When Smith turned around the girl was pensively regarding the water. His cap had stranded on a shoal almost at his feet; he recovered it, wrung the drops from it, and stood twirling it thoughtfully in the sunlight.
“I’ve ruined it, haven’t I?” she asked.
“Oh, no; it’s a shooting-cap. Like Tartarin, I shall probably ventilate it later in true Midi fashion.”
She laughed; then, with the flushed composure of uneasiness: “Thank you for a lesson in angling. I have learned a great deal — enough at least to know that I shall not care to destroy life, even in a fish.”
“That is as it should be,” he replied coolly. “Men find little charm in women who kill.”
“That is scarcely in accord with the English novels I read — and I read many,” she said laughing.
“It is true, nevertheless. Saint Hubert save us from the woman who can watch the spark of life fade out in the eye of any living thing.”
“Are you not a little eccentric, monsieur?”
“If you say so. Eccentricity is the full-blown blossom of mediocrity.”
CHAPTER XXIV
A JOURNEY TO THE MOON
There was a silence so politely indifferent on her part that he felt it to be the signal for his dismissal. And he took his leave with a formality so attractive, and a good humour so informal, that before she meant to she had spoken again — a phrase politely meaningless in itself, yet — if he chose to take it so — acting as a stay of execution.
“I was wondering,” he said, amiably, “how I was going to climb back over the wall.”
A sudden caprice tinged with malice dawned in the most guileless of smiles as she raised her eyes to his:
“You forgot your ladder this time, didn’t you?”
Would he ever stop getting redder? His ears were afire, and felt enormous.
“I am afraid you misunderstood me,” she said, and her smile became pitilessly sweet. “I am quite sure a distinguished foreign angler could scarcely condescend to notice trespass signs in a half-ruined old park — —”
His crimson distress softened her, perhaps, for she hesitated, then added impulsively: “I did not mean it, monsieur; I have gone too far — —”
“No, you have not gone too far,” he said. “I’ve disgraced myself and deserve no mercy.”
“You are mistaken; the trout may have come from your side of the wall — —”
“It did, but that is a miserable excuse. Nothing can palliate my conduct. It’s a curious thing,” he added, bitterly, “that a fellow who is decent enough at home immediately begins to do things in Europe.”
“What things, monsieur?”
“Ill-bred things; I might as well say it. Theoretically, poaching is romantic; practically, it’s a misdemeanor — the old conflict between realism and romance, madame — as typified by a book I am at present reading — a copy of the same book which I notice you are now carrying under your arm.”
She glanced at him, curious, irresolute, waiting for him to continue. And as he did not, but stood moodily twirling his cap like a sulky schoolboy, she leaned back against a tree, saying: “You are very severe on romance, monsieur.”
“You are very lenient with reality, madame.”
“How do you know? I may be far more angry with you than you suspect. Indeed, every time I have seen you on the wall—” she hesitated, paling a trifle. She had made a mistake, unless he was more stupid than she dared hope.
“But until this morning I had done nothing to anger you?” he said, looking up sharply. Her features wore the indifference of perfect repose; his latent alarm subsided. She had made no mistake in his stupidity.
And now, perfectly conscious of the irregularity of the proceedings, perhaps a trifle exhilarated by it, she permitted curiosity to stir behind the curtain, ready for the proper cue.
“Of course,” he said, colouring, “I know you perfectly well by sight — —”
“And I you, monsieur — perfectly well. One notices strangers, particularly when reading so frequently about them in romance. This book” — she opened it leisurely and examined an illustration— “appears to describe the American quite perfectly. So, having read so much about Americans, I was a trifle curious to see one.”
He did not know what to say; her youthful face was so innocent that suspicion subsided.
“That American you are reading about is merely a phantom of romance,” he said honestly. “His type, if he ever did exist, would become such a public nuisance in Europe that the police would take charge of him — after a few kings and dukes had finished thrashing him.”
“I do not believe you,” she said, with a hint of surprise and defiance. “Besides, if it were true, what sense is there in destroying the pleasure of illusion? Romance is at least amusing; reality alone is a sorry scarecrow clothed in the faded rags of dreams. Do you think you do well to destroy the tinted film of romance through which every woman ever born gazes at man — and pardons him because the rainbow dims her vision?”
She leaned back against the silver birch once more and laid her white hand flat on the open pages of the book:
“Monsieur, if life were truly like this, fewer tears would fall from women’s eyes — eyes which man, in his wisdom, takes pains to clear — to his own destruction!”
She struck the book a light blow, smiling up at him:
“Here in these pages are spring and youth eternal — blue skies and roses, love and love and love unending, and once more love, and the world’s young heart afire! Close the book and what remains?” She closed the covers very gently. “What remains?” she asked, raising her blue eyes to him.
“You remain, madame.”
She flushed with displeasure.
“And yet,” he said, smiling, “if the hero of that book replied as I have you would have smiled. That is the false light the moon of romance sheds in competition with the living sun.” He shrugged his broad shoulders, laughing: “The contrast between the heroine of that romance and you proves which is the lovelier, reality or romance — —”
She bit her lips and looked at him narrowly, the high colour pulsating and dying in her cheeks. Under cover of the very shield that should have protected her he was using weapons which she herself had sanctioned — the impalpable weapons of romance.
