"'I—I don't know,' she stammered; 'my shoe seems tied to yours.'"
"I—I don't know," she stammered; "my shoe seems to be tied to yours."
"Tied!" he cried, bending down in a panic, "wasn't thatmyshoe-lace?" His golf-bag fell, he seized it and set it against the seat between them. "Hold it a moment," he groaned. "I tied your shoe-lace to mine!"
"Youtied it!" she repeated, furiously.
"I saw a shoe-lace—I thought it was mine—I tied it fast—in a d-d-double knot——"
"Untie it at once!" she said, crimson to the roots of her hair.
"Great Heavens, madam! I didn't mean to do it! I'll fix it in a moment——"
"Don't," she whispered, fiercely; "the people opposite are looking at us! Do you wish to hold us both up to ridicule?" He straightened up, thoroughly flurried.
"But—this is my station—" he began.
"It is mine, too. I'd rather sit here all night than have those people see you untie your shoe from mine! How—howcouldyou——"
"I've explained that I didn't mean to do it," he returned, dropping into the breathless undertone in which she spoke. "Happening to glance down, I saw a shoe-lace end and thought my shoe was untied——"
She looked at him scornfully.
"And I tied it tight, that's all. I'm horribly mortified; this is the second time I've appeared to disadvantage——"
"People in New York usually turn to the right; even horses——"
"I doubt," he said, "that you can make me feel much worse than I feel now, but it's a sort of a horrible relief to know what a fool you think me."
She said nothing, sitting there, cooling her hot face in the breeze from the forward door; he, numb with chagrin, stole an apprehensive glance at the passengers opposite. Nobody appeared to have observed their plight, and he ventured to say so in a low voice.
"Are you certain?" she asked, her own voice not quite steady.
"Perfectly. Look! Nobody is eying our feet."
Her own small feet were well tucked up under her gown; she instinctively drew them further in; he felt a little tug; they both coloured furiously.
"This is simply unspeakable," she said, looking straight ahead of her through two bright tears of mortification.
"Suppose," he whispered, "you edge your foot a trifle this way—I think I can cut the knot with my penknife—" He glanced about him stealthily. "Shall I try?"
"Not now. Wait until those people go."
"But some of them may live in Harlem."
"I—I can't help it. Do you suppose I'm going to let you lean over before all those people and try to untie our shoes?"
"Do you mean to sit here until they're all gone?" he asked, appalled.
"I do. Terrible as the situation is, we've got to conceal it."
"Even if some of them go to the end of the line?"
"I don't care!" She turned on him with a hint of that pretty fierceness again. "Do you know what you've done? You've affronted and mortified me and humiliated me beyond endurance. I have a guest to dine with me: I shall not arrive before midnight!"
"Do you suppose," he said miserably, "that anything you say can add to my degradation? Can't you imagine how a man must feel who first of all makes a four-footed fool of himself before the most attractive girl he——"
"Don't say that!" she cried, hotly.
"Yes, I will! You are! And I dodged and tumbled about like a headless chicken and ran into the wrong gate. I wish I'd climbed out on the third rail! And then, when I hoped I'd never see you again, I found myself beside you, and—Good Heavens! I lost no time in beginning my capers again and doing the most abandoned deed a man ever accomplished on earth!"
She appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of a breakfast-food advertisement; her color was still high; at times she worried her under lip with her white teeth, but her breath rose and fell under the fluffy bosom of her gown with more regularity, and the two bright tears in her eyes had dried unshed. Wrath may have dried them.
"I wish it were possible," he said very humbly, "for you to see the humour——"
"Humour!" she repeated, menacingly.
"No—I didn't mean that, I meant the—the——"
"You did! You meant the humour of the situation. I will answer you. I donotsee the humour of it!"
"You are quite right," he admitted, looking furtively at the edge of her gown which concealed his right foot. "It is, as you say, simply ghastly to be tied together by the feet. Don't you suppose I could—without awakening suspicion—cut the—the laces with a penknife?"
"I beg you will attempt nothing whatever until this car is empty."
"Certainly," he said. "I will do anything in the world I can to spare you."
She did not reply, and he sat there nervously balanced on the edge of his seat, watching the lights of Harlem flash into view below. He had been hungry; he was no longer. Appetite had been succeeded by a gnawing anxiety. Again and again warm waves of shame overwhelmed him, alternating with a sort of wild-eyed pity for the young girl who sat so rigidly beside him, face averted. Once a mad desire to laugh seized him; he wondered whether it might be a premonition of hysteria, and shuddered. It didnot seem as though he could possibly endure it another second to be tied by the foot to this silently suffering and lovely companion.
"Do you think," he said, hoarsely, "at the next station that if we rose together—and kept step——"
She shook her head.
"A—a sort of lock-step," he explained, timidly.
"I would if I thought it possible," she replied under her breath; "but I dare not. Suppose you should miss step! You are likely to do anything if it's only sufficiently foolish."
"You could take my arm and pretend you are my lame sister," he ventured.
"Suppose the train started. Suppose, by any one of a thousand possible accidents, you should become panic-stricken. What sort of a spectacle would we furnish the passengers of this car? No! No! No! The worst of it is almost over. My guest is there—astounded at my absence. Before I am even half-way back to Twenty-eighth Street she will have become sufficiently affronted to leave the house. I might as well go on to the end of the road." She turned toward him hastily: "Where is the end of this road?"
"Somewhere in the Bronx, I believe," he said, vaguely.
"That is hours from Twenty-eighth Street, isn't it?"
"I believe so."
The train whirled on; stations were far between, now. He sat so silent, so utterly broken and downcast, that after a long while she turned to him with a hint of softness in her stern reserve.
"Of course," she said, "I do not suppose you deliberately intended to tie our feet together. I am not absurd. But the astonishment, the horror of finding what you had done exasperated me for a moment. I'm cool enough now; besides, it is perfectly plain that you are the sort of man one is—is accustomed to know."
"I hope not!" he said, devoutly.
"Oh, I mean—" She hesitated, and the glimmer of a smile touched her eyes, instantly extinguished, however.
