Simon Dale. Anthony Hope

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СКАЧАТЬ was most marvellously at her ease, for, on my salute, she cried, lifting her hands in feigned amazement,

      "A man, by my faith; a man in this place!"

      Well pleased to be called a man, I bowed again.

      "Or at least," she added, "what will be one, if it please Heaven."

      "You may live to see it without growing wrinkled," said I, striving to conceal my annoyance.

      "And one that has repartee in him! Oh, marvellous!"

      "We do not all lack wit in the country, madame," said I, simpering as I supposed the Court gallants to simper, "nor, since the plague came to London, beauty."

      "Indeed, it's wonderful," she cried in mock admiration. "Do they teach such sayings hereabouts, sir?"

      "Even so, madame, and from such books as your eyes furnish." And for all her air of mockery, I was, as I remember, much pleased with this speech. It had come from some well-thumbed romance, I doubt not. I was always an eager reader of such silly things.

      She curtseyed low, laughing up at me with roguish eyes and mouth.

      "Now, surely, sir," she said, "you must be Simon Dale, of whom my host the gardener speaks?"

      "It is my name, madame, at your service. But the gardener has played me a trick; for now I have nothing to give in exchange for your name."

      "Nay, you have a very pretty nosegay in your hand," said she. "I might be persuaded to barter my name for it."

      The nosegay that was in my hand I had gathered and brought for Barbara Quinton, and I still meant to use it as a peace-offering. But Barbara had treated me harshly, and the stranger looked longingly at the nosegay.

      "The gardener is a niggard with his flowers," she said with a coaxing smile.

      "To confess the truth," said I, wavering in my purpose, "the nosegay was plucked for another."

      "It will smell the sweeter," she cried, with a laugh. "Nothing gives flowers such a perfume." And she held out a wonderfully small hand towards my nosegay.

      "Is that a London lesson?" I asked, holding the flowers away from her grasp.

      "It holds good in the country also, sir; wherever, indeed, there is a man to gather flowers and more than one lady who loves smelling them."

      "Well," said I, "the nosegay is yours at the price," and I held it out to her.

      "The price? What, you desire to know my name?"

      "Unless, indeed, I may call you one of my own choosing," said I, with a glance that should have been irresistible.

      "Would you use it in speaking of me to Mistress Barbara there? No, I'll give you a name to call me by. You may call me Cydaria."

      "Cydaria! A fine name!"

      "It is," said she carelessly, "as good as any other."

      "But is there no other to follow it?"

      "When did a poet ask two names to head his sonnet? And surely you wanted mine for a sonnet?"

      "So be it, Cydaria," said I.

      "So be it, Simon. And is not Cydaria as pretty as Barbaria?"

      "It has a strange sound," said I, "but it's well enough."

      "And now—the nosegay!"

      "I must pay a reckoning for this," I sighed; but since a bargain is a bargain I gave her the nosegay.

      She took it, her face all alight with smiles, and buried her nose in it. I stood looking at her, caught by her pretty ways and graceful boldness. Boy though I was, I had been right in telling her that there are many ways of beauty; here were two to start with, hers and Barbara's. She looked up and, finding my gaze on her, made a little grimace as though it were only what she had expected and gave her no more concern than pleasure. Yet at such a look Barbara would have turned cold and distant for an hour or more. Cydaria, smiling in scornful indulgence, dropped me another mocking curtsey, and made as though she would go her way. Yet she did not go, but stood with her head half-averted, a glance straying towards me from the corner of her eye, while with her tiny foot she dug the gravel of the avenue.

      "It is a lovely place, this park," said she. "But, indeed, it's often hard to find the way about it."

      I was not backward to take her hint.

      "If you had a guide now——" I began.

      "Why, yes, if I had a guide, Simon," she whispered gleefully.

      "You could find the way, Cydaria, and your guide would be most——"

      "Most charitably engaged. But then——" She paused, drooping the corners of her mouth in sudden despondency.

      "But what then?"

      "Why then, Mistress Barbara would be alone."

      I hesitated. I glanced towards the house. I looked at Cydaria.

      "She told me that she wished to be alone," said I.

      "No? How did she say it?"

      "I will tell you all about that as we go along," said I, and Cydaria laughed again.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

THE WAY OF YOUTH

       Table of Contents

      The debate is years old; not indeed quite so old as the world, since Adam and Eve cannot, for want of opportunity, have fallen out over it, yet descending to us from unknown antiquity. But it has never been set at rest by general consent: the quarrel over Passive Obedience is nothing to it. It seems such a small matter though; for the debate I mean turns on no greater question than this: may a man who owns allegiance to one lady justify by any train of reasoning his conduct in snatching a kiss from another, this other being (for it is important to have the terms right) not (so far as can be judged) unwilling? I maintained that he might; to be sure, my position admitted of no other argument, and, for the most part, it is a man's state which determines his arguments and not his reasons that induce his state. Barbara declared that he could not; though, to be sure, it was, as she added most promptly, no concern of hers; for she cared not whether I were in love or not, nor how deeply, nor with whom, nor, in a word, anything at all about the matter. It was an abstract opinion she gave, so far as love, or what men chose to call such, might be involved; as to seemliness, she must confess that she had her view, with which, may be, Mr. Dale was not in agreement. The girl at the gardener's cottage must, she did not doubt, agree wholly with Mr. Dale; how otherwise would she have suffered the kiss in an open space in the park, where anybody might pass—and where, in fact (by the most perverse chance in the world), pretty Mistress Barbara СКАЧАТЬ