At this dramatic moment both the young people sprang protesting to their feet.
“What are you talking about? We’re going to Brantôme,” cried Corinna, gripping the lapels of his coat.
“Of course we are,” exclaimed Martin, scared at the prospect of losing the inspired counsellor.
“Then why aren’t you more enthusiastic?” asked Fortinbras.
“But we are enthusiastic,” Corinna declared.
“We’ll start to-morrow,” said Martin.
“At six o’clock in the morning,” said Corinna.
“At five, if you like,” said Martin.
Fortinbras embraced them both in a capacious smile, as he deliberately repocketed the coins.
“That is well, my children. But don’t do too many unaccustomed things at once. In the Dordogne you can rise at five—with enjoyment and impunity. In Paris, your meeting at that hour would be fraught with mutual antipathy, and you would not find a shop open where you could hire or buy your bicycles.”
“I’ve got one,” said Corinna.
“So have I,” said Martin; “but it’s in London.”
Fortinbras extracted from his person a dim, chainless watch.
“It is now a quarter past one. Time for honest folk to be abed. Meet me here at eleven o’clock to-morrow, booted and spurred, with but a scrip at the back of your bicycles, and I will hand you letters to Félise and the poetic and philosophic Bigourdin, and now,” said he, “with your permission, I will ring for Auguste.”
Auguste appeared and Martin, waving aside the protests of Corinna, paid the modest bill. In the airless street Fortinbras bade them an impressive good night and disappeared in the byways of the sultry city. Martin accompanied Corinna to the gaunt neighbouring building wherein her eyrie was situate. Both were tongue-tied, shy, embarrassed by the prospect of the intimate adventure to which they had pledged themselves. When the great door, swung open by the hidden concierge, at Corinna’s ring, invited her entrance, they shook hands perfunctorily.
“At a quarter to eleven,” said Martin.
“I shall be ready,” said Corinna.
CHAPTER III
THEbicycle journey of two young people through a mere three hundred miles of France is, on the face of it, an Odyssey of no importance. The only interest that could attach itself to such a humdrum affair would centre in the development of tender feelings reciprocated or otherwise in the breasts of both or one of the young people. But when the two of them proceed dustily and unemotionally along the endless, straight, poplar-bordered roads, with the heart of each at the end of the day as untroubled by the other as at the beginning, a detailed account of their wanderings would resolve itself into a commonplace itinerary.
“My children,” said Fortinbras, when, after having lunched with them at the Petit Cornichon and given them letters of introduction and his blessing, he had accompanied them to the pavement whence they were preparing to start, “I advise you, until you reach Brantôme to call yourself brother and sister, so that your idyllic companionship shall not be misinterpreted.”
“Pooh!”—or some such vocable of scorn—Corinna remarked. “We’re not in narrow-minded England.”
“In narrow-minded England,” Fortinbras replied, “without a wedding ring, and without the confessed brother-and-sisterly relation, inns would close their virtuous doors against you. In France, where a pair of lovers is universally regarded as an object of romantic interest, innkeepers would confuse you with zealous attentions. Thus in either country, though for opposite reasons, you would be bound to encounter impossible embarrassment.”
“I don’t think there would be any danger of that,” laughed Corinna lightly, “unless Martin went mad. But perhaps it would be just as well to play the comedy. I’ll stick up my cheek to be kissed every night in the presence of the landlady. ‘Bon soir, mon frère.’—Do you think you can go through the performance, Martin?”
Martin, very uncomfortable, already experiencing at the suggestion of misconstrued relations, the embarrassment foreshadowed by Fortinbras, flushed deeply and took refuge in an examination of his bicycle. The celibate dreamer was shocked by her cool bravado. Since the episode of Gwendoline he had lived remote from the opposite sex; the only woman he had known intimately was his mother and from that knowledge he had formed the profound conviction that women were entirely futile and utterly holy. Corinna kept on knocking this conviction endwise. She made hay, not to say chaos, with his theory of woman. He felt himself on the verge of a fog-filled abysm of knowledge. There she stood, a foot or two away—he scarce dared glance at her—erect, clear-eyed, the least futile person in the world, treating a suggestion the most disconcerting and appalling to maidenhood with the unholiest mockery, and coolly proposing that, in order to give themselves an air of innocence, they should contract the habit of a nightly embrace.
“I’ll do anything,” said he, “to prevent disagreeableness arising.”
Corinna laughed, and, after final farewells, they rode away down the baking little street leaving Fortinbras watching them wistfully until they had disappeared. And he remained a long time following in his thoughts the pair whom he had despatched upon their unsentimental journey. How young they were, how malleable, how agape for hope like young thrushes for worms, how attractive in their respective ways, how careless of sunstroke! If only he could have escaped with them from this sweltering Paris to the cool shadow of the Dordogne rocks and the welcome of a young girl’s eyes. What a hopeless mess and muddle was life. He sighed and mopped his forehead, and then a hand touched his arm. He turned and saw the careworn face of Madame Gaussart, the fat wife of a neighbouring print-seller.
“Monsieur Fortinbras, it is only you in this city of misfortune that can give me advice. My husband left me the day before yesterday and has not returned. I am in despair. I have been weeping ever since. I weep now——” she did, copiously regardless of the gaze of the street. “Tell me what to do, my good Monsieur Fortinbras, you whom they call theMarchand de Bonheur. See—I have your little honorarium.”
She held out the five-franc piece. Fortinbras slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
“At your service, madame,” said he, with a sigh. “Doubtless I shall be able to restore to you a fallacious semblance of conjugal felicity.”
