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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Guest of Quesnay, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Guest of Quesnay
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Posting Date: June 5, 2012 [EBook #5756]
+Release Date: May, 2004
+First Posted: August 28, 2002
+Last Updated: December 11, 2004
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GUEST OF QUESNAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GUEST OF QUESNAY
+
+BY BOOTH TARKINGTON
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+NEW YORK 1915
+
+TO OVID BUTLER JAMESON
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Several pairs of brighter eyes followed my companion ...... Frontispiece
+
+"I haven't had my life. It's gone!"
+
+"You and Miss Ward are old and dear friends, aren't you?"
+
+"Embrasse moi, Larrabi! Embrasse moi!" she cried
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+There are old Parisians who will tell you pompously that the
+boulevards, like the political cafes, have ceased to exist, but this
+means only that the boulevards no longer gossip of Louis Napoleon, the
+Return of the Bourbons, or of General Boulanger, for these highways are
+always too busily stirring with present movements not to be forgetful
+of their yesterdays. In the shade of the buildings and awnings, the
+loungers, the lookers-on in Paris, the audience of the boulevard, sit
+at little tables, sipping coffee from long glasses, drinking absinthe
+or bright-coloured sirops, and gazing over the heads of throngs afoot
+at others borne along through the sunshine of the street in carriages,
+in cabs, in glittering automobiles, or high on the tops of omnibuses.
+
+From all the continents the multitudes come to join in that procession:
+Americans, tagged with race-cards and intending hilarious disturbances;
+puzzled Americans, worn with guide-book plodding; Chinese princes in
+silk; queer Antillean dandies of swarthy origin and fortune; ruddy
+English, thinking of nothing; pallid English, with upper teeth bared
+and eyes hungrily searching for sign-boards of tea-rooms;
+over-Europeanised Japanese, unpleasantly immaculate; burnoosed sheiks
+from the desert, and red-fezzed Semitic peddlers; Italian nobles in
+English tweeds; Soudanese negroes swaggering in frock coats; slim
+Spaniards, squat Turks, travellers, idlers, exiles, fugitives,
+sportsmen--all the tribes and kinds of men are tributary here to the
+Parisian stream which, on a fair day in spring, already overflows the
+banks with its own much-mingled waters. Soberly clad burgesses,
+bearded, amiable, and in no fatal hurry; well-kept men of the world
+swirling by in miraculous limousines; legless cripples flopping on
+hands and leather pads; thin-whiskered students in velveteen;
+walrus-moustached veterans in broadcloth; keen-faced old prelates;
+shabby young priests; cavalrymen in casque and cuirass; workingmen
+turned horse and harnessed to carts; sidewalk jesters, itinerant
+vendors of questionable wares; shady loafers dressed to resemble
+gold-showering America; motor-cyclists in leather; hairy musicians,
+blue gendarmes, baggy red zouaves; purple-faced, glazed-hatted,
+scarlet-waistcoated, cigarette-smoking cabmen, calling one another
+"onions," "camels," and names even more terrible. Women prevalent over
+all the concourse; fair women, dark women, pretty women, gilded women,
+haughty women, indifferent women, friendly women, merry women. Fine
+women in fine clothes; rich women in fine clothes; poor women in fine
+clothes. Worldly old women, reclining befurred in electric
+landaulettes; wordy old women hoydenishly trundling carts full of
+flowers. Wonderful automobile women quick-glimpsed, in multiple veils
+of white and brown and sea-green. Women in rags and tags, and women
+draped, coifed, and befrilled in the delirium of maddened
+poet-milliners and the hasheesh dreams of ladies' tailors.
+
+About the procession, as it moves interminably along the boulevard, a
+blue haze of fine dust and burnt gasoline rises into the sunshine like
+the haze over the passages to an amphitheatre toward which a crowd is
+trampling; and through this the multitudes seem to go as actors passing
+to their cues. Your place at one of the little tables upon the sidewalk
+is that of a wayside spectator: and as the performers go by, in some
+measure acting or looking their parts already, as if in preparation,
+you guess the roles they play, and name them comedians, tragedians,
+buffoons, saints, beauties, sots, knaves, gladiators, acrobats,
+dancers; for all of these are there, and you distinguish the principles
+from the unnumbered supernumeraries pressing forward to the entrances.
+So, if you sit at the little tables often enough--that is, if you
+become an amateur boulevardier--you begin to recognise the transient
+stars of the pageant, those to whom the boulevard allows a dubious and
+fugitive role of celebrity, and whom it greets with a slight flutter:
+the turning of heads, a murmur of comment, and the incredulous
+boulevard smile, which seems to say: "You see? Madame and monsieur
+passing there--evidently they think we still believe in them!"
+
+This flutter heralded and followed the passing of a white touring-car
+with the procession one afternoon, just before the Grand Prix, though
+it needed no boulevard celebrity to make the man who lolled in the
+tonneau conspicuous. Simply for THAT, notoriety was superfluous; so
+were the remarkable size and power of his car; so was the elaborate
+touring-costume of flannels and pongee he wore; so was even the
+enamelled presence of the dancer who sat beside him. His face would
+have done it without accessories.
+
+My old friend, George Ward, and I had met for our aperitif at the
+Terrace Larue, by the Madeleine, when the white automobile came snaking
+its way craftily through the traffic. Turning in to pass a victoria on
+the wrong side, it was forced down to a snail's pace near the curb and
+not far from our table, where it paused, checked by a blockade at the
+next corner. I heard Ward utter a half-suppressed guttural of what I
+took to be amazement, and I did not wonder.
+
+The face of the man in the tonneau detached him to the spectator's gaze
+and singled him out of the concourse with an effect almost ludicrous in
+its incongruity. The hair was dark, lustrous and thick, the forehead
+broad and finely modelled, and certain other ruinous vestiges of youth
+and good looks remained; but whatever the features might once have
+shown of honour, worth, or kindly semblance had disappeared beyond all
+tracing in a blurred distortion. The lids of one eye were discoloured
+and swollen almost together; other traces of a recent battering were
+not lacking, nor was cosmetic evidence of a heroic struggle, on the
+part of some valet of infinite pains, to efface them. The nose lost
+outline in the discolorations of the puffed cheeks; the chin, tufted
+with a small imperial, trembled beneath a sagging, gray lip. And that
+this bruised and dissipated mask should suffer the final grotesque
+touch, it was decorated with the moustache of a coquettish marquis, the
+ends waxed and exquisitely elevated.
+
+The figure was fat, but loose and sprawling, seemingly without the will
+to hold itself together; in truth the man appeared to be almost in a
+semi-stupor, and, contrasted with this powdered Silenus, even the woman
+beside him gained something of human dignity. At least, she was
+thoroughly alive, bold, predatory, and in spite of the gross
+embon-point that threatened her, still savagely graceful. A purple
+veil, dotted with gold, floated about her hat, from which green-dyed
+ostrich plumes cascaded down across a cheek enamelled dead white. Her
+hair was plastered in blue-black waves, parted low on the forehead; her
+lips were splashed a startling carmine, the eyelids painted blue; and,
+from between lashes gummed into little spikes of blacking, she favoured
+her companion with a glance of carelessly simulated tenderness,--a look
+all too vividly suggesting the ghastly calculations of a cook wheedling
+a chicken nearer the kitchen door. But I felt no great pity for the
+victim.
+
+"Who is it?" I asked, staring at the man in the automobile and not
+turning toward Ward.
+
+"That is Mariana--'la bella Mariana la Mursiana,'" George answered;
+"--one of those women who come to Paris from the tropics to form
+themselves on the legend of the one great famous and infamous Spanish
+dancer who died a long while ago. Mariana did very well for a time.
+I've heard that the revolutionary societies intend striking medals in
+her honour: she's done worse things to royalty than all the anarchists
+in Europe! But her great days are over: she's getting old; that type
+goes to pieces quickly, once it begins to slump, and it won't be long
+before she'll be horribly fat, though she's still a graceful dancer.
+She danced at the Folie Rouge last week."
+
+"Thank you, George," I said gratefully. "I hope you'll point out the
+Louvre and the Eiffel Tower to me some day. I didn't mean Mariana."
+
+"What did you mean?"
+
+What I had meant was so obvious that I turned to my friend in surprise.
+He was nervously tapping his chin with the handle of his cane and
+staring at the white automobile with very grim interest.
+
+"I meant the man with her," I said.
+
+"Oh!" He laughed sourly. "That carrion?"
+
+"You seem to be an acquaintance."
+
+"Everybody on the boulevard knows who he is," said Ward curtly, paused,
+and laughed again with very little mirth. "So do you," he continued;
+"and as for my acquaintance with him--yes, I had once the distinction
+of being his rival in a small way, a way so small, in fact, that it
+ended in his becoming a connection of mine by marriage. He's Larrabee
+Harman."
+
+That was a name somewhat familiar to readers of American newspapers
+even before its bearer was fairly out of college. The publicity it then
+attained (partly due to young Harman's conspicuous wealth) attached to
+some youthful exploits not without a certain wild humour. But frolic
+degenerated into brawl and debauch: what had been scrapes for the boy
+became scandals for the man; and he gathered a more and more unsavoury
+reputation until its like was not to be found outside a penitentiary.
+The crux of his career in his own country was reached during a midnight
+quarrel in Chicago when he shot a negro gambler. After that, the negro
+having recovered and the matter being somehow arranged so that the
+prosecution was dropped, Harman's wife left him, and the papers
+recorded her application for a divorce. She was George Ward's second
+cousin, the daughter of a Baltimore clergyman; a belle in a season and
+town of belles, and a delightful, headstrong creature, from all
+accounts. She had made a runaway match of it with Harman three years
+before, their affair having been earnestly opposed by all her
+relatives--especially by poor George, who came over to Paris just after
+the wedding in a miserable frame of mind.
+
+The Chicago exploit was by no means the end of Harman's notoriety.
+Evading an effort (on the part of an aunt, I believe) to get him locked
+up safely in a "sanitarium," he began a trip round the world with an
+orgy which continued from San Francisco to Bangkok, where, in the
+company of some congenial fellow travellers, he interfered in a native
+ceremonial with the result that one of his companions was drowned.
+Proceeding, he was reported to be in serious trouble at Constantinople,
+the result of an inquisitiveness little appreciated by Orientals. The
+State Department, bestirring itself, saved him from a very real peril,
+and he continued his journey. In Rome he was rescued with difficulty
+from a street mob that unreasonably refused to accept intoxication as
+an excuse for his riding down a child on his way to the hunt. Later,
+during the winter just past, we had been hearing from Monte Carlo of
+his disastrous plunges at that most imbecile of all games, roulette.
+
+Every event, no matter how trifling, in this man's pitiful career had
+been recorded in the American newspapers with an elaboration which, for
+my part, I found infuriatingly tiresome. I have lived in Paris so long
+that I am afraid to go home: I have too little to show for my years of
+pottering with paint and canvas, and I have grown timid about all the
+changes that have crept in at home. I do not know the "new men," I do
+not know how they would use me, and fear they might make no place for
+me; and so I fit myself more closely into the little grooves I have
+worn for myself, and resign myself to stay. But I am no "expatriate." I
+know there is a feeling at home against us who remain over here to do
+our work, but in most instances it is a prejudice which springs from a
+misunderstanding. I think the quality of patriotism in those of us who
+"didn't go home in time" is almost pathetically deep and real, and,
+like many another oldish fellow in my position, I try to keep as close
+to things at home as I can. All of my old friends gradually ceased to
+write to me, but I still take three home newspapers, trying to follow
+the people I knew and the things that happen; and the ubiquity of so
+worthless a creature as Larrabee Harman in the columns I dredged for
+real news had long been a point of irritation to this present exile.
+Not only that: he had usurped space in the Continental papers, and of
+late my favourite Parisian journal had served him to me with my morning
+coffee, only hinting his name, but offering him with that gracious
+satire characteristic of the Gallic journalist writing of anything
+American. And so this grotesque wreck of a man was well known to the
+boulevard--one of its sights. That was to be perceived by the flutter
+he caused, by the turning of heads in his direction, and the low
+laughter of the people at the little tables. Three or four in the rear
+ranks had risen to their feet to get a better look at him and his
+companion.
+
+Some one behind us chuckled aloud. "They say Mariana beats him."
+
+"Evidently!"
+
+The dancer was aware of the flutter, and called Harman's attention to
+it with a touch upon his arm and a laugh and a nod of her violent
+plumage.
+
+At that he seemed to rouse himself somewhat: his head rolled heavily
+over upon his shoulder, the lids lifted a little from the red-shot
+eyes, showing a strange pride when his gaze fell upon the many staring
+faces.
+
+Then, as the procession moved again and the white automobile with it,
+the sottish mouth widened in a smile of dull and cynical contempt: the
+look of a half-poisoned Augustan borne down through the crowds from the
+Palatine after supping with Caligula.
+
+Ward pulled my sleeve.
+
+"Come," he said, "let us go over to the Luxembourg gardens where the
+air is cleaner."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Ward is a portrait-painter, and in the matter of vogue there seem to be
+no pinnacles left for him to surmount. I think he has painted most of
+the very rich women of fashion who have come to Paris of late years,
+and he has become so prosperous, has such a polite celebrity, and his
+opinions upon art are so conclusively quoted, that the friendship of
+some of us who started with him has been dangerously strained.
+
+He lives a well-ordered life; he has always led that kind of life. Even
+in his student days when I first knew him, I do not remember an
+occasion upon which the principal of a New England high-school would
+have criticised his conduct. And yet I never heard anyone call him a
+prig; and, so far as I know, no one was ever so stupid as to think him
+one. He was a quiet, good-looking, well-dressed boy, and he matured
+into a somewhat reserved, well-poised man, of impressive distinction in
+appearance and manner. He has always been well tended and cared for by
+women; in his student days his mother lived with him; his sister, Miss
+Elizabeth, looks after him now. She came with him when he returned to
+Paris after his disappointment in the unfortunate Harman affair, and
+she took charge of all his business--as well as his
+social--arrangements (she has been accused of a theory that the two
+things may be happily combined), making him lease a house in an
+expensively modish quarter near the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. Miss
+Elizabeth is an instinctively fashionable woman, practical withal, and
+to her mind success should be not only respectable but "smart." She
+does not speak of the "right bank" and the "left bank" of the Seine;
+she calls them the "right bank" and the "wrong bank." And yet, though
+she removed George (her word is "rescued") from many of his old
+associations with Montparnasse, she warmly encouraged my friendship
+with him--yea, in spite of my living so deep in the wrong bank that the
+first time he brought her to my studio, she declared she hadn't seen
+anything so like Bring-the-child-to-the-old-hag's-cellar-at-midnight
+since her childhood. She is a handsome woman, large, and of a fine,
+high colour; her manner is gaily dictatorial, and she and I got along
+very well together.
+
+Probably she appreciated my going to some pains with the clothes I wore
+when I went to their house. My visits there were infrequent, not
+because I had any fear of wearing out a welcome, but on account of Miss
+Elizabeth's "day," when I could see nothing of George for the crowd of
+lionising women and time-wasters about him. Her "day" was a dread of
+mine; I could seldom remember which day it was, and when I did she had
+a way of shifting it so that I was fatally sure to run into it--to my
+misery, for, beginning with those primordial indignities suffered in
+youth, when I was scrubbed with a handkerchief outside the parlour door
+as a preliminary to polite usages, my childhood's, manhood's prayer has
+been: From all such days, Good Lord, deliver me!
+
+It was George's habit to come much oftener to see me. He always really
+liked the sort of society his sister had brought about him; but now and
+then there were intervals when it wore on him a little, I think.
+Sometimes he came for me in his automobile and we would make a mild
+excursion to breakfast in the country; and that is what happened one
+morning about three weeks after the day when we had sought pure air in
+the Luxembourg gardens.
+
+We drove out through the Bois and by Suresnes, striking into a
+roundabout road to Versailles beyond St. Cloud. It was June, a dustless
+and balmy noon, the air thinly gilded by a faint haze, and I know few
+things pleasanter than that road on a fair day of the early summer and
+no sweeter way to course it than in an open car; though I must not be
+giving myself out for a "motorist"--I have not even the right cap. I am
+usually nervous in big machines, too; but Ward has never caught the
+speed mania and holds a strange power over his chauffeur; so we rolled
+along peacefully, not madly, and smoked (like the car) in hasteless
+content.
+
+"After all," said George, with a placid wave of the hand, "I sometimes
+wish that the landscape had called me. You outdoor men have all the
+health and pleasure of living in the open, and as for the work--oh! you
+fellows think you work, but you don't know what it means."
+
+"No?" I said, and smiled as I always meanly do when George "talks art."
+He was silent for a few moments and then said irritably,
+
+"Well, at least you can't deny that the academic crowd can DRAW!"
+
+Never having denied it, though he had challenged me in the same way
+perhaps a thousand times, I refused to deny it now; whereupon he
+returned to his theme: "Landscape is about as simple as a stage fight;
+two up, two down, cross and repeat. Take that ahead of us. Could
+anything be simpler to paint?"
+
+He indicated the white road running before us between open fields to a
+curve, where it descended to pass beneath an old stone culvert. Beyond,
+stood a thick grove with a clear sky flickering among the branches. An
+old peasant woman was pushing a heavy cart round the curve, a scarlet
+handkerchief knotted about her head.
+
+"You think it's easy?" I asked.
+
+"Easy! Two hours ought to do it as well as it could be done--at least,
+the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the
+handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash--there's your road." He
+paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of
+a barn. "Swish, swash--there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit!
+Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your
+dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt
+the edges of your foliage in with a blow-pipe. Throw a cup of tea over
+the whole, and there's your haze. Call it 'The Golden Road,' or 'The
+Bath of Sunlight,' or 'Quiet Noon.' Then you'll probably get a
+criticism beginning, 'Few indeed have more intangibly detained upon
+canvas so poetic a quality of sentiment as this sterling landscapist,
+who in Number 136 has most ethereally expressed the profound silence of
+evening on an English moor. The solemn hush, the brooding quiet, the
+homeward ploughman--'"
+
+He was interrupted by an outrageous uproar, the grisly scream of a
+siren and the cannonade of a powerful exhaust, as a great white
+touring-car swung round us from behind at a speed that sickened me to
+see, and, snorting thunder, passed us "as if we had been standing
+still."
+
+It hurtled like a comet down the curve and we were instantly choking in
+its swirling tail of dust.
+
+"Seventy miles an hour!" gasped George, swabbing at his eyes. "Those
+are the fellows that get into the pa--Oh, Lord! THERE they go!"
+
+Swinging out to pass us and then sweeping in upon the reverse curve to
+clear the narrow arch of the culvert were too much for the white car;
+and through the dust we saw it rock dangerously. In the middle of the
+road, ten feet from the culvert, the old woman struggled frantically to
+get her cart out of the way. The howl of the siren frightened her
+perhaps, for she lost her head and went to the wrong side. Then the
+shriek of the machine drowned the human scream as the automobile struck.
+
+The shock of contact was muffled. But the mass of machinery hoisted
+itself in the air as if it had a life of its own and had been stung
+into sudden madness. It was horrible to see, and so grotesque that a
+long-forgotten memory of my boyhood leaped instantaneously into my
+mind, a recollection of the evolutions performed by a Newfoundland dog
+that rooted under a board walk and found a hive of wild bees.
+
+The great machine left the road for the fields on the right, reared,
+fell, leaped against the stone side of the culvert, apparently trying
+to climb it, stood straight on end, whirled backward in a
+half-somersault, crashed over on its side, flashed with flame and
+explosion, and lay hidden under a cloud of dust and smoke.
+
+Ward's driver slammed down his accelerator, sent us spinning round the
+curve, and the next moment, throwing on his brakes, halted sharply at
+the culvert.
+
+The fabric of the road was so torn and distorted one might have thought
+a steam dredge had begun work there, but the fragments of wreckage were
+oddly isolated and inconspicuous. The peasant's cart, tossed into a
+clump of weeds, rested on its side, the spokes of a rimless wheel
+slowly revolving on the hub uppermost. Some tools were strewn in a
+semi-circular trail in the dust; a pair of smashed goggles crunched
+beneath my foot as I sprang out of Ward's car, and a big brass lamp had
+fallen in the middle of the road, crumpled like waste paper. Beside it
+lay a gold rouge box.
+
+The old woman had somehow saved herself--or perhaps her saint had
+helped her--for she was sitting in the grass by the roadside, wailing
+hysterically and quite unhurt. The body of a man lay in a heap beneath
+the stone archway, and from his clothes I guessed that he had been the
+driver of the white car. I say "had been" because there were reasons
+for needing no second glance to comprehend that the man was dead.
+Nevertheless, I knelt beside him and placed my hand upon his breast to
+see if his heart still beat. Afterward I concluded that I did this
+because I had seen it done upon the stage, or had read of it in
+stories; and even at the time I realised that it was a silly thing for
+me to be doing.
+
+Ward, meanwhile, proved more practical. He was dragging a woman out of
+the suffocating smoke and dust that shrouded the wreck, and after a
+moment I went to help him carry her into the fresh air, where George
+put his coat under her head. Her hat had been forced forward over her
+face and held there by the twisting of a system of veils she wore; and
+we had some difficulty in unravelling this; but she was very much
+alive, as a series of muffled imprecations testified, leading us to
+conclude that her sufferings were more profoundly of rage than of pain.
+Finally she pushed our hands angrily aside and completed the
+untanglement herself, revealing the scratched and smeared face of
+Mariana, the dancer.
+
+"Cornichon! Chameau! Fond du bain!" she gasped, tears of anger starting
+from her eyes. She tried to rise before we could help her, but dropped
+back with a scream.
+
+"Oh, the pain!" she cried. "That imbecile! If he has let me break my
+leg! A pretty dancer I should be! I hope he is killed."
+
+One of the singularities of motoring on the main-travelled roads near
+Paris is the prevalence of cars containing physicians and surgeons.
+Whether it be testimony to the opportunism, to the sporting
+proclivities, or to the prosperity of gentlemen of those professions, I
+do not know, but it is a fact that I have never heard of an accident
+(and in the season there is an accident every day) on one of these
+roads when a doctor in an automobile was not almost immediately a
+chance arrival, and fortunately our case offered no exception to this
+rule. Another automobile had already come up and the occupants were
+hastily alighting. Ward shouted to the foremost to go for a doctor.
+
+"I am a doctor," the man answered, advancing and kneeling quickly by
+the dancer. "And you--you may be of help yonder."
+
+We turned toward the ruined car where Ward's driver was shouting for us.
+
+"What is it?" called Ward as we ran toward him.
+
+"Monsieur," he replied, "there is some one under the tonneau here!"
+
+The smoke had cleared a little, though a rivulet of burning gasoline
+ran from the wreck to a pool of flame it was feeding in the road. The
+front cushions and woodwork had caught fire and a couple of labourers,
+panting with the run across the fields, were vainly belabouring the
+flames with brushwood. From beneath the overturned tonneau projected
+the lower part of a man's leg, clad in a brown puttee and a russet
+shoe. Ward's driver had brought his tools; had jacked up the car as
+high as possible; but was still unable to release the imprisoned body.
+
+"I have seized that foot and pulled with all my strength," he said,
+"and I cannot make him move one centimetre. It is necessary that as
+many people as possible lay hold of the car on the side away from the
+fire and all lift together. Yes," he added, "and very soon!"
+
+Some carters had come from the road and one of them lay full length on
+the ground peering beneath the wreck. "It is the head of monsieur,"
+explained this one; "it is the head of monsieur which is fastened under
+there."
+
+"Eh, but you are wiser than Clemenceau!" said the chauffeur. "Get up,
+my ancient, and you there, with the brushwood, let the fire go for a
+moment and help, when I say the word. And you, monsieur," he turned to
+Ward, "if you please, will you pull with me upon the ankle here at the
+right moment?"
+
+The carters, the labourers, the men from the other automobile, and I
+laid hold of the car together.
+
+"Now, then, messieurs, LIFT!"
+
+Stifled with the gasoline smoke, we obeyed. One or two hands were
+scorched and our eyes smarted blindingly, but we gave a mighty heave,
+and felt the car rising.
+
+"Well done!" cried the chauffeur. "Well done! But a little more! The
+smallest fraction--HA! It is finished, messieurs!"
+
+We staggered back, coughing and wiping our eyes. For a minute or two I
+could not see at all, and was busy with a handkerchief.
+
+Ward laid his hand on my shoulder.
+
+"Do you know who it is?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, of course," I answered.
+
+When I could see again, I found that I was looking almost straight down
+into the upturned face of Larrabee Harman, and I cannot better express
+what this man had come to be, and what the degradation of his life had
+written upon him, than by saying that the dreadful thing I looked upon
+now was no more horrible a sight than the face I had seen, fresh from
+the valet and smiling in ugly pride at the starers, as he passed the
+terrace of Larue on the day before the Grand Prix.
+
+We helped to carry him to the doctor's car, and to lift the dancer into
+Ward's, and to get both of them out again at the hospital at
+Versailles, where they were taken. Then, with no need to ask each other
+if we should abandon our plan to breakfast in the country, we turned
+toward Paris, and rolled along almost to the barriers in silence.
+
+"Did it seem to you," said George finally, "that a man so frightfully
+injured could have any chance of getting well?"
+
+"No," I answered. "I thought he was dying as we carried him into the
+hospital."
+
+"So did I. The top of his head seemed all crushed in--Whew!" He broke
+off, shivering, and wiped his brow. After a pause he added
+thoughtfully, "It will be a great thing for Louise."
+
+Louise was the name of his second cousin, the girl who had done battle
+with all her family and then run away from them to be Larrabee Harman's
+wife. Remembering the stir that her application for divorce had made, I
+did not understand how Harman's death could benefit her, unless George
+had some reason to believe that he had made a will in her favour.
+However, the remark had been made more to himself than to me and I did
+not respond.
+
+The morning papers flared once more with the name of Larrabee Harman,
+and we read that there was "no hope of his surviving." Ironic phrase!
+There was not a soul on earth that day who could have hoped for his
+recovery, or who--for his sake--cared two straws whether he lived or
+died. And the dancer had been right; one of her legs was badly broken:
+she would never dance again.
+
+Evening papers reported that Harman was "lingering." He was lingering
+the next day. He was lingering the next week, and the end of a month
+saw him still "lingering." Then I went down to Capri, where--for he had
+been after all the merest episode to me--I was pleased to forget all
+about him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+A great many people keep their friends in mind by writing to them, but
+more do not; and Ward and I belong to the majority. After my departure
+from Paris I had but one missive from him, a short note, written at the
+request of his sister, asking me to be on the lookout for Italian
+earrings, to add to her collection of old jewels. So, from time to
+time, I sent her what I could find about Capri or in Naples, and she
+responded with neat little letters of acknowledgment.
+
+Two years I stayed on Capri, eating the lotus which grows on that happy
+island, and painting very little--only enough, indeed, to be remembered
+at the Salon and not so much as knowing how kindly or unkindly they
+hung my pictures there. But even on Capri, people sometimes hear the
+call of Paris and wish to be in that unending movement: to hear the
+multitudinous rumble, to watch the procession from a cafe terrace and
+to dine at Foyot's. So there came at last a fine day when I, knowing
+that the horse-chestnuts were in bloom along the Champs Elysees, threw
+my rope-soled shoes to a beggar, packed a rusty trunk, and was off for
+the banks of the Seine.
+
+My arrival--just the drive from the Gare de Lyon to my studio--was like
+the shock of surf on a bather's breast.
+
+The stir and life, the cheerful energy of the streets, put stir and
+life and cheerful energy into me. I felt the itch to work again, to be
+at it, at it in earnest--to lose no hour of daylight, and to paint
+better than I had painted!
+
+Paris having given me this impetus, I dared not tempt her further, nor
+allow the edge of my eagerness time to blunt; therefore, at the end of
+a fortnight, I went over into Normandy and deposited that rusty trunk
+of mine in a corner of the summer pavilion in the courtyard of Madame
+Brossard's inn, Les Trois Pigeons, in a woodland neighborhood that is
+there. Here I had painted through a prolific summer of my youth, and I
+was glad to find--as I had hoped--nothing changed; for the place was
+dear to me. Madame Brossard (dark, thin, demure as of yore, a
+fine-looking woman with a fine manner and much the flavour of old
+Norman portraits) gave me a pleasant welcome, remembering me readily
+but without surprise, while Amedee, the antique servitor, cackled over
+me and was as proud of my advent as if I had been a new egg and he had
+laid me. The simile is grotesque; but Amedee is the most henlike waiter
+in France.
+
+He is a white-haired, fat old fellow, always well-shaved; as neat as a
+billiard-ball. In the daytime, when he is partly porter, he wears a
+black tie, a gray waistcoat broadly striped with scarlet, and, from
+waist to feet, a white apron like a skirt, and so competently
+encircling that his trousers are of mere conventionality and no real
+necessity; but after six o'clock (becoming altogether a maitre d'hotel)
+he is clad as any other formal gentleman. At all times he wears a fresh
+table-cloth over his arm, keeping an exaggerated pile of them ready at
+hand on a ledge in one of the little bowers of the courtyard, so that
+he may never be shamed by getting caught without one.
+
+His conception of life is that all worthy persons were created as
+receptacles for food and drink; and five minutes after my arrival he
+had me seated (in spite of some meek protests) in a wicker chair with a
+pitcher of the right Three Pigeons cider on the table before me, while
+he subtly dictated what manner of dinner I should eat. For this
+interval Amedee's exuberance was sobered and his badinage dismissed as
+being mere garniture, the questions now before us concerning grave and
+inward matters. His suggestions were deferential but insistent; his
+manner was that of a prime minister who goes through the form of
+convincing the sovereign. He greeted each of his own decisions with a
+very loud "Bien!" as if startled by the brilliancy of my selections,
+and, the menu being concluded, exploded a whole volley of "Biens" and
+set off violently to instruct old Gaston, the cook.
+
+That is Amedee's way; he always starts violently for anywhere he means
+to go. He is a little lame and his progress more or less sidelong, but
+if you call him, or new guests arrive at the inn, or he receives an
+order from Madame Brossard, he gives the effect of running by a sudden
+movement of the whole body like that of a man ABOUT to run, and moves
+off using the gestures of a man who IS running; after which he proceeds
+to his destination at an exquisite leisure. Remembering this old habit
+of his, it was with joy that I noted his headlong departure. Some ten
+feet of his progress accomplished, he halted (for no purpose but to
+scratch his head the more luxuriously); next, strayed from the path to
+contemplate a rose-bush, and, selecting a leaf with careful
+deliberation, placed it in his mouth and continued meditatively upon
+his way to the kitchen.
+
+I chuckled within me; it was good to be back at Madame Brossard's.
+
+The courtyard was more a garden; bright with rows of flowers in formal
+little beds and blossoming up from big green tubs, from red jars, and
+also from two brightly painted wheel-barrows. A long arbour offered a
+shelter of vines for those who might choose to dine, breakfast, or
+lounge beneath, and, here and there among the shrubberies, you might
+come upon a latticed bower, thatched with straw. My own pavilion (half
+bedroom, half studio) was set in the midst of all and had a small porch
+of its own with a rich curtain of climbing honeysuckle for a screen
+from the rest of the courtyard.
+
+The inn itself is gray with age, the roof sagging pleasantly here and
+there; and an old wooden gallery runs the length of each wing, the
+guest-chambers of the upper story opening upon it like the deck-rooms
+of a steamer, with boxes of tulips and hyacinths along the gallery
+railings and window ledges for the gayest of border-lines.
+
+Beyond the great open archway, which gives entrance to the courtyard,
+lies the quiet country road; passing this, my eyes followed the wide
+sweep of poppy-sprinkled fields to a line of low green hills; and there
+was the edge of the forest sheltering those woodland interiors which I
+had long ago tried to paint, and where I should be at work to-morrow.
+
+In the course of time, and well within the bright twilight, Amedee
+spread the crisp white cloth and served me at a table on my pavilion
+porch. He feigned anxiety lest I should find certain dishes (those
+which he knew were most delectable) not to my taste, but was obviously
+so distended with fatuous pride over the whole meal that it became a
+temptation to denounce at least some trifling sauce or garnishment;
+nevertheless, so much mendacity proved beyond me and I spared him and
+my own conscience. This puffed-uppedness of his was to be observed only
+in his expression of manner, for during the consumption of food it was
+his worthy custom to practise a ceremonious, nay, a reverential, hush,
+and he never offered (or approved) conversation until he had prepared
+the salad. That accomplished, however, and the water bubbling in the
+coffee machine, he readily favoured me with a discourse on the decline
+in glory of Les Trois Pigeons.
+
+"Monsieur, it is the automobiles; they have done it. Formerly, as when
+monsieur was here, the painters came from Paris. They would come in the
+spring and would stay until the autumn rains. What busy times and what
+drolleries! Ah, it was gay in those days! Monsieur remembers well. Ha,
+Ha! But now, I think, the automobiles have frightened away the
+painters; at least they do not come any more. And the automobiles
+themselves; they come sometimes for lunch, a few, but they love better
+the seashore, and we are just close enough to be too far away. Those
+automobiles, they love the big new hotels and the casinos with
+roulette. They eat hastily, gulp down a liqueur, and pouf! off they
+rush for Trouville, for Houlgate--for heaven knows where! And even the
+automobiles do not come so frequently as they did. Our road used to be
+the best from Lisieux to Beuzeval, but now the maps recommend another.
+They pass us by, and yet yonder--only a few kilometres--is the coast
+with its thousands. We are near the world but out of it, monsieur."
+
+He poured my coffee; dropped a lump of sugar from the tongs with a
+benevolent gesture--"One lump: always the same. Monsieur sees that I
+remember well, ha?"--and the twilight having fallen, he lit two
+orange-shaded candles and my cigar with the same match. The night was
+so quiet that the candle-lights burned as steadily as flames in a
+globe, yet the air was spiced with a cool fragrance, and through the
+honeysuckle leaves above me I saw, as I leaned back in my wicker chair,
+a glimmer of kindly stars.
+
+"Very comfortably out of the world, Amedee," I said. "It seems to me I
+have it all to myself."
+
+"Unhappily, yes!" he exclaimed; then excused himself, chuckling. "I
+should have said that we should be happier if we had many like
+monsieur. But it is early in the season to despair. Then, too, our best
+suite is already engaged."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"Two men of science who arrive next week. One is a great man. Madame
+Brossard is pleased that he is coming to Les Trois Pigeons, but I tell
+her it is only natural. He comes now for the first time because he
+likes the quiet, but he will come again, like monsieur, because he has
+been here before. That is what I always say: 'Any one who has been here
+must come again.' The problem is only to get them to come the first
+time. Truly!"
+
+"Who is the great man, Amedee?"
+
+"Ah! A distinguished professor of science. Truly."
+
+"What science?"
+
+"I do not know. But he is a member of the Institute. Monsieur must have
+heard of that great Professor Keredec?"
+
+"The name is known. Who is the other?"
+
+"A friend of his. I do not know. All the upper floor of the east wing
+they have taken--the Grande Suite--those two and their
+valet-de-chambre. That is truly the way in modern times--the
+philosophers are rich men."
+
+"Yes," I sighed. "Only the painters are poor nowadays."
+
+"Ha, ha, monsieur!" Amedee laughed cunningly.
+
+"It was always easy to see that monsieur only amuses himself with his
+painting."
+
+"Thank you, Amedee," I responded. "I have amused other people with it
+too, I fear."
+
+"Oh, without doubt!" he agreed graciously, as he folded the cloth. I
+have always tried to believe that it was not so much my pictures as the
+fact that I paid my bills the day they were presented which convinced
+everybody about Les Trois Pigeons that I was an amateur. But I never
+became happily enough settled in this opinion to risk pressing an
+investigation; and it was a relief that Amedee changed the subject.
+
+"Monsieur remembers the Chateau de Quesnay--at the crest of the hill on
+the road north of Dives?"
+
+"I remember."
+
+"It is occupied this season by some rich Americans."
+
+"How do you know they are rich?"
+
+"Dieu de Dieu!" The old fellow appealed to heaven. "But they are
+Americans!"
+
+"And therefore millionaires. Perfectly, Amedee."
+
+"Perfectly, monsieur. Perhaps monsieur knows them."
+
+"Yes, I know them."
+
+"Truly!" He affected dejection. "And poor Madame Brossard thought
+monsieur had returned to our old hotel because he liked it, and
+remembered our wine of Beaune and the good beds and old Gaston's
+cooking!"
+
+"Do not weep, Amedee," I said. "I have come to paint; not because I
+know the people who have taken Quesnay." And I added: "I may not see
+them at all."
+
+In truth I thought that very probable. Miss Elizabeth had mentioned in
+one of her notes that Ward had leased Quesnay, but I had not sought
+quarters at Les Trois Pigeons because it stood within walking distance
+of the chateau. In my industrious frame of mind that circumstance
+seemed almost a drawback. Miss Elizabeth, ever hospitable to those whom
+she noticed at all, would be doubly so in the country, as people always
+are; and I wanted all my time to myself--no very selfish wish since my
+time was not conceivably of value to any one else. I thought it wise to
+leave any encounter with the lady to chance, and as the by-paths of the
+country-side were many and intricate, I intended, without ungallantry,
+to render the chance remote. George himself had just sailed on a
+business trip to America, as I knew from her last missive; and until
+his return, I should put in all my time at painting and nothing else,
+though I liked his sister, as I have said, and thought of her--often.
+
+Amedee doubted my sincerity, however, for he laughed incredulously.
+
+"Eh, well, monsieur enjoys saying it!"
+
+"Certainly. It is a pleasure to say what one means."
+
+"But monsieur could not mean it. Monsieur will call at the chateau in
+the morning"--the complacent varlet prophesied--"as early as it will be
+polite. I am sure of that. Monsieur is not at all an old man; no, not
+yet! Even if he were, aha! no one could possess the friendship of that
+wonderful Madame d'Armand and remain away from the chateau."
+
+"Madame d'Armand?" I said. "That is not the name. You mean Mademoiselle
+Ward."
+
+"No, no!" He shook his head and his fat cheeks bulged with a smile
+which I believe he intended to express a respectful roguishness.
+"Mademoiselle Ward" (he pronounced it "Ware") "is magnificent; every
+one must fly to obey when she opens her mouth. If she did not like the
+ocean there below the chateau, the ocean would have to move! It needs
+only a glance to perceive that Mademoiselle Ward is a great lady--but
+MADAME D'ARMAND! AHA!" He rolled his round eyes to an effect of
+unspeakable admiration, and with a gesture indicated that he would have
+kissed his hand to the stars, had that been properly reverential to
+Madame d'Armand. "But monsieur knows very well for himself!"
+
+"Monsieur knows that you are very confusing--even for a maitre d'hotel.
+We were speaking of the present chatelaine of Quesnay, Mademoiselle
+Ward. I have never heard of Madame d'Armand."
+
+"Monsieur is serious?"
