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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41284 ***
+
+THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Mignon]
+
+
+
+
+  THE ARM-CHAIR
+  AT THE INN
+
+  BY
+  F. HOPKINSON SMITH
+
+  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+  A. I. KELLER, HERBERT WARD
+  AND THE AUTHOR
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  NEW YORK
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+  1912
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+  Published August, 1912
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+If I have dared to veil under a thin disguise some of the men whose talk
+and adventures fill these pages it is because of my profound belief that
+truth is infinitely more strange and infinitely more interesting than
+fiction. The characters around the table are all my personal friends;
+the incidents, each and every one, absolutely true, and the setting of
+the Marmouset, as well as the Inn itself, has been known to many
+hundreds of my readers, who have enjoyed for years the rare hospitality
+of its quaint and accomplished landlord.
+
+                                                              F. H. S.
+
+November, 1911
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+
+     I. THE MARMOUSET                                                3
+
+    II. THE WOOD FIRE AND ITS FRIENDS                               18
+
+   III. WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS      34
+
+    IV. THE ARRIVAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY                            60
+
+     V. IN WHICH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CANNIBAL AND A
+          FREEBOOTER IS CLEARLY SET FORTH                           95
+
+    VI. PROVING THAT THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH  120
+
+   VII. IN WHICH OUR LANDLORD BECOMES BOTH ENTERTAINING AND
+          INSTRUCTIVE                                              144
+
+  VIII. CONTAINING SEVERAL EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES SHOWING
+          THE WIDE CONTRASTS IN LIFE                               163
+
+    IX. IN WHICH MADAME LA MARQUISE BINDS UP BROKEN HEADS AND
+          BLEEDING HEARTS                                          182
+
+     X. IN WHICH WE ENTERTAIN A JAIL-BIRD                          211
+
+    XI. IN WHICH THE HABITS OF CERTAIN GHOSTS, GOBLINS, BANDITS,
+          AND OTHER OBJECTIONABLE PERSONS ARE DULY SET FORTH       240
+
+   XII. WHY MIGNON WENT TO MARKET                                  267
+
+  XIII. WITH A DISSERTATION ON ROUND PEGS AND SQUARE HOLES         280
+
+   XIV. A WOMAN'S WAY                                              304
+
+    XV. APPLE-BLOSSOMS AND WHITE MUSLIN                            335
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+  Mignon                                                _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+
+  Howls of derision welcomed him                                    30
+
+  Flooding the garden, the flowers, and the roofs                   60
+
+  As her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear of the
+    wreck                                                          132
+
+  Herbert caught up his sketch-book and ... transferred her dear
+    old head ... to paper                                          184
+
+  Lemois crossed the room and began searching through the old
+    fifteenth-century triptych                                     240
+
+  "Just think, monsieur, what _does_ go on below Coco in the
+    season"                                                        308
+
+  First, of course, came the mayor--his worthy spouse on his left  350
+
+
+
+
+THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
+
+
+
+
+THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE MARMOUSET
+
+
+"How many did you say?" inquired Lemois, our landlord.
+
+"Five for dinner, and perhaps one more. I will know when the train gets
+in. Have the fires started in the bedrooms and please tell Mignon and
+old Leà to put on their white caps."
+
+We were in the Marmouset at the moment--the most enchanting of all the
+rooms in this most enchanting of all Normandy inns. Lemois was busying
+himself about the table, selecting his best linen and china--an old
+Venetian altar cloth and some Nancy ware--replacing the candles in the
+hanging chandelier, and sorting the silver and glass. Every one of my
+expected guests was personally known to him; some of them for years. All
+had shared his hospitality, and each and every one appreciated its rare
+value. Nothing was too good for them, and nothing should be left undone
+which would add to their comfort.
+
+I had just helped him light the first blaze in the big baronial
+fireplace, an occupation I revel in, for to me the kindling of a fire is
+the gathering of half a dozen friends together, each log nudging his
+neighbor, the cheer of good comradeship warming them all. And a roaring
+fire it was when I had piled high the logs, swept the hearth, and made
+it ready for the choice spirits who were to share it with me. For years
+we have had our outings--or rather our "in-tings" before it--red-letter
+days for us in which the swish of a petticoat is never heard, and we are
+free to enjoy a "man's time" together; red-letter days, too, in the
+calendar of the Inn, when even Lemois, tired out with the whirl of the
+season, takes on a new lease of life.
+
+His annual rejuvenation began at dawn to-day, when he disappeared in the
+direction of the market and returned an hour later with his procession
+of baskets filled with fish and lobsters fresh out of the sea a mile
+away (caught at daylight), some capons, a string of pigeons, and an
+armful of vegetables snatched in the nick of time from the early grave
+of an impending frost.
+
+As for the more important items, the Chablis Moutonne and Roumanée
+Conti--rare Burgundies--they were still asleep in their cobwebs on a
+low Spanish bench that had once served as a temporary resting-place
+outside a cardinal's door.
+
+Until to-night Lemois and I have dined in the kitchen. You would too
+could you see it. Not by any manner of means the sort of an interior the
+name suggests, but one all shining brass, rare pottery, copper braziers,
+and resplendent pewter, reflecting the dancing blaze of a huge open
+hearth with a spit turned by the weight of a cannon ball fired by the
+British, and on which--the spit, not the ball--are roasted the joints,
+chickens, and game for which the Inn is famous, Pierre, the sole
+remaining chef--there are three in the season--ineffectually cudgelling
+his French pate under his short-cropped, shoe-brush hair for some dish
+better than the last.
+
+Because, however, of the immediate gathering of the clan, I have
+abandoned the kitchen and have shifted my quarters to the Marmouset.
+Over it up a steep, twisted staircase with a dangling rope for banisters
+is my bedroom, the Chambre de Cure, next to the Chambre de
+Officier--where the gluttonous king tossed on his royal bed (a true
+story, I am told, with all the details set forth in the State Archives
+of France). Mine has a high-poster with a half lambrequin, or bed
+curtain, that being all Lemois could find, and he being too honest an
+antiquary to piece it out with modern calico or chintz. My guests, of
+course, will take their pick of the adjoining rooms--Madame Sévigné's,
+Grèvin's, the Chambre du Roi, and the others--and may thank their stars
+that it is not a month back. Then, even if they had written ten days
+ahead, they would have been received with a shrug--one of Lemois' most
+engaging shrugs tinged with grief--at his inability to provide better
+accommodation for their comfort, under which one could have seen a
+slight trace of suppressed glee at the prosperity of the season. They
+would then doubtless have been presented with a massive key unlocking
+the door of a box of a bedroom over the cake-shop, or above the
+apothecary's, or next to the man who mends furniture--all in the village
+of Dives itself.
+
+
+And now a word about the Inn itself--even before I tell you of the
+Arm-Chair or the man who sat in it or the others of the clan who
+listened and talked back.
+
+Not the low-pitched, smothered-in-ivy Kings Arms you knew on the
+Thames, with its swinging sign, horse-block, and the rest of it; nor the
+queer sixteenth-century tavern in that Dutch town on the Maas, with its
+high wainscoting, leaded window-panes, and porcelain stove set out with
+pewter flagons--not that kind of an inn at all.
+
+This one bolsters up one corner of a quaint little town in Normandy; is
+faced by walls of sombre gray stone loop-holed with slits of windows,
+topped by a row of dormers, with here and there a chimney, and covers an
+area as large as a city block, the only break in its monotony being an
+arched gate-way in which swing a pair of big iron-bound doors. These are
+always open, giving the passer-by a glimpse of the court within.
+
+You will be disappointed, of course, when you drive up to it on a
+summer's day. You will think it some public building supported by the
+State--a hospital or orphan asylum--and, tourist-like, will search for
+the legend deep cut in the key-stone of the archway to reassure yourself
+of its identity. Nobody can blame you--hundreds have made that same
+mistake, I among them.
+
+But don't lose heart--keep on through the gate, take a dozen steps into
+the court-yard and look about, and if you have any red corpuscles left
+in your veins you will get a thrill that will take your breath away.
+Spread out before you lies a flower-choked yard flanked about on three
+sides by a chain of moss-encrusted, red-tiled, seesaw roofs, all out of
+plumb. Below, snug under the eaves, runs a long go-as-you-please
+corridor, dodging into a dozen or more bedrooms. Below this again, as if
+tired out with the weight, staggers a basement from which peer out
+windows of stained glass protected by Spanish grills of polished iron,
+their leaded panes blinking in the sunshine, while in and out, up the
+door-jambs, over the lintels, along the rain-spouts, even to the top of
+the ridge-poles of the wavy, red-tiled roofs, thousands of blossoms and
+tangled vines are running riot.
+
+And this is not all. Close beside you stands a fuchsia-covered,
+shingle-hooded, Norman well, and a little way off a quaint kiosk roofed
+with flowering plants, and near by a great lichen-covered bust of Louis
+VI, to say nothing of dozens of white chairs and settees grouped against
+a background of flaring reds and brilliant greens. And then, with a gasp
+of joy, you follow the daring flight of a giant feather-blown clematis
+in a clear leap from the ground, its topmost tendrils throttling the
+dormers.
+
+Even then your surprises are not over. You have yet to come in touch
+with the real spirit of the Inn, and be introduced to our jewel of a
+dining-room, the "Marmouset," opening flat to the ground and hidden
+behind a carved oaken door mounted in hammered iron: a low-ceilinged,
+Venetian-beamed room, with priceless furniture, tapestries, and
+fittings--chairs, tables, wainscoting of carved oak surmounted by
+Spanish leather; quaint andirons, mirrors, arms, cabinets, silver,
+glass, and china; all of them genuine and most of them rare, for Lemois,
+our landlord, has searched the Continent from end to end.
+
+Yes!--a great inn this inn of William the Conqueror at Dives, and unique
+the world over. You will be ready now to believe all its legends and
+traditions, and you can quite understand why half the noted men of
+Europe have, at one time or another, been housed within its hospitable
+walls, including such exalted personages as Louis XI and Henry IV--the
+latter being the particular potentate who was laid low with a royal
+colic from a too free indulgence in the seductive oyster--not to
+mention such rare spirits as Molière, Dumas, George Sand, Daubigny, as
+well as most of the litterateurs, painters, and sculptors of France,
+including the immortal Grèvin, many of whose drawings decorate the walls
+of one of the garden kiosks, and whose apartment still bears his name.
+
+And not only savants and men of rank and letters, but the frivolous
+world of to-day--the flotsam and jetsam of Trouville, Houlgate, and
+Cabourg--have gathered here in the afternoon for tea in the court-yard,
+their motors crowding the garage, and at night in the Marmouset when,
+under the soft glow of overhead candles falling on bare shoulders and
+ravishing toilettes, laughter and merry-making extend far into the small
+hours. At night, too, out in the gardens, what whisperings and
+love-makings in the soft, starry air!--what seductive laughter and
+little half-smothered screams! And then the long silences with only the
+light of telltale cigarettes to mark their hiding-places!
+
+All summer this goes on until one fine morning the most knowing, or the
+most restless, or the poorest of these gay birds of passage (the Inn is
+not a benevolent institution) spreads its wings and the flight begins.
+The next day the court is empty, as are all the roosting-places up and
+down the shore. Then everybody at the Inn takes a long breath--the first
+they have had for weeks.
+
+About this time, too, the crisp autumn air, fresh from the sea, begins
+to blow, dulling the hunger for the open. The mad whirl of blossoms no
+longer intoxicates. Even the geraniums, which have flamed their bravest
+all summer, lose their snap and freshness; while the blue and pink
+hydrangeas hang their heads, tired out with nodding to so many
+passers-by: they, too, are paying the price; you can see it in their
+faces. Only the sturdy chrysanthemums are rejoicing in the first frost,
+while the more daring of the roses are unbuckling their petals ready to
+fight their way through the perils of an October bloom.
+
+It is just at this blessed moment that I move in and settle down with my
+companions, for now that the rush is over, and the little Normandy maids
+and the older peasant women who have served the hungry and thirsty mob
+all summer, as well as two of the three French cooks, have gone back to
+their homes, we have Leà, Mignon, and Pierre all to ourselves.
+
+I put dear old Leà first because it might as well be said at once that
+without her loving care life at the Inn, with all its comforts, would be
+no life at all--none worth living. Louis, the running-water painter,
+known as the Man in High-Water Boots--one of the best beloved of our
+group--always insists that in the days gone by Leà occupied a pedestal
+at the main entrance of the twelfth-century church at the end of the
+street, and is out for a holiday. In proof he points out the empty
+pedestal set in a niche, and has even gone so far as to pencil her name
+on the rough stone.
+
+Mignon, however, he admits, is a saint of another kind--a dainty,
+modest, captivating little maid, who looks at you with her wondering
+blue eyes, and who is as shy as a frightened gazelle. There is a young
+fisherman named Gaston, a weather-tanned, frank, fearless fellow who
+knows all about these eyes. He brings the fish to the Inn--those he
+catches himself--and Mignon generally manages to help in their
+unpacking. It is not a part of her duty. Her special business is to make
+everybody happy; to crack the great white sugar-loaf into bits with a
+pair of pincers--no machine-made dominoes for Lemois--and to turn the
+coffee-roaster--an old-fashioned, sheet-iron drum swinging above a
+brazier of hot coals--and to cool its contents by tossing them in a
+pan--much as an Egyptian girl winnows wheat. It is a pity you never
+tasted her coffee, served in the garden--old Leà on the run with it
+boiling-hot to your table. You might better have stopped what you were
+doing and taken steamer for Havre and the Inn. You would never have
+regretted it.
+
+Nor would you even at this late hour regret any one of the dishes made
+by Pierre, the chef. And now I think of it, it is but fair to tell you
+that if you repent the delay and show a fit appreciation of his efforts,
+or come properly endorsed (I'll give you a letter), he may, perhaps,
+invite you into his kitchen which I have just vacated, a place of such
+various enticing smells from things baking, broiling, and frying; with
+unforgettable, appetizing whiffs of burnt sugar, garlic, fine herbs, and
+sherry, to say nothing of the flavors of bowls of mayonnaise, heaps of
+chopped onions, platters of cream--even a basket of eggs still warm from
+the nest--that the memory of it will linger with you for the rest of
+your days.
+
+Best of all at this season, we have quite to ourselves that prince of
+major-domos, our landlord, Lemois. For as this inn is no ordinary inn,
+this banquet room no ordinary room, and this kitchen no ordinary
+kitchen, so, too, is Monsieur Lemois no ordinary landlord. A small,
+gray, gently moving, low-voiced man with thoughtful, contented face,
+past the prime of life; a passionate lover of animals, flowers, and all
+beautiful things; quick of temper, but over in a moment; a poet withal,
+yet a man with so quaint a humor and of so odd a taste, and so
+completely absorbed in his pets, cuisine, garden, and collection, that
+it is easy to believe that when he is missed from his carnal body, he
+will be found wandering as a ghost among these very flower-beds or
+looking down from the walls of the Marmouset--doubtless an old haunt of
+his prior to this his latest incarnation. Only here would he be really
+happy, and only here, perhaps, among his treasures, would he be fully
+understood.
+
+One of the rarest of these--a superb Florentine chair--the most
+important chair he owns, stood within reach of my hand as I sat
+listening to him before the crackling blaze.
+
+"Unquestionably of the sixteenth century!" he exclaimed with his
+customary enthusiasm, as I admired it anew, for, although I had heard
+most of it many times, I am always glad to listen, so quaint are his
+descriptions of everything he owns, and so sincerely does he believe in
+the personalities and lineage of each individual piece.
+
+"I found it," he continued, "in a little chapel in Ravenna. For years it
+had stood outside the cabinet of Alessandro, one of the Florentine
+dukes. Think of all the men and women who have sat in it, and of all the
+cruel and anxious thoughts that raced through their brains while they
+waited for an audience with the tyrant! Nothing like a chair for
+stirring up old memories and traditions. And do you see the carved heads
+on the top! I assure you they are alive! I have caught them smiling or
+frowning too often at the talk around my table not to know. Once when De
+Bouf, the great French clown was here, the head next you came near
+splitting itself in two over his grimaces, and when Marcot told one of
+his pathetic stories that other one wept such tears that I had to mop
+them up to keep the velvet from being spoilt. You don't believe it?--you
+laugh! Ah!--that is just like you modern writers--you do not believe
+anything--you have no imagination! You must measure things with a rule!
+You must have them drawn on the blackboard! It is because you do not
+see them as they are. You shut your eyes and ears to the real things of
+life; it is because you cannot understand that it is the _soul_ of the
+chair that laughs and weeps. Monsieur Herbert will not think it funny.
+He understands these queer heads--and, let me tell you, they understand
+_him_. I have often caught them nodding and winking at each other when
+he says something that pleases them. He has himself seen things much
+more remarkable. That is the reason why he is the only one of all who
+enters this room worthy to sit in it."
+
+"You like Herbert, then?" I interrupted, knowing just what he would say.
+
+"How absurd, my dear friend! You like a filet, and a gown on a
+woman--but you don't like a man. You _love_ him--when he is a
+_man_!--and Monsieur Herbert is all that. It is the English in him which
+counts. Since he was fourteen years of age he has been roaming around
+the world doing everything a man could to make his bread--and he a
+gentleman born, with his father's house to go home to if he pleased. Yet
+he has been farm-hand, acrobat, hostler, sailor before the mast,
+newspaper reporter, next four years in Africa among the natives; then
+painter, and now, at forty-five, after only six years' practice, one of
+the great sculptors of France, with his work in the Luxembourg and the
+ribbon of the Legion in his button-hole! Have I not the right to say
+that he is a _man_? And one thing more: not for one moment has he ever
+lost the good heart and the fine manner of the gentleman. Ah! that is
+most extraordinary of all, when you think of the adventures and
+hair-breadth escapes and sufferings he has gone through! Did he ever
+tell you of his stealing a ride in Australia on a locomotive tender to
+get to Sydney, two hundred miles away?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Well--get him to tell you. You will be so sorry for him, even now, that
+you cannot keep the tears from your eyes. Listen! There goes the scream
+of his horn--and I wager you, too, that he brings that delightful wild
+man, Monsieur Louis, with him."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE WOOD FIRE AND ITS FRIENDS
+
+
+Two men burst in.
+
+Herbert, compact, wellknit, ruddy, simple in his bearing and manner;
+Louis, broad-shouldered, strong as a bull, and bubbling over with
+unrepressed merriment. Both were muffled to their chins--Herbert in his
+fur motor-coat, his cap drawn close over his steady gray eyes; Louis in
+his big sketching-cloak and hood and a pair of goggles which gave him so
+owlish a look that both Mignon and Leà broke out laughing at the sight.
+
+"Fifty miles an hour, High-Muck" (I am High-Muck) "this brute of a
+Herbert kept up. Everything went by in a blur; but for these gig-lamps
+I'd be stone blind."
+
+The brace and the snap of the crisp autumn air clinging to their clothes
+suddenly permeated the room as with electricity. Even slow-moving Lemois
+felt its vivifying current as he hurriedly dragged the Florentine nearer
+the fire.
+
+"See, Monsieur Herbert, the chair has been waiting for you. I have kept
+even Monsieur High-Muck out of it."
+
+"That's very good of you, Lemois," returned the sculptor as he handed
+Leà his coat and gloves and settled himself in its depths. "I'm glad to
+get back to it. What the chair thinks about it is another thing--make it
+tell you some time."
+
+"But it has--only last night one of the heads was saying----"
+
+"None of that, Lemois," laughed Louis, abreast of the fireplace now, his
+fingers outspread to the blaze. "Too many wooden heads talking around
+here as it is. I don't, of course, object to Herbert's wobbling around
+in its upholstered magnificence, but he can't play doge and monopolize
+everything. Shove your high-backed pulpit with its grinning cherubs to
+one side, I tell you, Herbert, and let me warm up"--and off came the
+cloak and goggles, his broad shoulders and massive arms coming into
+view. Then tossing them to Mignon, he turned to me.
+
+"There's one thing you're good for, High-Muck-a-Muck, if nothing else,
+and that is to keep a fire going. If I wanted to find you, and there was
+a chimney within a mile, I'd be sure you were sitting in front of the
+hearth with the tongs in your hand"--here he kicked a big log into
+place bringing to life a swarm of sparks that blazed out a welcome and
+then went laughing up the chimney. "By thunder!--isn't this glorious!
+Crowd up, all of you--this is the best yet! Lemois, won't you please
+shove just a plain, little chair this way for me? No--come to think of
+it, I'll take half of Herbert's royal throne," and he squeezed in beside
+the sculptor, one leg dangling over the arm of the Florentine.
+
+Herbert packed himself the closer and the talk ran on: the races at
+Cabourg and Trouville; the big flight of wild geese which had come a
+month earlier than usual, and last, the season which had just closed
+with the rush of fashion and folly, in which chatter Lemois had joined.
+
+"And the same old crowd, of course, Lemois?" suggested Herbert; "and
+always doing the same things--coffee at nine, breakfast at twelve, tea
+at five, dinner at eight, and bridge till midnight! Extraordinary, isn't
+it! I'd rather pound oakum in a country jail."
+
+"Some of them will," remarked Louis with a ruminating smile. "And it was
+a good season, you say, Lemois?" he continued; "lots of people shedding
+shekels and lots of tips for dear old Leà? That's the best part of it.
+And did they really order good things--the beggars?--or had you cleaned
+them out of their last franc on their first visit? Come now--how many
+Pêche-Flambées, for instance, have you served, Lemois, to the mob since
+July--and how many demoiselles de Cherbourg--those lovely little girl
+lobsters without claws?"
+
+"Do you mean the on-shore species--those you find in the hotels at
+Trouville?" returned Lemois, rubbing his hands together, his thoughtful
+face alight with humor. "We have two varieties, you know, Monsieur
+Louis--the on-shore--the Trouville kind who always bring their claws
+with them--you can feel them under their kid gloves."
+
+"Oh, let up!--let up!" retorted Louis. "I mean the kind we devour; not
+the kind who devour us."
+
+"Same thing," remarked Herbert in his low, even tones from the depths of
+the chair, as he stretched a benumbed hand toward the fire. "It
+generally ends in a broil, whether it's a woman or a lobster."
+
+Louis twisted his body and caught the sculptor by the lapel of his
+coat.
+
+"None of your cheap wit, Herbert! Marc, the lunatic, would have said
+that and thought it funny--you can't afford to. Move up, I tell you, you
+bloated mud-dauber, and give me more room; you'd spread yourself over
+two chairs with four heads on their corners if you could fill them."
+
+Whereupon there followed one of those good-natured rough-and-tumble
+dog-plays which the two had kept up through their whole friendship.
+Indeed, a wrestling match started it. Herbert, then known to the world
+as an explorer and writer, was studying at Julien's at the time. Louis,
+who was also a pupil, was off in Holland painting. Their fellow
+students, noting Herbert's compact physique, had bided the hour until
+the two men should meet, and it was when the room looked as if a cyclone
+had struck it--with Herbert on top one moment and Louis the next--that
+the friendship began. The big-hearted Louis, too, was the first to
+recognize his comrade's genius as a sculptor. Herbert had a wad of clay
+sent home from which he modelled an elephant. This was finally tossed
+into a corner. There it lay a shapeless mass until his conscience smote
+him and the whole was transformed into a Congo boy. Louis insisted it
+should be sent to the Salon, and thus the explorer, writer, and painter
+became the sculptor. And so the friendship grew and strengthened with
+the years. Since then both men had won their gold medals at the
+Salon--Louis two and Herbert two.
+
+The same old dog-play was now going on before the cheery fire, Louis
+scrouging and pushing, Herbert extending his muscles and standing
+pat--either of them could have held the other clear of the floor at
+arm's length--Herbert, all his sinews in place, ready for any move of
+his antagonist; Louis, a Hercules in build, breathing health and
+strength at every pore.
+
+Suddenly the tussle in the chair ceased and the young painter, wrenching
+himself loose, sprang to his feet.
+
+"By thunder!" he cried, "I forgot all about it! Have you heard the news?
+Hats off and dead silence while I tell it! Lemois, stop that confounded
+racket with your dishes and listen! Let me present you to His Royal
+Highness, Monsieur Herbert, the Gold Medallist--his second!" and he made
+a low salaam to the sculptor stretched out in the Florentine. He was
+never so happy as when extolling Herbert's achievements.
+
+"Oh, I know all about it!" laughed back Lemois. "Le Blanc was here
+before breakfast the next morning with the _Figaro_. It was your
+African--am I not right, Monsieur Herbert?--the big black man with the
+dagger--the one I saw in the clay? Fine!--no dryads, no satyrs nor
+demons--just the ego of the savage. And why should you not have won the
+medal?" he added in serious tones that commanded instant attention. "Who
+among our sculptors--men who make the clay obey them--know the savage as
+you do? And to think, too, of your being here after your triumph, under
+the roof of my Marmouset. Do you know that its patron saint is another
+African explorer--the first man who ever set foot on its western
+shores--none other than the great Bethencourt himself? He was either
+from Picardy or Normandy--the record is not clear--and on one of his
+voyages--this, remember, was in the fifteenth century, the same period
+in which the stone chimney over your heads was built--he captured and
+brought home with him some little black dwarfs who became very
+fashionable. You see them often later on in the prints and paintings of
+the time, following behind the balloon petticoats and high headdresses
+of the great ladies. After a time they became a regular article of
+trade, these marmots, and there is still a street in Paris called 'The
+Marmouset.' So popular were they that Charles VI is said to have had a
+ministry composed of five of these little rascals. So, when you first
+showed me your clay sketch of your African, I said--'Ah! here is the
+spirit of Bethencourt! This Monsieur Herbert is Norman, not English; he
+has brought the savage of old to light, the same savage that Bethencourt
+saw--the savage that lived and fought and died before our cultivated
+moderns vulgarized him.' That was a glorious thing to do, messieurs, if
+you will think about it"--and he looked around the circle, his eyes
+sparkling, his small body alive with enthusiasm.
+
+Herbert extended his palms in protest, muttering something about parts
+of the statue not satisfying him and its being pretty bad in spots, if
+Lemois did but know it, thanking him at the same time for comparing him
+to so great a man as Bethencourt; but his undaunted admirer kept on
+without a pause, his voice quivering with pride: "The primitive man
+demanding of civilization his right to live! Ah! that is a new motive in
+art, my friends!"
+
+"Hear him go on!" cried Louis, settling himself again on the arm of
+Herbert's chair; "talks like a critic. Gentlemen, the distinguished
+Monsieur Lemois will now address you on----"
+
+Lemois turned and bowed profoundly.
+
+"Better than a critic, Monsieur Louis. They only see the outside of
+things. Pray don't rob Monsieur Herbert of his just rights or try to
+lean on him; take a whole chair to yourself and keep still a moment. You
+are like your running water--you----"
+
+"Not a bit like it," broke in Herbert, glad to turn the talk away from
+himself. "His water sometimes reflects--he never does."
+
+"Ah!--but he does reflect," protested Lemois with a comical shrug; "but
+it is always upsidedown. When you stand upsidedown your money is apt to
+run out of your pockets; when you think upsidedown your brains run out
+in the same way."
+
+"But what would you have me do, Lemois?" expostulated Louis, regaining
+his feet that he might the better parry the thrust. "Get out into your
+garden and mount a pedestal?"
+
+"Not at this season, you dear Monsieur Louis; it is too cold. Oh!--never
+would I be willing to shock any of my beautiful statues in that way.
+You would look very ugly on a pedestal; your shoulders are too big and
+your arms are like a blacksmith's, and then you would smash all my
+flowers getting up. No--I would have you do nothing and be nothing but
+your delightful and charming self. This room of mine, the 'Little
+Dwarf,' is built for laughter, and you have plenty of it. And now,
+gentlemen"--he was the landlord once more--both elbows uptilted in a
+shrug, his shoulders level with his ears--"at what time shall we serve
+dinner?"
+
+"Not until Brierley comes," I interposed after we were through laughing
+at Louis' discomfiture. "He is due now--the Wigwag train from Pont du
+Sable ought to be in any minute."
+
+"Is Marc coming with him?" asked Herbert, pushing his chair back from
+the crackling blaze.
+
+"No--Marc can't get here until late. He's fallen in love for the
+hundredth time. Some countess or duchess, I understand--he is staying at
+her château, or was. Not far from here, so he told Le Blanc."
+
+"Was walking past her garden gate," broke in Louis, "squinting at her
+flowers, no doubt, when she asked him in to tea--or is it another
+Fontainebleau affair?"
+
+"That's one love affair of Marc's I never heard of," remarked Herbert,
+with one of his meaning smiles, which always remind me of the lambent
+light flashed by a glowworm, irradiating but never creasing the surface
+as they play over his features.
+
+"Well, that wasn't Marc's fault--you _would_ have heard of it had he
+been around. He talked of nothing else. The idiot left Paris one
+morning, put ten francs in his pocket--about all he had--and went over
+to Fontainebleau for the day. Posted up at that railroad station was a
+notice, signed by a woman, describing a lost dog. Later on Marc came
+across a piece of rope with the dog on one end and a boy on the other.
+An hour later he presented himself at madame's villa, the dog at his
+heels. There was a cry of joy as her arms clasped the prodigal. Then
+came a deluge of thanks. The gratitude of the poor lady so overcame Marc
+that he spent every sou he had in his clothes for flowers, sent them to
+her with his compliments and walked back to Paris, and for a month after
+every franc he scraped together went the same way. He never
+called--never wrote her any letters--just kept on sending flowers; never
+getting any thanks either, for he never gave her his address. Oh, he's
+a Cap and Bells when there's a woman around!"
+
+A shout outside sent every man to his feet; the door was flung back and
+a setter dog bounded in followed by the laughing face of a man who
+looked twenty-five of his forty years. He was clad in a leather
+shooting-jacket and leggings, spattered to his hips with mud, and
+carried a double-barrelled breech-loading gun. Howls of derision
+welcomed him.
+
+"Oh!--what a spectacle!" cried Louis. "Don't let Brierley sit down,
+High-Muck, until he's scrubbed! Go and scrape yourself, you ruffian--you
+are the worst looking dog of the two."
+
+The Man from the Latin Quarter, as he is often called, clutched his gun
+like a club, made a mock movement as if to brain the speaker, then
+rested it tenderly and with the greatest care against one corner of the
+fireplace.
+
+"Sorry, High-Muck, but I couldn't help it. I'd have missed your dinner
+if I had gone back to my bungalow for clothes. I've been out on the
+marsh since sunup and got cut off by the tide. Down with you, Peter! Let
+him thaw out a little, Herbert; he's worked like a beaver all day, and
+all we got were three plover and a becassine. I left them with Pierre
+as I came in. Didn't see a duck--haven't seen one for a week. Wait until
+I get rid of this," and he stripped off his outer jacket and flung it at
+Louis, who caught it with one hand and, picking up the tongs, held the
+garment from him until he had deposited it in the far corner of the
+room.
+
+"Haven't had hold of you, Herbert, since the gold medal," the hunter
+resumed. "Shake!" and the two pressed each other's hands. "I thought
+'The Savage' would win--ripping stuff up and down the back, and the
+muscles of the legs, and he stands well. I think it's your high-water
+mark--thought so when I saw it in the clay. By Jove!--I'm glad to get
+here! The wind has hauled to the eastward and it's getting colder every
+minute."
+
+"Cold, are you, old man!" condoled Louis. "Why don't you look out for
+your fire, High-Muck? Little Brierley's half frozen, he says. Hold
+on!--stay where you are; I'll put on another log. Of course, you're half
+frozen! When I went by your marsh a little while ago the gulls were
+flying close inshore as if they were hunting for a stove. Not a
+fisherman fool enough to dig bait as far as I could see."
+
+[Illustration: Howls of derision welcomed him]
+
+Brierley nodded assent, loosened his under coat of corduroy, searched in
+an inside pocket for a pipe, and drew his chair nearer, his knees to the
+blaze.
+
+"I don't blame them," he shivered; "mighty sensible bait-diggers. The
+only two fools on the beach were Peter and I; we've been on a sand spit
+for five hours in a hole I dug at daylight, and it was all we could do
+to keep each other warm--wasn't it, old boy?" (Peter, coiled up at his
+feet, cocked an ear in confirmation.) "Where's Marc, Le Blanc, and the
+others--upstairs?"
+
+"Not yet," replied Herbert. "Marc expects to turn up, so he wired
+High-Muck, but I'll believe it when he gets here. Another case of Romeo
+and Juliet, so Louis says. Le Blanc promises to turn up after dinner.
+Louis, you are nearest--get a fresh glass and move that decanter this
+way,--Brierley is as cold as a frog."
+
+"No--stay where you are, Louis," cried the hunter. "I'll wait until I
+get something to eat--hot soup is what I want, not cognac. I say,
+High-Muck, when are we going to have dinner? I'm concave from my chin to
+my waistband; haven't had a crumb since I tumbled out of bed this
+morning in the pitch dark."
+
+"Expect it every minute. Here comes Leà now with the soup and Mignon
+with hot plates."
+
+Louis caught sight of the two women, backed himself against the jamb of
+the fireplace, and opened wide his arms.
+
+"Make way, gentlemen!" he cried. "Behold the lost saint--our Lady of the
+Sabots!--and the adorable Mademoiselle Mignon! I kiss the tips of your
+fingers, mademoiselle. And now tell me where that fisher-boy is--that
+handsome young fellow Gaston I heard about when I was last here. What
+have you done with him? Has he drowned himself because you wouldn't be
+called in church, or is he saving up his sous to put a new straw thatch
+on his mother's house so there will be room for two more?"
+
+Pretty Mignon blushed scarlet and kept straight on to the serving-table
+without daring to answer--Gaston was a tender subject to her, almost as
+tender as Mignon was to Gaston--but Leà, after depositing the tureen at
+the top of the table, made a little bob of a curtsy, first to Herbert
+and then to Louis and Brierley--thanking them for coming, and adding, in
+her quaint Normandy French, that she would have gone home a month since
+had not the master told her of our coming.
+
+"And have broken our hearts, you lovely old gargoyle!" laughed Louis.
+"Don't you dare leave the Inn. They are getting on very well at the
+church without you. Come, Herbert, down with you in the old Florentine.
+I'll sit next so I can keep all three wooden heads in order," and he
+wheeled the chair into place.
+
+"Now, Leà--the soup!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS
+
+
+Lemois, as was his custom, came in with the coffee. He serves it
+himself, and always with the same little ceremony, which, while
+apparently unimportant, marks that indefinable, mysterious line which he
+and his ancestry--innkeepers before him--have invariably maintained
+between those who wait and those who are waited upon. First, a small
+spider-legged mahogany table is wheeled up between the circle and the
+fire, on which Leà places a silver coffee-pot of Mignon's best; then
+some tiny cups and saucers, and a sugar-dish of odd design--they said it
+belonged to Marie Antoinette--is laid beside them. Thereupon Lemois
+gravely seats himself and the rite begins, he talking all the time--one
+of us and yet aloof--much as would a neighbor across a fence who makes
+himself agreeable but who has not been given the run of your house.
+
+To the group's delight, however, he was as much a part of the coterie
+as if he had taken the fifth chair, left vacant for the always late
+Marc, who had not yet put in an appearance, and a place we would have
+insisted upon his occupying, despite his intended isolation, but for a
+certain look in the calm eyes and a certain dignity of manner which
+forbade any such encroachments on his reserve.
+
+To-night he was especially welcome. Thanks to his watchful care we had
+dined well--Pierre having outdone himself in a pigeon pie--and that
+quiet, restful contentment which follows a good dinner, beside a warm
+fire and under the glow of slow-burning candles, had taken possession of
+us.
+
+"A wonderful pie, Lemois--a sublime, never-to-be-forgotten pie!"
+exclaimed Louis, voicing our sentiments. "Every one of those pigeons
+went straight to heaven when they died."
+
+"Ah!--it pleased you then, Monsieur Louis? I will tell Pierre--he will
+be so happy."
+
+"Pleased!" persisted the enthusiastic painter. "Why, I can think of no
+better end--no higher ambition--for a well-brought-up pigeon than being
+served hot in one of Pierre's pies. Tell him so for me--I am speaking as
+a pigeon, of course."
+
+"What do you think the pigeon himself would have said to Pierre before
+his neck was wrung?" asked Herbert, leaning back in his big chair.
+"Thank you--only one lump, Lemois."
+
+"By Jove!--why didn't I ask the bird?--it might have been
+illuminating--and I speak a little pigeon-English, you know. Doubtless
+he would have told me he preferred being riddled with shot at a match
+and crawling away under a hedge to die, to being treated as a common
+criminal--the neck-twisting part, I mean. Why do you want to know,
+Herbert?"
+
+"Oh, nothing; only I sometimes think--if you will forgive me for being
+serious--that there is another side to the whole question; though I must
+also send my thanks to Pierre for the pie."
+
+That one of their old good-natured passages at arms was coming became
+instantly apparent--tilts that every one enjoyed, for Herbert talked as
+he modelled--never any fumbling about for a word; never any uncertainty
+nor vagueness--always a direct and convincing sureness of either opinion
+or facts, and always the exact and precise truth. He would no sooner
+have exaggerated a statement than he would have added a hair's-breadth
+of clay to a muscle. Louis, on the other hand, talked as he
+painted--with the same breeze and verve and the same wholesome cheer and
+sanity which have made both himself and his brush so beloved. When
+Herbert, therefore, took up the cudgels for the cooked pigeon, none of
+us were surprised to hear the hilarious painter break out with:
+
+"Stop talking such infernal rot, Herbert, and move the matches this way.
+How could there be another side? What do you suppose beef and mutton
+were put into the world for except to feed the higher animal, man?"
+
+"But _is_ man higher?" returned Herbert quietly, in his low, incisive
+voice, passing Louis the box. "I know I'm the last fellow in the world,
+with my record as a hunter--and I'm sometimes ashamed of it--to advance
+any such theory, but as I grow older I see things in a different light,
+and the animal's point of view is one of them."
+
+"Pity you didn't come to that conclusion before you plastered your
+studio with the skins of the poor devils you murdered," he chuckled,
+winking at Lemois.
+
+"That was because I didn't know any better--or, rather, because I didn't
+_think_ any better," retorted Herbert. "When we are young, we delude
+ourselves with all sorts of fallacies, saying that things have always
+been as they are since the day of Nimrod; but isn't it about time to let
+our sympathies have wider play, and to look at the brute's side of the
+question? Take a captive polar bear, for instance. It must seem to him
+to be the height of injustice to be hunted down like a man-eating tiger,
+sold into slavery, and condemned to live in a steel cage and in a
+climate that murders by slow suffocation. The poor fellow never injured
+anybody; has always lived out of everybody's way; preyed on nothing that
+robbed any man of a meal, and was as nearly harmless, unless attacked,
+as any beast of his size the world over. I know a case in point, and
+often go to see him. He didn't tell me his story--his keeper did--though
+he might have done so had I understood bear-talk as well as Louis
+understands pigeon-English," and a challenging smile played over the
+speaker's face.
+
+"You ought to have stepped inside and passed the time of day with him.
+They wouldn't have fed him on anything but raw sculptor for a month."
+
+Herbert fanned his fingers toward Louis in good-humored protest, and
+kept on, his voice becoming unusually grave.
+
+"They wanted, it seems, a polar bear at the Zoo, because all zoos have
+them, and this one must keep up with the procession. It would be
+inspiring and educating for the little children on Sunday
+afternoons--and so the thirty pieces of silver were raised. The chase
+began among the icebergs in a steam-launch. The father and mother in
+their soft white overcoats--the two baby bears in powder-puff furs--were
+having a frolic on a cake of floating ice when the strange craft
+surprised them. The mother bear tucked the babies behind her and pulled
+herself together to defend them with her life--and did--until she was
+bowled over by a rifle ball which went crashing through her skull. The
+father bear fought on as long as he could, dodging the lasso,
+encouraging the babies to hurry--sweeping them ahead of him into the
+water, swimming behind, urging them on, until the three reached the next
+cake. But the churning devil of a steam launch kept after them--two
+armed men in the bow, one behind with the lariat. Another plunge--only
+one baby now--a staggering lope along the edge of the floe, the little
+tot tumbling, scuffling to its feet; crying in terror at being left
+behind--doing the best it could to keep up. Then only the gaunt,
+panic-stricken, shambling father bear--slower and slower--the breath
+almost out of him. Another plunge--a shriek of the siren--a twist of the
+rudder--the lasso curls in the air, the launch backs water, the line
+tautens, there is a great swirl of foam broken by lumps of rocking ice,
+and the dull, heavy crawl back to the ship begins, the bear in tow, his
+head just above the water. Then the tackle is strapped about his girth,
+the 'Lively now, my lads!' rings out in the Arctic air, and he is hauled
+up the side and dumped half dead on deck, his tongue out, his eyes shot
+with blood.
+
+"You can see him any day at the Zoo--the little children's noses pressed
+against the iron bars of his cage. They call him 'dear old Teddy bear,'
+and throw him cakes and candies, which he sniffs at and turns over with
+his great paw. As for me, I confess that whenever I stand before his
+cage I always wonder what he thinks of the two-legged beasts who are
+responsible for it all--his conscience being clear and neither crime,
+injustice, nor treachery being charged against him. Yes, there are two
+sides to this question, although, as Louis has said, it might have been
+just as well to have thought about it before. Speak up, Lemois, am I
+right or wrong? You have something on your mind; I see it in your eyes."
+
+"It's more likely on his stomach," interrupted Louis; "the pigeon may
+have set too heavy."
+
+"You are more than right, Monsieur Herbert," Lemois answered in measured
+tones, ignoring the painter's aside. He was stirring his cup as he
+spoke, the light of the fire making a silhouette of his body from where
+I sat. "For your father bear, as you call him, I have every sympathy;
+but I do not have to go to the North Pole to express what we owe to
+animals. I bring the matter to my very door, and I tell you from my
+heart that if I had my way there would never be anything served in my
+house which suffered in the killing--not even a pigeon."
+
+Everybody looked up in astonishment, wondering where the joke came in,
+but our landlord was gravity itself. "In fact," he went on, "I believe
+the day will come when nothing will be killed for food--not even your
+dear demoiselle de Cherbourg, Monsieur Louis. Adam and Eve got on very
+well without cutlets or broiled squab, and yet we must admit they raised
+a goodly race. I, myself, look forward to the time when nothing but
+vegetables and fruit, with cheese, milk, and eggs, will be eaten by men
+and women of refinement. When that time comes the butcher will go as
+entirely out of fashion as has the witch-burner and, in many parts of
+the world, the hangman."
+
+"But what are you going to do with Brierley, who can't enjoy his morning
+coffee until he has bagged half a dozen ducks on his beloved marsh?"
+cried Louis, tossing the stump of his cigar into the fire.
+
+"But Monsieur Brierley is half converted already, my dear Monsieur
+Louis; he told me the last time I was at his bungalow that he would
+never kill another deer. He was before his fireplace under the head of a
+doe at the time--one he had shot and had stuffed. Am I not right,
+Monsieur Brierley?" and Lemois inclined his head toward the hunter.
+
+Brierley nodded in assent.
+
+"Same old game," muttered Louis. "Had his fun first."
+
+"I have been a cook all my life," continued the undaunted Lemois, "and
+half the time train my own chefs in my kitchen, and yet I say to you
+that I could feed my whole clientele sumptuously without ever spilling a
+drop of blood. I live in that way myself as far as I can, and so would
+you if you had thought about it."
+
+"Skimmed milk and hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, I suppose!" roared
+Louis in derision, "with a lettuce sandwich and a cold turnip for
+luncheon."
+
+"No, you upsidedown man! Cheese souffles, omelets in a dozen different
+ways, stuffed peppers, tomatoes fried, stewed, and fricasseed, oysters,
+clams----"
+
+"And crabs and lobsters?" added Louis.
