Vignolles

“ It might have been a passing insurgency or even a passing mood; for one doesn't often do these things—now, does one? And just then the children rushed out on us; they had been to the village church with Vignolles, and were come back all zeal and mischief, like two colts liberated and free to kick up their heels. And he, good chap, was happy—as happy as I had ever known him; and looking it, too, as his eyes rested on that delightful place, all green and sunlit, and the two children, and Mrs. Tyrrell and me, standing there, both rather happy as well. ”

“ There was the depots naked in the sunlight, with its couple of wooden huts for offices, its long rows of tents, and its longer rows of camel lines, all beautifully laid out in the marshy land on the African side of the canal. Brown and baked it was, very much like Vignolles, before it joined the reed beds and the water. It was endurable by day; a hard and healthy life we led, spent mostly on our Arab ponies; but after sundown, to the flies were added the mosquitoes, and to the mosquitoes, the sand-flies. The mosquitoes were the fiercest and the most voracious I have ever known. ”

“ It was certainly an admirable philosophy, though to freer spirits, like Vignolles and myself, it made conversation or any general survey of the world at times rather difficult, and, in moments of impatience we were both of us inclined to regard the older Carey-Holts as a couple of bores.
"It's that generation—our generation," Vignolles had once exclaimed, "that made the war! I belong to it, and yet I hate it; no wonder I couldn't get on with it! By Jove, we were rotten and we're still rotten! If the young 'uns don't kick us out, or hold us down and muzzle us, we'll start some devilment again. ”

“ Vignoles. — De Vignolles, or Vignoles, was the name of a noble family in Languedoc. From Jean de Vignoles, who was married in 1559, sprang the chiefs of four branches. The grandson of Vignoles de Prades, the oldest chief, was the first Protestant of the race ”

“ TO see old Vignolles vivid and all alert, safe in a big arm-chair again, reposing in my rooms, eloquent and nervous, or thoughtful and sitting at his ease! That was to me one of those rare delights that go with friendship—the slow and cautious friendship of the middle years. One does not make friends easily after one has climbed the hill. I suppose one is critical, or difficult—call it what you like. But Vignolles I had tested, I had known so thoroughly; and every time he had given the right answer. ”

“ Vignolles laughed.
"What we talked about, or what they talk about? Money and women mostly," he answered; "same as people do in Europe, only it's different money and different women. And then there's eating and drinking and one's relatives, and land and crops and things; but it's money and women mostly. Can't say it's always very respectable." ”

“ I could understand the Carey-Holts. Young and old, they were greedy, and, being of the same blood with him, quite inevitably they must look upon Vignolles as their natural prey. I could even understand the older Tyrrells, whose pride and whose prejudices were these years very much on edge and to whom my friend most appear as a final portent of disorder. To them he must have come as the proverbial last straw; for even a Jew money-lender will do no more than produce his bond and ready cash and you are spared the horrors of his table. ”

“ Vignolles was not embarrassed, though he ought to have been. But it takes a good deal to embarrass Vignolles; and here was a case in point.
"What do you think of me?" we heard her ask him; and next she had led him off to where she was shown as only Edwards dared show her. A predatory object, a veritable bird of prey, he had made of her; with her aquiline nose slightly accentuated, hard-eyed, and hands that looked like claws.
"You aren't as bad as all that," said Vignolles, smiling. "What are you going to do to him?"
"Keep him waiting," she laughed. "He's always hard up, isn't he? ”

“ He was a man past fifty and had always been in the thick of it. That, I imagine, was his passion, the ruling motive of his life. Most people, therefore, would call him an adventurer; the war threw up many such. They flocked home from all the corners of the earth at the great call, and Vignolles was one of them, the only one, however, whom I knew with any intimacy. He had the two South African ribbons, he had a Japanese, he would have had a Bulgarian, only just now they were the enemy, and he had two more which I can't exactly remember that finished off the row. ”