"I understand," he said. "You mean that it's lucky your shoe-laces are tied to the shoe-lace of a man of your own sort. I hope to Heaven you may find a little comfort in that."
"I do," she said, with the uncertain violet light in her eyes again. "It's bad enough, goodness knows, but I—I am very sure you did not mean——"
"You are perfectly right; I mean well, as they say of all chumps. And the worst of it is," he added,wildly, "I never before knew that I was a chump! I never before saw any symptoms. Would you believe me, I never in all my life have been such an idiot as I was in those first few minutes that I crossed your path. How on earth to account for it; how to explain, to ask pardon, to—to ever forget it! As long as I live I shall wake at night with the dreadful chagrin burning my ears off. Isn't it the limit? And I—I shouldn't have felt so crushed if it had been anybody excepting you——"
"I do not understand," she said gravely.
"I do," he muttered.
The conversation dropped there: she gazed thoughtfully out upon the Teutonic magnificence of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street by gaslight; he, arms folded, relapsed into bitter contemplation of the breakfast-food. So immersed he became in the picture of an unctuous little boy stuffing himself to repletion under the admiring smirk of a benevolent parent that he forgot his manacles, and attempting to stretch his cramped leg, returned to his senses in a hurry.
"I think," she suggested, quietly, "that, if you care to stretch, I wouldn't mind it, either. Can you do it discreetly?"
"I'll try," he said in a whisper. "Shall I count three?"
She nodded.
"One, two, three," he counted, and they cautiously stretched their legs.
"I now know how the Siamese twins felt," he said, sullenly. "No wonder they died young."
She laughed—a curious, little laugh which was one of the most agreeable sounds he had ever heard.
"I take it for granted," he said, "that you will always cherish for me a wholesome and natural hatred."
"I shall never see you again," she replied, simply.
That silenced him for a while; he fished about in his intellect to find mitigating circumstances. There was none that he knew of.
"Suppose—under pleasanter auspices, we should some day meet?" he suggested.
"We never shall."
"How do you know?"
"It is scarcely worth while speculating upon such an improbability," she said, coldly.
"But—suppose——"
She turned toward him. "You desire to know what my attitude would be toward you?"
"Yes, I do."
"It would be one of absolutely amiable indifference—if you really wish to know," she said so sweetly that he was quite sure his entire body shrank at least an inch.
"By the way," she added, "the last passenger has left this car."
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. "Now's our time. Would you mind——"
"With the very greatest pleasure," she said, quickly; "please count one, two, three."
He counted; there came a discreet movement, and from under the hem of her gown there appeared a dainty shoe, accompanied by a larger masculine companion. He bent down, his fingers seemed to be all thumbs, and he grew redder and redder.
"Perhaps I can do it," she said, stripping off her gloves and bending over. A stray tendril of bright hair brushed his cheek as their heads almost came together.
"Goodness, what a dreadful knot!" she breathed, her smooth fingers busy. The perfume of her hair, her gloves, her gown thrilled him; he looked at her face, now flushed with effort; his eyes fell on her delicate hands, her distractingly pretty foot, in its small, polished shoe.
"Patience," she said, calmly; "this knot must give way——"
"If it doesn't——"
"Madness lies that way," she breathed. "Wait! Don't dare to move your foot!"
"We are approaching a station; shall I cut it?" he asked.
"No—wait! I think I have solved it. There!" she cried with a breathless laugh. "We are free!"
There was not an instant to lose, for the train had already stopped; they arose with one accord and hurried out into the silvery Harlem moonlight—which does not, perhaps, differ from normal moonlight, although it seemed to him to do astonishing tricks with her hair and figure there on the deserted platform, turning her into the loveliest and most unreal creature he had ever seen in all his life.
"There ought to be a train pretty soon," he said cheerfully.
She did not answer.
"Do you mind my speaking to you now that we are——"
"Untethered?" she said with a sudden little flurry of laughter. "Oh, no; why should I care what happens to me now, after taking a railroad journey tied to the shoe-strings of an absent-minded stranger?"
"Please don't speak so—so heartlessly——"
"Heartlessly? What have hearts to do with this evening's lunacy?" she asked, coolly.
He had an idea, an instinctive premonition, but it was no explanation to offer her.
Far away up the track the starlike headlight of a train glittered: he called her attention to it, and she nodded. Neither spoke for a long while; the headlight grew larger and yellower; the vicious little train came whizzing in, slowed, halted with a jolt. He put her aboard and followed into a car absolutely empty save for themselves. When they had gravely seated themselves side by side she looked around at him and said without particular severity: "I can see no reason for our going back together; can you?"
"Yes," he answered with such inoffensive and guileless conviction that she was silent.
He went on presently: "Monstrous as my stupidity is, monumental ass as I must appear to you, I am, as a matter of fact, rather a decent fellow—the sort of man a girl need not flay alive to punish."
"I do not desire to punish you. I do not expect to know you——"
"Do you mean 'expect,' or 'desire'?"
"I mean both, if you insist." There was a sudden glimmer in her clear eyes that warned him; but he went on:
"I beg you to give me a chance to prove myself not such a clown as you think me."
"But I don't think about you at all!" she explained.
"Won't you give me a chance?"
"How?"
"Somebody you—we both know—I mean to say——"
"You mean, will I sit here and compare notes with you to find out whether we both know Tom, Dick, and Harry? No, I will not."
"I mean—so that—if you don't mind—somebody can vouch for me——"
"No," she said, decisively.
"I mean—I would be so grateful—and I admire you tremendously——"
"Please do not say that."
"No—I won't, of course; I don't admire anybody very much, and I didn't dream of being offensive—only—I—now that I've known you——"
"You don't know me," she observed, icily.
"No, of course, I don't know you at all; I'm only talking to you——"
"A nice comment upon us both," she observed; "could anything be more pitifully common?"
"But being tied together, how could we avoid talking about it?" he pleaded. "When you're tied up like that to a person, it's per—permitted to speak, you know——"
"We talked entirely too much," she said with decision. "Now we are not tied at all, and I do notsee what decent excuse we can have for conversing about anything.... Do you?"
"Yes, I do."
