My sister, as it proved, was not sufficiently restored to leave Havre by the afternoon train; so that, as the autumn dusk began to fall, I found myself at liberty to call at the sign of the Fair Norman. I must confess that I had spent much of the interval in wondering what the disagreeable thing was that my charming friend’s disagreeable cousin had been telling her. The “Belle Normande” was a modest inn in a shady bystreet, where it gave me satisfaction to think Miss Spencer must have encountered local color in abundance. There was a crooked little court, where much of the hospitality of the house was carried on; there was a staircase climbing to bedrooms on the outer side of the wall; there was a small trickling fountain with a stucco statuette in the midst of it; there was a little boy in a white cap and apron cleaning copper vessels at a conspicuous kitchen door; there was a chattering landlady, neatly laced, arranging apricots and grapes into an artistic pyramid upon a pink plate. I looked about, and on a green bench outside of an open door labelled Salle à Manger, I perceived Caroline Spencer. No sooner had I looked at her than I saw that something had happened since the morning. She was leaning back on her bench, her hands were clasped in her lap, and her eyes were fixed upon the landlady, at the other side of the court, manipulating her apricots.
But I saw she was not thinking of apricots. She was staring absently, thoughtfully; as I came near her I perceived that she had been crying. I sat down on the bench beside her before she saw me; then, when she had done so, she simply turned round, without surprise, and rested her sad eyes upon me. Something very bad indeed had happened; she was completely changed.
I immediately charged her with it. “Your cousin has been giving you bad news; you are in great distress.”
For a moment she said nothing, and I supposed that she was afraid to speak, lest her tears should come back. But presently I perceived that in the short time that had elapsed since my leaving her in the morning she had shed them all, and that she was now softly stoical, intensely composed.
“My poor cousin is in distress,” she said at last. “His news was bad.” Then, after a brief hesitation, “He was in terrible want of money.”
“In want of yours, you mean?”
“Of any that he could get—honestly. Mine was the only money.”
“And he has taken yours?”
She hesitated again a moment, but her glance, meanwhile, was pleading. “I gave him what I had.”
I have always remembered the accent of those words as the most angelic bit of human utterance I had ever listened to; but then, almost with a sense of personal outrage, I jumped up. “Good heavens!” I said, “do you call that getting, it honestly?”
I had gone too far; she blushed deeply. “We will not speak of it,” she said.
“We must speak of it,” I answered, sitting down again. “I am your friend; it seems to me you need one. What is the matter with your cousin?”
“He is in debt.”
“No doubt! But what is the special fitness of your paying his debts?”
“He has told me all his story; I am very sorry for him.”
“So am I! But I hope he will give you back your money.”
“Certainly he will; as soon as he can.”
“When will that be?”
“When he has finished his great picture.”
“My dear young lady, confound his great picture! Where is this desperate cousin?”
She certainly hesitated now. Then,—“At his dinner,” she answered.
I turned about and looked through the open door into the salle à manger. There, alone at the end of a long table, I perceived the object of Miss Spencer’s compassion, the bright young art-student. He was dining too attentively to notice me at first; but in the act of setting down a well-emptied wineglass he caught sight of my observant attitude. He paused in his repast, and, with his head on one side and his meagre jaws slowly moving, fixedly returned my gaze. Then the landlady came lightly brushing by with her pyramid of apricots.
“And that nice little plate of fruit is for him?” I exclaimed.
Miss Spencer glanced at it tenderly. “They do that so prettily!” she murmured.
I felt helpless and irritated. “Come now, really,” I said; “do you approve of that long strong fellow accepting your funds?” She looked away from me; I was evidently giving her pain. The case was hopeless; the long strong fellow had “interested” her.
“Excuse me if I speak of him so unceremoniously,” I said. “But you are really too generous, and he is not quite delicate enough. He made his debts himself; he ought to pay them himself.”
“He has been foolish,” she answered; “I know that He has told me everything. We had a long talk this morning; the poor fellow threw himself upon my charity. He has signed notes to a large amount.”
“The more fool he!”
“He is in extreme distress; and it is not only himself. It is his poor wife.”
“Ah, he has a poor wife?”
“I didn’t know it; but he confessed everything. He married two years since, secretly.”
“Why secretly?”
Caroline Spencer glanced about her, as if she feared listeners. Then softly, in a little impressive tone,—“She was a countess!”
“Are you very sure of that?”
“She has written me a most beautiful letter.”
“Asking you for money, eh?”
“Asking me for confidence and sympathy,” said Miss Spencer. “She has been disinherited by her father. My cousin told me the story, and she tells it in her own way, in the letter. It is like an old romance. Her father opposed the marriage, and when he discovered that she had secretly disobeyed him he cruelly cast her off. It is really most romantic. They are the oldest family in Provence.”
I looked and listened in wonder. It really seemed that the poor woman was enjoying the “romance” of having a discarded countess-cousin, out of Provence, so deeply as almost to lose the sense of what the forfeiture of her money meant for her.
“My dear young lady,” I said, “you don’t want to be ruined for picturesqueness’ sake?”
“I shall not be ruined. I shall come back before long to stay with them. The Countess insists upon that.”
“Come back! You are going home, then?”
She sat for a moment with her eyes lowered, then with an heroic suppression of a faint tremor of the voice,—“I have no money for travelling!” she answered.
“You gave it all up?”
“I have kept enough to take me home.”
I gave an angry groan; and at this juncture Miss Spencer’s cousin, the fortunate possessor of her sacred savings and of the hand of the Provençal countess, emerged from the little dining-room. He stood on the threshold for an instant, removing the stone from a plump apricot which he had brought away from the table; then he put the apricot into his mouth, and while he let it sojourn there, gratefully, stood looking at us, with his long legs apart and his hands dropped into the pockets of his velvet jacket. My companion got up, giving him a thin glance which I caught in its passage, and which expressed a strange commixture of resignation and fascination,—a sort of perverted exaltation. Ugly, vulgar, pretentious, dishonest, as I thought the creature, he had appealed successfully to her eager and tender imagination. I was deeply disgusted, but I had no warrant to interfere, and at any rate I felt that it would be vain.
The young man waved his hand with a pictorial gesture. “Nice old court,” he observed. “Nice mellow old place. Good tone in that brick. Nice crooked old staircase.”
Decidedly, I could n’t stand it; without responding I gave my hand to Caroline Spencer. She looked at me an instant with her little white face and expanded eyes, and as she showed her pretty teeth I suppose she meant to smile.
“Don’t be sorry for me,” she said, “I am very sure I shall see something of this dear old Europe yet.”
I told her that I would not bid her goodby; I should find a moment to come back the next morning. Her cousin, who had put on his sombrero again, flourished it off at me by way of a bow, upon which I took my departure.
The next morning I came back to the inn, where I met in the court the landlady, more loosely laced than in the evening. On my asking for Miss Spencer,—“ Partie, monsieu,” said the hostess. “She went away last night at ten o ‘clock, with her—her—not her husband, eh?—in fine, her monsieur. They went down to the American ship.” I turned away; the poor girl had been about thirteen hours in Europe.