I seem to have spent my time falling in and falling out of love with
lanky boys. And you, my darling Mary, are trying to make out that that
kind of thing is serious. Well, if it was, my young life has been
lived, for at present I couldn't fall in love with anybody."
"I believe I could," said Mary meditatively. "But not with Jemmie
Alison. If you really think about it, marriage is terrible."
"Why?"
Here was Mary's opportunity to ask Daisy a few direct questions; but,
when it came to the point, she could not bring herself to do so. She
could not imagine that she would ever feel more intimate with any other
girl than she felt with Daisy, and if she could not ask Daisy she could
not ask anybody.
"Why?" her friend repeated.
"Oh, always being with the same person," said Mary, with this
explanation allowing the opportunity to pass.
Daisy went back to her hunting; Mary remained in London.
"We might go to Ventnor in March," said Lady Flower. "I don't feel
inclined to travel far. I really believe that I'm beginning to feel
old. I wish I could see you safely married. You strike me as being
somewhat listless in your manner. That would vanish if you were
married."
Jemmie Alison ventured to think that Mary was not looking quite
herself. He would have been glad to suggest the same remedy as Lady
Flower; but he lacked the courage and compromised.
"What you want is a dog," he decided. "A nice little dog. Give you an
excuse for taking a walk every morning in the Park. I should like to
think of you with your little dog under the trees when I'm working in
my office."
Jemmie Alison proved that he had faith in his prescription by taking
a great deal of trouble to procure for Mary the very dog for the
purpose--a wise Dandie Dinmont not so young as to require the elements
of training, yet not so old as to be fretting for a former mistress or
master.
"He is called Mac. You don't dislike that name?" the donor asked.
Mary said that she thought it was a most suitable name.
"There's so much in a name," he continued meaningly.
"Yes, and it's so unlucky, I always think, to change a name," Mary
added.
"Oh, you think it's unlucky?" Jemmie Alison asked in a gloomy tone.
Mac was a success from the moment of his arrival, and Mary was really
grateful to her friend--friendship was the relation established between
her and Jemmie Alison after several discussions--for the kind thought
that made the dog hers. She was glad when the need of exercising Mac
took her out into Hyde Park where by now, crocuses, a myriad steady
flames, defied the wind and lighted the dim green of the London grass.
There were also white and purple crocuses that gave Mary a keener
pleasure than the yellow ones, for they seemed to be not so much the
first flowers of Spring as the last flowers of Winter, and to express
with their cold hues and tranquillity of form the sharpness of life
that was there all the time. They reminded her somehow of those lovers
who wandered about in the iron chill of that January afternoon, those
regardful lovers whose happy indifference to time or weather she had so
greatly envied.
One morning the sun was so warm that, tired with throwing sticks
for Mac, Mary sat down on a chair in the Broad Walk, watching the
children bowling their hoops or running about with pink and blue
balloons, while with one splay paw upon his mistress's instep Mac sat
watching the other dogs. Mary from paying attention to the children
and nurses fell to wondering about the fragments of shell that were
mixed with the fresh gravel of the path. From what far-off beach had
they come, or were they fossil shells from the bed of a long-receded
ocean? Whencesoever it came, each fragment had once been part of a
living animal. A living animal. Not a hundred years hence, she, or all
that part of her beheld now by the passers-by, would seem not more
important than one of these shells. Was there not indeed something
more permanent than this bodily husk? Grandmamma did not think so.
Mary was sure of her unbelief, even if every Sunday morning Grandmamma
in sealskin and dove-gray silk did make use of the pew she rented for
herself and Mary in St. Peter's, Knightsbridge.
"You are seen in church," she told her granddaughter. "One is anxious
for you to be seen."
With the help of her vinaigrette Lady Flower kept awake during the
sermon and congratulated herself upon the charming appearance of Mary,
when Mary rose to take her share of singing unto the Lord at Morning
Prayer.
The notion that her granddaughter was contemplating the serious aspect
and expression of religious fervor would have shocked the old lady; the
knowledge that she was sitting in Kensington Gardens asking herself
what she really was would have made Lady Flower think more earnestly
than ever that it was high time her granddaughter was married.
