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Wonderful Year

<div><h1>CHAPTER IX</h1></div> BEHOLD Martin, the professor, transformed into the perfect waiter—perfect, at least, in zeal, manner and habiliment. His dress suit, of ardent cut but practically unworn, gave the salle-à-manger an air of startling refinement and prosperity. At first Bigourdin, embarrassed by the shifting of the relative position, had deprecated this outer symbol of servitude. A man could wait in a lounge suit just as well as in a tail-coat—a proposition which Fortinbras vehemently controverted. He read his perplexed brother-in-law a lecture on the psychology of clothes. They had a spiritual significance, bringing subjective and objective into harmony. A judge could not devote his whole essence to the administration of justice if he were conscious of being invested in the glittering guise of a harlequin. If Martin wore the tweeds of the tourist he would feel inharmonious with his true waiter-self, and therefore could not wait with the perfect waiter’s spiritual deftness. Besides, he had not counselled his disciple to wait as an amateur. The way of the amateur was perdition. No, when Martin threw his napkin under his left arm, he should flick a bit of his heart into its folds, like a true professional. “Arrange it as you like,” said the weary Bigourdin. Fortinbras arranged and Martin became outwardly the perfect waiter. Of the craft itself he had much to learn, chiefly under the guidance of Bigourdin and sometimes under the shy instruction of Félise. Its many calls on intelligence and bodily skill surprised him. To balance a piled-up tray on one bent-back hand required the art of a juggler. He practised for days with a trayful of bricks before he trusted himself with plates and dishes. By means of this exercise his arm became muscular. He discovered that the long, grave step of the professor—especially when he bore a load of eatables—did not make for the perfect waiter’s celerity. He acquired the gentle arts of salad making and folding napkins into fantastic shapes. Never handy with his fingers, and, like most temperate young men in London lodgings, unaccustomed to the corkscrew, he found the clean prestidigitation of cork-drawing a difficult accomplishment. But he triumphed eventually in this as in all other branches of his new industry. And he liked it. It amused and interested him. It was work of which he could see the result. The tables set before the meal bore testimony to his handicraft. Never had plate been so polished, cutlery so lustrous, glass so transparent in the hundred years history of the Hôtel des Grottes. And when the guests assembled it was a delight to serve them according to organised scheme and disarm criticism by demonstration of his efficiency. He rose early and went to bed late, tired as a draught-dog and slept the happy sleep of the contented human. Bigourdin praised him, but shrugged his shoulders. “What you are doing it for, mon ami, I can’t imagine.” “For the good of my soul,” laughed Martin, “and in order to attain happiness.” “Our good friends the English are a wonderful race,” said Bigourdin, “and I admire them enormously, but there’s not one of them who isn’t a little bit mad.” To the coterie of the Café de l’Univers, however, he gave a different explanation altogether of Professor Martin’s descent in the social scale. The Professor, said he, had abandoned the professoriat for the more lucrative paths of commerce and had decided to open a hotel in England, where every one knew the hotels were villainous and provided nothing for their clients but overdone bacon and eggs and raw beef-steaks. The Professor, more enlightened than his compatriots, was apprenticing himself to the business in the orthodox Continental fashion. As the substantial Gaspard Bigourdin himself, son of the late equally substantially, although one-armed and one-legged Armédée Bigourdin, had, to the common knowledge of Brantôme, served as scullion, waiter, sous-chef de cuisine, sous-maître d’hôtel, and bookkeeper at various hotels in Lyons, in order to become the bon hôtelier that he was, his announcement caused no sensation whatever. The professor of the Ecole Normale bewailed his own chill academic lot and proclaimed Monsieur Martin an exceedingly lucky fellow. “But, mon cher patron, it isn’t true what you have said at the Café de l’Univers,” protested Martin, when Bigourdin told him of the explanation. Bigourdin waved his great arm. “How am I to know it isn’t