diff options
Diffstat (limited to '20359.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 20359.txt | 5882 |
1 files changed, 5882 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/20359.txt b/20359.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..985dfaf --- /dev/null +++ b/20359.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5882 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lovely Lady, by Mary Austin + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Lovely Lady + +Author: Mary Austin + +Illustrator: Gordon Grant + +Release Date: January 14, 2007 [EBook #20359] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVELY LADY *** + + + + +Produced by Hillie Plantinga and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + +Transcriber's notes: + +Four typographical errors have been corrected: + Page 88, "seemes" changed to "seems" (it seems such a wasteful way + to live somehow,) + Page 162, "Ellen" changed to "Ellen," ("I'm very glad you feel that way + about it, Ellen,") + Page 199, "accomodating" changed to "accommodating" (He felt his mind + accommodating to) + Page 252, "Weatherall" changed to "Weatheral" (Mr. Weatheral had some + papers) + + + + + +THE LOVELY LADY + + + + +_By the same author_ + +A WOMAN OF GENIUS + +THE ARROW MAKER + +THE GREEN BOUGH + +CHRIST IN ITALY + + + + +[Illustration: _"It was one thin web of rose and gold over lakes of +burnished light...."_] + + + + +THE LOVELY LADY + +BY MARY AUSTIN + +[Illustration: ] + +_Frontispiece by Gordon Grant_ + +GARDEN CITY NEW YORK + +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + +1913 + + + + +_Copyright, 1913, by_ + +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + +_All rights reserved, including that of +translation into Foreign Languages, +including the Scandinavian._ + + + + +To + +J. AND E. + +THE COMPANIONS OF THE GONDOLA + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +PART ONE + +In which Peter meets a Dragon, and the Lovely +Lady makes her appearance. 3 + +PART TWO + +In which Peter becomes invisible on the way to +growing rich. 37 + +PART THREE + +In which Peter becomes a bachelor. 59 + +PART FOUR + +In which the Lovely Lady makes a final appearance. 107 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"It was one thin web of rose and gold over lakes of +burnished light...." + + + + +PART ONE + +IN WHICH PETER +MEETS A DRAGON, AND +THE LOVELY LADY +MAKES HER APPEARANCE + + + + +PART ONE + +IN WHICH PETER MEETS A DRAGON, AND THE +LOVELY LADY MAKES HER APPEARANCE + + + + +I + + +The walls of the Wonderful House rose up straight and shining, pale +greenish gold as the slant sunlight on the orchard grass under the apple +trees; the windows that sprang arching to the summer blueness let in the +scent of the cluster rose at the turn of the fence, beginning to rise +above the dusty smell of the country roads, and the evening clamour of +the birds in Bloombury wood. As it dimmed and withdrew, the shining of +the walls came out more clearly. Peter saw then that they were all of +coloured pictures wrought flat upon the gold, and as the glow of it +increased they began to swell and stir like a wood waking. They leaned +out from the walls, looking all one way toward the increasing light and +tap-tap of the Princess' feet along the halls. + +"Peter, oh, Peter!" + +The tap-tapping grew sharp and nearer like the sound of a crutch on a +wooden veranda, and the voice was Ellen's. + +"Oh, Peter, you are always a-reading and a-reading!" + +Peter rolled off the long settle where he had been stretched and put the +book in his pocket apologetically. + +"I was just going to quit," he said; "did you want anything, Ellen?" + +"The picnic is coming back; I thought we could go down to the turn to +meet them. Mrs. Sibley said she would save me some things from the +luncheon." + +If there was a little sting to Peter in Ellen's eagerness, it was +evidence at least, how completely he and his mother had kept her from +realizing that it was chiefly because of their not being able to afford +the well-filled basket demanded by a Bloombury picnic that they had not +accepted the invitation. Ellen had thought it was because Bet, the mare, +could not be spared all day from the ploughing nor Peter from hoeing +the garden, and her mother was too busy with the plaid gingham dress she +was making for the minister's wife, to do any baking. It meant to Ellen, +the broken fragments of the luncheon, just so much of what a picnic +should mean: the ride in the dusty morning, swings under the trees, easy +games that she could play, lemonade, pails and pails of it, pink ham +sandwiches and frosted cake; and if Ellen could have any of these, she +was having a little piece of the picnic. What it would have meant +particularly to Peter over and above a day let loose, the arching elms, +the deep fern of Bloombury wood, might have been some passages, perhaps, +which could be taken home and made over into the groundwork of new and +interesting adventures in the House from which Ellen had recalled him. +There was a girl with June apple cheeks and bright brown eyes at that +picnic, who could have given points to princesses. + +He followed the tapping of his sister's crutch along the thick, bitter +smelling dust of the road, rising more and more heavily as the dew +gathered, until they came to the turn by the cluster rose and heard +below them on the bridge, the din of the wheels and the gay laughter of +the picnickers. + +"Hi, Peter!" + +"Hello, Ellen!" + +"Awful sorry you couldn't come ... had a bully time.... Killed a +copperhead and two water snakes." + +"Here, Ellen, catch ahold of this!" + +And while she was about it the June apple girl leaned over the end-board +of the wagon, and spoke softly to Peter. + +"We're going over to Harvey's pasture next Wednesday afternoon, +berrying, in the Democrat wagon with our team; Jim Harvey's going to +drive. We made it up to-day. Surely you can get away for an afternoon?" +That was what the voice said. "To be with me," the eyes added. + +"I don't know.... I'd like it...." + +It was not altogether the calculation as to how much earlier he would +have to get up that morning to be able to take an hour off in the +afternoon, that made Peter hesitate, but the sudden swimming of his +senses about the point of meeting eyes. "I'll tell you what," he said, +"you come by for Ellen, and I'll walk over about four and ride home with +you." + +"Oh," said the girl; she did not know quite whether to triumph at having +gained so much or to be disappointed at so little. "I'll be expecting +you." + +The horses creaked forward in the harness, the dust puffed up from under +the wheels and drowned the smell of the wilding rose, it fell thick on +the petals and a little on Peter's spirit, too, as he followed Ellen +back to the house, though it never occurred to him to think any more of +it than that he had been working too long in the hot sun and was very +tired. It did not, however, prevent his eating his share of the picnic +dainties as he sat with his mother and Ellen on the veranda. Then as the +soft flitter of the bats' wings began in the dusk, he kissed them both +and went early up to bed. + +Peter's room was close under the roof and that was close under the elm +boughs; all hours he could hear them finger it with soft rustling +touches. The bed was pulled to the window that gave upon the downslope +of the hill; at the foot of it one saw the white bloom-faces of the +alders lift and bow above the folded leaves, and the rising of the river +damp across the pastures. All the light reflected from the sky above +Bloombury wood was no more than enough to make a glimmer on the glass of +a picture that hung at the foot of Peter's bed. It served to show the +gilt of the narrow frame and the soft black of the print upon which +Peter had looked so many times that he thought now he was still seeing +it as he lay staring in the dusk--a picture of a young man in bright +armour with loosened hair, riding down a particularly lumpy and swollen +dragon. Flames came out of the creature's mouth in the immemorial +fashion of dragons, but the young man was not hurt by them. He sat there +lightly, his horse curvetting, his lance thrust down the dragon's throat +and coming out of the back of his head, doing a great deed easily, the +way people like to think of great things being done. It was a very +narrow picture, so narrow that you might think that it had something to +do with the dragon's doubling on himself and the charger's forefeet +being up in the air to keep within the limits of the frame, and the +exclusion from it of the Princess whom, as his father had told him the +story, the young knight George had rescued from those devouring jaws. It +came out now, quite clearly, that she must have had cheeks as red as +June apples and eyes like the pools of spring rain in Bloombury wood, +and her not being there in the picture was only a greater security for +her awaiting him at this moment in the House with the Shining Walls. + +There was, for the boy still staring at it through the dusk, something +particularly personal in the picture, for ever since his father had +died, three years ago, Peter had had a dragon of his own to fight. Its +name was Mortgage. It had its lair in Lawyer Keplinger's office, from +which it threatened twice yearly to come out and eat up his mother and +Ellen and the little house and farm, and required to have its mouth +stopped with great wads of interest which took all Peter's laborious +days to scrape together. This year, however, he had hopes, if the garden +turned out well, of lopping off a limb or a claw of the dragon by way +of a payment on the principal, which somehow seemed to bring the +Princess so much nearer, that as Peter lay quite comfortably staring up +at the glimmer on the wall, the four gold lines of the frame began to +stretch up and out and the dark block of the picture to recede until it +became the great hall of a palace again, and there was the Princess +coming toward him in a golden shimmer. + +There was just such another glow on the afternoon when Peter walked over +to the berrying and came up with the apple-cheeked girl whose name was +Ada, a good half mile from the others. As they climbed together over +uneven ground she gave him her hand to hold, and there was very little +to say and no need of saying it until they came to the hill overlooking +the pasture, yellowing toward the end of summer, full of late bloom and +misty colour passing insensibly into light. Threads of gossamer caught +on the ends of the scrub or floated free, glinting as they turned and +bellied in the windless air, to trick the imagination with the hint of +robed, invisible presences. + +"Oh, Peter, don't you wish it would stay like this always?" + +"Like this," Peter gave her hand the tiniest squeeze to show what there +was about this that he would like to keep. "It's just as good to look at +any season though," he insisted. "I was here hunting rabbits last +winter, in February, and you could find all sorts of things in the +runways where the brambles bent over and kept off the snow; bunches of +berries and coloured leaves, and little green fern, and birds hopping in +and out." + +Ada spread her skirts as she sat on a flat boulder and began sticking +leaves into Peter's hat. + +"Peter, what are you going to do this winter?" + +"I don't know, I should like to go over to the high school at Harmony, +but I suppose I'll try to get a place to work near home." + +"We've been getting up a dancing and singing school, to begin in +October. The teacher is coming from Dassonville. It will be once a week; +we sing for an hour and then have dancing. It will be cheap as +cheap--only two dollars a month. I hope you can come." + +"I don't know; I'll think about it." He was thinking then that two +dollars did not sound much, but when you come to subtract it from the +interest it was a great deal, and then there would be Ellen to pay for, +and perhaps a dress for her, and dancing shoes for himself and singing +books. And no doubt at the dances there would be basket suppers. + +"I should think you could come if you wanted to. Jim Harvey's getting it +up.... He wants to keep company with me this winter." Ada was a little +nervous about this, but as she stole a glance at Peter's face as he lay +biting at a stem of grass, she grew quite comfortable again. "But I +don't know as I will," she said. "I don't care very much for Jim +Harvey." + +Peter picked up a stone and shied it joyously at a thrush in the bushes. + +"And I don't know as I want you to," he declared boldly. "I'll come to +that dancing school if I possibly can, Ada, and if I can't you'll know +it isn't because I don't wish to." + +"You must want to with all your might and that'll make it come true. You +can wish it on my amethyst ring." + +"You won't take it off until October, Ada?" + +"I truly won't." And it took Peter such a long time to get the ring on +and held in place while the wish was properly made, that it was +practically no time at all until the others found them on the way home +as they came laughing up the hill. + +As it happened, however, Peter did not get to the dancing school once +that winter. The first of the cold spell Ellen had slipped on the ice, +to the further trying of her lame back, and there were things to be done +to it which the doctor said could not possibly be put off, so it +happened that the mortgage dragon did not get his payment and Peter gave +up the high school to get a place in Greenslet's grocery at Bloombury. +And since there were the books to be made up after supper, and as Bet, +the mare, after being driven in the delivery wagon all day, could not be +let stand half the night in the cold at the schoolhouse door, it turned +out that Peter had not been once to the dancing school. In the beginning +he had done something for himself in the way of a hall for dancing, +thrown out from the House of the Shining Walls, in which he and the +Princess Ada, to lovely, soundless strains, had whirled away, and found +occasion to say things to each other such as no ballroom could +afford;--bright star pointed occasions which broke and scattered before +the little hints of sound that crept up the stair to advise him that +Ellen was stifling back the pain for fear of waking him. They had moved +Ellen's bed downstairs as a way of getting on better with the +possibility of her being bedridden all that winter, and the tiny +whispered moan recalled him to the dread that as the half yearly term +came around, what with doctor's bills and delicacies, the mortgage +dragon would have not even his sop of interest, and remain whole and +threatening as before. + +When Ellen was able to sit up in bed the mother moved her sewing in +beside it. Then Peter would sit on the other side of the lamp with a +book, and the walls of the House rose up from its pages gilded finely, +and the lights would come out and the dancing begin, but before he could +get more than a word with the Princess, he would hear Ellen: + +"Peter, oh, Peter! I wish you wouldn't be always with your nose in a +book. I wish you would talk sometimes." + +"What about, Ellen?" + +"Oh, Peter, you are the _worst_. I should think you would take some +interest in things." + +"What sort of things?" Peter wished to know. + +"Why, who comes in the store, and what they say, and everything." + +"Mrs. Sleason wanted us to open a kit of mackerel to see if she'd like +it," began Peter literally, "and we persuaded her to take two cans of +sardines instead. Does that interest you?" + +"Have you sold any of the blue tartan yet?" + +"Ada Brown bought seven yards of it." + +"Oh, Peter! And trimmings?" + +"Six yards of black velvet ribbon--yes, I forgot--Mrs. Blackman is to +make it up for her. I heard Mrs. Brown say she would call for the +linings." + +"She's having it made up for Jim Harvey's birthday," Ellen guessed +shrewdly. "He's twenty-one, you know.... People say she's engaged to +him." + +Peter felt the walls of the House which had stood out waiting for him +during this interlude, fall inward into the gulf of blackness. Nobody +said anything for two or three ticks of the large kitchen clock, and +then Ellen burst out: + +"I think she's a nasty, flirty, stuck-up _thing_; that's what I think!" + +"Shs--hss! Ellen," said her mother. + +"Peter," demanded Ellen, "are you reading again?" + +"I beg your pardon, Ellen." Peter did not know that he had turned a +page. + +"Don't you ever wish for anything for yourself, Peter? Don't you wish +you were rich?" + +"No, Ellen, I don't know that I ever do." + +But as the winter got on and the news of Ada Brown's engagement was +confirmed, he must have wished it a great many times. + +One evening late in January he was sitting with his mother very quietly +by the kitchen stove, the front of which was opened to throw out the +heat; there was the good smell of the supper in the room, for though he +had a meal with the Greenslets at six, his mother always made a point of +having something hot for him when he came in from bedding down the +mare, and the steam of it on the window-panes made dull smears of the +reflected light. The shade of the lamp was drawn down until the ceiling +of the room was all in shadow save for the bright escape from the +chimney which shone directly overhead, round and yellow as twenty +dollars, and as Peter leaned back in his chair, looking up, it might +have been that resemblance which gave a turn to his thoughts and led him +to say to his mother: + +"Why did my father never get rich?" + +"I hardly know, Peter. He used to say that he couldn't afford it. There +were so many other things he wished to do; and I wished them, too. When +we were young we did them together. Then your father was the sort of man +who always gave too much and took too little. I remember his saying once +that no one who loved his fellowman very much, _could_ get rich." + +"Do you wish he had?" + +"I don't know that either. No, not if he was happier the way he was. And +we _were_ happy. Things would have come out all right if it hadn't been +for the accident when the thresher broke, and his being ill so long +afterward. And my people weren't so kind as they might have been. You +see, they always thought him a little queer. Before we were married, +before we were even engaged, he had had a little money. It had been left +him, and instead of investing it as anybody in Bloombury would, he spent +it in travel. I remember his saying that his memories of Italy were the +best investment he could have made. But afterward, when he was in +trouble, they threw it up to him. We had never got in debt before ... +and then just as he was getting round, he took bronchitis and died." + +She wiped her eyes quietly for a while, and the kettle on the stove +began to sing soothingly, and presently Peter ventured: + +"Do you wish I would get rich?" + +"Yes, Peter, I do. We are all like that, I suppose, we grown-ups. Things +we manage to get along without ourselves, we want for our children. I +hope you will be a rich man some day; but, Peter, I don't want you to +think it a reflection on your father that he wasn't. He had what he +thought was best. He might have left me with more money and fewer happy +memories--and that is what women value most, Peter;--the right sort of +women. There are some who can't get along without _things_: clothes, and +furniture, and carriages. Ada Brown is that kind; sometimes I'm afraid +Ellen is a little. She takes after my family." + +"It is partly on account of Ellen that I want to get rich." + +"You mustn't take it too hard, Peter; we've always got along somehow, +and nobody in Bloombury is very rich." + +Peter turned that over in his mind the whole of a raw and sleety +February. And one day when nobody came into the store from ten till +four, and loose winds went in a pack about the village streets, casting +up dry, icy dust where now and then some sharp muzzle reared out of the +press as they turned the corners, he spoke to Mr. Greenslet about it. It +was so cold that day that neither the red apples in the barrels nor the +crimson cranberries nor the yellowing hams on the rafters could +contribute any appearance of warmth to the interior of the grocery. A +kind of icy varnish of cold overlaid the gay lables of the canned +goods; the remnants of red and blue tartan exposed for sale looked +coarse-grained with the cold, and cold slips of ribbons clung to the +glass of the cases like the tongues of children tipped to the frosted +panes. Even the super-heated stove took on a purplish tinge of +chilblains, roughed by the wind. + +A kind of arctic stillness pervaded the place, out of which the two men +hailed each other at intervals as from immeasurable deeps of space. + +"Mr. Greenslet," ventured Peter at last, "are you a rich man?" + +"Not by a long sight." + +"Why?" questioned Peter. + +"Not built that way." + +The grocer lapsed back into the silence and seemed to lean against it +meditatively. The wolf wind howled about the corners and cast snow like +powdered glass upon the windows contemptuously, and time went by with a +large deliberate movement like a fat man turning over, before Peter +hailed again. + +"Did you ever want to be?" + +Mr. Greenslet reached out for the damper of the stove ostensibly to +shake down the ashes, but really to pull himself up out of the soundless +spaces of thought. + +"When I was your age, yes. Thought I was going to be." The shaking of +the damper seemed to loosen the springs of speech in him. "I was up in +the city working for Siegel Brothers; began as a bundle boy and meant to +be one of the partners. But by the time I worked up to fancy goods I +realized that I would have to be as old as Methuselah to make it at that +rate. And Mrs. Greenslet didn't like the city; she was a Bloombury girl. +It wasn't any place for the children." + +"So you came back?" + +"We had saved a little. I bought out this place and put in a few notions +I'd got from Siegel's. I'm comfortably off, but I'm not rich." + +"Would you like to be?" + +"I don' know, I don' know. I'd like to give the boys a better start than +I had, but I'm my own boss here and one of the leading men. That's +always something." + +Peter went and looked out of the smudged windows while he considered +this. The long scrapes of the wind in the loose snow were like the +scratches of great claws. It was now about mail time and a few people +began to stir in the street; the clear light and the cold gave them a +poverty-bitten look. + +"Does anybody ever get rich in Bloombury?" + +"Not that I know of. There's Mr. Dassonville in Harmony--Dave +Dassonville, the richest man in these parts." + +"I suppose he could tell me how to go about it?" + +"I suppose he would if he knows. Mostly these things just happen." + +Peter did not say anything more just then; he was watching a man and a +girl of about his own age who had come out of a frame house farther down +the street. The young man was walking so as to shield her from the wind, +her rosy cheek was at his shoulder, and she smiled up at him over her +muff, from dark, bright eyes. + +"What's set you on to talk about riches? Thinking of doing something in +that line yourself?" + +"Yes," said Peter, kicking at the baseboard with his toes. "I don't know +how it is to be done, but I've got to be rich. I've just simply got to." + + + + +II + + +It was along in the beginning of spring on a day full of wet cloud and +clearing wind, that Peter walked over to Harmony to inquire of Mr. David +Dassonville the way to grow rich. It was Sunday afternoon and the air +sweet with the sap adrip from the orchards lately pruned and the smell +of the country road dried to elasticity by the winds of March. + +Between timidity and the conviction that a week day would have been +better suited to his business, he drew on to the place of his errand +very slowly, for he was sore with the raking of the dragon's claws, and +unrested. It had been a terrible scrape to get together the last +instalment of interest, and since Ellen had shattered it with the gossip +about Ada Brown's engagement, there had been no House with Shining Walls +for Peter to withdraw into out of the dragon's breath of poverty; above +all, no Princess. + +He did not know where the House had come from any more than he knew now +where it had gone. It was a gift out of his childhood to his shy, +unfriended youth, but he understood that if ever its walls should waver +and rise again to enclose his dreams, there would be no Princess. Never +any more. Princesses were for fairy tales; girls wanted Things. There +was his mother too--he had wished so to get her a new dress this winter. +It was an ache to him to cut off yards and yards of handsome stuffs at +Mr. Greenslet's, and all the longing in the world had not availed to get +one of them for his mother. Plainly the mastery of Things was +accomplished by being rich; he was on his way to Mr. Dassonville to find +out how it was done. + +It was quite four of the clock when he paused at the bottom of the +Dassonville lawn to look up at the lace curtains at the tall French +windows. Nobody in Bloombury was rich enough to have lace curtains at +all the windows, and the boy's spirit rose at the substantial evidence +of being at last fairly in the track of his desire. + +He found Mr. Dassonville willing to receive him in quite a friendly way, +sitting in his library, keeping the place with his finger in the book he +had been reading to his wife. Peter also found himself a little at a +loss to know how to begin in the presence of this lady, for he +considered it a matter quite between men, but suddenly she looked up and +smiled. It came out on her face fresh and delicately as an apple orchard +breaking to bloom, and besides making it quite spring in the room, +discovered in herself a new evidence of the competency of Mr. David +Dassonville to advise the way of riches. She looked fragile and +expensive as she sat in her silken shawl, her dark hair lifted up in a +half moon from her brow, her hands lying in her lap half-covered with +the lace of her sleeves, white and perfect like twin flowers. He saw +rings flashing on the one she lifted to motion to the maid to bring a +chair. + +"If you have walked over from Bloombury you must be tired," she said, +"and chilled, perhaps. Come nearer the fire." + +"No, thank you," Peter had managed, "I am quite warm," as in fact he +was, and a little flushed. He sat down provisionally on the edge of the +chair and looked at Mr. Dassonville. + +"I came on business. I don't know if you will mind its being Sunday, but +I couldn't get away from the store on other days." + +"Quite right, quite right." Mr. Dassonville had lost his place in the +book and laid it on his knee. "Private business? My dear, perhaps----" + +"Oh, no--no," protested Peter handsomely. "I'd rather she stayed. It +isn't. At least ... I don't know if you will consider it private or +not." + +"Go on," urged Mr. Dassonville. + +"I just came to ask you," Peter explained, "if you don't mind telling +me, how you got rich?" + +"But bless you, young man," exclaimed Mr. Dassonville, "I'm not rich." + +This for a beginning, was, on the face of it, disconcerting. Peter +looked about at the rows of books, at the thick, soft carpet and the +leather-covered furniture, and at the rings on Mrs. Dassonville's hand. +If Mr. Dassonville were not rich, how then--unless---- + +"I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought--that is, everybody says you are +the richest man in these parts." + +"As to that, well, perhaps, I have a little more money than my +neighbours." + +Peter breathed relief. The beautiful Mrs. Dassonville's rings were paid +for, then. + +"But as to being _rich_, why, when you come to a really rich man all +I've got wouldn't be a pinch to him." Mr. Dassonville illustrated with +his own thumb and fingers how little that would be. "We don't have +really rich men in a place like Harmony," he concluded. "You have to go +to the city for that." + +"You've got everything you want, haven't you?" + +Mr. Dassonville looked over at his wife, and the smile bloomed again; he +smiled quietly to himself as he admitted it. "Yes, I've got everything I +want." + +They were quiet, all of them, for a little while, with Peter turning his +hat over in his hands and Mr. Dassonville laying the tips of his fingers +together before him, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair. + +"I wish," said Peter at last, "you would tell me how you did it." + +"How I got more money than my neighbours? Well, I wasn't born with it." + +This was distinctly encouraging. Neither was Peter. + +"No two men, I suppose, make money in the same way," went on the man who +had, "but there are three or four things to be observed by all of them. +In the first place one must be very hard-working." + +"Yes," said Peter. + +"And one must never lose sight of the object worked for. Not"--as if he +had followed the boy's inward drop of dismay--"that a man should think +of nothing but getting money. On the contrary, I consider it very +essential for a man to have some escape from his business, some change +of pasture to run his mind in. He comes fresher to his work so. What I +mean is that _when_ he works he must make every stroke count toward the +end he has in view. Do you understand?" + +"I think so." The House and the Shining Walls were safe, at any rate. + +"And then," Mr. Dassonville checked off the points on his fingers, "he +must always save something from his income, no matter how small it is." + +"I try to do that," confessed Peter, "but what with Ellen's back being +bad, and the interest on the mortgage, it's not so easy." + +"Is there a mortgage? I am sorry for that, for the next thing I was +going to say is that he must never go into debt, never on any account." + +"My father was sick; it was an accident," Peter protested loyally. + +"So! I think I remember. Well, it is unfortunate, but where there is a +debt the only thing is to reduce it as steadily as possible, and if this +mortgage teaches you the trick of saving it may not be such a bad thing +for you. But when a man works and saves for a long time without getting +any sensible benefit, he sometimes thinks that saving and working are +not worth while. You must never make that mistake." + +"Oh, no," said Peter. It seemed to him that they were getting on very +well indeed. + +"There is another thing I should like to say," Mr. Dassonville went on, +"but I am not sure I can put it plainly. It is that you must not try to +be too wise." He smiled a little to Peter's blankness. "I believe in +Harmony it is called looking on all sides of a thing, but there is +always one side of everything like the moon which is turned from us. You +must just start from where you are and keep moving." + +"I see," said Peter, looking thoughtfully into the fire, in imitation of +Mr. Dassonville. And there being no more advice forthcoming he began to +wonder if he ought to sit a while from politeness, as people did in +Bloombury, or go at once. Mrs. Dassonville got up and came behind her +husband's chair. + +"Don't you think you ought to tell him, David, that there are other +things worth having besides money; better worth?" + +"You, perhaps." Mr. Dassonville took the hand of his wife laid on his +shoulder and held it against his cheek; it brought out for Peter +suddenly, how many years younger she was, and what he had heard of Mr. +Dassonville having married her from among the summer folk who came to +Harmony for the pine woods and the sea air. "Ah, but I'm not sure I'd +have you without a great deal of it. It takes money to raise rare plants +like you. But I ought to say," still holding his wife's hand to his +cheek and watching Peter across it, "that I think it is a very good sign +that you are willing to ask. The most of poor men will sit about and +rail and envy the rich, but hardly one would think to ask how it is +done, or believe if he were told. They've a notion it's all gouging and +luck, and you couldn't beat that out of them if you tried. Very few of +them understand how simple success is; it isn't easy often, but it is +always simple." + +Peter supposed that he really ought to go after that, though he did not +know how to manage it until Mrs. Dassonville smiled at him over her +husband's shoulder and asked him what sort of work he did. "Oh, if you +know about gardens," she interrupted him, "you can help a little. There +are such a lot of things coming up in mine that I don't know the names +of." + +It flashed out to Peter long afterward that she had simply provided an +easy way for him to get out of the house now that his visit was +terminated. She held the white fold of her shawl over her head with one +hand and gathered the trailing skirts with the other. They rustled as +she moved like the leaves of the elms at night above the roof, as she +led him along the walk where little straight spears of green and blunt +flower crowns faintly tinged with colour came up thickly in the borders. +So by degrees she got him down past the hyacinth beds and the nodding +buds of the daffodils to the gate and on the road again, walking home in +the chill early twilight with the pricking of a pleasant excitement in +his veins. + +It was that, perhaps, and the sense of having got so much more out of it +than any account of his visit would justify, that kept Peter from saying +much to his mother that night about his talk with the rich man; he asked +her instead if she had ever seen Mrs. Dassonville. + +"Yes," she assured him. "Mr. Dassonville drove her over to Mrs. +Tillinghurst's funeral in October. They had only been married a little +while then; she is the second Mrs. Dassonville, you know; the first died +years ago. I thought her a very lovely lady." + +"A lovely lady," Peter said the phrase under his breath. The sound of it +was like the soft drawing of silken skirts. + +His mother looked at him across the supper table and was pleased to see +the renewal of cheerfulness, and then, motherlike, sighed to think that +Peter was getting so old now that if he didn't choose to tell her things +she had no right to ask him. "Your walk has done you good," was all she +said, and it must have been the case, for that very night as soon as his +head had touched the pillow he was off again, as he hadn't been since +Ellen fell ill, to the House of the Shining Walls. It rose stately +against a blur of leafless woods and crocus-coloured sky. The garden +before it was all full of spring bulbs and the scent of daffodils. The +Princess came walking in it as before, but she was no Princess now, +merely a woman with her dark hair brushed up in a half moon from her +brow and her skirts drawing after her with a silken rustle; her face was +dim and sweet, with only a faint, a very faint, reminder of Ada, and her +name was the Lovely Lady. + + + + +PART TWO + + +IN WHICH PETER +BECOMES INVISIBLE ON THE +WAY TO GROWING RICH + + + + +PART TWO + +IN WHICH PETER BECOMES INVISIBLE ON +THE WAY TO GROWING RICH + + +In the late summer of that year Peter