Chapter 5

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER V

Toward the last of June Neville left town to spend a month with his father and mother at their summer Lome near Portsmouth. Valerie had already gone to the mountains with Rita Tevis, gaily refusing her address to everybody. And, packing their steamer trunks and satchels, the two young girls departed triumphantly for the unindicated but modest boarding-house tucked away somewhere amid the hills of Delaware County, determined to enjoy every minute of a vacation well earned, and a surcease from the round of urban and suburban gaiety which the advent of July made a labour instead of a relaxation.

From some caprice or other Valerie had decided that her whereabouts should remain unknown even to Neville. And for a week it suited her perfectly. She swam in the stump-pond with Rita, drove a buckboard with Rita, fished industriously with Rita, played tennis on a rutty court, danced rural dances at a "platform," went to church and giggled like a schoolgirl, and rocked madly on the veranda in a rickety rocking-chair, demurely tolerant of the adoration of two boys working their way through, college, a smartly dressed and very confident drummer doing his two weeks, and several assorted and ardent young men who, at odd moments, had persuaded her to straw rides and soda at the village druggists.

And all the while she giggled with Rita in a most shameless and undignified fashion, went about hatless, with hair blowing and sleeves rolled up; decorated a donation party at the local minister's and flirted with him till his gold-rimmed eye-glasses protruded; behaved like a thoughtful and considerate angel to the old, uninteresting and infirm; romped like a young goddess with the adoring children of the boarders, and was fiercely detested by the crocheting spinsters rocking in acidulated rows on the piazza.

The table was meagre and awful and pruneful; but she ate with an appetite that amazed Rita, whose sophisticated palate was grossly insulted thrice daily.

"How on earth you can contrive to eat that hash," she said, resentfully, "I don't understand. When my Maillard's give out I'll quietly starve in a daisy field somewhere."

"Close your eyes and pretend you and Sam are dining at the Knickerbocker," suggested Valerie, cheerfully. "That's what I do when the food doesn't appeal to me."

"With whom do you pretend you are dining?"

"Sometimes with Louis Neville, sometimes with Querida," she, said, frankly. "It helps the hash wonderfully. Try it, dear. Close your eyes and visualise some agreeable man, and the food isn't so very awful."

Rita laughed: "I'm not as fond of men as that."

"Aren't you? I am. I do like an agreeable man, and I don't mind saying so."

"I've observed that," said Rita, still laughing.

"Of course you have. I've spent too many years without them not to enjoy them now--bless their funny hearts!"

"I'm glad there are no men here," observed Rita.

"But there are men here," said Valerie, innocently.

"Substitutes. Lemons."

"The minister is superficially educated--"

"He's a muff."

"A nice muff. I let him pat my gloved hand."

"You wicked child. He's married."

"He only patted it in spiritual emphasis, dear. Married or single he's more agreeable to me than that multi-coloured drummer. I let the creature drive me to the post office in a buckboard, and he continued to sit closer until I took the reins, snapped the whip, and drove at a gallop over that terrible stony road. And he is so fat that it nearly killed him. It killed all sentiment in him, anyway."

Rita, stretched lazily in a hammock and displaying a perfectly shod foot and silken ankle to the rage of the crocheters on the veranda, said dreamily:

"The unfortunate thing about us is that we know too much to like the only sort of men who are likely to want to marry us."

"What of it?" laughed Valerie. "We don't want to marry them--or anybody. Do we?"

"Don't you?"

"Don't I what?"

"Want to get married?"

"I should think not."

"Never?"

"Not if I feel about it as I do now. I've never had enough play, Rita. I've missed all those years that you've had--that most girls have had. I never had any boys to play with. That's really all I am doing now--playing with grown-up boys. That's all I am--merely a grown-up girl with a child's heart."

"A heart of gold," murmured Rita, "you darling."

"Oh, it isn't all gold by any means! It's full of silver whims and brassy selfishness and tin meannesses and senseless ideas--full of fiery, coppery mischief, too; and, sometimes, I think, a little malice--perhaps a kind of diluted deviltry. But it's a hungry heart, dear, hungry for laughter and companionship and friendship--with a capacity for happiness! Ah, you don't know, dear--you never can know how capable I am of friendship and happiness!"

"And--sentiment?"

