I have often deplored that unlucky adjustment which allotted to the
medicines, countries, flavouring extracts, and the like, names which
should have been reserved for women. For example what beautiful names
for beautiful women are Arnica, Ammonia, and Magnesia; as for Syria,
one could fall in love with a woman called Syria; and it would be
sufficient to make a poet out of any lover to sit all day at the feet
of a woman named Vanilla.
This occurred to me again as a fortnight later Pelleas and I took our
seats in the train for the sea, since across the aisle sat a pale and
pretty little invalid girl whose companions called her “Phenie.” I do
not know what this term professed to abbreviate, but I myself would
have preferred to be known by the name of some euphonious disease, say
Pneumonia. Monia would make a very pretty love-name, as they say.
Our little neighbour should have had a beautiful name. She looked not a
day past ten, though I learned that she was sixteen; and she was pale
and spiritless, but her great dark eyes were filled with the fervour
which might have been hers if life had been more kind. She had a merry
laugh, and a book; not what I am wont to call a tramp book, seeking to
interest people, but a book of dignity and parts which solicits nobody,
a book which may have a bookplate under its leather wing.
I puzzled pleasantly over the two in whose charge she appeared to be
and finally I took Pelleas in my confidence.
“Pelleas,” said I, “do you think that those two can be her parents?”
“Bless you, no, dear,” he answered; “they are not old enough. She is
more likely to be sister to one of them. They are very much in love.”
“I noticed,” I agreed; “they must be old-young married people.”
“Instead of young-old married people like us,” Pelleas said.
For Pelleas and I, merely because we are seventy and white-haired and
frightened to cross streets, are not near enough to death to treat
each other so coldly as do half the middle-aged. I cannot imagine a
breakfast at which we two would separate the morning paper and intrude
stocks and society upon our companionship and our omelet. At hotels I
have seen elderly people who looked as if breakfast could a prison make
and coffee cups a cage. Pelleas and I are not of these, and we look
with kindly eyes upon all who have never known that youth has gone,
because love stays.
So we were delighted when we saw our old-young married people and the
little invalid preparing to leave the train with us. When we drew
into our station the big kindly conductor, with a nasturtium in a
buttonhole, came bearing down upon Little Invalid and carried her from
the car in his vast arms and across the platform to a carriage. And we,
in a second carriage, found ourselves behind the little party driving
to the sea.
I had been so absorbed in our neighbours that until the salt air blew
across our faces I had forgotten what a wonderful day it really was to
be. Pelleas and I were come alone to the seaside with no one to look
after us and no one to meet us and we meant to have such a holiday as
never had been known. It came about in this wise:--
We were grown hungry for the sea. All winter long over our drawing-room
fire we had talked about the sea. We had pretended that the roar of the
elevated trains was the charge and retreat of the breakers and we had
remembered a certain summer years before, when--Pelleas still being
able to model and I to write so that a few were deceived--we had taken
a cottage having a great view and no room, and we had spent one of the
summers which are torches to the years to follow. Who has once lived
by the sea becomes its fellow and it is likely to grow lyric in his
heart years afterward and draw him back. So it had long been drawing
Pelleas and me until, the Spring being well advanced, we had risen one
morning saying, “We must go to-morrow.”
We had dreaded confessing to Nichola our intention. Nichola renounces
everything until her renunciations are not virtue but a disease. She
cannot help it. She is caught in a very contagion of renunciation,
and one never proposes anything that she does not either object to or
seek to postpone. When the day comes for Nichola to die it has long
been my belief that she will give up the project as a self-indulgence.
Therefore it was difficult for us to approach her who rules us with the
same rod which she continually brandishes over her own spirit. It was I
who told her at last; for since that day when Nichola came upon Pelleas
trying to dance, he has lost his assurance in her presence, dislikes to
address her without provocation, and agrees with everything that she
says as if he had no spirit. I, being a very foolhardy and tactless old
woman, put it to her in this way:--
“Nichola! Pelleas and I are going to the seashore for all day
to-morrow.”