+
+"Truly!" I answered, making bold to quote his shibboleth.
+
+"Then monsieur has truly much to live for. Truly!" he chuckled openly,
+convinced that he had obtained a marked advantage in a conflict of
+wits, shaking his big head from side to side with an exasperating air
+of knowingness. "Ah, truly! When that lady drives by, some day, in the
+carriage from the chateau--eh? Then monsieur will see how much he has
+to live for. Truly, truly, truly!"
+
+He had cleared the table, and now, with a final explosion of the word
+which gave him such immoderate satisfaction, he lifted the tray and
+made one of his precipitate departures.
+
+"Amedee," I said, as he slackened down to his sidelong leisure.
+
+"Monsieur?"
+
+"Who is Madame d'Armand?"
+
+"A guest of Mademoiselle Ward at Quesnay. In fact, she is in charge of
+the chateau, since Mademoiselle Ward is, for the time, away."
+
+"Is she a Frenchwoman?"
+
+"It seems not. In fact, she is an American, though she dresses with so
+much of taste. Ah, Madame Brossard admits it, and Madame Brossard knows
+the art of dressing, for she spends a week of every winter in
+Rouen--and besides there is Trouville itself only some kilometres
+distant. Madame Brossard says that Mademoiselle Ward dresses with
+richness and splendour and Madame d'Armand with economy, but beauty.
+Those were the words used by Madame Brossard. Truly."
+
+"Madame d'Armand's name is French," I observed.
+
+"Yes, that is true," said Amedee thoughtfully. "No one can deny it; it
+is a French name." He rested the tray upon a stump near by and
+scratched his head. "I do not understand how that can be," he continued
+slowly. "Jean Ferret, who is chief gardener at the chateau, is an
+acquaintance of mine. We sometimes have a cup of cider at Pere
+Baudry's, a kilometre down the road from here; and Jean Ferret has told
+me that she is an American. And yet, as you say, monsieur, the name is
+French. Perhaps she is French after all."
+
+"I believe," said I, "that if I struggled a few days over this puzzle,
+I might come to the conclusion that Madame d'Armand is an American lady
+who has married a Frenchman."
+
+The old man uttered an exclamation of triumph.
+
+"Ha! without doubt! Truly she must be an American lady who has married
+a Frenchman. Monsieur has already solved the puzzle. Truly, truly!" And
+he trulied himself across the darkness, to emerge in the light of the
+open door of the kitchen with the word still rumbling in his throat.
+
+Now for a time there came the clinking of dishes, sounds as of pans and
+kettles being scoured, the rolling gutturals of old Gaston, the cook,
+and the treble pipings of young "Glouglou," his grandchild and
+scullion. After a while the oblong of light from the kitchen door
+disappeared; the voices departed; the stillness of the dark descended,
+and with it that unreasonable sense of pathos which night in the
+country brings to the heart of a wanderer. Then, out of the lonely
+silence, there issued a strange, incongruous sound as an execrable
+voice essayed to produce the semblance of an air odiously familiar
+about the streets of Paris some three years past, and I became aware of
+a smell of some dreadful thing burning. Beneath the arbour I perceived
+a glowing spark which seemed to bear a certain relation to an oval
+whitish patch suggesting the front of a shirt. It was Amedee, at ease,
+smoking his cigarette after the day's work and convinced that he was
+singing.
+
+  "Pour qu'j'finisse
+  Mon service
+  Au Tonkin je suis parti--
+  Ah! quel beau pays, mesdames!
+  C'est l'paradis des p'tites femmes!"
+
+I rose from the chair on my little porch, to go to bed; but I was
+reminded of something, and called to him.
+
+"Monsieur?" his voice came briskly.
+
+"How often do you see your friend, Jean Ferret, the gardener of
+Quesnay?"
+
+"Frequently, monsieur. To-morrow morning I could easily carry a message
+if--"
+
+"That is precisely what I do not wish. And you may as well not mention
+me at all when you meet him."
+
+"It is understood. Perfectly."
+
+"If it is well understood, there will be a beautiful present for a good
+maitre d'hotel some day."
+
+"Thank you, monsieur."
+
+"Good night, Amedee."
+
+"Good night, monsieur."
+
+Falling to sleep has always been an intricate matter with me: I liken
+it to a nightly adventure in an enchanted palace. Weary-limbed and with
+burning eyelids, after long waiting in the outer court of wakefulness,
+I enter a dim, cool antechamber where the heavy garment of the body is
+left behind and where, perhaps, some acquaintance or friend greets me
+with a familiar speech or a bit of nonsense--or an unseen orchestra may
+play music that I know. From here I go into a spacious apartment where
+the air and light are of a fine clarity, for it is the hall of
+revelations, and in it the secrets of secrets are told, mysteries are
+resolved, perplexities cleared up, and sometimes I learn what to do
+about a picture that has bothered me. This is where I would linger, for
+beyond it I walk among crowding fantasies, delusions, terrors and
+shame, to a curtain of darkness where they take my memory from me, and
+I know nothing of my own adventures until I am pushed out of a secret
+door into the morning sunlight. Amedee was the acquaintance who met me
+in the antechamber to-night. He remarked that Madame d'Armand was the
+most beautiful woman in the world, and vanished. And in the hall of
+revelations I thought that I found a statue of her--but it was veiled.
+I wished to remove the veil, but a passing stranger stopped and told me
+laughingly that the veil was all that would ever be revealed of her to
+me--of her, or any other woman!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+I was up with the birds in the morning; had my breakfast with them--a
+very drowsy-eyed Amedee assisting--and made off for the forest to get
+the sunrise through the branches, a pack on my back and three
+sandwiches for lunch in my pocket. I returned only with the failing
+light of evening, cheerfully tired and ready for a fine dinner and an
+early bed, both of which the good inn supplied. It was my daily
+programme; a healthy life "far from the world," as Amedee said, and I
+was sorry when the serpent entered and disturbed it, though he was my
+own. He is a pet of mine; has been with me since my childhood. He
+leaves me when I live alone, for he loves company, but returns whenever
+my kind are about me. There are many names for snakes of his breed,
+but, to deal charitably with myself, I call mine
+Interest-In-Other-People's-Affairs.
+
+One evening I returned to find a big van from Dives, the nearest
+railway station, drawn up in the courtyard at the foot of the stairs
+leading to the gallery, and all of the people of the inn, from Madame
+Brossard (who directed) to Glouglou (who madly attempted the heaviest
+pieces), busily installing trunks, bags, and packing-cases in the suite
+engaged for the "great man of science" on the second floor of the east
+wing of the building. Neither the great man nor his companion was to be
+seen, however, both having retired to their rooms immediately upon
+their arrival--so Amedee informed me, as he wiped his brow after
+staggering up the steps under a load of books wrapped in sacking.
+
+I made my evening ablutions removing a Joseph's coat of dust and paint;
+and came forth from my pavilion, hoping that Professor Keredec and his
+friend would not mind eating in the same garden with a man in a
+corduroy jacket and knickerbockers; but the gentlemen continued
+invisible to the public eye, and mine was the only table set for dinner
+in the garden. Up-stairs the curtains were carefully drawn across all
+the windows of the east wing; little leaks of orange, here and there,
+betraying the lights within. Glouglou, bearing a tray of covered
+dishes, was just entering the salon of the "Grande Suite," and the door
+closed quickly after him.
+
+"It is to be supposed that Professor Keredec and his friend are
+fatigued with their journey from Paris?" I began, a little later.
+
+"Monsieur, they did not seem fatigued," said Amedee.
+
+"But they dine in their own rooms to-night."
+
+"Every night, monsieur. It is the order of Professor Keredec. And with
+their own valet-de-chambre to serve them. Eh?" He poured my coffee
+solemnly. "That is mysterious, to say the least, isn't it?"
+
+"To say the very least," I agreed.
+
+"Monsieur the professor is a man of secrets, it appears," continued
+Amedee. "When he wrote to Madame Brossard engaging his rooms, he
+instructed her to be careful that none of us should mention even his
+name; and to-day when he came, he spoke of his anxiety on that point."
+
+"But you did mention it."
+
+"To whom, monsieur?" asked the old fellow blankly.
+
+"To me."
+
+"But I told him I had not," said Amedee placidly. "It is the same
+thing."
+
+"I wonder," I began, struck by a sudden thought, "if it will prove
+quite the same thing in my own case. I suppose you have not mentioned
+the circumstance of my being here to your friend, Jean Ferret of
+Quesnay?"
+
+He looked at me reproachfully. "Has monsieur been troubled by the
+people of the chateau?"
+
+"'Troubled' by them?"
+
+"Have they come to seek out monsieur and disturb him? Have they done
+anything whatever to show that they have heard monsieur is here?"
+
+"No, certainly they haven't," I was obliged to retract at once. "I beg
+your pardon, Amedee."
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" He made a deprecatory bow (which plunged me still
+deeper in shame), struck a match, and offered a light for my cigar with
+a forgiving hand. "All the same," he pursued, "it seems very
+mysterious--this Keredec affair!"
+
+"To comprehend a great man, Amedee," I said, "is the next thing to
+sharing his greatness."
+
+He blinked slightly, pondered a moment upon this sententious drivel,
+then very properly ignored it, reverting to his puzzle.
+
+"But is it not incomprehensible that people should eat indoors this
+fine weather?"
+
+I admitted that it was. I knew very well how hot and stuffy the salon
+of Madame Brossard's "Grande Suite" must be, while the garden was
+fragrant in the warm, dry night, and the outdoor air like a gentle
+tonic. Nevertheless, Professor Keredec and his friend preferred the
+salon.
+
+When a man is leading a very quiet and isolated life, it is
+inconceivable what trifles will occupy and concentrate his attention.
+The smaller the community the more blowzy with gossip you are sure to
+find it; and I have little doubt that when Friday learned enough
+English, one of the first things Crusoe did was to tell him some
+scandal about the goat. Thus, though I treated the "Keredec affair"
+with a seeming airiness to Amedee, I cunningly drew the faithful rascal
+out, and fed my curiosity upon his own (which, as time went on and the
+mystery deepened, seemed likely to burst him), until, virtually, I was
+receiving, every evening at dinner, a detailed report of the day's
+doings of Professor Keredec and his companion.
+
+The reports were voluminous, the details few. The two gentlemen, as
+Amedee would relate, spent their forenoons over books and writing in
+their rooms. Professor Keredec's voice could often be heard in every
+part of the inn; at times holding forth with such protracted vehemence
+that only one explanation would suffice: the learned man was delivering
+a lecture to his companion.
+
+"Say then!" exclaimed Amedee--"what king of madness is that? To make
+orations for only one auditor!"
+
+He brushed away my suggestion that the auditor might be a stenographer
+to whom the professor was dictating chapters for a new book. The
+relation between the two men, he contended, was more like that between
+teacher and pupil. "But a pupil with gray hair!" he finished, raising
+his fat hands to heaven. "For that other monsieur has hair as gray as
+mine."
+
+"That other monsieur" was farther described as a thin man, handsome,
+but with a "singular air," nor could my colleague more satisfactorily
+define this air, though he made a racking struggle to do so.
+
+"In what does the peculiarity of his manner lie?" I asked.
+
+"But it is not so much that his manner is peculiar, monsieur; it is an
+air about him that is singular. Truly!"
+
+"But how is it singular?"
+
+"Monsieur, it is very, very singular."
+
+"You do not understand," I insisted. "What kind of singularity has the
+air of 'that other monsieur'?"
+
+"It has," replied Amedee, with a powerful effort, "a very singular
+singularity."
+
+This was as near as he could come, and, fearful of injuring him, I
+abandoned that phase of our subject.
+
+The valet-de-chambre whom my fellow-lodgers had brought with them from
+Paris contributed nothing to the inn's knowledge of his masters, I
+learned. This struck me not only as odd, but unique, for French
+servants tell one another everything, and more--very much more. "But
+this is a silent man," said Amedee impressively. "Oh! very silent! He
+shakes his head wisely, yet he will not open his mouth. However, that
+may be because"--and now the explanation came--"because he was engaged
+only last week and knows nothing. Also, he is but temporary; he returns
+to Paris soon and Glouglou is to serve them."
+
+I ascertained that although "that other monsieur" had gray hair, he was
+by no means a person of great age; indeed, Glouglou, who had seen him
+oftener than any other of the staff, maintained that he was quite
+young. Amedee's own opportunities for observation had been limited.
+Every afternoon the two gentlemen went for a walk; but they always came
+down from the gallery so quickly, he declared, and, leaving the inn by
+a rear entrance, plunged so hastily into the nearest by-path leading to
+the forest, that he caught little more than glimpses of them. They
+returned after an hour or so, entering the inn with the same appearance
+of haste to be out of sight, the professor always talking, "with the
+manner of an orator, but in English." Nevertheless, Amedee remarked, it
+was certain that Professor Keredec's friend was neither an American nor
+an Englishman. "Why is it certain?" I asked.
+
+"Monsieur, he drinks nothing but water, he does not smoke, and Glouglou
+says he speaks very pure French."
+
+"Glouglou is an authority who resolves the difficulty. 'That other
+monsieur' is a Frenchman."
+
+"But, monsieur, he is smooth-shaven."
+
+"Perhaps he has been a maitre d'hotel."
+
+"Eh! I wish one that _I_ know could hope to dress as well when he
+retires! Besides, Glouglou says that other monsieur eats his soup
+silently."
+
+"I can find no flaw in the deduction," I said, rising to go to bed. "We
+must leave it there for to-night."
+
+The next evening Amedee allowed me to perceive that he was concealing
+something under his arm as he stoked the coffee-machine, and upon my
+asking what it was, he glanced round the courtyard with histrionic
+slyness, placed the object on the table beside my cap, and stepped back
+to watch the impression, his manner that of one who declaims: "At last
+the missing papers are before you!"
+
+"What is that?" I said.
+
+"It is a book."
+
+"I am persuaded by your candour, Amedee, as well as by the general
+appearance of this article," I returned as I picked it up, "that you
+are speaking the truth. But why do you bring it to me?"
+
+"Monsieur," he replied, in the tones of an old conspirator, "this
+afternoon the professor and that other monsieur went as usual to walk
+in the forest." He bent over me, pretending to be busy with the
+coffee-machine, and lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper. "When they
+returned, this book fell from the pocket of that other monsieur's coat
+as he ascended the stair, and he did not notice. Later I shall return
+it by Glouglou, but I thought it wise that monsieur should see it for
+himself."
+
+The book was Wentworth's Algebra--elementary principles. Painful
+recollections of my boyhood and the binomial theorem rose in my mind as
+I let the leaves turn under my fingers. "What do you make of it?" I
+asked.
+
+His tone became even more confidential. "Part of it, monsieur, is in
+English; that is plain. I have found an English word in it that I
+know--the word 'O.' But much of the printing is also in Arabic."
+
+"Arabic!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, look there." He laid a fat forefinger on "(a + b)2 = a2
++ 2ab + b2." "That is Arabic. Old Gaston has been to Algeria, and he
+says that he knows Arabic as well as he does French. He looked at the
+book and told me it was Arabic. Truly! Truly!"
+
+"Did he translate any of it for you?"
+
+"No, monsieur; his eyes pained him this afternoon. He says he will read
+it to-morrow."
+
+"But you must return the book to-night."
+
+"That is true. Eh! It leaves the mystery deeper than ever, unless
+monsieur can find some clue in those parts of the book that are
+English."
+
+I shed no light upon him. The book had been Greek to me in my tender
+years; it was a pleasure now to leave a fellow-being under the
+impression that it was Arabic.
+
+But the volume took its little revenge upon me, for it increased my
+curiosity about Professor Keredec and "that other monsieur." Why were
+two grown men--one an eminent psychologist and the other a gray-haired
+youth with a singular air--carrying about on their walks a text-book
+for the instruction of boys of thirteen or fourteen?
+
+The next day that curiosity of mine was piqued in earnest. It rained
+and I did not leave the inn, but sat under the great archway and took
+notes in colour of the shining road, bright drenched fields, and
+dripping sky. My back was toward the courtyard, that is,
+"three-quarters" to it, and about noon I became distracted from my work
+by a strong self-consciousness which came upon me without any visible
+or audible cause. Obeying an impulse, I swung round on my camp-stool
+and looked up directly at the gallery window of the salon of the
+"Grande Suite."
+
+A man with a great white beard was standing at the window, half hidden
+by the curtain, watching me intently.
+
+He perceived that I saw him and dropped the curtain immediately, a
+speck of colour in his buttonhole catching my eye as it fell.
+
+The spy was Professor Keredec.
+
+But why should he study me so slyly and yet so obviously? I had no
+intention of intruding upon him. Nor was I a psychological "specimen,"
+though I began to suspect that "that other monsieur" WAS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+I had been painting in various parts of the forest, studying the early
+morning along the eastern fringe and moving deeper in as the day
+advanced. For the stillness and warmth of noon I went to the very
+woodland heart, and in the late afternoon moved westward to a glade--a
+chance arena open to the sky, the scene of my most audacious
+endeavours, for here I was trying to paint foliage luminous under those
+long shafts of sunshine which grow thinner but ruddier toward sunset. A
+path closely bordered by underbrush wound its way to the glade, crossed
+it, then wandered away into shady dingles again; and with my easel
+pitched in the mouth of this path, I sat at work, one late afternoon,
+wonderful for its still loveliness.
+
+The path debouched abruptly on the glade and was so narrow that when I
+leaned back my elbows were in the bushes, and it needed care to keep my
+palette from being smirched by the leaves; though there was more room
+for my canvas and easel, as I had placed them at arm's length before
+me, fairly in the open. I had the ambition to paint a picture here--to
+do the whole thing in the woods from day to day, instead of taking
+notes for the studio--and was at work upon a very foolish experiment: I
+had thought to render the light--broken by the branches and
+foliage--with broken brush-work, a short stroke of the kind that stung
+an elder painter to swear that its practitioners painted in shaking
+fear of the concierge appearing for the studio rent. The attempt was
+alluring, but when I rose from my camp-stool and stepped back into the
+path to get more distance for my canvas, I saw what a mess I was making
+of it. At the same time, my hand, falling into the capacious pocket of
+my jacket, encountered a package, my lunch, which I had forgotten to
+eat, whereupon, becoming suddenly aware that I was very hungry, I began
+to eat Amedee's good sandwiches without moving from where I stood.
+
+Absorbed, gazing with abysmal disgust at my canvas, I was eating
+absent-mindedly--and with all the restraint and dignity of a Georgia
+darky attacking a watermelon--when a pleasant voice spoke from just
+behind me.
+
+"Pardon, monsieur; permit me to pass, if you please."
+
+That was all it said, very quietly and in French, but a gunshot might
+have startled me less.
+
+I turned in confusion to behold a dark-eyed lady, charmingly dressed in
+lilac and white, waiting for me to make way so that she could pass.
+
+Nay, let me leave no detail of my mortification unrecorded: I have just
+said that I "turned in confusion"; the truth is that I jumped like a
+kangaroo, but with infinitely less grace. And in my nervous haste to
+clear her way, meaning only to push the camp-stool out of the path with
+my foot, I put too much valour into the push, and with horror saw the
+camp-stool rise in the air and drop to the ground again nearly a third
+of the distance across the glade.
+
+Upon that I squeezed myself back into the bushes, my ears singing and
+my cheeks burning.
+
+There are women who will meet or pass a strange man in the woods or
+fields with as finished an air of being unaware of him (particularly if
+he be a rather shabby painter no longer young) as if the encounter took
+place on a city sidewalk; but this woman was not of that priggish kind.
+Her straightforward glance recognised my existence as a fellow-being;
+and she further acknowledged it by a faint smile, which was of courtesy
+only, however, and admitted no reference to the fact that at the first
+sound of her voice I had leaped into the air, kicked a camp-stool
+twenty feet, and now stood blushing, so shamefully stuffed with
+sandwich that I dared not speak.
+
+"Thank you," she said as she went by; and made me a little bow so
+graceful that it almost consoled me for my caperings.
+
+I stood looking after her as she crossed the clearing and entered the
+cool winding of the path on the other side.
+
+I stared and wished--wished that I could have painted her into my
+picture, with the thin, ruddy sunshine flecking her dress; wished that
+I had not cut such an idiotic figure. I stared until her filmy summer
+hat, which was the last bit of her to disappear, had vanished. Then,
+discovering that I still held the horrid remains of a sausage-sandwich
+in my hand, I threw it into the underbrush with unnecessary force, and,
+recovering my camp-stool, sat down to work again.
+
+I did not immediately begin.
+
+The passing of a pretty woman anywhere never comes to be quite of no
+moment to a man, and the passing of a pretty woman in the greenwood is
+an episode--even to a middle-aged landscape painter.
+
+"An episode?" quoth I. I should be ashamed to withhold the truth out of
+my fear to be taken for a sentimentalist: this woman who had passed was
+of great and instant charm; it was as if I had heard a serenade there
+in the woods--and at thought of the jig I had danced to it my face
+burned again.
+
+With a sigh of no meaning, I got my eyes down to my canvas and began to
+peck at it perfunctorily, when a snapping of twigs underfoot and a
+swishing of branches in the thicket warned me of a second intruder, not
+approaching by the path, but forcing a way toward it through the
+underbrush, and very briskly too, judging by the sounds.
+
+He burst out into the glade a few paces from me, a tall man in white
+flannels, liberally decorated with brambles and clinging shreds of
+underbrush. A streamer of vine had caught about his shoulders; there
+were leaves on his bare head, and this, together with the youthful
+sprightliness of his light figure and the naive activity of his
+approach, gave me a very faunlike first impression of him.
+
+At sight of me he stopped short.
+
+"Have you seen a lady in a white and lilac dress and with roses in her
+hat?" he demanded, omitting all preface and speaking with a quick
+eagerness which caused me no wonder--for I had seen the lady.
+
+What did surprise me, however, was the instantaneous certainty with
+which I recognised the speaker from Amedee's description; certainty
+founded on the very item which had so dangerously strained the old
+fellow's powers.
+
+My sudden gentleman was strikingly good-looking, his complexion so
+clear and boyishly healthy, that, except for his gray hair, he might
+have passed for twenty-two or twenty-three, and even as it was I
+guessed his years short of thirty; but there are plenty of handsome
+young fellows with prematurely gray hair, and, as Amedee said, though
+out of the world we were near it. It was the new-comer's "singular air"
+which established his identity. Amedee's vagueness had irked me, but
+the thing itself--the "singular air"--was not at all vague. Instantly
+perceptible, it was an investiture; marked, definite--and intangible.
+My interrogator was "that other monsieur."
+
+In response to his question I asked him another:
+
+"Were the roses real or artificial?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered, with what I took to be a whimsical
+assumption of gravity. "It wouldn't matter, would it? Have you seen
+her?"
+
+He stooped to brush the brambles from his trousers, sending me a
+sidelong glance from his blue eyes, which were brightly confident and
+inquiring, like a boy's. At the same time it struck me that whatever
+the nature of the singularity investing him it partook of nothing
+repellent, but, on the contrary, measurably enhanced his
+attractiveness; making him "different" and lending him a distinction
+which, without it, he might have lacked. And yet, patent as this
+singularity must have been to the dullest, it was something quite apart
+from any eccentricity of manner, though, heaven knows, I was soon to
+think him odd enough.
+
+"Isn't your description," I said gravely, thinking to suit my humour to
+his own, "somewhat too general? Over yonder a few miles lies Houlgate.
+Trouville itself is not so far, and this is the season. A great many
+white hats trimmed with roses might come for a stroll in these woods.
+If you would complete the items--" and I waved my hand as if inviting
+him to continue.
+
+"I have seen her only once before," he responded promptly, with a
+seriousness apparently quite genuine. "That was from my window at an
+inn, three days ago. She drove by in an open carriage without looking
+up, but I could see that she was very handsome. No--" he broke off
+abruptly, but as quickly resumed--"handsome isn't just what I mean.
+Lovely, I should say. That is more like her and a better thing to be,
+shouldn't you think so?"
+
+"Probably--yes--I think so," I stammered, in considerable amazement.
+
+"She went by quickly," he said, as if he were talking in the most
+natural and ordinary way in the world, "but I noticed that while she
+was in the shade of the inn her hair appeared to be dark, though when
+the carriage got into the sunlight again it looked fair."
+
+I had noticed the same thing when the lady who had passed emerged from
+the shadows of the path into the sunshine of the glade, but I did not
+speak of it now; partly because he gave me no opportunity, partly
+because I was almost too astonished to speak at all, for I was no
+longer under the delusion that he had any humourous or whimsical
+intention.
+
+"A little while ago," he went on, "I was up in the branches of a tree
+over yonder, and I caught a glimpse of a lady in a light dress and a
+white hat and I thought it might be the same. She wore a dress like
+that and a white hat with roses when she drove by the inn. I am very
+anxious to see her again."
+
+"You seem to be!"
+
+"And haven't you seen her? Hasn't she passed this way?"
+
+He urged the question with the same strange eagerness which had marked
+his manner from the first, a manner which confounded me by its absurd
+resemblance to that of a boy who had not mixed with other boys and had
+never been teased. And yet his expression was intelligent and alert;
+nor was there anything abnormal or "queer" in his good-humoured gaze.
+
+"I think that I may have seen her," I began slowly; "but if you do not
+know her I should not advise--"
+
+I was interrupted by a shout and the sound of a large body plunging in
+the thicket. At this the face of "that other monsieur" flushed
+slightly; he smiled, but seemed troubled.
+
+"That is a friend of mine," he said. "I am afraid he will want me to go
+back with him." And he raised an answering shout.
+
+Professor Keredec floundered out through the last row of saplings and
+bushes, his beard embellished with a broken twig, his big face red and
+perspiring. He was a fine, a mighty man, ponderous of shoulder,
+monumental of height, stupendous of girth; there was cloth enough in
+the hot-looking black frock-coat he wore for the canopy of a small
+pavilion. Half a dozen books were under his arm, and in his hand he
+carried a hat which evidently belonged to "that other monsieur," for
+his own was on his head.
+
+One glance of scrutiny and recognition he shot at me from his
+silver-rimmed spectacles; and seized the young man by the arm.
+
+"Ha, my friend!" he exclaimed in a bass voice of astounding power and
+depth, "that is one way to study botany: to jump out of the middle of a
+high tree and to run like a crazy man!" He spoke with a strong accent
+and a thunderous rolling of the "r." "What was I to think?" he
+demanded. "What has arrived to you?"
+
+"I saw a lady I wished to follow," the other answered promptly.
+
+"A lady! What lady?"
+
+"The lady who passed the inn three days ago. I spoke of her then, you
+remember."
+
+"Tonnerre de Dieu!" Keredec slapped his thigh with the sudden violence
+of a man who remembers that he has forgotten something, and as a final
+addition to my amazement, his voice rang more of remorse than of
+reproach. "Have I never told you that to follow strange ladies is one
+of the things you cannot do?"
+
+"That other monsieur" shook his head. "No, you have never told me that.
+I do not understand it," he said, adding irrelevantly, "I believe this
+gentleman knows her. He says he thinks he has seen her."
+
+"If you please, we must not trouble this gentleman about it," said the
+professor hastily. "Put on your hat, in the name of a thousand saints,
+and let us go!"
+
+"But I wish to ask him her name," urged the other, with something
+curiously like the obstinacy of a child. "I wish--"
+
+"No, no!" Keredec took him by the arm. "We must go. We shall be late
+for our dinner."
+
+"But why?" persisted the young man.
+
+"Not now!" The professor removed his broad felt hat and hurriedly wiped
+his vast and steaming brow--a magnificent structure, corniced, at this
+moment, with anxiety. "It is better if we do not discuss it now."
+
+"But I might not meet him again."
+
+Professor Keredec turned toward me with a half-desperate,
+half-apologetic laugh which was like the rumbling of heavy wagons over
+a block pavement; and in his flustered face I thought I read a signal
+of genuine distress.
+
+"I do not know the lady," I said with some sharpness. "I have never
+seen her until this afternoon."
+
+Upon this "that other monsieur" astonished me in good earnest.
+Searching my eyes eagerly with his clear, inquisitive gaze, he took a
+step toward me and said:
+
+"You are sure you are telling the truth?"
+
+The professor uttered an exclamation of horror, sprang forward, and
+clutched his friend's arm again. "Malheureux!" he cried, and then to
+me: "Sir, you will give him pardon if you can? He has no meaning to be
+rude."
+
+"Rude?" The young man's voice showed both astonishment and pain. "Was
+that rude? I didn't know. I didn't mean to be rude, God knows! Ah," he
+said sadly, "I do nothing but make mistakes. I hope you will forgive
+me."
+
+He lifted his hand as if in appeal, and let it drop to his side; and in
+the action, as well as in the tone of his voice and his attitude of
+contrition, there was something that reached me suddenly, with the
+touch of pathos.
+
+"Never mind," I said. "I am only sorry that it was the truth."
+
+"Thank you," he said, and turned humbly to Keredec.
+
+"Ha, that is better!" shouted the great man, apparently relieved of a
+vast weight. "We shall go home now and eat a good dinner. But first--"
+his silver-rimmed spectacles twinkled upon me, and he bent his
+Brobdingnagian back in a bow which against my will reminded me of the
+curtseys performed by Orloff's dancing bears--"first let me speak some
+words for myself. My dear sir"--he addressed himself to me with grave
+formality--"do not suppose I have no realization that other excuses
+should be made to you. Believe me, they shall be. It is now that I see
+it is fortunate for us that you are our fellow-innsman at Les Trois
+Pigeons."
+
+I was unable to resist the opportunity, and, affecting considerable
+surprise, interrupted him with the apparently guileless query:
+
+"Why, how did you know that?"
+
+Professor Keredec's laughter rumbled again, growing deeper and louder
+till it reverberated in the woods and a hundred hale old trees laughed
+back at him.
+
+"Ho, ho, ho!" he shouted. "But you shall not take me for a
+window-curtain spy! That is a fine reputation I give myself with you!
+Ho, ho!"
+
+Then, followed submissively by "that other monsieur," he strode into
+the path and went thundering forth through the forest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+No doubt the most absurd thing I could have done after the departure of
+Professor Keredec and his singular friend would have been to settle
+myself before my canvas again with the intention of painting--and that
+is what I did. At least, I resumed my camp-stool and went through some
+of the motions habitually connected with the act of painting.
+
+I remember that the first time in my juvenile reading I came upon the
+phrase, "seated in a brown study," I pictured my hero in a brown chair,
+beside a brown table, in a room hung with brown paper. Later, being
+enlightened, I was ambitious to display the figure myself, but the uses
+of ordinary correspondence allowed the occasion for it to remain
+unoffered. Let me not only seize upon the present opportunity but gild
+it, for the adventure of the afternoon left me in a study which was, at
+its mildest, a profound purple.
+
+The confession has been made of my curiosity concerning my
+fellow-lodgers at Les Trois Pigeons; however, it had been comparatively
+a torpid growth; my meeting with them served to enlarge it so suddenly
+and to such proportions that I wonder it did not strangle me. In fine,
+I sat there brush-paddling my failure like an automaton, and saying
+over and over aloud, "What is wrong with him? What is wrong with him?"
+
+This was the sillier inasmuch as the word "wrong" (bearing any
+significance of a darkened mind) had not the slightest application to
+"that other monsieur." There had been neither darkness nor dullness;
+his eyes, his expression, his manner, betrayed no hint of wildness;
+rather they bespoke a quick and amiable intelligence--the more amazing
+that he had shown himself ignorant of things a child of ten would know.
+Amedee and his fellows of Les Trois Pigeons had judged wrongly of his
+nationality; his face was of the lean, right, American structure; but
+they had hit the relation between the two men: Keredec was the master
+and "that other monsieur" the scholar--a pupil studying boys' textbooks
+and receiving instruction in matters and manners that children are
+taught. And yet I could not believe him to be a simple case of arrested
+development. For the matter of that, I did not like to think of him as
+a "case" at all. There had been something about his bright
+youthfulness--perhaps it was his quick contrition for his rudeness,
+perhaps it was a certain wistful quality he had, perhaps it was his
+very "singularity"--which appealed as directly to my liking as it did
+urgently to my sympathy.
+
+I came out of my vari-coloured study with a start, caused by the
+discovery that I had absent-mindedly squeezed upon my palette the
+entire contents of an expensive tube of cobalt violet, for which I had
+no present use; and sighing (for, of necessity, I am an economical
+man), I postponed both of my problems till another day, determined to
+efface the one with a palette knife and a rag soaked in turpentine, and
+to defer the other until I should know more of my fellow-lodgers at
+Madame Brossard's.
+
+The turpentine rag at least proved effective; I scoured away the last
+tokens of my failure with it, wishing that life were like the canvas
+and that men had knowledge of the right celestial turpentine. After
+that I cleaned my brushes, packed and shouldered my kit, and, with a
+final imprecation upon all sausage-sandwiches, took up my way once more
+to Les Trois Pigeons.
+
+Presently I came upon an intersecting path where, on my previous
+excursions, I had always borne to the right; but this evening, thinking
+to discover a shorter cut, I went straight ahead. Striding along at a
+good gait and chanting sonorously, "On Linden when the sun was low," I
+left the rougher boscages of the forest behind me and emerged, just at
+sunset, upon an orderly fringe of woodland where the ground was neat
+and unencumbered, and the trimmed trees stood at polite distances,
+bowing slightly to one another with small, well-bred rustlings.
+
+The light was somewhere between gold and pink when I came into this
+lady's boudoir of a grove. "Isar flowing rapidly" ceased its tumult
+abruptly, and Linden saw no sterner sight that evening: my voice and my
+feet stopped simultaneously--for I stood upon Quesnay ground.
+
+Before me stretched a short broad avenue of turf, leading to the
+chateau gates. These stood open, a gravelled driveway climbing thence
+by easy stages between kempt shrubberies to the crest of the hill,
+where the gray roof and red chimney-pots of the chateau were glimpsed
+among the tree-tops. The slope was terraced with strips of
+flower-gardens and intervals of sward; and against the green of a
+rising lawn I marked the figure of a woman, pausing to bend over some
+flowering bush. The figure was too slender to be mistaken for that of
+the present chatelaine of Quesnay: in Miss Elizabeth's regal amplitude
+there was never any hint of fragility. The lady upon the slope, then, I
+concluded, must be Madame d'Armand, the inspiration of Amedee's
+"Monsieur has much to live for!"
+
+Once more this day I indorsed that worthy man's opinion, for, though I
+was too far distant to see clearly, I knew that roses trimmed Madame
+d'Armand's white hat, and that she had passed me, no long time since,
+in the forest.
+
+I took off my cap.
+
+"I have the honour to salute you," I said aloud. "I make my apologies
+for misbehaving with sandwiches and camp-stools in your presence,
+Madame d'Armand."
+
+Something in my own pronunciation of her name struck me as reminiscent:
+save for the prefix, it had sounded like "Harman," as a Frenchman might
+pronounce it.
+
+Foreign names involve the French in terrible difficulties. Hughes, an
+English friend of mine, has lived in France some five-and-thirty years
+without reconciling himself to being known as "Monsieur Ig."
+
+"Armand" might easily be Jean Ferret's translation of "Harman." Had he
+and Amedee in their admiration conferred the prefix because they
+considered it a plausible accompaniment to the lady's gentle bearing?
+It was not impossible; it was, I concluded, very probable.
+
+I had come far out of my way, so I retraced my steps to the
+intersection of the paths, and thence made for the inn by my accustomed
+route. The light failed under the roofing of foliage long before I was
+free of the woods, and I emerged upon the road to Les Trois Pigeons
+when twilight had turned to dusk.
+
+Not far along the road from where I came into it, stood an old, brown,
+deep-thatched cottage--a branch of brushwood over the door prettily
+beckoning travellers to the knowledge that cider was here for the
+thirsty; and as I drew near I perceived that one availed himself of the
+invitation. A group stood about the open door, the lamp-light from
+within disclosing the head of the house filling a cup for the wayfarer;
+while honest Mere Baudry and two generations of younger Baudrys
+clustered to miss no word of the interchange of courtesies between Pere
+Baudry and his chance patron.
+
+It afforded me some surprise to observe that the latter was a most
+mundane and elaborate wayfarer, indeed; a small young man very lightly
+made, like a jockey, and point-device in khaki, puttees, pongee cap,
+white-and-green stock, a knapsack on his back, and a bamboo stick under
+his arm; altogether equipped to such a high point of pedestrianism that
+a cynical person might have been reminded of loud calls for wine at
+some hostelry in the land of opera bouffe. He was speaking fluently,
+though with a detestable accent, in a rough-and-ready, pick-up dialect
+of Parisian slang, evidently under the pleasant delusion that he
+employed the French language, while Pere Baudry contributed his share
+of the conversation in a slow patois. As both men spoke at the same
+time and neither understood two consecutive words the other said, it
+struck me that the dialogue might prove unproductive of any highly
+important results this side of Michaelmas; therefore, discovering that
+the very pedestrian gentleman was making some sort of inquiry
+concerning Les Trois Pigeons, I came to a halt and proffered aid.
+
+"Are you looking for Madame Brossard's?" I asked in English.
+
+The traveller uttered an exclamation and faced about with a jump,
+birdlike for quickness. He did not reply to my question with the same
+promptness; however, his deliberation denoted scrutiny, not sloth. He
+stood peering at me sharply until I repeated it. Even then he
+protracted his examination of me, a favour I was unable to return with
+any interest, owing to the circumstance of his back being toward the
+light. Nevertheless, I got a clear enough impression of his alert,
+well-poised little figure, and of a hatchety little face, and a pair of
+shrewd little eyes, which (I thought) held a fine little conceit of his
+whole little person. It was a type of fellow-countryman not altogether
+unknown about certain "American Bars" of Paris, and usually connected
+(more or less directly) with what is known to the people of France as
+"le Sport."
+
+"Say," he responded in a voice of unpleasant nasality, finally deciding
+upon speech, "you're 'Nummeric'n, ain't you?"
+
+"Yes," I returned. "I thought I heard you inquiring for--"
+
+"Well, m' friend, you can sting me!" he interrupted with condescending
+jocularity. "My style French does f'r them camels up in Paris all
+right. ME at Nice, Monte Carlo, Chantilly--bow to the p'fess'r; he's
+RIGHT! But down here I don't seem to be GUD enough f'r these
+sheep-dogs; anyway they bark different. I'm lukkin' fer a hotel called
+Les Trois Pigeons."
+
+"I am going there," I said; "I will show you the way."
+
+"Whur is't?" he asked, not moving.
+
+I pointed to the lights of the inn, flickering across the fields.
+"Yonder--beyond the second turn of the road," I said, and, as he showed
+no signs of accompanying me, I added, "I am rather late."
+
+"Oh, I ain't goin' there t'night. It's too dark t' see anything now,"
+he remarked, to my astonishment. "Dives and the choo-choo back t'
+little ole Trouville f'r mine! I on'y wanted to take a LUK at this
+pigeon-house joint."
