THE FEASTING OF THE CHARM
"There's that that would be thought upon,
I trow, beside the bride.
The business of the kitchen's great,
For it is fit that men should eat,
Nor was it there denied."
Sir John Suckling.
Crowded hours were to follow that quiet afternoon in the forest.
A morning or so afterwards Olwen darted out into the hall, where she had
caught a glimpse of the bride-to-be going past in a great hurry.
"Miss Walsh----!"
"Oh, Olwen," said Miss Walsh, stopping breathlessly. "Oh, I do want to
talk to you, but I haven't a moment. It's the lunch today, you know, the
_dejeuner intime_ for all his relations and friends. They've had the
cards----"
Olwen nodded; she had sent her "_faire part_" card home to Wales as a
curiosity.
"It's to be down in Madame Leroux's own sitting-room; she says better so
than having the party in the _salle_ after the hotel visitors have had
lunch," explained Miss Walsh, always breathless. "Oh, I feel I must go
down and see if I can help her, but it is so difficult to understand
when she will talk French so dreadfully fast----"
"Let me come too," entreated Olwen, eyes suddenly alight. "Let me help,
do! I can generally make out even her fast French."
"Very well--if _you_ ask her!"
Madame Leroux was talking faster French that morning than they had ever
heard from her before. They found her in the basement, a whole region of
the hotel that was unknown ground to Olwen, peopled by a tribe of
workers whose sallow faces she had never seen before, and who were
flying hither and thither on errands undreamt of on the upper floors.
Even so the stoke-hole of a liner is unthought about on its polished
decks.
The manageress was in the _appartement_ that adjoined the kitchen, a
domain smaller but pleasanter of aspect than any of the big rooms above,
and more comfortable, except for one narrow space that was neither
kitchen nor _appartement_. This space between the walls seemed to be a
sound magnifier of the rumbling service-lift, the whistles of
speaking-tubes, and the hissing and running of every water-pipe in the
place. The door into the huge French kitchen stood open, giving a
glimpse of marmites, burnished copper pans, crocks, and five-decker
cookers; of vegetables piled haystack high, of ramparts of yard-long
rolls, of twenty other kinds of provisions.
Beyond the kitchen a second door opened out into the _cour_, where
buckets clanked, a tap splashed, and the whistling of a knife-cleaning
machine could be heard. By yet another door Marie and Rosalie were
bringing in chairs collected from bedrooms, attics, landings, and any
other corner.
"May we both come in?" Miss Walsh asked timidly.
Madame Leroux turned.
"Ah! Enter always, Mademoiselle. It is not to all the world that I
permit it--but for the little demoiselle of M. the Professor, but yes,
but yes----To help? But certainly, if that gives her pleasure. One would
have said that she would have preferred to spend the fine morning with
M. le Capitaine in the forest, he with the one arm who admires her
already----" Madame's glance was as swift as the dart of a chameleon's
tongue after a fly.
She was already dressed for the day, her dark hair dragged up to the top
of her head in a fist-shaped knob, secured with combs, and her front
locks _frises_ above her mercilessly intelligent face. Over her
tightly-fitted gown of black _broche_ and _passementerie_, showing a fat
white V of neck, a velvet band and a pendant, she had passed an enormous
apron of blue-and-white check.
She was looking over her well-covered shoulder with eyes that were
everywhere at once, and giving orders in a voice that was as shrill as a
whipsaw and as quick as a mill-race.
"Hold! Prop that door open, Rosalie, instead of bumping it each time
with the good chair, little careless one; one would say a swing!" (She
took breath in a gasp.)
