Four Meetings | Page 7

to Caroline Spencer. "I believe it is the best
inn in the world; and in case I should still have a moment to call upon
you here, where are you lodged?"
"Oh, it's such a pretty name," said Miss Spencer gleefully. "À la Belle
Normande."
As I left them her cousin gave me a great flourish with his picturesque
hat.

III.
My sister, as it proved, was not sufficiently restored to leave Havre by
the afternoon train; so that, as the autumn dusk began to fall, I found
myself at liberty to call at the sign of the Fair Norman. I must confess
that I had spent much of the interval in wondering what the
disagreeable thing was that my charming friend's disagreeable cousin
had been telling her. The "Belle Normande" was a modest inn in a
shady bystreet, where it gave me satisfaction to think Miss Spencer
must have encountered local color in abundance. There was a crooked
little court, where much of the hospitality of the house was carried on;
there was a staircase climbing to bedrooms on the outer side of the wall;
there was a small trickling fountain with a stucco statuette in the midst
of it; there was a little boy in a white cap and apron cleaning copper
vessels at a conspicuous kitchen door; there was a chattering landlady,
neatly laced, arranging apricots and grapes into an artistic pyramid
upon a pink plate. I looked about, and on a green bench outside of an
open door labelled Salle à Manger, I perceived Caroline Spencer. No
sooner had I looked at her than I saw that something had happened
since the morning. She was leaning back on her bench, her hands were

clasped in her lap, and her eyes were fixed upon the landlady, at the
other side of the court, manipulating her apricots.
But I saw she was not thinking of apricots. She was staring absently,
thoughtfully; as I came near her I perceived that she had been crying. I
sat down on the bench beside her before she saw me; then, when she
had done so, she simply turned round, without surprise, and rested her
sad eyes upon me. Something very bad indeed had happened; she was
completely changed.
I immediately charged her with it. "Your cousin has been giving you
bad news; you are in great distress."
For a moment she said nothing, and I supposed that she was afraid to
speak, lest her tears should come back. But presently I perceived that in
the short time that had elapsed since my leaving her in the morning she
had shed them all, and that she was now softly stoical, intensely
composed.
"My poor cousin is in distress," she said at last. "His news was bad."
Then, after a brief hesitation, "He was in terrible want of money."
"In want of yours, you mean?"
"Of any that he could get--honestly. Mine was the only money."
"And he has taken yours?"
She hesitated again a moment, but her glance, meanwhile, was pleading.
"I gave him what I had."
I have always remembered the accent of those words as the most
angelic bit of human utterance I had ever listened to; but then, almost
with a sense of personal outrage, I jumped up. "Good heavens!" I said,
"do you call that getting, it honestly?"
I had gone too far; she blushed deeply. "We will not speak of it," she
said.

"We must speak of it," I answered, sitting down again. "I am your
friend; it seems to me you need one. What is the matter with your
cousin?"
"He is in debt."
"No doubt! But what is the special fitness of your paying his debts?"
"He has told me all his story; I am very sorry for him."
"So am I! But I hope he will give you back your money."
"Certainly he will; as soon as he can."
"When will that be?"
"When he has finished his great picture."
"My dear young lady, confound his great picture! Where is this
desperate cousin?"
She certainly hesitated now. Then,--"At his dinner," she answered.
I turned about and looked through the open door into the salle à
manger. There, alone at the end of a long table, I perceived the object
of Miss Spencer's compassion, the bright young art-student. He was
dining too attentively to notice me at first; but in the act of setting down
a well-emptied wineglass he caught sight of my observant attitude. He
paused in his repast, and, with his head on one side and his meagre
jaws slowly moving, fixedly returned my gaze. Then the landlady came
lightly brushing by with her pyramid of apricots.
"And that nice little plate of fruit is for him?" I exclaimed.
Miss Spencer glanced at it tenderly.