WHEN Martin returned to the hotel a couple of hours later, he found that
Monsieur Camille Fargot had departed, and that Corinna had entrenched
herself in her room. On the wane of the afternoon she sent word to any
whom it might concern that, not being hungry, she would not come down
for dinner. To Félise, anxious concerning her health, she denied access.
Offers of comforting nourishment on a tray made on the outer side of the
closed door she curtly declined. Mystery enveloped the visit of Camille
Fargot.
Martin learned from a perturbed Bigourdin that she had descended
immediately after he had left the vestibule and had led Fargot at once
into the _Salon de Lecture_, a moth-eaten and fusty cubby-hole in which
commercial travellers who found morbid pleasure in the early stages of
asphyxiation sometimes wrote their letters. There they had remained for
some time, at the end of which Monsieur Fargot—“_il avait l’air
hébété_,” according to Baptiste, a witness of his exit—had issued forth
alone and jumped into his car and sped away, presumably to Bordeaux.
After a moment or two Mademoiselle Corinne, in her turn, had emerged
from the _Salon de Lecture_ and looking very haughty with her pretty
head in the air—(again Baptiste)—had mounted to her apartment.
Those were the bare facts. Bigourdin narrated them simply, in order to
account for Corinna’s non-appearance at dinner. With admirable taste he
forbore to question Martin as to the relations between the lady and her
visitor. Nor did Martin enlighten him. An art-student in Paris like
Corinna must necessarily have a host of friends. What more natural than
that one, finding himself in her neighbourhood, should make a passing
call. Such was the tacit convention between Martin and Bigourdin. But
the breast of each harboured the conviction that the visit had not been
a success of cordiality. Bigourdin exhibited brighter spirits that night
at the Café de l’Univers. He played his game of backgammon with Monsieur
le Maire and beat him exultantly. Around him the coterie cursed the
Germans for forcing the three years’ service on France. He paused, arm
uplifted in the act of throwing the dice.
“Never mind. They seek it—they will get it. _Vous l’avez voulu, Georges
Dandin._ The _bon Dieu_ is on our side, just as He is on mine in this
battle here. _Vlan!_”
The dice rattled out of the box and they showed the number that declared
him the winner. A great shout arose. The honest burgesses cried miracle.
_Voyons_, it was a sign from heaven to France. “_In hoc signo vinces!_”
cried a professor at the _Ecole Normale_, and the sober company had
another round of bocks to celebrate the augury.
Martin and Bigourdin walked home through the narrow, silent streets and
over the bridges. There was a high wind sharpened by a breath of autumn
which ruffled the dim surface of the water; and overhead a rack of cloud
scudded athwart the stars. A light or two far up the gloomy scaur shewed
the Hôtel des Grottes. Bigourdin waved his hand in the darkness.
“It is beautiful, all this.”
Martin assented and buttoned up his overcoat.
“It is beautiful to me,” said Bigourdin, “because it is my own country.
I was born and bred here and my forefathers before me. It is part of me
like my legs and my arms. I don’t say that I am beautiful myself,” he
added, with a laugh, his French wit seeing whither logic would lead him.
“But you understand.”
“Yes,” said Martin. “I can understand in a way. But I have no little
corner of a country that I can call my own. I’m not the son of any
soil.”
“Périgord is very fruitful and motherly. She will adopt you,” laughed
Bigourdin.
“But I am English of the English,” replied Martin. “Périgord would only
adopt a Frenchman.”
“I have heard it said and I believe it to be true,” said Bigourdin,
“that every English artist has two countries, his own and France. And it
is the artist who expresses the national feeling and not the university
professors and philosophers; and all true men have in them something of
the artistic, something which responds to the artistic appeal—I don’t
know if I make myself clear, Monsieur Martin—but you must confess that
all the outside inspiration you get in England in your art and your
literature is Latin. I say ‘outside,’ for naturally you draw from your
own noble wells; but for nearly a generation the _fin esprit anglais_,
in all its delicacy and all its subtlety and all its humanity is in
every way sympathetic with the _fin esprit français_. Is not that true?”
“Now I come to think of it,” said Martin, “I suppose it is. I represent
the more or less educated middle-class Englishman, and, so far as I am
aware of any influence on my life, everything outside of England that
has moved me has been French. As far as I know, Germany has not produced
one great work of art or literature during the last forty years.”
