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His chorus supported him Grandstone, Somerard, my engineer and the others in dignified black clothes, official boutonnières and ceremonial cravats: they greeted Frau Kranich with awe, and bowed before the polished head of the lawyer with the parallelism of ninepins. My little group of fellow-travelers was almost complete. The young duelist, of course, was not expected or wanted.
But I felt that weakness and unmanageableness of knee which comes with strong mental anguish, and I sank back impotent upon the baron, whose lingering legs repudiated the pressure, so that we both accumulated miserably upon Grandstone. My eyes closed, and I did not hear the Dark Ladye's salutations to Frau Kranich.
Doubtless a Grandstone will have, by any other name, a bouquet as sweet." The idea took. An almanac of saints' days, which is often printed in combination with the menu of a restaurant, was lying on the table.
I promised to meet Hohenfels at Marly: children, bankruptcy stares me in the face." Grandstone had the grace to be a little embarrassed: "You wished to dine with me at the Feast of Saint Athanasius, but you mistook the day. Your engineer is the true culprit, for he voluntarily deceived you. The fact is, my dear Flemming, we have concocted a little conspiracy.
They had made him swallow, in a glass, some fearful mixture or other, and he had imperturbably declared that it was in his opinion the wine of Moët: after this evidence of taste the proof of sight was to follow, and the semicircle of purple faces was quite blackening with bottled laughter, when Grandstone touched me on the shoulder. My hour for departure was come, and I had not a minute to spare.
"Besides, Grandstone is living now, as you remind me, at Épernay that is to say, at seventy or eighty miles' distance." "Say three hours," he retorted: "on a railway line we don't count by miles. But are you really not here at Noisy to satisfy your promise and report yourself for the feast of Saint Athanasius? If you are not bound for Épernay, where are you bound?" "I am off for Marly."
Has my reader forgotten the dim, tear-swollen story which I heard not at all improved in the telling from my generous young friend Grandstone how an impulsive Frenchman had laid to rest, in flowers and evergreens, the unnamed baby of a woman he had never seen? Jealous as I was of Fortnoye, I never could think without tenderness of this singular action.
"Must you be for ever kept in mediocrity by an address that is not the designation of an individual, but of a whole nation? Could you not have been called by something rather less oecumenical?" "You may style me by what title you please, Mr. Flemming," said Grandstone nonchalantly. "I am to enter a great New York wine-house after a little examination of the grape-country here.
I have often heard you argue against railroads a fine argument for a geographer to uphold against an engineer! Now is the instant to bury your prejudice. Do you see that soft ringlet of smoke off yonder? It is the message of the locomotive, offering to reconcile your engagements with Grandstone and Hohenfels. Come, get your ticket!"
The words were uncivil and rude, the hand was on my shoulder like a vise; but there floated into my head a recollection of one of the pleasantest evenings I have ever enjoyed. We were dining with James Grandstone, one of my young friends.
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