THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE




[Colophon]




 THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE

 BY
 ZONA GALE

 New York
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
 1921

 _All rights reserved_




 Copyright, 1907,
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1907.


 Norwood Press
 J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




 To
 MY FATHER AND MOTHER




The author hereby acknowledges the courtesy of the publishers of
_Appleton’s Magazine_, _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_, _The Delineator_,
_Everybody’s Magazine_, _The Outlook_, _The Saturday Evening Post_,
_The Smart Set_, and _The Woman’s Home Companion_, in permitting the
reprint here of the stories that originally appeared in their pages.




CONTENTS


                                                    PAGE
     I. The Odour of the Ointment                      1
    II. The Matinée                                   27
   III. The Path of In-the-Spring                     45
    IV. The Elopement                                 72
     V. The Dance                                     93
    VI. The Honeymoon                                115
   VII. The Other Two                                134
  VIII. A Fountain of Gardens                        148
    IX. The Baby                                     171
     X. The Marriage of Katinka                      190
    XI. The Christening                              208
   XII. An Interlude                                 229
  XIII. The Return of Endymion                       246
   XIV. The Golden Wedding                           265
    XV. The Wedding                                  291
   XVI. “So the Carpenter encouraged the Goldsmith”  312
  XVII. Christmas Roses                              336




The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre




I

THE ODOUR OF THE OINTMENT


Ascension lilies were everywhere in our shabby drawing-room. They
crowded two tables and filled a corner and rose, slim and white, atop
a Sheraton cabinet. Every one had sent Pelleas and me a sheaf of the
flowers--the Chartres, the Cleatams, Miss Willie Lillieblade, Enid,
Lisa and dear Hobart Eddy had all remembered us on Easter eve, and
we entered our drawing-room after breakfast on Easter morning to be
all but greeted with a winding of the white trumpets. The sun smote
them and they were a kind of candle, their light secretly diffused,
premonitory of Spring, of some resurrection of light as a new element.
It was a wonderful Easter day, and in spite of our sad gray hair
Pelleas and I were never in fairer health; yet for the first time in
our fifty years together Easter found us close prisoners. Easter
morning, and we were forbidden to leave the house!

“Etarre,” Pelleas said, with some show of firmness, “there is no reason
in the world why we should not go.”

“Ah, well now,” I said with a sigh, “I wish you could prove that to
Nichola. Do I not know it perfectly already?”

It is one sign of our advancing years, we must suppose, that we are
prone to predicate of each other the trifles which heaven sends. The
sterner things we long ago learned to accept with our hands clasped in
each other’s; but when the postman is late or the hot water is cold or
we miss our paper we have a way of looking solemnly sidewise.

We had gone upstairs the night before in the best of humours, Pelleas
carrying an Ascension lily to stand in the moonlight of our window,
for it always seems to us the saddest injustice to set the sullen
extinguisher of lowered lights on the brief life of a flower. And we
had been looking forward happily to Easter morning when the service is
always inseparable from a festival of Spring. Then, lo! when we were
awakened there was the treacherous world one glitter of ice. Branches
sparkled against the blue, the wall of the park was a rampart of silver
and the faithless sidewalks were mockeries of thoroughfare. But the
grave significance of this did not come to us until Nichola entered
the dining-room with the griddle-cakes and found me dressed in my gray
silk and Pelleas in broadcloth.

“Is it,” asked our old serving-woman, who rules us as if she had
brought us from Italy and we had not, more than forty years before,
tempted her from her native Capri, “is it that you are mad, with this
ice everywhere, everywhere?”

“It is Easter morning, Nichola,” I said, with the mildness of one who
supports a perfect cause.

“Our Lady knows it is so,” Nichola said, setting down her smoking
burden, “but the streets are so thick with ice that one breaks one’s
head a thousand times. You must not think of so much as stepping in the
ar-y.”

She left the room, and the honey-brown cakes cooled while Pelleas and I
looked at each other aghast. To miss our Easter service for the first
time in our life together! The thought was hardly to be borne. We
reasoned with Nichola when she came back and I think that Pelleas even
stamped his foot under the table; but she only brought more cakes and
shook her head, the impertinent old woman who has conceived that she
must take care of us.

“One breaks one’s head a thousand times,” she obstinately repeated.
“Our Lady would not wish it. Danger is not holy.”

To tell the truth, as Pelleas and I looked sorrowfully from the
window above the Ascension lilies we knew that there was reason in the
situation, for the streets were perilous even to see. None the less we
were frankly resentful, for it is bad enough to have a disagreeable
matter occur without having reason on its side. As for our carriage,
that went long ago together with the days when Pelleas could model and
I could write so that a few were deceived; and as for a cab to our far
downtown church and back, that was not to be considered. For several
years now we have stepped, as Nichola would say, softly, softly from
one security to another so that we need not give up our house; and even
now we are seldom sure that one month’s comfort will keep its troth
with the next. Since it was too icy to walk to the car we must needs
remain where we were.

“I suppose,” said I, as if it were a matter of opinion, “that it is
really Easter uptown too. But some way--”

“I know,” Pelleas said. Really, of all the pleasures of this world I
think that the “I know” of Pelleas in answer to something I have left
unsaid is the last to be foregone. I hope that there is no one who does
not have this delight.

“Pelleas--” I began tremblingly to suggest.

“Ah, well now,” Pelleas cried, resolutely, “let us go anyway. We
can walk beside the curb slowly. And after all, we do not belong to
Nichola.” Really, of all the pleasures of this world I think that the
daring of Pelleas in moments when I am cowardly is quite the last to
be renounced. I hope that there is no one who has not the delight of
living near some one a bit braver than himself.

With one accord we slipped from the drawing-room and toiled up the
stairs. I think, although we would not for the world have said so,
that there may have been in our minds the fear that this might be our
last Easter together and, if it was to be so, then to run away to
Easter service would be a fitting memory, a little delicious human
thing to recall among austerer glories. Out of its box in a twinkling
came my violet bonnet and I hardly looked in a mirror as I put it
on. I fastened my cloak wrong from top to bottom and seized two
right-hand gloves and thrust them in my muff. Then we opened the door
and listened. There was not a sound in the house. We ventured into
the passage and down the stairs, and I think we did not breathe until
the outer door closed softly upon us. For Nichola, we have come to
believe, is a mystic and thinks other people’s thoughts. At all events,
she finds us out so often that we prefer to theorize that it is her
penetration and not our clumsiness which betrays us.

Nichola had already swept the steps with hot water and salt and ashes
and sawdust combined; Nichola is so thorough that I am astonished she
has not corrupted me with the quality. Yet no sooner was I beyond
the pale of her friendly care than I overestimated thoroughness, like
the weak character that I am, and wished that the whole street had
practiced it. I took three steps on that icy surface and stood still,
desperately.

“Pelleas,” I said, weakly, “I feel--I feel like a little nut on top of
a big, frosted, indigestible cake.”

I laughed a bit hysterically and Pelleas slipped my arm more firmly in
his and we crept forward like the hands of a clock, Pelleas a little
the faster, as became the tall minute hand. We turned the corner safely
and had one interminable block to traverse before we reached the haven
of the car. I looked down that long expanse of slippery gray, unbroken
save where a divine janitor or two had interposed, and my courage
failed me. And Pelleas rashly ventured on advice.

“You walk too stiffly, Etarre,” he explained. “Relax, relax! Step
along slowly but easily, as I do. Then, if you fall, you fall like a
child--no jar, no shock, no broken bones. Now relax--”

And Pelleas did so. Before I could shape my answer Pelleas had relaxed.
He lay in a limp little heap on the ice beside me, and I shall never
forget my moment of despair.

I do not know where she came from, but while I stood there hopelessly
reiterating, “Pelleas--why, Pelleas!” on the verge of tears, she
stepped from some door of the air to my assistance. She wore a little
crimson hat and a crimson collar, but her poor coat, I afterward noted,
was sadly worn. At the moment of her coming it was her clear, pale face
that fixed itself in my grateful memory. She darted forward, stepped
down from the curb and held out two hands to Pelleas.

“Oh, sir,” she said, “I can help you. I have on rubber boots.”

Surely no interfering goddess ever arrived in a more practical frame of
mind.

When Pelleas was on his feet, looking about him in a dazed and rather
unforgiving fashion, the little maid caught off her crimson muffler and
brushed his coat. Pelleas, with bared head, made her as courtly a bow
as his foothold permitted, and she continued to stand somewhat shyly
before us with the prettiest anxiety on her face, shaking the snow from
her crimson muffler.

“You are not hurt, sir?” she asked, and seemed so vastly relieved at
his reassurance that she quite won our hearts. “Now,” she said, “won’t
you let me walk with you? My rubber boots will do for all three.”

We each accepted her arm without the smallest protest. I will hazard
that no shipwrecked sailor ever inquired of the rescuing sail whether
he was inconveniencing it. Once safely aboard, however, and well under
way, he may have symbolized his breeding to the extent of offering a
faint, polite resistance.

As “Shall we not be putting you out?” Pelleas inquired, never offering
to release her arm.

And “I’m afraid we are,” I ventured, pressing to her all the closer.
She was frail as I, too, and it was not the rubber boots to which I
pinned my faith; she was young, and you can hardly know what safety
that bespeaks until you are seventy, on ice.

“It’s just there, on the south corner of the avenue,” Pelleas explained
apologetically, and for the first time I perceived that by common
consent we had turned back toward home. But neither of us mentioned
that.

Then, as we stepped forward, with beautiful nicety rounding the corner
to come upon our entrance, suddenly, without a moment’s warning, our
blackest fears were fulfilled. We ran full upon Nichola.

“Ah, I told you, Pelleas!” I murmured; which I had not, but one has to
take some comfort in crises.

Without a word Nichola wheeled solemnly, grasped my other arm and made
herself fourth in our singular party. Her gray head was unprotected and
her hair stood out all about it. She had thrown her apron across her
shoulders and great patches in her print gown were visible to all the
world. When Nichola’s sleeves wear out she always cuts a piece from
the front breadth of her skirt to mend them, trusting to her aprons to
conceal the lack. She was a sorry old figure indeed, out there on the
avenue in the Easter sunshine, and I inclined bitterly to resent her
interference.

“Nichola,” said I, haughtily, “one would think that we were obliged to
be wheeled about on casters.”

Nichola made but brief reply.

“Our Lady knows you’d be better so,” she said.

So that was how, on Easter morning, with the bells pealing like a
softer silver across the silver of the city, Pelleas and I found
ourselves back in our lonely drawing-room considerably shaken and
hovering before the fire which Nichola stirred to a leaping blaze.
And with us, since we had insisted on her coming, was our new little
friend, fluttering about us with the prettiest concern, taking away my
cloak, untying my bonnet and wheeling an arm-chair for Pelleas, quite
as if she were the responsible little hostess and we her upset guests.
Presently, the bright hat and worn coat laid aside, she sat on a
hassock before the blaze and looked up at us, like a little finch that
had alighted at our casement and had been coaxed within. I think that
I love best these little bird-women whom one expects at any moment to
hear thrilling with a lilt of unreasonable song.

“My dear,” said I, on a sudden, “how selfish of us. I dare say you will
have been going to church?”

She hesitated briefly.

“I might ’a’ gone to the mission,” she explained, unaccountably
colouring, “but I don’t know if I would. On Easter.”

“But I should have thought,” I cried, “that this is the day of days to
go.”

“It would be,” she assented, “it would be--” she went on, hesitating,
“but, ma’am, I can’t bear to go,” she burst out, “because they don’t
have no flowers. We go to the mission,” she added, “and not to the
grand churches. And it seems--it seems--don’t you think God must be
where the most flowers are? An’ last Easter we only had one geranium.”

Bless the child. I must be a kind of pagan, for I understood.

“Your flowers are beau-tiful,” she said, shyly, with a breath of
content. “Are they real? I’ve been wantin’ to ask you. I never saw so
many without the glass in front. But they don’t smell much,” she added,
wistfully; “I wonder why that is?”

Pelleas and I had been wondering that very morning. They looked so
sweet-scented and yet were barren of fragrance; and we had told
ourselves that perhaps they were lilies of symbol without mission
or message beyond the symbol, without hue or passion or, so to say,
experience.

“Perhaps if one were to make some one happy with them or to put them in
a bride’s bouquet they would no longer be scentless,” Pelleas quaintly
said.

But now my mind was busy with other problems than those of such
fragrance.

“Where do you go to church, my dear?” I asked, not daring to glance at
Pelleas.

“To the mission,” she said, “over--” and she named one of the poorest
of the struggling East Side chapels. “It’s just started,” she
explained, “an’ the lady that give most, she died, and the money don’t
come. And poor Mr. Lovelow, he’s the minister and he’s sick--but he
preaches, anyhow. And pretty near nobody comes to hear him,” she added,
with a curious, half-defiant emotion, her cheeks still glowing. It
was strange that I who am such a busybody of romance was so slow to
comprehend that betraying colour.

Pelleas and I knew where the mission was. We had even peeped into it
one Sunday when, though it was not quite finished, they were trying to
hold service from the unpainted pulpit. I remembered the ugly walls
covered with the lead-pencil calculations of the builders, the forlorn
reed organ, the pushing feet upon the floor. And now “the lady who give
most” had died.

“Last Easter,” our little friend was reiterating, “we had one geranium
that the minister brought. But now his mother is dead and I guess he
won’t be keeping plants. Men always lets ’em freeze. Mis’ Sledge,
she’s got a cactus, but it hasn’t bloomed yet. Maybe she’ll take that.
And they said they was going to hang up the letters left from last
Christmas, for the green. They don’t say nothing but ‘Welcome’ and
‘Star of Bethlehem,’ but I s’pose the ‘Welcome’ is always nice for a
church, and I s’pose the star shines all year round, if you look. But
they don’t much of anybody come. Mr. Lovelow, he’s too sick to visit
round much. Last Sunday they was only ’leven in the whole room.”

“Only ’leven in the whole room.” It hardly seemed credible in New York.
But I knew the poverty of some of the smaller missions, especially in
a case where “the lady that give most” has died. And this poor young
minister, this young Mr. Lovelow whose mother had died and who was
too sick to “visit round much,” and doubtless had an indifferent,
poverty-ridden parish which no other pastor wanted--I knew in an
instant the whole story of the struggle. I looked over at our pots
of Ascension lilies and I found myself unreasonably angry with the
dear Cleatams and Chartres and Hobart Eddy and the rest for the
self-indulgence of having given them to us.

At that moment my eyes met those of Pelleas. He was leaning forward,
looking at me with an expression of both daring, and doubt of my
approval, and I saw his eyes go swiftly to the lilies. What was he
contriving, I wondered, my heart beating. He was surely not thinking of
sending our lilies over to the mission, for we could never get them all
there in time and Nichola--

“Etarre!” said Pelleas--and showed me in a moment heights of
resourcefulness to which I can never attain--“Etarre! It is only half
after ten. We can’t go out to service--and the mission is not four
blocks from us. Why not have our little friend run over there and,
if there are only two dozen or so in the chapel, have that young Mr.
Lovelow bring them all over here, and let it be Easter in this room?”

He waved his hand toward the lilies waiting there all about the walls
and doing no good to any save a selfish old man and woman. He looked
at me, almost abashed at his own impulse. Was ever such a practical
Mahomet, proposing to bring to himself some Mountain Delectable?

“Do you mean,” I asked breathlessly, “to let them have services in
this--”

“Here with us, in the drawing-room,” Pelleas explained. “Why not? There
were fifty in the room for that Lenten morning musicale. There’s the
piano for the music. And the lilies--the lilies--”

“Of course we will,” I cried. “But, O, will they come? Do you think
they will come?”

I turned to our little friend, and she had risen and was waiting with
shining eyes.

“O, ma’am,” she said, trembling, “why, ma’am! O, yes’m, they’ll come.
I’ll get ’em here myself. O, Mr. Lovelow, he’ll be so glad....”

She flew to her bright hat and worn coat and crimson muffler.

“Mr. Lovelow says,” she cried, “that a shabby church is just as much
a holy temple as the ark of the gover’ment--but he was so glad when
we dyed the spread for the orgin--O, ma’am,” she broke off, knotting
the crimson scarf about her throat, “do you really want ’em? They
ain’t--you know they don’t look--”

“Hurry, child,” said Pelleas, “and mind you don’t let one of them
escape!”

When she was gone we looked at each other in panic.

“Pelleas,” I cried, trembling, “think of all there is to be done in ten
minutes.”

Pelleas brushed this aside as a mere straw in the wind.

“Think of Nichola,” he portentously amended.

In all our flurry we could not help laughing at the frenzy of our old
servant when we told her. Old Nichola was born upon the other side
of every argument. In her we can see the history of all the world
working out in a miniature of wrinkles. For Nichola would have cut off
her gray hair with Sparta, hurled herself fanatically abroad on St.
Bartholomew’s day, borne a pike before the Bastile, broken and burned
the first threshing-machine in England, stoned Luther, and helped to
sew the stars upon striped cloth in the kitchen of Betsy Ross.

“For the love of heaven,” cried Nichola, “church in the best room!
It is not holy. Whoever heard o’ church in a private house, like a
spiritualist seeonce or whatever they are. An’ me with a sponge-cake
in the oven,” she concluded fervently. “Heaven be helpful, mem, I
wish’t you’d ’a’ went to church yourselves.”

Chairs were drawn from the library and dining-room and from
above-stairs, and frantically dusted with Nichola’s apron. The lilies
were turned from the windows to look inward on the room and a little
table for the Bible was laid with a white cloth and set with a vase
of lilies. And in spite of Nichola, who every moment scolded and
prophesied and nodded her head in the certainty that all the thunders
of the church would descend upon us, we were ready when the door-bell
rang. I peeped from the drawing-room window and saw that our steps were
filled!

“Nichola,” said I, trembling, “you will come up to the service, will
you not?”

Nichola shook her old gray head.

“It’s a nonsense,” she shrilly proclaimed. “It will not be civilized.
It will not be religious. I’ll open the door on ’em, but I won’t do
nothink elst, mem.”

When we heard their garments in the hall and the voice of Little
Friend, Pelleas pushed back the curtains and there was our Easter, come
to us upon the threshold.

I shall not soon forget the fragile, gentle figure who led them. The
Reverend Stephen Lovelow came in with outstretched hand, and I have
forgotten what he said or indeed whether he spoke at all. But he took
our hands and greeted us as the disciple must have greeted the host of
that House of the Upper Room. We led the way to the table where he laid
his worn Bible and he stood in silence while the others found their
places, marshaled briskly by Little Friend who as captain was no less
efficient than as deliverer. There were chairs to spare, and when every
one was seated, in perfect quiet, the young clergyman bowed his head:--

“Lord, thou hast made thy face to shine upon us--” he prayed, and it
seemed to me that our shabby drawing-room was suddenly quick with a
presence more intimate than that of the lilies.

When the hymn was given out and there was a fluttering of leaves of
the hymn-books they had brought, five of our guests at a nod from Mr.
Lovelow made their way forward. One was a young woman with a ruddy
face, but ruddy with that strange, wrinkled ruddiness of age rather
than youth, who wore a huge felt hat laden with flaming roses evidently
added expressly for Easter day. She had on a thin waist of flimsy pink
with a collar of beads and silver braid, and there were stones of all
colours in a half-dozen rings on her hands. She took her place at the
piano with an ease almost defiant and she played the hymn not badly,
I must admit, and sang in a full riotous soprano. Meanwhile, at her
side was ranged the choir. There were four--a great watch-dog of a
bass with swelling veins upon his forehead and erect reddish hair; a
little round contralto in a plush cap and a dress trimmed with the
appliquéd flowers cut from a lace curtain; a tall, shy soprano who
looked from one to another through the hymn as if she were in personal
exhortation; and a pleasant-faced tenor who sang with a will that was
good to hear and was evidently the choir leader, for he beat time with
a stumpy, cracked hand set with a huge black ring on its middle finger.
The little woman next me offered her book and I had a glimpse of a
pinched side-face, with a displaced strand of gray hair and a loose
linen collar with no cravat, but I have seldom heard a sweeter voice
than that which up-trembled beside me--although, poor little woman!
she was sadly ill at ease because the thumb which rested on the book
next me was thrust in a glove fully an inch too long. As for Pelleas,
he was sharing a book with a youngish man, stooped, long-armed, with
a mane of black hair, whom Mr. Lovelow afterward told me had lost his
position in a sweat-shop through drawing some excellent cartoons on
the box of his machine. Mr. Lovelow himself was “looking over” with a
mother and daughter who were later presented to us, and who embarrassed
any listener by persistently talking in concert, each repeating a few
words of what the other had just said, quite in the fashion of the most
gently bred talkers bent upon assuring each other of their spontaneous
sympathy and response.

And what a hymn it was! After the first stanza they gained in
confidence, and a volume of sound filled the low room--ay, and a world
of spirit, too. “Christ the Lord is risen to-day, Hallelu--jah! ...”
they caroled, and Pelleas, who never can sing a tune aloud although he
declares indignantly that in his head he keeps it perfectly, and I, who
do not sing at all, both joined perforce in the triumphant chorus. Ah,
I dare say that farther down the avenue were sweet-voiced choirs that
sang music long rehearsed, golden, flowing, and yet I think there was
no more fervent Easter music than that in which we joined. It was as if
the other music were the censer-smoke, and we were its shadow on the
ground, but a proof of the sun for all that.

I cannot now remember all that simple service, perhaps because I so
well remember the glory of the hour. I sat where I could see the
park stretching away, black upon silver and silver upon black, over
the Ascension lilies. The face of the young minister was illumined
as he read and talked to his people. I think that I have never known
such gentleness, never such yearning and tenderness as were his with
that handful of crude and careless and devout. And though he spoke
passionately and convincingly I could not but think that he was
like some dumb thing striving for the utterance of the secret fire
within--striving to “burn aloud,” as a violin beseeches understanding.
Perhaps there is no other way to tell the story of that first day of
the week--“early, when it was yet dark.”

“They had brought sweet spices,” he said, “with which to anoint Him.
Where are the spices that we have brought to-day? Have we aught of
sacrifice, of charity, of zeal, of adoration--let us lay them at His
feet, an offering acceptable unto the Lord, a token of our presence at
the door of the sepulcher from which the stone was rolled away. Where
are the sweet spices of our hands, where the pound of ointment of
spikenard wherewith we shall anoint the feet of our living Lord? For if
we bring of our spiritual possession, the Christ will suffer us, even
as He suffered Mary; and the house shall be filled with the odour of
the ointment.”

“And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,” I said
over to myself. Is it not strange how a phrase, a vista, a bar of song,
a thought beneath the open stars, will almost pierce the veil?

“And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,” I
said silently all through the last prayer and the last hymn and the
benediction of “The Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord
give you peace.” And some way, with our rising, the abashment which is
an integral part of all such gatherings as we had convoked was not to
be reckoned with, and straightway the presentations and the words of
gratitude and even the pretty anxiety of Little Friend fluttering among
us were spontaneous and unconstrained. It was quite as if, Pelleas
said afterward, we had been reduced to a common denominator. Indeed,
it seems to me in remembering the day as if half the principles of
Christian sociology were illustrated there in our shabby drawing-room;
but for that matter I would like to ask what complexities of political
science, what profound bases of _solidarité_, are not on the way to
be solved in the presence of Easter lilies? I am in all these matters
most stupid and simple, but at all events I am not blameful enough to
believe that they are exhausted by the theories.

Every one lingered for a little, in proof of the success of our
venture. Pelleas and I talked with the choir and with the pianiste,
and this lady informed us that our old rosewood piano, which we
apologetically explained to have been ours for fifty years, was every
bit as good and every bit as loud as a new golden-oak “instrument”
belonging to her sister. The tall, shy soprano told us haltingly how
much she had enjoyed the hour and her words conveyed sincerity in spite
of her strange system of overemphasis of everything she said, and of
carrying down the corners of her mouth as if in deprecation. The plump
little contralto thanked us, too, with a most winning smile--such round
open eyes she had, immovably fixed on the object of her attention, and
as Pelleas said such _evident_ eyes.

“Her eyes looked so amazingly like eyes,” he afterward commented
whimsically.

We talked too with the little woman of the long-thumbed gloves who
had the extraordinary habit of smiling faintly and turning away her
head whenever she detected any one looking at her. And the sweat-shop
cartoonist proved to be an engaging young giant with the figure of a
Greek god, classic features, a manner of gravity amounting almost to
hauteur, and as pronounced an East Side dialect as I have ever heard.

“Will you not let us,” I said to him, after Mr. Lovelow’s word about
his talent, “see your drawings sometime? It would give us great
pleasure.”

Whereupon, “Sure. Me, I’ll toin de whol’ of ’em over to youse,” said
the Greek god, thumbs out and shoulders flickering.

But back of these glimpses of reality among them there was something
still more real; and though I dare say there will be some who will
smile at the affair and call that interest curiosity and those awkward
thanks mere aping of convention, yet Pelleas and I who have a modest
degree of intelligence and who had the advantage of being present do
affirm that on that Easter morning countless little doors were opened
in the air to admit a throng of presences. We cannot tell how it may
have been, and we are helpless before all argument and incredulity,
but we know that a certain stone was rolled away from the door of the
hearts of us all, and there were with us those in shining garments.

In the midst of all I turned to ask our Little Friend some trivial
thing and I saw that which made my old heart leap. Little Friend stood
before a table of the lilies and with her was young Mr. Lovelow. And
something--I cannot tell what it may have been, but in these matters
I am rarely mistaken; and something--as she looked up and he looked
down--made me know past all doubting how it was with them. And this
open secret of their love was akin to the mysteries of the day itself.
The gentle, sad young clergyman and our Little Friend of the crimson
muffler had suddenly opened to us another door and admitted another
joyous presence. I cannot tell how it may be with every one else but
for Pelleas and me one such glimpse--a glimpse of two faces alight with
happiness on the street, in a car, or wherever they may be--is enough
to make glad a whole gray week. Though to be sure no week is ever
wholly gray.

I was still busy with the sweet surprise of this and longing for
opportunity to tell Pelleas, when they all moved toward the door and
with good-byes filed into the hall. And there in the anteroom stood
Nichola, our old servant, who brushed my elbow and said in my ear:--

“Mem, every one of ’em looks starvin’. I’ve a kettle of hot coffee on
the back of the range an’ there’s fresh sponge-cake in plenty. I’ve put
cups on the dinin’-room table, an’ I thought--”

“Nichola!” said I, in a low and I must believe ecstatic tone.

“An’ no end o’ work it’s made me, too,” added our old servant sourly,
and not to be thought in the least gracious.

It was a very practical ending to that radiant Easter morning but I
dare say we could have devised none better. Moreover Nichola had ready
sandwiches and a fresh cheese of her own making, and a great bowl of
some simple salad dressed as only her Italian hands can dress it. I
wondered as I sat in the circle of our guests, a vase of Easter lilies
on the table, whether Nichola, that grim old woman who scorned to come
to our service, had yet not brought her pound of ointment of spikenard,
very precious.

“You and Mr. Lovelow are to spend the afternoon and have tea with us,”
I whispered Little Friend, and had the joy of seeing the tell-tale
colour leap gloriously to her cheek and a tell-tale happiness kindle in
his eyes. I am never free from amazement that a mere word or so humble
a plan for another’s pleasure can give such joy. Verily, one would
suppose that we would all be so busy at this pastime that we would
almost neglect our duties.

So when the others were gone these two lingered. All through the
long Spring afternoon they sat with us beside our crackling fire of
bavin-sticks, telling us of this and that homely interest, of some
one’s timid hope and another’s sacrifice, in the life of the little
mission. Ah, I dare say that Carlyle and Hugo have the master’s hand
for touching open a casement here and there and letting one look in
upon an isolated life, and sympathizing for one passionate moment
turn away before the space is closed again with darkness; but these
two were destined that day to give us glimpses not less poignant, to
open to us so many unknown hearts that we would be justified in never
again being occupied with our own concerns. And when after tea they
stood in the dusk of the hall-way trying to say good-bye, I think that
their secret must have shone in our faces too; and, as the children
say, “we all knew that we all knew,” and life was a thing of heavenly
blessedness.

Young Mr. Lovelow took the hand of Pelleas, and mine he kissed.

“The Lord bless you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord
give you peace,” was in his eyes as he went away.

“And, O, sir,” Little Friend said shyly to Pelleas as she stood at the
top of the steps, knotting her crimson muffler, “ain’t it good, after
all, that Easter was all over ice?”

       *       *       *       *       *

That night Pelleas carried upstairs a great armful of the Ascension
lilies to stand in the moonlight of our window. We took lilies to the
mantel, and set stalks of bloom on the table, with their trumpets
turned within upon the room. And when the lower lights had been
extinguished and Nichola had bidden us her grumbling good-night, we
opened the door of that upper room where the moon was silvering the
lilies; and we stood still, smitten with a common surprise.

“Pelleas,” I said, uncertainly, “O, Pelleas. I thought--”

“So did I,” said Pelleas, with a deep breath.

We bent above the lilies that looked so sweet-scented and yet had been
barren of fragrance because, we had told ourselves, they seemed flowers
of symbol without mission or message beyond the symbol, without hue
or passion, or, so to say, experience. (“Perhaps if one were to make
some one happy with them or to put them in a bride’s bouquet they would
no longer be scentless,” Pelleas had quaintly said.) And now we were
certain, as we stood hushed beside them, that our Easter lilies were
giving out a faint, delicious fragrance.

I looked up at Pelleas almost fearfully in the flood of Spring
moonlight. The radiance was full on his white hair and tranquil face,
and he met my eyes with the knowledge that we were suddenly become the
custodians of an exquisite secret. The words of the young servant of
God came to me understandingly.

“‘And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,’” I
said over. “O, Pelleas,” I added, tremulously, “do you think....”

Pelleas lifted his face and I thought that it shone in the dimness.

“Ah, well,” he answered, “we must believe all the beautiful things we
can.”




II

THE MATINÉE


Somewhat later in the Spring Pelleas was obliged to spend one whole day
out of town. He was vastly important over the circumstance and packed
his bag two days before, which alone proves his advancing years. For
formerly his way had been to complete his packing in the cab on his
way to the train at that moment pulling from the station. Now he gave
himself an hour to reach the ferry to allow for being blocked.

“Yes, that alone would prove that we are seventy,” I said sadly as I
stood at the window watching him drive away.

Yet if ever a good fairy grants you one wish I advise your wishing that
when you are seventy your heart and some one else’s heart will be as
heavy at a separation as are ours.

“Pelleas,” I had said to him that morning, “I wish that every one in
the world could love some one as much as I love you.”

And Pelleas had answered seriously:--

“Remember, Etarre, that every one in the world who is worth anything
either loves as we do or expects to do so, or else is unhappy because
he doesn’t.”

“Not every one?” I remonstrated.

“Every one,” Pelleas repeated firmly.

I wondered about that after he went away. Not every one, surely. There
was, for exception, dear Hobart Eddy who walked the world alone, loving
every one exactly alike; and there was, for the other extreme, Nichola,
our old servant. She was worth a very great deal but she loved nobody,
not even us; and I was sure that she prided herself on it. I could not
argue with Pelleas on the eve of a journey but I harboured the matter
against his return.

I was lonely when Pelleas was gone. I was sitting by the fire with
Semiramis on my knee--an Angora cannot wholly sympathize with you but
her aloofness can persuade you into peace of mind--when the telephone
bell rang. We are so seldom wanted that the mere ringing of the bell
is an event even, as usually happens, if we are called in mistake.
This time, however, old Nichola, whose tone over the telephone is
like that of all three voices of Cerberus saying “No admission,” came
in to announce that I was wanted by Miss Wilhelmina Lillieblade. I
hurried excitedly out, for when Miss “Willie” Lillieblade telephones
she has usually either heard some interesting news or longs to invent
some. She is almost seventy as well as I. As a girl she was not very
interesting, but I sometimes think that like many other inanimate
objects she has improved with age until now she is delightful and
reminds me of spiced cordials. I never see a stupid young person
without applying the inanimate object rule and longing to comfort him
with it.

“Etarre,” Miss Willie said, “you and Pelleas come over for tea this
afternoon. I am alone and I have a lame shoulder.”

“I’ll come with pleasure,” said I readily, “but Pelleas is away.”

“O,” Miss Willie said without proper regret, “Pelleas is away.”

For a moment she thought.

“Etarre,” she said, “let’s lunch downtown together and go to a matinée.”

I could hardly believe my old ears.

“W--we two?” I quavered.

“Certainly!” she confirmed it, “I’ll come in the coupé at noon.”

I made a faint show of resistance. “What about your lame shoulder?” I
wanted to know.

“Pooh!” said Miss Willie, “that will be dead in a minute and then I
won’t know whether it’s lame or not.”

The next moment she had left the telephone and I had promised!

I went upstairs in a delicious flutter of excitement. When our niece
Lisa is with us I watch her go breezily off to matinées with her young
friends, but “matinée” is to me one of the words that one says often
though they mean very little to one, like “ant-arctic.” I protest that
I felt myself to be as intimate with the appearance of the New Hebrides
as with the ways of a matinée. I fancy that it was twenty years since
I had seen one. Say what you will, evening theater-going is far more
commonplace; for in the evening one is frivolous by profession but
afternoon frivolity is stolen fruit. And being a very frivolous old
woman I find that a nibble or so of stolen fruit leavens the toast and
tea. Innocent stolen fruit, mind you, for heaven forbid that I should
prescribe a diet of dust and ashes.

I had taken from its tissues my lace waist and was making it splendid
with a scrap of lavender velvet when our old servant brought in fresh
candles. She looked with suspicion on the garment.

“Nichola,” I said guiltily, “I’m going to a matinée. And you’ll need
get no luncheon,” I hastened to add, “because I’m lunching with Miss
Lillieblade.”

“Yah!” said Nichola, “going to a matinée?”

Nichola says “matiknee,” and she regards a theater box as among all
self-indulgences the unpardonable sin.

“You’ll have no luncheon to get, Nichola,” I persuasively reminded her.

Old Nichola clicked the wax candles.

“Me, I’d rather get up lunch for a fambly o’ shepherds,” she grimly
assured me, “than to hev you lose your immortal soul at this late day.”

She went back to the kitchen and I was minded to take off the lavender
velvet; but I did not do so, my religion being independent of the
spectrum.

At noon Nichola was in the drawing-room fastening my gaiters when Miss
Lillieblade came in, erect as a little brown and white toy with a
chocolate cloak and a frosting hood.

“We are going to see ‘The End of the World,’” said Miss Willie
blithely,--“I knew you haven’t seen it, Etarre.”

Old Nichola, who is so privileged that she will expect polite attention
even on her death-bed, listened eagerly.

“Is it somethin’ of a religious play, mem?” she hopefully inquired.

“I dare say, Nichola,” replied Miss Willie kindly; and afterward, to
me: “But I hope not. Religious plays are so ungodly.”

Her footman helped us down the steps, not by any means that we required
it but for what does one pay a footman I would like to ask? And we
drove away to a little place which I cannot call a café. I would
as readily lunch at a ribbon-counter as in a café. But this was a
little place where Pelleas and I often had our tea, a place that was
all of old rugs and old brasses in front, and in secret was set with
tête-à-tête tables having each one rose and one shaded candle. The
linen was what a café would call lace and the china may have been china
or it may have been garlands and love-knots. From where I sat I could
see shelves filled with home-made jam, labeled, like library-books, and
looking far more attractive than some peoples’ libraries. We ordered
tea and chicken-broth and toast and a salad and, because we had both
been forbidden, a sweet. I am bound to say that neither of us ate the
sweet but we pretended not to notice.

We talked about the old days--this is no sign of old age but rather of
a good memory; and presently I was reminded of what Pelleas had assured
me that morning about love.

“Where did you go to school?” Miss Willie had been asking me.

“At Miss Mink’s and Miss Burdick’s,” I answered, “and I was counting
up the other day that if either of them is alive now she is about one
hundred and five years old and in the newspapers on her birthday.”

“Miss Mink and Miss Burdick alive now,” Miss Willie repeated. “No,
indeed. They would rather die than be alive now. They would call
it proof of ill-breeding not to die at threescore and ten each
according to rule. I went to Miss Trelawney’s. I had an old aunt who
had brought me up to say ‘Ma’am?’ when I failed to understand; but if
I said ‘Ma’am?’ in school, Miss Trelawney made me learn twenty lines
of Dante; and if I _didn’t_ say it at home I was not allowed to have
dessert. Between the two I loved poetry and had a good digestion and my
education extended no farther.”

“That is quite far enough,” I said. “I don’t know a better preparation
for life than love of poetry and a good digestion.”

If I could have but one--and yet why should I take sides and prejudice
anybody? Still, Pelleas had a frightful dyspepsia one winter and it
would have taken forty poets armed to the teeth--but I really refuse to
prejudice anybody.

Then I told Miss Willie how at Miss Mink’s and Miss Burdick’s I had
had my first note from a _boy_; I slept with it under my pillow and I
forgot it and the maid carried it to Miss Mink, and I blush to recall
that I appeared before that lady with the defense that according
to poetry my note was worth more than her entire curriculum, and
triumphantly referred her to “Summum Bonum.” She sent me home, I
recall. And then Miss Willie told how having successfully evaded chapel
one winter evening at Miss Trelawney’s she had waked in the night with
the certainty that she had lost her soul in consequence and, unable to
rid herself of the conviction, she had risen and gone barefoot through
the icy halls to the chapel and there had been horrified to find old
Miss Trelawney kneeling with a man’s photograph in her hands.

“Isn’t it strange, Etarre,” said Miss Willie, “how the little mysteries
and surprises of loving some one are everywhere, from one’s first note
from a _boy_ to the Miss Trelawneys whom every one knows?”

Sometimes I think that it is almost impudent to wonder about one’s
friends when one is certain beyond wondering that they all have secret
places in their hearts filled with delight and tears. But remembering
what Pelleas had said that morning I did wonder about Miss Willie,
since I knew that for all her air of spiced cordial she was lonely;
and yet mentally I placed Miss Willie beside old Nichola and Hobart
Eddy, intending to use all three as instances to crush the argument of
Pelleas. Surely of all the world, I decided, those three loved nobody.

At last we left the pleasant table, nodding good-afternoon to the Cap
and Ribbons who had been cut from a coloured print to serve us. We
lingered among the brasses and the casts, feeling very humble before
the proprietor who looked like a duchess cut from another coloured
print. I envied her that library of jelly.

On the street Miss Willie bought us each a rose for company and then
bade the coachman drive slowly so that we entered the theater with the
orchestra, which is the only proper moment. If one is earlier one feels
as if one looked ridiculously expectant; if one is later one misses the
pleasure of being expectant at all. We were in a lower stage box and
all the other boxes were filled with bouquets of young people, with a
dry stalk or two magnificently bonneted set stiffly among them. I hope
that we did not seem too absurd, Miss Willie and I with our bobbing
white curls all alone in that plump crimson box.

“The End of the World” proved to be a fresh, happy play, fragrant of
lavender and sweet air. The play was about a man and a woman who loved
each other very much with no analyses or confessions to disturb any
one. The blinds were open and the sun streamed in through four acts of
pleasant humour and quick action among well-bred people who manifestly
had been brought up to marry and give in marriage without trying to
compete with a state where neither is done. In the fourth act the moon
shone on a little châlet in the leaves and one saw that there are love
and sacrifice and good will enough to carry on the world in spite
of its other connections. It was a play which made me thankful that
Pelleas and I have clung to each other through society and poverty and
dyspepsia and never have allied ourselves with the other side. And if
any one thinks that there is a middle ground I, who am seventy, know
far better.

Now in the third act it chanced that the mother of the play, so to
speak, at the height of her ambition that her daughter marry a fortune
as she herself had done, opened an old desk and came upon a photograph
of the love of her own youth, whom she had not married. That was a
sufficiently hackneyed situation, and the question that smote the
mother must be one that is beating in very many hearts that give no
sign; for she had truly loved this boy and he had died constant to her.
And the woman prayed that when she died she might “go back and be with
him.” Personally, being a very hard and unforgiving old woman, I had
little patience with her; and besides I think better of heaven than to
believe in any such necessity. Still this may be because Pelleas and I
are certain that we will belong to each other when we die. Perhaps if I
had not married him--but then I did.

Hardly had the curtain fallen when to my amazement Miss Willie
Lillieblade leaned forward with this:--

“Etarre, do you believe that those who truly love each other here are
going to know each other when they die?”

“Certainly!” I cried, fearing the very box would crumble at the heresy
of that doubt.

“No matter how long after ...” she said wistfully.

“Not a bit of difference,” I returned positively.

“You and Pelleas can be surer than most,” Miss Willie said
reflectively, “but suppose one of you had died fifty years ago. Would
you be so sure?”

“Why, of course,” I replied, “Pelleas was always Pelleas.”

“So he was,” Miss Willie assented and was silent for a little; and
then, without warning:--

“Etarre, I mean this,” she said, speaking rapidly and not meeting my
eyes. “When I was twenty I met a boy a little older than I, and I had
known him only a few months when he went abroad to join his father.
Before he went--he told me that he loved me--” it was like seeing
jonquils bloom in snow to hear Miss Willie say this--“and I know that
I loved him. But I did not go with him--he wanted me to go and I did
not go with him--for stupid reasons. He was killed on a mountain in
Switzerland. And I wonder and wonder--you see that was fifty years
ago,” said Miss Willie, “but I wonder....”

I sat up very straight, hardly daring to look at her. All you young
people who talk with such pretty concern of love, do you know what it
will be when you are seventy to come suddenly on one of these flowers,
still fresh, which you toss about you now?

“Since he died loving you and you have loved him all these years,” I
said, trying to keep my voice steady, “never tell me that you will not
be each other’s--afterward.”

And at least no one need gainsay this who is not prepared to prove the
contrary.

“But where--where?” cried Miss Willie, poor little Miss Willie, echoing
the cry of every one in the world. It was very strange to see this
little vial of spiced cordial wondering about the immortality of love.

“I don’t know where or how,” I said, “but believe it and you’ll see.”

Ah, how I reproached myself later to think that I could have said
no more than that. Many a fine response that I might have made I
compounded afterward, all about love that is infinite and eternal so
that it fills the universe and one cannot get beyond it, and so on, in
long phrases; but there in that box not one other word could I say. And
yet when one thinks of it what is there to say when one is asked about
this save simply: “I don’t know how or where, but believe it and you’ll
see.”

We said little else, and I sat there with all that company of blue and
pink waists dancing about me through a mist in a fashion that would
have astonished them. So much for Miss Willie as an instance in my
forthcoming argument with Pelleas about every one in the world loving
some one. Miss Willie had gone over to his side of the case outright.
I began to doubt that there would be an argument. Still, there would
always be Hobart Eddy, inalienably on my side and serenely loving every
one alike. And there would always be Nichola, loving nobody. If all
the world fell in love and went quite mad, there would yet be Nichola
fluting her “Yah!” to any such fancy.

I dare say that neither Miss Willie nor I heard very much of that last
act in spite of its moonlit châlet among the leaves. But one picture I
carried away with me and the sound of one voice. They were those of a
girl, a very happy girl, waiting at the door of the châlet.

“Dear,” she said to her sweetheart, “if we had never met, if we had
never seen each other, it seems as if my love for you would have
followed you without my knowing. Maybe some day you would have heard it
knocking at your heart, and you would have called it a wish or a dream.”

Afterward I recalled that I was saying over those words as we made our
way up the aisle.

We were almost the last to leave the theater. I like that final glimpse
of a place where happy people have just been. We found the coupé and a
frantic carriageman put us in, very gently, though he banged the door
in that fashion which seems to be the only outlet to a carriageman’s
emotions.

“Good-night,” said Miss Willie Lillieblade at my door, and gave my hand
an unwonted lingering touch. I knew why. Dear, starved heart, she must
have longed for years to talk about that boy. I watched her coupé roll
toward the great lonely house. Never tell me that the boy who died in
Switzerland was not beside her hearth waiting her coming.

Our drawing-room was dimly lighted. I took off my bonnet there and
found myself longing for my tea. I am wont to ring for Nichola only
upon stately occasions and certainly not at times when in her eyes I
tremble on the brink of “losing my immortal soul at this late day.”
Accordingly I went down to the kitchen.

I cautiously pushed open the door, for I am frankly afraid of Nichola
who is in everything a frightful non-conformist. There was no fire
on the hearth, but the bracket lamp was lighted and on a chair lay
Nichola’s best shawl. Nichola, in her best black frock and wearing her
best bonnet, was just arranging the tea-things on a tray.

“I’m glad that you’ve been out, Nichola,” said I gently--as gently as a
truant child, I fancy!--“It is such a beautiful day.”

“Who,” Nichola said grimly without looking at me, “said I’d been out?”

“Why, I saw you--” I began.

“Where was I?” Nichola demanded shrilly, whirling about.

“I saw you with your bonnet on,” said I, and added with dignity, “You
may bring the tea up at once, and mind that there is plenty of hot
water.”

Then I scurried upstairs, my heart beating at my daring. I had actually
ordered Nichola about. I half expected that in consequence she would
bring me cold water, but she came up quietly enough with some delicious
tea and sandwiches. At the door, with unwonted meekness, she asked me
if everything was right; and I, not abating one jot of my majesty, told
her that there might be a bit more cream. She even brought that and
left me marveling. I could as easily imagine the kitchen range with an
emotion as Nichola with a guilty conscience, and yet sometimes I have
a guilty conscience myself and I always act first very self-sufficient
and then very humble, just like Nichola.

When she was handing the dessert that night at my solitary dinner, she
spoke; and if the kitchen range had kissed a hand at me I should not
have been more amazed.

