“Is that your policy?”
“Isn’t it a safe one?”
“Yes. Is it yours?”
“Wisdom suggests it to me — has always urged it. I’m not sure that it always works. For example, I prefer champagne to milk, but I try not to.”
“You always contrive to twist sense into nonsense.”
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“No; but don’t you ever take anything seriously?”
“Myself.”
“I’m afraid you don’t.”
“Indeed, I do! See how my financial mishaps sent me flying to you for help!”
She said: “You don’t even take seriously what you call your financial mishaps.”
“But I take the remedy for them most reverently and most thankfully.”
“The remedy?”
“You.”
A slight colour stained her cheeks; for she did not see just how to avoid the footing they had almost reached — the understanding which, somehow, had been impending from the moment they met. Intuition had warned her against it. And now here it was.
How could she have avoided it, when it was perfectly evident from the first that he found her interesting — that his voice and intonation and bearing were always subtly offering friendship, no matter what he said to her, whether in jest or earnest, in light-hearted idleness or in all the decorum of the perfunctory and commonplace.
To have made more out of it than was in it would have been no sillier than to priggishly discountenance his harmless good humour. To be prim would have been ridiculous. Besides, everything innocent in her found an instinctive pleasure, even in her own misgivings concerning this man and the unsettled problem of her personal relations with him — unsolved with her, at least; but he appeared to have settled it for himself.
As they walked back to the armoury together, she was trying to think it out; and she concluded that she might dare be toward him as unconcernedly friendly as he would ever think of being toward her. And it gave her a little thrill of pride to feel that she was equipped to carry through her part in a light, gay, ephemeral friendship with one belonging to a world about which she knew nothing at all.
That ought to be her attitude — friendly, spirited, pretending to a savoir faire only surmised by her own good taste — lest he find her stupid and narrow, ignorant and dull. And it occurred to her very forcibly that she would not like that.
So — let him admire her.
His motives, perhaps, were as innocent as hers. Let him say the unexpected and disconcerting things it amused him to say. She knew well enough how to parry them, once her mind was made up not to entirely ignore them; and that would be much better. That, no doubt, was the manner in which women of his own world met the easy badinage of men; and she determined to let him discover that she was interesting if she chose to be.
She had produced her note-book and pencil when they entered the armoury. He carried Grenville’s celebrated monograph, and she consulted it from time to time, bending her dainty head beside his shoulder, and turning the pages of the volume with a smooth and narrow hand that fascinated him.
From time to time, too, she made entries in her note-book, such as: “Armet, Spanish, late XV century. Tilting harness probably made by Helmschmid; espaliers, manteau d’armes, coude, left cuisse and colleret missing. War armour, Milanese, XIV century; probably made by the Negrolis; rere-brace, gorget, rondel missing; sword made probably by Martinez, Toledo. Armour made in Germany, middle of XVI century, probably designed by Diego de Arroyo; cuisses laminated.”
They stopped before a horseman, clad from head to spurs in superb mail. On a ground of blackened steel the pieces were embossed with gold grotesqueries; the cuirass was formed by overlapping horizontal plates, the three upper ones composing a gorget of solid gold. Nymphs, satyrs, gods, goddesses and cupids in exquisite design and composition framed the “lorica”; cuisses and tassettes carried out the lorica pattern; coudes, arm-guards, and genouillères were dolphin masks, gilded.
“Parade armour,” she said under her breath, “not war armour, as it has been labelled. It is armour de luxe, and probably royal, too. Do you see the collar of the Golden Fleece on the gorget? And there hangs the fleece itself, borne by two cupids as a canopy for Venus rising from the sea. That is probably Sigman’s XVI century work. Is it not royally magnificent!”
“Lord! What a lot of lore you seem to have acquired!” he said.
“But I was trained to this profession by the ablest teacher in America—” her voice fell charmingly, “ — by my father. Do you wonder that I know a little about it?”
They moved on in silence to where a man-at-arms stood leaning both clasped hands over the gilded pommel of a sword.
She said quickly: “That sword belongs to parade armour! How stupid to give it to this pikeman! Don’t you see? The blade is diamond sectioned; Horn of Solingen’s mark is on the ricasse. And, oh, what a wonderful hilt! It is a miracle!”
The hilt was really a miracle; carved in gold relief, Italian renaissance style, the guard centre was decorated with black arabesques on a gold ground; quillons curved down, ending in cupid’s heads of exquisite beauty.
The guard was engraved with a cartouche enclosing the Three Graces; and from it sprang a beautiful counter-guard formed out of two lovely Caryatids united. The grip was made of heliotrope amethyst inset with gold; the pommel constructed by two volutes which encompassed a tiny naked nymph with emeralds for her eyes.
“What a masterpiece!” she breathed. “It can be matched only in the Royal Armoury of Madrid.”
“Have you been abroad, Miss Nevers?”
“Yes, several times with my father. It was part of my education in business.”
He said: “Yours is a French name?”
“Father was French.”
“He must have been a very cultivated man.”
“Self-cultivated.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “there once was a de written before ‘Nevers.’”
