Nancy Part 18

CHAPTER XIII.

"If he does not like it," say I, setting it on the floor, and regarding it from a little distance, with my head on one side, while friendly criticism and admiration meet in happy wedlock in my eyes, "I can give it to you; I had much rather make you a present than _him_."

"Then Heaven grant that it may find disfavor in his sight!" says Sir Roger, piously.

We are talking of the traveling-bag, which at last, in despair of any thing suitable occurring to my mind, I have bought, and now regard with a sort of apprehensive joy. The blinds are half lowered for the heat, but, through them and under them, the broad gold suns.h.i.+ne is streaming and pus.h.i.+ng itself, was.h.i.+ng the careful twists of my flax hair, the bag's stout red leather sides, and Sir Roger's nose, as he leans over it, with manly distrust, trying the clasp by many searching snappings.

"I never gave you a present in my life--never--did I?" say I, squatting down on the floor beside him, crumpling my nice crisp muslin frock with the recklessness of a woman who knows that there are many more such frocks in the cupboard, and to whom this knowledge has but newly come; "never mind! next birthday I will give you one--a really nice, handsome, rather expensive one--all bought with your own money, too--there!"

This is on the morning of our last day in Dresden. Yes! _to-morrow_ we set off homeward. Our wedding-tour is nearly ended: tyrant Custom, which sent us off, permits us to rejoin our fellows. Well, it really has not been so bad! I do not know that I should care to have it over again--that is, just immediately; but it has gone off very well altogether--quite as well as most other people's, I fancy. These are my thoughts in the afternoon, as (Sir Roger having gone to the post-office, and I having made myself very hot by superintending the packing of the presents--most of them of a brittle, _crackable_ nature) I am leaning, to cool myself, over our balcony, and idly watching the little events that are happening under my nose. The omnibus stands, as usual, in the middle of the square, about to start for Blasewitz. Mysterious 'bus!

always about to start--always full of patient pa.s.sengers, and that yet was never seen by mortal man to set off. As I watch it with the wondering admiration with which I have daily regarded it, I hear the door of our sitting-room open, and Vick give a little shrewish shrill bark, speedily changed into an apologetic and friendly whiffling and whoffling.

"Is that you?" cry I, holding on by the balcony, and leaning back to peep over my own shoulder into the interior. "Come out here, if it is."

"Sir Roger is out," I say, a second later, putting my hand into that of Mr. Musgrave (for it is he), as he comes stepping, in his usual unsmiling, discontented beauty, to meet me.

"I know he is! I met him!"

"I am seeing the people start for Blasewitz for the last time! it makes me quite low!" I say, replacing my arms on the balcony, and speaking with an irrepressibly jovial broad smile on my face that rather contradicts my words.

"You _look_ low," he answers, ironically, standing beside me, and looking rather provoked at my urbanity.

"This time to-morrow we shall be off," say I, beginning to laugh out of pure light-heartedness, though there is no joke within a mile of me, and to count on my fingers; "this time the day after to-morrow we shall be at Cologne--this time the day after _that_ we shall be getting toward Brussels--this time the day after _that_, we shall be getting toward Dover--this time the day after _that_--"

"You will all be rus.h.i.+ng higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter, into each other's arms," interrupts my companion, looking at me with a lowering eye.

"Yes," say I, my eyes dancing. "You are quite right."

"Algy, and the Brat, and--what is the other fellow's name?--d.i.c.ky?--Jacky?--Jemmy?--"

"Bobby," say I, correcting him. "But you are not quite right; the Brat will not be there!--worse luck--he is in Paris!"

"Well, Barbara will not be in Paris," says the young man, still in the same discontented, pettish voice. "_She_ will be there, no doubt--well to the front--in the thickest of the osculations."

"_That_ she will!" cry I, heartily. "But you must give up calling her Barbara; that is not at all pretty manners."

"We will make a bargain," he says, beginning to smile a little, but rather as if it were against his will and intention. "I will allow her to call me 'Frank,' if she will allow me to call her 'Barbara.'"

"I dare say you will" (laughing).

A little pause. Another person has got into the omnibus; it is growing extremely full.

"I _hate_ last days," says my companion, hitting viciously at the iron balcony rails with his stick, and scowling.

"'The Last Days of Pompeii,'" say I, stupidly, and yet laughing again; not because I think my witticism good, which no human being could do, but because I _must_ laugh for very gladness. Another longer pause.

(Shall I present the bag the night we arrive, or wait till next day?)

"I have got a riddle to ask you," says Frank, abruptly, and firing the observation off somewhat like a bomb-sh.e.l.l.

"Have you?" say I, absently. "I hope it is a good one."

"Of course, _you_ must judge of that--'_Mon premier_--'"

"It is in _French_!" cry I, with an accent of disgust.

"Well, why should not it be?" (rather tartly).

"No reason whatever, only that I warn you beforehand I shall not understand it: I always _s.h.i.+ver_ when people tell me a French anecdote; I never know when the point has arrived: I always laugh too soon or too late."

He says nothing, but looks black.

"Go on!" say I, laughing. "We will try, if you like."

"_Mon--premier--est--le--premier--de tout_," he says, p.r.o.nouncing each word very separately and distinctly. "Do you understand _that_?"

I nod. "My first is the first of all--yes."

"_Mon second n'a pas de second._"

"My second has no second--yes."

"_Mon tout_"--(turning his long, sleepy eyes sentimentally toward me)--"_je ne saurai vous le dire._"

"My whole--I cannot tell it you!--then why on earth did you ask me?" cry I, breaking out into hearty, wholesome laughter.

Again he blackens.

"Well, have you guessed it?"

"Guessed it!" I echo, recovering my gravity. "Not I!--my first is the first of all--my second has no second--my whole, I cannot tell it you!--I do not believe it is a riddle at all! it is a hoax--a take-in, like 'Why does a miller wear a white hat?'"

"It is nothing of the kind," he answers, looking thoroughly annoyed.

"Must I tell you the answer?"

"I shall certainly never arrive at it by my una.s.sisted genius," I reply, yawning. "Ah! there is M. Dom going out riding! Alas! never again shall I see him mount that peac.o.c.king steed!"

"It is 'Adieu!'" says my companion, blurting it out in a rage, seeing that I _will_ not be interested in or excited by it.

"_Adieu!_" repeat I, standing with my mouth wide open, looking perfectly blank. "_How?_"

"You do not see?" he says. (His face has grown scarlet.) "Well, you must excuse me for saying that you are rather--" He breaks off and begins again, very fast this time. "My first is the first of all--is not _A_ the first letter in the alphabet? My second has no second--has G.o.d (_Dieu_) any second? My whole--I cannot say it to you--_Adieu!_"

The contrast between the sentimentality of the words, and the brusque and defiant anger of his tone, is so abrupt, that I am sorry to say, I laugh again: indeed, I retire from the balcony into the saloon inside, throw myself into a chair, and, covering my face with my handkerchief, roar--

"It is very good," say I, in a choked voice; "very--so civil and pretty--but it is not very _funny_, is it?"

I receive no answer. I am still in my pocket-handkerchief, and he might be gone, but that I hear his quick, angry breathing, and know, by instinct, that he is standing over me, looking like a handsome thunder-cloud. I dare not look up at him, lest another mad cachinnation, such as sometimes overtakes one for the punishment of one's sins in church, should again lay violent hands upon me.