LUCILLA MERRITON had much money, a kind heart and a pretty little talent
in painting. The last secured her admittance to the circle of
art-students round about the Rue Bonaparte, the second made her popular
among them and the money enabled her to obey any reasonable dictate of
the kind heart aforesaid. When those who were her intimates, mainly
hard-working and none too opulent English girls, took her to task for
her luxurious way of living, and pointed out that it was not in keeping
with the Spartan, makeshift traditions of the Latin Quarter, and that it
differentiated her too much from her fellows, she replied, with the
frankness of her country, first, that she saw no sense in pretending to
be other than she was, second, that in the atmosphere of luxury to which
she had been born, she was herself, for whatever that self was worth;
and thirdly, that any masquerading as a liver of the simple life would
choke all the agreeable qualities out of her. When, looking round her
amateur studio, they objected that she did not take her art seriously,
she cordially agreed.
“I take what you call my art,” she would say, “just as it suits me. I
can command too many things in the world for me to sacrifice them to the
mediocre result I can get out of a paint-brush and a bit of canvas. I
shall never need paint for money, and if I did I’m sure I shouldn’t earn
any. But I love painting for its own sake, and I have enough talent to
make it worth while to have good instruction in technique, so that my
pictures shall more or less satisfy myself and not set my friends’ teeth
on edge. And that’s why I’m here.”
She was a wealthy vagabond of independent fortune inherited from her
mother long since deceased, with no living ties save her father, a
railway director in America, now married to a young wife, a school-mate
of her own, whom, since her childhood, she had peculiarly abhorred. But
in the world, which lay wide open to her, _videlicet_ the civilised
nations of the two hemispheres, she had innumerable friends. No human
will pretended to control her actions. She was as free to live in
Rosario as in Buda-Pesth; in Nairobi as in Nijni Novgorod. For the last
two or three years she had elected to establish her headquarters in
Paris and study painting. But why the latter process should involve a
hard bed in a shabby room and dreadful meals at the Petit Cornichon, she
could never understand. Occasionally, on days of stress at the
_atélier_, she did lunch at the Petit Cornichon. It was convenient, and,
as she was young and thirsty for real draughts of life, the chatter and
hubbub of insensate ambitions afforded her both interest and amusement;
but she found the food execrable and the universal custom of cleaning
knife, fork, spoon and plate before using them exceedingly disgusting.
Yet, being a lady born and bred, she performed the objectionable rite in
the most gracious way in the world; and when it came to comradeship,
then her democratic traditions asserted themselves. Her student friends
ranged the social gamut. If the wearer were a living spirit, she
regarded broken boots and threadbare garments merely as an immaterial
accident of fortune, like a broken nose or an amputated limb. The flat
on the Boulevard St. Germain was the haven of many a hungry girl and
boy. And they found their way thither (as far as Lucilla was concerned)
not because they were hungry, but because that which lay deep in their
souls had won her accurate recognition.
By way of digression, an essential difference in point of view between
English and Americans may here be noted. If an Englishman has reason to
admire a tinker and make friends with him, he will leave his own
respectable sphere and enter that of the tinker, and, in some humble
haunt of tinkerdom, where he can remain incognito, will commune with his
crony over pots of abominable and digestion-racking ale. The instinct of
the American, in sworn brotherhood with a tinker, is, on the other hand,
to lift the tinker to his own habitation of delight. He will desire to
take him into a saloon which he himself frequents, fill him up with
champagne and provide him with the best, biggest and strongest cigar
that money can buy. In both cases appear the special defects of national
qualities. The Englishman goes to the tinker’s boozing ken (thereby,
incidentally, putting the tinker at his ease) because he would be
ashamed of being seen by any of his own clan in a tinker’s company. The
American does not care a hang for being seen with the tinker; he wants
to give his friend a good time; but, incidentally, he has no intuitive
regard for the tinker’s feelings, predilections and timidities.
