WHEN Martin returned to the hotel a couple of hours later, he found that Monsieur Camille Fargot had departed, and that Corinna had entrenched herself in her room. On the wane of the afternoon she sent word to any whom it might concern that, not being hungry, she would not come down for dinner. To Félise, anxious concerning her health, she denied access. Offers of comforting nourishment on a tray made on the outer side of the closed door she curtly declined. Mystery enveloped the visit of Camille Fargot. Martin learned from a perturbed Bigourdin that she had descended immediately after he had left the vestibule and had led Fargot at once into the Salon de Lecture, a moth-eaten and fusty cubby-hole in which commercial travellers who found morbid pleasure in the early stages of asphyxiation sometimes wrote their letters. There they had remained for some time, at the end of which Monsieur Fargot—“il avait l’air hébété,” according to Baptiste, a witness of his exit—had issued forth alone and jumped into his car and sped away, presumably to Bordeaux. After a moment or two Mademoiselle Corinne, in her turn, had emerged from the Salon de Lecture and looking very haughty with her pretty head in the air—(again Baptiste)—had mounted to her apartment.
Those were the bare facts. Bigourdin narrated them simply, in order to account for Corinna’s non-appearance at dinner. With admirable taste he forbore to question Martin as to the relations between the lady and her visitor. Nor did Martin enlighten him. An art-student in Paris like Corinna must necessarily have a host of friends. What more natural than that one, finding himself in her neighbourhood, should make a passing call. Such was the tacit convention between Martin and Bigourdin. But the breast of each harboured the conviction that the visit had not been a success of cordiality. Bigourdin exhibited brighter spirits that night at the Café de l’Univers. He played his game of backgammon with Monsieur le Maire and beat him exultantly. Around him the coterie cursed the Germans for forcing the three years’ service on France. He paused, arm uplifted in the act of throwing the dice.
“Never mind. They seek it—they will get it. Vous l’avez voulu, Georges Dandin. The bon Dieu is on our side, just as He is on mine in this battle here. Vlan!”
The dice rattled out of the box and they showed the number that declared him the winner. A great shout arose. The honest burgesses cried miracle. Voyons, it was a sign from heaven to France. “In hoc signo vinces!” cried a professor at the Ecole Normale, and the sober company had another round of bocks to celebrate the augury.
Martin and Bigourdin walked home through the narrow, silent streets and over the bridges. There was a high wind sharpened by a breath of autumn which ruffled the dim surface of the water; and overhead a rack of cloud scudded athwart the stars. A light or two far up the gloomy scaur shewed the H?tel des Grottes. Bigourdin waved his hand in the darkness.
“It is beautiful, all this.”
Martin assented and buttoned up his overcoat.
“It is beautiful to me,” said Bigourdin, “because it is my own country. I was born and bred here and my forefathers before me. It is part of me like my legs and my arms. I don’t say that I am beautiful myself,” he added, with a laugh, his French wit seeing whither logic would lead him. “But you understand.”
“Yes,” said Martin. “I can understand in a way. But I have no little corner of a country that I can call my own. I’m not the son of any soil.”
“Périgord is very fruitful and motherly. She will adopt you,” laughed Bigourdin.
“But I am English of the English,” replied Martin. “Périgord would only adopt a Frenchman.”
“I have heard it said and I believe it to be true,” said Bigourdin, “that every English artist has two countries, his own and France. And it is the artist who expresses the national feeling and not the university professors and philosophers; and all true men have in them something of the artistic, something which responds to the artistic appeal—I don’t know if I make myself clear, Monsieur Martin—but you must confess that all the outside inspiration you get in England in your art and your literature is Latin. I say ‘outside,’ for naturally you draw from your own noble wells; but for nearly a generation the fin esprit anglais, in all its delicacy and all its subtlety and all its humanity is in every way sympathetic with the fin esprit fran?ais. Is not that true?”
“Now I come to think of it,” said Martin, “I suppose it is. I represent the more or less educated middle-class Englishman, and, so far as I am aware of any influence on my life, everything outside of England that has moved me has been French. As far as I know, Germany has not produced one great work of art or literature during the last forty years.”
