CHAPTER IX
BEHOLDMartin, the professor, transformed into the perfect waiter—perfect, at least, in zeal, manner and habiliment. His dress suit, of ardent cut but practically unworn, gave thesalle-à-mangeran air of startling refinement and prosperity. At first Bigourdin, embarrassed by the shifting of the relative position, had deprecated this outer symbol of servitude. A man could wait in a lounge suit just as well as in a tail-coat—a proposition which Fortinbras vehemently controverted. He read his perplexed brother-in-law a lecture on the psychology of clothes. They had a spiritual significance, bringing subjective and objective into harmony. A judge could not devote his whole essence to the administration of justice if he were conscious of being invested in the glittering guise of a harlequin. If Martin wore the tweeds of the tourist he would feel inharmonious with his true waiter-self, and therefore could not wait with the perfect waiter’s spiritual deftness. Besides, he had not counselled his disciple to wait as an amateur. The way of the amateur was perdition. No, when Martin threw his napkin under his left arm, he should flick a bit of his heart into its folds, like a true professional.
“Arrange it as you like,” said the weary Bigourdin.
Fortinbras arranged and Martin became outwardly the perfect waiter. Of the craft itself he had much to learn, chiefly under the guidance of Bigourdin and sometimes under the shy instruction of Félise. Its many calls on intelligence and bodily skill surprised him. To balance a piled-up tray on one bent-back hand required the art of a juggler. He practised for days with a trayful of bricks before he trusted himself with plates and dishes. By means of this exercise his arm became muscular. He discovered that the long, grave step of the professor—especially when he bore a load of eatables—did not make for the perfect waiter’s celerity. He acquired the gentle arts of salad making and folding napkins into fantastic shapes. Never handy with his fingers, and, like most temperate young men in London lodgings, unaccustomed to the corkscrew, he found the clean prestidigitation of cork-drawing a difficult accomplishment. But he triumphed eventually in this as in all other branches of his new industry. And he liked it. It amused and interested him. It was work of which he could see the result. The tables set before the meal bore testimony to his handicraft. Never had plate been so polished, cutlery so lustrous, glass so transparent in the hundred years history of the Hôtel des Grottes. And when the guests assembled it was a delight to serve them according to organised scheme and disarm criticism by demonstration of his efficiency. He rose early and went to bed late, tired as a draught-dog and slept the happy sleep of the contented human.
Bigourdin praised him, but shrugged his shoulders.
“What you are doing it for,mon ami, I can’t imagine.”
“For the good of my soul,” laughed Martin, “and in order to attain happiness.”
“Our good friends the English are a wonderful race,” said Bigourdin, “and I admire them enormously, but there’s not one of them who isn’t a little bit mad.”
To the coterie of the Café de l’Univers, however, he gave a different explanation altogether of Professor Martin’s descent in the social scale. The Professor, said he, had abandoned theprofessoriatfor the more lucrative paths of commerce and had decided to open a hotel in England, where every one knew the hotels were villainous and provided nothing for their clients but overdone bacon and eggs and raw beef-steaks. The Professor, more enlightened than his compatriots, was apprenticing himself to the business in the orthodox Continental fashion. As the substantial Gaspard Bigourdin himself, son of the late equally substantially, although one-armed and one-legged Armédée Bigourdin, had, to the common knowledge of Brantôme, served as scullion, waiter,sous-chef de cuisine,sous-maître d’hôtel, and bookkeeper at various hotels in Lyons, in order to become thebon hôtelierthat he was, his announcement caused no sensation whatever. The professor of theEcole Normalebewailed his own chill academic lot and proclaimed Monsieur Martin an exceedingly lucky fellow.
“But,mon cher patron, it isn’t true what you have said at the Café de l’Univers,” protested Martin, when Bigourdin told him of the explanation.
Bigourdin waved his great arm. “How am I to know it isn’t true? How am I to get into the English minds of you and myfarceurof a brother-in-law so as to discover why you arrive as an honoured guest at my hotel and then in the wink of an eye become the waiter of the establishment? What am I to say to our friends? They wouldn’t care a hang (ils se ficheraient pas mal) for your soul. If you are to continue to mix with them on terms of equality they must have an explanation,nom de Dieu, which they can understand.”
“I never dreamed,” said Martin, “of entering the circle at the Café again.”
“Mais, j’y ai pensé, moi, animal!” cried Bigourdin. “Because you have the fantasy of becoming my waiter, are you any less the same human being I had the pleasure of introducing to my friends?”
And then, perhaps for the first time, Martin appreciated his employer’s fine kindness and essential loyalty. It would have been quite easy for the innkeeper to dismiss his waiter from the consideration of the hierarchy of Brantôme as a mad Englishman, an adventurer, not a professor at all, but a broken-down teacher of languages giving private lessons—an odd-job instructor who finds no respect in highly centralised, bureaucratic France; but the easy way was not the way of Gaspard Bigourdin. So Martin, driven byforce majeure, lent himself to the pious fraud and, when the evening’s work was done, divested himself of his sable panoply of waiterdom and once more took his place in the reserved cosy corner of the Café de l’Univers.