went up to the city with Mr. +Greenslet to lay in his winter stock and remained in canned goods with +Siegel Brothers' Household Emporium. That his mother had rented the +farming land for cash was the immediate occasion of his setting out, but +there were several other reasons and a great many opinions. Mr. +Greenslet had a boy of his own coming on for Peter's place; Bet, the +mare, had died, and the farm implements wanted renewing; in spite of +which Mrs. Weatheral could hardly have made up her mind to spare him +except for the opportune appearance of the cash renter. With that and +the chickens and the sewing, she and Ellen could take care of themselves +and the interest, which would leave all that Peter could make to count +against the mortgage. + +They put it hopefully to one another so, as they sat about the kitchen +stove, all three of them holding hands, on the evening before his +departure. But the opinions, which were rather thicker at Bloombury than +opportunities, were by no means so confident as Peter could have wished +if he had known them. Mr. Greenslet thought it couldn't be much worse +than Peter's present situation, and the neighbours were sure it wasn't +much better. The minister had a great deal to say of the temptations of +a young man in the city, which was afterward invalidated by the city's +turning out quite another place than he described it. + +It was left for Ellen and Mrs. Jim Harvey to make the happy +prognostication. "You can trust Peter," Ada was confident. + +"But you got to be mighty cute to get in with those city fellows," her +husband warned her, "and Peter's so dashed simple; never sees anything +except what's right in front of him. Now a man"--Jim assumed this estate +for himself in the right of being three months married--"has got to look +on all sides of a thing." + +As for Ellen, she hadn't the slightest doubt that Peter was shortly to +become immensely wealthy and she was to go up and keep house for him. + +"There'll be gold chairs in the parlour and real Brussels," she +anticipated. Peter affected to think it unlikely that she could be +spared by the highly mythical person who was to carry her off to keep +house for himself. Somehow Peter could never fall into the normal +Bloombury attitude of thinking that if you had hip disease, your life +was bound to be different from everybody's and you might as well say so +right out, flat-footed, and be done with it. + +With all this, finally he was got off to the city in the wake of Mr. +Greenslet, and the first discovery he made there was that outside of +Siegel Brothers, and a collarless man with a discouraged moustache who +appeared in the hall of his lodging-house when the rent was due, he was +practically invisible. As he went up and down the stairs sodden with +scrub water which never by any possible chance left them scrubbed, +nobody spoke to him. Nobody in the street saw him walking to and fro in +his young loneliness. There were men passing there with faces like Mr. +Dassonville's, keen and competent, and lovely ladies in soft becoming +wraps and bright winged hats--such hats! Peter would like to have hailed +some of these as one immeasurably behind but still in the way, seized of +that precious inward quality which manifests itself in competency and +brightness. He would have liked to feel them looking on friendlily at +his business of becoming rich; but he remained, as far as any word from +them was concerned, completely invisible. He came after a while to the +conclusion that most of those who went up and down with him were in the +same unregarded condition. + +The city appeared quite habituated to this state of affairs; hordes of +them came and went unconfronted between banked windows of warmth and +loveliness, past doors from which light and music overflowed into the +dim street in splashes of colour and sound, where people equally under +the prohibition lapped them up hungrily like dogs at puddles. Sometimes +in the street cars or subways he brushed against fair girls from whom +the delicate aroma of personality was like a waft out of that country +of which his preferences and appreciations acknowledged him a native, +but no smallest flutter of kinship ever put forth from them to Peter. +The place was crammed full of everything that anybody could want and +nobody could get at it, at least not Peter, nor anybody he knew at +Siegel Brothers. And at the lodging house they seemed never to have +heard of the undiminished heaps of splendour that lay piled behind plate +glass and polished counters. It was extraordinary, incredible, that he +wasn't to have the least of them. + +As the winter closed in on him, the restrictions of daily living rose so +thick upon him that they began to prevent him from his dreams. He could +no longer get through them to the House with the Shining Walls. Often as +he lay in his bed trying to believe he was warm enough, he would set off +for it down the lanes of blinding city light through which the scream of +the trolley pursued him, only to see it glimmer palely on him through +impenetrable plate glass, or defended from him by huge trespass signs +that appeared to have some relation to the fact that he was not yet so +rich as he expected to be. Times when he would wake out of his sleep, +it would be to a strange sense of severances and loss, and though he did +not know exactly what ailed him, it was the loss of all his dreams. +After a while the whole city seemed to ache with that loss. He would lie +in his narrow bed and think that if he did not see his mother and +Bloombury again he would probably die of it. + +Then along in the beginning of April somebody saw him. It was in the +dusk between supper and bed time, walking on the viaduct where he had +the park below him. There was a wash of blue still in the sky and a thin +blade of a moon tinging it with citron; here and there the light +glittered on the trickle of sap on the chafed boughs. It was just here +that he met her. She was about his own age, and she was walking oddly, +as though unconscious of the city all about her, with short picked +steps, and her hat with the tilt to it of a girl who knows herself +admired. She had a rose at her breast which she straightened now and +then, or smoothed a fold of her dress and hummed as she walked. Her +cheeks were bright even in the dusk, and some strange, quick fear kept +pace with her glancing. Peter was walking heavily himself, as the young +do when the dreams have gone out of them, and as they passed in the +light of the arc that danced delicately to the wandering air, the girl's +look skimmed him like a swallow. She must have turned just behind him, +for in a moment she drifted past his shoulder. + +"Hello!" she said. + +"Hello!" said Peter, but, in the moment it had taken to drag that up +from under his astonishment, she had passed him; her laugh as she went +brushed the tip of his youth like a swallow's wing. It remained with him +as a little, far spark; it seemed as if a dream was about to spin itself +out from it. He went around that way several times on his evening walks +in hopes that he might meet her again. + +As though the spark had lightened a little of the blank unrecognition +with which the city met him, he was seen that day and in no unfriendly +aspect by "our Mr. Croker" of Siegel Brothers. The running gear of a +great concern like the Household Emporium pressed, in the days of +Peter's apprenticeship, unequally at times on its employees, and the +galled spot of the canned goods department was Blinders the bundle boy. +His other name was Horace and he was chiefly remarkable for pimples +which he seemed to think interesting, and for a state of active +resentment against anybody who gave him anything to do. The world for +Horace was a dark jungle full of grouches and pulls and privilege and +devious guile. + +That the propensity which Peter had developed for inquiring every half +hour or so if he hadn't got that done yet, could be nothing else but a +cabal directed against Blinders' four dollars and a half a week, he was +convinced. In all the time that he could spare from his pimples, Horace +rehearsed a martyr's air designed to convey to Mr. Croker that though he +would suffer in silence he was none the less suffering. It being +precisely Mr. Croker's business to rap out grouches as an expert +mechanician taps defective cogs, it happened the day after Peter's +meeting with the girl that the worst hopes of Horace were realized. + +"Aw, they're always a pickin' on me, Mr. Croker, that's what they are, +Mr. Croker," Horace defended himself, preparing to snivel if the +occasion seemed to demand it, by taking out his gum and sticking it on +the inside of his sleeve. "I can't handle 'em no faster, Mr. Croker." + +"Not the way you go at it," Peter assured him. Anybody could have told +by the way he included Mr. Croker in his cheerfulness that there was +something between them. "You turn 'em over too many times and you use +too much paper and too much string." Suddenly Peter reddened with +embarrassment. "Not that that makes any difference to a big firm like +this," he apologized, "but in a small place every little counts." He +turned the package deftly and began to illustrate his method. "When +you're tying up calico with one hand and taking in eggs and butter with +the other and telling three people the price of things at the same +time," he explained, "you have to notice things like this." + +"I see," said Mr. Croker. "You try it, Blinders." + +"Aw, what's the matter with the way I was doin' it?" wailed Horace. + +"If you don't feel quite up to it----" Mr. Croker hinted. Horace did, he +wrapped with alacrity and Peter showed him how to hold the string. + +"You come along with me, Weatheral," Mr. Croker commanded. Horace took +his gum out of his cuff and made dark prognostication as to what was +probably to be done to Peter. + +What Peter thought was that he should probably become very unpopular +with his fellow clerks. Croker took him across to dry goods, where girls +were tying bundles in little cages over the sales ladies' heads, and had +him repeat the method of handling string. Except that he thought he +should get to like Mr. Croker, the incident made no particular +impression on Peter--so dulled were all his senses for want of +dreams,--and passed wholly out of mind. + +It was two or three days after that he saw the girl again, nearer the +end of the viaduct, where four or five streets poured light and +confusion into Venable Square. She was going on ahead, hurrying and +pretending not to hurry to overtake a man to whom she wished to speak. +She was quite close to him, she was speaking, and suddenly he gave a +little outward jerk with his elbow which caught hers unexpectedly and +whirled her back against the parapet. The little purse she was carrying +fell from her hand. The man gave a quick laugh over his shoulder and +ploughed his way across the street. + +"The skunk!" Peter's list of expletives was not extensive. He picked up +the flat little purse and handed it back to her. "Shall I go after him? +Did you know him?" + +The girl was holding on to the parapet with a little choky laugh. "Oh, +yes, I know that kind. No, I don't want him!" + +"He ought to have a good thrashing," Peter was convinced. The girl +looked up at him with a sudden curiosity. + +"You're from the country, ain't you? I thought so the other night. I can +always tell." + +"I guess you're from the country yourself," Peter hazarded. She was +prettier even than he had thought. Her glance had left his, however, and +was roving up and down the hurrying crowd as though testing it for some +plunge she was about to make. + +"If you wanted me to see you home----" Peter hinted; he did not know +quite what was expected of him. She answered with a little sharp noise +which ended in a cough. + +"I guess you're real kind," she admitted, "but I ain't goin' home just +yet. I got a date." She moved off then, and since it was in the +direction he was going, there was nothing for Peter to do but move with +her, on the other side of the wide pavement. At the turn she drifted +back to his side again; it seemed to Peter there was amusement in her +tone. + +"You got anything to do Saturday about this time?" Peter hadn't. "Well, +I'll be here--savvy?" But before he could make her any assurance she +laughed again and slipped into the crowd. + +Peter knew a great many facts about life. There were human failings even +in Bloombury, and what Peter didn't know about the city had been largely +made up to him by the choice conversation of J. Wilkinson Cohn, in +staples, at the next counter to him. Anybody who listened long enough +to J. Wilkinson's personal reminiscences would have found himself fully +instructed for every possible contingency likely to arise between a +gentleman of undoubted attractions and the ladies, but there are forces +in youth that are stronger than experience. It is a very old, old way of +the world for young things to walk abroad in the spring and meet one +another. + +Peter strolled along the viaduct Saturday and felt his youth beat in him +pleasantly when he saw her come. She had on a different hat, and the +earlier hour showed him the shining of her eyes above the raddled +cheeks. + +"We could go down in the park a piece," he suggested as they turned in +together along the parapet. There was a delicate damp smell coming up +from it on the night, like the Bloombury lanes. + +"You're regular country, aren't you?" There was an accent of impatience +in her tone, "I haven't had my supper yet." + +"Well, what do you say to a piece of roast beef and a cup of coffee?" +Peter had planned this magnificence as he came along fingering his pay +envelope. He knew just the place, he told her. The feeling of his proper +male ascendency as he drew her through the crowd was a tonic to him; the +man tossing pancakes in the window where he hesitated looking for the +ladies' entrance seemed quite to enjoy doing it, as though he had known +all along there was to be company. + +"Oh, I don't care for any of these places." Peter felt her pull at his +elbow. "I'll show you." They went along then, brushing lightly shoulder +to shoulder until they came to one of those revolving doors from which +gusts of music issued. There was a girl standing up to sing as they sat +down and the whole air of the place was beyond even the retailed +splendour of J. Wilkinson. The girl threw back her wraps and began to +order freely. Peter, who had a glimpse of the card, stiffened. + +"I--I guess I'm not so very hungry," he cautioned. She looked up from +the menu sharply and her face softened; she made one or two deft changes +in it. + +"This is Dutch, you know," she threw out. "Oh, I know you invited me, +but you didn't think I was one of the kind that let a strange gentleman +pay for my dinner, did you?" Peter denied it, stricken with +embarrassment. She seemed in the light, to take him in more completely. + +"Say, would you have licked that fellow the other night, honest?" + +"Well, if he was disrespectful to a lady----" Peter began. + +"Oh, _excuse_ me!" She turned her head aside for a moment in her long +gloves. "You _are_ country!" she said again, but it seemed not to +displease her. "I don't care so much for her voice, do you?" She turned +on the singer. They discussed the entertainment and the dinner. They +were a long time about it. The orchestra played a waltz at last, and +Ethel--she had told him to call her that--put her arms on the table and +leaned across to him, and though Peter knew by this time that her cheeks +were painted, he didn't somehow mind it. + +"What's it like up in the country where you lived?" she wished to know. + +"Hills mostly, little wooded ones, and high pastures, and the apple +orchards going right up over them...." + +"I know," she nodded. "I guess it's them I been smelling ... or +laylocks." + +"Things coming up in the garden," Peter contributed: "peonies, and long +rows of daffodils...." He did not realize it, but he had described to +her no place that he had known but the way to the House. The girl cut +him off. + +"Don't!" she said sharply. "You know," she half apologized, "you kind of +remind me of somebody ... a boy I knew up country. It was him that got +me here----" She made her little admission quietly, the horror of it +long worn down to daily habit. "That first time I saw you, it seemed +almost as if it was him ... I ain't never blamed him--much. He didn't +mean to be bad, but when the trouble came he couldn't help none.... I +guess real help is about the hardest thing to find there is." + +"I guess it is." + +"Oh, well, we gotta make the best of it." She glanced at Peter with her +head on one side as she twiddled her fingers across the cloth to the +tune of the orchestra. + +They went out at last and walked in the least frequented streets, and +Peter held her hand; the warmth of it ran with a pleasant tingling in +his veins. He seemed to have touched in her palm the point at which the +city came alive to him. They walked and walked and yet it seemed that +something lacked to bring the evening to a finish; it was incredible to +Peter that after all his loneliness he should have to let her go. + +"We could go up to my place," Ethel suggested. "It's up here." He hadn't +suspected that she had been guiding him. + +"I guess not to-night." Peter's blood was singing in his ears. In the +dark of the unfrequented street he could feel her young body leaning +toward his. + +"Say, you know I ain't after the money the way some girls are; I like +you ... honest----" + +"I guess I'd better go home." But they went on up the side street a +little farther. "Good-bye," he said, but he did not let her go. + +She shook her hand free at last. + +"Oh, well, of course, if you don't want to...." He felt her soft hands +fumbling at his face; she drew him down to a kiss. Suddenly she sprang +away, laughing. "Go, you silly!" + +"Ethel!" he cried, but he lost her in the dark. He should have let her +go at that; he knew he should. In spite of her paying half, his dinner +had cost him more than two ordinary dinners ... and besides.... He +couldn't help, however, walking around by the viaduct for several +evenings the next week, and at last he saw her. She was going by without +speaking, but he got squarely in front of her. + +"Ethel!" + +She pretended just to have recognized him. + +"Oh, you here? I thought you'd gone back to the country!" + +"You aren't mad with me about ... the other night?" He did not quite +know how to express the quality of his desertion. + +"Who? Me?" airily. "Oh, I guess there's just as good fish in the +sea----" She changed all at once under his young hunger for +companionship. "You're good," she said; "you're the real thing." + +"You're good, too," he was certain, "when you're with me." + +"Oh, it rubs off. Say, kid, I guess you got folks at home you're sending +money to and all that, and you got to get ahead in the world. Well, you +don't want to have nothing to do with my kind, and that's straight." The +deviltry she put on toward him failed pitifully. "Chase yourself, kid; I +just ain't good for you any more." Nevertheless they moved along the +parapet to the dark interval between the lights and there they kissed +again, this time with no undercurrent. + +"Good-bye, Ethel." + +"Good-bye, boy." The little spark was out. + + + + +PART THREE + +IN WHICH PETER +BECOMES A BACHELOR + + + + +PART THREE + +IN WHICH PETER BECOMES A BACHELOR + + + + +I + + +The day before leaving for his summer vacation Peter was notified that +he was wanted in his private office by the younger Siegel Brother. +Though he couldn't quite fall in with the dark prognostications of +Blinders that he was about to be mulcted of his salary by a plot which +had been plainly indicated by the marked partiality of our Mr. Croker, +the incident gave him some uneasiness. The young Siegel Brother must +have been younger than somebody of course, though it couldn't have been +by more than a scratch, and he might have been any age without betraying +it, so deeply was he sunk in the evidence of the surpassing quality of +the grocery department. However, there was something surprisingly young +looking out at Peter from the junior brother's red and white rotundity, +at which he took heart immensely. + +"Weatheral, Peter, canned goods, recommended by Mr. Greenslet," Siegel +Brother ticked him off from a manilla envelope. "Just a little +honorarium, Mr. Weatheral, we are in the habit of distributing to such +of our employees as make practical suggestions to the advantage of the +business." Contriving to make his hands meet in front of him by clasping +them very high up on his chest, Siegel Brother assumed that he had +folded his arms, and waited to see what Peter would do about it. + +"We have also a little savings bank for the benefit of our employees +which pays 3 per cent., yet I believe we have you not among our +depositors." There was the slightest possible burr to his speech as +though it were blunted by so much fatness. + +"Well, you see, sir--there's a mortgage." Peter was afraid he should +damage himself by the admission, but the firm heard him out. + +"How much?" + +"It was a thousand, but we've got it down to seven hundred--six hundred +and sixty," Peter corrected himself with a glance at his honorarium. + +"And the farm, it is worth----" Siegel Brother parted his hands slightly +to admit of any valuation. + +"Two thousand." + +"So! Well, Mr. Weatheral, that is not so bad, and if I were you, when I +had occasion to speak of it I would say, not 'I am paying a mortgage,' +that is dead work, Mr. Weatheral, but 'I am buying a farm.' It goes +easier so." + +"Thank you, sir, I'll remember." He supposed his employer was done with +him, but as he turned to go he heard his name again. + +"You will report to our Mr. Croker when you return, Mr. Weatheral; he +thinks he can use you." + +Two weeks later when he came back rested from Bloombury, Peter found +himself visible to at least ten persons, all of whom pertained to the +boarding-house of the exclusive Mrs. Blodgett, where, by the advice of +J. Wilkinson Cohn, he engaged a small room on the third floor with a +window opening some six feet from the rear wall of a wholesale +stationery, and one electric light discreetly placed to discourage the +habit of reading in bed. + +From this time on he was visible to Mrs. Blodgett and Aggie and Miss +Thatcher, whom he already knew as the pure food demonstrator in dairy +products, to two inconsiderable young women from the wholesale +stationer's, and a gentleman from a shoe store, the whole of whose +physiognomy appeared to be occupied with the effort to express an +engaging youthfulness which the crown of his head explicitly denied. He +was occasionally visible to the representative of gentlemen's outfitters +who was engaged to Aggie and took Sunday dinners with them, and he was +particularly and pleasingly visible to J. Wilkinson Cohn and Miss Minnie +Havens. The rest of his fellow boarders were so much of a likeness, a +kind of family likeness that spread all over Siegel Brothers and such +parts of the city as Peter had been admitted to, that it was a relief to +Peter to realize from his profile that J. Wilkinson's last name probably +ought to have been spelled Cohen. The determinedly young gentleman +explained to him that J. Wilkinson's intrusion into the exclusiveness of +Blodgett's was largely a concession to Aggie's being as good as married +and not liable to social contamination, and to the fact that the little +Jew was amusing and pretty near white, anyway. + +Miss Minnie Havens did typewriting and stenography in a downtown office +and was understood to be in search of economic independence, rather than +under the necessity of making a living. She had a high fluffy pompadour +and a half discoverable smile which could be brought to a very agreeable +laugh if one spent a little pains at it. J. Wilkinson Cohn appeared to +find it worth the pains. + +The particular advantage of Blodgett's, besides the fact that you could +have two helps of everything without paying extra for it, was that it +was exclusive and social. Mrs. Blodgett had collected her family of +boarders on the principle of not having anybody who wasn't a suitable +companion for Aggie. There was also a pianola which gave the place a +tone. + +There was fire and light in the dining-room at Blodgett's from seven to +nine always, and in the parlour with the pianola on Saturday evening +and all day Sunday. Sometimes, even on week days after supper, J. +Wilkinson would open the door into the darkened room, push away the +pianola and sing topical songs to his own accompaniment until his +stiffened fingers clattered on the keys. Other times he would give +imitations of popular stage celebrities until Blodgett's shouted with +laughter. At all times they appeared to have a great many engagements. +Peter was advised to join this or that organization, and to enter upon +social occasions that unfortunately presented themselves in the light of +occasions to spend money. Apparently there were no dragons tracking the +path of Blodgett's boarders. Miss Havens did better than any of them for +him. She explained to him how to get books from the circulating library, +and let him read hers until he could arrange for a card. She said it was +a pleasure to think there was going to be somebody in the house who was +congenial. It wasn't that she had anything against Miss Thatcher and the +rest of them--they just didn't have the same tastes. She thought a +person ought to spend some of the time improving their minds. Although +the expression was ambiguous, it served as a sort of sedative to the +aching vacuity of the hours which Peter spent away from Siegel Brothers. +He found himself spending as many as possible of them with Miss Havens. +She had a way of making the frivolling talk of the supper table appear a +warrantable substitute for the things that Peter knew, even while he +echoed her phrases, that he wasn't getting. He found himself skidding on +the paths of self-improvement and the obligations of seeing life, along +the edges of desolation. He immersed himself as far as possible in the +atmosphere of Blodgett's in order that he needn't have any time left in +which to consider how far it fell short of what he had come to find. For +this reason he was usually the last at the supper table, but there were +occasions when he found it discreet to slip away as early and quietly as +possible. + +It was one evening about two months after his instalment at Blodgett's. +Peter was sitting in his room when he heard them yammering at his door +with so much hilarious insistence that he found himself getting up to +open it, without giving himself time to put down the book he was reading +or to take off the overcoat he had put on for want of a fire, and +finding himself in some embarrassment because of the misapprehension +which this fact involved. + +"Ready, Peter?" + +"Come along, Peter!" + +"I ... I'm not going," said Peter. + +"What? Not going to the rink with us to-night? Why, you said----" The +bright group of his fellow boarders hung upon the narrow landing like +bees at the threshold of a hive. + +"I said I'd go if I could--" protested Peter, "and I can't." + +"Gee! What's the matter with you?" + +"Don't be a beastly stiff!" + +"Come on, fellows, we'll miss the car. Let him be a stiff if he wants +to." + +Peter heard their feet retreating on the stairs, and then he saw that +Minnie Havens still hesitated at the landing. She had on her best silk +waist and her blond pompadour was brushed higher than ever. Her eyes, +which were blue, were fixed directly on him with something in the +meeting that gave him the impression, gaspingly, of being about to step +off into space. He seemed suddenly to see a path opening directly +through the skating rink and the Saturday Social Club to the House of +the Shining Walls, and Minnie Havens walking in it beside him. He +wrenched his mind away forcibly from that and fixed it on the figure of +his weekly salary. + +"Couldn't you?" she persuaded. + +"No," said Peter. "I'm much obliged to you, but I really couldn't." + +But before he had time to take up his reading, which somehow he was not +able to do immediately, he heard Mrs. Blodgett, who made a point of +being as kind to her boarders as she could afford to be, tapping at his +door. + +"I thought you'd be going to the rink to-night." + +"No," said Peter. + +"You don't think it's wrong, or anything?" + +"Oh, no, not in the least." + +"Well, Mr. Weatheral, I've seen a power of young folks, comin' and +goin', in my business and it don't pay for 'em to get too stodgy like. +They need livenin' up." She hung upon the door as Peter waited for her +to go. "Miss Havens is a nice girl," she ventured. + +Peter admitted it. "I've my mother and sister to think of," he told her, +and presently he found he had told her a great deal more. + +"Well," commented Mrs. Blodgett, "you do have a lot to carry.... Was you +readin' now, Mr. Weatheral? ... because it's warmer down in my sittin' +room, and there's only Aggie and me sewin'.... Besides," she argued +triumphantly, "it's savin' light." + +First and last he heard a great deal about saving at Blodgett's. Aggie, +who was making up her white things, had something to tell every evening +almost, about the price of insertion. But it was saving for a purpose; +they were in the way, most of them, of being investors. J. Wilkinson had +sixty dollars in his brother's cigar stand on Fifty-fourth street. He +used to let his brother off for Sunday afternoons with quite a +proprietary air. The shoe gentleman, whose very juvenile name was Wally +Whitaker, didn't believe in such a mincing at prosperity. He talked +freely about tips and corners and margins and had been known to make +twenty-seven dollars in copper once. He offered Peter some exclusive +inside information in B and C's before he had been in the house a month. + +"Well, you see," Peter explained himself, "I'm buying a farm up our +way!" His fellow boarders laid down their forks to look at him; he could +see reflected from their several angles how he had placed himself by the +mere statement of his situation. He felt at once the resistance it gave +him, the sense of something to pull against, of having got his feet +under him. It was the point at which the conquest of the mortgage dragon +began to present itself to him as a thing accomplished rather than a +thing escaped. + +It must have been this feeling of release which opened up for him, from +pictures that he saw occasionally with Miss Havens on Sundays, from +books he read and discussed with her, avenues that appeared to lead more +or less directly to the House. There were times when he found himself +walking in them with Miss Minnie Havens, and yet always curiously +expecting the Lovely Lady when they found her there, to be quite another +person. He came within an inch of telling her about it on the occasion +on which she presented him with an embroidered hat marker for Christmas, +and when he took her to the theatre with tickets the floor walker had +presented to him on account of Mrs. Floor Walker not feeling up to it. +It appeared, further, that Miss Havens had a way of falling into +profound psychological difficulties which required a vast amount of +talking over, and a great many appeals to Peter's disinterested judgment +to extract her, not without some subtle intimations of dizzying escapes +for himself. Peter supposed that was always the way with girls. It came +to a crisis later where Miss Havens' whole destiny hung upon the point +as to whether she could accept a situation offered her in her own town, +or should stay on in the city and see what came of it. + +"You'd get more salary there, and be able to live cheaper?" Peter wished +to know. + +"Oh, yes." The implication of her tone was that she didn't see what +that had to do with it. It was toward the end of June, and she was +looking very pretty in a white dress and a hat that set off her +pompadour to advantage, and there was no special reason, as they had the +afternoon before them, why they should not have taken some of the +by-paths that the girl perceived to lead out from the subject into +breathless wonder. She had ways, which were maidenly and good, of +opening up to Peter comfortable little garden plots of existence which, +though they lay far this side of the House and the Lovely Lady, had in +the monotony of the long climb up the scale of Siegel Brothers, moments +of importunate invitation. + +"And you came up to the city," Peter went on in the gravelled walk of +fact, "just to improve yourself in shorthand so you could get such a +situation? I don't see why you hesitate." + +Miss Havens could hardly say why herself. + +"There were so many ways of bettering one's self in the city. I've a +great many friends here," she hinted. + +"Not so many," Peter reminded her, "as you'd have where you were brought +up." + +"You are staying in the city?" Miss Havens suggested. + +"That's different. I have to." He had already told her about Ellen and +also about his mother. + +"And are you always going to stay on here like this, working and working +and never taking any time for yourself? Aren't you ever going to ... +marry?" + +"I know too much what poverty is like to ask any woman to share it," +Peter protested. + +"Suppose she should ask you?" + +"They don't do that; the right sort." + +"I don't see why ... if some girl ... cared ... and if she saw ... +anybody struggling along under burdens she would be glad to share, and +she knew because of that he didn't mean to ask her ... You think she +ought not to let him know?" + +"I think it wouldn't be best," said Peter. + +"You think the man would despise her?" + +"Not that; but if he liked her a little ... he might consent to it ... +just because he liked her and was tired maybe ... and that wouldn't be +good for either of them." + +"Well, anyway, it doesn't concern either of us," said Miss Havens. + +The next evening as Peter was letting himself in at his own door--he had +moved to the second floor front by this time--Mrs. Blodgett stopped him. + +"Miss Havens left her regards for you," she explained. "She went +to-day." + +"Oh," said Peter, "wasn't it sudden?" + +"Sort of. She'd been considerin' of it for some time, and last night she +made up her mind. But I did think," said Mrs. Blodgett, "that she'd have +said good-bye to _you_." And not eliciting anything by way of a reply, +she added: "Miss Havens is a nice girl. I hate to think of her slavin' +her life out in an office. She'd ought to get married." + +"A girl has ever so many more chances in her home town," Peter offered +hopefully. + +"Yes, I suppose so." Mrs. Blodgett sighed. "Is there anything I can do +for you, Mr. Weatheral?" + +"Nothing, thank you." He was lingering still on the landing on Mrs. +Blodgett's account, but he found his finger slipping between the leaves +of the volume he had brought from the library. + +"Ah," she warned him, "readin' is an improvin' occupation, but