She laughed: “No. Father’s family were always bourgeois shopkeepers — as I am.”
He looked at the dainty girl beside him, with her features and slender limbs and bearing of an aristocrat.
“Too bad,” he said, pretending disillusion. “I expected you’d tell me how your ancestors died on the scaffold, remarking in laudable chorus, ‘Vive le Roi!’”
She laughed and sparkled deliciously: “Alas, no, monsieur. But, ma foi! Some among them may have worked the guillotine for Sanson or drummed for Santerre.
“You seem to me to symbolise all the grace and charm that perished on the Place de Grève.”
She laughed: “Look again, and see if it is not their Nemesis I more closely resemble.”
And as she said it so gaily, an odd idea struck him that she did embody something less obvious, something more vital, than the symbol of an aristocratic régime perishing en masse against the blood-red sky of Paris.
He did not know what it was about her that seemed to symbolise all that is forever young and fresh and imperishable. Perhaps it was only the evolution of the real world he saw in her opening into blossom and disclosing such as she to justify the darkness and woe of the long travail.
She had left him standing alone with Grenville’s book open in his hands, and was now examining a figure wearing a coat of fine steel mail, with a black corselet protecting back and breast decorated with horizontal bands.
“Do you notice the difference?” she asked. “In German armour the bands are vertical. This is Milanese, and I think the Negrolis made it. See how exquisitely the morion is decorated with these lions’ heads in gold for cheek pieces, and these bands of gold damascene over the skull-piece, that meet to form Minerva’s face above the brow! I’m sure it’s the Negrolis work. Wait! Ah, here is the inscription! ‘P. Iacobi et Fratr Negroli Faciebant MDXXXIX.’ Bring me Grenville’s book, please.”
She took it, ran over the pages rapidly, found what she wanted, and then stepped forward and laid her
white hand on the shoulder of another grim, mailed figure.
“This is foot-armour,” she said, “and does not belong with that morion. It’s neither Milanese nor yet of Augsburg make; it’s Italian, but who made it I don’t know. You see it’s a superb combination of parade armour and war mail, with all the gorgeous design of the former and the smoothness and toughness of the latter. Really, Mr. Desboro, this investigation is becoming exciting. I never before saw such a suit of foot-armour.”
“Perhaps it belonged to the catcher of some ancient baseball club,” he suggested.
She turned, laughing, but exasperated: “I’m not going to let you remain near me,” she said. “You annihilate every atom of romance; you are an anachronism here, anyway.”
“I know it; but you fit in delightfully with tournaments and pageants and things — —”
“Go up on that ladder and sit!” resolutely pointing.
He went. Perched aloft, he lighted a cigarette and surveyed the prospect.
“Mark Twain killed all this sort of thing for me,” he observed.
She said indignantly: “It’s the only thing I never have forgiven him.”
“He told the truth.”
“I know it — I know it. But, oh, how could he write what he did about King Arthur’s Court! And what is the use of truth, anyway, unless it leaves us ennobling illusions?”
Ennobling illusions! She did not know it; but except for them she never would have existed, nor others like her that are yet to come in myriads.
Desboro waved his cigarette gracefully and declaimed:
“The knights are dust,
Their good swords bust;
Their souls are up the spout we trust—”
“Mr. Desboro!”
“Mademoiselle?”
“That silly parody on a noble verse is not humorous.”
“Truth seldom is. The men who wore those suits of mail were everything that nobody now admires — brutal, selfish, ruthless — —”
“Mr. Desboro!”
“Mademoiselle?”
“Are there not a number of such gentlemen still existing on earth?”
“New York’s full of them,” he admitted cheerfully, “but they conceal what they really are on account of the police.”
“Is that all that five hundred years has taught men — concealment?”
“Yes, and five thousand,” he muttered; but said aloud: “It hasn’t anything to do with admiring the iron hats and clothes they wore. If you’ll let me come down I’ll admire ’em — —”
“No.”
“I want to carry your book for you.”
“No.”
“ — And listen to everything you say about the vertical stripes on their Dutch trousers — —”
“Very well,” she consented, laughing; “you may descend and examine these gold inlaid and checkered trousers. They were probably made for a fashionable dandy by Alonso Garcia, five hundred years ago; and you will observe that they are still beautifully creased.”
So they passed on, side by side, while she sketched out her preliminary work. And sometimes he was idly flippant and irresponsible, and sometimes she thrilled unexpectedly at his quick, warm response to some impulsive appeal that he share her admiration.
Under the careless surface, she divined a sort of perverse intelligence; she was certain that what appealed to her he, also, understood when he chose to; because he understood so much — much that she had not even imagined — much of life, and of the world, and of the men and women in it. But, having lived a life so full, so different from her own, perhaps his interest was less easily aroused; perhaps it might be even a little fatigued by the endless pageant moving with him amid scenes of brightness and happiness which seemed to her as far away from herself and as unreal as scenes in the painted arras hanging on the walls.