“_Voilà!_” cried Bigourdin, “how could a pig of a country like that
produce works of art? I haven’t been to Berlin. But I have seen
photographs of the Allée des Victoires. _Mon cher_, it is terrible. It
is sculpture hewn out by orders of the drill sergeant’s cane. _Ah,
cochon de pays!_ But you others, you English—at last, after our hundred
years of peace, you realise how bound you are to France. You
realise—all the noble souls among you—that your language is half
Latin, that for a thousand years, even before the Norman conquest, all
your culture, all the sympathies of your poetry and your art are
Roman—and Greek—_enfin_ are Latin. Your wonderful
cathedrals—Gothic—do you get them from Teutonic barbarism? No. You get
them from the Comacine masters—the little band of Latin spiritualists
on the shores of Lake Como. I am an ignorant man, Monsieur Martin, but I
have read a little and I have much time to think and—_voilà_—those are
my conclusions. In the great war that will come——”
“It can’t come in our time,” said Martin.
“No? It will come in our time. And sooner than you expect. But when it
does come, all that is noble and spiritual in England will be
passionately French in its sympathies. _Tiens, mon ami_—” he planted
himself at the corner of the dark uphill road that led to the hotel, and
brought his great hands down on Martin’s shoulders. “You do not yet
understand. You are a wonderful race, you English. But if you were pure
Frisians, like the German, you would not be where you are. Nor would you
be if you were pure Latins. What has made you invincible is the
interfusion since a thousand years of all that is best in Frisian and
Latin. You emerged English after Chaucer—Saxon bone and Latin spirit.
That is why, my friend, you hate all that is German. That is why you
love now all that is French. And that is why we, _nous autres Français_,
feel at last that England understands us and is with us.”
Having thus analysed the psychology of the Entente Cordiale in terms
which proceeding from the lips of a small English innkeeper would have
astounded Martin, Bigourdin released him and together they mounted
homewards.
“I was forgetting,” said he, as he bade Martin good-night. “All of what
I said was to prove that if you were in need of a foster-mother,
Périgord will take you to her bosom.”
“I’ll think of it,” smiled Martin.
He thought of it for five minutes after he had gone to bed and then fell
fast asleep.
Early in the morning he was awakened by a great thundering at his door.
Convinced of catastrophe, he leaped to his feet and opened. On the
threshold the urbane figure of Fortinbras confronted him.
“You?” cried Martin.
“Even I. Having embraced Félise, breakfasted, washed and viewed Brantôme
proceeding to its daily labours, I thought it high time to arouse you
from your unlarklike slumbers.”
Saying this he passed Martin and drew aside the curtains so that the
morning light flooded the room. He was still attired in his sober black
with the _avoué’s_ white tie which bore the traces of an all-night
journey. Then he sat down on the bed, while Martin, in pyjamas and
bare-foot, took up an irresolute position on the cold boards.
“I generally get up a bit later,” said Martin with an air of apology.
“So I gather from my excellent brother-in-law. Well,” said Fortinbras,
“how are you faring in Arcadia?”
“Capitally,” replied Martin. “I’ve never felt so fit in my life. But I’m
jolly glad you’ve come.”
“You want another consultation? I am ready to give you one. The usual
fee, of course. Oh, not now!” As Martin turned to the dressing table
where lay a small heap of money, he raised a soft, arresting hand. “The
hour is too early for business even in France. I have no doubt Corinna
is equally anxious to consult me. How is she?”
“Much the same as usual,” said Martin.
“By which you would imply that she belongs to the present stubborn and
stiff-necked generation of young Englishwomen. I hope you haven’t
suffered unduly.”
“I? Oh, Lord, no!” Martin replied, with a laugh. “Corinna goes her way
and I go mine. Occasionally when there’s only one way to go—well, it
isn’t hers.”
“You’ve put your foot down.”
“At any rate Corinna hasn’t put her foot down on me. I think,” said
Martin, rubbing his thinly clad sides meditatively, “my journey with
Corinna has not been without profit to myself. I’ve made a discovery.”
He paused.
“My dear young friend,” said Fortinbras, “let me hear it.”
“I’ve found out that I needn’t be trampled on unless I like.”
Fortinbras passed his hand over his broad forehead and his silver mane
and regarded the young man acutely. Whatever possibilities he might have
seen of a romantic attachment between the pair of derelicts no longer
existed. Martin had taken cool measure of Corinna and was not the least
in love with her. The Dealer in Happiness smiled in his benevolent way.
