She went!
Reader, whom I feel it unworthy to cajole by the use of any epithet so
simple or so designing as gentle,--reader, I who went too, I who heard,
who saw, and who now narrate, do not profess to have the charcoal
sketch of a notion how we really embarked on our fantastic adventure.
I therefore feel somewhat hopeless of communicating it to you, or
of convincing you that you have not unwittingly been seduced into
starting a story unfit for ladylike or gentlemanly ears. To charge it
to the account of the Moselle, however, is what I refuse. I can only
propound the thesis that the geography of “this goodly promontory,”
the unstable planet whereon we spin, has as yet been imperfectly
mapped out. I am unable, at all events, to accept the popular theory
that its surface face is divided between the World and the Half World.
Even you, epithetless reader, have heard of a tract lying between the
two, and overlapping them both, vaguely designated as Bohemia. But my
own mild explorations have convinced me that Bohemia is a name not
comprehensive enough for a certain dark intervening continent of which
are denizens my very good friends Nick and Zephine. And I hereby invite
you, if not to comprehend their case, at least in a spirit of tolerance
to consider the same.
Do not expect me, therefore, to fill up valuable space by assuring you
in so many words of Zephine’s epic simplicity, or of Nick’s romantic
freedom to do whatever came into his head. He told me afterward that
when he saw our friend and her braids and the apple blossoms and
everything, he just had to find out whether I had been lying about her;
and if she hadn’t agreed to go with us he would have cancelled our
passage.
As a matter of fact, he did. Not many hours after our return from Fort
Lee he sent me off by myself to get Zephine. “And by the way” he added,
just as I was starting, “come to the Cunard pier.”
“What pier?” demanded I in astonishment.
“The Cunard,” he repeated. “We shall get over quicker by the
_Pactolia_. And it may amuse Zephine more.”
I, who am of the submerged tenth, had been dying to cross by the latest
flier. But Nick, who won’t--or who wouldn’t--have a yacht because
it’s duller and less comfortable, has a passion for discovering boats
that nobody ever heard of, by which queer people take forever to get
to out of the way ports. He had therefore engaged passage on a line
that sails to Christiania--when it doesn’t hit some outlying portion
of Scotland and go down with all on board. It was on the tip of my
conventional tongue to object that we were too late to get anything
by the Cunard or any other line than our own, three hours before the
ship was to sail, in the migrating season. I have travelled with Nick
before, however. He is not like me, credulous enough to believe steamer
agents and hotel clerks and sleeping car men when they solemnly swear
they haven’t a berth left. He always insists, on some dark theory that
what they really prefer is not to sell out, that they’ve got something
up their sleeve. And heaven has gifted him with the art of getting it
down.
And so it was on this memorable occasion. Zephine and I arrived at
the foot of Fourteenth Street at three minutes to ten, purple and
panting but still on speaking terms. For I had all but abducted her.
At the decisive moment I had discovered in this emancipated lady a
scruple. She was calmly painting in the orchard, and before she would
dismiss the sunrise models, or pack her straw suitcase, it became
necessary for me to prove to her that Nick could take the entire
Academy of Design to Norway every summer, if he chose, and still have
enough left for enamels. However, we were hustled by that gentleman
aboard the _Pactolia_ just as the gang-plank went up. Zephine and
her straw suit-case were installed in an ivory-and-gold royal suite
which had until the last moment been reserved for a Cattle Queen of
the South-West, her retinue, and her wardrobe trunks. But the Cattle
Queen had been so imprudent as to indulge in an excess of Nesselrode
pudding, plus Crême d’Yvette, during the fated hours that Nick and I
were taxying around New York and New Jersey. We contented ourselves
with the captain’s cabin--Nick vowing they had another somewhere and
would cough it up as soon as they started. Which, in fact, they did.
But as Nick wouldn’t let me take it, and I couldn’t let Nick, I suppose
the captain must have slept there instead of in the steamer chair with
which Zephine’s sympathetic imagination endowed him.
I have been lucky enough to cross the ocean as often as most people,
and oftener than some; but I never made a voyage like that. The howls
with which I had greeted Zephine’s reappearance on my horizon were
constantly upsetting my equilibrium. While I have enough in common with
her and Nick to travel in their company even to this day, I also have
too much in common with Mrs. Grundy not to be conscious how horrified
she would be when it came out, through the pronunciation of names and
the confidences of stewardesses, that the lady of the royal suite was
not the famous Cattle Queen of the sailing list but a simple damsel of
the brush, voyaging under the protection of the far from obscure Mr.
Nicholas Marler. Such cases, of course, are not absolutely unknown on
ocean greyhounds. The beauty of this case was its perfect difference
from anything good Mrs. Grundy was capable of conceiving. And what a
picture-play I could make out of it if I had the time!
Zephine’s clothes were naturally what interested the more inquiring of
our fellow passengers. Yet the glances which followed our companion
were not, I noted, of disdain. I concluded that the royal suite of the
_Pactolia_ lent Zephine’s uniform a new value, or at any rate gave her
a freedom to wear what she chose. For she was good enough to justify
my account of her. Having marked out a sartorial course for herself,
Zephine had never wasted time in reconsideration. She duly produced
the brown skirt, or the pea-green, or the shiny grey, as occasion
demanded. And each was a pure delight to Nick, who couldn’t get over
her. But he had had the flair to know, which I hadn’t, that Zephine
would not suffer by comparison with the laces and jewels of the saloon.
It surprised me, in that company, to discover what an air she had.
She had been through the mill of the studios, of course, and it would
take a good deal to startle her. In fact she sometimes startled more
delicately nurtured dames by the things she took for granted. She was
not Marguerite, though. She was nearer Juno, in her large, fair, easy,
Germanic way. Her braids were magnificent in the light. As for her
throat and her shoulder, they were incomparable.
“Really Nick,” I burst out one night, “you are a born connoisseur. Did
you know, or were you mad--just seeing her like that, in a window, for
a quarter of an hour, in the moonlight?”
Nick’s rejoinder, which was no reply, edified me to the limit of
edification.
“She says they wash,” he seriously observed.
My jaw dropped, for only to the wise is a word sufficient. But then I
howled anew.
“Of course they wash, you cracked walnut! That’s the killing part of
it, because she doesn’t save anything by her famous system--she has to
keep so many of them going.”
“Why didn’t you ever marry her?” continued Nick inconsequently.
“I never thought of it, for one thing. Neither did she, for another.
If she had, she scarcely would have failed to mention it. And neither
of us could afford it, for a third. Want any more reasons? I can think
them up as fast as you can ask them.”
“Herb, you’re an ass,” commented Nick without forms. “But it’s never
too late to mend. We’ll build a Norwegian cottage in the lake orchard
at Island Pond, and you can both paint apple trees and live happily
ever after.”
“Thanks,” said I.