The two girls were evidently proud of themselves at having succeeded so well with the mysterious garments.There were one or two points on which they needed my guidance, but they were unimportant; and when at last Nicolete would consent to stand up straight and let me have a good look at her,--for, poor child!
she was as shy and shrinking as though she had nothing on,--she made a very pretty young man indeed.
She didn't, I'm afraid, look like a young man of our degenerate day.She was far too beautiful and distinguished for that.
Besides, her dark curling hair, quite short for a woman, was too long, and her eyes-- like the eyes of all poets--were women's eyes.She looked, indeed, like one of those wonderful boys of the Italian Renaissance, whom you may still see at the National Gallery, whose beauty is no denial, but rather the stamp of their slender, supple strength, young painters and sculptors who held the palette for Leonardo, or wielded the chisel for Michelangelo, and anon threw both aside to take up sword for Guelf or Ghibelline in the narrow streets of Florence.
Her knapsack was already packed, and its contents included a serge skirt "in case of emergencies." Already, she naughtily reminded me, we possessed a petticoat between us.
The brief remainder of the evening passed in excited chatter and cigarettes, and in my instructing Nicolete in certain tricks of masculine deportment.The chief difficulty I hardly like mentioning; and if the Obstacle had not been present, I certainly dare not have spoken of it to Nicolete.I mean that she was so shy about her pretty legs.She couldn't cross them with any successful nonchalance.
"You must take your legs more for granted, dear Nicolete," Isummoned courage to say."The nonchalance of the legs is the first lesson to be learnt in such a masquerade as this.You must regard them as so much bone and iron, rude skeleton joints and shins, as though they were the bones of the great elk or other extinct South Kensington specimen,"--"not," I added in my heart, "as the velvet and ivory which they are."We had agreed to start with the sun on the morrow, so as to get clear of possible Peeping Toms; and when good-nights had been said, and I was once more swinging towards my inn, it seemed but an hour or two, as indeed it was, before I heard four o'clock drowsily announced through my bedroom door, and before I was once more striding along that river-bank all dew- silvered with last night's moonlight, the sun rubbing his great eye on the horizon, the whole world yawning through dainty bed-clothes of mist, and here and there a copse-full of birds congratulating themselves on their early rising.
Nicolete was not quite ready, so I had to go listen to the lark, about whom, alas! I could find nothing to say to my pocket-book, before Nicolete, armed cap-a-pie with stick and knapsack, appeared at the door of her chalet.
The Obstacle was there to see us start.She and Nicolete exchanged many kisses which were hard to bear, and the first quarter of an hour of our journey was much obstructed by the farewells of her far-fluttering handkerchief.When at last we were really alone, I turned and looked at Nicolete striding manfully at my side, just to make sure that it was really true.
"Well, we're in for it now," I said; "aren't you frightened?""Oh, it's wonderful," she replied; "don't spoil it by talking."And I didn't; for who could hope to compete with the sun, who was making the whole dewy world shake with laughter at his brilliancy, or with the birds, any one of whom was a poet at least equal to Herrick?
Presently we found ourselves at four crossroads, with a four-fingered post in the centre.We had agreed to leave our destination to chance.We read the sign-post.
"Which shall we choose?" I said,--
"Aucassin, true love and fair, To what land do we repair?""Don't you think this one," she replied."this one?--To the Moon!""Certainly, we couldn't find a prettier place; but it's a long way," I replied, looking up at the sky, all roses and pearls,--"a long way from the Morning Star to the Moon.""All the longer to be free," cried Nicolete, recklessly.
"So be it," I assented."Allons--to the Moon!"
