“Better not try,” she said. “Let us pay for the cider and get on.”
So they paid and went on and halted at the townlet of Rambouillet, where as Monsieur and Mademoiselle Overshaw, they engaged rooms at the most modest of terms. And to Martin’s infinite relief Corinna did not summon him to kiss her cheek in the presence of the landlady, before they retired for the night. He went to bed comforted by the thought that Corinna’s bark was worse than her bite.
I have done my best to tell you that this was an unsentimental journey.
So day after day they sped their innocent course, resting by night at tiny places where haughty automobiles halted not. They had but sixty pounds to their joint fortune, and it behoved them not to dissipate it in unwonted luxury. Through Chartres they went, and Corinna quite as eagerly as Martin drank in deep draughts of its Gothic mystery and its splendour of stained glass; through Châteaudun with its grim old castle; through Vendôme with the flaming west front of its cathedral; through Tours in the neighbourhood of which they lingered many days, seeing in familiar intimacy things of which they had but dreamed before—Chinon, Loches, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, perhaps the most delicate of all the châteaux of the Loire. And following the counsel of a sage Fortinbras they went but a few kilometres out of their way and visited Richelieu, the fascinating town known only to the wanderer, himself judicious or judiciously advised, that was built by the great Cardinal outside his palace gates for the accommodation of his court; and there it remains now untouched by time, priceless jewel of the art of Louis Treize, with its walls and gates and church and market square and stately central thoroughfare of hôtels for the nobles, each having its mansard roof and porte-cochère giving entrance to court and garden; and there it remains dozing in prosperity, for around it spread the vineyards which supply brandy to the wide, wide world.
It was here that Martin, sitting with Corinna on a blistered bench beneath a plane tree in the little market-place, said for the first time:
“I don’t seem to care whether I ever see England again.”
“What about getting another billet?” asked Corinna.
“England and billets are synonymous terms. The further I go the less important does it appear that I should get one. At any rate the more loathsome is the prospect of a return to slavery.”
“Don’t let us talk of it,” she said, fanning herself with her hat. “The mere thought of going back turns the sun grey. Let us imagine we’re just going on and on for ever and ever.”
“I’ve been doing so in a general way,” he replied. “I’ve been living in a sort of intoxication; but now and then I wake up and have a lucid interval. And then I feel that by not sitting on the doorstep of scholastic agents I’m doing something wrong, something almost immoral—and it gives me an unholy thrill of delight.”