I had finished dressing, next morning, and was strapping my things
together for the day's campaign, when I heard a shuffling step upon the
porch, and the door opened gently, without any previous ceremony of
knocking. To my angle of vision what at first appeared to have opened
it was a tray of coffee, rolls, eggs, and a packet of sandwiches, but,
after hesitating somewhat, this apparition advanced farther into the
room, disclosing a pair of supporting hands, followed in due time by
the whole person of a nervously smiling and visibly apprehensive
Amedee. He closed the door behind him by the simple action of backing
against it, took the cloth from his arm, and with a single gesture
spread it neatly upon a small table, then, turning to me, laid the
forefinger of his right hand warningly upon his lips and bowed me a
deferential invitation to occupy the chair beside the table.
"Well," I said, glaring at him, "what ails you?"
"I thought monsieur might prefer his breakfast indoors, this morning,"
he returned in a low voice.
"Why should I?"
The miserable old man said something I did not understand--an
incoherent syllable or two--suddenly covered his mouth with both hands,
and turned away. I heard a catch in his throat; suffocated sounds
issued from his bosom; however, it was nothing more than a momentary
seizure, and, recovering command of himself by a powerful effort, he
faced me with hypocritical servility.
"Why do you laugh?" I asked indignantly.
"But I did not laugh," he replied in a husky whisper. "Not at all."
"You did," I asserted, raising my voice. "It almost killed you!"
"Monsieur," he begged hoarsely, "HUSH!"
"What is the matter?" I demanded loudly. "What do you mean by these
abominable croakings? Speak out!"
"Monsieur--" he gesticulated in a panic, toward the courtyard.
"Mademoiselle Ward is out there."
"WHAT!" But I did not shout the word.
"There is always a little window in the rear wall," he breathed in my
ear as I dropped into the chair by the table. "She would not see you
if--"
I interrupted with all the French rough-and-ready expressions of
dislike at my command, daring to hope that they might give him some
shadowy, far-away idea of what I thought of both himself and his
suggestions, and, notwithstanding the difficulty of expressing strong
feeling in whispers, it seemed to me that, in a measure, I succeeded.
"I am not in the habit of crawling out of ventilators," I added,
subduing a tendency to vehemence. "And probably Mademoiselle Ward has
only come to talk with Madame Brossard."
"I fear some of those people may have told her you were here," he
ventured insinuatingly.
"What people?" I asked, drinking my coffee calmly, yet, it must be
confessed, without quite the deliberation I could have wished.
"Those who stopped yesterday evening on the way to the chateau. They
might have recognised--"
"Impossible. I knew none of them."
"But Mademoiselle Ward knows that you are here. Without doubt."
"Why do you say so?"
"Because she has inquired for you."
"So!" I rose at once and went toward the door. "Why didn't you tell me
at once?"
"But surely," he remonstrated, ignoring my question, "monsieur will
make some change of attire?"
"Change of attire?" I echoed.
"Eh, the poor old coat all hunched at the shoulders and spotted with
paint!"
"Why shouldn't it be?" I hissed, thoroughly irritated. "Do you take me
for a racing marquis?"
"But monsieur has a coat much more as a coat ought to be. And Jean
Ferret says--"
"Ha, now we're getting at it!" said I. "What does Jean Ferret say?"
"Perhaps it would be better if I did not repeat--"
"Out with it! What does Jean Ferret say?"
"Well, then, Mademoiselle Ward's maid from Paris has told Jean Ferret
that monsieur and Mademoiselle Ward have corresponded for years, and
that--and that--"
"Go on," I bade him ominously.
"That monsieur has sent Mademoiselle Ward many expensive jewels, and--"
"Aha!" said I, at which he paused abruptly, and stood staring at me.
The idea of explaining Miss Elizabeth's collection to him, of getting
anything whatever through that complacent head of his, was so hopeless
that I did not even consider it. There was only one thing to do, and
perhaps I should have done it--I do not know, for he saw the menace
coiling in my eye, and hurriedly retreated.
"Monsieur!" he gasped, backing away from me, and as his hand, fumbling
behind him, found the latch of the door, he opened it, and scrambled
out by a sort of spiral movement round the casing. When I followed, a
moment later--with my traps on my shoulder and the packet of sandwiches
in my pocket--he was out of sight.
