“That will matter little,” I presently replied. “Telling you will do no
good.”
“Ah, why do you say that?” murmured Aurora Church.
I said it partly because it was true; but I said it for other reasons as
well, which it was hard to define. Standing there bare-headed, in the
night air, in the vague light, this young lady looked extremely
interesting; and the interest of her appearance was not diminished by a
suspicion on my own part that she had come into the garden knowing me to
be there. I thought her a charming girl, and I felt very sorry for her;
but, as I looked at her, the terms in which Madame Beaurepas had ventured
to characterise her recurred to me with a certain force. I had professed
a contempt for them at the time, but it now came into my head that
perhaps this unfortunately situated, this insidiously mutinous young
creature, was looking out for a preserver. She was certainly not a girl
to throw herself at a man’s head, but it was possible that in her
intense—her almost morbid-desire to put into effect an ideal which was
perhaps after all charged with as many fallacies as her mother affirmed,
she might do something reckless and irregular—something in which a
sympathetic compatriot, as yet unknown, would find his profit. The
image, unshaped though it was, of this sympathetic compatriot, filled me
with a sort of envy. For some moments I was silent, conscious of these
things, and then I answered her question. “Because some things—some
differences are felt, not learned. To you liberty is not natural; you
are like a person who has bought a repeater, and, in his satisfaction, is
constantly making it sound. To a real American girl her liberty is a
very vulgarly-ticking old clock.”
“Ah, you mean, then,” said the poor girl, “that my mother has ruined me?”
“Ruined you?”
“She has so perverted my mind, that when I try to be natural I am
necessarily immodest.”
“That again is a false note,” I said, laughing.
She turned away. “I think you are cruel.”
“By no means,” I declared; “because, for my own taste, I prefer you
as—as—”
I hesitated, and she turned back. “As what?”
“As you are.”
She looked at me a while again, and then she said, in a little reasoning
voice that reminded me of her mother’s, only that it was conscious and
studied, “I was not aware that I am under any particular obligation to
please you!” And then she gave a clear laugh, quite at variance with her
voice.
“Oh, there is no obligation,” I said, “but one has preferences. I am
very sorry you are going away.”
“What does it matter to you? You are going yourself.”
“As I am going in a different direction that makes all the greater
separation.”
She answered nothing; she stood looking through the bars of the tall gate
at the empty, dusky street. “This grille is like a cage,” she said, at
last.
“Fortunately, it is a cage that will open.” And I laid my hand on the
lock.
“Don’t open it,” and she pressed the gate back. “If you should open it I
would go out—and never return.”
“Where should you go?”
“To America.”
“Straight away?”
“Somehow or other. I would go to the American consul. I would beg him
to give me money—to help me.”
I received this assertion without a smile; I was not in a smiling humour.
On the contrary, I felt singularly excited, and I kept my hand on the
lock of the gate. I believed (or I thought I believed) what my companion
said, and I had—absurd as it may appear—an irritated vision of her
throwing herself upon consular sympathy. It seemed to me, for a moment,
that to pass out of that gate with this yearning, straining, young
creature, would be to pass into some mysterious felicity. If I were only
a hero of romance, I would offer, myself, to take her to America.
In a moment more, perhaps, I should have persuaded myself that I was one,
but at this juncture I heard a sound that was not romantic. It proved to
be the very realistic tread of Célestine, the cook, who stood grinning at
us as we turned about from our colloquy.
“I ask _bien pardon_,” said Célestine. “The mother of Mademoiselle
desires that Mademoiselle should come in immediately. M. le Pasteur
Galopin has come to make his adieux to _ces dames_.”
Aurora gave me only one glance, but it was a touching one. Then she
slowly departed with Célestine.
The next morning, on coming into the garden, I found that Mrs. Church and
her daughter had departed. I was informed of this fact by old M.
Pigeonneau, who sat there under a tree, having his coffee at a little
green table.
“I have nothing to envy you,” he said; “I had the last glimpse of that
charming Miss Aurora.”
“I had a very late glimpse,” I answered, “and it was all I could possibly
desire.”
“I have always noticed,” rejoined M. Pigeonneau, “That your desires are
more moderate than mine. Que voulez-vous? I am of the old school. Je
crois que la race se perd. I regret the departure of that young girl:
she had an enchanting smile. Ce sera une femme d’esprit. For the
mother, I can console myself. I am not sure that _she_ was a femme
d’esprit, though she wished to pass for one. Round, rosy, _potelée_, she
yet had not the temperament of her appearance; she was a _femme austère_.
I have often noticed that contradiction in American ladies. You see a
plump little woman, with a speaking eye, and the contour and complexion
of a ripe peach, and if you venture to conduct yourself in the smallest
degree in accordance with these _indices_, you discover a species of
Methodist—of what do you call it?—of Quakeress. On the other hand, you
encounter a tall, lean, angular person, without colour, without grace,
all elbows and knees, and you find it’s a nature of the tropics! The
women of duty look like coquettes, and the others look like alpenstocks!