"And those oysters from Monsieur Paul; are they not yet arrived? Do not
open them immediately, as last time; and even so, see that you open me
but half of them in order that they may keep. And thou, Marcel, take me
that mat into the yard instead of brushing me the dust over the
vegetables!" (Gasps.) "_Bon dieu_, one would need twenty eyes----As
for these knives, Etienne, have you the intention to grind them to
powder rather than find other work? It is then not necessary that they
serve us for another day?" (Gasp.) "My faith!... Ah, Mees Ouall
she--Agathe----but no, it is not necessary that you help. Go, go and
make yourself beautiful for after the _dejeuner_, when you are presented
to the friends. Make yourself beautiful for Pierre, who shall mount up
afterwards to beg you to descend for a little half-hour, like a
princess!" (Gasp.) "_Eh bien_, if you hold to assisting me now, but not
in the kitchen, no, no; if you will have the goodness to dispose on the
table within the _serviettes_ that I have already placed in a heap. Also
the glasses; they are in those cupboards there; no, not there,
Mademoiselle, here, here, here. Arrange them all precisely as in
England, at your _chateau_, yes? It is that! It is perfect!" (Gasp.)
"And the little demoiselle of the Professor shall set out the cards with
the names----But no, no, no, no, no; she does not know the names nor
where they sit. Better to place these pots of cyclamen on the
window-sill, Mademoiselle, if you please. One would say real flowers,
would one not? But two francs." (Gasp.) "Fifty! It is true! _Ah, pas
ca_----" seeing Agatha Walsh, entirely at a loss, picking up from the
sofa-corner and unrolling a tricolor flag. "Not that. It should have
been interlaced with the other. I was desolated, but one could not
obtain in time, the Union Jacques. Flowers only, therefore. _Tiens_, I
have not placed a cloth over the safe----"
She spread over the iron cash-safe a cloth edged and inserted with the
lovely pillow-made lace of the neighbourhood, while her nimble French
tongue ran ceaselessly on.
Her niece-by-marriage-to-be, helped by Olwen, set to work with all the
good will in the world to lay the large round table. From the cupboard
drawers indicated by Madame's plump hands they brought a tablecloth, an
ornately embroidered table-centre, and napkins of the finest linen, all
wedded to that beautiful lace; from the cupboards they took old and
exquisite glass, and silver that could not have been bettered at the
Grange of Miss Walsh's youth. Olwen noticed that the old-fashioned
carved bread-cradle that swung from the ceiling had already been filled
with blossomed and berried boughs of the arbutus, patron plant of the
place. She thought as Mrs. Cartwright had thought, "I shall always think
of arbutus--and here."
The chairs, some of them rush-bottomed, others of carved gilt, were
ranged about the table; then Olwen and Agatha Walsh sped out into the
yard and returned with the knives that Etienne, the boy in the green
drugget apron, had at last polished to his satisfaction.
In the middle of the red-tiled kitchen Madame Leroux still stormed as
shrilly as though she alone of all excellent housewives possessed
worthless servants.
"Is it not enough that I myself must arise at half-past four today, and
it is that I must do _all_ myself, me, as well as to entertain the
friends and the relations of Monsieur, they who are eating their blood
with jealousy because he marries himself with an English lady of the
high nobility? And why are the boards not placed over the bowls of soup?
My faith, it is then that _I_ must work, _I_ must arrange, _I_ must
plan, _I_ must have the eyes everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, while
you let the fire die down, female idle ones who do nothing but regard
with open mouths and talk in corners and try to eat me the _glaces_
fruits out of the dishes?" (Gasp for breath.) "Take you these
immediately, Marie Claire----" she waved towards a score of trussed
chickens that looked like a frieze of poultry--"and set them in the
pans. And pose you those lids so that the pottage may simmer as it
must." She pointed to the vast arched fireplace with the grid running
from one end to the other. "_Mon Dieu_, if this boy here had as many
legs as an octopus he could not more expressly place them in my way.
That he does at each moment! Is it that I have sent my own children out
to receive _les amis_ even at Arcachon, to be encumbered by thee? The
children? They will feast out here in the yard with the children of the
notary and the little cousins; I do not wish that they are the whole
time with the grown ones when one talks----"
And she bustled out into the _cour_ to look to the long trestled table
there which had been surrounded by a still further variety of chairs.
It was here that Miss Walsh in her halting French asked where was
Gustave, where was Monsieur Leroux?
"The men?" Madame gabbled. "Ah, for that, where would they be?
