somewhat later in the spring pelleas was obliged to spend one whole day out of town. he was vastly important over the circumstance and packed his bag two days before, which alone proves his advancing years. for formerly his way had been to complete his packing in the cab on his way to the train at that moment pulling from the station. now he gave himself an hour to reach the ferry to allow for being blocked.
“yes, that alone would prove that we are seventy,” i said sadly as i stood at the window watching him drive away.
yet if ever a good fairy grants you one wish i advise your wishing that when you are seventy your heart and some one else’s heart will be as heavy at a separation as are ours.
“pelleas,” i had said to him that morning, “i wish that every one in the world could love some one as much as i love you.”
and pelleas had answered seriously:—
“remember, etarre, that every one in the world who is worth anything either loves as we do or expects to do so, or else is unhappy because he doesn’t.”
“not every one?” i remonstrated.
“every one,” pelleas repeated firmly.
i wondered about that after he went away. not every one, surely. there was, for exception, dear hobart eddy who walked the world alone, loving every one exactly alike; and there was, for the other extreme, nichola, our old servant. she was worth a very great deal but she loved nobody, not even us; and i was sure that she prided herself on it. i could not argue with pelleas on the eve of a journey but i harboured the matter against his return.
i was lonely when pelleas was gone. i was sitting by the fire with semiramis on my knee—an angora cannot wholly sympathize with you but her aloofness can persuade you into peace of mind—when the telephone bell rang. we are so seldom wanted that the mere ringing of the bell is an event even, as usually happens, if we are called in mistake. this time, however, old nichola, whose tone over the telephone is like that of all three voices of cerberus saying “no admission,” came in to announce that i was wanted by miss wilhelmina lillieblade. i hurried excitedly out, for when miss “willie” lillieblade telephones she has usually either heard some interesting news or longs to invent some. she is almost seventy as well as i. as a girl she was not very interesting, but i sometimes think that like many other inanimate objects she has improved with age until now she is delightful and reminds me of spiced cordials. i never see a stupid young person without applying the inanimate object rule and longing to comfort him with it.
“etarre,” miss willie said, “you and pelleas come over for tea this afternoon. i am alone and i have a lame shoulder.”
“i’ll come with pleasure,” said i readily, “but pelleas is away.”
“o,” miss willie said without proper regret, “pelleas is away.”
for a moment she thought.
“etarre,” she said, “let’s lunch downtown together and go to a matinée.”
i could hardly believe my old ears.
“w—we two?” i quavered.
“certainly!” she confirmed it, “i’ll come in the coupé at noon.”
i made a faint show of resistance. “what about your lame shoulder?” i wanted to know.
“pooh!” said miss willie, “that will be dead in a minute and then i won’t know whether it’s lame or not.”
the next moment she had left the telephone and i had promised!
i went upstairs in a delicious flutter of excitement. when our niece lisa is with us i watch her go breezily off to matinées with her young friends, but “matinée” is to me one of the words that one says often though they mean very little to one, like “ant-arctic.” i protest that i felt myself to be as intimate with the appearance of the new hebrides as with the ways of a matinée. i fancy that it was twenty years since i had seen one. say what you will, evening theater-going is far more commonplace; for in the evening one is frivolous by profession but afternoon frivolity is stolen fruit. and being a very frivolous old woman i find that a nibble or so of stolen fruit leavens the toast and tea. innocent stolen fruit, mind you, for heaven forbid that i should prescribe a diet of dust and ashes.
i had taken from its tissues my lace waist and was making it splendid with a scrap of lavender velvet when our old servant brought in fresh candles. she looked with suspicion on the garment.
“nichola,” i said guiltily, “i’m going to a matinée. and you’ll need get no luncheon,” i hastened to add, “because i’m lunching with miss lillieblade.”
“yah!” said nichola, “going to a matinée?”
nichola says “matiknee,” and she regards a theater box as among all self-indulgences the unpardonable sin.
“you’ll have no luncheon to get, nichola,” i persuasively reminded her.
old nichola clicked the wax candles.
“me, i’d rather get up lunch for a fambly o’ shepherds,” she grimly assured me, “than to hev you lose your immortal soul at this late day.”
she went back to the kitchen and i was minded to take off the lavender velvet; but i did not do so, my religion being independent of the spectrum.
at noon nichola was in the drawing-room fastening my gaiters when miss lillieblade came in, erect as a little brown and white toy with a chocolate cloak and a frosting hood.
