Short Stories of Various Types Part 17

"Oh, it's no matter!" she said impatiently.

"All right, have it your own way," he agreed, good-naturedly, s.h.i.+fting into a more comfortable position, and resuming his patient silence. He might have been a slightly pre-occupied but indulgent parent, waiting for a naughty child to emerge from a tantrum.

After a while, "Well, then," she began as though nothing had pa.s.sed between them since his offer to give her advice, "well then, if you want to be father-confessor, tell me what you'd do in my place, if your family expected you as a matter of course to--to----"

"What do they want you to do?" he asked as she hesitated.

"Oh, nothing that they consider at all formidable! Only what every girl should do--make a good and suitable marriage, and bring up children to go on doing what she had found no joy in."

"Don't you do it!" he said quietly. "n.o.body believes more than I do in marrying the right person. But just marrying so's to _be_ married--that's Tophet! Red-hot Tophet!"[133-1]

"But what else is there for me to do?" she said, turning her eyes to him with a desperate hope in his answer. "Tell me! My parents have brought me up so that there is nothing I can fill my life with, if--I think, on the whole, I will be more miserable if I don't than if I----"

"Why, look-y-here!" he said earnestly. "You're not a child, you're a grown woman. You have your music. You could earn your living by that.

Great Scott! Earn your living scrubbing floors before you----"

She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "Ah, but I am so alone against all my world! Now, here, with you, it seems easy but--without any one to sustain me, to----"

Harrison went on: "Now let me give you a rule I believe in as I do in the sun's rising. Never marry a man just because you think you could manage to live with him. Don't do it unless you are dead sure you couldn't live without him!"

She took down her handkerchief, showing a white face, whose expression matched the quaver in her voice, as she said breathlessly: "But how if I meet a man and feel I cannot live without him, and he is already--"

she brought it out squarely in the sunny peace,--"if he is already as good as married!"

He took it with the most single-hearted simplicity. "Now it's you who are unsophisticated and getting your ideas from fool novels. Things don't happen that way in real life. Either the man keeps his marriage a secret, in which case he is a sneak and not worth a second thought from any decent woman, or else, if she had known all along that he was married, she doesn't get to liking him that way. Don't you see?"

She looked away, down the stream for a moment with inscrutable eyes, and then broke into an unexpected laugh, rising at the same time and putting on her hat. "I see, yes, I see," she said. "It is as you say, quite simple. And now let us go to visit the rest of the park."

VI

The next excursion was to be their last, and Miss Midland had suggested a return to Versailles to see the park in its spring glory. They lunched in a little inclosure, rosy with the pink and white magnolia blossoms, where the uncut gra.s.s was already ankle-deep and the rose-bushes almost hid the gray stone wall with the feathery abundance of their first pale green leaves. From a remark of the girl's that perhaps this was the very spot where Marie Antoinette had once gathered about her gay court of pseudo-milkmaids, they fell into a discussion of that queen's pretty pastoral fancy. Harrison showed an unexpected sympathy with the futile, tragic little merrymaker.

"I expect she got sick and tired of being treated like a rich, great lady, and wanted to see what it would feel like to be a human being.

The king is always disguising himself as a goat-herd to make sure he can be loved for his own sake."

"But those stories are all so monotonous!" she said impatiently. "The king always is made to find out that the shepherdess does love him for his own sake. What would happen if she wouldn't look at him?"

Harrison laughed, "Well, by George, I never thought of that. I should say if he cared enough about her to want his own way, he'd better get off his high-horse and say, 'Look-y-here, I'm not the common ordinary mutt I look. I'm the king in disguise. _Now_ will you have me?"

Miss Midland looked at him hard. "Do you think it likely the girl would have him then?"

"Don't you?" he said, still laughing, and tucking away the last of a foie-gras sandwich.

She turned away, frowning, "I don't see how you can call _me_ cynical!"

He raised his eyebrows, "That's not cynical," he protested. "You have to take folks the way they are, and not the way you think it would be pretty to have them. It mightn't be the most dignified position for the king, but I never did see the use of dignity that got in the way of your having what you wanted."

She looked at him with so long and steady a gaze that only her patent absence of mind kept it from being a stare. Then, "I think I will go for a walk by myself," she said.

"Sure, if you want to," he a.s.sented, "and I'll take a nap under this magnolia tree. I've been working late nights, lately."

When she came back after an hour, the little inclosure was quite still, and, walking over to the magnolia, she saw that the young man had indeed fallen soundly asleep, one arm under his head, the other flung wide, half buried in the gra.s.s. For a long time she looked down gravely at the powerful body, at the large, sinewy hand, relaxed like a sleeping child's, at the eagle-like face, touchingly softened by its profound unconsciousness.

Suddenly the dark eyes opened wide into hers. The young man gave an exclamation and sat up, startled. At this movement she looked away, smoothing a fold of her skirt. He stared about him, still half-asleep.

"Did I hear somebody call?" he asked. "I must have had a very vivid dream of some sort--I thought somebody was calling desperately to me.

