And whilst she was warbling the door of the salle opened and in walked Laurent.
‘Pardon, madame,’ he cried; ‘do not permit me to interrupt you.’
But Annette had already risen from the piano, and had closed the lid of the instrument.
‘My sister has gone to Janenne,’ he explained, ‘and I am left breakfastless. You hungry rascals have not eaten everything, I hope?’
The Flemish maid would lay an instant cover for Monsieur Laurent, and room was made for him at the table with something like enthusiasm. He began to talk vivaciously scraps of local news gathered on his morning rounds among his patients, and from time to time he turned to Paul to explain some rustic allusion or phrase. He made himself charming, and since he did not explain that he had purposely dismissed his sister for the day in order to find an excuse for his visit to the hotel, Annette had no present suspicion of him. They had a little playful badinage together, and Laurent, turning mock-sentimental, lamented his celibacy so quaintly that she broke into peals of silvery laughter over him. Paul was pleased with her, and half inclined to be proud of her for the first time in his life, though he had a nervous fear lest her gaiety should topple over like an unskilled artist on the slack wire.
By-and-by Laurent set about his meal in a business-like fashion, and Paul strolled quietly from the room. The others, juge and garde and huissier and chemist, chief of gendarmerie, and all the rest of the regular frequenters of the table, were called away by their own avocations. Paul, sitting with his study-door ajar, looking as if prepared to be absorbed in labour at any moment, watched them as they went out by ones and twos, and knew that at last Laurent and Annette were together. The heat of summer noon was in the air. The place was empty, and there was everywhere a humming silence through which his ear discerned now and then the deeper hum of Laurent’s voice. Not a word was audible, or would have been even had Paul cared to play the eavesdropper, but one might have thought that the doctor was preaching a sermon.
‘He’s a wise old man, is Laurent,’ said Paul to himself, ‘and, for a bachelor, he seems to have an uncommon good knowledge of women. That comes out of a doctor’s practice, I dare say.’
The heat of the day, the single glass of wine he had taken, and the hearty meal he had eaten after his morning fast, all combined to make him drowsy, and he had fallen into a half-slumber in which he saw hazily the creatures of his fancy moving behind the footlights, when the door of the dining-room opened, and he heard Laurent’s words of farewell:
‘Croyez moi, Madame Armstrong, c’est une affaire assez grave. Mais courage, courage! Et—bon jour—et bonne espérance.’
Then the door closed, and the doctor’s sturdy feet in their thick-soled boots went echoing along the parquet, clattered for a moment on the pavement outside, and were lost to hearing.