“Every one took their parts very well this afternoon, I thought,” she
stiffly volunteered.

I looked at her blankly. Then slowly it dawned for me: The best shawl,
the guilty conscience--Nichola had been to the matinée!

“Nichola!” I said unguardedly. “Were you--”

“Certain,” she said curtly, “I ain’t no call to be no more careful o’
my soul than what you are.”

I, the keeper of Nichola, who has bullied Pelleas and me about for
years!

“Did--did you like it, Nichola?” I asked doubtfully, a little unaware
how to treat a discussion of original sin like this.

“Yes, I did,” she replied unexpectedly. “But--do you believe all of it?”

“Believe that it really happened?” I asked in bewilderment.

“No,” said Nichola, catching up a corner of the table-cloth in her
brown fingers; “believe what she said--in the door there?”

It came to me then dimly, but before I could tell or remember....

“That about ‘If we hadn’t never met,’” Nichola quoted; “‘it sorter
seems as though my love would ’a’ followed you up even if I didn’t know
about it an’ mebbe you’d ’a’ heard it somewheres an’ ’a’ thought you
was a-wishin’ or a-dreamin’--’ that part,” said Nichola.

And then I understood--I understood.

“Nichola,” I said, “yes. I believe it with all my heart. I know it is
so!”

Nichola looked at me wistfully.

“But wishin’ may be just wishin’,” she said, “an’ dreamin’ nights may
be just dreamin’ nights--”

“Never,” I cried positively. “Most of the time these are voices of the
people who would have loved us if we had ever met.”

Old Nichola’s face, with its little unremembering eyes beneath her gray
moss hair, seldom changes expression save to look angry. I think that
Nichola, like the carriageman slamming the doors, relieves all emotion
by anger. When I die I expect that in proof of her grief she will
drive every one out of the house with the broom. Therefore I was not
surprised to see her look at me now with a sudden frown and flush that
should have terrorized me.

“Heaven over us!” she said, turning abruptly. “The silly folks
that dream. I never dreamed a thing in my life. Do you want more
pudding-sauce?”

“No,” I said gently, “no, Nichola.”

I was not deceived. Nichola knew it, and went in the pantry, muttering.
But I was not deceived. I knew what she had meant. Nichola, that old
woman whose life had some way been cast up on this barren coast near
the citadel of the love of Pelleas and me; Nichola, who had lived
lonely in the grim company of the duties of a household not her own;
Nichola, at more than sixty, was welcoming the belief that the love
which she never had inspired was some way about her all the time.

Where was my side of the argument to be held with Pelleas? Where,
indeed? But I was glad to see it go. And I serenely put away until
another time the case of Hobart Eddy.

All the evening I sat quietly before the hearth. There was no need for
books. The drawing-room was warm and bright; supper for Pelleas was
drawn to the open fire and my rose was on the tray. When I heard him
close the front door it seemed to me that I must welcome him for us
three, for Miss Willie and Nichola and me.




III

THE PATH OF IN-THE-SPRING


The case of Hobart Eddy had always interested us,--dear Hobart Eddy
with whom matters stood like this: Heaven had manifestly intended him
to be a Young Husband, and yet he was thirty-five and walked the world
alone.

Pelleas and I were wont to talk of him before our drawing-room fire.
Hobart Eddy, we were agreed, was one of the men who look like a young
husband. By that I cannot in the least explain what I mean, but he
was wont to bend above a book or lean toward a picture exactly as
another man would say: “And how are you to-day, dear?” If he were to
have entered a coach in which I was traveling I think that I should
involuntarily have looked about for some girlish face to be lighting
at his coming. Therefore we two had been wont to amuse ourselves by
picturing, but without much hope, his possible wife; she must be so
many things to him that we found it difficult to select any one in whom
to rest our expectation, faint yet persistent. Though I knew no one
save Pelleas himself who would have been as a lover so adorable, as a
husband so tender, the problem was not quite so simple; for Hobart Eddy
was a king of the social hour and a ruler of many.

“The allegro, quite the allegro of my dinner symphony,” Miss Willie
Lillieblade had once thankfully flattered him. “Ah, you were more.
You were the absolute conductor. You were the salvation of our tempo
during the entrée. The dear Bishop, who thought he was the religious
theme for the trombones, how you quieted his ecclesiastical chantings.
How you modulated the sputterings of that French horn of a count. And
ah, my dear Hobart, how you obeyed my anxious _sforzando_ over my mute
little guest of honour. I’ve no _beaux yeux_ to look you thanks, but I
appreciated every breath of your baton.”

Thus, with his own charm, Hobart Eddy was one whom it was a simple
thing to adore; and as Pelleas said with twinkling cruelty débutantes
are dear, simple things. But among them all season after season Hobart
moved, boyishly interested, urbanely ready as we thought to do the
homage of the devotee and, one might have said, urbanely unable. And
season after season we had failed to plan for him a concrete romance.
For we thought that his wife should be no less than he a social ruler
of many, yet she must have his own detached heart of youth. Moreover,
we wished her to be clever, but not to every one; and wise, though
with a pretty unreason; and girlishly unconscious, or if she was
conscious then just conscious enough; and very willing to be ordered
about a bit, though losing none of her pretty imperiousness--ah well,
no wonder the case of Hobart Eddy baffled us. No wonder that I believed
him hopeless as I had believed Nichola, who loves no one. We should
long ago have laid the matter by if only there had not persisted about
him that Devoted Young Husband look.

It was in the week made memorable both by our Easter day experience and
by the moral of my matinée that our thought momentarily took up the
case of Hobart Eddy in earnest. Indeed, our Easter day and my matinée
did much to shape our Summer. For on a sudden it seemed so easy to make
happiness in the world as well as to look close and read the fine print
of romance that we found ourselves with almost no leisure. And in that
very week Viola unexpectedly came home from school.

Viola is a niece of my dear Madame Sally Chartres and the previous
Spring she had nominally spent a week with Pelleas and me. I say
nominally because in reality she had spent it before the telephone on
our landing.

“Viola, who,” Pelleas had been wont to say, “sounds like a Greek
maiden captive in an Illyrian household and beloved of a Greek youth,
_Telephone_, in four syllables.”

He was a young bank clerk in Broad street and he seemed to have a
theory that whenever any one else had used the telephone Viola was no
longer at the other end, and he was obliged to make sure. “Miss Viola,
the telephone wants to talk to you,” Nichola had announced all day
long. And though Pelleas and I are the first to love a lover, some way
the case failed to impress us to partisanship--just as we lose sympathy
with the influenza of a man who is perpetually shutting the car door.

“If I were a telephone,” Pelleas would say, “intended by Science for
uses of medicine, bonds and the like I should get out of order if they
tried to make me a courtier.”

“Pelleas,” I had justly protested, “you would be the first to be
delighted.”

“Ah, yes,” he admitted, “I dare say I should, but then you see I know
so little about science.”

When that Summer it was decided that Viola should complete her school
in Switzerland, Pelleas and I understood that the Chartres family
sympathized with our own impression about our telephone. But before
the end of the year Viola unexpectedly returned from Lausanne. And the
April day on which we learned of this from Hobart Eddy was further
memorable to us: For it was on that very morning that the first
rose-breasted grosbeaks appeared in the park.

West of the walk leading from the south to the Reservoir Castle in
the park there is a little brick path, steep and uneven and running
crookedly downward like a mere mood of the sober walk itself. The path
is railed in from the crowding green things on either side, but the
rail hardly thwarts a magnificent Forsythia which tosses its sprays to
curve high over the way like the curve of wings in flight. It was a
habit of ours to seek out this path once or twice every Spring and to
stand beneath these branches. Some way when we did that we were _sure_
that it was Spring, for we seemed to catch its high moment; as for
another a bell might strike somewhere with “One, two, three: Now it is
the crest of May. Four, five, six: Now this apple-tree is at the very
height of its bloom. This is _the moment_ of this rose.” We called this
path the path of In-the-Spring. We always went there in the mornings,
for in Spring we think that it seems to be _more_ Spring in the morning
than in the afternoon. And it was here of an April Nine-o’clock that we
saw our first pair of grosbeaks of the year.

They alighted quite close to us as if for them we were not there. They
were on some pleasant business of testing the flavour of buds and the
proud, rose-throated male, vibrating his wings the while, gave us his
note as if he were the key to the whole matter. And I think that he
was .. .--.....⌒⌒.--.--? he imparted, and it was like revelation and
prophecy and belief; so that for a moment we were near knowing what
he meant and what he is and what we and the Forsythia are. But the
information escaped us and the grosbeaks flew away. However, they left
us their blessing. For there was a little glow in our hearts at having
been so near.

“Now,” Pelleas said as we mounted the steep path back to the real walk
(so innocently absorbed the real walk looked and as if it knew nothing
at all about its gay little aberration of a path!). “Now, that must
mean something.”

“Of course it must,” said I contentedly. “What must, Pelleas?”

He answered solemnly: That when a bird or a child or a wood-creature
shows you confidence it always indicates that something pleasant is
about to happen. I detected his mood of improvisation; but who am I to
dissent from an improvisation so satisfying?

We sat on the first bench and Pelleas drew out our March-April record.
In a little town of the West which we know and love there is kept each
Spring on the bulletin board of the public library a list of dates of
the return of the migratory birds with the names of those who first
saw and reported them; and there is the pleasantest rivalry among the
citizens to determine who shall announce the earliest appearances.
From time to time through the Spring this list is printed in the daily
newspaper. Since we knew of this beautiful custom Pelleas and I have
always made a list, for Spring. That day our record read:--

  March 9th   Robin,           Pelleas.
  March 10th  Bluebird,        Etarre.
  March 12th  Phœbe,           Etarre.

 Note.--Earliest we have seen in five years.

  March 16th  Geese (flying),  Pelleas.
  March 21st  Song Sparrow,    Pelleas.
  March 21st  Meadow Lark,     Pelleas.

 Note.--Not perfectly certain. Nearly so.

  April 5th   House Wren,      Etarre.

 Note.--Did not see it. Heard it.

  April 12th  High Holder,     Etarre.
  April 14th  Sparrow Hawk,    Pelleas.

 Note.--May have been a pigeon hawk.

  April 29th  Rose-breasted grosbeaks (pair),  Etarre and Pelleas.

“It sounds like a programme of music,” I said.

“All lists are wonderful things,” said Pelleas, folding ours away in
his portmonnaie; “one ought to ‘keep’ a great many.”

I did not at once agree. To be sure I believe passionately in lists of
birds; but in the main I profess for lists a profound indifference. As
for “keeping a diary” I would as soon describe a walk in the woods by
telling the number of steps I had taken.

“One cannot make a list of the glory of a thing,” I ventured at last.

“Well, no,” Pelleas admitted. “If only one could what a talisman it
would be to take out and read, on one’s worst days.”

It would indeed. But I suppose that one’s list of Spring birds would
help one on such a day if one would, so to speak, read deep down into
the page.

“We might make a ‘Bird List: Part Two,’” Pelleas suggested, “for that
kind of thing.”

“But how could one?” I objected; “for example: ‘_April
29th--Rose-breasted grosbeak day. A momentary knowledge that there is
more about a bird and about what he is and about what we are than one
commonly supposes._’ You see, Pelleas, how absurd that would be.”

“Ah, well,” he protested stoutly, “one needn’t try to write it out in
words. One could merely indicate it. Just that would help one to keep
alive the thrill of a thing. Such a device would be very dear to every
one.”

That is true. To keep alive the thrill of a thing, of revelation, of
prophecy, of belief--we all go asking how to do that.

“I dare say though,” Pelleas said, “that one could keep it alive by
merely passing it on. The point is to keep such moments _alive_. Not
necessarily to keep them for one’s own.”

To keep alive the thrill of that moment when we had seen the grosbeaks,
the high moment of a Spring morning; not to know these little ecstasies
briefly, but to abide in their essential peace; is this not as if one
were arbiter of certain modes of immortality?

“Surely that would make one a ‘restorer of paths to dwell in,’” he
added.

“A restorer of the path of In-the-Spring,” I said.

Pelleas turned the glasses on the magnolias. “On my soul,” he
exclaimed, “I thought I saw a tanager!” And when we had stood for a
moment to watch hopefully and had been disappointed (“Why shouldn’t an
early tanager come, to help us to believe?” he wondered), he gave a
vital spark to what I had said about the path:--

“I suppose that that little path really has no ending,” he said; “you
cannot end direction. Yes, the path of In-the-Spring must run right
away to the end of the world.”

We walked on happily, counting the robins, listening to a near phœbe
call to a far phœbe, watching two wrens pull slivers from a post for a
nest they knew. Across the green, but too far away for certainty, we
thought we saw a cherry bough in flower. .. .-- ..... .⌒⌒ .--? we heard
the grosbeak once again from somewhere invisible. The mornings on
which we walk in the park seem to us almost like youth.

       *       *       *       *       *

The augury that something pleasant was about to happen was further
fulfilled when we came in sight of our house and saw Hobart Eddy’s
great appalling French touring car like an elephant kneeling at our
curb. Hobart was waiting for us in the drawing-room and he stood before
us looking down from his splendid height and getting his own way from
the first.

“Come, Aunt Etarre,” he said, “there is no car like her. I want you
both to run over to Inglese to see Viola. You knew that she has come
home?”

“Viola--has she really?” I cried; and, “Have you seen her?” asked
Pelleas; and, “How does she look?” we demanded together.

“No,” Hobart said, “I’ve not seen her. I had a charming little note
from her, full of nods. Now that I think of it,” he went on leisurely,
“Viola’s charming little letters are always very like a bow from her.
She never even waves her hand in them. She merely bows, in ink. I think
I shall point out to her that if ever she is too busy to write letters
she might send about her handkerchiefs, instead. One would tell quite
as much as the other, and both suggest orris....”

“Hobart Eddy,” I begged impatiently, “where is Viola?”

“She is in Inglese-in-the-valley, with the Chartres,” he told me. “Get
your bonnet, dear, and a tremendous veil and come. I’ll run like a
tortoise-shell and you shall toot the horn.”

I turned tremblingly to Pelleas for I had never been in a motor car.
Lumbering electric hansoms and victorias had borne me, but the kneeling
elephant was another matter. But Pelleas, being a man, is no more in
awe of machinery than I am of chiffons; or than he is of chiffons; and
he assented to Inglese quite simply.

“Very well, Hobart Eddy,” I said, “I will go. You are charming to
want us. But bear in mind that I reserve the right to insist that you
are running too fast, block by block. And if anything goes wrong very
likely I shall catch at the brake.”

“I’ll lead the thing by the bridle if you say so,” he promised
faithfully.

Presently we were free of the avenue, skimming the park, threading our
way among an hundred excitements, _en route_ to Inglese. Hobart Eddy
was driving the machine himself and as I looked at his shoulders I
found to my amazement that I was feeling a certain confidence. Hobart
Eddy was one of the men whose shoulders--ah, well, it is among the
hardships of life that one’s best reasons are never communicable. But
I was feeling a certain confidence. And though a little alarm remained
to prove me conservative I found myself also diverted. I remember
trying when I was a child to determine at night in a thunder-storm
which of me was frightened and which was sleepy and deciding that
some of me was sleepy but all of me was frightened. And now, having
come to a time of life when some terror should be a diversion, all of
me was diverted though some of me was terrified. Hobart was running
very slowly and glancing back at me now and then to nod reassuringly.
The very sun was reassuring. The river and the Long Island ferry were
reassuring. On such a day certainty is as easy as song. And by the time
that we had reached the hills about Inglese I could have found it in my
heart to telephone to Pelleas if he had been a block away: What a day.
I love you.

Instead I sat quietly in the tonneau when, on the outskirts of the
village, Hobart drew the car to the green crest of a little height. I
found that the tonneau was geometrically in the one precise spot from
which through pine- and fir-trees a look of the sea unrolled. Hobart is
a perfect host and is always constructing these little altars to the
inessential. On a journey Pelleas and he would remember to look out
for the “view” as another man would think of trunk checks. But Pelleas
and Hobart would remember trunk checks too and it is this combination
which holds a woman captive.

“And down there,” said Hobart, looking the other way, “will be Viola of
Inglese-in-the-valley. It sounds like an aria.”

“I wonder,” Pelleas observed on this, “whether Viola is still in love
with our telephone. If I thought she was I should certainly take it
out. I have never,” Pelleas added conscientiously, “taken one out. But
I think I could. I’ve often thought I could. And that should do for
him--that young Greek youth _Telephone_.”

“Her little nod of a letter,” said Hobart, “seemed very content. So
content that either she must have forgotten all about your telephone or
else she had him at her elbow. They say there are those two routes to
content.”

Had Hobart himself found that first route, I wondered. For some years
now we had seen him merely sitting out operas, handing tea, leading
cotillons, and returning fans--urbane, complaisant, perfectly the
social automaton. But always we had patiently hoped for him something
gracious. Instead, had he merely found the content of some Forgetting?
And if this was so he was in case still more sad than if he were
unhappy. Either possibility grieved me. I am not unskillful with my
needle and I found myself oddly longing to bring to bear my embroidery
silks and cottons upon Hobart Eddy’s life. If only I might have
embroidered on it a pattern of rosemary or heart’s-ease--ay, or even
the rue.

And suddenly I grasped the real situation. Here was Hobart for whom
we longed to plan a concrete romance. And over there, in Inglese,
was Viola come home again, grown wiser, more beautiful, and I had no
doubt remaining as wholly lovable as before. And did I not know how
willingly Madame Sally Chartres would have trusted the future of her
little grandniece to Hobart Eddy? Was I not, in fact, in the secret of
certain perfectly permissible ideas of Madame Sally’s on the subject?
Not plans, but ideas. Moreover, now that Viola was back in America
there was once more the peril of that young _Telephone_. And if Pelleas
and I had devised the matter we could have thought of no lady lovelier
than Viola. I turned to telegraph to Pelleas and I found him in the
midst of the merest glance at me. It was one of the glances which need
no spelling. And it was in that moment as if between us there had been
spoken our universal and unqualified, _Why not?_

“Hobart,” said I, “you are very brave to go to Inglese. I have always
thought that any man could fall in love with a woman named Viola.”

But as for Hobart he serenely took one of the side paths which he is so
fond of developing.

“I don’t know,” he said reflectively, “Viola begins with a V. I’m a
bit afraid of V. V--‘the viol, the violet, and the vine.’ V sounds,”
he continued, as if he enjoyed it, “such an impractical letter--a kind
of apotheosis of B. Wouldn’t one say that V is a sort of poet to the
alphabet? None of the sturdiness of G--or the tranquillity of M--or the
piquancy of K--or the all-round usefulness of E. I don’t know, really,
whether a woman who begins with V could be taken seriously. I think I
should feel as if I were married to a wreath, or a lyre.”

Any one save Pelleas and me would have been discouraged, but we are
more than seventy years old and we understand the value of the quality
of a man’s indifference. Moreover, we believed that Hobart had a heart
both cold and hot but that the cold side is always turned toward the
sun.

“Ah,” said I, “but Viola Chartres is another matter. She makes one
_wish_ to fall in love with a wreath, or a lyre.”

“A man always ought,” Hobart impersonally continued, “to marry a
woman named Elizabeth Strong Davis or the like. Something that sounds
primal--and finished. A sort of ballast-and-anchor name that one might
say over in exigencies, like a golden text.”

“Ah, well, now, I don’t know,” Pelleas submitted mildly, “‘Etarre’
sounds like Camelot and Astolat and Avalon and so on to any number of
unrealities. But it seems like a golden text to me.”

I wonder that I could pursue my fixed purpose, that was so charming
to hear. Perhaps it is that I have partly learned to keep a purpose
through charming things as well as through difficulties, though this is
twofold as hard to do.

“Women’s names are wonderful things,” Hobart Eddy was going tranquilly
on. “They seem to be alive--to have life on their own account. I can
say over a name--or I think I could say over a name,” he corrected it,
“to myself, and aloud, until it seemed Somebody there with me.”

I looked at him swiftly. Did he mean that there was for him some such
name? Or did he merely mean that he might mean something, other things
being equal?

“That would be a good test,” he added, “for one who couldn’t make up
his mind whether he was in love. And it would be a new and decorative
branch of phonology. Why doesn’t phonology,” he inquired reasonably,
“take up some of these wonderful things instead of harking back to
beginnings?”

“Precisely,” said I tenaciously, “and Viola--”

    “‘Who is Viola? What is she
    That all our swains commend her?’”

he adapted, smiling.

“I’ve wondered,” said I gravely, “that you haven’t asked that of
yourself before.”

But having now effectually introduced the matter I looked about me
helplessly. What were we to say to Hobart Eddy? To have embroidered a
message with silks and cottons would have been a simple matter; but it
is difficult to speak heart’s-ease and rue. Moreover, it is absurd to
impart one’s theory of life without an invitation. Sometimes even by
invitation it is absurd. If only one might embroider it, now! Or if one
might merely indicate it, as Pelleas had said of the “Bird Book: Part
Two,” for keeping alive the thrill of a thing....

At that our morning was back upon me, with its moment that was like
revelation and prophecy and belief. Yet how to give to Hobart Eddy in
effect: _A momentary knowledge that there is more about a bird and
about what he is and about what we are than one commonly supposes._
How to tell him that some gracious purpose--like winning the love of
Viola--would teach the secret? I longed unspeakably, and so, I know,
did Pelleas, to be to him a “restorer of paths to dwell in”--a restorer
of the path of In-the-Spring which we feared that he had long lost.
Though, indeed, how should one ever lose that path which runs to the
end of the world? I looked at Pelleas and surprised him in the midst
of the merest glance at me. And when he spoke I knew that he understood.

“Hobart,” said he, “the grosbeaks are here. We saw them this morning.”

Hobart Eddy nodded with an air of polite concern. “The Grosbeaks?” he
said over, uncertainly. “Do--do I know them? I am so deuced forgetful.”

“Ah, well, now,” said Pelleas, “I don’t know that they are on your
list. But you are on theirs, if you care to be. I suggest that you make
their acquaintance. They’re birds.”

Hobart looked startled. But Pelleas enjoys as much as any one being
momentarily misunderstood and he smiled back at Hobart as if he were
proud of his idiom.

“I must get you to present me,” Hobart seriously murmured.

“Do,” Pelleas said with enjoyment. “Come over in the park with us any
day now--though May and June are rather better. I never knew them come
up from the South so early. Splendid family and all that,” Pelleas
added; “_Zamelodia Ludoviciana_, you know. Charming connections.”

“O, I say,” said Hobart, “what a jolly idiot I am! I thought you were
in earnest, you know.”

“I never was more in earnest in my life,” Pelleas protested. “You
really must see them. Little brown lady-bird with her gold under
her wings. Male with a glorious rose all over his breast and a
song--Hobart, you should hear his song. It’s a little like a robin’s
song, but all trilled out and tucked in and done in doubles and
triplets and burrs--and a question at the end. You never heard one sing
at night? You never went over in the park or out in the country to hear
them sing at night? Etarre--do show him how it goes.”

I have a fancy for singing the bird notes that we love and Pelleas,
who could as easily hem a thing as to sing it, will in Spring keep me
all hours at this pastime. Once he woke me in the night to reclaim the
song of the orchard oriole--and next morning Nichola sorely discomfited
me by observing that long after midnight she had heard owls in the
chimney. But we persist in the delight and so now I sang for Hobart the
song of the grosbeak:--

[Music]

“it goes,” said I, “but the next one you hear may be quite--quite
different! There is no tune to the song, ever--but exquisite rhythm.
O, and such arch anxiety he is in, Hobart; you cannot think. And when
he is done you’ve got to believe the way he does because of his little
question which is never ‘Do you think?’ but always ‘Don’t you think?’
Fancy your never having heard him.”

“I say, you know,” said Hobart, enthusiastically, “I’d like to hear
him, most awfully.”

“O you would--you would,” I agreed, and could say no more. In Spring my
heart is always aching for the busy and the self-absorbed who do not
seize opera glasses and post away to some place of trees.

Pelleas was fumbling in his portmonnaie.

“Look here,” he said beaming; “this is the list of the birds that we
have seen this Spring. And we have not once stepped outside town,
either.”

Hobart took our list and knitted his brows over it.

“I know robins and bluebirds,” he claimed proudly.

Pelleas nodded. “They are very nearly our dearest,” he said, “like
daisies and buttercups. But we love the others, too--the rose and
orchid and gardenia birds, Hobart. The grosbeaks and orioles and
tanagers. You can’t think what a pleasure it is to see them come back
one after another, as true to their dates as the stars--only now and
then a bit earlier, for spice. The society columns in November are
nothing in comparison--though of course they do very well. Yes, it’s
quite like seeing the stars come back every year. Etarre and I go to
the park after breakfast for the birds and to the roof of the house
after dinner for the stars. March and April are wonderful months for
the constellations.”

“O yes,” said Hobart Eddy, “yes. The Great Dipper and the North star
and the Pleiades. I always know those.”

He was still holding the list, and Pelleas leaned forward and tapped on
it, his face sparkling.

“Hobart,” he said, “give us a day next week. Let us leave home at
six in the morning and get out in the real country and _walk_ in the
fields. We’ll undertake to show you the birds of this entire list! The
hermit thrushes should be here by then--and I don’t know but the wood
pewees and the orioles, the season is so early. And of course no end of
the warbler family. We will all take glasses and Etarre shall give us
the bird songs and I dare say we’ll see some nests. In the middle of
the day we’ll hunt flowers--I could have been certain that I saw violet
columbine a bit back on this road. And by next week we won’t be able
to step for the rue anemone and the hepatica. You wouldn’t mind not
picking them, Hobart?” asked Pelleas, anxiously. “We’re rather extreme
when it comes to that, and we don’t pick them, you know. You wouldn’t
mind that, I dare say?”

Hobart Eddy said: No. That he should not mind that.

“And then after dark we’ll start home,” Pelleas went on, “but long
enough after dark so that we can walk on some open road and see the
stars. Orion will be done for by then,” he recalled frowning. “Orion
and Jupiter are about below the west by dark even now. But Leo is
overhead--and the Dragon and Cassiopeia in the north--and Spica and
Vega and Arcturus in the east. O, we shall have friends enough. It is
now,” said Pelleas, “forty-nine years that Etarre and I have watched
for them every year. We began to study them the Summer that we were
married. Forty-nine years and they have never failed us once. What do
you think of that?”

Hobart folded our list and handed it back.

“Do you know,” he said solemnly, “that I wouldn’t know whether Hepatica
was a bird or a constellation? Jove,” he added, “what a lot of worlds.”

As for me I sat nodding with all my might. Yes, what a lot of worlds.

“Will you give us a day, Hobart?” Pelleas repeated.

“With all my heart,” Hobart Eddy said simply.

“We’ll take Viola with us!” I cried then joyfully. “She knows all these
things better than we.”

“She does?” exclaimed Hobart. “At her age? I believe they have
actually begun to educate people for living,” he observed, “instead
of for earning a living. I dare say lots of people know this kind of
thing--people in cafés and cars and around, whom one never suspects of
knowing,” he added thoughtfully.

Pelleas and I have sometimes said that of the most unpromising people:
Perhaps after all they know the birds and wait for the stars to come
back. Not that this would prove them good citizens. But neither do the
most utilitarian faculties prove them so.

“I could fall in love with any woman who was so accomplished,” said
Pelleas, looking at Hobart and pretending to mean me.

“By Jove, so could I!” said Hobart, looking at me openly.

“Why, then,” said I at this, meeting his eyes fairly, “I think that we
may as well hurry on to Inglese.”

He understood, and smiled at us.

“You dear fairy god-people,” he said.

But I hugged our hope as we rolled away; and so, I know, did Pelleas.

       *       *       *       *       *

No one was on the veranda at the Chartres villa, and we had seen no
one in the grounds save a man or two working miracles by unwrapping
rose-trees. Madame Sally Chartres, the servant told us, was gone in the
town, and Miss Viola was walking by the lake. We would not have her
summoned and Hobart, Pelleas, and I went down the slope of early green
to the lake walk.

The day was mounting to noon. A Summer day will miss its high-tide
expression because peace falls on it at noon; but the high noon of
Spring is the very keystone of the bow from sun to sun. I remember once
dreaming of music which grew more beautiful and came nearer, until I
knew as I woke that I could bear it no longer and that another moment
would have _freed_ me. And,

“Pelleas and Hobart,” I said now, “if to-day gets any lovelier, I think
that none of us can bear it and that the bubble will burst and we shall
be let _out_.”

For I love to seem a little mad for the sake of the contrast of my own
knowledge that I am sane.

“On a day like this,” said Pelleas, “one hardly knows whether one is
living it or reading it.”

“If we _are_ reading it,” said I, seeming to glance at Hobart Eddy, “I
hope that it will turn out to be a love story.”

And it did--it did. We followed the curve of the walk past some
flowering bushes and came on a bench, the kind of bench that rises
from the ground at the mere footfall of two lovers. And there sat
Viola, quite twice as lovely as when she had spent that week before our
telephone on the landing, and beside her a Boy whose _rôle_ no one who
saw his face could doubt.

She was very lovely as she rose to greet us--indeed, Viola was one of
those who prove the procession of the wild things and the stars to be
an integral part of life. But now for her a new star had risen whose
magnitude was unquestionable.

“Aunt Etarre!” cried Viola. “O, I am so glad to have you and Uncle
Pelleas and Hobart know--_first_.”

And when she had presented her fine young lover and I had taken her in
my arms, “You know,” she murmured, “he is your telephone, dear. Do you
remember Uncle Pelleas calling him _Telephone_?”

Indeed, I do not think that we caught his real name that morning at
all. And as for Pelleas and me, who are the first to love a lover, we
found ourselves instant partisans of that fine young telephone of ours,
so to speak, now that we finally saw him face to face. And I remember
noting with a reminiscent thrill that the flowering shrub beneath which
we were standing was Forsythia; and so did Pelleas, who is delighted
with coincidences and hears in them the _motifs_ of the commonplace.

“I told you this morning, Etarre, that something pleasant was about to
happen,” he said with satisfaction.

“And so it has,” said I happily--and met Hobart Eddy’s eyes, fixed on
mine and quite uncontrollably dancing.

On which I fell guiltily silent, and so did Pelleas. It is one of the
hardships of life that it is impossible to grieve with the loser and
rejoice with the winner of the same cause.

       *       *       *       *       *

When, some time after we five had lunched alone on the veranda, Viola
and Our Telephone waved our car down the drive, Pelleas and I were not
less disposed to silence. Running slowly through the grounds Hobart
Eddy glanced back at us, and,

“Well?” he asked gravely.

Pelleas and I looked away over the lawns and said nothing.

“You’ve still got me on your hands, fairy god-people,” said Hobart, and
smiled angelically and quite without a shadow in his eyes.

“I know,” muttered Pelleas then; “we seem to be miserable at this kind
of thing.”

And it did seem as if the path of In-the-Spring had eluded us.

Suddenly, with a great wrench, Hobart brought the car to a standstill.
“Look! Look there! By Jove, there it is! Look at it go!” he cried like
a boy. “What is it--O, I say, do you know what it is?”

We, too, had seen it--the joyous rise and curve of the wing of a
scarlet tanager, flashing into flight, skimming a lawn, burning from
the bough of a far sycamore.

“A tanager!” cried Pelleas and I together, and caught a moment of its
song--its open, double-toned, two-note and three-note song, a serene
cradle melody borrowed from May.

“O, Jove!” said Hobart Eddy. “Hear him.”

In the reeds by the lake the song sparrows were singing--we heard these
too. But I think that Pelleas and I heard chiefly another voice which
for the first time Hobart Eddy was hearing.

“What day next week could we go in the country, do you think?” Hobart
asked as he started the car.

“Monday,” suggested Pelleas promptly.

He had out his portmonnaie and the bird list and I saw what he wrote:--

 April 29: Scarlet tanager. Etarre and Hobart and Pelleas.

And across the page:--

 Part Two: Scarlet Tanager day:
   _Spent all day in the path of In-the-Spring._




IV

THE ELOPEMENT


The next morning Pelleas and I sat before our drawing-room fire talking
over our amazing trip to Inglese.

“In that love affair of yesterday,” Pelleas said sadly, “we were good
for absolutely nothing.”

“Ah, well, now,” I protested feebly, “we chaperoned.”

“Chaperons,” Pelleas said sententiously, “are nothing, _per se_.
Chaperons are merely the evidence that everything is not seen.”

“At least,” said I, “that arietta of the _Inutile Precauzione_ gives
great charm to ‘The Barber.’”

“I know,” Pelleas assented; “so does the property man. But I should
like us to be really good for something on our own account. In some
pleasant affair or other--I don’t greatly care what.”

I looked out the window at New York.

“Think,” said I, “of all the people out there who are in love and who
absolutely _need_ our help.”

“It is shocking,” Pelleas assented gravely. “I could almost find
it in my heart to advertise. How should we word it? ‘Pelleas and
Etarre, Promoters of Love Stories Unlimited. Office Hours from Time to
Eternity--’”

He broke off smiling, but not at any fancied impracticality.

“Why not?” said I. “The world needs us. You yourself said that the
world is the shape of a dollar instead of a heart.”

“Ah, I’m not so sure, though,” Pelleas returned with an air of
confidence. “We don’t know the ways of the North Pole. Perhaps we shall
yet find that the world _is_ the shape of a heart.”

“At all events,” said I, “we can act as if it were. And no one now can
possibly prove the contrary.”

How would one act if the world were the shape of a heart? I was
considering this seriously when, five minutes later, I selected with
especial care a book to take to the park. I was going over alone that
morning, for Pelleas was obliged to be downtown. This happens about
three times a year, but the occasions are very important and Nichola
and I make a vast ado over his departure and we fuss about until he
pretends distraction, though we well know how flattered he is. Nichola
even runs after him on the street with a newspaper to be read on the
elevated, though we are all three perfectly aware that even with both
pairs of spectacles he cannot possibly read on the jolting car. But he
folds the paper and thanks Nichola and, as I believe, sits with the
paper spread before him all the way to Hanover Square.

On that particular morning Pelleas left very early, and I arrived in
the park when it was not yet a playground and a place for loitering
but a busy causeway for the first pedestrians. I found a favourite
bench near a wilding mass of Forsythia, with a curve of walk and a
cherry-tree in sight. There I sat with my closed book--for in the park
of a Spring morning one need never open one’s book providing only that
the book shall have been perfectly selected. I remember that Pelleas
once took down, as he supposed, a volume of well-beloved essays to
carry with us and when we reached the park we found by accident that we
had brought a doctor’s book instead. It was such a glad morning that
we had not intended to read, but we were both miserable until Pelleas
went back to exchange it. I cannot tell how we knew but certain voices
refused to sing in the presence of that musty, fusty volume. When he
had returned with the well-beloved book they all drew near at once.
Therefore we will not go even in the neighbourhood of the jonquil beds
with a stupid author.

But on this morning of Spring my book was in tune and all the voices
sang, so that they and the sun and the procession of soft odours almost
lulled me asleep. You young who wonder why the very dead do not awake
in Spring, let me say that one has only to be seventy to understand
peace even in May.

I was awakened by the last thing which, awake or asleep, one would
expect to hear on such a morning; a sound which was in fact an act of
high treason to be tried in a court of daffodils. It was a sob.

I opened my eyes with a start, expecting that a good fairy had planted
some seeds which by having failed to come up on the instant had made
her petulant. The sob, however, proceeded from a very human Little
Nursemaid who sat at the extreme end of my bench, crying her eyes
out. I could not see her face but her exquisitely neat blue gown and
crisp white cap, cuffs and apron were a delight. She had a fresh pink
drawn through her belt. Both plump hands were over her eyes and she
was crying to break her heart. Her Little Charge sat solemnly by in a
go-cart, regarding her, and dangling a pet elephant by one leg. The
elephant, I may add, presented a very singular appearance through
having lost large patches of its cloth and having been mended by
grafting on selections from the outside of some woolly sheep.

I was in doubt what to do; but when I am not sure about offering my
sympathy I always scan the victim to see whether she shows any signs of
“niceness.” If she does I know that my sympathy will not come amiss.
The sight of that fresh pink determined me: Little Nursemaid was “nice.”

“My dear,” said I, “what is it?”

This sounds as if I have no dignity. I have, up to the moment that some
one cries, and then I maintain that dignity loses its point. There is
a perfectly well-bred dignity which has hurt more hearts than ever
sympathy has bound up, but you do not learn that until you are seventy
and then no one listens to what you have learned.

Little Nursemaid showed me one eye, blue as her gown.

“Nothink, ma’am,” she said shamelessly, and fell to sobbing anew.

“Nonsense,” said I gently, “you are not crying for nothing, are you?”

Think of the times that all the women in the world require to have that
said to them.

Little Charge whimpered slightly as if to say that he could cry all
day if he chose, and only be scolded for his pains. He was doubtless
justly aggrieved at my sympathy for a performance borrowed from his own
province. Little Nursemaid pushed the go-cart with her foot, such a
trim little well-shod foot, _without_ openwork stockings.

“Tell me about it,” I urged with even more persuasiveness. “Perhaps I
could help you, you know.”

She shook her head. No; nobody could help her.

“Is it that some one is dead?” I asked.

No; no one was dead.

“Well, then!” I exclaimed triumphantly, “that is all I need to know.
Tell me--and we can do _something_, at any rate.”

Bit by bit she told me, pulling at her trim little cuffs, twirling the
head of the pink, rolling the go-cart until Little Charge smiled as
upon an unexpectedly beneficent world.

And the trouble was--how, I wondered as I listened, could I ever have
doubted that the world is the shape of a heart--the trouble was that
Little Nursemaid had intended to elope that very day, and now she
couldn’t!

Cornelia Emmeline Ayres, for so she subsequently told me that she was
called, was by her own admission pathetically situated.

“I am a orphan nursemaid, ma’am,” she confessed, shaking her brown head
in pleasant self-pity.

Briefly, she was living with a well-to-do family just off the avenue,
who had cared for her mother in her last illness and had taken charge
of Cornelia herself when she was a child. She had grown up in the
family as that most pitiful of all creatures, an unpaid dependant, who
is supposed to have all the advantages of a home and in reality has
only its discomforts. Until a year ago the life of the little maid had
been colourless enough, and then the Luminous Inevitable happened. He
was a young drug clerk. He had had two “rises” of salary within seven
months, probably, I surmised, averaging some seventy-five cents each.
And she had fourteen dollars of her own.

“Well, well,” said I in bewilderment, “what more do you want? Why wait?”

“Oh, ma’am,” sobbed Cornelia Emmeline, “it’s the unthankfulness I’m
bothered about. Why, She raised me an’ I just can’t a-bear to leave Her
like this.”

“What does She say about it?” I inquired, gathering from the
reverential tone of the pronoun that the Shrewd Benefactress was in her
mind. O, these women whose charity takes the form of unpaid servants
who have “homes” in return.

“That’s just it, ma’am. She won’t hear to it,” said Cornelia Emmeline
sadly. “She says I’m too young to have the care of a home.”

I looked at the stout proportions of Little Charge who had to be
carried and lifted all day.

“So you planned to elope?” I tempted her on. “And why didn’t you?”

Then her heart overflowed.

“We was to go to the church to-night,” she sobbed. “Evan, he told the
m-m-minister, an’ I was goin’ to wear my new p-p-plum-colour’ dress,
an’ it was a-goin’ to be at six-fifteen. Evan has a hour off at six.
An’ th-then th-this morning She gimme a bright fifty cents an’ a
watered ribbin--an’ O, ma’am, I just can’t a-bear to go an’ do it!”

So--Benefactress was even shrewder than I had thought.

“Have you told him?” I asked, feeling with Evan the hopelessness of
competing with “a bright fifty cents an’ a watered ribbin.”

She nodded speechlessly for a moment.

“Jus’ now,” she burst out finally. “I went to the drug store an’
told him. He d-d-didn’t say a word, but he jus’ went on makin’ a
egg-phosphate, in a heartbroke way, for a ole gentleman. He never
l-l-looked at me again.”

I sat in sad silence going over the principal points of the narrative.
Nothing makes me so sorrowful as the very ordinary sight of two
young lovers juggling with their future. There are so few chances
for happiness in every life, “and that hardly,” and yet upon these
irreverent hands are constantly laid, and all the hues despoiled.
Thereafter the two despoilers are wont to proclaim happiness a bubble.
I do not know if that be true, but say that it _is_ a bubble. Is it not
better to have so luminous a thing ever trembling over one’s head than
to see, through one’s tears, its fragments float away? If happiness be
a bubble, Pelleas and I know of one that has outlasted many a stouter
element and will last to the end. Yet what can Seventy say of this
to Seventeen? It can only wring its hands, and Seventeen has but
one answer: “But _this_ is different!” I could have shaken Cornelia
Emmeline had it not been for our brief acquaintance.

As I sat considering this and pulling at the fringe of my reticule, the
last words that she had spoken began to assert themselves with a vague,
new significance.

“He d-d-didn’t say a word, but he jus’ went on makin’ a egg-phosphate,
in a heartbroke way, for a ole gentleman,” she had said. My attention
had been so fixed on the image of Evan behind the counter that a
supreme coincidence had escaped me.

I touched Cornelia Emmeline’s arm--I have dignity, I repeat, but not in
the face of such a sorrow as this.

“What drug store?” I inquired.

There was only one in the world for her, so she knew what I meant.

“How long ago were you there to tell him?” I asked next, breathlessly.

Cornelia Emmeline thought that it might have been a matter of twenty
minutes.

“The very same!” I cried, and fell to smiling at Little Nursemaid in a
fashion that would have bewildered her had she not been so occupied in
wiping her eyes.

For who in the world should be the old gentleman of the egg-phosphate
but Pelleas?

Had I not, morning after morning, waited in that very drug store,
amusing myself before a glass case of chest-protectors while Pelleas
drank his egg-phosphate which he loathed? And so that handsome,
curly-headed, long-lashed youngster who fizzed and bubbled among his
delicacies with such dexterity was none other than Evan! Why, indeed,
he was a friend of Pelleas’. Pelleas had given him a red muffler of his
own only last Christmas.

I do not know whether you have what I call the quality of making mental
ends meet when you ought to be concerned with soberer matters. For
myself, being a very idle and foolish and meddlesome old woman, I can
not only make them meet but I can tie them into bowknots, veritable
love knots. And so I did now, sitting there on the bench in the
sunshine with the fragrance of Forsythia and cherry blossoms about,
and my eyes fixed on the all-wool elephant of Little Charge. And yet,
remembering now, I disown that plan; for I protest that it came pealing
to me from some secret bell in the air--and what could I, a most unwise
and helpless old woman, do against such magic? And how else could one
act--in a world the shape of a heart?

“Don’t you want to tell me,” said I shyly, “how you had planned your
elopement? It will do no harm to talk about it, at any rate.”

Little Nursemaid liked to talk about it. With many a sob and sigh she
brought forth her poor little plans, made with such trembling delight
and all come to naught. They were to have met that very night at
precisely quarter-past six at the door of a chapel that I knew well.
The curate had been engaged by Evan, and a “little couple” who lived
over the drug store were to be witnesses. The new plum-colour’ dress
figured extensively and repeatedly in the account. Then they were to
have marched straight and boldly to the Benefactress and proclaimed
their secret, and Evan was to have been back behind the counter at
seven o’clock, while Cornelia Emmeline would have been in time to put
Little Charge to bed, as usual. The remainder of their lives, so far as
I could determine, did not enter importantly into the transaction. The
main thing was to be married.

And all this bright castle had toppled down before the onslaught of “a
bright fifty cents an’ a watered ribbin.” Ah, Cornelia Emmeline! Yet
she truly loved him--mark you, if I had not believed in that I would
have left her to the solitary company of Little Charge and the all-wool
elephant. But since I did believe in that I could not see those two
dear little people make a mess of everything.

“It is too bad,” said I innocently, “and let me tell you what I
suggest. You’ll be very lonely to-night about six o’clock--and you will
probably cry and be asked questions. Don’t you want to run down to my
house for a few minutes to help me? I have something most important to
do.”

I had much trouble to keep from laughing at that “something most
important to do.”

Cornelia Emmeline promised readily and gratefully. She had always that
hour to herself, it appeared, because then He came home--the husband of
Benefactress, I inferred--and wanted Little Charge to himself before
dinner. That was such a pleasant circumstance that I began to feel
kindly toward even the Shrewd Benefactress and “Him.” But I did not
relent. I made Cornelia Emmeline promise, and I saw that she had my
card tucked away for safe-keeping, and when we had talked awhile longer
about the danger of unthankfulness, and the prospects of drug clerks,
Little Charge suddenly straightened out stiffly in the go-cart and
demanded his “bread’n’butter’n’sugar.” So she took him away and nodded
me a really bright farewell; and when she had gone a few steps she came
running back and shyly laid something on my knee. It was the fresh
pink. After that you may be sure that I would have carried on my plan
in the face of all disaster, save indeed the opposition of Pelleas.

But Pelleas is to be counted on in everything. He has failed me but
once, and that was in a matter of a wedding which took place anyway
and is therefore an incident which hardly counts against him. I could
hardly wait for him to come home. I was at the window when he reached
the steps, and before he could unbutton his greatcoat he knew the whole
story. But Pelleas is not inventive. He is sympathetic, corroborative,
even coöperative, but not inventive. To him the situation simply closed
down.

“Poor little souls,” he said ruefully, “now that is hard. So that young
rascal is in love. I didn’t know he ever thought of anything but soda.
It’s a blessing he didn’t fix me up a chloroform phosphate this morning
in sheer misery. Too bad, too bad. Won’t matters ever be straightened
out, do you think?”

