Mr. Crane was a persistent person. Otherwise he would hardly have
arrived where he had in the Washington Trust Company. Having failed to
broach the great subject in the afternoon, he immediately made another
opportunity for himself by hustling Adelle, ahead of the others, into
his own cab for the return drive to the city, and then jumping in after
her and giving the driver the order to leave. It was very ill-bred and
he knew it, but he was determined not to bother about Miss Comstock any
longer. His vacation was very nearly at an end, and this would be his
last chance for another year if the ward was to remain in Europe as was
her present determination. He consoled himself with the thought that the
others had Adelle's car at their disposal, and gave the order to take a
roundabout road back to London. The driver needed but the suggestion to
plunge them into a maze of forgotten country roads where there were no
lights and no impeding traffic....
There are in general three ways in which to make love to a woman, young
or old: the deliberate, the impulsive, and the inevitable. Of the third
there is no occasion to speak here, as neither Ashly Crane nor Adelle
understood it. Of the remaining two the deliberate method of cautious,
persistent siege was more to the taste and the temperament of the
banker, but he was strictly limited in time. The Kaiser Nonsuch, on
which his passage was reserved, sailed in three days from Southampton,
and he must win within that brief period or put the matter over for a
whole year. And he judged that Adelle, under her present environment
with such an expert manager as Miss Catherine Comstock, would not be
left hanging on the bough within his reach for long. A year's delay
would almost surely be fatal, and it was uncertain whether he could get
away before the next summer from his important responsibilities at the
Washington Trust Company. So haste must be the word.
That he should reason thus about a delicate matter of sentiment betrays
not merely the man's coarse grain, but the inferiority of the commercial
experience in making an accomplished lover. He had been trained in the
"new school" of rapid finance to complete large transactions on the
moment, never letting small uncertainties or delays interfere with his
purposes. It was really not essential to the working of the financial
system--even for the salvation of the Washington Trust Company--that Mr.
Ashly Crane should turn up at his desk on the morning of the
twenty-sixth instanter. It might just as well have been the thirty-first
or even the middle of the next month--or, if he should have the good
luck to gain the heart and hand of the heiress, never at all! But Mr.
Ashly Crane was neither of the temperament nor of the age to play the
sentimental game thus desperately. He was altogether too much an
American to let his love-making interfere with his business schedule.
(Besides, there was not another swift steamer sailing for New York for
three weeks.)
So he sighed, and when the cab shot into the umbrageous dimness of old
trees he took the girl's hand in his. She made no attempt to withdraw
her hand. Probably Adelle was more frightened by this first experience
in the eternal situation than the man was, and that is saying a good
deal. She took refuge in her usual defense against life and its many
perplexities, which was silence, permitting the banker to press her
captive hand for several moments while the cab tossed on the uneven road
and Crane was summoning his nerve for the next step. Her heart beat a
little faster, and she wondered what was going to happen.
That was the man's attempt to encircle her waist with his free arm. In
this maneuver Adelle did not assist him: instead, she pushed herself
back against the cushion so firmly that it made it a difficult
engineering feat to obtain possession of her figure. By this time his
face was close to hers, and he was stammering incoherently such words
as--"Adelle" ... "Dearest" ... "Love" ... etc. But we will spare the
reader Mr. Ashly Crane's crude imitation of ardor. All love-making, even
the most sincere and eloquent, is verbally disappointingly alike and
rather tame. The human animal, ingenious as he is in many ways, is
nevertheless almost as limited as the ape when it comes to the
articulation of the deeper emotions. That is why delicacy and the habit
of _nuances_ give the experienced wooer such an immense advantage, even
with a raw girl like Adelle, over the mere clumsy male. Love, like the
drama, being so rigidly limited in technique, is no field for the
bungler! And Mr. Ashly Crane was far from being an artist in anything.
By this time Adelle had become aware that she was being made love to. It
filled her with a variety of emotions not clearly defined. First of all,
there was something of the woman's natural complacency in her first
capture, more vivid than when the other girls had dubbed Mr. Crane her
"beau." This was a _bona fide_ illustration of what all the girls talked
about most of the time and the novels were full of from cover to
cover--love-making! And next was a feeling akin to repugnance. Mr. Crane
was not aged--barely forty-two--and he was good-looking enough and quite
the man. But to Adelle he had always been, if not exactly a parent, at
least an older brother or uncle,--in some category of relationship other
than that of young love. That he should thus hastily be professing
ardent sentiments towards her seemed a trifle improper. Beneath these
superficial feelings there were, of course, some deeper ones;--for
instance, a slight sense of humor in his clumsy management and a feeling
of gratification that at last the unknown had arrived. And a something
else not wholly unpleasant in her own small person....
Crane was mumbling something about his loneliness and her unprotected
condition. Adelle was not aware that she was to be pitied because of
lack of protection, but she liked to be the object of sympathy.
Gradually she relaxed, and permitted him to insert his arm between her
and the cushion, which he seemed so ridiculously anxious to do. At once
he drew her slight form towards him. He was saying,--
"Dearest! Can you--will you--"