Invisibles, so long as there is work to be done," with a half-indulgent
laugh. "You will see also, in good time, you English ladies, that which
the _service militaire_ does for the men! They make their service. They
return. They put themselves at their ease. Behold, they are required to
do nothing further for the rest of their life. It is we, Mesdemoiselles,
we who are accustomed to it; we other French wives. You also, you will
see! Ah, hold, the oysters! Now, Etienne, you will dust me once again
the seats of all these chairs, I say to you, and with a dry duster, I
pray you, not a wet one; dry, dry, dry, dry, dry----"
In this exalting hubbub did Olwen pass the whole morning with her friend
until the sallow little Italian waiter came down to announce that
_dejeuner_ was served.
They went up. How cool and quiet, it struck them, were those upper
reaches of the hotel....
But as they were seeking their places a quick "Oh, come and look!" from
Miss Walsh brought Olwen running to the side window. "Oh, here are the
people----"
The procession of the French _invites_ was coming down the road from the
little tramway terminus. It was solemnly headed by the three little
pigtailed Leroux girls, each holding by the hand another child, bare
from mid-thigh to ankle, and wearing an adaptation of the sailor suit.
After them, in a broken line of twos and ones and threes, came the
grown-up people.
First and most resplendent of them appeared the individual whom Olwen
rightly guessed to be the _notaire_ from Bordeaux. He wore a white
bowler hat, a white waistcoat, and he carried in his hands, which he
held well out in front of him, a large bouquet tied with tricolour
streamers and the Union Jacques which Madame Leroux had desired, and he
overshadowed even his rotund _endimanchee_ wife in her purple costume
and forward raking hat, who bobbed in his wake. She was escorted by
Monsieur Leroux. Next came Monsieur Popinot, the clerk from the
passports office, all in black, but carrying Madame Popinot's pink
parasol. She, a plump and pretty little woman, carried a year-old baby
in a corolla of lace.
Then came a sister of Madame Leroux, as dark, as mercilessly intelligent
as the manageress herself, talking eagerly to Pierre Tronchet, effective
in his blue and red.
Another _artilleriste_ on leave, evidently a comrade from the regiment,
walked a pace or so behind them, between two silent young girls; then a
trio of stout, bearded old men gesticulating freely, then a lady in
another forward raking hat, then a party wearing deepest mourning, but
wreathed in smiles, then others ... then again others.... Tronchets,
Leroux, ramifications of both families, relatives, friends, and those
whom it was intended to dazzle....
Olwen, gazing upon this _cortege_, suppressed a wish to think aloud of a
rhyme of her childhood:
"The animals went in four by four,
Hurray, Hurray!
The animals went in four by four
And the big hippopotamus stuck in the door."
This last line, she considered, might almost have applied to several of
the _invites_!
All of them, as they approached the hotel, stiffened, pulled themselves
together as if they were going past the saluting point of a review,
assumed photographically unnatural expressions, and walked delicately;
then they seemed to deflate and hurry as they slipped past the corner to
the back entrance to the premises.
"Oh, I'm not a bit hungry," sighed the agitated Miss Walsh as she turned
from the window and sat down next to Olwen at the long table. The
_dejeuner_ was as perfectly cooked and served as if no subterranean
banquet had been in preparation. "Oh, fancy having to be 'shown' to a
host of people! Oh, I can't help feeling almost glad that Gustave's
father and mother aren't alive! If they had been, you know, he would
have had to ask their consent to marry me, even though he is
thirty-eight. Oh, it is such a mercy that Madame didn't want me to sit
through the whole of lunch."
"Much the best plan!" agreed Mrs. Cartwright from her side of the table.
"Oh, yes; I don't appear till they have to drink my health--oh, but I am
so nervous! And do you think I look all right in this, Mrs.
Cartwright?... honestly?"
She wore an expensive new dress of prune-coloured _glace_ silk,
ornamented with a kind of lace bib and with rows and rows of little
crimson buttons that fastened nothing. Both Mrs. Cartwright and Olwen
fibbed valiantly, and had their reward. The loveliest frock in Paris
could not have been more becoming to Agatha Walsh than her flush of
pleasure.
* * * * *
That _dejeuner_ downstairs was supposed to be _intime_ and private; but
the distant sounds of it were already becoming audible to the more
public part of the hotel.
