# The Smart Set/Volume 4/Issue 4/The Sunflower Girl

from The Smart Set, Vol 4 Iss 4, Aug 1901, pp. 93-100.
THE SUNFLOWER GIRL
By Justus Miles Forman
Livingstone came on board almost at the last moment, and so had no chance to cast an eye over his fellow passengers as they embarked. He had been staying with the Leith-Holdens down in Chester, and had come up on an afternoon train that left him barely time to drive to the landing stage.
He saw his luggage into the hold, and then followed his steamer box and suit case to room 103. Room 103 was nearly full of a huge Englishman, red as to face and yellow as to hair, who flourished in one hand a bath sponge the size of a football and in the other a suit of appalling pink pajamas. "Thank the Lord he isn't French or German!" breathed Mr. Livingstone, gratefully, and proceeded to stow away his effects.
He inquired as to what hour of the morning the Englishman meant to tub, fixed his own time a half-hour later, changed his hat for a cap of shrieking plaids, and went on deck.
His roommate followed in a moment, and they stood leaning over the rail and gazing down into the liquid mud of the Mersey.
"Who was responsible," asked Livingstone, "for that charming paraphrase, 'The quality of Mersey is not strained?'"
The Englishman laughed. "Don't know. Fancy it's about as old among the Liverpool people as the shipping itself. Not bad, either."
It was already growing dusk as they floated down the river, and a bugle from the companionway amidships tootled cheerfully "The Roast Beef of Old England."
As Livingstone squeezed into his revolving chair at the table he became conscious of a most wonderful mass of very smartly coiffed hair at his left, shining, silken, wavy black, with unexpected bits of red here and there, in the high lights.
The head turned, and there were equally wonderful eyes, big, rather too big, and gray, and there were dark shadows under them, as is often the case among brunettes of a certain type.
"Oh, I don't know," smiled the young gentleman, exultantly. "I think I'm glad I came. Why, hang it, she's a beauty! She's a picture!"
Then he cast about for something to make an excuse for talk.
"She doesn't want salt," he said, "or pepper, and she's got an indecent amount of pickle already. If she'd only drop something I might pick it up, and she'd have to thank me."
Finally he settled on the flower. The girl had not changed her black traveling clothes, and wore, pinned to the front of her jacket, a small sunflower.
"Your sunflower," said Livingstone, "makes me hesitate to believe that I've really left England. I have been living for three weeks in a sort of jungle of sunflowers, for which some friends of mine down in Chester have developed a sudden and violent passion, and with which they have completely hidden their house and garden."
The girl lifted the drooping head of the flower with very nice, long, slim fingers, and laughed.
"This has come from farther than Chester," she said. "It was growing only yesterday morning in a dear old jardin bosquet in Quimper. It's all I have left of Quimper, and I think I'm going to cry right here."
"Why, then it isn't a sunflower," declared the man. "It's a tourne-sol, and that's much nicer. I used to be fond of Quimper and all that coast. Please," he demanded, gravely, "will you give me your tourne-sol when it is dead? I should like to press it in the back of my watch for the sake of Quimper."
The girl laughed. "If you will promise to do that I will give it to you without fail," she agreed. "Won't you show me your watch? It must be such a nice, large, comfortable watch."
"It is a comfortable watch," he said. "It's not one of those aggressively prompt and accurate watches that are always giving you incipient heart disease by reminding you that you are late for something important. My watch may have infirmities, but I love its infirmities. We are so much alike."
The girl looked at him with amusement and with a glint of interest in the big gray eyes.
"It must be very pleasant," she smiled, "to have a watch so sympathetic and feeling as that. It is certainly well trained. Is—is your conscience equally considerate?"
"More so," said Livingstone, firmly. "It has been with me longer than the watch, and there is nothing it would not do for me—nothing."
The girl laughed.
The large woman with beetling brows who sat across the table from Mr. Livingstone gave a little gasp and pressed a startled hand to the front of her bodice.
"There was a distinct motion," she said, truculently, to the table at large. "I felt it plainly. If it continues I shall be exceedingly ill," and she fixed a baleful eye on Mr. Livingstone, as if she suspected him of maliciously rolling the ship.
There was the faintest possible uplift as the ship's nose met the swell at the mouth of the river, the slightest possible heave, the breathing of a giant asleep.
The large person across the table added another hand to the front of her bodice.
"There!" she said, in a husky roar, and lowered malevolently at the fascinated Livingstone. That young gentleman met the delighted eyes of the Sunflower Girl and turned pink.
