"Hungry, Joseph?" I asked.
He had to bethink himself before he could answer. Then he replied that he had food in his pocket, bread and cheese, and that Finois carried his own dinner. They would be ready to go on, if I chose, or to remain, if that were my pleasure. "It is too early for a final stop, at a place where there can no amusement for the evening," said I. "We had better go on. If you intend to stay outside with Finois, I'll send you a bottle of beer, and you can, if you will, drink my health."
With this I went in, feeling sure that the time of my absence would not pass heavily for Joseph.
This was the hour at which, in England, we would sip a cup of tea as an excuse for talk with a pretty woman in her drawing-room; but having tramped steadily for some hours in mountain air, I was in a mood to understand the tastes of that class who like an egg or a kipper for "a relish to their tea." I looked for the landlady with the illustrious ancestors, and could not find her; but voices on the floor above led me to the stairway. I mounted, passed a doorway, and found myself in a room which instinct told me had been the scene of the historic déjeuner.
It was a low-ceilinged room with wainscoted walls, and at first glance one received an impression of the past. There was a soft lustre of much-polished mahogany, and a glitter of old silver candelabra; I thought that I detected a faint fragrance of lavender lurking in the clean curtains, or perhaps it might have come from the square of ancient damask covering the table, on which a meal was spread.
That meal consisted of chicken; a salad of pale green lettuce and coraline tomatoes; a slim-necked bottle of white wine; a custard with a foaming crest of beaten egg and sugar; and a dish of purple figs. Food for the gods, and with only a boy to eat it—but a remarkable boy. I gazed, and did not know what to make of him. He also gazed at me, but his look lacked the curiosity with which I honoured him. It expressed frank and (in the circumstances) impudent disapproval. Having bestowed it, he nonchalantly continued his conversation with the plump and capped landlady, who was evidently enraptured with him, while I was left to stand unnoticed on the threshold.
Purely from the point of view of the picturesque, there was some excuse for madame's preoccupation. The boy would have delighted an artist, no doubt, though our first interchange of glances gave me a strong desire to smack him.
His panama—a miniature copy of mine—hung over the back of his old-fashioned chair—the one, no doubt, in which Napoleon had sat to eat the déjeuner. Soft rings of dark, chestnut hair, richly bright as Japanese bronze, had been flattened across his forehead by the now discarded hat. This hair, worn too long for any self-respecting, twentieth-century boy, curled round his small head and behind the slim throat, which was like a stem for the flower of his strange little face. "Strange" was the first adjective which came into my mind; yet, if he had been a girl instead of a boy, he would have been beautiful. The delicately pencilled brows were exquisite, and out of the small brown face looked a pair of large, brilliant eyes of an extraordinary blue—the blue of the wild chicory. When the boy glanced up or down, there was great play of dark lashes, long, and amazingly thick. This would have been charming on a girl, but seemed somehow affected in a boy, though one could hardly have accused the little snipe of making his own eyelashes. He wore a very loose-trousered knickerbocker suit of navy-blue; a white silk shirt or blouse, loose also, with a turned-down Byronic collar and a careless black bow underneath. He had extremely small hands, tanned brown, and on the least finger of one was a seal ring. My impression of this youthful tourist was that in age he might be anywhere between thirteen and seventeen, and I was sure that he would be the better for a good thrashing.
"Some rich, silly mother's darling," I said to myself. "Little milksop, travelling with a muff of a tutor, I suppose. Why doesn't the ass teach him good manners?"
This lesson seemed particularly necessary, because the youth persisted in holding the attention of the landlady, who, with a comfortable back to me, laughed at some sally of the boy's. When I had stood for a moment or two, waiting for a pause which did not come, although the brat saw me and knew well what I wanted, I spoke coldly: "Pardon, madame, I desire something to eat," I said in French.