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Several pairs of brighter eyes followed my companion 
 
THE GUEST OF 
 QUESNAY 
 
 BY 
 
 BOOTH TABKINGTON 
 
 ILLUSTEATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCREBNER'S SONS 
 
 1915 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907, 1908, BY 
 THE EIDGWAY COMPANY 
 
TO 
 OVID BUTLER JAMESON 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Several pairs of brighter eyes followed my 
 companion Frontispiece 
 
 FACINQ PAOB 
 
 "I haven't had my life. It's gone!" . 166 
 
 "You and Miss Ward are old and dear friends, 
 
 aren't you?" 198 
 
 "Embrasse moi, Larrabi! Embrasse moi!" 
 
 she cried 240 
 
THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THERE are old Parisians who will tell you 
 pompously that the boulevards, like the po- 
 litical cafes, have ceased to exist, but this 
 means only that the boulevards no longer gossip of 
 Louis Napoleon, the Return of the Bourbons, or of 
 General Boulanger, for these highways are always 
 too busily stirring with present movements not to 
 be forgetful of their yesterdays. In the shade of 
 the buildings and awnings, the loungers, the look- 
 ers-on in Paris, the audience of the boulevard, sit 
 at little tables, sipping coffee from long glasses, 
 drinking absinthe or bright-coloured sirops, and 
 gazing over the heads of throngs afoot at others 
 borne along through the simshine of the street in 
 carriages, in cabs, in glittering automobiles, or high 
 on the tops of omnibuses. 
 
 From all the continents the multitudes come to 
 join in that procession: Americans, tagged with 
 race-cards and intending hilarious disturbances; 
 puzzled Americans, worn with guide-book plodding; 
 
4 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 Chinese princes in silk; queer Antillean dandies of 
 swarthy origin and fortune; ruddy English, think- 
 ing of nothing; pallid English, with upper teeth 
 bared and eyes hungrily searching for sign-boards 
 of tea-rooms; over-Europeanised Japanese, unpleas- 
 antly immaculate; burnoosed sheiks from the desert, 
 and red-fezzed Semitic peddlers; Italian nobles in 
 English tweeds; Soudanese negroes swaggering in 
 frock coats; slim Spaniards, squat Turks, travellers, 
 idlers, exiles, fugitives, sportsmen — all the tribes 
 and kinds of men are tributary here to the Parisian 
 stream which, on a fair day in spring, already over- 
 flows the banks with its own much-mingled waters. 
 Soberly clad burgesses, bearded, amiable, and in no 
 fatal hurry; well-kept men of the world swirling 
 by in miraculous limousines; legless cripples flopping 
 on hands and leather pads; thin-whiskered stu- 
 dents in velveteen; walrus-moustacaed veterans in 
 broadcloth; keen-faced old prelates; shabby young 
 priests; cavalrymen in casque and cuirass; work- 
 ingmen turned horse and harnessed to carts; side- 
 walk jesters, itinerant vendors of questionable 
 wares; shady loafers dressed to resemble gold- 
 showering America; motor-cyclists in leather; hairy 
 musicians, blue gendarmes, baggy red zouaves; purple- 
 
CHAPTER ONE 6 
 
 faced, glazed-hatted, scarlet-waistcoated, cigarette- 
 smoking cabmen, calling one another "onions," 
 "camels," and names even more terrible. Women 
 prevalent over all the concourse; fair women, dark 
 women, pretty women, gilded women, haughty 
 women, indifferent women, friendly women, merry 
 women. Fine women in fine clothes; rich women in 
 fine clothes; poor women in fine clothes. Worldly 
 old women, reclining befurred in electric landaulettes; 
 wordy old women hoydenishly trimdling carts full 
 of flowers. Wonderful automobile women quick- 
 glimpsed, in midtiple veils of white and brown and 
 sea-green. Women in rags and tags, and women 
 draped, coifed, and befrilled in the delirium of 
 maddened poet-milliners and the hasheesh dreams 
 of ladies' tailors. 
 
 About the procession, as it moves interminably 
 along the boulevard, a blue haze of fine dust and 
 burnt gasoline rises into the sunshine like the haze 
 over the passages to an amphitheatre toward which 
 a crowd is trampling; and through this the multi- 
 tudes seem to go as actors passing to their cues. 
 Your place at one of the little tables upon the side- 
 walk is that of a wayside spectator: and as the 
 performers go by, in some measure acting or look- 
 
6 1 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 ing their parts already, as if in preparation, you 
 guess the roles they play, and name them comedifins, 
 tragedians, buffoons, saints, beauties, sots, knaves, 
 gladiators, acrobats, dancers; for all of these are 
 there, and you distinguish the principles from the 
 unnumbered supernumeraries pressing forward to 
 the entrances. So, if you sit at the little tables 
 often enough — ^that is, if you become an amateur 
 boidevardier — ^you begin to recognise the transient 
 stars of the pageant, those to whom the boulevard 
 allows a dubious and fugitive r61e of celebrity, and 
 whom it greets with a slight flutter: the turning 
 of heads, a murmur of comment, and the incredulous 
 boulevard smile, which seems to say: "You see? 
 Madame and monsieur passing there — evidently they 
 think we still beUeve in them!" 
 
 This flutter heralded and followed the passing 
 of a white touring-car with the procession one 
 afternoon, just before the Grand Prix, though it 
 needed no boulevard celebrity to make the man 
 who lolled in the tonneau conspicuous. Simply for 
 thai, notoriety was superfluous; so were the remark- 
 able size and power of his car; so was the elaborate 
 touring-costume of flannels and pongee he wore; so 
 was even the enamelled presence of the dancer who 
 
CHAPTER ONE 7 
 
 sat beside him. His face would have done it with- 
 out accessories. 
 
 My old friend, George Ward, and I had met for 
 our aperitif at the Terrace Larue, by the Made- 
 leine, when the white automobile came snaking its 
 way craftily through the traffic. Turning in to 
 pass a victoria on the wrong side, it was forced 
 down to a snail's pace near the curb and not far 
 from our table, where it paused, checked by a block- 
 ade at the next corner. I heard Ward utter a 
 half -suppressed guttural of what I took to be amaze- 
 ment, and I did not wonder. 
 
 The face of the man in the tonneau detached him 
 to the spectator's gaze and singled him out of the 
 concourse with an effect almost ludicrous in its 
 incongruity. The hair was dark, lustrous and 
 thick, the forehead broad and finely modelled, and 
 certain other ruinous vestiges of youth and good 
 looks remained; but whatever the featm-es might 
 once have shown of honour, worth, or kindly sem- 
 blance had disappeared beyond all tracing in a 
 blurred distortion. The lids of one eye were dis- 
 coloured and swoUen almost together; other traces 
 of a recent battering were not lacking, nor was 
 cosmetic evidence of a heroic struggle, on the part 
 
8 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 of some valet of infinite pains, to efface them. 
 The nose lost outline in the discolorations of the 
 puffed cheeks; the chin, tufted with a small im- 
 perial, trembled beneath a sagging, gray lip. And 
 that this bruised and dissipated mask should suffer 
 the final grotesque touch, it was decorated with 
 the moustache of a coquettish marquis, the ends 
 waxed and exquisitely elevated. 
 
 The figure was fat, but loose and sprawling, 
 seemingly without the will to hold itself together; 
 in truth the man appeared to be almost in a semi- 
 stupor, and, contrasted with this powdered Silenus, 
 even the woman beside him gained something of 
 human dignity. At least, she was thoroughly 
 alive, bold, predatory, and in spite of the gross 
 embon-point that threatened her, still savagely 
 graceful. A purple veil, dotted with gold, floated 
 about her hat, from which green-dyed ostrich plumes 
 cascaded down across a cheek enamelled dead white. 
 Her hair was plastered in blue-black waves, parted 
 low on the forehead; her lips were splashed a 
 startling carmine, the eyelids painted blue; and, 
 from between lashes gummed into little spikes of 
 blacking, she favoured her companion with a glance 
 of carelessly simulated tenderness, — a look all too 
 
CHAPTER ONE 9 
 
 vividly suggesting the ghastly calculations of a 
 cook wheedling a chicken nearer the kitchen door. 
 But I felt no great pity for the victim. 
 
 "Who is it?" I asked, staring at the man in the 
 automobile and not turning toward Ward. 
 
 "That is Mariana — 'la bella Mariana la Mursi- 
 ana' " George answered; " — one of those women 
 who come to Paris from the tropics to form them- 
 selves on the legend of the one great famous and 
 infamous Spanish dancer who died a long while 
 ago. Mariana did very well for a time. I've heard 
 that the revolutionary societies intend striking 
 medals in her honour: she's done worse things to 
 royalty than alt the anarchists in Europe! But her 
 great days are over: she's getting old; that type 
 goes to pieces quickly, once it begins to slump, 
 and it won't be long before she'll be horribly fat, 
 though she's still a graceful dancer. She danced 
 at the Folic Rouge last week." 
 
 "Thank you, George," I said gratefully. "I 
 hope you'll point out the Louvre and the Eiffel 
 Tower to me some day. I didn't mean Mariafia." 
 
 "What did you mean?" 
 
 What I had meant was so obvious that I turned 
 to my friend in surprise. He was nervously tapping 
 
10 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 his chin with the handle of his cane and staring 
 at the white automobile with very grim interest. 
 
 "I meant the man with her," I said. 
 
 "Oh!" He laughed sourly. "That carrion?" 
 
 "You seem to be an acquaintance." 
 
 "Everybody on the boulevard knows who he is," 
 said Ward curtly, paused, and laughed again with 
 very little mirth. "So do you," he continued; 
 "and as for my acquaintance with him — ^yes, I 
 had once the distinction of being his rival in a 
 small way, a way so small, in fact, that it ended 
 in his becoming a connection of mine by marriage. 
 He's Larrabee Harman." 
 
 That was a name somewhat familiar to readers 
 of American newspapers even before its bearer was 
 fairly out of college. The publicity it then attained 
 (partly due to young Harman's conspicuous wealth) 
 attached to some youthful exploits not without a 
 certain wild humour. But frolic degenerated into 
 brawl and debauch: what had been scrapes for 
 the boy became scandals for the man; and he 
 gathered a more and more imsavoury reputation 
 until its like was not to be found outside a pen- 
 itentiary. The crux of his career in his own country 
 was reached during a midnight quarrel in Chicago 
 
CHAPTER ONE 11 
 
 when he shot a negro gambler. After that, the 
 negro having recovered and the matter being some- 
 how arranged so that the prosecution was dropped, 
 Harman's wife left him, and the papers recorded 
 her appUcation for a divorce. She was George 
 Ward's second cousin, the daughter of a Baltimore 
 clergyman; a belle in a season and town of belles, 
 and a dehghtful, headstrong creature, from all 
 accounts. She had made a runaway match of it 
 with Harman three years before, their affair having 
 been earnestly opposed by all her relatives — espec- 
 ially by poor George, who came over to Paris just 
 after the wedding in a miserable frame of mind. 
 
 The Chicago exploit was by no means the end 
 of Harman's notoriety. Evading an effort (on 
 the part of an aunt, I believe) to get him locked 
 up safely in a "sanitarium," he began a trip round 
 the world with an orgy which continued from 
 San Francisco to Bangkok, where, in the company 
 of some congenial fellow travellers, he interfered 
 in a native ceremonial with the result that one of 
 his companions was drowned. Proceeding, he was 
 reported to be in serious trouble at Constantinople, 
 the result of an inquisitiveness little appreciated 
 by Orientals. The State Department, bestirring 
 
12 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 itself, saved him from a very real peril, and he 
 continued his journey. In Rome he was rescued 
 with difficulty from a street mob that unreasonably 
 refused to accept intoxication as an excuse for his 
 riding down a child on his way to the hunt. Later, 
 during the winter just past, we had been hearing 
 from Monte Carlo of his disastrous plunges at 
 that most imbecile of all games, roulette. 
 
 Every event, no matter how trifling, in this 
 man's pitiful career had been recorded in the Amer- 
 ican newspapers with an elaboration which, for 
 my part, I found infuriatingly tiresome. I have 
 lived in Paris so long that I am afraid to go home: 
 I have too little to show for my years of pottering 
 with paint and canvas, and I have grown timid 
 about all the changes that have crept in at home. 
 I do not know the "new men," I do not know how 
 they would use me, and fear they might make no 
 place for me; and so I fit myself more closely into 
 the little grooves I have worn for myself, and re- 
 sign myself to stay. But I am no "expatriate." 
 I know there is a feeling at home against us who 
 remain over here to do our work, but in most in- 
 stances it is a prejudice which springs from a mis- 
 understanding. I think the quality of patriotism 
 
CHAPTER ONE 13 
 
 in those of us who "didn't go home in time" is 
 almost pathetically deep and real, and, like many 
 another oldish fellow in my position, I try to keep 
 as close to things at home as I can. All of my 
 old friends gradually ceased to write to me, but 
 I still take three home newspapers, trying to fol- 
 low the people I knew and the things that happen; 
 and the ubiquity of so worthless a creature as 
 Larrabee Harman in the colunms I dredged for 
 real news had long been a point of irritation to 
 this present exile. Not only that: he had usurped 
 space in the Continental papers, and of late my 
 favourite Parisian journal had served him to me 
 with my morning coffee, only hinting his name, but 
 offering him with that gracious satire character- 
 istic of the Gallic journalist writing of anything 
 American. And so this grotesque wreck of a man 
 was well known to the boulevard — one of its sights. 
 That was to be perceived by the flutter he caused, 
 by the turning of heads in his direction, and the 
 low laughter of the people at the little tables. Three 
 or four in the rear ranks had risen to their feet 
 to get a better look at him and his companion. 
 
 Some one behind us chuckled aloud. "They say 
 Mariana beats him." 
 
14 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "Evidently!" 
 
 The dancer was aware of the flutter, and called 
 Harman's attention to it with a touch upon his 
 arm and a laugh and a nod of her violent plumage. 
 
 At that he seemed to rouse himself somewhat: 
 his head rolled heavily over upon his shoulder, 
 the lids lifted a little from the red-shot eyes, show- 
 ing a strange pride when his gaze fell upon the 
 many staring faces. 
 
 Then, as the procession moved again and the 
 white automobile with it, the sottish mouth widened 
 in a smile of dull and cynical contempt: the look 
 of a half-poisoned Augustan borne down through 
 the crowds from the Palatine after supping with 
 Caligula. 
 
 Ward pulled my sleeve. 
 
 "Come," he said, "let us go over to the Lux- 
 embourg gardens where the air is cleaner." 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 WARD is a portrait-painter, and in the 
 matter of vogue there seem to be no 
 pinnacles left for him to surmount. 
 I think he has painted most of the very rich women 
 of fashion who have come to Paris of late years, 
 and he has become so prosperous, has such a pohte 
 celebrity, and his opinions upon art are so con- 
 clusively quoted, that the friendship of some of 
 us who started with him has been dangerously 
 strained. 
 
 He Uves a well-ordered life; he has always led 
 that kind of life. Even in his student days when 
 I first knew him, I do not remember an occasion 
 upon which the principal of a New England high- 
 school would have criticised his conduct. And yet 
 I never heard anyone call him a prig; and, so far 
 as I know, no one was ever so stupid as to think 
 him one. He was a quiet, good-looking, well- 
 dressed boy, and he matured into a somewhat re- 
 served, well-poised man, of impressive distinction 
 in appearance and manner. He has always been 
 
 16 
 
16 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 well tended and cared for by women; in his stu- 
 dent days his mother lived with him; his sister. 
 Miss Elizabeth, looks after him now. She came 
 with him when he returned to Paris after his dis- 
 appointment in the unfortunate Harman afiFair, and 
 she took charge of all his business — as well as his 
 social — ^arrangements (she has been accused of a 
 theory that the two things may be happily com- 
 bined), making him lease a house in an expensively 
 modish quarter near the Avenue du Bois de 
 Boulogne. Miss Elizabeth is an instinctively fash- 
 ionable woman, practical withal, and to her mind 
 success should be not only respectable but "smart." 
 She does not speak of the "right bank" and the 
 "left bank" of the Seine; she calls them the "right 
 bank" and the "wrong bank." And yet, though 
 she removed George (her word is "rescued") from 
 many of his old associations with Montparnasse, 
 she warmly encouraged my friendship with him — 
 yea, in spite of my living so deep in the wrong 
 bank that the first time he brought her to my 
 studio, she declared she hadn't seen anything 
 so like Bring-the-child-to-the-old-hag's-cellar-at-mid- 
 night since her childhood. She is a handsome 
 woman, large, and of a fine, high colour; her manner 
 
CHAPTER TWO 17 
 
 is gaily dictatorial, and she and I got along very 
 well together. 
 
 Probably she appreciated my going to some pains 
 with the clothes I wore when I went to their house. 
 My visits there were infrequent, not because I 
 had any fear of wearing out a welcome, but on 
 account of Miss Elizabeth's "day," when I could 
 see nothing of George for the crowd of lionising 
 women and time-wasters about him. Her "day" 
 was a dread of mine; I could seldom remember 
 which day it was, and when I did she had a way 
 of shifting it so that I was fatally sure to run into 
 it — to my misery, for, beginning with those pri- 
 mordial indignities suffered in youth, when I was 
 scrubbed with a handkerchief outside the parlour 
 door as a preliminary to polite usages, my child- 
 hood's, manhood's prayer has been: From all such 
 days. Good Lord, deliver me! 
 
 It was George's habit to come much oftener 
 to see me. He always really liked the sort of so- 
 ciety his sister had brought about him; but now 
 and then there were intervals when it wore on 
 him a little, I think. Sometimes he came for me 
 in his automobile and we would make a mild ex- 
 cursion to breakfast in the country; and that is 
 
18 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 what happened one morning about three weeks 
 after the day when we had sought pure air in the 
 Luxembourg gardens. 
 
 We drove out through the Bois and by Suresnes, 
 striking into a roundabout road to Versailles be- 
 yond St. Cloud. It was June, a dustless and balmy 
 noon, the air thinly gilded by a faint haze, and 
 I know few things pleasanter than that road on 
 a fair day of the early summer and no sweeter 
 way to course it than in an open car; though I 
 must not be giving myself out for a "motorist"' 
 — ^I have not even the right cap. I am usually 
 nervous in big machines, too; but Ward has never 
 caught the speed mania and holds a strange power 
 over his chauffeur; so we rolled along peacefully, not 
 madly, and smoked (like the car) in hasteless content. 
 
 "After all," said George, with a placid wave of 
 the hand, "I sometimes wish that the landscape 
 had called me. You outdoor men have all the 
 health and pleasure of living in the open, and as 
 for the work — oh! you fellows think you work, but 
 you don't know what it means." 
 
 "No?" I said, and smiled as I always meanly 
 do when George "talks art." He was silent for a 
 few moments and then said irritably, 
 
CHAPTER TWO 19 
 
 "Well, at least you can't deny that the academic 
 crowd can draw!" 
 
 Never having denied it, though he had challenged 
 me in the same way perhaps a thousand times, 
 I refused to deny it now; whereupon he returned 
 to his theme: "Landscape is about as simple as a 
 stage fight; two up, two down, cross and repeat. 
 Take that ahead of us. Could anything be simpler 
 to paint?" 
 
 He indicated the white road running before us 
 between open fields to a curve, where it descended 
 to pass beneath an old stone culvert. Beyond, 
 stood a thick grove with a clear sky flickering 
 among the branches. An old peasant woman was 
 pushing a heavy cart round the curve, a scarlet 
 handkerchief knotted about her head. 
 
 "You think it's easy?" I asked. 
 
 "Easy! Two hours ought to do it as well as 
 it could be done — at least, the way you fellows 
 do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the 
 handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash — 
 there's your road." He paddled the air with the 
 imaginary brush as though painting the side of 
 a bam. "Swish, swash — ^there go your fields and 
 your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your 
 
20 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your 
 dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all 
 complete. Squirt the edges of your foliage in with 
 a blow-pipe. Throw a cup of tea over the whole, 
 and there's your haze. Call it 'The Golden Road,' 
 or 'The Bath of Sunlight,' or 'Quiet Noon.' Then 
 you'll probably get a criticism beg'nning, 'Few in- 
 deed have more intangibly detained upon canvas 
 so poetic a quality of sentiment as this sterling 
 landscapist, who in Number 136 has most ethereally 
 expressed the profound silence of evening on an 
 English moor. The solemn hush, the brooding 
 quiet, the homeward ploughman ' " 
 
 He was interrupted by an outrageous uproar, 
 the grisly scream of a siren and the cannonade of 
 a powerful exhaust, as a great white touring-car 
 swung round us from behind at a speed that sick- 
 ened me to see, and, snorting thunder, passed us 
 "as if we had been standing still." 
 
 It hurtled like a comet down the curve and we 
 were instantly choking in its swirling tail of dust. 
 
 "Seventy miles an hour!" gasped George, swab- 
 bing at his eyes. "Those are the fellows that get 
 into the pa — Oh, Lord! There they go!" 
 
 Slanging out to pass us and then sweeping in 
 
CHAPTER TWO 21 
 
 upon the reverse curve to clear the narrow arch 
 of the culvert were too much for the white car; 
 and through the dust we saw it rock dangerously. 
 In the middle of the road, ten feet from the cul- 
 vert, the old woman struggled frantically to get her 
 cart out of the way. The howl of the siren frightened 
 her perhaps, for she lost her head and went to the 
 wrong side. Then the shriek of the machine drowned 
 the human scream as the automobile struck. 
 
 The shock of contact was muffled. But the mass 
 of machinery hoisted itself in the air as if it had 
 a life of its own and had been stung into sudden 
 madness. It was horrible to see, and so grotesque 
 that a long-forgotten memory of my boyhood leaped 
 instantaneously into my mind, a recollection of the 
 evolutions performed by a Newfoundland dog that 
 rooted under a board walk and found a hive of 
 wild bees. 
 
 The great machine left the road for the fields 
 on the right, reared, fell, leaped against the stone 
 side of the culvert, apparently trying to climb 
 it, stood straight on end, whirled backward in a 
 half-somersault, crashed over on its side, flashed 
 with flame and explosion, and lay hidden under a 
 cloud of dust and smoke. 
 
22 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 Ward's driver slammed down his accelerator, 
 sent us spinning round the curve, and the next 
 moment, throwing on his brakes, halted sharply 
 at the culvert. 
 
 The fabric of the road was so torn and distorted 
 one might have thought a steam dredge had begun 
 work there, but the fragments of wreckage were 
 oddly isolated and inconspicuous. The peasant's 
 cart, tossed into a clump of weeds, rested on its 
 side, the spokes of a rimless wheel slowly revolving 
 on the hub uppermost. Some tools were strewn in 
 a semi-circular trail in the dust; a pair of smashed 
 goggles crunched beneath my foot as I sprang out 
 of Ward's car, and a big brass lamp had fallen 
 in the middle of the road, crumpled like waste 
 paper. Beside it lay a gold rouge box. 
 
 The old woman had somehow saved herself — 
 or perhaps her saint had helped her — ^for she was 
 sitting ia the grass by the roadside, wailing hysteri- 
 cally and quite unhurt. The body of a man lay 
 in a heap beneath the stone archway, and from 
 his clothes I guessed that he had been the driver 
 of the white car. I say "had been" because there 
 were reasons for needing no second glance to com- 
 prehend that the man was dead. Nevertheless, I 
 
CHAPTER TWO 23 
 
 knelt beside him and placed my hand upon his 
 breast to see if his heart still beat. Afterward I 
 concluded that I did this because I had seen it 
 done upon the stage, or had read of it in stories; 
 and even at the time I realised that it was a silly 
 thing for me to be doing. 
 
 Ward, meanwhile, proved more practical. He 
 was dragging a woman out of the suffocating smoke 
 and dust that shrouded the wreck, and after a 
 moment I went to help him carry her into the 
 fresh air, where George put his coat under her head. 
 Her hat had been forced forward over her face 
 and held there by the twisting of a system of veils 
 she wore; and we had some diflBculty in unravelling 
 this; but she was very much alive, as a series of 
 muffled imprecations testified, leading us to con- 
 clude that her sufferings were more profoundly 
 of rage than of pain. Finally she pushed our hands 
 angrily aside and completed the untanglement her- 
 self, revealing the scratched and smeared face of 
 Mariana, the dancer. 
 
 "Cornichon! Chameau! Fond du bainl" she 
 gasped, tears of anger starting from her eyes. She 
 tried to rise before we could help her, but dropped 
 back with a scream. 
 
24 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "Oh, the pain!" she cried. "That imbecile! If 
 he has let me break my leg! A pretty dancer I 
 should be! I hope he is killed." 
 
 One of the singularities of motoring on the main- 
 travelled roads near Paris is the prevalence of cars 
 containing physicians and surgeons. Whether it 
 be testimony to the opportunism, to the sporting 
 proclivities, or to the prosperity of gentlemen of 
 those professions, I do not know, but it is a fact 
 that I have never heard of an accident (and in 
 the season there is an accident every day) on one 
 of these roads when a doctor in an automobile was 
 not almost immediately a chance arrival, and for- 
 tunately our case offered no exception to this rule. 
 Another automobile had already come up and the 
 occupants were hastily alighting. Ward shouted 
 to the foremost to go for a doctor. 
 
 "I am a doctor," the man answered, advancing 
 and kneeling quickly by the dancer. "And you — 
 you may be of help yonder." 
 
 We turned toward the ruined car where Ward's 
 driver was shouting for us. 
 
 "What is it?" called Ward as we ran toward him. 
 
 "Monsieur," he replied, "there is some one under 
 the tonneau here!" 
 
CHAPTER TWO 25 
 
 The smoke had cleared a little, though a rivulet 
 of burning gasoline ran from the wreck to a pool 
 of flame it was feeding in the road. The front 
 cushions and woodwork had caught fire and a 
 couple of labourers, panting with the run across the 
 fields, were vainly belabouring the flames with 
 brushwood. From beneath the overturned tonneau 
 projected the lower part of a man's leg, clad in a 
 brown puttee and a russet shoe. Ward's driver 
 had brought his tools; had jacked up the car as 
 high as possible; but was still unable to release 
 the imprisoned body. 
 
 "I have seized that foot and pulled with all 
 my strength," he said, "and I cannot make him 
 move one centimetre. It is necessary that as many 
 people as possible lay hold of the car on the side 
 away from the fire and all lift together. Yes," 
 he added, "and very soon!" 
 
 Some carters had come from the road and one 
 of them lay full length on the ground peering be- 
 neath the wreck. "It is the head of monsieur," 
 explained this one; "it is the head of monsieur 
 which is fastened under there." 
 
 "Eh, but you are wiser than Clemenceau!" said 
 the chauffeur. "Get up, my ancient, and you there. 
 
26 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 with the brushwood, let the fire go for a moment 
 and help, when I say the word. And you, mon- 
 sieur," he turned to Ward, "if you please, will you 
 pull with me upon the ankle here at the right 
 moment?" 
 
 The carters, the labourers, the men from the 
 other automobile, and I laid hold of the car together. 
 
 "Now, then, messieurs, lift!" 
 
 Stifled with the gasoline smoke, we obeyed. One 
 or two hands were scorched and our eyes smarted 
 blindingly, but we gave a mighty heave, and felt 
 the car rising. 
 
 tVell done!" cried the chauffeur. "Well done! 
 But a little more! The smallest fraction — ^ha! 
 It is finished, messieurs!" 
 
 We staggered back, coughing and wiping our 
 eyes. For a minute or two I could not see at all, 
 and was busy with a handkerchief. 
 
 Ward laid his hand on my shoulder. 
 
 "Do you know who it is?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes, of course," I answered. 
 
 When I could see again, I found that I was look- 
 ing almost straight down into the upturned face 
 of Larrabee Harman, and I cannot better express 
 what this man had come to be, and what the degrada- 
 
CHAPTER TWO 27 
 
 tion of his life had written upon him, than by say- 
 ing that the dreadful thing I looked upon now was 
 no more horrible a sight than the face I had seen, 
 fresh from the valet and smiling in ugly pride at 
 the starers, as he passed the terrace of Larue on 
 the day before the Grand Prix. 
 
 We helped to carry him to the doctor's car, and 
 to lift the dancer into Ward's, and to get both of 
 them out again at the hospital at Versailles, where 
 they were taken. Then, with no need to ask each 
 other if we should abandon our plan to breakfast 
 in the country, we turned toward Paris, and rolled 
 along almost to the barriers in silence. 
 
 "Did it seem to you," said George finally, "that 
 a man so frightfully injured could have any chance 
 of getting well?" 
 
 "No," I answered. "I thought he was dying 
 as we carried him into the hospital." 
 
 "So did I. The top of his head seemed all crushed 
 in — ^Whew!" He broke ofiF, shivering, and wiped 
 his brow. After a pause he added thoughtfully, 
 "It will be a great thing for Louise." 
 
 Louise was the name of his second cousin, the 
 ^1 who had done battle with all her family and 
 
28 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 then run away f rona them to be Larrabee Harman's 
 wife. Remembering the stir that her application 
 for divorce had made, I did not understand how 
 Harman's death could benefit her, unless George 
 had some reason to believe that he had made a 
 will in her favour. However, the remark had been 
 made more to himself than to me and I did not 
 respond. 
 
 The morning papers flared once more with the 
 name of Larrabee Harman, and we read that there 
 was "no hope of his surviving." Ironic phrase! 
 There was not a soul on earth that day who could 
 have hoped for his recovery, or who — for his sake 
 — cared two straws whether he lived or died. And 
 the dancer had been right; one of her legs was 
 badly broken: she would never dance again. 
 
 Evening papers reported that Harman was "lin- 
 gering." He was lingering the next day. He was 
 lingering the next week, and the end of a month 
 saw him still 'lingering." Then I went down to 
 Capri, where — ^for he had been after all the merest 
 episode to me — ^I was pleased to forget all about him. 
 
CHAPTER m 
 
 A GREAT many people keep their friends 
 in mind by writing to them, but more 
 do not; and Ward and I belong to the 
 majority. After my departure from Paris I had 
 but one missive from him, a short note, written at 
 the request of his sister, asking me to be on the 
 lookout for Italian earrings, to add to her collec- 
 tion of old jewels. So, from time to time, I sent 
 her what I could find about Capri or in Naples, 
 and she responded with neat little letters of ac- 
 knowledgment . 
 
 Two years I stayed on Capri, eating the lotus 
 which grows on that happy island, and painting 
 very little — only enough, indeed, to be remembered 
 at the Salon and not so much as knowing how 
 kindly or unkindly they hung my pictures there. 
 But even on Capri, people sometimes hear the 
 call of Paris and wish to be in that unending move- 
 ment: to hear the multitudinous rumble, to watch 
 the procession from a cafe terrace and to dine at 
 Foyot's. So there came at last a fine day when I, 
 
 29 
 
30 THE GUEST OF QUESNEY 
 
 knowing that the horse-chestnuts were in bloom 
 along the Champs Elysees, threw my rope-soled 
 shoes to a beggar, packed a rusty trunk, and was 
 off for the banks of the Seine. 
 
 My arrival — ^just the drive from the Gare de 
 Lyon to my studio — was like the shock of surf 
 on a bather's breast. 
 
 The stir and life, the cheerful energy of the 
 streets, put stir and life and cheerful energy into 
 me. I felt the itch to work again, to be at it, at it 
 in earnest — ^to lose no hour of daylight, and to 
 paint better than I had painted! 
 
 Paris having given me this impetus, I dared not 
 tempt her further, nor allow the edge of my eager- 
 ness time to blunt; therefore, at the end of a fort- 
 night, I went over into Normandy and deposited 
 that rusty trunk of mine in a corner of the summer 
 pavilion in the courtyard of Madame Brossard's 
 inn, Les Trois Pigeons, in a woodland neighbor- 
 hood that is there. Here I had painted through 
 a prolific summer of my youth, and I was glad to 
 find — as I had hoped — ^nothing changed; for the 
 place was dear to me. Madame Brossard (dark, 
 thin, demure as of yore, a fine-looking woman with 
 a fine manner and much the flavour of old Norman 
 
CHAPTER THREE SI 
 
 portraits) gave me a pleasant welcome, remember- 
 ing me readily but without surprise, while Amedee, 
 the antique servitor, cackled over me and was as 
 proud of my advent as if I had been a new egg and 
 he had laid me. The simile is grotesque; but Amedee 
 is the most henlike waiter in France. 
 
 He is a white-haired, fat old fellow, always well- 
 shaved; as neat as a billiard-ball. In the daytime, 
 when he is partly porter, he wears a black tie, a 
 gray waistcoat broadly striped with scarlet, and, 
 from waist to feet, a white apron like a skirt, and 
 so competently encircling that his trousers are of 
 mere conventionality and no real necessity; but 
 after six o'clock (becoming altogether a maltre 
 d'h6tel) he is clad as any other formal gentleman. 
 At all times he wears a fresh table-cloth over his 
 arm, keeping an exaggerated pile of them ready 
 at hand on a ledge in one of the little bowers of 
 the courtyard, so that he may never be shamed 
 by getting caught without one. 
 
 His conception of life is that all worthy persons 
 were created as receptacles for food and drink; and 
 five minutes after my arrival he had me seated (in 
 spite of some meek protests) in a wicker chair with 
 a pitcher of the right Three Pigeons cider on the 
 
32 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 table before me, while he subtly dictated what 
 manner of dinner I should eat. For this interval 
 Amedee's exuburance was sobered and his bandinage 
 dismissed as being mere garniture, the questions 
 now before us concerning grave and inward matters. 
 His suggestions were deferential but insistent; his 
 manner was that of a prime minister who goes 
 through the form of convincing the sovereign. 
 He greeted each of his own decisions with a very 
 loud "Bienl" as if startled by the brilliancy of my 
 selections, and, the menu being concluded, exploded 
 a whole volley of "Biens" and set off violently to 
 instruct old Gaston, the cook. 
 
 That is Amedee's way; he always starts violently 
 for anywhere he means to go. He is a little lame 
 and his progress more or less sidelong, but if you 
 call him, or new guests arrive at the inn, or he 
 receives an order from Madame Brossard, he gives 
 the effect of running by a sudden movement of 
 the whole body like that of a man about to run, 
 and moves off using the gestures of a man who 
 is running; after which he proceeds to his destina- 
 tion at an exquisite leisure. Remembering this old 
 habit of his, it was with joy that I noted his head- 
 long departure. Some ten feet of his progress ac- 
 
CHAPTER THREE 33 
 
 complished, lie halted (for no purpose but to scratch 
 his head the more luxuriously); next, strayed from 
 the path to contemplate a rose-bush, and, selecting 
 a leaf with careful deliberation, placed it in his 
 miouth and continued meditatively upon liis way 
 to the kitchen. 
 
 I chuckled within me; it was good to be back at 
 Madame Brossard's. 
 
 The courtyard was more a garden; bright with 
 rows of flowers in formal little beds and blossom- 
 ing up from big green tubs, from red jars, and 
 also from two brightly painted wheel-barrows. A 
 long arbour offered a shelter of vines for those who 
 might choose to dine, breakfast, or lounge beneath, 
 and, here and there among the shrubberies, you 
 might come upon a latticed bower, thatched with 
 straw. My own pavilion (half bedroom, half 
 studio) was set in the midst of all and had a small 
 porch of its own with a rjch curtain of climbing 
 honeysuckle for a screen from the rest of the 
 courtyard. 
 
 The inn itself is gray with age, the roof sagging 
 pleasantly here and there; and an old wooden gal- 
 lery runs the length of each wing, the guest-cham- 
 bers of the upper story opening upon it like the 
 
84 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 deck-rooms of a steamer, with boxes of tulips and 
 hyacinths along the gallery railings and window 
 ledges for the gayest of border-lines. 
 
 Beyond the great open archway, which gives 
 entrance to the courtyard, lies the quiet country 
 road; passing this, my eyes followed the wide 
 sweep of poppy-sprinkled fields to a line of low 
 green hills; and there was the edge of the forest 
 sheltering those woodland interiors which I had 
 long ago tried to paint, and where I should be at 
 work to-morrow. 
 
