style="font-size:15px;"> “Oh, that’s the place, that’s the place!” I said.
She looked at two or three photographs in silence. “They say it is not so dear.”
“As some other countries? Yes, that is not the least of its charms.”
“But it is all very dear, is it not?”
“Europe, you mean?”
“Going there and travelling. That has been the trouble. I have very little money. I give lessons,” said Miss Spencer.
“Of course one must have money,” I said, “but one can manage with a moderate amount.”
“I think I should manage. I have laid something by, and I am always adding a little to it. It’s all for that.” She paused a moment, and then went on with a kind of suppressed eagerness, as if telling me the story were a rare, but a possibly impure satisfaction, “But it has not been only the money; it has been everything. Everything has been against it I have waited and waited. It has been a mere castle in the air. I am almost afraid to talk about it. Two or three times it has been a little nearer, and then I have talked about it and it has melted away. I have talked about it too much,” she said hypocritically; for I saw that such talking was now a small tremulous ecstasy. “There is a lady who is a great friend of mine; she does n’t want to go; I always talk to her about it. I tire her dreadfully. She told me once she did n’t know what would become of me. I should go crazy if I did not go to Europe, and I should certainly go crazy if I did.”
“Well,” I said, “you have not gone yet, and nevertheless you are not crazy.”
She looked at me a moment, and said, “I am not so sure. I don’t think of anything else. I am always thinking of it. It prevents me from thinking of things that are nearer home, things that I ought to attend to. That is a kind of craziness.”
“The cure for it is to go,” I said.
“I have a faith that I shall go. I have a cousin in Europe!” she announced.
We turned over some more photographs, and I asked her if she had always lived at Grimwinter.
“Oh, no, sir,” said Miss Spencer. “I have spent twenty-three months in Boston.”
I answered, jocosely, that in that case foreign lands would probably prove a disappointment to her; but I quite failed to alarm her.
“I know more about them than you might think,” she said, with her shy, neat little smile. “I mean by reading; I have read a great deal I have not only read Byron; I have read histories and guidebooks. I know I shall like it.”
“I understand your case,” I rejoined. “You have the native American passion,—the passion for the picturesque. With us, I think it is primordial,—antecedent to experience. Experience comes and only shows us something we have dreamt of.”
“I think that is very true,” said Caroline Spencer. “I have dreamt of everything; I shall know it all!”
“I am afraid you have wasted a great deal of time.”
“Oh, yes, that has been my great wickedness.”
The people about us had begun to scatter; they were taking their leave. She got up and put out her hand to me, timidly, but with a peculiar brightness in her eyes.
“I am going back there,” I said, as I shook hands with her. “I shall look out for you.”
“I will tell you,” she answered, “if I am disappointed.”
And she went away, looking delicately agitated, and moving her little straw fan.
II
A few months after this I returned to Europe, and some three years elapsed. I had been living in Paris, and, toward the end of October, I went from that city to Havre, to meet my sister and her husband, who had written me that they were about to arrive there. On reaching Havre I found that the steamer was already in; I was nearly two hours late. I repaired directly to the hotel, where my relatives were already established. My sister had gone to bed, exhausted and disabled by her voyage; she was a sadly incompetent sailor, and her sufferings on this occasion had been extreme. She wished, for the moment, for undisturbed rest, and was unable to see me more than five minutes; so it was agreed that we should remain at Havre until the next day. My brother-in-law, who was anxious about his wife, was unwilling to leave her room; but she insisted upon his going out with me to take a walk and recover his landlegs. The early autumn day was warm and charming, and our stroll through the bright-colored, busy streets of the old French seaport was sufficiently entertaining. We walked along the sunny, noisy quays, and then turned into a wide, pleasant street, which lay half in sun and half in shade—a French provincial street, that looked like an old water-color drawing: tall, gray, steep-roofed, red-gabled, many-storied houses; green shutters on windows and old scroll-work above them; flower-pots in balconies, and white-capped women in doorways. We walked in the shade; all this stretched away on the sunny side of the street and made a picture. We looked at it as we passed along; then, suddenly, my brother-in-law stopped, pressing my arm and staring. I followed his gaze and saw that we had paused just before coming to a café, where, under an awning, several tables and chairs were disposed upon the pavement The windows were open behind; half a dozen plants in tubs were ranged beside the door; the pavement was besprinkled with clean bran. It was a nice little, quiet, old-fashioned café; inside, in the comparative dusk, I saw a stout, handsome woman, with pink ribbons in her cap, perched up with a mirror behind her back, smiling at some one who was out of sight. All this, however, I perceived afterwards; what I first observed was a lady sitting alone, outside, at one of the little marble-topped tables. My brother-in-law had stopped to look at her. There was something on the little table, but she was leaning back quietly, with her hands folded, looking down the street, away from us. I saw her only in something less than profile; nevertheless, I instantly felt that I had seen her before.
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