THEY had further talk together the next afternoon. A lost remnant of golden autumn freakishly returned to warm the December air. The end of the terrace caught a flood of sunshine wherein Lucilla, wrapped in furs and rugs and seated in one of the bent-wood rocking-chairs brought out from winter quarters for the occasion, had established herself with a book. The little dog’s head appeared from under the rug, his strange Mongolian eyes staring unsympathetically at a draughty world. Martin sauntered out to breathe the beauty of the hour, which was that of his freedom. He explained the fact when she informed him that Félise and Bigourdin had both left her a few minutes before in order to return to their duties. Martin being free, she commanded him to stay and entertain her. “If I were a good American,” she said, “I should be racing about in the car doing the sights of the neighbourhood; but to sit lazily in the sun is too great a temptation. Besides,” she added, “I have explored the town this morning. I went round with Monsieur Bigourdin.”
“He is very proud of Brant?me,” said Martin.
She dismissed Brant?me. “I have lost my heart to him. He is so big and comfortable and honest, and he talks history like a poetical professor with the manners of an Embassy attaché. He’s unique among landlords.”
“I love Bigourdin,” said Martin, “but the type is not uncommon in these old inns of France—especially those which have belonged to the same family for generations. There is the proprietor of the H?tel du Commerce at Périgueux, for instance, who makes paté de foie gras, just like Bigourdin, and is a well-known authority on the prehistoric antiquities of the Dordogne. He once went to London, for a day; and what do you think was his object? To inspect the collection of flint instruments at the Guildhall Museum. He told me so himself.”
“That’s all very interesting,” said Lucilla, “but I’m sure he’s nothing like Bigourdin. He can’t be. And his hotel can’t be like this. It’s the queerest hotel I’ve ever struck. It’s run by such unimaginable people. I think I’ve lost my heart to all of you. There’s Bigourdin, there’s Félise, the dearest and most delicate little soul in the world, the daughter of a remarkable mystery of a man, there are Baptiste and Euphémie and Marie, the chambermaid, who seem to exude desire to fold me to their bosoms whenever I meet them, and there is yourself, an English University man, an exceedingly competent waiter and a perfectly agreeable companion.”
The divinity crowned with a little sealskin motoring toque which left unhidden the fascination of her up-brushed hair, cooed on deliciously. The knees of Martin, leaning against the parapet, became as water. He had a crazy desire to kneel at her feet on the concrete floor of the terrace. Then he noticed that between her feet and the cold concrete floor there was no protecting footstool. He fetched one from the dining room and had the felicity of placing it for her and readjusting the rugs.
“I suppose you’re not going to be a waiter here all your life,” she said.
He signified that the hypothesis was correct.
“What are you going to do?”
It was in his awakened imagination to say:
“Follow you to the ends of the earth,” but common sense replied that he did not know. He had made no plans. She suggested that he might travel about the wide world. He breathed an inward sigh. Why not the starry firmament? Why not, rainbow-winged and golden spear in hand, swoop, a bright Archangel, from planet to planet?
“You ought to see Egypt,” she said, “and feel what a speck of time you are when the centuries look down on you. It’s wholesome. I’m going early in the New Year. I go there and try to paint the desert; and then I sit down and cry—which is wholesome too—for me.”
Before Martin’s inner vision floated a blurred picture of camels and pyramids and sand and oleographic sunsets. He said, infatuated: “I would give my soul to go to Egypt.”
“Egypt is well worth a soul,” she laughed.
Words and reply were driven from his head by the sight of a great splotch of grease on the leg of his trousers. A dress suit worn daily for two or three months in pursuit of a waiter’s avocation, does not look its best in stark sunlight. Self-conscious, he crossed his legs, as he leaned against the parapet, in order to hide the splotch. Then he noticed that one of the studs of his shirt had escaped from the frayed and blackened buttonhole. Again he felt her humorous eyes upon him. For a few moments he dared not meet them. When he did look up he found them fixed caressingly on the Pekinese spaniel, which had slipped upon its back in the hope of a rubbed stomach, and was waving feathery paws in pursuit of her finger. A moment’s reflection brought heart of grace. Greasy suit and untidy stud-hole must have been obvious to her from his first appearance on the terrace—indeed they must have been obvious while he had waited on her at déjeuner. Her invitation to converse was proof that she disregarded outer trappings, that she recognised the man beneath the soup-stained raiment. He uncrossed his legs and stood upright. Then he remembered her remark.
“The question is,” said he, “whether my soul would fetch enough to provide me with a ticket to Egypt.”
She smiled lazily. The sunlight being full on her face, he noticed that her eyelashes were brown. Wondrous discovery!