From which disquisition it may be understood how Lucilla played Lady
Bountiful without the slightest consciousness of doing so. She played it
so well, with regard to Félise, as to make that young woman in the
course of a day or two her slave and worshipper. She shewed her the
sights of Paris, Versailles, the Galeries de Lafayette, the Tomb of
Napoleon, Poiret’s, the Salon d’Hiver, the Panthéon and Cartier’s in the
Rue de la Paix. With the aid of pins and scissors and Céleste, she also
attired her in an evening frock and under the nominal protection of an
agreeable young compatriot from the Embassy took her to dine at the Café
de Paris and then to the Théâtre du Gymnase. A great, soft-cushioned,
smooth, noiseless car carried them luxuriously through the infinite
streets; and when they were at home it seemed to await them night and
day by the kerb of the Boulevard Saint Germain. Lucilla set the head of
the little country mouse awhirl with sensations. Félise revered her as a
goddess, and whispered in awe the Christian name which she was commanded
to use.
* * * * *
A breathless damsel, with a jumble of conflicting scraps of terror and
delight instead of a mind, her arms full of an adored Persian kitten and
an adoring Pekinese spaniel, after a couple of days’ flashing course
through France, was brought in the gathering dusk, with a triumphant
sweep up the hill, to the familiar front door of the Hôtel des Grottes.
Baptiste, green-aproned, gaped as he saw her, and, scuttling indoors,
shouted at the top of his voice:
“_Monsieur, monsieur, c’est mademoiselle!_”
In an instant, Bigourdin lumbered out at full speed. He almost lifted
her from the car, scattering outraged kitten and offended dog, hid her
in his vast embrace and hugged her and kissed her and held her out at
arm’s length and laughed and hugged her again. There was no doubt of the
prodigal’s welcome. She laughed and sobbed and hugged the great man in
return. And then he recovered himself and became the _bon hôtelier_ and
assisted Lucilla to alight, while Félise greeted a smiling Martin and
suffered the embrace of Euphémie, panting from the kitchen.
“If mademoiselle will give herself the trouble of following me——” said
Bigourdin, and led the way up the stairs, followed by Lucilla and
Céleste, guardian of the jewel case. He threw open the door of the
_chambre d’honneur_, a double-windowed room, above the terrace,
overlooking the town and the distant mountains of the Limousin, and
shewed her with pride a tiny salon adjoining, the only private
sitting-room in the hotel, crossed the corridor and flung to view the
famous bathroom, disclosed next door a room for the maid, and swept her
back to the bedroom, where a pine-cone fire was blazing fragrantly.
“_Voilà, mademoiselle_,” said he. “_Tout à votre disposition._”
“I think it is absolutely charming,” cried Lucilla. She looked round.
“Oh! what lovely things you have!”
Bigourdin beamed and made a little bow. He took inordinate pride in his
_chambre d’honneur_ in which he had stored the gems of the Empire
furniture acquired by his great-grandfather, the luckless Général de
Brigade. The instantaneous appreciation of a casual glance enchanted
him.
“I hope, mademoiselle,” said he, in his courteous way, “you will do
Félise and myself the honour of being our guest as long as you deign to
stay at Brantôme.”
Lucilla met his bright eyes. “That’s delightful of you,” she laughed.
“But I’m not one solitary person, I’m a caravan. There’s me and the maid
and the chauffeur and the car and the dog and the cat.”
“The hotel is very little, mademoiselle,” replied Bigourdin, “but our
hearts are big enough to entertain them.”
Nothing more, or, at least, nothing more by way of protest, was to be
said. Lucilla put out her hand in her free, generous gesture.
“Monsieur Bigourdin, I accept with pleasure your delightful
hospitality.”
“_Je vous remercie infiniment, mademoiselle_,” said Bigourdin.
He went downstairs in a flutter of excitement. Not for four generations,
so far as he was aware, had such an event occurred in the Hôtel des
Grottes. Members of the family, of course, had stayed there without
charge. Once, towards the end of the Second Empire, a Minister of the
Interior had occupied the _chambre d’honneur_, and had gone away without
paying his bill; but that remained a bad black debt in the books of the
hotel. Never had a stranger been an honoured guest. He had offered the
position, it is true, to Corinna; but then he was in love with Corinna,
which makes all the difference. The French are not instinctively
hospitable; when they are seized, however, by the impulse of
hospitality, all that they have is yours, down to the last crust in the
larder; but they are fully conscious of their own generosity, they feel
the tremendousness of the spiritual wave. So Bigourdin, kindest-hearted
of men, lumbered downstairs aglow with a sense of altruistic adventure.
In the vestibule he met Félise who had lingered there in order to obtain
from Martin a _compte rendu_ of the household and the neighbourhood.
