Everymans Land | Page 7

water-colours and admires them. Then he turns from the pictures to me. We discuss the sketches and the scenes they represent. "Oh, have you been there?" "Why, I was at that place a week ago!" "How odd!" "We must have missed each other by a day." And we drift into gossip about ourselves. Still we don't come to the subject of names. Names seem to be of no importance. They belong to the world of conventions.
We talk and talk--mostly of France, and our travels, and pictures and books we love; but our eyes speak of other things. I feel that his are saying, "You are beautiful!" Mine answer, "I'm glad you think that. Why do you seem so different to me from other people?" Then suddenly, there's a look too long between us. "I wish my brother were here to explain his pictures!" I cry; though I don't wish it at all. It is only that I must break the silence.
This brings us back to the business in hand. He says, "May I really buy one of these sketches?"
"Are you sure you want to?" I laugh.
"Sure!" he answers. And I never heard that word sound so nice, even in my own dear Ireland.
He chooses the cathedral--which he hasn't visited yet. Do I know the price my brother has decided on? With that question I discover that he has Madame Mounet's version of our name. Brian and I have laughed dozens of laughs at her way of pronouncing O'Malley. "Ommalee" we are for her, and "Mees Ommalee" she has made me for her millionaire. For fun, I don't correct him. Let him find out for himself who we really are! I say that my brother hasn't fixed a price; but would six hundred francs seem very high? The man considers it ridiculously low. He refuses to pay less than twice that sum. Even so, he argues he will be cheating us, and getting me into hot water when my brother comes. We almost quarrel, and at last the hero has his way. He strikes me as one who is used to that!
When the matter is settled, an odd look passes over his face. I wonder if he has changed his mind, and doesn't know how to tell me his trouble. Something is worrying him; that is clear. Just as I'm ready to make things easy, with a question, he laughs.
"I'm going to take you into my confidence," he says, "and tell you a story--about myself. In Paris, before I started on this tour, a friend of mine gave a man's dinner for me. He and the other chaps were chaffing because--oh, because of a silly argument we got into about--life in general, and mine in particular. On the strength of it my chum bet me a thing he knew I wanted, that I couldn't go through my trip under an assumed name. I bet I could, and would. I bet a thing I want to keep. That's the silly situation. I hate not telling you my real name, and signing a cheque for your brother. But I've stuck it out for four weeks, and the bet has only two more to run. I'm calling myself Jim Wyndham. It's only my surname I've dropped for the bet. The rest is mine. May I pay for the picture in cash--and may I come back here, or wherever you are on the fifteenth day from now, and introduce myself properly? Or--you've only to speak the word, and I'll throw over the whole footling business this minute, and----"
I cut in, to say that I won't speak the word, and he mustn't throw the business over. It is quite amusing I tell him, and I hope he'll win his bet. As for the picture--he may pay as he chooses. But about the proper introduction--Heaven knows where I shall be in a fortnight. My brother loves to make up his mind the night beforehand, where to go next. We are a pair of tramps.
"You don't do your tramping on foot?"
"Indeed we do! We haven't seen a railway station since our first day out from Paris. We stop one day in a place we don't care for: three in a place we like: a week or more in a place we love."
"Then at that rate you won't have got far in fifteen days. I know the direction you've come from by what you've told me, and your brother's sketches. You wouldn't be here on the border of Belgium if you didn't mean to cross the frontier."
"Oh, we shall cross it, of course. But where we shall go when we get across is another question."
"I'll find the answer, and I'll find you," he flings at me with a smile of defiance.
"Why should you give yourself trouble?"
"To--see some more of