“I was sure of it,” said the lady already comforted. “If you would deign to enter the shop, Monsieur.”
Fortinbras followed her, and for a while lost his envy of Martin and Corinna in patient and ironic consideration of the naughtiness of Monsieur Gaussart.
This first stage out of Paris was the only time when the wanderers braved the midday heat of the golden August. They took counsel together in an earwiggy arbour outside Versailles, where they quenched their thirst with cider. They were in no hurry to reach their destination. A few hours in the early morning—they could start at six—and an hour or two in the cool of the evening would suffice. The remainder of the day would be devoted to repose. . . .
“And churches and cathedrals,” added Martin.
“You have a frolicsome idea of a holiday jaunt,” said Corinna.
“What else can we do?”
“Eat lotus,” said Corinna. “Forget that there ever were such places as Paris or London or Wendlebury.”
“I don’t think Chartres would remind you of one of them,” said Martin. “I’ve dreamed of Chartres ever since I read ‘La Cathédrale’ by Huysmans.”
“You’re what they call an earnest soul,” remarked Corinna. “All the way here I’ve never stopped wondering why I’ve come with you on this insane pilgrimage to nowhere.”
“I’ve been wondering the same myself,” said Martin.
As he had lain awake most of the night and therefore risen late, the occupations of the morning involving the selection and hire of a bicycle, consultation with the concierge of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse with regard to luggage being forwarded, the changing of his money into French banknotes and gold, and various small purchases, had left him little time for reflection. It was only when he found himself pedalling perspiringly by the side of this comparatively unknown and startling young woman, who was to be his intimate companion for heaven knew how long, that he began to think.Qu’allait il faire dans cette galère?It was comforting to know that Corinna asked herself the same question.
“That old humbug Fortinbras must have put a spell upon us,” she continued, without commenting on Martin’s lack of gallantry. “He sort of envelops one in such a mist of words uttered in that musical voice of his and he looks so inspired with benevolent wisdom that one loses one’s common sense. The old wretch can persuade anybody to do anything. He once inveigled a girl—an art student—into becoming a nun.”
Martin’s Protestant antagonism was aroused. He expressed himself heatedly. He saw nothing but reprehensibility in the action of Fortinbras. Corinna examined her well-trimmed fingernails.
“It was a question of Saint Clothilde—that I think was the order—or Saint Lazare. Some girls are like that.”
“Saint Lazare?”
“Don’t you know anything?” she sighed. “What’s the good of being decently epigrammatic? Saint Lazare is the final destination of a certain temperament unsupported by good looks or money. It’s the woman’s prison of Paris.”
“Oh!” said Martin.
“How he did it I don’t know, but he saved her body and soul. And now she’s the happiest creature in the world. I had a letter from her only the other day urging me to go over to Rome and take the vows——”
“I hope you’re not thinking of it,” said Martin.
“I’m in no danger of Saint Lazare,” replied Corinna drily.
There was a long silence. In the leafy arbour screened from the dust and glare of the highway there prevailed a drowsy peace. Only one of the dozen other green blistered wooden tables was occupied—and that by a blue-bloused workman and his wife and baby, all temperately refreshing themselves with harmless liquid, the last from nature’s fount itself. The landlord, obese, unshaven and alpaca-jacketed, read thePetit Journalat the threshold of the café of which the arboured terrace was but a summer adjunct. A mangy mongrel lying at his feet snapped spasmodically at flies. A couple of tow-headed urchins hung by the arched entrance, low-class Peris at the gates of a dilapidated Paradise.
“Who is Fortinbras?” Martin asked.
Corinna shrugged her dainty shoulders. She did not know. Rumour had it—and for rumour she could not vouchsafe—that he was an English solicitor struck off the rolls. With French law at any rate he was familiar. He had the Code Napoléon at his finger-ends. In spite of the sober black clothes and white tie of the French attorney which he affected, he certainly possessed no French qualifications which would have enabled him to set up a regularcabinet d’avouéand earn a professional livelihood. Nor did he presume to step within theavoué’sjealously guarded sphere. But his opinion on legal points was so sound, and his fee so moderate, that many consulted him in preference to an orthodox practitioner. That was all that Corinna knew of him in his legal aspect. The rest of his queer practice consisted in advising in all manner of complications. He arbitrated in disputes between man and man, woman and woman, lover and mistress, husband and wife, parent and child. He diverted the debtor from the path to bankruptcy. He rescued youths and maidens from disastrous nymphs and fauns. He hushed up scandal. Meanwhile his private life and even his address remained unknown. Twice a day he went the round of the cafés and restaurants of thequartier, so that those in need of his assistance had but to wait at their respective taverns in order to see him—for he appeared with the inevitability of the sun in its course.
“There are all kinds of parasitical people,” said Corinna, “who try to sponge on students for drinks and meals and money—but Fortinbras isn’t that kind. Now and again, but not often, he will accept an invitation to lunch or dinner—and then it’s always for the purpose of discussing business. Whether it’s his cunning or his honesty I don’t know—but nobody’s afraid of him. That’s his great asset. You’re absolutely certain sure that he won’t stick you for anything. Consequently anybody in trouble or difficulty goes to him confident that his five francs consultation fee is the end of the financial side of the matter and that he will concentrate his whole mind and soul on the case. He’s an odd devil.”
“The most remarkable man I’ve ever met,” said Martin.
“You’ve not met many,” said Corinna.
