Chapter 1 of 15 · 3923 words · ~20 min read

Part 1

THE GOLDEN WINDMILL

AND OTHER STORIES

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO

THE GOLDEN WINDMILL AND OTHER STORIES

BY STACY AUMONIER Author of “One After Another,” etc.

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921

_All rights reserved_

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1921.

TO J. G.

PREFACE

“_Oh, that mine enemy would write a book—of short stories._”

As you know, it is considered rather provocative to launch a book of short stories. It is asking for trouble. The least I can do is to offer a brief apology; and I cannot do this without writing a preface, which requires an apology in itself. Unless you are a Bernard Shaw you find a preface a most embarrassing business. Having written the stories I would rather talk about anything else—old furniture, for instance. Perhaps my best policy will be to start by attacking you, O Reader, friend or enemy, as the case may be. You are a most exacting fellow. Far more exacting than a reader of novels, or works of reference, or even histories; for the reason that your criticism follows a more circumscribed tradition. You are a kind of gourmet whose palate is acutely sensitive to accustomed flavors and satieties. It is always easier to be an epicure of a small repast than of a banquet. A novel is less easily digested. You may enjoy it in parts, or derive satisfaction from the matter, or from the manner of telling, but with a short story you require a _bonne bouche_. You have a most arbitrary standard. When you raise your eyes from the last line you pass through a most peculiar mental process. It all takes place in a few seconds. In a flash you see the shape and form and color, the application of the title, the _point_ of the whole thing. You demand this, and you also demand to have your senses tickled by some cunning solution, and to be soothed by something unexpected at the close. You observe it as a whole, in the same way that you would observe a water-color sketch, or a Sheraton chair. You may afterwards further examine the sketch, and even sit on the chair, but their appeal to you depends on that first glance. Otherwise you turn away, a dissatisfied and disgruntled gourmet. To-morrow you will dine elsewhere. The truth is your sense of tradition had been outraged.

Fortunately for you, and for me, tradition is a fine thing. Nothing comes out of the blue, except perhaps thunderbolts and they are not really very useful things, certainly no good to any one trying to create. Chippendale, Sheraton, or Heppelwhite were all men of strong individuality. You could never mistake a Sheraton chair for a Chippendale, or a Chippendale for a Heppelwhite; and yet they were all craftsmen who worked on strictly traditional lines. The same may be said of Turgenev, Guy de Maupassant, Joseph Conrad and Tchekoff. Please do not think that I am mentioning my own short stories in the same breath with the stories of these giants. I only want to point out to you that those of us who desire to write them have a noble tradition to follow. You may argue that the analogy between the making of a chair and the creation of a short story is rather far-fetched for the reason that the plan of a chair has long since been fixed and determined by the nature of the seated attitude; that until we find a new way of sitting down the plan of the chair must remain the same; whereas the short story may wander at random over the wide fields of human nature. To this I will reply—Has human nature altered perceptibly more than the nature of the seated attitude? You are bound to agree with me that it hasn’t. The Arabs—who have always been the best story tellers—have stated that there are only seven stories in the world. The complications of what is called Social Progress have not increased the number. They have rather restricted it. The emotions can do no more with dollars and girders than they used to be able to do with magic carpets and languishing houris. People love, hate, struggle and fructify, and to set down their story is a nice respectable craft with a fine old tradition—very like chairmaking.

The two crafts have another point in common. It is the business of them both to make you comfortable. When I start reading a story by Tchekoff I feel comfortable at once. On quite a different plane I feel the same with that remarkable story-teller, O. Henry. They may shock me, or thrill me, or delight me, but I know it’s going to be all right. My sense of tradition will not be outraged. Tchekoff may give me that accustomed sense of satiety by a mere turn of a phrase; O. Henry by some amazing double surprise. But I know all the time that there will be nothing to worry about.

In these stories, then, I have merely tried to be a good apprentice to skilled craftsmen. I claim for them no originality at all. Though their setting is entirely modern, and they deal with such things as fried-fish shops, and public-houses, and the like, they are just the same old seven stories told in the bazaars of Ispahan three thousand years ago.

If through them all you feel something which links them together, which moreover makes you and me more intimate with each other, then I shall feel as happy as Sheraton’s apprentice must have felt when some noble patron of the master’s stopped in the workshops to give him a word of encouragement.

STACY AUMONIER.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE GOLDEN WINDMILL 3

A SOURCE OF IRRITATION 35

THE BROTHERS 59

“OLD IRON” 79

LITTLE WHITE FROCK 109

A GOOD ACTION 137

THEM OTHERS 169

THE BENT TREE 199

THE GREAT UNIMPRESSIONABLE 213

THE GOLDEN WINDMILL

At the top of the hill the party halted. It had been a long trek up and the sun was hot. Monsieur Roget fanned himself with his hat, and his eye alighted on a large pile of cut fern-leaves.

