The archbishop and the lady

Front matter

Hu ftsmf t Hr i it 1 1

CANNOT LEAVE THE LIBRARY.

Chap ___

II

It was not more than five o’clock when Quentin de¬ scended the chalet stair. He asked of Pierre Mon¬ rouge, who was raking the gravel of the terrace, if he could get to the river.

“ Does M’sieu then wish to get away ? ” asked Pierre Monrouge wondering, open-mouthed. “Did M’sieu then pass an unquiet night? ”

“ No, no, my good man. I want a plunge in the lit¬ tle stream.”

“But M’sieu will take cold,” returned Pierre Mon¬ rouge with that prudence which is ever present with the French peasant so far as water is concerned.

“I shall not take cold,” laughed Quentin; “show me the way.”

“ M’sieu must have the key of the little door by the mill,” said Pierre Monrouge. “I will get it for M’sieu. But I strongly advise the M’sieu against it. We take les grands bains, it is true, on several days in the year. On Ascension day, par example! Tout le monde takes them on Ascension day, and we immerse the whole body in water before other fete days; often in midsummer, but that is in a house, where the room has been warmed. To dip oneself in the (cold water as it runs from the hills, it is indeed to

tempt Providence, and-”

Quentin seized the key, and fairly ran away to escape tlie voluble speech which Pierre Monrouge was pouring out upon him. He hastened along the path beneath the chateau walls, and was soon at the mill door.

He glanced as he ran at the ruin of the Abbey church, now showing rugged and grey in the early light, but a feeling of loyalty to Madame kept him from penetrating its interior. This was her present to him, his kind friend; the pleasure he was to expe¬ rience within the next few days. She had expressed a wish to show him everything of interest, herself. He would not mar her kindly anticipations by so much as a glance.

A dip in the cool little stream which flowed just outside the Abbey walls in a world where he was the only soul awake, and a run back to the chalet, where he encased himself in fresh clothes, was the work of a half hour. Then the sun began to creep through the top of the pines which clothed the hill on the oppo¬ site side of the road.

Quentin again descended the chalet stairs, and went along the terrace toward the entrance gate. The grille was thrown back, the door was open, and Pierre Mon¬ rouge was sweeping away" the ubiquitous dust of yes¬ terday from the broad stone step.

“ Can I get up the hill from here? ” asked Quentin.

“ The M’sieu has but to walk a little way back along the road, and he will find a path, a narrow little path, which leads up the hillside. But will not M’sieu have some coffee first? ” inquired Pierre Monrouge. “ Charles, is not the coffee ready? ”

Charles, who had just come sleepily out from a door near the gate, looked in surprise at the strange Monsieur standing there, dressed for the day.

“M’sieu must be cold, tlie water must have chilled him,” said Pierre Monrouge, who was apparently re¬ lieved to see Quentin in the flesh once more.

“I am not cold,” said Quentin, laughing. “When is breakfast? ”

“At all times, Monsieur,” replied Charles, with a sigh of protest at the luxurious irregularity of the early family meal.

Quentin passed out of the gate, and walked back along the road that he had traversed the night before. A short distance from the chateau he passed an old iron door sunk in the wall. It had broad and strong hinges, which were yellow with rust, and large nails whose angular tops spoke plainly of a long past age. Quentin stood for a moment looking at the door. Then he glanced upward at the chalet underneath whose walls it was placed. He was satisfied that it was the door of which Madame had told him the night before, whose key was kept in the chateau, and at once the conviction forced itself upon his mind that it was through this door the priest must have entered to reach the small dressing room where he was now sleeping. If so, how had he obtained the key?

Quentin turned away from the mysterious door and mused as he walked onward. “ Who has gone in and out of that door?” he thought. “What wary feet, what scheming heads, what black hearts, have made use of it, and for what purpose? ” His mental ques¬ tions were colored from a puritanical standpoint, but there was no one to answer them, and he proceeded upon his way.

