The Quest of the Golden Girl [65]
shall not be to me as a ship that has passed in the night, though to me you have behaved very like an iceberg."
We parted in tears and kisses, and I lived for some weeks with that sense of having been a Nero, till two months after I received a much glazed and silvered card to the usual effect.
And so I ceased to repine for the wound I had made in the heart of Semiramis Wilcox.
Of another whom I met and loved in that brief month in Paris, I cherish tenderer memories. Prim little Pauline Deschapelles! How clearly I can still see the respectable brass plate on the door of your little flat-- "Mademoiselle Deschapelles--Modes et Robes;" and indeed the "modes et robes" were true enough. For you were in truth a very hard-working little dressmaker, and I well remember how impressed I was to sit beside you, as you plied your needle on some gown that must be finished by the evening, and meditate on the quaint contrast between your almost Puritanic industry and your innocent love of pleasure. I don't think I ever met a more conscientious little woman than little Pauline Deschapelles.
There was but one drawback to our intercourse. She didn't know a word of English, and I couldn't speak a word of French. So we had to make shift to love without either language. But sometimes Pauline would throw down her stitching in amused impatience, and, going to her dainty secretaire, write me a little message in the simplest baby French--which I would answer in French which would knit her brows for a moment or two, and then send her off in peals of laughter.
It WAS French! I know. Among the bric-a-brac of my heart I still cherish some of those little slips of paper with which we made international love--question and answer.
"Vous allez m'oublier, et ne plus penser a moi--ni me voir. Les hommes--egoistes-- menteurs, pas dire la verite . . ." so ran the questions, considerably devoid of auxiliary verbs and such details of construction.
"Je serais jamais t'oublier," ran the frightful answers!
Dear Pauline! Shall I ever see her again? She was but twenty-six. She may still live.
CHAPTER XIV
END OF BOOK THREE
So ended my pilgrimage. I had wandered far, had loved many, but I came back to London without the Golden Girl. I had begun my pilgrimage with a vision, and it was with a vision that I ended it. From all my goings to and fro upon the earth, I had brought back only the image of a woman's face,--the face of that strange woman of the moorland, still haunting my dreams of the night and the day.
It was autumn in my old garden, damp and forsaken, and the mulberry-tree was hung with little yellow shields. My books looked weary of awaiting me, and they and the whole lonely house begged me to take them where sometimes they might be handled by human fingers, mellowed by lamplight, cheered by friendly laughter.
The very chairs begged mutely to be sat upon, the chill white beds to be slept in. Yes, the very furniture seemed even lonelier than myself.
So I took heed of their dumb appeal.
"I know," I answered them tenderly,--"I too, with you, have looked on better days, I too have been where bells have knoll'd to church, I too have sat at many a good man's feast,--yes! I miss human society, even as you, my books, my bedsteads, and my side- boards,--so let it be. It is plain our little Margaret is not coming back, our little Margaret, dear haunted rooms, will never come back; no longer shall her little silken figure flit up and down your quiet staircases, her hands filled with flowers, and her heart humming with little songs. Yes, let us go, it is very lonely; we shall die if we stay here all so lonely together; it is time, let us go."
So thereon I wrote to a furniture-remover, and went out to walk round the mossy old garden for the last time, and say good-bye to the great mulberry, under whose Dodonaesque shade we had sat half frightened on starry nights, to the apple-trees whose blossom had seemed like fairy-land to Margaret and me, town-bred folk, to the apricots and the peaches and the nectarines
We parted in tears and kisses, and I lived for some weeks with that sense of having been a Nero, till two months after I received a much glazed and silvered card to the usual effect.
And so I ceased to repine for the wound I had made in the heart of Semiramis Wilcox.
Of another whom I met and loved in that brief month in Paris, I cherish tenderer memories. Prim little Pauline Deschapelles! How clearly I can still see the respectable brass plate on the door of your little flat-- "Mademoiselle Deschapelles--Modes et Robes;" and indeed the "modes et robes" were true enough. For you were in truth a very hard-working little dressmaker, and I well remember how impressed I was to sit beside you, as you plied your needle on some gown that must be finished by the evening, and meditate on the quaint contrast between your almost Puritanic industry and your innocent love of pleasure. I don't think I ever met a more conscientious little woman than little Pauline Deschapelles.
There was but one drawback to our intercourse. She didn't know a word of English, and I couldn't speak a word of French. So we had to make shift to love without either language. But sometimes Pauline would throw down her stitching in amused impatience, and, going to her dainty secretaire, write me a little message in the simplest baby French--which I would answer in French which would knit her brows for a moment or two, and then send her off in peals of laughter.
It WAS French! I know. Among the bric-a-brac of my heart I still cherish some of those little slips of paper with which we made international love--question and answer.
"Vous allez m'oublier, et ne plus penser a moi--ni me voir. Les hommes--egoistes-- menteurs, pas dire la verite . . ." so ran the questions, considerably devoid of auxiliary verbs and such details of construction.
"Je serais jamais t'oublier," ran the frightful answers!
Dear Pauline! Shall I ever see her again? She was but twenty-six. She may still live.
CHAPTER XIV
END OF BOOK THREE
So ended my pilgrimage. I had wandered far, had loved many, but I came back to London without the Golden Girl. I had begun my pilgrimage with a vision, and it was with a vision that I ended it. From all my goings to and fro upon the earth, I had brought back only the image of a woman's face,--the face of that strange woman of the moorland, still haunting my dreams of the night and the day.
It was autumn in my old garden, damp and forsaken, and the mulberry-tree was hung with little yellow shields. My books looked weary of awaiting me, and they and the whole lonely house begged me to take them where sometimes they might be handled by human fingers, mellowed by lamplight, cheered by friendly laughter.
The very chairs begged mutely to be sat upon, the chill white beds to be slept in. Yes, the very furniture seemed even lonelier than myself.
So I took heed of their dumb appeal.
"I know," I answered them tenderly,--"I too, with you, have looked on better days, I too have been where bells have knoll'd to church, I too have sat at many a good man's feast,--yes! I miss human society, even as you, my books, my bedsteads, and my side- boards,--so let it be. It is plain our little Margaret is not coming back, our little Margaret, dear haunted rooms, will never come back; no longer shall her little silken figure flit up and down your quiet staircases, her hands filled with flowers, and her heart humming with little songs. Yes, let us go, it is very lonely; we shall die if we stay here all so lonely together; it is time, let us go."
So thereon I wrote to a furniture-remover, and went out to walk round the mossy old garden for the last time, and say good-bye to the great mulberry, under whose Dodonaesque shade we had sat half frightened on starry nights, to the apple-trees whose blossom had seemed like fairy-land to Margaret and me, town-bred folk, to the apricots and the peaches and the nectarines