A GIRL WHO COULDN’T STOP BEING A PRINCESS
In the lee of a huge gray bowlder
on the summit of Mount Tom sat Philip Lambert and
Carlotta Cressy. Below them stretched the wide
sweep of the river valley, amethyst and topaz and emerald,
rich with lush June verdure, soft shadowed, tranquil,
in the late afternoon sunshine. They had been
silent for a little time but suddenly Carlotta broke
the silence.
“Phil, do you know why I brought
you up here?” she asked. As she spoke she
drew a little closer to him and her hand touched his
as softly as a drifting feather or a blown cherry
blossom might have touched it.
He turned to look at her. She
was all in white like a lily, and otherwise carried
out the lily tradition of belonging obviously to the
non-toiling-and-spinning species, justifying the arrangement
by looking seraphically lovely in the fruits of the
loom and labor of the rest of the world. And
after all, sheer loveliness is an end in itself.
Nobody expects a flower to give account of itself
and flower-like Carlotta was very, very lovely as
she leaned against the granite rock with the valley
at her feet. So Phil Lambert’s eyes told
her eloquently. The valley was not the only thing
at Carlotta’s feet.
“I labored under the impression
that I did the bringing up myself,” he remarked,
his hand closing over hers. “However, the
point is immaterial. You are here and I am here.
Is there a cosmic reason?”
“There is.” Carlotta’s
voice was dreamy. She watched a cloud shadow
creep over the green-plumed mountain opposite.
“I brought you up here so that you could propose
to me suitably and without interruption.”
“Huh!” ejaculated Phil
inelegantly, utterly taken by surprise by Carlotta’s
announcement. “Do you mind repeating that?
The altitude seems to have affected my hearing.”
“You heard correctly. I
said I brought you up here to propose to me.”
Phil shrugged.
“Too much ‘As You Like
It,’” he observed. “These Shakespearean
heroines are a bad lot. May I ask just why you
want me to propose to you, my dear? Do you have
to collect a certain number of scalps by this particular
rare day in June? Or is it that you think you
would enjoy the exquisite pleasure of seeing me writhe
and wriggle when you refuse me?”
Phil’s tone was carefully light,
and he smiled as he asked the questions, but there
was a tight drawn line about his mouth even as he smiled.
“Through bush, through briar,
Through flood, through fire”
he had followed the will o’
the wisp, Carlotta, for two years now, against his
better judgment and to the undoing of his peace of
mind and heart. And play days were over for Phil
Lambert. The work-a-day world awaited him, a
world where there would be neither space nor time for
chasing phantoms, however lovely and alluring.
“Don’t be horrid, Phil.
I’m not like that. You know I’m not,”
denied Carlotta reproachfully. “I have
a surprise for you, Philip, my dear. I am going
to accept you.”
“No!” exclaimed Phil in unfeigned amazement.
“Yes,” declared Carlotta
firmly. “I decided it in church this morning
when the man was telling us how fearfully real and
earnest life is. Not that I believe in the real-earnestness.
I don’t. It’s bosh. Life was
made to be happy in and that is why I made up my mind
to marry you. You might manage to look a little
bit pleased. Anybody would think you were about
to keep an appointment with a dentist, instead of having
the inestimable privilege of proposing to me with
the inside information that I am going to accept you.”
Phil drew away his hand from hers.
His blue eyes were grave.
“Don’t, Carlotta!
I am afraid the chap was right about the real-earnestness.
It may be a fine jest to you. It isn’t to
me. You see I happen to be in love with you.”
“Of course,” murmured
Carlotta. “That is quite understood.
Did you think I would have bothered to drag you clear
up on a mountain top to propose to me if I hadn’t
known you were in love with me and I with
you?” she added softly.
“Carlotta! Do you mean
it?” Phil’s whole heart was in his honest
blue eyes.
“Of course, I mean it.
Foolish! Didn’t you know? Would I have
tormented you so all these months if I hadn’t
cared?”
“But, Carlotta, sweetheart,
I can’t believe you are in earnest even now.
Would you marry me really?”
“Would I? Will
I is the verb I brought you up here to use. Mind
your grammar.”
Phil clasped his hands behind him for safe keeping.
“But I can’t ask you to marry me at
least not to-day.”
Carlotta made a dainty little face at him.
“And why not? Have you
any religious scruples about proposing on Sunday?”
He grinned absent-mindedly and involuntarily
at that. But he shook his head and his hands
stayed behind his back.