+
+"Do you mind my inquiring," I said, "what you expected to see at Les
+Trois Pigeons?"
+
+"Why!" he exclaimed, as if astonished at the question, "I'm a tourist.
+Makin' a pedestrun trip t' all the reg'ler sights." And, inspired to
+eloquence, he added, as an afterthought: "As it were."
+
+"A tourist?" I echoed, with perfect incredulity.
+
+"That's whut I am, m' friend," he returned firmly. "You don't have to
+have a red dope-book in one hand and a thoid-class choo-choo ticket in
+the other to be a tourist, do you?"
+
+"But if you will pardon me," I said, "where did you get the notion that
+Les Trois Pigeons is one of the regular sights?"
+
+"Ain't it in all the books?"
+
+"I don't think that it is mentioned in any of the guide-books."
+
+"NO! I didn't say it WAS, m' friend," he retorted with contemptuous
+pity. "I mean them history-books. It's in all o' THEM!"
+
+"This is strange news," said I. "I should be very much interested to
+read them!"
+
+"Lookahere," he said, taking a step nearer me; "in oinest now, on your
+woid: Didn' more'n half them Jeanne d'Arc tamales live at that hotel
+wunst?"
+
+"Nobody of historical importance--or any other kind of importance, so
+far as I know--ever lived there," I informed him. "The older portions
+of the inn once belonged to an ancient farm-house, that is all."
+
+"On the level," he demanded, "didn't that William the Conker nor NONE
+o' them ancient gilt-edges live there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Stung again!" He broke into a sudden loud cackle of laughter. "Why!
+the feller tole me 'at this here Pigeon place was all three rings when
+it come t' history. Yessir! Tall, thin feller he was, in a three-button
+cutaway, English make, and kind of red-complected, with a sandy
+MUS-tache," pursued the pedestrian, apparently fearing his narrative
+might lack colour. "I met him right comin' out o' the Casino at
+Trouville, yes'day aft'noon; c'udn' a' b'en more'n four o'clock--hol'
+on though, yes 'twas, 'twas nearer five, about twunty minutes t' five,
+say--an' this feller tells me--" He cackled with laughter as palpably
+disingenuous as the corroborative details he thought necessary to
+muster, then he became serious, as if marvelling at his own wondrous
+verdancy. "M' friend, that feller soitn'y found me easy. But he can't
+say I ain't game; he passes me the limes, but I'm jest man enough to
+drink his health fer it in this sweet, sound ole-fashioned cider 'at
+ain't got a headache in a barrel of it. He played me GUD, and here's TO
+him!"
+
+Despite the heartiness of the sentiment, my honest tourist's enthusiasm
+seemed largely histrionic, and his quaffing of the beaker too
+reminiscent of drain-the-wine-cup-free in the second row of the chorus,
+for he absently allowed it to dangle from his hand before raising it to
+his lips. However, not all of its contents was spilled, and he
+swallowed a mouthful of the sweet, sound, old-fashioned cider--but by
+mistake, I was led to suppose, from the expression of displeasure which
+became so deeply marked upon his countenance as to be noticeable, even
+in the feeble lamplight.
+
+I tarried no longer, but bidding this good youth and the generations of
+Baudry good-night, hastened on to my belated dinner.
+
+"Amedee," I said, when my cigar was lighted and the usual hour of
+consultation had arrived; "isn't that old lock on the chest where
+Madame Brossard keeps her silver getting rather rusty?"
+
+"Monsieur, we have no thieves here. We are out of the world."
+
+"Yes, but Trouville is not so far away."
+
+"Truly."
+
+"Many strange people go to Trouville: grand-dukes, millionaires, opera
+singers, princes, jockeys, gamblers--"
+
+"Truly, truly!"
+
+"And tourists," I finished.
+
+"That is well known," assented Amedee, nodding.
+
+"It follows," I continued with the impressiveness of all logicians,
+"that many strange people may come from Trouville. In their excursions
+to the surrounding points of interest--"
+
+"Eh, monsieur, but that is true!" he interrupted, laying his right
+forefinger across the bridge of his nose, which was his gesture when he
+remembered anything suddenly. "There was a strange monsieur from
+Trouville here this very day."
+
+"What kind of person was he?"
+
+"A foreigner, but I could not tell from what country."
+
+"What time of day was he here?" I asked, with growing interest.
+
+"Toward the middle of the afternoon. I was alone, except for Glouglou,
+when he came. He wished to see the whole house and I showed him what I
+could, except of course monsieur's pavilion, and the Grande Suite.
+Monsieur the Professor and that other monsieur had gone to the forest,
+but I did not feel at liberty to exhibit their rooms without Madame
+Brossard's permission, and she was spending the day at Dives. Besides,"
+added the good man, languidly snapping a napkin at a moth near one of
+the candles, "the doors were locked."
+
+"This person was a tourist?" I asked, after a pause during which Amedee
+seemed peacefully unaware of the rather concentrated gaze I had fixed
+upon him. "Of a kind. In speaking he employed many peculiar
+expressions, more like a thief of a Parisian cabman than of the polite
+world."
+
+"The devil he did!" said I. "Did he tell you why he wished to see the
+whole house? Did he contemplate taking rooms here?"
+
+"No, monsieur, it appears that his interest was historical. At first I
+should not have taken him for a man of learning, yet he gave me a great
+piece of information; a thing quite new to me, though I have lived here
+so many years. We are distinguished in history, it seems, and at one
+time both William the Conqueror and that brave Jeanne d'Arc--"
+
+I interrupted sharply, dropping my cigar and leaning across the table:
+
+"How was this person dressed?"
+
+"Monsieur, he was very much the pedestrian."
+
+And so, for that evening, we had something to talk about besides "that
+other monsieur"; indeed, we found our subject so absorbing that I
+forgot to ask Amedee whether it was he or Jean Ferret who had prefixed
+the "de" to "Armand."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The cat that fell from the top of the Washington monument, and
+scampered off unhurt was killed by a dog at the next corner. Thus a
+certain painter-man, winged with canvases and easel, might have been
+seen to depart hurriedly from a poppy-sprinkled field, an infuriated
+Norman stallion in close attendance, and to fly safely over a stone
+wall of good height, only to turn his ankle upon an unconsidered
+pebble, some ten paces farther on; the nose of the stallion projected
+over the wall, snorting joy thereat. The ankle was one which had turned
+aforetime; it was an old weakness: moreover, it was mine. I was the
+painter-man.
+
+I could count on little less than a week of idleness within the
+confines of Les Trois Pigeons; and reclining among cushions in a wicker
+long-chair looking out from my pavilion upon the drowsy garden on a hot
+noontide, I did not much care. It was cooler indoors, comfortable
+enough; the open door framed the courtyard where pigeons were strutting
+on the gravel walks between flower-beds. Beyond, and thrown deeper into
+the perspective by the outer frame of the great archway, road and
+fields and forest fringes were revealed, lying tremulously in the hot
+sunshine. The foreground gained a human (though not lively) interest
+from the ample figure of our maitre d'hotel reposing in a rustic chair
+which had enjoyed the shade of an arbour about an hour earlier, when
+first occupied, but now stood in the broiling sun. At times Amedee's
+upper eyelids lifted as much as the sixteenth of an inch, and he made a
+hazy gesture as if to wave the sun away, or, when the table-cloth upon
+his left arm slid slowly earthward, he adjusted it with a petulant
+jerk, without material interruption to his siesta. Meanwhile Glouglou,
+rolling and smoking cigarettes in the shade of a clump of lilac,
+watched with button eyes the noddings of his superior, and, at the cost
+of some convulsive writhings, constrained himself to silent laughter.
+
+A heavy step crunched the gravel and I heard my name pronounced in a
+deep inquiring rumble--the voice of Professor Keredec, no less. Nor was
+I greatly surprised, since our meeting in the forest had led me to
+expect some advances on his part toward friendliness, or, at least, in
+the direction of a better acquaintance. However, I withheld my reply
+for a moment to make sure I had heard aright.
+
+The name was repeated.
+
+"Here I am," I called, "in the pavilion, if you wish to see me."
+
+"Aha! I hear you become an invalid, my dear sir." With that the
+professor's great bulk loomed in the doorway against the glare outside.
+"I have come to condole with you, if you allow it."
+
+"To smoke with me, too, I hope," I said, not a little pleased.
+
+"That I will do," he returned, and came in slowly, walking with
+perceptible lameness. "The sympathy I offer is genuine: it is not only
+from the heart, it is from the latissimus dorsi" he continued, seating
+himself with a cavernous groan. "I am your confrere in illness, my dear
+sir. I have choosed this fine weather for rheumatism of the back."
+
+"I hope it is not painful."
+
+"Ha, it is so-so," he rumbled, removing his spectacles and wiping his
+eyes, dazzled by the sun. "There is more of me than of most men--more
+to suffer. Nature was generous to the little germs when she made this
+big Keredec; she offered them room for their campaigns of war."
+
+"You'll take a cigarette?"
+
+"I thank you; if you do not mind, I smoke my pipe."
+
+He took from his pocket a worn leather case, which he opened,
+disclosing a small, browned clay bowl of the kind workmen use; and,
+fitting it with a red stem, he filled it with a dark and sinister
+tobacco from a pouch. "Always my pipe for me," he said, and applied a
+match, inhaling the smoke as other men inhale the light smoke of
+cigarettes. "Ha, it is good! It is wicked for the insides, but it is
+good for the soul." And clouds wreathed his great beard like a storm on
+Mont Blanc as he concluded, with gusto, "It is my first pipe since
+yesterday."
+
+"That is being a good smoker," I ventured sententiously; "to whet
+indulgence with abstinence."
+
+"My dear sir," he protested, "I am a man without even enough virtue to
+be an epicure. When I am alone I am a chimney with no hebdomadary
+repose; I smoke forever. It is on account of my young friend I am
+temperate now."
+
+"He has never smoked, your young friend?" I asked, glancing at my
+visitor rather curiously, I fear.
+
+"Mr. Saffren has no vices." Professor Keredec replaced his
+silver-rimmed spectacles and turned them upon me with serene
+benevolence. "He is in good condition, all pure, like little
+children--and so if I smoke near him he chokes and has water at the
+eyes, though he does not complain. Just now I take a vacation: it is
+his hour for study, but I think he looks more out of the front window
+than at his book. He looks very much from the window"--there was a
+muttering of subterranean thunder somewhere, which I was able to locate
+in the professor's torso, and took to be his expression of a
+chuckle--"yes, very much, since the passing of that charming lady some
+days ago."
+
+"You say your young friend's name is Saffren?"
+
+"Oliver Saffren." The benevolent gaze continued to rest upon me, but a
+shadow like a faint anxiety darkened the Homeric brow, and an odd
+notion entered my mind (without any good reason) that Professor Keredec
+was wondering what I thought of the name. I uttered some commonplace
+syllable of no moment, and there ensued a pause during which the
+seeming shadow upon my visitor's forehead became a reality, deepening
+to a look of perplexity and trouble. Finally he said abruptly: "It is
+about him that I have come to talk to you."
+
+"I shall be very glad," I murmured, but he brushed the callow formality
+aside with a gesture of remonstrance.
+
+"Ha, my dear sir," he cried; "but you are a man of feeling! We are both
+old enough to deal with more than just these little words of the mouth!
+It was the way you have received my poor young gentleman's excuses when
+he was so rude, which make me wish to talk with you on such a subject;
+it is why I would not have you believe Mr. Saffren and me two very
+suspected individuals who hide here like two bad criminals!"
+
+"No, no," I protested hastily. "The name of Professor Keredec--"
+
+"The name of NO man," he thundered, interrupting, "can protect his
+reputation when he is caught peeping from a curtain! Ha, my dear sir! I
+know what you think. You think, 'He is a nice fine man, that old
+professor, oh, very nice--only he hides behind the curtains sometimes!
+Very fine man, oh, yes; only he is a spy.' Eh? Ha, ha! That is what you
+have been thinking, my dear sir!"
+
+"Not at all," I laughed; "I thought you might fear that _I_ was a spy."
+
+"Eh?" He became sharply serious upon the instant. "What made you think
+that?"
+
+"I supposed you might be conducting some experiments, or perhaps
+writing a book which you wished to keep from the public for a time, and
+that possibly you might imagine that I was a reporter."
+
+"So! And THAT is all," he returned, with evident relief. "No, my dear
+sir, I was the spy; it is the truth; and I was spying upon you. I
+confess my shame. I wish very much to know what you were like, what
+kind of a man you are. And so," he concluded with an opening of the
+hands, palms upward, as if to show that nothing remained for
+concealment, "and so I have watched you."
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"The explanation is so simple: it was necessary."
+
+"Because of--of Mr. Saffren?" I said slowly, and with some trepidation.
+
+"Precisely." The professor exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Because I am
+sensitive for him, and because in a certain way I am--how should it be
+said?--perhaps it is near the truth to say, I am his guardian."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Forgive me," he rejoined quickly, "but I am afraid you do not see. I
+am not his guardian by the law."
+
+"I had not supposed that you were," I said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because, though he puzzled me and I do not understand his case--his
+case, so to speak, I have not for a moment thought him insane."
+
+"Ha, my dear sir, you are right!" exclaimed Keredec, beaming on me,
+much pleased. "You are a thousand times right; he is as sane as
+yourself or myself or as anybody in the whole wide world! Ha! he is now
+much MORE sane, for his mind is not yet confused and becobwebbed with
+the useless things you and I put into ours. It is open and clear like
+the little children's mind. And it is a good mind! It is only a little
+learning, a little experience, that he lacks. A few months more--ha, at
+the greatest, a year from now--and he will not be different any longer;
+he will be like the rest of us. Only"--the professor leaned forward and
+his big fist came down on the arm of his chair--"he shall be better
+than the rest of us! But if strange people were to see him now," he
+continued, leaning back and dropping his voice to a more confidential
+tone, "it would not do. This poor world is full of fools; there are so
+many who judge quickly. If they should see him now, they might think he
+is not just right in his brain; and then, as it could happen so easily,
+those same people might meet him again after a while. 'Ha,' they would
+say, 'there was a time when that young man was insane. I knew him!' And
+so he might go through his life with those clouds over him. Those
+clouds are black clouds, they can make more harm than our old sins, and
+I wish to save my friend from them. So I have brought him here to this
+quiet place where nobody comes, and we can keep from meeting any
+foolish people. But, my dear sir"--he leaned forward again, and spoke
+emphatically--"it would be barbarous for men of intelligence to live in
+the same house and go always hiding from one another! Let us dine
+together this evening, if you will, and not only this evening but every
+evening you are willing to share with us and do not wish to be alone.
+It will be good for us. We are three men like hermits, far out of the
+world, but--a thousand saints!--let us be civilised to one another!"
+
+"With all my heart," I said.
+
+"Ha! I wish you to know my young man," Keredec went on. "You will like
+him--no man of feeling could keep himself from liking him--and he is
+your fellow-countryman. I hope you will be his friend. He should make
+friends, for he needs them."
+
+"I think he has a host of them," said I, "in Professor Keredec."
+
+My visitor looked at me quizzically for a moment, shook his head and
+sighed. "That is only one small man in a big body, that Professor
+Keredec. And yet," he went on sadly, "it is all the friends that poor
+boy has in this world. You will dine with us to-night?"
+
+Acquiescing cheerfully, I added: "You will join me at the table on my
+veranda, won't you? I can hobble that far but not much farther."
+
+Before answering he cast a sidelong glance at the arrangement of things
+outside the door. The screen of honeysuckle ran partly across the front
+of the little porch, about half of which it concealed from the garden
+and consequently from the road beyond the archway. I saw that he took
+note of this before he pointed to that corner of the veranda most
+closely screened by the vines and said:
+
+"May the table be placed yonder?"
+
+"Certainly; I often have it there, even when I am alone."
+
+"Ha, that is good," he exclaimed. "It is not human for a Frenchman to
+eat in the house in good weather."
+
+"It is a pity," I said, "that I should have been such a bugbear."
+
+This remark was thoroughly disingenuous, for, although I did not doubt
+that anything he told me was perfectly true, nor that he had made as
+complete a revelation as he thought consistent with his duty toward the
+young man in his charge, I did not believe that his former precautions
+were altogether due to my presence at the inn.
+
+And I was certain that while he might fear for his friend some chance
+repute of insanity, he had greater terrors than that. As to their
+nature I had no clew; nor was it my affair to be guessing; but whatever
+they were, the days of security at Les Trois Pigeons had somewhat eased
+Professor Keredec's mind in regard to them. At least, his anxiety was
+sufficiently assuaged to risk dining out of doors with only my screen
+of honeysuckle between his charge and curious eyes. So much was evident.
+
+"The reproach is deserved," he returned, after a pause. "It is to be
+wished that all our bugbears might offer as pleasant a revelation, if
+we had the courage, or the slyness"--he laughed--"to investigate."
+
+I made a reply of similar gallantry and he got to his feet, rubbing his
+back as he rose.
+
+"Ha, I am old! old! Rheumatism in warm weather: that is ugly. Now I
+must go to my boy and see what he can make of his Gibbon. The poor
+fellow! I think he finds the decay of Rome worse than rheumatism in
+summer!"
+
+He replaced his pipe in its case, and promising heartily that it should
+not be the last he would smoke in my company and domain, was making
+slowly for the door when he paused at a sound from the road.
+
+We heard the rapid hoof-beats of a mettled horse. He crossed our vision
+and the open archway: a high-stepping hackney going well, driven by a
+lady in a light trap which was half full of wild flowers. It was a
+quick picture, like a flash of the cinematograph, but the pose of the
+lady as a driver was seen to be of a commanding grace, and though she
+was not in white but in light blue, and her plain sailor hat was
+certainly not trimmed with roses, I had not the least difficulty in
+recognising her. At the same instant there was a hurried clatter of
+foot-steps upon the stairway leading from the gallery; the startled
+pigeons fluttered up from the garden-path, betaking themselves to
+flight, and "that other monsieur" came leaping across the courtyard,
+through the archway and into the road.
+
+"Glouglou! Look quickly!" he called loudly, in French, as he came; "Who
+is that lady?"
+
+Glouglou would have replied, but the words were taken out of his mouth.
+Amedee awoke with a frantic start and launched himself at the archway,
+carroming from its nearest corner and hurtling onward at a speed which
+for once did not diminish in proportion to his progress.
+
+"That lady, monsieur?" he gasped, checking himself at the young man's
+side and gazing after the trap, "that is Madame d'Armand."
+
+"Madame d'Armand," Saffren repeated the name slowly. "Her name is
+Madame d'Armand."
+
+"Yes, monsieur," said Amedee complacently; "it is an American lady who
+has married a French nobleman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Like most painters, I have supposed the tools of my craft harder to
+manipulate than those of others. The use of words, particularly, seemed
+readier, handier for the contrivance of effects than pigments. I
+thought the language of words less elusive than that of colour, leaving
+smaller margin for unintended effects; and, believing in complacent
+good faith that words conveyed exact meanings exactly, it was my
+innocent conception that almost anything might be so described in words
+that all who read must inevitably perceive that thing precisely. If
+this were true, there would be little work for the lawyers, who produce
+such tortured pages in the struggle to be definite, who swing riches
+from one family to another, save men from violent death or send them to
+it, and earn fortunes for themselves through the dangerous inadequacies
+of words. I have learned how great was my mistake, and now I am wishing
+I could shift paper for canvas, that I might paint the young man who
+came to interest me so deeply. I wish I might present him here in
+colour instead of trusting to this unstable business of words, so wily
+and undependable, with their shimmering values, that you cannot turn
+your back upon them for two minutes but they will be shouting a hundred
+things which they were not meant to tell.
+
+To make the best of necessity: what I have written of him--my first
+impressions--must be taken as the picture, although it be but a
+gossamer sketch in the air, instead of definite work with well-ground
+pigments to show forth a portrait, to make you see flesh and blood. It
+must take the place of something contrived with my own tools to reveal
+what the following days revealed him to me, and what it was about him
+(evasive of description) which made me so soon, as Keredec wished, his
+friend.
+
+Life among our kin and kind is made pleasanter by our daily platitudes.
+Who is more tedious than the man incessantly struggling to avoid the
+banal? Nature rules that such a one will produce nothing better than
+epigram and paradox, saying old, old things in a new way, or merely
+shifting object for subject--and his wife's face, when he shines for a
+circle, is worth a glance. With no further apology, I declare that I am
+a person who has felt few positive likes or dislikes for people in this
+life, and I did deeply like my fellow-lodgers at Les Trois Pigeons.
+Liking for both men increased with acquaintance, and for the younger I
+came to feel, in addition, a kind of championship, doubtless in some
+measure due to what Keredec had told me of him, but more to that
+half-humourous sense of protectiveness that we always have for those
+young people whose untempered and innocent outlook makes us feel, as we
+say, "a thousand years old."
+
+The afternoon following our first dinner together, the two, in
+returning from their walk, came into the pavilion with cheerful
+greetings, instead of going to their rooms as usual, and Keredec,
+declaring that the open air had "dispersed" his rheumatism, asked if he
+might overhaul some of my little canvases and boards. I explained that
+they consisted mainly of "notes" for future use, but consented
+willingly; whereupon he arranged a number of them as for exhibition and
+delivered himself impromptu of the most vehemently instructive lecture
+on art I had ever heard. Beginning with the family, the tribe, and the
+totem-pole, he was able to demonstrate a theory that art was not only
+useful to society but its primary necessity; a curious thought,
+probably more attributable to the fact that he was a Frenchman than to
+that of his being a scientist.
+
+"And here," he said in the course of his demonstration, pointing to a
+sketch which I had made one morning just after sunrise--"here you can
+see real sunshine. One certain day there came those few certain moment'
+at the sunrise when the light was like this. Those few moment', where
+are they? They have disappeared, gone for eternally. They went"--he
+snapped his fingers--"like that. Yet here they are--ha!--forever!"
+
+"But it doesn't look like sunshine," said Oliver Saffren hesitatingly,
+stating a disconcerting but incontrovertible truth; "it only seems to
+look like it because--isn't it because it's so much brighter than the
+rest of the picture? I doubt if paint CAN look like sunshine." He
+turned from the sketch, caught Keredec's gathering frown, and his face
+flushed painfully. "Ah!" he cried, "I shouldn't have said it?"
+
+I interposed to reassure him, exclaiming that it were a godsend indeed,
+did all our critics merely speak the plain truth as they see it for
+themselves. The professor would not have it so, and cut me off.
+
+"No, no, no, my dear sir!" he shouted. "You speak with kindness, but
+you put some wrong ideas in his head!"
+
+Saffren's look of trouble deepened. "I don't understand," he murmured.
+"I thought you said always to speak the truth just as I see it." "I
+have telled you," Keredec declared vehemently, "nothing of the kind!"
+
+"But only yesterday--"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"I understood--"
+
+"Then you understood only one-half! I say, 'Speak the truth as you see
+it, when you speak.' I did not tell you to speak! How much time have
+you give' to study sunshine and paint? What do you know about them?"
+
+"Nothing," answered the other humbly.
+
+A profound rumbling was heard, and the frown disappeared from Professor
+Keredec's brow like the vanishing of the shadow of a little cloud from
+the dome of some great benevolent and scientific institute. He dropped
+a weighty hand on his young friend's shoulder, and, in high
+good-humour, thundered:
+
+"Then you are a critic! Knowing nothing of sunshine except that it
+warms you, and never having touched paint, you are going to tell about
+them to a man who spends his life studying them! You look up in the
+night and the truth you see is that the moon and stars are crossing the
+ocean. You will tell that to the astronomer? Ha! The truth is what the
+masters see. When you know what they see, you may speak."
+
+At dinner the night before, it had struck me that Saffren was a rather
+silent young man by habit, and now I thought I began to understand the
+reason. I hinted as much, saying, "That would make a quiet world of it."
+
+"All the better, my dear sir!" The professor turned beamingly upon me
+and continued, dropping into a Whistlerian mannerism that he had
+sometimes: "You must not blame that great wind of a Keredec for
+preaching at other people to listen. It gives the poor man more room
+for himself to talk!"
+
+I found his talk worth hearing.
+
+I would show you, if I could, our pleasant evenings of lingering, after
+coffee, behind the tremulous screen of honeysuckle, with the night very
+dark and quiet beyond the warm nimbus of our candle-light, the faces of
+my two companions clear-obscure in a mellow shadow like the middle
+tones of a Rembrandt, and the professor, good man, talking wonderfully
+of everything under the stars and over them,--while Oliver Saffren and
+I sat under the spell of the big, kind voice, the young man listening
+with the same eagerness which marked him when he spoke. It was an
+eagerness to understand, not to interrupt.
+
+These were our evenings. In the afternoons the two went for their walk
+as usual, though now they did not plunge out of sight of the main road
+with the noticeable haste which Amedee had described. As time pressed,
+I perceived the caution of Keredec visibly slackening. Whatever he had
+feared, the obscurity and continued quiet of LES TROIS PIGEONS
+reassured him; he felt more and more secure in this sheltered retreat,
+"far out of the world," and obviously thought no danger imminent. So
+the days went by, uneventful for my new friends,--days of warm idleness
+for me. Let them go unnarrated; we pass to the event.
+
+My ankle had taken its wonted time to recover. I was on my feet again
+and into the woods--not traversing, on the way, a certain
+poppy-sprinkled field whence a fine Norman stallion snorted ridicule
+over a wall. But the fortune of Keredec was to sink as I rose. His
+summer rheumatism returned, came to grips with him, laid him low. We
+hobbled together for a day or so, then I threw away my stick and he
+exchanged his for an improvised crutch. By the time I was fit to run,
+he was able to do little better than to creep--might well have taken to
+his bed. But as he insisted that his pupil should not forego the daily
+long walks and the health of the forest, it came to pass that Saffren
+often made me the objective of his rambles. At dinner he usually asked
+in what portion of the forest I should be painting late the next
+afternoon, and I got in the habit of expecting him to join me toward
+sunset. We located each other through a code of yodeling that we
+arranged; his part of these vocal gymnastics being very pleasant to
+hear, for he had a flexible, rich voice. I shudder to recall how
+largely my own performances partook of the grotesque. But in the forest
+where were no musical persons (I supposed) to take hurt from whatever
+noise I made, I would let go with all the lungs I had; he followed the
+horrid sounds to their origin, and we would return to the inn together.
+
+On these homeward walks I found him a good companion, and that is
+something not to be under-valued by a selfish man who lives for himself
+and his own little ways and his own little thoughts, and for very
+little else,--which is the kind of man (as I have already confessed)
+that I was--deserving the pity of all happily or unhappily married
+persons.
+
+Responsive in kind to either a talkative mood or a silent one, always
+gentle in manner, and always unobtrusively melancholy, Saffren never
+took the initiative, though now and then he asked a question about some
+rather simple matter which might be puzzling him. Whatever the answer,
+he usually received it in silence, apparently turning the thing over
+and over and inside out in his mind. He was almost tremulously
+sensitive, yet not vain, for he was neither afraid nor ashamed to
+expose his ignorance, his amazing lack of experience. He had a greater
+trouble, one that I had not fathomed. Sometimes there came over his
+face a look of importunate wistfulness and distressed perplexity, and
+he seemed on the point of breaking out with something that he wished to
+tell me--or to ask me, for it might have been a question--but he always
+kept it back. Keredec's training seldom lost its hold upon him.
+
+I had gone back to my glade again, and to the thin sunshine, which came
+a little earlier, now that we were deep in July; and one afternoon I
+sat in the mouth of the path, just where I had played the bounding
+harlequin for the benefit of the lovely visitor at Quesnay. It was warm
+in the woods and quiet, warm with the heat of July, still with a July
+stillness. The leaves had no motion; if there were birds or insects
+within hearing they must have been asleep; the quivering flight of a
+butterfly in that languid air seemed, by contrast, quite a commotion; a
+humming-bird would have made a riot.
+
+I heard the light snapping of a twig and a swish of branches from the
+direction in which I faced; evidently some one was approaching the
+glade, though concealed from me for the moment by the winding of the
+path. Taking it for Saffren, as a matter of course (for we had arranged
+to meet at that time and place), I raised my voice in what I intended
+for a merry yodel of greeting.
+
+I yodeled loud, I yodeled long. Knowing my own deficiencies in this
+art, I had adopted the cunning sinner's policy toward sin and made a
+joke of it: thus, since my best performance was not unsuggestive of
+calamity in the poultry yard, I made it worse. And then and there, when
+my mouth was at its widest in the production of these shocking
+ulla-hootings, the person approaching came round a turn in the path,
+and within full sight of me. To my ultimate, utmost horror, it was
+Madame d'Armand.
+
+I grew so furiously red that it burned me. I had not the courage to
+run, though I could have prayed that she might take me for what I
+seemed--plainly a lunatic, whooping the lonely peace of the woods into
+pandemonium--and turn back. But she kept straight on, must inevitably
+reach the glade and cross it, and I calculated wretchedly that at the
+rate she was walking, unhurried but not lagging, it would be about
+thirty seconds before she passed me. Then suddenly, while I waited in
+sizzling shame, a clear voice rang out from a distance in an answering
+yodel to mine, and I thanked heaven for its mercies; at least she would
+see that my antics had some reason.
+
+She stopped short, in a half-step, as if a little startled, one arm
+raised to push away a thin green branch that crossed the path at
+shoulder-height; and her attitude was so charming as she paused,
+detained to listen by this other voice with its musical youthfulness,
+that for a second I thought crossly of all the young men in the world.
+
+There was a final call, clear and loud as a bugle, and she turned to
+the direction whence it came, so that her back was toward me. Then
+Oliver Saffren came running lightly round the turn of the path, near
+her and facing her.
+
+He stopped as short as she had.
+
+Her hand dropped from the slender branch, and pressed against her side.
+
+He lifted his hat and spoke to her, and I thought she made some quick
+reply in a low voice, though I could not be sure.
+
+She held that startled attitude a moment longer, then turned and
+crossed the glade so hurriedly that it was almost as if she ran away
+from him. I had moved aside with my easel and camp-stool, but she
+passed close to me as she entered the path again on my side of the
+glade. She did not seem to see me, her dark eyes stared widely straight
+ahead, her lips were parted, and she looked white and frightened.
+
+She disappeared very quickly in the windings of the path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+He came on more slowly, his eyes following her as she vanished, then
+turning to me with a rather pitiful apprehension--a look like that I
+remember to have seen (some hundreds of years ago) on the face of a
+freshman, glancing up from his book to find his doorway ominously
+filling with sophomores.
+
+I stepped out to meet him, indignant upon several counts, most of all
+upon his own. I knew there was no offence in his heart, not the
+remotest rude intent, but the fact was before me that he had frightened
+a woman, had given this very lovely guest of my friends good cause to
+hold him a boor, if she did not, indeed, think him (as she probably
+thought me) an outright lunatic! I said:
+
+"You spoke to that lady!" And my voice sounded unexpectedly harsh and
+sharp to my own ears, for I had meant to speak quietly.
+
+"I know--I know. It--it was wrong," he stammered. "I knew I
+shouldn't--and I couldn't help it."
+
+"You expect me to believe that?"
+
+"It's the truth; I couldn't!"
+
+I laughed sceptically; and he flinched, but repeated that what he had
+said was only the truth. "I don't understand; it was all beyond me," he
+added huskily.
+
+"What was it you said to her?"
+
+"I spoke her name--'Madame d'Armand.'"
+
+"You said more than that!"
+
+"I asked her if she would let me see her again."
+
+"What else?"
+
+"Nothing," he answered humbly. "And then she--then for a moment it
+seemed--for a moment she didn't seem to be able to speak--"
+
+"I should think not!" I shouted, and burst out at him with satirical
+laughter. He stood patiently enduring it, his lowered eyes following
+the aimless movements of his hands, which were twisting and untwisting
+his flexible straw hat; and it might have struck me as nearer akin to
+tragedy rather than to a thing for laughter: this spectacle of a grown
+man so like a schoolboy before the master, shamefaced over a stammered
+confession.
+
+"But she did say something to you, didn't she?" I asked finally, with
+the gentleness of a cross-examining lawyer.
+
+"Yes--after that moment."
+
+"Well, what was it?"
+
+"She said, 'Not now!' That was all."
+
+"I suppose that was all she had breath for! It was just the
+inconsequent and meaningless thing a frightened woman WOULD say!"
+
+"Meaningless?" he repeated, and looked up wonderingly.
+
+"Did you take it for an appointment?" I roared, quite out of patience,
+and losing my temper completely.
+
+"No, no, no! She said only that, and then--"
+
+"Then she turned and ran away from you!"
+
+"Yes," he said, swallowing painfully.
+
+"That PLEASED you," I stormed, "to frighten a woman in the woods--to
+make her feel that she can't walk here in safety! You ENJOY doing
+things like that?"
+
+He looked at me with disconcerting steadiness for a moment, and,
+without offering any other response, turned aside, resting his arm
+against the trunk of a tree and gazing into the quiet forest.
+
+I set about packing my traps, grumbling various sarcasms, the last
+mutterings of a departed storm, for already I realised that I had taken
+out my own mortification upon him, and I was stricken with remorse. And
+yet, so contrarily are we made, I continued to be unkind while in my
+heart I was asking pardon of him. I tried to make my reproaches
+gentler, to lend my voice a hint of friendly humour, but in spite of me
+the one sounded gruffer and the other sourer with everything I said.
+This was the worse because of the continued silence of the victim: he
+did not once answer, nor by the slightest movement alter his attitude
+until I had finished--and more than finished.
+
+"There--and that's all!" I said desperately, when the things were
+strapped and I had slung them to my shoulder. "Let's be off, in
+heaven's name!"
+
+At that he turned quickly toward me; it did not lessen my remorse to
+see that he had grown very pale.
+
+"I wouldn't have frightened her for the world," he said, and his voice
+and his whole body shook with a strange violence. "I wouldn't have
+frightened her to please the angels in heaven!"
+
+A blunderer whose incantation had brought the spirit up to face me, I
+stared at him helplessly, nor could I find words to answer or control
+the passion that my imbecile scolding had evoked. Whatever the barriers
+Keredec's training had built for his protection, they were down now.
+
+"You think I told a lie!" he cried. "You think I lied when I said I
+couldn't help speaking to her!"
+
+"No, no," I said earnestly. "I didn't mean--"
+
+"Words!" he swept the feeble protest away, drowned in a whirling
+vehemence. "And what does it matter? You CAN'T understand. When YOU
+want to know what to do, you look back into your life and it tells you;
+and I look back--AH!" He cried out, uttering a half-choked, incoherent
+syllable. "I look back and it's all--BLIND! All these things you CAN do
+and CAN'T do--all these infinite little things! You know, and Keredec
+knows, and Glouglou knows, and every mortal soul on earth knows--but
+_I_ don't know! Your life has taught you, and you know, but I don't
+know. I haven't HAD my life. It's gone! All I have is words that
+Keredec has said to me, and it's like a man with no eyes, out in the
+sunshine hunting for the light. Do you think words can teach you to
+resist such impulses as I had when I spoke to Madame d'Armand? Can life
+itself teach you to resist them? Perhaps you never had them?"
+
+"I don't know," I answered honestly.
+
+"I would burn my hand from my arm and my arm from my body," he went on,
+with the same wild intensity, "rather than trouble her or frighten her,
+but I couldn't help speaking to her any more than I can help wanting to
+see her again--the feeling that I MUST--whatever you say or do,
+whatever Keredec says or does, whatever the whole world may say or do.
+And I will! It isn't a thing to choose to do, or not to do. I can't
+help it any more than I can help being alive!"
+
+He paused, wiping from his brow a heavy dew not of the heat, but like
+that on the forehead of a man in crucial pain. I made nervous haste to
+seize the opportunity, and said gently, almost timidly:
+
+"But if it should distress the lady?"
+
+"Yes--then I could keep away. But I must know that."
+
+"I think you might know it by her running away--and by her look," I
+said mildly. "Didn't you?"
+
+"NO!" And his eyes flashed an added emphasis.
+
+"Well, well," I said, "let's be on our way, or the professor will be
+wondering if he is to dine alone."
+
+Without looking to see if he followed, I struck into the path toward
+home. He did follow, obediently enough, not uttering another word so
+long as we were in the woods, though I could hear him breathing sharply
+as he strode behind me, and knew that he was struggling to regain
+control of himself. I set the pace, making it as fast as I could, and
+neither of us spoke again until we had come out of the forest and were
+upon the main road near the Baudry cottage. Then he said in a steadier
+voice:
+
+"Why should it distress her?"
+
+"Well, you see," I began, not slackening the pace "there are
+formalities--"
+
+"Ah, I know," he interrupted, with an impatient laugh. "Keredec once
+took me to a marionette show--all the little people strung on wires;
+they couldn't move any other way. And so you mustn't talk to a woman
+until somebody whose name has been spoken to you speaks yours to her!
+Do you call that a rule of nature?"
+
+"My dear boy," I laughed in some desperation, "we must conform to it,
+ordinarily, no matter whose rule it is."
+
+"Do you think Madame d'Armand cares for little forms like that?" he
+asked challengingly.
+
+"She does," I assured him with perfect confidence. "And, for the
+hundredth time, you must have seen how you troubled her."
+
+"No," he returned, with the same curious obstinacy, "I don't believe
+it. There was something, but it wasn't trouble. We looked straight at
+each other; I saw her eyes plainly, and it was--" he paused and sighed,
+a sudden, brilliant smile upon his lips--"it was very--it was very
+strange!"
+
+There was something so glad and different in his look that--like any
+other dried-up old blunderer in my place--I felt an instant tendency to
+laugh. It was that heathenish possession, the old insanity of the
+risibles, which makes a man think it a humourous thing that his friend
+should be discovered in love.
+
+But before I spoke, before I quite smiled outright, I was given the
+grace to see myself in the likeness of a leering stranger trespassing
+in some cherished inclosure: a garden where the gentlest guests must
+always be intruders, and only the owner should come. The best of us
+profane it readily, leaving the coarse prints of our heels upon its
+paths, mauling and man-handling the fairy blossoms with what pudgy
+fingers! Comes the poet, ruthlessly leaping the wall and trumpeting
+indecently his view-halloo of the chase, and, after him, the joker,
+snickering and hopeful of a kill among the rose-beds; for this has been
+their hunting-ground since the world began. These two have made us
+miserably ashamed of the divine infinitive, so that we are afraid to
+utter the very words "to love," lest some urchin overhear and pursue us
+with a sticky forefinger and stickier taunts. It is little to my credit
+that I checked the silly impulse to giggle at the eternal marvel, and
+went as gently as I could where I should not have gone at all.
+
+"But if you were wrong," I said, "if it did distress her, and if it
+happened that she has already had too much that was distressing in her
+life--"
+
+"You know something about her!" he exclaimed. "You know--"
+
+"I do not," I interrupted in turn. "I have only a vague guess; I may be
+altogether mistaken."
