THEY had further talk together the next afternoon. A lost remnant of
golden autumn freakishly returned to warm the December air. The end of
the terrace caught a flood of sunshine wherein Lucilla, wrapped in furs
and rugs and seated in one of the bent-wood rocking-chairs brought out
from winter quarters for the occasion, had established herself with a
book. The little dog’s head appeared from under the rug, his strange
Mongolian eyes staring unsympathetically at a draughty world. Martin
sauntered out to breathe the beauty of the hour, which was that of his
freedom. He explained the fact when she informed him that Félise and
Bigourdin had both left her a few minutes before in order to return to
their duties. Martin being free, she commanded him to stay and entertain
her.
“If I were a good American,” she said, “I should be racing about in the
car doing the sights of the neighbourhood; but to sit lazily in the sun
is too great a temptation. Besides,” she added, “I have explored the
town this morning. I went round with Monsieur Bigourdin.”
“He is very proud of Brantôme,” said Martin.
She dismissed Brantôme. “I have lost my heart to him. He is so big and
comfortable and honest, and he talks history like a poetical professor
with the manners of an Embassy attaché. He’s unique among landlords.”
“I love Bigourdin,” said Martin, “but the type is not uncommon in these
old inns of France—especially those which have belonged to the same
family for generations. There is the proprietor of the Hôtel du Commerce
at Périgueux, for instance, who makes _pâté de foie gras_, just like
Bigourdin, and is a well-known authority on the prehistoric antiquities
of the Dordogne. He once went to London, for a day; and what do you
think was his object? To inspect the collection of flint instruments at
the Guildhall Museum. He told me so himself.”
“That’s all very interesting,” said Lucilla, “but I’m sure he’s nothing
like Bigourdin. He can’t be. And his hotel can’t be like this. It’s the
queerest hotel I’ve ever struck. It’s run by such unimaginable people. I
think I’ve lost my heart to all of you. There’s Bigourdin, there’s
Félise, the dearest and most delicate little soul in the world, the
daughter of a remarkable mystery of a man, there are Baptiste and
Euphémie and Marie, the chambermaid, who seem to exude desire to fold me
to their bosoms whenever I meet them, and there is yourself, an English
University man, an exceedingly competent waiter and a perfectly
agreeable companion.”
The divinity crowned with a little sealskin motoring toque which left
unhidden the fascination of her up-brushed hair, cooed on deliciously.
The knees of Martin, leaning against the parapet, became as water. He
had a crazy desire to kneel at her feet on the concrete floor of the
terrace. Then he noticed that between her feet and the cold concrete
floor there was no protecting footstool. He fetched one from the dining
room and had the felicity of placing it for her and readjusting the
rugs.
“I suppose you’re not going to be a waiter here all your life,” she
said.
He signified that the hypothesis was correct.
“What are you going to do?”
It was in his awakened imagination to say:
“Follow you to the ends of the earth,” but common sense replied that he
did not know. He had made no plans. She suggested that he might travel
about the wide world. He breathed an inward sigh. Why not the starry
firmament? Why not, rainbow-winged and golden spear in hand, swoop, a
bright Archangel, from planet to planet?
“You ought to see Egypt,” she said, “and feel what a speck of time you
are when the centuries look down on you. It’s wholesome. I’m going early
in the New Year. I go there and try to paint the desert; and then I sit
down and cry—which is wholesome too—for me.”
Before Martin’s inner vision floated a blurred picture of camels and
pyramids and sand and oleographic sunsets. He said, infatuated: “I would
give my soul to go to Egypt.”
“Egypt is well worth a soul,” she laughed.
Words and reply were driven from his head by the sight of a great
splotch of grease on the leg of his trousers. A dress suit worn daily
for two or three months in pursuit of a waiter’s avocation, does not
look its best in stark sunlight. Self-conscious, he crossed his legs, as
he leaned against the parapet, in order to hide the splotch. Then he
noticed that one of the studs of his shirt had escaped from the frayed
and blackened buttonhole. Again he felt her humorous eyes upon him. For
a few moments he dared not meet them. When he did look up he found them
fixed caressingly on the Pekinese spaniel, which had slipped upon its
back in the hope of a rubbed stomach, and was waving feathery paws in
pursuit of her finger. A moment’s reflection brought heart of grace.
