Nevertheless, every night, before he undressed, he put on his hat again, and took out his cane for a few minutes, holding it this way and that way in front of the mirror. He swung it as gracefully as the narrowness of his bedchamber allowed, and seating himself on the side of his bed, he drew a heart on the carpet.
This cane had a horn ferrule of the highest quality. It was as smooth and round as anything you can possibly imagine, and it was girdled with a slim circlet of gold, for all the world like a wedding ring.
Now that he possessed such a cane as this, Henri could no longer resist casting glances at the girls, although his saving was at far too early a stage to justify such boldness. He was a little bothered by a certain look on the more attractive faces he saw, a look which can only be described as suggesting worldly experience. «Where shall I find a bride,» thought Henri, «as fresh, immaculate, and shining as my new cane?» He did not reflect that this cane had come to him, not leafy from the swamp in which it had grown, but smooth and sophisticated from the hands of the polisher.
However, Henri still hoped, and every evening he rode home on the bus to his dwelling at the far end of the Prado. At this hour, at the beginning of May, the streets of Marseilles are full of a golden light. The new leaves of the innumerable plane trees exude their soft yellow into the radiance of the declining sun.
One evening a girl got on to the bus. Henri looked up; his magnificent nose made a true point, his dark eyes flamed, his little mustache quivered, and his childish mouth pouted as if it had been stung by a bee. She was an Italianate Marseillaise; and as lovely as a black grape; her skin had that sort of bloom upon it. This dusky bloom concentrated into a delicate, adorable down along the line of her upper lip, which was bewitchingly lifted. Her eye was like the eye of a gazelle, her cheek was soft, and her figure was at once young and ample, such as any man must admire, but especially he whose buttocks are as lean as a hair-pin under his skimpy pants.
To crown it all, she was dressed very simply, in one of those nondescript black dresses affected by the well-to-do peasantry, who are so much better off than the little bookkeepers. She wore black cotton gloves. It must have been a careful family, of the proper old-fashioned type, that had brought her up so completely out of the dubious mode. Such old-fashioned people are usually extremely conscientious about the dot. Henri admired, approved, and loved.
«It is true,» he thought, «I have yet to win her affections, gain the approval of her family, and save up a whole mountain of francs. All that is possible, but how am I to make her acquaintance? At any moment she may get off the bus. If I speak to her, she will either answer me, in which case she cannot be as virtuous as she looks, or she will not answer me, and I shall never see her again.» Here Henri experienced one of the greatest dilemmas known to mankind, and one which has been sadly neglected by the philosophers.
Fate, however, was altogether on his side. The bus stopped for a whole minute at a corner where a family of gipsies were giving the traditional exhibition. A goat mounted precariously upon a step-ladder, a mangy bear stood by, shifting his feet in melancholy reminiscence of his training, a nervous monkey presented a miniature tambourine for the sous of the passers-by.
The girl, as simple as a child, was ravished by this familiar spectacle. She pressed her face against the glass, smiled in rapture, and turned a bright gaze on the other passengers, to see if they were enjoying it, too. Henri, leaning over, was emboldened to offer the comments of a man of the world.
«Very amusing, the little monkey,» said he.
«Yes, Monsieur, very amusing.»
«The bear, he is droll.»
«But yes, Monsieur, very droll.»
«The goat, also. For a domestic animal, he is droll, too.»
«Yes, Monsieur, he is truly droll.»
«The gitanos are very picturesque, but they are a bad type.»
At this point the bus jolted on. A brilliant conversation had been interrupted, but acquaintance was established, and in such a simple and innocent fashion that the most fastidious of future husbands could find nothing to object to. Henri ventured to seat himself beside her. The jolting of the bus provided the briefest but most delicious of contacts. A rapport was established; their tongues uttered banalities, but their shoulders were supremely eloquent. «Mademoiselle,» said Henri at last, «dare I hope that you will take a little promenade with me on Sunday.»
«Oh, but I am afraid that would hardly be possible,» replied the young girl, with an adorable appearance of confusion.
Henri urged his plea with all the feeling at his command, and at length his charmer, whose name was Marie, decided that she might overcome the obstacles, which doubtless had their origin in the excessive respectability of her upbringing.
The rendezvous was made. Henri, left alone upon the bus, rode far past his destination, lost in an ecstasy far transcending any description. The excess fare amounted to two francs.
That night he spent a whole hour before his mirror, conducting his cane in the manner in which he hoped to parade it on Sunday. «There is no doubt about it,» said he to himself, «such a cane and such a girl, absolutely demand that new suit from Marquet's. Tomorrow I will pay them a visit.» He drew several hearts, all of them transfixed by arrows, and surrounded by initials. «I will take her to the calanque,» said he to himself, «and there, seated beside her on a rock, I will draw something of this sort on the sand. She will guess what I mean.»
On Sunday everything went as well as any lover could wish. Henri was first at the trysting place, and soon saw her tripping along. This time she was wearing a summer frock and white cotton gloves. She had the happy air of a little girl let out from school. «Her parents must be very severe,» thought Henri. «So much the better. I wonder by what artless excuses she managed to get away.»
Their greeting was all the heart could desire. Every true lover, and some whose aims are less creditable, knows the delicious promise of those first meetings in which both parties act as frankly and simply as children, and take hands even as they make their way to the bus. Days beginning thus should always be spent in the open air, and no place under all the sky is more propitious to them than those deep and cliffy creeks near Marseilles, which are called the calanques. Snow-white rocks descend into water as clear as glass, edged by tiny beaches of sand, perfectly suited for the inscription of hearts and arrows. Little pine trees cover all the slopes, and, when the afternoon sun is hot, there is all the more reason to take advantage of their shade.
Henri and his Marie did this. «Take off your gloves,» said he, «and I will tell your fortune.»
She willingly removed the glove from her right hand, which she extended to him with the utmost grace.
«No,» said he, «I beg you to take off both.»
Marie blushed, and hesitated, and began with tantalizing slowness to draw off the other glove.
«It does not seem to come off very easily,» said Henri.
«You demand too much,» said she. «This is only the first time I have been out with you. I did not think you would ask me to remove my gloves.»
«At last,» thought Henri, «I have found a girl of a simplicity, of a virtue, such as must be absolutely unique in the world of 193—. Marie,» cried he, pressing his lips to her hands, «I adore you with every fibre of my being. I implore you to be mine. I long, I burn, I die for the happiness of being married to you.»
«Oh, no,» said she. «That is impossible.»
«Then you do not love me,» said he. «I have spoken too soon.»