Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  She stood in profile to me; there were some jasmine flowers at her breast; I could see them rise and fall with more than deep breathing; and I wondered what the man who had talked of her so wildly, only yesterday, would feel if he could know that already the thought of him had moved her.

  “I haven’t HAD my life. It’s gone!” It was almost as if I heard his voice, close at hand, with all the passion of regret and protest that rang in the words when they broke from him in the forest. And by some miraculous conjecture, within the moment I seemed not only to hear his voice but actually to see him, a figure dressed in white, far below us and small with the distance, standing out in the moonlight in the middle of the tree-bordered avenue leading to the chateau gates.

  I rose and leaned over the railing. There was no doubt about the reality of the figure in white, though it was too far away to be identified with certainty; and as I rubbed my eyes for clearer sight, it turned and disappeared into the shadows of the orderly grove where I had stood, one day, to watch Louise Harman ascend the slopes of Quesnay. But I told myself, sensibly, that more than one man on the coast of Normandy might be wearing white flannels that evening, and, turning to my companion, found that she had moved some steps away from me and was gazing eastward to the sea. I concluded that she had not seen the figure.

  “I have a request to make of you,” she said, as I turned. “Will you do it for me — setting it down just as a whim, if you like, and letting it go at that?”

  “Yes, I will,” I answered promptly. “I’ll do anything you ask.”

  She stepped closer, looked at me intently for a second, bit her lip in indecision, then said, all in a breath:

  “Don’t tell Mr. Saffren my name!”

  “But I hadn’t meant to,” I protested.

  “Don’t speak of me to him at all,” she said, with the same hurried eagerness. “Will you let me have my way?”

  “Could there be any question of that?” I replied, and to my astonishment found that we had somehow impulsively taken each other’s hands, as upon a serious bargain struck between us.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE ROUND MOON was white and at its smallest, high overhead, when I stepped out of the phaeton in which Miss Elizabeth sent me back to Madame Brossard’s; midnight was twanging from a rusty old clock indoors as I crossed the fragrant courtyard to my pavilion; but a lamp still burned in the salon of the “Grande Suite,” a light to my mind more suggestive of the patient watcher than of the scholar at his tome.

  When my own lamp was extinguished, I set my door ajar, moved my bed out from the wall to catch whatever breeze might stir, “composed myself for the night,” as it used to be written, and lay looking out upon the quiet garden where a thin white haze was rising. If, in taking this coign of vantage, I had any subtler purpose than to seek a draught against the warmth of the night, it did not fail of its reward, for just as I had begun to drowse, the gallery steps creaked as if beneath some immoderate weight, and the noble form of Keredec emerged upon my field of vision. From the absence of the sound of footsteps I supposed him to be either barefooted or in his stockings. His visible costume consisted of a sleeping jacket tucked into a pair of trousers, while his tousled hair and beard and generally tossed and rumpled look were those of a man who had been lying down temporarily.

  I heard him sigh — like one sighing for sleep — as he went noiselessly across the garden and out through the archway to the road. At that I sat straight up in bed to stare — and well I might, for here was a miracle! He had lifted his arms above his head to stretch himself comfortably, and he walked upright and at ease, whereas when I had last seen him, the night before, he had been able to do little more than crawl, bent far over and leaning painfully upon his friend. Never man beheld a more astonishing recovery from a bad case of rheumatism!

  After a long look down the road, he retraced his steps; and the moonlight, striking across his great forehead as he came, revealed the furrows ploughed there by an anxiety of which I guessed the cause. The creaking of the wooden stairs and gallery and the whine of an old door announced that he had returned to his vigil.

  I had, perhaps, a quarter of an hour to consider this performance, when it was repeated; now, however, he only glanced out into the road, retreating hastily, and I saw that he was smiling, while the speed he maintained in returning to his quarters was remarkable for one so newly convalescent.

