THE COOING OF TURTLE-DOVES
There is nothing like the possibility of loss to bring a man to his bearings in regard to a woman. Dick Fairfield had told Jack that of course he was not a marrying man, that he could not afford to marry a poor woman, and that nothing would induce him to marry a rich one; he had even set down in his diary on the announcement of Jack's engagement that he could never have offered his hand to a girl with so much money; what his secret thought may have been no sage may say, but he had all the outward signs of a man who has convinced himself that he has no idea of trying to secure the girl he loves. Now that the affair had shaped itself so that May was again free, he hurried to her with a precipitation which had in it a choice flavor of comedy.
May always told him afterward that he did not even do her the honor to ask her for her hand, but that he coolly walked in and took up the engagement of Jack Neligage where it had been dropped. It was at least true that by nine o'clock that very evening they were sitting side by side as cosy and as idiotically blissful as a young couple newly betrothed should be. However informally the preliminaries had been conducted, the conclusion seemed to be eminently satisfactory.
"To think that this is the result of that little letter that I found on my table one rainy night last February," Dick observed rapturously. "I remember just how it looked."
"It was horrid of me to write it," May returned, with a demure look which almost as plainly as words added: "Contradict me!"
"It was heavenly of you," Dick declared, rising to the occasion most nobly. "It was the nicest valentine that ever was."
Some moments of endearments interesting to the participants but not edifying in narration followed upon this assertion, and then the little stream of lover-talk purled on again.
"Oh, Mr. Fairfield," May began with utter irrelevancy, "I—"
"You promised not to call me that," he interrupted.
"But it's so strange to say Dick. Well, Dick, then—"
The slight interruption of a caress having been got over, she went on with her shattered observation.
"What was I going to say? You put me all out, with your 'Dick'—I do think it's the dearest name!—Stop! I know what I was going to say. I was frightened almost to death when Mrs. Neligage said the Count wrote 'Love in a Cloud.' Oh, I wanted to get under the tea-table!"
"But you didn't really think he wrote my letters?"
"I couldn't believe it; but I didn't know what to think. Then when he wore a red carnation the next day, I thought I should die. I thought anyway he'd read the letter; and that's what made me so meek when Mrs. Neligage took hold of me."
"But you never suspected that I wrote the book?" Fairfield asked.
"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes it seems to me as if I really did know all the time. Don't you remember how we talked about the book at Mrs. Harbinger's tea?"
"That's just your intuition," Dick returned. "I know I didn't suspect you, for it troubled me tremendously that I cared so much for you when I thought I was in love with my unknown correspondent. It didn't seem loyal."
"But of course it was, you know, because there was only one of us."
Dick laughed, and bestowed upon her an ecstatic little hug.
"You dear little Paddy! That's a perfect bull!"
She drew herself away, and pretended to frown with great dignity.
"I don't care if it is a bull!" protested she. "I won't be called a Paddy!"
Dick's face expressed a consternation and a penitence so marked that she burst into a trill of laughter and flung herself back into his arms.
"I was just teasing," she said. "The truth is that Jack Neligage has teased me so awfully that I've caught it like the measles."
The tender follies which make up the talk of lovers are not very edifying reading when set down in the unsympathetic blackness of print. They are to be interpreted, moreover, with the help of many signs, trifling in themselves but essential to a correct understanding. Looks, caresses, sighs, chuckles, giggles, pressures and claspings, intonations which alter or deny the word spoken, a thousand silly becks, and nods, and wreathèd smiles, all go to make up the conversation between the pair, so that what may be put into print is but a small portion of the ecstatic whole. May Calthorpe and Dick Fairfield were not behind in all the enchanting idiocy which belongs to a wooing, where each lover, secure in being regarded as perfection, ventures for once in a lifetime to be frankly childish, to show self without any mask of convention.
"Oh, I knew you were a man of genius the very first time I saw you," May cried, in an entirely honest defiance of all facts and all evidence.
"I wish I were for your sake," Dick replied, with an adoring glance, and a kiss on the hand which he held. "And to think that this absurdly small hand wrote those beautiful letters."
"You didn't suppose I had an amanuensis, did you?" laughed May.
Then Dick laughed, and together they both laughed, overpowered by the exquisite wit of this fine jest.
"Really, though," Dick said, "they came to me like a revelation. I never had such letters before!"
May drew away her hand, and sat upright with an air of offended surprise.
"Well, I should hope you never did!" she cried. "The idea of any other woman's daring to write to you!"
"But you were writing to a stranger; some other woman—"
"Now, Richard," declared May resolutely, "this has got to be settled right here. If you are going to twit me all my life with having written to you—"
He effectually stopped her speech.
"I'll never speak of it again," he said; "or at least only just often enough so that it shan't be entirely forgotten."
"You are horrid!" declared she with a pout. "You mean to tease me with—"
"Tease you, May? Heavens, how you mistake! I only want all my life to be kept your slave by remembering—"
The reader is at liberty from experience to supply as many hours of this sort of talk as his taste calls for. There were, however, some points of real interest touched upon in the course of the evening. Dick confided to May the fact that Jack Neligage had sold his ponies, was paying his debts, and had accepted a place in a bank. Mr. Frostwinch, a college friend of Jack's father, had offered the situation, and although the salary was of course not large it gave Neligage something to live on.
"Oh, I'll tell that to Alice to-morrow," May said. "She will be delighted to know that Jack is going to do something. Alice is awfully fond of him."
The conversation had to be interrupted by speculations upon the relative force of the attachment between Alice and Jack and the love which May and Dick were at that moment confirming; and from this the talk drifted away to considerations of the proper manner of disclosing the engagement. May's guardian, Mr. Frostwinch, Dick knew well, and there was no reason to expect opposition from him unless on the possible ground of a difference of fortune. It was decided that Dick should see him on the morrow, and that there should be no delay in announcing the important news.
"It will take us two or three days to write our notes, of course," May said, with a pretty air of being very practical in the midst of her sentiment. "We'll say next Wednesday."
Dick professed great ignorance of the social demands of the situation, and of course the explanation had to be given with many ornamental flourishes in the way of oscular demonstrations. May insisted that everything should be done duly and in order; told him upon whom of her relatives he would have to call, to whom write, and so many other details that Dick accused her of having been engaged before.
"You horrid thing!" she pouted. "I've a great mind to break the engagement now. I have been engaged, though," she added, bursting into a laugh of pure glee. "You forget that I woke up this morning engaged to one man and shall go to sleep engaged to another."
"Dear old Jack!" Fairfield said fervently. "Well, I must go home and find him. I want to tell him the news. Heavens! I had no idea it was so late!"
"It isn't late," May protested, after the fashion of all girls in her situation, both before and since; but when Dick would go, she laughingly said: "You tell Jack if he were here I'd kiss him. He said I'd want to some time."
And after half an hour of adieus and a brisk walk home, Dick delivered the message.