Greasy suit and untidy stud-hole must have been obvious to her from his
first appearance on the terrace—indeed they must have been obvious
while he had waited on her at déjeuner. Her invitation to converse was
proof that she disregarded outer trappings, that she recognised the man
beneath the soup-stained raiment. He uncrossed his legs and stood
upright. Then he remembered her remark.
“The question is,” said he, “whether my soul would fetch enough to
provide me with a ticket to Egypt.”
She smiled lazily. The sunlight being full on her face, he noticed that
her eyelashes were brown. Wondrous discovery!
“Anyhow,” she replied, “where there’s a soul, there’s a way.”
She took a cigarette from a gold case that lay on the little iron table
beside her. Martin sprang forward with a match. She thanked him
graciously.
“It isn’t money that does the real things,” she said, after a few
meditative puffs. “To hear an American say so must sound strange to your
English ears. You believe, I know, that Americans make money an Almighty
God that can work any miracles over man and natural forces that you
please. But it isn’t so. The miracles, such as they are, that America
has performed, have been due to the naked human soul. Money has come as
an accident or an accretion and has helped things along. We have a
saying which you may have heard: ‘Money talks.’ That’s just it. It
talks. But the soul has had to act first. Money had nothing to do with
American Independence. It was the soul of George Washington. It wasn’t
money that invented the phonograph. It was the soul of the train newsboy
Edison. It wasn’t money that brought into being the original Cornelius
Vanderbilt. It was the soul of the old ferryman that divined the power
of steam both on sea and land a hundred years ago, and accidentally or
incidentally or logically or what you please, founded the Vanderbilt
fortune. I could go on for ever with instances from my own
country—instances that every school-child knows. In the eyes of the
world the Almighty Dollar may seem to rule America —but every thinking
American knows in his heart of hearts that the Almighty Dollar is but an
accidental symbol of the Almighty soul of man. And it’s the soul that
we’re proud of and that keeps the nation together. All this more or less
was at the back of my mind when I said where there’s a soul there’s a
way.”
As this little speech progressed her face lost its expression of serene
and humorous contentment with the world, and grew eager and her eyes
shone and her voice quickened. He regarded her as some fainéant Homeric
warrior might have regarded the goddess who had descended cloud-haste
from Olympus to exhort him to noble deeds. The exhortation fluttered
both pride and pulses. He saw in her a woman capable of great things and
she had appealed to him as a man also capable.
“You have pointed me out the way to Egypt,” he said.
“I’m glad,” said Lucilla. “Look me up when you get there,” she added
with a smile. “It seems a big place, but it isn’t. Cairo, Luxor,
Assouan—and at any rate the Semiramis Hotel at Cairo.”
And then she began to talk of that wonderful land, of the mystery of the
desert, the inscrutable gods of granite and Karnac brooding over the
ghost of Thebes. She spoke from wide knowledge and sympathy. An allusion
here and there indicated how true a touch she had on far divergent
aspects of life. Apart from her radiant adorableness which held him
captive, she possessed a mind which stimulated his own so long lain
sluggish. He had not met before the highly educated woman of the world.
Instinctively he contrasted her with Corinna, who in the first days of
their pilgrimage had dazzled him with her attainments. She had a quick
intelligence, but in any matter of knowledge was soon out of her depth;
yet she exhibited singular adroitness in regaining the shallows where
she found safety in abiding. Lucilla, on the other hand, swam serenely
out into deep blue water. From every point of view she was a goddess of
bewildering attributes.
After a while she shivered slightly. The sun had disappeared behind a
corner of the hotel. Greyness overspread the terrace. The glory of the
short winter afternoon had departed. She rose, Heliogabalus, also
shivering, under her arm. Martin held the rugs.
“I wonder,” said she, “whether you could possibly send up some tea to my
quaint little salon. Perhaps you might induce Félise to join me.”
That was all the talk he had with her. In the evening the arrival of an
English motor party kept him busy, both during dinner and afterwards;
for not only did they desire coffee and liqueurs served in the
vestibule, but they gave indications to his experienced judgment of
requiring relays of whiskies and sodas until bedtime. Again he did not
visit the Café de l’Univers.
