CHAPTER XVII
If passion reveals the God in us, it was a wise policy of the Father God which fettered it with restrictions, lest, in aspiring to achieve angels, we should repeople chaos with abortions. Mercifully the streets and the trains, eating and drinking, business and the social duties, are always with us, to appropriate to themselves ninety-nine hundredths of our nervous energy: what remains for our divinity, the odd fiery fraction, is quite enough for all reasonably creative purposes. The poeticules of our latest movement are all for revolt against this state of things; they glory, openly and personally, in the passion that burns and blisters, which is, after all, I suppose, only their modern euphemism for venery in its vulgarest and most penalising form. That is to exalt unclean gods with a vengeance, and, though I do not go with the orthodox Jehovah in most things, I could follow him gratefully in any relentless campaign he instituted against these little wormy monstrosities of a new Gomorrah. The fact that most of them probably are callow and intellectually embryonic, proves nothing so much as the weak indulgence of an age which allows such undeveloped juvenilities to pipe their pretentious eroticisms unsmacked. When Art claims the right to discover and worship beauty in filthy disease, or in the iridescent scums over human corruption, it is time that Art was put away by its friends in an asylum for the neuroticly impossible. So far as I can make out from the published evidences, that asylum should need at the present moment considerable enlargement.
There is, in fact, no beauty, and there never can be, in incontinence; the point is too self-evident to need labouring. Restraint is the quality most to be studied in aiming at perfection of form, and to achieve it one must be content to concentrate on the hundredth fraction. Spiritually and materially, that man will find the highest happiness who is satisfied to yield the bulk of his being to the workaday and unemotional.
Morning lowered the pride of my own starry exaltation, and found me with a normal pulse and a brain swept clean as a housemaid’s step—with a deep thankfulness, moreover, that I was reawaking to a day of untroubled commonplace, and not to one of unquiet, responsible remorse. In action I looked to dissipate the last fumes of an intoxication, whose memory, though it lingered without nausea, was yet no proof against that glad consciousness of moral security. I whistled as I dressed.
Fifine did not come down to breakfast; and I was off with my friends before she had appeared. I knocked at her door, bidding her to expect me back about midday, when I should hope to have finished my task, and she answered “Very well”—coldly, I thought, and in a manner which I was relieved, I told myself, to recognise for one of reassuring indifference.
However, she was punctual to her appointment; and I found her awaiting me in the coffee-room, when I came in—a little late myself—after seeing the ladies off to the station.
“Well, they are gone,” I said. “And now for relaxation and refreshment following duty.”
She shot a quick glance at me; but relapsed immediately into the rather apathetic attitude with which she had accepted my reappearance. She looked a little pale and dark-eyed; but I was resolute to make no comment thereon, nor to imply in any way an understanding sympathy with her state. I expressed my contrition for my unpunctuality, and that was all.
“It doesn’t matter in the least,” she said. “I don’t think I am very hungry.”
“Nonsense,” I answered. “You must eat, after that—” I checked myself, on the brink of the undesired subject. “Besides,” I said, “we have this journey before us, and with only a problematic meal at the end of it. I don’t build implicitly on the resources of the place we are going to—unless it has altered considerably since my time.”
“Very well,” she said impassively: “I will try.”
“How have you amused yourself during my absence?” I asked.
“I went to the Muséon Arleten with M. Cabarus,” she answered in an indifferent voice: “we stayed there till it was time for him to go.”
“To go! What, has he actually taken his departure?”
“Yes—for les Baux. He went in a hired automobile.”
I sat back in my chair, and looked her fixedly in the face.
“Did you tell him we were going there?”
“Yes, I told him.”
I said no more. Presently an uncontrollable fit of laughter began to shake me. It was too ridiculous. Was I for evermore to be haunted by this incubus with the inflated paunch and disordered head? But the moral was no less obvious than the absurdity—I could not shut my eyes to the fact. I had been crushing under in myself a sentiment which had no authority for existing. Perhaps, even, she had known all the time whither he was bound, and had manœuvred so as to induce me to follow in his footsteps. I could not quite believe that; but anyhow I felt myself handsomely made a fool of, and the thought of my own discomfiture appealed irresistibly to my sense of humour. One thing was now certain, that I might quit my conscience of any feeling of regret for my own harshness or irresponsiveness.
Fifine looked a little astonished over my hilarious reception of her thunderbolt; but she said nothing, and we finished our lunch almost in silence.
“Now,” said I, when all was done: “what time did you say our train started? You looked it out, didn’t you, as I asked you.”
“Yes,” she said. “It was at three-twenty.”
