THE bicycle journey of two young people through a mere three hundred
miles of France is, on the face of it, an Odyssey of no importance. The
only interest that could attach itself to such a humdrum affair would
centre in the development of tender feelings reciprocated or otherwise
in the breasts of both or one of the young people. But when the two of
them proceed dustily and unemotionally along the endless, straight,
poplar-bordered roads, with the heart of each at the end of the day as
untroubled by the other as at the beginning, a detailed account of their
wanderings would resolve itself into a commonplace itinerary.
“My children,” said Fortinbras, when, after having lunched with them at
the Petit Cornichon and given them letters of introduction and his
blessing, he had accompanied them to the pavement whence they were
preparing to start, “I advise you, until you reach Brantôme to call
yourself brother and sister, so that your idyllic companionship shall
not be misinterpreted.”
“Pooh!”—or some such vocable of scorn—Corinna remarked. “We’re not in
narrow-minded England.”
“In narrow-minded England,” Fortinbras replied, “without a wedding ring,
and without the confessed brother-and-sisterly relation, inns would
close their virtuous doors against you. In France, where a pair of
lovers is universally regarded as an object of romantic interest,
innkeepers would confuse you with zealous attentions. Thus in either
country, though for opposite reasons, you would be bound to encounter
impossible embarrassment.”
“I don’t think there would be any danger of that,” laughed Corinna
lightly, “unless Martin went mad. But perhaps it would be just as well
to play the comedy. I’ll stick up my cheek to be kissed every night in
the presence of the landlady. ‘_Bon soir, mon frère._’—Do you think you
can go through the performance, Martin?”
Martin, very uncomfortable, already experiencing at the suggestion of
misconstrued relations, the embarrassment foreshadowed by Fortinbras,
flushed deeply and took refuge in an examination of his bicycle. The
celibate dreamer was shocked by her cool bravado. Since the episode of
Gwendoline he had lived remote from the opposite sex; the only woman he
had known intimately was his mother and from that knowledge he had
formed the profound conviction that women were entirely futile and
utterly holy. Corinna kept on knocking this conviction endwise. She made
hay, not to say chaos, with his theory of woman. He felt himself on the
verge of a fog-filled abysm of knowledge. There she stood, a foot or two
away—he scarce dared glance at her—erect, clear-eyed, the least futile
person in the world, treating a suggestion the most disconcerting and
appalling to maidenhood with the unholiest mockery, and coolly proposing
that, in order to give themselves an air of innocence, they should
contract the habit of a nightly embrace.
“I’ll do anything,” said he, “to prevent disagreeableness arising.”
Corinna laughed, and, after final farewells, they rode away down the
baking little street leaving Fortinbras watching them wistfully until
they had disappeared. And he remained a long time following in his
thoughts the pair whom he had despatched upon their unsentimental
journey. How young they were, how malleable, how agape for hope like
young thrushes for worms, how attractive in their respective ways, how
careless of sunstroke! If only he could have escaped with them from this
sweltering Paris to the cool shadow of the Dordogne rocks and the
welcome of a young girl’s eyes. What a hopeless mess and muddle was
life. He sighed and mopped his forehead, and then a hand touched his
arm. He turned and saw the careworn face of Madame Gaussart, the fat
wife of a neighbouring print-seller.
“Monsieur Fortinbras, it is only you in this city of misfortune that can
give me advice. My husband left me the day before yesterday and has not
returned. I am in despair. I have been weeping ever since. I weep
now——” she did, copiously regardless of the gaze of the street. “Tell
me what to do, my good Monsieur Fortinbras, you whom they call the
_Marchand de Bonheur_. See—I have your little honorarium.”
She held out the five-franc piece. Fortinbras slipped it into his
waistcoat pocket.
“At your service, madame,” said he, with a sigh. “Doubtless I shall be
able to restore to you a fallacious semblance of conjugal felicity.”
“I was sure of it,” said the lady already comforted. “If you would deign
to enter the shop, Monsieur.”
Fortinbras followed her, and for a while lost his envy of Martin and
Corinna in patient and ironic consideration of the naughtiness of
Monsieur Gaussart.
