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Updated: May 22, 2025
I faced about and beheld, just emerged from a by-path, a fox-faced young man whose light, well-poised figure was jauntily clad in gray serge, with scarlet waistcoat and tie, white shoes upon his feet, and a white hat, gaily beribboned, upon his head. A recollection of the dusky road and a group of people about Pere Baudry's lamplit door flickered across my mind. "The historical tourist!"
And you, my friend" he turned to me as Madame Brossard, obviously distressed and frightened, but none the less intelligent for that, skurried away to do his bidding "my friend, will you help us? For we need it!" "Anything in the world!" "Go to Pere Baudry's; have him put the least tired of his three horses to his lightest cart and wait in the road beyond the cottage.
"I do not understand how that can be," he continued slowly. "Jean Ferret, who is chief gardener at the chateau, is an acquaintance of mine. We sometimes have a cup of cider at Pere Baudry's, a kilometre down the road from here; and Jean Ferret has told me that she is an American. And yet, as you say, monsieur, the name is French. Perhaps she is French after all."
I spoke first: "Amedee, how long a walk is it from Quesnay to Pere Baudry's?" "Monsieur, about three-quarters of an hour for a good walker, one might say." "A long way for Jean Ferret to go for a cup of cider," I remarked musingly. "Eh? But why should he?" asked Amedee blankly. "Why indeed? Surely even a Norman gardener lives for more than cider! You usually meet him there about noon, I believe?"
He had reached the other end of the room, but at this he whirled about on me, his laughter rolling out again, till it might have been heard at Pere Baudry's. "Ha, my dear sir, you have said it! But you knew it; you told him to come to me and tell me."
He scratched his head. "I believe I had an errand in that direction. Eh? Yes, I remember. Truly, I think it so happened." "And you found Jean Ferret there?" "Where, monsieur?" "At Pere Baudry's." "No, monsieur." "What?" I exclaimed. "No, monsieur." He was firm, somewhat reproachful. "You didn't see Jean Ferret this morning?" "Monsieur?" "Amedee!" "Eh, but I did not find him at Pere Baudry's!
It may have happened that I stopped there, but he did not come until some time after." "After you had gone away from Pere Baudry's, you mean?" "No, monsieur; after I arrived there. Truly." "Now we have it! And you gave him the news of all that had happened here?" "Monsieur!" A world no, a constellation, a universe! of reproach was in the word. "I retract the accusation," I said promptly.
I set my lantern on the ground close to the wall, and at the same moment a horse and cart drew up on the road at the end of the lane, showing against the starlight. It was Pere Baudry's best horse, a stout gray, that would easily enough make Trouville by daylight. "Who is it, I say?" shouted our excited friend. "What kind of a game d'ye think y're puttin' up on me here?"
"Therefore," I said, "Jean Ferret ran all the way to Pere Baudry's to learn from you the reason for this agitation and this pallor?" "But, monsieur " "I retract again!" I cut him off to save time. "What other news had he?" There came a gleam into his small, infolded eyes, a tiny glitter reflecting the mellow candle-light, but changing it, in that reflection, to a cold and sinister point of steel.
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