“Now, I don’t suppose you really intend to do such a — —”
“Yes, I do! It sounds preposterous, but it’s logical. I’m going to practice what I expect to spend my life in preaching; that’s all. Not that I want to marry just now — I don’t; it’s inconvenient. I don’t want to fall in love, I don’t want to marry, I don’t want to have a dozen children,” he said, irritably; “but I’m going to, Smith! I’m going to, for the sake of my country. Pro patria et gloria!”
“Right away?”
“What rot you talk, sometimes! But I’m ready to make my words mean something; I’m ready to marry the Countess of Semois. There is no possible room for doubt; any man can marry any woman he wants to; that is my absolute conviction. Anyhow, I shall ask her.”
“As soon as you meet her?”
“Certainly not. I expect to take several days about it — —”
“Why employ several days in sweet dissembling?”
“Confound it, I’m not going to dissemble! I’m going to let her know that I admire her the moment I meet her. I’m going to tell her about my theory of scientific marriages. If she is sensible — if she is the woman America requires — if she is the dark-haired girl — she’ll understand.” He turned squarely on Smith: “As for you, if you were the sort of American that you ought to be you would pick out some ornamental and wholesome young Belgian aristocrat and marry her in the shortest time that decency permits! That’s what you’d do if you had a scintilla of patriotism in your lazy make-up!”
“No, I wouldn’t — —”
“You would! Look at yourself — a great, hulking, wealthy, idle young man, who stands around in puddles catching fish while Europe runs off our loveliest women under your bovine nose. Shame on you! Have you no desire to be up and doing?”
“Oh, of course,” said Smith, unruffled; “if several passion-smitten duchesses should climb over the big wall yonder and chase me into the garden — —”
Kingsbury swung on his spurred heels and strode into the house.
CHAPTER XXII
A YOUTHFUL PATRIOT
Smith sauntered out to the terrace, looked at the sky, sniffed the roses, and sat down in the shadow of a cherry tree, cocking his feet up and resting his novel on his knees. Several hours later, aroused by the mellow clash of harness and noise of wheels, he looked out over the terrace wall just in time to catch a glimpse of the victoria of his neighbour, gold and green livery, strawberry roans, flashing wheels and all; and quite alone under her brilliant sunshade, the dark-haired girl whom Kingsbury had decided to marry as soon as he could arrange to fall in love with her.
“I fancy she’s the Countess, all right,” mused Smith; “but, to me, the girl with red hair is vastly — more — more alluring — —”
The sound of wheels again broke the thread of his sleepy meditation; their dog-cart was at the gate; and presently he perceived Kingsbury, hatted and gloved to perfection, get in, take the reins from the coachman, loop his whip, assume the posture popularly attributed to pupils of Howlett, and go whirling away through the lazy sunshine of a perfect Belgian afternoon.
“The beast has lunched without me,” muttered Smith, yawning and looking at his watch. Then he got up, stretched, tinkled the bell, and when the doll-faced maid arrived, requested an omelet à la Semois and a bottle of claret.
He got it in due time, absorbed it lazily, casting a weatherwise eye on the sky at intervals with a view to afternoon fishing; but the sun was too bright; besides, his book had become interesting in a somewhat maudlin fashion, inasmuch as the lovers must come to a clinch in the next chapter or not at all.
“You can’t tell in modern novels,” he muttered; “a girl has a way of side-stepping just as the bell rings: but the main guy ought to make good within the next page or two. If he doesn’t he’s a dub!”
With which comment he sought his hammock for an hour’s needed repose; but he had slumbered longer than that when he found himself sitting bolt upright, the telephone bell ringing in his ears.
Comfortably awake now, he slid from the hammock, and, entering the house, stepped into the smoking-room.
“Hello!” he said, unhooking the receiver.
Kingsbury’s voice replied: “I’m here in Semois-les-Bains, at the charity bazar. Can you distinguish what I say?”
“Perfectly, my Romeo! Proceed.”
