Lawless (7 page)

The man had twice been at the café where Matt and his friends congregated. The first time he’d evidently come in by accident. He’d gotten interested in the barmaid, Lisa, and had come back to see her again. On both occasions he’d been wearing a uniform of dark blue with polished jackboots, a sabre and sabretache and a pickelhaube with an ornate Prussian eagle plate on the front and a wicked-looking vertical spike on top.

Lisa hadn’t been impressed or even slightly interested in the man’s heavy humor, his heavy palm slapping her bottom or his heavy-handed announcements that he was attached to the Prussian diplomatic mission in Paris and, therefore, important. Both times, the Prussian had left the café in very bad humor.

Damn funny crowd, the Prussians, Matt thought as the fellow removed a monocle from his eye. They’d whipped the Austrians in ’66 by utilizing the railroads effectively. And here the officer was, boldly copying French railroad schedules in one of Paris’ major depots.

“Well, hello, my friend!” the Prussian said with a lingering look at Matt’s mouth. Uneasily, Matt wondered whether the officer was one of those types who found pleasure with persons of either sex.

The Prussian was just a few years older. He had healthy pink cheeks, bright pale eyes and a dazzling grin. “It was the Café Guerbois, wasn’t it? You’re one of that Batignolles crowd—”

“Good memory, Herr Lepp.” Matt nodded, trying to be cordial despite his dislike of the man’s mixture of arrogance and smarmy charm. The officer stood with one knee turned out and slightly bent.

“Colonel Lepp.” he corrected. “To be quite precise about it, von Lepp. May I ask what you want? I’m rather busy.”

Matt burst out laughing. “Doing what? Fixing up an invasion timetable?”

It was meant as a joke, but Lepp lacked a sense of humor. He stiffened, turned red in the face. The gnomish older man hovering near him scowled.

Abruptly, Lepp realized he’d reacted too strongly. He tried to smile. “Oh, no. I’m merely putting together some information for a commercial study.”

Matt didn’t believe it for a minute. Prussian officers didn’t study rail schedules in order to facilitate freight shipments.

“Believe me,” Lepp went on, “if there is ever any—difficulty between France and the new, unified Germany, it shall not be Prussia who is the aggressor. But it shall not be Prussia who is the loser, either.”

“Look—” Matt raised a placating hand. He forgot he was carrying violets. Lepp snickered. Matt fought to hold his temper. “All I wanted was the correct time. I’ll ask someone el—”

Lepp interrupted with a snap of his fingers. The gnome took out a cheap plated watch and showed Matt the dial: twenty-five until six. He was in time.

He murmured a thank-you and started away. Lepp caught his arm, closing his fingers on Matt’s sleeve in a way Matt found repellant. Lepp’s anise-scented breath washed over him.

“Wait one moment, please. Tell that charming if slightly grubby young woman at the café that I still think of her. Twice refused, I do not consider myself refused permanently.”

A chuckle, a squeeze, and then he let go.

“You must remember Prussia and the Prussian people are accustomed to getting what they want these days. Remind her of that, if you please!” Though he was still smiling, the words had a marked undertone of command.

Matt resented the officer’s tone and manner. “Tell her yourself, Herr Lepp. I don’t pimp for anyone, Prussians included. Good evening.”

Lepp snarled something in his native tongue as Matt walked away.
Damn fool to indulge your temper that way!
he said to himself. But he’d disliked the Prussian from the moment the man had walked into the café, acting as if he owned it.

He turned and saw Lepp studying him, his monocle back in his eye. The officer’s expression was not at all friendly.

The Prussian pivoted sharply again and returned to charting the train schedules. Matt hoped he’d seen the last of the fellow, but in view of Lepp’s remarks about Lisa, he doubted it.

The Calais train came chugging in at five forty-five on the dot. By then the prospect of seeing Dolly had Matt in a state of physical and emotional excitement. But it was a state tinged with a good deal of tension.

D
OLLY WASN’T AMONG
the first passengers who came streaming up the platform. Matt went through an agonizing five minutes as he stared into Gallic eyes and Gallic faces. Had she missed the steamer or thought about their life together and decided she wasn’t coming back?