“Although in your present ruffled and unshorn state you’re not looking
your best, you’re a different man from my client of two months ago.”
“Thanks to your advice,” said Martin, “my three weeks’ journey put me
into gorgeous health and here I’ve been living in clover.”
“And the environment does not seem to be unfavourable to moral and
intellectual development.”
“That’s Bigourdin and his friends,” cried Martin. “He is a splendid
fellow, a liberal education.”
“He’s an apostle of sanity,” replied Fortinbras with an approving nod.
“Meanwhile sanity would not recommend your standing about in this chilly
air with nothing on. I will converse with you while you dress.”
“I’ll have my tub at once,” said Martin.
He disappeared into the famous bathroom and after a few moments returned
and made his toilet while he gossiped with Fortinbras of the things he
had learned at the Café de l’Univers.
“It’s a funny thing,” said he, “but I can’t make Corinna see it.”
“She’s Parisianised,” replied Fortinbras. “In Paris we see things in
false perspective. All the little finnicky people of the hour, artists,
writers, politicians are so close to us that they loom up like
mountains. You learn more of France in a week at Brantôme than in a year
at Paris, because here there’s nothing to confuse your sense of values.
Happy young man to live in Brantôme!”
He sighed and, seeing that Martin was ready, rose and accompanied him
downstairs. Félise, fresh and dainty, with heightened colour and
gladness in her eyes due to the arrival of the adored father, poured out
Martin’s coffee. They were old-fashioned in the Hôtel des Grottes, and
drank coffee out of generous bowls without handles, beside which, on the
plate, rested great spoons for such sops of bread as might be thrown
therein.
“It is as you like it?” she asked in her pretty, clipped English.
“It’s always the best coffee I have ever drunk,” smiled Martin. He
looked up at Fortinbras lounging in the wooden chair usually occupied by
Corinna. “Do you know, Mr. Fortinbras, that Mademoiselle Félise has so
spoilt me with food and drink that I shall never be able to face an
English lodging-house meal again?”
Fortinbras passed his arm round his daughter’s waist and drew her to him
affectionately.
“She would spoil me too, if she had the chance. It is astonishing what
capability there is in this little body.”
Félise, yielding to the caress, touched her father’s hair. “It’s like
_mamman_, when she was young, _n’est-ce pas_?” She spoke in French which
came more readily.
“Yes,” said Fortinbras, in a deep voice. “Just like your mother.”
“I try to resemble her. _Tu sais_, every time I feel I am lazy or
missing my duties, I think of _mamman_, and I say, ‘No, I will not be
unworthy of her.’ And so that gives me courage.”
“I’ve heard so much of Mrs. Fortinbras,” said Martin, “that I seem to
know her intimately.”
A smile of great tenderness and sadness crept into Fortinbras’s eyes as
he turned them on his daughter.
“It is good that you still think and speak so much of her. Ideals keep
the soul winged for flight. If it flies away into the empyrean and comes
to grief like Icarus and his later fellow pioneers in aviation, at least
it has done something.”
He released her and she sped away on her duties. Presently she returned
with a scared face.
“Monsieur Martin, what has happened? Here is Corinna going to leave us
this morning.”
“Corinna going? Does she know I’m here?” asked Fortinbras in wonderment.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her. I did not dream that she was up—she
generally rises so late. But she has told Baptiste to take down her
boxes for the omnibus to catch the early train for Paris. _Mon Dieu_,
what has happened to drive her away?”
“Perhaps the visit yesterday of Monsieur Camille Fargot,” said Martin.
“Eh?” said Fortinbras sharply. Then turning to Félise. “Go, my dear, and
lay my humble homage at the feet of Mademoiselle Corinna and say that as
I have travelled for nearly a day and a night in order to see her, I
crave her courtesy so far as to defer her departure until I can have
speech with her. You can also tell Baptiste that I’ll break his neck if
he touches those boxes. The omnibus might also anticipate its usual hour
of starting.”
Félise departed. Fortinbras lit a cigarette, and holding it between his
fingers, frowned at it.
“Camille Fargot? What was that spawn of nothingness doing here?”
“I fancy she sent for him,” said Martin. “I suppose I had better tell
you all about it. I haven’t as yet—because it was none of my business.”
