Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/88

76 CHAPTER VI

CONJUGAL TRIBULATIONS

EANTIME, as my wife appeared to have got the use of her tongue only to say soft and pleasant things to me, I readily enough consoled myself for my disappointment. In fact, for a whole month I was perfectly happy. Everybody congratulated me; only the Parisian, when I boasted of my good luck, would answer by striking up:

I must do him the justice to say he had distrusted the Buchold from the first.

"After a month of halcyon days, I began to see that foul weather was brewing; there were still occasional intervals of calm, but it was the calm that comes before the storm. As an old sailor should, I foresaw what was ahead and prepared to face it.

"It began about a voyage I had made to Amsterdam; she would have it I had paid a visit to an old sweetheart of mine who lived down by the harbour, and that I had spent the night with her.

"I must tell you that in less than a week my wife had learnt to say whatever she wanted, and that now, at the end of a month, she could have given lessons to any language master at Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague. What angered me most in what she said about my visit to Amsterdam was the fact that it was true; you might have thought the witchwafe had followed me there, gone into the house with me, and seen everything that happened. I denied the facts till all was blue, but she would not be argued out of it, and threatened that the very next time such a thing occurred she would make me remember it. I took her threats for what women's threats are worth as a rule, and as nothing in the world is more unbearable than a cross face, I cajoled and pacified the Buchold to such good purpose that she thought no more about it, or at any rate, appeared to think no more about it.

"A fortnight slipped by in comparative peace. At the end of that time I took some travellers over to Edam. They were to return the same evening to

Monnikendam; but they were artists, and had found capital subjects to draw; so they told me they would keep me till the following day. Of course I might have gone back, telling them that as they did not keep to their agreement, I was not going to keep to mine, but as you will understand, a man does not treat good customers like that. Moreover, I had an old sweetheart at Edam, and I had not seen her since my marriage with the Buchold; she had given me a little nod from behind her window curtain as I passed down the street, and I had replied by a wink of the eye. This meant, being interpreted: ' That's all settled; if I have a moment to spare, I shall give you a look in.' Now I had more than a moment; I had a whole night.

"This time I felt quite secure. My fair friend had to be careful; so whenever I went to see her before my marriage, it was always at night, by climbing a garden wall, opening a little door in a fence and scrambling into her room by the window. Nobody had ever known about these nocturnal expeditions, and nobody would know now. At eleven o'clock the night was as black as ink; I made my way to the wall and scaled it, opened the door I have mentioned, and scrambled in by the window—all successfully."

"By gad!" said Biard, "you have a very graphic way of telling a story, Père Olifus; here's to the health of your pretty sweetheart."

"Oh! sir, it would be more to the point to drink to mine," said Père Olifus in melancholy tones, draining a third glass of schnapps.

"Pooh! why, what could come to you in her room under these pleasant circumstances? "

"It was not in the room, sir, I came to grief, but as I left it."

"Go on, Père Olifus, we are all attention; you are quite a Laurence Sterne at a story; go on."

"Well, as I came out,—it was before daylight, you understand—she had to be careful as I have told you, and for my own part, after what had happened at home on my return from Amsterdam, I was not particularly anxious to be seen,—well, as I came out, after passing the little door in the fence, I encountered an obstacle in the