The Arm Chair at the Inn Part 20

Up went her hands.

"No--please don't say a word and, whatever you do, don't invite me to stay to dinner, because I'm not going to; and that is my last word, and nothing will change my mind. Oh!--it is too ba.n.a.l--and you've spoiled everything. I didn't think I'd see anybody. Why are you not all in your rooms? Oh!--I am ready to cry with it all!"

"But we can't think of your leaving us," I begged, wondering what had disturbed her, but determined she should not go until we had found out.

"Pierre has been at work all the morning and we----"

"No--it is I who have been working all the morning, digging in my garden, getting ready for the winter, and I am tired out, and so I will go back to my little bed in my dear garage and have my dinner alone."

Here Herbert broke loose. "But, madame, you _must_ dine with us; we have been counting on it." He had set his heart on another evening with the extraordinary woman and did not mean to be disappointed.

"But, my dear Monsieur Herbert, you see, I----"

"And you really mean that you won't stay?" groaned Louis, his face expressive of the deepest despair.

"Stop!--stop!--I tell you, and hear me through. Oh!--you dreadful men!

Just see what you have done: I had such a pretty little plan of my own--I've been thinking of it for days. I said to myself this morning: I'll go to the Inn after I have finished with Lemois--about six o'clock--when it is getting dark--quite too dark for a lady to be even poking about alone. They will all be out walking or dressing for dinner, and I'll slip into the darling Marmouset, just to warm myself a little, if there should be a fire, and then they will come in and find me and be so surprised, and before any one of them can say a word I will shout out that I have come to dinner! And now you've ruined everything, and I must say, 'Thank you, kind gentlemen'--like any other poor parishioner--and eat my bowl of bread and milk in the corner. Was there ever _anything_ so ba.n.a.l?--Oh!--I'm heartbroken over it all. No; don't say another word--please, papa, I'll be a good girl. So help me off with my wraps, dear Monsieur Louis. No; wait until I get inside--you see, I've been gardening all day, and when one does gardening----"

The two were inside the Marmouset now, the others following, the laughter increasing as Louis led her to the hearth, where a fire had just been kindled. There he proceeded to unb.u.t.ton her fur-lined motor-cloak--the laughter changing to shouts of delight when freeing herself from its folds. She stood before us a veritable Lebrun portrait, in a short black-velvet gown with wide fichu of Venetian lace rolled back from her plump shoulders, her throat circled with a string of tiny jewels from which drooped a pear-shaped pearl big as a pecan-nut and worth a king's ransom.

"There!" she cried, her brown eyes dancing, her face aglow with her whirl through the crisp air. "Am I not too lovely, and is not my gardening costume perfect? You see, I am always careful to do my digging in black velvet and lace," and a low gurgling sound like the cooing of doves followed by a burst of uncontrollable laughter filled the room.

If on her other visits she had captured us all by the charm of her personality, she drew the bond the tighter now. Then she had been the thorough woman of the world, adapting herself with infinite tact to new surroundings, contributing her share to the general merriment--one of us, so to speak; to-night she was the elder sister. She talked much to Herbert about his new statue and what he expected to make of it. He must not, she urged, concern himself alone with artistic values or the honors they would bring. He had gone beyond all these; his was a higher mission--one to bring the human side of the African savage to light and so help to overturn the prejudice of centuries, and nothing must swerve him from what she considered his lofty purpose--and there must be no weak repet.i.tion of his theme. Each new note he sounded must be stronger than the last.

She displayed the same fine insight when, dinner over, she talked to Louis of his out-door work--especially the whirl and slide of his water.

"You will forgive a woman, Monsieur Louis, who is old enough to be your great-grandmother, when she tells you that, fine as your pictures are--and I know of no painter of our time who paints water as well--there are some things in the out of doors which I am sure you will yet put into your canvases. I am a fisherman myself, and have thrashed many of the brooks you have painted, and there is nothing I love so much as to peer down into the holes where the little fellows live--way down among the pebbles and the brown moss and green of the water-plants.

