PAGE 16
The Chaperon
by
One morning in September, coming with her mother out of the marble church at Milan, she perceived that a gentleman who had just passed her on his way into the cathedral and whose face she had not noticed, had quickly raised his hat, with a suppressed ejaculation. She involuntarily glanced back; the gentleman had paused, again uncovering, and Captain Jay stood saluting her in the Italian sunshine. “Oh, good-morning!” she said, and walked on, pursuing her course; her mother was a little in front. She overtook her in a moment, with an unreasonable sense, like a gust of cold air, that men were worse than ever, for Captain Jay had apparently moved into the church. Her mother turned as they met, and suddenly, as she looked back, an expression of peculiar sweetness came into this lady’s eyes. It made Rose’s take the same direction and rest a second time on Captain Jay, who was planted just where he had stood a minute before. He immediately came forward, asking Rose with great gravity if he might speak to her a moment, while Mrs. Tramore went her way again. He had the expression of a man who wished to say something very important; yet his next words were simple enough and consisted of the remark that he had not seen her for a year.
“Is it really so much as that?” asked Rose.
“Very nearly. I would have looked you up, but in the first place I have been very little in London, and in the second I believed it wouldn’t have done any good.”
“You should have put that first,” said the girl. “It wouldn’t have done any good.”
He was silent over this a moment, in his customary deciphering way; but the view he took of it did not prevent him from inquiring, as she slowly followed her mother, if he mightn’t walk with her now. She answered with a laugh that it wouldn’t do any good but that he might do as he liked. He replied without the slightest manifestation of levity that it would do more good than if he didn’t, and they strolled together, with Mrs. Tramore well before them, across the big, amusing piazza, where the front of the cathedral makes a sort of builded light. He asked a question or two and he explained his own presence: having a month’s holiday, the first clear time for several years, he had just popped over the Alps. He inquired if Rose had recent news of the old lady in Hill Street, and it was the only tortuous thing she had ever heard him say.
“I have had no communication of any kind from her since I parted with you under her roof. Hasn’t she mentioned that?” said Rose.
“I haven’t seen her.”
“I thought you were such great friends.”
Bertram Jay hesitated a moment. “Well, not so much now.”
“What has she done to you?” Rose demanded.
He fidgeted a little, as if he were thinking of something that made him unconscious of her question; then, with mild violence, he brought out the inquiry: “Miss Tramore, are you happy?”
She was startled by the words, for she on her side had been reflecting–reflecting that he had broken with her grandmother and that this pointed to a reason. It suggested at least that he wouldn’t now be so much like a mouthpiece for that cold ancestral tone. She turned off his question–said it never was a fair one, as you gave yourself away however you answered it. When he repeated “You give yourself away?” as if he didn’t understand, she remembered that he had not read the funny American books. This brought them to a silence, for she had enlightened him only by another laugh, and he was evidently preparing another question, which he wished carefully to disconnect from the former. Presently, just as they were coming near Mrs. Tramore, it arrived in the words “Is this lady your mother?” On Rose’s assenting, with the addition that she was travelling with her, he said: “Will you be so kind as to introduce me to her?” They were so close to Mrs. Tramore that she probably heard, but she floated away with a single stroke of her paddle and an inattentive poise of her head. It was a striking exhibition of the famous tact, for Rose delayed to answer, which was exactly what might have made her mother wish to turn; and indeed when at last the girl spoke she only said to her companion: “Why do you ask me that?”