there's a +book we hadn't any of us ought to miss, and that's the Book of Life, Mr. +Weatheral." And somehow with that ringing in his ears, Peter spent +several minutes walking up and down in his room before he could settle +to his book again. + + + + +II + + +It was a week or ten days after Miss Havens left, before Peter went down +to Bloombury for his midsummer vacation, a week in which he had the +greatest difficulty in getting back to the House of the Shining Walls. +He set out for it almost immediately with a feeling akin to the release +with which one returns to daily habit after the departure of an +unexpected guest. But his thought would no sooner strike into the +accustomed paths than Miss Minnie Havens would meet him there +unaccountably, to begin again those long intimate conversations which +led toward and about the House, but never quite to it. Peter found +himself looking out for those meetings with some notion of dodging them, +and yet once they were fairly off, he owned them a great relief from +Blodgett's. Now that it was withdrawn, he realized in the girl's bright +companionship the effect of the rose-red glow of the shade that Aggie +drew down over the front parlour lamp on the evenings when the +Gentlemen's Outfitter called. It had prevented his seeing until now, +that the chief difference between himself and his fellow boarders, was +that for most of them, this was a place where they had come to stay. +Having let Miss Havens go on alone to the place she was bound for, he +had moments of dreadful sinking, as it occurred to him to wonder if he +hadn't made a mistake in the nature of his own destination. Suppose, +after all, he should find himself castaway in some oasis of determined +sprightliness with Wally Whitaker in whose pocket pretenses of tips and +margins he began to discern a poorer sort of substitute for the House. +He was as much bored by the permanently young shoe-salesman after this +discovery as before it, but obliged to set a watch on himself lest in a +moment of finding himself too much in the same case, he should make the +mistake of inviting Wally to Bloombury for his vacation. + +He was relieved, when at last he had got away without it, to be saved +from such a misadventure, for he found his mother not standing the heat +well, and Ellen anxious. He had never definitely shaped to himself the +idea that there could anything happen to his mother; she was as much a +part of his life as the aging apple trees and the hills that climbed, +with low, gnarled pines to the sky's edge beyond the marshes, a point +from which to take distance and direction. He began to note now the +graying hair, the shrunken breast and the worn hands, so blue veined for +all their brownness, and he could not sleep of nights because of the +sweat that was on his soul, for fear of what might come to her. He would +lie in the little room under the roof and hear the elms moving like the +riffle of silence into sound, thinking of his mother until at last he +would be obliged to rise and move softly about the place, as if by the +mere assertion of himself he could make her safer in it. He wished +nothing so much as not to disturb her, but she must have been lying +awake often herself, for the second or third time this happened, she +called to him. He came, half dressed as he was and drew the covers up +close about her shoulders, and was exceedingly gay and tender with her. + +"There's nothing troubling you, son?" + +"Nothing--except to be sure there's nothing troubling _you_." + +She gave a little, low laugh like a girl. + +"That's so like your father. I remember he would get up in the night +when you were little, and go prowling about ... he used to say he was +afraid the roof tree would fall in and kill you. And yet here you +are...." She reached out to give him a little pat, as if somehow to +reassure him. The low dropping moon made a square block of light on +the uncarpeted floor; outside, the orchard waited for the dawn, and +the fields brimmed life up to their very doors. + +"You're like him in other ways," she went on. "Somehow it's brought him +back wonderfully the last two or three days, and especially at night +when I'd hear you creaking down the stair. There's a board there which +always does creak, and I'd hear you trying to remember which it was, the +same as _he_ used to----" + +"I haven't meant to keep you awake, mother." + +"I've been awake. When you're getting along like, you don't sleep much, +Peter. Sleep is for dreaming, some of it, and the old don't dream." + +"You're not to go calling yourself old, mother!" + +"And me with a son going twenty-three! We weren't so young either when +we were married, your father and I ... but I want you should sleep, +Peter, and dream when you can. You have pleasant dreams, son?" + +"Any amount of them." He was going off into one of those bright +fantasies of what he should do when he was rich as he meant to be, with +which he had so often beguiled Ellen's pain, but she kissed him and sent +him to bed again lest Ellen should hear them. + +It was not more than a day or two after that the minister's wife caught +young Mr. Weatheral walking with his mother in the back pasture with his +arm about her, and was slightly shocked by it, for though it was thought +highly commendable in him to have paid off the mortgage and managed a +silk dress for her and Ellen besides, Bloombury was not habituated to a +lively expression of family affection. Peter had consented to gather the +huckleberries which Ellen insisted were of a superior flavour in the +back pasture, on the sole condition that his mother should come with +him, and the minister's wife had just stepped aside on her way to the +Tillinghurst's to gather the southerwood which grew there, for the +minister's winter cough, when she caught sight of them. + +"She couldn't have stared more if she'd caught me with a girl." Peter +protested. + +"It's only that she'd have thought it more likely," his mother +extenuated. "I hope you aren't going to be a girl-hater, Peter. I want +you should marry some time, and if I haven't seemed anxious about it +before now, you mustn't think it's because I want to keep you for Ellen +and me. What I don't want is that you should take to it just _because_ +there's a girl. Not but what that's natural, but there's more to it than +that, Peter. For you," she supplemented. She sat down on a gray, round +stone while Peter stripped the bushes at her feet, and watched to see if +his colour rose while she talked, or his gaze failed to meet hers at any +point. + +"I'd have liked to have Ellen marry," said Ellen's mother, "she's that +kind. Having a man of her own, most any kind of a man so as he would be +good to her, would mean such a lot. If Ellen can have a little of what +everybody's having, she's satisfied. But there are some who can get a +great deal more out of it than that ... and if they don't the rest of it +is a drag and a weariness." He left off stripping the bushes and turned +contentedly against her knees. + +"You're my home, Mumsey." + +"And not even," she gently insisted, "when I'm not here to make it for +you. There's a kind of life goes with loving; it's like--like the +lovely inside colour of a shell, and somehow, this winter I've wondered +if you'd got to the place where you knew what that would be like if you +should find it." She turned his face up to her with a tender anxiety and +yet with a little timidity; they did not talk much of such things in +Bloombury. + +"I know, mother." + +"Yes...." after a long look, "you would; you're so like your father. But +if you know, you mustn't ever be led by dullness or loneliness into +anything less, Peter. Not that I'm afraid you'll be led into anything +wrong ... but there are things that are almost more wrong than downright +wickedness.... + +"I've been thinking a great deal lately about when I was your age, and +there didn't seem anything for me but to marry one of the neighbour's +boys that I'd known always, or a long plain piece of school teaching. It +wasn't easy with everybody egging me on--but I stuck it out, and at the +last along came your father ... I'd like you to have something like +that, Peter,--and your son coming to you the way you came to me, like +it was through a cloud of glory...." He looked up presently on her +silence, silver tipped now with the hope of renewal, and he saw her as a +man sometimes when he is young and clean, sees his mother, the Sacred +Door ... and he did not observe at all that her hands were berry stained +and the nails broken, nor that her cheek had fallen in and her hair gray +and wispy. But being a young man and never good at talking, it made no +difference with him except that as they walked home across the pastures +he was more than ever careful of her and teased her more whimsically. + +He forgot, after he had settled in his room again at Blodgett's, that +Miss Minnie Havens had ever walked with him in the purlieus of the +House, for he was quite taken up with a new set of rooms he had thrown +out from it for his mother. She was always there with him now until the +day of her death and long after, made a part of all his dreaming by the +touch with which she had limned in herself for him, the feature of all +Lovely Ladies. + +He would write her long letters into which crept much that had been +uttered only in the House, which that winter became an estate in +Florida, moved there because of Mrs. Weatheral's need of mild climate. +They went abroad after the Christmas Holidays in which she had coughed +more than usual and consented to have her breakfast brought up to bed, +setting out every evening from Peter's reading-lamp and arriving very +shortly at Italian Cathedrals and old Roman seaport towns that smelled +of history. + +Dreaming of lovely ladies who have no face or form other than they +borrow from the passing incident is a very pleasant way of passing the +time, and does not necessarily lead to anything; but when a man goes +about afraid lest his mother should die for lack of something he might +have got for her, he dreams closer at home. More than ever since the +revelation of his mother's frailness, Peter dreamed of being rich, and +since there was nothing nearer to him than the way Siegel Brothers had +managed it, he devoted so much time to the scrutiny of their methods +that he passed in a very short time from being head of the delivery +department to the right hand of Mr. Croker. Even Blinders could not +recall, in the three years he had been bundle boy, so marked an example +of favouritism. + +"They don't make partners any more out of underlings," Croker let him +know confidentially. "What do you think you're headed for?" Peter +explained himself. + +"I wanted to find out how they did it." + +"And when you find out," Croker wagged at him, "you won't be able to do +anything with it. You have to have capital. Look at the time I've been +with them!" + +"How long is that?" Peter was interested. + +"Twenty years." Croker told him. + +"In twenty years," Peter was confident, "a man ought to be able to find +some capital." After that he began to observe Mr. Croker. + +It is probable at this time that if he had not been concerned for his +mother's health, he might have grown as dry and uninteresting as at +Blodgett's they began to think him. + +He was a thin young man with hair of no particular colour, and eyes +that were good and rather shy about women. He went out very little and +had not, Miss Thatcher who sat opposite him was sure, a mind above his +business. Aggie had married her Outfitter, and J. Wilkinson Cohn, who +had become a full partner in his brother's cigar stand, had moved out to +Fifty-fourth Street, so that there was nobody who could have +contradicted her. But lying awake planning how he might piece out life +for his mother with comforts, and hearing in every knock the precursor +of what might have happened to her, his heart was exercised as it is +good for the heart to be even with pain and anxiety. And beyond the +heart stretching there was always the House. He could seldom get away to +it in his waking hours, but he knew it was there for him, and visiting +it in dreams he kept in spite of the anxiety and Mr. Croker, his young +resiliency. Along in December, about two weeks before his midwinter +holiday, Ellen sent for him. + +"It's not as if there hadn't been time for everything. You must think of +that, Peter. And your being able to come down every Saturday since the +first stroke. There's plenty that are hurried away without a good-bye or +anything." + +"I know, Ellen." + +"And it isn't as if there hadn't been plenty to say, either. Six weeks +would have been too long for anybody less loving than mother. They +wouldn't have known how to go through your life and say just the things +you'll be glad to remember when the time comes for them. You've got to +keep your mind on those things, Peter." + +"Yes, Ellen." + +The front room had been well rid up after the funeral and everybody at +Ellen's earnest entreaty had left them quite alone. Although there was +fire in the base burner, they were sitting together by the kitchen +stove, the front of which was thrown open for the sake of the warm glow +of the coals. By and by the kettle began to sing and the bare tips of +the lilac scratched on the pane like a live thing waiting to be let in. +The little familiar sounds refilled for them the empty room. + +Outside it was every way such a day as a well-spent life might slip +away in; the tracks in the deep-rutted February snow might have been +worn there by the habit of sixty years. There was no hint of the spring +yet, but here and there in the bare patches on the hills and the frayed +icy edges of the drifts, the sign that the weight of the winter was +behind them. There would be a little quiet time yet and then the +resurrection. The brother and sister had taken it all very quietly. +Nobody had ever taken anything in any other way in the presence of Mrs. +Weatheral, and that she was there still for them, that she would always +be present in their lives, a warm determining influence, was witnessed +by that absence of violence which empties too soon the cup of grief. The +loss of their mother had at least brought them no sense of leaving her +behind. They were going on with their life so soon because she was going +with them. + +"That was why I wanted them all to go away," Ellen took up the thought +again. "I've been thinking all day about mother being with father and +how glad he'll be to see her, and yet it seems as if I can feel her +here. I thought if we kept still a while she'd make us understand what +she wanted us to do." + +"About what, Ellen?" + +"About my going up to the city with you to board--it seems such a +wasteful way to live somehow, just sitting around!" + +"It isn't as expensive as keeping house," Peter told her, "and I want +you to sit around, Ellen; women in Bloombury don't get enough of that +I'm afraid." + +"They don't. Did you see Ada Harvey to-day? Four children and two teeth +out, and her not thirty. I guess you'd take better care of me than that, +Peter,--only----" + +"You think _she_ wouldn't like it for you?" + +"She thought such a lot of keeping up a home, Peter. It was like--like +those Catholics burning candles. It seemed as if she thought you'd get +something out of it if it was just going on, even if you didn't visit it +more than two or three times a year. Lots of women feel that way, Peter, +and I guess there must be something in it." + +"There _is_ something in it," Peter assured her. + +"And if I go and board with you we'd have to break up everything----" +She looked about on all the familiar mould of daily habit that was her +world, and tears started afresh. "And we've got all this furniture." She +moved her head toward the door of the front room and the parlour set +that had been Peter's Christmas gift to them two years ago. "For all it +was such a comfort to her to have it, it's as good as new. It seemed as +if she thought you were the only one good enough to sit in it." + +"Don't, Ellen." + +"I know, Peter." They were silent a while until the deep wells of grief +had stilled in the sense of that sustaining presence. "I only wanted to +be sure I wouldn't be going against her, breaking up the home. It seems +like anything she set such store by oughtn't to stop just because she +isn't here to take care of it." They had to come back to that the next +day and the next. + +"I only want to do what is best for you, Ellen." + +"I'd be best off if I was making you happy, Peter--and I'd feel such a +burden somehow, just boarding." + +"The rents _are_ cheaper in the suburbs," Peter went so far as to admit. +It was all so inarticulate in him; how could he explain to Ellen the +feeling that he had, that settling down to a home with her would somehow +put an end to any dreams he had had of a home of his own, persistent but +unshaped visions that vanished before the sudden brightening of Ellen's +face at his least concession. + +"We could have somebody in to clean," she reminded him, "and I hardly +ever have to be in bed now." + +The fact was that Peter had the very place in mind; he had often walked +out there on Sundays from Blodgett's; he thought the neighbourhood had a +clean and healthy look. He went up on Tuesday to see what could be done +about it. + +Lessing, who rented him the apartment, made the natural mistake about it +that Peter's age and his inexperience as a householder invited. He said +the neighbours were all a most desirable class of people, and Peter +could see for himself that the city was bound to build out that way in a +few years. As for what Pleasanton could do in the way of climate, well, +Lessing told him, with the air of being only a little less interested +than he credited Peter with being, look at the perambulators. + +They were as fine a lot of wellfilled vehicles as could be produced by +any suburb anywhere, and Ellen for one was never tired of looking at +them. But Peter couldn't understand why Ellen insisted on walking home +from church Sunday morning the wrong way of the pavement. + +"I suppose we do get in the way," she admitted after he had explained to +her that they wouldn't be crowded off so frequently if they moved with +the nurse-maid's parade and not against it, "but if we go this way we +can see all the little faces." + +"I didn't know you cared so much for babies." + +"Well, you see it isn't as if I was to have any of my own----" Something +in the tone with which she admitted the restraining fact of her +affliction brought out for Peter how she had fitted her life to it, like +a plant growing hardily out of a rock, climbing over and around it +without rancour or rebellion. As he turned now to look at her long, +plain face in the light of what had been going on in himself lately, he +recalled that the determining influence which had drawn her thick hair +into that unbecoming knot at the back of her neck had been the pain it +had given her when she first began to put up her hair, to do it higher. + +She was watching the bright little bonneted heads go by with the same +detachment that he had learned to look at the shop windows, without +thinking of appropriating any of their splendour for himself, and when +she spoke again it was without any sensible connection with the present +occasion. + +"Peter, do you remember Willy Shakeley?" + +"Shakey Willy, we used to call him. I remember his freckles; they were +the biggest thing about him." He waited for the communicating thread, +but nothing came except what presently reached him out of his own young +recollections. "He wasn't good enough for you, Ellen," he said at last +for all comment. + +"He was kind, and he wouldn't have minded about my being lame, but a man +has to have a healthy wife if he's a farmer." How completely she had +accepted the deprivation for herself, he saw by her not wasting a sigh +over it; she had schooled herself so long to go no further in her +thought than she went on the crutch which tapped now on the pavement +beside him. As if to stop his going any further on her account she +smiled up at him. "Peter, if you were to meet any of the things you +thought you'd grow up to be, do you suppose you'd know them?" + +At least he could have told her that he didn't meet any of them on his +way between Siegel Brothers and the flat in Pleasanton. + +There are many things which if a young man goes without until he is +twenty-five he can very well do without, but the one thing he cannot +leave off without hurting him is the expectation of some time doing +them. The obligation of the mortgage and Ellen's lameness had been a +sort of bridge for Peter, a high airy structure which engaged the best +of him and so carried him safely over Blodgett's without once letting +him fall into the unlovely vein of life there, its narrowness, its +commonness. He had known, even when he had known it most inaccessible, +that there was another life which answered to every instinct of his for +beauty and fitness. He waited only for the release from strain for his +entry with it. Now by the shock of his mother's death he found himself +precipitated in a frame of living where a parlour set out of Siegel +Brothers' Household Emporium was the limit of taste and understanding. +The worst thing about Siegel Brothers' parlour sets was that he sold +them. He knew it was his particular value to Siegel Brothers that he had +always known what sort of things were acceptable to the out-of-town +trade. He had selected this one distinctly with an eye to the pleasure +his mother and Ellen would get out of what Bloombury would think of it. +He hadn't expected it would turn and rend him. That it was distinctly +better than anything he had had at Blodgett's was inconsiderable beside +the fact that Blodgett's hadn't owned him. That he was owned now by his +sister and the furniture, was plain to him the first time he sat down to +figure out the difference between his salary and what it would cost him +to let Ellen be a burden to him in the way that made her happiest. Not +that he thought of Ellen in that way; he was glad when he thought of it +at all articulately, to be able to make life so little of a burden to +her. But though he saw quite clearly how, without some fortunate +accident, the rest of his life would be taken up with making a home for +Ellen and making it secure for her in case anything happened to him, he +saw too, that there was no room in it for the Lovely Lady. The worst of +all this was that he did not see how he was to go on without her. + +He had fled to her from the inadequacy of all substitutes for her that +his life afforded, and she had ended by making him over into the sort of +man who could never be satisfied with anything less. Something he owed, +no doubt, to that trait of his father's which made his memories of Italy +more to him than his inheritance, but there it was, a world Peter had +built up out of books and pictures and music, more real and habitable +than that in which he went about in a gray business suit and a pleasant +ready manner; a world from which, every time he fitted his key in the +latch of the little flat in Pleasanton, he felt himself suddenly +dispossessed. + +It was not that he failed to get a proper pleasure out of being a +householder, in being able to take a certain tone with the butcher and +discuss water rates and rents with other householders going to and fro +on his train. Ellen's cooking tasted good to him and it was very +pleasant to see the pleasure it gave her to have Burnell of the +hardware, out to supper occasionally. He made friends with Lessing, +whose natty and determinedly architectural office with its air of being +somehow akin to Wally Whitaker, occupied the corner where Peter waited +every morning for his car. Lessing began it by coming out on the very +first occasion to ask him how his sister did, in an effort to correct +any impression of a want of perspicuity in his first estimate of Peter's +situation. He kept it up for the reason perhaps that men friends are +meant for each other from the beginning of time quite as much as we are +accustomed to thinking of them as being meant for the lovely ladies whom +they so frequently miss. Lessing was about Peter's own age and had large +and cheerful notions of the probable increase of real-estate values in +Pleasanton, combined with a just appreciation of the simple shrewdness +which had so recommended Peter to his employers. + +"You'd be a crackerjack to talk to the old ladies," Lessing generously +praised him. "I scare 'em; they think I'm too hopeful." That he didn't, +however, have the same effect on young ladies was apparent from the very +pretty one whom Peter used to see about, especially on early closing +Saturday afternoons, helping him to shut up the office and get off to +the ball game. He couldn't have told why, but those were the days when +Peter allowed the car to carry him on to the next block, before +alighting, after which he would make a point of being particularly kind +to Ellen. It would never do for her to get a notion that the tapping of +her crutch beside him had scared anything out of Peter's life which he +might think worth having in it. + +Along toward Thanksgiving time, on an occasion when Peter had just +missed his car and had to wait for another one, Lessing--J. B. on the +door sign, though he was the sort that everybody who knew him called +Julian--came quite out to the pavement and stood there with his hands +in his pockets and his hair beginning to curl boyishly in the dampness, +quite brimming over with good fortune. Singularly he didn't mention it +at once, but began to complain about the low state of the market in real +estate. + +"Not but that the values are all right," he was careful to explain; +"it's just that they _are_ all right makes it so trying. If a fellow had +a little capital now, he could do wonders. The deuce of a chap like me +is that he hasn't any capital unless there's some buying." + +"You think it's a good time then to lay out a little money?" + +"Good! _Good!_ Oh, Lord, it's so good that if a fellow had a few +thousands just put around judiciously, he wouldn't be able to sleep +nights for hearing it turn over." He kicked the gravel in sheer +impatience. "How's your sister?" + +It was a formula that he had kept on with because to have dropped it +immediately might have betrayed the extenuating nature of its inception, +and besides there were so many directions in which one might start +conversationally off from it. He made use of it now without waiting for +Peter's habitual "Very well, thank you," by a burst into confidence. + +"You see I'm engaged to be married--yes, I guess you've seen me with +her. Fact is, I haven't cared how much people have seen so long as she's +seen it, too; and now we've got it all fixed up, naturally I'm on the +make. I'm dashed if I don't think I'll have to take a partner." + +"I've been wanting to speak to you about some property of mine," Peter +ventured. "It's a farm up country." + +"What's it worth?" + +"Well, I've added to it some the last ten years and made considerable +improvement. I ought to get three thousand." + +"That's for farming? For summer residence it ought to bring more than +that. Any scenery?" + +"Plenty," Peter satisfied him on that score. "I've been thinking," he +let out shyly, "that if I could put the price of it in some place where +I could watch it, the money would do me more good...." + +Lessing turned on him a suddenly brightening eye. + +"That's the talk--say, you know I think I could get you forty-five +hundred for that farm of yours anyway." They looked at one another on +the verge of things hopeful and considerable. As Peter's car swung +around the curve, suddenly they blushed, both of them, and reached out +and shook hands. + +That evening as Peter came home he saw Lessing buying chrysanthemums at +the florist's with a happy countenance, and to master the queer pang it +gave him, Peter got off the car and walked a long way out on the dim wet +pavement. He was looking at the bright picture of Lessing and the +girl--she was really very pretty--and seeing instead, himself, quite the +bachelor, and his lame sister taking their blameless dull way in the +world. He couldn't any more for the life of him, get a picture of +himself without Ellen in it; the tapping of her crutch sounded even in +the House when he visited it in his dreams. It was well on this occasion +that he had Ellen beside him, for she showed him the way presently to +take it, as he knew she would take it as soon as he went home and told +her--as another door by which they could enter sympathetically in the +joyousness they were denied. She would be so pleased for Julian's sake, +in whom, by Peter's account of him, she took the greatest interest, and +so pleased for the girl to have such a handsome, capable lover. It made, +for Ellen, a better thing of life if somebody could have him. + +Peter went back after a while with that thought to the florist's and +bought chrysanthemums, taking care to ask for the same kind Mr. Lessing +had just ordered. He was feeling quite cheerful even, as he ran up the +steps with them a few minutes later, and saw the square of light under +the half-drawn curtain, and heard the tap of Ellen's crutch coming to +meet him. + +That night after he had gone to bed a very singular thing happened. The +Princess out of the picture visited him. It was there at the foot of his +bed in a new frame where Ellen had hung it--the young knight riding down +the old, lumpy dragon, but with an air that Peter hadn't for a long time +been able to manage for himself, doing a great thing easily the way one +knew perfectly great things couldn't. The assistant sales manager of +Siegel Brothers had been lying staring up at it for some time when the +Princess spoke to him. He knew it was she, though there was no face nor +form that he could remember in his waking hours, except that it was +familiar. + +"Ellen is right," she told him; "it doesn't really matter so long as +somebody finds me." + +"But what have _I_ done?" Peter was sore with a sense of personal +slight. "It wasn't in the story that there should be a whole crop of +dragons." + +"All dragons are made so that where one head comes off there are seven +in its place; and you must remember if somebody didn't go about slaying +them, I couldn't be at all." This as she said it had a deep meaning for +Peter that afterward escaped him. "And you can hold the dream. It takes +a lot of dreaming to bring one like me to pass." + +"I'm sick of dreams," said Peter. "A man dies after a little who is fed +on nothing else." + +"They die quicker if they stop dreaming; on those that have the gift for +it the business of dreaming falls. Listen! How many that you know have +found me?" + +"A great many think they have; it comes to the same thing." + +"The same for them; but you must see that I can never really _be_ until +I am for those outside the dream. The trouble with you is that you'd +wake up after a while and you would _know_." + +"Yes," Peter admitted, "I should know." + +"Well, then," she was oh, so gentle about it, "yours is the better part. +If you can't have me, at least you're not stopping me by leaving off for +something else. In the dream I can live and grow, and you can grow to +me. Do you remember what happened to Ada Harvey? I've saved you from +that at any rate." + +"No," said Peter, "it was the dragon saved me. I thought you were she. +It's saved me from lots of things, now that I think of it." + +"Ah, that's what we have to do between us, Peter, we have to save you. +You're worth saving." + +"Save me for what?" Peter cried out to her and so strongly in his +loneliness that he found himself starting up from his bed with it. He +could see the dragon spitting flames as before, and the pale light from +the swinging street lamp gilding the frame of the picture. Though he +did not understand all that had happened to him, as he lay down again he +was more comforted than he had been at any time since he had made up his +mind that he was to be a bachelor. + + + + +PART FOUR + +IN WHICH THE LOVELY +LADY MAKES A +FINAL APPEARANCE + + + + +PART FOUR + +IN WHICH THE LOVELY LADY MAKES A +FINAL APPEARANCE + + + + +I + + +On the day that the silver-laced maple, then in fullest leaf, had passed +by the space of three delicate palm-shaped banners the sill of the +third-story office window, Lessing, of Weatheral, Lessing & Co., Brokers +in Real Estate, crossed over to his partner's desk before sitting down +at his own, and remained quietly leaning against it and looking out of +the window without a word. He remained there staring out over the new, +orderly growth of the suburb, toward the river, until the stenographer +from the outer room had come in with the vase which she had been filling +with great golden roses, and gone out again, after placing it carefully +in the exact middle of the top of the junior partner's desk. By that +time Lessing's rather plump, practical hand had crept out along the rim +of the desk until it was covered by Peter's lean one, and still neither +of them had said a word. The roses had come in from Lessing's country +place that morning in Lessing's car, and Lessing's wife had gathered +them. There were exactly seventeen, full-blown and fragrant, and one +small bud of promise which Peter presently removed from its vase to his +button hole. The act had almost the significance of a ritual, a thing +done many times with particular meaning. + +"Somehow," Peter said as he fastened it with a pin underneath his lapel, +"seventeen years seems a shorter time to look back on than to look +forward to." + +"Well, when we've put twenty-five years of work into it--and that's +nothing to what we'll get into the next seventeen." Lessing's tone keyed +admirably with the bright ample day outside, the rapid glint of the +river and the tips of the maple all a-tremble with the urgency of new +growth. The senior partner's eye roved from that to the restrained +richness of the office furniture from which the new was not yet worn, +and returned to the contemplation of the towering white cumuli beginning +to pile up beyond the farther bank of the river. "There's no end to what +a man can lift," he asserted confidently, "once he's got his feet under +him." + +"We've carried a lot," Peter assented cheerfully, "and sometimes it was +rather steep going, but now it's carrying us. The question is"--and here +his voice fell off a shade and a slight gathering appeared between his +eyes--"the real question is, I suppose, what it is carrying us _to_." + +"Where's the good of that?" Julian protested. "It's only a limitation to +set out for a particular place. The fun is in the going. You keep right +along with the procession until old age gets you. The thing is just to +keep it up as long as you can." He swung himself into a sitting posture +on the edge of the desk and noted that the slight pucker had not left +his partner's eyes. "What's the idea?" he wished affectionately to know. + +"Oh, nothing much, but I sort of