Left to myself, I began to retrace my steps. Solitude had mitigated my craving for tobacco in a surprising manner; indeed, a casual observer might have thought it completely forgotten, for I walked with curious leisure. When I had come again to the box-hedge my pace had degenerated, a little by a little, into an aimless lounge. Mr. Robert Etheridge Townsend was rapt with admiration of the perfect beauty of the night.
Followed a strange chance. There was only the mildest breeze about; it was barely audible among the leaves above; and yet—so unreliable are the breezes of still summer nights,—with a sudden, tiny and almost imperceptible outburst, did this treacherous breeze lift Mr. Townsend's brand-new straw hat from his head, and waft it over the hedge of trim box-bushes. This was unfortunate, for, as has been said, the hedge was a tall and sturdy hedge. So I peeped over it, with disconsolate countenance.
"Beastly awkward," said I, as meditatively; "I'd give a great deal to know how I'm going to get my hat back without breaking through the blessed hedge, and rousing the house, and being taken for a burglar, may be—"
"It is terrible," assented a quite tranquil voice; "but if gentlemen will venture abroad on such terrible nights—"
"Eh?" said I. I looked up quickly at the moon; then back toward the possessor of the voice. It was peculiar I had not noticed her before, for she sat on a rustic bench not more than forty feet away, and in full view of the street. It was, perhaps, the strangeness of the affair that was accountable for the great wonder in my soul; and the little tremor which woke in my speech.
"—so windy," she complained.
"Er—ah—yes, quite so!" I agreed, hastily.
"I am really afraid that it must be a tornado. Ah," she continued, emotion catching at her voice, "heaven help all poor souls at sea! How the wind must whistle through the cordage! how the marlin-spikes must quiver, and the good ship reel on such a night!" She looked up at a cloudless sky, and sighed.
"Er h'm!" I observed.
For she had come forward and had held out my hat toward me, and I could see her very plainly now; and my mouth was making foolish sounds, and my heart was performing certain curious and varied gymnastics which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be included among its proper duties, and which interfered with my breathing.
"Didn't I know it—didn't I know it?" I demanded of my soul, and my pulses sang a paean; "I knew, with that voice, she couldn't be a common actress—a vulgar, raddled creature out of a barn! You not a gentlewoman! Nonsense! Why—why, you're positively incredible! Oh, you great, wonderful, lazy woman, you are probably very stupid, and you certainly can't act, but your eyes are black velvet, and your voice is evidently stolen from a Cremona, and as for your hair, there must be pounds of it, and, altogether, you ought to be set up on a pedestal for men to worship! There is just one other woman in the whole wide world as beautiful as you are; and she is two thousand years old, and is securely locked up in the Louvre, and belongs to the French Government, and, besides, she hasn't any arms, so that even there you have the advantage!"
Indeed, Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci was of much the same large, placid type as the Venus of Milo, nor were the upper portions of the two faces dissimilar. Miss Montmorenci's lips, however, were far more curved, more buxom, and were, at the present moment, bordered by an absolutely bewildering assemblage of dimples which the statue may not boast.
"I really think," said Miss Montmorenci, judicially, "that it would be best for you to seek some shelter from this devastating wind. It really is not safe, you know, in the open. You might be swept away, just as your hat was."
"The shelter of a tree—" I began, looking doubtfully into the garden, which had any number of trees.
"The very thing," she assented. "There is a splendid oak yonder, just half a block up the street." And she graciously pointed it out.
I regarded it with disapproval. "Such a rickety old tree," I objected, sulkily.
Followed a silence. She bent her head to one side, and looked up at me. She was now grave with a difference. "A strolling actress isn't supposed to be very particular, is she?" asked Miss Montmorenci. "She wouldn't object to a man's coming by night and trying to scrape acquaintance with her,—a man who wouldn't think of being seen with her by day? She would like it, probably. She—she'd probably be accustomed to it, wouldn't she?" And Miss Montmorenci smiled.
And I, on a sudden, was abjectly ashamed of myself. "Why, you can't think that of me!" I babbled. "I—oh, don't think me that sort, I beg of you! I'm not—really, I'm not, Miss Montmorenci! But I admired you so much to-night—I—oh, of course, I was very silly and very presumptuous, but, really, you know—"
I paused for a little. This was miles apart from the glib talk I had designed.
"My name is Robert Townsend," I then continued; "I am staying at Mr. Charteris's place, just outside of Fairhaven. And I am delighted to meet you, Miss Montmorenci. So now, you see, we have been quite properly introduced, haven't we? And, by the way," I suggested, after a moment's meditation, "there is a very interesting old college here— old pictures, records, historical association and such like. I would like to inspect it, vastly. Can't I call for you in the morning. We can do it together, if you don't mind, and if you haven't already seen it. Won't you, Miss Montmorenci? You really ought to see King's College, you know; it is quite famous, because I was educated there, and no end of other interesting things have happened within its venerable confines."
She had drawn close to the hedge. "You really mean it?" she asked. "You would walk through the streets of this Fairhaven with me—with a barn-stormer, with a strolling actress? You'd be afraid!" she cried, suddenly; "oh, yes, you talk bravely enough, but you'd be afraid, of course, when the time came! You'd be afraid!"
I had taken the hat, but my head was still uncovered. "I don't think," said I, reflectively, "that I am afraid of many things, somehow. But of one thing I am certainly not afraid, and that is of mistaking a good woman for—for anything else. Their eyes are different somehow," I haltingly explained, as to myself; then I smiled. "Shall we say eleven o'clock?"
Miss Montmorenci laid one hand upon the hedgetop and slowly twisted off four box-leaves what while I waited. "I—I believe you," she said, in' meditation; "oh, yes, I believe you, somehow, Mr. Townsend. But we rehearse in the morning, and there is a matinee every day, you know, and—and there are other reasons—" She paused, irresolutely. "No," said Miss Montmorenci, "I thank you, but—good night."
"Oh, I say! am I never to see any more of you?"
A century or so of silence now. Her deliberation seemed endless.
At last: "Matinees and rehearsal keep us busy by day. But I am boarding here for the week, and—and I rest here in the garden after the evening performance. It is cool, it—it is like a glass of water after taking rather bitter medicine. And you aren't a bad sort, are you? No; you look too big and strong and clean, Mr. Townsend. And, besides, you're just a boy—"
"In that case," cried Mr. Townsend, "I shall say goodnight with a light heart." And I turned to go.
"A moment—" said she.
"An eternity," I proffered.
"Promise me," she said, "that you will not come again this week to the Opera House."
My brows were raised a trifle. "I adore the drama," I pleaded.
"And I loathe it. And I act very badly—hopelessly so," said Miss Montmorenci, with an indolent shrug; "and, somehow, I don't want you to see me do it. Why did you mind my calling you a boy? You are, you know."
So I protested I had not minded it at all; and I promised. "But at least," I said, triumphantly, "you can't prevent my remembering Juliet!"
She said of course not, only I was not to be silly.
"And therefore," quoth I, "Juliet shall be remembered always." I smiled and waved my hand. "Au revoir, Signorina Capulet," said I.
And I took my departure. My blood rejoiced, with a strange fervor, in the summer moonlight. It was good to be alive.