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!"