If the young men brought to the banquet the heart of joy which had been recommended they dissembled. There were no signs of joy at all among the little group upon Hector’s lawn the next evening, but rather of constraint and embarrassment. They spoke little, and nobody seemed to pay attention to what was said. M. Philipon wore his whitest waistcoat and his finest rosebud, and received the three young men with the cordiality of one who bestows, as well as receives, honour. He was, however, fully alive to the responsibility of the position, and felt that he had a serious speech to make, and that it was due to his daughter that the speech should be expressed in fitting words. Claire did not appear. Could it be that they were going to have the banuet without her? As for the young men, Will and Allen stood together, Allen with one hand on Will’s shoulder, as if for support. Olinthus stood apart from the others, wearing a smile of assurance which now and then gave place to a look of anxiety. He was dressed with great splendour, wore all his rings and chains, and had the shiniest of hats.

     Just when the constraint and the silence became painful there appeared in the porch a little serving maid, with a white cap and a long white apron, very neat, and appropriate to the cottage.

     ‘My friends, cried the host,’ supper awaits us. Permit me to lead the way.’

     He led them into the house. They found that Claire was waiting them. She was dressed in some sort of creamy white stuff with a ribbon round her neck and a white flower in her black hair, and she looked so sweet, so dainty, that Allen choked, and Will turned pale, and Olinthus red. She bowed to them without offering her hand or raising her eyes; and then she took her father’s arm.

     ‘Gentlemen,’ said Hector, ‘on this occasion I lead my daughter to the banquet.’ If she had been a duchess and he the Regent; if the cottage had been the Palais Royal; if the supper had been of royal or regental character, he could not have assumed a more courtly air. The young men followed in great awe and expectation.

     ‘My clear friends,’ said their host, ‘take your places; let there be no jealousies; Claire sits beside me. Olinthus, you are nearest — take the chair next to her. Allen, my pupil, sit on this side of me. Will, take the opposite chair. So.’

     He sat down and looked about him with a truly festive countenance, though the occasion was a grave one. Yet whatever is to come after supper, let the joy which belongs to that meal be maintained. The supper was served on the whitest of table covers and in the plainest of white china. It took a great number of dishes and in the giver’s eyes it was magnificent. Indeed, at first, everybody’s breath was taken away by the mere aspect of the spread and the profusion of flowers in which it lay imbedded. No supper, however magnificent, could have made a more imposing appearance.

     On the present occasion, there were five tiny lamb cutlets lying on a white bank of mashed potatoes; there was a dish of new potatoes, boiled, another of potatoes sautés, another of early peas, another of asparagus, another of cauliflower au gratin, another of spinach served with eggs and butter. There was a dish of gooseberry fool. There was an immense bowl of salad, prepared by the hands of Claire herself, there was bread à discrétion, and there was a little plate of cheese. Everything, in fact, except the cutlets and the cheese and the bread. had come straight from the garden.

     ‘My friends,’ said Hector joyously, all his embarrassment gone as he surveyed this royal supper, ‘this is magnificent, it is superb, it makes the heart rejoice’ —he looked round the table — ‘where. but where is the wine? Hein? Is it possible? I had forgotten the wine — aha! the wine to make us merry. Behold the bottle’ —he could reach it from the sideboard without rising from his seat. ‘Aha! the Divine Bottle! the glou-glou of the bottle!’

     He handled the bottle as lovingly as if it contained a liquid more precious than words can express. He held it up to the light, held it carefully, so as not to shake it, and inserted the screw as an angler sticks on his worm, as if he loved the cork. Then when, with a voluptuous pop, the cork left the bottle, M. Philipon laughed softly, and placed the Divine Bottle beside him, wagging his head and forefinger at it as if it, too, were a boon companion. Two of the young men knew the wine well, They were perfectly acquainted with the resources of the cellar, and they both looked straight before them as if fearing to meet each other’s eyes. Only from Allen, who was imaginative, a faint shiver escaped with a whispered trembling of the lips as if caused by the rolling of a few r’s.

     ‘Supper,’ said their host, a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other, ‘supper, like all good things, is a French invention. I do not boast, my friends, I merely state a fact. No one knew what supper could be before the time of the Regent — the first man of modern times who understood how to live. We will imagine ourselves — for this evening only — in the time of the Regent; we will feast like him, we will talk like him — that is, at a respectful distance; we will dismiss the lacqueys and servants’ — he spoke as if his one little maid was a complete staff — ‘and we will wait upon each other — that is, we will all wait upon Claire. My dear, let me find for you, among all these cutlets, the sweetest, the best cooked, the most delicious.’