“No later,” said I, “than seven o’clock to-night.”

“Bless my soul!” cried Pelleas. “How?”

I told him, quivering with the pleasant occupation of minding somebody
else’s affairs. Pelleas listened a little doubtfully at first--I have
a suspicion that all men strive to convince you of their superior
judgment by doubting, at first, every unusual project; all, that is,
save Pelleas, whose judgment _is_ superior. But presently as I talked a
light began to break in his face and then he wrinkled his eyes at the
corners and I knew that I had won the day.

“Will you, Pelleas?” I cried breathlessly.

“I will,” Pelleas answered magnificently, “if I have to take three
egg-phosphates in succession to win his confidence.”

Nichola knew very well that something unusual and delightful was
at harbour in the house that afternoon. For Pelleas and I found it
impossible to read, and she kept coming in the room and finding us with
our heads together. Nichola is one of those who suspect every undertone
to mean a gigantic enterprise. I think, moreover, that she believes
us wholly capable of turning the drawing-room into a theater with
boxes, and presenting a comedy. Ah, well--that we may, as the days grow
colourless.

At a little before six o’clock Pelleas set out, I figuratively dancing
on the doorstep with excitement.

“Pelleas,” I whispered him in the hall, “don’t you fail! Pelleas, if
you fail, attractive as you are, I shall be divorced from you!”

He smiled confidently.

“I feel as if we were eloping ourselves,” he said, “and this is
something like.”

Before the clock had gone six Nichola ushered into the drawing-room
Cornelia Emmeline Ayres. In one glance I knew that I had not counted
on her in vain. To do honour to me she appeared in full regalia of
plum colour. But she had been crying all day--I saw that in the same
glance, and her attempt to be cheerful in her sadness and shyness went
to my heart.

We sat beside the fire where I could watch the clock, but it seemed to
me as if the very hands were signaling to her what my plan was. Nichola
came in with more coals, which we needed considerably less than more
wall paper; but Nichola’s curiosity is her one recreation and almost
her one resource, as I sometimes think. I trembled afresh lest she knew
all about this, as she did about everything else, and would suddenly
face about on the hearth rug and recite the whole matter. She went out
in silence, however, and had heard us discuss nothing but the best
makes of go-carts, which was the matter that first presented itself to
my mind.

“Now, my dear,” said I, when we were alone, “haven’t you thought better
of it? Shall we not be married at fifteen past six, after all?”

She shook her head, and the tears started as if by appointment. No; we
would not be married that night, it would appear.

“Nor ever?” I put it point-blank. “Evan won’t wait forever, you know.”

She looked forlornly in the fire.

“Not as long as She needs me around.”

“Rubbish!” cried I, at this. “There are a thousand nursemaids as good
as you, I dare say--but there is only one wife for Evan.”

“That’s what he keeps a-sayin’,” she cried, and broke down and sobbed.

The hands of the clock pointed rigidly at six. Then and there I cast
the die.

“I wish to go for a walk,” I said abruptly. “Will you give me your arm
for a block or so?”

My bonnet was ready on the hall-table and I had kept the pink quite
fresh to pin on my cloak. We were off in no time and went down the
avenue at a brisk pace, while Nichola lurked about the area, pretending
to sweep and really devoured with curiosity.

Cornelia Emmeline looked up longingly at all the big, beautiful homes,
and down the cross-streets at all that impertinent array of comfort,
so hopelessly professional, so out of sympathy with the amateur in
domesticity.

“So many homes all fixed up for somebody else,” she said wistfully.

My heart ached as I thought of all the little people, divinely in
love, who have looked up at those grim façades with the same thought.
Personally, I prefer a flat, but it takes one seventy years to learn
even this.

I talked on as well as I could about little in particular and most of
all I encouraged her to talk, since I was becoming every moment more
excited. For every step was bringing us nearer and nearer to the little
chapel, and at last we rounded the corner and were full upon it. A
clock in a near-by steeple showed six-fifteen. I looked anxiously up
the street and the street was empty.

“Let us,” said I, guilelessly, “go in here and rest awhile.”

Little Nursemaid’s mouth trembled.

“Oh, ma’am--no, please--not in there! I couldn’t go in there
_to-night_,” she stammered.

“Nonsense!” said I sharply, pretending to be very cross. “I am tired
and I must have rest.”

She could do nothing but lead me up the steps, but her poor little face
was quite white. So was mine, I suspect. Indeed, I fancy that neither
of us could have borne matters very much longer. Happily there was no
need; for when the double green doors had closed behind us there in
the dim anteroom stood the faithful Pelleas and a bewildered Evan--who
very naturally failed to understand why a strange old gentleman, whom
he had hitherto connected only with egg-phosphates and one red muffler,
should have decoyed him from his waiting supper to a chapel of painful
association.

Pelleas and I are not perfectly agreed on what did happen next. For we
had planned no farther than the church door, trusting to everything
to come right the moment that those two little people saw each
other in the place of their dream. The first thing that I recall is
that I fairly pushed Cornelia Emmeline into the arms of the young
soda-fountain king, and cried out almost savagely:--

“Be married--be married at once! And thank the Lord that you love each
other!”

“But She--what’ll She--” quavered Cornelia Emmeline on a coat-lapel.

Then young Evan rose magnificently to the occasion. He took her little
white face in his hands, kissed her very tenderly, and decided for her.

“Now, then, Sweetheart,” said he, “so we will! And no more trouble
about it!”

Little Nursemaid gave him one quick look--shy, beseeching,
delicious--and glanced down.

“I’ve got on my plum-colour’,” she consented.

Whereat Pelleas and I, who had been standing by, smiling and nodding
like mandarins, turned ecstatically and shook hands with each other.

Evan, in the midst of all his bliss, looked at his watch. It was plain
to be seen that Cornelia Emmeline had not put her trust in a worthless
fellow.

“Six-twenty,” said he; “I’ll run across and get the minister. O,” he
turned to us helplessly, “what if he can’t come--now?”

I shared his anxiety, being suspicious that in the event of a
postponement the store of “bright fifty cents and watered ribbins”
might prove inexhaustible.

Then very leisurely the green baize doors swung open and without undue
haste or excitement in walked the curate.

“Ah!” we four said breathlessly.

“Ah, my young friends,” said the curate, and seemed to include us
all--and at the time this did not impress me as impossible--“I have
been until this moment detained at the bedside of a sick parishioner. I
regret that I am five minutes tardy.”

“Why, sir--why, sir--” stammered Evan, “we meant--we didn’t mean--”

The curate looked his perplexity.

“Is this not the same?” he inquired, adjusting his pince-nez and
throwing his head back. “Did you not make an appointment with me for
six-fifteen to-day? Surely I have not mistaken the day?”

At this young Evan burst into a laugh that sorely tried the echoes of
the anteroom.

“Bless me!” he cried, “if I ain’t forgot to tell ’im not to come!”

So there we were, snug as a planned-out wedding with invitations and
bells.

They were married in the vestry, and Pelleas and I had the honour
of writing our names below theirs, and we both wiped our eyes right
through the entire process in a fashion perfectly absurd.

“Parents of the--?” hesitated the curate, regarding us consultingly.

I looked at Pelleas in some embarrassment, and I think we felt that he
was concealing something when he said simply: “No.” Perhaps it would
not have been legal or churchly had the curate known that we had never
seen Cornelia Emmeline until that day and knew nothing of Evan save
egg-phosphates.

On the steps of the chapel the two kissed each other with beautiful
simplicity, and young Evan shook our hands with tears in his eyes.

“How--how come you to do it?” he asked, this phase of the hour having
now first occurred to him.

“Yes,” said Cornelia Emmeline, “I’ve been a-wantin’ to ask.”

Pelleas and I looked at each other somewhat foolishly.

“Bless you!” we mumbled together. “I don’t know!”

Off went young Evan like a god to his star, and Cornelia Emmeline
walked back with us, and we all waved our hands at the far end of the
street. Then we left her at the door of the Shrewd Benefactress, and
with broken words the dear little soul in her best plum-colour’ went
blithely to Little Charge and the all-wool elephant, and all the age
was gold.

Pelleas and I walked soberly home.

“Suppose,” said he darkly, “that they are minors?”

“I really don’t care if they are,” cried I, with great courage. “They
have acted far less like minors than we have.”

“Suppose--” he began again.

“Pelleas,” I said, “how did you say that advertisement was to be?
‘Pelleas and Etarre, Promoters of Love Stories Unlimited--’”

“Ah, yes, that’s all very well,” he insisted, “but suppose--”

“And who was it,” I pursued, “who was half persuaded that the world is
the shape of a heart?”

“I’m afraid it was I,” Pelleas admitted then, shaking his head.

But I could see that his eyes were without remorse.




V

THE DANCE


I think that by then Pelleas and I had fairly caught the colour of
Youth. For I protest that in Spring Youth is a kind of Lydian stone,
and the quality of old age is proved by the colour which it can show
at the stone’s touch. Though perhaps with us the gracious basanite has
often exceeded its pleasant office and demonstrated us to be quite mad.

Otherwise I cannot account for the intolerance of age and the love of
youth that came upon us. I was conscious of this when after breakfast
one morning Pelleas and I stood at the drawing-room window watching a
shower. It was an unassuming storm of little drops and infrequent gusts
and looked hardly of sufficient importance to keep a baby within-doors.
But we are obliged to forego our walk if so much as a sprinkling-cart
passes. This is so alien to youth that it always leaves us disposed
to take exception and to fail to understand and to resort to all the
ill-bred devices of well-bred people who are too inventive to be openly
unreasonable.

As “What a bony horse,” observed Pelleas.

“Not really bony,” I said; “its ribs do not show in the least.”

“It is bony,” reiterated Pelleas serenely. “It isn’t well fed.”

“Perhaps,” said I, “that is its type. A great many people would say
that a slender woman--”

“_They’re_ bony too,” went on Pelleas decidedly. “I never saw a slender
woman who looked as if she had enough to eat.”

“Pelleas!” I cried, aghast at such apostasy; “think of the women with
lovely tapering waists--”

“Bean poles,” said Pelleas.

“And sloping shoulders--”

“Pagoda-shaped shoulders,” said Pelleas.

“And delicate pointed faces--”

“They look hungry, all the time, and bony,” Pelleas dismissed the
matter--Pelleas, who in saner moments commiserates me upon my appalling
plumpness.

“There comes the butter woman,” I submitted, to change the subject.

“Yes,” assented Pelleas resentfully, finding fresh fuel in this;
“Nichola uses four times too much butter in everything.”

“Pelleas,” I rebuked him, “you know how careful she is.”

“She is,” insisted Pelleas stubbornly, “extravagant in butter.”

“She uses a great deal of oil,” I suggested tremulously, not certain
whether oil is the cheaper.

“Butter, butter, she spreads butter on the soup,” stormed Pelleas. “I
believe she uses butter to boil water--”

Then I laughed. Pelleas is never more adorable than when he is cross at
some one else.

At that very moment the boy who was driving the butter woman’s wagon
began to whistle. It was a thin, rich little tune, a tune that _pours_
slowly, like honey. I am not musical but I can always tell honey-tunes.
At sound of it Pelleas’ face lighted as if at a prescription of magic.

“Etarre--Etarre!” he cried; “do you hear that tune?”

“Yes,” I said breathlessly.

“Do you remember--?”

“No,” said I, just as breathlessly.

“It’s the Varsovienne,” cried Pelleas, “that we danced together the
night that I met you, Etarre.”

With that Pelleas caught me about the waist and hummed the air with all
his might and whirled me down the long room.

“Pelleas!” I struggled. “I don’t know it. Let me go.”

For it has been forty years since I have danced or thought of dancing
and I could not in the least remember the silly step.

Leaving me to regain my breath as best I might Pelleas was off up the
room, around chairs and about tables, stepping long and short, turning,
retreating, and singing louder and louder.

“You stood over there,” he cried, still dancing; “the music had begun
and I was not your partner--but I caught you away before you could say
no, and we danced--_tol te tol te tol_--”

Pelleas was performing with his back to the hall door when it opened
softly, and he did not hear. There stood Nichola. I have never before
seen that grim old woman look astonished, but at sight of the flying
figure of Pelleas she seemed ready to run away. It was something to
see old Nichola taken aback. Our old servant is a brave woman, afraid
of nothing in the world but an artificial bath heater which she would
rather die than light, but the spectacle of Pelleas, dancing, seemed
actually to frighten her. She stood silent for a full minute--and this
in itself was amazing in Nichola, who if she went often to the theater
would certainly answer back to the player talk. Then Pelleas faced the
door and saw her. He stopped short as if he had been a toy and some one
had dropped the string. He was frightfully abashed and was therefore
never more haughty.

“Nichola,” he said with lifted brows, “we did not ring.”

Nichola remained motionless, her little bead eyes which have not grown
old with the rest of her quite round in contemplation.

“We are busy, Nichola,” repeated Pelleas, slightly raising his voice.

Then Nichola regained full consciousness and rolled her eyes naturally.

“Yah!” said she, with a dignity too fine for scorn. “_Busy!_”

Really, Nichola tyrannizes over us in a manner not to be borne. Every
day we tell each other this.

Pelleas looked at me rather foolishly when she had disappeared.

“That was the way it went,” said he, ignoring the interruption as one
always does when one is nettled. “_Tol te tol te tol_--”

“Why don’t you sing _da de da de da_, Pelleas?” I inquired, having
previously noticed that all the world is divided into those who sing
_tol_, or _da_, or _la_, or _na_. “I always say ‘_da_.’”

“I prefer ‘_tol_,’” said Pelleas shortly.

Sometime I intend classifying people according to that one peculiarity,
to see what so pronounced a characteristic can possibly augur.

“Ah, well,” said I, to restore his good humour, “what a beau you were
at that ball, Pelleas.”

“Nonsense!” he disclaimed, trying to conceal his pleasure.

“And how few of us have kept together since,” I went on; “there are
Polly Cleatam and Sally Chartres and Horace and Wilfred, all living
near us; and there’s Miss Lillieblade, too.”

“That is so,” Pelleas said, “and I suppose they will all remember that
very night--our night.”

“Of course,” said I confidently.

Pelleas meditated, one hand over his mouth, his elbow on his knee.

“I wonder,” he said; “I was thinking--I wouldn’t be surprised if--well,
why couldn’t we--”

He stopped and looked at me in some suspicion that I knew what he meant.

“Have them all here some evening?” I finished daringly.

Pelleas nodded.

“And _dance_!” said he, in his most venturesome mood.

“Pelleas!” I cried, “and all wear our old-fashioned things.”

Pelleas smiled at me speechlessly.

The plan grew large in our eyes before I remembered the climax of the
matter.

“Thursday,” I said below my breath, “Thursday, Pelleas, is _Nichola’s
day out_!”

“Nichola’s day out” sounds most absurd to every one who has seen our
old servant. When she came to us, more than forty years ago, she had
landed but two weeks before from Italy, and was a swarthy little
beauty in the twenties. She spoke small English and was deliciously
amazed at everything, and her Italian friends used to come and take
her out once a week, on Thursday. With her black eyes flashing she
would tell me next day, while she dressed me, of the amazing sights
that had been permitted her. Those were the days when we had many
servants and Nichola was my own maid; then gradually all the rest left
and Nichola remained, even through one black year when she had not a
centime of wages. And so she had grown gray and bent in our service and
had changed in appearance to another being and had lost her graces and
her disposition alike. One thing only remained the same: She still had
Thursday evenings “out.”

Where in the world she found to go now, was a favourite subject of
speculation with Pelleas and me over our drawing-room fire. She had
no friends, no one came to see her, she did not mention frequenting
any houses; she was openly averse to the dark--not afraid, but averse;
and her contempt for all places of amusement was second only to her
distrust of the cable cars. Yet every Thursday evening she set forth in
her best purple bonnet and black “circular,” and was gone until eleven
o’clock. Old, lonely, withered woman--where did she go? Unless indeed,
it was, as we half suspected, to take certain lessons in magic whereby
she seems to divine our inmost thoughts and intentions.

And now for the first time we planned to make a base and harmless
advantage of Nichola’s absence. We meant to give a party, a _dance_,
with seven guests. Nichola, we were certain, would not for a moment
have supported the idea; she would have had a thousand silly objections
concerning my sleeplessness and our nerves and the digestion of
Pelleas. We argued that all three objections were inadequate, and that
Nichola was made for us and not we for Nichola. This bold innovation of
thought alone will show how adventuresome we were become.

We set about our preparation with proper caution. For one whole
forenoon I kept Pelleas in the kitchen, as sentinel to Nichola,
driving her nearly mad with his forced excuses for staying while
I risked my neck among boxes long undisturbed. But then I love an
attic. I have always a sly impulse to attempt framing ours for a
wall of our drawing-room. I prefer most attics to some libraries. I
have known houses whose libraries do not invite, but gesticulate;
whose dining-rooms have an air of awful permanence, like a ship’s
dining-room; and whose drawing-rooms are as uninhabitable as the
guillotine; yet above stairs would lie a splendid attic of the utmost
distinction. These places always have chests which thrill one
with the certainty that they are filled with something--how shall
I say?--something which does not anywhere exist: Vague, sumptuous
things, such as sultans give for wedding gifts, and such as parcels
are always suggesting without ever fulfilling the suggestion. Yet
when chests like these are opened they are found to contain most
commonplace matter--trunk straps with the buckles missing, printed
reports of forgotten meetings called to exploit forgotten enthusiasms,
and cotton wadding. Yet I never go up to our attic without an impulse
of expectancy. I dare say if I persist I shall find a Spanish doubloon
there some day. But that morning I found only what I went to seek--the
lustrous white silk which I had worn on the night that I met Pelleas.
We had looked at it together sometimes, but for very long it had lain
unregarded and the fine lace about the throat was yellowed and it had
caught the odour of the lonely days and nights. But it was in my eyes
no less beautiful than on the night that I had first worn it.

I hid it away in my closet beneath sober raiment and went down to
release Pelleas. When I entered the kitchen Nichola glanced at me once,
and without a word led me to the looking-glass in the door of the clock.

“Yah?” she questioned suspiciously. “Is it that you have been tomboning
about, building fires?”

I looked, wondering vaguely what Nichola can possibly mean by
_tomboning_, which she is always using. There was a great place of dust
on my cheek. I am a blundering criminal and should never be allowed in
these choice informalities.

That afternoon while Nichola was about her marketing, Pelleas and
I undertook to telephone to our guests. When I telephone I always
close my eyes, for which Pelleas derides me as he passes; and when he
telephones he invariably turns on the light on the landing. Perhaps
this is because men are at home in the presence of science while women,
never having been gods, fear its thunder-bolt methods. Pelleas said
something like this to our friends:--

“Do you remember the ball at the Selby-Whitfords’? Yes--the one on
Washington’s Birthday forty-nine years ago? Well, Etarre and I are
going to give another ball to the seven survivors. Yes--a ball. Just we
seven. And you must wear something that you might have worn that night.
It’s going to be Thursday at eight o’clock, and it’s quite a secret.
Will you come?”

Would they come! Although the “seven survivors” did suggest a steamship
disaster, our guests could have risen to no promise of festivity with
greater thanksgiving. At the light that broke over Pelleas’ face at
their answers my heart rejoiced. Would they come! Polly Cleatam
promised for herself and her husband, although all their grandchildren
were their guests that week. Sally Chartres’ son, a stout, middle-aged
senator, was with her but she said that she would leave him with his
nurse; and Miss Willie Lillieblade cried out at first that she was a
hermit with neuralgia and at second thought added that she would come
anyway and if necessary be buried directly from our house.

The hall was dark and silent again when Nichola came toiling home and
there was nothing to tell her, as we thought, what plans had peopled
the air in her absence. Nor in the three days of our preparation did
we leave behind, we were sure, one scrap or one breath of evidence
against us. We worked with the delighted caution of naughty children
or escaping convicts. Pelleas, who has a delicate taste in sweets,
ordered the cakes when he took his afternoon walk and went back to the
shop every day to charge the man not to deliver the things until the
evening. My sewing woman’s son plays the violin “like his own future,”
as Pelleas applauds him, and it was easy to engage him and his sister
to accompany him. Meanwhile I rearranged my old gown, longing for
Nichola, who has a genius in more than cookery. To be sure Pelleas did
his best to help me, though he knows no more of such matters than the
spirits of the air; he can button very well but to hook is utterly
beyond his simple art. However, he attended to everything else. After
dark on Thursday he smuggled some roses into the house and though I set
the pitcher in my closet I could smell the flowers distinctly while we
were at dinner. It is frightful to have a conscience that can produce
not only terrors but fragrances.

We were in a fever of excitement until Nichola got off. While Pelleas
tidied the drawing-room I went down and wiped the dishes for her--in
itself a matter to excite suspicion--and I broke a cup and was meek
enough when Nichola scolded me. Every moment I expected the ice cream
to arrive, in which event I believe I would have tried to prove to
Nichola that it was a prescription and that the cakes were for the poor.

Pelleas and I waited fearfully over the drawing-room fire, dreading
her appearance at the door to say her good-night; for to our minds
every chair and fixture was signaling a radiant “Party! Party!” like a
clarion. But she thrust in her old face, nodded, and safely withdrew
and we heard the street door close. Thereupon we got upstairs at a
perilous pace and I had on the white gown in a twinkling while Pelleas,
his hands trembling, made ready too.

I hardly looked in the mirror for the roses had yet to be arranged.
I gathered them in my arms and Pelleas followed me down, and as we
entered the drawing-room I felt his arm about my waist.

“Etarre,” he said. “Look, Etarre.”

He led me to the great gilt-framed cheval glass set in its shadowy
corner. I looked, since he was determined to have me.

I remembered her so well, that other I who forty-nine years ago had
stood before her mirror dressed for the Selby-Whitford ball. The brown
hair of the girl whom I remembered was piled high on her head and
fastened with a red rose; the fine lace lay about her throat and fell
upon her arms, and the folds of the silk touched and lifted over a
petticoat of lawn and lace. And here was the white gown and here the
petticoat and tucker, and my hair which is quite white was piled high
and held its one rose. The white roses in my arms and in my hair were
like ghosts of the red ones that I had carried at that other ball--but
I was no ghost! For as I looked at Pelleas and saw his dear face
shining I knew that I was rather the happy spirit risen from the days
when roses were not white, but merely red.

Pelleas stooped to kiss me, stooped just enough to make me stand on
tiptoe as he always does, and then the door-bell rang.

“Pelleas!” I scolded, “and the roses not arranged.”

“You know you wanted to,” said Pelleas, shamelessly. And the truth of
this did not in the least prevent my contradicting it.

Sally Chartres and Wilfred came first, Sally talking high and fast as
of old. Such a dear little old lady as Sally is. I can hardly write her
down “old lady” without a smile at the hyperbole, for though she is
more than seventy and is really Madame Sarah Chartres, she knows and I
know the jest and that she is just Sally all the time.

She threw off her cloak in the middle of the floor, her pearl earrings
and necklace bobbing and ticking. At sight of her blue gown, ruffled
to the waist and laced with black velvet, I threw my arms about her
and we almost laughed and cried together; for we both remembered how,
before she was sure that Wilfred loved her, she had spent the night
with me after a ball and had sat by the window until dawn, in that very
blue frock, weeping in my arms because Wilfred had danced so often with
Polly Cleatam. And now here was Wilfred looking as if he had had no
thought but Sally all his days.

In came Polly Cleatam herself presently in her old silk poplin
trimmed with fringe, and her dimples were as deep as on the day of
her elopement. Polly was nineteen when she eloped on the evening of
her début party with Horace who was not among the guests. And the
sequel is of the sort that should be suppressed, but I must tell it,
being a very truthful old woman and having once or twice assisted at
an elopement myself: _They are very happy._ Polly is an adorable old
lady; she has been a grandmother for nineteen years, and the Offence is
Lisa’s best friend. But whereas Sally and I have no idea of our own age
Polly, since her elopement, has rebounded into a Restraining Influence.
That often happens. I think that the severest-looking women I know have
eloped and have come to think twice of everything else. Polly with
an elopement behind her is invariably the one to say “Hush,” and “I
wouldn’t.”

Miss Willie Lillieblade was late. She came in wound in costly
furs--Heaven provided her bank account in the neuter gender--and she
stood revealed in a gorgeous flowered gown, new, but quite like the
one which she had worn at the very ball that we were celebrating. Miss
Lillieblade is tiny, and though her hair is quite white she seems to
have taken on none of the graces of age. She has grown old like an
expensive India-rubber ball, retaining some of her elasticity and
constantly suggesting her former self instead of becoming another
article altogether. She has adopted caps, not soft, black, old-lady
caps, but perky little French affairs of white. She is erect--and she
walks with a tall white staff, silver-headed, the head being filled
with two kinds of pills though few know about that.

I fancy that we were in great contrast; for Miss Lillieblade is become
a fairy-godmother-looking old lady; Polly Cleatam has taken on severity
and poise and has conquered all obstacles save her dimples; Sally has
developed into a _grande dame_ of old lace and Roman mosaic pins; and I
look for all the world like the plump grandmothers that they paint on
calendars.

Pelleas and Wilfred and Horace talked us over.

“Ah, well now,” said Wilfred, “they look not a day older than when we
were married, and Miss Willie is younger than any one.”

Wilfred, who used to be slim and bored, is a plump, rosy old gentleman
interested in everything to the point--never beyond--of curiosity. O
these youthful poses of languor and faint surprise, how they exchange
themselves in spite of themselves for the sterling coin!

Horace beamed across at Polly--Horace is a man of affairs in Nassau
Street and his name is conjured with as the line between his eyes would
lead one to suspect; yet his eyes twinkled quite as they used before
the line was there.

“Polly,” he begged, “may I call you ‘Polly’ to-night? I’ve been
restricted to ‘Penelope,’” he explained, “ever since our Polly was
born. Then after her coming out she demanded the Penelope, and I went
back to the Polly I preferred. But now our Polly-Penelope is forty,
and there is a little seminary Polly who is Polly too, though I dare
say the mite may rebuke us any day for undue familiarity. May I say
‘Polly’ now?”

Pelleas was smiling.

“I leave it to you,” he said generously to every one, “to say if
Etarre’s hair was not white at our wedding? She has always looked
precisely--but precisely!--the way she looks now.”

Miss Willie Lillieblade sighed and tapped with her staff.

“Pooh!” said she. “Old married folk always live in the past. I’m a
young thing of seventy-four and I’ve learned to live in the present.
Let’s dance. My neuralgia is coming back.”

We had the chairs away in a minute, and Pelleas summoned from the
dining-room the musicians--a Danish lad with a mane of straight hair
over his eyes and his equally Danish sister in a collarless loose wool
frock. They struck into the Varsovienne with a will and at the sound my
heart bounded; and, Pelleas having recalled to me the step when Nichola
was not looking, I danced away with Wilfred as if I knew how to do
nothing else. Pelleas danced with Miss Willie who kept her staff in her
hand and would tap the floor at all the impertinent rests in the music,
while Pelleas sang “tol” above everything. Polly insisted on dancing
alone--I suspect because her little feet are almost as trim as when
she wore one’s--and she lifted her poplin and sailed about among us.
Sally kept her head prettily on one side for all the world as she used,
though now her gray curls were bobbing. Horace, who suffers frightfully
from gout, kept beside her at a famous pace and his eyes were quite
triangular with pain. “_Tol te tol te tol!_” insisted Pelleas, with
Miss Willie holding her hand to her neuralgia as she whirled. I looked
down at the figures on the carpet gliding beneath my feet and for one
charmed moment, with the lilt of the music in my blood, I could have
been certain that _now was not now, but then_!

This lasted, as you may imagine, somewhat less than three minutes.
Breathless we sank down one by one, though Sally and Pelleas, now
together and now alone, outdanced us all until we dreaded to think what
the morrow held for them both. Miss Lillieblade was on her knees by the
fire trying to warm her painful cheek on an andiron knob and laughing
at every one. Polly with flushed face and tumbled hair was crying out:
“O, but stop, Sally!” and “Pray be careful!” and fanning herself with
an unframed water-colour that had been knocked from the mantel. We
all knew for that matter that we would have to pay, but then we paid
anyway. If one has to have gout and attendant evils one may as well
make them a fair exchange for innocent pleasure instead of permitting
them to be mere usury. Pelleas said that afterward.

Sally suddenly laughed aloud.

“They think that we have to be helped up and down steps!” she said
blithely.

We caught her meaning and joined in her laugh at the expense of a world
that fancies us to have had our day.

“If we liked,” said Miss Lillieblade, “I have no doubt we could meet
here every night when no one was looking, and be our exact selves of
the Selby-Whitford ball.”

Horace smiled across at Polly.

“Who would read _them_ to sleep with fairy stories?” he demanded.

Polly nodded her gray curls and smiled tenderly.

“And who would get my son, the senator, a drink of water when he cried
for it?” gayly propounded Sally.

Pelleas and I were silent. The evenings that we spent together in the
nursery were bitterly long ago.

“Ah, well,” said Miss Lillieblade with a little sigh, “I could come, at
any rate.”

For a moment she was silent. “Let’s dance again!” she cried.

We danced a six-step--those little people could play anything that
we asked for--and then, to rest, we walked through a minuet, Pelleas
playing a double rôle. And thereafter we all sat down and shook our
heads at the music and pretended to be most exhausted, and I was glad
that the rest pretended for I really was weak with fatigue and so was
Pelleas. For half an hour we sat about the fire, Miss Willie with her
face constantly upon the andiron though she recalled more delightful
things than anybody.

“Then there was Aunt Effié in Vermont,” she had just said, her voice
cracking deliciously on its high tones, “who cooked marvelously. And
when the plain skirts came in she went about declaring that she would
never have one that wasn’t full, because she couldn’t make a comforter
out of it afterward!”

At that mention of marvelous cookery and in the laugh which followed,
Pelleas and I slipped without. For we were suddenly in an agony of
foreboding, realizing horribly that we had not once heard the area-bell
ring. And if the ices and cakes had been left outside it would probably
be true that by now they _had_ gone to the poor.

The back stairway was dark for Nichola always extinguishes all the
lower lights when she goes out. We groped our way down the stairs as
best we might, Pelleas clasping my hand. We were breathing quickly,
and as for me my knees were trembling. For the first time the enormity
of our situation overcame me. What if the ices had not come? Or had
been stolen? What about plates? And spoons? Where did Nichola keep the
best napkins? And after all Sally was Madame Sarah Chartres, whose
entertainments were superb. All this flooded my spirit at once and I
clung to Pelleas for strength.

“Pelleas,” I murmured weakly, “did the ice-cream man promise to have it
here in time?”

“He’s had to promise me that every day since I first ordered it,”
Pelleas assured me cheerfully, “five or six times, in all.”

“O,” said I, as if I had no character, “I feel as if I should faint,
Pelleas.”

Three steps from the bottom I stood still and caught at his coat.
Through the crack at the top of the door I could see a light in the
kitchen. At the same moment an odour--faint, permeating, delicious,
unmistakable--saluted us both. It was coffee.

Pelleas flung open the door and we stood making a guilty tableau on the
lowest step.

The kitchen was brightly lighted and a fire blazed on the hearth. The
gas range was burning and a kettle of coffee was playing its fragrant
rôle. Plates, napkins, and silver were on the dresser; the boxes of
ices were on the sill of the open area window; on the table stood the
cakes, cut, and flanked by a tray of thin white sandwiches; the great
salad bowl was ready with a little tray of things for the dressing;
from a white napkin I saw protruding the leg of a cold fowl; there was
the chafing dish waiting to hold something else delectable. And in the
rocking-chair before the fire, wearing an embroidered white apron and
waiting with closed eyes, sat Nichola.

“O Nichola,” we cried together in awed voices, “Nichola.”

She opened an eye, without so much as lifting her head.

“For the love of heaven,” she said, “it’s ’most time. The coffee’s just
ready an’ Our Lady knows you’ve been havin’ a hard evenin’. Ain’t you
hungry, dancin’ so? Well, go back upstairs, the both of you.”

We went. In the dark of the stairway we clung to each other, filled
with amazement and thanksgiving. We could hear Nichola moving briskly
about the kitchen collecting her delicacies. How _had_ she found us
out? O, and now at last was not the secret of her mysterious Thursday
evenings revealed to us? She did go somewhere for lessons in magic and
she had learned to read our inmost thoughts!

From above stairs came the laughter of the others, echoes of that
ancient ball which we had been pretending to re-live, trading the empty
past for the largess and beauty of now.

Pelleas slipped his arm about me to help me up the stairs.

“Etarre,” he said, “I am glad that now is now--and not then!”




VI

THE HONEYMOON


I have often deplored that unlucky adjustment which allotted to the
medicines, countries, flavouring extracts, and the like, names which
should have been reserved for women. For example what beautiful names
for beautiful women are Arnica, Ammonia, and Magnesia; as for Syria,
one could fall in love with a woman called Syria; and it would be
sufficient to make a poet out of any lover to sit all day at the feet
of a woman named Vanilla.

This occurred to me again as a fortnight later Pelleas and I took our
seats in the train for the sea, since across the aisle sat a pale and
pretty little invalid girl whose companions called her “Phenie.” I do
not know what this term professed to abbreviate, but I myself would
have preferred to be known by the name of some euphonious disease, say
Pneumonia. Monia would make a very pretty love-name, as they say.

Our little neighbour should have had a beautiful name. She looked not a
day past ten, though I learned that she was sixteen; and she was pale
and spiritless, but her great dark eyes were filled with the fervour
which might have been hers if life had been more kind. She had a merry
laugh, and a book; not what I am wont to call a tramp book, seeking to
interest people, but a book of dignity and parts which solicits nobody,
a book which may have a bookplate under its leather wing.

I puzzled pleasantly over the two in whose charge she appeared to be
and finally I took Pelleas in my confidence.

“Pelleas,” said I, “do you think that those two can be her parents?”

“Bless you, no, dear,” he answered; “they are not old enough. She is
more likely to be sister to one of them. They are very much in love.”

“I noticed,” I agreed; “they must be old-young married people.”

“Instead of young-old married people like us,” Pelleas said.

For Pelleas and I, merely because we are seventy and white-haired and
frightened to cross streets, are not near enough to death to treat
each other so coldly as do half the middle-aged. I cannot imagine a
breakfast at which we two would separate the morning paper and intrude
stocks and society upon our companionship and our omelet. At hotels I
have seen elderly people who looked as if breakfast could a prison make
and coffee cups a cage. Pelleas and I are not of these, and we look
with kindly eyes upon all who have never known that youth has gone,
because love stays.

So we were delighted when we saw our old-young married people and the
little invalid preparing to leave the train with us. When we drew
into our station the big kindly conductor, with a nasturtium in a
buttonhole, came bearing down upon Little Invalid and carried her from
the car in his vast arms and across the platform to a carriage. And we,
in a second carriage, found ourselves behind the little party driving
to the sea.

I had been so absorbed in our neighbours that until the salt air blew
across our faces I had forgotten what a wonderful day it really was to
be. Pelleas and I were come alone to the seaside with no one to look
after us and no one to meet us and we meant to have such a holiday as
never had been known. It came about in this wise:--

We were grown hungry for the sea. All winter long over our drawing-room
fire we had talked about the sea. We had pretended that the roar of the
elevated trains was the charge and retreat of the breakers and we had
remembered a certain summer years before, when--Pelleas still being
able to model and I to write so that a few were deceived--we had taken
a cottage having a great view and no room, and we had spent one of the
summers which are torches to the years to follow. Who has once lived
by the sea becomes its fellow and it is likely to grow lyric in his
heart years afterward and draw him back. So it had long been drawing
Pelleas and me until, the Spring being well advanced, we had risen one
morning saying, “We must go to-morrow.”

We had dreaded confessing to Nichola our intention. Nichola renounces
everything until her renunciations are not virtue but a disease. She
cannot help it. She is caught in a very contagion of renunciation,
and one never proposes anything that she does not either object to or
seek to postpone. When the day comes for Nichola to die it has long
been my belief that she will give up the project as a self-indulgence.
Therefore it was difficult for us to approach her who rules us with the
same rod which she continually brandishes over her own spirit. It was I
who told her at last; for since that day when Nichola came upon Pelleas
trying to dance, he has lost his assurance in her presence, dislikes to
address her without provocation, and agrees with everything that she
says as if he had no spirit. I, being a very foolhardy and tactless old
woman, put it to her in this way:--

“Nichola! Pelleas and I are going to the seashore for all day
to-morrow.”

“Yah!” said Nichola derisively, putting her gray moss hair from her
eyes. “Boat-ridin’?”

“No,” said I gently, “no, Nichola. But we want the sea--we need the
sea.”

Nichola narrowed her eyes and nodded as if she knew more about the sea
than she would care to tell.

“Oh, well,” she said with resignation, “I s’pose the good Lord don’t
count suicide a first-class crime when you’re old.”

“We shall want breakfast,” I continued with great firmness, “at half
after six.”

“The last breakfast that I’ll ever have to get you,” meditated Nichola,
turning her back on me. The impudent old woman believes because she is
four years younger than I that she is able to look after me. I cannot
understand such self-sufficiency. I am wholly able to look after myself.

Pelleas and I dreamed all that night of what the morrow held for us. We
determined to take a little luncheon and, going straight to the beach
and as near to the water as possible, lie there in the sand the whole
day long.

“And build sand houses and caves with passages _sidewise_,” said
Pelleas with determination and as if he were seven.

“And watch the clouds and the gulls,” said I.

“And find a big wave away out and follow it till it comes in,” Pelleas
added.

“And let the sand run through our fingers--O, Pelleas,” I cried, “I
think it will make us young.”

So the sea spoke to us and we were wild for that first cool salt
breath of it, and the glare and the gray and the boom of the surf. But
Nichola, to whom the sea is the sea, bade us good-bye next morning with
no sign of relenting in her judgment on us.

“Well packed with flannel?” she wanted to know. And we went out in the
street feeling like disobedient children, undeserving of the small,
suggestive parcel of lunch which at the last moment she thrust in our
hands.

“After all,” Pelleas said, “what is it to Nichola if we get drowned or
run over?”

“Nothing,” we agreed with ungrateful determination.

Yet when we reached our station we had become so absorbed in Little
Invalid that the sea had almost to pluck us by the sleeve before we
remembered.

It was early for guests at the hotel and but few were on the
veranda. Little Invalid was lifted from her carriage and placed in a
rocking-chair while the old-young married people went in the office.
And when Pelleas suggested that I rest before we go down to the beach
I gladly assented and sat with him beside the little creature, who
welcomed me with a shy smile. She was so like a bird that I had almost
expected her to vanish at my approach; and when she did not do so the
temptation to talk with her was like the desire to feed a bird with
crumbs from my hand.

“It is pleasant to be near the sea again,” I said to her, by way of
crumbs.

Her eyes had been fixed on the far blue and they widened as she turned
to me.

“‘Again’?” she repeated. “I haven’t ever seen it before, ma’am.”

“You have not?” I said. “What a sorrow to live far from the sea.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I live in New York--we all three have lived in New
York always--but I never saw anything of the sea, only from the
Battery. None of us has but Henny. Henny has been to Staten Island.”

I was silent in sheer bewilderment. Then it was true; there are people
living in New York who have never seen the sea.

Something else trembled on Little Invalid’s lips and out it came,
hesitating.

“Bessie an’ Henny’s married last week,” she imparted shyly, touching a
great coloured button picture of Bessie upon her waist. “This is their
honeymoon.”

“O,” I observed, brightening, “then you will be here for some time. I
am so glad.”

Again she shook her head.

“O, no, ma’am,” she answered, “we’re going back to-night. This is
Henny’s day off, but Bessie, she wouldn’t come without me. She’s my
sister,” said Little Invalid proudly; “she paid my way herself.”

Was it not wonderful for an old woman whose interests are supposed to
be confined to draughts and diets to be admitted to such a situation as
this? I was still speechless with the delight of it when the old-young
married people came outside.

Bessie, the sister to Little Invalid and the bride of a week, was a
gentle, worn little woman in the thirties, of shabby neatness, and
nervous hands wide and pink at the knuckles, and a smile that was like
the gravity of another. “Henny”--I perceive that my analogy extends
farther and that some men would better have been christened Nicotine or
Camphor--Henny was a bit younger than she, I fancied, and the honest
fellow’s heavy, patched-looking hands and quick, blue eyes would
immediately have won my heart even if I had not seen the clumsy care
that he bestowed upon Little Invalid, as though a bear should don a
nurse’s stripes.

Pelleas says that I spoke to them first. I dare say I did, being a very
meddlesome old woman, but the first thing that I distinctly recall was
hearing Henny say:--

“Now, you run along down the beach, Bess, an’ I’ll sit here a spell
with Phenie!”

“I’m sure I’d be all right all alone,” protested Little Invalid feebly,
looking nervously about at the fast-gathering groups of chattering
people. However Bessie and Henny seemed to know very much better than
this, and with her smile that was like gravity Bessie moved reluctantly
away.

Fancy that situation. Little Invalid could not be carried to the sands,
and those two old-young married people meant to spend their “honeymoon”
in taking turns at visiting the beach. I looked at Pelleas and his face
made the expression which means an alarm, for something to be done at
once.

“Why,” I asked casually, “don’t you both go down to the beach and let
us sit here awhile?” For to tell the truth the journey by the train had
tired me more than I cared to confess.

I remember how Pelleas once sent two incredibly dirty little boys into
the circus at the Garden, and save then I really think that I never saw
such sudden happiness in the face of any one.

“Were--were you goin’ to sit here anyway, ma’am?” Bessie asked, trying
as heroically to conceal her joy as if it had been tears.

“Yes,” I assured her shamelessly, and really I was over-tired. “Stay as
long as ever you like,” I said.

“O, ma’am,” said Henny with shining eyes, “thank you! And thank you,
sir!”

“Pooh!” said Pelleas gruffly and thrust my sunshade in his hands.

Off they went down the beach, Shabby Neatness hanging on her husband’s
arm in a fashion which I cannot call deplorable, and her husband
looking down at her adoringly. Before they disappeared past the
pavilion we all waved our hands. And then to my amazement I saw tears
on the face of Little Invalid.

“O, ma’am,” she said, her lips trembling, “you don’t know what this
will mean to them--you don’t know!”

“Let me see your book, my dear,” I said hastily, ashamed enough to be
praised for indulging my own desire to rest.

She handed the distinguished-looking little volume and I saw that it
was a very bouquet of sea poems, sea songs, sea delight in every form.
Beloved names nodded to me from the page and beloved lines smiled up at
me.

“The settlement lady lief me take it,” said Little Invalid.

Then began an hour whose joy Pelleas and I love to remember. It would
have been pleasure merely to sit in that veranda corner within sound of
the sea and to hear Pelleas read those magic words; but we had a new
and unexpected joy in the response of this untutored little maid who
was as eager as were we. With her eyes now on the sea, now on the face
of Pelleas as he read, now turned to me with the swift surprise of
something that his voice held for her, she sat breathlessly between us;
and sometimes when a passage had to be explained her eyes were like the
sea itself with the sun penetrating to its unsounded heart.

“Oh,” she would say, “was it all there all the time--was it? I read it
alone but I didn’t know it was like this!”

It puzzled her to find that what we were reading had been known and
loved by us for very long.

“Did the settlement lady lief you have the book, too?” she asked
finally.

“No,” we told her, “we have these things in other books, ourselves.”

“Why, I thought,” she said then in bewilderment, “that there was only
one book of every kind. And I thought how grand for me to have this
one, and that I’d ought to lend it to people who wouldn’t ever see it
if I didn’t. Is there other ones like it?” she asked.

Gradually the shy heart opened to us and we spoke together of the
simple mysteries of earth. For example Little Invalid knew nothing of
the tides and the moon’s influence, and no triumph of modern science
could more have amazed her. Then from the terrifying parlour of the
hotel we brought to her pieces of coral and seaweed, and these she had
never seen and she touched them with reverent fingers. In the parlour
too was an hourglass filled with shining sand--it was like finding
jewels in the coal bin to extract things of such significance from that
temple of plush and paper flowers. She held the coral and the seaweed
and the hourglass while we went back to the little book or sat watching
the waves, gray-green, like the leaves of my moth geranium.

In this manner two hours had passed without our suspecting when,
flushed and breathless, Bessie and Henny reappeared. They were very
distressed and frightened over having stayed so long away, but no
degree of embarrassment could disguise their happy possession of those
two hours on the white beach.

Pelleas beamed on them both.

“Ah, well, now,” he said, “we couldn’t think of going away down there
before luncheon. Run along back, but mind that you are here by one
o’clock. You are to lunch with us.”

At that my heart bounded, though I knew very well that Pelleas had
intended certain five dollars in his portemonnaie for far other and
sterner purposes. Yet it is a great truth that the other and sterner
purposes are always adjusted in the end and the commonwealth goes
safely on no matter how often you divert solitary bills to radiant uses
with which they have no right to be concerned. Being I dare say a very
spendthrift old woman I cannot argue matters of finance, but this one
principle I have often noted; and I venture to believe that the people
who omit the radiant uses are not after all the best citizens. I write
this in defence of Pelleas, whose financial conscience troubled him for
many a day on account of that luncheon.

So back those old-young married people went to the beach, trying hard,
as I could see, not to appear too delighted lest Little Invalid feel
herself a burden to us all. And when they returned at one o’clock with
bright eyes and cheeks already beginning to tan, Pelleas marshaled us
all to a table by a window toward the sea, and a porter drew Little
Invalid’s chair beside us.