“Voilà!” cried Bigourdin, “how could a pig of a country like that produce works of art? I haven’t been to Berlin. But I have seen photographs of the Allée des Victoires. Mon cher, it is terrible. It is sculpture hewn out by orders of the drill sergeant’s cane. Ah, cochon de pays! But you others, you English—at last, after our hundred years of peace, you realise how bound you are to France. You realise—all the noble souls among you—that your language is half Latin, that for a thousand years, even before the Norman conquest, all your culture, all the sympathies of your poetry and your art are Roman—and Greek—enfin are Latin. Your wonderful cathedrals—Gothic—do you get them from Teutonic barbarism? No. You get them from the Comacine masters—the little band of Latin spiritualists on the shores of Lake Como. I am an ignorant man, Monsieur Martin, but I have read a little and I have much time to think and—voilà—those are my conclusions. In the great war that will come——”
“It can’t come in our time,” said Martin.
“No? It will come in our time. And sooner than you expect. But when it does come, all that is noble and spiritual in England will be passionately French in its sympathies. Tiens, mon ami—” he planted himself at the corner of the dark uphill road that led to the hotel, and brought his great hands down on Martin’s shoulders. “You do not yet understand. You are a wonderful race, you English. But if you were pure Frisians, like the German, you would not be where you are. Nor would you be if you were pure Latins. What has made you invincible is the interfusion since a thousand years of all that is best in Frisian and Latin. You emerged English after Chaucer—Saxon bone and Latin spirit. That is why, my friend, you hate all that is German. That is why you love now all that is French. And that is why we, nous autres Fran?ais, feel at last that England understands us and is with us.”
Having thus analysed the psychology of the Entente Cordiale in terms which proceeding from the lips of a small English innkeeper would have astounded Martin, Bigourdin released him and together they mounted homewards.
“I was forgetting,” said he, as he bade Martin good-night. “All of what I said was to prove that if you were in need of a foster-mother, Périgord will take you to her bosom.”
“I’ll think of it,” smiled Martin.
He thought of it for five minutes after he had gone to bed and then fell fast asleep.
Early in the morning he was awakened by a great thundering at his door. Convinced of catastrophe, he leaped to his feet and opened. On the threshold the urbane figure of Fortinbras confronted him.
“You?” cried Martin.
“Even I. Having embraced Félise, breakfasted, washed and viewed Brant?me proceeding to its daily labours, I thought it high time to arouse you from your unlarklike slumbers.”
Saying this he passed Martin and drew aside the curtains so that the morning light flooded the room. He was still attired in his sober black with the avoué’s white tie which bore the traces of an all-night journey. Then he sat down on the bed, while Martin, in pyjamas and bare-foot, took up an irresolute position on the cold boards.
“I generally get up a bit later,” said Martin with an air of apology.
“So I gather from my excellent brother-in-law. Well,” said Fortinbras, “how are you faring in Arcadia?”
“Capitally,” replied Martin. “I’ve never felt so fit in my life. But I’m jolly glad you’ve come.”
“You want another consultation? I am ready to give you one. The usual fee, of course. Oh, not now!” As Martin turned to the dressing table where lay a small heap of money, he raised a soft, arresting hand. “The hour is too early for business even in France. I have no doubt Corinna is equally anxious to consult me. How is she?”
“Much the same as usual,” said Martin.
“By which you would imply that she belongs to the present stubborn and stiff-necked generation of young Englishwomen. I hope you haven’t suffered unduly.”
“I? Oh, Lord, no!” Martin replied, with a laugh. “Corinna goes her way and I go mine. Occasionally when there’s only one way to go—well, it isn’t hers.”
“You’ve put your foot down.”
“At any rate Corinna hasn’t put her foot down on me. I think,” said Martin, rubbing his thinly clad sides meditatively, “my journey with Corinna has not been without profit to myself. I’ve made a discovery.”
He paused.
“My dear young friend,” said Fortinbras, “let me hear it.”
“I’ve found out that I needn’t be trampled on unless I like.”
Fortinbras passed his hand over his broad forehead and his silver mane and regarded the young man acutely. Whatever possibilities he might have seen of a romantic attachment between the pair of derelicts no longer existed. Martin had taken cool measure of Corinna and was not the least in love with her. The Dealer in Happiness smiled in his benevolent way.
