Through what quiet lanes of trivial circumstance do we move toward the
momentous events of our lives? We go our way, whistling thoughtlessly;
we turn a corner and stand face to face with the all-important. In my
boyhood I went fishing and tumbled into a mountain stream; I overheard
Boller of '89 speaking to Gladys Todd; I walked the Avenue at half past
three in the afternoon and met Penelope Blight. How finely spun is the
thread which holds together my story! A firmer foothold on the bank,
an ear less quick to catch an undertone, a moment's delay before
setting out on my daily airing, and there might have been no story to
tell you; the valley might have been all the world I know and the wall
of mountains my mind's horizon.
Then I come to the matter of Philip Bennett's motor. It was always
breaking down. The delays that it caused as we journeyed north from
Naples were annoying, but at the time these were trivial events, as we
usually found a comfortable inn where we could wait while Bennett's man
lay in the dust and peered up into the vitals of the machine. It was
an adventurous thing to trust one's self to the mercy of the Italian
highway in the untrustworthy little cars of those days, but Stephen
Bennett insisted on our joining his brother, and as I was travelling
back to England with him after a hard year in the Sudan I consented.
Bennett's brother met us at Naples, where we landed from the steamer,
and, after pointing out to us the marvels of his self-propelling
vehicle, put us into it, and took us puffing and rattling northward.
We broke down twice a day, but we did not mind it, for after the trip
from Khartum, the saddle over the desert, and the uncomfortable
Egyptian rail, this new invention was to us the height of luxury in
travel.
Stephen Bennett was in the Egyptian army, in the camel corps. I had
ridden many a long march with him, and was beside him at Omdurman when
he was struck through the body by a Remington. We got in a nasty
corner that morning on the heights of Kerreri, and were so hard pressed
by the dervishes in the retreat that the wounded were saved with the
greatest difficulty. Bennett was so badly hurt that it took two of us
to hold him on my horse; but we got him back to the river and the
hospital, and after Khartum fell I picked him up at Fort Atbara. To
Cairo by rail, a week at sea, and in the October days we were rattling
northward and homeward over the white Italian roads. We reached Rome.
I had one day in the Eternal City while François replaced a broken
gear, and then we went on to Foligno, where we paced the Corso for an
afternoon and the Frenchman fixed up his brakes. Late that night at
Perugia we broke down at the foot of the hill and we had to climb to
our hotel. At this last mishap Bennett began to show annoyance, for he
had not as yet recovered his full strength, and the next morning, over
our coffee and rolls, he proposed that we go by rail to Florence, where
he knew people, and wait there until the car caught up with us. To
Bennett's brother this suggestion was a reflection on the power of his
beloved machine. He resented it, and I, not wishing to inject myself
into a fraternal argument of some heat, went out to see the town,
promising to return when they had amicably settled our plans.
From the rampart, where I paused that morning, as I strolled out so
carelessly, leaning over the wall and looking over the Umbrian plain,
there is a fair prospect--the fairest, I think, that I have ever seen,
save one--and I hung there drinking in its peace and ruminating.
Across that plain, and I should take another step toward home. But it
was my boyhood's home alone, and yet I was going happily to sit again
on the horse-hair sofa in the parlor, with my father on one hand and my
mother on the other, and before me, perhaps, Mr. Pound, giving me his
blessing. I saw it all: the valley clad white in snow, the house on
the hill amid the bare oaks, the windows bright with potted plants, and
down the path my father and mother running to meet me. I thought, with
love in my heart, of that boyhood home and of my coming to it. Yet in
that same heart there was a longing unfulfilled. Where was my
manhood's home? Once I had had a tantalizing glimpse of it. That was
when I sat at Penelope's side by the carved mantel, under the eyes of
Reynolds's majestic lady. That for which I yearned so vainly was the
spot which she made sweeter by her presence. Were she here at my side,
looking with me over the Umbrian plain, this would be home. But
wherever I travelled, east or west, north or south, my journey could
have no such satisfying ending. Even in the valley, in the presence of
familiar, homely things, I knew that I should look away vaguely, as I
looked now, at distant mountains, wondering where Penelope was and how
the world went with her.
After two years of absence from her and utter silence, I could drag out
of my memory no pictures of her save old ones, and one by one I brought
them forth, my favorite portraits, and saw her sitting in the carved
chair pouring tea or driving down the Avenue, very still and very
straight in her victoria. She must be in New York, I said, for in late
October she would be hurrying back to town for the old futile routine.
