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.
"Or," he continued, thoughtfully, "was it an inch or two this way? I
could tell exactly if the moon were up. Still"--he considered the ladder
attentively--"I might be able to fix it with some accuracy if you would
help me. Will you?"
"I do not understand," she said.
"Oh, it is nothing--still, if you wouldn't mind aiding me to settle a
matter that interests me--would you?"
"With pleasure, monsieur," she said, indifferently. "What shall I do?"
So he mounted the ladder, crossed the wall, and stood on a stone niche
on his side, looking down at the ladder. "Now," he said, "if you would
be so amiable, madame, as to stand on the ladder for one moment you
could aid me immensely."
"Mount that ladder, monsieur?"
She caught his eyes fixed on her; for just an instant she hesitated,
then met them steadily enough; indeed, a growing and innocent curiosity
widened her gaze, and she smiled and lifted her pretty shoulders--just a
trifle, and her skirts a trifle, too; and, with a grace that made him
tremble, she mounted the ladder, step by step, until her head and
shoulders were on a level with his own across the wall.
"And now?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.
"The moon," he said, unsteadily, "ought to be about--there!"
"Where?" She turned her eyes inquiringly skyward.
But his heart had him by the throat again, and he was past all speech.
"Well, monsieur?" She waited in sweetest patience. Presently: "Have you
finished your astronomical calculations? And may I descend?" He tried to
speak, but was so long about it that she said very kindly: "You are
trying to locate the moon, are you not?"
"No, madame--only a shadow."
"A shadow, monsieur?"--laughing.
"A shadow--a silhouette."
"Of what?"
"Of a--a woman's head against the moon."
"Monsieur, for a realist you are astonishingly romantic. Oh, you see I
was right! You do belong in a book."
"You, also," he said, scarcely recognising his own voice. "Men--in
books--do well to risk all for one word, one glance from you; men--in
books--do well to die for you, who reign without a peer in all
romance----"
"Monsieur," she faltered.
But he had found his voice--or one something like it--and he said: "You
are right to rebuke me; romance is the shadow, life the substance; and
_you_ live; and as long as you live, living men must love you; as I love
you, Countess of Semois."
"Oh," she breathed, tremulously, "oh,--you think _that_? You think _I_
am the Countess of Semois? And _that_ is why----"
For a moment her wide eyes hardened, then flashed brilliant with tears.
"Is that your romance, monsieur?--the romance of a Countess! Is your
declaration for mistress or servant?--for the Countess or for her
secretary--who sometimes makes her gowns, too? Ah, the sorry romance!
Your declaration deserved an audience more fitting----"
"My declaration was made a week ago! The moon and you were audience
enough. I love you."
"Monsieur, I--I beg you to release my hand----"
"No; you must listen--for the veil of romance is rent and we are face to
face in the living world! Do you think a real man cares what title you
wear, if you but wear his name? Countess that you are _not_--if you say
you are not--but woman that you _are_, is there anything in Heaven or
earth that can make love _more_ than love? Veil your beautiful true eyes
with romance, and answer me; look with clear, untroubled eyes upon
throbbing, pulsating life; and answer me! Love is no more, no less,
than love. I ask for yours; I gave you mine a week ago--in our first
kiss."
Her face was white as a flower; the level beauty of her eyes set him
trembling.
"Give me one chance," he breathed. "I am not mad enough to hope that the
lightning struck us both at a single flash. Give me, in your charity, a
chance--a little aid where I stand stunned, blinded, alone--you who can
still see clearly!"
She did not stir or speak or cease to watch him from unwavering eyes; he
leaned forward, drawing her inert hands together between his own; but
she freed them, shivering.
"Will you not say one word to me?" he faltered.
"Three, monsieur." Her eyes closed, she covered them with her slender
hands: "I--love--you."
* * * * *
Before the moon appeared she had taken leave of him, her hot, young face
pressed to his, striving to say something for which she found no words.
In tremulous silence she turned in his arms, unclasping his hands and
yielding her own in fragrant adieu.
"Do you not know, oh, most wonderful of lovers--do you not know?" her
eyes were saying, but her lips were motionless; she waited, reluctant,
trembling. No, he could not understand--he did not care, and the
knowledge of it suffused her very soul with a radiance that transfigured
her.
So she left him, the promise of the moon silvering the trees. And he
stood there on the wall, watching the lights break out in the windows of
her house--stood there while his soul drifted above the world of moonlit
shadow floating at his feet.
"Smith!"
Half aroused, he turned and looked down. The moonlight glimmered on
Kingsbury's single eyeglass. After a moment his senses returned; he
descended to the ground and peered at Kingsbury, rubbing his eyes.
With one accord they started toward the house, moving slowly, shoulder
to shoulder.
"Not that I personally care," began Kingsbury. "I am sorry only on
account of my country. I was, perhaps, precipitate; but I purchased one
hundred and seven dolls of Mademoiselle Plessis--her private
secretary----"
"What!"
"With whom," continued Kingsbury, thoughtfully, "I am agreeably in love.
Such matters, Smith, cannot be wholly controlled by a sense of duty to
one's country. Beauty and rank seldom coincide except in fiction. It
appears"--he removed his single eyeglass, polished it with his
handkerchief, replaced it, and examined the moon--"it appears," he
continued blandly, "that it is the Countess of Semois who is--ah--so to
speak, afflicted with red hair.... The moon--ahem--is preternaturally
bright this evening, Smith."
After a moment Smith halted and turned, raising his steady eyes to that
pale mirror of living fire above the forest.
"Well," began Kingsbury, irritably, "can't you say something?"
"Nothing more than I have said to her already--though she were Empress
of the World!" murmured Smith, staring fixedly at the moon.
"Empress of _what_? I do not follow you."
"No," said Smith, dreamily, "you must not try to. It is a long journey
to the summer moon--a long, long journey. I started when I was a child;
I reached it a week ago; I returned to-night. And do you know what I
discovered there? Why, man, I discovered the veil of Isis, and I looked
behind it. And what do you suppose I found? A child, Kingsbury, a winged
child, who laughingly handed me the keys of Eden! What do you think of
that?"
But Smith had taken too many liberties with the English language, and
Kingsbury was far too mad to speak.
[Illustration]