"I--don't--know."

"Better watch out, sweetness!"

"I do."

Rita said thoughtfully, swinging in her hammock:

"Sentiment, for us, is no good. I've learned that."

"You?"

"Of course."

"How?"

"Experience," said Rita, carelessly. "Every girl is bound to have it. She doesn't have to hunt for it, either."

"Were you ever in--love?" asked Valerie, curiously.

"Now, dear, if I ever had been happily in love is it likely you wouldn't know it?"

"I suppose so," said Valerie.... She added, musingly:

"I wonder what will become of me if I ever fall in love."

"If you'll take my advice you'll run."

"Run? Where? For goodness' sake!"

"Anywhere until you became convalescent."

"That would be a ridiculous idea," remarked Valerie so seriously that Rita began to laugh:

"You sweet thing," she said, "it's a million chances that you'd be contented only with the sort of man who wouldn't marry you."

"Because I'm poor, you mean? Or because I am working for my living?"

"Both--and then some."

"What else?"

"Why, the only sort of men who'd attract you have come out of their own world of their own accord to play about for a while in our world. They can go back; that is the law. But they can't take us with them."

"They'd be ashamed, you mean?"

"Perhaps not. A man is likely enough to try. But alas! for us, if we're silly enough to go. I tell you, Valerie, that their world is full of mothers and sisters and feminine relatives and friends who could no more endure us than they would permit us to endure them. It takes courage for a man to ask us to go into that world with him; it takes more for us to do it. And our courage is vain. We stand no chance. It means a rupture of all his relations; and a drifting--not into our world, not into his, but into a horrible midway void, peopled by derelicts.... I know, dear, believe me. And I say that to fall in love is no good, no use, for us. We've been spoiled for what we might once have found satisfactory. We are people without a class, you and I."

Valerie laughed: "That gives us the more liberty, doesn't it?"

"It's up to us, dear. We are our own law, social and spiritual. If we live inside it we are not going to be any too happy. If we live without it--I don't know. Sometimes I wonder whether some of the pretty girls you and I see at Rector's--"

"I've wondered, too.... They _look_ happy--some of them."

"I suppose they are--for a while.... But the worst of it is that it never lasts."

"I suppose not." Valerie pondered, grave, velvet-eyed, idly twisting a grass stem.

"After all," she said, "perhaps a brief happiness--with love--is worth the consequences."

"Many women risk it.... I wonder how many men, if social conditions were reversed, would risk it? Not many, Valerie."

They remained silent; Rita lay in the shadow of the maples, eyes closed; Valerie plaited her grass stems with absent-minded industry.

"I never yet wished to marry a man," she observed, presently.

Rita made no response.

"Because," continued the girl with quaint precision, "I never yet wanted anything that was not offered freely; even friendship. I think--I don't know--but I think--if any man offered me love--and I found that I could respond--I _think_ that, if I took it, I'd be contented with love--and ask nothing further--wish nothing else--unless he wanted it, too."

Rita opened her eyes.

Valerie, plaiting her grass very deftly, smiled to herself.

"I don't know much about love, Rita; but I believe it is supreme contentment. And if it is--what is the use of asking for more than contents one?"

"It's safer."

"Oh--I know that.... I've read enough newspapers and novels and real literature to know that. Incidentally the Scriptures treat of it.... But, after all, love is love. You can't make it more than it is by law and custom; you can't make it less; you can't summon it; you can't dismiss it.... And I believe that I'd be inclined to take it, however offered, if it were really love."

"That is unmoral, dear," said Rita, smiling.

"I'm not unmoral, am I?"

"Well--your philosophy sounds Pagan."

"Does it? Then, as you say, perhaps I'd better run if anything resembling love threatens me."

"The nymphs ran--in Pagan times."

"And the gods ran after them," returned Valerie, laughing. "I've a very fine specimen of god as a friend, by the way--a Protean gentleman with three quick-change stunts. He's a perfectly good god, too, but he never ran after me or tried to kiss me."

"You _don't_ mean Querida, then."

"No. He's no god."

"Demi-god."

"Not even that," said Valerie; "he's a sentimental shepherd who likes to lie with his handsome head in a girl's lap and make lazy eyes at her."

"I know," nodded Rita. "Look out for that shepherd."

