Jerry

‘Tell me,’ there was both entreaty and command in his tone, ‘did you know the truth before you wrote that letter?’

‘You mean, did I know whom I was inviting? Assuredly! Do you think it would have been dignified to write such an informal invitation to a person I did not know?’

She turned away quickly and laid her hand on her father’s shoulder.

‘Come, Dad, don’t you think we ought to be going? Poor Tony wants to read the paper himself.’

Mr. Wilder came back to the jail and his companions with a start.

‘Oh, eh, yes, I think perhaps we ought. If they don’t let you out this afternoon, Tony, I’ll make matters lively for ’em, and if there’s anything you need, send word by Gustavo—I’ll send back later.’ He fished in his pockets and brought up a handful of cigars. ‘Here’s something better than lemon jelly, and they’re not from the tobacco shop in Valedolmo either.’

He dropped them on the table and   turned toward the door; Constance followed with a backward glance.

‘Good-bye, Tony; don’t despair. Remember that it’s always darkest before the dawn, and that whatever others think, Costantina and I believe in you. We know that you are incapable of telling anything but the truth!’ She had almost reached the door when she became aware of the flowers in her hand; she hurried back. ‘Oh, I forgot! Costantina sent these with her—with–’ She faltered; her audacity did not go quite that far.

Tony reached for them. ‘With what?’ he insisted.

She laughed; and a second later the door closed behind her. He stood staring at the door till he heard the key turn in the lock, then he looked down at the flowers in his hand. A note was tied to the stems; his fingers trembled as he worked with the knot.

‘Caro Antonio mio,’ it commenced; he could read that. ‘La sua Costantina,’ it ended; he could read that. But between the two was an elusive, tantalizing hiatus. He studied it and put it in his pocket and took it out and studied it again. He was still puzzling over it half an hour later when Gustavo came to inquire if the signore had need of anything.

Had he need of anything! He sent Gustavo flying to the stationer’s in search of an Italian-English dictionary.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon and all the world—except Constance—was taking a siesta. The Farfalla, anchored at the foot of the water-steps in a blaze of sunshine, was dipping up and down in drowsy harmony with the lapping waves; she was for the moment abandoned, Giuseppe being engaged with a nap in the shade of the cypress trees at the end of the drive. He was so very engaged that he did not hear the sound of an approaching carriage, until the horse was pulled to a sudden halt to avoid stepping on him. Giuseppe staggered sleepily to his feet and rubbed his eyes. He saw a gentleman descend, a gentleman clothed as for a wedding, in a frock coat and a white waistcoat, in shining hat and pearl grey gloves and a boutonnière of oleander. Having paid the driver and dismissed the carriage, the gentleman fumbled in his pocket for his card-case. Giuseppe hurrying forward with a polite bow, stopped suddenly and blinked. He fancied that he must still be dreaming; he rubbed his eyes and stared again, but he found the second inspection more confounding than the first. The gentleman looked back imperturbably, no slightest shade of recognition in his glance, unless a gleam of amusement far, far down in the depths of his eye might be termed recognition. He extracted a card with grave deliberation and handed it to his companion.

‘Voglio vedere la Signorina Costantina,’ he remarked.

The tone, the foreign accent, were both reminiscent of many a friendly though halting conversation. Giuseppe stared again, appealingly, but the gentleman did not help him out; on the contrary he repeated his request in a slightly sharpened tone.

‘Si, signore,’ Giuseppe stammered. ‘Prego di verire. La signorina è nel giardino.’

He started ahead toward the garden, looking behind at every third step to make sure that the gentleman was still following, that he was not merely a figment of his own sleepy senses. Their direction was straight toward the parapet where, on an historic wash-day, the signorina had sat beside a row of dangling stockings. She was sitting there now, dressed in white, the oleander tree above her head enveloping her in a glowing and fragrant shade. So occupied was she with a dreamy contemplation of the mountains across the lake that she did not hear footsteps until Giuseppe paused before her and presented the card. She glanced from this to the visitor, and extended a friendly hand.

‘Mr. Hilliard! Good afternoon.’