"I think I'll go on deck," he said, hastily; "I want to smell the sea. We're out of the river now." And he fled to his stateroom.
"Curse that old dragon!" he complained, in an indignant growl. "She quite turned my appetite with that eye of hers. None o' my fault if the tub pitches a bit."
He put on a heavy white sweater and a yachting jacket, and filled a pipe. Then he went up on deck.
It was a clear, fresh night, keen with the salt, delicious coolness of the North Atlantic in Summer. Livingstone hung over the rail and watched the white uplift of the water at the vessel's quarter. The wind beat against his face, clean, chill, blood-stirring, till he gasped for breath.
"Jove, that's something like!" he cried, as he turned to watch the deck. Then someone spoke beside him.
"Isn't it glorious?" said the girl.
Livingstone swung about toward her.
She had tied a veil about her hair so that it should not loosen in the wind. She wore no hat, but a long gray ulster that fell from her chin to the deck in straight lines, and she had turned the collar up about her neck. She looked extremely well.
"I am glad I came!" said Mr. Livingstone, with fervor.
He did not realize that he was speaking aloud. There was a little smothered sound from the girl. It might have been a laugh.
"The night hides your gorgeous eyes," he said—inwardly this time. "They're just two great black shadows. One feels what is there, though. And your nose is perfect. I approve of its evident desire to turn up a bit. It ought to turn up—a bit. And that ridiculous little curled upper lip that overhangs the lower one!—why, you've a Rossetti mouth, a perfect Rossetti mouth! If it weren't for your square jaw—and I like that, too—you would be the Blessed Damozel—no, I think the Donna della Finestra—all over again! You're really much nicer than either of those ladies, though," he concluded. "Perhaps you aren't so poetic, but you'd be a lot more fun," he decided, somewhat vaguely.
"I asked you a question," said the girl; "I asked you if it isn't glorious. You are not polite."
"I was considering," he retorted, "just how glorious it is. I should like to tell you, but you see I've a working knowledge of only three or four languages. Besides," he added, inwardly, "you mightn't like it." And aloud: "But since that is beyond me, shall we walk? It's the proper thing to do, on shipboard, after dinner—or after breakfast or luncheon, or any other time."
The girl laughed. "Yes, we must walk," she agreed; "but before we do that I've got to wish on the first star. I saw the tip of the Great Bear's tail when I came on deck, so it shall be that one."
Then she repeated, very solemnly, three times that classic little rhyme:
"Star light, star bright.
First star I've seen to-night!
Wish I may, wish I might,
Have the wish I wish to-night!"
and turning round once, threw a kiss to the star.
"Now I'll get the wish," she declared. "Are you so satisfied with the world that you don't wish anything?"
"Well," he said, "I own that I'm very much satisfied just now. However, there might be a few frills sewed on it," and he gravely performed the incantation.
"And now," declared the Blessed Damozel, "you shall give me your arm and we will walk."
They tramped miles round and round the narrow deck in spite of Mr. Livingstone's frequent and grave attacks of heart failure and paralysis of the knees, when, on rounding the deckhouse, forward, the force of the wind threw the girl against him and forced her to cling to him with all her strength. He soon learned that an arm judiciously disposed about her waist at such crises was both efficacious and, to himself, delightful. He cherished vague hopes that the promenade would last till morning.
"I think I'm a bit tired," said the girl, presently. Livingstone's heart sank. So they went aft and stood by the port rail, where the deckhouse sheltered them from the sweep of the wind, and watched the great black veil of smoke overhead that streamed back toward England.
"I shall be glad to see America again," said Livingstone, slowly. "It's years since I left there, but—well, I hated to come." He pointed out over the heaving blackness to the southeast. "Paris is over there," he said, wistfully, "my Paris. Jimmy Rogers and Simmons are sitting out in front of the Source or the Pantheon, on the Boul' Miche', drinking things, and Johnny Gurd and Hopper, and all of them; and the cafés chantants in the Champs Élysées are full of people and music and lights, and the boulevards are—bah!" He laughed and shook his head. "If it weren't for you, I think I should jump over and swim back."
"Merci bien!" said the girl. "Don't let me stop you. Perhaps I'd like to go along—and Finisterre is over there, too," she went on, pointing, "not so far as Paris, my Finisterre, all cliffs and sea and sky and little queer houses; Quimper and Quimperlé and Concarneau. And over this way, if you want people, there's St. Malo. Oh, let's go back!" She tried to laugh, but there were tears in the laugh, and it faltered and broke.
