Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 10

Bourron-Marlotte was a short train ride from Paris, but Louis Stevenson nearly missed the stop. His damp cheek had stuck to the window in his sleep, and it was only the abrupt separation of skin from glass when the train halted that shocked him awake. He grabbed his knapsack and leaped onto the station platform, still groggy. It was dinner hour, and the plangent sound of pots rattling in a house nearby made his belly growl. If he were to catch the end of supper at the H?tel Chevillon, he’d have to step lively, but Grez-sur-Loing was only four and a half kilometers away, a snap for a walking man. His legs—unfurled after three weeks in a canoe—rejoiced in the freedom.

Louis climbed down an embankment next to the tracks and found the path through the woods toward Grez. He remembered the trail from a year ago. He and his cousin Bob had followed it to a pub in Bourron, then staggered back to the Chevillon, singing “Flow gently, sweet Afton” and baying at the moon. It had been a perfect summer idyll, an escape from Edinburgh and parents, a wild splash into la vie bohème.

Now, as the darkening violet sky drew down upon the last horizon’s strip of gold, he picked his way over fallen trees and brush until he spotted an open ?eld next to the main road into Grez. It was August, and he had already missed two months of raucous pleasure with the friends who’d arrived earlier. He shouted,  “I’m coming!,” laughed at the hoarse caw of his voice in the evening silence, then broke into a run. In a few minutes, the hotel came into sight, its yellow windows and doors beaming like camp?res in the gloaming. Louis went around to the side of the building and entered the back garden through the carriage doors so he wouldn’t be noticed. As he crept across the stone terrace, he could see familiar  faces  at  the  dining  room  table,  as  well  as  an  equal  number  he  didn’t  know. Madame Chevillon’s niece Ernestine languidly cleared plates. There was Henley with his great, unruly red beard and his hogshead of a chest, shaking with laughter. Charles Baxter, Louis’s old university comrade, who’d clearly had a snoutful, was smiling at a robust young woman with olive skin and wavy hair—Spanish or Italian, perhaps. And Bob, so handsome with his newly drooping mustache, was listening to an interesting-looking woman at the end of the table.

Louis moved a  step  closer.  The woman  appeared to be a  sister of  the other,  for her straight nose and dark hair were similar and her skin the same pale caramel shade. She

was sitting sideways, with her feet propped on a slat of Bob’s chair, and between draws on her cigarette, she leaned near to his ear to speak. Bob’s usual sardonic expression  was nowhere in evidence.

Louis watched for several minutes before stepping toward one of the open French doors. He stopped and turned to the garden. In the dim moonlight, he made his way to a small fountain, where he splashed water on his face and neck and raked wet ?ngers through his hair. Then he knelt, opened his knapsack, and recovered from its bottom a rolled-up black velvet jacket. Shaking the coat, he pulled it on and smoothed it as best he could. From a pocket in its lining, he produced an embroidered felt smoking cap and placed it on his head. Once more Louis’s hand went into the bag, this time coming up with a red sash that he tied around his waist. As a last touch, he tucked his white linen pants into his high boots.

He walked quickly to the house, pausing to consider each of the two doors. Rejecting both, he chose the open window. With the grace of a high jumper, he threw one long leg and then the other over the windowsill and hurtled himself into the dining room.