# The House of the Open Heart

Extracted from Everybody's magazine, 1913 April, pp. 502–511. Accompanying illustrations by j. H. Gardner Soper may be omitted.
The House of the Open Heart
By ARTHUR TRAIN
AUTHOR OF THE CONFESSIONS OF ARTEMIS QUIBBLE, C. Q.: IN THE WIRELESS HOUSE
WE'LL never be able to make Dijon,” declared Gibson grimly, “unless we keep going until midnight. We've already come three hundred and seventy kilometers since nine this morning. Pierre is on the edge of a nervous breakdown and I've got a rotten headache. However, don't mind us! We'll probably reach a palace hotel some time before daybreak!”
And he glared ironically through the rain-spattered window of the limousine at the slumped back of the French chauffeur.
The car was thundering along the high river-road of the Valley of the Doubs through the rapidly dropping twilight, in a heavy rain which made driving difficult and dangerous; and, as Gibson had said, the man was on the brink of hysteria, for he had been at the wheel for five consecutive days of over seven hours each, and during most of that time had averaged sixty kilometers an hour. He was the victim of Fanny Gibson's speed mania, notorious among her social friends. Cars succumbed to it, broke down, smashed up, tires blew out in constant succession, chauffeurs came and chauffeurs went, but she went on forever—at seventy kilometers an hour.
Yearly she left New York in early March, met her car at Cherbourg, and after a week of hectic clothes-buying in Paris, started out on a two-months' endurance contest with her husband over Europe. From Paris she flashed to Aix-les-Bains, Nice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. Northward she whirled around the Italian lakes, through budding Lombardy to Venice, thence over such passes of the rainbow-hued Dolomites as were free of snow, and after a day at Vienna or Budapest scorched back via Salzburg through the Pusterthal, climbed the Arlberg, traversed the Black Forest and the Rhine, and usually made Paris just in time for a final fitting of her new ball dresses and to catch a steamer in time for the Newport season.
They had left Baden-Baden that morning, and Thérèse, Fanny's maid, and Griffin, her husband's valet, had been sent on to Dijon with the baggage by rail, to await the motor's arrival and to engage the best rooms in the hotel with a salon privé for the use of their master and mistress. Hence to stop before reaching Dijon was an obvious impossibility to Fanny Gibson, who suffered agony at the mere thought of asking her husband to hook up her dress,
“But Dijon is only a hundred kilometers farther,” she protested irritably. “And you know there isn't any other place fit for a dog to stay, this side of Paris. What makes you so nervous? we've often done four hundred kilometers in one day. There's at least an hour of light, yet.”
“I was thinking of the man who's steering us,” returned her husband. “Do you realize that he's driven two thousand kilometers in the last five days?”
“Well, isn't that what he's paid for?” she snapped, for she was herself so travel-weary that only pride kept her from tears. She threw herself back among the gray satin cushions of the rear seat and closed her eyes, wondering if motoring was really the fun she had always found it to be.
Gibson shrugged his trim shoulders and lit a slender cigarette which he took out of a gold case from his waistcoat pocket. “Go ahead!” he muttered grimly. “It would serve us right if we got ditched. I don't believe in motoring in this reckless way. It spoils all the enjoyment of it.”
“It has quite obviously spoiled your temper and your manners!” retorted Fanny.
Gibson did not reply. He knew that to do so would be quite useless, and that any word of his would inevitably prove a penultimate to her final fling. Yet the two loved each other, and it was only during these hysteric flights that their good-fellowship was ever marred. It was true that she had changed a good deal since she had married him and had become used to spending so much money. Her extravagance was really phenomenal. Gibson called the shopping excursions in which her friends participated “spending matches.” The motor itself was a sort of triumphal car for her luxurious progress through existence.
Every year she had a new one of the latest model, with all the latest fancy appliances, and there was a standing order at Vevier's for a new limousine body each spring, to be painted the “Gibson gray” and specially upholstered with trimmings of the same color. A screen made of wire so fine as to be almost invisible covered the plate-glass window behind the driver's seat and kept out the dust when the window was lowered. A gold and jeweled clock, which ticked at any angle, hung below, and a duplex speedometer beside it showed the length of the journey in both kilometers and miles, and also the speed at which they were traveling at the moment. When the needle registered less than 70, Fanny was accustomed to press an electric button at her side which moved an indicator on the dashboard to “Go Faster.”
