Lady Barbarina Part 53

"She really asked you to get the Rucks out of the house?"

"She asked me to tell them that their rooms had been let three months ago to another family. She has an aplomb!"

Mrs. Church's aplomb caused me considerable diversion; I'm not sure that it wasn't in some degree to laugh at my leisure that I went out into the garden that evening to smoke a cigar. The night was dark and not particularly balmy, and most of my fellow pensioners, after dinner, had remained indoors. A long straight walk conducted from the door of the house to the ancient grille I've described, and I stood here for some time looking through the iron bars at the silent empty street. The prospect was not enlivening and I presently turned away. At this moment I saw in the distance the door of the house open and throw a shaft of lamplight into the darkness. Into the lamplight stepped the figure of an apparently circ.u.mspect female, as they say in the old stories, who presently closed the door behind her. She disappeared in the dusk of the garden and I had seen her but an instant; yet I remained under the impression that Aurora Church, on the eve of departure, had come out to commune, like myself, with isolation.

I lingered near the gate, keeping the red tip of my cigar turned toward the house, and before long a slight but interesting figure emerged from among the shadows of the trees and encountered the rays of a lamp that stood just outside the gate. My fellow solitary was in fact Aurora Church, who acknowledged my presence with an impatience not wholly convincing.

"Ought I to retire-to return to the house?"

"If you ought," I replied, "I should be very sorry to tell you so."

"But we're all alone. There's no one else in the garden."

"It's not the first time, then, that I've been alone with a young lady.

I'm not at all terrified."

"Ah, but I?" she wailed to extravagance. "I've _never_ been alone-!"

Quickly, however, she interrupted herself. "Bon, there's another false note!"

"Yes, I'm obliged to admit that one's very false."

She stood looking at me. "I'm going away to-morrow; after that there will be no one to tell me."

"That will matter little," I presently returned. "Telling you will do no good."

"Ah, why do you say that?" she all ruefully asked.

I said it partly because it was true, but I said it for other reasons, as well, which I found hard to define. Standing there bareheaded in the night air, in the vague light, this young lady took on an extreme interest, which was moreover not diminished by a suspicion on my own part that she had come into the garden knowing me to be there. I thought her charming, I thought her remarkable and felt very sorry for her; but as I looked at her the terms in which Madame Beaurepas had ventured to characterise her recurred to me with a certain force. I had professed a contempt for them at the time, but it now came into my head that perhaps this unfortunately situated, this insidiously mutinous young creature was in quest of an effective preserver. She was certainly not a girl to throw herself at a man's head, but it was possible that in her intense-her almost morbid-desire to render operative an ideal charged perhaps after all with as many fallacies as her mother affirmed, she might do something reckless and irregular-something in which a sympathetic compatriot, as yet unknown, would find his profit. The image, unshaped though it was, of this sympathetic compatriot filled me with a semblance of envy. For some moments I was silent, conscious of these things; after which I answered her question. "Because some things-some differences-are felt, not learned. To you liberty's not natural; you're like a person who has bought a repeating watch and is, in his satisfaction, constantly taking it out of his pocket to hear it sound. To a real American girl her liberty's a very vulgarly-ticking old clock."

"Ah, you mean then," said my young friend, "that my mother has ruined me?"

"Ruined you?"

"She has so perverted my mind that when I try to be natural I'm necessarily indecent."

I threw up hopeless arms. "That again's a false note!"

She turned away. "I think you're cruel."

"By no means," I declared; "because, for my own taste, I prefer you as-as-"

On my hesitating she turned back. "As what?"

"As you are!"

She looked at me a while again, and then she said in a little reasoning tone that reminded me of her mother's, only that it was conscious and studied, "I wasn't aware that I'm under any particular obligation to please you!" But she also gave a clear laugh, quite at variance with this stiffness. Suddenly I thought her adorable.

"Oh there's no obligation," I said, "but people sometimes have preferences. I'm very sorry you're going away."

"What does it matter to you? You are going yourself."

"As I'm going in a different direction, that makes all the greater separation."

She answered nothing; she stood looking through the bars of the tall gate at the empty dusky street. "This grille is like a cage," she said at last.

"Fortunately it's a cage that will open." And I laid my hand on the lock.

"Don't open it"; and she pressed the gate close. "If you should open it I'd go out. There you'd be, monsieur-for I should never return."

I treated it as wholly thrilling, and indeed I quite found it so. "Where should you go?"

"To America."

"Straight away?"

"Somehow or other. I'd go to the American consul. I'd beg him to give me money-to help me."

I received this a.s.sertion without a smile; I was not in a smiling humour.

On the contrary I felt singularly excited and kept my hand on the lock of the gate. I believed, or I thought I believed, what my companion said, and I had-absurd as it may appear-an irritated vision of her throwing herself on consular tenderness. It struck me for a moment that to pa.s.s out of that gate with this yearning straining young creature would be to pa.s.s to some mysterious felicity. If I were only a hero of romance I would myself offer to take her to America.

