Chapter VI.
When Pyramus and Thisbe, when Cœur de Lion and Blondel, want speech of each other, Wall will ever have “a cranny right and sinister” for their whispers, will “show a chink to blink through with their eyne.”
Breakfast was over. Voltaire was in the pantry, clashing dish and pan for a signal. Lucy waited her moment to dart in and get her hopes of escape made into certainties.
“I am going up stairs, Lucy,” said her mother, “to give Dewitt her last hints about your wedding-dress. Come up presently and try it on.”
She went out, leaving lover and lady together.
Kerr stood before the fire in his favorite posture. His face was red, his jacket was red. He produced the effect of a great unmeaning daub of scarlet in a genre — mauvais genre — picture.
The big booby grew embarrassed with himself. The quiet presence of this young girl abashed him. He knew that his suit was an insult to her. He saw that she did not appreciate his feet and inches. Neither his cheeks nor his shoulders nor his calves touched her heart. His vanity had been hurt, and he felt a spiteful triumph that she was in his power.
This morning he was ashamed of himself. It is a grievous thing that men cannot go to bed tipsy and wake up without headaches and with self-respect. Perhaps it will be different when Chaos comes again.
Kerr felt disgusted with himself, and embarrassed. He wanted to talk to cover his awkwardness. He did not know what to say. The complaint is not uncommon.
“I suppose she knows it’s a fine day, and wont thank me for telling her,” he thought. “Vaughan’s trip up the river, — that’s talked out. I made the pun about Esopus and Esop’s fables, that Rawdon got off last night, and she didn’t laugh. I wish I had Jack André’s tongue. I have half a mind to cut it out of him — the dashed whipper-snapper — for trying to get her to flirt with him yesterday. I suppose I ought to be making love now. But she has never let me come near enough to make what I call love. Well, I must say something. Here goes! Ahem! Lucy — Miss Lucy.”
“Sir.”
“It’s a very fine day.”
“Very.”
“A most uncommonly fine day for this doosed climate.”
No reply.
“I’d box the dumb thing’s ears if she was Mrs. K.,” thought the Major. “But she sha’n’t silence me. I’ll give her another chance. Ahem! Miss Lucy! Wouldn’t you like to stroll out and take the air?”
“No, I thank you. Do not let me detain you.”
“I say, you know, we’re to be married tomorrow. You needn’t be so infernally distant.”
“My mother wishes me to join her with the dressmakers.”
“Well, if you wont come, you wont,” says Kerr, taking himself off in dudgeon.
He walked out upon the lawn. The air was nine-oxygen azote of the purest proof. He swallowed it boozily, as if it were six-water grog.
Lucy hied to the trysting-place, where the arch-plotter was waiting amid pans and dishes.
“Voltaire, tell me!” she cried. And here tears interrupted her, and gushed as if she intended to use the biggest pan for a lacrymatory.
“Don’t cry, Miss Lucy,” the old fellow says. “It’s good news!”
At which she only wept the more.
Without much knowledge of the chemistry of tears, Voltaire saw that spending them relieved and calmed the young lady. Meanwhile, to be talking on indifferent subjects until her first burst was over, he said, “I saw Major Scrammel at Fishkill, Miss Lucy. He asked after your health.”
“I am. obliged to him.” The name seemed to act like a dash of cold water. These Majors fatigued her. Scrammel Yankee, Emerick Hessian, Kerr British, — she liked none of them. She began to feel a disgust for the grade.
“My father!” she said, with her whole heart in the word, “tell me of him. He has not forgotten me. He loves me. He will save me from this — this —” A sob drowned the epithet.
“He loves you dearly,” Voltaire responded.
“Lub,” he still pronounced the precious word. He brought his two thick lips together to sound the final “b,” instead of lightly touching his upper teeth against his lower lip and breathing out “ve” final.
This great fact of love established, with all its sequel, by a single word, Lucy, womanlike, desired to know that this dear new lover no longer misunderstood her. She must be satisfied that she stood right in his esteem before she could take thought of her own dangers.
“You told him,” she said, eagerly, “that I was not an unnatural daughter, — only deceived and deluded by this cruel woman?”
Tears had started again, as she thought of the misery he must have suffered for her disloyalty. But indignation at her mother burned them up, and she closed her sentence sternly.