lucilla merriton had much money, a kind heart and a pretty little talent in painting. the last secured her admittance to the circle of art-students round about the rue bonaparte, the second made her popular among them and the money enabled her to obey any reasonable dictate of the kind heart aforesaid. when those who were her intimates, mainly hard-working and none too opulent english girls, took her to task for her luxurious way of living, and pointed out that it was not in keeping with the spartan, makeshift traditions of the latin quarter, and that it differentiated her too much from her fellows, she replied, with the frankness of her country, first, that she saw no sense in pretending to be other than she was, second, that in the atmosphere of luxury to which she had been born, she was herself, for whatever that self was worth; and thirdly, that any masquerading as a liver of the simple life would choke all the agreeable qualities out of her. when, looking round her amateur studio, they objected that she did not take her art seriously, she cordially agreed.
“i take what you call my art,” she would say, “just as it suits me. i can command too many things in the world for me to sacrifice them to the mediocre result i can get out of a paint-brush and a bit of canvas. i shall never need paint for money, and if i did i’m sure i shouldn’t earn any. but i love painting for its own sake, and i have enough talent to make it worth while to have good instruction in technique, so that my pictures shall more or less satisfy myself and not set my friends’ teeth on edge. and that’s why i’m here.”
she was a wealthy vagabond of independent fortune inherited from her mother long since deceased, with no living ties save her father, a railway director in america, now married to a young wife, a school-mate of her own, whom, since her childhood, she had peculiarly abhorred. but in the world, which lay wide open to her, videlicet the civilised nations of the two hemispheres, she had innumerable friends. no human will pretended to control her actions. she was as free to live in rosario as in buda-pesth; in nairobi as in nijni novgorod. for the last two or three years she had elected to establish her headquarters in paris and study painting. but why the latter process should involve a hard bed in a shabby room and dreadful meals at the petit cornichon, she could never understand. occasionally, on days of stress at the atélier, she did lunch at the petit cornichon. it was convenient, and, as she was young and thirsty for real draughts of life, the chatter and hubbub of insensate ambitions afforded her both interest and amusement; but she found the food execrable and the universal custom of cleaning knife, fork, spoon and plate before using them exceedingly disgusting. yet, being a lady born and bred, she performed the objectionable rite in the most gracious way in the world; and when it came to comradeship, then her democratic traditions asserted themselves. her student friends ranged the social gamut. if the wearer were a living spirit, she regarded broken boots and threadbare garments merely as an immaterial accident of fortune, like a broken nose or an amputated limb. the flat on the boulevard st. germain was the haven of many a hungry girl and boy. and they found their way thither (as far as lucilla was concerned) not because they were hungry, but because that which lay deep in their souls had won her accurate recognition.
by way of digression, an essential difference in point of view between english and americans may here be noted. if an englishman has reason to admire a tinker and make friends with him, he will leave his own respectable sphere and enter that of the tinker, and, in some humble haunt of tinkerdom, where he can remain incognito, will commune with his crony over pots of abominable and digestion-racking ale. the instinct of the american, in sworn brotherhood with a tinker, is, on the other hand, to lift the tinker to his own habitation of delight. he will desire to take him into a saloon which he himself frequents, fill him up with champagne and provide him with the best, biggest and strongest cigar that money can buy. in both cases appear the special defects of national qualities. the englishman goes to the tinker’s boozing ken (thereby, incidentally, putting the tinker at his ease) because he would be ashamed of being seen by any of his own clan in a tinker’s company. the american does not care a hang for being seen with the tinker; he wants to give his friend a good time; but, incidentally, he has no intuitive regard for the tinker’s feelings, predilections and timidities.
