Chapter XV

For quite satisfying reasons she thought frequently about Roger during the next few weeks; there was no one else much to think of; the only person who had ever leapt your breastworks and kissed you behind a bush must always have a romantic interest; and still more, a man who was patently in love with you, when you couldn't feel the slightest stir of emotion for _him_, was some one to be rather proud of. She wondered if his passion would overcome his pride and force him to write to her; and was already phrasing her friendly but discouraging answer. But no letter appeared, so she indulged herself in pictures of Roger with love gnawing at his heart and pride denying him a cry. Once when cantering on Ditchling Common she passed him, and, answering his raised hat with a friendly bow, galloped away. At a safe distance she swung her horse round to get a covert glimpse of him, and saw him staring after her. He was standing not far from Jacob's Post. One evening she was certain he passed her house and gave it a quick glance.

She determined to learn more about him from Mrs. Montague Jevons. The subject was not easy to open till an afternoon, when, calling at Wildean Manor after the dance, she found Lady Muirhead among other ladies in the drawing-room. Lady Muirhead, she discerned, was a woman of one subject--her son. When other subjects were being bandied across the carpet she was silent, but her interest immediately quickened if some one asked, "And what is Roger doing now?" or remarked, "How handsome your boy is getting!" Daphne moved to sit beside her.

"You've met Roger then," said Lady Muirhead, in response to a casual allusion.

"Oh yes, I danced with him here the other day."

"Did you?" She glanced round the drawing-room, and through the door into the library. "I didn't really catch your name just now."

"Daphne Bruno."

"Oh, _you're_ Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter. I've heard about you."

Daphne coloured. "Have you?"

"Oh yes. Your father's quite a famous man, isn't he?"

"Well, he's written a lot of books," acknowledged Daphne, with a deprecating smile.

"Yes. I'm afraid I don't read much. I never had much time when Roger was young, and you get out of the habit when they go to school."

"You've only one son, haven't you?"

"Yes, only one, though Roger was equal to a dozen in trouble."

"Was he really? Not in health, surely?"

"In health, good gracious, no! I suppose his bounding health was the source of all his masterfulness and mischief."

"Oh, was he mischievous?" exclaimed Daphne. "How ripping!"

"He's essentially a dominating character, I think, and I suppose as they can't help themselves, it's not fair to call it mischief."

Daphne nodded.

And Lady Muirhead, encouraged by such a listener, rattled on with a record of Roger's domestic tyrannies, of which she seemed very proud.

When she had gone and the other visitors were departing, Mrs. Montague Jevons begged Daphne to stay a little longer.

"There, sit down," said she, after the door had closed on the last lady. "And let me sit here.... Ah, for this relief much thanks.... A particularly boring afternoon. And I was so sorry for you, cooped up with the Muirhead Dowager. I suppose she carried on insufferably about her boy?"

"Yes, it was chiefly about him."

"Pity she goes on like that."

"But it isn't all praise," suggested Daphne. "She spent much of the time deploring his tyrannies."

"Bless you, that's indirect praise. She's as proud as a peacock of them,"

"But is it all true?"

"Well, I like Roger. He and I get on splendidly. He's got the most courtly manners with women. I think it's a sort of feudal pose and unconsciously based on conceit, but as it's spiced with a _soupçon_ of humour and cheek it makes him a pleasant companion."

Daphne pursued her adverse criticism.

"I should think he's now irreparably spoiled by his mother."

"He's not been spoiled in the usual sense--old Sir Roger's seen to that--but what's happened is this." Mrs. Montague Jevons crumpled her brow so as to find a description worthy of her keen analysis. "She's created a legend about the masterfulness of the Muirhead men, and especially about the last specimen of them, and the wretched boy's heard nothing else all his life. The damage is probably final--he'll live up to the amiable legend till the end of his days. You'll find the characters he likes in history and books are the honourable but merciless Cavalier overlords--Strafford, or people like the Earl of Warwick, the King Maker. I try to chaff him about it, but every man's sense of humour fails when it comes to himself. Probably my chaffing only makes matters worse. He likes to be chaffed about his 'indomitable will,' and all the rest of the trash. No man ever didn't."

Daphne's head nodded, implying that her experience was the same.

"I tell him," pursued Mrs. Montague Jevons, "that it's a popular type beloved of housemaids, but the obsession's too strong for chaff to expel it.... That's Roger."

