Tales of Two Countries Part 7

"I suppose it's a family failing," answered the fair one, with a rapid glance.

"N-n-no," said Ola, exceedingly put out, "my brother sings capitally."

"Do you think so?" she said, drily.

This was the most astounding thing that had ever happened to Ola: that there could be more than one opinion about his brother's singing, and that she, his "future wife," did not seem to admire it! And yet it was not quite unpleasant to him to hear it.

Again there was a silence, which Ola sought in vain to break.

"Don't you care for dancing?" she asked.

"Not with every one," he blurted out.

She laughed: "No, no; but gentlemen have the right to choose."

Now Ola began to lose his footing. He felt like a man who is walking, lost in thought, through the streets on a winter evening, and who suddenly discovers that he has got upon a patch of slippery ice. There was nothing for it but to keep up and go ahead; so, with the courage of despair, he said "If I knew--or dared to hope--that one of the ladies--no--that the lady I wanted to dance with--that she would care to--hm--that she would dance with me, then--then--" he could get no further, and after saying "then" two or three times over, he came to a stand-still.

"You could ask her," said the fair one.

Her bracelet had come unfastened, and its clasp was so stiff that she had to bend right forward and pinch it so hard that she became quite red in the face, in order to fasten it again.

"Would you, for example, dance with me?" Ola's brain was swimming.

"Why not?" she answered. She stood pressing the point of her shoe into a crack in the floor.

"We're to have a party at the Parsonage on Friday--would you give me a dance then?"

"With pleasure; which would you like?" she answered, trying her best to a.s.sume a "society" manner.

"A quadrille?" said Ola; thinking: "Quadrilles are so long."

"The second quadrille is disengaged," answered the lady.

"And a galop?"

"Yes, thank you; the first galop," she replied, with a little hesitation.

"And a polka?"

"No, no! no more," cried the fair one, looking at Ola with alarm.

At the same moment, Hans came rushing along at full speed. "Oh, how lucky I am to find you!--but in what company!"

Thereupon he took possession of the fair one in his amiable fashion, and drew her away with him to find her wraps and join the others.

"A quadrille and a galop; but no more--so so! so so!" repeated Cousin Ola. He stood as though rooted to the spot. At last he became aware that he was alone. He hastily seized a hat, slunk out by the back way, sneaked through the garden, and clambered with great difficulty over the garden fence, not far from the gate which stood ajar.

He struck into the first foot-path through the fields, fixing his eyes upon the Parsonage chimneys. He was vaguely conscious that he was getting wet up to the knees in the long gra.s.s; but on the other hand, he was not in the least aware that the Sheriff's old uniform cap, which he had had the luck to s.n.a.t.c.h up in his haste, was waggling about upon his head, until at last it came to rest when the long peak slipped down over his ear.

"A quadrille and a galop; but no more--so so! so so!--"--It was pretty well on in the night when Hans approached the Parsonage. He had seen the ladies of the Doctor's party home, and was now making up the accounts of the day as he went along.

"She's a little shy; but on the whole I don't dislike that."

When he left the road at the Parsonage garden, he said, "She's dreadfully shy--almost more than I care for."

But as he crossed the farm-yard, he vowed that coy and capricious girls were the most intolerable creatures he knew. The thing was that he did not feel at all satisfied with the upshot of the day. Not that he for a moment doubted that she loved him; but, just on that account, he thought her coldness and reserve doubly annoying. She had never once thrown the ring to him; she had never once singled him out in the cotillion; and on the way home she had talked to every one but him. But he would adopt a different policy the next time; she should soon come to repent that day.

He slipped quietly into the house, so that his uncle might not hear how late he was. In order to reach his own and his brother's bedroom he had to pa.s.s through a long attic. A window in this attic was used by the young men as a door through which to reach a sort of balcony, formed by the canopy over the steps leading into the garden.

Cousin Hans noticed that this window was standing open; and out upon the balcony, in the clear moonlight, he saw his brother's figure.

Ola still wore his white dancing-gloves; he held on to the railing with both hands, and stared the moon straight in the face.

Cousin Hans could not understand what his brother was doing out there at that time of night; and least of all could he understand what had induced him to put a flower-pot on his head.

"He must be drunk," thought Hans, approaching him warily.

Then he heard his brother muttering something about a quadrille and a galop; after which he began to make some strange motions with his hands.

Cousin Hans received the impression that he was trying to snap his fingers; and presently Ola said, slowly, and clearly, in his monotonous and unsympathetic speaking voice: "Hope's clad in April green--trommelommelom, trommelommelom;" you see, poor fellow, he could not sing.

AT THE FAIR.

It was by the merest chance that Monsieur and Madame Tousseau came to Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the early days of September.

Four weeks ago they had been married in Lyons, which was their home; but where they had pa.s.sed these four weeks they really could not have told you. The time had gone hop skip-and-jump; a couple of days had entirely slipped out of their reckoning, and, on the other hand, they remembered a little summer-house at Fontainebleau, where they had rested one evening, as clearly as if they had pa.s.sed half their lives there.

Paris was, strictly speaking, the goal of their wedding journey, and there they established themselves in a comfortable little _hotel garni_.

But the city was sultry and they could not rest; so they rambled about among the small towns in the neighborhood, and found themselves, one Sunday at noon, in Saint-Germain.

"Monsieur and Madame have doubtless come to take part in the fete?" said the plump little landlady of the Hotel Henri Quatre, as she ushered her guests up the steps.

The fete? They knew of no fete in the world except their own wedded happiness; but they did not say so to the landlady.

They soon learned that they had been lucky enough to drop into the very midst of the great and celebrated fair which is held every year, on the first Sunday of September, in the Forest of Saint-Germain.

The young couple were highly delighted with their good hap. It seemed as though Fortune followed at their heels, or rather ran ahead of them, to arrange surprises. After a delicious tete-a-tete dinner behind one of the clipped yew trees in the quaint garden, they took a carriage and drove off to the forest.

In the hotel garden, beside the little fountain in the middle of the lawn, sat a ragged condor which the landlord had bought to amuse his guests. It was attached to its perch by a good strong rope. But when the sun shone upon it with real warmth, it fell a-thinking of the snow-peaks of Peru, of mighty wing-strokes over the deep valleys--and then it forgot the rope.

Two vigorous strokes with its pinions would bring the rope up taut, and it would fall back upon the sward. There it would lie by the hour, then shake itself and clamber up to its little perch again.

When it turned its head to watch the happy pair, Madame Tousseau burst into a fit of laughter at its melancholy mien.

The afternoon sun glimmered through the dense foliage of the interminable straight-ruled avenue that skirts the terrace. The young wife's veil fluttered aloft as they sped through the air, and wound itself right round Monsieur's head. It took a long time to put it in order again, and Madame's hat had to be adjusted ever so often. Then came the relighting of Monsieur's cigar, and that, too, was quite a business; for Madame's fan would always give a suspicious little flirt every time the match was lighted; then a penalty had to be paid, and that, again, took time.