His spirit began to feel as wilted as the violets. Then, suddenly, he glimpsed a round English face and pink cheeks, and large, lovely eyes of a blue that looked lavender in a certain light. He recognized the neat but out-of-date clothing she was wearing: the plush pelisse, the little Windsor cap of straw with its ostrich-tip ornament perched on her yellow curls. She spied him at almost the same moment, dropped her portmanteau, rose on tiptoe and waved.

He started running against the tide of passengers. He had to travel three car lengths to reach her. What he felt as he rushed along—a powerful, soaring emotion that quite eradicated his apprehension—told him how much he truly loved her.

“Oh Matt, Matt love!” she exclaimed, reaching up for him. Her little gray gloves clasped at the back of his neck. Her cheek, smooth as heavy cream, pressed his darker, sunburned one. Dolly Stubbs was a head shorter than he. She tended to plumpness, but he liked her plump.

He could feel the swell of her corseted breasts against his shirt. Only a couple of passengers paid any attention as they kissed. He wouldn’t have cared if they had an audience of ten thousand. All he wanted to do was savor the sweetness of her parted lips.

“Oh!” she said again, out of breath when they broke the embrace. “Oh, I’ve missed you so terribly!”

“So have I. My God, Doll, three weeks is longer than I ever imagined.”

She understood, laughed and whispered, “Far too long for me. As you’ll discover when I get you alone.”

He raised his hand, offering the violets. “Not as pretty as your eyes, but the best I could do on short notice.” That was said in French. It seemed a more appropriate language in which to frame such a high-flown if heartfelt sentiment.

She inhaled the scent of the flowers, slipped her arm through his and squeezed against him. “Thank you, my darling.”

He picked up her luggage. They walked to the clamorous central area of the station. Lepp was nowhere to be seen now, Matt noted with some relief.

“Have you taken care of yourself?” she asked as they started outside.

With a vaguely surprised expression and perfect sincerity, he said, “I don’t know. I suppose.”

She frowned. “Still having trouble with your work?”

“More than ever.”

“Well, we shall have to talk about that. And some other things, too. The holiday was good for me, Matt. It helped me get some of my thoughts in order.” It was all said in a very light way. Yet he was disturbed, somehow.

As they left the station, the shower stopped. In the west over a long row of chimney pots, a blue sky worthy of a Constable began to appear between racing clouds.

They walked arm in arm in the newly washed spring evening. An old man selling mussels broke his chant, leaned on the handle of his cart and smiled at them.

“We’ll catch an omnibus up to the butte—” he began.

“Nonsense, we’ll walk. We’re both in good health, and we don’t need to squander our money—even if you will be a California Midas one day.”

He chuckled. He seldom thought about the huge sum he would inherit when his father died. He had no appreciation of the value of money, and placed little importance on having more than a few sous in his pocket.

“We’ve been having unsettled weather, Dolly. Was the channel rough?”

“A bloody tempest!” she declared with uncharacteristic vulgarity. “I couldn’t so much as nibble a biscuit till we docked.”

“How did you find Liverpool?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Grimy as ever.”

“How’s your pa?”

“Still at the Birkenhead.” Her father was a steamfitter at the famous Liverpool shipyard of the Laird brothers. McGill’s last steam-driven blockade runner had been built there, as well as the great Confederate raider
Alabama.

“Is the rest of your family well?”

“Yes, fine—though of course they think we’ll be celebrating our wedding anniversary again this year.” She turned to look into his eyes. “Speaking of that, Peg’s found a fellow.”

“What? Is it serious?”

“The wedding’s planned for October. I told them we’d be there if we could.”

He felt a flare of resentment. He hated even having to think about taking time from his work to attend such a meaningless social event. He tried to tell himself it was important to her, but he wasn’t wholly successful in over-coming his irritation.

“Certainly, we’ll try.” His voice sounded strained. “Your father had been worrying about your sister’s prospects, hadn’t he?”

“Yes, Peg’s thirty-three. Well, she’s taken care of now. That leaves only me.”

He bent to kiss her cheek. “A poor, benighted twenty-four.”

“Practically an old granny!” Her smile seemed forced.

