ANOTHER BEGINNING
Norris, as he left Percival's house, had a glimpse of Lena coming down
the hall, wonderful in her shimmering evening gown, brave in jewels. She
dazzled him, though he despised his eyes for admiring her and told
himself that she was tinsel.
He bowed in response to her curt nod, well aware that she thought him
too unimportant to merit her courtesy, while she resented her husband's
inexplicable regard for him. He went out into a cold winter drizzle and
turned his face toward home and Madeline, those new and thrilling
possessions. For the moment, however, there was no exhilaration in his
heart, rather a depressed questioning whether, after all, everything
beautiful was a sham. Was the daily grind a mechanical millwheel? Dick
and Dick's marriage, were they but samples of the way life deals with
hope? A pang stabbed through him as his own marriage rose and stood
beside Dick's in his mind. It meant so much to him; yet only a few
months before his friend had been bubbling with an exultation more
open-voiced than his own.
There are not only great Sloughs of Despond waiting here and there for
the pilgrim, but there are in almost every day little gutters of despond
that must be jumped if one does not wish cold and soiled feet; so here
his healthy mind cried out against morbid thoughts and he reviled
himself for companioning the thing he held sacred with the thing he had
always felt foredoomed to failure. He told himself that middle-age was
not a dead level of hopes grown gray and withered, but rather a
heightening of the contrasts between success and failure. A word of Mr.
Elton's spoken long ago, flashed back to him: "Don't build your attics
before you've finished your cellars." That, after all, was a test. If
one could but get a good solid foundation under hope, one might trust it
to lift its pinnacle as far toward Heaven as the ethereal upper air.
Alas for Dick!
Then, though he still loved his one-time hero, Ellery put Dick from his
mind. His feet quickened and his heart began to beat joyously again. He
ran up his steps, delighting in the commonplace performance of putting a
latch-key into a lock. The cold and drizzle were shut outside, and
Madeline waited in the warmth and light of the hall to insist on helping
him off with his overcoat, a task so absurdly difficult that when it was
finished they laughed and kissed each other in mutual delight at their
own foolishness.
Then Madeline took his hand and drew him into the living-room, where the
light was low and shaded, but blazing logs painted even far-shadowed
corners with warmth, and pranked the girl's white dress into glowing
pink, while the fire hummed and crackled its own triumph:
"I consumed the deep green forest with all its songs,
And all the songs of the forest now sing aloud in me."
Ellery stood with his arm around his wife's waist and looked about with
a quizzical expression that made her ask,
"What are you thinking?"
"I was remembering."
"And pray what business have you, sir, to live in anything but the
present?"
"Perhaps I get more from to-day because I don't forget yesterday. When I
first came to St. Etienne, sweetheart, Dick took me to his home. You
know, with your mere mind, but you can not appreciate, how unrelated my
life had been. You can't imagine how hungrily I looked at that restful
room and at Dick's mother. I felt as though I would give anything--my
soul--to have a home. And now, behold, I have one."
"And you had to pledge your soul to me to get it."
"True. I paid dearly," he said. "But I was wondering how it was that you
had managed to put so much atmosphere into so untried a place. It looks
to me as impossible as a miracle. Here are some new walls, and new
furniture and new curtains and new vases and new pictures. Even the
books are mostly new. I always resented new books. They are like green
fruit. A book isn't ripe until it begins to be frayed around the edges.
It would seem to me a hopeless job to make a home out of all this raw
material. Yet this room already reminds me of Mrs. Percival's library,
Madeline, and it isn't only because it is a long room with a big
fireplace."
"I think it is a good beginning," she answered. "Now all we have to do
is to live in it."
"You talk as though 'living' were a very easy matter," he remonstrated.
"I think it must be the hardest thing in the world, judging by the
failures. I know heaps of people who are drifting, or grubbing, or
wallowing, or stumbling, or racing, but only a handful that are living.
The thought of it made me blue all the way home."
"Dick?" Madeline asked with ready intuition.