“I can’t propose to you
because I haven’t a red cent in the world at
least not more than three red cents. I couldn’t
support an everyday wife on ’em, not to mention
a fairy princess.”
“As if that mattered,”
dismissed Carlotta airily. “You are in love
with me, aren’t you?”
“Lord help me!” groaned Phil. “You
know I am.”
“And I am in love with you for
the present. You had better ask me while the
asking is good. The wind may veer by next week,
or even by tomorrow. There are other young men
who do not require to be commanded to propose.
They spurt, automatically and often, like Old Faithful.”
Phil’s ingenuous face clouded
over. The other young men were no fabrication,
as he knew to his sorrow. He was forever stumbling
over them at Carlotta’s careless feet.
“Don’t, Carlotta,”
he begged again. “You don’t have to
scare me into subjection, you know. If I had
anything to justify me for asking you to marry me
I’d do it this minute without prompting.
You ought to know that. And you know I’m
jealous enough already of the rest of ’em, without
your rubbing it in now.”
“Don’t worry, old dear,”
smiled Carlotta. “I don’t care a snap
of my fingers for any of the poor worms, though I
wouldn’t needlessly set foot on ’em.
As for justifications I have a whole bag of them up
my sleeve ready to spill out like a pack of cards
when the time comes. You don’t have to
concern yourself in the least about them. Your
business is to propose. ’Come, woo me,
woo, me, for now I am in a holiday humor and like
enough to consent’” she quoted
Tony’s lines and, leaning toward him, lifted
her flower face close to his. “Shall I count
ten?” she teased.
“Carlotta, have mercy.
You are driving me crazy. Pretty thing it would
be for me to propose to you before I even got my sheepskin.
Jolly pleased your father would be, wouldn’t
he, to be presented with a jobless, penniless son-in-law?”
“Nonsense!” said Carlotta
crisply. “It wouldn’t matter if you
didn’t even have a fig leaf. You wouldn’t
be either jobless or penniless if you were his son-in-law.
He has pennies enough for all of us and enough jobs
for you, which is quite sufficient unto the day.
Don’t be stiff and silly, Phil. And don’t
set your jaw like that. I hate men who set their
jaws. It isn’t at all becoming. I
don’t say my dear misguided Daddy wouldn’t
raise a merry little row just at first. He often
raises merry little rows over things I want to do,
but in the end he always comes round to my way of
thinking and wants precisely what I want. Everything
will be smooth as silk, I promise you. I know
what I am talking about. I’ve thought it
out very carefully. I don’t make up my
mind in a hurry, but when I do decide what I want
I take it.”
“You can’t take this,” said Philip
Lambert.
Carlotta drew back and stared, her
violet eyes very wide open. Never in all her
twenty two years had any man said “can’t”
to her in that tone. It was a totally new experience.
For a moment she was too astounded even to be angry.
“What do you mean?” she asked a little
limply.
“I mean I won’t take your
father’s pennies nor hold down a pseudo-job
I’m not fitted for, even for the sake of being
his son-in-law. And I won’t marry you until
I am able to support you on the kind of job I am fitted
for.”
“And may I inquire what that
is?” demanded Carlotta sharply, recovering sufficiently
to let the thorns she usually kept gracefully concealed
prick out from among the roses.
Phil laughed shortly.
“Don’t faint, Carlotta.
I am eminently fitted to be a village store-keeper.
In fact that is what I shall be in less than two weeks.
I am going into partnership with my father. The
new sign Stuart Lambert and Son is being painted
now.”
Carlotta gasped.
“Phil! You wouldn’t. You can’t.”
“Oh yes, Carlotta. I not
only could and would but I am going to. It has
been understood ever since I first went to college
that when I was out I’d put my shoulder to the
wheel beside Dad’s. He has been pushing
alone too long as it is. He needs me. You
don’t know how happy he and Mums are about it.
It is what they have dreamed about and planned, for
years. I’m the only son, you know.
It’s up to me.”
“But, Phil! It is an awful
sacrifice for you.” For once Carlotta forgot
herself completely.
“Not a bit of it. It is
a flourishing concern not just a two-by-four
village shop a real department store, doing
real business and making real money. Dad built
it all up himself, too. He has a right to be proud
of it and I am lucky to be able to step in and enjoy
the results of all his years of hard work. I’m
not fooling myself about that. Don’t get
the impression I am being a martyr or anything of
the sort. I most distinctly am not.”
