THE EARLY LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF SYLVIA SCARLETT

PRELUDE




=_Prelude_=


At six o'clock on the morning of Ash Wednesday in the year 1847, the
Honorable Charles Cunningham sat sipping his coffee in the restaurant of
the Vendanges de Bourgogne. He was somewhat fatigued by the exertions
that as "lion" of the moment he had felt bound to make, exertions that
had included a display of English eccentricity and had culminated in a
cotillion at a noble house in the Faubourg St.-Germain, the daughter of
which had been assigned to him by Parisian gossip as his future wife.
Marriage, however, did not present itself to his contemplation as an
urgent duty; and he sipped his coffee, reassured by the example of his
brother Saxby, who, with the responsibility of a family succession,
remained a bachelor. In any case, the notion of marrying a French girl
was preposterous; he was not to be flattered into an unsuitable alliance
by compliments upon his French. Certainly he spoke French uncommonly
well, devilishly well for an Englishman, he told himself; and he stroked
his whiskers in complacent meditation.

Charles Cunningham had arrived at the Vendanges de Bourgogne to watch
that rowdy climax of Carnival, the _descente de la Courtille_. And now
through the raw air they were coming down from Belleville, all sorts of
revelers in masks and motley and rags. The noise of tin trumpets and toy
drums, of catcalls and cocoricots, of laughter and cheers and whistling,
came nearer. Presently the road outside was thronged for the aristocrats
of the Faubourg St.-Germain to alight from their carriages and mix with
the mob. This was the traditional climax of Carnival for Parisian
society: every year they drove here on Ash Wednesday morning to get
themselves banged on the head by bladders, to be spurted with cheap
scent and pelted with sugar-plums, and to retaliate by flinging down
hot louis for the painful enrichment of the masses. The noise was for a
time deafening; but gradually the cold light of morning and the
melancholy Lenten bells cast a gloom upon the crowd, which passed on
toward the boulevards, diminishing in sound and size at every street
corner.

The tall, fair Englishman let himself be carried along by the exodus,
thinking idly what excitable folk foreigners were, but conscious,
nevertheless, of a warmth of intimacy that was not at all disagreeable,
the kind of intimacy that is bestowed on a man by taking a pack of
friendly dogs for a country walk. Suddenly he was aware of a small hand
upon his sleeve, a small hand that lay there like a white butterfly;
and, looking down, he saw a poke-bonnet garlanded with yellow rosebuds.
The poke-bonnet was all he could see, for the wearer kept her gaze
steadily on the road, while with little feet she mimicked his long
strides. The ineffable lightness of the arm laid on his own, the joyous
mockery of her footsteps, the sense of an exquisite smile beneath the
poke-bonnet, and the airy tremor of invitation that fluttered from the
golden shawl of Siamese crêpe about her shoulders tempted him to
withdraw from the crowd at the first opportunity. Soon they were in a
by-street, whence the clamor of Carnival slowly died away, leaving no
sound upon the morning air but their footfalls and the faint whisper of
her petticoats where she tripped along beside him.

Presently the poke-bonnet was raised; Charles Cunningham beheld his
companion's face, a perfect oval, set with eyes of deepest brown,
demurely passionate, eyes that in this empty street were all for him. He
had never considered himself a romantic young man; when this encounter
had faded to a mere flush upon the dreamy sky of the past, he was always
a little scornful of his first remark, and apt to wonder how the deuce
he ever came to make it.

"By Jove! _vous savez, vous êtes tout à fait comme un oiseau!_"

"_Eh, alors?_" she murmured, in a tone that was neither defiance nor
archness nor indifference nor invitation, but something that was
compounded of all four and expressed exactly herself. "_Eh, alors?_"

"_Votre nid est loin d'ici?"_ he asked.

Nor did he blush for the guise of his speech at the time: afterward it
struck him as most indecorously poetic.

"_Viens donc,"_ she whispered.

"_Comment appelez-vous?"_

"_Moi, je suis Adèle._"

"_Adèle quoi?_" he pressed.