“I’m in a fix. Our Ambassador didn’t come, and I don’t know anybody to take me over and present me.”
“Buy a doll, idiot!”
“Confound it, I’ve already bought ten! That doesn’t give me the privilege of doing anything but buying ten more. She’s busy; about five million people are crowding around her.”
“Buy every doll she has! Put her out of business, man! Then if you can’t fix it somehow you’re a cuckoo. Is the Countess the dark-haired girl?”
“Certainly.”
“How do you know?”
“Isn’t she here selling dolls? Didn’t the paper say she was going to?”
“Yes — but hadn’t you better find out for certain before you — —”
“I am certain; anyway, I don’t care. Smith, she is the most radiantly — —”
“All right; ring off — —”
“Wait! I wanted to tell you that she has the prettiest way of smiling every time I buy a doll. And then, while she wraps up the infernal thing in ribbons and tissue we chat a little. I’d like to murder our Ambassador! Do you think that if I bought her entire stock — —”
“Yes, I do!”
“What do you think?”
“What you do.”
“But I don’t think anything at all. I am asking you — —”
“Try it, anyhow.”
“All right. Hold the wire, Smith. I’ll report progress — —”
“What! Stand here and wait — —”
“Don’t be selfish. I’ll return in a moment.”
The “moment” stretched into a buzzing, crackling half hour, punctuated by impatient inquiries from Central. Suddenly an excited: “Hello, Smith!”
“Hello, you infernal — —”
“I’ve done it! I’ve bought every doll! She’s the sweetest thing; I told her I had a plan for endowing a ward in any old hospital she might name, and she thinks we ought to talk it over, so I’m going to sit out on the terrace with her — Smith!”
“What?”
“Oh, I thought you’d gone! I only wanted to say that she is far, far lovelier than I had supposed. I can’t wait here talking with you any longer. Good-by!”
“Is she the Countess?” shouted Smith incredulously. But Kingsbury had rung off.
CHAPTER XXIII
ON THE WALL
Smith retired to his room to bathe, clothed himself in snowy linen and fresh tennis flannels, and descended again, book under his arm, to saunter forth through heavy tangles of cinnamon-tinted Flemish roses and great sweet-scented peonies, musing on love and fate.
“Kingsbury and his theories! The Countess of Semois will think him crazy. She’ll think us both crazy! And I am not sure that we’re not; youth is madness; half the world is lunatic! Take me, for example; I never did a more unexpected thing than kissing that shadow across the wall. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I did it; and I am out of jail yet. Certainly it must have been the cook. Oh, Heavens! If cooks kiss that way, what, what must the indiscretion of a Countess resemble?... She did kiss back.... At least there was a soft, tremulous, perfumed flutter — a hint of delicate counter-pressure — —”
But he had arrived at the wall by that time.
“How like a woodland paradise!” he murmured sentimentally, youthful face upraised to the trees. “How sweet the zephyr! How softly sing the dicky-birds! I wonder — I wonder—” But what it was that perplexed him he did not say; he stood eying the top of the wall as the furtive turkey eyes its selected roost before coyly hopping thither.
“What’s the use? If I see her I’ll only take fright and skulk homeward. Wh
y do I return again and again to the scene of guilt? Is it Countess or cook that draws me, or some one less exalted in the culinary confine? Why, why should love get busy with me? Is this the price I pay for that guileless kiss? Am I to be forever ‘it’ in love’s gay game of tag?”
He ascended the steplike niche in the wall, peeped fearfully over into his neighbour’s chasse. Tree and tangle slept in the golden light of afternoon; a cock-pheasant strutted out of a thicket, surveyed the solitude with brilliant eyes, and strutted back again; a baby rabbit frisked across the carrefour into the ferny warren beyond; and “Bubble, bubble, flowed the stream, like an old song through a dream.”