+
+"Ah! but crabs and lobsters suffer like any other thing which has the
+power to move; what I am trying to do is to live so that nothing will
+suffer because of my appetite."
+
+"And go round looking like a skeleton in a doctor's office! How could
+you get these up on boiled cabbage?" and he patted Herbert's biceps.
+
+"No, my dear Monsieur Louis," persisted Lemois gravely, still refusing
+to be side-tracked by the young painter's onslaughts. "If we loved the
+things we kill for food as Monsieur Brierley loves his dog Peter, there
+would never be another Chateaubriand cooked in the world. What would you
+say if I offered you one of that dear fellow's ribs for breakfast? It
+would be quite easy--the butcher is only around the corner and Pierre
+would broil it to a turn. But that would not do for you gourmets. You
+must have liver or sweetbreads cut from an animal you never saw and of
+which, of course, you know nothing. If the poor animal had been a
+playmate of Mignon's--and she once had a pet lamb--you could no sooner
+cut its throat than you could Peter's."
+
+Before Louis could again explode, Brierley, who, at mention of Peter's
+name had leaned over to stroke the dog's ears, now broke in, a dry smile
+on his face.
+
+"There's another side of this question which you fellows don't seem to
+see, and which interests me a lot. You talk about cruelty to animals,
+but I tell you that most of the cruelty to-day is served out to the man
+with the gun. The odds are really against him. The birds down my way
+have got so almighty cunning that they club together and laugh at us. I
+hear them many a time when Peter and I are dragging ourselves home
+empty-handed. They know too when I start out and when I give up and
+make for cover."
+
+"Go slow, Brierley; go slow!"
+
+"Of course they know, Louis!" retorted Brierley in mock dejection.
+"Doesn't a crow keep a watch out for the flock? Can you get near one of
+them with a gun unless you are lucky enough to shoot the sentry first?
+You can call it instinct if you choose--I call it reason--the same kind
+of mental process that compels you to look out for an automobile before
+you cross the street, with your eyes both ways at once. When you talk of
+their helplessness and want of common sense, and inability to look out
+for themselves, you had better lie under a hedge as I have done, the
+briars scraping your neck, or scrunched down in a duckblind, with your
+feet in ice water, and study these simple-minded creatures. Explain this
+if you can. Some years ago, in America, I spent the autumn on the
+Housatonic River. The ducks come in from Long Island Sound to feed on
+the shore stuff, and I could sometimes get five--once I got
+eleven--between dawn and sunrise. The constant banging away soon made
+them so shy that if I got five in a week I was lucky. On the first of
+the month and for the first time in the State a new law came into force
+making it cost a month's wages for any pot-hunter to kill a duck or even
+have one in his possession. The law, as is customary, was duly
+advertised. Not only was it published in the papers but stuck up in
+bar-rooms and county post-offices, and at last became common gossip
+around the feeding-ground of the ducks. At first they didn't believe it,
+for they still kept out of sight, flying high--and few at that. But when
+they found the law was obeyed and that all firing had ceased, not a gun
+being heard on the river, they tumbled to the game as quick as did the
+pot-hunters. When the shooting season opened the following year, hardly
+a duck showed up. Those that came were evidently stragglers who rested
+for a day on their long flight south; but the Long Island Sound
+ducks--the well-posted ducks--stayed away altogether until, with the
+first of the month, the law for their protection came into force again.
+Then, so the old farmer, a very truthful man with whom I used to put up,
+wrote me, they came back by thousands; the shore was black with them."
+
+"And you really believe it, Brierley?" Louis' head was shaking in a
+commiserating way.
+
+"Of course I believe it, and I can show the farmer's letter to back
+it," he answered, with a wink at me behind his hand; "and so would you
+if you had been humbugged by them as many times as I have. Ask
+Peter--he'll tell you the same thing. And I'll tell you something else.
+On the edge of that same village was a jumble of shanties inhabited by a
+lot of Italians who had come up from New York to work a quarry near by.
+On Sundays and holidays these fellows went gunning for the small birds,
+especially cedar birds and flickers, hiding in the big woods a mile
+away. After these birds had stood it for a while they put their dear
+little innocent heads together and thought it all out. Women and
+children did not shoot, therefore the safest place for nesting and
+skylarking was among these very women and children. After that the woods
+were empty; the birds just made fools of the pot-hunters and swarmed to
+the gardens and yards and village trees. No one had ever seen them
+before in such quantities, and--would you believe it?--they never went
+back to the woods again until the Italians had left for New York."
+
+Lemois, having also missed the humor in Brierley's tone, rose from his
+place beside the coffee-table, leaned over the young writer, and, with
+a characteristic gesture, patted him on the arm, exclaiming:
+
+"How admirably you have put it, my dear Monsieur Brierley; I have to
+thank you most sincerely. Ah! you Americans are always clear and to the
+point. May I add one more word? That which made these birds so cunning
+was the fact that you were out to _kill_ them." Here he straightened up,
+his back to the fire, and stood with the light of its blaze tingeing his
+gray beard. "It's a foolish fancy, I know, but I would have liked to
+have lived, if only for one day, with the man Adam, just to see how he
+and Madame Eve and the Noah's ark family got on before they began
+quarrelling and Cain made a hole in the head of the other monsieur. I
+have an idea that the lion and the lamb ate out of the same trough, with
+the birds on their backs for company--all the world at peace. My Coco
+rubs his beak against my cheek, not because I feed him, but because he
+trusts me; he would, I am sure, bite a piece out of Monsieur Louis'
+because he does not trust him--and with reason," and the old man smiled
+good-naturedly. "But why don't they all trust us?"
+
+Herbert, who had also for some reason entirely missed Brierley's humor,
+fumbled for an instant with the end of a match he had picked from the
+cloth, and then, tossing it quickly from him as if he had at last framed
+the sentence he was about to utter, said in a thoughtful tone:
+
+"I have often wondered what the world would be like if all fear of every
+kind was abolished--of punishment, of bodily hurt, and of pain?
+Everything that swims, flies, or walks is afraid of something
+else--women of men, men of each other. The first thing an infant does is
+to cry out--not from the pain, but from fright--just as a small dog or
+the cub of a bear hides under its mother's coat before its eyes are
+open. It is the ogre, Fear, that begins with the milk and ends with the
+last breath in terror over the unknown, and it is our fault. Half the
+children in the world--perhaps three-fourths of them--have been brought
+up by fear and not by love."
+
+"How about the lambasting your father gave you, Herbert, when you hooked
+it from school? 'Spare the rod and spoil the--' You know the rest of it.
+Did you deserve it?"
+
+"Probably I did," laughed Herbert. "But, all the same, Louis, that
+foolish line has done more harm in the world than any line ever
+written. Many a brute of a father--not mine, for he did what he thought
+was right--has found excuse in those half-dozen words for his temper
+when he beat his boy."
+
+"Oh, come, let us get back to dry ground, gentlemen," broke in Brierley.
+"We commenced on birds and we've brought up on moral suasion with the
+help of a birch-rod. Nobody has yet answered my argument: What about the
+birds and the way they play it on Peter and me?" and again Brierley
+winked at me.
+
+"It's because you tricked them first, Brierley," returned Herbert in all
+seriousness and in all sincerity. "They got suspicious and outwitted
+you, and they will every time. A beast never forgets treachery. I know
+of a dozen instances to prove it."
+
+"Now I think of it, I know of one case, too," remarked Louis gravely, in
+the voice of a savant uncovering a matter of great weight; "that is, if
+I may be allowed to tell it in the presence of the big Nimrod of the
+Congo--he of a hundred pairs of tusks, to say nothing of skins galore."
+
+Herbert nodded assent and with an air of surprise leaned forward to
+listen. That the jovial painter had ever met the savage beast in any
+part of the world was news to him.
+
+"A most extraordinary and remarkable instance, gentlemen, showing both
+the acumen, the mental equipment, and the pure cussedness, if I may be
+permitted the expression, of the brute beast of the field. The incident,
+as told to me, made a profound impression on my early life, and was
+largely instrumental in my abandoning the pursuit and destruction of
+game of that class. I refer to the well-known case of the boy who gave
+the elephant a quid of tobacco for a cake, and was buried the following
+year by his relatives when the circus came again to his town--he
+unfortunately having occupied a front seat. Yes, you are right, the
+beast forgives anything but treachery. But go on, Professor Herbert;
+your treatment of this extremely novel view of animal life is most
+exhilarating. I shall, at the next meeting of the Academy of Sciences,
+introduce a----"
+
+Brierley's hand set firmly on Louis' mouth, who sputtered out he would
+be good, would have ended the discussion had not Lemois moved into an
+empty chair beside Herbert, and, resting his hand on the sculptor's
+shoulder, exclaimed in so absorbed a tone as to command every one's
+attention:
+
+"Please do not stop, Monsieur Herbert, and please do not mind this wild
+man, who has two mouths in his face--one with which he eats and the
+other with which he interrupts. I am very much interested. You were
+speaking of the ogre, Fear. Please go on. One of the things I want to
+know is whether it existed in the Garden of Eden. Now if you gentlemen
+will all keep still"--here he fixed his eyes on Louis--"we may hear
+something worth listening to."
+
+Louis threw up both hands in submission, begging Lemois not to shoot,
+and Herbert, having made him swear by all that was holy not to open
+either of his mouths until his story was told to the end, emptied his
+glass of Burgundy and faced the expectant group.
+
+"We don't need to go back to the Garden of Eden to decide the question,
+Lemois. As to who is responsible for the existence of this ogre, Fear, I
+can answer best by telling you what happened only four years ago on a
+German expedition to the South Pole. It was told me by the commander
+himself, who had been specially selected by Emperor William as the best
+man to take charge. When I met him he was captain of one of the great
+North Atlantic liners--a calm, self-contained man of fifty, with a smile
+that always gave way to a laugh, and a sincerity, courage, and capacity
+that made you turn over in your berth for another nap no matter how hard
+it blew.
+
+"We were in his cabin near the bridge at the time, the walls of which
+were covered with photographs of the Antarctic, most of which he had
+taken himself, showing huge icebergs, vast stretches of hummock ice,
+black, clear-etched shore lines, and wastes of snow that swept up to
+high mountains, their tops lost in the fog. He was the first human
+being, so he told me, to land on that coast. He had left the ship in the
+outside pack and with his first mate and one of the scientists had
+forced a way through the floating floes, their object being to make the
+ascent of a range of low rolling mountains seen in one of the
+photographs. This was pure white from base to summit except for a dark
+shadow one-third the slope, which he knew must be caused by an
+overhanging ledge with possibly a cave beneath. If any explorers had
+ever reached this part of the Antarctic, this cave, he knew, would be
+the place of all others in which to search for records and remains.
+
+"He had hardly gone a dozen yards toward it when his first mate touched
+his arm and pointed straight ahead. Advancing over the crest of the snow
+came the strangest procession he had ever seen. Thirty or more penguins
+of enormous size, half as high as a man, were marching straight toward
+them in single file, the leader ahead. When within a few feet of them
+the penguins stopped, bunched themselves together, looked the invaders
+over, bending their heads in a curious way--walking round and round as
+if to get a better view--and then waddled back to a ridge a few rods
+off, where they evidently discussed their strange guests.
+
+"The captain and the first mate, leaving the scientist, walked up among
+them, patted their heads, caressed their necks--the captain at last
+slipping his hand under one flipper of the largest penguin, the mate
+taking the other--the two conducting the bird slowly and with great
+solemnity and dignity back to the boat, its companions following as a
+matter of course. None of them exhibited the slightest fear; did not
+start or crane their heads in suspicion, but were just as friendly as so
+many tame birds waiting to be fed. The boat seemed to interest them as
+much as the men had done. One by one, or by twos and threes, they came
+waddling gravely down to where it lay, examined it all over and as
+gravely waddled back, looking up into the explorers' faces as if for
+some explanation of the meaning and purpose of the strange craft. They
+had, too, a queer way of extending their necks, rubbing their cheeks
+softly against the men's furs, as if it felt good to them. The only
+thing they seemed disappointed in were the ship's rations--these they
+would not touch.
+
+"Leaving the whole flock grouped about the boat, the party pushed on to
+the dark shadow up the white slope. It was, as he had supposed, an
+overhanging cliff, its abrupt edge and slant forming a shallow cave
+protected from the glaciers and endless snows. As he approached nearer
+he could make out the whirling flight of birds, and when he reached the
+edge he found it inhabited by thousands upon thousands of sea fowl--a
+gray and white species common to these latitudes. But there was no
+commotion nor excitement of any kind--no screams of alarm or running to
+cover. On the contrary, when the party came to a halt and looked up at
+the strange sight, two birds stopped in their flight to perch on the
+mate's shoulder, and one hopped toward the captain with a movement as
+if politely asking his business. He even lifted the young birds from
+under their mother's wings without protest of any kind--not even a peck
+of their beaks--one of the older birds really stepped into his hand and
+settled herself as unconcerned as if his warm palm was exactly the kind
+of nest she had been waiting for. He could, he told me, have carried the
+whole family away without protest of any kind so long as he kept them
+together.
+
+"The following week he again visited the shore. This time he found not
+only the friendly penguins, who met him with even more than their former
+welcome, but a huge seal which had sprawled itself out on the rock and
+whose only acknowledgment of their presence was a lazy lift of the head
+followed by a sleepy stare. So perfectly undisturbed was he by their
+coming, that both the captain and the first mate sat down on his back,
+the mate remaining long enough to light his pipe. Even then the seal
+moved only far enough to stretch himself, as if saying, 'Try that and
+you will find it more comfortable.'
+
+"On this visit, however, something occurred which, he told me, he
+should never cease to regret as long as he lives. That morning as they
+pushed off from the ship, one of the dogs had made a clear spring from
+the deck and had landed in the boat. It was rather difficult to send him
+back without loss of time, and so he put him in charge of the mate, with
+orders not to take his eyes off him and, as a further precaution, to
+chain him to the seat when he went ashore. So fascinated were the
+penguins by the dog that for some minutes they kept walking round and
+round him, taking in his every movement. In some way, when the mate was
+not looking, the dog slipped his chain and disappeared. Whether he had
+gone back to the vessel or was doing some exploring on his own account
+nobody knew; anyhow, he must be found.
+
+"It then transpired that one of the penguins had also taken a notion to
+go on a still hunt of its own, and alone. Whether the dog followed the
+penguin, or the penguin the dog, he said he never knew; but as soon as
+both were out of sight the dog pounced upon the bird and strangled it.
+They found it flat on its back, the black-webbed feet, palms up, as in
+dumb protest, the plump white body glistening in the snow. From its
+throat trickled a stream of blood: they had come just in time to save
+any further mutilation. To hide all traces of the outrage, the captain
+and his men not only carried the dead penguin and the live dog to the
+boat, but carefully scraped up every particle of the stained snow, which
+was also carried to the boat and finally to the ship. What he wanted, he
+told me, was to save his face with the birds. He knew that not one of
+them had seen the tragedy, and he was determined that none of them
+should find it out. So careful was he that no smell of blood would be
+wafted toward them, that he had the boat brought to windward before he
+embarked the load; in this way, too, he could avoid bidding both them
+and the seal good-by.
+
+"The following spring he again landed on the shore. He had completed the
+survey, and the coast lay on their homeward track. There were doubters
+in the crew, who had heard the captain's story of the penguins walking
+arm and arm with him, so he landed some of the ship's company to
+convince them by ocular demonstration of its truth. But no penguins were
+in sight, nor did any other living thing put in an appearance. One of
+his men--there were six this time--caught a glimpse of a row of heads
+peering at them over a ridge of snow a long way off, but that was all.
+When he reached the cave the birds flew out in alarm, screaming and
+circling as if to protect their young."
+
+Herbert paused, moved his cup nearer the arm of his chair, and for a
+moment stirred it gently.
+
+Lemois, whose grave eyes had never wandered from Herbert, broke the
+silence.
+
+"I should have learned their language and have stayed on until they did
+understand," he murmured softly. "It wouldn't have taken very long."
+
+"The captain did try, Lemois," returned Herbert, "first by signs and
+gentle approaches, and then by keeping perfectly still, to pacify them;
+but it was of no use. They had lost all confidence in human kind. The
+peace of the everlasting ages had come to an end. Fear had entered into
+their world!"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE ARRIVAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY
+
+
+One of the delights of dressing by our open windows at this season is to
+catch the aroma of Mignon's roasting coffee. This morning it is
+particularly delicious. The dry smell of the soil that gave it birth is
+fast merging into that marvellous perfume which makes it immortal. The
+psychological moment is arriving; in common parlance it is just on the
+"burn"--another turn and the fire will have its revenge. But Mignon's
+vigil has never ceased--into the air it goes, the soft breeze catching
+and cooling it, and then there pours out, flooding the garden, the
+flowers, and the roofs, its new aroma and with it its new life.
+
+And the memories it calls up--this pungent, fragrant, spicy perfume:
+memories of the cup I drank in that old posada outside the gate of
+Valencia and the girl who served it, and the matador who stood by the
+window and scowled; memories of my own toy copper coffee-pot, with its
+tiny blue cup and saucer which Luigi, my gondolier, brings and pours
+himself; memories of the thimblefuls in shallow china cups hardly bigger
+than an acorn shell, that Yusef, my dragoman, laid beside my easel in
+the patio of the Pigeon Mosque in Stamboul, when the priests forbade me
+to paint.
+
+[Illustration: Flooding the garden, the flowers, and the roofs]
+
+Yes!--a wonderful aroma this which our pretty, joyous Mignon is
+scattering broadcast over the court-yard, hastening every man's toilette
+that he may get down the earlier where Leà is waiting for him with the
+big cups, the crescents, the pats of freshly churned butter, and the
+pitcher of milk boiling-hot from Pierre's fire.
+
+Another of the pleasures of the open window is being able to hear what
+goes on in the court-yard. To-day the ever-spontaneous and delightful
+Louis, as usual, is monopolizing all the talk, with Lemois and Mignon
+for audience, he having insisted on the open garden for his early cup,
+which the good Leà has brought, her scuffling sabots marking a track
+across the well-raked gravel. The conversation is at long range--Louis
+sitting immediately under my window and Lemois, within reach of the
+kitchen door at the other side of the court, busying himself with his
+larder spread out on a table.
+
+"Monsieur Lemois! Oh, Monsieur Lemois!" Louis called; "will you be good
+enough to pay attention! What about eggs?--can I have a couple of
+soft-boiled?"
+
+"Why, of course you can have eggs! Leà, tell Pierre to----"
+
+"Yes, I know, but will it endanger the life of the chickens inside?
+After your sermon last night, and Herbert's penguin yarn, I don't intend
+that any living thing shall suffer because of my appetite--not if I can
+help it."
+
+Lemois shrugged his shoulders in laughter, and kept on with his work,
+painting a still-life picture on his table-top--a string of silver
+onions for high lights and a brace of pheasants with a background of
+green turnip-tops for darks. To see Lemois spread his marketing thus
+deliberately on his canvas of a kitchen table is a lesson in color and
+composition. You get, too, some idea as to why he was able to reproduce
+in real paint the "Bayeux" tapestry on the walls of the "Gallerie" and
+arrange the Marmouset as he has done.
+
+My ear next became aware of a certain silence in the direction of the
+coffee-roaster which had ceased its rhythm--the coffee is roasted fresh
+every morning. I glanced out and discovered our Mignon standing erect
+beside her roaster with flushed cheeks and dancing eyes. Next I caught
+sight of young Gaston, his bronze, weather-beaten face turned toward the
+girl, his eyes roaming around the court-yard. In his sunburned hand he
+clutched a letter. He was evidently inquiring of Mignon as to whom he
+should give it.
+
+"Who's it for?" shouted Louis, who, as godfather to Mignon's romance,
+had also been watching the little comedy in delight. "All private
+correspondence read by the cruel parent! I am the cruel parent--bring it
+over here! What!--not for me? Oh!--for the High-Muck-a-Muck." The shout
+now came over his left shoulder. "Here's a letter for you, High-Muck,
+from Marc, so this piscatorial Romeo announces. Shall I send it up?"
+
+"No--open and read it," I shouted back.
+
+Louis slit the envelope with his thumb-nail and absorbed its contents.
+
+"Well!--I'll be--No, I won't, but Marc ought. What do you think he's
+been and gone and done, the idiot!"
+
+"Give it up!"
+
+"Invited a friend of his--a young--the Marquise de la Caux--to dine with
+us to-night. Says she's the real thing and the most wonderful woman he
+knows. Doesn't that make your hair curl up backward! He's coming down
+with her in her motor--be here at seven precisely. A marquise! Well!--if
+that doesn't take the cake! I'll bet she's Marc's latest mash!"
+
+Herbert put his head out of an adjoining window. "What's the matter?"
+
+"Matter! Why that lunatic Marc is going to bring a woman down to
+dinner--one of those fine things from St. Germain. She's got a château
+above Buezval. Marc stayed there last night instead of showing up here."
+
+"Very glad of it, why not?" called Herbert, drawing in his head.
+
+Lemois, who had heard the entire outbreak, nodded to himself as if in
+assent, looked at Gaston for a moment, and, without adding a word of any
+kind, disappeared in the kitchen. What he thought of it all nobody knew.
+
+There was no doubt as to the seriousness of the impending catastrophe.
+Marc, in his enthusiasm, had lost all sense of propriety, and was about
+to introduce among us an element we had hitherto avoided. Indeed, one
+of the enticing comforts at the Inn was its entire freedom from
+petticoat government of any kind. A woman of quality, raised as she had
+been, would mean dress-coats and white ties for dinner and the restraint
+that comes with the mingling of the sexes, and we disliked both--that
+is, when on our outings.
+
+By this time the news had penetrated to the other rooms, producing
+various comments. Herbert, with his head again out of the window,
+advanced the opinion that the hospitality of madame la marquise had been
+so overwhelming, and her beauty and charm so compelling, that Marc's
+only way out was to introduce her among us. Louis kept his nose in the
+air. Brierley, from the opposite side of the court, indulged in a
+running fire of good-natured criticism in which Marc was described as
+the prize imbecile who needed a keeper. As for me, sitting on the
+window-sill watching the by-plays going on below--especially Louis, who
+demanded an immediate answer for Gaston--there was nothing left, of
+course, but a--"Why certainly, Louis, any friend of Marc's will be most
+welcome, and say that we dine at seven."
+
+And yet before the day was over--so subtly does the feminine make its
+appeal--that despite our assumed disgust, each and every man of us had
+resolved to do his prettiest to make the distinguished lady's visit a
+happy one. As a woman of the world she would, of course, overlook the
+crudities of our toilettes. And then, as we soon reasoned to ourselves,
+why shouldn't our bachelor reunions be enlivened, at least for once, by
+a charming woman of twenty-five--Marc never bothered himself with any
+older--who would bring with her all the perfume, dash, and chic of the
+upper world and whose toilette in contrast with our own dull clothes
+would be all the more entrancing? This, now that we thought about it,
+was really the touch the Marmouset needed.
+
+It was funny to see how everybody set to work without a word to his
+fellow. Herbert made a special raid through the garden and nipped off
+the choicest October roses--buds mostly--as befitted our guest. Louis,
+succumbing to the general expectancy, occupied himself in painting the
+menus on which Watteau cupids swinging from garlands were most
+pronounced. Brierley, pretending it was for himself, spent half the
+morning tuning up the spinet with a bed-key, in case this rarest of
+women could sing, or should want any one else to, while Lemois, with
+that same dry smile which his face always wears when his mind is
+occupied with something that amuses him, ordered Pierre to begin at once
+the preparation of his most famous dish, Poulet Vallée d'Auge, spending
+the rest of the morning in putting a final polish on his entire George
+III coffee service--something he never did except for persons, as he
+remarked, of "exceptional quality."
+
+Not to be outdone in courtesy I unhooked the great iron key of the
+wine-cellar from its nail in Pierre's kitchen, and swinging back the old
+door on its rusty hinges, drew from among the cobwebs a bottle of
+Chablis, our heavier Burgundies being, of course, too heating for so
+dainty a creature. This I carried in my own hands to the Marmouset,
+preserving its long-time horizontal so as not to arouse a grain of the
+sediment of years, tucking it at last into a crib of a basket for a
+short nap, only to be again awakened when my lady's glass was ready.
+
+When the glad hour arrived and we were drawn up to receive her--every
+man in his best outfit--best he had--with a rosebud in his
+button-hole--and she emerged from the darkness and stood in the light of
+the overhead candles--long, lank Marc bowing and scraping at her side,
+there escaped from each one of us, all but Lemois, a half-smothered
+groan which sounded like a faint wail.
+
+What we saw was not a paragon of delicate beauty, nor a vision of
+surpassing loveliness, but a parallelogram stood up on end, fifty or
+more years of age, one unbroken perpendicular line from her shoulders to
+her feet--or rather to a brown velvet, close-fitting skirt that reached
+to her shoe-tops--which were stout as a man's and apparently as big.
+About her shoulders was a reefing jacket, also of brown velvet, fastened
+with big horn buttons; above this came a loose cherry-red scarf of
+finest silk in perfect harmony with the brown of the velvet; above this
+again was a head surmounted by a mass of fluffy, partly gray hair,
+parted on one side--as Rosa Bonheur wore hers. Then came two brilliant
+agate eyes, two ruddy cheeks, and a sunny, happy mouth filled with
+pearl-white teeth.
+
+One smile--and it came with the radiance of a flashlight--and all
+misgivings vanished. There was no question of her charm, of her
+refinement, or of her birth. Neither was there any question as to her
+thorough knowledge of the world.
+
+"I knew you were all down here for a good time," she began in soft, low,
+musical tones, when the introductions were over, "and would understand
+if I came just as I was. I have been hunting all day--tramping the
+fields with my dogs--and I would not even stop to rearrange my hair. It
+was so good of you to let me come; and I love this room--its atmosphere
+is so well bred, and it is never so charming as when the firelight
+dances about it. Ah, Monsieur Lemois! I see some new things. Where did
+you get that duck of a sauce-boat?--and another Italian mirror! But then
+there is no use trying to keep up with you. My agent offered what I
+thought was three times its value for that bit of Satsuma, and I nearly
+broke my heart over it--and here it is! You really _should_ be locked up
+as a public nuisance!"
+
+We turned instinctively toward Lemois, remembering his queer, dry smile
+when he referred to her coming, but his only reply to her comment was a
+low bow to the woman of rank, with the customary commonplace, that all
+of his curios were at her disposal if she would permit him to send them
+to her, and with this left the room.
+
+"And now where shall I sit?" she bubbled on. "Next to you, I hope, my
+dear Monsieur Herbert. You do not know me--never heard of me,
+perhaps--but I know all about you and the wonderful things you have
+accomplished. And you too, Monsieur Louis. I remember your first success
+as I do those of most of the young men who have won their medals for
+twenty years back. And you, Monsieur Brierley--and--can I say
+it?--Monsieur High-Muck"--and she nodded gayly at me. "And now you will
+all please give your imagination free rein. Try and remember that I am
+not a hideous old woman in corduroys and high boots, but a most
+delightful and bewitching demoiselle; and please remember, too, that I
+can wear a décolleté gown if I please, only I don't please, and haven't
+pleased for ten years or more."
+
+Her perfect poise and freedom from all conventionality put us at once at
+our ease, making us forget she had only been among us a few minutes.
+
+"And how clever you are to have chosen this room for these delightful
+meetings, of which Monsieur Marc has told me," she continued, her eyes
+wandering again over the several objects, while her personality
+completely dominated everything. "Nobody but Lemois would have brought
+them all together. What a genius he is! Think of his putting that wooden
+angel where its golden crown can become an aureole in the candle-light:
+he has done that since my last visit. And that other one--really the
+rarest thing he owns--in the dark corner by the fireplace. May I tell
+you about it before he comes back? It is of the fifteenth century, and
+is called the 'Bella Nigra'--the Black Virgin. Look at it, all of you,
+while I hold the candle. You see the face is black, the legend running,
+'I am beautiful though black because the sun has looked at me so long.'
+You notice, too, that she has neither arms nor legs--a symbol of
+nobility, showing she need neither work nor walk, and the triple crown
+means that she is Queen of Heaven, Earth, and Sea. Why he pokes her in a
+dark corner I cannot imagine, except that it is just like him to do the
+queerest things--and say them too. And yet, he is _such_ a dear--and
+_so_ funny! You cannot think what funny things he does and says until
+you watch him as I have. Why is it, Monsieur Brierley, that you have
+never put him into one of your books--you who write such charming
+stories of our coast? Only this summer something occurred which I laugh
+over every time I think of it. The Cabourg races were on and the
+court-yard outside was packed with people who had come for luncheon
+before the Prix Lagrange was run. They were making a good deal of
+noise--a thing the old gentleman hates, especially from loudly dressed
+women. I was at the next table, sheltered from the others, and was
+enjoying the curious spectacle--such people always interest me--when I
+noticed Monsieur Lemois rubbing his hands together, talking to himself,
+his eyes fixed on the group. I knew one of his storms was brewing, and
+was wondering what would happen, when I saw him start forward as another
+uproarious laugh escaped one of the most boisterous.
+
+"'Mademoiselle,' he said in his softest and most courteous tone, hat in
+hand, bowing first to her and then to her male companions;
+'mademoiselle, I love to hear you laugh; I built this place for
+laughter, but when you laughed so _very_ loud a moment ago my flowers
+were so ashamed they hung their heads,' and then he kept on bowing, his
+hat still in his hand, his face calm, his manner scrupulously polite.
+Nobody was offended. They seemed to think it was some kind of a
+compliment; the rebuked woman even turned her head toward the big
+hydrangeas as if trying to find out how they really felt about it.
+Oh!--he is too delicious for words."
+
+And so it went on until before the dinner was over she had captured
+every man in the room--both by what she said and the way she said
+it--her eyes flashing like a revolving light, now dim, now brilliant
+with the thoughts behind them, her white teeth gleaming as she talked.
+Marc seemed beside himself with pride and happiness. "Never was there
+such a woman," he was pouring into Herbert's ear; "and you should see
+her pictures and her stables and her gun-room. Really the most
+extraordinary creature I have ever known! Does just as she pleases--a
+tramp one day and a duchess the next. And you should watch her at the
+head of her table in her château--then you will know what a real 'Grande
+Dame' is."
+
+While the others were crowding about her, Marc eager to anticipate her
+every wish in the way of cushions, footstools, and the like, I went to
+find Lemois, who was just outside, his hands laden with a tray of
+cordials.
+
+"You know her then?"
+
+"Oh, for years," he whispered back. "I did not tell you, for I wanted to
+see your surprise and surrender. It is always the same story with her.
+She does not live here except for a month or so in the autumn, when the
+small villa on the bluff above Buezval--two miles from here--is opened;
+a little box of a place filled with costly bric-à-brac. Her great
+château--the one in which she really lives--is on an estate of some
+thousands of acres near Rouen, and is stocked with big game--boar and
+deer. The marquis--and a great gentleman he was--died some twenty years
+ago. Madame paints, carves ivories, binds books, shoots, fishes, speaks
+five languages, has lived all over the world and knows everybody worth
+knowing. No one in her youth was more beautiful, but the figure has
+gone, as you see--and it is such a pity, for it was superb; only the
+eyes and the teeth are left--and the smile. That was always her greatest
+charm, and still is--except her charities, which never cease."
+
+Her musical voice was still vibrating through the room as I re-entered.
+
+"No, I don't agree with you, Monsieur Herbert," she was saying. "It is
+shameful that we do not keep closer to the usages and requirements of
+the old régime. In my time a woman would have excited comment who did
+not wear her finest gown and her choicest jewels in so select a company
+as this; and often very extraordinary things happened when any one
+defied the mandate. I remember one very queer instance which I wish I
+could tell you about--and it resulted in all sorts of dreadful
+complications. I became so adept a fibber in consequence that I wasn't
+able to speak the truth for months afterward--and all because this most
+charming girl wouldn't wear a low gown at one of our dinners."
+
+Herbert beat the air with his hand. "Keep still, everybody--madame la
+marquise is going to tell us a story."
+
+"Madame la marquise is going to do nothing of the kind. She has enough
+sins of her own to answer for without betraying those of this poor
+girl."
+
+"Hold up your hands and swear secrecy, every one of you!" cried Louis.
+
+"But who will absolve me from breaking the commandment? You will never
+have any respect for me again--you remember the rule--all liars shall
+have their portion--don't you?"
+
+"If madame will permit me," said Lemois with a low bow, "I will be her
+father-confessor, for I alone of all this group know how good she really
+is."
+
+"Very well, I take you at your word, Fra Lemois, and to prove how good
+_you_ are, you shall send me the Satsuma with your compliments, and pick
+from my collection anything that pleases you. But you must first let me
+have a cigarette. Wait"--she twisted back her arm and drew a gold case
+from the side pocket of her jacket--"yes, I have one of my own--one I
+rolled myself, and I cure my own tobacco too, if you please. No! no more
+Burgundy" (she had declined my carefully selected Chablis and had drank
+the heavier wine with the rest of us). "That Romanée Conti I know, and
+it generally gets into my head, and I don't like anything in my head
+except what I put there myself. What did you want me to do? Oh, yes,
+tell you that story of my youth.
+
+"Well, one day my dear husband received a letter from an English
+officer, a dear friend of his with whom he had had the closest relations
+when they were both stationed in Borneo. This letter told us that his
+daughter, whom, as we knew, had been captured by the Dyaks when she was
+a child of eight, had been found some three years before by a scouting
+party and returned to the English agent at the principal seaport, the
+name of which I forget. Since that time she had been living with a
+relative, who had sent her to school. She had now completed her
+education, the letter went on to say, and was on her way back to England
+to join him, he being an invalided officer on half-pay. Before reaching
+him he wanted her to see something of the world, particularly of French
+life, and knew of no one with whom he would be more willing to trust her
+than ourselves. She was just grown--in her eighteenth year--and,
+although she had passed seven years of her life among a wild tribe, was
+still an English girl of prepossessing appearance.
+
+"Well, she came--a beautifully formed, graceful creature, with flashing
+black eyes, a clear skin, and with a certain barbaric litheness when she
+moved that always reminded me of a panther, it was so measured, and had
+such meaning in it. She brought some expensive clothes, but no décolleté
+dresses of any kind, which surprised me, and when I offered to lend her
+my own--we were of about the same size--she refused politely but
+firmly, which surprised me all the more, and went right on wearing her
+high-necked gowns, which, while good in themselves--for her people were
+not poor--were not exactly the kind of toilettes my husband and my
+guests had been accustomed to--certainly not at dinners of twenty.
+
+"At every other function she was superb, and for each one had the proper
+outfit and of the best make. She rode well, danced well, sang like a
+bird, could shoot and hunt with any of us, and, with the exception of
+this curious whim--for her form was faultless--was one of the most
+delightful creatures who ever stayed with us--and we had had, as you may
+suppose, a good many. The subjects she avoided were her captivity and
+the personnel of those with whom she had lived. When pressed she would
+answer that she had told the story so often she was tired of it; had
+banished it from her mind and wished everybody else would.
+
+"Then the expected happened. Indeed I had begun to wonder why it had not
+happened before. A young Frenchman, the only son of one of our oldest
+families, a man of birth and fortune, fell madly in love with her. The
+mother was up in arms, and so was the father. She was without title,
+and, so far as they knew, without fortune in her own right; was English,
+and the match could not and should not take place.
+
+"How the girl felt about it we could not find out. Sometimes she would
+see him alone, generally in the dusk of the evening on the lawn, but
+though she was English, and we had given the full limit of her freedom,
+she always kept within sight of the veranda. At other times she refused
+to see him altogether, sending word she was ill, or engaged, or had
+friends, all of which I found extraordinary. This went on until matters
+reached a crisis. She knew she must either send him about his business
+or succumb: this was _her_ problem. _His_ problem was to win her whether
+or no; if not here, then in England, where he would follow her; and he
+took no pains to conceal it. His persistence was met by a firm refusal,
+and finally by a command to leave her alone. The dismissal was given one
+night after dinner when they were together for a few minutes in the
+library, after which, so my maid told me, she went to her room and threw
+herself on her bed in an agony of tears.
+
+"But there is nothing for sheer obstinacy like a Frenchman in love.
+Indeed he was too far gone to believe a word she said or take no for an
+answer, and as my grounds were next to his mother's, and the two
+families most intimate, he still kept up his visits to the house, where,
+I must say, he was always welcome, for my husband and I liked him
+extremely, and he deserved it. His mother, objecting to the marriage,
+wanted to keep him away. She insisted--all this I heard afterward--that
+the girl was half savage and looked and moved like one; that she had
+doubtless been brought up among a lawless tribe who robbed every one
+around them; that there was no knowing what such a girl had done and
+would not do, and that she would rather see her son lying dead at her
+feet--the usual motherly exaggeration--than see him her victim. This
+brought him at last to his senses, for he came to me one day and wanted
+me to tell him what I knew of her antecedents as well as the story of
+her captivity and life with the savages. This was a difficult situation
+to face, and I at first refused to discuss her private affairs. Then I
+knew any mystery would only make him the more crazy, and so I told him
+what I knew, omitting the more intimate details. Strange to say,
+Frenchman-like, it only maddened him the more--so much so that he again
+waylaid her and asked her some questions which made her blaze like coals
+of fire, and again the poor girl went to bed in a flood of tears.
+
+"Then the most puzzling and inexplicable thing happened. I had a very
+deep topaz of which I was passionately fond--one given me by my dear
+husband shortly after we were married. I generally kept it in my small
+jewel case, to which only my maid and I had the key. This night when I
+opened it the jewel was gone. My maid said she remembered distinctly my
+putting it, together with the chain, in the box, for my guest was with
+me at the time and had begged me to wear it because of its rich color,
+which she always said matched my eyes. At first I said nothing to any
+one--not even my husband--and waited; then I watched my maid; then my
+butler, about whom I did not know much, and who was in love with the
+maid, and might have tempted her to steal it. And, last of all--why I
+could not tell, and cannot to this day, except for that peculiar
+pantherlike movement about my guest--I watched the girl herself. But
+nothing came of it.
+
+"Then I began to talk. I told my husband; I told the young man's mother,
+my intimate friend, who told her son, she accusing the girl, of course,
+without a scintilla of proof; I told my butler, my maid--I told
+everybody who could in any way help to advertise my loss and the reward
+I was willing to pay for its recovery. Still nothing resulted and the
+week passed without a trace of the jewel or the thief.
+
+"One morning just after luncheon, when I was alone in my little boudoir
+and my husband and the young man were having their coffee and cigarettes
+on the veranda outside, the girl walked in, made sure that no one was
+within hearing, and held out her hand. In the palm was my lost topaz.
+
+"'Here is your jewel,' she said calmly; 'I stole it, and now I have
+brought it back.'
+
+"'You!' I gasped. 'Why?'
+
+"'To disgust him and make him hate me so that he will never see me
+again. I love him too much to give myself to him. In my madness I
+thought of this.'
+
+"'And you want him to know it!' I cried out. I could hardly get my
+breath, the shock was so great.
+
+"'Yes--_here!_--NOW!' She stepped to the door. 'Monsieur,' she called,
+'I have something to tell you. I have just brought back her jewel--I
+stole it! Now come, madame, to my room and I will tell you the rest!'
+
+"I followed her upstairs, leaving the horror-stricken young man dazed
+and speechless. She shut the door, locked it, and faced me.
+
+"'I have lied to both of you, madame. I did not steal your jewel; nobody
+stole it. I found it a few minutes ago under the edge of the rug where
+it had rolled; you dropped it in my room the night you wore it. In my
+agony to find some way out I seized on this. It came to me in a flash
+and I ran downstairs clutching it in my hand, knowing I would be lost if
+I hesitated a moment. It is over now. He will never see me again!'
+
+"I stood half paralyzed at the situation; she erect before me, her eyes
+blazing, her figure stretched to the utmost, like an animal in pain.
+
+"'And you deliberately told him you were a thief!' I at last managed to
+stammer out. 'Why?'
+
+"'Because it was the only way to escape--it was the only way out. I never
+want him to think of me in any other light--I want to be dead to him
+forever! Nothing else would have done; I should have yielded, for I
+could no longer master my love for him. Look!'
+
+"She was fumbling at her dress, loosening the top buttons close under
+her chin; then she ripped it clear, exposing her neck and back.
+
+"'This is what was done to me when I was a child!'
+
+"I leaned forward to see the closer. The poor child was one mass of
+hideous tattoo from her throat to her stays!
+
+"'Now you know the whole story,' she sobbed, her eyes streaming tears;
+'my heart is broken but I am satisfied. I could have stood anything but
+his loathing.'
+
+"With this she fastened her dress and walked slowly out of the room, her
+head down, her whole figure one of abject misery."
+
+Madame leaned forward, picked up her goblet of water, and remarking that
+walking in the wind always made her thirsty, drained its contents. Then
+she turned her head to hide her tears.
+
+"A most extraordinary story, madame. Did the young fellow ever speak of
+the theft?" asked Herbert, the first of her listeners to speak.
+
+"No," she answered slowly, in the effort to regain her composure, "he
+loved her too much to hear anything against her. He knew she had stolen
+it, for he had heard it from her own lips."
+
+"And you never tried to clear her character?"
+
+"How could I? It was her secret, not mine. To divulge it would have led
+to her other and more terrible secret, and that I was pledged to keep.
+She is dead, poor girl, or I would not have told you now."
+
+"And what did you do, may I ask?" inquired Brierley.
+
+"Nothing, except tell fibs. After she had gone the following morning I
+excused her to him, of course, on every ground that I could think of. I
+argued that she had a peculiar nature; that owing to her captivity she
+had perhaps lost that fine sense of what was her own and what was
+another's; that she had many splendid qualities; that she had only
+yielded to an impulse, just as a Bedouin does who steals an Arab horse
+and who, on second thought, returns it. That I had forgiven her, and had
+told her so, and as proof of it had tried, without avail, to make her
+keep the topaz. Only my husband knew the truth. 'Let it stay as it is,
+my dear,' he said to me; 'that girl has more knowledge of human nature
+than I credited her with. Once that young lover of hers had learned the
+cruel truth he wouldn't have lived with her another hour.'"
+
+"I think I should have told him," remarked Louis slowly; the story
+seemed to have strangely moved him. "If he really loved her he'd have
+worn green spectacles and taken her as she was--I would. Bad business,
+this separating lovers."
+
+"No, you wouldn't, Louis," remarked Herbert, "if you'd ever seen her
+neck. I know something of that tattoo, although mine was voluntary, and
+only covered a part of my arm. Madame did just right. There are times
+when one must tell anything but the truth."
+
+Everybody looked at the speaker in astonishment. Of all men in the world
+he kept closest to the exact hair-line; indeed, one of Herbert's
+peculiarities, as I have said, was his always understating rather than
+overstating a fact.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "the only way out is to 'lie like a gentleman,' as
+the saying is, and be done with it. I've been through it myself and
+know. Your story, madame, has brought it all back to me."
+
+"It's about a girl, of course," remarked Louis, flashing a smile around
+the circle, "and your best girl, of course. Have a drop of cognac, old
+man," and he filled Herbert's tiny glass. "It may help you tell the
+_whole_ truth before you get through."
+
+"No," returned Herbert calmly, pushing the cognac from him, a peculiar
+tenderness in his voice; "not my best girl, Louis, but a gray-haired
+woman of sixty--one I shall never forget."
+
+Madame laid her hand quickly on Herbert's arm; she had caught the note
+in his voice.
+
+"Oh! I'm so glad!" she said. "I love stories of old women; I always
+have. Please go on."
+
+"If I could have made her young again, madame, you would perhaps have
+liked my story better."
+
+"Why? Is it very sad?"
+
+"Yes and no. It is not, I must say, exactly an after-dinner story, and
+but that it illustrates precisely how difficult it is sometimes to speak
+the truth, I would not tell it at all. Shall I go on?"