"Does he bite?"

"No; there's the trouble. Anybody can pet him."

Valerie laughed, turned over, and lay at length on her stomach in the grass, exploring the verdure for a four-leaf clover.

"I never yet found one," she said, cheerfully. "But then I've never before seen much grass except in the Park."

"Didn't you ever go to the country?"

"No. Mother was a widow and bedridden. We had a tiny income; I have it now. But it wasn't enough to take us to the country."

"Didn't you work?"

"I couldn't leave mother. Besides, she wished to educate me."

"Didn't you go to school?"

"Only a few months. We had father's books. We managed to buy a few more--or borrow them from the library. And that is how I was educated, Rita--in a room with a bedridden mother."

"She must have been well educated."

"I should think so. She was a college graduate.... When I was fifteen I took the examinations for Barnard--knowing, of course, that I couldn't go--and passed in everything.... If mother could have spared me I could have had a scholarship."

"That was hard luck, wasn't it, dear?"

"N-no. I had mother--as long as she lived. After she died I had what she had given me--and she had the education of a cultivated woman; she was a lover of the best in literature and in art, a woman gently bred, familiar with sorrow and privation."

"If you choose," said Rita, "you are equipped for a governess--or a lady's companion--or a secretary--"

"I suppose I am. Before I signed with Schindler I advertised, offering myself as a teacher. How many replies do you suppose I received?"

"How many?"

"Not one."

Rita sighed. "I suppose you couldn't afford to go on advertising."

"No, and I couldn't afford to wait.... Mother's burial took all the little income. I was glad enough when Schindler signed me.... But a girl can't remain long with Schindler."

"I know."

Valerie plucked a grass blade and bit it in two reflectively.

"It's a funny sort of a world, isn't it, Rita?"

"Very humorous--if you look at it that way."

"Don't you?"

"Not entirely."

Valerie glanced up at the hammock.

"How did _you_ happen to become a model, Rita?"

"I'm a clergyman's daughter; what do you expect?" she said, with smiling bitterness.

"_You_!"

"From Massachusetts, dear.... The blue-light elders got on my nerves. I wanted to study music, too, with a view to opera." She laughed unpleasantly.

"Was your home life unhappy, dear?"

"Does a girl leave happiness?"

"You didn't run away, did you?"

"I did--straight to the metropolis as a moth to its candle."

Valerie waited, then, timidly: "Did you care to tell me any more, dear? I thought perhaps you might like me to ask you. It isn't curiosity."

"I know it isn't--you blessed child! I'll tell you--some day--perhaps.... Pull the rope and set me swinging, please.... Isn't this sky delicious--glimpsed through the green leaves? Fancy you're not knowing the happiness of the country! I've always known it. Perhaps the trouble was I had too much of it. My town was an ancient, respectable, revolutionary relic set in a very beautiful rolling country near the sea; but I suppose I caught the infection--the country rolled, the breakers rolled, and finally I rolled out of it all--over and over plump into Gotham! And I didn't land on my feet, either.... You are correct, Valerie; there is something humorous about this world.... There's one of the jokes, now!" as a native passed, hunched up on the dashboard, driving a horse and a heifer in double harness.

"Shall we go to the post office with him?" cried Valerie, jumping to her feet.

"Now, dear, what is the use of our going to the post office when nobody knows our address and we never could possibly expect a letter!"

"That is true," said Valerie, pensively. "Rita, I'm beginning to think I'd like to have a letter. I believe--believe that I'll write to--to somebody."

"That is more than I'll do," yawned Rita, closing her eyes. She opened them presently and said:

"I've a nice little writing case in my trunk. Sam presented it. Bring it out here if you're going to write."

The next time she unclosed her eyes Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass by the hammock, the writing case on her lap, scribbling away as though she really enjoyed it.

The letter was to Neville. It ran on:

"Rita is asleep in a hammock; she's too pretty for words. I love her. Why? Because she loves me, silly!

"I'm a very responsive individual, Kelly, and a pat on the head elicits purrs.

"I want you to write to me. Also, pray be flattered; you are the only person on earth who now has my address. I _may_ send it to Jose Querida; but that is none of your business. When I saw the new moon on the stump-pond last night I certainly did wish for Querida and a canoe. He can sing very charmingly.

