Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/192

Rh standing over Mexique, his hands clenched, his eyes sparkling—it took a good deal of persuasion to convince the parent that his son was in error, meanwhile Mexique placidly awaited his end ... and neither B. nor I, despite the Imp's tormentings, could keep from laughing when he all at once with a sort of crowing cry rushed for the nearest post, jumped upon his hands, arched his back, and poised head-downward; his feet just touching the pillar. Bare-footed, in a bright chemise and one-third of his father's trousers....

Being now in a class with "les hommes mariés" The Wanderer spent most of the day downstairs, coming up with his little son every night to sleep in The Enormous Room. But we saw him occasionally in the cour; and every other day when the dreadful cry was raised

"Allez, tout-le-monde, 'plicher les pommes!" and we descended, in fair weather, to the lane between the building and the cour, and in foul (very foul I should say) the dynosaur-coloured sweating walls of the dining-room—The Wanderer would quietly and slowly appear, along with the other hommes mariés, and take up the peeling of the amazingly cold potatoes which formed the pièce de resistance (in guise of Soupe) for both women and men at La Ferté. And if the wedded males did not all of them show up for this unagreeable task, a dreadful hullabaloo was instantly raised—

"LES HOMMES MARIÉS!" and forth would more or less sheepishly issue the delinquents.

And I think The Wanderer, with his wife and children whom he loved as never have I seen a man love anything in this world, was partly happy; walking in the sun when there was any, sleeping with his little boy in a great gulp of softness. And I remember him pulling his fine beard into two darknesses—huge-sleeved, pink-checked chemise—walking kindly like a bear—corduroy bigness of trousers, waistline always amorous of knees—finger-ends just catching tops of enormous pockets. When he feels, as I think, partly happy, he corrects our pronunciation of the ineffable Word—saying

"O, May-err-DE!"