+
+"Yes, please do," she pleaded, a tremor now in her own voice. It was
+astonishing how simple and girlish she could be when her sympathies were
+aroused.
+
+"My gray-haired woman had an only son, a man but a few years younger
+than myself, a member of my own party, who had died some miles from our
+camp at Bangala, and it accordingly devolved upon me not only to notify
+his people of his death, but to forward to them the few trinkets and
+things he had left behind. As I was so soon to return to London I wrote
+his people that I would bring them with me.
+
+"He was a fine young fellow, cool-headed, afraid of nothing, and was a
+great help to me and very popular with every one in the camp. Having
+been sent out by the company to which I belonged, as were many others
+during the first years of our stay on the Congo, he had already mastered
+both the language and the ways of the natives. When a powwow was to be
+held I always sent him to conduct it if I could not go myself. I did so,
+too, when he had to teach the natives a lesson--lessons they needed and
+never forgot, for he was as plucky as he was politic.
+
+"I knew nothing of his people except that he was a Belgian whose mother,
+Madame Brion, occupied a villa outside of Brussels, where she lived with
+a married daughter.
+
+"On presenting my card I was shown into a small library where the young
+woman received me with tender cordiality, and, after closing the door so
+that we might not be overheard, she gave me an outline of the ordeal I
+was about to go through. With her eyes brimming tears she told me how
+her mother had only allowed her son to leave home because of the
+pressure brought to bear upon her by his uncle, who was interested in
+the company; how she daily, almost hourly, blamed herself for his death;
+how, during the years of his absence, she had lived on his letters, and
+when mine came, telling her of his end, she had sat dazed and paralyzed
+for hours, the open page in her lap--no word escaping her--no
+tears--only the dull pain of a grief which seemed to freeze the blood in
+her veins. Since that time she had counted the days to my coming, that
+she might hear the details of his last illness and suffering.
+
+"You can imagine how I felt. I have never been able to face a woman when
+she is broken down with grief, and but that she was expecting me every
+minute, and had set her heart on my coming, I think I should have been
+cowardly enough to have left the house.
+
+"When the servant returned, I was conducted up the broad staircase and
+into a small room hung with wonderful embroideries and pictures and
+filled with flowers. In one corner on an easel was Brion's portrait in
+the uniform of an officer, while all about were other portraits--some
+taken when he was a child, others as a boy--a kind of sanctuary, really,
+in which the mother worshipped this one idol of her life."
+
+Herbert stopped, drew the tiny glass of cognac toward him, sipped its
+contents slowly, the tenderness of tone increasing as he went on:
+
+"She greeted me simply and kindly, and led me to a seat on the sofa
+beside her, where she thanked me for the trouble I had taken, her soft
+blue eyes fixed on mine, her gentle, high-bred features illumined with
+her gratitude, her silver-gray hair forming an aureole in the light of
+the window behind her, as she poured out her heart. Then followed
+question after question; she wanting every incident, every word he had
+uttered; what his nursing had been--all the things a mother would want
+to know. Altogether it was the severest ordeal I had been through since
+I left home--and I have had some trying ones.
+
+"For three hours I sat there, giving her minute accounts of his illness,
+his partial recovery, his relapse; what remedies I had used; how he
+failed after the fourth day; how his delirium had set in, and how at the
+last he had passed peacefully away. Next I described the funeral, giving
+a succinct account of the preparations; how we buried him on a little
+hill near a spring, putting a fence around the grave to keep any one
+from walking over it. Then came up the question of a small head-stone.
+This she insisted she would order cut at once and sent out to me--or
+perhaps one could be made ready so that I might take it with me. All
+this I promised, of course, even to taking it with me were there time,
+which, after all, I was able to do, for my steamer was delayed. And so I
+left her, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes fixed on mine in gratitude
+for all I had done for her dead son."
+
+"Oh!--the poor, dear lady!" cried madame la marquise, greatly moved, her
+hands tight clasped together. "Yes, I believe you--nothing in all your
+experience could have been as painful!"
+
+Brierley raised his head and looked at Herbert:
+
+"Rather a tight place, old man, awful tight place," and his voice
+trembled. "But where does the lie come in? You told her the truth, after
+all."
+
+"Told her the truth! I thought you understood. Why I lied straight
+through! There _was_ no grave--there never had been! Her son and his
+three black carriers had been trapped by cannibals and eaten."
+
+Madame started from her chair and clutched Herbert's hand.
+
+"Oh!--how terrible! No! you could not have told her!--I would never have
+liked you again if you had told her. Oh! I am so glad you didn't!"
+
+"There was nothing else to do, madame," said Herbert thoughtfully, his
+eyes gazing into space as if the recital had again brought the scene
+before him.
+
+"Pray God she never found out!" said the marquise under her breath.
+
+"That has always been my consolation, madame. So far as I know she never
+did find out. She is dead now."
+
+"And I wish we had never found out either!" groaned Louis. "Why in the
+world do you want to make goose-flesh crawl all over a fellow! An
+awful, frightful story. I say, Herbert, if you've got any more horrors
+keep 'em for another night. I move we have a rest. Drag out that spinet,
+Brierley, and give us some music."
+
+"No, please don't!" cried the marquise. "Tell us another. I wish this
+one of Monsieur Herbert's was in print, so that I could read it over and
+over. Think how banal is our fiction; how we are forever digging in the
+same dry ground, turning up the same trivialities--affairs of the heart,
+domestic difficulties--thin, tawdry romances of olden times, all the
+characters masquerading in modern thought--all false and stupid. Oh! how
+sick I am of it all! But this epic of Monsieur Herbert means the clash
+of races, the meeting of two civilizations, the world turning back, as
+it were, to measure swords with that from which it sprung. And think,
+too, how rare it is to meet a man who in his own life has lived them
+both--the savage and the civilized. So please, Monsieur Herbert, tell us
+another--something about the savage himself. You know so many things and
+you _are so human_."
+
+"He doesn't open his lips, madame, until I get some fresh air!" cried
+Louis. "Throw back that door, Lemois, and let these hobgoblins out! No
+more African horrors of any kind! Ladies and gentlemen, you will now
+hear the distinguished spinetist, Herr Brierley, of Pont du Sable, play
+one of his soul-stirring melodies! Up with you, Brierley, and take the
+taste out of our mouths!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+IN WHICH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CANNIBAL AND A FREE-BOOTER IS CLEARLY
+SET FORTH
+
+
+To-night the circle around the table welcomed the belated Le Blanc,
+bringing with him his friend, The Architect, who had designed some of
+the best villas on the coast, and whose fad when he was not bending over
+his drawing-board was writing plays. Marc, to every one's regret, did
+not come. After returning with madame to her villa the night of her
+visit, he had, according to Le Blanc, been lost to the world.
+
+Dinner over and the cigarettes lighted, the men pushed back their
+chairs; Louis spreading himself on the sofa or great lounge; Brierley in
+a chair by the fire, with Peter cuddled up in his arms, and the others
+where they would be the most comfortable; Lemois, as usual, at the
+coffee-table.
+
+The talk, as was to be expected, still revolved around the extraordinary
+woman who had so charmed us the night before; Le Blanc expressing his
+profound regret at not having been present, adding that he would rather
+listen to her talk than to that of any other woman in Europe, and I had
+just finished giving him a résumé of her story about the tattooed girl
+and her sufferings, when Brierley, who is peculiarly sympathetic, let
+the dog slip to the floor, and rising to his feet broke out in a tirade
+against all savage tribes from Dyaks to cannibals, closing his outburst
+with the hope that the next fifty years would see them all exterminated.
+Soon the table had taken sides, The Architect, who had lived in Nevada
+and the far West, defending the noble red man so cruelly debauched by
+the earlier settlers; Le Blanc siding with Brierley, while Lemois and I
+watched the discussion, Louis, from his sofa, putting in his oar
+whenever he thought he could jostle the boat, grewsome discussions not
+being to his liking.
+
+Herbert, who, dinner over, had been leaning back in his chair, the glow
+of the firelight touching both his own and the two carved heads above
+him, and who, up to this time, had taken no part in the talk--Herbert,
+not the heads, suddenly straightened up, threw away his cigarette, and
+rested his hands on the table.
+
+"I have not been among the savage tribes in lower Borneo," he said,
+addressing The Architect; "neither do I know the red Indian as the
+Americans or their grandfathers may have known him. But I do know the
+cannibal"--here he looked straight at Le Blanc--"and he is not as black
+as he is painted. In fact, the white man is often ten times blacker in
+the same surroundings."
+
+"Not when they roasted your Belgian friend?" cried Louis, with some
+anger.
+
+"Not even then. There were two sides to that question."
+
+"The brown and the underdone, I suppose," remarked Louis _sotto voce_.
+
+"No, the human."
+
+"But you don't excuse the devils, do you?" broke in Le Blanc. "Their
+cruelties are incredible. A friend of mine once met a man in Zanzibar
+who told him he had seen a group of slaves, mostly young girls, who,
+after being fattened up, were tied together and marched from one of the
+villages to the other that the buyers might select and mark upon their
+bodies the particular cuts they wanted."
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it. It's all true," replied Herbert. "I once saw
+the same thing myself when I was helpless to prevent it, as I was in
+hiding at the time and dared not expose myself. Yet I recognized even
+then that the savage was only following out the traditions of centuries,
+with no one to teach him any better. We ourselves have savage tastes
+that are never criticised; to do so would be considered mawkish and
+sentimental. We feel, for instance, no regret when we wring the neck of
+a pigeon--that is, we didn't," Herbert added with a dry smile, "until
+Lemois advanced his theories of 'mercy' the other night. We still feed
+our chickens in coops, stuff our geese to enlarge their livers, fatten
+our hogs until they can barely stagger, and, after parading them around
+the market-places, kill and eat them just as the African does his human
+product. Even Lemois, with equal nonchalance, hacks up his lobsters
+while they are alive or plunges them into boiling water--he wouldn't
+dare serve them to us in any other way. The only difference is that we
+persuade ourselves that our pigs and poultry are ignorant of what is
+going to happen to them, while the captured African begins to suffer the
+moment he is pounced upon by his captors."
+
+"And you mean to tell me you don't blame these wretches!" burst out Le
+Blanc. "I'd burn 'em alive!"
+
+"Yes, I am quite sure you would--that is the usual civilized,
+twentieth-century way, a continuation of the eye-for-an-eye dogma, but
+it isn't always efficacious, and it is seldom just. The savage has his
+good side; he can really teach some of us morals and manners, though you
+may not believe it. Please don't explode again--not now; wait until I
+get through. And I go even farther, for my experience teaches me that
+the savage never does anything which he himself thinks to be wrong. I
+say this because I have been among them for a good many years, speak
+their dialects, and have had, perhaps, a better opportunity of studying
+them than most travellers. And these evidences of a better nature can be
+found, let me tell you, not only among the tribes in what is known as
+'White Man's Africa,' opened up by the explorers, but in the more
+distant parts--out of the beaten track--often where no white man has
+ever stepped--none at least before me. Even among the cannibal tribes I
+have often been staggered at discovering traits which were as mysterious
+as they were amazing--deep human notes of the heart which put the white
+man to shame. These traits are all the more extraordinary because they
+are found in a race who for centuries have been steeped in superstition
+with its attendant cruelty, and who are considered incapable even of
+love because they sell their women.
+
+"You, Le Blanc, naturally break out and want to burn them alive. Lemois,
+more humane, as he always is, would exercise more patience if he could
+see anything to build upon. You are both wrong. Indeed, between the
+educated white man freed from all restraint and turned loose in a savage
+wilderness, and the uneducated savage I would have more hope of the
+cannibal than the freebooter, and I say this because the older I grow
+the more I am convinced that with a great majority of men, public
+opinion, and public opinion only, keeps them straight, and that when
+they are far from these restraints they often stoop to a lower level
+than the savage, unless some form of religion controls their actions. To
+make this clear I will tell you two stories.
+
+"My first is about a young fellow, a graduate of one of the first
+universities of Europe. I am not going to preach, nor throw any blame.
+Some of us in our twenties might have done what that white man did. I
+am only trying to prove my statement that the cannibal in his cruelties
+is only following out the instincts and traditions of his race, which
+have existed for centuries, while the white man goes back on every one
+of his. I wish to prove to you if I can that there is more in the heart
+of a savage than most of us realize--more to build upon, as Lemois puts
+it.
+
+"Some years ago I met, on the Upper Congo, a young fellow named Goringe,
+of about twenty-four or five, who had a contract with the company for
+providing carriers to be sent to the coast for the supplies to be
+brought back and delivered to the several camps, mine among the others.
+He, like many an adventurer drawn to that Eldorado of adventure, was a
+man of more than ordinary culture, a brilliant talker, and of very great
+executive ability. It was his business to visit the different villages,
+buy, barter, or steal able-bodied men for so much a month, and rush them
+in gangs to the coast under charge of an escort. On their return the
+company paid them and him so much a head. There were others besides
+Goringe, of course, engaged in the same business, but none of them
+attained his results, as I had learned from time to time from those who
+had come across his caravans in their marches through the jungle.
+
+"One morning a runner came into my camp with a message from Goringe,
+telling me that he intended passing within a mile or so of where I was;
+that he was pressed for time or would do himself the honor of calling
+upon me, and that he would deem it a great favor if I would meet him at
+a certain crossing where he meant to rest during the heat of the day. I,
+of course, sent him word that I should be on hand. I hadn't seen him for
+some years--few other white men, for that matter--and I wanted to learn
+for myself the secret of his marvellous success. When in London he had
+worn correct evening clothes, a decoration in his button-hole, and was a
+frequenter of the best and most exclusive clubs--rather a poor training,
+one would suppose, for the successful life he had of late been leading
+in the jungle--and it _was_ successful so far as the profits of the home
+company were concerned. While their other agents would hire ten men--or
+twenty--in a long march of months, gathering up former carriers out of
+work, some of whom had served Stanley in his time, Goringe would get a
+hundred or more of fresh recruits, all able-bodied savages capable of
+carrying a load of sixty-five pounds no matter what the heat or how
+rough the going.
+
+"I arrived at the crossing first and waited--waited an hour, perhaps
+two--before his vanguard put in an appearance. Then, to use one of
+Louis' expressions, I 'sat up and began to take notice.' I had seen a
+good many barbaric turnouts in my time--one in India when I was the
+guest of a maharaja, who received me at the foot of a steep hill flanked
+on either side by a double row of elephants in gorgeous trappings, with
+armed men in still more gorgeous costumes filling the howdahs; another
+in Ceylon, and another in southern Spain at Easter time--but Goringe's
+march was the most unique and the most startling spectacle I had ever
+laid my eyes on, so much so that I hid myself in a mass of underbrush
+and let the last man pass me before I made myself known.
+
+"The vanguard was composed of some twenty naked men, black as tar, of
+course, and armed with spears and rawhide shields. These were the
+fighters, clearing the way for my lord, the white man. These were
+followed by a dozen others carrying light articles: the great man's
+india-rubber bath-tub, his guns, ammunition, medicine-chest, tobacco,
+matches, and toilette articles--with such portions of his wardrobe as he
+might choose to enjoy. Separated from the contaminating touch of those
+in front by a space of some twenty feet and by an equal distance from
+those behind, came Goringe, walking alone, like a potentate of old. As
+he passed within a few yards of where I lay concealed I had ample
+opportunity to study every detail of his personality and make-up. I was
+not quite sure that it was he; then I got his smile and the peculiar
+debonair lift of his head. Except that he was fifty pounds heavier, he
+was the man with whom I had dined so often in London.
+
+"On his head was a pith helmet that had once been white, round which was
+wound a yard or more of bright-red calico. A dozen strings of gaudy
+beads bound his throat and half covered his bare chest. After that there
+was nothing but his naked skin--back and front, as far down as his
+waist, from which hung a frock of blue denim falling to his knees--then
+more bare skin, and then his feet wrapped in goat-skins. In his hand he
+carried a staff which he swung from side to side as he walked with
+lordly stride.
+
+"His harem followed: thirty girls in single file, dressed in the
+prevailing fashion of the day--a petticoat of plantain leaves and a
+string of beads. Each of them carried a gaudy paper umbrella like those
+sold at home for sixpence. Some of the girls were slim and tall, some
+fat; but all were young and all bore themselves with an air of calm
+distinction, as if conscious of their alliance with a superior race.
+Bringing up the rear was a long line of carriers loaded down with tents,
+provisions, and other camp equipage.
+
+"When it had all passed I stepped quickly through the forest, got
+abreast of my lord the white man, and shouted:
+
+"'Goringe!'
+
+"He turned suddenly, lifted the edge of his helmet, threw his staff to
+one of his men, and came quickly toward me.
+
+"'By the Eternal, but I'm glad to see you! I was afraid you were going
+back on me! It was awfully decent in you to come. You didn't mind my
+sending for you, did you? I've got to make the next village by sundown,
+and then I'm going up into the Hill Country, and may not be this way
+again for months--perhaps never. How well you look! What do you think of
+my turnout?'
+
+"I told him in reply, that it was rather remarkable--about as
+uncivilized as anything I had ever seen--and was on the point of asking
+some uncomfortable questions when, noting my disapproval, he switched
+off by explaining that it was the only way he could make a penny, and
+again turned the conversation by exclaiming abruptly:
+
+"'Saw my wives, didn't you?-every one of them the daughter of a chief.
+You see, I buy the girl, and so get even with her father, am made High
+Pan-Jam with the red button and feather, or next of kin to the chief by
+blood-letting--anything they want. I'm scarred all up now mixing my
+precious ancestral fluid with that of these blacklegs, and am first
+cousin to half the cutthroats on the river. Next I start on the
+carriers, pick 'em out myself, and send 'em down to the agent. The home
+company is getting ugly, so I hear, and wonder why they owe me so much
+for the carriers I've sent them--pretty near six hundred pounds
+sterling, now. They think there is something crooked about it, but I'm
+keeping it up. I'm going down when the row is over and present my bill,
+and they've got to pay it or I'll know the reason why. Now we'll have
+tiffin.'
+
+"I watched his women crowd about him. One spread a blanket for his
+royal highness to sit on; two or more busied themselves getting the food
+together; one, parasol in hand, planted herself behind him to shield his
+precious head from the few sunbeams that filtered through the
+overhanging leaves, fanning him vigorously all the while.
+
+"With the serving of the meal and the uncorking of a bottle in which he
+kept what he called his 'private stock,' he gave me further details of
+his methods with the natives. When a chief was at war with another
+tribe, for instance, he would move into the first village he came to,
+spread his own tent and those of his wives, post his retainers, and then
+despatch one of his men to the other combatant, commanding a powwow the
+next morning. Everybody would come--everybody would talk, including
+himself, for he spoke Kinkongo and Bangala perfectly. Then when he had
+patched up their difficulties, he would distribute presents, get
+everybody drunk on palm wine, and would move on next day with a
+contribution of carriers from both tribes, adding with a wink, 'And the
+trick works every time.'"
+
+Herbert paused for a moment and his lips curled.
+
+"Now there's a specimen white man for you! To have expressed my disgust
+of his methods in the way I would have liked to do--and I can be pretty
+ugly at times--would, under the circumstances, have been impossible,
+although there was no question in my mind of his cruelty nor of his
+sublime selfishness. The world was his oyster and he opened it at his
+leisure. He knew as well as I did what would become of the women when he
+was through with them--that they would either be sold into slavery or
+eaten--and he knew, too, how many of those poor devils of carriers would
+go to their death, for the mortality among them is fearful--and yet none
+of it ever made the slightest impression on him. Now I could excuse that
+sort of thing in Tippoo Tib, whom I knew very well. He was a
+slave-trader and the most cruel ruffian that was ever let loose on the
+natives; but this man was an Anglo-Saxon, a graduate of a university,
+speaking French and German fluently, with a good mother, and sisters,
+and friends; a man whom you could no doubt find to-night perfectly
+dressed and heartily welcomed in a London club, or in the foyer of some
+theatre in Paris, for his father has since died and he has come into his
+property. And yet the environment and the absence of public opinion had
+reduced him to something worse than a savage, and so I say again, one
+can excuse a cannibal whose traditions and customs have known no change
+for centuries, but you cannot excuse a freebooter who goes back on every
+drop of decent blood in his veins."
+
+Before any one could reply The Architect was on his feet waving his
+napkin. "By Jove!" he cried, "what a personality! Wouldn't he be a hit
+in comic opera! And think what could be done with the scenery; and that
+procession of parasols, with snakes hanging down from the branches, and
+monkeys skipping around among the leaves! Robinson Crusoe wouldn't be in
+it--why, it would take the town by storm! Girls in black stockinette and
+bangles, savages, spears, palms, elephant tusks, Goringe in a helmet and
+goat-skin shoes! I'll tell Michel Carré about it the first time I see
+him."
+
+"And every one of Goringe's girls a beautiful seductive houri," chimed
+in Louis with a wink at Le Blanc. "You seem to have slurred over all the
+details of this part of the panorama, Herbert."
+
+"Oh, ravishingly beautiful, Louis! Half of them were greased from head
+to foot with palm-oil, and smeared with powdered camwood that changed
+them to a deep mahogany; all had their wool twisted into knobs and
+pigtails, and most of them wore pieces of wood, big as the handle of a
+table knife, skewered through their upper lips. Oh!--a most adorable lot
+of houris."
+
+"All the better," vociferated The Architect. "Be stunning under the
+spotlights. Tell me more about him. I may write the libretto myself and
+get Livadi to do the music. It's a wonderful find! Did you ever see
+Goringe again?"
+
+"No, but I kept track of him. The Belgian home company went back on
+their contract, and refused to pay him just as he feared they would;
+they claimed he didn't and couldn't have supplied that number of
+carriers--the sort of defence a corporation always makes when they want
+to get out of a bad bargain. This decided him. He made a bee-line for
+the coast, sailed by the first steamer, brought suit, tried it himself,
+won his case, got his money and a new contract; took the first train for
+Monte Carlo, lost every penny he had in a night; went back to Brussels,
+got a second contract, sailed the same week for the Congo, and when I
+left Bangala for home had another caravan touring the country--bigger
+than the first--fitted out with the best that money could buy----"
+
+"Including his wives, of course," suggested Louis.
+
+"Yes, but not the lot he had left behind," added Herbert slowly, a frown
+settling on his brow. "They had long since been wiped out of existence."
+
+The Architect pounded the table until the glasses rattled. "Superb!
+Magnificent! That finishes the libretto! Carré shan't have it; I'll
+write it myself! But tell me please, if----"
+
+Lemois opened his fingers deprecatingly, his gaze fixed good-naturedly
+on the speaker.
+
+"You will pardon me, my dear friend, but Monsieur Herbert is only half
+through. He is not writing a play; he is introducing us to a higher
+standard of morals and perhaps of manners. Besides, if you listen you
+may get a fourth act and a climax which will be better than what you
+have. He has promised to convince Monsieur Le Blanc, who has not yet
+said a word, that the savage should not be burnt alive, and to convince
+me that there is something in that terrible blackamoor worthy of my
+admiration, even if he does dine on his fellow men. We have yet to hear
+Monsieur Herbert's second story."
+
+"All right, Lemois, but I doubt if it will help our distinguished guest
+here to complete his scenario; but here goes:
+
+"When I was chief of Bangala Station, circumstances made it necessary
+for me to make an expedition into the Aruwimi District, inhabited by a
+tribe now known as the Waluheli--cannibals and typical savages so far as
+morals and habits were concerned. These people, as I afterward learned,
+are possessed of great physical strength and are constantly on the
+war-path, trading among each other between times in slaves, ivory, and
+native iron ore. They live in huts made of grass stalks and plaited
+palm-leaves. Manioc is about the only food. This, of course, the women
+till. In fact, that which protects her from being sold as food is often
+her value as a worker, for one of their beliefs is that women have no
+souls and no future state.
+
+"I took with me five carriers and some fifteen fighting men and struck
+due east. It was the customary outfit, each man carrying sixty-five
+pounds of baggage, including tent, guns, ammunition, etc. The Aruwimi
+District, we had heard, was rich in plantains, as well as game, and we
+needed both, and the fighting men served for protection in case we were
+attacked, and as food carriers if we were not.
+
+"The first day's march brought us to a small river, a branch of the
+larger tributaries of the Upper Congo, which we crossed. Then followed a
+three days' march which led us to a hilly country where the villages
+were few and far between, and although the natives we met on the trail
+were most friendly--indeed some of their men had helped make up my
+gangs, two of them joining my escort--no food was to be had, and so I
+was obliged to push on until I struck a stretch that looked as if the
+plantains and manioc could be raised. Still further on I discovered
+traces of antelope and zebra and some elephants' tracks. Although the
+villages we passed were deserted, the character of the country proved
+that at some time in the past both plantains and a sort of yam had been
+raised in abundance, which led me to believe we could get what we
+wanted.
+
+"In this new country, too, we met a new kind of native, different from
+those to whom I had been accustomed, who, on discovering us, crouched
+behind trees and bunches of tangled vines, brandishing their spears and
+shields, but making no direct assault. Coming suddenly upon eight or ten
+warriors in fording a small brook, I walked boldly in among them,
+shouting that we were friendly and not enemies. They listened without
+moving and in a moment more my men had cut off their retreat and had
+surrounded them. Then I discovered that they spoke one of the dialects I
+knew--the Mabunga--and after that we had no trouble. Indeed, they
+directed us to their village, where that night my bed was spread in
+their largest hut. Next day I started bartering and soon had all the
+provisions we could carry, the currency, as usual, being glass beads and
+a few feet of brass and copper wire, with some yards of calico for the
+women and the chief. I should then have turned in another direction, but
+early the next morning, as I was getting ready to leave, one of my men
+brought news of an elephant who the night before had been seen
+destroying their crops. The temptation was too strong--no, don't laugh,
+Louis, I have reformed of late--and I dropped everything and started for
+the game. Meat for our camp, and especially for the friendly village,
+would be a godsend, and, taking five men, I was soon on his track. They
+are strong-legged and quick movers, these elephants, and a few hours'
+start makes it difficult for a white man to catch up with them. All that
+day I followed him, never getting near him, although the spoor, stripped
+saplings, and vines showed that he was but a few miles ahead. At
+nightfall I gave him up, sent my men back, and, to avoid fording a deep
+stream, made a short détour to the right. The sun had set and darkness
+had begun to fall. And it comes all at once and almost without warning
+in these parts.
+
+"My men being out of reach, I pushed ahead until I struck a narrow path
+twisting in and out of the heavier trees and less tangled underbrush.
+Here I came upon an open place with signs of cultivation and caught
+sight of another unexpected village, the first I had run across in that
+day's march. This one, on nearer approach, proved to be a collection of
+small huts straggling along the edge of what at last became a road or
+street. Squatting in front of these rude dwellings sat the inhabitants
+staring at me in wonder--the first white man they had ever seen.
+
+"It was a curious sight and an uncanny one--these silent black savages
+watching my advance. One man had thrown his arm around his wife, as if
+to protect her; she crouching close to him--both naked as the day they
+were born. I used the pair in a group I exhibited two or three years ago
+which bore the title, 'They Have Eyes and See Not'--you may perhaps
+remember it. I wanted to express the instinctive recognition of the
+savage for what he feels dimly is to conquer him, and I tried as well to
+give something of the pathos of the surrender.
+
+"There was no movement as I approached--no greeting--no placing of yams,
+coarse corn, and pieces of dried game and dried meat on the ground at
+their feet, especially the flesh of animals, in preparing which they are
+experts, a whole carcass being sometimes so dried. They only stared
+wonderstruck--absorbed in my appearance. Now and then, as I passed
+rapidly along so as to again reach my men before absolute darkness set
+in, I would stop and make the sign of peace. This they returned, showing
+me that their customs, and I hoped their language, was not unlike what I
+understood.
+
+"When I was abreast of the middle of the village a sudden desire for a
+pipe--that solace of the lone man--took possession of me and I began
+fumbling about my clothes for my matchbox. Then I remembered that I had
+given it to one of my carriers to start our morning blaze. I now began
+to scan the dwellings I passed for some signs of a fire. My eye finally
+caught between the supports of the last hut on the line the glow of a
+heap of embers, and huddled beside it the dim outline of two
+figures--that of a man and a woman.
+
+"For a moment I hesitated. I was alone, out of the hearing of my
+followers, and darkness was rapidly falling. As long as I kept on a
+straight course I was doubtless safe; if I halted or, worse yet, if I
+entered his hut without invitation, the result might be different. Then
+the picture began to take hold of me: the rude primeval home; the warmth
+and cheer of the fire; the cuddling of man and wife close to the embers,
+the same the world over whether cannibal or Christian. Involuntarily my
+thoughts went back to my own fireside, thousands of miles away: those I
+loved were sitting beside the glowing coals that gave it life, a curl of
+smoke drifting toward the near hills.
+
+"I turned sharply, walked straight into the hut, and, making the sign of
+peace, asked in Mabunga for a light for my pipe.
+
+"The man started--I had completely surprised him--sprang to his feet,
+and, looking at me in amazement, returned my greeting in the same
+tongue, touching his forehead in peaceful submission as he spoke. The
+woman made neither salutation nor gesture. I leaned over to pick up a
+coal, and, to steady myself, laid my hand on the woman's shoulder.
+
+"It was cold and hard as wood!
+
+"I bent closer and scanned her face.
+
+"She was a dried mummy!
+
+"The man's gaze never wavered.
+
+"Then, he said slowly: 'She was my woman--I loved her, and I could not
+bury her!'"
+
+
+Herbert's dénouement had come as an astounding surprise. He looked round
+at the circle of faces, his eyes resting on Le Blanc's and Lemois' as if
+expecting some reply.
+
+The older man roused himself first.
+
+"Your story, Monsieur Herbert," he said with a certain quaver in his
+voice, "has opened up such a wide field that I no longer think of the
+moral, although I see clearly what you intended to prove. When your
+climax came"--and his eyes kindled--"I felt as if I were standing on
+some newly discovered cliff of modern thought, below which rolled a
+thick cloud of superstition rent suddenly by a flash of human sympathy
+and love. Below and beyond stretched immeasurable distances fading into
+the mists of the ages. You will excuse the way I put it--I do not mean
+to be fanciful nor pedantic--but it does not seem that I can express my
+meaning in any other way. _Mon Dieu_, what a lot of cheap dancing jacks
+we are! We dig and sell our product; we plead to save a criminal; we
+toil with our hands and scheme with our heads, and when it is all done
+it is to get a higher place in the little world we ourselves make. Once
+in a while there comes a flash of lightning like this from on high and
+the cloud is rent in twain and we look through and are ashamed. Thank
+you again, Monsieur Herbert. You have widened my skull--cracked it open
+an inch at least, and my heart not a little. Your savage should be
+canonized!"
+
+And he left the room.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+PROVING THAT THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH
+
+
+Mignon's coffee-roaster was silent this morning. By listening intently a
+faint rhythm could be heard coming from beyond the kitchen door, telling
+that she was alive and about her work, but the garden was not the scene
+of her operations. Rain had fallen steadily all night and was still at
+it, driving every one within doors. Furthermore, somewhere off in the
+North Sea the wind had suddenly tumbled out of bed and was raising the
+very Old Harry up and down the coast. Reports had come in of a bad wreck
+along shore, and much anxiety was felt for the fishing fleet.
+
+To brave such a downpour seemed absurd, and so we passed the morning as
+best we could. I made a sketch in color of the Marmouset; Herbert and
+Brierley disposed themselves about the room reading, smoking, or
+criticising my work; Louis upstairs was stretching a canvas--nothing
+appealed to him like a storm--and he had determined, as soon as the
+deluge let up--no moderate downpour ever bothers him--to paint the surf
+dashing against the earth cliffs that frowned above the angry sea.
+Lemois did not appear until near noon, his excuse being that he had lain
+awake half the night thinking of Herbert's story of the African's dried
+wife, and had only dropped off to sleep when the fury of the storm awoke
+him.
+
+As luncheon was about to be served, Le Blanc arrived in his car one mass
+of mud, the glass window in the rear of the cover smashed by the wind.
+He brought news of a serious state of things along the coast. The sea in
+its rage, so his story ran, was biting huge mouthfuls out of the bluffs,
+the yellow blood of the dissolving clay staining the water for half a
+mile out. One of the card-board, jig-saw, gimcrack villas edging the
+cliff had already slid into the boiling surf, and the rest of them would
+follow if the wind held for another hour.
+
+We drew him to the fire, helped him off with his drenched coat, each of
+us becoming more and more thoughtful as we listened to his description.
+Leà and Mignon, unheeded, came in bearing the advance dishes--some
+oysters and crisp celery. They were soon followed by Lemois, who,
+instead of helping, as was his invariable custom, in the arrangement of
+the table, walked to the hearth and stood gazing into the coals. He,
+too, was thoughtful, and after a moment asked if we would permit Mignon
+to replace him at the coffee-table that evening, as he must be off for a
+few hours, and possibly all night, explaining in answer to our questions
+that the storm had already reached the danger line, and he felt that as
+ex-mayor of the village he should be within reach if any calamity
+overtook the people and fishermen in and around Buezval. We all, of
+course, offered to go with him--Louis being especially eager--but Lemois
+insisted that we had better finish our meal, promising to send for us if
+we were really needed.
+
+His departure only intensified our apprehensions as to the gravity of
+the situation. What had seemed to us at first picturesque, then
+threatening, assumed alarming proportions. The gale too, during
+luncheon, had gone on increasing. Great puffs of smoke belched from the
+throat of the chimney into the room, and we heard the thrash of the rain
+and shrill wails of the burglarious wind rising and falling as it
+fingered the cracks and crevices of the old building. Now and then an
+earthen tile would be ripped from the roof and sent crashing into the
+court. "By Jove!--just hear that wind!" followed by an expectant
+silence, interrupted almost every remark.
+
+As the fury of the storm increased we noticed that a certain nervous
+anxiety had taken possession of our pretty Mignon, who, at one crash
+louder than the others, so far forgot herself as to go to the window,
+trying to peer out between the bowed shutters, her baffled eyes seeking
+Leà's for some comforting assurance, the older woman, without ceasing
+her ministrations to our needs, patting the girl's shoulder in passing.
+
+Suddenly the great outside door of the court, which had been closed to
+break the force of the wind, gave way with a bang; then came the muffled
+cry of a man in distress, and Gaston burst in, clad in oilskins, his
+south-wester tied under his chin, rivers of rain pouring from his hat
+and overalls. Mignon gave a half-smothered sob of relief and would have
+sunk to the floor at his feet had not Leà caught her.
+
+The young fisherman staggered back against the edge of the fire-jamb,
+his hand on his chest.
+
+"It's madame la marquise!" he gasped. He had run the two miles from
+Buezval and had barely breath enough to reach the Inn. "I came for
+Monsieur Lemois! There isn't a moment to lose--the sea is now up to the
+porch. She is lost if you wait!"
+
+"Madame lost!" we cried in unison.
+
+"No," he panted, "the house. She is not there. Find Monsieur
+Lemois!--all of you must come!"
+
+Le Blanc was out of his chair before Gaston had completed his sentence.
+
+"Get your coats and meet me at the garage!" he shouted. "I'll run the
+motor out; we'll be there in ten minutes! My coat too, Leà!" and he
+slammed the door behind him.
+
+The old woman clattered upstairs into the several rooms for our ulsters
+and water-proofs, but Mignon sat still, too overjoyed to move or speak.
+Gaston, she knew, was going out into the rain again, but he was safe on
+the land now and not on a fishing craft, fighting his way into the
+harbor, as she had feared all day. The young fellow looked at her from
+under the brim of his dripping south-wester, but there was no word of
+recognition, though he had come as much to tell her he was safe as to
+summon us to madame's villa. I caught her lifted eyes and the furtive
+glance of gratitude she gave him.
+
+
+It was a wild dash up the coast; Le Blanc driving, Herbert handling the
+siren, the others packed in, crouching close, Gaston holding to the
+foot-board, where he roared in our ears the details of the impending
+calamity, his breath having now come back to him. The cliff, he
+explained, that supported the tennis court of an adjoining villa had
+given way, taking with it a slice of madame's lawn, leaving only the
+gravel walk under her library windows. The surf, goaded by the thrash of
+the wind, was, when he left, cutting great gashes in the toe of the
+newly exposed slope. Another hour's work like the last--and it was not
+high water until four o'clock--would send the cottage heels over head
+into the sea. Madame was in Paris, and the caretakers--an old fisherman
+and his wife--too old to work--were panic-stricken, calling piteously
+for Monsieur Lemois, whom their mistress trusted most of all the people
+in and about the village.
+
+The end of the shore road had now been reached, our siren blowing
+continuously. With a twist of the wheel we swerved from the main
+highway, climbed a short hill, and chugged along an overhanging road
+flanked by a row of little black lumps of cottages in silhouette against
+the white fury of the smashing surf. The third of these, so Gaston said,
+was madame's. Thank God it was still square-sided and the chimneys still
+upright. We were in time anyhow!
+
+More than once have I helped in a fire or lent a welcoming hand to a
+shipwrecked crew breasting an ugly sea in a water-logged boat; but to
+hold on to a cottage sliding into the sea--as one would to the heels of
+a would-be suicide determined to dash himself to pieces on the sidewalk
+below--was a new experience to me.
+
+Not so to Herbert--that is, you would never have supposed it from the
+way he took hold of things. In less time than I tell it, he had swung
+wide the rear door of madame's villa, stationed Brierley, Le Blanc, and
+myself at the side entrances to keep out poachers, formed a line of
+fishermen (whom Gaston knew) to pass out bric-à-brac, pictures, and rare
+furniture to the garage at the end of the lawn--the only safe place
+under cover--and, with Louis to help, was packing it with household
+goods.
+
+While this was going on, although we did not know it, Lemois was
+half-way down the slope watching the encroaching sea; calculating the
+number of minutes which the villa had to live; watching, too, the slow
+crumbling of the cliff. He knew something of these earth slides--or
+thought he did--and, catching sight of our rescue party, struggled up to
+warn us.
+
+But Herbert had not furled a mainsail off Cape Horn for nothing. He also
+knew the sea and what its savage force could do. He, too, had swept his
+eyes over the crumbling slopes, noted the wind, looked at his watch,
+and, bounding back, had given orders to go ahead. There was possibly an
+hour--certainly thirty minutes--before the house, caught by the tide at
+high water, would sag, tilt, and pitch headlong, like a bird-cage
+dropped from a window-sill, and no power on earth could save it. Until
+then the work of rescuing madame's belongings must go on.
+
+Louis' enormous strength now came into play: first it was an inlaid
+cabinet, mounted in bronze, with heavy glass doors. This, stripped of
+its curios, which he crammed into his pockets, was picked up bodily and
+carried without a break to the garage, a hundred yards in the rear;
+then followed bronzes that had taken two men to place on their
+pedestals; pictures in heavy frames; a harp muffled in a water-proof
+cover, which became a toy in his hands; even the piano went out on the
+run and was slid along the porch and down the steps, and, with the aid
+of Gaston and another fisherman, whirled under cover.
+
+The fight now was against time, Lemois indicating the most valuable
+articles. Soon the first floor was entirely cleared except for some
+heavy pieces of furniture, and a dash was made upstairs for madame's
+bedroom and boudoir, filled with choice miniatures, larger portraits,
+and the little things she loved and lived with. The pillows were now
+torn from the beds, emptied, and every conceivable kind of small
+precious thing--silver-topped toilet articles, an ivory crucifix, bits
+of Dresden china--all the odds and ends a woman of quality, taste, and
+refinement uses and must have--were dumped one after another into the
+pillow-sacks and carried carefully to shelter. Then followed the books
+and rare manuscripts.
+
+Herbert, who, between every trip to the garage or to the crowd of
+willing workers outside, had paused to watch the sea, now bawled up the
+staircase ordering every man out. The last moment of safety had arrived.
+Lemois, intent on rescuing a particular portfolio of etchings, either
+would not or did not hear. Gaston, more alert, and who had been helping
+him to carry down an armful of the more precious books, sprang past
+Herbert, despite his cry, and dashed back up the steps, shouting as he
+raced on that Lemois was still upstairs. Herbert made a plunge to follow
+when Louis threw his arms around him.
+
+"No, for God's sake! She's going! Out of this!--quick! Jump, Herbert, or
+you'll be killed!"
+
+As the two men cleared the doorway there came a racking, splitting,
+tearing noise; a doubling under of the posts of the front porch; a hail
+of broken glass and clouds of blinding dust from squares of plaster as
+the ceilings collapsed; then the whole structure canted--slid ten feet
+and stopped, the brick chimneys smashing their full length into the
+crumbling mass. When the dust and flying splinters settled, Herbert and
+Louis were standing on firm ground within a foot only of the upheaved
+edge of raw earth. Staring them in the face, like the upturned feet of
+a prostrate man, were the bottom timbers of the cottage.
+
+Somewhere inside the chaotic mass lay Lemois and Gaston!
+
+A cry of horror went up from the crowd, made more intense by the shriek
+of a fisher-woman--Gaston's mother--who just before the crash came had
+seen her son's head at the library window, and who was now fighting her
+way to where Herbert was keeping back the mob until he could make up his
+mind what was best to do. Her breathless news decided him.
+
+"Louis!" he shouted, his voice ringing above the roar of the sea, "pick
+out two men--good ones--and follow me!"
+
+The four worked their way to a careened window now flattened within a
+foot of the ground, crawled over the sill, and Herbert calling out to
+Lemois and Gaston all the while, crept under a tangle of twisted beams,
+flooring, and furniture, until they reached what was once the farther
+wall of the library.
+
+Under an overturned sofa, pinned down but unhurt, white with dust and
+broken plaster and almost unrecognizable, they found our landlord.
+Gaston lay a few feet away, the breath knocked out of him, an ugly
+wound in his head. Lemois had answered their call, but Gaston had given
+no sign.
+
+Herbert braced himself and in the dim light looked about him. The saving
+of lives was now a question of judgment, requiring that same
+instantaneous making up of his mind always necessary when his own life
+had depended upon the exact placing of a rifle-ball in the skull of a
+charging elephant. There was not a second to lose. Another slash of the
+sea and the whole mass might go headlong down the slope, and yet to lift
+the wrong timber in an effort to free Lemois might topple the entire
+heap, as picking out the wrong match-stick topples a pile of jackstraws.
+
+He ran his eye over the shattered room; ordered the two fishermen to
+leave the wrecked building; selected, after a moment's pause, a heavy
+joist lying across the sofa; stood by while Louis put his shoulder under
+its edge, his enormous strength bearing the full brunt of the weight;
+waited until it swayed loose, and then, grabbing Lemois firmly by the
+coat-collar, dragged him clear and set him on his feet.
+
+Gaston came next, limp and apparently dead--the blood trickling from
+his head and spattering his rescuers.
+
+The crowd shouted in unison as they caught sight of Lemois' gray head,
+all the whiter from the grime of powdered plaster. Then came another and
+louder shout, followed by another piercing shriek from Gaston's mother
+as her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear of the wreck.
+None of his bones were broken, none that Lemois could find; something
+had struck the boy--some falling weight--perhaps a bust from one of the
+bookcases over his head. That was the last the lad had known until he
+found his mother kneeling beside him in the rain and mud, where the cold
+wind and rain revived him.
+
+But our work was not yet over. The miscellaneous assortment of precious
+things housed in the garage must be rearranged before nightfall and
+protected against breakage and leakage. Watchmen must be selected and
+made comfortable in the garage, a telegram despatched to madame at her
+apartment in Paris, with details of the catastrophe and salvage, and
+another to her estate at Rouen, and, more important still, Gaston must
+be carried home, put to bed, and a doctor sent for. This done, Herbert
+and the rest of us could go back to the inn in Le Blanc's motor.