true? How am I to get into the English minds of you and my farceur of a brother-in-law so as to discover why you arrive as an honoured guest at my hotel and then in the wink of an eye become the waiter of the establishment? What am I to say to our friends? They wouldn’t care a hang (ils se ficheraient pas mal) for your soul. If you are to continue to mix with them on terms of equality they must have an explanation, nom de Dieu, which they can understand.” “I never dreamed,” said Martin, “of entering the circle at the Café again.” “Mais, j’y ai pensé, moi, animal!” cried Bigourdin. “Because you have the fantasy of becoming my waiter, are you any less the same human being I had the pleasure of introducing to my friends?” And then, perhaps for the first time, Martin appreciated his employer’s fine kindness and essential loyalty. It would have been quite easy for the innkeeper to dismiss his waiter from the consideration of the hierarchy of Brantôme as a mad Englishman, an adventurer, not a professor at all, but a broken-down teacher of languages giving private lessons—an odd-job instructor who finds no respect in highly centralised, bureaucratic France; but the easy way was not the way of Gaspard Bigourdin. So Martin, driven by force majeure, lent himself to the pious fraud and, when the evening’s work was done, divested himself of his sable panoply of waiterdom and once more took his place in the reserved cosy corner of the Café de l’Univers. The agreeable acidity in his life which he missed when Corinna, graciously dignified, had steamed off by the night train, he soon discovered in the pursuit of his new avocation. Euphémie, the cook, whose surreptitious habits of uncleanliness carefully hidden from Félise, but unavoidably patent to an agonised Martin, supplied as much sourness as his system required. She would not take him seriously and declared her antipathy to un monsieur in her kitchen. To bring about an entente cordiale was for Martin an education in diplomacy. The irritability of a bilious commercial traveller, poisoned by infected nourishment at his last house of entertainment—the reason invariably given for digestive misadventure—so that his stomach was dislocated, often vented itself on the waiter serving an irreproachable repast at the Hôtel des Grottes. The professional swallowing of outraged feelings also gave a sub-acid flavour to existence. Motorists on the other hand, struck by his spruceness and polite demeanour, administered pleasant tonic in the form of praise. They also bestowed handsome tips. These caused him some misgiving. A gentleman could be a waiter or anything you pleased, so long as it was honest, and remain a gentleman: but could he take tips? Or rather, having taken tips, was it consonant with his gentility to retain them? Would it not be nobler to hand them over to Baptiste or Euphémie? Bigourdin, appealed to, decided that it would be magnificent but would inevitably disorganise these excellent domestics. Martin suggested the Assistance Publique or the church poor-box. “I thought,” said Bigourdin, “you became a waiter in order to earn your living?” “That is so,” replied Martin. “Then,” said Bigourdin, “earn it like a waiter. Suppose I were the manager of a Grand Hotel and gave you nothing at all—as it is your salary is not that of a prince—how would you live? You are a servant of the public. The public pays you for your services. Why should you be too proud to accept payment?” “But a tip’s a tip,” Martin objected. “It is good money,” said Bigourdin. “Keep your fine five-franc pieces in your pocket and elles feront des petits, and in course of time you will build with them an hotel on the Côte d’Azur.” In a letter to Corinna, Martin mentioned the disquieting problem. Chafing in her crowded vicarage home she offered little comfort. She made the sweeping statement that whether he kept his tips or not, the whole business was revolting. He wrote to Fortinbras. The Dealer in Happiness replied on a postcard: “Will you never learn that a sense of humour is the beginning and end of philosophy?” After which, Martin, having schooled himself to the acceptance of pourboires, learned to pocket them with a professional air and ended by regarding them as part of the scheme of the universe. As the heavens rained water on the thirsty fields, so did clients shower silver coins on hungry waiters. How far, as yet, it was good for his soul he could not determine. At any rate, in his mild, unambitious way, he attained the lower rungs of