“But how do you suppose I am ever going to pay you?”
“That, my dear Corinna,” said he, “is a matter which doesn’t interest me in the least.”
She turned on him furiously. “Do you know what you are? Would you like me to tell you? You’re the most utterly selfish man in the wide, wide world.”
She flung away through the empty salle-à-manger, and left Martin questioning the eternal hills of the Limousin. “I offer,” said he, in effect, “to share my last penny, in all honour and comradeship, with a young person of the opposite sex whom I have always treated with the utmost delicacy, who is absolutely nothing to me, who would scoff at the idea of marrying me and whom I would no more think of marrying than a Fifth of November box of fireworks, who has heaped on me all sorts of contumelious epithets—I offer, I repeat, to divide my last crust with her, and she calls me selfish. Eternal hills, resolve the problem.” But the hills enfolded themselves majestically in their autumn purple and deigned no answer to the little questionings of man.
Unsuccessful he strolled through the dining-room and vestibule and at the hotel entrance came upon the ramshackle hotel omnibus and the grey, raw-boned omnibus horse standing unattended and forlorn. To pass the time the latter shivered occasionally in order to jingle the bells on his collar and scatter the magenta fly-whisk hung between his eyes. Martin went up and patted his soft muzzle and put to him the riddle. But the old horse, who naturally thought that these overtures heralded a supply of bodily sustenance, and, in good faith, had essayed an expectant nibble, at last jerked his head indignantly and refused to concern himself with such insane speculation. Martin was struck by the indifferent attitude of hills and horses towards the queer vagaries of the human female.
Then from the doorway sallied forth a flushed Corinna booted and spurred for adventure. I need not tell you that a woman’s boots and spurs are on her head and not on her feet. Corinna wore the little hat with the defiant pheasant feather which she had not put on since her last night in Paris. A spot of red burned angrily on each cheek. Martin accustomed to ask: “Where are you going?” was on the point of putting the mechanical question when he was checked by one of her hard glances. Obviously she would have nothing to do with him. She passed him by and walked down the hill at a brisk pace. Martin watched her retreating figure until a turn in the road hid it from his view and then retiring into the house, went up to his room and buried himself in Montaigne, to which genial author, it may be remembered, he had been recommended by Fortinbras.
They did not meet till dinner, when she greeted him, all smiles. She apologised for wayward temper and graciously offered, should she need money, to accept a small loan for a short period. What her errand had been when she set forth in her defiant hat she did not inform him. He shrewdly surmised she had gone to the Postes et Télégraphes in the town; but he was within a million miles of guessing that she had despatched a telegram to Bordeaux.
The meal begun under these fair auspices was enlivened by a final act of depravity on the part of the deboshed waiter, Polydore. He had of late given more than usual dissatisfaction, to the point of being replaced by the chambermaid and Félise when fashionable motordom halted at the Hôtel des Grottes. Once Martin himself, beholding through the terrasse doorway Félise struggling around a large party of belated and hungry Americans, came to her assistance and lent an amused hand. The guests taking him for a deputy landlord, explained their needs in bad French. Félise thanked him in blushing confusion, while Bigourdin, as he had done a hundred times before, gave a week’s notice to Polydore, who, acting scullion, was breaking plates and dishes with drunken persistency. And now the truth is out as regards Polydore. With the sins of sloth, ignorance, and uncleanliness he combined the sin of drunkenness. Polydore was nearly always fuddled. Yet because of the ties of blood, the foster-sisterdom of respective grandmothers, Bigourdin had submitted to his inefficiency. Once more he revoked the edict of dismissal. Once more Polydore kept sober for a few days. Then once more he backslided. And he backslided irretrievably this night at dinner.
All went fairly well at first. It was a slack night. Only three commis-voyageurs sat at the long table, and thus there were only seven persons on whom to attend. It is true that his eye was somewhat glazed and his hand somewhat unsteady; but under the awful searchlight of Bigourdin’s glance, he nerved himself to his task. Soup and fish had been served satisfactorily; then came a long, long wait. Presently Polydore reeled in. As he passed by Bigourdin’s table he held up the finger of a dirty hand bound with a dripping bloody rag.
“Pardon, je me suis coupé le doigt,” he announced thickly and made a bee-line to Corinna, with the ostensible purpose of removing her plate. But just as he reached her, the extra dram that he must have taken to fortify himself against the shock of his wound, took full effect. He staggered, and in order to save himself clutched wildly at Corinna, leaving on her bare neck his disgusting sanguine imprint. She uttered a sharp cry and simultaneously Bigourdin uttered a roar and, rushing across the room, in a second had picked up the unhappy varlet in his giant arms.