 In the course of time, and well within the bright 
 twilight, Amedee spread the crisp white cloth and 
 served me at a table on my pavilion porch. He 
 feigned anxiety lest I should find certain dishes 
 (those which he knew were most delectable) not 
 to my taste, but was obviously so distended with 
 fatuous pride over the whole meal that it became 
 a temptation to denounce at least some trifling 
 sauce or garnishment; nevertheless, so niuch men- 
 dacity proved beyond me and I spared him and my 
 own conscience. This puffed-uppedness of his was 
 to be observed only in his expression of manner, 
 for during the consumption of food it was his worthy 
 custom to practise a ceremonious, nay, a reverential. 
 
CHAPTER THREE 35 
 
 hush, and he never offered (or approved) conver- 
 sation until he had prepared the salad. That 
 accomplished, however, and the water bubbling in 
 the coffee machine, he readily favoured me with 
 a discourse on the decline in glory of Les Trois 
 Pigeons. 
 
 "Monsieur, it is the automobiles; they have done 
 it. Formerly, as when monsieur was here, the 
 painters came from Paris. They would come in 
 the spring and would stay until the autumn rains. 
 What busy times and what drolleries! Ah, it was 
 gay in those days! Monsieur remembers well. 
 Ha, Ha! But now, I think, the automobiles have 
 frightened away the painters; at least they do not 
 come any more. And the automobiles themselves; 
 they come sometimes for lunch, a few, but they 
 love better the seashore, and we are just close 
 enough to be too far away. Those automobiles, 
 they love the big new hotels and the casinos with 
 roulette. They eat hastily, gulp down a liqueur, 
 and 'pouf! off they rush for TrouviUe, for Houlgate 
 — ^for heaven knows where! And even the automo- 
 biles do not come so frequenlty as they did. Our 
 road used to be the best from Lisieux to Beuzeval, 
 but now the maps recommend another. Th<^y pass 
 
36 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 us by, and yet yonder — only a few kilometres — ^is 
 the coast with its thousands. We are near the 
 world but out of it, monsieur." 
 
 He poured my coffee; dropped a lump of sugar 
 from the tongs with a benevolent gesture — "One 
 lump: always the same. Monsieur sees that I re- 
 member well, ha.?"' — and the twilight having fallen, 
 he lit two orange-shaded candles and my cigar 
 with the same match. The night was so quiet 
 that the candle-lights burned as steadily as flames 
 in a globe, yet the air was spiced with a cool fra- 
 grance, and through the honeysuckle leaves above 
 me I saw, as I leaned back in my wicker chair, a 
 glimmer of kindly stars. 
 
 "Very comfortably out of the world, Amedee," 
 I said. "It seems to me I have it all to myself." 
 
 "Unhappily, yes!" he exclaimed; then excused 
 himself, chuckling. "I should have said that we 
 shoidd be happier if we had many like monsieur. 
 But it is early in the season to despair. Then, 
 too, our best suite is already engaged." 
 
 "By whom?" 
 
 "Two men of science who arrive next week. 
 One is a great man. Madame Brossard is pleased 
 that he is coming to Les Trots Pigeons, but I tell 
 
CHAPTER THREE 37 
 
 her it is only natural. He comes now for the first 
 time because he hkes the quiet, but he will come 
 again, like monsieur, because he has been here 
 before. That is what I always say: 'Any one who 
 has been here must come again.' The problem is 
 only to get them to come the first time. Truly!" 
 
 "Who is the great man, Amedee.''" 
 
 "Ah! A distinguished professor of science. Truly." 
 
 "What science?" 
 
 "I do not know. But he is a member of the 
 Institute. Monsieur must have heard of that great 
 Professor Keredec?" 
 
 "The name is known. Who is the other?" 
 
 "A friend of his. I do not know. All the upper 
 floor of the east wing they have taken — the Grande 
 Suite — those two and their valet-de-chambre. That 
 is truly the way in modem times — the philosophers 
 are rich men." 
 
 "Yes," I sighed. "Only the painters are poor 
 nowadays." 
 
 "Ha, ha, monsieur!" Amedee laughed cunningly. 
 
 "It was always easy to see that monsieur only 
 amuses himself with his painting." 
 
 "Thank you, Amedee," I responded. "I have 
 amused other people with it too, I fear." 
 
38 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "Oh, without doubt!" he agreed graciously, as 
 he folded the cloth. I have always tried to believe 
 that it was not so much my pictxires as the fact 
 that I paid my bills the day they were presented 
 which convinced everybody about Les Trois Pig- 
 eons that I was an amateur. But I never became 
 happily enough settled in this opinion to risk press- 
 ing an investigation; and it was a relief that Amedee 
 changed the subject. 
 
 "Monsieur remembers the Ch3,teau de Quesnay 
 — at the crest of the hill on the road north of 
 Dives?" 
 
 "I remember." 
 
 "It is occupied this season by some rich 
 Americans." 
 
 "How do you know they are rich?" 
 
 "Dieu de Dieul" The old fellow appealed to 
 heaven. "But they are Americans!" 
 
 "And therefore millionaires. Perfectly, Amedee." 
 
 "Perfectly, monsieur. Perhaps monsieur knows 
 them." 
 
 "Yes, I know them." 
 
 "Truly!" He aflfected dejection. "And poor 
 Madame Brossard thought monsieur had returned 
 to our old hotel because he liked it, and remembered 
 
CHAPTER THREE 39 
 
 our wine of Beaune and the good beds and old 
 Gaston's cooking!" 
 
 "Do not weep, Amedee," I said. "I have come 
 to paint; not because I know the people who have 
 taken Quesnay." And I added: "I may not see 
 them at all." 
 
 In truth I thought that very probable. Miss 
 Elizabeth had mentioned in one of her notes that 
 Ward had leased Quesnay, but I had not sought 
 quarters at Les Trois Pigeons because it stood 
 within walking distance of the chS.teau. In my 
 industrious frame of mind that circumstance seemed 
 almost a drawback. Miss Elizabeth, ever hos- 
 pitable to those whom she noticed at all, would 
 be doubly so in the country, as people always are; 
 and I wanted all my time to myself — ^no very 
 selfish wish since my time was not conceivably of 
 value to any one else. I thought it wise to leave 
 any encounter with the lady to chance, and as 
 the by-paths of the country-side were many and 
 intricate, I intended, without ungallantry, to render 
 the chance remote. George himself had just sailed 
 on a business trip to America, as I knew from her 
 last missive; and until his return, I should put 
 in all my time at painting and nothing else, though 
 
40 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 I liked his sister, as I have said, and thought of 
 her — often. 
 
 Amedee doubted my sincerity, however, for he 
 laughed incredulously. 
 
 "Eh, well, monsieur enjoys saying it!" 
 
 "Certainly. It is a pleasure to say. what one 
 means." 
 
 "But monsieur could not mean it. Monsieur 
 "will call at thie chS,teau in the morning" — ^the com- 
 placent varlet prophesied — "as early as it will be 
 polite. I am sure of that. Monsieur is not at all 
 an old man; no, not yet! Even if he were, aha! 
 no one could possess the friendship of that won- 
 derful Madame d'Armand and remain away from 
 the chS,teau." 
 
 "Madame d'Armand?" I said. "That is not the 
 name. You mean Mademoiselle Ward." 
 
 "No, no!" He shook his head and his fat cheeks 
 bulged with a smile which I believe he intended 
 to express a respectful roguishness. "Mademoiselle 
 Ward" (he pronounced it "Ware") "is magnifi- 
 cent; every one must fly to obey when she opens 
 her mouth. If she did not like the ocean there 
 below the ch&teau, the ocean would have to move! 
 It needs only a glance to perceive that Made- 
 
CHAPTER THREE 41 
 
 moiselle Ward is a great lady — ^but Madame d'Ar- 
 mand! Aha!" He rolled his round eyes to an 
 effect of unspeakable admiration, and with a gesture 
 indicated that he would have kissed his hand to 
 the stars, had that been properly reverential to 
 Madame d'Armand. "But monsieur knows very 
 well for himself!" 
 
 "Monsieur knows that you are very confusing — 
 even for a mattre d'h6tel. We were speaking of 
 the present chatelaine of Quesnay, Mademoiselle 
 Ward. I have never heard of Madame d'Armand." 
 
 "Monsieur is serious?" 
 
 "Truly!" I answered, making bold to quote his 
 shibboleth. 
 
 "Then monsieur has truly much to live for. 
 Truly!" he chuckled openly, convinced that he 
 had obtained a marked advantage in a conflict 
 of wits, shaking his big head from side to side with 
 an exasperating air of knowingness. "Ah, truly! 
 When that lady drives by, some day, in the car- 
 riage from the chateau — eh? Then monsieur wil! 
 see how much he has to live for. Truly, truly, 
 truly!" 
 
 He had cleared the table, and now, with a final 
 explosion of the word which gave him such im- 
 
42 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 moderate satisfaction, he lifted the tray and made 
 one of his precipitate departures. 
 
 "Amedee," I said, as he slackened down to his 
 sidelong leisure. 
 
 "Monsieur?" 
 
 "Who is Madame d'Armand?" 
 
 "A guest of Mademoiselle Ward at Quesnay. 
 In fact, she is in charge of the ch&teau, since Made- 
 moiselle Ward is, for the time, away." 
 
 "Is she a Frenchwoman?" 
 
 "It seems not. In fact, she is an American, 
 though she dresses with so much of taste. Ah, 
 Madame Brossard admits it, and Madame Brossard 
 knows the art of dressing, for she spends a week 
 of every winter in Rouen — and besides there is 
 Trouville itself only some kilometres distant. Ma- 
 dame Brossard says that Mademoiselle Ward dresses 
 with richness and splendour and Madame d'Armand 
 with economy, but beauty. Those were the words 
 used by Madame Brossard. Truly." 
 
 "Madame d'Armand's name is French," I ob- 
 served. 
 
 "Yes, that is true," said Amed6e thoughtfully. 
 "No one can deny it; it is a French name." He 
 rested the tray upon a stump near by and scratched 
 
CHAPTER THREE - 43 
 
 his head. "I do not understand how that can be," 
 he continued slowly. "Jean Ferret, who is chief 
 gardener at the chS,teau, is an acquaintance of 
 mine. We sometimes have a cup of cider at Pere 
 Baudry's, a kilometre down the road from here; 
 and Jean Ferret has told me that she is an American. 
 And yet, as you say, monsieur, the name is French. 
 Perhaps she is French after all." 
 
 "I believe," said I, 'that if I struggled a few 
 days over this puzzle, I might come to the con- 
 clusion that Madame d'Armand is an American 
 lady who has married a Frenchman." 
 
 The old man uttered an exclamation of triumph. 
 
 "Ha! without doubt! Truly she must be an 
 American lady who has married a Frenchman. 
 Monsieur has already solved the puzzle. Truly, 
 truly!" And he trulied himself across the darkness, 
 to emerge in the light of the open door of the kitchen 
 with the word still rumbling in his throat. 
 
 Now for a time there came the clinking of dishes, 
 sounds as of pans and kettles being scoured, the 
 rolling gutturals of old Gaston, the cook, and the 
 treble pipings of young "Glouglou," his grandchild 
 and scullion. After a while the oblong of light 
 from the kitchen door disappeared; the voices 
 
44 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 departed; the stillness of the dark descended, and 
 with it that unreasonable sense of pathos which 
 night in the country brings to the heart of a wan- 
 derer. Then, out of the lonely silence, there issued 
 a strange, incongruous sound as an execrable voice 
 essayed to produce the semblance of an air odiously 
 familiar about the streets of Paris some three years 
 past, and I became aware of a smell of some dread- 
 ful thing burning. Beneath the arbour I perceived 
 a glowing spark which seemed to bear a certain 
 relation to an oval whitish patch suggesting the 
 front of a shirt. It was Am6d6e, at ease, smoking 
 his cigarette after the day's work and convinced 
 that he was singing. 
 
 "Pour qu'ffinisse 
 Mon service 
 Au Tonkin je suis parti 
 
 Ah! quel beau pays, mesdames! 
 C'est I'paradis des p'tites femmesl" 
 
 I rose from the chair on my little porch, to go 
 to bed; but I was reminded of something, and 
 called to him. 
 
 "Monsieur?" his voice came briskly. 
 
CHAPTER THREE 45 
 
 "How often do you see your friend, Jean Ferret, 
 the gardener of Quesnay?" 
 
 "Frequently, monsieur. To-morrow morning I 
 could easily carry a message if " 
 
 "That is precisely what I do not wish. And 
 you may as well not mention me at all when you 
 meet him." 
 
 "It is understood. Perfectly." 
 
 "If it is well imderstood, there will be a beau- 
 tiful present for a good maitre d'hdtel some day." 
 
 "Thank you, monsieur." 
 
 "Good night, Amedee." 
 
 "Good night, monsieur." 
 
 Falling to sleep has always been an intricate 
 matter with me: I liken it to a nightly adventure 
 in an enchanted palace. Weary-limbed and with 
 burning eyelids, after long waiting in the outer 
 court of wakefulness, I enter a dim, cool ante- 
 chamber where the heavy garment of the body is 
 left behind and where, perhaps, some acquaintance 
 or friend greets me with a familiar speech or a bit 
 of nonsense — or an imseen orchestra may play 
 music that I know. Prom here I go iato a spacious 
 apartment where the air and hght are of a fine 
 
46 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 clarity, for it is the hall of revelations, and in it 
 the secrets of secrets are told, mysteries are resolved, 
 perplexities cleared up, and sometimes I learn what 
 to do about a picture that has bothered me. This 
 is where I would linger, for beyond it I walk among 
 crowding fantasies, delusions, terrors and shame, to 
 a curtain of darkness where they take my memory 
 from me, and I know nothing of my own ad- 
 ventures until I am pushed out of a secret door 
 into the morning sunlight. Amedee was the ac- 
 quaintance who met me in the antechamber to-night. 
 He remarked that Madame d'Armand was the 
 most beautiful woman in the world, and vanished. 
 And in the hall of revelations I thought that I 
 foimd a statue of her — ^but it was veiled. I wished 
 to remove the veil, but a passing stranger stopped 
 and told me laughingly that the veil was all that 
 would ever be revealed of her to me — of her, or 
 any other woman! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 1WAS up with the birds in the morning; had 
 my breakfast with them — a very drowsy-eyed 
 Amedee assisting — and made off for the forest 
 to get the sunrise through the branches, a pack 
 on my back and three sandwiches for lunch in my 
 pocket. I returned only with the failing light of 
 evening, cheerfully tired and ready for a fine dinner 
 and an early bed, both of which the good inn sup- 
 plied. It was my daily programme; a healthy life 
 "far from the world," as Amedee said, and I was 
 sorry when the serpent entered and disturbed it, 
 though he was my own. He is a pet of mine; has 
 been with me since my childhood. He leaves me 
 when I live alone, for he loves company, but returns 
 whenever my kind are about me. There are many 
 names for snakes of his breed, but, to deal char- 
 itably with myself, I call mine Interest-In-Other- 
 People's-Affairs. 
 
 One evening I returned to find a big van from 
 Dives, the nearest railway station, drawn up in the 
 courtyard at the foot of the stairs leading to the 
 
 47 
 
48 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 gallery, and all of the people of the inn, from Ma- 
 dame Brossard (who directed) to Glouglou (who 
 madly attempted the heaviest pieces), busily in- 
 stalling trunks, bags, and packing-cases in the suite 
 engaged for the "great man of science" on the 
 second floor of the east wing of the building. Neither 
 the great man nor his companion was to be seen, 
 however, both having retired to their rooms im- 
 mediately upon their arrival — so Amedee informed 
 me, as he wiped his brow after staggering up the 
 steps under a load of books wrapped in sacking. 
 
 I made my evening ablutions removing a Joseph's 
 coat of dust and paint; and came forth from my 
 pavilion, hoping that Professor Keredec and his 
 friend would not mind eating in the same garden 
 with a man in a corduroy jacket and knickerbockers; 
 but the gentlemen continued invisible to the public 
 eye, and mine was the only table set for dinner 
 in the garden. Up-stairs the curtains were care- 
 fully drawn across all the windows of the east wing; 
 little leaks of orange, here and there, betraying the 
 lights within. Glouglou, bearing a tray of covered 
 dishes, was just entering the salon of the "Grande 
 Suite," and the door closed quickly after him. 
 
 "It is to be supposed that Professor Keredec and 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 49 
 
 his friend are fatigued with their journey from 
 Paris?" I began, a Httle later. 
 
 "Monsieur, they did not seem fatigued," said 
 Amedee. 
 
 "But they dine in their own rooms to-night." 
 
 "Every night, monsieur. It is the order of Pro- 
 fessor Keredec. And with their own valet-de- 
 chambre to serve them. Eh.''" He poured my 
 coffee solemnly. "That is mysterious, to say the 
 least, isn't it?" 
 
 "To say the very least," I agreed. 
 
 "Monsieur the professor is a man of secrets, 
 it appears," continued Amedee. "When he wrote 
 to Madame Brossard engaging his rooms, he in- 
 structed her to be careful that none of us should 
 mention even his name; and to-day when he came, 
 he spoke of his anxiety on that point." 
 
 "But you did mention it." 
 
 "To whom, monsieur?" asked the old fellow 
 blankly. 
 
 "To me." 
 
 "But I told him I had not," said Amedee placidly. 
 "It is the same thing." 
 
 "I wonder," I began, struck by a sudden thought, 
 "if it will prove quite the same thing in my own 
 
50 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 case. I suppose you have not mentioned the cir- 
 cumstance of my being here to your friend, Jean 
 Ferret of Quesnay?" 
 
 He looked at me reproachfully. "Has monsieur 
 been troubled by the people of the chS.teau?" 
 
 " 'Troubled' by them?" 
 
 "Have they come to seek out monsieur and 
 disturb him? Have they done anything whatever 
 to show that they have heard monsieur is here?" 
 
 "No, certainly they haven't," I was obUged to 
 retract at once. "I beg your pardon, Amdd^e." 
 
 "Ah, monsieur!" He made a deprecatory bow 
 (which plunged me still deeper in shame), struck 
 a match, and oflPered a light for my cigar with 
 a forgiving hand. "All the same," he pursued, "it 
 seems very mysterious — this Keredec affair!" 
 
 "To comprehend a great man, Am6dee," I said, 
 "is the next thing to sharing his greatness." 
 
 He blinked slightly, pondered a moment upon 
 this sententious drivel, then very properly ignored 
 it, reverting to his puzzle. 
 
 "But is it not incomprehensible that people should 
 eat indoors this fine weather?" 
 
 I admitted that it was. I knew very well how 
 hot and stuffy the salon of Madame Brossard's 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 51 
 
 "Grande Suite" must be, while the garden was 
 fragrant in the warm, dry night, and the outdoor 
 air like a gentle tonic. Nevertheless, Professor 
 Keredec and his friend preferred the salon. 
 
 When a man is leading a very quiet and isolated 
 life, it is inconceivable what trifles will occupy and 
 concentrate his attention. The smaller the com- 
 munity the more blowzy with gossip you are siu-e 
 to find it; and I have little doubt that when Friday 
 learned enough English, one of the first things Crusoe 
 did was to tell him some scandal about the goat. 
 Thus, though I treated the "Keredec affair" with 
 a seeming airiness to Amedee, I cunningly drew 
 the faithful rascal out, and fed my curiosity upon 
 his own (which, as time went on and the mystery 
 deepened, seemed likely to burst him), untU, vir- 
 tually, I was receiving, every evening at dinner, a 
 detailed report of the day's doings of Professor 
 Keredec and his companion. 
 
 The reports were voluminous, the details few. 
 The two gentlemen, as Amedee would relate, spent 
 their forfenoons over books and writing in their 
 rooms. Professor Keredec's voice could often be 
 heard in every part of the inn; at times holding 
 
52 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 forth with such protracted vehemence that only one 
 explanation would suffice: the learned man was 
 delivering a lecttire to his companion. 
 
 "Say then!" exclaimed Amedee — "what king of 
 madness is that? To make orations for only one 
 auditor !" 
 
 He brushed away my suggestion that the auditor 
 might be a stenographer to whom the professor 
 was dictating chapters for a new book. The rela- 
 tion between the two men, he contended, was more 
 like that between teacher and pupil. "But a pupil 
 with gray hair!" he finished, raising his fat hands 
 to heaven. "For that other monsieur has hair as 
 gray as mine." 
 
 "That other monsieur" was farther described as a 
 thin man, handsome, but with a "singular air," 
 nor could my colleague more satisfactorily define 
 this air, though he made a racking struggle to do so. 
 
 "In what does the peculiarity of his maimer lie?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "But it is not so much that his manner is pe- 
 culiar, monsieur; it is an air about him that is 
 singular. Truly !" 
 
 "But how is it singular?" 
 
 "Monsieur, it is very, very singular." 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 53 
 
 "You do not understand," I insisted. "What 
 kind of singularity has the air of 'that other mon- 
 sieur'?" 
 
 "It has," replied Amedee, with a powerful effort, 
 "a very singular singularity." 
 
 This was as near as he could come, and, fear- 
 ful of injuring him, I abandoned that phase of 
 our subject. 
 
 The valet-de-chambre whom my fellow-lodgers 
 had brought with them from Paris contributed 
 nothing to the inn's knowledge of his masters, I 
 learned. This struck me not only as odd, but 
 unique, for French servants tell one another every- 
 thing, and more — ^very much more. "But this 
 is a silent man," said Amedee impressively. "Oh! 
 very silent! He shakes his head wisely, yet he will 
 not open his mouth. However, that may be be- 
 cause" — and now the ejqjlanation came — "because 
 he was engaged only last week and knows nothing. 
 Also, he is but temporary; he returns to Paris soon 
 and Glouglou is to serve them." 
 
 I ascertained that although "that other mon- 
 sieur" had gray hair, he was by no means a person 
 of great age; indeed, Glouglou, who had seen him 
 oftener than any other of the staff, maintained 
 
54 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 that he was quite young. AmMee's own oppor- 
 tunities for observation had been limited. Every 
 afternoon the two gentlemen went for a walk; 
 but they always came down from the gallery so 
 quickly, he declared, and, leaving the inn by a 
 rear entrance, plunged so hastily into the nearest 
 by-path leading to the forest, that he caught little 
 more than glimpses of them. They retmned after 
 an hour or so, entering the inn with the same ap- 
 pearance of haste to be out of sight, the professor 
 always talldng, "with the manner of an orator, 
 but in Enghsh." Nevertheless, Amedee remarked, 
 it was certain that Professor Keredec's friend was 
 neither an American nor an Enghshman. 
 "Why is it certain?" I asked. 
 "Monsieur, he drinks nothing but water, he does 
 not smoke, and Glouglou says he speaks very pure 
 French." 
 
 "Glouglou is an authority who resolves the dijE- 
 culty. 'That other monsieur' is a Frenchman." 
 "But, monsieur, he is smooth-shaven." 
 "Perhaps he has been a maitre d'h6tel." 
 "Eh! I wish one that I know could hope to 
 dress as well when he retires ! Besides, Glouglou says 
 that other monsieur eats his soup silently." 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 55 
 
 "I can find no flaw in the deduction," I said, 
 rising to go to bed. "We must leave it there for 
 to-night." 
 
 The next evening Amedee allowed me to per- 
 ceive that he was concealing something under his 
 arm as he stoked the coffee-machine, and upon 
 my asking what it was, he glanced round the court- 
 yard with histrionic slyness, placed the object on 
 the table beside my cap, and stepped back to watch 
 the impression, his manner that of one who de- 
 claims: "At last the missing papers are before 
 you!" 
 
 "What is that?" I said. 
 
 "It is a book." 
 
 "I am persuaded by your candour, Am6dee, as 
 well as by the general appearance of this article," 
 I returned as I picked it up, "that you are speaking 
 the truth. But why do you bring it to me?" 
 
 "Monsieur," he replied, in the tones of an old 
 conspirator, "this afternoon the professor and that 
 other monsieur went as usual to walk in the forest." 
 He bent over me, pretending to be busy with the 
 coffee-machine, and lowering his voice to a hoarse 
 whisper. "When they returned, this book fell from 
 the pocket of that other moniseur's coat as he 
 
56 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 ascended the stair, and he did not notice. Later 
 I shall return it by Glouglou, but I thought it wise 
 that monsieur should see it for himself." 
 
 The book was Wentworth's Algebra — elementary 
 principles. Painful recollections of my boyhood and 
 the binomial theorem rose in my mind as I let the 
 leaves turn under my fingers. "What do you make 
 of it?" I asked. 
 
 His tone became even more confidential. "Part 
 of it, monsieur, is in English; that is plain. I have 
 foxmd an English word in it that I know — ^the 
 word 'O.' But much of the printing is also in 
 Arabic." 
 
 "Arabic!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, look there." He laid a fat fore- 
 finger on "(a + hy = a^ + 2ab + b^" "That is 
 Arabic. Old Gaston has been to Algeria, and he 
 says that he knows Arabic as well as he does French. 
 He looked at the book and told me it was Arabic. 
 Truly! Truly!" 
 
 "Did he translate any of it for you?" 
 
 "No, monsieur; his eyes pained him this after- 
 noon. He says he will read it to-morrow." 
 
 "But you must return the book to-night." 
 ^ "That is true. Eh! It leaves the mystery deeper 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 57 
 
 than ever, unless monsieur can find some clue ia 
 those parts of the book that are English." 
 
 I shed no hght upon him. The book had been 
 Greek to me in my tender years; it was a pleasure 
 now to leave a fellow-being under the impression 
 that it was Arabic. 
 
 But the volume took its little revenge upon me, 
 for it increased my curiosity about Professor Keredec 
 and "that other monsieur." Why were two grown 
 men — one an eminent psychologist and the other a 
 gray-haired youth with a singular air — carrying 
 about on their walks a text-book for the instruction 
 of boys of thirteen or fourteen? 
 
 The next day that curiosity of mine was piqued 
 in earnest. It rained and I did not leave the inn, 
 but sat under the great archway and took notes in 
 colour of the shining road, bright drenched fields, 
 and dripping sky. My back was toward the court- 
 yard, that is, "three-quarters" to it, and about 
 noon I became distracted from my work by a strong 
 self -consciousness which came upon me without any 
 visible or audible cause. Obeying an impvdse, I 
 swung round on my camp-stool and looked up 
 directly at the gallery window of the salon of the 
 "Grande Suite." 
 
58 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 A man with a great white beard was standing at 
 the window, half hidden by the curtain, watching 
 me intently. 
 
 He perceived that I saw him and dropped the cur- 
 tain immediately, a speck of colour in his buttonhole 
 catching my eye as it fell. 
 
 The spy was Professor Keredec. 
 
 But why should he study me so slyly and yet so 
 obviously? I had no intention of intruding upon him. 
 Nor was I a psychological "specimen," though I 
 began to suspect that "that other monsieur" was. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 I HAD been painting in various parts of the forest, 
 studying the early morning along the eastern 
 fringe and moving deeper in as the day advanced. 
 For the stillness and warmth of noon I went to the 
 very woodland heart, and in the late afternoon moved 
 westward to a glade — a chance arena open to the sky, 
 the scene of my most audacious endeavours, for here 
 I was trying to paint foliage luminous under those 
 long shafts of sunshine which grow thinner but rud- 
 dier toward sunset. A path closely bordered by 
 underbrush wound its way to the glade, crossed it, 
 then wandered away into shady dingles again; and 
 with my easel pitched in the mouth of this path, I sat 
 at work, one late afternoon, wonderful for its still 
 loveliness. 
 
 The path debouched abruptly on the glade and was 
 so narrow that when I leaned back my elbows were 
 in the bushes, and it needed care to keep my palette 
 from being smirched by the leaves; though there was 
 more room for my canvas and easel, as I had placed 
 them at arm's length before me, fairly in the open, 
 
 59 
 
60 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 I had the ambition to paint a picture here — ^to do the 
 whole thing in the woods from day to day, instead of 
 taking notes for the studio — and was at work upon 
 a very fooHsh experiment: I had thought to render 
 the Hght — ^broken by the branches and foliage — with 
 broken brush-work, a short stroke of the kind that 
 stung an elder painter to swear that its practitioners 
 painted in shaking fear of the concierge appearing 
 for the studio rent. The attempt was alluring, but 
 when I rose from my camp-stool and stepped back 
 into the path to get more distance for my canvas, I 
 saw what a mess I was making of it. At the same 
 time, my hand, falling into the capacious pocket of 
 my jacket, encountered a package, my lunch, which 
 I had forgotten to eat, whereupon, becoming suddenly 
 aware that I was very hungry, I began to eat Ame- 
 dee's good sandwiches without moving from where 
 I stood. 
 
 Absorbed, gazing with abysmal disgust at my can- 
 vas, I was eating absent-mindedly — and with all the 
 restraint and dignity of a Georgia darky attacking 
 a watermelon — when a pleasant voice spoke from just 
 behind me. 
 
 "Pardon, monsieur; permit me to pass, if you 
 please." 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 61 
 
 That was all it said, very quietly and in French, 
 but a gunshot might have startled me less. 
 
 I turned ia confusion to behold a dark-eyed lady, 
 charmingly dressed in lilac and white, waiting for me 
 to make way so that she could pass. 
 
 Nay, let me leave no detail of my mortification 
 unrecorded: I have just said that I "turned in con- 
 fusion"; the truth is that I jumped like a kangaroo, 
 but with infinitely less grace. And in my nervous 
 haste to clear her way, meaning only to push the 
 camp-stool out of the path with my foot, I put too 
 much valour into the push, and with horror saw the 
 camp-stool rise in the air and drop to the ground 
 again nearly a third of the distance across the glade. 
 
 Upon that I squeezed myself back into the bushes, 
 my ears singing and my cheeks burning. 
 
 There are women who will meet or pass a strange 
 man in the woods or fields with as finished an air of 
 being unaware of him (particularly if he be a rather 
 shabby painter no longer young) as if the encounter 
 took place on a city sidewalk; but this woman was 
 not of that priggish kind. Her straightforward 
 glance recognised my existence as a fellow-being; and 
 she further acknowledged it by a faint smile, which 
 was of courtesy only, however, and admitted no ref- 
 
62 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 erence to the fact that at the first sound of her voice 
 I had leaped into the air, kicked a camp-stool twenty 
 feet, and now stood blushing, so shamefully stuflFed 
 "with sandwich that I dared not speak. 
 
 "Thank you," she said as she went by; and made 
 me a little bow so graceful that it almost consoled 
 me for my caperings. 
 
 I stood looking after her as she crossed the clear- 
 ing and entered the cool winding of the path on the 
 other side. 
 
 I stared and wished — wished that I could have 
 painted her into my picture, with the thin, ruddy 
 sunshine flecking her dress; wished that I had not 
 cut such an idiotic figure. I stared until her filmy 
 summer hat, which was the last bit of her to disap- 
 pear, had vanished. Then, discovering that I still 
 held the horrid remains of a sausage-sandwich in my 
 hand, I threw it into the underbrush with unnecessary 
 force, and, recovering my camp-stool, sat down to 
 work again. 
 
 I did not immediately begin. 
 
 The passing of a pretty woman anywhere never 
 comes to be quite of no moment to a man, and the 
 passing of a pretty woman in the greenwood is an 
 episode — even to a middle-aged landscape painter. 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 63 
 
 "An episode?" quoth I. I should be ashamed to with- 
 hold the truth out of my fear to be taken for a senti- 
 mentalist: this woman who had passed was of great 
 and instant charm; it was as if I had heard a serenade 
 there in the woods — and at thought of the jig I had 
 danced to it my face burned again. 
 
 With a sigh of no meaning, I got my eyes down to 
 my canvas and began to peck at it perfimctorily, 
 when a snapping of twigs imderfoot and a swishing 
 of branches in the thicket warned me of a second 
 intruder, not approaching by the path, but forcing 
 a way toward it through the underbrush, and very 
 briskly too, judging by the sounds. 
 
 He burst out into the glade a few paces from me, 
 a tall man in white flannels, hberally decorated with 
 brambles and clinging shreds of imderbrush. A 
 streamer of vine had caught about his shoulders; 
 there were leaves on his bare head, and this, together 
 with the youthful sprightliness of his light figxire 
 and the naive activity of his approach, gave me a 
 very faunlike first impression of him. 
 
 At sight of me he stopped short. 
 
 "Have you seen a lady in a white and lilac dress 
 and with roses in her hat.?" he demanded, omitting 
 all preface and speaking with a quick eagerness 
 
64 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 which caused me no wonder — ^for I had seen the 
 lady. 
 
 What did surprise me, however, was the instan- 
 taneous certainty with which I recognised the speaker 
 from Am^dde's description; certainty founded on the 
 very item which had so dangerously strained the 
 old fellow's powers. 
 
 My sudden gentleman was strikingly good-looking, 
 his complexion so clear and boyishly healthy, that, 
 except for his gray hair, he might have passed for 
 twenty-two or twenty-three, and even as it was I 
 guessed his years short of thirty; but there are plenty 
 of handsome young fellows with prematurely gray 
 hair, and, as Amedee said, though out of the world 
 we were near it. It was the new-comer's "singular 
 air" which established his identity. Amedee 's vague- 
 ness had irked me, but the thing itseK — the "singular 
 air" — was not at all vague. Instantly perceptible, 
 it was an investiture; marked, definite — and intan- 
 gible. My interrogator was "that other monsieur." 
 
 In response to his question I asked him another: 
 
 "Were the roses real or artificial?" 
 
 "I don't know," he answered, with what I took 
 to be a whimsical assumption of gravity. "It 
 wouldn't matter, would it? Have you seen her?" 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 65 
 
 He stooped to brush the brambles from his trou- 
 sers, sending me a sidelong glance from his blue eyes, 
 which were brightly confident and inquiring, like a 
 boy's. At the same time it struck me that whatever 
 the natiu-e of the singularity investing him it par- 
 took of nothing repellent, but, on the contrary, 
 measurably enhanced his attractiveness; making him 
 "different" and lending him a distinction which, 
 without it, he might have lacked. And yet, patent 
 as this singularity must have been to the dullest, 
 it was something quite apart from any eccentricity 
 of manner, though, heaven knows, I was soon to 
 think him odd enough. 
 
 "Isn't your description," I said gravely, thinking 
 to suit my humour to his own, "somewhat too 
 general.'' Over yonder a few miles hes Houlgate. 
 TrouvUle itself is not so far, and this is the season. 
 A great many white hats trimmed with roses might 
 come for a stroll in these woods. If you would com- 
 plete the items — " and I waved my hand as if invit- 
 ing him to continue. 
 
 "I have seen her only once before," he responded 
 promptly, with a seriousness apparently quite genu- 
 ine. "That was from my window at an inn, three 
 days ago. She drove by in an open carriage without 
 
66 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 looking up, but I could see that she was very hand- 
 some. No — " he broke off abruptly, but as quickly 
 resumed — "handsome isn't just what I mean. Lovely, 
 I should say. That is more like her and a better 
 thing to be, shouldn't you think so.?" 
 
 "Probably — ^yes — I think so," I stammered, in 
 considerable amazement. 
 
 "She went by quickly," he said, as if he were talk- 
 ing in the most natural and ordinary way in the 
 world, "but I noticed that while she was in the 
 shade of the inn her hair appeared to be dark, though 
 when the carriage got into the sunlight again it 
 looked fair." 
 
 I had noticed the same thing when the lady who 
 had passed emerged from the shadows of the path 
 into the sunshine of the glade, but I did not speak 
 of it now; partly because he gave me no opportu- 
 nity, partly because I was almost too astonished to 
 speak at all, for I was no longer under the delusion 
 that he had any humourous or whimsical intention. 
 
 "A little while ago," he went on, "I was up in 
 the branches of a tree over yonder, and I caught a 
 glimpse of a lady in a Ught dress and a white hat 
 and I thought it might be the same. She wore a 
 dress like that and a white hat with roses when she 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 67 
 
 drove by the inn. I am very anxious to see her 
 again." 
 
 "You seem to be!" 
 
 "And haven't you seen her? Hasn't she passed 
 this way?" 
 
 He urged the question with the same strange 
 eagerness which had marked his manner from the 
 first, a manner which confounded me by its absurd 
 resemblance to that of a boy who had not mixed 
 with other boys and had never been teased. And 
 yet his expression was intelligent and alert; nor was 
 there anything abnormal or "queer" in his good- 
 humoured gaze. 
 
