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Read Ebook: The Azure Rose: A Novel by Kauffman Reginald Wright
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Ebook has 1413 lines and 51919 words, and 29 pages
If an imperious person may be said to have tossed her head, then it should here be said that this imperious person now tossed hers.
"Now, shall I go to the window and yell into the street?" he savagely inquired.
Her high-tilted chin, her crimsoned cheeks and the studiously managed lack of expression in her eyes were proofs that she had heard him. Nevertheless, she persisted in her disregard of his suggestion.
Cartaret's mood became more ugly. He resolved to make her pay attention.
"I'll do it," he said, and turned away from the door.
That brought the answer. She looked at him in angry horror.
"Insulted you?" He stood with the hammer in one hand and the chisel in the other, a rather unromantic figure of protest. "I never did anything of the sort."
He made a flourish and dropped the hammer. When he picked it up, he saw that she stood there, looking over his bent head, with eyes sternly kept serene; but he saw also that her cheeks remained aglow and that her breath came short.
"I never did anything of the sort," he went on. "How could I?"
"How could you?" She clenched her hands.
She recoiled.
"You speak so to me?"
It was out: he had to go ahead now. He did not at all recognize himself: this was not American; it was wholly Gallic.
"I can't help it," he said, "you are."
"Go to work," said the girl.
Two tears, twin diamonds of mortification, shone in her blue eyes.
"You have humiliated me, and mortified me, and insulted me!" she persisted. Her white throat swallowed the chagrin, and anger returned to take its place. "If you are what you pretend to be, you will go back to your work of opening that door. If I were the strong man that you are, I should have broken it open long ago."
She had a handsome ferocity. Cartaret put one broad shoulder to the door and both hands to the knob. There was a tremendous wrenching and splitting: the door swung open. He turned and bowed.
"It's open," he said.
To his amazement, her mood had entirely changed. Whether his action had served as proof of his declared sincerity, or whether her brief reflection on his words had itself served him this good turn, he could not guess; but he saw now that her eyes had softened and that her underlip quivered.
"Good afternoon," said Cartaret.
"Good-by," said she.
She moved toward the door, then stopped.
"I hope that you will pardon me," she said, and she spoke as if she were not accustomed to asking pardon. "I have been too quick and very foolish. You must know that I am new to Paris--new to France--new to cities--and that I have heard strange stories of Parisians and of the men of the large towns."
Cartaret was more than mollified, but he took a grip upon his emotions and resolved to pursue this advantage.
"At least," he said, "you should have seen that I was your own sort."
"My own--my own sort?" She did not seem to comprehend.
"Well, of your own class, then." This girl had an impish faculty for making him say things that sounded priggish: "You should have seen I was of your own class."
Again her eyes widened. Then she tossed her head and laughed a little silvery laugh.
He fancied the laugh disdainful, and thought so the more when she seemed to detect his suspicion and tried to allay it by an alteration of tone.
"I mean exactly that," he said.
She bit her red lip, and Cartaret noted that her teeth were even and white.
"Forgive me," she begged.
She put out her hand so frankly that he would have forgiven her anything. He took the hand and, as it nestled softer than any satin in his, he felt his heart hammer in his breast.
"Forgive me," she was repeating.
She shook her head.
"It was I that was foolish."
He stopped, for her eyes had fallen from his and rested on their clasped hands. He released her instantly.
"Good-by," she said again.
"I do not know."
"I do not know," she said. "Good-by."
She went out, drawing-to the shattered door behind her.
Cartaret leaned against the panel and listened shamelessly.
He heard her cross the hall and open the door to the opposite room; he heard her suspiciously greeted by another voice--a voice that he gladly recognized as feminine--and in a language that was wholly unfamiliar to him: a language that sounded somehow Oriental. Then he heard the other door shut, and he turned to the comfortless gloom of his own quarters.
He sat down on the bed. He had forgotten a riotous dinner that was to have been his final Parisian folly, forgotten his poverty, forgotten his day of disappointment and his desire to go back to Ohio and the law. He remembered only the events of the last quarter-hour and the girl that had made them what they were.
As he sat there, there seemed to come again into the silent room the perfume he had noticed when he returned. It seemed to float in on the twilight, still dimly pink behind the roofs of the gray houses along the Boul' Miche': subtle, haunting, an odor more delicate and tender than any he had ever known before.
He raised his head. He saw something white lying on the floor--lying where, a few moments since, he had stood. He went forward and picked it up.
It was a flower like a rose--a white rose--but unlike any rose of which Cartaret had any knowledge. It was small, but perfect, its pure petals gathered tight against its heart, and from its heart came the perfume that had seemed to him like a musical poem in an unknown tongue.
For a second time Cartaret had that quick vision of the sunlight upon snow-crests and the virgin sheen of unattainable mountain tops....
PROVIDING THE GENTLE READER WITH A CARD OF ADMISSION TO THE NEST OF THE TWO DOVES
Until just before the appearance of Charlie Cartaret's rosy vision, this had been a day of darkness and wet. Rain--a dull, hopeless, February rain--fell with implacable monotony. It descended in fine spray, as if too lazy to hurry, yet too spiteful to stop. It made all Paris miserable; but, as is the way with Parisian rains, it was a great deal wetter on the Left Bank of the Seine than on the Right.
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