grew up with the idea of +Duty--something you had to do because there was nobody else to do it. +You had not only to do it but you had to like it, not because it was +likable, but because it was your duty. It was always right in front of +me: I couldn't see over or around it; I just had to do it." + +"Well, you did it," Lessing corroborated. "Clarice says the way you've +taken care of Ellen----" + +"And the way Ellen has taken care of me--but then Ellen was all the +woman I had." He caught himself up swiftly after that; it was seldom +even to his partner that anything escaped him in reference to the +interior life of dreams which had gone on in him, quite happily behind +his undistinguished exterior. "But somehow it hasn't seemed to come out +anywhere. I've done my duty ... and when I'm dead and Ellen's dead, +where is it? After all, what have I done?" + +"Ah, look at Pleasanton," Julian reminded him; "do you call that +nothing?" They looked together toward the esplanade along the river, +beginning at this hour to be flecked with the white aprons of +nurse-maids and their charges. "We've given them clean water to drink +and clean streets, and a safe place for the children to play in. The +fight we had with the city council for _that_...!" He waved his arm +again toward the well-parked river front. "Ever since I sold your farm +for you and you began putting your money into the business, we've walked +right along with it. Even before you left Siegel Brothers and we used to +sit up nights with the map, planning where to put our money like a +checker-board, we saw things like this for the town, and now we've made +'em true. And you say we've done nothing!" The senior partner was +touched a little in his tenderest susceptibilities. + +"Oh, well," Peter admitted with a shamed laugh, "I suppose man is an +incurable egotist. I was thinking of something more personal, something +_mine_, the way a book or a picture belongs to the man who makes it." + +"The game isn't over yet," Lessing reminded him, with a glance at the +unfolding bud which Clarice had sent as a symbol of the opening year; +"you're only forty. And, anyway, the money's yours; you made it." +Something in the word recalled him to a thought that had been earlier +in his mind. "Clarice wanted me to ask you to-day if you had any idea +how much you are worth." + +Peter's attention came back from the window with a start. "Does that +mean the Fresh Air Fund or the Association for the Protection of +Ownerless Pups?" + +Julian grinned. "Ownerless bachelors rather. Clarice has an idea you are +well enough off to marry." + +"If it were a proposition of my being married to Clarice I should +consider myself well enough off without anything else----" Peter dropped +the light, accustomed banter for a sober tone. "How well off does your +wife think I ought to be?" + +"She's got it figured out that all you've spent on making Ellen +comfortable for life isn't a patch on what she and the boys cost me, so +it's high time you set about your natural destiny of making some woman +happy." + +"Look here, Julian, _is_ it an object for a man to live for, making some +woman happy?" + +"Well, it keeps you on the jump all right," Lessing assured him. "What +else is there? It's a way of making yourself happy when you come to +look at it; keeping her and the kids so that you leave the world better +off than you found it. It suits _me_." He was looking, indeed, +particularly well suited, in spite of a disposition to portliness and a +suspicion of thinning hair, with what the seventeen years just past had +brought him. A warm appreciation of what those things were touched his +regard for his companion with a sober affectionateness. "I reckon +Clarice is right: a wife and a couple of kids is the prescription for +your case. That's why she wanted me to remind you that you could afford +'em." + +"And has she named the day?" Peter wished to know whimsically. + +"Oh, I say, Weatheral----" + +"My dear Julian, if I hadn't been able to see what Clarice has been up +to for the last six months, at least I could have depended on Ellen to +see it for me." + +"She doesn't object, does she?" + +"Oh, if you think the privilege of being aunt to your children has made +up to her for not being aunt to mine----" + +"The privilege is on the other side. But anyway, I'm glad you got on to +it. I didn't want to be a spoil sport. I suppose women's instincts can +be trusted in these things, but I hated to see Clarice coming it over +you blind." + +Peter wondered to himself a little, which of the charming ladies to whom +he had been introduced lately, Clarice had selected for him. He wasn't, +however, concerned about her coming it blind over anybody but the senior +partner who got down now from the desk, whistling softly and walking +with a wide step as a man will in June when affairs go well with him, +and he feels that if there are still some things which he desires he is +able to get them for himself. + +"Don't forget you're coming to us on Saturday; and we dine together +to-night as usual." + +"As usual." Always on the anniversary of their beginning business +together Weatheral and Lessing, who were still, in spite of seeing one +another daily for seventeen years, able to be interested in one another, +dined apart from their families, savouring pleasantly that essential +essence of maleness, the mutual power of work well accomplished. It was +the best tribute that Clarice and Ellen could pay to the occasion that +they understood that, much as their several lives had profited by the +partnership, they were still and naturally outside of it. + +On this occasion, however, it was impossible for Peter to keep Mrs. +Lessing out of the background of his consciousness, because of the part +her suggestion of the morning played in new realization of himself as +the rich Mr. Weatheral of Pleasanton. He credited her with sufficient +knowledge of his character to have egged Julian on to the reminder as a +part of the game she had played with him for the past two or three +years, by which Peter was to be instated in a life more in keeping with +his opportunities. + +It was a game Clarice played with life everywhere, coaxing it to yield +its choicest bloom to her. She had an instinct for choiceness like a +hummingbird, darting here and there for sweetness. Her flutterings were +never of uncertainty but such as kept her in the perfect airy poise. If +she wanted marriage for Peter it was because she could imagine nothing +better for anybody than a marriage like hers, and if she chose this +time for letting him know that she was thinking of it, it was because in +those terms she could bring closest to him his new-found possibilities. +If she could have reached Peter with the personal certainty of riches by +explaining to him how far his dollars would stretch end to end, or how +many acres of postage stamps he could buy with them, she might have +thought less of him on that account, but she would have helped him to +understanding even on those terms. You couldn't have made Clarice +Lessing believe that whatever their limitations, people weren't entitled +to help simply because they needed it. + +It had come upon Peter by leaps and bounds during the last two or three +years, both the wealth and the necessity of putting it to himself in +terms of personal expression. During the first ten years of the +partnership, the only use for money the simple needs of Ellen and +himself had established was to put it back into the business; a use +which had become almost an obligation during the time when both children +and opportunity were coming to Julian faster than the cash to meet them. +It was due to the high ground that Clarice had made for them all out of +what she and the children stood for, that Peter's superior cash +contribution to the firm had become a privilege. They had had, he and +Ellen, their stringent occasions; it had been Clarice's part to see that +since they endured the pinch of poverty they should at least get +something human out of it. It came out for Peter pleasantly as he walked +home through the mild June evening, just how much they had had. Much, +much more than they would have been able to buy with the money they +might in strict equity have withdrawn from the business. Nothing, he had +long admitted, that he could have purchased for his sister would have +been so satisfying as what Clarice contributed, pressing the full cup of +her motherhood to Ellen's thirsty lips. They might have grown sleek, he +and Ellen, without exceeding a proper ratio of expenditure, and if in +the end they had been a little less rich, they would still have had +enough to go on being sleek and comfortable to the end. That he was +still fit, as Mrs. Lessing's transparent efforts to marry him to her +friends guaranteed him to be, he felt was owing greatly to the terms on +which Clarice had admitted him to the adventure of bringing up a family. +That a special fitness was required for admission to Mrs. Lessing's +circle he would have guessed even without the aid of print which +consistently described it as Our Best Society, for it was a Best +attested to by all the marks by which Clarice herself expressed the +essential fineness of things. + +One couldn't have told, from anything that appeared on the surface of +the Lessing's social environment, that life did not proceed there as it +did between Clarice and the Weatherals, by means of its subtler +sympathies, and proceed, at least so far as the women were concerned, on +a still higher plane of grace and harmony. It moved about her table and +across the lawns of Lessing's handsome country place, with such +soundless ease and perfection as it had glided for Peter through the +House with the Shining Walls. Or at least so it had seemed on those +occasions during the last few years when he had found himself wondrously +inside it. + +It had been accepted by Ellen on the mere certainty of Clarice's mother +having been one of the Thatcher Inwoods, that Clarice should enlarge +her social borders with Lessing's increasing means until they included +people among whom Ellen would have been miserably shy and out of tune. +But not Ellen herself guessed how much of Peter's admission to its +inaccessibility was owing to the returns from hardly snatched options +and long-nursed opportunities, coming in in checks of six figures. +Perhaps Clarice herself never knew. It was one of the things that went +with being a Thatcher Inwood, wherever an occasion presented a handle of +nobility, to seize by that and maintain it in the face of any contingent +smallness. Clarice wouldn't have introduced Peter to her friends if he +hadn't been fit, and it was part of the social creed of women like +Clarice Lessing, which takes almost the authority of religion, that he +wouldn't have been in a position to be introduced if he hadn't been fit. +So it had happened for the past two years that Peter had found himself +skirting the fringe of Best Society, and identifying it with the life he +had lived so long, sitting with his book open on his knees in their +little flat, with Ellen across the fire from him knitting white things +for Julian's children. But the idea that having come into this +neighbourhood of fine appreciations he was to take up his home and live +there, opened more slowly. It required more than one of Clarice's swift +hummingbird darts, more than the flutter of suggestion to brush its +petals awake for him. + +It lay so deep under all the years, the power of loving. He knew almost +nothing about it except that he had had it once, and that marriage +without it would be unthinkable, even such a marriage as Mrs. Lessing +had let him see was now possible to him. She had called with all her +delicate friendly skill, on something which only now under that summons +he began to miss. It was like a lost word in every sentence in which the +ordinary hopes of men are to be read, and he felt that until he found it +again all the help Mrs. Lessing could afford him would not enable him to +think of marriage as a thing desirable in itself. It was missing in him +still, when he came that night rather late to the apartment where only +the Japanese houseboy awaited him. One of the first things he had done +for Ellen with his increasing means, had been to buy back for her the +house at Bloombury with the garden and a bit of the orchard. She had +been there now since Decoration Day, retiring more and more into the +kindly village life as a point of vantage from which to mark with pride +the social distance that Peter travelled from her. It had been +understood from the beginning that she wasn't to go with him. The +tapping of her crutch was no more to be heard in the new gracious +existence than in the House where she had never followed him. Life for +Ellen was lived close at hand. There were hollyhocks and currant bushes +in her garden and Julian's children overran it. + +It was not Ellen then that Peter missed as he sat alone in the house +that night with his back to the lowered light and his gaze seeking the +river and the flitting shapes of boats that went up and down on it, +freighted with young voices and laughter. He missed the Lovely Lady. He +knew now why he had not been able to think of marriage in the way +Clarice held it out to him, as a happy contingency of his now being as +rich as he had intended to be. It was because he had not thought of her +clearly for a long time. + +There had been a period in the beginning of his life with Ellen, when +the lady of his dreams had been so near the surface of all his thinking +that she took on form and likeness from anything that was lovely and +young in his neighbourhood, but as things lovely and young drifted from +him with the years; and as the business took deeper and deeper hold on +his attention, she had become a mere floating figment, a live fluttering +spark in the very core of all his imaginings. + +She had been beside him, a pleasant, indeterminate presence in the long +journey she travelled from the printed page to the accompanying click of +Ellen's needles. Sometimes at the opera she took on a gossamer tint from +the singer's face, and longer ago than he could afford operas, he had +understood that all the beauty of the world, bursting apple buds, the +great curve of the surf that set the beaches trembling, derived somehow +its pertinence from her. Now at the age of forty he had ceased to think +very much about the Lovely Lady. + +It occurred to him that this might have something to do with his failure +to get a new relation to life out of his new wealth. + +It had struck Peter rather forlornly during the past few years that +there was little use he could put money to, except to make more money. +He could see by turning his head to the room behind him how little there +was there of what he had fancied once riches would bring him. The lines +of the room were good, the amount of the annual rent assured that to +him, the furniture was good and the rugs expensive. Ellen believed that +money in rugs was a good investment, particularly if the colours were +strong and would stand fading. There were some choice things here and +there, a vase and pictures which Peter had chosen for himself, though he +was aware, as he took them in under the dull glow, that Ellen had +arranged them in strict reference to the size of the frames, and that +the whole effect failed of satisfaction. He thought his life might be +somewhat like that room, full of good things but lacking the touch that +should set them in fruitful order. It stole over him as persuasively as +the warm growing smell of the park below him that the something missed +might be the touch and presence of the Lovely Lady. + + + + +II + + +It was the late end of the afternoon when Peter stepped off the train at +the Lessing's station and into the trap that was waiting for him. He +learned from Lessing's man that the family had been kept by the tennis +match at Maplemont and he was to come on to the house at his leisure. +That being the case, Peter took the reins himself and made a long detour +through the dust-smelling country roads, so that it was quite six when +he reached the house, and everybody dressing for the early dinner. + +He made so hasty a change himself in his fear of being late, that when +he came down to the living-room in a quarter of an hour there was no one +there to meet him. Absorbed particles of the bright day gave off in the +dusk and made it golden. There were honeysuckles on the pergola outside, +and in the room beyond a girl singing a quiet air, half-trilled and +half-forgotten. He heard the singer moving toward him through the vacant +house, of which the doors stood open to the evening coolness, and the +click of the electric button as she passed, and saw the rooms burst one +by one into the bloom of shaded lights. So she came, busy with the +hummed fragments of her songs, and turned the lamp full on Peter before +she was aware of him, but she was not half so much disconcerted. + +"You must be Mr. Weatheral," she said. "Mrs. Lessing sent me to say she +expected you. I am Miss Goodward." + +She gave him her hand for a gracious moment before she turned to what +had brought her so early down, the arrangement of two great bowls of +wild ferns and vines which a servant had just placed on either end of +the low mantlepiece. + +"We brought them in from Archer's Glen on the way home," she told him +over her shoulder, her hands busy with deft, quick touches. She was all +in white, which took a pearly lustre from the lamps, and for the moment +she was as beautiful as Peter believed her. A tiny unfinished phrase of +the song floated half consciously from her lips as a bubble. "They look +better so, don't you think?" As she stood off to measure the effect, it +seemed to Peter that the Spirit of the House had received him; it was so +men dream of home-coming, without sensible displacement of a life going +on in it, lovely and secure, as a bark slips into some still pool to its +moorings. He yielded himself naturally to the impersonal intimacy of her +welcome and all the sordid ways of his life led up to her. + +It was not all at once he saw it so. He kept watching her all that +evening as one watches a perfect thing, a bird or a dancer, sensing in +the slim turn of her ankle, the lithe throat, the delicate perfume that +she shook from her summer draperies, so many strokes of a master hand. +She was evidently on terms with the Lessings which permitted her +acceptance of him at the family valuation, but the perfection of her +method was such that it never quite sunk his identity as the junior +partner in his character of Uncle Peter. + +This was a nuance, if Peter had but known it, which Eunice Goodward +could have no more missed than she could have eaten with her knife. She +had been trained to the finer social adjustments as to a cult: Clarice's +game of persuading life to present itself with a smiling countenance, +played all in the key of personal relations. It was as if Nature, having +tried her hand at a great many ordinary persons, each with one gift of +sympathy or graciousness, had culled and compacted the best of them into +Eunice Goodward; which was precisely the case except that Peter through +his unfamiliarity with the Best Society couldn't be expected to know +that the intelligence which had put together so much perfectness was no +less calculating than that which goes to the matching of a string of +pearls. All that he got from it was precisely all that he was meant to +receive--namely, the conviction that she couldn't have charmed him so +had she not been altogether charming. + +And as yet he did not know what had happened to him. He thought, when he +awoke in the morning to a new realization of the satisfactoriness of +living, that the fresh air had done it, the breath of the nearby +untrimmed forest, the loose-leaved roses pressed against the pane +beginning to give off warm odours in the sun. Then he came out on the +terrace and saw Eunice Goodward, looking like a thin slip of the morning +herself, in a blue dress buttoned close to her figure with wide white +buttons and a tiny froth of white at the short sleeves and open throat. +Across her bosom it was caught with a blue stone set in dull silver, +which served also to hold in place a rose that matched the morning tint +of her skin. She was talking with the Lessings' chauffeur as Peter came +up with her and all her accents were of dismay. They were to have driven +over to Maplemont that afternoon, she explained to Peter, for the last +of the tennis sets, and now Gilmore had just told her that the car must +go to the shop for two or three days. She was so much more charming in +the way she forgave Gilmore for her evident disappointment that he, +being a young man and troubled by a sense of moral responsibility, was +quite overcome by it. + +"But, nonsense"; Peter was certain "there is always something can be +done to cars." There was, Gilmore assured him, but it took time to do +it, and to-morrow would be Sunday. "If you'd only thought to come down +in the motor yourself, sir----" the chauffeur reproached him. The truth +was that Peter hadn't a car of his own and Gilmore knew it. There was an +electric runabout which had gone down to Bloombury with Ellen, and a +serviceable roadster which was part of the office equipment, but the +rich Mr. Weatheral had never taken the pains to own a private car. Now, +as he hastily drew out his watch, it occurred to him that Lessing's +chauffeur was a fellow of more perspicuity than he had given him credit +for. The two men communicated wordlessly across the cool width of the +terrace steps. + +"At what hour," Peter wished to know, "would we have to leave here to +reach Maplemont in good time? Then if you can be ready to leave the +moment my car gets here...." He excused himself to go to the telephone; +half an hour later when he joined the family at breakfast he had +discovered some of the things that, besides making more money with it, +can be done with money. + +The knowledge suited him like his own garment, as if it had been lying +ready for him to put on when the occasion required it, and now became +him admirably. He perceived it to be a proper male function to produce +easily and with precision whatever utterly charming young ladies might +reasonably require. He appreciated Miss Goodward's acceptance of it as +she came down from the house bewilderingly tied into soft veils for the +afternoon's drive, as a part of her hall-marked fineness. If she +couldn't help knowing, taking in the car's glittering newness from point +to point, that its magnificence had materialized out of her simple wish +for it, she at least didn't allow him to think it was any more than she +would have expected of him. So completely did he yield himself to this +new sense of the fitness of things that it came as a shock to have her, +as soon as they had joined themselves to the holiday-coloured crowd that +streamed and shifted under the bright boughs of Maplemont, reft from him +by friendly, compelling voices, and particularly by Burton Henderson, +who played singles and went about bareheaded and singularly +self-possessed. It was unthinkable to Peter that, in view of her +recently discovered importance in putting him at rights with himself, +that he hadn't arranged with her that they were to be more together. For +the moment it was almost a derogation of her charm that she shouldn't +herself have recognized by some overt act her extraordinary opportunity. +And then in a moment more he perceived that she had recognized it. He +had only to wait, as he saw, and he would find himself pleasantly beside +her, and at each renewal of the excluding companionship, he was more +subtly aware that it was accorded not to anything he was but to what she +had it in her power so beautifully to make of him. + +So perfectly did she strike the key with him, when, in the intervals of +the afternoon's entertainment they found themselves sitting or walking +together, that he could not have imagined her to have been out of it, +not even in a rather long session after tea with Burton Henderson among +the rhododendrons, in which it was apparent from the young man's manner +that she hadn't at least been in tune with him. It occurred just as they +were leaving and served in the flutter of delay it occasioned to fix +the attention of all their party on Eunice coming out of the shrubbery +with young Henderson in her wake, batting aimlessly at the grass-tops +with the racquet which he still carried. There was an air of sulkiness +about him which caused Mrs. Lessing enigmatically to say that Eunice was +altogether too good to that young man. To which Lessing's "Well, if she +is, he doesn't seem to appreciate," served also to confirm Peter in the +role which the effect she produced on himself had created for him. He at +least appreciated the way in which she had made him feel himself the +Distributer of Benefits, to a degree which made it almost obligatory of +her to go on with it. + +Successfully as Miss Goodward had kept for Peter during the day his new +relation to his wealth on the one hand and society on the other, she +seemed that evening quite to have abandoned him. While the family was +having coffee on the terrace after dinner, she slipped away from them to +reappear lower down among the rose trees, her white dress gathering all +that was left of the lingering glow. The junior partner, feeling himself +never so much junior, though he knew it was but a scant year or two, +sat on through Lessing's inconsequential comment on business and the +day's adventures, hearing not a word; now and then his chair creaked +with the intensity of his preoccupation. It grew dusk and the lamps +blossomed in the house behind them; presently Clarice slipped away to +the children and the evening damp fell over the rose garden. Peter could +endure it no longer. He believed as he rose suddenly with a stretching +movement that he meant merely to relieve the tension of sitting by +pacing up and down; it was unaccountable therefore that he should find +himself at the edge of the terrace. He wondered why on earth Clarice +couldn't have helped him a little, and then as if in response to his +deep instinctive demand upon her, he heard her call softly to her +husband from the door of the house. At the scrape of Julian's chair on +the terrace tiling, Peter cast away his cigar and hurried into the dusk +of the garden. + +He found her at last by the herbacious border, keeping touch with the +flight of a sphinx-head moth along the tall white rockets of phlox. +Peter whipped out his handkerchief and dropped it deftly over the +fluttering wings. In a moment he had stilled them in his hand. Miss +Goodward cried out to him: + +"You've spoiled his happy evening!" + +"He's not hurt...." Peter laid the moth gently on a feathery flower +head, and the tiny whispering whirr began again. "I thought you wanted +him." + +"I did--but not to catch him," Miss Goodward explained. "I wanted just +to want him." + +"Ah, I'm afraid I'm one of those people with whom to want a thing is to +go after it," Peter justified himself. + +"So one gathers from what one hears." She brushed him as lightly with +the compliment as with the wings of a moth. "I wasn't really wanting him +so much as I was wanting to _be_ him for a while. Just to pass from one +lovely hour to another and nothing to pay! But we humans have always to +pay something." + +"Or some one pays for us." + +"Well, isn't that worse ... taking it out of somebody else?" + +"I'm not so sure; some people enjoy paying. It's not a bad feeling, I +assure you: being able to pay. Haven't you found that out yet?" + +"Not in Trethgarten Square." Mrs. Lessing had managed to let him know +during the day that her guest had been reared within the sacred pale of +those first families in whom the choice stock of humanness is refined by +being maintained at precisely the same level for at least three +generations. + +"In Trethgarten Square," Peter reminded her, "we are told that you +settle your account just by _being_; that you manage somehow to become +something so superior and delectable that the rest of us are willing to +pay for the privilege of having you about." He would have liked to add +that recently, no later in fact than the evening before, he had come to +think that this was so, but as she hesitated in her walk beside him, he +saw that she was concerned in putting the case to herself quite as much +as to him. + +"It's not that exactly; more perhaps that our whole thought about life +is to live it so that there won't be anything to pay. We have to manage +to add things up like a column of figures with nothing to carry. +Perhaps that's why we get so little out of it." + +"Don't you?"--he was genuinely surprised, "get anything out of it, I +mean." + +"Oh, but I'm a selfish beast, I suppose! I want more--more!" They swung +as she spoke into a broad beam of yellow light raying out from the +library window, and he saw by it that with the word she flung out her +arms with a lovely upward motion that lifted his mood to the crest of +audacity. + +"If you keep on looking like that," Peter assured her, "you'll get it." +He was struck dumb immediately after with apprehension. It sounded +daring, like a thing said in a book; but she took it as it came lightly +off the tip of his impulse, laughing. "Yes ... the great difficulty is +choosing which of so many things one really wants." They walked on then +in silence, the air darkling after the sudden shaft of illumination, the +light folds of her scarf brushing his sleeve. Peter was considering how +he might say, without precipitation, how suddenly she had limited and +defined all the things that he wanted by expressing them so perfectly +in herself, when she interrupted him. + +"There's our moth again," she pointed; "he settles it by taking all of +them. It's a possibility denied to us." + +"Even he," Peter insisted, "has to reckon with such incidents as my +dropping on him just now. I might have wanted him for a collection." + +"Oh, if he takes us into account it must be as men used to think of the +gods walking." Suddenly the familiar beds and hedges widened for Peter; +they stretched warm and tender to the borders of youth and the unmatched +Wonder.... It was so they had talked when they walked together in the +Garden which was about the House.... + +For some time after Miss Goodward left him Peter remained walking up and +down, thinking of many things and unable to think of them clearly +because of a pleasant blur of excitement in his brain. As he came +finally back to the house he heard the Lessings talking from behind one +of the open windows. + +"My word, that car was never out of the shop before," Julian was saying. +"He's a _goner!