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Updated: May 9, 2025
Madame Bornier and Thérèse dispensing tea and coffee in the dining-room, one hired parlor-maid, and she herself active and busy everywhere. Certain French models were in her head, and memories of her mother's bare little salon in Bruges, with its good talk, and its thinnest of thin refreshments a few cups of weak tea, or glasses of eau sucrée, with a plate of patisserie.
Well, we got to the hotel, which was really more of a pension than an hotel, and Madame Bornier, the elderly woman in deep mourning who was la patronne, was kind and helpful. Her best room had been made ready for the wife of an officer just coming out of hospital, but there would be time to prepare another.
Madame Bornier prepared rooms for us all; but there weren't enough to go round, so Brian and Julian O'Farrell were put together, and Dierdre and I! She, by the way, is in bed at this moment, whether asleep or not I don't know; but if not she is pretending. Her lashes are very long, and she looks prettier than I ever saw her look before. But that may be because I like her better.
A charwoman, indeed, came in the morning for the roughest work, but by ten o'clock she was gone, and Julie, Madame Bornier, and the child remained in undisputed possession. Little, flat-nosed, silent Madame Bornier bought and brought in all they ate.
"Thérèse, darling," said Julie, "will you go up-stairs, please, and fetch me that book from my room that has your little drawings inside it?" The child limped away on her errand. In spite of her lameness she moved with wonderful lightness and swiftness, and she was back again quickly with a calf-bound book in her hand. "Léonie!" said Julie, in a low voice, to Madame Bornier.
She pointed to the drawing-room. "I will come directly. Let me just go and ask Léonie to sit up." Warkworth went into the drawing-room. Julie opened the dining-room door. Madame Bornier was engaged in washing and putting away the china and glass which had been used for Julie's modest refreshments. "Léonie, you won't go to bed? Major Warkworth is here." Madame Bornier did not raise her head.
She passed through the hotel and walked down the Montreux road. The post had already reached the first houses of the village, and the postman, who knew her, willingly gave her the letters. Yes, a packet for Aileen, addressed in an unknown hand to a London address, and forwarded thence. It bore the Denga postmark. And another for herself, readdressed from London by Madame Bornier.
When I left the theatre I found poor Bornier quite transfigured. He thanked me a thousand times, for he thought very highly of this scene, and he dared not thwart Emile Augier. Both Perrin and myself had divined the legitimate emotions of this poor poet, so gentle and so well bred, but a trifle Jesuitical. The play was an immense success.
The Duchess believed that, after her inspection of the house in Heribert Street, Julie had gone on to Bloomsbury to find Madame Bornier. Jacob Delafield was there, not much inclined to talk, even as Julie's champion. And, one by one, Lady Henry's oldest habitués, the "criminals" of the night before, dropped in. Dr. Meredith arrived with a portfolio containing what seemed to be proof-sheets.
The play was ready to be performed, when Bornier asked that his friend Emile Augier might attend the dress rehearsal. When this rehearsal was over Perrin came to me; he had an affectionate and constrained air. As to Bornier, he came straight to me in a decided and quarrelsome manner. Emile Augier followed him. "Well " he said to me.
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