AFEW evenings 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 the fabrique, 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 the plongeur (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 cher Viriot,” and “mon cher Bigourdin,” 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 the plongeur, 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 Brant?me. 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 the beau sabreur by her side? And she ate next to nothing. When she was about to decline a bécasse 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 the plongeur in 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 and ris-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 the ban and arrière-ban of their friends and relations and say that there is not such a cuisine in Périgord as at the H?tel des Grottes. And the service was excellent. Not the smallest hitch. I congratulate you and thank you, mon ami. But ouf!”—he took a great breath of relief—“I am glad it is over. I was not built for the formalities of society. ?a 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 petit Martin!”—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 am in 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 with tilleul, 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 ordered soupe à l’hu............