He soon found himself in the little path of which Charles had spoken. Quentin at once took this foot-path, and was soon mounting the hill with easy strides. When the path crossed the country road, he struck into that and walked on for nearly an hour, and when it was nearing half after six o’clock, he turned and retraced his steps. Walking for about an hour more, he came out upon the top of a hill. This hill, he supposed, must overlook the Abbey, but he had no way of ascertaining this fact. As he walked along the crest between the great giants of the wood, he emerged suddenly into a little glade. Here,'to his surprise, his eye caught sight of a head¬ stone. A headstone rather yellow and moss-grown, but it was evident that some one had lately been at work upon the inscription. A busy and faithful hand had been cleaning some of the letters, and Quentin, leaning down, read the word “General.” Following this were the letters “ Petr—” “ So this was the rest¬

ing place of the General! General Petrofsky, of whom Madame had spoken with so much widowed pride. There was a second headstone standing there, and Quentin made out upon it the name “ Allaire Carleton, beloved wife of H. Yalery, Esq., aged eighteen years and ten months.” Beneath this again was carved the words, “She has found peace.”

The glade was a nearly circular one. The absence of branches and leaves argued that it was carefully kept, but the grass was long and yellow, and waved in the breeze which crept through the wood. Quen¬ tin circled the glade about, but only the serried ranks of forest trees faced him as he tried in vain to peer between their trunks. Being a member of the Alpen Klub, a climber of repute and faithful to his cult, he was anxious to obtain a view as much as to get his bearings. As there seemed to be no way but one by which he could attain this object, he proceeded to climb a low-branching tree, whose great height seemed to overlook the other denizens of the forest.

Quentin was soon at the top of the tree. Hete his eye could range over the Valley of Moncousis, and down the hill upon the other side, along a second valley, of whose name he Was ignorant. Just below him lay the Abbey, and far off, like a winding silver thread, ran the little stream, the “river” of Pierre Monrouge, in which he had taken his dip, now nearly three hours ago.

Quentin was lost in the beauty of the view. At his height he could hear nothing but the sighing of the soft morning air in the trees, and the twitter of the woodland birds. Suddenly he became conscious of a new feeling, a void, which only the coffee of Charles could satisfactorily supply. He had suddenly dis¬ covered that he was ravenously hungry. He started to descend, and as he proceeded he was conscious of a far voice calling. Was it for him? He listened. No! the name was “ Alixe! Alixe! ” The sound did not come to him unfamiliarly. It seemed as if he had been hearing that new, sweet name all the morn¬ ing long.

When Quentin had descended half way to the ground, he seated himself for a few moments on an inviting branch. But for the noise of his own move¬ ments he might have heard the sweeping sound of a dress across the long grass of the glade Whefe no foot¬ fall could be heard, while the rustle made by the skirt of the gown wus loud enough to quench to the ear of its owner the noise made by his movements among the leaves. He did not hear the step Which entered the glade beneath, nor the sigh of pleasure with which the tall figure sank down at the foot of the very tree in which, he was sitting. But he was aroused from his momentary reverie by hearing his own name. It was so sudden that there was nothing to do but re¬ main quiet and hope that his presence would not be discovered.

“I-came to speak to you about Mr. Quentin, Alixe; there must be no interference there! ” It was Madame’s voice. When her sentence was half finished Quentin was just about to cry out, “Oh! dear Ma¬ dame, don’t talk of me, or I shall hear no good of myself,” but the second half of the sentence caused him to sit as if he were a part of the tree itself.

He glanced downward, and for the first time he was aware that the younger woman was reclining beneath the tree, his tree, and that he was stalled, so to speak, by her presence. Madame had evidently just followed Alixe into the glade and was standing facing her. She was panting breathlessly.

“I wish you not to interfere, do you hear? Not to interfere.” The words had poured forth so rapidly that Quentin had no choice but to remain where he was.

Madame’s tone was decidedly sharp and impa¬ tient.

“How can you stalk ahead so? Here I have been actually chasing you up the hill. Your stride is like a man’s! I couldn’t make you hear me, though I called and called! Now, do you hear, Alixe, I will have no interference with Mr. Quentin; he is my friend.” There was an emphasis on the personal pronoun.

At the first sound of Madame’s voice, Quentin had been minded to declare himself, but now he sat as if frozen to marble. The least word or sound from him and lie should be forced to forsake this Paradise within the hour.