You didn't speak, did you?"

"No," she answered softly, "I said nothing."

"Well, I hope you'll excuse me for being such poor company. I only meant to take a cat-nap. I hope we won't be too late for the train."

He scrambled to his feet, his eyes still heavy with sleep, and pulled out his watch. As he did this, Miss Midland began to speak very rapidly. What she said was so astonis.h.i.+ng to him that he forgot to put back his watch, forgot even to look at it, and stood with it in his hand, staring at her, with an expression as near to stupefaction as his keen and powerful face could show.

When she finally stopped to draw breath, the painful breath of a person who has been under water too long, he broke into baroque e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, "Well, wouldn't that _get_ you! Wouldn't that absolutely freeze you to a pillar of salt! Well, of all the darndest idiots, I've been the----"

With Miss Midland's eyes fixed on him, he broke into peal after peal of his new-world laughter, his fresh, crude, raw, inimitably vital laughter, "I'm thinking of the time I loaned you the franc and a half for your lunch, and hated to take it back because I thought you needed it--and you rich enough to buy ten libraries to Andy's[137-1] one! Say, how did you keep your face straight!"

Miss Midland apparently found no more difficulty in keeping a straight face now than then. She did not at all share his mirth. She was still looking at him with a strained gaze as though she saw him with difficulty, through a mist increasingly smothering. Finally, as though the fog had grown quite too thick, she dropped her eyes, and very pa.s.sive, waited for his laughter to stop.

When it did, and the trees which had looked down on Marie Antoinette had ceased echoing to the loud, metallic, and vigorous sound, he noticed his watch still in his hand. He glanced at it automatically, thrust it back into his pocket and exclaimed, quite serious again, "Look-y-here. We'll have to step lively if we are going to catch that train back to Paris, Miss Midland--Lady Midland, I mean,--Your highness--what _do_ they call the daughter of an Earl? I never met a real live member of the aristocracy before."

She moved beside him as he strode off towards the gate. "I am usually called Lady Agatha," she answered, in a flat tone.

"How pretty that sounds!" he said heartily, "Lady Agatha! Lady Agatha!

Why don't we have some such custom in America?" He tried it tentatively. "Lady Marietta--that's my mother's name--don't seem to fit altogether does it? Lady Maggie--Oh, Lord! awful! No, I guess we'd better stick to Miss and Mrs. But it _does_ fit Agatha fine!"

She made no rejoinder. She looked very tired and rather stern.

After they were on the train, she said she had a headache and preferred not to talk and, ensconcing herself in a corner of the compartment, closed her eyes. Harrison, refreshed by the outdoor air and his nap, opened his notebook and began puzzling over a knotty point in one of the French Royal Grants to LaSalle[138-1] which he was engaged at the time in deciphering. Once he glanced up to find his companion's eyes open and fixed on him. He thought to himself that her headache must be pretty bad, and stirred himself to say with his warm, friendly accent, "It's a perfect shame you feel so miserable! Don't you want me to open the window? Wouldn't you like my coat rolled up for a pillow? Isn't there something I can do for you?"

She looked at him, and closing her lips, shook her head.

Later, in the midst of a struggle over an archaic law-form, the recollection of his loan to his fellow-student darted into his head. He laid down his notebook to laugh again. She turned her head and looked a silent question. "Oh, it's just that franc and a half!" he explained.

"I'll never get over that as long as I live!"

She pulled down her veil and turned away from him again.

When they reached Paris, he insisted that she take a carriage and go home directly. "I'll go on to the reading-room and explain to your hired girl that you were sick and couldn't wait for her." Before he closed her into the cab he added, "But, look here! I won't see you again, will I? I forgot you are going back to England to-morrow. Well, to think of this being good-bye! I declare, I hate to say it!" He held out his hand and took her cold fingers in his. "Well, Miss Midland, I tell _you_ there's not a person in the world who can wish you better luck than I do. You've been awfully good to me, and I appreciate it, and I do hope that if there's ever any little thing I can do for you, you'll let me know. I surely am yours to command."

The girl's capacity for emotion seemed to be quite exhausted, for she answered nothing to this quaint valedictory beyond a faint, "Good-by, Mr. Harrison, I hope you----" but she did not finish the sentence.

FRANCIS BRET HARTE

Chu Chu

I do not believe that the most enthusiastic lover of that "useful and n.o.ble animal," the horse, will claim for him the charm of geniality, humor, or expansive confidence. Any creature who will not look you squarely in the eye--whose only oblique glances are inspired by fear, distrust, or a view to attack, who has no way of returning caresses, and whose favorite expression is one of head-lifting disdain, may be "n.o.ble" or "useful," but can be hardly said to add to the gayety of nations. Indeed it may be broadly stated that, with the single exception of gold-fish, of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a pa.s.sion that shall be absolutely hopeless. I deem these general remarks necessary to prove that my unreciprocated affection for Chu Chu was not purely individual or singular. And I may add that to these general characteristics she brought the waywardness of her capricious s.e.x.