George Waldeaux hummed a tune gayly as he climbed the winding maze of streets in Vannes, one cloudy afternoon, with Lisa.
"It is impertinent to be modern Americans in this old town," he said. "We might play that we were jongleurs, and that it was still mediaeval times. I am sure the gray walls yonder and the fortress houses in this street have not changed in ages.""Neither have the smells, apparently," said Lisa grimly.
"Wrap this scarf about your throat, George. You coughed last night."George tied up his throat. "Coughed, did I?" he said anxiously. He had had a cold last winter, and his wife with her poultices and fright had convinced him that he was a confirmed invalid. The coming of her baby had given to the woman a motherly feeling toward all of the world, even to her husband.
"Look at these women," he said, going on with his fancy presently. "I am sure that they were here wearing these black gowns and huge red aprons in the twelfth century. What is this?" he said, stopping abruptly, to a boy of six who was digging mud at the foot of an ancient ivy-covered tower.
"C'est le tour du Connetable," the child lisped. "Et v'la, monsieur!" pointing to a filthy pen with a gate of black oak; "v'la le donjon de Clisson!""Who was Clisson?" said Lisa impatiently.
"A live man to Froissart--and to this boy," said George, laughing. "I told you that we had gone back seven centuries. This fog comes in from the Morbihan sea where Arthur and his knights went sailing to find the Holy Greal. They have not come back. And south yonder is the country of the Druids. I will take you to-morrow and show you twenty thousand of their menhirs, and then we will sail away to an island where there is an altar that the serpent worshippers built ages before Christ."Lisa laughed. He was not often in this playful mood.
She panted as she toiled up the dark little street, a step behind him, but he did not think of giving her his arm. He had grown accustomed to regard himself as the invalid now, and the one who needed care.
"I am going for letters," he called back, diving into a dingy alley. The baby and its bonne were near Lisa.
The child never was out of her sight for, a moment. She waited, standing a little apart from Colette to watch whether the passers-by would notice the baby. When one or two of the gloomy and stolid women who hurried past in their wooden sabots clicked their fingers to it, she could not help smiling gayly and bidding them good-day.
The fog was stifling. As she waited she gave a tired gasp. Colette ran to her. "Madame is going to be ill!""No, no! Don't frighten monsieur."
George came out of the gate at the moment.
"Going to faint again, Lisa?" he said, with an annoyed glance around the street. "Your attacks do choose the most malapropos times----""Oh, dear no, George! I am quite well quite." She walked beside him with an airy step, laughing gayly now and then, but George's frown deepened.
"I don't understand these seizures at all," he said.
"You seem to be in sound physical condition.""Oh, all women have queer turns, George."
"Did you consult D'Abri, as I told you to do, in Paris?""Yes, yes! Now let us talk no more about it. I have had these--symptoms since I was a child.""You never told me of them before we were married," he muttered.
Lisa scowled darkly at him, but she glanced at the baby and her mouth closed. Little Jacques should never hear her rage nor swear.
From an overhanging gable at the street corner looked down a roughly hewn stone Madonna. The arms of the Holy Child were outstretched to bless. Lisa paused before it, crossing herself. A strange joy filled her heart.
"I too am a mother! I too!" she said. She hurried after George and clung to his arm as they went home.
"Was there any letter?" she asked.
"Only one from Munich--Miss Vance. I haven't opened it.""I thought your mother would write. She must have heard about the boy!"George's face grew dark. "No, she'll not write. Nor come.""You wish for her every day, George?" She looked at him wistfully.
"Yes, I do. She and I were comrades to a queer degree.
I long for something hearty and homelike again. See here, Lisa. I'm going home before my boy begins to talk.
I mean he shall grow up under wholesome American influences--not foreign.""Not foreign," she repeated gravely. She was silent a while. "I have thought much of it all lately," she said at last. "It will be wholesome for Jacques on your farm.
Horses--dogs---- Your mother will love him. She can't help it. She--I acted like a beast to that woman, George. I'll say that. She hit me hard. But she has good traits. She is not unlike my own mother."George said nothing. God forbid that he should tell her, even by a look, that she and her mother were of a caste different from his own.
But he was bored to the soul by the difference; he was tired of her ignorances, which she showed every minute, of her ghastly, unclean knowledges--which she never showed.