"What excuse?" she asked.
"Well, for one thing, a sense of humour. A nice spectacle we should be, you in one otherwise empty car, I in another, bored to death——"
"Do you think," she said, impatiently, "that I require anybody's society to save myself fromennui?"
"No—but I require——"
"That is impertinent!"
"I didn't mean to be; you must know that!" he said.
She looked out of the window.
"I wonder," he began in a cheerful and speculative tone, taking courage from her silence—"I wonder whether you know——"
"I will not discuss people I know with you," she said.
"Then let us discuss people I know," he rejoined, amiably.
"Please don't."
"Please let me——"
"No."
"Are you never going to forgive me?" he asked.
"I shall forget," she said, meaningly.
"Me?"
"Certainly."
"Please don't——"
"You are always lingering dangerously close to the border of impertinence," she said. "I do not wish to be rude or ungracious. I have been unpardonably annoyed, and—when I consider my present false situation—I am annoyed still more. Let me be unmistakably clear and concise; I do not feel any—anger—toward you; I have no feeling whatever toward you; and I do not ever expect to see you again. Let it rest so. I will drop you my best curtsey when you lift your hat to me at Twenty-ninth Street. Can a guilty man ask more?"
"Your punishment is severe," he said, flushing.
"My punishment? Who am I punishing, if you please?"
"Me."
"What folly! I entertain no human emotions toward you; I have no desire to punish you. How could I punish you—if I wished to?"
"By doing what you are doing."
"And what is that?" she asked rather softly.
"Denying me any hope of ever knowing you."
"You are unfair," she said, biting her lip. "I do not deny you that 'hope,' as you choose to call it. Consider a moment. Had you merely seen meon the train you could not have either hoped or even desired ever to know me. Suppose for a moment—" she flushed, but her voice was cool and composed "suppose you were attracted to me—thought me agreeable to look at? You surely would never have dreamed of speaking to me and asking such a thing. Why, then, should you take unfair advantage of an accident and ask it now? You have no right to—nor have I to accord you what you say you desire."
She spoke very sweetly, meeting his eyes without hesitation.
"May I reply to you?" he asked soberly.
"Yes—if you wish."
"You will not take it as an affront?"
"Not—not if—" She looked at him. "No," she said.
"Then this is my reply: Wherever I might have seen you I should instantly have desired to know you. That desire would have caused you no inquietude; I should have remained near you without offense, perfectly certain in my own mind that somehow and somewhere I must manage to know you; and to that end—always without offense, and without your knowledge—I should have left the train when you did, satisfied myself where you lived, and then I should have scoured the city, and moved heaven andearth to find the proper person who might properly ask your permission to receive me. That is what I should have done if I had remained thirty seconds in the same car with you.... Are you offended?"
"No," she said.
They journeyed on for some time, saying nothing; she, young face bent, sensitive lips adroop, perhaps considering what he said; he, cradling his golf-sticks, trying to keep his eyes off her and succeeding very badly.
"I wonder what your name is?" she said, looking up at him.
"James Seabury," he replied so quickly that it was almost pathetic.
She mused, frowning a little: "Where have I heard your name?" she asked with an absent-minded glance at him.
"Oh—er—around, I suppose," he suggested, vaguely.
"But I have heard it. Are you famous?"
"Oh, no," he said quickly. "I'm an architect, or ought to be. Fact is, I'm so confoundedly busy golfing and sailing and fishing and shooting and hunting that I have very little time for business."
"What a confession!" she exclaimed, laughing outright; and the beauty that transfigured her took his breath away. But her laughter was brief, hereyes grew more serious than ever: "So you are not in business?"
"No."
"I am employed," she said calmly, looking at him.
"Are you?" he said, astonished.
"So, you see," she added gaily, "I should have very little time to see anybody——"
"You mean me?"
"Yes, you, for example."
"You don't work all the while, do you?" he asked.
"Usually."
"All the time?"
"I dine—at intervals."
"That's the very thing!" he said with enthusiasm.
She looked at him gravely.
"Don't you see," he went on, "as soon as you'll let me know you my sister will call, and then you'll call, and then my sister will invite——"
She was suddenly laughing again—a curious laugh, quite free and unguarded.
"Of course, you'll tell your sister how we met," she suggested; "she'll be so anxious to know me when she hears all about it."
"Do you suppose," he said coolly, "that I don't know one of my own sort whenever or however I happen to meet her?"
"Men cannot always tell; I grant you women seldom fail in placing one another at first glance; but men rarely possess that instinct.... Besides, I tell you I am employed."
"What of it? Even if you wore the exceedingly ornamental uniform of a parlor-maid it could not worry me."
"Do you think your sister would hasten to call on a saleswoman at Blumenshine's?" she asked carelessly.
"Nobody wants her to," he retorted, amused.
"Or on a parlor-maid—for example?"
"Let her see you first; you can't shock her after that.... Are you?" he inquired gently—so gently, so pleasantly, that she gave him a swift look that set his heart galloping.
"Do you really desire to know me?" she asked. But before he could answer she sprang up, saying: "Good gracious! This is Twenty-eighth Street! It seems impossible!"
He could not believe it, either, but he fled after her, suit-case and golf-bag swinging; the gates slammed, they descended the stairs and emerged on Twenty-eighth Street. "I live on Twenty-ninth Street," she said; "shall we say good-bye here?"
"I should think not!" he replied with a scornful decision that amazed her, but, curiously enough, didnot offend her. They walked up Twenty-eighth Street to Fifth Avenue, crossed, turned north under the white flare of electricity, then entered Twenty-ninth Street slowly, side by side, saying nothing.
She halted at the portal of an old-fashioned house which had been turned into an apartment hotel—a great brownstone mansion set back from the street. A severely respectable porter in livery appeared and bowed to her, but when his apoplectic eyes encountered Seabury's his shaven jaw dropped and a curious spasm appeared to affect his knees.
She did not notice it; she turned to Seabury and, looking him straight in the face, held out her hand.
"Good-night," she said. "Be chivalrous enough to find out who I am—without sacrificing me.... You—you have not displeased me."
He took her hand, held it a moment, then released it.
