The next day Madame Beaurepas handed me, with her own elderly fingers, a
missive, which proved to be a telegram. After glancing at it, I informed
her that it was apparently a signal for my departure; my brother had
arrived in England, and proposed to me to meet him there; he had come on
business, and was to spend but three weeks in Europe. “But my house
empties itself!” cried the old woman. “The famille Ruck talks of leaving
me, and Madame Church _nous fait la révérence_.”
“Mrs. Church is going away?”
“She is packing her trunk; she is a very extraordinary person. Do you
know what she asked me this morning? To invent some combination by which
the famille Ruck should move away. I informed her that I was not an
inventor. That poor famille Ruck! ‘Oblige me by getting rid of them,’
said Madame Church, as she would have asked Célestine to remove a dish of
cabbage. She speaks as if the world were made for Madame Church. I
intimated to her that if she objected to the company there was a very
simple remedy; and at present _elle fait ses paquets_.”
“She really asked you to get the Rucks out of the house?”
“She asked me to tell them that their rooms had been let, three months
ago, to another family. She has an _aplomb_!”
Mrs. Church’s aplomb caused me considerable diversion; I am not sure that
it was not, in some degree, to laugh over it at my leisure that I went
out into the garden that evening to smoke a cigar. The night was dark
and not particularly balmy, and most of my fellow-pensioners, after
dinner, had remained in-doors. A long straight walk conducted from the
door of the house to the ancient grille that I have described, and I
stood here for some time, looking through the iron bars at the silent
empty street. The prospect was not entertaining, and I presently turned
away. At this moment I saw, in the distance, the door of the house open
and throw a shaft of lamplight into the darkness. Into the lamplight
there stepped the figure of a female, who presently closed the door
behind her. She disappeared in the dusk of the garden, and I had seen
her but for an instant, but I remained under the impression that Aurora
Church, on the eve of her departure, had come out for a meditative
stroll.
I lingered near the gate, keeping the red tip of my cigar turned toward
the house, and before long a young lady emerged from among the shadows of
the trees and encountered the light of a lamp that stood just outside the
gate. It was in fact Aurora Church, but she seemed more bent upon
conversation than upon meditation. She stood a moment looking at me, and
then she said,—
“Ought I to retire—to return to the house?”
“If you ought, I should be very sorry to tell you so,” I answered.
“But we are all alone; there is no one else in the garden.”
“It is not the first time that I have been alone with a young lady. I am
not at all terrified.”
“Ah, but I?” said the young girl. “I have never been alone—” then,
quickly, she interrupted herself. “Good, there’s another false note!”
“Yes, I am obliged to admit that one is very false.”
She stood looking at me. “I am going away to-morrow; after that there
will be no one to tell me.”