     It would have been impossible for the most generous of hosts, had his eyes been turned upon Olinthus at this moment, to escape the discovery that he was counting, with a disappointment impossible to be concealed, the number of cutlets in the dish. There were five — one apiece; as for the rest, he had now discovered that it was nothing but salad and flowers. And he had been invited to supper, and he had been promised a royal banquet, and he had taken only a slender meal in the middle of the day in order to do justice to that banquet. One lamb
cutlet — with salad! The other two, however, were not disappointed: they knew what to expect. To M. Philipon a cup of chocolate was a large early breakfast; a cubic inch of beef stewed in a mess of onions, carrots, and potatoes made a midday
déjeuner; a croûte au pot, with another inch of beef and a dish of lentils or beans, made a substantial dinner. This supper, with its festive array of dishes, its variety of vegetables. and the presence of his guests, was to him a veritable feast of Belshazzar. They wondered not, but yet they trembled, because they must needs pass through the ordeal of the wine.

     Their host urged them to superhuman efforts, and congratulated them on their prowess, as if a whole lamb cutlet was in itself a feast worthy of an alderman. The young men, stimulated by these exhortations, went on eating until there was not a stalk of asparagus, or a single potato, or a morsel of cauliflower.

     ‘Go on, brave boys,’ cried their host, with glowing eyes. ’The English are as valiant at the table as on the field. They are lusty feasters. Allen. another potato Will. more spinach. Olinthus, you spare the cheese. It is good to see these young athletes. It is Achilles, with Ajax and Diomede — brave Diomede; no doubt he greatly resembled Olinthus. It is a Homeric banquet, or — yes, it is the Centaurs feasting after a fight; or, still better, it is the suitors of Penelope feasting in the Palace of Ithaca. Desist not; eat as valiantly as Friar John; drink as deep as a Franciscan friar. Allen, the bottle stands by you; let it move on — let it trot — let it gallop. Olinthus, fill up, fill up all; let us drink like the good folk of Chinon; let us drink without stopping, except to eat.’

     With these rollicking and Rabelaisian exhortations did M. Philipon stimulate the revellers and astonish his daughter, who saw, to her amazement, the bottle fly from hand to hand and the young men pour continually more wine into their glasses. They poured as little as they could, and it seemed as if the bottle never would get finished. When you added water to the proportion of three to one, you practically disguised the sourness of the wine, though you made the water thin. At last Allen, who could bear the thing no longer, and who trembled lest Tommy should say something that would annoy their host — indeed he was beginning to look dangerous — poured out all that was left into his tumbler, and heroically drank it off at a gulp Claire looked in terror to see some of the signs of intoxication. The young men might, if her father went on plying them with strong drink, roll under the table, or have to catch each other by the shoulders as she had seen men do in Epping Forest.

     So infectious. in fact. was the gaiety assumed by their host at this imaginary feast that two of the three guests were presently quite carried away by it, and laughed and talked as if the potency of the wine had indeed mounted to their brains and unlocked their tongues. The gravity of the occasion, the importance of the decision that was immediately to be announced to them, seemed forgotten. Allen, for his part, brandished his glass in sympathy when his host flourished the bottle over his head and quoted the French song——

Je ne quitterai jamais ma mye

Tandis qu’elle fera glou glou:

Je ne quitterai jamais ma mye

Qu’elle ne soit vuide da tout.

     As if the wine was of the most rollicking kind, and charged with mirth and song and revelry. And Will laughed approvingly.

     Claire for her part, knowing why the young men were bidden to the feast, and remembering what was about to be said to them, and what hopes were to be destroyed or postponed that evening, felt pained at the exhibition of gaiety, and wondered how men can be so light of heart and so careless even when their own happiness — if they are truthful — is at stake. Claire was not experienced in the heart of male man, else she
would have known that the excitement of expectation, of suspense,
of a deed done or yet to do, is strangely akin to gaiety. When Oliver Cromwell signed the death-warrant of the King, he fillipped his neighbour with the ink. Not out of frivolous light-heartedness. if you please, but as a relief to the heaviness of his heart. These young men at least were profoundly anxious, and when Allen Engledew brandished his glass like a mad monk of Medmenham, it was because he was unconsciously seeking refuge from trouble in merriment.

     This explanation is intended only for metaphysicians, and for the seekers after that which cannot be found.

     Claire wondered, but she said nothing and was silent, keeping her eyes clown and anxious for the time when she might leave the table.