+
+"What is it that you guess?" he demanded abruptly. "Who made her
+suffer?"
+
+"I think it was her husband," I said, with a lack of discretion for
+which I was instantly sorry, fearing with reason that I had added a
+final blunder to the long list of the afternoon. "That is," I added,
+"if my guess is right."
+
+He stopped short in the road, detaining me by the arm, the question
+coming like a whip-crack: sharp, loud, violent.
+
+"Is he alive?"
+
+"I don't know," I answered, beginning to move forward; "and this is
+foolish talk--especially on my part!"
+
+"But I want to know," he persisted, again detaining me.
+
+"And I DON'T know!" I returned emphatically. "Probably I am entirely
+mistaken in thinking that I know anything of her whatever. I ought not
+to have spoken, unless I knew what I was talking about, and I'd rather
+not say any more until I do know."
+
+"Very well," he said quickly. "Will you tell me then?"
+
+"Yes--if you will let it go at that."
+
+"Thank you," he said, and with an impulse which was but too plainly one
+of gratitude, offered me his hand. I took it, and my soul was
+disquieted within me, for it was no purpose of mine to set inquiries on
+foot in regard to the affairs of "Madame d'Armand."
+
+It was early dusk, that hour, a little silvered but still clear, when
+the edges of things are beginning to grow indefinite, and usually our
+sleepy countryside knew no tranquiller time of day; but to-night, as we
+approached the inn, there were strange shapes in the roadway and other
+tokens that events were stirring there.
+
+From the courtyard came the sounds of laughter and chattering voices.
+Before the entrance stood a couple of open touring-cars; the chauffeurs
+engaged in cooling the rear tires with buckets of water brought by a
+personage ordinarily known as Glouglou, whose look and manner, as he
+performed this office for the leathern dignitaries, so awed me that I
+wondered I had ever dared address him with any presumption of intimacy.
+The cars were great and opulent, of impressive wheel-base, and
+fore-and-aft they were laden intricately with baggage: concave trunks
+fitting behind the tonneaus, thin trunks fastened upon the footboards,
+green, circular trunks adjusted to the spare tires, all deeply coated
+with dust. Here were fineries from Paris, doubtless on their way to
+flutter over the gay sands of Trouville, and now wandering but
+temporarily from the road; for such splendours were never designed to
+dazzle us of Madame Brossard's.
+
+We were crossing before the machines when one of the drivers saw fit to
+crank his engine (if that is the knowing phrase) and the thing shook
+out the usual vibrating uproar. It had a devastating effect upon my
+companion. He uttered a wild exclamation and sprang sideways into me,
+almost upsetting us both.
+
+"What on earth is the matter?" I asked. "Did you think the car was
+starting?"
+
+He turned toward me a face upon which was imprinted the sheer, blank
+terror of a child. It passed in an instant however, and he laughed.
+
+"I really didn't know. Everything has been so quiet always, out here in
+the country--and that horrible racket coming so suddenly--"
+
+Laughing with him, I took his arm and we turned to enter the archway.
+As we did so we almost ran into a tall man who was coming out,
+evidently intending to speak to one of the drivers.
+
+The stranger stepped back with a word of apology, and I took note of
+him for a fellow-countryman, and a worldly buck of fashion indeed,
+almost as cap-a-pie the automobilist as my mysterious spiller of cider
+had been the pedestrian. But this was no game-chicken; on the contrary
+(so far as a glance in the dusk of the archway revealed him), much the
+picture for framing in a club window of a Sunday morning; a seasoned,
+hard-surfaced, knowing creature for whom many a head waiter must have
+swept previous claimants from desired tables. He looked forty years so
+cannily that I guessed him to be about fifty.
+
+We were passing him when he uttered an ejaculation of surprise and
+stepped forward again, holding out his hand to my companion, and
+exclaiming:
+
+"Where did YOU come from? I'd hardly have known you."
+
+Oliver seemed unconscious of the proffered hand; he stiffened visibly
+and said:
+
+"I think there must be some mistake."
+
+"So there is," said the other promptly. "I have been misled by a
+resemblance. I beg your pardon."
+
+He lifted his cap slightly, going on, and we entered the courtyard to
+find a cheerful party of nine or ten men and women seated about a
+couple of tables. Like the person we had just encountered, they all
+exhibited a picturesque elaboration of the costume permitted by their
+mode of travel; making effective groupings in their ample draperies of
+buff and green and white, with glimpses of a flushed and pretty face or
+two among the loosened veilings. Upon the tables were pots of tea,
+plates of sandwiches, Madame Brossard's three best silver dishes heaped
+with fruit, and some bottles of dry champagne from the cellars of
+Rheims. The partakers were making very merry, having with them (as is
+inevitable in all such parties, it seems) a fat young man inclined to
+humour, who was now upon his feet for the proposal of some prankish
+toast. He interrupted himself long enough to glance our way as we
+crossed the garden; and it struck me that several pairs of brighter
+eyes followed my young companion with interest. He was well worth it,
+perhaps all the more because he was so genuinely unconscious of it; and
+he ran up the gallery steps and disappeared into his own rooms without
+sending even a glance from the corner of his eye in return.
+
+I went almost as quickly to my pavilion, and, without lighting my lamp,
+set about my preparations for dinner.
+
+The party outside, breaking up presently, could be heard moving toward
+the archway with increased noise and laughter, inspired by some
+exquisite antic on the part of the fat young man, when a girl's voice
+(a very attractive voice) called, "Oh, Cressie, aren't you coming?" and
+a man's replied, from near my veranda: "Only stopping to light a cigar."
+
+A flutter of skirts and a patter of feet betokened that the girl came
+running back to join the smoker. "Cressie," I heard her say in an
+eager, lowered tone, "who WAS he?"
+
+"Who was who?"
+
+"That DEVASTATING creature in white flannels!"
+
+The man chuckled. "Matinee sort of devastator--what? Monte Cristo hair,
+noble profile--"
+
+"You'd better tell me," she interrupted earnestly--"if you don't want
+me to ask the WAITER."
+
+"But I don't know him."
+
+"I saw you speak to him."
+
+"I thought it was a man I met three years ago out in San Francisco, but
+I was mistaken. There was a slight resemblance. This fellow might have
+been a rather decent younger brother of the man I knew. HE was the--"
+
+My strong impression was that if the speaker had not been interrupted
+at this point he would have said something very unfavourable to the
+character of the man he had met in San Francisco; but there came a
+series of blasts from the automobile horns and loud calls from others
+of the party, who were evidently waiting for these two.
+
+"Coming!" shouted the man.
+
+"Wait!" said his companion hurriedly, "Who was the other man, the older
+one with the painting things and SUCH a coat?"
+
+"Never saw him before in my life."
+
+I caught a last word from the girl as the pair moved away.
+
+"I'll come back here with a BAND to-morrow night, and serenade the
+beautiful one.
+
+"Perhaps he'd drop me his card out of the window!"
+
+The horns sounded again; there was a final chorus of laughter, suddenly
+ceasing to be heard as the cars swept away, and Les Trois Pigeons was
+left to its accustomed quiet.
+
+"Monsieur is served," said Amedee, looking in at my door, five minutes
+later.
+
+"You have passed a great hour just now, Amedee."
+
+"It was like the old days, truly!"
+
+"They are off for Trouville, I suppose."
+
+"No, monsieur, they are on their way to visit the chateau, and stopped
+here only because the run from Paris had made the tires too hot."
+
+"To visit Quesnay, you mean?"
+
+"Truly. But monsieur need give himself no uneasiness; I did not mention
+to any one that monsieur is here. His name was not spoken. Mademoiselle
+Ward returned to the chateau to-day," he added. "She has been in
+England."
+
+"Quesnay will be gay," I said, coming out to the table. Oliver Saffren
+was helping the professor down the steps, and Keredec, bent with
+suffering, but indomitable, gave me a hearty greeting, and began a
+ruthless dissection of Plato with the soup. Oliver, usually, very
+quiet, as I have said, seemed a little restless under the discourse
+to-night. However, he did not interrupt, sitting patiently until
+bedtime, though obviously not listening. When he bade me good night he
+gave me a look so clearly in reference to a secret understanding
+between us that, meaning to keep only the letter of my promise to him,
+I felt about as comfortable as if I had meanly tricked a child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+I had finished dressing, next morning, and was strapping my things
+together for the day's campaign, when I heard a shuffling step upon the
+porch, and the door opened gently, without any previous ceremony of
+knocking. To my angle of vision what at first appeared to have opened
+it was a tray of coffee, rolls, eggs, and a packet of sandwiches, but,
+after hesitating somewhat, this apparition advanced farther into the
+room, disclosing a pair of supporting hands, followed in due time by
+the whole person of a nervously smiling and visibly apprehensive
+Amedee. He closed the door behind him by the simple action of backing
+against it, took the cloth from his arm, and with a single gesture
+spread it neatly upon a small table, then, turning to me, laid the
+forefinger of his right hand warningly upon his lips and bowed me a
+deferential invitation to occupy the chair beside the table.
+
+"Well," I said, glaring at him, "what ails you?"
+
+"I thought monsieur might prefer his breakfast indoors, this morning,"
+he returned in a low voice.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+The miserable old man said something I did not understand--an
+incoherent syllable or two--suddenly covered his mouth with both hands,
+and turned away. I heard a catch in his throat; suffocated sounds
+issued from his bosom; however, it was nothing more than a momentary
+seizure, and, recovering command of himself by a powerful effort, he
+faced me with hypocritical servility.
+
+"Why do you laugh?" I asked indignantly.
+
+"But I did not laugh," he replied in a husky whisper. "Not at all."
+
+"You did," I asserted, raising my voice. "It almost killed you!"
+
+"Monsieur," he begged hoarsely, "HUSH!"
+
+"What is the matter?" I demanded loudly. "What do you mean by these
+abominable croakings? Speak out!"
+
+"Monsieur--" he gesticulated in a panic, toward the courtyard.
+"Mademoiselle Ward is out there."
+
+"WHAT!" But I did not shout the word.
+
+"There is always a little window in the rear wall," he breathed in my
+ear as I dropped into the chair by the table. "She would not see you
+if--"
+
+I interrupted with all the French rough-and-ready expressions of
+dislike at my command, daring to hope that they might give him some
+shadowy, far-away idea of what I thought of both himself and his
+suggestions, and, notwithstanding the difficulty of expressing strong
+feeling in whispers, it seemed to me that, in a measure, I succeeded.
+"I am not in the habit of crawling out of ventilators," I added,
+subduing a tendency to vehemence. "And probably Mademoiselle Ward has
+only come to talk with Madame Brossard."
+
+"I fear some of those people may have told her you were here," he
+ventured insinuatingly.
+
+"What people?" I asked, drinking my coffee calmly, yet, it must be
+confessed, without quite the deliberation I could have wished.
+
+"Those who stopped yesterday evening on the way to the chateau. They
+might have recognised--"
+
+"Impossible. I knew none of them."
+
+"But Mademoiselle Ward knows that you are here. Without doubt."
+
+"Why do you say so?"
+
+"Because she has inquired for you."
+
+"So!" I rose at once and went toward the door. "Why didn't you tell me
+at once?"
+
+"But surely," he remonstrated, ignoring my question, "monsieur will
+make some change of attire?"
+
+"Change of attire?" I echoed.
+
+"Eh, the poor old coat all hunched at the shoulders and spotted with
+paint!"
+
+"Why shouldn't it be?" I hissed, thoroughly irritated. "Do you take me
+for a racing marquis?"
+
+"But monsieur has a coat much more as a coat ought to be. And Jean
+Ferret says--"
+
+"Ha, now we're getting at it!" said I. "What does Jean Ferret say?"
+
+"Perhaps it would be better if I did not repeat--"
+
+"Out with it! What does Jean Ferret say?"
+
+"Well, then, Mademoiselle Ward's maid from Paris has told Jean Ferret
+that monsieur and Mademoiselle Ward have corresponded for years, and
+that--and that--"
+
+"Go on," I bade him ominously.
+
+"That monsieur has sent Mademoiselle Ward many expensive jewels, and--"
+
+"Aha!" said I, at which he paused abruptly, and stood staring at me.
+The idea of explaining Miss Elizabeth's collection to him, of getting
+anything whatever through that complacent head of his, was so hopeless
+that I did not even consider it. There was only one thing to do, and
+perhaps I should have done it--I do not know, for he saw the menace
+coiling in my eye, and hurriedly retreated.
+
+"Monsieur!" he gasped, backing away from me, and as his hand, fumbling
+behind him, found the latch of the door, he opened it, and scrambled
+out by a sort of spiral movement round the casing. When I followed, a
+moment later--with my traps on my shoulder and the packet of sandwiches
+in my pocket--he was out of sight.
+
+Miss Elizabeth sat beneath the arbour at the other end of the
+courtyard, and beside her stood the trim and glossy bay saddle-horse
+that she had ridden from Quesnay, his head outstretched above his
+mistress to paddle at the vine leaves with a tremulous upper lip. She
+checked his desire with a slight movement of her hand upon the
+bridle-rein; and he arched his neck prettily, pawing the gravel with a
+neat forefoot. Miss Elizabeth is one of the few large women I have
+known to whom a riding-habit is entirely becoming, and this group of
+two--a handsome woman and her handsome horse--has had a charm for all
+men ever since horses were tamed and women began to be beautiful. I
+thought of my work, of the canvases I meant to cover, but I felt the
+charm--and I felt it stirringly. It was a fine, fresh morning, and the
+sun just risen.
+
+An expression in the lady's attitude, and air which I instinctively
+construed as histrionic, seemed intended to convey that she had been
+kept waiting, yet had waited without reproach; and although she must
+have heard me coming, she did not look toward me until I was quite near
+and spoke her name. At that she sprang up quickly enough, and stretched
+out her hand to me.
+
+"Run to earth!" she cried, advancing a step to meet me.
+
+"A pretty poor trophy of the chase," said I, "but proud that you are
+its killer."
+
+To my surprise and mystification, her cheeks and brow flushed rosily;
+she was obviously conscious of it, and laughed.
+
+"Don't be embarrassed," she said.
+
+"I!"
+
+"Yes, you, poor man! I suppose I couldn't have more thoroughly
+compromised you. Madame Brossard will never believe in your
+respectability again."
+
+"Oh, yes, she will," said I.
+
+"What? A lodger who has ladies calling upon him at five o'clock in the
+morning? But your bundle's on your shoulder," she rattled on, laughing,
+"though there's many could be bolder, and perhaps you'll let me walk a
+bit of the way with you, if you're for the road."
+
+"Perhaps I will," said I. She caught up her riding-skirt, fastening it
+by a clasp at her side, and we passed out through the archway and went
+slowly along the road bordering the forest, her horse following
+obediently at half-rein's length.
+
+"When did you hear that I was at Madame Brossard's?" I asked.
+
+"Ten minutes after I returned to Quesnay, late yesterday afternoon."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Louise."
+
+I repeated the name questioningly. "You mean Mrs. Larrabee Harman?"
+
+"Louise Harman," she corrected. "Didn't you know she was staying at
+Quesnay?"
+
+"I guessed it, though Amedee got the name confused."
+
+"Yes, she's been kind enough to look after the place for us while we
+were away. George won't be back for another ten days, and I've been
+overseeing an exhibition for him in London. Afterward I did a round of
+visits--tiresome enough, but among people it's well to keep in touch
+with on George's account."
+
+"I see," I said, with a grimness which probably escaped her. "But how
+did Mrs. Harman know that I was at Les Trois Pigeons?"
+
+"She met you once in the forest--"
+
+"Twice," I interrupted.
+
+"She mentioned only once. Of course she'd often heard both George and
+me speak of you."
+
+"But how did she know it was I and where I was staying?"
+
+"Oh, that?" Her smile changed to a laugh. "Your maitre d'hotel told
+Ferret, a gardener at Quesnay, that you were at the inn."
+
+"He did!"
+
+"Oh, but you mustn't be angry with him; he made it quite all right."
+
+"How did he do that?" I asked, trying to speak calmly, though there was
+that in my mind which might have blanched the parchment cheek of a
+grand inquisitor.
+
+"He told Ferret that you were very anxious not to have it known--"
+
+"You call that making it all right?"
+
+"For himself, I mean. He asked Ferret not to mention who it was that
+told him."
+
+"The rascal!" I cried. "The treacherous, brazen--"
+
+"Unfortunate man," said Miss Elizabeth, "don't you see how clear you're
+making it that you really meant to hide from us?"
+
+There seemed to be something in that, and my tirade broke up in
+confusion. "Oh, no," I said lamely, "I hoped--I hoped--"
+
+"Be careful!"
+
+"No; I hoped to work down here," I blurted. "And I thought if I saw too
+much of you--I might not."
+
+She looked at me with widening eyes. "And I can take my choice," she
+cried, "of all the different things you may mean by that! It's either
+the most outrageous speech I ever heard--or the most flattering."
+
+"But I meant simply--"
+
+"No." She lifted her hand and stopped me. "I'd rather believe that I
+have at least the choice--and let it go at that." And as I began to
+laugh, she turned to me with a gravity apparently so genuine that for
+the moment I was fatuous enough to believe that she had said it
+seriously. Ensued a pause of some duration, which, for my part, I found
+disturbing. She broke it with a change of subject.
+
+"You think Louise very lovely to look at, don't you?"
+
+"Exquisite," I answered.
+
+"Every one does."
+
+"I suppose she told you--" and now I felt myself growing red--"that I
+behaved like a drunken acrobat when she came upon me in the path."
+
+"No. Did you?" cried Miss Elizabeth, with a ready credulity which I
+thought by no means pretty; indeed, she seemed amused and, to my
+surprise (for she is not an unkind woman), rather heartlessly pleased.
+"Louise only said she knew it must be you, and that she wished she
+could have had a better look at what you were painting."
+
+"Heaven bless her!" I exclaimed. "Her reticence was angelic."
+
+"Yes, she has reticence," said my companion, with enough of the same
+quality to make me look at her quickly. A thin line had been drawn
+across her forehead.
+
+"You mean she's still reticent with George?" I ventured.
+
+"Yes," she answered sadly. "Poor George always hopes, of course, in the
+silent way of his kind when they suffer from such unfortunate
+passions--and he waits."
+
+"I suppose that former husband of hers recovered?"
+
+"I believe he's still alive somewhere. Locked up, I hope!" she finished
+crisply.
+
+"She retained his name," I observed.
+
+"Harman? Yes, she retained it," said my companion rather shortly.
+
+"At all events, she's rid of him, isn't she?"
+
+"Oh, she's RID of him!" Her tone implied an enigmatic reservation of
+some kind.
+
+"It's hard," I reflected aloud, "hard to understand her making that
+mistake, young as she was. Even in the glimpses of her I've had, it was
+easy to see something of what she's like: a fine, rare, high type--"
+
+"But you didn't know HIM, did you?" Miss Elizabeth asked with some
+dryness.
+
+"No," I answered. "I saw him twice; once at the time of his
+accident--that was only a nightmare, his face covered with--" I
+shivered. "But I had caught a glimpse of him on the boulevard, and of
+all the dreadful--"
+
+"Oh, but he wasn't always dreadful," she interposed quickly. "He was a
+fascinating sort of person, quite charming and good-looking, when she
+ran away with him, though he was horribly dissipated even then. He
+always had been THAT. Of course she thought she'd be able to straighten
+him out--poor girl! She tried, for three years--three years it hurts
+one to think of! You see it must have been something very like a 'grand
+passion' to hold her through a pain three years long."
+
+"Or tremendous pride," said I. "Women make an odd world of it for the
+rest of us. There was good old George, as true and straight a man as
+ever lived--"
+
+"And she took the other! Yes." George's sister laughed sorrowfully.
+
+"But George and she have both survived the mistake," I went on with
+confidence. "Her tragedy must have taught her some important
+differences. Haven't you a notion she'll be tremendously glad to see
+him when he comes back from America?"
+
+"Ah, I do hope so!" she cried. "You see, I'm fearing that he hopes so
+too--to the degree of counting on it."
+
+"You don't count on it yourself?"
+
+She shook her head. "With any other woman I should."
+
+"Why not with Mrs. Harman?"
+
+"Cousin Louise has her ways," said Miss Elizabeth slowly, and, whether
+she could not further explain her doubts, or whether she would not,
+that was all I got out of her on the subject at the time. I asked one
+or two more questions, but my companion merely shook her head again,
+alluding vaguely to her cousin's "ways." Then she brightened suddenly,
+and inquired when I would have my things sent up to the chateau from
+the inn.
+
+At the risk of a misunderstanding which I felt I could ill afford, I
+resisted her kind hospitality, and the outcome of it was that there
+should be a kind of armistice, to begin with my dining at the chateau
+that evening. Thereupon she mounted to the saddle, a bit of gymnastics
+for which she declined my assistance, and looked down upon me from a
+great height.
+
+"Did anybody ever tell you," was her surprising inquiry, "that you are
+the queerest man of these times?"
+
+"No," I answered. "Don't you think you're a queerer woman?"
+
+"FOOTLE!" she cried scornfully. "Be off to your woods and your
+woodscaping!"
+
+The bay horse departed at a smart gait, not, I was glad to see, a
+parkish trot--Miss Elizabeth wisely set limits to her sacrifices to
+Mode--and she was far down the road before I had passed the outer
+fringe of trees.
+
+My work was accomplished after a fashion more or less desultory that
+day; I had many absent moments, was restless, and walked more than I
+painted. Oliver Saffron did not join me in the late afternoon; nor did
+the echo of distant yodelling bespeak any effort on his part to find
+me. So I gave him up, and returned to the inn earlier than usual.
+
+While dressing I sent word to Professor Keredec that I should not be
+able to join him at dinner that evening; and it is to be recorded that
+Glouglou carried the message for me. Amedee did not appear, from which
+it may be inferred that our maitre d'hotel was subject to lucid
+intervals. Certainly his present shyness indicated an intelligence of
+no low order.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The dining-room at Quesnay is a pretty work of the second of those
+three Louises who made so much furniture. It was never a proper setting
+for a rusty, out-of-doors painter-man, nor has such a fellow ever found
+himself complacently at ease there since the day its first banquet was
+spread for a score or so of fine-feathered epigram jinglers, fiddling
+Versailles gossip out of a rouge-and-lace Quesnay marquise newly sent
+into half-earnest banishment for too much king-hunting. For my part,
+however, I should have preferred a chance at making a place for myself
+among the wigs and brocades to the Crusoe's Isle of my chair at Miss
+Elizabeth's table.
+
+I learned at an early age to look my vanities in the face; I outfaced
+them and they quailed, but persisted, surviving for my discomfort to
+this day. Here is the confession: It was not until my arrival at the
+chateau that I realised what temerity it involved to dine there in
+evening clothes purchased, some four or five or six years previously,
+in the economical neighbourhood of the Boulevard St. Michel. Yet the
+things fitted me well enough; were clean and not shiny, having been
+worn no more than a dozen times, I think; though they might have been
+better pressed.
+
+Looking over the men of the Quesnay party--or perhaps I should signify
+a reversal of that and say a glance of theirs at me--revealed the
+importance of a particular length of coat-tail, of a certain rich
+effect obtained by widely separating the lower points of the waistcoat,
+of the display of some imagination in the buttons upon the same
+garment, of a doubled-back arrangement of cuffs, and of a specific
+design and dimension of tie. Marked uniformity in these matters denoted
+their necessity; and clothes differing from the essential so vitally as
+did mine must have seemed immodest, little better than no clothes at
+all. I doubt if I could have argued in extenuation my lack of
+advantages for study, such an excuse being itself the damning
+circumstance. Of course eccentricity is permitted, but (as in the Arts)
+only to the established. And I recall a painful change of colour which
+befell the countenance of a shining young man I met at Ward's house in
+Paris: he had used his handkerchief and was absently putting it in his
+pocket when he providentially noticed what he was doing and restored it
+to his sleeve.
+
+Miss Elizabeth had the courage to take me under her wing, placing me
+upon her left at dinner; but sprightlier calls than mine demanded and
+occupied her attention. At my other side sat a magnificently
+upholstered lady, who offered a fine shoulder and the rear wall of a
+collar of pearls for my observation throughout the evening, as she
+leaned forward talking eagerly with a male personage across the table.
+This was a prince, ending in "ski": he permitted himself the slight
+vagary of wearing a gold bracelet, and perhaps this flavour of romance
+drew the lady. Had my good fortune ever granted a second meeting, I
+should not have known her.
+
+Fragments reaching me in my seclusion indicated that the various
+conversations up and down the long table were animated; and at times
+some topic proved of such high interest as to engage the comment of the
+whole company. This was the case when the age of one of the English
+king's grandchildren came in question, but a subject which called for
+even longer (if less spirited) discourse concerned the shameful lack of
+standard on the part of citizens of the United States, or, as it was
+put, with no little exasperation, "What is the trouble with America?"
+Hereupon brightly gleamed the fat young man whom I had marked for a wit
+at Les Trois Pigeons; he pictured with inimitable mimicry a western
+senator lately in France. This outcast, it appeared, had worn a slouch
+hat at a garden party and had otherwise betrayed his country to the
+ridicule of the intelligent. "But really," said the fat young man,
+turning plaintiff in conclusion, "imagine what such things make the
+English and the French think of US!" And it finally went by consent
+that the trouble with America was the vulgarity of our tourists.
+
+"A dreadful lot!" Miss Elizabeth cheerfully summed up for them all.
+"The miseries I undergo with that class of 'prominent Amurricans' who
+bring letters to my brother! I remember one awful creature who said,
+when I came into the room, 'Well, ma'am, I guess you're the lady of the
+house, aren't you?'"
+
+Miss Elizabeth sparkled through the chorus of laughter, but I
+remembered the "awful creature," a genial and wise old man of affairs,
+whose daughter's portrait George painted. Miss Elizabeth had missed his
+point: the canvasser's phrase had been intended with humour, and even
+had it lacked that, it was not without a pretty quaintness. So I
+thought, being "left to my own reflections," which may have partaken of
+my own special kind of snobbery; at least I regretted the Elizabeth of
+the morning garden and the early walk along the fringe of the woods.
+For she at my side to-night was another lady.
+
+The banquet was drawing to a close when she leaned toward me and spoke
+in an undertone. As this was the first sign, in so protracted a period,
+that I might ever again establish relations with the world of men, it
+came upon me like a Friday's footprint, and in the moment of shock I
+did not catch what she said.
+
+"Anne Elliott, yonder, is asking you a question," she repeated, nodding
+at a very pretty gal down and across the table from me. Miss Anne
+Elliott's attractive voice had previously enabled me to recognise her
+as the young woman who had threatened to serenade Les Trois Pigeons.
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said, addressing her, and at the sound my
+obscurity was illuminated, about half of the company turning to look at
+me with wide-eyed surprise. (I spoke in an ordinary tone, it may need
+to be explained, and there is nothing remarkable about my voice).
+
+"I hear you're at Les Trois Pigeons," said Miss Elliott.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"WOULD you mind telling us something of the MYSTERIOUS Narcissus?"
+
+"If you'll be more definite," I returned, in the tone of a question.
+
+"There couldn't be more than one like THAT," said Miss Elliott, "at
+least, not in one neighbourhood, could there? I mean a RECKLESSLY
+charming vision with a WHITE tie and WHITE hair and WHITE flannels."
+
+"Oh," said I, "HE'S not mysterious."
+
+"But he IS," she returned; "I insist on his being MYSTERIOUS! Rarely,
+grandly, STRANGELY mysterious! You WILL let me think so?" This young
+lady had a whimsical manner of emphasising words unexpectedly, with a
+breathless intensity that approached violence, a habit dangerously
+contagious among nervous persons, so that I answered slowly, out of a
+fear that I might echo it.
+
+"It would need a great deal of imagination. He's a young American, very
+attractive, very simple--"
+
+"But he's MAD!" she interrupted.
+
+"Oh, no!" I said hastily.
+
+"But he IS! A person told me so in a garden this VERY afternoon," she
+went on eagerly; "a person with a rake and EVER so many moles on his
+chin. This person told me all about him. His name is Oliver Saffren,
+and he's in the charge of a VERY large doctor and quite, QUITE mad!"
+
+"Jean Ferret, the gardener." I said deliberately, and with venom, "is
+fast acquiring notoriety in these parts as an idiot of purest ray, and
+he had his information from another whose continuance unhanged is every
+hour more miraculous."
+
+"How RUTHLESS of you," cried Miss Elliott, with exaggerated reproach,
+"when I have had such a thrilling happiness all day in believing that
+RIOTOUSLY beautiful creature mad! You are wholly positive he isn't?"
+
+Our dialogue was now all that delayed a general departure from the
+table. This, combined with the naive surprise I have mentioned, served
+to make us temporarily the centre of attention, and, among the faces
+turned toward me, my glance fell unexpectedly upon one I had not seen
+since entering the dining-room. Mrs. Harman had been placed at some
+distance from me and on the same side of the table, but now she leaned
+far back in her chair to look at me, so that I saw her behind the
+shoulders of the people between us. She was watching me with an
+expression unmistakably of repressed anxiety and excitement, and as our
+eyes met, hers shone with a certain agitation, as of some odd
+consciousness shared with me. It was so strangely, suddenly a reminder
+of the look of secret understanding given me with good night,
+twenty-four hours earlier, by the man whose sanity was Miss Elliott's
+topic, that, puzzled and almost disconcerted for the moment, I did not
+at once reply to the lively young lady's question.
+
+"You're hesitating!" she cried, clasping her hands. "I believe there's
+a DARLING little chance of it, after all! And if it weren't so, why
+would he need to be watched over, day AND night, by an ENORMOUS doctor?"
+
+"This IS romance!" I retorted. "The doctor is Professor Keredec,
+illustriously known in this country, but not as a physician, and they
+are following some form of scientific research together, I believe.
+But, assuming to speak as Mr. Saffren's friend," I added, rising with
+the others upon Miss Ward's example, "I'm sure if he could come to know
+of your interest, he would much rather play Hamlet for you than let you
+find him disappointing."
+
+"If he could come to know of my interest!" she echoed, glancing down at
+herself with mock demureness. "Don't you think he could come to know
+something more of me than that?"
+
+The windows had been thrown open, allowing passage to a veranda. Miss
+Elizabeth led the way outdoors with the prince, the rest of us
+following at hazard, and in the mild confusion of this withdrawal I
+caught a final glimpse of Mrs. Harman, which revealed that she was
+still looking at me with the same tensity; but with the movement of
+intervening groups I lost her. Miss Elliott pointedly waited for me
+until I came round the table, attached me definitely by taking my arm,
+accompanying her action with a dazzling smile. "Oh, DO you think you
+can manage it?" she whispered rapturously, to which I replied--as
+vaguely as I could--that the demands of scientific research upon the
+time of its followers were apt to be exorbitant.
+
+Tables and coffee were waiting on the broad terrace below, with a big
+moon rising in the sky. I descended the steps in charge of this pretty
+cavalier, allowed her to seat me at the most remote of the tables, and
+accepted without unwillingness other gallantries of hers in the matter
+of coffee and cigarettes. "And now," she said, "now that I've done so
+much for your DEAREST hopes and comfort, look up at the milky moon, and
+tell me ALL!"
+
+"If you can bear it?"
+
+She leaned an elbow on the marble railing that protected the terrace,
+and, shielding her eyes from the moonlight with her hand, affected to
+gaze at me dramatically. "Have no distrust," she bade me. "Who and WHAT
+is the glorious stranger?"
+
+Resisting an impulse to chime in with her humour, I gave her so dry and
+commonplace an account of my young friend at the inn that I presently
+found myself abandoned to solitude again.
+
+"I don't know where to go," she complained as she rose. "These other
+people are MOST painful to a girl of my intelligence, but I cannot
+linger by your side; untruth long ago lost its interest for me, and I
+prefer to believe Mr. Jean Ferret--if that is the gentleman's name. I'd
+join Miss Ward and Cressie Ingle yonder, but Cressie WOULD be
+indignant! I shall soothe my hurt with SWEETEST airs. Adieu."
+
+With that she made me a solemn courtesy and departed, a pretty little
+figure, not little in attractiveness, the strong moonlight, tinged with
+blue, shimmering over her blond hair and splashing brightly among the
+ripples of her silks and laces. She swept across the terrace languidly,
+offering an effect of comedy not unfairylike, and, ascending the steps
+of the veranda, disappeared into the orange candle-light of a salon. A
+moment later some chords were sounded firmly upon a piano in that room,
+and a bitter song swam out to me over the laughter and talk of the
+people at the other tables. It was to be observed that Miss Anne
+Elliott sang very well, though I thought she over-emphasised one line
+of the stanza:
+
+"This world is a world of lies!"
+
+Perhaps she had poisoned another little arrow for me, too. Impelled by
+the fine night, the groups upon the terrace were tending toward a wider
+dispersal, drifting over the sloping lawns by threes and couples, and I
+was able to identify two figures threading the paths of the garden,
+together, some distance below. Judging by the pace they kept, I should
+have concluded that Miss Ward and Mr. Cresson Ingle sought the
+healthful effects of exercise. However, I could see no good reason for
+wishing their conversation less obviously absorbing, though Miss
+Elliott's insinuation that Mr. Ingle might deplore intrusion upon the
+interview had struck me as too definite to be altogether pleasing.
+Still, such matters could not discontent me with my solitude. Eastward,
+over the moonlit roof of the forest, I could see the quiet ocean, its
+unending lines of foam moving slowly to the long beaches, too far away
+to be heard. The reproachful voice of the singer came no more from the
+house, but the piano ran on into "La Vie de Boheme," and out of that
+into something else, I did not know what, but it seemed to be music; at
+least it was musical enough to bring before me some memory of the faces
+of pretty girls I had danced with long ago in my dancing days, so that,
+what with the music, and the distant sea, and the soft air, so
+sparklingly full of moonshine, and the little dancing memories, I was
+floated off into a reverie that was like a prelude for the person who
+broke it. She came so quietly that I did not hear her until she was
+almost beside me and spoke to me. It was the second time that had
+happened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Mrs. Harman," I said, as she took the chair vacated by the elfin young
+lady, "you see I can manage it! But perhaps I control myself better
+when there's no camp-stool to inspire me. You remember my woodland
+didoes--I fear?"
+
+She smiled in a pleasant, comprehending way, but neither directly
+replied nor made any return speech whatever; instead, she let her
+forearms rest on the broad railing of the marble balustrade, and,
+leaning forward, gazed out over the shining and mysterious slopes
+below. Somehow it seemed to me that her not answering, and her quiet
+action, as well as the thoughtful attitude in which it culminated,
+would have been thought "very like her" by any one who knew her well.
+"Cousin Louise has her ways," Miss Elizabeth had told me; this was
+probably one of them, and I found it singularly attractive. For that
+matter, from the day of my first sight of her in the woods I had needed
+no prophet to tell me I should like Mrs. Harman's ways.
+
+"After the quiet you have had here, all this must seem," I said,
+looking down upon the strollers, "a usurpation."
+
+"Oh, they!" She disposed of Quesnay's guests with a slight movement of
+her left hand. "You're an old friend of my cousins--of both of them;
+but even without that, I know you understand. Elizabeth does it all for
+her brother, of course."
+
+"But she likes it," I said.
+
+"And Mr. Ward likes it, too," she added slowly. "You'll see, when he
+comes home."
+
+Night's effect upon me being always to make me venturesome, I took a
+chance, and ventured perhaps too far. "I hope we'll see many happy
+things when he comes home."
+
+"It's her doing things of this sort," she said, giving no sign of
+having heard my remark, "that has helped so much to make him the
+success that he is."
+
+"It's what has been death to his art!" I exclaimed, too quickly--and
+would have been glad to recall the speech.
+
+She met it with a murmur of low laughter that sounded pitying. "Wasn't
+it always a dubious relation--between him and art?" And without
+awaiting an answer, she went on, "So it's all the better that he can
+have his success!"
+
+To this I had nothing whatever to say. So far as I remembered, I had
+never before heard a woman put so much comprehension of a large subject
+into so few words, but in my capacity as George's friend, hopeful for
+his happiness, it made me a little uneasy. During the ensuing pause
+this feeling, at first uppermost, gave way to another not at all in
+sequence, but irresponsible and intuitive, that she had something in
+particular to say to me, had joined me for that purpose, and was
+awaiting the opportunity. As I have made open confession, my curiosity
+never needed the spur; and there is no denying that this impression set
+it off on the gallop; but evidently the moment had not come for her to
+speak. She seemed content to gaze out over the valley in silence.
+
+"Mr. Cresson Ingle," I hazarded; "is he an old, new friend of your
+cousins? I think he was not above the horizon when I went to Capri, two
+years ago?"
+
+"He wants Elizabeth," she returned, adding quietly, "as you've seen."
+And when I had verified this assumption with a monosyllable, she
+continued, "He's an 'available,' but I should hate to have it happen.
+He's hard."
+
+"He doesn't seem very hard toward her," I murmured, looking down into
+the garden where Mr. Ingle just then happened to be adjusting a scarf
+about his hostess's shoulders.
+
+"He's led a detestable life," said Mrs. Harman, "among detestable
+people!"
+
+She spoke with sudden, remarkable vigour, and as if she knew. The
+full-throated emphasis she put upon "detestable" gave the word the
+sting of a flagellation; it rang with a rightful indignation that
+brought vividly to my mind the thought of those three years in Mrs.
+Harman's life which Elizabeth said "hurt one to think of." For this was
+the lady who had rejected good George Ward to run away with a man much
+deeper in all that was detestable than Mr. Cresson Ingle could ever be!
+
+"He seems to me much of a type with these others," I said.
+
+"Oh, they keep their surfaces about the same."
+
+"It made me wish _I_ had a little more surface to-night," I laughed.
+"I'd have fitted better. Miss Ward is different at different times.
+When we are alone together she always has the air of excusing, or at
+least explaining, these people to me, but this evening I've had the
+disquieting thought that perhaps she also explained me to them."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Harman, turning to me quickly. "Didn't you see? She
+was making up to Mr. Ingle for this morning. It came out that she'd
+ridden over at daylight to see you; Anne Elliott discovered it in some
+way and told him."
+
+This presented an aspect of things so overwhelmingly novel that out of
+a confusion of ideas I was able to fasten on only one with which to
+continue the conversation, and I said irrelevantly that Miss Elliott
+was a remarkable young woman. At this my companion, who had renewed her
+observation of the valley, gave me a full, clear look of earnest
+scrutiny, which set me on the alert, for I thought that now what she
+desired to say was coming. But I was disappointed, for she spoke
+lightly, with a ripple of amusement.
+
+"I suppose she finished her investigations? You told her all you could?"
+
+"Almost."
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't trust ME with the reservation?" she asked,
+smiling.
+
+"I would trust you with anything," I answered seriously.
