The Guest of Quesnay Part 4

The reports were voluminous, the details few. The two gentlemen, as Amedee would relate, spent their forenoons over books and writing in their rooms. Professor Keredec's voice could often be heard in every part of the inn; at times holding forth with such protracted vehemence that only one explanation would suffice: the learned man was delivering a lecture to his companion.

"Say then!" exclaimed Amedee--"what king of madness is that? To make orations for only one auditor!"

He brushed away my suggestion that the auditor might be a stenographer to whom the professor was dictating chapters for a new book. The relation between the two men, he contended, was more like that between teacher and pupil. "But a pupil with gray hair!" he finished, raising his fat hands to heaven. "For that other monsieur has hair as gray as mine."

"That other monsieur" was farther described as a thin man, handsome, but with a "singular air," nor could my colleague more satisfactorily define this air, though he made a racking struggle to do so.

"In what does the peculiarity of his manner lie?" I asked.

"But it is not so much that his manner is peculiar, monsieur; it is an air about him that is singular. Truly!"

"But how is it singular?"

"Monsieur, it is very, very singular."

"You do not understand," I insisted. "What kind of singularity has the air of 'that other monsieur'?"

"It has," replied Amedee, with a powerful effort, "a very singular singularity."

This was as near as he could come, and, fearful of injuring him, I abandoned that phase of our subject.

The valet-de-chambre whom my fellow-lodgers had brought with them from Paris contributed nothing to the inn's knowledge of his masters, I learned. This struck me not only as odd, but unique, for French servants tell one another everything, and more--very much more. "But this is a silent man," said Amedee impressively. "Oh! very silent! He shakes his head wisely, yet he will not open his mouth. However, that may be because"--and now the explanation came--"because he was engaged only last week and knows nothing. Also, he is but temporary; he returns to Paris soon and Glouglou is to serve them."

I ascertained that although "that other monsieur" had gray hair, he was by no means a person of great age; indeed, Glouglou, who had seen him oftener than any other of the staff, maintained that he was quite young. Amedee's own opportunities for observation had been limited.

Every afternoon the two gentlemen went for a walk; but they always came down from the gallery so quickly, he declared, and, leaving the inn by a rear entrance, plunged so hastily into the nearest by-path leading to the forest, that he caught little more than glimpses of them. They returned after an hour or so, entering the inn with the same appearance of haste to be out of sight, the professor always talking, "with the manner of an orator, but in English." Nevertheless, Amedee remarked, it was certain that Professor Keredec's friend was neither an American nor an Englishman. "Why is it certain?" I asked.

"Monsieur, he drinks nothing but water, he does not smoke, and Glouglou says he speaks very pure French."

"Glouglou is an authority who resolves the difficulty. 'That other monsieur' is a Frenchman."

"But, monsieur, he is smooth-shaven."

"Perhaps he has been a maitre d'hotel."

"Eh! I wish one that _I_ know could hope to dress as well when he retires! Besides, Glouglou says that other monsieur eats his soup silently."

"I can find no flaw in the deduction," I said, rising to go to bed. "We must leave it there for to-night."

The next evening Amedee allowed me to perceive that he was concealing something under his arm as he stoked the coffee-machine, and upon my asking what it was, he glanced round the courtyard with histrionic slyness, placed the object on the table beside my cap, and stepped back to watch the impression, his manner that of one who declaims: "At last the missing papers are before you!"

"What is that?" I said.

"It is a book."

"I am persuaded by your candour, Amedee, as well as by the general appearance of this article," I returned as I picked it up, "that you are speaking the truth. But why do you bring it to me?"

"Monsieur," he replied, in the tones of an old conspirator, "this afternoon the professor and that other monsieur went as usual to walk in the forest." He bent over me, pretending to be busy with the coffee-machine, and lowering his voice to a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "When they returned, this book fell from the pocket of that other monsieur's coat as he ascended the stair, and he did not notice. Later I shall return it by Glouglou, but I thought it wise that monsieur should see it for himself."

The book was Wentworth's Algebra--elementary principles. Painful recollections of my boyhood and the binomial theorem rose in my mind as I let the leaves turn under my fingers. "What do you make of it?" I asked.

His tone became even more confidential. "Part of it, monsieur, is in English; that is plain. I have found an English word in it that I know--the word 'O.' But much of the printing is also in Arabic."

