At last Adelle had a young man! He was not much of a young man in the
eyes of Miss Comstock or Irene Paul, perhaps, but Adelle did not care
for that. Incipient love awoke in the girl all her latent power of
guile. This time she did not "give herself away" to "Pussy" nor to her
companions, knowing instinctively that her toy would be taken away from
her if it was discovered. For two months she managed almost daily
meetings with Archie Davis without arousing the suspicion of any one,
except possibly Miss Baxter, who did not consider the matter seriously.
When late in May Miss Comstock took it into her head to motor to Italy
for a trip to the Lakes and Venice, Adelle tried her best to escape, but
failed. She departed sulkily, and managed to scrawl a letter and post it
privately almost every day. Each mile that bore her farther from Paris
filled her heart with gloom, and she made mad plans of escape. Her
emotions having at last been stirred dominated her exclusively. She
wanted Archie every moment. She wrote him to meet the party, casually,
somewhere. But Archie, alas, was altogether too poor to follow his lady
about Europe. She would have sent him the money for the journey if she
had known how to do it. Instead, she sent him picture postcards of the
monuments of southern France and northern Italy.
It was in Venice one languid afternoon in early June, as she was coming
out from Cook's, where she had been to get her mail, that she heard her
name,--"Adelle!... Miss Clark,"--and looking around discovered her lover
leaning against a pillar of the piazza. He had somehow found the means
to follow her, arriving that morning by the third-class train, and had
hung around the piazza, confident that the girl must appear in this
center of civic activity. They at once took to a gondola as the safest
method of privacy. And it was in this gondola, behind the little black
curtains of the _felza_, that Adelle received her second kiss from the
lips of a man. But this time due preparation had been made: the kiss was
neither unexpected nor undesired, and on her part, at least, the embrace
had all the fervor of nature.
As they floated out upon the still waters of the lagoon beyond the
lonely hospital, with the translucent silver haze of the magic city
hanging above them, Adelle felt that heaven had been thrust unexpectedly
into her arms. This was something far beyond the magic touch of her
lamp, and all the sweeter because it came to her as a personal gift,
independent of her fortune. At least she felt so. It is permissible to
doubt if Archie Davis would have been sufficiently stirred by a
penniless girl to have spent his recent remittance in chasing her to
Italy, but such fine discriminations about young love are cruel.
Sufficient for them both, in these gray and golden hours of the June
afternoon in Venice, that they had come together. In time Adelle learned
just how the miracle had been worked. Father Davis's remittance to take
his son back to the ranch had at last arrived with a rather acid letter
of parental instructions from the wine-grower. Archie with the true
recklessness of youth had torn the letter to shreds and cashed the
draft, purchased a third-class ticket for Venice, and put almost all
that was left of the money into a much-needed suit of clothes. And now?
Adelle, with an unexpected acuteness, felt that Archie even in his
present rehabilitated condition would be an object of suspicion to the
keen eyes of Pussy Comstock, whom she was beginning to find troublesome.
And she felt quite inadequate to explaining Archie plausibly. So it was
decided between the lovers before the gondola returned to the city that
they should meet clandestinely while the party remained in Venice. It
was the family habit to take prolonged siestas after the second
breakfast, when Adelle would be free to slip forth and join Archie in
the cool recesses of a neighboring church. Other opportunity might
arise. Young love is content with little--or thinks it will be. They
parted with a final kiss, and Adelle thoughtfully paid the boatmen when
they landed at the piazzetta.
There followed for one week the most exciting and the most taxing
episode in Adelle's small existence. She never had time for naps or odd
moments of indolent nothings. In spite of the languorous heat, she
became alert and schemed all her waking moments how best to make time
for Archie. After a few days she bribed her maid so that she could get
out of the hotel to a gondola after the others had gone to their rooms
for the night. It was all a piece of pure recklessness, and Adelle was
hardly adept enough to have carried it on long without detection.
Fortunately, Miss Comstock was much occupied with some important English
people, for whose sake she had really dragged the party down to Venice.
And for seven days Adelle spent rapturous hours behind the black
curtains of a gondola, varied by hardly less exciting hours of planning
to bring her joy once more to her lips. Then Miss Comstock's English
friends departed and the family set out for the North. They went by the
International and Archie followed more slowly by the _omnibus_. He
overtook the party at Lucerne, but Lucerne is not as well adapted as
Venice for the shy retreats of love. They were content to return to
Paris, where they imagined their liberty would be less circumscribed....