Dusk, too, had already laid its bloom on hill and forest and had spun a haze along the stream — dusk, the accomplice of all the dim, jewelled forms that people the tinted shadows of romance. Why — if he had displeased her — did she not dismiss him? It is not with a question that a woman gives a man his congé.
“Why do you speak as you do?” she asked, gravely. “Why, merely because you are clever, do you twist words into compliments. We are scarcely on such a footing, monsieur.”
“What I said I meant,” he replied, slowly.
“Have I accorded you permission to say or mean?”
“No; that is the fashion of romance — a pretty one. But in life, sometimes, a man’s heart beats out the words his lips deliver untricked with verbal tinsel.”
Again she coloured, but met his eyes steadily enough.
“This is all wrong,” she said; “you know it; I know it. If, in the woman standing here alone with you, I scarcely recognise myself, you, monsieur, will fail to remember her — if chance wills it that we meet again.”
“My memory,” he said in a low voice, “is controlled by your mind. What you forget I cannot recall.”
She said, impulsively, “A gallant man speaks as you speak — in agreeable books of fiction as in reality. Oh, monsieur” — and she laughed a pretty, troubled laugh— “how can you expect me now to disbelieve in my Americans of romance?”
She had scarcely meant to say just that; she did not realise exactly what she had said until she read it in his face — read it, saw that he did not mean to misunderstand her, and, in the nervous flood of relief, stretched out her hand to him. He took it, laid his lips to the fragrant fingers, and relinquished it. Meanwhile his
heart was choking him like the clutch of justice.
“Good-by,” she said, her outstretched hand suspended as he had released it, then slowly falling. A moment’s silence; the glow faded from the sky, and from her face, too; then suddenly the blue eyes glimmered with purest malice:
“Having neglected to bring your ladder this time, monsieur, pray accept the use of mine.” And she pointed to a rustic ladder lying half-buried in the weedy tangle behind him.
He gave himself a moment to steady his voice: “I supposed there was a ladder here — somewhere,” he said, quietly.
“Oh! And why did you suppose—” She spoke too hurriedly, and she began again, pleasantly indifferent: “The foresters use a ladder for pruning, not for climbing walls.”
He strolled over to the thicket, lifted the light ladder, and set it against the wall. When he had done this he stepped back, examining the effect attentively; then, as though not satisfied, shifted it a trifle, surveyed the result, moved it again, dissatisfied.
“Let me see,” he mused aloud, “I want to place it exactly where it was that night—” He looked back at her interrogatively. “Was it about where I have placed it?”
Her face was inscrutable.
“Or,” he continued, thoughtfully, “was it an inch or two this way? I could tell exactly if the moon were up. Still” — he considered the ladder attentively— “I might be able to fix it with some accuracy if you would help me. Will you?”
“I do not understand,” she said.
“Oh, it is nothing — still, if you wouldn’t mind aiding me to settle a matter that interests me — would you?”
“With pleasure, monsieur,” she said, indifferently. “What shall I do?”
So he mounted the ladder, crossed the wall, and stood on a stone niche on his side, looking down at the ladder. “Now,” he said, “if you would be so amiable, madame, as to stand on the ladder for one moment you could aid me immensely.”
“Mount that ladder, monsieur?”
She caught his eyes fixed on her; for just an instant she hesitated, then met them steadily enough; indeed, a growing and innocent curiosity widened her gaze, and she smiled and lifted her pretty shoulders — just a trifle, and her skirts a trifle, too; and, with a grace that made him tremble, she mounted the ladder, step by step, until her head and shoulders were on a level with his own across the wall.
“And now?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“The moon,” he said, unsteadily, “ought to be about — there!”
“Where?” She turned her eyes inquiringly skyward.
But his heart had him by the throat again, and he was past all speech.
“Well, monsieur?” She waited in sweetest patience. Presently: “Have you finished your astronomical calculations? And may I descend?” He tried to speak, but was so long about it that she said very kindly: “You are trying to locate the moon, are you not?”
“No, madame — only a shadow.”
“A shadow, monsieur?” — laughing.
“A shadow — a silhouette.”
“Of what?”
“Of a — a woman’s head against the moon.”
“Monsieur, for a realist you are astonishingly romantic. Oh, you see I was right! You do belong in a book.”
“You, also,” he said, scarcely recognising his own voice. “Men — in books — do well to risk all for one word, one glance from you; men — in books — do well to die for you, who reign without a peer in all romance — —”
“Monsieur,” she faltered.
But he had found his voice — or one something like it — and he said: “You are right to rebuke me; romance is the shadow, life the substance; and you live; and as long as you live, living men must love you; as I love you, Countess of Semois.”
“Oh,” she breathed, tremulously, “oh, — you think that? You think I am the Countess of Semois? And that is why — —”
For a moment her wide eyes hardened, then flashed brilliant with tears.
