CHAPTER THREE
Joyselle's party arrived at Falaise the next evening, and leaving Brigit at the inn in the Rue d'Argentin, the others drove on to old M. Joyselle's house in the Rue Victor Hugo.
Brigit was very tired and glad to rest, for the day's journey had been long, and Joyselle's interest in her interest in his country had taken the form of a restless desire to have her see everything possible from both sides of the compartment. For hours, therefore, she had been springing from one window to another, admiring everything to which he pointed, in a mad attempt to satisfy his pride in ici-bas.
Her coming at all had been entirely his idea, and her faint refusals he had laughed to scorn, easily enlisting Théo, and, with a trifle more difficulty, his wife, to his cause.
"Of course you will go with us," he had cried, beaming with joy and tossing Papillon nearly to the ceiling as some outlet for his feelings, "and it will be glorious; and think of the ecstasy of my old people and the rest!"
"Remember, Victor—they are simple people," Félicité had ventured, but he had laughed again.
"And so is she! They are peasants, and she is a great lady. Ça se comprend. But extremes meet, and Brigit has none of the British middle-class snobbism. It is well that she should see the people from whom we come. She shall go with us."
And she had come.
Things had gone very well of late, and as she lay on her narrow bed resting and waiting for Théo to fetch her, she reviewed the events that had occurred since her great quarrel with Victor, and drew a deep breath of satisfaction at the state of affairs.
She and Joyselle, both of them remembering the horror of the quarrel, had been exceptionally gentle to each other, and as so often happens when a situation is apparently unbearable, it had suddenly become quite smooth and pleasant. Restraining himself from demonstrativeness, Joyselle had been able to keep his emotions well in hand, and the tacit avoidance of têtes-à-tête had also proved most helpful.
Félicité's innocent interpretation of their feelings had gone far, too, towards quieting those feelings almost to her conception of them. There were times, Brigit had seen, not without amusement, when Victor had nearly felt for her the paternal solicitude his wife believed him to feel, and even though she smiled at this susceptibility to impression in him, the girl more than once caught herself semi-unconsciously playing the rôle of youthful hero-worshipper cast for her by the older woman.
The position should have been untenable, but it was not. As yet no remorse had come to Brigit regarding Félicité, although she frequently experienced a pang of self-loathing on meeting Théo's honest and trusting eyes. Her upbringing had been such that she really believed herself to be as yet quite guiltless of anything more than an almost inevitable deceit, and even when she did regret the deceit, the thought that she was going to marry Théo gave her instant comfort, as though she were contemplating some noble act of atonement.
"Victor is very good now," she thought, turning her flat, hard pillow, "and I am much less nervous and irritable. Things always do straighten themselves out, I suppose—for those who know how to wait. Mere waiting does no good, it's the knowing how that counts. And I think we are learning now. If only Théo would fall in love with someone else. The minute he becomes unhappy or even impatient Victor will grow paternal, and that is horrible. Théo seems happy enough now——"
Her room was small and high, with orange-coloured stencillings on a grey ground, and thin, dangerously movable strips of carpet on the slippery floor. The curtains were of blue flannel and thoroughly unbeautiful.
The sitting-room was exactly like the bedroom, except that its stencilling was bright green and that it had no bed. There was in each room a big bunch of dahlias of gorgeous hues—offerings from Madame Chalumeau.
Yellow Dog Papillon, who had been left with Brigit to keep her company, lay on one of the rugs and snapped rudely at flies. It was very warm, and the tea had proved quite undrinkable. Brigit thought that she did not greatly care for the Chevreuil d'Or.
Then eight o'clock struck and she rose and rang for hot water. The "maid," who was incidentally a grandmother, wore a blue skirt and a red blouse and smiled cheerfully and toothlessly.
"Yes, yes, mademoiselle, de l'eau chaude. I have brought it! Je connais ma clientèle, moi." With a proud smile she set down a jug about as large as a milk-jug for two coffee-drinkers, and withdrew.
Smiling to herself, Brigit dressed and then went into her sitting-room, and opening a window looked down into the street.
It is a most important thoroughfare, this Rue d'Argentin; the Rue de la Paix de Falaise.
Leaning out the window and looking to her left Brigit beheld the Place St. Gervais, with its fountain, its market-place, now of course empty, and its church steps, on which beggars sleep by day. Opposite her was a café, at present enlivened by the dashing presence of two foot-soldiers and an old man playing dominoes with himself.
Above the houses the sky was pale and clear, and from a garden off to the right at the end of the street came a cooing of wood-pigeons.
Two little boys in black blouses came running up the street, their sabots clacking against the rough cobbles. Someone was playing a mandolin, and at the foot of the street, near the bridge, a girl in a pink apron was flirting with a youth with curly red hair.
People stood by their shop doors, the men smoking small clay pipes, the women usually with a child or two at their skirts. A quiet scene, dull and homely, this birthplace of the Conqueror, and at this humble end of the great street rather pathetic in its aspect of simple relaxation.
Suddenly a little ripple of excited interest touched the groups in the street. The two soldiers rose and stared hard to their left; M. Perret of the Pharmacie Normale came out at a quick call from his wife, and stood, pestle in hand, as she struggled with a maddening knot in the strings of her black apron.
Brigit, leaning out still further, laughed aloud.
"Victor," she said under her breath. "Oh, look at him! You old sabreur!"
Joyselle, a great purple flower in his coat, came swinging down the street, bowing right and left, his grey felt hat in his gloved hand. He looked amazingly young and amazingly handsome, and there was no mistaking the fact that, great man though he undoubtedly was, he was hugely enjoying the homage of his townspeople.
When he reached the Pharmacie Normale he paused, and shaking hands politely with Madame Perret, he met M. Perret with open arms, and the little apothecary, bounding at him, was caught and kissed on either cheek.
"Ce cher Anatole!" Brigit heard him exclaim, "and how art thou, old one?"
Perret, greatly delighted, skipped about in rapture, inquiring in a high piping voice for Félicité and the boy, and asking many questions for which he waited for no answer.
Then there was a lady from the shop, Au Bonheur des chers Petits, to be greeted very cordially, and the old domino-player, who, Brigit learned, was a cousin.
There was something very charming in the simplicity of Joyselle's pleasure in seeing his boyhood's friends, and something almost ludicrous in his perfectly obvious joy in their homage.
Looking down at him in his oft-interrupted progress, Brigit told herself that things must turn out all right. "He is so good-natured and generous and strong," she reflected, with glad shifting of all responsibility, "he will surely find some way out."
When at last she heard his light, regular footfall coming down the passage she rose and went to meet him.
"So the Conquering Hero has come," she teased. "I have been watching your advance down the street. Such a strut!"
"Did I strut? I daresay. They are my own people and I love their affection. Also, as you say, it pleases my vanity. Hélas, my dear, I am very vain."
She put on her hat and took up her gloves.
"I thought Théo was coming for me, Glorieux."
His face changed. "No, my dear love. It is my town, this. Here I was born, here I lived as a child. I must show it to you."
Taking her hand he laid it on his arm with a gentle little pat and led her proudly downstairs.