     Olinthus, it may be observed, responded only partially and with effort. He was too hungry to laugh, and, besides, he saw nothing to laugh at. Being asked to drink vinegar and eat salad when one was raging with hunger seemed to him like going beyond the limits of legitimate mirth.

     When there was nothing more to eat, and even the bottle was at length happily empty, their entertainer began to wink mysteriously and to shake a finger with a meaning wink.

     ‘Good Heaven!’ thought Tommy; ‘what is he going to give us next?’

     But his spirits were raised when he remembered that French people frequently finish their banquets with a gloria or chasse café. ‘Brandy, I hope,’ he murmured.

     ‘On this occasion,’ said M. Philipon, ‘which is remarkable, I produce a bottle of remarkable wine; a veritable grand vin, a Margaux of premier crû. It is as old as Claire, and was enclosed in its casket of glass the very year in which she was born.’

     He drew forth, from some secret recess, a small pint bottle covered with dust. This he uncorked with immense ceremony.

     ‘Claire, my daughter,’ he said, his bright eyes softening, ‘we have feasted and we have laughed in your honour. Woman is the giver of all joy; therefore we do well to be joyful in her honour. This day, my dear, you have attained your majority. You are of age, not because you are eighteen, but because these young gentlemen have become your suitors. We shall drink, my best of daughters, to you!’

     He filled four glasses, which proved to be exactly the measure of the bottle, and passed one to each.

     Then all stood up, glass in hand.

     *lsquo;Claire, my child!’

     ‘Claire!’

     They drained their glasses and set them down; that is, three of the four men did. Tommy set his down unfinished with a gasp and a shiver; for, alas! the vaunted wine had been kept too long, and it was even more sour than its predecessor.

     ‘Claire looked from one to the other with a smile of thanks, and then, blushing violently, rose from her seat.

     ‘Yes, child,’ said her father, ‘I will not say in your presence what I have to say to these young men concerning you. Leave us, my dear.’

     He held out both his hands, drew her towards him, and kissed her gravely on the forehead. Then, still holding her ——

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘before Claire goes, you may each of you — yes — her father permits so much — you may hiss her hand.

     Tommy, outraged by the last glass of claret, thought this permission, being of a hollow and Barmecide character, was only a natural ending to a banquet from which he rose more hungry than when he sat down — one lamb cutlet and a pint of vinegar! He had no desire to kiss Claire’s hand; he wanted to kiss her lips; as for a girl’s fingers, anybody might kiss them that pleased. Still, to refuse might, be misunderstood, and if he was expected to enjoy the privilege, he must pretend. He therefore hastened to be the first to lift her hand, and imprinted a kiss with as much fervour as he could. Allen, for his part, blushing as much as the girl herself, bent respectfully over and touched the fingers with his lips, murmuring a few words. Will did not bend more than was necessary, but he looked at Claire while he raised her hand; and he was rewarded by a shy and troubled look, as she lifted her eyes for a moment.

     Then she was gone, and the time was arrived for the speech to be made.

     M. Philipon invited his guests to resume their chairs and presently began :——

     Gentlemen, you know why I have called you here. You will appreciate my desire in proposing that before entering upon the subject, at once so delicate and so important, we should all feast together as good friends and bons camarades.’ Here Olinthus dropped his eyes upon his plate, where yet lingered the bone of the single lamb cutlet. ‘Now, then, that our hearts are glad with old wine’ — nobody smiled: on such a subject a smile might have been misinterpreted — ‘we will approach the subject which is in our minds.’

     ‘It is the English custom,’ he went on, ‘in affairs of the heart, to address one’s self first to the young lady. In France we arrange these things differently, perhaps more simply, perhaps with the effect of producing fewer mistakes. That is nothing; I bow, gentlemen, to the English custom’ — he saluted the three with a comprehensive sweep. ‘You have followed the method adopted by your compatriots. I accept it. And I thank you for the honour you have conferred upon me and upon my respectable family.’

     He paused here, and sat down in order that these words might produce their full and desired effect, and they all three bowed. Then he rose again, and placed his left hand in his bosom, behind his white waistcoat, reserving his right for gesture. But remark that a well-educated Frenchman does not greatly gesticulate. A Frenchman in a rage or a Frenchman carried away by the passion of indignation or contempt may use arms and hands in a fine freedom and frenzy, but not, if you please, a dignified père de famille who is calmly discussing the future of his daughter.

     ‘Gentlemen,’ the speaker continued, ‘it is my duty to inform you, at the outset, that the dot of my Claire is — is — in fact — not worth mentioning.

     Here they all three murmured and spread out their hands and bowed and blushed, and Olinthus made some remark about things being enough for two.