+
+"You didn't gratify that child?" she said, half laughing. Then, to my
+surprise, her tone changed suddenly, and she began again in a hurried
+low voice: "You didn't tell her--" and stopped there, breathless and
+troubled, letting me see that I had been right after all: this was what
+she wanted to talk about.
+
+"I didn't tell her that young Saffren is mad, no; if that is what you
+mean."
+
+"I'm glad you didn't," she said slowly, sinking back in her chair so
+that her face was in the shadow of the awning which sheltered the
+little table between us.
+
+"In the first place, I wouldn't have told her even if it were true," I
+returned, "and in the second, it isn't true--though YOU have some
+reason to think it is," I added.
+
+"_I_?" she said. "Why?"
+
+"His speaking to you as he did; a thing on the face of it inexcusable--"
+
+"Why did he call me 'Madame d'Armand'?" she interposed.
+
+I explained something of the mental processes of Amedee, and she
+listened till I had finished; then bade me continue.
+
+"That's all," I said blankly, but, with a second thought, caught her
+meaning. "Oh, about young Saffren, you mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I know him pretty well," I said, "without really knowing anything
+about him; but what is stranger, I believe he doesn't really know a
+great deal about himself. Of course I have a theory about him, though
+it's vague. My idea is that probably through some great illness he
+lost--not his faculty of memory, but his memories, or, at least, most
+of them. In regard to what he does remember, Professor Keredec has
+anxiously impressed upon him some very poignant necessity for
+reticence. What the necessity may be, or the nature of the professor's
+anxieties, I do not know, but I think Keredec's reasons must be good
+ones. That's all, except that there's something about the young man
+that draws one to him: I couldn't tell you how much I like him, nor how
+sorry I am that he offended you."
+
+"He didn't offend me," she murmured--almost whispered.
+
+"He didn't mean to," I said warmly. "You understood that?"
+
+"Yes, I understood."
+
+"I am glad. I'd been waiting the chance to try to explain--to ask you
+to pardon him--"
+
+"But there wasn't any need."
+
+"You mean because you understood--"
+
+"No," she interrupted gently, "not only that. I mean because he has
+done it himself."
+
+"Asked your pardon?" I said, in complete surprise.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He's written you?" I cried.
+
+"No. I saw him to-day," she answered. "This afternoon when I went for
+my walk, he was waiting where the paths intersect--"
+
+Some hasty ejaculation, I do not know what, came from me, but she
+lifted her hand.
+
+"Wait," she said quietly. "As soon as he saw me he came straight toward
+me--"
+
+"Oh, but this won't do at all," I broke out. "It's too bad--"
+
+"Wait." She leaned forward slightly, lifting her hand again. "He called
+me 'Madame d'Armand,' and said he must know if he had offended me."
+
+"You told him--"
+
+"I told him 'No!'" And it seemed to me that her voice, which up to this
+point had been low but very steady, shook upon the monosyllable. "He
+walked with me a little way--perhaps It was longer--"
+
+"Trust me that it sha'n't happen again!" I exclaimed. "I'll see that
+Keredec knows of this at once. He will--"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted quickly, "that is just what I want you not to
+do. Will you promise me?"
+
+"I'll promise anything you ask me. But didn't he frighten you? Didn't
+he talk wildly? Didn't he--"
+
+"He didn't frighten me--not as you mean. He was very quiet and--" She
+broke off unexpectedly, with a little pitying cry, and turned to me,
+lifting both hands appealingly--"And oh, doesn't he make one SORRY for
+him!"
+
+That was just it. She had gone straight to the heart of his mystery:
+his strangeness was the strange PATHOS that invested him; the
+"singularity" of "that other monsieur" was solved for me at last.
+
+When she had spoken she rose, advanced a step, and stood looking out
+over the valley again, her skirts pressing the balustrade. One of the
+moments in my life when I have wished to be a figure painter came then,
+as she raised her arms, the sleeves, of some filmy texture, falling
+back from them with the gesture, and clasped her hands lightly behind
+her neck, the graceful angle of her chin uplifted to the full rain of
+moonshine. Little Miss Elliott, in the glamour of these same blue
+showerings, had borrowed gauzy weavings of the fay and the sprite, but
+Mrs. Harman--tall, straight, delicate to fragility, yet not to
+thinness--was transfigured with a deeper meaning, wearing the sadder,
+richer colours of the tragedy that her cruel young romance had put upon
+her. She might have posed as she stood against the marble railing--and
+especially in that gesture of lifting her arms--for a bearer of the
+gift at some foredestined luckless ceremony of votive offerings. So it
+seemed, at least, to the eyes of a moon-dazed old painter-man.
+
+She stood in profile to me; there were some jasmine flowers at her
+breast; I could see them rise and fall with more than deep breathing;
+and I wondered what the man who had talked of her so wildly, only
+yesterday, would feel if he could know that already the thought of him
+had moved her.
+
+"I haven't HAD my life. It's gone!" It was almost as if I heard his
+voice, close at hand, with all the passion of regret and protest that
+rang in the words when they broke from him in the forest. And by some
+miraculous conjecture, within the moment I seemed not only to hear his
+voice but actually to see him, a figure dressed in white, far below us
+and small with the distance, standing out in the moonlight in the
+middle of the tree-bordered avenue leading to the chateau gates.
+
+I rose and leaned over the railing. There was no doubt about the
+reality of the figure in white, though it was too far away to be
+identified with certainty; and as I rubbed my eyes for clearer sight,
+it turned and disappeared into the shadows of the orderly grove where I
+had stood, one day, to watch Louise Harman ascend the slopes of
+Quesnay. But I told myself, sensibly, that more than one man on the
+coast of Normandy might be wearing white flannels that evening, and,
+turning to my companion, found that she had moved some steps away from
+me and was gazing eastward to the sea. I concluded that she had not
+seen the figure.
+
+"I have a request to make of you," she said, as I turned. "Will you do
+it for me--setting it down just as a whim, if you like, and letting it
+go at that?"
+
+"Yes, I will," I answered promptly. "I'll do anything you ask."
+
+She stepped closer, looked at me intently for a second, bit her lip in
+indecision, then said, all in a breath:
+
+"Don't tell Mr. Saffren my name!"
+
+"But I hadn't meant to," I protested.
+
+"Don't speak of me to him at all," she said, with the same hurried
+eagerness. "Will you let me have my way?"
+
+"Could there be any question of that?" I replied, and to my
+astonishment found that we had somehow impulsively taken each other's
+hands, as upon a serious bargain struck between us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The round moon was white and at its smallest, high overhead, when I
+stepped out of the phaeton in which Miss Elizabeth sent me back to
+Madame Brossard's; midnight was twanging from a rusty old clock indoors
+as I crossed the fragrant courtyard to my pavilion; but a lamp still
+burned in the salon of the "Grande Suite," a light to my mind more
+suggestive of the patient watcher than of the scholar at his tome.
+
+When my own lamp was extinguished, I set my door ajar, moved my bed out
+from the wall to catch whatever breeze might stir, "composed myself for
+the night," as it used to be written, and lay looking out upon the
+quiet garden where a thin white haze was rising. If, in taking this
+coign of vantage, I had any subtler purpose than to seek a draught
+against the warmth of the night, it did not fail of its reward, for
+just as I had begun to drowse, the gallery steps creaked as if beneath
+some immoderate weight, and the noble form of Keredec emerged upon my
+field of vision. From the absence of the sound of footsteps I supposed
+him to be either barefooted or in his stockings. His visible costume
+consisted of a sleeping jacket tucked into a pair of trousers, while
+his tousled hair and beard and generally tossed and rumpled look were
+those of a man who had been lying down temporarily.
+
+I heard him sigh--like one sighing for sleep--as he went noiselessly
+across the garden and out through the archway to the road. At that I
+sat straight up in bed to stare--and well I might, for here was a
+miracle! He had lifted his arms above his head to stretch himself
+comfortably, and he walked upright and at ease, whereas when I had last
+seen him, the night before, he had been able to do little more than
+crawl, bent far over and leaning painfully upon his friend. Never man
+beheld a more astonishing recovery from a bad case of rheumatism!
+
+After a long look down the road, he retraced his steps; and the
+moonlight, striking across his great forehead as he came, revealed the
+furrows ploughed there by an anxiety of which I guessed the cause. The
+creaking of the wooden stairs and gallery and the whine of an old door
+announced that he had returned to his vigil.
+
+I had, perhaps, a quarter of an hour to consider this performance, when
+it was repeated; now, however, he only glanced out into the road,
+retreating hastily, and I saw that he was smiling, while the speed he
+maintained in returning to his quarters was remarkable for one so newly
+convalescent.
+
+The next moment Saffron came through the archway, ascended the steps in
+turn--but slowly and carefully, as if fearful of waking his
+guardian--and I heard his door closing, very gently. Long before his
+arrival, however, I had been certain of his identity with the figure I
+had seen gazing up at the terraces of Quesnay from the borders of the
+grove. Other questions remained to bother me: Why had Keredec not
+prevented this night-roving, and why, since he did permit it, should he
+conceal his knowledge of it from Oliver? And what, oh, what wondrous
+specific had the mighty man found for his disease?
+
+Morning failed to clarify these mysteries; it brought, however,
+something rare and rich and strange. I allude to the manner of Amedee's
+approach. The aged gossip-demoniac had to recognise the fact that he
+could not keep out of my way for ever; there was nothing for it but to
+put as good a face as possible upon a bad business, and get it
+over--and the face he selected was a marvel; not less, and in no hasty
+sense of the word.
+
+It appeared at my door to announce that breakfast waited outside.
+
+Primarily it displayed an expression of serenity, masterly in its
+assumption that not the least, remotest, dreamiest shadow of danger
+could possibly be conceived, by the most immoderately pessimistic and
+sinister imagination, as even vaguely threatening. And for the rest,
+you have seen a happy young mother teaching first steps to the
+first-born--that was Amedee. Radiantly tender, aggressively solicitous,
+diffusing ineffable sweetness on the air, wreathed in seraphic smiles,
+beaming caressingly, and aglow with a sacred joy that I should be
+looking so well, he greeted me in a voice of honey and bowed me to my
+repast with an unconcealed fondness at once maternal and reverential.
+
+I did not attempt to speak. I came out silently, uncannily fascinated,
+my eyes fixed upon him, while he moved gently backward, cooing pleasant
+words about the coffee, but just perceptibly keeping himself out of
+arm's reach until I had taken my seat. When I had done that, he leaned
+over the table and began to set useless things nearer my plate with
+frankly affectionate care. It chanced that in "making a long arm" to
+reach something I did want, my hand (of which the fingers happened to
+be closed) passed rather impatiently beneath his nose. The madonna
+expression changed instantly to one of horror, he uttered a startled
+croak, and took a surprisingly long skip backward, landing in the
+screen of honeysuckle vines, which, he seemed to imagine, were some new
+form of hostility attacking him treacherously from the rear. They
+sagged, but did not break from their fastenings, and his behaviour, as
+he lay thus entangled, would have contrasted unfavourably in dignity
+with the actions of a panic-stricken hen in a hammock.
+
+"And so conscience DOES make cowards of us all," I said, with no hope
+of being understood.
+
+Recovering some measure of mental equilibrium at the same time that he
+managed to find his feet, he burst into shrill laughter, to which he
+tried in vain to impart a ring of debonair carelessness.
+
+"Eh, I stumble!" he cried with hollow merriment. "I fall about and
+faint with fatigue! Pah! But it is nothing: truly!"
+
+"Fatigue!" I turned a bitter sneer upon him. "Fatigue! And you just out
+of bed!"
+
+His fat hands went up palm outward; his heroic laughter was checked as
+with a sob; an expression of tragic incredulity shone from his eyes.
+Patently he doubted the evidence of his own ears; could not believe
+that such black ingratitude existed in the world. "Absalom, O my son
+Absalom!" was his unuttered cry. His hands fell to his sides; his chin
+sank wretchedly into its own folds; his shirt-bosom heaved and
+crinkled; arrows of unspeakable injustice had entered the defenceless
+breast.
+
+"Just out of bed!" he repeated, with a pathos that would have brought
+the judge of any court in France down from the bench to kiss him--"And
+I had risen long, long before the dawn, in the cold and darkness of the
+night, to prepare the sandwiches of monsieur!"
+
+It was too much for me, or rather, he was. I stalked off to the woods
+in a state of helpless indignation; mentally swearing that his day of
+punishment at my hands was only deferred, not abandoned, yet secretly
+fearing that this very oath might live for no purpose but to convict me
+of perjury. His talents were lost in the country; he should have sought
+his fortune in the metropolis. And his manner, as he summoned me that
+evening to dinner, and indeed throughout the courses, partook of the
+subtle condescension and careless assurance of one who has but faintly
+enjoyed some too easy triumph.
+
+I found this so irksome that I might have been goaded into an outbreak
+of impotent fury, had my attention not been distracted by the curious
+turn of the professor's malady, which had renewed its painful assault
+upon him. He came hobbling to table, leaning upon Saffren's shoulder,
+and made no reference to his singular improvement of the night
+before--nor did I. His rheumatism was his own; he might do what he
+pleased with it! There was no reason why he should confide the cause of
+its vagaries to me.
+
+Table-talk ran its normal course; a great Pole's philosophy receiving
+flagellation at the hands of our incorrigible optimist. ("If he could
+understand," exclaimed Keredec, "that the individual must be immortal
+before it is born, ha! then this babbler might have writted some
+intelligence!") On the surface everything was as usual with our trio,
+with nothing to show any turbulence of under-currents, unless it was a
+certain alertness in Oliver's manner, a restrained excitement, and the
+questioning restlessness of his eyes as they sought mine from time to
+time. Whatever he wished to ask me, he was given no opportunity, for
+the professor carried him off to work when our coffee was finished. As
+they departed, the young man glanced back at me over his shoulder, with
+that same earnest look of interrogation, but it went unanswered by any
+token or gesture: for though I guessed that he wished to know if Mrs.
+Harman had spoken of him to me, it seemed part of my bargain with her
+to give him no sign that I understood.
+
+A note lay beside my plate next morning, addressed in a writing strange
+to me, one of dashing and vigorous character.
+
+"In the pursuit of thrillingly scientific research," it read, "what
+with the tumult which possessed me, I forgot to mention the bond that
+links us; I, too, am a painter, though as yet unhonoured and unhung. It
+must be only because I lack a gentle hand to guide me. If I might sit
+beside you as you paint! The hours pass on leaden wings at Quesnay--I
+could shriek! Do not refuse me a few words of instruction, either in
+the wildwood, whither I could support your shrinking steps, or, from
+time to time, as you work in your studio, which (I glean from the
+instructive Mr. Ferret) is at Les Trois Pigeons. At any hour, at any
+moment, I will speed to you. I am, sir,
+
+"Yours, if you will but breathe a 'yes,'
+
+"ANNE ELLIOTT."
+
+To this I returned a reply, as much in her own key as I could write it,
+putting my refusal on the ground that I was not at present painting in
+the studio. I added that I hoped her suit might prosper, regretting
+that I could not be of greater assistance to that end, and concluded
+with the suggestion that Madame Brossard might entertain an offer for
+lessons in cooking.
+
+The result of my attempt to echo her vivacity was discomfiting, and I
+was allowed to perceive that epistolary jocularity was not thought to
+be my line. It was Miss Elizabeth who gave me this instruction three
+days later, on the way to Quesnay for "second breakfast." Exercising
+fairly shame-faced diplomacy, I had avoided dining at the chateau
+again, but, by arrangement, she had driven over for me this morning in
+the phaeton.
+
+"Why are you writing silly notes to that child?" she demanded, as soon
+as we were away from the inn.
+
+"Was it silly?"
+
+"You should know. Do you think that style of humour suitable for a
+young girl?"
+
+This bewildered me a little. "But there wasn't anything offensive--"
+
+"No?" Miss Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows to a height of bland inquiry.
+"She mightn't think it rather--well, rough? Your suggesting that she
+should take cooking lessons?"
+
+"But SHE suggested she might take PAINTING lessons," was my feeble
+protest. "I only meant to show her I understood that she wanted to get
+to the inn."
+
+"And why should she care to 'get to the inn'?"
+
+"She seemed interested in a young man who is staying there.
+'Interested' is the mildest word for it I can think of."
+
+"Pooh!" Such was Miss Ward's enigmatic retort, and though I begged an
+explanation I got none. Instead, she quickened the horse's gait and
+changed the subject.
+
+At the chateau, having a mind to offer some sort of apology, I looked
+anxiously about for the subject of our rather disquieting conversation,
+but she was not to be seen until the party assembled at the table, set
+under an awning on the terrace. Then, to my disappointment, I found no
+opportunity to speak to her, for her seat was so placed as to make it
+impossible, and she escaped into the house immediately upon the
+conclusion of the repast, hurrying away too pointedly for any attempt
+to detain her--though, as she passed, she sent me one glance of meek
+reproach which she was at pains to make elaborately distinct.
+
+Again taking me for her neighbour at the table, Miss Elizabeth talked
+to me at intervals, apparently having nothing, just then, to make up to
+Mr. Cresson Ingle, but not long after we rose she accompanied him upon
+some excursion of an indefinite nature, which led her from my sight.
+Thus, the others making off to cards indoors and what not, I was left
+to the perusal of the eighteenth century facade of the chateau, one of
+the most competent restorations in that part of France, and of the
+liveliest interest to the student or practitioner of architecture.
+
+Mrs. Harman had not appeared at all, having gone to call upon some one
+at Dives, I was told, and a servant informing me (on inquiry) that Miss
+Elliott had retired to her room, I was thrust upon my own devices
+indeed, a condition already closely associated in my mind with this
+picturesque spot. The likeliest of my devices--or, at least, the one I
+hit upon--was in the nature of an unostentatious retreat.
+
+I went home.
+
+However, as the day was spoiled for work, I chose a roundabout way, in
+fact the longest, and took the high-road to Dives, but neither the road
+nor the town itself (when I passed through it) rewarded my vague hope
+that I might meet Mrs. Harman, and I strode the long miles in
+considerable disgruntlement, for it was largely in that hope that I had
+gone to Quesnay. It put me in no merrier mood to find Miss Elizabeth's
+phaeton standing outside the inn in charge of a groom, for my vanity
+encouraged the supposition that she had come out of a fear that my
+unceremonious departure from Quesnay might have indicated that I was
+"hurt," or considered myself neglected; and I dreaded having to make
+explanations.
+
+My apprehensions were unfounded; it was not Miss Elizabeth who had come
+in the phaeton, though a lady from Quesnay did prove to be the
+occupant--the sole occupant--of the courtyard. At sight of her I halted
+stock-still under the archway.
+
+There she sat, a sketch-book on a green table beside her and a board in
+her lap, brazenly painting--and a more blushless piece of assurance
+than Miss Anne Elliott thus engaged these eyes have never beheld.
+
+She was not so hardened that she did not affect a little timidity at
+sight of me, looking away even more quickly than she looked up, while I
+walked slowly over to her and took the garden chair beside her. That
+gave me a view of her sketch, which was a violent little "lay-in" of
+shrubbery, trees, and the sky-line of the inn. To my prodigious
+surprise (and, naturally enough, with a degree of pleasure) I perceived
+that it was not very bad, not bad at all, indeed. It displayed a sense
+of values, of placing, and even, in a young and frantic way, of colour.
+Here was a young woman of more than "accomplishments!"
+
+"You see," she said, squeezing one of the tiny tubes almost dry, and
+continuing to paint with a fine effect of absorption, "I HAD to show
+you that I was in the most ABYSMAL earnest. Will you take me painting
+with, you?"
+
+"I appreciate your seriousness," I rejoined. "Has it been rewarded?"
+
+"How can I say? You haven't told me whether or no I may follow you to
+the wildwood."
+
+"I mean, have you caught another glimpse of Mr. Saffren?"
+
+At that she showed a prettier colour in her cheeks than any in her
+sketch-box, but gave no other sign of shame, nor even of being
+flustered, cheerfully replying:
+
+"That is far from the point. Do you grant my burning plea?"
+
+"I understood I had offended you."
+
+"You did," she said. "VICIOUSLY!"
+
+"I am sorry," I continued. "I wanted to ask you to forgive me--"
+
+I spoke seriously, and that seemed to strike her as odd or needing
+explanation, for she levelled her blue eyes at me, and interrupted,
+with something more like seriousness in her own voice than I had yet
+heard from her:
+
+"What made you think I was offended?"
+
+"Your look of reproach when you left the table--"
+
+"Nothing else?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Yes; Miss Ward told me you were."
+
+"Yes; she drove over with you. That's it!" she exclaimed with vigour,
+and nodded her head as if some suspicion of hers had been confirmed. "I
+thought so!"
+
+"You thought she had told me?"
+
+"No," said Miss Elliott decidedly. "Thought that Elizabeth wanted to
+have her cake and eat it too."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Then you'll get no help from me," she returned slowly, a frown marking
+her pretty forehead. "But I was only playing offended, and she knew it.
+I thought your note was THAT fetching!"
+
+She continued to look thoughtful for a moment longer, then with a
+resumption of her former manner--the pretence of an earnestness much
+deeper than the real--"Will you take me painting with you?" she said.
+"If it will convince you that I mean it, I'll give up my hopes of
+seeing that SUMPTUOUS Mr. Saffren and go back to Quesnay now, before he
+comes home. He's been out for a walk--a long one, since it's lasted
+ever since early this morning, so the waiter told me. May I go with
+you? You CAN'T know how enervating it is up there at the chateau--all
+except Mrs. Harman, and even she--"
+
+"What about Mrs. Harman?" I asked, as she paused.
+
+"I think she must be in love."
+
+"What!"
+
+"I do think so," said the girl. "She's LIKE it, at least."
+
+"But with whom?"
+
+She laughed gaily. "I'm afraid she's my rival!"
+
+"Not with--" I began.
+
+"Yes, with your beautiful and mad young friend."
+
+"But--oh, it's preposterous!" I cried, profoundly disturbed. "She
+couldn't be! If you knew a great deal about her--"
+
+"I may know more than you think. My simplicity of appearance is
+deceptive," she mocked, beginning to set her sketch-box in order. "You
+don't realise that Mrs. Harman and I are quite HURLED upon each other
+at Quesnay, being two ravishingly intelligent women entirely surrounded
+by large bodies of elementals. She has told me a great deal of herself
+since that first evening, and I know--well, I know why she did not come
+back from Dives this afternoon, for instance."
+
+"WHY?" I fairly shouted.
+
+She slid her sketch into a groove in the box, which she closed, and
+rose to her feet before answering. Then she set her hat a little
+straighter with a touch, looking so fixedly and with such grave
+interest over my shoulder that I turned to follow her glance and
+encountered our reflections in a window of the inn. Her own shed a
+light upon THAT mystery, at all events.
+
+"I might tell you some day," she said indifferently, "if I gained
+enough confidence in you through association in daily pursuits."
+
+"My dear young lady," I cried with real exasperation, "I am a working
+man, and this is a working summer for me!"
+
+"Do you think I'd spoil it?" she urged gently.
+
+"But I get up with the first daylight to paint," I protested, "and I
+paint all day--"
+
+She moved a step nearer me and laid her hand warningly upon my sleeve,
+checking the outburst.
+
+I turned to see what she meant.
+
+Oliver Saffren had come in from the road and was crossing to the
+gallery steps. He lifted his hat and gave me a quick word of greeting
+as he passed, and at the sight of his flushed and happy face my riddle
+was solved for me. Amazing as the thing was, I had no doubt of the
+revelation.
+
+"Ah," I said to Miss Elliott when he had gone, "I won't have to take
+pupils to get the answer to my question, now!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+"Ha, these philosophers," said the professor, expanding in discourse a
+little later--"these dreamy people who talk of the spirit, they tell
+you that spirit is abstract!" He waved his great hand in a sweeping
+semicircle which carried it out of our orange candle-light and freckled
+it with the cold moonshine which sieved through the loosened screen of
+honeysuckle. "Ha, the folly!"
+
+"What do YOU say it is?" I asked, moving so that the smoke of my cigar
+should not drift toward Oliver, who sat looking out into the garden.
+
+"I, my friend? I do not say that it IS! But all such things, they are
+only a question of names, and when I use the word 'spirit' I mean
+identity--universal identity, if you like. It is what we all are,
+yes--and those flowers, too. But the spirit of the flowers is not what
+you smell, nor what you see, that look so pretty: it is the flowers
+themself! Yet all spirit is only one spirit and one spirit is all
+spirit--and if you tell me this is Pant'eism I will tell you that you
+do not understand!"
+
+"I don't tell you that," said I, "neither do I understand."
+
+"Nor that big Keredec either!" Whereupon he loosed the rolling thunder
+of his laughter. "Nor any brain born of the monkey people! But this
+world is full of proof that everything that exist is all one thing, and
+it is the instinct of that, when it draws us together, which makes what
+we call 'love.' Even those wicked devils of egoism in our inside is
+only love which grows too long the wrong way, like the finger nails of
+the Chinese empress. Young love is a little sprout of universal unity.
+When the young people begin to feel it, THEY are not abstract, ha? And
+the young man, when he selects, he chooses one being from all the
+others to mean--just for him--all that great universe of which he is a
+part."
+
+This was wandering whimsically far afield, but as I caught the
+good-humoured flicker of the professor's glance at our companion I
+thought I saw a purpose in his deviation. Saffren turned toward him
+wonderingly, his unconscious, eager look remarkably emphasised and
+brightened.
+
+"All such things are most strange--great mysteries," continued the
+professor. "For when a man has made the selection, THAT being DOES
+become all the universe, and for him there is nothing else at
+all--nothing else anywhere!"
+
+Saffren's cheeks and temples were flushed as they had been when I saw
+him returning that afternoon; and his eyes were wide, fixed upon
+Keredec in a stare of utter amazement.
+
+"Yes, that is true," he said slowly. "How did you know?"
+
+Keredec returned his look with an attentive scrutiny, and made some
+exclamation under his breath, which I did not catch, but there was no
+mistaking his high good humour.
+
+"Bravo!" he shouted, rising and clapping the other upon the shoulder.
+"You will soon cure my rheumatism if you ask me questions like that!
+Ho, ho, ho!" He threw back his head and let the mighty salvos forth.
+"Ho, ho, ho! How do I know? The young, always they believe they are the
+only ones who were ever young! Ho, ho, ho! Come, we shall make those
+lessons very easy to-night. Come, my friend! How could that big, old
+Keredec know of such things? He is too old, too foolish! Ho, ho, ho!"
+
+As he went up the steps, the courtyard reverberating again to his
+laughter, his arm resting on Saffren's shoulders, but not so heavily as
+usual. The door of their salon closed upon them, and for a while
+Keredec's voice could be heard booming cheerfully; it ended in another
+burst of laughter.
+
+A moment later Saffren opened the door and called to me.
+
+"Here," I answered from my veranda, where I had just lighted my second
+cigar.
+
+"No more work to-night. All finished," he cried jubilantly, springing
+down the steps. "I'm coming to have a talk with you."
+
+Amedee had removed the candles, the moon had withdrawn in fear of a
+turbulent mob of clouds, rioting into our sky from seaward; the air
+smelled of imminent rain, and it was so dark that I could see my
+visitor only as a vague, tall shape; but a happy excitement vibrated in
+his rich voice, and his step on the gravelled path was light and
+exultant.
+
+"I won't sit down," he said. "I'll walk up and down in front of the
+veranda--if it doesn't make you nervous."
+
+For answer I merely laughed; and he laughed too, in genial response,
+continuing gaily:
+
+"Oh, it's all so different with me! Everything is. That BLIND feeling I
+told you of--it's all gone. I must have been very babyish, the other
+day; I don't think I could feel like that again. It used to seem to me
+that I lived penned up in a circle of blank stone walls; I couldn't see
+over the top for myself at all, though now and then Keredec would boost
+me up and let me get a little glimmer of the country round about--but
+never long enough to see what it was really like. But it's not so now.
+Ah!"--he drew a long breath--"I'd like to run. I think I could run all
+the way to the top of a pretty fair-sized mountain to-night, and
+then"--he laughed--"jump off and ride on the clouds."
+
+"I know how that is," I responded. "At least I did know--a few years
+ago."
+
+"Everything is a jumble with me," he went on happily, in a confidential
+tone, "yet it's a heavenly kind of jumble. I can't put anything into
+words. I don't THINK very well yet, though Keredec is trying to teach
+me. My thoughts don't run in order, and this that's happened seems to
+make them wilder, queerer--" He stopped short.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+He paused in his sentry-go, facing me, and answered, in a low voice:
+
+"I've seen her again."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"She told me you knew it," he said, "--that she had told you."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But that's not all," he said, his voice rising a little. "I saw her
+again the day after she told you--"
+
+"You did!" I murmured.
+
+"Oh, I tell myself that it's a dream," he cried, "that it CAN'T be
+true. For it has been EVERY day since then! That's why I haven't joined
+you in the woods. I have been with her, walking with her, listening to
+her, looking at her--always feeling that it must be unreal and that I
+must try not to wake up. She has been so kind--so wonderfully,
+beautifully kind to me!"
+
+"She has met you?" I asked, thinking ruefully of George Ward, now on
+the high seas in the pleasant company of old hopes renewed.
+
+"She has let me meet her. And to-day we lunched at the inn at Dives and
+then walked by the sea all afternoon. She gave me the whole day--the
+whole day! You see"--he began to pace again--"you see I was right, and
+you were wrong. She wasn't offended--she was glad--that I couldn't help
+speaking to her; she has said so."
+
+"Do you think," I interrupted, "that she would wish you to tell me
+this?"
+
+"Ah, she likes you!" he said so heartily, and appearing meanwhile so
+satisfied with the completeness of his reply, that I was fain to take
+some satisfaction in it myself. "What I wanted most to say to you," he
+went on, "is this: you remember you promised to tell me whatever you
+could learn about her--and about her husband?"
+
+"I remember."
+
+"It's different now. I don't want you to," he said. "I want only to
+know what she tells me herself. She has told me very little, but I know
+when the time comes she WILL tell me everything. But I wouldn't hasten
+it. I wouldn't have anything changed from just THIS!"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"I mean the way it IS. If I could hope to see her every day, to be in
+the woods with her, or down by the shore--oh, I don't want to know
+anything but that!"
+
+"No doubt you have told her," I ventured, "a good deal about yourself,"
+and was instantly ashamed of myself. I suppose I spoke out of a sense
+of protest against Mrs. Harman's strange lack of conventionality,
+against so charming a lady's losing her head as completely as she
+seemed to have lost hers, and it may have been, too, out of a feeling
+of jealousy for poor George--possibly even out of a little feeling of
+the same sort on my own account. But I couldn't have said it except for
+the darkness, and, as I say, I was instantly ashamed.
+
+It does not whiten my guilt that the shaft did not reach him.
+
+"I've told her all I know," he said readily, and the unconscious pathos
+of the answer smote me. "And all that Keredec has let me know. You see
+I haven't--"
+
+"But do you think," I interrupted quickly, anxious, in my remorse, to
+divert him from that channel, "do you think Professor Keredec would
+approve, if he knew?"
+
+"I think he would," he responded slowly, pausing in his walk again. "I
+have a feeling that perhaps he does know, and yet I have been afraid to
+tell him, afraid he might try to stop me--keep me from going to wait
+for her. But he has a strange way of knowing things; I think he knows
+everything in the world! I have felt to-night that he knows this,
+and--it's very strange, but I--well, what WAS it that made him so glad?"
+
+"The light is still burning in his room," I said quietly.
+
+"You mean that I ought to tell him?" His voice rose a little.
+
+"He's done a good deal for you, hasn't he?" I suggested. "And even if
+he does know he might like to hear it from you."
+
+"You're right; I'll tell him to-night." This came with sudden decision,
+but with less than marked what followed. "But he can't stop me, now. No
+one on earth shall do that, except Madame d'Armand herself. No one!"
+
+"I won't quarrel with that," I said drily, throwing away my cigar,
+which had gone out long before.
+
+He hesitated, and then I saw his hand groping toward me in the
+darkness, and, rising, I gave him mine.
+
+"Good night," he said, and shook my hand as the first sputterings of
+the coming rain began to patter on the roof of the pavilion. "I'm glad
+to tell him; I'm glad to have told you. Ah, but isn't this," he cried,
+"a happy world!"
+
+Turning, he ran to the gallery steps. "At last I'm glad," he called
+back over his shoulder, "I'm glad that I was born--"
+
+A gust of wind blew furiously into the courtyard at that instant, and I
+heard his voice indistinctly, but I thought--though I might have been
+mistaken--that I caught a final word, and that it was "again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The rain of two nights and two days had freshened the woods, deepening
+the green of the tree-trunks and washing the dust from the leaves, and
+now, under the splendid sun of the third morning, we sat painting in a
+sylvan aisle that was like a hall of Aladdin's palace, the filigreed
+arches of foliage above us glittering with pendulous rain-drops. But
+Arabian Nights' palaces are not to my fancy for painting; the air,
+rinsed of its colour, was too sparklingly clean; the interstices of sky
+and the roughly framed distances I prized, were brought too close. It
+was one of those days when Nature throws herself straight in your face
+and you are at a loss to know whether she has kissed you or slapped
+you, though you are conscious of the tingle;--a day, in brief, more for
+laughing than for painting, and the truth is that I suited its mood
+only too well, and laughed more than I painted, though I sat with my
+easel before me and a picture ready upon my palette to be painted.
+
+No one could have understood better than I that this was setting a bad
+example to the acolyte who sat, likewise facing an easel, ten paces to
+my left; a very sportsmanlike figure of a painter indeed, in her short
+skirt and long coat of woodland brown, the fine brown of dead
+oak-leaves; a "devastating" selection of colour that!--being much the
+same shade as her hair--with brown for her hat too, and the veil
+encircling the small crown thereof, and brown again for the stout,
+high, laced boots which protected her from the wet tangle underfoot.
+Who could have expected so dashing a young person as this to do any
+real work at painting? Yet she did, narrowing her eyes to the finest
+point of concentration, and applying herself to the task in hand with a
+persistence which I found, on that particular morning, far beyond my
+own powers.
+
+As she leaned back critically, at the imminent risk of capsizing her
+camp-stool, and herself with it, in her absorption, some ill-suppressed
+token of amusement most have caught her ear, for she turned upon me
+with suspicion, and was instantly moved to moralize upon the reluctance
+I had shown to accept her as a companion for my excursions; taking as
+her theme, in contrast, her own present display of ambition; all in all
+a warm, if over-coloured, sketch of the idle master and the industrious
+apprentice. It made me laugh again, upon which she changed the subject.
+
+"An indefinable something tells me," she announced coldly, "that
+henceforth you needn't be so DRASTICALLY fearful of being dragged to
+the chateau for dinner, nor dejeuner either!"
+
+"Did anything ever tell you that I had cause to fear it?"
+
+"Yes," she said, but too simply. "Jean Ferret."
+
+"Anglicise that ruffian's name," I muttered, mirth immediately
+withering upon me, "and you'll know him better. To save time: will you
+mention anything you can think of that he HASN'T told you?"
+
+Miss Elliott cocked her head upon one side to examine the work of art
+she was producing, while a slight smile, playing about her lips, seemed
+to indicate that she was appeased. "You and Miss Ward are old and dear
+friends, aren't you?" she asked absently.
+
+"We are!" I answered between my teeth. "For years I have sent her
+costly jewels--"
+
+She interrupted me by breaking outright into a peal of laughter, which
+rang with such childish delight that I retorted by offering several
+malevolent observations upon the babbling of French servants and the
+order of mind attributable to those who listened to them. Her defence
+was to affect inattention and paint busily until some time after I had
+concluded.
+
+"I think she's going to take Cressie Ingle," she said dreamily, with
+the air of one whose thoughts have been far, far away. "It looks
+preponderously like it. She's been teetertottering these AGES and AGES
+between you--"
+
+"Between whom?"
+
+"You and Mr. Ingle," she replied, not altering her tone in the
+slightest. "But she's all for her brother, of course, and though you're
+his friend, Ingle is a personage in the world they court, and among the
+MULTITUDINOUS things his father left him is an art magazine, or one
+that's long on art or something of that sort--I don't know just
+what--so altogether it will be a good thing for DEAREST Mr. Ward. She
+likes Cressie, of course, though I think she likes you better--"
+
+I managed to find my voice and interrupt the thistle-brained creature.
+"What put these fantasias into your head?"
+
+"Not Jean Ferret," she responded promptly.
+
+"It's cruel of me to break it to you so coarsely--I know--but if you
+are ever going to make up your mind to her building as glaring a
+success of you as she has of her brother, I think you must do it now.
+She's on the point of accepting Mr. Ingle, and what becomes of YOU will
+depend on your conduct in the most immediate future. She won't ask you
+to Quesnay again, so you'd better go up there on your own accord.--And
+on your bended knees, too!" she added as an afterthought.
+
+I sought for something to say which might have a chance of impressing
+her--a desperate task on the face of it--and I mentioned that Miss Ward
+was her hostess.
+
+One might as well have tried to impress Amedee. She "made a little
+mouth" and went on dabbling with her brushes. "Hostess? Pooh!" she said
+cheerfully. "My INFANTILE father sent me here to be in her charge while
+he ran home to America. Mr. Ward's to paint my portrait, when he comes.
+Give and take--it's simple enough, you see!"
+
+Here was frankness with a vengeance, and I fell back upon silence,
+whereupon a pause ensued, to my share of which I imparted the deepest
+shadow of disapproval within my power. Unfortunately, she did not look
+at me; my effort passed with no other effect than to make some of my
+facial muscles ache.
+
+"'Portrait of Miss E., by George Ward, H. C.,'" this painfully
+plain-speaking young lady continued presently. "On the line at next
+spring's Salon, then packed up for the dear ones at home. I'd as soon
+own an 'Art Bronze,' myself--or a nice, clean porcelain Arab."
+
+"No doubt you've forgotten for the moment," I said, "that Mr. Ward is
+my friend."
+
+"Not in painting, he isn't," she returned quickly,
+
+"I consider his work altogether creditable; it's carefully done,
+conscientious, effective--"
+
+"Isn't that true of the ladies in the hairdressers' windows?" she asked
+with assumed artlessness. "Can't you say a kind word for them, good
+gentleman, and heaven bless you?"
+
+"Why sha'n't I be asked to Quesnay again?"
+
+She laughed. "You haven't seemed FANATICALLY appreciative of your
+opportunities when you have been there; you might have carried her off
+from Cresson Ingle instead of vice versa. But after all, you
+AREN'T"--here she paused and looked at me appraisingly for a
+moment-"you AREN'T the most piratical dash-in-and-dash-out and
+leave-everything-upside-down-behind-you sort of man, are you?"
+
+"No, I believe I'm not."
+
+"However, that's only a SMALL half of the reason," Miss Elliott went
+on. "She's furious on account of this."
+
+These were vague words, and I said so.
+
+"Oh, THIS," she explained, "my being here; your letting me come.
+Impropriety--all of that!" A sharp whistle issued from her lips. "Oh!