"Now I suppose you want to know under what circumstances I have permitted myself to wish for you. If you talk to a man about another man he always attempts to divert the conversation to himself. Yes, he does. And you are no better than other men, Louis--not exempt from their vanities and cunning little weaknesses. Are you?

"Well, then, as you admit that you are thoroughly masculine, I'll admit that deep in a corner of my heart I've wished for you a hundred times. The moon suggests Querida; but about everything suggests you. Now are you flattered?

"Anyway, I do want you. I like you, Louis! I like you, Mr. Neville! And oh, Kelly, I worship you, without sentiment or any nonsense in reserve. You are life, you are happiness, you are gaiety, you are inspiration, you are contentment.

"I wonder if it would be possible for you to come up here for a day or two after your visit to your parents is ended. I'd adore it. You'd probably hate it. Such food! Such beds! Such people! But--could you--would you come--just to walk in the heavenly green with me? I wonder.

"And, Louis, I'd row you about on the majestic expanse of the stump-pond, and we'd listen to the frogs. Can you desire anything more romantic?

"The trouble with you is that you're romantic only on canvas. Anyway, I can't stir you to sentiment. Can I? True, I never tried. But if you come here, and conditions are favourable, and you are so inclined, and I am feeling lonely, nobody can tell what might happen in a flat scow on the stump-pond.

"To be serious for a moment, Louis, I'd really love to have you come. You know I never before saw the real country; I'm a novice in the woods and fields, and, somehow, I'd like to have you share my novitiate in this--as you did when I first came to you. It is a curious feeling I have about anything new; I wish you to experience it with me.

"Rita is awake and exploring the box of Maillard's which is about empty. Be a Samaritan and send me some assorted chocolates. Be a god, and send me something to read--anything, please, from Jacobs to James. There's latitude for you. Be a man, and send me yourself. You have no idea how welcome you'd be. The chances are that I'd seize you and embrace you. But if you're willing to run that risk, take your courage in both hands and come.

"Your friend,

"VALERIE WEST."

The second week of her sojourn she caught a small pickerel--the only fish she had ever caught in all her life. And she tearfully begged the yokel who was rowing her to replace the fish in its native element. But it was too late; and she and Rita ate her victim, sadly, for dinner.

At the end of the week an enormous box of bonbons came for her. Neither she nor Rita were very well next day, but a letter from Neville did wonders to restore abused digestion.

Other letters, at intervals, cheered her immensely, as did baskets of fruit and boxes of chocolates and a huge case of books of all kinds.

"Never," she said to Rita, "did I ever hear of such an angel as Louis Neville. When he comes the first of August I wish you to keep tight hold of me, because, if he flees my demonstrations, I feel quite equal to running him down."

But, curiously enough, it was a rather silent and subdued young girl in white who offered Neville a shy and sun-tanned hand as he descended from the train and came forward, straw hat under one arm, to greet her.

"How well you look!" he exclaimed, laughingly; "I never saw such a flawless specimen of healthy perfection!"

"Oh, I know I look like a milk-maid, Kelly; I've behaved like one, too. Did you ever see such a skin? Do you suppose this sun-burn will ever come off?"

"Instead of snow and roses you're strawberries and cream," he said--"and it's just as fetching, Valerie. How are you, anyway?"

"Barely able to sit up and take nourishment," she admitted, demurely. "... I don't think you look particularly vigorous," she added, more seriously. "You are brown but thin."

"Thin as a scorched pancake," he nodded. "The ocean was like a vast plate of clam soup in which I simmered several times a day until I've become as leathery and attenuated as a punctured pod of kelp.... Where's the rig we depart in, Valerie?" he concluded, looking around the sun-scorched, wooden platform with smiling interest.

"I drove down to meet you in a buck-board."

"Splendid! Is there room for my suit case?"

"Plenty. I brought yards of rope."

They walked to the rear of the station where buckboard and horse stood tethered to a tree. He fastened his suit case to the rear of the vehicle, swathing it securely in, fathoms of rope; she sprang in, he followed; but she begged him to let her drive, and pulled on a pair of weather-faded gloves with a business-like air which was enchanting.

