I am not going to relate in detail the processes of our homeward
journeying. One must necessarily in leaving Paradise put on the common
vesture of mortality; and, though the deathless glamour of past days
remained to us for all eternity, a sense of the finite conditions of
life, of its partings and uncertainties, returned to possess us, like
a premonition, the moment we stepped beyond the bounds of our
love-haunted Eden. Wherefore, having fully depicted that sovereign
realm of delight, it would be a work of rather sad supererogation to
dwell at length on our sojournings, as we made our way easily
northward, in the subkingdoms of happiness. Beautiful it all was, but
with a beauty more of evening than of sunrise. We were drawing to the
night that has no voice but that of lonely introspection.
From les Baux we walked over the Alpines, six miles or so, to St.
Remy, passing by the way those two famous fragments, tomb and
triumphal arch, which are all that remains of a once prosperous Roman
town. Standing solitary under the hills, they would seem to have been
spared, in their chance juxtaposition, as a symbol and epitome to all
future generations of the glory and vanity of the human story: Life’s
victory, Death’s victory over Life, and Time, the last and mightiest,
the conquerer of both. I might have read into them, had I possessed
the seer’s vision, the moral of all idylls in the world, including our
own.
From St. Remy the balmy we took, having lunched and wandered an hour
or two about the place, the prosaic motor-omnibus to the fruity little
town of Châteaurenard, whence we bowled by the long white road, dusty
and monotonous with its eternal plantations of esparto grass, into
Avignon, reaching that city after dark, and in comfortable time for
dinner at the Hôtel du Louvre, where we had elected to pitch our
camp. Old house of the Templars (one meals, actually, in the very
vaulted refectory of that ancient order), we felt, enjoying its
pleasant hospitality, so little remote as yet from the spirit of
antique romance, that our ex-Paradisian “fall” was hardly enough to
disturb or abash us. We had fallen “soft,” indeed, and, during the
three or four days we stayed there, lived in a somewhat renewed
glamour of enchantment. The year was now drawing on and in, closing
upon the last days of October; but still the season moved in golden
accord with our mood, showering peace and quiet sunshine upon our
heads. Fifine had of course as a child lifted her trivial skirts and
pointed her pretty toes to the “_L’on y danse tout en rond_,” and
nothing now in all the grey old city delighted her so much as the
broken bridge, on whose imagined stones the feet of countless
generations of infants have danced and pattered. It moved her more
than the mighty palace of the Popes, than the Cathedral, than the
stupendous ramparts, than the great ruined fort of St. André, looming
misty and gigantic on its hill across the river--though there, when we
came to visit it, the old baker’s dies for stamping the loaves of
bread outside the ovens _did_ fascinate her almost as much. They
impressed her so, she said, with their suggestion of domestic fitness
and tidiness.
For Fifine was tidy: have I never remarked upon it? Our difference in
that respect was her perpetual lament. She could never be at ease in
the presence of casual litter; a piece of paper flung in a grate, a
picture hung crooked on a wall, would spoil the whole æsthetic value
of a room to her; she folded her clothes at night; her toilette
accessories had each its definite place on her dressing table, and any
natural disorder was no sooner done with than she must be removing its
evidences. Tidying-up was an obsession with her; I used to laugh at
her about it, but it was no good.
“What is the use,” I would say, “of sweeping up dust only to resettle,
of making clear spaces for the fresh deposits that are sure to follow?
It is a purely human monomania that of tidiness; nothing in nature
sets us the example.”
“I daresay,” she would answer. “But dogs and cats and birds and trees
have no sense of preparing for anything; and I, as a human being,
have.”
“What are you preparing for?”
“I don’t know--the next world perhaps. It is just an instinct, like
washing your hands.”
“Washing your hands isn’t an instinct, you goose. It is an acquired
superstition.”
“Well, so perhaps is tidiness. But anyhow it is a superstition founded
on the Bible.”
“How?”
“Isn’t there something in it about keeping your house swept and
garnished?”
I hooted. “No, that won’t do. That was the house that proved so
attractive to the unclean spirit and his brethren. You are hoist with
your own petard, I am afraid, my Fifinette.”
“O!” said Fifine. “Well, anyhow you won’t make me believe that
tidiness is a sin.”
“No, it is only a ‘preparation’--for what? fresh untidiness, say I.
