So in Nicolete's bower it illuminated with strange radiancy the dainty disorder of deserted lunch, made prisms out of the wine-glasses, painted the white cloth with wedge-shaped rainbows, and flooded the cavernous interiors of the half-eaten fowl with a pathetic yellow torchlight.
Leaving that melancholy relic of carnivorous appetite, it turned its bold gold gaze on Nicolete.No need to transfigure her! But, heavens! how grandly her young face took the great kiss of the god! Then it fell for a tender moment on the jaundiced page of my old Boccaccio,--a rare edition, which I had taken from my knapsack to indulge myself with the appreciation of a connoisseur.Next minute "the unobstructed beam" was shining right into the knapsack itself, for all the world like one of those little demon electric lights with which the dentist makes a momentary treasure-cave of your distended jaws, flashing with startled stalactite.At the same moment Nicolete's starry eyes took the same direction; then there broke from her her lovely laughter, merry and inextinguishable.
Once more, need I say, my petticoat had played me false--or should I not say true? For there was its luxurious lace border, a thing for the soft light of the boudoir, or the secret moonlight of love's permitted eyes, alone to see, shamelessly brazening it out in this terrible sunlight.Obviously there was but one way out of the dilemma, to confess my pilgrimage to Nicolete, and reveal to her all the fanciful absurdity to which, after all, Iowed the sight of her.
"So that is why you pleaded so hard for that poor trout," she said, when I had finished."Well, you are a fairy prince indeed! Now, do you know what the punishment of your nonsense is to be?""Is it very severe and humiliating?" I asked.
"You must judge of that.It is--to take me with you!""You,--what do you mean?"
"Yes,--not for good and all, of course, but just for, say, a fortnight, just a fortnight of rambles and adventures, and then to deliver me safe home again where you found me--""But it is impossible," I almost gasped in surprise."Of course you are not serious?""I am, really, and you will take me, won't you?" she continued pleadingly."You don't know how we women envy you men those wonderful walking-tours we can only read about in Hazlitt or Stevenson.We are not allowed to move without a nurse or a footman.From the day we are born to the day we die, we are never left a moment to ourselves.But you--you can go out into the world, the mysterious world, do as you will, go where you will, wander here, wander there, follow any bye-way that takes your fancy, put up at old inns, make strange acquaintances, have all kinds of romantic experiences-- Oh, to be a man for a fortnight, your younger brother for a fortnight!""It is impossible!" I repeated.
"It isn't at all," she persisted, with a fine blush."If you will only be nice and kind, and help me to some Rosalind's clothes.You have only to write to your tailors, or send home for a spare suit of clothes,--with a little managing yours would just fit me, you're not so much taller,--and then we could start, like two comrades, seeking adventures.Oh, how glorious it would be!"It was in vain that I brought the batteries of common-sense to bear upon her whim.I raised every possible objection in vain.
I pointed out the practical difficulties.There were her parents.
Weren't they drinking the waters at Wiesbaden, and weren't they to go on drinking them for another three weeks? My fancy made a picture of them distended with three weeks' absorption of mineral springs.Then there was her companion.Nicolete was confident of her assistance.Then I tried vilifying myself.How could she run the risk of trusting herself to such intimate companionship with a man whom she hadn't known half a dozen hours? This she laughed to scorn.Presently I was silent from sheer lack of further objections; and need I say that all the while there had been a traitor impulse in my heart, a weak sweetness urging me on to accept the pretty chance which the good genius of my pilgrimage had so evidently put in my way,--for, after all, what harm could it do? With me Nicolete was, indeed, safe,--that, of course, I knew,--and safely she should come back home again after her little frolic.All that was true enough.And how charming it would be to have such a dainty companion! then the fun, the fancy, the whim of it all.What was the use of setting out to seek adventures if I didn't pursue them when found.
Well, the long and short of it was that I agreed to undertake the adventure, provided that Nicolete could win over the lady whom at the beginning of the chapter I declared too charming to be described as an obstacle.
By nine o'clock the following morning the fairy tailors, as Nicolete called them, were at work on the fairy clothes, and, at the end of three days, there came by parcel-post a bulky unromantic-looking brown-paper parcel, which it was my business to convey to Nicolete under cover of the dark.