Things had gone none too well—Monsieur Peyrian, one of their regular
commercial travellers, having discovered a black-beetle in his bread,
had gone to the Hôtel du Cygne. The baker had indignantly repudiated the
black-beetle, his own black-beetles being apparently of an entirely
different species. Another baker had been appointed, whose only defect
was his inability to bake bread. The _brave_ Madame Thuillier, who had
been called in to superintend the factory, had quarrelled, after two
days, with everybody, and had gone off in dudgeon because she did not
eat at the _patron’s_ table. Then they had lost two of their best hands,
one a young married woman who was reluctantly compelled to add to the
population of France, and the other a girl who was discharged for laying
false information against the very respectable and much married
Baptiste, saying that he had pinched her. The old Mère Maquoise,
_marchande de quatre saisons_, who was reputed to have known Général
Bigourdin, was dead, and one of the hotel omnibus horses had come down
on its knees.
Félise, forgetful of the Maison de Blanc and Nôtre Dame, wrung her
hands. She had descended from fairyland into life’s dear and important
realities.
“It’s desolating, what you tell me,” she cried.
“And all because you went away and left us,” said Martin.
“She is not going to leave us again!” cried Bigourdin, swooping down on
her and carrying her off.
In the prim little salon he hugged her again and said gripping her
hands:
“It appears you have greatly suffered, my poor little Félise. But why
didn’t you tell me from the first that you were unhappy with your Aunt
Clothilde? I did not know she had turned into such a _vieille pimbèche_.
She has written. And I have answered. Ah! I tell you, I have answered!
You need never again have any fear of your Aunt Clothilde. I hope I am a
Christian. But I hope too that I shall always differ from her in my
ideas of Christianity. _Mais tout ça est fini—bel et bien fini._ We
have to talk of ourselves. I have been a miserable man since you have
been away, _ma petite_ Félise. I tell you that in all frankness.
Everything has been at sixes and sevens. I can’t do without my little
_ménagère_. And you shall never marry anybody, even the President of the
Republic, unless you want to. _Foi de Bigourdin! Voilà!_”
Félise cried a little. “_Tu es trop bon pour moi, mon oncle._”
“_Allons donc!_ I seem to have been an old bear. Yet, in truth, I am
harmless as a sheep. But have confidence in me, and in my very dear
friend, your father—there are many things you cannot understand—and
things will arrange themselves quite happily. You love me just a little
bit, don’t you?”
She flung her arms round the huge man’s neck.
“_Je t’adore, mon petit oncle_,” she cried.
Ten minutes afterwards, with bunch of keys slung at her waist, she was
busy restoring to order the chaos of the interregnum. Terrible things
had happened during the absence of the feminine eye. Even Martin shared
the universal reprimand. For Félise, manageress of hotel, and Félise,
storm-tossed little human soul, were two entirely different entities.
“My dear Martin, how could you and my uncle pass these napkins from that
infamous old thief of a laundress. They are black!”
And ruthlessly she flicked a napkin folded mitre-wise from the centre
table before the eyes of the folder and revealed its dingy turpitude.
“It is well that I am back,” she declared.
“It is indeed, Mademoiselle Félise,” said Martin.
She gave him a swift little glance out of the tail of her eye, before
she sped away, and the corners of her lips drooped as though in
disappointment. Then perhaps reflecting that she had been addressing the
waiter and not the man, her face cleared. At all events he had taken her
rating in good part.
* * * * *
Dinner had already begun and the hungry commercials, napkins at neck,
were finishing their soup lustily, when Lucilla entered the dining room.
The open Medici collar to a grey velvet dress shewed the graceful
setting of her neck and harmonised with the brown hair brushed up from
the forehead. She advanced smiling and stately, giving the impression of
the perfect product of a new civilisation. Martin, who had but seen her
for a few seconds in the dusk confusedly clad in furs, stood
spell-bound, a pile of used soup-plates in his hands. Never had so
radiant an apparition swum before his gaze. Bigourdin, dining as usual
with Félise, rose immediately and conducted his guest to the little
table by the terrace where once Martin and Corinna had sat. It was
specially adorned with tawny chrysanthemums.
“I fell dreaming before the fire in the midst of your wonderful,
old-world things, and had to hurry into my clothes, and so I’m late,”
she apologised.
“If only you found all you needed, mademoiselle——” said Bigourdin
anxiously. “It is the provinces and not Paris.”