Livingstone reached for the small gloved hand that lay on the rail and pressed it. Then, "Look, look!" he said. A rim of light, huge, incandescent, sanguinary, pushed up above the sea's edge to the east, and an orange path shot over the waves to the very side of the vessel.
"Oh, oh!" said the girl, with a little gasp. "It's a dream moon! It's too wonderful to be a real one. Haven't you ever had dreams of moons like that?—great, enormous, blood-red moons that rise out of nothing and hang looking at you, and frightening you, and that finally drag you off to dream places where you have the most unthinkable adventures and wake up shivering? It's frightening me now!"
The moon was clear of the sea's rim, and hung, crimson and portentous, over the black waste. A wandering little remnant of cloud drifted across the huge face and seemed to contort it in a gigantic grin.
Livingstone reached again for the small gloved hand on the rail, and it closed on his.
"It doesn't look frightful to me," he said. "It looks rather friendly, rather as if it would like to do us a good turn. See it grin? That's the best it can do by way of a smile, you know. It is a well-meaning grin. It's saying, 'You poor young things! Here you're going clean across the sea to America, and neither of you wants to go a bit. You want to come back and play—you both know how to play so well! I'd really like to help you, really!'"
The girl gave a little, low, nervous laugh, and the hand in Livingstone's stirred and seemed to nestle.
"See!" she whispered, "it has offered us a way back. We could walk over that yellow path straight to Brittany. Surely it wouldn't let us through into the water."
"We'll go!" cried Livingstone. "It would be sinful not to take such a chance. We're both sorry we came away. And now let's settle just where we're to go. Where do you say?"
The girl stared out at the crimson moon with half-shut eyes. Little curls of hair, loosened from the veil blew across her face, white in the darkness, and she smiled.
"Morlaix," she breathed; "Morlaix on the cool, clean north coast. Blue sky and gulls overhead and blue water out at sea, with a creamy froth of foam under the cliffs, miles and miles of heather stretching inland, and a keen, clean, sweet wind blowing always, blowing all your troubles and bad temper and little meannesses away. Ah, you and I on the cliffs of Morlaix, with the wind in our faces and the sea splashing, splashing down below!"
"I've something better than that," said the man. "Morlaix is good, but I've a better; a little island in a sapphire-blue lake, the merest bit of an island, a tangle of shrubbery and flowers and stained marble. It is terraced to the south, seven terraces, and on the top one there's a half-ruined villa. No one has lived in it for years. And on the north side there's a wilderness of garden full of red and white flowers, and great purple blossoms that cling to a broken fountain and to moss-grown nymphs, armless and noseless. When you've pushed through the flowers you come to the wall that rises from the water's edge, and up beyond you, over the hills at the head of the lake, there's a huge glitter of white, the snow peaks from the Simplon to Monte Rosa. They don't look a mile distant There are singling birds in the ilex trees and the acacias, and a tattered white peacock marches up and down the garden wall, and screams maliciously at any boat that comes near. There's where we'll go," he said, nodding gently. "We'll buy my little island from those Borromei chaps. We'll build up the villa where it is falling to pieces and we'll stain it lemon color or pink. We'll hire a gardener and a woman or two from one of the towns, and we'll leave word with the boatmen at Pallanza and Stresa and Baveno that they mustn't row any more tourists to our island. Tourists, indeed! And there we'll live—with the big, fierce flowers in the garden and the peacock and the blue sky. In the evenings we can sit in the garden and watch the snows to the north turn pink and blue like mother-of-pearl, and the water of the lake grow gray. And when it's dark the music will begin at the big hotels over on the Punta della Castagnola. And when you grow tired of having just me about—" the girl's face turned up to him and she smiled, while the hand in his stirred again and nestled—"why, then we can be rowed over to the Castagnola or to Baveno, and hunt up the people we know in the hotels there. Do you like my island?"
"Like it?" whispered the girl, "like it?"
"And then, in October, when the winds from the snow begin to grow cold, we'll shut up the villa and give it our blessing and run away south to Rome, and south still to Naples—we can loaf about there in Sorrento and Pozzuoli and Capri and Ischia—and east to Brindisi, where we'll catch a P. and O.—and there's all the big, gorgeous East to pick and choose from till April, when we can come back to Maggiore."
The girl bent her shoulders over the rail and laid her cheek on the two hands there, hers and his.
