Part 74 (1/2)
It was Sunday, and in the morning they went dutifully to church. They ate their luncheon dutifully with the whole family, and motored dutifully afterwards with the General. Then at twilight they sought the Toy Shop.
They had it all to themselves, and they had told Bronson that they would not be home for dinner. So Jean made chocolate for Derry as she had made it on that first night for his father. They toasted war bread on the electric grill, and there were strawberries.
They were charmed with their housekeeping. ”It would have been like this,” Derry said--all eyes for her loveliness, ”if you had been the girl in the Toy Shop and I had been the shabby boy--”
Jean pondered. ”I wonder if a big house is ever really a home?”
”Not ours. Mother tried to make it--but it has always been a sort of museum with Dad's collections.”
”Do you think that some day we could have a little house?”
”We can have whatever you want.” His smile warmed her.
”Wouldn't you want it, Derry?”
”If you were in it.”
”Let's talk about it, and plan it, and put dream furniture in it, and dream friends--”
”More Lovely Dreams?”
”Well, something like that--a House o' Dreams, Derry, without any gold dragons or marble b.a.l.l.s or queer porcelain things; just our own bits of furniture and china, and a garden, and m.u.f.fin and Polly Ann--” Her eyes were wistful.
”You shall have it now if you wish.”
”Not until you can share it with me--”
And that was the beginning of their fantastic pilgrimage. In the time that was left to them they were to find a house of dreams, and as Jean said, expansively, ”all the rest.”
”We will start tonight,” Derry declared. ”There's such a moon.”
It was the kind of moon that whitened the world; one swam in a sea of light. Derry's runabout was a fairy car. Jean's hair was molten gold, her lover's pale silver--as with bare heads, having pa.s.sed the city limits, they took the open road.
It was as warm as summer, and there were fragrances which seemed to wash over them in waves as they pa.s.sed old gardens and old orchards. There was bridal-wreath billowing above stone fences, snow-b.a.l.l.s, pale globes among the green, beds of iris, purple-black beneath the moon.
They forded a stream--more silver, and a silver road after that.
”Where are we going?” Jean breathed.
”I know a house--”
It was a little house set on top of a hill, where indeed no little house should be set, for little houses should nestle, protected by the slopes back of them. But this little house was set up there for the view--the Monument a spectral shaft, miles away, the Potomac broadening out beyond it, the old trees of the Park sleeping between. This was what the little house saw by night; it saw more than that by day.
It was not an empty house. One window was lighted, a square of gold in a lower room.
They did not know who lived in the house. They did not care. For the moment it was theirs. Leaving the car, they sat on the gra.s.s and surveyed their property.
”Of course it is ours,” Jean said, ”and when you are over there, you can think of it with the moon s.h.i.+ning on it.”
”I like the sloping roof,” her lover took up the refrain, ”and the big chimney and the wide windows.”