She assured him that Félise had seen to every conceivable want and he
left her to her meal. Martin delivered his soup-plates into the arms of
the chambermaid and hovered over Lucilla with the menu card.
“Will mademoiselle take the dinner?” he asked in French.
She regarded him calmly and humorously and nodded. He became aware that
her eyes were of a deep, deep grey, full of light. He found it difficult
not to keep on looking at them. Breaking away, however, he fetched her
soup and went off to attend to the others. At every pause by her table
he noted some new and incomparable attribute. When bending over the
platter from which she helped herself, he saw that her hands were
beautifully shaped, plump, with long thin fingers and with delicate
markings of veins beneath the white skin. An upward glance caught more
blue veins on the temples. Another time he was struck by the supple
grace of her movements. There were infinite gleams in her splendid hair.
The faintest suggestion of perfume arose from her garments. She declined
the vegetable course and, declining, looked up at him and smiled. He
thought he had never seen a brow so noble, a nose so exquisitely cut,
lips so kind and mocking. Her face was that of a Romney duchess into
which the thought and spiritual freedom of the twentieth century had
entered. As he sped about the service, thrusting dishes beneath bearded
or blue, ill-shaven chins, her face floated before his eyes; every now
and then he stole a distant glance at it, and longed for the happy
though transient moment when he should come close to it again.
While he was clearing her table for dessert she said:
“Why do you speak French to me, when you know I’m an American?”
“It is the custom of the house when a guest speaks such excellent French
as mademoiselle.”
“That’s very kind of you,” she said in English; “but it seems rather
ridiculous for an American and an Englishman to converse in a foreign
language.”
“How do you know I am English, mademoiselle?” he asked, his heart
a-flutter at the unexpected interchange of words.
She laughed. “I have eyes. Besides, I know all about you—first from our
friend Corinna Hastings, and lately from my little hostess over the
way.”
He flushed, charmed by the deep music of her voice and delighted at
being recognised by her not only as an individual (for she radiated an
attraction which had caused him to hate the conventional impersonality
of waiterdom) but as a member more or less of her own social class. He
paused, plate of crumbs in one hand and napkin in the other.
“Do you know Corinna Hastings?”
“Evidently. How else could she have told me of your romantic doings?”
she replied laughingly, and Martin flushed deeper, conscious of an idiot
question.
He set the apples and little white grapes before her. “I ought to have
asked you,” said he, “how Miss Hastings came to talk to you about me?”
“She came on the train from Brantôme and rang my bell in Paris. She kept
me up talking till four o’clock in the morning—not of you all the time.
Don’t imagine it. You were just interestingly incidental.”
“_Garçon_,” cried a voice from the centre table.
“_Bien, m’sieur._”
Martin tucked his napkin under his arm and turned away, followed by
Lucilla’s humorous glance.
“_L’addition!_”
“_Bien, m’sieur._”
He became the perfect waiter again, and brought the bill to the
commercial traveller who had merely come in for dinner. The latter paid
in even money, rose noisily—he was a stout, important, red-faced
man—and, fumbling in several pockets rendered difficult of access by
adiposity and good cheer, at last produced four coppers which he
deposited with a base, metallic chink in Martin’s palm.
“_Merci, m’sieur. Bon soir, m’sieur_,” said the perfect waiter. But he
would have given much to be able to dispose of the horrible coins
otherwise than by thrusting them in his trouser pocket, to be able, for
instance, to hurl them at the triple sausage neck of the departing
donor; for he knew the starry, humorous eyes of the divinity were fixed
on him. He felt hot and clammy and did not dare look round. And the
hideous thought flashed through his mind: “Will she offer me a tip when
she leaves?”
He busied himself furiously with his service, and, in a few moments, was
relieved to see her ceremoniously conducted by Bigourdin and Félise from
the _salle-à-manger_. On the threshold Bigourdin paused and called him.
“You will serve coffee and liqueurs in the _petit salon_, and if you go
to the Café de l’Univers, you will kindly make my excuses to our
friends.”
To enter the primly and plushily furnished salon, bearing the tray, and
to set out the cups and glasses and bottles was an ordeal which he went
through with the automatic rigidity of a highly trained London footman,
looking neither to right nor left. He had a vague impression of a
queenly figure reclining comfortably in an arm chair, haloed by a little
cloud of cigarette smoke. He retired, finished his work in the pantry,
swallowed a little food, changed his things and went out.
