Garnache looked up, pausing in the very act of helping himself to that ragout. Rabecque looked up from behind his master, and his lips tightened. The host looked up from the act of drawing the cork of the flagon he had taken from his wife, and his eyes grew big as in his mind he prepared a judicious blend of apology and remonstrance wherewith to soothe this very impatient gentleman. But before he could speak, Garnache’s voice cut sharply into the silence. An interruption at such a moment vexed him sorely.
“Monsieur says?” quoth he.
“To you, sir—nothing,” answered the fellow impudently, and looked him straight between the eyes.
With a flush mounting to his cheeks, and his brows drawn together in perplexity, Garnache surveyed him. He was that same traveller who had lately clamoured to know when he might sup, a man of rather more than middle height, lithe and active of frame, yet with a breadth of shoulder and depth of chest that argued strength and endurance as well. He had fair, wavy hair, which he wore rather longer than was the mode, brown eyes, and a face which, without being handsome, was yet more than ordinarily engaging by virtue of its strength and frank ingenuousness. His dress was his worst feature. It was flamboyant and showy; cheap, and tawdrily pretentious. Yet he bore himself with the easy dignity of a man who counts more inferiors than superiors.
Despite the arrogant manner of his address, Garnache felt prepossessed in the newcomer’s favour. But before he could answer him, the host was speaking.
“Monsieur mistakes...” he began.
“Mistakes?” thundered the other in an accent slightly foreign. “It is you who mistake if you propose to tell me that this is not my supper. Am I to wait all night, while every jackanapes who follows me into your pigsty is to be served before me?”
“Jackanapes?” said Garnache thoughtfully, and looked the man in the face again. Behind the stranger pressed his three companions now, whilst the troopers across the room forgot their card-play to watch the altercation that seemed to impend.
The foreigner—for such, indeed, his French proclaimed him—turned half-contemptuously to the host, ignoring Garnache with an air that was studiously offensive.
“Jackanapes?” murmured Garnache again, and he, too, turned to the host. “Tell me, Monsieur l’Hote,” said he, “where do the jackanapes bury their dead in Grenoble? I may need the information.”