 "I think that I may have seen her," I began 
 slowly; "but if you do not know her I should not 
 advise " 
 
 I was interrupted by a shout and the sound of a 
 large body plunging in the thicket. At this the face 
 of "that other monsieur" flushed slightly; he smiled, 
 but seemed troubled. 
 
 "That is a friend of mine," he said. "I am afraid 
 he will want me to go back with him." And he raised 
 an answering shout. 
 
 Professor Keredec floundered out through the last 
 row of saplings and bushes, his be£ird embelhshed 
 
68 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 with a broken twig, his big face red and perspiring. 
 He was a fine, a mighty man, ponderous of shoulder, 
 monumental of height, stupendous of girth; there 
 was cloth enough in the hot-looking black frock- 
 coat he wore for the canopy of a small pavilion. 
 Half a dozen books were under his arm, and in his 
 hand he carried a hat which evidently belonged to 
 "that other monsieur," for his own was on his head. 
 
 One glance of scrutiny and recognition he shot at 
 me from his silver-rimmed spectacles; and seized the 
 young man by the arm. 
 
 "Ha, my friend!" he exclaimed in a bass voice of 
 astounding power and depth, "that is one way to 
 study botany: to jump out of the middle of a high 
 tree and to nm like a crazy man!" He spoke with 
 a strong accent and a thunderous rolling of the "r." 
 "What was I to think?" he demanded. "What has 
 arrived to you?" 
 
 "I saw a lady I wished to follow," the other 
 answered promptly. 
 
 "A lady! What lady?" 
 
 "The lady who passed the inn three days ago. 
 I spoke of her then, you remember." 
 
 "Tonnerre de Dieul" Keredec slapped his thigh 
 with the sudden violence of a man who remembers 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 69 
 
 that he has forgotten something, and as a final addi- 
 tion to my amazement, his voice rang more of 
 remorse than of reproach. "Have I never told you 
 that to follow strange ladies is one of the things 
 you cannot do?" 
 
 "That other monsieur" shook his head. "No, you 
 have never told me that. I do not understand it," 
 he said, adding irrelevantly, "I believe this gentle- 
 man knows her. He says he thinks he has seen 
 her." 
 
 "If you please, we must not trouble this gentleman 
 about it," said the professor hastily. "Put on your 
 hat, in the name of a thousand saints, and let us go !" 
 
 "But I wish to ask him her name," urged the other, 
 with something curiously like the obstinacy of a child. 
 "I wish " 
 
 "No, no!" Keredec took him by the arm. "We 
 must go. We shall be late for our dinner." 
 
 "But why.?" persisted the yotmg man. 
 
 "Not now!" The professor removed his broad felt 
 hat and hurriedly wiped his vast and steaming brow 
 — a magnificent structure, corniced, at this moment, 
 with anxiety. "It is better if we do not discuss it 
 now." 
 
 "But I might not meet him again." 
 
70 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 Professor Keredec turned toward me with a half- 
 desperate, half-apologetic laugh which was like the 
 rumbling of heavy wagons over a block pavement; 
 and in his flustered face I thought I read a signal 
 of genuine distress. 
 
 "I do not know the lady," I said with some sharp- 
 ness. "I have never seen her until this afternoon." 
 
 Upon this "that other monsieur" astonished me in 
 good earnest. Searching my eyes eagerly with his 
 clear, inquisitive gaze, he took a step toward me and 
 said: 
 
 "You are sure you are telling the truth?" 
 
 The professor uttered an exclamation of horror, 
 sprang forward, and clutched his friend's arm again. 
 " Malh&ureuxl" he cried, and then to me: "Sir, you 
 will give him pardon if you can.? He has no mean- 
 ing to be rude." 
 
 "Rude?" The young man's voice showed both 
 astonishment and pain. "Was that rude? I didn't 
 know. I didn't mean to be rude, God knows ! Ah," 
 he said sadly, "I do nothing but make mistakes. 
 I hope you will forgive me." 
 
 He lifted his hand as if in appeal, and let it drop 
 to his side; and in the action, as well as in the tone 
 of his voice and his attitude of contrition, there was 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 71 
 
 something that reached me suddenly, with the touch 
 of pathos. 
 
 "Never mind," I said. "I am only sorry that it 
 was the truth." 
 
 "Thank you," he said, and turned humbly to 
 Keredec. 
 
 "Ha, that is better!" shouted the great man, 
 apparently relieved of a vast weight. "We shall go 
 home now and eat a good dinner. But first — " his 
 silver-rimmed spectacles twinkled upon me, and he 
 bent his Brobdingnagian back in a bow which against 
 my will reminded me of the curtseys performed by 
 Orloff's dancing bears — "first let me speak some 
 words for myself. My dear sir" — ^he addressed him- 
 self to me with grave formality — "do not suppose I 
 have no realization that other excuses should be 
 made to you. Believe me, they shall be. It is now 
 that I see it is fortunate for us that you are our 
 fellow-innsman at Les Trois Pigeons." 
 
 I was unable to resist the opportunity, and, affect- 
 ing considerable surprise, interrupted him with the 
 apparently guileless query: 
 
 "Why, how did you know that?" 
 
 Professor Keredec's laughter rumbled again, grow- 
 ing deeper and louder till it reverberated in the woods 
 
72 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 and a hundred hale old trees laughed back at 
 him. 
 
 "Ho, ho, ho!" he shouted. "But you shall not 
 take me for a window-curtam spy! That is a fine 
 reputation I give myself with you! Ho, ho!" 
 
 Then, followed submissively by "that other mon- 
 sieur," he strode into the path and went thundering 
 forth through the forest. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 NO doubt the most absurd thing I could have 
 done after the departure of Professor Ke- 
 redec and his singular friend would have 
 been to settle myself before my canvas again with 
 the intention of painting — and that is what I did. 
 At least, I resumed my camp-stool and went through 
 some of the motions habitually connected with the 
 act of painting. 
 
 I remember that the first time in my juvenile 
 reading I came upon the phrase, "seated in a brown 
 study," I pictured my hero in a brown chair, beside 
 a brown table, in a room hung with brown paper. 
 Later, being enlightened, I was ambitious to display 
 the figure myself, but the uses of ordinary corre- 
 spondence allowed the occasion for it to remain 
 imoffered. Let me not only seize upon the present 
 opportunity but gild it, for the adventure of the 
 afternoon left me ia a study which was, at its 
 mildest, a profound purple. 
 
 The confession has been made of my curiosity con- 
 cerning my fellow-lodgers at Les Trais Pigeons; 
 
 73 
 
74 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 however, it had been comparatively a torpid growth; 
 my meeting with them served to enlarge it so sud- 
 denly and to such proportions that I wonder it did 
 not strangle me. In fine, I sat there brush-paddling 
 my failure Kke an automaton, and saying over and 
 over aloud, "What is wrong with him? What is 
 wrong with him?" 
 
 This was the sillier inasmuch as the word "wrong" 
 (bearing any significance of a darkened mind) had 
 not the slightest application to "that other mon- 
 sieur." There had been neither darkness nor dullness; 
 his eyes, his expression, his manner, betrayed no 
 hint of wildness; rather they bespoke a quick and 
 amiable intelligence — ^the more amazing that he had 
 shown himself ignorant of things a child of ten would 
 know. Amed6e and his fellows of Les Trois Pigeons 
 had judged wrongly of his nationahty; his face was 
 of the lean, right, American structure; but they had 
 hit the relation between the two men: Keredec was 
 the master and "that other monsieur" the scholar — 
 a pupU studying boys' textbooks and receiving 
 instruction in matters and manners that children are 
 taught. And yet I could not believe him to be a 
 simple case of arrested development. For the matter 
 of that, I did not like to think of him as a "case" 
 
CHAPTER SIX 75 
 
 at all. There had been something about his bright 
 youthf ulness — ^perhaps it was his quick contrition for 
 his rudeness, perhaps it was a certain wistful quality 
 he had, perhaps it was his very "singularity" — 
 which appealed as directly to my liking as it did 
 urgently to my sympathy. 
 
 I came out of my vari-coloured study with a start, 
 caused by the discovery that I had absent-mindedly 
 squeezed upon my palette the entire contents of an 
 expensive tube of cobalt violet, for which I had no 
 present use; and sighing (for, of necessity, I am an 
 economical man), I postponed both of my problems 
 till another day, determined to efface the one with 
 a palette knife and a rag soaked in turpentine, and 
 to defer the other until I should know more of my 
 fellow-lodgers at Madame Brossard's. 
 
 The turpentine rag at least proved effective; I 
 scoured away the last tokens of my failure with it, 
 wishing that life were like the canvas and that men 
 had knowledge of the right celestial turpentine. 
 After that I cleaned my brushes, packed and shoul- 
 dered my kit, and, with a final imprecation upon all 
 sausage-sandwiches, took up my way once more to 
 Les Trois Pigeons. 
 
 Presently I came upon an intersecting path where. 
 
76 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 on my previous excursions, I had always borne to the 
 right; but this evening, thinking to discover a shorter 
 cut, I went straight ahead. Striding along at a good 
 gait and chanting sonorously, "On Linden when the 
 sun was low," I left the rougher boscages of the 
 forest behind me and emerged, just at sunset, upon 
 an orderly fringe of woodland where the ground was 
 neat and unencumbered, and the trimmed trees stood 
 at polite distances, bowing slightly to one another 
 with small, well-bred rustlings. 
 
 The light was somewhere between gold and pink 
 when I came into this lady's boudoir of a grove. 
 "Isar flowing rapidly" ceased its tumult abruptly, 
 and Linden saw no sterner sight that evening: my 
 voice and my feet stopped simultaneously — ^for I 
 stood upon Quesnay groimd. 
 
 Before me stretched a short broad avenue of turf, 
 leading to the chateau gates. These stood open, a 
 gravelled driveway climbing thence by easy stages 
 between kempt shrubberies to the crest of the hill, 
 where the gray roof and red chimney-pots of the 
 cha.teau were glimpsed among the tree-tops. The 
 slope was terraced with strips of flower-gardens and 
 intervals of sward; and against the green of a rising 
 lawn I marked the figure of a woman, pausing to 
 
CHAPTER SIX 77 
 
 bend over some flowering bush. TKe figure was too 
 slender to be mistaken for that of the present chate- 
 laine of Quesnay: in Miss Elizabeth's regal ampli- 
 tude there was never any hint of fragility. The lady 
 upon the slope, then, I concluded, must be Madame 
 d'Armand, the inspiration of Amed^e's "Monsieur 
 has much to Uve for!" 
 
 Once more this day I indorsed that worthy man's 
 opinion, for, though I was too far distant to see 
 clearly, I knew that roses trimmed Madame d'Ar- 
 mahd's white hat, and that she had passed me, no 
 long time since, in the forest. 
 
 I took off my cap. 
 
 "I have the honour to salute you," I said aloud. 
 "I make my apologies for misbehaving with sand- 
 wiches and camp-stools in your presence, Madame 
 d'Armand." 
 
 Something in my own pronunciation of her name 
 struck me as reminiscent: save for the prefix, it had 
 sounded like "Harman," as a Frenchman might pro- 
 nounce it. 
 
 Foreign names involve the French in terrible diffi- 
 culties. Hughes, an English friend of mine, has lived 
 in France some five-and-thirty years without recon- 
 ciling himself to being known as "Monsieur Ig." 
 
78 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "Armand" might easily be Jean Ferret's translation 
 of "Harman." Had he and Amedee in their admira- 
 tion conferred the prefix because they considered it 
 aplausible accompaniment to the lady's gentle bear- 
 ing? It was not impossible; it was, I concluded, very 
 probable. 
 
 I had come far out of my way, so I retraced my 
 steps to the intersection of the paths, and thence 
 made for the inn by my accustomed route. The 
 light failed under the roofing of foliage long before I 
 was free of the woods, and I emerged upon the road 
 to Les Trois Pigeons when twilight had turned to 
 dusk. 
 
 Not far along the road from where I came into 
 it, stood an old, brown, deep-thatched cottage — a 
 branch of brushwood over the door prettily beckon- 
 ing travellers to the knowledge that cider was here 
 for the thirsty; and as I drew near I perceived that 
 one availed himself of the invitation. A group stood 
 about the open door, the lamp-light from within 
 disclosing the head of the house filling a cup for the 
 wayfarer; while honest Mere Baudry and two gene- 
 rations of younger Baudrys clustered to miss no word 
 of the interchange of courtesies between P^re Baudry 
 and his chance patron. 
 
CHAPTER SIX 79 
 
 It afforded me some surprise to observe that the 
 latter was a most mundane and elaborate wayfarer, 
 indeed; a small young man very lightly made, like a 
 jockey, and point-device in khaki, puttees, pongee 
 cap, white-and-green stock, a knapsack on his back, 
 and a bamboo stick under his arm; altogether equip- 
 ped to such a high point of pedestrianism that a 
 cynical person might have been reminded of loud 
 calls for wine at some hostelry in the land of opera 
 bouffe. He was speaking fluently, though with a 
 detestable accent, in a rough-and-ready, pick-up 
 dialect of Parisian slang, evidently under the pleas- 
 ant delusion that he employed the French language, 
 while Pfere Baudry contributed his share of the con- 
 versation in a slow patois. As both men spoke at the 
 same time and neither understood two consecutive 
 words the other said, it struck me that the dialogue 
 might prove unproductive of any highly important 
 results this side of Michaelmas; therefore, discover- 
 ing that the very pedestrian gentleman was making 
 some sort of inquiry concerning Les Trois Pigeons, 
 I came to a halt and proffered aid. 
 
 "Are you looking for Madame Brossard's?" I 
 asked in English. 
 
 The traveller uttered an exclamation and faced 
 
80 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 about with a jump, birdlike for quickness. He did 
 not reply to my question with the same promptness; 
 however, his dehberation denoted scrutiny, not sloth. 
 He stood peering at me sharply until I repeated it. 
 Even then he protracted his examination of me, a 
 favour I was unable to return with any interest, owing 
 to the circumstance of his back being toward the 
 light. Nevertheless, I got a clear enough impression 
 of his alert, well-poised little figure, and of a hatchety 
 little face, and a pair of shrewd little eyes, which 
 (I thought) held a fine little conceit of his whole httle 
 person. It was a type of fellow-countryman not 
 altogether unknown about certain "American Bars" 
 of Paris, and usually connected (more or less directly) 
 with what is known to the people of France as "le 
 Sport." 
 
 "Say," he responded in a voice of unpleasant 
 nasaUty, finally deciding upon speech, "you're 'Num- 
 meric'n, ain't you?" 
 
 "Yes," I returned. "I thought I heard you 
 inquiring for " 
 
 "Well, m' friend, you can sting me!" he inter- 
 rupted with condescending jocularity. "My style 
 French does f'r them camels up in Paris all right. 
 Me at Nice, Monte Carlo, Chantilly — ^bow to the 
 
CHAPTER SIX 81 
 
 p'fess'r; he's right! But down Bere I don'^t seem to 
 be gvd enough f'r these sheep-dogs; anyway they 
 bark different. I'm lukkin' fer a hotel called Les 
 Trois Pigeons." 
 
 "I am going there," I said; "I will show you the 
 way." 
 
 "Whur is 't?" he asked, not moving. 
 
 I pointed to the lights of the inn, flickering across 
 the fields. "Yonder — beyond the second turn of the 
 road," I said, and, as he showed no signs of accom- 
 panying me, I added, "I am rather late." 
 
 "Oh, I ain't goin' there t'night. It's too dark t' 
 see anything now," he remarked, to my astonish- 
 ment. "Dives and the choo-choo back t' little ole 
 Trouville f'r mine! I on'y wanted to take a luh at 
 this pigeon-house joint." 
 
 "Do you mind my inquiring," I said, "what you 
 expected to see at Les Trois Pigeons?" 
 
 "Why!" he exclaimed, as if astonished at the 
 question, "I'm a tourist. Makin' a pedestrun trip 
 t' all the reg'ler sights." And, inspired to eloquence, 
 he added, as an afterthought: "As it were." 
 
 "A tourist.''" I echoed, with perfect incredulity. 
 
 "That's whut I am, m' friend," he returned firmly. 
 "You don't have to have a red dope-book in one 
 
82 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 hand and a thoid-class choo-choo ticket in the other 
 to be a tourist, do you?" 
 
 "But if you will pardon me," I said, "where did 
 you get the notion that Les Trois Pigeons is one of 
 the regular sights?" 
 
 "Ain't it in all the books?" 
 
 "I don't think that it is mentioned in any of the 
 guide-books." 
 
 "Not I didn't say it was, m' friend," he retorted 
 with contemptuous pity. "I mean them history- 
 books. It's in all o' them!" 
 
 "This is strange news," said I. "I should be 
 very much interested to read them!" 
 
 "Lookahere," he said, taking a step nearer me; 
 "in oinest now, on your woid: Didn' more'n half 
 them Jeanne d'Arc tamales Uve at that hotel wunst?" 
 
 "Nobody of historical importance — or any other 
 kind of importance, so far as I know — ever lived 
 there," I informed him. "The older portions of the inn 
 once belonged to an ancient farm-house, that is all." 
 
 "On the level," he demanded, "didn't that William 
 the Conker nor none o' them ancient gilt-edges live 
 there?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Stung again!" He broke into n sudden loud 
 
CHAPTER SIX 83 
 
 cackle of laughter. "Why! the feller tole me 'at 
 this here Pigeon place was all three rings when it 
 come t' history. Yessir! Tall, thin feller he was, in 
 a three-button cutaway, English make, and kind of 
 red-complected, with a sandy mMS-tache," pursued 
 the pedestrian, apparently fearing his narrative 
 might lack colour. "I met him right com in' out o' 
 the Casino at Trouville, yes'day aft'noon; c'udn' a' 
 b'en more'n four o'clock — ^hol' on though, yes 'twas, 
 'twas nearer five, about twunty minutes t' five, say 
 • — an' this feller tells me — " He cackled with laugh- 
 ter as palpably disingenuous as the corroborative 
 details he thought necessary to muster; then he 
 became serious, as if marvelling at his own won- 
 drous verdancy. "M' friend, that feller soitn'y found 
 me easy. But he can't say I ain't game; he passes 
 me the limes, but I'm jest man enough to drink his 
 health fer it in this sweet, sound ole-fashioned cider 
 'at ain't got a headache in a barrel of it. He played 
 me gud, and here's to him!" 
 
 Despite the heartiness of the sentiment, my honest 
 tourist's enthusiasm seemed largely histrionic, and 
 his quaflBng of the beaker too reminiscent of drain- 
 the-wine-cup-free in the second row of the chorus, 
 for he absently allowed it to dangle from his hand 
 
84 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 before raising it to his Kps. However, not all of its 
 contents was spilled, and he swallowed a mouthful 
 of the sweet, sound, old-fashioned cider — ^but by 
 mistake, I Was led to suppose, from the expression of 
 displeasure which became so deeply marked upon 
 his countenance as to be noticeable, even in the 
 feeble lamplight. 
 
 I tarried no longer, but bidding this good youth 
 and the generations of Baudry good-night, hastened 
 on to my belated dinner. 
 
 "Amedde," I said, when my cigar was hghted and 
 the usual hour of consultation had arrived; "isn't 
 that old lock on the chest where Madame Brossard 
 keeps her silver getting rather rusty?" 
 
 "Monsieur, we have no thieves here, y^^e are out 
 of the world." 
 
 "Yes, but Trouville is not so far away." 
 
 "Truly." 
 
 "Many strange people go to Trouville: grand- 
 dukes, millionaires, opera singers, princes, jockeys, 
 gamblers " 
 
 "Truly, truly!" 
 
 "And tourists," I finished. 
 
 "That is well known," assented Amed6e, nodding. 
 
 "It follows," I continued with tlie impressiveness 
 
CHAPTER SIX 85 
 
 of all logicians, "that many strange people may come 
 from Trouville. In their excxu-sions to the sxirromid- 
 ing points of interest " 
 
 "Eh, monsieur, but that is true!" he interrupted, 
 laying his right forefinger across the bridge of his 
 nose, which was his gesture when he remembered any- 
 thing suddenly. "There was a strange monsieur 
 from Trouville here this very day." 
 
 "What kind of person was he?" 
 
 "A foreigner, but I could not tell from what 
 country." 
 
 "What time of day was he here?" I asked, with 
 growing interest. 
 
 "Toward the middle of the afternoon. I was alone, 
 except for Glouglou, when he came. He wished to 
 see the whole house and I showed him what I could, 
 except of course monsieur's pavilion, and the Grande 
 Suite. Monsieur the Professor and that other mon- 
 sieur had gone to the forest, but I did not feel at 
 liberty to exhibit their rooms without Madame Bros- 
 sard's permission, and she was spending the day at 
 Dives. Besides," added the good man, languidly 
 snapping a napkin at a moth near one of the 
 candles, "the doors were locked." 
 
 "This person was a tourist?" I asked, after a 
 
86 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 pause during which Amedee seemed peacefully im- 
 aware of the rather concentrated gaze I had fixed 
 upon him. 
 
 "Of a kind. In speaking he employed many 
 peculiar expressions, more like a thief of a Parisian 
 cabman than of the pohte world." 
 
 "The devil he did!" said I. "Did he tell you why 
 he wished to see the whole house? Did he contem- 
 plate taking rooms here?" 
 
 "No, monsieur, it appears that his interest was 
 historical. At first I should not have taken him for a 
 man of learning, yet he gave me a great piece of 
 information; a thing quite new to me, though I have 
 lived here so many years. We are distinguished in 
 history, it seems, and at one time both William the 
 Conqueror and that brave Jeanne d'Arc " 
 
 I interrupted sharply, dropping my cigar and 
 leaning across the table: 
 
 "How was this person dressed?" 
 
 "Monsieur, he was very much the pedestrian." 
 
 And so, for that evening, we had something to 
 talk about besides "that other monsieur"; indeed, 
 we found our subject so absorbing that I forgot 
 to ask Amed6e whether it was he or Jean Ferret 
 who had prefixed the "de" to "Armand." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE cat that fell from the top of the Wash- 
 ington monument, and scampered off un- 
 hurt was killed by a dog at the next corner. 
 Thus a certain painter-man, winged with canvases 
 and easel, might have been seen to depart hiurriedly 
 from a poppy-sprinkled field, an infuriated Norman 
 stallion in close attendance, and to fly safely over a 
 stone wall of good height, only to turn his ankle 
 upon an unconsidered pebble, some ten paces farther 
 on; the nose of the stallion projected over the wall, 
 snorting joy thereat. The ankle was one which had 
 turned aforetime; it was an old weakness: moreover, 
 it was mine. I was the painter-man. 
 
 I could count on little less than a week of idle- 
 ness within the confines of Les Trois Pigeons; and 
 reclining among cushions in a wicker long-chair 
 looking out from my pavilion upon the drowsy 
 garden on a hot noontide, I did not much care. 
 It was cooler indoors, comfortable enough; the open 
 
 door framed the courtyard where pigeons were 
 
 87 
 
88 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 strutting on the gravel walks between flower-beds. 
 Beyond, and thrown deeper into the perspective 
 by the outer frame of the great archway, road and 
 fields and forest fringes were revealed, lying trem- 
 ulously in the hot sunshine. The foreground gained 
 a human (though not lively) interest from the 
 ample figure of our maitre d'hotel reposing in a 
 rustic chair which had enjoyed the shade of an 
 arbour about an hour earlier, when first occupied, 
 but now stood in the broiling sun. At times Amedee's 
 upper eyelids lifted as much as the sixteenth of an 
 inch, and he made a hazy gesture as if to wave the 
 sun away, or, when the table-cloth upon his left 
 arm slid slowly earthward, he adjusted it with a 
 petulant jerk, without material interruption to his 
 siesta. Meanwhile Glouglou, rolling and smoking 
 cigarettes in the shade of a clump of lilac, watched 
 with button eyes the noddings of his superior, 
 and, at the cost of some convulsive writhings, 
 constrained himself to silent laughter. 
 
 A heavy step crunched the gravel and I heard 
 my name pronounced in a deep inquiring rumble 
 — the voice of Professor Keredec, no less. Nor 
 was I greatly surprised, since our meeting in the 
 forest had led me to expect some advances on his 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 89 
 
 part toward friendliness, or, at least, in the direc- 
 tion of a better acquaintance. However, I withheld 
 my reply for a moment to make sure I had heard 
 aright. 
 
 The name was repeated. 
 
 "Here I am," I called, "in the pavilion, if you 
 wish to see me." 
 
 "Aha! I hear you become an invalid, my dear 
 sir." With that the professor's great bulk loomed 
 in the doorway against the glare outside. "I have 
 come to condole with you, if you allow it." 
 
 "To smoke with me, too, I hope," I said, not 
 a little pleased. 
 
 "That I will do," he returned, and came in slowly, 
 walking with perceptible lameness. "The sympathy 
 I offer is genuine: it is not only from the heart, it 
 is from the laiissimus dorsi," he continued, seating 
 himself with a cavernous groan. "I am your confrere 
 in illness, my dear sir. I have choosed this fine 
 weather for rheumatism of the back." 
 
 "I hope it is not painful." 
 
 "Ha, it is so-so," he rumbled, removing his spec- 
 tacles and wiping his eyes, dazzled by the sun. 
 "There is more of me than of most men — more to 
 suffer. Nature was generous to the httle germs 
 
90 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 when she made this big Keredec; she offered them 
 room for their campaigns of war." 
 
 "You'll take a cigarette?" 
 
 "I thank you; if you do not mmd, I smoke my 
 pipe." 
 
 He took from his pocket a worn leather case, 
 which he opened, disclosing a small, browned clay 
 bowl of the kind workmen use; and, fitting it with 
 a red stem, he filled it with a dark and sinister 
 tobacco from a pouch. "Always my pipe for me," 
 he said, and applied a match, inhaling the smoke 
 as other men inhale the light smoke of cigarettes. 
 "Ha, it is good! It is wicked for the insides, but 
 it is good for the soul." And clouds wreathed his 
 great beard like a storm on Mont Blanc as he con- 
 cluded, with gusto, "It is my first pipe since 
 yesterday." 
 
 "That is being a good smoker," I ventured sen- 
 tentiously; "to whet indulgence with abstinence." 
 
 "My dear sir," he protested, "I am a man with- 
 out even enough virtue to be an epicure. "When 
 I am alone I am a chimney with no hebdomadary 
 repose; I smoke forever. It is on account of my 
 young friend I am temperate now." 
 
 "He has never smoked, your young friend?" I 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 91 
 
 asked, glancing at my visitor rather curiously, I 
 fear. 
 
 "Mr. Saflfren has no vices." Professor Keredec 
 replaced his silver-rimmed spectacles and turned 
 them upon me with serene benevolence. "He is 
 in good condition, all pure, hke Uttle children — 
 and so if I smoke near him he chokes and has water 
 at the eyes, though he does not complain. Just 
 now I take a vacation: it is his hour for study, 
 but I think he looks more out of the front window 
 than at his book. He looks very much from the 
 window" — ^there was a muttering of subterranean 
 thunder somewhere, which I was able to locate in 
 the professor's torso, and took to be his expression 
 of a chuckle — "yes, very much, since the passing 
 of that charming lady some days ago." 
 
 "You say your young friend's name is Saflfren?" 
 "Oliver Saflfren." The benevolent gaze continued 
 to rest upon me, but a shadow like a faint anxiety 
 darkened the Homeric brow, and an odd notion 
 entered my mind (without any good reason) that 
 Professor Keredec was wondering what I thought 
 of the name. I uttered some commonplace syllable 
 of no moment, and there ensued a pause during 
 which the seeming shadow upon my visitor's fore- 
 
92 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 head became a reality, deepening to a look of per- 
 plexity and trouble. Finally he said abruptly: 
 "It is about him that I have come to talk to you." 
 
 "I shall be very glad," I murmured, but he 
 brushed the callow formality aside with a gesture 
 of i^emonstrance. 
 
 "Ha, my dear sir," he cried; "but you are a 
 man of feeling! We are both old enough to deal 
 with more than just these little words of the mouth! 
 It was the way you have received my poor young 
 gentleman's excuses when he was so rude, which 
 make me wish to talk with you on such a subject; 
 it is why I would not have you believe Mr. Sajffren 
 and me two very suspected individuals who hide 
 here like two bad criminals!" 
 
 "No, no," I protested hastily. "The name of 
 Professor Keredec " 
 
 "The name of no man," he thundered, interrupt- 
 ing, "can protect his reputation when he is caught 
 peeping from a curtain! Ha, my dear sir! I know 
 what you think. You think, 'He is a nioe fine man, 
 that old professor, oh, very nice — only he hides 
 behind the curtains sometimes! Very fine man, 
 oh, yes; only he is a spy.' Eh? Ha, ha! That is 
 what you have been thinking, my dear sir!" 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 93 
 
 "Not at all," I laughed; "I thought you might 
 fear that I was a spy." 
 
 "Eh?" He became sharply serious upon the in- 
 stant. "What made you think that?" 
 
 "I supposed you might be conducting some experi- 
 ments, or perhaps writing a book which you wished 
 to keep from the public for a time, and that possibly 
 you might imagine that I was a reporter." 
 
 "So! And that is all," he returned, with evident 
 relief. "No, my dear sir, I was the spy; it is the 
 truth; and I was spying upon you. I confess my 
 shame. I wish very much to know what you 
 were like, what kind of a man you are. And so," 
 he concluded with an opening of the hands, palms 
 upward, as if to show that nothing remained for 
 concealment, "and so I have watched you." 
 
 "Why?" I asked. 
 
 "The explanation is so simple: it was necessary." 
 
 "Because of — of Mr. Saffren?" I said slowly, 
 and with some trepidation. 
 
 "Precisely." The professor exhaled a cloud of 
 smoke. "Because I am sensitive for him, and 
 because in a certain way I am — how should it be 
 said? — perhaps it is near the truth to say, I am his 
 guardian." 
 
94 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "I see." 
 
 "Forgive me," he rejoined quickly, "but I am 
 afraid you do not see. I am not his guardian by 
 the law." 
 
 "I had not supposed that you were," I said. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because, though he puzzled me and I do not 
 understand his case — ^his case, so to speak, I have 
 not for a moment thought him insane." 
 
 "Ha, my dear sir, you are right!" exclaimed 
 Keredec, beaming on me, much pleased. "You are 
 a thousand times right; he is as sane as yourself 
 or myseK or as anybody in the whole wide world! 
 Ha! he is now much more sane, for his mind is not 
 yet confused and becobwebbed with the useless 
 things you and I put into ours. It is open and 
 clear like the little children's mind. And it is a 
 good mind! It is only a little learning, a little 
 experience, that he lacks. A few months more — ha, 
 at the greatest, a year from now — and he will not 
 be different any longer; he will be like the rest 
 of us. Only" — the professor leaned forward and 
 his big fist came down on the arni of his chair — 
 "he shall be better than the rest of us! But if 
 strange people were to see him now," he continued. 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 95 
 
 leaning back and dropping his voice to a more 
 confidential tone, "it would not do. This poor 
 world is full of fools; there are so many who judge 
 quickly. If they should see him now, they might 
 think he is not just right in his brain; and then, 
 as it could happen so easily, those same people 
 might meet him again after a whUe. 'Ha,' they 
 would say, 'there was a time when that young 
 man was insane. I knew him!' And so he might 
 go through his life with those clouds over him. 
 Those clouds are black clouds, they can make 
 more harm than our old sins, and I wish to save 
 my friend from them. So I have brought him here 
 to this quiet place where nobody comes, and we 
 can keep from meeting any foolish people. But, 
 my dear sir" — he leaned forward again, and spoke 
 emphatically — "it would be barbarous for men of 
 intelligence to live in the same house and go always 
 hiding from one another! Let us dine together this 
 evening, if you will, and not only this evening but 
 every evening you are willing to share with us and 
 do not wish to be alone. It will be good for us. 
 We are three men Uke hermits, far out of the world, 
 but — a thousand saints! — let us be civilised to one 
 another!" 
 
96 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "With all my heart," I said. 
 
 "Ha! I wish you to know my young man," 
 Keredec went on. "You will like him — ^no man of 
 feeling could keep himself from liking him — ^and he 
 is your fellow-countryman. I hope you will be his 
 friend. He should make friends, for he needs them." 
 
 "I think he has a host of them," said I, "in Pro- 
 fessor Keredec." 
 
 My visitor looked at me quizzically for a moment, 
 shook his head and sighed. "That is only one small 
 man in a big body, that Professor Keredec. And 
 yet," he went on sadly, "it is aU the friends that 
 poor boy has in this world. You will dine with us 
 to-night?" 
 
 Acquiescing cheerfully, I added: "You will join 
 me at the table on my veranda, won't you? I can 
 hobble that far but not much farther." 
 
 Before answering he cast a sidelong glance at 
 the arrangement of things outside the door. The 
 screen of honeysuckle ran partly across the front of 
 the little porch, about half of which it concealed 
 from the garden and consequently from the road 
 beyond the archway. I saw that he took note of 
 this before he pointed to that corner 'of the veranda 
 most closely screened by the vines and said: 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 97 
 
 "May the table be placed yonder?" 
 
 "Certainly; I often have it there, even when I 
 am alone." 
 
 "Ha, that is good," he exclaimed. "It is not 
 human for a Frenchman to eat in the house in good 
 weather." 
 
 "It is a pity," I said, "that I should have been 
 such a bugbear." 
 
 This remark was thoroughly disingenuous, for, 
 although I did not doubt that anything he told 
 me was perfectly true, nor that he had made as 
 complete a revelation as he thought consistent with 
 his duty toward the young man in his charge, I 
 did not believe that his former precautions were 
 altogether due to my presence at the inn. 
 
 And I was certain that while he might fear for 
 his friend some chance repute of insanity, he had 
 greater terrors than that. As to their nature I had 
 no clew; nor was it my affair to be guessing; but 
 whatever they were, the days of security at Les 
 Trais Pigeons had somewhat eased Professor Kere- 
 dec's mind in regard to them. At least, his anxiety 
 was sufficiently assuaged to risk dining out of doors 
 with only my screen of honeysuckle between his 
 charge and curious eyes. So much was evident. 
 
98 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "The reproach is deserved," he returned, after a 
 pause. "It is to be wished that all our bugbears 
 might offer as pleasant a revelation, if we had the 
 courage, or the slyness" — ^he laughed — "to investi- 
 gate them." 
 
 I made a reply of similar gallantry and he got 
 to his feet, rubbing his back as he rose. 
 
 "Ha, I am old! old! Rheumatism in warm 
 weather: that is ugly. Now I must go to my boy 
 and see what he can make of his Gibbon. The poor 
 fellow! I think he finds the decay of Rome worse 
 than rheumatism in summer!" 
 
 He replaced his pipe in its case, and promising 
 heartily that it should not be the last he would 
 smoke in my company and domain, was making 
 slowly for the door when he paused at a sound from 
 the road. 
 
 We heard the rapid hoof -beats of a mettled horse. 
 He crossed our vision and the open archway: a 
 high-stepping hackney going well, driven by a lady 
 in a light trap which was half full of wild flowers. 
 It was a quick picture, like a flash of the cinemato- 
 graph, but the pose of the lady as a driver was 
 seen to be of a commanding grace, and though she 
 was not in white but in Ught blue, and her plain 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 99 
 
 sailor hat was certainly not trimmed with roses, I 
 had not the least difficulty in recognising her. At 
 the same instant there was a hurried clatter of foot- 
 steps upon the stairway leading from the gallery; 
 the startled pigeons fluttered up from the garden- 
 path, betaking themselves to flight, and "that other 
 monsieur" came leaping across the courtyard, 
 through the archway and into the road. 
 
 "Glouglou! Look quickly!" he called loudly, in 
 French, as he came; "Who is that lady?" 
 
 Glouglou would have replied, but the words were 
 taken out of his mouth. Amedee awoke with a 
 frantic start and launched himself at the archway, 
 carroming from its nearest corner and hurtling on- 
 ward at a speed which for once did not diminish 
 in proportion to his progress. 
 