First a soft but thunderous drumming as of applause upon the table-top
was heard.
Then a skirl of laughter, the piercingness of which, near to, could only
be guessed at.
Then, booming fragments of a voice that rose above others just as an
occasional column of foam spouted higher than those other Biscay
rollers on the reef. Then an uninterrupted booming.... Apparently a
speech was in progress.
An involuntary and smiling silence seemed to fall upon the luncheon
parties in the _salle_ above, almost as if they would have felt it
impolite to talk through what was going on below. Truly, Miss Walsh was
making the hotel one that day--the hotel to which she had only come
because of that hat-pin stuck in a guide-book and pricking at random a
name on a page!
Then suddenly, the door of the _salle a manger_ opened. The blue-and-red
apparition of Sergeant Tronchet stood to attention just inside it:
darkly flushed, beaming, silent.
(It may here be said that none of the visitors ever had known this
swarthy well-set-up French soldier anything but silent. All that most of
them had ever heard of his voice had been the murmured "Madame ...
Mademoiselle ... Messieurs ..." that accompanied his heel-clicking
bows. Only Miss Walsh had ever had any conversation with him. But had
not this been to some purpose?)
"Oh, he's come to fetch me," she exclaimed now in a voice that failed.
"Good-bye, Olwen dear," she added, as if she never expected to come back
alive. "I shall see you and Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor at
tea-time----you are all coming to _my_ tea, aren't you?" she finished
appealingly.
Then she disappeared, with her peacock-proud _fiance_.
* * * * *
"The day has only just begun, my dear child!" declared Mrs. Cartwright
to Olwen, rising. "Come to my room and take a rest before _we_ come on
in the next act. Run up, will you? I'll follow."
Olwen ran up; glad of a breathing space.
That party, three floors and five or six rooms away, did still dominate
the whole hotel! She was glad to lie back in Mrs. Cartwright's
basket-chair and to draw a long breath. She had nothing to do that
afternoon, she thanked goodness....
But Mrs. Cartwright, as soon as she came in, drew a chair up to her
writing-table and began to make notes, chuckling from time to time.
"Tell me when the people begin to go," she begged Olwen. "I had to make
an errand about the tea, and take a peep in just now, I couldn't miss
it.... My dear! The heat! And the din down there! Poor Miss Walsh! How
Madame crammed them all in I don't know.... And Monsieur Leroux with his
black domino beard and his pouchy eyes, _and_ all those women exactly
the same height whether they sit down or stand up...."
She was scribbling sketches of them all to send to her boys....
The noise downstairs rose to sounds of confused singing--_Le Chanson des
Baisers_, then fell at last.
"I think they're all going away now," said Olwen from the balconied
window, and Mrs. Cartwright ran to join her and to watch the
homeward-faring procession filing by.
First the notary, his white bowler hat a little dinted, appeared round
the corner of the hotel. He was arm in arm with Monsieur Popinot, who
still carried his wife's pink parasol, and who seemed to have an idea
of putting it up over the pair of them as they went by the windows, but
was restrained by a gesture, suppressed but fierce, from the notary. His
purple-clad wife hustled the children ahead of her; the party in
mourning were giggling joyously together, then assumed a gravity.
With the same effect of pompously pulling themselves together with which
they had passed the front of the hotel, they all repassed it now.
Even as they turned their backs upon it, the strain was seen to relax
again. Up went the pink parasol in the distance.
"Ah, there; there goes Gustave's comrade the _artilleriste_," commented
Mrs. Cartwright. "First at the fight--and last at the feast; yes, he's
the last."
The _artilleriste_ swaggered delightfully, turning to wave a farewell,
and obviously caring little whether it were to the front of the hotel or
the back....
And then, about seventy yards behind the last of these revellers there
went by two other figures.
They were those of Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas, who had been making
themselves scarce for the day.
And perhaps it was because Olwen was busy with her own effort not to
look at one of them that she did not notice Mrs. Cartwright's swift
glance at the other; the flying boy.
As if he felt that glance upon him, Jack Awdas looked up and put a hand
to his cap; a smile rippling all over his face.
Olwen would not have read the purpose behind the smile.