"I live here," he said calmly.
A trifle disconcerted, she searched his face. "That is curious," she said uneasily.
"Oh, not very. I have bachelor apartments here; I've been away from town for three months. Here is my pass-key," he added, laughing, and to the strangely paralyzed porter he tossed his luggage with a nod and a pleasant: "You didn't expect me for another month, William, did you?"
"That explains it," she said smiling, a tint of excitement in her pretty cheeks. "I've been here only for a day or two."
They were entering now, side by side; he followed her into the elevator. The little red-haired boy, all over freckles and gilt buttons, who presided within the cage, gaped in a sort of stupor when he saw Seabury.
"Well, Tommy," inquired that young gentleman, "what's the matter?"
"What floor?" stammered Tommy, gazing wildly from one to the other.
"The usual one, in my case," said Seabury, surprised.
"The usual one, in my case," said the girl, looking curiously at the agitated lad. The cage shot up to the third floor; they both rose, and he handed her out. Before either could turn the elevator hurriedlydropped, leaving them standing there together. Then, to the consternation of Seabury, the girl quietly rang at one of the only two apartments on the floor, and the next instant a rather smart-looking English maid opened the door.
Seabury stared; he turned and examined the corridor; he saw the number on the door of the elevator shaft; he saw the number over the door.
"There seems to be," he began slowly, "something alarming the matter with me to-night. I suppose—I suppose it's approaching dementia, but do you know that I have a delusion that this apartment is mine?"
"Yours!" faltered the girl, turning pale.
"Well—it was once—before I left town. Either that or incipient lunacy explains my hallucination."
The maid stood at the door gazing at him in undisguised astonishment. Her pretty mistress looked at her, looked at Seabury, turned and cast an agitated glance along the corridor—just in time to catch a glimpse of the curly black whiskers and the white and ghastly face of the proprietor peering at them around the corner. Whiskers and pallor instantly vanished. She looked at Seabury.
"Please come in a moment, Mr. Seabury," she said calmly. He followed her into the familiar room decorated with his own furniture, and lined with hisown books, hung with his own pictures. At a gesture from her he seated himself in his own armchair; she sat limply in a chair facing him.
"Are these your rooms?" she asked unsteadily.
"I thought so, once. Probably there's something the matter with me."
"You did not desire to rent them furnished during your absence?"
"Not that I know of."
"And you have returned a month before they expected you, and I—oh, this is infamous!" she cried, clenching her white hands. "How dared that wretched man rent this place to me? How dared he!"
A long and stunning silence fell upon them—participated in by the British maid.
Then Seabury began to laugh. He looked at the maid, he looked at her angry and very lovely young mistress, looked at the tables littered with typewriters and stationery, he caught sight of his own dining-room with the little table laid for two. His gayety disconcerted her—he rose, paced the room and returned.
"It seems my landlord has tried to turn a thrifty penny by leasing you my rooms!" he said, soberly. "Is that it?"
She was close to tears, controlling her voice andkeeping her self-possession with a visible effort. "I—I am treasurer and secretary for the new wing to—to St. Berold's Hospital," she managed to say. "We—the women interested, needed an office—we employ several typewriters, and—oh, goodness! What on earth will your sister think!"
"My sister? Why, she's at Seal Harbor——"
"Your sister was there visiting my mother. I came on to town to see our architects; I wired her to come. She—she was to dine with me here to-night! Sherry was notified!"
"My sister?"
"Certainly. What on earth did she think when she found me installed in your rooms? And that's bad enough, but I invited her to dine and go over the hospital matters—she's one of the vice presidents—and then—then you tied our feet together and it's—what time is it?" she demanded of her maid.
"It is midnight, mem," replied the maid in sepulchral tones.
"Is that man from Sherry's still there?"
"He is, mem."
Her mistress laid her charming head in her hands and covered her agreeable features with a handkerchief of delicate and rather valuable lace.
The silence at last was broken by Seabury addressing the maid: "Is that dinner spoiled?"
"Quite, sir."
Her mistress looked up hastily: "Mr. Seabury, you are not going to——"
"Yes, I am; this is the time and the place!" And he rose with decision and walked straight to the kitchen, where a stony-faced individual sat amid the culinary ruins, a statue of despair.
"What I want you to do," said Seabury, "is to fix up a salad and some of the cold duck, and attend to the champagne. Meanwhile I think I'll go downstairs; I have an engagement to kill a man."
However, a moment later he thought better of it;shewas standing by the mirror—his own mirror—touching her eyes with her lace handkerchief and patting her hair with the prettiest, whitest hands.
"Kill him? Never: I'll canonize him!" muttered Seabury, enchanted. Behind him he heard the clink of glass and china, the pleasant sound of ice. She heard it, too, and turned.
"Of all the audacity!" she said in a low voice, looking at him under her level brows. But there was something in her eyes that gave him courage—and in his that gave her courage.... Besides, they were dreadfully hungry.
"You refuse to tell me?"
"I do," she said. "If you have not wit enough to find out my name without betraying me to your sister you do not deserve to know my name—or me."
It was nearly two o'clock, they had risen, and the gay little flowery table remained between them; the salad and duck were all gone. But the froth purred in their frail glasses, breaking musically in the candle-lit silence.
"Will you tell me your name before I go?"
"I will not." Her bright eyes and fair young face defied him.
"Very well; as soon as I learn it I shall be more generous—for I have something to tell you; and I'll do it, too!"
"Are you sure you will?" she asked, flushing up.
"Yes, I am sure."
"I may not care to hear what you have to say, Mr. Seabury."
They regarded one another intently, curiously. Presently her slender hand fell as by accident on the stem of her wine-glass; he lifted his glass: very, very slowly. She raised hers, looking at him over it.
"To—what I shall tell you—when I learn your name!" he said, deliberately.
Faint fire burned in her cheeks; her eyes fell, thenwere slowly raised to his; in silence, still looking at one another, they drank the toast.
"Dammit!" I said, impatiently, "is that all?"
"Yes," he said, "that will be about all. I'm going home to bed."