+the EXCORIATING things she's said of my pursuing you!"
+
+"But doesn't she know that it's only part of your siege of Madame
+Brossard's; that it's a subterfuge in the hope of catching a glimpse of
+Oliver Saffren?"
+
+"No!" she cried, her eyes dancing; "I told her that, but she thinks
+it's only a subterfuge in the hope of catching more than a glimpse of
+you!"
+
+I joined laughter with her then. She was the first to stop, and,
+looking at me somewhat doubtfully, she said:
+
+"Whereas, the truth is that it's neither. You know very well that I
+want to paint."
+
+"Certainly," I agreed at once. "Your devotion to 'your art' and your
+hope of spending half an hour at Madame Brossard's now and then are
+separable;--which reminds me: Wouldn't you like me to look at your
+sketch?"
+
+"No, not yet." She jumped up and brought her camp-stool over to mine.
+"I feel that I could better bear what you'll say of it after I've had
+some lunch. Not a SYLLABLE of food has crossed my lips since coffee at
+dawn!"
+
+I spread before her what Amedee had prepared; not sandwiches for the
+pocket to-day, but a wicker hamper, one end of which we let rest upon
+her knees, the other upon mine, and at sight of the foie gras, the
+delicate, devilled partridge, the truffled salad, the fine yellow
+cheese, and the long bottle of good red Beaune, revealed when the cover
+was off, I could almost have forgiven the old rascal for his
+scandal-mongering. As for my vis-a-vis, she pronounced it a "maddening
+sight."
+
+"Fall to, my merry man," she added, "and eat your fill of this fair
+pasty, under the greenwood tree." Obeying her instructions with right
+good-will, and the lady likewise evincing no hatred of the viands, we
+made a cheerful meal of it, topping it with peaches and bunches of
+grapes.
+
+"It is unfair to let you do all the catering," said Miss Elliott, after
+carefully selecting the largest and best peach.
+
+"Jean Ferret's friend does that," I returned, watching her rather
+intently as she dexterously peeled the peach. She did it very daintily,
+I had to admit that--though I regretted to observe indications of the
+gourmet in one so young. But when it was peeled clean, she set it on a
+fresh green leaf, and, to my surprise, gave it to me.
+
+"You see," she continued, not observing my remorseful confusion, "I
+couldn't destroy Elizabeth's peace of mind and then raid her larder to
+boot. That poor lady! I make her trouble enough, but it's nothing to
+what she's going to have when she finds out some things that she must
+find out."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"About Mrs. Harman," was the serious reply. "Elizabeth hasn't a clue."
+
+"'Clue'?" I echoed.
+
+"To Louise's strange affair." Miss Elliott's expression had grown as
+serious as her tone. "It is strange; the strangest thing I ever knew."
+
+"But there's your own case," I urged. "Why should you think it strange
+of her to take an interest in Saffren?"
+
+"I adore him, of course," she said. "He is the most glorious-looking
+person I've ever seen, but on my WORD--" She paused, and as her gaze
+met mine I saw real earnestness in her eyes. "I'm afraid--I was half
+joking the other day--but now I'm really afraid Louise is beginning to
+be in love with him."
+
+"Oh, mightn't it be only interest, so far?" I said.
+
+"No, it's much more. And I've grown so fond of her!" the girl went on,
+her voice unexpectedly verging upon tremulousness. "She's quite
+wonderful in her way--such an understanding sort of woman, and generous
+and kind; there are so many things turning up in a party like ours at
+Quesnay that show what people are really made of, and she's a rare,
+fine spirit. It seems a pity, with such a miserable first experience as
+she had, that this should happen. Oh I know," she continued rapidly,
+cutting off a half-formed protest of mine. "He isn't mad--and I'm sorry
+I tried to be amusing about it the night you dined at the chateau. I
+know perfectly well he's not insane; but I'm absolutely sure, from one
+thing and another, that--well--he isn't ALL THERE! He's as beautiful as
+a seraph and probably as good as one, but something is MISSING about
+him--and it begins to look like a second tragedy for her."
+
+"You mean, she really--" I began.
+
+"Yes, I do," she returned, with a catch in her throat. "She conies to
+my room when the others are asleep. Not that she tells me a great deal,
+but it's in the air, somehow; she told me with such a strained sort of
+gaiety of their meeting and his first joining her; and there was
+something underneath as if she thought _I_ might be really serious in
+my ravings about him, and--yes, as if she meant to warn me off. And the
+other night, when I saw her after their lunching together at Dives, I
+asked her teasingly if she'd had a happy day, and she laughed the
+prettiest laugh I ever heard and put her arms around me--then suddenly
+broke out crying and ran out of the room."
+
+"But that may have been no more than over-strained nerves," I feebly
+suggested.
+
+"Of course it was!" she cried, regarding me with justifiable
+astonishment. "It's the CAUSE of their being overstrained that
+interests me! It's all so strange and distressing," she continued more
+gently, "that I wish I weren't there to see it. And there's poor George
+Ward coming--ah! and when Elizabeth learns of it!"
+
+"Mrs. Harman had her way once, in spite of everything," I said
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, she was a headstrong girl of nineteen, then. But let's not think
+it could go as far as that! There!" She threw a peach-stone over her
+shoulder and sprang up gaily. "Let's not talk of it; I THINK of it
+enough! It's time for you to give me a RACKING criticism on my
+morning's work."
+
+Taking off her coat as she spoke, she unbuttoned the cuffs of her manly
+blouse and rolled up her sleeves as far as they would go, preparations
+which I observed with some perplexity.
+
+"If you intend any violence," said I, "in case my views of your work
+shouldn't meet your own, I think I'll be leaving."
+
+"Wait," she responded, and kneeling upon one knee beside a bush near
+by, thrust her arms elbow-deep under the outer mantle of leaves,
+shaking the stems vigorously, and sending down a shower of sparkling
+drops. Never lived sane man, or madman, since time began, who, seeing
+her then, could or would have denied that she made the very prettiest
+picture ever seen by any person or persons whatsoever--but her purpose
+was difficult to fathom. Pursuing it, I remarked that it was improbable
+that birds would be nesting so low.
+
+"It's for a finger bowl," she said briskly. And rising, this most
+practical of her sex dried her hands upon a fresh serviette from the
+hamper. "Last night's rain is worth two birds in the bush."
+
+With that, she readjusted her sleeves, lightly donned her coat, and
+preceded me to her easel. "Now," she commanded, "slaughter! It's what I
+let you come with me for."
+
+I looked at her sketch with much more attention than I had given the
+small board she had used as a bait in the courtyard of Les Trois
+Pigeons. Today she showed a larger ambition, and a larger canvas as
+well--or, perhaps I should say a larger burlap, for she had chosen to
+paint upon something strongly resembling a square of coffee-sacking.
+But there was no doubt she had "found colour" in a swash-buckling,
+bullying style of forcing it to be there, whether it was or not, and to
+"vibrate," whether it did or not. There was not much to be said, for
+the violent kind of thing she had done always hushes me; and even when
+it is well done I am never sure whether its right place is the "Salon
+des Independants" or the Luxembourg. It SEEMS dreadful, and yet
+sometimes I fear in secret that it may be a real transition, or even an
+awakening, and that the men I began with, and I, are standing still.
+The older men called US lunatics once, and the critics said we were
+"daring," but that was long ago.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+I had to speak, so I paraphrased a mot of Degas (I think it was Degas)
+and said:
+
+"If Rousseau could come to life and see this sketch of yours, I imagine
+he would be very much interested, but if he saw mine he might say,
+'That is my fault!'"
+
+"OH!" she cried, her colour rising quickly; she looked troubled for a
+second, then her eyes twinkled. "You're not going to let my work make a
+difference between us, are you?"
+
+"I'll even try to look at it from your own point of view," I answered,
+stepping back several yards to see it better, though I should have had
+to retire about a quarter of the length of a city block to see it quite
+from her own point of view.
+
+She moved with me, both of us walking backward. I began:
+
+"For a day like this, with all the colour in the trees themselves and
+so very little in the air--"
+
+There came an interruption, a voice of unpleasant and wiry nasality,
+speaking from behind us.
+
+"WELL, WELL!" it said. "So here we are again!"
+
+I faced about and beheld, just emerged from a by-path, a fox-faced
+young man whose light, well-poised figure was jauntily clad in gray
+serge, with scarlet waistcoat and tie, white shoes upon his feet, and a
+white hat, gaily beribboned, upon his head. A recollection of the dusky
+road and a group of people about Pere Baudry's lamplit door flickered
+across my mind.
+
+"The historical tourist!" I exclaimed. "The highly pedestrian tripper
+from Trouville!"
+
+"You got me right, m'dear friend," he replied with condescension; "I
+rec'leck meetin' you perfect."
+
+"And I was interested to learn," said I, carefully observing the effect
+of my words upon him, "that you had been to Les Trois Pigeons after
+all. Perhaps I might put it, you had been through Les Trois Pigeons,
+for the maitre d'hotel informed me you had investigated every
+corner--that wasn't locked."
+
+"Sure," he returned, with rather less embarrassment than a brazen
+Vishnu would have exhibited under the same circumstances. "He showed me
+what pitchers they was in your studio. I'll luk 'em over again fer ye
+one of these days. Some of 'em was right gud."
+
+"You will be visiting near enough for me to avail myself of the
+opportunity?"
+
+"Right in the Pigeon House, m'friend. I've just come down t'putt in a
+few days there," he responded coolly. "They's a young feller in this
+neighbourhood I take a kind o' fam'ly interest in."
+
+"Who is that?" I asked quickly.
+
+For answer he produced the effect of a laugh by widening and lifting
+one side of his mouth, leaving the other, meantime, rigid.
+
+"Don' lemme int'rup' the conv'sation with yer lady-friend," he said
+winningly. "What they call 'talkin' High Arts,' wasn't it? I'd like to
+hear some."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Miss Elliott's expression, when I turned to observe the effect of the
+intruder upon her, was found to be one of brilliant delight. With
+glowing eyes, her lips parted in a breathless ecstasy, she gazed upon
+the newcomer, evidently fearing to lose a syllable that fell from his
+lips. Moving closer to me she whispered urgently:
+
+"Keep him. Oh, keep him!"
+
+To detain him, for a time at least, was my intention, though my motive
+was not merely to afford her pleasure. The advent of the young man had
+produced a singularly disagreeable impression upon me, quite apart from
+any antagonism I might have felt toward him as a type. Strange
+suspicions leaped into my mind, formless--in the surprise of the
+moment--but rapidly groping toward definite outline; and following hard
+upon them crept a tingling apprehension. The reappearance of this
+rattish youth, casual as was the air with which he strove to invest it,
+began to assume, for me, the character of a theatrical entrance of
+unpleasant portent--a suggestion just now enhanced by an absurdly
+obvious notion of his own that he was enacting a part. This was written
+all over him, most legibly in his attitude of the knowing amateur, as
+he surveyed Miss Elliott's painting patronisingly, his head on one
+side, his cane in the crook of his elbows behind his back, and his body
+teetering genteelly as he shifted his weight from his toes to his heels
+and back again, nodding meanwhile a slight but judicial approbation.
+
+"Now, about how much," he said slowly, "would you expec' t' git f'r a
+pitcher that size?"
+
+"It isn't mine," I informed him.
+
+"You don't tell me it's the little lady's--what?" He bowed genially and
+favoured Miss Elliott with a stare of warm admiration. "Pretty a thing
+as I ever see," he added.
+
+"Oh," she cried with an ardour that choked her slightly. "THANK you!"
+
+"Oh, I meant the PITCHER!" he said hastily, evidently nonplussed by a
+gratitude so fervent.
+
+The incorrigible damsel cast down her eyes in modesty. "And I had
+hoped," she breathed, "something so different!"
+
+I could not be certain whether or not he caught the whisper; I thought
+he did. At all events, the surface of his easy assurance appeared
+somewhat disarranged; and, perhaps to restore it by performing the
+rites of etiquette, he said:
+
+"Well, I expec' the smart thing now is to pass the cards, but mine's in
+my grip an' it ain't unpacked yet. The name you'd see on 'em is Oil
+Poicy."
+
+"Oil Poicy," echoed Miss Elliott, turning to me in genuine astonishment.
+
+"Mr. Earl Percy," I translated.
+
+"Oh, RAPTUROUS!" she cried, her face radiant. "And WON'T Mr. Percy give
+us his opinion of my Art?"
+
+Mr. Percy was in doubt how to take her enthusiasm; he seemed on the
+point of turning surly, and hesitated, while a sharp vertical line
+appeared on his small forehead; but he evidently concluded, after a
+deep glance at her, that if she was making game of him it was in no
+ill-natured spirit--nay, I think that for a few moments he suspected
+her liveliness to be some method of her own for the incipient stages of
+a flirtation.
+
+Finally he turned again to the easel, and as he examined the painting
+thereon at closer range, amazement overspread his features. However,
+pulling himself together, he found himself able to reply--and with
+great gallantry:
+
+"Well, on'y t' think them little hands cud 'a' done all that rough
+woik!"
+
+The unintended viciousness of this retort produced an effect so marked,
+that, except for my growing uneasiness, I might have enjoyed her
+expression.
+
+As it was, I saved her face by entering into the conversation with a
+question, which I put quickly:
+
+"You intend pursuing your historical researches in the neighborhood?"
+
+The facial contortion which served him for a laugh, and at the same
+time as a symbol of unfathomable reserve, was repeated, accompanied by
+a jocose manifestation, in the nature of a sharp and taunting cackle,
+which seemed to indicate a conviction that he was getting much the best
+of it in some conflict of wits.
+
+"Them fairy tales I handed you about ole Jeanne d'Arc and William the
+Conker," he said, "say, they must 'a' made you sore after-WOIDS!"
+
+"On the contrary, I was much interested in everything pertaining to
+your too brief visit," I returned; "I am even more so now."
+
+"Well, m'friend"--he shot me a sidelong, distrustful glance--"keep yer
+eyes open."
+
+"That is just the point!" I laughed, with intentional significance, for
+I meant to make Mr. Percy talk as much as I could. To this end,
+remembering that specimens of his kind are most indiscreet when
+carefully enraged, I added, simulating his own manner:
+
+"Eyes open--and doors locked! What?"
+
+At this I heard a gasp of astonishment from Miss Elliott, who must have
+been puzzled indeed; but I was intent upon the other. He proved
+perfectly capable of being insulted.
+
+"I guess they ain't much need o' lockin' YOUR door," he retorted
+darkly; "not from what I saw when I was in your studio!" He should have
+stopped there, for the hit was palpable and justified; but in his
+resentment he overdid it. "You needn't be scared of anybody's cartin'
+off THEM pitchers, young feller! WHOOSH! An' f'm the luks of the CLO'ES
+I saw hangin' on the wall," he continued, growing more nettled as I
+smiled cheerfully upon him, "I don' b'lieve you gut any worries comin'
+about THEM, neither!"
+
+"I suppose our tastes are different," I said, letting my smile broaden.
+"There might be protection in that."
+
+His stare at me was protracted to an unseemly length before the sting
+of this remark reached him; it penetrated finally, however, and in his
+sharp change of posture there was a lightning flicker of the
+experienced boxer; but he checked the impulse, and took up the task of
+obliterating me in another way.
+
+"As I tell the little dame here," he said, pitching his voice higher
+and affecting the plaintive, "I make no passes at a friend o' her--not
+in front o' her, anyways. But when it comes to these here ole, ancient
+curiosities"--he cackled again, loudly--"well, I guess them clo'es I
+see, that day, kin hand it out t' anything they got in the museums!
+'Look here,' I says to the waiter, 'THESE must be'n left over f'm ole
+Jeanne d'Arc herself,' I says. 'Talk about yer relics,' I says. Whoosh!
+I'd like t' died!" He laughed violently, and concluded by turning upon
+me with a contemptuous flourish of his stick. "You think I d'know what
+makes YOU so raw?"
+
+The form of repartee necessary to augment his ill humour was, of
+course, a matter of simple mechanism for one who had not entirely
+forgotten his student days in the Quarter; and I delivered it airily,
+though I shivered inwardly that Miss Elliott should hear.
+
+"Everything will be all right if, when you dine at the inn, you'll sit
+with your back toward me."
+
+To my shamed surprise, this roustabout wit drew a nervous, silvery
+giggle from her; and that completed the work with Mr. Percy, whose face
+grew scarlet with anger.
+
+"You're a hot one, you are!" he sneered, with shocking bitterness.
+"You're quite the teaser, ain't ye, s'long's yer lady-friend is lukkin'
+on! I guess they'll be a few surprises comin' YOUR way, before long.
+P'raps I cudn't give ye one now 'f I had a mind to."
+
+"Pshaw," I laughed, and, venturing at hazard, said, "I know all YOU
+know!"
+
+"Oh, you do!" he cried scornfully. "I reckon you might set up an' take
+a little notice, though, if you knowed 'at I know all YOU know!"
+
+"Not a bit of it!"
+
+"No? Maybe you think I don't know what makes you so raw with ME? Maybe
+you think I don't know who ye've got so thick with at this here Pigeon
+House; maybe you think I don't know who them people ARE!"
+
+"No, you don't. You have learned," I said, trying to control my
+excitement, "nothing! Whoever hired YOU for a spy lost the money. YOU
+don't know ANY-thing!"
+
+"I DON'T!" And with that his voice went to a half-shriek. "Maybe you
+think I'm down here f'r my health; maybe you think I come out f'r a
+pleasant walk in the woods right now; maybe you think I ain't seen no
+other lady-friend o' yours besides this'n to-day, and maybe I didn't
+see who was with her--yes, an' maybe you think I d'know no other times
+he's be'n with her. Maybe you think I ain't be'n layin' low over at
+Dives! Maybe I don't know a few real NAMES in this neighbourhood! Oh,
+no, MAYBE not!"
+
+"You know what the maitre d'hotel told you; nothing more."
+
+"How about the name--OLIVER SAFFREN?" he cried fiercely, and at last,
+though I had expected it, I uttered an involuntary exclamation.
+
+"How about it?" he shouted, advancing toward me triumphantly, shaking
+his forefinger in my face. "Hey? THAT stings some, does it? Sounds kind
+o' like a FALSE name, does it? Got ye where the hair is short, that
+time, didn't I?"
+
+"Speaking of names," I retorted, "'Oil Poicy' doesn't seem to ring
+particularly true to me!"
+
+"It'll be gud enough fer you, young feller," he responded angrily. "It
+may belong t' me, an' then again, it maybe don't. It ain' gunna git me
+in no trouble; I'll luk out f'r that. YOUR side's where the trouble is;
+that's what's eatin' into you. An' I'll tell you flat-foot, your
+gittin' rough 'ith me and playin' Charley the Show-Off in front o' yer
+lady-friends'll all go down in the bill. These people ye've got so
+chummy with--THEY'LL pay f'r it all right, don't you shed no tears over
+that!"
+
+"You couldn't by any possibility," I said deliberately, with as much
+satire as I could command, "you couldn't possibly mean that any sum of
+mere money might be a salve for the injuries my unkind words have
+inflicted?"
+
+Once more he seemed upon the point of destroying me physically, but,
+with a slight shudder, controlled himself. Stepping close to me, he
+thrust his head forward and measured the emphases of his speech by his
+right forefinger upon my shoulder, as he said:
+
+"You paint THIS in yer pitchers, m' dear friend; they's jest as much
+law in this country as they is on the corner o' Twenty-thoid Street an'
+Fif' Avenoo! You keep out the way of it, or you'll git runned over!"
+
+Delivering a final tap on my shoulder as a last warning, he wheeled
+deftly upon his heel, addressed Miss Elliott briefly, "Glad t' know
+YOU, lady," and striking into the by-path by which he had approached
+us, was soon lost to sight.
+
+The girl faced me excitedly. "What IS it?" she cried. "It seemed to me
+you insulted him deliberately--"
+
+"I did."
+
+"You wanted to make him angry?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh! I thought so!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "I knew there was
+something serious underneath. It's about Mr. Saffren?"
+
+"It is serious indeed, I fear," I said, and turning to my own easel,
+began to get my traps together. "I'll tell you the little I know,
+because I want you to tell Mrs. Harman what has just happened, and
+you'll be able to do it better if you understand what is understandable
+about the rest of it."
+
+"You mean you wouldn't tell me so that I could understand for myself?"
+There was a note of genuine grieved reproach in her voice. "Ah, then
+I've made you think me altogether a hare-brain!"
+
+"I haven't time to tell you what I think of you," I said brusquely,
+and, strangely enough, it seemed to please her. But I paid little
+attention to that, continuing quickly: "When Professor Keredec and Mr.
+Saffren came to Les Trois Pigeons, they were so careful to keep out of
+everybody's sight that one might have suspected that they were in
+hiding--and, in fact, I'm sure that they were--though, as time passed
+and nothing alarming happened, they've felt reassured and allowed
+themselves more liberty. It struck me that Keredec at first dreaded
+that they might be traced to the inn, and I'm afraid his fear was
+justified, for one night, before I came to know them, I met Mr. 'Percy'
+on the road; he'd visited Madame Brossard's and pumped Amedee dry, but
+clumsily tried to pretend to me that he had not been there at all. At
+the time, I did not connect him even remotely with Professor Keredec's
+anxieties. I imagined he might have an eye to the spoons; but it's as
+ridiculous to think him a burglar as it would be to take him for a
+detective. What he is, or what he has to do with Mr. Saffren, I can
+guess no more than I can guess the cause of Keredec's fears, but the
+moment I saw him to-day, saw that he'd come back, I knew it was THAT,
+and tried to draw him out. You heard what he said; there's no doubt
+that Saffren stands in danger of some kind. It may be inconsiderable,
+or even absurd, but it's evidently imminent, and no matter what it is,
+Mrs. Harman must be kept out of it. I want you to see her as soon as
+you can and ask her from me--no, persuade her yourself--not to leave
+Quesnay for a day or two. I mean, that she absolutely MUST NOT meet Mr.
+Saffren again until we know what all this means. Will you do it?"
+
+"That I will!" And she began hastily to get her belongings in marching
+order. "I'll do anything in the world you'll let me--and oh, I hope
+they can't do anything to poor, poor Mr. Saffren!"
+
+"Our sporting friend had evidently seen him with Mrs. Harman to-day," I
+said. "Do you know if they went to the beach again?"
+
+"I only know she meant to meet him--but she told me she'd be back at
+the chateau by four. If I start now--"
+
+"Wasn't the phaeton to be sent to the inn for you?"
+
+"Not until six," she returned briskly, folding her easel and strapping
+it to her camp-stool with precision. "Isn't it shorter by the woods?"
+
+"You've only to follow this path to the second crossing and then turn
+to the right," I responded. "I shall hurry back to Madame Brossard's to
+see Keredec--and here"--I extended my hand toward her traps, of which,
+in a neatly practical fashion, she had made one close pack--"let me
+have your things, and I'll take care of them at the inn for you.
+They're heavy, and it's a long trudge."
+
+"You have your own to carry," she answered, swinging the strap over her
+shoulder. "It's something of a walk for you, too."
+
+"No, no, let me have them," I protested, for the walk before her WAS
+long and the things would be heavy indeed before it ended.
+
+"Go your ways," she laughed, and as my hand still remained extended she
+grasped it with her own and gave it a warm and friendly shake. "Hurry!"
+And with an optimism which took my breath, she said, "I know YOU can
+make it come out all right! Besides, I'll help you!"
+
+With that she turned and started manfully upon her journey. I stared
+after her for a moment or more, watching the pretty brown dress
+flashing in and out of shadow among the ragged greeneries, shafts of
+sunshine now and then flashing upon her hair. Then I picked up my own
+pack and set out for the inn.
+
+Every one knows that the more serious and urgent the errand a man may
+be upon, the more incongruous are apt to be the thoughts that skip into
+his mind. As I went through the woods that day, breathless with haste
+and curious fears, my brain became suddenly, unaccountably busy with a
+dream I had had, two nights before. I had not recalled this dream on
+waking: the recollection of it came to me now for the first time. It
+was a usual enough dream, wandering and unlifelike, not worth the
+telling; and I had been thinking so constantly of Mrs. Harman that
+there was nothing extraordinary in her worthless ex-husband's being
+part of it.
+
+And yet, looking back upon that last, hurried walk of mine through the
+forest, I see how strange it was that I could not quit remembering how
+in my dream I had gone motoring up Mount Pilatus with the man I had
+seen so pitiably demolished on the Versailles road, two years
+before--Larrabee Harman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Keredec was alone in his salon, extended at ease upon a long chair, an
+ottoman and a stool, when I burst in upon him; a portentous volume was
+in his lap, and a prolific pipe, smoking up from his great cloud of
+beard, gave the final reality to the likeness he thus presented of a
+range of hills ending in a volcano. But he rolled the book cavalierly
+to the floor, limbered up by sections to receive me, and offered me a
+hearty welcome.
+
+"Ha, my dear sir," he cried, "you take pity on the lonely Keredec; you
+make him a visit. I could not wish better for myself. We shall have a
+good smoke and a good talk."
+
+"You are improved to-day?" I asked, it may be a little slyly.
+
+"Improve?" he repeated inquiringly.
+
+"Your rheumatism, I mean."
+
+"Ha, yes; that rheumatism!" he shouted, and throwing back his head,
+rocked the room with sudden laughter. "Hew! But it is gone--almost! Oh,
+I am much better, and soon I shall be able to go in the woods again
+with my boy." He pushed a chair toward me. "Come, light your cigar; he
+will not return for an hour perhaps, and there is plenty of time for
+the smoke to blow away. So! It is better. Now we shall talk."
+
+"Yes," I said, "I wanted to talk with you."
+
+"That is a--what you call?--ha, yes, a coincidence," he returned,
+stretching himself again in the long chair, "a happy coincidence; for I
+have wished a talk with you; but you are away so early for all day, and
+in the evening Oliver, he is always here."
+
+"I think what I wanted to talk about concerns him particularly."
+
+"Yes?" The professor leaned forward, looking at me gravely. "That is
+another coincidence. But you shall speak first. Commence then."
+
+"I feel that you know me at least well enough," I began rather
+hesitatingly, "to be sure that I would not, for the world, make any
+effort to intrude in your affairs, or Mr. Saffren's, and that I would
+not force your confidence in the remotest--"
+
+"No, no, no!" he interrupted. "Please do not fear I shall
+misinterpretate whatever you will say. You are our friend. We know it."
+
+"Very well," I pursued; "then I speak with no fear of offending. When
+you first came to the inn I couldn't help seeing that you took a great
+many precautions for secrecy; and when you afterward explained these
+precautions to me on the ground that you feared somebody might think
+Mr. Saffren not quite sane, and that such an impression might injure
+him later--well, I could not help seeing that your explanation did not
+cover all the ground."
+
+"It is true--it did not." He ran his huge hand through the heavy white
+waves of his hair, and shook his head vigorously. "No; I knew it, my
+dear sir, I knew it well. But, what could I do? I would not have telled
+my own mother! This much I can say to you: we came here at a risk, but
+I thought that with great care it might be made little. And I thought a
+great good thing might be accomplish if we should come here, something
+so fine, so wonderful, that even if the danger had been great I would
+have risked it. I will tell you a little more: I think that great thing
+is BEING accomplish!" Here he rose to his feet excitedly and began to
+pace the room as he talked, the ancient floor shaking with his tread.
+"I think it is DONE! And ha! my dear sir, if it SHOULD be, this big
+Keredec will not have lived in vain! It was a great task I undertake
+with my young man, and the glory to see it finish is almost here. Even
+if the danger should come, the THING is done, for all that is real and
+has true meaning is inside the soul!"
+
+"It was in connection with the risk you have mentioned that I came to
+talk," I returned with some emphasis, for I was convinced of the
+reality of Mr. Earl Percy and also very certain that he had no
+existence inside or outside a soul. "I think it necessary that you
+should know--"
+
+But the professor was launched. I might as well have swept the rising
+tide with a broom. He talked with magnificent vehemence for twenty
+minutes, his theme being some theory of his own that the individuality
+of a soul is immortal, and that even in perfection, the soul cannot
+possibly merge into any Nirvana. Meantime, I wondered how Mr. Percy was
+employing his time, but after one or two ineffectual attempts to
+interrupt, I gave myself to silence until the oration should be
+concluded.
+
+"And so it is with my boy," he proclaimed, coming at last to the case
+in hand. "The spirit of him, the real Oliver Saffren, THAT has NEVER
+change! The outside of him, those thing that BELONG to him, like his
+memory, THEY have change, but not himself, for himself is eternal and
+unchangeable. I have taught him, yes; I have helped him get the small
+things we can add to our possession--a little knowledge, maybe, a
+little power of judgment. But, my dear sir, I tell you that such things
+are ONLY possessions of a man. They are not the MAN! All that a man IS
+or ever shall be, he is when he is a baby. So with Oliver; he had lived
+a little while, twenty-six years, perhaps, when pft--like that!--he
+became almost as a baby again. He could remember how to talk, but not
+much more. He had lost his belongings--they were gone from the lobe of
+the brain where he had stored them; but HE was not gone, no part of the
+real HIMSELF was lacking. Then presently they send him to me to make
+new his belongings, to restore his possessions. Ha, what a task! To
+take him with nothing in the world of his own and see that he get only
+GOOD possessions, GOOD knowledge, GOOD experience! I took him to the
+mountains of the Tyrol--two years--and there his body became strong and
+splendid while his brain was taking in the stores. It was quick, for
+his brain had retained some habits; it was not a baby's brain, and some
+small part of its old stores had not been lost. But if anything useless
+or bad remain, we empty it out--I and those mountain' with their pure
+air. Now, I say he is all good and the work was good; I am proud! But I
+wish to restore ALL that was good in his life; your Keredec is
+something of a poet.--You may put it: much the old fool! And for that
+greates' restoration of all I have brought my boy back to France; since
+it was necessary. It was a madness, and I thank the good God I was mad
+enough to do it. I cannot tell you yet, my dear sir: but you shall see,
+you shall see what the folly of that old Keredec has done! You shall
+see, you shall--and I promise it--what a Paradise, when the good God
+helps, an old fool's dream can make!"
+
+A half-light had broken upon me as he talked, pacing the floor,
+thundering his paean of triumph, his Titanic gestures bruising the
+harmless air. Only one explanation, incredible, but possible, sufficed.
+Anything was possible, I thought--anything was probable--with this
+dreamer whom the trump of Fame, executing a whimsical fantasia,
+proclaimed a man of science!
+
+"By the wildest chance," I gasped, "you don't mean that you wanted him
+to fall in love--"
+
+He had reached the other end of the room, but at this he whirled about
+on me, his laughter rolling out again, till it might have been heard at
+Pere Baudry's.
+
+"Ha, my dear sir, you have said it! But you knew it; you told him to
+come to me and tell me."
+
+"But I mean that you--unless I utterly misunderstand--you seem to imply
+that you had selected some one now in France whom you planned that he
+should care for--that you had selected the lady whom you know as Madame
+d'Armand."
+
+"Again," he shouted, "you have said it!"
+
+"Professor Keredec," I returned, with asperity, "I have no idea how you
+came to conceive such a preposterous scheme, but I agree heartily that
+the word for it is madness. In the first place, I must tell you that
+her name is not even d'Armand--"
+
+"My dear sir, I know. It was the mistake of that absurd Amedee. She is
+Mrs. Harman."
+
+"You knew it?" I cried, hopelessly confused. "But Oliver still speaks
+of her as Madame d'Armand."
+
+"He does not know. She has not told him."
+
+"But why haven't you told him?"
+
+"Ha, that is a story, a poem," he cried, beginning to pace the floor
+again--"a ballad as old as the oldest of Provence! There is a reason,
+my dear sir, which I cannot tell you, but it lies within the romance of
+what you agree is my madness. Some day, I hope, you shall understand
+and applaud! In the meantime--"
+
+"In the meantime," I said sharply, as he paused for breath, "there is a
+keen-faced young man who took a room in the inn this morning and who
+has come to spy upon you, I believe."
+
+"What is it you say?"
+
+He came to a sudden stop.
+
+I had not meant to deliver my information quite so abruptly, but there
+was no help for it now, and I repeated the statement, giving him a
+terse account of my two encounters with the rattish youth, and adding:
+
+"He seemed to be certain that 'Oliver Saffren' is an assumed name, and
+he made a threatening reference to the laws of France."
+
+The effect upon Keredec was a very distinct pallor. He faced me
+silently until I had finished, then in a voice grown suddenly husky,
+asked:
+
+"Do you think he came back to the inn? Is he here now?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"We must learn; I must know that, at once." And he went to the door.
+
+"Let me go instead," I suggested.
+
+"It can't make little difference if he see me," said the professor,
+swallowing with difficulty and displaying, as he turned to me, a look
+of such profound anxiety that I was as sorry for him now as I had been
+irritated a few minutes earlier by his galliard air-castles. "I do not
+know this man, nor does he know me, but I have fear"--his beard moved
+as though his chin were trembling--"I have fear that I know his
+employers. Still, it may be better if you go. Bring somebody here that
+we can ask."
+
+"Shall I find Amedee?"
+
+"No, no, no! That babbler? Find Madame Brossard."
+
+I stepped out to the gallery, to discover Madame Brossard emerging from
+a door on the opposite side of the courtyard; Amedee, Glouglou, and a
+couple of carters deploying before her with some light trunks and bags,
+which they were carrying into the passage she had just quitted. I
+summoned her quietly; she came briskly up the steps and into the room,
+and I closed the door.
+
+"Madame Brossard," said the professor, "you have a new client to-day."
+
+"That monsieur who arrived this morning," I suggested.
+
+"He was an American," said the hostess, knitting her dark brows--"but I
+do not think that he was exactly a monsieur."
+
+"Bravo!" I murmured. "That sketches a likeness. It is this 'Percy'
+without a doubt."
+
+"That is it," she returned. "Monsieur Poissy is the name he gave."
+
+"Is he at the inn now?"
+
+"No, monsieur, but two friends for whom he engaged apartments have just
+arrived."
+
+"Who are they?" asked Keredec quickly.
+
+"It is a lady and a monsieur from Paris. But not married: they have
+taken separate apartments and she has a domestic with her, a negress,
+Algerian."
+
+"What are their names?"
+
+"It is not ten minutes that they are installed. They have not given me
+their names."
+
+"What is the lady's appearance?"
+
+"Monsieur the Professor," replied the hostess demurely, "she is not
+beautiful."
+
+"But what is she?" demanded Keredec impatiently; and it could be seen
+that he was striving to control a rising agitation. "Is she blonde? Is
+she brunette? Is she young? Is she old? Is she French, English,
+Spanish--"
+
+"I think," said Madame Brossard, "I think one would call her Spanish,
+but she is very fat, not young, and with a great deal too much rouge--"
+
+She stopped with an audible intake of breath, staring at my friend's
+white face. "Eh! it is bad news?" she cried. "And when one has been so
+ill--"
+
+Keredec checked her with an imperious gesture. "Monsieur Saffren and I
+leave at once," he said. "I shall meet him on the road; he will not
+return to the inn. We go to--to Trouville. See that no one knows that
+we have gone until to-morrow, if possible; I shall leave fees for the
+servants with you. Go now, prepare your bill, and bring it to me at
+once. I shall write you where to send our trunks. Quick! And you, my
+friend"--he turned to me as Madame Brossard, obviously distressed and
+frightened, but none the less intelligent for that, skurried away to do
+his bidding--"my friend, will you help us? For we need it!"
+
+"Anything in the world!"
+
+"Go to Pere Baudry's; have him put the least tired of his three horses
+to his lightest cart and wait in the road beyond the cottage. Stand in
+the road yourself while that is being done. Oliver will come that way;
+detain him. I will join you there; I have only to see to my papers--at
+the most, twenty minutes. Go quickly, my friend!"
+
+I strode to the door and out to the gallery. I was half-way down the
+steps before I saw that Oliver Saffren was already in the courtyard,
+coming toward me from the archway with a light and buoyant step.
+
+He looked up, waving his hat to me, his face lighted with a happiness
+most remarkable, and brighter, even, than the strong, midsummer
+sunshine flaming over him. Dressed in white as he was, and with the air
+of victory he wore, he might have been, at that moment, a figure from
+some marble triumph; youthful, conquering--crowned with the laurel.
+
+I had time only to glance at him, to "take" him, as it were, between
+two shutter-flicks of the instantaneous eyelid, and with him, the
+courtyard flooded with sunshine, the figure of Madame Brossard emerging
+from her little office, Amedee coming from the kitchen bearing a
+white-covered tray, and, entering from the road, upon the trail of
+Saffren but still in the shadow of the archway, the discordant fineries
+and hatchet-face of the ex-pedestrian and tourist, my antagonist of the
+forest.
+
+I had opened my mouth to call a warning.
+
+"Hurry" was the word I would have said, but it stopped at "hur--." The
+second syllable was never uttered.
+
+There came a violent outcry, raucous and shrill as the wail of a
+captured hen, and out of the passage across the courtyard floundered a
+woman, fantastically dressed in green and gold.
+
+Her coarse blue-black hair fell dishevelled upon her shoulders, from
+which her gown hung precariously unfastened, as if she had abandoned
+her toilet half-way. She was abundantly fat, double-chinned, coarse,
+greasy, smeared with blue pencillings, carmine, enamel, and rouge.
+
+At the scream Saffren turned. She made straight at him, crying wildly:
+
+"Enfin! Mon mari, mon mari--c'est moi! C'est ta femme, mon coeur!"
+
+She threw herself upon him, her arms about his neck, with a tropical
+ferocity that was a very paroxysm of triumph.
+
+"Embrasse moi, Larrabi! Embrasse moi!" she cried.
+
+Horrified, outraged, his eyes blazing, he flung her off with a violence
+surpassing her own, and with loathing unspeakable. She screamed that he
+was killing her, calling him "husband," and tried to fasten herself
+upon him again. But he leaped backward beyond the reach of her
+clutching hands, and, turning, plunged to the steps and staggered up
+them, the woman following.
+
+From above me leaned the stricken face of Keredec; he caught Saffren
+under the arm and half lifted him to the gallery, while she strove to
+hold him by the knees.
+
+"O Christ!" gasped Saffren. "Is THIS the woman?"
+
+The giant swung him across the gallery and into the open door with one
+great sweep of the arm, strode in after him, and closed and bolted the
+door. The woman fell in a heap at the foot of the steps, uttered a
+cracked simulation of the cry of a broken heart.
+
+"Name of a name of God!" she wailed. "After all these years! And my
+husband strikes me!"
+
+Then it was that what had been in my mind as a monstrous suspicion
+became a certainty. For I recognised the woman; she was Mariana--la
+bella Mariana la Mursiana.
+
+If I had ever known Larrabee Harman, if, instead of the two strange
+glimpses I had caught of him, I had been familiar with his gesture,
+walk, intonation--even, perhaps, if I had ever heard his voice--the
+truth might have come to me long ago.