Miss Elizabeth sat beneath the arbour at the other end of the
courtyard, and beside her stood the trim and glossy bay saddle-horse
that she had ridden from Quesnay, his head outstretched above his
mistress to paddle at the vine leaves with a tremulous upper lip. She
checked his desire with a slight movement of her hand upon the
bridle-rein; and he arched his neck prettily, pawing the gravel with a
neat forefoot. Miss Elizabeth is one of the few large women I have
known to whom a riding-habit is entirely becoming, and this group of
two--a handsome woman and her handsome horse--has had a charm for all
men ever since horses were tamed and women began to be beautiful. I
thought of my work, of the canvases I meant to cover, but I felt the
charm--and I felt it stirringly. It was a fine, fresh morning, and the
sun just risen.
An expression in the lady's attitude, and air which I instinctively
construed as histrionic, seemed intended to convey that she had been
kept waiting, yet had waited without reproach; and although she must
have heard me coming, she did not look toward me until I was quite near
and spoke her name. At that she sprang up quickly enough, and stretched
out her hand to me.
"Run to earth!" she cried, advancing a step to meet me.
"A pretty poor trophy of the chase," said I, "but proud that you are
its killer."
To my surprise and mystification, her cheeks and brow flushed rosily;
she was obviously conscious of it, and laughed.
"Don't be embarrassed," she said.
"I!"
"Yes, you, poor man! I suppose I couldn't have more thoroughly
compromised you. Madame Brossard will never believe in your
respectability again."
"Oh, yes, she will," said I.
"What? A lodger who has ladies calling upon him at five o'clock in the
morning? But your bundle's on your shoulder," she rattled on, laughing,
"though there's many could be bolder, and perhaps you'll let me walk a
bit of the way with you, if you're for the road."
"Perhaps I will," said I. She caught up her riding-skirt, fastening it
by a clasp at her side, and we passed out through the archway and went
slowly along the road bordering the forest, her horse following
obediently at half-rein's length.
"When did you hear that I was at Madame Brossard's?" I asked.
"Ten minutes after I returned to Quesnay, late yesterday afternoon."
"Who told you?"
"Louise."
I repeated the name questioningly. "You mean Mrs. Larrabee Harman?"
"Louise Harman," she corrected. "Didn't you know she was staying at
Quesnay?"
"I guessed it, though Amedee got the name confused."
"Yes, she's been kind enough to look after the place for us while we
were away. George won't be back for another ten days, and I've been
overseeing an exhibition for him in London. Afterward I did a round of
visits--tiresome enough, but among people it's well to keep in touch
with on George's account."
"I see," I said, with a grimness which probably escaped her. "But how
did Mrs. Harman know that I was at Les Trois Pigeons?"
"She met you once in the forest--"
"Twice," I interrupted.
"She mentioned only once. Of course she'd often heard both George and
me speak of you."
"But how did she know it was I and where I was staying?"
"Oh, that?" Her smile changed to a laugh. "Your maitre d'hotel told
Ferret, a gardener at Quesnay, that you were at the inn."
"He did!"
"Oh, but you mustn't be angry with him; he made it quite all right."
"How did he do that?" I asked, trying to speak calmly, though there was
that in my mind which might have blanched the parchment cheek of a
grand inquisitor.
"He told Ferret that you were very anxious not to have it known--"
"You call that making it all right?"
"For himself, I mean. He asked Ferret not to mention who it was that
told him."
"The rascal!" I cried. "The treacherous, brazen--"
"Unfortunate man," said Miss Elizabeth, "don't you see how clear you're
making it that you really meant to hide from us?"
There seemed to be something in that, and my tirade broke up in
confusion. "Oh, no," I said lamely, "I hoped--I hoped--"
"Be careful!"
"No; I hoped to work down here," I blurted. "And I thought if I saw too
much of you--I might not."
She looked at me with widening eyes. "And I can take my choice," she
cried, "of all the different things you may mean by that! It's either
the most outrageous speech I ever heard--or the most flattering."
"But I meant simply--"
"No." She lifted her hand and stopped me. "I'd rather believe that I
have at least the choice--and let it go at that." And as I began to
laugh, she turned to me with a gravity apparently so genuine that for
the moment I was fatuous enough to believe that she had said it
seriously. Ensued a pause of some duration, which, for my part, I found
disturbing. She broke it with a change of subject.
"You think Louise very lovely to look at, don't you?"
"Exquisite," I answered.
"Every one does."