What a luncheon was that. Time was--when Pelleas was still able to
model and I to write so as to deceive a few--that we have sat at
beautiful dinner tables with those whose jests we knew that we should
read later, if we outlived them, set in the bezel of a chapter of
their biographies--and such a dinner is likely to give one a delicious
historic feeling while one is yet pleasantly the contemporary of the
entrée. Time has been too when a few of us have sat about a simple
board thankful for the miracle of that companionship. But save the
dinners which Pelleas and I have celebrated alone I think that
there never was another such dinner in our history. When his first
embarrassment was gone we found that Henny had a quiet drollery which
delighted us and caused his wife’s eyes to light adoringly. They said
little about themselves; indeed, save for the confidences of Little
Invalid, we knew when we parted nothing whatever about them, and yet we
were the warmest friends. However, it was enough to have been let into
that honeymoon secret.

And what a morning had those two had. I cannot begin to recount what
experiences had been theirs with great waves that had overtaken them,
with dogs that had gone in after shingles, and with smooth stones and
“angel-wing” shells and hot peanuts of which they had brought a share
to Little Invalid. I cannot recall what strange people they had met and
remembered. Above all I cannot tell you how they had listened to that
solemn beat and roar, and would try to make us know its message--of
course they did not know that this was what they tried to tell us, but
Pelleas and I understood well enough.

After luncheon when Little Invalid was back on the veranda, her cheeks
flushed with the unwonted excitement--it was her first dinner in a real
hotel, she told me--Pelleas leaned against a pillar with an exaggerated
air which I could not fathom, until:--

“Really,” he said, “I’m so very sleepy that I’m going to settle myself
in this big chair for a doze. Don’t you want to rest for a little,
Etarre? Suppose that we three all have a long quiet nap and you two
young people get back to the beach for a while so as not to bother us.”

Bless Pelleas. And I confess that I was not unwilling to rest. So the
two went away again, and I believe that Pelleas did sleep; but Little
Invalid and I, though we pretended to be asleep, sat with our heads
turned away from each other, staring out to sea. I do not know how it
may have been with her, but as for me I was happy out of all proportion
to the encouragement of that noisy veranda. Perhaps it was the look of
the sea line, pricked with sails, or the mere rough, indifferent touch
of the salt wind.

Presently we all pretended to wake and talk a little; and then we saw
Bessie and Henny coming back and at a sign from Pelleas we all shut our
eyes again, though Pelleas appeared to awake very crossly and bade them
go back and not disturb us unless they wanted to be great nuisances. So
they ran back, and we laughed at them in secret, and Little Invalid sat
happily holding the mysterious hourglass. And then a band began to play
in the pavilion--a dreadful band I thought until I saw the ecstatic
delight of Little Invalid, whereupon I discovered that there was a lilt
in its clamour.

When the bathers went in we found a glass for her, and she spent a
pleasant half hour watching the ropes. And twice more Bessie and Henny
came back and both times we pretended to be asleep, and Pelleas awoke
more testily each time and scolded them back. The second time he thrust
something in their hands.

“Just pitch this in the ocean,” he said crossly, “or eat it up. It
worries me.”

Secretly I looked from one eye and saw Nichola’s lunch disappearing.

When they came back at six o’clock we consented to be awake, for it was
time for Pelleas and me to go home. They stood before us trying with
pleasant awkwardness to make us know various things, and Little Invalid
kept tightly hold of my fingers. When I bent to kiss her good-bye
she pressed something in my hand, and it was the great coloured
button-picture of Bessie.

“Keep it,” she said, “to remember us by. There ain’t nothink else fit
to give you!”

Henny handed me to the carriage in an anguish of polite anxiety, and
they all three waved their hands so long as we could see them. They
were to stay two hours longer and finish that honeymoon.

As Pelleas and I drove up the long street, our backs to the sea, we
turned for one look at the moving gold of it under the falling sun. We
felt its breath in our faces for the last time--well, who knows? When
one is seventy every time may be the last time, though indeed I should
not have been surprised to find us both sea-bathing before the Summer
was over.

Pelleas looked at me with troubled eyes.

“Etarre,” he said, “I am afraid that we have indulged ourselves
shamefully to-day.”

“You mean about the luncheon party?” I asked.

“Yes, that,” he said, “and then we came down here for the sea to do us
good and we haven’t been near the sea.”

“No,” I said, “we haven’t.”

“We have simply amused ourselves all day long,” he finished disgustedly.

“Yes,” I said, “we have.”

But as the train drew over the salt marshes I smiled at this disgust of
Pelleas’, smiled until my hand crept down and found his under his hat.

“What is it?” he asked, seeing my smile.

“I’ve found out something,” I told him.

“What is it?” he wanted to know.

“It wasn’t their honeymoon so much,” I said triumphantly, “as it was
ours.”

As we came through the long cross street toward our house we had a
glimpse of Nichola beside our area gate, watching for us. But when
we reached the gate she was not in sight and though we waited for a
moment on our steps she did not come to open the door. It was not until
Pelleas had lighted the fire in the drawing-room and we sat before it
that we heard her coming up the stairs.

She brought us tea, neither volunteering a word of greeting nor, save
by a word and with averted eyes, responding to ours. But as she was
leaving the room she stood for a moment in the doorway.

“How’d your lunch go?” she demanded.

Instantly Pelleas and I looked at each other--we never can remember not
to do that. What _had_ Nichola given us in that lunch?

“Why, Nichola,” said I, “Nichola, your lunches are always--that is, I
never knew your lunches not to be--”

“You are a wonderful cook, you know, Nichola,” said Pelleas earnestly.

Nichola looked down upon us, her little eyes winking fast, and she
nodded her old gray head.

“Yah!” she said, “what I put in it was fruit an’ crackers. An’ I see
you’ve give it away.”

“O, Nichola--” we began. But as captain of the moment she would not
sally forth to parley.

“There’s your tea,” she cut us short; “drink it--if you ain’t drownded
an’ your shades settin’ here instead.”

Pelleas looked up bravely.

“I’m not sure about myself, Nichola,” he said gently; “one never is
sure about one’s self, you know. But this lady is real, I do assure
you!”

“And this, Nichola,” said I, gayly, “I protest is a real gentleman!”

On which we two laughed in each other’s eyes; and Nichola, that grim
old woman, said sharply:--

“Our Lady knows you talk enough nonsense to be new-married, the both.”

She clicked the portière rings, like little teeth. And at her words
Pelleas and I looked at each other in abashment. Does all the world,
like Nichola, guess at our long honeymoon?




VII

THE OTHER TWO


Pelleas has a little niece who when she sits in my room in the sun
combing her brown hair looks like a mermaid. I told her this when on
the morning after our return from the seashore she arrived to make us
a visit and came to sit in my sunny window with her hair all about her
shoulders drying from its fragrant bath.

“Lisa,” I said, for the sea was still in my soul, “if I might tie your
hair back with a rainbow and set you on a tall green and white wave you
would be a mermaid. And by the way,” I added, “perhaps you can tell me
something about which I have always wondered: How the mermaids in the
sea pictures keep their hair so dry?”

For answer Lisa smiled absently and spread a soft strand into shining
meshes and regarded it meditatively and sighed dolorously. But Lisa
was twenty, and Twenty is both meditative and dolorous, so I went
on tranquilly laying sachets in my old lace; for at seventy I have
sunk some of my meditation and all my dolour in such little joys as
arranging my one box of rare old lace. That seems a small lesson for
life to have taught, and yet it was hard to learn.

    “I rather think she was Latona’s brood,
    And that Apollo courted her bright hair--”

I was murmuring, when Lisa said:--

“Aunt Etarre, were you ever in love?”

Is it not notable what fragrance floats in the room when that question
is asked? Of course it may have been the orris in my hands, but I think
that it was more than this.

“If forty-nine and three quarters years of being in love,” I reminded
her, “would seem to you fair proof that I--”

“O, that kind,” Lisa said vaguely. “But I mean,” she presently went
on, “were you ever in love so that you were miserable about everything
else, and you thought all the time that somebody couldn’t possibly love
you; and so that seeing the postman made your heart beat the way it
used to at school exhibition, and so that you kept the paper that came
around flowers....”

Lisa saw me smiling--not at her, Heaven forbid--but at the great
collection of rubbish in the world saved because somebody beloved has
touched it, or has seen it, or has been with one when one was wearing
it.

“I mean were you ever in love like that, Aunt Etarre--were you?” Lisa
put it wistfully.

“Ah, well now, yes indeed,” I answered; “do you think that my hair was
always straight on rainy days, as it is now?”

Lisa sighed again, even more dolorously, and shook her head.

“It couldn’t have been the same,” she murmured decidedly.

Poor, dear Twenty, who never will believe that Seventy could have been
“the same.” But I forgot to sigh for this, so concerned I was at this
breaking of Lisa’s reticence, that enviable flowery armour of young
womanhood. So I waited, folding and refolding my Mechlin, until I had
won her confidence.

He was, it developed, a blessed young lawyer, with very long lashes
and a high sense of honour inextricably confused with lofty ideals and
ambitions and a most beautiful manner. He was, in fact, young Eric
Chartres, grandnephew to my dear Madame Sally Chartres. The sole cloud
was the objection of Dudley Manners, Lisa’s guardian, to the friendship
of the two on the hackneyed ground of their youth; for Eric, I absently
reckoned it aloud, was one year and five months older than Lisa.

“But it isn’t as if he hadn’t seen the world,” Lisa said magnificently.
“He has been graduated from college a year, and he has been abroad
twice--once when he was nine, and then for two months last Summer. And
he has read everything--O Aunt Etarre,” said Lisa, “and then think of
his loving me.”

“When am I going to meet him?” I asked, having exchanged with him only
a word in a crowded room or two. As I expected Lisa flung herself down
at my knee and laid her hands over the old Mechlin.

“O would you--would you? Uncle Dudley said he would trust me wholly to
you and Uncle Pelleas. Might he call--might he come this afternoon?”

“The telephone,” said I, “is on the landing.”

Below stairs I told Pelleas about it and he sighed and looked in
the fire and said, “Bless me, I used to wheel her mother about in a
go-cart!”

“Pelleas,” said I, thoughtfully, “I have seen that young Eric Chartres
only once or twice in a crowded room, but do you know that I thought he
looks a little--just a very little--as you looked at his age?”

“Does he really?” Pelleas asked, vastly pleased, and “Pooh!” he
instantly added to prove how little vanity he has.

“He does,” I insisted; “the first time I caught sight of him I could
have believed--”

Pelleas turned to me with a look almost startled.

“Do you know,” he confessed, “more than once when I have looked at
Lisa--especially Lisa in that gown with flowers in and the _spingley_
things that shine,” described Pelleas laboriously,--“I could almost
have thought that it was you as you used to be, Etarre. Yes--really.
There is something about the way that she turns her head--”

“And so Eric Chartres may call?” said I eagerly, with nothing but
certainty.

“Of course he may call,” Pelleas said heartily; “any fine fellow who is
honestly in love is as welcome here as a king.”

“Then,” I continued, making a base advantage of his enthusiasm, “let
us go down together and tell Nichola to have tea, served in her best
fashion, at five this afternoon.”

Pelleas looked doubtful. “She’s making raised doughnuts,” he demurred.

“But,” I reasoned, “her tea rose bloomed yesterday. She is bound to
believe in a beautiful thing or two. Let us risk it.”

Nichola was picking her doughnuts from the hot lard as delicately as
if she had been selecting violets for essences near her native Capri.
She did not deign to turn or to speak as we slipped in at the door.
Even when Pelleas had put the case to her, diplomatically dwelling on
the lightness of the delicacies desired, she did not reply until she
had brought to the table a colander of her hot brown dainties. Then
she rested her hands on each side of the pan and leaned forward. As I
looked at her, her gray hair brushed smoothly back from her rugged
face, her little eyes quick-winking--as if the air were filled with
dust--I caught on her face an expression which I have seldom seen
there: a look as if her features were momentarily out of drawing; as
if, say, old Nichola’s face were printed on cloth and the cloth had
been twitched a bit awry.

“Who’s a-comin’?” she demanded; but if Nichola were to ask to see our
visiting list I think that we should hardly deny her.

“It’s a friend of Miss Lisa’s,” Pelleas explained.

“Man?” Nichola inquired grimly.

Pelleas admitted it. I, now fancying myself wiser in the conceits of
Nichola, ventured something else.

“I think, Nichola,” I said, “that they--that he--that they--and I
thought if you had some absolutely simple sandwiches--”

“Yah!” Nichola exclaimed. “So there’s to be two pair o’ you!”

Then something wonderful happened. Nichola slipped both hands beneath
her floury apron and rolled up her arms in its calico length and
put her head on one side and smiled--such a strange, crinkled smile
interfering with all her worn features at once.

“My father had many goats,” Nichola said without warning, “and one
Summer I went with him to buy more, though that was before my bones
were all turned to cracked iron, you may be sure. And there was a
young shepherd--”

At that magic moment a sharp snapping and crackling came from the
kettle, and Nichola wheeled with a frown.

“So!” she cried angrily, “you come down here, letting my lard get too
hot to go near to! Is it not that I am baking? And as for tea, it may
be that there isn’t any tea. Go away!”

“Pelleas,” said I, as we climbed the stairs, “if it were not that
Nichola is too old to work anywhere else--”

“I know it,” Pelleas nodded frowning.

This is the dialogue in which we take part after each of Nichola’s
daily impertinences.

At four o’clock that afternoon I was roused from my drowsihead on
hearing a little tap at my door. Lisa came in, her face flushed, her
blue embroidered frock shimmering and ruffling to her feet.

“O Aunt Etarre,” she begged, “put on your gray gown and your Mechlin
fichu, will you? And come down right away--well, almost right away,”
she added naïvely.

“I will come presently,” I assured her, as if I did not understand;
and then the bell rang and Lisa, her eyes like stars, tapped down the
stairs.

I was a long time about my dressing. The gray grosgrain silk is for
very special occasions, and I had not worn my Mechlin collar since
Pelleas’ birthday nearly a year ago. When I had them both on and my
silver comb in my hair I heard Nichola’s step outside my door. I bade
her enter, but she merely stood for a moment on the threshold.

“Che!” she said grimly. “I hope, mem, you’ve got your neck well packed
with flannel under that slimpsey stuff. One would say you dress
lightly, lightly for fear of missing the rheumatism.”

She had gone crookedly down the passage before I had opportunity to
remention the tea. In a moment she came back, threw open my door and
flung something on the bed.

“There,” she said crossly, “put it on! No need to dress as if you was
ninety.”

And there on my pillow I saw as she hastened away the great pink tea
rose that had blossomed only that day from the rose plant in her own
window where she had tended it for months.

Pelleas was in the library across the hall from the drawing-room where
those two dear little people were. I opened the library door softly
and went in and stood close beside his chair before he turned. Pelleas
is not in the least deaf, as we both know; he is simply no longer
distracted by small, unnecessary noises.

He looked up smiling and then sprang to his feet and suddenly caught
my hands and held me at arm’s length and bade me turn about slowly,
slowly so that he might see. One would think that I had never worn my
old grosgrain and my Mechlin. I told him so, though I can never conceal
delight. And we talked a little about the first night that I had worn
it--O, so many years before, and about many things in which the very
sunshine of the room had no part because these things were so much more
luminous.

At last when the clock struck five we crossed the hall to the
drawing-room door. At the foot of the stairs Pelleas stopped for a
moment.

“Do you remember, Etarre,” he said, “the night that I ‘spoke’ to your
father, and you waited in the drawing-room, half dead with alarm, as
you made me believe?”

“Ah, yes,” I cried, “and how my father used to say that you won his
heart by your very beginning. ‘I can’t talk about it, sir,’ you said,
‘but you see, sir, you can; and will you?’”

We laughed together as we are never tired of laughing tenderly over
that, and I remembered tenderly too the old blue and white drawing-room
with the spindle-legged chairs and the stiff curtains where I had
waited breathlessly that night in my flowered delaine dress, while
Pelleas “spoke” to father. I was trembling when he came back, I recall,
and he took me in his arms and kissed away my fear. And some way the
thought of the girl in the flowered delaine dress who was I and of the
eager, buoyant young lad who was Pelleas must have shone in the faces
of us both when we entered our drawing-room now, reverently, as if to
meet our long-gone selves.

He was a fine, handsome fellow,--Eric Chartres, this young lover of
Lisa’s, and their sweet confusions and dignities were enchanting.
Pelleas and I sat on the red sofa and beamed at them, and the little
fire tossed and leaped on the hearth, and the shadows gathered in the
corners and fell upon us; and on Lisa and her lover the firelight
rested.

What a wonderful hour it was for our plain drawing-room, for so many
years doomed to be merely the home of talk about war and rumours of war
and relatives and their colourless doings and even about matches made
for shadowy lovers whom it never might see. And now the room was called
on to harbour Young Love itself. No wonder that the sober bindings on
the shelves tried in the yellow firelight to give news from their own
storied hearts that beat with the hearts of other lovers. No wonder
that the flowers on the mantel looked perilously like a bridal wreath.
At last, at last the poor room long deprived of its brightest uses was
habited by Young Love.

Presently Pelleas startled me from my reverie.

“It’s twenty past five,” he murmured, “and no tea.”

So Nichola intended to do as she pleased, and she was pleased to send
no tea at all, and the rose was but a sop to Cerbera. And I had so
counted on seeing those young lovers in the delicate intimacy of their
first tea. But even in that moment of my disappointment the stair door
creaked and then I heard her coming up, one step at a time, so that I
knew her to be laden with the tray.

Pelleas hastened to open the door for her and we were both fain to
gasp with astonishment. For in Nichola came splendid in the newest and
bluest of dresses with--wonder of all!--a white cap and apron to which
only very stately occasions can persuade her. And when she had set the
tray on the table I had much ado to keep from grasping her brown hands.
For she had brought the guest-silver, my Royal Sèvres, my prettiest
doilies and O, such thin, white, chicken sandwiches, such odorous tea
and thick cream, and to crown all a silver dish of bonbons.

I tried to look my gratitude to her and I saw her standing by the
fire tranquilly inspecting Lisa’s young lover and pretty Lisa herself
who was helping him to place my chair. And it may have been a trick
of the firelight, but I fancied that I detected on Nichola’s face
that expression of the morning, as if her features were a little out
of drawing, by way of bodying forth some unwonted thought. Then very
slowly she rolled her arms in her crisp white apron as she had done in
the morning and very slowly she began to speak.

“My father had many goats in Capri,” she said again, “and one Summer I
went with him to buy more. And at noon my father left me in the valley
while he went to look at some hill flocks. As for me I sat by a tree to
eat my lunch of goat’s cheese and bread, and a young shepherd of those
parts came and brought me berries and a little pat of sweet butter and
we shared them. I did not see him again, but now I have made you a
little pat of sweet butter,” said Nichola, nodding.

We were all silent, and Pelleas and I were spellbound; for it was as if
this old, withered, silent woman had suddenly caught aside her robe and
had looked into her own heart and given us news of its ancient beating.
Old Nichola to have harboured such an hour of Arcady as this! And at
that moment she turned to me with a kind of fury.

“For the love of heaven,” she cried terribly, “why sit there
stock-still till the crumpets are stone cold and the tea as red as the
tail of a fox? Eat!”

She was out of the room like a whirlwind and clattering down the
stairs. And for a moment we all looked silently in each other’s faces
and smiled a little--but tenderly, as if some unknown lover had lifted
his head from his grave.

Thereafter we drank our tea very happily and Lisa’s young lover, with
his whole heart in his eager face, told us quite simply of his love for
her and begged us to help him. And we all well-nigh laughed and cried
together at the bright business of life.

When the shadows had quite fallen and the young lover was gone and Lisa
had slipped away to her room to be alone, Pelleas and I sat long before
the fire. Nichola’s rose, fading in my lace, gave out a fragrance to
which some influence in the room was akin; and we both knew.

I said: “Pelleas, I have been remembering that morning long ago
at Miss Deborah Ware’s--and our Fountain of Gardens. When we were
twenty-something, like Lisa and Eric.”

“But so have I been thinking of that!” Pelleas cried. And we nodded,
smiling, for we love to have that happen. Perhaps it makes us
momentarily believe that we are each other, and no aid asked of science
to bring it about. But now as I looked at him I momentarily believed
something else as well.

“Pelleas,” I began, “I am not sure--are you sure? Has any one else
really been here in the room, besides us? Were Lisa and Eric really
here--or have we only been remembering?”

Pelleas was looking in the fire and he did not meet my eyes.

“Lisa looks uncommonly like you, you know,” he said.

“And that young Eric Chartres--O, indeed Pelleas, he is not unlike
you as you looked the very night that you ‘spoke’ to father. Dear,” I
said, “perhaps those two have not been here at all. _Perhaps it was we
ourselves._”

He looked at me swiftly; and “Pooh!” said he enigmatically; but
Pelleas’ doubt of charming things is always like belief.

I dare say many would feel that what we suspect is manifestly
impossible. Besides, we have never actually admitted that we do
suspect. But we are old and we have seen much magic.




VIII

A FOUNTAIN OF GARDENS


Indeed, to have remembered that morning at Miss Deborah Ware’s was
enough to bring back to us the very youth of which the morning was a
part. It seems to Pelleas and me that most of the beautiful things
that have come to us have been a part of our old age, as if in a kind
of tender compensation. But that beautiful happening of our youth we
love to remember, the more because it befell in the very week of our
betrothal. And though our betrothal was more than fifty years ago, I
suppose to be quite truthful that there is very little about those days
that I do not recall; or if there be any forgotten moments I grieve
to confess them. There are, however, I find to my amazement, many
excellent people who conscientiously remember the dates of the Norman
Conquest and the fall of Constantinople, and who are yet obliged to
stop to think on what day their betrothal fell. As for me I would far
rather offend my conscience in a matter of Turks than in a matter of
love-knots.

On a delicate day in May, Eighteen Hundred and Forty-five, Pelleas and
I were quite other people. And I do protest that the lane where we were
walking was different, too. I have never seen it since that summer; but
I cannot believe that it now wears anything like the same fabric of
shadow, the same curve of hedgerow or that season’s pattern of flowers.
The lane ran between the Low Grounds and the property of the Governor,
on one side the thatched cots of the mill folk and the woodsmen, and on
the other the Governor’s great mansion, a treasure-house of rare canvas
and curio. That morning the lane was a kind of causeway between two
worlds, and there was no sterner boundary than a hedge of early wild
roses. I remember how, stepping with Pelleas along that way of sun, I
loved him for his young strength and his blue eyes and his splendid
shoulders and for the way he looked down at me, but I think that he
must have loved me chiefly for my gown of roses and for the roses in my
hat. For I took very little account of life save its roses and I must
believe that a sense of roses was my most lovable quality. We were I
recall occupied chiefly in gathering roses from the hedgerow to fill my
reticule.

“Now, suppose,” Pelleas said, busy in a corner of green where the bloom
was thickest, “suppose we were to find that the hedges go on and never
stop, and that all there is to the world is this lane, and that we
could walk here forever?”

I nodded. That was very like my conception of the world, and the
speculation of Pelleas did not impress me as far wrong.

“Do you wish this morning could last forever, Etarre, do you?” asked
Pelleas, looking down at me.

“Yes,” said I truthfully, “I do.” I hope that there is no one in the
world who could not from his soul say that at least once of some hour
of Spring and youth. In such a moment, it is my belief, the spirit
is very near entering upon its own immortality--for I have always
held that immortality must begin at some beautiful moment in this
life. Though as for me, at that moment, I confess myself to have been
thinking of nothing more immortal than the adorable way that Pelleas
had of saying my name.

“But by and by,” Pelleas went on, “I think we would come to a garden.
Who ever heard of a love story without a garden? And it will be a
‘different’ garden from all the rest--the trees will be higher and the
shadows will be made differently and instead of echoes there will be
music. And there will be fountains--fountains everywhere; and when one
has gone in the garden a fountain will spring up at the gate and no
one can get out--ever. What do you think of that for a garden?” asked
Pelleas.

“I think,” said I, “that the garden we will come to will be Miss
Deborah Ware’s.”

For in fact I was carrying a message to Miss Deborah Ware, a kinswoman
of my mother’s, and I had met Pelleas only by some heavenly chance as
he crossed the common.

“And who is Miss Deborah Ware?” asked Pelleas, doubtfully, as if
weighing the matter of entering her garden.

“She owns a gold thimble,” I explained, “that once belonged to Marie
Antoinette. She prefers wooden sabots to all other shoes. And she
paints most beautiful pictures.”

“Ah,” said Pelleas, enlightened, “so _that_ is who she is. And how does
she look, pray?”

“I am certain that she looks like the Queen of Sheba,” I told him.
“And, moreover, all her caps are crown-shaped.”

“_Now_ I know how the Queen of Sheba looked,” cried Pelleas,
triumphantly. “She looked like the crowns of Miss Deborah’s caps. Do
you happen to know what the toll is to leave this lane?”

As I did not know--did anybody ever know?--and as we were even then at
the end of the lane, my ignorance was rebuked and I paid the toll and I
fancy repeated the lesson--it was a matter of honour to the sun and the
wild roses not to let it be otherwise. And we crossed the West Meadow
by the long way and at the last--at the very last, and nearly noon!--we
reached the cottage where Miss Deborah Ware had come to spend the
Summer and engage in the unmaidenly pursuit of painting pictures.

To tell the truth our Summer community of good Knickerbocker folk were
inclined to question Miss Deborah’s good taste. Not that they objected
to the paint, but the lack of virtue seemed to lie in the canvas. If
Miss Deborah had painted candle-shades or china porringers or watered
silk panels or flowerpots, no one, I think, would have murmured. But
when they learned that she painted _pictures_ they spread and lifted
their fans.

“Miss Deborah Ware would ape the men,” they said sternly. And when they
saw her studio apron made of ticking and having a bib they tried to
remonstrate with my mother, her kinswoman.

“She is a great beauty, for her age,” said the women. “But Beauty is as
Beauty does,” they reminded her.

“Deborah does as Deborah is,” my mother answered, smiling.

Miss Deborah was wearing the apron of ticking that morning that we went
to see her--Pelleas and I, who were rather basely making her an excuse
for the joy of our morning together. But Miss Deborah would have been
the last to condemn that. She was in a room overlooking the valley, and
a flood of north light poured on her easel and her idle palette. Miss
Deborah was breakfasting; and she explained that she had had a great
fit for working very early; and she gave us some delicious tea and
crumpets.

“This is the tea,” she told us, “that Cupid and Psyche always drank.
At least I suppose that is what the Japanese label says. Or perhaps
it says Aucassin and Nicolette.... I am a bit back in my Japanese.”
And immediately Miss Deborah nodded at me a little and murmured that I
crimsoned as prettily as either of these ladies.

Then: “They tell me that you two are betrothed,” she said, leaning back
in her chair. “Why is that?”

At that I blushed again and so I have no doubt did Pelleas, for we had
not so much as said that word in each other’s presence and to hear it
pronounced aloud was the most heavenly torture.

“I suppose you are very much in love,” she answered her question
meditatively. “Well, I believe you. I believe you so thoroughly that I
would like to paint you. What barbarism it is,” she went on, “that they
don’t allow young lovers to have their portraits painted together while
they are betrothed! Could there be a more delicious bit of history
added to any portrait gallery? And what if the marriage never did come
off--saving your presence? The history might be all the more delicious
for the separation, and the canvas would be quite as valuable. I am at
this moment painting two dear little peasant folk whose people flatter
me by being delighted. I think that I must really speak to your
mother, child, about painting you,” she said.

At that I stole a glance at Pelleas and surprised him at the same
pastime. And in that moment I do not think that either the history or
the taste of the portrait greatly occupied us; for neither of us could
pass with serenity the idea of the sittings. Together, mornings, in
that still, sun-flooded studio. What joy for those other lovers. In
those days one had only to mention an impossibly romantic situation for
Pelleas and me to live it out in imagination to its minutest joy.

“Of course she will not consent,” Miss Deborah added philosophically,
“so if I were you I would have another crumpet. My crumpets are
considerably better than my portraits. And my cook does the crumpets.”

She leaned forward in her low chair, and Pelleas and I looked at her
in a kind of awe. She was like mother’s Sweet-william that never would
blossom in the seed-book colours but came out unexpectedly in the most
amazing variegations. She sat with one long, slim hand propping her
face, a face attenuated, whimsical in line, with full red mouth and
eyes that never bothered with what went on before them so long as this
did not obstruct their view.

“What do you think of that picture above your heads?” she asked.

We looked, glad to be set at our ease. Then Pelleas and I turned to
each other in delicious trepidation. For there on the wall of Miss
Deborah’s studio was a picture of the very garden that we two had meant
to find. We recognized it at once--our garden, where Pelleas had said
the Spring lane would lead between the hedgerows and where the shadows
would fall differently and the echoes be long drawn to music.

I cannot tell what there may have been about that picture so to move
us, and to this day I do not know what place it strove to show.
But, O, I remember the green of it, the tender, early green, the
half-evident boughs of indeterminate bloom, the sense of freshness, of
sweet surprise at some meaning of the year, the well, the shrine, the
shepherd with his pipes, the incommunicable spirit of rhythm and of
echo....

“Do you like it?” asked Miss Deborah smiling, and I was abashed to find
my eyes filled with tears.

“I think that this,” Pelleas answered quaintly, “will be the soul of
Spring, Miss Deborah; and the outdoors this morning will be the body.”

“I dare say,” said Miss Deborah, nodding; “though I fancy more things
are souls than we give them credit for,” she added.

Miss Deborah looked at us, her chin in her hand. And after a moment to
our great amazement she said:--

“I shall give you this picture for a wedding gift, I think. And I tell
you now so that if you are tempted to break the engagement you will
think twice. Is it a picture that you want to live with?”

It was not only a picture that we wanted to live with; it was a picture
whose spell would be eternal. And “Did you paint it, Miss Deborah?” we
asked in our simplicity.

Miss Deborah shook her head and named a great name, then just beginning
to be reverenced.

“He paints pictures better than his cook makes crumpets,” she said,
“and the quality is not usual. Spend the day with me,” she added
abruptly. “I would like you to see the little lovers who are sitting
for my ‘Betrothed.’ I will send a message to your mother, Etarre. Sit
there while I work. I like to think of you there.”

Whereupon she went off to her easel before the north light, and Pelleas
and I sat in the quiet room with our Wonderful Picture and talked of it.

“There must be such a place,” said Pelleas simply, “or he wouldn’t have
painted it. He _couldn’t_, you know. There must be a place a little
like it.”

“Yes, a little like it,” I assented, “with the fountain at the gate the
way you said.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find it?” Pelleas went on. “To come upon
it quite suddenly when we didn’t know. In Etruria, or Tuscany, or
Tempe.”

Yes, it would be wonderful and before all things wonderful.

“We would know it at once,” he added. “We would have to know it,
whatever way we came, by the well or by the path or by the shrine.”

Yes, we agreed, we would have to know it. What wonder to step together
over that green with the rhythm and echo of the pipes to lure us to the
way. If once we found it we would never leave it, we settled that, too.
For this was the week of our betrothal, and it did not occur to us that
one must seek more than gardens. So we talked, and in the mists of our
happy fancy Pelleas suddenly set a reality that made our hearts beat
more joyously than for their dreams.

“Think, dear,” he said, “this picture will hang in our home.”

It would--it would. We looked at it with new eyes. In our home.

Eventually Miss Deborah Ware came back, one hand in the pocket of her
ticking apron.

“You two make me think of that picture,” she said. “That is why I have
given it to you, I believe. It is such a kind of heaven-and-earth
place, with the upper air to breathe, and what little ballast there is
would be flowers and pipes of Pan. But _I_ don’t find fault with that.
Personally I believe that is the only air there is, and I’m certain
it’s the only proper ballast. You recognize the place in the picture,
don’t you?”

We looked at each other in some alarm at the idea of being told; but we
ought to have trusted Miss Deborah.

“‘A fountain of gardens,’” she quoted, “‘a well of living waters and
streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow
upon my garden, that the spices may flow out.’ I don’t know if that
is what he meant,” she added, “but that is what he painted. ‘Awake, O
north wind; and come, thou south,’ is undoubtedly what that shepherd
is piping. Come to luncheon. Perhaps we shall find goat’s-milk cheese
and Bibline wine and pure white honey. In case we do not, would steamed
clams do?”

“Miss Deborah,” said Pelleas, as we followed her down the studio, “we
mean to go to that garden, the real garden, you know. We’ve been saying
so now.”

In the studio door she turned and faced us, nodding her understanding.

“Go there,” she said. “But whether you ever go to the real garden or
not, mind you live in this one. And one thing more: Mind you pay your
entrance fee,” she said.

At this, remembering as I do how our world was stuff of dreams, I think
that we both must have looked a bit bewildered. _Entrance fee._ What
had our fountain of gardens to do with an entrance fee?

“You don’t know what that means?” she said. “I thought as much. Then I
think I must ask you to promise me something.”

She went across the hall to the dining-room, and we followed wondering.

“Just you keep the picture,” said Miss Deborah Ware, “until it will
make some one else happier than it makes you. And then give it away.
Will you remember? Do you get the idea of the entrance fee to the
garden? And you promise? It’s just as I thought--we’ve steamed clams
instead of ambrosia. Are you sorry you stopped?”

It was a very merry luncheon. I remember chiefly the epergne of
clematis, and the border of the wall paper done in crocuses, and the
sun flooding through leaded glass. Those were the days when an epergne
of clematis and a border of crocuses and the like seemed to me to be
inclusive of the law and the prophets, and I felt a luxury of pity for
every one who had not this special grace of understanding. I think
that I even felt a little stir of pity for Miss Deborah Ware. Yes, I
decided, Miss Deborah was like mother’s Sweet-william that would not
blossom in the colours of the seed catalogue but showed forth amazing
hues of its own. Such as that entrance fee to Arcady.

We lingered at table until Miss Deborah’s two models were
announced--the two who were sitting for her “Betrothed.”

“They are adorable little people,” she said. “You must see them before
you go. They make me think of ripe apples and robin redbreasts and
mornings in the country. Even if it were not so I would like them for
their shyness. The little maid--her name is Mitty Greaves--is in the
prettiest panic every time I look at her; and Joel, the young lover,
actually blushes when the clock strikes.”

She went away to the studio and Pelleas and I looked at each other in
sudden abashment to find ourselves together, taking our coffee alone.
It might have been our own table in a land of clematis, beside our very
fountain of gardens itself. Pelleas stretched his hand across the table
for mine, and we lingered there in magnificent disregard of coffee
until the sun slanted away and the sweet drowsiness of the afternoon
was in the garden. Then we wandered back to the studio and sat in the
window-seat opposite our Wonderful Picture and in murmurs disposed
for all time, as we thought, of that extraordinary promise which Miss
Deborah had demanded.

“This picture,” Pelleas said solemnly, “never could make anybody so
happy as it makes us. For it _is_ our garden that we planned in the
lane this morning.... The picture will always bring back this morning
to us, Etarre. It is our garden. It _couldn’t_ be the same to any one
else.”

“If we were to give it to any one, Pelleas,” I recall saying, “it must
be to some one who would understand what the garden means better than
we.”

“Yes,” he assented; “some one who walks there all day long. Some one
who ‘walks in beauty’ all the time.”

Thereafter we fancied ourselves standing by the shrine and looking in
the well, and we saw our dreams take shape in the nebulous fall of
the fountain. Of our betrothal week it seems to me that that hour is
sweetest to recall when I sat throned in the window-seat in my gown of
roses, and Pelleas at my feet talked of our life to be. I think that
there came to us from the wall the sound of the piping in our garden.
Perhaps, although we had not then seen their faces, the mere presence
of those other lovers was a part of our delight.

Presently Miss Deborah Ware pushed aside the curtain in the far end of
the studio.

“Now they are going to rest for a little,” she said, “and I must go
down to the kitchen. But you may go about, anywhere you like.”

It fell so silent in the studio that Pelleas and I fancied those other
lovers to have gone out through the glass doors into the garden. And
when Pelleas proposed that we go to the north window and look away over
the valley I think that we must have believed ourselves to be alone
in the studio. At all events I recall that as we went up the room,
lingering before a cast or a sketch or a bit of brass, Pelleas had
slipped his arm about me; and his arm was still about me when we stood
before the north window and he said:--

“Etarre--have you thought of something? Have you thought that some day
we shall stand before the picture of our garden _when we are old_?”

This was a surprising reflection and we stood looking in each other’s
eyes trying to fathom the mystery which we have not fathomed yet, for
even now we go wondering how it can be that we, who _were_ we, are yet
_not_ we; and still the love, the love persists. I know of nothing more
wonderful in the world than that.

But to youth this thought brings an inevitable question:--

“Will you love me then as much as you love me now?” I asked inevitably;
and when Pelleas had answered with the unavoidable “More,” I dare say
that I promptly rebuked him with youth’s “But could you love me more?”
And I am certain that he must have answered with the usual divine logic
of “No, sweetheart.”

By which it will be seen that a May day in Eighteen Hundred and
Forty-five was as modern as love itself.

Then for no reason at all we looked toward the west window; and there
in the embrasure across the width of the great room were standing Mitty
Greaves and Joel, Miss Deborah’s little lover-models, and both Mitty’s
hands were crushed in Joel’s hands and he was looking into her lifted
eyes as if he were settling for all time some such question as had just
been gladdening us.

They did not see us. And as swiftly as if we had been the guilty ones,
as indeed we were, we stole back to the other end of the studio,
breathless with our secret. We felt such fellowship with all the world
and particularly the world of lovers that so to have surprised them
was, in a manner, a kind of delicious justification of ourselves. It
was like having met ourselves in another world where the heavenly
principle which we already knew maintained with a heavenly persistence.

“I dare say,” murmured Pelleas joyously, “I dare say that they think
they love each other as much as we do.”

We were sitting in the window-seat, a little awed by our sudden sense
of being sharers in such a universal secret, when Miss Deborah came
back and forthwith summoned us all before the open fire. She had
brought a great plate of home-made candy, thick with nuts.

“Mitty and Joel,” she said leisurely, “shall I tell you a secret? You
are not the only ones who are in love. For these two friends here are
like to be married before you are.”

Dear little Mitty in her starched white muslin frock--I can see her
now, how she blushed and lifted her shy eyes. Mitty was the daughter of
a laundress in the Low Grounds and I remember the scrupulous purity of
her white, threadbare gown. Miss Deborah had told us that her very hair
looked ironed and that it had long been her opinion that her mother
starched her flaxen braids. And Joel, in his open-throated blue blouse,
could no more have kept the adoration from his eyes when he looked at
Mitty than he could have kept his shifting brown hands quiet on his
knees. They belonged to the little wild-bird people, a variety that I
have since come to love and to seek out.

“And why,” Pelleas asked then, “are we likely to be married first? For
I’m afraid we have a whole year to wait.”

I recall that Miss Deborah tried to turn aside that question by asking
us quickly how we had been amusing ourselves; and when Pelleas told her
that we had been sitting before our Wonderful Picture she talked about
the picture almost as if she wished to keep us silent.

“Up at the Governor’s house,” said Miss Deborah, “they have wanted for
years to buy it. The Governor saw it when I had it in town. But the
picture is yours now, for all that. Don’t you think that is a pretty
picture, Mitty?” she asked.

At this little Mitty looked up, proud and pleased to be appealed to,
and turned shyly to our Wonderful Picture--the picture that gave
Pelleas and me a new sense of happiness whenever we looked at it; and
she said with an hesitation that was like another grace:--

“Yes’m. It’s the loveliest green, all over it. It’s the colour of the
moss on the roof of our woodshed.”

Ah, poor little Mitty, I remember thinking almost passionately. Why
was it that she was shut out from the kind of joy that came to Pelleas
and me in our picture? It was as if their love were indeed of another
world, in another sense than we had thought. For this picture that
had opened a kind of paradise to us was to these other lovers merely
suggestive of Mitty’s woodshed roof down in the Low Grounds.

“Shall you be married by the autumn?” Pelleas asked of them then
somewhat hurriedly.

And at that Miss Deborah fell silent as if she had done her best to
make us understand; and Mitty answered him.

“Oh, no, sir,” she said hesitatingly. “You see, it’s Joel’s
father--he’s hurt in the woods--a tree fell on him--he can’t ever work
no more, they think. And so Joel’s got the family for a while.”

“Joel’s got the family for a while.” We knew what that meant, even
before Pelleas’ sympathetic questioning brought out the fact that six
were dependent on him, boy that he was, with his own right to toil. He
talked bravely, even buoyantly, of his prospects on his pittance at
the mill. And little Mitty listened and looked up at him adoringly and
faced with perfect courage the prospect of those years of loneliness
and waiting. As I heard them talk and as their plans unfolded shyly
in the warmth of our eager interest, I think there came to me for the
first time the sad wondering that must come upon us all: How should it
be that Pelleas and I had so much and they so little? how should it be
that to us there were the Spring lanes, the May roses, the fountain of
gardens--and to them the burden of the day?

_To us the fountain of gardens._ The thought was as poignant as a
summons. Ay, to us the joy of the garden, the possession of its beauty;
and why then, since we possessed its spirit, should the mere magic of
the canvas be ours? We could part with that and by no means lose our
garden, for the garden would be ours always. But the value that the
world would set upon the picture itself, the value that they would set
upon it at the Governor’s house where were walls of rare canvas and
curio--was this what Miss Deborah had meant, I wondered? Here on the
day that we had received it were there come two to whom Miss Deborah’s
gift would give greater happiness than to us?

I looked at Pelleas and I think that in that moment was worked our
first miracle of understanding, and to this day we do not know to whom
the wish came first. But Pelleas smiled and I nodded a little and he
knew and he turned to Miss Deborah; and I leaned toward Mitty and spoke
most incoherently I fear, to keep her attention from what Miss Deborah
should say. But for all that I heard perfectly:--

“Would it be enough?” Miss Deborah repeated. “Dear boy, the picture
would keep the whole family like kings for a year. Since you ask me,
you know.”

And Pelleas turned to me with a barely perceptible--

“Shall we, Etarre?”

And I made him know that it was what I would have above all other
things, if Miss Deborah was willing. And as for Miss Deborah, she
leaned back in her low chair, her eyes shining and a little pink spot
on either cheek, and she said only:--

“I told you! I tell everybody! It’s you heaven-and-earth kind of people
with a ballast of flowers that know more about your entrance fee to
the garden than anybody else.”

We wondered afterward what she could have meant; for of course there
could be no question of our having paid an entrance fee to our garden
in the sense that she had intended, since what we were proposing to do
was to us no payment of a debt or a fee, but instead a great happiness
to us both.

“Are you sure, Miss Deborah, that they want it for the Governor’s house
_now_?” Pelleas asked in sudden anxiety.

“They were here again yesterday to ask me,” Miss Deborah assured us;
and I think there was a certain radiance in her face.

So Miss Deborah told Mitty and Joel--dear little maid, dear honest
young lover; shall I ever forget the look in their eyes when they
knew? And, remembering, I am smitten with a kind of wonderment at the
immortality of the look of happiness in another’s eyes. For many and
many a time when Pelleas and I have been stepping through some way
of shadow we have, I know, recalled the look on those luminous young
faces; and we have said to each other that life can never be wholly
shadowed or wholly barren while there remain in the world wistful faces
to whom one may bring that look. It is so easy to make eyes brighten,
as I hope every one in the world knows.

And so our fountain of gardens tossed up such a rainbow as the
happiness of Mitty and Joel--Mitty with the starched flaxen braids and
Joel with the brown shining face to whom the picture had suggested only
the green of a woodshed roof. Pelleas and I had quite forgotten that
we had meant to give the picture to some one who should understand the
garden better than we--one who should “walk in beauty.” Something of
the significance of this stirred vaguely in our thought even then; but
I think that we have since come to regard this change of purpose as
holding one of the meanings of life.

Mitty and Joel left Miss Deborah’s house just before us, and Pelleas
and I lingered for a moment in her doorway.

“That young artist,” said Miss Deborah, “who paints pictures better
than his cook makes crumpets--I shall write to him to-night. I shall
tell him that even if he never paints another picture he will not have
been an artist in vain.” She leaned toward us, smiling and nodding a
little. “There will be other entrance fees,” she said; “watch for them.”

We went up the twilight lane that led between the Governor’s
treasure-house of canvas and curio and the thatched cots of the Low
Grounds. Save for the shadowy figures of Mitty and Joel walking before
us, and waving their hands at the lane’s turning, nothing was changed
since the morning. Yet now the spirit of the place lived not only in
its spell of bloom but it lived also in us. Some door had been opened
and we had entered.

When we reached the upper meadow, Pelleas suddenly caught my hand.

“Ah, look--look, Etarre!” he cried.

In the dimness the meadow lay, all of tender, early green, like that of
our Wonderful Picture, with half-evident boughs of indeterminate bloom
pleasant with freshness and with sweet surprise at some meaning of the
year.

“Pelleas,” I said, “I think, if we look, the well and the shepherd with
his pipes will be over there.”

“And the shrine,” Pelleas said.

We stood at the stile, and it seemed to us that the dusk had shaped
itself to be our garden at whose gate, when one has entered, a fountain
will spring so that, as Pelleas had said, “no one can get out--ever.”
At the last we looked long in each other’s eyes. And I think that
we read there the secret of the garden that lies not in Etruria, or
Tuscany, or Tempe; and we knew its living waters and its spices and its
incommunicable spirit of rhythm and of echo.




IX

THE BABY


Our grandniece, Enid, is older than Lisa, her sister. Indeed, Enid was
twenty-two that Spring, and had been for two years happily married in
spite of the fact that Pelleas and I had had no hand in the wooing. To
see Enid with her baby in her arms was considerably like watching a
wild rose rock a butterfly, and no one can fancy how tenderly we two
observed her. I think that few sweet surprises of experience or even of
wisdom have so confirmed our joy in life as the sight of our grandniece
Enid with her baby.