My daughter Alida and my daughter Dulcima had gone to drive with the United States Ambassador and his daughter that morning, leaving me at the Hôtel with instructions as to my behaviour in their absence, and injunctions not to let myself be run over by any cab, omnibus, automobile, or bicycle whatever.
Considerably impressed by their solicitude, I retired to the smoking-room, believing myself safe there from any form of vehicular peril. But the young man from Chicago sauntered in and took a seat close beside me, with benevolent intentions toward relieving my isolation.
I preferred any species of juggernaut to his roughriding over the English language, so I left him murkily enveloped in the fumes of his own cigar and sauntered out into the street.
The sky was cloudless; the air was purest balm. Through fresh clean streets I wandered under the cool shadows of flowering chestnuts, and presently found myself on the quay near the Pont des Arts, leaning over and looking at the river slipping past between its walls of granite.
In a solemn row below me sat some two dozen fishermen dozing over their sport. Their long white bamboo poles sagged, their red and white quill-floats bobbed serenely on the tide. Truly here was a company of those fabled Lotus-eaters, steeped in slumber; a dreamy, passionless band of brothers drowsing in the sunshine.
Looking east along the grey stone quays I could see hundreds and hundreds of others, slumbering over their fishpoles; looking west, the scenery was similar.
"The fishing must be good here," I observed to an aged man, leaning on the quay-wall beside me.
"Comme ça," he said.
I leaned there lazily, waiting to see the first fish caught. I am an angler myself, and understand patience; but when I had waited an hour by my watch I looked suspiciously at the aged man beside me. He was asleep, so I touched him.
He roused himself without resentment. "Have you," said I, sarcastically, "ever seen better fishing than this, in the Seine?"
"Yes," he said; "I once saw a fish caught."
"And when was that?" I asked.
"That," said the aged man, "was in 1853."
I strolled down to the lower quay, smoking. As I passed the row of anglers I looked at them closely. They all were asleep.
Just above was anchored one of those floatinglavoirsin which the washerwomen of Paris congregate to beat your linen into rags with flat wooden paddles, and soap the rags snow-white at the cost of a few pennies.
The soapsuds from the washing floated off among the lines of the slumbering fishermen. Perhaps that was one reason why the fish were absent from the scenery. On the other hand, however, I was given to understand that a large sewer emptied into the river near the Pont des Arts, and that the fishing was best in such choice spots. Still something certainly was wrong somewhere, for either the sewer and the soapsuds had killed the fish, or they had all migrated up the sewer on an inland and subterranean picnic to meet the elite among the rats of Paris, and spend the balance of the day.
The river was alive with little white saucy steamboats,rushing up and down the Seine with the speed of torpedo craft. There was a boat-landing within a few paces of where I stood, so, when a boat came along and stopped to discharge a few passengers, I stepped aboard, bound for almost anywhere, and not over-anxious to get there too quickly. Neither did I care to learn my own destination, and when the ticket agent in naval uniform came along to inquire where I might be going, I told him to sell me a pink ticket because it looked pretty. As all Frenchmen believe that all Americans are a little mad, my request, far from surprising the ticket agent, simply confirmed his national theory; and he gave me my ticket very kindly, with an air of protection such as one involuntarily assumes toward children and invalids.
"You are going to Saint Cloud," he said. "I'll tell you when to get off the boat."
"Thank you," said I.
"You ought to be going the other way," he added.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because Charenton lies the other way," he replied, politely, and passed on to sell his tickets.
Now I had forgotten much concerning Paris in my twenty years of absence.
There was a pretty girl sitting on the bench besideme, with elbows resting on the railing behind. I glanced at her. She was smiling.
"Pardon, madame," said I, knowing enough to flatter her, though she had "mademoiselle" written all over her complexion of peaches and cream—"pardon, madame, but may I, a stranger, venture to address you for a word of information?"
"You may, monsieur," she said, with a smile which showed an edge of white teeth under her scarlet lips.
"Then, if you please, where is Charenton?"
"Up the river," she replied, smiling still.
"And what," said I, "is the principal feature of the town of Charenton?"
"The Lunatic Asylum, monsieur."
I thanked her and looked the other way.
Our boat was now flying past the Louvre. Above in the streets I could see cabs and carriages passing, and the heads and shoulders of people walking on the endless stone terraces. Below, along the river bank, our boat passed between an almost unbroken double line of dozing fishermen.
Now we shot out from the ranks oflavoirsand bathhouses, and darted on past the Champ de Mars; past the ugly sprawling Eiffel Tower, past the twin towers of the Trocadero, and out under the huge stone viaduct of the Point du Jour.
Here the banks of the river were green and inviting.Cafés, pretty suburban dance-houses, restaurants, and tiny hotels lined the shores. I read on the signs such names as "The Angler's Retreat," "At the Great Gudgeon," "The Fisherman's Paradise," and I saw sign-boards advertising fishing, and boats to let.
"I should think," said I, turning to my pretty neighbor, "that it would pay to remove these fisherman's signs to Charenton."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because," said I, "nobody except a Charentonian would ever believe that any fish inhabit this river."
"Saint Cloud! Saint Cloud!" called out the ticket-agent as the boat swung in to a little wooden floating pier on the left bank of the river.
The ticket-agent carefully assisted me over the bridge to the landing-dock, and I whispered to him that I was the Duke of Flatbush and would be glad to receive him any day in Prospect Park.
Then, made merry at my own wit, I strolled off up the steps that led to the bank above.
There, perched high above the river, I found a most delightful little rustic restaurant where I at once ordered luncheon served for me on the terrace, in the open air.
The bald waiter sped softly away to deliver my order, and I sipped an Amer-Picon, and bared myhead to the warm breeze which swept up the river from distant meadows deep in clover.
There appeared to be few people on the terrace. One young girl, however, whom I had seen on the boat, I noticed particularly because she seemed to be noticing me. Then, fearing that my stare might be misunderstood, I turned away and soon forgot her when the bald waiter returned with an omelet, bread and butter, radishes and a flask of white wine.
Such an omelet! such wine! such butter! and the breeze from the west blowing sweet as perfume from a nectarine, and the green trees waving and whispering, and the blessed yellow sunshine over all——
"Pardon, monsieur."
