Part 29 (1/2)
He sat down on the steps of the veranda, inviting me to do the same, with a civil wave of his pipestem, and we entered into pleasant converse, until the voice of his mate shrilly commanded him to arise and wash his hands and shed the overalls, whereat he hastily deserted me.
Came a supper at which I was able to comment agreeably on the cream served with the berries, whereat Mr. Gobbins gave out dark hints of watery malefactions on the part of some of the keepers of boarding houses in the neighborhood. There was cold pork, usually potent to bring me nightmares, and an obese pie to be washed down with pale tea. Under my breath I deplored the luck that had made me forget to bring digestive tablets and, spurred by unusual appet.i.te, I gorged myself.
The evening was a short one, spent on the porch where I lolled in a hammock, while Frances rocked in a big chair. There was no need to talk, for it was all very new and beautiful. The katydids and tree-frogs took charge of the conversation for us. After a time Eulalie joined us, sitting modestly on the steps. With much genuine sentiment she spoke of the cabbages of her own land and of cows she had once cherished.
”It is like the heaven of the _Bon Dieu_ to smell these things again,”
she informed us, and I decided that she had spoken a great and splendid truth.
We retired early. In my own little room, with the oil-lamp burning, I commented sadly on the fact that it was only half past nine, the hour at which my busy life commonly begins. Upon the bed I looked hopelessly; it was inviting enough, but, at this time of day, about as attractive as plum-pudding for breakfast. For an hour I read a magazine; the katydids were still clamoring softly and, in the distance, in the direction of the lake, I heard the plaintive notes of whippoorwills. Then I caught myself in a blessed yawn and went to bed. But a few moments seemed to have gone by, when I awoke in a room flooded with suns.h.i.+ne and penetrated by a myriad of joyful sounds coming from the Noah's Ark of the farm. Looking out of the window I was shamed by the sight of Eulalie who, with Baby Paul in her arms, strolled about the kitchen garden, evidently lost in rapture at the sight of leeks and radishes.
I hurried my dressing, donning a pair of white flannel trousers I had bought for the sake of bestowing upon myself some atmosphere of the country, and found Frances sitting in the hammock with Towser's big, nondescript head in her lap.
”I hope you slept ever so well,” she told me, looking very radiant and putting out her hand. ”And, David, I'm so wonderfully happy. Look at the beautiful lake! We will have to go over there after breakfast, and, perhaps, you can row in a boat, and we will take Eulalie and Baby with us. Or perhaps you can go fis.h.i.+ng, or may be you would rather stay quietly here and have a nice long rest. And just listen to that wood-thrush over there. She's up in the cherry tree; or perhaps it's a he, and probably there's a nest somewhere with dear little fellows just hatched out. Isn't it lovely?”
My enthusiasm was just as great as her own. There seemed to be altogether too many beautiful things to do, and to look at, and to allow to soak into one, like some penetrating water from the fountain of youth.
”I'm so glad you like it, Frances,” I told her.
And so we spent a heavenly day, and, in the morning, I took the early train and went back to the city, Frances looking rather regretfully at me. But I had decided that I must not remain there; it would not do. One evening after another, of moonlit glory, of whispering winds bearing fragrance and delight, of nearness to this wonderful woman with the heart of a child and the beauty of a G.o.ddess, endowed with that voice sounding like melodies from on high, must surely break down my courage.
How could I stand it day after day? No, I intended to return for weekends, propped up by new resolve to be silent. A chill would come over me at the idea of suddenly blurting out my love to her and having her look at me as she once gazed on Gordon, perhaps even more sorrowfully, because I think I have become a more valued friend.
I explained to her that I had some most important work to do and imagined all sorts of meetings with publishers. Also a moving-picture gentleman had thrown out dark hints. The atmosphere of the blazing city, I told her, was utterly needed for my new book. All she had to do was to be very patient, grow strong and brown, watch Baby Paul thrive, and await my coming on Sat.u.r.day afternoons. In the meanwhile I would send her books and magazines, besides a b.u.t.ton hook she had forgotten, and a package of the tea we were partial to, and--and a week was an exceedingly short s.p.a.ce of time.
So I said good-by and waved my hand at the turning in the road, and returned to the big city, which I could, without much regret, have seen reduced to the condition of Sodom and Gomorrha, since it would have given me a good excuse to take the next train back.
Upon entering my room, I decided that it was a beastly hole. So hateful did it seem that I strolled off into the opposite one. It seemed like a rather sneaking and underhanded thing to do and, I dare say, I had some of the feelings of a burglar. My old piano was there, upon which she played softly and sang exercises that were perfectly beautiful, and songs beyond compare. The very atmosphere of her was still in the place and things of hers were yet on the dressing table, including the b.u.t.ton hook, which I pocketed. They made me think of saintly relics to be wors.h.i.+pped. Baby Paul's crib appealed to me. She had so often bent over it, wistfully, as I watched her, admiring the wondrous curve of her neck, the sunlit glory of her hair.
Mrs. Milliken suddenly caught me there, and I felt a sense of heat in my cheeks.
”Yes,” she said, ”I'll give it a thorough cleaning. It needs it real bad. And next week I'll put new paper on the walls and have the carpet took up and beaten. I was wis.h.i.+n' you'd stay away long enough so I could do the same to yours. I've known all my life men are mussy, but that room of yours is the limit, Mr. Cole, all littered up with paper so a body don't dare touch anything.”
