We broke loose, however, when Lemois was gone, and I told the whole story as Leà had given it, Louis, in his customary rôle of toast-master, rising in his seat and pledging the young couple, whose health and happiness we all drank, Brierley whistling the Wedding March to the accompaniment of a great clatter of knives and forks on the plates.
In fact, the very air seemed so charged with uncontrollable exhilaration that Coco, the oldest and most knowing of birds—he is sixty-five and has seen more love-making from his perch in the dormer overlooking that same court-yard than all the chaperones who ever lived—suddenly broke out into screams of delight, ruffling his feathers, curling up his celery sprout of a topknot, his eyes following Mignon, his head cocked on one side, when she raced back and forth from Pierre’s range to our big table. Even Tito, the scrap of a black kitten, who was never three feet away from Mignon’s heels, dodged in and out of her swaying petticoats in mad chase after her restless feet, and would not be quieted until she stopped long enough to take him up in her arms for a moment’s cuddling.
Of none of all this, thank Heaven, did Lemois have the faintest glimmer of a suspicion. When on her return from market he had scolded her for being late, he had taken her silence only as proof that she thought she deserved it. When he would have broken out on her again, suddenly remembering that our coffee was likely to be delayed, Herbert, to whom I had whispered my discovery—diplomat as he was—begged him to delay the serving of it until it could be poured directly from the pot into our cups, as the air of the court would chill it. All of which, Heaven be thanked again, Mignon overheard, sending her flying back to the kitchen, her eyes aglow with the happiness of a secret that filled her heart to bursting.
When she at last appeared with the coffee-pot, so contagious was her joy that our extended hands trembled as we held the tiny cups beneath her fingers. Somehow we had caught a little of her thrill. And it was all so evident and so marvellous and so inspiring that every man Jack of us, blighted old bachelors as we were, fell to wondering whether, after all, it would not have been better to have bent the neck to the yoke and had a running-mate beside us than to have continued our dreary trot in single harness.
XIII
WITH A DISSERTATION ON ROUND
PEGS AND SQUARE HOLES
Work on the wrecked villa of madame la marquise was progressing with a vim. The Engineer, called in consultation, had with a comprehensive grasp of the situation brushed aside the architect’s plan of shoring up one end of the structure at a time; had rigged a pair of skids made from some old abandoned timber found on the beach and with a common ship’s windlass, a heavy hawser, and a “Heave ho, my hearties!”—to which every loose fisherman within reach lent a hand—had dragged the ruin up the hill and landed it intact on level ground some twenty feet back from its former site. This done—and it was accomplished in a day—the porch was straightened and the lopsided walls forced into place. With the exception of the collapsed chimney, the former residence of the distinguished lady was not such a wreck as had been supposed.
Next followed the slicing off of the raw edge of the landslide, the building of a fence, and, later on, the preparation of a new garden. This last was to be madame’s very own, and neither care nor cost was to be considered in its making. She could sleep in a garage—she had slept there since the catastrophe—and take her meals from the top of a barrel (which was also true), but a garden meant the very breath of her life—flowers she must have—flowers all the time, from the first crocus to the last October blossoms. Marc, now her abject slave, was then at Rouen arranging for their shipment. The daily news—such as twenty or more men at work, the chimney half finished, the fence begun, etc., etc.—Le Blanc, who was constantly at the site, generally brought us at night, his report being received with the keenest zest, for the marquise was now counted as the most delightful of our coterie.
His very latest and most important bulletin set us all to speculating;—the old garage—here his voice rose in intensity—was to be moved back some fifty feet and a new wing added, with bedroom above and a kitchen below. “A new garage!” we had all exclaimed. Who then was to occupy it? Not madame, of course, nor her servants, for they, as heretofore, would be quartered in the reconstructed villa. Certainly not any of her visitors—and most assuredly not Marc!