Chapter 10: Clelia

When Clelia saw me a startled expression came into her face, instantly controlled and concealed by the lovely smile so characteristic of her and of Thusis.

“Something,” said I, “smells very appetizing in there.”

“Tea-cakes,” she nodded. “Shall I bring you one from the oven?”

“Bring one for yourself, too, Clelia.”

At that she blushed, then with a pretty, abashed smile, went into the pantry and immediately reappeared with two delicious tea-cakes.

“We mustn’t be caught here doing this,” she whispered, offering me one of the cakes.

“Who’d object? Raoul?”

“Pouf!” she laughed.

“Who then? Josephine? Thusis?”

“Pouf! Pouf!”

“Smith?”

She blushed a deep pink but shrugged her young shoulders.

“Pouf!” she said calmly.

“Well then, who is there to object to our taking tea together?”

“Your guests, Monsieur O’Ryan.”

“My guests!” I mimicked her gaily: “Pouf! for my guests, Clelia. Do you think you could find two glasses of fresh milk for yourself and for me?”

“With cream on it?” she inquired naïvely.

“Certainly.”

She went back to the pantry. I heard Josephine demurring, then they both laughed, and Clelia reappeared with the milk and two more fresh tea-cakes.

We seated ourselves on the stone milk-bench in the cool, shadowy passageway.

“The way you behave with your servants,” she remarked, “seems almost scandalous, doesn’t it?”

“Outrageous,” said I. “What does Josephine think?”

“Oh, you haven’t attempted any familiarities with her.”

“No. I’d as soon try to pick up Juno and address that goddess as ‘girlie.’”

We both laughed, sitting there side by side absorbing milk and tea-cakes.

“Now,” said I, “the illusion would be complete if you wipe your mouth on your apron and I do a like office for myself on my sleeve.”

She looked up at me and did it. So did I.

“What else?” she inquired.

“Now we’ll kiss each other, Clelia, and then you’ll go back to your pots and pans and I’ll go out and hoe potatoes.”

“Do you think you’d better kiss me?”

“Yes, I do,” said I.

“I’ve never done it.”

“What!” I laughed incredulously.

“Why no,” she said, surprised.

“Is that true, Clelia?”

“Perfectly.”

“And you’re willing to begin on me?”

“Oh, pour ça—one must begin—if only to know how when necessary.”

“You think you ought to know how it’s done?” I inquired, controlling my gaiety with an effort.

“Well”—she hesitated with adorable indecision—”in an emergency, perhaps, it might be as well that I know how such things are accomplished.”

“It’s up to you, Clelia.”

“Is it?” She thought deeply for a moment. Then: “It’s going to be a shock to me, I suppose. But I’ve made up my mind that it’s likely to happen to me some day. And I think I’d better be prepared ... Don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”...

“Besides, I never was afraid of you.”

“Of course not. Nobody is!” said I, laughing.

“Oh, yes, they are.”

“Who?”

“Well, for one, my sister, Thusis, is.”

“Thusis! Afraid of me!” I exclaimed.

Clelia nodded: “She’s afraid.”

“Of me!” I repeated incredulously.

“Well, of herself, too.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t tell you why. You know Thusis and I differ in some things. Thusis has her own ideas—about—the world in general. And I’m afraid her ideas are rather old fashioned, and that they are going to make her unhappy.”

“Can’t you tell me what her ideas are?” I asked.

“No. She may tell you if she chooses. But it isn’t likely that she will. Anyway they are not my ideas. My opinion is that the way to be happy is to accept the world as it is, not as it was or should be.”

“You are quite wonderful, Clelia.”

“Oh, no, I’m not. I’m just a human girl who desires to be happy and who detests gloom of all sorts—gloomy ideals, gloomy pride, gloomy conventions that wrap their shrouds around the living and stifle them in a winding sheet of tradition.”

I was astonished to hear this girl so fluently express herself. In her soft, fresh, brilliant beauty she seemed to have stepped but yesterday across the frontiers of adolescence.

“So, if you kiss me,” she said, “I don’t think the world is going to tumble to pieces. Do you?”

“I do not.”

“However,” she added, “if Thusis felt the way I do about the world, I wouldn’t think of letting you kiss me.”

I didn’t understand, and I said so. But she laughed and refused to explain.

“Life is short and full of sorrow,” she said. “And the world is full of war and we’ll all get hurt, sooner or later, I think. What a pity! Because the world really is lovely. And when one is young, and just beginning to fall in love with life, one is naturally inclined to taste what few delights are offered between these storms of death—brief glimpses of sunshine, Monsieur, that gleam for a few moments between the thunderous clouds that darken all the world ... So, if you choose to kiss me——”

We sat quite motionless and in silence for a while. Then:

“How about Smith?” I asked tersely.

“Monsieur Smith?” she repeated, flushing. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know ... I wondered—wondered——”

“What?“

“How he’d feel about my kissing you. He might not like it, you know.”

“You mean to tell him!” she exclaimed in dismay.

