"What, you have met them?"
"Yes, the stupid father, the odious uncle, the fair Constantia—what a meek saint!—and that diabolical Japanese, who plays the piano like a house on fire." Tears came to the eyes of Marco Davos.
"Did they—I mean, did she take you in, too?"
"Here, at Ischl, last summer," was the grim reply.
XVIII
THE TUNE OF TIME
Ferval returned to Rouen after a fatiguing trip down the Seine as far as Croisset, the old home of Gustave Flaubert. Here he viewed, not without a dismal sense of fame and its futility, the little garden-house in which the masterpieces of the great Frenchman had been conceived in joy and executed in sorrow. He met the faithful Colange, one-time attendant of Flaubert, and from him learned exacerbating details of the novelist's lonesome years; so he was in a mood of irritation as he went ashore near the Boïeldieu Bridge and slowly paced toward his hotel. He loved this Norman Rouen, loved the battered splendour of Nôtre-Dame Cathedral, loved the church of Saint-Ouen—that miracle of the Gothic, with its upspringing turrets, its portal as perfect as a Bach fugue. And in the Solferino Garden he paid his tribute of flowers at the monuments of Maupassant and Flaubert. Ferval was modern in his tastes; he believed nothing in art was worth the while which did not date from the nineteenth century.
Deplorably bored, he passed his hotel on the Quai and turned into the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, which led by the façade of the Palais de Justice. He had studied it carefully, and it did not, this dull afternoon in September, hold his interest long; he sauntered on, not feeling strong enough to light a cigarette. Decidedly, Rouen was become tiresome. He would go back to Paris by the evening train—or to Dieppe, thence to London, on the morning boat. Presently he found himself nearing the Porte de la Grosse Horloge. Through its opening poured vivacious working girls and men in blouse and cap, smoking, chattering, gesticulating. It was all very animated, and the wanderer tried to enjoy the picture. Then over against the crenellated wall, under the tablet bearing the quaint inscription picked out in choice Latin, Ferval saw a tall girl. Her bare head would not have marked her in a crowd where motley prevailed; it was her pose that attracted him,—above all, her mediæval face, with its long, drooping nose which recalled some graven image of Jean Goujon. Her skin was tanned; her hair, flame-coloured, was confined by a classic fillet; her eyes, Oriental in fulness, were light blue—Ferval had crossed to the apparition and noted these things. She did not return his stare, but continued to gaze at the archway as if expecting some one. Young, robust, her very attitude suggested absolute health; yet her expression was so despairing, her eyes so charged with misery, that involuntarily he felt in his pocket for money. And then he saw that in her hand she held a tambourine. She wore a faded uniform of the Salvation Army.