“Then we will pay our bill, collect our traps, and, by your leave, start leisurely for the station.”
All of which we did, arriving at the little terminus in ample time. It was somewhat disconcerting, however, to find the platform empty, the office closed, and no sign whatever of train or passengers.
“This is odd,” I said; but presently sighting a porter in the distance, I went to enquire of him. The result was illuminating.
“What time did you tell me our train went?” I asked Fifine, as I rejoined her.
“At three-twenty,” she repeated. “I copied it down, and can show you.”
She showed it me, in fact—a little note in pencil on a scrap of paper.
“Read it, please,” I said.
She obeyed—“Thirteen-twenty”—and stopped. “O—o!” she exclaimed—a prolonged interjection of dismay.
“Exactly,” I said. “Thirteen-twenty is one-twenty, goose. There is not another train for just two hours.”
She stood looking up at me. Her lower lip went down, positively like a dear pitiful baby’s in deprecation of the expected and well-merited scolding.
“O, Felix,” she said. “I’m so sorry!”
I could have shaken her; I could have laughed; I could have snatched her to my heart and kissed her—it was so moving, after all, to see this change in her from that one-time confident assurance to propitiation and entreaty. In these latter days all her precocious dictatorialness seemed to have deserted her; and yet she did not know that I knew what I knew; to all intents and purposes she still figured to herself for a free agent. It was Carabas, the eternal Carabas, who had wrought the sad confusion.
“Never mind,” I said. “It will make us rather late, and it will be a little dull waiting; but we must kill the time as we can, and be glad it is no worse.”
She thanked me for my forbearance, though with only a pathetic look.
“Wouldn’t you like to go back into the town,” she said, “while I wait here for you? Please do. I shan’t mind, and it will make me feel less guilty.”
“Very well,” I answered, after a moment’s reflection—“if you are sure you won’t mind.”
“Quite sure,” she replied; and so I left her.
I knew why I had acquiesced; it was from policy, policy—I put it firmly to myself. It was from policy, also, no doubt, that I wandered no further than to the main platform—to which the other was related but locally—where I smoked and loitered aimlessly, acutely conscious all the time of my self-exile, obstinate to maintain it, yet never losing jealous mental sight of the forlorn figure awaiting my return a short stone’s-throw away. But I prevailed against inclination, even to the end, and did not return to Fifine until the train was actually in the station.
It was well past five when we started, and already there was an ominous drooping about the lids of the sky. Three-quarters of an hour’s run, with the stops at an halte or two and the little midway station of Fontvieille, would surely carry us into something deeper than twilight at Paradou, which was where we had to alight for our final destination. I had not before approached les Baux from this quarter, and was ignorant as to its distance from Paradou, the character of the way, and the possibility of procuring a vehicle of some sort. However, let come what would; we were in for it.
It was a wild little train, a mere giddy colt of a thing, which rattled us through scenery for ever growing more into communion with its untamed self—great stretches of rock-strewn heather, and clattering gullies, and vast ramparts of hill which continually rose about us more savage and menacing. We could see the white road creeping up the valley, as though stealthily pursuing us, now touching us with a coil and gliding swiftly from the contact, now receding to worm itself through purple thickets, whence it would reappear far ahead, wheeling as if to strike us as we passed. The light sank from the sky, like blood from a dying face; the country grew featureless first, and then slowly indistinguishable; once through the little sparkling oasis of Fontvieille, we found ourselves committed without reserve to uncompromising darkness. Still there was a twenty minutes run before us, and I found myself anxiously peering by and by for some sign of twinkling reassurance amidst the glooms ahead. There had been carriages at Fontvieille; should we find their like at Paradou-les-Baux? And while I was still peering, the train slowed down, stopped, and we were at the station.
It seemed a mere isolated platform in an otherwise lightless desolation. We were the only passengers who got out. With a rather sinking heart, I took, after the train had started on its way again, the solitary official—who seemed to combine in himself the parts of stationmaster, ticket-collector, signalman and porter—into my confidence.
“The distance to les Baux, Monsieur?”
“By road,” he answered brusquely, “three miles.”
“An easy road?”
“But far from it. For yourself difficult; for Madame impossible.”
That was discomforting; but it was not accurate. The road, as we discovered next day, was a carriage road and easily distinguishable, though decidedly steep.
“A voiture?” I suggested.
The stationmaster shrugged his shoulders, and called to an urchin, who was hanging about by the platform wicket. A brief colloquy ensued between the two as to the probability of Charloun’s cart being available. Finally, in order to ascertain, the boy ran down the hill, on which the station was situated, into lower gulfs of blackness. He was absent ten or fifteen minutes, when he re-appeared with the information that there was no possibility of our procuring a trap of any sort whatever.
