THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
[Illustration: Mignon]
THE ARM-CHAIR
AT THE INN
BY
F. HOPKINSON SMITH
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
A. I. KELLER, HERBERT WARD
AND THE AUTHOR
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published August, 1912
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
[Illustration]
If I have dared to veil under a thin disguise some of the men whose talk
and adventures fill these pages it is because of my profound belief that
truth is infinitely more strange and infinitely more interesting than
fiction. The characters around the table are all my personal friends;
the incidents, each and every one, absolutely true, and the setting of
the Marmouset, as well as the Inn itself, has been known to many
hundreds of my readers, who have enjoyed for years the rare hospitality
of its quaint and accomplished landlord.
F. H. S.
November, 1911
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
[Illustration]
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE MARMOUSET 3
II. THE WOOD FIRE AND ITS FRIENDS 18
III. WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS 34
IV. THE ARRIVAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY 60
V. IN WHICH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CANNIBAL AND A
FREEBOOTER IS CLEARLY SET FORTH 95
VI. PROVING THAT THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH 120
VII. IN WHICH OUR LANDLORD BECOMES BOTH ENTERTAINING AND
INSTRUCTIVE 144
VIII. CONTAINING SEVERAL EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES SHOWING
THE WIDE CONTRASTS IN LIFE 163
IX. IN WHICH MADAME LA MARQUISE BINDS UP BROKEN HEADS AND
BLEEDING HEARTS 182
X. IN WHICH WE ENTERTAIN A JAIL-BIRD 211
XI. IN WHICH THE HABITS OF CERTAIN GHOSTS, GOBLINS, BANDITS,
AND OTHER OBJECTIONABLE PERSONS ARE DULY SET FORTH 240
XII. WHY MIGNON WENT TO MARKET 267
XIII. WITH A DISSERTATION ON ROUND PEGS AND SQUARE HOLES 280
XIV. A WOMAN'S WAY 304
XV. APPLE-BLOSSOMS AND WHITE MUSLIN 335
ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
Mignon _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Howls of derision welcomed him 30
Flooding the garden, the flowers, and the roofs 60
As her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear of the
wreck 132
Herbert caught up his sketch-book and ... transferred her dear
old head ... to paper 184
Lemois crossed the room and began searching through the old
fifteenth-century triptych 240
"Just think, monsieur, what _does_ go on below Coco in the
season" 308
First, of course, came the mayor--his worthy spouse on his left 350
THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
I
THE MARMOUSET
"How many did you say?" inquired Lemois, our landlord.
"Five for dinner, and perhaps one more. I will know when the train gets
in. Have the fires started in the bedrooms and please tell Mignon and
old Leà to put on their white caps."
We were in the Marmouset at the moment--the most enchanting of all the
rooms in this most enchanting of all Normandy inns. Lemois was busying
himself about the table, selecting his best linen and china--an old
Venetian altar cloth and some Nancy ware--replacing the candles in the
hanging chandelier, and sorting the silver and glass. Every one of my
expected guests was personally known to him; some of them for years. All
had shared his hospitality, and each and every one appreciated its rare
value. Nothing was too good for them, and nothing should be left undone
which would add to their comfort.
I had just helped him light the first blaze in the big baronial
fireplace, an occupation I revel in, for to me the kindling of a fire is
the gathering of half a dozen friends together, each log nudging his
neighbor, the cheer of good comradeship warming them all. And a roaring
fire it was when I had piled high the logs, swept the hearth, and made
it ready for the choice spirits who were to share it with me. For years
we have had our outings--or rather our "in-tings" before it--red-letter
days for us in which the swish of a petticoat is never heard, and we are
free to enjoy a "man's time" together; red-letter days, too, in the
calendar of the Inn, when even Lemois, tired out with the whirl of the
season, takes on a new lease of life.
His annual rejuvenation began at dawn to-day, when he disappeared in the
direction of the market and returned an hour later with his procession
of baskets filled with fish and lobsters fresh out of the sea a mile
away (caught at daylight), some capons, a string of pigeons, and an
armful of vegetables snatched in the nick of time from the early grave
of an impending frost.
As for the more important items, the Chablis Moutonne and Roumanée
Conti--rare Burgundies--they were still asleep in their cobwebs on a
low Spanish bench that had once served as a temporary resting-place
outside a cardinal's door.
Until to-night Lemois and I have dined in the kitchen. You would too
could you see it. Not by any manner of means the sort of an interior the
name suggests, but one all shining brass, rare pottery, copper braziers,
and resplendent pewter, reflecting the dancing blaze of a huge open
hearth with a spit turned by the weight of a cannon ball fired by the
British, and on which--the spit, not the ball--are roasted the joints,
chickens, and game for which the Inn is famous, Pierre, the sole
remaining chef--there are three in the season--ineffectually cudgelling
his French pate under his short-cropped, shoe-brush hair for some dish
better than the last.
Because, however, of the immediate gathering of the clan, I have
abandoned the kitchen and have shifted my quarters to the Marmouset.
