Toward the end of July we found that the lodge at Little Rosemont was
to be vacant for a month or two and Pelleas rented it, furnished, from
the agent; and we took Nichola and moved down the length of the gravel
to the littlest house in the world, set in the littlest garden. There
we were established three days and more before Avis and Lawrence were
expected home.
We had merely crossed the garden from the great house, and yet life in
the little house seemed another matter, as if a harp were heard in a
room instead of in an open field. We felt less professionally alive and
more free to live. It was as if, Pelleas said, we were reading a poem
rather for the exquisite meaning than for the exquisite rhythm.
There was another reason why the lodge invited us. Though it was nearly
August, its tiny garden, walled round with a half-moon of hedge, was
rich with roses as if, Pelleas said, for an after-meeting of certain
Junes. For the lodge garden had been set with monthly roses, those
prodigals of giving, and there Chinese roses, Bengal roses, Giant of
Battles and Cloth of Gold rioted about a Hundred-leaved rose from the
Caucasus and that week they were all ripe with bloom.
That first morning as we stepped on the porch was a kind of greeting,
as intimate and personal as a nod. Pelleas and I stood in the garden
with the sun, as I believe, slanting madly in every direction and
butterflies vanishing against the blue. At all events, that is as I
soberly recall the day; and yet it is the day which we remember as our
one offence against love. It was the one time in our life that we said
of two lovers in whom we believed: “Are we sure that they are right?”
instead of our usual: “Let them be married to-day!” I can hardly credit
my own feint at heartlessness.
We went across the strip of terrace with a pleasure that was like
the pleasure of beginnings. In the center of the garden was a little
pool for water flowers and there we set the fountain free in the
sheer delight of bringing about all the liberty possible; and we
watched the scarlet tanagers bathing in the trickling outlet beside
the Hundred-leaved rose. And so we came at last to the arbour in a
green corner of the wall, and in its doorway we stood still with the
reasonable impression that we were thinking what we seemed to see.
On a bench beneath a window where the roses made an oval open to the
garden sat a girl. At first, save the shining of her hair, I saw only
that she had beside her a little traveling bag and, also beside her,
a fine, manly boy of not a day more than twenty-two. She was crying
a little and he was attempting with adorable awkwardness to comfort
her. At first glance the most rational explanation was that they were
run-away sprites from some neighbouring goblin settlement, and Pelleas
and I were making a sympathetic effort to withdraw when they looked up
and saw us.
Lo, with a little traveling bag between them, there were Lisa and Eric.
Almost before I grasped the import of this I hurried forward and took
Lisa in my arms. In all possible affairs I firmly believe that the kiss
should come first and the explanation afterward.
“But it is Lisa!” I cried. “Pelleas, it is Lisa and Eric. Wherever have
you come from, dear heart?”
The story was out in one burst of courage with the tears so near, so
near.
“I came from Chynmere,” she said; “Uncle Dudley and I are still at the
Wortleys’, you know--that is, Uncle Dudley is there. I--I ran away from
the Hall this m-morning. I--I eloped. I--Eric--we are going to be--”
Of course the rest was luminously clear.
“Dear heart,” I cried, “then what in this world are you crying for?”
Crying. In the midst of one’s elopement on a glad morning with the sun
slanting in every direction and butterflies vanishing against the blue.
“At all events,” said young Eric Chartres, with the most charmingly
abashed smile, “_I’m_ not crying.”
Bit by bit this logical climax of the Summer’s situation was imparted
to us--indeed, Pelleas and I had already secretly prophesied it. For
Dudley Manners to have charge of little Lisa at all was sufficiently
absurd; but for him with his middle-aged worldliness to have in keeping
her love story was not to be borne. Lisa and Eric had been betrothed
since Spring and in those two months Dudley Manners’ objection on the
score of their youth had not been to any extent outgrown. Moreover,
Lisa explained tremulously, Uncle Dudley had lately given out that
she had not yet “seen the world.” Therefore he had taken passage for
her and a Miss Constance Wortley, a governess cousin at Chynmere
Hall--elderly and an authority on plant life in Alaska--and they were
to go abroad to see the world for two years; and Eric was of course to
be left behind.
“_Two years_,” Lisa said impressively, with the usual accent of two
eternities; “we were to go to the north of Africa to watch the musk
roses bloom and to the Mediterranean to look for rosemary. Uncle
Dudley thinks _that_ would be seeing the world. So Eric came this
morning early and I slipped down and met him before any one was up.
And we came here. I told Eric,” Lisa confessed, “what you told me
about Cornelia Emmeline Ayres’ elopement. And we _knew_ you would both
understand.”
Pelleas and I looked at each other swiftly. Nature is very just.
“But what are you crying for, dear?” I puzzled then; “you are never
sorry you came?”
“Ah, but,” said Lisa sadly, “I think that Miss Wortley really wants to
go to Europe and wait about for things to bloom. And now of course she
can’t. And then they say--Uncle Dudley says--that I can’t make Eric
happy until I know something of life.”
“My dear,” said I from the superiority of my seventy years, “I don’t
know about the rest. But that much I am positive is nonsense.”
“Isn’t loving somebody knowing all about life?” Lisa asked simply.
“It is,” Pelleas and I answered together.
“Ah,” Lisa cried, brightening, “I _said_ you would understand. Didn’t
I, Eric?”
Eric raptly assented. I had always liked the boy. His whole mind was
on Lisa and yet, though from the edges of his consciousness, he had an
exquisite manner.
“At all events,” said I when presently I left Lisa in the flowered
chintz guest room, “let us lunch first and be married afterward.
Whatever happens you must have one of Nichola’s salads.”
I hurried downstairs longing to find Pelleas and to plan with him how
we were to bring it all about; but Pelleas was still in conference
with that young lover and they were walking up and down the path,
heads bent, brows grave, as if the matter were actually one requiring
the weightiest consideration. I stood for a moment at the hall window
to watch them, with all my heart longing to cry out: Never mind the
reasons. Look at the roses. It is perfectly easy to see what _they_
think.
Instead I went to the kitchen to say a word about luncheon. And the day
was so sunny and the guests at luncheon were so to my liking and my
heart was so full of their story that, as well as for a more practical
reason, I was obliged to tell something of it to Nichola.
Nichola was washing green leaves, and these, tender and curled in her
withered hands, were as incongruous as a flush I had once detected on
her withered cheek. In her starched print gown Nichola looked that
morning like some one cut from stiff paper.
“Nichola,” said I, “I _think_ we may have a wedding here this
afternoon.”
Instantly her little deep-set eyes became quick-lidded with disapproval.
“It is by no means certain,” I pursued, “but we hope to have it here.
And,” I advanced delicately, “could you possibly have ready for us
something frozen and delicious, Nichola? With little cakes? Then you
need make no dessert at all for dinner.”
Nichola looked at me doubtfully, pulling down her brown print sleeves
over her brown wrists.
“_Che!_” said she, “if it is a runaway match I cannot do this.”
I looked at Nichola in amazement. I was used to her denials; these were
merely the form that her emotion took. I was used to her prejudices;
these were her only pastime. But I had never before heard her offer an
objection which seemed to have a reason.
“Why not--but why not, Nichola?” I cried.
“I had a sister,” Nichola explained unexpectedly; and in all these
forty years and more I had never before heard her sister’s name upon
her lips. “She went quietly, quietly to San Rafael an’ a priest married
her to Beppo an’ they came home for supper. But no good came. Beppo was
drown’ from his boat within the year an’ with him a net full of fine
fish. If it is a runaway match I cannot do this. No good will come.”
“But, Nichola,” I urged reasonably, “you would not be blamed. Though
to be sure I may ask you to telephone to Mr. Didbin, that young rector
at Inglese. But you would not be blamed. And to make cream sherbet,
that would be no part of the ceremony. And little cakes--”
“No good will come!” cried Nichola shrilly; “for the love of heaven,
have I not said how Beppo was drown’ with all his fish? It is not holy.”
“Nichola,” I asked with dignity, “will you be sure to have a
particularly delicious luncheon to-day? And will you make for dessert
to-night a sherbet, with little cakes, and have it ready in the
afternoon?”
I went away with a false majesty covering my certainty that Nichola
would pay not the slightest heed to my injunction. Nichola is in
everything a frightful nonconformist, from habit; if to this were
really superadded a reason I could not tell what might happen, but I
felt sadly sure that Lisa and Eric would have for their wedding feast
afternoon tea and nothing more.
“Nichola!” said I from the doorway, “what made you think that they had
run away?”
“_Che!_” said Nichola grimly, “I saw them come in the gate. Have I
lived these seventy years always, always with my two eyes shut?”
As I hurried away I marveled at that. Once Nichola had unexpectedly
proved to me that she has wishes and even dreams. Was it possible that
she knew a lover when she saw one? After all, that is a rare gift.
At the foot of the stairs Pelleas met me with a manner of nothing but
gravity.
“Pelleas!” I cried, “isn’t it delightful? Wasn’t it providential that
they came to us?”
“Etarre,” said Pelleas solemnly, “I’m not at all sure that we oughtn’t
to send them straight back to Chynmere Hall.”
If Pelleas had proposed persuading Lisa and Eric to forget each other I
could have been no more amazed. Pelleas, who always pretends enormous
unconcern in all romance and secretly works with all his might on the
side of the adventure, Pelleas, to speak in austere fashion of sending
two lovers home. What did he mean? And did he think that a course in
the flora of Europe would make anybody any happier whatever?
“Pelleas,” I cried, “how can you? When _we_ are so happy?”
“But you know we didn’t elope,” Pelleas argued.
“Wouldn’t you have loved me if we had?” I inquired reasonably.
“Of course I would,” cried Pelleas, “but--”
“Ah, well, then,” I finished triumphantly, “it’s the same way with
them.”