Part 12

It carried, at any rate, as far as a low thatched farm-house, a hundred yards down the road. Presently a man and a woman came out of the farm-house, gazed for an instant in my direction, and then moved towards me: an old brown man, an old grey woman, the man in corduroys, the woman wearing a neat white cotton cap and a blue apron, both moving with the burdened gait of peasants.

“You are Monsieur and Madame Leroux?” I asked, when we had accomplished our preliminary good-days; and I explained that I had come from the agent in Dieppe to look over their house. For the rest, they must have been expecting me; the agent had said that he would let them know.

But, to my perplexity, this business-like announcement seemed somehow to embarrass them; even, I might have thought, to agitate, to distress them. They lifted up their worn old faces, and eyed me anxiously. They exchanged anxious glances with each other. The woman clasped her hands, nervously working her fingers. The man hesitated and stammered a little, before he was able to repeat vaguely, “You have come to look over the house, Monsieur?”

“Surely,” I said, “the agent has written to you? I understood from him that you would expect me at this hour to-day.”

“Oh yes,” the man admitted, “we were expecting you.” But he made no motion to advance matters. He exchanged another anxious glance with his wife. She gave her head a sort of helpless nod, and looked down.

“You see, Monsieur,” the man began, as if he were about to elucidate the situation, “you see—” But then he faltered, frowning at the air, as one at a loss for words.

“The house is already let, perhaps?” suggested I.

“No, the house is not let,” said he.

“You had better go and fetch the key,” his wife said at last, in a dreary way, still looking down.

He trudged heavily back to the farm-house. While he was gone we stood by the door in silence, the woman always nervously working the fingers of her clasped hands. I tried, indeed, to make a little conversation: I ventured something about the excellence of the site, the beauty of the view. She replied with a murmur of assent, civilly but wearily; and I did not feel encouraged to persist.

By-and-by her husband rejoined us, with the key; and they began silently to lead me through the house.

There were two pretty drawing-rooms on the ground floor, a pretty dining-room, and a delightful kitchen, with a broad hearth of polished red bricks, a tiled chimney, and shining copper pots and pans. The drawing-rooms and the dining-room were pleasantly furnished in a light French fashion, and their windows opened to the sun and to the fragrance and greenery of the garden. I expressed a good deal of admiration; whereupon, little by little, the manner of my conductors changed. From constrained, depressed, it became responsive; even, in the end, effusive. They met my exclamations with smiles, my inquiries with voluble eager answers. But it remained an agitated manner, the manner of people who were shaken by an emotion. Their old hands trembled as they opened the doors for me or drew up the blinds; their voices trembled. There was something painful in their very smiles, as if these were but momentary ripples on the surface of a trouble.

“Ah,” I said to myself, “they are hard-pressed for money. They have put their whole capital into this house, very likely. They are excited by the prospect of securing a tenant.”

“Now, if you please, Monsieur, we will go upstairs, and see the bedrooms,” the old man said.

The bedrooms were airy, cheerful rooms, gaily papered, with chintz curtains and the usual French bedroom furniture. One of them exhibited signs of being actually lived in; there were things about it, personal things, a woman’s things. It was the last room we visited, a front room, looking off to the sea. There were combs and brushes on the toilet-table; there were pens, an inkstand, and a portfolio on the writing-desk; there were books in the bookcase. Framed photographs stood on the mantelpiece. In the closet dresses were suspended, and shoes and slippers were primly ranged on the floor. The bed was covered with a counterpane of blue silk; a crucifix hung on the wall above it; beside it there was a prie-dieu, with a little porcelain holy-water vase.

“Oh,” I exclaimed, turning to Monsieur and Madame Leroux, “this room is occupied?”

Madame Leroux did not appear to hear me. Her eyes were fixed in a dull stare before her, her lips were parted slightly. She looked tired, as if she would be glad when our tour through the house was finished. Monsieur Leroux threw his hand up towards the ceiling in an odd gesture, and said, “No, the room is not occupied at present.”

