Then I consulted my watch, and subsequently grimaced. "It is also barely possible," said I, "that Margaret may not come at all. In which case—Margaret! Now, isn't that a sweet name? Isn't it the very sweetest name in the world? Now, really, you know, it is queer her being named Margaret—extraordinarily queer,—because Margaret has always been my favourite woman's name. I daresay, unbeknownst to myself, I am a bit of a prophet."
3
But she did come. She was very much surprised to see me.
"You!" she said, with a gesture which was practically tantamount to disbelief. "Why, how extraordinary!"
"You rogue!" I commented, internally: "you know it is the most natural thing in the world." Aloud I stated: "Why, yes, I happened to notice you forgot your book yesterday, so I dropped in—or, to be more accurate, climbed up,—to return it."
She reached for it. Our hands touched, with the usual result to my pulses. Also, there were the customary manual tinglings.
"You are very kind," was her observation, "for I am wondering which one of the two he will marry."
"Forman tells me he has no notion, himself."
"Oh, then you know Justus Miles Forman! How nice! I think his stories are just splendid, especially the way his heroes talk to photographs and handkerchiefs and dead flowers—"
Afterward she opened the book, and turned over its pages expectantly, and flushed a proper shade of pink, and said nothing.
And then, and not till then, my heart consented to resume its normal functions. And then, also, "These iron spikes—" said its owner.
"Yes?" she queried, innocently.
"—so humpy," I complained.
"Are they?" said she. "Why, then, how silly of you to continue to sit on them!"
The result of this comment was that we were both late for luncheon.
4
By a peculiar coincidence, at twelve o'clock the following day, I happened to be sitting on the same wall at the same spot. Peter said at luncheon it was a queer thing that some people never could manage to be on time for their meals.
I fancy we can all form a tolerably accurate idea of what took place during the next day or so.
It is scarcely necessary to retail our conversations. We gossiped of simple things. We talked very little; and, when we did talk, the most ambitiously preambled sentences were apt to result in nothing more prodigious than a wave of the hand, and a pause, and, not infrequently, a heightened complexion. Altogether, then, it was not oppressively wise or witty talk, but it was eminently satisfactory to its makers.
As when, on the third morning, I wished to sit by Margaret on the bench, and she declined to invite me to descend from the wall.
"On the whole," said she, "I prefer you where you are; like all picturesque ruins, you are most admirable at a little distance."
"Ruins!"—and, indeed, I was not yet twenty-six,—"I am a comparatively young man."
As a concession, "In consideration of your past, you are tolerably well preserved."
"—and I am not a new brand of marmalade, either."
"No, for that comes in glass jars; whereas, Mr. Townsend, I have heard, is more apt to figure in family ones."
"A pun, Miss Beechinor, is the base coinage of conversation tendered only by the mentally dishonest."
"—Besides, one can never have enough of marmalade."
"I trust they give you a sufficiency of it in the nursery?"
"Dear me, you have no idea how admirably that paternal tone sits upon you! You would make an excellent father, Mr. Townsend. You really ought to adopt someone. I wish you would adopt me, Mr. Townsend."
I said I had other plans for her. Discreetly, she forbore to ask what they were.
5
"Avis—"
"You must not call me that."
"Why not? It's your name, isn't it"
"Yes,—to my friends."
"Aren't we friends—Avis?"
"We! We have not known each other long enough, Mr. Townsend."
"Oh, what's the difference? We are going to be friends, aren't we—Avis?"
"Why—why, I am sure I don't know."
"Gracious gravy, what an admirable colour you have, Avis! Well,—I know. And I can inform you, quite confidentially, Avis, that we are not going to be—. friends. We are going to be—"
"We are going to be late for luncheon," said she, in haste. "Good-morning, Mr. Townsend."
6
Yet, the very next day, paradoxically enough, she told me:
"I shall always think of you as a very, very dear friend. But it is quite impossible we should ever be anything else."
"And why, Avis?"
"Because—"
"That"—after an interval—"strikes me as rather a poor reason. So, suppose we say this June?"
Another interval.
"Well, Avis?"
"Dear me, aren't those roses pretty? I wish you would get me one, Mr. Townsend."
"Avis, we are not discussing roses."
"Well, they are pretty."
"Avis!"—reproachfully.
Still another interval.
"I—I hardly know."
"Avis!"—with disappointment.
"I—I believe—"
"Avis!"—very tenderly.
"I—I almost think so,—and the horrid man looks as if he thought so, too!"
There was a fourth interval, during which the girl made a complete and careful survey of her shoes.
Then, all in a breath, "It could not possibly be June, of course, and you must give me until to-morrow to think about November," and a sudden flutter of skirts.
I returned to Gridlington treading on air.
7
For I was, by this time, as thoroughly in love as Amadis of Gaul or Aucassin of Beaucaire or any other hero of romance you may elect to mention.
Some two weeks earlier I would have scoffed at the notion of such a thing coming to pass; and I could have demonstrated, logically enough, that it was impossible for Robert Etheridge Townsend, with his keen knowledge of the world and of the innumerable vanities and whims of womankind, ever again to go the way of all flesh. But the problem, like the puzzle of the Eleatic philosophers, had solved itself. "Achilles cannot catch the tortoise," but he does. It was impossible for me to fall uncomfortably deep in love—but I had done so.
And it pricked my conscience, too, that Margaret should not know I was aware of her identity. But she had chosen to play the comedy to the end, and in common with the greater part of trousered humanity, I had, after all, no insuperable objection to a rich wife; though, to do me justice, I rarely thought of her, now, as Margaret Hugonin the heiress, but considered her, in a more comprehensive fashion, as the one woman in the universe whose perfections triumphantly overpeered the skyiest heights of preciosity.
26. He Assists in the Diversion of Birds
1
We met, then, in the clear May morning, with what occult trepidations I cannot say. You may depend upon it, though, we had our emotions.
And about us, spring was marshaling her pageant, and from divers nooks, the weather-stained nymphs and fauns regarded us in candid, if preoccupied, appraisement; and above us, the clipped ilex trees were about a knowing conference. As for the birds, they were discussing us without any reticence whatever, for, more favoured of chance than imperial Solomon, they have been the confidants in any number of such affairs, and regard the way of a man with a maid as one of the most matter-of-fact occurrences in the world.