from which disquisition it may be understood how lucilla played lady bountiful without the slightest consciousness of doing so. she played it so well, with regard to félise, as to make that young woman in the course of a day or two her slave and worshipper. she shewed her the sights of paris, versailles, the galeries de lafayette, the tomb of napoleon, poiret’s, the salon d’hiver, the panthéon and cartier’s in the rue de la paix. with the aid of pins and scissors and céleste, she also attired her in an evening frock and under the nominal protection of an agreeable young compatriot from the embassy took her to dine at the café de paris and then to the théatre du gymnase. a great, soft-cushioned, smooth, noiseless car carried them luxuriously through the infinite streets; and when they were at home it seemed to await them night and day by the kerb of the boulevard saint germain. lucilla set the head of the little country mouse awhirl with sensations. félise revered her as a goddess, and whispered in awe the christian name which she was commanded to use.
a breathless damsel, with a jumble of conflicting scraps of terror and delight instead of a mind, her arms full of an adored persian kitten and an adoring pekinese spaniel, after a couple of days’ flashing course through france, was brought in the gathering dusk, with a triumphant sweep up the hill, to the familiar front door of the h?tel des grottes. baptiste, green-aproned, gaped as he saw her, and, scuttling indoors, shouted at the top of his voice:
“monsieur, monsieur, c’est mademoiselle!”
in an instant, bigourdin lumbered out at full speed. he almost lifted her from the car, scattering outraged kitten and offended dog, hid her in his vast embrace and hugged her and kissed her and held her out at arm’s length and laughed and hugged her again. there was no doubt of the prodigal’s welcome. she laughed and sobbed and hugged the great man in return. and then he recovered himself and became the bon h?telier and assisted lucilla to alight, while félise greeted a smiling martin and suffered the embrace of euphémie, panting from the kitchen.
“if mademoiselle will give herself the trouble of following me——” said bigourdin, and led the way up the stairs, followed by lucilla and céleste, guardian of the jewel case. he threw open the door of the chambre d’honneur, a double-windowed room, above the terrace, overlooking the town and the distant mountains of the limousin, and shewed her with pride a tiny salon adjoining, the only private sitting-room in the hotel, crossed the corridor and flung to view the famous bathroom, disclosed next door a room for the maid, and swept her back to the bedroom, where a pine-cone fire was blazing fragrantly.
“voilà, mademoiselle,” said he. “tout à votre disposition.”
“i think it is absolutely charming,” cried lucilla. she looked round. “oh! what lovely things you have!”
bigourdin beamed and made a little bow. he took inordinate pride in his chambre d’honneur in which he had stored the gems of the empire furniture acquired by his great-grandfather, the luckless général de brigade. the instantaneous appreciation of a casual glance enchanted him.
“i hope, mademoiselle,” said he, in his courteous way, “you will do félise and myself the honour of being our guest as long as you deign to stay at brant?me.”
lucilla met his bright eyes. “that’s delightful of you,” she laughed. “but i’m not one solitary person, i’m a caravan. there’s me and the maid and the chauffeur and the car and the dog and the cat.”
“the hotel is very little, mademoiselle,” replied bigourdin, “but our hearts are big enough to entertain them.”
nothing more, or, at least, nothing more by way of protest, was to be said. lucilla put out her hand in her free, generous gesture.
“monsieur bigourdin, i accept with pleasure your delightful hospitality.”
“je vous remercie infiniment, mademoiselle,” said bigourdin.
he went downstairs in a flutter of excitement. not for four generations, so far as he was aware, had such an event occurred in the h?tel des grottes. members of the family, of course, had stayed there without charge. once, towards the end of the second empire, a minister of the interior had occupied the chambre d’honneur, and had gone away without paying his bill; but that remained a bad black debt in the books of the hotel. never had a stranger been an honoured guest. he had offered the position, it is true, to corinna; but then he was in love with corinna, which makes all the difference. the french are not instinctively hospitable; when they are seized, however, by the impulse of hospitality, all that they have is yours, down to the last crust in the larder; but they are fully conscious of their own generosity, they feel the tremendousness of the spiritual wave. so bigourdin, kindest-hearted of men, lumbered downstairs aglow with a sense of altruistic adventure. in the vestibule he met félise who had lingered there in order to obtain from martin a compte rendu of the household and the neighbourhood. things had gone none too well—monsieur peyrian, one of their regular commercial travellers, having discovered a black-beetle in his bread, had gone to the h?tel du cygne. the baker had indignantly repudiated the black-beetle, his own black-beetles being apparently of an entirely different species. another baker had been appointed, whose only defect was his inability to bake bread. the brave madame thuillier, who had been called in to superintend the factory, had quarrelled, after two days, with everybody, and had gone off in dudgeon because she did not eat at the patron’s table. then they had lost two of their best hands, one a young married woman who was reluctantly compelled to add to the population of france, and the other a girl who was discharged for laying false information against the very respectable and much married baptiste, saying that he had pinched her. the old mère maquoise, marchande de quatre saisons, who was reputed to have known général bigourdin, was dead, and one of the hotel omnibus horses had come down on its knees.