There were, besides, a barometer, a “grade index,” four gold-topped scent-bottles, a gold cigarette-box, a book-rack with a gold-mounted flap, and a cut-glass vase containing artificial flowers. Under the seat were stowed their bags and wraps, and under their feet were placed two soft, thick cushions of the “Gibson gray.”
Gibson asserted with a show of sincerity that he anxiously awaited the day when Fanny would propose constructing an immense car containing a dining-room, kitchen, bed-chamber, and bath, which should follow in their wake and come shooting in with a hot dinner cooked by a French chef at the psychological moment each evening.
The smoke of Gibson's cigarette rose in slow, darting eddies among the gold ornaments, the lace filigree, the scent-bottles, and the sham flowers inside the car, while the rain drummed steadily upon the roof and drove in torrents across the windows. The motor made a loud roar as it tore through the puddles which covered the weltering road-bed. Only by straining the sight could one distinguish where scenery left off and sky began. Night had come.
Gibson settled himself resignedly in his corner. He was exhausted, done up, and the constant motoring had made him nervous, irascible, and depressed. Moreover, he was very hungry. He wondered what the two kids were doing, the two little boys whom Fanny always shipped off to the lonely Long Island country house with a governess, maid, and trained nurse as soon as the social season was over and it was time to start on their spring junket.
It was just the hour when it was his habit to come home from the club and go up to the nursery where the children were having supper. There were great times afterward, times which were none the less uproarious because ruinous to the infantile digestion. He could imagine them at that moment wandering sedately off to bed in Westbury under the hygienically correct, prim guidance of Miss McFadden.
He wanted those boys—he wanted to hug them and eat them up! Why were they two scorching around Europe when two such jolly little chaps were pining for them at home!
“Why do you always go away?” the boys had asked in pathetic unison upon the parental departure two months before.
“So you'll like us all the better when we come back!” Fanny had answered conclusively; but even her heart had sunk a little as she uttered the lie. And now Gibson in the darkness of the car vowed that if he got safely home he would never leave them again; while his wife with clasped hands sat tensely, hysterically waiting for the hundred kilometers to be covered that separated them from Thérèse, a palace hotel, a warm bath, dinner a la carte, and a salon privé.
Thus they waited for what seemed an eternity—and may have been fifty minutes. Pierre had switched on the electric search-lights and with their aid bored into the storm with undiminished speed. Gibson touched an electric button and flooded the car with light from a shaded globe above. The little clock chimed seven.
“Oh, dear,” exclaimed Fanny, “I thought it must be half-past eight at least.”
“My stomach feels like half-past eleven,” answered Gibson.
At this moment the motor slowed down and began to bump over some cobblestones between two rows of houses. The wheels struck an unexpected rut, and both were tossed high in their seats.
“I do wish Pierre would be a little careful!” burst out Fanny. “He never——”
But her comments were interrupted by two loud reports, and the car, after limping a short distance, came to a standstill. Pierre climbed stiffly down from his seat and went to the rear of the motor. Then he opened the door.
“Pardon, m'sieu et 'dame,” he said with chattering teeth. “Both rear tires have blown out.”
“How long will it take to put on new ones?” sharply demanded Fanny.
Pierre swayed as he stood clinging to the door. He was as white as paper. “An hour, madame. I have only one extra rim mounted.”
“An hour!” she returned blankly. “We've still eighty kilometers to go! Well, we can't stop here, that's sure. Don't lose any time. Get right to work.”
Pierre put his hand to his head. “Madame—” he began faintly.
“Look here, Fanny!” exclaimed Gibson. “Don't you see the man's done up? We've got to stay right here for to-night—no matter what the accommodations are.”
