“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 continuing 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—”
“What about Mrs. Harman?” I asked, as she paused.
“I think she must be in love.”
“What!”
“I do think so,” said the girl. “She’s LIKE it, at least.”
“But with whom?”
She laughed gaily. “I’m afraid she’s my rival!”
“Not with—” I began.
“Yes, with your beautiful and mad young friend.”
“But—oh, it’s preposterous!” I cried, profoundly disturbed. “She couldn’t be! If you knew a great deal about her—”
“I may know more than you think. My simplicity of appearance is deceptive,” she mocked, beginning to set her sketch-box in order. “You don’t realise that Mrs. Harman and I are quite HURLED upon each other at Quesnay, being two ravishingly intelligent women entirely surrounded by large bodies of elementals. She has told me a great deal of herself since that first evening, and I know—well, I know why she did not come back from Dives this afternoon, for instance.”
“WHY?” I fairly shouted.
She slid her sketch into a groove in the box, which she closed, and rose to her feet before answering. Then she set her hat a little straighter with a touch, looking so fixedly and with such grave interest over my shoulder that I turned to follow her glance and encountered our reflections in a window of the inn. Her own shed a light upon THAT mystery, at all events.
“I might tell you some day,” she said indifferently, “if I gained enough confidence in you through association in daily pursuits.”
“My dear young lady,” I cried with real exasperation, “I am a working man, and this is a working summer for me!”
“Do you think I’d spoil it?” she urged gently.
“But I get up with the first daylight to paint,” I protested, “and I paint all day—”
She moved a step nearer me and laid her hand warningly upon my sleeve, checking the outburst.
I turned to see what she meant.
Oliver Saffren had come in from the road and was crossing to the gallery steps. He lifted his hat and gave me a quick word of greeting as he passed, and at the sight of his flushed and happy face my riddle was solved for me. Amazing as the thing was, I had no doubt of the revelation.
“Ah,” I said to Miss Elliott when he had gone, “I won’t have to take pupils to get the answer to my question, now!”