The next day was a very memorable day for Jack. The day after a falling in love is always a red-letter day; but the day after the falling in love-ah!
One looks back-far back-to the day before, and those hours of the day before, when her sun had not yet dawned, and struggles to recollect what ends life could have represented then. And one looks forward to the next day, the next week, the next year-but, particularly to the next morning with sensations as indescribable as they are delightful.
Whichever way you tip it, the kaleidoscope of the future arranges itself in equally attractive shapes of rainbow hue, and the prospect over land or sea-even if it is raining-looks brilliant green, and brighter red, and brightest yellow.
Upon that glorious "next day" of Jack"s the weather was quite a thing apart for February-partaking of the warmth of May, and owing that fact to a sun which early June need not have scorned to own. Under the circ.u.mstances the house party overflowed the house and ravaged the surrounding country, and Jack and Mrs. Rosscott began it all by having the highest cart and the fastest cob in the stables and making for the forest just as the clock was tolling ten.
"Do you want a groom?" asked Burnett, who was occasionally very cruel.
"Well, I"m not going to wait for him to get ready now," replied his sister, who had sharp wits and did not disdain to give even her own family the benefit of them.
Then she gathered up the reins and whip in a most scientific manner, and they were off. Jack folded his arms. He was simply flooded, drenched, and saturated with joy. The evening before had been Elysium when she had only been his now and again for a minute"s conversation, but now she was to be his and his alone until-until they came back-and his mind seemed able to grasp no dearer outlines of the form which Bliss Incarnate may be supposed to take. He didn"t care where they went or what they saw or what they talked of, just if only he and she might be going, seeing, and talking for the benefit of one another and of one another alone.
They bowled away upon a firm, hard road that skirted the park, and then plunged deeply into the forest. Mrs. Rosscott handled the reins and the whip with the hands of an expert.
"I like to drive," said she.
"You appear to," he answered.
"I like to do everything," she said. "I"m very athletic and energetic."
"I"m glad of that," he told her warmly. "I like athletic girls."
He really thought that he was speaking the truth, although upon that first day if she had declared herself lazy and languid he would have found her equally to his taste-because it was the first day.
"That"s kind of you, after my speech," she said smiling, "but let"s wait a bit before we begin to talk about me. Let us talk about you first-you"re the company, you know."
"But there"s nothing to tell about me," said Jack, "except that I"m always in difficulties-financial-or otherwise,-oftenest "otherwise," I must confess."
"But you have a rich aunt, haven"t you?" said Mrs. Rosscott. "I thought that I had heard about your aunt."
"Oh, yes, I have a rich aunt," Jack said, laughing, "and I can a.s.sure you that if I am not much credit to my aunt, my aunt is the greatest possible credit to me."
"Yes, I"ve heard that, too," said Mrs. Rosscott, joining in the laugh, "you see I"m well posted."
"If you"re so well posted as to me," Jack said, "do be kind and post me a little as to yourself. You don"t need information and I do."
She turned and looked at him.
"What shall I tell you first?" she inquired.
"Tell me what you like and what you don"t like-and that will give me courage to do the same later," he added boldly.
She laughed outright at that and then sobered quickly.
"I told you that I liked to drive and to do everything," she said lightly; "what else do you want to know about?"
"What you dislike."
"But I don"t know of anything that I dislike;" she said thoughtfully-"perhaps I don"t like England; I am not sure, though. I had a pretty good time there after all-only you know, being in mourning was so stupid. And then, too, I didn"t fit into their ideas. I really didn"t seem to get the true inwardness of what was expected of me. Oh, I never dared let them know at home what a failure I was as an Englishwoman. I mortified my husband"s sisters all the time. Just think-after a whole year I often forgot to say "Fancy now!" and used to say "Good gracious!" instead."
Jack laughed.
"My husband"s sisters were very unhappy about it. They did want to love me, because I had so much money; but it was tough work for them. Did you ever know any middle-aged English young ladies?" she asked him suddenly.
"No, I never did," he said.
"Really, they seem to be a thing apart that can"t grow anywhere but in England. Every married man has not less than two, nor more than three, and they always are a little gray and embroider very nicely. Someone told me that as long as there"s any hope they wear stout boots and walk about and hunt, but as soon as it"s hopeless they take to embroidering."
"It must be rather a blue day for them when they decide definitely to make the change," said Jack.
"I never thought of that," said Mrs. Rosscott soberly. "Of course it must!
I was always very good to them. I gave them ever so many things that I could have used longer myself, and they used to set pieces of muslin in behind the open-work places and wear them."
She sighed.
"It"s quite as bad as being a Girton girl," she said. "Do you know what a Girton girl is?"
"No, I don"t."
"It"s a girl from Girton College. It"s the most awful freak you ever saw.
They"re really quite beyond everything. They"re so homely, and their hands and feet are so enormous, and their pins never pin, and their belts never belt. And no one has ever married one of them yet!"
She paused dramatically.
"I won"t either, then," he declared.
She laughed at that, and touched up the cob a trifle.
"Did you live long in England?" he asked.
"Forever!" she answered with emphasis; "at least it seemed like forever.
Mamma left me there when I was nineteen (she married me off before she left me, of course) and I stayed there until last winter-until I was out of my mourning, you know-and then I was on the Continent for a while, and then I returned to papa."
"How do we strike you after your long absence?"
"Oh, you suit me admirably," she said, turning and smiling squarely into his face; "only the terrible "and" of the majority does get on my nerves somewhat."
"What "and"?"
"Haven"t you noticed? Why when an American runs out of talking material he just rests on one poor little "and" until a fresh run of thought overwhelms him; you listen to the next person you"re talking with, and you"ll hear what I mean."
Jack reflected.
"I will," he said at last.
The road went sweeping in and out among a thicket of bare tree trunks and brown copses, and the sunlight fell out of the blue sky above straight down upon their heads.