"i won't stop in town," said i to myself, "to be chaffed by all the fellows at the club and in the master's room at st. martin's. i'll run over on the continent until the wags (confound them) have forgotten all about it. i'm a sensitive man, and if there's anything on earth i hate it's cheap and easy joking and punning on a name or a personal peculiarity which lays itself open obviously to stupid buffoonery. of course i shall chuck up the schoolmastering now;—it's an odious trade at any time—and i may as well take a pleasant holiday while i'm about it. let me see—nice or cannes or florence would be the best thing at this time of year. escape the november fogs and january frosts. let's make it cannes, then, and try the first effect of my new name upon the corpus vile of the cannois."

so i packed up my portmanteau hurriedly, took the 7.45 to paris, and that same evening found myself comfortably ensconced in a wagon lit, making my way as fast as the lyons line would carry me en route for the blue mediterranean.

the h?tel du paradis at cannes is a very pleasant and well managed place, where i succeeded in making myself perfectly at home. i gave my full name to the concierge boldly. "thank heaven," i thought, "aikin-payne will sound to her just as good a label to one's back as howard or cholmondely. she won't see the absurdity of the combination." she was a fat vaudoise swiss by origin, and she took it without moving a muscle. but she answered me in very tolerable english—me, who thought my parisian accent unimpeachable! "vary well, sirr, your lettares shall be sent to your apartments." i saw there was the faintest twinkle of a smile about the corner of her mouth, and i felt that even she, a mere foreigner,[pg 117] a swiss concierge, perceived at once the incongruity of the two surnames. incongruity! that's the worst of it! would that they were incongruous! but it's their fatal and obvious congruity with one another that makes their juxtaposition so ridiculous. call a man payne, and i venture to say, though i was to the manner born, and it's me that says it as oughtn't to say it, you couldn't find a neater or more respectable surname in all england: call him plain aikin, and though that perhaps is less aristocratic, it's redeemed by all the associations of childhood with the earliest literature we imbibed through the innocuous pages of "evenings at home:" but join the two together, in the order of alphabetical precedence, and you get an aikin-payne, which is a thing to make a sensitive man, compelled to bear it for a lifetime, turn permanently red like a boiled lobster. my uncle must have done it on purpose, in order to inflict a deadly blow on what he would doubtless have called my confounded self-conceit!

however, i changed my tourist suit for a black cutaway, and made my way down to the salle-à-manger. the dinner was good in itself, and was enlivened for me by the presence of an extremely pretty girl of, say nineteen, who sat just opposite, and whose natural protector i soon managed to draw casually into a general conversation. i say her natural protector, because, though i took him at the time for her father, i discovered afterwards that he was really her uncle. experience has taught me that when you sit opposite a pretty girl at an hotel, you ought not to open fire by directing your observations to herself in person; you should begin diplomatically by gaining the confidence of her male relations through the wisdom or the orthodoxy of your political and social opinions. mr. shackleford—that, i found afterwards, was the uncle's name—happened to be a fiery tory, while i have the personal misfortune to be an equally rabid radical: but[pg 118] on this occasion i successfully dissembled, acquiescing with vague generality in his denunciation of my dearest private convictions; and by the end of dinner we had struck up quite an acquaintance with one another.

"ruby," said the aunt to the pretty girl, as soon as dinner was over, "shall we take a stroll out in the gardens?"

ruby! what a charming name really. i wonder, now, what is her surname? and what a beautiful graceful figure, as she rises from the table, and throws her little pale blue indian silk scarf around her pretty shoulders! clearly, ruby is a person whose acquaintance i ought to cultivate.

"uncle won't come, of course," said ruby, with a pleasant smile (what teeth!). "the evening air would be too much for him. you know," she added, looking across to me, "almost everybody at cannes is in the invalid line, and mustn't stir out after sunset. aunt and i are unfashionable enough to be quite strong, and to go in for a stroll by moonlight."