Sprawling there flat on top of the sun-warmed stucco wall, white sunlight barring the pages of his book, he lifted his head to listen. There was a leafy stirring somewhere, perhaps the pheasant rustling in the underbrush. The sing-song of the stream threaded the silence; and as he listened it seemed to grow louder, filling the woods with low, harmonious sounds. In the shallows he heard laughter; in the pouring waterfalls, echoes like wind-blown voices calling. Small grey and saffron tinted birds, passing from twig to twig, peered at him fearlessly; a heavy green lizard vanished between the stones with an iridescent wriggle. Suddenly a branch snapped and the underbrush crackled.
“Probably a deer,” thought Smith, turning to look. Close inspection of the thicket revealed nothing; he dropped his chin on his hands, crossed his legs, and opened his book.
The book was about one of those Americans who trouble the peace of mind of Princesses; and this was the place to read it, here in the enchanted stillness of the ancient Belgian forest, here where the sunshine spread its net on fretted waters, where lost pools glimmered with azure when the breeze stirred overhead — here where his neighbor was a Countess and some one in her household wore a mass of gold-red hair Greek fashion — and Aphrodite was not whiter of neck nor bluer eyed than she.
The romance that he read was designed to be thickly satisfying to American readers, for it described a typical American so accurately that Smith did not recognize the type. Until he had been enlightened by fiction he never imagined Americans were so attractive to exotic nobility. So he read on, gratified, cloyed, wondering how the Princess, although she happened to be encumbered with a husband, could stand for anything but ultimate surrender to the Stars and Stripes; and trustfully leaving it to another to see that it was done morally.
Hypnotized by the approaching crisis, he had begun already to finger the next page, when a slight crash in the bushes close by and the swish of parting foliage startled him from romance to reality.
But he had looked up too late; to slink away was impossible; to move was to reveal himself. It was she! And she was not ten feet distant.
One thing was certain: whether or not she was the shadowy partner of his kiss, she could not be the Countess, because she was fishing, unattended, hatless, the sleeves of her shirtwaist rolled up above her white elbows, a book and a short landing-net tucked under her left arm. Countesses don’t go fishing unattended; gillies carry things. Besides, the Countess of Semois was in Semois-les-Bains selling dolls to Kingsbury.
The sun glowed on her splendid red hair; she switched the slender rod about rather awkwardly, and every time the cast of flies became entangled in a nodding willow she set her red lips tight and with an impatient “Mais, c’est trop bête! Mais, c’est vraiment trop — —”
It was evident that she had not seen him where he lay on the wall; the chances were she would pass on — indeed her back was already toward him — when the unexpected happened: a trout leaped for a gnat and fell back into the pool with a resounding splash, sending ring on ring of sunny wavelets toward the shore.
“Ah! Te voilà!” she said aloud, swinging her line free for a cast.
Smith saw what was coming and tried to dodge, but the silk line whistled on the back-cast, and the next moment his cap was snatched from his head and deposited some twenty feet out in the centre of the pool.
The amazement of the fair angler was equal to his own as she looked hastily back over her shoulder and discovered him on the wall.
There is usually something undignified about a man whose hat has been knocked off; to laugh is as fatal as to show irritation; and Smith did neither, but quietly dropped over to her side of the wall, saying, “I’m awfully sorry I spoiled your cast. Don’t mind the cap; that trout was a big one, and he may rise again.”
He had spoken in English, and she answered in very pretty English: “I am so sorry — could I help you to recover your hat?”
“Thank you; if you would let me take your rod a moment.”
“Willingly, monsieur.”
She handed him the rod; he loosened the line, measured the distance with practiced eye, turned to look behind him, and, seeing there was scant room for a long back-cast, began sending loop after loop of silken line forward across the water, using the Spey method, of which none except an expert is master.
The first cast struck half-way, but in line; the next, still in line, slipped over the cap, but failed to hook. Then, as he recovered, there was a boiling rush in the water, a flash of pink and silver, and the rod staggered.
“I — I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed aghast; “I have hooked your trout!”