“Although in your present ruffled and unshorn state you’re not looking your best, you’re a different man from my client of two months ago.”
“Thanks to your advice,” said Martin, “my three weeks’ journey put me into gorgeous health and here I’ve been living in clover.”
“And the environment does not seem to be unfavourable to moral and intellectual development.”
“That’s Bigourdin and his friends,” cried Martin. “He is a splendid fellow, a liberal education.”
“He’s an apostle of sanity,” replied Fortinbras with an approving nod. “Meanwhile sanity would not recommend your standing about in this chilly air with nothing on. I will converse with you while you dress.”
“I’ll have my tub at once,” said Martin.
He disappeared into the famous bathroom and after a few moments returned and made his toilet while he gossiped with Fortinbras of the things he had learned at the Café de l’Univers.
“It’s a funny thing,” said he, “but I can’t make Corinna see it.”
“She’s Parisianised,” replied Fortinbras. “In Paris we see things in false perspective. All the little finnicky people of the hour, artists, writers, politicians are so close to us that they loom up like mountains. You learn more of France in a week at Brant?me than in a year at Paris, because here there’s nothing to confuse your sense of values. Happy young man to live in Brant?me!”
He sighed and, seeing that Martin was ready, rose and accompanied him downstairs. Félise, fresh and dainty, with heightened colour and gladness in her eyes due to the arrival of the adored father, poured out Martin’s coffee. They were old-fashioned in the H?tel des Grottes, and drank coffee out of generous bowls without handles, beside which, on the plate, rested great spoons for such sops of bread as might be thrown therein.
“It is as you like it?” she asked in her pretty, clipped English.
“It’s always the best coffee I have ever drunk,” smiled Martin. He looked up at Fortinbras lounging in the wooden chair usually occupied by Corinna. “Do you know, Mr. Fortinbras, that Mademoiselle Félise has so spoilt me with food and drink that I shall never be able to face an English lodging-house meal again?”
Fortinbras passed his arm round his daughter’s waist and drew her to him affectionately.
“She would spoil me too, if she had the chance. It is astonishing what capability there is in this little body.”
Félise, yielding to the caress, touched her father’s hair. “It’s like mamman, when she was young, n’est-ce pas?” She spoke in French which came more readily.
“Yes,” said Fortinbras, in a deep voice. “Just like your mother.”
“I try to resemble her. Tu sais, every time I feel I am lazy or missing my duties, I think of mamman, and I say, ‘No, I will not be unworthy of her.’ And so that gives me courage.”
“I’ve heard so much of Mrs. Fortinbras,” said Martin, “that I seem to know her intimately.”
A smile of great tenderness and sadness crept into Fortinbras’s eyes as he turned them on his daughter.
“It is good that you still think and speak so much of her. Ideals keep the soul winged for flight. If it flies away into the empyrean and comes to grief like Icarus and his later fellow pioneers in aviation, at least it has done something.”
He released her and she sped away on her duties. Presently she returned with a scared face.
“Monsieur Martin, what has happened? Here is Corinna going to leave us this morning.”
“Corinna going? Does she know I’m here?” asked Fortinbras in wonderment.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her. I did not dream that she was up—she generally rises so late. But she has told Baptiste to take down her boxes for the omnibus to catch the early train for Paris. Mon Dieu, what has happened to drive her away?”
“Perhaps the visit yesterday of Monsieur Camille Fargot,” said Martin.
“Eh?” said Fortinbras sharply. Then turning to Félise. “Go, my dear, and lay my humble homage at the feet of Mademoiselle Corinna and say that as I have travelled for nearly a day and a night in order to see her, I crave her courtesy so far as to defer her departure until I can have speech with her. You can also tell Baptiste that I’ll break his neck if he touches those boxes. The omnibus might also anticipate its usual hour of starting.”
Félise departed. Fortinbras lit a cigarette, and holding it between his fingers, frowned at it.
“Camille Fargot? What was that spawn of nothingness doing here?”
“I fancy she sent for him,” said Martin. “I suppose I had better tell you all about it. I haven’t as yet—because it was none of my business.”