However, we have still the handsome Madame Ruck—a real _femme de Rubens_,
_celle-là_. It is very true that to talk to her one must know the
Flemish tongue!”
I had determined, in accordance with my brother’s telegram, to go away in
the afternoon; so that, having various duties to perform, I left M.
Pigeonneau to his international comparisons. Among other things, I went
in the course of the morning to the banker’s, to draw money for my
journey, and there I found Mr. Ruck, with a pile of crumpled letters in
his lap, his chair tipped back, and his eyes gloomily fixed on the fringe
of the green plush table-cloth. I timidly expressed the hope that he had
got better news from home; whereupon he gave me a look in which,
considering his provocation, the absence of irritation was conspicuous.
He took up his letters in his large hand, and crushing them together,
held it out to me. “That epistolary matter,” he said, “is worth about
five cents. But I guess,” he added, rising, “I have taken it in by this
time.” When I had drawn my money I asked him to come and breakfast with
me at the little _brasserie_, much favoured by students, to which I used
to resort in the old town. “I couldn’t eat, sir,” he said, “I—couldn’t
eat. Bad news takes away the appetite. But I guess I’ll go with you, so
that I needn’t go to table down there at the pension. The old woman down
there is always accusing me of turning up my nose at her food. Well, I
guess I shan’t turn up my nose at anything now.”
We went to the little brasserie, where poor Mr. Ruck made the lightest
possible breakfast. But if he ate very little, he talked a great deal;
he talked about business, going into a hundred details in which I was
quite unable to follow him. His talk was not angry nor bitter; it was a
long, meditative, melancholy monologue; if it had been a trifle less
incoherent I should almost have called it philosophic. I was very sorry
for him; I wanted to do something for him, but the only thing I could do
was, when we had breakfasted, to see him safely back to the Pension
Beaurepas. We went across the Treille and down the Corraterie, out of
which we turned into the Rue du Rhône. In this latter street, as all the
world knows, are many of those brilliant jewellers’ shops for which
Geneva is famous. I always admired their glittering windows, and never
passed them without a lingering glance. Even on this occasion,
pre-occupied as I was with my impending departure, and with my
companion’s troubles, I suffered my eyes to wander along the precious
tiers that flashed and twinkled behind the huge clear plates of glass.
Thanks to this inveterate habit, I made a discovery. In the largest and
most brilliant of these establishments I perceived two ladies, seated
before the counter with an air of absorption, which sufficiently
proclaimed their identity. I hoped my companion would not see them, but
as we came abreast of the door, a little beyond, we found it open to the
warm summer air. Mr. Ruck happened to glance in, and he immediately
recognised his wife and daughter. He slowly stopped, looking at them; I
wondered what he would do. The salesman was holding up a bracelet before
them, on its velvet cushion, and flashing it about in an irresistible
manner.
Mr. Ruck said nothing, but he presently went in, and I did the same.
“It will be an opportunity,” I remarked, as cheerfully as possible, “for
me to bid good-bye to the ladies.”
They turned round when Mr. Ruck came in, and looked at him without
confusion. “Well, you had better go home to breakfast,” remarked his
wife. Miss Sophy made no remark, but she took the bracelet from the
attendant and gazed at it very fixedly. Mr. Ruck seated himself on an
empty stool and looked round the shop.
“Well, you have been here before,” said his wife; “you were here the
first day we came.”
Miss Ruck extended the precious object in her hands towards me. “Don’t
you think that sweet?” she inquired.
I looked at it a moment. “No, I think it’s ugly.”
She glanced at me a moment, incredulous. “Well, I don’t believe you have
any taste.”
“Why, sir, it’s just lovely,” said Mrs. Ruck.
“You’ll see it some day on me, any way,” her daughter declared.
“No, he won’t,” said Mr. Ruck, quietly.
“It will be his own fault, then,” Miss Sophy observed.
“Well, if we are going to Chamouni we want to get something here,” said
Mrs. Ruck. “We may not have another chance.”
Mr. Ruck was still looking round the shop, whistling in a very low tone.
“We ain’t going to Chamouni. We are going to New York city, straight.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said Mrs. Ruck. “Don’t you suppose we
want to take something home?”
“If we are going straight back I must have that bracelet,” her daughter
declared, “Only I don’t want a velvet case; I want a satin case.”
“I must bid you good-bye,” I said to the ladies. “I am leaving Geneva in
an hour or two.”
“Take a good look at that bracelet, so you’ll know it when you see it,”
said Miss Sophy.
“She’s bound to have something,” remarked her mother, almost proudly.
Mr. Ruck was still vaguely inspecting the shop; he was still whistling a
little. “I am afraid he is not at all well,” I said, softly, to his
wife.
She twisted her head a little, and glanced at him.
“Well, I wish he’d improve!” she exclaimed.
“A satin case, and a nice one!” said Miss Ruck to the shopman.
I bade Mr. Ruck good-bye. “Don’t wait for me,” he said, sitting there on
his stool, and not meeting my eye. “I’ve got to see this thing through.”
I went back to the Pension Beaurepas, and when, an hour later, I left it
with my luggage, the family had not returned.