Carlotta made a little inarticulate
exclamation. Mechanically she counted the cars
of the train which was winding its black, snake-like
trail far down below them in the valley. It hadn’t
occurred to her that the moon would be difficult to
dislodge. Perhaps Carlotta didn’t know much
about moons, after all.
Phil went on talking earnestly, putting
his case before her as best he might. He owed
it to Carlotta to try to make her understand if he
could. He thought that, under all the whimsicalities,
it was rather fine of her to lay down her princess
pride and let him see she cared, that she really wanted
him. It made her dearer, harder to resist than
ever. If only he could make her understand!
“You see I’m not fitted
for city life,” he explained. “I hate
it. I like to live where everybody has a plot
of green grass in front of his house to set his rocking
chair in Sunday afternoons; where people can have
trees that they know as well as they know their own
family and don’t have to go to a park to look
at ’em; where they can grow tulips and green
peas and babies, too, if the lord is good
to ’em. I want to plant my roots where
people are neighborly and interested in each other
as human beings, not shut away like cave dwellers
in apartment houses, not knowing or caring who is
on the other side of the wall. I should get to
hating people if I had to be crowded into a subway
with them, day after day, treading on their toes,
and they on mine. Altogether I am afraid I have
a small town mind, sweetheart.”
He smiled at Carlotta as he made the
confession, but she did not respond. Her face
gave not the slightest indication as to what was going
on in her mind as he talked.
“I wouldn’t be any good
at all in your father’s establishment. I’ve
never wanted to make money on the grand scale.
I wouldn’t be my father’s son if I did.
I couldn’t be a banker or a broker if I tried,
and I don’t want to try.”
“Not even for the sake of having
me?” Carlotta’s voice was as expressionless
as her face. She still watched the train, almost
vanishing from sight now in the far distance, leaving
a cloud of ugly black smoke behind it to mar the lustrous
azure of the June sky.
Phil, too, looked out over the valley.
He dared not look at Carlotta. He was young and
very much in love. He wanted Carlotta exceedingly.
For a minute everything blurred before his gaze.
It seemed as if he would try anything, risk anything,
give up anything, ride rough shod over anything, even
his own ideals, to gain her. It was a tense moment.
He came very near surrendering and thereby making
himself, and Carlotta too, unhappy forever after.
But something stronger held him back. Oddly enough
he seemed to see that sign Stuart Lambert and Son
written large all over the valley. His gaze came
back to Carlotta. Their eyes met. The hardness
was gone from the girl’s, leaving a wistful tenderness,
a sweet surrender, no man had ever seen there before.
A weaker lad would have capitulated under that wonderful,
new look of Carlotta’s. It only strengthened
Philip Lambert. It was for her as well as himself.
“I am sorry, Carlotta,”
he said. “I couldn’t do it, though
I’d give you my heart to cut up into pieces
if it could make you happy. Maybe I would risk
it for myself. But I can’t go back on my
father, even for you.”
“Then you don’t love me.”
Carlotta’s rare and lovely tenderness was burned
away on the instant in a quick blaze of anger.
“Yes I do, dear. It is
because I love you that I can’t do it. I
have to give you the best of me, not the worst of
me. And the best of me belongs in Dunbury.
I wish I could make you understand. And I wish
with all my heart that, since I can’t come to
you, you could care enough to come to me. But
I am not going to ask it not now anyway.
I haven’t the right. Perhaps in two years
time, if you are still free, I shall; but not now.
It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Two years from now, and long
before, I shall be married,” said Carlotta with
a sharp little metallic note in her voice. She
was trying to keep from crying but he did not know
that and winced both at her words and tone.
“That must be as it will,”
he answered soberly. “I cannot do any differently.
I would if I could. It it isn’t
so easy to give you up. Oh, Carlotta! I
love you.”
And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself
and Carlotta, he had her in his arms and was covering
her face with kisses. Carlotta’s cheeks
flamed. She was no longer a lily, but a red,
red rose. Never in her life had she been so frightened,
so ecstatic. With all her dainty, capricious flirtations
she had always deliberately fenced herself behind barriers.
No man had ever held her or kissed her like this,
the embrace and kisses of a lover to whom she belonged.
“Phil! Don’t, dear I
mean, do, dear I love you,” she whispered.
But her words brought Phil back to
his senses. His arms dropped and he drew away,
ashamed, remorseful. He was no saint. According
to his way of thinking a man might kiss a girl now
and then, under impulsion of moonshine or mischief,
but lightly always, like thistledown. A man didn’t
kiss a girl as he had just kissed Carlotta unless he
had the right to marry her. It wasn’t playing
straight.