+
+Larrabee Harman!
+
+"Oliver Saffren" was Larrabee Harman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+I do not like to read those poets who write of pain as if they loved
+it; the study of suffering is for the cold analyst, for the
+vivisectionist, for those who may transfuse their knowledge of it to
+the ultimate good of mankind. And although I am so heavily endowed with
+curiosity concerning the people I find about me, my gift (or curse,
+whichever it be) knows pause at the gates of the house of calamity. So,
+if it were possible, I would not speak of the agony of which I was a
+witness that night in the apartment of my friends at Madame Brossard's.
+I went with reluctance, but there was no choice. Keredec had sent for
+me.
+
+... When I was about fifteen, a boy cousin of mine, several years
+younger, terribly injured himself on the Fourth of July; and I sat all
+night in the room with him, helping his mother. Somehow he had learned
+that there was no hope of saving his sight; he was an imaginative child
+and realised the whole meaning of the catastrophe; the eternal
+darkness.... And he understood that the thing had been done, that there
+was no going back of it. This very certainty increased the intensity of
+his rebellion a thousandfold. "I WILL have my eyes!" he screamed. "I
+WILL! I WILL!"
+
+Keredec had told his tragic ward too little. The latter had understood
+but vaguely the nature of the catastrophe which overhung his return to
+France, and now that it was indeed concrete and definite, the guardian
+was forced into fuller disclosures, every word making the anguish of
+the listener more intolerable. It was the horizonless despair of a
+child; and that profound protest I had so often seen smouldering in his
+eyes culminated, at its crisis, in a wild flame of revolt. The shame of
+the revelation passed over him; there was nothing of the disastrous
+drunkard, sober, learning what he had done. To him, it seemed that he
+was being forced to suffer for the sins of another man.
+
+"Do you think that you can make me believe _I_ did this?" he cried.
+"That I made life unbearable for HER, drove HER from me, and took this
+hideous, painted old woman in HER place? It's a lie. You can't make me
+believe such a monstrous lie as that! You CAN'T! You CAN'T!"
+
+He threw himself violently upon the couch, face downward, shuddering
+from head to foot.
+
+"My poor boy, it is the truth," said Keredec, kneeling beside him and
+putting a great arm across his shoulders. "It is what a thousand men
+are doing this night. Nothing is more common, or more unexplainable--or
+more simple. Of all the nations it is the same, wherever life has
+become artificial and the poor, foolish young men have too much money
+and nothing to do. You do not understand it, but our friend here, and
+I, we understand because we remember what we have been seeing all our
+life. You say it is not you who did such crazy, horrible things, and
+you are right. When this poor woman who is so painted and greasy first
+caught you, when you began to give your money and your time and your
+life to her, when she got you into this horrible marriage with her, you
+were blind--you went staggering, in a bad dream; your soul hid away,
+far down inside you, with its hands over its face. If it could have
+once stood straight, if the eyes of your body could have once been
+clean for it to look through, if you could have once been as you are
+to-day, or as you were when you were a little child, you would have cry
+out with horror both of her and of yourself, as you do now; and you
+would have run away from her and from everything you had put in your
+life. But, in your suffering you must rejoice: the triumph is that your
+mind hates that old life as greatly as your soul hates it. You are as
+good as if you had never been the wild fellow--yes, the wicked
+fellow--that you were. For a man who shakes off his sin is clean; he
+stands as pure as if he had never sinned. But though his emancipation
+can be so perfect, there is a law that he cannot escape from the result
+of all the bad and foolish things he has done, for every act, every
+breath you draw, is immortal, and each has a consequence that is never
+ending. And so, now, though you are purified, the suffering from these
+old actions is here, and you must abide it. Ah, but that is a little
+thing, nothing!--that suffering--compared to what you have gained, for
+you have gained your own soul!"
+
+The desperate young man on the couch answered only with the sobbing of
+a broken-hearted child.
+
+I came back to my pavilion after midnight, but I did not sleep, though
+I lay upon my bed until dawn. Then I went for a long, hard walk,
+breakfasted at Dives, and begged a ride back to Madame Brossard's in a
+peasant's cart which was going that way.
+
+I found George Ward waiting for me on the little veranda of the
+pavilion, looking handsomer and more prosperously distinguished and
+distinguishedly prosperous and generally well-conditioned than ever--as
+I told him.
+
+"I have some news for you," he said after the hearty greeting--"an
+announcement, in fact."
+
+"Wait!" I glanced at the interested attitude of Mr. Earl Percy, who was
+breakfasting at a table significantly near the gallery steps, and led
+the way into the pavilion. "You may as well not tell it in the hearing
+of that young man," I said, when the door was closed. "He is eccentric."
+
+"So I gathered," returned Ward, smiling, "from his attire. But it
+really wouldn't matter who heard it. Elizabeth's going to marry Cresson
+Ingle."
+
+"That is the news--the announcement--you spoke of?"
+
+"Yes, that is it."
+
+To save my life I could not have told at that moment what else I had
+expected, or feared, that he might say, but certainly I took a deep
+breath of relief. "I am very glad," I said. "It should be a happy
+alliance."
+
+"On the whole, I think it will be," he returned thoughtfully. "Ingle's
+done his share of hard living, and I once had a notion"--he glanced
+smiling at me--"well, I dare say you know my notion. But it is a good
+match for Elizabeth and not without advantages on many counts. You see,
+it's time I married, myself; she feels that very strongly and I think
+her decision to accept Ingle is partly due to her wish to make all
+clear for a new mistress of my household,--though that's putting it in
+a rather grandiloquent way." He laughed. "And as you probably guess, I
+have an idea that some such arrangement might be somewhere on the wings
+of the wind on its way to me, before long."
+
+He laughed again, but I did not, and noting my silence he turned upon
+me a more scrutinising look than he had yet given me, and said:
+
+"My dear fellow, is something the matter? You look quite haggard. You
+haven't been ill?"
+
+"No, I've had a bad night. That's all."
+
+"Oh, I heard something of a riotous scene taking place over here," he
+said. "One of the gardeners was talking about it to Elizabeth. Your bad
+night wouldn't be connected with that, would it? You haven't been
+playing Samaritan?"
+
+"What was it you heard?" I asked quickly.
+
+"I didn't pay much attention. He said that there was great excitement
+at Madame Brossard's, because a strange woman had turned up and claimed
+an insane young man at the inn for her husband, and that they had a
+fight of some sort--"
+
+"Damnation!" I started from my chair. "Did Mrs. Harman hear this story?"
+
+"Not last night, I'm certain. Elizabeth said the gardener told her as
+she came down to the chateau gates to meet me when I arrived--it was
+late, and Louise had already gone to her room. In fact, I have not seen
+her yet. But what difference could it possibly make whether she heard
+it or not? She doesn't know these people, surely?"
+
+"She knows the man."
+
+"This insane--"
+
+"He is not insane," I interrupted. "He has lost the memory of his
+earlier life--lost it through an accident. You and I saw the accident."
+
+"That's impossible," said George, frowning. "I never saw but one
+accident that you--"
+
+"That was the one: the man is Larrabee Harman."
+
+George had struck a match to light a cigar; but the operation remained
+incomplete: he dropped the match upon the floor and set his foot upon
+it. "Well, tell me about it," he said.
+
+"You haven't heard anything about him since the accident?"
+
+"Only that he did eventually recover and was taken away from the
+hospital. I heard that his mind was impaired. Does Louise--" he began;
+stopped, and cleared his throat. "Has Mrs. Harman heard that he is
+here?"
+
+"Yes; she has seen him."
+
+"Do you mean the scoundrel has been bothering her? Elizabeth didn't
+tell me of this--"
+
+"Your sister doesn't know," I said, lifting my hand to check him. "I
+think you ought to understand the whole case--if you'll let me tell you
+what I know about it."
+
+"Go ahead," he bade me. "I'll try to listen patiently, though the very
+thought of the fellow has always set my teeth on edge."
+
+"He's not at all what you think," I said. "There's an enormous
+difference, almost impossible to explain to you, but something you'd
+understand at once if you saw him. It's such a difference, in fact,
+that when I found that he was Larrabee Harman the revelation was
+inexpressibly shocking and distressing to me. He came here under
+another name; I had no suspicion that he was any one I'd ever heard of,
+much less that I'd actually seen him twice, two years ago, and I've
+grown to--well, in truth, to be fond of him."
+
+"What is the change?" asked Ward, and his voice showed that he was
+greatly disquieted. "What is he like?"
+
+"As well as I can tell you, he's like an odd but very engaging boy,
+with something pathetic about him; quite splendidly handsome--"
+
+"Oh, he had good looks to spare when I first knew him," George said
+bitterly. "I dare say he's got them back if he's taken care of himself,
+or been taken care OF, rather! But go on; I won't interrupt you again.
+Why did he come here? Hoping to see--"
+
+"No. When he came here he did not know of her existence except in the
+vaguest way. But to go back to that, I'd better tell you first that the
+woman we saw with him, one day on the boulevard, and who was in the
+accident with him--"
+
+"La Mursiana, the dancer; I know."
+
+"She had got him to go through a marriage with her--"
+
+"WHAT?" Ward's eyes flashed as he shouted the word.
+
+"It seems inexplicable; but as I understand it, he was never quite
+sober at that time; he had begun to use drugs, and was often in a
+half-stupefied condition. As a matter of fact, the woman did what she
+pleased with him. There's no doubt about the validity of the marriage.
+And what makes it so desperate a muddle is that since the marriage
+she's taken good care to give no grounds upon which a divorce could be
+obtained for Harman. She means to hang on."
+
+"I'm glad of that!" said George, striking his knee with his open palm.
+"That will go a great way toward--"
+
+He paused, and asked suddenly: "Did this marriage take place in France?"
+
+"Yes. You'd better hear me through," I remonstrated. "When he was taken
+from the hospital, he was placed in charge of a Professor Keredec, a
+madman of whom you've probably heard."
+
+"Madman? Why, no; he's a member of the Institute; a psychologist or
+metaphysician, isn't he?--at any rate of considerable celebrity."
+
+"Nevertheless," I insisted grimly, "as misty a vapourer as I ever saw;
+a poetic, self-contradicting and inconsistent orator, a blower of
+bubbles, a seer of visions, a mystic, and a dreamer--about as
+scientific as Alice's White Knight! Harman's aunt, who lived in London,
+the only relative he had left, I believe--and she has died since--put
+him in Keredec's charge, and he was taken up into the Tyrol and
+virtually hidden for two years, the idea being literally to give him
+something like an education--Keredec's phrase is 'restore mind to his
+soul'! What must have been quite as vital was to get him out of his
+horrible wife's clutches. And they did it, for she could not find him.
+But she picked up that rat in the garden out yonder--he'd been some
+sort of stable-manager for Harman once--and set him on the track. He
+ran the poor boy down, and yesterday she followed him. Now it amounts
+to a species of sordid siege."
+
+"She wants money, of course."
+
+"Yes, MORE money; a fair allowance has always been sent to her. Keredec
+has interviewed her notary and she wants a settlement, naming a sum
+actually larger than the whole estate amounts to. There were colossal
+expenditures and equally large shrinkages; what he has left is invested
+in English securities and is not a fortune, but of course she won't
+believe that and refuses to budge until this impossible settlement is
+made. You can imagine about how competent such a man as Keredec would
+be to deal with the situation. In the mean time, his ward is in so
+dreadful a state of horror and grief I am afraid it is possible that
+his mind may really give way, for it was not in a normal condition, of
+course, though he's perfectly sane, as I tell you. If it should," I
+concluded, with some bitterness, "I suppose Keredec will be still
+prating upliftingly on the saving of his soul!"
+
+"When was it that Louise saw him?"
+
+"Ah, that," I said, "is where Keredec has been a poet and a dreamer
+indeed. It was his PLAN that they should meet."
+
+"You mean he brought this wreck of Harman, these husks and shreds of a
+man, down here for Louise to see?" Ward cried incredulously. "Oh,
+monstrous!"
+
+"No," I answered. "Only insane. Not because there is anything lacking
+in Oliver--in Harman, I mean--for I think that will be righted in time,
+but because the second marriage makes it a useless cruelty that he
+should have been allowed to fall in love with his first wife again. Yet
+that was Keredec's idea of a 'beautiful restoration,' as he calls it!"
+
+"There is something behind all this that you don't know," said Ward
+slowly. "I'll tell you after I've seen this Keredec. When did the man
+make you his confidant?"
+
+"Last night. Most of what I learned was as much a revelation to his
+victim as it was to me. Harman did not know till then that the lady he
+had been meeting had been his wife, or that he had ever seen her before
+he came here. He had mistaken her name and she did not enlighten him."
+
+"Meeting?" said Ward harshly. "You speak as if--"
+
+"They have been meeting every day, George."
+
+"I won't believe it of her!" he cried. "She couldn't--"
+
+"It's true. He spoke to her in the woods one day; I was there and saw
+it. I know now that she knew him at once; and she ran away, but--not in
+anger. I shouldn't be a very good friend of yours," I went on gently,
+"if I didn't give you the truth. They've been together every day since
+then, and I'm afraid--miserably afraid, Ward--that her old feeling for
+him has been revived."
+
+I have heard Ward use an oath only two or three times in my life, and
+this was one of them.
+
+"Oh, by God!" he cried, starting to his feet; "I SHOULD like to meet
+Professor Keredec!"
+
+"I am at your service, my dear sir," said a deep voice from the
+veranda. And opening the door, the professor walked into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+He looked old and tired and sad; it was plain that he expected attack
+and equally plain that he would meet it with fanatic serenity. And yet,
+the magnificent blunderer presented so fine an aspect of the tortured
+Olympian, he confronted us with so vast a dignity--the driven snow of
+his hair tousled upon his head and shoulders, like a storm in the
+higher altitudes--that he regained, in my eyes, something of his
+mountain grandeur before he had spoken a word in defence. But sympathy
+is not what one should be entertaining for an antagonist; therefore I
+said cavalierly:
+
+"This is Mr. Ward, Professor Keredec. He is Mrs. Harman's cousin and
+close friend."
+
+"I had divined it." The professor made a French bow, and George
+responded with as slight a salutation as it has been my lot to see.
+
+"We were speaking of your reasons," I continued, "for bringing Mr.
+Harman to this place. Frankly, we were questioning your motive."
+
+"My motives? I have wished to restore to two young people the paradise
+which they had lost".
+
+Ward uttered an exclamation none the less violent because it was
+half-suppressed, while, for my part, I laughed outright; and as Keredec
+turned his eyes questioningly upon me, I said:
+
+"Professor Keredec, you'd better understand at once that I mean to help
+undo the harm you've done. I couldn't tell you last night, in Harman's
+presence, but I think you're responsible for the whole ghastly
+tragi-comedy--as hopeless a tangle as ever was made on this earth!"
+
+This was even more roughly spoken than I had intended, but it did not
+cause him to look less mildly upon me, nor was there the faintest
+shadow of resentment in his big voice when he replied:
+
+"In this world things may be tangled, they may be sad, yet they may be
+good."
+
+"I'm afraid that seems rather a trite generality. I beg you to remember
+that plain-speaking is of some importance just now."
+
+"I shall remember."
+
+"Then we should be glad of the explanation," said Ward, resting his
+arms on my table and leaning across it toward Keredec.
+
+"We should, indeed," I echoed.
+
+"It is simple," began the professor. "I learned my poor boy's history
+well, from those who could tell me, from his papers--yes, and from the
+bundles of old-time letters which were given me--since it was necessary
+that I should know everything. From all these I learned what a strong
+and beautiful soul was that lady who loved him so much that she ran
+away from her home for his sake. Helas! he was already the slave of
+what was bad and foolish, he had gone too far from himself, was
+overlaid with the habit of evil, and she could not save him then. The
+spirit was dying in him, although it was there, and IT was good--"
+
+Ward's acrid laughter rang out in the room, and my admiration went
+unwillingly to Keredec for the way he took it, which was to bow
+gravely, as if acknowledging the other's right to his own point of view.
+
+"If you will study the antique busts," he said, "you will find that
+Socrates is Silenus dignified. I choose to believe in the infinite
+capacities of all men--and in the spirit in all. And so I try to
+restore my poor boy his capacities and his spirit. But that was not
+all. The time was coming when I could do no more for him, when the
+little education of books would be finish' and he must go out in the
+world again to learn--all newly--how to make of himself a man of use.
+That is the time of danger, and the thought was troubling me when I
+learned that Madame Harman was here, near this inn, of which I knew. So
+I brought him."
+
+"The inconceivable selfishness, the devilish brutality of it!" Ward's
+face was scarlet. "You didn't care how you sacrificed her--"
+
+"Sacrificed!" The professor suddenly released the huge volume of his
+voice. "Sacrificed!" he thundered. "If I could give him back to her as
+he is now, it would be restoring to her all that she had loved in him,
+the real SELF of him! It would be the greatest gift in her life."
+
+"You speak for her?" demanded Ward, the question coming like a
+lawyer's. It failed to disturb Keredec, who replied quietly:
+
+"It is a quibble. I speak for her, yes, my dear sir. Her action in
+defiance of her family and her friends proved the strength of what she
+felt for the man she married; that she have remained with him three
+years--until it was impossible--proved its persistence; her letters,
+which I read with reverence, proved its beauty--to me. It was a living
+passion, one that could not die. To let them see each other again; that
+was all I intended. To give them their new chance--and then, for
+myself, to keep out of the way. That was why--" he turned to me--"that
+was why I have been guilty of pretending to have that bad rheumatism,
+and I hope you will not think it an ugly trick of me! It was to give
+him his chance freely; and though at first I had much anxiety, it was
+done. In spite of all his wicked follies theirs had been a true love,
+and nothing in this world could be more inevitable than that they
+should come together again if the chance could be given. And they HAVE,
+my dear sirs! It has so happened. To him it has been a wooing as if for
+the first time; so she has preferred it, keeping him to his mistake of
+her name. She feared that if he knew that it was the same as his own he
+might ask questions of me, and, you see, she did not know that I had
+made this little plan, and was afraid--"
+
+"We are not questioning Mrs. Harman's motives," George interrupted
+hotly, "but YOURS!"
+
+"Very well, my dear sir; that is all. I have explained them."
+
+"You have?" I interjected. "Then, my dear Keredec, either you are
+really insane or I am! You knew that this poor, unfortunate devil of a
+Harman was tied to that hyenic prowler yonder who means to fatten on
+him, and will never release him; you knew that. Then why did you bring
+him down here to fall in love with a woman he can never have? In pity's
+name, if you didn't hope to half kill them both, what DID you mean?"
+
+"My dear fellow," interposed George quickly, "you underrate Professor
+Keredec's shrewdness. His plans are not so simple as you think. He
+knows that my cousin Louise never obtained a divorce from her husband."
+
+"What?" I said, not immediately comprehending his meaning.
+
+"I say, Mrs. Harman never obtained a divorce."
+
+"Are you delirious?" I gasped.
+
+"It's the truth; she never did."
+
+"I saw a notice of it at the time. 'A notice?' I saw a hundred!"
+
+"No. What you saw was that she had made an application for divorce. Her
+family got her that far and then she revolted. The suit was dropped."
+
+"It is true, indeed," said Keredec. "The poor boy was on the other side
+of the world, and he thought it was granted. He had been bad before,
+but from that time he cared nothing what became of him. That was the
+reason this Spanish woman--"
+
+I turned upon him sharply. "YOU knew it?"
+
+"It is a year that I have known it; when his estate was--"
+
+"Then why didn't you tell me last night?"
+
+"My dear sir, I could not in HIS presence, because it is one thing I
+dare not let him know. This Spanish woman is so hideous, her claim upon
+him is so horrible to him I could not hope to control him--he would
+shout it out to her that she cannot call him husband. God knows what he
+would do!"
+
+"Well, why shouldn't he shout it out to her?"
+
+"You do not understand," George interposed again, "that what Professor
+Keredec risked for his 'poor boy,' in returning to France, was a trial
+on the charge of bigamy!"
+
+The professor recoiled from the definite brutality. "My dear sir! It is
+not possible that such a thing can happen."
+
+"I conceive it very likely to happen," said George, "unless you get him
+out of the country before the lady now installed here as his wife
+discovers the truth."
+
+"But she must not!" Keredec lifted both hands toward Ward appealingly;
+they trembled, and his voice betrayed profound agitation. "She cannot!
+She has never suspected such a thing; there is nothing that could MAKE
+her suspect it!"
+
+"One particular thing would be my telling her," said Ward quietly.
+
+"Never!" cried the professor, stepping back from him. "You could not do
+that!"
+
+"I not only could, but I will, unless you get him out of the
+country--and quickly!"
+
+"George!" I exclaimed, coming forward between them. "This won't do at
+all. You can't--"
+
+"That's enough," he said, waving me back, and I saw that his hand was
+shaking, too, like Keredec's. His face had grown very white; but he
+controlled himself to speak with a coolness that made what he said
+painfully convincing. "I know what you think," he went on, addressing
+me, "but you're wrong. It isn't for myself. When I sailed for New York
+in the spring I thought there was a chance that she would carry out the
+action she begun four years ago and go through the form of ridding
+herself of him definitely; that is, I thought there was some hope for
+me; I believed there was until this morning. But I know better now. If
+she's seen him again, and he's been anything except literally
+unbearable, it's all over with ME. From the first, I never had a chance
+against him; he was a hard rival, even when he'd become only a cruel
+memory." His voice rose. "I've lived a sober, decent life, and I've
+treated HER with gentleness and reverence since she was born, and HE'S
+done nothing but make a stew-pan of his life and neglect and betray her
+when he had her. Heaven knows why it is; it isn't because of anything
+he's done or has, it's just because it's HIM, I suppose, but I know my
+chance is gone for good! THAT leaves me free to act for her; no one can
+accuse me of doing it for myself. And I swear she sha'n't go through
+that slough of despond again while I have breath in my body!"
+
+"Steady, George!" I said.
+
+"Oh, I'm steady enough," he cried. "Professor Keredec shall be
+convinced of it! My cousin is not going into the mire again; she shall
+be freed of it for ever: I speak as her relative now, the
+representative of her family and of those who care for her happiness
+and good. Now she SHALL make the separation definite--and LEGAL! And
+let Professor Keredec get his 'poor boy' out of the country. Let him do
+it quickly! I make it as a condition of my not informing the woman
+yonder and her lawyer. And by my hope of salvation I warn you--"
+
+"George, for pity's sake!" I shouted, throwing my arm about his
+shoulders, for his voice had risen to a pitch of excitement and fury
+that I feared must bring the whole place upon us. He caught himself up
+suddenly, stared at me blankly for a moment, then sank into a chair
+with a groan. As he did so I became aware of a sound that had been
+worrying my subconsciousness for an indefinite length of time, and
+realised what it was. Some one was knocking for admission.
+
+I crossed the room and opened the door. Miss Elizabeth stood there,
+red-faced and flustered, and behind her stood Mr. Cresson Ingle, who
+looked dubiously amused.
+
+"Ah--come in," I said awkwardly. "George is here. Let me present
+Professor Keredec--"
+
+"'George is here!'" echoed Miss Elizabeth, interrupting, and paying no
+attention whatever to an agitated bow on the part of the professor. "I
+should say he WAS! They probably know THAT all the way to Trouville!"
+
+"We were discussing--" I began.
+
+"Ah, I know what you were discussing," she said impatiently. "Come in,
+Cresson." She turned to Mr. Ingle, who was obviously reluctant. "It is
+a family matter, and you'll have to go through with it now."
+
+"That reminds me," I said. "May I offer--"
+
+"Not now!" Miss Elizabeth cut short a rather embarrassed handshake
+which her betrothed and I were exchanging. "I'm in a very nervous and
+distressed state of mind, as I suppose we all are, for that matter.
+This morning I learned the true situation over here; and I'm afraid
+Louise has heard; at least she's not at Quesnay. I got into a panic for
+fear she had come here, but thank heaven she does not seem to--Good
+gracious! What's THAT?"
+
+It was the discordant voice of Mariana la Mursiana, crackling in
+strident protest. My door was still open; I turned to look and saw her,
+hot-faced, tousle-haired, insufficiently wrapped, striving to ascend
+the gallery steps, but valiantly opposed by Madame Brossard, who stood
+in the way.
+
+"But NO, madame," insisted Madame Brossard, excited but darkly
+determined. "You cannot ascend. There is nothing on the upper floor of
+this wing except the apartment of Professor Keredec."
+
+"Name of a dog!" shrilled the other. "It is my husband's apartment, I
+tell you. Il y a une femme avec lui!"
+
+"It is Madame Harman who is there," said Keredec hoarsely in my ear. "I
+came away and left them together."
+
+"Come," I said, and, letting the others think what they would, sprang
+across the veranda, the professor beside me, and ran toward the two
+women who were beginning to struggle with more than their tongues. I
+leaped by them and up the steps, but Keredec thrust himself between our
+hostess and her opponent, planting his great bulk on the lowest step.
+Glancing hurriedly over my shoulder, I saw the Spanish woman strike him
+furiously upon the breast with both hands, but I knew she would never
+pass him.
+
+I entered the salon of the "Grande Suite," and closed the door quickly
+behind me.
+
+Louise Harman was standing at the other end of the room; she wore the
+pretty dress of white and lilac and the white hat. She looked cool and
+beautiful and good, and there were tears in her eyes. To come into this
+quiet chamber and see her so, after the hot sunshine and tawdry scene
+below, was like leaving the shouting market-place for a shadowy chapel.
+
+Her husband was kneeling beside her; he held one of her hands in both
+his, her other rested upon his head; and something in their attitudes
+made me know I had come in upon their leave-taking. But from the face
+he lifted toward her all trace of his tragedy had passed: the wonder
+and worship written there left no room for anything else.
+
+"Mrs. Harman--" I began.
+
+"Yes?" she said. "I am coming."
+
+"But I don't want you to. I've come for fear you would, and you--you
+must not," I stammered. "You must wait."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It's necessary," I floundered. "There is a scene--"
+
+"I know," she said quietly. "THAT must be, of course."
+
+Harman rose, and she took both his hands, holding them against her
+breast.
+
+"My dear," she said gently,--"my dearest, you must stay. Will you
+promise not to pass that door, even, until you have word from me again?"
+
+"Yes," he answered huskily, "if you'll promise it SHALL come--some day?"
+
+"It shall, indeed. Be sure of it."
+
+I had turned away, but I heard the ghost of his voice whispering
+"good-bye." Then she was beside me and opening the door.
+
+I tried to stay her.
+
+"Mrs. Harman," I urged, "I earnestly beg you--"
+
+"No," she answered, "this is better."
+
+She stepped out upon the gallery; I followed, and she closed the door.
+Upon the veranda of my pavilion were my visitors from Quesnay, staring
+up at us apprehensively; Madame Brossard and Keredec still held the
+foot of the steps, but la Mursiana had abandoned the siege, and,
+accompanied by Mr. Percy and Rameau, the black-bearded notary, who had
+joined her, was crossing the garden toward her own apartment.
+
+At the sound of the closing door, she glanced over her shoulder, sent
+forth a scream, and, whirling about, ran viciously for the steps, where
+she was again blocked by the indomitable Keredec.
+
+"Ah, you foolish woman, I know who you are," she cried, stepping back
+from him to shake a menacing hand at the quiet lady by my side. "You
+want to get yourself into trouble! That man in the room up there has
+been my husband these two years and more."
+
+"No, madame," said Louise Harman, "you are mistaken; he is my husband."
+
+"But you divorced him," vociferated the other wildly. "You divorced him
+in America!"
+
+"No. You are mistaken," the quiet voice replied. "The suit was
+withdrawn. He is still my husband."
+
+I heard the professor's groan of despair, but it was drowned in the
+wild shriek of Mariana. "WHAT? You tell ME that? Ah, the miserable! If
+what you say is true, he shall pay bitterly! He shall wish that he had
+died by fire! What! You think he can marry ME, break my leg so that I
+cannot dance again, ruin my career, and then go away with a pretty
+woman like you and be happy? Aha, there are prisons in France for
+people who marry two like that; I do not know what they do in YOUR
+barbaric country, but they are decent people over here and they punish.
+He shall pay for it in suffering--" her voice rose to an incredible and
+unbearable shriek--"and you, YOU shall pay, too! You can't come
+stealing honest women's husbands like that. You shall PAY!"
+
+I saw George Ward come running forward with his hand upraised in a
+gesture of passionate warning, for Mrs. Harman, unnoticed by me--I was
+watching the Spanish woman--had descended the steps and had passed
+Keredec, walking straight to Mariana. I leaped down after her, my heart
+in my throat, fearing a thousand things.
+
+"You must not talk like that," she said, not lifting her voice--yet
+every one in the courtyard heard her distinctly. "You can do neither of
+us any harm in the world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It is impossible to say what Mariana would have done had there been no
+interference, for she had worked herself into one of those furies which
+women of her type can attain when they feel the occasion demands it, a
+paroxysm none the less dangerous because its foundation is histrionic.
+But Rameau threw his arms about her; Mr. Percy came hastily to his
+assistance, and Ward and I sprang in between her and the too-fearless
+lady she strove to reach. Even at that, the finger-nails of Mariana's
+right hand touched the pretty white hat--but only touched it and no
+more.
+
+Rameau and the little spy managed to get their vociferating burden
+across the courtyard and into her own door, where she suddenly
+subsided, disappearing within the passage to her apartment in
+unexpected silence--indubitably a disappointment to the interested
+Amedee, to Glouglou, Francois, and the whole personnel of the inn, who
+hastened to group themselves about the door in attentive attitudes.
+
+"In heaven's name," gasped Miss Elizabeth, seizing her cousin by the
+arm, "come into the pavilion. Here's the whole world looking at us!"
+
+"Professor Keredec--" Mrs. Harman began, resisting, and turning to the
+professor appealingly.
+
+"Oh, let him come too!" said Miss Elizabeth desperately. "Nothing could
+be worse than this!"
+
+She led the way back to the pavilion, and, refusing to consider a
+proposal on the part of Mr. Ingle and myself to remain outside, entered
+the room last, herself, producing an effect of "shooing" the rest of us
+in; closed the door with surprising force, relapsed in a chair, and
+burst into tears.
+
+"Not a soul at Quesnay," sobbed the mortified chatelaine--"not one but
+will know this before dinner! They'll hear the whole thing within two
+hours."
+
+"Isn't there any way of stopping that, at least?" Ward said to me.
+
+"None on earth, unless you go home at once and turn your visitors and
+THEIR servants out of the house," I answered.
+
+"There is nothing they shouldn't know," said Mrs. Harman.
+
+George turned to her with a smile so bravely managed that I was proud
+of him. "Oh, yes, there is," he said. "We're going to get you out of
+all this."
+
+"All this?" she repeated.
+
+"All this MIRE!" he answered. "We're going to get you out of it and
+keep you out of it, now, for good. I don't know whether your revelation
+to the Spanish woman will make that easier or harder, but I do know
+that it makes the mire deeper."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"For Harman. But you sha'n't share it!"
+
+Her anxious eyes grew wider. "How have I made it deeper for him? Wasn't
+it necessary that the poor woman should be told the truth?"
+
+"Professor Keredec seemed to think it important that she shouldn't."
+
+She turned to Keredec with a frightened gesture and an unintelligible
+word of appeal, as if entreating him to deny what George had said. The
+professor's beard was trembling; he looked haggard; an almost pitiable
+apprehension hung upon his eyelids; but he came forward manfully.
+
+"Madame," he said, "you could never in your life do anything that would
+make harm. You were right to speak, and I had short sight to fear,
+since it was the truth."
+
+"But why did you fear it?"
+
+"It was because--" he began, and hesitated.
+
+"I must know the reason," she urged. "I must know just what I've done."
+
+"It was because," he repeated, running a nervous hand through his
+beard, "because the knowledge would put us so utterly in this people's
+power. Already they demand more than we could give them; now they can--"
+
+"They can do what?" she asked tremulously.
+
+His eyes rested gently on her blanched and stricken face. "Nothing, my
+dear lady," he answered, swallowing painfully. "Nothing that will last.
+I am an old man. I have seen and I have--I have thought. And I tell you
+that only the real survives; evil actions are some phantoms that
+disappear. They must not trouble us."
+
+"That is a high plane," George intervened, and he spoke without
+sarcasm. "To put it roughly, these people have been asking more than
+the Harman estate is worth; that was on the strength of the woman's
+claim as a wife; but now they know she is not one, her position is
+immensely strengthened, for she has only to go before the nearest
+Commissaire de Police--"
+
+"Oh, no!" Mrs. Harman cried passionately. "I haven't done THAT! You
+mustn't tell me I have. You MUSTN'T!"
+
+"Never!" he answered. "There could not be a greater lie than to say you
+have done it. The responsibility is with the wretched and vicious boy
+who brought the catastrophe upon himself. But don't you see that you've
+got to keep out of it, that we've got to take you out of it?"
+
+"You can't! I'm part of it; better or worse, it's as much mine as his."
+
+"No, no!" cried Miss Elizabeth. "YOU mustn't tell us THAT!" Still
+weeping, she sprang up and threw her arms about her brother. "It's too
+horrible of you--"
+
+"It is what I must tell you," Mrs. Harman said. "My separation from my
+husband is over. I shall be with him now for--"
+
+"I won't listen to you!" Miss Elizabeth lifted her wet face from
+George's shoulder, and there was a note of deep anger in her voice.
+"You don't know what you're talking about; you haven't the faintest
+idea of what a hideous situation that creature has made for himself.
+Don't you know that that awful woman was right, and there are laws in
+France? When she finds she can't get out of him all she wants, do you
+think she's going to let him off? I suppose she struck you as being
+quite the sort who'd prove nobly magnanimous! Are you so blind you
+don't see exactly what's going to happen? She'll ask twice as much now
+as she did before; and the moment it's clear that she isn't going to
+get it, she'll call in an agent of police. She'll get her money in a
+separate suit and send him to prison to do it. The case against him is
+positive; there isn't a shadow of hope for him. You talk of being with
+him; don't you see how preposterous that is? Do you imagine they
+encourage family housekeeping in French prisons?"
+
+"Oh, come, this won't do!" The speaker was Cresson Ingle, who stepped
+forward, to my surprise; for he had been hovering in the background
+wearing an expression of thorough discomfort.
+
+"You're going much too far," he said, touching his betrothed upon the
+arm. "My dear Elizabeth, there is no use exaggerating; the case is
+unpleasant enough just as it is."
+
+"In what have I exaggerated?" she demanded.
+
+"Why, I KNEW Larrabee Harman," he returned. "I knew him fairly well. I
+went as far as Honolulu with him, when he and some of his heelers
+started round the world; and I remember that papers were served on him
+in San Francisco. Mrs. Harman had made her application; it was just
+before he sailed. About a year and a half or two years later I met him
+again, in Paris. He was in pretty bad shape; seemed hypnotised by this
+Mariana and afraid as death of her; she could go into a tantrum that
+would frighten him into anything. It was a joke--down along the line of
+the all-night dancers and cafes--that she was going to marry him; and
+some one told me afterward that she claimed to have brought it about. I
+suppose it's true; but there is no question of his having married her
+in good faith. He believed that the divorce had been granted; he'd
+offered no opposition to it whatever. He was travelling continually,
+and I don't think he knew much of what was going on, even right around
+him, most of the time. He began with cognac and absinthe in the
+morning, you know. For myself, I always supposed the suit had been
+carried through; so did people generally, I think. He'll probably have
+to stand trial, and of course he's technically guilty, but I don't
+believe he'd be convicted--though I must say it would have been a most
+devilish good thing for him if he could have been got out of France
+before la Mursiana heard the truth. Then he could have made terms with
+her safely at a distance--she'd have been powerless to injure him and
+would have precious soon come to time and been glad to take whatever
+he'd give her. NOW, I suppose, that's impossible, and they'll arrest
+him if he tries to budge. But this talk of prison and all that is
+nonsense, my dear Elizabeth!"
+
+"You admit there is a chance of it!" she retorted.
+
+"I've said all I had to say," returned Mr. Ingle with a dubious laugh.
+"And if you don't mind, I believe I'll wait for you outside, in the
+machine. I want to look at the gear-box."
+
+He paused, as if in deference to possible opposition, and, none being
+manifested, went hastily from the room with a sigh of relief, giving
+me, as he carefully closed the door, a glance of profound commiseration
+over his shoulder.
+
+Miss Elizabeth had taken her brother's hand, not with the effect of
+clinging for sympathy; nor had her throwing her arms about him produced
+that effect; one could as easily have imagined Brunhilda hiding her
+face in a man's coat-lapels. George's sister wept, not weakly: she was
+on the defensive, but not for herself.
+
+"Does the fact that he may possibly escape going to prison"--she
+addressed her cousin--"make his position less scandalous, or can it
+make the man himself less detestable?"
+
+Mrs. Harman looked at her steadily. There was a long and sorrowful
+pause.
+
+"Nothing is changed," she said finally; her eyes still fixed gravely on
+Miss Elizabeth's.
+
+At that, the other's face flamed up, and she uttered a half-choked
+exclamation. "Oh," she cried--"you've fallen in love with playing the
+martyr; it's SELF-love! You SEE yourself in the role! No one on earth
+could make me believe you're in LOVE with this degraded imbecile--all
+that's left of the wreck of a vicious life! It isn't that! It's because
+you want to make a shining example of yourself; you want to get down on
+your knees and wash off the vileness from this befouled creature; you
+want--"
+
+"Madame!" Keredec interrupted tremendously, "you speak out of no
+knowledge!" He leaned toward her across the table, which shook under
+the weight of his arms. "There is no vileness; no one who is clean
+remains befouled because of the things that are gone."
+
+"They do not?" She laughed hysterically, and for my part, I sighed in
+despair--for there was no stopping him.
+
+"They do not, indeed! Do you know the relation of TIME to this little
+life of ours? We have only the present moment; your consciousness of
+that is your existence. Your knowledge of each present moment as it
+passes--and it passes so swiftly that each word I speak now overlaps
+it--yet it is all we have. For all the rest, for what has gone by and
+what is yet coming--THAT has no real existence; it is all a dream. It
+is not ALIVE. It IS not! It IS--nothing! So the soul that stands clean
+and pure to-day IS clean and pure--and that is all there is to say
+about that soul!"
+
+"But a soul with evil tendencies," Ward began impatiently, "if one must
+meet you on your own ground--"
+
+"Ha! my dear sir, those evil tendencies would be in the soiling
+memories, and my boy is free from them."
+
+"He went toward all that was soiling before. Surely you can't pretend
+he may not take that direction again?"
+
+"That," returned the professor quickly, "is his to choose. If this lady
+can be with him now, he will choose right."
+
+"So!" cried Miss Elizabeth, "you offer her the role of a guide, do you?
+First she is to be his companion through a trial for bigamy in a French
+court, and, if he is acquitted, his nurse, teacher, and moral
+preceptor?" She turned swiftly to her cousin. "That's YOUR conception
+of a woman's mission?"