“I don’t know——” replied Martin reflectively. “I once came across a prize-fighter—a remarkable chap—in the bar-parlour of the pub at the corner of our street who was afterwards hanged for murdering his wife, and I once met a member of Parliament, another remarkable man—I forget his name now—and then of course there was Cyrus Margett.”
“But none of them is in it with Fortinbras,” Corinna smiled with ironic indulgence.
“None,” said Martin, “had his peculiar magnetic quality. Not even the member of Parliament. But,” he continued after a pause, “is that all that is known of him? He seems to be a very mysterious person.”
“I shouldn’t mind betting you,” said Corinna, “that you and I are the only people in Paris who are aware of his daughter in Brantôme.”
“Why should he single us out for such a confidence?” asked Martin. “He said last night that he was giving us a bit of his heart because we were good children—it was quite touching—but why should we be the only ones to have a bit of his heart?”
“Would you like to know?” asked Corinna, meeting his eyes full.
“I should.”
“He told me before you turned up at the Petit Cornichon, this morning, that you interested him as a sort of celestial freak.”
“I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not,” replied Martin, pausing in the act of rolling a cigarette. “It’s tantamount to calling me an infernal ass.”
At this show of spirit the girl swiftly changed her tone.
“You may take it from me that Fortinbras doesn’t give a bit of his heart to infernal asses. If I had gone to him, on my own, he would never—you heard him—he would never have touched on ‘things precious to him.’ It’s for your sake, not mine.”
“But why?”
“Because he’s fed up with the likes of me,” said Corinna, with sudden bitterness. “There are hundreds and thousands of us.”
Martin knitted his brow. “I don’t understand.”
“Better not try,” she said. “Let us pay for the cider and get on.”
So they paid and went on and halted at the townlet of Rambouillet, where as Monsieur and Mademoiselle Overshaw, they engaged rooms at the most modest of terms. And to Martin’s infinite relief Corinna did not summon him to kiss her cheek in the presence of the landlady, before they retired for the night. He went to bed comforted by the thought that Corinna’s bark was worse than her bite.
I have done my best to tell you that this was an unsentimental journey.
So day after day they sped their innocent course, resting by night at tiny places where haughty automobiles halted not. They had but sixty pounds to their joint fortune, and it behoved them not to dissipate it in unwonted luxury. Through Chartres they went, and Corinna quite as eagerly as Martin drank in deep draughts of its Gothic mystery and its splendour of stained glass; through Châteaudun with its grim old castle; through Vendôme with the flaming west front of its cathedral; through Tours in the neighbourhood of which they lingered many days, seeing in familiar intimacy things of which they had but dreamed before—Chinon, Loches, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, perhaps the most delicate of all the châteaux of the Loire. And following the counsel of a sage Fortinbras they went but a few kilometres out of their way and visited Richelieu, the fascinating town known only to the wanderer, himself judicious or judiciously advised, that was built by the great Cardinal outside his palace gates for the accommodation of his court; and there it remains now untouched by time, priceless jewel of the art of Louis Treize, with its walls and gates and church and market square and stately central thoroughfare ofhôtelsfor the nobles, each having its mansard roof andporte-cochèregiving entrance to court and garden; and there it remains dozing in prosperity, for around it spread the vineyards which supply brandy to the wide, wide world.
It was here that Martin, sitting with Corinna on a blistered bench beneath a plane tree in the little market-place, said for the first time:
“I don’t seem to care whether I ever see England again.”
“What about getting another billet?” asked Corinna.
“England and billets are synonymous terms. The further I go the less important does it appear that I should get one. At any rate the more loathsome is the prospect of a return to slavery.”
“Don’t let us talk of it,” she said, fanning herself with her hat. “The mere thought of going back turns the sun grey. Let us imagine we’re just going on and on for ever and ever.”
“I’ve been doing so in a general way,” he replied. “I’ve been living in a sort of intoxication; but now and then I wake up and have a lucid interval. And then I feel that by not sitting on the doorstep of scholastic agents I’m doing something wrong, something almost immoral—and it gives me an unholy thrill of delight.”
“When I was a small child,” said Corinna, “I used to take the Ten Commandments one by one and secretly break them, just to see what would happen. Some I didn’t know how to break—the seventh for instance, which worried me—and others referring to stealing and murder were rather too stiff propositions. But I chipped out with a nail on a tile a little graven image and I bowed down and worshipped it in great excitement; and as father used to tell us that the third commandment included all kinds of swearing, I used to bend over an old well we had in the garden and whisper ‘Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn,’ until the awful joy of it made my flesh creep. I think, Martin, you can’t be more than ten years old.”
“Why do you spoil a bit of sympathetic comprehension by that last remark?” he asked.
“Why do you jib at truth?” she retorted.
“Truth?”
“Aren’t you like a child revelling in naughtiness—naughtiness just for the sake of being naughty?”
“Perhaps I am,” said he. “But why do you mock at me for it?”
“I don’t think I’m mocking,” she answered more seriously. “When I said you were only ten years old I meant to be rather affectionate. I seem to be ever so old in experience, and you never to have grown up. You’re so refreshing after all these people I’ve been mixed up with—mostly lots younger really than you—who have plumbed the depths of human knowledge and have fished up the dregs and holding them out in their hands say, ‘See what it all comes to!’ I’m dead sick of them. So to consort, as I’ve been doing, with an ingenuous mind like yours, is a real pleasure.”
Martin rose from his seat and a tortoiseshell cat, the only other denizen of the market-place, startled from intimate ablutions, gazed at him, still poising a forward thrown hind leg.