“Anyhow,” she replied, “where there’s a soul, there’s a way.”
She took a cigarette from a gold case that lay on the little iron table beside her. Martin sprang forward with a match. She thanked him graciously.
“It isn’t money that does the real things,” she said, after a few meditative puffs. “To hear an American say so must sound strange to your English ears. You believe, I know, that Americans make money an Almighty God that can work any miracles over man and natural forces that you please. But it isn’t so. The miracles, such as they are, that America has performed, have been due to the naked human soul. Money has come as an accident or an accretion and has helped things along. We have a saying which you may have heard: ‘Money talks.’ That’s just it. It talks. But the soul has had to act first. Money had nothing to do with American Independence. It was the soul of George Washington. It wasn’t money that invented the phonograph. It was the soul of the train newsboy Edison. It wasn’t money that brought into being the original Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was the soul of the old ferryman that divined the power of steam both on sea and land a hundred years ago, and accidentally or incidentally or logically or what you please, founded the Vanderbilt fortune. I could go on for ever with instances from my own country—instances that every school-child knows. In the eyes of the world the Almighty Dollar may seem to rule America —but every thinking American knows in his heart of hearts that the Almighty Dollar is but an accidental symbol of the Almighty soul of man. And it’s the soul that we’re proud of and that keeps the nation together. All this more or less was at the back of my mind when I said where there’s a soul there’s a way.”
As this little speech progressed her face lost its expression of serene and humorous contentment with the world, and grew eager and her eyes shone and her voice quickened. He regarded her as some fainéant Homeric warrior might have regarded the goddess who had descended cloud-haste from Olympus to exhort him to noble deeds. The exhortation fluttered both pride and pulses. He saw in her a woman capable of great things and she had appealed to him as a man also capable.
“You have pointed me out the way to Egypt,” he said.
“I’m glad,” said Lucilla. “Look me up when you get there,” she added with a smile. “It seems a big place, but it isn’t. Cairo, Luxor, Assouan—and at any rate the Semiramis Hotel at Cairo.”
And then she began to talk of that wonderful land, of the mystery of the desert, the inscrutable gods of granite and Karnac brooding over the ghost of Thebes. She spoke from wide knowledge and sympathy. An allusion here and there indicated how true a touch she had on far divergent aspects of life. Apart from her radiant adorableness which held him captive, she possessed a mind which stimulated his own so long lain sluggish. He had not met before the highly educated woman of the world. Instinctively he contrasted her with Corinna, who in the first days of their pilgrimage had dazzled him with her attainments. She had a quick intelligence, but in any matter of knowledge was soon out of her depth; yet she exhibited singular adroitness in regaining the shallows where she found safety in abiding. Lucilla, on the other hand, swam serenely out into deep blue water. From every point of view she was a goddess of bewildering attributes.
After a while she shivered slightly. The sun had disappeared behind a corner of the hotel. Greyness overspread the terrace. The glory of the short winter afternoon had departed. She rose, Heliogabalus, also shivering, under her arm. Martin held the rugs.
“I wonder,” said she, “whether you could possibly send up some tea to my quaint little salon. Perhaps you might induce Félise to join me.”
That was all the talk he had with her. In the evening the arrival of an English motor party kept him busy, both during dinner and afterwards; for not only did they desire coffee and liqueurs served in the vestibule, but they gave indications to his experienced judgment of requiring relays of whiskies and sodas until bedtime. Again he did not visit the Café de l’Univers.
The next morning she started for the Riviera. She was proceeding thither via Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne and the coast. To Martin’s astonishment Félise was accompanying her, on a visit for ten days or a fortnight to the South. It appeared that the matter had been arranged late the previous evening. Lucilla had made the proposal, swept away difficulty after difficulty with her air of a smiling, but irresistible providence and left Bigourdin and Félise not a leg save sheer churlishness to stand on. Clothes? She had ten times the amount she needed. The perils of the lonely and tedious return train journey? Never could Félise accomplish it. Bigourdin turned up an Indicateur des Chemins de Fer. There were changes, there were waits. Communications were arranged, with diabolical cunning, not to correspond. Perhaps it was to confound the Germans in case of invasion. As far as he could make out it would take seventy-four hours, forty-three minutes to get from Monte Carlo to Brant?me. It was far simpler to go from Paris to Moscow, which as every one knew was the end of the world. Félise would starve. Félise would perish of cold. Félise would get the wrong train and find herself at Copenhagen or Amsterdam or Naples, where she wouldn’t be able to speak the language. Lucilla laughed. There was such a thing as L’Agence Cook which moulded the Indicateur des Chemins de Fer to its will. She would engage a man from Cook’s before whose brass-buttoned coat and a gold-lettered cap band the Indicateur would fall to pieces, to transfer Félise personally, by easy stages, from house to house. Félise had pleaded her uncle’s need. Lucilla, in the most charming way imaginable, had deprecated as impossible any such colossal selfishness on the part of Monsieur Bigourdin. Overawed by the Olympian he had peremptorily ordered Félise to retire and pack her trunk. Then, obeying the dictates of his sound sense he had asked Lucilla what object she had in her magnificent invitation. His little girl, said he, would acquire a taste for celestial things which never afterwards would she be in a position to gratify. To which, Lucilla:
“How do you know she won’t be able to gratify them? A girl of her beauty, charm and character, together with a little knowledge of the world of men, women and things, is in a position to command whatever she chooses. She has the beauty, charm and character and I want to add the little knowledge. I want to see a lovely human flower expand”—she had a graceful trick of restrained gesture which impressed Bigourdin. “I want to give a bruised little girl whom I’ve taken to my heart a good time. For myself, it’s some sort of way of finding a sanction for my otherwise useless existence.”
