A Book o' Nine Tales Part 32

_She._ What particular thing had she been playing to rouse you to that point of enthusiasm?

_He._ If my memory serves me, it was the Chopin Nocturne in G minor. She did play extremely well, and as we happened to be in the conservatory afterward, I improved the opportunity to propose.

_She._ Oh, very naturally!

_He._ It is a form of words that comes very readily to my lips, as you know. Annie confessed to that very superfluous and old-fas.h.i.+oned sentiment called love, which wasn't in good form, I'll admit; but in consideration for the object of her attachment, and the fact that on that particular evening I was in love myself, I managed to overlook it.

_She._ Very good of you, I'm sure. I hope Annie appreciated your generosity.

_He._ Very likely she didn't. Your s.e.x very seldom do appreciate masculine virtues; but Annie has a far more old-fas.h.i.+oned and worse vice than love. Why, the girl, in the midst of these enlightened nineteenth-century days, actually goes to the nonsensical bother of keeping a conscience! It must be more trouble to attend to, Agnes, than her aunt Wheeler's seven pet poodles and three red-headed parrots.

_She._ I suppose you are right. You don't speak from experience, though, do you?

_He._ Oh, no; I never had a conscience: as a boy, I preferred white mice; now I have my horses, you know.

_She._ And your innumerable loves.

_He._ If such trifles are to be taken into account.

_She._ Go on about Annie.

_He._ Well, on my confessing how far I had carried my flirtation with you-- I can't, for the life of me, tell how I happened to speak of it; I am usually more discreet.

_She._ I should hope so.

_He._ Oh, I am, I a.s.sure you; but the loves are so numerous, while I am but one, that they sometimes get the better of my discretion. What is one among so many?

_She._ Oh, in this case, absolutely nothing.

_He._ Thank you again.

_She._ But to continue--

_He._ Well, to continue, Annie actually seemed to think that you had some sort of claim upon me. Fancy!

_She._ She needn't have troubled.

_He._ Oh, of course not. Why, I have offered myself to dozens of girls, with no more idea of marrying them than I have of becoming a howling dervish; and more than that, I have habitually been accepted. That is one thing about you that attracted me, do you know? There is a beautiful novelty about being rejected.

_She._ So that is the secret of my amusing you, is it? You ought to have explained this to Annie.

_He._ Oh, she wouldn't have understood. Like every other girl, 'twas the personal application that she was touched by. You see she didn't know the other girls, and she did know you; and she seems to think your no more binding than any other person's yes. Perhaps she knows that a woman's negative--

_She._ Really, Arthur, that's so hackneyed that if you haven't the gallantry not to say it you ought to be ashamed to repeat anything so stale.

_He._ Perhaps you are right; I have known you to be on very rare occasions. However, Annie insisted that I should come, and, as she said, "a.s.sure myself of your sentiments and of my own." Did you ever hear anything more absurd? As if I didn't know, all the time, that you were dying for me; and as if I--despite my mad and overpowering pa.s.sion for your lovely self, Miss Peltonville--couldn't tell as well in New York as in Cuba whether I wanted to marry her or not.

_She._ If you were no better informed of your own sentiments than of mine, I don't wonder she doubted your conclusions.

_He._ Oh, she didn't in the least.

_She._ At least, Annie may set her mind quite at rest, so far as I am concerned.

_He._ Thank you so much. It is such a relief to have things settled.

_She._ What would you have done if I had accepted you?

_He._ Oh, I was confident of my ability of putting the question so that you wouldn't.

_She._ I have almost a mind to do it, even now.

_He._ Really?

_She._ Oh, don't be alarmed. There is one insuperable obstacle.

_He._ What is that?

_She._ Yourself.

_He._ Then I am quite safe. That is a permanent one.

_She._ Well, I wish Annie joy of her bargain. She is worthy of a better fate; and since we are talking frankly, I must say that what she can see in you I can't imagine.

_He._ These things are so strange; there is no accounting for them. Why, I have been perfectly puzzled--do you know?--ever since I came last night, to tell what I found in you last winter.

_She._ Since we seem to be striving to outdo each other in abuse, it is quite in keeping for me to add, that I have no occasion to bother my head on such a question, for I never pretended to have found anything in you.

_He._ But then, as I said, you amused me; and one may sometimes be so far amused that--

_She._ His amus.e.m.e.nt may even amount to astonishment, perhaps; and, by the way, that gentleman on the gray horse, just coming between the China laurels with papa, expects to marry me.

_He._ Fred Armstrong, by all that is unspeakable! Agnes Peltonville, I humble myself in the dust before you; and no humiliation could be greater than going down into Cuban dust. You are an angel; you have removed my last fear.

_She._ Yes; and how?

_He._ I was always jealous of Fred Armstrong; he was forever dangling about Annie. Do I understand that you are engaged?

_She._ Oh, I didn't say that I expected to marry him; but since Annie confesses such a strong attachment to you--

_He._ Oh, I didn't say I was the object of the attachment.

[_They sit confronting each other in silence a moment, until the riders, having dismounted, are seen approaching the piazza. Then Chester leans forward impulsively, and speaks with a new intensity._]

_He._ Agnes!

_She._ Arthur!

_He._ Quick! Before they come! You won't send me away?