Opposite No. 6 Rue Victor Hugo is a long black wall, and in the middle
of this wall an old-fashioned gas lantern was glowing red when Joyselle
and Brigit arrived.
The moon had risen, and mingling with the red of the gas made that part
of the narrow street almost as light as if it had been high noon.
"There is the house, ma Brigitte," murmured Joyselle, pressing her hand
close to his side. When she had left the inn arm-in-arm with him, she
had felt as though they must look perilously like a German bride and
groom, but there was in his old-fashioned bearing as he guided her
through the streets a kind of chivalrous courtesy that she liked, and
she began to feel like a princess being presented to his people by her
lord.
"There is their house. I gave it to them twenty-five years ago. It is
their palace, their country-place, their world, to my old people."
Through a half-door in the opposite wall the girl could just catch a
glimpse of the left side of the house. It was hung with trumpet flowers.
Beyond, a clearly defined square of moonlight showed her a smooth patch
of lawn, beyond which the side of a creeper-clad arbour blocked the
view.
"The dinner is to be in the garden; they are to sit in the arbour, and
there will be many narrow tables all over the lawn, which is rather
large behind the house. They are very much interested in it; all of us
will be there, and our children, and--theirs. I am old, ma Brigitte----"
His voice fell sadly as this idea occurred to him, and she pressed his
arm and smiled up at him, her face ruddy in the gaslight.
"You are young, my man; you will never grow old. And you will play at
the dinner? And you will play to me? I always know when you play to me."
"Yes, for it is always. You are good to me now, _bien-aimée_."
His gentleness was wonderfully appealing, as it always was to her. The
long respite from nerve-racking misunderstandings had allowed her to see
more clearly the real beauty of his faulty character, and a wave of
compunction came over her as she thought how little she, with her bad
qualities of jealousy, selfishness and cruelty, deserved this beautiful
love.
For she fully understood that only a deep, real love could so vanquish
the lower part of his nature as to let the nobler triumph as it had of
late.
"I adore you, my great man," she said, very low, and their eyes met.
Then they crossed the street and he, leaning over the closed half of the
door in the wall, opened it and they went in.
It was nine o'clock, and the old people had had their supper. Brigit who
had, thinking of their great age, rather expected to find them more or
less mummy-like, sitting in comfortable chairs tended by a middle-aged
relation, was somewhat amused to find them squabbling fiercely over a
game of dominoes, each with a glass of cider at hand.
"_Mon père--la voici_," announced Joyselle, with a kind of simple
pomposity eminently fitted to the occasion.
Old Joyselle finished his act of adding a domino to the long line before
him and then looked up. He was a rather small, bent old man, with
quantities of rough, curly grey hair and a petulant expression.
"Ugh!" he said rudely.
"Shake hands with him, Brigit," suggested Victor pulling his moustache
to suppress a smile. Brigit held out her hand.
"I am very glad to meet you," she said in French.
The old man stared. Then he smiled, showing one snow-white tooth. "_Tu
parles_," he murmured. Then he went back to his game.
The old woman, more polite, had risen, and was waiting her turn. She was
very tall and had a heavy moustache.
"They told me you were beautiful," she began courteously, whereupon the
old man interrupted, repeating her words but, by a change in emphasis,
casting derisive doubts on whoever "they" might be. "They _told_ me you
were _beautiful_."
Brigit burst out laughing, and leaning forward smiled at the speaker.
"Well--am I not beautiful?" she asked with an infectious chuckle of
sincere amusement.
But old Joyselle was a man of character, apparently, and not to be
beguiled.
"_Belle? Non, non. Pas ça. Mais_--Victor, _petit_, surely you can't be
going to marry a real lady?"
Joyselle flushed, and she knew his flush had to do only with his
father's lapse of memory, not his reference to her ladyhood.
"Not I, _mon père_. I married Félicité, you know. It is our boy who is
going to marry this--ugly lady."
His father shook his head. "Not ugly, _mon fils_." he declared solemnly,
"not ugly. Only _plain_."
This time Brigit did not laugh. Something in the old man's half-vacant
face touched her. He was Victor's father; he had held, as a little baby,
the man she loved; he had worked for him and helped to make him what he
was. Laying her hand on his, she smiled down at him.
"You are quite right," she said gently, "only plain. Will you show me
how to play dominoes?"
"He can't," retorted Madame Joyselle, eagerly, "he has forgotten, and,
besides, he cheats."
Joyselle walked to the window, his shoulders shaking, and before the old
man could retort, Théo came into the room carrying a lacquered tin tray
with a jug of cider and some glasses on it.
"Ah, you have come? _Grand-père, grand-mère_, what do you think of my
_fiancée_?"
But Brigit drew him away and sat down on the ingeniously uncomfortable
sofa with him.
"Fighting again, are they? Poor old dears, it really is quite dreadful.
You see, grandfather used to be a fearful tyrant, though he is so
little, and grandmother was deathly afraid of him until his health began
to fail. So now she is getting even with him. They adore each other,
however. Isn't the house quaint? Have you seen the garden?"