"It must be for something," Mary told herself, crushing a tiny
scalloped fragment with her toe. "Life must be meant for something."
Any attempt to solve the riddle of the universe had to be postponed
on account of Mac's suddenly being involved in a desperate fight, for
while his mistress had been lost in meditation he had been exposed to
the insults of an aggressive fox terrier.
"Bandy-legged Sawney!" the terrier had murmured when he trotted fussily
past with erect tail. Mac's ears had twitched under this reflection
upon his nationality; but he had restrained himself. Presently the
terrier had come trotting back, this time on three legs as if to
insinuate that he was a better dog on three legs than a Dandie Dinmont
on four.
"Donkey's ears!" he had snarled.
Even this Mac had endured in patience, for his splay paw was still
reposing on his mistress' instep and he was proud of the pose, too
proud to abandon it for a fox-terrier. But, when his mistress had of
her own accord released him by withdrawing her toe from his protection,
Mac had been able to stand no more.
"Let him come back and say another word," he had growled to himself,
turning round and round and scratching up the gravel in his irritation.
The fox-terrier had trotted back more aggressive than ever and to
emphasize his contempt of the Dandie Dinmont's short legs he had
swaggered up and down in front of Mac on the tips of his paws,
boastfully snarling.
Mac rushed in, and the fight began.
The nearest children climbed hastily over the railings to the safety
of the grass: nurses screamed to their charges: a park-keeper looked
out of the window of his little green room and made ready to effect an
impressive arrival upon the scene when the fight was over.
"Your dog began it," a weather-beaten woman said angrily to Mary. "I
call all and sundry to witness that it was your dog who deliberately
made an attack upon mine. Trusty! Trusty! Oh, my poor Trusty, he'll be
killed. That other brute's got him down. He's being bitten to pieces,
my poor old Trusty!"
Mary was hitting both dogs with her whip-lead; but although she felt
that she was using most unfeminine force, such force that the ribbons
of her bonnet came untied and at any moment she expected to find her
hair loose upon her shoulders, her blows had not the slightest effect
upon the dogs. The owner of the fox-terrier was exciting herself more
every moment, and Mary was afraid that presently she should find
herself being rolled over and over among those fragments of shells, her
preoccupation with which had been the cause of Mac's outburst. However,
the Dandie Dinmont was certainly winning; and if the weather-beaten
lady did attack her, perhaps he would have disposed of the fox-terrier
in time to rescue his mistress. At that moment a slim young man rushed
into the middle of the fray and, seizing both dogs by their tails, he
held them apart until he had returned them growling to the arms of
their owners.
"You can think yourself lucky that I don't take out a summons against
you," said the owner of the fox-terrier, hurrying off, without a word
of thanks to the young man, to bathe Trusty's wounds at the nearest
fountain.
He was a dark young man with fine features and deep brown eyes, who
spoke English with a French accent.
"Pardon, Mademoiselle, we have not met before, have we?" he asked,
looking hard at Mary.
She thought that he was trying to improve the occasion and was on
the point of replying with a cold negative, when she began to wonder
where and how she had met this stranger before. In his frankly puzzled
stare there was not a hint of presumption, and, though to enter into
conversation with a young man who had rendered her a service in a
public park was contrary to the whole spirit of her bringing up, Mary
could not resist her curiosity.
"Have we met before?" she asked. "I've a feeling that we have
somewhere. You are French, are you not?"
"From the Lyonnais," he replied.
"But that's where I was at school."
"I lived in Châteaublanc," he continued. In a flash she remembered who
he was.
"Pierre Menard!" she cried.
"And you are the little English girl with--pardon, Mademoiselle--with
red hair."
When two old friends meet after a long lapse of time, the years between
are either swept away altogether or their capacity for separation is
doubled. In this case they were obliterated. Here on this fine morning
in early March Pierre stood before Mary as many times he had stood in
the fair landscapes of memory. She heard again the diminishing sound
of the drum that played him on to glory down that winding road ten
years ago; she stood again beside him in that embrasure, gazing at a
world washed with the gold of that breathless and mellow autumn day;
she saw him again in heroic guise and found in his handling of the
dog-fight such an inspired chivalry as she had found in his setting
forth to fight for France.