Instinct led him along the quays and through the narrow, old-world
streets to the patch of yellow light before the Café de l’Univers. But
there he halted, suddenly disinclined to enter. Something new and
amazing had come into his life—he could not yet tell what—discordant
with the commonplace of the familiar company. He looked through the
space left between the edge of the blind and the jamb of the window and
saw Beuzot, the professor at the Ecole Normale, playing backgammon with
Monsieur Callot, the postmaster; and a couple of places away from them
was visible the square-headed old Monsieur Viriot, smiting his left palm
with his right fist. The excellent old man always did that when he
inveighed against the government. To-night Martin cared little about the
Government of the French Republic; still less for backgammon. He had a
nostalgia for unknown things and an absurd impulse to walk abroad to
find them beneath the moon and stars. Obeying the impulse, he retraced
his steps along the quays and struck the main-road past the habitations
of the rock dwellers. He walked for a couple of miles between rocks
casting jagged shadows and a calm, misty plain without finding anything,
until, following a laborious, zig-zag course, a dissolute quarryman of
his acquaintance in incapable charge of a girl child of five, lurched
into him and laid the clutch of a drowning mariner upon his shoulder.
“Monsieur Martin,” said he. “It is the good God who has sent you.”
“Boucabeille,” said Martin—for that was the name of the miscreant—“you
ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“You need not tell me, Monsieur Martin,” replied Boucabeille.
As the child was crying bitterly and the father was self-reproachful—he
had taken the _mioche_ to see her aunt, and coming back had met some
friends who had enticed him into the Café of the Mère Diridieu, where
they had given him some poisoned, leg-dislocating alcohol—Martin took
the child in his arms, and trudged back to the rock-dwellings where the
drunkard lived. On the way Boucabeille, relieved of paternal
responsibility, the tired child now snuggling sleepily and comfortably
against Martin’s neck, grew confidential and confessed, with sly
enjoyment, that he had already well watered his throttle before he
started. The man, he declared, with the luminousness of an apostle, who
did not get drunk occasionally was an imbecile denying himself the
pleasures of the Other Life. Martin recognised in Boucabeille a
transcendentalist, no matter how muddle-headed. The sober clod did not
know adventures. He did not know happiness. The path of the drunkard,
Boucabeille explained, was strewn with joy.
The anxious wife who met them at the door called Martin a saint from
heaven and her husband a stream of unmentionable things. He staggered
under the outburst and laid his hand again on Martin’s shoulder.
“Monsieur Martin, I have committed a fault. I take you to witness”—his
wife paused in her invective to hear the penitent—“if I was more drunk
I wouldn’t pay attention to anything she says. I have committed a fault.
I haven’t got drunk enough.”
“_Sale cochon!_” cried the lady, and Martin left them, meditating on the
philosophy of drunkenness. _Quo me rapis Bacche, plenum tui?_ To what
godlike adventure? But the magic word was _plenum_—right full to the
lips. No half-and-half measures for Bacchus. Apparently Boucabeille had
failed in his adventure and had missed happiness by a gill. Browning’s
lines about the little more and the little less came into his head, and
he laughed. Both the poet and the muddle-headed quarryman were right.
Adventures not brought through to the end must be dismal fiasco. . . .
His mind wandered a little. His shoulder was ever such a trifle stiff
from carrying the child; but he missed the warmth of her grateful little
body, and the trusting clasp of her tiny arms. It had been an
insignificant adventure, an adventure, so to speak, in miniature; but it
had been complete, rounded off, perfect. The proof lay in the glow of
satisfaction at the thing accomplished. Materially, there was nothing to
complain about. But from a philosophic standpoint the satisfaction was
not absolute. For the absolute is finality, and there is no finality in
mundane things. From a thing so finite as human joy eternal law decreed
the evolution of the germs of fresh desires. There had been a strange
sweetness in the clasp of those tiny arms. How much sweeter to a man
would be the clasp, if the arms were his own flesh and blood? Martin was
shocked by the suspicion that things were not going right with him as a
human being.
The pleasant mass of the Hôtel des Grottes looming dimly white against
its black background came into view. The lights in an uncurtained and
unshuttered window, above the terrace, were visible. A figure passed
rapidly across the room and sent drunkards and adventures and
curly-headed five-year-olds packing from his mind. But he averted his
eyes and walked on and came to the Pont de Dronne, and then halted to
light a cigarette. The frosty silence of sharp moonlight hung over the
town. The silver shimmer reflected from reaches of water and from slated
roofs invested it with unspeakable beauty and peace. A little cold
caressing wind came from the distant mountains, seen in soft outline.