There was nothing of surprise in her greeting; evidently she did not find the visit extraordinary. Giuseppe stared, his   mouth and eyes at their widest, until the signorina dismissed him; then he turned and walked back—staggered back almost—never before not even late at night on Corpus Domini day, had he had such overwhelming reason to doubt his senses.

Constance turned to the visitor, and swept him with an appreciative glance, her eye lingering a second on the oleander in his buttonhole.

‘Perhaps you can tell me, is Tony out of jail? I am so anxious to know.’

He shook his head.

‘Found guilty and sentenced for life; you’ll never see him again.’

‘Ah; poor Tony! I shall miss him.’

‘I shall miss him too; we’ve had very good times together.’

Constance suddenly became aware that her guest was still standing; she moved along and made place on the wall. ‘Won’t you sit down? Oh, excuse me,’ she added with an anxious glance at his clothes, ‘I’m afraid you’ll get dusty; it would be better to bring a chair.’ She nodded toward the terrace.

He sat down beside her.

‘I am only too honoured; the last time I came you did not invite me to sit on the wall.’

‘I am sorry if I appeared inhospitable, but you came so unexpectedly, Mr. Hilliard.’

‘Why “Mr. Hilliard”? When you wrote you called me “dear Jerry.”’

‘That was a slip of the pen; I hope you will excuse it.’

‘When I wrote I called you “Miss Wilder”; that was a slip of the pen too. What I meant to say was, “dear Constance.”’

She let this pass without comment.

‘I have an apology to make.’

‘Yes?’

‘Once, a long time ago, I insulted you; I called you a kid. I take it back; I swallow the word. You were never a kid.’

‘Oh,’ she dimpled, and then, ‘I don’t believe you remember a thing about it?’

‘Connie Wilder, a little girl in a blue sailor suit, and two nice fat braids of yellow hair dangling down her back with red bows on the ends—very convenient for pulling.’

‘You are making that up. You don’t remember.’

‘Ah, but I do! And as for the racket you were making that afternoon, it was, if you will permit the expression, infernal. I remember it distinctly; I was trying to cram for a math. exam.’

‘It wasn’t I. It was your bad little sisters and brothers and cousins.’

‘It was you, dear Constance. I saw you with my own eyes; I heard you with my own ears.’

‘Bobbie Hilliard was pulling my hair.’

‘I apologize on his behalf, and with that   we will close the incident. There is something much more important which I wish to talk about.’

‘Have you seen Nannie?’ She offered this hastily, not to allow a pause.

‘Yes, dear Constance, I have seen Nannie.’

‘Call me “Miss Wilder,” please.’

‘I’ll be hanged if I will! You’ve been calling me Tony and Jerry and anything else you chose ever since you knew me—and long before for the matter of that.’

Constance waived the point.

‘Was she glad to see you?’

‘She’s always glad to see me.’

‘Oh, don’t be so provoking! Give me the particulars. Was she surprised? How did you explain the telegrams and letters and Gustavo’s stories? I should think the Hotel Sole d’Oro at Riva and the walking trip with the Englishman must have been difficult.’

‘Not in the least; I told the truth.’

‘The truth! Not all of it?’

‘Every word.’

‘How could you?’ There was reproach in her accent.

‘It did come hard; I’m a little out of practice.’

‘Did you tell her about—about me?’

‘I had to, Constance. When it came to the necessity of squaring all of Gustavo’s yarns, my imagination gave out. Anyway,   I had to tell her out of self-defence; she was so superior. She said it was just like a man to muddle everything up. Here I’d been ten days in the same town with the most charming girl in the world, and hadn’t so much as discovered her name; whereas if she had been managing it– You see how it was; I had to let her know that I was quite capable of taking care of myself without any interference from her. I even—anticipated a trifle.’

‘How?’

‘She said she was engaged. I told her I was too.’

‘Indeed!’ Constance’s tone was remote. ‘To whom?’

‘The most charming girl in the world.’

‘May I ask her name?’

He laid his hand on his heart in a gesture reminiscent of Tony. ‘Costantina.’