I made no answer. I suppose that house cleaning is a necessary evil but her contemplated invasion of Frances's room seems to me like the desecration of a shrine. It should be locked up and penetrated only by people soft of foot and low of voice.
CHAPTER XX
RICHETTI IS PLEASED
Goodness only knows how many pages I blackened with the experiences of this short summer, but I have thrown them away, in small pieces. They were too introspective; mere impressions of one week after another, when I would take the train and join Frances again, under self-suggested and hypocritical pleas. My wisdom was needed to see to it that Baby Paul grew and thrived. His teething necessitated my worrying Dr. Porter half to death as to the possibilities of such portentous happenings. It was also indispensable that I should accurately ascertain the mother's condition of health and listen to Eulalie's observations. In other words, I pretended that I was a very important person.
But in the heart of me, I knew myself to be like some drug-fiend, only permitted to indulge his destructive habit once a week. The work I turned out of nights, I am afraid, was worth little and will have to be subjected to plentiful alterations. In the day I wandered over the superheated city and occasionally took a boat for a lonely excursion over the Bay, for the sake of fresh air and unneeded rest. But from the Monday morning to Sat.u.r.day afternoon the fever was always on me to hasten back, to drift with Frances over the little lake, to stroll with her in the woodland roads or among the fields, to steep myself in the atmosphere she radiated, of sweetest womanhood, of tenderness she displayed only to Baby Paul, but some of which was reflected on me. The mere speaking voice of her, telling me of rumbling bull-frogs, of a terrible little garter-snake beheld on the main road, of a tiny calf which, she feared, was destined to go the way of all veal, was melody and charm and delight. Gordon once told me that a man and a woman cannot be true friends long. There is no middle ground, he explained, it must be either more or less. But I would meet her on the road on the days of my arrival. She would walk all but the last quarter mile, that ran along a sun-beaten lane surfaced with red-hot dust, and wait for me beside a little watering trough usually tenanted by a beady-eyed froglet, which she counted among her friends. From afar she would wave her hand, her face joyous and welcoming, and would insist on knowing at once the contents of the packages I was always laden with. On our way to the farm she would faithfully recount the incidents of the past week, and finally we would sit down on the little porch and thirty-six hours of heavenliness would begin. And always, she was a friend, nothing but the dear friend which Gordon deemed an impossibility, and I firmly endeavored to follow her lead. Yes, there were evenings of starlight, afternoons among the oaks and chestnuts of the hillsides where we sat on ground heavily carpeted with last year's leaves and moss of silvery green, early mornings by the side of the lake under the caress of the rising breeze, and ever I managed to padlock my heart, to control the shakiness of my voice, to laugh out gaily as if the world's beauty could not possibly leave room in a man's soul for hopeless longing.
And then back to the city again! Frances had often urged me to stay a little longer; it would do me so much good. She sometimes thought I looked tired, but I refused with the obstinacy of the weak. She argued that I was utterly master of my time and, one day, with a trace of woman's injustice, said that thirty-six hours of her company was all that I could stand. I remember feeling a terrific wave of heat coming to my brow. Never was I nearer to an indignant protest to be followed by the blurting of the whole truth, of nothing but the truth, to the effect that I loved her madly, wildly, and could have crushed her in my arms till she cried for mercy. But I laughed, stupidly, with my finger-nails digging into the palms of my hands and called her attention to a reticulated pickerel poised beneath some lily-pads, motionless, watchful, gavial-snouted and yet graceful, ready to convert itself into a flas.h.i.+ng death for other fishes. I pointed to gossamer-winged dragon-flies, which used to frighten her, till I declared them to be friendly devourers of mosquitoes, and both of us remained breathless when a golden oriole perched on some hazel bushes near at hand, for a moment's display of its gaudiness. She told me of the wood-thrush we had seen on our arrival, and how she had found the nest with the dainty blue eggs, and how one day these had been converted into great big little mouths ever clamoring for a distracted mother who could never find food enough.
”But they grew up all right and took lessons in flying and, by this time, are far away, and the little nest is abandoned,” she informed me.
”I hope they will all come back another year.”
And thus a moment of terrible danger pa.s.sed. The peril was perhaps averted by the saving grace of that pickerel. I trembled to think over what might have happened. She would have looked at me, astonished and alarmed, with those big, beautiful eyes s.h.i.+ning, and she would have sorrowfully shaken her head, and--I could never have returned again--and I would have been compelled to leave Mrs. Milliken's, and the whole beautiful, useless dream would have been ended because Gordon is right, as far as I am concerned. Yet I can remain a friend to Frances! Please G.o.d, I may remain one all my life and never reveal myself to her! But my friends.h.i.+p will never be a perfectly genuine one since, underlying it, there will always be the quivering of a pa.s.sion held in gyves and suffering, as suffers some gold and ruby-winged b.u.t.terfly pinned to a card and denied the mercy of a drop of chloroform.
I had received another letter from Gordon, telegraphic in brevity, and sent it to Miss Van Rossum. He was well, having a most wonderful and heartrending experience. He had met some stunning fellows. The taking of awful chances was a daily occurrence, with the little ambulances darting among the wounded, sometimes under sh.e.l.l-fire. He asked me to drop into his studio, from time to time. He had discharged the j.a.p, but still kept the place. It was looked after by an elderly woman he had installed there, who was supposed to sweep and dust and let some air and light into the studio. I was to see that she kept at it and guarded his acc.u.mulated rubbish.