“You folks thinks you was all to the gud, gittin’ them trunks off, what?”
“You speak in mysterious numbers,” I returned, having no comprehension of his meaning.
“I suppose you don’ know nothin’ about it,” he laughed satirically. “You didn’ go over to Lisieux ‘saft’noon to ship ‘em? Oh, no, not YOU!”
“I went for a long walk this afternoon, Mr. Percy. Naturally, I couldn’t have walked so far as Lisieux and back.”
“Luk here, m’friend,” he said sharply—“I reco’nise ‘at you’re tryin’ t’ play your own hand, but I ast you as man to man: DO you think you got any chanst t’ git that feller off t’ Paris?”
“DO you think it will rain to-night?” I inquired.
The light of a reflecting lamp which hung on the wall near the archway enabled me to perceive a bitter frown upon his forehead. “When a gen’leman asts a question AS a gen’leman,” he said, his voice expressing a noble pathos, “I can’t see no call for no other gen’leman to go an’ play the smart Aleck and not answer him.”
In simple dignity he turned his back upon me and strolled to the other end of the courtyard, leaving me to the renewal of my reverie.
It was not a happy one. My friends—old and new—I saw inextricably caught in a tangle of cross-purposes, miserably and hopelessly involved in a situation for which I could predict no possible relief. I was able to understand now the beauty as well as the madness of Keredec’s plan; and I had told him so (after the departure of the Quesnay party), asking his pardon for my brusquerie of the morning. But the towering edifice his hopes had erected was now tumbled about his ears: he had failed to elude the Mursiana. There could be no doubt of her absolute control of the situation. THAT was evident in the every step of the youth now confidently parading before me.
Following his active stride with my eye, I observed him in the act of saluting, with a gracious nod of his bare head, some one, invisible to me, who was approaching from the road. Immediately after—and altogether with the air of a person merely “happening in”—a slight figure, clad in a long coat, a short skirt, and a broad-brimmed, veil-bound brown hat, sauntered casually through the archway and came into full view in the light of the reflector.