Chapter 12

Music, faint, tinkling, we certainly heard. It came with the wind in little sobs, and then silence settled upon us.

"It's the Chevalier Gluck, and he is playing to his duchess out in the fields. See, I will open the door and show you," whispered the fat landlord.

He went slowly to the door, and we followed him breathlessly. The door was pushed open, and we peered out. The wind was still high, and the moon rode among rolling boulders of yellow, fleecy clouds.

"There, there, over yonder, look; Mother of Christ, look at the ghost!" the old man pointed a shaking hand.

Just then the moonlight was blackened by a big cloud, and we heard the tinkling music of a harpsichord again, but could see naught. The sounds were plainer now, and presently resolved into the rhythmic accents of a gavotte. But it seemed far away and very plaintive!

"Hark," said Michael, in a hoarse voice. "That's the gavotte from Pagliacci. Listen! Don't you remember it?"

"Pshaw!" I said roughly, for my nerves were all astir. "It's the Alceste music of Gluck."

"Look, look, gentlemen!" called our host, and as the moon glowed again in the blue we saw at the edge of the forest a white figure, saw it, I swear, although it vanished at once and the music ceased. I started to follow, but Michael and the old man seized my arms, the door was closed with a crash, and we found ourselves staring blankly into the fire, all feeling a bit shaken up.

It was Michael's turn to speak. "You may do what you please, but I stay here for the night, no sleep for me," and he placed his pistols on his knee.

I looked at the landlord and I thought I saw an expression of disappointment on his face, but I was not sure. He made some excuse about being tired and went out of the room. We spent the rest of the night in gloomy silence. We did not speak five words, for I saw that conversation only irritated my companion.

At dawn we walked into the sweet air and I called loudly for Arnold, who looked sleepy and out of sorts when he appeared. The fat old man came to see us off and smilingly accepted the silver I put into his hand for our night's reckoning.

"Au revoir, my old friend," I said as I pressed the unnecessary spur into my horse's flank. "Au revoir, and look out for the ghost of the gallant Chevalier Gluck. Tell him, with my compliments, not to play such latter-day tunes as the gavotte from Pagliacci."

"Oh, I'll tell him, you may be sure," said he, quite dryly.

We saluted and dashed down the road to Amboise, where we hoped to capture our rare prize.

We had ridden about a mile when a dog attempted to cross our path. We all but ran the poor brute down.

"Why, it's lame!" exclaimed Arnold.

"Oh, if it were but a lame man, instead of a dog!" fervently said the groom, who was in the secret of our quest.

A horrid oath rang out on the smoky morning air. Michael, his wicked eyes bulging fiercely, his thick neck swollen with rage, was cursing like the army in Flanders, as related by dear old Uncle Toby.

"Lame man! why, oddsbodkins, that hostler was lame! Oh, fooled, by God! cheated, fooled, swindled and tricked by that scamp and scullion of the inn! Oh, we've been nicely swindled by an old wives' tale of a ghost!"

I stared in sheer amazement at Michael, wondering if the strangely spent night had upset his reason. He could only splutter out between his awful curses:--

"Gluck, the rascal, the ghost, the man we're after! That harpsichord--the lying knave--that tune--I swear it wasn't Gluck--oh, the rascal has escaped again! The ghost story--the villain was told to scare us out of the house--to put us off the track. A thousand devils chase the scamp!" And Michael let his head drop on the pommel of his saddle as he fairly groaned in the bitterness of defeat.

I had just begun a dignified rebuke, for Michael's language was inexcusable, when it flashed upon me that we had been, indeed, duped.

"Ah," I cried, in my fury, "of course we were taken in! Of course his son was the lame hostler, the very prize we expected to bag! O Lord! what will we say to my lady? We are precious sharp! I ought to have known better. That stuff he told us! Langlois, pshaw, Berri--pouf! A Berri never married a Langlois, and I might have remembered that Gluck wasn't assassinated by a jealous duke. What shall we do?"

We all stood in the middle of the road, gazing stupidly at the lame dog that gave us the clue. Then Arnold timidly suggested:--

"Hadn't we better go back to the inn?"

