Part 12 (2/2)
Wentworth informs me that the carriage is always at my disposal, and Charlotte offers to go with me, in a pair of tight gloves and a very stiff petticoat. And yet for three days I have been putting it off. They must think me horribly vicious.”
”You ask me to apologize,” said Acton, ”but you don't tell me what excuse I can offer.”
”That is more,” the Baroness declared, ”than I am held to. It would be like my asking you to buy me a bouquet and giving you the money. I have no reason except that--somehow--it 's too violent an effort. It is not inspiring. Would n't that serve as an excuse, in Boston? I am told they are very sincere; they don't tell fibs. And then Felix ought to go with me, and he is never in readiness. I don't see him. He is always roaming about the fields and sketching old barns, or taking ten-mile walks, or painting some one's portrait, or rowing on the pond, or flirting with Gertrude Wentworth.”
”I should think it would amuse you to go and see a few people,” said Acton. ”You are having a very quiet time of it here. It 's a dull life for you.”
”Ah, the quiet,--the quiet!” the Baroness exclaimed. ”That 's what I like. It 's rest. That 's what I came here for. Amus.e.m.e.nt? I have had amus.e.m.e.nt. And as for seeing people--I have already seen a great many in my life. If it did n't sound ungracious I should say that I wish very humbly your people here would leave me alone!”
Acton looked at her a moment, and she looked at him. She was a woman who took being looked at remarkably well. ”So you have come here for rest?”
he asked.
”So I may say. I came for many of those reasons that are no reasons--don't you know?--and yet that are really the best: to come away, to change, to break with everything. When once one comes away one must arrive somewhere, and I asked myself why I should n't arrive here.”
”You certainly had time on the way!” said Acton, laughing.
Madame Munster looked at him again; and then, smiling: ”And I have certainly had time, since I got here, to ask myself why I came. However, I never ask myself idle questions. Here I am, and it seems to me you ought only to thank me.”
”When you go away you will see the difficulties I shall put in your path.”
”You mean to put difficulties in my path?” she asked, rearranging the rosebud in her corsage.
”The greatest of all--that of having been so agreeable”--
”That I shall be unable to depart? Don't be too sure. I have left some very agreeable people over there.”
”Ah,” said Acton, ”but it was to come here, where I am!”
”I did n't know of your existence. Excuse me for saying anything so rude; but, honestly speaking, I did not. No,” the Baroness pursued, ”it was precisely not to see you--such people as you--that I came.”
”Such people as me?” cried Acton.
”I had a sort of longing to come into those natural relations which I knew I should find here. Over there I had only, as I may say, artificial relations. Don't you see the difference?”
”The difference tells against me,” said Acton. ”I suppose I am an artificial relation.”
”Conventional,” declared the Baroness; ”very conventional.”
”Well, there is one way in which the relation of a lady and a gentleman may always become natural,” said Acton.
”You mean by their becoming lovers? That may be natural or not. And at any rate,” rejoined Eugenia, ”nous n'en sommes pas la!”
They were not, as yet; but a little later, when she began to go with him to drive, it might almost have seemed that they were. He came for her several times, alone, in his high ”wagon,” drawn by a pair of charming light-limbed horses. It was different, her having gone with Clifford Wentworth, who was her cousin, and so much younger. It was not to be imagined that she should have a flirtation with Clifford, who was a mere shame-faced boy, and whom a large section of Boston society supposed to be ”engaged” to Lizzie Acton. Not, indeed, that it was to be conceived that the Baroness was a possible party to any flirtation whatever; for she was undoubtedly a married lady. It was generally known that her matrimonial condition was of the ”morganatic” order; but in its natural aversion to suppose that this meant anything less than absolute wedlock, the conscience of the community took refuge in the belief that it implied something even more.
Acton wished her to think highly of American scenery, and he drove her to great distances, picking out the prettiest roads and the largest points of view. If we are good when we are contented, Eugenia's virtues should now certainly have been uppermost; for she found a charm in the rapid movement through a wild country, and in a companion who from time to time made the vehicle dip, with a motion like a swallow's flight, over roads of primitive construction, and who, as she felt, would do a great many things that she might ask him. Sometimes, for a couple of hours together, there were almost no houses; there were nothing but woods and rivers and lakes and horizons adorned with bright-looking mountains. It seemed to the Baroness very wild, as I have said, and lovely; but the impression added something to that sense of the enlargement of opportunity which had been born of her arrival in the New World.
One day--it was late in the afternoon--Acton pulled up his horses on the crest of a hill which commanded a beautiful prospect. He let them stand a long time to rest, while he sat there and talked with Madame Munster. The prospect was beautiful in spite of there being nothing human within sight. There was a wilderness of woods, and the gleam of a distant river, and a glimpse of half the hill-tops in Ma.s.sachusetts.
The road had a wide, gra.s.sy margin, on the further side of which there flowed a deep, clear brook; there were wild flowers in the gra.s.s, and beside the brook lay the trunk of a fallen tree. Acton waited a while; at last a rustic wayfarer came trudging along the road. Acton asked him to hold the horses--a service he consented to render, as a friendly turn to a fellow-citizen. Then he invited the Baroness to descend, and the two wandered away, across the gra.s.s, and sat down on the log beside the brook.
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