I turned. It was my pretty little Parisienne of the steamboat, seated at the next small table, demurely chipping an egg.
"I begyourpardon," said I, hastily, for the leg of my chair was pinning her gown to the ground.
"It is nothing," she said brightly, with a mischievous glance under her eyes.
"My child," said I, "it was very stupid of me, and I am certainly old enough to know better."
"Doubtless, monsieur; and yet you do not appear to be very, very old."
"I am very aged," said I—"almost forty-five."And I smiled a retrospective smile, watching the bubbles breaking in my wine-glass.
Memory began to work, deftly, among the debris of past years. I saw myself a student of eighteen, gayly promenading Paris with my tutor, living a monotonous colourless life in a city of which I knew nothing and saw nothing save through the windows of my English pension or in the featureless streets of the American quarter, under escort of my tutor and my asthmatic aunt, Miss Janet Van Twiller.
That year spent in Paris, to "acquire the language" in a house where nothing but English was spoken, had still a vague, tender charm for me, because in that year I was young. I grew older when I shook the tutor, side-stepped my aunt, and moved across the river.
Once, only once, had the placid serenity of that year been broken. It was one day—a day like this in spring—when, for some reason, even now utterly unknown to me, I deliberately walked out of the house alone in defiance of my tutor and my aunt, and wandered all day long through unknown squares and parks and streets intoxicated with my own freedom. And I remember, that day—which was the twin of this—sitting on the terrace of a tiny café in the Latin Quarter, I drifted into idle conversation with ademure little maid who was sipping a red syrup out of a tall thin glass.
Twenty-seven years ago! And here I was again, in the scented spring sunshine, with the same west wind whispering of youth and freedom, and my heart not a day older.
"My child," said I to the little maid, "twenty-seven years ago you drank pink strawberry syrup in a tall iced glass."
"I do not understand you, monsieur," she faltered.
"You cannot, mademoiselle. I am drinking to the memory of my dead youth."
And I touched my lips to the glass.
"I wonder," she said, under her breath, "what I am to do with the rest of the day?"
"I could have told you," said I—"twenty-seven years ago."
"Perhaps you could tell me better now?" she said, innocently.
I looked out into the east where the gold dome of the Tomb rose glimmering through a pale-blue haze. "Under that dome lies an Emperor in his crypt of porphyry," said I. "Deeper than his dust, bedded in its stiff shroud of gold, lies my dead youth, sleeping forever in the heart of this fair young world of spring."
I touched my glass idly, then lifted it.
"Yet," said I, "the pale sunshine of winter lies not unkindly on snow and ice, sometimes. I drink to your youth and beauty, my child."
"Is that all?" she asked, wonder-eyed.
I thought a moment: "No, not all. Williams isn't the only autocratic interpreter of Fate, Chance, and Destiny."
"Williams!" she repeated, perplexed.
"You don't know him. He writes stories for a living. But he'll never write the story I might very easily tell you in the sunshine here."
After a pause she said: "Are you going to?"
"I think I will," I said. And my eyes fixed smiling upon the sunny horizon, I began:
Now, part of this story is to be vague as a mirrored face at dusk; and part is to be as precise as the reflection of green trees in the glass of the stream; and all is to be as capricious as the flight of that wonderful butterfly of the South which is called Ajax by the reverent, and The White Devil by the profane. Incidentally, it is the story of Jones and the Dryad.
The profession of Jones was derided by the world at large. He collected butterflies; and it may be imagined what the American public thought of him when they did not think he was demented. But alarge, over-nourished and blasé millionaire, wearied of collecting pigeon-blood rubies, first editions and Rembrandts, through sheerennuione day commissioned Jones to gather for him the most magnificent and complete collection of American butterflies that could possibly be secured—not only single perfect specimens of the two sexes in each species, but series on series of every kind, showing local varieties, seasonal variations in size and colour, strange examples of albinism and polymorphic phenomena—in fact, this large, benevolent and intellectual capitalist wanted something which nobody else had, so he selected Jones and damned the expense. Nobody else had Jones: that pleased him; Jones was to secure specimens that nobody else had: and that would be doubly gratifying. Therefore he provided Jones with a five-year contract, an agreeable salary, turned him loose on a suspicious nation, and went back to hunt up safe investments for an income the size of which had begun to annoy him.
"This part of the story is clear enough, is it not, my child?"
"AreyouJones?"
"Don't ask questions," I said, seriously.
"The few delirious capers cut by Jones subsequent to the signing of the contract consisted of adebauch at the Astor Library, a mad evening with seven aged gentlemen at the Entomological Society, and the purchase of a ticket to Florida. This last spasm was his undoing; he went for butterflies, and the first thing he did was to trip over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fall plump into the open arms of Destiny. And in a week he was playing golf. This part is sufficiently vague, I hope. Is it?"
She said it was; so I continued:
The Dryad, with her sleeves rolled up above her pretty elbows, was preparing to assault a golf ball; Jones regarded the proceedings with that inscrutable expression which, no doubt, is bestowed upon certain creatures as a weapon for self-protection.
"Don't talk to me while I'm driving," said the Dryad.
"No," said Jones.
"Don't even say 'no'!" insisted the Dryad.
A sharp thwack shattered the silence; the golf ball sailed away toward the fifth green, landing in a gully. "Oh, bother!" exclaimed the Dryad, petulantly, as the small black caddie pattered forward, irons rattling in his quiver. "Now, Mr. Jones, it is up to you"—doubtless a classically mythologicalform of admonition common to Dryads but now obsolete.
The Dryad, receiving no reply, looked around and beheld Jones, net poised, advancing on tiptoe across the green.
"What is it—a snake?" inquired the Dryad in an unsteady voice.
"It is The White Devil!" whispered Jones.
The Dryad's skirts were short enough as it was, but she hastily picked them up. She had a right to. "Does it bite?" she whispered, looking carefully around in the grass. But all she could see was a strangely beautiful butterfly settled on a blue wild blossom which swayed gently in the wind on the edge of the jungle. So she dropped her skirts. She had a right to.