“A guide, possibly?” I asked.
It was certain, was the answer, that no one could be found at this time of night, and the day’s labour over, to put himself to the trouble.
“This is pleasant,” I said to Fifine; and turned again to the stationmaster:—
“There is, without question, an inn?”
O, yes, there was an inn, it appeared, one inn, but hardly of a quality to appeal to travellers of our distinction. It was merely, in short, a cabaret. “Still, if Monsieur and Madame——”
Monsieur and Madame held a short counsel of desperation, and agreed—if one may apply the term to Madame’s passive acquiescence—that it was a question of the undesirable inn or nothing.
“Conduct us to it,” I said to the boy, “and you shall earn the fifty centimes which travellers of distinction are accustomed to bestow upon the deserving.”
He led off, and we followed—down the gulf-like hill. There were no stars, and the wind blew upon us coldly.
“I’m afraid,” I said, “that there’s no help for it, Fifine. You’ll have to resign yourself to being parted from your troubadour for a few hours.”
She did not answer for a little; and then she looked suddenly up at me.
“How cruel you are,” she said. “I never should have thought it of you once.”
There was an odd catch in her voice; but she commanded it, and spoke clearly and precisely. Thereafter we walked in silence—a surprised, half-vindictive one on my part. Not that I was wrathful with Fifine, but with Fate. However unexceptionable my motives, it would not allow me, it seemed, the unequivocal expression of them, but must always be impelling me to say the provocative thing when I had meant only the playful. At least, so I told myself; but then one is not always quite honest in one’s self-confidences. It is extraordinary how gullible we can be when our own inclinations prompt us to mischief.
At the bottom of the hill we came to a crossroad, turning to the right along which we presently sighted the yellow end wall of a country caravansary, on which was emblazoned the magnificent legend “Grand Café Bellin.” It was, in truth, as we discovered on reaching it, a humble enough hostelry, standing in an arid little compound, with a row of plane trees before its windows; but it offered shelter, at least, and possibly some hope of refreshment. We knocked on the door, and a formidable cross-eyed woman opened and demanded our business.
At first it was all impossible; the cooking was done with and the fire down; but finally she was prevailed on to admit us grudgingly; and we were shewn through a reeking little kitchen—which opened straight upon the compound, and where, it seemed, the whole staring household was assembled—into a great barn of a room, furnished with bare benches and tables, at which were seated a number of boors, quite à l’hollandais, only drinking hot coffee in lieu of beer, and playing dominoes and cards with greasy little packs. There in a corner we sat, watching the curious scene, and awaiting meekly the moment when it should please the high-handed landlady to serve us the wherewithal for a meal. It came, and sooner and ampler than we had dared to hope—thin soup, a mess of mutton bones, the usual tough smoked cutlets, the usual rancid wine; but we were hungry and thankful, and remote from a critical mood. We blessed providence and ate; and afterwards sought to ruminate at ease, watching the coming and going, the rough but mannerly company, the animated expressions and the sober recreations. There was a billiard table at the further end of the long room; and presently I went and challenged to a game on it a young quarryman who was idly knocking the balls about. He was unwashed and heavy-booted; the lines of his common face and coarse clothes were filled thick with the dust of his labour; but he accepted with perfect courtesy—and gave me a complete thrashing into the bargain, his strokes being as deft and resourceful with a cue as they must have been violently destructive with a pick. We had a petit verre together afterwards—the only palatable cheap drink in Provence—and parted very good friends. I went back to Fifine, and found her sitting quite patient, but with a strained tired look in her eyes.
“It is bed for you, by your leave,” I said. “Shall I call the girl and get her to show you up to your room?”
“I think,” she answered, “I—I will not go till you do, Felix.”
“Why not, Fifine?”
“I don’t know. I would rather not.”
“You are nervous, little goose. These rough surroundings frighten you; and you are recalling terrible tales of things done to belated travellers in lonely inns. Are you not?”
She smiled faintly, but did not answer.
“Believe me,” I said; “you are safer here than you would be in the Hôtel Ritz, and far less likely to meet with impertinences. But, of course, if you feel so, I will come. You ought, it is very certain, to be in your bed.”
“It is a shame to victimise you so. I am very sorry, Felix. I have been trying to fight it down; but I can’t—everything is so wild and strange.”
“Of course. Poor child!”
