At Saint-Graal André was waiting to lunch with him.
'When we were children,' Paul wrote in a letter to Mrs Winchfield,
'André, our gardener's son, and I were as intimate as brothers, he
being the only companion of my sex and age the neighbourhood afforded.
But now, after a separation of twenty years, André, who has become our
curé, insists upon treating me with distance. He won't waive the fact
that I am the lord of the manor, and calls me relentlessly Monsieur.
I've done everything to entice him to unbend, but his backbone is of
granite. From the merriest of mischief-loving youngsters, he has
hardened into the solemnest of square-toes, with _such_ a long
upper-lip, and manners as stiff as the stuff of his awful best
cassock, which he always buckles on prior to paying me a visit.
Whatever is a poor young man to do? At our first meeting, after my
arrival, I fell upon his neck, and thee-and-thou'd him, as of old
time; he repulsed me with a _vous_ italicised. At last I demanded
reason. "Why _will_ you treat me with this inexorable respect? What
have I done to deserve it? What can I do to forfeit it?" _Il devint
cramoisi_ (in the traditional phrase) and stared.--This is what it is
to come back to the home of your infancy.'
André, in his awful best cassock, was waiting on the terrace. It was
on the terrace that Paul had ordered luncheon to be served. The
terrace at Saint-Graal is a very jolly place. It stretches the whole
length of the southern façade of the house, and is generously broad.
It is paved with great lozenge-shaped slabs of marble, stained in
delicate pinks and greys with lichens; and a marble balustrade
borders it, overgrown, the columns half uprooted and twisted from the
perpendicular, by an aged wistaria-vine, with a trunk as stout as a
tree's. Seated there, one can look off over miles of richly-timbered
country, dotted with white-walled villages, and traversed by the Nive
and the Adour, to the wry masses of the Pyrenees, purple curtains
hiding Spain.
Here, under an awning, the table was set, gay with white linen and
glistening glass and silver, a centrepiece of flowers and jugs of red
and yellow wine. The wistaria was in blossom, a world of colour and
fragrance, shaken at odd moments by the swift dartings of innumerable
lizards. The sun shone hot and clear; the still air, as you touched
it, felt like velvet.
'Oh, what a heavenly place, what a heavenly day,' cried Paul; 'it only
needs a woman.' And then, meeting André's eye, he caught himself up,
with a gesture of contrition. 'I beg a thousand pardons. I forgot your
cloth. If you,' he added, 'would only forget it too, what larks we
might have together. _Allons, à table_.'
And they sat down.
If Paul had sincerely wished to forfeit André's respect, he could
scarcely have employed more efficacious means to do so, than his
speech and conduct throughout the meal that followed. You know how
flippant, how 'fly-away,' he can be when the mood seizes him, how
wholeheartedly he can play the fool. To-day he really behaved
outrageously; and, since the priest maintained a straight countenance,
I think the wonder is that he didn't excommunicate him.
'I remember you were a teetotaller, André, when you were young,' his
host began, pushing a decanter towards him.
'That, monsieur, was because my mother wished it, and my father was a
drunkard,' André answered bluntly. 'Since my father's death, I have
taken wine in moderation.' He filled his glass.
'I remember once I cooked some chestnuts over a spirit-stove, and you
refused to touch them, on the ground that they were alcoholic.'
'That would have been from a confusion of thought,' the curé
explained, with never a smile.
But it was better to err on the side of scrupulosity than on that of
self-indulgence.'
'Ah, that depends. That depends on whether the pleasure you got from
your renunciation equalled that you might have got from the
chestnuts.'
'You're preaching pure Paganism.'
'Oh, I'm not denying I'm a Pagan--in my amateurish way. Let me give
you some asparagus. Do you think a man can be saved who smokes
cigarettes between the courses?'
'Saved?' questioned André. 'What have cigarettes to do with a man's
salvation?'
'It's a habit I learned in Russia. I feared it might relate itself in
some way to the Schism.' And he lit a cigarette. 'I'm always a rigid
Catholic when I'm in France.'
'And when you're in England?'
'Oh, one goes in for local colour, for picturesqueness, don't you
know. The Church of England's charmingly overgrown with ivy. And
besides, they're going to disestablish it. One must make the most of
it while it lasts. Tell me--why can you never get decent _brioches_
except in Catholic countries?'
'Is that a fact?'
'I swear it.'
'It's very singular,' said André.
'It's only one of the many odd things a fellow learns from
travel.--Hush! Wait a moment.'
He rose hastily, and made a dash with his hand at the tail of a
lizard, that was hanging temptingly out from a bunch of wistaria
leaves. But the lizard was too quick for him. With a whisk, it had
disappeared. He sank back into his chair, sighing. 'It's always like
that. They'll never keep still long enough to let me catch them.
What's the use of a university education and a cosmopolitan culture,
if you can't catch lizards? Do you think they have eyes in the backs
of their heads?'
André stared.
'Oh, I see. You think I'm frivolous,' Paul said plaintively. 'But you
ought to have seen me an hour or two ago.'