happiness. I do not wish it to be understood that if he had entered as a stranger, say, the employment of the excellent proprietor of the excellent Hôtel de Commerce at Périgueux, he would have found the same contentment of body and spirit. The alleviations of the Hôtel des Grottes would have been missing. His employer, while acknowledging his efficiency still regarded him as an eccentric professor, and apart from business relations treated him as friend and comrade. The notables of the town accepted him as an equal. To the cave-dwellers and others of the proletariat with whom he had formed casual acquaintance, he was still “Monsieur Martin,” greeted with the same shade of courteous deference as before, although the whole population of Brantôme knew of his social metamorphosis. Wherever he went, in his walks abroad, he met the genial smile and raised hat. He contrasted it all with the dour unwelcome of the North London streets. There he had always felt lost, a drab human item of no account. Here he had an identity, pleasantly proclaimed. So would a sensitive long-sentence Convict, B 2278, coming into the world of remembering men, rejoice that he was no longer a number, but that intensely individual entity Bill Smith, recognised as a lover of steak-and-kidney pudding. As a matter of fact, he seldom heard his surname. The refusal of Bigourdin’s organs of speech to grapple with the Saxon “Overshaw” has already been remarked upon. From the very first Bigourdin decreed that he should be “Monsieur Martin”—Martin pronounced French fashion—and as “Monsieur Martin” he introduced him to the Café de l’Univers, and “Monsieur Martin” he was to all Brantôme. But of what importance is a surname, when you are intimately known by your Christian name to all of your acquaintance? Who in the world save his mother and the Hastings family had for dreary ages past called him “Martin”? Now he was “Martin”—or “Monsieur Martin”—a designation which agreeably combined familiarity with respect—to all who mattered in Périgord. It must be remembered that it was an article of faith among the good Brantômois that, in Périgord, only Brantôme mattered. “You people are far too good to me,” he remarked one day to Bigourdin. “It is a large-hearted country.” “Did I not say, my friend,” replied Bigourdin, “that Périgord would take you to her bosom?” And then there was Félise, who in her capacity of task-mistress called him peremptorily “Martin”; but out of official hours nearly always prefixed the “Monsieur.” She created an atmosphere of grace around the plates and dishes, her encouraging word sang for long afterwards in his ears. With a tact only to be found in democratic France she combined the authority of the superior with the intellectual inferior’s respect. Apparently she concerned herself little about his change of profession. Her father, the all-wise and all-perfect, had ordained it; her uncle, wise and perfect, had acquiesced; Martin, peculiarly wise and almost perfect, had accepted it with enthusiasm. Who was she to question the doings of inscrutable men? They met perforce more often than during his guesthood, and, their common interests being multiplied, their relations became more familiar. They had reached now the period of the year’s stress, that of the great foie gras making when fatted geese were slain and the masses of swollen liver were extracted and the huge baskets of black warty truffles were brought in from the beech forests where they had been hunted for by pigs and dogs. Martin, like every one else in the household, devoted all his spare moments to helping in the steaming kitchen supervised by a special chef, and in the long, clean-smelling work-room where rows of white-aproned girls prepared and packed the delectable compound. Here Bigourdin presided in brow-knit majesty and Félise bustled a smiling second in command. “It is well to learn everything,” she said to Martin. “Who knows when you may be glad to have been taught how to make pâté de foie gras?” So Martin, though such a course was not contemplated in his agreement with the Hôtel des Grottes, received much instruction from her in the delicate craft, which was very pleasant indeed. And the girls looked on at the lessons after the way of their kind and exchanged glances one with another, and every one, save perhaps Bigourdin, who had not yet recovered his serenity overclouded by Corinna’s rejection of his suit, was exceedingly contented. And then, lo and behold, into this terrestrial paradise strayed the