CHAPTER VIII

 CORINNA fortified by urgently summoned nourishment lit a cigarette and sarcastically announced her readiness to listen to the oracle. The oracle bowed with his customary benevolence and spoke for a considerable time in florid though unambiguous terms. To say that Corinna was surprised by the proposal which he set before her would inadequately express her indignant stupefaction. She sat angry, with reddened cheek-bones and tightly screwed lips, perfectly silent, letting the wretched man complete his amazing pronouncement before she should annihilate him. He was still pronouncing, however, when Bigourdin appeared at the door. Fortinbras broke off in the middle of a sentence and called him into the room. “My good Gaspard,” said he, in French, for Bigourdin knew little English, “I am suggesting to mademoiselle a scheme for her perfect happiness of which I have reason to know you will approve. Sit down and join our conclave.” “I approve of everything in advance,” said the huge man, with a smile. “Then I suppose you’re aware of this delicious scheme?” she asked. “Not at all,” said he; “but I have boundless confidence in my brother-in-law.” “His idea is that I should enter your employment as a kind of forewoman in your fabrique.” “But that is famous!” exclaimed Bigourdin, with a sparkle in his eyes. “It could only enter into that wise head yonder. The trade is getting beyond Félise and myself. Sooner or later I must get some one, a woman, to take charge of the manufacturing department. I have told Daniel my difficulties and he comes now with this magnificent solution. Car c’est vraiment magnifique.” He beamed all over his honest face. “You would have to learn the business from the beginning,” said Fortinbras quickly. “That would be easy, as you would have willing instructors, and as you are not deficient in ordinary intelligence. You would rise every day in self-esteem and dignity and at last find yourself of use in the social organism.” “You propose then,” said Corinna, restraining the annihilatory outburst owing to Bigourdin’s presence and shaking with suppressed wrath, “you propose then that I should spend the life that God has given me in making paté de foie gras.” “Better that than spend it in making bad pictures or a fool of yourself.” “I’ve given up painting,” Corinna replied, “and every woman makes a fool of herself. Hence the perpetuation of the human species.” “In your case, my dear Corinna,” said Fortinbras, “that would be commendable folly.” “You are insulting,” she cried, her cheeks aflame. “Tiens, tiens!” said Bigourdin, laying his great hand on his brother-in-law’s arm. But Fortinbras stroked back his white mane and regarded them both with leonine serenity. “To meet a cynical gibe with a retort implying that marriage and motherhood are woman’s commendable lot cannot be regarded as an insult.” Corinna scoffed: “How do you manage to do it?” “Do what?” “Talk like that.” “By means of an education not entirely rudimentary,” replied Fortinbras in his blandest tone. “In the meanwhile you haven’t replied to my suggestion. Once you said you would like to take life by the throat and choke something big out of it. You still want to do it—but you can’t. You know you can’t, my dear Corinna. Even the people that can perform this garrotting feat squeeze precious little happiness out of it. Happiness comes to mortals through the most subtle channels. I suggest it might come to you through the liver of an overfed goose.” At Corinna’s outburst, Bigourdin’s sunny face had clouded over. “Mademoiselle Corinna,” said he earnestly, “if you would deign to accept such a position, which after all has in it nothing dishonourable, I assure you from my heart that you would be treated with all esteem and loyalty.” The man’s perfect courtesy disarmed her. Of course she was still indignant with Fortinbras. That she, Corinna Hastings, last type of emancipated English womanhood, bent on the expression of a highly important self, should calmly be counselled to bury herself in a stuffy little French town and become a sort of housekeeper in a shabby little French hotel. The suggestion was preposterous, an outrage to the highly-important self, reckoning it a thing of no account. Why not turn her into a chambermaid or a goose-herd at once? The contemptuous assumption fired her wrath. She was furious with Fortinbras. But Bigourdin, who treated the subject from the point of view of one who asked a favour, deserved a civil answer. “Monsieur Bigourdin,” she said with a becoming air of dignity tempered by a pitying smile, “I know that you are everything that is kind, and I thank you most sincerely for your offer, but for private reasons it is one that I cannot accept. You must forgive me if I return to England, where my duty calls me.” “Your duty—to whom?” asked Fortinbras. She petrified him with a glance. “To myself,” she replied. “In that case there’s nothing more to be said,” remarked Bigourdin dismally. “There’s everything to be said,” declared Fortinbras. “But it’s not worth while saying it.” Corinna rose and gathered up her gloves. “I’m glad you realise the fact.” Bigourdin rose too and detained her for a second. “If you would do me the honour of accepting our hospitality for just a day or two”—delicately he included Félise as hostess—“perhaps you might be induced to reconsider your decision.” But she was not be moved—even by Martin who, having