XIX
Mr. Crane was a persistent person. Otherwise he would hardly have arrived where he had in the Washington Trust Company. Having failed to broach the great subject in the afternoon, he immediately made another opportunity for himself by hustling Adelle, ahead of the others, into his own cab for the return drive to the city, and then jumping in after her and giving the driver the order to leave. It was very ill-bred and he knew it, but he was determined not to bother about Miss Comstock any longer. His vacation was very nearly at an end, and this would be his last chance for another year if the ward was to remain in Europe as was her present determination. He consoled himself with the thought that the others had Adelle's car at their disposal, and gave the order to take a roundabout road back to London. The driver needed but the suggestion to plunge them into a maze of forgotten country roads where there were no lights and no impeding traffic....
There are in general three ways in which to make love to a woman, young or old: the deliberate, the impulsive, and the inevitable. Of the third there is no occasion to speak here, as neither Ashly Crane nor Adelle understood it. Of the remaining two the deliberate method of cautious, persistent siege was more to the taste and the temperament of the banker, but he was strictly limited in time. The Kaiser Nonsuch, on which his passage was reserved, sailed in three days from Southampton, and he must win within that brief period or put the matter over for a whole year. And he judged that Adelle, under her present environment with such an expert manager as Miss Catherine Comstock, would not be left hanging on the bough within his reach for long. A year's delay would almost surely be fatal, and it was uncertain whether he could get away before the next summer from his important responsibilities at the Washington Trust Company. So haste must be the word.
That he should reason thus about a delicate matter of sentiment betrays not merely the man's coarse grain, but the inferiority of the commercial experience in making an accomplished lover. He had been trained in the "new school" of rapid finance to complete large transactions on the moment, never letting small uncertainties or delays interfere with his purposes. It was really not essential to the working of the financial system—even for the salvation of the Washington Trust Company—that Mr. Ashly Crane should turn up at his desk on the morning of the twenty-sixth instanter. It might just as well have been the thirty-first or even the middle of the next month—or, if he should have the good luck to gain the heart and hand of the heiress, never at all! But Mr. Ashly Crane was neither of the temperament nor of the age to play the sentimental game thus desperately. He was altogether too much an American to let his love-making interfere with his business schedule. (Besides, there was not another swift steamer sailing for New York for three weeks.)
So he sighed, and when the cab shot into the umbrageous dimness of old trees he took the girl's hand in his. She made no attempt to withdraw her hand. Probably Adelle was more frightened by this first experience in the eternal situation than the man was, and that is saying a good deal. She took refuge in her usual defense against life and its many perplexities, which was silence, permitting the banker to press her captive hand for several moments while the cab tossed on the uneven road and Crane was summoning his nerve for the next step. Her heart beat a little faster, and she wondered what was going to happen.
That was the man's attempt to encircle her waist with his free arm. In this maneuver Adelle did not assist him: instead, she pushed herself back against the cushion so firmly that it made it a difficult engineering feat to obtain possession of her figure. By this time his face was close to hers, and he was stammering incoherently such words as—"Adelle" ... "Dearest" ... "Love" ... etc. But we will spare the reader Mr. Ashly Crane's crude imitation of ardor. All love-making, even the most sincere and eloquent, is verbally disappointingly alike and rather tame. The human animal, ingenious as he is in many ways, is nevertheless almost as limited as the ape when it comes to the articulation of the deeper emotions. That is why delicacy and the habit of nuances give the experienced wooer such an immense advantage, even with a raw girl like Adelle, over the mere clumsy male. Love, like the drama, being so rigidly limited in technique, is no field for the bungler! And Mr. Ashly Crane was far from being an artist in anything.
By this time Adelle had become aware that she was being made love to. It filled her with a variety of emotions not clearly defined. First of all, there was something of the woman's natural complacency in her first capture, more vivid than when the other girls had dubbed Mr. Crane her "beau." This was a bona fide illustration of what all the girls talked about most of the time and the novels were full of from cover to cover—love-making! And next was a feeling akin to repugnance. Mr. Crane was not aged—barely forty-two—and he was good-looking enough and quite the man. But to Adelle he had always been, if not exactly a parent, at least an older brother or uncle,—in some category of relationship other than that of young love. That he should thus hastily be professing ardent sentiments towards her seemed a trifle improper. Beneath these superficial feelings there were, of course, some deeper ones;—for instance, a slight sense of humor in his clumsy management and a feeling of gratification that at last the unknown had arrived. And a something else not wholly unpleasant in her own small person....
Crane was mumbling something about his loneliness and her unprotected condition. Adelle was not aware that she was to be pitied because of lack of protection, but she liked to be the object of sympathy. Gradually she relaxed, and permitted him to insert his arm between her and the cushion, which he seemed so ridiculously anxious to do. At once he drew her slight form towards him. He was saying,—
"Dearest! Can you—will you—"