“Yah!” said Nichola derisively, putting her gray moss hair from her
eyes. “Boat-ridin’?”
“No,” said I gently, “no, Nichola. But we want the sea--we need the
sea.”
Nichola narrowed her eyes and nodded as if she knew more about the sea
than she would care to tell.
“Oh, well,” she said with resignation, “I s’pose the good Lord don’t
count suicide a first-class crime when you’re old.”
“We shall want breakfast,” I continued with great firmness, “at half
after six.”
“The last breakfast that I’ll ever have to get you,” meditated Nichola,
turning her back on me. The impudent old woman believes because she is
four years younger than I that she is able to look after me. I cannot
understand such self-sufficiency. I am wholly able to look after myself.
Pelleas and I dreamed all that night of what the morrow held for us. We
determined to take a little luncheon and, going straight to the beach
and as near to the water as possible, lie there in the sand the whole
day long.
“And build sand houses and caves with passages _sidewise_,” said
Pelleas with determination and as if he were seven.
“And watch the clouds and the gulls,” said I.
“And find a big wave away out and follow it till it comes in,” Pelleas
added.
“And let the sand run through our fingers--O, Pelleas,” I cried, “I
think it will make us young.”
So the sea spoke to us and we were wild for that first cool salt
breath of it, and the glare and the gray and the boom of the surf. But
Nichola, to whom the sea is the sea, bade us good-bye next morning with
no sign of relenting in her judgment on us.
“Well packed with flannel?” she wanted to know. And we went out in the
street feeling like disobedient children, undeserving of the small,
suggestive parcel of lunch which at the last moment she thrust in our
hands.
“After all,” Pelleas said, “what is it to Nichola if we get drowned or
run over?”
“Nothing,” we agreed with ungrateful determination.
Yet when we reached our station we had become so absorbed in Little
Invalid that the sea had almost to pluck us by the sleeve before we
remembered.
It was early for guests at the hotel and but few were on the
veranda. Little Invalid was lifted from her carriage and placed in a
rocking-chair while the old-young married people went in the office.
And when Pelleas suggested that I rest before we go down to the beach
I gladly assented and sat with him beside the little creature, who
welcomed me with a shy smile. She was so like a bird that I had almost
expected her to vanish at my approach; and when she did not do so the
temptation to talk with her was like the desire to feed a bird with
crumbs from my hand.
“It is pleasant to be near the sea again,” I said to her, by way of
crumbs.
Her eyes had been fixed on the far blue and they widened as she turned
to me.
“‘Again’?” she repeated. “I haven’t ever seen it before, ma’am.”
“You have not?” I said. “What a sorrow to live far from the sea.”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said, “I live in New York--we all three have lived in New
York always--but I never saw anything of the sea, only from the
Battery. None of us has but Henny. Henny has been to Staten Island.”
I was silent in sheer bewilderment. Then it was true; there are people
living in New York who have never seen the sea.
Something else trembled on Little Invalid’s lips and out it came,
hesitating.
“Bessie an’ Henny’s married last week,” she imparted shyly, touching a
great coloured button picture of Bessie upon her waist. “This is their
honeymoon.”
“O,” I observed, brightening, “then you will be here for some time. I
am so glad.”
Again she shook her head.
“O, no, ma’am,” she answered, “we’re going back to-night. This is
Henny’s day off, but Bessie, she wouldn’t come without me. She’s my
sister,” said Little Invalid proudly; “she paid my way herself.”
Was it not wonderful for an old woman whose interests are supposed to
be confined to draughts and diets to be admitted to such a situation as
this? I was still speechless with the delight of it when the old-young
married people came outside.
Bessie, the sister to Little Invalid and the bride of a week, was a
gentle, worn little woman in the thirties, of shabby neatness, and
nervous hands wide and pink at the knuckles, and a smile that was like
the gravity of another. “Henny”--I perceive that my analogy extends
farther and that some men would better have been christened Nicotine or
Camphor--Henny was a bit younger than she, I fancied, and the honest
fellow’s heavy, patched-looking hands and quick, blue eyes would
immediately have won my heart even if I had not seen the clumsy care
that he bestowed upon Little Invalid, as though a bear should don a
nurse’s stripes.
