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Page 46
News travels fast and penetrates everywhere in that lost corner of
garrulous Gascony. The news that Paul had taken up his residence at
Saint-Graal could scarcely fail to reach the Queen. Would she remember
their childish intimacy? Would she make him a sign? Would she let him
see her, for old sake's sake? Oh, in all probability, no. Most
certainly, no. And yet--and yet, he couldn't forbid a little furtive
hope to flicker in his heart.
V.
It was only April, but the sun shone with midsummer strength.
After Andr� left him, he went down into the garden.
From a little distance the house, against the sky, looked
insubstantial, a water-colour, painted in grey and amber on a field of
luminous blue. If he had wished it, he could have bathed himself in
flowers; hyacinths, crocuses, jonquils, camellias, roses, grew round
him everywhere, sending up a symphony of warm odours; further on, in
the grass, violets, anemones, celandine; further still, by the margins
of the pond, narcissuses, and tall white flowers-de-luce; and, in the
shrubberies, satiny azaleas; and overhead, the magnolia trees,
drooping with their freight of ivory cups. The glass doors of the
orangery stood open, a cloud of sweetness hanging heavily before them.
In the park, the chestnuts were in full leaf; and surely a thousand
birds were twittering and piping amongst their branches.
'Oh, bother! How it cries out for a woman,' said Paul. 'It's such a
waste of good material'
The beauty went to one's head. One craved a sympathetic companion to
share it with, a woman on whom to lavish the ardours it enkindled. 'If
I don't look out I shall become sentimental,' the lone man told
himself. 'Nature's so fearfully lacking in tact. Fancy her singing an
epithalamium in a poor fellow's ears, when he doesn't know a single
human woman nearer than Paris.' To make matters worse, the day ended
in a fiery sunset, and then there was a full moon; and in the rosery a
nightingale performed its sobbing serenade. 'Please go out and give
that bird a penny, and tell him to go away,' Paul said to a servant.
It was all very well to jest, but at every second breath he sighed
profoundly. I'm afraid he _had_ become sentimental. It seemed a
serious pity that what his heart was full of should spend itself on
the incapable air. His sense of humour was benumbed. And when,
presently, the frogs in the pond, a hundred yards away, set up their
monotonous plaintive concert, he laid down his arms. 'It's no use, I'm
in for it,' he confessed. After all, he was out of England. He was in
Gascony, the borderland between amorous France and old romantic Spain.
I don't know whom his imagination dwelt the more fondly with: the
stricken Queen, beyond there, alone in the darkness and the silence,
where the night lay on the forest of Granjolaye; or the pale
horse-woman of the morning.
But surely, as yet, he had no ghost of a reason for dreaming that the
two were one and the same.
VI.
'Now, let's be logical,' he said next morning. 'Let's be logical and
hopeful--yet not too hopeful, not utopian. Let's look the matter
courageously in the face. Since she rode there once, why may she not
ride again in the Sentier des Contrebandiers? Why mayn't she ride
there often--even daily? I think that's logical. Don't _you_ think
that's logical?'
The person he addressed, a tall, slender young man, with a
fresh-coloured skin, a straight nose, and rather a ribald eye, was
vigorously brushing a head of yellowish hair, in the looking-glass
before him.
'Tush! But of course _you_ think so,' Paul went on. 'You always think
as I do. If you knew how I despise a sycophant! And yet--you're not
bad looking. No, I'll be hanged if I can honestly say that you're bad
looking. You've got nice hair, and plenty of it; and there's a
weakness about your mouth and chin that goes to my heart. I hate firm
people.--What? So do you? I thought so.--Ah, well, my poor friend,
you're booked for a shocking long walk this morning. You must summon
your utmost fortitude.--_Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie
with me?_' he carolled forth, to Marzials's tune. 'But come! I say!
That's anticipating.'
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