 "That lady, monsieur.''" he gasped, checking him- 
 self at the young man's side and gazing after the 
 trap, "that is Madame d'Armand." 
 
 "Madame d'Armand," Saffren repeated the name 
 slowly. "Her name is Madame d'Armand." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," said Amedee complacently; "it 
 is an American lady who has married a French 
 nobleman." 
 
CHAPTER Vm 
 
 LIKE most painters, I have supposed the 
 tools of my craft harder to manipulate 
 than those of others. The use of words, 
 particularly, seemed readier, handier for the con- 
 trivance of effects than pigments. I thought the 
 language of words less elusive than that of colour, 
 leaving smaller margin for unintended effects; and, 
 believing in complacent good faith that words con- 
 veyed exact meanings exactly, it was my innocent 
 conception that almost anything might be so de- 
 scribed in words that all who read must inevitably 
 perceive that thing precisely. K this were true, 
 there would be httle work for the lawyers, who 
 produce such tortured pages in the struggle to be 
 definite, who swing riches from one family to an- 
 other, save men from violent death or send them 
 to it, and earn fortunes for themselves through 
 the dangerous inadequacies of words. I have learned 
 how great was my mistake, and now I am wishing 
 I coxdd shift paper for canvas, that I might paint 
 
 the young man who came to interest me so deeply. 
 
 100 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 101 
 
 I wish I might present him here in colour instead 
 of trusting to this unstable business of words, 
 so wily and undependable, with their shimmering 
 values, that you cannot turn your back upon them 
 for two minutes but they will be shouting a hun- 
 dred things which they were not meant to tell. 
 
 To make the best of necessity: what I have 
 written of him — my first impressions — ^must be taken 
 as the picture, although it be but a gossamer sketch 
 in the air, instead of definite work with well-ground 
 pigments to show forth a portrait, to make you 
 see flesh and blood. It must take the place of some- 
 thing contrived with my own tools to reveal what 
 the following days revealed him to me, and what 
 it was about him (evasive of description) which made 
 me so soon, as Keredec wished, his friend. 
 
 Life among our kin and kind is made pleasanter 
 by our daily platitudes. "Who is more tedious than 
 the man incessantly struggling to avoid the banal? 
 Nature rules that such a one will produce nothing 
 better than epigram and paradox, saying old, old 
 things in a new way, or merely shifting object for 
 subject — and his wife's face, when he shines for a 
 circle, is worth a glance. With no further apology, 
 I declare that I am a person who has felt few posi- 
 
102 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 tive likes or dislikes for people in this life, and I 
 did deeply like my fellow-lodgers at Les Trois 
 Pigeons. Liking for both men increased vsdth ac- 
 quaintance, and for the younger I came to feel, 
 in addition, a kind of championship, doubtless in 
 some measure due to what Keredec had told me 
 of him, but more to that half-humourous sense of 
 protectiveness that we always have for those yoimg 
 people whose untempered and innocent outlook 
 makes us feel, as we say, "a thousand years old." 
 
 The afternoon following our first dinner together, 
 the two, in returning from their walk, came into 
 the pavilion with cheerful greetings, instead of 
 going to their rooms as usual, and Keredec, de- 
 claring that the open air had "dispersed" his rheu- 
 matism, asked if he might overhaul some of my 
 Uttle canvases and boards. I explained that they 
 consisted mainly of "notes" for future use, but con- 
 sented willingly; whereupon he arranged a number 
 of them as for exhibition and delivered himself 
 impromptu of the most vehemently instructive lec- 
 ture on art I had ever heard. Beginning with the 
 family, the tribe, and the totem-pole, he was able 
 to demonstrate a theory that art was not only 
 useful to society but its primary necessity; a curious 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 103 
 
 thought, probably more attributable to the fact that 
 he was a Frenchman than to that of his being a 
 scientist. 
 
 "And here," he said in the course of his demon- 
 stration, pointing to a sketch which I had made 
 one morning just after sunrise — "here you can see 
 real sunshine. One certain day there came those 
 few certain moment' at the sunrise when the light 
 was like this. Those few moment', where are they.'* 
 They have disappeared, gone for eternally. They 
 went" — ^he snapped his fingers — "like that. Yet here 
 they are — ^ha! — ^forever!" 
 
 "But it doesn't look like sunshine," said Oliver 
 SafPren hesitatingly, stating a disconcerting but in- 
 controvertible truth; "it only seems to look like 
 it because — isn't it because it's so much brighter 
 than the rest of the picture? I doubt if paint can 
 look like simshine." He turned from the sketch, 
 caught Keredec's gathering \ frown, and his face 
 flushed painfully. "Ah!" he cried, "I shouldn't have 
 said it?" 
 
 I interposed to reassure him, exclaiming that it 
 were a godsend indeed, did all our critics merely 
 speak the plain truth as they see it for themselves. 
 The professor would not have it so, and cut me off. 
 
104 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "No, no, no, my dear sir!" he shouted. "You 
 speak with kindness, but you put some wrong ideas 
 in his head!" 
 
 Saffren's look of trouble deepened. "I don't under- 
 stand," he murmured. " I thought you said always 
 to speak the truth just as I see it." 
 
 "I have telled you," Keredec declared vehemently, 
 "nothing of the kind!" 
 
 "But only yesterday " 
 
 "Never!" 
 
 "I understood " 
 
 "Then you understood only one-half! I say, 
 'Speak the truth as you see it, when you speak.' 
 I did not tell you to speak! How much time have 
 you give' to study sunshine and paint? What do 
 you know about them?" 
 
 "Nothing," answered the other humbly. 
 
 A profound rumbling was heard, and the frown 
 disappeared from Professor Keredec's brow like the 
 vanishing of the shadow of a little cloud from the 
 dome of some great benevolent and scientific insti- 
 tute. He dropped a weighty hand on his young 
 friend's shoulder, and, in high good-humour, thun- 
 dered: 
 
 "Then you are a critic! Knowing nothing of sim- 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 105 
 
 shine except that it warms you, and never having 
 touched paint, you are going to tell about them to 
 a man who spends his life studying them ! You look 
 up in the night and the truth you see is that the 
 moon and stars are crossing the ocean. You will tell 
 that to the astronomer? Ha! The truth is what the 
 masters see. When you know what they see, you 
 may speak." 
 
 At dinner the night before, it had struck me that 
 Saffren was a rather silent yoxmg man by habit, and 
 now I thought I began to understand the reason. 
 I hinted as much, saying, "That would make a quiet 
 world of it." 
 
 "All the better, my dear sir!" The professor 
 turned beamingly upon me and continued, dropping 
 into a Whistlerian mannerism that he had sometimes: 
 "You must not blame that great wind of a Keredec 
 for preaching at other people to listen. It gives the 
 poor man more room for himself to talk!" 
 
 I found his talk worth hearing. 
 
 I would show you, if I could, our pleasant evenings 
 of lingering, after coffee, behind the tremulous screen 
 of honeysuckle, with the night very dark and quiet 
 beyond the warm nimbus of our candle-light, the 
 faces of my two companions clear-obscure in a mellow 
 
106 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 shadow like the middle tones of a Rembrandt, and 
 the professor, good man, talking wonderfully of 
 everything under the stars and over them, — while 
 Ohver Saffren and I sat under the spell of the big, 
 kind voice, the young man Ustening with the same 
 eagerness which marked him when he spoke. It 
 was an eagerness to understand, not to interrupt. 
 These were our evenings. In the afternoons the 
 two went for their walk as usual, though now they 
 did not plunge out of sight of the main road with 
 the noticeable haste which Amedee had described. 
 As time pressed, I perceived the caution of Keredec 
 visibly slackening. Whatever he had feared, the 
 obscurity and continued quiet of Les Trois Pigeons 
 reassured him; he felt more and more secure in this 
 sheltered retreat, "far out of the world," and obvi- 
 ously thought no danger imminent. So the days 
 went by, uneventful for my new friends, — days of 
 warm idleness for me. Let them go imnarrated; we 
 pass to the event. 
 
 My ankle had taken its wonted time to recover. 
 I was on my feet again and into the woods — ^not 
 traversing, on the way, a certain poppy-sprinkled 
 field whence a fine Norman stallion snorted ridicule 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 107 
 
 over a wall. But the fortune of Keredec was to 
 sink as I rose. His summer rheumatism returned, 
 came to grips with him, laid him low. We hobbled 
 together for a day or so, then I threw away my 
 stick and he exchanged his for an improvised crutch. 
 By the time I was fit to run, he was able to do little 
 better than to creep — might well have taken to his 
 bed. But as he insisted that his pupil should not 
 forego the daily long walks and the health of the 
 forest, it came to pass that Saflfren often made me 
 the objective of his rambles. At dinner he usually 
 asked in what portion of the forest I should be paint- 
 ing late the next afternoon, and I got in the habit 
 of expecting him to join me toward sunset. We 
 located each other through a code of yodeling that 
 we arranged; his part of these vocal gymnastics 
 being very pleasant to hear, for he had a flexible, 
 rich voice. I shudder to recall how largely my own 
 performances partook of the grotesque. But in the 
 forest where were no musical persons (I supposed) 
 to take hurt from whatever noise I made, I would 
 let go with all the lungs I had; he followed the 
 horrid sounds to their origin, and we would return 
 to the inn together. 
 
 On these homeward walks I found him a good 
 
108 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 companion, and that is something not to be under- 
 valued by a selfish man who lives for himself and 
 his own little ways and his own little thoughts, and 
 for very little else, — which is the kind of man (as I 
 have already confessed) that I was — deserving the 
 pity of all happily or unhappily married persons. 
 
 Responsive in kind to either a talkative mood or 
 a silent one, always gentle in manner, and always 
 unobtrusively melancholy, Saffren never took the ini- 
 tiative, though now and then he asked a question 
 about some rather simple matter which might be 
 puzzling him. Whatever the answer, he usually 
 received it in silence, apparently turning the thing 
 over and over and inside out in his mind. He was 
 almost tremulously sensitive, yet not vain, for he 
 was neither afraid nor ashamed to expose his igno- 
 rance, his amazing lack of experience. He had a 
 greater trouble, one that I had not fathomed. Some- 
 times there came over his face a look of importunate 
 wistfulness and distressed perplexity, and he seemed 
 on the point of breaking out with something that 
 he wished to tell me — or to ask me, for it might 
 have been a question — but he always kept it back. 
 Keredec's training seldom lost its hold upon him. 
 
 I had gone back to my glade again, and to the 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 109 
 
 thin sunshine, which came a little earlier, now that 
 we were deep in July; and one afternoon I sat in 
 the mouth of the path, just where I had played the 
 bounding harlequin for the benefit of the lovely vis- 
 itor at Quesnay. It was warm in the woods and 
 quiet, warm with the heat of July, still with a July 
 stillness. The leaves had no motion; if there were 
 birds or insects within hearing they must have been 
 asleep; the quivering flight of a butterfly in that 
 languid air seemed, by contrast, quite a commotion; 
 a humming-bird would have made a riot. 
 
 I heard the light snapping of a twig and a swish 
 of branches from the direction in which I faced; 
 evidently some one was approaching the glade, 
 though concealed from me for the moment by the 
 winding of the path. Taking it for Saffren, as a 
 matter of course (for we had arranged to meet at 
 that time and place), I raised my voice in what I 
 intended for a merry yodel of greeting. 
 
 I yodeled loud, I yodeled long. Knowing my own 
 deficiencies in this art, I had adopted the cunning 
 sinner's policy toward sin and made a joke of it: 
 thus, since my best performance was not unsugges- 
 tive of calamity in the poultry yard, I made it worse. 
 And then and there, when my mouth was at its widest 
 
no THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 in the production of these shocking uUa-hootings, the 
 person approaching came round a turn in the path, 
 and within full sight of me. To my ultimate, utmost 
 horror, it was Madame d'Armand. 
 
 I grew so furiously red that it burned me. I had 
 not the courage to rxm, though I could have prayed 
 that she might take me for what I seemed — ^plainly 
 a limatic, whooping the lonely peace of the woods 
 into pandemonium — and turn back. But she kept 
 straight on, must inevitably reach the glade and 
 cross it, and I calculated wretchedly that at the rate 
 she was walking, unhurried but not lagging, it would 
 be about thirty seconds before she passed me. Then 
 suddenly, while I waited in sizzling shame, a clear 
 voice rang out from a distance in an answering yodel 
 to mine, and I thanked heaven for its mercies; at 
 least she would see that my antics had some reason. 
 
 She stopped short, in a half-step, as if a little 
 startled, one arm raised to push away a thin green 
 branch that crossed the path at shoulder-height; 
 and her attitude was so charming as she paused, 
 detained to listen by this other voice with its musical 
 youthfulness, that for a second I thought crossly of 
 all the young men in the world. 
 
 There was a final call, clear and loud as a bugle, 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 111 
 
 and she turned to the direction whence it came, so 
 that her back was toward me. Then OUver Saffren 
 came rmming Hghtly round the turn of the path, 
 near her and facing her. 
 
 He stopped as short as she had. 
 
 Her hand dropped from the slender branch, and 
 pressed against her side. 
 
 He lifted his hat and spoke to her, and I thought 
 she made some quick reply in a low voice, though I 
 could not be sure. 
 
 She held that startled attitude a moment longer, 
 then turned and crossed the glade so hurriedly that 
 it was almost as if she ran away from him. I had 
 moved aside with my easel and camp-stool, but she 
 passed close to me as she entered the path again on 
 my side of the glade. She did not seem to see me, 
 her dark eyes stared widely straight ahead, her Ups 
 were parted, and she looked white and frightened. 
 
 She disappeared very quickly in the windings of 
 the path. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 HE came on more slowly, his eyes following 
 her as she vanished, then turning to me 
 with a rather pitiful apprehension — a 
 look like that I remember to have seen (some hun- 
 dreds of years ago) on the face of a freshman, 
 glancing up from his book to find his doorway 
 ominously filling with sophomores. 
 
 I stepped out to meet him, indignant upon several 
 counts, most of all upon his own. I knew there was 
 no offence in his heart, not the remotest rude intent, 
 but the fact was before me that he had frightened 
 a woman, had given this very lovely guest of my 
 friends good cause to hold him a boor, if she did not, 
 indeed, think him (as she probably thought me) an 
 outright lunatic ! I said : 
 
 "You spoke to that lady!" And my voice sounded 
 unexpectedly harsh and sharp to my own ears, for I 
 had meant to speak quietly. 
 
 "I know — I know. It — ^it was wrong," he stam- 
 mered. "I knew I shouldn't — and I couldn't help it.'* 
 
 "You expect me to believe that?" 
 112 
 
CHAPTER NINE 113 
 
 "It's the truth; I couldn't!" 
 
 I laughed sceptically; and he flinched, but repeated 
 that what he had said was only the truth. "I don't 
 understand; it was all beyond me," he added huskily. 
 
 "What was it you said to her?" 
 
 "I spoke her name — 'Madame d'Armand.' " 
 
 "You said more than that!" 
 
 "I asked her if she would let me see her again." 
 
 "What else?" 
 
 "Nothing," he answered humbly. "And then she 
 — ^then for a moment it seemed — ^for a moment she 
 didn't seem to be able to speak " 
 
 "I should think not!" I shouted, and burst out 
 at him with satirical laughter. He stood patiently 
 enduring it, his lowered eyes following the aimless 
 movements of his hands, which were twisting and 
 untwisting his flexible straw hat; and it might have 
 struck me as nearer akin to tragedy rather than to 
 a thing for laughter: this spectacle of a grown man 
 so Uke a schoolboy before the master, shamefaced 
 over a stammered confession. 
 
 "But she did say something to you, didn't she?" 
 I asked finally, with the gentleness of a cross- 
 examining lawyer. 
 
 "Yes — after that moment." 
 
114 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "Well, what was it?" 
 
 "She said, 'Not now!' That was all." 
 
 "I suppose that was all she had breath for! It 
 was just the inconsequent and meaningless thing a 
 frightened woman would say !" 
 
 "Meaningless?" he repeated, and looked up won- 
 deringly. 
 
 "Did you take it for an appointment?" I roared, 
 quite out of patience, and losing my temper com- 
 pletely. 
 
 "No, no, no! She said only that, and then " 
 
 "Then she turned and ran away from you!" 
 
 "Yes," he said, swallowing painfully. 
 
 "That pleased you," I stormed, "to frighten a 
 woman in the woods — ^to make her feel that she can't 
 walk here in safety! You enjoy doing things like 
 that?" 
 
 He looked at me with disconcerting steadiness for 
 a moment, and, without offering any other response, 
 turned aside, resting his arm against the trunk of 
 a tree and gazing into the quiet forest. 
 
 I set about packing my traps, grumbling various 
 sarcasms, the last mutterings of a departed storm, 
 for already I realised that I had taken out my own 
 mortification upon him, and I was stricken with 
 
CHAPTER NINE 115 
 
 remorse. And yet, so contrarily are we made, I con- 
 tinued to be imkind while in my heart I was asking 
 pardon of him. I tried to make my reproaches gen- 
 tler, to lend my voice a hint of friendly humour, but 
 in spite of me the one sounded grufifer and the other 
 sourer with everything I said. This was the worse 
 because of the continued silence of the victim: he 
 did not once answer, nor by the slightest movement 
 alter his attitude until I had finished — and more than 
 finished. 
 
 "There — and that's all!" I said desperately, when 
 the things were strapped and I had slimg them to 
 my shoulder. "Let's be off, in heaven's name!" 
 
 At that he turned quickly toward me; it did not 
 lessen my remorse to see that he had grown very pale. 
 
 "I wouldn't have frightened her for the world," 
 he said, and his voice and his whole body shook with 
 a strange violence. "I wouldn't have frightened her 
 to please the angels in heaven!" 
 
 A blunderer whose incantation had brought the 
 spirit up to face me, I stared at him helplessly, nor 
 could I find words to answer or control the passion 
 that my imbecile scolding had evoked. Whatever 
 the barriers Keredec's training had built for his pro- 
 tection, they were down now. 
 
116 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "You think I told a lie!" he cried. "You think 
 I lied when I said I couldn't help speaking to her!" 
 , "No, no," I said earnestly. "I didn't mean " 
 
 "Words!" he swept the feeble protest away, 
 drowned in a whirling vehemence. "And what does 
 it matter? You can't understand. When you want 
 to know what to do, you look back into your life 
 and it tells you; and I look back — ah!" He cried 
 out, uttering a half-choked, incoherent syllable. "I 
 look back and it's all — blind! All these things you 
 can do and can't do — all these infinite little things! 
 You know, and Keredec knows, and Glouglou knows, 
 and every mortal soul on earth knows — ^but I don't 
 know! Your life has taught you, and you know, 
 but I don't know. I haven't had my life. It's gone! 
 All I have is words that Keredec has said to me, and 
 it's like a man with no eyes, out in the sunshine 
 hunting for the light. Do you think words can 
 teach you to resist such impulses as I had when I 
 spoke to Madame d'Armand? Can life itself teach 
 you to resist them? Perhaps you never had them?" 
 
 "I don't know," I answered honestly. 
 
 "I would burn my hand from my arm and my arm 
 from my body," he went on, with the same wild 
 intensity, "rather than trouble her or frighten her. 
 
CHAPTER NINE 117 
 
 but I couldn't help speaking to her any more than 
 I can help wanting to see her again — ^the feeling that 
 I must — whatever you say or do, whatever Keredec 
 says or does, whatever the whole world may say or 
 do. And I will ! It isn't a thing to choose to do, or 
 not to do. I can't help it any more than I can help 
 being alive!" 
 
 He paused, wiping from his brow a heavy dew not 
 of the heat, but like that on the forehead of a man 
 in crucial pain. I made nervous haste to seize the 
 opportxmity, and said gently, almost timidly: 
 
 "But if it should distress the lady?" 
 
 "Yes — then I could keep away. But I must know 
 that." 
 
 "I think you might know it by her running away 
 — and by her look," I said mildly. "Didn't you?" 
 
 "No!" And his eyes flashed an added emphasis. 
 
 "Well, well," I said, "let's be on our way, or the 
 professor will be wondering if he is to dine alone." 
 
 Without looking to see if he followed, I struck 
 into the path toward home. He did follow, obedi- 
 ently enough, not uttering another word so long as 
 we were in the woods, though I could hear him 
 breathing sharply as he strode behind me, and knew 
 that he was struggling to regain control of himself. 
 
118 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 I set the pace, making it as fast as I could, and 
 neither of us spoke again until we had come out of 
 the forest and were upon the main road near the 
 Baudry cottage. Then he said in a steadier voice: 
 
 "Why should it distress her?" 
 
 "Well, you see," I began, not slackening the pace 
 "there are formalities " 
 
 "Ah, I know," he interrupted, with an impatient 
 laugh. "Keredec once took me to a marionette show 
 — all the little people strung on wires; they couldn't 
 move any other way. And so you mustn't talk to 
 a woman until somebody whose name has been 
 spoken to you speaks yours to her! Do you call that 
 a rule of nature?" 
 
 "My dear boy," I laughed in some desperation, 
 "we must conform to it, ordinarily, no matter whose 
 rule it is." 
 
 "Do you think Madame d'Armand cares for Uttle 
 forms like that?" he asked challengingly. 
 
 "She does," I assured him with perfect confidence. 
 "And, for the himdredth time, you must have seen 
 how you troubled her." 
 
 "No," he returned, with the same curious obsti- 
 nacy, "I don't believe it. There was something, but 
 it wasn't trouble. We looked straight at each other; 
 
CHAPTER NINE 119 
 
 I saw her eyes plainly, and it was — " he paused and 
 sighed, a sudden, brilliant smile upon his lips — "it 
 was very — ^it was very strange!" 
 
 There was something so glad and different in his 
 look that — like any other dried-up old blimderer in 
 my place — ^I felt an instant tendency to laugh. It 
 was that heathenish possession, the old insanity of 
 the risibles, which makes a man think it a humourous 
 thing that his friend should be discovered in love. 
 
 But before I spoke, before I quite smiled outright, 
 I was given the grace to see myself in the likeness 
 of a leering stranger trespassing in some cherished 
 inclosure: a garden where the gentlest guests must 
 always be intruders, and only the owner should come. 
 The best of us profane it readily, leaving the coarse 
 prints of our heels upon its paths, mauling and man- 
 handling the fairy blossoms with what pudgy fingers ! 
 Comes the poet, ruthlessly leaping the wall and 
 trumpeting indecently his view-halloo of the chase, 
 and, after him, the joker, snickering and hopeful of 
 a kill among the rose-beds; for this has been their 
 hunting-ground since the world began. These two 
 have made us miserably ashamed of the divine infini- 
 tive, so that we are afraid to utter the very words 
 "to love," lest some urchin overhear and pursue us 
 
120 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 with a sticky forefinger and stickier taunts. It is 
 little to my credit that I checked the sUly impulse 
 to giggle at the eternal marvel, and went as gently 
 as I could where I should not have gone at all. 
 
 "But if you were wrong," I said, "if it did distress 
 her, and if it happened that she has already had too 
 much that was distressing in her life " 
 
 "You know something about her!" he exclaimed. 
 "You know " 
 
 "I do not," I interrupted in turn. "I have only 
 a vague guess; I may be altogether mistaken." 
 
 "What is it that you guess?" he demanded 
 abruptly. "Who made her suffer.'*" 
 
 "I think it was her husband," I said, with a lack 
 of discretion for which I was instantly sorry, fearing 
 with reason that I had added a final blunder to the 
 long list of the afternoon. "That is," I added, 
 "if my guess is right." 
 
 He stopped short in the road, detaining me by 
 the arm, the question coming like a whip-cradt: 
 sharp, loud, violent. 
 
 "Is he aHve?" 
 
 "I don't know," I answered, begianiiig to move 
 forward; "and this is foolish talk — especially on my 
 part!" 
 
CHAPTER NINE 121 
 
 "But I want to know," he persisted, again detain- 
 ing me. 
 
 "And I don't know!" I returned emphatically. 
 "Probably I am entirely mistaken in thinking that 
 I know anything of her whatever. I ought not to 
 have spoken, unless I knew what I was talking 
 about, and I'd rather not say any more until I do 
 know." 
 
 "Very well," he said quickly. "Will you teU me 
 then.?" 
 
 "Yes — ^if you will let it go at that." 
 
 "Thank you," he said, and with an impulse which 
 was but too plainly one of gratitude, offered me 
 his hand. I took it, and my soul was disquieted 
 within me, for it was no purpose of mine to set in- 
 quiries on foot in regard to the affairs of "Madame 
 d'Armand." 
 
 It was early dusk, that hour, a little silvered but 
 still clear, when the edges of things are beginning to 
 grow indefinite, and usually our sleepy countryside 
 knew no tranquiller time of day; but to-night, as we 
 approached the inn, there were strange shapes in 
 the roadway and other tokens that events were 
 stirring there. 
 
122 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 From the courtyard came the sounds of laughter 
 and chattering voices. Before the entrance stood a 
 couple of open touring-cars; the chauffeurs engaged 
 in cooling the rear tires with buckets of water brought 
 by a personage ordinarily known as Glouglou, whose 
 look and manner, as he performed this office for the 
 leathern dignitaries, so awed me that I wondered I 
 had ever dared address him with any presumption 
 of intimacy. The cars were great and opulent, of 
 impressive wheel-base, and fore-and-aft they were 
 laden intricately with baggage: concave trunks fit- 
 ting behind the tonneaus, thin trunks fastened upon 
 the footboards, green, circular trunks adjusted to the 
 spare tires, all deeply coated with dust. Here were 
 fineries from Paris, doubtless on their way to flutter 
 over the gay sands of Trouville, and now wandering 
 but temporarily from the road; for such splendours 
 were never designed to dazzle us of Madame Bros- 
 sard's. 
 
 We were crossing before the machines when one of 
 the drivers saw fit to crank his engine (if that is the 
 knowing phrase) and the thing shook out the usual 
 vibrating uproar. It had a devastating effect upon 
 my companion. He uttered a wild exclamation and 
 sprang sideways into me, almost upsetting us both. 
 
CHAPTER NINE 123 
 
 "What on earth is the matter?" I asked. "Did 
 you think the car was starting?" 
 
 He turned toward me a face upon which was im- 
 printed the sheer, blank terror of a child. It passed 
 in an instant however, and he laughed. 
 
 "I really didn't know. Everything has been so 
 quiet always, out here in the country — and that 
 horrible racket coming so suddenly " 
 
 Laughing with him, I took his arm and we turned 
 to enter the archway. As we did so we almost ran 
 into a tall man who was coming out, evidently intend- 
 ing to speak to one of the drivers. 
 
 The stranger stepped back with a word of apology, 
 and I took note of him for a fellow-countryman, and 
 a worldly buck of fashion indeed, almost as cap-a-pie 
 the automobilist as my mysterious spiller of cider had 
 been the pedestrian. But this was no game-chicken; 
 on the contrary (so far as a glance in the dusk of the 
 archway revealed him), much the picture for framing 
 in a club window of a Sunday morning; a seasoned, 
 hard-surfaced, knowing creature for whom many a 
 head waiter must have swept previous claimants 
 from desired tables. He looked forty years so can- 
 nily that I guessed him to be about fifty. 
 
 We were passing him when he uttered an ejacula- 
 
124 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 tion of surprise and stepped forward again, holding 
 out his hand to my companion, and exclaiming: 
 
 "Where did y(m come from? I'd hardly have 
 known you." 
 
 OUver seemed unconscious of the proffered hand; 
 he stiffened visibly and said: 
 
 "I think there must be some mistake." 
 
 "So there is," said the other promptly. "I have 
 been misled by a resemblance. I beg your pardon." 
 
 He lifted his cap slightly, going on, and we entered 
 the courtyard to find a cheerful party of nine or ten 
 men and women seated about a couple of tables. 
 Like the person we had just encountered, they all 
 exhibited a picturesque elaboration of the costume 
 permitted by their mode of travel; making effective 
 groupings in their ample draperies of buff and green 
 and white, with glimpses of a flushed and pretty 
 face or two among the loosened veilings. Upon the 
 tables were pots of tea, plates of sandwiches, Madame 
 Brossard's three best silver dishes heaped with fruit, 
 and some bottles of dry champagne from the cellars 
 of Rheims. The partakers were making very merry, 
 having with them (as is inevitable in all such parties, 
 it seems) a fat young man inclined to humour, who 
 was now upon his feet for the proposal of some 
 
CHAPTER NINE 125 
 
 prankish toast. He interrupted himself long enough 
 to glance ovlf way as we crossed the garden; and it 
 struck me that several pairs of brighter eyes followed 
 my young companion with interest. He was well 
 worth it, perhaps all the more because he was so 
 genuinely unconscious of it; and he ran up the gaUery 
 steps and disappeared into his own rooms without 
 sending even a glance from the comer of his eye 
 in return. 
 
 I went almost as quickly to my pavihon, and, 
 without lighting my lamp, set about my prepara- 
 tions for dinner. 
 
 The party outside, breaking up presently, could 
 be heard moving toward the archway with increased 
 noise and laughter, inspired by some exquisite antic 
 on the part of the fat young man, when a girl's 
 voice (a very attractive voice) called, "Oh, Cressie, 
 aren't you coming?" and a man's replied, from near 
 my veranda: "Only stopping to light a cigar." 
 
 A flutter of skirts and a patter of feet betokened 
 that the girl came running back to joiu the smoker. 
 "Cressie," I heard her say in an eager, lowered tone, 
 "who was he?" 
 
 "Who was who?" 
 
 "That devastating creature in white flannels!" 
 
126 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 The man chuckled. "Matinee sort of devastator — 
 
 what? Monte Cristo hair, noble profile " 
 
 ^, *'You'd better tell me," she interrupted earnestly 
 — "if you don't want me to ask the waiter." 
 
 "But I don't know him." 
 
 "I saw you speak to him." 
 
 "I thought it was a man I met three years ago 
 out in San Francisco, but I was mistaken. There was 
 a slight resemblance. This fellow might have been 
 a rather decent younger brother of the man I knew. 
 He was the- " 
 
 My strong impression was that if the speaker 
 had not been interrupted at this point he would have 
 said something very unfavourable to the character 
 of the man he had met in San Francisco; but there 
 came a series of blasts from the automobile horns 
 and loud calls from others of the party, who were 
 evidently waiting for these two. 
 
 "Coming!" shouted the man. 
 
 "Wait!" said his companion hurriedly. "Who was 
 the other man, the older one with the painting things 
 and such a coat?" 
 
 "Never saw him before in my life." 
 
 I caught a last word from the girl as the p>air 
 moved away. 
 
CHAPTER NINE 127 
 
 "I'll come back here with a band to-morrow 
 night, and serenade the beautiful one. 
 
 "Perhaps he'd drop me his card out of the win- 
 dow!" 
 
 The horns sounded again; there was a final chorus 
 of laughter, suddenly ceasing to be heard as the cars 
 swept away, and Les Trois Pigeons was left to its 
 accustomed quiet. 
 
 "Monsieur is served," said Amedee, looking in at 
 my door, five minutes later. 
 
 "You have passed a great hour just now, 
 Amedee." 
 
 "It was like the old days, truly!" 
 
 "They are off for Trouville, I suppose." 
 
 "No, monsieur, they are on their way to visit the 
 chS,teau, and stopped here only because the rim from 
 Paris had made the tires too hot." 
 
 "To visit Quesnay, you mean?" 
 
 "Truly. But monsieur need give himself no uneasi- 
 ness; I did not mention to any one that monsieur is 
 here. His name was not spoken. Mademoiselle 
 Ward returned to the chateau to-day," he added. 
 "She has been in England." 
 
 "Quesnay will be gay," I said, coming out to the 
 table. Oliver Saffren was helping the professor down 
 
128 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 the steps, and Keredec, bent with suffering, but 
 indomitable, gave me a hearty greeting, and began 
 a ruthless dissection of Plato with the soup. Oliver, 
 usually very quiet, as I have said, seemed a little 
 restless under the discourse to-night. However, he 
 did not interrupt, sitting patiently until bedtime, 
 though obviously not listening. When he bade me 
 good night he gave me a look so clearly in reference 
 to a secret understanding between us that, meaning 
 to keep only the letter of my promise to him, I felt 
 about as comfortable as if I had meanly tricked 
 a child. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 1HAD finished dressing, next morning, and was 
 strapping my things together for the day's 
 campaign, when I heard a shuflBing 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 sand- 
 wiches, but, after hesitating somewhat, this appari- 
 tion 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 Hps 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?" 
 
 129 
 
130 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 The miserable old man said something I did not 
 understand — an incoherent syllable or two — sud- 
 denly covered his mo\ith 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, recover- 
 ing 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 
 
CHAPTER TEN 131 
 
 hope that they might give him some shadowy, far- 
 away idea rf 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 recog- 
 nised " 
 
 "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 
 
132 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 question, "monsieur will make some change of 
 attire?" 
 
 "Change of attire?" I echoed. 
 
 "Eh, the poor old coat all hvmched at the shoul- 
 ders and spotted with paint!" 
 
 "Why shouldn't it be?" I hissed, thoroughly irri- 
 tated. "Do you take me for a racing mar- 
 quis?" 
 
 "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 re- 
 peat " 
 
 "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 any- 
 
CHAPTER TEN 133 
 
 thing 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 re- 
 treated. 
 
 "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 trem- 
 ulous 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 EUzabeth 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 
 
134 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 had a charm for all men ever since horses wera 
 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 Bros- 
 sard will never believe in your respectability again." 
 
CHAPTER TEN 135 
 
 "Oh, yes, she will," said I. 
 
 "What? A lodger who has ladies calling upon 
 him at five o'clock in the morning? But your bun- 
 dle's on your shoulder," she rattled on, laughing, 
 "though there's many coidd 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 
 
136 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 place for us while we were away. George won't 
 be back for another ten days, and I've been over- 
 seeing an exhibition for him in London. After- 
 ward 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 com-se 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. 
 "Yoiu: 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. 
 
CHAPTER TEN 137 
 
 "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 flat- 
 tering." 
 
 "But I meant simply " 
 
 "No." She lifted her hand and stopped me. 
 "I'd rather believe that I have at least the choice 
 
138 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 — 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 distm-bing. 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 acro- 
 bat when she came upon me in the path." 
 
 "No. Did you?" cried Miss EHzabeth, with a 
 ready creduUty which I thought by no means 
 pretty; indeed, she seemed amused and, to my 
 surprise (for she is not an unkind woman), rattier 
 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 
 
CHAPTER TEN 139 
 
 at her quickly. A thin Hne had been drawn across 
 her forehead. 
 
 "You mean she's still reticent with George?" 
 I ventured. 
 
 "Yes," she answered sadly. "Poor George al- 
 ways hopes, of course, in the silent way of his 
 kind when they suffer from such unfortimate pas- 
 sions — and he waits." 
 
 "I suppose that former husband of hers re- 
 covered?" 
 
 "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 com- 
 panion 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 under- 
 stand 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 Uke: a fine, rare, 
 high type " 
 
 "But you didn't know him, did you?" Miss 
 Elizabeth asked with some dryness. 
 
140 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "No," I answered. *T saw him twice; once at 
 the time of his accident — that was only a night- 
 mare, 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 inter- 
 posed 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 mis- 
 take," I went on with confidence. "Her tragedy 
 must have taught her some important differ- 
 ences. Haven't you a notion she'll be tremen- 
 
CHAPTER TEN 141 
 
 dously 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 
 comiting 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 Eliza- 
 beth 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 bright- 
 ened suddenly, and inquired when I would have 
 my things sent up to the chS,teau from the 
 inn. 
 
 At the risk of a misunderstanding which I felt 
 I could ill afford, I resisted her kind hospitaUty, 
 and the outcome of it was that there should be a 
 kind of armistice, to begin with my dining at the 
 chMeau that evening. Thereupon she mounted to 
 the saddle, a bit of gymnastics for which she de- 
 
142 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 clined 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?" 
 
 "Footlel" she cried scornfully. "Be oflf 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 Umits 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. OUver Saffren did not join me in the 
 late afternoon; nor did the echo of distant yodelling 
 bespeak any eflfort 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 
 Vhat evening; and it is to be recorded that Glouglou 
 
CHAPTER TEN 143 
 
 carried the message for me. Amed^e did not appear, 
 from which it may be inferred that our mmtre 
 d^hotel was subject to lucid intervals. Certainly 
 his present shyness indicated an intelligeace of no 
 low order. 
 
