CHAPTER XV.
During the course of his short journey from the wood-skirt to the inhospitable hostelry of his former acquaintance, Ned could have thought himself conscious of an atmosphere vaguely unfamiliar to his recollections of Méricourt. These were not at fault, he felt convinced, because of climatic changes; because of an aspect of seasonable reinvigoration in a place that he had last seen sunk in lethargy; because of an increase in the number of people he saw moving in the street even. They recognised themselves astray, rather, over a spirit of demure gravity—a chosen tribe smugness of expression, so to speak—that seemed to inform with pharisaic minauderie the faces of many of those he passed by; and even he fancied he could distinguish—in the absence of this self-important mien—strangers (of whom there were not a few) from those that were native to the hamlet.
There seemed, in short, an air of wandering expectancy abroad—almost as if the unregarded village, committed hitherto to a serene isolation, were become suddenly a field for prospectors, ready to “exploit” anything from a three-legged calf to a sainte nitouche. Conversing couples hushed their voices as he went by, their eyes stealthily scanning him as one that had ventured without justification within a consecrated sanctuary. A berline stood drawn up by the green-side, its occupants, two fashionable ladies from Liége, converted from the latest fashion in hats to the last in emotionalism. The blacksmith, in his little shop under the walnut-tree, familiarly rallied his Creator from stentorian lungs as he clanked upon his anvil. Across the Place the ineffective Curé was to be seen escorting a party towards the church; and, over all—visitors and inhabitants—went the sweet laugh of May blowing abroad the scent of woods and blossoms.
Ned turned into the “Landlust,” feeling somehow that his dream of rest was resolved into a droll. Nor, once within, was he to be agreeably disillusioned in this respect. The Van Roon seemed to positively resent his recursion—to regard him in the light of an insistent patient returning, on trifling provocation, to a hospital from which he had been discharged as cured.
“What! you again!” she cried sourly. “One would think moogsieur had no object in life but to canvass the favour of Méricourt.”
Ned, the yet imperturbable, answered with unruffled gallantry—
“Indeed, in all the course of my travels I have never seen anything to admire so much as madame in the conduct of her business. Whichever way I have looked since my departure, it was always she that filled my perspective.”
“If that is the same as your stomach,” said madame rudely, “you will have found me hard of digestion.”
“At least I am hungry now.”
“That is a pity. You shall pick Lenten fare in the ‘Landlust’ in these days.”