Over it up a steep, twisted staircase with a dangling rope for banisters
is my bedroom, the Chambre de Cure, next to the Chambre de
Officier--where the gluttonous king tossed on his royal bed (a true
story, I am told, with all the details set forth in the State Archives
of France). Mine has a high-poster with a half lambrequin, or bed
curtain, that being all Lemois could find, and he being too honest an
antiquary to piece it out with modern calico or chintz. My guests, of
course, will take their pick of the adjoining rooms--Madame Sévigné's,
Grèvin's, the Chambre du Roi, and the others--and may thank their stars
that it is not a month back. Then, even if they had written ten days
ahead, they would have been received with a shrug--one of Lemois' most
engaging shrugs tinged with grief--at his inability to provide better
accommodation for their comfort, under which one could have seen a
slight trace of suppressed glee at the prosperity of the season. They
would then doubtless have been presented with a massive key unlocking
the door of a box of a bedroom over the cake-shop, or above the
apothecary's, or next to the man who mends furniture--all in the village
of Dives itself.
And now a word about the Inn itself--even before I tell you of the
Arm-Chair or the man who sat in it or the others of the clan who
listened and talked back.
Not the low-pitched, smothered-in-ivy Kings Arms you knew on the
Thames, with its swinging sign, horse-block, and the rest of it; nor the
queer sixteenth-century tavern in that Dutch town on the Maas, with its
high wainscoting, leaded window-panes, and porcelain stove set out with
pewter flagons--not that kind of an inn at all.
This one bolsters up one corner of a quaint little town in Normandy; is
faced by walls of sombre gray stone loop-holed with slits of windows,
topped by a row of dormers, with here and there a chimney, and covers an
area as large as a city block, the only break in its monotony being an
arched gate-way in which swing a pair of big iron-bound doors. These are
always open, giving the passer-by a glimpse of the court within.
You will be disappointed, of course, when you drive up to it on a
summer's day. You will think it some public building supported by the
State--a hospital or orphan asylum--and, tourist-like, will search for
the legend deep cut in the key-stone of the archway to reassure yourself
of its identity. Nobody can blame you--hundreds have made that same
mistake, I among them.
But don't lose heart--keep on through the gate, take a dozen steps into
the court-yard and look about, and if you have any red corpuscles left
in your veins you will get a thrill that will take your breath away.
Spread out before you lies a flower-choked yard flanked about on three
sides by a chain of moss-encrusted, red-tiled, seesaw roofs, all out of
plumb. Below, snug under the eaves, runs a long go-as-you-please
corridor, dodging into a dozen or more bedrooms. Below this again, as if
tired out with the weight, staggers a basement from which peer out
windows of stained glass protected by Spanish grills of polished iron,
their leaded panes blinking in the sunshine, while in and out, up the
door-jambs, over the lintels, along the rain-spouts, even to the top of
the ridge-poles of the wavy, red-tiled roofs, thousands of blossoms and
tangled vines are running riot.
And this is not all. Close beside you stands a fuchsia-covered,
shingle-hooded, Norman well, and a little way off a quaint kiosk roofed
with flowering plants, and near by a great lichen-covered bust of Louis
VI, to say nothing of dozens of white chairs and settees grouped against
a background of flaring reds and brilliant greens. And then, with a gasp
of joy, you follow the daring flight of a giant feather-blown clematis
in a clear leap from the ground, its topmost tendrils throttling the
dormers.
Even then your surprises are not over. You have yet to come in touch
with the real spirit of the Inn, and be introduced to our jewel of a
dining-room, the "Marmouset," opening flat to the ground and hidden
behind a carved oaken door mounted in hammered iron: a low-ceilinged,
Venetian-beamed room, with priceless furniture, tapestries, and
fittings--chairs, tables, wainscoting of carved oak surmounted by
Spanish leather; quaint andirons, mirrors, arms, cabinets, silver,
glass, and china; all of them genuine and most of them rare, for Lemois,
our landlord, has searched the Continent from end to end.
Yes!--a great inn this inn of William the Conqueror at Dives, and unique
the world over. You will be ready now to believe all its legends and
traditions, and you can quite understand why half the noted men of
Europe have, at one time or another, been housed within its hospitable
walls, including such exalted personages as Louis XI and Henry IV--the
latter being the particular potentate who was laid low with a royal
colic from a too free indulgence in the seductive oyster--not to
mention such rare spirits as Molière, Dumas, George Sand, Daubigny, as
well as most of the litterateurs, painters, and sculptors of France,
including the immortal Grèvin, many of whose drawings decorate the walls
of one of the garden kiosks, and whose apartment still bears his name.
And not only savants and men of rank and letters, but the frivolous
world of to-day--the flotsam and jetsam of Trouville, Houlgate, and
Cabourg--have gathered here in the afternoon for tea in the court-yard,
their motors crowding the garage, and at night in the Marmouset when,
under the soft glow of overhead candles falling on bare shoulders and
ravishing toilettes, laughter and merry-making extend far into the small
hours. At night, too, out in the gardens, what whisperings and
love-makings in the soft, starry air!--what seductive laughter and
little half-smothered screams! And then the long silences with only the
light of telltale cigarettes to mark their hiding-places!
All summer this goes on until one fine morning the most knowing, or the
most restless, or the poorest of these gay birds of passage (the Inn is
not a benevolent institution) spreads its wings and the flight begins.
The next day the court is empty, as are all the roosting-places up and
down the shore. Then everybody at the Inn takes a long breath--the first
they have had for weeks.