“My dear Corinna,” said he, “I would beg you to believe that I’m not so damned ingenuous as all that!”
For reply Corinna laughed out loud, whereupon the cat fled. She rose too.
“Let us look at the church and cool this heat of controversy.”
So they visited the Louis XIII church, and continued their journey. And the idle days passed and nothing happened of any importance. They talked a vast deal and now and then wrangled. After his sturdy declaration at Richelieu, Martin resented her gibes at his ingenuousness. He felt that it was incumbent on him to play the man. At first Corinna had taken command of their tour, ordaining routes and making contracts with innkeepers. These functions he now usurped; the former to advantage, for he discovered that Corinna’s splendid misreading of maps had led them devious and unprofitable courses; the latter to the disgusted remonstrance of Corinna, who found the charges preposterously increased.
“I don’t care,” said Martin. “I don’t mind your treating me as a brother, but I’m not going to be treated as your little brother.”
In the freedom and adventure of their unremarkable pilgrimage, he had begun to develop, to lose the fear of her ironical tongue, to crave some sort of self-assertion, if not of self-expression. He also discovered in her certain little feminine frailties which flatteringly aroused his masculine sense of superiority. Once they were overtaken by a thunderstorm and in the cowshed to which they had raced for shelter, she sat fear-stricken, holding hands to ears at every clap, while Martin, hands in pockets, stood serene at the doorway interested in the play of the lightning. What was there to be afraid of? Far more dangerous to cross London or Paris streets or to take a railway journey. Her unreasoning terror was woman’s weakness, a mere matter of nerves. He would be indulgent; so turning from the door, he put his water-proof cape over her shoulders as she was feeling cold, and the humility with which she accepted his services afforded him considerable gratification. Of course, when the sun came out, she carried her head high and soon found occasion for a gibe; but Martin rode on unheeding. These were situations in which he was master.
Once, also, in order to avoid a drove of steers emerging from a farm-yard gate, she had swerved violently into a ditch and twisted her ankle. As she could neither walk nor ride, he picked her up in his arms.
“I’ll take you to the farm house.”
“You can’t possibly carry me,” she protested.
“I’ll soon show you,” said Martin, and he carried her. And although she was none too light and his muscles strained beneath her weight, he rejoiced in her surprised appreciation of his man’s strength.
But half way she railed, white lipped: “I suppose you’re quite certain now you’re my big brother.”
“Perfectly certain,” said Martin.
And then he felt her grip around his neck relax and her body weigh dead in his arms and he saw that she had fainted from the pain.
Leaving her in the care of the kind farm people, he went to retrieve the abandoned bicycles and reflected on the occurrence. In the first place he would not have lost his head on encountering a set of harmless steers; secondly, had he accidentally twisted his ankle, Corinna could not have carried him; thirdly he would not have fainted; fourthly, mocking as her last words had been, she had confessed her inferiority; all of which was most comforting to his self-esteem.
Then, some time afterwards, when the farmer put her into a broken-down equipage covered with a vast hood and drawn by a gaunt horse, rustily caparisoned, in order to drive her to the nearest inn some five kilometres distant, Martin superintended the arrangements, leaving Corinna not a word to say. He rode, a mounted constable, by her side, and on arriving at the inn carried her up to her room and talked with much authority.
Then, having passed through Poitiers and Ruffec, they came, three weeks after their start from Paris, to Angoulême, daintiest of cities, perched on its bastioned rocks above the Charente. And here, as it was the penultimate stage of their journey, they sojourned a few days.
They stood on the shady rampart and gazed over the red-roofed houses embowered in greenery at the great plain golden in harvest and drenched in sunshine, and sighed.
“I dread Brantôme,” said Corinna. “It marks something definite. Hitherto we have been going along vaguely, in a sort of stupefied dream. At Brantôme we’ll have to think.”
“I’ve no doubt it will do us good,” said Martin.
“I fail to see it,” said Corinna. “We’ll just have the same old worry over again.”
“I’m not so sure,” Martin answered. “In the first place we’re not quite the same people as we were three weeks ago——”
“Rubbish,” said Corinna.
“I’m not the same person at any rate.”
She laughed. “Because you give yourself airs nowadays?”
“Even my giving myself airs,” he replied soberly, “denotes a change. But it’s deeper than that—it’s difficult to explain. I feel I have a grip on myself I hadn’t before,—and also an intensity of delight in things I never had before. The first half hour or so of our rides in the early dewy mornings, our roughdéjeunersoutside the little cafés, the long, drowsy afternoons under the trees, watching the lazy life of the road—the wine wagons and the bullock carts and the sunburnt men and women—and the brown, dusty children with their goats—and the quiet evenings under the stars when we have either sat alone saying nothing or else talked to thepatronof theaubergeand listened to his simple philosophy of life. And then to sleep drunk with air and sunshine between the clean coarse sheets—to sleep like a dog until the scurry of the house wakes you at dawn—I don’t know,” he fetched up lamely. “It has been a thrill, morning, noon and night—and my life before this was remarkably devoid of thrills. Of course,” he added after a slight pause, “you have had a good deal to do with it.”
“Je te remercie infiniment, mon frère,” said Corinna. “That is as much as to say I’ve not been a too dull companion.”
“You’ve been a delightful companion,” he cried boyishly. “I had no idea a girl could be so—so——” He sought for a word with his fingers.
Her eyes smiled on him and lips shewed ever so delicate a curl of irony.
“So what?”
“So companionable,” said he.
