The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

Her manner was generally that of a woman under some kind of anxiety or suspense, from which she found relief in a half timid, half reckless abandonment to gaiety; she was like a schoolgirl on some feminine lark, entirely novel to her, to which some severity had driven her for relief, yet of which she was constantly in terror.

In the parlor, after supper, Wetheral's supposed travels being mentioned, he led up to the highly original remark, spoken with a most meaning look, "But of all women, I'll swear the finest I have seen are in England,—nay, I must say, is in England!" The charming blush with which she received this extremely subtle compliment encouraged Dick to further efforts in the same strain, for the conversation of the two had now fallen to a tone inaudible to Lord George and Miss Thorpe. These, on their side, sat at some distance, deep in a masked contest arising from the haughty Celestine's declared invulnerability to any man's attack, and from Lord George's complacent conviction that he could make a swift conquest of any woman without even seriously exerting himself.

This game, between the irresistible and the immovable, enabled Wetheral and Miss Englefield to proceed unwatched through a flirtation's first stages, so delicious to the participants, so insipid to third persons. Silly as their talk was, it derived unutterable charm from the low tones in which it was spoken, the ardent looks and suppressed agitation of Dick, the furtive glances and demure blushes of Miss Englefield. At last the silence of the inn, and the shortened state of the candles, broke up the reluctant quartette, and the ladies said good night, leaving Dick on the outer threshold of his paradise, and Lord George at the first man[oe]uvre in his campaign against the composure of Celestine.

"By the lord," cried Wetheral in ecstasy, when he and Lord George were alone together, "did you ever see a more heavenly creature? She's divine, she's perfect, and her name is Amabel, as lovely as herself! She told me it, and she told me, too, almost in as many words, that her affections were not engaged—previously. Amabel! Could any name fit any woman better?"

"Come, come," said Lord George, "it's bedtime. I must sleep well to-night, and look my best to-morrow, for I've a conquest to make."

"'Fore gad, I sha'n't sleep at all!" cried Dick. "I've been made a conquest of!"

But he followed his friend up-stairs, where he found the latter slightly meditative and absent, a circumstance that would have held his attention had not his mind been full of other thoughts. Dick looked out of the window, at the inn garden. It was a perfect night, with a glorious moonlight. Dick could never go to bed in his present mood. He longed to walk, to revel in the moonlight, which was all his own, now that the rest of the world was asleep. If he could but pace beneath her window! That window also, being in line with his own, looked out on the garden. Between the two windows was that of the corridor, and beneath this there was a rear door leading to the garden, which door was flanked by a vine-clad trellis.

"I'm going for a stroll in the garden," said Dick, suddenly, to Lord George, who was already in bed. "I sha'n't want a candle to go to bed by."

He thereupon stepped from his window to the trellis, and descended thereby to the ground, heedless of the impeding vines. Amabel's window was already dark, as his own became a moment later. The garden sloped gently, between a wall and a hedge, to the Kennet, which reflected the moon between shadows of over-arching boughs. With its small trees, its bushes and flowers, its solitary bench, and its clear spaces of short grass, all made beautiful and mysterious by the moonlight, its spring odors, and the murmur of the stream, the place seemed to Dick like some Italian garden, and he imagined himself Romeo gazing up at Juliet's balcony.

In the midst of this fancy, he was rudely brought back to England by the sound of wheels and horse, and of voices speaking guardedly in very un-Italian accents, in the inn coach-yard beyond the wall that bounded one side of the garden. The sounds came to a stop, and the gate of the wall opened cautiously, whereupon Dick stepped into the shadow of the trellis flanking the rear doorway. Through the gateway he could see a rickety coach, of which the door was open and from about which there now stepped stealthily into the garden four ill-clad, desperate-looking fellows, one wearing a cloak about his lank body and stifling a cough as he walked, another carrying a large handkerchief in his hand, two others awkwardly bearing a ladder.