“You don’t know how bleak the Hill can be before spring,” objected Mrs. Lansing.
“Will it be any bleaker with me there than when you were alone?” asked Alix.
Mrs. Lansing came over to her and kissed her.
“No, dear,” she said.
CHAPTER X
IN the squalid Hôtel d’Europe Gerry occupied a large room that overlooked the quay. Even if there had been a better hotel in town, he would not have moved. Here he looked out on a scene of never-ceasing movement and color. The setting changed with the varying light. The false rains of the midsummer season came up in black horses of cloud, driven by a furious wind. They passed with a whirl and a veritable clatter of heavy drops hurled against the earth in a splendid volley. The long strip of the quay emptied at the first wet shot. The tatterdemalion crowd invaded every doorway and nook of shelter with screams and laughter. Then came the sun again, and back came the throng to the fresh-washed quay.
Gerry missed his club, but for that he found a substitute. Cluny’s, next door to the hotel, was a strange hall of convivial pleasure. A massive square door, the masonry of which centuries had hardened and blackened to stone, gave on to a long hallway that ended in a wider dungeon. Here stood a bar and half a dozen teak tables. The floor was of stone flags.
The clientele had the cleavage of oil and water. One part stood to their drink at the bar, had it, and went out. The other sat to their glasses at the tables, and sat late. Among these was a pale, thin man of about Gerry’s age, with a mouth slightly twisted to humor until toward evening drink loosened it to mere weakness. One afternoon he nodded to Gerry, and Gerry left the bar for the tables. After that they sat together. The man was an American—the American consul. Gerry liked him, pitied him, and forgot to pity himself. One night he invited the consul to his room. They sat in the balcony, a bottle of whisky and a siphon between them. Gerry started to put his glass on the rail.
“Don’t do it,” said the consul, with his twisted smile; “it might carry away.” He went on more seriously. “It’s rotten. The whole place is rotten. There’s a blight on the men and the women and on the children. God!”
Gerry put down his glass untouched. “Why don’t you go home?”