When he had the map of the region in mind he drove to a neighboring village and found a telephone. He called her number, and when a servant answered he asked for “Madame”—no name for any listening ears! When he heard her voice he spoke in a businesslike tone: “Madame, I have come to show you those pictures of which I wrote you.”
She was not one to make any blunder. In a tone as matter-of-fact as his own she replied: “I shall be interested to see them. Where can we arrange it?”
“I am at your service, Madame. I have them in my car.”
“I was about to go for a walk,” she said—a very quick mind! “You might pick me up and take me to the village.”
“Be so kind as to indicate the place, Madame.”
“You know where the Quatre Chats is?” It was a little inn with a gay sign in the modern fashion; he had marked it, and she said: “A road runs west from there. I shall be on it shortly.”
VII
He saw her coming, wearing a dark blue summer dress, and a sun-hat, as if she had been working in the garden. Blue dresses would have magic from that day on! Every motion of her slender figure pleased him; her whole personality radiated those qualities which he most esteemed. When she was nearer, he saw that excitement—or was it the walk?—had brought a glow to her cheeks; her step had a spring—the magic was working in her also. Glücklich allein ist die Seele die liebt!
He started his engine and turned the car about, and when she came to him, in she stepped and away they went. L’Enlèvement au Sérail!
He made no move to embrace her, or even to touch her hand. He whispered: “Darling!” It was enough.
“Where are you going, Lanny?” she asked.
“Whichever way there will be least chance of your being noticed.”
“The first turn to the right,” she said. He took it and found himself on a country road, following the bank of a small stream. Trees shaded it, and houses were few.
“Now, dear,” he said, “listen to me. I have waited three months, and it seems as many years. I have had time to think it over, and to know that I love you. I love you with body, mind, and soul. I have no doubt about it, and no fears of anybody or anything. I have come to tell you that, and to claim you. It all depends on one answer to one question. Do you love me?”
“Yes, Lanny.”
“Do you love as I have just told you I love you?”
“Yes, Lanny; but—”
“Answer me some more questions. Are the boys reasonably well?”
“Yes.”
“Who is in charge of them?”
“A governess.”
“Where are they now?”
“They have gone fishing with her.”
“Delightful!” he said. “Perhaps I saw them. Where is your husband?”
“In Paris.”
“When do you expect him home?”
“He has no regular times.”
“Then you need have none. This is what I propose: we drive over the roads of la belle France. When the time comes so that mademoiselle the governess will have returned to the house, you telephone her and inform her that you have received word of a woman friend who is ill, and that you have gone to her; you will write or telephone later. Then we continue to drive over the long roads of la belle France and see the country of which it is never possible to see too much. We will avoid all resorts and places where you might meet anyone you know; we will stay in country inns. We will have a week of happiness, and at the end there will be no possible way for anyone to find out where you have been.”
“But, Lanny, that is mad!”
“I am mad, love is mad, and very soon you will be mad. But it will be a calculated madness, supervised by your wise mind and your honorable conscience. You have had time to think it over. You have a right to the joy I can give you, and I have a right to the joy you can give me.”
“But, Lanny, I have no things!” Her phrase was the French one, articles de voyage.
“Articles?” he repeated, laughing. “Are for sale in boutiques and boutiques are to be found in villes, large or small. I have taken the precaution to bring a little money with me, and some time before long we will prove that there exist in France a robe de nuit, and a peigne and a brosse and some mouchoirs, and a portemanteau to carry them in, and possibly even a small bottle of rouge vinaigre—though I think from the present appearance of your cheeks that you will not need it!”
VIII
She began a long expostulation, and he let her go through with it. He had a formula of ancient and well-established power “Je vous aime.” He had learned that it is not wise to let an hour pass without saying it to a woman, and in times of stress such as this its spell is more effective if it is repeated every two minutes. He drove very slowly, following the curves of the road with one hand, while he laid the other upon hers and poured out his heart.
“Chérie, sooner or later we have to take the first step.” He was speaking in French—c’est le premier pas qui coûte. “I do not believe that you have ever known what it is to be happy in love. I really believe that you have borne two children without knowing what love is. That happens to many women, and they have to be taught. Then everything becomes simple, all problems become solvable, because you are determined to solve them, whereas now you are not sure.”
She brought up one problem after another, but he persisted in laying them aside. “All that will be simple, when you know what love is. This is our honeymoon, and it is our time for happiness; let yourself be happy, I entreat you. Tell me that you love me, and tell me nothing else.”
“You are trying to sweep me off my feet, Lanny!” Her voice had grown faint.
