The Pomp of the Lavilettes | Page 8

no particular details in his first view of the house. The
picture was satisfying to a tired man--comfort, quiet, the bread of
idleness to eat, and welcome, admiring faces round him. Monsieur
Lavilette stood in the doorway, and behind him, at a carefully disposed
distance, was Madame, rather more emphatically dressed than
necessary. As he shook hands genially with Madame he saw Sophie
and Christine in the doorway of the parlour. His spirits took another
leap. His inexhaustible emotions were out upon cheerful parade at
once.

The Lavilettes immediately became pensioners of his affections. The
first hour of his coming he himself did not know which sister his ample
heart was spending itself on most--Sophie, with her English face, and
slow, docile, well-bred manner, or Christine, dark, petite, impertinent,
gay-hearted, wilful, unsparing of her tongue for others--or for herself.
Though Christine's lips and cheeks glowed, and her eyes had wonderful
warm lights, incredulity was constantly signalled from both eyes and
lips. She was a fine, daring little animal, with as great a talent for
untruth as truth, though, to this point in her life, truth had been more
with her. Her temptations had been few.
CHAPTER III
Mr. Ferrol seemed honestly to like the old farmhouse, with its low
ceilings, thick walls, big beams and wide chimneys, and he showed
himself perfectly at home. He begged to be allowed to sit for an hour in
the kitchen, beside the great fireplace. He enjoyed this part of his first
appearance greatly. It was like nothing he had tasted since he used, as a
boy, to visit the huntsman's home on his father's estate, and gossip and
smoke in that Galway chimney-corner. It was only when he had to face
the too impressive adoration of Madame Lavilette that his comfort got
a twist.
He made easy headway into the affections of his hostess; for, besides
all other predilections, she had an adoring awe of the nobility. It rather
surprised her that Ferrol seemed almost unaware of his title. He was
quite without self-consciousness, although there was that little touch of
irresponsibility in him which betrayed a readiness to sell his dignity for
a small compensation. With a certain genial capacity for universal
blarney, he was at first as impressive with Sophie as he was attentive to
Christine. It was quite natural that presently Madame Lavilette should
see possibilities beyond all her past imaginations. It would surely
advance her ambitions to have him here for Sophie's wedding; but even
as she thought that, she had twinges of disappointment, because she
had promised Farcinelle to have the wedding as simple and bourgeois
as possible.

Farcinelle did not share the social ambitions of the Lavilettes. He liked
his political popularity, and he was only concerned for that. He had that
touch of shrewdness to save him from fatuity where the Lavilettes were
concerned. He was determined to associate with the ceremony all the
primitive customs of the country. He had come of a race of simple
farmers, and he was consistent enough to attempt to live up to the
traditions of his people. He was entirely too good-natured to take
exception to Ferrol's easy-going admiration of Sophie.
Ferrol spoke excellent French, and soon found points of pleasant
contact with Monsieur Lavilette, who, despite the fact that he had
coarsened as the years went on, had still upon him the touch of family
tradition, which may become either offensive pride or defensive
self-respect. With the Cure, Ferrol was not quite so successful. The
ascetic, prudent priest, with that instinctive, long-sighted accuracy
which belongs to the narrow-minded, scented difficulty. He disliked the
English exceedingly; and all Irishmen were English men to him. He
resisted Ferrol's blarney. His thin lips tightened, his narrow forehead
seemed to grow narrower, and his very cassock appeared to contract
austerely on his figure as he talked to the refugee of misfortune.
When the most pardonable of gossips, the Regimental Surgeon, asked
him on his way home what he thought of Ferrol, he shrugged his
shoulders, tightened his lips again, and said:
"A polite, designing heretic."
The Regimental Surgeon, though a Frenchman, had once belonged to a
British battery of artillery stationed at Quebec, and there he had
acquired an admiration for the English, which betrayed itself in his
curious attempts to imitate Anglo-Saxon bluffness and blunt
spontaneity. When the Cure had gone, he flung back his shoulders, with
a laugh, as he had seen the major-general do at the officers' mess at the
citadel, and said in English:
"Heretics are damn' funny. I will go and call. I have also some Irish
whiskey. He will like that; and pipes--pipes, plenty of them!"

The pipe he was smoking at the moment had been given to him by the
major- general, and he polished the silver ferrule,