Now, within a few moments of the hour when Jones had first laid eyes on her, and she on Jones, he had confided to her his family history, his ambitions, his ethical convictions, and his theories concerning the four known forms of the exquisite Ajax butterfly of Florida. She had been young enough to listen without yawning—which places her age somewhere close to eighteen. Besides, she had remembered almost everything that Jones had said, which confirms a diagnosis of her disease. There could be no doubt about it; the Dryad was afflictedwith extreme Youth, for she now recognized the butterfly from the eulogy of Jones, and her innocent heart began a steady tattoo upon her ribs as Jones, on tiptoe, crept nearer and nearer, net outstretched.
The moment was solemn; breathless, hatless, bare-armed, the Dryad advanced, skirts spread as though to shoo chickens.
"Don't," whispered Jones.
But the damage had been accomplished; Ajax jerked his pearl and ashen banded wings, shot with the fiery crimson bar, flashed into the air, and was gone like the last glimmer of a fading sun-spot.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" cried the Dryad, clasping her highly ornamental hands; "what on earth will you think of my stupidity?"
"Nothing," said Jones, resolutely, swallowing hard and gazing at the tangled jungle.
"It was too stupid," insisted the Dryad; and, as the silence of Jones assented, she added, "but it is not very nice of you to say so."
"Why, I didn't," cried Jones.
"You did," said the Dryad, tears of vexation in her blue eyes. "And to pay for your discourtesy you shall make me a silk net and I shall give up golf and spend my entire time in hunting for White Devils, to make amends."
The suggested penance appeared to attract Jones.
"Give up golf—which I am perfectly mad about," repeated the Dryad, "just because you were horrid when I tried to help you."
"That will be delightful," said Jones, naïvely. "We will hunt Ajax together—all day, every day——"
"Oh, I shall catch—something—the first time I try," observed the Dryad, airily. She teed up a practice ball, hit it a vicious whack, followed its flight with narrowing blue eyes, and, turning placidly upon Jones, smiled a dangerous smile.
"If I don't catch an Ajax before you do I'll forfeit anything you please," she said.
"I'll take it," said Jones.
"But," cried the Dryad, "what do you offer against it?"
"Whatever I ask from you," he said, deliberately.
"You are somewhat vague, Mr. Jones."
"I won't be when I win."
"Tell me what you want—if you win!"
"What? With this caddie hanging around and listening?" The Dryad, wide-eyed and flushed, regarded him in amazement.
Jones picked up a pinch of wet sand from the box, moulded it with great care into a tiny truncated cone, set it on the tee, set his ball on top of it, whipped the air persuasively with his driver once or twice, and,settling himself into the attitude popularly attributed to the Colossus of Rhodes, hit the ball for the longest, cleanest drive he had ever perpetrated.
"Dryad," he said, politely, "it is now up to you."
Of all the exquisite creatures that float through the winter sunshine of the semi-tropics this is the most exquisite and spirituelle. Long, slender, swallow-tailed wings, tinted with pearl and primrose, crossed with ashy stripes and double-barred with glowing crimson—this is the shy, forest-haunting creature that the Dryad sought to snare, and sought in vain.
Sometimes, standing on the long, white shell roads, where myriads of glittering dragon-flies sailed, far away a pale flash would catch the sun for an instant; and "Ready! Look out!" would cry the Dryad. Vanity! Swifter than a swallow the Ajax passed, a pearly blurr against the glare of the white road; swish! swish! the silken nets swung in vain.
"Oh, bother," sighed the Dryad.
Again, in the dim corridors of the forest, where tall palms clustered and green live oaks spread transparent shadows across palmetto thickets, far in some sunlit glade a tiny wing-flash would bring the Dryad's forest cry: "Quick! Oh, quick!" But the woodland ghost was gone.
"Oh, bother, bother!" sighed the Dryad. "Thereare flowers—the sparkleberry is in blossom—there is bloom on the China tree, but this phantom never stops! Can nothing stop it?"
Day after day, guarding the long, white road, the Dryad saw the phantom pass—always flying north; day after day in the dim forest, the hurrying, pale-winged, tireless creatures fled away, darting always along some fixed yet invisible aërial path. Nothing lured them, neither the perfumed clusters of the China-berry, nor the white forest flowers; nothing checked them, neither the woven curtain of creepers across the forest barrier, nor the jungle walled with palms.
To the net of the Dryad and of Jones had fallen half a thousand jewelled victims; the exquisite bronzed Berenice, the velvet and yellow Palamedes, the great orange-winged creatures brilliant as lighted lanterns. But in the gemmed symmetry of the casket the opalescent heart was missing; and the Dryad, uncomforted, haunted the woodlands, roaming in defiance of the turquoise-tinted lizards and the possible serpent whose mouth is lined with snow-white membranes—prowling in contempt of that coiled horror that lies waiting, S shaped, a mass of matted grey and velvet diamond pattern from which two lidless eyes glitter unwinking.
"How on earth did anybody ever catch an Ajax?"inquired the Dryad at the close of one fruitless, bootless day's pursuit.
"I suppose," said Jones, "that every year or so the Ajax alights." That was irony.
"On what?" insisted the Dryad.
"Oh, on—something," said Jones, vaguely. "Butterflies are, no doubt, like the human species; flowers tempt some butterflies, mud-puddles attract others. One or the other will attract our Ajax some day."
That night Jones, with book open upon his knees, sat in the lamplight of the great veranda and read tales of Ajax to the Dryad; how that, in the tropics, Ajax assumes four forms, masquerading as Floridensis in winter and as Telamonides in summer, and how he wears the exquisite livery of Marcellus, too, and even assumes, according to a gentleman named Walsh, a fourth form. Beautiful pictures of Ajax illumined the page where were also engraved the signs of Mars and of Venus. The Dryad looked at these; Jones looked at her; the rest of the hotel looked at them. Jones read on.
Sleepy-eyed the Dryad listened; outside in the burnished moonlight the whippoorwill's spirit call challenged the star-set silence; and far away in the blue night she heard the deep breathing of the sea. Presently the Dryad slept in her rocking-chair, curvedwrist propping her head; Jones was chagrined. He need not have been, for the Dryad was dreaming of him.