He got out of the car and gazed about him. The rain had nearly ceased. They were in the midst of a straggling village through which a narrow, crooked street crawled upward toward a little church and then disappeared. Somewhere near by he could hear the rush of a river. The small stone houses stood in gloomy, irregular monotony, their tiny, shutterless windows staring inhospitably into the cobbled roadway. No living thing was to be seen anywhere about. Gibson whistled to himself.
“We're going to catch it this time!” he remarked gloomily. “Where on earth are we?”—turning to Pierre.
“This is St. Aignan-sur-Doubs,” answered the chauffeur.
Gibson took his pocket search-light from its place inside the limousine and played it on the adjacent walls and doorways.
“Must we stay here?” reiterated Fanny faintly from within the car. “It looks perfectly disgusting!”
Just then the flash caught on a weather-beaten sign hanging above a rambling, barn-like building seventy odd feet away:
“Here we are!” chuckled Gibson—“By the grace of God!”
II
Monsieur Didon had entered the kitchen by the back door and was slowly removing his waterproof jacket whale Madame Didon bustled around, lit the candle, poked the fire, and pulled up the armchair. He had thrown his fishing-rod and basket upon the floor beside him. and his wrinkled old face gleamed rosily through a multitude of raindrops.
“Well, mon ami, and what luck had you?” inquired his wife, a white-haired woman who moved with the vigor of a young girl, in spite of her sixty-five years.
“You may well ask,” returned Monsieur Didon. “I have caught him at last—le vieux!”
“What!” cried madame excitedly. “The big one! It is impossible!”
“Mais, oui!” he laughed. “See for yourself!” And he raised the cover of the basket and lifted out by the gills a three-pound mountain trout. “I fished all day and caught nothing until the rain, and then at the foot of the falls Monsieur Truite obligingly swallowed my fly and here we both are.”
At that moment two muffled reports echoed through the house.
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Madame Didon. “Can it be the Germans?”
“Not yet,” answered her husband more conservatively. “It must be an automobile.”
“Perhaps they are coming to the hotel,” she cried. “I will go and see. Put a candle in the front window's, Baptiste!”
She hurriedly removed her apron and started through the long, narrow passage that led to the entrance of the inn—damp and chilly now on account of the rain. She opened the front door and looked out. Two glaring lights like torches made the street as light as day, and a tall gentleman was helping a beautiful young lady out of a magnificent motor-car. They must be a bride and groom, she thought. Oh, were they coming to the hotel? Her heart beat more quickly. No one had come to the hotel for nearly three months, except the notary and the priest, who played chess in the kitchen and paid nothing at all.
“Bon soir, m'sieu et madame!” she called out encouragingly. “Do you wish anything?”
“Bon soir, madame,” answered the tall gentleman in excellent French. “Can you accommodate us for the night?”
“Mais, oui, m'sieu!” retorted Madame Didon gaily. “Mais, oui, oui! Come right in and dry yourselves. Dinner shall be ready for you in half an hour.”
Fanny Gibson walked hesitatingly toward the dank portal of the “Hotel of the Grace of God.” Visions of smelly little bedrooms, horrible mattresses, dirty car pets, cold water in ponderous jugs, and greasy food, rose before her, and her heart yearned for Thérèse and the comforts to which she was used.
“Have you—a room—with a bath?” she inquired in her best Fifty-fourth Street French.
“Ah, oui, madame—one can take a bath in the hotel,” Madame Didon eagerly answered her. “There is no end of hot water and a nice round tin tub which my husband bought two years ago at Besançon.”
“What did I tell you!” half sobbed Fanny to her husband. “There is nothing here—nothing!”
But Gibson had led her on through the door and into the court of the hotel, the darkness of which was only mitigated by a candle stuck in a tin reflector.
“We will see the room,” said he courteously to their hostess.
Madame Didon, carrying an immense bunch of keys, led the way up a broad flight of stairs, down a long hall, and with an effort unlocked a door at the end of it.
“Voilà” she exclaimed, rushing across the room, and throwing open the windows.
Fanny Gibson gazed blankly about her.