félise, forgetful of the maison de blanc and n?tre dame, wrung her hands. she had descended from fairyland into life’s dear and important realities.
“it’s desolating, what you tell me,” she cried.
“and all because you went away and left us,” said martin.
“she is not going to leave us again!” cried bigourdin, swooping down on her and carrying her off.
in the prim little salon he hugged her again and said gripping her hands:
“it appears you have greatly suffered, my poor little félise. but why didn’t you tell me from the first that you were unhappy with your aunt clothilde? i did not know she had turned into such a vieille pimbèche. she has written. and i have answered. ah! i tell you, i have answered! you need never again have any fear of your aunt clothilde. i hope i am a christian. but i hope too that i shall always differ from her in my ideas of christianity. mais tout ?a est fini—bel et bien fini. we have to talk of ourselves. i have been a miserable man since you have been away, ma petite félise. i tell you that in all frankness. everything has been at sixes and sevens. i can’t do without my little ménagère. and you shall never marry anybody, even the president of the republic, unless you want to. foi de bigourdin! voilà!”
félise cried a little. “tu es trop bon pour moi, mon oncle.”
“allons donc! i seem to have been an old bear. yet, in truth, i am harmless as a sheep. but have confidence in me, and in my very dear friend, your father—there are many things you cannot understand—and things will arrange themselves quite happily. you love me just a little bit, don’t you?”
she flung her arms round the huge man’s neck.
“je t’adore, mon petit oncle,” she cried.
ten minutes afterwards, with bunch of keys slung at her waist, she was busy restoring to order the chaos of the interregnum. terrible things had happened during the absence of the feminine eye. even martin shared the universal reprimand. for félise, manageress of hotel, and félise, storm-tossed little human soul, were two entirely different entities.
“my dear martin, how could you and my uncle pass these napkins from that infamous old thief of a laundress. they are black!”
and ruthlessly she flicked a napkin folded mitre-wise from the centre table before the eyes of the folder and revealed its dingy turpitude.
“it is well that i am back,” she declared.
“it is indeed, mademoiselle félise,” said martin.
she gave him a swift little glance out of the tail of her eye, before she sped away, and the corners of her lips drooped as though in disappointment. then perhaps reflecting that she had been addressing the waiter and not the man, her face cleared. at all events he had taken her rating in good part.
dinner had already begun and the hungry commercials, napkins at neck, were finishing their soup lustily, when lucilla entered the dining room. the open medici collar to a grey velvet dress shewed the graceful setting of her neck and harmonised with the brown hair brushed up from the forehead. she advanced smiling and stately, giving the impression of the perfect product of a new civilisation. martin, who had but seen her for a few seconds in the dusk confusedly clad in furs, stood spell-bound, a pile of used soup-plates in his hands. never had so radiant an apparition swum before his gaze. bigourdin, dining as usual with félise, rose immediately and conducted his guest to the little table by the terrace where once martin and corinna had sat. it was specially adorned with tawny chrysanthemums.
“i fell dreaming before the fire in the midst of your wonderful, old-world things, and had to hurry into my clothes, and so i’m late,” she apologised.
“if only you found all you needed, mademoiselle——” said bigourdin anxiously. “it is the provinces and not paris.”
she assured him that félise had seen to every conceivable want and he left her to her meal. martin delivered his soup-plates into the arms of the chambermaid and hovered over lucilla with the menu card.