“Proceed,” said Fortinbras, and Martin told him of the famous
balance-striking and of Corinna’s subsequent behaviour, including last
night’s retirement into solitude after her mysterious interview with the
spawn of nothingness.
“Good,” said Fortinbras, when Martin had finished. “Very good. And what
had my excellent brother-in-law to say to it?”
“Your excellent brother-in-law,” replied Martin, with a smile, “seems to
be a very delicate-minded gentleman.”
Fortinbras did not press the subject. Waiting for Corinna, they talked
of casual things. Martin, now a creature of health and appetite,
devoured innumerable rolls and absorbed many bowls of coffee, to the
outspoken admiration of Fortinbras. But still Corinna did not come. Then
Martin filled a pipe of caporal and, smoking it with gusto, told
Fortinbras more of what he had learned at the Café de l’Univers. He
expressed his wonder at the people’s lack of enthusiasm for their
political leaders.
“The adventurer politician is the curse of this country,” said
Fortinbras. “He insinuates himself into every government. He is out for
plunder and his hand is at the throat of patriotic ministers, and he
strangles France, while into his pockets through devious channels
filters a fine stream of German gold.”
“I can’t believe it,” cried Martin.
“Oh! He isn’t a traitor in the sense of being suborned by a foreign
Power. He is far too subtle. But he knows what policy will affect the
world’s exchanges to his profit; and that policy he advocates.”
“A gangrene in the body politic,” said Martin.
Fortinbras nodded assent. “It will only be the sword of war that will
cut it out.”
On this, in marched Corinna dressed for travel, with a little
embroidered bag slung over her arm. She crossed the room, her head up,
her chin in the air, defiant as usual, and shook hands with Fortinbras.
“I’ve come as you asked,” she said. “But let us be quick with the
talking, as I’ve got to catch a train.”
“Sit down,” said Fortinbras, setting a chair for her.
She obeyed and there the three of them were sitting once more round a
table in an empty dining room. But this time it was a cloudy morning in
early November, in the heart of France, the distant mountains across the
town half-veiled in mist, and a fine rain falling. Gusts of raw air came
in through the open terrace window at the end of the room.
“So, my dear Corinna,” said Fortinbras, “you have not waited for the
second consultation which was part of our programme.”
“That’s your fault, not mine,” said Corinna. “I expected you weeks ago.”
“Doubtless. But your expectation was no reason for my coming weeks ago.
My undertaking, however, was a reason for your continuing to expect me
and being certain that sooner or later I should come.”
“All right,” said Corinna. “This is mere talk. What do you want with
me?”
“To ask you, my dear Corinna,” replied Fortinbras, in his persuasive
tones, “why you have disregarded my advice?”
“And what was your advice?”
“To do nothing headstrong, violent and lunatic until we met again.”
“You should have come sooner. I find I am living now on Martin’s charity
and the time has come to put all this rubbish aside and go home to my
people with my tail between my legs. It’s vastly pleasant, I assure
you.”
“Oh, young woman of little faith!—Why did you not put your trust in me,
instead of in callow medical students with ridiculous mothers?”
Corinna flushed crimson and her eyes hardened in anger. “I suppose every
gossiping tongue in this horrid little hotel has been wagging. That’s
why I’m going off now, so that they can wag in my absence.”
“But my dear Penthesilea,” said Fortinbras soothingly, “why get so
angry? Every living soul in this horrid hotel is on your side. They
would give their eyes and ears to help you and sympathise with you and
shew you that they love you.”
“I don’t want their sympathy,” said Corinna stubbornly.
“Or any human expression of affection or regret? You want just to pay
your bill like any young woman in an automobile who has put up for the
night and go your way?”
“No. I don’t. But I’ve been damnably treated and I want to get away back
to England.”
“Who has treated you damnably here?” asked Fortinbras.
“Don’t be idiotic,” cried Corinna. “Everybody here has been simply
angelic to me—even Martin.”
“On the whole I think I’ve behaved fairly decently since we started out
together,” Martin observed.
“At any rate you act according to the instincts of a gentleman,” she
admitted.
Fortinbras leaned back in his chair and drew a breath of relief.
“I’m glad to perceive that this hurried departure is not an elopement.”
“Elopement!” she echoed. “Do you think I’d——”
Fortinbras checked her with his uplifted hand. “Sh! Would you like me to
tell you in a few words everything that has happened?” He bent his
intellectual brow upon her and held her with his patient, tired eyes.
