V.
We hurried on, still in a state of suppressed excitement, I, for one, wondering if we should ever find the Grand Hotel. But we did find it, to my relief. Why, I was so hysterically glad to see the familiar faces of our friends again that it was all I could do to refrain from embracing Herr Baron von Donnerwetter, who stood with others, sad-faced and dejected, waiting in the hope of a meal.
The usual state of things prevailed: hungry Americans were clamouring for impossible foods; helpless waiters were doing their best to pacify the ravenous demands; a feeble, unhappy host was beating the air with oratorical violence, and the Americans—always good-humoured, in spite of their clamourings—waited and waited, only to be satisfied with poor stuff at last; and finding it thus we fled.
The man of the family had, it seems, been quietly reading the signs as we first wandered up into St. Pierre, and the name of a modest little inn had stuck well in his memory; but, manlike, he kept still about it. So with his bump of locality well in evidence, we followed his sturdy steps; in short, found the place in question, and entered a dark, covered, arched passageway, which opened into a number of dimly lighted apartments.
The room we first entered was a kind of salle à manger and salon combined, for it had a sofa—a very hard, rock-like affair—a number of chairs, a quaint old sideboard, a table in the centre, and a lamp on the wall which gave a feeble, flickering light.
Do you remember about the children who followed us so silently on our long walk? Well, when our tall friend left us, the children kept right along, and, as soon as it was discovered that we were trying to find a place all on our own responsibility, their number was augmented by others—big grown men, black men—whose services being rejected, quietly but firmly joined the procession.
The keeper of the inn was a magnificent, great creole woman, well on in years, with a pleasant, winning smile, and an air of hospitality more for the guest than the purse. She said, if we could wait for awhile until the noisy students in the adjoining rooms were pacified, she would do her best for us, but she feared she had nothing suitable.
Ah, friends, how humble doth an empty stomach make the human animal! We told her that we adored fried eggs. In fact we could not picture to ourselves anything more delectable. (We hadn’t had fried eggs at every turn in the West Indies for nothing, our stomachs were becoming acclimated.) Whereupon she bowed her gracefully turbaned head and leisurely left the room. Then the process began, and we may as well keep you right in the room, for to adequately appreciate the repast that followed, good appetite must be seasoned by hilarity and waited upon by patience.
We had on the table a red oilcloth cover, various well-used salt-cellars, and a motley array of knives and forks. Two long-limbed negresses began to arrange our feast, speaking as usual one of their home-made languages, impossible to comprehend as a whole and difficult even in part. These two black cupbearers began, as I said, to arrange the feast, and we sat by, looking on, hungrier every moment, as the prospect grew less promising. After a while some bread, several big chunks,—or loaves, I suppose I ought to say,—were laid on the table. They were shaped like small turtles with heads pulled out at both ends. Next came a bottle of red wine (from the old country!) and the glasses. Then we sat there and sat there fully three-quarters of an hour.
The dusky nymphs had flippety-flapped off; the hostess with the smile had also disappeared, and there was silence. I began to think that, perhaps, the bread and wine was the first course, that so things were served in St. Pierre; and besides there wasn’t even a whiff of garlic anywhere. I was confident that no creole cooking was going on; and, the more I thought, the more I became convinced that we ought to begin. But Daddy thought we ought to wait, and Sister and Blue Ribbons thought so, too, they are such proper lassies. Why did they ever have a mother who would be so unconventional? But I was famished and that bread turtle was put there to eat. I knew it. So in awful silence, with the family holding its bated breath, I began to pull at the bread. I got one of the heads off the turtle, and poured forth the ruddy nectar into the pressed-glass goblet, and took my first delightsome taste of French wine in Martinique. I was just about to continue, when into the room sauntered the black waitress with a steaming dish of soup, and as she discovered my glass of wine well begun, she set her bowl down on the table, fastened a reproving look on me, and putting her arms akimbo, exclaimed:
“Oh, lá, la!”
Then the other black heathen came in, and with her eye upon me, added her astonished:
“Oh, lá, la!”
And then the head of the family said, in a “told you so” tone:
“Oh, lá, la!”
And then the youngsters joined with a choice duet of:
“Oh, lá, la!”
And I said, “Why, certainly, ‘Oh, lá, la,’” and took another swallow of wine.
I felt perfectly justified in my conduct under the circumstances, but no amount of explanation, I am convinced, could have ever placed me in the proper light in the minds of those two black women. I had even some difficulty in explaining the matter satisfactorily to my own family.
I do not think there are in all the French language three small words which can express quite the scorn and derision of “Oh, lá, la!” From the high courts of justice to the dim little dining-room of a Martinique inn, “Oh, lá, la!” withers and humiliates. So I took my bowl of soup very meekly, and said: “Merci, mille fois,” and went to work. After the soup, we waited again long, and, with appetite appeased, more patiently.