When you have paid all your bills, and filed the receipts, and checked
and balanced your bank book, and swept the hearth clean, and sat down
with a satisfied sense of accumulated scores settled, and of being
able to start again with a clean slate, what follows? Why, the falling
of new ashes into the fender, and the recovering of the slate with the
same old fatuous irreconcilabilities between receipt and expenditure.”
“Well, you know at least periodically how you stand, and where,” said
Fifine; “and that is a consolation.”
How was it a consolation? How can a coat removed from the floor, say,
and hung on a peg make one feel more sure of one’s position? I have
often tried to understand, and cannot. Or is there really in the
instinct some subtle feeling of the temporary sojourner in a strange
land, prepared for eventualities, ready, because unencumbered, to move
on at a moment’s notice? Travellers, explorers, are often the tidiest
of men, clearing up behind them, as they advance, having its place for
every article of their kit, and scrupulous to maintain it. To me,
nevertheless, it is no comfort to know how I stand, if the result is
to prove every item in the ledger against me. I am interested in my
own solvency or insolvency, moral or material, only as regards their
practical effects, and those occur automatically without my troubling
my head with anticipations, or with manœuvrings for or against them.
At the same time I am quite willing to admit an argument in favour of
the _super_-natural instinct of tidiness, since Nature herself is
atrociously untidy. Those who possess it may be spirits, finer than
the common, who bring unconsciously from some other sphere the desire
to mend, in their little piecemeal, the lamentable disorder of things
mundane. Then human tidiness _may_ be, in fact, the surest evidence of
immortality; and indeed I hope it is. For if I laughed at it in
Fifine, I loved its staid pretty manifestations enough to desire with
all my soul to find now in their memory some comfort and assurance.
One entire day we devoted to a visit to the Pont-du-Gard, a
super-impressive experience, since, owing to the lateness of the
season, we had the whole stupendous mise-en-scène, lovely valley and
striding aqueduct, to ourselves. We lunched gaily, sitting on the flat
rocks of the river, and then climbed the hill, and walked through the
huge artery of the bridge, which, drawing from the heart of Usèz,
once flushed with life all the ramifying veins of Nîmes. The conduit
is dry now, drained of its living force with the decay and death of
the ancient city it supplied; but one still thinks of it somehow as a
thing animate, a thing actually organic and sentient in the days when
the throbbing of its mighty pulses shook the league-long hills by
which it travelled.
That was our last ex-mural expedition; and the next morning, with a
sigh of regret for what we were leaving, and of reluctance in the
thought of the further stage it meant for us _away_ from Paradise, and
_towards_ the uneasy problem of Paris, we shouldered our pack
(figuratively) and took the train north to Orange.
This was, however, an event of its kind, since--ostensibly, at
least--it stood for the mid-maze of our enterprise. We were
travelling, if you remember, with the main purpose to visit Fifine’s
birthplace, and I could not but be, secretly, a little curious to
learn how she proposed to herself to deal with a rather nervous
question. It was hardly to be assumed but that, as the offspring of
one of the richest and most powerful nobles in the land, her advent
would have occurred amid environments the most notable the town could
boast; whereas--but it is true I knew nothing as to the facts of her
origin.
However, she resolved the difficulty quite quietly and naturally, and
in the most convincing way possible; though I thought a little flush
came to her cheek with the explanation. We got in about eleven o’clock
of the morning, and were walking up the long avenue that leads from
the station to the town, when I said to her:--
“Well, m’amie; how about the site of Fifine’s nest? In what direction
are we to seek it?”
“Indeed,” she answered, “I know no more than you.”
“You do not?”
“I was a baby at the time, you see.”
“But not always a baby?”
“Always, as long as I was here. I remember nothing, absolutely
nothing--only the oddest, most shadowy little impression, like a
dream, of a great thing like a curtain, and a confusion of pots and
pans, and dark people moving about among them.”
I laughed. “It is queer, isn’t it, that survival of first
impressions--what decides it. Accident, perhaps; the accident of their
alighting on a peculiarly sensitive patch of brain-matter. Hullo!”
We had been walking at haphazard, and had emerged suddenly into a
broad open _Place_, which, dominated by the huge blind façade of the
Roman Theatre, suggested somehow, with its scintillating crowds, an
operatic stage before the rise of the curtain.
“There is your impression,” said I--“realised to the life!”
It was actually so. Strewed all about the ground, with little alleys
of commerce dividing the groups, was an infinite confusion of
pottery--jugs, dishes, cooking utensils, and what not; and, pervading
it, a number of picturesque figures, swarthy of face, hot-dyed of
dress and neckerchief, the whole constituting a sort of gypsies’ fair.