"Arabic!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, monsieur, look there." He laid a fat forefinger on "(a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2." "That is Arabic. Old Gaston has been to Algeria, and he says that he knows Arabic as well as he does French. He looked at the book and told me it was Arabic. Truly! Truly!"

"Did he translate any of it for you?"

"No, monsieur; his eyes pained him this afternoon. He says he will read it to-morrow."

"But you must return the book to-night."

"That is true. Eh! It leaves the mystery deeper than ever, unless monsieur can find some clue in those parts of the book that are English."

I shed no light upon him. The book had been Greek to me in my tender years; it was a pleasure now to leave a fellow-being under the impression that it was Arabic.

But the volume took its little revenge upon me, for it increased my curiosity about Professor Keredec and "that other monsieur." Why were two grown men--one an eminent psychologist and the other a gray-haired youth with a singular air--carrying about on their walks a text-book for the instruction of boys of thirteen or fourteen?

The next day that curiosity of mine was piqued in earnest. It rained and I did not leave the inn, but sat under the great archway and took notes in colour of the shining road, bright drenched fields, and dripping sky. My back was toward the courtyard, that is, "three-quarters" to it, and about noon I became distracted from my work by a strong self-consciousness which came upon me without any visible or audible cause. Obeying an impulse, I swung round on my camp-stool and looked up directly at the gallery window of the salon of the "Grande Suite."

A man with a great white beard was standing at the window, half hidden by the curtain, watching me intently.

He perceived that I saw him and dropped the curtain immediately, a speck of colour in his b.u.t.tonhole catching my eye as it fell.

The spy was Professor Keredec.

But why should he study me so slyly and yet so obviously? I had no intention of intruding upon him. Nor was I a psychological "specimen,"

though I began to suspect that "that other monsieur" WAS.

CHAPTER V

I had been painting in various parts of the forest, studying the early morning along the eastern fringe and moving deeper in as the day advanced. For the stillness and warmth of noon I went to the very woodland heart, and in the late afternoon moved westward to a glade--a chance arena open to the sky, the scene of my most audacious endeavours, for here I was trying to paint foliage luminous under those long shafts of sunshine which grow thinner but ruddier toward sunset. A path closely bordered by underbrush wound its way to the glade, crossed it, then wandered away into shady dingles again; and with my easel pitched in the mouth of this path, I sat at work, one late afternoon, wonderful for its still loveliness.

The path debouched abruptly on the glade and was so narrow that when I leaned back my elbows were in the bushes, and it needed care to keep my palette from being smirched by the leaves; though there was more room for my canvas and easel, as I had placed them at arm's length before me, fairly in the open. I had the ambition to paint a picture here--to do the whole thing in the woods from day to day, instead of taking notes for the studio--and was at work upon a very foolish experiment: I had thought to render the light--broken by the branches and foliage--with broken brush-work, a short stroke of the kind that stung an elder painter to swear that its pract.i.tioners painted in shaking fear of the concierge appearing for the studio rent. The attempt was alluring, but when I rose from my camp-stool and stepped back into the path to get more distance for my canvas, I saw what a mess I was making of it. At the same time, my hand, falling into the capacious pocket of my jacket, encountered a package, my lunch, which I had forgotten to eat, whereupon, becoming suddenly aware that I was very hungry, I began to eat Amedee's good sandwiches without moving from where I stood.

Absorbed, gazing with abysmal disgust at my canvas, I was eating absent-mindedly--and with all the restraint and dignity of a Georgia darky attacking a watermelon--when a pleasant voice spoke from just behind me.

"Pardon, monsieur; permit me to pa.s.s, if you please."

That was all it said, very quietly and in French, but a gunshot might have startled me less.

I turned in confusion to behold a dark-eyed lady, charmingly dressed in lilac and white, waiting for me to make way so that she could pa.s.s.

Nay, let me leave no detail of my mortification unrecorded: I have just said that I "turned in confusion"; the truth is that I jumped like a kangaroo, but with infinitely less grace. And in my nervous haste to clear her way, meaning only to push the camp-stool out of the path with my foot, I put too much valour into the push, and with horror saw the camp-stool rise in the air and drop to the ground again nearly a third of the distance across the glade.