  The next moment Saffron came through the archway, ascended the steps in turn — but slowly and carefully, as if fearful of waking his guardian — and I heard his door closing, very gently. Long before his arrival, however, I had been certain of his identity with the figure I had seen gazing up at the terraces of Quesnay from the borders of the grove. Other questions remained to bother me: Why had Keredec not prevented this night-roving, and why, since he did permit it, should he conceal his knowledge of it from Oliver? And what, oh, what wondrous specific had the mighty man found for his disease?

  Morning failed to clarify these mysteries; it brought, however, something rare and rich and strange. I allude to the manner of Amedee’s approach. The aged gossip-demoniac had to recognise the fact that he could not keep out of my way for ever; there was nothing for it but to put as good a face as possible upon a bad business, and get it over — and the face he selected was a marvel; not less, and in no hasty sense of the word.

  It appeared at my door to announce that breakfast waited outside.

  Primarily it displayed an expression of serenity, masterly in its assumption that not the least, remotest, dreamiest shadow of danger could possibly be conceived, by the most immoderately pessimistic and sinister imagination, as even vaguely threatening. And for the rest, you have seen a happy young mother teaching first steps to the first-born — that was Amedee. Radiantly tender, aggressively solicitous, diffusing ineffable sweetness on the air, wreathed in seraphic smiles, beaming caressingly, and aglow with a sacred joy that I should be looking so well, he greeted me in a voice of honey and bowed me to my repast with an unconcealed fondness at once maternal and reverential.

  I did not attempt to speak. I came out silently, uncannily fascinated, my eyes fixed upon him, while he moved gently backward, cooing pleasant words about the coffee, but just perceptibly keeping himself out of arm’s reach until I had taken my seat. When I had done that, he leaned over the table and began to set useless things nearer my plate with frankly affectionate care. It chanced that in “making a long arm” to reach something I did want, my hand (of which the fingers happened to be closed) passed rather impatiently beneath his nose. The madonna expression changed instantly to one of horror, he uttered a startled croak, and took a surprisingly long skip backward, landing in the screen of honeysuckle vines, which, he seemed to imagine, were some new form of hostility attacking him treacherously from the rear. They sagged, but did not break from their fastenings, and his behaviour, as he lay thus entangled, would have contrasted unfavourably in dignity with the actions of a panic-stricken hen in a hammock.

  “And so conscience DOES make cowards of us all,” I said, with no hope of being understood.

  Recovering some measure of mental equilibrium at the same time that he managed to find his feet, he burst into shrill laughter, to which he tried in vain to impart a ring of debonair carelessness.

  “Eh, I stumble!” he cried with hollow merriment. “I fall about and faint with fatigue! Pah! But it is nothing: truly!”

  “Fatigue!” I turned a bitter sneer upon him. “Fatigue! And you just out of bed!”

  His fat hands went up palm outward; his heroic laughter was checked as with a sob; an expression of tragic incredulity shone from his eyes. Patently he doubted the evidence of his own ears; could not believe that such black ingratitude existed in the world. “Absalom, O my son Absalom!” was his unuttered cry. His hands fell to his sides; his chin sank wretchedly into its own folds; his shirt-bosom heaved and crinkled; arrows of unspeakable injustice had entered the defenceless breast.

  “Just out of bed!”
he repeated, with a pathos that would have brought the judge of any court in France down from the bench to kiss him— “And I had risen long, long before the dawn, in the cold and darkness of the night, to prepare the sandwiches of monsieur!”

  It was too much for me, or rather, he was. I stalked off to the woods in a state of helpless indignation; mentally swearing that his day of punishment at my hands was only deferred, not abandoned, yet secretly fearing that this very oath might live for no purpose but to convict me of perjury. His talents were lost in the country; he should have sought his fortune in the metropolis. And his manner, as he summoned me that evening to dinner, and indeed throughout the courses, partook of the subtle condescension and careless assurance of one who has but faintly enjoyed some too easy triumph.

  I found this so irksome that I might have been goaded into an outbreak of impotent fury, had my attention not been distracted by the curious turn of the professor’s malady, which had renewed its painful assault upon him. He came hobbling to table, leaning upon Saffren’s shoulder, and made no reference to his singular improvement of the night before — nor did I. His rheumatism was his own; he might do what he pleased with it! There was no reason why he should confide the cause of its vagaries to me.