We went back downstairs, and concluded an agreement. I was to take the house for the summer. Madame Leroux would cook for me. Monsieur Leroux would drive into Dieppe on Wednesday to fetch me and my luggage out.

On Wednesday we had been driving for something like half an hour without speaking, when all at once Leroux said to me, “That room, Monsieur, the room you thought was occupied——”

“Yes?” I questioned, as he paused.

“I have a proposition to make,” said he. He spoke, as it seemed to me, half shyly, half doggedly, gazing the while at the ears of his horse.

“What is it?” I asked.

“If you will leave that room as it is, with the things in it, we will make a reduction in the rent. If you will let us keep it as it is?” he repeated, with a curious pleading intensity. “You are alone. The house will be big enough for you without that room, will it not, Monsieur?”

Of course, I consented at once. If they wished to keep the room as it was, they were to do so, by all means.

“Thank you, thank you very much. My wife will be grateful to you,” he said.

For a little while longer we drove on without speaking. Presently, “You are our first tenant. We have never let the house before,” he volunteered.

“Ah? Have you had it long?” I asked.

“I built it. I built it, five, six, years ago,” said he. Then, after a pause, he added, “I built it for my daughter.”

His voice sank, as he said this. But one felt that it was only the beginning of something he wished to say.

I invited him to continue by an interested, “Oh?”

“You see what we are, my wife and I,” he broke out suddenly. “We are rough people, we are peasants. But my daughter, sir”—he put his hand on my knee, and looked earnestly into my face—“my daughter was as fine as satin, as fine as lace.”

He turned back to his horse, and again drove for a minute or two in silence. At last, always with his eyes on the horse’s ears, “There was not a lady in this country finer than my daughter,” he went on, speaking rapidly, in a thick voice, almost as if to himself. “She was beautiful, she had the sweetest character, she had the best education. She was educated at the convent, in Rouen, at the Sacré Cour. Six years—from twelve to eighteen—she studied at the convent. She knew English, sir—your language. She took prizes for history. And the piano! Nobody living can touch the piano as my daughter could. Well,” he demanded abruptly, with a kind of fierceness, “was a rough farm-house good enough for her?” He answered his own question. “No, Monsieur. You would not soil fine lace by putting it in a dirty box. My daughter was finer than lace. Her hands were softer than Lyons velvet. And oh,” he cried, “the sweet smell they had, her hands! It was good to smell her hands. I used to kiss them and smell them, as you would smell a rose.” His voice died away at the reminiscence, and there was another interval of silence. By-and-by he began again, “I had plenty of money. I was the richest farmer of this neighbourhood. I sent to Rouen for the best architect they have there. Monsieur Clermont, the best architect of Rouen, laureate of the Fine Arts School of Paris, he built that house for my daughter; he built it and furnished it, to make it fit for a countess, so that when she came home for good from the convent she should have a home worthy of her. Look at this, Monsieur. Would the grandest palace in the world be too good for her?”

He had drawn a worn red leather case from his pocket, and taken out a small photograph, which he handed to me. It was the portrait of a girl, a delicate-looking girl, of about seventeen. Her face was pretty, with the irregular prettiness not uncommon in France, and very sweet and gentle. The old man almost held his breath while I was examining the photograph. “Est-elle gentille? Est-elle belle, Monsieur?” he besought me, with a very hunger for sympathy, as I returned it. One answered, of course, what one could, as best one could. He, with shaking fingers, replaced the photograph in its case. “Here, Monsieur,” he said, extracting from an opposite compartment a little white card. It was the usual French memorial of mourning: an engraving of the Cross and Dove, under which was printed: “Eulalie-Joséphine-Marie Leroux. Born the 16th May, 1874. Died the 12th August, 1892. Pray for her.”