wandering feet of Lucien Viriot. Not that Lucien was unexpected. His father, Monsieur Viriot, marchand de vins en gros, and one of the famous circle at the Café de l’Univers, had for the past month or two nightly proclaimed the approaching release of the young man from military service. Martin had heard him. Bigourdin on their walks home together had dilated on the heaven-decreed union of the two young people and the loneliness of his lot. Where would he find, at least, such a ménagère as Félise? “It’s a pity Corinna hadn’t any sense,” said Martin on one of these occasions. Bigourdin heaved a mighty sigh. “Ah, mon vieux!” said he by way of answer. The sigh and the “Ah, mon vieux!” were eloquent of shattered ideals. “There is always Madame Thuillier who used to help me when Félise was little,” he continued after a while, meditatively. “She has experience, but she is as ugly as a monkey, the poor woman!” Whereupon he sighed again, leaving Martin in doubt as to the exact position he intended the ill-favoured lady to occupy in his household. Anyhow, Martin was forewarned of the ex-warrior’s advent. So was Félise. “But I cannot leave you, mon oncle,” she cried in dismay. “What would become of you? Who would mend your linen? What would become of the hotel? What would become of the fabrique?” “Bah!” said he, snapping his fingers at such insignificant considerations. “There is always the brave Madame Thuillier.” “But I thought you detested her—as much as you can detest anybody.” “You are mistaken, mon enfant,” replied Bigourdin. “I have a great regard for her. She has striking qualities. She is a woman of ripe age and much common sense.” Which shows how double-tongued men may be. “C’est une vieille pimbèche!” cried Félise. “Tais-toi,” said Bigourdin severely. For a “vieille pimbèche” means, at the very least, a horrid old tabby with her claws out. “I won’t be silent,” laughed Félise rebelliously. “C’est une vieille pimbèche, and I’m not going to leave you to her. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to marry.” “That is what all little girls say,” replied Bigourdin. “But when you see Lucien return, joli garçon, holding his head in the air like a brave little soldier of France, and looking at you out of his honest eyes, you will no longer tell me, ‘Je ne veux pas me marier, mon oncle.’ ” She laughed at his outrageous mimicry of a modest little girl’s accent. “It’s true all the same,” she retorted. “I don’t want to marry anybody, and Lucien after having seen all the pretty girls of Paris won’t want to marry me.” “If he doesn’t——!” cried Bigourdin threateningly. “If he dares——!” “Well, what then?” asked Félise. “I’ll have a serious conversation with his father,” declared Bigourdin. Thus both Martin and Félise, as I have said, were forewarned. Yet neither took much notice of the warning. Martin had been aware, all along, of the destiny decreed for her by the omnipotent Triumvirate consisting of her uncle, the bon Dieu and Monsieur Viriot, and, regarding her as being sealed to another, had walked with Martin-like circumspection (subject, in days not long since past, for Corinna’s raillery) along the borderline of the forbidden land of tenderness. But this judicious and conscientious skirting had its charm. I would have you again realise that the eternal feminine had entered his life only in the guise: first, of the kissed damsel who married the onion-loving plumber; secondly, of Corinna, by whose “Bo!” he had been vastly terrified until he had taken successfully to saying “Bo!” himself, a process destructive of romantic regard; and thirdly, of Félise, a creature—he always remembered Fortinbras’s prejudiced description—“like one of the wild flowers from which Alpine honey is made,” and compact of notable, gentle and adorable qualities. Naturally, of the three, he preferred Félise. Félise, for her part, like the well brought up damsel of the French bourgeoisie, never allowed her eyelids to register the flutterings of the heart which the mild young Englishman’s society set in action. She scarcely admitted the flutterings to herself. Possibly, if he had been smitten with a fine frenzy of love-making, she would have been shocked. But as he shewed respectful gratification at being allowed to consort with her and gratitude for her little bits of sympathetic understanding, and as she found she could talk with him more spontaneously than with any other young man she had ever met, she sought rather than avoided the many daily opportunities for pleasant