_" + +"And that lovely, dusty, brown colour that goes so well with her hair! +Who would have thought Peter would be so noticing." + +"It couldn't have cost him a cent under seven thousand." Julian was +certain, "and carrying it off with me the way he did--bought the six +cylinder after all, he had.... I'll bet old Peter don't know a cylinder +from a stomach pump." + +Clarice was evidently going on with her own line of thought. "It will be +the best thing that ever happened to Eunice if she can only be got to +see it." + +"Well, if she don't her mother will see it for her." Lessing's voice +died into a subdued chuckle as Peter passed under it on the dew-damp +lawn, but there was no revelation in it for the junior partner. He had +already found out what was the matter with him and what he meant to do +about it. + + + + +III + + +Whatever the process of becoming engaged to Eunice Goodward lacked of +dramatic interest, it made up to Peter by being such a tremendous +adventure for him to become engaged to anybody. + +He had gone through life much as his unfriended youth had strayed +through the city streets, aching for the walled-up splendour--all the +world's chivalries, tendernesses, passions--known to him only by +glimmers and reflections on the plain glass of duty. Now at a word the +glass dissolved and he was free to wander through the rooms crammed with +imperishable poets' wares. He walked there not only as one who has the +price to buy, but himself made one of the splendid things of earth by +this same word which her mere being pronounced to him. + +He paid himself for years of denials and repressions by the discovery of +being able to love in such a key. For he meant quite simply to marry +Eunice Goodward if she would have him, and it was no vanity which gave +him hope, but a tribute to her fineness as being able to see herself so +absolutely the one thing his life waited for. He knew himself, modestly, +no prize for her except as he was added to by inestimable passion. +Whatever she saw in him as a man, for her not to recognize the immortal +worth of what he was able to become under her hand, was to subtract +something from her perfections. In her acceptance would lie the Queen's +touch, redeeming him from all commonness. + +He made his first venture within a week after their first meeting, in a +call on Miss Goodward and her mother in Trethgarten Square, where he +found their red brick, vine-masked front distinguishable among half a +hundred others by being kept open as late as the middle of June. To +their being marooned thus in a desert of boarded-up doors and shuttered +windows, due, as Eunice had frankly and charmingly let him know, to +their being poor among their kind, he doubtless owed it that no other +callers came to disturb the languid afternoon. Seen against her proper +background of things precious but worn, and in the style of a preceding +generation, the girl showed even lovelier than before, with the rich, +perfumed quality of a flower held in a chipped porcelain vase, a flower +moreover secure in its own perfectness, waiting only to be worn, +disdaining alike to offer or resist. Her very quietness--she left him, +in fact, almost wholly to her mother--had the air of condoning his +state, of understanding what he was there for and of finding it somehow +an accentuation of the interest they let him see that he had for them. +He found them, mother and daughter, more alike, in spite of their +natural and evident difference of years, more of a degree than he was +accustomed to find mother and daughters in the few houses where the +business of growing rich had admitted him, as though they had been +carved out of the same material, by the same distinguished artist, at +different times in his career. + +It contributed to the effect of his having found, not by accident, but +by seeking, a frame of life kept waiting for him, kept warm and +conscious. Presently Eunice poured tea for them, and the intimacy of her +remembering as she did, how he took it, had its part in the freedom +which he presently found for offering hospitality on his own account, +not at his home, as he explained to them, his sister being away, but say +a dinner at Briar Crest to which they might motor out pleasantly +Saturday afternoon, returning by moonlight. He offered Briar Crest +tentatively on the strength of the Lessings having once given a dinner +there, and was relieved to find that he had made no mistake. + +"A great many of your friends go there," Mrs. Goodward allowed; "the Van +Stitarts, Eunice, you remember." + +"The Gherberdings are there now, mamma; I'm sure we shall enjoy it." + +Having crossed thus at one fortunate stroke the frontiers of social +observance, to which Clarice had but edged her way in the right of being +a Thatcher Inwood, Peter ventured on Friday to suggest by telephone that +since dinner must be late, the ladies should meet him at what he had +taken pains to ascertain was the correct one of huge uptown hotels, for +tea before starting. It was Mrs. Goodward who answered him and she whom +he met in the white, marble tessellated tea-room, explaining that Eunice +had had some shopping to do--they were really leaving on Saturday--and +Mr. Weatheral was to order tea without waiting. They had time, however, +for the tea to be drunk and for Mrs. Goodward to become anxious in a +gentle, ladylike way, before it occurred to Peter to suggest that Miss +Goodward might be lurking anywhere in the potted palm and marble +pillared labyrinth, waiting for _them_, suffering equal anxieties, and +dreadful to think of in their present replete condition, languishing for +tea. His proposal to go and look for her was accepted with just the +shade of deprecation which admitted him to an amused tolerance of the +girl's delinquencies, as if somehow Eunice wouldn't have dared to be +late with him had she not had reason more than ordinary for counting on +his indulgence. + +"You'll find," Mrs. Goodward let him know, "that we require a deal of +looking after, Eunice and I." + +"Ah, I only hope you'll find that I'm equal to it." Peter had answered +her with so little indirection that it drew from the older woman a +quick, mute flush of sympathy. For a moment the homeliness of his lean +countenance was relieved with so redeeming a touch of what all women +most wish for in all men that she met it with an equal simplicity. "For +myself I am sure of it," but lifted next moment to a lighter key, with +a smile very like her daughter's dragged a little awry by the use of +years, "as for Eunice, you'll first have to lay hands on her." + +With this permission he rose and made the circuit of the semi-divided +rooms, coming out at last into the dim rotunda, forested with clustered +porphyry columns, and there at last he caught sight of her. She had but +just stepped into its shaded coolness out of the hot, bright day, and +hung for a moment, in the act of furling her parasol, in which he was +about to hail her, until he discovered by his stepping into range from +behind one of the green pillars, that she was also in the act of saying +good-bye to Burton Henderson. There was a certain finality in the way +she held out her hand to him which checked Peter in the hospitable +impulse to include the younger man in the afternoon's diversion. He +stepped back the moment he saw that she was having trouble with her +escort, defending herself by her manner from something accusing in his. +Not to seem to spy upon her, Weatheral made his way back though the +coatroom without disclosing himself. From the door of it he timed his +return so as to meet her face to face as she came up with Mrs. Goodward +and was rewarded for it by the gayety of her greeting and the +unaffectedness of her attack of the fresh relay of toasted muffins and +tea. + +"Absolutely famished," she told them, "and the shops are _so_ +fascinating! You'd forgive me, Mr. Weatheral, if you could see the heaps +and heaps of lovely things simply begging to be bought; it seemed +positively unkind to come away and leave any of them." As she said +nothing whatever about the young man, it seemed unlikely that she could +have him much on her mind. She had a new way, very charming to Peter, of +surrendering the afternoon into his hands; let him ask nothing of her +she seemed to say, but to enjoy herself. She built out of their being +there before her, a very delightful supposition of her mother and Mr. +Weatheral, between them having made a little space for her to be gay in +and simple and lovely after her own kind. If she took any account of +them it was such as a dancer might who, practising a few steps for the +mere joy and pride of it, finds herself unexpectedly surrounded by an +interested and smiling audience. + +If, however, with the memory of that afternoon upon him, Peter had gone +down to Fairport in the latter part of July with the expectation of +resuming the part of impresario to her charm, he suffered a sharp +disappointment. He found the Goodwards, not in the expensive caravansary +in which he installed himself, but in a smaller tributary house set back +from the main hotel though not quite disconnected with it; for quiet, +Mrs. Goodward told him, though he guessed quite as much from economy. + +"It's wonderful, really, what they do with so little," Clarice, with her +fine discriminations in the obligations of friendship, had generously +let him know. "Eunice hasn't anything, positively not _any_thing in +comparison with what people of her class usually have. And with her +taste, you know, there must be things she's just aching for, that +somehow you can't give her." You couldn't, indeed. Though Peter made +excuses enough for giving her the use of his car, and giving it to her +shorn even of the implication of his society, there were few occasions +when he could do even so much as that. He couldn't even give her his +appreciations. + +For at Fairport the Goodwards were quite in the heart of all that Peter +himself failed to understand that he couldn't possibly be. It was not +that he wasn't to the extent at least of sundry invitations given and +accepted, "in" as much of the Best Society as Fairport afforded. Mrs. +Goodward saw to that, and there were two or three whom he had met at the +Lessings' as well as men to whom the figure of his income was the cachet +of eligibility. It wasn't indeed that he wasn't liked, and that quite at +his proper worth, but that he couldn't somehow manage it so that the +Best Society cared in the least whether he liked it. He could see, in a +way, where Clarice had been at work for him; but the poison that was +dropped in his cup was the certainty that the way for him had to be +"worked." The discovery that he couldn't just find his way to Eunice +Goodward's side by the same qualities that had placed him beside the +males of her circle in point of property and power, that he couldn't +without admission to that circle, properly court her, hemmed him in +bewilderingly. + +Her method of eluding him, if there were method in it, left him feeling +not so much avoided as prevented by the moves of a game he hadn't meant +to play. So greatly it irked his natural simplicity to be banded about +by the social observances of the place, that it might have led him to +irrecoverable mistakes had it not been for the hand held out to him by +Mrs. Goodward. + +He perceived on closer acquaintance, that this lady's fine serenity of +manner was due largely to her never admitting to her mind the upsetting +possibility. She thought her world into acceptable shape and held it +there by the simple process of ignoring the eccentricities of its axis. + +Peter would have admired, if his unsophistication had allowed him, the +facility with which she made it revolve now about their mutual pursuit +of Eunice through the rattle and cheapness of what was known as "the +Burton Henderson set." As it was against just such social inconsequence +that Peter felt himself strong to defend her, he fell easily into the +key of crediting the girl's sudden, bewildering flight to it as a mere +midsummer madness. + +"It's the way with girls, I fancy," Mrs. Goodward had said to him, +strolling up and down the hotel veranda where through the wide French +windows they had glimpses of Eunice whirling away on the ice polished +floor of the ballroom within; "they cling the more to gayety as they see +the graver things of life bearing down upon them." + +"You think she sees that?" + +"Ah, there's much a mother sees, Mr. Weatheral----" + +"You would, of course," he accepted. + +"It's a woman's part, seeing; there's an instinct in us not to see too +soon." She gave him the benefit of her sweet weighted smile. + +Peter lived greatly on these things. He was so sure of himself, of the +reality and strength of his passion; he had a feeling of its being quite +enough for them to go on, an inexhaustible, fairy capital out of which +almost anything that Eunice Goodward desired might be drawn. It was +fortunate that he found his passion so self-sufficing, for there was +little enough that Eunice afforded it by way of sustenance. For a week +he no more than kept in sight of her in the inevitable summer round; he +did not dance and the game of cards he could play was gauged to what +Ellen could manage in an occasional quiet evening at the Lessings'. + +"I suppose," Eunice had said to him on an occasion when he had known +enough to decline an invitation for an afternoon's play to which Burton +Henderson was carrying her away, "that the stakes we play for aren't any +temptation to _you_." + +"I think that they're out of proportion to the trouble you have to be at +to win them." + +"Oh, if you don't care for the game----" + +"I don't." And then casting about for a phrase that explained him more +happily, "Put it that I like to cut out my job and go to it." She gave +him a quick, condoning flash of laughter; the phrase was Lessing's and +out of her recognition of it he drew, loverlike, that assurance of +common understanding so dear to lovers. "Put it," he ventured further, +"that I don't like to see myself balked of the prize by the way the +cards are dealt." + +"Ah, but that's what makes it a game. I'd no idea you were such +a--revolutionist." + +"Evolutionist," he corrected, happy in having touched the subtler note +behind their persiflage. "I've all science on my side for the most +direct method." After all, why should he let even the Best Society deal +the cards for him? Should not a man sweep the boards of whatever kept +him from his natural mate? + +That was on Tuesday, and the Thursday following he had asked the +Goodwards to motor over to Lighthouse Reef with him. He did not know +quite what he meant to bring about on this occasion; he had so much the +feeling of its being an occasion, the invitation had been so pointedly +given and accepted, it was with difficulty he adjusted himself to the +discovery on arriving at their hotel with the car, that Eunice had gone +to play tennis instead. + +"The time is so short," Mrs. Goodward apologized; "she felt she must +make the most of it." She had to leave it there, not being able to make +a game of tennis in the hot sun seem more of a diversion than the steady +pacing of the luxurious car along the road which laced the forest to +the singing beaches. She had to let her sidewise smile do what it could +toward making the girl's bald evasion of her engagement seem the mere +flutter and hesitancy of besieged femininity. For the moment she was as +much "outside" so far as her daughter was concerned as Peter was of the +select bright circle in which she moved. + +The way opened before them, beautiful in late bloom and heavy fern, +above which the sea wind kept a perpetual movement of aliveness. + +"Eunice _will_ miss it," Mrs. Goodward rallied; "such a perfect +afternoon!" She gave him the oblique smile again, weighted this time +with the knowledge of all that Peter hadn't been able or hadn't tried to +keep from her. "It isn't easy, is it," she went on addressing her speech +to whatever, at the mention of her daughter's name, hung in the air +between them, "to stand by and see other people's great moments hover +over them. One would like so to lend a hand. And one is sure of nothing +so much as that if they are really to _be_ big, one mustn't." + +"If you feel that," Peter snatched at encouragement, "that it is really +the big thing for her--what I'm sure you can't help knowing what I +mean--what I hope." + +"What _I_ feel----? After all, it's _her_ feeling, my dear Mr. +Weatheral, that we have to take into account. It wouldn't be fair for me +to attempt to answer to you for that!" + +"And of course if I can't _make_ her feel...." He did not trust himself +to a conclusion. + +They found, however, when the road issued on the coast opposite the +great bursting bulks of spray, that Eunice's desertion and the +extenuation of it to which they had lent themselves, had put them out of +the mood for the high wind and warring surf of the Reef. Accordingly +they turned aside at Peter's suggestion to have tea at a little country +inn farther back in the hills, where the pound of the sea was reduced to +a soft, organ-booming bass to which the shrill note of the needles +countered in perfect tune. The tea garden, the favourite port of call +for afternoon drives from the resorts hereabouts, lay back of the +hostelry in a narrow, ferny glen from which springs issued. As Peter led +the way up its rocky stair, they could hear the light laughter of a +party just rising from one of the round rustic tables. The group +descending poured past them a summer-coloured runnel down the little +glen, and left them face to face with Eunice, who had lingered, her +dress caught on a point of the rustic chair. + +"Mamma--you!" She looked trapped, accused, though sheer astonishment +held the others dumb. "We finished the game----" she began and stopped +short; after all, her manner seemed to say, why shouldn't she have tea +there with her friends? She made as if to sweep past after them but Mrs. +Goodward never moved from the narrow path. She was more embarrassed, +Peter saw, than her daughter, and as plainly at bay. + +"Now that we are here----" she began in her turn. + +"Now that you have followed me here," the girl rang out, "what is it +that you have to say to me?" She was white and a bright flame spot +showed on either cheek. + +"I--oh," the elder woman by an effort drew the remnant of the grand +manner about her; "it is Mr. Weatheral, I think, who might have +something to say." She caught the occasion as it were on the wing. Peter +heard the quick breath behind him with which she grasped it. "Now that +you are here, however, I'll tell your party that you will be driving +home with us." She gathered up her draperies and was gone down the path +she had come before either of the others thought to stop her. Eunice had +not made a move to do so. She stood clasping the back of the chair from +which she had freed her dress, and looked across it mutinously at Peter. + +"And what," she quivered, "has Mr. Weatheral to say to me?" + +"There is nothing," he told her, "that I would say to you, Miss +Goodward, unless you wished to hear it." His magnanimity shamed her a +little. + +"I broke my engagement to you," she admitted, "broke it to come here +with--the others. I haven't any excuse to offer you." + +"And when," Peter demanded of her, "have I asked any other excuse of you +for anything that you chose to do except that you chose it. There _was_ +something I wished to say to you, that I hoped for a more auspicious +occasion...." He hurried on with it suddenly as a thing to be got over +with at all hazards. "It was to say that I hoped you might not find it +utterly beyond you to think of marrying me." He saw her sway a little, +holding still to her chair, and moved toward her a step, dizzy himself +with the sudden onset of emotion. "But now that it is said, if it +distresses you we will say no more about it." She waved him back for a +moment without altering her strained, trapped attitude. + +"Have you said this to mamma? And has she--has she said anything to you? +About me, I mean; how I might take it, or anything?" + +"She said that she couldn't answer for you; that it was your feeling +that must be taken into account. She put me, so to speak, on my own feet +in so far as _that_ was concerned." He waited for her answer to that, +and none coming, though he saw that she grew a little easier, he went on +presently. "There is, however, much that I feel ought to be said about +my feeling for you, what it means to me, what I hoped----" She stopped +him with a gesture; he could see her lovely manner coming back to her as +quiet comes to the surface of a smitten pool. + +"That--one may take for granted, may one not? Since you _have_ asked me, +that the feeling that goes to it is all I have a right to ask?" + +"Quite, quite," he assured her. "It may be," he managed to smile upon +her here for the easing of her sweet discomposure, "it may very easily +be that I was thinking too much of my pleasure in saying it." + +"It would, then, be a pleasure?" She had the air of snatching at that as +something concrete, graspable. + +"It would, and it wouldn't. I mean if you were bothered by it. You could +take everything for granted, everything." + +"Even," she insisted, "to the point of taking it for granted that you +would take things for granted from me: that you wouldn't expect +anything--any expression, anything more than just accepting you?" + +"Ah!" he cried, the wonder, the amazement of success breaking upon him. +"If you accepted me what more _could_ I expect." He had clasped the hand +which she held out to check him and held it against his heart firmly +that she shouldn't see how he trembled. + +"I haven't, you know," she reminded him, "but if I was sure--very sure +that you wouldn't ask any more of me than thinking, I ... might think +about it." She was trembling now, though her hand was so cold, and +suddenly a tear gathered and dropped, splashing her fine wrist. + +"Oh, my dear, my dear!" he cried, moved more than he had thought it +possible to be; "you can be perfectly sure that there will never be +anything between you and me that shall not be exactly as you wish." He +suited his action to the word, kissing the wet splash and letting her +go. + +"Why, then," she recovered herself with the smile that was now strangely +like her mother's, sweeter for being smiled a little awry, "the best +thing you can do is to find poor mamma and let us give her a cup of +tea." + + + + +IV + + +"Peter, have you any idea what I am thinking about?" + +"Not in the least, Ellen," which was not strictly the truth. He +supposed she must be thinking naturally of the news he had told her not +an hour since, of his engagement to Eunice Goodward. It lay so close to +the surface of his own mind at all times that the slightest stir of +conversation, like the wind above a secret rose, seemed always about to +disclose it. They were sitting on the porch at Bloombury and the pointed +swallows pitched and darted about the eaves. + +"It was the smell of the dust that reminded me," said Ellen, "and the +wild rose at the turn of the road; you can smell it as plain as plain +when the air lifts a little. Do you remember a picnic that we were +invited to and couldn't go? It was on account of being poor ... and I +was just finding it out. I found out a good many things that summer; +about my always going to be lame and what it would mean to us. It was +dreadful to me that I couldn't be lame just by myself, but I had to mix +up you and mother in it." + +"We were glad, Ellen, to be mixed up in it if it made things easier for +you." + +"I know ... times I felt that way about it too, but that was when I was +older ... as if it sort of held us all together; like somebody who had +belonged to us all and had died. Only it was me that died, the me that +would have been if I hadn't been lame.... Well, I hadn't thought it out +so far that first summer; I just hated it because it kept us from doing +things like other people. You were fond of Ada Brown, I remember, and it +was because I was lame and we were so poor and all, that you couldn't go +with her and she got engaged to Jim Harvey. I hope you don't think I +have a bad heart, Peter, but I was always glad that Ada didn't turn out +very well. Every time I saw her getting homelier and kind of bedraggled +like, I said to myself, well, I've saved Peter from that at any rate. I +couldn't have borne it if she had turned out the kind of a person you +ought to have married." + +"You shouldn't have worried, Ellen; very few men marry the first woman +they are interested in." + +"There was a girl you used to write home about--at that boarding-house. +I used to get you to write. I daresay you thought I was just curious. +But I was trying to find out something that would make me perfectly sure +she wasn't good enough for you. She was a typewriter, wasn't she?" + +"Something of that sort." + +"Well!" Ellen took him up triumphantly, "you wouldn't have wanted to be +married to a typewriter _now!"_ + +"I never really thought of marrying one, Ellen. I'm sure everything has +turned out for the best." + +"That's what I'm trying to tell you. You see I was determined it should +turn out that way. I said, what was the use of being lame and being a +burden to you unless there was something _meant_ by it. I'd have fretted +dreadfully if I hadn't felt that there was something to come out of it. +And it has come.... Peter, you'd rather I'd saved you for this than +anything that might have happened?" + +"Much rather, Ellen." + +It had surprised him in the telling, to see how accurately his sister +had gauged the worldly advantage of his marriage. If Eunice Goodward had +been a piece of furniture, Ellen couldn't have appraised her better at +her obvious worth: beauty and character and family and the mysterious +cachet of society. Clarice had been at work there, too, he suspected. +Miss Goodward fitted in Ellen's mind's eye into her brother's life and +fortune as a picture into its frame. + +"I'm very glad you feel that way about it, Ellen," he said again; he was +on the point of telling her about the House of Shining Walls. The +material from which he had drawn its earliest furnishings lay all about +them, the receding blue of the summer sky, the aged, arching apple +boughs. The scent of the wilding rose came faintly in from the country +road--suddenly his sister surprised him with a flash of rare insight. + +"I guess there can't anything keep us from the best except ourselves," +she said. "Being willing to put up with the second best gives us more +trouble than the Lord ever meant for us. Think of the way I've always +wanted children--but if they'd been my real own, they'd have been +sickly, likely, or even lame like me, or just ordinary like the only +kind of man who would have married me. As it is, I've had Clarice's and +now----" She broke off with a quick, old-maidish colour. + +Ellen had gone so far as to name all of Peter's children in the days +when nothing seemed so unlikely; now in the face of his recent +engagement she would have thought it indelicate. + +"_She_ would have liked you marrying so well, Peter," she finished with +a backward motion of her head toward the room where the parlour set, +banished long ago from the town house, symbolized for Ellen the brooding +maternal presence. + +"Yes, she would have liked it." There came back to him with deep +satisfaction his mother's appraisement of young Mrs. Dassonville, who +must, as he recalled her, have been shaped by much the same frame of +life as Eunice Goodward--the Lovely Lady. The long unused phrase had +risen unconsciously to his lips on the day that he had brought Eunice +her ring. He had spent a whole week in the city choosing it; three +little flawless, oblong emeralds set with diamonds, almost encircling +her finger with the mystic number seven. He had discovered on the day +that she had accepted him, that it had to be emeralds to match the +green lights that her eyes took on in the glen from the deep fern, the +mossy bank and the green boughs overhead. On the terrace at Lessings' +under a wide June sky he had supposed them to be blue; but there was no +blue stone of that sky colour of sufficient preciousness for Eunice +Goodward. + +She had been very sweet about the ring, touched with grateful surprise +for its beauty and its taste. Something he could see of relief, of +assurance, flashed and fell between the two women as she showed it to +her mother. They had taken him so beautifully on trust, they couldn't +have known, he reflected, whether he would rise at all to the delicate, +balanced observation of life among them; it was evidence, the emerald +circlet, of how satisfyingly he had risen. The look that passed between +mother and daughter was like a spark that lighted as it fell, an +unsuspected need of him as man merely, the male element, security, +dependability, care. His first response to it was that of a swimmer who +has struck earth under him; he knew in that flash where he was, by what +familiar shores; and the whole effect, in spite of him was of the +sudden shrinkage of that lustrous sea in which his soul and sense had +floated. It steadied him, but it also for the moment narrowed a little +the horizon of adventure. It was the occasion that Eunice took to define +for him his status as an engaged man. + +He kept as far as he was able his compact of expecting nothing of her, +except of course that he couldn't avoid expecting that their arrangement +would lead in the natural course to marriage. She had met him more than +halfway in that, agreeing to an earlier date than he had thought +compatible with the ritual of engagements in the Best Society. She had +managed, however, that Peter should present her with her summer freedom: +the engagement was not even to be announced until their return to town. +And in the meantime Peter was to find a house. He had offered her travel +for that first year. Europe, which he had scarcely glimpsed, glittered +and allured. But travel, Eunice let him know, went much better when you +had a place to come back to. He saw at once how right was everything she +did. Well, then, a house on Fillmore Avenue? + +"Oh--shall we be so rich as that, Peter?" He divined some embarrassment +in her as to the scale in which they were to live. "We'll want something +in the country, too," she reminded him. + +"I've a couple of options at Maplemont----" + +"Oh, Maplemont----" She liked that also, he perceived. + +"And a place in Florida. Lessing and I bought it the winter the children +had the diphtheria. They've a very pretty bungalow; we could put up +something like it for ourselves--if you wouldn't mind my sister +occasionally. Ellen isn't happy at hotels." + +"Mind! with all you're giving me! You won't think it's just the money, +Peter;" she had a very charming hesitancy about it. "It's what money +stands for, beauty, and suitability--and--everything." He was very +tender with her. + +"It's not that I have such a pile of it either," he assured her, "though +I turn over a great deal in the course of a year. It's easier making +money than people think." + +"Easier for everybody?" There was a certain eagerness in the look and +voice. + +"Easier for those who know how. I'm only forty, and I've learned; +there's not much I couldn't get if I set about it. It's a kind of a +gift, perhaps, like painting or music, but there's a great deal to be +learned, too." + +"And some haven't the gift to learn, perhaps." For some reason she +sighed.... He was turning all this over in his mind when suddenly Ellen +recalled him. + +"Have you told Clarice yet?" + +"I mean to, Sunday, if you don't mind my not coming down to you. Miss +Goodward is spending the week end at Maplemont, and by staying at +Julian's----" + +"Of _course_." Ellen sympathized. "I shall want to know what Clarice +says." She never did know exactly, for when Clarice gave Peter her +congratulations in the terrace garden after dinner, she missed, +extraordinarily for her, the felicitous note. + +"I'm so happy for Eunice, you can't imagine," she insisted. "I've always +said we've none of us known what Eunice can do until she's had her +opportunity. And now with all the background you can give her---- You'll +see!" + +He didn't quite know what he was to see except that if Eunice were to be +in the picture it was bound to be satisfying. But Mrs. Lessing was not +done with him. "For all her being so beautiful and so well placed," she +went on, "Eunice has never had any life at all, not what you might call +a life. And she might so easily have missed this. It is hard for girls +to realize sometimes that the success of marriage depends on real +qualities in the man, in mastery over things and not just over her +susceptibilities. It is quite the most sensible thing I've known Eunice +to do." + +"Only," Peter reminded her for his part, "I'm not just exactly doing it +because it is sensible." Her "of course not" was convinced enough to +have stilled the vague ruffling of his mind, without doing it. He didn't +object to having his qualifications as Eunice Goodward's husband taken +solidly, but why dwell upon them when it was just the particular +distinction of his engagement that it had the intensity, the spiritual +extension which was supposed to put it out of reach of material +considerations. Even Ellen had done better by him than this. + +He was forced, however, to come back to the substance of Mrs. Lessing's +comment a few days later when he was being dined at the club by a +twice-removed cousin of the Goodward's, the upright, elderly symbol of +the male sanction which was the most that his fiancee's fatherless +condition could furnish forth. The man was cordial enough; he was even +prepared to find Peter likable; but even more on that account to measure +his relation to Miss Goodward in terms of its being a "good thing." + +"It's not, you know," his host couldn't forebear to remind him, "exactly +the sort of a marriage we expected of Eunice; but if the girl is +satisfied----" + +"If I hadn't satisfied myself on that point----" Peter reminded him in +his turn. + +"Quite so, quite so ... girls have notions sometimes; one never quite +knows ... You'll keep on with your--just _what_ is it you do such +tremendous things with; one hears of course that you _do_ do them----" + +"Real estate, brokerage," Peter enlightened him. "I shall certainly keep +on with it. Isn't one supposed to have all the more need of it when +there's an establishment to keep up?" + +The symbol waved a deprecating hand. "You'll find it rather an +occupation to keep up with Eunice, I'm thinking. I've a notion she'll go +it, once she has the chance." + +"If by going it, you mean going out a great deal, seeing the world and +having it in to see her, well, why shouldn't she, so long as I have the +price?" He could only take it good-naturedly. It was amusing when you +came to think of it, that a man who would contribute to the sum of his +wife's future perhaps, the price of a silver tea salver, should so hold +him to account for it. Nevertheless the talk left a faint savour of +dryness. It was part of his new pride in himself as a possession of hers +that he should in all things come up to the measure of men, but the one +thing which should justify his being so ticketed and set aside by them +as the Provider, the Footer-up of Accounts, was the assurance which only +she could give, of his being the one thing, good or bad, which could be +made to answer for her happiness. + +Walking home by the river to avoid as far as possible the baked, +oven-smelling streets, he was aware how strangely the whole earth ached +for her. He was here walking, as he had been since his first seeing her, +at the core of a great light and harmony, and walking alone in it. If +just loving her had been sufficient occupation for his brief courtship, +for the present it failed him. For he was not only alone but lonely. He +saw her swept aside by the calculating crowd--strange that Ellen and +Clarice should be a part of it--not only out of reach of his live +passion, but beyond all speech. Alone in his room he felt suddenly faint +for the want of her. He turned off the light with which he had first +flooded it, for the flare of the street came feebly in through the +summer leafage, and sat sensing the need of her as a thing to be handled +and measured, a benumbing, suffocating presence. As he sat, a sound of +music floated by, and a thin pencil of light from a pleasure barge on +the river flitted from window to window, travelling the gilt line of a +picture-frame and the dark block of a picture that hung over his bed. +And as it touched in passing the high ramping figure of a knight in +armour, the old magic worked. He felt himself flung as it were across +great distances, and dizzy with the turn, to her side. He was there to +maintain in the face of all worldly reckoning, the excluding, spiritual +quality of their relation. The more his engagement to Eunice Goodward +failed of being the usual, the expected thing, the more authority it +derived for its supernal sources. It took the colour of true romance +from its unlikelihood. Peter turned on the light, and drawing paper to +him, began to write. + +"Lovely Lady," the letter began, and as if the words had been an +incantation, the room was full and palpitating with his stored-up +dreams. They came waking and crowding to fill out the measure of his +unconsummated passion, and they had all one face and one likeness. Late, +late he was still going on with it.... + +"And so," he wrote, "I have come to the part of the story that was not +in the picture, that I never knew. The dragon is slain and the knight +has just begun to understand that the Princess for whom it was done is +still a Princess; and though you have fought and bled for them, +princesses must be approached humbly. And he did not know in the least +how to go about it for in all his life the knight could never have +spoken to one before. You have to think of that when you think of him at +all, and of how he must stand even with his heart at her feet, hardly +daring to so much as call her attention to it. For though he knows very +well that it is quite enough to hope for and more than he deserves, to +be able to spend his whole life serving her, love, great love such as +one may have for princesses, aches, aches, my dear, and needs a +comforting touch sometimes and a word of recognition to make it beat +more steadily and more serviceably for every day." + +He went out that night to post his letter when it was done, for though +there was not time for an answer to it, he was going down to her on +Saturday, he liked to think of it running before him as a torch to light +the way which, even while he slept, he was so happily traversing. He was +quite trembling with the journey he had come, when on Saturday she met +him, floating in summer draperies and holding out a slim ringed hand, +and a cool cheek to glance past his lips like a swallow. + +"You had my letter, dear?" + +"Such a lovely letter, Peter, I couldn't think of trying to answer it." + +"Oh, it wasn't to be answered--at least not by another----" He released +her lest she should be troubled by his trembling. + +"I should think not!" She was more than gracious to him. "It's a wonder +to me, Peter, you never