“As long as your family believes we’re married, they won’t fret about—”

“Matthew Kent,” she interrupted, stopping by a news kiosk. “Let us not debate
that
again. You know we don’t agree. I came with you to Paris of my own free will, but that does not change certain facts about our situation. My parents believing we’re married and the two of us actually
being
married is not the same thing and never will be. Really”—she gave a little shake of her head—“sometimes you’re terribly stubborn. We really must sit down for a serious discussion about this whole situation—and soon.”

Right then he would cheerfully have bashed her sister Peg square in the face. The holiday hadn’t helped their relationship at all. It had only exacerbated the unhappiness developing in her. His worst fears were coming true—though he was puzzled about one thing. It didn’t seem like her to be upset by her older sister finally catching a man and scheduling a wedding. Was there anything else behind her quietly determined statement of a moment ago?

They lived in two rooms in a house on the Rue Saint-Vincent, a pleasant, winding street. The house belonged to Madame Rochambeau, a widow whose husband had been the well-paid manager of one of the gypsum quarries on the Butte de Montmartre. She spoke of the departed gentleman fondly. A lusty spouse, she said, though always with gypsum dust in his pores—the “plaster of Paris” known the world over.

Madame Rochambeau had been left in reasonably comfortable circumstances. She owned the house without debt. But it was still necessary for her to supplement her income by taking in boarders. She fulfilled the duties of concierge herself, thus realizing an economy. She liked Matt and Dolly, but was less enthusiastic about their friends the Strelniks who occupied the other two rented rooms with their infant son Anton.

“Ah, Madame Kent!”

The landlady jumped up from the flowerbed she’d been cultivating and rushed to embrace Dolly. She was a huge breadloaf of a woman with a cheery, mole-dotted face. Matt closed the door to the street and leaned against the wall.

Madame Rochambeau was a militant Catholic, and didn’t like a great many modern things, including the land speculators who were invading her little suburb, and the Bohemians who practiced “free love.” He and Dolly had felt it prudent to fib about their marital status to her as well. To reinforce the fib, Dolly wore a cheaply plated gold ring on her left hand. Matt had bought the ring from a junk dealer.

“I am delighted to see you home.” Madame Rochambeau pinched Dolly’s cheek. “Your mama and papa fed you well. There is a little extra under the chin, eh?”

Old meddler,
Matt thought, smiling.
Always saying what she thinks!

“Oh, maybe just a little, just a little—” Dolly acted quite flustered about having a weight gain pointed out. Matt hadn’t even noticed.

“There is a piece of mail for your husband,” Madame Rochambeau said with an admiring glance at Matt’s wide shoulders. “The late post brought it. The quarters have been swept and all the dirty laundry put in a pile.”

Ruefully, Dolly looked at him. He was supposed to have maintained the rooms in reasonable order while she was gone but of course had completely forgotten, being occupied with the problems of his work.

“Well, I’m home,” she said softly with a wry little smile. “And nothing’s changed.” She started inside.

Matt swung the portmanteau onto his shoulder and squeezed Madame’s arm affectionately as he passed beneath the branches of the old plane tree. The landlady turned scarlet and covered a giggle with her hand. Above the garden, the vanes of one of Montmartre’s windmills turned lazily in the fading light.

Their rooms were in the south wing, which they entered from a door directly off the garden. Pattering footsteps ahead of Dolly told Matt the Strelniks’ child was romping in the corridor.

“Ah, Anton, you imp!” she exclaimed, bending to pick up the year-old toddler. She laughed and patted the gurgling child. His face curved into an immense, snaggle-toothed smile. She kissed him and rumpled his thick russet hair.

From the doorway across from theirs drifted the odor of boiling cabbage. A woman in her late twenties appeared. She was slender, drably dressed. Her delicately pretty face resembled that of an Italian Madonna, though in fact she was Russian.

“Dolly! Matt said you would be home today!” she cried in halting English.

“And you’ve been practicing, Leah. That was very good.”

The young woman blushed. Because Leah’s husband talked about emigrating to America someday, Dolly had volunteered to teach her the language.

Leah dabbed her sweaty cheek with an apron. “But while I was practicing, it seems my son was scampering about naked again.”

Dolly handed the little boy to his mother with a particularly fond and lingering look, Matt thought.

Tartly, the English girl said, “Whatever you’re doing, you should make Sime tend the baby once in a while.”