The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett [192]
The landlord and his wife were eating in another corner, a fat, slatternly pair, whom no privations of a siege could have emaciated. The landlord rose. He was dressed as a chef, all in white, with the sacred cap; but a soiled white. Everything in the place was untidy, unkempt and more or less unclean, except just the table upon which champagne was waiting. And yet the restaurant was agreeable, reassuring. The landlord greeted his customers as honest friends. His greasy face was honest, and so was the pale, weary, humorous face of his wife. Chirac saluted her.
"You see," said she, across from the other corner, indicating a bone on her plate. "This is Diane!"
"Ah! the poor animal!" exclaimed Chirac, sympathetically.
"What would you?" said the landlady. "It cost too dear to feed her. And she was so mignonne! One could not watch her grow thin!"
"I was saying to my wife," the landlord put in, "how she would have enjoyed that bone—Diane!" He roared with laughter.
Sophia and the landlady exchanged a curious sad smile at this pleasantry, which had been re-discovered by the landlord for perhaps the thousandth time during the siege, but which he evidently regarded as quite new and original.
"Eh, well!" he continued confidentially to Chirac. "I have found for you something very good—half a duck." And in a still lower tone: "And it will not cost you too dear."
No attempt to realize more than a modest profit was ever made in that restaurant. It possessed a regular clientele who knew the value of the little money they had, and who knew also how to appreciate sincere and accomplished cookery. The landlord was the chef, and he was always referred to as the chef, even by his wife.
"How did you get that?" Chirac asked.
"Ah!" said the landlord, mysteriously. "I have one of my friends, who comes from Villeneuve St. Georges—refugee, you know. In fine …" A wave of the fat hands, suggesting that Chirac should not inquire too closely.
"In effect!" Chirac commented. "But it is very chic, that!"
"I believe you that it is chic!" said the landlady, sturdily.
"It is charming," Sophia murmured politely.
"And then a quite little salad!" said the landlord.
"But that—that is still more striking!" said Chirac.
The landlord winked. The fact was that the commerce which resulted in fresh green vegetables in the heart of a beleagured town was notorious.
"And then also a quite little cheese!" said Sophia, slightly imitating the tone of the landlord, as she drew from the inwardness of her cloak a small round parcel. It contained a Brie cheese, in fairly good condition. It was worth at least fifty francs, and it had cost Sophia less than two francs. The landlady joined the landlord in inspecting this wondrous jewel. Sophia seized a knife and cut a slice for the landlady's table.
"Madame is too good!" said the landlady, confused by this noble generosity, and bearing the gift off to her table as a fox-terrier will hurriedly seek solitude with a sumptuous morsel. The landlord beamed. Chirac was enchanted. In the intimate and unaffected cosiness of that interior the vast, stupefied melancholy of the city seemed to be forgotten, to have lost its sway.
Then the landlord brought a hot brick for the feet of madame. It was more an acknowledgment of the slice of cheese than a necessity, for the restaurant was very warm; the tiny kitchen opened directly into it, and the door between the two was open; there was no ventilation whatever.
"It is a friend of mine," said the landlord, proudly, in the way of gossip as he served an undescribed soup, "a butcher in the Faubourg St. Honore, who has bought the three elephants of the Jardin des Plantes for twenty-seven thousand francs."
Eyebrows were lifted. He uncorked the champagne.
As she drank the first mouthful (she had long lost her youthful aversion for wine), Sophia had a glimpse of herself in a tilted mirror hung rather high on the opposite wall. It was several months since she had attired herself with ceremoniousness. The sudden unexpected vision of elegance and pallid beauty pleased her. And the instant effect of the champagne was to renew in her mind a forgotten conception of the goodness of life and of the joys which she had so long missed.