"You have been eating little and sleeping less. For how long?" I
demanded sternly.
"For a week," she said pitifully.
"We must change all that. This abominable hole is a kind of cold
storage for depression."
She drew my arm tighter. She had always been an affectionate little
girl, and now she seemed to crave human sympathy and companionship.
"I don't mind it now. It doesn't in the least matter where I am.
Before he came I used to hate Ravetot, and long for the gaiety and
brightness of the great world. I used to stand here for hours and just
long and long for something to happen to take us away; and it seemed no
good. Here I was for the rest of time--with nothing to do day after
day but housework and sewing and reading, while father sat by the fire,
with his little roulette machine and Monte Carlo averages and paper and
pencil, working out the wonderful system that is going to make our
fortune. We'll never have enough money to go to Monte Carlo for him to
try it, so that is some comfort. One would have thought he had had
enough of gambling."
She made the allusion, very simply, to me--an old friend. Her father
had gambled away a fortune, and in desperation had forged another man's
name on the back of a bill, for which he had suffered a term of
imprisonment. His relatives had cast him out. That was why he lived
in poverty-stricken seclusion at Ravetot-sur-Mer. He was not an
estimable old man, and I had always pitied Pauline for being so
parented. Her mother had died years ago. I thought I would avoid the
painful topic.
"And so," said I, after we had gone the length of the jetty in silence
and had turned again, "one day when the lonely little princess was
staring out to sea and longing for she knew not what, the young prince
out of the fairy tale came riding up behind her--and stayed just long
enough to make her lose her heart--and then rode off again."
"Something like it--only worse," she murmured. And then, with a sudden
break in her voice, "I will tell you all about it. I shall go mad if I
don't. I haven't a soul in the world to speak to. Yes. He came. He
found me standing at the end of the jetty. He asked his way, in
French, to the cemetery, and I recognised from his accent that he was
English like myself. I asked him why he wanted to go to the cemetery.
He said that it was to see his wife's grave. The only Englishwoman
buried here was a Mrs. Everest, who was drowned last summer. This was
the husband. He explained that he was in the Indian Civil Service, was
now on leave. Being in Paris he thought he would like to come to
Ravetot, where he could have quiet, in order to write a book."
"I understood it was to see his wife's grave," I remarked.
"He wanted to do that as well. You see, they had been separated for
some years--judicially separated. She was not a nice woman. He didn't
tell me so; he was too chivalrous a gentleman. But I had learned about
her from the gossip of the place. I walked with him to the cemetery.
I know a well-brought-up girl wouldn't have gone off like that with a
stranger."
"My dear," said I, "in Ravetot-sur-Mer she would have gone off with a
hippogriffin."