“No, of course not! But suppose he sauntered around the corner—during the process——”

Clelia laughed: “It might do him infinite good,” she said, “to see that somebody is willing to kiss me——”

“What!”

“—Because he won’t. And he knows, I think, that he could if he asked to.”

“Good heavens!” I said, “I thought Smith had become sentimental over you, Clelia!”

“He is a very gloomy young man,” said the girl with decision.

“But isn’t he very evidently enamored of you?”

“He’s too respectful.”

I gasped.

“I can’t goad him into human behavior,” she went on with lively displeasure. “He must see that I am quite willing to be friendly and light-hearted, —that I am always ready to stop dusting and sweeping and making beds to converse with him. But all he does is to follow me about and remind me of the solemnity of life, and tell me that he is deeply concerned about my attitude toward the world. Fancy! It is not very gay, you see, my acquaintance with Monsieur Smith.”

I was surprised. What she said presented Smith at a new angle. I had supposed him an idle philanderer.

“What worries him about you?” I demanded.

“He seems to think I’m an idiot. I told him I meant to take life gaily and happily when opportunity offered, because I, probably, had only a very short time to live. I told him that I found the world beautiful and that I had fallen ardently in love with life. I told him that I didn’t want to die without learning a little something about men, and that my time was short, and I ought to neglect no opportunity.”

“What on earth did he say?”

“He became angry.”

“Didn’t he say anything?”

She blushed: “Oh, yes. He said he wouldn’t be used in such a manner. He said that he desired to be taken seriously or not at all. At which solemn statement I laughed, naturally enough. Then he became furious, demanding to be informed whether I had the soul of a soubrette or of a modest and properly brought up young girl.

“And I replied that to be modest did not necessitate deceit and hypocrisy; that I had told him the truth; that I loved life, adored happiness, was enamored of the world, knew nothing of men but wished to: imagined nothing more delightful than to be made love to, intended to take advantage of the first opportunity that offered.”

“W-what did he say to that, Clelia?” I faltered, utterly bewildered.

“A lot of nonsense. He tried to make me believe that love is a tragic and solemn business—as though I were not fed up on the solemn and tragic!

“He said I was a fool and didn’t know what I was talking about. He said, in substance, that the subject of love was one to be approached on tip-toe, with awe, formality, prayer, and fasting. He said that such a man as he could love only an ideal, not a human and happy thing in love with life and willing to prove it with the first young man that passes. He said that I alarmed and grieved him; that I am unmoral; that my impulses are purely pagan; that the formalism of civilization alone can sanction any impulse attraction between his sex and mine.”

“What did you say?” I asked, feebly.

“I said, ‘Pouf!’ And I meant it.”

Her color was high and her eyes very bright.

“I did like him. He was the first man I had ever had a decent chance to talk to alone, —I mean the first young man of education. And, knowing I hadn’t much time, I was quite willing to play at being in love with him. I told him so.”

“Maybe,” said I, in a weak voice, “he wanted to do more than merely play at being in love.”

“But my time is too short,” she explained. “I haven’t time to fall in love. Why doesn’t he take what there is to take?”

“Your time is short—what do you mean, Clelia?”

“It is.”

“Are you—ill?”

“No,” she said impatiently, “I’m in perfect health.”

“Then—what makes you suppose you’re going to die soon?”

“I can’t tell you. Of course I may not die very soon. But it’s likely I shall ... And if I do I hope it will teach Mr. Smith a good lesson!”

“W-what lesson?”

“To take what offers and thank the gods!”

She looked up at me and laughed: “You’d better kiss me,” she said: “you’ll never have a chance with Thusis.”

I blushed violently.

“Did you think I desired to k-kiss Thusis?”

“I think you are a little in love with Thusis.”

“I am.”

“How wonderful! And don’t you desire to kiss her?”

I was silent.

“Because,” said Clelia, laughing, “I think she’d like to have you do it. She’d slay me if she heard me. And she’d slay herself before she’d ever let you ... And yet—it is odd!—I’m willing to learn how it feels to be kissed, but I am not in love; and Thusis likes you and won’t admit it:—you’ve turned my sister’s head and she’s horribly afraid of you; and never, never will she let you kiss her. And there you are!”

After a long silence she looked up at me shyly:

“Shall we?” she asked naïvely.

“I could show you how it’s done,” said I.

And then, just at the moment when the deed was about to be accomplished, a shadow fell across the floor. I looked up. Thusis stood there.

Her beautiful face flamed as she met our eyes.

Clelia stood up with a light laugh. “My first lesson!” she exclaimed, “and already ended before I learned a word of it! Take your young man, sister! He’s quite as disappointing as his solemn friend!”

And she went into the pantry taking with her our empty glasses.

“So that is the sort of man you are,” said Thusis calmly.

The utter hopelessness of the situation turned me flippant.

“Yes,” said I, “I am a very dangerous, unprincipled man. I’m thoroughly and hopelessly bad, Thusis. What do you think about me now?”

“What I have always thought about your class, —nothing!” she said in an even, smiling voice.

“Class!” I repeated, perplexed by the word, and the faint contempt in her voice.