The apartment in which they stood was an immense chamber at least sixty feet long and thirty broad, with three small windows draped with heavy curtains tied back with black ribbons. On each side of the door stood an undersized single bed with a mountainous mattress and a pillow like a gigantic white sausage. A lonely wash-stand, a rickety sofa, and a wabbly table with a couple of insecure-looking chairs were all the furniture visible. On the walls hung a worsted motto or two, and several ancient lithographs entitled “La Belle Jardinière,” “Grandmaman's Fête,” and “Le Petit Soldat.” Madame Didon's solitary candle made but a dim illumination in this apparently comfortless waste.
Fanny turned eyes welling with tears to her husband, after their hostess had departed, leaving them alone together. “But I can't stay here, in this hole!” she wailed, and, throwing herself on the sofa, gave way to an utter demoralization of homesickness and fatigue. Gibson, made wise by experience, followed Madame Didon down-stairs.
Five minutes later a knock on the door made her hastily wipe her eyes, and Madame Didon entered, staggering under the weight of the Gibson baggage, but smiling with redoubled cordiality.
“Ah, pauvre m'sieu le chauffeur!” she remarked sympathetically. “He can hardly stand. And how tired madame must be!”
Fanny smiled faintly, unable in spite of herself not to respond. “Yes,” she answered, “we are all a little tired.”
Madame Didon vanished again, only to appear in a couple of minutes bearing a huge tin of boiling hot water in one hand and a lamp in the other. She substituted the lamp for the candle, placed the latter on the mantelpiece, drew the curtains, and then turned to Fanny's valise.
“Shall I unpack madame's bag?” she asked. “Madame is so tired, perhaps it would be better for her simply to lie on the sofa.”
“Oh, thank you,” answered Fanny with a sense of relief, and watched her with languid curiosity. How deft she was in spite of her years, how capable, how—nice!
“In fifteen minutes,” said Madame Didon. “dinner will be ready. Does madame wish anything else?”
Fanny shook her head. Already she felt warmer, and the old sofa was by no means uncomfortable. There were her silver-mounted toilet articles all laid out, just as Thérèse would have arranged them, on the table; there were her slippers and embroidered dressing-gown. She began to look about her. The floor, only partly covered by a small rug of twisted rags, was scrupulously clean. She arose and felt of the beds, and was surprised to find that they had excellent springs and that the linen, while coarse, was nevertheless soft and white. She continued her tour of inspection. Not a speck of dust was discoverable anywhere. The things were old, so old as to be almost comic, but they were serviceable and clean. She began to think that if it were not for the necessity of eating she could pass a fairly comfortable night.
When Gibson came up after seeing the car safely stowed away in the shed that served for a garage, he found her sitting in the creaking old rocker with a rather puzzled expression upon her face.
“Well?” he queried.
“Well,” she answered, “I've survived so far. We'll have to take turns washing. Don't use all the hot water, please.”
Her husband made no comment upon her accession of cheerfulness, but gravely poured some hot water into the only hand-basin.
“Pierre's all in, and I've shipped him off to bed,” said he. “Now, madame—after you on the wash!”
III
Ten minutes or so later there came a respectful knock on the chamber door, and Monsieur Didon, carefully arrayed in an antique dress suit, a napkin on his arm, announced that m'sieu and madame were served. Up to within a few moments the old gentleman had been busily occupied over the kitchen fire, and now after having acted first as porter, and then as chef, he finally appeared in the capacity of head waiter.
The Gibsons followed him the length of the hall, down the stairs, across the court, and through a complicated series of dark, damp public rooms and passages. Then with much ceremony their host opened a door and motioned them into a tiny room—apparently a family dining-room—a salon privé, in fact!
At the sight within Fanny gave a little gasp of astonished surprise. A table covered with a fresh, snow-white cloth stood in the center of the room directly in front of a bright wood fire, which threw a cheerful light upon the cosily furnished chamber. Above the fireplace was a stag's head bearing upon its antlers Monsieur Didon's rifle, shotgun, and various implements of the chase. Several old portraits in oil hung upon the walls, and an ebony bookcase filled with well-used volumes stood opposite the door. A host of candles burned on mantel and table, and two chairs were drawn up snugly at either side. Behind the table a sort of dresser did service at one and the same time as sideboard and museum, for from the top shelves stuffed birds, weasels, and other animals looked glassily down on the piles of gleaming plates below.