“But this will suit me admirably!” he remarked, and he plumped his squat little figure down, and taking out his large English pipe he began to stuff tobacco into it.

“My little one,” said his stout wife, “I should not advise you to go to sleep. You know that to do so in the afternoon always gives you an indisposition.”

“Oh, la la! No, no, no. I do not go to sleep, but—this position suits me admirably!” he replied.

“Oh, papa, papa! ... lazybones!” exclaimed his pretty daughter Louise. “And if we leave you, you will sleep like a dormouse.”

“It is very hot!” rejoined the father.

“Leave him alone,” said Madame Roget, “and we will go down to that place that looks like an inn, and see whether they will sell us milk. Where is Lisette?”

“Lisette! Where should she be?”

And of course it was foolish to ask. Lisette, the younger daughter, had been lost in the wood on the way up, with her _fiancé_, Paul Fasquelle. Indeed, the party had all become rather scattered. It is a peculiarity of picnics. Monsieur Roget’s eldest son, Anton, was playing at see-saw with his three children on the trunk of a fallen tree. His wife was talking to Madame Aubert, and occasionally glancing up to exclaim:

“Careful, my darlings!”

Monsieur Roget was left alone.

He lighted his pipe, and blinked at the sun. One has to have reached a mature age to appreciate to the full the narcotic seductiveness of good tobacco on the system, when the sun is shining and there is no wind. If there is wind all the pleasant memories and dreams are blown away, but if there is no wind the sun becomes a kind, confidential old fellow. He is very, very mature. And Monsieur Roget was mature. He was fifty-nine years old, given to corpulence, rather moist and hot, but eminently comfortable leaning against the pile of ferns. A glorious view across the woods of Fontainebleau lay stretched before him, the bees droned in the young gorse, his senses tingled with a pleasurable excitement, and, as a man will in such moments, he enjoyed a sudden crystallized epitome of his whole life. His struggles, and failures, and successes. On the whole he had been a successful man. If he died to-morrow, his beloved ones would be left in more than comfort. Many thousand francs carefully invested, some house-property in the Rue Renoir, the three _comestibles_ establishments all doing reasonably well.

Things had not always been like that. There had been long years of anxiety, worry and even poverty. He had worked hard and it had been a bitter struggle. When the children _were_ children, that had been the anxious time. It made Monsieur Roget shudder to look back on it. But, God be praised! he had been fortunate, very fortunate in his life-companion. During that anxious time, Madame Roget had been patient, encouraging, incredibly thrifty, competent, resourceful, a loyal wife, a very—Frenchwoman. And they had come through. He was now a proud grandfather. Both his sons were doing well, and were married. Lisette was engaged to a very desirable young advocate. Of Louise there need be no apprehension. In fact, everything....

“Name of a dog! that’s very curious,” suddenly thought Monsieur Roget, interrupting his own pleasant reflections.

And for some minutes he could not determine exactly what it was that was curious. He had been idly gazing at the clump of buildings lower down the hill, whither his wife and daughter had gone in search of milk. Perhaps the perfume of the young gorse had something to do with it, but as he looked at the buildings, he thought:

“It’s very familiar, and it’s very unfamiliar. In fact, it’s gone wrong. They’ve been monkeying with that gable on the east side, and they’ve built a new loft over the stables.”

But how should he know? What was the gable to him? or he to the gable? He drew in a large mouthful of smoke, held it for some seconds, and then blew it out in a cloud round his head. Where was this? When had he been here before? They had driven out to a village called Pavane-en-Bois, and from there they had walked, and walked, and walked. He may have been here before, and have come from another direction....

“Oo-eh!”

Monsieur Roget was glad that he was alone when he uttered this exclamation, which cannot convey what it is meant to in print. Of course, across there on the other side of the clearing was the low stone wall, and the reliquary with the figure of the Virgin, and doubtless at the bottom of the slope the other side would be—the well!

It was exactly on this spot that he had met Diane—God in heaven! how long ago? Ten, twenty, thirty.... Exactly thirty-seven years ago!

And how vividly it could all come back to one!

