After the neatness and regularity of the hospital, the contrast of living at the Pension Gontran made an exceptionally strong impression of disorder on Sylvia. It vaguely recalled her life at Lillie Road with Mrs. Meares, as if she had dreamed that life over again in a nightmare: there was not even wanting to complete the comparison her short hair. Yet with all the grubbiness and discomfort of it she was glad to be with Mère Gontran, whose mind, long attuned to communion with animals, had gained thereby a simplicity and sincerity that communion with mankind could never have given to her. Like the body after long fasting, the mind after a long illness was peculiarly receptive, and Sylvia rejoiced at the opportunity to pause for a while before re-entering ordinary existence in order to contemplate the life of another lonely soul.
The evening meal at the Pension Gontran was positively formal in comparison with the haphazard midday meal; Mère Gontran's three sons rarely put in an appearance, and the maid used to come in with set dishes and lay them on the table in such a close imitation of civilized behavior that Sylvia used to watch her movements with a fascinated admiration, as she might have watched the performance of an animal trained to wait at table. The table itself was never entirely covered with a white cloth, but that even half of it should be covered seemed miraculous after the kitchen table. The black-and-red checkered cloth that covered the dining-room table for the rest of the day was pushed back to form an undulating range of foothills, beyond which the relics of Mère Gontran's incomplete undertakings piled themselves in a mountainous disarray; stockings that ought to be mended, seedlings that ought to be planted out, garden tools that ought to be put away, packs of cards, almanacs, balls of wool, knitting-needles, flower-pots, photograph-frames, everything that had been momentarily picked up by Mère Gontran in the course of her restless day had taken refuge here. The dining-room itself was long, low, and dark, with a smell of bird-cages and withering geraniums; sometimes when Mère Gontran had managed to concentrate her mind long enough upon the trimming of a lamp, there would be a lamp with a shade like a draggled petticoat; more frequently the evening meal (dinner was too stringent a definition) was lighted by two candles, the wicks of which every five minutes assumed the form of large fiery flies' heads and danced up and down with delight like children who have dressed themselves up, until Mère Gontran attacked them with a weapon that was used indifferently as a nutcracker and a snuffer, but which had been designed by its maker to extract nails. Under these repeated assaults the candles themselves deliquesced and formed stalagmites and stalactites of grease, which she used to break off, roll up into balls, and drop on the floor, where they perplexed the greed of the various cats, whose tails, upright with an expectation of food, could dimly be seen waving in the shadows like seaweed.
On the first night of Sylvia's arrival she had been too tired to sit up with Mère Gontran and attend the conversation with her deceased husband, nor did the widow overpersuade her, because it was important to settle the future of her three sons by threatening Gontran with a visit to the Embassy, a threat that might disturb even his astral liberty. Sylvia gathered from Mère Gontran's account of the interview, next morning, that it had led to words, if the phrase might be used of communication by raps, and it seemed that the spirit had retired to sulk in some celestial nook as yet unvexed by earthly communications; his behavior as narrated by his wife reminded Sylvia of an irritated telephone subscriber.
"But he'll be sorry for it now," said Mère Gontran. "I'm expecting him to come and say so every moment."
Gontran, however, must have spent the day walking off his wife's ill-temper in a paradisal excursion with a kindred spirit, for nothing was heard of him, and she was left to her solitary gardening, as maybe often in life she had been left.
"I hope nothing's happened to Gontran," she said, gravely, when Sylvia and she sat down to the evening meal.
"Isn't the liability to accident rather reduced by getting rid of matter?" Sylvia suggested.
"Oh, I'm not worrying about a broken leg or anything like that," Mère Gontran explained. "But supposing he's reached another plane?"
"Ah, I hadn't thought of that."
"The communications get more difficult ever year since he died," the widow complained. "The first few months after his death, hardly five minutes used to pass without a word from him, and all night long he used to rap on the head of my bed, until James used to get quite fidgety." James was the bulldog who slept with Mère Gontran.