thought of writing. You have such a beautiful +vocabulary." But even that did not daunt him, for he knew as soon as he +had looked on her again, that loving Eunice Goodward was enough of an +occupation. + + + + +V + + +The senior partner of Weatheral, Lessing & Co., was exactly the sort of +man, when his physicians ordered him abroad for two years, with the +intimation that there might even worse happen to him, to make so little +fuss about it that he got four inches of type in a leading paper the +morning of his departure and very little more. Lessing would certainly +have been at the steamer to see him off, except for being so much taken +up with adjustments of the business made necessary by Peter's going out +of it; and his sister Ellen never went out in foggy weather, seldom so +far from the house in any case. Besides, she declared that if she once +saw Peter disappearing down the widening water she should never be able +to rid herself of the notion of his being quite overwhelmed by it, +whereas if he sent on his trunks the day before, and walked quietly out +in the morning with his suitcase, she could persuade herself that he had +merely run down to Bloombury for a few days and would be back on Monday. +And having managed his leave-taking as he did most personal matters, to +please Ellen, who though she had never been credited with an +imagination, seemed likely to develop one in the exigencies of getting +along without Peter, he had no sense of having done anything other than +to please himself. He found a man to carry his suitcase as soon as he +was out of the house, and walked the whole way to the steamer; for if +one has been ordered out of all activity there is still a certain +satisfaction in going out on your own feet. + +It was an extremely ill-considered day, wet fog drawn up to the high +shouldering roofs and shrugged off, like a nervous woman's shawl. But +whether it sulked over his departure or smiled on him for remembrance, +would not have made any difference to Peter, who, whatever the papers +said of the reason for his going abroad, knew that there would be +neither shade nor shine for him, nor principalities nor powers until he +had found again the House of the Shining Walls. As soon as he had +bestowed his belongings in his stateroom, he went out on the side of the +deck farthest from the groups of leave-taking, and stood staring down, +as if he considered whether the straightest route might not lie in that +direction, into the greasy, shallow hollows of the harbour water, at the +very moment when the Burton Hendersons, over their very late coffee, had +discovered the item of his departure. + +Mrs. Henderson balanced her spoon on the edge of her cup while her +husband read the paragraph aloud to her. + +"You don't suppose," she said, as if it might be an interesting even if +regrettable possibility, "that _I_--that our affair--had anything to do +with it?" + +"If it did," admitted her husband, with the air of not thinking it +likely, but probably served him right, "it has taken a long time to get +at him. Two years, isn't it, since you threw him over for a better man?" + +"Oh, I'm not so sure of your being a better man, Bertie; I liked you +better----" + +Mr. Burton Henderson accepted his wife's amendment with complacency. + +"I don't believe Weatheral appreciated the distinction. Men like that +have a sort of money crust that prevents the ordinary perceptions from +getting through to them." This illustration appeared on second thoughts +so illuminating that it carried him a little further. "Perhaps that's +the reason it has taken him so long to tumble after he has been hit; it +has just got through to him. It would be interesting to know, though, if +he is still a little in love with you." + +There was a fair amount of speculation in Mr. Burton Henderson's tone +that did not appear to have its seat in any apprehension. + +"Just as if you rather hoped it," his wife protested. + +"Well, I was only wondering if his health is so bad as the papers +say--it seldom is, you know--but if he were to go off all of a sudden +one of these days, whether he mightn't take it into his head now to +leave you a legacy." + +"I don't believe it was personal enough with Peter for that. It wasn't +me he wanted so much as just to be married. And, besides, I did come +down on him rather hard." Mrs. Burton Henderson smiled a little +reminiscently as if she still saw herself in the process of coming down +on Peter and thought rather well of it. + +"Well, anyway," her husband finished, "we could have managed with a +legacy." + +"Yes, we do need money dreadfully, don't we, Bertie?" she sighed. "But I +don't believe I had anything to do with it." + +That was all very well for Mrs. Burton Henderson, but Peter's sister +Ellen had a different opinion. "Peter," she had said the evening after +Peter had sent his trunk out of the house and locked up his suitcase to +keep her from putting anything more into it, "you're not thinking of +_her_, are you? You're not going to take that abroad with you." + +"No, Ellen, I haven't thought of her for a long time except to wish her +happiness. You mustn't let that worry you." + +"Just the same," said Ellen, "if anything happens to you over there--if +you never come back to me, I shall never forgive her." + +"I shall come back. I am sorry you should feel so bitter about it." + +He could not, especially now that it was gone, very well explain to +Ellen about the House; for all the years that it had stood there just +beyond the edge of dreams with the garden spread around it and a lovely +wood before, she had never heard of it. There had been so many ways to +it once, paths to it began in pictures, great towered gates of music +gave upon its avenues, and if he had not spoken of it, it was because as +he had made himself believe when she did come, that Eunice Goodward +would come into it of first right. He could not have blamed her for not +wishing to live in it--from the first he had never blamed her. He might +have managed even had she pulled it about his ears to rebuild it in +some fashion, but this was the bitterest, that he knew now for a +certainty there had never been any House and the certainty made him +ridiculous. + +It had been rather the worse that, with all the suddenness of this +discovery, he had not been able to avoid the habit of setting out for +it, seeking in dreams the relief of desolation in knowing that no dreams +could come. As often as he heard music or saw in the soft turn of a +cheek or the slender line of a wrist, what had moved him so in hers he +felt himself urged forward on old trails, only to be scared from them by +the apparition of himself as Eunice had evoked it from her bright +surpassing surfaces, as a man unaccomplished in passion, unprovocative. +All the gates to the House opened upon dreadful hollows of +self-despising into which Peter fell and floundered, so that he took to +going that way as little as possible, taking wide circuits about it +continually in the way of business, being rather pleased with himself +when at the end of two years he could no longer feel any pang of loss +nor any remembering thrill of what the House had been--until he +discovered that also he could not feel some other things, the pen +between his fingers and the rise of the stairs under him. He forgot +Eunice Goodward, and then one day he forgot to go home after office +hours, and they found him sitting still at his desk in the dark, trying +to remember whether he ought to put down the blotting-pad and the paper +weight on top of that, or if, on the whole, it were not better to put +the paper weight, as being the heavier article, first. + +It was after that the doctor told him to go as far away from his +business as possible and keep on staying away. + +"But if I am going to die, doctor," Peter carefully explained, "I would +much rather do it in my own country." + +"Ah," the doctor warned him, "that's just the difficulty. You won't +die." + +And that was how Peter happened to be leaning over the forward rail of +an Atlantic steamer on his way to Italy, which he had chosen because the +date of sailing happened to be convenient. But he knew, as he stood +looking down at the surface of the water, rough-hewn by the wind, that +whatever the doctor said to Lessing, or Ellen surmised, he would get no +good there except as it showed him the way to the House of the Shining +Walls. + +He did not remember where in the blind pointless ring through which the +steamer chugged and wallowed as though it were a superior sort of water +beetle and the horizon a circle of its own making, he began to get +sufficiently acquainted with his fellow passengers, to understand that +they were most of them going abroad in the interest of unrealized +estates, and abounded in confidence. To see them forever forward and +agaze at the lit shores of Spain and the Islands of Desire, roused in +him the faint savour of expectation. Which, however, did not prevent him +from finding Naples squalid, and Rome, where he arrived in the middle of +the tourist season, too modern in a cheap, second-rate sort of way. He +could remember when Rome had furnished some excellent company for the +House, and suffered in the places of renown an indeterminable pang like +the ache of an amputated stump. It seemed, on occasion, as if the old +trails might lie down the hollow of the Forum, under the arch of that +broken aqueduct, beside the dark Volsinian mere; but when Peter arrived +at any of these places he found them prepossessed by Germans gabbling +out of _Baedekers_. The Sistine Chapel made the back of his neck ache +and he came no nearer than seven tourists to the noble quietude of the +Vatican can marbles. + +"I must remember," said Peter to himself, "that I am a very sick man, +and crowds annoy me." + +Then he went into the country and saw the gray of the olives above the +springing grass, like the silver bloom on a green plum, and began to +experience the pangs of recovery. He found Hadrian's Villa and the +garden of the Villa d'Este, and remembered other things. He remembered +the flat malachite-coloured pools, the definite, pointed cypresses and +the fountain's soft incessant rain--as it had been in the House. As it +_was_ in the House. For he understood in Italy what was still the most +bitter to know, that though it might yet be somewhere in the world, he +was never to find it any more. Toward all that once had led him thither, +his sense was locked and sealed. He remembered Eunice Goodward--the +fact of her--how tall she was as she walked beside him--but not how at +the soft brushing of her hair as she turned, his blood had sung to her; +nor all the weeks of their engagement like a morning full of wings. And +he could not yet recall so much as the bare reasons for her break with +him except that they had been unhappy ones. + +It had been a part of a long plan that he and Eunice should have seen +Italy together, but for the moment he did not wish her there. He was +sure she would have been in the way of his getting something that +glimmered at him from the coign of castellated walls all awash about +their base with purpled shadow, that strove to say itself in intricate +fine tracery of tower and shrine, and failed and fell away before the +sodden quality of his mind. + +So he drifted northward with the spring, and saw the anemones blowing +and the bloomy violet wonder the world, suffering incredible aching +intimations of the recrudescence of desire. Afterward he came to +Florence, where he had heard there were pictures, and hoped to have some +peace; but at Florence they were all too busy being painted or prayed +to, the remote Madonnas, the wounded Saints, the comfortable plump +Venuses; the lean Christs too stupefied with candle smoke to take any +account of an American gentleman in a plain business suit, who looked +homely and ill and competent. Sometimes in Santa Croce or in the long +gallery over the bridge, the noise of the city would remove from him and +the faces would waver and lean out of their frames, as if, had the +occasion allowed, they would have said the word to set him on his way. +But there was always a guard about or a tourist stalking some +uncatalogued prey and it never came to anything. + +"What you really want," said a man at his hotel to whom he had half +whimsically complained of their inarticulateness--one of those +remarkable individuals who had done nothing so successfully in so many +cities of Europe that he was supposed to know the exact month for doing +it most delightfully in any one of them--"what you really want is +Venice. It's an off season there; you'll meet nobody but Germans, and if +you go about in your own gondola you needn't mind them." + +So Peter went to Venice, and on the way there he met the Girl from Home. + + + + +VI + + +He knew at once that she was from Home, though as she sat opposite him +with the fingers of her mended gloves laced under her chin and her face +turned away to miss no point of the cypresses and warm, illumined walls, +there was nothing to prove that any one of a hundred towns might not +have produced her. Peter remembered what sort of people wore gloves like +that in Bloombury--the minister's wife, the school teacher, his mother +and Ellen--and was instantly sure she would not have been travelling +through Italy first-class except at the instigation of the large, +widowed and distrustful woman with whom she got on at Padua. This lady, +also, Peter understood very well. He thought it likely she sat in +rocking chairs a great deal at home and travelled to improve her mind. +She had, moreover, a general air of proclaiming the unwarrantableness of +railway acquaintances, which alone would have prevented Peter from +asking the girl, as he absurdly wanted to, if they had painted the new +school-house yet, and if there had been much water that year in Miller's +pond. + +As she sat so with her round hat pushed askew by the window-glass, there +was some delicate reminder about her that streaked the rich Italian +landscape with vestiges of Bloombury. + +He looked out of the window where she looked and saw the white +straight-sided villas change to green-shuttered farmhouses, and fine old +Roman roads lead on to Harmony. It was all there for him in its +unexpectedness, as freshly touching as those reminders of his mother +which he came upon occasionally where Ellen kept them laid by in +lavender; as if the girl had shaken from the folds of her jacket of +unmistakable Bloombury cut, Youth for him--his own--anybody's Youth--no +limp and yellowed keepsake, but all crisply done up and ready for +putting on. So sharp for the moment was his sense of accepting the +invitation to put it on with her as the best possible traveller's guise, +especially for seeing Venice in, that catching the speculative eye of +the large lady turned upon him, he quailed sensibly. She had the air of +having detected him in an attempt to establish a relation with her +companion on the ground of their common youngness, and finding herself +much more a match for him both in years and in respect to their common +origin. Whatever passed between the two women, and something did pass +wordlessly, with hardly so much substance as a look, remained there, not +intrusively, but as proof that what he had been seeking was still going +on in some far but attainable place. It was the first movement of an +accomplished recovery, for Peter to find himself resisting the +implication of his appearance in favour of what was coming to him out of +the retouched, sensitive surfaces of his past. + +He knew so well as he looked at the girl, what had produced her. She was +leaning a little from the window in a way that brought more of her face +into view, and though from where he sat Peter could have very little +notion of the points of the nearing landscape, he knew by what he saw of +her, that somewhere across the low runnels in the windy reeds she had +caught sight of the "sea birds' nest." + +He did not on that account change his position so that he might have a +glimpse of the dark hills of Arqua or the towers of Venice repeating +themselves in the lustrous, spacious sea. Sitting opposite the girl, he +saw in her following eyes the silver trails of water and the dim +procession down them of old loves, old wars, old splendours, much better +than the thin line of the landscape presented them to his weary sense. +He leaned back as far as the stiff seat allowed, watching the Old World +shine on her face, where the low light, striking obliquely on the water, +turned it white above black shoals of weed. For the first time since his +illness his mind slipped the leash of maimed desire, and as if it parted +for him there beyond the window of the railway carriage, struck into the +trail to the House. The walls of it rose up straight and shining, gilded +purely; the windows arching to summer blueness, let in with them the +smell of the wilding rose at the turn of the road and the evening +clamour of the birds in Bloombury wood. + +All this time Peter had been sitting in an Italian railway carriage, +knee to knee with a pirate bearded Austrian Jew who gave him the +greatest possible occasion for wishing the window opened, and when the +jar of the checked train drew him into consciousness again, he was at a +loss to know what had set him off so far until he caught sight of the +girl. She was buttoning on her jacket with fingers that trembled with +excitement as she constrained herself to the recapitulation of the two +suitcases, the hat box and three parcels which her companion in order to +have well in hand, had been alternately picking up and dropping ever +since they sighted the tower of San Georgio dark against the sea +streaked west. + +"Two and one is three and three is six and the _'Baedeker'_ and the +umbrellas," said the girl. "No, I don't have to look in the address +book. I have it by heart. Casa Frolli, the Zattera." Then the roar of +the train split into the sharp cries of the _facchinos_ that carried +them forward like an explosion into Venice as it rose statelily from the +rippling lustre. Around it wove the black riders with still, +communicating prows, so buoyant, so mysteriously alive and peering, like +some superior sea creatures risen magically from below the frayed +reflection of the station lights. Much as Peter felt that he owed to the +vivid presence of the girl, his new capacity to see and feel it so as it +burst upon them, he hadn't found the courage to address her. So it was +with a distinct sense of deprivation that he saw her with her companion +grasping the side of the gondola as if by that method to keep it afloat, +disappearing down the dim water lanes in the direction of the Zattera. + + + + +VII + + +It was the evidence of how far he had come on the road to recovery that +he was able, when he woke in his bed at the _Britania_, to allow full +play to the suggestion that he had experienced nothing more than the +natural reversion of age to the bright vividness of the past. "Though I +didn't expect," he admitted as he lay fronting in the wide old mirrors, +interminable reflections of a pillow dinted by his too-early whitened +head, "I really did not expect to have it begin at forty-two." Having +made this concession to his acceptance of himself as a man done with +youngness of any sort, he lay listening to the lip-lapping of the water +and the sounds that came up from the garden just below him, the clink of +cups and the women's easy laughter, and wondered what it could have been +about that girl to set him dreaming of all the women who had ever +interested him. + +It did not occur to him then, nor in the interval in which the tang of +his dream intervened between him and the full flavour of Venice, that he +had not thought once of Eunice Goodward, but only of those who had +touched his life without hurting it. He was so far indeed from thinking +of women again as beings from whom hurts were expected to come, that he +blamed himself for not having made an occasion out of their enforced +companionship, for speaking to the girl in the train if he should meet +her again. + +"I must be twice her age," he told himself determinedly, "and no doubt +she has been brought up to be respectful to her elders." + +He looked out very carefully, therefore, as he drifted about the canals, +for a large, widowed lady and a girl in a round hat who might have come +from Bloombury, but he did not find her that day nor the next, nor the +day after, and in the meantime Venice took him. + +The ineffable consolation of its beauty stole upon him like the breath +of its gardens, as it rose delicately from its sea station, murmurous +like a shell with the whisper of joyous adventure. It was, as he told +himself, a part of the sense of renewal which the girl had afforded him, +that he was able to accept its incomparable charm as the evidence of the +continuity of the world of youth and passion. His being able to see it +so was a sort of consolation for having, by the illusive quality of his +dreams, missed them both on his own account. + +It was not, however, until the morning of the fourth day that it drew +him as he had known in the beginning it inevitably must, to the core of +Venice, where in the wide piazza full of sleepy light, the great banners +dropped from their staves broad splashes of colour between the slaty +droves of doves. High over the door the gold horses of Lysippus +breasted the gold air made shadowless by the approaching _temporale_. He +was so far then from anything that had to do with his dream that it was +not for some moments after he had turned into St. Mark's, obsessed of +the sense of life unconquerable and pervading, that he began to take +notice of what he saw there in the dim wonder. It was first of all the +smell of stale incense and the mutter of the mass, and then as he bowed +instinctively to the elevated Host, the snare of the intricate mosaic +pavement; so by degrees appreciation cleared to the seductive polish of +the pillars, the rows of starred candles, and beyond that to the clear +gold of the walls, with all the pictures wrought flatly upon them ... as +it had been in the House! + +It was some time before he was able to draw up out of his boyhood +memories, so newly made a gift to him, the stray, elucidating fact of +his father's early visit to this spot and the possibility of his dream +having shaped itself about some unremembered account of it. He climbed +up to the galleries to give himself room to that wonder of memory which +had failed to preserve to him any image of how his father looked, and +yet had so furnished all his imagination. Which didn't make any less of +a wonder of his knowing as he stood there, Peter Weatheral, of the firm +of Weatheral, Lessing & Co., Real Estate Brokers, what it was all about. + +"It's a picture-book of the heart of man," he concluded, and no sooner +had he shaped this thought in his mind than he heard it uttered for him +on the opposite side of the pillar in a voice made soft by indulgent +tenderness, "Just a great picture-book." He leaned forward at the sound +far enough to have a glimpse of the Girl from Home, and smiled at her. + +"So you've found that out, have you?" It was not strange to find himself +addressing her friendlily nor to hear her answer him. + +"Just a picture-book," she repeated. "It explains so much. What the +saints were to them, and the Holy Personages. Monkish tales to prey upon +their superstition, we were taught. But you can see here what they +really were, the wonder tales of a people, the fairy wonder and the +blessed happenings come true as they do in dreams. Oh, it must have been +a good time when the saints were on the earth." + +"You believe in them, then?" + +"Here in San Marco, yes. But not when I am in Bloombury." + +"Oh!" cried Peter, "are you really from Bloombury? I knew you were from +up country but I hardly dared to hope--if you will permit me----" He +searched for his card which she accepted without looking at it. + +"You are Mr. Peter Weatheral, aren't you? Mrs. Merrithew thought she +recognized you yesterday." + +"Is that why she glared at me so? But anyway I am obliged to her, though +I haven't vestige of a recollection of her." + +"She didn't suppose you had. Her husband sold you some land once. But of +course everybody in Bloombury knows the Mr. Weatheral who went from +there to the city and made his fortune." + +"A sorry one," said Peter. "But if you are really from Bloombury why +don't I remember you? I go there with Ellen every summer, and _she_ +knows everybody." + +"Yes; she is so kind. Everybody says that. But I'm really from Harmony. +I taught the Bloombury school last year. I am Savilla Dassonville." + +"Oh, I knew your father then! Now that I come to think of it, it was he +who laid the foundation of my greatness," Peter smiled whimsically. "And +I knew your mother; she was a very lovely lady." + +He realized as the girl's eyes filled with tears, that this must have +been the child at whose birth, he had heard, the mother had died. "But I +suppose we mustn't talk about Bloombury in San Marco," he blamed his +inadvertence, "though that doesn't seem to want talking about either. +When you said that just now about its being a picture-book, I was +thinking how like it was to one of those places I used to go to in my +youth--you know where you go in your mind when you don't like the place +where you are. So like. I used to call it the House of the Shining +Walls." + +"I know," she nodded, "mine is a garden." + +"_Is?_" said Peter. "There's where you have the advantage of me." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, spreading her hands toward the pictured wall and +the springing domes, "isn't this the evidence that it _is_ always. Let +us look." + +The mass was over and the crowd departing; they moved from page to page +to the storied wall and identified in it the springs of a common +experience. + +"It's like nothing so much," said Miss Dassonville, "as the things I've +seen the children make at school, with bits of coloured stone and broken +china and rags of tinsel or whatever treasures, laid out in a pattern on +the ground." + +"Something like that," admitted Peter. + +"And that's why," said Miss Dassonville, "it doesn't make me feel at +_all_ religious. Just--just--maternal." + +It appeared by this time they had become well enough acquainted for +Peter to remark that she didn't seem to feel under any obligation to +experience the prescribed and traditional thrill. + +"Well, I'm divided in my mind. I don't want to overlook any of the +facts, and I want to give the poor imprisoned things a chance, if they +have anything to say that the guide books have missed, to get it off +their minds. I've always heard that celebrities grow tired of being +forever taken at their public valuation. I've got a _Baedeker_ and a +_Hare_ and _The Stones of Venice_ but I neglect them quite as much as I +read them, don't you?" + +They had come down into the nave and she went about stroking the fair +marbles delicately as though there sprang a conscious communication from +the touch. He felt his mind accommodating to the ease of hers with a +movement of release. They spent so much time in the church that when +they issued on the Piazza at last it was with amazement to discern that +the cloud mass which an hour before had piled ethereal tones of blueness +above Frauli, lit cavernously by soundless flashes, had dissolved in +rain. + +"And I haven't even an umbrella," explained Miss Dassonville with a real +dismay. + +"But I'll take you home in my gondola," it appeared to him +providentially provided for this contingency; "it is here at the +Piazzetta." + +"Oh, have you a gondola, and is it as much of a help as people say? Mrs. +Merrithew hates walking, but we didn't know if we should like it." + +They whisked around the corner under the arcade of the ducal palace, +and almost before they reached the _traghetto_ the shower was stayed and +the sun came out on the lucent water. Peter allowed Miss Dassonville to +give the direction lest she should think it a liberty of him to have +noticed and remembered it, but he added something to it that caused her, +as they swung out into the canal, to enter an expostulation. + +"But this is not the way to the Casa Frolli!" + +"It's one way; besides, it isn't raining any more, and if you are +thinking of taking a gondola you ought to make a trial trip or two, and +it's worth seeing how the palace looks from the canal." + +The rain began again in a little while, whitening the water; the depth +of it blackened to the cloud but the surface frothed like quicksilver +under the steady patter. The awning was up and they were safe against a +wetting, but Peter saw the girl shiver in the slight chill, and looking +at her more attentively he perceived that she might recently have been +ill. The likeness to her mother came out then in spite of her plainness, +the hands, the eyes, the pleasant way of smiling; it was that no doubt +which had set him on the trail of his old dreams. He tried, more for the +purpose of avoiding it than for any curiosity, to remember what he had +ever heard of David Dassonville that would account for his daughter's +teaching school when she evidently wasn't able for it, but he talked of +Mrs. Merrithew. + +"I must call on her," he said, "as soon as she will permit me. But tell +me, what business did I do with her husband?" + +"It was a mortgage--those poor McGuires, you know, were in such trouble, +and you----" + +"Yes, I was always nervous about mortgages. I was bitten by one once. +But dear me, I did not expect to have my youthful indiscretions coming +out like this. What else did she tell you?" + +The girl laughed delightedly. "Well, we did rather talk you over. She +said you were such a good son. Even when you were a young man on a +salary your mother had a best black silk and a second best." + +"Women are the queerest!" Peter commented at large. "It was always such +a comfort to Ellen that mother had a good silk to be buried in. Now +what is there talismanic about silk?" + +"It's evidence," she smiled, "and that's what women require most." + +"Well, I hope Mrs. Merrithew will accept it as evidence that I am a +suitable person to take you out in a gondola this evening. You haven't +seen Venice by night?" + +"Only as we came from the station. I'm sure she would like you to call, +and I hope she will like the gondola." + +"Oh, she will like it," Peter assured Miss Dassonville as he helped her +out in front of the Casa Frolli; "it will remind her of a rocking +chair." + +Mrs. Merrithew did like the gondola; she liked everything:--the spacious +dark, the scudding forms like frightened swans, the sound of singing on +the water, the soft bulks of foliage that overhung them in the narrow +_calle_, the soundless hatchet-faced prows that rounded on them from +behind dim palaces; and she liked the gondola so much that she asked +Peter "right out" what it cost him. + +"We would have taken one ourselves," she explained without waiting, +"only we didn't feel able to afford it. Fifty francs a week they wanted +to charge us, but maybe that was because we were Americans; they think +Americans can do everything over here. But I suppose you get yours cheap +at the hotel?" + +"Oh, much cheaper." + +"How much?" + +"Forty francs," hazarded Peter. "I'm sure I could get you one for that. +Unless ... if you don't mind...." He made what he hadn't done yet under +any circumstances, a case out of his broken health to explain how by not +getting up very early and by taking some prescribed exercise, Giuseppe +and the gondola had to lie unused half the mornings, which was very bad +for them.... "So," he persuaded them, "if you would be satisfied with it +for half a day, I would be very much obliged to you if you would take +it ... share and share alike." There was as much hesitation in Peter's +speech as if it had really been the favour he seemed to make it, though +in fact it grew out of his attempt to fashion his offer by what he saw +in the dusk of Miss Dassonville's face. "In the evenings," he finished, +"we could take it turn about. There are a great many evenings when I +don't go out at all." + +"Me, too," consented Mrs. Merrithew cheerfully. "I get tired easy, but +you and Savilla could go." The proposal appealed to her as neighbourly, +and it was quite in keeping with the character of a successful business +man, as he was projected on the understanding of Bloombury, to wish not +to keep paying for a thing of which he had no use. "I think we might as +well close with it at once, don't you, Savilla?" + +"If you are sure it's only forty francs----" Miss Dassonville was +doubtful. + +"Quite sure," Peter was very prompt. "You see they keep them so +constantly employed at the hotel"--which seemed satisfactorily to make +way for the arrangement that the gondola was to call for the two ladies +the next morning. + +"Giuseppe," Weatheral demanded as he stepped out of the gondola at the +hotel landing, "how much do I pay you?" + +"Sixty francs, _Signore_." + +Peter had no doubt the extra ten was divided between his own man and the +gondolier, but he was not thinking of that. + +"I have a very short memory," he said, "and I have told the _Signora_ +and the _Signorina_ forty francs. If they ask you, you are to tell them +forty francs; and listen, Beppe, every franc over that you tell them, I +shall deduct from your _pourboire_ when I leave, do you understand?" + +"_Si, Signore_." + + + + +VIII + + +A morning or two after the arrangement about the gondola Peter was +leaning over the bridge of San Moise watching the sun on the copper +vessels the women brought to the fountain, when his man came to him. +This Luigi he had picked up at Naples for the chief excellence of his +English and a certain seraphic bearing that led Peter to say to him that +he would cheerfully pay a much larger wage if he could only be certain +Luigi would not cheat him. + +"Oh _Signore!_ In Italy? _Impossible!