Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/231

. . . Bonapartist of course. She translated American novels into French to amuse herself and to help keep up the household in Neuilly. Yet she was rich, for her fat pig's hands were covered with rings and the sable of her cloak was the best.

A man's voice, ill-tempered and gruff, rose through the shadowy room. Captain Marchand, who did not get on with his wife. Toactless of Madame de Cyon to have led them to the bridge table to play with each other. Bridge-mad. . . was Madame de Cyon. . . bridge-mad, and she hated like the Devil to lose. To lose five francs was like losing one of her fat legs. Strange game. . . this bridge. It put every one into a bad temper. Not at all like piquet.

"Deux pique!" announced Madame de Cyon.

"Passe!" . . . "Passe!" . . . "Passe!"

From the dining-room issued the sound of two voices in dispute, the one high-pitched, old and somewhat shrill, and the other rather deep and gentle, almost conciliatory. They drifted to Madame Gigon across the murmurous spaces of the drawing-room. Madame Blaise and "Mees Ellen's" friend, Schneiderman. Madame Blaise was a Gasconne, old, shrill and vituperatory, yet somehow amusing and stimulating. . . a little cracked perhaps but still full of spirit, and mysterious in the fashion of those whose existence has its foundations in a world of fanciful, half-mad unreality. She was tall and thin, with a mass of dyed red hair (it must have gone gray ten years earlier) under an old-fashioned purple bonnet trimmed with purple plumes and perched high on her head in the fashion of the eighties. Madame Gigon knew she was by the gateaux. . . eating. . . eating. . . eating. . . as if she starved her self at home. Yet she too was rich.

"Ah, you don't know the Germans as I do!" came the high-pitched voice. "My fine young fellow! I tell you I have lived with them. I have been on business for the government. They are capable of anything. You will see . . ."

And then the voice of Schneidermann, mild and a little amused by the old lady. "Ah . . . ," gently. "Perhaps . . . perhaps. But I do not think that war is any longer possible."

"Nevertheless," persisted the voice. "One fine day you will go marching away like the rest."