“No.”
“There wouldn’t be,” he volunteered somewhat inconsequently. After
which he went on: “People liked her all the same. There were dozens
of them ready to jump into the Canal for her, even then. And I guess
some of ’em did. I didn’t, though. I didn’t like her. I liked to hear
her sing, but that was all. I had an idea she posed. She struck me as
doing the high tragedy act, and I didn’t much care for it. She had
funny ways, too. She used to come into my room at all hours of day and
night, and I thought she was up to that sham Bohemian game they put on
sometimes when they get a chance. Not that I’m so terribly straitlaced
myself; but I like people to be what they are, and I didn’t think she
was. Oh, I had ideas then!”
He stopped, did Chatty, as we watched the last of the yacht. It faded
like a ghost into the purple of the cliffs.
“Yes, she was a funny girl,” he finally said. Then he put his hand
into his pocket and drew out the classic pocketbook. From it, however,
he took neither the classic photograph nor the classic lock of
hair--not even the classic rose. But I will admit that he did produce
a desiccated vegetable of some sort. This he held up to himself and to
me. “When I went away,” he said, “she came into my room to watch me
pack. She had been in the garden, and she had a big branch of lemon
verbena. She broke off a sprig every now and then and threw it into the
trunk. I found them all over everything, afterwards. ‘When you get to
America,’ she said, ‘it will remind you of the girl you didn’t like and
who didn’t like you.’”
He stopped and looked down the inlet. Then he looked at his sprig
again. I wondered what to say.
“Oh!” I uttered tamely. “So you keep it to remind you of the girl you
didn’t like!”
“Yes,” he said--“and who didn’t like me.”