“Oh, Harold!” gasped Fanny. “Isn't it just too homelike and lovely!”
“It certainly looks good to me!” he exclaimed, going over to the fire and warming his hands. “This must be the family sitting-room. They are giving us the best they have.”
While they were speaking. Monsieur Didon returned from the kitchen bearing an old-fashioned tureen of smoking onion soup, the savor of which seemed to the motorists more delicious than anything they had ever ever known.
“What will monsieur have to drink?” inquired Monsieur Didon. “Red or white wine, or champagne? We have some excellent champagne of the country which is not light and cheap.”
“Let us have it by all means,” assented Gibson. “We'll have to drink it, if only not to hurt his feelings,” he added to his wife.
But the cobwebbed bottle that Monsieur Didon came in holding so carefully with both hands needed no apology, and yielded a creaming, delicate wine that, as Gibson said afterward, could not have been duplicated in New York for six dollars a bottle.
And no sooner had monsieur placed the bottle on the sideboard than Madame Didon's voice called to him from the kitchen, and to the astonishment of his guests he hurried back with a sizzling dish upon which lay a beautiful speckled trout swimming in brown sauce.
“But where, may I ask,” inquired Gibson, “did you manage to procure such a wonderful fish at this short notice?”
“Ah,” answered Monsieur Didon delightedly, “it was a charming coincidence! I caught him myself this very afternoon just before your arrival. I have been trying to catch that same old fish for three years!”
“And they served him for us!” whispered Fanny. “The dear old things!”
The host watched with keen enjoyment as the trout quickly disappeared save for the head, tail, backbone, and a few fins.
After the trout came a fragrant ragout de chasseur of rabbit and partridge, then some dainty fresh peas cooked in butter and served alone, after the French fashion, and finally a plate of huge, juicy strawberries.
For years afterward the Gibsons vowed they had never had such a meal, and when the table had been cleared and Madame Didon appeared in a freshly pressed black dress and a little white cap, and made black coffee for them—café filtré—in one of those little green hump-backed coffee-pots—and Monsieur Didon followed with a bottle of rare old brandy, Fanny could have hugged them both.
“The dear old things!” she repeated. “I've never had such a good time in my life!”
Madame Didon finished pouring the coffee and filled two tiny china cups while her white-haired husband stood smiling beside her.
“Monsieur and madame,” said Gibson, rising from his chair, “fill, I beg you, four cups instead of two. You have treated us not as guests but as friends. We shall never forget your kindness. This is your private sitting-room—you must sit here with us to-night. Monsieur, will you accept one of my very bad cigars?”
“Oh, m'sieu and madame!” protested Madame Didon. “It is not fitting.”
But Monsieur Didon, who was proud of his wife, shook his head and interrupted her. “And why should you not, Philomine?” he demanded. Then, turning to his guests: “I am but of ordinary stock, m'sieu, but my wife was a Fresney of Château Buffard. We can sit, surely, m'amie, a while with these two gentlefolk who are young enough to be our grandchildren?”
And he took the cigar Gibson held out to him, and with a dignified courtesy worthy of one of the old noblesse placed a chair at the table for his wife.
IV
“And to think when we first heard the sound of your automobile my wife thought it was the Germans!” laughed old Monsieur Didon half an hour later.
“It might well have been!” asserted she. “If they do not come to-day, they will come to-morrow or next week.”
“That is true,” he assented, nodding his head. “They will come—but this time we shall be ready for them.”
Madame Didon looked at Fanny Gibson. “It must be a wonderful thing to live in a country where there is no fear of war!” she said. “It seems only yesterday that there was fighting in this very street. I remember I had gone to wash at the river when I heard musket shots coming from near the church. Then suddenly there were German soldiers everywhere. The town swarmed with them. A German colonel took possession of the hotel and quartered his staff here. I took my two boys and went and lived in the woods.”
“Your two boys?” queried Fanny.
