The garden in the Rue Victor Hugo was full of long narrow tables covered with snowy cloths and as white china. In the pitiless noonday sun the display dazzled the eyes. In the middle of every table was a high vase of yellow flowers, and at intervals down each stood china bowls heaped with apples and grapes.
A carafe of cider stood at every plate, for Normans are thirsty and their heads strong.
Brigit stood in an upper window looking down as the crowd a.s.sorted itself and settled down on the benches by the tables. In a few moments Theo would fetch her and conduct her to the arbour where twelve people were to be seated; at present he was bustling about making himself agreeable to everybody, laughing with those few children who, being over twelve, were present, helping the old or unwieldly to dispose of themselves comfortably, darting to and fro, looking strangely out of place among the good people with whom he felt so thoroughly at home.
In the arbour, Brigit knew, were already a.s.sembled the bridal couple, Victor and Felicite, Antoine and Guillaume, and the wife of Guillaume, Madame Chalumeau, the ancient cure and M. Thibaut, the Mayor. She and Theo were to complete the dozen. For some reason the girl dreaded the feast. She had been unable to speak to Victor as yet, and since their eyes had met in the church she had been unable to shake off a haunting feeling of fear that had come to her at that moment. Something was impending.
And the sultry heat seemed to make matters worse. Down in the garden the guests were now all seated, and sc.r.a.ps of their conversation reached her as she leaned in the window.
"A magnificent dinner, I am told," M. Perret, the apothecary, was saying in his high voice like that of a gra.s.s-hopper chirping in the heat.
"Thildette Chalumeau told me: Pot au feu, veal cooked in a ca.s.serole in its own juice, rabbits stewed in wine, gigot roti, patisserie--and many other things. Yvonne Gaude is cooking it, but Thildette prepared most of the things with her own hands----"
"--And what is a poor man to think when a cow dies like that, from no reason whatever," murmured one of the humblest of the country cousins.
"M. le cure can say what he likes about there being no witches!"
"Have you seen the _future_ of _le pet.i.t de_ Victor? They call her beautiful, I am told, in England, but----"
"Victor is growing old, Maitre Leboeuf. He looked quite old in church----"
"No, _ma chere_, positively only eighteen fifty, and as good as new! I always liked plush, too----"
Brigit listened absently. What could be the matter with Victor? And why had he not come to her for only one minute before the long ordeal of the dinner began?
Then the door opened and Theo, beaming with a sense of duty artistically fulfilled, came in. "They are all as happy as possible," he laughed; "the pot au feu is a thing of the past, and they are beginning on the veal. Come, my Brigit, you must be hungry."
Without answering, she accompanied him downstairs, and they threaded their way to the arbour.
"You are to sit here, Brigit, between grandfather and me," explained Theo, stopping opposite his father, who was listening to something Madame Guillaume was telling him.
Grandfather Joyselle, whose impish spirit had subsided, was busy with some minced veal, and shot a rather grudging look at his new neighbour.
"Don"t touch my gla.s.s, will you?" he said, "It"s got flies in it, and I love to see "em drown."
Theo laughed. "Some wine, _grand-mere_?"
The old woman shook her head. "No, thank you," she answered civilly. "I will teach you dominoes, mademoiselle."
Brigit thanked her and began her dinner.
"Listen to Jacques tell about how he converted a retrograde priest back to holiness by his great eloquence," laughed Antoine Joyselle, who was an old and soured edition of his famous brother. "_Gascon!_"
Madame Chalumeau, whose eyes were fixed on M. Bouillard as he sat far down one of the tables, dropped her knife to the ground, and disappearing under the table in search of it, gave her head a terrible thump, and emerged scarlet and agonised.
"Someone ought to propose a toast!" suggested Theo, "I suppose M.
Thibaut, father?"
Victor nodded absently. "Yes, or M. le cure."
"How do you feel to-day--Master?" asked Brigit, suddenly, forcing him to look at her.
His eyes as her gaze met his were so profoundly tragic that she shuddered, and he did not answer.
"I think I might eat more if I had my teeth," observed the bridegroom, "and I hear there is to be rabbit."
"Hush, father! you _know_ you can"t eat with your teeth. You are to have _minced_ rabbit, with plenty of gravy." Madame Chalumeau, whose bright blue dress was very tight and warm, wiped her face on her handkerchief.
Brigit looked round in despair. It was horrible; the heat, the smell of food, the clatter of knives and forks.
For a long time she heard nothing, and then found that M. Thibaut the Mayor was trying to persuade Victor to play. "It would be very pleasant," urged the good man, with evident pride in his own tact, "and the young people might dance."
Joyselle burst out laughing. "Yes, I will play--for the young people to dance. That is what fiddlers are for," he answered.
M. Thibaut bowed. "It will be very pleasant," he repeated.
Felicite rose quietly and went to the kitchen for a moment, coming back with a plate of minced rabbit for her father-in-law. "_Voila_, papa,"
she said gently, and the old man stopped poking at the flies in his cider with his fork and began to eat.
Suddenly, in his evident agony, Joyselle again looked at Brigit, and all her misery of suspense and curiosity flew to her eyes. "What is it?"
they asked him. "Why are you tortured, and why are you torturing me who love you?"
He looked long at her, and then seeing her sympathetic suffering and her pa.s.sion of wounded love, his face cleared, and for the first time that day he looked like himself.
He began talking, and in a few moments was making everyone at the table roar with laughter.
Brigit, though deeply relieved, was more puzzled than ever. "I want to talk to you after dinner," she said, leaning towards him, and he bowed.
"I, too, have things to say to you, my dear," he answered, and they were both wildly happy.
Then the Mayor rose, and in short and stereotyped phrase drank to the health of the bride and groom.
The bridegroom had fallen asleep and was not wakened, but the bride bowed with some dignity.
"M. le cure--will you say a few words?" asked Victor courteously.
The old priest rose in obedience to the summons, and murmured a kind of blessing on the two he had joined together in his own youth. He remembered them both very well as they had been in that day; far better than he could in the days of their middle age. Now their three lives were nearly over: "We are all very old," he faltered, fumbling at his snuff-box, "very old----"
Someone outside thought he had finished and began to clap. He sat down abashed, and took snuff to hide his confusion. Yes, they were all very old.
The meal ended at length with coffee, calvados, a local liqueur, and cheese.
"You are tired, my daughter?" asked Felicite, as Brigit frowned with impatience.
"Yes, _pet.i.te mere_."
Felicite, who for the last half hour had been fanning the sleeping bridegroom to keep off the flies, sighed.
"It is very warm. Why not go? They will clear the table and dance on the gra.s.s, I think."
Everyone left the arbour except her and the old man, and Brigit, feeling that Joyselle was close on her heels, went into the house and into the sitting-room.