“Of course, dear! That is exactly what I am doing. If I were trying to teach you to swim, I would have to get you into the water. You surely know that I am no seducer; I do not find my pleasure in deflowering virgins, or in breaking marital vows. I am offering you my faith; I am pledging everything that I have. I am carrying you away because I know there is no other way to do it, and because I know that before this night is over you will thank me. You will no longer have any doubts, but will set to work with me in a firm and sensible way to face our problem and remove the barriers from the path of our love.”
“Oh, Lanny! Lanny darling!” She began to sob softly to herself, and he knew that that was all right, for love is frequently born amid tears.
The car rolled on, mile after mile, past the summer landscapes of France, and she did not demand that it turn back. Late in the afternoon she telephoned to her home and told mademoiselle what Lanny had suggested, adding many injunctions which he had not thought of. Another drive, and they stopped in a small town, where they found it possible to purchase all the articles de voyage. She wouldn’t let him come into the shop with her, because she feared she couldn’t hide her tumult of emotion, and was ashamed to appear as the lover of one who was young enough to be her son.
“Almost, but not quite!” smiled Lanny. “Perhaps in the South Seas, or some of those warm places where they begin unusually early!”
IX
They continued westward, into a land of flat plains and ditches lined with poplars, and under the shelter of darkness halted at a little tavern. A waiter in a red-and-white-striped coat escorted them with candles to two connecting chambers provided with a superfluity of curtains, and ancient carved oak beds in which at least ten generations of sturdy Normans had been begotten. The man brought them a well-cooked supper, and manifested no curiosity as to their affairs; tourists of all kinds motored through this land in summer, and his concern was to get the largest possible tip from each.
In this safe retreat Lanny carried out his promise to make Marie happy, and she left him no doubt that he had done so; she accepted him as her fate, and there would be no further need of persuasion. In the morning the waiter appeared as a valet de chambre to open the shutters and let in the morning sun and tell them the weather prospects; he brought their déjeuner while they were still in bed, and this carried a comfo
rting reassurance of domesticity. God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. Perpetual blushes suffused the cheeks of Lanny’s amie, and laughter bubbled forth from her so that he was reminded of the healing springs which he had recently left.
They headed west into Brittany; a land of granite rocks of all sizes, of which walls and pavements and houses are built; a land of oak forests which the people carve into balustrades, and huge armoires, and sabots which clatter on the pavements; a land of wind and fog and gray skies, pleasant enough in July. The peasant women wear stiff white caps and bulging skirts with white aprons; from their apple orchards they derive a bitter and deadly cider; and over the door of every home they put a little niche for their saint. Since the sea winds do not respect sanctity, the people cover the niches with a pane of glass, from which they have frequently to rub the salt. It is a sternly royalist land and has a lady patron in heaven.
The fugitives from the seraglio drove to Saint-Malo, which neither had ever visited before. They climbed streets like long stairways, so narrow that you could almost touch the house-walls on both sides; they walked on a broad city wall, and gazed down on crowded tall buildings and a harbor enclosed by craggy rocks and speckled white by little boats having the oddest mainsails divided horizontally into several sections. They were followed everywhere by urchins begging ceaselessly for a “paynee,” and if you gave them one you did not get rid of them. Lanny said this was a feature of all Catholic countries. Marie said: “Of others also!”
They spent the night, or rather part of it, in an old inn, built lopsided in the ancient fashion, and having beds in enclosed shelves. They cut short their stay because of the painful discovery that a tiny round flat insect is the world’s most aggressive enemy of romance. Lanny said this too was to be expected in Catholic lands. Evidently Sainte Anne did not approve of what they were doing, so they left her domain in the small hours of the morning, brushed off their troubles with laughter, and saw dawn come up like thunder on the broad estuary of the river Rance.
X
They headed south toward the region of the lower Loire; and while they watched the landscapes they talked about each other. Their minds were opened as well as their hearts, and they had all things in common. She told him about her girlhood, which had been a happy one. Her father had been an avocat in the city of Reims; the Germans had swept over the place, and the mother had died during the war; the father was now living with an older daughter in Paris. Marie had been educated in a convent; it had not been altogether successful, she remarked ruefully. Lanny expatiated upon the evils of superstition, which he thought of as a black cloud shutting off the sunlight of knowledge from the mind and the sunlight of joy from the heart.
She plied him with questions about his own life. She could never hear enough about this youth who had come, clad in shining armor, to lead her out of her state of resignation. How did it happen that one who had not yet attained his majority should think and speak so like a mature man? He explained the unusual opportunities he had enjoyed; his father had brought important people to their home, his mother had cultivated them, and an only child had listened and learned how the grand monde was run. Before him fashionable ladies had talked freely—never dreaming that he was understanding the dreadful things they said. Also there had been books; he had begun learning about the world from pictures before he could read. There had been travel all over Europe; he had visited country homes—he had been on a yacht cruise—
“Yes, Lanny,” she said, “but other children of the rich are dragged about Europe, and it doesn’t mean much to them. You learn everything, forget nothing, and yet contrive not to become conceited about your mind!”