" Interfere, mother? And why should I wish to interfere? The man is nothing tome! God knows that I have annoyances enough, without bringing others upon myself. I cannot very well go away, but I will shut myself up, if you wish.”

"Absurd! Alixe. You know that those are things that you cannot do, we should have a fine scandal, but I wish you to understand that this is my own particu¬ lar friend, and that the less you see of him-”

“Why should I see anything of him?” exclaimed Alixe with a tone and intonation that made Quentin’s heart to fail. “ I am sure that he has taken no notice of me, and probably will not. Don’t be foolish, mother. Ignore me utterly, as probably he will, and as I shall ignore him.”

Quentin in his amaze and mortification did not fail to note that the younger called the older woman “Mother,” plain and simple. There was no playful “ Mamasha ” now, no “ Madame,” and no caress in the word which did duty for both.

“ You remember Baron Olsten, ” continued Madame, in her high voice, which had suddenly become shrill and unpleasant, very different from the voice in which she had said “ You dear! ” to Quentin in the chalet rooms the night before. “You remember also per¬ haps Mr. Lauderdale, and the Marquis de Gelconcourt-”

“Was it my fault, mother? Their attentions were hateful to me.”

“—And Mr. le Maurier-”

“ Mother! he seemed to me more like a detective than anything else. He was so inquisitive and-”

“—And then there was Henry Ware. 5 ’

“ Mother! do not insult me! I never looked at the little man, I assure you. Why, moth-”

"Do say Mamasha!” said Madame, looking anx¬ iously over her shoulder.

“Mamasha,” said Alixe, with no change of tone, “ I never looked at that underbred little man. Gartha caught some of his sayings, and I was obliged to cor¬ rect her for it. I never object to your asking whom you will to the Abbey, but I must confess I was sur¬ prised when-”

“You seemed to be very attractive to him at ledst—— 5 ”

“Mother! Mamasha! can I help that? I should not know Mr. Henry Ware if he were to walk into the glade this very moment.”

“Well, he looked at you at all events.”

“And can I help that? Do not annoy me with these silly and hateful suspicious about people in whom I take no interest. Do be more serious. Do respect me more. Remember the conditions which surround me, mother; you of all people in the world certainly should not forget.” There was a piteous emphasis on the word “you.” Quentin’s heart sank still lower at these last words. “ And if I am unfortu¬ nate enough to-” Alixe broke off and threw her¬

self upon the grass, her face hidden in her hands.

“ Oh, my dear God! ” she cried aloud. “ Was ever any poor creature more utterly alone in the world than I? ”

“ You are not alone, Alixe, if you would comport yourself like other people. Yoti have Bruno.”

“ Bruiio! ” The word so uttered told Quentin more than an hour of explanation could have done.

Alixe Sat upright and leaned her hand against the tree where Quentin was crouched above her. She turned about slowly and looked at Madaine. Quentin found himself gazing down upoti her as if he must read her very thoughts. He wished that he knew what was in that look to cause Madame to turn hur¬ riedly away. Quentin was horribly conscious that he had tumbled upon a secret which was not intended for his ears. He was in terror for fear that some falling twig or leaf should cause one or the other to look up¬ ward.

Alixe withdrew her eyes from Madame and sat with her hat pushed back, her gaze fixed upon the white headstone where Quentin had read the name of Allaire Carleton, beloved wife of H. Yalery, Esq. She ab¬ sently pulled a stem of grass to pieces and threw the little blue blossoms on the ground.

Quentin’s position, awkwatd at best, was becoming almost unbearable. He felt that if they did not soon go away he must discover himself and come down from the tree. Suddenly, to relieve the situation, the Abbey bell clanged out. The sound was sweet. It rang across the valley and up the hill. Madame turned away with an exclamation of annoyance.

“ I had no idea that it was so late! Will you come down? Half past eight! What will they think of me?”

Alixe arose. She said nothing. She had taken off the Russian hat, and her head was bare. Quentin saw the sun shining on the full waves of her hair, and upon the silver combs pushed forward at the sides.

“Will you remember?” asked Madame, half turn¬ ing at the edge of the glade.

“I will remember,” answered Alixe.