The agreeable acidity in his life which he missed when Corinna, graciously dignified, had steamed off by the night train, he soon discovered in the pursuit of his new avocation. Euphémie, the cook, whose surreptitious habits of uncleanliness carefully hidden from Félise, but unavoidably patent to an agonised Martin, supplied as much sourness as his system required. She would not take him seriously and declared her antipathy toun monsieurin her kitchen. To bring about anentente cordialewas for Martin an education in diplomacy. The irritability of a bilious commercial traveller, poisoned by infected nourishment at his last house of entertainment—the reason invariably given for digestive misadventure—so that his stomach was dislocated, often vented itself on the waiter serving an irreproachable repast at the Hôtel des Grottes. The professional swallowing of outraged feelings also gave a sub-acid flavour to existence. Motorists on the other hand, struck by his spruceness and polite demeanour, administered pleasant tonic in the form of praise. They also bestowed handsome tips.
These caused him some misgiving. A gentleman could be a waiter or anything you pleased, so long as it was honest, and remain a gentleman: but could he take tips? Or rather, having taken tips, was it consonant with his gentility to retain them? Would it not be nobler to hand them over to Baptiste or Euphémie? Bigourdin, appealed to, decided that it would be magnificent but would inevitably disorganise these excellent domestics. Martin suggested theAssistance Publiqueor the church poor-box.
“I thought,” said Bigourdin, “you became a waiter in order to earn your living?”
“That is so,” replied Martin.
“Then,” said Bigourdin, “earn it like a waiter. Suppose I were the manager of a Grand Hotel and gave you nothing at all—as it is your salary is not that of a prince—how would you live? You are a servant of the public. The public pays you for your services. Why should you be too proud to accept payment?”
“But a tip’s a tip,” Martin objected.
“It is good money,” said Bigourdin. “Keep your fine five-franc pieces in your pocket andelles feront des petits, and in course of time you will build with them an hotel on the Côte d’Azur.”
In a letter to Corinna, Martin mentioned the disquieting problem. Chafing in her crowded vicarage home she offered little comfort. She made the sweeping statement that whether he kept his tips or not, the whole business was revolting. He wrote to Fortinbras. The Dealer in Happiness replied on a postcard: “Will you never learn that a sense of humour is the beginning and end of philosophy?”
After which, Martin, having schooled himself to the acceptance ofpourboires, learned to pocket them with a professional air and ended by regarding them as part of the scheme of the universe. As the heavens rained water on the thirsty fields, so did clients shower silver coins on hungry waiters. How far, as yet, it was good for his soul he could not determine. At any rate, in his mild, unambitious way, he attained the lower rungs of happiness. I do not wish it to be understood that if he had entered as a stranger, say, the employment of the excellent proprietor of the excellent Hôtel de Commerce at Périgueux, he would have found the same contentment of body and spirit. The alleviations of the Hôtel des Grottes would have been missing. His employer, while acknowledging his efficiency still regarded him as an eccentric professor, and apart from business relations treated him as friend and comrade. The notables of the town accepted him as an equal. To the cave-dwellers and others of the proletariat with whom he had formed casual acquaintance, he was still “Monsieur Martin,” greeted with the same shade of courteous deference as before, although the whole population of Brantôme knew of his social metamorphosis. Wherever he went, in his walks abroad, he met the genial smile and raised hat. He contrasted it all with the dour unwelcome of the North London streets. There he had always felt lost, a drab human item of no account. Here he had an identity, pleasantly proclaimed. So would a sensitive long-sentence Convict, B 2278, coming into the world of remembering men, rejoice that he was no longer a number, but that intensely individual entity Bill Smith, recognised as a lover of steak-and-kidney pudding. As a matter of fact, he seldom heard his surname. The refusal of Bigourdin’s organs of speech to grapple with the Saxon “Overshaw” has already been remarked upon. From the very first Bigourdin decreed that he should be “Monsieur Martin”—Martin pronounced French fashion—and as “Monsieur Martin” he introduced him to the Café de l’Univers, and “Monsieur Martin” he was to all Brantôme. But of what importance is a surname, when you are intimately known by your Christian name to all of your acquaintance? Who in the world save his mother and the Hastings family had for dreary ages past called him “Martin”? Now he was “Martin”—or “Monsieur Martin”—a designation which agreeably combined familiarity with respect—to all who mattered in Périgord. It must be remembered that it was an article of faith among the good Brantômois that, in Périgord, only Brantôme mattered.
“You people are far too good to me,” he remarked one day to Bigourdin. “It is a large-hearted country.”
“Did I not say, my friend,” replied Bigourdin, “that Périgord would take you to her bosom?”
And then there was Félise, who in her capacity of task-mistress called him peremptorily “Martin”; but out of official hours nearly always prefixed the “Monsieur.” She created an atmosphere of grace around the plates and dishes, her encouraging word sang for long afterwards in his ears. With a tact only to be found in democratic France she combined the authority of the superior with the intellectual inferior’s respect. Apparently she concerned herself little about his change of profession. Her father, the all-wise and all-perfect, had ordained it; her uncle, wise and perfect, had acquiesced; Martin, peculiarly wise and almost perfect, had accepted it with enthusiasm. Who was she to question the doings of inscrutable men?