“The good God knows what He does. I built that house for my daughter, and when it was built the good God took her away. We were mad with grief, my wife and I; but that could not save her. Perhaps we are still mad with grief,” the poor old man said simply. “We can think of nothing else. We never wish to speak of anything else. We could not live in the house—her house, without her. We never thought to let it. I built that house for my daughter, I furnished it for her, and when it was ready for her—she died. Was it not hard, Monsieur? How could I let the house to strangers? But lately I have had losses. I am compelled to let it, to pay my debts. I would not let it to everybody. You are an Englishman. Well, if I did not like you, I would not let it to you for a million English pounds. But I am glad I have let it to you. You will respect her memory. And you will allow us to keep that room—her room. We shall be able to keep it as it was, with her things in it. Yes, that room which you thought was occupied—that was my daughter’s room.”

Madame Leroux was waiting for us in the garden of the chalet. She looked anxiously up at her husband as we arrived. He nodded his head, and called out, “It is all right. Monsieur agrees.”

The old woman took my hands, wringing them hysterically almost. “Ah, Monsieur, you are very good,” she said. She raised her eyes to mine. But I could not look into her eyes. There was a sorrow in them, an awfulness, a sacredness of sorrow, which, I felt, it would be like sacrilege for me to look at.

We became good friends, the Leroux and I, during the three months I passed as their tenant. Madame, indeed, did for me and looked after me with a zeal that was almost maternal. Both of them, as the old man had said, loved above all things to talk of their daughter, and I hope I was never loth to listen. Their passion, their grief, their constant thought of her, appealed to one as very beautiful, as well as very touching. And something like a pale spirit of the girl seemed gently, sweetly, always to be present in the house, the house that Love had built for her, not guessing that Death would come, as soon as it was finished, and call her away. “Oh, but it is a joy, Monsieur, that you have left us her room,” the old couple were never tired of repeating. One day Madame took me up into the room, and showed me Eulalie’s pretty dresses, her trinkets, her books, the handsomely bound books that she had won as prizes at the convent. And on another day she showed me some of Eulalie’s letters, asking me if she hadn’t a beautiful hand-writing, if the letters were not beautifully expressed. She showed me photographs of the girl at all ages; a lock of her hair; her baby clothes; the priest’s certificate of her first communion; the bishop’s certificate of her confirmation. And she showed me letters from the good sisters of the Sacred Heart, at Rouen, telling of Eulalie’s progress in her studies, praising her conduct and her character. “Oh, to think that she is gone, that she is gone!” the old woman wailed, in a kind of helpless incomprehension, incredulity, of loss. Then, in a moment, she murmured, with what submissiveness she could, “Le bon Dieu sait ce qu’il fait,” crossing herself.

On the 12th of August, the anniversary of her death, I went with them to the parish church, where a mass was said for the repose of Eulalie’s soul. And the kind old curé afterwards came round, and pressed their hands, and spoke words of comfort to them.

In September I left them, returning to Dieppe. One afternoon I chanced to meet that same old curé in the high street there. We stopped and spoke together—naturally, of the Leroux, of what excellent people they were, of how they grieved for their daughter. “Their love was more than love. They adored the child, they idolised her. I have never witnessed such affection,” the curé told me. “When she died, I seriously feared they would lose their reason. They were dazed, they were beside themselves; for a long while they were quite as if mad. But God is merciful. They have learned to live with their affliction.”

“It is very beautiful,” said I, “the way they have sanctified her memory, the way they worship it. You know, of course, they keep her room, with her things in it, exactly as she left it. That seems to me very beautiful.”

“Her room?” questioned the curé, looking vague. “What room?”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” I wondered. “Her bedroom in the chalet. They keep it as she left it, with all her things about, her books, her dresses.”

“I don’t think I follow you,” the curé said. “She never had a bedroom in the chalet.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon. One of the front rooms on the first floor was her room,” I informed him.

But he shook his head. “There is some mistake. She never lived in the chalet. She died in the old house. The chalet was only just finished when she died. The workmen were hardly out of it.”

“No,” I said, “it is you who must be mistaken; you must forget. I am quite sure. The Leroux have spoken of it to me times without number.”

“But, my dear sir,” the curé insisted, “I am not merely sure; I know. I attended the girl in her last agony. She died in the farm-house. They had not moved into the chalet. The chalet was being furnished. The last pieces of furniture were taken in the very day before her death. The chalet was never lived in. You are the only person who has ever lived in the chalet. I assure you of the fact.”