intercourse. And there was not the least harm in it; and the bogey of a Lucien (whom she had liked well enough, years ago in a childish way) was still hundreds of miles from Brantôme. In fact they entered upon as pretty a Daphnis and Chloe idyll as ever was enacted by a pair of innocents. Then, one fine day, as I have stated, in swaggered Lucien Viriot, ex-cuirassier, and spoiled the whole thing. His actual hour of swaggering into Martin’s ken was unexpected—by Martin, at any rate. He was playing backgammon with the Professor of the Ecole Normale in the midst of elders discussing high matters of local politics, when all of a sudden an uproar arose among these grave and reverend seniors, clapping of hands and rattling on tables, and Martin, looking up from his throw of the dice, perceived the stout, square-headed, close-cropped Monsieur Viriot, marchand de vins en gros, his eyes sparkling and his cheeks flushed above his white moustache and imperial, advancing from the café door, accompanied by his square-headed, close-cropped, sturdy, smiling, swaggeringly-sheepish, youthful replica. And when they reached the group, the young man bowed punctiliously before grasping each outstretched hand; and every one called him “mon brave” to which he replied “bien aimable”; and Monsieur Viriot presented him formally—“mon his qui vient de terminer son service militaire”—to Monsieur Beuzot, Professor à l’Ecole Normale, a newcomer to Brantôme, and to Monsieur Martin, ancien professeur anglais. Whereupon Monsieur Lucien Viriot declared himself enchanted at meeting the two learned gentlemen, and the two learned gentlemen reciprocated the emotion of enchantment. Then amid scuffling of chairs and eager help of waiters, room was made for Monsieur Viriot and Monsieur Lucien; and the proprietor of the café, Monsieur Cazensac, swarthy, portly and heavy-jowled, a Gascon from Agen, who, if the truth were known took the good, easy folk of Périgord under his protection, came up from behind the high bottle-armamented counter, where Madame Cazensac, fat and fair, prodigally beamed on the chance of a ray reaching the hero of the moment—which happened indeed before Cazensac could get in a word, and brought Lucien to his feet in a splendid spread of homage to the lady—Monsieur Cazensac, I say, came up and grasped Lucien by the hand and welcomed him back to the home of his fathers. He turned to Monsieur Viriot. “Monsieur orders——?” “Du vin de champagne.” Happy land of provincial France where you order champagne as you order brandy and soda and are contented when you get it. There is no worry about brand or vintage or whether the wine is brut or extra-sec. You just tell the good landlord to bring you champagne and he produces the sweet, sticky, frothy, genuine stuff, and if you are a Frenchman, you are perfectly delighted. It is champagne, the wine of feasts, the wine of ceremony, the wine of ladies, the wine of toasts—Je lève mon verre. If the uplifted glass is not beaded with bubbles winking at the brim, what virtue is there in the uplifting? It is all a symbolical matter of sparkle. . . . So, at the Café de l’Univers, Monsieur Cazensac disappeared portentously, and a few moments later re-appeared ever so much more portentously, followed by two waiters, one bringing the foot-high sacred glasses, the other the uncorked bottles labelled for all who wished to know what they were drinking: “Grand Champagne d’Ay,” with the vine-proprietor’s name inconspicuously printed in the right-hand bottom corner. All, including Monsieur Cazensac, clinked foaming glasses with Lucien, and, after they had sipped in his honour, they sipped again to the cries of “Vive l’Armée” and “Vive la France,” whereupon they all settled down comfortably again to the enjoyment of replenished goblets of the effervescing syrup. Martin looked with some envy at the young man who sat flushed with his ovation and twisted his black moustache to the true cuirassier’s angle, yet bore himself modestly among his elders. Willing and gay of heart he had given the years of his youth to the service of his country; when the great struggle should come—and all agreed it was near—he would be one of the first to be summoned to defend her liberty, and willing and gay of heart he would ride to his death. And now, in the meanwhile, he had returned to the little square hole in France that had been ordained for him (little square peg) before he was born, and was to be reserved for him as long as his life should last. And Martin looked again