Part 27 (1/2)

”My dear,” I answered, ”do not let us discuss such gruesome things on an afternoon like this.”

”You would like better for me to go on playing at being your Turkish wife?”

”Infinitely,” said I.

Alas! The day is sped. I have asked the fleeting moment to tarry, and it laughed, and shook its gossamer wings at me, and flew by on its mad race into eternity.

As we lay, a cicada set up its shrilling quite close to us. I slipped my head from Carlotta's lap and idly parted the rank gra.s.s in search of the noisy intruder, and by good luck I found him. I beckoned Carlotta, who glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath, we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger, and every now and then making his corslet vibrate pa.s.sionately. On the top of a blade of gra.s.s sat a brown little Juliet--a most reserved, discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied, she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last another cicada set up a louder note some yards away and, without a nod or a sign, Juliet skipped off into s.p.a.ce, leaving the most disconsolate little Romeo of a gra.s.shopper you ever beheld. He gave vent to a dismal failure of a vibration and hopped to the foot of the faithless lady's bower.

Carlotta broke into a merry laugh and clapped her hands.

”I am so glad.”

”She is the most graceless hussy imaginable,” I cried. ”There was he grinding his heart out for her, and just because a more brazen-throated scoundrel came upon the scene she must needs leave our poor friend in the lurch. She has no more heart than my boot, and she will come to a bad end.”

”But he was such a fool,” retorted my sage damsel, with a flash of laughter in her dark eyes. ”If he wanted her, why didn't he go up and take her?”

”Because he is a gentleman, a cicada of fine and delicate feeling.”

”_Hou!_” laughed Carlotta. ”He was a fool. It served him right. She grew tired of waiting.”

”You believe, then,” said I, ”in marriage by capture?”

I explained and discoursed to her of the matrimonial habits of the Tartar tribes.

”Yes,” said Carlotta. ”That is sense. And it must be such fun for the girl. All that, what you call it?--wooing?--is waste of time. I like things to happen, quick, quick, one after the other--or else--”

”Or else what?”

”To do nothing, nothing but lie in the sun, like this afternoon.”

”Yes,” said I dreamily, after I had again thrown myself by her side.

”Like this afternoon.”

I sit at my window and look out upon the strip of beach, the hauled-up fis.h.i.+ng boats and the nets hung out to dry looming vague in the starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a few yards beyond; and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that has recurred all the evening.

But why should I be mad? For filling my soul with G.o.d's utmost glory of earth and sea and sky? For filling my heart with purest pleasure in the intimate companions.h.i.+p of fresh and fragrant maidenhood? For giving myself up for once to a dream of sense clouded by never a thought that was not serenely fair?

For feeling young again?

I shall read myself to sleep with _La Dame de Monsoreau_, which I have procured from the circulating library in the Rue Alphonse Karr--(the literary horticulturist is the genius loci and the G.o.dfather of my landlady)--and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and walk lovingly between the valiant Bussy and Henri Quatre. By this, if by nothing else, I recognise the beneficence of the high G.o.ds--they have given us tired men Dumas.

CHAPTER XIII

September 30th.