Near black shelves of rock and dark mysteries of forest and masses of
houses beyond the bridge-end closed other horizons. He remembered his
first impression of Brantôme, when he had sat with Corinna on the
terrace, a mothering shelter from all fierce and cruel things.
“And yet,” thought he, as he puffed his cigarette smoke in the clear
air, “beyond this little spot lies a world of unceasing endeavour and
throbbing pulses and women of disturbing beauty. Such a woman on her
meteoric passage from one sphere of glory to another has flashed before
my eyes to-night. Why am I here pursuing an avocation, which, though
honest, is none the less greasy and obscure?”
Unable to solve the enigma, he sighed and threw his cigarette, which had
gone out during his meditation, into the river. A patter of quick
footsteps at the approach of the bridge caused him to turn his head, and
he saw emerge from the gloom into the moonlight a tall, fur-clad figure
advancing towards him. She gave him a swift look of recognition.
“Monsieur Martin——”
He raised his cap. “Good evening, Miss Merriton.”
She halted. “My good host and hostess are gone to bed. I couldn’t sit by
my window and sentimentalise through the glass; so I came out.”
“It’s a fine night,” said Martin.
“It is. But not one to hang about on a windy bridge. Come for a little
walk, if you have time, and protect me against the dangers of Brantôme.”
Go for a walk with her? Defend her from dangers? Verily he would go
through the universe with her! His heart thumped. It was in his whirling
brain to cry: “Come and ride with me throughout the world and the more
dragons I can meet and slay in your service, the more worthy shall I be
to kiss the hem of your sacred grey velvet dinner-gown.” But from his
fundamental, sober, commonsense he replied:
“The only dangers of Brantôme at this time of night are prudish eyes and
scandalous tongues.”
She drew a little breath. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s frank and
sensible. I’m always forgetting that France isn’t New York, or Paris for
the matter of that, where one can do as one likes. I don’t know
Provincial France a little bit, but I suppose, for red-hot gossip, it
isn’t far behind a pretty little New England village. Still, can’t we
get out of range, somehow, of the eyes? That road over there”—she waved
a hand in the direction of the silent high-road, which Martin had lately
travelled—“doesn’t seem to be encumbered with the scandal-mongers of
Brantôme.”
He laughed. “Will you try it?”
She nodded assent.
They set forth briskly. The glimpse into her nature delighted him. She
appreciated at once the motive of his warning, but was serenely
determined to have her own way.
“We were just beginning an interesting little talk when you were called
off,” she remarked.
Martin felt himself grow red, remembering the tightly pocketed bagman
who took the stage while he searched for eleemosynary sous.
“My profession has its drawbacks,” said he.
“So has every profession. I’ve got a friend in America—I have met him
two or three times—who is conductor on the Twentieth Century Express
between New York and Chicago. He’s by way of being an astronomer, and
the great drawback of his profession is that he has no time to sit on
top of a mountain and look at stars. The drawback of yours is that you
can’t carry on pleasant conversations whenever you like. But the
profession’s all right, unless you’re ashamed of it.”
“But why should I be ashamed of it?” asked Martin.
“I don’t know. Why should you? My father, who was the son of a New
England parson——”
“My father was a parson,” said Martin.
“Was he? Well, that’s good. We both come of a God-fearing stock, which
is something in these days. Anyway, my father, in order to get through
college, waited on the men in Hall at Harvard, and was a summer waiter
at a hotel in the Adirondacks. Of course there are some Americans who
would like it to be thought that their ancestors brought over the family
estates with them in the _Mayflower_. But we’re not like that. Say,” she
said, after a few steps through the sweet keenness of the moonlit night.
“Have you heard lately from Corinna?”
He had not. In her last letter to him she had announced her departure
from the constricting family circle of Wendlebury. She was going to
London.
“Where she would have a chance of self-development,” said Lucilla, with
a laugh.
“How did you know that?” Martin asked in simple surprise, for those had
been almost Corinna’s own words.
“What else would she go to London for?”
“I don’t know,” said Martin. “She did not tell me.”