“ I attempted my little diversions and tried to interest them in some other subject, half a dozen other subjects, more or less; but Vignolles, and his social obscurity, and his not belonging to a recognizable class or circle—these were the points that mattered on this particular afternoon, and they returned to them again and yet again. They rankled, evidently.
"Now, if he were an American. One doesn't mind it so much with them, does one? And I suppose they are somebody in their own country." It was the Honorable Amelia who had crossed the Atlantic and arrived at this decision on the other side. ”

“ We had time to spare, and as I lingered. 'You've made a proper old fool of yourself,' he remarked; and, smiling rather grimly with his cold blue eyes, 'you've made rather a fool of me, Mr. Vignolles.' It was a complete and perfect survey of the situation. And next growing almost human, 'It's the climate,' he ran on; 'most people go a bit daft in hot countries. That's what's the matter with Egypt; all of us out here are a little mad. ”

“ Some went in with a net and caught gray mullet that were leaping. Pine swimmers they were, and, though not much to look at as they plodded along with the camels, they stripped like statues—like bronze statues.
Vignolles was still brooding. I remember one curious remark he made; there was a good deal of truth in it.
"I suppose the worst day in a woman's life," he said, "is the day she realizes that men don't care a damn about her. Sooner or later it's bound to come—the day she's finished and the youth gone out of her. We two are a bit like that, getting fired and sent down to a garrison job." ”

“ The Camel Transport Corps isn't exactly an alluring proposition. But there were others, and, indeed, the most of us—for the old chap hadn't an enemy—who were pretty certain that Vignolles had reached Port Said all right and then come some sort of a cropper in Arab Town, the festive quarter. After these months in the desert, it seemed more than likely. Knocked on the head, or knifed, or even poisoned; the drink they sell has little relation to the label. He may have turned quarrelsome after a dose of it, and, in one way and another, he had a good deal of money on him. ”

“ There had been something contradictory in Vignolles's account of his relations with those two children. In one breath they thought him "wonderful," and yet were quite unstirred by the material comforts and other benefits his friendship offered or seemed to promise. I asked him about this, for I couldn't well follow it.
"My dear old chump," he responded, "don't you see that it's me, Vignolles, they think wonderful, and that the house and home and all the rest of it are only a house and home. The things money, sordid cash, can buy don't interest them ”

“ I answered.
"No man and no woman know what they're taking on till the first year's over," he said abruptly.
"And after that?" I asked.
"They begin to put questions. You'd say, 'By Jove, is it worth it?' and Eve'd say, 'By Jove, is it worth it?' But you'd both go on and hide the doubt away from one another and even from yourselves. That's what I did, and, perhaps, I found a different answer. It was worth it. But I'm not like you, young Vignolles. And I'm not like Eve. She's had everything; she's never been denied. I've spoilt my women. Perhaps we've spoilt one another. ”

“ Still, as I said to my father once: "We Vignolles have been in trade for three generations; it's about time one of us started doing something else. It's against Darwin and evolution to go on forever." He was hot on Darwin and Huxley in his way; yet when it came to a matter of business, he threw his hobbies overboard and what had been good enough for him was good enough for me. However, for the time being, I was a sudden and sumptuous capitalist, and I cast round for ways and means of spending my Aunt Betty's savings in a way to do her credit or to make her turn in her grave. ”

“ And then she moved toward me, one step closer, and in her low, sweet voice, "I see—I see," she said. "It had never occurred to me. A woman looks in, perhaps, too much, instead of looking out. And I'm forgetting all about the Sunday dinner, am I not?" she ended. "You'll amuse yourself for a little while?"
She was gone, leaving me alone on the big lawn by the greenhouses; and I was feeling rather the better for having said my say; and if I took the path through the wood, I'd be sure to run into Fred Vignolles and the children, and if I didn't it wouldn't much matter. ”

“ It was not a very big place as places go; but, it had a completeness, a variety, which showed that the people who had lived here and were now dispersed had loved it and spent a few of their generations upon its making.
Mrs. Tyrrell loved it too, and she said so quite openly.
"It's often hard to believe in all our luck," she remarked to me one Sunday morning as we strolled out of doors. "It's more like a thing one dreams of than a thing that has happened."
"But Vignolles is like that—exactly like that," I answered, smiling. ”

