PHINUIT & CO.

In the upshot, however, the necessity of his dismal forebodings had nothing to do with the length of time devoted by Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin to kicking idle heels in the town of Nant; where the civil authorities proved considerate in a degree that--even making allowance for the local prestige of the house of Montalais--gratified and surprised the confirmed Parisian. For that was just what the good man was at heart and would be till he died, the form in which environment of younger years had moulded him: less French than Parisian, sharing the almost insular ignorance of life in the provinces characteristic of the native boulevardier; to whom the sun is truly nothing more or less than a spotlight focussed exclusively on Paris, leaving the rest of France in a sort of crepuscular gloom, the world besides steeped in eternal night.

The driver-guide of La Roque turned out to have been a thorough-paced scamp, well and ill-known to the gendarmerie; the wound sustained by Monsieur d'Aubrac bore testimony to the gravity of the affair, amply excusing d.u.c.h.emin's interference and its fatal sequel; while the statements of Mesdames de Sevenie et de Montalais, duly becoming public property, bade fair to exalt the local reputation of Andre d.u.c.h.emin to heroic stature. And, naturally, his papers were unimpeachable.

So that he found himself, before his acquaintance with Nant was thirty-six hours of age, free once more to humour the dictates of his own sweet will, to go on to Nimes (his professed objective) or to the devil if he liked. A freedom which, consistent with the native inconsistency of man, he exercised by electing to stop over in Nant for another day or two, at least; a.s.suring himself that he found the town altogether charming, more so even than Meyrueis--and sometimes believing this fiction for as much as twenty minutes at a stretch.

Besides, the weather was unsettled ....

The inn, which went by the unpretending style of the Grand Hotel de l'Univers, he found clean, comfortable, and as to its cuisine praiseworthy. The windows of the cubicle in which he had been lodged--one of ten which sufficed for the demands of the itinerant Universe--not only overlooked the public square and its amusing life of a minor market town, but commanded as well a splendid vista of the valley of the Dourbie, with its piquant contrast of luxuriant alluvial verdure and grim scarps of rock that ran up, on either side the wanton, glimmering river, into two opposed and overshadowing pinnacles of crag, the Roc Nantais and the Roc de Saint Alban--peaks each a rendezvous just then for hosts of cloud that scowled forbiddingly down upon the peaceful, sun-drenched valley.

Moreover, even from the terra.s.se of the cafe below, one needed only to lift one's eyes to see, afar, perched high upon a smiling slope of green, with the highway to Millau at its foot and a beetling cliff behind, the Chateau de Montalais. Seated on that terra.s.se, late in the afternoon of his second day in Nant, discussing a Picon and a villainous caporal cigarette of the Regie (to whose products a rugged const.i.tution was growing slowly reconciled anew) d.u.c.h.emin let his vision dwell upon the distant chateau almost as constantly as his thoughts.

He was to dine there that very evening. Even taking into account the signal service d.u.c.h.emin had rendered, this wasn't easy to believe when one remembered the tradition of social conservatism among French gentlefolk. Still, it was true: d.u.c.h.emin of the open road was bidden to dine en famille at the Chateau de Montalais. In his pocket lay the invitation, penned in the crabbed antique hand of Madame de Sevenie and fetched to the hotel by a servitor quite as crabbed and antique: Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin would confer a true pleasure by enabling the ladies of the chateau to testify, even so inadequately, to their sense of obligation, etc.; with a postscript to say that Monsieur d'Aubrac was resting easily, his wound mending as rapidly as heart could wish.

Of course d.u.c.h.emin was going, had in fact already despatched his acceptance by the hand of the same messenger. Equally of course he knew that he ought not to go. For a man of his years he was, as a matter of training and habit, amazingly honest with himself. He knew quite well what bent his inclination toward visiting the Chateau de Montalais just once before effecting, what he was resolved upon, a complete evanishment from the ken of its people. He had yet to hold one minute of private conversation with Eve de Montalais, he had of her no sign to warrant his thinking her anything but utterly indifferent to him; and yet....

No; he wasn't a.s.s enough to dream that he was in love with the woman; to the contrary, he was wise enough, knew himself well enough, to know that he could be, easily, and would be, given half a chance to lose his head.

His warning had been clear beyond mistake, in that hour in the motor car on the road from La Roque to Nant, when Nature, as she sometimes will, incautiously had shown her hand to one whom she herself had schooled to read shrewdly, letting him discern what was her will with him, the snare that was laid for his feet and in which he must soon find himself trapped beyond extrication ... always providing he lacked the wit and resolution to fly his peril, who knew through bitterest of learning that love was never for him.

Now he had seen Madame de Montalais another time, and had found that she fitted to the sweetest detail of perfection his ideal of Woman.

On the previous afternoon, meeting the ladies of the chateau by arrangement in the bureau of the maire, d.u.c.h.emin had sat opposite and watched and listened to Eve de Montalais for upwards of two hours--as completely devoted to covert study of her as if she had been the one woman in the room, as if the girl Louise, Madame de Sevenie, and the officials and functionaries of Nant had not existed in the same world with her. And in that tedious and constrained time of formalities he had learned much about her, but first of all, thanks to the uncompromising light of day that filled the cheerless room, that moonlight had not enhanced but rather tempered the charms of person which had the night before so stirred his pulses.