Nothing more was said. Alixe paced slowly down the slope, her trailing robe rolling the falling leaves over and over with an early autumnal sound. Ma¬ dame ran ahead, and was soon tick-tacking down the hard forest road.

When they were well out of sight and hearing, Quentin arose from his cramped posture in the tree. He descended slowly and dropped to the place where the young figure of Alixe had rested. He seated himself where she had sat, and picked up from the ground the blue-eyed grass which her long slim fingers had pulled unconsciously to pieces.

“ Poor soul! ” he said aloud. “ Poor soul! ” and was astonished to find that he had spoken. He put the blossom in his breast pocket, and then with a “ Why not? ” took it boldly out and thrust it within the buttonhole of his coat. Then he, in his turn, slowly descended the hill.

nx

When Quentin rang at the door in the wall and was admitted by Charles, he saw at a glance that there were not many persons at the table. He advanced along the terrace, curious to know who would be seated there. The Archbishop from his place upon Madame’s right gave him a kindly, if a stately bow, and others nearer him looked up and bent their heads slightly. Alixe was in her seat at the farther end of the table, the Russian hat still upon her head, and Gartha was close beside her. Madame was voluble, and warmly welcoming. She pressed Quentin’s hand. Alixe did not raise her eyes. She was engaged in preparing some food for Gartha. Many places were empty which Quentin remembered to have seen oc¬ cupied the night before by prettily dressed and black-coated figures.

“ The Baroness and Miss Tliorndyke take their cof¬ fee in their rooms, Charles,” said Madame. “Has Marie Monrouge served them? Mr. Le Brun and Mr. Jennings have gone to town, you know, your Grace, and Mrs. Jennings and her secretary never appear at early breakfast.” Charles and Eugene were occupied in passing the cups of coffee which Madame was en¬ gaged in preparing, cups so large as to deserve the name of bowls. Great plates of bread were set at various places down the length of the table, and pitchers of steaming chocolate at intervals, tliat each one might serve himself. Silver bowls and dishes, heaped high respectively with strawberries, sugar, and iced rolls of butter, held their own jjositions also, and bot¬ tles of St. Galmier and Evian were placed between every two of the guests.

“An egg? ” asked Madame, in her sweetest of high voices, beaming brightly on Quentin.

“ Two, please, or three! ” said Quentin, endeavor¬ ing to smile so broadly as to feel certain, later, that he had overdone the effort to make his whereabouts of a half hour earlier unsuspected.

Charles opened his mouth and stood regarding the strange Monsieur.

“ Two,” he said. “ Or even three! ” He went tow¬ ard the door which opened into the kitchen. “ Two or even three. The hens of the Chateau Bref lay but one egg at a time. Two, or eveii three! Does the strange Monsieur imagine that the cuisine of the Chateau Bref holds three eggs for each guest. Sixty eggs in a morning? Two, or even three. Oh! mon Dieu!”

Quentin applied himself to his breakfast with the devotion of a starved pedestrian.

There was no sound for a few moments but the trickling of coffee into the great colored bowls, or Eugene’s “Sucre, Monsieur? Sucre, Madame? Cafe au lait, Monsieur? Ah! du noir! Bien, Monsieur, bien! C'estga!”

The silence was broken by a footstep overhead. Then a sound as if a chair had suddenly fallen. Quentin involuntarily raised his eyes. As he did so, he catiglit sight of Alixe rising abruptly from her seat at the further end of the table. She stood for a moment, irresolute, listening, and then sat down again.

“Who is in Monsieur Quentin’s rooms, Eugene?” asked Madame in her high key.

“It is no one, Mamaslia.” Alixe had again arisen. “ Rather, I will go and see if Mr. Quentin will allow me.”

“Sit still, Alixe,” called Madame, with heightened color, “and do take off that dreadful hat.”

“It—it—is the—other—maid,” stammered Quen¬ tin, arraying himself unconsciously on what he felt at once to be the side of Alixe.

(t We have no other maid but Nanette. She is Alixe’s maid. Perhaps Henri went up to- v

Alixe with no reply to Madame had left her chair and was now at the chalet stairs.