“will mademoiselle take the dinner?” he asked in french.
she regarded him calmly and humorously and nodded. he became aware that her eyes were of a deep, deep grey, full of light. he found it difficult not to keep on looking at them. breaking away, however, he fetched her soup and went off to attend to the others. at every pause by her table he noted some new and incomparable attribute. when bending over the platter from which she helped herself, he saw that her hands were beautifully shaped, plump, with long thin fingers and with delicate markings of veins beneath the white skin. an upward glance caught more blue veins on the temples. another time he was struck by the supple grace of her movements. there were infinite gleams in her splendid hair. the faintest suggestion of perfume arose from her garments. she declined the vegetable course and, declining, looked up at him and smiled. he thought he had never seen a brow so noble, a nose so exquisitely cut, lips so kind and mocking. her face was that of a romney duchess into which the thought and spiritual freedom of the twentieth century had entered. as he sped about the service, thrusting dishes beneath bearded or blue, ill-shaven chins, her face floated before his eyes; every now and then he stole a distant glance at it, and longed for the happy though transient moment when he should come close to it again.
while he was clearing her table for dessert she said:
“why do you speak french to me, when you know i’m an american?”
“it is the custom of the house when a guest speaks such excellent french as mademoiselle.”
“that’s very kind of you,” she said in english; “but it seems rather ridiculous for an american and an englishman to converse in a foreign language.”
“how do you know i am english, mademoiselle?” he asked, his heart a-flutter at the unexpected interchange of words.
she laughed. “i have eyes. besides, i know all about you—first from our friend corinna hastings, and lately from my little hostess over the way.”
he flushed, charmed by the deep music of her voice and delighted at being recognised by her not only as an individual (for she radiated an attraction which had caused him to hate the conventional impersonality of waiterdom) but as a member more or less of her own social class. he paused, plate of crumbs in one hand and napkin in the other.
“do you know corinna hastings?”
“evidently. how else could she have told me of your romantic doings?” she replied laughingly, and martin flushed deeper, conscious of an idiot question.
he set the apples and little white grapes before her. “i ought to have asked you,” said he, “how miss hastings came to talk to you about me?”
“she came on the train from brant?me and rang my bell in paris. she kept me up talking till four o’clock in the morning—not of you all the time. don’t imagine it. you were just interestingly incidental.”
“gar?on,” cried a voice from the centre table.
“bien, m’sieur.”
martin tucked his napkin under his arm and turned away, followed by lucilla’s humorous glance.
“l’addition!”
“bien, m’sieur.”
he became the perfect waiter again, and brought the bill to the commercial traveller who had merely come in for dinner. the latter paid in even money, rose noisily—he was a stout, important, red-faced man—and, fumbling in several pockets rendered difficult of access by adiposity and good cheer, at last produced four coppers which he deposited with a base, metallic chink in martin’s palm.
“merci, m’sieur. bon soir, m’sieur,” said the perfect waiter. but he would have given much to be able to dispose of the horrible coins otherwise than by thrusting them in his trouser pocket, to be able, for instance, to hurl them at the triple sausage neck of the departing donor; for he knew the starry, humorous eyes of the divinity were fixed on him. he felt hot and clammy and did not dare look round. and the hideous thought flashed through his mind: “will she offer me a tip when she leaves?”
he busied himself furiously with his service, and, in a few moments, was relieved to see her ceremoniously conducted by bigourdin and félise from the salle-à-manger. on the threshold bigourdin paused and called him.