Fifine stood as if dumbstricken.
“Perhaps now,” I said, “the clue of memory taken up will lead you back
to your birthplace?”
She shook her head. “No. But it--O, mon ami, I feel as if I want to
cry!”
“You shall cry, Fifine, when we reach our quarters. Come; we will go
to the best I know.”
It was at the Hôtel de la Poste we put up; and I specify the fact for
three particular reasons: it was from the window of my bedroom, in the
Pension attached to that hotel, that I had had--as I was able now to
point out to Fifine--my earlier impression of the plane-trees; it was
in its salle-à-manger that I found my first opportunity to introduce
to her the delectable mysteries of bouille-abaisse; it was in that
room also that occurred--but let me come to it.
This dining-room was not, perhaps, of the cheeriest. It was
ill-lighted, far from spacious, and fairly crowded, when we entered
it, with a mixed assemblage of farmers, shop-keepers, and bagmen. A
certain commercial importance attaches, I fancy, to Orange; and
moreover market-day, had, no doubt, contributed its quota to the
complement. Anyhow we had some difficulty in securing places at a
table in a dark corner; but, once established, we prepared, after our
custom, to enjoy ourselves thoroughly. And, lo! the first item on the
menu was bouille-abaisse.
I crowed. “Tiens! The goal of our long romantic quest lies revealed to
us at last. We are about to achieve our ideal; the spirit of abstract
beauty offers to materialise before us. Eat of this ambrosia, my
gossip, and count for its sake the toil well vindicated.”
Fifine laughed, rosily, but in her little sedate way.
“Poor M. Cabarus!” she said. “It is a shame so to mock at his ideals.
They were not the less fine and sincere because his personality failed
to recommend them. It was a great soul, was it not, Felix, in a
grotesque setting? But externals ought not to influence us. They mean
nothing.”
“Of course not,” I said. “I have known the most abstemious men
libelled in their waistcoats.”
She laughed again, with a little protesting “tais-toi”--and the
bouille-abaisse was placed before us. I watched her taste that
Provençal delicacy, trifle a moment with it, put down her fork and
lean back.
“You do not like it?” I asked, grinning.
“I think it is simply horrid,” she said, making a face.
So we had come to Provence for nothing after all. However, for myself,
I swallowed my disappointment with relish.
It was towards the end of our meal, when the company was somewhat
thinning, that the event occurred. I was conscious of a sudden
convulsive pressure of Fifine’s shoulder against mine; looked up--and
there was Carabas entering the room. We sat aghast and spellbound, but
he did not observe us in our dusk corner. He sat himself down, as
usual, at the long table, pulled off his gloves (brown kid gloves, and
extensively worn), placed them, with his straw hat, on the chair
beside him, examined the menu, looked up from his scrutiny with a full
sigh of gratification, and round on his immediate company,
self-conscious, challenging, and summoned the waiter with a gesture.
That garçon, prompt, deferential, relaid the accessories, swept away
contiguous crumbs, retreated, and reappeared--with a dish of veal.
“Bouille-abaisse!” exclaimed Carabas, in a voice that all might hear.
“Ah, pardon, Monsieur,” apologised the waiter. “There is none left.”
“It is on the menu.”
“It is, in fact, as Monsieur says. But it is not in the kitchen.”
“But this is infamous,” said the visitor, very loud and indignant. “It
is here, but it is not there, you say?”
“The demand, Monsieur will comprehend, has been excessive. There is
not so much as a spoonful remaining.”
“No demand should discover a good landlord unprepared. It is his
business to keep faith with his guests. Tell him to come and explain.”
The landlord came, apologised, expressed a thousand regrets. All
propitiation was in vain. The disappointed troubadour fumed, refused,
with many venomous “Bahs” and sarcastic “Chahs,” every offer of an
alternative _plat_, expressed his mortification in a growing fury of
speech and emphasis, finally snatched up his hat and gloves from the
chair beside, and stalked out of the room, followed by the still
protesting hôtelier.
And so he disappeared from our lives, never to enter them again. We
sat without a word, quiet as mice. Presently I looked at Fifine, my
eyes twinkling. She responded, still silent, to the unspoken
suggestion, rose, and we went out together.
“Now for the Roman theatre,” I said, in a suppressed voice.
