This
simple life under low, thatched roofs had a charm. When a door was
opened he could see a fire of logs on the ample hearth shooting
its yellow tongues up the sooty chimney-throat. Soft creole voices
murmured and sang, or jangled their petty domestic discords. Women
in scant petticoats, leggings and moccasins swept snow from the
squat verandas, or fed the pigs in little sties behind the cabins.
Everybody cried cheerily: "Bon jour, Monsieur, comment allez-
vous?" as he went by, always accompanying the verbal salute with a
graceful wave of the hand.
When he walked early in the morning a waft of broiling game and
browning corn scones was abroad. Pots and kettles occupied the
hearths with glowing coals heaped around and under. Shaggy dogs
whined at the doors until the mensal remnants were tossed out to
them in the front yard.
But it was always a glimpse of Alice that must count for
everything in Beverley's reckonings, albeit he would have
strenuously denied it. True he went to Roussillon place almost
every day, it being a fixed part of his well ordered habit, and
had a talk with her. Sometimes, when Dame Roussillon was very busy
and so quite off her guard, they read together in a novel, or in
certain parts of the odd volume of Montaigne. This was done more
for the sweetness of disobedience than to enjoy the already
familiar pages.
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