They met perforce more often than during his guesthood, and, their common interests being multiplied, their relations became more familiar. They had reached now the period of the year’s stress, that of the greatfoie grasmaking when fatted geese were slain and the masses of swollen liver were extracted and the huge baskets of black warty truffles were brought in from the beech forests where they had been hunted for by pigs and dogs. Martin, like every one else in the household, devoted all his spare moments to helping in the steaming kitchen supervised by a special chef, and in the long, clean-smelling work-room where rows of white-aproned girls prepared and packed the delectable compound. Here Bigourdin presided in brow-knit majesty and Félise bustled a smiling second in command.
“It is well to learn everything,” she said to Martin. “Who knows when you may be glad to have been taught how to makepâté de foie gras?”
So Martin, though such a course was not contemplated in his agreement with the Hôtel des Grottes, received much instruction from her in the delicate craft, which was very pleasant indeed. And the girls looked on at the lessons after the way of their kind and exchanged glances one with another, and every one, save perhaps Bigourdin, who had not yet recovered his serenity overclouded by Corinna’s rejection of his suit, was exceedingly contented.
And then, lo and behold, into this terrestrial paradise strayed the wandering feet of Lucien Viriot.
Not that Lucien was unexpected. His father, Monsieur Viriot,marchand de vins en gros, and one of the famous circle at the Café de l’Univers, had for the past month or two nightly proclaimed the approaching release of the young man from military service. Martin had heard him. Bigourdin on their walks home together had dilated on the heaven-decreed union of the two young people and the loneliness of his lot. Where would he find, at least, such aménagèreas Félise?
“It’s a pity Corinna hadn’t any sense,” said Martin on one of these occasions.
Bigourdin heaved a mighty sigh. “Ah,mon vieux!” said he by way of answer. The sigh and the “Ah,mon vieux!” were eloquent of shattered ideals.
“There is always Madame Thuillier who used to help me when Félise was little,” he continued after a while, meditatively. “She has experience, but she is as ugly as a monkey, the poor woman!”
Whereupon he sighed again, leaving Martin in doubt as to the exact position he intended the ill-favoured lady to occupy in his household.
Anyhow, Martin was forewarned of the ex-warrior’s advent. So was Félise. “But I cannot leave you,mon oncle,” she cried in dismay. “What would become of you? Who would mend your linen? What would become of the hotel? What would become of the fabrique?”
“Bah!” said he, snapping his fingers at such insignificant considerations. “There is always thebraveMadame Thuillier.”
“But I thought you detested her—as much as you can detest anybody.”
“You are mistaken,mon enfant,” replied Bigourdin. “I have a great regard for her. She has striking qualities. She is a woman of ripe age and much common sense.”
Which shows how double-tongued men may be.
“C’est une vieille pimbèche!” cried Félise.
“Tais-toi,” said Bigourdin severely. For a “vieille pimbèche” means, at the very least, a horrid old tabby with her claws out.
“I won’t be silent,” laughed Félise rebelliously. “C’est une vieille pimbèche, and I’m not going to leave you to her. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to marry.”
“That is what all little girls say,” replied Bigourdin. “But when you see Lucien return,joli garçon, holding his head in the air like a brave little soldier of France, and looking at you out of his honest eyes, you will no longer tell me, ‘Je ne veux pas me marier, mon oncle.’ ”
She laughed at his outrageous mimicry of a modest little girl’s accent.
“It’s true all the same,” she retorted. “I don’t want to marry anybody, and Lucien after having seen all the pretty girls of Paris won’t want to marry me.”
“If he doesn’t——!” cried Bigourdin threateningly. “If he dares——!”
“Well, what then?” asked Félise.
“I’ll have a serious conversation with his father,” declared Bigourdin.
Thus both Martin and Félise, as I have said, were forewarned. Yet neither took much notice of the warning. Martin had been aware, all along, of the destiny decreed for her by the omnipotent Triumvirate consisting of her uncle, the bon Dieu and Monsieur Viriot, and, regarding her as being sealed to another, had walked with Martin-like circumspection (subject, in days not long since past, for Corinna’s raillery) along the borderline of the forbidden land of tenderness. But this judicious and conscientious skirting had its charm. I would have you again realise that the eternal feminine had entered his life only in the guise: first, of the kissed damsel who married the onion-loving plumber; secondly, of Corinna, by whose “Bo!” he had been vastly terrified until he had taken successfully to saying “Bo!” himself, a process destructive of romantic regard; and thirdly, of Félise, a creature—he always remembered Fortinbras’s prejudiced description—“like one of the wild flowers from which Alpine honey is made,” and compact of notable, gentle and adorable qualities. Naturally, of the three, he preferred Félise. Félise, for her part, like the well brought up damsel of the French bourgeoisie, never allowed her eyelids to register the flutterings of the heart which the mild young Englishman’s society set in action. She scarcely admitted the flutterings to herself. Possibly, if he had been smitten with a fine frenzy of love-making, she would have been shocked. But as he shewed respectful gratification at being allowed to consort with her and gratitude for her little bits of sympathetic understanding, and as she found she could talk with him more spontaneously than with any other young man she had ever met, she sought rather than avoided the many daily opportunities for pleasant intercourse. And there was not the least harm in it; and the bogey of a Lucien (whom she had liked well enough, years ago in a childish way) was still hundreds of miles from Brantôme. In fact they entered upon as pretty a Daphnis and Chloe idyll as ever was enacted by a pair of innocents.