+
+[Illustration: As her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear
+of the wreck]
+
+The first load brought Herbert, Brierley, and myself, Le Blanc driving:
+Lemois had remained with Gaston. Mignon, with staring, inquiring eyes,
+her apron over her head to protect her from the wet, met us at the outer
+gate, but not a word was said by any of us about Gaston, a crack on a
+fisherman's head not being a serious affair--and then again, this one
+was as tough as a rudder-post and as full of spring as an oar--and then,
+more important still, the poor child with her hungry, tear-stained eyes
+had had trouble enough for one day, as we all knew. Later when Leà  and
+I were alone, I told her the story, describing Gaston's pluck and
+bravery and his risking his life to save Lemois--the dear old woman
+clasping her fingers together as if in church when I added that "he'd be
+all right in the morning after a good night's rest."
+
+"Pray God nothing happens to him!" she said at last, crossing herself.
+"Mignon is only a child and it would break her heart. Monsieur Lemois
+does not wish it, and there is trouble--much trouble--ahead for her, but
+while there is life there is hope. He is a good Gaston--his mother and
+I were girls together; she had only this one left--the boat upset and
+the father was drowned off _Les Dents Terribles_ two years ago."
+
+Louis, whose heart is as big as his body, was less cautious. He must
+have a word with the girl herself. And so, when we had all gathered
+before the fire to dry out--for most of us were still wet and all
+ravenous--he called out to her in his cheery, hearty way:
+
+"That is a plucky garçon of yours, mademoiselle. Monsieur Lemois would
+have been flattened into a pancake but for him. When the house fell it
+was Monsieur Gaston who jerked him away from the window and rolled a
+sofa on top of him. Ah!--a brave garçon, and one who does you credit."
+
+The girl--she was busying herself with her dishes at the time--blushed
+and said: "Merci, monsieur," her eyes dancing over the praise of her
+lover, but she was too modest and too well trained to say more.
+
+Again Le Blanc's siren came shrieking down the road. This time it would
+bring Lemois. I threw on another log to warm them both, and Louis began
+collecting a small assortment of glasses, Mignon following with a
+decanter.
+
+Several minutes passed, during which we waited for the heavy tread of
+fat Le Blanc. Then the door opened and Leà appeared; she was trembling
+from head to foot and white as a ghost.
+
+"Monsieur wants you--all of you--something has happened! Not you,
+Mignon--you stay here."
+
+Inside the court-yard, close to the door of the Marmouset, stood Le
+Blanc's motor. Lemois was on the foot-board leaning over the body of a
+man stretched out on the two seats.
+
+"Easy now," Lemois whispered to Louis, who had pushed his way alongside
+of the others crowding about the car. "He collapsed again as soon as you
+all left. There is something serious I am afraid--that is why I brought
+him here. His mother wanted to take him home, but that's no place for
+him now. He must stay here to-night. We stopped and left word for the
+doctor and he will be here in a minute. Be careful, Monsieur Louis--not
+in there--upstairs."
+
+Louis was careful--careful as if he were lifting a baby; but he did not
+delay, nor did he take him upstairs. Picking up the unconscious
+fisherman bodily in his arms, he bore him clear of the machine, carried
+him through the open door of the Marmouset, and stretched him full
+length on the lounge, tucking a cushion under his head as the lad sank
+down into the soft mattress.
+
+As the flare of the table candles stirred by the night wind lighted up
+his face, Mignon, who had been pushing aside the chairs from out the
+wounded man's way, believing it to be Le Blanc, sprang forward, and with
+a half-stifled cry sank on her knees beside the boy. Lemois lunged
+forward, stooped quickly, and grasping her firmly by the arm, dragged
+her to her feet.
+
+"Leave the room!--you are in the way," he said in low, angry tones.
+"There are plenty here to take care of him."
+
+Louis, who had moved closer to the girl, and who had already begun to
+quiet her fears, wheeled suddenly and would have broken out in
+instantaneous protest had not Leà, her lean, tall body stretched to its
+utmost, her flat, sunken chest heaving with indignation, stepped in
+front of Lemois.
+
+"You are not kind, monsieur," she said coldly, with calm, unflinching
+eyes.
+
+"Hold your tongue! I do not want your advice. Take her out!--this is no
+place for her!"
+
+Louis' eyes blazed. Unkindness to a woman was the one thing that always
+enraged him. Then his better judgment worked.
+
+"Give her to me, Leà," he said. "Come, Mignon! Don't cry, child; he's
+not hurt so bad; he'll be all right in the morning. Move away there, all
+of you!" and he led the sobbing girl from the room.
+
+A dull, paralyzing silence fell upon us all. Those of us who knew only
+the gentle, kind-hearted, always courteous Lemois were dumb with
+astonishment. Had he, too, received a crack on his head which had
+unsettled his judgment, or was this, after all, the real Lemois?
+
+The opening of the door and the hurried re-entrance of Louis, followed
+by the doctor, a short, thick-set man with a bald head, for a time
+relieved the tension.
+
+"I was on my way near here when your messenger met me," called out the
+doctor with a nod of salutation to the room at large as he dropped into
+a chair beside the sufferer, thus supplanting Brierley, who during
+Lemois' outburst had been wiping the blood-stained face and lips with a
+napkin and finger-bowl he had caught up from the table.
+
+There was an anxious hush; the men standing in a half-circle awaiting
+the decision; the doctor feeling for broken limbs, listening to his
+breathing, his hand on the boy's heart. Then there came a convulsive
+movement and the wounded man lifted his head and gazed about him.
+
+The doctor bent closer, studied Gaston's eyes for a moment, rose to his
+feet, tucked his spectacles into a black leather case which he took from
+his pocket, and said calmly:
+
+"I think there's no fracture of the skull. I'll know definitely later
+on. He is, as I at first supposed, suffering from shock and has
+swallowed a lot of dust. He must have complete rest; get him to bed
+somewhere and send for a woman in the village to take care of him. I'll
+come to-morrow. Who carried him in here?"
+
+Louis nodded his head.
+
+"Then pick him up again and, if Monsieur Lemois is willing, put him in
+the room on the ground floor at the end of the court. I can get at him
+then from the outside without disturbing anybody. You, gentlemen, so I
+hear, are down here for your pleasure and not to run a hospital, and so
+I will see you are not disturbed."
+
+Louis leaned down, picked the young fisherman up in his arms with no
+more effort than if he had been handling a bag of flour, and carried him
+out of the room, across the court, Leà following, and into the basement
+chamber, where he laid him on the bed, leaving him with the remark:
+
+"Now stay here and take care of him, Leà, no matter what Monsieur Lemois
+says."
+
+Meanwhile Lemois had poured out a glass of wine for the doctor, waited
+until he had drank it, thanked him in his most courteous tones for his
+promptness, bidden him good-night on the threshold, closed the door
+behind him, and without a word to any of us had resumed his place by the
+fire.
+
+Another embarrassing silence ensued. Every one felt that the incident,
+if aggravated by any untimely remarks, might lead up to an outbreak
+which would bring our visit to a premature close. And yet both Leà and
+Mignon were so beloved by all of us, and the brutality of the attack
+upon the little maid was so uncalled for, that we felt something was due
+to our own self-respect.
+
+Herbert, catching our suggestive glances, essayed the task. He was the
+man held in most esteem by Lemois, and might perhaps be allowed to say
+things which the old gentleman would not take from the rest; and then
+again, whatever the outcome, Herbert could be depended upon to keep his
+temper no matter what Lemois might answer in return.
+
+"Mignon did nothing, monsieur, except show her love for her
+sweetheart--why break out on her?" Herbert's voice was low, but there
+was meaning behind it.
+
+"I won't have this thing!" came the indignant retort, all his poise
+gone. "That's why I broke out on her. Mignon is not for fishermen, nor
+ditch-diggers, nor road-makers. She is like my child--I have other
+things in store for her. I tell you I will not have it go on--she knows
+why and Leà knows why! I have said so, and it is finished!"
+
+"He about saved your life a little while ago. Does that count for
+anything?" The words edged their way through tightly closed lips.
+
+"Yes--for me; that is why I brought him home--but he has not saved
+Mignon's life. He would wreck it. She will marry somebody else and he
+will marry somebody else. There are too many thick-heads along the
+coast now. I decide to steer clear of them."
+
+Louis, who now that his human-ambulance trip was over, had returned to
+the Marmouset, stood wondering. What had taken place in his absence was
+a mystery. He had, after depositing his burden, taken Mignon to Pierre
+and sat her down by the kitchen fire, where he had left her crying
+softly to herself.
+
+Lemois waited until Louis had found a seat and went on:
+
+"You, gentlemen, are my friends, and so I will explain to you what I
+would not explain to others. You wonder at what I have just said and
+done. I try to do my duty--that is my religion, and my only religion. I
+have tried to do it to-night. With your help I have done what I could to
+save my friend's property, because she was away and helpless. She has
+now left to her some of the things she loved. So it is with this girl.
+Ten years ago I found her, a child of eight, crying in the street. For
+months she had gotten up at daylight, had washed and dressed her two
+baby brothers, cooked their breakfast, cleaned house, and tucked in her
+bedridden mother; but, try as she would, she was late for school--not
+once, but several times. This was against the rules, and when the
+prizes and diplomas were given out, all she got was a scolding. Later on
+she was dismissed. Because she had no other place to go, and because I
+had no child of my own, I took her home with me. As I assumed all
+responsibility for her, and she has no one but me, I shall carry it out
+to the end, exactly as if she were my daughter. My own daughter should
+not and would not marry a fisherman, neither shall Mignon. Madame la
+Marquise de la Caux is in Paris, and I do what I can to look after her
+belongings. Madame, Mignon's mother, is in heaven, and the remnant of
+her people God knows where, and so I do what I can to look after their
+child."
+
+"But has the girl no say in the matter?" broke out Louis angrily. "You
+are not to live with him--she is."
+
+"That may make some difference in your country, Monsieur Louis, but it
+makes no difference in mine. In France we parents and guardians are the
+best judges of what is and what is not good for our children. Now,
+gentlemen, let us brush it all away. It is very creditable to your
+hearts to be so interested in the child; I do not blame you. She is very
+lovely and very amusing, and when she leaves us--even with the man I
+shall choose for her--it will be a great grief for me, for you see I am
+quite alone in the world. So, Monsieur Herbert, there is my hand. Not to
+have you understand me would be harder than all the rest, for I esteem
+you as I do no other man. And you too, Monsieur Louis, with your big
+arms and your big heart. Let us be friends once more. And now I am tired
+out with the day's work, and if you do not mind I will say
+'Good-night!'"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+IN WHICH OUR LANDLORD BECOMES BOTH ENTERTAINING AND INSTRUCTIVE
+
+
+The experiences of the previous day had left their mark in stiffened
+joints and blistered hands. Herbert was nursing a wrenched finger,
+Lemois had discovered a bruised back, and Louis a strained wrist--slight
+accidents all of them, unheeded in the excitement of the rescue, and
+only definitely located when the several victims got out of bed the next
+morning.
+
+The real sufferer was Gaston. Two stitches had been taken in his shapely
+head and, although he was quite himself and restless as a goat, the
+doctor had given positive orders to Leà to keep him where he was until
+his wound should heal. To this Lemois had added another and far more
+cruel mandate, forbidding Mignon either outside or inside his bedroom
+door under pain of death, or words to that effect.
+
+It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the day was passed
+quietly, the men keeping indoors, although the storm had whirled down
+the coast, leaving behind it only laughing blue skies and a light wind.
+
+The one exciting incident was a telegram from madame la marquise,
+thanking Lemois and his "brave body of men" for their heroic services
+and adding that she would come as soon as possible to inspect what she
+called her "ruin," and would then give herself the pleasure of thanking
+each and every one in person. This was followed some hours later by a
+second despatch inquiring after the wounded fisherman and charging
+Lemois to spare no expense in bringing him back to health; and a third
+one from Marc saying he had gone to Paris and would not be back for
+several days.
+
+The absorbing topic, of course, had been Lemois' outbreak on Mignon and
+subsequent justification of his conduct. Louis was the most outspoken of
+all, and, despite Lemois' defence, valiantly espoused the girl's cause,
+the rest of us with one accord pledging ourselves to fight her battles
+and Gaston's, no matter at what cost. Brierley even went so far as to
+offer to relieve Leà, during which blissful interim he would smuggle
+Mignon in for a brief word of sympathy, but this was frowned upon and
+abandoned when Herbert reminded us that we were in a sense Lemois'
+guests and could not, therefore, breed treachery among his servants. To
+this was added his positive conviction that the girl's sufferings would
+so tell upon the old man that before many days he would not only regret
+his attitude, but would abandon his ambitious plans and give her to the
+man she loved.
+
+If Lemois had any such misgivings there was no evidence of it in his
+manner. But for an occasional wry face when he moved, due to the blow of
+the overturned sofa, he was in an exceptionally happy frame of mind. Nor
+did he show the slightest resentment toward any one of us for not
+agreeing with him. Even when the twilight hour arrived--a restful hour
+when the fellowship of the group came out strongest, and men voiced the
+thoughts that lay closest to their hearts--no word escaped him. Music,
+church architecture, the influence of Rodin and Rostand on the art and
+literature of our time, French politics--all were touched upon in turn,
+but not a word of the condition of Gaston's broken head nor the state
+of Mignon's bleeding heart--nothing so harrowing. Indeed, so gay was
+he, so full of quaint sayings and odd views of life and things, that
+when Brierley sat down at the spinet and ran his fingers over the keys,
+giving us snatches of melodies from the current music of the day, he
+begged for some mediæval anthems "as a slight apology to my suffering
+ears," and when Brierley complied with what he claimed was an old
+Italian chant, having found the original in Padua, Lemois branched off
+into a homily on church music which evinced such a mastery of the
+subject that even Brierley, who is something of a musician himself, was
+filled with amazement. Indeed, the discussion was in danger of becoming
+so heated that the old man, with a twinkle in his eye, relieved the
+tension with:
+
+"No, you are quite wrong, Monsieur Brierley, if you will forgive me for
+saying so. Your chant is not Italian; it is Spanish. I have a better way
+of knowing than by searching among musty libraries and sacristies. When
+your fingers were touching the keys I looked around my Marmouset to see
+who was listening beside you gentlemen. I soon discovered that the two
+heads on Monsieur Herbert's chair were glum and solemn; they might have
+been asleep so dull were they. My old Virgin in the corner, which I
+found in Rouen, and which is unquestionably French, never raised her
+eyes; but the two carved saints over your head, the ones I got in
+Salamanca when I was last there, were overjoyed. One smiled so sweetly
+that I could not take my eyes from her, and the other kept such perfect
+time with his head that I was sorry when you stopped. So you see, your
+chant is unquestionably Spanish, and I am glad."
+
+Nor did his spirits flag when dinner was over and he took his place by
+the coffee-table, handing Mignon the tiny cups without even a look of
+reproach at the demure, sad-eyed girl who was keeping up so brave a
+heart.
+
+The change was a delightful one to the coterie. As long as the
+embarrassing situation continued there was no telling what might happen.
+A question of cuisine could be settled by more or less cayenne, but the
+question of a marriage settlement was another affair. Press him too far
+and the old gentleman might have bundled us all into the street and
+thrown our trunks after us.
+
+The wisest thing, therefore, was to meet his cordiality more than half
+way, an easy solution, really, since his _amende honorable_ of the night
+before had put us all on our mettle. He should be made to realize and at
+once that all traces of ill feeling of every kind had been wiped out of
+our hearts.
+
+Herbert, who, as usual when any patching up was to be done, was chief
+pacificator, opened the programme by becoming suddenly interested in the
+several rare specimens of furniture that enriched the room in which we
+sat, complimenting Lemois on his good taste in banishing from his
+collection the severe, uncomfortable chairs and sofas of Louis XIV and
+XV, and calling special attention to the noble Spanish and Italian
+specimens about us, with wide seats, backs, and arms, where, even in the
+old days, tired mortals could have lounged without splitting their
+stockings or disarranging their wigs, had the dons and contessas worn
+any such absurdities.
+
+"Quite true, Monsieur Herbert, but you must remember that the
+aristocrats of that day never sat down--their mirrors were hung too high
+for them to see themselves should they recline. It was an era of high
+heels and polished floors, much low bowing, and overmuch ceremony. And
+yet it was a delightful period, and a most instructive one, for the
+antiquary, even if it did end with the guillotine. I have always thought
+that nothing so clearly defines the taste and intelligence of a nation
+as their furniture and house decoration. The frivolities of the Monarchs
+of the period is to be found in every twist and curve of their several
+styles, just as the virility and out-door life of the Greeks and Romans
+are expressed in their solid-marble benches and carved-stone sofas.
+Since I have no place in my gardens for ruins of this kind, I do not
+collect them--nor would I if I had. There should be, I think, a certain
+sane appropriateness in every collection, even in so slight a one as my
+own, and a Greek garden with a line of motor cars on one side and a
+Normandy church on the other would, I am afraid, be a little out of
+keeping," and he laughed softly.
+
+"But you haven't kept close to that rule in this room," said Herbert,
+gazing about him. "We have everything here from Philip the Second to
+Napoleon the Third."
+
+"I have kept much closer than you think, Monsieur Herbert. The panels,
+ceiling, furniture, and stained glass, as well as the fireplace, are
+more or less of one period. The fixtures, such as the andirons,
+candelabra, and curtains, might have been obtained in one of the
+antiquary shops of the day--if any such existed; and so could the china,
+silver, and glass. What I had in mind was, not a museum, but a room that
+would take you into its arms--a restful, warm, enticing room--one full
+of surprises, too"--and he pointed to his rarest possession, the Black
+Virgin, half hidden in the recess of the chimney breast. "You see, a
+very rare thing is always more effective when you come upon it suddenly
+than when you confront it in the blaze of a window or under a fixed
+light. Your curiosity is then aroused, and you must stoop to study it. I
+arrange these surprises for all my most precious things.
+
+"Here, for instance"--and he crossed the room, opened a cabinet, and
+brought from its hiding-place a crystal chalice with a legend in Latin
+engraved in gold letters around the rim, placing it on the table so that
+the light from the candelabra could fall upon it--"here is something now
+you would not look at twice, perhaps, if it were put in the window and
+filled with flowers. It must be hidden away before you appreciate it. I
+found it in a convent outside of Salamanca some years ago. It is
+evidently the work of some old monk who spent his life in doing this
+sort of thing, and is a very rare example of that kind of craftsmanship.
+Be very careful, Monsieur Louis, you will break the monk's heart, as
+well as my own, if you smash it."
+
+"Brierley is the man you want to look out for," answered the painter,
+bending closer over the precious object. "He'll be borrowing it to mix
+high-balls in unless you keep the cabinet locked."
+
+"Monsieur Brierley is too good for any such sacrilege. And now please
+stand aside, and you, Monsieur High-Muck, will you kindly move your
+arm?" and he lifted the vase from the cloth and replaced it in the
+cabinet, adding with a shrewd glance, "You see, it is always wise to
+keep the most precious things hidden away, with, perhaps, only an edge
+peeping out to arouse your curiosity--and I have many such."
+
+"Like a grisette's slipper below a petticoat," remarked Louis _sotto
+voce_.
+
+"Quite like a grisette's slipper, my dear Monsieur Louis. What a nimble
+wit is yours! Only, take an old man's advice and don't be too curious."
+
+Every one roared, Louis louder than any one, and when quiet reigned once
+more Herbert, who was determined to keep the talk along the lines which
+would most interest our landlord, and who had examined the chalice with
+the greatest interest, said, pointing to the cabinet:
+
+"And now show us something else. Here I have lived with these things for
+weeks at a time and yet am only beginning to find them out. What else
+have you that is especially rare?"
+
+Lemois, who had just closed the door of the cabinet, turned and began
+searching the room before replying.
+
+"Well, there is my bas-relief, my Madonna. It is just behind you--very
+beautiful and very rare. I do not lock it up; I keep it in a dark corner
+where the cross-lights from the window can bring out the face in strong
+relief. Please do me the favor, gentlemen, to leave your seats. I never
+take it from its place," and he crossed the room and stood beneath it.
+"This is the only one in existence, so far as I know--that is, the only
+replica. The original is in the Sistine Chapel, near Ravenna. Bring a
+candle, please, Monsieur Brierley, so we can all enjoy it. See how
+beautiful is the Madonna's face--it is very seldom that so lovely a
+smile has lived in marble--and the tenderness of the mother suggested in
+the poise of the head as it bends over the Child. I never look at it
+without a twinge of my conscience, for it is the only thing in this room
+which I made off with without letting any one know I had it, but I was
+young then and a freebooter like Monsieur Herbert's man Goringe. I did
+penance for years afterward by putting a few lira in the poor-box
+whenever I was in Italy, and I often come in here and say my prayers,
+standing reverently before her, begging her forgiveness; and she always
+gives it--that is, she _must_--for the smile has never, during all these
+years, faded from her face."
+
+"But this is plaster," remarked Herbert, reaching up and passing his
+skilled fingers over the caste. "Very well done, too."
+
+"Yes--of course. I helped make the mould myself from the original marble
+built into the altar--and in the night too, when I had to feel my way
+about. I am glad you think it is so good."
+
+"Couldn't do it better myself. But why in the night?"
+
+"Ah--that is a long story."
+
+Herbert clapped his hands to command attention.
+
+"Everybody take their seats. Monsieur Lemois is going to tell us of how
+he burglarized a church and made off with a Madonna."
+
+Louis walked solemnly toward the door, his hand over his heart.
+
+"You must excuse me, Herbert, if I leave the room before Lemois begins,"
+he said, turning and facing the group, "for I should certainly interrupt
+his recital. This whole discussion is so repulsive to me, and so far
+below my own high standard of what is right and wrong, that my morals
+are in danger of being undermined. And I----"
+
+"Dry up, Louis!" growled Brierley. "Go on, Lemois."
+
+"No, I mean what I say," protested Louis. "Only a few nights ago, and at
+this very table, a most worthy woman, descendant of one of the oldest
+families in France, and our guest, confessed to wilful perjury, and now
+a former mayor of this village admits that he robbed a church. I have
+not been brought up this way, and if----"
+
+"Tie him to a chair, High-Muck!" cried Herbert. "No, his hands are up!
+All right, go on, Lemois."
+
+"Our landlord drew nearer to the table, sat down, and, with a humorous
+nod toward Louis, began:
+
+"You must all remember I was an impressionable young fellow at the time,
+full of daredevil, romantic ideas, and, like most young fellows, saw
+only the end in view without caring a sou about the means by which I
+reached it.
+
+"I found the bas-relief, as I have told you, in a small chapel outside
+of Ravenna--one of those deep-toned interiors lighted by dust-begrimed
+windows, the roof supported by rows of marble columns. The altar, which
+was low and of simple design, was placed at the top of a wide flight of
+three rose-marble steps over which swung a huge brass lamp burning a
+ruby light. With the exception of an old woman asleep on her knees
+before a figure of the Virgin, I was the only person in the building. I
+had already seen dozens of such interiors, all more or less alike, and
+after walking around it once or twice was about to leave by a side door
+protected by a heavy clay-soiled red curtain when my eye fell on the
+original of the caste above you, the figures and surrounding panel
+being built into the masonry of the altar, a position it had occupied,
+no doubt, since the days of Michael Angelo.
+
+"For half an hour I stood before it--worshipping it, really. The longer
+I looked the more I wanted something to take away with me that would
+keep it alive in my memory. I drew a little, of course, and had my
+sketch-book filled, student-like, with bits of architecture, peasants,
+horses, and things I came across every day; but I knew I could never
+reproduce the angelic smile on the Madonna's face, and that was the one
+thing that made it greater than all the bas-reliefs I had seen in all my
+wanderings. Then it suddenly occurred to me--there being no photographs
+in those days: none you could buy of a thing like this--that perhaps I
+could get some one in the village to make a caste, the Italians being
+experts at this work. While I was leaning over the rose-marble rail
+drinking it in, a door opened somewhere behind the altar and an old
+priest came slowly toward me.
+
+"'It is very lovely, holy father,' I said, in an effort to open up a
+conversation which might lead somewhere.
+
+"'Yes!' he replied curtly; 'but love it on your knees.'
+
+"So down I got, and there I stayed until he had finished his prayer at
+one of the side chapels and had left the church by the main door.
+
+"All this time I was measuring it with my eye--its width, thickness, the
+depth of the cutting, how much plaster it would take, how large a bag it
+would require in which to carry it away. This done I went back to
+Ravenna and started to look up some one of the image vendors who haunt
+the door of the great church.
+
+"But none of them would listen. It would take at least an hour before
+the plaster would be dry enough to come away from the marble. The
+priests--poor as some of them were--would never consent to such a
+sacrilege. Without their permission detection was almost certain; so
+please go to the devil, illustrious signore, and do not tempt a poor man
+who does not wish to go to prison for twenty lira.
+
+"This talk, let me tell you, took place in a shop up a back street, kept
+by a young Italian image-vendor who made casts and moulds with the
+assistance of his father, who was a hunch-back, and an old man all rags
+whom I could see was listening to every word of the talk.
+
+"That same night, about the time the lamps began to be lighted, and I
+had started out in search of another mouldmaker, the old man in rags
+stepped out of the shadow of a wall and touched my arm.
+
+"'I know the place, signore, and I know the Madonna. I have everything
+here in this bucket--at night the church is closed, but there is a side
+door. I will take your twenty lira. Come with me.'
+
+"When you are twenty, you are like a hawk after its quarry--your blood
+boiling, your nerves keyed up, and you swoop down and get your talons in
+your prey without caring what happens afterward. Being also a romantic
+hawk, I liked immensely the idea of doing my prowling at night; there
+was a touch of danger in that kind of villany which daylight dispels. So
+off we started, the ragged man carrying the bucket holding a small
+bottle of olive-oil, dry plaster, and a thick sheet of modelling wax
+besides some tools: I with two good-sized candles and a box of matches.
+
+"When you rob a bank at night you must, so I am told, be sure you have a
+duplicate key or something with which to pick the lock. When you rob an
+Italian church, there is no such bother--you simply push wide the door
+and begin feeling your way about. And it was not, to my surprise, very
+dark once we got in. The ruby light in the big altar lamp helped, and so
+did what was left of a single candle placed on a side altar by some poor
+soul as part penance for unforgiven sins.
+
+"And it did not take long once we got to work. First a coat of oil to
+keep the wax from sticking to the marble; then a patting and forcing of
+the soft stuff with thumbs, fingers, and a wooden tool into the crevices
+and grooves of the stone, and then a gentle pull.
+
+"Just here my courage failed and my conscience gave a little jump like
+the toothache. It might have been the quick flare of the lone candle on
+the side altar--I had not used my own, there being light enough to see
+to work--or it might have been my heated imagination, but I distinctly
+saw on the oil-smeared face of the blessed mother an expression of such
+intense humiliation that I pulled out my handkerchief, and although the
+ragged man was calling me to hurry, and I myself heard the noise of
+approaching footsteps, I kept on wiping off the oil until I saw her
+smile once more.
+
+"The time lost caused our undoing--or rather mine. The ragged man with
+the precious mould ran out the side door which was never locked--the
+one he knew--I landed in the arms of a priest.
+
+"He was bald-headed, wore sandals, and carried a lantern.
+
+"'What are you doing here?' he asked gruffly.
+
+"I pulled out the two candles and held them up so he could see them.
+
+"'I came to burn these before the Madonna--the door was open and I
+walked in.'
+
+"He lifted the lantern and scanned my face.
+
+"'You are the man who was here this morning. Did you get down on your
+knees as I told you?'
+
+"'Yes, holy father.'
+
+"'Get down again while I close the church. You can light your candles by
+the lantern,' and he laid it on the stone pavement beside me and moved
+off into the gloom.
+
+"I did everything he bade me--never was there a more devout
+worshipper--handed him back his lantern, and made my way out.
+
+"At the end of the town the ragged man thrust his head over a low wall.
+He seemed greatly relieved, and picking up the bucket, we two started on
+a run for my lodgings. Before I went to bed that night he had mixed up
+the dry plaster in his bucket and taken the cast. He wanted to keep the
+matrix, but I wouldn't have it. I did not want his dirty fingers feeling
+around her lovely face, and so I paid him his blood money and pounded
+the mould out of shape. The next morning I left Ravenna for Paris.
+
+"You see now, messieurs, what a disreputable person I am." Here he rose
+from his seat and walked back to the bas-relief. "And yet, most blessed
+of women"--and he raised his eyes as if in prayer--"I think I would do
+it all over again to have you where you could always listen to my
+sins."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+CONTAINING SEVERAL EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES SHOWING THE WIDE CONTRASTS
+IN LIFE
+
+
+How it began I do not remember, for nothing had led up to it except,
+perhaps, Le Blanc's arrival for dinner half an hour late, due, so he
+explained, to a break in the running gear of his machine, most of which
+time he had spent flat on his back in the cold mud, monkey-wrench in
+hand, instead of in one of our warm, comfortable chairs.
+
+No sooner was he seated at my side and his story told than we fell
+naturally to discussing similar moments in life when such sudden
+contrasts often caused us to look upon ourselves as two distinct persons
+having nothing in common each with the other. Lemois, whose story of the
+stolen Madonna the previous night had made us eager for more, described,
+in defence of the newly launched theory, a visit to a Swiss chalet, and
+the sense of comfort he felt in the warmth and coseyness of it all, as
+he settled himself in bed, when just as he was dozing off a fire broke
+out and in less than five minutes he, with the whole family, was
+shivering in a snow-bank while the house burned to the ground.
+
+"And a most uncomfortable and demoralizing change it was, messieurs--one
+minute in warm white sheets and the next in a blanket of cold snow. What
+has always remained in my mind was the rapidity with which I passed from
+one personality to another."
+
+Brierley, taking up the thread, described his own sensations when,
+during a visit to a friend's luxurious camp in the Adirondacks, he lost
+his way in the forest and for three days and nights kept himself alive
+on moose-buds and huckleberries.
+
+"Poor grub when you have been living on porter-house steak and lobsters
+from Fulton Market and peaches from South Africa. Time, however, didn't
+appeal to me as it did to Lemois, but hunger did, and I have never
+looked a huckleberry in the face since without the same queer feeling
+around my waistband."
+
+Appealed to by Herbert for some experiences of my own, I told how this
+same realization of intense and sudden contrasts always took possession
+of me, when, after having lived for a week on hardtack, boiled pork, and
+plum duff, begrimed with dust and cement, I would leave the inside of a
+coffer-dam and in a few hours find myself in the customary swallow-tail
+and white tie at a dinner of twelve, sitting among ladies in costly
+gowns and jewels.
+
+"What, however, stuck out clearest in my mind," I continued, "was
+neither time nor what I had had to eat, but the enormous contrasts in
+the color scheme of my two experiences: at noon a gray sky and leaden
+sea, relieved by men in overalls, rusty derricks, and clouds of white
+steam rising from the concrete mixers; at night filmy gowns and bare
+shoulders rose pink in the softened light against a strong relief of the
+reds and greens of deep-toned tapestries and portraits in rich frames. I
+remember only the color."
+
+At this Herbert lighted a fresh cigar and, with the flaming match still
+in hand, said quietly:
+
+"While you men have been talking I have been going over some of my own
+experiences"--here he blew out the match--"and I have a great mind to
+tell you of one that I had years ago which made an indelible impression
+on me."
+
+"Leave out your 'great mind,' Herbert," cried Louis--"we'll believe
+anything but that--and give us the story--that is, Le Blanc, if you will
+be so very good as to move your very handsome but slightly opaque head,
+so that I can watch the distinguished mud-dauber's face while he talks.
+Fire away, Herbert!"
+
+"I was a lad of twenty at the time," resumed Herbert, pausing for a
+moment until the unembarrassed Le Blanc had pushed back his chair, "and
+for reasons which then seemed good to me ran away from home, and for two
+years served as common sailor aboard an English merchantman, bunking in
+the forecastle, eating hardtack, and doing work aloft like any of the
+others. I had the world before me, was strong and sturdily built, and,
+being a happy-hearted young fellow, was on good terms with every one of
+the crew except a dark, murderous-looking young Portuguese of about my
+own age, active as a cat, and continually quarrelling with every one.
+When you get a low-down Portuguese with negro blood in his veins you
+have reached the bottom of cunning and cruelty. I've come across several
+of them since--some in dress suits--and know.
+
+"For some reason this fellow hated me as only sailors who are forced to
+live together on long voyages know how to hate. My bunk was immediately
+over his, and when I slid out in the morning my feet had to dangle in
+front of his venomous face. When I crawled up at night the same thing
+happened. We worked side by side, got the same pay, and ate the same
+grub, yet I never was with him without feeling his animosity toward me.
+
+"It was only by the merest accident that I found out why he hated me. He
+blurted it out in the forecastle one night after I had gone on deck, and
+the men told me when I dropped down the companion-way again. He hated me
+because I brushed my teeth! Oh!--you needn't laugh! Men have murdered
+each other for less. I once knew a man who picked a quarrel at the club
+with a diplomat because he dared to twist his mustache at the same angle
+as his own; and another--an Austrian colonel--who challenged a brother
+officer to a mortal duel for serving a certain Johannesburg when it was
+a well-known fact that he claimed to own every bottle of that year's
+vintage.
+
+"I continued brushing my teeth, of course, and at the same time kept an
+eye on the Portuguese whose slurs and general ugliness at every turn
+became so marked that I was convinced he was only waiting for a chance
+to put a knife into me. The captain, who studied his crew, was of the
+same opinion and instructed the first mate to look after us both and
+prevent any quarrel reaching a crisis.
+
+"One night, off Cape Horn, a gale came up, and half a dozen of us were
+ordered aloft to furl a topsail. That's no easy job for a greenhorn;
+sometimes it's a pretty tough job for an old hand. The yard is generally
+wet and slippery, the reefers stiff as marlin-spikes, and the sail hard
+as a board, particularly when the wind drives it against your face. But
+orders were orders and up I went. Then again, I had been a fairly good
+gymnast when I was at school, and could throw wheels on the horizontal
+bars with the best of them.
+
+"The orders had come just as we were finishing supper. As usual the
+Portuguese had opened on me again; this time it was my table manners, my
+way of treating my plate after finishing meals being to leave some of
+the fragments still sticking to the bottom and edge, while he wiped his
+clean with a crust of bread as a compliment to the cook.
+
+"The mate had heard the last of his outbreak, and in detailing the men
+sent me up the port ratlines and the Portuguese up the starboard. The
+sail was thrashing and flopping in the wind, the vessel rolling her
+rails under as the squall struck her. I was so occupied with tying the
+reefers over the canvas and holding on at the same time to the slippery
+yard, that I had not noticed the Portuguese, who, with every flop of the
+sail, was crawling nearer to where I clung.
+
+"He was almost on top of me when I caught sight of him sliding along the
+foot-stay, his eyes boring into mine with a look that made me stop short
+and pull myself together. One hand was around the yard, the other
+clutched his sheath knife. Another lunge of the ship and he would let
+drive and over I'd go.
+
+"For an instant I quavered before the fellow's hungry glare, his tiger
+eyes fixed on mine, the knife in his hand, the sail smothering me as it
+flapped in my face, while below were the black sea and half-lighted
+deck. Were he to strike, no trace would be left of me. I was a
+greenhorn, and it would be supposed I had missed my hold and fallen
+clear of the ship.
+
+"Bracing myself, I twisted a reefer around my wrist for better hold,
+determined, if he moved an inch nearer, to kick him square in the face.
+But at that instant a sea broke over the starboard bow, wrenching the
+ship fore and aft and jerking the yards as if they had been so many
+tent-poles. Then came a horrible shriek, and looking down I saw the
+Portuguese clutching wildly at the ratlines, clear the ship's side, and
+strike the water head-foremost. 'Man overboard!' I yelled at the top of
+my lungs, slid to the deck, and ran into the arms of the first mate, who
+had been watching us and who had seen the whole thing.
+
+"Some of the crew made a spring for the davits, I among them. But the
+mate shook his head.
+
+"'Ain't no use lowerin',' he said. 'Besides, he ain't worth savin'.'
+
+"That night I had to crawl over the dead man's empty berth; his pillow
+and quilt were just as he had left them, all tumbled and mussed, and his
+tin tobacco-box where he had laid it. Try as I would as I lay awake in
+my warm bunk and thought of him out in the sea, and my own close shave
+for life, I could not get rid of a certain uncanny feeling--something
+akin to the sensation as that of which Lemois was speaking. Only an
+instant's time had saved me from the same awful plunge--his last in
+life. I never got over the feeling until we reached port, for his berth
+was left untouched and his tin tobacco-box still lay beside his pillow.
+Even now when a sailor or fisherman pulls out an old tin box--they are
+all pretty much alike--or cuts a plug with a sheath knife, it gives me a
+shudder."
+
+"Served the brute right!" cried Louis. "Very good story, Herbert--a
+little exaggerated in parts, particularly where you were so
+absent-minded as to select the face of the gentleman for your murderous
+kick, but it's all right: very good story. I could freeze you all solid
+by an experience I had with an Apache who followed me on my way to
+Montmartre last week, but I won't."
+
+"Give it to us, Louis!" cried everybody in unison.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well, why not?" I demanded.
+
+"Because he turned down the next street. I said I _could_, and I would
+if he'd kept on after me. Your turn, Brierley. We haven't heard from you
+since you kept school for crows and wild ducks and taught them how to
+dodge bird shot. Unhook your ear-flaps, gentlemen; the distinguished
+naturalist is about to relate another one of his soul-stirring
+adventures--pure fiction, of course, but none the less entertaining."
+
+Before I could reply, Lemois, who had followed the course of the
+discussion with the keenest interest, interrupted with a deprecating
+shrug of his shoulders, his fingers widened out.
+
+"But not another bird story, if you please, Monsieur Brierley. We want
+something deeper and stronger. We have touched upon a great subject
+to-night, and have only scraped the surface."
+
+Herbert leaned forward until he caught Lemois' eye.
+
+"Say the rest, Lemois. You have something to tell us."
+
+"I! No--I have nothing to tell you. My life has been too stupid. I am
+always either bowing to my guests or making sauces for them over
+Pierre's fire. I could only tell you about things of which I have
+_heard_. You, Monsieur Herbert, can tell us of things with which you
+have _lived_. I want to listen now to something we will remember, like
+your story of the cannibal's wife. Almost every night since you have
+been here I go to bed with a great song ringing in my ears. You,
+Monsieur Herbert, must yourself have seen such tragedies in men's lives,
+when in the space of a lightning's flash their souls were stripped clean
+and they left naked."
+
+Herbert played with his fork for a moment, threw it back upon the cloth,
+and then said in a decided tone:
+
+"No--it is not my turn; I've talked enough to-night. Open up, Le Blanc,
+and give us something out of the old Latin Quartier--there were
+tragedies enough there."
+
+"Only what absinthe and starvation brought--and a ring now and then on
+the wrong girl's finger--or none at all, as the case might have been.
+But you've got a story, Herbert, if you will tell it, which will send
+Lemois to bed with a whole orchestra sounding in his ears."
+
+Herbert looked up.
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"The fever camp at Bangala."
+
+Herbert's face became instantly grave and an expression of intense
+thought settled upon it. We waited, our eyes fixed upon him.
+
+"No--I'd rather not, Le Blanc," he said slowly. "That belongs to the
+dead past, and it is best to leave it so."
+
+"Tell it, Herbert," I coaxed.
+
+"Both you and Le Blanc have heard it."
+
+"But Lemois and the others haven't."
+
+"Got any cannibals or barbecues in it, Herbert?" inquired Louis.
+
+"No, just plain white man all the way through, Louis. Two of them are
+still alive--I and another fellow. And you really want it again, Le
+Blanc? Well, all right. But before I begin I must ask you to pardon my
+referring so often to my African experiences"--and he glanced in apology
+around the table--"but I was there at a most impressionable age, and
+they still stand out in my mind--this one in particular. You may have
+read of the horrors that took place at Bangala in what at the time was
+known as the fever camp, where some of the bravest fellows who ever
+entered the jungles met their deaths. Both natives and white men had
+succumbed, one after another, in a way that wiped out all hope.
+
+"The remedies we had, had been used without effect, and quinine had lost
+its power to pull down the temperature, and each fellow knew that if he
+were not among those carried out feet foremost to-day, and buried so
+deep that the hyenas could not dig him up, it was only a question if on
+the morrow his own turn did not come. A strange kind of fear had taken
+possession of us, sick or well, and a cold, deadening despair had crept
+into our hearts, so great was the mortality, and so quickly when once a
+man was stricken did the end come. We were hundreds of miles from
+civilization of any kind, unable to move our quarters unless we deserted
+our sick, and even then there was no healthier place within reach. And
+so, not knowing who would go next, we awaited the end.
+
+"The only other white man in the country besides ourselves was a young
+English missionary who had taken up his quarters in a native village
+some two miles away, in the low, marshy lands, and who from the very day
+of his arrival had set to work to teach and care for the swarms of
+native children who literally infested the settlement. Many of these had
+been abandoned by their parents and would have perished but for his
+untiring watchfulness. When the fever broke out he, with the assistance
+of those of the natives whom he could bribe to help, had constructed a
+rude hospital into which the little people were placed. These he nursed
+with his own hands, and as children under ten years of age were less
+liable to the disease than those who were older, and, when stricken,
+easier to coax back to life, his mortality list was very much less than
+our own.
+
+"With our first deaths we would send for him to come up the hill and
+perform the last rites over the poor fellows, but, as our lists grew, we
+abandoned even this. Why I escaped at the time I do not know, unless it
+was by sheer force of will. I have always believed that the mind has
+such positive influence over the body that if you can keep it working
+you can arrest the progress of any disease--certainly long enough for
+the other forces of the body to come to its aid. So when I was at last
+bowled over and so ill that I could not stand on my feet, or even turn
+on my bed, I would have some one raise me to a sitting posture and then
+I would deliberately shave myself. The mental effort to get the beard
+off without cutting the skin; the determination to leave no spot
+untouched; the making of the lather, balancing of the razor, and
+propping up of the small bit of looking-glass so as to reflect my face
+properly, was what I have always thought really saved my life.
+
+"What I started to tell you, however, happened before I was finally
+stricken and will make you think of the tales often heard of shipwrecked
+men who, having given up all hope at the pumps, turn in despair and
+break open the captain's lockers, drinking themselves into a state of
+bestiality. It is the coward's way of meeting death, or perhaps it means
+the great final protest of the physical against the spiritual--a mad
+defiance of the inevitable--and confirms what some of our physiologists
+have always maintained--that only a thin stratum of self-control divides
+us from something lower than the beast.
+
+"We had buried one of our bravest and best comrades, one whose name is
+still held in reverence by all who knew him, and after we had laid him
+in the ground an orgy began, which I am ashamed to say--for I was no
+better than the rest--was as cowardly as it was bestial. My portable
+india-rubber bath-tub, being the largest vessel in the camp, was the
+punch-bowl, and into it was dumped every liquor we had in the place:
+Portuguese wine, Scotch whiskey, Bass's ale, brown stout,
+cognac--nothing escaped. You can imagine what followed. Those of our
+natives who helped themselves, after a wild outburst of savagery, soon
+relapsed into a state of unconsciousness. The exhilaration of the white
+man lasted longer, and was followed by a fighting frenzy which filled
+the night with horror. Men tore their clothes from their backs and,
+half-naked, danced in a circle, the flickering light of the camp-fire
+distorting their bodies into demons. It was hell let loose!
+
+"I have got rather a strong head, but one cup of that mixture sent my
+brain reeling. My fear was that my will would give way and I be tempted
+to drink a second dipperful and so knocked completely out. With this
+idea firmly in my mind, I watched my chance and escaped outside the
+raging circle, where I found a pool into which I plunged my head. This
+sobered me a little and I kept on in the darkness until I reached the
+edge of the hill overlooking the missionary's settlement, the shouts of
+the frenzied men growing fainter and fainter.
