Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  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 maitre d’hotel) 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 table before me, while he subtly dictated what manner of dinner I should eat. For this interval Amedee’s exuberance was sobered and his badinage 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 “Bien!” 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 destination at an exquisite leisure. Remembering this old habit of his, it was with joy that I noted his headlong departure. Some ten feet of his progress accomplished, he 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 mouth and continued meditatively upon his 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 blossoming 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 rich 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 gallery runs the length of each wing, the guest-chambers of the upper story opening upon it like the 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 much mendacity 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, hush, and he never offered (or approved) conversation 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 Trouville, for Houlgate — for heaven knows where! And even the automobiles do not come so frequently as they did. Our road used to be the best from Lisieux to Beuzeval, but now the maps recommend another. They pass 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 remember 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 fragrance, 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 should 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 Trois Pigeons, but I tell her it is only natural. He comes now for the first time because he likes 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 modern 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.”

  “Oh, without doubt!” he agreed graciously, as he folded the cloth. I have always tried to believe that it was not so much my pictures as the fact that I paid my bills the day they were presented which convinced everybody about Les Trois Pigeons that I was an amateur. But I never became happily enough settled in this opinion to risk pressing an investigation; and it was a relief that Amedee changed the subject.

  “Monsieur remembers the Chateau 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 Dieu!” 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 affected dejection. “And poor Madame Brossard thought monsieur had returned to our old hotel because he liked it, and remembered 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 chateau. In my industrious frame of mind that circumstance seemed almost a drawback. Miss Elizabeth, ever hospitable 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 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 the chateau in the morning” — the complacent 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 wonderful Madame d’Armand and remain away from the chateau.”

  “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 magnificent; every one must fly to obey when she opens her mouth. If she did not like the ocean there below the chateau, the ocean would have to move! It needs only a glance to perceive that Mademoiselle Ward is a great lady — but MADAME D’ARMAND! 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 maitre d’hotel. 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 carriage from the chateau — eh? Then monsieur will 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 immoderate 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 chateau, since Mademoiselle 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. Madame 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 observed.

  “Yes, that is true,” said Amedee thoughtfully. “No one can deny it; it is a French name.” He rested the tray upon a stump near by and scratched his head. “I do not understand how that can be,” he continued slowly. “Jean Ferret, who is chief gardener at the chateau, 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 conclusion 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 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 wanderer. 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 dreadful 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 Amedee, at ease, smoking his cigarette after the day’s work and convinced that he was singing.

  “Pour qu’j’finisse

  Mon service

  Au Tonkin je suis parti —

  Ah! quel beau pays, mesdames!

  C’est l’paradis des p’tites femmes!”

  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.

  “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 understood, there will be a beautiful present for a good maitre d’hotel 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 antechamber 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 unseen orchestra may play music that I know. From here I go into a spacious apartment where the air and light are of a fine 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 th
at 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 adventures until I am pushed out of a secret door into the morning sunlight. Amedee was the acquaintance 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 found 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

  I WAS 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 supplied. 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 charitably 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 gallery, and all of the people of the inn, from Madame Brossard (who directed) to Glouglou (who madly attempted the heaviest pieces), busily installing 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 immediately 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.