I went on, recklessly fancying Penelope leading that life, dancing,
dining and driving, as though this were all in the world she could
possibly be doing. I knew that she had not married Talcott. I had
learned this much of her from a stray newspaper which announced the
breaking of the engagement. I knew that it could make no difference to
me if she had married some one else. That was highly possible, yet it
was not a possibility on which I cared to dwell in my moments of
rumination. This day my mind dwelt on it, whether I would or not.
Over the plain, just beyond the mountains, I saw Penelope in my
visionary eye, and I asked myself if I should find another in that
coveted place from which I was barred. A bit of land, a bit of sea,
and there was home. In a few hours the same sun would be smiling on
it. At that moment I dreaded to go on. It was my duty, yet, could I,
I would have turned back to the Sudan, to ride again over the yellow
sands in the dust of marching regiments. I wanted action. Poor,
pitiful action it was to walk, but with every fall of my feet and every
click of my cane I could say to myself that I was going home, to my
boyhood's home, and it mattered little if I had no other. The clatter
of the Corso jarred on me. My mood demanded quiet places. The little
streets called to me from their stillness, and I answered them. They
led me higher and higher to the summit of the town. I crossed a
deserted piazza, and by a gentle slope was carried down to the terrace
of the Porta Sola.
There was in this secluded spot a soothing shade and silence. Old
palaces, ghosts of another age, cast their shadows over it. Steps
wound from its quiet, down the hill into the clatter of the lower town.
A rampart guarded the sheer cliff, and with elbows resting there and
chin cupped in my hands I looked away to the Apennines. Below me two
arms of the town stretched out into the plain, but their mingling
discords rose to my ear like the drum of insects. Beyond them, in the
nearer prospect, the land seemed topsy-turvy, a maze of little hills
and valleys. A pink villa flamed against the brown, and its flat,
squat tower, glowing in the sunlight, called to its gaunt neighbor,
rising from a deserted monastery, to cheer up and be merry with it.
Distance levelled the land. It became broad plain, studded with gray
villages and slashed by the Tiber; it rose to higher hills; then lifted
sharply, the brown fading into the whiteness of massed mountain peaks.
This is my fairest prospect. And yet at that moment it offered me no
peace. I was so infinitely lonely. With Penelope at my side, I said,
I could stand here for hours feasting my eyes on so lovely a picture.
To me, alone, it gave nothing. I should be happier with the Bennetts,
forgetting self and self's vague longings in a plunge into the
fraternal dispute.
I turned away into a narrow alley, but I was unaccustomed to Perugian
streets and had not solved the mystery of their windings. Suddenly,
passing a corner, I found myself again in the deserted piazza, and,
looking down the slope, saw the same picture framed by palace walls.
First my eyes grasped the panorama of plain and mountain. Then I saw
only the terrace.
It was not mine any longer to hold in loneliness. I brushed my hand
across my eyes to sweep away the taunting image. But she held there by
the wall, leaning over it, her chin resting in her hands, wrapped in
contemplation. Her face was turned from me, but there was no mistaking
that still, black figure. If she heard my footfalls and the click of
my cane, she gave no sign of being aware of my approach, but looked
straight out over the plain. I checked an impulse to call her name and
stood for a moment watching her. Would she greet me, I asked, with
that same chilling stare with which she had said good-by? I feared it.
But I tiptoed down the slope to the wall, and, leaning over it in
silence, enjoyed the stolen pleasure of her presence. Whether she
would or not, we looked together over the fair land. And what a
prospect it was with Penelope at my side!
"David!" she said.
She took a step back, and stood there, very straight, surveying me, as
though she were not quite sure that it could be. I searched her eyes
for a hostile gleam, but found none, and when her hand met mine it was
with a friendly and firm grasp.
"Penelope," said I, "as I came down the hill there and saw you, I
thought that I dreamed."
"And I," said she, "when I turned and found David Malcolm beside me. I
had heard that you were in the Sudan."
"Much as I should have liked to bury myself in the Sudan, there were
calls from home," I returned.
"From Miss Dodd--what are you laughing at, David? From Miss Todd, I
mean. How could you talk of burying yourself when you have such
happiness before you? But, David, why do you laugh?"
With this reproof she tilted her head. That did not trouble me. I had
so often seen her tilt her head in the same scornful way in the old
days. And I laughed on joyfully at her calm assurance that I was going
back to Gladys Todd.