He was twenty-two then, a slim young man—considered elegant and rather distinguished-looking by some people—an orphan, without either brothers or sisters, the inheritor of a quite substantial competence from his father, who had been a ship-broker at Marseilles. He had gone to Paris to educate himself and to prepare for a commercial career. He was a serious young man, with modest ambitions, rather moody and given to abstract speculations. Paris bewildered him, and he used to escape when he could, and seek solitude in the country. At length he decided that he must settle down to some definite career, and he became articled to a firm of chartered accountants: Messrs. Manson et Cie. He took rooms at a quiet _pension_ near the Luxembourg, and there fell in love with his patron’s daughter, Lucile, a demure and modest brunette. The affair was almost settled, but not quite. Monsieur Roget, even in those days, was a man who never put his leg over the wall till he had seen the other side. He was circumspect, cautious, and there was indeed plenty of time.

And then one day he had found himself on this identical hillock. He could not quite clearly remember how he came to be there. Probably he had come for the day, to escape the clamor of Paris. He certainly had no luggage. He was seated on this spot, dreaming and enjoying the view, when he heard a cry coming from the other side of the low stone wall. He jumped up and ran to it, and lo! on the other side he beheld—Diane! The name was peculiarly appropriate. She was lying there on her side like a wounded huntress. When she caught sight of him she called out:

“Ah, monsieur, will you be so kind as to help me? I fear I have sprained my ankle.”

Paul Roget leapt the wall and ran to her assistance. (The thought of leaping a wall now made him gasp!) He lifted her up, trembling himself, and making sympathetic little clucks with his tongue.

“Pardon, pardon! very distressing!” he murmured, when she stood erect.

“If monsieur will be good enough to allow me to rest my hand on his shoulder, I shall be able to hop back to the _auberge_.”

“With the greatest pleasure. Allow me.”

On the ground was an upturned pail. He remarked:

“Would it distress mademoiselle to stand for one minute, whilst I re-fill the pail?”

“Oh, no, no,” she exclaimed. “Do not inconvenience yourself.”

“Then perhaps mademoiselle will allow me to return for the pail?”

“Oh, no, if you please! My father will do it.”

She leant on his shoulder and hopped a dozen paces.

“How did it happen, mademoiselle?”

“Imbecile that I am! I think I was dreaming. I had filled the pail and was descending the embankment when I slipped. I tried to step across the pail, but caught my foot in the rim. And then—I don’t know quite what happened. I fell. It is the other ankle which I fear I have sprained.”

“I am indeed most desolated. Is it far to the inn?”

“You see it yonder, monsieur. It is perhaps ten minutes’ walk, but twenty minutes’ hop.”

She laughed gayly, and Monsieur Roget said solemnly:

“If I might suggest it—I think it would be more comfortable for Mademoiselle if she would condescend to place her arm round my neck.”

“It is too good of you.”

They proceeded another hundred paces in silence, and then rested against a stile. Suddenly she gave him one of her quick glances, and said:

“You are very silent, monsieur.”

“I was thinking—how very beautiful the day is.”

As a matter of fact, he was not thinking anything of the sort. He was in a fever. He was thinking how very beautiful, adorable, attractive this lovely wild creature was hanging round his neck. He had never before adventured such an experience. He had never kissed Lucile. Women were an unopened book to him, and lo! suddenly the most captivating of her sex was clinging to him. He felt the pressure of her soft brown forearm on the back of his neck. Her little teeth were parted with smiles, and she panted gently with the exertion of hopping. Her dark eyes searched his, and appeared to be slightly mocking, amused, interested.

“If only I might pick her up and carry her,” he thought, but he did not dare to make the suggestion.

Once she remarked:

“Oh, but I am tired,” and he thought she looked at him slyly.

The journey must have occupied half-an-hour, and she told him a little about herself. She lived with her father. Her mother had died when she was a baby. It was quite a small inn, frequented by charcoal-burners and woodmen, and occasionally by visitors from Paris. She liked the country very much, but sometimes it was dull—oh, dull, dull, dull!

“Ah, it is sometimes dull, even in Paris!” sighed Monsieur Roget.

“You must come and speak to my father, and take a glass of wine,” she remarked.

In the forecourt of the inn the father appeared.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed. “What is all this?”

He was a rubicund, heavy-jowled gentleman, who by the wheezy exhalations coming from his chest gave the impression of being a chronic sufferer from asthma. Diane laughed.

“I have been through fire and water, my dear,” she said, “and this is my deliverer.”

She explained the whole episode to the landlord, who shook hands with Paul, and they led the girl into a sitting-room at the back of the café. Paul was somewhat diffident about entering this private apartment, but the landlord wheezed:

“Come in, come in, monsieur.”

They sat Diane down on a sofa, and the landlord pulled off her stocking. In doing so he revealed his daughter’s leg as far as the knee. She had a very pretty leg, but the ankle was considerably swollen.

“The ankle is sprained,” said the landlord.

“Will you allow me to go and fetch a doctor?” asked Paul.