About this time, too, the crisp autumn air, fresh from the sea, begins
to blow, dulling the hunger for the open. The mad whirl of blossoms no
longer intoxicates. Even the geraniums, which have flamed their bravest
all summer, lose their snap and freshness; while the blue and pink
hydrangeas hang their heads, tired out with nodding to so many
passers-by: they, too, are paying the price; you can see it in their
faces. Only the sturdy chrysanthemums are rejoicing in the first frost,
while the more daring of the roses are unbuckling their petals ready to
fight their way through the perils of an October bloom.
It is just at this blessed moment that I move in and settle down with my
companions, for now that the rush is over, and the little Normandy maids
and the older peasant women who have served the hungry and thirsty mob
all summer, as well as two of the three French cooks, have gone back to
their homes, we have Leà, Mignon, and Pierre all to ourselves.
I put dear old Leà first because it might as well be said at once that
without her loving care life at the Inn, with all its comforts, would be
no life at all--none worth living. Louis, the running-water painter,
known as the Man in High-Water Boots--one of the best beloved of our
group--always insists that in the days gone by Leà occupied a pedestal
at the main entrance of the twelfth-century church at the end of the
street, and is out for a holiday. In proof he points out the empty
pedestal set in a niche, and has even gone so far as to pencil her name
on the rough stone.
Mignon, however, he admits, is a saint of another kind--a dainty,
modest, captivating little maid, who looks at you with her wondering
blue eyes, and who is as shy as a frightened gazelle. There is a young
fisherman named Gaston, a weather-tanned, frank, fearless fellow who
knows all about these eyes. He brings the fish to the Inn--those he
catches himself--and Mignon generally manages to help in their
unpacking. It is not a part of her duty. Her special business is to make
everybody happy; to crack the great white sugar-loaf into bits with a
pair of pincers--no machine-made dominoes for Lemois--and to turn the
coffee-roaster--an old-fashioned, sheet-iron drum swinging above a
brazier of hot coals--and to cool its contents by tossing them in a
pan--much as an Egyptian girl winnows wheat. It is a pity you never
tasted her coffee, served in the garden--old Leà on the run with it
boiling-hot to your table. You might better have stopped what you were
doing and taken steamer for Havre and the Inn. You would never have
regretted it.
Nor would you even at this late hour regret any one of the dishes made
by Pierre, the chef. And now I think of it, it is but fair to tell you
that if you repent the delay and show a fit appreciation of his efforts,
or come properly endorsed (I'll give you a letter), he may, perhaps,
invite you into his kitchen which I have just vacated, a place of such
various enticing smells from things baking, broiling, and frying; with
unforgettable, appetizing whiffs of burnt sugar, garlic, fine herbs, and
sherry, to say nothing of the flavors of bowls of mayonnaise, heaps of
chopped onions, platters of cream--even a basket of eggs still warm from
the nest--that the memory of it will linger with you for the rest of
your days.
Best of all at this season, we have quite to ourselves that prince of
major-domos, our landlord, Lemois. For as this inn is no ordinary inn,
this banquet room no ordinary room, and this kitchen no ordinary
kitchen, so, too, is Monsieur Lemois no ordinary landlord. A small,
gray, gently moving, low-voiced man with thoughtful, contented face,
past the prime of life; a passionate lover of animals, flowers, and all
beautiful things; quick of temper, but over in a moment; a poet withal,
yet a man with so quaint a humor and of so odd a taste, and so
completely absorbed in his pets, cuisine, garden, and collection, that
it is easy to believe that when he is missed from his carnal body, he
will be found wandering as a ghost among these very flower-beds or
looking down from the walls of the Marmouset--doubtless an old haunt of
his prior to this his latest incarnation. Only here would he be really
happy, and only here, perhaps, among his treasures, would he be fully
understood.
One of the rarest of these--a superb Florentine chair--the most
important chair he owns, stood within reach of my hand as I sat
listening to him before the crackling blaze.
"Unquestionably of the sixteenth century!" he exclaimed with his
customary enthusiasm, as I admired it anew, for, although I had heard
most of it many times, I am always glad to listen, so quaint are his
descriptions of everything he owns, and so sincerely does he believe in
the personalities and lineage of each individual piece.
"I found it," he continued, "in a little chapel in Ravenna. For years it
had stood outside the cabinet of Alessandro, one of the Florentine
dukes. Think of all the men and women who have sat in it, and of all the
cruel and anxious thoughts that raced through their brains while they
waited for an audience with the tyrant! Nothing like a chair for
stirring up old memories and traditions. And do you see the carved heads
on the top! I assure you they are alive! I have caught them smiling or
frowning too often at the talk around my table not to know. Once when De
Bouf, the great French clown was here, the head next you came near
splitting itself in two over his grimaces, and when Marcot told one of
his pathetic stories that other one wept such tears that I had to mop
them up to keep the velvet from being spoilt. You don't believe it?--you
laugh! Ah!--that is just like you modern writers--you do not believe
anything--you have no imagination! You must measure things with a rule!
You must have them drawn on the blackboard! It is because you do not
see them as they are. You shut your eyes and ears to the real things of
life; it is because you cannot understand that it is the _soul_ of the
chair that laughs and weeps. Monsieur Herbert will not think it funny.
He understands these queer heads--and, let me tell you, they understand
_him_. I have often caught them nodding and winking at each other when
he says something that pleases them. He has himself seen things much
more remarkable. That is the reason why he is the only one of all who
enters this room worthy to sit in it."
