Part 31 (1/2)
”Don't let it bite!” cried the girl. ”Be careful, Mr. Smith!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”'Don't let it bite!' cried the girl. 'Be careful, Mr.
Smith!'”]
But its jaws were toothless; only soft, cold gums pinched me, and I held it twisting and writhing, while the icy temperature of its body began to benumb my fingers and creep up my wrist, paralyzing my arm; and its incessant and piercing shrieks deafened me.
In vain I transferred it to the other hand, and then pa.s.sed it from one hand to the other, as one s.h.i.+fts a lump of ice or a hot potato, in an attempt to endure the temperature: it shrieked and squirmed and doubled, and finally wriggled out of my stiffened and useless hands, and scuttled away into the fire.
It was an overwhelming disappointment. For a moment it seemed unendurable.
”Never mind,” I said, huskily, ”if I caught one in my hands, I can surely catch another in a trap.”
”I am so sorry for your disappointment,” she said, pitifully.
”Do _you_ care, Miss Blythe?” I asked.
She blushed.
”Of course I care,” she murmured.
My hands were too badly frost-nipped to become eloquent. I merely sighed and thrust them into my pockets. Even my arm was too stiff to encircle her shapeful waist. Devotion to Science had temporarily crippled me. Love must wait. But, as we ascended the gra.s.sy slope together, I promised myself that I would make her a good husband, and that I should spend at least part of every day of my life in trapping crows and smearing their claws with glue.
That evening I was seated on the veranda beside Wilna--Miss Blythe's name was Wilna--and what with gazing at her and fitting together some of the folding box-traps which I always carried with me--and what with trying to realise the pecuniary magnificence of our future existence together, I was exceedingly busy when Blythe came in to display, as I supposed, his most recent daub to me.
The canvas he carried presented a series of crimson speckles, out of which burst an eruption of green streaks--and it made me think of stepping on a caterpillar.
My instinct was to placate this impossible man. He was _her_ father. I meant to honour him if I had to a.s.sault him to do it.
”Supremely satisfying!” I nodded, chary of naming the subject. ”It is a stride beyond the art of the future: it is a flying leap out of the Not Yet into the Possibly Perhaps! I thank you for enlightening me, Mr.
Blythe. I am your debtor.”
He fairly snarled at me:
”What are _you_ talking about!” he demanded.
I remained modestly mute.
To Wilna he said, pointing pa.s.sionately at his canvas:
”The crows have been walking all over it again! I'm going to paint in the woods after this, earthquakes or no earthquakes. Have the trees been heaved up anywhere recently?”
”Not since last week,” she said, soothingly. ”It usually happens after a rain.”
”I think I'll risk it then--although it did rain early this morning. I'll do a moonlight down there this evening.” And, turning to me: ”If you know as much about science as you do about art you won't have to remain here long--I trust.”
”What?” said I, very red.
He laughed a highly disagreeable laugh, and marched into the house.
Presently he bawled for dinner, and Wilna went away. For her sake I had remained calm and dignified, but presently I went out and kicked up the turf two or three times; and, having foozled my wrath, I went back to dinner, realising that I might as well begin to accustom myself to my future father-in-law.