“we are going to see ‘the end of the world,’” said miss willie blithely,—“i knew you haven’t seen it, etarre.”
old nichola, who is so privileged that she will expect polite attention even on her death-bed, listened eagerly.
“is it somethin’ of a religious play, mem?” she hopefully inquired.
“i dare say, nichola,” replied miss willie kindly; and afterward, to me: “but i hope not. religious plays are so ungodly.”
her footman helped us down the steps, not by any means that we required it but for what does one pay a footman i would like to ask? and we drove away to a little place which i cannot call a café. i would as readily lunch at a ribbon-counter as in a café. but this was a little place where pelleas and i often had our tea, a place that was all of old rugs and old brasses in front, and in secret was set with tête-à-tête tables having each one rose and one shaded candle. the linen was what a café would call lace and the china may have been china or it may have been garlands and love-knots. from where i sat i could see shelves filled with home-made jam, labeled, like library-books, and looking far more attractive than some peoples’ libraries. we ordered tea and chicken-broth and toast and a salad and, because we had both been forbidden, a sweet. i am bound to say that neither of us ate the sweet but we pretended not to notice.
we talked about the old days—this is no sign of old age but rather of a good memory; and presently i was reminded of what pelleas had assured me that morning about love.
“where did you go to school?” miss willie had been asking me.
“at miss mink’s and miss burdick’s,” i answered, “and i was counting up the other day that if either of them is alive now she is about one hundred and five years old and in the newspapers on her birthday.”
“miss mink and miss burdick alive now,” miss willie repeated. “no, indeed. they would rather die than be alive now. they would call it proof of ill-breeding not to die at threescore and ten each according to rule. i went to miss trelawney’s. i had an old aunt who had brought me up to say ‘ma’am?’ when i failed to understand; but if i said ‘ma’am?’ in school, miss trelawney made me learn twenty lines of dante; and if i didn’t say it at home i was not allowed to have dessert. between the two i loved poetry and had a good digestion and my education extended no farther.”
“that is quite far enough,” i said. “i don’t know a better preparation for life than love of poetry and a good digestion.”
if i could have but one—and yet why should i take sides and prejudice anybody? still, pelleas had a frightful dyspepsia one winter and it would have taken forty poets armed to the teeth—but i really refuse to prejudice anybody.
then i told miss willie how at miss mink’s and miss burdick’s i had had my first note from a boy; i slept with it under my pillow and i forgot it and the maid carried it to miss mink, and i blush to recall that i appeared before that lady with the defense that according to poetry my note was worth more than her entire curriculum, and triumphantly referred her to “summum bonum.” she sent me home, i recall. and then miss willie told how having successfully evaded chapel one winter evening at miss trelawney’s she had waked in the night with the certainty that she had lost her soul in consequence and, unable to rid herself of the conviction, she had risen and gone barefoot through the icy halls to the chapel and there had been horrified to find old miss trelawney kneeling with a man’s photograph in her hands.
“isn’t it strange, etarre,” said miss willie, “how the little mysteries and surprises of loving some one are everywhere, from one’s first note from a boy to the miss trelawneys whom every one knows?”
sometimes i think that it is almost impudent to wonder about one’s friends when one is certain beyond wondering that they all have secret places in their hearts filled with delight and tears. but remembering what pelleas had said that morning i did wonder about miss willie, since i knew that for all her air of spiced cordial she was lonely; and yet mentally i placed miss willie beside old nichola and hobart eddy, intending to use all three as instances to crush the argument of pelleas. surely of all the world, i decided, those three loved nobody.
at last we left the pleasant table, nodding good-afternoon to the cap and ribbons who had been cut from a coloured print to serve us. we lingered among the brasses and the casts, feeling very humble before the proprietor who looked like a duchess cut from another coloured print. i envied her that library of jelly.
on the street miss willie bought us each a rose for company and then bade the coachman drive slowly so that we entered the theater with the orchestra, which is the only proper moment. if one is earlier one feels as if one looked ridiculously expectant; if one is later one misses the pleasure of being expectant at all. we were in a lower stage box and all the other boxes were filled with bouquets of young people, with a dry stalk or two magnificently bonneted set stiffly among them. i hope that we did not seem too absurd, miss willie and i with our bobbing white curls all alone in that plump crimson box.
