The Pension Beaurepas | Page 9

wink.
"That one where we saw the blue cross," said his daughter.
"Oh, come, what do you want of that blue cross?" poor Mr. Ruck
demanded.
"She wants to hang it on a black velvet ribbon and tie it round her
neck," said his wife.
"A black velvet ribbon? No, I thank you!" cried the young lady. "Do
you suppose I would wear that cross on a black velvet ribbon? On a
nice little gold chain, if you please--a little narrow gold chain, like an
old-fashioned watch-chain. That's the proper thing for that blue cross. I
know the sort of chain I mean; I'm going to look for one. When I want
a thing," said Miss Ruck, with decision, "I can generally find it."
"Look here, Sophy," her father urged, "you don't want that blue cross."
"I do want it--I happen to want it." And Sophy glanced at me with a
little laugh.
Her laugh, which in itself was pretty, suggested that there were various
relations in which one might stand to Miss Ruck; but I think I was
conscious of a certain satisfaction in not occupying the paternal one.
"Don't worry the poor child," said her mother.
"Come on, mother," said Miss Ruck.
"We are going to look about a little," explained the elder lady to me, by
way of taking leave.

"I know what that means," remarked Mr. Ruck, as his companions
moved away. He stood looking at them a moment, while he raised his
hand to his head, behind, and stood rubbing it a little, with a movement
that displaced his hat. (I may remark in parenthesis that I never saw a
hat more easily displaced than Mr. Ruck's.) I supposed he was going to
say something querulous, but I was mistaken. Mr. Ruck was unhappy,
but he was very good-natured. "Well, they want to pick up something,"
he said. "That's the principal interest, for ladies."

CHAPTER IV.

Mr. Ruck distinguished me, as the French say. He honoured me with
his esteem, and, as the days elapsed, with a large portion of his
confidence. Sometimes he bored me a little, for the tone of his
conversation was not cheerful, tending as it did almost exclusively to a
melancholy dirge over the financial prostration of our common country.
"No, sir, business in the United States is not what it once was," he
found occasion to remark several times a day. "There's not the same
spring--there's not the same hopeful feeling. You can see it in all
departments." He used to sit by the hour in the little garden of the
pension, with a roll of American newspapers in his lap and his high hat
pushed back, swinging one of his long legs and reading the New York
Herald. He paid a daily visit to the American banker's, on the other side
of the Rhone, and remained there a long time, turning over the old
papers on the green velvet table in the middle of the Salon des
Etrangers, and fraternising with chance compatriots. But in spite of
these diversions his time hung heavily upon his hands. I used
sometimes to propose to him to take a walk; but he had a mortal horror
of pedestrianism, and regarded my own taste for it as' a morbid form of
activity. "You'll kill yourself, if you don't look out," he said, "walking
all over the country. I don't want to walk round that way; I ain't a
postman!" Briefly speaking, Mr. Ruck had few resources. His wife and
daughter, on the other hand, it was to be supposed, were possessed of a
good many that could not be apparent to an unobtrusive young man.
They also sat a great deal in the garden or in the salon, side by side,

with folded hands, contemplating material objects, and were
remarkably independent of most of the usual feminine aids to
idleness--light literature, tapestry, the use of the piano. They were,
however, much fonder of locomotion than their companion, and I often
met them in the Rue du Rhone and on the quays, loitering in front of
the jewellers' windows. They might have had a cavalier in the person of
old M. Pigeonneau, who possessed a high appreciation of their charms,
but who, owing to the absence of a common idiom, was deprived of the
pleasures of intimacy. He knew no English, and Mrs. Ruck and her
daughter had, as it seemed, an incurable mistrust of the beautiful
tongue which, as the old man endeavoured to impress upon them, was
pre-eminently the language of conversation.
"They have a tournure de princesse--a distinction supreme," he said to
me. "One is surprised to find them in a little pension, at seven francs a
day."
"Oh, they don't come for economy," I answered. "They must be rich."