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