"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.
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.