The next morning she started for the Riviera. She was proceeding thither
via Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne and the coast. To Martin’s
astonishment Félise was accompanying her, on a visit for ten days or a
fortnight to the South. It appeared that the matter had been arranged
late the previous evening. Lucilla had made the proposal, swept away
difficulty after difficulty with her air of a smiling, but irresistible
providence and left Bigourdin and Félise not a leg save sheer
churlishness to stand on. Clothes? She had ten times the amount she
needed. The perils of the lonely and tedious return train journey? Never
could Félise accomplish it. Bigourdin turned up an _Indicateur des
Chemins de Fer_. There were changes, there were waits. Communications
were arranged, with diabolical cunning, not to correspond. Perhaps it
was to confound the Germans in case of invasion. As far as he could make
out it would take seventy-four hours, forty-three minutes to get from
Monte Carlo to Brantôme. It was far simpler to go from Paris to Moscow,
which as every one knew was the end of the world. Félise would starve.
Félise would perish of cold. Félise would get the wrong train and find
herself at Copenhagen or Amsterdam or Naples, where she wouldn’t be able
to speak the language. Lucilla laughed. There was such a thing as
L’Agence Cook which moulded the _Indicateur des Chemins de Fer_ to its
will. She would engage a man from Cook’s before whose brass-buttoned
coat and a gold-lettered cap band the Indicateur would fall to pieces,
to transfer Félise personally, by easy stages, from house to house.
Félise had pleaded her uncle’s need. Lucilla, in the most charming way
imaginable, had deprecated as impossible any such colossal selfishness
on the part of Monsieur Bigourdin. Overawed by the Olympian he had
peremptorily ordered Félise to retire and pack her trunk. Then, obeying
the dictates of his sound sense he had asked Lucilla what object she had
in her magnificent invitation. His little girl, said he, would acquire a
taste for celestial things which never afterwards would she be in a
position to gratify. To which, Lucilla:
“How do you know she won’t be able to gratify them? A girl of her
beauty, charm and character, together with a little knowledge of the
world of men, women and things, is in a position to command whatever she
chooses. She has the beauty, charm and character and I want to add the
little knowledge. I want to see a lovely human flower expand”—she had a
graceful trick of restrained gesture which impressed Bigourdin. “I want
to give a bruised little girl whom I’ve taken to my heart a good time.
For myself, it’s some sort of way of finding a sanction for my otherwise
useless existence.”
And Bigourdin clutching at his bristles had plucked forth no adequately
inspired reply. The will of the New World had triumphed over that of the
Old.
All the staff of the hotel witnessed the departure.
“Monsieur Martin,” said Félise in French, about to step into the great
car, a medley, to her mind, of fur rugs and dark golden dogs and grey
cats and maids and chauffeurs and innumerable articles of luggage, “I
have scarcely had two words with you. I no longer know where I have my
head. But look after my uncle and see that the laundress does not return
the table-linen black.”
“_Bien_, Mademoiselle Félise,” said Martin.
Lucilla, pink and white and leopard-coated, shook hands with Bigourdin,
thanked him for his hospitality and reassured him as to the perfect
safety of Félise. She stepped into the car. Martin arranged the rugs and
closed the door. She held out her hand to him.
“We meet in Egypt,” she said in a low voice. As the car drove off, she
turned round and blew a gracious kiss to the little group.
“_Voilà une petite sorcière d’Américaine_,” said Bigourdin. “Pif! Paf!
and away goes Félise on her broomstick.”
Martin stood shocked at hearing his Divinity maligned as a witch.
“Here am I,” continued Bigourdin, “between pretty sheets. I have no
longer a housekeeper, seeing that Madame Thuillier rendered herself
unbearable. However”—he shrugged his shoulders resignedly—“we must get
on by ourselves as best we can. The trip will be good for the health of
Félise. It will also improve her mind. She will stay in many hotels and
observe their organisation.”
From the moment that Martin returned to his duties he felt unusual lack
of zeal in their performance. Deprived of the Celestial Presence the
Hôtel des Grottes seemed to be stricken with a blight The rooms had
grown smaller and barer, the furniture more common, and the terrace
stretched outside a bleak concrete wilderness. Often he stood on the
bridge and repeated the question of the memorable evening. What was he
doing there when the wide world was illuminated by a radiant woman?