She laughed again. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“So sensible,” said Martin.
“When a man calls a girl sensible, do you know what he means? He means that she doesn’t expect him to fall in love with her. Now you haven’t fallen in love with me, have you?”
Martin from his lolling position on the parapet sprang erect. “I should never dream of such a thing!”
She laughed loud and grasped the lapels of his jacket. “Oh, Martin!” she cried, “you’re a gem, a rare jewel. You haven’t changed one little bit. And for Heaven’s sake don’t change!”
“If you mean that I haven’t turned from a gentleman into a cad, then I haven’t changed,” said Martin freeing himself, “and I’m glad of it.”
She tossed her head and the laughter died from her face. “I don’t see how you would be a cad to have fallen in love with a girl who is neither unattractive nor a fool, and has been your sole companion from morning to night for three weeks. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have done it.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Martin. “I have a higher estimate of the honour of my fellow-men.”
“If that’s your opinion of me——” she said, and turning swiftly walked away. Martin overtook her.
“Do you want me to fall in love with you?” he asked.
She halted for a second and stamped her foot. “No. Ten thousand times no. If you did I’d throw vitriol over you.”
She marched on. Martin followed in an obfuscated frame of mind. She led the way round the ramparts and out into the narrow, cobble-paved streets of the old town, past dilapidated glories of the Renaissance, where once great nobles had entertained kings and now the proletariat hung laundry to dry over royal salamanders and proud escutcheons, past the Maison de Saint Simon, with its calm and time-mellowed ornament and exquisite oriels, past things over which, but yesterday, but that morning, they had lingered lovingly, into the Place du Mûrier. There she paused, as if seeking her bearings.
“Where are you going?” asked Martin, somewhat breathlessly.
“To some place where I can be alone,” she flashed.
“Very well,” said he, and raised his cap and left her.
In a few seconds he heard her call.
“Martin!”
He turned. “Yes?”
“I’m anything you like to call me,” she said. “It’s not your fault. It’s my temper. But you’ve got to learn it’s better not to turn women down flat like that, even when they speak in jest.”
“I’m very sorry, Corinna,” he said, smiling gravely, “but when one jests on such subjects I don’t know where I am.”
They crossed the square slowly, side by side.
“I suppose neither you nor anybody else could understand,” she said. “I was angry with you, but if you had played the fool I should have been angrier still.”
“Why?” he asked.
She looked straight ahead with a strained glance and for a minute or two did not reply. At last:
“You remember Fortinbras mentioning the name of Camille Fargot?”
“Oh!” said Martin.
“That’s why,” said Corinna.
“Is he at Brantôme?” asked Martin, with brow perplexed by the memory of the ridiculous mother.
“No, I wish to God he was.”
“Are you engaged?”
“In a sort of a way,” said Corinna, gloomily.
“I see,” said Martin.
“You don’t see a little bit in the world, she retorted with a sudden laugh. “You’re utterly mystified.”
“I’m not,” he declared stoutly. “Why on earth shouldn’t you have a love affair?”
“I thought you insinuated that none of your ‘fellow men’ would look at me twice.”
He contracted his brows and regarded her steadily. “I’m beginning to get tired of this argument,” said he.
Her eyes drooped first. “Perhaps you really have progressed a bit since we started.”
“I was doing my best to tell you, when you switched off onto this idiot circuit.”
Suddenly she put out her hand. “Don’t let us quarrel, Martin. What has been joy and wonder to you has been merely an anodyne to me. I’m about the most miserable girl in France.”
“I wish you had told me something of this before,” said Martin, “because I’ve been feeling myself the happiest man. . . .”
CHAPTER IV
THEREis six o’clock striking and those English have not yet arrived.”
Thus spake Gaspard-Marie Bigourdin, landlord of the Hôtel des Grottes, a vast man clad in a brown holland suit and a soft straw hat with a gigantic brim. So vast was he that his person overlapped in all directions the Austrian bent-wood rocking-chair in which he was taking the cool of the evening.
“They said they would come in time for dinner,mon oncle,” said Félise.
She was a graceful slip of a girl, dark-eyed, refined of feature. Fortinbras with paternal fondness, if you remember, had likened her to the wild flowers from which Alpine honey was made. And indeed, she suggested wild fragrance. Her brown hair was done up on the top of her head and fastened by a comb like that of all the peasant girls of the district; but she wore the blouse and stuff skirt of the well-to-do bourgeoisie.
“Six o’clock is already time for dinner in Brantôme,” remarked Monsieur Bigourdin.
“They are accustomed to the hours of London and Paris, where I’ve heard they dine at eight or nine or any time that pleases them.”
“In London and Paris they get up at midday and go to bed at dawn. They are coming here purposely to dis-habilitate themselves from the ways of London and Paris. At least so your father gives me to understand. It is a bad beginning.”
“I am longing to see them,” said Félise.
“Don’t you see enough English? Ten years ago an Englishman at Brantôme was a curiosity. All the inhabitants, you among them,ma petiteFélise, used to run two kilometres to look at him. But now, with the automobile, they are as familiar in the eyes of the good Brantômois as truffles.”
By this simile Monsieur Bigourdin did not mean to convey the idea that the twelve hundred inhabitants of Brantôme were all gastronomic voluptuaries. It is true that Brantôme battens onpâté de foie gras; but it is the essence of its existence, seeing that Brantôme makes it and sells it and with pigs and dogs hunts the truffles without whichpâté de foie graswould be a comestible of fat absurdity.
“But no English have been sent before by my father,” said Félise.