“ At sunrise, however, all would be well again, and Vignolles and I and such other subalterns as were awaiting orders here would meet upon parade. One day's ritual was very like another, except that on every other day we watered. And then all the camels, four of five hundred of them, would march out in a long line, two by two, with an Egyptian driver to each pair. These men wore bright blue gowns—galabiahs, they call them—of the same color as the eternal blue of the sky; the camels, and Vignolles and I in khaki, were of the color of the desert ”

“ Carey-Holt, the sister of whom Vignolles had occasionally spoken; and there was her husband, the stock-broker; and young Francis Carey-Holt, and Miss Jane Carey-Holt, their offspring. Vignolles did not seem exactly enamored of his niece and nephew.
"The boy's too much like a young lady for my taste," he said, discussing them; "had everything done for him—never seems to have put his nose outside of London—been to all the cinemas and dances all the latest dances, but after that you come to a blank wall. It's a pity he didn't get roped in for the war. ”

“ I said at last, "if people work, they can't very well pick and choose whom they'll work for."
"No, I suppose not," admitted the Honorable John. "But there must be a few of us left; and perhaps Angela needn't have been so hasty."
It was no use arguing with them. I realized that, and how they had been brought up to regard people of a certain class as one thing and people of all other classes as another. Nor had Vignolles ever done anything considerable in politics or in law, or in any of those recognizable channels by which the commoner sort may enter upon a higher meeting-ground. ”

“ And next I turned and listened to her father.
"I like you, Vignolles," he had said; "that's why I'm taking all this trouble. I've spent a week trying to understand you. Eve I already know. She wouldn't stick it"; and when I turned a challenging face to him, he went on, unruffled.
"She fell in love with a hero," he pursued, "a romantic fellow she met on board a ship and rode with on islands; a careless young devil who'd taken his chances and didn't give a fig for any man. That's right, isn't it? But if you go into business, you'll lose all that. ”

“ Tyrrell and the two children out of Richmond, where they had shared a home with the elder Tyrrells, down to the house that Vignolles had bought and furnished on the country's edge. I dare say she had a salary, and there was, of course, her pension, and as for the rest of it, I have no doubt that Vignolles footed the bills. ”

“ He seemed surprised at this attention.
"Good-by, bison," I said. "I'm off now. The world hasn't much use for us, has it?" And as he chewed and grunted, "We were too strong, too primitive, too simple," I said; "and Eve's father and that fellow on the ship who'd been smashed up were right. Eh, boy? And that's the long and the short of it."
XVII
Vignolles was finished. I remember then that I looked up, expecting more from him; for I hadn't quite realized that he was finished. And when no more came:
"Eve Damer—she's your Eve Drummond?" I asked. ”

“ This is what modern civilization comes to, I suppose; crowds of people living elbow to elbow, and the more they see of one another, the more they dislike each other and pick each other to pieces. The women are the worst offenders, having leisure and, therefore, plenty of time to brood. Well, I've no doubt they have their grievances. There was Mrs. Carey-Holt, for instance, Vignolles's only sister. She had a good deal to say for herself, and I admit that I listened very politely to all she had to say. ”

“ But if we were angels instead of men and women, we'd just sit tight and leave war to the fools."
"But the Turk was—something more than a fool," I ventured.
"Quite right," answered Vignolles, thoughtfully. "He's got a certain point of view. It don't square with ours; it can't live in the same street with ours. So I don't blame him as much as I blame the Hun. Nothing the Hun loves better than living in our street; can't keep him out of it. If you chuck him out at the door, in he comes by the window. ”

“ The canal had been rather a gold-mine to Vignolles Brothers and Company—they still stuck to the old style from habit. I learnt all that over again—I d heard most of it vaguely—chatting away at luncheon and sometimes after dinner. My father's business now was buying goods and shipping them to his clients overseas. Sometimes they paid in produce and sometimes in bills. I was always quick at the theory of any business, though not so ready with the practice. ”