"You like Herbert, then?" I interrupted, knowing just what he would say.
"How absurd, my dear friend! You like a filet, and a gown on a
woman--but you don't like a man. You _love_ him--when he is a
_man_!--and Monsieur Herbert is all that. It is the English in him which
counts. Since he was fourteen years of age he has been roaming around
the world doing everything a man could to make his bread--and he a
gentleman born, with his father's house to go home to if he pleased. Yet
he has been farm-hand, acrobat, hostler, sailor before the mast,
newspaper reporter, next four years in Africa among the natives; then
painter, and now, at forty-five, after only six years' practice, one of
the great sculptors of France, with his work in the Luxembourg and the
ribbon of the Legion in his button-hole! Have I not the right to say
that he is a _man_? And one thing more: not for one moment has he ever
lost the good heart and the fine manner of the gentleman. Ah! that is
most extraordinary of all, when you think of the adventures and
hair-breadth escapes and sufferings he has gone through! Did he ever
tell you of his stealing a ride in Australia on a locomotive tender to
get to Sydney, two hundred miles away?"
I shook my head.
"Well--get him to tell you. You will be so sorry for him, even now, that
you cannot keep the tears from your eyes. Listen! There goes the scream
of his horn--and I wager you, too, that he brings that delightful wild
man, Monsieur Louis, with him."
II
THE WOOD FIRE AND ITS FRIENDS
Two men burst in.
Herbert, compact, wellknit, ruddy, simple in his bearing and manner;
Louis, broad-shouldered, strong as a bull, and bubbling over with
unrepressed merriment. Both were muffled to their chins--Herbert in his
fur motor-coat, his cap drawn close over his steady gray eyes; Louis in
his big sketching-cloak and hood and a pair of goggles which gave him so
owlish a look that both Mignon and Leà broke out laughing at the sight.
"Fifty miles an hour, High-Muck" (I am High-Muck) "this brute of a
Herbert kept up. Everything went by in a blur; but for these gig-lamps
I'd be stone blind."
The brace and the snap of the crisp autumn air clinging to their clothes
suddenly permeated the room as with electricity. Even slow-moving Lemois
felt its vivifying current as he hurriedly dragged the Florentine nearer
the fire.
"See, Monsieur Herbert, the chair has been waiting for you. I have kept
even Monsieur High-Muck out of it."
"That's very good of you, Lemois," returned the sculptor as he handed
Leà his coat and gloves and settled himself in its depths. "I'm glad to
get back to it. What the chair thinks about it is another thing--make it
tell you some time."
"But it has--only last night one of the heads was saying----"
"None of that, Lemois," laughed Louis, abreast of the fireplace now, his
fingers outspread to the blaze. "Too many wooden heads talking around
here as it is. I don't, of course, object to Herbert's wobbling around
in its upholstered magnificence, but he can't play doge and monopolize
everything. Shove your high-backed pulpit with its grinning cherubs to
one side, I tell you, Herbert, and let me warm up"--and off came the
cloak and goggles, his broad shoulders and massive arms coming into
view. Then tossing them to Mignon, he turned to me.
"There's one thing you're good for, High-Muck-a-Muck, if nothing else,
and that is to keep a fire going. If I wanted to find you, and there was
a chimney within a mile, I'd be sure you were sitting in front of the
hearth with the tongs in your hand"--here he kicked a big log into
place bringing to life a swarm of sparks that blazed out a welcome and
then went laughing up the chimney. "By thunder!--isn't this glorious!
Crowd up, all of you--this is the best yet! Lemois, won't you please
shove just a plain, little chair this way for me? No--come to think of
it, I'll take half of Herbert's royal throne," and he squeezed in beside
the sculptor, one leg dangling over the arm of the Florentine.
Herbert packed himself the closer and the talk ran on: the races at
Cabourg and Trouville; the big flight of wild geese which had come a
month earlier than usual, and last, the season which had just closed
with the rush of fashion and folly, in which chatter Lemois had joined.
"And the same old crowd, of course, Lemois?" suggested Herbert; "and
always doing the same things--coffee at nine, breakfast at twelve, tea
at five, dinner at eight, and bridge till midnight! Extraordinary, isn't
it! I'd rather pound oakum in a country jail."
"Some of them will," remarked Louis with a ruminating smile. "And it was
a good season, you say, Lemois?" he continued; "lots of people shedding
shekels and lots of tips for dear old Leà? That's the best part of it.
And did they really order good things--the beggars?--or had you cleaned
them out of their last franc on their first visit? Come now--how many
Pêche-Flambées, for instance, have you served, Lemois, to the mob since
July--and how many demoiselles de Cherbourg--those lovely little girl
lobsters without claws?"
"Do you mean the on-shore species--those you find in the hotels at
Trouville?" returned Lemois, rubbing his hands together, his thoughtful
face alight with humor. "We have two varieties, you know, Monsieur
Louis--the on-shore--the Trouville kind who always bring their claws
with them--you can feel them under their kid gloves."
"Oh, let up!--let up!" retorted Louis. "I mean the kind we devour; not
the kind who devour us."
"Same thing," remarked Herbert in his low, even tones from the depths of
the chair, as he stretched a benumbed hand toward the fire. "It
generally ends in a broil, whether it's a woman or a lobster."
Louis twisted his body and caught the sculptor by the lapel of his
coat.
