Lady Barbarina Part 50

"Don't you want to show it off to this gentleman?" he sociably continued.

"Mercy, how you do carry on!" his wife sighed.

"Well, I want to be lively. There's every reason for it. We're going up to Chamouni."

"You're real restless-that's what's the matter with you." And Mrs. Ruck roused herself from her own repose.

"No, I ain't," said her husband. "I never felt so quiet. I feel as peaceful as a little child."

Mrs. Ruck, who had no play of mind, looked at her daughter and at me.

"Well, I hope you'll improve," she stated with a certain flatness.

"Send in the bills," he went on, rising to match. "Don't let yourself suffer from want, Sophy. I don't care what you do now. We can't be more than gay, and we can't be worse than broke."

Sophy joined her mother with a little toss of her head, and we followed the ladies to the carriage, where the younger addressed her father. "In your place, Mr. Ruck, I wouldn't want to flaunt my meanness quite so much before strangers."

He appeared to feel the force of this rebuke, surely deserved by a man on whom the humiliation of seeing the main ornaments of his hearth betray the ascendency of that character had never yet been laid. He flushed and was silent; his companions got into their vehicle, the front seat of which was adorned with a large parcel. Mr. Ruck gave the parcel a poke with his umbrella and turned to me with a grimly penitent smile. "After all, for the ladies, that's the princ.i.p.al interest."

VII

Old M. Pigeonneau had more than once offered me the privilege of a walk in his company, but his invitation had hitherto, for one reason or another, always found me hampered. It befell, however, one afternoon that I saw him go forth for a vague airing with an unattended patience that attracted my sympathy. I hastily overtook him and pa.s.sed my hand into his venerable arm, an overture that produced in the good old man so rejoicing a response that he at once proposed we should direct our steps to the English Garden: no scene less consecrated to social ease was worthy of our union. To the English Garden accordingly we went; it lay beyond the bridge and beside the lake. It was always pretty and now was really recreative; a band played furiously in the centre and a number of discreet listeners sat under the small trees on benches and little chairs or strolled beside the blue water. We joined the strollers, we observed our companions and conversed on obvious topics. Some of these last, of course, were the pretty women who graced the prospect and who, in the light of M. Pigeonneau's comprehensive criticism, appeared surprisingly numerous. He seemed bent upon our making up our minds as to which might be prettiest, and this was an innocent game in which I consented to take a hand.

Suddenly my companion stopped, pressing my arm with the liveliest emotion. "La voila, la voila, the prettiest!" he quickly murmured; "coming toward us in a blue dress with the other." It was at the other I was looking, for the other, to my surprise, was our interesting fellow pensioner, the daughter of the most systematic of mothers. M. Pigeonneau meanwhile had redoubled his transports-he had recognised Miss Ruck. "Oh la belle rencontre, nos aimables convives-the prettiest girl in the world in effect!" And then after we had greeted and joined the young ladies, who, like ourselves, were walking arm in arm and enjoying the scene, he addressed himself to the special object of his admiration, Mees Roque.

"I was citing you with enthusiasm to my young friend here even before I had recognised you, mademoiselle."

"I don't believe in French compliments," remarked Miss Sophy, who presented her back to the smiling old man.

"Are you and Miss Ruck walking alone?" I asked of her companion. "You had better accept M. Pigeonneau's gallant protection, to say nothing of mine."

Aurora Church had taken her hand from Miss Ruck's arm; she inclined her head to the side and shone at me while her open parasol revolved on her shoulder. "Which is most improper-to walk alone or to walk with gentlemen that one picks up? I want to do what's most improper."

"What perversity," I asked, "are you, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause, trying to work out?"

"He thinks you can't understand him when he talks like that," said Miss Ruck. "But I _do_ understand you," she flirted at me-"always!"

"So I've always ventured to hope, my dear Miss Ruck."

"Well, if I didn't it wouldn't be much loss!" cried this young lady.