“That’s true,” replied Bigourdin, with a capacious smile, showing white strong teeth.
“They are the first people—French or English, I shall have met who know my father.”
“That’s true also,” said Bigourdin. “And they must be droll types like your excellent father himself.Tiens, let me see again what he says about them.” He searched his pockets, a process involving convulsions of his frame which made the rocking-chair creak. “It must be in my black jacket,” said he at last.
“I’ll get it,” said Félise, and went into the house.
Bigourdin rolled and lit a cigarette and gave himself up to comfortable reflection. The Hôtel des Grottes was built on the slope of a rock and the loggia or verandah on which Bigourdin was taking his ease, hung over a miniature precipice. At the bottom ran the River Dronne encircling most of the old-world town and crossed here and there by flashing little bridges. Away to the northeast loomed the mountains of the Limousin where the river has its source. The tiny place slumbered in the slanting sunshine. The sight of Brantôme stretched out below him was inseparable from Bigourdin’s earliest conception of the universe. In the Hôtel des Grottes he had been born; there, save for a few years at Lyons whither he had been sent by his mother in order to widen his views on hotel keeping, he had spent all his life, and there he sincerely hoped to die full of honour and good nourishment. Brantôme contented him. It belonged to him. It was so diminutive and compact that he could take the whole of it in at once. He was familiar with all the little tragedies and comedies that enacted themselves beneath those red-tiled roofs. Did he walk down the Rue de Périgueux his hand went to his hat as often as that of the President of the Republic on his way to a review at Longchamps. He was a man of substance and consideration, and he was just forty years of age. And Félise adored him, and anticipated his commands.
She returned with the letter. He glanced through it, reading portions aloud:
“I am sending you a young couple whom I have taken to my heart. They are not relations, they are not married and they are not lovers. They are Arcadians of the pavement, more innocent than doves, and of a ferocious English morality. She is a painter without patrons, he a professor without classes. They are also candidates for happiness performing their novitiate. Later they will take the vows.”
“What does he mean? What vows?”
“Perhaps they are pious people and are going to enter the convent,” Félise suggested.
“I can see your father—anti-clerical that he is—interesting himself in little nuns and monks.”
“Yet he and Monsieur le Curé are good friends.”
“That is because Monsieur le Curé has much wisdom and no fear. He would have tried to convert Voltaire himself. . . . Let us continue——”
“As they are poor and doing this out of obedience——”
“Saprelotte!” he laughed, “they seem to have taken the three vows already!”
He read on:“—— they do not desire the royal suite in your Excelsior Palace. Corinna Hastings has lived under the roofs in Paris, Martin Overshaw over a baker’s shop in a vague quarter of London. All the luxury they ask is to be allowed to wash themselves all over in cold water once a day.”
“I was sure you had not written to my father about the bathroom,” said Félise.
She was right. But the omission was odd. For Bigourdin took inordinate pride in the newly installed bathroom and all the touring clubs of Europe and Editors of Guide Books had heard of it and he had offered it to the admiring inspection of half Brantôme. Monsieur le Maire himself had visited it, and if he had only arrived girt with his tricolour sash, Bigourdin would have jumped in and demanded an inaugural ceremony.
“I must have forgotten,” said Bigourdin. “But no matter. They can have plenty of cold water. But if I am to feed them and lodge them and wash them for the derisory price your father stipulates, they must learn that six o’clock is the hour of table d’hôte at the Hôtel des Grottes. It is only people in automobiles who can turn the place upside down, and then they have to pay four francs for their dinner.”
He rose mountainously, and, standing, displayed the figure of a vigorous, huge proportioned, upright man. On his face, large and ruddy, a small black moustache struck a startling note. His eyes were brown and kindly, his mouth too small and his chin had a deep cleft, which on a creature of lesser scale would have been a pleasing dimple.
“Allons dîner,” said he.
In the patriarchal fashion, now unfortunately becoming obsolete, Monsieur Bigourdin dined with his guests. Thesalle-à-manger—off the loggia—was furnished with the long central table sacred to commercial travellers, and with a few side tables for other visitors. At one of these, in the corner between the service door and the dining-room door, sat Monsieur Bigourdin and his niece. As they entered the room five bagmen, with anticipatory napkins stuck cornerwise in their collars, half rose from their chairs and bowed.
“Bon soir, messieurs,” said Bigourdin, and he passed with Félise to his table.
Euphémie, the cook, fat and damp, entered with the soup tureen, followed by a desperate-looking, crop-headed villain bearing plates. The latter, who viewed half a mile off through a telescope might have passed for an orthodox waiter, appeared, at close quarters, to be raimented in grease and grime. He served the soup; first to the five commercial travellers,—and then to Bigourdin and Félise. On Félise’s plate he left a great thumb-mark. She looked at it with an expression of disgust.
“Regarde, mon oncle.”
Bigourdin alluding to him as a sacred animal, asked what she could expect. He was from Bourdeilles, a place of rocks some five miles distant, condemned by Brantôme, chef-lieu du Canton. He summoned him.
“Polydore.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“You have made a mistake. You are no longer in the hands of the police.”
“Monsieur veut dire——?”
“I am not the Commissaire who desires to photograph your finger-prints.”
“Ah, pardon,” said Polydore, and with a soiled napkin he erased the offending stain.
“Sacré animal!” repeated Bigourdin, attacking his soup. “I wonder why I keep him.”
“I too,” said Félise.
“If his grandmother and my grandmother had not been foster-sisters——” said Bigourdin, waving an indignant spoon.