"And how well you speak English, Monsieur."
"I have lived in London for eight years. I'm working with Marechal
et Cie, the big silk merchants. I had some business to transact in
Kensington and took the opportunity of walking through the Gardens this
beautiful day."
"Then I must not detain you," she murmured.
With a gesture he disposed of any urgency in his business.
"You were in a greater hurry last time we were together," Mary reminded
him.
She blushed at the adverb she had used, for it seemed to sweep them
toward an intimacy that she felt was imprudent.
"I was not old enough last time, Mademoiselle, to appreciate my good
fortune. And you were, if I may say so, a very little girl in those
days, Mademoiselle."
While they were talking, they had moved away from the populous Broad
Walk and were wandering now through a grove of elms. Mary looking
round realized that they were as much alone together as if they were in
the country. Yet not for anything would she have been anywhere else,
not for anything would she have missed this new music in the twittering
of the sparrows overhead, this fresh glow in the grass, this sudden
accord of herself with the Spring.
"I ought really to be going home," she murmured. "I only came out to
give my little dog a run."
"See how much he is enjoying himself on the grass. I could never have
the heart to deprive him of a moment's pleasure, Mademoiselle. I should
indeed be _ingrat_."
They were wandering deeper into the green heart of the Gardens. Mary,
looking over her shoulder, saw the houses of Kensington lose themselves
in a mist of bare boughs, heard the traffic sound more faintly, ceased
to feel the slightest desire to solve the riddle of the universe, and
threw all the responsibility of her behavior upon Fate.
"I've felt for a long time that something was about to happen,"
she told herself deliberately without being the least aware of
inconsistency, who only half an hour ago was feeling drearily that
nothing was going to happen. What nice hands Pierre had ... she pulled
herself up for a moment, but a moment later asked herself indignantly
by what other name she should think of him. He had always been Pierre.
Why did he keep staring sideways at her without speaking? She must be
careful to appear utterly unconscious of his glances.
"I'm trying to tell myself that you are grown up," Pierre said.
It was so easy to think of him as Pierre. Monsieur Menard would sound
so affected, and Mr. Menard would sound ridiculous.
"I am grown up. I'm twenty."
What would Grandmamma say if she could hear her? Yet after all he must
know within a year or two how old she was, so why pretend?
"I am twenty-seven."
"I think you look older than that," Mary said judicially. "I should
have guessed you were thirty, if I had not known that you were scarcely
seventeen when you went off to the war."
Mary felt that it was important to impress on Pierre how much she was
aware of that boy and girl friendship. It would never do for him to
think that she would have allowed herself to walk with him under these
trees because he was what he was now. No sooner had she decided this
than she felt a sharp desire to glance sideways at him, to see more
exactly what he was indeed now. She tried hard to resist the impulse,
but the longer she resisted the more urgent it became, and thus their
eyes met.
She blushed in confusion, but an instant afterward turned pale with
emotion.
"Mademoiselle, you are ill," he cried. "Sit here awhile. The sun is
shining. You will not catch cold."
Why did he call her Mademoiselle? Why did he not say "Mary"? Oh, she
must not think such thoughts. Probably he did not know her name, or if
he ever knew it he must have forgotten it long ago. He was behaving so
well, and she was behaving so badly.
"I don't know what you must think of me," she murmured.
"Mademoiselle, I should not dare to say so soon what I thought."
"Is your opinion of me as bad as all that?" She was behaving like a
coquette. What was happening to her? Mac's fight must have upset her
more than she thought.
"You are unkind to me," said Pierre with a shrug.
"Unkind?" she echoed.
"You taunt me with my position...." He broke off and began to play with
the dog.
Already a quarrel. How exciting life became when one could quarrel!
"You misunderstand me, Monsieur," Mary said with a dignity that she
hoped was a match for his. "I had not the least intention of taunting
you. Perhaps you are trying to persuade yourself into thinking that,
because you are afraid that you may have led me to suppose that you
were more interested in thinking about me than you really were."