Instantly our horses' heads were turned and we galloped madly back on our old tracks. Not a word was uttered until we reined up in front of the lonely house, which looked more haunted by daylight than it did the night before.

"What did I tell you?" suddenly cried Michael.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Over there, you blind bat!" he said, coarsely and impatiently; and pulling out his pistol he fired thrice, and a low, melodious sound followed the reports of his weapon. When the smoke cleared away I saw that he had hit an old harpsichord which stood against a tree, facing the house.

"The ghost!" we yelled, and then we laughed consumedly. But the shots that winged the old-fashioned instrument had a greater result. The fat host appeared on the edge of the forest, and he waved a large napkin as a flag of truce. With him was the lame hostler.

"Mercy, gentlemen, mercy, we beseech you!" he cried, and we soon surrounded both and bound them securely.

"You will pay dearly for the trick you put upon us, my man," said Michael, grimly, and, walking our horses, we went by easy stages toward the castle, towing our prisoners along.

When I fetched the lame man to my lady, her face glowed with joy, and her Parisian eyes grew brilliant with victory.

"So you tried to escape?" she cruelly asked of the poor, cowering wretch. "You will never get another chance, I'll warrant me. Go, let the servants put you to work in the large music room first. Begin with the grands, then follow with the uprights. Thank you, gentlemen both, for the courage and finesse you displayed in this desperate quest. I'll see that you are both suitably rewarded." I fancied that Michael regarded me sardonically, but he held his peace about the night's adventures.

We had indeed reason to feel flattered at the success of the dangerous expedition. Had we not captured, more by sheer good luck than strategy, the only piano-tuner in mediæval France?

XII

THE TRAGIC WALL

I

BY THE DARK POOL

It was not so high, the wall, as massive, not so old as moss-covered. After Rudolph Côt, the painter, had achieved celebrity with his historical canvas, The Death of the Antique World, now in the Louvre, he bought the estate of Chalfontaine, which lies at the junction of two highroads: one leading to Ecouen, the other to Villiers-le-Bel. Almost touching the end of the park on the Ecouen side there is a little lake, hardly larger than a pool, and because of its melancholy aspect--sorrowful willows hem it about, drooping into stagnant waters--Monsieur Côt had christened the spot: The Dark Tarn of Auber. He was a fanatical lover of Poe, reading him in the Baudelaire translation, and openly avowing his preference for the French version of the great American's tales. That he could speak only five words of English did not deter his associates from considering him a profound critic of literature.

After his death his property and invested wealth passed into the hands of his youthful widow, a charming lady, a native of Burgundy, and--if gossip did not lie--a former model of the artist; indeed, some went so far as to assert that her face could be seen in her late husband's masterpiece--the figure of a young Greek slave attired as a joyous bacchante. But her friends always denied this. Her dignified bearing, sincere sorrow for her dead husband, and her motherly solicitude for her daughter left no doubt as to the value of all petty talk. It was her custom of summer evenings to walk to the pool, and with her daughter Berenice she would sit on the broad wall and watch the moon rise, or acknowledge the respectful salutations of the country folk with their bran-speckled faces. In those days Villiers-le-Bel was a dull town a half-hour from Paris on the Northern Railway, and about two miles from the station.

The widow was not long without offers. Her usual answer was to point out the tiny Berenice, playing in the garden with her nurse. Then a landscape painter, one of the Barbizon group, appeared, and, as a former associate of Rudolph Côt, and a man of means and position, his suit was successful. To the astonishment of Villiers-le-Bel, Madame Valerie Côt became Madame Théophile Mineur; on the day of the wedding little Berenice--named after a particularly uncanny heroine of Poe's by his relentless French admirer--scratched the long features of her stepfather. The entire town accepted this as a distressing omen and it was not deceived; Berenice Côt grew up in the likeness of a determined young lady whose mother weakly endured her tyranny, whose new father secretly feared her.