The cost of a furnished flat in Paris, capable of housing himself, his daughter, Miss Carrell, Hollins, and Owen in vacations, was high enough to drive Mr. Bruno's mercury very low. A new idea shaped in his mind, and the infernal noise of the Gay City, as he walked its pavement seeking his _pied-à-terre_, gave it stronger outline; he would find within a dozen miles of Paris some inexpensive villa, from which Daphne and Miss Carrell might descend as often as they liked on the Gare du Nord, while he stayed with his manuscripts and his books in a countryside peace.

He found the place, and returned to England, not a little eager to tell his daughter all about it. It was a Tuesday evening, just after dark, when he arrived at Old Hall House, flung himself into an easy chair, and cried for tea. That his daughter had met him with a hail of questions, and hurried after him into his study, and was now sitting on the edge of his writing-table demanding information, he affected to have hardly perceived.

"What have you decided, Daddy--what have you decided?"

"It's not her father that she welcomes," said he to his boot-laces, "but the things he may have brought for her. A selfish girl, and one without natural affection."

"Oh, Daddy, what have you decided?"

"Slippers, dear. If you like, you can get me my slippers. It would have already occurred to a more beautiful nature."

"If I get them for you, will you tell me what you have decided?"

"I have decided to say nothing about anything till I have been fed, and fed very satisfyingly."

"Oh, Father, don't be a cad. I've been waiting weeks to know."

"And I've been waiting weeks for a cup of tea.... I spent a very enjoyable time in Paris, thank you. It's a city eternally romantic, classic, realistic. You can imagine me entering the Louvre with a worshipper's feet, and lighting my poor candle at the shrines of Leonardo, Titian, Veronese, Rubens...."

"Oh, blow them! I'm screwed up to hear everything. I made sure you'd tell me at once."

"The music of English tea-things! It's unmistakable--and it's music that Paris, in spite of its singular imitations, has never learned."

"Well, you shan't have any till you have told me. I shall hold it back."

"Ah, it's Hollins. Put it here, Hollins.... Thank you very much."

Hollins laid the tea-tray on a little table by the side of his easy chair; and Mr. Bruno, with a running commentary on Paris and its wickedness and English tea, poured out a cup and folded over a thin slice of bread and butter. Daphne sat on the writing-table. And over his bread and butter, despite his jesting manner, his mind was asking the usual questions: why, though the sight of her and the nearness of her could inflate his love, he could never really get close to her, but must always protect himself, as he approached, with a cloud of persiflage; whether now at sixty it was too late to learn the art of emptying himself and becoming like unto her; whether he had exchanged life for books? "This man chose not to live but read." Disproportion. Disproportion. Books should be an elixir to heighten one's awareness to life, not a drug in which to escape from it.

"There." He pushed the tea-things away, and signalled to her to come and sit on the _pouffe_ which was his footstool.

"Come here. I have a tale to tell you."

And he lit a cigarette and began.

"Some ten or a dozen miles nor'-nor'-west of Paris there's a little cocksure village that calls itself St. Leu Taverny. It straggles at the very feet of the Montmorency Forest. A few days ago I climbed a cobbled street to the outer verge of the forest trees, among which rose the turrets, not unpicturesque, of the plaster châteaux, or villas, of wealthy Parisians. Grocers, for the most part, I expect. In a little new-made avenue, that finished in nothing, as if it had forgotten that it had ever started, I found a very modest little villa in the centre of a tiny garden of firs. Its windows had shutters thrown back against the bricks, and on the sills those flamboyant iron-work railings that so delight the French. Strange how the French think themselves classical, and are the most flamboyant people in Europe! In many ways the absurd little villa reminded me of you. It was tall and narrow--and pretentious."

"Are you being funny?" submitted Daphne.

"Pretentious, with its turret up one corner for the staircase. At the top of the turret--and this completes the simile--was a cone-shaped roof, like a dunce's hat."

Daphne only continued to watch the fire. She was getting used to this sort of thing from her men-folk.

"No," pursued Mr. Bruno, after thought. "The resemblance can be carried farther, for I found the furniture within to be adequate to its purposes and inoffensive, but quite uninspired and quite without distinction."

"But the outlook was beautiful," interrupted Daphne.