Then, one fine day, as I have stated, in swaggered Lucien Viriot, ex-cuirassier, and spoiled the whole thing.
His actual hour of swaggering into Martin’s ken was unexpected—by Martin, at any rate. He was playing backgammon with the Professor of theEcole Normalein the midst of elders discussing high matters of local politics, when all of a sudden an uproar arose among these grave and reverend seniors, clapping of hands and rattling on tables, and Martin, looking up from his throw of the dice, perceived the stout, square-headed, close-cropped Monsieur Viriot,marchand de vins en gros, his eyes sparkling and his cheeks flushed above his white moustache and imperial, advancing from the café door, accompanied by his square-headed, close-cropped, sturdy, smiling, swaggeringly-sheepish, youthful replica. And when they reached the group, the young man bowed punctiliously before grasping each outstretched hand; and every one called him “mon brave” to which he replied “bien aimable”; and Monsieur Viriot presented him formally—“mon his qui vient de terminer son service militaire”—to Monsieur Beuzot,Professor à l’Ecole Normale, a newcomer to Brantôme, and to Monsieur Martin,ancien professeur anglais. Whereupon Monsieur Lucien Viriot declared himself enchanted at meeting the two learned gentlemen, and the two learned gentlemen reciprocated the emotion of enchantment. Then amid scuffling of chairs and eager help of waiters, room was made for Monsieur Viriot and Monsieur Lucien; and the proprietor of the café, Monsieur Cazensac, swarthy, portly and heavy-jowled, a Gascon from Agen, who, if the truth were known took the good, easy folk of Périgord under his protection, came up from behind the high bottle-armamented counter, where Madame Cazensac, fat and fair, prodigally beamed on the chance of a ray reaching the hero of the moment—which happened indeed before Cazensac could get in a word, and brought Lucien to his feet in a splendid spread of homage to the lady—Monsieur Cazensac, I say, came up and grasped Lucien by the hand and welcomed him back to the home of his fathers. He turned to Monsieur Viriot.
“Monsieur orders——?”
“Du vin de champagne.”
Happy land of provincial France where you order champagne as you order brandy and soda and are contented when you get it. There is no worry about brand or vintage or whether the wine isbrutorextra-sec. You just tell the good landlord to bring you champagne and he produces the sweet, sticky, frothy, genuine stuff, and if you are a Frenchman, you are perfectly delighted. It is champagne, the wine of feasts, the wine of ceremony, the wine of ladies, the wine of toasts—Je lève mon verre. If the uplifted glass is not beaded with bubbles winking at the brim, what virtue is there in the uplifting? It is all a symbolical matter of sparkle. . . . So, at the Café de l’Univers, Monsieur Cazensac disappeared portentously, and a few moments later re-appeared ever so much more portentously, followed by two waiters, one bringing the foot-high sacred glasses, the other the uncorked bottles labelled for all who wished to know what they were drinking: “Grand Champagne d’Ay,” with the vine-proprietor’s name inconspicuously printed in the right-hand bottom corner. All, including Monsieur Cazensac, clinked foaming glasses with Lucien, and, after they had sipped in his honour, they sipped again to the cries of “Vive l’Armée” and “Vive la France,” whereupon they all settled down comfortably again to the enjoyment of replenished goblets of the effervescing syrup.
Martin looked with some envy at the young man who sat flushed with his ovation and twisted his black moustache to the true cuirassier’s angle, yet bore himself modestly among his elders. Willing and gay of heart he had given the years of his youth to the service of his country; when the great struggle should come—and all agreed it was near—he would be one of the first to be summoned to defend her liberty, and willing and gay of heart he would ride to his death. And now, in the meanwhile, he had returned to the little square hole in France that had been ordained for him (little square peg) before he was born, and was to be reserved for him as long as his life should last. And Martin looked again at the chosen child of destiny, and this time with admiration, for he knew him to be a man; a man of the solid French stock that makes France unshakable, of the stock that in peace may be miserly of its pence, but in war is lavish of its blood. “I am not that young fellow’s equal,” thought Martin humbly; and he felt glad that he had not betrayed Bigourdin’s trust with regard to Félise. What kind of a wretch would he have been to set himself up as a rival to Lucien Viriot? Bigourdin had been right in proclaiming the marriage as arranged by the bon Dieu. He loved Félise—who knowing her did not? But he loved her in brotherly fashion and could reconcile it to his heart to bestow her on one so worthy. And all this without taking into account the sentiments of Félise. Her heart, in military phrase, was aville ouverte. Lucien had but to march in and take it.
