Quest of the Golden Girl Part 5

"I tell you the things are mine; and what I should like to know does a gentleman want bothering himself about a lady's petticoat! No wonder you blush," for, in fact, as was easy to foresee, the situation was becoming a little ridiculous for me.

"Now, look here," I said with an affectation of gravity, "if you'll tell me how you came by those things, I'll make it worth your while.

They were given to you by a lady who stayed here not so long ago, now, weren't they?"

"Well, then, they were."

"The lady stayed here with a gentleman?"

"Yes, she did."

"H'm! I thought so," I said. "Yes! that lady, it pains me to say, was my wife!"

This unblus.h.i.+ng statement was not, I could see, without its effect upon the present owner of the petticoat.

"But she said they were brother and sister," she replied.

"Of course she did," I returned, with a fine a.s.sumption of scorn,--"of course she did. They always do."

"Dear young woman," I continued, when I was able to control my emotion, "you are happily remote from the sin and wickedness of the town, and I am sorry to speak of such things in so peaceful a spot--but as a strange chance has led me here, I must speak, must tell you that all wives are not so virtuous and faithful as you, I am sure, are. There are wives who forsake their husbands and--and go off with a handsomer man, as the poet says; and mine, mine, alas! was one of them. It is now some months ago that my wife left me in this way, and since then I have spent every day in searching for her; but never till this moment have I come upon the least trace of her. Strange, is it not? that here, in this peaceful out-of-the-way garden, I should come upon her very petticoat, her very stockings--"

By this my grief had become such that the kind girl put her hand on my arm. "Don't take on so," she said kindly, and then remembering her treasured property, and probably fearing a counterclaim on my part to its possession, "But how can you be sure she was here? There are lots of petticoats like that--"

"What was she like?" I asked through my agitation.

"Middle height, slim and fair, with red goldy hair and big blue eyes; about thirty, I should say."

"The very same," I groaned, "there is no mistake; and now," I continued, "I want you to sell me that petticoat and those stockings,"

and I took a couple of sovereigns from my purse. "I want to have them to confront her with, when I do find her. Perhaps it will touch her heart to think of the strange way in which I came by them; and you can buy just as pretty ones again with the money," I added, as I noticed the disappointment on her face at the prospect of thus losing her finery.

"Well, it's a funny business, to be sure," she said, as still half reluctantly she unpegged the coveted garments from the line; "but if what you say 's true, I suppose you must have them."

The wanton wind had been so busily kissing them all the morning that they were quite dry, so I was able to find room for them in my knapsack without danger to the other contents; and, with a hasty good-day to their recent possessor, I set off at full speed to find a secure nook where I could throw myself down on the gra.s.s, and let loose the absurd laughter that was dangerously bottled up within me; but even before I do that it behoves me if possible to vindicate my sanity to the reader.

CHAPTER XVI

CLEARS UP MY MYSTERIOUS BEHAVIOUR OF THE LAST CHAPTER

What a sane man should be doing carrying about with him a woman's petticoat and silk stockings, may well be a puzzle to the most intelligent reader.

Whim, sir, whim! and few human actions admit of more satisfactory solution. Like Shylock, I'll say "It is my humour." But no! I'll be more explanatory. This madcap quest of mine, was it not understood between us from the beginning to be a fantastic whim, a poetical wild-goose chase, conceived entirely as an excuse for being some time in each other's company? To be whimsical, therefore, in pursuit of a whim, fanciful in the chase of a fancy, is surely but to maintain the spirit of the game. Now, for the purpose, therefore, of a romance that makes no pretence to reasonableness, I had very good reasons for buying that petticoat, which (the reasons, not the petticoat) I will now lay before you.

I have been conscious all the way along through this pilgrimage of its inevitable vagueness of direction, of my need of something definite, some place, some name, anything at all, however slight, which I might a.s.sociate, if only for a time, with the object of my quest, a definite something to seek, a definite goal for my feet.

Now, when I saw that mysterious petticoat, and realised that its wearer would probably be pretty and young and generally charming, and that probably her name was somewhere on the waistband, the spirit of whim rejoiced within me. "Why not," it said, "buy the petticoat, find out the name of its owner, and, instead of seeking a vague Golden Girl, make up your mind doggedly to find and marry her, or, failing that, carry the petticoat with you, as a sort of Cinderella's slipper, try it on any girl you happen to fancy, and marry her it exactly fits?"

Now, I confess, that seemed to me quite a pretty idea, and I hope the reader will think so too. If not, I'm afraid I can offer him no better explanation; and in fact I am all impatience to open my knapsack, and inform myself of the name of her to the discovery of whom my wanderings are henceforth to be devoted.