"None of your cheap wit, Herbert! Marc, the lunatic, would have said
that and thought it funny--you can't afford to. Move up, I tell you, you
bloated mud-dauber, and give me more room; you'd spread yourself over
two chairs with four heads on their corners if you could fill them."
Whereupon there followed one of those good-natured rough-and-tumble
dog-plays which the two had kept up through their whole friendship.
Indeed, a wrestling match started it. Herbert, then known to the world
as an explorer and writer, was studying at Julien's at the time. Louis,
who was also a pupil, was off in Holland painting. Their fellow
students, noting Herbert's compact physique, had bided the hour until
the two men should meet, and it was when the room looked as if a cyclone
had struck it--with Herbert on top one moment and Louis the next--that
the friendship began. The big-hearted Louis, too, was the first to
recognize his comrade's genius as a sculptor. Herbert had a wad of clay
sent home from which he modelled an elephant. This was finally tossed
into a corner. There it lay a shapeless mass until his conscience smote
him and the whole was transformed into a Congo boy. Louis insisted it
should be sent to the Salon, and thus the explorer, writer, and painter
became the sculptor. And so the friendship grew and strengthened with
the years. Since then both men had won their gold medals at the
Salon--Louis two and Herbert two.
The same old dog-play was now going on before the cheery fire, Louis
scrouging and pushing, Herbert extending his muscles and standing
pat--either of them could have held the other clear of the floor at
arm's length--Herbert, all his sinews in place, ready for any move of
his antagonist; Louis, a Hercules in build, breathing health and
strength at every pore.
Suddenly the tussle in the chair ceased and the young painter, wrenching
himself loose, sprang to his feet.
"By thunder!" he cried, "I forgot all about it! Have you heard the news?
Hats off and dead silence while I tell it! Lemois, stop that confounded
racket with your dishes and listen! Let me present you to His Royal
Highness, Monsieur Herbert, the Gold Medallist--his second!" and he made
a low salaam to the sculptor stretched out in the Florentine. He was
never so happy as when extolling Herbert's achievements.
"Oh, I know all about it!" laughed back Lemois. "Le Blanc was here
before breakfast the next morning with the _Figaro_. It was your
African--am I not right, Monsieur Herbert?--the big black man with the
dagger--the one I saw in the clay? Fine!--no dryads, no satyrs nor
demons--just the ego of the savage. And why should you not have won the
medal?" he added in serious tones that commanded instant attention. "Who
among our sculptors--men who make the clay obey them--know the savage as
you do? And to think, too, of your being here after your triumph, under
the roof of my Marmouset. Do you know that its patron saint is another
African explorer--the first man who ever set foot on its western
shores--none other than the great Bethencourt himself? He was either
from Picardy or Normandy--the record is not clear--and on one of his
voyages--this, remember, was in the fifteenth century, the same period
in which the stone chimney over your heads was built--he captured and
brought home with him some little black dwarfs who became very
fashionable. You see them often later on in the prints and paintings of
the time, following behind the balloon petticoats and high headdresses
of the great ladies. After a time they became a regular article of
trade, these marmots, and there is still a street in Paris called 'The
Marmouset.' So popular were they that Charles VI is said to have had a
ministry composed of five of these little rascals. So, when you first
showed me your clay sketch of your African, I said--'Ah! here is the
spirit of Bethencourt! This Monsieur Herbert is Norman, not English; he
has brought the savage of old to light, the same savage that Bethencourt
saw--the savage that lived and fought and died before our cultivated
moderns vulgarized him.' That was a glorious thing to do, messieurs, if
you will think about it"--and he looked around the circle, his eyes
sparkling, his small body alive with enthusiasm.
Herbert extended his palms in protest, muttering something about parts
of the statue not satisfying him and its being pretty bad in spots, if
Lemois did but know it, thanking him at the same time for comparing him
to so great a man as Bethencourt; but his undaunted admirer kept on
without a pause, his voice quivering with pride: "The primitive man
demanding of civilization his right to live! Ah! that is a new motive in
art, my friends!"
"Hear him go on!" cried Louis, settling himself again on the arm of
Herbert's chair; "talks like a critic. Gentlemen, the distinguished
Monsieur Lemois will now address you on----"
Lemois turned and bowed profoundly.
"Better than a critic, Monsieur Louis. They only see the outside of
things. Pray don't rob Monsieur Herbert of his just rights or try to
lean on him; take a whole chair to yourself and keep still a moment. You
are like your running water--you----"
"Not a bit like it," broke in Herbert, glad to turn the talk away from
himself. "His water sometimes reflects--he never does."
"Ah!--but he does reflect," protested Lemois with a comical shrug; "but
it is always upsidedown. When you stand upsidedown your money is apt to
run out of your pockets; when you think upsidedown your brains run out
in the same way."
"But what would you have me do, Lemois?" expostulated Louis, regaining
his feet that he might the better parry the thrust. "Get out into your
garden and mount a pedestal?"
"Not at this season, you dear Monsieur Louis; it is too cold. Oh!--never
would I be willing to shock any of my beautiful statues in that way.
You would look very ugly on a pedestal; your shoulders are too big and
your arms are like a blacksmith's, and then you would smash all my
flowers getting up. No--I would have you do nothing and be nothing but
your delightful and charming self. This room of mine, the 'Little
Dwarf,' is built for laughter, and you have plenty of it. And now,
gentlemen"--he was the landlord once more--both elbows uptilted in a
shrug, his shoulders level with his ears--"at what time shall we serve
dinner?"