at the chosen child of destiny, and this time with admiration, for he knew him to be a man; a man of the solid French stock that makes France unshakable, of the stock that in peace may be miserly of its pence, but in war is lavish of its blood. “I am not that young fellow’s equal,” thought Martin humbly; and he felt glad that he had not betrayed Bigourdin’s trust with regard to Félise. What kind of a wretch would he have been to set himself up as a rival to Lucien Viriot? Bigourdin had been right in proclaiming the marriage as arranged by the bon Dieu. He loved Félise—who knowing her did not? But he loved her in brotherly fashion and could reconcile it to his heart to bestow her on one so worthy. And all this without taking into account the sentiments of Félise. Her heart, in military phrase, was a ville ouverte. Lucien had but to march in and take it. After a while Lucien, having looked about the café, rose and went from table to table where sat those citizens who, by reason of lowlier social status or personal idiosyncrasies, had not been admitted into the Inner Coterie of Notables, and greeted old acquaintances. Monsieur Viriot then caught Martin’s eye and lifted his glass again. “A votre santé, Monsieur Martin.” Martin bowed. “A la vôtre, monsieur!” “I hope that you and my son will be good friends. It is important that the youth of our two countries, so friendly, so intimately bound, should learn to know and appreciate each other; especially when one of them, like yourself, has the power of translating England into terms of France.” And with the courteous simplicity of a grey, square-headed, close-cropped marchand de vins en gros, he lifted his glass again. “A l’Entente Cordiale.” When Lucien returned to the circle, his father re-introduced him to Martin. “In fact,” he concluded, “here is an Englishman who not only speaks French like you and me, but eats truffles and talks the idiom of the quarrymen and is qualifying himself to be a good Périgordin.” It was charmingly said. The company hummed approval. “C’est bien vrai,” said Bigourdin. Lucien again bowed. He would do himself the honour of presenting himself at monsieur’s hotel. Monsieur was doubtless staying at the Hôtel des Grottes. “Monsieur Bigourdin has taken me as a waiter into his service,” replied Martin. “Ah! Tant mieux!” exclaimed Lucien, as if the announcement were the most ordinary one in the world, and shook hands with him heartily. “Like that, as my father says, one becomes a good Périgordin.” So Martin went home and contentedly to bed. Again a little corner of the earth that he might call his own was offered him in this new land so courteous to, yet so sensitively aloof from the casual Englishman, but on the other hand, so generous and hospitable to the Englishman into whom the spirit of France had entered. Was there here, thought he, the little round hole which he, little round peg, after thirty years of square-holed discomfort, had been pre-ordained to fill? The thought soothed him. He woke up in the night, worried by some confused dream. In his head stuck the Latin tag: Ubi bene ibi patria. He kicked indignantly against the aphorism. It was the infamous philosophy of the Epicurean opportunist. If he had been comfortable in Germany would he regard Germany as his fatherland? A million times no. When you wake up at four o’clock in the morning to a soul-stirring proposition, you think in terms of millions. He was English of the English. His Swiss motherdom was but an accident of begetting. He was of his father’s race. Switzerland did not exist in his being as a national influence. English, narrowly, stupidly, proudly, he was and English he would remain to the end of time. To denaturalise himself and become a Frenchman—still less a mere Périgordin—was abhorrent. But to remain an Englishman, and as an Englishman—an obscure and menial Englishman—to be given the freedom of a province of old France was an honour of which any man breathing the breath of life might be justly proud. I can, thought he, in the intense, lunatic clarity of four o’clock in the morning, show France what England stands for. I have a chance of one in a million. I am an Englishman given a home in the France that I am learning to love and to understand, I am a hyphen between the two nations. Having settled that, he turned over, tucked the bed-clothes well round his shoulders and went soundly to sleep again. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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