“We will go back to the hotel,” repeated her husband, in his expressionless tones. “I have seen enough of Perigueux.”
This was final. They drove back to the hotel. Mr. Ducksmith, without a word, went straight into the salon, leaving Aristide and his wife standing in the vestibule.
“And you, madame,” said Aristide; “are you going to sacrifice the glory of God’s sunshine to the manufacture of woollen socks?”
She smiled—she had caught the trick at last—and said, in happy submission: “What would you have me do?”
With one hand he clasped her arm; with the other, in a superb gesture, he indicated the sunlit world outside.
“Let us drain together,” cried he, “the loveliness of Perigueux to its dregs!”
Greatly daring, she followed him. It was a rapturous escapade—the first adventure of her life. She turned her comely face to him and he saw smiles round her lips and laughter in her eyes. Aristide, worker of miracles, strutted by her side choke-full of vanity. They wandered through the picturesque streets of the old town with the gaiety of truant children, peeping through iron gateways into old courtyards, venturing their heads into the murk of black stairways, talking (on the part of Aristide) with mothers who nursed chuckling babes on their doorsteps, crossing the thresholds, hitherto taboo, of churches, and meeting the mystery of coloured glass and shadows and the heavy smell of incense.
Her hand was on his arm when they entered the flagged courtyard of an ancient palace, a stately medley of the centuries, with wrought ironwork in the balconies, tourelles, oriels, exquisite Renaissance ornaments on architraves, and a great central Gothic doorway, with great window-openings above, through which was visible the stone staircase of honour leading to the upper floors. In a corner stood a mediæval well, the sides curiously carved. One side of the courtyard blazed in sunshine, the other lay cool and grey in shadow. Not a human form or voice troubled the serenity of the spot. On a stone bench against the shady wall Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat down to rest.
“Voilà!” said Aristide. “Here one can suck in all the past like an omelette. They had the feeling for beauty, those old fellows.”
“I have wasted twenty years of my life,” said Mrs. Ducksmith, with a sigh. “Why didn’t I meet someone like you when I was young? Ah, you don’t know what my life has been, Mr. Pujol.”