"Not until Brierley comes," I interposed after we were through laughing
at Louis' discomfiture. "He is due now--the Wigwag train from Pont du
Sable ought to be in any minute."
"Is Marc coming with him?" asked Herbert, pushing his chair back from
the crackling blaze.
"No--Marc can't get here until late. He's fallen in love for the
hundredth time. Some countess or duchess, I understand--he is staying at
her château, or was. Not far from here, so he told Le Blanc."
"Was walking past her garden gate," broke in Louis, "squinting at her
flowers, no doubt, when she asked him in to tea--or is it another
Fontainebleau affair?"
"That's one love affair of Marc's I never heard of," remarked Herbert,
with one of his meaning smiles, which always remind me of the lambent
light flashed by a glowworm, irradiating but never creasing the surface
as they play over his features.
"Well, that wasn't Marc's fault--you _would_ have heard of it had he
been around. He talked of nothing else. The idiot left Paris one
morning, put ten francs in his pocket--about all he had--and went over
to Fontainebleau for the day. Posted up at that railroad station was a
notice, signed by a woman, describing a lost dog. Later on Marc came
across a piece of rope with the dog on one end and a boy on the other.
An hour later he presented himself at madame's villa, the dog at his
heels. There was a cry of joy as her arms clasped the prodigal. Then
came a deluge of thanks. The gratitude of the poor lady so overcame Marc
that he spent every sou he had in his clothes for flowers, sent them to
her with his compliments and walked back to Paris, and for a month after
every franc he scraped together went the same way. He never
called--never wrote her any letters--just kept on sending flowers; never
getting any thanks either, for he never gave her his address. Oh, he's
a Cap and Bells when there's a woman around!"
A shout outside sent every man to his feet; the door was flung back and
a setter dog bounded in followed by the laughing face of a man who
looked twenty-five of his forty years. He was clad in a leather
shooting-jacket and leggings, spattered to his hips with mud, and
carried a double-barrelled breech-loading gun. Howls of derision
welcomed him.
"Oh!--what a spectacle!" cried Louis. "Don't let Brierley sit down,
High-Muck, until he's scrubbed! Go and scrape yourself, you ruffian--you
are the worst looking dog of the two."
The Man from the Latin Quarter, as he is often called, clutched his gun
like a club, made a mock movement as if to brain the speaker, then
rested it tenderly and with the greatest care against one corner of the
fireplace.
"Sorry, High-Muck, but I couldn't help it. I'd have missed your dinner
if I had gone back to my bungalow for clothes. I've been out on the
marsh since sunup and got cut off by the tide. Down with you, Peter! Let
him thaw out a little, Herbert; he's worked like a beaver all day, and
all we got were three plover and a becassine. I left them with Pierre
as I came in. Didn't see a duck--haven't seen one for a week. Wait until
I get rid of this," and he stripped off his outer jacket and flung it at
Louis, who caught it with one hand and, picking up the tongs, held the
garment from him until he had deposited it in the far corner of the
room.
"Haven't had hold of you, Herbert, since the gold medal," the hunter
resumed. "Shake!" and the two pressed each other's hands. "I thought
'The Savage' would win--ripping stuff up and down the back, and the
muscles of the legs, and he stands well. I think it's your high-water
mark--thought so when I saw it in the clay. By Jove!--I'm glad to get
here! The wind has hauled to the eastward and it's getting colder every
minute."
"Cold, are you, old man!" condoled Louis. "Why don't you look out for
your fire, High-Muck? Little Brierley's half frozen, he says. Hold
on!--stay where you are; I'll put on another log. Of course, you're half
frozen! When I went by your marsh a little while ago the gulls were
flying close inshore as if they were hunting for a stove. Not a
fisherman fool enough to dig bait as far as I could see."
[Illustration: Howls of derision welcomed him]
Brierley nodded assent, loosened his under coat of corduroy, searched in
an inside pocket for a pipe, and drew his chair nearer, his knees to the
blaze.
"I don't blame them," he shivered; "mighty sensible bait-diggers. The
only two fools on the beach were Peter and I; we've been on a sand spit
for five hours in a hole I dug at daylight, and it was all we could do
to keep each other warm--wasn't it, old boy?" (Peter, coiled up at his
feet, cocked an ear in confirmation.) "Where's Marc, Le Blanc, and the
others--upstairs?"
"Not yet," replied Herbert. "Marc expects to turn up, so he wired
High-Muck, but I'll believe it when he gets here. Another case of Romeo
and Juliet, so Louis says. Le Blanc promises to turn up after dinner.
Louis, you are nearest--get a fresh glass and move that decanter this
way,--Brierley is as cold as a frog."
"No--stay where you are, Louis," cried the hunter. "I'll wait until I
get something to eat--hot soup is what I want, not cognac. I say,
High-Muck, when are we going to have dinner? I'm concave from my chin to
my waistband; haven't had a crumb since I tumbled out of bed this
morning in the pitch dark."
"Expect it every minute. Here comes Leà now with the soup and Mignon
with hot plates."
Louis caught sight of the two women, backed himself against the jamb of
the fireplace, and opened wide his arms.
