditions for producing psychic phenomena. Do not imagine that what I say is a mere trifle. Even the Master did not many mighty works in Galilee because of their unbelief."

Delapine, Riche and Villebois left the unfinished dinner and joined Marcel in the library, where coffee had been ordered by Villebois.

"Now that the ladies have all been attended to," said Villebois, "we may as well make ourselves comfortable, but we have to thank you, professor, for causing the fracas to end so peacefully. Mon Dieu, but it was a narrow escape; if you had not stopped it as you did I tremble to think what would have happened to Marcel."

"I thank you for the compliment, doctor, but you will all be pleased to hear that I have so arranged things that the affair is ended so far as the ladies and our absent friends are concerned."

"How did you manage it, professor?" asked Marcel.

"That is my affair," said Delapine, "but you may rest assured that I have told you the truth."

"And my wife? Do you mean to say that you have pacified her?" asked Villebois.

"Perfectly," answered Delapine, "she has quite forgiven Payot, and will welcome him again most cordially."

"What?" cried Villebois, "Is it really a fact that you have succeeded in twisting her round your little finger as well?"

"Why not? It was the easiest thing in the world."

"Well, ma foi, I never could all the years I have been married. You are a marvel, professor, that's all I can say."