smoked the pipe of discreet silence during the discussion, begged her to postpone her departure. “Anyhow, wait,” said he, “until our good counsellor tells us what he proposes to do for me. As we started in together, it’s only fair.” “Yes,” said Corinna. “Let us hear. What ordonnance de bonheur have you for Martin?” “Are you very anxious to know?” asked Fortinbras. “Naturally,” said Martin, and he added hastily in English, being somewhat shy of revealing himself to Bigourdin: “Corinna can tell you that I’ve been loyal to you all through. I’ve had a sort of blind confidence in you. I’ve chucked everything. But I’m nearly at the end of the financial tether, and something must happen.” “Sans doute,” said Fortinbras. So as to bring Bigourdin into range again, he continued in French. “To tell you what is going to happen is one of the reasons why I am here.” “Well, tell us,” said Corinna, “I can’t stand here all day.” “Won’t you sit down, mademoiselle?” said Bigourdin. Corinna took her vacated chair. “Aren’t you ever going to begin?” “I had prepared,” replied Fortinbras benevolently, “an exhaustive analysis of our young friend’s financial, moral and spiritual state of being. But, as you appear to be impatient, I will forego the pleasure of imparting to you this salutary instruction. So perhaps it is better that I should come to the point at once. He is practically penniless. He has abandoned all ideas of returning to his soul-stifling profession. But he must, in the commonplace way of mortals, earn his living. His soul has had a complete rest for three months. It is time now that it should be stimulated to effort that shall result in consequences more glorious than the poor human phenomenon that is, I can predict. My prescription of happiness, as you, Corinna, have so admirably put it, is that Martin shall take the place of the unclean Polydore, who, I understand, has recently been ejected with ignominy from this establishment.” His small audience gasped in three separate and particular fashions. “Mon vieux, c’est idiot!” cried Bigourdin. “What a career,” cried Corinna, with a laugh. “I never thought of that,” said Martin, thumping the table. Fortinbras rubbed his soft hands together. “I don’t deal in the obvious.” “Mon vieux, you are laughing at us,” said Bigourdin. “Monsieur Martin, a gentleman, a scholar, a professor——!” “A speck of human dust in search of a soul,” said Fortinbras. “Which he’s going to find among dirty plates and dishes,” scoffed Corinna. “In the eyes of the Distributing Department of the Soul Office of Olympus, where every little clerk is a Deuce of a High God, the clatter of plates and dishes is as important as the clash of armies.” Corinna looked at Bigourdin. “He’s raving mad,” she said. Fortinbras rose unruffled and laid a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “My excellent friend and disciple,” said he, “let us leave the company of these obscurantists, and seek enlightenment in the fresh air of heaven.” Whereupon he led the young man to the terrace and walked up and down discoursing with philosophical plausibility while his white hair caught by the gusty breeze streamed behind like a shaggy meteor. Bigourdin, who had remained standing, sat down again and said apologetically: “My brother-in-law is an oddity.” “I believe you,” assented Corinna. There was a short silence. Corinna felt that the time had come for a dignified retirement. But whither repair at this unconscionably early hour? The hotel resembled now a railway station at which she was doomed to wait interminably, and one spot seemed as good as another. So she did not move. “You have decided then to leave us, Mademoiselle Corinna?” said Bigourdin at last. “I must.” “Is there no means by which I could persuade you to stay? I desire enormously that you should stay.” Her glance met his and lowered. The tone of his voice thrilled her absurdly. She had at once an impulse to laugh and a queer triumphant little flutter of the heart. “To make paté de foie gras? You must have unwarrantable faith in me.” “Perhaps, in the end,” said he soberly, “it might amuse you to make paté de foie gras. Who knows? All things are possible.” He paused for a moment, then bent forward, elbow on table and chin in hand. “This is but a little hotel in a little town, but in it one might find tranquillity and happiness—enfin, the significance of things,—of human things. For I believe that where human beings live and love and suffer and strive, there is an eternal significance beneath the commonplace, and if we grasp it, it leads us to the root of life, which is happiness. Don’t you think so, mademoiselle?” “I suppose you’re right,” she admitted dubiously, never having taken the trouble to look at existence from the subjective standpoint. Her attitude was instinctively objective. “I thank you, mademoiselle,” said he. “I said that because I want to put something before you. And it is not very easy. I repeat—this is but a little hotel in a little town. I too am but a man of the people, Mademoiselle; but this hotel—my father added to it and transformed it, but it is the same property—this hotel has been handed down from father to son for a hundred years. My great-grandfather, a simple peasant, rose to be Général de Brigade in the Grand Armée of Napoléon. After Waterloo, he would accept no favour from the Bourbons, and retired to Brant?me, the home of his race, and with his little