“You would have kept him just because he is ugly,” smiled Félise. “You would have found a reason.”
“One of these days I’ll throw him into the river,” Bigourdin declared. “I am patient. I am slow to anger. But when I am roused I am like a lion. Polydore,” said he serenely, as the dilapidated menial removed the plates, “if you can’t keep your hands clean I’ll make you wear gloves.”
“People would laugh at me,” said Polydore.
“So much the better,” said Bigourdin.
The meal was nearly over when the expected guests were announced. Uncle and niece slipped from the dining room into the little vestibule to welcome them. An elderly man in a blouse, name Baptiste, was already busying himself with their luggage—the knapsacks fastened to the back of the bicycles.
“Mademoiselle, Monsieur,” said Bigourdin, “it is a great pleasure to me to meet friends of my excellent brother-in-law. Allow me to present Mademoiselle Félise Fortinbras” (he gave the French pronunciation), “my niece. As dinner is not yet over and as you must be hungry, will you give yourselves the trouble to enter thesalle-à-manger.”
“I should like to have a wash first,” said Corinna.
Bigourdin glanced at Félise. They were beginning early.
“There is a bathroom upstairs fitted with every modern luxury.”
Corinna laughed. “I only want to tidy up a bit.”
“I will show you to your room,” said Félise, and conducted her up the staircase beside the bureau.
“And monsieur?”
Martin went over to the little lavabo against the wall beside which hung the usual damp towel.
“This will do quite well,” said he.
Bigourdin breathed again. The new arrivals were quite human; and they spoke French perfectly. The men conversed a while until the two girls descended. Bigourdin led his guests into thesalle-à-mangerand installed them at a table by one of the windows looking on the loggia.
“Like this,” said he, “you will be cool and also enjoy the view.”
“I think,” said Corinna, looking up at him, “you have the most delicious little town I have seen in France.”
Bigourdin’s eyes beamed with gratification. He bowed and went back to his unfinished meal.
“Behold over there,” said he to Félise, “a young girl of extraordinary good sense. She is also extremely pretty; a combination which is rare in women.”
“Yes, uncle,” said Félise demurely.
The five commercial travellers rose, and, bowing as they passed their host, went out in search, after the manner of their kind, of coffee and backgammon at the Café de l’Univers in the Rue de Périgueux. It is only foreigners who linger over coffee, liqueurs and tobacco in the little inns of France. Presently Félise went off to the bureau to make up the day’s accounts, and Bigourdin, having smoked a thoughtful cigarette, crossed over to Martin and Corinna. After the good hotel-keeper’s enquiry as to their gastronomic satisfaction, he swept his hand through his inch-high standing stubble of black hair, and addressed Martin.
“Monsieur Over—Oversh—forgive me if I cannot pronounce your name——”
“Overshaw,” said Martin distinctly.
“Auvershaud—Auverchat—non—c’est bigrement difficile.”
“Then call me Monsieur Martin,à la française.”
“And me, Mademoiselle Corinne,” laughed Corinna.
“Voilà!” cried Bigourdin, delighted. “Those are names familiar to every Frenchman.” Then his brow clouded. “Well, Monsieur Martin, there is something I would say to you. What profession does my good brother-in-law exercise in Paris?”
Martin and Corinna exchanged glances.
“I scarcely know,” said Corinna.
“Nor I,” said Martin.
“It is on account of my niece, his daughter, that I ask. You permit me to sit down for a moment?” He drew a chair. “You must understand at once,” said he, “that I have nothing against Monsieur Fortinbras. I love him like myself. But, on the other hand, I also love my little niece. She is very simple, very innocent, and does not appreciate the subtleties of the great world. She adores her father.”
“I can quite understand that,” said Martin, “and I am sure that he adores her.”
“Precisely,” said Bigourdin. “That is why I would like you to have no doubt as to the profession of my brother-in-law. You have never, by any chance, Mademoiselle Corinne, heard him called ‘Le Marchand de Bonheur’?”
“Never,” said Corinna, meeting his eyes.
“Never,” echoed Martin.
“Not even when he advised you to come here? It is for Félise that I ask.”
“No,” said Corinna.
“Certainly not,” said Martin.
“But you have heard that he is anavoué?”
“An English solicitor practising in Paris. Of course,” said Martin.
“A very clever solicitor,” said Corinna.
Bigourdin smote his chest with his great hand. “I thank you with all my heart for your understanding. You are the first persons she has met who know her father—it is somewhat embarrassing, what I say—and she, in her innocence, will ask you questions, which he did not foresee——”
“There will be no difficulty in answering them,” replied Martin.
“Encore merci,” said Bigourdin. “You must know that Félise came to us at five years old, when my poor wife was living—she died ten years ago—I am a widower. She is to me like my own daughter. Although,” he added, with a smile and a touch of vanity, “I am not quite so old as that. My sister, her mother, is older than I.”
“She is alive then?” asked Corinna.
“Certainly,” replied Bigourdin. “Did you not know that? But she has been an invalid for many years. That is why Félise lives here instead of with her parents. I hope, Mademoiselle, you and she will be good friends.”
“I am sure we shall,” replied Corinna.
A little while later the two wanderers sat over their coffee by the balustrade of the covered loggia and looked out on the velvet night, filled with contentment. They had reached their goal. Here they were to stay until it pleased Fortinbras to come and direct them afresh. Hitherto, their resting-places, mere stages on their journey, had lacked the atmosphere of permanence. The still nights when they had talked together, as now, beneath the stars, had throbbed with a certain fever, the anticipation of the morrow’s dawn, the morrow’s adventures in strange lands. But now they had come to their destined haven. Here they would remain to-morrow, and the morrow after that, and for morrows indefinite. A phase of their life had ended with curious suddenness.
