Grey Roses Part 17

'Well, we walked in the garden; and she was crying, and I was beseeching her not to cry. She wore one of her white frocks, with a red sash, and her hair fell down her back below her waist. I was holding her hand. "Don't cry, don't cry. I'll come back as soon as I'm a man, and marry you in real earnest!" I promised her.' He paused and laughed.

'Go on. And she?'

'"Oh, aren't we married in real earnest now?" she asked. I explained that we weren't. "You have to have the Notary over from Bayonne, and go to Church. I know, because that's how it was when my cousin Elodie was married. We're only married in play?" Then she asked if that wasn't just as good. "Things one does in play are always so much nicer than real things," she said.'

'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! She had a prophetic soul.'

'Hadn't she? I admitted that that was true. But I added that perhaps when people were grown up and could do exactly as they pleased, it was different,--perhaps real things would come to be pleasant too.'

'Have you found them so?'

'I suppose I can't be quite grown-up, for I've never yet had a chance to do exactly as I pleased.'

'Poor young man. Go on.'

'And, besides, I reminded her, all the married people we knew were really married, my father and mother, Andre's father and mother, my cousin Elodie. Helene's mother was dead, so her parents didn't count.

And I argued that we might be sure they found it fun to be really married, or else they wouldn't keep it up. "Oh, well, then, I suppose we'll have to be really married too," she consented. "But it seems as though it never could be as nice as this. If only you weren't going away!" Whereupon I promised again to come back, if she'd promise to wait for me, and never love anybody else, and never, never, never allow another boy to kiss her. "Oh, never, never, never," she a.s.sured me. Then her father called her, and they drove away.'

'And you went to Paris and forgot her. Why were you false to your engagement?'

'Oh, she had allowed another boy to kiss her. She had married a German prince. Besides, I received a good deal of discouragement from my family. The next day, in the train, I confided our understanding to my mother. My mother seemed to doubt whether her father would like me as a son-in-law. I was certain he would; he was awfully good-natured; he had given me two louis as a parting tip. "But do you think he'll care to let his daughter marry a bourgeois?" my mother asked. "A what?"

cried I. "A bourgeois," said my mother. "I ain't a bourgeois," I retorted indignantly. "What are you then?" pursued my mother. I explained that my grandmother had been a countess, and my uncle was a count; so how could I be a bourgeois? "But what is your father?" my mother asked. Oh, my father was "only an Englishman." But that didn't make me a bourgeois? "Yes, it does," my mother said. "Just because my father's English?" "Because he's a commoner, because he isn't n.o.ble."

"But then--then what did you go and marry him for?" I stammered.

"Where would you have been if I hadn't?" my mother enquired. That puzzled me for a moment, but then I answered, "Well, if you'd married a Frenchman, a Count or a Duke or something, I shouldn't have been a bourgeois;" and my mother confessed that that was true enough. "I don't care if I _am_ a bourgeois," I said at last. "When I'm big I'm going back to Saint-Graal; and if her father won't let me really marry her, because I'm a bourgeois, then we'll just go on making believe we're married."'

She laughed. 'And now you are big, and you've come back to Saint-Graal, and your lady-love is at Granjolaye. Why don't you call on her and offer to redeem your promise?'

'Why doesn't she send for me--bid me to an audience?'

'Perhaps her prophetic soul warns her how you'd disappoint her.'

'Do you think she'd be disappointed in me?'

'Aren't you disappointed in yourself?'

'Oh, dear, no; I think I'm very nice.'

'_I_ should be disappointed in myself, if I were a man who had been capable of such an innocent, sweet affection as yours for Helene de la Granjolaye, and had then gone and soiled myself with the mud of what they call life.' She spoke earnestly; her face was grave and sad.

He was surprised, and a little alarmed. 'Do you mean by that that you think I'm a bad lot?' he asked.

'You said the other day--yesterday was it?--that you had made a fool of yourself on various occasions.'

'Well?'

'Did the process not generally involve making a fool of a woman too?'

'Reciprocity? Perhaps.'

'And what was it you always said to them?'

'Oh, I suppose I did.'

'You told them you loved them?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'And was it true?'

'No.'

'Well, then!'

'Ah, but they weren't deceived; they never believed it. That's only a convention of the game, a necessary formula, like the "Dear" at the beginning of a letter.'

'You have "lived"; you have "lived." You'd have been so unique, so rare, so much more interesting, if instead of going and "living" like other men, you had remained true to the ideal pa.s.sion of your childhood.'

'I had the misfortune to be born into the world, and not into a fairy tale, you see. But it's a perfectly gratuitous a.s.sumption, that I have "lived."'

'Can you honestly tell me you haven't?' she asked, very soberly, with something like eagerness; her pale face intent.

'As a matter of fact ... Oh, the worst of it is ... I can't honestly say that I've never ... But then, what do you want to rake up such matters for? It's not my fault if I've accepted the traditions of my century. Well, anyhow, you see I can't lie to you.'

'You appear to find it difficult,' she a.s.sented, rising.

'Well, what do you infer from that?'

She blew her whistle. 'That--that you're out of training,' she said lightly, as she mounted her horse.

'Oh,' he groaned, 'you're--'

'What?'

'You beggar language.'

She laughed and rode away.

'There, I've spoiled everything,' Paul said, and went home, and pa.s.sed a sleepless night.

XI.

'I'll bet you sixpence she won't turn up to-day,' he said to his friend in the gla.s.s, next morning; nevertheless he went into the forest, and there she was. But she did not offer to dismount.

'Isn't there another inference to be drawn from my inability to lie to you?' he asked.

She smiled on him from her saddle. 'Oh, perhaps there are a hundred.'