  Table-talk ran its normal course; a great Pole’s philosophy receiving flagellation at the hands of our incorrigible optimist. (“If he could understand,” exclaimed Keredec, “that the individual must be immortal before it is born, ha! then this babbler might have writted some intelligence!”) On the surface everything was as usual with our trio, with nothing to show any turbulence of under-currents, unless it was a certain alertness in Oliver’s manner, a restrained excitement, and the questioning restlessness of his eyes as they sought mine from time to time. Whatever he wished to ask me, he was given no opportunity, for the professor carried him off to work when our coffee was finished. As they departed, the young man glanced back at me over his shoulder, with that same earnest look of interrogation, but it went unanswered by any token or gesture: for though I guessed that he wished to know if Mrs. Harman had spoken of him to me, it seemed part of my bargain with her to give him no sign that I understood.

  A note lay beside my plate next morning, addressed in a writing strange to me, one of dashing and vigorous character.

  “In the pursuit of thrillingly scientific research,” it read, “what with the tumult which possessed me, I forgot to mention the bond that links us; I, too, am a painter, though as yet unhonoured and unhung. It must be only because I lack a gentle hand to guide me. If I might sit beside you as you paint! The hours pass on leaden wings at Quesnay — I could shriek! Do not refuse me a few words of instruction, either in the wildwood, whither I could support your shrinking steps, or, from time to time, as you work in your studio, which (I glean from the instructive Mr. Ferret) is at Les Trois Pigeons. At any hour, at any moment, I will speed to you. I am, sir,

  “Yours, if you will but breathe a ‘yes,’

  “ANNE ELLIOTT.”

  To this I returned a reply, as much in her own key as I could write it, putting my refusal on the ground that I was not at present painting in the studio. I added that I hoped her suit might prosper, regretting that I could not be of greater assistance to that end, and concluded with the suggestion that Madame Brossard might entertain an offer for lessons in cooking.

  The result of my attempt to echo her vivacity was discomfiting, and I was allowed to perceive that epistolary jocularity was not thought to be my line. It was Miss Elizabeth who gave me this instruction three days later, on the way to Quesnay for “second breakfast.” Exercising fairly shame-faced diplomacy, I had avoided dining at the chateau again, but, by arrangement, she had driven over for me this morning in the phaeton.

  “Why are you writing silly notes to that child?” she demanded, as soon as we were away from the inn.

  “Was it silly?”

  “You should know. Do you think that style of humour suitable for a young girl?”

  This bewildered me a little. “But there wasn’t anything offensive—”

  “No?” Miss Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows to a height of bland inquiry. “She mightn’t think it rather — well, rough? Your suggesting that she should take cooking lessons?”

  “But SHE suggested she might take PAINTING lessons,” was my feeble protest. “I only meant to show her I understood that she wanted to get to the inn.”

  “And why should she care to ‘get to the inn’?”

  “She seemed interested in a young man who is staying there. ‘Interested’ is the mildest word for it I can think of.”

  “Pooh!” Such was Miss Ward’s enigmatic retort, and though I begged an explanation I got none. Instead, she quickened the horse’s gait and changed the subject.

  At the chateau, having a mind to offer some sort of apology, I looked anxiously about for the subject of our rather disquieting conversation, but she was not to be seen until the party assembled at the table, set under an awning on the terrace. Then, to my disappointment, I found no opportunity to speak to her, for her seat was so placed as to make it impossible, and she escaped into the house immediately upon the conclusion of the repast, hurrying away too pointedly for any attempt to detain her — though, as she passed, she sent me one glance of meek reproach which she was at pains to make elaborately distinct.

  Again taking me for her neighbour at the table, Miss Elizabeth talked to me at intervals, apparently having nothing, just then, to make up to Mr. Cresson Ingle, but not long after we rose she accompanied him upon some excursion of an indefinite nature, which led her from my sight. Thus, the others making off to cards indoors and what not, I was left to the perusal of the eighteenth century facade of the chateau, one of the most competent restorations in that part of France, and of the liveliest interest to the student or practitioner of architecture.