"Make way, gentlemen!" he cried. "Behold the lost saint--our Lady of the
Sabots!--and the adorable Mademoiselle Mignon! I kiss the tips of your
fingers, mademoiselle. And now tell me where that fisher-boy is--that
handsome young fellow Gaston I heard about when I was last here. What
have you done with him? Has he drowned himself because you wouldn't be
called in church, or is he saving up his sous to put a new straw thatch
on his mother's house so there will be room for two more?"
Pretty Mignon blushed scarlet and kept straight on to the serving-table
without daring to answer--Gaston was a tender subject to her, almost as
tender as Mignon was to Gaston--but Leà, after depositing the tureen at
the top of the table, made a little bob of a curtsy, first to Herbert
and then to Louis and Brierley--thanking them for coming, and adding, in
her quaint Normandy French, that she would have gone home a month since
had not the master told her of our coming.
"And have broken our hearts, you lovely old gargoyle!" laughed Louis.
"Don't you dare leave the Inn. They are getting on very well at the
church without you. Come, Herbert, down with you in the old Florentine.
I'll sit next so I can keep all three wooden heads in order," and he
wheeled the chair into place.
"Now, Leà--the soup!"
III
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS
Lemois, as was his custom, came in with the coffee. He serves it
himself, and always with the same little ceremony, which, while
apparently unimportant, marks that indefinable, mysterious line which he
and his ancestry--innkeepers before him--have invariably maintained
between those who wait and those who are waited upon. First, a small
spider-legged mahogany table is wheeled up between the circle and the
fire, on which Leà places a silver coffee-pot of Mignon's best; then
some tiny cups and saucers, and a sugar-dish of odd design--they said it
belonged to Marie Antoinette--is laid beside them. Thereupon Lemois
gravely seats himself and the rite begins, he talking all the time--one
of us and yet aloof--much as would a neighbor across a fence who makes
himself agreeable but who has not been given the run of your house.
To the group's delight, however, he was as much a part of the coterie
as if he had taken the fifth chair, left vacant for the always late
Marc, who had not yet put in an appearance, and a place we would have
insisted upon his occupying, despite his intended isolation, but for a
certain look in the calm eyes and a certain dignity of manner which
forbade any such encroachments on his reserve.
To-night he was especially welcome. Thanks to his watchful care we had
dined well--Pierre having outdone himself in a pigeon pie--and that
quiet, restful contentment which follows a good dinner, beside a warm
fire and under the glow of slow-burning candles, had taken possession of
us.
"A wonderful pie, Lemois--a sublime, never-to-be-forgotten pie!"
exclaimed Louis, voicing our sentiments. "Every one of those pigeons
went straight to heaven when they died."
"Ah!--it pleased you then, Monsieur Louis? I will tell Pierre--he will
be so happy."
"Pleased!" persisted the enthusiastic painter. "Why, I can think of no
better end--no higher ambition--for a well-brought-up pigeon than being
served hot in one of Pierre's pies. Tell him so for me--I am speaking as
a pigeon, of course."
"What do you think the pigeon himself would have said to Pierre before
his neck was wrung?" asked Herbert, leaning back in his big chair.
"Thank you--only one lump, Lemois."
"By Jove!--why didn't I ask the bird?--it might have been
illuminating--and I speak a little pigeon-English, you know. Doubtless
he would have told me he preferred being riddled with shot at a match
and crawling away under a hedge to die, to being treated as a common
criminal--the neck-twisting part, I mean. Why do you want to know,
Herbert?"
"Oh, nothing; only I sometimes think--if you will forgive me for being
serious--that there is another side to the whole question; though I must
also send my thanks to Pierre for the pie."
That one of their old good-natured passages at arms was coming became
instantly apparent--tilts that every one enjoyed, for Herbert talked as
he modelled--never any fumbling about for a word; never any uncertainty
nor vagueness--always a direct and convincing sureness of either opinion
or facts, and always the exact and precise truth. He would no sooner
have exaggerated a statement than he would have added a hair's-breadth
of clay to a muscle. Louis, on the other hand, talked as he
painted--with the same breeze and verve and the same wholesome cheer and
sanity which have made both himself and his brush so beloved. When
Herbert, therefore, took up the cudgels for the cooked pigeon, none of
us were surprised to hear the hilarious painter break out with:
"Stop talking such infernal rot, Herbert, and move the matches this way.
How could there be another side? What do you suppose beef and mutton
were put into the world for except to feed the higher animal, man?"
"But _is_ man higher?" returned Herbert quietly, in his low, incisive
voice, passing Louis the box. "I know I'm the last fellow in the world,
with my record as a hunter--and I'm sometimes ashamed of it--to advance
any such theory, but as I grow older I see things in a different light,
and the animal's point of view is one of them."
"Pity you didn't come to that conclusion before you plastered your
studio with the skins of the poor devils you murdered," he chuckled,
winking at Lemois.
"That was because I didn't know any better--or, rather, because I didn't
_think_ any better," retorted Herbert. "When we are young, we delude
ourselves with all sorts of fallacies, saying that things have always
been as they are since the day of Nimrod; but isn't it about time to let
our sympathies have wider play, and to look at the brute's side of the
question? Take a captive polar bear, for instance. It must seem to him
to be the height of injustice to be hunted down like a man-eating tiger,
sold into slavery, and condemned to live in a steel cage and in a
climate that murders by slow suffocation. The poor fellow never injured
anybody; has always lived out of everybody's way; preyed on nothing that
robbed any man of a meal, and was as nearly harmless, unless attacked,
as any beast of his size the world over. I know a case in point, and
often go to see him. He didn't tell me his story--his keeper did--though
he might have done so had I understood bear-talk as well as Louis
understands pigeon-English," and a challenging smile played over the
speaker's face.