At the age of eighteen she had refused nearly all the young painters between Ecouen and Domaine de Vallières; and had spent several summers in England, and four years at a Lausanne school. She feared neither man nor mouse, and once, when she saw a famous Polish pianist walking on his terrace at Morges, she took him by the hand, asked for a lock of his hair, and was not refused by the amiable virtuoso. After that Berenice was the acknowledged leader of her class. The teachers trembled before her sparkling, wrathful black eyes. At home she ruled the household, and as she was an heiress no one dared to contradict her. Her contempt for her stepfather was only matched by her impatience in the company of young men. She pretended--so her intimates said--to loathe them. "Frivolous idiots" was her mildest form of reproof when an ambitious boy would trench upon her pet art theories or attempt to flirt. She called her mother "the lamb" and her stepfather "the parrot"--he had a long curved nose; all together she was very unlike the pattern French girl. Her favourite lounging place was the wall, and after she had draped it with a scarlet shawl and perched herself upon it, she was only too happy to worry any unfortunate man who presented himself.

The night Hubert Falcroft called at Chalfontaine Mademoiselle Élise Evergonde told him that her cousin, Madame Mineur, and Berenice had gone in the direction of the pool. He had walked over from the station, preferring the open air to the stuffy train. So a few vigorous steps brought to his view mother and daughter as they slowly moved, encircling each other's waist. The painter paused and noted the general loveliness of the picture; the setting sun had splashed the blue basin overhead with delicate pinks, and in the fretted edges of some high floating cloud-fleece there was a glint of fire. The smooth grass parquet swept gracefully to the semicircle of dark green trees, against the foliage of which the virginal white of the gowns was transposed to an ivory tone by the blue and green keys in sky and forest.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "paint in the foreground a few peacocks languidly dragging their gorgeous tails, and you have a Watteau or a Fragonard--no, a Monticelli! Only, Monticelli would have made the peacocks the central motive with the women and trees as an arabesque."

He was a portraitist who solemnly believed in the principle of decoration--character must take its chances when he painted. Falcroft was successful with women's heads, which he was fond of depicting in misty shadows framed by luxurious accessories. They called him the Master of Chiffon, at Julien's; when he threw overboard his old friends and joined the new crowd, their indignation was great. His title now was the Ribbon Impressionist, and at the last salon of the Independents, Falcroft had the mortification of seeing a battalion of his former companions at anchor in front of his picture, The Lady with the Cat, which they reviled for at least an hour. He was an American who had lived his life long in France, and only showed race in his nervous, brilliant technic and his fondness for bizarre subjects....

He had not stood many minutes when a young voice saluted him:--

"Ah, Monsieur Falcroft. Come, come quickly. Mamma is delighted to see you!" His mental picture was decomposed by the repeated waving of the famous shawl, which only came into view as Berenice turned. Hubert regretted that she had not worn it--the peacocks could have been exchanged for its vivid note of scarlet. Pretending not to have heard her speech, he gravely saluted the mother and daughter. But Berenice was unabashed.

"Mamma was wondering if you would visit us to-night, Monsieur Falcroft, when I saw you staring at us as if we were ghosts." A burst of malicious laughter followed.

"Berenice, Berenice," remonstrated her mother, "when will you cease such tasteless remarks!" She blushed in her pretty matronly fashion and put her hand on her daughter's mouth.

"Don't mind her, Madame Mineur! I like to meet a French girl with a little unconventionality. Berenice reminds me now of an English girl--"

"Or one of your own countrywomen!" interrupted Berenice; "and please--_Miss_, after this, I am a grown young lady." He joined in the merriment. She was not to be resisted and he wished--no, he did not wish--but he thought, that if he were younger, what gay days he might have. Yet he admired her mother much more. Elaine Côt-Mineur was an old-fashioned woman, gentle, reserved, and at the age when her beauty had a rare autumnal quality--the very apex of its perfection; in a few years, in a year, perhaps, the change would come and crabbed winter set in. He particularly admired the oval of her face, her soft brown eyes, and the harmonious contour of her head. He saw her instantly with a painter's imagination--filmy lace must modulate about her head like a dreamy aureole; across her figure a scarf of yellow silk; in her hands he would paint a crystal vase, and in the vase one rose with a heart of sulphur. And her eyes would gaze as if she saw the symbol of her age--the days slipping away like ropes of sand from her grasp. He could make a fascinating portrait he thought, and he said so. Instantly another peal of irritating laughter came from Berenice:--

"Don't tell papa. He is _so_ jealous of the portrait he tried to make of mamma last summer. You never saw it! It's awful. It's hid away behind a lot of canvases in the atelier. It looks like a Cézanne still-life. I'll show it to you sometime." Her mother revealed annoyance by compressing her lips. Falcroft said nothing. They had skirted the pool in single file, for the path was narrow and the denseness of the trees caused a partial obscurity. When they reached the wall, the moon was rising in the eastern sky.

