XIII
“Mr. Shortland!”
“Yes, I suppose I have selected an unfortunate moment,” he said calmly. “And I am afraid you want to say no.”
“I most certainly”
“But you won't just yet, because I haven't presented my case. And I really have a very strong case, Beryl. You see, I've been in love with you for four years, and that's quite a long time when you consider that I've had nothing to base any hopes upon except the possession of a ring.”
“That's positively absurd!” she said, almost angrily. “You must think me very—very innocent to tell such a tale. As if a man could fall in love with a girl like that!”
“No? But I did. It is so very easy to fall in love in Venice, and so very much easier to fall in love with you! Why, any one could do it without half trying! I did it instantly, and take pride in the fact that there wasn't a moment's hesitation. And then I spent four years looking for you up and down the world. Oh, I don't mean”—at a protesting gesture from Beryl—“that I have wandered about all this time with no other aim than to find you. I was never the disconsolate lover. I knew that somewhere, some time, I'd find you again, although it might, perhaps, be too late. You see, I didn't even know your nationality. I guessed you were English, but as the freshness of the mental picture of you wore off I had my doubts. Then you might have been German, perhaps, French, Russian, almost anything; but always beautiful.”
“Mr. Shortland, won't you please”
“It was queer that I never seriously thought you might be a countrywoman, although there are always many Americans in Venice. I suppose it was because the manner of our meeting, the scene, the moment, were all so romantic, and one, somehow, does not associate romance with Americans, or, at least, the romance of the Old World. And so I told myself that, since I didn't know your country, much less your town, the only way to find you was to join hands with Chance and haunt the highways. For I argued that one who travels once travels again. My error, however, was in thinking you would come back to Venice. And yet—most folks do, sooner or later. So will you.”
“Mr. Shortland, you are only making it more—embarrassing. I”
“Oh, wait, please! I, want you to know first. So that was why I kept from the backwaters during those four years, why I followed the broad highway that leads around the world. My, dear, I've almost found you so many times! But always it was never quite you. I wondered about you a great deal. I had only four features to start on, but, like the scientists who construct a prehistoric creature from a single bone, I fashioned you in my mind and endowed you with all the charms.”
“That was a dangerous thing to do,” said the girl in a low tone.
“You mean that I might have been disappointed? I don't think so.” He paused a moment. “Well, like the man who traversed the earth in search of a four-leaf clover and found it by his doorstep in the end, I looked for you around the globe and found you at last almost in my dooryard. I turned the corner of this porch that morning and saw you and felt almost no surprise, only a great gladness. All along I'd imagined the meeting happening just as simply, just as casually, just as unexpectedly. There was no premonition. There never had been. Some days I have awakened and thought, 'To-day I shall find her!' but the promise was never fulfilled.”
“That first day you came,” said Beryl wonderingly, “I was here on the porch and saw you.”
“By all the laws of psychology I should have known it, but I didn't. And yet I wonder if it was only chance that sent me doubling back on my trail a few days later. I hadn't meant to return. But one morning—I had spent the night at a little hotel in a village somewhere beyond here—I walked out of the door and deliberately turned back the way I had come. And so I found you. That is all. And now what are you going to do with me, Beryl?”
There was a long moment of silence before she spoke.
“It is all very strange, what you have told me,” she began hesitatingly. “I—I ought to feel flattered. I do, Mr. Shortland. But—oh, what can I say? It almost seems as if Fate had played a joke with us. Now that you have found me, I am not the girl you searched for, Mr. Shortland, for she—she would have known and—and cared!”
“And you don't, Beryl? Even a little?”
“Not like that. I mean—I don't want to marry you. I—I don't want to marry any one! I don't want tolove any one! I did once and”
“Very much?” he asked gently as she stopped.
“I don't know. I only know that—it hurt—horribly! And so I don't want ever to care again. You understand, don't you?”
“Yes, I understand,” he answered slowly.
“And you won't try to—make me, will you?” she begged.
“Do you think I could?” he asked. “Are you—afraid of that?”
“N-no, only—if you'd promise—I'd feel”
“You are asking me to go away?”
“Oh, no! I—don't want you to do that. I only want you to—to”
“Keep to the middle course?” he asked, with a smile. “My dear, I'm away off it already, and I can never get back to it. That's out of the question. I might go away from you, but—well, I shan't. You don't need me yet; perhaps you never will; but I need you very badly, and I—well, I shall keep on wanting and hoping.”
“But when I've told you that I don't—care for you,” she said troubledly, “it seems that”
“I might believe you? But are you quite certain that you don't, Beryl?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you have been listening to wounded pride for so long that you can't hear your heart, dear.”
“My heart only tells me to beware,” she answered bitterly.
“No, that's your pride speaking.”
“Then, I don't believe—I have any heart,” she sighed.
He laughed softly. “Some day you will find that you have, and then there'll be no thought of pride, for you'll hear nothing but just your heart.”
There was silence for a moment. Then
“I almost wish” she said softly, and paused.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing!” She laughed uncertainly. “I'm afraid you think me a very silly person, Mr. Shortland. I've talked a lot of nonsense, I fear. Perhaps we both have. Let's be sensible now. Shall we?”
“By all means! Does that mean that you are going to accept me?”
“No. It means that I—am grateful to you for—for caring for me, and am sorry that I can't do as you want, Mr. Shortland. And it means that I want to be friends again, just as we were before I behaved so nastily. And that's as near an apology as I shall offer!”
“Very well,” he answered. cheerfully. “Friends as before.”
“And you're not to try to—you know!”
“Miss Vernon, the Declaration of Independence declares that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I, as a good citizen of this republic, agree with the declaration, and insist on being allowed to continue the pursuit of happiness.”
“Self-conscious!” she said, and he surmised the little frown that accompanied the word. “With you it all comes back to that, doesn't it?”
“Just that,” he agreed. “The sum of all that is best in life.”
“I shall call you the Happy Man,” she said. “Shall we go in now?”
“I had rather you made me the Happy Man,” he answered. “Perhaps we had better.”