‘Oh! I congratulate you.’

‘Thank you—I hoped you would.’

She looked away gravely toward the Maggiore rising from the midst of its clouds. His gaze followed hers, and for three minutes there was silence. Then he leaned toward her.

‘Constance, will you marry me?’

‘No!’

A pause of four minutes during which Constance stared steadily at the mountain. At the end of that time her curiosity overcame her dignity; she glanced at him sidewise. He was watching her with a smile,   partly of amusement, partly of something else.

‘Dear Constance, haven’t you had enough of play, are you never going to grow up? You are such a kid!’

She turned back to the mountain.

‘I haven’t known you long enough,’ she threw over her shoulder.

‘Six years!’

‘One week and two days.’

‘Through three incarnations.’

She laughed a delicious rippling laugh of surrender, and slipped her hand into his.

‘You don’t deserve it, Jerry, after the fib you told your sister, but I think—on the whole—I will.’

Neither noticed that Mr. Wilder had stepped out from the house and was strolling down the cypress alley in their direction. He rounded the corner in front of the parapet, and as his eye fell upon them, came to a startled halt. The young man failed to let go of her hand, and Constance glanced at her father with an apprehensive blush.

‘Here’s—Tony, Dad. He’s out of jail.’

‘I see he is.’

She slipped down from the wall and brought Jerry with her.

‘We’d like your parental blessing, please. I’m going to marry him, but don’t look so worried. He isn’t really a   donkey-man, nor a Magyar, nor an orphan, nor an organ-grinder, nor—any of the things he has said he was. He is just a plain American man and an awful liar!’

The young man held out his hand and Mr. Wilder shook it.

‘Jerry,’ he said, ‘I don’t need to tell you how pleased–’

‘“Jerry!”’ echoed Constance. ‘Father, you knew?’

‘Long before you did, my dear.’ There was a suggestion of triumph in Mr. Wilder’s tone.

‘Jerry, you told.’ There was reproach, scorn, indignation in hers.

Jerry spread out his hands in a gesture of repudiation.

‘What could I do? He asked my name the day we climbed Monte Maggiore; naturally, I couldn’t tell him a lie.’

‘Then we haven’t fooled anybody. How unromantic!’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jerry, ‘we’ve fooled lots of people. Gustavo doesn’t understand, and Giuseppe, you noticed, looked rather dazed. Then there’s Lieutenant Carlo di Ferara–’

‘Oh!’ said Constance, her face suddenly blank.

‘You can explain to him now,’ said her father, peering through the trees.

A commotion had suddenly arisen on the terrace—the rumble of wheels, the   confused mingling of voices. Constance and Jerry looked too. They found the yellow omnibus of the Hotel du Lac, its roof laden with luggage, drawn up at the end of the driveway, and Mrs. Eustace and Nannie on the point of descending. The centre of the terrace was already occupied by Lieutenant di Ferara, who, with heels clicked together and white gloved hands at salute, was in the act of achieving a military bow. Miss Hazel fluttering from the door, in one breath welcomed the guests, presented the lieutenant, and ordered Giuseppe to convey the luggage upstairs. Then she glanced questioningly about the terrace.

‘I thought Constance and her father were here—Giuseppe!’

Giuseppe dropped his end of a trunk and approached. Miss Hazel handed him the lieutenant’s card. ‘The signorina and the signore—in the garden, I think.’

Giuseppe advanced upon the garden. Jerry’s face, at the sight, became as blank as Constance’s. The two cast upon each other a glance of guilty terror, and from this looked wildly behind for a means of escape. Their eyes simultaneously lighted on the break in the garden wall. Jerry sprang up and pulled Constance after him. On the top, she gathered her skirts together preparatory to jumping, then turned back for a moment toward her father.

‘Dad,’ she called in a stage whisper, ‘you go and meet him like a gentleman. Tell him you are very sorry, but your daughter is not at home to-day.’

The two conspirators scrambled down on the other side; and Mr. Wilder, with a sigh, dutifully stepped forward to greet the guests.