In a moment more perhaps I should have persuaded myself that I was one, but at this juncture I heard a sound hostile to the romantic note. It was nothing less than the substantial tread of Celestine, the cook, who stood grinning at us as we turned about from our colloquy.

"I ask bien pardon," said Celestine. "The mother of mademoiselle desires that mademoiselle should come in immediately. M. le Pasteur Galopin has come to make his adieux to ces dames."

Aurora gave me but one glance, the memory of which I treasure. Then she surrendered to Celestine, with whom she returned to the house.

The next morning, on coming into the garden, I learned that Mrs. Church and her daughter had effectively quitted us. I was informed of this fact by old M. Pigeonneau, who sat there under a tree drinking his cafe-au-lait at a little green table.

"I've nothing to envy you," he said; "I had the last glimpse of that charming Mees Aurore."

"I had a very late glimpse," I answered, "and it was all I could possibly desire."

"I've always noticed," rejoined M. Pigeonneau, "that your desires are more under control than mine. Que voulez-vous? I'm of the old school.

Je crois que cette race se perd. I regret the departure of that attractive young person; she has an enchanting smile. Ce sera une femme d'esprit. For the mother, I can console myself. I'm not sure _she_ was a femme d'esprit, though she wished so prodigiously to pa.s.s for one.

Round, rosy, potelee, she yet had not the temperament of her appearance; she was a femme austere-I made up my mind to that. I've often noticed that contradiction in American ladies. You see a plump little woman with a speaking eye and the contour and complexion of a ripe peach, and if you venture to conduct yourself in the smallest degree in accordance with these _indices_, you discover a species of Methodist-of what do you call it?-of Quakeress. On the other hand, you encounter a tall lean angular form without colour, without grace, all elbows and knees, and you find it's a nature of the tropics! The women of duty look like coquettes, and the others look like alpenstocks! However, we've still la belle Madame Roque-a real femme de Rubens, celle-la. It's very true that to talk to her one must know the Flemish tongue!"

I had determined in accordance with my brother's telegram to go away in the afternoon; so that, having various duties to perform, I left M.

Pigeonneau to his ethnic studies. Among other things I went in the course of the morning to the banker's, to draw money for my journey, and there I found Mr. Ruck with a pile of crumpled letters in his lap, his chair tipped back and his eyes gloomily fixed on the fringe of the green plush table-cloth. I timidly expressed the hope that he had got better news from home; whereupon he gave me a look in which, considering his provocation, the habit of forlorn patience was conspicuous.

He took up his letters in his large hand and, crushing them together, held it out to me. "That stack of postal matter," he said, "is worth about five cents. But I guess," he added, rising, "that I know where I am by this time." When I had drawn my money I asked him to come and breakfast with me at the little bra.s.serie, much favoured by students, to which I used to resort in the old town. "I couldn't eat, sir," he frankly pleaded, "I couldn't eat. Bad disappointments strike at the seat of the appet.i.te. But I guess I'll go with you, so as not to be on show down there at the pension. The old woman down there accuses me of turning up my nose at her food. Well, I guess I shan't turn up my nose at anything now."

We went to the little bra.s.serie, where poor Mr. Ruck made the lightest possible dejeuner. But if he ate very little he still moved his lean jaws-he mumbled over his spoilt repast of apprehended facts; strange tough financial fare into which I was unable to bite. I was very sorry for him, I wanted to ease him off; but the only thing I could do when we had breakfasted was to see him safely back to the Pension Beaurepas. We went across the Treille and down the Corraterie, out of which we turned into the Rue du Rhone. In this latter street, as all the world knows, prevail those shining shop-fronts of the watchmakers and jewellers for its long list of whom Geneva is famous. I had always admired these elegant exhibitions and never pa.s.sed them without a lingering look. Even on this occasion, preoccupied as I was with my impending departure and with my companion's troubles, I attached my eyes to the precious tiers that flashed and twinkled behind the huge clear plates of gla.s.s. Thanks to this inveterate habit I recorded a fresh observation. In the largest and most irresistible of these repositories I distinguished two ladies, seated before the counter with an air of absorption which sufficiently proclaimed their ident.i.ty. I hoped my companion wouldn't see them, but as we came abreast of the door, a little beyond, we found it open to the warm summer air. Mr. Ruck happened to glance in, and he immediately recognised his wife and daughter. He slowly stopped, his eyes fixed on them; I wondered what he would do. A salesman was in the act of holding up a bracelet before them on its velvet cushion and flashing it about in a winsome manner.

Mr. Ruck said nothing, but he presently went in; whereupon, feeling that I mustn't lose him, I did the same. "It will be an opportunity," I remarked as cheerfully as possible, "for me to bid good-bye to the ladies."

They turned round on the approach of their relative, opposing an indomitable front. "Well, you'd better get home to breakfast-that's what _you'd_ better do," his wife at once remarked. Miss Sophy resisted in silence; she only took the bracelet from the attendant and gazed at it all fixedly. My friend seated himself on an empty stool and looked round the shop. "Well, we've been here before, and you ought to know it," Mrs.

Ruck a trifle guiltily contended. "We were here the first day we came."