“Proceed,” said Fortinbras, and Martin told him of the famous balance-striking and of Corinna’s subsequent behaviour, including last night’s retirement into solitude after her mysterious interview with the spawn of nothingness.
“Good,” said Fortinbras, when Martin had finished. “Very good. And what had my excellent brother-in-law to say to it?”
“Your excellent brother-in-law,” replied Martin, with a smile, “seems to be a very delicate-minded gentleman.”
Fortinbras did not press the subject. Waiting for Corinna, they talked of casual things. Martin, now a creature of health and appetite, devoured innumerable rolls and absorbed many bowls of coffee, to the outspoken admiration of Fortinbras. But still Corinna did not come. Then Martin filled a pipe of caporal and, smoking it with gusto, told Fortinbras more of what he had learned at the Café de l’Univers. He expressed his wonder at the people’s lack of enthusiasm for their political leaders.
“The adventurer politician is the curse of this country,” said Fortinbras. “He insinuates himself into every government. He is out for plunder and his hand is at the throat of patriotic ministers, and he strangles France, while into his pockets through devious channels filters a fine stream of German gold.”
“I can’t believe it,” cried Martin.
“Oh! He isn’t a traitor in the sense of being suborned by a foreign Power. He is far too subtle. But he knows what policy will affect the world’s exchanges to his profit; and that policy he advocates.”
“A gangrene in the body politic,” said Martin.
Fortinbras nodded assent. “It will only be the sword of war that will cut it out.”
On this, in marched Corinna dressed for travel, with a little embroidered bag slung over her arm. She crossed the room, her head up, her chin in the air, defiant as usual, and shook hands with Fortinbras.
“I’ve come as you asked,” she said. “But let us be quick with the talking, as I’ve got to catch a train.”
“Sit down,” said Fortinbras, setting a chair for her.
She obeyed and there the three of them were sitting once more round a table in an empty dining room. But this time it was a cloudy morning in early November, in the heart of France, the distant mountains across the town half-veiled in mist, and a fine rain falling. Gusts of raw air came in through the open terrace window at the end of the room.
“So, my dear Corinna,” said Fortinbras, “you have not waited for the second consultation which was part of our programme.”
“That’s your fault, not mine,” said Corinna. “I expected you weeks ago.”
“Doubtless. But your expectation was no reason for my coming weeks ago. My undertaking, however, was a reason for your continuing to expect me and being certain that sooner or later I should come.”
“All right,” said Corinna. “This is mere talk. What do you want with me?”
“To ask you, my dear Corinna,” replied Fortinbras, in his persuasive tones, “why you have disregarded my advice?”
“And what was your advice?”
“To do nothing headstrong, violent and lunatic until we met again.”
“You should have come sooner. I find I am living now on Martin’s charity and the time has come to put all this rubbish aside and go home to my people with my tail between my legs. It’s vastly pleasant, I assure you.”
“Oh, young woman of little faith!—Why did you not put your trust in me, instead of in callow medical students with ridiculous mothers?”
Corinna flushed crimson and her eyes hardened in anger. “I suppose every gossiping tongue in this horrid little hotel has been wagging. That’s why I’m going off now, so that they can wag in my absence.”
“But my dear Penthesilea,” said Fortinbras soothingly, “why get so angry? Every living soul in this horrid hotel is on your side. They would give their eyes and ears to help you and sympathise with you and shew you that they love you.”
“I don’t want their sympathy,” said Corinna stubbornly.
“Or any human expression of affection or regret? You want just to pay your bill like any young woman in an automobile who has put up for the night and go your way?”
“No. I don’t. But I’ve been damnably treated and I want to get away back to England.”
“Who has treated you damnably here?” asked Fortinbras.
“Don’t be idiotic,” cried Corinna. “Everybody here has been simply angelic to me—even Martin.”
“On the whole I think I’ve behaved fairly decently since we started out together,” Martin observed.
“At any rate you act according to the instincts of a gentleman,” she admitted.
Fortinbras leaned back in his chair and drew a breath of relief.
“I’m glad to perceive that this hurried departure is not an elopement.”