After a while Lucien, having looked about the café, rose and went from table to table where sat those citizens who, by reason of lowlier social status or personal idiosyncrasies, had not been admitted into the Inner Coterie of Notables, and greeted old acquaintances. Monsieur Viriot then caught Martin’s eye and lifted his glass again.
“A votre santé, Monsieur Martin.”
Martin bowed. “A la vôtre, monsieur!”
“I hope that you and my son will be good friends. It is important that the youth of our two countries, so friendly, so intimately bound, should learn to know and appreciate each other; especially when one of them, like yourself, has the power of translating England into terms of France.”
And with the courteous simplicity of a grey, square-headed, close-croppedmarchand de vins en gros, he lifted his glass again.
“A l’Entente Cordiale.”
When Lucien returned to the circle, his father re-introduced him to Martin.
“In fact,” he concluded, “here is an Englishman who not only speaks French like you and me, but eats truffles and talks the idiom of the quarrymen and is qualifying himself to be a good Périgordin.”
It was charmingly said. The company hummed approval.
“C’est bien vrai,” said Bigourdin.
Lucien again bowed. He would do himself the honour of presenting himself at monsieur’s hotel. Monsieur was doubtless staying at the Hôtel des Grottes.
“Monsieur Bigourdin has taken me as a waiter into his service,” replied Martin.
“Ah! Tant mieux!” exclaimed Lucien, as if the announcement were the most ordinary one in the world, and shook hands with him heartily.
“Like that, as my father says, one becomes a good Périgordin.”
So Martin went home and contentedly to bed. Again a little corner of the earth that he might call his own was offered him in this new land so courteous to, yet so sensitively aloof from the casual Englishman, but on the other hand, so generous and hospitable to the Englishman into whom the spirit of France had entered. Was there here, thought he, the little round hole which he, little round peg, after thirty years of square-holed discomfort, had been pre-ordained to fill? The thought soothed him.
He woke up in the night, worried by some confused dream. In his head stuck the Latin tag:Ubi bene ibi patria. He kicked indignantly against the aphorism. It was the infamous philosophy of the Epicurean opportunist. If he had been comfortable in Germany would he regard Germany as his fatherland? A million times no. When you wake up at four o’clock in the morning to a soul-stirring proposition, you think in terms of millions. He was English of the English. His Swiss motherdom was but an accident of begetting. He was of his father’s race. Switzerland did not exist in his being as a national influence. English, narrowly, stupidly, proudly, he was and English he would remain to the end of time. To denaturalise himself and become a Frenchman—still less a mere Périgordin—was abhorrent. But to remain an Englishman, and as an Englishman—an obscure and menial Englishman—to be given the freedom of a province of old France was an honour of which any man breathing the breath of life might be justly proud. I can, thought he, in the intense, lunatic clarity of four o’clock in the morning, show France what England stands for. I have a chance of one in a million. I am an Englishman given a home in the France that I am learning to love and to understand, I am a hyphen between the two nations.
Having settled that, he turned over, tucked the bed-clothes well round his shoulders and went soundly to sleep again.
CHAPTER X
AFEWevenings afterwards Bigourdin gave a dinner of ceremony to the Viriots—and a dinner of ceremony in provincial France is a very ceremonious and elaborate affair. All day long there had been anxious preparations. Félise abandoning thefabrique, toiled assiduously with Euphémie, while Bigourdin, expert chef like all good hotel-keepers, controlled everything with his master touch. The crazily ceremonious hour of seven-thirty was fixed upon; not only on account of its ceremoniousness, but because by that time the commercial travellers would have finished their meal and melted away. The long middle table was replaced by a round table prodigally adorned with flowers and four broad tricolour ribbons, each like the sash of Monsieur le Maire, radiating from under a central silver épergne laden with fruit of which a pineapple was the crown. A bewildering number of glasses of different shapes stood at each place, to be filled each kind in its separate order with the wine ordained for each separate course. Martin rehearsed the wine service over and over again with a solemn Bigourdin. As a lieutenant he had theplongeur(or washer-up of glass and crockery) from the Café de l’Univers, an earnest neophyte tense with the excitement of practising a higher branch of his profession.
Hosts and guests were ceremoniously attired; Bigourdin and the elder Viriot suffocated in tightly buttoned frock-coats of venerable and painful fit; Lucien, more dashing, wore a morning coat (last cry of Bond Street) acquired recently from the “High Life” emporium in Paris; all three men retained yellow dogskin gloves until they sat down to table. Madame Viriot, stout and placid, appeared in her black silk dress and an old lace collar and her very best hat with her very best black ostrich feather secured by the old rose-diamond buckle, famous throughout the valley of the Dordogne, which had belonged to her great-great-grandmother; and, lastly, Félise wore a high-necked simple frock of dazzling whiteness which might have shewn up her delicate dark colouring had not her cheeks been inordinately pale.