As the intensity of silence falls on ears accustomed to the whirr of machinery, so did an intensity of peace encompass their souls. And the dim-lit valley itself brought solace. Not here stretched infinite horizons such as those of the plains of La Beauce through which they had passed, horizons whence sprang a whole hemisphere of stars, horizons which embracing nothing set the heart aching for infinite things beyond, horizons in the centre of which they stood specks of despair overwhelmed by immensities. Here the comfortable land had taken them to its bosom. Near enough to be felt, the vague bluish mass of the Limousin mountains sweeping from north to east assured them of the calm protection of eternal forces. Beyond them who need look or crave to look? To the fevered spirit they brought in their mothering shelter all that was needed by man for his happiness: fruitfulness of cornfields, mystery of beech-woods faintly revealed by the rays of a young moon, a quiet town for man’s untroubled habitation, guarded by its encircling river, rather guessed than seen and betrayed only here and there by a streak of quivering light. And as the distant glare of great cities—the lights of London reflected in the heavens—in the days of wandering youths seeking their fortunes, compelled them moth-like to the focus, so in its dreamy microcosm did the lights of the little town, a thousand flickering points from the outskirts and a line of long illumination marking the main street athwart the dark mass of roofs and dissipating itself hazily in midair, appeal to the imagination—set it wondering as to the myriad joyous affairs of men.
In low voices they talked of Fortinbras. His spirit seemed to have emerged from the welter of Paris into this pool of the world’s tranquillity. In spite of his magnetic force his words had been but words. What they were to meet at Brantôme they knew not. They scarce had thought. What to them had been the landlord of a tiny provincial inn but a good-natured common fellow unworthy of speculation? And what the daughter of the seedy Paris Bohemian, snapper up of unconsidered trifles, but a serving girl of no account, plain and redolent of the scullery? Bigourdin’s courteous bearing and delicacy of speech had come upon them as a surprise. So had the refinement of Félise. They had to readjust their conception of Fortinbras. They were amazed, simple souls, to find that he had ties in life so indubitably respectable. And he had a wife, too, a chronic invalid, with whom he lived in the jealous obscurity of Paris. It was pathetic. . . . They had obeyed him hardly knowing why. At the back of their minds he had been but a charlatan of peculiar originality—at the same time a being almost mythical, so remote from them was his life. And now he became startlingly real. They heard his voice soft and persuasive whispering by their side with a touch of gentle mockery.
Then silence fell upon them; their minds drifted apart and they lost themselves in their separate dreams.
At last, Polydore coming to remove the coffee tray and to enquire as to their further wants, broke the spell. When he had gone, Corinna leaned her elbow on the little iron table and asked in her direct fashion:
“What have you been thinking of, Martin?”
He drew his hand across his eyes, and it was a moment or two before he answered.
“When I was in London,” said he, “I seem to have lived in a tiny provincial town. Now that I come to a tiny provincial town I have an odd feeling that the deep life of a great city is before me. That’s the best I can do by way of explanation. Thoughts like that are a bit formless and elusive, you know.”
“What do you think you’re going to find here?”
“I don’t know. Why not happiness in some form or other?”
“You expect a lot for five francs,” she laughed.
“And you?”
“I——?”
“Yes, what have you been thinking of?”
She pointed, and in the gloom he followed the direction of white-bloused arm and white hand.
“Do you see that little house on the quay? The one with the lights and the loggia. You can just get a glimpse of the interior. See? There’s a picture and below a woman sitting at a piano. If you listen you can catch the sound. It’s Schubert’s ‘Moment Musical.’ Well, I’ve been wishing I were that woman with her life full of her home and husband and children. Sheltered—protected—love all around her—nothing more to ask of God. It was a beautiful dream.”
“You too,” said Martin, “feel about this place somewhat as I do.”
“I suppose it’s the night. It turns one into a sentimental lunatic. Fancy living here for the rest of one’s days and concentrating one’s soul on human stomachs.”
“What do you mean, Corinna?”
“Isn’t that what woman’s domestic life comes to? She must fill her husband’s stomach properly or he’ll beat her or run off with somebody else, and she must fill her babies’ stomachs properly or they’ll get cramps and convulsions and bilious attacks and die. It was a beautiful dream. But the reality would drive me stick, stark, staring mad.”
“My ideas of married life,” said Martin sagely, “are quite different.”
“Of course!” she cried. “You’re one of the creatures with the stomach.”
“I’ve never been aware of it,” said Martin.
“It strikes me you’re too good for this world,” said Corinna.
Martin rolled a cigarette from a brown packet of Maryland tobacco—his supply of English ‘Woodbines’ had long since given out.
“I have my ideals as to love—and so forth,” said he.
“And so have I. ‘All for Love and the World Well Lost.’ That’s the title of an old play, isn’t it? I can understand it. I would give my soul for it. But it happens once in a blue moon. Meanwhile one has to live. And connubiality and maternity in a little lost hole in Nowhere like this aren’t life.”
“What the dickens is life?” asked Martin.
But her definition he did not hear, for the vast figure of Bigourdin loomed in the doorway of thesalle-à-manger.
“I wish you good night,” said he.
Martin rose and looked at his watch. “I think it’s time to go to bed.”
“So do I,” yawned Corinna.