THE bicycle 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 Brant?me 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 the Marchand 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 H?tel 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 the Petit Journal at 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 regular cabinet d’avoué and earn a professional livelihood. Nor did he presume to step within the avoué’s jealously 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 the quartier, 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 Brant?me.”
“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 Chateaudun with its grim old castle; through Vend?me 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 chateaux 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 of h?tels for the nobles, each having its mansard roof and porte-cochère giving 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 Brant?me,” said Corinna. “It marks something definite. Hitherto we have been going along vaguely, in a sort of stupefied dream. At Brant?me 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 rough déjeuners outside 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 the patron of the auberge and 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 M?rier. 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 Brant?me?” 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. . . .”