"i happen to be equally out of the cannes fashion," i said, directing my observation, with great strategic skill, rather to the aunt than to miss ruby in person; "and if you will allow me i should be very glad to accompany you."

so we turned out on the terrace of the paradis, and walked among the date-palms and prickly pears that fill the pretty tropical garden. it was a lovely moonlight evening in october; and october is still almost a summer month in the riviera. the feathery branches of the palms stood out in clear-cut outline against the pale moonlit sky; the white houses of cannes gleamed with that peculiarly soft greenish mediterranean tint in the middle distance; and the sea reflected the tremulous shimmer in the background, between the jagged sierra of the craggy esterel and the long low outline of the ile ste.[pg 119] marguerite. altogether, it was an ideal poet's evening, the very evening to stroll for the first time with a beautiful girl through the charmed alleys of a proven?al garden!

ruby estcourt—she gave me her name before long—was quite as pleasant to talk to as she was beautiful and graceful to behold. fortunately, her aunt was not one of the race of talkative old ladies, and she left the mass of the conversation entirely to ruby and myself. in the course of half an hour or so spent in pacing up and down that lovely terrace, i had picked out, bit by bit, all that i most wanted to know about ruby estcourt. she was an orphan, without brothers or sisters, and evidently without any large share of this world's goods; and she lived with her aunt and uncle, who were childless people, and who usually spent the summer in switzerland, retiring to the riviera every winter for the benefit of mr. shackleford's remaining lung. quite simple and unaffected ruby seemed, though she had passed most of her lifetime in the too-knowing atmosphere of continental hotels, among that cosmopolitan public which is so very sharp-sighted that it fancies it can see entirely through such arrant humbug as honour in men and maidenly reserve in women. still, from that world ruby estcourt had somehow managed to keep herself quite unspotted; and a simpler, prettier, more natural little fairy you wouldn't find anywhere in the english villages of half a dozen counties.

it was all so fresh and delightful to me—the palms, the mediterranean, the balmy evening air, the gleaming white town, and pretty ruby estcourt—that i walked up and down on the terrace as long as they would let me; and i was really sorry when good mrs. shackleford at last suggested that it was surely getting time for uncle's game of cribbage. as they turned to go, ruby said good evening, and then, hesitating for a moment as to my name, said quite simply and naturally, "why, you haven't yet told us who you are, have you?"[pg 120]

i coloured a little—happily invisible by moonlight—as i answered, "that was an omission on my part, certainly. when you told me you were miss estcourt, i ought to have mentioned in return that my own name was aikin-payne, theodore aikin-payne, if you please: may i give you a card?"

"aching pain!" ruby said, with a smile. "did i hear you right? aching pain, is it? oh, what a very funny name!"

i drew myself up as stiffly as i was able. "not aching pain," i said, with a doleful misgiving in my heart—it was clear everybody would put that odd misinterpretation upon it for the rest of my days. "not aching pain, but aikin-payne, miss estcourt. a-i-k-i-n, aikin, the aikins of staffordshire; p-a-y-n-e, payne, the paynes of surrey. my original surname was payne, a surname that i venture to say i'm a little proud of; but my uncle, mr. aikin, from whom i inherit property," i thought that was rather a good way of putting it, "wished me to adopt his family name in addition to my own—in fact, made it a condition, sine qua non, of my receiving the property."

"payne—aikin," ruby said, turning the names over to herself slowly. "ah, yes, i see. excuse my misapprehension, mr.—mr. aikin-payne. it was very foolish of me; but really, you know, it does sound so very ludicrous, doesn't it now?"

i bit my lip, and tried to smile back again. absurd that a man should be made miserable about such a trifle; and yet i will freely confess that at that moment, in spite of my uncle's twelve hundred a year, i felt utterly wretched. i bowed to pretty little ruby as well as i was able, and took a couple more turns by myself hurriedly around the terrace.

was it only fancy, or did i really detect, as ruby estcourt said the two names over to herself just now, that she seemed to find the combination a familiar one?[pg 121] i really didn't feel sure about it; but it certainly did sound as if she had once known something about the paynes or the aikins. ah, well! there are lots of paynes and aikins in the world, no doubt; but alas! there is only one of them doomed to go through life with the absurd label of an aikin-payne fastened upon his unwilling shoulders.