T 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 HE dining-room at Quesnay is a pretty 
 j work of the second of those three Louises 
 who made so much furniture. It was 
 never a proper setting for a rusty, out-of-doors 
 painter-man, nor has such a fellow ever found him- 
 self complacently at ease there since the day its 
 first banquet was spread for a score or so of fine- 
 feathered epigram jinglers, fiddling Versailles gossip 
 out of a rouge-and-lace Quesnay marquise newly 
 sent into half -earnest banishment for too much king- 
 hunting. For my part, however, I should have 
 preferred a chance at making a place for myself 
 among the wigs and brocades to the Crusoe's Isle 
 of my chair at Miss Elizabeth's table. 
 
 I learned at an early age to look my vanities in 
 the face; I outfaced them and they quailed, but 
 persisted, surviving for my discomfort to this day. 
 Here is the confession: It was not untU my arrival 
 at the ch&teau that I reaHsed what temerity it in- 
 volved to dine there in evening clothes purchased, 
 
 some four or five or six years previously, in the 
 
 144 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 145 
 
 economical neighbourhood of the Boulevard St. 
 Michel. Yet the things fitted me well enough; were 
 clean and not shiny, having been worn no more 
 than a dozen times, I think; though they might 
 have been better pressed. 
 
 Looking over the men of the Quesnay party — or 
 perhaps I should signify a reversal of that and say 
 a glance of theirs at me — revealed the importance 
 of a particular length of coat-tail, of a certain rich 
 effect obtained by widely separating the lower points 
 of the waistcoat, of the display of some imagina- 
 tion in the buttons upon the same garment, of a 
 doubled-back arrangement of cuffs, and of a specific 
 design and dimension of tie. Marked uniformity 
 in these matters denoted their necessity; and clothes 
 differing from the essential so vitally as did mine 
 must have seemed immodest, little better than no 
 clothes at all. I doubt if I could have argued in 
 extenuation my lack of advantages for study, such 
 an excuse being itself the damning circumstance. 
 Of course eccentricity is permitted, but (as in the 
 Arts) only to the established. And I recall a pain- 
 ful change of colour which befell the countenance 
 of a shining young man I met at Ward's house in 
 Paris: he had used his handkerchief and was ab- 
 
146 THE GUEST OP QUESNAY 
 
 sently putting it in his pocket when he providen-. 
 tially noticed what he was doing and restored it 
 to his sleeve. 
 
 Miss Elizabeth had the courage to take me imder 
 her wing, placing me upon her left at dinner; but 
 sprightlier calls than mine demanded and occupied 
 her attention. At my other side sat a magnificently 
 upholstered lady, who offered a fine shoulder and 
 the rear wall of a collar of pearls for my observa- 
 tion throughout the evening, as she leaned forward 
 talking eagerly with a male personage across the 
 table. This was a prince, ending in "ski": he 
 permitted himself the slight vagary of wearing a 
 gold bracelet, and perhaps this flavoiu- of romance 
 drew the lady. Had my good fortune ever granted 
 a second meeting, I should not have known her. 
 
 Fragments reaching me in my seclusion indicated 
 that the various conversations up and down the 
 long table were animated; and at times some topic 
 proved of such high interest as to engage the com- 
 ment of the whole company. This was the case 
 when the age of one of the English king's grand- 
 children came in question, but a subject which 
 called for even longer (if less spirited) discourse 
 concerned the shameful lack of standard on the 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 147 
 
 part of citizens of the United States, or, as it was 
 put, with no little exasperation, "What is the 
 trouble with America?" Hereupon brightly gleamed 
 the fat young man whom I had marked for a wit 
 at Les Trois Pigeons; he pictured with inimitable 
 mimicry a western senator lately in France. This 
 outcast, it appeared, had worn a slouch hat at a 
 garden party and had otherwise betrayed his coun- 
 try to the ridicule of the inteUigent. "But really," 
 said the fat young man, turning plaintiff in con- 
 clusion, "imagine what such things make the English 
 and the French think of us!" And it finally went 
 by consent that the trouble with America was the 
 vulgarity of our tourists. 
 
 "A dreadful lot!" Miss Elizabeth cheerfully 
 summed up for them all. "The miseries I undergo 
 with that class of 'prominent Amurricans' who 
 bring letters to my brother! I remember one awful 
 creature who said, when I came into the room, 
 'Well, ma'am, I guess you're the lady of the house, 
 aren't you?' " 
 
 Miss Ehzabeth sparkled through the chorus of 
 laughter, but I remembered the "awful creature," 
 a genial and wise old man of affairs, whose daughter's 
 portrait George painted. Miss Elizabeth had missed 
 
148 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 his point: the canvasser's phrase had been intended 
 with humour, and even had it lacked that, it was 
 not without a pretty quaintness. So I thought, 
 being "left to my own reflections," which may have 
 partaken of my own special kind of snobbery; at 
 least I regretted the Elizabeth of the morning 
 garden and the early walk along the fringe of the 
 woods. For she at my side to-night was another 
 lady. 
 
 The banquet was drawing to a close when she 
 leaned toward me and spoke in an undertone. 
 As this was the first sign, in so protracted a period, 
 that I might ever again establish relations with 
 the world of men, it came upon me like a Friday's 
 footprint, and in the moment of shock I did not 
 catch what she said. 
 
 "Anne Elliott, yonder, is asking you a question," 
 she repeated, nodding at a very pretty girl down 
 and across the table from me. Miss Anne Elliott's 
 attractive voice had previously enabled me to recog- 
 nise her as the young woman who had threatened 
 to serenade Les Trots Pigeons. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," I said, addressing her, and 
 at the sound my obscurity was illuminated, about 
 half of the company turning to look at me with 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 149 
 
 wide-eyed surprise. (I spoke in an ordinary tone, 
 it may need to be explained, and there is nothing 
 remarkable about my voice). 
 
 "I hear you're at Les Trais Pigeons," said Miss 
 Elliott. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Would you mind telling us something of the 
 mysterious Narcissus?" 
 
 "If you'll be more definite," I returned, in the 
 tone of a question. 
 
 "There couldn't be more than one like that," 
 said Miss Elliott, "at least, not in one neighbour- 
 hood, could there? I mean a recklessly charming 
 vision with a white tie and white hair and white 
 flannels." 
 
 "Oh," said I, "he's not mysterious." 
 
 "But he is," she returned; "I insist on his being 
 mysterious! Rarely, grandly, strangely mysterious! 
 You will let me think so?" This young lady had a 
 whimsical manner of emphasising words unexpect- 
 edly, with a breathless intensity that approached 
 violence, a habit dangerously contagious among 
 nervous persons, so that I answered slowly, out of 
 a fear that I might echo it. 
 
 "It would need a great deal of imagination. 
 
160 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 He's a young American, very attractive, very 
 simple " 
 
 "But he's mad !" she interrupted. 
 
 "Oh, no!" I said hastily. 
 
 "But he w/ A person told me so in a garden 
 this very afternoon," she went on eagerly; "a person 
 with a rake and ever so many moles on his chin. 
 This person told me all about him. His name is 
 Oliver Saffren, and he's in the charge of a very 
 large doctor and quite, quite mad!" 
 
 "Jean Ferret, the gardener," I said deUberately, 
 and with venom, "is fast acquiring notoriety in 
 these parts as an idiot of purest ray, and he had 
 his information from another whose continuance 
 unhanged is every hour more miraculous." 
 
 "How ruthless of you," cried Miss Elliott, with 
 exaggerated reproach, "when I have had such 
 a thrilling happiness all day in believing that riot- 
 ously beautiful creature mad! You are wholly 
 positive he isn't?" 
 
 Our dialogue was now all that delayed a general 
 departure from the table. This, combined with 
 the naive siuTprise I have mentioned, served to make 
 us temporarily the centre of attention, and, among 
 the faces turned toward me, my glance fell unexpect- 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 151 
 
 edly upon one I had not seen since entering the din- 
 ing-room. Mrs. Harman had been placed at some 
 distance from me and on the same side of the table, 
 but now she leaned far back in her chair to look 
 at me, so that I saw her behind the shoulders of 
 the people between us. She was watching me with 
 an expression unmistakably of repressed anxiety and 
 excitement, and as our eyes met, hers shone with 
 a certain agitation, as of some odd consciousness 
 shared with me. It was so strangely, suddenly a re- 
 minder of the look of secret understanding given me 
 with good night, twenty-four hours earher, by the man 
 whose sanity was Miss Elliott's topic, that, puzzled 
 and almost disconcerted for the moment, I did not 
 at once reply to the lively young lady's question. 
 
 "You're hesitating!" she cried, clasping her 
 hands. "I beHeve there's a darling little chance of 
 it, after all! And if it weren't so, why would he 
 need to be watched over, day and night, by an 
 enormous doctor?" 
 
 "This is romance!" I retorted. "The doctor is 
 Professor Keredec, illustriously known in this coun- 
 try, but not as a physician, and they are follow- 
 ing some form of scientific research together, I 
 believe. But, assuming to speak as Mr. Saffren's 
 
152 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 friend," I added, rising with the others upon Miss 
 Ward's example, "I'm sure if he could come to 
 know of your interest, he would much rather play 
 Hamlet for you than let you find him disappointing." 
 
 "If he could come to know of my interest!" 
 she echoed, glancing down at herself with mock 
 demureness. "Don't you think he could come 
 to know something more of me than that?" 
 
 The windows had been thrown open, allow- 
 ing passage to a veranda. >Miss Elizabeth led the 
 way outdoors with the prince, the rest of us fol- 
 lowing at hazard, and in the mild confusion of 
 this withdrawal I caught a final glimpse of Mrs. 
 Harman, which revealed that she was stiU looking 
 at me with the same tensity; but with the move- 
 ment of intervening groups I lost her. Miss Elliott 
 pointedly waited for me until I came round the 
 table, attached me definitely by taking my arm, 
 accompanying her action with a dazzling smile. 
 "Oh, do you think you can manage it?" she whis- 
 pered rapturously, to which I replied — as vaguely as 
 I could — ^that the demands of scientific research upon 
 the time of its followers were apt to be exorbitant. 
 
 Tables and coflfee were waiting on the broad ter- 
 race below, with a big moon rising in the sky. I 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 153 
 
 descended the steps in charge of this pretty cavalier, 
 allowed her to seat me at the most remote of the 
 tables, and accepted without unwillingness other 
 gallantries of hers in the matter of coffee and cigar- 
 ettes. "And now," she said, "now that I've done 
 so much for your dearest hopes and comfort, look 
 up at the milky moon, and tell me all!" 
 
 "If you can bear it?" 
 
 She leaned an elbow on the marble railing that 
 protected the terrace, and, shielding her eyes from 
 the moonlight with her hand, affected to gaze at 
 me dramatically. "Have no distrust," she bade 
 me. "Who and what is the glorious stranger?" 
 
 Resisting an impulse to chime in with her humoiu*, 
 I gave her so dry and commonplace an account of 
 my young friend at the inn that I presently found 
 myselt abandoned to solitude again. 
 
 "I don't know where to go," she complained as 
 she rose. "These other people are most painful to 
 a girl of my intelligence, but I cannot linger by 
 your side; untruth long ago lost its interest for me, 
 and I prefer to believe Mr. Jean Ferret — ^if that 
 is the gentleman's name. I'd join Miss Ward and 
 Cressie Ingle yonder, but Cressie i^ouM be indignant! 
 I shall soothe my hurt with sweetest airs. Adieu." 
 
154 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 With that she made me a solemn courtesy and 
 departed, a pretty Httle figure, not Uttle in attract- 
 iveness, the strong moonlight, tinged with blue, 
 shimmering over her blond hair and splashing 
 brightly among the ripples of her silks and laces. 
 She swept across the terrace languidly, ofifering an 
 effect of comedy not xuifairylike, and, ascending 
 the steps of the veranda, disappeared into the 
 orange candle-light of a salon. A moment later 
 some chords were soimded firmly upon a piano in 
 that room, and a bitter song swam out to me over 
 the laughter and talk of the people at the other 
 tables. It was to be observed that Miss Anne 
 Elliott sang very well, though I thought she over- 
 emphasised one line of the stanza: 
 
 "This world is a world of lies!" 
 
 Perhaps she had poisoned another little arrow 
 for me, too. Impelled by the fine night, the groups 
 upon the terrace were tending toward a wider 
 dispersal, drifting over the sloping lawns by threes 
 and couples, and I was able to identify two figures 
 threading the paths of the garden, together, some 
 distance below. Judging by the pace they kept, 
 I should have concluded that Miss Ward and 
 Mr. Cresson Ingle sought the healthful effects of 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 155 
 
 exercise. However, I could see no good reason 
 for wishing their conversation less obviously ab- 
 sorbing, though Miss Elliott's insinuation that Mr. 
 Ingle might deplore intrusion upon the interview 
 had struck me as too definite to be altogether 
 pleasing. Still, such matters could not discontent 
 me with my solitude. Eastward, over the moon- 
 lit roof of the forest, I could see the quiet ocean, 
 its unending lines of foam moving slowly to the 
 long beaches, too far away to be heard. The re- 
 proachful voice of the singer came no more from 
 the house, but the piano ran on into "La Vie 
 de Bohfeme," and out of that into something else, 
 I did not know what, but it seemed to be music; 
 at least it was musical enough to bring before me 
 some memory of the faces of pretty girls I had 
 danced with long ago in my dancing days, so that, 
 what with the music, and the distant sea, and the 
 soft air, so sparklingly full of moonshine, and the 
 httle dancing memories, I was floated oflf into a 
 reverie that was like a prelude for the person who 
 broke it. She came so quietly that I did not hear 
 her until she was almost beside me and spoke to me. 
 It was the second time that had happened. 
 
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 cul- 
 minated, 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. 
 
 15S 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 157 
 
 "After the quiet you have had here, all this must 
 seem," I said, looking down upon the strollers, "a 
 usurpation." 
 
 "Oh, theyl" She disposed of Quesnay's guests 
 with a sUght 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 
 ventm-esome, I took a chance, and ventured per- 
 haps 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 ex- 
 claimed, too quickly — ^and would have been glad 
 to recall the speech. 
 
 She met it with a murmur of low laughter that 
 soimded pitying. "Wasn't it always a dubious rela- 
 tion — ^between him and art?" And without await- 
 
158 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 ing 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 Httle uneasy. 
 During the ensuing pause this feeling, at first 
 uppermost, gave way to another not at all in se- 
 quence, but irresponsible and intuitive, that she 
 had something in particular to say to me, had joined 
 me for that purpose, and was awaiting the oppor- 
 tunity. 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. 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 159 
 
 "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 
 
160 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 are alone together she always has the air of ex- 
 cusing, 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 overwhelm- 
 ingly 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 reserva- 
 tion?" she asked, smiling. 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 161 
 
 "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. 
 
16« THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "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 poig- 
 nant 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 some- 
 thing 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." 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 163 
 
 "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 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'Ar- 
 mand,' and said he must know if he had offended 
 me." 
 
 "You told him " 
 
 "I told him 'No!' " And it seemed to me that 
 
164 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 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 wiU " 
 
 "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 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 165 
 
 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, falHng 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 transfigurejd 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 gestiu-e 
 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 jas- 
 mine flowers at her br-east; 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 aheady the thought of him had moved her. 
 
166 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "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 chS.teau 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 east- 
 ward to the sea. I concluded that she had not seen 
 the figure. 
 
 "I have a request to make of you," she said, as 
 
s 
 o 
 
 
 "s 
 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 167 
 
 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 any- 
 thing you ask." 
 
 She stepped closer, looked at me intently for a 
 second, bit her Up 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 some- 
 how impulsively taken each other's hands, as upon 
 a serious bargain struck between us. 
 
CHAPTER xrn 
 
 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 
 
 168 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 169 
 
 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 sleep- 
 ing 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 httle 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 moonUght, 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. 
 
170 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 I had, perhaps, a quarter of an hour to consider 
 this performance, when it was repeated; now, how- 
 ever, 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 Saffren came through the arch- 
 way, 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 
 rom 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 ap- 
 proach. 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 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 171 
 
 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 break- 
 fast waited outside. 
 
 Primarily it displayed an expression of serenity, 
 masterly in its assumption that not the least, remot- 
 est, 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-bom — ^that 
 was Amedee. Radiantly tender, aggressively solici- 
 tous, diffusing inefifable 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 him- 
 self 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 
 
172 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 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 hostiUty attacking him treacherously from 
 the rear. They sagged, but did not break from their 
 fastenings, and his behaviour, as he lay thus en- 
 tangled, would have contrasted unfavourably in 
 dignity with the actions of a panicstricken 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!" 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 173 
 
 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 
 imuttered 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 oflf to the woods in a state of helpless indig- 
 nation; mentally swearing that his day of punish- 
 ment 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 
 
174 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 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 pain- 
 ful assault upon him. He came hobbling to table, 
 leaning upon Saffren's shoulder, and made no refer- 
 ence 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 receiviiig flagellation at the hands of 
 our incorrigible optimist. ("If he could mider- 
 stand," exclaimed Keredec, "that the individual 
 must be immortal before it is bom, 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 question- 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 175 
 
 ing restlessness of his eyes as they sought mine from 
 time to time. Whatever he wished to ask me, he 
 was given no opportimity, for the professor carried 
 him off to work when ,om- 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. 
 
176 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 from time to time, as you work in your studio, 
 which (I glean from the instructive Mr. Ferret) 
 is at Ias Trois Pigeons. At any hour, at any 
 moment, I will speed to you. I am, sir, 
 "Yours, if you will but breathe a 'y^s,' 
 
 "Anne Elliott." 
 
 To this I returned a reply, as much in her own 
 key as I could write it, putting my refusal on the 
 groimd 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 oflfer 
 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 chS,teau 
 again, but, by arrangement, she had driven over for 
 me this morning in the phaeton. 
 
 "Why are you writing silly notes to that child?" 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 177 
 
 she demanded, as soon as we were away from the 
 iim. 
 
 "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 hfted 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 
 <t 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 ch&teau, having a mind to offer some sort 
 of apology, I looked anxiously about for the subject 
 
178 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 of our rather disquieting conversation, but she was 
 not to be seen until the party assembled at the table, 
 set luider 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 impos- 
 sible, 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. Cres- 
 son Ingle, but not long after we rose she accom- 
 panied him upon some excursion of an indefinite 
 nature, which led her from my sight. Thus, the 
 others making oflf 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 live- 
 liest interest to the student or practitioner of archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 Mrs. Harman had not appeared at all, having 
 gone to call upon some one at Dives, I was told. 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 179 
 
 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 tmostentatious 
 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 dis- 
 gruntlement, 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. 
 
180 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 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 paint- 
 ing — 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 httle 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 yoimg 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 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 181 
 
 I was in the most abysmal earnest. V/ill 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. "Vicumsly!" 
 
 "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 Hke 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 " 
 
182 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "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 ElUott 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 thai 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 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 183 
 
 ean't know how enervating it is up there at the 
 ch§,teau — 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 yoimg 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 elemen- 
 tals. 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." 
 
184 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "Why?" I fairly shouted. 
 
 She shd 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. 
 
 'T might tell you some day," she said indiffer- 
 ently, "if I gained enough confidence in you through 
 association in daily pursuits." 
 
 "My dear young lady," I cried with real exas- 
 peration, "I am a working man, and this is a work- 
 ing 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 
 wamingly upon my sleeve, checking the outburst. 
 
 I tiuned 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 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 185 
 
 was solved for me. Amazing as the thing was, 1 
 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!" 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HA, these philosophers," said the professor, 
 expanding in discourse a Uttle later — 
 "these dreamy people who talk of the 
 spirit, they tell you that spirit is abstract!" He 
 waved his great hand in a sweeping semicircle 
 which carried it out of our orange candle-Kght 
 and freckled it with the cold moonshine which 
 sieved through the loosened screen of honeysuckle. 
 "Ha, the folly!" 
 
 "What do you say it is?" I asked, moving so that 
 the smoke of my cigar should not drift toward OUver, 
 who sat looking out into the garden. 
 
 "I, my friend? I do not say that it is! But all 
 
 such things, they are only a question of names, and 
 
 when I use the word 'spirit' I mean identity — 
 
 universal identity, if you Uke. It is what we all 
 
 are, yes — ^and those flowers, too. But the spirit of 
 
 the flowers is not what you smell, nor what you 
 
 see, that look so pretty: it is the flowers themself! 
 
 Yet all spirit is only one spirit and one spirit is all 
 
 186 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 187 
 
 spirit — and if you tell me this is Pant'eism I will 
 tell you that you do not understand!" 
 
 "I don't tell you that," said I, "neither do I 
 understand." 
 
 "Nor that big Keredec either!" Whereupon he 
 loosed the rolling thunder of his laughter. "Nor 
 any brain bom of the monkey people! But this 
 world is full of proof that everything that exist is 
 all one thing, and it is the instinct of that, when it 
 draws us together, which makes what we call 'love.' 
 Even those wicked devils of egoism in oiu: inside is 
 only love which grows t lo long the wrong way, like 
 the finger nails of the Chinese empress. Young love 
 is a little sprout of universal imity. When the yoimg 
 people begin to feel it, they are not abstract, ha? 
 And the young man, when he selects, he chooses one 
 being from all the others to mean — ^just for him — all 
 that great imiverse of which he is a part." 
 
 This was wandering whimsically far afield, but as 
 I caught the good-humoured flicker of the professor's 
 glance at our companion I thought I saw a purpose 
 in his deviation. Saffren turned toward him wonder- 
 ingly, his unconscious, eager look remarkably em- 
 phasised and brightened. 
 
 "All such things are most strange — ^great mys- 
 
188 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 t^ies," continued the professor. "For when a man 
 has made the selection, thai being does become all 
 the universe, and for him there is nothing else at 
 all — nothing else anywhere!" 
 
 Saffren's cheeks and temples were flushed as they 
 had been when I saw him returning that afternoon; 
 and his eyes were wide, fixed upon Keredec in a 
 stare of utter amazement. 
 
 "Yes, that is true," he said slowly. "How did 
 you know?" 
 
 Keredec returned his look with an attentive 
 scrutiny, and made some exclamation under his 
 breath, which I did not catch, but there was no 
 mistaking his high good humour. 
 
 "Bravo!" he shouted, rising and clapping the 
 other upon the shoulder. "You will soon cure my 
 rheiunatism if you ask me questions like that! 
 Ho, ho, ho!" He threw back his head and let the 
 mighty salvos forth. "Ho, ho, ho! How do I know? 
 The young, always they believe they are the only 
 ones who were ever young! Ho, ho, ho! Come, 
 we shall make those lessons very easy to-night. 
 Come, my friend! How could that big, old Keredec 
 know of such things? He is too old, too foolish! 
 Ho, ho, ho!" 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 189 
 
 As he went up the steps, the courtyard rever- 
 berating again to his laughter, his arm resting 
 on Saffren's shoulders, but not so heavily as usual. 
 The door of their salon closed upon them, and for 
 a while Keredec's voice could be heard boom- 
 ing cheerfully; it ended in another burst of 
 laughter. 
 
 A moment later Saffren opened the door and 
 called to me. 
 
 "Here," I answered from my veranda, where I 
 had Just lighted my second cigar. 
 
 "No more work to-night. All finished," he cried 
 jubilantly, springing down the steps. "I'm coming 
 to have a talk with you." 
 
 AmM^ had removed the candles, the moon had 
 withdrawn in fear of a turbulent mob of clouds, 
 rioting iato omr sky from seaward; the air smelled 
 of imnunent rain, and it was so dark that I could 
 see my visitor only as a vague, tall shape; but a 
 happy excitement vibrated in his rich voice, and 
 his step on the gravelled path was hght and 
 exultant. 
 
 "I won't sit down," he said. "I'll walk up and 
 down in front of the veranda — ^if it doesn't make 
 you nervous." 
 
190 THE GUEST OP QUESNAY 
 
 For answer I merely laughed; and he laughed 
 too, in genial response, continuing gaUy: 
 
 "Oh, it's all so different with me! Everything is. 
 That blind feeUng I told you of — ^it's all gone. I 
 must have been very babyish, the other day; I don't 
 think I could feel like that again. It used to seem 
 to me that I lived penned up in a circle of blank 
 stone walls; I couldn't see over the top for myself 
 at all, though now and then Keredec would boost 
 me up and let me get a httle glimmer of the country 
 round about — ^but never long enough to see what it 
 was really like. But it's not so now. Ah!" — ^hedrew 
 a long breath — "I'd like to run. I think I could 
 run all the way to the top of a pretty fair-sized 
 moimtain to-night, and then" — he laughed — "jump 
 off and ride on the clouds." 
 
 "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 rim in order, and 
 this that's happened seems to make them wilder, 
 queerer — " He stopped short. 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 191 
 
 "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, beauti- 
 fully kind to me!" 
 
 "She has met you?" I asked, thinking ruefully 
 of George Ward, now on the high seas in the pleas- 
 ant 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 
 
192 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 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 speak- 
 ing 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 com- 
 pleteness 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 loiU 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!" 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 193 
 
 "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 feeUng 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 aU 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. 
 
194 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 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'Ar- 
 mand herself. No one!" 
 
 "I won't quarrel with that," I said drily, throw- 
 ing 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 b^an to patter 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 195 
 
 on the ro(rf <rf 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 bom " 
 
 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 hke a hall of Aladdin's palace, the filigreed 
 arches of foHage 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 paint- 
 ing, 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 
 
 196 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 197 
 
 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 under- 
 foot. 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 overcoloured. 
 
198 TEE GUEST OP QUESNAY 
 
 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 chS^teau for diimer, 
 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 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 199 
 
 observations upon the babbling of French servants 
 and the order of mind attributable to those who 
 listened to them. Her defence was to affect inat- 
 tention and paint busily imtil 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 fan- 
 tasias into your head?" 
 
 "Not Jean Ferret," she responded promptly. 
 
200 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "It's cruel of me to break it to you so coarsely — 
 I know — ^but if you are ever goiag 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 iu 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 weU have tried to impress Amed^e. 
 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, 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 201 
 
 she did not look at me; my eflfort 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 gentle- 
 man, 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 ier off from 
 Cresson Ingle rustead of vice versa. But after 
 all, you arenH" — ^here she paused and looked at 
 me appraisingly for a moment — "you aren't the 
 
?02 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 most piratical dash-in-and-dash-out and leave-every- 
 thiag-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 excoriat- 
 ing 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 SaflFren.?" 
 
 "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 doubt- 
 fully, 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 devo- 
 tion to 'your art' and your hope of spending half 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 203 
 
 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," 
 
204 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 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 in- 
 dications 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 ex- 
 pression 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?" 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 205' 
 
 "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 wonder- 
 ful 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 chS.teau. I 
 know perfectly well he's not insane; but I'm ab- 
 solutely sure, from one thing and another, that — 
 well — ^he isn't aU therel He's as beautiful as a 
 
206 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 seraph and probably as good as one, but sometMng 
 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 comes 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 imder- 
 neath as if she thought / 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 cry- 
 ing 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 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 207 
 
 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 imder 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 what- 
 
208 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 soever — ^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. To- 
 day 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 209 
 
 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 stand- 
 ing 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. 
 \ began: 
 
210 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "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 yoimg 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 Pfere Baudry's lamplit door flickered 
 across my mind. 
 
 "The historical tourist!" I exclaimed. ''The 
 highly pedestrian tripper from TrouviUe!" 
 
 "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, care- 
 fully 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'hdtel informed 
 me you had investigated every corner — that wasn't 
 locked." 
 
 "Sure," he returned, with rather less embarrass- 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 211 
 
 ment than a brazen Vishnu would have exhibited 
 under the same circumstances. "He showed me 
 what pitchers they was in your studio. I'll Ink 
 '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 feUer in this neighbour- 
 hood 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 
 'taUdn' 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 in- 
 truder upon her, was found to be one of 
 brilliant delight. With glowing eyes, her lips parted 
 in a breathless ecstasy, she gazed upon the new- 
 comer, 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 in- 
 tention, 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 out- 
 line; 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 
 
 212 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 213 
 
 of a theatrical entrance of impleasant 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 shght 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 Httle 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 
 shghtly. "Thank youl" 
 
 "Oh, I meant the piicherJ" he said hastfly, evi- 
 dently nonplussed by a gratitude so fervent. 
 
 The incorrigible damsel cast down her eyes in 
 modesty. "And I had hoped," she breathed, "some- 
 thing so different!" 
 
214 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 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 perform- 
 ing the rites of etiquette, he said: 
 
 "WeU, I expec' the smart thing now is to pass 
 the cards, but mine's in my grip an' it ain't un- 
 packed yet. The name you'd see on 'em is Oil 
 Poicy." 
 
 "Oil Poicy," echoed Miss Elliott, turning to me 
 in genuine astonishment. 
 
 "Mr. Earl Percy," I translated. 
 
 "Oh, rapturous!" she cried, her face radiant. 
 "And won't Mr. Percy give us his opinion of my 
 Art.?" 
 
 Mr. Percy was in doubt how to take her enthu- 
 siasm; he seemed on the point of turniag surly, and 
 hesitated, while a sharp vertical line appeared on 
 his small forehead; but he evidently concluded, 
 after a deep glance at her, that if she was making 
 game of him it was in no ill-natured spirit — ^nay, 
 I think that for a few momeats he suspected her 
 liveliness to be some method of her own for the 
 incipient stages of a flirtation. 
 
 Finally he turned again to the easel, and as he 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 215 
 
 examined the painting thereon at closer range, 
 amazement overspread his features. However, pull- 
 ing himseK together, he found himself able to reply 
 — ^and with great gallantry: 
 
 "Well, on'y t' think them little hands cud V 
 done all that rough woik!" 
 
 The unintended viciousness of this retort produced 
 an effect so marked, that, except for my growiag 
 uneasiness, I might have enjoyed her expression. 
 
 As it was, I saved her face by entering into 
 the conversation with a question, which I put 
 quickly: 
 
 "You intend pursuing your historical researches 
 in the neighborhood.''" 
 
 The facial contortion which served him for a 
 laugh, and at the same time as a symbol of imf athom- 
 able reserve, was repeated, accompanied by a jocose 
 manifestation, in the nature of a sharp and taunting 
 cackle, which seemed to indicate a conviction that 
 he was getting much the best of it in some conflict 
 of wits. 
 
 "Them fairy tales I handed you about ole Jeanne 
 d'Arc and William the Conker," he said, "say, they 
 must 'a' made you sore atter-woids!" 
 
 "On the contrary, I was much interested in every- 
 
216 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 thing pertaining to your too brief visit," I returned; 
 "I am even more so now." 
 
 "Well, m'friend" — lie shot me a sidelong, dis- 
 trustful glance — "keep yer eyes open." 
 
 "That is just the point!" I laughed, with inten- 
 tional significance, for I meant to make Mr. Percy 
 talk as much as I could. To this end, remember- 
 ing that specimens of his kind are most indiscreet 
 when carefully enraged, I added, simulating his 
 own manner: 
 
 "Eyes open — and doors locked! "What?" 
 
 At this I heard a gasp of astonishment from Miss 
 EUiott, who must have been puzzled indeed; but I 
 was intent upon the other. He proved perfectly 
 capable, of being insulted. 
 
 "I guess they ain't much need o' lockin' your 
 door," he retorted darkly; "not from what I saw 
 when I was in your studio !" He should have stopped 
 there, for the hit was palpable and justified; but in 
 his resentment he overdid it. "You needn't be 
 scared of anybody's cartin' off them pitchers, young 
 feller! Whoosh! An' f'm the luks of the clo'es I saw 
 hangin' on the wall," he continued, growing more net- 
 tled as I smiled cheerfully upon him, "I don' b'lieve 
 you gut any worries comin' about them, neither.'" 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 217 
 
 "I suppose our tastes are diflferent," I said, 
 letting my smile broaden. "There might be protec- 
 tion in that." 
 
 His stare at me was protracted to an unseemly 
 length before the sting of this remark reached him; 
 it penetrated finally, however, and in his sharp 
 change of postiu:e there was a hghtning flicker of 
 the experienced boxer; but he checked the impulse, 
 and took up the task of obliterating me in another 
 way, 
 
 "As I tell the little dame here," he said, pitching 
 his voice higher and affecting the plaintive, "I make 
 no passes at a friend o* her — ^not iu front o' her, 
 anyways. But when it comes to these here ole, 
 ancient curiosities" — he cackled again, loudly — 
 "well, I guess them clo'es I see, that day, kin hand 
 it out t' anything they got in the museums! 'Look 
 here,' I says to the waiter, 'these must be'n left 
 over f'm ole Jeanne d'Arc herself,' I says. 'Talk 
 about yer reUcs,' I says. Whoosh! I'd Uke t' died!" 
 He laughed violently, and concluded by turning 
 upon me with a contemptuous flourish of his stick. 
 "You think I d'know what makes you so raw?" 
 
 The form of repartee necessary to augment his 
 ill humour was, of course, a matter of simple mechan- 
 
218 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 ism for one who had not entirely forgotten his 
 student days in the Quarter; and I dehvered it 
 airily, though I shivered inwardly that Miss Elliott 
 should hear. 
 
 "Everything will be all right if, when you dine 
 at the inn, you'll sit with your back toward me." 
 
 To my shamed surprise, this roustabout wit drew 
 a nervous, silvery giggle from her; and that com- 
 pleted the work with Mr. Percy, whose face grew 
 scarlet with anger. 
 
 "You're a hot one, you are!" he sneered, with 
 shocking bitterness. "You're quite the teaser, ain't 
 ye, s'long's yer lady-friend is lukkin' on! I guess 
 they'll be a few surprises comin' your way, before 
 long. P'raps I cudn't give ye one now 'f I had a 
 mind to." 
 
 "Pshaw," I laughed, and, venturing at hazard, 
 said, "I know all you know!" 
 
 "Oh, you do!" he cried scornfully. "I reckon 
 you might set up an' take a httle notice, though, 
 if you knowed 'at I know all you know!" 
 
 "Not a bit of it!" 
 
 "No? Maybe you think I don't know what makes 
 you so raw with me? Maybe you thmk I don't 
 know who ye've got so thick with at this here 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 219 
 
 Pigeon House; maybe you think I don't know who 
 them people are!" 
 
 "No, you don't. You have learned," I said, 
 trying to control my excitement, "nothing! Who- 
 ever hired you for a spy lost the money. You don't 
 know awi/-thing!" 
 
 "I don't!" And with that his voice went to a 
 half-shriek. "Maybe you think I'm down here 
 f'r my health; maybe you think I come out f'r a 
 pleasant walk in the woods right now; maybe you 
 think I ain't seen no other lady-friend o' yours 
 besides this'n to-day, and maybe I didn't see who 
 was with her — ^yes, an' maybe you think I d'know 
 no other times he's be'n with her. Maybe you 
 think I ain't be'n layin' low over at Dives! Maybe 
 I don't know a few real names in this neighbour- 
 hood! Oh, no, maybe not!" 
 
 "You know what the maltre d'h6tel told you; 
 nothing more." 
 
 "How about the name — Oliver Saffren?" he cried 
 fiercely, and at last, though I had expected it, I 
 uttered an involuntary exclamation. 
 
 "How about it?" he shouted, advancing toward 
 me triumphantly, shaking his forefinger in my face. 
 "Hey? ThM stings some, does it? Sounds kind o' 
 
mo THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 like a false name, does it? Got ye where the hair 
 is short, that time, didn't I?" 
 
 "Speaking of names," I retorted, " 'Oil Poicy' 
 doesn't seem to ring particularly true to me!" 
 
 "It'll be gud enough fer you, young feller," he 
 responded angrily. "It may belong t' me, an' then 
 again, it maybe don't. It ain' gunna git me in no 
 trouble; I'll luk out f'r that. Your side's where 
 the trouble is; that's what's eatin' into you. An' 
 I'll tell you flat-foot, your gittin' rough 'ith me 
 and playin' Charley the Show-Off in front o' yer 
 lady-friends'U all go down in the bill. These people 
 ye've got so chummy with — they'll pay f'r it all 
 right, don't you shed no tears over that!" 
 