It chanced that when the baby was but a few weeks old David, Enid’s
young husband, was sent to The Hague upon some government business, a
state of affairs for which it seemed to Pelleas and me that the United
States should be called to account. For experience shows that the
government will go irresistibly forward but I protest that the baby’s
father never can be compensated for that absence; and I would like to
have any one object who can believe differently.

For all his impatience to see whether the little child had grown to
manhood in those six weeks or so, David was obliged to report at
Washington immediately upon his return. When the steamship was almost
due Enid found that she could wait for him to see the baby not one day
longer than that on which the boat was to arrive. So she took train
from somewhere in Connecticut with that very little child and arrived
at our house in a sad state of collapse, a few minutes before her
telegram. Enid has no nurse maid. They are very young married people
indeed.

The night on which Enid and her baby reached us Pelleas and I had been
sitting in the dark of our drawing-room, with the fire almost burned
out. It was one of the nights when all the little shadows that live
near come creeping forth. They came when we were not aware and there
they were in the room, saying nothing. The ghosts that come to the
platforms of Elsinore do not often speak.

“We dreamed it differently, Etarre,” Pelleas had said.

I knew what he meant. Have we not all dreamed it differently? And then
we sat thinking of the Great Dream which we had had and lost. For
there was a time, when Pelleas could model and I could write so that
a few were deceived, that the Great Dream for one radiant year was
in our home and went away when little Cedric died. In all the years
since then we have gone wondering where he may be now, and where now,
without us. For he was so very tiny when he left us; he could hardly
take a step alone even by clinging to my finger, with Pelleas’ hands
outstretched before him. I think it is partly lest he be needing us as
he needed us then that we are never very far from him in thought, and
that night we talked long of him until one by one all the other shadows
went away in the presence of his little figure on our hearth.

So we were sitting with “Do you remember?” and “But do you remember?”
on our lips when the door-bell rang and Nichola came upstairs to
answer it, talking all the way. We wondered somewhat, for we have no
unexpected visitors and no small excitements. We wondered the more when
she appeared on the threshold of the drawing-room, bearing in her arms
a white bundle which wore long and alarmingly fluffy skirts.

“Nichola!” we both cried; for you do not know how pleasant it is when
the days grow colourless to have something happen which you yourself
did not bring about. “Nichola! What is it?”

“It’s a babby,” Nichola informed us grimly, and laid it in Pelleas’
arms--face downward, he afterward told me. Then she beckoned me to the
hall and I went, barely able to stand; for I was certain that it had
been left in a basket on the steps with nothing but a locket.

“Nichola,” I begged, “whose baby?”

Nichola was bending over the bench where sat poor little Enid, crying
helplessly.

“N--nobody told me,” Enid sobbed on my shoulder, “what it would be like
to travel with a ten-weeks-old baby. He cried every m--mile of the way
here--and he is a good baby, too!”

Bless the little mothers. I have never yet known one who would not
assure you, though in the presence of a child exhibiting a most
dreadful temper, that her baby was “usually so good, too.”

Together, though I suppose that I hindered far more than I helped,
Nichola and I got Enid upstairs and put her in bed, dear little thing,
hardly more than a baby herself for all her wise use of the most
advanced baby terms. Nichola hurried downstairs and in a few minutes
bustled back with a steaming bowl of some mysterious compound, hot and
savoury in a bowl. How do some people always know what to bring you,
hot and savoury, in a bowl? If I had gone down to the kitchen I protest
that I could have devised nothing but eggs.

Nichola insisted on feeding Enid--the impertinent old woman had
observed that when I am excited my hands tremble. But whose do not? As
for Nichola I had often told her that she would not show emotion if
an army with banners were to march in the front door. Instead of fear
or sorrow or agitation Nichola’s way of emotion is anger; and I should
have expected her to remind such an army of the purpose of the door mat.

“You’d best,” Nichola said to me over her shoulder, “go downstairs and
see after that--babby.”

Nichola dislikes a great many things, but the greatest of these
dislikes is babies. When she passes one in its perambulator I have seen
her take the extreme edge of the walk.

“They ain’t a bone in ’em,” she once explained; “when you go to pick
’em up, they _slimpse_.”

I deplored this failing of Nichola’s as I hurried downstairs to
Pelleas, but I was chiefly concerned to know how he had got on in my
absence--Pelleas, who will not even hold my Angora.

No sound came from the drawing-room. I entered fearfully, for even a
man of genius is sometimes helpless. I have never known my own alarm
more swiftly rebuked.

He had managed to turn on the lights and furthermore he had contrived
to take off the baby’s cloak and bonnet and veil, though usually he
could as easily embroider a thing as to untie it, save after a very
long time. And there sat Pelleas on the sofa with the baby in one arm,
and he was gravely holding a lighted match a foot from its face.

As I looked he threw the burned match in the grate, soberly lighted
another and repeated the performance. Evidently he construed some
movement of the baby’s face to be an answering smile, for he looked
vastly pleased and encouraged and instantly said clearly:--

“Well, tol, tol, tol, tolly tol! Yes!” And then added in a tone of the
simplest conviction, “Of course.”

I hurried forward, laughing at him in spite of the sudden lump in my
throat. It is sad for Pelleas to be nobody’s grandfather when he looks
so precisely like a grandfather on the stage.

“What are the matches for, Pelleas?” I cried.

He looked up with the adorably abashed expression that I love to bring
to his eyes.

“They keep its attention,” he murmured apologetically, “nothing else
would. I think it’s hungry.”

“‘It’!” I cried scornfully; “why, it’s a boy.”

“Ah, well now,” Pelleas argued placidly, “you said ‘It’s a boy.’ And I
said, ‘It’s hungry.’ What’s the difference?”

And to this there was really no response.

The baby’s disturbed babbling waxed to a steady fretting which
increased in volume and violence. Hungry he undoubtedly was.

I remembered that Enid’s black bag lay on the bench in the hall. I
hurried to it, and there was the baby’s empty bottle. When I came back,
though Pelleas was lighting matches at a furious rate, the baby was
crying at the top of his small strength.

“He’ll disturb Enid,” I said. “Pelleas,” I added, as one proposing
revolutions, “we must take the baby down to the kitchen and feed him.”

You to whom such sweet offices are the joy--or the burden!--of every
day, what can you know of the thrill of that moment to one whose arms
have been empty for so long? I protest that holding the keys to The
Hague and all Europe and the other continents is not to be compared to
the radiant responsibility of that moment.

Pelleas promptly stood up and extended his arms.

“Take it,” he said, with enchanting masculine helplessness. Pelleas
will not even let me carry my primroses up and down stairs, but merely
because this was a baby he resigned his rights. I had almost forgotten
how humble men are in such a presence.

I took the baby in my arms, and he settled down with that contented
little gurgle which always attends a baby’s changing hands, most
subtilely flattering the new nurse until the storm breaks afresh harder
than before. This the storm did next, and I looked at Pelleas a little
wildly. For whatever was to be done I must do.

“Go first,” said I firmly, “and open the kitchen door.”

I followed him down the stairs, one foot at a time, and when he opened
the door the sight warmed my heart. The kitchen was cheery and brightly
lighted, a hot fire was blazing in the range, and the teakettle was
singing away to make the most miserable at peace. Sometime I shall
write a letter to those who are of all men the bluest, and the
substance of it will be: Go and put on the teakettle.

I sat by the fire while Pelleas, by devious ways of pantry and
refrigerator, sought out the milk, and we were very merry over warming
it, for it was a wonderful occasion. Pelleas spilled a great deal of
milk on Nichola’s perfectly polished griddles--O, I could not have
loved him if in such a pleasant experience his hands had been perfectly
firm and indifferent. Nichola’s hands would have been quite firm. That
brown old woman has no tremors and no tears. And just as Pelleas had
filled the baby’s bottle, she appeared at the stair door.

“The babby’s mother,” she said, folding her arms, “says you’d know
about mixin’ in the lime water an’ the milk sugar, an’ boilin’ the
bottles up, an’ washin’ out the babby’s mouth with carbolic acid.”

“Nichola!” we gasped.

“That’s what she says,” Nichola maintained firmly, “some kind o’ acid.
I think she says her Aunt Septy told her. She says I’s to tell you or
the babby’d starve. The young leddy acts like a cluck-chicken.”

When she had gone back upstairs Pelleas and I looked in each other’s
faces.

“I had forgotten,” I said weakly, “Pelleas, they boil _everything_ now.”

“They do?” said Pelleas helplessly.

“And they use two _separate_ bottles,” I recalled anxiously. “And
they--”

Pelleas wrinkled his eyes at the corners.

“Fudge!” he said.

O, I loved Pelleas for that “Fudge!” Not that I do not believe in every
improvement in the world. I do. And Pelleas holds the most advanced
doctrines. But now and then I do love a “Fudge!”

“Would you dare give him this warm milk?” I asked him bravely.

“I certainly would dare,” Pelleas answered clearly; “we would take the
baby to ride in an automobile, would we not? and as for danger--”

“But, Pelleas,” I hesitated, “I don’t like to think we’re behind the
times, undermining the progress of Society and Science and--”

By then the displeasure of the baby was like that of a young god,
neglected of Hebe. Pelleas handed me the bottle.

“I am the last not to sympathize with these details,” he said gravely,
“but it’s hungry, Etarre. Feed it. The situation seems to require
something more than a boiled bottle.”

So, being unregenerate, we hesitated no longer. And Pelleas sat beside
me, and the baby drank with little soft, shuddering breaths at the
painful memory of how hungry he really had been. I bent above him and
so did Pelleas, our heads quite close together as we watched him,
and heard the little soft noises and sighs and met the eyes’ grave,
wondering criticism. So long, so long it had been since I had seen that
one serious eye lifted to mine as a little face lay against my breast.

Pelleas put out one finger and the funny little hand caught it and
clung to it. Pelleas wrinkled his eyes at the corners and smiled up at
me--I had almost forgotten how he used to do that and then wait for me
to tell him that at that rate I could never get Cedric to sleep. When
Pelleas did that now we sat silent; for very little babies are never
unlike, and if I had really let myself I might have imagined and so I
think might Pelleas have imagined ... that which for more than forty
years we have only dreamed.

At last the baby moved his head, gurgled a brief grace, stared up
at us unwinkingly, and then wrinkled his face astoundingly. Pelleas
rose and looked wildly about for matches. One would have said that
we were fugitives from justice crouching behind a panel and that our
safety depended upon keeping that baby quiet during the passing of the
men-at-arms. I cannot tell how it is with others, but when one is
seventy a baby affects one like this and to prevent it crying seems all
the law and a fair proportion of the prophets. So that when Pelleas
came with a box of paraffin matches and lighted whole handfuls before
Enid’s baby’s eyes I said very little; for he did stop crying, though
he looked at these humble pyrotechnics somewhat haughtily and as if he
knew more about them than he cared to give out.

The stair door does not creak, and this time Nichola was quite in the
kitchen before we heard her. She looked at us once and then hurried to
the other side of the room and busied herself at the dresser. We have
seldom seen Nichola laugh but, if it were not that we cannot imagine
her laughing, I would have thought and Pelleas would have thought that
her voice sounded ever so slightly muffled.

“Its mother wants it right straight off,” she remarked, with her back
toward us.

We rose promptly, and meekly made our way upstairs. Old Nichola
dictates to us all day long in matters in which, as I think, we are
really far wiser than she; how then should we not yield in crises of
which we may be supposed to know nothing? Though I am bound to confess
that save in matters of boiling I felt myself as wise as little Enid
who, as I have said, is a baby herself. And this suggests something
about which I have often wondered, namely, when the actual noon of
motherhood may be? For I protest it seems to me that all the mothers of
my acquaintance are either themselves babies, or else I catch myself
thinking that they are too old and even spinsterish in their notions
to be able perfectly to bring up a child. Yet it cannot very well be
that I was the only mother neither too young nor too old to train youth
properly.

I laid the little thing in Enid’s bed, and Enid smiled--that tender,
pitiful, young-mother smile which somehow breaks one’s heart no matter
how happy the young mother may be. But I was certain that the baby
would disturb her. And an hour later while the doctor was with her an
idea came to me that set me in a delicious flutter. I had forgotten
that there are such sweet excitements in the world. I hugged the hope in
silence for a moment and then shared it with Pelleas.

“Suppose,” I said, “that Enid should need her rest to-night?”

I looked at him tentatively, expecting him to understand at once
as he almost never fails to do. I did not remember that it is far
easier to understand in matters of design, rhythm and the like, which
had occupied us these many years, than to adjust one’s self without
preparation to the luminous suggestion which I was harbouring.

“I hope that she _will_ have a good night,” Pelleas advanced, with
appalling density.

“But suppose,” I persisted, “that she should need her rest and that the
doctor thought the baby would be certain to disturb her?”

“If it cries,” Pelleas suggested then with magnificent generosity, “you
might get it and rock it awhile.”

“Pelleas!” I cried, “don’t you see? Maybe we can have the baby with us
all night.”

Pelleas looked up in surprise; then his dear face shone.

“Could we, do you think?” he said, as we say when we want a thing very
much.

“We will,” I promised.

Therefore when we heard the doctor coming downstairs we hurried to the
hall and waited for him at the foot of the stairs. Between us we must
have laid the matter before him, though I do not in the least remember
what we may have said; but some way we made him know for he nodded and
smiled in a surprising fashion.

“Yes,” said he, “yes--by all means! I really am persuaded that it would
be an act of charity for you to keep that baby with you to-night.”

“On our niece’s account, you know,” said I with dignity.

“Certainly,” said he gravely, and caught up his hat and rushed away. At
the time it seemed to me that he was curiously moved about something
and I feared that Enid might be very ill.

As for Pelleas and me we could hardly wait to go upstairs. Of course
Nichola had to know; she brought up the milk and the alcohol lamp
and we were obliged to tell her. To tell Nichola that you mean to do
anything which she considers foolish is very like a confession that
your whole point of view is ignorant and diseased. Still, in some
fashion, Pelleas and I together told her. Our old servant regarded us
with the disapprobation which it is her delight not to disguise. Then
on her brown fingers she checked matters off.

“No sleep for neither one of you,” she cast up the account. “Headaches
to-morrow all day. Death o’ cold dancin’ in an’ out o’ bed. An’ a
smothered babby by mornin’.”

“O, no, no, Nichola,” said we, gently but sweepingly.

I brought the baby in our room to undress him. Our room was cheerful
and warm. An open fire was burning; and Pelleas had lighted all the
candles as we will do on the rare occasions when we are dressing for
some great event. On a table beside the bed stood the alcohol lamp and
the glasses and the baby’s bottle--I had not even mentioned lime water
and boiled bottles to Enid--and strange enough they looked where only
my Bible and my medicine have lived for so long. The baby was asleep
when we took him from Enid, but he waked and smiled impartially and
caught at the air in perfect peace. I took off the little garments,
feeling all the old skill come back to my hands idle to all such sweet
business for more than forty years. Pelleas insisted on drawing off the
tiny socks and stockings and when I saw the little feet in his palm
I could almost have believed, for one swift moment, that the years
had indeed rolled back. Then we wrapped him warmly and laid him in
the great bed. And Pelleas spent a long while happily tucking in and
tucking down and pretending to be very useful.

We had thought to read for a little while as is our wont and we did
try to do so; but neither of us could keep our eyes anywhere near the
book or could listen to the other read aloud. For the unwonted sound
of that soft breathing was wholly distracting. And once a little hand
was thrown up over the edge of the covers. What did we care about the
sculptures at Ægina then?

Nichola looked in.

“Best leave a lamp burnin’,” she said crossly. “An’ if it should cry,
you call me.”

By which, as Pelleas said afterward, she by no means intended to
provide for the possible emotion of the lamp.

I was longing to feel that little head in the hollow of my arm. I
laid it there presently and tucked my hand between the two pillows as
I had been wont and held away the covering from the baby’s face. There
was the fine dark hair, and there was the tiny hand uplifted and--as I
live!--there was the identical ruffle of lace which had always used to
bother about the little chin. In that first ecstatic moment I looked up
at Pelleas almost frightened, half-expecting the buoyant, youthful face
and the dear eyes that were wont to look down upon Cedric and me. And
the dear eyes smiled, for they have never changed.

I lay very still listening to that quiet breathing, to the rustle and
turning which is a tender language of its own. When one is seventy and
closes one’s eyes it is wonderful how the whole world grows youthful.
And when I had almost dozed that tender rustling brought me back so
happily that I could hardly tell which was memory of that other little
head upon my arm and which was now. At midnight and twice later when
the baby’s food had to be warmed it was I who did this, and the old
familiar helplessness of Pelleas in this little presence delighted me
beyond measure. Though when the baby grew impatient and cried, Pelleas
valiantly lighted matches before him, and he fell silent and even
smiled, and slept again. I record it as a mere matter of history that
in the intervals of these ceremonies I had not slept for a moment. For
there had come thronging back such a company of memories, such a very
flight of spirits of the old delight of our wonderful year when there
was Cedric, that the world had no room for sleep at all. Sleep! I do
not suppose that any one would chide me for being wakeful at a ball?
And nothing in the world could have been so delightful to me as were
those hours when that little head lay on my arm.

Sometime after daylight he awoke. Cedric had been wont to lie quietly
as long as ever I would do so, but Enid’s baby--for it was Enid’s baby
for all our pretending--awoke and played with his fists. Then a fancy
that had hovered over me all the night took shape, and I told it to
Pelleas.

“Dear,” I said, “you know the things in the bottom drawer in the
closet?”

“Yes,” he answered at once, “I have been thinking about them.”

“Suppose,” I suggested, “that we were to--to try some of them on the
baby.”

“I have been thinking the same thing,” Pelleas said.

It was not cold in the room, for we had kept the hearth alive all the
night. When we were warmly wrapped and had drawn chairs before the
fire, Pelleas brought from the closet that box filled with the tender
yellow muslins that Cedric had worn such a little time. I chose the
white batiste gown that I had made myself, every stitch; and over
his little nightgown we put it on Enid’s baby. He was very good, and
crowed and nestled; and so we found the long white cloak that I had
embroidered and a bonnet that Pelleas had once selected himself, all
alone, at a shop. And Enid’s baby’s arm doubled up in a ball when I
tried to put it in a sleeve--I suppose that there never was a baby’s
arm that did not do this, but I have known only one little arm. And
when the pink hand came creeping through the cuff Pelleas caught it and
kissed it--O, I had not thought for years how he used to do that.

“Now!” I said, “Pelleas--look now.”

Enid’s baby sat on my knee, his back to us both. The little bent back
in that white coat, the soft collar crumpling up about the neck in
spite of me, the same little bonnet with the flower in the back and the
lace all around--

Pelleas and I looked at each other silently. And not so much in grief
as in longing that was like the hope of heaven.

We did not hear Nichola coming with our coffee. So she opened the door
and saw the box on the floor and the things scattered all about. She
knew what they were. She was with us when little Cedric was here, and
she had not forgotten. She stood still, and then set the tray down on
the table.

“Drink your coffee!” she called sharply, and was out of the room before
we could speak.

In a moment, when I could, and because Enid’s baby cried then I laid
him in Pelleas’ arms and went out to tell Nichola to bring more milk.

And leaning against a bureau in the passage Nichola stood crying as if
her heart would break.

“Go on away!” she said, shaking her old gray head. “Go on away!”




X

THE MARRIAGE OF KATINKA


“I shall take my white lady’s-cloth gown,” I repeated obstinately.

“You don’t need it no more than what you do two heads, mem,” Nichola
maintained.

“But it is the first visit that I’ve made in three years, Nichola,” I
argued, “and it is quite the prettiest gown that I’ve had for--”

“Yah!” Nichola denied; “you’ve got four sides of a closet hung full.
An’ where you goin’ but down on a farm for three days? Take the kitchen
stove if you must, but leave the dress here. You’ll be laughed at for
fashionable!”

I wavered, and looked consultingly at Pelleas.

It is one sign of our advancing years, we must believe, that Pelleas
and I dislike to be laughed at. Our old servant scolds us all day long
and we are philosophical; but if she laughs at either of us Pelleas
grieves and I rage. Nichola’s “You’ll be laughed at for fashionable”
humbled me.

Pelleas, the morning sun shining on his hair, was picking dead leaves
from the begonias in the window and pretended not to hear.

I looked longingly at my white lady’s-cloth gown but Nichola was
already folding it away. It had ruffles of lace and a chiffon fichu and
was altogether most magnificent. I had had it made for a winter wedding
and as it had not been worn since, I was openly anxious to reappear in
it. And now on occasion of this visit to Cousin Diantha at Paddington
Nichola threatened me with remorse if I so much as took it with me. I
would be “laughed at for fashionable!”

However, Pelleas continuing to pick dead leaves in a cowardly fashion,
there would have been no help for me had not Nichola at that moment
been called from the room by the poultry wagon which drew up at our
door like a god from a cloud. Our steamer-trunk, carefully packed,
stood open before me with room enough and to spare for my white
lady’s-cloth gown.

“Pelleas!” I cried impulsively.

He looked round inquiringly, pretending to have been until that moment
vastly absorbed.

“If I put the gown in,” I cried excitedly, “will you strap the trunk
before she gets back?”

Pelleas wrinkled his eyes at the corners, and it was the look that
means whatever I mean.

In a twinkling the gown was out of its tissues and tumbled in place in
a fashion which would have scandalized me if I had been feeling less
adventuresome. Pelleas, whose hands could have trembled with no more
sympathy if he had been expecting to appear in the gown too, fastened
the straps and turned the key and we hurried downstairs. On the landing
we met Nichola.

“The trunk is strapped, Nichola,” said I firmly.

“You needn’t to hev done that,” she grunted graciously.

We passed her in guilty silence.

“If only there is actually a chance to wear the gown,” I confided to
Pelleas on the train that afternoon, “it will make it all right to have
taken it.”

“What a shocking principle, Etarre,” returned Pelleas, quite as if he
had not helped.

We were met at the Paddington station by something which Cousin Diantha
called “the rig.” It was four-seated and had flying canvas sides
which seemed to billow it on its way. From an opening in the canvas
Cousin Diantha herself thrust out a red mitten as the bony driver was
conducting us across the platform. Our Cousin Diantha Bethune is the
mince-pie-and-plum-pudding branch of our family. We can never think
of her without recollecting her pantry and her oven. And whereas some
women wear always the air of having just dressed several children or
written letters or been shopping, Cousin Diantha seems to have been
caught red-handed at slicing and kneading and to be away from those
processes under protest. She never reads a book without seeming to turn
the leaves with a cook knife and I think her gowns must all be made
with “apron fronts.”

“Ain’t this old times though?” she cried, opening her arms to me,
“ain’t it? Etarre, you set here by me. Pelleas can set front with Hiram
there. My!”

“The rig” rocked up the dingy village street with us, its only
passengers, buttoned securely within its canvas sails so that I could
see Paddington before us like an aureole about the head of Pelleas. But
if a grate fire had been a-light in that shabby interior it could have
cheered us no more than did Cousin Diantha’s ruddy face and scarlet
mittens. She gave us news of the farm that teemed with her offices
of spicing and frosting; and by the time we reached her door we were
already thinking in terms of viands and ingredients.

“What a nice little, white little room,” said Pelleas for example,
immediately we had set our lamp on our bureau. “The ceiling looks
like a lemon pie.” Verily are there not kitchen-cupboard houses whose
carpets resemble fruit jelly and whose bookcases suggest different
kinds of dessert?

Cousin Diantha was bustling down the stairs. She never walked as others
do but she seemed to be always hurrying for fear, say, that the toast
was burning.

“Baked potatoes!” she called back cheerily. “I put ’em in last thing
before I left, an’ Katinka says they’re done. Supper’s ready when you
are.”

I was hanging my white lady’s-cloth gown under the cretonne curtain.

“Katinka,” I repeated to Pelleas in a kind of absent-minded pleasure.

“It sounds like throwing down a handful of spoons,” submitted Pelleas,
wrinkling the corners of his eyes.

We saw Katinka first when we were all about the table--Cousin Diantha,
Miss Waitie who was her spinster sister, Pelleas and I, and Andy, who
worked for his board. I shall not soon forget the picture that she made
as she passed the corn cakes,--Katinka, little maid-of-all-work, in a
patched black frock and a red rubber ring and a red rubber bracelet.
Her face was round and polished and rosy with health, and she was
always breathless and clothed with a pretty fear that she was doing
everything wrong. Moreover, she had her ideas about serving--she
afterward told me that she had worked for a week at the minister’s in
Paddington where every one at breakfast, she added in an awed voice,
“had a finger bowl to themself.” Cousin Diantha, good soul, cared
very little how her dainties were served so that the table was kept
groaning, and Katinka had therefore undertaken a series of reforms to
impress which she moved in a mysterious way. For example, as she handed
the corn cakes and just as I raised my hand to take one, steaming,
moist, yellow and quite beneath my touch, the plate was suddenly
sharply withdrawn, a spirited revolution of Katinka’s hands ensued, and
the cakes reappeared upon my other side.

“We got the table set longways o’ the room to-night,” she explained
frankly, “and I can’t hardly tell which _is_ left till I look at my
ring.”

Conversation with Katinka while she served was, I perceived, a habit
of the house; and indeed Katinka’s accounts of kitchen happenings were
only second in charm to Katinka’s comments upon the table talk. It
was to this informality that I was indebted for chancing on a radiant
mystery on that very night of our arrival.

“Mis’ Grocer Helman,” said Cousin Diantha to me at this first
supper--every woman in Paddington has her husband’s occupation for a
surname--“wants to come to see you about making over her silk. She’s
heard you was from the city an’ she says Mis’ Photographer Bronson’s
used up the only way she--Mis’ Grocer--knew on a cheap taffeta. Mis’
Grocer Helman won’t copy. She’s got a sinful pride.”

Katinka set down the bread plate.

“I got some loaf sugar sent up from Helman’s to-day,” she contributed,
“because I just _had_ to get that new delivery wagon up here to this
house somehow. It’d been in front o’ Mis’ Lawyer More’s twict in one
forenoon.”

And at this Miss Waitie, who was always a little hoarse and very
playful, shook her head at Katinka.

“Now, new delivery wagon nothin’,” she said skeptically; “it’s that
curly-headed delivery boy, _I’ll_ be bound.”

So it was in my very first hour in Cousin Diantha’s house that I saw
what those two good souls had never suspected. For at Miss Waitie’s
words Andy, who worked for his board, suddenly flushed one agonizing
red and spilled the preserves on the tablecloth. What more did any sane
woman need on which to base the whole pleasant matter? Andy was in love
with Katinka.

I sat up very straight and refused the fish balls in my preoccupation.
My entire visit to Paddington quickly resolved itself into one
momentous inquiry: Was Katinka in love with Andy?

“Is Katinka in love with Andy?” I put it to Pelleas excitedly, when at
last we were upstairs.

“Katinka? Andy? Andy? Katinka?” responded Pelleas politely.

“Now, one would think you were never in love yourself,” I chided him,
and fell planning what on earth they would live on. Why are so many
little people with nothing at all to live on always in love--when every
one knows spinster after spinster with an income apiece?

I was not long in doubt about Katinka. The very next morning I came
upon her in the hall, her arms filled with kindling for the parlour
fire. I followed her. Her dear, bright little face and yellow braids
reminded me of the kind of doll that they never make any more.

“Katinka,” said I, lingering shamelessly, “do you put the sticks in
across or up and down?”

For it may very well be upon this nice question as well as Angora cats
that Pelleas and I will have our final disagreement, which let no one
suppose that we will really ever have.

She looked up to answer me. The gingham bib of her apron fell down. And
there, pinned to her tight little waist, I beheld--a button-picture
of Andy! Never tell me that there does not abide in the air a race of
little creatures whose sole duty it is to unveil all such secrets to
make glad the gray world. Never tell me that it is such a very gray
world either, if you wish my real opinion.

She looked down and espied the exposed mystery. She cast a frightened
glance at me and I suppose that she saw me, who am a very foolish old
woman, smiling with all my sympathetic might. At all events she gasped
and sat down among the kindling, and said:--

“Oh, ma’am, we’re agoin’ to be marrit to-morrow. An’ Mis’ Bethune--I’m
so scairt to tell ’er.”

I sat down too and caught my breath. This blessed generation. I had
been wondering if these two were in love and on what they could live
when at last they should make up their minds and lo, they were to be
married to-morrow.

“Why, Katinka!” said I; “where?”

The little maid-of-all-work sobbed in her apron.

“I do’ know, ma’am,” she said. “Andy, he’s boardin’ so, an’ I’m a
orphing. I t’ought,” mentioned Katinka, still sobbing, “maybe Mis’
Bethune’d let us stand up by the dinin’-room windy. The hangin’ lamp
there looks some like a weddin’ bell, Andy t’ought.”

The hanging lamp had an orange shade and was done in dragons.

“When I see you an’ him las’ night,” Katinka went on, motioning with
her stubby thumb toward the absent Pelleas, “I t’ought maybe you’d sign
fer seein’ it done. I tol’ Andy so. Mis’ Bethune, I guess she’ll be
rarin’. I wanted it to be in the kitchen, but Andy, he’s so proud. His
pa was in dry goods,” said Katinka, wiping her eyes at the mere thought.

Here was a most delicious business thrown, as it were, fairly in my
arms. I hailed it with delight, and sat holding my elbows and planning
with all my might.

“Katinka,” said I portentously, “you leave _where_ you are to be
married to me.”

“Oh, ma’am!” said Katinka.

I never had more earnest appreciation.

Cousin Diantha Bethune was heard calling her at that moment, and
Katinka went off with the coals quite as if the next day were not to
see her a bride, married in the parlour.

For I was determined that the wedding should be in the parlour, and I
spent a most feverish day. I made repeated visits to the kitchen and
held consultations with the little maid, whose cheeks grew rosy and
whose eyes grew bright at the heaven of having some one in the world
interested in her.

While she washed the dishes she told me that she and Andy had saved
enough to live for three months at Mis’ Slocum’s boarding house. After
that the future was a pleasant but indefeasible mystery. While she
cleaned the knives I slipped down to find whether Andy had remembered
to engage the parson; and he had done so, but at the risk of having the
ceremony performed in the scullery as the only available apartment.
Andy, it appeared, objected to being married at the parson’s house; and
Katinka seemed to think that this also was because his father had been
“in dry goods.” At our last conference, during lamp cleaning, I advised
Katinka to break the news to Cousin Diantha Bethune immediately after
supper when we were still at table. Katinka promised and her mouth
quivered at the thought.

“She’ll never hev us in the parlour, not in this world, ma’am,” she
said to me hopelessly, “not with that new three-ply ingrain on the
floor.”

Meanwhile I had told Pelleas who, though he is sometimes disposed to
pretend to scoff at romance which he does not himself discover, was
yet adequately sympathetic. At supper we were both absurdly excited,
and Pelleas heaped little attentions on Andy who ate nothing and kept
brushing imaginary flies from before his face to show how much at ease
he was. And after the last plate of hot bread had been brought in I
wonder now at my own self-possession; for I knew thereafter that little
Katinka, by the crack in the pantry door, was waiting the self-imposed
signal of Cousin Diantha’s folded napkin. When this came she popped
into the room like a kind of toy and stood directly back of Cousin
Diantha’s chair.

“Please, ma’am,” she said, “Andy an’ me’s goin’ to get marrit.”

Andy, one blush, rose and shambled spryly to her side and caught at
her hand and stood with glazing eyes.

Cousin Diantha wheeled in her chair and her plate danced on the
table. My heart was in my mouth and I confess that I was prepared for
a dudgeon such as only mistresses know when maids have the temerity
to wish to marry. In that moment I found, to my misery, that I had
forgotten every one of my arguments about young love and the way of
the world and the durability of three-ply ingrain carpets, and I did
nothing but sit trembling and fluttering for all the world as if it
were my own wedding at stake. I looked beseechingly at Pelleas, and he
nodded and smiled and rubbed his hands under the tablecloth--O, I could
not have loved a man who would look either judicious or doubtful as do
too many at the very mention of any one’s marriage but their own.

Dimly I saw Cousin Diantha look over her spectacles; I heard her amazed
“Bless us, Katinka! What _are_ you talking about?” And I half heard
the little maid add “To-morrow” quite without expression as she turned
to leave the room, loyally followed by Andy. And then, being an old
woman and no longer able to mask my desire to interfere in everything,
I was about to have the last word when Cousin Diantha turned to me and
spoke:--

“Listen at that!” she cried; “listen at that! To-morrow--an’ not a
scrap o’ cake in this house! An’ a real good fruit cake had ought to be
three months old at the least. I declare, it don’t seem as if a wedding
could be _legal_ on sponge cake!”

I could hardly believe my ears. Not a word against the parlour, no
mention of the three-ply ingrain nor any protest at all. Cousin
Diantha’s one apprehension was concerning the legality of weddings
not solemnized in the presence of a three-months-old fruit cake. The
mince-pie-and-plum-pudding branch of our family had risen to the
occasion as nobly as if she had been steeped in sentiment.

Upstairs Pelleas and I laughed and well-nigh cried about it.

“And Pelleas,” I told him, “Pelleas, you see it doesn’t matter in the
least whether it’s romance or cooking that’s accountable so long as
your heart is right.”

So it was settled; and I lay long awake that night and planned which
door they should come in and what flowers I could manage and what I
could find for a little present. Here at last, I thought triumphantly
as I was dropping asleep, was a chance to overcome Nichola by the news
that I had actually found another wedding at which to wear my white
lady’s-cloth gown.

With that I sat suddenly erect, fairly startled from my sleep.

_What was Katinka to wear?_

Alas, I have never been so firmly convinced that I am really seventy
as when I think how I remembered even the parson and yet could forget
Katinka’s wedding gown.

Immediately I roused Pelleas.

“Pelleas!” I cried, “what do you suppose that dear child can be married
in?”

Pelleas awoke with a logical mind.

“In the parlour, I thought,” said he.

“But what will she wear, Pelleas?” I inquired feverishly; “what can she
wear? I don’t suppose the poor child--”

“I thought she looked very well to-night,” he submitted sleepily;
“couldn’t she wear that?” And drifted into dreams.

Wear _that_! The little tight black frock in which she served. Really,
for a man who is adorable, Pelleas at times can seem stupid enough,
though he never really is stupid.

I lay for a little while looking out the high window at the Paddington
stars which some way seemed unlike town stars. And on a sudden I smiled
back at them, and lay smiling at them for a long time. For little
Katinka was very nearly my size and I knew what she was to wear at her
wedding. My white lady’s-cloth gown.

As soon as her work was done next morning I called her to my room. It
was eleven o’clock and she was to be married at twelve.

“Katinka,” said I solemnly, “what are you going to wear, child, to be
married in?”

She looked down at the tight little black gown.

“I t’ought o’ that,” said the poor little thing uncertainly, “but I
haven’t got nothink nicer than what this is.”

She had thought of that. The tears were in my eyes as I turned to the
cretonne curtain and pulled it aside.

“Look, Katinka,” I said; “you are going to wear this.”

There hung the white lady’s-cloth in all its bravery of chiffon and
fichu and silver buttons. Katinka looked once at that splendour and
smiled patiently, as one who is wonted to everything but surprises.

“La, ma’am,” she humoured me, pretending to appreciate my jest.

When at last she understood, the poor little soul broke down and cried
on the foot of the bed. I know of no sadder sight than the tears of one
to whom they are the only means of self-expression.

Never did gown fit so beautifully. Never was one of so nearly the
proper length. Never was such elegance. When she was quite ready, the
red ring and red bracelet having been added at her request, Katinka
stood on a chair to have a better view in the little mirror above my
washbasin, and she stepped down awe-struck.

“O, ma’am,” she said in a whisper, “I look like I was ready to be laid
out.”

Then she went to the poor, tawdry things of her own which she had
brought to my room, and selected something. It was a shabby plush book
decorated with silk flowers and showing dog-eared gilt leaves.

“I t’ought I’d carry this here,” she said shyly.

I opened the book. And my eye fell on these words written in letters
which looked as if they had been dropped on the page from a sieve:--

    There may be sugar and there may be spice
    But you are the one I shall ever call nice.

It was an autograph album.

“Why, Katinka,” I said, “what for?”

“Well,” she explained, “I know in the fashion pictures brides allus
carries books. I ain’t got no other book than what this is. An’ this
was mother’s book--it’s all of hers I’ve got--and I t’ought--”

“Carry it, child,” I said, and little Katinka went down the stairs with
the album for a prayer-book.

And lo! as the door opened my heart was set beating. For there was
music; the reed organ in the parlour was played furiously; and I at
once realized that Pelleas was presiding, performing the one tune that
he knows: The long-meter doxology.

The parlour blinds were open, the geraniums had been brought up from
the cellar to grace the sills, and as crowning symbol of festivity
Cousin Diantha had shaken about the room a handkerchief wet with
cologne. Miss Waitie had contributed the presence of her best dress.
Andy, blushing, waited by the window under the transferred wedding bell
of dragons, pretending to talk with the parson and continually brushing
imaginary flies from before his face. When he saw Katinka he changed
countenance and fairly joined in the amazed “Ah!” of the others. Indeed
the parson began the ceremony with Andy’s honest eyes still reverently
fixed on Katinka’s gown.

There was but one break in the proceedings. Pelleas, at Cousin
Diantha’s urgent request attempting to play softly through the
ceremony, reckoned without one of the keys which stuck fast with a
long, buzzing sound and could not be released though every one had a
hand at it. And finally Katinka herself, who had dusted the keyboard
for so long that she understood it, had to come to the rescue while the
parson waited for her “I will.”

As for me, by the time that it was all over I was crying softly behind
the stove with as much enjoyment as if I had been Katinka’s mother. And
not until I bent my head to hide a tear did I perceive that I had not
changed my gown that morning. As if because one is seventy that is
reason for losing one’s self-respect!

Pelleas put the rest in my head.

“Etarre,” he said, while we were having cherry sauce and seedcakes
after the ceremony, “you’ve got your gray gown, haven’t you?”

“Why, yes,” said I, not understanding.

“And you don’t really need that white one....” He hesitated.

I saw what he meant. We looked across at the little bride, speechlessly
happy in my old woman’s finery.

“Not a bit,” I said, loving Pelleas for his thought.

We smiled at each other with the tidings of a new secret.

That is why, when we reached home three nights later, we permitted
Nichola to unpack our trunk and had no fear. The white lady’s-cloth
gown was not there.




XI

THE CHRISTENING


The christening of Enid’s baby, delayed until David’s return from
Washington, was to be at our house because Enid and her little son had
already come to us, but we, being past seventy, could not so easily go
up in Connecticut to Enid. At all events that was what they told us,
though Pelleas and I smiled somewhat sadly as we permitted our age to
bear the burden of our indolence. Besides, I would always be hostess
rather than guest, for the hostess seems essentially creative and the
guest pathetically the commodity.

Therefore on a day in May we rose early and found our shabby
drawing-room a kind of temple of hyacinths, and every one in the
room--by whom I mean its permanent inhabitants--rejoicing. The marble
Ariadne, on a pedestal in a dark corner, guided her panther on a field
of jonquils which they two must have preferred to asphodel; the Lady
Hamilton who lived over the low shelves folded her hands above a very
home of Spring; and once, having for a moment turned away, I could have
been certain that the blindfold Hope above the mantel smote her harp
softly, just loud enough, say, for a daffodil to hear.

“Ah, Pelleas,” I cried, “one would almost say that this is _The
Day_--you know, the day that one is expecting all one’s life and that
never comes precisely as one planned.”

“Only,” Pelleas supplemented positively, “this is much nicer than that
day.”

“Much,” I agreed, and we both laughed like children waiting to be
christened ourselves.

Pelleas was to be godfather--I said by virtue of his age, but Enid,
whose words said backward I prefer to those of many others in their
proper order, insisted that it was by office of his virtue. There were
to be present only the Chartres’ and the Cleatams, Miss Lillieblade and
Lisa and Hobart Eddy and a handful besides--all our nearest and dearest
and no one else; although, “Ah, me,” cried Madame Sally Chartres while
we waited, “haven’t you invited every one who has lately invited _you_
to a christening?” And on, so to speak, our positive negative, she
added: “Really, I would have said that in these social days no one
is even asked to a funeral who has not very recently had a sumptuous
funeral of her own.”

“Who was _my_ godfather?” Pelleas asked morosely. “I don’t think I ever
had a godfather. I don’t know that I ever was christened. Have I any
proof that I was named what I was named? I only know it by hearsay.
And how glaringly unscientific.”

“You are only wanting,” cried Madame Polly Cleatam, shaking her curls,
“to be fashionably doubtful!”

“Religions have been thrown away by persons who had no more authentic
doubts,” Pelleas gravely maintained.

“I dare say,” Miss Lillieblade piped. “In these days if a man has an
old coat he puts on a new doubt, and society is satisfied.”

Thereafter the baby arrived, a mere collection of hand embroidery
and lace, with an angel in the midst of these soft billows. The baby
looked quite like a photograph made by the new school, with the high
lights on long sweeping skirts and away up at the top of the picture
a vague, delicious face. Our grandniece Enid is an adorable little
mother, looking no less like a mermaid than does Lisa, but with a light
in her eyes as if still more of the mystery of the sea were come upon
her. And, as a mer-mother should, she had conversation not exclusively
confined to the mer-child. I heard her on the subject of prints with
the bishop’s lady, and the mer-child was not three months old.

The christening was to have been at eleven o’clock, and at twelve
Pelleas had an appointment which it was impossible to delay, or so he
thought, having a most masculine regard for hours, facts, and the
like. Therefore when, at fifteen after eleven, the bishop had not yet
arrived, Pelleas began uneasily suggesting taking leave. Enid looked
at him with a kind of deep-sea-cave reproach before which every one
else would have been helpless; but Pelleas, whose nature is built on
straight lines, patted her and kissed the baby at large upon the chest
and, benign, was still inexorable.

“But who will be godfather?” Enid cried disconsolately, and,
young-wife-like, looked reproachfully at her young husband.

At that moment the hall door, as if it had been an attentive listener
as long as it could and must now give the true answer, opened and
admitted Hobart Eddy, come late to the christening and arrived with
that vague air of asking why he was where he was which lent to him all
the charm of _ennui_ without its bad taste.

“Hobart,” Enid cried ecstatically, “_you_ shall be godfather!”

Hobart Eddy continued to bend to kiss my hand and then sought the hand
of Madame Sally and next the hand of Madame Polly Cleatam. Finally he
bowed before Enid and fixed his monocle on the baby.

“It opens and shuts its eyes,” he earnestly observed; “how these baby
people imitate the doll factories. It’s disgraceful.”

“Kiss him!” the mer-mother commanded, as if she were the prompter.

Hobart Eddy obediently kissed the baby’s thumb.

“Man and brother,” he greeted him solemnly; “Lord, to think I’ll take
it to luncheon sometime and hear it know more about the town than I do.”

“At all events,” Madame Sally Chartres begged gravely, “don’t ask him
to lunch until he’s been christened. In Society you have to have a
name.”

“But,” Enid settled it with pretty peremptoriness, “you must be
godfather even if he never lunches. Hobart--you will?”

“Its godfather?” said Hobart Eddy. “I? But yes, with all pleasure. What
do I have to do? Is there more than one figure?”

When at length the arrival of the bishop followed close on the
departure of Pelleas, regretful but absurdly firm, we were in a merry
clamour of instruction. The situation had caught our fancy and this
was no great marvel. For assuredly Hobart Eddy was not the typical
godfather.

“On my honour,” he said, “I never was even ‘among those’ at a
christening, in my life, and I would go a great distance to be
godfather. It’s about the only ambition I’ve never had and lost.”

The service of the christening holds for me a poignant solemnity. And
because this was Enid’s baby and because I remembered that hour in
which he had seemed to be Pelleas’ dream and mine come back, my heart
was overflowingly full. But I missed Pelleas absurdly, for this was one
of the hours in which we listen best together; and to have learned to
listen with some one brings, in that other’s absence, a silence. But it
was a happy hour, for the sun streamed gayly across the window-boxes,
there were the dear faces of our friends, the mer-mother and her young
husband were near to joyful tears and the bishop’s voice was like an
organ chord in finer, fluttering melody. Through the saying of prayer
and collects I stood with uplifting heart; and then Enid’s husband
gave the baby’s name with a boyish tremble in his voice; and after the
baptism and its formalities the bishop read the words that were the
heart of the whole matter; and the heart of a matter does not always
beat in the moment’s uplift.

“_‘And thou, Child,’ the bishop read, ‘shalt be called the prophet of
the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare
His ways._

“_‘Through the tender mercy of our Lord, whereby the day spring from on
high hath visited us._

“_‘To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.’_”

As he read a hush fell upon us. It seemed suddenly as if our
conventional impulse to see Enid’s baby christened was an affair of
more radiant import than we had meant. From the words of exhortation
that followed I was roused by a touching of garments, and I looked up
to see a trim, embroidered maid holding the baby toward Hobart Eddy.
The moment for his service as godfather was come. As he held out his
arms he questioned Enid briefly with his eyes, and then earnestly
gave himself to establishing the little man and brother in a curve of
elbow. It was after all, I suppose him to have been reflecting, as
sternly required of a man that he be an efficient godfather as that
he perfectly fill all the other offices of a man of the world. I even
suspected him of a downward glance to be assured that the soft skirts
were gracefully in place, quite as if he were arranging _tableaux
vivants_. Thereafter he stood erect, with his complaisant passivity of
look, as perfectly the social automaton as if the baby were a cup of
tea. Really, to accept dear Hobart Eddy as godfather was rather like
filling a champagne glass with cream.

