A week after this was the first of April, and when Harrison, as was his
wont, reached the reading-room a little before the opening hour, he
found a notice on the door to the effect that the fall of some
plastering from a ceiling necessitated the closing of the reading-room
for that day. A week of daily lunches and talks with Miss Midland had
given him the habit of communicating his ideas to her, and he waited
inside the vestibule for her to appear. He happened thus, as he had not
before, to see her arrival. Accompanied by an elderly person in black,
who looked, even to Harrison's inexperienced eyes, like a maid-servant,
she came rapidly in through the archway which led from the street to
the court. Here, halting a moment, she dismissed her attendant with a
gesture, and, quite unconscious of the young man's gaze upon her,
crossed the court diagonally with a free, graceful step. Observing her
thus at his leisure, Harrison was moved to the first and almost the
last personal comment upon his new friend. He did not as a rule notice
very keenly the outward aspect of his associates. "Well, by gracious,"
he said to himself, "if she's not quite a good-looker!--or would be if
she had money or gumption enough to put on a little more style!"
He took a sudden resolution and, meeting her at the foot of the steps,
laid his plan enthusiastically before her. It took her breath away.
"Oh, no, I _couldn't_," she exclaimed, looking about her helplessly as
if foreseeing already that she would yield. "What would people----?"
"Nobody would say a thing, because nobody would know about it. We could
go and get back here by the usual closing time, so that whoever comes
for you would never suspect--she's not very sharp, is she?"
"No, no. She's only what you would call my hired girl."
"Well, then, it's Versailles[125-1] for us. Here, give me your
portfolio to carry. Let's go by the tram line[125-2]--it's cheaper for
two poor folks."
On the way out he proposed, with the same thrifty motive, that they buy
provisions in the town, before they began their sight-seeing in the
chateau, and eat a picnic lunch somewhere in the park.
"Oh, anything you please now!" she answered with reckless
light-heartedness. "I'm quite lost already."
"There's nothing disreputable about eating sandwiches on the grass," he
assured her; and indeed, when they spread their simple provision out
under the great pines back of the Trianon, she seemed to agree with
him, eating with a hearty appetite, laughing at all his jokes, and,
with a fresh color and sparkling eyes, telling him that she had never
enjoyed a meal more.
"Good for you! That's because you work too hard at your old history of
music."--By this time each knew all the details of the other's
research--"You ought to have somebody right at hand to make you take
vacations and have a good time once in a while. You're too
conscientious."
Then, because he was quite frank and unconscious himself, he went on
with a simplicity which the most accomplished actor could not have
counterfeited, "That's what I'm always telling Maggie--Miss Warner.
She's the girl I'm engaged to."
He did not at the time remark, but afterward, in another land, he was
to recall with startling vividness the quick flash of her clear eyes
upon him and the fluttering droop of her eyelids. She finished her
éclair quietly, remarking, "So you are engaged?"
"Very much so," answered Harrison, leaning his back against the
pine-tree and closing his eyes, more completely to savor the faint
fragrance of new life which rose about them in the warm spring air,
like unseen incense.
Miss Midland stood up, shaking the crumbs from her skirt, and began
fitting her gloves delicately upon her slim and very white hands. After
a pause, "But how would she like _this_?" she asked.
Without opening his eyes, Harrison murmured, "She'd like it fine. She's
a great girl for outdoors."
His companion glanced down at him sharply, but in his tranquil and
half-somnolent face there was no trace of evasiveness. "I don't mean
the park, the spring weather," she went on, with a persistence which
evidently cost her an effort. "I mean your being here with another
girl. That would make an English woman jealous."
Harrison opened his dark eyes wide and looked at her in surprise. "You
don't understand--we're not flirting with each other, Maggie and
I--we're engaged." He added with an air of proffering a self-evident
explanation, "As good as married, you know."
Miss Midland seemed to find in the statement a great deal of material
for meditation, for after an "Ah!" which might mean anything, she sat
down on the other side of the tree, leaning her blonde head against its
trunk and staring up into the thick green branches. Somewhere near them
in an early-flowering yellow shrub a bee droned softly. After a time
she remarked as if to herself, "They must take marriage very seriously
in Iowa."
The young man aroused himself, to answer sleepily: "It's Illinois where
I live now--Iowa was where I grew up--but it's all the same. Yes, we
do."
After that there was another long, fragrant silence which lasted until
Harrison roused himself with a sigh, exclaiming that although he would
like nothing better than to sit right there till he took root, they had
yet to "do" the two Trianons and to see the state carriages. During
this sightseeing tour he repeated his performance of the morning in the
chateau, pouring out a flood of familiar, quaintly expressed historical
lore of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made his
astonished listener declare he must have lived at that time.
"Nope!" he answered her. "Got it all out of Illinois libraries. Books
are great things if you're only willing to treat them right. And
history--by gracious! history is a study fit for the gods! All about
folks, and they are all that are worth while in the world!"
They were standing before the Grand Trianon as he said this, waiting
for the tram car, and as it came into sight he cried out artlessly, his
dark, aquiline face glowing with fervor, "I--I just _love_ folks!"
She looked at him curiously. "In all my life I never knew any one
before to say or think that." Some of his enthusiasm was reflected upon
her own fine, thoughtful face as a sort of wistfulness when she added,
"It must make you very happy. I wish I could feel so."
"You don't look at them right," he protested.
She shook her head. "No, we haven't known the same kind. I had never
even heard of the sort of people you seem to have known."
The tram car came noisily up to them, and no more was said.
V
A notice posted the following day to the effect that for some time the
reading-room would be closed one day in the week for repairs, gave
Harrison an excuse for insisting on weekly repetitions of what he
called their historical picnics.
Miss Midland let herself be urged into these with a half-fearful
pleasure which struck the young American as pathetic. "Anybody can see
she's had mighty few good times in _her_ life," he told himself. They
"did" Fontainebleau,[129-1] Pierrefonds,[129-2] Vincennes,[129-3] and
Chantilly[129-4]--this last expedition coming in the first week of May,
ten days before Miss Midland was to leave Paris. They were again
favored by wonderfully fine spring weather, so warm that the girl
appeared in a light-colored cotton gown and a straw hat which, as her
friend told her, with the familiarity born of a month of almost
uninterrupted common life, made her look "for all the world like a
picture."
After their usual conscientious and minute examination of the objects
of historical interest, they betook themselves with their lunch-basket
to a quiet corner of the park, by a clear little stream, on the other
side of which a pair of white swans were building a nest. It was very
still, and what faint breeze there was barely stirred the trees. The
English girl took off her hat, and the sunlight on her blonde hair
added another glory to the spring day.
They ate their lunch with few words, and afterward sat in what seemed
to the American the most comfortable and companionable of silences,
idly watching a peacock unfold the flashing splendor of his plumage
before the old gray fountain. "My! My! My!" he murmured finally. "Isn't
the world about the best place!"
The girl did not answer, and, glancing at her, he was startled to see
that her lips were quivering. "Why, Miss Midland!" he cried anxiously.
"Have you had bad news?"