Quentin arose also with a careless “ I will go and see,” and followed slowly to the archway. Madame looked annoyed and half arose, but at the Arch¬ bishop’s calm “Do not disturb yourself, my friend,” she seated herself. Quentin thought that he knew the cause of Alixe’s disappearance, though he hardly knew why he was following her. He mounted the stairs lingeringly, reached the floor of his bedroom and haltingly entered.

The door which led into the dressing room was un¬ bolted. He paused, then passed with increasing hesi¬ tancy toward the doorway. He wished to be within call should he be needed, and yet, he was not at home; a stranger here. He listened, but heard no voices. He entered the middle room • it was empty. As he halted, again irresolute, Alixe came hastening toward him from the third room, the so-called closet. She breathed as if she had been running. She had a key in her hand. She walked swiftly through the disor¬ dered rooms, Quentin following her. She paused for a moment on the landing outside his door.

“ I—I—thought that Mamasha had put you in the left wing,” she said. “I made a mistake. I hope that you will pardon it.”

“Pardon? Pardon what, Mad-”

“All,” she replied. She gave him a look pregnant with meaning and hastened down the stairs.

As Quentin again took his seat, he heard Alixe laughing gayly. Perhaps it was his late experience which made the laughter seem forced to him.

“Only the same old thing, Mamasha,” she called down the length of the table. “ I hardly know whether it is the wind or the rats, and in broad daylight too! ”

“ I will answer for it that there is no rat behind your arras, Madame,” said the Archbishop, smiling at his neighbour.

“Hola! Hola! What a fine company have we here! And, pray, who are all these good people?”

There was a slight suspicion of an Hibernian accent in the good natured tone.

“ Yalery ! ” said Madame in an explanatory whisper to the Archbishop. “Bear with him if you can, your Grace.”

“ The Bastaquouere? ” asked the Archbishop under his breath, with an indulgent smile. “ I am delighted! I am in luck! ”

“Yes,” said Madame, with a sigh of pity for her¬ self, “ the Bastaquouere! ”

“Papachen! papachen!” It was Gartha who had arisen from her chair and had flown at this bird of gorgeous plumage. “When did you get here? You said you would come back last night.”

“Petite polissonne, come back to your eating,” screamed Mademoiselle, wlio loved to air her Eng¬ lish.

The new arrival sauntered up to the table. The sweetest of odours came with him, preceded him al¬ most.

“I hate a perfumed man,” said Madame in an undertone to Quentin.

“You promised to come back last night, Valery,” said Gartha; “ I watched and watched-”

“ So I did, little one, but, you know, I was born to break promises.”

He seated himself as near Alixe and as far from Madame as circumstances would permit.

“He doesn’t wear an electric light in his scarf pin,” whispered Miss Jenkins to Quentin. “ I am so dis¬ appointed ! I had at the least expected that! You know, like the little man who goes round thimble-rig¬ ging in the Paris cafes.”

“I don’t know this gentleman as well as I do the other,” answered Quentin, “but I should say that he was a touch above that.”

“ Well, I suppose there is no one who has not a mission in life,” returned the speaker, “either con¬ sciously or unconsciously. His seems to be to keep other men up to the mark in the way of neatness of person and dress. Heaven forbid that they should emulate his magnificence and variety of color and adornment.”

“Gorgeous being, though, he is,” broke in Mary Thorndyke; “ there is nothing, well, what you would call common about him; he is-”

“Most uncommon, I should say,” returned Miss Jenkins.

He was a butterfly of the first and clearest water, this Rastaquouere. He was immaculate. Most men appear fresh and spotless on a summer morning, but the dazzling snowiness of the newcomer’s linen caused each man at the table to cast a hasty glance downward at his own shirt front. The waistcoat of the new¬ comer was of pale green, ornamented with large white pearl buttons, and was crossed by a conspicuously heavy chain of gold. His light grey coat was of thin flannel, and his white trousers were of the same ma¬ terial. Upon his feet he wore low shoes of fine rus¬ set leather, and when he moved sufficiently his yellow socks, clocked with blue, showed a studied care for his entire person. His necktie of delicate pink, his sleeve links, his studs, the middle one of which showed a large opal set with diamonds, his finger rings, which were many and blazed like the constellations of the heavens, his almost crimson face, short nose, china blue eyes, and red, well kept moustache, plentifully sjmnkled with grey, made a combination not easily forgotten.