“Play him,” she said quickly. The elfin shriek of the reel answered; he gave the fish every ounce the quivering rod could spare, the great trout surged deeply, swerved, circled and bored slowly upstream.
“This fish is magnificent,” said Smith, guiltily. “You really must take the rod — —”
“I shall not, indeed.”
“But this is not fair!”
“It is perfectly fair, monsieur — and a wonderful lesson in angling to me. Oh, I beg you to be careful! There is a sunken tree limb beyond!”
Her cheeks were the colour of wild roses, her blue eyes burned like stars.
“He’s down; I can’t stir him,” said Smith. “He’s down like a salmon!”
She linked her hands behind her back. “What is to be done?” she asked calmly.
“If you would gather a handful of those pebbles and throw one at a time into the pool where he is lying — —”
Before he finished speaking she had knelt, filled her palms with golden gravel, and stood ready at the water’s edge.
“Now?” she nodded, inquiringly.
“Yes, one at a time; try to hit him.”
The first pebble produced no effect; neither did the second, nor yet the third.
“Throw a handful at him,” he suggested, and braced himself for the result. A spray of gravel fell; the great fish sulked motionless.
“There’s a way—” began Smith, feeling in his pockets for his key-ring. It was not there.
“Could I be of any use?” she asked, looking up at Smith very guilelessly.
“Why, if I had something — a key-ring or anything that I could hang over the taut line — something that would slide down and jog him gently — —”
“A hairpin?” she asked.
“I’m afraid it’s too light.”
She reflected a moment; her bent forefinger brushed her velvet lips. Then she began to unfasten a long gold pin at her throat.
“Oh, not that!” exclaimed Smith, anxiously. “It might slip off.”
“It can’t; there’s a safety clasp. Anyway, we must have that trout!”
“But I could not permit — —”
“It is I who permit myself, monsieur.”
“No, no, it is too generous of you — —”
“Please!” She held the pin toward him; he shook his head; she hesitated, then with a quick movement she snapped the clasp over the taut line and sent it spinning toward the invisible fish.
He saw the gold glimmer become a spark under water, die out in dusky depths; then came a rushing upheaval of spray, a flash, the rod quivered to the reel-plate, and the fight began in fury. The rod was so slim, so light — scarce three ounces — that he could but stand on the defensive at first
. Little by little the struggle became give and take, then imperceptibly he forced the issue, steadily, delicately, for the tackle was gossamer, and he fought for the safety of the golden clasp as well as for his honour as an angler.
“Do you know how to net a trout?” he asked presently. She came and stood at his shoulder, net poised, blue eyes intent upon the circling fish.
“I place it behind him, do I not?” she asked coolly.
“Yes — when I give the word — —”
One more swerve, a half circle sheering homeward, nearer, nearer ——
A moment later the huge trout lay on the moss; iridescent tints played over its broad surface, shimmering hues deepened, waxing, warning; the spots glowed like rubies set in bronze.
Kneeling there, left hand resting on the rod, Smith looked up at her over his shoulder; but all she said was: “Ah, the poor, brave thing! The gallant fish! This is wrong — all wrong. I wish we had not taken a life we cannot give again.”
“Shall I put the trout back madame?”
She looked at him surprised.
“Would you?” she asked incredulously.
“If you desire it.”
“But it is your fish.”
“It is yours, madame.”
“Will it live? Oh, try to make it live!”
He lifted the beautiful fish in both hands, and, walking to the water’s edge, laid it in the stream. For a while it floated there, gold and silver belly turned to the sky, gills slowly inflating and collapsing. Presently a fin stirred; the spasmodic movement of the gill-covers ceased, and the breathing grew quiet and steady. Smith touched the pectoral fins; the fish strove to turn over; he steadied the dorsal fin, then the caudal, righting the fish. Slowly, very slowly, the great trout moved off, farther, farther, sinking into cool, refreshing depths; there was a dull glitter under the water, a shadow gliding, then nothing except the green obscurity of the pool criss-crossed with surface sunshine.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 574