There came a day late in April when, knee deep in palmetto scrub, the Dryad and Jones stood leaning upon their nets and scanning the wilderness for the swift-winged forest phantom they had sought so long. Ajax was on the wing; glimpse after glimpse they had of him, a pale shadow in the sun, a misty spot in the shadow, then nothing but miles of palmetto scrub and the pink stems of tall pines.
Suddenly an Ajax darted into the sunny glade where they stood, and a ragged, faded brother Ajax fluttered up from the ground and, Ajax-like, defied the living lightning.
Wing beating wing they closed in battle, whirling round and round one another above the palmetto thicket. The ragged and battered butterfly won, the other darted away with the speed of a panic-stricken jacksnipe, and his shabby opponent quietly settled down on a sun-warmed twig.
Then it was that inspiration seized the Dryad: "Mr. Jones, you trick wild ducks into gunshot range by setting painted wooden ducks afloat close to the shore where you lie hidden. Catch that ragged Ajax, place him upon a leaf, and who knows?"
Decoy a butterfly? Decoy the forest phantom drunk with the exhilaration of his own mad flight! It was the invention of a new sport.
Scarcely appearing to move at all, so cautious was his progress, Jones slowly drew near the basking and battle-tattered creature that had once been Ajax. There was a swift drop of the silken net, a flutter, and all was over. In the palm of Jones's hand, dead, lay the faded and torn insect with scarce a vestige of former beauty on the motionless wings.
Doubting, yet stirred to hope, he placed the dead butterfly on a palmetto frond, wings expanded to catch the sun; and then, standing within easy net-stroke, the excited Dryad and Jones strained their eyes to catch the first far glimpse of Ajax in the wilderness.
What was that distant flash of light? A dragon-fly sailing? There it is again! And there again! Nearer, nearer, following the same invisible aërial path.
"Quick!" whispered the Dryad. A magnificent Ajax flashed across the glade, turned an acute angle in mid-air, and in an instant hung hovering over the lifeless insect on the palm leaf.
Swish-h! A wild fluttering in the net, a soft cry of excitement from the Dryad, and there, dead, in the palm of the hand of Jones, lay the first perfectspecimen, exquisite, flawless, beautiful beyond words.
Before the Dryad could place the lovely creature in safety another Ajax darted into the glade, sheered straight for the decoy, and the next instant was fluttering, a netted captive.
Then the excitement grew; again and again Ajax appeared in the vicinity; and the tension only increased as the forest phantom, unseeing or unheeding the decoy, darted on in a mad ecstasy of flight.
No hunter, crouched in the reeds, could find keener excitement watching near his decoys than the Dryad found that April day, motionless, almost breathless, scanning the forest depths for the misty-winged phantom of the tropic wilderness. One in six turned to the decoy; there were long, silent intervals of waiting and of strained expectancy; there were false alarms as a distant drifting dragon-fly glimmered in the sun; but one by one the swift-winged victims dashed at the decoy and were taken in their strength and pride and all their unsullied beauty. And when the sport of that April morning was over, and when Denis, the Ethiopian, turned the horses' heads homeward, Ajax Floridensis, Ajax Marcellus and Ajax Telamonides were no longer mysteries to the Dryad and to Jones.
But there was a deeper mystery to solve beforereturning to the vast caravansary across the river; and while they hesitated to attack it, I, mademoiselle, having met and defeated Ajax in fair and open trial of cunning and of wit, think fit to throw a ray of modern light upon this archaic tale.
It is true that Ajax, of the family of Papilio, rivals the wind in flight, and seldom, in spring and summer, deigns to alight. Yet I have seen Ajax Telamonides alight in the middle of the roadway, and, netting him, have found him fresh from the chrysalis, and therefore weak and inexperienced. Ajax Floridensis I have taken with a net as he feasted on the bunches of white sparkleberry on the edge of the jungle.
Rarely have I seen Ajax seduced by the wild phlox blossoms, but I have sometimes caught him sipping there.
As for the decoy, I have used it and taken with it scores and scores of Ajax butterflies which otherwise I could not have hoped to capture. This is not all; the great Tiger Swallowtail of the orange groves can be decoyed by a dead comrade of either sex; so, too, can the royal, velvet-robed Palamedes butterfly; and when the imperial Turnus sails high among the magnolias' topmost branches, a pebble cast into the air near him will sometimes bring him fluttering down, following the stone as it falls to the ground. These three butterflies, however, are generally easily decoyed,and all love flowers. Yet, in experimenting with decoys, I have never seen an Ajax decoy to any dead butterfly except an Ajax; and the dead butterfly may be of either sex, and as battered as you please.
It is supposed by some that butterflies can distinguish colour and form at no greater distance than five feet; and experiments in decoying appear to bear out this theory. Butterflies decoy to their own species, even to faded and imperfect ones.
Of half a dozen specimens set out on leaves and twigs, among which were Papilio Palamedes, Cresphontes, and Turnus, Ajax decoyed only to an imperfect and faded Ajax, and finally, when among that brilliant array of specimens a single upper wing of a dead Ajax was placed on a broad leaf, Ajax came to it, ignoring the other perfect specimens.
Yet Ajax will fight in single combat with any live butterfly, and so will Palamedes, Turnus, and Cresphontes.
If a female Luna moth is placed in a cage of mosquito netting and hung out of the window at night she is almost certain to attract all the male Luna moths in the neighbourhood before morning. In this case, as it is in the case of the other moths of the same group, it is the odor that attracts.
But in the case of a dead Ajax butterfly it appears to be colour even more than form; and it can scarcely be odor, because the Ajax butterflies of both sexes decoy to a dead and dried butterfly of either sex. With this abstruse observation, mademoiselle, I, personally, retire into the jungle to peep out at a passing vehicle driven by an Ethiopian known as Denis, and containing two young people of sexes diametrically opposed. And I am pleasantly conscious that I can no longer conceal their identity from you, mademoiselle.
"No," she said, "I know who they are. Please continue about them."
So I smiled and continued: