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