“Yes, madame, two of the loveliest boys God ever sent to this earth. They are both dead now forty years! They lived but a short time after the Germans had marched away leaving the fever behind them. They went, first one and then the other. And Baptiste was away fighting for France. But my boys died for France! It will not be long now before I shall see them.”
“Would m'sieu and madame like to see their photographs?” asked Monsieur Didon, as his wife wiped her eyes and tried to smile at the same time. “They were two splendid little fellows. Four and five years! We never had any other children.”
He went to the mantelpiece and brought to the table a carved walnut frame surrounding a faded picture of two little lads holding each other by the hand.
Fanny Gibson felt a pang of the heart as she looked at the faces of the two sturdy little chaps who had died for France. They had been just the ages of her two boys at home—and they had been dead forty years! She glanced at her husband and saw that his lips were set grimly.
“But, Philomene, we must not trouble these two young people with our private sorrows!” exclaimed Monsieur Didon. “Yes, they were fine boys, but think! they might have had grandchildren of their own now! Some day you two will know perhaps the joy of having such children as that! Then you will not be traveling over the world any more, for you would be ennuyé to leave them. It is terrible how they cling to one's heart-strings!”
Gibson and his wife studied the pattern on the table-cloth and did not reply. Both were thinking of two little boys who had said their prayers by the side of a hired nurse four thousand miles away.
And then the old couple, feeling on a more intimate footing with their guests, began to tell of their life in the quiet little town during the years following the loss of their sons—of how before the war the place had been prosperous and the people happy, but afterward the curse of an ever-impending conflict had blighted it.
In return Gibson told of the life in the big American cities, of the strife of political parties, of the avarice and greed of business competition, of the multitude of interests that made up latter-day existence. After he had finished Madame Didon said quietly:
“But when does anybody have time to live? When do they see their children? How can there be time for so many things?”
Gibson only shook his head in reply.
When the clock on the village church struck eleven and her husband's cigar-case was empty, Fanny rose. Monsieur Didon took one of the candles and led the way through the passages to the door of their room, and bade them good-night. Both were silent as they prepared to go to bed. Then Fanny said very gently:
“Harold, dear, do you mind unhooking my dress?”
Half an hour later, cosily tucked away in her bed without the assistance of Thérèse, her dainty head refusing on the white sausage of a pillow, and guarded above by “La Belle Jardinière” and “Le Petit Soldat,” she drifted off into a dreamless slumber. Gibson, a candle in his hand, stood and looked at his sleeping wife for a long time. It was true, she seemed too young to have any children, as she lay there like a young girl, her head with its wavy, yellowish-brown hair resting on one hand.
Was it not all his fault that she had become the kind of woman she was? Had not he himself been utterly weak and selfish in allowing her to give way to her extravagance? It had been so easy to fall in with her whims—and, he confessed, so delightful. He had not protested very much at leaving the little boys. Come to think of it, he himself had been the original projector of their first motor-trip abroad. And now they were drifting the way of most wealthy people, leading utterly useless lives of self-indulgence. Was it yet too late?
V
A cart rumbling over the cobblestones outside roused Fanny Gibson from a profound, childish sleep, and she opened her eyes lazily and watched some tiny globules of light dancing on “Le Petit Soldat” for several minutes before she realized where she was. The little figure looked not unlike that of one of her own boys in the soldier clothes she had given him at Christmas. The air in the room was fresh and sweet after the rain of the night before. She raised her head and looked across the room to where her husband lay in his own little white sarcophagus. His eyes were open.
“Well?” she said.
“Well?” he answered. “Not so bad, was it?”
“Oh, Harold!” she sighed in a tone of deep compunction.
“I wonder if we can get breakfast?”
Near the bed was a red bell-cord and, reaching up, she gave it a gentle pull. Down below they could hear an answering jangle and in a few moments steps outside the door.
“Bon jour, madame!” called Gibson. “Can we have déjeuner?”
“Ah, oui!” came back the cheery voice of Madame Didon. “I have it here outside, and the hot water also!”
Gibson threw on a wrapper and opened the door, and Madame Didon, bearing a neat tray, came smilingly in.
