Part 18 (1/2)

That _dejeuner_ downstairs was supposed to be _intime_ and private; but the distant sounds of it were already becoming audible to the more public part of the hotel.

First a soft but thunderous drumming as of applause upon the table-top was heard.

Then a skirl of laughter, the piercingness of which, near to, could only be guessed at.

Then, booming fragments of a voice that rose above others just as an occasional column of foam spouted higher than those other Biscay rollers on the reef. Then an uninterrupted booming.... Apparently a speech was in progress.

An involuntary and smiling silence seemed to fall upon the luncheon parties in the _salle_ above, almost as if they would have felt it impolite to talk through what was going on below. Truly, Miss Walsh was making the hotel one that day--the hotel to which she had only come because of that hat-pin stuck in a guide-book and p.r.i.c.king at random a name on a page!

Then suddenly, the door of the _salle a manger_ opened. The blue-and-red apparition of Sergeant Tronchet stood to attention just inside it: darkly flushed, beaming, silent.

(It may here be said that none of the visitors ever had known this swarthy well-set-up French soldier anything but silent. All that most of them had ever heard of his voice had been the murmured ”Madame ...

Mademoiselle ... Messieurs ...” that accompanied his heel-clicking bows. Only Miss Walsh had ever had any conversation with him. But had not this been to some purpose?)

”Oh, he's come to fetch me,” she exclaimed now in a voice that failed.

”Good-bye, Olwen dear,” she added, as if she never expected to come back alive. ”I shall see you and Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor at tea-time----you are all coming to _my_ tea, aren't you?” she finished appealingly.

Then she disappeared, with her peac.o.c.k-proud _fiance_.

”The day has only just begun, my dear child!” declared Mrs. Cartwright to Olwen, rising. ”Come to my room and take a rest before _we_ come on in the next act. Run up, will you? I'll follow.”

Olwen ran up; glad of a breathing s.p.a.ce.

That party, three floors and five or six rooms away, did still dominate the whole hotel! She was glad to lie back in Mrs. Cartwright's basket-chair and to draw a long breath. She had nothing to do that afternoon, she thanked goodness....

But Mrs. Cartwright, as soon as she came in, drew a chair up to her writing-table and began to make notes, chuckling from time to time.

”Tell me when the people begin to go,” she begged Olwen. ”I had to make an errand about the tea, and take a peep in just now, I couldn't miss it.... My dear! The heat! And the din down there! Poor Miss Wals.h.!.+ How Madame crammed them all in I don't know.... And Monsieur Leroux with his black domino beard and his pouchy eyes, _and_ all those women exactly the same height whether they sit down or stand up....”

She was scribbling sketches of them all to send to her boys....

The noise downstairs rose to sounds of confused singing--_Le Chanson des Baisers_, then fell at last.

”I think they're all going away now,” said Olwen from the balconied window, and Mrs. Cartwright ran to join her and to watch the homeward-faring procession filing by.

First the notary, his white bowler hat a little dinted, appeared round the corner of the hotel. He was arm in arm with Monsieur Popinot, who still carried his wife's pink parasol, and who seemed to have an idea of putting it up over the pair of them as they went by the windows, but was restrained by a gesture, suppressed but fierce, from the notary. His purple-clad wife hustled the children ahead of her; the party in mourning were giggling joyously together, then a.s.sumed a gravity.

With the same effect of pompously pulling themselves together with which they had pa.s.sed the front of the hotel, they all repa.s.sed it now.

Even as they turned their backs upon it, the strain was seen to relax again. Up went the pink parasol in the distance.

”Ah, there; there goes Gustave's comrade the _artilleriste_,” commented Mrs. Cartwright. ”First at the fight--and last at the feast; yes, he's the last.”

The _artilleriste_ swaggered delightfully, turning to wave a farewell, and obviously caring little whether it were to the front of the hotel or the back....