+
+"As I sat there my brain began to clear. I noticed the dull light of the
+moon shrouded in a deadly fog that rose from the valley below. In its
+mysterious dimness the wraiths of mist and fog became processions of
+ghosts stealing slowly up the hill--spirits of the dead on their way to
+judgment. The swollen moon swimming in the drowsy vapor was an evil eye
+from which there was no escape--searching the souls of men--mine among
+them--I, who had been spared death and in return had defied all the laws
+of decency. The cries of the forest rang in my ears, loud and insistent.
+The howl of a pariah dog, the hoot of an owl, became so many
+questions--all directed toward me--all demanding an answer for my sins.
+Even the hum of myriads of insects seemed concerned with me, disputing
+in low tones and deciding on my punishment.
+
+"Gradually these sounds grew less insistent, and soft as a breath of
+air--hardly perceptible at first--there rose from the valley below, like
+a curl of smoke mounting into the stillness, a strain of low, sweet
+music, and as suddenly ceased. I bent my head, wondering whether I was
+dreaming. I had heard that same music, when I was a boy at home, wafted
+toward me from the open window of the village church. How came it here?
+Why sing it? Why torture me with it--who would never see home again?
+
+"I struggled to my feet, steadied myself against a cotton-tree, and
+fixed my eyes on the valley below; my ears strained to catch the first
+recurrent note. Again it rose on the night air, this time strong and
+clear, as if a company of angels were singing.
+
+"I knew now!
+
+"It was the hymn my friend the missionary had taught the children.
+
+"I plunged down the hill, stumbling, falling, only to drag myself to my
+feet again, groping my way through the dense night fog and the tangle of
+undergrowth, until I reached the small stockade at the foot of the
+incline which circled the missionary station. Crossing this ground, I
+followed the path and entered a small gate. Beyond it lay a flat piece
+of land cleared of all underbrush, and at its extreme end the rude
+bamboo hut of a hospital filled with sick and dying children.
+
+"Once more on the deadly night air rose the hymn, a note of exaltation
+now, calling me on--to what I knew not, nor did I care, so it would ease
+the grinding fear under which I had lived for weeks.
+
+"Suddenly I came to a halt. In the faint moonlight, within a dozen yards
+of me, knelt the figure of a man. He was praying--his hands upraised,
+his face lifted--the words falling from his lips distinctly audible. I
+moved nearer. Before him was a new-made grave--one he had dug
+himself--to cover the body of a child who had died at sunset.
+
+"It was a moment I have never forgotten, and never want to forget.
+
+"On the hill above me were the men I had left--a frenzied body of
+bestial cowards who had dishonored themselves, their race, and their
+God; here beside me, huddled together, a group of forest children--spawn
+of cannibal and savage--racked with fever, half-starved, many of them
+delirious, their souls rising to heaven on the wings of a song.
+
+"And then the kneeling man himself!--his courage facing death every hour
+of the day--alone--no one to help--only his Maker as witness. I tell
+you, gentlemen, that when I stood beside him and looked into his eyes,
+caught the tones of his voice, and watched the movement of his fingers
+patting the last handfuls of earth over the poor little nameless body,
+and realized that his only recompense lay in that old line I used to
+hear so often when I was a boy--'If ye have done it unto the least of
+these, ye have done it unto me'--I could have gone down on my knees
+beside him and thanked my Creator that He had sent me to him."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+IN WHICH MADAME LA MARQUISE BINDS UP BROKEN HEADS AND BLEEDING HEARTS
+
+
+The morning brought us two most welcome pieces of news, one being that
+Gaston, his head swathed in bandages, had, with the doctor's approval,
+gone home an hour before breakfast, and the other that our now adorable
+Madame la Marquise de la Caux, with Marc as gentleman-in-waiting, would
+arrive at the Inn some time during the day or evening, the exact hour
+being dependent upon her duties at the site of her "ruin." These pieces
+of news, being positive and without question, were received with the
+greatest satisfaction, Gaston's recovery meaning fresh roses in Mignon's
+cheeks and madame's visit giving us another glimpse of her charming
+personality.
+
+That which was less positive, because immediately smothered and sent
+around in whispers, were rumors of certain happenings that had taken
+place shortly after daybreak. Mignon, so the word ran, before seeking
+her little cot the night before, had caught a nod, or the lift of Leà's
+brow, arched over a meaning eye, or a significant smile--some sort of
+wireless, anyway, with Leà as chief operator, and a private wire to
+Louis' room, immediately over Gaston's. What she had learned had kept
+the girl awake half the night and sent her skipping on her toes at the
+break of dawn to the little passageway at the far end of the court-yard,
+where she had cried over Gaston and kissed him good-by, Leà being deaf
+and dumb and blind. All this occurred before the horrible old bogie
+(Lemois was the bogie), who had given strict orders that everything
+should be done for the comfort of the boy before he left the Inn, was
+fairly awake; certainly before he was out of bed.
+
+"By thunder!--I could hardly keep the tears out of my eyes I was so
+sorry for her," Louis had said when he burst into my room an hour before
+getting-up time. "I heard the noise and thought he was suffering again
+and needed help, and so I hustled out and came bump up against them as
+they stood at the foot of the stairs. I wasn't dressed for company and
+dared not go back lest they should see me, and so I flattened myself
+against the wall and was obliged to hear it all. I'm not going to give
+them away; but if any girl will love me as she does that young fellow
+she can have my bank account. And he was so manly and square about it
+all--no snivelling, no making a poor face. 'It is nothing, Mignon--I am
+all right. Don't cry,' he kept saying. 'Everything will come out our way
+in the end.' By Jove!--I wish some girl loved me like that!"
+
+Such an expression of happiness had settled, too, on Leà's face as she
+brought our coffee, that Herbert caught up his sketch-book and made her
+stand still until he had transferred her dear old head in its white cap
+to paper. Then, the portrait finished--and it was exactly like her--what
+a flash of joy suffused Mignon's face when he called to her and
+whispered in her ear the wonderful tale of why he had drawn it and who
+was to be its proud possessor; and when it was all to take place, a bit
+of information that sent her out of the room and skipping across the
+court, her tiny black kitten at her heels.
+
+
+It was, indeed, a joyous day, with every one in high good humor,
+culminating in the wildest enthusiasm when the sound of a siren,
+followed by the quick "chug-chug" of the stop brake of madame's motor,
+announced the arrival of that distinguished woman an hour ahead of time.
+
+[Illustration: Herbert caught up his sketch-book and ... transferred her
+dear old head ... to paper]
+
+"Ah!--gentlemen!" she shouted out, rising from her seat, both hands
+extended before any of us could reach her car, "I have come over to
+crown you with laurel! Oh, what a magnificent lot of heroes!--and to
+think you saved my poor, miserable little mouse-trap of a villa that has
+been trying all its life to slide down hill into the sea and get washed
+and scrubbed. No, I don't want your help--I'm going to jump!" and out
+she came, man's ulster, black-velvet jockey cap, short skirt, high
+boots, and all, Marc following.
+
+"And now, Monsieur Marc, give me a little help--no, not here--down below
+the seat. Careful, now! And the teakwood stand is there too--I steadied
+them both with my feet. There, you dear men!"--here she lifted the
+priceless treasure above her head, her eyes dancing--"what do you think
+of your punch-bowl? This is for your choicest mixtures whenever you
+meet, and not one of you shall have a drop out of it unless you promise
+to make me honorary member of your coterie, with full permission to
+stay away or come just as I please. Isn't it a beauty?--and not a crack
+or scar on it--Old Ming, they tell me, of the first dynasty. There, dear
+Lemois, put it among your things, but never out of reach."
+
+She had shaken every one's hand now and was stamping her little feet in
+their big men's boots to keep up her circulation, talking to us all the
+while.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur Louis, it was you who carried out my beloved
+piano--Liszt played on it, and so did Paderewski and Livadi,
+and a whole lot of others, until it gave out and I sent it down
+here, more for its associations than anything else. And you too,
+Monsieur Herbert"--and she gave him a low curtsy, as befitted his
+rank--"you-were-a-_real-major-general_, and saved the life of that poor
+young fisherman; and you, Lemois, rescued my darling miniatures and my
+books. Yes--I have heard all about it. Oh!--it was so kind of you
+all--and you were so good--nothing I really loved is missing. I have
+been all the morning feasting my eyes on them. And now let us all go in
+and stir up the fire--and, please, one of you bring me a thimbleful of
+brandy. I have rummaged over my precious things until I have worked
+myself into a perspiration, and then I must drive like Jehu until I get
+chilled to the bone. Catch cold!--my dear Monsieur Brierley--I never
+catch cold! I should be quite ashamed of myself if I did."
+
+We were inside the Marmouset now, Marc unbuttoning her outer garments,
+revealing her plump, penguin-shaped body clothed in a blouse of
+mouse-colored corduroy with a short skirt to match, her customary red
+silk scarf about her throat; the silver watch with its leather strap,
+which hung from the pocket of her blouse, her only ornament.
+
+"Take my cap, please," and she handed it to the ever-obsequious Marc,
+who always seemed to have lost his wits and identity in her presence.
+This done, she ran her fingers through her fluff of gray hair, caught it
+in a twist with her hand, skewered it with a tortoise-shell pin, and,
+with a "So! that's all over," drew up a chair to the blaze and settled
+herself in it, talking all the time, the men crowding about her to catch
+her every word.
+
+"And now how about that young fisherman? Thank you, Monsieur Herbert.
+No, that is quite enough; a thimbleful of cognac is just what I
+need--more than that I have given up these many years. Come!--the young
+fisherman, Lemois. Is he badly hurt? Has he a doctor? How long before he
+gets well? Can I go to see him as soon as I get warm? Such a brave
+lad--and all to save my miserable jim-cracks."
+
+Both of Lemois' hands were outstretched in a low bow. "We could do no
+less than rescue your curios, madame. Our only fear is that we may have
+left behind something more precious than anything we saved."
+
+"No, I have not missed a single thing; and it wouldn't make any
+difference if I had; we love too many things, anyway, for our good. As
+to the house--it is too funny to see it. I laughed until I quite lost my
+breath. Everything is sticking out like the quills on a mad hedgehog,
+and the porch steps are smashed flat up against the ceiling. Oh!--it is
+too ridiculous! Just fancy, only the shelf in my boudoir is left where
+it used to be, and the plants are still blooming away up in the air as
+if nothing had happened. But not a word more of all this!" and she rose
+from her seat. "Take me to see the poor fellow at once!"
+
+Again Lemois bowed, this time with the greatest deference. The exalted
+rank of his guest was a fact he never lost sight of.
+
+"He is not here, madame," he said in an apologetic tone; "I have sent
+him home to his mother."
+
+"Home!--to his mother?--and after my despatch. Oh!--but I could take so
+much better care of him here! Why did you do it?"
+
+"For the best of reasons--first, because the doctor said he might go,
+and then because I"--and he lowered his voice and glanced around to see
+if Mignon had by any chance slipped into the room--"because," he added
+with a knowing smile, "it is sometimes dangerous to have so good-looking
+a fellow about."
+
+"So good of you, Lemois," she flashed back; "so thoughtful and
+considerate. Twenty years ago I might have lost my heart, but----"
+
+"Oh, but, madame--I never for an instant--" He was really frightened.
+
+"Oh, it was not _me_, then!" and one of her ringing, silvery laughs
+gladdened the room. "Who, then, pray?--certainly not that dear old woman
+with the white cap who--Oh!--I see!--it is that pretty little Norman
+maid. Such a winning creature, and so modest. Yes, I remember her
+distinctly. But why should not these two people love each other? He is
+brave, and you say he is handsome--what better can the girl have?"
+
+Lemois shrugged his shoulders in a helpless way, but with an expression
+on his obstinate face that showed his entire satisfaction with his own
+course.
+
+Madame read his thoughts and turned upon him, a dominating ring in her
+voice. "And you really mean, Lemois, that you are playing jailer, and
+shutting up two hearts in different cells?"
+
+Lemois, suddenly nonplussed, hesitated and looked away. We held our
+breaths for his answer.
+
+"Ah, madame," he replied at last slowly, all the fight knocked out of
+him, "it is not best that we discuss it. Better let me know what madame
+la marquise will have for dinner--we have waited all day until your
+wishes were known."
+
+"Nothing--not a crumb of anything until I find out about these lovers.
+Did you ever know anything like it, gentlemen? Here on one side are
+broken heads and broken hearts--on the other, a charming old gentleman
+whom I have known for years, and whom I love dearly, playing bear and
+ready to eat up both of these young turtle doves. When I remonstrate he
+wants to know whether I will have my chicken roasted on a spit or _en
+casserole_! Oh, you are too silly, Lemois!"
+
+"But she is like my daughter, madame," replied Lemois humbly, and yet
+with a certain dignity.
+
+"And, therefore, she mustn't marry an honest young fisherman. Is that
+what you mean?"
+
+Lemois merely inclined his head.
+
+"And pray what would you make of her--a countess?"
+
+A grim baffled smile ruffled the edges of the old man's lips as he tried
+again to turn the conversation, but she would not listen.
+
+"No, I see it all! You want some flat-chested apothecary, or some fat
+clerk, or a notary, or a grocer, or--Oh, I know all about it! Now do you
+go and get your dinner ready--anything will suit me--and when it is over
+and Monsieur Herbert is firmly settled in his big chair, with the funny
+heads listening to everything we say, I am going to tell you a story
+about one of your mismated marriages, and I want you to listen, Monsieur
+Bear, with your terrible growl and your great claws and your ugly
+teeth. No, I won't take any apologies," and another laugh--a whole chime
+of silver bells this time--rang through the room.
+
+"What a pity it is," she continued after her opponent had left the room,
+"that people who get old forget so soon what their own youth has meant
+to them. He takes this child, puts a soul into her by his kindness, and
+then, when she becomes a woman, builds a fence around her--not for her
+protection but for his own pride. It will be so much more _honorable_,
+he says to himself, for the great house of Lemois to have one of his
+distinguished waifs _honorably_ settled in an _honorable_ home," and she
+lifted her shoulders ever so slightly. "Not a word, you will please
+note, about the girl or what _she_ wants--nothing whatever of that kind.
+And he is such a dear too. But I won't have it, and I'm going to tell
+him so!" she added, her brown eyes blazing as her heart went out once
+more to the girl.
+
+
+All through the dinner the marquise made no further reference to the
+love affair, although I could see that it was still on her mind, for
+when Mignon entered and began moving about the room in her demure,
+gentle way, her lids lowered, her pretty head and throat aglow in the
+softened light, I saw that she was following her every gesture. Once,
+when the girl replenished her plate, the woman of birth, as if by
+accident, laid her fingers on the serving-woman's wrist, and then there
+flashed out of her eyes one of those sympathetic glances which only a
+tender-hearted woman can give, and which only another woman, no matter
+how humble her station, can fully understand. It was all done so quickly
+and so deftly that I alone noticed it, as well as the answering look in
+Mignon's eyes: full of such gratitude and reverence that I started lest
+she should betray herself and thus spoil it all.
+
+With the coffee and cigarettes--madame refusing any brand but her
+own--"I dry every bit of my tobacco myself," she offered in explanation,
+"and roll every cigarette I smoke"--we settled ourselves in pleased
+expectation, Herbert, as usual, in the Florentine; our guest of honor
+beside a small table which Lemois had moved up for her comfort, and on
+which he had placed a box of matches and an ashtray; Brierley stretched
+out on the sofa with a cushion at his back; Lemois on a low stool by the
+fire; Louis and I with chairs drawn close. Even the big back log, which
+had been crooning a song of the woods all the evening, ceased its hum as
+if to listen, while overhead long wraiths of tobacco smoke drifted
+silently, dimming the glint and sparkle of copper, brass, and silver
+that looked down at us from the walls.
+
+"And now, madame," said Herbert with a smile, when both Leà and Mignon
+had at last left the room, "you were good enough to say you had a story
+for us."
+
+"No," she answered gayly. "It is not for you. It is for our dear Lemois
+here," and she shook her head at him in mock reproval. "You are all too
+fine and splendid, every one of you. You keep houses from tumbling to
+pieces and rescue lovers and do no end of beauteous things. He goes
+about cutting and slashing heads and hearts, and never cares whom he
+hurts."
+
+Lemois rose from his seat, put his hand on his shirt-front--a favorite
+gesture of his--bowed humbly, and sat down again.
+
+"Yes, I mean it," she cried with a toss of her head, "and I have just
+been telling these gentlemen that I am going to put a stop to it just as
+soon as I can find out whether this young hero with the broken head is
+worth the saving, and that I shall decide the moment I get my eyes on
+him. Pass me my coffee, Lemois, and give me my full share of
+sugar--three lumps if you please--and put four into your own to sweeten
+your temper, for you will need them all before I get through.
+
+"The story I promised you is one of sheer stupidity, and always enrages
+me when I think of it. I have all my life set my face against this
+idiotic custom of my country of choosing wives and husbands for other
+people. In any walk of life it is a mistake; in some walks of life it is
+a crime. This particular instance occurred some twenty years ago in a
+little village near Beaumont, where I lived as a girl. Outside our far
+gate, leading to the best fields, was the house of a peasant who had
+made some thousands of francs by buying calves when they were very
+small, fattening them, and driving them to the great markets. He was big
+and coarse, with a red face, small, shrewd eyes, and a bull neck that
+showed puffy above his collar. He was loud, too, in his talk and could
+be heard above every one else in the crowd when the auction sales were
+being held in the market. But for his blue blouse, which reached to his
+feet, he might have been taken for one of his own steers.
+
+"The wife was different. Although she was of the same peasant stock, a
+strain of gentleness and refinement had somehow crept in. In everything
+she was his opposite--a short woman with narrow shoulders and small
+waist; a low, soft voice, and a temper so kindly and even that her
+neighbors loved her as much as they hated her husband. And then there
+was a daughter--no sons--just one daughter. With her my acquaintance
+with the family began, and but for this girl I should have known nothing
+of what I am going to tell you.
+
+"It all came about through a little fête my father gave to which the
+neighbors and some of the land-owners were invited. You know all about
+these festivities, of course. Something of the kind must be done every
+year, and my dear father never forgot what he owed his people, and
+always did his best to make them happy. On this occasion the idea came
+into my head that it would be something of a novelty if I arranged a
+dance of the young people with a May-pole and garlands, after one of the
+Watteau paintings in our home; something that had never been done
+before, but which, if done at all, must be carried out properly. So I
+sent to Paris to get the costumes, the wide hats, petticoats, and
+all--with the small clothes for the men--and started out to find my
+characters. One of my maids had told me of this girl and, as she lived
+nearest, I stopped at her house first. Well, the father came in and
+blustered out a welcome; then the mother, with a curtsy and a smile,
+wiped out the man's odious impression, thanking me for coming, and then
+the girl appeared--the living counterpart of her mother except that the
+fine strain of gentle blood had so softened and strengthened the
+daughter's personality that she had blossomed into a lovely young person
+without a trace of the peasant about her--just as any new grafting
+improves both flower and fruit. I could not take my eyes from her, she
+was so gentle and modest--her glance reaching mine timidly, the lids
+trembling like a butterfly afraid to alight; oh, a very charming and
+lovely creature--an astonishing creature, really, to be the daughter of
+such a man. Before the visit was over I had determined to make her my
+prima donna: she should lead the procession, and open the dance with
+some gallant of her choice--a promise received with delight by the
+family; the girl being particularly pleased, especially with the last
+part of it, and so I left them, and kept on my rounds through the
+village and outlying district.
+
+"It was a lovely summer day--in June, if I remember--too late for
+May-poles, but I didn't care--and long before the hour arrived our lawn
+was thronged with peasants and their sons and daughters, and our stables
+and paddocks crowded with their carts and vehicles. My father had
+provided a tent where the young people should change their clothes, but
+I took my little maid up into my own room, and my femme de chambre and I
+dressed her at our leisure.
+
+"It is astonishing what you find underneath the rough garments worn by
+some of our peasants. I have often heard one of my friends--a figure
+painter--express the same surprise over his models. What appears in
+coarse cloth to be an ill-shaped arm turns out to be beautifully
+modelled when bared to the overhead light of a studio. So it was with
+this girl. She had the dearest, trimmest little figure, her shoulders
+temptingly dimpled, her throat and neck with that exquisite modelling
+only seen in a beautifully formed girl just bursting into womanhood. And
+then, too, her hair--what a lot of it there was when it was all combed
+out, and of so rich a brown, with a thread of gold here and there where
+the light struck it; and, more than all, her deep sapphire-blue eyes.
+Oh!--you cannot think how lovely they were; eyes that drank you all in
+until you were lost in their depths--like a well holding and refreshing
+you.
+
+"So we dressed her up--leghorn hat, petticoats, tiny slippers on her
+tiny feet--and they were tiny--even to her shepherdess crook--until she
+looked as if she had just stepped out of one of Watteau's canvases.
+
+"And you may be sure she had her innings! The young fellows went wild
+over her, as well as the older ones--and even some of our own gentry
+tried to make love to her--so I heard next day. When all was ready she
+picked out her own partner, as I had promised she should, a straight,
+well-built, honest-faced young peasant whom she called 'Henri'--a year
+or two her senior, and whom I learned was the son of a poor farmer whose
+land adjoined her father's, but whose flocks and herds consisted of but
+one cow and a few pigs. In his pearl-gray short clothes and jacket,
+slashed sleeves, and low-cut shoes he looked amazingly well, and I did
+not blame her for her choice. Indeed she could not have done better,
+perfectly matched as they were in their borrowed plumes.
+
+"And now comes a curious thing: so puffed up was that big animal of a
+father over the impression the girl had made, and so proud was he over
+the offers he received shortly after for her hand--among them a fellow
+herdsman twenty years her senior--that he immediately began to put on
+airs of distinction. A man with such a daughter, he said to himself, was
+also a man of weight and prominence in the community; he, therefore, had
+certain duties to perform. This was his only child; moreover, was he not
+rich, being the owner of more than a hundred head of cattle, and did he
+not have money in the banks? Loyette--have I told you her name was
+Loyette?--Loyette should marry no one of the young fellows about her--he
+had other and higher views for her. What these views were nobody knew,
+but one thing was certain, and that was that Henri, whom she loved with
+all her heart, and who had danced with her around the May-pole, was
+forbidden the house. The excuse was that his people were not of her
+class; that they were poor, his father being.... Oh, the same stupid
+story which has been told thousands of times and will continue to be
+told as long as there are big, thick-necked fathers who lay down the law
+with their sledge-hammer fists, and ambitious old gentlemen"--here she
+cut her eye at Lemois--"who try to wheedle you with their flimsy
+arguments--arguments which they would have thrown in your face had you
+tried it on them when they themselves were young. The father forgot, of
+course--just as they all forget--that she was precisely the same young
+girl with precisely the same heart before the fête as she was after it;
+that every rag on her back I had given her; that her triumph was purely
+a matter of chance--my going first to his house and thus finding
+her--and that on the very next day she had milked the cows and polished
+the tins just as she had done since she was old enough to help her
+mother.
+
+"Again that old story was repeated: the mother begged and pleaded; the
+girl drowned herself in tears, but the father stormed on. Poor Henri
+continued to peep over the fence at Loyette when she went milking, or
+met her clandestinely on the path behind the cow sheds, and everybody
+was wretched for months trying to make water run uphill.
+
+"Then Loyette confided in me. I had started to walk to the village and
+she had seen me cross the broad road and had followed. Poor child!--I
+can see her now, the tears streaming down her cheeks as she poured out
+her heart: how she and Henri had always loved each other; how fine and
+brave and truthful he was, and how kind and noble: she emptying her
+heart of her most precious secret--the story of her first love--a story,
+gentlemen"--here the marquise's voice dropped into tones of infinite
+sweetness--"which the angels bend their ears to catch, for there is
+nothing more holy nor more sublime.
+
+"I listened, her hand in mine--we were about the same age and I could,
+therefore, the better understand--her pretty blue eyes like wet violets
+searching for my own--and when her story was all told, I comforted her
+as best I could, telling her what I firmly believed--that no father with
+a spark of tenderness in his heart could be obdurate for long and not to
+worry--true love like hers always winning its way--whereupon she dried
+her eyes, kissed my hand, and I left her.
+
+"What happened I do not know, for I went to Paris shortly after and was
+married myself, and did not return to my old home for some years. Then
+one day, in the effort to pick up once more the threads of my old life,
+there suddenly popped into my mind Loyette's love story. I sent at once
+for one of the old servants who had lived with us since before I was
+born.
+
+"'And Loyette--the girl with the big ugly father--did he relent and did
+she marry the young fellow she was in love with?'
+
+"'No, madame,' she answered sadly, with a shake of the head; 'she
+married the cattleman, Marceaux, and a sad mess they made of it, for he
+was old enough then to be her father, and he is now half paralyzed, and
+goes around in a chair on wheels, and there are no children--and
+Loyette, who was so pretty and so happy, must follow him about like a
+dog tied to a blind man, and she never laughs the whole livelong day.
+That was her father's work--he made her do it, and now she must pay the
+price.'
+
+"'And what became of the pig of a father?' I had hated him before; I
+loathed him now.
+
+"'Dead; so is her mother.'
+
+"'And the young fellow?'
+
+"'He had to do his service, and was gone three years, and when he came
+back it was too late.'
+
+"'Well, but why did she give in?'
+
+"'Don't they all have to give in at last? Did the husband not settle the
+farm on her, and fifty head of cattle, and the pasturage and barns? Is
+not that better for an only daughter than digging in the fields bending
+over washing-boards all day and breaking your back hanging out the
+clothes? How did she know he would be only a sick child in a chair on
+wheels--and this a year after marriage?'
+
+"'And what did the young fellow do?'
+
+"'What could he do? It was all over when he came back. And now he never
+laughs any more, and will look at none of the women--and it is a pity,
+for he is prosperous and can well take care of a wife.'
+
+"I had it all now, just as plain as day; they had tricked the girl into
+a marriage; had maligned the young fellow in the same cowardly way, and
+had embittered them both for life. It was the same old game; I had seen
+it played a hundred times in different parts of the world. Often the
+cards are stacked. Sometimes it is a jewel--or a handful of them--or
+lands--or rank--or some other such make-believe. This trick is to be
+expected in the great world where success in life is a game, and where
+each gambler must look to the cards--but not here among our
+peasantry"--and again she shot her glance at Lemois--"where a girl grows
+up as innocent as a heifer, her nature expanding, her only ambition
+being to find a true mate who will help her bear the burdens her station
+lays upon her.
+
+"I resolved to see her for myself. If I had been wrong in my
+surmises--and it were true that so sweet and innocent a creature had of
+her own free will married a man twenty years her senior when her heart
+was wholly another's--I should lose faith in girl nature: and I have
+looked into many young hearts in my time. That her father--big brute as
+he was--would have dared force her into such an alliance without her
+consent I did not believe, for the mother would then have risen up.
+These Norman peasants fight for their children as a bear fights for her
+cubs--women of the right kind--and she was one.
+
+"My own father shrugged his shoulders when I sought his counsel, and
+uttered the customary man-like remark: 'Better for her, I expect, than
+hoeing beets. All she has to do now is to see him comfortably fixed in
+his chair--a great blessing, come to think of it, for she can always
+find him when she wants him.'
+
+"This view of the case brought me no relief, and so the next day I
+mounted my horse, took my groom, and learning that her cripple of a
+husband had bought another and a larger farm a few kilometres away, rode
+over to see her.
+
+"I shall never forget what I found. Life presents some curious
+spectacles, and the ironies of fate work out the unexpected. In front of
+the low door of a Norman farm-house of the better class sat a
+gray-haired, shrivelled man with a blanket across his knees--his face of
+that dirty, ash-colored hue which denotes disease and constant pain. My
+coming made some stir, for he had seen me making my way through the
+orchard and had recognized my groom, and at his call the wife ran out to
+welcome me. My young beauty was now a thin, utterly disheartened, and
+worn-out woman who looked twice her age, and on whose face was stamped
+the hall-mark of suffering and sorrow. The brown-gold hair, the white
+teeth, and deep-blue eyes were there, but everything else was a wreck.
+
+"When the horses were led away, and I had expressed my sympathy for the
+cripple, I drew her inside the house, shut the door, and took a chair
+beside her.
+
+"'Now tell me the whole story--not your suffering, nor his--I see that
+in your faces--but how it could all happen. The last time you talked to
+me we were girls together--we are girls now.'
+
+"'Madame la marquise,' she began, 'I----'
+
+"'No, not madame la marquise,' I interrupted, taking her hand in mine;
+'just one woman talking to another. Whose fault was it--yours or
+Henri's?'
+
+"'Neither. They lied about him; they said he would never come back;
+then, when he did not write and no news came of him and I was wild and
+crazy with grief, they told me more things of which I won't speak; and
+one of the old women in the village, who wanted him for her
+granddaughter, laughed and said the things were true and that she didn't
+mind, and nobody else should; and then all the time my father was saying
+I must marry the other'--and she pointed in the direction of the
+cripple--'and he kept coming every day, and was kind and sympathetic,
+and good to me I must say, and is now, and at last my heart was worn
+out--and they took me to the church, and it was all over. And then the
+next month Henri came back from Algiers, where he had been ill in the
+hospital, and came straight here and sat down in that chair over there,
+and looked about him, and then he said: "I would not have come home if I
+had known how things were; I would rather have been shot. I cannot give
+you all this"--and he pointed to the furniture--"and you did not want
+them when we first loved each other."
+
+"'And then he told me how many times he had written, and we hunted
+through my father's chest which I had brought here with me--he had died
+that year, and so had my dear mother--and there we found all Henri's
+letters tied together with a string, and not one of them opened.'
+
+"'What did you do?' I asked.
+
+"'I went at once to my husband and told him everything. He burst into a
+great rage; and the two had hard words, and then the next day he was out
+in the field and the sun was very hot, and he was brought home, and has
+been as you see him ever since.'
+
+"'And where is Henri?'
+
+"'He is here on the farm. When the doctor gave my husband no hope of
+ever being well again, my husband sent for him and begged Henri's pardon
+for what he had said, saying he wanted no one to hate him now that he
+could not live; that all Henri had done was to love me as a man should
+love a woman, and that, if I would be willing, Henri should take care of
+the farm and keep it for me. This was four years ago, and Henri is still
+here and my husband has never changed. When the weather is good, Henri
+puts him in his chair, the one we bought in Rouen, and wheels him about
+under the apple-trees, and every night he comes in and sits beside him
+and goes over the accounts and tells him of the day's work. Then he goes
+back home, six kilometres away, to his mother's, where he lives.'"
+
+Madame la marquise paused and shook the ashes from her cigarette, her
+head on one side, her eyes half-closed, a thoughtful, wholly absorbed
+expression on her face. Lemois, who had listened to every word of the
+strange narrative, his gaze fastened upon her, made no sound, nor did he
+move.
+
+"And now listen to the rest: Two years later the poor cripple passed
+away and the next spring the two were married. The last time she came
+to me she brought her child with her--a baby in arms--but the dazzling
+light of young motherhood did not shine in her eyes--the baby had come,
+and she was glad, but that was all. They are both alive to-day, sitting
+in the twilight--their youth gone; robbed of the joy of making the first
+nest, together--meeting life second-hand, as it were--content to be
+alive and to be left alone.
+
+"As for me, knowing the whole story, I had only a deep, bitter, intense
+sense of outrage. I still have it whenever I think of her wrongs. God is
+over all and pardons us almost every sin we commit--even without our
+asking, I sometimes think--but the men and women who for pride's sake
+rob a young girl of a true and honorable love have shut themselves out
+of heaven."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+IN WHICH WE ENTERTAIN A JAIL-BIRD
+
+
+What effect madame's story had made upon Lemois became at once an
+absorbing question. He had listened intently with deferential
+inclination of the head, and when she had finished had risen from his
+seat and thanked her calmly with evident sincerity, but whether he was
+merely paying a tribute to her rare skill--and she told her story
+extremely well, and with such rapid changes of tones and gestures that
+every situation and character stood out in relief--or because he was
+grateful for a new point of view in Mignon's case, was still a mystery
+to us. While she was being bundled up by Herbert and Louis for her ride
+home, Marc had delivered himself of the opinion that Mignon would have
+her lover in the end; that nothing madame had ever tried to do had
+failed when once she set her heart and mind to work, and that the banns
+might as well be published at once. But, then, Marc would have begun to
+set nets for larks and bought both toaster and broiler had the same idol
+of his imagination predicted an immediate fall of the skies. That his
+inamorata was twenty years his senior made no difference to the
+distinguished impressionist; that Marc was twenty years her junior made
+not the slightest difference to madame--nor did Marc himself, for that
+matter. All good men were comrades to her--and Marc was one: further she
+never went. Her rule of life was freedom of thought and action, and
+absolute deference to her whims, however daring and foolish.
+
+Nor did the marquise herself enlighten us further as to what she thought
+of Mignon's love affairs or Lemois' narrow matrimonial views. She had
+become suddenly intent on having the smashed villa pulled uphill and set
+on its legs again, with Marc as adviser and Le Blanc's friend, The
+Architect, as director-in-chief--an appointment which blew into thin air
+that gentleman's determination to put into dramatic form the new
+Robinson Crusoe of which Herbert had told us, with Goringe, the
+explorer, as star, the lady remarking sententiously that she had
+definite reasons for the restoration and wanted the work to begin at
+once and to continue with all possible speed.
+
+This last Le Blanc told us the next day when he returned in madame's
+motor, bringing with him an old friend of his--a tall, sunburned,
+grizzly bearded man of fifty, with overhanging eyebrows shading piercing
+brown eyes, firm, well-buttressed nose, a mouth like a ruled line--so
+straight was it--and a jaw which used up one-third of his face. When
+they entered Herbert was standing with his back to the room. An instant
+later the stranger had him firmly by the hand.
+
+"I heard you were here, Herbert," he cried joyously, "but could hardly
+believe it. By Jove! It's good to see you again! When was the last time,
+old man?--Borneo, wasn't it?--in that old shack outside the town, and
+those devils howling for all they were worth."
+
+Introductions over, he dropped into a chair, took a pipe from his
+pocket, and in a few minutes was as much a part of the coterie as if we
+had known him all his life: his credentials of accomplishment, of pluck,
+of self-sacrifice, of endurance and skill were accepted at sight; the
+hearty welcome he gave Herbert, and the way his eyes shone with the joy
+of meeting him, completing the last and most important requirement on
+our list--good-fellowship. That he had lived outside the restrictions of
+civilization was noticeable in his clothes, which were of an ancient cut
+and looked as if they had just been pulled out of a trunk where they had
+lain in creases for years, which was true, for during the past decade he
+had been acting Engineer-in-Chief of one section of the great dam on the
+Nile, and was now home on leave. He had, he told us, left London the
+week before, had crossed with his car at Dieppe, and was making a run
+down the coast by way of Trouville when he bumped into Le Blanc and,
+hearing Herbert was within reach, had made bold to drop in upon us.
+
+When Mignon and Leà had cleared the table, dinner being over, and the
+coffee had been served--and somehow the real talk always began after the
+coffee--for then Lemois was with us--Herbert looked at The Engineer long
+and searchingly, a covetous light growing in his eyes--the look of a
+housed sailor sniffing the brine on a comrade's reefer just in from the
+sea--and said dryly:
+
+"Are you glad to get home?"
+
+"Yes and no. My liver had begun to give out and they sent me to England
+for a few months, but I shall have to go back, I'm afraid, before my
+time is up. Gets on my nerves here--too much sand on the axles--too much
+friction and noise--such a lot of people, too, chasing bubbles. Seems
+queer when you've been away from it as long as I have. How do you stand
+it, old man?"
+
+Herbert tapped the table-cloth absently with the handle of his knife and
+remarked slowly:
+
+"I don't stand it. I lie down and let it roll over me. If I ever thought
+about it at all I'd lose my grip. Sometimes a longing to be again in the
+jungle sweeps over me--to feel its dangers--its security--its
+genuineness and freedom from all shams, if you will"--and a strange
+haunting look settled in his eyes.
+
+"But you always used to dream of getting home; I've lain awake by the
+hour and heard you talk."
+
+"Yes, I know," he answered rousing himself, "it was a battle even in
+those days. I would think about it and then decide to stay a year or two
+longer; and then the hunger for home would come upon me again and I'd
+begin to shape things so I could get back to England. Sometimes it took
+a year to decide--sometimes two or three--for you can't get rid of that
+kind of a nightmare in a minute."
+
+"You were different from me, Herbert," remarked Le Blanc. "You went to
+the wilds because you loved them; I went because they locked the front
+and back gates on me. I suppose I deserved it, for nobody got much sleep
+when I was twenty. But it sounds funny to have you say it would take you
+two years to make up your mind whether you'd come home or not. It
+wouldn't have taken me five seconds."
+
+"Sometimes it didn't take that long," and a quick laugh escaped
+Herbert's lips as if to conceal his serious mood. "Those things depend
+on how you feel and what has started your thinking apparatus to working.
+I walked out of a kraal in Australia one summer's night when the
+home-hunger was on me and never stopped until I reached Sydney--the last
+hundred miles barefoot. You must have known about it, for I met you
+right after"--and he turned to The Engineer, who nodded in an amused
+way. "That was before we struck Borneo, if I remember?"
+
+"Why barefooted, Herbert?" asked Louis, hitching his chair the closer.
+
+"Because the soles and heels were gone and the uppers were all that were
+left."
+
+"Tell them about it, Herbert," remarked The Engineer with a smile,
+pulling away at his pipe.
+
+"Oh, if you would, Monsieur Herbert! I tried to tell Monsieur High-Muck
+about it the night you arrived, but Monsieur Louis' horn put it out of
+my head. It is better that he hears it from you"--and the old man's lip
+quivered, his face lighting up with admiration. Herbert was his
+high-priest in matters of this kind.
+
+"There is really nothing to tell," returned Herbert. "I was tending
+cattle for a herdsman at the time up in the hills--I and a friend of
+mine. We had both run away from our ships and were trying the rolling
+country for a change, when one of those irresistible, overwhelming
+attacks of homesickness seized me, and without caring a picayune what
+became of me, I turned short on my tracks and struck out for the coast.
+A man does that sort of thing sometimes. I had no money and only the
+clothes on my back, but I knew the railroad was some forty miles away,
+and that when I reached it I could work my passage into civilization and
+from there on to London.
+
+"The weather was warm and I slept in a cow shack when I found one, and
+in the bushes when they got scarce. Finally I reached the railroad. I
+had never tried stealing a ride, sleeping on the trucks, hiding in
+freight cars, and being put off time and again until the next town was
+reached--I had never tried it because it had never been necessary, and
+then I hated that sort of thing. But I had no objection to asking for a
+lift, telling the agent or conductor the whole story, and I did it
+regularly at every station I passed on foot, only to get the customary
+oath or jeering laugh. After I had walked about sixty miles I came upon
+a water station known as Merton, with a goods train standing by. This
+time I asked for a ride on the tender. The engineer met my request with
+a vacant stare--never taking his pipe from his mouth. The fireman was a
+different sort of man. He not only listened to my story, but handed me
+part of the contents of his dinner pail wrapped up in a newspaper--which
+I was glad to get, and told him so. Before the train had gone fifty
+yards she was side-tracked for orders--which gave me another chance to
+get at the fireman. 'I may lose my job if I do,' he said, 'but I've been
+up against it myself; come around a little later; it'll be dark soon
+and something may turn up.'
+
+"Something did turn up. While the engineer was oiling under his engine I
+got a wink from the fireman, climbed on the tender, crept beneath a
+tarpaulin, and rooted down in the coal. There, tired out, I fell asleep.
+I was awakened by the whistle of the locomotive, and then came the slow
+wheeze of the cylinder head, and we were off. Sleeping on a hard plank
+under a car going thirty miles an hour is a spring mattress to lying in
+a pile of coal with lumps as big as your head grinding into your back.
+Now and then the fireman--not my particular friend, but a man who had
+replaced him as I discovered when we whizzed past the light of a
+station--would ram his shovel within reach of my ribs--just missing me.
+But I didn't mind--every mile meant that much nearer home and less
+tramping in the heat and dust to get there. If I could manage to keep
+hidden until we reached Sydney I should gain one hundred--maybe two
+hundred--miles before morning.
+
+"About midnight we came to a halt, followed by a lot of backing and
+filling--shunting here and there. The safety-valve was thrown wide
+open, or the exhaust, or something else, and suddenly the steam went out
+of her. Then came a dead silence--not a sound of any kind. Sore as I
+was--and every bone in my body ached--I wrenched myself loose, lifted
+the edge of the tarpaulin, and peeped out. The engine and tender were
+backed up against a building which looked like a round-house; not a soul
+was in sight. I slid to the ground and began to peer around. After a
+moment I caught the swing of a lantern and heard the steps of a man. It
+was a watchman going his rounds.
+
+"'Warm night,' he hollered when he came abreast of me. He evidently took
+me for a fireman, and I didn't blame him, for I was black as
+soot--clothes, face, hands, and hair.
+
+"'Yes,' I said, and stopped. It wouldn't do to undeceive him. Then I
+remembered the name of the station where I had boarded the tender. 'Been
+hot all the way from Merton. How far is that from Sydney?'
+
+"'Oh, a devil of a way!' He lifted his lantern and held it to my face.
+'Say, you ain't no fireman--you're a hobo, ain't ye?'
+
+"I nodded.
+
+"'And you're p'inted for Sydney? Well, it serves ye right for stealin' a
+ride; you're eighty-two miles further away than when ye started. That
+locomotive is a special and got return orders.'"
+
+The Engineer threw back his head and roared.
+
+"Yes, that's it, Herbert. I remember just how you looked when we ran
+against each other in Sydney."
+
+"Not barefooted, were you, old fellow?" remarked Louis in a sympathetic
+tone. "That was tough."
+
+"Barefooted? Not much!" exclaimed The Engineer. "He was quite a nob.
+That's why I made up to him; he was so much better dressed than I. And
+do you know, Herbert, I never heard a word of you from that time on
+until I struck one of your statues in the Royal Academy the other day. I
+never thought you'd turn out sculptor with medals and things. Thought
+you wanted more room to swing around in. This is something new, isn't
+it?"
+
+Herbert took his freshly lighted cigar from his mouth long enough to
+say, "About as new as your building dams. You were trying to get into
+the real-estate business when I bid you good-by in Sydney. Did it work?"
+
+"No, I got into jail instead."
+
+Everybody stared.
+
+"What was it all about?" asked Herbert, unperturbed.
+
+"Stealing!"
+
+"_Stealing!_" exclaimed Le Blanc.
+
+"Yes. That was about it," he answered. "Only this time I tried to bag a
+government and got locked up for my pains. One of your countrymen"--and
+he nodded toward me--"was mixed up in it. By the way"--and he rose from
+his chair--"you don't mind my taking this candle, do you?--I've been
+looking at something in that cabinet over there all the evening and I
+can't stand it any longer. I may be wrong, but they look awfully like
+it."
+
+He had reached the carved triptych, and was holding the flame of the
+candle within a few inches of a group of tiny figures--some of Lemois'
+most precious carvings--one the figure of a man with a gun.
+
+"Just as I thought. Prison work, isn't it, Monsieur Lemois? Yes--of
+course it is--I see the tool marks. Made of soup bones. Oh, very good
+indeed--best I have ever seen. Where did you get this?"
+
+"They were made by the French prisoners in Moscow," answered Lemois, who
+had also risen from his seat and was now standing beside him. "But how
+did you know?" he asked in astonishment. "Most of my visitors, if they
+look at them at all, think they are Chinese."
+
+"Because no one, if he can get ivory, makes a thing like this of
+bone"--and he held it up to our gaze--"and everybody out of jail who has
+this skill _can_ get ivory. I've made a lot myself--never as fine as
+these--this man must have been an expert. I used to keep from going
+crazy by doing this sort of thing--that and the old dodge of taming
+fleas so they'd eat out of my hand. What a pile of good stuff you have
+here--regular museum"--and with a searching, comprehensive glance he
+replaced the candle and regained his chair.