“you will serve coffee and liqueurs in the petit salon, and if you go to the café de l’univers, you will kindly make my excuses to our friends.”
to enter the primly and plushily furnished salon, bearing the tray, and to set out the cups and glasses and bottles was an ordeal which he went through with the automatic rigidity of a highly trained london footman, looking neither to right nor left. he had a vague impression of a queenly figure reclining comfortably in an arm chair, haloed by a little cloud of cigarette smoke. he retired, finished his work in the pantry, swallowed a little food, changed his things and went out.
instinct led him along the quays and through the narrow, old-world streets to the patch of yellow light before the café de l’univers. but there he halted, suddenly disinclined to enter. something new and amazing had come into his life—he could not yet tell what—discordant with the commonplace of the familiar company. he looked through the space left between the edge of the blind and the jamb of the window and saw beuzot, the professor at the ecole normale, playing backgammon with monsieur callot, the postmaster; and a couple of places away from them was visible the square-headed old monsieur viriot, smiting his left palm with his right fist. the excellent old man always did that when he inveighed against the government. to-night martin cared little about the government of the french republic; still less for backgammon. he had a nostalgia for unknown things and an absurd impulse to walk abroad to find them beneath the moon and stars. obeying the impulse, he retraced his steps along the quays and struck the main-road past the habitations of the rock dwellers. he walked for a couple of miles between rocks casting jagged shadows and a calm, misty plain without finding anything, until, following a laborious, zig-zag course, a dissolute quarryman of his acquaintance in incapable charge of a girl child of five, lurched into him and laid the clutch of a drowning mariner upon his shoulder.
“monsieur martin,” said he. “it is the good god who has sent you.”
“boucabeille,” said martin—for that was the name of the miscreant—“you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“you need not tell me, monsieur martin,” replied boucabeille.
as the child was crying bitterly and the father was self-reproachful—he had taken the mioche to see her aunt, and coming back had met some friends who had enticed him into the café of the mère diridieu, where they had given him some poisoned, leg-dislocating alcohol—martin took the child in his arms, and trudged back to the rock-dwellings where the drunkard lived. on the way boucabeille, relieved of paternal responsibility, the tired child now snuggling sleepily and comfortably against martin’s neck, grew confidential and confessed, with sly enjoyment, that he had already well watered his throttle before he started. the man, he declared, with the luminousness of an apostle, who did not get drunk occasionally was an imbecile denying himself the pleasures of the other life. martin recognised in boucabeille a transcendentalist, no matter how muddle-headed. the sober clod did not know adventures. he did not know happiness. the path of the drunkard, boucabeille explained, was strewn with joy.
the anxious wife who met them at the door called martin a saint from heaven and her husband a stream of unmentionable things. he staggered under the outburst and laid his hand again on martin’s shoulder.
“monsieur martin, i have committed a fault. i take you to witness”—his wife paused in her invective to hear the penitent—“if i was more drunk i wouldn’t pay attention to anything she says. i have committed a fault. i haven’t got drunk enough.”
“sale cochon!” cried the lady, and martin left them, meditating on the philosophy of drunkenness. quo me rapis bacche, plenum tui? to what godlike adventure? but the magic word was plenum—right full to the lips. no half-and-half measures for bacchus. apparently boucabeille had failed in his adventure and had missed happiness by a gill. browning’s lines about the little more and the little less came into his head, and he laughed. both the poet and the muddle-headed quarryman were right. adventures not brought through to the end must be dismal fiasco. . . . his mind wandered a little. his shoulder was ever such a trifle stiff from carrying the child; but he missed the warmth of her grateful little body, and the trusting clasp of her tiny arms. it had been an insignificant adventure, an adventure, so to speak, in miniature; but it had been complete, rounded off, perfect. the proof lay in the glow of satisfaction at the thing accomplished. materially, there was nothing to complain about. but from a philosophic standpoint the satisfaction was not absolute. for the absolute is finality, and there is no finality in mundane things. from a thing so finite as human joy eternal law decreed the evolution of the germs of fresh desires. there had been a strange sweetness in the clasp of those tiny arms. how much sweeter to a man would be the clasp, if the arms were his own flesh and blood? martin was shocked by the suspicion that things were not going right with him as a human being.
the pleasant mass of the h?tel des grottes looming dimly white against its black background came into view. the lights in an uncurtained and unshuttered window, above the terrace, were visible. a figure passed rapidly across the room and sent drunkards and adventures and curly-headed five-year-olds packing from his mind. but he averted his eyes and walked on and came to the pont de dronne, and then halted to light a cigarette. the frosty silence of sharp moonlight hung over the town. the silver shimmer reflected from reaches of water and from slated roofs invested it with unspeakable beauty and peace. a little cold caressing wind came from the distant mountains, seen in soft outline. near black shelves of rock and dark mysteries of forest and masses of houses beyond the bridge-end closed other horizons. he remembered his first impression of brant?me, when he had sat with corinna on the terrace, a mothering shelter from all fierce and cruel things.
