The Halo Part 42

"Victor is very good now," she thought, turning her flat, hard pillow, "and I am much less nervous and irritable. Things always do straighten themselves out, I suppose--for those who know how to wait. Mere waiting does no good, it's the knowing how that counts. And I think we are learning now. If only Theo would fall in love with someone else. The minute he becomes unhappy or even impatient Victor will grow paternal, and that is horrible. Theo seems happy enough now----"

Her room was small and high, with orange-coloured stencillings on a grey ground, and thin, dangerously movable strips of carpet on the slippery floor. The curtains were of blue flannel and thoroughly unbeautiful.

The sitting-room was exactly like the bedroom, except that its stencilling was bright green and that it had no bed. There was in each room a big bunch of dahlias of gorgeous hues--offerings from Madame Chalumeau.

Yellow Dog Papillon, who had been left with Brigit to keep her company, lay on one of the rugs and snapped rudely at flies. It was very warm, and the tea had proved quite undrinkable. Brigit thought that she did not greatly care for the Chevreuil d'Or.

Then eight o'clock struck and she rose and rang for hot water. The "maid," who was incidentally a grandmother, wore a blue skirt and a red blouse and smiled cheerfully and toothlessly.

"Yes, yes, mademoiselle, _de l'eau chaude_. I have brought it! _Je connais ma clientele, moi._" With a proud smile she set down a jug about as large as a milk-jug for two coffee-drinkers, and withdrew.

Smiling to herself, Brigit dressed and then went into her sitting-room, and opening a window looked down into the street.

It is a most important thoroughfare, this Rue d'Argentin; the Rue de la Paix de Falaise.

Leaning out the window and looking to her left Brigit beheld the Place St. Gervais, with its fountain, its market-place, now of course empty, and its church steps, on which beggars sleep by day. Opposite her was a _cafe_, at present enlivened by the das.h.i.+ng presence of two foot-soldiers and an old man playing dominoes with himself.

Above the houses the sky was pale and clear, and from a garden off to the right at the end of the street came a cooing of wood-pigeons.

Two little boys in black blouses came running up the street, their sabots clacking against the rough cobbles. Someone was playing a mandolin, and at the foot of the street, near the bridge, a girl in a pink ap.r.o.n was flirting with a youth with curly red hair.

People stood by their shop doors, the men smoking small clay pipes, the women usually with a child or two at their skirts. A quiet scene, dull and homely, this birthplace of the Conqueror, and at this humble end of the great street rather pathetic in its aspect of simple relaxation.

Suddenly a little ripple of excited interest touched the groups in the street. The two soldiers rose and stared hard to their left; M. Perret of the Pharmacie Normale came out at a quick call from his wife, and stood, pestle in hand, as she struggled with a maddening knot in the strings of her black ap.r.o.n.

Brigit, leaning out still further, laughed aloud.

"Victor," she said under her breath. "Oh, _look_ at him! You old sabreur!"

Joyselle, a great purple flower in his coat, came swinging down the street, bowing right and left, his grey felt hat in his gloved hand. He looked amazingly young and amazingly handsome, and there was no mistaking the fact that, great man though he undoubtedly was, he was hugely enjoying the homage of his townspeople.

When he reached the Pharmacie Normale he paused, and shaking hands politely with Madame Perret, he met M. Perret with open arms, and the little apothecary, bounding at him, was caught and kissed on either cheek.

"_Ce cher_ Anatole!" Brigit heard him exclaim, "and how art thou, old one?"

Perret, greatly delighted, skipped about in rapture, inquiring in a high piping voice for Felicite and the boy, and asking many questions for which he waited for no answer.

Then there was a lady from the shop, _Au Bonheur des chers Pet.i.ts_, to be greeted very cordially, and the old domino-player, who, Brigit learned, was a cousin.

There was something very charming in the simplicity of Joyselle's pleasure in seeing his boyhood's friends, and something almost ludicrous in his perfectly obvious joy in their homage.

Looking down at him in his oft-interrupted progress, Brigit told herself that things must turn out all right. "He is so good-natured and generous and strong," she reflected, with glad s.h.i.+fting of all responsibility, "he will surely find some way out."

When at last she heard his light, regular footfall coming down the pa.s.sage she rose and went to meet him.

"So the Conquering Hero has come," she teased. "I have been watching your advance down the street. Such a strut!"

"Did I strut? I daresay. They are my own people and I love their affection. Also, as you say, it pleases my vanity. _Helas_, my dear, I am very vain."

She put on her hat and took up her gloves.

"I thought Theo was coming for me, Glorieux."

His face changed. "No, my dear love. It is _my_ town, this. Here I was born, here I lived as a child. I must show it to you."

Taking her hand he laid it on his arm with a gentle little pat and led her proudly downstairs.

CHAPTER FOUR

Opposite No. 6 Rue Victor Hugo is a long black wall, and in the middle of this wall an old-fas.h.i.+oned gas lantern was glowing red when Joyselle and Brigit arrived.

The moon had risen, and mingling with the red of the gas made that part of the narrow street almost as light as if it had been high noon.

"There is the house, ma Brigitte," murmured Joyselle, pressing her hand close to his side. When she had left the inn arm-in-arm with him, she had felt as though they must look perilously like a German bride and groom, but there was in his old-fas.h.i.+oned bearing as he guided her through the streets a kind of chivalrous courtesy that she liked, and she began to feel like a princess being presented to his people by her lord.

"There is their house. I gave it to them twenty-five years ago. It is their palace, their country-place, their world, to my old people."

Through a half-door in the opposite wall the girl could just catch a glimpse of the left side of the house. It was hung with trumpet flowers.

Beyond, a clearly defined square of moonlight showed her a smooth patch of lawn, beyond which the side of a creeper-clad arbour blocked the view.

"The dinner is to be in the garden; they are to sit in the arbour, and there will be many narrow tables all over the lawn, which is rather large behind the house. They are very much interested in it; all of us will be there, and our children, and--theirs. I am old, ma Brigitte----"

His voice fell sadly as this idea occurred to him, and she pressed his arm and smiled up at him, her face ruddy in the gaslight.

"You are young, my man; you will never grow old. And you will play at the dinner? And you will play to me? I always know when you play to me."

"Yes, for it is always. You are good to me now, _bien-aimee_."

His gentleness was wonderfully appealing, as it always was to her. The long respite from nerve-racking misunderstandings had allowed her to see more clearly the real beauty of his faulty character, and a wave of compunction came over her as she thought how little she, with her bad qualities of jealousy, selfishness and cruelty, deserved this beautiful love.

For she fully understood that only a deep, real love could so vanquish the lower part of his nature as to let the n.o.bler triumph as it had of late.

"I adore you, my great man," she said, very low, and their eyes met.

Then they crossed the street and he, leaning over the closed half of the door in the wall, opened it and they went in.

It was nine o'clock, and the old people had had their supper. Brigit who had, thinking of their great age, rather expected to find them more or less mummy-like, sitting in comfortable chairs tended by a middle-aged relation, was somewhat amused to find them squabbling fiercely over a game of dominoes, each with a gla.s.s of cider at hand.

"_Mon pere--la voici_," announced Joyselle, with a kind of simple pomposity eminently fitted to the occasion.

Old Joyselle finished his act of adding a domino to the long line before him and then looked up. He was a rather small, bent old man, with quant.i.ties of rough, curly grey hair and a petulant expression.

"Ugh!" he said rudely.