CHAPTER XVII

THE NAME UPON THE PETTICOAT

So imagine me seated in a gra.s.sy corner, with my knapsack open on the ground and my petticoat and silk stockings spread out in front of me,--an odd picture, to be sure, for any pa.s.ser by to come upon. I suppose I could have pa.s.sed for a pedlar, but undoubtedly it would have been very embarra.s.sing. However, as it happened, I remained undisturbed, and was able to examine my purchases at leisure. I had never seen a petticoat so near before,--at all events I had never given one such close attention. What delicious dainty things they are! How essentially womanly--as I hope no one would call a pair of trousers essentially manly.

How pretty it looked spread out on the gra.s.s in front of me! How soft!

how wondrously dainty the finish of every little seam! And the lace!

It almost tempts one to change one's s.e.x to wear such things. There was a time indeed, and not so long ago, when brave men wore garments no less dainty.

Rupert's Cavaliers were every bit as particular about their lace collars and frills as the lady whose pretty limbs once warmed this cambric.

But where is the name? Ah! here it is! What sweet writing! "Sylvia Joy, No. 6."

Sylvia Joy! What a perfectly enchanting name! and as I repeated it enthusiastically, it seemed to have a certain familiarity for my ear,--as though it were the name of some famous beauty or some popular actress,--yet the exact a.s.sociation eluded me, and obviously it was better it should remain a name of mystery. Sylvia Joy! Who could have hoped for such a pretty name! Indeed, to tell the truth, I had dreaded to find a "Mary Jones" or an "Ann Williams"--but Sylvia Joy! The name was a romance in itself. I already felt myself falling in love with its unseen owner. With such a petticoat and such a name, Sylvia herself could not be otherwise than delightful too. Already, you see, I was calling her by her Christian name! And the more I thought of her, the stronger grew the conviction--which has no doubt already forced itself upon the romantic reader--that we were born for each other.

But who is Sylvia, who is she? and likewise where is Sylvia, where is she? Obviously they were questions not to be answered off-hand. Was not my future--at all events my immediate future--to be spent in answering them?

Indeed, curiously enough, my recent haste to have them answered had suddenly died down. A sort of matrimonial security possessed me. I felt as I imagine a husband may feel on a solitary holiday--if there are husbands unnatural enough to go holidaying without their wives--pleasantly conscious of a home tucked somewhere beneath the distant sunset, yet in no precipitate hurry to return there before the appointed day.

In fact, a chill tremor went through me as I realised that, to all intent, I was at length respectably settled down, with quite a considerable retrospect of happy married life. To come to a decision is always to bring something to an end. And, with something of a pang, resolutely stifled, I realised for a moment the true blessedness of the single state I was so soon to leave behind. At all events, a little golden fragment of bachelorhood remained. There was yet a fertile strip of time wherein to sow my last handful of the wild oats of youth.

So festina lente, my destined Sylvia, festina lente!

CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH THE NAME OF A GREAT POET IS CRIED OUT IN A SOLITARY PLACE

As I once more shouldered my pack and went my way, the character of the country side began to change, and, from a semi-pastoral heathiness and furziness, took on a wildness of aspect, which if indeed melodramatic was melodrama carried to the point of genius.

It was a scene for which the nineteenth century has no worthy use. It finds ign.o.ble occupation as a gaping-ground for the vacuous tourist,--somewhat as Heine might have imagined Pan carrying the gentleman's luggage from the coach to the hotel. It suffers teetotal picnic-parties to encamp amid its savage hollows, and it humbly allows itself to be painted by the worst artists. Like a lion in a menagerie, it is a survival of the extinct chaos entrapped and exhibited amid the smug parks and well-rolled downs of England.

I came upon it by a winding ledge of road, which clung to the bare side of the hill like the battlements of some huge castle. Some two hundred feet below, a brawling upland stream stood for the moat, and for the enemy there was on the opposite side of the valley a great green company of trees, settled like a cloud slope upon slope, making all haste to cross the river and ascend the heights where I stood. Some intrepid larches waved green pennons in the very midst of the turbulent water, here and there a veteran lay with his many-summered head abased in the rocky course of the stream, and here was a young foolhardy beech that had climbed within a dozen yards of the rampart. All was wild and solitary, and one might have declared it a scene untrodden by the foot of man, but for the telegraph posts and small piles of broken "macadam"

at punctual intervals, and the ginger-beer bottles and paper bags of local confectioners that lent an air of civilisation to the road.

It was a place to quote Alastor in, and nothing but a bad memory prevented my affrighting the oaks and rills with declamation. As it was, I could only recall the lines

"The Poet wandering on, through Arabie And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves--"

and that other pa.s.sage beginning

"At length upon the lone Chorasmian sh.o.r.e He paused--"

This last I mouthed, loving the taste of its thunder; mouthed thrice, as though it were an incantation,--and, indeed, from what immediately followed, it might reasonably have seemed so.