“and yet,” thought he, as he puffed his cigarette smoke in the clear air, “beyond this little spot lies a world of unceasing endeavour and throbbing pulses and women of disturbing beauty. such a woman on her meteoric passage from one sphere of glory to another has flashed before my eyes to-night. why am i here pursuing an avocation, which, though honest, is none the less greasy and obscure?”
unable to solve the enigma, he sighed and threw his cigarette, which had gone out during his meditation, into the river. a patter of quick footsteps at the approach of the bridge caused him to turn his head, and he saw emerge from the gloom into the moonlight a tall, fur-clad figure advancing towards him. she gave him a swift look of recognition.
“monsieur martin——”
he raised his cap. “good evening, miss merriton.”
she halted. “my good host and hostess are gone to bed. i couldn’t sit by my window and sentimentalise through the glass; so i came out.”
“it’s a fine night,” said martin.
“it is. but not one to hang about on a windy bridge. come for a little walk, if you have time, and protect me against the dangers of brant?me.”
go for a walk with her? defend her from dangers? verily he would go through the universe with her! his heart thumped. it was in his whirling brain to cry: “come and ride with me throughout the world and the more dragons i can meet and slay in your service, the more worthy shall i be to kiss the hem of your sacred grey velvet dinner-gown.” but from his fundamental, sober, commonsense he replied:
“the only dangers of brant?me at this time of night are prudish eyes and scandalous tongues.”
she drew a little breath. “thank you,” she said. “that’s frank and sensible. i’m always forgetting that france isn’t new york, or paris for the matter of that, where one can do as one likes. i don’t know provincial france a little bit, but i suppose, for red-hot gossip, it isn’t far behind a pretty little new england village. still, can’t we get out of range, somehow, of the eyes? that road over there”—she waved a hand in the direction of the silent high-road, which martin had lately travelled—“doesn’t seem to be encumbered with the scandal-mongers of brant?me.”
he laughed. “will you try it?”
she nodded assent.
they set forth briskly. the glimpse into her nature delighted him. she appreciated at once the motive of his warning, but was serenely determined to have her own way.
“we were just beginning an interesting little talk when you were called off,” she remarked.
martin felt himself grow red, remembering the tightly pocketed bagman who took the stage while he searched for eleemosynary sous.
“my profession has its drawbacks,” said he.
“so has every profession. i’ve got a friend in america—i have met him two or three times—who is conductor on the twentieth century express between new york and chicago. he’s by way of being an astronomer, and the great drawback of his profession is that he has no time to sit on top of a mountain and look at stars. the drawback of yours is that you can’t carry on pleasant conversations whenever you like. but the profession’s all right, unless you’re ashamed of it.”
“but why should i be ashamed of it?” asked martin.
“i don’t know. why should you? my father, who was the son of a new england parson——”
“my father was a parson,” said martin.
“was he? well, that’s good. we both come of a god-fearing stock, which is something in these days. anyway, my father, in order to get through college, waited on the men in hall at harvard, and was a summer waiter at a hotel in the adirondacks. of course there are some americans who would like it to be thought that their ancestors brought over the family estates with them in the mayflower. but we’re not like that. say,” she said, after a few steps through the sweet keenness of the moonlit night. “have you heard lately from corinna?”
he had not. in her last letter to him she had announced her departure from the constricting family circle of wendlebury. she was going to london.
“where she would have a chance of self-development,” said lucilla, with a laugh.
“how did you know that?” martin asked in simple surprise, for those had been almost corinna’s own words.
“what else would she go to london for?”