_" + +"In that case," said Peter, "if you can't be honest with me, be as +honest as you can"--but he had to accept the lifted shoulders and the +Raphael smile as his only security. However, Luigi had made him +comfortable and as he approached him now it was without any misgiving. + +"I have just seen Giuseppe and the gondola," he announced. "They are at +the Palazza Rezzonico, and after that they go to San Georgio degli +Sclavoni. There are pictures there." + +"Oh!" said Peter. + +"It is a very little way to the San Georgio," volunteered Luigi as they +remained, master and man, looking down into the water in the leisurely +Venetian fashion. "Across the Piazza," said Luigi, "a couple of turns, a +bridge or two and there you are;" and after a long pause, "_The signore_ +is looking very well this morning. Exercise in the sea air is excellent +for the health." + +"Very," said Peter. "I shall go for a walk, I think. I shall not need +you, Luigi." + +Nevertheless Luigi did not lose sight of him until he was well on his +way to Saint George of the Sclavoni which announced itself by the +ramping fat dragon over the door. There was the young knight riding him +down as of old, and still no Princess. + +"She must be somewhere on the premises," said Peter to himself. "No +doubt she has preserved the traditions of her race by remaining +indoors." He had not, however, accustomed his eyes to the dusk of the +little room when he heard at the landing the scrape of the gondola and +the voices of the women disembarking. + +"If we'd known you wanted to come," explained Mrs. Merrithew heartily, +"we could have brought you in the boat." That was the way she oftenest +spoke of it, and other times it was the gon_do_la. + +Peter explained his old acquaintance with the charging saint and his +curiosity about the lady, but when the custodian had brought a silver +paper screen to gather the little light there was upon the mellow old +Carpaccio, he looked upon her with a vague dissatisfaction. + +"It's the same dragon and the same young man," he admitted. "I know him +by the hair and by the determined expression. But I'm not sure about the +young lady." + +"You are looking for a fairy-tale Princess," Miss Dassonville declared, +"but you have to remember that the knight didn't marry this one; he only +made a Christian of her." + +They came back to it again when they had looked at all the others and +speculated as to whether Carpaccio knew how funny he was when he painted +Saint Jerome among the brethren, and whether in the last picture he was +really in heaven as Ruskin reported. + +"So you think," said Peter, "she'd have been more satisfactory if the +painter had thought Saint George meant to marry her?" + +"More personal and convincing," the girl maintained. + +"There's one in the Belle Arti that's a lot better looking to my +notion," contributed Mrs. Merrithew. + +"Oh, but that Princess is running away," the girl protested. + +"It's what any well brought up young female would be expected to do +under the circumstances," declared the elder lady; "just look at them +fragments. It's enough to turn the strongest." + +"It does look a sort of 'After the Battle,'" Peter admitted. "But I +should like to see the other one," and he fell in very readily with Mrs. +Merrithew's suggestion that he should come in the gondola with them and +drop into the Academy on the way home. They found the Saint George with +very little trouble and sat down on one of the red velvet divans, +looking a long time at the fleeing lady. + +"And you think," said Peter, "she would not have run away?" + +"I think she shouldn't; when it's done for her." + +"But isn't that--the running away I mean--the evidence of her being +worth doing it for, of her fineness, of her superior delicacy?" + +"Well," Miss Dassonville was not disposed to take it lightly, "if a +woman has a right to a fineness that's bought at another's expense. They +can't all run away, you know, and I can't think it right for a woman to +evade the disagreeable things just because some man makes it possible." + +"I believe," laughed Peter, "if you had been the Princess you would have +killed the dragon yourself. You'd have taken a little bomb up your +sleeve and thrown it at him." He had to take that note to cover a +confused sense he had of the conversation being more pertinent than he +could at that moment remember a reason for its being. + +"Oh, I've been delivered to the dragons before now," she said. "It's +going on all the time." She moved a little away from the picture as if +to avoid the personal issue. + +"What beats me," commented Mrs. Merrithew, "is that there has to be a +young lady. You'd think a likely young man, if he met one of them +things, would just kill it on general principles, the same as a snake or +a spider." + +"Oh," said Peter, "it's chiefly because they are terrifying to young +ladies that we kill them at all. Yes, there has to be a young lady." He +was aware of an accession of dreariness in the certainty that in his +case there never could be a young lady. But Miss Dassonville as she +began to walk toward the entrance gave it another turn. + +"There _is_ always a young lady. The difficulty is that it must be a +particular one. No one takes any account of those who were eaten up +before the Princess appeared." + +"But you must grant," said Peter, with an odd sense of defending his own +position, "that when one got done with a fight like that, one would be +entitled to something particular." + +"Oh, if it came as a reward," she laughed. "But nowadays we've reversed +the process. One makes sure of the Princess first, lest when the dragon +is killed she should prove to have gone away with one of the +bystanders." + +Something that clicked in Peter's mind led him to look sharply from one +to the other of the two women. In Bloombury they had a way, he knew, of +not missing any point of their neighbours' affairs, but their faces +expressed no trace of an appreciation of anything in the subject being +applicable to his. The flick of memory passed and left him wondering why +it should be. + +He caught himself looking covertly at the girl as the gondola swung into +open water, to discover in her the springs of an experience such as lay +at the source of his own desolation. He perceived instead under her +slight appearance a certain warmth and colour like a light behind a +breathed-on window-pane. Illness, overwork, whatever dragon's breath had +dimmed her surfaces, she gave the impression of being inwardly +inexhaustibly alight and alive. Something in her leaped to the day, to +the steady pacing of the gondola on the smooth water tessellated by the +sun in blue and bronze and amber, to the arched and airy palaces that +rose above it. + +The awning was up; there was strong sun and pleasant wind: from hidden +gardens they smelled the oleanders. Peter felt the faint stir of +rehabilitation like the breath of passing presences. + +The mood augmented in him as he drifted late that evening on the lagoon +beyond the Guidecca, after the sun was gone down and the sea and the sky +reflected each to each, one roseate glow like a hollow shell of pearl. +Lit peaks of the Alps ranged in the upper heaven, and nearer the great +dome of the Saluti signalled whitely; below them, all the islands near +and far floated in twilit blueness on the flat lagoon. There was by +times, a long sea swell, and no sound but the tread of the oar behind +like a woman's silken motion. It drew with it films of recollection in +which his mood suspended like gossamer, a mood capable of going on +independently of his idea of himself as a man cut off from those +experiences, intimations of which pressed upon him everywhere by line +and form and colour. + +It had come back, the precious intimacy of beauty, with that fullness +sitting there in the gondola, he realized with the intake of the breath +to express it and the curious throbbing of the palms to grasp. He was +able to identify in his bodily response to all that charged the decaying +wonder of Venice with opulent personality, the source of his boyish +dreams. It was no woman, he told himself, who had gone off with the +bystanders while he had been engaged with the dragons of poverty and +obligation, but merely the appreciations of beauty. There had never been +any woman, there was never going to be. He began to plan how he should +explain his discovery and the bearing of it, to Miss Dassonville. It +would be a pity if she were making the same mistake about it. He leaned +back in the cushioned seat and watched the silver shine of the prow +delicately peering out its way among the shadowy islands; lay so still +and absorbed that he did not know which way they went nor what his +gondolier inquired of him, and presently realized without surprise that +the Princess was speaking to him. + +He felt her first, warm and friendlily, and then he heard her laughing. +He knew she was the Princess though she had no form or likeness. + +"But which are you?" he whispered to the laughter. + +"The right one." + +"The one who stayed or the one who ran away?" + +"Oh, if you don't know by this time! I have come to take you to the +House." + +"Are you the one who was always there?" + +"The Lovely Lady; there was never any other." + +"And shall I go there as I used?" asked Peter, "and be happy there?" + +"You are free to go; do you not feel it?" + +"Oh, here--I feel many things. I am just beginning to understand how I +came to lose the way to it." + +"Are you so sure?" + +"Quite." Peter's new-found certainty was strong in him. "I made the +mistake of thinking that the House was the House of Love, and it is +really the House of Beauty. I thought if I found the one to love, I +should live in it forever. But now that I have found the way back to it +I see that was a mistake." + +"How did you find it?" + +"Well, there is a girl here----" + +"Ah!" said the Princess. + +"She is young," Peter explained; "she looks at things the way I used to, +and that somehow brought me around to the starting-point again." + +"I see," said the Princess; the look she turned on him was full of a +strange, secret intelligence which as he returned it without knowing +what it was about, afforded Peter the greatest satisfaction. "Do you +know me now," she said at last, "which one I am?" + +"The right one, I am sure of that." + +"But which?" + +"I know now," Peter answered, "but I am certain that in the morning I +shall not be able to remember." + +It was true as Peter had said that the next morning he was in as much +doubt as ever about the princesses. He thought he would go and have a +look at them but forgot what he had come for once he had entered the +spacious quiet of the Academy. Warmed still from his contact of the +night before he found the pictures sentient and friendly. He found +trails in them that led he knew now where, and painted waters that +lapped the fore-shore of remembrance. + +After an hour in which he had seen the meaning of the pictures emerge +from the frontier of mysticism which he knew now for the reflection of +his own unstable state, and proceed toward him by way of his +intelligence, he heard the Princess say at his shoulder, at least he +thought it might have been the Princess for the first word or two, until +he turned and saw Miss Dassonville. She was staring at the dim old +canvases patched with saints, and her eyes were tender. + +"They are not really saints, you know, they are only a sort of +hieroglyphics that spell devotion. It isn't as though they had the +breath of life breathed into them and could come down from their +canvases as some of them do." + +"Oh," he protested, "did you think of that for yourself? It was the +Princess who said it to me." + +"The Princess of the Dragon?" + +"She came to me last night on the lagoon. It was wonderful,--the water +shine and the rosy glow. I was wishing I had insisted on your coming, +and all at once there was the Princess." + +"The one who stayed or the one who ran away?" + +"She declined to commit herself. I suppose it's one of the things a man +has to find out." He experienced a great lift of his spirit in the +girl's light acceptance of his whimsicality, it was the sort of thing +that Eunice Goodward used to be afraid to have any one hear him say lest +they should think it odd. It occurred to him as he turned and walked +beside Miss Dassonville that if he had come to Italy with Eunice there +might have been a great deal that she would not have liked to hear. He +could think things of that sort of her now with a queer lightness as of +ease after strain, and yet not think it a merit of Miss Dassonville's so +to ease him. They walked through the rooms full of the morning coolness, +and let the pictures say what they would to them. + +"It is strange to me," said the girl, "the reality of pictures; as if +they had reached a point under the artist's hand where they became +suddenly independent of him and went about saying a great deal more than +he meant and perhaps more than he could understand. I am sure they must +have a world of their own of picture rock and tree and stone, where they +go when they are not being looked at on their canvases." + +"Oh, haven't you found them, then?" + +"In dreams you mean? Not in Bloombury; they don't get so far from home. +One of these little islands I suspect, that lie so low and look so blue +and airy." + +"Will you go with me in the gondola to discover it?" + +"To-night?" + +"To-morrow." He was full of a plan to take her and Mrs. Merrithew to the +Lido that same evening to have dinner, and to come home after moonrise, +to discover Venice. She agreed to that, subject to Mrs. Merrithew's +consent, and they went out to find that lady at a bead shop where she +spent a great many hours in a state of delightful indecision. + +Mrs. Merrithew proving quite in the mood for it, they went to the Lido +with an extra gondolier--Miss Dassonville had stipulated for one who +could sing--and came home in time to see Venice all a-flower, with the +continual slither of the gondolas about it like some slim sort of moth. +They explored Saint George of the Sea Weed after that, took tea in the +public gardens and had a day at Torcello. On such occasions when Peter +and Mrs. Merrithew talked apart, the good lady who got on excellently +with the rich Mr. Weatheral grew more than communicative on the subject +of Savilla Dassonville. It was not that she talked of the girl so much +nor so freely, but that she left him with the sense of her own +exasperation at the whole performance. It was a thin little waif of a +story as it came from Mrs. Merrithew, needing to be taken in and +comforted before it would yield even to Peter, who as a rich man had +come to have a fair discernment in pitiable cases, the faint hope of a +rescue. There had been, to begin with, the death of the girl's mother at +her birth, followed by long years of neglect growing out of just that +likeness to the beloved wife which first excited her father's aversion +and afterward became the object of a jealous, insistent tenderness. + +After his wife's death, Dave Dassonville had lost his grip on his +property as he had on all the means of living. Later he was visited by a +stringency which Mrs. Merrithew was inclined to impute to a Providence, +which, however prompt it had been in the repayment of the slight to the +motherless infant, had somehow failed to protect her from its +consequences. Savilla's girlhood had been devoted to nursing her father +to his grave, to which he had gone down panting for release; after that +she had taught the village school. + +The winter before, tramping through the heavy snow, she had contracted a +bronchitis that had developed so alarmingly as to demand, by the +authority of the local doctor, "a trip somewhere"--"and nobody," said +Mrs. Merrithew, "but me to go with her." + +"Not," she added, "that I'm complainin'. Merrithew left me well off, and +there's no denyin' travellin's improvin' to the mind, though at my age +it's some wearin' to the body. I'm glad," she further confided to Peter +at Torcello, "she takes so to Venice. It's a lot more comfortable goin' +about in a gondola. At Rome, now, I nearly run my legs off." + +It was later when Savilla had been kept at home by a slight +indisposition from a shower that caught them unprepared, she expressed +her doubt of a winter in Italy being anything more than a longer stick +with which to beat a dog. + +"She will have spent all her money on it, and the snow will be just as +deep in Bloombury next year. There isn't anything _really_ the matter +with her, but she's just too fine for it. It's like seeing a clumsy +person handlin' one of them spun glass things, the way I have to sit +still and see Providence dealing with Savilla Dassonville. It may be +sort of sacrilegious to say so, but I declare it gives me the fidgets." + +It ought of course to have given Peter, seeing the interest he took in +her, a like uneasiness; but there was something in the unmitigated +hardness of her situation that afforded him the sort of easement he had, +inexplicably, in the plainness of her dress. His memory was not working +well enough yet for him to realize that it was relief from the strain of +the secondary feminity that had fluttered and allured in Eunice +Goodward. + +It was even more unclearly that he recognized that it had been a strain. +All this time he had been forgetting her--and how completely he had +forgotten her this new faculty for comparison was proof--he had still +been enslaved by her appearance. It was an appearance, that of Eunice's, +which he admired still in the young American women at the expensive +hotels where he had put up, and admitted as the natural, the inevitable +sign of an inward preciousness. But if he allowed to himself that he +would never have spoken to Savilla Dassonville that day at San Marco, if +she had been to the eye anything that Eunice Goodward was, he told +himself it was because he was not sure from behind which of those +charming ambuscades the arrows of desolation might be shot. If he gave +himself up now to the play of the girl's live fancy he did so in the +security of her plainness, out of which no disturbing surprises might +come. And she left him, in respect to her hard conditions, without even +the excuse for an attitude. Eunice had been poor in her world, and had +carried it with just that admixture of bright frankness and proud +reserve which, in her world, supported such a situation with most charm. +She made as much use of her difficulties as a Spanish dancer of her +shawl; but Savilla Dassonville was just poor, and that was the end of +it. That he got on with her so well by the simple process of talking out +whatever he was most interested in, occurred to Peter as her natural +limitation. It was not until they had been going out together for a week +or more, in such fashion as his mending health allowed, that he had +moments of realizing, in her swift appropriations of Venice, rich +possibilities of the personal relations with which he believed himself +forever done. Oddly it provoked in him the wish to protect, when the +practical situation had left him dry and bare. + +It was the evening of the _Serenata_. They were all there in the +gondola, Mrs. Merrithew and the girl, with Luigi squatting by Giuseppe, +not too far from the music float that sprang mysteriously from the black +water in arching boughs of red and gold and pearly Aladdin's fruit. +Behind them the lurking prows rustled and rocked drunkenly with the +swell to which they seemed at times attentively to lean. They could make +out heads crowded in the gondolas, and silver gleams of the prows as +they drifted past palaces lit intermittently by a red flare that wiped +out for the moment, the seastain and disfiguring patches of restoration. + +They had passed the palace of Camerleigh. The jewel-fruited arbour +folded and furled upon itself to pass the slow curve of the Rialto, and +suddenly, Peter's attention, drawn momentarily from the music, was +caught by that other bright company leaning from deserted balconies, +swarming like the summer drift between the pillars of dark loggias. They +were all there, knights and saints and ladies, out of print and paint +and marble, and presently he made out the Princess. She was leaning out +of one of the high, floriated windows, looking down on him with pleased, +secret understanding as she might have smiled from her palace walls on +the festival that brought the young knight George home with the +conquered dragon. It was the compressed and pregnant meaning of her gaze +that drew his own upward, and it was then when the Lovely Lady turned +and waved her hand at him that he felt the girl stir strangely beside +him. + +"How full the night is of the sense of presences," she said, "as if all +the loved marbles came to life and the adored had left their canvases. I +cannot think but it is so." + +"Oh, I am sure of it." + +She moved again with the vague restlessness of one stared upon by +innumerable eyes. "How one would like to speak," she said. "They seem so +near us." + +There was a warm tide of that nearness rising in Peter's blood. As the +music flowed out again in summer fullness, he put out his arm along the +back of the seat instinctively in answer to the girl's shy turning, the +natural movement of their common equity in the night's unrealized +wonder. + + + + +IX + + +"Peter! oh, Peter!" + +It was dark in the room when Peter awoke, but he knew it was morning by +the salt smell which he thought came into the room from the cove beyond +Bloombury pastures, until he roused in his bed and knew it for the smell +of the lagoons. He looked out to see the beginning of rose light on the +world and understood that he was called. He did not hear the voice again +but out there in the shimmering space the call awaited him. It might be +the Princess. + +He dressed and got down quietly into the shadowed city and waked a +frowsy gondolier asleep in his gondola. They spoke softly, both of them, +before the morning hush, as they swung out into the open water between +the towers of San Georgio fairily dim, and the pillars of the saints; +the city floated in a mist of blueness, the dome of the Saluti faintly +pearled. + +"_Dove, Signore?_" The gondolier feathered his oar. + +"_Un giro_"--Peter waved his arm seaward; the dip of the oar had a +stealthy sound in the deserted dawning. They passed the public gardens +and saw the sea widen and the morning quicken. Islands swam up out of +silver space, took form and colour, and there between the islands he saw +the girl. She had gotten another oar from Giuseppe and stood delighting +in the free motion; her sleeves were rolled up, her hat was off, her +hair blew out; alive and pliant she bent to the long sweep of it, and +her eyes were on the morning wonder. But when she caught sight of Peter +she looked only at him and he knew that her seeing him appearing thus on +the shining water was its chief and exquisite wonder, and that she did +not know what he saw. The gondolier steered straight for the girl +without advice; he had thought privately that the _Signore Americano_ +was a little mad, but he knew now with what manner of madness. + +They drew close and drifted alongside. Peter did not take his eyes from +the girl's eyes lest for her to look away ever so slightly from there +to his face would be to discover that he knew; and he did not know how +he stood with himself toward that knowledge. + +"Oh," she said breathlessly, "I wanted you--I called you--and you came! +You did not know where I was and yet you came?" + +"I heard you calling." + +She left her oar and sat down; Peter laid his hand on the edge of her +gondola and they drifted side by side. + +"May I come with you?" he asked presently. + +She made a little gesture, past all speech. Peter held up a hand full of +silver toward his gondolier and laid it on the seat as he stepped +lightly over. The man slid away from them without word or motion, and +together they faced the morning. It was one thin web of rose and gold +over lakes of burnished light; islands lifted in mirage, floated +miraculously upon the verge of space. Behind them the mainland banked +like a new created world over which waited the Hosts of the ranked Alps. +Winged boats from Murano slid through the flat lagoons. + +There was very little to say. Peter was aware chiefly, in what came from +her to him, of the wish to be very tender toward it, of having it in +hand to support her securely above the abyss into which he felt at the +least rude touch of his, she must immeasurably fall. At the best he +could but keep with her there at the point of her unconsciousness by +knowing the truth himself, as he felt amazingly that he did know it with +all the completeness of his stripped and beggared past. + +They drifted and saw the morning widen into the working-day. Market +boats piled with fruit, fish in shining heaps, wood boats of Istria, +went by with Madonna painted sails. Among the crowded goods the women +sat Madonna-wise and nursed their bambini, or cherishing the recurrent +hope, knitted interminably. If he wanted any evidence of what he +admitted between the girl and himself it flashed out for him in the +faces of the market wives, on whom labour and maternity sat not too +heavily to cloud the primal radiance. It was there in their soft _Buon +giorno_ in the way they did not, as the gondola drew beside them, cover +their fruitful breasts from her tender eyes, in the way most fall, they +grasped in the high mood of the _forestieri_ a sublimity untouched by +the niceties of bargaining. A man in the state of mind to which the +girl's visible shine confessed, could hardly be expected to stickle at +the price of the few figs and roses which served as an easy passage from +the wonder of their meeting to the ground of their accustomed gay +pretences. They made of Peter's purchases of fruit and flowers a market +garden of their own from which they had but just come on hopeful +errands. They made believe again as boats thickened like winged things +in a summer garden, to be bent upon discovery, and slid with pretended +caution under the great ships stationed by the Giudecca, from which they +heard sailors singing. They shot with exaggerated shivers past a slim +cruiser and suddenly Miss Dassonville clutched Peter by the arm. + +"Oh!" she cried: "Do you see it? That little dark, impudent-looking one, +and _the_ flag?" + +Peter saw; he was not quite, he reminded her, even in the intoxication +of a morning on the lagoons with her, quite in that state where he +couldn't see his country's flag when it was pointed out to him. They +came alongside with long strokes, and sniffed deliciously. + +"Ah--um--um----" said Miss Dassonville. "I know what that is. It's ham +and eggs. How long since you've had a real American breakfast?" + +"Not since I left the steamer," Peter confessed. "Now if I were to smell +hot cakes I shouldn't be able to stand it. I should go aboard her." + +Miss Dassonville saluted softly as they went under the bright banner. + +"'Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light,'" she began to sing and +immediately a large, blooming face rose through a mist of faded whisker +at the prow and they saw all the coast of Maine looking down on them +from the rail of the _Merrythought_. + +"United States, ahoy?" it said. + +They came close under and Miss Dassonville hailed in return; as soon as +the captain saw her face smiling up at him he beamed on it as the women +in the boats had done. + +"We smelled your breakfast," she explained, and the man laughed +delightedly. + +"I know what kind these Dagoes give ye. Come up and have some." + +Peter and the girl consulted with their eyes. + +"Are you going to have hot cakes?" she demanded. + +"I will if you come; darned if I don't." + +"We're coming, then." + +It was part of the task that Peter had set himself, to persevere for +Savilla Dassonville the film of unconsciousness that lay delicately like +the bloom of a rare fruit over all that was at that moment going on in +her, that made him hasten as soon as Captain Dunham had announced +himself, to introduce her particularly by name. To forestall in the +jolly sailor the natural interpretation of their appearance together at +this hour and occasion, he had to lend himself to the only other +reasonable surmise. If they were not, as he saw it on the tip of the +good captain's tongue to propose, newly married, they were in a hopeful +way to be. The consciousness of himself as accessory to so delightful an +arrangement passed from the captain to Peter with almost the +obviousness of a wink, as he surrendered himself to the charm of the +girl's ethereal excitement. + +He understood perfectly that his not being able to feel more of a drop +from the pregnant mystery of her call and his high response to it, to +the homely incident of breakfast, was due to Miss Dassonville's +obliviousness of its being one. It was for her, in fact, no drop at all +but rather as if they had pulled out for a moment into this little shoal +of neighbourly interest and comfortable food, the better to look back at +the perfect wonder of it, as from the deck of the _Merrythought_ toward +the fair front of the ducal palace and the blue domes of St. Mark's +behind the rearing lion. + +Although he had parted from her that morning with no hint of an +arrangement for a next meeting, it had become a part of the day's +performance for Peter to call for the two ladies in the afternoon, so +much so that his own sense of the unusualness of finally letting the +gondola go off without him, and his particular wish at this juncture not +to mark his intercourse with any unusualness, led him to send off with +it as many roses as Luigi could find at that season on the Piazza. +Afterward, as he recalled that he had never sent flowers to Miss +Dassonville before, and as he had that morning furnished her from the +market boats past her protesting limitation, it was perhaps a greater +emphasis to his desertion. + +However, it seemed that the roses and nothing but the roses might serve +as a bridge, delicate and dizzying, to support them from the realization +of their situation, into which he had no intention of letting Miss +Dassonville fall. He stayed in his room most of that afternoon, knowing +that he was shut up with a very great matter, not able to feel it so +because of the dryness of his heart, nor to think what was to be done +about it because of the lightness of his brain. + +It occurred to him at last that at St. Mark's there might be reflective +silences and perhaps resolution. He felt it warm from the stored-up +veneration of the world, and though he said to himself, as he climbed to +the galleries, that it was to give himself the more room to think, he +knew that it must have been in his mind all the time that the girl was +there, as it was natural she should have come to the place where they +had met. Even before he caught the outline of her dress against the +pillar he found himself crossing over to the organ loft the better to +observe her. Knowledge reached him incredibly across the empty space, as +to what, over and above the pictured saints, she faced there in the +vault, lit so faintly by the shining of its golden walls. The service of +the benediction going on in the church below furnished him with the +figure of what came to him from her as she laid up her thoughts on an +altar before that mysterious intimation of maternity which presages in +right women the movement of passion. He felt himself caught up in it +purely above all sense of his personal insufficiency. + +Back in his hotel after dinner he found he had still to let the roses +answer for him as he sat out on his balcony and realized oddly that +though he had no right to go to Miss Dassonville again until he had +thought out to its furthermost his relation to her, he could, +incontinently, think better in her company. + +It was not wholly then with surprise, since he felt himself so much in +need of some compelling touch, that he heard, after an hour of futile +battling, the Princess speak to him. + +She stood just beyond him in the shadow of the wistaria that went up all +the front of the balcony, and called him by his name. + +"Ah," said Peter "I know now who you are. You are the one who stayed." + +"How did you find out?" + +"Because the one who ran away was the one he would have married." + +He did not look at the Princess, but he saw the shadow of her that the +moon made, mixed with the lace of the wistaria leaves, tremble. + +"Well," said she, "and what are you going to do about it?" + +"You know then...?" + +"I was there on the water with you this morning.... It was I that showed +you the way, but you had no eyes for anything." + +It was the swift recurrent start of what he _had_ had eyes for that kept +Peter silent long enough for the Princess to have asked him again what +he was going to do about it, and then---- + +"The other night--with the music--she knew that I was there?" + +"Oh--she!" He was taken all at once with the completeness with which in +his intimate attitude to things, Savilla did know. "She knows +everything." + +"What was there so different about the other one?" + +"Everything ... she was beautiful ... she was air and fire ... she made +the earth rock under me." + +"And did you go to her calling?" + +"I would have risen out of death and dust at her slightest word ... I +would have followed where her feet went over all the world." + +"And why did you never?" + +"I suppose," said Peter, "it was because she never called." + +"This one," suggested the Princess, "would be prettier if she were not +so thin; and she wouldn't have to wear shirtwaists if you married her. +She makes them herself, you know. Why did the other one run away?" + +"That's just the difficulty. I can't remember." He wished sincerely +within himself that he might; it seemed it would have served him somehow +with Miss Dassonville. "I've been very ill," he apologized. + +"Anyway, you'd be getting what everybody wants." + +"And that is----" + +"A woman of your own ... understanding and care ... and children. I was +in the church with you ... you saw----" + +"But I don't want to talk about it." + +"What do you want then?" + +"To be the prince in a fairy tale, I suppose," Peter sighed. + +"Oh, you're all of that to _her_. The half god--the unmatched wonder. +When she watched your coming across the water this morning--_I_ know the +look that should go to a slayer of dragons. It seems to me," said the +Princess severely, "it is you who are running away." + +She was wise enough to leave him with that view of it though it was not +by any means leaving him more comfortable. He tried for relief to +figure himself as by the Princess' suggestion, he must seem to Savilla +Dassonville. But if he was really such to her why could he not then play +the Deliverer in fact, rescue her from untended illness, from meagreness +and waste? Why not, in short, marry her, except for a reason--oh, there +was reason enough if he could only remember it! + +He heard Luigi moving softly in the room behind, and presently when the +door clicked he rose and went in and taking the lamp held it high over +him, turning with it fronting the huge mirror in its gilded frame. If +there were a good reason why he couldn't marry Savilla Dassonville, he +ought to have found it in his own lean frame, the face more drawn than +was justified by his years, lined about the eyes, the hand that held the +accusing lamp broadened by labours that no scrupulosity of care denied. +Weatheral, of Weatheral, Lessing & Co., unaccomplished, unaccustomed. He +put down the lamp heavily, leaning forward in his chair as he covered +his face with his hands and groaned in them, fully remembering. + + + + +X + + +He had been sitting just so in his library with the lamp behind him and +the hollow flare of the coals making an excellent starting place for the +House which was now so near him that the mere exhibition in shop windows +of the stuffs with which it was being modernly renewed, was enough to +set him off for it. It was so near now, that since the announcement of +their engagement in September, he had moved through all its obligations +benumbed by the white, blinding flash thrown backward from its +consummating moment, the moment of her cry to him, of their welding at +the core of light and harmony, bounded inevitably by the approaching +date of marriage. It had been, he recalled on some one of those +occasions of social approval by which it appeared engagements in the +Best Society proceeded, that he had sat thus, waiting until the clock +ticked on the moment when he might properly join her, sat so full of the +sense of her that for the instant he accepted her unannounced appearance +at the darkened doorway as the mere extension of his white-heated +fancy. The next moment as she charged into the circle of the lamp he saw +that the umbra of some strange electrical excitement hung about her. It +fairly crackled between them as he rose hurriedly to his feet. + +"You have come, Eunice! You have come----" + +But he saw well enough what she had come for. She laid the case on the +table, but as she tugged impatiently at her glove, the fringe of her +wrap caught the clasp of it and scattered the jewels on the cloth. She +tried then to put the ring beside them, but her hand shook so that it +fell and rolled upon the floor behind them. Peter picked it up quietly, +but he did not offer it to her hand again. + +"I have come," said Eunice, "to say what in my mother's house I was +afraid of being interrupted in saying; what you must see, what my mother +won't see." + +"I see you are greatly excited about something!" + +"I'm not, I'm not.... That is ... I am, but not in the way you think," +she was sharp with insistence; "that is what you and mother always say, +that I'm nervous or excited, and all the time you don't _see_." + +"What is it I don't see, Eunice?" + +"That I can't stand it, that I can't go on with it, that it is dreadful +to me,--_dreadful!