The Arm-Chair at the Inn

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

“It all came about through a little fête my father gave to which the neighbors and some of the land-owners were invited. You know all about these festivities, of course. Something of the kind must be done every year, and my dear father never forgot what he owed his people, and always did his best to make them happy. On this occasion the idea came into my head that it would be something of a novelty if I arranged a dance of the young people with a May-pole and garlands, after one of the Watteau paintings in our home; something that had never been done before, but which, if done at all, must be carried out properly. So I sent to Paris to get the costumes, the wide hats, petticoats, and all—with the small clothes for the men—and started out to find my characters. One of my maids had told me of this girl and, as she lived nearest, I stopped at her house first. Well, the father came in and blustered out a welcome; then the mother, with a curtsy and a smile, wiped out the man’s odious impression, thanking me for coming, and then the girl appeared—the living counterpart of her mother except that the fine strain of gentle blood had so softened and strengthened the daughter’s personality that she had blossomed into a lovely young person without a trace of the peasant about her—just as any new grafting improves both flower and fruit. I could not take my eyes from her, she was so gentle and modest—her glance reaching mine timidly, the lids trembling like a butterfly afraid to alight; oh, a very charming and lovely creature—an astonishing creature, really, to be the daughter of such a man. Before the visit was over I had determined to make her my prima donna: she should lead the procession, and open the dance with some gallant of her choice—a promise received with delight by the family; the girl being particularly pleased, especially with the last part of it, and so I left them, and kept on my rounds through the village and outlying district.

“It was a lovely summer day—in June, if I remember—too late for May-poles, but I didn’t care—and long before the hour arrived our lawn was thronged with peasants and their sons and daughters, and our stables and paddocks crowded with their carts and vehicles. My father had provided a tent where the young people should change their clothes, but I took my little maid up into my own room, and my femme de chambre and I dressed her at our leisure.

“It is astonishing what you find underneath the rough garments worn by some of our peasants. I have often heard one of my friends—a figure painter—express the same surprise over his models. What appears in coarse cloth to be an ill-shaped arm turns out to be beautifully modelled when bared to the overhead light of a studio. So it was with this girl. She had the dearest, trimmest little figure, her shoulders temptingly dimpled, her throat and neck with that exquisite modelling only seen in a beautifully formed girl just bursting into womanhood. And then, too, her hair—what a lot of it there was when it was all combed out, and of so rich a brown, with a thread of gold here and there where the light struck it; and, more than all, her deep sapphire-blue eyes. Oh!—you cannot think how lovely they were; eyes that drank you all in until you were lost in their depths—like a well holding and refreshing you.

“So we dressed her up—leghorn hat, petticoats, tiny slippers on her tiny feet—and they were tiny—even to her shepherdess crook—until she looked as if she had just stepped out of one of Watteau’s canvases.

“And you may be sure she had her innings! The young fellows went wild over her, as well as the older ones—and even some of our own gentry tried to make love to her—so I heard next day. When all was ready she picked out her own partner, as I had promised she should, a straight, well-built, honest-faced young peasant whom she called ‘Henri’—a year or two her senior, and whom I learned was the son of a poor farmer whose land adjoined her father’s, but whose flocks and herds consisted of but one cow and a few pigs. In his pearl-gray short clothes and jacket, slashed sleeves, and low-cut shoes he looked amazingly well, and I did not blame her for her choice. Indeed she could not have done better, perfectly matched as they were in their borrowed plumes.

“And now comes a curious thing: so puffed up was that big animal of a father over the impression the girl had made, and so proud was he over the offers he received shortly after for her hand—among them a fellow herdsman twenty years her senior—that he immediately began to put on airs of distinction. A man with such a daughter, he said to himself, was also a man of weight and prominence in the community; he, therefore, had certain duties to perform. This was his only child; moreover, was he not rich, being the owner of more than a hundred head of cattle, and did he not have money in the banks? Loyette—have I told you her name was Loyette?—Loyette should marry no one of the young fellows about her—he had other and higher views for her. What these views were nobody knew, but one thing was certain, and that was that Henri, whom she loved with all her heart, and who had danced with her around the May-pole, was forbidden the house. The excuse was that his people were not of her class; that they were poor, his father being.... Oh, the same stupid story which has been told thousands of times and will continue to be told as long as there are big, thick-necked fathers who lay down the law with their sledge-hammer fists, and ambitious old gentlemen”—here she cut her eye at Lemois—“who try to wheedle you with their flimsy arguments—arguments which they would have thrown in your face had you tried it on them when they themselves were young. The father forgot, of course—just as they all forget—that she was precisely the same young girl with precisely the same heart before the fête as she was after it; that every rag on her back I had given her; that her triumph was purely a matter of chance—my going first to his house and thus finding her—and that on the very next day she had milked the cows and polished the tins just as she had done since she was old enough to help her mother.

“Again that old story was repeated: the mother begged and pleaded; the girl drowned herself in tears, but the father stormed on. Poor Henri continued to peep over the fence at Loyette when she went milking, or met her clandestinely on the path behind the cow sheds, and everybody was wretched for months trying to make water run uphill.

“Then Loyette confided in me. I had started to walk to the village and she had seen me cross the broad road and had followed. Poor child!—I can see her now, the tears streaming down her cheeks as she poured out her heart: how she and Henri had always loved each other; how fine and brave and truthful he was, and how kind and noble: she emptying her heart of her most precious secret—the story of her first love—a story, gentlemen”—here the marquise’s voice dropped into tones of infinite sweetness—“which the angels bend their ears to catch, for there is nothing more holy nor more sublime.

“I listened, her hand in mine—we were about the same age and I could, therefore, the better understand—her pretty blue eyes like wet violets searching for my own—and when her story was all told, I comforted her as best I could, telling her what I firmly believed—that no father with a spark of tenderness in his heart could be obdurate for long and not to worry—true love like hers always winning its way—whereupon she dried her eyes, kissed my hand, and I left her.

“What happened I do not know, for I went to Paris shortly after and was married myself, and did not return to my old home for some years. Then one day, in the effort to pick up once more the threads of my old life, there suddenly popped into my mind Loyette’s love story. I sent at once for one of the old servants who had lived with us since before I was born.