The Guest of Quesnay Part 32

"It almost is--for you," I said; "because in ten minutes I shall take you back to the chateau gates."

She offered 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 insisting 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, THAT!" I groaned. "If I could still call him 'Oliver Saffren,' if I could still 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 something 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, disdaining 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 begun to tremble.

"Why?" I asked, leaning toward her across the table.

"Because, if she were involved in some undertaking--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 a.s.sented 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 all 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 lily 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 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 believe 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 understand."

"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--Mr. Percy!" She laughed nervously. "That's why it's almost absolutely necessary for us to have you. If we have--the thing is so simple that it's certain."

"If you have me for what?" I asked.

"If you'll help"--and, as she looked up, her eyes, now very close to mine, were dazzling indeed--"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 palpable 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 young 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 restlessly about the garden in this refulgence, glancing at us now and then with what, in spite of the insufficient revelation of the starlight, we both recognised 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, 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 our three selves, was a rhythmical sound from an open window near the kitchen, where incontrovertibly 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 until 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, 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. If 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 Can.o.by Lea," before they could get out of the immediate neighbourhood. But with two hours' start, and the pursuit 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 beset him. There, I thought, was a whole love; or there she was not only wife but mother to him.