They came out of the train to a morning of soft sunshine and mellow ocean air. The twin spires of Quimper rose bright among their minarets, its sister rivers gleamed, and the wooded hill beyond glowed bronze. Dubois bustled away from breakfast to see officials. “Don Quixote is a law to himself, but Sancho had better be correct, my friend.”
“Yes, rather,” Reggie mumbled, from a mouth full of honey.” Conciliate the authorities. Liable to want ‘em.”
“Always the optimist, my Quixote.”
“No. No. Only careful. Don’t tell ‘em anything.”
“Name of a name!” Dubois exploded. “That is necessary, that warning. I have so much to tell!”
In an hour, they were driving away from Quimper, up over high moorland of heather and gorse and down again to a golden bay and a fishing village of many boats then on westward, with glimpses of sea on either hand. There was never a tree, only, about the stone walls which divided the waves of bare land into a draught - board of little fields, thick growth of bramble and gorse. Beyond the next village, with its deep inlet of a harbour, the fields merged into moor again, and here and there rose giant stones, in line, in circle, and solitary.
“Brrr,” Dubois rumbled. “Tombs or temples, what you please, it was a gaunt religion which put them up here on this windy end of the earth.”
The car stopped, the driver turned in his seat and pointed, and said he could drive no nearer, but that was the Woman of Sarn. “She is lonely,” Dubois shrugged. “There is no village near, my lad?”
“There is Sarn.” The driver pointed towards the southern sea. “But it is nothing.”
Reggie plodded away through the heather. “Well, this is hopeful, is it not?” Dubois caught him up. “When we find her, what have we found? An idol in the desert. But you will go on to the end, my Quixote. Forward, then.”
They came to the statue, and stood, for its crude head rose high above theirs, looking up at it. “And we have found it, one must avow,” Dubois shrugged. “This is the lady Farquhar drew, devil a doubt. But, saperlipopette, she is worse here than on paper. She is real; she is a brute - all that there is of the beast in woman, emerging from the shapeless earth.”
“Inhuman and horrid human, yes,” Reggie murmured. “Cruelty of life. Yes. He knew about that, the fellow who made her, poor beggar. So did Farquhar.”
“I believe it! But do you ask me to believe little children come and dance round this horror. Ah, no!”
“Oh, no. No. That never happened. Not in our time. Point of interest is, Farquhar thought it fittin’ they should. Very interestin’ point.” Reggie gave another look at the statue, and walked on towards the highest point of the moor.
From that he could see the tiny village of Sarn, huddled in a cove, the line of dark cliff, a long rampart against the Atlantic. Below the cliff top he made out a white house, of some size, which seemed to stand alone.
His face had a dreamy placidity as he came back to Dubois. “Well, well. Not altogether desert,” he murmured. “Something quite residential over there. Let’s wander.”
They struck southward towards the sea. As they approached the white house, they saw that it was of modern pattern - concrete, in simple proportions, with more window than wall. Its site was well chosen, in a little hollow beneath the highest of the cliff, sheltered, yet high enough for a far prospect, taking all the southern sun.
“Of the new ugliness, eh?” said Dubois, whose taste is for elaboration in all things. “All the last fads. It should be a sanatorium, not a house.”
“One of the possibilities, yes.” Reggie went on fast.
They came close above the house. It stood in a large walled enclosure, within which was a trim garden, but most of the space was taken by a paved yard with a roofed platform like a bandstand in the middle. Reggie stood still and surveyed it. Not a creature was to be seen. The acreage of window blazed blank and curtainless.
THE LONG DINNER 825
“The band is not playing.” Dubois made a grimace. ?“It is not the season.”
Reegie did not answer. His eyes puckered to stare at a window within which the sun glinted on something of brass. He made a little inarticulate sound, and walked on, keeping above the house. But they saw no one no sign of life, till they were close to the cliff edge.
Then a cove opened below them in a gleaming stretch of white shell sand, and on the sand children were playing: some of them at a happy - go - lucky game of rounders, some building castles, some tumbling over each other like puppies. On a rock sat, in placid guard over them, a man who had the black pointed beard, the heavy black brows, which Farquhar had sketched on his menu. But these Mephistophelean decorations did not display the leer and sneer of Farquhar’s drawing. The owner watched the children with a grave and kindly attention which seemed to be interested in everyone. He called to them cheerily, and had gay answers. He laughed jovial satisfaction at their laughter.
Reggie took Dubois’s arm and walked him away. “Ah, my poor friend!” Dubois rumbled chuckles. “There we are at last. We arrive. We have the brute goddess, we have the children, we have even the devil of our Farquhar. And behold! he is a genial paternal soul, and all the children love him. Oh, my poor friend!”
“Yes. Funny isn’t it? “Reggie snapped. “Dam’ funny. Did you say the end? Then God forgive us. Which He wouldn’t. He would not!”
Dubois gave him a queer look - something of derision, something of awe, and a good deal of doubt. “When you talk like that” - a shrug, a wave of the hands - “it is outside reason, is it not? An inspiration of faith.”
“Faith that the world is reasonable. That’s all” Reggie snarled. “Come on.”
“And where?”
“Down to this village.”