"Need I tell you how sweet it would be?" she breathed.
"Would?" he demanded.
The cheek nestled closer.
"Will," she whispered. "Ah, so sweet! Ah, so beautiful! The happy dreams one had when one was a girl in school all come true! The castles one builds and paints of lonely evenings turned to gold and marble—real castles! But oh, aren't you afraid? What do you know about me? You've seen me during one dinner, and talked to me about a sunflower. Maybe I'm an adventuress. Maybe I'm a Boston schoolma'am out for a lark. What if, after we had raced back to Brittany, to Paris, to Lago Maggiore, you found I'd a nasty temper and a shrewish disposition, and was given to tippling and wore false teeth?"
She looked up with round eyes.
"Why, then," declared Livingstone, cheerfully, "I should beat you—wife-beating isn't seriously regarded on the Continent. It is considered hygienic. I should beat all the nasty temper and shrewish disposition out of you."
She giggled delightedly. "I should adore beatings!" she cried. "I've never been beaten in all my life. Of course I was spanked—frequently."
The man laughed. His face was turned out to sea and for a long time he made no sound, only there was a steady little smile on his lips.
The hand recalled him presently.
"Tell me what you're thinking," said the girl; "you aren't polite."
He shook his head and drew a long breath. "What's the good of telling?" he said; "and some of it couldn't be told. I was thinking of the life a certain worthless young chap is looking forward to. I was thinking of seeing those gorgeous eyes of yours and that beautiful face over the coffee every morning, turning pink at first, when you had to ask me how many lumps of sugar. I was thinking of your coming to show off wonderful new gowns and mysterious hats to a simple-minded male being who wouldn't appreciate the gown or the hat at all, but who would be starving to take into his arms what the gown held and the hat covered—to kiss the warm mouth, to crush it with kissing, and the roseleaf cheeks, and the black lashes that are altogether too fond of hiding dear eyes. I was thinking how proud he'd be, this worthless young man, when people pointed after her at Homburg and Baden, and in Paris and Nice and Rome, and scraped up acquaintance with him in the smoking-room to get an introduction to her. I was thinking how he'd be happiest of all sitting beside her or at her feet in their island garden under the acacias, holding her slim, cool hands and telling her just how beautiful and unspeakably lovely she was. I was thinking—oh, thinking of all the beautiful little intimate things that can't be told and that come along day by day in a big, strong love. What's the use of trying to tell?"
The small, gloved hand quivered. "I've wanted," cried the girl, softly, "oh, all my life I've wanted to be made love to like that—" The voice came in little gasping half -sobs, "and nobody ever did it. Ah, why didn't you come sooner? Why didn't you?"
Someone from within opened a port of the over-heated music-room, and at once the chatter of voices and the sound of laughter came out to the two on deck, with a rush of warm air and the scent of roses. Someone was at the piano singing the "Star of My Soul," from "The Geisha:"
"Dream, oh, my dearest, till we meet once more;
Day dreams of happiness again in store.
Dreams of a future that our fates may hold,
Passed in a wonderland of love untold."
It was a contralto voice, that tone which words are so utterly powerless to describe, a voice like a 'cello—that makes one want to say "chocolate," if only it were not ridiculous.
"'Passed in a wonderland of love untold'—that's it," said the girl, softly. "Don't you suppose I can picture what it would—will be? Don't you suppose I can shut my eyes and imagine the simple-minded male being taking what the gown held and the hat covered into his arms and kissing her lips, crushing them with kissing? Don't you suppose I can call up a thrill from head to foot when I think of it? I should hate the simple-minded male being if he only said the gown was pretty and the hat was smart. That would be too much like real life, not our moon country, not our island dreamland at all." She threw a kiss with her free hand to the moon, small and silver and high overhead now. "You're a dear moon!" she cried, with a little, low laugh, "even if you do turn the head of a silly little girl and a silly little boy and set them to talking madness."
She turned about, still laughing softly, and pressed her hands over her eyes, as if she were waking from sleep.
"Moonshine and madness, mon ami!" she said. "Ah, but a heavenly moonshine and a sweet madness—strangely sweet! I sha'n't forget it quickly. What solemn nonsense we've been talking—what atrocious nonsense!" She shook a humorously reproving head at the silver moon. "You're an untrustworthy old party. You put queer notions into young folks' heads. A sweet madness," she sighed, "though very mad. Wouldn't it be beautiful if—ah, that great, big, unsurmountable 'if!'—if that path of light out yonder could only be walked on, if only we knew something about each other, if—oh, if the thousand other big obstacles could be sunk in the sea? But we're well away toward America, my friend—and we've never even been introduced to each other!"