“Well,” I said, “that is very strange, that is very strange indeed.” And for a minute I was bewildered, I did not know what to think. But only for a minute. Suddenly I cried out, “Oh, I see—I see. I understand.”

I saw, I understood. Suddenly I saw the pious, the beautiful deception that these poor stricken souls had sought to practise on themselves; the beautiful, the fond illusion they had created for themselves. They had built the house for their daughter, and she had died just when it was ready for her. But they could not bear—they could not bear—to think that not for one little week even, not even for one poor little day or hour, had she lived in the house, enjoyed the house. That was the uttermost farthing of their sorrow, which they could not pay. They could not acknowledge it to their own stricken hearts. So, piously, reverently—with closed eyes as it were, that they might not know what they were doing—they had carried the dead girl’s things to the room they had meant for her, they had arranged them there, they had said, “This was her room; this was her room.” They would not admit to themselves, they would not let themselves stop to think, that she had never, even for one poor night, slept in it, enjoyed it. They told a beautiful pious falsehood to themselves. It was a beautiful pious game of “make-believe,” which, like children, they could play together. And—the curé had said it: God is merciful. In the end they had been enabled to confuse their beautiful falsehood with reality, and to find comfort in it; they had been enabled to forget that their “make-believe” was a “make-believe,” and to mistake it for a beautiful comforting truth. The uttermost farthing of their sorrow, which they could not pay, was not exacted. They were suffered to keep it; and it became their treasure, precious to them as fine gold.

Falsehood—truth? Nay, I think there are illusions that are not falsehoods—that are Truth’s own smiles of pity for us.

THE QUEEN’. PLEASURE

I am writing to you from a lost corner of the far south-east of Europe. The author of my guide-book, in his preface, observes that a traveller in this part of the world, “unless he has some acquaintance with the local idioms, is liable to find himself a good deal bewildered about the names of places.” On Thursday of last week I booked from Charing Cross, by way of Dover, Paris, and the Orient Express, for Vescova, the capital of Monterosso; and yesterday afternoon—having changed on Sunday, at Belgrade, from land to water, and steamed for close upon forty-eight hours down the Danube—I was put ashore at the town of Bckob, in the Principality of Tchermnogoria.

I certainly might well have found myself a good deal bewildered; and if I did not—for I’m afraid I can’t boast of much acquaintance with the local idioms—it was no doubt because this isn’t my first visit to the country. I was here some years ago, and then I learned that Bckob is pronounced as nearly as may be Vscof, and that Tchermnogoria is Monterosso literally translated—tchermnoe (the dictionaries certify) meaning red, and gora, or goria, a hill, a mountain.

It is our fashion in England to speak of Monterosso, if we speak of it at all, as I have just done: we say the Principality of Monterosso. But if we were to inquire at the Foreign Office, I imagine they would tell us that our fashion of speaking is not strictly correct. In its own Constitution Monterosso describes itself as a Krolevstvo, and its Sovereign as the Krol; and in all treaties and diplomatic correspondence, Krol and Krolevstvo are recognised by those most authoritative lexicographers, the Powers, as equivalent respectively to King and Kingdom. Anyhow, call it what you will, Monterosso is geographically the smallest, though politically the eldest, of the lower Danubian States. (It is sometimes, by-the-bye, mentioned in the newspapers of Western Europe as one of the Balkan States, which can scarcely be accurate, since, as a glance at the map will show, the nearest spurs of the Balkan Mountains are a good hundred miles distant from its southern frontier.) Its area is under ten thousand square miles, but its reigning family, the Pavelovitches, have contrived to hold their throne, from generation to generation, through thick and thin, ever since Peter the Great set them on it, at the conclusion of his war with the Turks, in 1713.