 "You couldn't by any possibility," I said deliber- 
 ately, with as much satire as I could command, "you 
 couldn't possibly mean that any sum of mere 
 money might be a salve for the injuries my unkind 
 words have inflicted?" 
 
 Once more he seemed upon the point of destroying 
 me physically, but, with a slight shudder, controlled 
 himself. Stepping close to me, he thrust his head 
 forward and measured the emphases of his speech 
 by his right forefinger upon my shoulder, as he 
 said: 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 221 
 
 "You paint this in yer pitchers, m' dear friend; 
 they's jest as much law in this country as they is 
 on the comer o' Twenty-thoid Street an' Fif 
 Avenoo! You keep out the way of it, or you'll 
 git runned over!" 
 
 Delivering a final tap on my shoulder as a last 
 warning, he wheeled deftly upon his heel, addressed 
 Miss Elliott briefly, "Glad t' know you, lady," and 
 striking into the by-path by which he had ap- 
 proached us, was soon lost to sight. 
 
 The girl faced me excitedly. "What is it.?" she 
 cried. "It seemed to me you insulted him de- 
 liberately " 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "You wanted to make him angry?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Oh! I thought so!" she exclaimed breathlessly. 
 "I knew there was something serious underneath. 
 It's about Mr. Saffren?" 
 
 "It is serious indeed, I fear," I said, and turning 
 to my own easel, began to get my traps together. 
 "I'U tell you the little I know, because I want you 
 to tell Mrs. Harman what has just happened, and 
 you'll be able to do it better if you understand what 
 is understandable about the rest of it." 
 
222 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "You mean you wouldn't tell me so that I could 
 understand for myself?" There was a note of 
 genuine grieved reproach in her voice. "Ah, then 
 I've made you think me altogether a hare- 
 brain!" 
 
 "I haven't time to tell you what I think of you," 
 I said brusquely, and, strangely enough, it seemed 
 to please her. But I paid little attention to that, 
 continuing quickly: "When Professor Keredec and 
 Mr. Saffren came to Les Trois Pigeons, they were 
 so careful to keep out of everybody's sight that 
 one might have suspected that they were in hiding 
 — and, in fact, I'm sure that they were — though, 
 as time passed and nothing alarming happened, 
 they've felt reassured and allowed themselves more 
 liberty. It struck me that Keredec at first dreaded 
 that they might be traced to the inn, and I'm 
 afraid his fear was justified, for one night, before 
 I came to know them, I met Mr. 'Percy' on the 
 road; he'd visited Madame Brossard's and pumped 
 Amed6e dry, but clumsily tried to pretend to me 
 that he had not been there at all. At the time, 
 I did not connect him even remotely with Professor 
 Keredec's anxieties. I imagined he might have an 
 eye to the spoons; but it's as ridiculous to think 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 223 
 
 him a burglar as it would be to take him for a 
 detective. What he is, or what he has to do with 
 Mr. Saffren, I can guess no more than I can guess 
 the cause of Keredec's fears, but the moment I saw 
 him to-day, saw that he'd come back, I knew it 
 was thai, and tried to draw him out. You heard 
 what he said; there's no doubt that Saffren stands 
 in danger of some kind. It may be inconsiderable, 
 or even absurd, but it's evidently imminent, and no 
 matter what it is, Mrs. Harman must be kept 
 out of it. I want you to see her as soon as you can 
 and ask her from me — no, persuade her yourself 
 — ^not to leave Quesnay for a day or two. I mean, 
 that she absolutely must not meet Mr. Saffren 
 again until we know what all this means. Will 
 you do it?" 
 
 "That I will!" And she began hastily to get 
 her belongings in marching order. "I'll do any- 
 thing in the world you'U let me — ^and oh, I hope 
 they can't do anything to poor, poor Mr. 
 Saffren!" 
 
 "Our sporting friend had evidently seen him with 
 Mrs. Harman to-day," I said. "Do you know if 
 they went to the beach again?" 
 
 "I only know she meant to meet him — ^but she 
 
224 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 told me she'd be back at the chateau by four. If 
 I start now " 
 
 "Wasn't the phaeton to be sent to the inn for 
 you?" 
 
 "Not until six," she returned briskly, folding her 
 easel and strapping it to her camp-stool with pre- 
 cision. "Isn't it shorter by the woods?" 
 
 "You've only to follow this path to the second 
 crossing and then turn to the right," I responded. 
 "I shall hurry back to Madame Brossard's to 
 see Keredec — and here" — ^I extended my hand 
 toward her traps, of which, in a neatly practical 
 fashion, she had made one close pack — "let me 
 have your things, and I'll take care of them at 
 the inn for you. They're heavy, and it's a long 
 trudge." 
 
 "You have your own to carry," she answered, 
 swinging the strap over her shoulder. "It's some- 
 thing of a walk for you, too." 
 
 "No, no, let me have them," I protested, for the 
 walk before her was long and the things would be 
 heavy indeed before it ended. 
 
 "Go your ways," she laughed, and as my hand 
 still remained extended she grasped it with her own 
 and gave it a warm and friendly shake. "Hurry!" 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 225 
 
 And with an optimism which took my breath, she 
 said, "I know you can make it come out all right! 
 Besides, I'll help you!" 
 
 With that she turned and started manfully upon 
 her journey. I stared after her for a moment or 
 more, watching the pretty brown dress flashing in 
 and out of shadow among the ragged greeneries, 
 shafts of sunshine now and then flashing upon her 
 hair. Then I picked up my own pack and set out 
 for the inn. 
 
 Every one knows that the more serious and urgent 
 the errand a man may be upon, the more incongru- 
 ous are apt to be the thoughts that skip into his 
 mind. As I went through the woods that day, 
 breathless with haste and curious fears, my brain 
 became suddenly, unaccountably busy with a dream 
 I had had, two nights before. I had not recalled 
 this dream on waking: the recollection of it canae 
 to me now for the first time. It was a usual enough 
 dream, wandering and unlifelike, not worth the 
 telling; and I had been thinking so constantly of 
 Mrs. Harman that there was nothing extraordinary 
 in her worthless ex-husband's being part of it. 
 
 And yet, looking back upon that last, hurried walk 
 
226 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 of mine through the forest, I see how strange it 
 was that I could not quit remembering how in my 
 dream I had gone motoring up Mount Pilatus with 
 the man I had seen so pitiably demolished on the 
 Versailles road, two years before — ^Larrabee Har- 
 man. 
 
CHAPTER XVn 
 
 KEREDEC was alone in his salon, extended 
 at ease upon a long chair, an ottoman and 
 a stool, when I burst in upon him; a 
 portentous volume was in his lap, and a prolific 
 pipe, smoking up from his great cloud of beard, 
 gave the final reality to the likeness he thus pre- 
 sented of a range of hills ending in a volcano. But 
 he rolled the book cavalierly to the floor, limbered 
 up by sections to receive me, and offered me a hearty 
 welcome. 
 
 "Ha, my dear sir," he cried, "you take pity on 
 the lonely Keredec; you make him a visit. I could 
 not wish better for myself. We shall have a good 
 smoke and a good talk." 
 
 "You are improved to-day?" I asked, it may be 
 a little slyly. 
 
 "Improve?" he repeated inquiringly. 
 
 "Your rheumatism, I mean." 
 
 "Ha, yes; that rheumatism!" he shouted, and 
 throwing back his head, rocked the room with sud- 
 den laughter. "Hew! But it is gone — ^almost! 
 
 227 
 
228 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 Oh, I am much better, and soon I shall be able 
 to go in the woods again with my boy." He pushed 
 a chair toward me. "Come, light your cigar; he 
 will not return for an hour perhaps, and there is 
 plenty of time for the smoke to blow away. So! 
 It is better. Now we shall talk." 
 
 "Yes," I said, "I wanted to talk with you." 
 
 "That is a — what you call? — ^ha, yes, a coinci- 
 dence," he returned, stretching himself again in the 
 long chair, "a happy coincidence; for I have wished 
 a talk with you; but you are away so early for all 
 day, and in the evening Oliver, he is always here." 
 
 "I think what I wanted to talk about concerns 
 him particularly." 
 
 "Yes?" The professor leaned forward, looking 
 at me gravely. "That is another coincidence. But 
 you shall speak first. Commence then." 
 
 "I feel that you know me at least well enough," 
 I began rather hesitatingly, "to be sure that I 
 would not, for the world, make any effort to in- 
 trude in your affairs, or Mr. Saffren's, and that I 
 would not force your confidence in the remotest " 
 
 "No, no, no!" he interrupted. "Please do not 
 fear I shall misinterpretate whatever you will say. 
 You are our friend. We know it." 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 229 
 
 "Very well," I pursued; "then I speak with no 
 fear of offending. When you first came to the inn 
 I couldn't help seeing that you took a great many 
 precautions for secrecy; and when you afterward 
 explained these precautions to me on the ground 
 that you feared somebody might think Mr. Saffren 
 not quite sane, and that such an impression might 
 injure him later — ^well, I could not help seeing 
 that your explanation did not cover all the ground." 
 
 "It is true — it did not." He ran his huge hand 
 through the heavy white waves of his hair, and 
 shook his head vigorously. "No; I knew it, my 
 dear sir, I knew it well. But, what could I do? 
 I would not have telled my own mother! This 
 much I can say to you: we came here at a risk, 
 but I thought that with great care it might be made 
 little. And I thought a great good thing might be 
 accomplish if we should come here, something so 
 fine, so wonderful, that even if the danger had been 
 great I would have risked it. I will tell you a little 
 more: I think that great thing is being accomplish!" 
 Here he rose to his feet excitedly and began to pace 
 the room as he talked, the ancient floor shaking 
 with his tread. "I think it is done! And ha! my 
 dear sir, if it should be, this big Keredec will not 
 
230 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 have lived in vain! It was a great task I under- 
 take with my young man, and the glory to see it 
 finish is almost here. Even if the danger should 
 come, the thing is done, for all that is real and has 
 true meaning is inside the soul!" 
 
 "It was in connection with the risk you have 
 mentioned that I came to talk," I returned with 
 some emphasis, for I was convinced of the reality 
 of Mr. Earl Percy and also very certain that he 
 had no existence inside or outside a soid. "I think 
 it necessary that you should know " 
 
 But the professor was launched. I might as well 
 have swept the rising tide with a broom. He talked 
 with magnificent vehemence for twenty minutes, his 
 theme being some theory of his own that the indi- 
 viduahty of a soul is immortal, and that even in 
 perfection, the soul cannot possibly merge into any 
 Nirvana. Meantime, I wondered how Mr. Percy 
 was employing his time, but after one or two in- 
 effectual attempts to interrupt, I gave myself to 
 silence until the oration should be concluded. 
 
 "And so it is with my boy," he proclaimed, com- 
 ing at last to the case in hand. "The spirit of 
 him, the real Oliver Saffren, that has never change! 
 The outside of him, those thing that belong to him. 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 231 
 
 like his memory, they have change, but not himself, 
 for himself is eternal and unchangeable. I have 
 taught him, yes; I have helped him get the small 
 things we can add to our possession — a little knowl- 
 edge, maybe, a little power of judgment. But, my 
 dear sir, I tell you that such things are only pos- 
 sessions of a man. They are not the man! All 
 that a man is or ever shall be, he is when he is a 
 baby. So with Oliver; he had lived a little while, 
 twenty-six years, perhaps, when 'pft — ^Uke that! — 
 he became almost as a baby again. He could re- 
 member how to talk, but not much more. He 
 had lost his belongings — they were gone from the 
 lobe of the brain where he had stored them; but 
 he was not gone, no part of the real himself was 
 lacking. Then presently they send him to me to 
 make new his belongings, to restore his possessions. 
 Ha, what a task! To take him with nothing in the 
 world of his own and see that he get only good 
 possessions, good knowledge, good experience! I 
 took him to the mountains of the Tyrol — two 
 years — and there his body became strong and splen- 
 did while his brain was taking in the stores. It 
 was quick, for his brain had retained some habits; 
 it was not a baby's brain, and some small part of 
 
232 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 its old stores had not been lost. But if anything 
 useless or bad remain, we empty it out — ^I and 
 those mountain' with their pure air. Now, I say 
 he is all good and the work was good; I am proud! 
 But I wish to restore aU that was good in his life; 
 your Keredec is something of a poet. — ^You may 
 put it: much the old fool! And for that greates' 
 restoration of all I have brought my boy back to 
 France; since it was necessary. It was a madness, 
 and I thank the good God I was mad enough to 
 do it. I cannot tell you yet, my dear sir; but you 
 shall see, you shall see what the folly of that old 
 Keredec has done! You shall see, you shall — ^and 
 I promise it — ^what a Paradise, when the good God 
 helps, an old fool's dream can make!" 
 
 A half-Kght had broken upon me as he talked, 
 pacing the floor, thundering his psean of triumph, 
 his Titanic gestures bruising the harmless air. Only 
 one explanation, incredible, but possible, sufficed. 
 Anything was possible, I thought — anything was 
 probable — with this dreamer whom the trump of 
 Fame, executing a whimsical fantasia, proclaimed a 
 man of science! 
 
 "By the wildest chance," I gasped, "you don't 
 mean that you wanted him to fall in love " 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 233 
 
 He had reached the other end of the room, bul 
 at this he whirled about on me, his laughter rolling 
 out again, till it might have been heard at Pere 
 Baudry's. 
 
 "Ha, my dear sir, you have said it! But you 
 knew it; you told him to come to me and teD 
 me." 
 
 "But I mean that you — ^unless I utterly mis- 
 understand — ^you seem to imply that you had 
 selected some one now in France whom you planned 
 that he should care for — ^that you had selected the 
 lady whom you know as Madame d'Armand." 
 
 "Again," he shouted, "you have said it!" 
 
 "Professor Keredec," I returned, with asperity, 
 "I have no idea how you came to conceive 
 such a preposterous scheme, but I agree heartily 
 that the word for it is madness. In the first 
 place, I must tell you that her name is not even 
 d'Armand " 
 
 "My dear sir, I know. It was the mistake of 
 that absurd Amedee. She is Mrs. Harman," 
 
 "You knew it?" I cried, hopelessly confused. 
 "But Oliver still speaks of her as Madame d'Ar- 
 mand." 
 
 "He does not know. She has not told him." 
 
234 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "But why haven't you told him?" 
 
 "Ha, that is a story, a poem," he cried, beginning 
 to pace the floor again — ^"a ballad as old as the 
 oldest of Provence! There is a reason, my dear 
 sir, which I cannot teU you, but it lies within the 
 romance of what you agree is my madness. Some 
 day, I hope, you shall understand and applaud! 
 In the meantime " 
 
 "In the meantime," I said sharply, as he paused 
 for breath, "there is a keen-faced young man who 
 took a room in the inn this morning and who has 
 come to spy upon you, I believe." 
 
 "What is it you say?" 
 
 He came to a sudden stop. 
 
 I had not meant to deliver my information quite 
 so abruptly, but there was no help for it now, and I 
 repeated the statement, giving him a terse account 
 of my two encounters with the rattish youth, and 
 adding: 
 
 "He seemed to be certain that 'Oliver Saffren' 
 is an assumed name, and he made a threatening 
 reference to the laws of France." 
 
 The effect upon Keredec was a very distinct 
 pallor. He faced me silently until I had finished, 
 then in a voice grown suddenly husky, asked: 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 235 
 
 "Do you think he came back to the inn? Is 
 he here now?" 
 
 "I do not know." 
 
 "We must learn; I must know that, at once." 
 And he went to the door. 
 
 "Let me go instead," I suggested. 
 
 "It can't make Kttle difference if he see me," 
 said the professor, swallowing with diflSculty and 
 displaying, as he turned to me, a look of such pro- 
 found anxiety that I was as sorry for him now as 
 I had been irritated a few minutes earlier by his 
 galliard air-castles. "I do not know this man, 
 nor does he know me, but I have fear" — ^his beard 
 moved as though his chin were trembling — "I have 
 fear that I know his employers. Still, it may be 
 better if you go. Bring somebody here that we 
 can ask." 
 
 "Shall I find Amed6e?" 
 
 "No, no, no! That babbler? Find Madame 
 Brossard." 
 
 I stepped out to the gallery, to discover Madame 
 Brossard emerging from a door on the opposite 
 side of the courtyard; Amedee, Glouglou, and a 
 couple of carters deploying before her with some 
 light trunks and bags, which they were carrying 
 
236 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 into the passage she had just quitted. I summoned 
 her quietly; she came briskly up the steps and into 
 the room, and I closed the door. 
 
 "Madame Brossard," said the professor, "you 
 have a new client to-day." 
 
 "That monsieur who arrived this morning," I 
 suggested. 
 
 "He was an American," said the hostess, knitting 
 her dark brows — "but I do not think that he was 
 exactly a monsieur." 
 
 "Bravo!" I murmured. "That sketches a like- 
 ness. It is this 'Percy' without a doubt." 
 
 "That is it," she returned. "Monsieur Poissy 
 is the name he gave." 
 
 "Is he at the inn now?" 
 
 "No, monsieiu-, but two friends for whom he 
 engaged apartments have just arrived." 
 
 "Who are they?" asked Keredec quickly. 
 
 "It is a lady and a monsieur from Paris. But 
 not married: they have taken separate apartments 
 and she has a domestic with her, a negress, 
 Algerian." 
 
 "What are their names?" 
 
 "It is not ten minutes that they are installed. 
 They have not given me their names." 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 237 
 
 "What is the lady's appearance?" 
 
 "Monsieur the Professor," replied the hostess 
 demurely, "she is not beautiful." 
 
 "But what is she?" demanded Keredec impa- 
 tiently; and it could be seen that he was striving 
 to control a rising agitation? "Is she blonde? Is 
 she brunette? Is she young? Is she old? Is she 
 French, English, Spanish " 
 
 "I think," said Madame Brossard, "I think one 
 would call her Spanish, but she is very fat, not 
 young, and with a great deal too much rouge " 
 
 She stopped with an audible intake of breath, 
 staring at my friend's white face. "Eh! it is bad 
 news?" she cried. "And when one has been so 
 ill " 
 
 Keredec checked her with an imperious gesture. 
 "Monsieur Saffren and I leave at once," he said. 
 "I shall meet him on the road; he will not return 
 to the inn. We go to — to Trouville. See that no 
 one knows that we have "^one until to-morrow, if 
 possible; I shall leave fees for the servants with 
 you. Go now, prepare your bill, and bring it to 
 me at once. I shall write you where to send our 
 trunks. Quick! And you, my friend" — ^he turned 
 to me as Madame Brossard, obviously distressed 
 
238 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 and frightened, but none the less intelligent for 
 that, skurried away to do his bidding — "my friend, 
 will you help us? For we need it!" 
 
 "Anything in the worid!" 
 
 "Go to Pere Baudry's; have him put the least 
 tired of his three horses to his lightest cart and 
 wait in the road beyond the cottage. Stand in the 
 road yourself while that is being done. Oliver will 
 come that way; detain him. I will join you there; 
 I have only to see to my papers — at the most, 
 twenty minutes. Go quickly, my friend!" 
 
 I strode to the door and out to the gallery. I 
 was half-way down the steps before I saw that 
 Oliver Saffren was already in the courtyard, coming 
 toward me from the archway with a light and 
 buoyant step. 
 
 He looked up, waving his hat to me, his face 
 lighted with a happiness most remarkable, and 
 brighter, even, than the strong, midsummer sun- 
 shine flaming over him. Dressed in white as he was, 
 and with the air of victory he wore, he might have 
 been, at that moment, a figure from some marble 
 triumph; youthful, conquering — crowned with the 
 laurel. 
 
 I had time only to glance at him, to "take" 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 239 
 
 him, aa it were, between two shutter-flicks of the 
 instantaneous eyelid, and with him, the courtyard 
 flooded with sunshine, the figure of Madame Bros- 
 sard emerging from her Uttle oflSce, Amedee coming 
 from the kitchen bearing a white-covered tray, and, 
 entering from the road, upon the trail of Saffren 
 but still in the shadow of the archway, the discord- 
 ant fineries and hatchet-face of the ex-pedestrian 
 and tourist, my antagonist of the forest. 
 
 I had opened my mouth to call a warning. 
 
 "Hurry" was the word I would have said, but 
 it stopped at "hur — -" The second syllable was 
 never uttered. 
 
 There came a violent outcry, raucous and shrill 
 as the wail of a captured hen, and out of the pas- 
 sage across the courtyard floundered a woman, fan- 
 tastically dressed in green and gold. 
 
 Her coarse blue-black hair fell dishevelled upon 
 her shoulders, from which her gown hung precari- 
 ously unfastened, as if she had abandoned her 
 toilet half-way. She was abundantly fat, double- 
 chinned, coarse, greasy, smeared with blue pen- 
 cillings, carmine, enamel, and rouge. 
 
 At the scream Saffren turned. She made straight 
 at him, crying wildly: 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 241 
 
 "Name of a name of God!" she wailed. "After 
 all these years! And my husband strikes me!" 
 
 Then it was that what had been in my mind as 
 a monstrous suspicion became a certainty. For I 
 recognised the woman; she was Mariana — la bella 
 Mariana la Mursiana. 
 
 If I had ever known Larrabee Harman, if, instead 
 of the two strange glimpses I had caught of him, I 
 had been familiar with his gesture, walk, intonation 
 — even, perhaps, if I had ever heard his voice — the 
 truth might have come to me long ago. 
 
 Larrabee Harman ! 
 
 "Oliver Saffren" was Larrabee Harman. 
 
CHAPTER xvrn 
 
 I DO not like to read those poets who write of 
 pain as if they loved it; the study of suffering 
 is for the cold analyst, for the vivisectionist, 
 for those who may transfuse their knowledge of it 
 to the ultimate good of mankind. And although I 
 am so heavily endowed with curiosity concerning 
 the people I find about me, my gift (or curse, which- 
 ever it be) knows pause at the gates of the house of 
 calamity. So, if it were possible, I would not speak 
 of the agony of which I was a witness that night 
 in the apartment of my friends at Madame Bros- 
 sard's. I went with reluctance, but there was no 
 choice. Keredec had sent for me. 
 
 . . . When I was about fifteen, a boy cousin of 
 mine, several years younger, terribly injured him- 
 self on the Fourth of July; and I sat aU night in 
 the room with him, helping his mother. Somehow 
 he had learned that there was no hope of saving his 
 sight; he was an imaginative child and realised the 
 whole meaning of the catastrophe; the eternal dark- 
 ness. . . . And he understood that the thing had 
 
 242 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 243 
 
 been done, that there was no going back of it. This 
 very certainty increased the intensity of his rebellion 
 a thousandfold. "I vnll have my eyes !" he screamed. 
 "I wUl! I Willi" 
 
 Keredec had told his tragic ward too little. The 
 latter had understood but vaguely the nature of the 
 catastrophe which overhimg his return to France, 
 and now that it was indeed concrete and definite, 
 the guardian was forced into fuller disclosures, every 
 word making the anguish of the listener more intol- 
 erable. It was the horizonless despair of a child; 
 and that profound protest I had so often seen 
 smouldering in his eyes culminated, at its crisis, in 
 a wild flame of revolt. The shame of the revelation 
 passed over him; there was nothing of the disas- 
 trous drunkard, sober, learning what he had done. 
 To him, it seemed that he was being forced to suffer 
 for the sins of another man. 
 
 "Do you think that you can make me beUeve I 
 did this?" he cried. "That I made life unbearable 
 for her, drove her from me, and took this hideous, 
 painted old woman in her place? It's a lie. You 
 can't make me believe such a monstrous Ke as that! 
 You can't! You can'tl" 
 
244 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 He threw himself violently upon the couch, face 
 downward, shuddering from head to foot. 
 
 "My poor boy, it is the truth," said Keredec, 
 kneeling beside him and putting a great arm across 
 his shoulders. "It is what a thousand men are doing 
 this night. Nothing is more common, or more unex- 
 plainable — or more simple. Of all the nations it 
 is the same, wherever life has become artificial and 
 the poor, foolish young men have too much money 
 and nothing to do. You do not understand it, but 
 our friend here, and I, we understand because we 
 remember what we have been seeing all our life. 
 You say it is not you who did such crazy, horrible 
 things, and you are right. When this poor woman 
 who is so painted and greasy first caught you, when 
 you began to give your money and your time and 
 your life to her, when she got you into this horrible 
 marriage with her, you were blind — ^you went stag- 
 gering, in a bad dream; your soul hid away, far 
 down inside you, with its hands over its face. If it 
 could have once stood straight, if the eyes of your 
 body could have once been clean for it to look through, 
 if you could have once been as you are to-day, or 
 as you were when you were a little child, you would 
 have cry out with horror both of her and of yourself. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 245 
 
 as you do now; and you would have run away from 
 her and from everything you had put in your hfe. 
 But, in your suffering you must rejoice: the triumph 
 is that yom: mind hates that old hfe as greatly as 
 your soul hates it. You are as good as if you had 
 never been the wild fellow — ^yes, the wicked fellow — 
 that you were. For a man who shakes off his siu 
 is clean; he stands as pure as if he had never sinned. 
 But though his emancipation can be so perfect, 
 there is a law that he cannot escape from the 
 result of all the bad and foolish things he has 
 done, for every act, every breath you draw, is 
 immortal, and each has a consequence that is 
 never ending. And so, now, though you are puri- 
 fied, the suffering from these old actions is here, 
 and you must abide it. Ah, but that is a little 
 thing, nothing! — that suffering — compared to what 
 you have gained, for you have gained your own 
 soul!" 
 
 The desperate young man on the couch answered 
 only with the sobbing of a broken-hearted child. 
 
 I came back to my pavilion after midnight, but 
 I did not sleep, though I lay upon my bed until 
 dawn. Then I went for a long, hard walk, break- 
 fasted at Dives, and begged a ride back to Madame 
 
246 THE GUEST OP QUESNAY 
 
 Brossard's in a peasant's cart which was going that 
 way. 
 
 I found George Ward waiting for me on the little 
 veranda of the pavilion, looking handsomer and more 
 prosperously distinguished and distinguishedly pros- 
 perous and generally well-conditioned than ever — as 
 I told him. 
 
 "I have some news for you," he said after the 
 hearty greeting — "an announcement, in fact." 
 
 "Wait!" I glanced at the interested attitude of 
 Mr. Earl Percy, who was breakfasting at a table 
 significantly near the gallery steps, and led the way 
 into the pavilion. "You may as well not teU it in 
 the hearing of that young man," I said, when the 
 door was closed. "He is eccentric." 
 
 "So I gathered," returned Ward, smiling, "from 
 his attire. But it really wouldn't matter who 
 heard it. Elizabeth's going to marry Cresson 
 Ingle." 
 
 "That is the news — ^the announcement — you spoke 
 of?" 
 
 "Yes, that is it." 
 
 To save my life I could not have told at that 
 moment what else I had expected, or feared, that he 
 might say, but certainly I took a deep breath of 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 247 
 
 relief. "I am very glad," I said. "It shoxild be a 
 happy alliance." 
 
 "On the whole, I think it will be," he returned 
 thoughtfully. "Ingle's done his share of hard living, 
 and I once had a notion" — he glanced snuling at 
 me — "well, I dare say you know my notion. But 
 it is a good match for Elizabeth and not without 
 advantages on many counts. You see, it's time I 
 married, myself; she feels that very strongly and I 
 think her decision to accept Ingle is partly due to 
 her wish to make all clear for a new mistress of my 
 household, — ^though that's putting it in a rather 
 grandiloquent way." He laughed. "And as you 
 probably guess, I have an idea that some such 
 arrangement might be somewhere on the wings of 
 the wind on its way to me, before long." 
 
 He laughed again, but I did not, and noting my 
 silence he turned upon me a more scrutinising look 
 than he had yet given me, and said: 
 
 "My dear fellow, is something the matter? You 
 look quite haggard. You haven't been ill?" 
 
 "No, I've had a bad night. That's all." 
 
 "Oh, I heard something of a riotous scene taking 
 place over here," he said. "One of the gardeners 
 was talking about it to Elizabeth. Your bad night 
 
248 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 woiddn't be connected with that, would it? You 
 haven't been playing Samaritan?" 
 
 "What was it you heard?" I asked quickly. 
 
 "I didn't pay much attention. He said that there 
 was great excitement at Madame Brossard's, because 
 a strange woman had turned up and claimed an 
 insane young man at the inn for her husband, and 
 that they had a fight of some sort " 
 
 "Damnation!" I started from my chair. "Did 
 Mrs. Harman hear this story?" 
 
 "Not last night, I'm certain. Elizabeth said the 
 gardener told her as she came down to the chMeau 
 gates to meet me when I arrived — ^it was late, 
 and Louise had already gone to her room. In fact, 
 I have not seen her yet. But what diflPerence could 
 it possibly make whether she heard it or not? She 
 doesn't know these people, surely?" 
 
 "She knows the man." 
 
 "This insane- 
 
 "He is not insane," I interrupted. "He has lost 
 the memory of his earlier life — ^lost it through an 
 accident. You and I saw the accident." 
 
 "That's impossible," said George, frowning. "I 
 never saw but one accident that you " 
 
 "That was the one: the man is Larrabee Harman." 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 249 
 
 George had struck a match to light a cigar; but 
 the operation remained incomplete: he dropped the 
 match upon the floor and set his foot upon it. "Well, 
 tell me about it," he said. 
 
 "You haven't heard anything about him since 
 the accident?" 
 
 "Only that he did eventually recover and was 
 taken away from the hospital. I heard that his mind 
 was impaired. Does Louise — " he began; stopped, 
 and cleared his throat. "Has Mrs. Harman heard 
 that he is here?" 
 
 "Yes; she has seen him." 
 
 "Do you mean the scoundrel has been bothering 
 her? EKzabeth didn't tell me of this " 
 
 "Your sister doesn't know," I said, lifting my 
 hand to check him. "I think you ought to under- 
 stand the whole case — ^if you'll let me tell you what 
 I know about it." 
 
 "Go ahead," he bade me. "I'U try to hsten 
 patiently, though the very thought of the fellow has 
 always set my teeth on edge." 
 
 "He's not at all what you think," I said. "There's 
 an enormous difference, almost impossible to explain 
 to you, but something you'd understand at once fit 
 you saw him. It's such a difference, in fact, that 
 
250 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 when I found that he was Larrabee Harman the 
 revelation was inexpressibly shocking and distress- 
 ing to me. He came here under another name; I 
 had no suspicion that he was any one I'd ever heard 
 of, much less that I'd actually seen him twice, two 
 years ago, and I've grown to — ^well, in truth, to be 
 fond of him." 
 
 "What is the change?" asked Ward, and his 
 voice showed that he was greatly disquieted. "What 
 is he hke?" 
 
 "As well as I can teU you, he's like an odd but 
 very engaging boy, with something pathetic about 
 him; quite splendidly handsome " 
 
 "Oh, he had good looks to spare when I first 
 knew him," George said bitterly. "I dare say he's 
 got them back if he's taken care of himself, or been 
 taken care of, rather! But go on; I won't interrupt 
 you again. Why did he come here? Hoping to 
 see " 
 
 "No. When he came here he did not know of her 
 existence except in the vaguest way. But to go 
 back to that, I'd better tell you first that the woman 
 we saw with him, one day on the boulevard, and who 
 was in the accident with him " 
 
 "La Miu-siana, the dancer; I know." 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 251 
 
 "She had got him to go through a marriage 
 with her " 
 
 "Whai?" Ward's eyes flashed as he shouted the 
 word. 
 
 "It seems inexplicable; but as I imderstand it, 
 he was never quite sober at that time; he had begun 
 to use drugs, and was often in a half-stupefied con- 
 dition. As a matter of fact, the woman did what 
 she pleased with him. There's no doubt about the 
 validity of the marriage. And what makes it so des- 
 perate a muddle is that since the marriage she's 
 taken good care to give no grounds upon which a 
 divorce could be obtained for Harman. She means 
 to hang on." 
 
 "I'm glad of that!" said George, striking his 
 knee with his open palm. "That will go a great 
 way toward " 
 
 He paused, and asked suddenly: "Did this mar- 
 riage take place in France?" 
 
 "Yes. You'd better hear me through," I 
 remonstrated. "When he was taken from the 
 hospital, he was placed in charge of a Professor 
 Keredec, a madman of whom you've probably 
 heard." 
 
 "Madman? Why, no; he's a member of the 
 
252 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 Institute; a psychologist or metaphysician, isn't 
 he? — at any rate of considerable celebrity." 
 
 "Nevertheless," I insisted grimly, "as misty a 
 vapourer as I ever saw; a poetic, self -contradicting 
 and inconsistent orator, a blower of bubbles, a seer 
 of visions, a mystic, and a dreamer — about as scien- 
 tific as Alice's "White Knight! Harman's aunt, who 
 lived in London, the only relative he had left, I believe 
 — and she has died since — ^put him in Keredec's 
 charge, and he was taken up into the Tyrol and 
 virtually hidden for two years, the idea being hterally 
 to give him something like an education — ^Keredec's 
 phrase is 'restore mind to his soul'! "What must 
 have been quite as vital was to get him out of his 
 horrible wife's clutches. And they did it, for she 
 could not find him. But she picked up that rat in 
 the garden out yonder — ^he'd been some sort of 
 stable-manager for Harman once — and set him on 
 the track. He ran the poor boy down, and yester- 
 day she followed him. Now it amounts to a species 
 of sordid siege." 
 
 "She wants money, of course." 
 
 "Yes, more money; a fair allowance has always 
 been sent to her. Keredec has interviewed her 
 notary and she wants a settlement, naming a sum 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 253 
 
 actually larger than the whole estate amounts to. 
 There were colossal expenditures and equally large 
 shrinkages; what he has left is invested in English 
 securities and is not a fortune, but of course she 
 won't believe that and refuses to budge until this 
 impossible settlement is made. You can imagine 
 about how competent such a man as Keredec would 
 be to deal with the situation. In the mean time, 
 his ward is in so dreadful a state of horror and grief 
 I am afraid it is possible that his mind may really 
 give way, for it was not in a normal condition, of 
 coiu-se, though he's perfectly sane, as I tell you. 
 If it should," I concluded, with some bitterness, 
 "I suppose Keredec will be still prating upliftingly 
 on the saving of his soul !" 
 
 "When was it that Louise saw him?" 
 
 "Ah, that," I said, "is where Keredec has been 
 a poet and a dreamer indeed. It was his plan that 
 they should meet." 
 
 "You mean he brought this wreck of Harman, 
 these husks and shreds of a man, down here for 
 Louise to see?" Ward cried incredulously. "Oh, 
 monstrous !" 
 
 "No," I answered. "Only insane. Not because 
 there is anything lacking in Oliver — ^in Harman. 
 
254 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 I mean — for I think that will be righted in time, 
 but because the second marriage makes it a use- 
 less cruelty that he should have been allowed to 
 fall in love with his first wife again. Yet that was 
 Keredec's idea of a "beautiful restoration,' as he 
 calls it!" 
 
 "There is something behind all this that you 
 don't know," said Ward slowly. "I'll tell you 
 after I've seen this Keredec. When did the man 
 make you his confidant?" 
 
 "Last night. Most of what I learned was as 
 much a revelation to his victim as it was to me. 
 Harman did not know till then that the lady he 
 had been meeting had been his wife, or that he 
 had ever seen her before he came here. He had 
 mistaken her name and she did not enlighten him." 
 
 "Meeting?" said Ward harshly. "You speak as 
 if " 
 
 "They have been meeting every day, George." 
 
 "I won't believe it of her!" he cried. "She 
 couldn't " 
 
 "It's true. He spoke to her in the woods one 
 day; I was there and saw it. I know now that 
 she knew him at once; and she ran away, but — 
 not in anger. I shouldn't be a very good friend 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 255 
 
 of yours," I went on gently, "if I didn't give you 
 the truth. They've been together every day since 
 then, and I'm afraid — miserably afraid, Ward- 
 that her old feeling for him has been revived." 
 
 I have heard Ward use an oath only two or three 
 times in my life, and this was one of them. 
 
