“The d—— Really?” said May.
The countess folded the letter, kissed it, and replaced it in her bosom. This was an extremely embarrassing proceeding to May, and he kept some time silent. With his Anglo-Saxon awkwardness at social comedy, he thought that Polacco might as well be kept out of the case.
“Shall we go for a drive?” said she, at last.
“Delighted,” said Austin May.
The drives about Baden-Baden are charming. You wind for miles upon the brows of castle-crowned hills, overhanging the gay little valley; and then you plunge into the ancient gloom of the Black Forest, and the eerie pines, and a delicious shiver of wildness and solitude, all the time with the feeling that the Kursaal and its band are close at hand, should the silence grow oppressive. There, if your heart do trouble you, you can look at pretty women; and, if the eternal verities beset your spirit, gamble for napoleons.
The countess drove two little cream-colored ponies, and encouraged May to smoke his cigarette most charmingly.... Bah! why go on with it? Even now, over the Eclipse claret, May could not but admit that he had spent in Baden-Baden three of the most charming weeks of his life. He would not mind passing three such weeks again, could he be sure they would be just three such weeks, and that they would end at the same time. But, que diable! because the play is amusing, we do not wish to stay in the theatre forever. And May nervously glanced at the window, as he thought he heard the sound of carriage-wheels again. He had smoked too much strong tobacco, probably; but, after all, it was even now only the middle of the afternoon—not sunset, or near it. He might have to come to stronger drugs than tobacco, to stronger deeds than tobacco-smoke, ere the evening was over. Hence that arsenal with which he had provided himself.
Well, to cut it short, he fell in love with her. Of course he did. He adored her. Possible! He wanted to marry her. This seemed impossible; but he had most certainly said so. He was barely twenty-five, and she—well, she was older than he was. And she had a husband in the Siberian mines. As May looked back upon it, this seemed her only advantage. But, after all, it was her patriotism that first attracted him—her heroism, her devotion to her unhappy cause, or causes. Italia irredenta! Poland! Nihilism! For May was not quite clear which one or more of these was chief in her mind; and nihilism was a new word then, but it sounded dangerous and attractive. Could he not be her chevalier, her lieutenant, her esquire? It was no more than Byron had done for Greece, after all. He was free, independent (for the next eight years)—broken-hearted, he was going to add, but stopped. After all, May Austin had not refused to marry him; and three of the eleven years were gone. At all events, there was nothing to prevent his attaching himself to a forlorn hope, if he chose. Eight years of chances were in his favor; and at the worst—if neither May Austin got married, nor Polacco died—he could make a rescue of the husband from Siberia and do the BB pencils himself. He lay awake many nights thinking of these things, and at last he was emboldened to speak of them to her.
How well he remembered the day he did so! The day—but no, it was evening. They had driven out after dinner, (did any man ever propose before breakfast?) and the scene was a moonlit glade in the Black Forest. The two ponies stood motionless; but their fair owner was much moved as he poured into her delicate ear his desires and devotions. It was so noble of him, she said, and was moved to tears. And then his devotion to her unhappy country! and she wiped away another tear for Poland or Italia irredenta. How she wished Serge could have met him, and could know of this! And she wiped away another tear for Serge. But no, my noble American—noble citizen of a free country! It could never be. Poland and she must bear their woes alone. They could never consent to drag down a brave young Bostonian in their wreck. And then, how could she ever reward him? With her friendship, said Austin. But the Comtesse seemed to think her friendship would be inadequate.
The scene was becoming somewhat oppressive; and May, at least, was conscious of a certain difficulty in providing for it a proper termination. In the excitement of the occasion, he had felt emboldened to take one of her hands, which he still retained; the other was holding the reins of the two cream-colored ponies. He could hardly simply drop it—the hand and the conversation—without more; and yet what suitable catastrophe could there be for the situation? Might he kiss it, and cut the conversation? It were a mere act of courtesy, no breach of respect to the absent Serge. As a boy of twenty-two he had never dared; but as a man of twenty-five——
She did not seem in the least surprised. Possibly she had thought him older than twenty-five. But May, after that little ceremony, had dropped the hand most unmistakably; and she turned the ponies’ heads away. May gave a last look to the forest-glade, as they drove out from it, and reflected that the place would be impressed upon his memory forever. It was really astonishing the number of places that were to be impressed upon his memory forever!