Part 7 (1/2)
Rene de Ronville called upon Alice a day or two previous to the occasion and duly engaged her as his partenaire; but she insisted upon having the engagement guarded in her behalf by a condition so obviously fanciful that he accepted it without argument.
”If my wandering knight should arrive during the dance, you promise to stand aside and give place to him,” she stipulated. ”You promise that?
You see I'm expecting him all the time. I dreamed last night that he came on a great bay horse and, stooping, whirled me up behind the saddle, and away we went!”
There was a childish, half bantering air in her look; but her voice sounded earnest and serious, notwithstanding its delicious timbre of suppressed playfulness.
”You promise me?” she insisted.
”Oh, I promise to slink away into a corner and chew my thumb, the moment he comes,” Rene eagerly a.s.sented. ”Of course I'm taking a great risk, I know; for lords and barons and knights are very apt to appear Suddenly in a place like this.”
”You may banter and make light if you want to,” she said, pouting admirably. ”I don't care. All the same the laugh will jump to the other corner of your mouth, see if it doesn't. They say that what a person dreams about and wishes for and waits for and believes in, will come true sooner or later.”
”If that's so,” said Rene, ”you and I will get married; for I've dreamed it every night of the year, wished for it, waited for it and believed in it, and--”
It was a madly sudden rush. He made it on an impulse quite irresistible, as hypnotized persons are said to do in response to the suggestion of the hypnotist, and his heart was choking his throat before he could end his speech. Alice interrupted him with a hearty burst of laughter.
”A very pretty twist you give to my words, I must declare,” she said; ”but not new by any means. Little Adrienne Bourcier could tell you that. She says that you have vowed to her over and over that you dream about her, and wish for her, and wait for her, precisely as you have just said to me.”
Rene's brown face flushed to the temples, partly with anger, partly with the shock of mingled surprise and fear. He was guilty, and the guilt showed in his eyes and paralyzed his tongue, so that he sat there before Alice with his under jaw sagging ludicrously.
”Don't you rather think, Monsieur Rene de Ronville,” she presently added in a calmly advisory tone, ”that you had better quit trying to say such foolish things to me, and just be my very good friend? If you don't, I do, which comes to the same thing. What's more, I won't be your partenaire at the dance unless you promise me on your word of honor that you will dance two dances with Adrienne to every one that you have with me. Do you promise?”
He dared not oppose her outwardly, although in his heart resistance amounted to furious revolt and riot.
”I promise anything you ask me to,” he said resignedly, almost sullenly; ”anything for you.”
”Well, I ask nothing whatever on my own account,” Alice quickly replied; ”but I do tell you firmly that you shall not maltreat little Adrienne Bourcier and remain a friend of mine. She loves you, Rene de Ronville, and you have told her that you love her. If you are a man worthy of respect you will not desert her. Don't you think I am right?”
Like a singed and crippled moth vainly trying to rise once again to the alluring yet deadly flame, Rene de Ronville essayed to break out of his embarra.s.sment and resume equal footing with the girl so suddenly become his commanding superior; but the effort disclosed to him as well as to her that he had fallen to rise no more. In his abject defeat he accepted the terms dictated by Alice and was glad when she adroitly changed her manner and tone in going on to discuss the approaching dance.
”Now let me make one request of you,” he demanded after a while. ”It's a small favor; may I ask it?”
”Yes, but I don't grant it in advance.”
”I want you to wear, for my sake, the buff gown which they say was your grandmother's.”
”No, I won't wear it.”
”But why, Alice?”
”None of the other girls have anything like such a dress; it would not be right for me to put it on and make them all feel that I had taken the advantage of them, just because I could; that's why.”
”But then none of them is beautiful and educated like you,” he said; ”you'll outs.h.i.+ne them anyway.”
”Save your compliments for poor pretty little Adrienne,” she firmly responded, ”I positively do not wish to hear them. I have agreed to be your partenaire at this dance of Papa Roussillon's, but it is understood between us that Adrienne is your sweet-heart. I am not, and I'm not going to be, either. So for your sake and Adrienne's, as well as out of consideration for the rest of the girls who have no fine dresses, I am not going to wear the buff brocade gown that belonged to Papa Roussillon's mother long ago. I shall dress just as the rest do.”
It is safe to say that Rene de Ronville went home with a troublesome bee in his bonnet. He was not a bad-hearted fellow. Many a right good young man, before him and since, has loved an Adrienne and been dazzled by an Alice. A violet is sweet, but a rose is the garden's queen. The poor youthful frontiersman ought to have been stronger; but he was not, and what have we to say?
As for Alice, since having a confidential talk with Adrienne Bourcier recently, she had come to realize what M. Roussillon meant when he said; ”But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope.” She saw through the situation with a quick understanding of what Adrienne might suffer should Rene prove permanently fickle. The thought of it aroused all her natural honesty and serious n.o.bleness of character, which lay deep under the almost hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner. Crude as her sense of life's larger significance was, and meager as had been her experience in the things which count for most in the sum of a young girl's existence under fair circ.u.mstances, she grasped intuitively the gist of it all.