Robert Chambers - The Laughing Girl

Horrified at her levity I tried to grasp the amazing fact that my cook was poking fun at me. I could not compass the idea. All I seemed to realize was that I stood in my cellar confronting a slender laughing stranger by candle-light – an amazingly pretty girl who threatened most utterly to bewitch me.

"I'm sorry! – are you offended?" she asked, still laughing, and her dark-fringed eyes very brilliant with mischief. – "Are you very angry at me, Mr. O'Ryan?"

"Why do you think so?" I asked, wincing at her mirth.

"Because I suppose I know what you are thinking."

"What am I thinking?"

"You're very, very angry with me and with yourself. You are saying to yourself in pained amazement that you have no business in a cellar exchanging persiflage with a presumptuous servant! You are chagrined, mortified! You are astonished at yourself – astounded that the solemn, dignified, distinguished Cabalero Don Michael O'Ryan y Santiago de Chile y Manhattanos – "

I turned red with surprise and wrath – and then slightly dizzy with the delicious effrontery of her beauty which daring had suddenly made dazzling in the candle-light.

For a minute my brain resembled a pin-wheel; then I pulled myself together, but not with the aid of the Admiral. No! The Admiral made me sick. In my sudden rush of exhilaration I derided him.

"Thusis," said I, when I recovered power of speech, "there's just one thing to do with you, and that is to kiss you for your impudence."

"Your own cook ! Oh, shocking! Oh, Señor! Oh Don Michael – "

– "And I'm going to do it! – " said I solemnly.

"Remember the seriousness of life!" she warned me, retreating a step or two as I set all my bottles upon the ground. "Remember the life-long degradation entailed by such an undignified proceeding, Don Michael."

That was too much. She saw trouble coming, turned to escape what she had unloosed: and I caught her near the cellar stairs.

Then, under the lifted candle, I saw her face pale a little, change, then a flush stain the white skin to her throat.

"Don't do that," she said, still smiling, but in a quiet and very different voice. "I invited it by my silly attitude; – I know it perfectly well. But you won't do it – will you, Mr. O'Ryan?"

"You deserve it, Thusis."

"I know I do. But don't."

My arms slipped from her. I released her. She was still smiling faintly.

"Thank you," she said. "I'm sorry I offered you provocation. I don't know why you seem to tempt me to – to laugh at you a little – not unkindly. But you are so very young to be so solemn – "

"I tell you I will kiss you if you repeat that remark again!"

It was on the tip of her tongue to retort that I dared not: I saw defiance in her brilliant eyes. Something in mine, perhaps, made her prudent; for she suddenly slipped past me and fled up the stairs.

Half way up she turned and looked back. There was an odd silence for a full minute. Then she lifted the candle in mocking salute:

"I defy you," she said, "to tell Mr. Smith what you've been about down here in the cellar with your cook!" I said nothing. She mounted the stairs, her head turned toward me, watching me. And, on the top step:

"Try always to remember," she called back softly, "that the world is a very, very solemn and serious planet for a ponderous young man to live in!"

I don't remember how long after that it was before I picked up my bottles and went out to the fountain where Smith sat awaiting me. I don't know what he saw in my face to arouse his suspicion.

"You've been in the kitchen again!" he exclaimed.

I placed the bottles on the grass without noticing the accusation.

"What was it this time – business as usual?" he inquired sarcastically.

"I have not been in the kitchen," said I, "although I did transact a little business with my cook." I did not add: – "business of making an outrageous ass of myself."

As I drew the first cork I was conscious of Smith's silent and offensive scrutiny. And very gradually my ears revealed my burning guilt under his delighted gaze.

Calm, but exasperated, I lifted my brimming glass and bowed politely to Smith.

"Go to the devil," said I.

"A rendezvous," said he.

And we drank that friendly toast together.

Smith's luggage and mine, and my other effects – trunks, boxes, and crates – arrived very early the next morning: and several large, sweating Swiss staggered up the stairs with the impedimenta until both they and their job were finished.

When I left New York, not knowing how long this business of my ridiculous inheritance might detain me in Switzerland, I packed several trunks with clothing and several crates with those familiar and useful – or useless – objets-d'art which for many years had formed a harmless and agreeable background for my more or less blameless domestic career in New York.

Rugs, curtains, furniture, sofa-pillows, books, a clock mantel set, framed and unframed pictures and photographs including the O'Ryan coat-of-arms – all this was the sort of bachelor stuff that Smith and I disinterred from the depths of trunks, crates, and boxes, and lugged about from corner to corner trying effects and combinations.

Before we had concluded our task I think he had no opinion at all of me as an interior decorator. Which revealed considerable insight on his part. And although I explained to him that interior decorators became so fed up on gorgeous and sumptuous effects that they themselves preferred to live amid simpler surroundings reminiscent of the Five and Ten Cent Store, he remained unconvinced.

"It's like a lady-clerk in a candy shop," I insisted. "She never eats the stuff she sells. It's the same with me. I am surfeited with magnificence. I crave the humble what-not. I long for the Victorian. I need it."

He gazed in horror at a framed picture of my grandfather the Admiral.

"Oh God," he said, "what are we to do with this old bird?"

Intensely annoyed I took it from him and hung it over my mantel. It wasn't a Van Dyck, I admit, but it demanded no mental effort on my part. One can live in peace with such pictures.

"Some day, Smith," said I, "you'll understand that the constant contemplation of true Art is exhausting. A man can't sleep in a room full of Rubens. When I put on my dressing gown and slippers and light a cigarette what I want is relaxation, not Raphael. And these things that I own permit me to relax. Why," I added earnestly, "they might as well not be there at all so little do they distract my attention. That's the part of art suitable for domestic purposes, – something that you never look at, or, if you do, you don't want to look at it again."

He said: "I couldn't sleep here. I couldn't get away from that old bird over the mantel. However, it's your room."

"It is."

"Doubtless you like it."

"Doubtless."

"On me," he remarked, "it has the effect of a Jazz band." And he went into his own apartment. For half an hour or so I fussed and pottered about, nailing up bunches of photographs fanwise on the walls, arranging knickknacks, placing brackets for curtain-poles and shoving the poles through the brass rings supporting the curtains. They had once belonged to the Admiral. They were green and blue with yellow birds on them.

After I finished draping them, I discovered that I had hung one pair upside down. But the effect was not so bad. In domestic art one doesn't want everything exactly balanced. Reiteration is exasperating; repetition aggravating to the nerves. A chef-d'oeuvre is a priceless anæsthetic: duplicated it loses one hundred per cent of its soporific value. I was glad I had hung one pair of curtains upside down. I went into Smith's room. He was shaving and I had him at my mercy.