CHAPTER X
Another Letter from Wigborough
For a few moments we sat still, oblivious of the flight of time. The afternoon sun threw long shadows across the road. Mrs. Wederslen flew past in her automobile, inclining her haughty southern head as she sat, erect and dominant, behind the steering-wheel. The rumble of the trolley-cars came up on the still air from the valley. My friend and I looked at each other and knocked out our pipes.
I do not think that, had we been left to ourselves, we would have broken the silence for a long time. Mr. Carville's retreat had been so sudden that we could scarcely realize he was gone, that we might not see him again for perhaps two months. Time was needed, moreover, for us to adjust our feelings towards him, to comprehend fully the peculiar circumstances that, while we had been listening to the story of Rosa, she herself had been in the next house. We had to connect the Genoese maiden with the reserved and taciturn neighbour who had given us food for so many conjectures. Nor would our resentment against Mr. Carville, for breaking off so abruptly, have taken the form of speech all at once. We were too dazed. We wanted to think. We would not, I say, have broken the silence for a long time ourselves. But Miss Fraenkel's temperament was different, and in this case surprising.
With Miss Fraenkel silent thought, I imagine, is not a habit. With her to think is to speak. The effervescent enthusiasm of her nature makes speech indispensable. I do not believe that, during the two-and-a-half-hour recital of Mr. Carville, Miss Fraenkel had any coherent thoughts. More than any other women the American woman avoids the cooler levels of intellectual judgment. In one moment she stands, nude of the commonest knowledge of a person or a thing. In a moment more, and she appears before your astonished eyes, panoplied in all the glittering harness of a glowing conviction. Minerva-like, her opinions and beliefs spring full-armed from the head and front of her great Jove Intuition. Logic, says the ancient platitude, hangs by the end of a philosopher's beard; and an American woman would as soon grow hair on her face as admit reason to her soul. Therein, doubtless, lies her charm, her artless allurements, her enigmatic manner, her astonishing success.
Something of this was apparent in Miss Fraenkel as she leaned out of the window and met our gaze with delighted eyes.
"Isn't he just won-der-ful?" she exclaimed.
"You enjoyed it?" I asked.