“i don’t know,” said martin. “she did not tell me.”
they did not discuss corinna further. but martin felt that his companion had formulated his own diagnosis of corinna’s abiding defect: her suspicion that the cosmic scheme centred round the evolution of corinna hastings. in a very subtle way the divinity had established implied understandings between them. they were of much the same parentage. in her own family the napkin had played no ignoble part. they were at one in their little confidential estimate of their common friend. and when she threw back her adorable head and drew a deep breath and said: “it’s just lovely here,” he felt deliciously near her. deliciously and dangerously. a little later, as they came upon the rock dwellings, she laid a fleeting, but thrilling touch on his arm.
“what in the world are those houses?”
he told her. he described the lives of the inhabitants. he described, on the way back, for the rocks marked the limit of their stroll, his adventure with boucabeille. ordinarily shy, and if not tongue-tied, at least unimaginative in speech, he now found vivid words and picturesque images, his soul set upon repaying her, in some manner for her gracious comradeship. her smiles, her interest, her quick sympathy, the occasional brush of her furs against his body, as she leaned to listen, intoxicated him. he spoke of france, the land of his adoption, and the spiritual france that no series of hazardous governments could impair, with rhapsodical enthusiasm. she declared, in her rich, deep voice, as though carried away by him:
“i love to hear you say such things. it is splendid to get to the soul of a people.”
her tone implied admiration of achievement. he laughed rather foolishly, in besotted happiness. they had reached the steep road leading to the h?tel des grottes. she threw a hand to the moonlit bridge, where they had met.
“were you thinking of all that when i dragged you off?”
he laughed again. “no,” he confessed. “i was wondering what on earth i was doing there.”
“i think,” said she softly, “you have just given me the mot de l’enigme.”
in the vestibule they came across bigourdin, cigarette in mouth, sprawling as might have been expected, on the cane-bottomed couch. he was always the last to retire, a fact which the blissful martin had forgotten. lucilla sailed up, radiant in her furs, the flush of exercise on her cheeks visible even under the dim electric light. bigourdin raised his ponderous bulk.
“i found monsieur martin outside,” she said, “and i commandeered him as an escort round the neighbourhood. he couldn’t refuse. i hope i haven’t done wrong.”
“martin knows more about brant?me,” replied bigourdin courteously, “than most of the brant?mois themselves.”
céleste appeared from the gloom of the stairs. lucilla, after an idle word or two, retired. bigourdin closed and bolted the front door. to do that he would trust nobody, not even martin. having completed the operation, he advanced slowly towards his employé.
“did you go to the café to-night?”
“no,” replied martin. “i was walking with mademoiselle, who, as she may have told you, is a friend of mademoiselle corinna.”
“yes, yes, she told me that,” said bigourdin. “there is no need of explanations, mon ami. but i am glad you did not go to the café. i ought to have warned you. we must be very discreet towards the viriots. there is no longer any marriage. félise doesn’t want it. her father has formally forbidden it. i have no desire to make anybody unhappy. but there it is. foutu, le mariage. and i haven’t said anything as yet to the viriots. and, again, i can’t say anything to monsieur viriot, until he says something to me. voilà la situation. cest d’une délicatesse extraordinaire.”
he passed his hand over his head and tried to grip the half-inch stubble.
“i tell you this, mon cher martin, because you know the intimate affairs of the family. so”—he shook an impressive finger—“act towards the viriots, father and son, as if you knew nothing, nothing at all. laissez-moi faire.”
martin pledged the discretion of the statues in the old alhambra tale. what did the extraordinary delicacy of the situation between bigourdin and the viriots matter to him? when he reached his room, he laughed aloud, oblivious of bigourdin, the viriots and poor little félise who (though he knew it not) lay achingly awake.
at last a woman, a splendid wonder of a woman, a woman with the resplendent dignity of the king’s daughter of the fairy tales, with the bewilderment of beauty of face and of form and of voice like the cooing of a dove, with the delicate warm sympathy of sheer woman, had come into his life.
the usually methodical martin threw his shirt and trousers across the room and walked about like a lunatic in his under things, until a sneeze brought him to the consciousness of wintry cold.
the only satisfying sanction of romance is its charm of intimate commonplace.