I caught up the rücksack, went to the door, summoned the little solemn-eyed Provençale who had waited on us, and bade her conduct us to our rooms. She went before, carrying a lighted candle, up a flight of stairs as steep and narrow as a ladder, and ushered us at the top into a dim windy chamber, sparely littered with furniture, whence opened a couple of doors into two box-like little cubicles, or compartments—our bedrooms. Each contained a bed, a tiny washstand, one chair, and a minute chest of drawers with a scrap of looking-glass on it. They were dingy, the discoloured paper was peeling from the walls, the boards were bare; but, wonder of wonders, each boasted a single switch and electric light. They were more civilized in Paradou than we had opined, and I hoped that Fifine’s nerves would take comfort from that reassurance. I made her choose her room, and deposited in it, as was our custom, the rücksack, having first removed from it my own necessities. Then I bade her good-night, and told her to sleep in peace and security, seeing my own cubicle was contiguous, and the wall between no thicker than match-boxes.
“If you whisper, I shall hear you,” I said. “Call to me, if anything frightens you.”
She promised, and I went—went perforce, though the look in her face made me feel as though I were abandoning a scared child to its night-terrors. There was a mosquito blind to the window in my room, and, raising it, I saw that it opened upon the row of plane trees, and the little compound faintly illuminated by the light from the common-room below. All else and around was dense obscurity—only that little spectral oasis shone isolated in a desert of night.
I sat there long, smoking and meditating. Now and again the door underneath would swing and bang, and a figure would cross the paddock of light and disappear into the glooms beyond. Gradually all sounds in the house ceased; and presently, after a wink or two, the light itself shrunk and was gone. Only still the faintest luminosity, proceeding from somewhere undetected, lingered in my neighbourhood. It took me a minute to discover that it shone through the close web of Fifine’s mosquito blind. So she was awake still; or slept with her light up.
And almost immediately I heard a little stifled call.
“Felix!”
“What is it, m’amie.”
“O, do come to me! There is something horrible!”
I laughed, as I got to my feet; then set my teeth, with a groan, as I softly slipped off my shoes.
“All right,” I whispered back; “I am coming.”
I opened noiselessly one door after the other, stepping like a panic-stricken thief. She was sitting up in bed, her hair coiling about her temples, the sheet clutched to her chin by her two convulsive hands. Her eyes met mine, piteous, deprecating, imploring.
“What is it?” I said.
“There!” She nodded her head frantically, looking beyond me at the wall. I turned; and saw a slowly-travelling centipede—truly a monstrum horrendum. It was about an inch and a half long, its body was encased in overlapping dusky-red scales, and its innumerable legs, unlike the brief pedicles of its more northern brethren, were as long as a house-spider’s, but like fine hairs. I seized up one of Fifine’s shoes that stood outside the door, flattened out the visitor with it, and he fell defunct.
“O, what was it?” She shivered. “Have you killed it?”
“As dead as Charity,” I assured her. “It was just a shield-bearing centipede, Fifine. Nothing worse. You find them about here.”
“Will another come?”
“I should think it unlikely.”
“Felix—will you—will you sit by me till I go to sleep?”
“I ought not to, you know, m’amie.”
“I will shut my eyes; I will not speak to you—not one word. Felix, I am very lonely and miserable.”
“Hush, child. Close your eyes, then. I will stay only on condition that you are absolutely true to your promise.”
She lay down at once, turning from me to obey. I just pushed to the door without latching it, and went and sat as far from her as possible. It was a strange vigil that followed; and yet I never once felt chill throughout it. The blood was always throbbing through my veins like a living fire; little reels of vertigo seemed to take me from time to time, half blissful, half delirious. When my thoughts grew masterful, my soul grew weak; and in those kind and pitiful moods I had to force myself to keep my place, lest a single movement should precipitate a tragedy. But I could not hide the truth from myself any longer. We must go home, I said to my suffering conscience: we must end it and go home. Did she guess the torture in my mind—had she even invited it? In that case I had a formidable task before me indeed.
I don’t know when she slept at last; probably the ferment in her brain, coupled with her consciousness of my presence, kept her long awake. That she could sleep at all, trustful in that consciousness like a child, was sufficiently moving to me. And somewhere in the little hours she did sleep: I knew it, when it came, by the soft regularity of her breathing; and thereupon I rose, and padding it like a burglar, went away from her room into my own. Yet I could not pass her bed, I had not that self-command, but I must pause by it for one moment to look in her dear unconscious face. There was the tenderest flush upon the upturned cheek; the lips were the least bit parted; to look on innocent sleep is to know the bud before the flower, the locked secret, the loveliness nearest heaven. God forgive me!