The Adventures of a Modest Man

IN A BELGIAN GARDEN

That evening I found Williams curled up in his corner at the Café Jaune.

"You are sun-burned," he said, inspecting me.

"A little. I've been in Florida."

"What?"

"With the ghosts of years ago. But it seemed very realistic to me as I sat in the sun and recalled it. Possibly it was even real enough to sun-burn me a little."

He eyed me with considerable chagrin. Perhaps he thought that he had the monopoly of poetic fancies. It was most agreeable to me to touch him up. They're a jealous bunch, those whittlers of fact into fiction.

However, he brightened as he drew a letter from his pocket:

"You remember Kingsbury, of course?" he asked.

"Perfectly."

"And his friend Smith?"

"Certainly."

"I've a letter here from Kingsbury. He expects to be in Paris this autumn."

"I'd like to see him," said I, "but I'm going home before Autumn."

"Haven't you seen him in all these years?"

"Not once."

"And you never heard – "

"Oh, go on, Williams, and tell your story. I'm perfectly willing to listen. Cut out all that coy business and tear off a few page-proofs. Besides," I added, maliciously, "I know how it's done, now."

"How do you know?"

"Because I did a little in that line myself this afternoon. Let me tell you something; there isn't a profession in all the world which can be so easily and quickly acquired as yours. Therefore pin no more orders and ribbons and stars and medals on yourself. The only difference between you and your public is that they have no time to practice your profession in addition to their own."

Which took him down a peg or two, until we both took down another peg or two. But when I called the waiter and ordered a third, he became more cheerful.

"You're a jollier," he said, "aren't you?"

"I did a little this afternoon. Go on about Kingsbury and Smithy. After all, Williams, you really do it much better than I."

Which mollified him amazingly, and he began with a brisk confidence in his powers of narration:

When Kingsbury had finished his course at the University of Paris, there appeared to be little or nothing further in the way of human knowledge for him to acquire. However, on the chance of disinterring a fragment or two of amorphous information which he might find use for in his projected book, The Economy of Marriage, he allowed himself another year of travel, taking the precaution to invite Smith – the flippancy of Smith being calculated to neutralise any over-intellectual activity in himself.

He needed a rest; he had had the world on his hands too long – ever since his twentieth year. Smith was the man to give him mental repose. There was no use attempting to discuss social economy with Smith, or of interesting that trivial and inert mind in race suicide. Smith was flippant. Often and often Kingsbury thought: "How can he have passed through The University of Paris and remained flippant?" But neither Sorbonne nor Pantheon produced marked effect upon Smith, and although it is true that Paris horridly appealed to him, in the remainder of Europe he found nothing better to do than to unpack his trout-rod and make for the nearest puddle wherever they found themselves, whether in the Alps, the Tyrol, the Vosges, or the forests of Belgium, where they at present occupied a stucco-covered villa with servants, stables, hot-houses, and a likely trout stream for Smith to dabble in, at a sum per month so ridiculously reasonable that I shall not mention it for fear of depopulating my native land.

Besides, they had the youthful and widowed Countess of Semois for their neighbour.

And so it came about that, in this leafy, sunny land of cream and honey, one very lovely morning, young Kingsbury, booted and spurred and still flushed from his early gallop through the soft wood-roads of the forest, found Smith at breakfast under the grape-arbour, immersed in a popular novel and a bowl of strawberries.

"Hello," said Smith, politely, pushing the fruit across the table. "The berries are fine; I took a corking trout an hour ago; we'll have it directly."

"I saw the Countess," said Kingsbury, carelessly unbuttoning his gloves as he stood there.

"Oh, you did? Well, which one is the Countess, the girl with the dark hair, or that stunning red-haired beauty?"

"How could I tell? I couldn't ride up and ask, could I? They were driving, as usual. The King was out, too; I wish he'd wear a decent hat."

"With the moral welfare of two hemispheres on your hands, you ought not to feel responsible for the King's derby," observed Smith.

Any exaggeration of fact always perplexed Kingsbury. He flattened out his gloves, stuck his riding-crop into his left boot, and looked at Smith through his monocle.

"For all the talk about the King," he said, "the peasantry salute him as reverently as though he were their father."

To which Smith, in his flippancy, replied:

"The children for their monarch pray,
Each buxom lass and laddie;
A thousand reasons good have they
To call the King their daddy."

Kingsbury retired to make his toilet; returned presently smelling less of the stables, seated himself, drowned a dozen luscious strawberries in cream, tasted one, and cast a patronising eye upon the trout, which had been prepared à la Meunière.

"Corker, isn't he?" observed Smith, contemplating the fish with pardonable pride. "He's poached, I regret to inform you."

"Poached?"

"Oh, not like an egg; I mean that I took him in private waters. It was a disgusting case of poaching."

"What on earth did you do that for?"

"Now, I'll explain that in a minute. You know where our stream flows under the arch in the wall which separates our grounds from the park next door? Well, I was casting away on our side, never thinking of mischief, when, flip! flop! spatter! splash! and, if you please, right under the water-arch in the wall this scandalous trout jumped. Of course, I put it to him good and plenty, but the criminal creature, on purpose to tempt me, backed off down stream and clean through the arch into our neighbour's water.

"'Is it poaching if I go over after him?' thought I. And, Kingsbury, do you know I had no time to debate that moral question, because, before I could reply to myself, I found myself hoisting a ladder to the top of the wall and lowering it on the other side – there are no steps on the other side. And what do you think? Before I could rouse myself with the cry of 'Trespasser! Help!' I found myself climbing down into the park and casting a fly with sinful accuracy.

"'Is it right?' I asked myself in an agony of doubt. But, alas, Kingsbury, before I had a ghost of a chance to answer myself in the negative I had hooked that trout fast; and there was the deuce to pay, for I'd forgotten my landing-net!"

He shook his head, helped Kingsbury to a portion of the trout, and refilled his own cup. "Isn't it awful," he said.

"It's on a par with most of your performances," observed the other, coldly. "I suppose you continued your foolish conduct with that girl, too."

"What girl?"

"And I suppose you kissed her again! Did you?"