From Cameliard to Camelot Rode Guinevere and Lancelot-- Ye bright pavilions, babble not!

The king she took, she keeps for king, in spite of shame, in spite of blot!

--_From Cameliard to Camelot_.

It is a disagreeable duty (one, however, which you and I, madam, discharge with a conscientiousness which the unthinking are sometimes unable to distinguish from zeal) to criticize one's friends. The task is doubly hard when the animadversion is committed to paper, with a more or less definite idea of ultimate publication. I trust, beloved, that we may call Mr. Florian Amidon a friend. He is an honest fellow as the world goes, in spite of the testimony of Simeon Woolaver regarding the steers; and he wishes to do the right thing. In a matter of business, now, or on any question of films, plates or lenses, we should find him full of decision, just and prompt in action. But (and the disagreeable duty of censure comes in here) there he stands like a Stoughton-bottle in a most abject state of woe, because, forsooth, he possesses the love of that budding Juno over there by the grate, and knows not what to do with it! What if he _doesn't_ feel as if he had the slightest personal acquaintance with her? What if the image of another, and the thought----? But look with me, for a moment, at the situation.

There she sits, so attentive to her book (is it the _Rubaiyat_? Yes!) that his entrance has not attracted her notice--not at all! One shapely patent-leather is stretched out to the fender, and the creamy silk of the gown happens to be drawn back so as to show the slender ankle, and a glimpse of black above the leather. The desire for exactness alone compels a reference to the fact that the boundary lines of this silhouetted black area diverge perceptibly as they recede from the shoe. It is only a detail, but even Florian notices it, and thinks about it afterward. Her face is turned toward the shadows up there by the window, her eyes looking at s.p.a.ce, as if in quest of Iram and his Rose, or Jamshyd and his Sev'n-ring'd Cup, or the solution of the Master-knot of Human Fate. The unconscious pose showing the incurved spine, and the arms and shoulders glimpsing through falls of lace at sleeve and corsage, would make the fortune of the photographer-in-ordinary to a professional beauty. And yet that man Amidon stands there like a graven image, and fears to rush in where an angel has folded her wings for him and rests!

[Ill.u.s.tration: There she sits so attentive to her book that his entrance has not attracted her notice]

He knows that he is expected to claim some of the privileges of the long-absent lover. He has some information as to their nature. His eyes ought to apprise him (as they do us, my boy!) of their preciousness. He is not without knowledge concerning past conduct of that type which, beginning in hard-won privileges, ripens into priceless duties, not to discharge which is insult all the more bitter because it is not to be mentioned. It is not to be denied that the tableau appeals to him; and because another woman has lately touched him in a similar way, he stands there and condemns himself for that!

There is small excuse for him, I admit, sir. Her first token of his presence should have been a kiss on the snowy shoulder. You suggest the hair? Well, the hair, then, though for my part, I have always felt---- But never mind! Had it been you or I in his place----

Yes, my dear, this digression is becoming tedious. Let us proceed with the story.

Elizabeth rose with a little start of surprise, a little flutter of the bosom, and came forward with extended hands. He took them with a trembling grasp which might well have pa.s.sed as evidence of fervor.

"Ah, Eugene," said she, holding him away, "it has seemed an age!"

"Yes," said he truthfully, "an eternity, almost."

"Sit down by the fire," said she, in that low voice which means so much. "You are cold."

"I am a little cold," he replied. "I must have remained outside too long."

"Y-e-s?" she returned; and after a long pause: "It doesn't seem to take long--sometimes. And the wind is in the east."

Now, when a bride-elect begins to deal in double meanings of this sort with her fiance, the course of true love is likely to be entering on a piece of rough road-bed.

"How did you find Estelle when you called?"

Estelle? Estelle? Estelle! Nothing in Blodgett and Blatherwick's notes about Estelle. "A whole directory of names," as Judge Blodgett had said, but no Estelle. The world full of useless people--a billion and a half of them--and not an Estelle at poor Amidon's call in this time of need. Hence this long hiatus in the conversation.

"Really, Miss--er--a--my dear, I haven't had time to call on any one."

"It will be a little hard to explain," said she after a silence, "to my prospective bridesmaid and dearest friend, that you were so long in New York and could not call. It is not quite like you, Eugene."

He was sitting where he could see her well, and because she looked into the fire a good deal, he found himself gazing fixedly at her. Her manifold perfections filled him with the same feeling of astonishment experienced by that beggar who awoke in the prince's chamber, clothed in splendor, and with a royal domain in fee.

(Personally, I regard the domain which spread itself before Amidon, as imperial.)

As she p.r.o.nounced her gentle reproof, her eyes turned to his, and he started guiltily.

"No," he confessed, "it was not the right thing. You must forgive me, won't you?"

"I hope," said she, smiling, "I may be able to do more than that: maybe I shall be so fortunate as to get you Estelle's forgiveness."

"Thank you," he said; and then seeking for safer ground: "Haven't you something for us to look over--some plans or something?"

"'Or something'!" she repeated with a ripple of laughter.

It was the first time he had heard this laugh; and Marot's lines ran through his mind:

"Good G.o.d! 'twould make the very streets and ways Through which she pa.s.ses, burst into a pleasure!

No spell were wanting from the dead to raise me, But only that sweet laugh wherewith she slays me!"

