Part 36 (1/2)

”But you don't see any other chance for her.”

He felt that she was taking an unfair advantage of a chance lapse on his part and, dismayed and disgusted by the pious color of their talk, was pointedly silent, conveying the impression that he was trying to command his patience till she should consent to stop talking foolishly.

”Marise isn't a bit old,” she pointed out, half to herself, half to him.

”She's just seventeen to-day. And she's not plain, either.”

”You bet your life she's not. That's why I know what her music is going to do to _her_.”

”Well, for goodness' sakes, why take her out of college to go on with it?”

He evidently felt that he had more than explained this, for he made no answer. She said then, a very plain, human anxiety wrinkling her old face, ”Do you honestly think, Horace, that you are the right person to bring up a pretty, seventeen-year-old girl?”

”As good as anybody else,” he said drily, averring the complete incompetence of all the world for that task.

”But she is getting on so well at college--she stands so high--and the youngest in her cla.s.s. She is so bright.”

”Oh, that hasn't anything to do with her being bright. That comes from the schooling she's had in France. She learned to keep at whatever she was doing till she got it right.--Lord--the sloshy work in an American college--as easy as sliding down hill for her. She may or she may not have a good mind. She's learned to work, that's all.”

”That's what you're going back for, because of good work,” stated Cousin Hetty.

”Oh, I'm not expecting to do any of it myself,” he enjoyed his usual satisfaction in making no pretense to virtue, ”but I like being able to hire other folks for a nickel or two, to work like that. And I like being able to hire other folks to make it their business to keep me comfortable. And don't forget the cooking. And the wine. And the beds.

There's not a decent bed in America.”

She made him feel by a lift of the eyebrows that she considered this a rather self-conscious, soph.o.m.oric continuance of the pose of knowing sophistication. At this he looked nettled and cross.

A little later, as she stopped in front of him, with an armful of pruned-off shoots, on her way to the bon-fire, she asked, ”But will Marise have a good time over there? Young folks here do have such good times.”

In his turn he showed her by a lift of the eyebrows that he considered this too unimportant to answer. She stood looking down at her shears, cruel, steel-bright and keen, ”Oh, well ... I don't suppose I let my roses have such a good time,” she said to herself.

II

After supper they went out on the bench while he smoked his cigar.

Cousin Hetty did not mind tobacco smoke inside the house, but her elderly hired girl did. They were both still under the impression of the tepid warmth of the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, and were surprised to find the evening air so cold.

”Feels as though there were still snow on the mountains,” he remarked, recognizing the peculiar, raw, penetrating chill.

”There is,” she told him, drawing her shawl about her.

By his tone he had intimated that he had pa.s.sed out of the p.r.i.c.kly irritation of his afternoon mood. By hers, she had told him that she would, as usual, meet him half-way, in any mood he chose to feel.

They sat down together on the wooden bench; he began silently to smoke, and she to think.

”My visit's over. I must take the noon train to-morrow,” he said, ”and I've half a notion to ask your advice about something.”

She refrained from any expression of the astonishment and skepticism she felt and said briefly with a friendly accent, ”All right.”

”About Marise,” he said.

”Oh, yes, of course. What is it?” she asked in an altered tone of quickened interest.

But for a time he said nothing more. He waited, drawing on his cigar. He drew so hard that it began to gleam redly through the dusk. At this, he took it from his lips and held it down, his fingers out-curved at his side, where he did not see the raging coal at its tip. He had never thought consciously about this gesture, but it was an invariable one with him. There was something distasteful to him about the naked, raw hotness of a newly-lighted cigar-tip. He preferred it later on when all you could see was the ghost-form of the burned-out tobacco, the long, fine ash held together by nothing at all, ready to be shattered at a breath into floating particles of nothingness.