Henri, with decisive gravity, was helping the ladies to alight; in another instant he had regained his seat, and he and Renard were flying down the roadway, out of sight.
"Really—it's the coolest proceeding," Charm began. Then we looked through the bars of the park gate. The park was as green and as still as a convent garden; a pink brick mansion, with closed window-blinds, was standing, surrounded by a terrace on one side, and by glittering parterres on the other.
"Where did he say the old curé was?" asked Charm, quite briskly, all at once. Everything had turned out precisely as Renard had predicted. Doubtless he had also counted on the efficacy of the old fable of the Peri at the Gate—one look had been sufficient to turn us into arrant conspirators; to gain an entrance into that tranquil paradise any ruse would serve.
"Here's a church—he said nothing about a church, did he?"
Across the avenue, above the branches of a row of tall trees, rose the ivied facade of a rude hamlet church; a flight of steep weedy steps led up to its Norman doorway. The door was wide open; through the arched aperture came the sounds of footfalls, of a heavy, vigorous tread; Charm ran lightly up a few of the lower steps, to peer into the open door.
"It's the curé dusting the altar—shall I go in?"
"No, we had best ring—this must be his house."
The clatter of the curé's sabots was the response that answered to the bell we pulled, a bell attached to a diminutive brick house lying at the foot of the churchyard. The tinkling of the cracked-voiced bell had hardly ceased when the door opened.
But the curé had already taken his first glance at us over the garden hedges.