The Mystery of Choice by Robert W. Chambers

Author:Robert W. Chambers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

“Oh, Jack, I do like your knickerbockers——”

“And you shall wear your most gorgeous gown for me——”

“Indeed I won’t,” she laughed, adding impulsively, “indeed I will—every day, if you wish it!”

At the top of the hill stood an ancient Ursuline convent surrounded by a high wall, which also inclosed the broad acres of the wealthy sisterhood. We sat down by the roadside hedge and looked across the valley, where the hurrying river had ceased to hasten and now lingered in placid pools and long, deep reaches. The sun had set behind the forest, and the sky threw a purple light over woods and meadow. The grassy pools below were swept by flocks of whistling martins and swallows. One or two white gulls flapped slowly toward the tide water below, and a young curlew, speeding high overhead, uttered a lonesome cry. The grass—the brilliant green grass of Brittany—had turned a deep metallic blue in the twilight. A pale primrose light grew and died in the sky, and the forest changed from rose to ashes. Then a dull red bar shot across the parting clouds in the west, the forest smouldered an instant, and the pools glowed crimson. Slowly the red bar melted away, the light died out among the branches, the pools turned sombre. Looking up, we saw the new moon flashing in the sky above our heads. Sweetheart sighed in perfect contentment.

“It’s beautiful!” I said, with another sigh.

“Ah, yes,” she murmured, “beautiful to you, and to me—to me, Jack, who have never before seen this land of Morbihan.”

After a while she said, “And the ocean—oh, how I long to see it! Is it near us, Jack?”

“The river runs into it twenty kilometres below. We feel the tide at Quimperlé.” I did not add, “Baedeker.”

“I wonder,” I said presently, “what are the feelings of a little American who sees this country—the real country—for the first time?”

“I suppose you mean me,” she said. “I don’t know—I don’t think I understand it yet, but I know I shall love it, and never want to go back.”

“Perhaps we never shall,” I said. “The magic second may stretch into years that end at last as all ends.”

Then our hands met in that sudden nervous clasp which seemed to help and steady us when we were thinking of the real world, so long, so long forgotten.

IX.

I was awakened next morning by a spongeful of cold water in the face, which I hate. I started up to wreak vengeance upon Sweetheart, but she fled to the toilet room and locked herself in. From this retreat she taunted me until further sleep was out of the question, and I bowed to the inevitable—indignantly, when I saw my watch pointed to five o’clock.

Sweetheart was perfectly possessed to row; so when I had bolted my coffee and sat watching her placidly sip hers, we decided to go down to the bank of the little stream and hire a boat. The boat was a wretched, shapeless affair, with two enormous oars and the remnants of rowlocks.

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