Part 5 (1/2)

Upon that I squeezed myself back into the bushes, my ears singing and my cheeks burning.

There are women who will meet or pa.s.s a strange man in the woods or fields with as finished an air of being unaware of him (particularly if he be a rather shabby painter no longer young) as if the encounter took place on a city sidewalk; but this woman was not of that priggish kind.

Her straightforward glance recognised my existence as a fellow-being; and she further acknowledged it by a faint smile, which was of courtesy only, however, and admitted no reference to the fact that at the first sound of her voice I had leaped into the air, kicked a camp-stool twenty feet, and now stood blus.h.i.+ng, so shamefully stuffed with sandwich that I dared not speak.

”Thank you,” she said as she went by; and made me a little bow so graceful that it almost consoled me for my caperings.

I stood looking after her as she crossed the clearing and entered the cool winding of the path on the other side.

I stared and wished--wished that I could have painted her into my picture, with the thin, ruddy suns.h.i.+ne flecking her dress; wished that I had not cut such an idiotic figure. I stared until her filmy summer hat, which was the last bit of her to disappear, had vanished. Then, discovering that I still held the horrid remains of a sausage-sandwich in my hand, I threw it into the underbrush with unnecessary force, and, recovering my camp-stool, sat down to work again.

I did not immediately begin.

The pa.s.sing of a pretty woman anywhere never comes to be quite of no moment to a man, and the pa.s.sing of a pretty woman in the greenwood is an episode--even to a middle-aged landscape painter.

”An episode?” quoth I. I should be ashamed to withhold the truth out of my fear to be taken for a sentimentalist: this woman who had pa.s.sed was of great and instant charm; it was as if I had heard a serenade there in the woods--and at thought of the jig I had danced to it my face burned again.

With a sigh of no meaning, I got my eyes down to my canvas and began to peck at it perfunctorily, when a snapping of twigs underfoot and a swis.h.i.+ng of branches in the thicket warned me of a second intruder, not approaching by the path, but forcing a way toward it through the underbrush, and very briskly too, judging by the sounds.

He burst out into the glade a few paces from me, a tall man in white flannels, liberally decorated with brambles and clinging shreds of underbrush. A streamer of vine had caught about his shoulders; there were leaves on his bare head, and this, together with the youthful sprightliness of his light figure and the naive activity of his approach, gave me a very faunlike first impression of him.

At sight of me he stopped short.

”Have you seen a lady in a white and lilac dress and with roses in her hat?” he demanded, omitting all preface and speaking with a quick eagerness which caused me no wonder--for I had seen the lady.

What did surprise me, however, was the instantaneous certainty with which I recognised the speaker from Amedee's description; certainty founded on the very item which had so dangerously strained the old fellow's powers.

My sudden gentleman was strikingly good-looking, his complexion so clear and boyishly healthy, that, except for his gray hair, he might have pa.s.sed for twenty-two or twenty-three, and even as it was I guessed his years short of thirty; but there are plenty of handsome young fellows with prematurely gray hair, and, as Amedee said, though out of the world we were near it. It was the new-comer's ”singular air”

which established his ident.i.ty. Amedee's vagueness had irked me, but the thing itself--the ”singular air”--was not at all vague. Instantly perceptible, it was an invest.i.ture; marked, definite--and intangible.

My interrogator was ”that other monsieur.”

In response to his question I asked him another:

”Were the roses real or artificial?”

”I don't know,” he answered, with what I took to be a whimsical a.s.sumption of gravity. ”It wouldn't matter, would it? Have you seen her?”

He stooped to brush the brambles from his trousers, sending me a sidelong glance from his blue eyes, which were brightly confident and inquiring, like a boy's. At the same time it struck me that whatever the nature of the singularity investing him it partook of nothing repellent, but, on the contrary, measurably enhanced his attractiveness; making him ”different” and lending him a distinction which, without it, he might have lacked. And yet, patent as this singularity must have been to the dullest, it was something quite apart from any eccentricity of manner, though, heaven knows, I was soon to think him odd enough.

”Isn't your description,” I said gravely, thinking to suit my humour to his own, ”somewhat too general? Over yonder a few miles lies Houlgate.

Trouville itself is not so far, and this is the season. A great many white hats trimmed with roses might come for a stroll in these woods.

If you would complete the items--” and I waved my hand as if inviting him to continue.

”I have seen her only once before,” he responded promptly, with a seriousness apparently quite genuine. ”That was from my window at an inn, three days ago. She drove by in an open carriage without looking up, but I could see that she was very handsome. No--” he broke off abruptly, but as quickly resumed--”handsome isn't just what I mean.

Lovely, I should say. That is more like her and a better thing to be, shouldn't you think so?”

”Probably--yes--I think so,” I stammered, in considerable amazement.