“the end of the world” proved to be a fresh, happy play, fragrant of lavender and sweet air. the play was about a man and a woman who loved each other very much with no analyses or confessions to disturb any one. the blinds were open and the sun streamed in through four acts of pleasant humour and quick action among well-bred people who manifestly had been brought up to marry and give in marriage without trying to compete with a state where neither is done. in the fourth act the moon shone on a little châlet in the leaves and one saw that there are love and sacrifice and good will enough to carry on the world in spite of its other connections. it was a play which made me thankful that pelleas and i have clung to each other through society and poverty and dyspepsia and never have allied ourselves with the other side. and if any one thinks that there is a middle ground i, who am seventy, know far better.
now in the third act it chanced that the mother of the play, so to speak, at the height of her ambition that her daughter marry a fortune as she herself had done, opened an old desk and came upon a photograph of the love of her own youth, whom she had not married. that was a sufficiently hackneyed situation, and the question that smote the mother must be one that is beating in very many hearts that give no sign; for she had truly loved this boy and he had died constant to her. and the woman prayed that when she died she might “go back and be with him.” personally, being a very hard and unforgiving old woman, i had little patience with her; and besides i think better of heaven than to believe in any such necessity. still this may be because pelleas and i are certain that we will belong to each other when we die. perhaps if i had not married him—but then i did.
hardly had the curtain fallen when to my amazement miss willie lillieblade leaned forward with this:—
“etarre, do you believe that those who truly love each other here are going to know each other when they die?”
“certainly!” i cried, fearing the very box would crumble at the heresy of that doubt.
“no matter how long after ...” she said wistfully.
“not a bit of difference,” i returned positively.
“you and pelleas can be surer than most,” miss willie said reflectively, “but suppose one of you had died fifty years ago. would you be so sure?”
“why, of course,” i replied, “pelleas was always pelleas.”
“so he was,” miss willie assented and was silent for a little; and then, without warning:—
“etarre, i mean this,” she said, speaking rapidly and not meeting my eyes. “when i was twenty i met a boy a little older than i, and i had known him only a few months when he went abroad to join his father. before he went—he told me that he loved me—” it was like seeing jonquils bloom in snow to hear miss willie say this—“and i know that i loved him. but i did not go with him—he wanted me to go and i did not go with him—for stupid reasons. he was killed on a mountain in switzerland. and i wonder and wonder—you see that was fifty years ago,” said miss willie, “but i wonder....”
i sat up very straight, hardly daring to look at her. all you young people who talk with such pretty concern of love, do you know what it will be when you are seventy to come suddenly on one of these flowers, still fresh, which you toss about you now?
“since he died loving you and you have loved him all these years,” i said, trying to keep my voice steady, “never tell me that you will not be each other’s—afterward.”
and at least no one need gainsay this who is not prepared to prove the contrary.
“but where—where?” cried miss willie, poor little miss willie, echoing the cry of every one in the world. it was very strange to see this little vial of spiced cordial wondering about the immortality of love.
“i don’t know where or how,” i said, “but believe it and you’ll see.”
ah, how i reproached myself later to think that i could have said no more than that. many a fine response that i might have made i compounded afterward, all about love that is infinite and eternal so that it fills the universe and one cannot get beyond it, and so on, in long phrases; but there in that box not one other word could i say. and yet when one thinks of it what is there to say when one is asked about this save simply: “i don’t know how or where, but believe it and you’ll see.”
we said little else, and i sat there with all that company of blue and pink waists dancing about me through a mist in a fashion that would have astonished them. so much for miss willie as an instance in my forthcoming argument with pelleas about every one in the world loving some one. miss willie had gone over to his side of the case outright. i began to doubt that there would be an argument. still, there would always be hobart eddy, inalienably on my side and serenely loving every one alike. and there would always be nichola, loving nobody. if all the world fell in love and went quite mad, there would yet be nichola fluting her “yah!” to any such fancy.
i dare say that neither miss willie nor i heard very much of that last act in spite of its moonlit châlet among the leaves. but one picture i carried away with me and the sound of one voice. they were those of a girl, a very happy girl, waiting at the door of the châlet.
“dear,” she said to her sweetheart, “if we had never met, if we had never seen each other, it seems as if my love for you would have followed you without my knowing. maybe some day you would have heard it knocking at your heart, and you would have called it a wish or a dream.”
afterward i recalled that i was saying over those words as we made our way up the aisle.
we were almost the last to leave the theater. i like that final glimpse of a place where happy people have just been. we found the coupé and a frantic carriageman put us in, very gently, though he banged the door in that fashion which seems to be the only outlet to a carriageman’s emotions.
