It all seemed so bewildering—so utterly incredible. They went to the
matinée. They strolled in Golden Gate Park and watched the swans and
laughed a great deal over hot tamales on the beach. He became a frequent
caller—and sometimes it seemed to the delighted girl that the florist’s
box was even more frequent. He seemed to know so expertly how everything
should be done: such intoxicating manners, such style! He seemed to have
dropped right from the skies into her dazzled heart. From this time
forward her little romance moved swiftly indeed.
Before she had half time to realize—yes, even _begin_ to realize—what
was really taking place, he had asked her to become his wife. “You’re
the first girl I’ve cared enough for,” was the way he phrased it; though
it goes without saying that a man of Mr. King’s temperament must more or
less have cared for a good many girls in his day. “I guess I can manage
to make you happy, little girl,” he assured her, with a certain splendid
imperiousness, “though perhaps you might come to long for a more settled
life....” He had just arrived from a secret conference with Captain
Utterbourne under the shadow of an august map of the world. But of course
Stella was up in arms at once: “I never want to stop! I want to go on and
on, out in the world, seeing new things, meeting new people...!” And, in
his graceful way, he allowed her to carry the point.
Oh, life! Oh the forces of life—and the world—and human destiny!
“I just have to blush right to his face every time he looks at me, he
_is_ so handsome!” was one of Aunt Alice’s voluble confidences shared
by Maud out in the kitchen. “I’ve got a psychic feeling he’s just the
one for our little Stella, and yet don’t it beat all! My gracious, Maud,
you’d think he’d never look at any one less than a countess! And his side
view makes me think of a picture I saw once in the paper of a man who was
going to marry a duchess!”
Oh, life! Oh the forces of life—and the world—and human destiny!
* * * * *
The afternoon was idyllic. Mr. King and Stella were sitting together
before a tiny fire, and there was tea. It was very cosy and romantic. She
had been doing some mending before he came, and had hurriedly laid her
basket aside. Breaking off in the midst of a very glowing description of
the Riviera when at its gayest, however, he suddenly begged her to go
on with her sewing. She demurred, naturally: “It’s such awfully plain
and uninteresting work!” But he insisted that it completed the “domestic
picture,” and added: “You don’t know how charming it is to see a woman
sitting before the fire busy with needlework.” At length she complied;
but it vaguely alarmed the girl. “All I want to do is to get away!” she
cried throwing her arms wide, though she still grasped the garment she
was mending, bringing it thus a little whimsically into the gesture.
“What you’ve told me of your life sounds so wonderful!” she sighed
happily.
“Well, it’s adventurous,” he conceded. And then he asked her: “What does
your father think about it?”
“Why, what could he think but what every one thinks?”
King might have asked, not perhaps egregiously or unreasonably, what
every one did think; but he merely amplified: “I had in mind my immediate
prospects.”
“With Captain Utterbourne?”
“Yes—and its having to be handled in so hushed and confidential a way.”
“Oh, but to me the mystery—that is the most wonderful part!” she cried.
“I love having everything mysterious!”
He gave her hand a little squeeze, and she looked up at him, happily
thrilled. She pictured herself going through life with him like this,
thrilled, always thrilled, each day full of delicious mystery and romance.
He began murmuring a bit of nursery jingle, which sounded in her charmed
ears like the rarest music:
“‘_Curly Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be mine?_
_Thou shalt not wash dishes nor feed the swine,_
_But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,_
_And feast upon strawberries, sugar, and cream!_’”
“Oh, I wonder,” she laughed softly, “—will it really be like that? How
did this wonderful thing ever happen to me?”