Pelleas says that I spoke to them first. I dare say I did, being a very
meddlesome old woman, but the first thing that I distinctly recall was
hearing Henny say:--
“Now, you run along down the beach, Bess, an’ I’ll sit here a spell
with Phenie!”
“I’m sure I’d be all right all alone,” protested Little Invalid feebly,
looking nervously about at the fast-gathering groups of chattering
people. However Bessie and Henny seemed to know very much better than
this, and with her smile that was like gravity Bessie moved reluctantly
away.
Fancy that situation. Little Invalid could not be carried to the sands,
and those two old-young married people meant to spend their “honeymoon”
in taking turns at visiting the beach. I looked at Pelleas and his face
made the expression which means an alarm, for something to be done at
once.
“Why,” I asked casually, “don’t you both go down to the beach and let
us sit here awhile?” For to tell the truth the journey by the train had
tired me more than I cared to confess.
I remember how Pelleas once sent two incredibly dirty little boys into
the circus at the Garden, and save then I really think that I never saw
such sudden happiness in the face of any one.
“Were--were you goin’ to sit here anyway, ma’am?” Bessie asked, trying
as heroically to conceal her joy as if it had been tears.
“Yes,” I assured her shamelessly, and really I was over-tired. “Stay as
long as ever you like,” I said.
“O, ma’am,” said Henny with shining eyes, “thank you! And thank you,
sir!”
“Pooh!” said Pelleas gruffly and thrust my sunshade in his hands.
Off they went down the beach, Shabby Neatness hanging on her husband’s
arm in a fashion which I cannot call deplorable, and her husband
looking down at her adoringly. Before they disappeared past the
pavilion we all waved our hands. And then to my amazement I saw tears
on the face of Little Invalid.
“O, ma’am,” she said, her lips trembling, “you don’t know what this
will mean to them--you don’t know!”
“Let me see your book, my dear,” I said hastily, ashamed enough to be
praised for indulging my own desire to rest.
She handed the distinguished-looking little volume and I saw that it
was a very bouquet of sea poems, sea songs, sea delight in every form.
Beloved names nodded to me from the page and beloved lines smiled up at
me.
“The settlement lady lief me take it,” said Little Invalid.
Then began an hour whose joy Pelleas and I love to remember. It would
have been pleasure merely to sit in that veranda corner within sound of
the sea and to hear Pelleas read those magic words; but we had a new
and unexpected joy in the response of this untutored little maid who
was as eager as were we. With her eyes now on the sea, now on the face
of Pelleas as he read, now turned to me with the swift surprise of
something that his voice held for her, she sat breathlessly between us;
and sometimes when a passage had to be explained her eyes were like the
sea itself with the sun penetrating to its unsounded heart.
“Oh,” she would say, “was it all there all the time--was it? I read it
alone but I didn’t know it was like this!”
It puzzled her to find that what we were reading had been known and
loved by us for very long.
“Did the settlement lady lief you have the book, too?” she asked
finally.
“No,” we told her, “we have these things in other books, ourselves.”
“Why, I thought,” she said then in bewilderment, “that there was only
one book of every kind. And I thought how grand for me to have this
one, and that I’d ought to lend it to people who wouldn’t ever see it
if I didn’t. Is there other ones like it?” she asked.
Gradually the shy heart opened to us and we spoke together of the
simple mysteries of earth. For example Little Invalid knew nothing of
the tides and the moon’s influence, and no triumph of modern science
could more have amazed her. Then from the terrifying parlour of the
hotel we brought to her pieces of coral and seaweed, and these she had
never seen and she touched them with reverent fingers. In the parlour
too was an hourglass filled with shining sand--it was like finding
jewels in the coal bin to extract things of such significance from that
temple of plush and paper flowers. She held the coral and the seaweed
and the hourglass while we went back to the little book or sat watching
the waves, gray-green, like the leaves of my moth geranium.