+
+"I haven't any mission," Mrs. Harman answered quietly. "I've never
+thought about missions; I only know I belong to him; that's all I EVER
+thought about it. I don't pretend to explain it, or make it seem
+reasonable. And when I met him again, here, it was--it was--it was
+proved to me."
+
+"Proved?" echoed Miss Elizabeth incredulously.
+
+"Yes; proved as certainly as the sun shining proves that it's day."
+
+"Will you tell us?"
+
+It was I who asked the question: I spoke involuntarily, but she did not
+seem to think it strange that I should ask.
+
+"Oh, when I first met him," she said tremulously, "I was frightened;
+but it was not he who frightened me--it was the rush of my own feeling.
+I did not know what I felt, but I thought I might die, and he was so
+like himself as I had first known him--but so changed, too; there was
+something so wonderful about him, something that must make any stranger
+feel sorry for him, and yet it is beautiful--" She stopped for a moment
+and wiped her eyes, then went on bravely: "And the next day he came,
+and waited for me--I should have come here for him if he hadn't--and I
+fell in with the mistake he had made about my name. You see, he'd heard
+I was called 'Madame d'Armand,' and I wanted him to keep on thinking
+that, for I thought if he knew I was Mrs. Harman he might find out--"
+She paused, her lip beginning to tremble. "Oh, don't you see why I
+didn't want him to know? I didn't want him to suffer as he would--as he
+does now, poor child!--but most of all I wanted--I wanted to see if he
+would fall in love with me again! I kept him from knowing, because, if
+he thought I was a stranger, and the same thing happened again--his
+caring for me, I mean--" She had begun to weep now, freely and openly,
+but not from grief. "Oh!" she cried, "don't you SEE how it's all proven
+to me?"
+
+"I see how it has deluded you!" said Miss Elizabeth vehemently. "I see
+what a rose-light it has thrown about this creature; but it won't last,
+thank God! any more than it did the other time. The thing is for you to
+come to your senses before--"
+
+"Ah, my dear, I have come to them at last and for ever!" The words rang
+full and strong, though she was white and shaking, and heavy tears
+filled her eyes. "I know what I am doing now, if I never knew before!"
+
+"You never did know--" Miss Ward began, but George stopped her.
+
+"Elizabeth!" he said quickly. "We mustn't go on like this; it's more
+than any of us can bear. Come, let's get out into the air; let's get
+back to Quesnay. We'll have Ingle drive us around the longer way, by
+the sea." He turned to his cousin. "Louise, you'll come now? If not,
+we'll have to stay here with you."
+
+"I'll come," she answered, trying bravely to stop the tears that kept
+rising in spite of her; "if you'll wait till"--and suddenly she flashed
+through them a smile so charming that my heart ached the harder for
+George--"till I can stop crying!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Mr. Earl Percy and I sat opposite each other at dinner that evening.
+Perhaps, for charity's sake, I should add that though we faced each
+other, and, indeed, eyed each other solemnly at intervals, we partook
+not of the same repast, having each his own table; his being set in the
+garden at his constant station near the gallery steps, and mine, some
+fifty feet distant, upon my own veranda, but moved out from behind the
+honeysuckle screen, for I sat alone and the night was warm.
+
+To analyse my impression of Mr. Percy's glances, I cannot
+conscientiously record that I found favour in his eyes. For one thing,
+I fear he may not have recalled to his bosom a clarion sentiment (which
+doubtless he had ofttimes cheered from his native gallery in softer
+years): the honourable declaration that many an honest heart beats
+beneath a poor man's coat. As for his own attire, he was even as the
+lilies of Quesnay; that is to say, I beheld upon him the same formation
+of tie that I had seen there, the same sensuous beauty of the state
+waistcoat, though I think that his buttons were, if anything, somewhat
+spicier than those which had awed me at the chateau. And when we
+simultaneously reached the fragrant hour of coffee, the cigarette case
+that glittered in his hand was one for which some lady-friend of his (I
+knew intuitively) must have given her All--and then been left in debt.
+
+Amedee had served us both; Glouglou, as aforetime, attending the silent
+"Grande Suite," where the curtains were once more tightly drawn.
+Monsieur Rameau dined with his client in her own salon, evidently; at
+least, Victorine, the femme de chambre, passed to and from the kitchen
+in that direction, bearing laden trays. When Mr. Percy's cigarette had
+been lighted, hesitation marked the manner of our maitre d'hotel;
+plainly he wavered, but finally old custom prevailed; abandoning the
+cigarette, he chose the cigar, and, hastily clearing my fashionable
+opponent's table, approached the pavilion with his most conversational
+face.
+
+I greeted him indifferently, but with hidden pleasure, for my soul (if
+Keredec is right and I have one) lay sorrowing. I needed relief, and
+whatever else Amedee was, he was always that. I spoke first:
+
+"Amedee, how long a walk is it from Quesnay to Pere Baudry's?"
+
+"Monsieur, about three-quarters of an hour for a good walker, one might
+say."
+
+"A long way for Jean Ferret to go for a cup of cider," I remarked
+musingly.
+
+"Eh? But why should he?" asked Amedee blankly.
+
+"Why indeed? Surely even a Norman gardener lives for more than cider!
+You usually meet him there about noon, I believe?"
+
+Methought he had the grace to blush, though there is an everlasting
+doubt in my mind that it may have been the colour of the candle-shade
+producing that illusion. It was a strange thing to see, at all events,
+and, taking it for a physiological fact at the time, I let my willing
+eyes linger upon it as long as it (or its appearance) was upon him.
+
+"You were a little earlier than usual to-day," I continued finally,
+full of the marvel.
+
+"Monsieur?" He was wholly blank again.
+
+"Weren't you there about eleven? Didn't you go about two hours after
+Mr. Ward and his friends left here?"
+
+He scratched his head. "I believe I had an errand in that direction.
+Eh? Yes, I remember. Truly, I think it so happened."
+
+"And you found Jean Ferret there?"
+
+"Where, monsieur?"
+
+"At Pere Baudry's."
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+"What?" I exclaimed.
+
+"No, monsieur." He was firm, somewhat reproachful.
+
+"You didn't see Jean Ferret this morning?"
+
+"Monsieur?"
+
+"Amedee!"
+
+"Eh, but I did not find him at Pere Baudry's! It may have happened that
+I stopped there, but he did not come until some time after."
+
+"After you had gone away from Pere Baudry's, you mean?"
+
+"No, monsieur; after I arrived there. Truly."
+
+"Now we have it! And you gave him the news of all that had happened
+here?"
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+A world--no, a constellation, a universe!--of reproach was in the word.
+
+"I retract the accusation," I said promptly. "I meant something else."
+
+"Upon everything that takes place at our hotel here, I am silent to all
+the world."
+
+"As the grave!" I said with enthusiasm. "Truly--that is a thing well
+known. But Jean Ferret, then? He is not so discreet; I have suspected
+that you are in his confidence. At times you have even hinted as much.
+Can you tell me if he saw the automobile of Monsieur Ingle when it came
+back to the chateau after leaving here?"
+
+"It had arrived the moment before he departed."
+
+"Quite SO! I understand," said I.
+
+"He related to me that Mademoiselle Ward had the appearance of
+agitation, and Madame d'Armand that of pallor, which was also the case
+with Monsieur Ward."
+
+"Therefore," I said, "Jean Ferret ran all the way to Pere Baudry's to
+learn from you the reason for this agitation and this pallor?"
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+"I retract again!" I cut him off--to save time. "What other news had
+he?"
+
+There came a gleam into his small, infolded eyes, a tiny glitter
+reflecting the mellow candle-light, but changing it, in that
+reflection, to a cold and sinister point of steel. It should have
+warned me, but, as he paused, I repeated my question.
+
+"Monsieur, people say everything," he answered, frowning as if
+deploring what they said in some secret, particular instance. "The
+world is full of idle gossipers, tale-bearers, spreaders of scandal!
+And, though I speak with perfect respect, all the people at the chateau
+are not perfect in such ways."
+
+"Do you mean the domestics?"
+
+"The visitors!"
+
+"What do they say?"
+
+"Eh, well, then, they say--but no!" He contrived a masterly pretense of
+pained reluctance. "I cannot--"
+
+"Speak out," I commanded, piqued by his shilly-shallying. "What do they
+say?"
+
+"Monsieur, it is about"--he shifted his weight from one leg to the
+other--"it is about--about that beautiful Mademoiselle Elliott who
+sometimes comes here."
+
+This was so far from what I had expected that I was surprised into a
+slight change of attitude, which all too plainly gratified him, though
+he made an effort to conceal it. "Well," I said uneasily, "what do they
+find to say of Mademoiselle Elliott?"
+
+"They say that her painting is only a ruse to see monsieur."
+
+"To see Monsieur Saffren, yes."
+
+"But, no!" he cried. "That is not--"
+
+"Yes, it is," I assured him calmly. "As you know, Monsieur Saffren is
+very, very handsome, and Mademoiselle Elliott, being a painter, is
+naturally anxious to look at him from time to time."
+
+"You are sure?" he said wistfully, even plaintively. "That is not the
+meaning Jean Ferret put upon it."
+
+"He was mistaken."
+
+"It may be, it may be," he returned, greatly crestfallen, picking up
+his tray and preparing to go. "But Jean Ferret was very positive."
+
+"And I am even more so!"
+
+"Then that malicious maid of Mademoiselle Ward's was mistaken also," he
+sighed, "when she said that now a marriage is to take place between
+Mademoiselle Ward and Monsieur Ingle--"
+
+"Proceed," I bade him.
+
+He moved a few feet nearer the kitchen. "The malicious woman said to
+Jean Ferret--" He paused and coughed. "It was in reference to those
+Italian jewels monsieur used to send--"
+
+"What about them?" I asked ominously.
+
+"The woman says that Mademoiselle Ward--" he increased the distance
+between us--"that now she should give them to Mademoiselle Elliott!
+GOOD night, monsieur!"
+
+His entrance into the kitchen was precipitate. I sank down again into
+the wicker chair (from which I had hastily risen) and contemplated the
+stars. But the short reverie into which I then fell was interrupted by
+Mr. Percy, who, sauntering leisurely about the garden, paused to
+address me.
+
+"You folks thinks you was all to the gud, gittin' them trunks off,
+what?"
+
+"You speak in mysterious numbers," I returned, having no comprehension
+of his meaning.
+
+"I suppose you don' know nothin' about it," he laughed satirically.
+"You didn' go over to Lisieux 'saft'noon to ship 'em? Oh, no, not YOU!"
+
+"I went for a long walk this afternoon, Mr. Percy. Naturally, I
+couldn't have walked so far as Lisieux and back."
+
+"Luk here, m'friend," he said sharply--"I reco'nise 'at you're tryin'
+t' play your own hand, but I ast you as man to man: DO you think you
+got any chanst t' git that feller off t' Paris?"
+
+"DO you think it will rain to-night?" I inquired.
+
+The light of a reflecting lamp which hung on the wall near the archway
+enabled me to perceive a bitter frown upon his forehead. "When a
+gen'leman asts a question AS a gen'leman," he said, his voice
+expressing a noble pathos, "I can't see no call for no other gen'leman
+to go an' play the smart Aleck and not answer him."
+
+In simple dignity he turned his back upon me and strolled to the other
+end of the courtyard, leaving me to the renewal of my reverie.
+
+It was not a happy one. My friends--old and new--I saw inextricably
+caught in a tangle of cross-purposes, miserably and hopelessly involved
+in a situation for which I could predict no possible relief. I was able
+to understand now the beauty as well as the madness of Keredec's plan;
+and I had told him so (after the departure of the Quesnay party),
+asking his pardon for my brusquerie of the morning. But the towering
+edifice his hopes had erected was now tumbled about his ears: he had
+failed to elude the Mursiana. There could be no doubt of her absolute
+control of the situation. THAT was evident in the every step of the
+youth now confidently parading before me.
+
+Following his active stride with my eye, I observed him in the act of
+saluting, with a gracious nod of his bare head, some one, invisible to
+me, who was approaching from the road. Immediately after--and
+altogether with the air of a person merely "happening in"--a slight
+figure, clad in a long coat, a short skirt, and a broad-brimmed,
+veil-bound brown hat, sauntered casually through the archway and came
+into full view in the light of the reflector.
+
+I sprang to my feet and started toward her, uttering an exclamation
+which I was unable to stifle, though I tried to.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Percy," she said cheerily. "It's the most EXUBERANT
+night. YOU'RE quite hearty, I hope?"
+
+"Takin' a walk, I see, little lady," he observed with genial patronage.
+
+"Oh, not just for that," she returned. "It's more to see HIM." She
+nodded to me, and, as I reached her, carelessly gave me her left hand.
+"You know I'm studying with him," she continued to Mr. Percy,
+exhibiting a sketch-book under her arm. "I dropped over to get a
+criticism."
+
+"Oh, drawin'-lessons?" said Mr. Percy tolerantly. "Well, don' lemme
+interrup' ye."
+
+He moved as if to withdraw toward the steps, but she detained him with
+a question. "You're spending the rest of the summer here?"
+
+"That depends," he answered tersely.
+
+"I hear you have some PASSIONATELY interesting friends."
+
+"Where did you hear that?"
+
+"Ah, don't you know?" she responded commiseratingly. "This is the most
+scandalously gossipy neighbourhood in France. My DEAR young man, every
+one from here to Timbuctu knows all about it by this time!"
+
+"All about what?"
+
+"About the excitement you're such a VALUABLE part of; about your
+wonderful Spanish friend and how she claims the strange young man here
+for her husband."
+
+"They'll know more'n that, I expec'," he returned with a side glance at
+me, "before VERY long."
+
+"Every one thinks _I_ am so interesting," she rattled on artlessly,
+"because I happened to meet YOU in the woods. I've held quite a levee
+all day. In a reflected way it makes a heroine of me, you see, because
+you are one of the very MOST prominent figures in it all. I hope you
+won't think I've been too bold," she pursued anxiously, "in claiming
+that I really am one of your acquaintances?"
+
+"That'll be all right," he politely assured her.
+
+"I am so glad." Her laughter rang out gaily. "Because I've been talking
+about you as if we were the OLDEST friends, and I'd hate to have them
+find me out. I've told them everything--about your appearance you see,
+and how your hair was parted, and how you were dressed, and--"
+
+"Luk here," he interrupted, suddenly discharging his Bowery laugh, "did
+you tell 'em how HE was dressed?" He pointed a jocular finger at me.
+"That WUD 'a' made a hit!"
+
+"No; we weren't talking of him."
+
+"Why not? He's in it, too. Bullieve me, he THINKS he is!"
+
+"In the excitement, you mean?"
+
+"Right!" said Mr. Percy amiably. "He goes round holdin' Rip Van Winkle
+Keredec's hand when the ole man's cryin'; helpin' him sneak his trunks
+off t' Paris--playin' the hired man gener'ly. Oh, he thinks he's quite
+the boy, in this trouble!"
+
+"I'm afraid it's a small part," she returned, "compared to yours."
+
+"Oh, I hold my end up, I guess."
+
+"I should think you'd be so worn out and sleepy you couldn't hold your
+head up!"
+
+"Who? ME? Not t'-night, m'little friend. I tuk MY sleep's aft'noon and
+let Rameau do the Sherlock a little while."
+
+She gazed upon him with unconcealed admiration. "You are wonderful,"
+she sighed faintly, and "WONDERFUL!" she breathed again. "How prosaic
+are drawing-lessons," she continued, touching my arm and moving with me
+toward the pavilion, "after listening to a man of action like that!"
+
+Mr. Percy, establishing himself comfortably in a garden chair at the
+foot of the gallery steps, was heard to utter a short cough as he
+renewed the light of his cigarette.
+
+My visitor paused upon my veranda, humming, "Quand l'Amour Meurt" while
+I went within and lit a lamp. "Shall I bring the light out there?" I
+asked, but, turning, found that she was already in the room.
+
+"The sketch-book is my duenna," she said, sinking into a chair upon one
+side of the centre table, upon which I placed the lamp. "Lessons are
+unquestionable, at any place or time. Behold the beautiful posies!" She
+spread the book open on the table between us, as I seated myself
+opposite her, revealing some antique coloured smudges of flowers.
+"Elegancies of Eighteen-Forty! Isn't that a survival of the period when
+young ladies had 'accomplishments,' though! I found it at the chateau
+and--"
+
+"Never mind," I said. "Don't you know that you can't ramble over the
+country alone at this time of night?"
+
+"If you speak any louder," she said, with some urgency of manner,
+"you'll be 'hopelessly compromised socially,' as Mrs. Alderman McGinnis
+and the Duchess of Gwythyl-Corners say"--she directed my glance, by one
+of her own, through the open door to Mr. Percy--"because HE'LL hear you
+and know that the sketch-book was only a shallow pretext of mine to see
+you. Do be a little manfully self-contained, or you'll get us talked
+about! And as for 'this time of night,' I believe it's almost half past
+nine."
+
+"Does Miss Ward know--"
+
+"Do you think it likely? One of the most convenient things about a
+chateau is the number of ways to get out of it without being seen. I
+had a choice of eight. So I 'suffered fearfully from neuralgia,' dined
+in my own room, and sped through the woods to my honest forester." She
+nodded brightly. "That's YOU!"
+
+"You weren't afraid to come through the woods alone?" I asked,
+uncomfortably conscious that her gaiety met a dull response from me.
+
+"No."
+
+"But if Miss Ward finds that you're not at the chateau--"
+
+"She won't; she thinks I'm asleep. She brought me up a sleeping-powder
+herself."
+
+"She thinks you took it?"
+
+"She KNOWS I did," said Miss Elliott. "I'm full of it! And that will be
+the reason--if you notice that I'm particularly nervous or excited."
+
+"You seem all of that," I said, looking at her eyes, which were very
+wide and very brilliant. "However, I believe you always do."
+
+"Ah!" she smiled. "I knew you thought me atrocious from the first. You
+find MYRIADS of objections to me, don't you?"
+
+I had forgotten to look away from her eyes, and I kept on forgetting.
+(The same thing had happened several times lately; and each time, by a
+somewhat painful coincidence, I remembered my age at precisely the
+instant I remembered to look away.) "Dazzling" is a good old-fashioned
+word for eyes like hers; at least it might define their effect on me.
+
+"If I did manage to object to you," I said slowly, "it would be a good
+thing for me--wouldn't it?"
+
+"Oh, I've WON!" she cried.
+
+"Won?" I echoed.
+
+"Yes. I laid a wager with myself that I'd have a pretty speech from you
+before I went out of your life"--she checked a laugh, and concluded
+thrillingly--"forever! I leave Quesnay to-morrow!"
+
+"Your father has returned from America?"
+
+"Oh dear, no," she murmured. "I'll be quite at the world's mercy. I
+must go up to Paris and retire from public life until he does come. I
+shall take the vows--in some obscure but respectable pension."
+
+"You can't endure the life at the chateau any longer?"
+
+"It won't endure ME any longer. If I shouldn't go to-morrow I'd be put
+out, I think--after to-night!"
+
+"But you intimated that no one would know about to-night!"
+
+"The night isn't over yet," she replied enigmatically.
+
+"It almost is--for you," I said; "because in ten minutes I shall take
+you back to the chateau gates."
+
+She offered no comment on this prophecy, but gazed at me thoughtfully
+and seriously for several moments. "I suppose you can imagine," she
+said, in a tone that threatened to become tremulous, "what sort of an
+afternoon we've been having up there?"
+
+"Has it been--" I began.
+
+"Oh, heart-breaking! Louise came to my room as soon as they got back
+from here, this morning, and told me the whole pitiful story. But they
+didn't let her stay there long, poor woman!"
+
+"They?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, Elizabeth and her brother. They've been at her all afternoon--off
+and on."
+
+"To do what?"
+
+"To 'save herself,' so they call it. They're insisting that she must
+not see her poor husband again. They're DETERMINED she sha'n't."
+
+"But George wouldn't worry her," I objected.
+
+"Oh, wouldn't he?" The girl laughed sadly. "I don't suppose he could
+help it, he's in such a state himself, but between him and Elizabeth
+it's hard to see how poor Mrs. Harman lived through the day."
+
+"Well," I said slowly, "I don't see that they're not right. She ought
+to be kept out of all this as much as possible; and if her husband has
+to go through a trial--"
+
+"I want you to tell me something," Miss Elliott interrupted. "How much
+do you like Mr. Ward?"
+
+"He's an old friend. I suppose I like my old friends in about the same
+way that other people like theirs."
+
+"How much do you like Mr. Saffren--I mean Mr. Harman?"
+
+"Oh, THAT!" I groaned. "If I could still call him 'Oliver Saffren,' if
+I could still think of him as 'Oliver Saffren,' it would be easy to
+answer. I never was so 'drawn' to a man in my life before. But when I
+think of him as Larrabee Harman, I am full of misgivings."
+
+"Louise isn't," she put in eagerly, and with something oddly like the
+manner of argument. "His wife isn't!"
+
+"Oh, I know. Perhaps one reason is that she never saw him at quite his
+worst. I did. I had only two glimpses of him--of the briefest--but they
+inspired me with such a depth of dislike that I can't tell you how
+painful it was to discover that 'Oliver Saffren'--this strange,
+pathetic, attractive FRIEND of mine--is the same man."
+
+"Oh, but he isn't!" she exclaimed quickly.
+
+"Keredec says he is," I laughed helplessly.
+
+"So does Louise," returned Miss Elliott, disdaining consistency in her
+eagerness. "And she's right--and she cares more for him than she ever
+did!"
+
+"I suppose she does."
+
+"Are you--" the girl began, then stopped for a moment, looking at me
+steadily. "Aren't you a little in love with her?"
+
+"Yes," I answered honestly. "Aren't you?"
+
+"THAT'S what I wanted to know!" she said; and as she turned a page in
+the sketch-book for the benefit of Mr. Percy, I saw that her hand had
+begun to tremble.
+
+"Why?" I asked, leaning toward her across the table.
+
+"Because, if she were involved in some undertaking--something that, if
+it went wrong, would endanger her happiness and, I think, even her
+life--for it might actually kill her if she failed, and brought on a
+worse catastrophe--"
+
+"Yes?" I said anxiously, as she paused again.
+
+"You'd help her?" she said.
+
+"I would indeed," I assented earnestly. "I told her once I'd do
+anything in the world for her."
+
+"Even if it involved something that George Ward might never forgive you
+for?"
+
+"I said, 'anything in the world,'" I returned, perhaps a little
+huskily. "I meant all of that. If there is anything she wants me to do,
+I shall do it."
+
+She gave a low cry of triumph, but immediately checked it. Then she
+leaned far over the table, her face close above the book, and, tracing
+the outline of an uncertain lily with her small, brown-gloved
+forefinger, as though she were consulting me on the drawing, "I wasn't
+afraid to come through the woods alone," she said, in a very low voice,
+"because I wasn't alone. Louise came with me."
+
+"What?" I gasped. "Where is she?"
+
+"At the Baudry cottage down the road. They won't miss her at the
+chateau until morning; I locked her door on the outside, and if they go
+to bother her again--though I don't think they will--they'll believe
+she's fastened it on the inside and is asleep. She managed to get a
+note to Keredec late this afternoon; it explained everything, and he
+had some trunks carried out the rear gate of the inn and carted over to
+Lisieux to be shipped to Paris from there. It is to be supposed--or
+hoped, at least--that this woman and her people will believe THAT means
+Professor Keredec and Mr. Harman will try to get to Paris in the same
+way."
+
+"So," I said, "that's what Percy meant about the trunks. I didn't
+understand."
+
+"He's on watch, you see," she continued, turning a page to another
+drawing. "He means to sit up all night, or he wouldn't have slept this
+afternoon. He's not precisely the kind to be in the habit of afternoon
+naps--Mr. Percy!" She laughed nervously. "That's why it's almost
+absolutely necessary for us to have you. If we have--the thing is so
+simple that it's certain."
+
+"If you have me for what?" I asked.
+
+"If you'll help"--and, as she looked up, her eyes, now very close to
+mine, were dazzling indeed--"I'll adore you for ever and ever! Oh, MUCH
+longer than you'd like me to!"
+
+"You mean she's going to--"
+
+"I mean that she's going to run away with him again," she whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+At midnight there was no mistaking the palpable uneasiness with which
+Mr. Percy, faithful sentry, regarded the behaviour of Miss Elliott and
+myself as we sat conversing upon the veranda of the pavilion. It was
+not fear for the security of his prisoner which troubled him, but the
+unseemliness of the young woman's persistence in remaining to this hour
+under an espionage no more matronly than that of a sketch-book
+abandoned on the table when we had come out to the open. The youth had
+veiled his splendours with more splendour: a long overcoat of so
+glorious a plaid it paled the planets above us; and he wandered
+restlessly about the garden in this refulgence, glancing at us now and
+then with what, in spite of the insufficient revelation of the
+starlight, we both recognised as a chilling disapproval. The lights of
+the inn were all out; the courtyard was dark. The Spanish woman and
+Monsieur Rameau had made their appearance for a moment, half an hour
+earlier, to exchange a word with their fellow vigilant, and, soon
+after, the extinguishing of the lamps in their respective apartments
+denoted their retirement for the night. In the "Grande Suite" all had
+been dark and silent for an hour. About the whole place the only sign
+of life, aside from those signs furnished by our three selves, was a
+rhythmical sound from an open window near the kitchen, where
+incontrovertibly slumbered our maitre d'hotel after the cares of the
+day.
+
+Upon the occasion of our forest meeting Mr. Percy had signified his
+desire to hear some talk of Art. I think he had his fill to-night--and
+more; for that was the subject chosen by my dashing companion, and
+vivaciously exploited until our awaited hour was at hand. Heaven knows
+what nonsense I prattled, I do not; I do not think I knew at the time.
+I talked mechanically, trying hard not to betray my increasing
+excitement.
+
+Under cover of this traduction of the Muse I served, I kept going over
+and over the details of Louise Harman's plan, as the girl beside me had
+outlined it, bending above the smudgy sketch-book. "To make them think
+the flight is for Paris," she had urged, "to Paris by way of Lisieux.
+To make that man yonder believe that it is toward Lisieux, while they
+turn at the crossroads, and drive across the country to Trouville for
+the morning boat to Havre."
+
+It was simple; that was its great virtue. If they were well started,
+they were safe; and well started meant only that Larrabee Harman should
+leave the inn without an alarm, for an alarm sounded too soon meant
+"racing and chasing on Canoby Lea," before they could get out of the
+immediate neighbourhood. But with two hours' start, and the pursuit
+spending most of its energy in the wrong direction--that is, toward
+Lisieux and Paris--they would be on the deck of the French-Canadian
+liner to-morrow noon, sailing out of the harbour of Le Havre, with
+nothing but the Atlantic Ocean between them and the St. Lawrence.
+
+I thought of the woman who dared this flight for her lover, of the
+woman who came full-armed between him and the world, a Valkyr winging
+down to bear him away to a heaven she would make for him herself.
+Gentle as she was, there must have been a Valkyr in her somewhere, or
+she could not attempt this. She swept in, not only between him and the
+world, but between him and the destroying demons his own sins had
+raised to beset him. There, I thought, was a whole love; or there she
+was not only wife but mother to him.
+
+And I remembered the dream of her I had before I ever saw her, on that
+first night after I came down to Normandy, when Amedee's talk of
+"Madame d'Armand" had brought her into my thoughts. I remembered that I
+had dreamed of finding her statue, but it was veiled and I could not
+uncover it. And to-night it seemed to me that the veil had lifted, and
+the statue was a figure of Mercy in the beautiful likeness of Louise
+Harman. Then Keredec was wrong, optimist as he was, since a will such
+as hers could save him she loved, even from his own acts.
+
+"And when you come to Monticelli's first style--" Miss Elliott's voice
+rose a little, and I caught the sound of a new thrill vibrating in
+it--"you find a hundred others of his epoch doing it quite as well, not
+a BIT of a bit less commonplace--"
+
+She broke off suddenly, and looking up, as I had fifty times in the
+last twenty minutes, I saw that a light shone from Keredec's window.
+
+"I dare say they ARE commonplace," I remarked, rising. "But now, if you
+will permit me, I'll offer you my escort back to Quesnay."
+
+I went into my room, put on my cap, lit a lantern, and returned with it
+to the veranda. "If you are ready?" I said.
+
+"Oh, quite," she answered, and we crossed the garden as far as the
+steps.
+
+Mr. Percy signified his approval.
+
+"Gunna see the little lady home, are you?" he said graciously. "I was
+THINKIN' it was about time, m'self!"
+
+The salon door of the "Grand Suite" opened, above me, and at the sound,
+the youth started, springing back to see what it portended, but I ran
+quickly up the steps. Keredec stood in the doorway, bare-headed and in
+his shirt-sleeves; in one hand he held a travelling-bag, which he
+immediately gave me, setting his other for a second upon my shoulder.
+
+"Thank you, my good, good friend," he said with an emotion in his big
+voice which made me glad of what I was doing. He went back into the
+room, closing the door, and I descended the steps as rapidly as I had
+run up them. Without pausing, I started for the rear of the courtyard,
+Miss Elliott accompanying me.
+
+The sentry had watched these proceedings open-mouthed, more mystified
+than alarmed. "Luk here," he said, "I want t' know whut this means."
+
+"Anything you choose to think it means," I laughed, beginning to walk a
+little more rapidly. He glanced up at the windows of the "Grande
+Suite," which were again dark, and began to follow us slowly. "What you
+gut in that grip?" he asked.
+
+"You don't think we're carrying off Mr. Harman?"
+
+"I reckon HE'S in his room all right," said the youth grimly; "unless
+he's FLEW out. But I want t' know what you think y're doin'?"
+
+"Just now," I replied, "I'm opening this door."
+
+This was a fact he could not question. We emerged at the foot of a lane
+behind the inn; it was long and narrow, bordered by stone walls, and at
+the other end debouched upon a road which passed the rear of the Baudry
+cottage.
+
+Miss Elliott took my arm, and we entered the lane.
+
+Mr. Percy paused undecidedly. "I want t' know whut you think y're
+doin'?" he repeated angrily, calling after us.
+
+"It's very simple," I called in turn. "Can't I do an errand for a
+friend? Can't I even carry his travelling-bag for him, without going
+into explanations to everybody I happen to meet? And," I added,
+permitting some anxiety to be marked in my voice, "I think you may as
+well go back. We're not going far enough to need a guard."
+
+Mr. Percy allowed an oath to escape him, and we heard him muttering to
+himself. Then his foot-steps sounded behind us.
+
+"He's coming!" Miss Elliott whispered, with nervous exultation, looking
+over her shoulder. "He's going to follow."
+
+"He was sure to," said I.
+
+We trudged briskly on, followed at some fifty paces by the perturbed
+watchman. Presently I heard my companion utter a sigh so profound that
+it was a whispered moan.
+
+"What is it?" I murmured.
+
+"Oh, it's the thought of Quesnay and to-morrow; facing them with THIS!"
+she quavered. "Louise has written a letter for me to give them, but
+I'll have to tell them--"
+
+"Not alone," I whispered. "I'll be there when you come down from your
+room in the morning."
+
+We were embarked upon a singular adventure, not unattended by a certain
+danger; we were tingling with a hundred apprehensions, occupied with
+the vital necessity of drawing the little spy after us--and that was a
+strange moment for a man (and an elderly painter-man of no mark, at
+that!) to hear himself called what I was called then, in a tremulous
+whisper close to my ear. Of course she has denied it since;
+nevertheless, she said it--twice, for I pretended not to hear her the
+first time. I made no answer, for something in the word she called me,
+and in her seeming to mean it, made me choke up so that I could not
+even whisper; but I made up my mind that, after THAT if this girl saw
+Mr. Earl Percy on his way back to the inn before she wished him to go,
+it would be because he had killed me.
+
+We were near the end of the lane when the neigh of a horse sounded
+sonorously from the road beyond.
+
+Mr. Percy came running up swiftly and darted by us.
+
+"Who's that?" he called loudly. "Who's that in the cart yonder?"
+
+I set my lantern on the ground close to the wall, and at the same
+moment a horse and cart drew up on the road at the end of the lane,
+showing against the starlight. It was Pere Baudry's best horse, a stout
+gray, that would easily enough make Trouville by daylight. A woman's
+figure and a man's (the latter that of Pere Baudry himself) could be
+made out dimly on the seat of the cart.
+
+"Who is it, I say?" shouted our excited friend. "What kind of a game
+d'ye think y're puttin' up on me here?"
+
+He set his hand on the side of the cart and sprang upon the hub of the
+wheel. A glance at the occupants satisfied him.
+
+"Mrs. Harman!" he yelled. "Mrs. Harman!" He leaped down into the road.
+"I knowed I was a fool to come away without wakin' up Rameau. But you
+haven't beat us yet!"
+
+He drove back into the lane, but just inside its entrance I met him.
+
+"Where are you going?" I asked.
+
+"Back to the pigeon-house in a hurry. There's devilment here, and I
+want Rameau. Git out o' my way!"
+
+"You're not going back," said I.
+
+"The hell I ain't!" said Mr. Percy. "I give ye two seconds t' git out
+o' my--TAKE YER HANDS OFFA ME!"
+
+I made sure of my grip, not upon the refulgent overcoat, for I feared
+he might slip out of that, but upon the collars of his coat and
+waistcoat, which I clenched together in my right hand. I knew that he
+was quick, and I suspected that he was "scientific," but I did it
+before he had finished talking, and so made fast, with my mind and
+heart and soul set upon sticking to him.
+
+My suspicions as to his "science" were perfervidly justified. "You
+long-legged devil!" he yelled, and I instantly received a series of
+concussions upon the face and head which put me in supreme doubt of my
+surroundings, for I seemed to have plunged, eyes foremost, into the
+Milky Way. But I had my left arm around his neck, which probably saved
+me from a coup de grace, as he was forced to pommel me at half-length.
+Pommel it was; to use so gentle a word for what to me was crash, bang,
+smash, battle, murder, earthquake and tornado. I was conscious of some
+one screaming, and it seemed a consoling part of my delirium that the
+cheek of Miss Anne Elliott should be jammed tight against mine through
+one phase of the explosion. My arms were wrenched, my fingers twisted
+and tortured, and, when it was all too clear to me that I could not
+possibly bear one added iota of physical pain, the ingenious fiend
+began to kick my shins and knees with feet like crowbars.
+
+Conflict of any sort was never my vocation. I had not been an
+accessory-during-the-fact to a fight since I passed the truculent age
+of fourteen; and it is a marvel that I was able to hang to that dynamic
+bundle of trained muscles--which defines Mr. Earl Percy well
+enough--for more than ten seconds. Yet I did hang to him, as Pere
+Baudry testifies, for a minute and a half, which seems no
+inconsiderable lapse of time to a person undergoing such experiences as
+were then afflicting me.
+
+It appeared to me that we were revolving in enormous circles in the
+ether, and I had long since given my last gasp, when there came a great
+roaring wind in my ears and a range of mountains toppled upon us both;
+we went to earth beneath it.
+
+"Ha! you must create violence, then?" roared the avalanche.
+
+And the voice was the voice of Keredec.
+
+Some one pulled me from underneath my struggling antagonist, and, the
+power of sight in a hazy, zigzagging fashion coming back to me, I
+perceived the figure of Miss Anne Elliott recumbent beside me, her arms
+about Mr. Percy's prostrate body. The extraordinary girl had fastened
+upon him, too, though I had not known it, and she had gone to ground
+with us; but it is to be said for Mr. Earl Percy that no blow of his
+touched her, and she was not hurt. Even in the final extremities of
+temper, he had carefully discriminated in my favour.
+
+Mrs. Harman was bending over her, and, as the girl sprang up lightly,
+threw her arms about her. For my part, I rose more slowly, section by
+section, wondering why I did not fall apart; lips, nose, and cheeks
+bleeding, and I had a fear that I should need to be led like a blind
+man, through my eyelids swelling shut. That was something I earnestly
+desired should not happen; but whether it did, or did not--or if the
+heavens fell!--I meant to walk back to Quesnay with Anne Elliott that
+night, and, mangled, broken, or half-dead, presenting whatever
+appearance of the prize-ring or the abattoir that I might, I intended
+to take the same train for Paris on the morrow that she did.
+
+For our days together were not at an end; nor was it hers nor my desire
+that they should be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+It was Oliver Saffren--as I like to think of him--who helped me to my
+feet and wiped my face with his handkerchief, and when that one was
+ruined, brought others from his bag and stanched the wounds gladly
+received, in the service of his wife.
+
+"I will remember--" he said, and his voice broke. "These are the
+memories which Keredec says make a man good. I pray they will help to
+redeem me." And for the last time I heard the child in him speaking: "I
+ought to be redeemed; I must be, don't you think, for her sake?"
+
+"Lose no time!" shouted Keredec. "You must be gone if you will reach
+that certain town for the five-o'clock train of the morning." This was
+for the spy's benefit; it indicated Lisieux and the train to Paris. Mr.
+Percy struggled; the professor knelt over him, pinioning his wrists in
+one great hand, and holding him easily to earth.
+
+"Ha! my friend--" he addressed his captive--"you shall not have cause
+to say we do you any harm; there shall be no law, for you are not hurt,
+and you are not going to be. But here you shall stay quiet for a little
+while--till I say you can go." As he spoke he bound the other's wrists
+with a short rope which he took from his pocket, performing the same
+office immediately afterward for Mr. Percy's ankles.
+
+"I take the count!" was the sole remark of that philosopher. "I can't
+go up against no herd of elephants."
+
+"And now," said the professor, rising, "good-bye! The sun shall rise
+gloriously for you tomorrow. Come, it is time."
+
+The two women were crying in each other's arms. "Good-bye!" sobbed Anne
+Elliott.
+
+Mrs. Harman turned to Keredec. "Good-bye! for a little while."
+
+He kissed her hand. "Dear lady, I shall come within the year."
+
+She came to me, and I took her hand, meaning to kiss it as Keredec had
+done, but suddenly she was closer and I felt her lips upon my battered
+cheek. I remember it now.
+
+I wrung her husband's hand, and then he took her in his arms, lifted
+her to the foot-board of the cart, and sprang up beside her.
+
+"God bless you, and good-bye!" we called.
+
+And their voices came back to us. "God bless YOU and good-bye!" They
+were carried into the enveloping night. We stared after them down the
+road; watching the lantern on the tail-board of the cart diminish;
+watching it dim and dwindle to a point of gray;--listening until the
+hoof-beats of the heavy Norman grew fainter than the rustle of the
+branch that rose above the wall beside us. But it is bad luck to strain
+eyes and ears to the very last when friends are parting, because that
+so sharpens the loneliness; and before the cart went quite beyond our
+ken, two of us set out upon the longest way to Quesnay.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Guest of Quesnay, by Booth Tarkington
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