+
+I bent forward and touched his elbow.
+
+"We've entertained all sorts of people here," I said with a laugh, "but
+I think this is the first time we have ever had an out-and-out
+ticket-of-leave man. Do you mind telling us how it happened?"
+
+"No; but it wouldn't interest you. Just one of those fool scrapes a
+fellow gets into when he is chucked out neck and heels into the world."
+
+Brierley drew his chair closer--so did Louis and Le Blanc.
+
+Herbert glanced toward his friend. "Let them have it, old man. We
+promise not to set the dogs on you."
+
+"Thanks. But it wouldn't be the first time. Well, all right if it won't
+bore you. Now let me think"--and he lifted his weather-bronzed face,
+made richer by the glow of the candles overhead, and began scratching
+his grizzly beard with his forefinger.
+
+"It was after you left Borneo, Herbert, that I came across two
+fellows--Englishmen--who told me of some new gold diggings on the west
+coast, and I was fool enough to join them, working my passage on one of
+the home-going tramp steamers. Well, we thrashed about for six months
+and landed on one of the small islands in the Caribbean Sea--the name of
+which I forget--where we left the ship and hid until she disappeared.
+The gold fever was well out of us by that time, and, besides, I had
+gotten tired of scrubbing decks and my two fellow tramps of washing
+dishes. The port was a regular coaling station and some other craft
+would come along; if not, we could stay where we were. The climate was
+warm, bananas were cheap and plenty; we were entirely fit, and--like
+many another lot of young chaps out for a lark--did not care a tinker's
+continental what happened. That, if you think about it, is the
+high-water mark of happiness--to be perfectly well, strong, twenty-five
+years of age, and ready for anything that bobs up.
+
+"This time it was a small schooner with a crew of about one hundred men,
+instead of the customary ten or twelve. A third of them came ashore,
+bought provisions and water, and were about to shove off to the vessel
+again, when one of my comrades recognized the mate as an old friend. He
+offered to take us with them, and in half an hour we had gathered
+together our duds and had pushed off with the others. The following week
+we ran into a sheltered cove, where we began landing our cargo. Then it
+all came out: we were loaded to the scuppers with old muskets in cases,
+some thousand rounds of ammunition, and two small, muzzle-loading
+field-guns. There was a revolution in Boccador--one of the small South
+American republics--they have them every year or so--and we were part of
+the insurgent navy! If we were caught we were shot; if we got a new flag
+on top of Government House in the capital of San Josepho, we would have
+a plantation apiece and negroes enough to run it. It sounded pleasant,
+didn't it?
+
+"I'm not going into all the details--it's the story of the jail you
+want, not the revolution. Well, we had two weeks of tramping up to our
+waists in the swamps; three days of fighting, in which one of the
+field-guns blew off its nose, killing the mate; and the next thing I
+knew, my two companions and I were looking down the muzzles of a dozen
+rifles held within three feet of our heads. That ended it and we were
+marched into town and locked up in the common jail--and rightly named, I
+tell you, for a filthier or more deadly hole I never got into. It was a
+square, two-story building--all four sides to the town--with a patio, or
+court, in the centre. Outside was a line of sentries and inside were
+more sentries and a couple of big dogs.
+
+"They put us on the ground floor with a murderous-looking chap for
+guard. As the place was packed with prisoners, we three were shoved into
+one cell. Every morning at daylight one or two--once six--poor devils
+were led out; the big gate was opened, and then there would come a
+rattling of rifle-shots, and when the six came back they were on planks
+with sheets over them. All this we could see by standing on each other's
+shoulders and looking over the grating.
+
+"Our turn came the morning of the seventh day. The door was unlocked and
+we were ordered to fall in. But we didn't go through the big outer gate;
+we were led to a door across the yard and into a bare room where another
+murderous-looking chap, in a dirty uniform with shoulder-straps and a
+sword, sat at a table. On either side of him were two more ruffians, one
+with an inkstand. Not a man Friday of them spoke anything but Spanish.
+When we were pushed in front of his highness in shoulder-straps, he
+looked us over keenly and began whispering to the man with the ink. Then
+to my surprise--and before either I or my two friends--one of whom spoke
+a little Spanish--could utter a protest--right-about-face, and we were
+hustled back into our cell and locked up again.
+
+"For three days and nights the usual jail things happened: We had two
+meals a day--bone soup and a hunk of mouldy bread; the guard tramped in
+the dust outside our cell, while at night another took his place--the
+dogs prowling or sniffing at the crack of our door; at daylight the
+rifle-shots!
+
+"We had started to work for our release by that time, and by persistent
+begging got a sheet of paper, and, with the help of my companion, I
+wrote a letter to 'his Excellenza,' as the guard called his nibs,
+informing him that we were English tourists who had taken passage for
+sheer love of adventure, and demanding that our case be brought to the
+attention of the English consul.
+
+"One week passed and then a second before we were informed by the head
+jailer that there _was_ no English consul, and that if there had been it
+would have made no difference, as we had been taken with arms in our
+hands, and that but for some inquiries put on foot by his Excellenza we
+would have been shot long ago.
+
+"So the hours and days dragged on and we had about started in to make
+our wills when, one morning after our slop coffee had been pushed in to
+us, the bolts were slid back and the nattiest-looking young fellow you
+ever laid your eyes on stepped inside. He was about twenty-four, was
+dressed from head to foot in a suit of white duck, and looked as if he
+had just cleared the deck of the royal yacht. With him were two
+slovenly looking functionaries, one of whom carried a note-book. The
+young fellow eyed us all three, sizing us up with the air of a man
+accustomed to that sort of thing, and said with an air of authority:
+
+"'I am the American consul. Your communication was brought to me because
+your government is not represented here. You're in a bad fix, but I'll
+help you out if I can. Now tell me all about it.'
+
+"Tell him about it! Why, we nearly fell on his neck, and before he left
+he had our whole story in his head and a lot of our letters and cards in
+his clothes. They might be of use, he said, in proving that we had not,
+by any means, started out to undermine his Supreme Highness's
+government. But that under fear of death--and he winked meaningly--we
+had been compelled to take up arms against the most illustrious republic
+of Boccador.
+
+"Nine long, weary months passed after this and not another human being
+crossed our threshold except the head jailer. When we bombarded him with
+questions about the fellow who had passed himself off as the American
+consul, and who had stolen our letters and had never shown up
+since--damn him!--we had all learned to speak a little Spanish by this
+time--he pretended not to hear and, his inspection over, locked the door
+behind him. Pretty soon we fell into the ways of all disheartened
+prisoners--each man following the bent of his nature. I warded off
+sickening despair by carving with my pocket-knife--which they let me
+keep as being too small to do them any harm--little figures out of the
+beef bones I found in my soup. That's how I came to recognize those in
+Monsieur Lemois' cabinet. When I was lucky enough to get hold of a
+knuckle bone with a rounded knob at the end, I made a friar with a bald
+head, the smooth knob answering for his pate. Other bones were turned
+into grotesque figures of men, women, and animals. These I gave to the
+sentry, who sent them to his children. Often he brought me small pieces
+of calico and I made dresses and trousers for them. When I got tired of
+that I trained two fleas--and they were plenty--to play leap-frog up my
+arm.
+
+"When these little diversions failed to drive dull care away, we passed
+the time cursing the gentleman in the immaculate cotton ducks. He had
+either lied to us, or was dead, or had been transferred--anyway, he had
+gone back on us and left us to rot in jail.
+
+"At last we determined to escape.
+
+"We had made that same resolution every day for months and had planned
+out half a dozen schemes, some of which might have been successful but
+for two difficulties--the double guard on the outside of the building
+and the two dogs in the jail-yard. There was now but one chance of
+success. We would dig a hole in the dirt floor clear under the wall,
+watch for a stormy night, and make a break for the town and the coast,
+where we might be able to signal some trading craft and so get away.
+
+"So we started to digging, beginning on the side opposite the door--our
+utensils being a sharpened bone, my pocket-knife, and a bayonet which
+had dropped from a sentry's scabbard, and which I managed to pick up on
+our exercise walk in the court-yard and conceal in the straw on which we
+slept. This straw too helped hide the dirt. We rammed the wisps up into
+each end of the pallets, put the excavated earth in the middle with a
+dusting of loose straw over it, and so hid our work from view. At the
+end of a month we had a hole under the wall large enough to wriggle in.
+I could see the daylight through the loose earth on the other side.
+Then we waited for a storm, the rainy season being on and thunder
+showers frequent. Two, three, four nights went by without a cloud; then
+it began to pour. We determined to try it just before the guards were
+changed. This was at 2 A. M. by the church clock. The outgoing sentry
+would be tired then and the new man not thoroughly awake.
+
+"When the hour came I crawled in head first, worked myself to the end of
+the tunnel, and, putting out my hands to break away the remaining clods
+of earth, came bump up against a piece of heavy board. There I lay
+trembling. The board could never have rolled down from anywhere, nor
+could our opening have been detected from the outside.
+
+"Somebody had placed it there on purpose!
+
+"I wriggled back feet foremost, whispered in my companions' ears what I
+had found, and we all three sat up the rest of the night wondering what
+the devil it meant. When morning broke, the head jailer came in. I
+noticed instantly a change in his manner. Instead of a few perfunctory
+questions, he gave a cursory glance around the cell, his eyes resting on
+the pile of straw, and turning short on his heel left without a word.
+
+"There was no question now but we were suspected, so we held a council
+of war and determined to keep quiet--at least for some nights. What was
+up we didn't know, but at all events it was best to go slow. So we
+stuffed most of the dirt back in the hole and waited--our ears open to
+every sound, our teeth chattering. You get pretty nervous in
+jail--especially when you have about made up your mind that the next
+hour is your last.
+
+"We didn't wait long.
+
+"That afternoon the bolts were slid back and the head jailer, who had
+never before appeared at that hour, stood in the doorway.
+
+"I thought right away that it was all over with us; that we were
+discovered and that we were either to be shot or moved to another
+cell--I really didn't care which, for instant death could not be much
+worse than lingering in a South American prison until we were
+gray-bearded and forgotten.
+
+"The jailer stepped inside, half closed the door, and made this
+announcement:
+
+"'The American consul is outside and wants to see you.' Then he stepped
+out, leaving the door open.
+
+"They have a way of coaxing you to escape down in that country and then
+filling you full of lead. It's justifiable murder when sometimes a trial
+and conviction might raise unpleasant international questions. We all
+three looked at each other and instantly decided not to swallow the
+bait. The American consul dodge had been tried when they wanted to get
+legal possession of our letters. So it isn't surprising that we didn't
+believe him. Then, to my astonishment, I caught through the crack of the
+door a suit of white duck, and the natty young man stepped in.
+
+"'I've been down the coast,' he began as chipper as if he was
+apologizing for not having called after we had invited him to dinner,
+'or I should have been here before. I have a permit from the governor to
+come as often as I like, or as often as you would be glad to see me. I
+must tell you, however, that I am pledged to keep faith with the
+authorities, and it is their confidence in me which has gained me this
+privilege. I can bring you nothing to eat or drink, no tools or
+knickknacks or any bodily comforts. I can only bring myself. This I have
+told his Excellenza, who has his orders, and who understands.' Then he
+turned to the jailer. 'Get me a stool and I will stay a while with
+them. You can leave the door open; I will be responsible that none of
+them attempts to escape.'
+
+"When the jailer was out of hearing, he passed around cigarettes,
+lighted his own, and started in to tell us the news of the day: what was
+going on in town and country; how the revolution had been put down; how
+many insurgents had been shot, exiled, or sent to horrible
+prisons--worse than ours, which, he informed us, was really only a sort
+of police station and unsafe except for the dogs and the guards, who
+were picked men and who had never been known to neglect their duty. Only
+the year before five men had attempted to dig their way out and had been
+shot as they were climbing the outside wall--rather dispiriting talk for
+us, to say the least, but it was talk, and that was what we hungered
+for, especially as his spirits never flagged.
+
+"All this was more or less entertaining, and he would have had our
+entire confidence but for two things which followed, and which we could
+not understand. One was that he always chose rainy or stormy nights for
+his subsequent visits, dropping in on us at all hours, when we least
+expected him; and the other that he never referred to what was being
+done for our release. That he would not discuss.
+
+"By and by we began to grow uneasy and suspect him. One of the men
+insisted that he was too damned polite to be honest, and that the
+American consul yarn was a put-up job. Anyway, he was getting tired of
+it all. It would take him but half an hour to dig the loose earth out of
+the tunnel, and he was going to begin right away if he went at it alone.
+
+"We at once fell to, working like beavers, digging with everything we
+had--our fingers bleeding--until we had cleaned out the dirt to the
+plank. Then we crawled back and waited for the consul's customary visit.
+After that was over--no matter how long it lasted--we'd make the dash.
+
+"He came on the minute; and this time, to our intense disgust, brought
+his guitar--said he thought we might like a little music--and without so
+much as by-your-leave opened up with negro melodies and native songs,
+the instrument resting in the hollow of his knee, one leg crooked over
+the other, a cigarette stuck tight to his lower lip.
+
+"Hour after hour went by and still he sang on--French, German,
+Italian--anything and everything--rolling out the songs as if we had
+been so many classmates at a college supper. Charming, of course, had we
+not had a hole behind us and freedom within sight.
+
+"Hints, yawns, even blunt proposals to let us go to bed, had no effect.
+Further than these we dared not go. We were afraid to turn him out
+bodily lest we should be suspected of trying to get rid of him for a
+purpose. To have let him into the secret was also out of the question.
+Better wait until he was gone.
+
+"Would you believe it, he never left until broad daybreak, his
+confounded irritating cheerfulness keeping up to the last, even to his
+tossing his fingers to us in good-by, quite as he might have done to his
+sweetheart.
+
+"At eight o'clock on that same morning, not more than two hours after he
+had left, there came a bang at the door with a sword-hilt, the bolts
+were drawn, and we were marched into the court-yard between five
+soldiers in command of a sergeant. Then came the orders to fall in, and
+we were pushed into the same room where, nearly a year before, we had
+been examined by the ruffian in shoulder-straps and sent back to our
+cell.
+
+"And here I must say that, for the first time since our capture, I lost
+all hope. Five men for three of us, and two of the cartridges blank!
+
+"The squad closed in and we were lined up in front of a table before
+another black-haired, greasy, villanous-looking reptile who read the
+death-warrant, as near as I could make out--he spoke so fast. Then he
+rose from his seat, bowed stiffly, and left the room. Next the sergeant
+saluted us, ordered his men to fall in, and left the room. Then the
+jailer stepped forward, shook our hands all around, and left the room.
+
+"We were free!
+
+"Outside, in the broad glare of the scorching sun, his boyish face in a
+broad grin, stood the consul, looking as if he had just stepped out of a
+bandbox.
+
+"'I am sorry you found me such a bore last night,' he said, gay and
+debonair as an old beau at a wedding, 'but there was nothing else to do.
+If I'd gone home earlier and let you crawl out of that hole, you would
+have been shot to a dead certainty. I knew a month ago you were at work
+on it, and when it was nearly finished I got permission to drop in on
+you. The plank that you ran up against I had put there with the help of
+the jailer. It was meant to keep you quiet until my mail got in. I was
+helpless, of course, to assist you until it did, being my government's
+representative. It arrived yesterday, informing me that our State
+Department has taken up your cases with your government and has entered
+a formal protest. Now all of you come over to the consulate, and let me
+see what I can do to fix you out with some clothes and things.
+
+"'After that we'll have breakfast.'"
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+IN WHICH THE HABITS OF CERTAIN GHOSTS, GOBLINS, BANDITS, AND OTHER
+OBJECTIONABLE PERSONS ARE DULY SET FORTH
+
+
+The Engineer's story whetted every one's appetite for more. Lemois,
+hoping to further inspire him, left his chair, crossed the room, and
+began searching through the old fifteenth-century triptych to find some
+object of interest which would start him to talking again as
+entertainingly as had the carved soup bones from the Moscow prison. When
+he reoccupied his seat he held in his hand a small statuette in
+terra-cotta. This he placed on the table where the light fell full upon
+it.
+
+"You overlooked this, I am afraid," he said, addressing The Engineer.
+"It is one of the most precious things I own. It is a portrait of Madame
+de Rabutin-Chantal, the grandmother of Madame de Sévigné." The Sévigné
+family were a favorite topic with the old gentleman, and anything
+pertaining to them of peculiar interest to him. "You will note, I am
+sure, Monsieur Herbert, the marvellous carving especially in the dress
+and about the neck."
+
+[Illustration: Lemois crossed the room and began searching through the
+old fifteenth-century triptych]
+
+Before Herbert could answer, Louis craned his head and a disgusted look
+overspread his face. "I hope," he said, "she didn't look like that,
+Lemois--squatty old party with a snub nose."
+
+Herbert, ignoring Louis' aside, reached over and took the little image
+in his fingers.
+
+"Squatty or not, Louis, it is an exquisite bit--modern Tanagra, really.
+Seventeenth century, isn't it, Lemois?"
+
+Lemois nodded. If he had heard Louis' remark he gave no sign of the
+fact.
+
+"Yes," continued Herbert, "and wonderfully modelled. We can't do these
+things now--not in this way"--and he passed it to The Engineer, who
+turned it upsidedown, as if it were a teacup, glanced at the bottom in
+search of its mark, and without a word handed it back.
+
+Lemois replaced the precious object in the triptych, his mind still
+filled with his favorite topic, and, turning suddenly, wheeled a richly
+upholstered chair from a far corner into the light.
+
+"And here is another relic of Madame Sévigné, monsieur. This is
+madame's own chair; the one she always used when she stopped here,
+sometimes for days at a time, on her way to her country-seat, Les
+Rochers. The room which she occupied, and in which she wrote many of her
+famous letters, is just over our heads. If monsieur will shift his seat
+a little he can see the very spot in which she sat."
+
+But The Engineer neither shifted his seat nor rose to the bait. None of
+the small things of past ages appealed to him. Even mummies and the
+spoil of coffins three thousand years old--and he had inspected many of
+them--failed to stir him. It was what was built over them, and the
+brains and power that hoisted the stones into place, as well as the
+forces of wind and water--the song of the creaking crane--those were the
+things that thrilled him. That Herbert, after his career in the open,
+had contented himself with a few tools and a mass of clay was what had
+most surprised him when he came upon his statues in the Royal Academy.
+
+So he kept silent until what Louis called the "bric-à-brac moment" had
+passed--such discussion often occurring whenever Lemois felt he had a
+new audience. Gradually the talk drifted into other channels. Mistaken
+identity and the injustice of convictions on circumstantial evidence
+were gone into, The Engineer recalling some of his own errors in dealing
+with his men in Egypt. At this Le Blanc, wandering slightly from the
+main topic, gave an account of a mysterious woman in white who on
+certain nights when the moon was bright used to descend the wide
+staircase of a French château which he often visited, the apparition
+being the ghost of a beautiful countess who had been walled up somewhere
+below stairs by a jealous husband, and who took this mode of publishing
+her wrongs to the world. Le Blanc had seen her himself, first at the
+head of the great staircase and then as she crept slowly down the steps
+and disappeared through the solid wall to the left of the baronial
+fireplace. His hostess, who affected not to believe in such uncanny
+mysteries, tried to persuade him it was merely a shaft of moonlight
+stencilled on the white wall, but Le Blanc scouted the explanation and
+was ready to affirm on his word of honor that she looked at him out of
+her great, round, beseeching eyes, and would, he felt assured, have
+spoken to him had not one of the servants opened a door at the moment
+and so scared her away.
+
+I told of a somewhat similar experience in which a strong-minded
+Englishwoman, who laughed at ghosts and all other forms of unsavory back
+numbers, and a bishop of distinction were mixed up. There was a haunted
+room in the Devonshire country house that no one dared occupy. Another
+white figure prowled here, but whether man or woman, no one knew. That
+it was quite six feet high and broad in proportion, and had at various
+times scared the wits out of several nervous and semi-hysterical females
+who had passed the night between the sheets, all agreed. As it was the
+week-end, there were a goodly number of visitors and the house more or
+less crowded. When the haunted room was mentioned, even the bishop
+demurred--preferring to take the one across the corridor--he being a
+frequent visitor and knowing the lay of the land. The strong-minded
+young woman, however, jumped at the chance. She had all her life been
+hoping to see a ghost and, in order to allow his or her ghostship free
+entrance, had left the door of the haunted room unlocked when she got
+into bed. Despite her screwed-up courage she began to get nervous, and
+when she heard the door creak on its hinges and felt the cold, clammy
+air of the corridor on her cheek, she slid down off her pillow and
+ducked her head under the sheet. Then, to her horror, she felt the
+blanket slowly slipping away and, peering out, was frozen stiff to see a
+tall figure, dressed in white, standing at the foot of her bed, its
+long, skinny fingers clutching at the covering. Without even a groan she
+passed promptly into a fit of unconsciousness, known as a dead faint,
+where, with only a sheet over her, she lay until the cold woke her. She
+left by the early coach and believes to this day that she would have
+been strangled had she offered the slightest protest. Nor did her
+hostess's letter, covering a full explanation, satisfy her. "It was not
+a ghost you saw, my dear, but the bishop, who wanted an extra blanket,
+and who jumped out of bed in search of one, and into your room, thinking
+it empty. It's a mercy you didn't scream, for then the situation could
+never have been explained--better say nothing about it, or, if you
+do--stick to its being a ghost."
+
+While these and other yarns were sent spinning around the table, Louis
+had cut in, of course, with all sorts of asides--some whispers behind
+his hand to his next neighbor--some squibs of criticism exploded without
+rhyme or reason in our midst--all jolly and diverting, but nothing
+approaching a story short or long.
+
+My own and Herbert's efforts to draw him out into something sustained
+brought only--"Don't know any yarns" and "Never had anything happen to
+me"--followed at last by--"The only time I was ever in a tight place was
+when I was sketching in Perugia; then I jumped through the window and
+took most of the sash with me."
+
+"Let's have it!" we all cried in one breath. No one was so lively and
+entertaining once we got him started.
+
+"That's all there is to it. They had locked the door on me--three of
+them--and when the back of the chair gave out--I was swinging it around
+my head--I made a break for out-of-doors."
+
+"Oh!--go on--go on, Louis!" came the chorus.
+
+"No, I'd rather listen to you men. I haven't been tattooed in the South
+Seas, nor half murdered rounding Cape Horn. I'm just a plain painter,
+and my experience is limited, and my three Perugian villains were just
+three dirty Italians, one of whom was the landlord who had charged me
+five prices for my meal, and tried to hold me up until I paid it--only
+a vulgar brawl, don't you see? The landlord had his head in splints when
+I passed him the next day."
+
+"You were lucky to escape," said The Engineer. "They have a way of
+knifing you while you are asleep. I had a friend who just got out of one
+of those Italian dives with his life."
+
+"Yes, that was why I was swinging the chair. Hard for any three men to
+get at you if its legs and back hold out. Of course a fellow can sneak
+up behind you with a knife and then you--By Jingo!--come to think of it,
+I _can_ tell you a story! It just popped into my head. You have brought
+it all back"--and he nodded to our guest--"about the closest shave--so I
+thought at the time--that I ever had in my life. Your ghost stories
+don't hold a candle to it--stealthy assassin--intended victim sound
+asleep--miraculous escape!--Oh! a blood-curdler!--I was scared blue."
+
+Everybody shifted their chairs and craned their heads to watch Louis'
+face the better, overjoyed that he had at last wakened up. Louis scared
+blue--and he a match for any five men--meant a tale worth hearing.
+
+"It was the summer I made those studies of mountain brooks flowing out
+of the glaciers--you remember them, Herbert? Anyway, I was across the
+Swiss border, and in a ragged Italian town dumped down on the side of a
+hill as if it had been spilt from a cart--one of those sprawled-out
+towns with a white candle of a campanile overtopping the heap. The
+diligence, about sunup, had dropped me at the exact spot with my traps,
+and was hardly out of sight before I had started to work, and I kept it
+up all day, pegging away like mad, as I always do when a subject takes
+hold of me--and this particular mountain brook was choking the life out
+of me, with lots of deep greens and transparent browns all through it,
+and the creamy froth of a glass of beer floating on the top.
+
+"When the sun began to sink down behind the mountains I realized that it
+was about time to find a place to sleep. I was at work on a 40 x
+30--rather large for out-doors--and, as it would take me several days, I
+had arranged with a goatherd--who lived in a slant with stones enough on
+its roof to keep it from being blown into space--to let me store my wet
+canvas and my palette and box under its supports. I'd have bunked in
+with the goats if I'd had anything to cover me from the cold--and it
+gets pretty cold there at night. Then again I knew from experience that
+a goatherd's sour bread and raw onions were not filling at any price.
+What I really wanted was two rooms in some private house, or over a
+wine-shop or village store, with a good bed and a place where I could
+work in bad weather. I had found just such a place the summer before, on
+the Swiss side of the mountains, belonging to an old woman who kept a
+cheap grocery and who gave me for a franc a day her two upper rooms--and
+mighty comfortable rooms they were, and with a good north light. So I
+hung the wet canvas where the goats couldn't lick off my undertones,
+shouldered my knapsack, and started downhill to the village.
+
+"I found that the red-tiled houses followed a tangle of streets, no two
+of them straight, but all twisting in and out with an eye on the
+campanile, and so I struck into the crookedest, wormed my way around
+back stoops, water barrels, and stone walls with a ripening pumpkin here
+and there lolling over their edges, and reached the church porch just as
+the bell was ringing for vespers. When you want to get any information
+in an Italian village, you go to the priest, and if he is out, or busy,
+or checking off some poor devil's sins--and he has plenty of it to
+do--then hunt up the sacristan.
+
+"There must have been an extra load of peccadilloes on hand that night,
+for I didn't find his reverence, nor the sacristan, nor anybody
+connected with the church. What I did find was a chap squatting against
+one side of the door with a tray on his lap filled with little medals
+and rosaries--and a most picturesque-looking chap he was. His feet were
+tied up in raw hides; his head bound in a red cotton handkerchief, over
+which was smashed a broad-brimmed sombrero; his waist was gripped with
+another to match; his lank body squeezed into a shrunken blue jacket,
+and his shambly legs wobbled about in yellow breeches. The sombrero
+shaded two cunning, monkey eyes, a hooked nose, a wavering mouth, and a
+beard a week old. It was his smile, though, that tickled my funny-bone,
+and this happened when he held up the tray for my inspection--one of
+those creepy, oily smiles that spread slowly over his dirty, soapy face,
+like the swirl of oil and turpentine which floats over a basin of suds
+when you wash your brushes.
+
+"Not a very inviting person;--a loafer, a lazzaroni, a dead-beat of a
+dago, really--and yet my heart warmed to him all the same when he
+answered me with enough French sandwiched between his 'o's' and 'i's' to
+help out my bad Italian. What finally trickled from his wrinkled lips
+was the disappointing announcement that no hostelry at all worthy of the
+Distinguished Signore existed in the village, nor was there money enough
+in the place for any one of the inhabitants to have a surplus of
+anything--rooms especially--but there was--here the oily smile overran
+the soap-suddy face--a most excellent casino kept by an equally
+excellent citizen where travellers were wont to stay overnight; that it
+was up a back street--they were all 'back' so far as I had seen--and
+that, if the Distinguished Signore would permit, he would curtail the
+sale of his religious relics long enough to conduct his D. S. to the
+very door.
+
+"So we started, the vendor of 'helps to piety' ahead and I following
+behind, my knapsack over my shoulder. I soon discovered that if the
+casino was up a back street he was going a long way round to reach it.
+First he dived into an alley behind the mouldy, plaster-pock-marked
+church--the candle-stick of the campanile--ducked under an
+archway--'_sotto portico_,' he called it--opened out into a field,
+struck across a little bridge into another street--hardly a soul about,
+nothing alive--nothing except dogs and children--all of which he
+explained was a short cut. For some time his dodging made no impression
+on me; then the way he rounded the corners and hugged the shadowed side
+of the street, away from the few dim lamps, set me to wondering as to
+his intentions. What the devil did he mean by picking out these blind
+alleys? He must have seen that I was no tenderfoot or tourist who had
+lost his way.
+
+"With this I began to fix certain landmarks in my memory in case I had
+to make my way back alone. There was no question now in my mind as to
+the town's character. Half the murders and hold-ups in the large cities
+are concocted in these villages, and this had rascality stamped all over
+it. Every corner I turned looked more forbidding than the last--every
+street seemed to end in a trap--the kind of street a scene-painter tries
+to produce when he has a murder up a back alley to provide for the third
+act. And crooked!--well, the tracks of a bunch of fishworms crawling
+out from under a brick were straight compared to it. When I at last
+protested--for I was getting ravenous and I must say a trifle
+uneasy--the beggar bowed low enough for me to see the tail of his jacket
+over his sombrero, and gave as a reason that any other route would have
+greatly fatigued the signore, all of which he must have known was a lie.
+The fact was that if I had known how to get out of the tangle, I would
+have lifted him by the scruff of his neck and the slack of his trousers
+and dropped him into the first convenient hole.
+
+"When he did come to a halt I found myself before a low two-story ruin
+of a house--almost the last house in the village, and on the opposite
+edge from that which I had entered on my way to the church. It was
+evidently a common road house, the customary portico covered with
+grape-vines and a square room on the ground floor, containing one or
+more tables. In the rear, so I discovered later, was a dreary yard
+corralling a few scraggly trees--one overhanging a slanting shed under
+which the cooking was done--and below this tree an assortment of chairs
+and tables under an arbor, where a bottle of wine and a bit of cheese
+or bunch of grapes were served when the sun was hot.
+
+"It was now quite dark, and my guide had some difficulty in getting his
+fingers on the latch of the garden gate. When it swung open I followed
+up a short path and found myself in a square room which was lighted by a
+single lamp. Under this sat another oily Italian, in his shirt-sleeves,
+eating from an earthen bowl. Not a picturesque-looking chap at all, but
+a fat, swarthy lump of a man with small, restless eyes, stub nose, and
+flabby lips--one of those fellows you think is fast asleep until you
+catch him studying you from under his eyebrows, and begin to look out
+for his knife. The only other occupant of the room was a woman who was
+filling his glass from a straw-covered flask--a thin, flat-bosomed woman
+who stooped when she walked, and who sneaked a glance at me now and then
+from one side of her nose. I might better have slept in the slant and
+bunked in with the goats.
+
+"My guide bent down and whispered a word in his ear; the man jumped
+up--looked me all over--a boring, sizing-up look--like a farmer guessing
+the weight of a steer--bowed grandiloquently, and with an upward
+flourish of his hand put his house, his fortune, and his future
+happiness at my feet. There were bread and wine, and cheese and grapes;
+and there were also eggs, and it might be a slice of pork. As for
+chicken--he would regret to his dying day that none was within his
+reach. Would I take my repast in the house at the adjoining table, or
+would I have a lamp lighted in the arbor and eat under the trees?
+
+"I preferred the lamp, of course, under the trees; picked up the flask
+of wine, poured out a glass for my guide, which he drank at a gulp, and
+handed him a franc for his trouble. The woman gave a sidelong glance at
+the coin and followed him out into the garden; there the two stood
+whispering. On her return, while she passed close enough to me to graze
+my arm, she never once raised her eyes, but kept her face averted until
+she had hidden herself in the kitchen.
+
+"I had selected the garden for two reasons: I wanted the air and I
+wanted to know something more of my surroundings. What I saw--and I
+could see now the more clearly, for the moon had risen over the
+mountain--were two rear windows on the second floor, their sills level
+with the sloping shed, and a tree with its branches curved over its
+roof. This meant ventilation and a view of the mountains at
+sunrise--always a delight to me. It also meant an easy escape out the
+window, over the roof, and down the tree-trunk to the garden, and so on
+back to the goatherd if anything unusual should happen. That, however,
+could take care of itself. The sensible thing to do was to eat my
+supper, order my coffee to be ready at six o'clock, go to bed in one of
+these rear rooms, and get back to my work before the heat became
+intense.
+
+"All this was carried out--that is, the first part of it. I had the rear
+room, the one I had picked out for myself, not by my choice but by his,
+the landlord selecting it for me; it would be cooler, he said, and then
+I could sleep with my window open, free from the dust which sometimes
+blew in the front windows when the wind rose--and it was rising now, as
+the signore could hear. Yes, I should be called at six, and my coffee
+would be ready--and 'may the good God watch over your slumbers, most
+Distinguished of Excellencies.'
+
+"This comforting information was imparted as I followed him up a
+break-neck stair and down a long, narrow corridor, ending in a small
+hall flanked by two bedroom doors. The first was mine--and so was the
+candle which he now placed in my hand--and 'will your Excellency be
+careful to see that it is properly blown out before your Excellency
+falls asleep?' and so I bade him good-night, pushed in the door, held
+the sputtering candle high above my head, and began to look around.
+
+"It wouldn't have filled your soul with joy. Had I not been tired out
+with my day's work I would have called him back, read the riot act, and
+made him move in some comforts. The only things which could be
+considered furniture were a heavy oaken chest and a solid wooden bed--a
+box of a bed with a filling of feathers supporting two hard pillows. And
+that was every blessed thing the room contained except a toy pitcher and
+basin decorating the top of the chest; a white cotton curtain stretched
+across the lower sash of the single window; a nail for my towel, a row
+of wooden pegs for my clothes, and a square of looking-glass which once
+had the measles. Not a chair of any kind, no table, no wash-stand. This
+was a place in which to sleep, not sit nor idle in. Off with your
+clothes and into bed--and no growling.
+
+"I walked to the open window, pushed aside the cotton curtain, and
+looked out on the sloping shed and overhanging tree, and the garden
+below, all clear and distinct in the light of the moon. I could see now
+that the tree had either prematurely lost its leaves or was stone dead.
+The branches, too, were bent as if in pain.
+
+"The correct drawing of trees, especially of their limbs and twig ends,
+has always been a fad of mine, and the twistings of this old scrag were
+so unusual, and the tree itself so gnarled and ugly, that I let my
+imagination loose, wondering whether, like the villagers, it was
+suffering from some unconfessed sin, and whether fear of the future and
+the final bonfire, which overtakes most of us sooner or later, was not
+the cause of its writhings. With this I blew out the candle and crawled
+into bed, where I lay thinking over the events of the evening and
+laughing at myself for being such a first-class ass until I fell asleep.
+
+"How long I slept I do not know, but when I woke it was with a start,
+all my faculties about me. What I heard was the sound of steps on the
+shed outside my window--creaking, stealthy steps as of a man's weight
+bending the supports of the flimsy shed. I raised myself cautiously on
+my elbow and looked about me. The square of moonlight which had
+patterned the floor when I first entered the room was gone, although the
+moon was still shining. This showed me that I had slept some time. I
+noticed, too, that the wind had risen, although very little seemed to
+penetrate the apartment, the curtains only flopping gently in the
+draught.
+
+"I lay motionless, hardly breathing. Had I heard aright--or was it a
+dream? Again came the stealthy tread, and then _the shadow of a hand_
+crept across the curtain. This sent me sitting bolt upright in bed.
+There was no question now--some deviltry was in the air.
+
+"I slid from under the cover, dropped to the floor, flattened myself to
+the matting, worked my body to the window-sill, and stood listening. He
+must have heard me, for there came a sudden halt and a quick retreat.
+Then all was silent.
+
+"I waited for some minutes, reached up with one hand and gently lowered
+the sash a foot or more, leaving room enough for me to throw it up and
+spring out, but not room enough for him to slide in without giving me
+warning. If the brute tried it again I would paste myself to the wall
+next the sash where I could see him, and he not see me, and as he
+ducked his head to crawl in I'd hit him with all my might; that would
+put him to sleep long enough for me to dress, catch up my traps, and get
+away.
+
+"Again the step and the shadow. This time he stopped before he reached
+the window-sill. He had evidently noticed the difference in the height
+of the sash. Then followed a hurried retreating footstep on the roof. I
+craned my head an inch or more to see how big he was, but I was too
+late--he had evidently dropped to the garden below.
+
+"I remained glued to the window-jamb and waited. I'd watch now for his
+head when he pulled himself up on the roof. If it were the lumpy
+landlord, the best plan was to plant the flat of my boot in the pit of
+his stomach--that would double him up like a bent pillow. If it was the
+brigand with the rosaries, or some of his cut-throat friends, I would
+try something else. I had no question now that I had been enticed here
+for the express purpose of doing me up while I was asleep. The
+mysterious way in which I had been piloted proved it; so did my guide's
+evident anxiety to avoid being seen by any of the inhabitants. Then
+there bobbed up in my mind the cool, sizing-up glance of the landlord
+as he looked me over. This clinched my suspicions. I was in for a scrap
+and a lively one. If there were two of them, I'd give them both barrels
+straight from the shoulder; if there were three or more, I'd fight my
+way out with a chair, as I had done at Perugia.
+
+"With this I came to a sudden halt and moved to the middle of the room.
+There I stood, straining my eyes in the dim light, hoping to find
+something with which to brain the gang should they come in a bunch. I
+took hold of the bed and shook it--the posts and back were as solid as a
+cart body. The chest was worse--neither of them could be whirled around
+my head as a club, as I had used the chair at Perugia. Next I tried the
+door, and found it without lock or bolt--in fact it swung open as
+noiselessly and easily as if it had been greased. The toy pitcher and
+basin came next--too small even to throw at a cat. It was a case, then,
+of bare fists and the devil take the hindmost.
+
+"With this clear in my mind, I laid the pitcher on the floor within an
+inch of the door, so that the edge would strike it if opened, and again
+raised the window high enough for me to jump through. I could, of
+course, have dragged the chest across the door, as a girl would have
+done, put the basin and pitcher on top, and shoved the head-board of the
+bed against the window-sash--but this I was ashamed to do; and then,
+again, the whole thing might be a blooming farce--one I would laugh over
+in the morning.
+
+"The question now arose whether I should get into my clothes, walk
+boldly down the corridor, and make a break through the kitchen and
+square room, with the risk of being stabbed in the garden, or whether I
+should stick it out until morning. Inside, I could choose my fighting
+ground; outside was a different thing. Then, again, daylight was not far
+off.
+
+"I decided to hold the fort; slipped into my clothes--all but my
+coat--packed my knapsack, laid the basin within striking distance of the
+pitcher, placed the candle and matches close to my hand, stretched
+myself on the bed, and, strange as it may seem to you, again dropped off
+to sleep; only to find myself again sitting bolt upright in bed, my
+heart pounding away like a trip-hammer, my ears wide open.
+
+"More footsteps!--this time in the corridor. I slid out of bed, crept to
+the door, and pulled myself together. When the pitcher and basin came
+together with a clink, he would get it behind the ear--all at
+once--ker-chunk! He was so close now that I heard his fingers feeling
+around in the dark for the knob. A steady, gentle push with his hand
+near the key-hole, and he could then steal in without waking me. Whether
+he smelt me or not I do not know, for I made no sound--not even with my
+breath--but he came to a dead halt, backed away, rose to his feet and
+tiptoed down the corridor.
+
+"That settled all sleep for the night, and it was just as well, for the
+day was breaking--first the gray, pallid light, then the yellow, and
+then the rose tint. Nothing like a sunrise to put a fellow's ghosts to
+flight. So I picked up the basin and pitcher, unhooked my towel, had a
+wash, finished dressing, leaned out of the window for a while watching
+the rising sun warm up the little snow peaks one after another, and,
+shouldering my trap, started along the corridor and so on downstairs.
+
+"The pot-bellied lump of a scoundrel was waiting for me in the square
+room. He gave me the same keen, scrutinizing look with which he had
+welcomed me the night before. This time it began with my hair and ended
+at my boots, which were still muddy from the tramp of the previous
+evening.
+
+"'I am sorry, your Excellency,' he said, 'but if you had left your shoes
+outside your door I could have polished them; I was afraid of disturbing
+you or I should have hunted for them inside.'"
+
+
+Louis, as he finished, settled his big shoulders back in the chair until
+it creaked with his weight, and ran his eye around the table waiting for
+the explosion which he knew would follow. All we could do was to stare
+helplessly in his face. Le Blanc, who hadn't drawn a full breath since
+the painter began, found his voice first.
+
+"And he didn't intend cutting your throat?" he roared indignantly.
+
+"No, of course not--I never said he did. I said I was scared blue, and I
+was--real indigo. Oh!--an awful night--hardly got an hour's sleep."
+
+"But what about the fellow on the shed, and his footsteps, and the
+shadow of the hand?" demanded Brierley, wholly disappointed at the
+outcome of the yarn.
+
+"There was no fellow, Brierley, and no footsteps." This came in mild,
+gentle tones, as if the hunter's credulity were something surprising.
+"I thought you understood. It was the scraping of the dead tree against
+the roof of the shed that made the creaking noise; the hand was the
+shadow cast by the end of a bunched-up branch swaying in the wind. The
+same thing occurred the next night and on every moonlight night for a
+week after--as long as I stayed."
+
+"And what became of the soap-suddy brigand with the rosaries?" inquired
+The Engineer calmly, looking at Louis over the bowl of his pipe, a queer
+smile playing around his lips.
+
+"Oh, a ripping good fellow," returned Louis in the same innocent,
+childlike tone--"a real comfort; best in the village outside the
+landlord and his wife, with whom I stayed two weeks. Brought me my
+luncheon every day and crawled up a breakneck hill to do it, and then
+kept on two miles to mail my letters."
+
+"Well, but Louis," I exclaimed, "what a mean, thin, fake of a yarn; no
+point, no plot--no nothing but a string of----"
+
+"Yes, High-Muck, quite true--no plot, no nothing; but it is as good as
+your bogus ghosts and shivering bishops. And then I always had my doubts
+about that bishop, High-Muck. I've heard you tell that story before, and
+it has always struck me as highly improper. I don't wonder the girl was
+scared to death and skipped the next morning. And the gay old bishop!
+Felt cold, did he?" and Louis threw back his head and laughed until the
+tears rolled down his cheeks.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+WHY MIGNON WENT TO MARKET
+
+
+It is market day at Dives. This means that it is Saturday. On Friday the
+market is at Cabourg, on Wednesday at Buezval, and on the other days at
+the several small towns within a radius of twenty miles.
+
+It means, too, that the street fronting the Inn is blocked up with a
+line of carts, little and big, their shafts in the gutter, the horses
+eating from troughs tied to the hind axle; that another line stretches
+its length along the narrow street on the kitchen side of the Inn which
+leads to the quaint Norman church, squeezing itself through a yet
+narrower street into a small open square, where it comes bump up against
+a huge hulk of a building, choked up on these market days with piles of
+vegetables, crates of chickens, boxes of apples, unruly pigs alive and
+squealing; patient, tired, little calves; geese, ducks--all squawking;
+chrysanthemums in pots spread out on the sidewalk; old brass, old iron;
+everything that goes to supply the needs of the white-capped women and
+wide-hatted men who crowd every square foot of standing room.
+
+Market day means, too, that Pierre is unusually busy; and so is Lemois,
+and so are Leà and our little Mignon. Long before any one of us were out
+of bed this morning, the court-yard was crowded with big red-faced
+Norman farmers and their fat wives, all talking at once over their
+coffee, each with half a glass of Calvados (Norman apple-jack) dumped
+into their cups. At noon, the market over, they were back again for
+their midday breakfast, and Pierre, who had been working since daylight
+without a mouthful to eat, then placed on a big table in one of the open
+kiosks a huge earthen crock, sizzling-hot, filled with tripe, bits of
+pork, and chicken--the whole seasoned with onions and giving out a most
+seductive and inviting smell when its earthenware cover was lifted.