“Being at the end of your resources, not desiring to share in the
vagabond’s pool with Martin, and losing faith in my professional pledge,
you bethink you of the young popinjay with whom, in your independent
English innocence, but to the scandal of his French relatives, you have
flaunted it in the restaurants and theatres of Paris. _Il vous a conté
fleurette._ He has made his little love to you. All honour and no blame
to him. At his age”—he bowed—“I would have done the same. You
correspond on the sentimental plane. But in all his correspondence you
will find not one declaration in form.”
Corinna mechanically peeled off her gloves. Fortinbras drew a whiff of
his cigarette. He continued:—
“You think of him as a possible husband: I am frank—it is my profession
to be so. But your heart,”—he pointed dramatically to her bosom—“has
never had a flutter. You don’t deny it. Good. In your extremity, as you
think, you send him an urgent telegram, such as no man of human feeling
could disregard. He borrows his cousin’s husband’s motor-car and obeys
your summons. You interview him in yonder little fly-blown, suffocating
salon. You put your case before him—with no matter what feminine
delicacy. He perceives that he is confronted with a claim for a demand
in marriage. He draws back. He cannot by means of any quirk or quibble
of French law marry you without his parent’s consent. This they would
never give, having their own well-matured and irrefragable plans.
Marriage is as impossible as immediate canonization. ‘But,’ says he, ‘we
are both young. We love each other, we shall both be in the _quartier_
for time indefinite’—time is never definite, thank God, to youth—‘Why
should we not set up housekeeping together? I have enough for both—and
let the future take care of itself.’”
Corinna rose and looked at him haggardly and clutched him by the
shoulder.
“How, in the name of God, do you know that? Who told you? Who overheard
that little beast propose that I should go and live with him as his
mistress?”
Fortinbras patted the white-knuckled hand and smiled, as he looked up
into her tense face. “Do you suppose, my dear child, that I have been
the father confessor of half the _Rive Gauche_ for twenty years without
knowing something of the ways of the _Rive Gauche_? without knowing
something, not exactly of international, but say of multi-national codes
of social observance, morality, honour, and so forth, and how they
clash, correspond and interact? I know the two international
forces—yours and Camille Fargot’s, converging on the matrimonial
point—and with simple certainty I tell you the resultant. It’s like a
schoolboy’s exercise in mathematics.”
She freed herself and sat down again dejectedly. Everything had happened
as Fortinbras declared. His only omission, to repair which she had not
given him time, was the scene of flaming indignation incident to Camille
Fargot’s dismissal. And his psychology was correct. The young man’s
charming love-making had flattered her, had indeed awakened foolish
hopes; but she had never cared a button for him. Now she loathed him
with a devastating hate. She thrummed with her fingers on the table.
“What is there left for me to do?”
“Ah, now,” said Fortinbras genially, “we’re talking sense. Now we come
to our famous second professional consultation.”
“Go ahead then,” said Corinna.
“I mentioned the word ‘professional,’” Fortinbras remarked.
Martin laughed and put a ten-franc piece into the soft open palm.
“I’ll pay for both,” said he.
“It’s like having your fortune told at a fair,” said Corinna. “But hurry
up!” she glanced at her watch. “As it is, I shan’t have time to pay my
bill. Will you see after it?” she drew from her bag one of the borrowed
notes and threw it across to Martin. “Well, I am all attention. I can
give you three minutes.”
But just then a familiar sound of scrunching wheels came through the
open doors of the vestibule and dining-room. She started.
“That’s the omnibus going.”
“The omnibus gone,” said Fortinbras.
“I’ll miss my train.”
“You will,” said Fortinbras.
“My luggage has gone with it.”
“It has not,” said Fortinbras. “I gave instructions that it should not
be brought down.”
Corinna gasped. “Of all the cool impertinence——!” She looked at her
watch again. “And the beastly thing has started long before its time!”
“At my request,” said Fortinbras. “And now, as there is no possibility
of your getting away from Brantôme for several hours, perhaps you might,
with profit, abandon your attitude of indignation and listen to the
voice of reason.”
“By the way,” said Martin, “have you had your _petit déjeuner_?”
“No,” said Corinna sullenly.
“Good God!” cried Fortinbras, holding up his hands, “and they let women
run about loose!”