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The Guest of Quesnay, a novel by Booth Tarkington |
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Chapter 12 |
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_ CHAPTER XII "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. _ |
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