Madcap Part 33

"You'll not be rid of me so easily, Monsieur. I'm not going, do you hear?"

He shrugged and smiled.

"There!" she smiled. "I knew you wouldn't refuse me. You're an angel, Philidor, and I shall reward you."

She touched Pre Gu?gou's blossom to her lips, then put it deftly into the lapel of his coat.

"It is the Order of the Golden Rose, _mon ami_, and its motto is _Sincere et Constanter_. You will remember that motto, Philidor, and however mad, however inconsistent or incomprehensible I may be, know that I am bound to you, apprenticed to learn the trade of living and that not until you send me away will I ever leave you."

He smiled and lifted the blossom to his lips.

"Friendship?" he asked.

"Yes, that always--whatever else--"

She stopped suddenly as his eyes eagerly alight sought her face, and then turning quickly she fled to the kitchen of Mre Gu?gou and upstairs away from him.

The Gu?gou family made good its promise, and they supped upon the fat of Vall?cy, Mre Gu?gou waiting upon them, her good man bringing from the cellar a cob-webbed bottle which dated from a vintage which was still spoken of in the valley with reverence. A brave wine it was, such as one remembers in after days, and a brave night for Philidor whose heart was singing.

"Ah! _la jeunesse_!" sighed Madame Gu?gou, setting down her gla.s.s when the healths were drunk. "I, too, Mademoiselle, was once young."

Yvonne patted her cheek gently.

"Age is only in the heart, Madame," she said.

"_Non, ma belle_," cackled Gu?gou from his corner. "It's in the joints."

"_Tais-toi_, Jules," scolded his wife. "What should lovers care about thy joints."

"My joints are my joints," he creaked stubbornly. "When one has ninety years--"

"Ninety!" cried Yvonne. "Monsieur carries his years lightly. I should not have said that he had over sixty."

"Say no more, Mademoiselle," put in Mre Gu?gou. "You will render him conceited."

Indeed it seemed that the old man had already forgotten his joints, for he poured out another gla.s.s of wine and was pledging Yvonne with toothless gayety.

"_Vos beaux yeux_, Mademoiselle," he creaked gallantly, "and to your good fortune, Monsieur Philidor."

"To your roses, Monsieur Gu?gou," replied Philidor. "In the whole of the _Eure et Oise_ there are not such roses. To your omelette, Madame. In the country there is not such another!"

With these compliments and in others like them the minutes pa.s.sed quickly. Yvonne's eyes avoided Philidor's, though he frequently sought them. Nor was he dismayed when, in response to Madame Gu?gou's interest query as to when they would marry, Yvonne shrugged her shoulders indifferently and sighed.

"Oh, I do not know, Madame. Often I think--never. One marries and that is the end of romance. One lover--pouf! When one may have many."

She tossed her chin in the direction of Philidor, who looked at her over his chicken bone.

"If one has but one lover," she went on, "he must have all the virtues of the many and none of the faults. He must sing when we are gay, weep when we are sad, and make love to us while doing either. _Enfin_, he must be what no man is. _Voyez-vous_?" and she pointed the finger of scorn at Philidor. "He eats just as you or I."

Madame Gu?gou laughed.

"What you require is no man at all. Mademoiselle Yvonne, but a saint."

"Perhaps," she finished, yawning. "But, _bien entendu_, I'm in no hurry."

When the dinner was finished, Yvonne helped Mre Gu?gou with the dishes, and when that was done went straightway to her room, with no other word for Philidor than a "_Bon soir_," and a nod of the head.

Philidor sat for a long while in the arbor smoking a pipe. He had much to think about. One by one the lights went out, and the village grew quiet. The moon rose over the forest on the hilltop beyond the stream, and he stretched his limbs and smiled at it in drowsy content. He was so wrapped in his reflections that he hardly heard a voice which came to him over the yellow roses.

"_Bonne nuit_, Philidor."

"Hermia!"

"You're to go to bed--at once."

"I couldn't. Imagine a saint going to bed."

"You're _not_ a saint. You're a prowler."

"Let me prowl. I'm happy."

"Why should you be?"

"I love you."

The shutter above him closed abruptly. He waited in the shadow of the wall looking upward. There was no sound.

CHAPTER XVIII

A PHILOSOPHER IN A QUANDARY

Clarissa carried a double burden the next day, but she breasted the keen morning air so briskly that whatever her own thoughts upon the subject she gave no sign of her increasing responsibilities. Yet Cupid sat perched upon the pack which Philidor had been at such pains to fasten. Yvonne alone of the three was out of humor and she moved along silently, suppressing the joyous mood of her companion by answers in monosyllables and a forbidding expression which defied conciliation.

As nothing seemed to please her, Philidor, too, relapsed into silence and swinging his stick, walked on ahead, whistling gaily. But that only provoked her mood the more, and when she overtook him she made him stop.

His silence seemed even more exasperating.

"Oh, if you have nothing to say to me," she said petulantly at last, "I'd much rather you whistled."

He glanced at her before replying.

"You motto of the Golden Rose needs amending," he said.

"What would you add?"

"Patience," he laughed.

"Clarissa is patient," she sniffed. "The _bon Dieu_ preserve me from the patient man."