And Bigourdin clutching at his bristles had plucked forth no adequately inspired reply. The will of the New World had triumphed over that of the Old.
All the staff of the hotel witnessed the departure.
“Monsieur Martin,” said Félise in French, about to step into the great car, a medley, to her mind, of fur rugs and dark golden dogs and grey cats and maids and chauffeurs and innumerable articles of luggage, “I have scarcely had two words with you. I no longer know where I have my head. But look after my uncle and see that the laundress does not return the table-linen black.”
“Bien, Mademoiselle Félise,” said Martin.
Lucilla, pink and white and leopard-coated, shook hands with Bigourdin, thanked him for his hospitality and reassured him as to the perfect safety of Félise. She stepped into the car. Martin arranged the rugs and closed the door. She held out her hand to him.
“We meet in Egypt,” she said in a low voice. As the car drove off, she turned round and blew a gracious kiss to the little group.
“Voilà une petite sorcière d’Américaine,” said Bigourdin. “Pif! Paf! and away goes Félise on her broomstick.”
Martin stood shocked at hearing his Divinity maligned as a witch.
“Here am I,” continued Bigourdin, “between pretty sheets. I have no longer a housekeeper, seeing that Madame Thuillier rendered herself unbearable. However”—he shrugged his shoulders resignedly—“we must get on by ourselves as best we can. The trip will be good for the health of Félise. It will also improve her mind. She will stay in many hotels and observe their organisation.”
From the moment that Martin returned to his duties he felt unusual lack of zeal in their performance. Deprived of the Celestial Presence the H?tel des Grottes seemed to be stricken with a blight The rooms had grown smaller and barer, the furniture more common, and the terrace stretched outside a bleak concrete wilderness. Often he stood on the bridge and repeated the question of the memorable evening. What was he doing there when the wide world was illuminated by a radiant woman? Suddenly Bigourdin, Félise, the circle of the Café de l’Univers became alien in speech and point of view. He upbraided himself for base ingratitude. He realised, more from casual talk with Bigourdin, than from sense of something wanting, the truth of Félise’s last remark. In the usual intimate order of things she would have related her experiences of Chartres and Paris in which he would have manifested a more than brotherly interest. During her previous absence he had thought much of Félise and had anticipated her return with a throb of the heart. The dismissal of Lucien Viriot, much as he admired the gallant ex-cuirassier, pleased him mightily. He had shared Bigourdin’s excitement over the escape from Chartres, over Fortinbras’s prohibition of the marriage, over her return in motoring state. When she had freed herself from Bigourdin’s embrace, and turned to greet him, the clasp of her two little hands and the sight of her eager little face had thrilled him. He had told her, as though she belonged to him, of the things he knew she was dying to hear. . . . And then the figure of the American girl with her stately witchery had walked through the door of the salle-à-manger into his life.
The days went on dully, shortening and darkening as they neared Christmas. Félise wrote letters to her uncle, artlessly filled with the magic of the South. Two letters from Lucilla Merriton decreed extension of her guest’s visit. Bigourdin began to lose his genial view of existence. He talked gloomily of France’s unreadiness for war. There were thieves and traitors in the Cabinet. Whole Army Corps were notoriously deficient in equipment and transport. It was enough, he declared, to make a patriotic Frenchman commit protesting suicide in the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies. And what news had Martin received of Mademoiselle Corinna? Martin knew little save that she was engaged in some mysterious work in London.
“But what is she doing?” cried Bigourdin, at last.
“I haven’t the remotest idea,” replied Martin.
“Dites donc, mon ami,” said Bigourdin, the gloom of anxiety deepening on his brow. “You do not think, by............