"_L'heure exquise_," murmured Madame Mineur. Berenice wandered down the road and Hubert helped her mother to the wall, where he sat beside her and looked at her. He was a big, muscular man with shaven cheeks, dark eyes, and plenty of tumbled hair, in which flecks of gray were showing. He had been a classmate of Théophile Mineur, for whose talents or personality he had never betrayed much liking. But one day at a _déjeûner_, which had prolonged itself until evening, Mineur insisted on his old friend--the Burgundy was old, too--accompanying him to Villiers-le-Bel, and not without a motive. He knew Falcroft to be rich, and he would not be sorry to see his capricious and mischievous stepdaughter well settled. But Falcroft immediately paid court to Madame Mineur, and Berenice had to content herself with watching him and making fun to her stepfather of the American painter's height and gestures. The visit had been repeated. Berenice was amused by a dinner _en ville_ and a theatre party, and then Hubert Falcroft became a friend of the household. When Mineur was away painting, the visits were not interrupted.

"Listen," said Madame Mineur; "I wish to speak with you seriously, my dear friend." She made a movement as if to place her hand on his shoulder, but his expression--his face was in the light--caused her to transfer her plump fingers to her coiffure, which she touched dexterously. Hubert was disappointed.

"I am listening," he answered; "is it a sermon, or consent--to that portrait? Come, give in--Elaine." He had never called her by this name before, and he anxiously awaited the result. But she did not relax her grave attitude.

"You must know, Monsieur Falcroft, what anxieties we undergo about Berenice. She is too wild for a French girl, too wild for her age--"

"Oh, let her enjoy her youth," he interrupted.

"Alas! that youth will be soon a thing of the past," she sighed. "Berenice is past eighteen, and her father and I must consider her future. Figure to yourself--she dislikes young men, eligible or not, and you are the only man she tolerates."

"And I am hopelessly ineligible," he laughingly said.

"Why?" asked the mother, quietly.

"Why! Do you know that I am nearing forty? Do you see the pepper and salt in my hair? After one passes twoscore it is time to think of the past, not of the future. I am over the brow of the hill; I see the easy decline of the road--it doesn't seem as long as when I climbed the other half." He smiled, threw back his strong shoulders, and inhaled a huge breath of air.

"Truly you are childish," she said; "you are at the best part of your life, of your career. Yes, Théophile, my husband, who is so chary in his praise, said that you would go far if you cared." Her low, warm voice, with its pleading inflections, thrilled him. He took her by the wrist.

"And would it please _you_, if I went far?" She trembled.

"Not too far, dear friend--remember Berenice."

"I remember no one but you," he impatiently answered; and relaxing his hold, he moved so that the moonlight shone on her face. She was pale. In her eyes there were fright and hope, decision and delight. He admired her more than ever.

"Let me paint you, Elaine, these next few weeks. It will be a surprise for Mineur. And I shall have something to cherish. Never mind about Berenice. She is a child. I am a middle-aged man. Between us is the wall--of the years. Never should it be climbed. While you--"

"Be careful--Hubert. Théophile is your friend."

"He is not. I never cared for him. He dragged me out here after he had been drinking too much, and when I saw you I could not stay away. Hear me--I insist! Berenice is nice, but the wall is too high for her to climb; it might prove a--"

"How do you know the wall is too steep for Berenice?" the girl cried as she scaled the top with apish agility, where, after a few mocking steps in the moonlight, she sank down breathless beside Hubert, and laughed so loudly that her mother was fearful of hysteria.

"Berenice! Berenice!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, Berenice is all right, mamma. Master Hubert, I want you to paint my portrait before papa returns--that's to be in four weeks, isn't it?" The elder pair regarded her disconcertedly.