“It is not necessary,” replied the landlord. “I know all about sprained ankles. When I was in the army I served in the ambulance brigade. We will just bind it up very tight with cold linen bandages. Does it hurt, little one?”

“Not very—yet. It tingles. I feel that it may. Won’t you offer Monsieur—I do not know his name—some refreshment?”

“Monsieur Paul Roget,” said that gentleman, bowing. “But please do not consider me. The sufferer must be attended first. Later on, I would like to be permitted to partake of a little lunch in the inn.”

While the landlord, whose name was Jules Couturier, was binding up his daughter’s ankle, Paul slipped out and returned to the well, filled the pail, and brought it back to the yard of the inn.

“But this is extremely agreeable of you, monsieur,” exclaimed the landlord, as he came bustling through the porch. “She will do well. I know all about sprained ankles. Oh, yes! I have had great experience. I beg you to share a little lunch with us. We are quite simple folk, but I think we may find you an omelette and a ragoût. Quite country people, you know; nothing elaborate.”

The lunch was excellent, and Diane had the sofa drawn up to the table, and in spite of the pain she must have been suffering, she laughed and joked, and they were quite a merry party. After lunch he helped to wheel her out into the crab-apple orchard at the back, and he told her all about himself, his life and work, and ambitions. He told her everything, except perhaps about Lucile. And he felt very strange, elevated, excited.

When the evening came he left it till too late to catch the train back to Paris, and the landlord lent him some things and he stayed the night.

He stayed three nights, and wrote to Messrs. Manson et Cie, and explained that he had gone to Pavane-en-Bois, and had been taken ill. He wrote the same thing to Lucile. And during the day he talked to Diane, and listened to the landlord. Sometimes he would wander into the woods, but he could not bring himself to stay away for long. He brought back armfuls of flowers which he flung across her lap. He touched her hands, and trembled, and at night in bed he choked with a kind of ecstasy and regret. It was horribly distracting. He did not know how to act. He was behaving badly to Lucile, and dishonorably to Manson et Cie. His conscience smote him, but the other little fiend was dancing at the back of his mind. Nothing else seemed to matter. He was mad—madly in love with this little dark-eyed huntress.

At the end of three days he returned to Paris, but not till he had promised to come back at the earliest opportunity.

“Perhaps I will go again in August,” he sighed in the train. It was then the seventh of June.

On the fifteenth of June he was back again in the “Moulin d’Or.” Diane was already much better. She could hobble about alone with the help of two sticks. She was more bewitching than ever. He stayed three weeks, till her ankle was quite well, and they could go for walks together in the woods. And he called her Diane, and she called him Paul. And one day, as the sun was setting, he flung his arms round her and gasped:

“Diane.... Diane! I love you!”

And he kissed her on the lips, and her roguish eyes searched his.

“Oh, you!” she murmured. “You bad boy ... you!”

“But I love you, Diane. I want you. I can’t live without you. You must come away with me. We will get married. We will build a world of our own. Oh, you beautiful! Tell me you love me, or I shall go mad!”

She laughed that low, gurgling, silvery laugh of hers.

“What are you saying?” she said. “How should I know? I think you are—a nice boy. But I cannot leave my father.”

“My dear, he managed all the time you had to lie with your foot up. Don’t torture me! Oh, you must love me, Diane. I couldn’t love you so much if you didn’t love me a little in return.”

“Perhaps I do,” she said, smiling.

“What is it, then, Diane?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I do not want to marry. I want to be free, to see the world. I am ambitious. I have been to the conservatoire at Souboise. They say I can sing and dance. My father has spent his savings on me.”

“Darling, if you marry me, you shall be free. You shall do as you like. You shall dance and sing and see the world. Everything of mine shall be yours if only you will love me. You must—you must. Diane!”

“Well ... we shall see. Come; father will be anxious.”

In July he left his _pension_ and moved out to Montmartre. He had never definitely proposed to Lucile, but his expressions of affection had been so definite that he felt ashamed. He spent his holiday in August at the “Moulin d’Or.” And Diane promised to marry him “one day.”

“Diane,” he said, “I will work for you. You have inspired me. I shall go back to Paris and think of you all day, and dream of you all night.”

“That won’t give you much time to make your fortune, my little cabbage.”

“Do not mock me. Where would you like to live?”

“In Paris, in Nice, in Rome, in Vienna. And then, one day, I would like to creep back here and just live in the ‘Moulin d’Or.’”

“The ‘Moulin d’Or’?”

“Oh, we could improve it. We could build an extra wing, with a dancing-hall, and more nice bedrooms, and a garage. We could improve the inn, but we could not improve these beautiful hills. Isn’t that true, little friend?”

“Nothing could be improved where you are. You are perfection.”

“Yes, but—”