They did not discuss Corinna further. But Martin felt that his companion
had formulated his own diagnosis of Corinna’s abiding defect: her
suspicion that the cosmic scheme centred round the evolution of Corinna
Hastings. In a very subtle way the divinity had established implied
understandings between them. They were of much the same parentage. In
her own family the napkin had played no ignoble part. They were at one
in their little confidential estimate of their common friend. And when
she threw back her adorable head and drew a deep breath and said: “It’s
just lovely here,” he felt deliciously near her. Deliciously and
dangerously. A little later, as they came upon the rock dwellings, she
laid a fleeting, but thrilling touch on his arm.
“What in the world are those houses?”
He told her. He described the lives of the inhabitants. He described, on
the way back, for the rocks marked the limit of their stroll, his
adventure with Boucabeille. Ordinarily shy, and if not tongue-tied, at
least unimaginative in speech, he now found vivid words and picturesque
images, his soul set upon repaying her, in some manner for her gracious
comradeship. Her smiles, her interest, her quick sympathy, the
occasional brush of her furs against his body, as she leaned to listen,
intoxicated him. He spoke of France, the land of his adoption, and the
spiritual France that no series of hazardous governments could impair,
with rhapsodical enthusiasm. She declared, in her rich, deep voice, as
though carried away by him:
“I love to hear you say such things. It is splendid to get to the soul
of a people.”
Her tone implied admiration of achievement. He laughed rather foolishly,
in besotted happiness. They had reached the steep road leading to the
Hôtel des Grottes. She threw a hand to the moonlit bridge, where they
had met.
“Were you thinking of all that when I dragged you off?”
He laughed again. “No,” he confessed. “I was wondering what on earth I
was doing there.”
“I think,” said she softly, “you have just given me the _mot de
l’enigme_.”
In the vestibule they came across Bigourdin, cigarette in mouth,
sprawling as might have been expected, on the cane-bottomed couch. He
was always the last to retire, a fact which the blissful Martin had
forgotten. Lucilla sailed up, radiant in her furs, the flush of exercise
on her cheeks visible even under the dim electric light. Bigourdin
raised his ponderous bulk.
“I found Monsieur Martin outside,” she said, “and I commandeered him as
an escort round the neighbourhood. He couldn’t refuse. I hope I haven’t
done wrong.”
“Martin knows more about Brantôme,” replied Bigourdin courteously, “than
most of the Brantômois themselves.”
Céleste appeared from the gloom of the stairs. Lucilla, after an idle
word or two, retired. Bigourdin closed and bolted the front door. To do
that he would trust nobody, not even Martin. Having completed the
operation, he advanced slowly towards his employé.
“Did you go to the café to-night?”
“No,” replied Martin. “I was walking with mademoiselle, who, as she may
have told you, is a friend of Mademoiselle Corinna.”
“Yes, yes, she told me that,” said Bigourdin. “There is no need of
explanations, _mon ami_. But I am glad you did not go to the café. I
ought to have warned you. We must be very discreet towards the Viriots.
There is no longer any marriage. Félise doesn’t want it. Her father has
formally forbidden it. I have no desire to make anybody unhappy. But
there it is. _Foutu, le mariage._ And I haven’t said anything as yet to
the Viriots. And, again, I can’t say anything to Monsieur Viriot, until
he says something to me. _Voilà la situation. Cest d’une délicatesse
extraordinaire._”
He passed his hand over his head and tried to grip the half-inch
stubble.
“I tell you this, _mon cher_ Martin, because you know the intimate
affairs of the family. So”—he shook an impressive finger—“act towards
the Viriots, father and son, as if you knew nothing, nothing at all.
_Laissez-moi faire._”
Martin pledged the discretion of the statues in the old Alhambra tale.
What did the extraordinary delicacy of the situation between Bigourdin
and the Viriots matter to him? When he reached his room, he laughed
aloud, oblivious of Bigourdin, the Viriots and poor little Félise who
(though he knew it not) lay achingly awake.
At last a woman, a splendid wonder of a woman, a woman with the
resplendent dignity of the King’s daughter of the fairy tales, with the
bewilderment of beauty of face and of form and of voice like the cooing
of a dove, with the delicate warm sympathy of sheer woman, had come into
his life.
The usually methodical Martin threw his shirt and trousers across the
room and walked about like a lunatic in his under things, until a sneeze
brought him to the consciousness of wintry cold.
The only satisfying sanction of romance is its charm of intimate
commonplace.