"The outlook was good. Yes, the outlook was good, stretching over the garden of firs to the high ground and the trees of Montmorency. Here and there, however, was a château such as the vulgar dream of. One could wish for an earthquake to remove them. I walked among the rooms, peopling them to my fancy with a certain girl, and the excellent Miss Carrell, and the entirely fundamental Hollins. Also perhaps a French slut for the meaner tasks. I have taken the place for a year."

Daphne leapt up.

"Daddy, let's go to-morrow."

"'Some having no root sprang up.' ... We shall not go to-morrow nor the next day, but possibly the day after that. The _épicier's_ wife was recommended to me as a person who would light a fire and dress a dish to welcome us. She'll have to be communicated with. But you can think about packing."

Packing! The word was galvanising. Packing to go anywhere was among the liveliest excitements, but packing to go abroad was in a class by itself. In what a cloud of romance had her father, when she was a child, set off abroad! Refusing to hearken to her brain, which assured her there was nothing remarkable in a visit to Paris, she told every one she met in the next few days that they were leaving for Paris on Friday. Once over there she would really start writing. Foreign scenes would be a spring of inspiration. Against this expected seizure by inspiration she pushed into her trunks pens, pencils, scribbling paper and manuscript books, having vague ideas that French pencils and paper would not be the same thing at all.

Miss Carrell and Hollins, never having travelled before, were equally if more secretly excited. Miss Carrell's inward pleasure was slightly marred by the reflection that her meagre knowledge of French, in which she had once instructed Daphne, would be horridly exposed. Hollins, though pretending to be "put about" by it all and to wonder how she would be able to manage with a fast French kitchen girl, was really much pleased, and inclined to emphasise to the other servants that in this accompanying of the family, she was as usual a privileged person.

Friday, seen from Daphne's bedroom window at six-thirty in the morning, was overcast, but windless and dry. It stayed so. Throughout the day she had a sense that the excitement of continental travel could be measured, as in a graph, by a rising and falling line. The line began at a high point when the carriage came to the door; it shot higher at the London terminus where the words "Boat Train" flashed at you, and French beards and French tongues wagged among the encumbered people; it dropped and ran straight during the rumble through Kentish meadows and hop-fields; it rose again, very high, when they saw the boat with its twin funnels; it stayed high, as they mingled in the bustle on the quay, and walked a trembling gangway, and were confused by the voices, the loaded porters, the luggage swung in upper air by the crane, the bell from the bridge, and the throbbing of the engines; it was kept high by the rush of wind and the repeated booming of the siren as the boat moved out, and the hand-waving of less fortunate friends ashore. Then it dropped and ran in a straight line as they spent two hours in the grey channel; only to rise to its highest at the first sight of French hills and the gradual delineation of domes and roofs and lighthouses of Boulogne. Through the greyness, France boomed a welcome.

Miss Carrell, though rendered ill at ease by this rapid approach to France and exposure, pretended to all the interest, loudly voiced by Daphne. Hollins, too, smiled pleasantly at her young mistress's happiness. "It's folks as young as them that gets the full enjoyment out of this," said she to Miss Carrell, and a few minutes later was sick.

Dark had almost fallen before they were safely against the quay; and they saw nothing of the place except the hideous Customs and the ill-lit station with its comfortable Paris train. Once the train had started and run into the complete darkness outside the town, the glamour departed from the journey, factitiously recovered sometimes by translating the _Avis aux Voyageurs_ printed round the alarm bell. Miss Carrell had a bad moment when Daphne sought her aid, but luckily Mr. Bruno's desire to display his knowledge was as great as her desire to hide her ignorance. He did the translating, and she prepared them for the worst by saying:

"Really, I have rusted so. I can scarcely remember anything. I used to be able to speak quite well."

She need not have worried; both Mr. Bruno and her old pupil had forgotten that she had ever been paid to teach the language.

All were tired, and Hollins after her sickness slept. The excitement only reached its former heights when they ran through the lighted suburbs into the Gare du Nord, Paris.

"Here we are. Out you get. Tumble out."

Daphne descended from the train into a confusion that bruised all her senses at once: voices, pushing people, hiss of steam, smell of smoke and soot, rumble of porters' trucks, and cries of "_Attention là!_" The sounds and the smell--the smell especially--raised into memory the day when first they had trained into a London station, and she but eight years old. Overtones of pleasant melancholy hung round the recollection. "I am in Paris," she told herself. "I am now standing in Paris."