"Gladys Todd is now Mrs. Bundy," I said.
"Oh!" Penelope exclaimed, and her voice changed to one of sympathy. "I
am sorry, David. I see now what you meant by the Sudan."
"Didn't you know that Gladys Todd had jilted me years ago?" I asked.
"Why, no," she answered. "How should I? You never told me."
"I was on my way to tell you one day," said I. "And then----"
I stopped. Remembering why I had not told Penelope, I deemed it wiser
to be evasive. I remembered, too, that in my joy at seeing her again I
had been taking it for granted that she was still Penelope Blight. The
gulf between us, which had been closing so fast, yawned again. "Tell
me," said I in undisguised eagerness, "are you married, Penelope?"
Then she laughed, and in the gay ring of her laughter, I read her
answer. She stepped back to a stone bench and seated herself, and I
took a place beside her, watching as she made circles in the sand with
the point of her parasol. There were a thousand commonplace questions
that I might have asked her, but I was contented with the silence. It
mattered little to me how she came there. It was enough that she was
at my side. It mattered little to me that Bennett and his brother
might have settled their dispute long since and be hunting for me, for
I had made my farewell to them. I was home. I intended to stay at
home. So I, too, fell to making circles in the sand, with my stick.
Then Penelope looked up and asked me: "David, how do you come to be
here, in this out-of-the-way Italian town? I thought you were in the
Sudan. Uncle Rufus told me that you were in the Sudan. That is how I
happened to hear it. He always insists on reading to me everything of
yours he can find--rather bores me, in fact, sometimes--not, of course,
that I haven't been interested in what you were doing."
She spoke so coldly that I feared that, after all, I had best go my way
with Bennett and his brother. I told her how I had travelled with
them, and how the motor had broken down, and how my finding her was by
the barest chance, for in a few hours I should have been on my way to
Florence.
"It's strange," she said. "Our motor broke down, too, last night--just
as we reached the gates; but this afternoon we hope to be off again to
Rome."
"We?" I questioned.
"Uncle Rufus and I," she said.
"And Mrs. Bannister?"
"Married a year ago to a rich broker," she answered, laughing.
"How long I have been away!" I exclaimed.
I glanced covertly at Penelope. Despite the tone of formality in which
she addressed me she seemed quite content to sit here weaving
hieroglyphics with the point of her parasol, for I noticed that she was
smiling, unconscious, perhaps, that I was studying her face. A while
ago I had stood a little in awe of Penelope, but it was an awe inspired
by her surroundings rather than by her. Going from Miss Minion's to
face the critical eye of her pompous English butler was itself an
ordeal; to Mrs. Bannister I was a poor young man whom it was a form of
charity to patronize; the great library, the carved mantel, the
portrait, the heavy silver on the tea-table, these were emblems of
another world than mine. But here in this piazzetta, with the broad
Italian landscape before us, those days of awkward constraint were in
the far past. This quiet Penelope at my side contentedly tracing
circles in the sand was, after all, the simple, kindly Penelope of the
days in the valley. I had no fear of her. If she tossed her head
disdainfully, I could fancy the blue ribbon bobbing there again and
smile to myself as I recalled the morning when we had galloped together
out of the mountains on the mule. There were questions which I wanted
answered, and I dared to ask them.
"Penelope," I said, "I am glad to hear that Mrs. Bannister is happily
married. Now tell me of my friend Talcott--what of him?"
Penelope sat up very straight and her head tossed. "David, I should
think that one subject which you would avoid."
"I confess myself consumed with merely idle curiosity," I returned.
"Talcott once made a great deal of trouble for me. Don't you remember
the day on the Avenue when you cut me?"
"And if I had met you here a year ago, David, I should not have known
you," she said severely. "A woman resents being made a fool of, nor
can she easily forgive one who exposes the sham in which she has a
part. The fault was mine and Mrs. Bannister's, and back of it there
was something else."
"Something else?" I questioned.
Penelope did not answer. She had turned from me to the parasol and the
sand. I repeated the question.
"Herbert Talcott is married--a year now," she said in a measured tone.
"His wife was a Miss Carmody--the daughter of Dennis Carmody, who owns
the Sagamore--or something like that--mine." A pause. Her head
tossed. "He recovered very quickly."
"But the something else?" I insisted.
"There are some things which you will never understand," she answered
carelessly.
