Free Randalls Round by Eleanor Scott Page A

perhaps repose yourself better there. You will permit?”
    “With the greatest pleasure,” said Maddox fervently. “You are very kind to me, father.”
    The little man patted his hand.
    “It is that I like you very much, monsieur,” he said naively. “And – I am not altogether a fool. We of Brittany see much that we do not look at, and hear much to which we do not listen.”
    “Father,” said Maddox awkwardly, “I want to ask you something. When I began to read out that paper – you remember? -” (The curé nodded uneasily) – “you said that it was an invocation – that it summoned celui-là. Did you mean – the devil?”
    “No, my son. I-I cannot tell you; It has no name with us of Kerouac. We say, simply, celui-là. You will not, if you please, speak of it again. It is not good to speak of it.”
    “No, I can imagine it isn’t,” said Maddox; and the conversation dropped. Maddox certainly slept better that night. In the morning he told himself that this might be for more than one reason. The bed might be more comfortable (but he knew it was not that); or he might have overtired himself the day before, or the little curé’s offerings might somehow have given him a kind of impression of safety and protection without really having the least power to guard him. His feeling of security increased when the priest announced:
    “Tomorrow we have another guest, monsieur. M. Foster has done me the honour to accept my invitation for a visit.”
    “ Foster? Really? Excellent,” cried Maddox. He felt that the doctor stood for science and civilisation and sanity and all the comfortable reassuring things of life that were so utterly lacking in the desolate wildness of Kerouac. Sure enough Foster came next day, and was just as stolid and ugly and completely reassuring as Maddox had hoped he would be and half feared he would not. He seemed to be ignoring his friend’s physical condition at first, but on the day after his arrival he got to business.
    “Maddox, I don’t know how you expect to get fit again,” he said. “You came here for the air as much as anything. I said you were to take moderate exercise. Yet here you stick moping about this poky little house.” (Needless to say Father Vetier was not present when this conversation took place.) “What’s wrong with the place, eh? I’d have said it was excellent walking country.”
    Maddox flushed a little. “It’s a bit boring, walking alone,” he said evasively, well aware that “boring” was not the right word.
    “Perhaps… Yes. But you can get out a bit more now I’m here to come along. You might take me out this afternoon; the cure’s going off to some kind of conference.”
    Maddox wondered uneasily how much Foster knew. Had he come by chance, off his own bat? Or had Father Vetier been worried about his first guest and sent for him? If that were so, what exactly had the priest said? He thought he’d soon get that out of Foster.
    They walked along the beach, farther than Maddox had yet been. He had avoided the shore of late, and he had not felt up to going so far when he first came to Kerouac; yet, though he knew he had never been on that particular reach of shore, the place seemed familiar. It is, of course, a common thing to feel that one knows a place which one is now seeing for the first time; but the impression was so extremely vivid that Maddox couldn’t help remarking on it to his companion.
    “Rot, my dear man,” said Foster bluntly. “You haven’t been in Brittany before, and you say you’ve never been as far as this. It’s not such uncommon country, you know; it’s like lots of other places.”
    “I know,” said Maddox; but he was not satisfied. He was poor company for the rest of the walk, and was very silent on the way home. No amount of chaff from Foster could rouse him, and at last the doctor abandoned the effort. The men reached the presbytery in silence.
    The next day was close, threatening rain, though the downpour