"I am too much interested in you," Pierre retorted. "And you with the
cruelty of your sex have perceived that too quickly. But you are right
to make it clear to me that you have only condescended to give me your
company.... Ah, Mademoiselle, do you think I have forgotten that when
you first met me I was the gardener's son?"
So he was! But he was French. And France was now a republic where all
were equal.
"I remember perfectly what you were," said Mary. "But I don't remember
that it made any difference to me when I was ten, and I don't see why
it should make any difference when I'm twenty."
"Mademoiselle," cried Pierre, starting to his feet, "I entreat you not
to mock me. I have no right to say what I feel for you. But at least I
may beg you to spare my feelings."
"You really do speak English quite perfectly," Mary exclaimed in
obvious, open-eyed admiration of his fluency.
"Mademoiselle, if I should wish to change my employer, I would beg you
to give me a written testimonial."
"Ah, now it's you who are sneering at me," said Mary, turning upon
Pierre reproachful eyes.
He made a gesture that was intended to convey how little it mattered to
her what he did or what he said or what he thought. Who was he in her
world?
Mary felt that it would give quite a wrong impression of herself
if she did not succeed in convincing him that she despised those
artificial barriers of rank and station to which he evidently supposed
she attached so much importance.
"I assure you that I never was and never could be conscious of any
difference between us like that," she affirmed. "I look upon you as an
old friend whom Fate--Fate," she repeated emphatically, for she felt
that it was imperative to make it clear from the start that Fate was
going to be accounted culpable for anything that might happen, "whom
Fate has brought once more into my life. I should never have allowed
myself to take this walk with you alone, if I didn't consider you an
old friend. And now I'm sure you ought to be keeping your appointment.
It would never do for you to neglect your business on my account."
"But shall we ever meet again?" he asked.
"Fate will decide that," answered Mary demurely. "I dare say, if your
business brings you this way sometimes, we shall meet."
And of course they did meet, not once but many times that Spring.
"It was really a happy thought of Mr. Alison's to give you that
odd-looking dog," Lady Flower observed. "Your color is much better
since you've made a habit of exercising that dog in the Park. I really
don't think you'll want to leave town until the season is over. And I
shall not be sorry for an excuse to stay where I am. I find these short
excursions into the country rather a bore nowadays."
"I'm perfectly well in London," Mary assured her grandmother. "I think
it would be a great mistake to go away."
Mary did not meet Pierre in the Park every day, but she did meet him
very often; and, although at the back of her mind she had a suspicion
that he must be neglecting his business to be able to meet her as often
as he did, she allowed herself to suppose that it was Fate. And if ever
before her mirror she was tempted by honesty to ask herself what was
going to be the end of it, she always hurried down to dinner and left
Fate to argue it out upstairs. Her friend Daisy had been back in town
a long time before Mary gave the least hint of an interest in life. In
fact, if she had not met Pierre unexpectedly one morning when she was
out walking with Daisy, she would probably never have said anything
about her romance.
"So that's why you find Jemmie Alison so dull," her friend laughed.
"My dear, what has he got to do with Jemmie Alison?"
"A great deal, I should imagine, by your blushes."
"Did I never tell you about young Menard, when we were at the
_pension_?"
Daisy shook her head.
"Of course, it happened before you came. When I was there during the
war." She related briefly the tale of Pierre's determination to fight
for his country. "And the other day we met again quite by accident."
"And no doubt will go on meeting quite by accident," said Daisy dryly.
"I must take Mac somewhere," Mary protested.
Two days later she met Pierre by the banks of the Serpentine on a
May noon that held the city in a web of silver. The tall houses of
Bayswater, reflected in that shimmering expanse of water, appeared like
the battlements of an enchanted palace above the trees that masked
their prosaic beginnings. The white peacocks haunting the slopes toward
Hyde Park made one feel that life was a dream and that the children
and nurses, the meditative loiterers, even the old maids with their
pet dogs, would all presently be turned into birds to fly above this
cloud-cuckoo-town of London.