“I’ve enjoyed thrills when older people marveled over some precocious remark of mine—something which I had heard one of them say a short time previously. But I have always found it more interesting to be learning new things; about you, for example, and about love, and whether I am going to be able to keep you happy, and not let you slide back into that slough of resignation.”
“Darling!” she exclaimed. “I have moved on a thousand years—out of the old night of the race, the Dark Ages!”
“You won’t go home and start remembering some of the prayers you learned, and worrying about your immortal soul on its way to hell?”
“If I say any prayers, Lanny, they will be to you. I think about our love and a warm glow spreads over my being; little bells start ringing, little shivers pass over me like moonlight on water. I’m afraid to go home, because I look so happy; I don’t see how it will be possible to hide my secret.”
“You will have to watch your diet like my mother,” he told her. “One consequence of this happiness is that your metabolic rate will be increased.”
“Now that is what I mean about your mind!” she exclaimed. “Where on earth did you obtain that item of information?”
“That is too easy!” he laughed. “Rick writes for an English weekly, and in the last issue I read an article by an English surgeon on the subject of the female organism. He says that woman is ‘an appendage to the uterus.’”
“Mon dieu!” exclaimed Marie. “So that is what is the matter with me!”
XI
They were in the “château country.” They rambled at will, and between embraces they inspected tremendous castles from three to ten centuries old. They were escorted through vaulted halls where mighty lords had feasted, and into underground dungeons where luckless wretches had been tortured with diabolical contrivances. They shuddered at the realization of what cruelty had been and might still be in the hearts of men. The woman exclaimed: “Oh, Lanny! Do you suppose there will ever be a time when love will prevail in the world? When shall we be able to trust one another?”
“I’m afraid it’s still a long way off,” he said. “The best we can do is to make for ourselves a little island of safety.” He recited some lines from Matthew Arnold which had struck deep into his soul during the dreadful years of the war:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confus’d alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
XII
In between these grave reflections they discussed the problem of Denis de Bruyne, involuntary participant in their intimacy. Marie said that as soon as she returned to her home she would tell him, as an alternative to a divorce, she must have an understanding that she was free to live her own life. He would, of course, know this meant a lover; but she would refuse to discuss the matter, taking the position that her affairs were her own.
“Suppose he declines to agree?” asked Lanny.
“He won’t, dear!”
“While we are by ourselves, and have time to talk frankly, we dare not fail to consider all possibilities. When we part, will you be writing me about the marketing of pictures?”
“No, Lanny; I am going to be free!”
“All right; but suppose your husband says a flat no?” Lanny had already discussed this practical question with Mrs. Emily. “He may have you watched, and get evidence against you, and so be in position to divorce you and take your children from you. What will your answer be?”
“I cannot face such a thought, Lanny!”
“I am trying to protect your happiness. My father has a competent lawyer in Paris. If I go to him, tell him the situation, and put up the necessary costs, we can get our evidence first and you will have something definite to reply to your husband.”
“Oh, no, Lanny! That would not be according to my code. Denis is the father of my children, and I cannot believe that he would be capable of baseness! He has his weaknesses, but he has virtues too. I could not make the first move
in such a conflict.”
He made certain that her scruples were deeply based. She would have to be attacked before she would think of fighting back. “It will become a contest in continence,” he said. “If he opposes you, you will have to prove that you can live a celibate life longer than he can.”
“I believe that with your help I should win.”
They left the matter there. He would go back to Juan at once, and she would write as soon as she had news. In September the boys would be going to school, and then she would come to stay with her aunt in Cannes.
“Will that proper old lady sanction our love?” he inquired.
“I believe she will when I explain it to her. Anyhow, I will come to you in September. Will you be able to wait that long?”
“I can wait as long as I have to; but that doesn’t mean that I shall enjoy it.”
“You will have to take what I can give, dear. I believe that everything will be easier when my husband has adjusted himself to the idea that women too have their needs. You know that I myself required some time to adjust myself to the idea.”
“I have not forgotten that waiting,” he smiled. “Tell me again—have I kept my promises?”
“You have filled the cup of my happiness brim-full. You have given me a new life, and the courage to live it.”
More landscapes and old châteaux, as they worked their way eastward in the direction of her home. She wouldn’t let him take her near it, but had him set her down on the outskirts of a town from which a public conveyance ran to her neighborhood. When the time had come for parting, she said: