A Son of the Immortals. Louis Tracy
du Louvre, she met a young man. Each pretended that the meeting was accidental, though, after the first glance, the best-natured recording angel ever commissioned from Paradise would have refused to believe either of them.
"What a piece of luck!" cried the young man. "Are you going to the Louvre?"
"Yes. And you?" demanded Joan, flushing prettily.
"I am killing time till the afternoon, when I play Number One for the Wanderers. To-day's match is at Bagatelle."
She laughed. "'Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech betrayeth thee,'" she quoted.
"I don't quite follow that, Miss Vernon."
"No? Well, I'll explain another time. I must away to my copying."
"Let me come and fix your easel. Really, I have nothing else to do."
"Worse and worse! En route, alors! You can watch me at work. That must be a real pleasure to an idler."
"I am no idler," he protested.
"What? Who spoke but now of 'killing time,' 'play,' 'Number One,' and 'Bagatelle'? Really, Mr. Delgrado!"
"Oh, is that what you are driving at? But you misunderstood. Bagatelle is near the polo ground in the Bois, and, as Number One in my team, I shall have to hustle. Four stiff chukkers at polo are downright hard work, Miss Vernon. By teatime I shall be a limp rag. I promised to play nearly a month ago, and I cannot draw back now."
"Polo is a man's game, at any rate," she admitted.
"Would you care to see to-day's tie?" he asked eagerly. "We meet Chantilly, and, if we put them out in the first round of the tournament, with any ordinary luck we ought to run right into the semi-final."
She shook her head. "You unhappy people who have to plan and scheme how best to waste your hours have no notion of their value. I must work steadily from two till five. That means a sixteenth of my picture. Divide two hundred and fifty by sixteen, and you have—dear me! I am no good at figures."
"Fifteen francs, sixty-two and a half centimes," said he promptly.
She flashed a surprised look at him. "That is rather clever of you," she said. "Well, fancy a poor artist sacrificing all that money in order to watch eight men galloping after a white ball and whacking it and each other's ponies unmercifully."
"To hit an adversary's pony is the unforgivable sin," he cried, smiling at her, and she hastily averted her eyes, having discovered an unnerving similarity between his smile and—Henri Quatre's!
They walked on in eloquent silence. The man was cudgeling his brains for an excuse whereby he might carry her off in triumph to the Bois. The girl was fighting down a new sensation that threatened her independence. Never before had she felt tonguetied in the presence of an admirer. She had dismissed dozens of them. She refrained now from sending this good-looking boy packing only because it would be cruel, and Joan Vernon could not be cruel to anyone. Nevertheless, she had to justify herself as a free lance, and it is the rôle of a lance to attack rather than defend.
"What do you occupy yourself with when you are not playing polo or lounging about artists' studios?" she asked suddenly.
"Not much, I am afraid. I like shooting and hunting; but these Frenchmen have no backbone for sport. Will you believe it, one has the greatest difficulty in getting a good knock at polo unless there is a crowd of ladies on the lawn?"
"Ah! I begin to see light."
"That is not the reason I asked you to come. If you honored me so greatly you would be the first woman, my mother excepted, I have ever driven to the club. To-day's players are mostly Americans or English. Of course there are some first-rate French teams; but you can take it from me that they show their real form only before the ladies."
"As in the tourneys of old?"
"Perhaps. It is the same at the châteaux. Everyone wants his best girl to watch his prowess with the gun."
He stopped, wishing he had left the best girl out of it; but Joan was kind hearted and did not hesitate an instant.
"So you are what is known as a gentleman of leisure and independent means?" she said suavely.
"Something of the sort."
"I am sorry for you, Mr. Delgrado."
"I am rather sorry for myself at times," he admitted, and if Joan had chanced to glance at him she would have seen a somewhat peculiar expression on his face. "But why do you call me Mr. Delgrado?"
She gazed at him now in blank bewilderment—just a second too late to see that expression. "Isn't Delgrado your name?" she asked.
"Yes, in a sense. People mostly call me Alec. Correctly speaking, Alec isn't mother's darling for Alexis; but it goes, anyhow."
"Sometimes I think you are an American," she vowed.
"Half," he said. "My mother is an American, my father a Kosnovian—well, just a Kosnovian."
"And pray what is that?" she cried.
"Haven't you heard of Kosnovia? It is a little Balkan State."
"Is there some mystery, then, about your name?"
"Oh, no; plain Alec."
"Am I to call you plain Alec?"
"Yes."
"But it follows that you would call me plain Joan."
"Let it go at Joan."
"Very well. Good morning, Alec."
"No, no, Miss Vernon. Don't be vexed. I really did not mean to be rude. And you promised, you know."
"Promised what?"
"That I might help carry your traps. Please don't send me away!"
He was so contrite that Joan weakened again. "It is rather friendly to hear one's Christian name occasionally," she declared. "I will compound on the Alec if you will tell me why the Delgrado applies only in a sense."
"Done—Joan," said he, greatly daring. He waited the merest fraction of time; but she gave no sign. "My stipulation is of the slightest," he added, "that I discourse in the Louvre. Where are you working?"
"In the Grande Galerie; on a subject that I enjoy, too. People have such odd notions as to nice pictures. They choose them to match the furniture. Now, this one is quite delightful to copy, and not very difficult. But you shall see."
They entered the Louvre from the Quai.
Joan was undoubtedly flurried. Here, in very truth, was that irrepressible Henri descended from his bronze horse and walking by her side. That his later name happened to be Alec did not matter at all. She knew that a spiteful Bourbon had melted down no less than two statues of Napoleon in order to produce the fine cavalier who approved of her every time she crossed the Pont Neuf, and it seemed as if some of the little Corsican's dominance was allied with a touch of Béarnais swagger in the stalwart youth whom she had met for the first time in Rudin's studio about three weeks earlier.
They were steel and magnet at once. Delgrado had none of the boulevardier's abounding self-conceit, or Joan would never have given him a second look, while Joan's frank comradeship was vastly more alluring than the skilled coquetry that left him cold. Physically, too, they were well mated, each obviously made for the other by a discriminating Providence. They were just beginning to discover the fact, and this alarmed Joan.
She could not shake off the notion that he had waylaid her this morning for a purpose wholly unconnected with the suggested visit to the polo ground. So, tall and athletic though he was, she set such a pace up the steps and through the lower galleries that further intimate talk became impossible. Atalanta well knew what she was about when she ran her suitors to death, and Meilanion showed a deep insight into human nature when he arranged that she should loiter occasionally.
Delgrado,