“What shall be the name of this child?” once more demanded the bishop.

“Philip Wentworth,” prompted the young father a second time, presenting
a serious, young-father profile to the world.

The bishop waited.

“Philip Wentworth,” obediently repeated Hobart Eddy with, I dare be
sworn, the little deferential stooping of the shoulders with which I
had seen him return many and many a fan.

The bishop, his face filled with that shining which even in gravity
seemed sweeter than the smile of another, fixed his deep eyes upon the
godfather, and when he spoke it was as if he were saying the words for
the first time, to the guardian of the first child:--

“‘Dost thou, in the name of this Child, renounce ... the vain pomp and
glory of this world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the
sinful desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow nor be led by
them?’”

Hobart, his eyes fixed on the open prayer-book which he held, read the
response quickly and clearly:

“‘I renounce them all, and by God’s help I will endeavour not to follow
or be led by them.’”

“‘Wilt thou, then,’” pursued the bishop benignly, “‘obediently keep
God’s holy will and commandments and walk in the same all the days of
thy life?’”

“‘I will,’” said Hobart Eddy, “‘by God’s help.’”

There was no slightest hesitation, no thought, or so it seemed to me;
only the old urbane readiness to say what was required of him. What had
he said, what had he done, this young lion of the social moment, beau,
gallant, _dilettante_, and was it possible that he did not understand
what he had promised? Or was I a stupid and exacting old woman
taking with convulsive literalness that which all the world perhaps
recognizes as a form of promise for the mere civilized upbringing of
a child? I tried to remember other godfathers and I could remember
only those who, like Pelleas, had indeed served, as Enid had said in
jest, by office of their virtue. And yet Hobart Eddy--after all I told
myself he was a fine, upright young fellow who paid his debts, kept his
engagements, whose name was untouched by a breath of scandal, who lived
clear of gossip; so I went through the world’s dreary catalogue of the
primal virtues. But what had these to do with that solemn “I renounce
them all”?

By the time that the service was well over I could have found it in
my heart to proclaim to our guests that, as the world construed it, a
christening seemed to me hardly more vital than the breakfast which
would follow.

This however I forbore; and at the end every one pressed forward
in quite the conventional way and besieged the baby and Hobart and
showered congratulations upon them both and kissed Enid and was as
merry as possible. And as for Hobart, he stood in their midst, bowing a
little this way and that, giving his graceful flatteries as another man
gives the commonplaces, complaisant, urbane, heavy-lidded....

I omitted the baby and looked straight at the godfather.

“How do you like the office?” I asked somewhat dryly.

He met my eyes with his level look.

“Dear friend,” he said softly, “you see how inefficient I am. Even to
describe your charming christening toilet is my despair.”

“Hobart Eddy,” said I sharply, “take Enid in to breakfast.”

       *       *       *       *       *

While May was still stepping about the fields loath to leave her
business of violets and ladywort, Madame Sally Chartres sent pleasant
word from Long Island that a dozen or more of her friends were to spend
a day with her, and no one would willingly disregard the summons. The
Chartres’ lived on the edge of an orchard and another edge of field.
I dare say they lived in a house although what I chiefly remember
is a colonnade of white pillars, a library shelved to the ceiling,
and a sprinkling of mighty cushioned window seats whereon the sun
forever streamed through lattices. Perhaps Madame Sally and Wilfred
had assembled these things near an orchard and considered that to be
house enough. At all events there could have been no fairer place for a
Spring holiday.

Pelleas and I went down by train, and the morning was so golden that
I wholly expected to divine a procession of nymphs defiling faintly
across the fields in a cloud of blossoms rooted in air. I have often
wondered why goblins, dryads and the like do not more frequently appear
to folk on railway trains. These shy ones would be quite safe, for
by the time the bell rope should have been pulled and the conductor
told why the train must be stopped and the engine and cars brought
effectually to a standstill, the little shadowy things could have
vanished safely against the blue. Perhaps they do not understand how
sadly long it takes a spirit to influence the wheels of civilization.

The others coached down to the Chartres’ with Hobart Eddy, although
there must be made one important exception: Madame Sally had insisted
that Enid bring the baby; and Enid and her husband, who since the
christening were lingering on in town, had given the baby and his new
nurse to the charge of Pelleas and me. We arrived ahead of the coach
and stood on the veranda to welcome the others.

Lisa was among these, with Eric at her side; and Madame Polly and
Horace Cleatam and Miss Lillieblade, all three in spite of their white
hair and anxiety about draughts stoutly refusing to ride inside. There
were four or five others, and from the box seat beside Hobart Eddy I
saw descending with what I am bound to call picturesque deliberation a
figure whom I did not remember.

“Pray who is that?” there was time for me to ask Madame Sally.

“My dear,” she answered hurriedly, “she is a Mrs. Trempleau. I used to
love her mother. And Hobart wanted her here.”

“Hobart!” I exclaimed. “That Mrs. Trempleau?” I comprehended. “You
don’t think ...” I intimated.

Madame Sally’s eyebrows were more expressive than the eyes of many.

“Who knows?” she said only, and made of her eyebrows a positive welcome
to our friends.

Mrs. Trempleau came toward us flickering prettily--I protest that
she reminded me of a thin flame, luminous, agile, seeking. She had
hair like the lights in agate, and for its sake her gown and hat were
of something coloured like the reflection of the sun in a shield of
copper. She had a fashion of threading her way through an hour of
talk, lighting a jest here, burning a bit of irony there, smouldering
dangerously near the line of daring. And that day as she moved from
group to group on the veranda the eyes of us all, of whom Hobart Eddy
was chief, were following her. I think it may have been because her
soul was of some alien element like the intense, avid spirit of the
flames, though when I told Pelleas he argued that it was merely the way
she lifted her eyes.

“Where is _Mr._ Trempleau?” Pelleas added, his nature as I have said
being built on straight lines.

“There may be one,” I answered, “but I think he lives on some other
continent.”

Pelleas reflected.

“Hobart Eddy and Pelham and Clox look in love with her,” he said; “if
she doesn’t take care there won’t be enough continents.”

In no small amusement during luncheon we watched Hobart Eddy,
especially Pelleas and I who, however, besides being amused, were also
a little sad. Mrs. Trempleau’s appropriation of him was insistent but
very pretty. Indeed, if she had on a night of stars appropriated Sirius
I dare say the constellations would have sung approval. She had the
usual gift of attractive faults. But above Mrs. Trempleau’s shoulders
and beyond the brightness of her hair I had, at luncheon, glimpses
which effectually besought my attention from the drama within. The long
windows overlooked the May orchards, white and sweet and made like
youth, and I was impatient to be free of the woman’s little darting
laughs and away to the fields. Some way, in her presence it was not
like May.

Therefore, when Pelleas had been borne to the stables by his host and
when the others had wandered back to the veranda, I went away down what
I think must have been a corridor, though all that I remember is a long
open window leading to the Spring, as if one were to unlatch an airy
door and reveal a diviner prospect than our air infolds. A lawn, cut
by a gravel walk bounded by tulips, sloped away from this window to the
orchard and I crossed the green in the frank hope that the others would
not seek me out. But when I turned the corner by the dial I came fairly
on two other wanderers. There, with the white-embroidered nurse-maid,
sat, like another way of expressing the Spring, Enid’s baby. Was ever
such happy chance befallen at the gate of any May orchard whatever?

“Ah,” I cried to the little nurse, “Bonnie! Come quickly. I see a
place--there--or there--or there--where you must bring the baby at
once--at once! Leave the perambulator here--so. He is awake? Then
quickly--this way--to the pink crab apple-tree.”

I sometimes believe that in certain happy case I find every one
beautiful; but I recall that Bonnie--of whom I shall have more to tell
hereafter--that day seemed to me so charming that I suspected her of
being Persephone, with an inherited trick of caring for the baby as her
mother cared for Demophoön.

_To the pink crab apple-tree!_ What a destination. It had for me all
the delight of running toward, say, the plane tree in the meadow of
Buyukdere. I remember old branches looking like the arms of Pan,
wreath-wound, and rooms of sun through which petals drifted ... who
could distinctly recall the raiment of such an hour? But at length by
many aisles we came to a little hollow where the grass was greenest,
hard by the orchard arbour, and we stood before the giant pink
crab apple-tree. Has any one ever wondered that Sicilian courtiers went
out a-shepherding and that the Round Table, warned to green gowns,
fared forth a-Maying?

“Spread the baby’s rug!” I cried to Bonnie; “here is a little seat
made in the roots for this very day. Pull him a branch of apple
blossoms--so. And now run away, child, and amuse yourself. The baby and
I are going to make an apple-blossom pie.”

Bonnie, hesitating, at my more peremptory bidding went away. I have no
idea whether she was caught up among the branches by friendly hands or
whether the nearest tree trunk hospitably opened to receive her. But
there, in May, with the world gone off in another direction, the baby
and I sat alone.

“O--o-o-o-o--” said the baby, in a kind of lyric understanding of the
situation.

I held him close. These hours of Arcady are hard to win for the
sheltering of dreams.

       *       *       *       *       *

Voices, sounding beyond a momentary rain of petals, roused me. Enid’s
baby smiled up in my eyes but I saw no one, though the voices murmured
on as if the dryads had forgotten me and were idly speaking from tree
to tree. Then I caught from the orchard arbour Mrs. Trempleau’s darting
laugh. It was as if some one had kindled among the apple blossoms a
torch of perfumed wood.

“I am sailing on Wednesday,” I heard her saying in a voice abruptly
brought to sadness. “Ah, my friend, if I might believe you. Would there
indeed be happiness for you there with me, counting the cost?”

It was of course Hobart Eddy who answered quite, I will be bound, as
I would have said that Hobart Eddy would speak of love: with fine
deliberation, as another man would speak the commonplaces, possibly
with his little half bow over the lady’s hand, a very courtier of
Love’s plaisance.

She replied with that perpetual little snare of her laughter laid like
a spider web from one situation to the next.

“Come with me then,” she challenged him; “let us find this land where
it is always Spring.”

“Do you mean it?” asked Hobart Eddy.

I do not know what she may have said to this, for the new note in his
voice terrified me. Neither do I know what his next words were, but
their deliberation had vanished and in its stead had come something, a
pulse, a tremor....

I remember thinking that I must do something, that it was impossible
that I should not do anything. I looked helplessly about the great
empty orchard with its mock-sentinel trees, and down into Enid’s
baby’s eyes. And on a sudden I caught him in my arms and lifted him
high until his head was within the sweetness of the lowest boughs. He
did what any baby in the world would have done in that circumstance; he
laughed aloud with a little coo and crow at the end so that anybody in
that part of the orchard, for example, must have heard him with delight.

The two in the orchard arbour did hear. Mrs. Trempleau leaned from the
window.

“Ah,” she cried, in her pretty soaring emphasis, “what a picture!”

“Is he not?” I answered, and held the baby high. On which she said some
supreme nonsense about Elizabeth and the little John and “Hobart--see!”
she cried.

The two came out of the arbour, and Mrs. Trempleau made little dabs
at the baby and then went picturesquely about filling her arms with
blossoms. Hobart Eddy threw himself on the grass beside me and watched
her. I looked at them all: at the woman who was like thin flame, at
the man who watched her, indolent, confident, plainly allured, and at
Enid’s baby. And,

“There,” said I, abruptly to the baby, “is your godfather.”

Hobart Eddy turned on his elbow and offered him one finger.

“It’s like being godfather to a rose,” he said smiling, and his smile
had always the charm and spontaneity of his first youth.

“When the rose is twenty-one,” said I, “and this luncheon party which I
heard you prophesying the other day comes off, what sort of godfather
will you be then, do you think?”

“What sort am I now, for that matter?” he asked idly.

“Ah, well, then,” said I boldly; “yes! What sort are you now?”

When one is past seventy and may say what one pleases one is not
accountable for any virtue of daring.

He looked at me quickly but I did not meet his eyes. I was watching
Mrs. Trempleau lay the apple boughs against her gown.

“Ah, pray don’t,” he besought. “You make me feel as if there were
things around in the air waiting to see if I would do right or wrong
with them.”

“There are,” said I, “if you want me to be disagreeable.”

“But I!” he said lightly. “What have I to decide? Whether to have elbow
bits on the leaders for the coaching Thursday. Whether to give Eric
his dinner party on the eighth or the nineteenth. Whether to risk the
frou-frou figure at Miss Lillieblade’s cotillon. You don’t wish me to
believe that anything in the air is concerned with how I am deciding
those?”

“No,” said I with energy, “not in the air or on the earth or under the
sea.”

“Ah, well, now,” he went on with conviction, and gave to the baby a
finger of each hand--beautiful, idle, white fingers round which the
baby’s curled and clung, “what can I do?” He put it to me with an air
of great fairness.

With no warning I found myself very near to tears for the pity of it.
I laid my cheek on the baby’s head and when I spoke I am not even sure
that Hobart Eddy heard all I was saying.

“... ‘in the name of this child,’” I repeated, “was there not something
‘in the name of this child’--something of renouncing--and of not
following after nor being led by....”

For a moment he looked up at me blankly, though still with all his
urbanity, his conformity, his chivalrous attention.

“I’m not preaching,” said I briskly, “but a gentleman keeps his word,
and dies if need be for the sake of his oath, does he not? Whether it
chances to be about a bet, or a horse, or--or a sea lion. For my own
part, as a woman of the world, I cannot see why on earth he should not
keep it about a christening.”

Hobart Eddy turned toward me, seeking to free his fingers of that
little clinging clasp.

“Jove,” he said helplessly, “do they mean it _that_ way?”

“‘That way,’” I cried, past the limit of my patience. “I dare say that
very many people who are married would be amazed if they were told that
their oath had been meant ‘that way.’ But they would sell their very
days to pay a debt at bridge. ‘That way!’ Let me ask you, Hobart Eddy,
if ‘I will, by God’s help’ does not mean quite as much at a marriage or
a christening as it does in society?”

And at that Enid’s baby, missing the outstretched fingers, suddenly
leaned toward him, smiling and eager, uttering the most inane and
delicious little cries. A baby without genius would simply have paid no
attention.

Hobart Eddy took the baby in his arms and looked down at him with
something in his face which I had never seen there before. The baby
caught at his hand and pulled at the cord of his monocle and stared
up at the low blossoming boughs. As for me I fell gathering up stray
petals in a ridiculous fashion and I knew that my hands were trembling
absurdly.

I looked up as Mrs. Trempleau came toward us. She was dragging a burden
of flowering branches and she looked some priestess of the sun gone
momentarily about the offices of the blossoming earth.

“Ah, the baby!” she cried. “Let me have the baby.”

Hobart Eddy had risen and had helped me to rise; and I fancy that he
and Enid’s baby and I hardly heard Mrs. Trempleau’s pretty urgency. But
when she let fall the flowers and held out her arms, Hobart looked at
her and did not let the baby go.

“This little old man and I,” he said, “we understand each other. And
we’re going to walk together, if you don’t mind.”

       *       *       *       *       *

On Wednesday Mrs. Trempleau sailed for Cherbourg alone. But when I told
Pelleas the whole matter he shook his head.

“If those two had intended eloping,” he said, “all the christenings in
Christendom wouldn’t have prevented.”

“Pelleas!” I said, “I am certain--”

“If those two had intended to elope,” he patiently began it all over
again, “all the--”

“Pelleas,” I urged, “I don’t believe it!”

“If those two--” I heard him trying to say.

“Pelleas!” I cried finally, “_you_ don’t believe it either!”

“Ah, well, no,” he admitted, “I don’t know that I do.”




XII

AN INTERLUDE


We saw Mrs. Trempleau once afterward--it was the following Autumn in
the Berkshires--and of that time I must turn aside to tell. But the
story is of Mrs. Trempleau’s little girl, Margaret.

Pelleas and I had gradually come to admit that Margaret knew many
things of which we had no knowledge. This statement may very well be
received either as proof of our madness or as one of the pastimes of
our age; but we are reconciled to having both our pastimes and our
fancies disregarded. We were certain that there are extensions of the
experiences of every day which we missed and little Margaret understood.

This occurred to us the first time that we saw her. We were sitting
on the veranda of a boarding house where we were come with Miss
Willie Lillieblade to be her guests for a week. The boarding house
was kept by a Quakeress, as famous for her asters as for her pasties.
Mrs. Trempleau, who was there when we arrived (“She is like a flash
of something, would thee not say?” observed the gentle Quakeress,
“and she calls the child only, thee will have marked, ‘Run away now,
Dearness.’”)--Mrs. Trempleau had just driven away in a high trap with
orange wheels and a slim blond youth attached, when Margaret came up to
the veranda from the garden.

“Smell,” she said to me.

As I stooped over the wax-white scentless blossoms in the child’s hand,
I thought of that chorus of the flower girls in one of the Italian
dramas: “Smell! Smell! Smell!”

“What are they, dear?” I asked, taking care not to shake her confidence
by looking at her.

“I don’t know,” she said; “but O, smell!”

But though I held the flowers to my face I, who can even detect the
nameless fragrance of old lace, could divine in them no slightest
perfume. I held them toward Pelleas, dozing in a deep chair, and when
he had lifted them to his face he too shook his head.

“It is strange,” he said; “I would say that they have no odour.”

“They’ve such a beautiful smell,” said the child, sighing, and took
back her flowers with that which immediately struck Pelleas and me as
a kind of pathetic resignation. It was as if she were wonted to having
others fail to share her discoveries and as if she had approached us
with the shy hope that we might understand. But we had failed her!

“Won’t you sit down here with us?” said I, dimly conscious of this and
wistful to make amends. It is a very commonplace tragedy to fail to
meet other minds--their fancies, their humour, their speculation--but I
am loath to add to tragedy and I always do my best to understand.

We tried her attention that day with all that we knew of fairy
stories and vague lore. She listened with the closest regard to what
we offered but she was neither impressed nor, one would have said,
greatly diverted by our most ingenious inventions. Yet she was by no
means without response--we were manifestly speaking her language, but
a language about which Pelleas and I had a curious impression that she
knew more than we knew. It was as if she were listening to things which
she already understood in the hope that we might let fall something
novel about them. This we felt that we signally failed to do. Yet there
was after all a certain _rapport_ and the child evidently felt at ease
with us.

“Come and see us to-morrow morning,” we begged when she left us. For
having early ascertained that there was not a single pair of lovers in
the house, possible or estranged, we cast about for other magic. In
the matter of lack o’ love in that boarding house we felt as did poor
Pepys when he saw not a handsome face in the Sabbath congregation: “It
seems,” he complained, “as if a curse were fallen upon the parish.”
Verily, a country house without even one pair of lovers is an anomaly
ill to be supported. But this child was a gracious little substitute
and we waited eagerly to see if she would return to us.

Not only did she return but she brought us food for many a day’s
wonder. Next morning she came round the house in the sunshine and she
was looking down as if she were leading some one by the hand. She
lifted her eyes to us from the bottom step.

“I’ve brought my little sister to see you,” she said.

Then she came up the steps slowly as if she were helping uncertain feet
to mount.

“Halverson can’t get up so very fast,” she explained, and seated
herself on the top step holding one little arm as if it were circling
some one.

Pelleas and I looked at each other in almost shy consternation. We are
ourselves ready with the maddest fancies and we readily accept the
imaginings of others--and even, if we are sufficiently fond of them,
their facts. But we are not accustomed to being distanced on our own
ground.

“Your--little sister?” said I, as naturally as I was able.

“Yes,” she assented with simplicity, “Halverson. She goes with me
nearly all over. But she don’t like to come to see peoples, very well.”

At this I was seized with a kind of breathlessness and trembling. It is
always wonderful to be received into the secrets of a child’s play;
but here, we instinctively felt, was something which Margaret did not
regard as play.

“How old is she?” Pelleas asked. (Ah, I thought, even in my excitement
and interest, suppose I had been married to a man who would have felt
it necessary to say, “But, my dear little girl, there is no one there!”)

“She is just as old as I am,” explained Margaret; “we was borned
together. Sometimes I’ve thought,” she added shyly, “wouldn’t it ’a’
been funny if I’d been made the one you couldn’t see and Halverson’d
been me?”

Yes, we agreed, finding a certain relief in the smile that she
expected; that would have been funny.

“Then,” she continued, “it’d ’a’ been Halverson that’d had to be
dressed up and have her face washed an’ a cool bath, ’stead o’ me. I
often _rish_ it could be the other way round.”

She looked pensively down and her slim little hand might have been
straying over somebody’s curls.

“They isn’t no ’ticular use in bein’ _saw_,” she observed, “an’
Halverson’s got everything else but just that.”

“But can--can she talk?” Pelleas asked gravely.

“She can, to me,” the child answered readily, “but I do just as well as
more would. I can tell what she says. An’ I _always_ understand her.
She couldn’t be sure other folks would hear her--right.”

Then the most unfortunate thing that could have happened promptly came
about. Humming a little snatch of song and drawing on her gloves Mrs.
Trempleau idled down the long piazza. She greeted us, shook out her
lace parasol, and saw Margaret.

“My darling!” she cried; “go in at once to your practicing. And don’t
come out again _please_ until you’ve found a fresh hair ribbon.”

The child rose without a word. Pelleas and I looked to see her run down
the steps, readily forgetful of her pretence about the little sister.
Instead, she went down as she had mounted, with an unmistakable tender
care of little feet that might stumble.

“Run on, Dearness! Don’t be so stupid!” cried Mrs. Trempleau fretfully;
but the child proceeded serenely on her way and disappeared down the
aster path, walking as if she led some one whom we did not see.

“She is at that absurd play again,” said the woman impatiently;
“really, I didn’t know she ever bored strangers with it.”

“Does she often play so, madame?” Pelleas asked, following her for a
few steps on the veranda.

Mrs. Trempleau shrugged.

“All the time,” she said, “O, quite ever since she could talk, she has
insisted on this ‘sister.’ Heaven knows where she ever got the name.
_I_ never heard it. She is very tiresome with it--she never forgets
her. She saves food for Halverson; she won’t go to drive unless there
is room for Halverson; she wakes us in the night to get Halverson a
drink. Of course I’ve been to specialists. They say she is fanciful and
that she’ll outgrow it. But I don’t know--she seems to get worse. I
used to lock her up, but that did no good. She insisted that I couldn’t
lock Halverson _out_--the idea! She has stopped talking the nonsense
to me, but I can see she’s never stopped pretending. When I have my
nervous headaches I declare the dear child gives me cold chills.”

When she was gone Pelleas and I looked at each other in silence.
Between the vulgar skepticism of the mother and the madness of
believing that Margaret saw what we did not see, we hesitated not a
moment to ally ourselves with the little girl. After all, who are we
that we should be prepared to doubt the authority of the fancies of a
child?

“They’ve been to _specialists_!” said Pelleas, shaking his head.

       *       *       *       *       *

The night was very still, moonless, and having that lack of motion
among the leaves which gives to a garden the look of mid-Summer.
Pelleas and I stepped through the long glass doors of our sitting room,
crossed the veranda and descended to the path. There we were wont
to walk for an hour, looking toward the fields where the farm-house
candles spelled out the meaning of the dark as do children instead of
giving it forth in one loud, electric word as adults talk. That night
we were later than on other nights and the fields were still and black.

“Etarre,” Pelleas said, “of course I want to live as long as I can. But
more and more I am wildly eager to _understand_.”

“I know,” I said.

“‘I want to see my universe,’” he quoted. “Sometime,” he went on, “one
of us will know, perhaps, and not be able to tell the other. One of us
may know first. Isn’t it marvelous that people can talk about anything
else? Although,” he added, “I’m heartily glad that they can. It is bad
enough to hear many of us on the subject of beer and skittles without
being obliged to listen to what we have to say on the universe.”

I remember a certain judge who was delightful when he talked about
machinery and poultry and Chippendale; but the moment that he
approached law and order and the cosmic forces every one hoped for
dessert or leave-taking. Truly, there are worthy people who would
better talk of “love, taste and the musical glasses” and leave the
universe alone. But for us whose bread is wonder it is marvelous indeed
that we can talk of anything else. Nor do Pelleas and I often attempt
any other subject, “in such a night.”

“But I hold to my notion,” Pelleas said, “that we might know a great
many extraordinary things before we die, if only we would do our best.”

“At all events,” said I, “we have at least got to be willing to believe
them, whether they ever come our way or not. For I dare say that when
we die we shall be shown only as many marvels as we are prepared for.”

“For example, Nichola--” suggested Pelleas.

At her name we both smiled. Nichola would not believe in darkness
itself if it did not cause her to stumble. And she would as soon
harbour an understanding of, say, the way of the moon with the tides as
she would be credulous of witchcraft. Any comprehension of the results
of psychical research would necessitate in Nichola some such extension
of thought as death will mean to Pelleas and me. The only mystery for
which she has not an instant explanation is death; and even of that she
once said: “There ain’t much of anything mysterious about it, as I see.
It’s plain enough that we hev to be born. An’ that we can’t be kep’
goin’. So we die.”

No, Nichola would not be prepared for the marvels of afterward.
The universe is not “her” universe. But as for Pelleas and me no
phenomenon could put us greatly out of countenance or leave us wholly
incredulous. Therefore as we stepped across the lawn in the darkness
we were not too much amazed to hear very near us a little voice, like
the voice of some of the little night folk; and obviously in talk with
itself.

“No, no,” we heard it saying, “I don’t fink it would be right. No--it
wouldn’t be the way folks ought to do. S’posin’ everybody went and did
so? With theirs?”

It was Margaret. We knew her voice and at the turn of the path we
paused, fearing to frighten her. But she had heard our talking and
she ran toward us. In the dimness I saw that she wore her little pink
bedrobe over her nightgown and her hair was in its bedtime braids.

“Margaret--dear!” I said, for it was late and it must have been hours
since she had been left to sleep, “are you alone?”

“No,” she answered, “Halverson is here.”

She caught my fingers and her little hand was hot.

“Halverson wants me to change places with her,” she said.

We found a bench and I held the child in my arms. She was in no
excitement but she seemed troubled; and she drew her breath deeply, in
that strange, treble sigh which I have known from no other who has not
borne great sorrow. Have I said how beautiful she was? And there was
about her nothing sprite-like, no elfin graces, no graces of a kind
of angelic childhood such as make one fear for its flowering. She had
merely the beauty of the child eternal, the beauty of normal little
humankind. That may have been partly why her tranquil talk carried with
it all the conviction which for some the commonplace will have.

“Do you think I ought to?” she asked us seriously.

“But see, dear one, how could that be?” I said soothingly. “What would
you do--you and Halverson--if you were indeed to change places?”

“I s’pose,” she said thoughtfully, “that I should have to die an’ then
Halverson would come an’ be me. An’ maybe I might get lost--on the
way to being Halverson. But she begs me to change,” cried the child;
“she--she says I’m not happy. She--she says if I was her I’d be happy.”

“Ah, well,” said I, “but you are happy, are you not?”

“Not very,” she answered, “not since papa went. He knew ’bout
Halverson, an’ he didn’t scold. An’ he never laughed ’bout her. Since
he went I haven’t had anybody to talk to--’bout _Them_.”

“About--whom?” I asked, and I felt for Pelleas’ hand in the darkness.

Margaret shook her head, buried against my arm.

“I can’t say Them,” she confessed, “because nobody has ever told me
about them, an’ I don’t know how to ask. I can’t _say_ Them. I can
only see Them. I fink my papa could--too.”

“Now?” I asked, “can you see--now, Margaret?”

“I can--when I want to,” she answered, “I--move something in the back
of my head. An’ then I see colours that aren’t there--before that. An’
then I hear what they say--sometimes,” said the child; “they make me
laugh so! But I can’t ’member what it was for. An’ I can hear music
sometimes--an’ when flowers don’t smell at all I--do that way to the
back of my head an’ then the flowers are all ’fumery. I always try if
other people can do that to flowers. You couldn’t, you know.”

“No,” I said, “we couldn’t.”

“No,” said the child, with her little sigh of resignation, “nobody can.
But I fink my papa could. Well, an’ it’s _Them_ that Halverson is with.
She--I think she _is_ ’em. An’ she says for me to come an’ be ’em,
too--an’ she’ll hev to be me then; ’cause it isn’t time yet. An’ she’ll
do the practicin’ an’ come in for tea when mamma’s company’s there. She
says she’s sorry for me an’ she don’t mind bein’ _saw_ for a while.
Would you go?”

“But how would you do it, dear--how could you do it?” I asked, thinking
that the practicality would bring her to the actualities.

“O,” said Margaret, simply, “I fink I would just have to move that in
the back of my head long enough. Sometimes I ’most have--but I was
’fraid an’ I came back. Something ...” said the child, “something slips
past each other in the back of my head when I want to....”

She threw her head against my breast and closed her eyes.

“Pelleas!” I cried, “O, Pelleas--take her! Let us get her in the
house--_quick_.”

She opened her eyes as his arms folded about her to lift her.

“Don’t go so very fast,” she besought sleepily; “Halverson can’t go so
very fast.”

My summons at the door of Mrs. Trempleau’s apartment brought no reply.
Finally I turned the knob and we entered. The outer room was in
darkness, but beyond a light was burning and there was Margaret’s bed,
its pillow already pressed as if the little head had been there earlier
in the evening. Pelleas laid her down tenderly and she did not open her
eyes as I rearranged the covers. But when we would have moved a little
away she spoke in her clear, childish treble.

“Please don’t go,” she said, “till Halverson gets asleep. If she’ll
only go to sleep I’m not ’fraid.”

On this we sat by the bed and she threw one arm across the vacant
pillow.

“Halverson sleeps there,” she said, “but sometimes she keeps me ’wake
with her dreams.”

It may have been half an hour later when Pelleas and I nodded to each
other that, her restlessness having ceased, she would now be safely
asleep. In almost the same moment we heard the outer door open and some
one enter the room, with a touch of soft skirts. We rose and faced Mrs.
Trempleau, standing in the doorway. She was splendid in a glittering
gown, her white cloak slipping from her shoulders and a bright scarf
wound about her loosened hair.

We told her hurriedly what had brought us to the room, apologizing
for our presence, as well we might. She listened with straying eyes,
nodded, cast her cloak on a sofa and tried, frowning, to take the scarf
from her hair.

“It’s all right,” she said in her high, irritable voice; “thanks,
very much. I’m sorry--the child--has made a nuisance of herself. She
promised me she’d go to sleep. I went up to the ball--at the hotel. She
promised me--”

Her words trailed vaguely off, and she glanced up at us furtively. And
I saw then how flushed her cheeks were and how bright her eyes--

“Margaret promised me she’d go to sleep,” she insisted, throwing the
scarf on the floor.

And the child heard her name and woke. She sat up, looking at her
mother, round-eyed. And at her look Mrs. Trempleau laughed, fumbling at
her gloves and nodding at Margaret.

“Dearness,” she said, “we’re going away from here. You’ll have a new
father presently who will take us away from here. Don’t you look at
mother like that--it’s all right--”

Over the face of the child as Pelleas and I stood helplessly looking
down at her came a strangeness. We thought that she was hardly
conscious of our presence. Her eyes seemed rather to deepen than
to widen as she looked at her mother, and the woman, startled and
unstrung, threw out her hands and laughed weakly and without meaning.

“Mamma!” the child cried, “mamma!” and did not take her eyes from her
face, “O, mamma, you look as if you had been dead forever--are you
dead? _You are dead!_” cried Margaret. “O, They won’t touch you. They
are running away from you. You’re dead--dead,” sobbed the child and
threw herself back on her pillow. “O, papa--my papa!”

She stretched her little arm across the vacant pillow beside her.

“Halverson, I will--I will,” we heard her say.

As soon as we could we got the little Quakeress, for Mrs. Trempleau
fainted and we were in a passion of anxiety for the child. She lay
without moving, and when the village physician came he could tell us
nothing. We slipped away to our rooms as the East was whitening and I
found myself sobbing helplessly.

“She will die,” I said; “she knows how to do it--Pelleas, she knows
what we don’t know--whatever it is we can’t know till we die.”

“Etarre!” Pelleas besought me, “I do believe she has made you as
fantastic as she.” But his voice trembled and his hands trembled. And
it was as if we had stood in places where other feet do not go.

       *       *       *       *       *

But Margaret did not die. She was ill for a long time--at the last
languidly, even comfortably ill, able to sit up, to be amused. Mrs.
Trempleau was to be married in town, and on the day before the ceremony
Pelleas and I went in, as we often did, to sit with Margaret. She was
lying on a sofa and in her hands were some white, double lilies at
which she was looking half-frowning.

“These don’t smell any,” she said to us almost at once; “I thought they
would. It seems to me they used to smell but I can’t--find it now.”

She sat happily arranging and rearranging the blossoms until some one
who did not know of our presence came through an adjoining room, and
called her.

“Margaret! Margaret!”

She did not move nor did she seem to hear.

“They are calling you, dear,” Pelleas said.

She looked up at us quickly.

“What did they call me before--do you remember?” she said to us. “It
wasn’t that.”

Of the danger to the child I, in my sudden wild wonder and curiosity,
took no thought. I leaned toward her.

“Was it Halverson?” I asked.

Her face brightened.

“Yes,” she said, “somebody used to call me that. Why don’t they call me
that now? What did you say the word is?”




XIII

THE RETURN OF ENDYMION


Pelleas and I went through the wicket gate with a joyful sense of being
invaders. The gate clicked behind us, and we heard the wheels of our
cab rolling irretrievably from us, and where we stood the June dusk was
deep. We had let ourselves in by a little wicket gate in the corner of
the stone wall that ran round Little Rosemont, the Long Island country
place where our dear Avis and Lawrence Knight lived. We had come down
for a week with them and, having got a later train than we had thought,
we found at the station for Little Rosemont no one to meet us. So
there we were, entering by that woods’ gate and meaning to walk into
the house as if we belonged there. Indeed, secretly we were glad that
this had so befallen for we dislike arriving no less than we dislike
saying good-bye. To my mind neither a book nor a visit, unless it be in
uniform, should be begun or ended with a ruffle of drums.

Meanwhile we would have our walk to the house, a half-mile of delight.
Before us in the pines was a tiny path doubtless intended, I told
Pelleas, to be used by violets when they venture out to walk, two
by two, in the safe night. It was wide enough to accommodate no more
than two violets, and Pelleas and I walked singly, he before and I
clinging to his hand. The evergreens brushed our faces, we heard a
stir of wings, and caught some exquisite odour not intended for human
folk to breathe. It was a half-hour to which we were sadly unwonted;
for Pelleas and I are nominally denied all sweet adventures of
not-yet-seventy, and such as we win we are wont to thieve out-of-hand;
like this night walk, on which no one could tell what might happen.

“Pelleas,” I said, “it is absurd to suppose that we are merely on our
way to a country house for a visit. Don’t you think that this kind of
path through the woods always leads to something wonderful?”

“I have never known it to fail,” Pelleas said promptly. For Pelleas
is not one of the folk who when they travel grow just tired enough to
take a kind of suave exception to everything one says. Nor does Pelleas
agree to distraction. He agrees to all fancies and very moderately
corrects all facts, surely an attribute of the Immortals.

Then the path-for-violets took a turn, “a turn and we stood in the
heart of things.” And we saw that we had not been mistaken. The path
had not been intended for day-folk at all; we had taken it unaware and
it had led us as was its fairy nature to something wonderful.

From where we stood the ground sloped gently downward, a tentative
hill, not willing to declare itself, and spending its time on a spangle
of flowers. We could see the flowers, for the high moon broke from
clouds. And in the hollow stood a little building like a temple, with
a lighted portico girt by white columns and, within, a depth of green
and white. We looked, breathless, perfectly believing everything that
we saw, since to doubt might be to lose it. Indeed, in that moment the
only thing that I could not find it in my heart to fall in with was the
assumption that we were in the New World at all. Surely, here was the
old order, the golden age, with a temple in a glade and a satyr at your
elbow. Could this be Little Rosemont, where we were to find Avis and
Lawrence and Hobart Eddy and other happy realities of our uneventful
lives?

“Oh, Pelleas,” I said in awe, “if only we can get inside before it
disappears.”

“Maybe,” murmured Pelleas, “if we can do that we can disappear with it.”

For we have long had a dream--we are too frequently besieged by the
ways of the world to call it a hope--that sometime They will come and
take us, the Wind or the Day or any of the things that we love, and
thus save us this dreary business of dying.

We skirted the edge of the wood, looking down the while at that
place of light. Within, figures were moving, there was the faint
music of strings, and now and then we heard laughter. To complete
our mystification, as we were well in line with the white portals
there issued from the depth of green and white a group of women,
fair women in white gowns and with unbound hair--and they stepped to
the grass-plot before the door and moved at the direction of one who
leaned, watching, in the white portico. At that we hesitated no longer
but advanced boldly across the moonlit green. And when I saw that the
figure in the portico wore a frock of pink and when I saw her lift her
hand in a way sweetly familiar, I began to suspect that the time was
not yet come when Pelleas and I were to vanish in such bright wise.
Manifestly Pelleas had come to the same conclusion, for when he reached
a broad, flat rock beneath a birch he beckoned me to sit there in the
shadow where we could watch these strange offices.

But the broad, flat rock proved already to be occupied. As we paused
beside it there sprang to his feet a boy who at first glance I protest
to have looked quite like a god, he was so tall and fair under the
moon. But in spite of that he instantly caught at his cap and shuffled
his feet in a fashion which no god would employ.

“Oh,” said he in a voice that I liked, for all his awkward shyness, “I
was just sittin’ here, watchin’ ’em.”

Pelleas looked at him closely.

“Are you sure,” demanded Pelleas, “that you are not a shepherd who has
conjured up all this, on his pipe?”

He nodded toward the hollow and the young god smiled, looking
dreadfully embarrassed as a god would look, charged with being a
shepherd of dreams. He had some green thing in his hand which as he
stood bashfully drawing it through his fingers gave out a faint,
delicious odour.

“Is that mandrake?” asked Pelleas with pleasure.

And to our utter amazement the god answered:--

“Yes, sir. Squeeze it on your eyes and you can see things a good ways
off, they say.”

Shepherd or god, I liked him after that. I took a bit of the mandrake
from him and asked him whether he had ever tried it and what he had
seen; but at this he blushed so furiously that as we moved away Pelleas
hastened to set him at his ease by some crisp commonplace about the
night. And there we left him, standing under the birch with his
mandrake in his hand, looking down, I instantly guessed, for some one
in that brightness below us in the hollow.

“Pelleas,” I said, “Pelleas, without any doubt there is somebody down
there whom he wants to see. I dare say the temple may not be enchanted,
after all. For that fine young fellow and his blushes--they seemed to
me very human!”

“That’s the reason,” Pelleas said most wisely, “why there is likely to
be some enchantment about. The more human you are the more wonderful
things are likely to happen.”

That is true enough, and it was in very human fashion that next instant
the figure in pink in the portico of the temple came swiftly toward
us and took me in her arms. It was Avis, all tender regret for what
she fancied to be her inhospitality and as perfectly the hostess as
if it were usual for her to receive her guests in a white temple. And
manifestly it was usual; for when she had led us within, there on a
_papier maché_ rock on the edge of a _papier maché_ ocean sat Hobart
Eddy himself and Lawrence Knight in a dress as picturesque as Hobart’s;
and about them in a confusion of painted idols and crowns and robes
were all the house-party at Little Rosemont and a score from the
countryside.

“Upon my word,” Pelleas said, “they must have let us off at Arcady at
last. I always knew I’d buy a through ticket some day.”

Hobart Eddy came forward, twitching an amazing shepherd’s cloak about
him, and shook his shepherd’s crook at us.

“I’m head goat,” he explained, “but they let me call myself a goatherd
because they think I won’t see through the offence.”

Then Avis, laughing, drew Pelleas and me away to tell us how at last
her dream had come true and that the white temple was the theater which
she had wanted for her guests at Little Rosemont, and that on Monday
it was to be opened with some tableaux and an open-air play on the
grass-plot, under the moon. And when she had shown us all the charms
and wonders of the pretty place she led us away for our drive across
the fields to the house.

As we emerged on the wide portico Pelleas stopped us with a gesture.

“Look,” he said softly, “look there. Really, you know, it’s like being
somewhere else.”

Between the two central pillars we could see the moon streaming full
upon the tiled floor; and in the brightness a little figure was
standing, sandaled and crowned and in white, a solitary portress of
this sylvan lodge. She had heard our approach and she turned, a radiant
little creature with bright hair along her straight gown, and drew back
and dropped a quick, unmistakable courtesy!

I have seldom been more amazed than by the dipping courtesy of that
crowned head. Then I saw to my further bewilderment that the salutation
had been intended for me. And as I looked at her a certain familiarity
in her prettiness smote me, and I knew her.

“It is Bonnie!” I said.

“O, ma’am,” said Bonnie, “yes’m,” and blushed and waxed still prettier.
And this was Bonnie, the little maid whom I had last seen as I sat with
Enid’s baby under the pink crab apple-tree; and she was come to Little
Rosemont, Avis told me later, because her mother lived there in charge
of the cedar linen room. (So her mother cannot have been Demeter after
all!) I remembered her because of her really unusual prettiness which
in print gowns and white caps was hardly less notable than in this
splendour of white robe and unbound hair. It was easy to see why Avis
had pressed her in service for the Monday tableaux. It was easy to see
that no one could be more charmingly picturesque than Bonnie. And as I
looked down in her face upturned to answer some slight thing that I was
saying to her, in a flash something else was clear to me. With Bonnie
here in this fair guise was it not the easiest matter in the world to
see who had been in the mind of that fine young fellow up yonder there,
with mandrake in his hands?

It was a wild guess, if you like, but a guess not difficult to make in
that place of enchantment. I protest that there are nights when one
suspects one’s very gateposts of observing each other kindly across
one’s gate.

“Bonnie,” said I, with an instant intention, “come to my room to-night,
please, and help me about my unpacking. I’ve something to say to you.”

“O, yes’m,” said Bonnie, and I went away smiling at the incongruity of
having a radiant creature in a diadem to brush my sad gray curls.

“I have put her in a tableau,” Avis said, in the carriage, “in ‘The
Return of Endymion.’ She is a quaint little Diana. I have never seen
such hair.”

On which, “Avis,” I asked serenely, “who, pray, is that fine young
fellow hereabout who is in love with Bonnie?”

Avis, sitting tranquil in the white light with a basket of rhinestones
in her lap, looked flatteringly startled.

“Half an hour on the place, Aunt Etarre,” she said, shaking her head,
“and you know our one romance!”

“So does Pelleas,” I claimed defensively, “or, at all events, he has
actually talked with the lover.”

“Pooh!” said Pelleas in that splendid disdain which, in matters of
romance, he always pretends, “we were talking botany.”

“That’s he,” said Avis, nodding. “Bonnie’s sweetheart is the young
under-gardener--if you can call a man a sweetheart who is as shy as
Karl. He is really Faint Heart. But I think those two little people
are in love.”

Then I learned how, ever since the coming of Bonnie to Little Rosemont,
this big young Karl had paid her the most delicate and the most distant
attention. He had brought roots of violets and laid them outside her
window-ledge; and he had tossed in her blind clusters of the first
lady-slippers and the first roses. But though all the household at
Little Rosemont had good-naturedly done what it could to help on the
affair, some way it had not prospered. And as I listened I resolved
past all doubting that something must be done. For Pelleas and I are
fain to go through the world seeking out people who love each other
without knowing, and saying to them: “Fair Heart and Faint Heart, take
each other’s hands and follow us.”

Still, I was obliged to be certain that Bonnie was in love as well as
the young god whom we had surprised, and I meant to look in her eyes
the while I named the name of this young Karl. I think that there are
no eyes which I cannot read in a like circumstance and the pastime is
one of the delights of my hours.

“Bonnie,” said I to the little maid as she brushed my hair that night,
“I’ve an idea that you were wishing something delightful when you stood
in that great doorway to-night. Were you not?”

“O, ma’am,” said little Bonnie, and I saw her face, shadowy above my
own in the mirror, burn sudden crimson.

“Of course you were,” said I briskly. “Bonnie,” I pursued, “when
I came upon you I had just seen under a birch-tree not far away a
fine young fellow with a flower in his hand. Can that have been the
under-gardener?”

“O, ma’am,” said Bonnie, “I s’pose, if he had a flower--” and her voice
trembled, and she did not meet my eyes in the mirror.

“Bonnie!” said I.

Her eyes met mine.

“I know all about it,” said I boldly.

“O, ma’am,” she said, and tangled the comb in my sad gray curls.

Whereupon I flattered myself that I had taken Bonnie’s testimony and
that I was fortified with a thousand reasons for doing my best. But
it was not until the next day that I knew how, of all people, I could
count on Hobart Eddy to help me to be a kind of servant of Fate.

I was in the library next morning when, every one else being
frightfully enthusiastic and gone to look at the puppies, he came in
and sat on an ottoman at my feet--dear Hobart Eddy, with his tired eyes
and worldly-wise words and smile of utter sweetness.

“Aunt Etarre,” he said, “I feel bored and miserable. Let’s go out in
the world, hand in hand, and do a good deed. They say it sets you on
your feet. I’d like to try it.”

I shook my head, smiling. Nobody does more charmingly generous things
than Hobart and nobody, I suppose, poses for such a man of self.

“No, Hobart,” I said, “good deeds are a self-indulgence to you.”

“Everything I want to do they say will be a self-indulgence,” he
observed reflectively. “I dare say when I die they’ll all say I let
myself go at last.”

“What will they say when you fall in love?” I asked idly.

“What have they said?” he parried.