 "Oh, by God!" he cried, starting to his feet; 
 "I should like to meet Professor Keredec!" 
 
 "I am at your service, my dear sir," said a deep 
 voice from the veranda. And opening the door, 
 the professor walked into the room. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HE looked old and tired and sad; it was 
 plain that he expected attack and equally 
 plain that he would meet it with fanatic 
 serenity. And yet, the magnificent blunderer pre- 
 sented so fine an aspect of the tortured Olympian, 
 he confronted us with so vast a dignity — ^the driven 
 snow of his hair tousled upon his head and shoulders, 
 like a storm in the higher altitudes — that he regained, 
 in my eyes, something of his mountain grandeur 
 before he had spoken a word in defence. But sym- 
 pathy is not what one should be entertaining for 
 an antagonist; therefore I said cavalierly: 
 
 "This is Mr. Ward, Professor Keredec. He is 
 Mrs. Harman's cousin and close friend." 
 
 "I had divined it." The professor made aFreneh 
 bow, and George responded with as slight a saluta- 
 tion as it has been my lot to see. 
 
 "We were speaking of your reasons," I con- 
 tinued, "for bringing Mr. Harman to this place- 
 Frankly, we were questioning your motive." 
 
 256 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 257 
 
 "My motives? I have wished to restore to two 
 young people the paradise which they had lost"." 
 
 Ward uttered an exclamation none the less violent 
 because it was half-suppressed, while, for my part, 
 I laughed outright; and as Keredec turned his eyes 
 questioningly upon me, I said: 
 
 "Professor Keredec, you'd better understand at 
 once that I mean to help undo the harm you've done. 
 I couldn't tell you last night, in Harman's presence, 
 but I think you're responsible for the whole ghastly 
 tragi-comedy — as hopeless a tangle as ever was made 
 on this earth!" 
 
 This was even more roughly spoken than I had 
 intended, but it did not cause him to look less mildly 
 upon me, nor was there the faintest shadow of 
 resentment in his big voice when he replied: 
 
 "In this world things may be tangled, they may 
 be sad, yet they may be good." 
 
 "I'm afraid that seems rather a trite generality. 
 I beg you to remember that plain-speaking is of 
 some importance just now." 
 
 "I shall remember." 
 
 "Then we should be glad of the explanation," 
 said Ward, resting his arms on my table and leaning 
 across it toward Keredec. 
 
258 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "We should, indeed," I echoed. 
 
 "It is simple," began the professor. "I learned 
 my poor boy's history well, from those who could 
 tell me, from his papers — ^yes, and from the bundles 
 of old-time letters which were given me — since it was 
 necessary that I should know everything. From 
 all these I learned what a strong and beautiful soul 
 was that lady who loved him so much that she ran 
 away from her home for his sake. H6las! he was 
 already the slave of what was bad and foolish, he 
 had gone too far from himself, was overlaid with 
 the habit of evil, and she could not save him then. 
 The spirit was dying in him, although it was there, 
 and it was good " 
 
 Ward's acrid laughter rang out in the room, and 
 my admiration went unwillingly to Keredec for the 
 way he took it, which was to bow gravely, as if 
 acknowledging the other's right to his own point 
 of view. 
 
 "If you will study the antique busts," he said, 
 "you will find that Socrates is Silenus dignified. 
 I choose to believe in the infinite capacities of all 
 men — and in the spirit in all. And so I try to restore 
 my poor boy his capacities and his spirit. But that 
 was not all. The time was coming when I could do 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 259 
 
 no more for him, when the little education of books 
 would be finish' and he must go out in the world 
 again to learn — all newly — ^how to make of himself 
 a man of use. That is the time of danger, and the 
 thought was troubling me when I learned that 
 Madame Harman was here, near this inn, of which 
 I knew. So I brought him." 
 
 "The inconceivable selfishness, the devilish bru- 
 tality of it!" Ward's face was scarlet. "You 
 didn't care how you sacrificed her " 
 
 "Sacrificed!" The professor suddenly released 
 the huge volume of his voice. "Sacrificed!" he 
 thundered. "If I could give him back to her as 
 he is now, it would be restoring to her all that she 
 had loved in him, the real self of him! It would 
 be the greatest gift in her life." 
 
 "You speak for her?" demanded Ward, the ques- 
 tion coming like a lawyer's. It failed to disturb 
 Keredec, who replied quietly : 
 
 "It is a quibble. I speak for her, yes, my dear 
 sir. Her action in defiance of her family and her 
 friends proved the strength of what she felt for the 
 man she married; that she have remained with him 
 three years — until it was impossible — ^proved its 
 persistence; her letters, which I read with reverence. 
 
260 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 proved its beauty — to me. It was a living passion, 
 one that could not die. To let them see each other 
 again; that was all I intended. To give them their 
 new chance — and then, for myself, to keep out of 
 the way. That was why — " he turned to me — "that 
 was why I have been guilty of pretending to have 
 that bad rheumatism, and I hope you will not 
 think it an ugly trick of me! It was to give him 
 his chance freely; and though at first I had much 
 anxiety it was done. In spite of all his wicked 
 follies theirs had been a true love, and nothing in 
 this world could be more inevitable than that they 
 should come together again if the chance could be 
 given. And they have, my dear sirs! It has so hap- 
 pened. To him it has been a wooing as if for the 
 first time; so she has preferred it, keeping him to 
 his mistake of her name. She feared that if he 
 knew that it was the same as his own he might 
 ask questions of me, and, you see, she did not 
 know that I had made this little plan, and was 
 afraid " 
 
 "We axe not questioning Mrs. Harman's motives," 
 George interrupted hotly, "but yoursi" 
 
 "Very well, my dear sir; that is all. I havt 
 explained them." 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 261 
 
 "You have?" I interjected. "Then, my dear 
 Keredec, either you are really insane or I am! 
 You knew that this poor, unfortunate devil of a 
 Harman was tied to that hyenic prowler yonder 
 who means to fatten on him, and wiU never release 
 him; you knew that. Then why did you bring 
 him down here to fall in love with a woman he 
 he can never have? In pity's name, if you didn't 
 hope to half kill them both, what did you mean?" 
 
 "My dear fellow," interposed George quickly, 
 "you imderrate Professor Keredec's shrewdness. 
 His plans are not so simple as you think. He 
 knows that my cousin Louise never obtained a 
 divorce from her husband." 
 
 "What?" I said, not immediately comprehending 
 his meaning. 
 
 "I say, Mrs. Harman never obtained a divorce." 
 
 "Are you delirious?" I gasped. 
 
 "It's the truth; she never did." 
 
 "I saw a notice of it at the time. 'A notice?' 
 I saw a hundred!" 
 
 "No. What you saw was that she had made 
 an appUcation for divorce. Her family got her 
 that far and then she revolted. The suit was 
 dropped." 
 
262 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "It is true, indeed," said Keredec. "The poor 
 boy was on the other side of the world, and he 
 thought it was granted. He had been bad before, 
 but from that time he cared nothing what became 
 of him. That was the reason this Spanish 
 
 woman " 
 
 I turned upon him sharply. "You knew it.?" 
 "It is a year that I have known it; when his 
 estate was — " 
 
 "Then why didn't you tell me last night?" 
 "My dear sir, I could not in his presence, because 
 it is one thing I dare not let him know. This 
 Spanish woman is so hideous, her claim upon him 
 is so horrible to him I could not hope to control 
 him — ^he would shout it out to her that she cannot 
 call him husband. God knows what he would do!" 
 "WeU, why shouldn't he shout it out to her?" 
 "You do not understand," George interposed 
 again, "that what Professor Keredec risked for his 
 'poor boy,' in returning to France, was a trial on 
 the charge of bigamy!" 
 
 The professor recoiled from the definite brutality. 
 "My dear sir! It is not possible that such a thing 
 can happen." 
 
 "I conceive it very likely to happen," said George, 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 263 
 
 "unless you get him out of the country before the 
 lady now installed here as his wife discovers the 
 truth." 
 
 "But she must not!" Keredec lifted both hands 
 toward Ward appealingly; they trembled, and his 
 voice betrayed profound agitation. "She cannot! 
 She has never suspected such a thing; there is 
 nothing that could Tnake her suspect it!" 
 
 "One particular thing would be my telling her," 
 said Ward quietly. 
 
 "Never!" cried the professor, stepping back from 
 him. "You could not do that!" 
 
 "I not only could, but I wUl, unless you get him 
 out of the country — and quickly!" 
 
 "George!" I exclaimed, coming forward between 
 them. "This won't do at all. You can't " 
 
 "That's enough," he said, waving me back, and 
 I saw that his hand was shaking, too, like Keredec's. 
 His face had grown very white; but he controlled 
 himself to speak with a coolness that made what he 
 said painfully convincing. "I know what you think," 
 he went on, addressing me, "but you're wrong. It 
 isn't for myseK. When I sailed for New York in the 
 spring I thought there was a chance that she would 
 carry out the action she begun four years ago and 
 
264 THE GUEST OF QTJESNAY 
 
 go through the form of ridding herself of him defi- 
 nitely; that is, I thought there was some hope for 
 me; I believed there was until this morning. But 
 I know better now. If she's seen him again, and 
 he's been anything except literally unbearable, it's 
 all over with me. From the first, I never had a 
 chance against him; he was a hard rival, even when 
 he'd become only a cruel memory." His voice 
 rose. "I've lived a sober, decent life, and I've 
 treated her with gentleness and reverence since she 
 was bom, and he's done nothing but make a stew- 
 pan of his life and neglect and betray her when he 
 had her. Heaven knows why it is; it isn't because 
 of anything he's done or has, it's just because it's 
 him, I suppose, but I know my chance is gone 
 for good! That leaves me free to act for her; no 
 one can accuse me of doing it for myself. And 
 I swear she sha'n't go through that slough of de- 
 spond again while I have breath in my body!" 
 
 "Steady, George!" I said. 
 
 "Oh, I'm steady enough," he cried. 'Trofessor 
 Keredec shall be convinced of it! My cousin is 
 not going into the mire again; she shall be freed 
 of it for ever: I speak as her relative now, the repre- 
 sentative of her family and of those who care for 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 265 
 
 her happiness and good. Now she shall make the 
 separation definite — and legal! And let Professor 
 Keredec get his 'poor boy' out of the country. 
 Let him do it quickly! I make it as a condition 
 of my not informing the woman yonder and her 
 lawyer. And by my hope of salvation I warn 
 
 you " 
 
 "George, for pity's sake!" I shouted, throwing 
 my arm about his shoulders, for his voice had risen 
 to a pitch of excitement and fury that I feared must 
 bring the whole place upon us. He caught himself 
 up suddenly, stared at me blankly for a moment, 
 then sank into a chair with a groan. As he did so, 
 I became aware of a sound that had been worrying 
 my subconsciousness for an indefinite length of time, 
 and realised what it was. Some one was knocking 
 for admission. 
 
 I crossed the room and opened the door. Miss 
 Elizabeth stood there, red-faced and flustered, and 
 behind her stood Mr. Cresson Ingle, who looked 
 dubioiusly amused. 
 
 "Ah — come in," I said awkwardly. "George is 
 here. Let me present Professor Keredec " 
 
 " 'George is here!' " echoed Miss Elizabeth, 
 interrupting, and paying no attention whatever to 
 
266 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 an agitated bow on the part of the professor. "I 
 should say he was! They probably know that all 
 the way to Trouville!" 
 
 "We were discussing — " I began. 
 
 "Ah, I know what you were discussing," she said 
 impatiently. "Come in, Cresson." She turned to 
 Mr. Ingle, who was obviously reluctant. "It is a 
 family matter, and you'll have to go through with 
 it now." 
 
 "That reminds me," I said. "May I offer " 
 
 "Not now!" Miss Elizabeth cut short a rather 
 embarrassed handshake which her betrothed and I 
 were exchanging. "I'm in a very nervous and dis- 
 tressed state of mind, as I suppose we aU are, for 
 that matter. This morning I learned the true situa- 
 tion over here; and I'm afraid Louise has heard; 
 at least she's not at Quesnay. I got into a panic 
 for fear she had come here, but thank heaven she 
 does not seem to — Good gracious! What's that?" 
 
 It was the discordant voice of Mariana la Mur- 
 siana, crackling in strident protest. My door was 
 still open; I turned to look and saw her, hot-faced, 
 tousle-haired, insuflBciently wrapped, striving to 
 ascend the gallery steps, but valiantly opposed by 
 Madame Brossard, who stood in the way. 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 267 
 
 "But no, madame," insisted Madame Brossard, 
 excited but darkly determined. "You cannot ascend. 
 There is nothing on the upper floor of this wing 
 except the apartment of Professor Keredec." 
 
 "Name of a dog!" shrilled the other. "It is my 
 husband's apartment, I tell you. II y a une femme 
 avec lui!" 
 
 "It is Madame Harman who is there," said 
 Keredec hoarsely in my ear. "I came away and 
 left them together." 
 
 "Come," I said, and, letting the others think what 
 they would, sprang across the veranda, the professor 
 beside me, and ran toward the two women who were 
 beginning to struggle with more than their tongues. 
 I leaped by them and up the steps, but Keredec 
 thrust himself between our hostess and her opponent, 
 planting his great bulk on the lowest step. Glanc- 
 ing hurriedly over my shoulder, I saw the Spanish 
 woman strike him furiously upon the breast with 
 both hands, but I knew she would never pass him. 
 
 I entered the salon of the "Grande Suite," and 
 closed the door quickly behind me. 
 
 Louise Harman was standing at the other end of 
 the room; she wore the pretty dress of white and 
 
268 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 lilac and the white hat. She looked cool and beau- 
 tiful and good, and there were tears in her eyes. 
 To come into this quiet chamber and see her so, 
 after the hot sunshine and tawdry scene below, was 
 like leaving the shouting market-place for a shadowy 
 chapel. 
 
 Her husband was kneeling beside her; he held one 
 of her hands in both his, her other rested upon 
 his head; and something in their attitudes made me 
 know I had come in upon their leave-taking. But 
 from the face he lifted toward her all trace of his 
 tragedy had passed: the wonder and worship written 
 there left no room for anything else. 
 
 "Mrs. Harman — " I began. 
 
 "Yes?" she said. "I am coming." 
 
 "But I don't want you to. I've come for fear 
 you would, and you — ^you must not," I stammered. 
 "You must wait." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "It's necessary," I floundered. "There is a 
 scene " 
 
 "I know," she said quietly. "Thai must be, of 
 course." 
 
 Harman rose, and she took both his hands, hold- 
 ing them against her breast. 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN £69 
 
 "My dear," she said gently, — "my dearest, 
 you must stay. Will you promise not to pass 
 that door, even, until you have word from me 
 agamr 
 
 "Yes," he answered huskily, "if you'll promise 
 it shall come — some day?" 
 
 "It shall, indeed. Be sure of it." 
 
 I had turned away, but I heard the ghost of his 
 voice whispering "good-bye." Then she was beside 
 me and opening the door. 
 
 I tried to stay her. 
 
 "Mrs. Harman," I urged, "I earnestly beg 
 you " 
 
 "No," she answered, "this is better." 
 
 She stepped out upon the gallery; I followed, 
 and she closed the door. Upon the veranda of my 
 pavihon were my visitors from Quesnay, staring 
 up at us apprehensively; Madame Brossard and 
 Keredec still held the foot of the steps, but la 
 Mursiana had abandoned the siege, and, accom- 
 panied by Mr. Percy and Rameau, the black- 
 bearded notary, who had joined her, was crossing 
 the garden toward her own apartment. 
 
 At the sound of the closing door, she glanced 
 over her shoulder, sent forth a scream, and, whirl- 
 
270 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 ing about, ran viciously for the steps, where she 
 was again blocked by the indomitable Keredec. 
 
 "Ah, you foolish woman, I know who you are," 
 she cried, stepping back from him to shake a raenac- 
 ing hand at the quiet lady by my side. "You want 
 to get yourself into trouble! That man in the room 
 up there has been my husband these two years and 
 more." 
 
 "No, madame," said Louise Harman, "you are 
 mistaken; he is my husband." 
 
 "But you divorced him," vociferated the other 
 wildly. "You divorced him in America!" 
 
 "No. You are mistaken," the quiet voice 
 replied. "The suit was withdrawn. He is still 
 my husband." 
 
 I heard the professor's groan of despair, but it 
 was drowned in the wild shriek of Mariana. "Whai? 
 You tell me that? Ah, the miserable! If what you 
 say is true, he shall pay bitterly! He shall wish 
 that he had died by fire! What! You think he can 
 marry me, break my leg so that I cannot dance 
 again, ruin my career, and then go away with a 
 pretty woman like you and be happy? Aha, there 
 are prisons in France for people who marry two 
 like that; I do not know what they do in your 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 271 
 
 barbaric country, but they are decent people over 
 here and they punish. He shall pay for it in sufiFer- 
 ing — " her voice rose to an incredible and unbear- 
 able shriek — "and you, you shall pay, too! You 
 can't come stealing honest women's husbands like 
 that. You shall pay!" 
 
 I saw George Ward come running forward with 
 his hand upraised in a gesture of passionate warn- 
 ing, for Mrs. Harman, unnoticed by me — I was 
 watching the Spanish woman — ^had descended the 
 steps and had passed Keredec, walking straight to 
 Mariana. I leaped down after her, my heart in my 
 throat, fearing a thousand things. 
 
 "You must not talk hke that," she said, not lift- 
 ing her voice — ^yet every one in the courtyard heard 
 her distinctly. "You can do neither of us any harm 
 in the world." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 IT is impossible to say what Mariana would have 
 done had there been no interference, for she 
 had worked herself into one of those furies 
 which women of her type can attain when they feel 
 the occasion demands it, a paroxysm none the less 
 dangerous because its foundation is histrionic. But 
 Rameau threw his arms about her; Mr. Percy came 
 hastily to his assistance, and Ward and I sprang in 
 between her and the too-fearless lady she strove to 
 reach. Even at that, the finger-nails of Mariana's 
 right hand touched the pretty white hat — ^but only 
 touched it and no more. 
 
 Rameau and the little spy managed to get their 
 vociferating burden across the courtyard and into 
 her own door, where she suddenly subsided, dis- 
 appearing within the passage to her apartment in 
 unexpected silence — ^indubitably a disappointment to 
 the interested Am^dde, to Glouglou, Francois, and 
 the whole personnel of the inn, who hastened to 
 group themselves about the door in attentive atti- 
 tudes. 
 
 272 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY 273 
 
 "In heaven's name," gasped Miss Elizabeth, seiz- 
 ing her cousia by the arm, "come into the pavilion. 
 Here's the whole world looking at us !" 
 
 "Professor Keredec — " Mrs. Harman began, resist- 
 ing, and turning to the professor appealingly. 
 
 "Oh, let him come too!" said Miss Elizabeth 
 desperately. "Nothing could be worse than this!" 
 
 She led the way back to the paviUon, and, refus- 
 ing to consider a proposal on the part of Mr. Ingle 
 and myself to remain outside, entered the room last, 
 herself, producing an effect of "shooing" the rest 
 of us in; closed the door with surprising force, 
 relapsed in a chair, and burst into tears. 
 
 "Not a soul at Quesnay," sobbed the mortified 
 chatelaine — "not one but will know this before 
 dinner! They'll hear the whole thing within two 
 hours." 
 
 "Isn't there any way of stopping that, at least?" 
 Ward said to me. 
 
 "None on earth, unless you go home at once and 
 turn your visitors and their servants out of the 
 house," I answered. 
 
 "There is nothing they shouldn't know," said 
 Mrs. Harman. 
 
 George turned to her with a smile so bravely man- 
 
274 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 aged that I was proud of him. "Oh, yes, there is," 
 he said. "We're going to get you out of all this." 
 
 "AH this?" she repeated. 
 
 "AU this mire!" he answered. "We're going to 
 get you out of it and keep you out of it, now, for 
 good. I don't know whether your revelation to the 
 Spanish woman will make that easier or harder, but 
 I do know that it makes the mire deeper." 
 
 "For whom?" 
 
 "For Harman. But you sha'n't share it!" 
 
 Her anxious eyes grew wider. "How have I made 
 it deeper for him? Wasn't it necessary that the 
 poor woman should be told the truth?" 
 
 "Professor Keredec seemed to think it important 
 that she shouldn't." 
 
 She turned to Keredec with a frightened gesture 
 and an unintelligible word of appeal, as if entreat- 
 ing him to deny what George had said. The pro- 
 fessor's beard was trembling; he looked haggard; 
 an almost pitiable apprehension hung upon his eye- 
 lids; but he came forward manfully. 
 
 "Madame," he said, "you could never in your 
 life do anything that would make harm. You were 
 right to speak, and I had short sight to fear, since 
 it was the truth." 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY 275 
 
 "But why did you fear it?" 
 
 "It was because — " he began, and hesitated. 
 
 "I must know the reason," she urged. "I must 
 know just what I've done." 
 
 "It was because," he repeated, running a nervous 
 hand through his beard, "because the knowledge 
 would put us so utterly ia this people's power. 
 Already they demand more than we could give 
 them; now they can — " 
 
 "They can do what.?" she asked tremulously. 
 
 His eyes rested gently on her blanched and 
 stricken face. "Nothing, my dear lady," he 
 answered, swallowing painfully. "Nothing that 
 will last. I am an old man. I have seen and I 
 have — I have thought. And I tell you that only 
 the real survives; evil actions are some phantoms 
 that disappear. They must not trouble us." 
 
 "That is a high plane," George intervened, and 
 he spoke without sarcasm. "To put it roughly, 
 these people have been asking more than the Harman 
 estate is worth; that was on the strength of the 
 woman's claim as a wife; but now they know she is 
 not one, her position is immensely strengthened, for 
 she has only to go before the nearest Commissaire 
 de Police " 
 
276 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "Oh, no!" Mrs. Harman cried passionately. "I 
 haven't done that! You mustn't tell me I have. 
 You mustn'tl" 
 
 "Never!" he answered. "There could not be a 
 greater lie than to say you have done it. The 
 responsibility is with the wretched and vicious boy 
 who brought the catastrophe upon himself. But 
 don't you see that you've got to keep out of it, 
 that we've got to take you out of it?" 
 
 "You can't! I'm part of it; better or worse, it's 
 as much mine as his." 
 
 "No, no!" cried Miss Elizabeth. "You mustn't 
 tell us thatl" Still weeping, she sprang up and 
 threw her arms about her brother. "It's too hor- 
 rible of you " 
 
 "It is what I must tell you," Mrs. Harman said. 
 "My separation from my husband is over. I shall 
 be with him now for " 
 
 "I won't listen to you!" Miss Elizabeth lifted 
 her wet face from George's shoulder, and there was 
 a note of deep anger in her voice. "You don't 
 know what you're talking about; you haven't the 
 faintest idea of what a hideous situation that creature 
 has made for himself. Don't you know that that 
 awful woman was right, and there are laws in 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY 277 
 
 France? When she finds she can't get out of him 
 all she wants, do you think she's going to let him 
 off? I suppose she struck you as being quite the 
 sort who'd prove nobly magnanimous! Are you 
 so bhnd you don't see exactly what's going to 
 happen? She'll ask twice as much now as she 
 did before; and the moment it's clear that she isn't 
 going to get it, she'll call in an agent of poKce. 
 She'll get her money in a separate suit and send 
 him to prison to do it. The case against him is 
 positive; there isn't a shadow of hope for him. 
 You talk of being with him; don't you see how 
 preposterous that is? Do you imagine they en- 
 courage family housekeeping in French prisons?" 
 
 "Oh, come, this won't do!" The speaker was 
 Cresson Ingle, who stepped forward, to my siu*- 
 prise; for he had been hovering in the background 
 wearing an expression of thorough discomfort. 
 
 "You're going much too far," he said, touchiag 
 his betrothed upon the arm. "My dear Ehzabeth, 
 there is no use exaggerating; the case is unpleasant 
 enough just as it is." 
 
 "In what have I exaggerated?" she demanded. 
 
 "Why, I Icnew Larrabee Harman," he returned. 
 "I knew him fairly well. I went as far as Honolidu 
 
278 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 with him, when he and some of his heelers started 
 round the world; and I remember that papers were 
 served on him in San Francisco. Mrs. Harman 
 had made her application; it was just before he 
 sailed. About a year and a half or two years later 
 I met him again, in Paris. He was in pretty bad 
 shape; seemed hypnotised by this Mariana and 
 afraid as death of her; she could go into a tantrum 
 that would frighten him into anything. It was 
 a joke — down along the line of the all-night dancers 
 and cafes — ^that she was going to marry him; and 
 some one told me afterward that she claimed to 
 have brought it about. I suppose it's true; but 
 there is no question of his having married her in 
 good faith. He believed that the divorce had 
 been granted; he'd offered no opposition to it what- 
 ever. He was travelling continually, and I don't 
 think he knew much of what was going on, even 
 right around him, most of the time. He began 
 with cognac and absinthe in the morning, you know. 
 For myself, I always supposed the suit had been 
 carried through; so did people generally, I think. 
 He'll probably have to stand trial, and of coiu-se 
 he's technically guilty, but I don't believe he'd 
 be convicted — ^though I must say it would have 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY 279 
 
 been a most devilish good thing for him if he could 
 have been got out of France before la Mursiana 
 heard the truth. Then he could have made terms 
 with her safely at a distance — she'd have been 
 powerless to injure him and would have precious 
 soon come to time and been glad to take whatever 
 he'd give her. Now, I suppose, that's impossible, 
 and they'll arrest him if he tries to budge. But 
 this talk of prison and all that is nonsense, my 
 dear EUzabeth!" 
 
 "You admit there is a chance of it!" she re- 
 torted. 
 
 "I've said all I had to say," returned Mr. Ingle 
 with a dubious laugh. "And if you don't mind, I 
 believe I'll wait for you outside, in the machine. 
 I want to look at the gear-box." 
 
 He paused, as if in deference to possible opposi- 
 tion, and, none being manifested, went hastily from 
 the room with a sigh of reUef, giving me, as he 
 carefully closed the door, a glance of profound 
 commiseration over his shoulder. 
 
 Miss Elizabeth had taken her brother's hand, not 
 with the effect of clinging for sympathy; nor had 
 her throwing her arms about him produced that 
 effect; one could as easily have imagined Brimhilda 
 
280 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 hiding her face in a man's coat-lapels. George's 
 sister wept, not weakly: she was on the defensive, 
 but not for herself. 
 
 "Does the fact that he may possibly escape going 
 to prison" — she addressed her cousin — "make his 
 position less scandalous, or can it make the man 
 himself less detestable?" 
 
 Mrs. Harman looked at her steadily. There was 
 a long and sorrowful pause. 
 
 "Nothing is changed," she said finally; her eyes 
 still fixed gravely on Miss Elizabeth's. 
 
 At that, the other's face flamed up, and she 
 uttered a half-choked exclamation. "Oh," she 
 cried — "you've fallen in love with playing the 
 martyr; it's *e^-love! You see yourself in the r61e! 
 No one on earth could make me beheve you're in 
 love with this degraded imbecile — all that's left of 
 the wreck of a vicious life! It isn't that! It's be- 
 cause you want to make a shioing example of 
 yourself; you want to get down on your knees and 
 wash oflf the vileness from this befouled creature; 
 you want " 
 
 "Madame!" Keredec interrupted tremendously, 
 "you speak out of no knowledge!" He leaned toward 
 her across the table', which shook under the weight 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY 281 
 
 of his arms. "There is no vileness; no one who is 
 clean remains befouled because of the things that 
 are gone." 
 
 "They do not?" She laughed hysterically, and 
 for my part, I sighed in despair — ^for there was no 
 stopping him. 
 
 "They do not, indeed! Do you know the rela- 
 tion of time to this little life of ours? We have 
 only the present moment; yoxu: consciousness of 
 that is your existence. Your knowledge of each 
 present moment as it passes — and it passes so 
 swiftly that each word I speak now overlaps it — 
 yet it is all we have. For all the rest, for what 
 has gone by and what is yet coming — thai has no 
 real existence; it is all a dream. It is not alive. 
 It is not! It is — nothing! So the soul that stands 
 clean and pure to-day is clean and piure — and that 
 is all there is to say about that soid!" 
 
 "But a soul with evil tendencies," Ward began 
 impatiently, "if one must meet you on your own 
 ground " 
 
 "Ha! my dear sir, those evil tendencies would 
 be in the soiling memories, and my boy is free 
 from them." 
 
 "He went toward all that was soiling before. 
 
282 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 Surely you can't pretend he may not take that 
 direction again?" 
 
 "That," returned the professor quickly, "is his 
 to choose. If this lady can be with him now, he 
 will choose right." 
 
 "So!" cried Miss Elizabeth, "you oner her the 
 r6le of a guide, do you? First she is to be his com- 
 panion through a trial for bigamy in a French 
 court, and, if he is acquitted, his nurse, teacher, 
 and moral preceptor?" She turned swiftly to her 
 cousin. "That's your conception of a woman's 
 mission?" 
 
 "I haven't any mission," Mrs. Harman answered 
 quietly. "I've never thought about missions; I 
 only know I belong to him; that's all I eoer thought 
 about it. I don't pretend to explain it, or make it 
 seem reasonable. And when I met him again, here, 
 it was — ^it was — it was proved to me." 
 
 "Proved?" echoed Miss Elizabeth incredulously. 
 
 "Yes; proved as certainly as the sim shining 
 proves that it's day." 
 
 "Will you tell us?" 
 
 It was I who asked the question: I spoke involun- 
 tarily, but she did not seem to think it strange 
 that I should ask. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY 283 
 
 "Oh, when I first met him," she said tremulously, 
 "I was frightened; but it was not he who frightened 
 me — it was the rush of my own feeling. I did 
 not know what I felt, but I thought I might die, 
 and he was so like himself as I had first known 
 him — ^but so changed, too; there was something 
 so wonderful about him, something that must make 
 any stranger feel sorry for him, and yet it is beau- 
 tiful — " She stopped for a moment and wiped her 
 eyes, then went on bravely: "And the next day he 
 came, and waited for me — I shoidd have come here 
 for him if he hadn't — and I fell in with the mis- 
 take he had made about my name. You see, he'd 
 heard I was called 'Madame d'Armand,' and I 
 wanted him to keep on thinking that, for I thought 
 if he knew I was Mrs. Harman he might fiaid out — " 
 She paused, her lip beginning to tremble. "Oh, 
 don't you see why I didn't want him to know.!* 
 I didn't want him to suffer as he would — as he 
 does now, poor child! — ^but most of all I wanted — 
 I wanted to see if he would fall in love with me 
 again! I kept him from knowing, because, if he 
 thought I was a stranger, and the same thing hap- 
 pened again — ^his caring for me, I mean — " She 
 had begun to weep now, freely and openly, but 
 
284 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 not from grief. "Oh!" she cried, "don't you see 
 how it's all proven to me?" 
 
 "I see how it has deluded you!" said Miss Eliza- 
 beth vehemently. "I see what a rose-light it has 
 thrown about this creature; but it won't last, thank 
 God! any more than it did the other time. The 
 thing is for you to come to yoiu* senses before " 
 
 "Ah, my dear, I have come to them at last and 
 for ever!" The words rang full and strong, though 
 she was white and shaJdng, and heavy tears filled 
 her eyes. "I know what I am doing now, if I never 
 knew before!" 
 
 "You never did know — " Miss Ward began, but 
 George stopped her. 
 
 "Elizabeth !" he said quickly. "We mustn't go on 
 like this; it's more than any of us can bear. Come, 
 let's get out into the air; let's get back to Quesnay. 
 We'U have Ingle drive us around the longer way, 
 by the sea." He turned to his cousin. "Louise, you'll 
 come now? If not, we'll have to stay here with you." 
 
 "I'll come," she answered, trying bravely to stop 
 the tears that kept risiog in spite of her; "it you'll 
 wait till" — ^and suddenly she flashed through them 
 a smile so charming that my heart ached the harder 
 for George — "till I can stop crying!" 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 MR. EARL PERCY and I sat opposite each 
 other at dinner that evening. Perhaps, 
 for charity's sake, I should add that 
 though we faced each other, and, indeed, eyed each 
 other solemnly at intervals, we partook not of the 
 same repast, having each his own table; his being 
 set in the garden at his constant station near the 
 gallery steps, and mine, some fifty feet distant, upon 
 my own veranda, but moved out from behind the 
 honeysuckle screen, for I sat alone and the night 
 was warm. 
 
 To analyse my impression of Mr. Percy's glances, 
 I cannot conscientiously record that I foxmd favour 
 in his eyes. For one thing, I fear he may not have 
 recalled to his bosom a clarion sentiment (which 
 doubtless he had ofttimes cheered from his native 
 gallery in softer years): the honourable declaration 
 that many an honest heart beats beneath a poor 
 man's coat. As for his own attire, he was even as 
 the lilies of Quesnay; that is to say, I beheld upon 
 
 him the same formation of tie that I had seen there, 
 
 285 
 
286 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 the same sensuous beauty of the state waistcoat, 
 though I think that his buttons were, if anything, 
 somewhat spicier than those which had awed me at 
 the chMeau. And when we simultaneously reached 
 the fragrant hour of coffee, the cigarette case that 
 glittered in his hand was one for which some lady- 
 friend of his (I knew intuitively) must have given 
 her AU^ — and then been left in debt. 
 
 Amedee had served us both; Glouglou, as afore- 
 time, attending the silent "Grande Suite," where 
 the curtains were once more tightly drawn. Mon- 
 sieur Rameau dined with his client in her own salon, 
 evidently; at least, Victorine, the femme de chambre, 
 passed to and from the kitchen in that direction, 
 bearing laden trays. When Mr. Percy's cigarette 
 had been lighted, hesitation marked the manner of 
 our maitre d'hotel; plainly he wavered, but finally 
 old custom prevailed; abandoning the cigarette, he 
 chose the cigar, and, hastily clearing my fashionable 
 opponent's table, approached the pavilion with his 
 most conversational face. 
 
 I greeted him indifferently, but with hidden 
 pleasure, for my soul (if Keredec is right and I have 
 one) lay sorrowing. I needed reHef, and whateva* 
 else Am6d6e was, he was always that. I spoke first: 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 287 
 
 "Amed^e, how long a walk is it from Quesnay to 
 Pere Baudry's?" 
 
 "Monsieur, about three-quarters of an hour for 
 a good walker, one might say." 
 
 "A long way for Jean Ferret to go for a cup of 
 cider," I remarked musingly. 
 
 "Eh? But why should he?" asked Amed6e 
 blankly. 
 
 "Why indeed? Surely even a Norman gardener 
 Uves for more than cider! You usually meet him 
 there about noon, I beUeve?" 
 
 Methought he had the grace to blush, though 
 there is an everlasting doubt in my mind that it 
 may have been the colour of the candle-shade pro- 
 ducing that illusion. It was a strange thing to see, 
 at all events, and, taking it for a physiological fact 
 at the time, I let my willing eyes linger upon it as 
 long as it (or its appearance) was upon him. 
 
 "You were a little earUer than usual to-day," 
 I continued finally, full of the marvel. 
 
 "Monsieur?" He was wholly blank again. 
 
 "Weren't you there about eleven? Didn't you go 
 about two hoxurs after Mr. Ward and his friends 
 left here?" 
 
 He scratched his head. "I beheve I had an 
 
288 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 errand in that direction. Eh? Yes, I remember. 
 Truly, I think it so happened." 
 
 "And you found Jean Ferret there?" 
 
 "Where, monsieur?" 
 
 "At PSre Baudry's." 
 
 "No, monsieur." 
 
 "What?" I exclaimed. 
 
 "No, monsieur." He was firm, somewhat re- 
 proachful. 
 
 "You didn't see Jean Ferret this morning?" 
 
 "Monsieur?" 
 
 "Amed6e!" 
 
 "Eh, but I did not find him at Pere Baudry's! 
 It may have happened that I stopped there, but he 
 did not come until some time after." 
 
 "After you had gone away from Pere Baudry's, 
 you mean?" 
 
 "No, monsieur; after I arrived there. Truly." 
 
 "Now we have it! And you gave him the news ' 
 of all that had happened here?" 
 