It was at Lucerne that Adelle's lover demanded rather brusquely why she
was "so mortal scared of the schoolma'am?" Was she not a young woman of
nineteen and of independent means, without the annoying necessity of
consulting her parents in her choice of a lover? This put it into
Adelle's mind that in the last resort she might defy Pussy and have her
precious one all to herself in untrammeled freedom--in other words,
marry Archie. But she was really afraid of Miss Comstock, and also
doubtful of what her guardian, the trust company, might do to her. For
the present she was content, or nearly so, with what she had, and was
not thinking much about marriage. Her lover must be satisfied with
stolen moments and secret meetings in public places, with an occasional
kiss.
Marriage was really the only solution, and Archie knew it. If Adelle had
not been possessed of such a very large golden spoon, the whole affair
might have resulted differently and more disastrously. But her fortune
both endangered and protected her. For Archie was no worse and no better
than many a young man of his antecedents and condition. It is, perhaps,
to be doubted if he would have contented himself indefinitely with
innocent love-making, if the girl had not been so far removed from him
in estate.... He meant to marry Adelle when he could, which meant as
soon as it would be safe for her to marry. That might not be for another
two years, until she was mistress of herself in law and of her fortune.
Shortly after their return to Paris, the "home" at Neuilly was closed
for the summer and the family went to Etretat to occupy a villa that
Adelle had leased previous to her infatuation. There seemed no way of
escaping Etretat without betraying her real reasons. She said something
about staying on in Paris through June to work in the studio, but Pussy
firmly closed the house and shipped the servants to Adelle's villa. If
she only had not chosen Etretat, she wailed to Archie, but some nearer
Normandy watering-place from which she might have motored up to Paris on
one excuse or another and thus had glimpses of her lover! He must come
to Etretat. But Archie was again without funds, living on the bounty of
a hospitable fellow-countryman. After a fortnight of loneliness beside
the sea, Adelle invented an elaborate pretext to return to Paris, but
Miss Comstock insisted on accompanying her and stuck so closely to her
side during three hot days that there was no chance for a sight of
Archie. At last Adelle was sulkily dragged back to Etretat. Then she
asked Miss Baxter to visit her and induced that good-natured young woman
to send Archie a sufficient sum of money, as coming from an admirer of
his art, to enable him to take up his residence in the neighborhood.
Miss Baxter demurred over "giving him such a head," but finally was
persuaded. Archie Davis was probably more surprised than ever before in
his life to learn that one of his loose efforts on canvas had so
impressed an American amateur of the arts that the latter had given Miss
Baxter a five-hundred-dollar check for him and an order for a seascape
from the Brittany shore. Behold Archie established at Pluydell in a
picturesque thatched cottage with his easel and paint-box! Pluydell is
on the road from Etretat to Fecamp, and not over ten minutes' ride in a
swift motor-car from the villa that Adelle occupied.
The young man painted intermittently during August, and Adelle
discovered a mad passion for driving her new runabout alone, which her
friends naturally voted quite "piggy" in her. If she was occasionally
bullied into taking a companion with her, she drove the car so
recklessly around the roughest country lanes that the friend never asked
for another chance to ride with her. And thus she was free many times to
make the dash over the familiar bit of chalk road, leave her car beneath
the yellow rose-vine that covered the cottage, and walk across the sand
to that particular corner of the wide beach where the young American had
established himself with umbrella and painting tools....
What did they do with themselves all the hours that Adelle contrived to
snatch for her Archie? First there was a good deal of kissing. Adelle
grew fonder of this emotional expression as she became accustomed to it,
and sometimes rather wearied Archie with her tenderness. Then there was
a good deal of affectionate fondling, rumpling his red hair, pulling his
clothes and tie into place, criticizing his appearance and health.
Adelle when she was at the doll age never had had a chance for these
things, and now all her woman's instincts began to bloom at once. She
wanted to dress and care for her treasure and deluged him with small
trinkets, many of them made by her own somewhat bungling hands. After
these more intimate desires had been gratified, Adelle might take a
critical look at the canvas over which Archie was dawdling and pronounce
it "pretty" or "odd," or ask what it was meant to be. Then throwing
herself down on the sand or turf and pulling her broad straw hat over
her face she prepared for "talk." "Talk" consisted mostly of question
and answer,--
"Where did you go last night?"
"Casino."
"Whom did you see at the casino?"
"Same crowd."
"Did you play?"
"Just a little."
"Did you win?"
"Yep!"
"Much?"
"A couple of plunks," etc.