“Everything,” I replied truthfully.

“Just so,” he answered; “you wouldn’t think they would have so much
ingenuity. The queer thing,” he added meditatively, “is that such dull
folk have the originality to get up such good gossip.”

“But I mean,” I said, “when you really fall in love.”

“I am in love,” he told me plaintively, “with seeing other people in
love. I would go miles merely to look on two who are really devoted to
each other. I look about for them everywhere. Do you know,” he said,
“speaking of being in love myself, there is a most exquisite creature
in a tableau I’m in Monday night. I am in love with her, but, by
Jove, it being a tableau I can’t say a word to tell her so. It’s my
confounded luck. Sometimes I think I’m in a tableau all the time and
can’t say any of the things I really mean.”

“And who may she be?” I asked politely, being old to the meaningless
enthusiasms of Hobart Eddy.

“By Jove! I didn’t find out,” he remembered. “Nobody knew when I asked
’em. I suppose _they_ were in a tableau, too, and speechless. I forgot
to ask Avis. She’s a goddess, asleep on a bank. She’s Diana--sandals
and crown and all that. And I believe I’m to come swooning down a cloud
with a gold club in my hand. Anyway--”

“Hobart Eddy,” I cried, “are you Endymion?”

“But why not?” he asked with a fine show of indignation; “do you think
I should be just an ordinary shepherd, with no attention paid me?”

“Hobart Eddy, Hobart Eddy,” I said, “listen.”

Then I told him about Bonnie and Faint Heart, young god of the gardens.
And he heard me, smiling, complaisant, delighted, and at the last, when
he had seen what I had in mind, properly enthusiastic.

“Bonnie is going to look beautiful Monday night, Hobart,” I impressed
him, “and that boy will not be there to see her--save from far off,
with mandrake on his eyes! But he ought to be there to see her--and
Hobart, why can you not take him to the wings with you for the
tableaux and pretend that you need him to help you? And after he has
seen Bonnie in her tableau you ought to be trusted to arrange something
pleasant--”

He listened, pretending to be wholly amused at my excitement. But for
all that he put in a word of planning here and there that made me trust
him--dear Hobart Eddy.

“By Jove!” he finally recalled plaintively, “but I’m in love with her
myself, you know, confound it.”

“Ah, but think,” I comforted him, “how easily you can forget your
loves.”

The night of Monday came like a thing of cloud that had been going
before the day and had become silver bright when the darkness overtook
it. We walked through the park from the house--Avis and Lawrence and
Pelleas and Hobart Eddy and I, across the still fields never really
waked from sleep by any human voice. And when we came to the little
temple the moon was so bright that it was as if we had passed into a
kind of day made youthful, as we dream our days.

Pelleas and I found our seats in one of the half-circle of boxes built
of sweet boughs, open to the moon and walled by leaves. There was a
vacant chair or two and Avis and Lawrence and Hobart Eddy sat with us
in turn while the folk gathered--guests from the near country-houses,
guests who had motored out from town, and the party from Little
Rosemont. The edge of the wood was hung with lanterns, as if a shower
of giant sparks were held in the green.

“How will it be, Hobart?” I asked him eagerly as he joined us.

“Be? The love story? O, he’s up there,” Hobart assured me, “happy as
anything. I think he’ll put grease paint in Endymion’s eyes when he
comes to make me up, he’s that bereft.” He dropped his voice. “He has a
bunch of scarlet salvia the size of a lamp,” he confided. “I think he
means to fire it at us in the blessed middle of the tableau.”

I am a sentimental old woman. For all through that evening of beautiful
pictures and beautiful colour, I sat with my thought hovering about
Bonnie and that young Faint Heart. And yet I am not ashamed of that.
What better could my thought hover round than such a joy, trembling
into being?

“Pelleas,” I whispered, “O, Pelleas. Look at those people there, and
there, and down there. They don’t know what a charming secret is
happening.”

“Pooh!” said Pelleas, “they never do know. Besides,” he added, “maybe
they know one of their own.”

“Maybe they do,” I thought, and looked with new eyes on that watching
half-circle, with moving fans and fluttering scarfs. That is the best
thing about an audience: the little happy secrets that are in the
hearts.

When “The Return of Endymion” was announced I was in the pleasantest
excitement. For I love these hours when Love walks unmasked before me
and I am able to say: Such an one loves such an one and O, I wish them
well! The music sank to a single strain that beckoned to the curtain
of vines behind the portico; the lights were lowered and a ripple of
expectation, or so I fancied, ran here and there. And in the same
instant I heard beside me a familiar voice.

“Good setting for ’em, by Jove!” it said, and there was Hobart Eddy,
dropped down between Pelleas and me.

“Hobart,” I said excitedly, “Hobart Eddy! This is your tableau.”

He smiled, his familiar smile of utter sweetness, and rested his chin
on his hand and looked at the stage.

“No, Aunt Etarre,” he said; “see.”

Before the portico the curtain of vines parted to the tremble of the
violins. There was the slope, flower-spangled like the slope on which
we sat and across which, two nights ago, Pelleas and I had fancied
ourselves to be looking on immortal things. And there on the flowers
lay Diana asleep, her hair spread on the green, the crescent glittering
on her forehead, her white robe sweeping her sandaled feet. This was
Bonnie, dear little maid, and it was her hour; she would never again be
so beautiful before the whole world.

Even then I hardly understood until I saw him come from the
wings--Endymion, in the shepherd’s cloak, with the shepherd’s crook
in his hands. And as he went near to her and stood looking down at
her, Bonnie opened her eyes and saw what I saw, that her Endymion was
that young god of an under-gardener. Erect, splendid, crowned with
oak leaves--it was Karl’s hour, too, and he had come to her. As the
rose-light went stealing across the picture, embracing the shadows,
glowing in her awakened face, he opened his arms to her and caught
her and held her to him. The light burned vividly and beautifully;
and, all her hair rippling on his shepherd’s cloak, she clung to him,
before those people who sat and never guessed, under the moon. It was
their hour, the hour of Bonnie and Karl, and Pelleas and I were really
looking toward a place of enchantment and on immortal things.

The curtain of vines swept together in a soft thunder of applause. Who
were they, every one was asking, but who were they, who had given to
the tableau a quality that was less like a picture than like a dream?
“Hobart, Hobart,” I said, trembling, “how did you dare?”

Hobart Eddy was smiling at the ineffectual entreaties of the audience
for a repetition of the picture. In vain they begged, the curtain of
vines did not lift; the music swelled to a note of finality and lights
leaped up.

“He wasn’t so faint-hearted,” said Hobart Eddy. “To be sure, I was
obliged to make him do it. But then he did it. Faint Hearts aren’t like
that.”

“Hobart,” said I raptly, “you are the fairy godmother, after all.”

“Ah, well,” Hobart Eddy said dissentingly, “I only did it because I
wanted that minute when she opened her eyes. I’d go miles to see two
who are really devoted. And I was in love with her myself, confound it!
But then,” he added philosophically, “if I’d been there to take her in
my arms I couldn’t have looked on.”

In the intermission before the open-air play Pelleas gave me a certain
signal that we know and love and he rose and slipped from our box of
boughs. I followed him without, and stepped with him across the green
to the edge of the wood. There we took our way, as we had done on the
night of our coming, by the path in the trees, the path that was just
wide enough for, say, two violets when they venture out to walk two
by two in the safe night. “I was afraid we might not be able to come
here again,” Pelleas explained, “and I thought we ought ...” he added
vaguely. But I understood for I had wanted to come no less than he.

“Pelleas,” I said, as we stepped along the narrow way, “suppose it had
been as we fancied? Suppose it had all been some enchanted place that
would have vanished with us?”

“Every time we fail to vanish from this world,” Pelleas said
reflectively, “something charming happens. I suppose it is always so.”

“O, always,” I echoed confidently.




XIV

THE GOLDEN WEDDING


Next day heaven opened to us--a heaven, as does not always happen, of
some one’s else making. Our dear Avis Knight, fancying that Lawrence
was looking rather worn, persuaded him to shift the world to other
shoulders while he went off for golden apples, and he agreed to a
cruise in the yacht. Whereupon, Avis begged that Pelleas and I bring
Nichola and spend at Little Rosemont the month of their absence. The
roses were in full bloom and Avis said prettily that she longed to
think of us alone there among them. Really, to have inherited North
America would have been nothing to this; for Little Rosemont is my idea
of a palace and I think is by far the most beautiful of the Long Island
country places.

Therefore Pelleas and I went in town to fetch various belongings and
Nichola. Or I think I should say to approach Nichola, that violent and
inevitable force to be reckoned with like the weather and earthquakes.

“Whatever will Nichola say?” we had been wondering all the way on
train and ferry, and “Whatever _will_ Nichola say?” we put it in a kind
of panic, as Pelleas turned the latch-key at our house.

We went at once to the kitchen and as we descended the stairs we heard
her singing low, like a lullaby, that passionate serenade, _Com’ è
gentil_, from Don Pasquale. Her voice is harsh and broken and sadly
alien to serenades but the tones have never lost what might have been
their power of lullaby. Perhaps it is that this is never lost from any
woman’s voice. At all events, old Nichola reduces street-organ song,
and hymn, and _aria di bravura_ to this universal cradle measure.

When we appeared thus suddenly before her she looked up, but she did
not cease her song. She kept her eyes on us and I saw them light, but
the serenade went on and her hands continued their task above the table.

“Nichola,” I said, “we are invited to a most beautiful place on Long
Island to stay a month while our friends are away. We are to take you,
and we must start to-morrow. The house has one hundred and forty rooms,
Nichola, and you shall be my lady’s maid, as you used.”

“And nothing to do, Nichola, but pick roses and sing,” Pelleas added,
beaming.

Our old serving-woman pinched the crust about a plump new pie. On the
board lay a straggling remnant of the dough for the Guinea goat.
Nichola always fashioned from the remnant of pie-crust a Guinea goat
which she baked and, with a blanket of jelly, ate, beginning at the
horns. Once in her native Capri there had appeared, she had told me,
a man from West Africa leading a Guinea goat which she averred could
count; and the incident had so impressed her that she had never since
made a pie without shaping this ruminant quadruped. Whether there
really ever was such a goat I do not know, but Nichola believed in it
and in memoriam molded pie-crust goats by the thousand. She has even
fried them as doughnuts, too; but these are not so successful for the
horns puff out absurdly.

“A hundred and forty rooms, Nichola,” I said, “and you shall be my
lady’s maid.”

“Yah!” Nichola rejoined, interrupting her song rather to attend to
pricking the pie-crust with a fork than to reply to us; “don’t look
for no lady-maiding from me, mem. I’ll be kep’ busy countin’ up the
windows, me. When do we start off?” she wanted to know.

Nichola evidently believed us to be jesting. Later when she found that
our extravagant proposition was the truth she pretended to have known
from the first.

We were in the midst of our simple preparations, when a wonderful thing
occurred to Pelleas. I was folding my gown of heliotrope silk in its
tissues, the gown with the collar of Mechlin which is now my chief
finery, when Pelleas came in our room.

“Etarre,” he said, “you know what day comes next week. And now we shall
spend it at Little Rosemont, alone!”

I knew what he meant. Had we not previously talked of it and mourned
that it was not possible to us to celebrate that day alone, as we had
always dreamed that one’s golden-wedding day should be spent?

“Our wedding day--our golden-wedding day,” I said.

Pelleas nodded. “As if they have not all been golden,” he observed
simply.

There was in every fern a nod for our good fortune as on that next
afternoon Pelleas and Nichola and I drove up the avenue at Little
Rosemont. And at the very park entrance, though of course we did not
know that at the time, a part of our adventure began when the gate was
opened by that brown, smiling young under-gardener Karl, with honest
man’s eyes and a boy’s dimples, who bowed us into the place like a good
genie. As we returned his greeting we felt that he was in a manner
ringing up the curtain on the spectacle but we did not forecast that he
was also to play a most important part.

In the great hall all the servants were gathered to welcome us, an
ensemble of liveries and courtesies in which I distinguished only Mrs.
Woods, the housekeeper, very grave, a little hoarse, and clothed on
with black satin. We escaped as soon as possible, Pelleas and I not
having been formed by heaven to play the important squire and his lady
arriving home to bonfires and village bells and a chorus of our rent
roll. But once safely in the lordly sitting room of our suite, with its
canopies and a dais, and epergnes filled with orchids, I had but to
look at Pelleas to feel wonderfully at home. It is a blessed thing to
love some one so much that you feel at home together in any place of
deserts or perils or even lordly rooms filled with orchids.

On that first evening we were destined to chance upon another blessed
thing of the same quality. After our solitary dinner in the stately
dining-room, Pelleas and I went wandering in the grounds, very still
in the hush of June with June’s little moon lying on the sky. Little
Rosemont is a place of well-swept lawns, and orchards then newly freed
from the spell of their bloom; it is a place of great spaces and long
naves, with groves whose trees seem to have been drawn together to some
secret lyre. The house is a miracle of line and from its deep verandas
one sees afar off a band of the sea, as if some god had struck it from
the gray east. And everywhere at that glad season were the roses,
thousands and thousands of roses--ah, fancy using figures to compute
roses quite as one does in defraying debts. Though indeed as Pelleas
frivolously said, “‘Time brings roses’ but so does money!” For many of
those assembled were from Persia and Cashmere and I dare say from Lud
and Phut. I think that I have never had an experience of great delight
at which a band of familiar, singing things was not present; and when
I remember the month at Little Rosemont it is as if the roses were
the musical interludes, like a Greek chorus, explaining what is. They
hang starry on almost every incident; unless perhaps on that of the
night of our arrival, when we are told that Nichola in the servants’
dining-hall produced a basket which she had brought with her and calmly
took therefrom her Guinea goat of the day before and ate it, before all
assembled, beginning at the horns!

From the driveway on that first walk Pelleas and I looked up to a
balcony over which the roses were at carnival. It was the kind of
balcony that belongs to a moon and I half suspect all such balconies
to be moon-made and invisible by sun or starlight; it was the kind of
balcony that one finds in very old books, and one is certain that if
any other than a lover were to step thereon it would forthwith crumble
away. Pelleas, looking up at the balcony, irrelevantly said:--

“Do you remember the young rector over there in Inglese? The Reverend
Arthur Didbin? Who married Viola to Our Telephone the other day?”

“Yes, of course, Pelleas,” said I, listening. What could the Reverend
Arthur Didbin have to do with this balcony of roses?

“I’ve been thinking,” Pelleas went on, “that next week, on our
golden-wedding day you know, we might have him come up here in the
evening--there will be a full moon then--” he hesitated.

“Yes, yes?” I pressed him, bewildered.

“Well, and we might have him read the service for us, just we three up
there on the balcony. The marriage service, Etarre--unless you think it
would be too stupid and sentimental, you know?”

“Stupid!” I said, “O, Pelleas.”

“Ah, well, Nichola would think we were mad,” he defended his scruples.

“But she thinks so anyway,” I urged, “and besides she will never know.
But Mr. Didbin--what of him?” I asked doubtfully; “will he laugh or
will he understand?”

Pelleas reflected.

“Ah, well,” he said, “Hobart told me that one night when Mr. Didbin’s
train ran into an open switch he walked through six miles of mud to
marry a little country couple whom he had never seen.”

And that confirmed us: The Reverend Arthur Didbin would understand.
We stepped on in the pleasant light talking of this quite as if we had
a claim on moon-made balconies and were the only lovers in the world.
That we were not the only lovers we were soon to discover. At the edge
of a grove, where a midsummer-night-dream of a fountain tinkled, we
emerged on a green slope spangled with little flowers; and on its marge
stood a shallow arbour formed like a shell or a petal and brave with
bloom. We hastened toward it, certain that it had risen from the green
to receive us, and were close upon it before we saw that it was already
occupied. And there sat Bonnie, the little maid whose romance we had
openly fostered, and with her that young Karl, the under-gardener, whom
we observed in an instant Avis could never call Faint Heart any more.

Pelleas glanced at me merrily as we immediately turned aside pretending
to be vastly absorbed in some botanical researches on the spangled
evening slope.

“Bless us, Etarre,” he said, smiling, “what a world it is. You cannot
possibly hollow out an arbour anywhere without two lovers waiting to
occupy it.”

“Ah, yes,” said I, “the only difficulty is that there are more lovers
than arbours. Here are we for example, arbourless.”

But that we did not mind. On the contrary, being meddlers where
arbours and so on are concerned, we set about finding out more of
the two whom we had surprised. This was not difficult because we had
brought with us Nichola; and through her we were destined to develop
huge interest in the household. Nichola indeed talked of them all
perpetually while she was about my small mending and dressing and she
scolded shrilly at matters as she found them quite as she habitually
criticizes all orders and systems. Nichola is in conversation a sad
misanthrope, which is a pity, for she does not know it; and to know it
is, one must suppose, the only compensation for being a misanthrope.
She inveighed for example against the cook and the head laundress who
had a most frightful feud of long standing, jealously nourished, though
neither now had the faintest idea in what it had arisen--was this not
cosmopolitan and almost human of these two? And Nichola railed at the
clannishness of the haughty Scotch butler until he one day opened
an entry door for her, after which she softened her carping, as is
the way of the world also, and objected only to what she called his
“animal brogue,” for all the speeches of earth alien to the Italian
are to Nichola a sign of just so much black inferiority. And she went
on at a furious rate about the scandalous ways of “Reddie,” the second
stableman, who, she declared, “kep’ the actual rats in the stable
floor with their heads off their pillows, what with his playin’ on a
borrow’ fiddle that he’d wen’ to work an’ learnt of himself.” Through
Nichola we also had our attention directed to Mrs. Woods’ groveling
fear of burglars--her one claim to distinction unless one includes
that she pronounced them “burgulars.” And too we heard of the sinful
pride of Sarah McLean of the cedar linen room who declared in the
hearing of the household that one of her ancestors was a _Hittite_.
Where she had acquired this historic impression we never learned nor
with what she had confused the truth; but she stoutly clung to her
original assertion and on one occasion openly told the housekeeper
that as for her family-tree it was in the Old Testament Bible; and
the housekeeper, crossing herself, told this to Nichola who listened,
making the sign of the horn to ward away the evil. It was like learning
the secrets of a village; but the greatest of these realities proved
to be Bonnie McLean, daughter of her of Hittite descent, and Karl, the
under-gardener and the genie of the gate. Picture the agitation of
Pelleas and me when Nichola told us this:--

“Yes, mem,” she said, “them two, they’re in love _pitiful_. But the
young leddy’s mother, she’s a widdy-leddy an’ dependent on. An’ as
for the young fellow, he’s savin’ up fer to get his own mother acrost
from the old country an’ when he does it they’re agoin’ to get marrit.
But he needs eighty dollars an’ so far they say he’s got nine. Ain’t
it the shame, mem, an’ the very potatoes in this house with cluster
diamin’s in their eyes?”

Surely Avis did not know this about the young lovers--Avis, one of
whose frocks would have set the two at housekeeping with the mother
from “the old country” at the head of the table. Pelleas and I were
certain that she did not know, although we have found that there are
charming people of colossal interests to whom one marriage more or less
seems to count for as little as a homeless kitten, or a “fledgling
dead,” or the needless felling of an ancient oak. But it is among these
things that Pelleas and I live, and we believe that in spite of all the
lovers in the world there is yet not enough love to spare one lover’s
happiness. So while the moon swelled to the full and swung through
the black gulf of each night as if it had been shaped by heaven for
that night’s appointment, we moved among the roses of Little Rosemont,
biding our golden-wedding day, gradually becoming more and more intent
upon the romance and the homely realities of that liveried household.
Perhaps it was the story of Bonnie and Karl that suggested to Pelleas
the next step in our adventure; or it may have been our interest in
“Reddie,” whom we unearthed in the stable one afternoon and who,
radiant, played for us for an hour and fervently thanked us when he
had concluded. At all events, as our day of days came on apace Pelleas
became convinced that it was infamously selfish for us to spend it
in our own way. Because heaven had opened to us was that a reason for
occupying heaven to the exclusion of the joys of others?

“Etarre,” he said boldly, “there is not the least virtue in making
those about one happy. That is mere civilization. But there is nobody
about us but Avis’ servants. And she told us to make ourselves at
home. Let’s give all the servants a holiday on that day and get on by
ourselves.”

“We might let them picnic in the grounds,” I suggested doubtfully.

“With lemonade and cake,” Pelleas submitted.

“Lemonade and cake!” I retorted with superiority; “the servants of
to-day expect lobster and champagne.”

“Ah, well,” Pelleas defiantly maintained, “I believe they will like
your cream tarts anyway.” He meditated for a moment and then burst out
daringly: “Etarre! Would Avis care? Of course she could never do it
herself; but do you think she would care if we let them all come up
that night and dance in the great hall?”

I stared at Pelleas aghast.

“But they wouldn’t like it, Pelleas!” I cried; “servants, in this day,
are different. That butler now--O, Pelleas, he’d never do it.”

“Indeed he would,” Pelleas returned confidently; “he’s a fine Scot
with a very decent bagpipe in his clothes closet. I’ve seen it. I’ll
get him to bring it!” Pelleas declared with assurance.

“But why--” I quavered momentarily; “and why not?” I instantly went
on; “the very thing!” I ended, as triumphantly as if I had thought the
matter out quite for myself. “And, if you like, Pelleas, I’ll oversee
the making of the cream tarts for the whole company!” I added, not to
be outdone.

It is amazing what pleasant incredulities become perfectly possible
when once you attack them as Nichola attacks her Guinea goats,
beginning at the horns.

So that was why, having broached the subject to those concerned as
delicately as if we had been providing entertainment for a minister of
state; having been met with the enthusiasm which such a minister might
exhibit as diplomacy; and having myself contributed to the event by
the preparation of a mountain of my _chef d’œuvre_, the frozen cream
tarts which Pelleas appears to think would be fitting for both thrones
and ministers assembled, he and I stood together at half after eight
on the evening of our golden-wedding day and, in the middle of our
lordly sitting room, looked at each other with tardy trembling. Now
that the occasion was full upon us it seemed a Titanic undertaking. I
was certain that far from being delighted the servants were alarmed
and derisive and wary of our advances; that “Reddie” would at the last
moment refuse to play upon his borrowed fiddle for the dancing; and
that the haughty Scotch butler would be bored to extinction.

“O, Pelleas!” I said miserably, as we went down the grand staircase,
“it’s a terrible business, this attempt at philanthropy among the
servants in high places.”

“At all events,” said Pelleas brightly, “we are not plotting to improve
them. Though of course if that is done in the right way--” he added,
not to be thought light-minded. Pelleas has an adorable habit of saying
the most rebellious things, but it is simply because he is of opinion
that a great deal of nonsense is talked by those who have not the
brains to rebel.

On a sudden impulse he drew me aside to the latticed window of the
landing and pushed it ajar. The moon rode high above the oaks; it was
as if the night stood aside in delighted silence in this exalted moment
of the moon’s full. Around the casement the roses gathered, so that the
air was sweet.

“Ah, well,” Pelleas said softly, “I dare say they’ll like it. They
must--‘in such a night.’ We’ll leave them to themselves in a little
while. The Reverend Arthur Didbin will be here at ten, remember.”

The great honey-tongued clock beside us touched the silence with the
half hour.

“Pelleas,” I whispered him, “O, Pelleas. It was fifty years ago this
very minute. We were saying, ‘I will’ and ‘I will.’”

“Well,” said Pelleas, “we have, dear. Though we may yet fall out on a
question of Angora cats and the proper way to lay an open fire.”

We smiled, but we understood. And we lingered for a moment in silence.
Let me say to all skeptics that it is worth being married an hundred
years to attain such a moment as that.

Then as we went down the stairs the dining-room door suddenly burst
open with an amazing, eerie clamour; and into the great oak-paneled
hall marched the haughty Scotch butler in full Highland costume, plaid
and bare knees and feather, playing on his bagpipe like mad. No peril,
then, of his being bored to extinction, nor the others, as we were
soon to find. For the bagpipe gave the signal and immediately came
pouring from below stairs the great procession of our guests. My old
head grows quite giddy as I try to recount them. There were Mrs. Woods,
very grave, a little hoarse, and clothed on with black satin; and the
mother of Bonnie in brown silk and a cameo pin, as became a daughter
of the Hittites; and Bonnie herself of exquisite prettiness in white
muslin and rosebuds; and Karl in his well-brushed black; and “Reddie,”
his face shining above a flaming cravat; and the cook and the head
laundress who had entered competitive toilettes like any gentlewomen;
and the other menservants in decent apparel; and a bevy of _chic_
maids in crisp finery and very high heels. Led by Mrs. Woods they
came streaming toward us and shook our hands--was ever such a picture
anywhere, I wondered, as I saw them moving between the priceless
tapestries and clustering about the vast marble fireplace that came
from the quarries of Africa. And to our unbounded gratification they
seemed immensely to like it all and not to have lost their respect for
us because we were civil to them. Then when, presently, we had sent
“Reddie” and his fiddle up to the pillared musicians’ gallery, they all
rose to his first strains and in an instant the Scotch butler had led
out the crispest and highest-heeled of the maids and they all danced
away with a will. Danced very well too. It is amazing how tricks of
deportment are communicable from class to class. If I were to offer
to solve the servant problem I conclude that I would suggest to all
employers: Be gentlemen and gentlewomen yourselves and live with all
dignity and daintiness. Though I dare say that I am a very impractical
old woman, but all the virtue in the world does not lie in practicality
either.

In a little time Pelleas slipped away to brew a steaming punch--a
harmless steaming punch made from a recipe which my mother, who was a
high church woman, always compounded for dining archbishops and the
like. Bonnie and Karl did not dance but sat upon an old stone window
seat brought from Thebes and watched with happy eyes. And when the
punch came in we wheeled it before them and they served every one.

In that lull in the dancing I looked about with sudden misgiving;
Nichola was not with us. Where was Nichola, that faithful old woman,
and why was she not at our party? She had left me in full season to
make ready.

“Where is Nichola?” I anxiously demanded of Pelleas, reproaching myself
for my neglect.

Pelleas did not immediately answer and when I looked up I fancied that
I detected his eyes twinkling. But before I could wonder or inquire
came that which it makes my heart beat now to remember. Without the
slightest warning there sounded and echoed a violent summons on the
great entrance doors. Nothing could have created more consternation
than did the innocent fall of that silver knocker at Little Rosemont.

I chanced to be sitting near the door and I think that I must have
risen in astonishment. I saw Pelleas whirl in concern, and I was
conscious of the instant lull in the animated talk. Then the Scotch
butler recovered himself and in full Highland costume, with bare knees,
he sprang to his post quite as if this had been at the head of a
mountain pass and threw wide the door.

“Upon my word!” I heard exclaiming a fine, magnetic voice, “upon my
word, a party. Let us blush and withdraw.”

But they came crowding to the door; and there in motor caps and coats
stood a gay company of our friends and the friends of Avis, and of
them Madame Sally Chartres and Wilfred; and Lisa and her uncle, Dudley
Manners, who were guests near by at Chynmere Hall; and Hobart Eddy,
whose was the voice that I had heard. They had motored out from town
and from places roundabout us and were come to pay us a visit.

“Sally!” said I feebly. Sally was with Hobart Eddy who adores her and,
his critics say, affects her so-picturesque company to add to his
so-popular eccentricities. And with them came a cloud of the mighty, a
most impressive cloud of witnessing railway presidents and bankers and
statesmen and the like; and all spectators at our party.

“Ah, Etarre!” Sally cried blithely, “this is charming. But--we are not
invited.”

“No one is invited,” said I faintly, “we all belong here. Ah,” I cried,
as the humour of it overcame me, “come in. Do come in. The punch is
just served.”

They needed no second bidding. In they all marched in the merriest of
humours, not in the least understanding the meaning of that strange
assembly but with sufficient of moon magic and the swift motion in
their dancing blood to be ready for everything. And while Pelleas led
them away to the billiard room to put aside their wraps, I found Hobart
Eddy beside me. And somehow, before I knew, I was telling him all about
the occasion and at his beseeching actually leading him from one to
another and soberly presenting him to Mrs. Woods and the daughter of
the Hittites and the cook. Only to see that elegant young leader of
cotillons bowing before the head laundress in her competitive toilette
was something to remember.

“And _voilà mes enfants_, the sweethearts,” he murmured as we halted
near the window seat from Thebes. There sat Bonnie and Karl, intent
upon each other, she with a flush on her face that matched the rosebuds
of her frock. And how it happened I hardly know, save that I was at
that moment a distracted old woman and that in matters of romance
I invariably lose my head; but I instantly went a little mad and
told Hobart Eddy all about that young Endymion and his Diana of the
tableaux: how Endymion’s old mother must be spirited from “the old
country” before they might be married; and even how eighty dollars was
necessary and how they had only nine. I had just paused breathless
when the others came trooping from the den, and Sally Chartres in white
cloth and white curls leaned upon the arm of Mr. Dudley Manners--he
is king of some vast part of the mineral or vegetable kingdom at the
moment though they modestly call it only a corner--and insisted on
meeting every one, on hearing the bagpipe, on listening to “Reddie”
play, and on being a good angel with a cloud of the mighty at her side.

In the midst of this bewildering business the dining-room doors opened
and in came the tall and smiling footmen whose part was to bring up the
supper of cold dainties. And even in that moment my heart thrilled with
thanksgiving and pride in the contemplation of the one tall footman
who bore the tray of those cream tarts of mine. I say it boldly, and
Pelleas said it first: there never was such a decoction of thick,
frozen cream and foamy chocolate in this world of delectables. I could
not veil my satisfaction as I saw these set upon the table where the
plates were piled, and of a truth they looked so delicious that for an
instant it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world that Hobart
Eddy should leap from his place at my side as if he had gone suddenly
mad at the sight.

“Wait, please!” he cried ringingly, “no one must touch anything yet!”

On which he sprang up the step that leads to the great yellow salon,
lighted to enhance the look of festivity, and thus stood directly back
of the supper table. He was very handsome, his face alight and glowing,
his erect, compact figure drawn to its full height. And before I could
even guess what he was about, what had he done, this idol of society,
this deviser of the eccentric, but make his friends know in a burst of
amazing eloquence all that I had just told him of the love story of
Bonnie and Karl, save their very names.

His friends listened, curious, ready to be amused, and at the last
genuinely diverted; and the household of Little Rosemont listened,
bewildered, not knowing what to expect; and as for Bonnie and Karl and
Pelleas and me, we four listened and doubted the evidence of our own
senses, until:--

“Therefore,” cried Hobart Eddy, “I offer at auction a portion of the
contents of this table, especially one fourth of this tray of amazing
tarts, as an all-star benefit for these two young people. Also, I offer
a limited number of glasses of yonder punch--hey, Mannie!” he called
warningly to Mr. Dudley Manners, who stood with a punch glass in his
hand; “drop it down, man!”

“I’m hanged if I do,” said Mr. Manners, merrily; “I’ll bid five for it
first, you know!”

“Done!” cried Hobart Eddy, rapping on the table, “and what am I bid
for this first appetizing and innocent confection, this tart, all
compact of cream and spices--” So he went on, and I clung to my chair
and expected the whole place to crumble away and Nichola to call me to
breakfast in New York. It was too wonderful.

But it was all true. They were caught in the spirit of the happy hour
as if this had been some new game contrived to tempt their flagging
interests. They gathered about the table, they bid one another down,
they prompted the auctioneer, they escaped to corners with cream
tarts--my cream tarts!--for which they had paid a price that made
me tremble. And as for our original guests, they were lined up at a
respectful distance, but quite frantic with the excitement, for they
were all devoted--as who would not have been?--to the two to whom this
would mean all happiness. And as for Bonnie and Karl, scarce able to
breathe they sat on the stone bench from Thebes and clung to each
other’s hands. Ah, there never was such an hour. It makes me young to
think of it.

So it went on until the last tart of the portion which he had reserved
was auctioned to the highest bidder. And hardly had Hobart Eddy invited
the others to the table and paused for breath when the question that
had been forced from my mind by the unexpected arrivals was answered:
Nichola appeared in the dining-room door.

She had made herself splendid in her best frock, a flaming scarlet
merino; for Nichola has never lost her Italian love of colour. On her
head she had a marvelous cap of the kind that she can fashion at a
moment’s notice from a linen pillow case and a bit of string. And she
too bore a tray, a tray of that which had detained her below stairs
fashioning it for a surprise, a tray, in short, heaped with tiers and
tiers of pie-crust Guinea goats.

On these Hobart Eddy seized with an ardour that was beautiful to see.
Nichola, frowning terribly, stood back half minded to break into shrill
upbraidings. And while I was trying between my tears and smiles to make
her know what it was all about, her whole herd of goats was sold off at
a price which she afterward told me, privately, was as high as the Pope
in the Vatican could expect for his pie crusts.

They swept the pile of crisp notes and shining coin into a hat and
thrust it in the hands of Nichola, who stood nearest; and that old
woman at their bidding crossed the slippery oaken floor and poured
the treasure in the lap of little Bonnie, while the daughter of the
Hittites sobbed on the first shoulder, which chanced to be that of her
ancient enemy, the housekeeper.

Nichola’s presentation speech was brief and to the point.

“Here,” she said, “get marrit.”

Bonnie, dear little maid in muslin and rosebuds, stood up with Karl,
both pink and white to see; and they bowed, and laughed through their
tears. Ah, there were tears in the eyes of others of us too as we
looked; and Madame Sally Chartres and a very gay and magnificent Mrs.
Dane-Orvil and the cook formed one group and impartially smiled at one
another. Some way, a mask had fallen.

With Nichola’s words still in our ears the clock chimed quarter after
ten, and in the moonlight of the open door appeared on a sudden the
eager, concerned face of the Reverend Arthur Didbin, come to keep his
appointment with Pelleas and me.

At sight of him Pelleas fairly beamed.

“Why not?” he cried out; “what do these two young people say? Why shall
they not be married _now_?”

Why not, indeed? The proposition was met with acclamation. They
hardly waited for the frightened, ecstatic nod of star-eyed little
Bonnie before they had the supper table pushed aside--indeed, I do
not remember now whether it was the railway president and Mr. Dudley
Manners who did most of the work or the Scotch butler and the footmen,
for they all helped together. And Bonnie and Karl stood up in the door
of the salon, and so did the daughter of the Hittites, and Hobart Eddy
insisted on being joint best man with the Scotch butler, and the
Reverend Arthur Didbin married the two young lovers then and there. I
have always held that the license demanded in some parts is unromantic
nonsense.

After that there was a blur of adieux, and Hobart Eddy kissed my
hand and even when his machine had been started came running back in
the moonlight to get from Karl the address of his mother “in the old
country” so that he might cable to her and have her rejoicing by next
morning. No, never tell me that any man is mere idler and dilettante,
for I have seen the heart of one such and hereafter I dare not
disbelieve in any one.

They all swept down the moonlit drive, hands waving, motor horns
sounding; and the haughty Scotch butler in full Highland costume stood
between two pillars and played his bagpipe to speed them on their way.
The door of the tonneau of the last motor had just been hospitably
opened with the offer to set down the Reverend Arthur Didbin in the
village when that gentleman, his gray hair blowing, hurried to where
Pelleas and I were standing.

“But,” he said anxiously, “did you not wish me for something? Did you
not wish--”

At that Pelleas and I looked away from each other in sudden
consternation and then with one accord smiled and shook our heads. With
our assurance he turned away and in silence we watched him down the
drive. And after the last motor had disappeared behind the shrubbery
Pelleas and I lingered alone in the moonlit portal breathing in the
roses, and still we did not meet each other’s eyes. But when there
was at last no excuse for our waiting there longer I looked up at him
shamefacedly enough.

“Pelleas,” I faced the truth, but solemnly lest he should imagine that
I was not filled with regret at our neglect, “Pelleas, we _forgot_ our
golden wedding.”

“But there has been a golden wedding all the same,” said Pelleas.

       *       *       *       *       *

However, in fear of what the balcony of roses would think of our
defection, we stepped out there for a moment on our way upstairs. And
there Pelleas said over something that is a kind of bridal song for a
Golden Wedding:--

    “My own, confirm me! If I tread
    This path back, is it not in pride
    To think how little I dreamed it led
    To an age so blessed that by its side
    Youth seems the waste instead!”

We do not think that the balcony itself can have agreed with this,
because it was a moon balcony, made for youthful lovers. But roses are
like a chorus, explaining what is; and no one can persuade us that
these failed to understand.




XV

THE WEDDING


Toward the end of July we found that the lodge at Little Rosemont was
to be vacant for a month or two and Pelleas rented it, furnished, from
the agent; and we took Nichola and moved down the length of the gravel
to the littlest house in the world, set in the littlest garden. There
we were established three days and more before Avis and Lawrence were
expected home.

We had merely crossed the garden from the great house, and yet life in
the little house seemed another matter, as if a harp were heard in a
room instead of in an open field. We felt less professionally alive and
more free to live. It was as if, Pelleas said, we were reading a poem
rather for the exquisite meaning than for the exquisite rhythm.

There was another reason why the lodge invited us. Though it was nearly
August, its tiny garden, walled round with a half-moon of hedge, was
rich with roses as if, Pelleas said, for an after-meeting of certain
Junes. For the lodge garden had been set with monthly roses, those
prodigals of giving, and there Chinese roses, Bengal roses, Giant of
Battles and Cloth of Gold rioted about a Hundred-leaved rose from the
Caucasus and that week they were all ripe with bloom.

That first morning as we stepped on the porch was a kind of greeting,
as intimate and personal as a nod. Pelleas and I stood in the garden
with the sun, as I believe, slanting madly in every direction and
butterflies vanishing against the blue. At all events, that is as I
soberly recall the day; and yet it is the day which we remember as our
one offence against love. It was the one time in our life that we said
of two lovers in whom we believed: “Are we sure that they are right?”
instead of our usual: “Let them be married to-day!” I can hardly credit
my own feint at heartlessness.

We went across the strip of terrace with a pleasure that was like
the pleasure of beginnings. In the center of the garden was a little
pool for water flowers and there we set the fountain free in the
sheer delight of bringing about all the liberty possible; and we
watched the scarlet tanagers bathing in the trickling outlet beside
the Hundred-leaved rose. And so we came at last to the arbour in a
green corner of the wall, and in its doorway we stood still with the
reasonable impression that we were thinking what we seemed to see.

On a bench beneath a window where the roses made an oval open to the
garden sat a girl. At first, save the shining of her hair, I saw only
that she had beside her a little traveling bag and, also beside her,
a fine, manly boy of not a day more than twenty-two. She was crying
a little and he was attempting with adorable awkwardness to comfort
her. At first glance the most rational explanation was that they were
run-away sprites from some neighbouring goblin settlement, and Pelleas
and I were making a sympathetic effort to withdraw when they looked up
and saw us.

Lo, with a little traveling bag between them, there were Lisa and Eric.

Almost before I grasped the import of this I hurried forward and took
Lisa in my arms. In all possible affairs I firmly believe that the kiss
should come first and the explanation afterward.

“But it is Lisa!” I cried. “Pelleas, it is Lisa and Eric. Wherever have
you come from, dear heart?”

The story was out in one burst of courage with the tears so near, so
near.

“I came from Chynmere,” she said; “Uncle Dudley and I are still at the
Wortleys’, you know--that is, Uncle Dudley is there. I--I ran away from
the Hall this m-morning. I--I eloped. I--Eric--we are going to be--”

Of course the rest was luminously clear.

“Dear heart,” I cried, “then what in this world are you crying for?”

Crying. In the midst of one’s elopement on a glad morning with the sun
slanting in every direction and butterflies vanishing against the blue.

“At all events,” said young Eric Chartres, with the most charmingly
abashed smile, “_I’m_ not crying.”

Bit by bit this logical climax of the Summer’s situation was imparted
to us--indeed, Pelleas and I had already secretly prophesied it. For
Dudley Manners to have charge of little Lisa at all was sufficiently
absurd; but for him with his middle-aged worldliness to have in keeping
her love story was not to be borne. Lisa and Eric had been betrothed
since Spring and in those two months Dudley Manners’ objection on the
score of their youth had not been to any extent outgrown. Moreover,
Lisa explained tremulously, Uncle Dudley had lately given out that
she had not yet “seen the world.” Therefore he had taken passage for
her and a Miss Constance Wortley, a governess cousin at Chynmere
Hall--elderly and an authority on plant life in Alaska--and they were
to go abroad to see the world for two years; and Eric was of course to
be left behind.

“_Two years_,” Lisa said impressively, with the usual accent of two
eternities; “we were to go to the north of Africa to watch the musk
roses bloom and to the Mediterranean to look for rosemary. Uncle
Dudley thinks _that_ would be seeing the world. So Eric came this
morning early and I slipped down and met him before any one was up.
And we came here. I told Eric,” Lisa confessed, “what you told me
about Cornelia Emmeline Ayres’ elopement. And we _knew_ you would both
understand.”

Pelleas and I looked at each other swiftly. Nature is very just.

“But what are you crying for, dear?” I puzzled then; “you are never
sorry you came?”

“Ah, but,” said Lisa sadly, “I think that Miss Wortley really wants to
go to Europe and wait about for things to bloom. And now of course she
can’t. And then they say--Uncle Dudley says--that I can’t make Eric
happy until I know something of life.”

“My dear,” said I from the superiority of my seventy years, “I don’t
know about the rest. But that much I am positive is nonsense.”

“Isn’t loving somebody knowing all about life?” Lisa asked simply.

“It is,” Pelleas and I answered together.

“Ah,” Lisa cried, brightening, “I _said_ you would understand. Didn’t
I, Eric?”

Eric raptly assented. I had always liked the boy. His whole mind was
on Lisa and yet, though from the edges of his consciousness, he had an
exquisite manner.

“At all events,” said I when presently I left Lisa in the flowered
chintz guest room, “let us lunch first and be married afterward.
Whatever happens you must have one of Nichola’s salads.”

I hurried downstairs longing to find Pelleas and to plan with him how
we were to bring it all about; but Pelleas was still in conference
with that young lover and they were walking up and down the path,
heads bent, brows grave, as if the matter were actually one requiring
the weightiest consideration. I stood for a moment at the hall window
to watch them, with all my heart longing to cry out: Never mind the
reasons. Look at the roses. It is perfectly easy to see what _they_
think.

Instead I went to the kitchen to say a word about luncheon. And the day
was so sunny and the guests at luncheon were so to my liking and my
heart was so full of their story that, as well as for a more practical
reason, I was obliged to tell something of it to Nichola.

Nichola was washing green leaves, and these, tender and curled in her
withered hands, were as incongruous as a flush I had once detected on
her withered cheek. In her starched print gown Nichola looked that
morning like some one cut from stiff paper.

“Nichola,” said I, “I _think_ we may have a wedding here this
afternoon.”

Instantly her little deep-set eyes became quick-lidded with disapproval.

“It is by no means certain,” I pursued, “but we hope to have it here.
And,” I advanced delicately, “could you possibly have ready for us
something frozen and delicious, Nichola? With little cakes? Then you
need make no dessert at all for dinner.”

Nichola looked at me doubtfully, pulling down her brown print sleeves
over her brown wrists.

“_Che!_” said she, “if it is a runaway match I cannot do this.”

I looked at Nichola in amazement. I was used to her denials; these were
merely the form that her emotion took. I was used to her prejudices;
these were her only pastime. But I had never before heard her offer an
objection which seemed to have a reason.

“Why not--but why not, Nichola?” I cried.

“I had a sister,” Nichola explained unexpectedly; and in all these
forty years and more I had never before heard her sister’s name upon
her lips. “She went quietly, quietly to San Rafael an’ a priest married
her to Beppo an’ they came home for supper. But no good came. Beppo was
drown’ from his boat within the year an’ with him a net full of fine
fish. If it is a runaway match I cannot do this. No good will come.”

“But, Nichola,” I urged reasonably, “you would not be blamed. Though
to be sure I may ask you to telephone to Mr. Didbin, that young rector
at Inglese. But you would not be blamed. And to make cream sherbet,
that would be no part of the ceremony. And little cakes--”

“No good will come!” cried Nichola shrilly; “for the love of heaven,
have I not said how Beppo was drown’ with all his fish? It is not holy.”

“Nichola,” I asked with dignity, “will you be sure to have a
particularly delicious luncheon to-day? And will you make for dessert
to-night a sherbet, with little cakes, and have it ready in the
afternoon?”

I went away with a false majesty covering my certainty that Nichola
would pay not the slightest heed to my injunction. Nichola is in
everything a frightful nonconformist, from habit; if to this were
really superadded a reason I could not tell what might happen, but I
felt sadly sure that Lisa and Eric would have for their wedding feast
afternoon tea and nothing more.

“Nichola!” said I from the doorway, “what made you think that they had
run away?”

“_Che!_” said Nichola grimly, “I saw them come in the gate. Have I
lived these seventy years always, always with my two eyes shut?”

As I hurried away I marveled at that. Once Nichola had unexpectedly
proved to me that she has wishes and even dreams. Was it possible that
she knew a lover when she saw one? After all, that is a rare gift.

At the foot of the stairs Pelleas met me with a manner of nothing but
gravity.

“Pelleas!” I cried, “isn’t it delightful? Wasn’t it providential that
they came to us?”

“Etarre,” said Pelleas solemnly, “I’m not at all sure that we oughtn’t
to send them straight back to Chynmere Hall.”

If Pelleas had proposed persuading Lisa and Eric to forget each other I
could have been no more amazed. Pelleas, who always pretends enormous
unconcern in all romance and secretly works with all his might on the
side of the adventure, Pelleas, to speak in austere fashion of sending
two lovers home. What did he mean? And did he think that a course in
the flora of Europe would make anybody any happier whatever?