Can't we get this--or do I expect the impossible? But if it could be done--if the bottom as well as the surface of the water could be given--would we not uncover a fresh hiding-place of nature, and would not you--you, Monsieur Louis--be doing the world that much greater service?--the pleasure being more ours than yours--your reward being the giving of that pleasure to us. I hope you will all forgive me, but it has been such an inspiration to meet you all. I get so smothered by the commonplace that sometimes I gasp for breath, and then I find some oasis like this and I open wide my soul and drink my fill.

"But enough of all this. Let us have something more amusing. Monsieur Brierley, won't you go to the spinet and--" Here she sprang from her chair. "Oh, I forgot all about it, and I put it in my pocket on purpose.

Please some one look in my cloak for a roll of music; none of you I know have heard it before. It is an old song of Provence that will revive for you all your memories of the place. Thank you, Monsieur Brierley, and now lift the lid and I will sing it for you." And then there poured from her lips a voice so full and rich, with notes so liquid and sympathetic, that we stood around her in wonder doubting our ears.

Never had we found her so charming nor so bewitching, nor so full of enchanting surprises.

So uncontrollable were her spirits, always rising to higher flights, that I began at last to suspect that something outside of the inspiration of our ready response to her every play of fancy and wit was accountable for her bewildering mood.

The solution came when the coffee was served and fresh candles lighted and Lea and Mignon, with a curtsy to the table and a gentle, furtive good-night to madame, had left the room. Then, quite as if their departure had started another train of thought, she turned and faced our landlord.

"What a dear old woman is Lea, Lemois," she began in casual tones, "and what good care she takes of that pretty child; she is mother and sister and guardian to her. But she cannot be everything. There is always some other yearning in a young girl's heart which no woman can satisfy. You know that as well as I do. And this is why you are going to give Mignon to young Gaston. Is it not true?" she added in dissembling tones.

Lemois moved uneasily in his chair. The question had come so unexpectedly, and was so direct, that for a moment he lost his poise.

His own att.i.tude, he supposed, had been made quite clear the night of the rescue, when he had denounced Gaston and forbidden Mignon to see him. Yet his manner was grave enough as he answered:

"Madame has so many things to occupy her mind, and so many people to help, why should she trouble herself with those of my maid? Mignon is very happy here, and has everything she wants, and she will continue to have them as long as she is alive."

"Then I see it is not true, and that you intend breaking her heart; and now will you please tell us why?" She looked at him and waited. There was a new ring--one of command--in her voice. I understood now as I listened why it took so short a time for her to rebuild the villa.

"Is madame the girl's guardian that she wishes to know?" asked Lemois.

The words came with infinite courtesy, madame being the only woman of whom he stood in awe, but there was an undertone of opposition which, if aggravated, would, I felt sure, end in the old man's abrupt departure from the room.

I tried to relieve the situation by saying how happy not only Mignon but any one of us would be with so brilliant an advocate as madame pleading for our happiness, but she waved me aside with:

"No--please don't. I want dear Lemois to answer. It was one of my reasons for coming to-night, and he must tell me. He is so kind and considerate, and he is always so sorry for anything that suffers. He loves flowers and birds and animals, and music and pictures and all beautiful things, and yet he is worse than one of the cannibals that Monsieur Herbert tells us about. They eat their young girls and have done with them--Lemois kills his by slow torture--and so I ask you again, dear Lemois--_why_?"

Everybody sat up straight. How would Lemois take it? His fingers began to work, and the corners of his mouth straightened. A sudden flush crossed his habitually pale face. We were sure now of an outbreak: what would happen then none of us dared think.

"Madame la marquise," he began slowly--too slowly for anything but ill-suppressed feeling--"there is no one that I know for whom I have a higher respect; you must yourself have seen that in the many years I have known you. You are a very good and a very n.o.ble woman; all your life people have loved you--they still love you. It is one of your many gifts--one you should be thankful for. Some of us do not win this affection. You are, if you will permit me to say it, never lonely nor alone, except by your own choosing. Some of us cannot claim that--I for one. Do you not now understand?" He was still boiling inside, but the patience of the trained landlord and the innate breeding of the man had triumphed. And then, again, it would be a rash Frenchman of his cla.s.s who would defy a woman of her exalted rank.

Over her face crept a pleased look--as if she held some trump card up her sleeve--and one of her cooing, bubbling laughs escaped her lips.