“good-night,” said miss willie lillieblade at my door, and gave my hand an unwonted lingering touch. i knew why. dear, starved heart, she must have longed for years to talk about that boy. i watched her coupé roll toward the great lonely house. never tell me that the boy who died in switzerland was not beside her hearth waiting her coming.
our drawing-room was dimly lighted. i took off my bonnet there and found myself longing for my tea. i am wont to ring for nichola only upon stately occasions and certainly not at times when in her eyes i tremble on the brink of “losing my immortal soul at this late day.” accordingly i went down to the kitchen.
i cautiously pushed open the door, for i am frankly afraid of nichola who is in everything a frightful non-conformist. there was no fire on the hearth, but the bracket lamp was lighted and on a chair lay nichola’s best shawl. nichola, in her best black frock and wearing her best bonnet, was just arranging the tea-things on a tray.
“i’m glad that you’ve been out, nichola,” said i gently—as gently as a truant child, i fancy!—“it is such a beautiful day.”
“who,” nichola said grimly without looking at me, “said i’d been out?”
“why, i saw you—” i began.
“where was i?” nichola demanded shrilly, whirling about.
“i saw you with your bonnet on,” said i, and added with dignity, “you may bring the tea up at once, and mind that there is plenty of hot water.”
then i scurried upstairs, my heart beating at my daring. i had actually ordered nichola about. i half expected that in consequence she would bring me cold water, but she came up quietly enough with some delicious tea and sandwiches. at the door, with unwonted meekness, she asked me if everything was right; and i, not abating one jot of my majesty, told her that there might be a bit more cream. she even brought that and left me marveling. i could as easily imagine the kitchen range with an emotion as nichola with a guilty conscience, and yet sometimes i have a guilty conscience myself and i always act first very self-sufficient and then very humble, just like nichola.
when she was handing the dessert that night at my solitary dinner, she spoke; and if the kitchen range had kissed a hand at me i should not have been more amazed.
“every one took their parts very well this afternoon, i thought,” she stiffly volunteered.
i looked at her blankly. then slowly it dawned for me: the best shawl, the guilty conscience—nichola had been to the matinée!
“nichola!” i said unguardedly. “were you—”
“certain,” she said curtly, “i ain’t no call to be no more careful o’ my soul than what you are.”
i, the keeper of nichola, who has bullied pelleas and me about for years!
“did—did you like it, nichola?” i asked doubtfully, a little unaware how to treat a discussion of original sin like this.
“yes, i did,” she replied unexpectedly. “but—do you believe all of it?”
“believe that it really happened?” i asked in bewilderment.
“no,” said nichola, catching up a corner of the table-cloth in her brown fingers; “believe what she said—in the door there?”
it came to me then dimly, but before i could tell or remember....
“that about ‘if we hadn’t never met,’” nichola quoted; “‘it sorter seems as though my love would ’a’ followed you up even if i didn’t know about it an’ mebbe you’d ’a’ heard it somewheres an’ ’a’ thought you was a-wishin’ or a-dreamin’—’ that part,” said nichola.
and then i understood—i understood.
“nichola,” i said, “yes. i believe it with all my heart. i know it is so!”
nichola looked at me wistfully.
“but wishin’ may be just wishin’,” she said, “an’ dreamin’ nights may be just dreamin’ nights—”
“never,” i cried positively. “most of the time these are voices of the people who would have loved us if we had ever met.”
old nichola’s face, with its little unremembering eyes beneath her gray moss hair, seldom changes expression save to look angry. i think that nichola, like the carriageman slamming the doors, relieves all emotion by anger. when i die i expect that in proof of her grief she will drive every one out of the house with the broom. therefore i was not surprised to see her look at me now with a sudden frown and flush that should have terrorized me.
“heaven over us!” she said, turning abruptly. “the silly folks that dream. i never dreamed a thing in my life. do you want more pudding-sauce?”
“no,” i said gently, “no, nichola.”
i was not deceived. nichola knew it, and went in the pantry, muttering. but i was not deceived. i knew what she had meant. nichola, that old woman whose life had some way been cast up on this barren coast near the citadel of the love of pelleas and me; nichola, who had lived lonely in the grim company of the duties of a household not her own; nichola, at more than sixty, was welcoming the belief that the love which she never had inspired was some way about her all the time.
where was my side of the argument to be held with pelleas? where, indeed? but i was glad to see it go. and i serenely put away until another time the case of hobart eddy.
all the evening i sat quietly before the hearth. there was no need for books. the drawing-room was warm and bright; supper for pelleas was drawn to the open fire and my rose was on the tray. when i heard him close the front door it seemed to me that i must welcome him for us three, for miss willie and nichola and me.