     ‘I know,’ the speaker went on, ‘the wonderful English custom of marrying a wife without any dot at all. Droll manner! It is the husband who finds the dot, in the shape of an insurance on his life. The insular prejudice against economy is nowhere so strongly shown. You refuse to save anything. You insure. You trust to your strong arms. It is a valiant nation indeed, where the fathers give nothing to the bride, and the bridegroom has nothing, and both are rich — in the future. A brave people, truly! Yet, gentlemen, I love the French custom best, and I would that it were in my power to give my Claire the dot which she merits, Then would her husband be truly rich. As for myself, you have probably heard that the events, known to all the world, which drove me from my country, shut me out from the honourable career in which I should have grown rich. I do not accuse my fate. I am one of the martyrs of France. It is sweet and decorous for your country’s sake to be a professeur of French in an institution of demoiselles.’

     Here he paused again, and here Will lifted up his voice and begged him not to let the question of the dot weigh upon his mind at all, because they loved Claire without any thought of money.

     ‘Brave young men!’ said her father. ‘You would, perhaps, insure.’

     Olinthus said that so far as a policy of a thousand might go he should be most happy to meet M. Philipon’s views.

     ‘Gentlemen,’ M. Philipon resumed, ‘the family to which I belong has long been honourably connected with the commerce of my country. My brother still controls the vast establishment formerly directed by my father and my grandfather. It is a magasin de literie, a storehouse of — eh? — of beddery. In beddery my ancestors have been for three generations of the first force. Remark, gentlemen, that I pretent not to illustrious birth and claim no great ancestors. We are of the people — like yourselves.’

     They nodded their heads gravely. They were not themselves in ‘beddery,’ but two were in silk and one was in oil, and there is not much difference what you are in, provided you are deep in it, up to your neck in it; with room to plunge about in it; in it ‘in a large way.’ It is not everybody who can speak of controlling a vast establishment. Words do not convey the same significance to all hearers, nor did the young
men suppose that the vast establishment was but an ordinary shop.

     ‘Mv daughter,’ the Frenchman went on, ‘has received from every one of you, and almost at the same time, which shows that you were each anxious to be first in the field and jealous of the others, an offer which not only confers honour upon her, but also upon yourselves. Because, my friends, it shows that the young men who have been my pupils and friends for so many years are fully sensible to the charms of a girl who is as good as she is beautiful. Her mother was an English-woman. When I think of that fact and remember her many
virtues, I would have my daughter, too, all English. You are young men, I confess, of great worth and of much promise, but, boys, which one of you — I ask — is yet worthy of my child?’

     Upon this Tommy remarked, with a little cough, that he knew it well and had felt it; but he trusted that, with the income which he now hoped to make, having been recently admitted to a partnership in the Concern, not to speak of the insurance he was ready to effect, it would not be long before he
could prove himself worthy of the young lady.

     Allen said that he desired humbly to acknowledge his full sense of his own unworthiness.

     Will, with a little thickness in his speech, most certainly not due to the claret, said that nobody could be worthy of her, but he would do his best for her, if —— And here he stopped.

     Monsieur Philiuon bowed gravely to each.

     ‘It is well spoken,’ he said, ‘and every one according to his heart. So that, gentlemen, you will not be surprised or offended at my reply on behalf of my dear Claire. You all love her, I suppose. Then, gentlemen, prove it by waiting and working for her. I give you three years. You are all about twenty-one years of age. You shall have Claire’s answer — from Claire’s own lips, not from mine — when you are twenty-four. I do not tell you to go away and see her no more for that space of time: I do not ask you to desist from your visits, my dear young friends. I could not think of inflicting so great a pain upon. myself as to see you no more all this time. Whether you go or whether you stay, ask again in three years’ time, if you are then in the same mind. Claire, meantime, will wait. It will be well if during this time you do not — hein? — talk of love — make eyes of sheep. You will very likely forget her. You will go away and forget her. You are young! Youth is the time of hasty loves and quick forgetting.’

     ‘Oh! oh!’ they all protested.

     ‘Again, by the time you are twenty-four you will possibly be more awakened to the blessings of a dot, and may repent of an engagement with a penniless girl.’

     ‘Oh! oh!’ they all protested again.