economies he bought the H?tel des Grottes, at which he had worked years before as a little va-nu-pieds, turnspit, holder of horses—que sais-je, moi? Those were days, mademoiselle, of many revolutions of fortune.” “And all that means——?” asked Corinna, impressed, in spite of English prejudice, by the simple yet not inglorious ancestry of the huge innkeeper. “It means, mademoiselle,” said Bigourdin, “that I wish to present myself to you as an honest man. But as I am of no credit, myself, I would like to expose to you the honour of my family. My great-grandfather, as I have said, was Général de Brigade in the Grande Armée. My grandfather, simple soldat, fought side by side with the English in the Crimea. My father, Sergeant of Artillery, lost a leg and an arm in the War of 1870. My younger brother was killed in Morocco. For me, I have done my service militaire. Ou fait ce qu’on peut. It is chance that I am forty years of age and live in obscurity. But my name is known and respected in all Périgord, mademoiselle——” “And again—all that means?” “That if a petit h?telier like me ventures to lay a proposition at the feet of a jeune fille de famille like yourself—the petit h?telier wishes to assure her of the perfect honorabilité of his family. In short, Mademoiselle Corinne, I love you very sincerely. I can make no phrases, for when I say I love you, it comes from the innermost depths of my being. I am a simple man,” he continued very earnestly, and with an air of hope, as Corinna flashed out no repulse, but sat sphinx-like, looking away from him across the room, “a very simple man; but my heart is loyal. Such as I am, Mademoiselle Corinne—and you have had an opportunity of judging—I have the honour to ask you if you will be my wife.” Corinne knew enough of France to realise that all this was amazing. The average Frenchman, whom Bigourdin represented, is passionate but not romantic. If he sets his heart on a woman, be she the angel-eyed spouse of another respectable citizen or the tawdry and naughty little figurante in a provincial company, he does his honest (or dishonest) best to get her. C’est l’amour, and there’s an end to it. But he envisages marriage from a totally different angle. Far be it from me to say that he does not entertain very sincere and tender sentiments towards the young lady he proposes to marry. But he only proposes to marry a young lady who can put a certain capital into the business partnership which is an essential feature of marriage. If he is attracted towards a damsel of pleasing ways but devoid of capital, he either behaves like the appalling Monsieur Camille Fargot, or puts his common sense, like a non-conducting material, between them, and in all simplicity, doesn’t fall in love with her. But here was a manifestation of freakishness. Here was Bigourdin, man of substance, who could have gone to any one of twenty families of substance in Périgord and chosen from it an impeccable and well-dowered bride—here he was snapping his fingers at French bourgeois tradition—than which there is nothing more sacrosanct—putting his common sense into his cap and throwing it over the windmills, and acting in a manner which King Cophetua himself, had he been a Frenchman, would have condemned as either unconventional or insane. Corinna’s English upper middle-class pride had revolted at the suggestion that she should become an employee in a little bourgeois inn; but her knowledge of French provincial life painfully quickened by her experience of yesterday assured her that she was the recipient of the greatest honour that lies in the power of a French citizen to offer. An English innkeeper daring to propose marriage she would have scorched with blazing indignation, and the bewildered wretch would have gone away wondering how he had mistaken for an angel such a Catherine-wheel of a woman. But against Bigourdin, son of other traditions so secure in his integrity, so delicate in his approach, so intensely sincere in his appeal, she could find within her not a spark of anger. All conditions were different. The plane of their relations was different. She would never have confessed to a flirtation with an English innkeeper. Besides, she had a really friendly feeling for Bigourdin, something of admiration. He was so big, so simple, so genuine, so intelligent. In spite of Martin’s complaint that she could not realise the spirit of modern France, her shrewd observation had missed little of the moral and spiritual phenomena of Brant?me. She was well aware that Bigourdin, petit h?telier that he was, stood for many noble ideals outside her own narrow horizon. She respected him; she also derived feminine pleasure from his small mouth and the colour of his eyes. But the possibility of marrying him had never entered her head. She had not the remotest intention of marrying him now. The proposal was grotesque. As soon as she got clear of the place she would throw back her head and roar with laughter at it; a gleeful little devil was already dancing at the back of her brain. For the moment, however, she did not laugh: on the contrary a queer thrill again ran through her body, and she felt a difficulty in looking him in the face. After having thrown herself at a man’s head yesterday only to be spurned, her outraged spirit found solace in having to-day another man suppliant at her feet. Of his sincerity there could be no possible question. This