The Classic Humor MEGAPACK ®. Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ social intercourse. She was neither timid nor bold, but merely natural, with never a suspicion that conventionality demanded a man and a maid to leave a mutual liking unconfessed. It was rather rough on the young man. He was not used to having the truth fly around in such reckless fashion in his conversations with girls, and it bothered him.

      “I’m not a bit afraid of you,” she presently told him. “I knew all the time that Aunt Mattie was wrong. She told me that all men were dreadful, and that the first thing they did was to—to kiss a girl they liked.”

      “She knows nothing about it,” he replied rather crossly. For some unaccountable reason he was angry with himself and with her.

      “Indeed, she doesn’t,” she agreed, eying him thoughtfully. Presently she added: “I do not believe, though, that I should have minded it so much if she had been right.”

      Shade of Plato! He looked down at the tempting curve of her red lips. They were round and full and soft as the petals of a half-blown rosebud, warm and tender and sweet, with just the least trace of puckering to indicate how they could meet the pressure of other lips. He felt his heart come pounding up into the region of his Adam’s apple, and he trembled as he had not done since his first attack of puppy love at the age of fourteen. His breath came and went with a painful flutter but he made no movement. If it had been any sort of a girl under the sun, especially if so attractive as this one, she would have been kissed until she gasped for breath; but he just couldn’t do it. However, if she went so far as to ask him to kiss her, by George! he didn’t see how he was to get out of it!

      “I should really like to kiss you,” he admitted with a martyr-like sigh and a further echo of her own frankness, “but I shan’t. Under the circumstances it would not be right.”

      He reflected, grinning, that mother would be proud if she could see him now, then he thought, grinning harder, of the boys at the club. Ifthey only knew!

      “There, didn’t I say so!” she triumphantly exclaimed. “I told Aunt Matilda that there certainly must be some good men in the world!”

      Good! He winced as certain memories of his careless youth began to do cake-walks up and down his conscience. Then he changed the subject.

      She snuggled up closely to him, by and by, confidingly and unsuspicious, and just talked and talked and talked. It was very pleasant to have her there at his side, babbling innocently away in that sweet, musical voice. How pretty she was, how artless and trusting, how honest and how heart-whole! It came to him that his family and friends had for a long time been telling him that he ought to get married, and he began to see that they were right.

      How delightful it would be to stay on forever in this enchanted grove with her. He presently found himself fervently saying it, though he had not intended such words to pass his lips. She took the wish as a matter of course. She had confidently expected him to feel that way about it, and, if he felt that way, to say so.

      “Adnah Eggleson!”

      They jumped like juvenile jam-thieves caught red-handed.

      Aunt Sarah and Aunt Ann and Aunt Matilda rigidly confronted them, having stolen upon them unseen, unheard, unthought of, and they stood now in grim horror, merciless and implacable. They advanced in a swooping body, after one moment of agonizing suspense, and snatched Adnah into their midst, glaring three kinds of loathing scorn upon the interloping serpent.

      “Has this person kissed you, or attempted to do so?” hissed Aunt Sarah.

      “Not yet,” meekly answered poor Adnah.

      “I assure you ladies—,” began the serpent, but Aunt Sarah cut him short.

      “Silence, sir!” she commanded. “We wish no explanations from you, whatsoever.”

      Thus crushing him, the little company wheeled and marched away, bearing Adnah an unwilling and impenitent captive, two of them ingeniously keeping behind her so that she should have no opportunity of even exchanging a backward glance with the serpent.

      Left to himself the serpent moodily kicked holes in the turf. He had an intense desire to do something violent—to smash something, no matter what. He was furious with the trio of aunts. It was a shame, he told himself, to bury alive a beautiful and noble young woman like that, through a warped and mistaken notion of the world. What right had they to condemn a sweet and affectionate creature such as she to a starved and morbid spinsterhood? It was his duty to rescue her from the colorless fate that hung over her, and he would do his duty. He was unconsciously flexing his biceps as he said it.

      Would he? How? Should he get out a search warrant or a writ of replevin? This whimsical view of the case only exasperated him the more as it presented the utter hopelessness of approaching her—of ever seeing her again—and, when the dogs came chasing an utterly inconsequential and useless butterfly in his direction, he pelted them with stones until they yelped. Hang the dogs, anyhow. It was all their fault!

      Next he blamed himself. If he had only resisted that creek like a man he wouldn’t have been a hundred miles from home without clothes or money, and silly about a girl he had never seen until that day.

      Then he blamed the girl. Why, why was she such a confiding and altogether artless and bewitching little fool? She wasn’t! He remembered her eyes and abjectly apologized to the memory of her. She was everything that was sweet and pure and womanly—everything that was desirable in every sense—well-bred, well-schooled, unspoiled of the world, without guile or subterfuge, beautiful, healthy, honest. That had been the only startling thing about her—just honesty. It spoke ill for himself and the world in which he lived that this should have seemed startling! What a wonderful creature she was! By the Eternal, she belonged to him and he meant to have her! She loved him, too!

      He sat down on the bank to think over this phase of the question. He had known her several years in the minute and a half since noon, and it was time this foolishness came to an end.

      Time flies when youth listens to the fancied strains of Mendelssohn’s Spring Song. He was surprised, presently, to note a strange hush settling down over the woods. A chill vapor seemed to arise from the water. There was a melancholy note in the tweet of the low-flitting birds. The rustling trees softened their murmur to a continuous whisper, soothing and caressing. The tinkle of the creek became more metallic and pronounced. Near by, down the stream, a sudden chorus of frogs burst into croaking, their isolated notes blended by the chirping undertone of the crickets and tree toads. There were other sounds, mysterious, untraceable, but all musical in greater or lesser degree.

      He understood at last. These sounds, the rustling leaves, the flitting birds, the tinkling creek, the frogs, tree toads and crickets and those other intangible cadences, these were the instruments of nature’s vast orchestra, playing their lullaby, languorous and sweet, for the drowsy day. It was dusk, and he was desperately in love with Adnah, and he had on a fool bloomer bath suit and no money, and he had to go back into civilization just as he was. Woe, woe, woe and anathema!

      At the house he found a table set under a big oak tree back of the kitchen. Supper for one was illumined by the rays of a solitary lantern. Aunt Sarah and Aunt Ann, each with a pistol in her lap, sat grimly to one side. Adnah nor Aunt Matilda were anywhere to be seen, and he divined with a thrill that Aunt Matilda was acting as jailer to the young woman until he should be safely off the premises. Evidently she had been hard to manage. Bless the little girl!

      He took off his hat as he approached and bowed respectfully.

      “I should like you to know who I am,” he began.

      “You СКАЧАТЬ