"Who wants to know?"
"The Countess. That French lady."
"She has asked you to bring me?"
"Yes, sir," said the young man feebly, looking at my six feet of stature.
I went out with him, and we found the Countess sitting under one of the little quince-trees in front of the house. She was drawing a needle through the piece of embroidery which she had taken from the small table. She pointed graciously to the chair beside her, and I seated myself. Mr. Mixter glanced about him, and then sat down in the grass at her feet. He gazed upward, looking with parted lips from the Countess to me. "I am sure you speak French," said the Countess, fixing her brilliant little eyes upon me.
"I do, madam, after a fashion," I answered in the lady's own tongue.
"_Voila!_" she cried most expressively. "I knew it so soon as I looked at you. You have been in my poor dear country."
"A long time."
"You know Paris?"
"Thoroughly, madam." And with a certain conscious purpose I let my eyes meet her own.
She presently, hereupon, moved her own and glanced down at Mr. Mixter "What are we talking about?" she demanded of her attentive pupil.
He pulled his knees up, plucked at the grass with his hand, stared, blushed a little. "You are talking French," said Mr. Mixter.
"_La belle decouverte!_" said the Countess. "Here are ten months," she explained to me, "that I am giving him lessons. Don't put yourself out not to say he's an idiot; he won't understand you."
"I hope your other pupils are more gratifying," I remarked.
"I have no others. They don't know what French is in this place; they don't want to know. You may therefore imagine the pleasure it is to me to meet a person who speaks it like yourself." I replied that my own pleasure was not less; and she went on drawing her stitches through her embroidery, with her little finger curled out. Every few moments she put her eyes close to her work, nearsightedly. I thought her a very disagreeable person; she was coarse, affected, dishonest, and no more a countess than I was a caliph. "Talk to me of Paris," she went on. "The very name of it gives me an emotion! How long since you were there?"
"Two months ago."
"Happy man! Tell me something about it What were they doing? Oh, for an hour of the boulevard!"
"They were doing about what they are always doing,--amusing themselves a good deal."
"At the theatres, eh?" sighed the Countess. "At the _cafes-concerts_, at the little tables in front of the doors? _Quelle existence!_ You know I am a Parisienne, monsieur," she added, "to my fingertips."
"Miss Spencer was mistaken, then," I ventured to rejoin, "in telling me that you are a Provencale."
She stared a moment, then she put her nose to her embroidery, which had a dingy, desultory aspect. "Ah, I am a Provencale by birth; but I am a Parisienne by--inclination."
"And by experience, I suppose?" I said.
She questioned me a moment with her hard little eyes. "Oh, experience!
I could talk of experience if I wished. I never expected, for example, that experience had _this_ in store for me." And she pointed with her bare elbow, and with a jerk of her head, at everything that surrounded her,--at the little white house, the quince-tree, the rickety paling, even at Mr. Mixter.
"You are in exile!" I said, smiling.
"You may imagine what it is! These two years that I have been here I have passed hours--hours! One gets used to things, and sometimes I think I have got used to this. But there are some things that are always beginning over again. For example, my coffee."
"Do you always have coffee at this hour?" I inquired.
She tossed back her head and measured me.
"At what hour would you prefer me to have it? I must have my little cup after breakfast."
"Ah, you breakfast at this hour?"
"At midday--_comme cela se fait_. Here they breakfast at a quarter past seven! That 'quarter past' is charming!"
"But you were telling me about your _coffee?_ I observed sympathetically.
"My _cousine_ can't believe in it; she can't understand it. She's an excellent girl; but that little cup of black coffee, with a drop of cognac, served at this hour,--they exceed her comprehension. So I have to break the ice every day, and it takes the coffee the time you see to arrive. And when it arrives, monsieur! If I don't offer you any of it you must not take it ill. It will be because I know you have drunk it on the boulevard."
I resented extremely this scornful treatment of poor Caroline Spencer's humble hospitality; but I said nothing, in order to say nothing uncivil.
I only looked on Mr. Mixter, who had clasped his arms round his knees and was watching my companion's demonstrative graces in solemn fascination. She presently saw that I was observing him; she glanced at me with a little bold explanatory smile. "You know, he adores me," she murmured, putting her nose into her tapestry again. I expressed the promptest credence, and she went on. "He dreams of becoming my lover!
Yes, it's his dream. He has read a French novel; it took him six months. But ever since that he has thought himself the hero, and me the heroine!"
Mr. Mixter had evidently not an idea that he was being talked about; he was too preoccupied with the ecstasy of contemplation. At this moment Caroline Spencer came out of the house, bearing a coffee-pot on a little tray. I noticed that on her way from the door to the table she gave me a single quick, vaguely appealing glance. I wondered what it signified; I felt that it signified a sort of half-frightened longing to know what, as a man of the world who had been in France, I thought of the Countess.
It made me extremely uncomfortable. I could not tell her that the Countess was very possibly the runaway wife of a little hair-dresser. I tried suddenly, on the contrary, to show a high consideration for her. But I got up; I could n't stay longer. It vexed me to see Caroline Spencer standing there like a waiting-maid.
"You expect to remain some time at Grimwinter?" I said to the Countess.
She gave a terrible shrug.
"Who knows? Perhaps for years. When one is in misery!--_Chere belle_"
she added, turning to Miss Spencer, "you have forgotten the cognac!"
I detained Caroline Spencer as, after looking a moment in silence at the little table, she was turning away to procure this missing delicacy. I silently gave her my hand in farewell. She looked very tired, but there was a strange hint of prospective patience in her severely mild little face. I thought she was rather glad I was going. Mr. Mixter had risen to his feet and was pouring out the Countess's coffee. As I went back past the Baptist church I reflected that poor Miss Spencer had been right in her presentiment that she should still see something of that dear old Europe.