Part 5 (1/2)
”I tell you the things are mine; and what I should like to know does a gentleman want bothering himself about a lady's petticoat! No wonder you blush,” for, in fact, as was easy to foresee, the situation was becoming a little ridiculous for me.
”Now, look here,” I said with an affectation of gravity, ”if you'll tell me how you came by those things, I'll make it worth your while.
They were given to you by a lady who stayed here not so long ago, now, weren't they?”
”Well, then, they were.”
”The lady stayed here with a gentleman?”
”Yes, she did.”
”H'm! I thought so,” I said. ”Yes! that lady, it pains me to say, was my wife!”
This unblus.h.i.+ng statement was not, I could see, without its effect upon the present owner of the petticoat.
”But she said they were brother and sister,” she replied.
”Of course she did,” I returned, with a fine a.s.sumption of scorn,--”of course she did. They always do.”
”Dear young woman,” I continued, when I was able to control my emotion, ”you are happily remote from the sin and wickedness of the town, and I am sorry to speak of such things in so peaceful a spot--but as a strange chance has led me here, I must speak, must tell you that all wives are not so virtuous and faithful as you, I am sure, are. There are wives who forsake their husbands and--and go off with a handsomer man, as the poet says; and mine, mine, alas! was one of them. It is now some months ago that my wife left me in this way, and since then I have spent every day in searching for her; but never till this moment have I come upon the least trace of her. Strange, is it not? that here, in this peaceful out-of-the-way garden, I should come upon her very petticoat, her very stockings--”
By this my grief had become such that the kind girl put her hand on my arm. ”Don't take on so,” she said kindly, and then remembering her treasured property, and probably fearing a counterclaim on my part to its possession, ”But how can you be sure she was here? There are lots of petticoats like that--”
”What was she like?” I asked through my agitation.
”Middle height, slim and fair, with red goldy hair and big blue eyes; about thirty, I should say.”
”The very same,” I groaned, ”there is no mistake; and now,” I continued, ”I want you to sell me that petticoat and those stockings,”
and I took a couple of sovereigns from my purse. ”I want to have them to confront her with, when I do find her. Perhaps it will touch her heart to think of the strange way in which I came by them; and you can buy just as pretty ones again with the money,” I added, as I noticed the disappointment on her face at the prospect of thus losing her finery.
”Well, it's a funny business, to be sure,” she said, as still half reluctantly she unpegged the coveted garments from the line; ”but if what you say 's true, I suppose you must have them.”
The wanton wind had been so busily kissing them all the morning that they were quite dry, so I was able to find room for them in my knapsack without danger to the other contents; and, with a hasty good-day to their recent possessor, I set off at full speed to find a secure nook where I could throw myself down on the gra.s.s, and let loose the absurd laughter that was dangerously bottled up within me; but even before I do that it behoves me if possible to vindicate my sanity to the reader.
CHAPTER XVI
CLEARS UP MY MYSTERIOUS BEHAVIOUR OF THE LAST CHAPTER
What a sane man should be doing carrying about with him a woman's petticoat and silk stockings, may well be a puzzle to the most intelligent reader.
Whim, sir, whim! and few human actions admit of more satisfactory solution. Like Shylock, I'll say ”It is my humour.” But no! I'll be more explanatory. This madcap quest of mine, was it not understood between us from the beginning to be a fantastic whim, a poetical wild-goose chase, conceived entirely as an excuse for being some time in each other's company? To be whimsical, therefore, in pursuit of a whim, fanciful in the chase of a fancy, is surely but to maintain the spirit of the game. Now, for the purpose, therefore, of a romance that makes no pretence to reasonableness, I had very good reasons for buying that petticoat, which (the reasons, not the petticoat) I will now lay before you.
I have been conscious all the way along through this pilgrimage of its inevitable vagueness of direction, of my need of something definite, some place, some name, anything at all, however slight, which I might a.s.sociate, if only for a time, with the object of my quest, a definite something to seek, a definite goal for my feet.
Now, when I saw that mysterious petticoat, and realised that its wearer would probably be pretty and young and generally charming, and that probably her name was somewhere on the waistband, the spirit of whim rejoiced within me. ”Why not,” it said, ”buy the petticoat, find out the name of its owner, and, instead of seeking a vague Golden Girl, make up your mind doggedly to find and marry her, or, failing that, carry the petticoat with you, as a sort of Cinderella's slipper, try it on any girl you happen to fancy, and marry her it exactly fits?”
Now, I confess, that seemed to me quite a pretty idea, and I hope the reader will think so too. If not, I'm afraid I can offer him no better explanation; and in fact I am all impatience to open my knapsack, and inform myself of the name of her to the discovery of whom my wanderings are henceforth to be devoted.