And it was not until we had penetrated into that august ruin, and
climbed the tiers of seats, and sat ourselves down on the highest, in
commanding view of the mighty proscenium and of the distant slopes of
Mont Ventoux, that she permitted herself to give way, and broke into a
fit of laughter which presently threatened to become hysterical.
“O--O!” she cried--“his libelled waistcoat! and after all I had said
about his ideals!”
“Now, gossip,” said I, putting my arm about her, for we sat there
quite alone. “You must be reasonable, if you please.”
She obeyed at once, dear child, and lay panting against me, only
crying and laughing together now a little, and whispering words of
love and remorse into my ear; and in a very little she was her own
sane self once more.
We stayed in Orange only long enough to familiarise ourselves with its
two noblest antiquities, the magnificent theatre and the arch that
stands on the Lyons road; then went on by Valence to Vienne, where we
lay a couple of nights, and visited the fine Cathedral, and the little
temple like the Maison Carrée but not near so satisfying, and went to
look down on the Rhone from the heights of Pipet--a lovely vision at
sunset. Thence another day’s journey, by way of the Côte Rôtie, and
through the rich deep heart of the vine country, carried us to Dijon,
town of cakes and cassis and mustard, where, in Burgundian streets,
with the high-pitched tile-patterned roofs rising loftily above us, we
seemed to realise, as never yet, the sense of an alien atmosphere, not
unromantic yet not Paradise, and chill with the shadow of approaching
change. Passed and gone were the tamarisk, and the rosemary, and the
wild sweet aspic; passed were the ruby-fruited pomegranates, the
fig-trees hung thick with purple pendents, coldly luscious to the
thirsty palate, the great cypress rows, packed close to screen the
gardens from the mistral; passed were the little brisk black bulls,
the teams of slow white oxen ploughing in the fields, the be-ribboned
sheep, the ranks of gourds, orange and ivory and palest blue, ripening
in the open. They were not for our eyes again; but in their place, and
in place of the luxuriant hills, peaceful pastures, and endless
plains, and the interminable poplars of northern France stretching
everywhere. The phantom roar of Paris already echoed in our hearts;
and presently, impatient over its insistence, uneasy but allured, we
came to a decision, and entered upon the final stage of our journey.
Fifine was very quiet during that stage. She sat most of the time in
her corner by the window, looking out on the flowing landscape;
sometimes, when she thought I did not observe her, letting her eyes
rest on my face, mute, questioning, pathetic; occasionally rousing to
enthusiasm over some picturesque detail of the paysage--a leafy farm;
a town built on a gentle eminence, which just lifted it shapely above
the levels; a group of poplars, singularly effective in its place.
These poplars paid everywhere a largesse to the late season,
scattering their gold over a bereaved land, and so freely, that only
their royal crowns remained to them of all their profuse sovereignty.
One could read into them a score of dreamy fantasies--here a silver
stem bursting high overhead into a sparkling constellation, there a
misty coppice, streaming ashy purple, and ridged with a running fire
of stars. They thronged the subdued landscape, just emphasising with
their soft radiance its autumn melancholy. Nowhere did they figure so
beautiful as in the neighbourhood of Sens, which we passed at a short
distance at twilight. Mirrored in the placid waters of the Yonne, the
old town first appeared to us, lifting the velvet umber of its tower
and huddled buildings against a lemon sky. A poplar or two hung above
the river for foreground; there was hardly a ripple there to shake the
pictured rushes; it was as lovely an impression of antique peace as I
have ever encountered. Fifine, after we had passed it all, made a
little gesture to me, and I came and sat by her side, when she stole
her hand into mine. I thought I knew what was in her heart--something
emotional, a little piteous, the sense of a loveliness spent and of
doubts to come. I pressed the soft palm in reassurance.
And so at last--Paris. The benediction of the season remained with us
to the end. As we turned under the archway in the Rue de Fleurus, we
left behind us the memory of a quiet little moon rising over the
towers of Notre Dame.
Madame Crussol appeared to greet us as we passed the conciergerie.
“Ah! So you are back,” she said. “It is a time ill-chosen for those
who would seek Paris for its comfort and its safety. You had better
have remained with your savages in the south.”
Her manner was severe, if her utterance was cryptic. But I was
confident in her secret regard for me; and I believe she had always a
soft place in her heart for Fifine. Nevertheless I was startled for
the moment.
“What is all that?” I said; “and why and with what are we threatened,
ma bonne?”
And she told us.