"Oh, you needn't look so dismal. I'll not tell tales out of school. Hubert and mamma flirting! What a glorious jest! Isn't life a jest, Hubert? Let's make a bargain! If you paint mamma, you paint me, also. Then--you see--papa will not be jealous, and--and--" She was near tears her mother felt, and she leaned over Hubert and took the girl's hand. She grazed the long fingers of the painter, who at once caught both feminine hands in his.

"Now I have you both," he boasted, and was shocked by a vicious tap on the cheek--Berenice in rage pulled her left hand free. Silence ensued. Hubert prudently began to roll another cigarette, and Madame Mineur retreated out of the moonlight, while Berenice turned her back and soon began to hum. The artist spoke first:

"See here, you silly Berenice, turn around! I want to talk to you like a Dutch uncle--as we say in the United States. Of course I'll paint you. But I begin with your mother. And if you wish me to like you better than ever, don't say such things as you did. It hurts your--mother." His voice dropped into its deepest bass. She faced him, and he saw the glitter of wet eyelashes. She was charming, with her hair in disorder, her eyes two burning points of fire.

"I beg your pardon, mamma; I beg your pardon, Hubert. I'll be good the rest of this evening. Isn't it lovely?" She sniffed in the breeze with dilating nostrils, and the wild look of her set him to wondering how such a gentle mother could have such a gypsy daughter. Perhaps it was the father--yes, the old man had been an Apache in his youth according to the slang of the studios.

"But you must paint me as I wish, not as you will," resumed Berenice. "I hate conventional portraits. Papa Mineur chills me with his cabinet pictures of haughty society ladies, their faces as stiff as their starched gowns."

"Oh, Berenice, will you never say polite things of your father?"

"Never," she defiantly replied. "He wouldn't believe me if I did. No, Hubert, I want to pose as Ophelia. Oh, don't laugh, please!" They could not help it, and she leaped to the grass and called out:--

"I don't mean a theatrical Ophelia, singing songs and spilling flowers; I mean Ophelia drowned--" she threw herself on the sward, her arms crossed on her bosom, and in the moonlight they could see her eyes closed as if by death.

"Help me down, Hubert. That girl will go mad some day." He reached the earth and he gave her a hand. Berenice had arisen. Sulkily she said:--

"Shall I step into the Dark Tarn of Auber and float for you? I'll make a realistic picture, my Master Painter--who paints without imagination." And then she darted into the shrubbery and was lost to view. Without further speech the two regained the path and returned to the house.

II

THE CRIMSON SPLASH

When Éloise was asked by Berenice how long Monsieur Mineur would remain away on his tour, she did not reply. Rather, she put a question herself: why this sudden solicitude about the little-loved stepfather. Berenice jokingly answered that she thought of slipping away to Switzerland for a _vacance_ on her own account. Éloise, who was not agreeable looking, viewed her charge suspiciously.

"Young lady, you are too deep for me. But you'll bear watching," she grimly confessed. Berenice skipped about her teasingly.

"I know something, but I won't tell, unless you tell."

"What is it?"

"Will you tell?"

"Yes."

"When is he coming back, and where is he now?" she insisted.

"Your father, you half-crazy child, expects to return in a month--by the first of June. And if you wish to wire or write him, let me know."

"Now I won't tell you _my_ secret," and she was off like a gale of wind. Éloise shook her head and wondered.

In the atelier Hubert painted. Elaine sat on a dais, her hands folded in her lap; about her head twisted nun's-veiling gave her the old-fashioned quality of a Cosway miniature--the very effect he had sought. It was to be a "pretty" affair, this picture, with its subdued lighting, the face being the only target he aimed at; all the rest, the suave background, the gauzy draperies, he would brush in--suggest rather than state.

"I'll paint her soul, that sensitive soul of hers which tremulously peeps out of her eyes," he thought. Elaine was a patient subject. She took the pose naturally and scarcely breathed during the weary sittings. He recalled the early gossip and sought to evoke her as a professional model. But he gave up in despair. She was hopelessly "ladylike," and to interpret her adequately, only the decorative patterns of earlier men--Mignard, Van Loo, Nattier, Largillière--would translate her native delicacy.