Suddenly Bigourdin, Félise, the circle of the Café de l’Univers became
alien in speech and point of view. He upbraided himself for base
ingratitude. He realised, more from casual talk with Bigourdin, than
from sense of something wanting, the truth of Félise’s last remark. In
the usual intimate order of things she would have related her
experiences of Chartres and Paris in which he would have manifested a
more than brotherly interest. During her previous absence he had thought
much of Félise and had anticipated her return with a throb of the heart.
The dismissal of Lucien Viriot, much as he admired the gallant
ex-cuirassier, pleased him mightily. He had shared Bigourdin’s
excitement over the escape from Chartres, over Fortinbras’s prohibition
of the marriage, over her return in motoring state. When she had freed
herself from Bigourdin’s embrace, and turned to greet him, the clasp of
her two little hands and the sight of her eager little face had thrilled
him. He had told her, as though she belonged to him, of the things he
knew she was dying to hear. . . . And then the figure of the American
girl with her stately witchery had walked through the door of the
_salle-à-manger_ into his life.
The days went on dully, shortening and darkening as they neared
Christmas. Félise wrote letters to her uncle, artlessly filled with the
magic of the South. Two letters from Lucilla Merriton decreed extension
of her guest’s visit. Bigourdin began to lose his genial view of
existence. He talked gloomily of France’s unreadiness for war. There
were thieves and traitors in the Cabinet. Whole Army Corps were
notoriously deficient in equipment and transport. It was enough, he
declared, to make a patriotic Frenchman commit protesting suicide in the
lobby of the Chamber of Deputies. And what news had Martin received of
Mademoiselle Corinna? Martin knew little save that she was engaged in
some mysterious work in London.
“But what is she doing?” cried Bigourdin, at last.
“I haven’t the remotest idea,” replied Martin.
“_Dites donc, mon ami_,” said Bigourdin, the gloom of anxiety deepening
on his brow. “You do not think, by any chance”—he hesitated before
breathing the terrible surmise—“you do not think she has made herself a
suffragette?”
“How can I tell?” replied Martin. “With Corinna all things are
possible.”
“Except to take command of the Hôtel des Grottes,” said Bigourdin, and
he sighed vastly.
One evening he said: “My good friend Martin, I am feeling upset. Instead
of going to the Café de l’Univers, let us have a glass of the _vieille
fine du Brigadier_ in the _petit salon_ where I have ordered Marie to
make a good fire.”
The old Liqueur Brandy of the Brigadier was literally, from the market
standpoint, worth its weight in gold. In the seventies Bigourdin’s
father, during the course of reparations, had discovered, in a blocked
and forgotten cellar, three almost evaporated casks bearing the
inscription just decipherable beneath the mildew in Brigadier General
Bigourdin’s old war-dog handwriting: “Cognac. 1812.” His grandson, who
had lost a leg and an arm in 1870, knew what was due to the brandy of
the _Grande Armée_. Instead of filling up the casks with newer brandy
and selling the result at extravagant prices, he reverently bottled the
remaining contents of the three casks and on each bottle stuck a printed
label setting forth the great history of the brandy, and stored the lot
in a dry bin which he charged his son to venerate as one of the sacred
depositaries of France in the family of Bigourdin.
Now in any first-class restaurant in Paris, Monte Carlo, Aix-les-Bains,
you can get Napoleon Brandy. The bottle sealed with the still
mind-stirring initial “N” on the neck, is uncorked solemnly before you
by the silver-chained functionary. It is majestic liquid. But not a drop
of the distillation of the Napoleonic grape is there. The casks once
containing it have been filled and refilled for a hundred years. For
brandy unlike port does not mature in bottle. The best 1812 brandy
bottled that year would be to-day the same as it was then. But if it has
remained for over sixty years in cask, you shall have a precious fluid
such as it is given to few kings or even emperors to taste. I doubt
whether there are a hundred gallons of it in the wide, wide world.
