Part 48 (1/2)

”I'm afraid I can't. I'm rather busy this morning.”

”Really,” said Mr. Twist, in a voice of concentrated sarcasm. But it had no effect on Anna-Felicitas. She continued to contemplate him with perfect goodwill.

He hesitated a moment. What could he do? Nothing, that he could see, before the young man; nothing that wouldn't make him ridiculous. He felt a fool already. He oughtn't to have pulled up. He ought to have just waved to them and gone on his way, and afterwards in the seclusion of his office issued very plain directions to Anna-Felicitas as to her future conduct. Sitting by the roadside like that! Openly; before everybody; with a young man she had never seen twenty-four hours ago.

He jammed in the gear and let the clutch out with such a jerk that the car leaped forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded by the briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road out of sight.

”Does he mind your sitting here?” asked Elliott.

”It would be very unreasonable,” said Anna-Felicitas gently. ”One has to sit somewhere.”

And he laughed with delight at this answer as he laughed with delight at everything she said, and he told her for the twentieth time that she was the most wonderful person he had ever met, and she settled down to listen again, after the interruption caused by Mr. Twist, with a ready ear and the utmost complacency to these agreeable statements, and began to wonder whether perhaps after all she mightn't at last be about to fall in love.

In the new interest of this possibility she turned her head to look at him, and he told her tumultuously--for being a sailor-man he went straight ahead on great waves when it came to love-making--that her eyes were as if pansies had married stars.

She turned her head away again at this, for though it sounded lovely it made her feel a little shy and unprovided with an answer; and then he said, again tumultuously, that her ear was the most perfect thing ever stuck on a girl's cheek, and would she mind turning her face to him so that he might see if she had another just like it on the other side.

She blushed at this, because she couldn't remember whether she had washed it lately or not--one so easily forgot one's ears; there were so many different things to wash--and he told her that when she blushed it was like the first wild rose of the first summer morning of the world.

At this Anna-Felicitas was quite overcome, and subsided into a condition of blissful, quiescent waiting for whatever might come next.

Fancy her face reminding him of all those nice things. She had seen it every day for years and years in the looking-gla.s.s, and not noticed anything particular about it. It had seemed to her just a face.

Something you saw out of, and ate with, and had to clean whatever else you didn't when you were late for breakfast, because there it was and couldn't be hidden,--an object remote indeed from pansies, and stars, and beautiful things like that.

She would have liked to explain this to the young man, and point out that she feared his imagination ran ahead of the facts and that perhaps when his leg was well again he would see things more as they were, but to her surprise when she turned to him to tell him this she found she was obliged to look away at once again. She couldn't look at him. Fancy that now, thought Anna-Felicitas, attentively gazing at her toes. And he had such dear eyes; and such a dear, eager sort of face. All the more, then, she reasoned, should her own eyes have dwelt with pleasure on him.

But they couldn't. ”Dear me,” she murmured, watching her toes as carefully as if they might at any moment go away and leave her there.

”I know,” said Elliott. ”You think I'm talking fearful flowery stuff.

I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had ever caught myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's all the beastly blood and muck of the war that does it,--sends one back with a rush to things like that. Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about G.o.d now without turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to mention seriously that I'd even heard of him three years ago. Why, I write poetry now. We all write poetry. And n.o.body would mind now being seen saying their prayers. Why, if I were back at school and my mother came to see me I'd hug her before everybody in the middle of the street.

Do you realize what a tremendous change that means, you little girl who's never had brothers? You extraordinary adorable little lovely thing?”

And off he was again.

”When I was small,” said Anna-Felicitas after a while, still watching her feet, ”I had a governess who urged me to consider, before I said anything, whether it were the sort of thing I would like to say in the hearing of my parents. Would you like to say what you're saying to me in the hearing of your parents?”

”Hate to,” said Elliott promptly.

”Well, then,” said Anna-Felicitas, gentle but disappointed. She rather wished now she hadn't mentioned it.

”I'd take you out of earshot,” said Elliott.

She was much relieved. She had done what she felt might perhaps be regarded by Aunt Alice as her duty as a lady, and could now give herself up with a calm conscience to hearing whatever else he might have to say.

And he had an incredible amount to say, and all of it of the most highly gratifying nature. On the whole, looking at it all round and taking one thing with another, Anna-Felicitas came to the conclusion that this was the most agreeable and profitable morning she had ever spent. She sat there for hours, and they all flew. People pa.s.sed in cars and saw her, and it didn't disturb her in the least. She perfectly remembered she ought to be helping Anna-Rose pick and arrange the flowers for the tea-tables, and she didn't mind. She knew Anna-Rose would be astonished and angry at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By midday she was hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for the people who had motored through the lane told the people who hadn't what they had seen.

Once a great car pa.s.sed with a small widow in it, who looked astonished when she saw the pair but had gone almost before Elliott could call out and wave to her.

”That's my sister,” he said. ”You and she will love each other.”

”Shall we?” said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this suggestion of continuity in their relations; and remarked that she looked as if she hadn't got a husband.