Bigourdin had Madame Viriot on his right, Monsieur Viriot on his left, and Félise sat between Monsieur Viriot and Lucien. Every one was most ceremoniously polite. It was “mon cherViriot,” and “mon cherBigourdin,” and the formal “vous” instead of the “mon vieux” and the “tu” of the café and of ordinary life; also, “chère madame,” and “Monsieur Lucien” and “ma nièce.” And although from childhood Félise and Lucien had called each other by their Christian names, it was now “monsieur” and “mademoiselle” between them. You see, marriage is in France a deuce of a ceremony which begins months before anybody dreams of setting the wedding bells a-ringing. This dinner of ceremony was the first scene of the first act of the elaborate drama which would end on the curtain being run down to the aforesaid wedding-bells. Really, when one goes into the question, and considers all the barbed wire entanglements that French law and custom interpose between two young people who desire to become man and wife, one not only wonders how any human pair can go through the ordeal and ever marry at all, but is profoundly convinced that France is the most moral country on the face of the globe. As a matter of fact, it is.
It was a long meal of many courses. Martin, aided by theplongeur, acquitted himself heroically. Manners professional and individual, and also the strain of service prevented him from attending to the conversation. But what he could not avoid overhearing did not impress him with its brilliance. It was a self-conscious little company. It threw about statistics as to the state of the truffle crop; it listened to Lucien’s modest anecdotes of his military career; it decided that Parisians were greatly to be pitied in that fate compelled them to live in Paris instead of Brantôme. Even the flush of good cheer failed to inspire it with heartiness. For this perhaps the scared unresponsiveness of one of the chief personages was responsible.
“Are you fond of dogs, mademoiselle?” asked Lucien, valiant in small talk.
“Oui, monsieur,” replied Félise.
“Have you any now, mademoiselle?”
“Non, monsieur,” replied Félise.
“The beautiful poodle that was so clever is dead, I believe,” remarked Madame Viriot in support of her son.
“Oui, madame,” replied Félise.
However alluring to the young Frenchman about to marry may be timid innocence with downcast eyes, yet, when it is to such a degree monosyllabic, conversation does not sparkle. Martin, accustomed to her tongue wagging charmingly, wondered at her silence. What more attractive companion could she desire than thebeau sabreurby her side? And she ate next to nothing. When she was about to decline abécasse au fumet, as to the success of which Euphémie’s heart was beating like a sledge-hammer, he whispered in her ear,
“Just a little bit. Do.”
And as she helped herself, he saw the colour mount to her neck. He felt quite pleased at having prevailed on her to take nourishment.
What happened after the meal in the private salon, where Félise, according to sacred rite, served coffee and liqueurs, Martin did not know. He was too busy with Euphémie and the chambermaid and Baptiste and theplongeurin cleaning up after the banquet. Besides, as the waiter of the establishment, what should he have been doing in that ceremonious gathering?
When the work was finished and a concluding orgy on broken meats and half emptied bottles had been temperately concluded, and Euphémie for the hundredth time had been informed of the exact appreciation which each particular dish had received from Monsieur and Madame Viriot—“young people, you see,” she explained, “have their own affairs and they see everything rose-coloured, and you could give them boiled horse-liver and they wouldn’t know the difference between that andris-de-veau à l’Impériale; it doesn’t matter what you put into the stomachs of children; but with old, serious folks, it is very important. I made the stomach of Monsieur Viriot the central idea of my dinner—I have known the stomach of Monsieur Viriot for twenty years—also that of Madame, for old ladies,voyez-vous, know more than you think”—and when the weary and zealous servants had gone their separate ways, Martin locked up, and, escaping from the generous atmosphere of the kitchen, entered the dimly lit vestibule with the idea of smoking a quiet cigarette before going to bed. There he found Bigourdin, sprawling his great bulk over the cane-seated couch.
“Did things go all right?” he asked.
“Wonderfully. Everybody dined well. They can go to thebanandarrière-banof their friends and relations and say that there is not such acuisinein Périgord as at the Hôtel des Grottes. And the service was excellent. Not the smallest hitch. I congratulate you and thank you,mon ami. Butouf!”—he took a great breath of relief—“I am glad it is over. I was not built for the formalities of society.Ça vous fatigue!”
“It’s also fatiguing from the waiter’s point of view,” laughed Martin.
“But it is all necessary when one has a young girl to marry. The father and mother of the young man expect it. It is very complicated. Soon there will be the formal demand in marriage. They will wear gloves—c’est idiot—but what would you have? It is the custom. And then there will be a dinner of ceremony at the Viriots’. He has some Chambertin in his cellar, my old friend Viriot—ah,mon petitMartin!”—he blew a kiss to the purple goddess beloved of Bacchus and by him melted into each cobwebbed bottle—“It is the only thing that reconciles me to it. Truth to say, one dines abominably at the Viriots. If he does not produce some of that Chambertin, I withdraw the dowry of Félise.”
“It’s all arranged then?” Martin asked.
“All what?”
“The marriage.”
“Without doubt.”
“Then Monsieur Lucien has been accepted by Mademoiselle Félise? I mean, he has proposed to her, as we English say?”
“Mais non!” cried Bigourdin, with a shocked air. “Lucien is a correctly brought up young man and would not offend the proprieties in that matter. It is not the affair of Lucien and Félise, it is the affair of the two families, the parents; and for Félise I amin loco parentis. Propose to Félise! What are you talking about?”