_" + +"What is dreadful?" + +"Everything, being engaged--being married and giving up...." It was +fairly racked out of her by some inward torture to which he had not the +key. + +"Of course, Eunice, if you don't wish to be married so soon----" Peter +was all at sea. He brought a chair for her, and perceiving that he would +go on standing as long as she did, she sat upon the edge of it but kept +both the arms as a measure of defence. The slight act of doing something +for her restored him for the moment to reality; he bent over her. "I've +never wanted to hurry you, dearest---- It shall be when you say." She +put up her hands suddenly with a shivering movement. + +"Oh, never, never at all; never to you!" + +Peter could feel that working its track of desolation inward, but the +first instinctive movement of his surface was to close over the wound. +He took it as he knew he could only take it: as the explosive crisis of +the virginal resistance which he remembered he had heard came to girls +when marriage loomed upon them. He took a turn down the room to steady +himself, praying dumbly for the right word. + +"It isn't as if I didn't respect you"--she was eager in explanation, +hurried and stumbling--"as if I didn't know how good you are ... it is +only, because we are so different." + +"How different, Eunice?" + +"Oh ... older, I suppose." She grew quieter; it appeared on the whole +they were getting on. "I care for so many things, you know--dancing--and +bridge--_young_ things--and you are always reading and reading. Oh! I +couldn't stand it." + +So it was out now. She was jealous of his books, a little. Well, he had +been self-absorbed. It occurred to him dimly that the thing to have done +if he had known a little more about women, had practised with them, was +to have provoked her at this point to the tears which should have sealed +the renewal of his claim to her. What he said was, very quietly: + +"Of course I never meant, Eunice, that you shouldn't have everything you +want." + +"Oh," she seemed to have found a suffocating quality in his gentleness, +against which she struck out with drowning gestures, "if you could only +understand what it would mean to me never to have anybody I liked to +talk to about things,--anybody I liked to be with all the time!" She was +choked and aghast at the enormity of it. + + +"But I thought...." Peter was not able to go on with that. "Isn't there +anybody you like to be with, Eunice?" + +"Yes," said Eunice. "Burton Henderson." + +Mutinous and bright she looked at him out of the chair with a hand on +either arm of it poised for flight or defence. After an interval Peter +heard his own voice out of a fog rising to the conventional utterance. + +"Of course, if you have learned to love him----" + +"I've loved him all the time." She was so bent on making this clear to +him that she was careless what went down before her. "From the very +beginning," she said, "but he had so little money, and mother ... I +promised you, I know, but it's not as if I ever said I loved you." + +She should have spared him that! He had not put out a hand to hold her +that he should be so pierced through with needless cruelty. But she was +bent on clearing her skirts of him. + +"Do you think," she expostulated to his stricken silence, "that if I'd +cared in the least I'd have made it so easy for you? Can't you see that +it was all arranged, that we _jumped_ at you?" All the time she sat +opposite him, thrusting swift and hard, there was no diminution of her +appealing beauty, the flaming rose of her cheeks and the soft, dark +flare of her hair. As if she felt how it belied at every turn the +quality of her unyielding intention, her voice railed against him +feverishly. "I suppose you think I'm mercenary, and I thought I was, +too. You don't know how people like us _need_ money sometimes. All the +things we like _cost_ so--all the real things. And poor mamma, she +needed things; she'd never had them, and I thought that I could stand +being married to you if I could get them that way.... Maybe I could, +you know, if you'd been different, more like us I mean. But there was +such a lot you didn't understand ... things you hadn't even heard about. +I found that out as soon as we were engaged. There wasn't a thing +between us; not a _thing_." + +It poured scalding hot on Peter's sensitive surfaces: made sensitive by +the way in which even in this hour her beauty moved him. He felt tears +starting in his heart and prayed they might not come to his face. "So +you see as we hadn't anything in common it would be better for us not to +go on with it even"--she broke a little at this--"even if there hadn't +been anybody else. You see that, don't you?" She dared him to deny it +rather than begged the concession of him as she gathered herself for +departure. + +"I see that." + +"You never really belonged to our set, you know----" She rose now and he +rose blindly with her; he hoped that she was done, but there was +something still. "It hasn't been easy to go through with it.... Mother +isn't going to make it any easier. It's natural for her to want me to +have everything that money would mean, and I thought that if you would +just keep away from her ... you owe something to Burton and me for what +we've been through, I think ... just leave it to me to manage in my own +way...." + +"I shall never trouble you, Eunice." + +He came close to her then to open the door, seeing that she was to leave +him, and he saw too that she had suffered, was at the very ebb and stony +bottom of emotion as she hung for the moment in the doorway searching +for some winged shaft of separation that should cut her off from the +remotest implication of the situation. She found at last the barbedest. +All the succeeding time after he closed the door on her was marked for +Peter, not by the ticked moments but by successive waves of anguish as +that poisoned arrow worked its way to his secret places. + +"It isn't as if I had ever loved you; I owe it to Mr. Henderson to +remind you that I never said I did.... You know I never liked to have +you kiss me." + +He had in the months that succeeded to that last sight of Eunice +Goodward, moments of unbearably wanting to go to her to try for a little +to ease his torment in a more tender recognition of it--days when he +would have taken from her, gratefully even if she had fooled him and he +had seen her do it, whatever would have saved him from the certainty +that never even in those first exquisite moments had she been his. The +sharp edge of her young sufficiency had lopped off the right limb of his +manhood. Never, even in his dreams, if life had allowed him to dream +again, should he be able to see himself in any other guise than the +meagre, austere front which his obligation to his mother and Ellen had +obliged him to present to destiny. She had beggared him of all those +aptitudes for passionate relations, by the faith in which he had kept +himself inwardly alive. The capacity for loving died in him with the +knowledge of not being able to be loved. + +Out of the anaesthesia of exhaustion from which Italy had revived him, it +rolled back upon him that by just the walled imperviousness that shut +Eunice Goodward from the appreciation of his passion, he was prevented +now from Savilla Dassonville. + + + + +XI + + +It was odd, then, having come to this conclusion in the middle of the +night, that when he joined the ladies in the morning he should have +experienced a sinking pang in not being able any longer to be sure what +Miss Dassonville thought of him. There was in her manner, as she thanked +him for the flowers, nothing to ruffle the surface of the bright, +impersonal companionship which she had afforded him for weeks past. + +The occasion which brought them together was an agreement entered into +some days earlier, to go and look at palaces, and as they turned past +the Saluti to the Grand Canal, he found himself wondering if there had +not been a touch of fatuity in his reading of the incident of the +morning before. He had gone so far in the night as to think even of +leaving Venice, and saw himself now forlornly wishing for some renewal +of yesterday's mood to excuse him from the caddishness that such a +flight implied. + +It came out a little later, perhaps, when after traversing many high and +resounding marble halls, with a great many rooms opening into one +another in a way that suggested rather the avoidance of privacy than its +security, they found themselves in one of those gardens of shut delight +of which the exteriors of Venetian houses give so little intimation. + +As she went about from bough to bough of the neglected roses, turned all +inward as if they took their florescence from that still lighted human +passion which had found its release and centre there, her face glowed +for the moment with the colour of her quick sympathies. She turned it on +him with an unconscious, tender confidence, which not to meet seemed to +Peter, in that gentle enclosure full of warmth and fragrance, to assume +the proportions of a betrayal. + +He did meet it there as she came back to him for the last look from the +marble balustrade by which they had descended, covering her hand, there +resting, lingeringly with his own. He was awakened only to the +implication of this movement by the discovery that she had deeply and +exquisitely blushed. + +It was a further singularity in view of the conviction with which Peter +had come through the night, that the mood of protectingness which the +girl provoked in him should have multiplied itself in pointing out to +him how many ways, if he had not made up his mind not to marry her at +all, such a marriage could be made to serve its primal uses. She had +turned up her cuff to trail her hand overside as they slid through the +lucent water, and the pretty feminine curve of it had brought to mind +what the Princess had told him of the shirt-waists she made herself. He +decided that she made them very well. But she was too thin for their +severity--and if he married her he would have insisted on her wearing +them now and then as a tender way to prevent her suspecting that it was +on their account he had thought of not marrying her. The revealed +whiteness of her wrist, the intimacy of her relaxed posture, for though +her mind had played into his as freely as a child in a meadow, she had +been always, as regards her person, a little prim with him, had lent to +their errand of house visiting a personal note in which it was absurdly +apt for them to have run across Captain Dunham of the _Merrythought_ at +the door of the Consulate. Mr. Weatheral had some papers which Lessing +had sent him to acknowledge there, and it was a piece of the morning's +performance, when he had come back from that business, to find that the +meeting had taken on--from some mutual discovery of the captain's and +Mrs. Merrithew's of a cousin's wife's sister who had married one of the +Applegates who was a Dunham on the mother's side--quite the aspect of a +family party. It came in the end to the four of them going off at +Peter's invitation to have lunch together in a cafe overhanging the +_calle_. He told himself afterward that he would not have done it if he +had recalled in time the friendly seaman's romantic appreciation of the +situation between himself and Miss Dassonville. He saw himself so +intrigued by it that, by the time lunch was over, he felt himself in a +position which to his own sensitiveness, demanded that he must +immediately leave Venice or propose to Miss Dassonville. To see the way +he was going and to go on in it, had for him the fascination of the +abyss. He caught himself in the act even of trying to fix Miss +Dassonville's eye to include her by complicity in the beguilement of the +captain, a business which she seemed to have undertaken on her own +account on quite other grounds. He perceived with a kind of pride for +her that she had the ways of elderly sea-going gentlemen by heart. It +was something even if she had failed to charm Peter, that she shouldn't +be found quite wanting in it by other men. + +When they had put him back aboard of the _Merrythought_ they had come to +such a pitch among them all, that as the captain leaned above the rail +to launch an invitation, he addressed it to Miss Dassonville, as, if not +quite the giver of the feast, the mistress of the situation. + +"When are you coming to lunch with me?" demanded the captain. + +"Never!" declared Miss Dassonville. "It would be quite out of the +question to have hot cakes for luncheon, and I absolutely refuse to +come for anything less." + +"There's something quite as good," asserted the captain, "that I'll bet +you haven't had in as long." + +"Better than hot cakes?" Miss Dassonville was skeptical. + +"Pie," said the captain. + +"Oh, _Pie!_" in mock ecstasy. "Well, I'd come for pie," and with that +they parted. + +Peter had plenty of time for considering where he found himself that +afternoon, for the ladies were bent on a shopping expedition on which +they had rather pointedly given him to understand he was not expected to +attend. He had tried that once, and had hit upon the excellent device, +in face of the outrageous prices proposed by the dealers, of having them +settle upon what they would like and sending Luigi back to bargain for +it. All of which would have gone very well if Mrs. Merrithew, in the +delight of his amazing success, had not gone back to the shop the next +day to duplicate his purchases. Peter had never heard what occurred on +that occasion, but he had noticed that they never talked in his +presence of buying anything again. Bloombury people, he should have +remembered, had perfectly definite notions about having things done for +them. + +He walked, therefore, on this afternoon in the Public Gardens and tried +to reconstruct in their original force the reasons for his not marrying +Savilla Dassonville. They had come upon him overwhelmingly in the +recrudescence of memory, reasons rooted very simply in his man's hunger +for the lift, the dizzying eminence of desire. He liked the girl well +enough but he did not want her as he had wanted Eunice Goodward, as he +wanted expansively at this moment to want something, somebody--who was +not Eunice--he was perfectly clear on this point--but should be in a +measure all she stood for to him. He had renewed in the night, though in +so short a time, not less acutely, all the wounded misery of what Eunice +had forced upon him. He was there between the dark and dawn, and here +again in the cool of the garden, to taste the full bitterness of the +conviction that he was not good enough to be loved. He was not to be +helped from that by the thought, which came hurrying on the heels of +the other, that Savilla Dassonville loved him. He had a moment of almost +hating her as she seemed to plead with him, by no motion of her own he +was obliged to confess for those raptures, leaping fires, winged rushes, +which should have been his portion of their situation. + +He hated her for the certainty that if he went away now quietly without +saying anything, it would be to visit on her undeservedly all that had +come to him from Eunice. For she would know; she would not, as he had +been, be blind to the point of requiring the spoken word. If he left her +now it would be to the unavoidable knowledge that, as the Princess had +said of him, he would be running away. He would be running from the +evidences of a moneyless, self-abnegating youth, from the plain surfaces +of efficiency and womanliness, not hedged about and enfolded, but pushed +to the extremity of its use. He had, however, when he had taken that in +from every side, the grace to be ashamed of it. + +He was ashamed, too, of finding himself at their next meeting involved +in a wordless appeal to be helped from his state to some larger grounds. +If the girl had but appealed to him he could have done with a fine +generosity what he felt was beyond him to invite. He could have married +Savilla Dassonville to be kind to her; what he didn't enjoy was putting +it on a basis of her being kind to him. + +Miss Dassonville, however, afforded him no help beyond the negative one +of not talking too much and taking perhaps a shade less interest in +Venice. They had two quiet days together in which it was evident, +whatever Peter settled with himself as to his relation to the girl, it +had taken on for Mrs. Merrithew the pointedness known in Bloombury as +"attentions." She paid in to the possibilities of the situation the +tribute of her absence for long sessions in which, so far as Peter could +discover, the situation rather fell to the ground. It began to appear +that he had missed as he was doomed with women, the crucial instant, and +was to come out of this as of other encounters, empty. And then quite +suddenly the girl put out a hand to him. + +It was along about the end of the afternoon they had come out of the +church of Saint George the Greater, which as being most accessible had +been left to the latter end of their explorations. Mrs. Merrithew had +just sent Giuseppe back for a shawl which she had dropped in the +cloister. They sat rocking in the gondola looking toward the fairy +arcade of the ducal palace and the pillars of the saints, and suddenly +Miss Dassonville spoke to excuse her quietness. + +"I must look all I can," she said; "we are leaving the day after +to-morrow." + +If she had retired behind Mrs. Merrithew's comfortable breadth in order +to deliver her shot the more effectively, she missed seeing how plumply +it landed in the midst of Peter's defences and scattered them. + +"Leaving Venice?" he said. "Leaving me?" It took a moment for that fact, +dropping the depth of his indecision, to show him where he stood. "But I +thought you understood," he protested, "that I wanted you to stay ... to +stay with me...." He leaned across Mrs. Merrithew's broad lap in a great +fear of not being sufficiently plain. "Make her understand," he said, +"that I want her to stay always." + +"I guess," said Mrs. Merrithew, a dry smile twinkling in the placidity +of her countenance, "you'd better take me right home first, and then you +can explain to her yourself." + + + + +XII + + +"And you are sure," asked Peter, "that you are not going to mind my +being so much older?" + +"Oh, I'm going to mind it: There will be times when I shall be afraid of +not living up to it. But the most part of my minding will be, since you +are so much better acquainted with life than I am, that in any matter in +which we shouldn't agree I shall be so much the more sure of your being +right. It's going to be a great help to us, having something like that +to go by." + +"Oh," said Peter, "you put it very prettily, my dear." + +He was aware as soon as he had said it, that she would have a way always +of putting things prettily, and that not for the sake of any +prettiness, but because it was so intrinsically she saw them. It would +make everything much simpler that she was always sufficiently to be +believed. + +"It isn't, you know," she went on, "as if I should have continually to +prop up my confidence with my affection as I might with a man of less +experience. Oh!" she threw out her arms with a beautiful upward motion, +"you give me so much room, Peter." + +"Well, more than I would give you at this moment if we were not in a +gondola on a public highway!" + +He amazed himself at the felicity with which during the three days of +their engagement he had been able to take that note with her, still more +at the entertainment of her shy response. It gave him a new and enlarged +perception of himself as a man acquainted with passion. All that had +been withheld from him, by the mere experience of missing, he was able +to bestow with largesse. The witchery and charm that had been done on +him, he worked--if he were but to put his arm about her now, to draw +her so that her head rested on his shoulder, with a certain pressure, +he could feel all her being flower delicately to that beguilement. He +had promised himself, when he had her promise, that she should never +miss anything, and he had a certain male satisfaction in being able to +make good. What he did now, in deference to their being as they were in +the full light of day and the plying traffic, was to say: + +"Then if I were to put it to you in the light of my superior experience, +that I considered it best for us to be married right away, I shouldn't +expect you to contradict me." + +"Oh, Peter!" + +"We can't keep Mrs. Merrithew on forever, you know," he suggested, "and +we've such a lot to do--there's Greece and Egypt and the Holy Land----" + +"But can we--be married in Venice, I mean?" + +"That," said Peter, "is what I'm waiting your permission to find out." + +He spent the greater part of the afternoon at that business without, +however, getting satisfaction. "Marriage in Italy," the consul told +him, "is a sort of world-without-end affair. Even if you cable for the +necessary papers it will be a matter of a month or six weeks before the +ceremony could be accomplished. You'll do better to go to Switzerland +with the young lady." + +For the present he went back to her with a list of the required +certificates, and another item which he brought out later as a +corrective for the disappointment for the first. + +"My birth and baptismal certificates? I haven't any," said Miss +Dassonville, "and I don't believe you have either; and I don't want to +go to Switzerland." + +"No," said Peter, "even that takes three weeks." + +"Why can't he marry us himself--the consul, I mean? I thought wherever +the flag went up was territory of the United States." + +"If you will come along with me in the morning we can ask him," Peter +suggested, and on the way there he loosed for her benefit the second +item of his yesterday's discovery. They slid past the facade of a +certain palace and she kissed the tip of her finger to it lightly. "It's +as if we had a secret between us," she explained, "the secret of the +garden. Besides, I shall always love it because it was there I first +suspected that you--cared. When did you begin to care, Peter?" + +"Since before I can remember. Would you like to live in it?" + +"In this palace? Here in Venice?" + +"It's for rent," he told her; "the consul has it." + +"But could we afford it?" + +"Well," said Peter, "if you like it so much, at the rate things are +here, we can pull it up by the roots and take it back to Bloombury." + +They lost themselves in absurd speculations as to the probable effect on +the villagers of that, and so failed to take note as their gondola nosed +into the green shadow under the consulate, of the _Merrythought's_ +launch athwart the landing, until the captain himself hailed them. + +"This port," he declared, "is under embargo. I have been waiting here +since half tide and there's nothing doing. Somebody's in there chewing +red tape, but I don't calculate to let anybody else have a turn at it +until I get my bit wound up an' tied in a knot. Now don't tell me you've +got business in there?" + +"We want to find out something." + +"Well, when ye find it, it won't be what ye want," asserted the captain +gloomily. "It never is in these Dago countries." He motioned his own +boat aside from the landing. "If ye want to go inside and set on a +chair," he suggested, "I'll not hender ye. I like the water best myself. +I hope your business will stand waiting." + +"To everybody but ourselves," said Peter. "You see," he caught the +permission lightly from Miss Dassonville's eyes, "we want to get +married." + +"Ho!" said the captain, chirking up. "I could 'a' told ye that the fust +time I laid eyes on ye. But I'll tell ye this: ye can't do nothing in a +hurry in this country. The only place where a man can do things up as +soon as he thinks of 'em is on the blue water. We don't have red tape on +shipboard, I can tell you. The skipper's the law and the government." + +"Could you marry people?" + +"Well, I ain't to say in the habit of it, but it's the law that I +could." + +"Then if we get tangled up with the consul," said Peter, "we'll have to +fall back on you," and they took it as an excellent piece of fooling +which they were later to come back to as a matter of serious resort. + +"Of course," said the consul, "I could marry you and it would be legal +if you chose to count it so at home, but if you are thinking of taking a +house here and of making an extended residence I shouldn't advise it. As +to Captain Dunham's suggestion, it's not wholly a bad one. Not being in +Italy, the Italians can't take exception to it, and if it is properly +witnessed and recorded at home it ought to stand." + +They couldn't of course take it in all at once that they were simply to +sail out there into the ethereal blueness and to come back from it with +the right to live together. However, it made for a great unanimity of +opinion as they talked it over on the way home, that, since so much was +lacking from Peter's marriage that he had dreamed went to it, and so +much more had come into Savilla's than she had dared to imagine, it +mattered very little what else was added or left out. + +"I suppose," suggested Miss Dassonville, "Mrs. Merrithew will think it +dreadful." But as it turned out Mrs. Merrithew thought very well of it. + +"On a United States boat with a United States minister--there is one +here I've found out--it seems a lot safer than to trust to these foreign +ways. If you was to be married in Italian I should never be certain you +wouldn't wake up some morning and find yourself not married. And then +how should I feel!" As to the palace plan, she threw herself into it +with heavy alacrity. "I s'pose I've got to see you through," she said, +"and it will give me something to think about. I don't suppose you have +any intention that way, but an engaged couple isn't very good company." + +It transpired that the _Merrythought_ would put out to the high seas on +the twenty-second, and it was in the flutter of their practical +adjustments to meet this date that Peter found the ten days of his +engagement move so swiftly; to engage servants, to interview +tradespeople, to prune the neglected garden--it was Savilla's notion +that they should do this themselves--all the stir of domestic life made +so many points of advantage to support him above that dryness of despair +from which he had moments of feeling himself all too hardly rescued. He +had come up out of it sufficiently by the help that Italy afforded, to +glimpse once more the country of his dreams, only by this act of his +marriage to turn his back on it forever. Savilla Dassonville was a dear +little thing; if it came to that, a revered and valued thing, but she +was not, he had never pretended it, the Lovely Lady, and the door that +shut them in as man and wife was to shut _her_ forever out of his life. +And yet though this was his accepted, his official position, it was +remarkable even to himself how much less frequently as the preparations +for his marriage went forward, he found himself obliged to fall back +upon it; how much more he projected himself into his future as the +adored and protecting male. He recalled in this connection that the +Princess had said to him that he should visit his House no more, and it +was part of the proof of the notion he entertained toward himself as a +man done with the imaginative life, that he accepted it with no more +fuss about it. He had in fact his mind's eye on a piece of ground which +Lessing could buy for him, on the river, an hour from the city, where he +could manage for Savilla at least, a generous substitute for dreams, and +a situation for himself for which he began to discover more appetite +than he would have believed. It was likely, he thought, that he would +himself take a turn at planning the garden. + +It was very early in the morning when the wedding party which had been +reinforced by the consul, the mistress of Casa Frolli, and the minister, +who had turned out to be exactly of Mrs. Merrithew's persuasion, went +aboard the _Merrythought_, blooming out amazingly in bunting and roses +for the occasion. The morning blueness had drained out from the city and +stained the waters eastward as they put out between the red and yellow +sails of the fishing fleet. They saw the cypress-towered islands of +romance melt in the morning haze. The steam launch which was to take +them ashore again ploughed alongside, and there was a pleasant sort of +home smell from the cook's quarters. + +Peter sat forward with the bride's hand tucked under his arm and +presently he heard her laughing softly, delightedly. + +"Peter, do you know what that is, that good smell I mean?" + +"What do you think it is?" + +"It's pie baking. Truly, don't you think I'm enough of a housewife to +know that?" + +"I know you're everything you ought to be." + +"It is pie, there's no doubt about it, but we must pretend to be awfully +surprised when the captain brings it out. But Peter, don't you like it?" + +"Pie, my dear?" + +"No, but like having everything so homey and--and--so genuine at our +wedding?" + +"I hope," said Peter, "it's genuine pie, but I see what you mean, my +dear." + +"It's an omen, almost, that we'll always have the good, comfortable, +common things to fall back upon, if our marriage should not prove quite +all we've dreamed it. It's been so perfect up to now; it must drop down +out of the clouds some time." + +It seemed rather to have taken a sweep upward when, with sails swelling +over them and the beat of the sea under the bows, they stood up to be +married, and to exhibit capacities of sustaining itself at a level from +which not the very soggy and sallow complexioned pie with the cook +grinning behind it, could dislodge the two most concerned in it. It wore +through the day to a contained and quiet gayety at a dinner which took +place in the _ristoranta_ over the water where they had once lunched +with the captain, and lasted until Peter had brought his wife home again +to the refurnished palace. It had gone, as he told himself, remarkably +well, with every intimation, as he had time to tell himself in his last +hours in the garden with his cigar, of going much better, of becoming as +the place gave him occasion to indulge the figure, an enclosed and +fragrant garden, in which if no flaming angel of desire kept the gate +for him, he had at least the promise of refreshment. + +That old passion for Eunice Goodward, all his feelings for all the women +he had known, served to show him what Savilla had meant when she said he +"gave her so much room"--the renewed sense of the spaciousness of life. + +It would be there for his wife at the completest, and if she had, as it +seemed, turned him out of the Wonderful House in order to live in it +herself, he at least kept the gates. And was not this the proper +business for a man? He recalled what the Princess had said to him so +long ago when he had first begun to think of himself as a bachelor. "It +takes a lot of dreaming to bring one like me to pass." Well, he had +dreamed and he had slain some dragons. Later there would be children +playing in the House, daughters perhaps ... Lovely Ladies. The world +would be a better place for them to walk about in because of all that he +had lost and been. + +When he went into the garden he had half expected that the Princess +would speak to him; the place was full of hints of her, faint and +persuasive as the scent of the flowers in the dark, little riffles of +his pulse, flushed surfaces, the tingling of his palms which announced +her, but she did not speak. He said to himself that he was now a well +man and had seen the last of her. Never before had he felt so very +well. + +He saw the light moving in the palace behind him as his wife moved to +complete some of her arrangements; he heard her then pacing along the +marble floor of the great hall which went quite through the middle of +it--she must be going to her room, and in a little while he would go in +to her--he heard the light tapping of her feet and then he saw her come, +the lit lamp in her hand. + +She had on still the white dress in which she had been married, and over +it she had thrown the silver-woven scarf which had been one of his first +gifts to her, and as she came the light glittered on it; it drew from +the polished walls bright reflections in which, amid the gilded frames, +he saw the dim old pictures start and waver--and as he saw her coming +so, Peter threw away his cigar and gripped suddenly at the balustrade to +steady him where he stood, against what out of some far spring of his +youth rushed upon him, as he saw her come--as he had always seen her, as +he knew now he was to see her always--his wife and the Lovely Lady. + + +THE END + + + + +[Illustration] + +THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS +GARDEN CITY, N.Y. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lovely Lady, by Mary Austin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVELY LADY *** + +***** This file should be named 20359.txt or 20359.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/3/5/20359/ + +Produced by Hillie Plantinga and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |