Part 50 (1/2)
”Not much, that's a fact,” agreed Neale, reflecting that he did not seem to either.
She asked him suddenly, ”But really why _didn't_ you accept?”
”Do you want to know?” he asked warningly.
”Yes, I really wonder.”
”Simplest reason in the world. I didn't like Donna Antonia Pierleoni very well. She seemed to me like a bad-tempered, stupid old lady, mightily full of her own importance. Why under the sun _should_ I go and have tea with such a person?”
”Eh bien...!” she breathed out a long, soft e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of surprise, looking at him very queerly.
”You're thinking I'm very rude to say such a thing about a friend of yours,” he said, hanging his head.
”I'm thinking no such thing at all,” she contradicted him. ”I don't believe you could _imagine_ what I'm thinking.”
”You never said a truer thing,” Neale admitted ruefully.
”Well, I'll tell you,” she said, ”though it couldn't be interesting to anybody but me. I was thinking that I had never heard anybody before who spoke the truth right out about somebody who had wealth and position.”
”You mustn't blame me for it!” Neale excused himself. ”I'm a regular outsider on all that sort of thing--you remember the Sioux Indian in the eighteenth century who was taken to see the court at Versailles? How he strolled around in his blanket and couldn't make out what all the bowing and sc.r.a.ping was about? Well, he and I are about on a level of blank ignorance of social distinctions.”
”But you don't _wish_ to know,” the girl divined, ”you don't care if you _are_ an outsider. Why, I believe,” she said with a little burst of astonishment, ”I believe you'd rather be an outsider.”
He looked apologetic. ”That's part of my dumbness, don't you see? I just can't conceive why anybody should bother his head about it. _I_ tell you,” he hit on the right phrase of explanation, ”I just don't know any better.”
”Would you learn?” she pressed him more closely.
”Not if I could run faster than the person who was trying to teach me!”
he confessed helplessly.
The girl broke into another laugh. There never was anybody who laughed like that, with her lips, and her gleaming, dancing eyes, and her eyebrows--even her hands had a droll little gesture of delightedly giving him up. What in the world had ever made him imagine that her expression was pensive or her eyes wistful?
”Do you mind?” he asked, rather uncertain what she was laughing at, and hoping it was not at him.
”Oh, I _like_ it!” she told him, heartily. ”But it's the very first time I ever ran into it. It makes me laugh, it's so unexpected.”
”Well, it has its disadvantages,” he broke in, seeing an opening to say something that had been on his conscience for two days. ”It makes you do all sorts of unusual and unconventional things without meaning to at all. Like my talking to you yesterday morning, for instance, in the corridor of the pension, when I hadn't been introduced to you.”
She stopped laughing, her face all blank with surprise. ”Why, that was not unconventional! People at the same pension never wait for introductions. And anyhow I'm not a _jeune fille du monde_. I'm just a music-student. If you only knew how _some_ people try to take advantage of that! Why, what in the world made you think it was not all right?”
”Well, when you didn't say anything about it at the breakfast table, when Miss Oldham introduced us, the way you looked as though you'd never seen me before. I thought you--I thought I--well, why _didn't_ you mention we'd just been talking?”
”Oh--” She remembered the incident. ”Why didn't I? Why _should_ I? You always hide what you don't have to tell, don't you?”
Neale pondered this negligent axiom for a time, and then said hesitatingly, ”But if the servants happened to mention it?”
”Oh,” she explained quickly, as if mentioning something that went without saying, ”oh, of course I told the servants not to speak of it.”