"You are not telling me the truth, you dear Lemois. I am not in love with Gaston, the fisherman, nor are you with our pretty Mignon. Neither you nor I have anything to do with it. Here are two young people whose happiness is trembling in the balance. You hold the scales--that is, you claim to, although the girl is neither your child nor your ward and could marry without your consent, and would if she did not love you for yourself and for all you have done for her. Answer me now--do you object because Gaston is a fisherman?"

Whether her knowledge of Lemois' legal rights--and she had stated them correctly--softened him, or whether he saw a loophole for himself, was not apparent, but the answer came with a certain surrender.

"Yes. It is a dangerous life. You have only to live here, as I have done, to count the women who bid their men good-by and watch in the gray dawn for the boat that never comes back--Mignon's elder brothers in one of them. I do not want her to go through that agony--she is young yet--some one else will come. The first love is not always the last--except in the case of madame"--and he smiled in strange fashion.

The bomb was still within reach of his hand, but the fuse had gone out.

"Then it isn't Gaston himself?" she demanded with unflinching gaze.

"No--he is an honest lad; good to his mother; industrious--a brave fellow. He has, too, so I hear, a place in the market--one of the stalls--so he is getting on, and will soon be one of our best citizens."

He would talk all night about Gaston, and pleasantly, if she wished.

"Well, if he were a notary? Would that be different?" Her soft brown eyes were hardly visible between their lids, but they were burning with an intense light.

"Yes, it might be." Same air of nonchalance--anything to please the delightful woman.

"Or a chemist?"--just a slit between the lids now, with little flashes along the edges.

"Or a chemist," intoned Lemois.

"Or a head gardener, perhaps?" Both eyes tight shut under the fluffy gray hair, an intense expression on her face.

"Why not say a minister of state, madame?" laughed Lemois.

"No--no--don't you dare run away like that. Stand to your guns, monsieur. If he were a head gardener, then what?"

Lemois rose from his chair, laid his hand on his shirt-front, and bowed impressively. He was evidently determined to humor her pa.s.sing whim.

"If he were a head gardener I would not have the slightest objection, madame."

She sprang to her feet and began clapping her plump hands, her laughter filling the room.

"Oh!--I am so happy! You heard what he said--all of you. You, Monsieur Herbert--and you--and you"--pointing to each member of our group. "If he were a head gardener! Oh, was there ever such luck! And do you listen too, you magnificent Lemois! Gaston is a head gardener; has been a head gardener for days; every one of the plants you bought for me to-day he will put into the ground with his own hands. His mother will have the stall I bought in the fish market, and he and Mignon are to live in the new garage, and he is to have charge of the villa grounds, and she is to manage the dairy and the linen and look after the chickens and the ducks. And the wedding is to take place just as soon as you give your consent; and if you don't consent, it will take place anyway, for I am to be G.o.dmother and she is to have a dot and all the furniture they want out of what was saved from my house, and that's all there is to it--except that both of them know all about it, for I sent Gaston down here last night with a note for you, and he told Mignon, and it's all settled--now what do you say?"

A shout greeted her last words, and the whole room broke spontaneously into a clapping of hands, Louis, as was his invariable custom whenever excuse offered, on his feet, gla.s.s in hand, proposing the health of that most adorable of all women of her own or any other time, past, present, or future--at which the dear, penguin-shaped lady in black velvet and lace raised her dainty white palms in holy horror, protesting that it was Monsieur Lemois whose health must be drunk, as without him nothing could have been done, the clear tones of her voice rising like a bird's song above the others as she sprang forward, grasped Lemois' hand and lifted him to his feet, the whole room once more applauding.

Yes, it was a great moment! Mignon's happiness was very dear to us, but that which captured us completely was the daring and cleverness of the little woman who had worked for it, and who was so joyous over her success and so childishly enthusiastic at the outcome.

Lemois, unable to stem the flood of rejoicing, seemed to have surrendered and given up the fight, complimenting the marquise upon her diplomacy, and the way in which she had entirely outgeneralled an old fellow who was not up to the wiles of the world. "Such a mean advantage, madame, to take of a poor old man," he continued, bowing low, a curious, unreadable expression crossing his face. "I am, as you know, but clay in your hands, as are all the others who are honored by your acquaintance.

But now that I am tied to your chariot wheels, I must of course take part in your triumphal procession; so permit me to make a few suggestions."