The proposal to open a bottle of the Old Brandy of the Brigadier
portended a state of affairs so momentous that Martin gaped at the back
of Bigourdin on his way to the cellar. On the occasion of what high
solemnity the last had been uncorked, Martin did not know: certainly not
on the occasion of the dinner of ceremony to the Viriots, in spite of
the fact that the father of the prospective bridegroom was _marchand de
vins en gros_ and was expected by Bigourdin to produce at the return
dinner some of his famous Chambertin.
“Come,” said Bigourdin, cobwebbed bottle in hand, and Martin followed
him into the prim little salon. From a cupboard whose glass doors were
veiled with green-pleated silk, he produced two mighty quart goblets
which he set down on a small table, and into each poured about a
sherry-glass of the precious brandy.
“Like this,” he explained, “we do not lose the perfume.”
Martin sipped; it was soft like wine and the delicate flavour lingered
deliciously on tongue and palate.
“I like to think,” said Bigourdin, “that it contains the soul of the
_Grande Armée_.”
They sat in stiff arm chairs covered in stamped velvet, one on each side
of the wood fire.
“My friend,” said Bigourdin, lighting a cigarette, “I am not as
contented with the world as perhaps I ought to be. I had an interview
with Monsieur Viriot to-day which distressed me a great deal. The two
families have been friends and the Viriots have supplied us with wine on
an honourable understanding for generations. But the understanding was
purely mercantile and did not involve the sacrifice of a virgin. _Le
Père_ Viriot seems to think that it did. I exposed to him the
disinclination of Félise, and the impossibility of obtaining that which
is necessary, according to the law, the consent of her parents. He threw
the parents to the four winds of heaven. He conducted himself like a man
bereft of reason. Always beware of the obstinacy of a flat-headed man.”
“What was the result of the interview?” asked Martin.
“We quarrelled for good and all. We quitted each other as enemies. He
sent round his clerk this afternoon with his account, and I paid it in
cash down to the last centime. And now I shall have to go to the Maison
Prunier of Périgueux, who are incapable of any honourable understanding
and will try to supply me with abominable beverages which will poison
and destroy my clientèle.”
Recklessly he finished his brandy and poured himself out another
portion. Then he passed the bottle to Martin.
“_Sers-toi_,” said he, using for the first time the familiar second
person singular. Martin was startled, but said nothing. Then he
remembered that Bigourdin, contrary to his usual abstemious habits, had
been supplied at dinner with a cradled quart of old Corton which awakens
generosity of sentiment towards their fellows in the hearts of men.
“_Mon brave_,” he remarked, after a pause, “my heart is full of problems
which I cannot resolve and I have no one to turn to but yourself.”
“I appreciate your saying so very much,” replied Martin; “but why not
consult our wise and experienced friend Fortinbras?”
“_Voilà_,” cried Bigourdin, waving a great hand. “It is he who sets me
the greatest problem of all. Why do you think I have let Félise go away
with that pretty whirlwind of an American?” Martin stiffened, not
knowing whether this was a disparagement of Lucilla; but Bigourdin,
heedless, continued: “It is because she is very unhappy, and it is out
of human power to give her consolation. You are a gentleman and a man of
honour. I will repose in you a sacred confidence. But that which I am
going to tell you, you will swear never to reveal to a living soul.”
Martin gave his word. Bigourdin, without touching on long-past sorrows,
described the visit of Félise to the Rue Maugrabine.
“It was my sister,” said he, “for years sunk in the degradation of
drunkenness—so rare among Frenchwomen—it is madness, _que veux-tu_?
Often she has gone away to be cured, with no effect. I have urged my
brother-in-law to put her away permanently in a _maison de santé_; but
he has not been willing. It was he, he maintains, who in far-off,
unhappy days, when, _pauvre garçon_, he lifted his elbow too often
himself, gave her the taste for alcohol. For that reason he treats her
with consideration and even tenderness. _Cest beau._ And he himself, you
must have remarked, has not drunk anything but water for many years.”
“Of course,” said Martin, and his mind went back to his first meeting
with Fortinbras in the lonely Petit Cornichon, when the latter imbibed
such prodigious quantities of raspberry syrup and water. It seemed very
long ago. Bigourdin went on talking.
