Read Online Monsieur Jonquelle by Melville Davisson Post - Free Book Online

along the great mountain over Nice—a tiny canal that carries the water for the city. I do not know in what far-off lake of snow water it begins, but one can follow it for miles, trailing gently through the olive groves, disappearing under a little shoulder of the hills to come out in the sun beyond. A stream of crystal, uncovered and flowing gently, now and then a leaf or a wisp of grass or a bit of an olive twig on its surface. The grade of the aqueduct is almost imperceptible as it rises to the gap in the mountains, a V of blue descending like a wedge into the remote skyline.
    There is a path along this fairy water. I hadcome up on to the hill beyond Cimiez in the tram to the place where it ends abruptly in the middle of the road. There, a little farther on, I had found a white figure among the orange trees in the garden of the convent, and we had taken this path along the idling water into the mountains.
    I had believed yesterday that there could be no better background for Madame Nekludoff’s beauty than black and the severities of dress; but I was mistaken in that fancy. To-day she was in white—a thing imagined in Paris, but surely tailored in Bond Street—a French adaptation of an English shooting costume; the skirt in wide plaits; the coat with a belt and patch pockets, but fitting to the figure. The material was heavy Chinese silk, as firm and thick as duck, and only to be had of a tailor in London.
    Two things, however, were alluringly blended in this costume—the crisp freshness of out-of-doors and the softness of all things feminine and delicate, as, for instance, the first blossoms of the wild brier that go to pieces under the human hand. I thought the thing by its happy charm returned Madame Nekludoff to the first morning of some immortal youthfulness—as though on this afternoon, as in some Arabian story, cracking a roc’s egg, I had found her sleeping within it, her chin dimpling in her silk palm.
    Moreover, the background of sadness in herface was gone. She laughed and chatted like a schoolgirl escaped from a convent. She stooped to gather the little flowers along the path, to show them to me and to point out their beauties. She would catch my arm and nestle down in the dry grasses when a bird sang, and hunt him out among the gnarled limbs of the olive trees; or she would pluck a reed and, kneeling by the aqueduct, steer the dead leaves that floated along as though they were elfin ships on some mysterious voyage. She would dip her fingers in the water and fling the drops in my face, and then spring up and run along the path, screaming with laughter like a naughty child. When I caught up with her she was changed again into a woman I had not the courage to touch.… And she would show me the Mediterranean, lying below like a sheet of burnished azure metal.
    I think there must be some law in Nice against traveling on the path along this aqueduct, for we met no one. The whole enchanted world belonged to our two selves. We wandered on, following this lost path through the great deserted mountain of olive groves.
    I do not know how the thing happened! We had come upon one of those narrow blades of the mountain that the aqueduct burrowed under. I had helped my companion over it, and we were now in a little sunny pocket, with an abandonedolive grove rising in terraces above us, and a great gorge below, full of reeds and opening like a door on the sea. There was no sound but the drone of far-off winged things in the air. I had Madame Nekludoff’s hand, when suddenly, taken by the great flood of an impulse, I swung her into the hollow of my shoulder, caught her up in my arms and kissed her. She gave a little gasping cry that I smothered on her mouth.
    â€œI love you!” I whispered. “I love you! I love you!”
    She threw out her arm with her hand against my shoulder, as though she would free herself—but the force of resistance seemed to go out of her hand; it crept