“Elopement!” she echoed. “Do you think I’d——”
Fortinbras checked her with his uplifted hand. “Sh! Would you like me to tell you in a few words everything that has happened?” He bent his intellectual brow upon her and held her with his patient, tired eyes. “Being at the end of your resources, not desiring to share in the vagabond’s pool with Martin, and losing faith in my professional pledge, you bethink you of the young popinjay with whom, in your independent English innocence, but to the scandal of his French relatives, you have flaunted it in the restaurants and theatres of Paris. Il vous a conté fleurette. He has made his little love to you. All honour and no blame to him. At his age”—he bowed—“I would have done the same. You correspond on the sentimental plane. But in all his correspondence you will find not one declaration in form.”
Corinna mechanically peeled off her gloves. Fortinbras drew a whiff of his cigarette. He continued:—
“You think of him as a possible husband: I am frank—it is my profession to be so. But your heart,”—he pointed dramatically to her bosom—“has never had a flutter. You don’t deny it. Good. In your extremity, as you think, you send him an urgent telegram, such as no man of human feeling could disregard. He borrows his cousin’s husband’s motor-car and obeys your summons. You interview him in yonder little fly-blown, suffocating salon. You put your case before him—with no matter what feminine delicacy. He perceives that he is confronted with a claim for a demand in marriage. He draws back. He cannot by means of any quirk or quibble of French law marry you without his parent’s consent. This they would never give, having their own well-matured and irrefragable plans. Marriage is as impossible as immediate canonization. ‘But,’ says he, ‘we are both young. We love each other, we shall both be in the quartier for time indefinite’—time is never definite, thank God, to youth—‘Why should we not set up housekeeping together? I have enough for both—and let the future take care of itself.’?”
Corinna rose and looked at him haggardly and clutched him by the shoulder.
“How, in the name of God, do you know that? Who told you? Who overheard that little beast propose that I should go and live with him as his mistress?”
Fortinbras patted the white-knuckled hand and smiled, as he looked up into her tense face. “Do you suppose, my dear child, that I have been the father confessor of half the Rive Gauche for twenty years without knowing something of the ways of the Rive Gauche? without knowing something, not exactly of international, but say of multi-national codes of social observance, morality, honour, and so forth, and how they clash, correspond and interact? I know the two international forces—yours and Camille Fargot’s, converging on the matrimonial point—and with simple certainty I tell you the resultant. It’s like a schoolboy’s exercise in mathematics.”
She freed herself and sat down again dejectedly. Everything had happened as Fortinbras declared. His only omission, to repair which she had not given him time, was the scene of flaming indignation incident to Camille Fargot’s dismissal. And his psychology was correct. The young man’s charming love-making had flattered her, had indeed awakened foolish hopes; but she had never cared a button for him. Now she loathed him with a devastating hate. She thrummed with her fingers on the table.
“What is there left for me to do?”
“Ah, now,” said Fortinbras genially, “we’re talking sense. Now we come to our famous second professional consultation.”
“Go ahead then,” said Corinna.
“I mentioned the word ‘professional,’?” Fortinbras remarked.
Martin laughed and put a ten-franc piece into the soft open palm.
“I’ll pay for both,” said he.
“It’s like having your fortune told at a fair,” said Corinna. “But hurry up!” she glanced at her watch. “As it is, I shan’t have time to pay my bill. Will you see after it?” she drew from her bag one of the borrowed notes and threw it across to Martin. “Well, I am all attention. I can give you three minutes.”
But just then a familiar sound of scrunching wheels came through the open doors of the vestibule and dining-room. She started.
“That’s the omnibus going.”
“The omnibus gone,” said Fortinbras.
“I’ll miss my train.”
“You will,” said Fortinbras.
“My luggage has gone with it.”
“It has not,” said Fortinbras. “I gave instructions that it should not be brought down.”
Corinna gasped. “Of all the cool impertinence——!” She looked at her watch again. “And the beastly thing has started long before its time!”
“At my request,” said Fortinbras. “And now, as there is no possibility of your getting away from Brant?me for several hours, perhaps you might, with profit, abandon your attitude of indignation and listen to the voice of reason.”
“By the way,” said Martin, “have you had your petit déjeuner?”
“No,” said Corinna sullenly.
“Good God!” cried Fortinbras, holding up his hands, “and they let women run about loose!”