“And so,” said he, at last, “you see the unhappy situation which
Fortinbras, like a true Don Quixote, has arranged between himself and
Félise. She retains the sacred ideal of her mother, but holds in horror,
very naturally, the father whom she has always adored. It is a bleeding
wound in her innocent little soul. What can I do?”
Martin was deeply moved by the pitifulness of the tale. Poor little
Félise, how much she must have suffered.
“Would it not be better,” said he, “to sacrifice a phantom mother—for
that’s what it comes to—for the sake of a living father?”
Bigourdin agreed, but Fortinbras expressly forbade such a disclosure. In
this he sympathised with Fortinbras, although the mother was his own
flesh and blood. Truly he had not been lucky in sisters—one a _bigote_
and the other an _alcoolique_. He expressed sombre views as to the
family of which he was the sole male survivor. Seeing that his wife had
given him no children, and that he had not the heart to marry one of the
damsels of the neighbourhood, he bewailed the end of the good old name
of Bigourdin. But perhaps it were best. For who could tell, if he begat
a couple of children, whether one would not be afflicted with alcoholic,
and the other with religious mania? To beget brave children for France,
a man, _nom de Dieu_! must put forth all the splendour and audacity of
his soul. How could he do so, when the only woman who could conjure up
within him the said splendour and audacity would have nothing to do with
him? To fall in love with a woman was a droll affair. But if you loved
her, you loved her, however little she responded. It was a species of
malady which must be supported with courageous resignation. He sighed
and poured out a third glass of the brandy of the Brigadier. Martin did
likewise, thinking of the woman whose white fingers held the working of
the splendour and audacity of the soul of Martin Overshaw. He felt drawn
into brotherly sympathy with Bigourdin; but, for the life of him, he
could not see how anybody could be dependent for soul provisions of
splendour and audacity upon Corinna Hastings. The humbly aspiring fellow
moved him to patronising pity.
Martin strove to comfort him with specious words of hope. But
Bigourdin’s mental condition was that of a man to whom wallowing in
despair alone brings consolation. He had been suffering from a gathering
avalanche of misfortunes. First had come his rejection, followed by the
unsatisfied longing of the devout lover. It cannot be denied, however,
that he had borne himself gallantly. Then the fading of his dream of the
Viriot alliance had filled him with dismay. Félise’s adventure in the
Rue Maugrabine and its resulting situation had caused him sleepless
nights. Lucilla Merriton had taken him up between her fingers and
twiddled him round, thereby depriving him of volition, and having put
him down in a state of bewilderment, had carried off Félise. And to-day,
last accretion that set the avalanche rolling, his old friend Viriot had
called him a breaker of honourable understandings and had sent a clerk
with his bill. The avalanche swept him into the Slough of Despond,
wherein he lay solacing himself with hopeless imaginings and the old
brandy of the Brigadier. But human instinct made him beckon to Martin,
call him “_tu_” and bid him to keep an eye on the quagmire and stretch
out a helping hand. He also had in view a subtle and daring scheme.
“_Mon brave ami_,” said he, “when I die”—his broad face assumed an
expression of infinite woe and he spoke as though he were seventy—“what
will become of the Hôtel des Grottes? Félise will benefit principally,
_bien entendu_, by my will; but she will marry one of these days and
will follow her husband, who probably will not want to concern himself
with hotel keeping.” He glanced shrewdly at Martin, who regarded him
with unmoved placidity. “To think that the hotel will be sold and all
its honourable traditions changed would break my heart. I should not
like to die without any solution of continuity.”
“But, my dear Bigourdin,” said Martin, “what are you thinking of? You’re
a young man. You’re not stricken with a fatal malady. You’re not going
to die. You have twenty, thirty, perhaps forty years before you in the
course of which all kinds of things may happen.”
Bigourdin leant forward and stretched out his great arm across the
fireplace until his fingers touched Martin’s knee.
“Do you know what is going to happen? War is going to happen. Next
year—the year after—five years hence—_que sais-je, moi?_—but it has
to come. All these pacifists and anti-militarists are either imbeciles
or traitors—those that are not dreaming mad-house dreams of the
millennium are filling their pockets—of the latter there are some in
high places. There is going to be war, I tell you, and many people are
going to die. And when the bugle sounds I put on my old uniform and
march to the cannon’s mouth like my fathers before me. And why shouldn’t
I die, like my brother in Morocco? Tell me that?”