So he yielded seat and rusty reins to her; whip in hand, she steered the fat horse through the wilderness of arriving and departing carriages of every rural style and description--stages, surreys, mountain-waggons, buck-boards--drove across the railroad track, and turned up a mountain road--a gradual ascent bordered heavily by blackberry, raspberry, thimble berry and wild grape, and flanked by young growths of beech and maple set here and there with hemlock and white pine. But the characteristic foliage was laurel and rhododendron--endless stretches of the glossy undergrowth fringing every woodland, every diamond-clear water-course.

"It must be charming when it's in blossom," he said, drawing the sweet air of the uplands deep into his lungs. "These streams look exceedingly like trout, too. How high are we?"

"Two thousand feet in the pass, Kelly. The hills are much higher. You need blankets at night...." She turned her head and smilingly considered him:

"I can't yet believe you are here."

"I've been trying to realise it, too."

"Did you come in your favourite cloud?"

"No; on an exceedingly dirty train."

"You've a cinder mark on your nose."

"Thanks." He gave her his handkerchief and she wiped away the smear.

"How long can you stay?--Oh, don't answer! Please forget I asked you. When you've got to go just tell me a few minutes before your departure.... The main thing in life is to shorten unhappiness as much as possible. That is Rita's philosophy."

"Is Rita well?"

"Perfectly--thanks to your bonbons. She doesn't precisely banquet on the fare here--poor dear! But then," she added, philosophically, "what can a girl expect on eight dollars a week? Besides, Rita has been spoiled. I am not unaccustomed to fasting when what is offered does not interest me."

"You mean that boarding house of yours in town?"

"Yes. Also, when mother and I kept house with an oil stove and two rooms the odour of medicine and my own cooking left me rather indifferent to the pleasures of Lucullus."

"You poor child!"

"Not at all to be pitied--as long as I had mother," she said, with a quiet gravity that silenced him.

Up, up, and still up they climbed, the fat horse walking leisurely, nipping at blackberry leaves here, snatching at tender maple twigs there. The winged mountain beauties--Diana's butterflies--bearing on their velvety, blue-black pinions the silver bow of the goddess, flitted ahead of the horse--celestial pilots to the tree-clad heights beyond.

Save for the noise of the horse's feet and the crunch of narrow, iron-tired wheels, the stillness was absolute under the azure splendour of the heavens.

"I am not yet quite at my ease--quite accustomed to it," she said.

"To what, Valerie?"

"To the stillness; to the remote horizons.... At night the vastness of things, the height of the stars, fascinate me to the edge of uneasiness. And sometimes I go and sit in my room for a while--to reassure myself.... You see I am used to an enclosure--the walls of a room--the walled-in streets of New York.... It's like suddenly stepping out of a cellar to the edge of eternal space, and looking down into nothing."

"Is that the way these rolling hillocks of Delaware County impress you?" he asked, laughing.

"Yes, Kelly. If I ever found myself in the Alps I believe the happiness would so utterly over-awe me that I'd remain in my hotel under the bed. What are you laughing at? _Voluptates commendat rarior usus_."

"_Sit tua cura sequi, me duce tutus eris_!" he laughed, mischievously testing her limit of Latin.

"_Plus e medico quam e morbo periculi!_" she answered, saucily.

"You cunning little thing!" he exclaimed: "_vix a te videor posse tenere manus!_"

"_Di melius, quam nos moneamus talia quenquam!_" she said, demurely; "Louis, we are becoming silly! Besides, I probably know more Latin than you do--as it was my mother's favourite relaxation to teach me to speak it. And I imagine that your limit was your last year at Harvard."

"Upon my word!" he exclaimed; "I never was so snubbed and patronised in all my life!"

"Beware, then!" she retorted, with an enchanting sideway glance: "_noli me tangere!_" At the same instant he was aware of her arm in light, friendly contact against his, and heard her musing aloud in deep contentment:

"Such perfect satisfaction to have you again, Louis. The world is a gray void without the gods."

And so, leisurely, they breasted the ascent and came out across the height-of-land. Here and there a silvery ghost of the shorn forest stood, now almost mercifully hidden in the green foliage of hard wood--worthlessly young as yet but beautiful.

From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers--they of the solid crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks, pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris and pink azalea.

"How is the work going, Louis?" she asked, glancing at him askance.

"It's stopped."

"_A cause de_--?"

