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