"You ought to have stepped inside and passed the time of day with him.
They wouldn't have fed him on anything but raw sculptor for a month."
Herbert fanned his fingers toward Louis in good-humored protest, and
kept on, his voice becoming unusually grave.
"They wanted, it seems, a polar bear at the Zoo, because all zoos have
them, and this one must keep up with the procession. It would be
inspiring and educating for the little children on Sunday
afternoons--and so the thirty pieces of silver were raised. The chase
began among the icebergs in a steam-launch. The father and mother in
their soft white overcoats--the two baby bears in powder-puff furs--were
having a frolic on a cake of floating ice when the strange craft
surprised them. The mother bear tucked the babies behind her and pulled
herself together to defend them with her life--and did--until she was
bowled over by a rifle ball which went crashing through her skull. The
father bear fought on as long as he could, dodging the lasso,
encouraging the babies to hurry--sweeping them ahead of him into the
water, swimming behind, urging them on, until the three reached the next
cake. But the churning devil of a steam launch kept after them--two
armed men in the bow, one behind with the lariat. Another plunge--only
one baby now--a staggering lope along the edge of the floe, the little
tot tumbling, scuffling to its feet; crying in terror at being left
behind--doing the best it could to keep up. Then only the gaunt,
panic-stricken, shambling father bear--slower and slower--the breath
almost out of him. Another plunge--a shriek of the siren--a twist of the
rudder--the lasso curls in the air, the launch backs water, the line
tautens, there is a great swirl of foam broken by lumps of rocking ice,
and the dull, heavy crawl back to the ship begins, the bear in tow, his
head just above the water. Then the tackle is strapped about his girth,
the 'Lively now, my lads!' rings out in the Arctic air, and he is hauled
up the side and dumped half dead on deck, his tongue out, his eyes shot
with blood.
"You can see him any day at the Zoo--the little children's noses pressed
against the iron bars of his cage. They call him 'dear old Teddy bear,'
and throw him cakes and candies, which he sniffs at and turns over with
his great paw. As for me, I confess that whenever I stand before his
cage I always wonder what he thinks of the two-legged beasts who are
responsible for it all--his conscience being clear and neither crime,
injustice, nor treachery being charged against him. Yes, there are two
sides to this question, although, as Louis has said, it might have been
just as well to have thought about it before. Speak up, Lemois, am I
right or wrong? You have something on your mind; I see it in your eyes."
"It's more likely on his stomach," interrupted Louis; "the pigeon may
have set too heavy."
"You are more than right, Monsieur Herbert," Lemois answered in measured
tones, ignoring the painter's aside. He was stirring his cup as he
spoke, the light of the fire making a silhouette of his body from where
I sat. "For your father bear, as you call him, I have every sympathy;
but I do not have to go to the North Pole to express what we owe to
animals. I bring the matter to my very door, and I tell you from my
heart that if I had my way there would never be anything served in my
house which suffered in the killing--not even a pigeon."
Everybody looked up in astonishment, wondering where the joke came in,
but our landlord was gravity itself. "In fact," he went on, "I believe
the day will come when nothing will be killed for food--not even your
dear demoiselle de Cherbourg, Monsieur Louis. Adam and Eve got on very
well without cutlets or broiled squab, and yet we must admit they raised
a goodly race. I, myself, look forward to the time when nothing but
vegetables and fruit, with cheese, milk, and eggs, will be eaten by men
and women of refinement. When that time comes the butcher will go as
entirely out of fashion as has the witch-burner and, in many parts of
the world, the hangman."
"But what are you going to do with Brierley, who can't enjoy his morning
coffee until he has bagged half a dozen ducks on his beloved marsh?"
cried Louis, tossing the stump of his cigar into the fire.
"But Monsieur Brierley is half converted already, my dear Monsieur
Louis; he told me the last time I was at his bungalow that he would
never kill another deer. He was before his fireplace under the head of a
doe at the time--one he had shot and had stuffed. Am I not right,
Monsieur Brierley?" and Lemois inclined his head toward the hunter.
Brierley nodded in assent.
"Same old game," muttered Louis. "Had his fun first."
"I have been a cook all my life," continued the undaunted Lemois, "and
half the time train my own chefs in my kitchen, and yet I say to you
that I could feed my whole clientele sumptuously without ever spilling a
drop of blood. I live in that way myself as far as I can, and so would
you if you had thought about it."
"Skimmed milk and hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, I suppose!" roared
Louis in derision, "with a lettuce sandwich and a cold turnip for
luncheon."
"No, you upsidedown man! Cheese souffles, omelets in a dozen different
ways, stuffed peppers, tomatoes fried, stewed, and fricasseed, oysters,
clams----"
"And crabs and lobsters?" added Louis.
"Ah! but crabs and lobsters suffer like any other thing which has the
power to move; what I am trying to do is to live so that nothing will
suffer because of my appetite."
"And go round looking like a skeleton in a doctor's office! How could
you get these up on boiled cabbage?" and he patted Herbert's biceps.