  Mrs. Harman had not appeared at all, having gone to call upon some one at Dives, I was told, and a servant informing me (on inquiry) that Miss Elliott had retired to her room, I was thrust upon my own devices indeed, a condition already closely associated in my mind with this picturesque spot. The likeliest of my devices — or, at least, the one I hit upon — was in the nature of an unostentatious retreat.

  I went home.

  However, as the day was spoiled for work, I chose a roundabout way, in fact the longest, and took the high-road to Dives, but neither the road nor the town itself (when I passed through it) rewarded my vague hope that I might meet Mrs. Harman, and I strode the long miles in considerable disgruntlement, for it was largely in that hope that I had gone to Quesnay. It put me in no merrier mood to find Miss Elizabeth’s phaeton standing outside the inn in charge of a groom, for my vanity encouraged the supposition that she had come out of a fear that my unceremonious departure from Quesnay might have indicated that I was “hurt,” or considered myself neglected; and I dreaded having to make explanations.

  My apprehensions were unfounded; it was not Miss Elizabeth who had come in the phaeton, though a lady from Quesnay did prove to be the occupant — the sole occupant — of the courtyard. At sight of her I halted stock-still under the archway.

  There she sat, a sketch-book on a green table beside her and a board in her lap, brazenly painting — and a more blushless piece of assurance than Miss Anne Elliott thus engaged these eyes have never beheld.

  She was not so hardened that she did not affect a little timidity at sight of me, looking away even more quickly than she looked up, while I walked slowly over to her and took the garden chair beside her. That gave me a view of her sketch, which was a violent little “lay-in” of shrubbery, trees, and the sky-line of the inn. To my prodigious surprise (and, naturally enough, with a degree of pleasure) I perceived that it was not very bad, not bad at all, indeed. It displayed a sense of values, of placing, and even, in a young and frantic way, of colour. Here was a young woman of more than “accomplishments!”

  “You see,” she said, squeezing one of the tiny tubes almost dry, and continu
ing to paint with a fine effect of absorption, “I HAD to show you that I was in the most ABYSMAL earnest. Will you take me painting with, you?”

  “I appreciate your seriousness,” I rejoined. “Has it been rewarded?”

  “How can I say? You haven’t told me whether or no I may follow you to the wildwood.”

  “I mean, have you caught another glimpse of Mr. Saffren?”

  At that she showed a prettier colour in her cheeks than any in her sketch-box, but gave no other sign of shame, nor even of being flustered, cheerfully replying:

  “That is far from the point. Do you grant my burning plea?”

  “I understood I had offended you.”

  “You did,” she said. “VICIOUSLY!”

  “I am sorry,” I continued. “I wanted to ask you to forgive me—”

  I spoke seriously, and that seemed to strike her as odd or needing explanation, for she levelled her blue eyes at me, and interrupted, with something more like seriousness in her own voice than I had yet heard from her:

  “What made you think I was offended?”

  “Your look of reproach when you left the table—”

  “Nothing else?” she asked quickly.

  “Yes; Miss Ward told me you were.”

  “Yes; she drove over with you. That’s it!” she exclaimed with vigour, and nodded her head as if some suspicion of hers had been confirmed. “I thought so!”

  “You thought she had told me?”

  “No,” said Miss Elliott decidedly. “Thought that Elizabeth wanted to have her cake and eat it too.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then you’ll get no help from me,” she returned slowly, a frown marking her pretty forehead. “But I was only playing offended, and she knew it. I thought your note was THAT fetching!”

  She continued to look thoughtful for a moment longer, then with a resumption of her former manner — the pretence of an earnestness much deeper than the real— “Will you take me painting with you?” she said. “If it will convince you that I mean it, I’ll give up my hopes of seeing that SUMPTUOUS Mr. Saffren and go back to Quesnay now, before he comes home. He’s been out for a walk — a long one, since it’s lasted ever since early this morning, so the waiter told me. May I go with you? You CAN’T know how enervating it is up there at the chateau — all except Mrs. Harman, and even she—”