In spite of his intimacy with the sturdy thought of provincial France,
Martin could not realise how the vague imminence of war could affect so
closely the personal life of an individual Frenchman.
“No matter,” said Bigourdin, after a short discussion. “I have to die
some day. It was not to argue about the probable date of my decease that
I have asked you to honour me with this special conversation. I have
expressed to you quite frankly the motives which actuate me at the
present moment. I have done so in order that you may understand why I
desire to make you a business proposition.”
“A business proposition?” echoed Martin.
“_Oui, mon ami._”
He replenished Martin’s enormous beaker and his own and gave the toast.
“_A l’Entente Cordiale_—between our nations and between our two
selves.”
Lest the uninitiated may regard this sitting as a dram drinking orgy, it
must be borne in mind that in such brandy as that of the Brigadier,
strength has melted into the gracious mellowness of old age. The fiery
spirit that the _cantinière_ or the _vivandière_ of 1812 served out of
her little waist-slung barrel to the warriors of the _Grande Armée_, was
now but a fragrant memory of battles long ago.
“A business proposition,” repeated Bigourdin, and forthwith began to
develop it. It was the very simplest business proposition in the world.
Why should not Martin invest all or part of his little heritage in the
century-old and indubitably flourishing business of the Hôtel des
Grottes, and become a partner with Bigourdin? Lawyers would arrange the
business details. In this way, whether Bigourdin met with a gory death
within the next two or three years or a peaceful one a quarter of a
century hence, he would be reassured that there would be no solution of
continuity in the honourable tradition of the Hôtel des Grottes.
It was then that Martin fully understood the solemnity of the
occasion—the _petit salon_ with fire specially lit, the Brigadier
brandy, the preparatory revelation of the soul-state of Bigourdin. The
unexpectedness of the suggestion, however, dazed him. He said politely:
“My dear friend, your proposal that I should associate myself with you
in this business is a personal compliment, which I shall never cease to
appreciate. But——”
“But what?”
“I must think over it.”
“Naturally,” said Bigourdin. “One would be a linnet or a butterfly
instead of a man if one took a step like that without thinking. But at
least the idea is not disagreeable to you.”
“Of course not,” replied Martin. “The only question is how should I get
the money?”
“Your little heritage, _parbleu_.”
“But that is in Consols—_rentes anglaises_, and I only get my dividends
twice a year.”
“You could sell out to-morrow or the next day and get the whole in bank
notes or golden sovereigns.”
“I suppose I could,” said Martin. Not till then had he realised the
simple fact that if he chose he could walk about with a sack of a
thousand sovereigns over his shoulder. He had taken it in an
unspeculative way for granted that the capital remained locked up behind
impassable doors in the Bank of England. Instinct, however, restrained
him from confessing to Bigourdin such innocence in business affairs.
“If I did not think it would be as safe here as in the hands of the
British Government, I would not make the suggestion.”
Martin started upright in his chair.
“My dear friend, I know that,” he cried ingenuously, horrified lest he
should be thought to suspect Bigourdin’s good faith.
“And you would no longer wear that costume.” Bigourdin smiled and waved
a hand towards the dress-suit.
“Which is beginning to show signs of wear,” said Martin.
He glanced down and caught sight of the offending splotch of grease. The
quick association of ideas caused a vision of Lucilla to pass before his
eyes. He heard her rich, deep voice: “We meet in Egypt.” But how the
deuce could they meet in Egypt or in any other Lucilla-lit spot on the
earth if he started inn-keeping with Bigourdin, and tied himself down
for life to Brantôme? A chill ran down his spine.
“_Eh, bien?_” said Bigourdin, recalling him to the _petit salon_.
Martin had an inspiration of despair. “I should like,” said he, “to talk
the matter over with Fortinbras.”
“It is what I should advise,” said Bigourdin heartily. “You can go to
Paris whenever you like. And now _n’en parlons plus_. I feel much
happier than at the beginning of the evening. It is the brandy of the
brave old Brigadier. Let us empty the bottle and drink to the repose of
his soul. He would ask nothing better.”