“Is that your romance, monsieur? — the romance of a Countess! Is your declaration for mistress or servant? — for the Countess or for her secretary — who sometimes makes her gowns, too? Ah, the sorry romance! Your declaration deserved an audience more fitting — —”
“My declaration was made a week ago! The moon and you were audience enough. I love you.”
“Monsieur, I — I beg you to release my hand — —”
“No; you must listen — for the veil of romance is rent and we are face to face in the living world! Do you think a real man cares what title you wear, if you but wear his name? Countess that you are not — if you say you are not — but woman that you are, is there anything in Heaven or earth that can make love more than love? Veil your beautiful true eyes with romance, and answer me; look with clear, untroubled eyes upon throbbing, pulsating life; and answer me! Love is no more, no less, than love. I ask for yours; I gave you mine a week ago — in our first kiss.”
Her face was white as a flower; the level beauty of her eyes set him trembling.
“Give me one chance,” he breathed. “I am not mad enough to hope that the lightning struck us both at a single flash. Give me, in your charity, a chance — a little aid where I stand stunned, blinded, alone — you who can still see clearly!”
She did not stir or speak or cease to watch him from unwavering eyes; he leaned forward, drawing her inert hands together between his own; but she freed them, shivering.
“Will you not say one word to me?” he faltered.
“Three, monsieur.” Her eyes closed, she covered them with her slender hands: “I — love — you.”
Before the moon appeared she had taken leave of him, her hot, young face pressed to his, striving to say something for which she found no words. In tremulous silence she turned in his arms, unclasping his hands and yielding her own in fragrant adieu.
“Do you not know, oh, most wonderful of lovers — do you not know?” her eyes were saying, but her lips were motionless; she waited, reluctant, trembling. No, he could not understand — he did not care, and the knowledge of it suffused her very soul with a radiance that transfigured her.
So she left him, the promise of the moon silvering the trees. And he stood there on the wall, watching the lights break out in the windows of her house — stood there while his soul drifted above the world of moonlit shadow floating at his feet.
“Smith!”
Half aroused, he turned and looked down. The moonlight glimmered on Kingsbury’s single eyeglass. After a moment his senses returned; he descended to the ground and peered at Kingsbury, rubbing his eyes.
With one accord they started toward the house, moving slowly, shoulder to shoulder.
“Not that I personally care,” began Kingsbury. “I am sorry only on account of my country. I was, perhaps, precipitate; but I purchased one hundred and seven dolls of Mademoiselle Plessis — her private secretary — —”
“What!”
“With whom,” continued Kingsbury, thoughtfully, “I am agreeably in love. Such matters, Smith, cannot be wholly controlled by a sense of duty to one’s country. Beauty and rank seldom coincide except in fiction. It appears” — he removed his single eyeglass, polished it with his handkerchief, replaced it, and examined the moon— “it appears,” he continued blandly, “that it is the Countess of Semois who is — ah — so to speak, afflicted with red hair.... The moon — ahem — is preternaturally bright this evening, Smith.”
After a moment Smith halted and turned, raising his steady eyes to that pale mirror of living fire above the forest.
“Well,” began Kingsbury, irritably, “can’t you say something?”
“Nothing more than I have said to her already — though she were Empress of the World!” murmured Smith, staring fixedly at the moon.
“Empress of what? I do not follow you.”
“No,” said Smith, dreamily, “you must not try to. It is a long journey to the summer moon — a long, long journey. I started when I was a child;
I reached it a week ago; I returned to-night. And do you know what I discovered there? Why, man, I discovered the veil of Isis, and I looked behind it. And what do you suppose I found? A child, Kingsbury, a winged child, who laughingly handed me the keys of Eden! What do you think of that?”
But Smith had taken too many liberties with the English language, and Kingsbury was far too mad to speak.
CHAPTER XXV
THE ARMY OF PARIS
I was smoking peacefully in the conservatory of the hotel, when a bellboy brought me the card of Captain le Vicômte de Cluny.
In due time Monsieur the Viscount himself appeared, elegant, graceful, smart; black and scarlet uniform glittering with triple-gold arabesques on sleeve and Képi, spurs chiming with every step.
We chatted amiably for a few moments; then the Captain, standing very erect and stiff, made me a beautiful bow and delivered the following remarkable question:
“Monsieur Van Twillaire, I am come to-day according to the American custom, to beg your permission to pay my addresses to mademoiselle, your daughter.”
I inhaled the smoke of my cigarette in my astonishment. That was bad for me. After a silence I asked:
“Which daughter?”
“Mademoiselle Dulcima, monsieur.”
After another silence I said:
“I will give you an answer to-morrow at this hour.”
We bowed to each other, solemnly shook hands, and parted.
I was smoking restlessly in the conservatory of the hotel when a bellboy brought me the card of Captain le Vicômte de Barsac.
In due time the Vicômte himself appeared, elegant, graceful, smart; black, scarlet, and white uniform glittering with triple-gold arabesques on sleeve and Képi, spurs chiming with every step.
We chatted amiably for a few moments; then the Captain, standing very erect and stiff, made me a beautiful bow and delivered the following remarkable question:
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 575