“Pelleas,” I cried, “how can you? When _we_ are so happy?”

“But you know we didn’t elope,” Pelleas argued.

“Wouldn’t you have loved me if we had?” I inquired reasonably.

“Of course I would,” cried Pelleas, “but--”

“Ah, well, then,” I finished triumphantly, “it’s the same way with
them.”

I recall a distinct impression that I had the better of the argument.

“But you see,” Pelleas persisted gently, “after all they are so
appallingly young, Etarre. And if Dudley Manners were to be angry and
if he were to disinherit Lisa, and so on--”

“As for things going wrong,” said I, “can anything be so wrong as for
two who love each other to be separated?”

“No,” Pelleas admitted justly, “nothing can be. All the same--”

“Pelleas!” I cried in despair, “we could have that young rector over
here, and they could be married in the little round drawing-room--or in
the rose arbour--or in the garden at large. Think of it--cream sherbet
and little cakes afterward and us for parents and wedding party and
all. Then you and I could go straight to Dudley Manners at Chynmere
and tell him how it was, and I _know_ he would forgive them. Pelleas!
Can you really think of that dear child spending two years with an
authority on plant life in Alaska?”

“Instead of going to him afterward,” said Pelleas boldly then, “suppose
you and I leave here after luncheon and drive to Chynmere and _make_
Dudley Manners consent? And bring him and Miss Constance Wortley back
to the wedding!” he finished with triumphant daring.

“And not be married secretly?” I said lingeringly, as if the secret
wedding were our own.

“Ah, well,” said Pelleas, “at all events we won’t tell him on any
account where they are.”

So it was settled, and when presently we four went out to our tiny
dining-room courage and gayety were in the air. Our dining-room was
white and dull blue with a wreath of roses outside every window and a
bowl of roses on the table. And if Nichola considered it reprehensible
to assist at a “runaway match” she manifestly had no such scruple about
the luncheon to precede it for she set before us the daintiest dishes.
I could see the while how her little, quick-lidded eyes were fixed
disapprovingly on the young lovers; but then Nichola’s eyes disapprove
of the very moon in the sky. I wondered, as I looked at Lisa in the
noon of her fresh young beauty, and at Eric, so adoringly in love, how
Nichola could even pretend to disapproval at sight of them; and if she
had been any one but Nichola I would have suspected her conversion, for
of her own will she served our coffee in the rose arbour. Whereupon
Pelleas and I became absorbingly interested in the progress of some
slips which had been in the ground about six hours and we wandered
away to look at them, cups in hand, and left those two to take their
coffee in the arbour--in memory of a certain day when we had been
left to drink our coffee alone. And when we came back we scrupulously
refrained from looking whether they had so much as sipped a thimbleful.

Then, feeling deliciously guilty, we announced to our guests that we
had an errand which would keep us away for an hour. And that if it
should seem best there would be ample time for the wedding on our
return. And that at all events they must decide whether they would be
married in the round drawing-room, or in the rose arbour, or in the
garden at large. Also, not knowing what warning or summons we might
wish hurriedly to send, I added to Lisa:--

“And if the telephone rings, dear, you would better answer it yourself.
For it may be Cupid and ministers of grace. No one can tell.”

“O, Aunt Etarre,” said Lisa prettily, “this is perfect of you. Isn’t
it, Eric?”

The way that Eric shook the hand of Pelleas three times on the way to
the gate might have indicated to some that he thought it was.

Yet there we were, hastening out in the world to find a possible
obstacle to all that innocent joy. Never before had we been guilty of
such disaffection or even of prudence in such a cause.

“Pelleas, O Pelleas,” I said as we hurried down the lane for a
carriage, “but suppose it doesn’t turn out as we think? Suppose Dudley
Manners is furious, suppose he guesses where they are and suppose--?”

“Pooh,” said Pelleas in splendid disdain. “Dudley Manners. Thirty
years ago I took a polo championship away from him when he was looking
directly at me.”

And it needed no more than this and the sun in the lane to reassure me.

From a warlike-looking farmer, a friend of ours living at the lane’s
end, we got a low phaeton and a tall horse which we had made occasion
to use before. The drive to Chynmere occupied hardly half an hour, and
when we saw the tower of the Hall above the chestnuts and before us the
high English wall of the park cutting the roadside sward we looked at
each other in sudden breathless abashment. After all, Lisa was Dudley
Manners’ ward, not ours. After all, two years in Europe are commonly
accepted as desirable for a girl of twenty. In that black hour as we
drew rein at the lordly entrance of Chynmere Hall itself I felt myself
obliged to call up the essential horror of the situation.

“Pelleas,” I said, “remember: they love each other as much as ever we
did. And remember: two years with an authority on plant life in Alaska.”

“Monstrous,” said Pelleas firmly.

On which we went bravely up the steps.

Our enterprise was doomed to receive a blow, crushing and apparently
mortal. Neither Mr. Dudley Manners nor Miss Constance Wortley was at
home. They had gone away in different directions, the man thought,
immediately after luncheon.

We went back tremblingly to the low phaeton and the tall horse.

“O, Pelleas,” I said in despair. “And whatever shall we do now? Those
poor little people.”

Pelleas looked at his watch.

“We can take an hour,” he said. “We’ll give Dudley Manners or the
botanical lady an hour to get back, and we’ll call again.”

“O, Pelleas,” I said, “and if they aren’t there then let us go home and
be married anyway--” quite as if the wedding were our own.

But Pelleas shook his head.

“Dear,” he said, “we mustn’t, you know. We really mustn’t. It wouldn’t
do in the very least.”

“Pelleas,” said I irrelevantly, “we were just their age when we were
married.”

“So we were,” said Pelleas, and drew the tall horse to a walk in the
sun of the long green road, and we fell to remembering.

Any one who has ever by any chance remembered knows how sweet the
pastime may be. Sometimes I think that heaven must be a place where
some of the things that have been will be again. No wonder that as
we drove on our delayed mission for those two who sat expectant and
adoring in our rose garden, a throng of phantoms of delight came
about us and held us very near. No wonder that the tall horse, obeying
his own will, took this road and that road, leading us farther and
farther in those fragrant ways until at last where the highway ran
through a little hollow at the foot of a forbidding hill he stopped
altogether, minded to take the tops of some tender green, cool in the
shade. I recall the ditches of yellow sweet clover and the drone of the
honeybees.

The hollow was on the edge of Chynmere village. Across the green we
saw the parish church, white in its elms and alders. I noted absently
that a smart trap and a satin horse waited outside the iron fence and
that several figures were emerging from the chapel door where the
white-haired rector lingered.

“We can ask those people,” suggested Pelleas, “for the shortest cut
back to the Hall. I’m afraid the time is getting on.”

He gathered up the lines and drove leisurely across the springing turf.
A song sparrow was pouring out its little heart from the marsh land
beyond the church and the sounds of the afternoon were growing every
moment more beloved. Everything was luring to delight, and here were
Pelleas and I alone of all the world--save Dudley Manners and this Miss
Wortley--seeking to postpone a great happiness.

“Dudley Manners,” said I out of the fullness of my heart, “must be a
kind of ogre. And as for this Miss Wortley, I dare say she is a regular
Nichola.”

At this Pelleas said something so softly that I did not hear and drew
rein beside the smart trap in which a man and a woman coming from the
church had just taken their places. And when I looked up I saw the man
turning toward us a face so smiling and so deliciously abashed that it
bewildered my recognition, until--

“Dudley Manners!” cried Pelleas. “The very man I am searching the
county for.”

And to this Dudley Manners said:--

“I say, Pelleas--you’re a bit late--but how in the world did you guess?”

“Guess?” said Pelleas, puzzled. “Guess you?”

“Guess where--I should say guess what. Did you know I telephoned?”
said Dudley Manners all at once; and then having leaped from the trap
and bent above my hand he turned to the lady who had sat beside him,
an exquisite elderly woman with a lapful of fresia. “This is Mrs.
Manners,” he said with charming pride. “The fact is, we’ve just been
married in the chapel there.”

At this my heart leaped to a thousand tunes all carrying one happy air.

“You see,” he was explaining, looking up at us with an eagerness almost
boyish in his transfigured face, “we--we decided rather suddenly. And
we telephoned over to you an hour ago to get you to come and stand by
us--”

“Telephoned to us--at the lodge?” I cried in dismay. “O, _who_ came to
the telephone?”

Dudley Manners looked as if he wondered what _that_ had to do with his
happiness.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “The voice was familiar. I thought at
first it might have been you, Etarre. And then they cut us off; and
then a terrible voice thundered that neither of you was there. How did
you know what we wanted?” he went back to his text.

But as for me I could think only of the terror of those poor little
people, and I could guess that Nichola must some way have come to the
rescue. I knew her voice over the telephone, like all three voices of
Cerberus, saying, “Not at home.”

“Dudley,” said I faintly, “Pelleas--tell him. Ask him.”

I gave Dudley Manners my hand and got to the ground, trembling, and
crossed to the trap where the lady was so tranquilly seated, with
the fresia in her lap. I said insane, unremembered vagaries to her,
all the time listening to that murmur beside the phaeton and knowing
that the fate of our little lovers was being decided then and there.
And suddenly it came to me that the face in which I was looking was
uncommonly sweet and kindly and that inasmuch as she was Mrs. Manners
and a bride I might give her my confidence and win her heart for my
hope. But when I turned boldly to tell her something of the charming
case she was holding out to me some sprays of her fresia.

“Won’t you have this?” she said. “It is a very rare species.”

And then I knew her and I marveled that I had not understood at once.
This--this would be no other than Miss Constance Wortley, the botanical
lady herself. And in the same instant to quicken my assurance Dudley
Manners, laughing deliciously, called softly to her:--

“Constance--Constance. It’s all right. Lisa and Eric are bound to be
married to-day and I fancy you’ll have to take me to Europe alone!”

Ah, such a moment of tender, abashed laughter and open rejoicing. And
of course Pelleas and I opened our hearts and told them where the
lovers were, and who had doubtless answered the telephone at the lodge.
And forthwith we invited them to drive with us to the wedding, and to
have tea in the garden. And so it was settled, and away we went down
the golden road dipping between deep, deep green, and boldly past the
tower of Chynmere Hall and through the gracious land of afternoon back
to Little Rosemont lodge, bearing the glad tidings to usher in the glad
event. Tea or cream sherbet, what a world this is always turning out
to be.

“We will go in and explain,” I cried--how I love to explain when best
things are true--“and then, Pelleas, you must hurry over in the phaeton
for Mr. Didbin, and bring him back with you, no matter what. And then
we will be married--in the drawing-room or the rose arbour or the
garden at large.”

I love to recall the pleasure of that alighting at the lodge gates, of
going within, of looking across the roses for the two whom we were to
surprise. I caught a flutter of white in the arbour and, palpitating,
I led the way past the pool and the fountain and the trickling outlet
where a scarlet wing flashed into flight and past the Hundred-leaved
rose, to the turn in the path that led to the arbour.

Then without warning, outside the arbour entrance there seemed to rise
from the gravel the amazing figure of Nichola--Nichola in her best
black gown and embroidered white apron and an unmistakable manner of
threatening us with folded arms. She stood squarely before us, looking
at Pelleas and me with all the disapproval of those little, deep-set,
quick-lidded eyes.

“Now, then,” she said grimly, “go back. _The weddin’s on._”

In the same instant, through the low-arched doorway of the arbour, I
saw Lisa and Eric and the questioning, distressed face of the Reverend
Arthur Didbin.

Nichola followed my glance.

“It’s none o’ his doin’,” she explained shrilly. “It’s my doin’. We
knew who was on the telephone, well enough. She answered it herself,”
she explained, with a jerk of her shoulders toward the arbour, “an’
near fainted in my arms. She knew him. An’ we knew what was like to
happen when he got here. I went quickly, quickly for the minister an’
here he is. You must not interfere. It is not holy!”

Nichola, that grim old woman, as the ally and not the adversary of
Love! But I had no time to marvel at the death of either prejudice or
reason.

“Nichola--but Nichola!” I cried breathlessly, “we haven’t come to
interfere. We don’t want to interfere. We were going to send for Mr.
Didbin ourselves.”

At that Nichola drew back, but doubtfully, with mutterings. And she did
not disappear until little Lisa, having seen the radiant faces of _our_
bride and groom, suddenly understood and ran to them. And as for Dudley
Manners, one would have said that his dearest wish had been to see Lisa
married to Eric Chartres; and as for Mrs. Manners, with her kind eyes,
all her fresia scattered in the path as she kissed Lisa, I think that
she cannot even have noticed our Hundred-leaved rose or cared whether
it had come to us from its native Caucasus or her own Alaska.

I protest that I cannot now remember whether Lisa and Eric were married
by the fountain or in the rose arbour or in the garden at large. But I
know that it must have been out of doors, for I remember the roses and
how the sun was slanting madly in every direction and butterflies were
vanishing against the blue.

And when it was over and we sat in the gracious afternoon talking
joyously of what had happened and of how strangely it was come about
and of how heavenly sweet the world is, there came Nichola from the
house bearing to the table in the little arbour a tray unmistakably
laden with her cream sherbet and with mounds of her delicate cake.

“Nichola!” I cried as I hurried to her. “You _did_ make it?”

Nichola looked at me from her little deep eyes.

“I made it, yes,” she said, “an’ that was why I went for the minister.
I’d begun it, an’ I wasn’t going to have it wasted. It would not be
holy.”

It is true that Nichola can use the same argument on both sides of a
question. But I have never been able to see the slightest objection to
that if only the question is settled properly at last.




XVI

“SO THE CARPENTER ENCOURAGED THE GOLDSMITH”


They were all to spend Christmas eve with us, our nearest and dearest.
On Christmas day even the kinfolk farthest removed, both as to kin and
to kind, have a right by virtue of red holly to one’s companionship.
But Christmas eve is for the meeting of one’s dearest and they had all
been summoned to our house: The Chartres, the Cleatams, Miss Willie
Lillieblade, Hobart Eddy, Avis and Lawrence, and Enid and David and the
baby. As for Viola and Our Telephone and Lisa and Eric they were all in
Naples and I dare say looking in each other’s eyes as if Vesuvius were
a mere hill.

There was to be with us one other--Eunice Wells, who was lame. She
was in New York on the pleasant business of receiving a considerable
legacy from a relative, a friend of ours, whose will, though Eunice had
previously been unknown to Pelleas and me, endeared her to us.

“To my beloved niece, Eunice Wells,” the testament went, “I give and
bequeath This and That for her piety, her love of learning and her
incomparable courage in bearing sorrow.”

Was not that the living May breathing in a rigid and word-bound
instrument of the law? And what a picture of Eunice Wells. Pelleas and
I had sought her out, welcomed her, and bidden her on Christmas eve to
dine with us alone and to grace our merry evening.

At five o’clock on the day before Christmas, just as Pelleas and I
rested from holly hanging and were longing for our tea, Hobart Eddy
was announced. I say “announced” because we usually construe Nichola’s
smile at our drawing-room door to mean Hobart Eddy. She smiles for few
but to Hobart she is openly complaisant, unfolding from the leather of
her cheek an expression of real benignity.

“How very jolly you look,” he said, as we sat in the ingle. “Holly over
the blindfold Hope and down the curtains and, as I live, mistletoe on
the sconces. Aunt Etarre, I shall kiss you from sconce to sconce.”

“Do,” said I; “of late Pelleas is grown appallingly confident of my
single-minded regard.”

“Alas,” Hobart said, “nobody wants to kiss me for myself alone.”

On which he put back his head and sat looking up at the blindfold
Hope, wreathed with holly. And his fine, square chin without threat
of dimple, and his splendid, clear-cut face, and his hand drooping
a little from the arm of his chair sent me back to my old persistent
hope. Heaven had manifestly intended him to be a Young Husband. He of
all men should have been sitting before his own hearth of holly and
later making ready the morrow’s Yule-tree for such little hearts as
adore Yule-trees....

Suddenly Hobart Eddy looked over at us and, “I say, you know,” he said,
“what _do_ you think it is all for?”

“The holly?” Pelleas asked unsuspectingly.

“The mistletoe?” I hazarded.

“No, no,” said Hobart Eddy with simplicity, “everything.”

Pelleas and I looked at each other almost guiltily. Here were we two,
always standing up for life and promising others that it would yield
good things; and yet what in the world could we say to that question of
Hobart’s, fairly general though it is: “What is it all for?”

Pelleas spoke first, as became the more philosophical.

“It’s to do one’s best, wouldn’t one say?” he said, “and to let the
rest go.”

“Ah, yes, I see,” said Hobart Eddy, talking the primal things in his
trim staccato, “but it’s so deuced unnatural not to know _why_.”

“Yes,” Pelleas admitted, “yes, it is unnatural. But when one does
one’s worst it gets more unnatural than ever.”

Hobart Eddy looked critically at the fire.

“But, Good Lord,” he said helplessly, “suppose--suppose a black beetle
argues that way, and does his best, and lives to a good old beetle age.
And suppose another black beetle gives up in the beginning, and takes
some morphine-for-beetles, and next minute gets crushed by a watering
cart. What then?”

“But I,” said Pelleas with admirable dignity, “am not a beetle.”

“But confound it, sir,” Hobart said, “I’m afraid I am. That’s the
difference.”

“All philosophical arguments,” Pelleas observed, wrinkling the corners
of his eyes, “end that way. But beetles or not, doing one’s best is the
only way out.”

“But the ‘best’ of a beetle--” Hobart shrugged.

Then I spoke out with conviction.

“You, for example, Hobart Eddy,” I said, “would be a perfect husband.”

“Thanks, dear heart,” he replied, “it’s a common virtue, that.”

“It’s very uncommon,” I protested stoutly; “I can think of no one
besides Pelleas and you and Wilfred and Horace and Lawrence and David
and Our Telephone and Eric who in the least possess it. Hobart Eddy, if
you would marry--”

“Don’t tell me, Aunt Etarre,” he said, “that a married beetle is in the
scheme of things any nearer the solution than a single one. Besides--”
he added and stopped. I had noted, when we were on this not infrequent
subject, that he was wont to say this, and stop; and when he did so my
heart always went a thought faster than my reason: What if he did love
some one of whom we had never guessed? But that I dismissed as absurd;
for in that case, how should she not love him?

“You were meant by heaven to be a husband,” I muttered, unconvinced,
“you look at a picture on the wall as if you were saying: ‘How are you
to-day, dear?’”

“But even if one does one’s best, as you say,” Hobart went on,
“it’s the being beaten in the end that annoys me. I hate the
certainty of being beaten in the end. I can throw it off now I’m
young--comparatively young. But look at ’em pile up: Failures,
humiliations, estrangements, the beastly little stabs at you, your own
cursed mistakes--why, one is beaten in the beginning, for that matter.
When you’re young, even a little young, you don’t know that. But as you
get older, even supposing you do your best, you know you’re beaten.
It’s deuced unsportsmanlike of somebody.”

I looked at Pelleas with the glance that means an alarm, for something
to be done at once. He knew; and he did quite what I had hoped.

“We are more than seventy,” Pelleas said serenely, “and _we’re_ not
beaten.”

“But you--” Hobart protested, “you’ve had half the world at your feet.
You’ve won everything. You’ve been ...” and so on, in his choicest
social hyperbole.

“Hobart,” Pelleas said, “Etarre and I have been married for fifty
years. In that time we have lost, year after year, both hopes and
realities. I have seen my work harshly criticized and even justly
rejected. One year we had hardly a centime to pay Nichola. As it is,
we escape from each day by way of the dark for fear the next will find
us penniless. We lost--we need not speak of that, but you know how our
little boy--my son--died before his first birthday. O, do you think....
The sorrows, the estrangements, the failures, the ill-health, the
little stabs at us, above all the cursed mistakes of my own--do you
think we have not had these? Do you think we don’t know, Hobart? Do you
think we haven’t paid, to the last farthing? Good God!” said Pelleas.
“And yet we are not beaten. And we never shall be beaten, dead or
alive. And without defiance. Without defiance.”

“No,” said I, nodding with all my might, “never beaten. Except for a
little at a time when it hurts most. But never beaten.”

“How, though?” Hobart said helplessly, “I say, how do you do it, you
know?”

“Well, you see,” Pelleas answered gravely, “I don’t know much about
myself. One doesn’t know. I don’t know where I stop and where The Rest
Of It begins. I stop somewhere, I dare say--my consciousness and all
that must stop somewhere. But I’ve never found the last of me. I’ve
always felt as if I were working along with a few sets of faculties
when I’ve really got no end of them. And I don’t know where these stop.
Perhaps they don’t stop at all. And so when I get a knock-down blow I
fall all of a heap--that is, _as much of me as I know about_ falls.
That much of me may be beaten. But not the rest. And then I reach up a
hand to the rest of me that I don’t know about and I say: ‘But there’s
all that strength left that I don’t know yet. And I don’t know where
that stops. I’ve never found out that it stops at all. It is infinite
strength and I can use it and be it when I like.’ Beaten?” said
Pelleas; “I can no more be beaten than I can be smothered in the open
air. That strength is exhaustless, like the air. And nothing can shut
it out--nothing.”

“Not even your own mistakes? Not even irreparable loss?” said Hobart.

“No,” Pelleas said, “those are hardest. But not even those.”

O, I could not have loved him if he had talked to Hobart about
resignation and rewards. Yet perhaps to some these are another language
for victory--I do not know.

“Isn’t that better,” Pelleas demanded, “than taking
morphine-for-beetles? Besides, after a while you learn what that Other
Strength is. You learn Who it is. And how near that Someone is. But not
always at first--not at first.”

“But alone ... one is so deucedly alone ...” said Hobart uncertainly.

“Of course,” Pelleas said, “we need an amazing lot of little human
cheerings-up. The part of us with which we are acquainted has to be
cheered up somewhat. Well, and isn’t it--isn’t it? Look at the charming
things that are always happening! And these help one to believe right
and left.”

I hardly heard Nichola come in with the tea. Hobart absently took the
heavy tray from her and then, while she arranged it:--

“But in the last analysis,” he said, “you’ve got to dig your way out of
things alone, haven’t you? Nobody can help you.”

“No!” Pelleas cried, “no, you have not. Not when you learn Who the
strength is....”

But with that my attention wandered from Pelleas to Nichola. My Royal
Sèvres always looks so surprised at Nichola’s brown hands upon it that
I have long expected it to rebuke her for familiarity. And if it had
done so at that moment I could have been no more amazed than to see
Nichola, still bent above the tray, rest her hands on her knees and
look sidewise and inquiringly at Hobart Eddy.

“What nonsense, anyway,” Pelleas was saying, “every one can help every
one else no end. It’s not in the big lonely fights that we can help
much--but it’s in the little human cheerings-up. When we get strength
the next thing to do is to give it. Beetles or not--it’s merely a point
of moral etiquette to do that!”

“Ah, but,” Hobart said, smiling, unconscious of Nichola’s little eyes
immovably fixed on his face, “but when they reach you out a hand people
usually pinch by instinct instead of patting.”

At that Nichola’s little quick-lidded eyes began to wink, brows
lifting. And, still leaning hands on knees:--

“Yah!” she said, “none of what you say is so.”

Nichola employs the indirect method about as habitually as do thunder
and lightning. And in this directness of hers Hobart, that master of
feint and parry, delights.

“No, Nichola?” he said, smiling, “no?”

She got stiffly erect, drawing her hands up her apron to her thighs,
her eyes winking so fast that I marvel she could see at all.

“But the whole world helps along,” she said shrilly, “or else we should
tear each other’s eyes out. What do I do, me? I do not put fruit peel
in the waste paper to worrit the ragman. I do not put potato jackets in
the stove to worrit the ashman. I do not burn the bones because I think
of the next poor dog. What crumbs are left I lay always, always on the
back fence for the birds. I kill no living thing but spiders--which the
devil made. Our Lady knows I do very little. But if I was the men with
pockets on I’d find a way! I’d find a way, me,” said Nichola, wagging
her old gray head.

“Pockets?” Hobart repeated, puzzled.

“For the love of heaven, yes!” Nichola cried. “Pockets--money--give!”
she illustrated in pantomime. “What can I do? On Thursday nights I take
what sweets are in this house, what flowers are on all the plants, and
I carry them to a hospital I know. If you could see how they wait for
me on the beds! What can I do? The good God gave me almost no pockets.
It is as he says,” she nodded to Pelleas, “_Helping is why._ Yah! None
of what you say is so. Mem, I didn’t get no time to frost the nutcakes.”

“It doesn’t matter, Nichola--it doesn’t matter,” said I, holding hard
to the arms of my chair. So that was where she went on her Thursday
nights out ... so that was where the occasional blossoms on my
plants....

“I dare say you’re right, you know, Nichola,” Hobart was saying gravely.

She was almost out of the room but she turned, rolling her hands in her
apron.

“Since Bible days I was right,” she said, and leaning forward, nodding
her head at every word, to the utter amazement of Pelleas and me:
“_‘They helped everybody his neighbour,’_” she quoted freely, “_‘and
everybody said to his brother, “You be of good courage.” So the
carpenter encouraged the goldsmith; and the one that smoothed with the
hammer, him that smote with the anvil.’ Che!_” she cried; “you must
start in that way and then some good will come. Do I not know? Some
good will come, I say. It never, never fails.”

“Right, Nichola,” said Hobart, still gravely, “I haven’t a doubt of
what you say.”

“The tea’s all gettin’ cold,” she added indifferently as she went
between the curtains.

“Nichola and I,” Pelleas said in distress, “throw in our opinions with
the tea, Hobart. They don’t come extra.” But he was smiling and so was
Hobart and so was I, with my inevitable tear.

The next instant Nichola was at the portières again.

“The leddy with canaries in her head is in the lib’ry,” she said.

“_Canaries_, Nichola?” I echoed.

“It’s the truth!” she proclaimed, “the one with canaries singin’ in her
head till it shows through,” and instantly she vanished.

“Whom can she mean?” said I helplessly. For I have no acquaintance who
has a bird shop though I have always thought that bird-shop proprietors
must be charming people.

“It’s probably somebody with parrots on her bonnet,” Hobart suggested
helpfully.

I hurried across the hall, noting how the holly wreaths showed bright
in the mirrors as if the pleasantest things were about to happen.
For in dim light a mirror does not merely photograph. It becomes the
artist and suggests. And a mirror wreathed with holly on the day before
Christmas is no more like an ordinary mirror than an ordinary woman is
like a bride.

This thought was in my mind as I entered the library and found Eunice
Wells, whose “piety and love of learning and incomparable courage in
bearing sorrow” had drawn her to us no more than had her helplessness
and her charm. And suddenly I understood that there are some women
who seem always like brides, moving in an atmosphere apart, having
something of joy and something of wistfulness. With Eunice the joy was
paramount so that I knew now what Nichola had meant by the “canaries
singing in her head till it shows through.” But my heart smote me, for
it seemed to me that that joy was a flower of renunciation instead of
the flower of youth. And how should it be otherwise? For there beside
her chair lay her crutch.

“Ah,” I cried, “you are just in time, my dear, for a cup of tea and a
nutcake with no frosting. And Merry Christmas--Merry Christmas!”

I shall not soon forget her as she looked lying back in Pelleas’ big
chair, all the beauty of her face visible, hidden by no mask of mood;
and in her cheek a dimple like the last loving touch in the drawing of
her. I had never seen an invalid with a dimple and some way that dimple
seemed to link her with life.

“Besides,” I continued, “I’ve a friend whom I want you to meet--a
man, a youngish man--O, a Merry-Christmas-and-holly-man, to whom I am
devoted. Come in as you are--the tea ruins itself!”

“Ah, please,” Eunice begged at this, “will you forgive me if I sit here
instead while you go back to your guest? I would far rather be here and
not talk to--to strangers. You will not mind?”

“Do quite as you like, dear child,” I replied, for this atrocious
ethics is the only proper motto for every hostess.

So, her wraps having been put aside, I made her comfortable by the fire
with magazines, and a Christmas rose in a vase. And I went away in a
kind of misery; for here was one for whom with all my ardour I could
plan nothing. Her little crutch would bar the way to any future of
brightness. I had a swift sense of the mockery that Christmas holly may
be.

“I amuse myself with nutcakes, me,” said Hobart Eddy as I entered the
drawing-room, “and where, pray, is the Canary Lady?”

“She is a very fragile Canary Lady,” I answered sadly; “she is lame,
you know, Hobart.”

“And has she no tea?” he demanded.

“She was too tired to join us,” I explained; “Pelleas will take her cup
to her when Nichola brings the hot water.”

“Let me take it to her,” Hobart suggested when Nichola came in with
the hot-water pot. “I won’t stay,” he promised as I hesitated, “and do
let me be useful. I can’t look out for the emotions of the ashman and
the next poor dog, but I want to help. _Helping is why_,” he smiled at
Nichola.

“You must forgive Nichola and me our trespasses,” Pelleas murmured
uneasily.

“Forgive them? I’m going to practice them,” Hobart said, rising; “I’m
going to take tea and a nutcake to the Canary Lady in the library and
cheer her up, carpenter to goldsmith.”

“Well, then,” said I, since “Do quite as you like” is the proper motto
for every hostess, “do so. But mind that you do not stay _at all_.”

Nichola brought the little silver card tray from the hall, and about
the plate of cakes and the fragrant cup I laid a spray or two of holly.

    “Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
    Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:”

Hobart hummed as he moved away.

“Fancy rhyming ‘holly’ with such a sentiment!” I cried after him.

Nichola stood nodding her head.

“_Che!_” she said, “I said a word to him about the universe. _He_
understood. Some good will come.”

She went away muttering and Pelleas and I changed eyes.

“Pelleas,” I said wonderingly, “she has ideas!”

We had already surprised her in an emotion or two; but of course ideas
are another matter.

“More and more,” Pelleas said meditatively, “I suspect people of ideas.
They seem sometimes to have ideas when they have no minds. I dare say
they are acted on by emanations.”

“But, Pelleas,” I said, “think of old Nichola going alone to that
hospital on her Thursday evenings. Think of her understanding that
_Helping is why_, and quoting from Isaiah!”

“She believes,” Pelleas meditated, “that our sun is the largest body
in all the systems and that our moon is next in size. But for all that
she knows _Helping is why_. That the carpenter must encourage the
goldsmith. Yes, Nichola must be acted on by emanations.”

We sat silent for a little. Then,

“Do you remember,” I asked irrelevantly--but I am not sure that there
is such a thing as irrelevance--“how you insisted that every one in the
world who is worth anything loves some one as much as we do, or else
expects to do so, or else is unhappy because the love went wrong?”

“And it’s true,” said Pelleas.

“For all but Hobart,” I assented; “it was true for Miss Willie and for
Nichola. But not for Hobart. And I have been wondering how any one who
is not in love can live through a Christmas without falling in love.
Christmas seems a kind of loving-cup of days.”

“_We_ should sing it,” Pelleas suggested,

    “Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
    High love is high wisdom, to love not is folly:”

“That is the way it really is,” said I comfortably; and then I woke to
the other realities. “Pelleas,” I cried, “where is Hobart?”

Where was Hobart Eddy indeed? It was quite ten minutes since he had
gone with the Canary Lady’s cup, and I had charged him not to stay _at
all_.

“Really,” I said, “we must go after him. This is too bad of him, too--I
can’t forgive myself. Let us go after him, Pelleas.”

I took the little hot-water pot for an excuse and we went across the
hall.

    “Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
    High love is high wisdom, to love not is folly:
            Then, heigh ho! the holly!
            This life is most jolly.”

Pelleas hummed the whole way.

The library door was ajar and we entered together. Do you think that
we did not feel the bewilderment of gods and men when we saw, in the
firelight, Hobart Eddy with Eunice Wells in his arms?

I hugged my little hot-water pot and could find no words as they turned
and saw us. But ah, Hobart Eddy’s face! I say to every one that it
was transfigured, like the face of one who has found the secret of
the days. And as for dear Eunice--but then, had not I, who am a most
discerning old woman, already comprehended that Eunice had looked like
a bride from the beginning?

“Aunt Etarre!” cried Hobart Eddy like a boy, “I’ve found her again.
I’ve found her!”

I clasped Pelleas’ arm while I tried to understand. We who had
despaired of contriving for Hobart Eddy a concrete romance, were we
to gather that this was love at first sight, on our hearth-rug? Even
we have never officiated at anything so spectacular as love at first
sight. But my mind caught and clung to that “again.”

“‘Again’?” I echoed it.

“I have loved her for years,” Hobart said; “she was to have been my
wife. And she went away, went without a word, so that I couldn’t trace
her, and why do you think she did that? Because the lameness came--and
she never let me know.”

“It wasn’t ... I thought ... O, I ought not now ...” Eunice cried, “but
not because I don’t care. O, never that!”

On which, “Hobart Eddy! Eunice!” I uttered. “Like a Young Husband, you
know--didn’t I say so? Haven’t I always said so? Pelleas, you see the
rule does apply to Hobart too! And I thought of a bride at once, at
once and then that dimple--O,” said I, “I don’t know in the least what
I’m talking about--at least you don’t know. But I don’t care, because
I’m so glad.”

“You dear fairy god-people,” Hobart Eddy said in the midst of his
happiness, “you told me charming things were always happening!”

“To help us to believe,” I heard Pelleas saying to himself.

O, I wish that we two had had more to do in bringing it all about.
As it was I was very thankful that it proved not to be love at first
sight, for I would see one’s love, like one’s bonnets, chosen with
a fine deliberation. But about this affair there had been the most
sorrowful deliberation. Pelleas and I sat on the sofa before them and
they told us a fragment here and a fragment there and joy over all.
Hobart Eddy had met her years before in her little New England town.
His wooing had been brief and, because of an aunt who knew what it was
to be an ogre, nearly secret. Week by week through one Spring he had
gone to see Eunice, and then had come her ugly fall from her saddle of
which until now he had never known; for when she understood that the
lameness was likely to be incurable she and that disgustingly willing
aunt had simply disappeared and left no trace at all.

“What else could I do?” Eunice appealed to us simply; “I loved him ...
how could I let him sacrifice his life to me ... a cripple? Aunt Lydia
said he would forget. I had no home; we were staying here and there for
Aunt Lydia’s health; and to leave no trace was easy. What else could I
do?”

“O,” Hobart Eddy said only, “Eunice, Eunice!” There was that in his
voice which made Pelleas and me look at him in the happiest wonder. And
I remembered that other note in his voice that day in the orchard with
Enid’s baby. In the statue story Pelleas and I have never believed that
Galatea came to life alone. For we think that the Pygmalions have an
awakening not less sacred.

I do not in the least remember how Pelleas and I got out of the room. I
do remember that we two stood in the middle of our drawing-room looking
at each other, speechless with the marvel of what had come. No wonder
that the blindfold Hope over the mantel had wreathed herself in holly!

It was late when Hobart hurried home to dress and it was later still
when we four had dinner which I do not recall that any of us ate. And
then Pelleas and I left those two in the library in the presence of
their forgotten coffee while we flew distractedly about giving last
touches for our party, an event which had all but slipped our minds.

“Pelleas,” said I, lighting candles, “think how we planned that
Hobart’s wife must be a woman of the world!”

“But Eunice,” Pelleas said, “is a woman of many worlds.”

Our shabby drawing-room was ablaze with red candles; and what with
holly red on the walls and the snow banking the casements and bells
jingling up and down the avenue, the sense of Christmas was very real.
For me, Christmas seems always to be just past or else on the way; and
that sixth sense of Christmas being actually _Now_ is thrice desirable.

On the stroke of nine we two, waiting before the fire, heard Nichola on
the basement stairs; and by the way in which she mounted, with labor
and caution, I knew that she was bringing the punch. We had wished to
have it ready--that harmless steaming punch compounded from my mother’s
recipe--when our guests arrived, so that they should first of all hear
the news and drink health to Eunice and Hobart.

Nichola was splendid in her scarlet merino and that vast cap effect
managed by a starched pillowcase and a bit of string, and over her arm
hung a huge holly wreath for the bowl’s brim. When she had deposited
her fragrant burden and laid the wreath in place she stood erect and
looked at us solemnly for a moment, and then her face wrinkled in all
directions and was lighted with her rare, puckered smile.

“Mer--ry Christmas!” she said.

“Merry Christmas, Nichola!” we cried, and I think that in all her years
with us we had never before heard the words upon her lips.

“Who goes ridin’ behind the sleigh-bells to-night?” she asked then
abruptly.

“_Who_ rides?” I repeated, puzzled.

“Yes,” Nichola said; “this is a night when all folk stay home.
The whole world sits by the fire on Christmas night. An’ yet the
sleigh-bells ring like mad. It is not holy.”

Pelleas and I had never thought of that. But there may be something in
it. Who indeed, when all the world keeps hearth-holiday, who is it that
rides abroad on Christmas night behind the bells?

“Good spirits, perhaps, Nichola,” Pelleas said, smiling.

“I do not doubt it,” Nichola declared gravely; “that is not holy
either--to doubt.”

“No,” we said, “to doubt good spirits is never holy.”

On this we heard the summons at our door, and Nichola went off to
answer it. And in came all our guests at once from dinner at the
Chartres’; and at Nichola’s bidding they hastened straight to the
drawing-room and cried their Christmas greetings to Pelleas and me, who
stood serving the steaming punch before the fireplace.

They were all there: Madame Sally in black velvet and a diamond or two;
Polly Cleatam with--as I live!--a new dimple; and Wilfred and Horace
acting as if Christmas were the only day on the business calendar; Miss
Willie Lillieblade, taking a Christmas capsule from the head of her
white staff; Avis and Lawrence, always dangerously likely to be found
conferring in quiet corners; and Enid and David and the baby--we had
insisted on the baby and he had arrived, in a cocoon of Valenciennes.
And when the glasses had been handed round, Pelleas slipped across the
hall to the library and reappeared among us with Eunice and Hobart.

“Dear, dear friends,” Pelleas said, “dear friends....”

But one look in the faces of those three was enough. And I, an
incarnate confirmation, stood on the hearth-rug nodding with all my
might.

I cannot tell you how merry we were in that moment or how in love with
life. I cannot recall what tender, broken words were said or what
toasts were drunk. But I remember well enough the faces of Eunice and
Hobart Eddy; and I think that the holly-wreathed mirrors must have
found it difficult to play the artist and suggest, because that which
they had merely to reflect was so much more luminous.

In the midst of all, Nichola, bringing more glasses, spoke at my elbow.

“Mem,” she asked, “air them two goin’ to get marrit?”

“Yes, Nichola,” I said, “yes, they are. They are!”

Nichola stood looking at me and winking fast, as if the air were filled
with dust. And then came that curious change in her face which I had
seen there before: a look as if her features were momentarily out of
drawing, by way of bodying forth some unwonted thought.

“I made that match,” Nichola acknowledged briefly.

“Nichola!” I said in bewilderment.

“It’s so,” she maintained solemnly; “didn’t I say a word to him this
afternoon--a word about the universe? He begun to understand how to
act. For the love of heaven, did I not _say_ some good would come?”

“You did say so, Nichola,” I answered, “and certainly the good has
come.”

“_Che!_” said Nichola, nodding her head, “I am sure about all things,
me.”

I turned to Pelleas, longing to tell him that we were finding the end
of one rainbow after another. And Pelleas was at that moment lifting
his glass.

“Here’s to Christmas,” he cried as he met my eyes, “the loving cup of
days!”




XVII

CHRISTMAS ROSES


When our guests were gone Pelleas and I sat for some while beside the
drawing-room fire. They had brought us a box of Christmas roses and
these made sweet the room as if with a secret Spring--a Little Spring,
such as comes to us all, now and then, through the year. And it was the
enchanted hour, when Christmas eve has just passed and no one is yet
awakened by the universal note of Get-Your-Stocking-Before-Breakfast.

“For that matter,” Pelleas said, “every day is a loving cup, only some
of us see only one of its handles: Our own.”

And after a time:--

“Isn’t there a legend,” he wanted to know, “or if there isn’t one there
ought to be one, that the first flowers were Christmas roses and that
you can detect their odour in all other flowers? I’m not sure,” he
warmed to the subject, “but that they say if you look steadily, with
clear eyes, you can see all about every flower many little lines, in
the shape of a Christmas rose!”

Of course nothing beautiful is difficult to believe. Even in the
windows of the great florists, where the dear flowers pose as if for
their portraits, we think that one looking closely through the glass
may see in their faces the spirit of the Christmas roses. And when the
flowers are made a gift of love the spirit is set free. Who knows?
Perhaps the gracious little spirit is in us all, waiting for its
liberty in our best gifts.

And at thought of gifts I said, on Christmas eve of all times, what had
been for some time in my heart:--

“Pelleas, we ought--we really ought, you know, to make a new will.”

The word casts a veritable shadow on the page as I write it. Pelleas,
conscious of the same shadow, moved and frowned.

“But why, Etarre?” he asked; “I had an uncle who lived to be ninety.”

“So will you,” I said, “and still--”

“He began translating Theocritus at ninety,” Pelleas continued
convincingly.

“I’ll venture he had made his will by then, though,” said I.

“Is that any reason why I should make mine?” Pelleas demanded. “I
_never_ did the things my family did.”

“Like living until ninety?” I murmured.

O, I could not love Pelleas if he was never unreasonable. It seems to
me that the privilege of unreason is one of the gifts of marriage; and
when I hear The Married chiding each other for the exercise of this
gift I long to cry: Is it not tiresome enough in all conscience to have
to keep up a brave show of reason for one’s friends, without wearing a
uniform of logic in private? Laugh at each other’s unreason for your
pastime, and Heaven bless you.

Pelleas can do more than this: He can laugh at his own unreason. And
when he had done so:--

“Ah, well, I know we ought,” he admitted, “but I do so object to the
literary style of wills.”

It has long been a sadness of ours that the law makes all the poor
dead talk alike in this last office of the human pleasure, so that
cartman and potentate and philosopher give away their chattels to the
same dreary choice of forms. No matter with what charming propriety
they have in life written little letters to accompany gifts, most
sensitively shading the temper of bestowal, yet in the majesty of their
passing they are forced into a very strait-jacket of phrasing so that
verily, to bequeath a thing to one’s friend is well-nigh to throw it at
him. Yes, one of the drawbacks to dying is the diction of wills.

Pelleas meditated for a moment and then laughed out.

“Telegrams,” said he, “are such a social convenience in life that I
don’t see why they don’t extend their function. Then all we should need
would be two witnesses, ready for anything, and some yellow telegraph
blanks, and a lawyer to file the messages whenever we should die,
telling all our friends what we wish them to have.”

At once we fell planning the telegrams, quite as if the Eye of the Law
knew what it is to wrinkle at the corners.

As,

  Mrs. Lawrence Knight,
    Little Rosemont,
                    L.I.

 I wish you to have my mother’s pearls and her mahogany and my
 Samarcand rug and my Langhorne Plutarch and a kiss.

                                                            Aunt Etarre.

and

  Mr. Eric Chartres

  To His Club,

 Come to the house and get the Royal Sèvres tea-service on which you
 and Lisa had your first tea together and a check made out to you in my
 check book in the library table drawer.

                                                          Uncle Pelleas.

And so on, with the witnesses’ names properly in the corners.

“Perfect,” said I with enthusiasm. “O, Pelleas, let us get a bill
through to this effect.”

“But we may live to be only ninety, you know,” he reminded me.

We went to the window, presently, and threw it open on the chance of
hearing the bird of dawning singing all night long in the Park, which
is of course, in New York, where it sings on Star of Bethlehem night.
We did not hear it, but it is something to have been certain that it
was there. And as we closed the casement,

“After all,” Pelleas said seriously, “the Telegraph Will Bill would
have to do only with property. And a will ought to be concerned with
soberer matters.”

So it ought, in spite of its dress of diction, rather like the motley.

“A man,” Pelleas continued, “ought to have something more important to
will away than his house and his watch and his best bed. A man’s poor
soul, now--unless he is an artist, which he probably is not--has no
chance verbally to leave anybody anything.”

“It makes its will every day,” said I.

“Even so,” Pelleas contended, “it ought to die rich if it’s anything of
a soul.”

And that is true enough.

“Suppose,” Pelleas suggested, “the telegrams were to contain something
like this: ‘And from my spirit to yours I bequeath the hard-won
knowledge that you must be true from the beginning. But if by any
chance you have not been so, then you must be true from the moment that
you know.’ Why not?”

Why not, indeed?

“I think that would be mine to give,” Pelleas said reflectively; “and
what would yours be, Etarre?” he asked.

At that I fell in sudden abashment. What could I say? What would I
will my poor life to mean to any one who chances to know that I have
lived at all? O, I dare say I should have been able to formulate many a
fine-sounding phrase about the passion for perfection, but confronted
with the necessity I could think of nothing save a few straggling
truths.

“I don’t know,” said I uncertainly; “I am sure of so little, save
self-giving. I should like to bequeath some knowledge of the magic of
self-giving. Now Nichola,” I hazarded, to evade the matter, “would no
doubt say: ‘And from my soul to your soul this word about the universe:
_Helping is why._’”

“But you--you, Etarre,” Pelleas persisted; “what would the real You
will to others, in this mortuary telegram?”

And as I looked at him I knew.

“O, Pelleas,” I said, “I think I would telegraph to every one: ‘From my
spirit to your spirit, some understanding of the preciousness of love.
And the need to keep it true.’”

I shall always remember with what gladness he turned to me. I wished
that his smile and our bright hearth and our Christmas roses might
bless every one.

“I wanted you to say that,” said Pelleas.

       *       *       *       *       *


Printed in the United States of America.




Transcriber’s Notes


A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.

Cover image was created by the transcriber and is donated to the public
domain.