"That last," admitted Mr. Livingstone, "is an unsurmountable barrier, I grant you. As to the others, madness has been known to become permanent, and—you forget that we haven't touched at Queenstown yet"
"Queenstown!" she cried, softly, "Queenstown! Why—why—we could go—back—yet!"
The shaft of light from the open port struck full across her face, startled, amazed, full of a certain unwilling joy, full of a deprecatory laughter. The great gray eyes stared at Mr. Livingstone.
"We can get off at Queenstown to-morrow," he said, eagerly, "and go back on a Holyhead boat. The other 'ifs' aren't worth considering. Good God! don't you know, don't you realize to the very bottom of your heart that we're made for each other? Does it take two such as we are a year to find it out? Are you going to stand for conventions? Come back with me! Chuck up everything and come back with me! Look at me, dear. Are you afraid to trust yourself to me? Look at me. Can you find anything in me but worship of you?" He took her hands again and they lay shaking in his. The big eyes were upon him, half-fearful, half-full of a frightened joy. "If the moon has turned us mad, why, mad we'll be all our lives! Oh, it is a sweet madness, you have said it! Dearest, come back with me from Queenstown to-morrow, and we'll live out all we've dreamed to-night—and more."
Dream, oh, my dearest, till we meet once more—"
sang the great contralto from the music-room—
"Day dreams of happiness again in store. Dreams of a future that our lives may hold—"
and from the bridge deck there came six bells.
"Oh, it's absurd!" cried the girl, pulling away her hands. "Don't make it hard for me, dear boy, not any harder!" She laughed a bit hysterically. "We're both moon-mad yet. If it's any comfort to you to know, I'd give half my life to run away with you to-morrow . . . . Come, it's six bells, eleven o'clock, and I must go to my bed. I'll see you to-morrow. We shall both be in our right minds then. Good-night—and—yes, you may kiss me."
Then when he had set her down she stood trembling a little and gasping for breath, but after she had started away toward the cabin she came back a moment and put her hands on his arm. "Promise me something," she said, softly; "promise me that—that whatever happens after to-night, you will always think of me as I have been in these two or three hours."
Then she went below.
Livingstone lighted his pipe with "flamers" four times, then, his abstraction continuing, he threw it overboard, under the impression that it was a cigarette; and next to an old 'varsity sweater bearing a white Y it was his dearest possession, too.
The next morning he was down for an early breakfast. The girl's chair was vacant. The one to its left was also empty.
"Wonder who belongs there," said the American.
"No one in it last night. Queenstown arrival, probably."
He loafed anxiously about the deck for an hour. Then he saw her coming from the other end of the ship.
"Who's she picked up now?" he growled. "Villainous looking little beggar! By Jove, it's Rochemont-Sorel! The swine! What in heaven's name is that little beast doing here? He's married, too. I read it in the Figaro a month ago nearly. I say, I'll have to give that girl a friendly word in the ear. She mustn't be seen about with him."
The girl was rather pale, and there were black circles under her eyes.
"White nights," commented Livingstone. "'Tisn't becoming."
She saw him when only a few steps away. Her face went perfectly white, and at first she made as if to pass hurriedly. Then she paused, halting her companion with a touch on the arm, and turned toward the young American with a sort of desperate defiance. Her eyes were miserable and pleading.
"Good-morning, Mr. Livingstone," she said; "will you let me present you to—to my husband, le Comte de Rochemont-Sorel? My husband was ill last evening—which was not at all gallant of you, Henri, on your wedding journey."
Mr. Livingstone put out a hand behind him swiftly and caught at the rail. His eyes were on those of the Comtesse de Rochemont-Sorel. Then he bowed politely.
"Ah, but M. le Comte and I have met before," he said. "In Mentone, was it not, M. le Comte?"
M. le Comte de Rochemont-Sorel turned a deep rich purple. He made certain choked sounds, presumably of uncontrollable joy at the rencontre, but manifested a strong inclination to continue his walk.
Mr. Livingstone bowed again profoundly. "I wonder at what time we reach Queenstown?" he said, looking into the eyes of the Comtesse de Rochemont-Sorel. Then as she turned away he hummed a certain beautiful little air from "The Geisha" called "Star of My Soul."
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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