+There were great loaves of brown bread, too, which Lemois himself cut
+and served to the guests, besides cold pork in slices and cabbage
+chopped into shreds. When each plate was full, and the knives and forks
+had begun to rattle, he went indoors for his most precious heirloom--the
+square cut-glass decanter with its stopper made of silver buttons cut
+from a peasant's jacket and soldered together--and after brimming each
+glass, seated himself and took his meal with the others, bowing them out
+when breakfast was over--hat in hand--as if they were ambassadors of a
+foreign court--gentleman and peasant, as he is--while they, full to
+their eyelids, stumbled up into their several carts, their women
+climbing in after.
+
+And a great day it was for an out-door meal or for anything else one's
+soul longed for--and they have these days in Normandy in October, when
+the fire is out in the Marmouset, the air a caress, and a hunger for the
+vanished summer comes over you. So soothing was the touch of the autumn
+air, and so lovely the tones of the autumn sky, that Louis hauled out a
+sketch-box from beneath a pile of canvases, and tucking one of them
+under his arm, disappeared through the big gate in the direction of the
+old church. Brierley took down his gun, and, calling Peter, strolled out
+of the court-yard promising to be back at luncheon, while Herbert, who
+had risen at dawn and walked to Houlgate to bid The Engineer good-by,
+dragged out an easy-chair from the "Gallerie," backed it up against the
+statue of the Great Louis, and under pretence of resting his legs,
+buried himself in a book, the warm sunshine full on the page.
+
+I, being left to my own devices, waited until the last cart with its
+well-fed load of Norman farmers had turned the corner of the Inn and
+quiet reigned again; and remembering that I was host, sought out our
+landlord and put the question squarely as to what objections, if any,
+he, the lord of the manor, had to our lunching out of doors too, and at
+the same table on which Pierre had placed the big crock and its
+attendant trimmings.
+
+"Of course, my dear Monsieur High-Muck, you shall all lunch in the
+court, but the menu shall be better adapted to your more gentle
+appetites than the one prepared for our departed guests. I am at this
+moment paying the penalty for my share of the indigestible mess--but
+then I could not hurt their feelings by refusing--and so I have a queer
+feeling here"--and he ironed his waistcoat with the flat of his hand,
+his eyes upraised as if in pain. "But let me think--what shall it be
+to-day? I have a fish which Mignon, who has just gone to the market,
+will bring back, because I could not go myself nor spare Leà. Those
+big-eating people came so early and stayed so late. After the fish we
+will have Poulet Vallèe D'auge, with stewed celery, and at last a Pêche
+Flambée--and it will be the last time, for the late peaches are about
+over. And now about the wine--will you pick it out or shall I? Ah!--I
+remember--only yesterday I found a few bottles of Moncontour Vouvray at
+the bottom of a shelf in my old wine-cellar. It will bring fresh courage
+to your hearts. When it does not do that, and you have only dull despair
+or thick headaches, it should be poured out on the ground"--having
+delivered which homily, the old man, with his eye on Coco asleep on his
+perch, sauntered slowly up the court in the direction of the
+wine-cellar, from which he emerged a few minutes later bearing two
+dust-encrusted bottles topped with yellow wax--a distinguishing mark
+which he himself had placed there some twenty years before and had
+forgotten.
+
+So while Herbert read on, only looking up now and then from his book,
+Leà and I set the table, stripping it of its rough, heavy dishes,
+swabbing it off with a clean, water-soaked towel--I did the swabbing and
+Leà held the basin--bringing from the Marmouset our linen and china,
+then dragging up the big wooden chairs, which were rain-proof and never
+housed.
+
+We missed Mignon, of course. Buying a fish, and the market but half a
+dozen blocks away, should not require a whole hour for its completion,
+especially since she had been told to hurry--more especially still,
+since Pierre's pot was on the boil awaiting its arrival, Louis and
+Brierley having returned hungry as bears. Indeed I had already started
+in to ask Lemois the plump question as to what detained our Bunch of
+Roses, when Leà's thin, sharp, fingers clutched my coat-sleeve, her eyes
+on Lemois. What she meant I dared not ask, but there was no doubt in my
+mind that it had to do with the love affair in which every man of us was
+mixed up as coconspirator--a conclusion which was instantly confirmed
+when I looked into her shrivelled face and caught the joyous, lantern
+flare behind her eyes.
+
+Waiting until we were out of hearing, Lemois having gone to the kitchen,
+she answered with a shake of her old head:
+
+"Mignon loiters because Gaston is well again."
+
+"But he has never been ill. That crack on his head did him a lot of
+good--hurt Monsieur Lemois, I fancy, more than it did Gaston--set him to
+thinking--maybe now it will come out all right."
+
+"No; it only made him the more obstinate; he has forbidden the boy the
+place."
+
+"And is that why you are so happy?"
+
+The shrewd, kindly eyes of the old woman looked into mine and then a
+sudden smile flung a myriad of wrinkles across her face.
+
+"I am happy, monsieur," she whispered as I followed her around the table
+with the box of knives and forks, "because things are getting brighter.
+Gaston has a stall now in the market where he can sell his fish himself,
+and where Mignon can see him once in a while. She is with him now. You
+know the hucksters paid him what they pleased, and sometimes, even when
+Gaston's catch was big, he made only a few francs some mornings. And the
+mother and he were obliged to take what they could get, for you cannot
+wait with fish when the weather is hot. To buy the stall and pay for it
+all at once was what troubled them, so it is a great day for
+Gaston--Monsieur Gaston Duprè now"--and her eyes twinkled. "Even if
+Monsieur Lemois holds out--and he may, after all--then there may be
+another way. Is it not so? Ah, we will see! She is very happy now. Only
+I am getting nervous; she stays so long I am afraid that Monsieur Lemois
+may find out," and she shot an anxious glance up the garden.
+
+"What did the stall cost, Leà?" I asked, flattening the knives beside
+the plates as I talked, my eye on the kitchen door so Lemois should not
+surprise us.
+
+"Oh, a great sum--one hundred and ten francs. Two knives here, if you
+please, monsieur."
+
+"Well, where did it come from--their savings?" obeying her directions as
+I spoke.
+
+"No--not his money nor his mother's; she could not spare so much. She
+must be buried some time, and there must always be money enough for
+that. All Gaston knows is that the chief of the market came to his house
+and left the receipt with the permit. It is for a year."
+
+"Well--somebody must have paid. Who was it?" I had finished with the
+knives and had begun on the forks and tablespoons.
+
+"Yes--there was somebody, perhaps it was madame la marquise?" and she
+turned quickly and looked into my eyes, an expression of shrewd inquiry
+adding a new set of wrinkles to her gentle face. "Maybe you know,
+monsieur?"
+
+"No, it's all news to me. I am glad for her sake, anyhow, whoever did
+it. Was it news to Mignon?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Why this morning when she went to market?"
+
+"Yes, of course it was news to her. I, myself, only knew it last night,
+and I wouldn't tell her; she would have betrayed herself in her joy. So
+when the market people stayed so long--and I did all I could to make
+them stay"--here her small bead eyes were pinched tight in merriment--"I
+said there was nothing for your dinner and we must have a fish and that
+Mignon might better go for it. Watch her when she returns: her face will
+tell you whether she has seen him or not. Now give me the box, monsieur,
+and thank you for helping me. Listen! There she comes; I hear her
+singing."
+
+And so did the whole court-yard, and she kept on singing, her basket on
+her arm, her face in full sunlight, until she espied Leà. Then down
+went the fish and away she flew, throwing her arms around the dear old
+woman's neck, not caring who saw her; hugging her one minute, kissing
+her seamed cheeks the next, chattering like a magpie all the time, her
+eyes flashing, her cheeks red as two roses.
+
+Only when Lemois appeared in the kitchen door and bent his steps toward
+us did her customary demureness return, and even then the joy in her
+heart was only stifled for the moment by a fear of his having overheard
+her song and of his wondering at the cause.
+
+And if the truth be told, he did come very near finding out when
+luncheon was served, and would have done so but for the fact that I
+upset Le Blanc's glass of Vouvray and followed up the warning with a
+punch below his fat waist-line when he began telling us how sorry he was
+for being late, he having made a wide détour to avoid the market carts,
+winding up with: "And oh, by the way, I met your little maid, Mignon, in
+the fish-market; she was having a beautiful time with a young fisherman
+who----"
+
+It was here the dig came in.
+
+"Ouch! What the devil, High-Muck, do you mean? Oh, I understand--yes, as
+I was saying"--here he stole a glance at Lemois--"I met Mignon in the
+market; she was buying a beautiful fish. I hope, Monsieur Lemois, we are
+to have it for dinner. Don't bother, Leà, about the spilt wine; just get
+me a fresh glass. And, Louis, do you mind letting go that crusting of
+cobwebs so I can get another taste of that nosegay?" and thus the day
+was saved.
+
+We broke loose, however, when Lemois was gone, and I told the whole
+story as Leà had given it, Louis, in his customary rôle of toast-master,
+rising in his seat and pledging the young couple, whose health and
+happiness we all drank, Brierley whistling the Wedding March to the
+accompaniment of a great clatter of knives and forks on the plates.
+
+In fact, the very air seemed so charged with uncontrollable exhilaration
+that Coco, the oldest and most knowing of birds--he is sixty-five and
+has seen more love-making from his perch in the dormer overlooking that
+same court-yard than all the chaperones who ever lived--suddenly broke
+out into screams of delight, ruffling his feathers, curling up his
+celery sprout of a topknot, his eyes following Mignon, his head cocked
+on one side, when she raced back and forth from Pierre's range to our
+big table. Even Tito, the scrap of a black kitten, who was never three
+feet away from Mignon's heels, dodged in and out of her swaying
+petticoats in mad chase after her restless feet, and would not be
+quieted until she stopped long enough to take him up in her arms for a
+moment's cuddling.
+
+Of none of all this, thank Heaven, did Lemois have the faintest glimmer
+of a suspicion. When on her return from market he had scolded her for
+being late, he had taken her silence only as proof that she thought she
+deserved it. When he would have broken out on her again, suddenly
+remembering that our coffee was likely to be delayed, Herbert, to whom I
+had whispered my discovery--diplomat as he was--begged him to delay the
+serving of it until it could be poured directly from the pot into our
+cups, as the air of the court would chill it. All of which, Heaven be
+thanked again, Mignon overheard, sending her flying back to the kitchen,
+her eyes aglow with the happiness of a secret that filled her heart to
+bursting.
+
+When she at last appeared with the coffee-pot, so contagious was her joy
+that our extended hands trembled as we held the tiny cups beneath her
+fingers. Somehow we had caught a little of her thrill. And it was all
+so evident and so marvellous and so inspiring that every man Jack of us,
+blighted old bachelors as we were, fell to wondering whether, after all,
+it would not have been better to have bent the neck to the yoke and had
+a running-mate beside us than to have continued our dreary trot in
+single harness.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+WITH A DISSERTATION ON ROUND PEGS AND SQUARE HOLES
+
+
+Work on the wrecked villa of madame la marquise was progressing with a
+vim. The Engineer, called in consultation, had with a comprehensive
+grasp of the situation brushed aside the architect's plan of shoring up
+one end of the structure at a time; had rigged a pair of skids made from
+some old abandoned timber found on the beach and with a common ship's
+windlass, a heavy hawser, and a "Heave ho, my hearties!"--to which every
+loose fisherman within reach lent a hand--had dragged the ruin up the
+hill and landed it intact on level ground some twenty feet back from its
+former site. This done--and it was accomplished in a day--the porch was
+straightened and the lopsided walls forced into place. With the
+exception of the collapsed chimney, the former residence of the
+distinguished lady was not such a wreck as had been supposed.
+
+Next followed the slicing off of the raw edge of the landslide, the
+building of a fence, and, later on, the preparation of a new garden.
+This last was to be madame's very own, and neither care nor cost was to
+be considered in its making. She could sleep in a garage--she had slept
+there since the catastrophe--and take her meals from the top of a barrel
+(which was also true), but a garden meant the very breath of her
+life--flowers she must have--flowers all the time, from the first crocus
+to the last October blossoms. Marc, now her abject slave, was then at
+Rouen arranging for their shipment. The daily news--such as twenty or
+more men at work, the chimney half finished, the fence begun, etc.,
+etc.--Le Blanc, who was constantly at the site, generally brought us at
+night, his report being received with the keenest zest, for the marquise
+was now counted as the most delightful of our coterie.
+
+His very latest and most important bulletin set us all to
+speculating;--the old garage--here his voice rose in intensity--was to
+be moved back some fifty feet and a new wing added, with bedroom above
+and a kitchen below. "A new garage!" we had all exclaimed. Who then was
+to occupy it? Not madame, of course, nor her servants, for they, as
+heretofore, would be quartered in the reconstructed villa. Certainly
+not any of her visitors--and most assuredly not Marc!
+
+"Take my advice and stop guessing," laughed the Frenchman; "she'll tell
+you when she gets ready, and not before. And she'll have the wing
+completed on time, for nothing daunts her. To want a thing done is, with
+her, to have it finished. The new wing was an after-thought, and yet it
+did not delay the work an hour. She'll be serving tea in that wreck next
+week."
+
+"It is because madame la marquise was born with a gift," remarked Lemois
+dryly from his seat near the fire. "Her mind is constructive, and
+everything madame touches must have a definite beginning and lead up to
+a definite ending. Her sanity is shown in her never trying to do things
+for which she is not fitted. As a musician, or a painter, or even a
+sculptor, or in any occupation demanding a fine imagination, madame, it
+seems to me, would have been a pathetic failure."
+
+"How about an antiquary?" remarked Louis, blowing a ring of smoke across
+the table, a quizzical smile lighting up his face.
+
+"As an antiquary, my dear Monsieur Louis, the eminent lady would have
+been a pronounced success. She is one now, for she insists on knowing
+that the thing she buys is genuine, and it saves her many absurdities. I
+can think of nothing in her collection that can be questioned--and I
+cannot say that of my own."
+
+"And so you don't believe that a man or a woman can make what they
+please of themselves?" asked Herbert, who was always glad to hear from
+Lemois.
+
+"Not any more than I believe that tulip bulbs will grow blackberries if
+I water them enough."
+
+"It's all a question of blood," essayed Le Blanc, snipping the end from
+his cigar with a gold cutter attached to his watch-chain. "Failures in
+life are almost always due to a scrap of gray tissue clogging up a
+gentleman's brain, which, ten chances to one, he has inherited from some
+plebeian ancestor."
+
+"Failures in life come from nothing of the sort!" blurted out Louis.
+"It's just dead laziness, and of the cheapest kind. All the painters I
+knew at Julien's who waited for a mood are waiting yet."
+
+"The trouble with most unsuccessful men," volunteered Brierley, "is the
+everlasting trimming up of a square peg to make it fit a round hole."
+
+"Then drive it in and make it fit," answered Louis. "It will hug all the
+tighter for the raw edges it raises."
+
+"And if it splits the plank, Louis?" I asked.
+
+"Let it split! A man, High-Muck, who can't make a success of his life is
+better out of it, unless he's a cripple, and then he can have my
+pocket-book every time. Look at Herbert!--he's forged ahead; yet he's
+been so hungry sometimes he could have gnawed off the soles of his
+shoes."
+
+"Only the imagination of the out-door painter, gentlemen," answered
+Herbert with a laughing nod to the table at large. "The hungry part is,
+perhaps, correct, but I forget about the shoes."
+
+"I stick to my point!" exclaimed Le Blanc, facing Herbert as he spoke.
+"It's blood as well as push that makes a man a success. When he lacks
+the combination he fails--that is, he does nine times out of ten, and
+that percentage, of course, is too small to trust to."
+
+"That reminds me of a story," interrupted Brierley with one of his quiet
+laughs, "of some fellows who took chances on the percentage, as Le
+Blanc calls it, and yet, as we Americans say, 'arrived.' A well-born
+young Englishman, down on his luck, had been tramping the streets, too
+proud to go home to his father's house, the spirit of the hobo still in
+him. One night he struck up an acquaintance with another young chap as
+poor and independent as himself. Naturally they affiliated. Both were
+sons of gentlemen and both vagabonds in the best sense. One became a
+reporter and the other a news-gatherer. The first had no dress suit and
+was debarred from state functions and smart receptions; the second
+boasted not only a dress suit useful at weddings, but a respectable
+morning frock-coat for afternoon teas. The two outfits brought them
+lodgings and three meals a day, for what the dress suit could pick up in
+the way of society news the man with the pen got into type. Things went
+on this way until August set in and the season closed; then both men
+lost their jobs. For some weeks they braved it out, badgering the
+landlady; then came the pawning of their clothes, and then one meal a
+day, and then a bench in St. James's Park out of sight of the bobbies.
+This being rock bottom, a council of war was held. The news-gatherer
+shipped aboard an outgoing vessel and disappeared from civilization. The
+reporter kept on reporting. Both had courage and both had the best blood
+of England in their veins, according to my view. Twenty years later the
+two met at a drawing-room in Buckingham Palace. The reporter had risen
+to a peer and the news-gatherer to a merchant prince. There was a hearty
+handshake, a furtive glance down the long, gold-encrusted corridor, and
+then, with a common impulse, the two moved to an open window and looked
+out. Below them lay the bench on which the two had slept twenty years
+before."
+
+"Of course!" shouted Le Blanc; "that's just what I said--a case of good
+blood--that's what kept them going. They owed it to their ancestors."
+
+"Ancestors be hanged! It was a case of pure grit!" shouted Louis in
+return. "All the blood in the world wouldn't have helped them if it
+hadn't been for that. Neither of them expected, when they started out in
+life, to be shown up six flights of marble stairs by a hundred flunkeys
+in silk stockings, but, as Brierley puts it, 'they _arrived_ all the
+same.' Blood alone would have landed them as clerks in government pay
+or obscure country gentlemen waiting for somebody to die. They kept on
+driving in the peg and before they got through all the chinks were
+filled. Keep your toes in your pumps, gentlemen. High-Muck is loaded for
+something; I see it in his eyes. Go on, High-Muck, and let us have it.
+How do you vote--blood or brains?"
+
+"Neither," I answered. "Lemois is nearest the truth. You can't make a
+silk purse out of--you know the rest--neither can you force a man, nor
+can he force himself, to succeed in something for which he is not
+fitted. All you do is to split the plank and ruin his life. I'll tell
+you a story which will perhaps give you and idea of what I mean.
+
+"Perhaps five years ago--perhaps six--my memory is always bad for
+dates--I met a fellow in one of our small Western cities at home who, by
+all odds, was the most brilliant conversationalist I had run across for
+years. The acquaintance began as my audience--I was lecturing at the
+time--left the room and was continued under the sidewalk, where we had a
+porter-house steak and a mug apiece, the repast and talk lasting until
+two in the morning. Gradually I learned his history. He had started
+life as a reporter; developed into space writer, then editor, and was
+known as the most caustic and brilliant journalist on any of the Western
+papers. With the death of his wife, he had thrown up this position and
+was, when I met him, conducting a small country paper.
+
+"What possessed me I don't know, but after seeing him half a dozen times
+that winter--and I often passed through his town--I made up my mind that
+his brilliant talk, quaint philosophy, and mastery of English were
+wasted on what he was doing, and that if I could persuade him to write a
+novel he would not only drop into the hole his Maker had bored for him,
+but would make a name for himself. All that he had to do was to _put
+himself into type_ and the rest would follow. Of course he protested; he
+was fifty years old, he said, had but little means, no experience in
+fiction, his work not being imaginative but concerned with the weightier
+and more practical things of the day.
+
+"All this made me only the keener to do something to drag him out of the
+pit and start him in a new direction.
+
+"The first thing was to make him believe in himself. I pooh-poohed the
+idea of his failure to succeed at fifty as being any reason for his not
+acquiring distinction at sixty, and counted on my fingers the men who
+had done their best work late in life. Taking up some of the editorials
+he had sent me (undeniable proofs, so he had maintained, of his
+inability to do anything better or, rather, different), I picked out a
+sentence here and there, reading it aloud and dilating on his choice of
+words; I showed him how his style would tell in an up-to-date novel, and
+how forceful his short, pithy epigrams would be scattered throughout its
+text.
+
+"Little by little he began to enthuse: I had kindled his
+pride--something that had lain dormant for years--and the warmth of its
+revival soon sent the blood of a new hope tingling through his veins. He
+now confessed that he _had_ always wanted to write sustained fiction
+without ever having had either the opportunity or the strength to begin.
+Inspired by my efforts, others of his friends at home joined in the
+bracing up, recognizing as I had done the charm and quality of the
+man--his wit and tenderness, his philosophy and knowledge of the life
+about him. They forgot, of course, as had I, that in fiction--and in all
+imaginative literature for that matter--something more is required than
+either a knowledge of men or the ability for turning out phrases. As an
+actor steps in between the dramatist and the audience--visualizing and
+vitalizing the text by deft gestures, telling emphases, and those silent
+pauses often more effective than the speech itself--so must the author
+with his pen: in other words, he must infuse into the written word
+something that presents to you in print that which the actor makes you
+_see_ beyond the footlights. This, however, you men know all about, so I
+won't dilate on it.
+
+"Well, he started in and threw himself into the task with a grip and
+energy of which I had not thought him capable. It took him about six
+months to finish the novel; then he came East and laid the manuscript in
+my hands. We shut ourselves up in my study and went over it. When I
+suggested that a page dragged, he would snatch it from my hand, square
+himself on my hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and read it aloud,
+pumping his personality into every line. Conversations which, when I
+read them, had seemed long-winded and commonplace took on a new meaning.
+When he had gone to bed I reread the passages and again my heart sank.
+
+"The publisher came next, I delivering the manuscript myself with all
+the good things I could say about it.
+
+"At the end of the week that ominous-looking white coffin of an envelope
+in which so many of our hopes are buried, and which most of us know so
+well, was laid on my study table, and with it the short obituary notice:
+'Not adapted to our uses.'
+
+"I was afraid to tell him, and didn't. I arranged a dinner instead for
+the three of us--the editor, whom he had not yet met, being one. During
+the meal not a word was said about the rejected novel. I had cautioned
+the author--and, of course, the editor never brought his shop to a
+dinner-table.
+
+"After the cigars I took up the manuscript and the discussion opened.
+The editor was very frank, very kind, and very helpful. He had wanted to
+publish it, but there were long passages--essays, really--in which the
+reader's galloping interest would get stalled. Experience had taught him
+that it was slow-downs like these that mired so much of modern fiction.
+
+"'Which passages, for instance,' I asked rather casually.
+
+"'Well, the part which--Hand me the manuscript and I will----'
+
+"'No; suppose my friend reads it--you have enough of that to do all
+day.'
+
+"Just as I expected, the reader's personality again transformed
+everything. The long-winded descriptions under the magic of his voice
+seemed too short, while every conversation thought dull before appeared
+to be illumined by a hidden meaning tucked away between the lines.
+
+"When the editor left at midnight the coffin was in his pocket. Two days
+later the book department forwarded a contract with a check for five
+hundred dollars as advance royalties.
+
+"There was no holding my friend down to earth after that. His joy and
+pride in that shambling, God-forsaken, worthless plodder whom he had
+despised for years was overwhelming. He was like a boy out of school.
+Stories which he had forgotten were pulled out of the past and given
+with a humor and point that dazzled every one around my study fire.
+Personal reminiscences of politicians he had known, and campaigns he had
+directed from his editorial chair, were told in a way that made them
+live in our memories ever after. Never had any of my friends met so
+delightful and cultivated a man.
+
+"The next day he went back to his home town carrying his enthusiasm with
+him.
+
+"In two months the usual book notices began to crop out in the
+papers--all written in the publisher's establishment--a fact which he
+must have known, but which, from his enthusiastic letters, I saw he had
+overlooked. His own village papers reprinted the notices with editorial
+comments of their own--'Our distinguished fellow-citizen,' etc.--that
+sort of thing.
+
+"These were also forwarded to me by mail with renewed thanks for the
+service I had done him--he, the 'modern Lazarus snatched from an early
+grave.' When a bona fide reviewer noticed the book at all, it was in
+half a dozen lines, with allusions to the amateurishness of the
+effort--'his first and, it is hoped, his last,' one critic was brutal
+enough to add. When one of these reached him, it was dismissed with a
+smile. He knew what he had done, and so would the world once the book
+got out among the people.
+
+"Then the first six months' account was mailed him. The royalty sales
+had not reached one-half of the first payment!
+
+"He sat--so his brother told me afterward--with the firm's letter in
+his hand, and for an hour never opened his lips. That afternoon he went
+to bed; in three months he was dead! It had broken his heart.
+
+"I, too, sat with a paper in my hand--his brother's telegram. Had I done
+right or wrong? I am still wondering and I have not yet solved the
+question. Had I never crossed his path and had he kept on in his
+editor's chair, giving out short, crisp comments on the life of the day,
+he would, no doubt, be alive and earning a fair support. I had attempted
+the impossible and failed. The square peg in the round hole had split
+the plank!"
+
+"Better split it," remarked Louis, "than stop all driving. Poor fellow,
+I'm sorry for him; nothing hurts like having your pride dragged in the
+mud, and nothing brings keener suffering--I've seen it and know. Why
+didn't you brace him up again, High-Muck?"
+
+"I did try, but it was too late. Just before he died he wrote me the old
+refrain: 'At twenty-five I might have weathered it, but not at fifty.'"
+
+Herbert drew his chair closer, assuming his favorite gesture, his hands
+on the edge of the table.
+
+"I say 'poor fellow' too, Louis, but High-Muck has not put his finger on
+the right spot. It was not the man's pride that was wounded; nor did he
+die of a broken heart. He died because he had not reached his pinnacle,
+and that is quite a different thing. What blinded him and destroyed his
+reason--for it cannot be thought very sensible for a man to abandon a
+certain fixed income for a rainbow--was not your reviving his belief in
+himself, but your giving him, for the first time, an opportunity to
+spread his wings. But for that you could not have persuaded him to write
+a line. The pitiful thing was that the wings were not large
+enough--still they were _wings_ to be used in the air of romance, and
+not legs with which to tread the roads of the commonplace, and he knew
+it. He had felt them growing ever since he was a boy. It is only a
+question of the spread of one's feathers, after all, whether one
+succeeds soaring over mountains with a view of the never-ending Valley
+of Content below, or whether one keeps on grovelling in the mud."
+
+As Herbert paused a tremulous silence fell upon the group. That he, of
+all men, should thus penetrate, if not espouse, the cause of
+failure--the hardest of all things for a man of phenomenal success to
+comprehend or excuse in his fellows--came as a new note.
+
+"To illustrate this theory," he continued, unconscious of the effect he
+had produced, "I will tell you about a man whom I once came across in
+one of the studios of Paris, back of the Pantheon. All his life he had
+determined to be a sculptor--and when I say 'determined' I mean he had
+thought of nothing else. By day he worked in the atelier, at night he
+drew from a cast--a custom then of the young sculptors. In the Louvre
+and in the Luxembourg--out in the gardens of the Tuileries--wherever
+there was something moulded or cut into form, there at odd hours you
+could always find this enthusiast. At night too, when the other students
+were trooping through the Quartier, breaking things or outrunning the
+gendarmes, this poor devil was working away, doing Ledas and Venuses and
+groups of nudes, with rearing horses and chariots,--all the trite
+subjects a young sculptor attempts whose imagination outruns his
+ability.
+
+"Year after year his things would come up before the jury and be
+rejected; and they deserved it. Soon it began to dawn on his associates,
+but never on him, that, try as he might, there was something lacking in
+his artistic make-up. With the master standing over him advising a bit
+of clay put on here, or a slice taken off there, he had seemed to
+progress; when, however, he struck out for himself his results were most
+disheartening. It was during this part of his life that I came to know
+him. He was then a man of forty, ten years younger than your dead
+novelist, High-Muck, and, like him, a man of many sorrows. The
+difference was that all his life my man had been poor; at no time for
+more than a week had he ever been sure of his bread. As he was an expert
+moulder and often gratuitously helped his brother sculptors in taking
+casts of their clay figures, he had often been begged to accept
+employment at good wages with some of the stucco people, but he had
+refused and had fought on, preferring starvation to _pâtisserie_, as he
+called this kind of work.
+
+"Nor had he, like your novelist, happiness to look back upon. He had
+married young, as they all do, and there had come a daughter who had
+grown to be eighteen, and who had been lost in the whirl--slipped in the
+mud, they said, and the city had rolled over her. And then the wife died
+and he was alone. The girl had crept up his stairs one night and lay
+shivering outside his door; he had taken her in, put her to bed, and
+fed her. Later on her last lover discovered by chance her hiding-place,
+and in the mould-maker's absence the two had found the earthen pot with
+the few francs he owned and had spent them. After that he had shut his
+door in her face. And so the fight went on, his ideal still alive in his
+heart, his one purpose to give it flight--'soaring over the heads of the
+millions,' as he put it, 'so that even dullards might take off their
+hats in recognition.'
+
+"When I again met him he was living in an old, abandoned theatre on the
+outskirts of Paris, a weird, uncanny ruin--rats everywhere--the scenery
+hanging in tatters, the stage broken down, the pit filled to the level
+of the footlights with a mass of coal--for a dealer in fuels had leased
+it for this purpose, his carts going in and out of the main entrance.
+One of the dressing-rooms over the flies was his studio, reached by a
+staircase from the old stage entrance. A former tenant had cut a
+skylight under which my friend worked.
+
+"In answer to his 'Entrez' I pushed open his door and found him in a
+sculptor's blouse cowering over a small sheet-iron stove on which some
+food was being cooked. He raised his head, straightened his back, and
+came toward me--a small, shrunken man now, prematurely old, his two
+burning eyes looking out from under his ledge of a forehead like coals
+beneath a half-burnt log, a shock of iron-gray hair sticking straight up
+from his scalp as would a brush. About his nose, up his cheeks, around
+his mouth, and especially across his throat, which was free of a cravat,
+ran pasty wrinkles, like those on a piece of uncooked tripe. Only
+half-starved men who have lived on greasy soups and scraps from the
+kitchens have these complexions.
+
+"I describe him thus carefully to you because that first glance of his
+scarred face had told me his life's story. It is the same with every man
+who suffers.
+
+"He talked of his work, of the conspiracies that had followed him all
+his career, shutting him out of his just rewards, while less brilliant
+men snatched the prizes which should have been his; of his hopes for the
+future; of the great competition soon to come off at Rheims, in which he
+would compete--not that he had yet put his idea into clay--that was
+always a mere question of detail with him. Then, as if by the merest
+accident--something he had quite forgotten, but which he thought might
+interest me--he told me, with a quickening of his glance and the first
+smile I had seen cross his pasty face, of a certain statue of his, 'a
+Masterpiece,' which a great connoisseur had bought for his garden, and
+which faced one of the open spaces of Paris. I could see it any day I
+walked that way--indeed, if I did not mind, he would go with me--he had
+been housed all the morning and needed the air.
+
+"I pleaded an excuse and left him, for I knew all about this masterpiece
+which had been bought by a tradesman and planted in his garden among
+groups of cast-iron dogs and spouting dolphins, the hedge in front cut
+low enough for passers-by to see the entire collection. Hardly a day
+elapsed that the poor fellow did not walk by, drinking in the beauty of
+his work, comforting himself with the effect it produced on the plain
+people who stopped to admire. Sometimes he would accost them and bring
+the conversation round to the sculptor, and then abruptly take his
+leave, they staring at him as he bowed his thanks.
+
+"The following year I again looked him up; his poverty and his courage
+appealed to me; besides, I intended to help him. When I knocked at his
+door he did not cry 'Entrez'--he kept still, as if he had not heard me
+or was out. When I pushed the door open he turned, looked at me for an
+instant, and resumed his work. Again my eyes took him in--thinner,
+dryer, less nourished. He was casting the little images you buy from a
+board carried on a vendor's back.
+
+"Without heeding his silence I at once stated my errand. He should make
+a statue for my garden; furthermore, his name and address should be
+plainly cut in the pedestal.
+
+"He thanked me for my order, but he made no more statues, he said. He
+was now engaged in commercial work. Art was dead. Nobody cared. Did I
+remember his great statue--the one in the garden?--his Apollo?--the
+Greek of modern times? Well, the place had changed hands, and the new
+owner had carted it away with the cast-iron dogs and the dolphins and
+ploughed up the lawn to make an artichoke-bed. The masterpiece was no
+more. 'I found all that was left of my work,' he added, 'on a dirt heap
+in the rear of his out-house, the head gone and both arms broken short
+off.'
+
+"His voice wavered and ceased, and it was with some difficulty that he
+straightened his back, moved his drying plaster casts one side, and
+offered me the free part of the bench for a seat.
+
+"I remained standing and broke out in protest. I abused the ignorance
+and jealousy of the people and of the juries--did everything I could, in
+fact, to reassure him and pump some hope into him--precisely what you
+did to your own author, High-Muck. I even agreed to pay in advance for
+the new statue I had ordered. I told him, too, that if he would come
+back to the country with me, I would make a place for him in an empty
+greenhouse, where he could work undisturbed. He only shook his head.
+
+"'What for?' he answered--'for money? I am alone in the world, and it's
+of no use to me. I am accustomed to being starved. For fame? I have
+given my life to express the thoughts of my heart and nobody would
+listen. Now it is finished. I will keep them for the good God--perhaps
+He will listen.'
+
+"A week later I found him sitting bolt upright in his chair under the
+skylight, dead. Above in the dull gloom hung a row of plaster models,
+his own handiwork--fragments of arms and hands with fists clenched ready
+to strike; queer torsos writhing in pain; queerer masks with hollow
+eyes. In the grimy light these seemed to have come to life--the torsos
+leaning over, hunching their shoulders at him as if blaming him for
+their suffering; the masks mocking at his misery, leering at each other.
+It was a grewsome sight, and I did not shake off the memory of the scene
+for days.
+
+"And so I hold," added Herbert, with a sorrowful shake of his head "that
+it is neither pride nor suffering that kills men of this class. It is
+because they have failed to reach the pinnacle of their ideals--that
+goal for which some spirits risk both their lives and their hopes of
+heaven."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+A WOMAN'S WAY
+
+
+However serious the talk of the night before--and Herbert's pathetic
+story of the poor mould-maker was still in our memory when we awoke--the
+effect was completely dispelled as soon as we began to breathe the air
+of the out of doors.
+
+The weather helped--another of those caressing Indian-summer days--the
+sleepy sun with half-closed eyes dozing at you through its lace curtains
+of mist; every fire out and all the windows wide open.
+
+Leà helped. Never were her sabots so active nor so musical in their
+scuffle: now hot milk, now fresh coffee, now another crescent--all on
+the run, and all with a spontaneous, uncontrollable laugh between each
+serving--all the more unaccountable as of late the dear old woman's
+face, except at brief intervals, had been as long as an undertaker's.
+
+And Mignon helped!
+
+Helped? Why, she was the whole programme--with another clear, ringing,
+happy song that came straight from her heart; her head thrown back, her
+face to the sun as if she would drink in all its warmth and cheer, the
+coffee-roaster keeping time to the melody.
+
+And it was not many minutes before each private box and orchestra chair
+in and about the court-yard, as well as the top galleries, were filled
+with spectators ready for the rise of the curtain. Herbert leaned out
+over his bedroom sill, one story up; Brierley from the balcony, towel in
+hand, craned his head in attention; Louis left his seat in the kiosk,
+where he was at work on a morning sketch of the court, and I abandoned
+my chair at one of the tables: all listened and all watched for what was
+going to happen. For happen something certainly must, with our pretty
+Mignon singing more merrily than ever.
+
+I, being nearest to the footlights, beckoned to old Leà carrying the
+coffee, and pointed inquiringly to the blissful girl.
+
+"What's the meaning of all this, Leà?--what has happened? Your Mignon
+seemed joyous enough the other morning when she came from market, but
+now she is beside herself."
+
+The old woman lowered her voice, and, with a shake of her white cap,
+answered:
+
+"Don't ask me any questions; I am too happy to tell you any lies and I
+won't tell you the truth. Ah!--see how cold monsieur's milk is--let me
+run to Pierre for another"--and she was off; her flying sabots, like the
+upturned feet of a duck chased to cover, kicking away behind her short
+skirts.
+
+Lemois, too, had heard the song and, picking up Coco, strolled toward me
+his fingers caressing the bird, his uneasy glance directed toward the
+happy girl as he walked, wondering, like the rest of us, at the change
+in her manner. To watch them together as I have done these many times,
+the old man smoothing its plumage and Coco rubbing his black beak
+tenderly against his master's cheek, is to get a deeper insight into our
+landlord's character and the subtle sympathy which binds the two.
+
+The bird once settled comfortably on his wrist, Lemois looked my way.
+
+"You should get him a mate, monsieur," I called to him in answer to his
+glance, throwing this out as a general drag-net.
+
+The old man shifted the bird to his shoulder, stopped, and looked down
+at me.
+
+"He is better without one. Half the trouble in the world comes from
+wanting mates; the other half comes from not knowing that this is true.
+My good Coco is not so stupid"--and he reached up and stroked the bird's
+crest and neck. "All day long he ponders over what is going on down
+below him. And just think, monsieur, what _does_ go on down below him in
+the season! The wrong man and the wrong woman most of the time, and the
+pressure of the small foot under the table, and the little note slipped
+under the napkin. Ah!--they don't humbug Coco! He laughs all day to
+himself--and I laugh too. There is nothing, if you think about it, so
+comical as life. It is really a Punch-and-Judy show, with one doll
+whacking away at the other--'Now, will you be good!--Now, will you be
+good!'--and they are never good. No--no--never a mate for my Coco--never
+a mate for anybody if I can help it."
+
+"Would you have given the same advice thirty years ago to madame la
+marquise?" Madame was the one and only subject Lemois ever seemed to
+approach with any degree of hesitancy. My objective point was, of
+course, Mignon; but I had opened madame's gate, hoping for a short cut.
+
+"Ah!--madame is quite different," he replied with sudden gravity. "All
+the rules are broken in the case of a woman of fashion and of rank and
+of very great wealth. These people do not live for themselves--they are
+part of the State. But I will tell you one thing, Monsieur High-Muck,
+though you may not believe it, and that is that Madame la Marquise de la
+Caux was never so contented as she is at the present moment. She is free
+now to do as she pleases. Did you hear what Monsieur Le Blanc said last
+night about the way the work is being pressed? The old marquis would
+have been a year deciding on a plan; madame will have that villa on its
+legs and as good as new in a month. You know, of course, that she is
+coming down this afternoon?"
+
+I knew nothing of the kind, and told him so.
+
+"Yes; she sent me word last night by a mysterious messenger, who left
+the note and disappeared before I could see him--Leà brought it to me.
+You see, madame is most anxious about her flowers for next year, and
+this afternoon I am going with her to a nursery and to a great garden
+overlooking the market-place to help her pick them out." Here he
+caressed his pet again. "No, Monsieur Coco, you will not be allowed
+down here in the court where your pretty white feathers and your
+unblemished morals might be tarnished by the dreadful people all about.
+You shall go up on your perch; it is much better"--and with a
+deprecatory wave of his hand he strolled up the court-yard, Coco still
+nibbling his cheek with his horny black beak, the old man crooning a
+little love song as he walked.
+
+[Illustration: "Just think, monsieur, what does go on below Coco in the
+season"]
+
+I rose from my chair and began bawling out the good news of madame's
+expected visit to the occupants of the several windows, the effect being
+almost as startling as had been Mignon's song.
+
+Instantly plans were cried down at me for her entertainment. Of course
+she must stay to dinner, our last one for the season! This was carried
+with a whoop. There must be, too, some kind of a special ceremony when
+the invitation was delivered. We must greet her at the door--all of us
+drawn up in a row, with Herbert stepping out of the ranks, saluting like
+a drum-major, and requesting the "distinguished honor"--and the rest of
+it: that, too, was carried unanimously. Whatever her gardening costume,
+it would make no difference, and no excuse on this score would receive
+a moment's consideration. Madame even in a fisherman's tarpaulins would
+be welcome--provided only that she was really inside of them.
+
+
+With the whirl of her motor into the court-yard at dusk, and the
+breathing of its last wheeze in front of the Marmouset, the plump little
+woman sprang from her car muffled to her dimpled chin in a long
+waterproof, her two brown, squirrel eyes laughing behind her goggles.
+Instantly the importuning began, everybody crowding about her.
+
+Up went her hands.
+
+"No--please don't say a word and, whatever you do, don't invite me to
+stay to dinner, because I'm not going to; and that is my last word, and
+nothing will change my mind. Oh!--it is too banal--and you've spoiled
+everything. I didn't think I'd see anybody. Why are you not all in your
+rooms? Oh!--I am ready to cry with it all!"
+
+"But we can't think of your leaving us," I begged, wondering what had
+disturbed her, but determined she should not go until we had found out.
+"Pierre has been at work all the morning and we----"
+
+"No--it is I who have been working all the morning, digging in my
+garden, getting ready for the winter, and I am tired out, and so I will
+go back to my little bed in my dear garage and have my dinner alone."
+
+Here Herbert broke loose. "But, madame, you _must_ dine with us; we have
+been counting on it." He had set his heart on another evening with the
+extraordinary woman and did not mean to be disappointed.
+
+"But, my dear Monsieur Herbert, you see, I----"
+
+"And you really mean that you won't stay?" groaned Louis, his face
+expressive of the deepest despair.
+
+"Stop!--stop!--I tell you, and hear me through. Oh!--you dreadful men!
+Just see what you have done: I had such a pretty little plan of my
+own--I've been thinking of it for days. I said to myself this morning:
+I'll go to the Inn after I have finished with Lemois--about six
+o'clock--when it is getting dark--quite too dark for a lady to be even
+poking about alone. They will all be out walking or dressing for dinner,
+and I'll slip into the darling Marmouset, just to warm myself a little,
+if there should be a fire, and then they will come in and find me and
+be so surprised, and before any one of them can say a word I will shout
+out that I have come to dinner! And now you've ruined everything, and I
+must say, 'Thank you, kind gentlemen'--like any other poor
+parishioner--and eat my bowl of bread and milk in the corner. Was there
+ever _anything_ so banal?--Oh!--I'm heartbroken over it all. No; don't
+say another word--please, papa, I'll be a good girl. So help me off with
+my wraps, dear Monsieur Louis. No; wait until I get inside--you see,
+I've been gardening all day, and when one does gardening----"
+
+The two were inside the Marmouset now, the others following, the
+laughter increasing as Louis led her to the hearth, where a fire had
+just been kindled. There he proceeded to unbutton her fur-lined
+motor-cloak--the laughter changing to shouts of delight when freeing
+herself from its folds. She stood before us a veritable Lebrun portrait,
+in a short black-velvet gown with wide fichu of Venetian lace rolled
+back from her plump shoulders, her throat circled with a string of tiny
+jewels from which drooped a pear-shaped pearl big as a pecan-nut and
+worth a king's ransom.
+
+"There!" she cried, her brown eyes dancing, her face aglow with her
+whirl through the crisp air. "Am I not too lovely, and is not my
+gardening costume perfect? You see, I am always careful to do my digging
+in black velvet and lace," and a low gurgling sound like the cooing of
+doves followed by a burst of uncontrollable laughter filled the room.
+
+If on her other visits she had captured us all by the charm of her
+personality, she drew the bond the tighter now. Then she had been the
+thorough woman of the world, adapting herself with infinite tact to new
+surroundings, contributing her share to the general merriment--one of
+us, so to speak; to-night she was the elder sister. She talked much to
+Herbert about his new statue and what he expected to make of it. He must
+not, she urged, concern himself alone with artistic values or the honors
+they would bring. He had gone beyond all these; his was a higher
+mission--one to bring the human side of the African savage to light and
+so help to overturn the prejudice of centuries, and nothing must swerve
+him from what she considered his lofty purpose--and there must be no
+weak repetition of his theme. Each new note he sounded must be stronger
+than the last.
+
+She displayed the same fine insight when, dinner over, she talked to
+Louis of his out-door work--especially the whirl and slide of his water.
