The Adventures of a Modest Man

"If you say so. Eccentricity is the full-blown blossom of mediocrity."

CHAPTER XXIV

A JOURNEY TO THE MOON

There was a silence so politely indifferent on her part that he felt it to be the signal for his dismissal. And he took his leave with a formality so attractive, and a good humour so informal, that before she meant to she had spoken again – a phrase politely meaningless in itself, yet – if he chose to take it so – acting as a stay of execution.

"I was wondering," he said, amiably, "how I was going to climb back over the wall."

A sudden caprice tinged with malice dawned in the most guileless of smiles as she raised her eyes to his:

"You forgot your ladder this time, didn't you?"

Would he ever stop getting redder? His ears were afire, and felt enormous.

"I am afraid you misunderstood me," she said, and her smile became pitilessly sweet. "I am quite sure a distinguished foreign angler could scarcely condescend to notice trespass signs in a half-ruined old park – "

His crimson distress softened her, perhaps, for she hesitated, then added impulsively: "I did not mean it, monsieur; I have gone too far – "

"No, you have not gone too far," he said. "I've disgraced myself and deserve no mercy."

"You are mistaken; the trout may have come from your side of the wall – "

"It did, but that is a miserable excuse. Nothing can palliate my conduct. It's a curious thing," he added, bitterly, "that a fellow who is decent enough at home immediately begins to do things in Europe."

"What things, monsieur?"

"Ill-bred things; I might as well say it. Theoretically, poaching is romantic; practically, it's a misdemeanor – the old conflict between realism and romance, madame – as typified by a book I am at present reading – a copy of the same book which I notice you are now carrying under your arm."

She glanced at him, curious, irresolute, waiting for him to continue. And as he did not, but stood moodily twirling his cap like a sulky schoolboy, she leaned back against a tree, saying: "You are very severe on romance, monsieur."

"You are very lenient with reality, madame."

"How do you know? I may be far more angry with you than you suspect. Indeed, every time I have seen you on the wall – " she hesitated, paling a trifle. She had made a mistake, unless he was more stupid than she dared hope.

"But until this morning I had done nothing to anger you?" he said, looking up sharply. Her features wore the indifference of perfect repose; his latent alarm subsided. She had made no mistake in his stupidity.

And now, perfectly conscious of the irregularity of the proceedings, perhaps a trifle exhilarated by it, she permitted curiosity to stir behind the curtain, ready for the proper cue.

"Of course," he said, colouring, "I know you perfectly well by sight – "

"And I you, monsieur – perfectly well. One notices strangers, particularly when reading so frequently about them in romance. This book" – she opened it leisurely and examined an illustration – "appears to describe the American quite perfectly. So, having read so much about Americans, I was a trifle curious to see one."

He did not know what to say; her youthful face was so innocent that suspicion subsided.

"That American you are reading about is merely a phantom of romance," he said honestly. "His type, if he ever did exist, would become such a public nuisance in Europe that the police would take charge of him – after a few kings and dukes had finished thrashing him."

"I do not believe you," she said, with a hint of surprise and defiance. "Besides, if it were true, what sense is there in destroying the pleasure of illusion? Romance is at least amusing; reality alone is a sorry scarecrow clothed in the faded rags of dreams. Do you think you do well to destroy the tinted film of romance through which every woman ever born gazes at man – and pardons him because the rainbow dims her vision?"

She leaned back against the silver birch once more and laid her white hand flat on the open pages of the book:

"Monsieur, if life were truly like this, fewer tears would fall from women's eyes – eyes which man, in his wisdom, takes pains to clear – to his own destruction!"

She struck the book a light blow, smiling up at him:

"Here in these pages are spring and youth eternal – blue skies and roses, love and love and love unending, and once more love, and the world's young heart afire! Close the book and what remains?" She closed the covers very gently. "What remains?" she asked, raising her blue eyes to him.

"You remain, madame."

She flushed with displeasure.

"And yet," he said, smiling, "if the hero of that book replied as I have you would have smiled. That is the false light the moon of romance sheds in competition with the living sun." He shrugged his broad shoulders, laughing: "The contrast between the heroine of that romance and you proves which is the lovelier, reality or romance – "

She bit her lips and looked at him narrowly, the high colour pulsating and dying in her cheeks. Under cover of the very shield that should have protected her he was using weapons which she herself had sanctioned – the impalpable weapons of romance.

Dusk, too, had already laid its bloom on hill and forest and had spun a haze along the stream – dusk, the accomplice of all the dim, jewelled forms that people the tinted shadows of romance. Why – if he had displeased her – did she not dismiss him? It is not with a question that a woman gives a man his congé.

"Why do you speak as you do?" she asked, gravely. "Why, merely because you are clever, do you twist words into compliments. We are scarcely on such a footing, monsieur."

"What I said I meant," he replied, slowly.

"Have I accorded you permission to say or mean?"

"No; that is the fashion of romance – a pretty one. But in life, sometimes, a man's heart beats out the words his lips deliver untricked with verbal tinsel."

Again she coloured, but met his eyes steadily enough.

"This is all wrong," she said; "you know it; I know it. If, in the woman standing here alone with you, I scarcely recognise myself, you, monsieur, will fail to remember her – if chance wills it that we meet again."

"My memory," he said in a low voice, "is controlled by your mind. What you forget I cannot recall."

She said, impulsively, "A gallant man speaks as you speak – in agreeable books of fiction as in reality. Oh, monsieur" – and she laughed a pretty, troubled laugh – "how can you expect me now to disbelieve in my Americans of romance?"

She had scarcely meant to say just that; she did not realise exactly what she had said until she read it in his face – read it, saw that he did not mean to misunderstand her, and, in the nervous flood of relief, stretched out her hand to him. He took it, laid his lips to the fragrant fingers, and relinquished it. Meanwhile his heart was choking him like the clutch of justice.

"Good-by," she said, her outstretched hand suspended as he had released it, then slowly falling. A moment's silence; the glow faded from the sky, and from her face, too; then suddenly the blue eyes glimmered with purest malice:

"Having neglected to bring your ladder this time, monsieur, pray accept the use of mine." And she pointed to a rustic ladder lying half-buried in the weedy tangle behind him.

He gave himself a moment to steady his voice: "I supposed there was a ladder here – somewhere," he said, quietly.

"Oh! And why did you suppose – " She spoke too hurriedly, and she began again, pleasantly indifferent: "The foresters use a ladder for pruning, not for climbing walls."

He strolled over to the thicket, lifted the light ladder, and set it against the wall. When he had done this he stepped back, examining the effect attentively; then, as though not satisfied, shifted it a trifle, surveyed the result, moved it again, dissatisfied.

"Let me see," he mused aloud, "I want to place it exactly where it was that night – " He looked back at her interrogatively. "Was it about where I have placed it?"

Her face was inscrutable.