This first stage out of Paris was the only time when the wanderers
braved the midday heat of the golden August. They took counsel together
in an earwiggy arbour outside Versailles, where they quenched their
thirst with cider. They were in no hurry to reach their destination. A
few hours in the early morning—they could start at six—and an hour or
two in the cool of the evening would suffice. The remainder of the day
would be devoted to repose. . . .
“And churches and cathedrals,” added Martin.
“You have a frolicsome idea of a holiday jaunt,” said Corinna.
“What else can we do?”
“Eat lotus,” said Corinna. “Forget that there ever were such places as
Paris or London or Wendlebury.”
“I don’t think Chartres would remind you of one of them,” said Martin.
“I’ve dreamed of Chartres ever since I read ‘_La Cathédrale_’ by
Huysmans.”
“You’re what they call an earnest soul,” remarked Corinna. “All the way
here I’ve never stopped wondering why I’ve come with you on this insane
pilgrimage to nowhere.”
“I’ve been wondering the same myself,” said Martin.
As he had lain awake most of the night and therefore risen late, the
occupations of the morning involving the selection and hire of a
bicycle, consultation with the concierge of the Hôtel du Soleil et de
l’Ecosse with regard to luggage being forwarded, the changing of his
money into French banknotes and gold, and various small purchases, had
left him little time for reflection. It was only when he found himself
pedalling perspiringly by the side of this comparatively unknown and
startling young woman, who was to be his intimate companion for heaven
knew how long, that he began to think. _Qu’allait il faire dans cette
galère?_ It was comforting to know that Corinna asked herself the same
question.
“That old humbug Fortinbras must have put a spell upon us,” she
continued, without commenting on Martin’s lack of gallantry. “He sort of
envelops one in such a mist of words uttered in that musical voice of
his and he looks so inspired with benevolent wisdom that one loses one’s
common sense. The old wretch can persuade anybody to do anything. He
once inveigled a girl—an art student—into becoming a nun.”
Martin’s Protestant antagonism was aroused. He expressed himself
heatedly. He saw nothing but reprehensibility in the action of
Fortinbras. Corinna examined her well-trimmed fingernails.
“It was a question of Saint Clothilde—that I think was the order—or
Saint Lazare. Some girls are like that.”
“Saint Lazare?”
“Don’t you know anything?” she sighed. “What’s the good of being
decently epigrammatic? Saint Lazare is the final destination of a
certain temperament unsupported by good looks or money. It’s the woman’s
prison of Paris.”
“Oh!” said Martin.
“How he did it I don’t know, but he saved her body and soul. And now
she’s the happiest creature in the world. I had a letter from her only
the other day urging me to go over to Rome and take the vows——”
“I hope you’re not thinking of it,” said Martin.
“I’m in no danger of Saint Lazare,” replied Corinna drily.
There was a long silence. In the leafy arbour screened from the dust and
glare of the highway there prevailed a drowsy peace. Only one of the
dozen other green blistered wooden tables was occupied—and that by a
blue-bloused workman and his wife and baby, all temperately refreshing
themselves with harmless liquid, the last from nature’s fount itself.
The landlord, obese, unshaven and alpaca-jacketed, read the _Petit
Journal_ at the threshold of the café of which the arboured terrace was
but a summer adjunct. A mangy mongrel lying at his feet snapped
spasmodically at flies. A couple of tow-headed urchins hung by the
arched entrance, low-class Peris at the gates of a dilapidated Paradise.
“Who is Fortinbras?” Martin asked.
Corinna shrugged her dainty shoulders. She did not know. Rumour had
it—and for rumour she could not vouchsafe—that he was an English
solicitor struck off the rolls. With French law at any rate he was
familiar. He had the Code Napoléon at his finger-ends. In spite of the
sober black clothes and white tie of the French attorney which he
affected, he certainly possessed no French qualifications which would
have enabled him to set up a regular _cabinet d’avoué_ and earn a
professional livelihood. Nor did he presume to step within the _avoué’s_
jealously guarded sphere. But his opinion on legal points was so sound,
and his fee so moderate, that many consulted him in preference to an
orthodox practitioner. That was all that Corinna knew of him in his
legal aspect. The rest of his queer practice consisted in advising in
all manner of complications. He arbitrated in disputes between man and
man, woman and woman, lover and mistress, husband and wife, parent and
child. He diverted the debtor from the path to bankruptcy. He rescued
youths and maidens from disastrous nymphs and fauns. He hushed up
scandal. Meanwhile his private life and even his address remained
unknown. Twice a day he went the round of the cafés and restaurants of
the _quartier_, so that those in need of his assistance had but to wait
at their respective taverns in order to see him—for he appeared with
the inevitability of the sun in its course.
“There are all kinds of parasitical people,” said Corinna, “who try to
sponge on students for drinks and meals and money—but Fortinbras isn’t
that kind. Now and again, but not often, he will accept an invitation to
lunch or dinner—and then it’s always for the purpose of discussing
business. Whether it’s his cunning or his honesty I don’t know—but
nobody’s afraid of him. That’s his great asset. You’re absolutely
certain sure that he won’t stick you for anything. Consequently anybody
in trouble or difficulty goes to him confident that his five francs
consultation fee is the end of the financial side of the matter and that
he will concentrate his whole mind and soul on the case. He’s an odd
devil.”
“The most remarkable man I’ve ever met,” said Martin.
“You’ve not met many,” said Corinna.
“I don’t know——” replied Martin reflectively. “I once came across a
prize-fighter—a remarkable chap—in the bar-parlour of the pub at the
corner of our street who was afterwards hanged for murdering his wife,
and I once met a member of Parliament, another remarkable man—I forget
his name now—and then of course there was Cyrus Margett.”
“But none of them is in it with Fortinbras,” Corinna smiled with ironic
indulgence.
“None,” said Martin, “had his peculiar magnetic quality. Not even the
member of Parliament. But,” he continued after a pause, “is that all
that is known of him? He seems to be a very mysterious person.”
“I shouldn’t mind betting you,” said Corinna, “that you and I are the
only people in Paris who are aware of his daughter in Brantôme.”
“Why should he single us out for such a confidence?” asked Martin. “He
said last night that he was giving us a bit of his heart because we were
good children—it was quite touching—but why should we be the only ones
to have a bit of his heart?”
“Would you like to know?” asked Corinna, meeting his eyes full.
“I should.”
“He told me before you turned up at the Petit Cornichon, this morning,
that you interested him as a sort of celestial freak.”
“I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not,” replied
Martin, pausing in the act of rolling a cigarette. “It’s tantamount to
calling me an infernal ass.”
At this show of spirit the girl swiftly changed her tone.
“You may take it from me that Fortinbras doesn’t give a bit of his heart
to infernal asses. If I had gone to him, on my own, he would never—you
heard him—he would never have touched on ‘things precious to him.’ It’s
for your sake, not mine.”
“But why?”
“Because he’s fed up with the likes of me,” said Corinna, with sudden
bitterness. “There are hundreds and thousands of us.”
Martin knitted his brow. “I don’t understand.”
“Better not try,” she said. “Let us pay for the cider and get on.”
So they paid and went on and halted at the townlet of Rambouillet, where
as Monsieur and Mademoiselle Overshaw, they engaged rooms at the most
modest of terms. And to Martin’s infinite relief Corinna did not summon
him to kiss her cheek in the presence of the landlady, before they
retired for the night. He went to bed comforted by the thought that
Corinna’s bark was worse than her bite.
I have done my best to tell you that this was an unsentimental journey.
So day after day they sped their innocent course, resting by night at
tiny places where haughty automobiles halted not. They had but sixty
pounds to their joint fortune, and it behoved them not to dissipate it
in unwonted luxury. Through Chartres they went, and Corinna quite as
eagerly as Martin drank in deep draughts of its Gothic mystery and its
splendour of stained glass; through Châteaudun with its grim old castle;
through Vendôme with the flaming west front of its cathedral; through
Tours in the neighbourhood of which they lingered many days, seeing in
familiar intimacy things of which they had but dreamed before—Chinon,
Loches, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, perhaps the most delicate of all
the châteaux of the Loire. And following the counsel of a sage
Fortinbras they went but a few kilometres out of their way and visited
Richelieu, the fascinating town known only to the wanderer, himself
judicious or judiciously advised, that was built by the great Cardinal
outside his palace gates for the accommodation of his court; and there
it remains now untouched by time, priceless jewel of the art of Louis
Treize, with its walls and gates and church and market square and
stately central thoroughfare of _hôtels_ for the nobles, each having its
mansard roof and _porte-cochère_ giving entrance to court and garden;
and there it remains dozing in prosperity, for around it spread the
vineyards which supply brandy to the wide, wide world.
It was here that Martin, sitting with Corinna on a blistered bench
beneath a plane tree in the little market-place, said for the first
time:
“I don’t seem to care whether I ever see England again.”
“What about getting another billet?” asked Corinna.
“England and billets are synonymous terms. The further I go the less
important does it appear that I should get one. At any rate the more
loathsome is the prospect of a return to slavery.”
“Don’t let us talk of it,” she said, fanning herself with her hat. “The
mere thought of going back turns the sun grey. Let us imagine we’re just
going on and on for ever and ever.”
“I’ve been doing so in a general way,” he replied. “I’ve been living in
a sort of intoxication; but now and then I wake up and have a lucid
interval. And then I feel that by not sitting on the doorstep of
scholastic agents I’m doing something wrong, something almost
immoral—and it gives me an unholy thrill of delight.”
“When I was a small child,” said Corinna, “I used to take the Ten
Commandments one by one and secretly break them, just to see what would
happen. Some I didn’t know how to break—the seventh for instance, which
worried me—and others referring to stealing and murder were rather too
stiff propositions. But I chipped out with a nail on a tile a little
graven image and I bowed down and worshipped it in great excitement; and
as father used to tell us that the third commandment included all kinds
of swearing, I used to bend over an old well we had in the garden and
whisper ‘Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn,’ until the awful joy of it made
my flesh creep. I think, Martin, you can’t be more than ten years old.”
“Why do you spoil a bit of sympathetic comprehension by that last
remark?” he asked.
“Why do you jib at truth?” she retorted.
“Truth?”
“Aren’t you like a child revelling in naughtiness—naughtiness just for
the sake of being naughty?”
“Perhaps I am,” said he. “But why do you mock at me for it?”
“I don’t think I’m mocking,” she answered more seriously. “When I said
you were only ten years old I meant to be rather affectionate. I seem to
be ever so old in experience, and you never to have grown up. You’re so
refreshing after all these people I’ve been mixed up with—mostly lots
younger really than you—who have plumbed the depths of human knowledge
and have fished up the dregs and holding them out in their hands say,
‘See what it all comes to!’ I’m dead sick of them. So to consort, as
I’ve been doing, with an ingenuous mind like yours, is a real pleasure.”
Martin rose from his seat and a tortoiseshell cat, the only other
denizen of the market-place, startled from intimate ablutions, gazed at
him, still poising a forward thrown hind leg.
“My dear Corinna,” said he, “I would beg you to believe that I’m not so
damned ingenuous as all that!”
For reply Corinna laughed out loud, whereupon the cat fled. She rose
too.
“Let us look at the church and cool this heat of controversy.”
So they visited the Louis XIII church, and continued their journey. And
the idle days passed and nothing happened of any importance. They talked
a vast deal and now and then wrangled. After his sturdy declaration at
Richelieu, Martin resented her gibes at his ingenuousness. He felt that
it was incumbent on him to play the man. At first Corinna had taken
command of their tour, ordaining routes and making contracts with
innkeepers. These functions he now usurped; the former to advantage, for
he discovered that Corinna’s splendid misreading of maps had led them
devious and unprofitable courses; the latter to the disgusted
remonstrance of Corinna, who found the charges preposterously increased.
“I don’t care,” said Martin. “I don’t mind your treating me as a
brother, but I’m not going to be treated as your little brother.”
In the freedom and adventure of their unremarkable pilgrimage, he had
begun to develop, to lose the fear of her ironical tongue, to crave some
sort of self-assertion, if not of self-expression. He also discovered in
her certain little feminine frailties which flatteringly aroused his
masculine sense of superiority. Once they were overtaken by a
thunderstorm and in the cowshed to which they had raced for shelter, she
sat fear-stricken, holding hands to ears at every clap, while Martin,
hands in pockets, stood serene at the doorway interested in the play of
the lightning. What was there to be afraid of? Far more dangerous to
cross London or Paris streets or to take a railway journey. Her
unreasoning terror was woman’s weakness, a mere matter of nerves. He
would be indulgent; so turning from the door, he put his water-proof
cape over her shoulders as she was feeling cold, and the humility with
which she accepted his services afforded him considerable gratification.
Of course, when the sun came out, she carried her head high and soon
found occasion for a gibe; but Martin rode on unheeding. These were
situations in which he was master.
Once, also, in order to avoid a drove of steers emerging from a
farm-yard gate, she had swerved violently into a ditch and twisted her
ankle. As she could neither walk nor ride, he picked her up in his arms.
“I’ll take you to the farm house.”
“You can’t possibly carry me,” she protested.
“I’ll soon show you,” said Martin, and he carried her. And although she
was none too light and his muscles strained beneath her weight, he
rejoiced in her surprised appreciation of his man’s strength.
But half way she railed, white lipped: “I suppose you’re quite certain
now you’re my big brother.”
“Perfectly certain,” said Martin.
And then he felt her grip around his neck relax and her body weigh dead
in his arms and he saw that she had fainted from the pain.
Leaving her in the care of the kind farm people, he went to retrieve the
abandoned bicycles and reflected on the occurrence. In the first place
he would not have lost his head on encountering a set of harmless
steers; secondly, had he accidentally twisted his ankle, Corinna could
not have carried him; thirdly he would not have fainted; fourthly,
mocking as her last words had been, she had confessed her inferiority;
all of which was most comforting to his self-esteem.
Then, some time afterwards, when the farmer put her into a broken-down
equipage covered with a vast hood and drawn by a gaunt horse, rustily
caparisoned, in order to drive her to the nearest inn some five
kilometres distant, Martin superintended the arrangements, leaving
Corinna not a word to say. He rode, a mounted constable, by her side,
and on arriving at the inn carried her up to her room and talked with
much authority.
Then, having passed through Poitiers and Ruffec, they came, three weeks
after their start from Paris, to Angoulême, daintiest of cities, perched
on its bastioned rocks above the Charente. And here, as it was the
penultimate stage of their journey, they sojourned a few days.
They stood on the shady rampart and gazed over the red-roofed houses
embowered in greenery at the great plain golden in harvest and drenched
in sunshine, and sighed.
“I dread Brantôme,” said Corinna. “It marks something definite. Hitherto
we have been going along vaguely, in a sort of stupefied dream. At
Brantôme we’ll have to think.”
“I’ve no doubt it will do us good,” said Martin.
“I fail to see it,” said Corinna. “We’ll just have the same old worry
over again.”
“I’m not so sure,” Martin answered. “In the first place we’re not quite
the same people as we were three weeks ago——”
“Rubbish,” said Corinna.
“I’m not the same person at any rate.”
She laughed. “Because you give yourself airs nowadays?”
“Even my giving myself airs,” he replied soberly, “denotes a change. But
it’s deeper than that—it’s difficult to explain. I feel I have a grip
on myself I hadn’t before,—and also an intensity of delight in things I
never had before. The first half hour or so of our rides in the early
dewy mornings, our rough _déjeuners_ outside the little cafés, the long,
drowsy afternoons under the trees, watching the lazy life of the
road—the wine wagons and the bullock carts and the sunburnt men and
women—and the brown, dusty children with their goats—and the quiet
evenings under the stars when we have either sat alone saying nothing or
else talked to the _patron_ of the _auberge_ and listened to his simple
philosophy of life. And then to sleep drunk with air and sunshine
between the clean coarse sheets—to sleep like a dog until the scurry of
the house wakes you at dawn—I don’t know,” he fetched up lamely. “It
has been a thrill, morning, noon and night—and my life before this was
remarkably devoid of thrills. Of course,” he added after a slight pause,
“you have had a good deal to do with it.”
