"It is true," he thought, "I have yet to win her affections, gain the approval of her family, and save up a whole mountain of francs. All that is possible, but how am I to make her acquaintance? At any moment she may get off the bus. If I speak to her, she will either answer me, in which case she cannot be as virtuous as she looks, or she will not answer me, and I shall never see her again." Here Henri experienced one of the greatest dilemmas known to mankind, and one which has been sadly neglected by the philosophers.
Fate, however, was altogether on his side. The bus stopped for a whole minute at a corner where a family of gipsies were giving the traditional exhibition. A goat mounted precariously upon a step-ladder, a mangy bear stood by, shifting his feet in melancholy reminiscence of his training, a nervous monkey presented a miniature tambourine for the sous of the passers-by.
The girl, as simple as a child, was ravished by this familiar spectacle. She pressed her face against the glass, smiled in rapture, and turned a bright gaze on the other passengers, to see if they were enjoying it, too. Henri, leaning over, was emboldened to offer the comments of a man of the world.
"Very amusing, the little monkey," said he.
"Yes, Monsieur, very amusing."
"The bear, he is droll."
"But yes, Monsieur, very droll."
"The goat, also. For a domestic animal, he is droll, too."
"Yes, Monsieur, he is truly droll."
"The gitanos are very picturesque, but they are a bad type."
At this point the bus jolted on. A brilliant conversation had been interrupted, but acquaintance was established, and in such a simple and innocent fashion that the most fastidious of future husbands could find nothing to object to. Henri ventured to seat himself beside her. The jolting of the bus provided the briefest but most delicious of contacts. A rapport was established; their tongues uttered banalities, but their shoulders were supremely eloquent. "Mademoiselle," said Henri at last, "dare I hope that you will take a little promenade with me on Sunday."
"Oh, but I am afraid that would hardly be possible," replied the young girl, with an adorable appearance of confusion.
Henri urged his plea with all the feeling at his command, and at length his charmer, whose name was Marie, decided that she might overcome the obstacles, which doubtless had their origin in the excessive respectability of her upbringing.
The rendezvous was made. Henri, left alone upon the bus, rode far past his destination, lost in an ecstasy far transcending any description. The excess fare amounted to two francs.
That night he spent a whole hour before his mirror, conducting his cane in the manner in which he hoped to parade it on Sunday. "There is no doubt about it," said he to himself, "such a cane and such a girl, absolutely demand that new suit from Marquet's. Tomorrow I will pay them a visit." He drew several hearts, all of them transfixed by arrows, and surrounded by initials. "I will take her to the calanque," said he to himself, "and there, seated beside her on a rock, I will draw something of this sort on the sand. She will guess what I mean."
On Sunday everything went as well as any lover could wish. Henri was first at the trysting place, and soon saw her tripping along. This time she was wearing a summer frock and white cotton gloves. She had the happy air of a little girl let out from school. "Her parents must be very severe," thought Henri. "So much the better. I wonder by what artless excuses she managed to get away."
Their greeting was all the heart could desire. Every true lover, and some whose aims are less creditable, knows the delicious promise of those first meetings in which both parties act as frankly and simply as children, and take hands even as they make their way to the bus. Days beginning thus should always be spent in the open air, and no place under all the sky is more propitious to them than those deep and cliffy creeks near Marseilles, which are called the calanques. Snow-white rocks descend into water as clear as glass, edged by tiny beaches of sand, perfectly suited for the inscription of hearts and arrows. Little pine trees cover all the slopes, and, when the afternoon sun is hot, there is all the more reason to take advantage of their shade.
Henri and his Marie did this. "Take off your gloves," said he, "and I will tell your fortune."
She willingly removed the glove from her right hand, which she extended to him with the utmost grace.
"No," said he, "I beg you to take off both."
Marie blushed, and hesitated, and began with tantalizing slowness to draw off the other glove.
"It does not seem to come off very easily," said Henri.
"You demand too much," said she. "This is only the first time I have been out with you. I did not think you would ask me to remove my gloves."
"At last," thought Henri, "I have found a girl of a simplicity, of a virtue, such as must be absolutely unique in the world of 193. Marie," cried he, pressing his lips to her hands, "I adore you with every fibre of my being. I implore you to be mine. I long, I burn, I die for the happiness of being married to you."
"Oh, no," said she. "That is impossible."
"Then you do not love me," said he. "I have spoken too soon."
"No," said she. "Perhaps I do. But how can I answer you? It could not be for a year, perhaps two, possibly even three."
"What of that?" cried he. "I will wait. In fact, I still have a great deal of money to save." He told her of the prospects of the furniture business, and of the situation of his old mother, who had been treated abominably by certain relatives.
Marie was less explicit in her description of her background. She said, though, that she was treated very strictly, and could hardly introduce into her home a young man she had met so unconventionally on a bus.
"It is inconvenient," said Henri, "but it is as it should be. Sooner or later we will manage something. Till then, we are affianced, are we not? We will come here every Sunday."
"It will be very hard for me to get away," said she.
"Never mind," said he. "It will arrange itself. Meanwhile, we are affianced. Therefore I may embrace you."
An interlude followed in which Henri experienced that happiness which is only revealed to young men of the meagrest proportions in the company of girls as delightfully rounded as Marie. At the close of the day Henri had drawn almost as deeply on his future marriage as he had upon his costume and his cane. "They are right," thought he, "one is entitled to a little happiness on account."
He went home the happiest young man in Marseilles, or in all France for that matter, and next day he actually carried his cane to the office with him, for he could not bear to part with it.
That evening, on the bus, he fixed his eyes on the people waiting at every stopping place. He felt that fortune might grant him an unappointed glimpse of his beloved. Sure enough, after a false alarm or two, he caught sight of her shoulder and the line of her neck as she stood in a knot of people two or three hundred yards up the street. He recognized this single curve immediately.
His heart pounded, his hands shook, his cane almost fell from his grasp. The bus came to a stop, and he turned to greet her as she entered. To his horror and dismay, she appeared not to recognize him, and, as he blundered toward her, she gave him a warning frown.
Henri saw that behind her was an old man, a man of nearly eighty, a colossal ruin of a man, with dim and hollow eyes, a straggly white mustache horribly stained, and two or three yellow tusks in a cavernous mouth. He took his seat beside the adorable Marie, and folded his huge and grimy hands, on which the veins stood out like whipcord, over the handle of a cheap and horrible cane, an atrocity, fashioned out of bamboo. He wore the expensive and ugly broadcloth of the well-to-do peasant.