In this manner two hours had passed without our suspecting when,
flushed and breathless, Bessie and Henny reappeared. They were very
distressed and frightened over having stayed so long away, but no
degree of embarrassment could disguise their happy possession of those
two hours on the white beach.
Pelleas beamed on them both.
“Ah, well, now,” he said, “we couldn’t think of going away down there
before luncheon. Run along back, but mind that you are here by one
o’clock. You are to lunch with us.”
At that my heart bounded, though I knew very well that Pelleas had
intended certain five dollars in his portemonnaie for far other and
sterner purposes. Yet it is a great truth that the other and sterner
purposes are always adjusted in the end and the commonwealth goes
safely on no matter how often you divert solitary bills to radiant uses
with which they have no right to be concerned. Being I dare say a very
spendthrift old woman I cannot argue matters of finance, but this one
principle I have often noted; and I venture to believe that the people
who omit the radiant uses are not after all the best citizens. I write
this in defence of Pelleas, whose financial conscience troubled him for
many a day on account of that luncheon.
So back those old-young married people went to the beach, trying hard,
as I could see, not to appear too delighted lest Little Invalid feel
herself a burden to us all. And when they returned at one o’clock with
bright eyes and cheeks already beginning to tan, Pelleas marshaled us
all to a table by a window toward the sea, and a porter drew Little
Invalid’s chair beside us.
What a luncheon was that. Time was--when Pelleas was still able to
model and I to write so as to deceive a few--that we have sat at
beautiful dinner tables with those whose jests we knew that we should
read later, if we outlived them, set in the bezel of a chapter of
their biographies--and such a dinner is likely to give one a delicious
historic feeling while one is yet pleasantly the contemporary of the
entrée. Time has been too when a few of us have sat about a simple
board thankful for the miracle of that companionship. But save the
dinners which Pelleas and I have celebrated alone I think that
there never was another such dinner in our history. When his first
embarrassment was gone we found that Henny had a quiet drollery which
delighted us and caused his wife’s eyes to light adoringly. They said
little about themselves; indeed, save for the confidences of Little
Invalid, we knew when we parted nothing whatever about them, and yet we
were the warmest friends. However, it was enough to have been let into
that honeymoon secret.
And what a morning had those two had. I cannot begin to recount what
experiences had been theirs with great waves that had overtaken them,
with dogs that had gone in after shingles, and with smooth stones and
“angel-wing” shells and hot peanuts of which they had brought a share
to Little Invalid. I cannot recall what strange people they had met and
remembered. Above all I cannot tell you how they had listened to that
solemn beat and roar, and would try to make us know its message--of
course they did not know that this was what they tried to tell us, but
Pelleas and I understood well enough.
After luncheon when Little Invalid was back on the veranda, her cheeks
flushed with the unwonted excitement--it was her first dinner in a real
hotel, she told me--Pelleas leaned against a pillar with an exaggerated
air which I could not fathom, until:--
“Really,” he said, “I’m so very sleepy that I’m going to settle myself
in this big chair for a doze. Don’t you want to rest for a little,
Etarre? Suppose that we three all have a long quiet nap and you two
young people get back to the beach for a while so as not to bother us.”
Bless Pelleas. And I confess that I was not unwilling to rest. So the
two went away again, and I believe that Pelleas did sleep; but Little
Invalid and I, though we pretended to be asleep, sat with our heads
turned away from each other, staring out to sea. I do not know how it
may have been with her, but as for me I was happy out of all proportion
to the encouragement of that noisy veranda. Perhaps it was the look of
the sea line, pricked with sails, or the mere rough, indifferent touch
of the salt wind.
Presently we all pretended to wake and talk a little; and then we saw
Bessie and Henny coming back and at a sign from Pelleas we all shut our
eyes again, though Pelleas appeared to awake very crossly and bade them
go back and not disturb us unless they wanted to be great nuisances. So
they ran back, and we laughed at them in secret, and Little Invalid sat
happily holding the mysterious hourglass. And then a band began to play
in the pavilion--a dreadful band I thought until I saw the ecstatic
delight of Little Invalid, whereupon I discovered that there was a lilt
in its clamour.
When the bathers went in we found a glass for her, and she spent a
pleasant half hour watching the ropes. And twice more Bessie and Henny
came back and both times we pretended to be asleep, and Pelleas awoke
more testily each time and scolded them back. The second time he thrust
something in their hands.
“Just pitch this in the ocean,” he said crossly, “or eat it up. It
worries me.”
Secretly I looked from one eye and saw Nichola’s lunch disappearing.
When they came back at six o’clock we consented to be awake, for it was
time for Pelleas and me to go home. They stood before us trying with
pleasant awkwardness to make us know various things, and Little Invalid
kept tightly hold of my fingers. When I bent to kiss her good-bye
she pressed something in my hand, and it was the great coloured
button-picture of Bessie.
“Keep it,” she said, “to remember us by. There ain’t nothink else fit
to give you!”
Henny handed me to the carriage in an anguish of polite anxiety, and
they all three waved their hands so long as we could see them. They
were to stay two hours longer and finish that honeymoon.
As Pelleas and I drove up the long street, our backs to the sea, we
turned for one look at the moving gold of it under the falling sun. We
felt its breath in our faces for the last time--well, who knows? When
one is seventy every time may be the last time, though indeed I should
not have been surprised to find us both sea-bathing before the Summer
was over.
Pelleas looked at me with troubled eyes.
“Etarre,” he said, “I am afraid that we have indulged ourselves
shamefully to-day.”
“You mean about the luncheon party?” I asked.
“Yes, that,” he said, “and then we came down here for the sea to do us
good and we haven’t been near the sea.”
“No,” I said, “we haven’t.”
“We have simply amused ourselves all day long,” he finished disgustedly.
“Yes,” I said, “we have.”
But as the train drew over the salt marshes I smiled at this disgust of
Pelleas’, smiled until my hand crept down and found his under his hat.
“What is it?” he asked, seeing my smile.
“I’ve found out something,” I told him.
“What is it?” he wanted to know.
“It wasn’t their honeymoon so much,” I said triumphantly, “as it was
ours.”
As we came through the long cross street toward our house we had a
glimpse of Nichola beside our area gate, watching for us. But when
we reached the gate she was not in sight and though we waited for a
moment on our steps she did not come to open the door. It was not until
Pelleas had lighted the fire in the drawing-room and we sat before it
that we heard her coming up the stairs.
She brought us tea, neither volunteering a word of greeting nor, save
by a word and with averted eyes, responding to ours. But as she was
leaving the room she stood for a moment in the doorway.
“How’d your lunch go?” she demanded.
Instantly Pelleas and I looked at each other--we never can remember not
to do that. What _had_ Nichola given us in that lunch?
“Why, Nichola,” said I, “Nichola, your lunches are always--that is, I
never knew your lunches not to be--”
“You are a wonderful cook, you know, Nichola,” said Pelleas earnestly.
Nichola looked down upon us, her little eyes winking fast, and she
nodded her old gray head.
“Yah!” she said, “what I put in it was fruit an’ crackers. An’ I see
you’ve give it away.”
“O, Nichola--” we began. But as captain of the moment she would not
sally forth to parley.
“There’s your tea,” she cut us short; “drink it--if you ain’t drownded
an’ your shades settin’ here instead.”
Pelleas looked up bravely.
“I’m not sure about myself, Nichola,” he said gently; “one never is
sure about one’s self, you know. But this lady is real, I do assure
you!”
“And this, Nichola,” said I, gayly, “I protest is a real gentleman!”
On which we two laughed in each other’s eyes; and Nichola, that grim
old woman, said sharply:--
“Our Lady knows you talk enough nonsense to be new-married, the both.”
She clicked the portière rings, like little teeth. And at her words
Pelleas and I looked at each other in abashment. Does all the world,
like Nichola, guess at our long honeymoon?