“Bon jour, madame!” she said to Fanny. Then she removed the articles on the center table, covered it with a clean white cloth, and placed upon it a steaming pot of café filtré, a plate of featherweight crescent rolls, and a pot of apricot confiture.
“Did you ever taste such coffee?” exclaimed Fanny after madame had departed.
“Or such marmalade!” he echoed.
“Or such crescents!” she continued.
They looked at each other and laughed like children.
“I'd only need one other thing to make me absolutely blissful!” she went on.
“I'd need two!” he retorted, looking at her significantly.
“I meant two!” she admitted, glancing upward at where “Le Petit Soldat” was blowing his trumpet upon the wall.
When the coffee-pot had been completely drained and all the crescent rolls had vanished, the Gibsons slowly descended to the street. The sun was pouring over the thatched roofs and antique gables of St Aignan-sur-Doubs, a big apple-tree in the yard had showered the earth with blossoms, pigeons fluttered up and down the street, and a few hobbling old men and women were chatting by the church. Monsieur and Madame Didon stood by the door regretfully awaiting their guests' departure, and Pierre with the limousine was close by.
But a change had been wrought in the motor overnight, for it was decked with flowers from dashboard to tail-lamp, and blossomed like the old apple-tree. Even Pierre was decorated, and a huge bouquet was fastened to the radiator. The chauffeur looked completely rested, and a smile of appreciation shone on his usually patiently impassive countenance.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Fanny, her eyes sparkling with unexpected pleasure.
Madame Didon helped her into her featherweight silk traveling-coat while Pierre opened the door. Gibson was occupying himself with Monsieur Didon and the bill for their night's lodging.
“But monsieur, it is ridiculous?' she hard her husband protest.
For a single instant her spirits deserted her. Were these two old people who had made themselves so charming like other predatory landlords? But a glance at Madame Didon reassured her.
“It is ridiculous, monsieur,” she heard her husband repeat. “Only fifteen francs—three dollars—for three people overnight, rooms, service, dinner, breakfast, and even wine included! You have made some mistake.”
Monsieur Didon shook his head. "We should not be justified in charging more, m'sieu. If you are satisfied we are pleased.”
“Look here, Fanny!” expostulated her husband. “This is too much! Here we have descended on these good people, dumped a motor into their shed, slept in their beds, turned them out of the family sitting-room, eaten the old man's favorite trout, drunk his champagne, and had a flower festival besides, and all they charge is fifteen francs! Three miserable dollars!”
Fanny saw that he was genuinely disturbed. She glanced inside the motor at her array of gold-topped boxes and bottles. How tawdry and vulgar they seemed! Moreover, they were utterly useless for any practical purpose. The little clock was the only object out of all the display that had a respectable appearance, and she hastily unhooked it and placed it in Madame Didon's astonished hands.
“Mais, madam!” gasped the old lady. “Surely you do not mean to give me—me—this beautiful thing!"
And then Gibson experienced a shock of bewilderment, for he saw the dainty and snobbish Fanny suddenly throw her arms around Madame Didon's wrinkled neck and kiss her on both cheeks. What they said to each other was drowned in the roar that followed Pierre's cranking of the machine; but Madame Didon was wiping her eyes with one hand and holding the little clock in the other as Gibson shook hands with Monsieur Didon and climbed into the limousine after his wife. The Didons hastily retreated into their doorway and stood there waving good-by.
“Bon voyage,” shouted the Didons at the top of their voices.
“Adieu! Adieu!” chorused the Gibsons out of the window of the motor.
Then the steel treads of the tires gripped the cobblestones and the big car shot up the street. At the corner of the church they looked back. Monsieur and Madame Didon were still waving.
“What dear, sweet old people!” whispered Fanny, and Gibson saw that there were tears upon her eyelashes.
“There are not many in the world like them!” he answered.
“Perhaps there are more than we thinkv she returned softly as she placed her hand in his.
In front of “L'Hotel de la Grace de Dieu” Madame and Monsieur Didon stood gazing at the corner around which the machine had vanished.
“What charming young people!” exclaimed the old man. “So sympathetic!—So generous!—So kind-hearted!”
“And so simple!” added Madame Didon.
And they went into the house together.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1945, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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