Short Stories of Various Types Part 16

"Oh, no, I _couldn't_," she exclaimed, looking about her helplessly as if foreseeing already that she would yield. "What would people----?"

"n.o.body would say a thing, because n.o.body would know about it. We could go and get back here by the usual closing time, so that whoever comes for you would never suspect--she's not very sharp, is she?"

"No, no. She's only what you would call my hired girl."

"Well, then, it's Versailles[125-1] for us. Here, give me your portfolio to carry. Let's go by the tram line[125-2]--it's cheaper for two poor folks."

On the way out he proposed, with the same thrifty motive, that they buy provisions in the town, before they began their sight-seeing in the chateau, and eat a picnic lunch somewhere in the park.

"Oh, anything you please now!" she answered with reckless light-heartedness. "I'm quite lost already."

"There's nothing disreputable about eating sandwiches on the gra.s.s," he a.s.sured her; and indeed, when they spread their simple provision out under the great pines back of the Trianon, she seemed to agree with him, eating with a hearty appet.i.te, laughing at all his jokes, and, with a fresh color and sparkling eyes, telling him that she had never enjoyed a meal more.

"Good for you! That's because you work too hard at your old history of music."--By this time each knew all the details of the other's research--"You ought to have somebody right at hand to make you take vacations and have a good time once in a while. You're too conscientious."

Then, because he was quite frank and unconscious himself, he went on with a simplicity which the most accomplished actor could not have counterfeited, "That's what I'm always telling Maggie--Miss Warner.

She's the girl I'm engaged to."

He did not at the time remark, but afterward, in another land, he was to recall with startling vividness the quick flash of her clear eyes upon him and the fluttering droop of her eyelids. She finished her eclair quietly, remarking, "So you are engaged?"

"Very much so," answered Harrison, leaning his back against the pine-tree and closing his eyes, more completely to savor the faint fragrance of new life which rose about them in the warm spring air, like unseen incense.

Miss Midland stood up, shaking the crumbs from her skirt, and began fitting her gloves delicately upon her slim and very white hands. After a pause, "But how would she like _this_?" she asked.

Without opening his eyes, Harrison murmured, "She'd like it fine. She's a great girl for outdoors."

His companion glanced down at him sharply, but in his tranquil and half-somnolent face there was no trace of evasiveness. "I don't mean the park, the spring weather," she went on, with a persistence which evidently cost her an effort. "I mean your being here with another girl. That would make an English woman jealous."

Harrison opened his dark eyes wide and looked at her in surprise. "You don't understand--we're not flirting with each other, Maggie and I--we're engaged." He added with an air of proffering a self-evident explanation, "As good as married, you know."

Miss Midland seemed to find in the statement a great deal of material for meditation, for after an "Ah!" which might mean anything, she sat down on the other side of the tree, leaning her blonde head against its trunk and staring up into the thick green branches. Somewhere near them in an early-flowering yellow shrub a bee droned softly. After a time she remarked as if to herself, "They must take marriage very seriously in Iowa."

The young man aroused himself, to answer sleepily: "It's Illinois where I live now--Iowa was where I grew up--but it's all the same. Yes, we do."

After that there was another long, fragrant silence which lasted until Harrison roused himself with a sigh, exclaiming that although he would like nothing better than to sit right there till he took root, they had yet to "do" the two Trianons and to see the state carriages. During this sightseeing tour he repeated his performance of the morning in the chateau, pouring out a flood of familiar, quaintly expressed historical lore of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made his astonished listener declare he must have lived at that time.

"Nope!" he answered her. "Got it all out of Illinois libraries. Books are great things if you're only willing to treat them right. And history--by gracious! history is a study fit for the G.o.ds! All about folks, and they are all that are worth while in the world!"

They were standing before the Grand Trianon as he said this, waiting for the tram car, and as it came into sight he cried out artlessly, his dark, aquiline face glowing with fervor, "I--I just _love_ folks!"

She looked at him curiously. "In all my life I never knew any one before to say or think that." Some of his enthusiasm was reflected upon her own fine, thoughtful face as a sort of wistfulness when she added, "It must make you very happy. I wish I could feel so."

"You don't look at them right," he protested.

She shook her head. "No, we haven't known the same kind. I had never even heard of the sort of people you seem to have known."