"I suppose she told you--" and now I felt myself growing red--"that I
behaved like a drunken acrobat when she came upon me in the path."
"No. Did you?" cried Miss Elizabeth, with a ready credulity which I
thought by no means pretty; indeed, she seemed amused and, to my
surprise (for she is not an unkind woman), rather heartlessly pleased.
"Louise only said she knew it must be you, and that she wished she
could have had a better look at what you were painting."
"Heaven bless her!" I exclaimed. "Her reticence was angelic."
"Yes, she has reticence," said my companion, with enough of the same
quality to make me look at her quickly. A thin line had been drawn
across her forehead.
"You mean she's still reticent with George?" I ventured.
"Yes," she answered sadly. "Poor George always hopes, of course, in the
silent way of his kind when they suffer from such unfortunate
passions--and he waits."
"I suppose that former husband of hers recovered?"
"I believe he's still alive somewhere. Locked up, I hope!" she finished
crisply.
"She retained his name," I observed.
"Harman? Yes, she retained it," said my companion rather shortly.
"At all events, she's rid of him, isn't she?"
"Oh, she's RID of him!" Her tone implied an enigmatic reservation of
some kind.
"It's hard," I reflected aloud, "hard to understand her making that
mistake, young as she was. Even in the glimpses of her I've had, it was
easy to see something of what she's like: a fine, rare, high type--"
"But you didn't know HIM, did you?" Miss Elizabeth asked with some
dryness.
"No," I answered. "I saw him twice; once at the time of his
accident--that was only a nightmare, his face covered with--" I
shivered. "But I had caught a glimpse of him on the boulevard, and of
all the dreadful--"
"Oh, but he wasn't always dreadful," she interposed quickly. "He was a
fascinating sort of person, quite charming and good-looking, when she
ran away with him, though he was horribly dissipated even then. He
always had been THAT. Of course she thought she'd be able to straighten
him out--poor girl! She tried, for three years--three years it hurts
one to think of! You see it must have been something very like a 'grand
passion' to hold her through a pain three years long."
"Or tremendous pride," said I. "Women make an odd world of it for the
rest of us. There was good old George, as true and straight a man as
ever lived--"
"And she took the other! Yes." George's sister laughed sorrowfully.
"But George and she have both survived the mistake," I went on with
confidence. "Her tragedy must have taught her some important
differences. Haven't you a notion she'll be tremendously glad to see
him when he comes back from America?"
"Ah, I do hope so!" she cried. "You see, I'm fearing that he hopes so
too--to the degree of counting on it."
"You don't count on it yourself?"
She shook her head. "With any other woman I should."
"Why not with Mrs. Harman?"
"Cousin Louise has her ways," said Miss Elizabeth slowly, and, whether
she could not further explain her doubts, or whether she would not,
that was all I got out of her on the subject at the time. I asked one
or two more questions, but my companion merely shook her head again,
alluding vaguely to her cousin's "ways." Then she brightened suddenly,
and inquired when I would have my things sent up to the chateau from
the inn.
At the risk of a misunderstanding which I felt I could ill afford, I
resisted her kind hospitality, and the outcome of it was that there
should be a kind of armistice, to begin with my dining at the chateau
that evening. Thereupon she mounted to the saddle, a bit of gymnastics
for which she declined my assistance, and looked down upon me from a
great height.
"Did anybody ever tell you," was her surprising inquiry, "that you are
the queerest man of these times?"
"No," I answered. "Don't you think you're a queerer woman?"
"FOOTLE!" she cried scornfully. "Be off to your woods and your
woodscaping!"
The bay horse departed at a smart gait, not, I was glad to see, a
parkish trot--Miss Elizabeth wisely set limits to her sacrifices to
Mode--and she was far down the road before I had passed the outer
fringe of trees.
My work was accomplished after a fashion more or less desultory that
day; I had many absent moments, was restless, and walked more than I
painted. Oliver Saffron did not join me in the late afternoon; nor did
the echo of distant yodelling bespeak any effort on his part to find
me. So I gave him up, and returned to the inn earlier than usual.
While dressing I sent word to Professor Keredec that I should not be
able to join him at dinner that evening; and it is to be recorded that
Glouglou carried the message for me. Amedee did not appear, from which
it may be inferred that our maitre d'hotel was subject to lucid
intervals. Certainly his present shyness indicated an intelligence of
no low order.