Alone in that overhanging noise and buffeting stream of people Mr. Bruno seemed--or affected to seem--majestically unperturbed. Conscious of the respect of his women, he talked fluently to the porters, and led the way to the _Banlieue_ booking office. He chaffed his daughter, telling her to exercise her French by ordering the tickets for St. Leu; but when she tried she could only giggle into the little window. Miss Carrell kept well in the background. Hollins, in spite of her weight and difficulty in walking, often ran to keep in close touch with the master, lest she were lost in this wilderness of unintelligible people.

Soon they were in a far less comfortable train. After travelling first-class all the way, Mr. Bruno, alarmed by the expenses on the journey, had decided that they could do this last little bit in the _troisième classe_. The seats were distressingly upright and wooden. Nor did they have the compartment to themselves. Two Frenchmen, unaware of Daphne's wrinkled nose, got in; one an enormously fat gentleman, with a black square beard which made Hollins stare and Daphne giggle at Miss Carrell, and the other a younger man who never stopped talking and gesticulating to his companion. He struck Daphne as equally funny. The fat man expressed his real interest by nodding and picking his teeth through his black beard; and Daphne whispered that he was perfectly sweet. She maintained this view, even when he spat one of his diggings out of the window, causing Miss Carrell to retire further into her corner.

Sitting in that train, after viewing the crowds in the Gare du Nord, Daphne discovered afresh the _distingué_ appearance of her father. She felt proud that all should recognise him as an Englishman. Tall and slender as an athletic youth, with his pointed beard now grey, and his hair whitening over the ears--in his faultless grey suit and grey overcoat--he had been splendid among the English people on the boat, and was a lesson to all Frenchmen in France.

The train slowed into a badly lit station, and voices called "_St. Leu ... St. Leu_." Daphne, with some idea of having won a five hundred mile race, determined to step out first. She threw open the door, saw a yawning blackness where the platform should have been, and, stepping on to it, fell heavily to the pavement--only saving herself from going on to her hands and knees by her slippery hold on the carriage door.

"There!" said her father. "The daughter arrives. Credulous child to expect such advantages as platforms in a country which calls itself _à la tête de la civilisation_! Are you hurt?"

"No, it's lovely," said Daphne, though she could scarcely put her right foot to the ground. She was not going to be disloyal to her vision of this as one of the perfect days of her life.

The luggage was left on the station, no carriages being visible outside its doors; and Mr. Bruno led his party into the darkness of a street lit only by occasional private windows. Daphne could receive no impression of St. Leu as they climbed the hill-road towards their house, except that they were often walking on cobbles which sometimes stirred in that airy emptiness of her ankle the strange, sweet pain.

The little house, as they passed through the double gate into its garden, showed a bright light at the hall door, and the _épicier's_ wife standing above the steps, smiling amiably and rattling French. Everything was ready for them, said she, but would monsieur like a glass of wine? Mr. Bruno accepted this in the little dining-room. "_Et pour madame?_ ... _Madame Bruno, n'est-ce pas_?" queried the woman, with a look at Miss Carrell. That Miss Carrell should be taken for his wife was an error that amused Mr. Bruno, and, pointing to his whitening hairs, he laughed, "_Non, non, madame. Regardez mes neiges_."

"_Oui, monsieur_," said she, her head dropping knowingly, "_mais souvent sous les neiges on trouve des volcans_."

And Mr. Bruno roared with laughter.

"What did she say--what did she say?" demanded his daughter.

"Didn't you understand? Well, perhaps you'd better not. A sad people, the French."

In a few minutes Daphne had been all over the house, delighted with everything, though marvelling that it could so fit her father's description, and yet be so different from what she had pictured.

"Oh, I'd like to live here always. Why can't they build places like this in England?"

"Because the French are always faintly fantastic," explained her father.

He then led her to a bedroom at the top and in the front, whose windows, as he threw them open, gave on to the stars above the Forest of Montmorency.

"This is undeniably the best room, Duffy, and it is to be yours. Miss Carrell and Hollins can have the two smaller rooms on this floor."

"But, Father----" began she. Having always kept her schoolgirl room at home, she was diffident of taking a room superior to Miss Carrell.

"No, no," interrupted Mr. Bruno. "You are the mistress of this house."