Books: The Guest of Quesnay
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Booth Tarkington >> The Guest of Quesnay
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"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.
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