FullReads

‘Here is a franc,’ he said, ‘I cannot wait for change,’ and putting a coin into Ninette’s hand he turned into the theatre.

Ninette ran towards me with her eyes gleaming; she held up the piece of money exultantly.

‘Tiens, Anton!’ she cried, and I saw that it was not a franc, as we had though at first, but a gold Napoleon.

I believe the good little boy and girl in the story-books would have immediately sought out the unfortunate gentleman and bid him rectify his mistake, generally receiving, so the legend runs, a far larger bonus as a reward of their integrity. I have never been a particularly good little boy, however, and I don’t think it ever struck either Ninette or myself–perhaps we were not sufficiently speculative–that any other course was open to us than to profit by the mistake. Ninette began to consider how we were to spend it.

‘Think of it, Anton, a whole gold louis. A louis,’ said Ninette, counting laboriously, ‘is twenty francs, a franc is twenty sous, Anton; how many sous are there in a louis? More than an hundred?’

But this piece of arithmetic was beyond me; I shook my head dubiously.

‘What shall we buy first, Anton?’ said Ninette, with sparkling eyes. ‘You shall have new things, Anton, a pair of new shoes and an hat; and I–‘

But I had other things than clothes in my mind’s eye; I interrupted her.

‘Ninette, dear little Ninette,’ I said coaxingly, ‘remember the fiddle.’

Ninette’s face fell, but she was a tender little thing, and she showed no hesitation.

‘Certainly, Anton,’ she said, but with less enthusiasm, ‘we will get it to-morrow–one of the fiddles you showed me in M. Boudinot’s shop on the Quai. Do you think the ten-franc one will do, or the light one for fifteen francs?’

‘Oh, the light one, dear Ninette,’ I said; ‘it is worth more than the extra money. Besides, we shall soon earn it back now. Why if you could earn such a lot as you have with your old organ, when you only have to turn an handle, think what a lot I shall make, fiddling. For you have to be something to play the fiddle, Ninette.’

‘Yes,’ said the little girl, wincing; ‘you are right, dear Anton. Perhaps you will get rich and go away and leave me?’

‘No, Ninette,’ I declared grandly, ‘I will always take care of you. I have no doubt I shall get rich, because I am going to be a great musician, but I shall not leave you. I will have a big house on the Champs Elysees, and then you shall come and live with me, and be my housekeeper. And in the evenings, I will play to you and make you open your eyes, Ninette. You will like me to play, you know; we are often dull in the evenings.’

‘Yes,’ said Ninette meekly, ‘we will buy your fiddle to-morrow, dear Anton. Let us go home now.’

Poor vanished Ninette! I must often have made the little heart sore with some of the careless things I said. Yet looking back at it now, I know that I never cared for any living person so much as I did for Ninette.

I have very few illusions left now; a childhood, such as mine, does not tend to preserve them, and time and success have not made me less cynical. Still I have never let my scepticism touch that childish presence. Lady Greville once said to me, in the presence of her nephew Felix Leominster, a musician too, like myself, that we three were curiously suited, for that we were, without exception, the three most cynical persons in the universe, Perhaps in a way she was right. Yet for all her cynicism Lady Greville I know has a bundle of old and faded letters, tied up in black ribbon in some hidden drawer, that perhaps she never reads now, but that she cannot forget or destroy. They are in a bold handwriting, that is, not, I think, that of the miserable, old debauchee, her husband, from whom she has been separated since the first year of her marriage, and their envelopes bear Indian postmarks.