They had been speaking of operas in which armour, incorrectly designed and worn, was tolerated by public ignorance; and, thinking of the “horseshoe,” where all that is wealthy, and intelligent, and wonderful, and aristocratic in New York is supposed to congregate, she had mentally placed him there among those elegant and distant young men who are to be seen sauntering from one gilded box to another, or, gracefully posed, decorating and further embellishing boxes already replete with jeweled and feminine beauty; or in the curtained depths, mysterious silhouettes motionless against the dull red glow.
And, if those gold-encrusted boxes had been celestial balconies, full of blessed damosels leaning over heaven’s edge, they would have seemed no farther away, no more accessible to her, than they seemed from where she sometimes sat or stood, all alone, to listen to Farrar and Caruso.
The light in the armoury was growing a little dim. She bent more closely over her note-book, the printed pages of Mr. Grenville, and the shimmering, inlaid, and embossed armour.
“Shall we have tea?” he suggested.
“Tea? Oh, thank you, Mr. Desboro; but when the light fails, I’ll have to go.”
It was failing fast. She used the delicate tips of her fingers more often in examining engraved, inlaid, and embossed surfaces.
“I never had electricity put into the armoury,” he said. “I’m sorry now — for your sake.”
“I’m sorry, too. I could have worked until six.”
“There!” he said, laughing. “You have admitted it! What are you going to do for nearly two hours if you don’t take tea? Your train doesn’t leave until six. Did you propose to go to the station and sit there?”
Her confused laughter was very sweet, and she admitted that she had nothing to do after the light failed except to fold her hands and wait for the train.
“Then won’t you have tea?”
“I’d — rather not!”
He said: “You could take it alone in your room if you liked — and rest a little. Mrs. Quant will call you.”
She looked up at him after a moment, and her cheeks were very pink and her eyes brilliant.
“I’d rather take it with you, Mr. Desboro. Why shouldn’t I say so?”
No words came to him, and not much breath, so totally unexpected was her reply.
Still looking at him, the faint smile fading into seriousness, she repeated:
“Why shouldn’t I say so? Is there any reason? You know better than I what a girl alone may do. And I really would like to have some tea — and have it with you.”
He didn’t smile; he was too clever — perhaps too decent.
“It’s quite all right,” he said. “We’ll have it served in the library where there’s a fine fire.”
So they slowly crossed the armoury and traversed the hallway, where she left him for a moment and ran up stairs to her room. When she rejoined him in the library, he noticed that the insurgent lock of hair had been deftly tucked in among its lustrous comrades; but the first shake of her head dislodged it again, and there it was, threatening him, as usual, from its soft, warm ambush against her cheek.
“Can’t you do anything with it?” he asked, sympathetically, as she seated herself and poured the tea.
“Do anything with what?”
“That lock of hair. It’s loose again, and it will do murder some day.”
She laughed with scarcely a trace of confusion, and handed him his cup.
“That’s the first thing I noticed about you,” he added.
“That lock of hair? I can’t do anything with it. Isn’t it horribly messy?”
“It’s dangerous.”
“How absurd!”
“Are you ever known as ‘Stray Lock’ among your intimates?”
“I should think not,” she said scornfully. “It sounds like a children’s picture-book story.”
“But you look like one.”
“Mr. Desboro!” she protested. “Haven’t you any common sense?”
“You look,” he said reflectively, “as though you came from the same bookshelf as ‘Gold Locks,’ ‘The Robber Kitten,’ and ‘A Princess Far Away,’ and all those immortal volumes of
the ‘days that are no more.’ Would you mind if I label you ‘Stray Lock,’ and put you on the shelf among the other immortals?”
Her frank laughter rang out sweetly:
“I very much object to being labeled and shelved — particularly shelved.”
“I’ll promise to read you every day — —”
“No, thank you!”
“I’ll promise to take you everywhere with me — —”
“In your pocket? No, thank you. I object to being either shelved or pocketed — to be consulted at pleasure — or when you’re bored.”
They both had been laughing a good deal, and were slightly excited by their game of harmless double entendre. But now, perhaps it was becoming a trifle too obvious, and Jacqueline checked herself to glance back mentally and see how far she had gone along the path of friendship.
She could not determine; for the path has many twists and turnings, and she had sped forward lightly and swiftly, and was still conscious of the exhilaration of the pace in his gay and irresponsible company.
Her smile changed and died out; she leaned back in her leather chair, gazing absently at the fiery reflections crimsoning the andirons on the hearth, and hearing afar, on some distant roof, the steady downpour of the winter rain.
Subtly the quiet and warmth of the room invaded her with a sense of content, not due, perhaps, to them alone. And dreamily conscious that this might be so, she lifted her eyes and looked across the table at him.
“I wonder,” she said, “if this is all right?”
“What?”
“Our — situation — here.”
“Situations are what we make them.”
“But,” she asked candidly, “could you call this a business situation?”
He laughed unrestrainedly, and finally she ventured to smile, secretly reassured.
“‘Are business and friendship incompatible?’”
“Are business and friendship incompatible?” he inquired.
“I don’t know. Are they? I have to be careful in the shop, with younger customers and clerks. To treat them with more than pleasant civility would spoil them for business. My father taught me that. He served in the French Army.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 637