"_Je n'en sais rien, Valerie_."

She flicked the harness with her whip, absently. He also leaned back, thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance.

"Has not your desire to paint returned?"

"No."

"Do you know why?"

"Partly. I am up against a solid wall. There is no thoroughfare."

"Make one."

"Through the wall?"

"Straight through it."

"Ah, yes"--he murmured--"but what lies beyond?"

"It would spoil the pleasures of anticipation to know beforehand."

He turned to her: "You are good for me. Do you know it?"

"Querida said that, too. He said that I was an experience; and that all good work is made up of experiences that concern it only indirectly."

"Do you like Querida?" he asked, curiously.

"Sometimes."

"Not always?"

"Oh, yes, always more or less. But sometimes"--she was silent, her dark eyes dreaming, lips softly parted.

"What do you mean by that?" he inquired, carelessly.

"By what, Louis?" she asked, naively, interrupted in her day-dream.

"By hinting--that sometimes you like Querida--more than at others?"

"Why, I do," she said, frankly. "Besides, I don't hint things; I say them." She had turned her head to look at him. Their eyes met in silence for a few moments.

"You are funny about Querida," she said. "Don't you like him?"

"I have no reason to dislike him."

"Oh! Is it the case of Sabidius? '_Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare!_'"

He laughed uneasily: "Oh, no, I think not.... You and he are such excellent friends that I certainly ought to like him anyway."

But she remained silent, musing; and on the edge of her upcurled lip he saw the faint smile lingering, then fading, leaving the oval face almost expressionless.

So they drove past the one-story post office where a group of young people stood awaiting the arrival of the stage with its battered mail bags; past the stump-pond where Valerie had caught her first and only fish, past a few weather-beaten farm houses, a white-washed church, a boarding house or two, a village store, a watering-trough, and then drove up to the wooden veranda where Rita rose from a rocker and came forward with hand outstretched.

"Hello, Rita!" he said, giving her hand a friendly shake. "Why didn't you drive down with Valerie?"

"I? That child would have burst into tears at such a suggestion."

"Probably," said Valerie, calmly: "I wanted him for myself. Now that I've had him I'll share him."

She sprang lightly to the veranda ignoring Neville's offered hand with a smile. A hired man took away the horse; a boy picked up his suit case and led the way.

"I'll be back in a moment," he said to Valerie and Rita.

That evening at supper, a weird rite where the burnt offering was rice pudding and the stewed sacrifice was prunes, Neville was presented to an interesting assemblage of the free-born.

There was the clerk, the drummer, the sales-lady, and ladies unsaleable and damaged by carping years; city-wearied fathers of youngsters who called their parents "pop" and "mom"; young mothers prematurely aged and neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt out with the weariness of a sordid Harlem struggle.

Here in the height-of-land among scant pastures and the green charity which a spindling second-growth spread over the nakedness of rotting forest bones--here amid the wasted uplands and into this flimsy wooden building came the rank and file of the metropolis in search of air, of green, of sky, for ten days' surcease from toil and heat and the sad perplexities of those with slender means.

Neville, seated on the veranda with Valerie and Rita in the long summer twilight, looked around him at scenes quite new to him.

On the lumpy croquet ground where battered wickets and stakes awry constituted the centre of social activity after supper, some young girls were playing in partnership with young men, hatless, striped of shirt, and very, very yellow of foot-gear.

A social favourite, very jolly and corporeally redundant, sat in the hammock fanning herself and uttering screams of laughter at jests emanating from the boarding-house cut-up--a blonde young man with rah-rah hair and a brier pipe.

Children, neither very clean nor very dirty, tumbled noisily about the remains of a tennis court or played base-ball in the dusty road. Ominous sounds arose from the parlour piano, where a gaunt maiden lady rested one spare hand among the keys while the other languidly pawed the music of the "Holy City."

Somewhere in the house a baby was being spanked and sent to bed. There came the clatter of dishes from the wrecks of the rite in the kitchen, accompanied by the warm perfume of dishwater.

But, little by little the high stars came out, and the gray veil fell gently over unloveliness and squalour; little by little the raucous voices were hushed; the scuffle and clatter and the stringy noise of the piano died away, till, distantly, the wind awoke in the woods, and very far away the rushing music of a little brook sweetened the silence.

