‘But you are tall—but you are fresh and vermeille!’ Mademoiselle Pouchée hurried the girl across the strip of pavement to the house. ‘I see no more the little Cendrillon of old days. Come, then, mère, leave thy kitchen. Come, that I may present thee to our future Girton girl.’
Madame Pouchée’s cheeks were swarthy as the olives of her native country. An ample checked apron was tied round her neat black dress. She wore the provincial linen head-dress of her youth. Genuine French people do not shake hands on every occasion of human life, and fifty English years had left Madame Pouchée a genuine Frenchwoman still. The old lady came forward, not with a hand outstretched, but with such natural courtesy, such charming welcome written on her Southern face as reminded Marjorie of Spain, and caused her somewhat flagging spirit to rally.
‘I feel six years old again, dear Pouchée.’ This she said when Mademoiselle had led her into the salon, a tiny panelled room where a table was cosily spread for a dinner of two before the fire. ‘Surely we had our lessons this morning! Surely I was wicked—when was I not wicked?—and you gave me a double row of spelling for my penitence.’
Throughout the evening a mysterious sense of having gone back to her childhood fell balmily on Marjorie’s heart. Madame Pouchée gave them a little dinner, as exquisitely cooked, I dare to say, as was any dinner in Trinity or Magdalen that night. For dessert were Tintajeux pears, of which a goodly hamper had come over as a present from the Seigneur. Their coffee was served in Sèvres cups, dislodged for the occasion from Madame Pouchée’s inlaid cabinet—the costliest ornament of the salon, brought with her in bridal days from Paris, when the nineteenth century was in its teens.
‘It is like a Tintajeux holiday,’ cried Marjorie, as she and Pouchée sat, hand clasped in hand, beside the fire. ‘Do you remember every 29th of May we used to eat our dinner under the big oak in honour, you said, of le martyr Protestant, Charles?’ The prayer-books in the Tintajeux family pew were of ancient date. Pouchée, honest creature, was wont to entangle herself among the various Stuart and Orange services, greatly to the Seigneur’s edification. ‘Ah, Pouchée, we are wiser now. We have learnt history from loftier historians than Lady Callcott. And I, for one, am not happier.’
‘Whenever I look at Tintajeux I see a small Marjorie with temper, with eyes, with a determined Spanish face—and whom I loved much. There are no figures in the picture. Still, whenever I look at Tintajeux——’
Mademoiselle Pouchée’s voluble tongue stopped abruptly.
‘No figures in the picture?’ Marjorie glanced round the empty walls. ‘And what picture are you talking of? Where is the photograph of the Manoir I sent you last Christmas?’
As she spoke Madame Pouchée entered, bearing a fresh-trimmed lamp—for this little household boasted of no parlour-maid. The old Frenchwoman lingered a while, her quick septuagenarian eyes watching the faces of her daughter and of their guest. She had caught Marjorie’s last words.
‘The photograph of Tintajeux Manoir? Why, it has been moved upstairs. It hangs in the salon of our gentleman, notre bon locataire—pas vrai, ma fille?’