Gartha struggled at once with sinuous persistent motion up to his knees, and wound her arms round his large neck, thereby disarranging the necktie, and creasing the waistcoat, which had heretofore sat so smoothly over the portly figure beneath.

The newcomer sat patiently, while the child caressed him, pulling his moustache apart that she might im¬ print a kiss directly upon his lips; drawing from his well-kept fingers his many gorgeous and enormous rings, and hanging them upon her own little paws, from which they fell one after the other; jerking his heavy watch from his pocket, and putting it to her ear, insisting upon knowing what was the time in

Africa at the moment. Then denuding him of the chain also, she hung it round her own brown neck. Suddenly the victim lifted the jewel-bedecked little creature from his knee, seated her on the gravel be¬ side his chair, and held out his bowl for some coffee.

There was silence for a while, disturbed only by the breaking of an egg, or a murmured sentence, from some one, in the ear of a near neighbour.

Valery set down his empty cup. “ How Alixe spoils you! ” said he, looking down on the dark little head by his side.

Gartlia arose and stood by the table, glittering like the Queen of Sheba.

"You spoil her, Valery,” said Alixe, laughing.

"So does every one,” said Valery, in a pleasant, tolerant voice.

"You spoil me yourself, Alixe,” said Gartha. "Mamasha says you do.”

" I like to spoil you, ” said Alixe. " You are the only one I have to spoil.”

"Did you never have a little girl of your own, Alixe? ” asked Gartha.

"No,” answered Alixe, unembarrassed by this pointed question and looking straight into Gartlia’s eyes. " If I had, I should have wanted her to be just like Gartha.” At this compliment Gartha laughed gayly.

There was a short silence, broken in a moment by Gartha.

“Valery,” she said, "what is a Rastaquouere? ”

Valery set down his second cup carefully, wiped his moustache and leaned back so far that there seemed to be danger of his going over on to the gravel behind him. He turned his head toward the end of the table 4 where Madame, having caught the question, sat look¬ ing down and growing somewhat red.

“Mamasha,” he called, “you taught her that.”

“I did not, Valery,” came back in Madame’s high key.

“Well, then, she heard you say it.”

“ I am not responsible for all that Gartha hears, Valery. Alixe indulges the child to such an ex¬ tent-”

“But she heard you say it, Mamasha. Now, didn’t she? ”

The Archbishop’s keen eyes were fixed on Madame.

She hesitated—“Well, well—” she finally answered —“and are you not, Valery, dear? ”

“ You made her think it a term of reproach, Ma¬ masha.”

“Oh, no, no! Valery, dear,” called Madame down the vista of glass and silver. “But—but—and isn’t it—well, you know—rather—Valery, dear? ”

“Bather what? A term of reproach? No; I have had no cause to think so, Mamasha, me jool! and neither will you when you see into my boxes. Don’t you think your views are somewhat—ah—colored by circumstances? Oh, fie! Mamasha; oh, fie!”

Valery’s comic tone of reproof brought a smile, if a concealed one, to every lip. It somewhat discon¬ certed Madame. She was put so entirely in the wrong before those with whom she wished to seem entirely in the right. She glanced at Quentin, who was smil¬ ing more at Valery’s manner and brogue than at the subject of his words. She reached out her hand, has¬ tily seized a glass of water and as hurriedly swal¬ lowed it.

“ Poor old Mamasha! ” said Valery.

Madame’s clieek flushed, but she made some trivial remark to the Archbishop, and then turned to Quen¬ tin.

“ You have no idea what the care of such a house as this entails upon me, Mr. Quentin,” she said.

"Dear old Mamasha! ” exclaimed Yalery again.

“ I am sure you are more than good to ask us all here and give yourself so much trouble about us,” re¬ plied Quentin.

She turned a pleased face toward him.

“Dear friend,” she said, “you are too kind.”

Meanwhile Gartlia was clamoring: “Your boxes! Your boxes! When are they coming? When are they coming? ”

“They are coming,” said Yalery, resuming his in¬ terrupted meal.