Posed with consummate grace in a comfortless chair, a figure of slender elegance in her half-mourning, she had narrated quietly her version of last night's misadventure, an occasional tremor of humour lightening the moving modulations of her voice. A deep and vibrant voice, contralto in quality, hinting at hidden treasures of strength in the woman whose superficial mind it expressed. A fair woman, slim but round, with brown eyes level and calm, a translucent skin of matchless texture, hair the hue of bronze laced with intimations of gold ...

Her story told, and taken down in longhand by a withered clerk, she supplied without reluctance or trace of embarra.s.sment such intimate personal information as was necessary in order that her signature to the doc.u.ment might be acceptable to the State.

Her age, she said, was twenty-nine; her birthplace, the City of New York; her parents, Edmund Anstruther, once of Bath, England, but at the time of her birth a naturalised citizen of the United States, and Eve Marie Anstruther, nee Legendre, of Paris. Both were dead. In June 1914 she had married, in Paris, Victor Maurice de Montalais, who had been killed in action at La Fere-Champenoise on the ninth of September following. Her home? The Chateau de Montalais.

On the hand she stripped in order to sign her deposition d.u.c.h.emin saw a blue diamond of such superb water that this amateur of precious stones caught his breath for sheer wonder at its beauty and excellence and worth. Such jewels, he knew, were few and far to seek outside the collections of princes.

Out of these simple elements imagination reconstructed a tragedy, a tragedy of life singularly close to the truth as he later came to learn it, a story not at all calculated to lessen his interest in the woman.

Such women, he knew, are the product of a cultivation seldom to be achieved by poverty. This one had been made before, and not by, her marriage. Her father, then, had commanded riches. And when one knew, as d.u.c.h.emin knew, what delights New York has for young women of wealth and fashion, one perceived a radiant and many-coloured background for this drab life of a recluse, expatriate from the high world of her inheritance, which Eve de Montalais must lead, and for the six years of her premature widowhood must have led, in that lonely chateau, buried deep in the loneliest hills of all France, the sole companion and comfort of her husband's bereaved sister and grandmother, chained by sorrow to their sorrow, by an inexorable reluctance to give them pain by seeming to slight the memory of the husband, brother and grandson through turning her face toward the world of life and light and gaiety of which she was so essentially a part, isolate from which she was so inevitably a thing existing without purpose or effect.

How often, d.u.c.h.emin wondered, had she in hours of solitude and restlessness felt her spirit yearning toward Paris, the nearest gateway to her world, and had cried out: How long, O Lord! how long?...

The mellow resonance of a two-toned automobile horn, disturbing the early evening hush and at the same time d.u.c.h.emin's meditations, recalled him to Nant in time to see a touring car of majestic proportions and mien which, coming from the south, from the direction of the railroad and Nimes, was sweeping a fine curve round two sides of the public square. Arriving in front of the Hotel de l'Univers it executed a full stop and stood curbed yet palpitant, purring heavily: an impressive brute of a car, all shining silver plate and l.u.s.trous green paint and gold, the newest model of the costliest and best automobile manufactured in France.

Instantly, as the wheels ceased to turn, a young man in the smartest livery imaginable, green garnished with gold, leaped smartly from the driver's seat, with military precision opened the door of the tonneau and, holding it, immobilised himself into the semblance of a waxwork image with the dispa.s.sionate eye, the firm mouth, and the closely razored, square jowls of the model chauffeur. Rustics and townsfolk were already gathering, a gaping audience, when from the tonneau descended first a long and painfully emaciated gentleman, whose face was a cadaverous mask of settled melancholy and his chosen toilette for motoring (as might be seen through the open and flapping front of his ulster) a tightly tailored light grey cutaway coat and trousers, with a double-breasted white waistcoat, a black satin Ascot scarf transfixed by a single splendid pearl, and spotless white spats.

His hand, as gaunt as a skeleton's, a.s.sisted to alight a young woman whose brilliant blonde beauty, viewed for the first time in evening shadows, was like a shaft of sunlight in a darkened room. A well-made creature, becomingly and modishly gowned for motoring, spirited yet dignified in carriage, she was like a vision of, as she was palpably a visitation from, the rue de la Paix.

Following her, a third pa.s.senger presented the well-nourished, indeed rotund, person of a Frenchman of thirty devoted to "le Sport"; as witness his aggressively English tweeds and the single gla.s.s screwed into his right eye-socket. His face was chubby, pink and white, his look was merry, he was magnificently self-conscious and debonnaire.

Like shapes from some superbly costumed pageant of High Life in the Twentieth Century this trio drifted, rather than merely walked like mortals, across the terra.s.se and into the Cafe de l'Univers (which seemed suddenly to shrink in proportion as if reminded of its comparative insignificance in the Scheme of Things) where an awed staff of waiters, led by the overpowered proprietaires, monsieur et madame themselves, welcomed these apparitions from Another and A Better World with bowings and sc.r.a.pings and a vast bustle and movement of chairs and tables; while all Nant, all of it, that is, that was accustomed to foregather in the cafe at this the hour of the aperitif, looked on with awed and envious eyes.

