THERE is six o’clock striking and those English have not yet arrived.” Thus spake Gaspard-Marie Bigourdin, landlord of the H?tel 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 Brant?me,” 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 Brant?me was a curiosity. All the inhabitants, you among them, ma petite Félise, used to run two kilometres to look at him. But now, with the automobile, they are as familiar in the eyes of the good Brant?mois as truffles.”
By this simile Monsieur Bigourdin did not mean to convey the idea that the twelve hundred inhabitants of Brant?me were all gastronomic voluptuaries. It is true that Brant?me battens on paté de foie gras; but it is the essence of its existence, seeing that Brant?me makes it and sells it and with pigs and dogs hunts the truffles without which paté de foie gras would 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 H?tel 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 Brant?me stretched out below him was inseparable from Bigourdin’s earliest conception of the universe. In the H?tel 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. Brant?me 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 Brant?me. 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’h?te at the H?tel 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 d?ner,” said he.
In the patriarchal fashion, now unfortunately becoming obsolete, Monsieur Bigourdin dined with his guests. The salle-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 Brant?me, 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 the salle-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 the salle-à-manger and 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 fran?aise.”
“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 an avoué?”
“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 Brant?me 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 the salle-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.