big, good man loved her. For all her independent ways and rackety student experiences, no man before had come to her with the loyalty of deep love in his eyes, no man had asked her to be his wife. Absurd as it all was, she felt its flattering deliciousness in every fibre of her being. “Eh bien, Mademoiselle Corinne, what do you answer?” asked Bigourdin, after a breathless silence during which, with head bent forward over the table, she had been nervously fiddling with her gloves. “You are very kind, Monsieur Bigourdin. I never thought you felt like that towards me,” she said falteringly, like any well-brought-up school-girl. “You should have told me.” “To have expressed my feelings before, Mademoiselle, would have been to take advantage of your position under my roof.” Suddenly there came an unprecedented welling of tears in her eyes, and a lump in her throat. She sprang to her feet and with rare impulsiveness thrust out her hand. “Monsieur Bigourdin, you are the best man I have ever met. I am your friend, your very great friend. But I can’t marry you. It is impossible.” He rose too, holding her and put the eternal question. “But why?” “You deserve a wife who loves you. I don’t love you. I never could love you”—and then from the infinite spaces of loneliness there spread about her soul a frozen desolation, and she stood as one blasted by Polar wind—“I shall never love a man all my life long. I am not made like that.” And she seemed to shrivel in his grasp and, flitting between the snow-clad tables like a wraith, was gone. “Bigre!” said Bigourdin, sitting down again. Soon afterwards, Fortinbras and Martin, coming in from the terrace, found him sprawling over the table a monumental mass of dejection. But, full of their own conceits, they did not divine his misery. Fortinbras smote him friendly wise on his broad back and aroused him from lethargy. “It is all arranged, mon vieux Gaspard,” he cried heartily. “I have been pouring into awakening ears all the divine distillations of my philosophy. I have initiated him into mysteries. He is a neophyte of whom I am proud.” Bigourdin, in no mood for allusive hyperbole, shook himself like a great dog. “What kind of imbecility are you talking?” “The late Polydore——” Fortinbras began. “Ah! Finish with it, I beg you,” interrupted Bigourdin, with an unusual air of impatience. “It isn’t a joke, I assure you,” said Martin. “I have come to the end of my resources. I must work. You will, sooner or later have to fill the place of Polydore. Give me the wages of Polydore and I am ready to fill it. I could not be more incapable, and perhaps I am a little more intelligent.” “It is serious?” “As serious as can be.” Bigourdin passed his hand over his face. “I went to sleep last night in a commonplace world, I wake up this morning to a fantastic universe in which I seem to be a leaf, like those outside”—he threw a dramatic arm—“driven by the wind. I don’t know whether I am on my head or my heels. Arrange things as seems best to you.” “You accept me then as waiter in the H?tel des Grottes?” “Mon cher,” said Bigourdin, “in the state of upheaval in which I find myself I accept everything.” The upheaval or rather overthrow—for he used the word “bouleversement”—of the big man was evident. He sat the dejected picture of defeat. No man in the throes of sea-sickness ever cared less what happened to him. Fortinbras looked at him shrewdly and his thick lips formed themselves into a noiseless whistle. Then he exchanged a glance with Martin, who suddenly conjectured the reason of Bigourdin’s depression. “She ought to be spanked,” said he in English. Fortinbras beamed on him. “You do owe something to me, don’t you?” “A lot,” said Martin. Félise, her face full of affairs of high importance ran into the salle-à-manger. “Mon Oncle, le Père Didier sends word that he has decided not to kill his calf till next week. What shall we do?” “We’ll eat asparagus,” Bigourdin replied and lumbered out into the November drizzle. Three pairs of wondering eyes sought among themselves a solution of this enigmatic utterance. “Mais qu’est-ce que cela veut dire?” cried Félise, with pretty mouth agape. “It means, my child,” said Fortinbras, “that your uncle, with a philosopher’s survey of the destiny of the brute creation, refuses to be moved either to ecstatic happiness or to ignoble anger by the information that the life of the obscure progeny of a bull and a cow has been spared for seven days. For myself I am glad. So is our tender-hearted Martin. So are you. The calf has before him a crowded week of frisky life. Send word to Père Didier that we are delighted to hear of his decision and ask him to crown the calf with flowers and send him along to-day for afternoon tea.” He smiled and waved a dismissing hand. Félise, laughing, kissed him on the forehead and tripped away, having little time to spare for pleasantry. The two men smoked in silence for some time. At last Fortinbras, throwing the butt end of his cigarette into Corinna’s coffee-bowl, rose, stretched himself and yawned heartily. “Having now accomplished my benevolent purpose,” said he, “I shall retire and take some well-earned repose. In the meanwhile, Monsieur Polydore Martin, you had better enter upon your new duties.” So Martin, after he had procured a tray and an apron from the pantry, took off his coat, turned up his shirt-sleeves and set to work to clear away the breakfast things.