Vescova is rarely visited by English folk, lying, as it does, something like a two days’ journey off the beaten track, which leads through Belgrade and Sofia to Constantinople. But, should you ever chance to come here, you would be surprised to see what a fine town it is, with its population of upwards of a hundred thousand souls, its broad, well-paved streets, its substantial yellow-stone houses, its three theatres, its innumerable churches, its shops and cafés, its gardens, quays, monuments, its government offices, and its Royal Palace. I am speaking, of course, of the new town, the modern town, which has virtually sprung into existence since 1850, and which, the author of my guide-book says, “disputes with Bukharest the title of the Paris of the South-east.” The old town—the Turkish town, as they call it—is another matter: a nightmare-region of filthy alleys, open sewers, crumbling clay hovels, mud, stench, dogs, and dirty humanity, into which a well-advised foreigner will penetrate as seldom as convenient. Yet it is in the centre of the old town that the Cathedral stands, the Cathedral of Sankt Iakov, an interesting specimen of Fifteenth Century Saracenic, having been erected by the Sultan Mohammed II., as a mosque.

Of the Royal Palace I obtain a capital view from the window of my room in the Hôtel de Russie.

“A vast irregular pile,” in the language of my guide-book, “it is built on the summit of an eminence which dominates the town from the west.” The “eminence” rises gradually from this side to a height of perhaps a hundred feet, but breaks off abruptly on the other in a sheer cliff overhanging the Danube. The older portions of the Palace spring from the very brink of the precipice, so that, leaning from their ramparts, you could drop a pebble straight into the current, an appalling depth below. And, still to speak by the book, these older portions “vie with the Cathedral in architectural interest.” What I see from my bedroom is a formidable, murderous-looking Saracenic castle: huge perpendicular quadrangles of blank, windowless, iron-grey stone wall (curtains, are they technically called?), connecting massive square towers; and the towers are surmounted by battlements and pierced by meurtrières. It stands out very bold and black, gloomy and impressive, when the sun sets behind it, in the late afternoon. I could suppose the place quite impregnable, if not inaccessible; and it’s a mystery to me how Peter the Great ever succeeded in taking it, as History will have it that he did, by assault.

The modern portions of the Palace are entirely commonplace and cheerful. The east wing, visible from where I am seated writing, might have been designed by Baron Haussmann: a long stretch of yellow façade—dazzling to the sight just now, in the morning sunshine—with a French roof, of slate, and a box of gay-tinted flowers in each of its countless windows.

Behind the Palace there is a large and very lovely garden, reserved to the uses of the Royal Household; and beyond that, the Dunayskiy Prospekt, a park that covers about sixty acres, and is open to the public.

The first floor, the piano nobile, of that east wing is occupied by the private apartments of the King and Queen.

I look across the quarter-mile of red-tiled housetops that separate me from their Majesties’ habitation, and I fancy the life that is going on within. It is too early in the day for either of them to be abroad, so they are certainly there, somewhere behind those gleaming windows: Theodore Krolt and Anéli Kroleva.

She, I would lay a wager, is in her music-room, at her piano, practising a song with Florimond. She is dressed in white (I always think of her as dressed in white—doubtless because she wore a white frock the first time I saw her), and her brown hair is curling loose about her forehead, her maids not having yet imprisoned it. I declare, I can almost hear her voice: tra-la-lira-la-la: mastering a trill; while Florimond, pink, and plump, and smiling, walks up and down the room, nodding his head to mark the time, and every now and then interrupting her with a suggestion.

The King, at this hour, will be in his study, in dressing-gown and slippers—a tattered old dingy brown dressing-gown, out at elbows—at his big wildly-littered writing-table, producing “copy,” to the accompaniment of endless cigarettes and endless glasses of tea. (Monterossan cigarettes are excellent, and Monterossan tea is always served in glasses.) The King has literary aspirations, and—like Frederick the Great—coaxes his muse in French. You will occasionally see a conte of his in the Nouvelle Revue, signed by the artful pseudonym, Théodore Montrouge.

At one o’clock to-day I am to present myself at the Palace, and to be received by their Majesties in informal audience; and then I am to have the honour of lunching with them. If I were on the point of lunching with any other royal family in Europe.... But, thank goodness, I’m not; and I needn’t pursue the distressing speculation. Queen Anéli and King Theodore are—for a multitude of reasons—a Queen and King apart.