"Yes, Dick. He voted with the combine and against the reform element in
last night's council meeting; and he did it on some one's compulsion. I
can't tell you how it has stirred and disheartened me."
"Have you seen him?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"That he could not explain."
"Then," said his wife decisively, "it is some of Lena's doings. About
anything else--anything--he would have told you, Ellery."
"Very likely, though it is hard to see how Mrs. Percival could be mixed
up in affairs like this."
Madeline was moving about restlessly.
"Ellery," she said at last, "I feel as though you and I had to be a sort
of pair of god-parents to Dick. He is so dear, so lovable, so fine--and
so unable to go alone. You, particularly, dearest, are the stanchest
thing he has. I know just how he feels about you, for I feel so, too.
You are going to push behind him and understand him and back up all his
resolves, aren't you, even if he does half disappoint you? You aren't
going to let anything alienate you or come between your friendship and
his, are you? I know you love him, and I'm sure he needs you."
Ellery smiled down at her questioning eyes and the intoxicating appeal
of her confidence in him--Madeline's!
"I rather think I am Dick's friend for all I'm worth," he said slowly,
at last. "Even if I were tempted to disloyalty, I should be ashamed to
harbor it with your faithfulness standing before me. And I believe this
very afternoon was a kind of crisis with him--that he was gathering
himself together when I came away."
"And by your help, I dare say," added his wife.
"I hope so. I know but one thing that seems to me more worth while than
the purpose of helping Dick Percival to be what it is in him to be."
"And what is that other better thing?"
"You arrant fraud! Do you need to ask?" he said, laughing.
"Well, comfort yourself. You are to go on fulfilling your two purposes
in life--you and I together."
"I pray we may. I believe we shall," answered her husband earnestly.
"I know we shall, doubting Thomas. I'm one of the women who are strong
in unreasoning faith."
They stood silently smiling at each other for a moment.
"Shall we celebrate the beginning of home with pomp and music?" she
asked. "There's a little time before dinner. Make yourself comfortable.
Push Mrs. Percival up to the fire."
"Mrs. Percival!" Ellery exclaimed, dropping his guilty arm and looking
about in a startled manner.
"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. I've been all over the house this
afternoon, christening our things with the names of the people that gave
them to us. Doesn't it make all the wedding presents seem very friendly
and not at all new? Wouldn't you know, even if you hadn't been told,
that this particular chair was Mother Percival--it's so graceful and
comforting. Dump yourself into it, Ellery."
She pushed him down laughing.
"Ah, I begin to see that you stole your atmosphere. The things aren't so
new after all. They're old acquaintances."
"Of course they are. Isn't it jolly to have 'your loving friends' tucked
around in spirit in every nook and corner of the house, without the
nuisance of having the good people here in the body to disturb our
privacy?"
"I see," he meditated, then went on ungratefully: "After all, I think
I'm more taken with the privacy than with the spiritual presences,
though they can hardly be considered skeletons at the feast."
"I should think not," exclaimed Madeline indignantly. "I love them each
and all--well, with a few exceptions, Ellery. You needn't grin
sarcastically. Now there's the piano--such a piano as I have always
dreamed of but never hoped to own. If I called it a Steinway Grand, I
should know that it was an excellent instrument; but when I call it
'Vera,' it warms and delights my heart a thousand times."
Ellery rose and bowed ceremoniously to the piano.
"Vera, will you and Mrs. Norris favor me with Schubert's _Serenade_,
while I sit on Mrs. Percival?" he asked. "I am ragingly hungry, but
perhaps the _Serenade_ will keep me harmless and quiet for a little."
He sat and listened and looked into the warm deep heart of the friendly
fire. Dreams and hopes came back to him, as things once seen through a
glass darkly, but now face to face. Without turning, he was conscious of
Madeline, across the room, filling life with music.
When a small maid, as new as the books, appeared to announce dinner, he
looked up startled.
"Shall we go?" asked Madeline, rising.
"To our own private particular family communion-table," he answered,
drawing her arm through his.
* * * * *
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