"There are some things which you must understand," I cried. "The
hardest task that ever I had was to go to your uncle as I did, like a
bearer of idle gossip. It would have been easier to let you go on as
you were going, ignorant and blind. I knew that it meant an end of our
friendship. That day when I spoke I believed that I was going out of
your life forever. I was not surprised when, on the Avenue, you looked
at me as though I were beneath your notice." I rose and stood before
her. "Had I to do it over again, I would, a thousand times, for your
sake. And didn't I prove that it was for your sake, when I banished
myself and gave up all claim to you?"
"Claim to me?" Penelope's lips curled defiantly. "I should have
thought that you would have been occupied making good your claim to
Miss Dodd, or Bodd, or whatever her name was. I suppose you did right,
but none the less it was unpleasant. I thank you. You see I forgive
you, or we should not be here now talking." She raised her parasol as
though about to rise. "We must go. My uncle is waiting for me, and if
you care to, you may come with me and see him before we start for Rome."
She did not rise; but the matter-of-fact tone in which she made the
threat chilled me, and for a moment I stood silent, looking down at the
black figure. The brim of her hat hid her face from me, but she was
making circles in the sand. I asked myself if this was the time for me
to speak of that claim, to speak my whole heart to her.
She looked up. "David," she said, "you need not stand there so long.
It might be bad for your wound."
"My wound?" I asked, and I took my old place at her side.
"Why, yes," she said. "Were you not wounded in the Sudan? Uncle Rufus
told me that you were. He read about it in the papers. A Major
Bennett, or somebody, ran out under a heavy fire and pulled you out of
the hands of a lot of Arabs and saved your life."
I laughed. I would have given all I owned in the world to have had at
that moment an interesting and conspicuous wound, for I knew how
sympathy formed love, and how to a woman's mind a wound added interest
to a man. A few weeks ago, though unwounded, I had at least been very
thin and brown; but even of those mild attractions I had thoughtlessly
allowed myself to be robbed by too high living and a kinder sun than
the desert's. How I envied Bennett with his sunken eyes and tottering
gait!
"The telegraph evidently mixed the names," I said. "It was Bennett who
was shot."
"And you saved his life!" Penelope cried, forgetting herself.
However modest the man may be who hides his light under a bushel, it is
always pleasing to him to have another lift the basket. As a matter of
fact, on that morning at Omdurman it was almost as uncomfortable in the
disordered and retreating ranks as it was in our rear, where Bennett
lay crushed in the sand under his dead camel. If I did run back to him
in the face of the oncoming horde of dervishes, a half-dozen of his own
black troopers ran with me and helped to drag him to safety. It was an
ordinary incident of the heat of battle, yet I did wish that Bennett
were here to tell her about it, with his grateful exaggeration. To me
fell the hard task not only of hiding my light, but of blowing it out.
"We got him away," I returned carelessly, accenting the pronoun as
though the whole corps were concerned. "A lot of his men ran back to
him and put him on my horse. I simply led him out of danger."
"Oh!" Penelope exclaimed in a tone of disappointment.
She looked over the plain; and I beside her, with my stick bent across
my knee, studied her face, trying to read in it some promise of
kindness and hope. But I found none. She seemed lost in the fair
prospect. She had met an old friend and had spoken to him. That was
enough. Now it mattered little whether he went away or stayed. It
came to me then to try an old, old ruse to test the quality of her
indifference.
"We had best be going," I said, rising.
To my consternation she rose, too, and began to move off carelessly, as
though she expected me to follow her to the hotel to see Rufus Blight
and then to bid her a casual farewell. I did not follow. Indifferent
she might be, but my mind was made up that she should hear me. There
was no longer any gulf between us. There was only the barrier of cool
indifference which she had raised, and I would fight to break it down.
"Penelope," I said, "there are other things that you and I must speak
of before we go."
"What?" she asked, looking back over her shoulder.
"Of your father," I answered, stepping to the wall and leaning on it.
I think that she saw reproof in my eyes. She hesitated, stirring the
sand with her parasol, and then came to the wall beside me.
"Is there anything that I do not know of him?" she asked, as she stood
with her chin in her hands, looking over the plain. "You wrote so
fully--to my uncle. You might have written to me, David--but still you
wrote to my uncle." There was no hard note in Penelope's voice. "You
cared for him, David, and he died in your arms. It was for that I
forgave you--everything."
"Everything? What do you mean by everything?"
"There are some things that you will never understand."
"But you speak as though I had done much that needed forgiveness."
"We have been to Thessaly, David," she went on, as though she had not
heard me. "We found the very shrine where he died and the place where
you buried him, and we marked it. It seemed best that he should lie
there where he had fought so bravely--his last fight--as though he
would have it that way. How could I help forgiving you after
that--everything?"
"Everything? Penelope, I do not understand."
She laid a hand lightly on my arm. "Tell me, David, what were my
father's last words to you?"
"I wrote them to you," I answered.
"To Uncle Rufus--not to me."
"How could I write to you after that day on the Avenue?"
"That was a small thing, and I was foolish. Now I want to hear it from
you myself."
I looked straight before me as I repeated the words which her father
had said that night as he lay dying on the plain of Thessaly. "Tell
them at home--it was a good fight."
I felt her hand lightly on my arm again. I heard her quiet voice ask:
"Was that all?"
"The rest I could not write," I answered, turning to her, and she
looked from me to the mountains. "He said to me: 'David, take care of
Penelope.'"
For a moment Penelope was very still. It was as though she had not
heard me. Then she half-raised herself from the wall. One hand rested
there; the other was held out to me in reproof.
"And how have you done it, David? With a year of silence."
"But that day on the Avenue?" I said.
"There were other days on the Avenue which you could have remembered,"
she returned. "There was that day when we met--after long years. And
that day I remembered the valley and the boy who had come into the
mountains to help me; I remembered my father's last words to us, and
for a little while I was foolish enough to think that it must be for
that that I had found you again."
I would have taken the outstretched hand, but she drew it away quickly
and stepped back.
"And do you think I had forgotten the mountains that day?" I said.
"Why, Penelope, I loved you that day as I love you now, as I have from
the morning when you and I rode into the valley together."
I took a step toward her, but she moved from me, and stood with her
hands clasped behind her back and her head tilted proudly as she looked
up at me.
"It sounds well," she said, her lips curling in disdain. "But how
about Miss Dodd, or Miss Todd?"
"Why will you be forever casting that up at me?" I protested. "For a
time I did forget. I was a plain fool. But, Penelope----"
"I must be going," she said; but though she pointed toward the slope
down which I had come from the little piazza, she really went again to
the wall and stood there where I first found her, as though held
spellbound by the view.
I was beside her. "Penelope," I said firmly, "there are some things
which you and I must straighten out here and now."
"There is nothing to straighten out," she said. "Everything is
settled. We are friends." Lifting a hand, she pointed over the plain.
"What does that remind you of, David?"
"A little of the valley," I answered. Then I raised my hand too.
"There are the mountains, Penelope, and just before them the ridge over
which we rode that morning. Do you remember it? Do you remember how
Nathan ran away over the trail, how you clung to me and called to me to
save you? Home should be down there where you see the village. Do you
remember----"
Penelope was looking from me, as though at the stone house, its roof
just showing in the green of giant oaks.
Again she raised her hand. "And the barn, David--the big white
barn--there!" she cried. Then she checked herself. She was very
straight and very still. "I was forgetting," she said.
A step closer and I said: "You do remember, Penelope!"
"I must be going," she returned in a low voice, but she did not move.
I feared to speak now lest I should awaken her from the revery in which
she seemed to have suddenly forgotten my existence.
"I must be going," she said again, and still she did not move.
She was looking across our valley! I knew that she saw it as on the
morning when we rode in terror from the woods and it lay beneath us, a
friendly land, in the broad day, under the kindly eye of God. Then I
bent nearer her, an arm resting on the wall, my eyes on her averted
face, patiently waiting until she should speak. And I could wait
patiently now, for I believed that in the silence the memory of that
day was fighting for me.
After a long time Penelope spoke. "David, do you remember--" She
paused. Her voice fell to a whisper. "What was it that you said to me
that morning--don't you remember?--don't cry, little one!"
In all the world there is no fairer prospect than that on which I
looked from the little terrace in Perugia. For I saw not alone the
lovely Umbrian plain. Before me stretched a fair life itself, into the
unending years, from that moment when Penelope spoke, turning as she
spoke and looking up at me with a smiling face. What a blind,
blundering creature I had been! The black-gloved hand was close to
mine on the wall, and I took it. Then I leaned down to her and said:
"I remember, Penelope, and I will--I will take care of you always."