It was all very theatrical and inspiring--to Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin, too; who, lost in the shuffle of Nant and content to be so, murmured to himself that serviceable and comforting word of the time, "Profiteers!"

and contemplated with some satisfaction his personal superiority to such as these.

But there was more and better to come.

There remained in the car a mere average man, undistinguished but by a lack of especial distinction, sober of habit, economical of gesture, dressed in a simple lounge suit such as anybody might wear, beneath a rough and ready-made motorcoat. When the car stopped he had stood up in his place beside the chauffeur as if meaning to get out, but rather remained motionless, resting a hand on the windshield and thoughtfully gazing northwards along the road that, skirting the grounds of the Chateau de Montalais, disappeared from view round the sleek shoulder of a hill.

Now as the pattern chauffeur shut the door to the tonneau with the properly arrogant slam, the man who lingered in the car nodded gravely to some private thought, unlatched the door, got down, and turned toward the cafe, but before following his companions of more brilliant plumage paused for a quiet word with the chauffeur.

"We dine here, Jules," he announced in English.

Settling into place behind the wheel Jules saluted with fine finish and deference.

"Very good, Mr. Phinuit, sir," he said meekly, in the same tongue. To this he added, coolly, without the least flicker of a glance aside, without moving one muscle other than those involved by the act of speech, and in precisely the tone of respect that became his livery: "What's the awful idea, you big stiff?"

Mr. Phinuit betrayed not the slightest sense of anything untoward in this mode of address, but looked round to the chauffeur with a slow, not unfriendly smile.

"Why," he said pleasantly--"you misbegotten garage hound--why do you ask?"

In the same manner Jules replied: "Can't you see it's going to rain?"

Mr. Phinuit c.o.c.ked a calm, observant eye heavenwards. Involuntarily but un.o.btrusively, under cover of the little tubbed trees that hedged the terra.s.se apart from the square, d.u.c.h.emin did likewise, and so discovered, or for the first time appreciated, the cause of the uncommonly early dusk that loured over Nant.

Between the sentinel peaks that towered above the valley black battalions of storm cloud were fraternising, joining forces, coalescing into a vast and formidable army of ominous aspect.

"So it is," Mr. Phinuit commented amiably; indeed, not without a certain hint of satisfaction. "Blessed if you don't see everything!"

"Well, then: what about it?"

"Why, _I_ should say you'd better find a place to put the car under cover in case it comes on to storm before we're finished--and put up the top."

"You don't mean to go on in the rain?" Jules protested--yet studiously in no tone of protest.

"But naturally..."

"How do you get that way? Do you want us all to get soaked to our skins?"

"My dear Jules!" Mr. Phinuit returned with a winning smile--"I don't give a tupenny d.a.m.n if we do." With that he went to join his company; while Jules, once the other's back was turned, permitted himself, for the sake of his own respect and the effect upon the a.s.sembled audience, the luxury of a shrug that outrivalled words in expression of his personal opinion of the madness that contemplated further travel on such a night as this promised to be.

Then, like the well-trained servant that he was not, he meshed gears silently and swung the car away to seek shelter, taking with him the sympathy as well as the wonder of the one witness of this bit of by-play who had been able to understand the tongue in which it was couched; and who, knowing too well what rain in those hills could mean, was beginning to regret that his invitation to the chateau had not been for another night.

As for the somewhat unusual tone of the pa.s.sage to which he had just listened, his nimble wits could invent half a dozen plausible explanations. It was quite possible, indeed when one judged Mr. Phinuit by his sobriety in contrast with the gaiety of the others it seemed quite plausible, that he was equally with Jules a paid employee of those ostensible nouveaux riches: and that the two, the chauffeur and the courier (or whatever Mr. Phinuit was in his subordinate social rating) were accustomed to amuse themselves by indulging in reciprocal abuse.

But what d.u.c.h.emin could by no means fathom was the reason why Phinuit should choose, and how he should rule the choice of his party, in the face of such threatening weather, to stop in Nant for an early dinner--with Millau only an hour away and the chances fair that before the storm broke the automobile would reach the latter city with its superior hotel and restaurant accommodations.

But it was after all none of the business of Andre d.u.c.h.emin. He lighted another cigarette, observing the group of strangers in Nant with an open inquisitiveness wholly Gallic, therefore inconspicuous. The entire clientele of the Cafe de l'Univers was doing the same; Mr. Phinuit's party was the focal point of between twenty and thirty pair of staring eyes, and was enduring this with much equanimity.

Mr. Phinuit was conferring earnestly over the menu with madame la proprietaire. The others were ordering aperitifs of a waiter. Through the clatter of tongues that filled the cafe one caught the phrase "veeskysoda" uttered by the monsieur in tweeds. Then the tall man consulted the beautiful lady as to her preference, and d.u.c.h.emin caught the words "madame la comtesse" spoken in the rasping nasal drawl of an American.