“It all interests me so much,” replied Martin. “In England we manage differently. When a man wants to marry a girl, he asks her, and when they have fixed up everything between themselves, they go and announce the fact to their families.”
To which Bigourdin made the amazing answer:
“C’est le phlègme britannique!”
British phlegm! When a man takes his own unphlegmatic way with a maid! Martin could find no adequate retort. He was knocked into a cocked hat. He threw away his cigarette and, being very tired, half stifled a yawn. Bigourdin responded mightily and rose to his feet.
“Allons dodo,” said he. “All this has been terribly fatiguing.”
So fatiguing had it all been that Félise, for the first time since the chicken-pox and measles of childhood, remained in her bed the next day. Euphémie, her personal attendant, found her in the morning a wan ghost with a splitting headache, and forbade her to rise. She filled her up withtilleul, the decoction of lime-leaves which in French households is the panacea for all ills, and, good and comfortable gossip, extolled, in Gallic hyperbole, the dazzling qualities of Monsieur Lucien. At last, fever-eyed and desperate, Félise sat up in bed and pointed to the door.
“Ma bonne Euphémie, laisse-moi tranquille! Va-t’en! Fich’-moi la paix!”
Euphémie gaped in bewilderment. It was as though a dove had screamed:
“Leave me alone! Go away! Go to Blazes!”
“Ah, la! la! ma pauvre petite!” Euphémie knew not what she was saying, but she went. She went to Bigourdin and told him that mademoiselle was in delirium, she had brain-fever, and if he wanted to save her reason, he must send at once for the doctor. The doctor came, diagnosed a chill on the vaguest of symptoms, and orderedsoupe à l’huile. This invalid fare is a thin vegetable soup with a layer of salad oil floating on the top with the object of making the liquid slip gratefully down the gullet: the French gullet, be it understood. Félise, in spite of her lifelong French training, had so much of England lingering in her œsophagus, that it abhorredsoupe à l’huile. The good doctor’s advice failed. She fasted in bed all day, declaring that, headache apart, she was perfectly well, and the following morning, a wraith of herself, arose and went about her ordinary avocations.
“But what is the matter with her?” asked Bigourdin of Martin. “Nothing could have disagreed with her at that abominable dinner, because she didn’t eat anything.”
As Martin could throw no light on the sudden malady of Félise, Bigourdin lit a cigarette and inhaled a huge puff.
“It needs a woman,voyez-vous, to look after a young girl. Men are no good. There are a heap of secrets——” With his arms he indicated Mount Blanc piled on Mount Everest. “I shall be glad when she is well and duly married. Perhaps the approaching betrothal affects her. Women have nerves like that. She is anxious to know the result of the negotiations. At the present moment the Viriots are free to make or make not their demand. It would be good to reassure her a little. What do you think?”
Martin gave utterance to the profound apophthegm: “There is nothing so upsetting as uncertainty.”
“That is my idea!” cried Bigourdin. “Pardon me for consulting you on these details so intimate and a little sacred. But you have a clear intelligence and a loyal heart.”
So it came to pass that, afterdéjeuner, Bigourdin took Félise into their own primly and plushily furnished salon, and, like an amiable bull in a boudoir, proceeded to smash up the whole of her universe.
“There is no doubt,” he proclaimed, “Monsieur and Madame Viriot have dreamed of it for ten years. I give you a dowry—there is no merit in it, because I love you like my own daughter—but I give you a dowry such as there are not many in Périgord. Lucien loves you. He isbon garçon. It has never entered his head to think of another woman for his wife. It is all arranged. In two or three days—you must allow for theconvenances—Monsieur Viriot and Lucien will call on me. So, my dear little angel, do not be afraid.”
Félise had listened to this, white-faced and hollow-eyed. “But I don’t want to marry Lucien,mon oncle!”
“Comment?You don’t want to marry Lucien?”
“No,mon oncle.”
“But——” He swept the air with a protesting gesture.
“I have already told you so,” said Félise.
“But,ma chère petite, that wasn’t serious. It was because you had some stupid and beautiful idea of not deserting me. That is all imbecile. Young people must marry,sacrebleu! so that the race is perpetuated, and fathers and mothers and uncles don’t count.”
“But what has that to do with it,mon oncle?” protested Félise. “I find Lucien very charming; but I don’t love him. If I loved him, I would marry him. But as I don’t love him, I can’t marry him.”
“But marry him and you will love him,” cried Bigourdin, as millions of French fathers and uncles have cried for the last three or four hundred years. “It is very simple. What more do you want than a gallant fellow like Lucien?”
Then, of course, she broke down, and began to cry. Bigourdin, unused to feminine tears, tried to clutch his hair. If it had been longer than half an inch of upstanding bristle, he would have torn it.
“You don’t understand,mon oncle,” she sobbed, with bowed head. “It is only my mother who can advise me. I must see my mother.”
Bigourdin put his arm round the girl’s slender shoulders. “Your mother, my poor Félise, sees nobody.”
She raised her head and flashed out: “She sees my father. She lives with him in the same house. Why shouldn’t she see me?”
“Tiens, tiens, my little Félise,” said Bigourdin soothingly. “There is no need for you to consult your mother. Both your father and your mother have a long while ago decided that you should marry Lucien. Do you think I would take a step of which they did not approve?”