"Allons, en marche!" trumpeted M. Pigeonneau, all gallant urbanity and undiscouraged by her impertinence. "Let us make together the tour of the garden." And he attached himself to Miss Ruck with a respectful elderly grace which treated her own lack even of the juvenile form of that attraction as some flower of alien modesty, and was ever sublimely conscious of a mission to place modesty at its ease. This ill-a.s.sorted couple walked in front, while Aurora Church and I strolled along together.

"I'm sure this is more improper," said my companion; "this is delightfully improper. I don't say that as a compliment to you," she added. "I'd say it to any clinging man, no matter how stupid."

"Oh I'm clinging enough," I answered; "but I'm as stupid as you could wish, and this doesn't seem to me wrong."

"Not for you, no; only for me. There's nothing that a man can do that's wrong, is there? _En morale_, you know, I mean. Ah, yes, he can kill and steal; but I think there's nothing else, is there?"

"Well, it's a nice question. One doesn't know how those things are taken till after one has done them. Then one's enlightened."

"And you mean you've never been enlightened? You make yourself out very good."

"That's better than making one's self out very bad, as you do."

"Ah," she explained, "you don't know the consequences of a false position."

I was amused at her great formula. "What do you mean by yours being one?"

"Oh I mean everything. For instance, I've to pretend to be a jeune fille. I'm not a jeune fille; no American girl's a jeune fille; an American girl's an intelligent responsible creature. I've to pretend to be idiotically innocent, but I'm not in the least innocent."

This, however, was easy to meet. "You don't in the least pretend to be innocent; you pretend to be-what shall I call it?-uncannily wise."

"That's no pretence. I _am_ uncannily wise. You could call it nothing more true."

I went along with her a little, rather thrilled by this finer freedom.

"You're essentially not an American girl."

She almost stopped, looking at me; there came a flush to her cheek.

"Voila!" she said. "There's my false position. I want to be an American girl, and I've been hideously deprived of that immense convenience, that beautiful resource."

"Do you want me to tell you?" I pursued with interest. "It would be utterly impossible to an American girl-I mean unperverted, and that's the whole point-to talk as you're talking to me now."

The expressive eagerness she showed for this was charming. "Please tell me then! How would she talk?"

"I can't tell you all the things she'd say, but I think I can tell you most of the things she wouldn't. She wouldn't reason out her conduct as you seem to me to do."

Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. "I see. She would be simpler. To do very simply things not at all simple-that's the American girl!"

I greatly enjoyed our intellectual relation. "I don't know whether you're a French girl, or what you are, but, you know, I find you witty."

"Ah, you mean I strike false notes!" she quite comically wailed. "See how my whole sense for such things has been ruined. False notes are just what I want to avoid. I wish you'd always tell me."

The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in front of us, had evidently not borne fruit. Miss Ruck suddenly turned round to us with a question. "Don't you want some ice-cream?"

"_She_ doesn't strike false notes," I declared.

We had come into view of a manner of pavilion or large kiosk, which served as a cafe and at which the delicacies generally procurable at such an establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green tables and chairs set out on the gravel; M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a sense of dissipation, seconded the proposal, and we presently sat down and gave our order to a nimble attendant. I managed again to place myself next Aurora; our companions were on the other side of the table.

My neighbour rejoiced to extravagance in our situation. "This is best of all-I never believed I should come to a cafe with two strange and possibly depraved men! Now you can't persuade me this isn't wrong."

"To make it wrong," I returned, "we ought to see your mother coming down that path."

"Ah, my mother makes everything wrong," she cried, attacking with a little spoon in the shape of a spade the apex of a pink ice. And then she returned to her idea of a moment before. "You must promise to tell me-to warn me in some way-whenever I strike a false note. You must give a little cough, like that-ahem!"

"You'll keep me very busy and people will think I'm in a consumption."

"Voyons," she continued, "why have you never talked to me more? Is that a false note? Why haven't you been 'attentive'? That's what American girls call it; that's what Miss Ruck calls it."