No sooner were they seated on two of those green chairs, which in
their emptiness speak as eloquently as musical instruments of latent
emotions, than Pierre took Mary's hand and said: "Mademoiselle, I have
given up Marechal et Cie. Presently I shall find something better to
do. But so long as I was their _employé_ I could not tell you that I
loved you. At this moment I am poor, but I am free. Mary, I hope you
will love me until I can win you in marriage?"
She let her hand remain in his. Citizen and citizeness of
cloud-cuckoo-town, they floated far above ordinary life.
"I only know that I love you, Pierre," she whispered.
He bent over and touched her fingers with his lips. Then for a long
time they sat in silence.
"You had better come and speak to my grandmother this afternoon."
He nodded pensively.
"She might raise some difficulties," Mary went on, trying to realize
that there was another existence outside the serene and silver world in
which the beating of her own heart sounded so loud. "Come about four,"
she said, rising. "I will explain how all this has happened."
He kissed once more her hand and stood watching her as she floated
across the level grass toward home.
It was only when Mary heard the door of the house in King's Gate close
behind her and the gong chime for lunch that she began to wonder if
it was all going to be as easy as it had seemed by the banks of the
pale blue Serpentine. However, Pierre was coming this afternoon, and
Grandmamma must be warned. Lunch was surely unusually disturbed to-day.
The maids were always in and out with new dishes. Perhaps it would be
best to wait until they went up to the drawing-room for coffee. Would
that mean Grandmamma's missing her nap? If it did, it could not be
helped. At least she must be told that there was such a person.
"Did I ever tell you about a boy called Pierre Menard?" Mary asked
when she had poured out the coffee. It took a long time to describe
that scene ten years ago when Pierre followed the drum to glory, so
long that Grandmamma was nodding before Mary had finished. But when
Mary added that curiously enough she had met him again the other day,
met him once or twice in fact, and that he had asked her if he could
call this afternoon, Grandmamma sat upright and looked more wide-awake
than Mary had ever seen her yet.
"Is the young man going to call on you or me?"
"On you, Grandmamma."
"Oh," the old lady grimly commented. "Then I'd better go and take my
rest at once."
Mary could not make up her mind whether she should stay in the
drawing-room until Pierre came or whether it would be wiser to let
him interview her grandmother first. In the end she decided upon the
latter course, and in great agitation of spirit she went upstairs to
her own room where she tried to distract her thoughts by trying on
several new dresses with which Lady Flower had insisted on replenishing
her wardrobe, so that she should not carry an end-of-the-season air
about her, the old lady had said. But the new dresses were incapable
of keeping her from running out on the landing every few minutes to
hear if the front door was being opened. It became impossible to remain
in her room, and she went back to the drawing-room so that she might
see Pierre first and warn him that her grandmother was likely to be
difficult.
At last Pierre arrived, looking trim and slim in a frock-coat. Mary
was glad that he had dressed ceremoniously, for she knew how much
importance Grandmamma attached to ceremony.
"Oh, Pierre," she exclaimed. "I only wanted to see you for a moment
just to advise you to talk in French to Lady Flower. She is half French
herself, you know, and I'm sure it will all sound much better in your
own language. It's not that you don't speak English perfectly, but you
might make a slip in a foreign tongue. You might give quite a wrong
impression."
Pierre agreed with her about the wisdom of this, and then he took her
in his arms.
"_Ma bien aimée_," he whispered. "Will you give me courage with one
kiss?"
She fluttered upon his arms more lightly than a bird, more lightly
than a moth, more lightly than a crimson leaf that is blown whispering
along a window-pane. Then hearing her grandmother's step she fled from
the room through the domed conservatory past the staring eyes of the
pelargoniums and the pug-faced, toothless calceolarias.
Twenty minutes later, Mary found Pierre gone and her grandmother
reading _The Times_ as if she were trying to assure herself that normal
life would continue in spite of a presumptuous young Frenchman, who
without prospects asked for the hand of an heiress.
"Although, considering what he is," said Lady Flower, "the young man
behaved very well. I was able to show him at once how ridiculous it was
that he should aspire to marry you."
"But I love him," Mary interposed.
"I have no doubt that at this moment you do love him. It is my
business, dear child, to protect you against impulse."