+
+"You will forgive a woman, Monsieur Louis, who is old enough to be your
+great-grandmother, when she tells you that, fine as your pictures
+are--and I know of no painter of our time who paints water as
+well--there are some things in the out of doors which I am sure you will
+yet put into your canvases. I am a fisherman myself, and have thrashed
+many of the brooks you have painted, and there is nothing I love so much
+as to peer down into the holes where the little fellows live--way down
+among the pebbles and the brown moss and green of the water-plants.
+Can't we get this--or do I expect the impossible? But if it could be
+done--if the bottom as well as the surface of the water could be
+given--would we not uncover a fresh hiding-place of nature, and would
+not you--you, Monsieur Louis--be doing the world that much greater
+service?--the pleasure being more ours than yours--your reward being the
+giving of that pleasure to us. I hope you will all forgive me, but it
+has been such an inspiration to meet you all. I get so smothered by the
+commonplace that sometimes I gasp for breath, and then I find some oasis
+like this and I open wide my soul and drink my fill.
+
+"But enough of all this. Let us have something more amusing. Monsieur
+Brierley, won't you go to the spinet and--" Here she sprang from her
+chair. "Oh, I forgot all about it, and I put it in my pocket on purpose.
+Please some one look in my cloak for a roll of music; none of you I know
+have heard it before. It is an old song of Provence that will revive for
+you all your memories of the place. Thank you, Monsieur Brierley, and
+now lift the lid and I will sing it for you." And then there poured from
+her lips a voice so full and rich, with notes so liquid and sympathetic,
+that we stood around her in wonder doubting our ears.
+
+Never had we found her so charming nor so bewitching, nor so full of
+enchanting surprises.
+
+So uncontrollable were her spirits, always rising to higher flights,
+that I began at last to suspect that something outside of the
+inspiration of our ready response to her every play of fancy and wit was
+accountable for her bewildering mood.
+
+The solution came when the coffee was served and fresh candles lighted
+and Leà and Mignon, with a curtsy to the table and a gentle, furtive
+good-night to madame, had left the room. Then, quite as if their
+departure had started another train of thought, she turned and faced our
+landlord.
+
+"What a dear old woman is Leà, Lemois," she began in casual tones, "and
+what good care she takes of that pretty child; she is mother and sister
+and guardian to her. But she cannot be everything. There is always some
+other yearning in a young girl's heart which no woman can satisfy. You
+know that as well as I do. And this is why you are going to give Mignon
+to young Gaston. Is it not true?" she added in dissembling tones.
+
+Lemois moved uneasily in his chair. The question had come so
+unexpectedly, and was so direct, that for a moment he lost his poise.
+His own attitude, he supposed, had been made quite clear the night of
+the rescue, when he had denounced Gaston and forbidden Mignon to see
+him. Yet his manner was grave enough as he answered:
+
+"Madame has so many things to occupy her mind, and so many people to
+help, why should she trouble herself with those of my maid? Mignon is
+very happy here, and has everything she wants, and she will continue to
+have them as long as she is alive."
+
+"Then I see it is not true, and that you intend breaking her heart; and
+now will you please tell us why?" She looked at him and waited. There
+was a new ring--one of command--in her voice. I understood now as I
+listened why it took so short a time for her to rebuild the villa.
+
+"Is madame the girl's guardian that she wishes to know?" asked Lemois.
+The words came with infinite courtesy, madame being the only woman of
+whom he stood in awe, but there was an undertone of opposition which, if
+aggravated, would, I felt sure, end in the old man's abrupt departure
+from the room.
+
+I tried to relieve the situation by saying how happy not only Mignon but
+any one of us would be with so brilliant an advocate as madame pleading
+for our happiness, but she waved me aside with:
+
+"No--please don't. I want dear Lemois to answer. It was one of my
+reasons for coming to-night, and he must tell me. He is so kind and
+considerate, and he is always so sorry for anything that suffers. He
+loves flowers and birds and animals, and music and pictures and all
+beautiful things, and yet he is worse than one of the cannibals that
+Monsieur Herbert tells us about. They eat their young girls and have
+done with them--Lemois kills his by slow torture--and so I ask you
+again, dear Lemois--_why_?"
+
+Everybody sat up straight. How would Lemois take it? His fingers began
+to work, and the corners of his mouth straightened. A sudden flush
+crossed his habitually pale face. We were sure now of an outbreak: what
+would happen then none of us dared think.
+
+"Madame la marquise," he began slowly--too slowly for anything but
+ill-suppressed feeling--"there is no one that I know for whom I have a
+higher respect; you must yourself have seen that in the many years I
+have known you. You are a very good and a very noble woman; all your
+life people have loved you--they still love you. It is one of your many
+gifts--one you should be thankful for. Some of us do not win this
+affection. You are, if you will permit me to say it, never lonely nor
+alone, except by your own choosing. Some of us cannot claim that--I for
+one. Do you not now understand?" He was still boiling inside, but the
+patience of the trained landlord and the innate breeding of the man had
+triumphed. And then, again, it would be a rash Frenchman of his class
+who would defy a woman of her exalted rank.
+
+Over her face crept a pleased look--as if she held some trump card up
+her sleeve--and one of her cooing, bubbling laughs escaped her lips.
+
+"You are not telling me the truth, you dear Lemois. I am not in love
+with Gaston, the fisherman, nor are you with our pretty Mignon. Neither
+you nor I have anything to do with it. Here are two young people whose
+happiness is trembling in the balance. You hold the scales--that is, you
+claim to, although the girl is neither your child nor your ward and
+could marry without your consent, and would if she did not love you for
+yourself and for all you have done for her. Answer me now--do you object
+because Gaston is a fisherman?"
+
+Whether her knowledge of Lemois' legal rights--and she had stated them
+correctly--softened him, or whether he saw a loophole for himself, was
+not apparent, but the answer came with a certain surrender.
+
+"Yes. It is a dangerous life. You have only to live here, as I have
+done, to count the women who bid their men good-by and watch in the
+gray dawn for the boat that never comes back--Mignon's elder brothers in
+one of them. I do not want her to go through that agony--she is young
+yet--some one else will come. The first love is not always the
+last--except in the case of madame"--and he smiled in strange fashion.
+The bomb was still within reach of his hand, but the fuse had gone out.
+
+"Then it isn't Gaston himself?" she demanded with unflinching gaze.
+
+"No--he is an honest lad; good to his mother; industrious--a brave
+fellow. He has, too, so I hear, a place in the market--one of the
+stalls--so he is getting on, and will soon be one of our best citizens."
+He would talk all night about Gaston, and pleasantly, if she wished.
+
+"Well, if he were a notary? Would that be different?" Her soft brown
+eyes were hardly visible between their lids, but they were burning with
+an intense light.
+
+"Yes, it might be." Same air of nonchalance--anything to please the
+delightful woman.
+
+"Or a chemist?"--just a slit between the lids now, with little flashes
+along the edges.
+
+"Or a chemist," intoned Lemois.
+
+"Or a head gardener, perhaps?" Both eyes tight shut under the fluffy
+gray hair, an intense expression on her face.
+
+"Why not say a minister of state, madame?" laughed Lemois.
+
+"No--no--don't you dare run away like that. Stand to your guns,
+monsieur. If he were a head gardener, then what?"
+
+Lemois rose from his chair, laid his hand on his shirt-front, and bowed
+impressively. He was evidently determined to humor her passing whim.
+
+"If he were a head gardener I would not have the slightest objection,
+madame."
+
+She sprang to her feet and began clapping her plump hands, her laughter
+filling the room.
+
+"Oh!--I am so happy! You heard what he said--all of you. You, Monsieur
+Herbert--and you--and you"--pointing to each member of our group. "If he
+were a head gardener! Oh, was there ever such luck! And do you listen
+too, you magnificent Lemois! Gaston is a head gardener; has been a head
+gardener for days; every one of the plants you bought for me to-day he
+will put into the ground with his own hands. His mother will have the
+stall I bought in the fish market, and he and Mignon are to live in the
+new garage, and he is to have charge of the villa grounds, and she is
+to manage the dairy and the linen and look after the chickens and the
+ducks. And the wedding is to take place just as soon as you give your
+consent; and if you don't consent, it will take place anyway, for I am
+to be godmother and she is to have a dot and all the furniture they want
+out of what was saved from my house, and that's all there is to
+it--except that both of them know all about it, for I sent Gaston down
+here last night with a note for you, and he told Mignon, and it's all
+settled--now what do you say?"
+
+A shout greeted her last words, and the whole room broke spontaneously
+into a clapping of hands, Louis, as was his invariable custom whenever
+excuse offered, on his feet, glass in hand, proposing the health of that
+most adorable of all women of her own or any other time, past, present,
+or future--at which the dear, penguin-shaped lady in black velvet and
+lace raised her dainty white palms in holy horror, protesting that it
+was Monsieur Lemois whose health must be drunk, as without him nothing
+could have been done, the clear tones of her voice rising like a bird's
+song above the others as she sprang forward, grasped Lemois' hand and
+lifted him to his feet, the whole room once more applauding.
+
+Yes, it was a great moment! Mignon's happiness was very dear to us, but
+that which captured us completely was the daring and cleverness of the
+little woman who had worked for it, and who was so joyous over her
+success and so childishly enthusiastic at the outcome.
+
+Lemois, unable to stem the flood of rejoicing, seemed to have
+surrendered and given up the fight, complimenting the marquise upon her
+diplomacy, and the way in which she had entirely outgeneralled an old
+fellow who was not up to the wiles of the world. "Such a mean advantage,
+madame, to take of a poor old man," he continued, bowing low, a curious,
+unreadable expression crossing his face. "I am, as you know, but clay in
+your hands, as are all the others who are honored by your acquaintance.
+But now that I am tied to your chariot wheels, I must of course take
+part in your triumphal procession; so permit me to make a few
+suggestions."
+
+The marquise laughed gently, but with a puzzled look in her eyes. She
+was not sure what he was driving at, but she did not interrupt him.
+
+"We will have an old-time wedding," he continued gayly, with a
+comprehensive wave of his hand as if he were arranging the stage
+setting--"something quite in keeping with the general sentiment; for
+certain it is that not since the days when fair ladies let themselves
+down from castle walls into the arms of their plumed knights, only to
+dash away into space on milk-white steeds, will there be anything quite
+so romantic as this child-wedding!"
+
+"And so you mean to have a rope ladder, do you, and let my----"
+
+"Oh, no, madame la marquise," he interrupted--"nothing so ordinary!
+We"--here he began rubbing his hands together quite as if he was
+ordering a dinner for an epicure--"we will have a revival of all the old
+customs just as they were in this very place. Our bride will join her
+lord in a cabriolet, and our groom will come on horseback--all fishermen
+ride, you know--and so will the other fishermen and maids--each gallant
+with a fair lady seated behind him on the crupper, her arms about his
+waist. Then we will have trumpeters and a garter man----"
+
+"A what!" She was still at sea as to his meaning, although she had not
+missed the tone of irony in his voice.
+
+"A man, madame, whose duty is to secure one of the bride's garters. Oh,
+you need not start--that is quite simply arranged. The old-time brides
+always carried an extra pair to save themselves embarrassment. The one
+for the garter-man will be trimmed with ribbons which he will cut off
+and distribute to the other would-be brides, who will keep them in their
+prayer-books."
+
+"Leà, for instance," chimed in Louis, winking at Herbert.
+
+"Leà, for instance, my dear Monsieur Louis. I know of no better mate for
+a man--and it is a pity you are too young."
+
+The laugh was on Louis this time, but the old man kept straight on, his
+subtle irony growing more pointed as he continued: "And then, madame,
+when it is all over and the couple retire for the night--and of course
+we will give them the best room in our house, they being most
+distinguished personages--none other than Monsieur Gaston Duprè, Lord of
+the Lobster Pot, Duke of Buezval, and Grand Marshal of the Deep Sea, and
+Mademoiselle Mignon, Princess of----"
+
+The marquise drew herself up to her full height. "Stop your nonsense,
+Lemois. I won't let you say another word; you shan't ridicule my young
+people. Stop it, I say!"
+
+"Oh, but wait, madame--please hear me out--I have not finished. These
+pewter dishes must also come into service"--and he caught up the two
+bowls from the tops of the great andirons behind him--"these we will
+fill with spices steeped in mulled wine, which, as I tried to say, we
+will send to their Royal Highnesses' bedroom--after they are tucked away
+in----"
+
+"No!--no!--we will do nothing of the kind; everything shall be just the
+other way. There will be no horses, no cabriolet, no trumpeters, no
+garters except the ones the dear child will wear, and no mulled wine. We
+will all go on foot, and the only music will be the organ in the old
+church, and the breakfast will be here, in our beloved Marmouset, and
+the punch will be mixed by Monsieur Brierley in the Ming bowl I brought,
+and Monsieur Louis will serve it, and then they will both go to their
+own home and sleep in their own bed. So there! Not another word, for it
+is all settled and finished"--and one of her rippling, joyous laughs--a
+whole dove-cote mingled with any number of silver bells--quivered
+through the room.
+
+Lemois joined in the merriment, shrugging his inscrutable shoulders,
+repeating that he, of course, was only a captive, and must therefore do
+as he was bid, a situation which, he added with another low bow, had its
+good side since so charming a woman as madame held his chain.
+
+And yet despite his gayety there was under it all a certain reserve
+which, although lost on the others, convinced me that the old man had
+not, by any means, made up his mind as to what he would do. While Mignon
+was not his legal ward, his care of her all these years must count for
+something. Madame, of course, was a difficult person to make war upon
+once she had set her heart on a thing--and she certainly had on this
+marriage, amazing as it was to him--and yet there was still the girl's
+future to be considered, and with it his own. All this was in his eyes
+as I watched him resuming his place by the fire after some of the
+excitement had begun to quiet down.
+
+But none of this--even if she, too, had studied him as I had--would have
+made any impression on Mignon's champion. She was accustomed to being
+obeyed--the gang of mechanics who had under her directions performed two
+days' work in one had found that out. And then, again, her whole purpose
+in life was to befriend especially those girls who, having no one to
+stand by them, become broken down by opposition and so marry where their
+hearts seldom lead. How many had she taken under her wing--how many more
+would she protect as long as she lived!
+
+Before she bade us good-night all the wedding details were sketched out,
+our landlord listening and nodding his head whenever appeal was made to
+him, but committing himself by no further speech. The ceremony, she
+declared gayly--and it must be the most beautiful and brilliant of
+ceremonies--would take place in the old twelfth-century church, at the
+end of the street, from which the great knights of old had sallied forth
+and where a new knight, one Monsieur Gaston, would follow in their
+footsteps--not for war, but for love--a much better career--this, with
+an additional toss of her head at the silent Lemois. There would be
+flowers and perhaps music--she would see about that--but no
+trumpeters--and again she looked at Lemois--and everybody from Buezval
+would be invited--all the fishermen, of course, and their white-capped
+mothers and sisters and aunts, and cousins for that matter--everybody
+who would come; and Pierre and her own chef from Rouen would prepare
+the wedding breakfast if dear Lemois would consent--and if he didn't
+consent, it would be cooked anyhow, and brought in ready to be
+eaten--and in this very room with every one of us present.
+
+"And now, Monsieur Louis, please get me my cloak, and will one of you be
+good enough to tell my chauffeur I am ready?--and one thing more, and
+this I insist on: please don't any of you move--and, whatever you do,
+don't bid me good-by. I want to carry away with me just the picture I am
+looking at: Monsieur Herbert there in his chair between the two live
+heads--yes, I believe it now--and Messieurs Louis and Brierley and Le
+Blanc, and our delightful host, and dear tantalizing Lemois, by the
+hearth--and the queer figures looking down at us through the smoke of
+our cigarettes--and the glow of the candles, and the light of the lovely
+fire to which you have welcomed me. Au revoir, messieurs--you have made
+me over new and I am very happy, and I thank you all from the bottom of
+my heart!"
+
+And she was gone.
+
+
+When the door was shut behind her, Herbert strolled to the fire and
+stood with his face to the flickering blaze. We all remained standing,
+paying unconscious homage to her memory. For some seconds no one spoke.
+Then, turning and facing the group, Herbert said, half aloud, as if
+communing with himself:
+
+"A real woman--human and big, half a dozen such would revolutionize
+France. And she knows--that is the best part of it"--and his voice grew
+stronger--"she _knows_! You may think you've reached the bottom of
+things--thought them all out, convinced you are right, even steer your
+course by your deductions--and here comes along a woman who lifts a lid
+uncovering a well in your soul you never dreamed of, and your
+conclusions go sky-high. And she does it so cleverly, and she is so sane
+about it all. If she were where I could get at her now and then I'd do
+something worth while. I've made up my mind to one thing, anyhow--I'm
+going to pull to pieces the thing I set up before I came down here and
+start something new. I've got another idea in my head--something a
+little more human."
+
+"Isn't 'The Savage' human, Herbert?" I asked, filling his glass as I
+spoke, to give him time for reply.
+
+"No; it's only African--one phase of a race."
+
+"How about your 'group,' 'They Have Eyes and They See Not'?" asked
+Brierley, who had drawn up a chair and stood leaning over its back,
+gazing into the fire.
+
+"A little better, but not much. The Great Art is along other
+lines--bigger, higher, stronger--more universal lines, one that has
+nothing racial about it, one that expresses the human heart no matter
+what the period or nationality. The 'Prodigal Son' is a drama which has
+been understood and is still understood by the whole earth irrespective
+of creed or locality. It appeals to the savage and the savant alike and
+always will to the end of time. So with the Milo. She is Greek, English,
+or Slav at your option, but she will live forever because she expresses
+the divine essence of maternity which is eternal. It is this, and only
+this, which compels. I have had glimmerings of it all my life. Madame
+cleared out the cobwebs for me in a flash. A great woman--real human."
+
+Then noticing that no one had either interrupted his outburst or moved
+his position, he glanced around the group and, as if in doubt as to the
+way his outburst had been received, said simply:
+
+"Well, speak up; am I right or wrong? You don't seem to see it as I do.
+How did she appeal to you, Brierley?"
+
+The young fellow stepped in front of his chair and dropped into its
+depths.
+
+"You are dead right, Herbert; you are, anyhow, about the Milo. I never
+go into her presence without lifting my hat, and I have kept it up for
+years. But you don't do yourself justice, old man. Some of your things
+will live as long as they hold together. However"--and he laughed
+knowingly--"that's for posterity to settle. How does madame appeal to
+me? you ask. Well, being a many-sided woman--no frills, no coquetry, nor
+sham--she appeals to me more as a comrade than in any other way--just
+plain comrade. Half the women one meets of her age and class have
+something of themselves to conceal, giving you a side which they are
+not, or trying to give it for you to read at first sight. She gave us
+her worst side first--or what we thought was her worst side--and her
+best last."
+
+"And you, Le Blanc?" resumed Herbert. "She's your countrywoman; let's
+have it."
+
+"Oh, I don't know, Herbert. I, of course, have heard of her for years,
+and she was therefore not so much of a surprise to me as she was to you
+all. If, however, you want me to get down to something fundamental, I'll
+tell you that she confirms a theory I have always had that--But I won't
+go into that. It's our last night together and we----"
+
+"No; go on. This interests me enormously, especially her personality.
+We'll have our nightcap later on."
+
+"Well, all right," and he squared himself toward Herbert. "She confirms,
+as I said, a theory of mine--one I have always had, that the Great
+Art--that for which the world is waiting--is not so much the creation of
+statues, if you will pardon me, as the creation of a better
+understanding of women by men. Not of their personalities, but of their
+impersonalities. Most women are afraid to let themselves go, not knowing
+how we will take them, and because of this fear we lose the best part of
+a woman's nature. She dares not do a great many generous things--sane,
+kindly, human things--because she is in dread of being misunderstood.
+She is even afraid to love some of us as intensely as she would. Madame
+dares everything and could never be misunderstood. All doubts of her
+were swept out in her opening sentence the night she arrived. She ought
+to found a school and teach women to be themselves, then we'd all be
+that much happier."
+
+"And now, Louis," persisted Herbert, "come, we're waiting. No shirking,
+and no nonsense. Just the plain truth. How does she appeal to you?"
+
+"As a dead game sport, Herbert, and the best ever! Every man on his feet
+and I'll give you a toast that is as short and sweet as her adorable
+self.
+
+"Here's to our friend, Madame la Marquise de la Caux--THE WOMAN."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+APPLE-BLOSSOMS AND WHITE MUSLIN
+
+
+Coco, the snow-white cockatoo, on his perch high up in the roof dormer
+overlooking the court, is having the time of his life. To see and hear
+the better, he wobbles back and forth to the end of his wooden peg,
+steadying himself by his black beak, and then, straightening up, unfurls
+his yellow celery top of a crest and, with a quick toss of his head,
+shrieks out his delight.
+
+He wants to know what it is all about, and I don't blame him. No such
+hurrying and scurrying has been seen in the court-yard below since the
+morning the players came down from Paris and turned the
+sixteenth-century quadrangle into a stage-setting for an old-time
+comedy: new gravel is being raked and sifted over the open space; men on
+step-ladders are trimming up the vines and setting out plants on top of
+the kiosks; others are giving last touches to the tulip-beds and the
+fresh sod along the borders, while two women are scrubbing the chairs
+and tables under the arbors.
+
+As for the Inn's inhabitants, everybody seems to have lost their wits:
+Pierre has gone entirely mad. When butter, or eggs, or milk, or a pint
+of sherry--or something he needs, or thinks he needs--is wanted, he does
+not wait until his under-chef can bring it from the storage-cave where
+they are kept--he rushes out himself, grabbing up a basket, or pitcher,
+or cup as he goes, and comes back on the double-quick to begin again his
+stirring, chopping, and basting--the roasting-spit turning merrily all
+the while.
+
+Leà is even more restless. Her activities, however, are confined to
+clattering along the upstairs corridors, her arms full of freshly ironed
+clothes--skirts and things--and to the banging of chamber doors--one
+especially, behind which sits an old fishwoman, yellow as a dried
+mackerel and as stiff, helping a young girl dress.
+
+The only one who seems to have kept his head is Lemois. His nervousness
+is none the less in evidence, but he gets rid of his pent-up steam in a
+different way. He lets the others hustle, while he stands still just
+inside the gate giving orders to hurrying market boys with baskets of
+fish; signing receipts for cases filled with poultry and early
+vegetables just in by the morning train from Caen; or firing
+instructions to his gardeners and workmen--self-contained as a ball
+governor on a horizontal engine and seemingly as inert, yet an index of
+both pressure and speed.
+
+All this time Coco keeps up his hullabaloo, nobody paying the slightest
+attention. Suddenly there comes an answering cry and the cockatoo snaps
+his beak tight with a click and listens intently, his head on one side.
+It is the shriek of a siren--a long-drawn, agonizing wail that strikes
+the bird dumb with envy. Nearer it comes--nearer--now at the turn of the
+street; now just outside the gate, and in whirls Herbert's motor, the
+painter beside him.
+
+"Ah!--Lemois--the top of the morning to you and yours!" Louis'
+stentorian voice rings out. "Never saw a better one come out of the
+skies. Out with you, Herbert. Are we the first to arrive? Here, give me
+that basket of grapes and box of bonbons. A magnificent run, Lemois.
+Left Paris at five o'clock, while the milk was going its rounds; spun
+through Lisieux before they were wide awake; struck the coast, and since
+then nothing but apple-bloom--one great pink-and-white bedquilt up hill
+and down dale. Glorious! I want a whole tree, full of blossoms,
+remember--just as I wrote you--none of your mean little chopped-off
+twigs, but a cart-load of branches. Let me have that old apple-tree out
+in the lot in front--the apples were never any good, and Mignon may as
+well have the blossoms as those thieving boys. Did you send word to the
+school children? Yes, of course you did. Oh, I tell you, Herbert, we are
+going to have a bully time--Paul and Virginia are not in it. Hello! Leà,
+you up there, you blessed old carved root of a virgin!--where's the
+adorable Mignon?"
+
+"Good-morning, Monsieur Louis--and you too, Monsieur Herbert," came her
+voice in reply from the rail of the gallery above our heads. "Mignon is
+inside," and she pointed to the closed door behind her. "Gaston's mother
+is helping her. Madame la marquise will be here any minute, and so will
+Monsieur Le Blanc and everybody from Buezval. Oh!--you should see my
+child! You wouldn't know her in the pretty clothes madame has sent."
+
+And now while Herbert is digging out from under the motor seats various
+packages tied with white ribbons, including the drawing he made of Leà,
+now richly framed, and which with the aid of the old woman he carried up
+the crooked stairway and deposited at a certain door, I will tell you
+what all this excitement is about.
+
+Madame la marquise has had her way. Not an instantaneous and complete
+victory. There had been parleyings, of course, after that eventful night
+some months before when she had outgeneralled and then defied Lemois,
+and concessions had been made, both sides yielding a little; but before
+we separated for our homes we felt sure that the old man either had or
+would surrender.
+
+"Well, let it be as you will," he had said with a sigh; "but not now. In
+the spring when the apple-blossoms are in bloom--and then perhaps you
+may come back."
+
+To me, however, who had stayed on for a few days, he had, late one
+afternoon, poured out his whole heart. The twilight had begun to settle
+in the Marmouset, and the last glow of the western sky creeping through
+the stained-glass windows was falling upon the old Spanish leather and
+gold crowned saints and figures, warming them into rich harmonies, when
+I had stolen inside the wonderful room to take one of my last looks--an
+old habit of mine in a place I love. There I found him hunched up in
+Herbert's chair at one corner of the fireplace, his head on his hand.
+
+"Well, you have won your fight," he had said in a low, measured voice,
+speaking into the bare chimney, his fingers still supporting his
+forehead. "You will take my child from me and leave me alone."
+
+"But she will be much happier," I now ventured.
+
+"Perhaps so--I cannot tell. I have seen many a bright sunrise end in a
+storm. But none of you have understood me. You thought it was money, and
+what the man could bring her, and that I objected because the boy was
+poor and a fisherman. What am I but a man of the people?--what is she
+but a peasant?--and her mother and grandmother before her. Who are we
+that we should try to rise above our station, making ourselves a
+laughing-stock? Had he been a land-owner with a thousand head of cattle
+it would have been the same with me. Nothing will be as it was any more.
+I am an old man and she is all the child I have. When she was eight
+years old she would come into this very room and nestle close in my
+lap, and I would talk to her by the hour--she and I alone, the fire
+lighting up the dark. And so it was when she grew up. It is only of late
+that she has shut herself away from me. I deserve it maybe--she must
+marry somebody, and I would not have it otherwise--but why must it be
+now? I do not blame madame la marquise. She is an enthusiastic woman
+whose heart often runs away with her head; but she is honest and
+sincere. She had only the child's happiness in view, and she will be a
+mother to them both as long as she lives, as she is to many others I
+know."
+
+He had paused for a moment, I standing still beside him, and had then
+gone on, the words coming slowly, like the dropping of water:
+
+"You remember Monsieur Herbert's story, do you not, of the old
+mould-maker who lost his daughter, and who died in his chair, his clay
+masks grinning down at him from the skylight above? Well, I am he. Just
+as they grinned at the old mould-maker, his daughter gone, so in my
+loneliness will my figures grin at me."
+
+This had been in late October.
+
+What the dull winter had been to him I never knew, but he had not gone
+back on his word, and now that the apple-blossoms were in bloom, and
+the orchards a blaze of glory, the wedding day, just as he had promised,
+had arrived!
+
+No wonder, then, Coco is screaming at the top of his voice; no wonder
+the court-yard is swept by a whirlwind of flying feet; no wonder the
+upstairs chamber door, with Leà as guardian angel, is opened and shut
+every few minutes, hiding the girl behind it; and no wonder that
+Herbert's impatient car, every spoke in its wheels trembling with
+excitement, is puffing with eagerness to make the run to the old
+apple-tree in the outer lot, and so on to the church, loaded to its
+extra tires with a carpet of blossoms for Mignon's pretty feet.
+
+No wonder, either, that before Herbert's car, with Louis in charge of
+the blossom raid, had cleared the back gate, there had puffed in another
+motor--two this time--Le Blanc in one, with his friend, The Architect,
+beside him, the seats packed full of children, their faces scrubbed to a
+phenomenal cleanliness, their hair skewered with gay ribbons, all their
+best clothes on their backs; madame la marquise and Marc in the other,
+an old weather-beaten fisherman--an uncle of Gaston's, too lame to
+walk--beside her, and bundled up on the back seat two lean withered
+fishwomen in black bombazine and close-fitting white caps--a cousin and
+an aunt of the groom--the first time any one of the three had ever
+stepped foot in a car.
+
+As madame and her strange crew entered the court, I turned instinctively
+to Lemois, wondering how he would deport himself when the crucial moment
+arrived--and a car-load of relatives certainly seemed to express that
+fatality--but he was equal to the occasion.
+
+"Ah, madame!" he said in his courtliest manner, his hand over his heart,
+"who else in the wide world would have thought of so kindly an act?
+These poor people will bless you to their dying day. And it is
+delightful to see you again, Monsieur Marc. You have, I know, come to
+help madame in her good works. As I have so often told her, she is----"
+
+"And why should I not give them pleasure, you dear Lemois? See how happy
+they are. And this is not half of them! No, don't get out, mère
+Francine--you are all to keep on to the church and get into your seats
+before the village people crowd it full; and you, Auguste"--this to her
+chauffeur--"are to go back to Buezval for the others--they are all
+waiting." Here she espied Herbert on a ladder tacking some blossoms over
+the doorway. "Ah!--monsieur, aren't you very happy it has turned out so
+well? I caught only a glimpse of you as you dashed past a few minutes
+ago or I should have held you up and made you bring the balance of the
+old fishwomen. They are all crazy to come. Ah! but you needn't to have
+come down. It is so good to see you again," and she shook his hand
+heartily. "But what a morning for a wedding! Did you notice as you came
+along the shore road the little puff clouds skipping out to sea for very
+joy and hear the birds splitting their throats in song? Even my own head
+is getting turned with all this billing and cooing, and I warn all of
+you right here"--and she swept her glance over the men gathered about
+her, her eyes twinkling in merriment--"that you must be very careful to
+keep out of my way or the first thing you know one of you will be
+whisked off to the altar and married before you know it. And now I am
+going upstairs to see how my little bride gets on, if Monsieur Marc will
+be good enough to carry my heavy wraps inside."
+
+She turned, stopped for an instant attracted by something she saw
+through the archway of the court, and burst into a peal of ringing
+laughter.
+
+"Oh!--come here quick, every one of you, and see what's driving in! It's
+Monsieur Brierley in the dearest of donkey carts. Where did you get that
+absurd little beast?"
+
+"Whoa! Victor Hugo!" shouted Brierley, springing from the cart (both
+together wouldn't have covered the space occupied by an upright piano).
+"I found him last fall, my dear madame la marquise, in a stable in Caen,
+kicking out the partitions, and brought him home to my Abandoned Farm by
+the Marsh to add a touch of hilarity to my surroundings. He wakes me
+every morning with his hind feet against the door of his stable and is a
+most engaging and delightful companion. Hello! Lemois, and--you here,
+Herbert! Shake!--awful glad to see you. Where's Louis?--gone for
+blossoms?--just like him. I tried to get here earlier, to help you all,
+but Victor Hugo is peculiar and considerably set in his ways, and if I
+had tried to overpersuade him he might still be a mile down the road
+with his feet anchored in the mud.
+
+"Take a look inside my cart, will you, Herbert? My contribution to
+start the young couple housekeeping"--and he pulled off a covering of
+clean straw--"six dozen eggs, a pair of mallards--shot them yesterday,
+and about the last of them this season, and no business to shoot even
+these--a basket of potatoes, a dozen of pear jam--in family jars--and a
+small keg of apple-jack--the two last, the sweet and the strong, to be
+eaten and drank together to keep peace in the house. No, don't take Hugo
+out of the shafts, Lemois, and don't say anything about its being
+meal-time, not loud enough for him to hear. When the fun is over I'm
+going to drive him down to madame's garage and pack the housekeeping
+stuff away in Mignon's cupboard."
+
+Long before noon the court-yard, as well as the archway and the kiosks
+and arbors, had begun to fill up, the news of the extraordinary
+proceedings having brought everybody ahead of time. There was the mayor,
+wearing his tricolor sash and insignia of office, and with him his
+stout, double-chinned wife in black silk and white gloves--bareheaded,
+except for a gold ornament that looked like a bunch of twisted
+hair-pins; there were the apothecary and the notary and the man who sold
+pottery, not forgetting the bustling, outspoken fat doctor who had
+sewed up Gaston's head the time madame's villa went sliddering toward
+the sea--or tried to--as well as all the great and small folk of the
+village who claimed the least little bit of acquaintance with any one
+connected with the function from Lemois down.
+
+Why the distinguished Madame la Marquise de la Caux--to say nothing of
+Lemois and the equally distinguished sculptors, painters, and authors,
+some of whom were well known to them by reputation--should make all this
+fuss about a simple little serving-maid who had brought them their
+coffee--a waif, really, picked from between the cobbles--one like a
+dozen others the village over, except for her beauty--was a question no
+one of them had been able to answer. Was it a whim of the great
+lady?--for it was well known she had made the match--or was there
+something else behind it all? (a mystery, by the way, which they are
+still trying to solve; disinterested kindness being the most
+incomprehensible thing in the world to some people). The notary was
+particularly outspoken in his opinion. He even criticised the great
+woman herself from behind his hand to the apothecary, whose upper room
+he occupied. "Been much better if these people of high degree had stayed
+at home and let the two young people enjoy themselves in their own way.
+Great mistake mixing the classes." But, then, the notary is the
+mouth-piece of the revolutionary party in the village and hates the
+aristocracy as a singed cat does the fire.
+
+Soon there came a shout from the gallery over our heads, and we all
+looked up. Leà, her wrinkled face aglow with that same inner light, the
+rays struggling through her rusty skin, craned her head over the rail.
+Then came Mignon, madame close behind, pushing her veil aside so we
+could all see her face--the girl blushing scarlet, but too happy to do
+more than laugh and bow and make little dumb nods with her head, hiding
+her face as best she could behind Leà's angular shoulders.
+
+"Yes, we are all ready, and are coming down the back stairs, and will
+meet you at the gate," cried madame when she had released the girl--"and
+it's time to start."
+
+Mignon's passage along the corridor, followed by madame and Leà and
+Gaston's old mother, roused a murmur of welcome which swelled into an
+outburst of joyous enthusiasm as her feet touched the level of the
+court, and continued until she had joined Gaston and the others already
+formed in line for the march to the church.
+
+And a wonderful procession it was!
+
+First, of course, came the mayor--his worthy spouse on his left. "The
+State before the Church," madame la marquise remarked with a sly
+twinkle, "and quite as it should be," rabid anti-clerical as she was.
+
+Close behind stepped Lemois in a frock-coat buttoned to his chin, his
+grave, thoughtful face framed in a high collar and black cravat--like an
+old diplomat at a court function--Mignon on his arm: Such a pretty,
+shrinking, timid Mignon, her lashes lifting and settling as if afraid to
+raise her eyes lest some one should find a chink through which they
+could peep into her heart.
+
+Next came Louis escorting dear old Leà!
+
+There was a picture for you! Had she been a duchess the rollicking young
+painter could not have treated her with more deference, bearing himself
+aloft, his chest out, handing her over the low "thank-ye-marm" at the
+street corner--the old woman, straight as her bent shoulders would
+allow, calm, self-contained, but near bursting with a joy that would
+drown her in tears if she gave way but an instant--and all with a quiet
+dignity that somehow, when you looked at her, sent a lump to your
+throat.
+
+And then madame and Gaston!--she stepping free and alive, her little
+feet darting in and out below her rich, short gown, her eyes dancing; he
+swinging along beside her with that quick, alert step of the young who
+have always stretched their muscles to the utmost, his sun-burnt skin
+twice as dark from the mad rush of blood through his veins; abashed at
+the great honor thrust upon him, and yet with that certain poise and
+independence common to men who have fought and won and can fight and win
+again.
+
+And last--amused, glad to lend a hand, enjoying it all to the
+full--Herbert, and Gaston's poor old broken-down-with-hard-work
+mother--stiff, formal, scared out of her seven wits--trying to smile as
+she ambled along, her mouth dry, her knees shaking--the rest of us
+bringing up the rear--Brierley, Le Blanc, The Architect, Marc, and I
+walking together.
+
+[Illustration: First, of course, came the mayor--his worthy spouse on
+his left]
+
+But the greatest sight was at the church--it was but a short step,--the
+mayor, as he reached it, bowing right and left to the throng, the
+sacristan pushing his way through the school children massed in two rows
+on either side of the flower-strewn path, their hands filled with Louis'
+blossoms; back of these the rest of the villagers--those who wanted to
+see the procession, and crowding the doorway and well inside the aisles,
+every soul who could claim admission for miles around. And then as we
+passed under the old portal--through which, so the legend runs, strode
+the Great Warrior surrounded by his knights (not a word of which do I
+believe)--the small organ with a spasmodic jerk wheezed out a welcome
+that went on increasing in volume until we had moved beneath the groined
+arches and reached the altar. There we grouped ourselves in a
+half-circle while the vows were pledged and the small gold ring was
+slipped on Mignon's finger and Gaston had kissed Mignon; and Mignon had
+kissed her new mother; and madame la marquise had taken both their hands
+in her own and said how happy she was, and how she wished them all the
+joy in the world. And then--and this was the crowning joy of the
+ceremony--then, like the old cavalier he is, and can be when occasion
+demands, Lemois stepped up and shook Gaston's hand, Mignon looking at
+the old man with hungry, loving eyes until, unable to restrain herself
+the longer, she threw her arms around his neck and burst into tears--and
+so, with another wheeze of the organ, way was made and the homeward
+march began.
+
+It was high noon now--the warm spring sun in both their faces--Mignon on
+Gaston's arm. And a fine and wholesome pair they made--good to look
+upon, and all as it should and would oftener be if meddlesome cooks
+could keep their fingers out of the social broth: she in her pretty
+white muslin frock and veil, her head up, her eyes shining clear--she
+didn't care now who saw; Gaston in his country-cut clothes (his muscles
+would stretch them into lines of beauty before the week was out), his
+new straw hat with its gay ribbon half shading his fine, strong young
+face; his eyes drinking in everything about him--too supremely happy to
+do more than walk and breathe and look.
+
+Everything was ready for them at the Marmouset. Lemois had not been a
+willing ally, but having once sworn allegiance he had gone over heart
+and soul. The young people and their friends--as well as his
+own--including the exalted lady and her band of conspirators, should
+want for nothing at his hands.
+
+Louis and Leà, as well as madame la marquise, were already inside the
+Marmouset when the bride and groom arrived. More apple-blossoms
+here--banks and festoons of them; the deep, winter-smoked fireplace
+stuffed full; loops, bunches, and spirals hanging from the rafters, the
+table a mass of ivory and pink, the white cloth with its dishes and
+viands shining through.
+
+Mignon's lip quivered as she passed the threshold, and all her old-time
+shyness returned. This was not her place! How could she sit down and be
+waited upon--she who had served all her life? But madame would have none
+of it.
+
+"To-morrow, my child, you can do as you choose; to-day you do as _I_
+choose. You are not Mignon--you are the dear sweet bride whom we all
+want to honor. Besides, love has made you a princess, or Monsieur
+Herbert would not insist on your sitting in his own chair, which has
+only held the nobility and persons of high degree, and which he has
+wreathed in blossoms. And you will sit at the head of the table too,
+with Gaston right next to you."
+
+
+As grown-ups often devote themselves to amusing children--playing
+blind-man's-buff, puss-in-the-corner, and Santa Claus--so did Herbert
+and Louis, Le Blanc, Brierley, The Architect, madame, and the others lay
+themselves out to entertain these simple people. Leà and Mignon, knowing
+the ways of gentle-folk, soon forgot their shyness, as did Gaston, and
+entered into the spirit of the frolic without question--but the stiff
+old mother, and the lame uncle, and the aunts and cousins were sore
+distressed, refusing more than a mouthful of food, their furtive glances
+wandering over the queer figures and quaint objects of the
+Marmouset--more marvellous than anything their eyes had ever rested on.
+One by one, with this and that excuse, they stole away and stood
+outside, their wondering eyes taking in the now quiet and satisfied Coco
+and the appointments of the court-yard.
+
+Soon only our own party and Leà and the bride and groom were left,
+Lemois still the gracious host; madame pitching the key of the
+merriment, Louis joining in--on his feet one minute, proposing the
+health of the newly married couple; his glass filled from the contents
+of the rare punch-bowl entwined with blossoms, which madame had given
+the coterie the autumn before; paying profound and florid compliments
+the while to madame la marquise; the next, poking fun at Herbert and Le
+Blanc; having a glass of wine with Lemois and another with Gaston, who
+stood up while he drank in his effort to play the double rôle of servant
+and guest, and finally, shouting out that as this was to be the last
+time any one would ever get a decent cup of coffee at the Inn, owing to
+the cutting off in the prime of life of the high priestess of the
+roaster--once known as the adorable Mademoiselle Mignon--that Madame
+Gaston Duprè should take Lemois' place at the small table. "And may I
+have the distinguished pleasure, madame"--at which the bride blushed
+scarlet, and meekly did as she was bid, everybody clapping their hands,
+including Lemois.
+
+And it was in truth a pretty sight, one never to be forgotten: Gaston
+devouring her with his eyes, and the fresh young girl spreading out her
+white muslin frock as she settled into the chair which Louis had drawn
+up for her, moving closer the silver coffee-pot with her small white
+hands--and they were really very small and very pretty--dropping the
+sugar she had cracked herself into each cup--"One for you, is it,
+madame?"--and "Monsieur Herbert, did you say two?"--and all with a
+gentle, unconscious grace and girlish modesty that won our hearts anew.
+
+The snort and chug of Le Blanc's car, pushed close to the door, broke up
+the picture and scattered the party. Le Blanc would drive the bridal
+pair home himself--Gaston's mother and her relations having already been
+whisked away in madame's motor, with Marc beside the chauffeur to see
+them safely stowed inside their respective cabins.
+
+But it was when the bride stepped into the car at the gate--or rather
+before she stepped into it--that the real choke came in our throats.
+Lemois had followed her out, standing apart, while Leà hugged and kissed
+her and the others had shaken her hands and said their say; Louis
+standing ready to throw Brierley's two big hunting-boots after the
+couple instead of the time-honored slipper; Herbert holding the blossoms
+and the others huge handfuls of rice burglarized openly from Pierre's
+kitchen.
+
+All this time Mignon had said nothing to Lemois, nor had she looked his
+way. Then at last she turned, gazing wistfully at him, but he made no
+move. Only when her slipper touched the foot-board did he stir, coming
+slowly forward and looking into her eyes.
+
+"You have been a good girl, Mignon," he said calmly.
+
+She thanked him shyly and waited. Suddenly he bent down, took her cheeks
+between his hands, kissed her tenderly on the forehead, and with bowed
+head walked back into the Marmouset alone.
+
+
+END.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
+
+PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+  THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN. Illustrated _net_              $1.30
+  KENNEDY SQUARE. Illustrated                               1.50
+  PETER. Illustrated                                        1.50
+  THE TIDES OF BARNEGAT. Illustrated                        1.50
+  THE FORTUNES OF OLIVER HORN. Illustrated                  1.50
+  THE ROMANCE OF AN OLD-FASHIONED GENTLEMAN. Illustrated    1.50
+  COLONEL CARTER'S CHRISTMAS. Illustrated                   1.50
+  FORTY MINUTES LATE. Illustrated                           1.50
+  THE WOOD FIRE IN NO. 3. Illustrated                       1.50
+  THE VEILED LADY. Illustrated                              1.50
+  AT CLOSE RANGE. Illustrated                               1.50
+  THE UNDER DOG. Illustrated                                1.50
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Arm-Chair at the Inn, by F. Hopkinson Smith
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41284 ***