     ‘You live, gentlemen, in a village where the talk is of the money which has been lost; you work in a city where the talk is all of the money which may be made. The atmosphere everywhere is filled with the perfume of bank-notes, shares, bonds, and coupons. You breathe this air — it is like slow poison to some’ —he looked at Allen — ‘like the keen mountain air, which stimulates, to others’ —he looked at Will — ‘and like their own native air to others’ —he looked at Olinthus, who smiled and bowed, and felt that the highest compliment had been paid him. ‘So, gentlemen, I have finished. In three years Claire shall, if she then pleases, bestow her hand upon one of you. I hope that she will give it to the most worthy among you. Gentlemen,’ — here he became very grave — ‘if
during this period you live well — as young Englishmen do sometimes live — this child will remain to you, and become more and more to you a goddess worthy of all worship and reverence. If you live not well, she will become quite a common woman, a wild flower, of no use except to be plucked and thrown away. Remember that the chevalier sans reproche makes
the truest lover.’

     He finished: he sat down: he rested his head upon his hand, and looked gravely upon his friends. Dixerat: he hadspoken.

     Will Massey made reply, simply.

     He said, ‘We thank you, sir. Perhaps we could expect no more. We are young men with all our work before us. We will respect your confidence in us, and take no advantage.’

     ‘No advantage,’ echoed Allen.

     ‘Three years!’ murmured Olinthus.

     Then they rose, wished their host goodnight, and so out into the twilight of June, where the moon shone on the Forest, turning greys and browns into blacks and whites, and in the soft air the foolish cockchafers were buzzing about and getting into people’s whiskers.

     ‘I say, you fellows,’ said Tommy, when they were well in the road, ‘what do you think of it? Impudence, I call it. Nothing short of impudence. For what is he, after all? A common French master. Without a rap.’

     He leaned against the palings, and waited for a reply.

     ‘What do you say, Allen?’ asked Will.

     ‘Three years!’ Tommy went on grumbling. ‘Three whole years! Why, in three years a man might be in the Bankruptcy Court. Most likely he would if he stayed on in a hole like this, which reeks of bankruptcy. Three years!’

     ‘Why,’ said Allen; ‘three years is not such a very long time.’

     ‘As for me,’ Tommy went on grumbling; ‘I want to go away and live as a gentleman should — in Chambers. But if you two are going to hang on here, and take advantage behind my back——’

     ‘We promised to take no advantage,’ said Will gravely.

     ‘Oh! yes, I know. You won’t fall down on your knees to her. But as for you, Will, you will be in the garden working for her, making her things, and Allen will be bringing her books, and unless I am to be out of it altogether I shall have to stay here too.’

     ‘Well, Tommy,’ said Will, ‘you can’t expect us to go away just because you want to live in Chambers.’

     ‘A gentleman,’ said Tommy, ‘can’t live here. It is not possible.’

     ‘Allen and I are only clerks yet,’ he replied. ‘Time enough, later on, to consider the manners and customs of gentlemen.’

     Just then Allen spoiled what might have been an interesting discussion on the manners and characteristics of the British gentleman by suddenly bursting into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

     ‘What’s the matter, Allen?’ asked Will.

     ‘Did you — did you —’ he gasped, at length — ‘did you see Tommy’s face when he had eaten up his cutlet?’

     Then Will began to laugh, and Tommy grew hot and angry.

     ‘He had had no dinner — on purpose,’ Allen went on, ‘to enable him to eat more supper. Ho! Ho!’

     ‘I don’t see what you are laughing at,’ said Tommy. ‘I call it an imposition to promise a supper and give a man a lamb cutlet and cabbage with vinegar to drink, and to go on all the while like a Tom Fool at a fair about feasting and drinking.’

     But the other two continued to laugh.

     ‘And as to unworthiness,’ Tommy grumbled, ‘we read stuff like that in novels. But, you know, it is downright rubbish. That’s not the way that practical people — people in the City — look at things. A good-looking fellow’ — he held out one foot and his eyes fell complacently along the leg — ‘with a good position and an income’ —he hoped his friends would not be hurt in their feelings by this remark, but he desired to assert the truth, and he certainly was a Junior Partner —‘is fit for any
girl. Sentiment does not go down in the City.’

     ‘Never mind, Tommy,’ said Will. ‘I think, Allen, that we were right in having an explanation. It wasn’t right of us to begin to be jealous and distrustful of each other; and we ought not to have expected M. Philipon to decide for any of us. Why, Jacob served seven years, and seven years more, for Rachel. Can we not serve three for the chance of Claire?’

     ‘And we are twenty-one, Will. And Jacob, if you come to think of it, was seventy-eight when he began to serve for Rachel.’

     ‘Here’s more rubbish,’ said Tommy; but whether he was thinking of Rachel or Claire, of Jacob the Patriarch, or of Will the Youthful, did not appear.