“I’m sorry, Carlotta.
I didn’t mean to,” he said miserably.
“I’m not. I’m
glad. I think way down in my heart I’ve
always wanted you to kiss me, though I didn’t
know it would be like that. I knew your kisses
would be different, because you are different.”
“How am I different?”
Phil’s voice was humble. In his own eyes
he seemed pitifully undifferent, precisely like all
the other rash, intemperate, male fools in the world.
“You are different every way.
It would take too long to tell you all of them, but
maybe you are chiefly different because I love you
and I don’t love the rest. Except for Daddy.
I’ve never loved anybody but myself before,
and when you kissed me I just seemed to feel my meness
going right out of me, as if I stopped belonging to
myself and began to belong to you forever and ever.
It scared me but I liked it.”
“You darling!” fatuously. “Carlotta,
will you marry me?”
It was out at last the
words she claimed she had brought him up the mountain
to say the words he had willed not to speak.
“Of course. Kiss me again,
Phil. We’ll wire Daddy tomorrow.”
“Wire him what?” The mention
of Carlotta’s father brought Phil back to earth
with a jolt.
“That we are engaged and that
he is to find a suitable job for you so we can be
married right away,” chanted Carlotta happily.
Phil’s rainbow vanished almost
as soon as it had appeared in the heavens. He
drew a long breath.
“Carlotta, I didn’t mean
that. I can’t be engaged to you that way.
I meant will you marry me when I can afford
to have a fairy princess in my home?”
Carlotta stared at him, her rainbow, too, fading.
“You did?” she asked vaguely. “I
thought ”
“I know,” groaned Phil.
“It was stupid of me worse than stupid.
It can’t be helped now I suppose. The damage
is done. Shall we take the next car down?
It is getting late.”
He rose and put out both hands to
help her to her feet. For a moment they stood
silent in front of the gray bowlder. The end of
the world seemed to have come for them both.
It was like Humpty Dumpty. All the King’s
horses and all the King’s men couldn’t
restore things to their old state nor bring back the
lost happiness of that one perfect moment when they
had belonged to each other without reservations.
Carlotta put out her hand and touched Philip’s.
“Don’t feel too badly,
Phil,” she said. “As you say, it can’t
be helped nothing can be helped. It
just had to be this way. We can’t either
of us make ourselves over or change the way we look
at things and want things. I wish I were different
for both our sakes. I wish I were big enough
and brave enough and fine enough to say I would marry
you anyway, and stop being a princess. But I don’t
dare. I know myself too well. I might think
I could do it up here where it is all still and purple
and sweet and sacred. But when we got down to
the valley again I am afraid I couldn’t live
up to it, nor to you, Philip, my king. Forgive
me.”
Phil bent and kissed her again not
passionately this time, but with a kind of reverent
solemnity as if he were performing a rite.
“Never mind, sweetheart.
I don’t blame you any more than you blame me.
We’ve got to take life as we find it, not try
to make it over into something different to please
ourselves. If some day you meet the man who can
make you happy in your way, I’ll not grudge him
the right. I’m not sure I shall even envy
him. I’ve had my moment.”
“But Phil, you aren’t
going to be awfully unhappy about me?” sighed
Carlotta. “Promise you won’t.
You know I never wanted to hurt the moon, dear.”
Philip shook his head.
“Don’t worry about the
moon. It is a tough old orb. I shan’t
be too unhappy. A man has a whole lot of things
beside love in his life. I am not going to let
myself be such a fool as to be miserable because things
started out a little differently from what I would
like to have them.” His smile was brave
but his eyes belied the smile and Carlotta’s
heart smote her.
“You will forget me,”
she said. It was half a reproach, half a command.
Again he shook his head in denial.
“Do you remember the queen who
claimed she had Calais stamped on her heart?
Well, open mine a hundred years from now and you’ll
read Carlotta.”
“But won’t you ever marry?”
pursued Carlotta with youth’s insistence on
probing wounds to the quick.
“I don’t know. Probably,”
he added honestly. “A man is a poor stick
in this world without a home and kiddies. If
I do it will be a long time yet though. It will
be many a year before I see anybody but you, no matter
where I look.”
“But I am horrid selfish, cowardly,
altogether horrid.”
“Are you?” smiled Phil.
“I wonder. Anyway I love you. Come
on, dear. We’ll have to hurry. The
car is nearly due.”
And, as twilight settled down over
the valley like a great bird brooding over its nest,
Philip and Carlotta went down from the mountain.