Rita, who had been reading yesterday's paper by the lamplight which streamed over her shoulder from the open parlour-window, sighed, stifled a yawn, laid the paper aside, and drew her pretty wrap around her shoulders.

"It's absurd," she said, plaintively, "but in this place I become horribly sleepy by nine o'clock. You won't mind if I go up, will you?"

"Not if you feel that way about it," he said, smiling.

"Oh, Rita!" said Valerie, reproachfully, "I thought we were going to row Louis about on the stump-pond!"

"I am too sleepy; I'd merely fall overboard," said Rita, simply, gathering up her bonbons. "Louis, you'll forgive me, won't you? I don't understand why, but that child never sleeps."

They rose to bid her good night. Valerie's finger tips rested a moment on Neville's sleeve in a light gesture of excuse for leaving him and of promise to return. Then she went away with Rita.

When she returned, the piazza was deserted except for Neville, who stood on the steps smoking and looking out across the misty waste.

"I usually go up with Rita," she said. "Rita is a dear. But do you know, I believe she is not a particularly happy girl."

"Why?"

"I don't know why.... After all, such a life--hers and mine--is only happy if you make it so.... And I don't believe she tries to make it so. Perhaps she doesn't care. She is very young--and very pretty--too young and pretty to be so indifferent--so tired."

She stood on the step behind and above him, looking down at his back and his well-set shoulders. They were inviting, those firm, broad, young shoulders of his; and she laid both hands on them.

"Shall I row you about in the flat-boat, Louis?"

"I'll do the paddling--"

"Not by any means. I like to row, if you please. I have cold cream and a pair of gloves, so that I shall acquire no blisters."

They walked together out to the road and along it, she holding to her skirts and his arm, until the star-lit pond came into view.

Afloat in the ancient, weedy craft he watched her slender strength mastering the clumsy oars--watched her, idly charmed with her beauty and the quaint, childish pleasure that she took in manoeuvring among the shoreward lily pads and stumps till clear water was reached and the little misty wavelets came slap! slap! against the bow.

"If you were Querida you'd sing in an exceedingly agreeable tenor," she observed.

"Not being Querida, and labouring further under the disadvantage of a barytone, I won't," he said.

"Please, Louis."

"Oh, very well--if you feel as romantic as that." And he began to sing:

"My wife's gone to the country,
Hurrah! Hurrah!"

"Louis! Stop it! Do you know you are positively corrupt to do such a thing at such a time as this?"

"Well, it's all I know, Valerie--"

"I could cry!" she said, indignantly, and maintained a dangerous silence until they drifted into the still waters of the outlet where the starlight silvered the sedge-grass and feathery foliage formed a roof above.

Into the leafy tunnel they floated, oars shipped; she, cheek on hand, watching the fire-flies on the water; he, rid of his cigarette, motionless in the stern.

After they had drifted half a mile she seemed disinclined to resume the oars; so he crossed with her, swung the boat, and drove it foaming against the silent current.

On the return they said very little. She stood pensive, distraite, as he tied the boat, then--for the road was dark and uneven--took his arm and turned away beside him.

"I'm afraid I haven't been very amusing company," he ventured.

She tightened her arm in his--a momentary, gentle pressure:

"I'm merely too happy to talk," she said. "Does that answer satisfy you?"

Touched deeply, he took her hand which rested so lightly on his sleeve--a hand so soft and fine of texture--so cool and fresh and slender that the youth and fragrance of it drew his lips to it. Then he reversed it and kissed the palm.

"Why, Louis," she said, "I didn't think you could be so sentimental."

"Is that sentimental?"

"Isn't it?"

"It rather looks like it, doesn't it?"

"Rather."

"Did you mind?"

"No.... Only--you and I--it seems--superfluous. I don't think anything you do could make me like you more than I do."

"You sweet little thing!"

"No, only loyal, Kelly. I can never alter toward you."

"What's that? A vow!"

"Yes--of constancy and of friendship eternal."

"'_Nomen amicitia est; nomen inane fides_!--Friendship is only a name; constancy an empty title,'" he quoted.

"Do you believe that?"

"Constancy is an honest wish, but a dishonest promise," he said. "You know it lies with the gods, Valerie."