"'Or something!'" she repeated, I say; "it might just as well be the profiles of a new pipe-line survey, for all the interest you take in it. I oughtn't to look at them with you; but come, they're over here on the table."

Somehow, this lady's air required the deferential offer of his arm; and somehow, the deference seemed to please her. So he felt that the tension was lessened as she turned over the blue-prints. Moreover, in matters of architecture he felt at home--if he could only steer clear of any discussion of the grounds. He had no idea of the location of these.

Soon their heads were close together over the plans. A dozen times her hair brushed his lips, two or three times his fingers touched the satin skin of her arms and shoulders, and all the time he felt himself within the magic atmosphere which enwraps so divine a maiden, as odorous breezes clothe the sh.o.r.es of Ceylon. Her breath, the faint sweet perfume in her hair, the soft frou-frou of her skirts, the appealing lowness of her voice--all these wrought strongly on Florian; and when she leaned lightly upon him as she reached past him for one of the sheets, he felt (I record it to his credit) as if he must take her to his arms, and complete the embrace she had involuntarily half begun.

But the feeling that she was, after all, a strange young girl, and was revealing herself to him altogether under a mistake as to his ident.i.ty, restrained him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Soon their heads were close together over the plans]

She did not lean against him any more. There were some little improvements in the plans which had occurred to Elizabeth, especially in the arrangement of kitchen, pantry and laundry.

"I'll have the architect come and see you about these," said Amidon.

"What!" said she, in apparent astonishment--"from Boston?"

"Ah--well," he stammered, "I didn't know--that is---- Yes, from Boston! We want these matters as you want them, you know, if it were from Paris or Calcutta. And I think there should be some provision for prism-gla.s.s to light up the library. It could be cut in right there on that north exposure; don't you think so?"

"Oh, yes, and what an improvement it will be!" she replied. "And may I have all the editions of Browning I want, even if I couldn't explain what _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came_ means?"

"Oh, does that point puzzle you?" exclaimed Florian, greeting the allusion to Browning as the war-horse welcomes the battle. "Then you have never chanced to run across the first edition of Child's _Scottish Ballads_. You get the story there, of Childe Roland following up the quest for his sister, shut up by enchantment in the Dark Tower, in searching for which his brothers--Cuthbert and Giles, you remember, and the rest of 'The Band'--had been lost. He must blow a certain horn before it, in a certain way--you know how it goes, 'Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set!' It's quite obvious when you know the story, and not a bit of an enigma. The line in _Lear_ shows that the verses must have been commonly sung in Shakespeare's time----"

The girl was looking at him with something like amazement; but her answer referred to the matter of his discourse.

"Yes," said she, "I can see now how the 'Dark Tower' lightens up. I must read it again in the light of this explanation of yours. Shall we read it together, soon?"

"Oh, by all means!" said he. "Only I warn you I never tire when I find any one who will study Browning with me. I tried to read _The Ring and the Book_ with a dear friend once, and reading my favorite part, 'Giuseppe Caponsacchi,' as I raised my eyes after that heartbreaking finale, 'O, great, just, good G.o.d! Miserable me!' I saw she was dozing. Since then, I read Browning with his lovers only----"

"Yes, you are right in that. But, Eugene," she exclaimed, "you said to me many times that his verse was rot, that Nordau ought to have included him in his gallery of degenerates, that he is muddy, and that there isn't a line of poetry in his works so far as you have been able to dig into them. And you cited _Childe Roland_ as proof of all of this! And you never would listen to any of Browning, even when we almost quarreled about it! Now, if that was because---- Why, it was----!"

She paused as if afraid she might say too much. Florian, who had rallied in his literary enthusiasm, collapsed into his chronic state of terror. Even in so impersonal a thing as Browning, the man who does not know what his habits are takes every step at his peril.

"Oh, _that_ that I said!" he stammered. "Yes--yes. Well, there _are_ obscurities, you know. Even Mr. Birrell admits that. But on the whole, don't you agree with me?"

"Quite," said she dryly; "if I understand you."

There was an implied doubt as to her understanding of his position, and the only thing made clear was that the drawbridge was up again. So Florian began talking of the plans. He grew eloquent on ventilators, bath-rooms, and plumbing. He drew fine and learned distinctions between styles.

"The colonial," said he, "is not good unless indulged in in great moderation. Now, what I like about this is the way in which ultra-colonialism is held in check, and modified in the direction of the Greek ideal. Those columns, supporting the broad portico, hark back to the Parthenon, don't they? I like that taste and flavor of the cla.s.sic."

She listened in much the same wondering way in which she had regarded him at the beginning of his outburst on Browning. Was it possible that, after all, this lover of hers, whose antecedents were so little known, but whose five years of successful life in Bellevale had won for him that confidence of his townsmen in which she had partaken, was, after all, possessed of some of those tastes in art and literature, the absence of which had been the one thing lacking in his character, as it appeared to her? It would seem so. And yet, why had he concealed these things from her, who so pa.s.sionately longed for intellectual companionship? Somehow, resentment crept into her heart as she looked at him, and there was something in his att.i.tude which was not frank and bold, as she liked to see a man--but this would not do. He was so lovely in his provision for the future, and surely his conversation disclosed that he had those tastes and that knowledge!