“_Je te remercie infiniment, mon frère_,” said Corinna. “That is as much
as to say I’ve not been a too dull companion.”
“You’ve been a delightful companion,” he cried boyishly. “I had no idea
a girl could be so—so——” He sought for a word with his fingers.
Her eyes smiled on him and lips shewed ever so delicate a curl of irony.
“So what?”
“So companionable,” said he.
She laughed again. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“So sensible,” said Martin.
“When a man calls a girl sensible, do you know what he means? He means
that she doesn’t expect him to fall in love with her. Now you haven’t
fallen in love with me, have you?”
Martin from his lolling position on the parapet sprang erect. “I should
never dream of such a thing!”
She laughed loud and grasped the lapels of his jacket. “Oh, Martin!” she
cried, “you’re a gem, a rare jewel. You haven’t changed one little bit.
And for Heaven’s sake don’t change!”
“If you mean that I haven’t turned from a gentleman into a cad, then I
haven’t changed,” said Martin freeing himself, “and I’m glad of it.”
She tossed her head and the laughter died from her face. “I don’t see
how you would be a cad to have fallen in love with a girl who is neither
unattractive nor a fool, and has been your sole companion from morning
to night for three weeks. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have
done it.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Martin. “I have a higher estimate of the
honour of my fellow-men.”
“If that’s your opinion of me——” she said, and turning swiftly walked
away. Martin overtook her.
“Do you want me to fall in love with you?” he asked.
She halted for a second and stamped her foot. “No. Ten thousand times
no. If you did I’d throw vitriol over you.”
She marched on. Martin followed in an obfuscated frame of mind. She led
the way round the ramparts and out into the narrow, cobble-paved streets
of the old town, past dilapidated glories of the Renaissance, where once
great nobles had entertained kings and now the proletariat hung laundry
to dry over royal salamanders and proud escutcheons, past the Maison de
Saint Simon, with its calm and time-mellowed ornament and exquisite
oriels, past things over which, but yesterday, but that morning, they
had lingered lovingly, into the Place du Mûrier. There she paused, as if
seeking her bearings.
“Where are you going?” asked Martin, somewhat breathlessly.
“To some place where I can be alone,” she flashed.
“Very well,” said he, and raised his cap and left her.
In a few seconds he heard her call.
“Martin!”
He turned. “Yes?”
“I’m anything you like to call me,” she said. “It’s not your fault. It’s
my temper. But you’ve got to learn it’s better not to turn women down
flat like that, even when they speak in jest.”
“I’m very sorry, Corinna,” he said, smiling gravely, “but when one jests
on such subjects I don’t know where I am.”
They crossed the square slowly, side by side.
“I suppose neither you nor anybody else could understand,” she said. “I
was angry with you, but if you had played the fool I should have been
angrier still.”
“Why?” he asked.
She looked straight ahead with a strained glance and for a minute or two
did not reply. At last:
“You remember Fortinbras mentioning the name of Camille Fargot?”
“Oh!” said Martin.
“That’s why,” said Corinna.
“Is he at Brantôme?” asked Martin, with brow perplexed by the memory of
the ridiculous mother.
“No, I wish to God he was.”
“Are you engaged?”
“In a sort of a way,” said Corinna, gloomily.
“I see,” said Martin.
“You don’t see a little bit in the world, she retorted with a sudden
laugh. “You’re utterly mystified.”
“I’m not,” he declared stoutly. “Why on earth shouldn’t you have a love
affair?”
“I thought you insinuated that none of your ‘fellow men’ would look at
me twice.”
He contracted his brows and regarded her steadily. “I’m beginning to get
tired of this argument,” said he.
Her eyes drooped first. “Perhaps you really have progressed a bit since
we started.”
“I was doing my best to tell you, when you switched off onto this idiot
circuit.”
Suddenly she put out her hand. “Don’t let us quarrel, Martin. What has
been joy and wonder to you has been merely an anodyne to me. I’m about
the most miserable girl in France.”
“I wish you had told me something of this before,” said Martin, “because
I’ve been feeling myself the happiest man. . . .”