THE LADY OF THE BLUE BOOK
He saw her at breakfast the next morning; and again, later, sitting on a
deck-chair, with a book.
Once more he cursed his folly of the previous evening. A word or two
then, no matter how trivial their utterance, and the barriers of
convention would have been passed. Even should Fate throw a like
opportunity in his path again, it was entirely improbable that she would
choose the same hour. She is ever chary of exact repetitions. And, if his
stammering tongue failed in speech with the soft darkness to cover its
shyness, how was it likely it would find utterance in the broad light of
day? The Moment--he spelled it with a capital--had passed, and would
never again recur. Therefore he seated himself on his own deck-chair,
some twenty paces from her, and began to fill his pipe, gloomily enough.
Yet, in spite of gloom, he watched her,--surreptitiously of course. There
was no ill-bred staring in his survey.
She was again dressed in black, but this time the lace ruffles had given
place to soft white muslin cuffs and collar. Her dark hair was covered by
a broad-brimmed black hat. She was leaning back in her chair as she read,
the book lying on her lap. Suddenly the gravity of her face relaxed. A
smile rippled across it like a little breeze across the surface of some
lake. The smile broke into silent laughter. Antony found himself smiling
in response.
She looked up from her book, and out over the sun-kissed water, the
amusement still trembling on her lips and dancing in her eyes.
"I wonder," reflected Antony watching her, "what she has been reading."
For some ten minutes she sat gazing at the sunshine. Then she rose from
her chair, placed her book upon it, and went towards the stairway which
led to the lower deck.
Antony looked at the empty chair--empty, that is, except for a pale blue
cushion and a deeper blue book. On the back of the chair, certain letters
were painted,--P. di D.
Antony surveyed them gravely. The first letter really engrossed his
attention. The last was merely an adjunct. The first would represent--or
should represent--the real woman. He marshalled every possibility before
him, merely to dismiss them: Patience, Phyllis, Prudence, Priscilla,
Perpetua, Penelope, Persis, Phoebe, Pauline,--none were to his mind. The
last appeared to him the most possible, and yet it did not truly belong.
So he summed up its fitness. Yet, for the life of him, he could find no
other. He had run through the whole gamut attached to the initial, so he
told himself. Curiosity, or interest, call it what you will, fell back
baffled.
He got up from his chair, and began to pace the deck. Passing her chair,
he gazed again upon the letters painted thereon, as if challenging them
to disclose the secret. Inscrutable, they stared back blankly at him.
Turning for the third time, he perceived that she had returned on deck.
She was carrying a small bag of old gold brocade. She was in the chair
once more as he came alongside of her; but the blue book had slipped to
the ground. He bent to pick it up, involuntarily glancing at the title as
he handed it to her. _Dream Days_. It fitted into his imaginings of her.
"Do you know it?" she queried, noticing his glance.
"No," replied Antony, turning the book in his hands.
"Oh, but you should," she smiled back at him. "That is if you have the
smallest memory of your own childhood. I was just laughing over 'death
letters' ten minutes ago."
"Death letters?" queried Antony perplexed, the while his heart was
singing a little paean of joy at the vagaries of Fate's methods.
"Yes; a will or testament. But a death letter is so infinitely more
explanatory. Don't you think, so?"
Antony laughed.
"Of course," he agreed, light breaking in upon him.
"Take the book if you care to," she said. "I know it nearly by heart. But
I had it by me, and brought it on deck to look at it again. I didn't want
to get absorbed in anything entirely new. It takes one's mind from all
this, and seems a loss." A little gesture indicated sunshine, sea, and
sky.
"Yes," agreed Antony, "it's waste of time to read in the open." And then
he stopped. "Oh, I didn't mean--" he stammered, glancing down at the
book, and perceiving ungraciousness in his words.
"Oh, yes, you did," she assured him smiling, "and it was quite true, and
not in the least rude. Read it in your berth some time; you can do it
there with an easy conscience."
She gave him a little nod, which might have been considered dismissal or
a hint of emphasis. Antony, being of course aware that she could not
possibly find it the same pleasure to talk to him as he found it to talk
to her, took it as dismissal. With a word of thanks he moved off down the
deck, the blue book in his hands.
He found a retired spot forward on the boat. A curious shyness prevented
him from returning to his own deck-chair, and reading the book within
sight of her. In spite of his little remark against reading in the open,
he was longing to make himself acquainted with the contents immediately.
Had it not been her recommendation? Death letters! He laughed softly and
joyously. He had never even given the things a thought before, and here,
twice within ten days, they had been brought to his notice in a fashion
that, to his mind, fell little short of the miraculous. And it is not at
all certain that he did not consider their second queer little entry on
the scene the more miraculous of the two.
He opened the book, and there, facing him from the fly-leaf, was the
answer to the question he had erstwhile sought to fathom,--Pia di
Donatello. His lips formed the syllables, dwelling with pleasure on the
first three little letters--Pia. Oh, it was right, it was utterly and
entirely right. Every other possibility vanished before it into the
remotest background, unthinkable in the face of what was. Pia di
Donatello! Again he repeated the musical syllables. And yet--and
yet--he'd have sworn she was English. There wasn't the faintest trace of
a foreign accent in her speech. If anything, there was a hint of
Irish,--the soft intonation of the Emerald Isle. Her colouring, too, was
Irish, the blue-black hair, the dark violet eyes--he had discovered that
they were violet; looking, for all the world, as if they had been put in
with a smutty finger, as the saying goes. He revolved the problem in his
mind, and a moment later came upon the solution, so he told himself. An
Irish mother, and an Italian father, so he decreed, metaphorically
patting himself on the back the while for his perspicacity.
The problem settled, he turned himself to the contents of the book as set
forth by the author thereof, rather than the three words inscribed on the
fly-leaf by the owner. They were not hard of digestion. The print was
large, the matter light. Anon he came to Mutabile Semper and the death
letters, and, having read them, and laughed in concord with the erstwhile
laugh of the book's owner, he closed the pages, and gazed out upon the
sunshine and the water.