The tram car came noisily up to them, and no more was said.

V

A notice posted the following day to the effect that for some time the reading-room would be closed one day in the week for repairs, gave Harrison an excuse for insisting on weekly repet.i.tions of what he called their historical picnics.

Miss Midland let herself be urged into these with a half-fearful pleasure which struck the young American as pathetic. "Anybody can see she's had mighty few good times in _her_ life," he told himself. They "did" Fontainebleau,[129-1] Pierrefonds,[129-2] Vincennes,[129-3] and Chantilly[129-4]--this last expedition coming in the first week of May, ten days before Miss Midland was to leave Paris. They were again favored by wonderfully fine spring weather, so warm that the girl appeared in a light-colored cotton gown and a straw hat which, as her friend told her, with the familiarity born of a month of almost uninterrupted common life, made her look "for all the world like a picture."

After their usual conscientious and minute examination of the objects of historical interest, they betook themselves with their lunch-basket to a quiet corner of the park, by a clear little stream, on the other side of which a pair of white swans were building a nest. It was very still, and what faint breeze there was barely stirred the trees. The English girl took off her hat, and the sunlight on her blonde hair added another glory to the spring day.

They ate their lunch with few words, and afterward sat in what seemed to the American the most comfortable and companionable of silences, idly watching a peac.o.c.k unfold the flas.h.i.+ng splendor of his plumage before the old gray fountain. "My! My! My!" he murmured finally. "Isn't the world about the best place!"

The girl did not answer, and, glancing at her, he was startled to see that her lips were quivering. "Why, Miss Midland!" he cried anxiously.

"Have you had bad news?"

She shook her head. "Nothing new."

"What's the matter?" he asked, coming around in front of her. "Perhaps I can help you even if it's only to give some good advice."

She looked up at him with a sudden flash. "I suppose that, since you are so much engaged, you think you would make a good father-confessor!"

"I don't see that that has anything to do with it," he said, sitting down beside her, "but you can bank on me for doing anything I can."

"You don't see that that has anything to do with it," she broke in sharply, with the evident intention of wounding him, "because you are very unworldly, what is usually called very unsophisticated."

If she had thought to pique him with this adjective, she was disarmed by the heartiness of his admission, "As green as gra.s.s! But I'd like to help you all the same, if I can."

"You don't care if you are?" she asked curiously.

"Lord no! What does it matter?"

"You may care then to know," she went on, still probing at him, "that your not caring is the princ.i.p.al reason for my--finding you interesting--for my liking you--as I do."

"Well, I'm interested to know that," he said reasonably, "but blessed if I can see why. What difference does it make to _you_?"

"It's a great surprise to me," she said clearly. "I never met anybody before who didn't care more about being sophisticated than about anything else. To have you not even think of that--to have you think of nothing but your work and how to 'mean well' as you say----" she stopped, flus.h.i.+ng deeply.

"Yes, it must be quite a change," he admitted sobered by her tone, but evidently vague as to her meaning. "Well, I'm very glad you don't mind my being as green as gra.s.s and as dense as a hitching-block. It's very lucky for me."

A quick bitterness sprang into her voice. "I don't see," she echoed his phrase, "what difference it makes to _you_!"

"Don't you?" he said, lighting a cigarette and not troubling himself to discuss the question with her. She was evidently all on edge with nerves, he thought, and needed to be calmed down. He pitied women for their nerves, and was always kindly tolerant of the resultant petulances.

She frowned and said with a tremulous resentment, as if gathering herself together for a long-premediated attempt at self-defense.

"You're not only as green as gra.s.s, but you perceive nothing,--any European, even the stupidest, would perceive what you--but you are as primitive as a Sioux Indian, you have the silly morals of a non-conformist preacher,--you're as brutal as----"

He opposed to this outburst the impregnable wall of a calm and meditative silence. She looked angrily into his quiet eyes, which met hers with unflinching kindness. The contrast between their faces was striking--was painful.

She said furiously, "There is nothing to you except that you are stronger than I, and you know it--and that _is_ brutal!" She paused a long moment, quivering, and then relapsed into spent, defeated la.s.situde,--"and I like it," she added under her breath, looking down at her hands miserably.

"I don't mean to be brutal," he said peaceably. "I'm sorry if I am."