“A long while ago is not to-day,” sobbed Félise. “I want to talk to my mother.”
Bigourdin walked across the salon, with his back to her, and snapped his fingers in peculiar agitation, and muttered below his breath: “Nom de Dieu, de nom de Dieu, de nom de Dieu!” Kindest-hearted of mortals though he was, he resented the bottom being knocked out of his scheme of social existence. For years he had looked forward to this alliance with the Viriots. Personally he had nothing to gain: on the contrary, he stood to lose the services of Félise and a hundred thousand francs. But he had set his heart on it, and so had the Viriots. To go to them and say, “My niece refuses to marry your son,” would be a slash of the whip across their faces. His failure to bring up a young girl in the proper sentiments would be a disgrace to him in the eyes of the community. He felt hurt, too, because he no longer sufficed her; she wanted her mother; and it was out of the question that she should go to her mother. No wonder he swore to himself softly.
“But,mon Dieu,” said he, turning round. “What have you against Lucien?”
Whereupon they went over all the argument again. She did not love Lucien. She didn’t want to marry Lucien. She would not marry a man she did not love.
“Then you will die an old maid,” said Bigourdin. “An old maid,figure-toi! It would be terrible!”
Félise sniffed at such terrors. Bigourdin, in desperation, asked what he was to tell the Viriots. “The truth,” said Félise. But what was the truth?
“Tell me, my little Félise,” said he, gently, “there is, by chance, no one else?”
Then Félise waxed indignant and routed the unhappy man. She gave him to understand that she was ajeune fille bien élevéeand was not in the habit of behaving like a kitchenmaid. It was cruel and insulting to accuse her of clandestine love-affairs. And Bigourdin, bound by his honourable conventions, knew that she was justified in her resentment. Again he plucked at his bristles, scared by the spectacle of outraged maidenhood. The tender-eyed dove had become a flashing little eagle. A wilier man than he might have suspected the over-protesting damsel. Woman-like, she pressed her advantage.
“Mon oncle, I love you with all my heart, but you are a man and you don’t understand.”
“That is absolutely true,” said he.
“So you see there is only one person I can explain it to, and that is my mother.”
Thus she completed the vicious little circle. And again the helpless Bigourdin walked across the salon and turned his back on her and muttered the incantation which brings relief to distracted man. But this time she went up to him and put an arm round his great body and laid her face against his sleeve.
“Tu sais, je suis bien malheureuse.”
It was a knife stuck in the honest fellow’s heart. He caught her to him and in his turn protested vehemently. He would not allow her to be unhappy. He would cut off his head rather than allow her to be unhappy. He would do anything—his French caution forbade an offer to send the Viriots packing—anything in reason to bring the colour back to her white cheeks.
Suddenly he had an inspiration which glowed all over his broad face and caused him to hold her out at arms’ length and laugh joyously.
“You can’t see your mother—but there is your good Aunt Clothilde. She will be a second mother to you. A woman so pious and so sympathetic. You will be able to tell her all your troubles. She has married a regiment of daughters. What she doesn’t know of young girls isn’t worth knowing. You are tired, you are ill. You need a change, a little holiday. Go and spend a month with her, and when you come back we’ll see what can be done with regard to Lucien. I’ll write to her now.”
And without waiting to hear her demure “Bien, mon oncle,” he escaped to thebureauwhere he should find the writing materials which did not profane the sacred primness of the salon, and plunged into correspondence. Félise, left alone, pondered for a moment or two, with faint wrinkling of her smooth forehead, and then, sketching a gesture of fatalistic resignation, went off to the kitchen, where a great special boiling of goose livers was in progress. On the way she met Martin carrying a load of porcelain pots. But she passed him by coldly; and for the rest of the day she scarcely threw at him a couple of words.
Meanwhile Bigourdin beamed over the letter to his elder sister Clothilde, a comfortable and almost opulent widow who lived at Chartres. They had not met for a dozen years, it is true, and she had only once seen Félise; but the sense of the family is very strong in France, especially where marriage alliances are concerned, and he had no doubt that she would telegraph, as requested, and authorise him to entrust Félise to her keeping. Verily it had been an inspiration. It was a solution of difficulties. The Viriots had given signs of an almost indecent hurry, which naturally had scared Félise. A month was a long time. Clothilde was a woman of experience, tact and good sense. She would know how to bring Félise to a reasonable state of mind. If she did not succeed—well—he was not the man to force his little Félise into a distasteful marriage. In any case he had a month’s respite.
Having stated his case at length, he went out into the town to post such an important letter at the centralPostes et Télégraphes, and on the way back, looked in at the shop of the very respectable Madame Chauvet, who, with her two elderly daughters, sold crucifixes and rosaries and books of devotion and candles and all that would supply the devout needs of the religious population. And after a prolonged and courtly conversation, he induced Madame Chauvet, in consideration of their old friendship, her expenses and an honorarium of twenty francs, to undertake the safe convoy of Félise from Brantôme to the house of Madame Robineau, her Aunt Clothilde, at Chartres.