"Shake hands with him, Brigit," suggested Victor pulling his moustache to suppress a smile. Brigit held out her hand.
"I am very glad to meet you," she said in French.
The old man stared. Then he smiled, showing one snow-white tooth. "_Tu parles_," he murmured. Then he went back to his game.
The old woman, more polite, had risen, and was waiting her turn. She was very tall and had a heavy moustache.
"They told me you were beautiful," she began courteously, whereupon the old man interrupted, repeating her words but, by a change in emphasis, casting derisive doubts on whoever "they" might be. "They _told_ me you were _beautiful_."
Brigit burst out laughing, and leaning forward smiled at the speaker.
"Well--am I not beautiful?" she asked with an infectious chuckle of sincere amus.e.m.e.nt.
But old Joyselle was a man of character, apparently, and not to be beguiled.
"_Belle? Non, non. Pas ca. Mais_--Victor, _pet.i.t_, surely you can"t be going to marry a real lady?"
Joyselle flushed, and she knew his flush had to do only with his father"s lapse of memory, not his reference to her ladyhood.
"Not I, _mon pere_. I married Felicite, you know. It is our boy who is going to marry this--ugly lady."
His father shook his head. "Not ugly, _mon fils_." he declared solemnly, "not ugly. Only _plain_."
This time Brigit did not laugh. Something in the old man"s half-vacant face touched her. He was Victor"s father; he had held, as a little baby, the man she loved; he had worked for him and helped to make him what he was. Laying her hand on his, she smiled down at him.
"You are quite right," she said gently, "only plain. Will you show me how to play dominoes?"
"He can"t," retorted Madame Joyselle, eagerly, "he has forgotten, and, besides, he cheats."
Joyselle walked to the window, his shoulders shaking, and before the old man could retort, Theo came into the room carrying a lacquered tin tray with a jug of cider and some gla.s.ses on it.
"Ah, you have come? _Grand-pere, grand-mere_, what do you think of my _fiancee_?"
But Brigit drew him away and sat down on the ingeniously uncomfortable sofa with him.
"Fighting again, are they? Poor old dears, it really is quite dreadful.
You see, grandfather used to be a fearful tyrant, though he is so little, and grandmother was deathly afraid of him until his health began to fail. So now she is getting even with him. They adore each other, however. Isn"t the house quaint? Have you seen the garden?"
She shook her head. "No, show it to me."
Leaving the room they crossed to the oilclothed pa.s.sage and went into the dining-room, a small apartment enlivened by an oleograph of Leo XIII., and some gay chromos.
The windows opened to the ground, and opening one the young people went out into the moonlight. Brigit was feeling very happy, and therefore very kind. When Theo put his arm round her and drew her to him she did not protest.
"Brigitte," he whispered, "I do so love you."
"Dear Theo----" Suddenly she remembered that other moonlight night, nearly a year before, when she had accepted him. She recalled the look of the beautiful old house, the sound of Tommy at the pianola, the splashing of the fountain, the sun-dial at which, in his boyish grief, he had knelt.
And she had accepted his love, not because she loved him but because she hated her home and because, besides being sufficiently rich to satisfy her needs, he was nice and straight and kind. She had taken everything he had, and what had she given him? Nothing.
In the moonlight she saw as if with new eyes that he had changed. The young contours of his cheek were less round, his eyes had a deeper expression. He had suffered, and he had not complained.
"Theo," she said suddenly, smitten with pity, "I--have been horrid to you. I--I am so frightfully selfish. Will you forgive me?"
His eyes glistened as he looked at her.
"Forgive you? You angel!"
"No, no. I _have_ been horrid. But--I will be nicer. And--you are so good to me."
He was silent for a moment, then he said slowly:
"Brigitte--you are never horrid. But--if you do not--care for me at all--will you tell me now?"
She was abashed and then shivered. Here was the chance she had longed for. He would, she knew, give her up without a word if she asked him to; and she had also learned to know that whatever Joyselle might have done in like case a few months before, he would not refuse to see her now if she told him that she and Theo had agreed to separate.
Here was freedom to go her own way, unrebuked by her own conscience or the conscience of the man she loved.
Theo had turned away and stood with folded arms, awaiting her answer.
And she let her chance go by, for she could not bear to say the words that should hurt him, and in the quiet night under the shadow of the old house, it seemed to her that, after all, her happiness lay in this boy"s hands. Not the wild rapture she had once or twice felt with Joyselle, but the kind of happiness that builds homes, and--she wanted a home.
Inexplicably tangled with her feelings for Theo, too, was that anything binding her to him bound her to his father. They were more than father and son, these two, they belonged together.
"I--do care for you," she said quietly. "I am not in love with you, but I will marry you."
As he turned and held out his arms to her, Joyselle appeared at the end of the lawn. Brigit did not see him, and going slowly to her lover allowed him to embrace her.
"Ma Brigitte, _mon ange_--I--how can I thank you. Ah, what I have felt these last five months! I have thought--oh, many things, of late."
His voice shook and was good to hear in its sincere emotion. For the moment in her new-born wish to be good to him she felt that she had done the wise thing, and was happy. He was good, and she would marry him and--life would go on for ever, as it had been the last few weeks.
Joyselle, standing quite still in the shadow, watched them for a moment.
Then he turned and went back into the house.
CHAPTER FIVE
The morning of the eighth of September dawned that year very gloriously, and Brigit Mead saw it dawn. Theo had begged her the evening before to go with him to the castle to see the sunrise, and pleased by the originality of the idea, she had accepted.
So while the sweet summer night still held sway over the pleasant Norman land, the two climbed the steep street leading to the gates under the ivy-grown bastions.
"The _concierge_ always goes with visitors," the young man explained as they pa.s.sed the little house and began mounting. "But father was at school with him, so I got a permit to go up alone."
"Is your father all right to-day, I wonder? Or will he be?" returned Brigit thoughtfully. "I never knew him to have a headache before."