"So they say. But I know myself. And I know that, however I may ever care for anybody else, it can never be at your expense--at the cost of one atom of my regard for you. As I care for you now, so have I from the beginning; so will I to the end; care more for you, perhaps; but never less, Louis. And that I know."

More deeply moved than he perhaps cared to be, he walked on slowly in silence, measuring his step to hers. In the peace of the midnight world, in the peace of her presence, he was aware of a tranquillity, a rest that he had not known in weeks. Vaguely first, then uneasily, he remembered that he had not known it since her departure, and shook off the revelation with instinctive recoil--dismissed it, smiled at it to have done with it. For such things could not happen.

The woods were fragrant as they passed; a little rill, swelling from the thicket of tangled jewel-weed, welled up, bubbling in the starlight. She knelt down and drank from her cupped hands, and offered him the same sweet cup, holding it fragrantly to his lips.

And there, on their knees under the stars, he touched her full child-like lips with his; and, laughing, she let him kiss her again--but not a third time, swaying back from her knees to avoid him, then rising lithely to her feet.

"The poor nymph and the great god Kelly!" she said; "a new hero for the pantheon: a new dryad to weep over. Kelly, I believe your story of your golden cloud, now."

"Didn't you credit it before?"

"No."

"But now that I've kissed you, you do believe it?"

"Y-yes."

"Then to fix that belief more firmly--"

"Oh, no, you mustn't, Kelly--" she cried, her soft voice hinting of hidden laughter. "I'm quite sure that my belief is very firmly fixed. Hear me recite my creed. Credo! I believe that you are the great god Kelly, perfectly capable of travelling about wrapped in a golden cloud--"

"You are mocking at the gods!"

"No, I'm not. Who am I to affront Olympus?... Wh-what are you going to do, Kelly? Fly to the sacred mount with me?"

But she suffered his arm to remain around her waist as they moved slowly on through the darkness.

"How long are you going to stay? Tell me, Louis. I'm as tragically curious as Pandora and Psyche and Bluebeard's wife, melted into the one and eternal feminine."

"I'm going to-morrow."

"Oh-h," she said, softly.

He was silent. They walked on, she with her head bent a little.

"Didn't you want me to?" he asked at length.

"Not if you care to stay.... I never want what those I care for are indifferent about."

"I am not indifferent. I think I had better go."

"Is the reason important?"

"I don't know, Valerie--I don't really know."

He was thinking of this new and sweet familiarity--something suddenly born into being under the wide stars--something that had not been a moment since, and now was--something invoked by the vastness of earth and sky--something confirmed by the wind in the forest.

"I had better go," he said.

Her silence acquiesced; they turned into the ragged lawn, ascended the dew-wet steps; and then he released her waist.

The hallways were dark and deserted as they mounted the stairs side by side.

"This is my door," she said.

"Mine is on the next floor."

"Then--good night, Louis."

He took her hand in silence. After a moment she released it; laid both hands lightly on his shoulders, lifted her face and kissed him.

"Good night," she said. "You have made this a very happy day in my life. Shall I see you in the morning?"

"I'm afraid not. I left word to have a horse ready at daylight. It is not far from that, now."

"Then I shall not see you again?"

"Not until you come to New York."

"Couldn't you come back for a day? Querida is coming. Sammy and Harry Annan are coming up over Sunday. Couldn't you?"

"Valerie, dear, I _could_"--he checked himself; thought for a while until the strain of his set teeth aroused him to consciousness of his own emotion.

Rather white he looked at her, searching for the best phrase--for it was already threatening to be a matter of phrases now--of forced smiles--and some breathing spot fit for the leisure of self-examination.

"I'm going back to paint," he said. "Those commissions have waited long enough."

He strove to visualise his studio, to summon up the calm routine of the old regime--as though the colourless placidity of the past could steady him.

"Will you need me?" she asked.

"Later--of course. Just now I've a lot of men's figures to deal with--that symbolical affair for the new court house."

"Then you don't need me?"

"No."

She thought a moment, slim fingers resting on the knob of her door, standing partly turned away from him. Then, opening her door, she stepped inside, hesitated, looked back:

"Good-bye, Louis, dear," she said, gently. _

Read next: Chapter 6

Read previous: Chapter 4

Table of content of Common Law


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book