An Old Meerschaum | Page 3

you would find much to admire in him. Even now, if you have any taste for live statuary, you shall admire this upright six feet two inches of finely-modelled bone and muscle. If manly good-nature can make a handsome sun-browned face pleasant to you, then shall Barndale's countenance find favour in your eyes. Of his manly ways, his good and honest heart, this story will tell you something, though perchance not much. If you do not like Barndale before you part with him, believe me, it is my fault, who tell his story clumsily, and not his. For the lady of his love there might be more to say, if I were one of those clever people who read women. As it is, you shall make your own reading of her, and shall dislike her on your own personal responsibility, or love her for her transparent merits, and for the sake of no stupid analysis of mine.
Do you know the Adriatic? It pleases me to begin a love story over its translucent sapphire and under its heavenly skies. I shall rejoice again in its splendours as I hover in fancy over these two impressionable young hearts, to whom a new glamour lives upon its beauties.
Papa and Mamma Leland are placidly asleep on the saloon deck, beneath the flapping awning. Leland Junior is carrying on a pronounced flirtation with a little Greek girl, and Lilian and Barndale are each enjoying their own charming spiritual discomforts. They say little, but, like the famous parrot, they think the more. Concerning one thing, however, Mr. Barndale thinks long and deeply, pulling his tawny beard meanwhile. Lilian, gazing with placid-seeming spirit on the deep, is apparently startled by the suddenness of his address.
'Miss Leland!'
'How you startled me!' she answers, turning her hazel eyes upon him. She has been waiting these last five minutes for him to speak, and knew that he was about it. But take notice that these small deceits in the gentle sex are natural, and by no means immoral.
'I am disturbed in mind,' says Barndale, blushing a httle behind his bronze, 'about an incident of yesterday.'
'Conscience,' says Lilian, calmly didactic, 'will assert herself occasionally.'
'Conscience,' says Barndale, blushing a httle more perceptibly, 'has httle to do with this disturbance. Why did you laugh when I said that it was singular that we should be making this pleasant journey together?'
'Did I laugh?' she asked demurely. Then quite suddenly, and with an air of denunciation.
'Ask James.'
Barndale rises obediently.
'No, no,' says the lady. 'Sit down, Mr. Barndale. I was only joking. There was no reason.' And now the young lady is blushing. 'Did I really laugh?'
'You smiled,' says the guilty Barndale. 'At what?' inquires she with innocent inadvertency.
'Oh!' cries the young fellow, laughing outright, 'that is too bad. Why did you laugh when I said it was singular?'
'I am not prepared,' she answers, 'to account for all my smiles of yesterday.'
'Then,' says Barndale, 'I'll go and ask Jimmy.'
'You will do nothing of the kind.'
'Why?'
'Because you are too polite, Mr. Barndale, to pry into a lady's secrets.'
'There is a secret here, then?'
'No.'
'You are contradictory, Miss Leland?'
'You are obtuse, Mr. Barndale. If there be a secret it is as open as----'
'As what?'
'As your door was yesterday when you spoke to your servant.'
'Then you----?'
'Yes,' responds Miss Lilian, severely. I know you gentlemen. You were going home until you met that idle and dissolute James, by accident. Then you suddenly change your mind, and go out to Constantinople.' There for a moment she pauses and follows up her victory over the now crimson Barndale with a terrible whisper. 'On the spree! Oh, you need scarcely look surprised. I have learned your vulgar terms from James.'
'I hope I am not so criminal as you fancy,' says Barndale, finding the proof of his guilt fall less heavily than he had feared.
'If you were thrice as criminal, this is not the tribunal,' and she waves her parasol round her feet, 'at which the felon should be tried.'
'But, Miss Leland, if it were not because I met your brother that--I came out here! If there were another reason!'
'If there were another reason I confess my smile out of time and apologise for it.' And therewith she shot him through and through with another smile. It was fatal to both, for he in falling caught her with him. These things have a habit of occurring all at once, and in anything rather than the meditated fashion.
'Lilian,' said the young Barndale, inwardly delirious at his own daring and the supernal beauty of her smile, but on the outside of him quite calm and assured, and a trifle masterful, 'I came because I learned that you were com-ing. If you are displeased with me for that, I will land at Corfu and go home. And bury my