 "Monsieur!" 
 
 A world — ^no, a constellation, a universe! — of 
 reproach was in the word. 
 
 "I retract the accusation," I said promptly. "I 
 meant something else." 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 289 
 
 "Upon everything that takes place at our hotel 
 here, I am silent to all the world." 
 
 "As the grave!" I said with enthusiasm. "Truly 
 — ^that is a thing well known. But Jean Ferret, 
 then? He is not so discreet; I have suspected that 
 you are in his confidence. At times you have even 
 hinted as much. Can you tell me if he saw the 
 automobile of Monsieur Ingle when it came back 
 to the ch5,teau after leaving here.''" 
 
 "It had arrived the moment before he de- 
 parted." 
 
 "Quite so! I understand," said I. 
 
 "He related to me that Mademoiselle Ward 
 had the appearance of agitation, and Madame 
 d'Armand that of pallor, which was also the case 
 with Monsieur Ward." 
 
 "Therefore," I said, "Jean Ferret ran all the way 
 to P^re Baudry's to learn from you the reason for 
 this agitation and this pallor?" 
 
 "But, monsieur " 
 
 "I retract again!" I cut him off — ^to save time. 
 "What other news had he?" 
 
 There came a gleam into his small, infolded eyes, 
 a tiny glitter reflecting the mellow candle-light, but 
 changing it, in that reflection, to a cold and sinister 
 
290 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 point of steel. It should have warned me, but, as 
 he paused, I repeated my question. 
 
 "Monsieur, people say everything," he answered, 
 frowning as if deploring what they said in some 
 secret, particular instance. "The world is full of 
 idle gossipers, tale-bearers, spreaders of scandal! 
 And, though I speak with perfect respect, all the 
 people at the chS.teau are not perfect in such ways." 
 
 "Do you mean the domestics?" 
 
 "The visitors!" 
 
 "What do they say?" 
 
 "Eh, well, then, they say — ^but no!" He con- 
 trived a masterly pretense of pained reluctance. 
 "I cannot " 
 
 "Speak out," I commanded, piqued by hisjshilly- 
 shallying. "What do they say?" 
 
 "Monsieur, it is about" — he shifted his weight 
 from one leg to the other — "it is about — ^about that 
 beautiful Mademoiselle Elliott who sometimes comes 
 here." 
 
 This was so far from what I had expected that I 
 was surprised into a slight change of attitude, 
 which all too plainly gratified him, though he made 
 an effort to conceal it. "Well," I said uneasily, 
 "what do they find to say of Mademoiselle Elliott?" 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 291 
 
 "They say that her painting is only a ruse to 
 see monsieur." 
 
 "To see Monsieur Saffren, yes." 
 
 "But, no!" he cried. "That is not " 
 
 "Yes, it is," I assured him calmly. "As you 
 know. Monsieur Saffren is very, very handsome, and 
 Mademoiselle Elliott, being a painter, is naturally 
 anxious to look at him from time to time." 
 
 "You are sure?" he said wistfully, even plain- 
 tively. "That is not the meaning Jean Ferret 
 put upon it." 
 
 "He was mistaken." 
 
 "It may be, it may be," he returned, greatly 
 crestfallen, picking up his tray and preparing to 
 go. "But Jean Ferret was very positive." 
 
 "And I am even more so!" 
 
 "Then that malicious maid of Mademoiselle 
 Ward's was mistaken also," he sighed, "when she 
 said that now a marriage is to take place between 
 Mademoiselle Ward and Monsieur Ingle " 
 
 "Proceed," I bade him. 
 
 He moved a few feet nearer the kitchen. "The 
 malicious woman said to Jean Ferret — " He paused 
 and coughed. "It was in reference to those Italian 
 jewels monsieur used to send " 
 
292 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "What about them?" I asked ominously. 
 
 "The woman says that Mademoiselle Ward — " 
 he increased the distance between us — "that now 
 she should give them to Mademoiselle Elliott! 
 Good night, monsieur!" 
 
 His entrance into the kitchen was precipitate. I 
 sank down again into the wicker chair (from which 
 I had hastily risen) and contemplated the stars. 
 But the short reverie into which I then fell was 
 interrupted by Mr. Percy, who, sauntering leisurely 
 about the garden, paused to address me. 
 
 "You folks thinks you was all to the gud, gittin' 
 them trunks off, what?" 
 
 "You speak ia mysterious numbers," I returned, 
 having no comprehension of his meaning. 
 
 "I suppose you don' know nothin' about it," he 
 laughed satirically. "You didn' go over to Lisieux 
 'saft'noon to ship 'em? Oh, no, not youl" 
 
 "I went for a long walk this afternoon, Mr. 
 Percy. Naturally, I couldn't have walked so far 
 as Lisieux and back." 
 
 "Luk here, m'friend," he said sharply — "I reco'- 
 nise 'at you're tryin' t' play your own hand, but 
 I ast you as man to man: Do you think you got 
 any chanst t' git that feller off t' Paris?" 
 
CHAPTER T^^NTY-ONE 293 
 
 "Do you think it will rain to-night?" I in- 
 quired. 
 
 The light of a reflecting lamp which hung on 
 the wall near the archway enabled me to perceive a 
 bitter frown upon his forehead. "When a gen'leman 
 asts a question as a gen'leman," he said, his voice 
 expressing a noble pathos, "I can't see no call for 
 no other gen'leman to go an' play the smart Aleck 
 and not answer him." 
 
 In simple dignity he turned his back upon me 
 and strolled to the other end of the courtyard, 
 leaving me to the renewal of my reverie. 
 
 It was not a happy one. 
 
 My friends — old and new — ^I saw inextricably 
 caught in a tangle of cross-purposes, miserably and 
 hopelessly involved in a situation for which I could 
 predict no possible relief. I was able to understand 
 now the beauty as weU as the madness of Keredec's 
 plan; and I had told him so (after the departure 
 of the Quesnay party), asking his pardon for my 
 brusquerie of the morning. But the towering edifice 
 his hopes had erected was now tumbled about 
 his ears: he had failed to elude the Mursiana. 
 There could be no doubt of her absolute control 
 of the situation. That was evident in the every 
 
294 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 step of the youth now confidently parading before 
 me. 
 
 Following his active stride with my eye, I ob- 
 served him in the act of saluting, with a gracious 
 nod of his bare head, some one, invisible to me, 
 who was approaching from the road. Immediately 
 after — and altogether with the air of a person merely 
 "happening in" — a slight figure, clad in a long coat, 
 a short skirt, and a broad-brimmed, veil-bound 
 brown hat, sauntered casually through the archway 
 and came into full view in the light of the reflector. 
 
 I sprang to my feet and started toward her, 
 uttering an exclamation which I was unable to 
 stifle, though I tried to. 
 
 "Good evening, Mr. Percy," she said cheerily. 
 "It's the most exuberant night. You're quite hearty, 
 I hope?" 
 
 "Takin' a walk, I see, little lady," he observed 
 with genial patronage. 
 
 "Oh, not just for that," she returned. "It's 
 more to see him." She nodded to me, and, as I 
 reached her, carelessly gave me her left hand. "You 
 know I'm studying with him," she continued to 
 Mr. Percy, exhibiting a sketch-book under her arm. 
 "I dropped over to get a criticism." 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 295 
 
 "Oh, drawin'-lessons?" said Mr. Precy tolerantly. 
 "Well, don' lemme intemip' ye." 
 
 He moved as if to withdraw toward the steps, 
 but she detained him with a question. "You're 
 spending the rest of the summer here?" 
 
 "That depends," he answered tersely. 
 
 "I hear you have some passionately interesting 
 friends." 
 
 "Where did you hear that?" 
 
 "Ah, don't you know?" she responded commiser- 
 atingly. "This is the most scandalously gossipy 
 neighbourhood in France. My dear young man, 
 every one from here to Timbuctu knows all about 
 it by this time!" 
 
 "AU about what?" 
 
 "About the excitement you're such a valuable 
 part of; about your wonderful Spanish friend and 
 how she claims the strange young man here for 
 her husband." 
 
 "They'll know more'n that, I expec'," he re- 
 turned with a side glance at me, "before very 
 long." 
 
 "Every one thinks I am so interesting," she 
 rattled on artlessly, "because I happened to meet 
 you in the woods. I've held quite a levee aU day. 
 
296 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 In a reflected way it makes a heroine of me, you 
 see, because you are one of the very Vfiost prominent 
 figures in it all. I hope you won't think I've been 
 too bold," she pursued anxiously, "in claiming 
 that I really am one of your acquaintances?" 
 
 "That'll be aU right," he politely assured her. 
 
 "I am so glad." Her laughter rang out gaily. 
 "Because I've been talking about you as if we were 
 the oldest friends, and I'd hate to have them find 
 me out. I've told them everything — about your 
 appearance you see, and how your hair was parted, 
 and how you were dressed, and " 
 
 "Luk here," he interrupted, suddenly discharging 
 his Bowery laugh, "did you tell 'em how he was 
 dressed?" He pointed a jocidar finger at me. "That 
 vmd 'a' made a hit!" 
 
 "No; we weren't talking of him." 
 
 "Why not? He's in it, too. Bullieve me, he 
 thinks he is!" 
 
 "In the excitement, you mean?" 
 
 "Right!" said Mr. Percy amiably. "He goes 
 round holdin' Rip Van Winkle Keredec's hand when 
 the ole man's cryin'; helpin' him sneak his trunks 
 off t' Paris — ^playin' the hired man gener'ly. Oh, 
 he thinks he's quite the boy, in this trouble!" 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 297 
 
 "I'm afraid it's a small part," she returned, 
 "compared to yours." 
 
 "Oh, I hold my end up, I guess." 
 
 "I should think you'd be so worn out and sleepy 
 you couldn't hold your head up !" 
 
 "Who? Me? Not t'-night, m'Uttle friend. I 
 tuk my sleep 's aft'noon and let Rameau do the 
 Sherlock a little while." 
 
 She gazed upon him with unconcealed admiration. 
 "You are wonderful," she sighed faintly, and "Won- 
 derful!" she breathed again. "How prosaic are 
 drawing-lessons," she continued, touching my arm 
 and moving with me toward the pavilion, "after 
 listening to a man of action like that!" 
 
 Mr. Percy, establishing himself comfortably in a 
 garden chair at the foot of the gallery steps, was 
 heard to utter a short cough as he renewed the 
 light of his cigarette. 
 
 My visitor paused upon my veranda, humming, 
 "Quand I'Amour Meurt" while I went within and 
 ht a lamp. "Shall I bring the light out there?" 
 I asked, but, turning, foxmd that she was already 
 in the room. 
 
 "The sketch-book is my duenna," she said, sink- 
 
298 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 ing into a chair upon one side of the centre table, 
 upon which I placed the lamp. "Lessons are un- 
 questionable, at any place or time. Behold the 
 beautiful posies!" She spread the book open on 
 the table between us, as I seated myself opposite 
 her, revealing some antique coloured smudges of 
 flowers. "Elegancies of Eighteen-Forty! Isn't that 
 a siu^vival of the period when young ladies had 
 'accomplishments,' though ! I found it at the chateau 
 and " 
 
 "Never mind," I said. "Don't you know that you 
 can't ramble over the country alone at this time 
 of night?" 
 
 "K you speak any louder," she said, with some 
 urgency of manner, "you'll be 'hopelessly com- 
 promised socially,' as Mrs. Alderman McGinnis and 
 the Duchess of Gwythyl-Comers say" — ^she directed 
 my glance, by one of her own, through the open 
 door to Mr. Percy — "because he'U hear you and 
 know that the sketch-book was only a shallow 
 pretext of mine to see you. Do be a little man- 
 fully self-contained, or you'U get us talked about! 
 And as for 'this time of night,' I believe it's almost 
 half past nine." 
 
 "Does Miss Ward know " 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 299 
 
 "Do you think it likely? One of the most con- 
 venient things about a chS,teau is the number of 
 ways to get out of it without being seen. I had a 
 choice of eight. So I 'suffered fearfully from neu- 
 ralgia,' dined in. my own room, and sped through 
 the woods to my honest forester." She nodded 
 brightly. "That's youl" 
 
 "You weren't afraid to come through the woods 
 alone?" I asked, uncomfortably conscious that her 
 gaiety met a dull response from me. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "But if Miss Ward finds that you're not at the 
 chMeau " 
 
 "She won't; she thinks I'm asleep. She brought 
 me up a sleeping-powder herself." 
 
 "She thinks you took it?" 
 
 "She knows I did," said Miss Elliott. "I'm full 
 of it! And that will be the reason — ^if you notice 
 that I'm particularly nervous or excited." 
 
 "You seem all of that," I said, looking at her 
 eyes, which were very wide and very brilliant. 
 "However, I beUeve you always do." 
 
 "Ah!" she smiled. "I knew you thought me 
 atrocious from the first. You find myriads of 
 objections to me, don't you?" 
 
300 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 I had forgotten to look away from her eyes, and 
 I kept on forgetting. (The same thing had happened 
 several times lately; and each time, by a some- 
 what painful coincidence, I remembered my age 
 at precisely the instant I remembered to look away.) 
 "Dazzling" is a good old-fashioned word for eyes 
 like hers; at least it might define their eflPect on me. 
 
 "If I did manage to object to you," I said 
 slowly, "it would be a good thing for me — 
 wouldn't it?" 
 
 "Oh, I've won!" she cried. 
 
 "Won?" I echoed. 
 
 "Yes. I laid a wager with myself that I'd have 
 a pretty speech from you before I went out of your 
 life" — she checked a laugh, and concluded thrill- 
 ingly — "forever! I leave Quesnay to-morrow!" 
 
 "Your father has returned from America?" 
 
 "Oh dear, no," she murmured. "I'll be quite at 
 the world's mercy. I must go up to Paris and 
 retire from public life until he does come. I shall 
 take the vows — ^in some obscure but respectable 
 pension." 
 
 "You can't endure the life at the chateau any 
 longer?" 
 
 "It won't endure me any longer. If I shouldn't 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE SOI 
 
 go to-morrow I'd be put out, I think — ^after to- 
 night!" 
 
 "But you intimated that no one would know about 
 to-night!" 
 
 "The night isn't over yet," she replied enig- 
 matically. 
 
 "It almost is — ^for you," I said; "because in 
 ten minutes I shall take you back to the ch&teau 
 gates." 
 
 She oflFered no comment on this prophecy, but 
 gazed at me thoughtfully and seriously for several 
 moments. "I suppose you can imagine," she said, 
 in a tone that threatened to become tremulous, 
 "what sort of an afternoon we've been having up 
 there?" 
 
 "Has it been — " I began. 
 
 "Oh, heart-breaking! Louise came to my room 
 as soon as they got back from here, this morning, 
 and told me the whole pitiful story. But they 
 didn't let her stay there long, poor woman!" 
 
 "They?" I asked. 
 Oh, Elizabeth and her brother. They've been 
 at her all afternoon — off and on." 
 
 "To do what?" 
 
 "To 'save herself,' so they call it. They're in- 
 
S02 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 sisting that she must not see her poor husband 
 again. They're determined she sha'n't." 
 
 "But George wouldn't worry her," I objected. 
 
 "Oh, wouldn't he?" The girl laughed sadly. "I 
 don't suppose he could help it, he's in such a state 
 himself, but between him and Elizabeth it's hard to 
 see how poor Mrs. Harman lived through the day." 
 
 "Well," I said slowly, "I don't see that they're 
 not right. She ought to be kept out of all this 
 as much as possible; and if her husband has to go 
 through a trial " 
 
 "I want you to tell me something," Miss Elliott 
 interrupted. "How much do you like Mr. Ward?" 
 
 "He's an old friend. I suppose I like my old 
 friends in about the same way that other people 
 like theirs." 
 
 "How much do you like Mr. Saffren — ^I mean 
 Mr. Harman?" 
 
 "Oh, thai!" I groaned. "If I could still call 
 him 'Oliver SafiFren,' if I could stiU think of him 
 as 'Oliver Saffren,' it. would be easy to answer. 
 I never was so 'drawn' to a man in my life before. 
 But when I think of him as Larrabee Harman, I 
 am full of misgivings." 
 
 "Louise isn't," she put in eagerly, and with some- 
 
CHAPTEK TWENTY-ONE 303 
 
 thing oddly like the manner of argument. "His 
 wife isn't!" 
 
 "Oh, I know. Perhaps one reason is that she 
 never saw him at quite his worst. I did. I had 
 only two glimpses of him — of the briefest — ^but they 
 inspired me with such a depth of dislike that I 
 can't tell you how painful it was to discover that 
 'Oliver Saffren' — ^this strange, pathetic, attractive 
 friend of mine — ^is the same man." 
 
 "Oh, but he isn't!" she exclaimed quickly. 
 
 "Keredec says he is," I laughed helplessly. 
 
 "So does Louise," returned Miss Elliott, disdain- 
 ing consistency in her eagerness. "And she's right 
 — and she cares more for him than she ever did!" 
 
 "I suppose she does." 
 
 "Are you — " the girl began, then stopped for a 
 moment, looking at me steadily. "Aren't you a 
 little in love with her?" 
 
 "Yes," I answered honestly. "Aren't you?" 
 
 "That's what I wanted to know!" she said; and 
 as she turned a page in the sketch-book for the 
 benefit of Mr. Percy, I saw that her hand had 
 begim to tremble. 
 
 "Why?" I asked, leaning toward her across the 
 table. 
 
304 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 "Because, if she were involved in some under- 
 taking — something that, if it went wrong, would 
 endanger her happiness and, I think, even her 
 life — ^for it might actually kill her if she failed, 
 and brought on a worse catastrophe " 
 
 "Yes?" I said anxiously, as she paused again. 
 
 "You'd help her?" she said. 
 
 "I would indeed," I assented earnestly. "I told 
 her once I'd do anything in the world for her." 
 
 "Even if it involved something that George Ward 
 might never forgive you for?" 
 
 "I said, 'anything in the world,' " I returned, 
 perhaps a little huskily. "I meant aU of that. If 
 there is anything she wants me to do, I shall do 
 it." 
 
 She gave a low cry of triumph, but immediately 
 checked it. Then she leaned far over the table, 
 her face close above the book, and, tracing the 
 outline of an uncertain Hly with her small, brown- 
 gloved forefinger, as though she were consulting me 
 on the drawing, "I wasn't afraid to come through 
 the woods alone," she said, in a very low voice, 
 "because I wasn't alone. Louise came with me." 
 
 "What?" I gasped. "Where is she?" 
 
 "At the Baudry cottage down the road. They 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 305 
 
 won't miss her at the chateau until morning; I 
 locked her door on the outside, and if they go to 
 bother her again — ^though I don't think they will — 
 they'll beheve she's fastened it on the inside and is 
 asleep. She managed to get a note to Keredec late 
 this afternoon; it explained everything, and he had 
 some trunks carried out the rear gate of the inn 
 and carted over to Lisieux to be shipped to Paris 
 from there. It is to be supposed — or hoped, at 
 least — that this woman and her people will believe 
 that means Professor Keredec and Mr. Harman will 
 try to get to Paris in the same way." 
 
 "So," I said, "that's what Percy meant about 
 the trunks. I didn't imderstand." 
 
 "He's on watch, you see," she continued, turning 
 a page to another drawing. "He means to sit up 
 all night, or he wouldn't have slept this afternoon. 
 He's not precisely the kind to be in the habit of 
 afternoon naps — ^Mx. Percy!" She laughed ner- 
 vously. "That's why it's almost absolutely necessary 
 for us to have you. If we have — the thing is so 
 simple that it's certaiu." 
 
 "If you have me for what?" I asked. 
 
 "If you'll help" — and, as she looked up, her 
 eyes, now very dose to mine, were dazzling indeed 
 
308 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 — "I'll adore you for ever and ever! Oh, much 
 longer than you'd like me to !" 
 
 "You mean she's going to " 
 
 "I mean that she's going to run away with him 
 again," she whispered. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 AT midnight there was no mistaking the pal- 
 pable uneasiness with which Mr. Percy, 
 faithful sentry, regarded the behaviour of 
 Miss Elliott and myself as we sat conversing upon 
 the veranda of the pavilion. It was not fear for the 
 security of his prisoner which troubled him, but 
 the unseemliness of the yoimg woman's persistence 
 in remaining to this hour under an espionage no 
 more matronly than that of a sketch-book abandoned 
 on the table when we had come out to the open. 
 The youth had veiled his splendours with more 
 splendour: a long overcoat of so glorious a plaid it 
 paled the planets above us; and he wandered rest- 
 lessly about the garden in this refulgence, glancing 
 at us now and then with what, in spite of the in- 
 sufficient revelation of the starlight, we both recog- 
 nised as a chilling disapproval. The lights of the 
 inn were all out; the courtyard was dark. The 
 Spanish woman and Monsieur Rameau had made 
 their appearance for a moment, half an hour earlier, 
 
 to exchange a word with their fellow vigilant, and, 
 
 ^7 
 
308 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 soon after, the extinguishing of the lamps in their 
 respective apartments denoted their retirement for 
 the night. In the "Grande Suite" all had been 
 dark and silent for an hour. About the whole place 
 the only sign of life, aside from those signs furnished 
 by oiu- three selves, was a rhythmical sound from 
 an open window near the kitchen, where incon- 
 trovertibly slumbered our maitre d'hotel after the 
 cares of the day. 
 
 Upon the occasion of our forest meeting Mr. 
 Percy had signified his desire to hear some talk of 
 Art. I think he had his fill to-night — and more; 
 for that was the subject chosen by my dashing 
 companion, and vivaciously exploited imtil our 
 awaited hour was at hand. Heaven knows what 
 nonsense I prattled, I do not; I do not think I knew 
 at the time. I talked mechanically, trying hard 
 not to betray my increasing excitement. 
 
 Under cover of this traduction of the Muse I 
 served, I kept going over and over the details of 
 Louise Harman's plan, as the girl beside me had 
 outlined it, bending above the smudgy sketch-book. 
 "To make them think the flight is for Paris," she 
 had urged, "to Paris by way of Lisieux. To make 
 that man yonder believe that it is toward Lisieux, 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 309 
 
 while they turn at the crossroads, and drive across 
 the country to Trouville for the morning boat to 
 Havre." 
 
 It was simple; that was its great virtue. K they 
 were well started, they were safe; and well started 
 meant only that Larrabee Harman should leave the 
 inn without an alarm, for an alarm sounded too 
 soon meant "racing and chasing on Canoby Lea," 
 before they could get out of the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood. But with two hours' start, and the pur- 
 suit spending most of its energy in the wrong 
 direction — that is, toward Lisieux and Paris — they 
 would be on the deck of the French-Canadian liner 
 to-morrow noon, sailing out of the harbour of Le 
 Havre, with nothing but the Atlantic Ocean between 
 them and the St. Lawrence. 
 
 I thought of the woman who dared this flight 
 for her lover, of the woman who came full-armed 
 between him and the world, a Valkyr winging 
 down to bear him away to a heaven she would 
 make for him herself. Gentle as she was, there 
 must have been a Valkyr in her somewhere, or she 
 could not attempt this. She swept in, not only 
 between him and the world, but between him and 
 the destroying demons his own sins had raised to 
 
310 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 beset him. There, I thought, was a whole love; 
 or there she was not only wife but mother to 
 him. 
 
 And I remembered the dream of her I had before 
 I ever saw her, on that first night after I came down 
 to Normandy, when Am^dee's talk of "Madame 
 d'Armand" had brought her into my thoughts. I 
 remembered that I had dreamed of finding her 
 statue, but it was veiled and I could not uncover 
 it. And to-night it seemed to me that the veil had 
 hfted, and the statue was a figure of Mercy in the 
 beautiful likeness of Louise Harman. Then Keredec 
 was wrong, optimist as he was, since a will such as 
 hers could save him she loved, even from his own 
 acts. 
 
 "And when you come to Monticelli's first style — " 
 Miss Elliott's voice rose a little, and I caught the 
 sound of a new thrill vibrating in it — "you find 
 a hundred others of his epoch doing it quite as 
 well, not a bit of a bit less commonplace " 
 
 She broke oflP suddenly, and looking up, as I had 
 fifty times in the last twenty minutes, I saw that a 
 light shone from Keredec's window. 
 
 "I dare say they are commonplace," I remarked, 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 311 
 
 rising. "But now, if you will permit me, I'll oflfer 
 you my escort back to Quesnay." 
 
 I went into my room, put on my cap, lit a lantern, 
 and returned with it to the veranda. "If you are 
 ready?" I said. 
 
 "Oh, quite," she answered, and we crossed the 
 garden as far as the steps. 
 
 Mr. Percy signified his approval. 
 
 "Gimna see the little lady home, are you?" he 
 said graciously. "I was thinhin' it was about time, 
 m'self!" 
 
 The salon door of the "Grand Suite" opened, 
 above me, and at the soimd, the youth started, 
 springing back to see what it portended, but I ran 
 quickly up the steps. Keredec stood in the door- 
 way, bare-headed and in his shirt-sleeves; in one hand 
 he held a travelling-bag, which he immediately gave 
 me, setting his other for a second upon my shoulder. 
 
 "Thank you, my good, good friend," he said 
 with an emotion in his big voice which made me 
 glad of what I was doing. He went back into the 
 room, closing the door, and I descended the steps 
 as rapidly as I had run up them. Without pausing, 
 I started for the rear of the courtyard. Miss EUiott 
 accompanying me. 
 
S12 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 The sentry had watched these proceedings open- 
 mouthed, more mystified than alarmed. "Luk here," 
 he said, "I want t' know whut this means." 
 
 "Anything you choose to think it means," I 
 laughed, beginning to walk a little more rapidly. 
 He glanced up at the windows of the "Grande 
 Suite," which were again dark, and began to follow 
 us slowly. "What you gut in that grip.?" he 
 asked. 
 
 'Tfou don't think we're carrying oflf Mr. Harman?" 
 
 "I reckon he's in his room all right," said the 
 youth grimly; "unless he's flew out. But I want t' 
 know what you think y're doia'.?" 
 
 "Just now," I replied, "I'm opening this 
 door." 
 
 This was a fact he could not question. We emerged 
 at the foot of a lane behind the inn; it was long and 
 narrow, bordered by stone walls, and at the other 
 end debouched upon a road which passed the rear 
 of the Baudry cottage. 
 
 Miss Elliott took my arm, and we entered the 
 lane. 
 
 Mr. Percy paused undecidedly. "I want t' know 
 whut you think y're doin'?" he repeated angrily, 
 calling after us. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO SIS 
 
 "It's very simple," I called in turn. "Can't I do 
 an errand for a friend? Can't I even carry his 
 traveUing-bag for him, without going into ex- 
 planations to everybody I happen to meet? And," 
 I added, permitting some anxiety to be marked in 
 my voice, "I think you may as well go back. We're 
 not going far enough to need a guard." 
 
 Mr. Percy allowed an oath to escape him, and we 
 heard him muttering to himself. Then his foot- 
 steps sounded behind us. 
 
 "He's coming!" Miss EUiott whispered, with 
 nervous exultation, looking over her shoulder. "He's 
 going to foUow." 
 
 "He was sure to," said I. 
 
 We trudged briskly on, followed at some fifty 
 paces by the perturbed watchman. Presently I 
 heard my companion utter a sigh so profound that 
 it was a whispered moan. 
 
 "What is it?" I murmured. 
 
 "Oh, it's the thought of Quesnay and to-morrow; 
 facing them with this!" she quavered. "Louise has 
 written a letter for me to give them, but I'U have 
 to tell them " 
 
 "Not alone," I whispered. "I'U be there when 
 you come down from your room in the morning." 
 
S14 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 We were embarked upon a singular adventure, 
 not unattended by a certain danger; we were tingling 
 with a hundred apprehensions, occupied with the 
 vital necessity of drawing the little spy after us— 
 and that was a strange moment for a man (and an 
 elderly painter-man of no mark, at that!) to hear 
 himself called what I was called then, in a tremulous 
 whisper close to my ear. Of course she has denied 
 it since; nevertheless, she said it — twice, for I pre- 
 tended not to hear her the first time. I made no 
 answer, for something in the word she called me, 
 and in her seeming to mean it, made me choke up 
 so that I could not even whisper; but I made up 
 my mind that, after that, if this girl saw Mr. Earl 
 Percy on his way back to the iim before she wished 
 him to go, it would be because he had killed me. 
 
 We were near the end of the lane when the neigh 
 of a horse sounded sonorously from the road be- 
 yond. 
 
 Mr. Percy came running up swiftly and darted 
 by us. 
 
 "Who's that?" he called loudly. "Who's that in 
 the cart yonder?" 
 
 I set my lantern on the groimd close to the wall, 
 and at the same moment a horse and cart drew 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 315 
 
 up on the road at the end of the lane, showing 
 against the starlight. It was Pere Baudry's best 
 horse, a stout gray, that would easily enough make 
 TrouviUe by daylight. A woman's figure and a 
 man's (the latter that of Pere Baudry himself) 
 could be made out dimly on the seat of the 
 cart. 
 
 "Who is it, I say?" shouted our excited friend. 
 "What kind of a game d'ye think y're puttin' up 
 on me here?" 
 
 He set his hand on the side of the cart and 
 sprang upon the hub of the wheel. A glance at 
 the occupants satisfied him. 
 
 "Mrs. Harman!" he yelled. "Mrs. Harman!" 
 He leaped down into the road. "I knowed I was 
 a fool to come away without wakin' up Ba,meau. 
 But you haven't beat us yet!" 
 
 He drove back into the lane, but just inside its 
 entrance I met him. 
 
 "Where are you going?" I asked. 
 
 "Back to the pigeon-house in a hurry. There's 
 devilment here, and I want Rameau. Git out o' 
 my way!" 
 
 "You're not going back," said I. 
 
 "The hell I ain't!" said Mr. Percy. "I give 
 
316 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 ye two seconds t' git out o' my — Take yer hands 
 offa me!" 
 
 I made sure of my grip, not upon the refulgent 
 overcoat, for I feared he might sKp out of that, 
 but upon the collars of his coat and waistcoat, 
 which I clenched together in my right hand. I 
 knew that he was quick, and I suspected that he 
 was "scientific," but I did it before he had finished 
 talking, and so made fast, with my mind and heart 
 and soul set upon sticking to him. 
 
 My suspicions as to his "science" were perfer- 
 vidly justified. "You long-legged devil!" he yelled, 
 and I instantly received a series of concussions upon 
 the face and head which put me in supreme doubt 
 of my surroundings, for I seemed to have plunged, 
 eyes foremost, into the Milky Way. But I had my 
 left arm aroxmd his neck, which probably saved me 
 from a coup de grace, as he was forced to pommel 
 me at half-length. Pommel it was; to use so gentle 
 a word for what to me was crash, bang, smash, 
 battle, murder, earthquake and tornado. I was con- 
 scious of some one screaming, and it seemed a 
 consoling part of my delirium that the cheek of 
 Miss Anne Elliott should be jammed tight against 
 mine through one phase of the explosion. My 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 317 
 
 arms were wrenched, my fingers twisted and tor- 
 tured, and, when it was all too clear to me that I 
 could not possibly bear one added iota of physical 
 pain, the ingenious fiend began to kick my shins 
 and knees with feet hke crowbars. 
 
 Conflict of any sort was never my vocation. I 
 had not been an accessory-during-the-fact to a 
 fight since I passed the truculent age of fourteen; 
 and it is a marvel that I was able to hang to that 
 dynamic bundle of trained muscles — which defines 
 Mr. Earl Percy well enough — ^for more than ten 
 seconds. Yet I did hang to him, as Pere Baudry 
 testifies, for a minute and a half, which seems no 
 inconsiderable lapse of time to a person under- 
 going such experiences as were then afflicting me. 
 
 It appeared to me that we were revolving in 
 enormous circles in the ether, and I had long since 
 given my last gasp, when there came a great roaring 
 wind in my ears and a range of mountains toppled 
 upon us both; we went to earth beneath it. 
 
 "Ha! you must create violence, then?" roared 
 the avalanche. 
 
 And the voice was the voice of Keredec. 
 
 Some one pulled me from underneath my strug- 
 gling antagonist, and, the power of sight in a hazy. 
 
318 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 zigzagging fashion coming back to me, I perceived 
 the figure of Miss Aime Elliott recumbent beside 
 me, her arms about Mr. Percy's prostrate body. 
 The extraordinary girl had fastened upon him, too, 
 though I had not known it, and she had gone to 
 ground with us; but it is to be said for Mr. Earl 
 Percy that no blow of his touched her, and she 
 was not hurt. Even in the final extremities of tem- 
 per, he had carefully discrimiaated in my favour. 
 
 Mrs. Harman was bending over her, and, as the 
 girl sprang up lightly, threw her arms about her. 
 For my part, I rose more slowly, section by section, 
 wondering why I did not fall apart; lips, nose, and 
 cheeks bleeding, and I had a fear that I should need 
 to be led like a blind man, through my eyelids swell- 
 ing shut. That was something I earnestly desired 
 should not happen; but whether it did, or did not — 
 or if the heavens fell! — ^I meant to walk back to 
 Quesnay with Anne Elliott that night, and, mangled, 
 broken, or half-dead, presenting whatever appear- 
 ance of the prize-ring or the abattoir that I might, 
 I intended to take the same train for Paris on the 
 morrow that she did. 
 
 For our days together were not at an end; nor 
 was it hers nor my desire that they should be. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO S19 
 
 It was Oliver Saffren — as I like to think of him 
 — who helped me to my feet and wiped my face 
 with his handkerchief, and when that one was 
 ruined, brought others from his bag and stanched the 
 wounds gladly received, in the service of his wife. 
 
 "I will remember — " he said, and his voice broke. 
 "These are the memories which Keredec says make 
 a man good. I pray they will help to redeem me." 
 And for the last time I heard the child in him 
 speaking: "I ought to be redeemed; I must be, 
 don't you think, for her sake?" 
 
 "Lose no time!" shouted Keredec. "You must 
 be gone if you will reach that certain town for the 
 five-o'clock train of the morning." This was for 
 the spy's benefit; it indicated Lisieux and the train 
 to Paris. Mr. Percy struggled; the professor knelt 
 over him, pinioning his wrists in one great hand, 
 and holding him easily to earth. 
 
 "Ha! my friend — " he addressed his captive — 
 "you shall not have cause to say we do you any 
 harm; there shall be no law, for you are not hurt, 
 and you are not going to be. But here you shall stay 
 quiet for a little while — ^till I say you can go." As 
 he spoke he boimd the other's wrists with a short 
 rope which he took from his pocket, performing the 
 
320 THE GUEST OF QUESNAY 
 
 same office immediately afterward for Mr. Percy's 
 ankles. 
 
 "I take the comit!" was the sole remark of that 
 philosopher. "I can't go up against no herd of 
 elephants." 
 
 "And now," said the professor, rising, "good- 
 bye! The sun shall rise gloriously for you tomorrow. 
 Come, it is time." 
 
 The two wbmen were crying in each other's arms. 
 "Good-bye!" sobbed Anne Elliott. 
 
 Mrs. Harman turned to Keredec. "Good-bye! 
 for a little while." 
 
 He kissed her hand. "Dear lady, I shall come 
 within the year." 
 
 She came to me, and I took her hand, meaning 
 to kiss it as Keredec had done, but suddenly she 
 was closer and I felt her lips upon my battered 
 cheek. I remember it now. 
 
 I wrung her husband's hand, and then he took her 
 in his arms, lifted her to the foot-board of the cart, 
 and sprang up beside her. 
 
 "God bless you, and good-bye!" we called. 
 
 And their voices came back to us. "God bless you 
 and good-bye!" 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 321 
 
 They, were carried into the enveloping night. 
 We stared after them down the road; watching the 
 lantern on the tail-board of the cart diminish; 
 watching it dim and dwindle to a point of gray; — 
 Ustening imtU the hoof-beats of the heavy Norman 
 grew fainter than the rustle of the branch that rose 
 above the wall beside us. But it is bad luck to 
 strain eyes and ears to the very last when friends 
 are parting, because that so sharpens the loneliness; 
 and before the cart went quite beyond our ken, 
 two of us set out upon the longest way to Quesnay. 
 
 IHE END 
 
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 
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