"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-crack: sharp, loud, violent.
"Is he alive?"
"I don"t know," I answered, beginning to move forward; "and this is foolish talk--especially on my part!"
"But I want to know," he persisted, again detaining 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 tell 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 grat.i.tude, offered me his hand. I took it, and my soul was disquieted within me, for it was no purpose of mine to set inquiries 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.
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 fitting 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 Brossard"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.
"What on earth is the matter?" I asked. "Did you think the car was starting?"
He turned toward me a face upon which was imprinted the sheer, blank terror of a child. It pa.s.sed 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 intending 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 cannily that I guessed him to be about fifty.
We were pa.s.sing him when he uttered an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of surprise and stepped forward again, holding out his hand to my companion, and exclaiming:
"Where did YOU come from? I"d hardly have known you."
Oliver 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 prankish toast. He interrupted himself long enough to glance our 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 gallery steps and disappeared into his own rooms without sending even a glance from the corner of his eye in return.
I went almost as quickly to my pavilion, and, without lighting my lamp, set about my preparations 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 join the smoker. "Cressie," I heard her say in an eager, lowered tone, "who WAS he?"
"Who was who?"
"That DEVASTATING creature in white flannels!"
The man chuckled. "Matinee sort of devastator--what? Monte Cristo hair, n.o.ble 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 pair moved away.
"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 window!"
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 pa.s.sed 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 chateau, and stopped here only because the run from Paris had made the tires too hot."
"To visit Quesnay, you mean?"