"They were probably larger. Mrs. Anderson taught me that. There.... And
don't you agree now that my taste in wall paper is excellent? This gray
oatmeal, as a background----"
"It is cool and lovely. I've grown up among flowers and curlicues."
They did not buy many things, Pelham's uncertain income being a chief
cause. While with the company, he had lived up to his salary; from the
few pay checks as state inspector he had not been able to lay aside a
great sum. This, with a legacy kept untouched from college days, and an
income that Jane had from her father's estate, put them beyond
immediate worry; but there was no idle surplus for expensive
furnishings. The election, as well as the wedding trip, had cut into his
savings; and his present potboiling work--statistical researches for the
United Charities reports--did not go very far, nor promise a future.
Remembering these facts, Jane's natural economy sought the less
pretentious stores. The dining-room set and the bedroom furniture were
substantial, but inexpensive for the taste they showed; the piano and
bookcases were paid for on what Lily, the cook and maid-of-all-tasks,
called "de extortion plan."
As she approved of the final placing of the pictures, Jane reflected
with satisfaction on the fine showing their funds had made; and Pelham,
his mind rather on the total shown by the bank's balance slip the first
of the month, was glad that the bulk of the buying was ended.
Thoughtfully she studied the room. "That couch could stand two or three
pillows.... I saw some ruby cretonne that would go wonderfully with that
cover."
When she had purchased it and made it up, he had to admit that it was
the most colorful spot in the house.
And what a colorful time those first days were! Many of the ordinary
achievements toward the joint home brought positive ecstasy.
The puffed pride of those ruby cushions marked the end of the
metamorphosis of the house into a home. "It's really presentable, now,"
she sighed contentedly, as she sat in their own chair, on their own
porch of their own dwelling.
Pelham lounged back against her knee, studying the dark countenance of
the mountain; somehow its spell had drawn toward it the face of the
house, and the unlidded gaze of its blind-less front eyes. There was a
pleasant rustle in his ears, as his wife bent over her sewing; Jane
could not resist an occasional tingle of embarrassment at this
preoccupation, in his presence, with the intimate mends in her garments.
Would she ever dare mend his! What shameless and delightful publicity
marriage entailed!
Abstractedly he thought over the outstanding raptures of these days.
What simple stuff made the enduring pleasures! There was the thrill, for
instance, when he had, with studied casualness, pulled out of his pocket
the signed lease, for her inspection. What an unimportant thing, yet
wearing somehow the grace of man's protecting, shelter-building role!
Then the zest of standing beside her while they chose furniture ...
rugs, table, bedroom furniture.... The emotional exaltation had been
immense. And the first meal they had had in the dining-room, with
matter-of-fact Lily in and out in matter-of-fact fashion, and Jane
across the white and silver expanse, her face softened by the soft
lighting--these moments might become habitual, but the ecstasy of their
first tasting had welded a permanent bond connecting the two. Added to
this delight in things was the growing joy in each other--the day's
cordial comradeships, the splendor of cool nights sacred to love, and
reverent gray dawns in which he woke to watch the loveliness of her calm
face asleep on the pillow's rumpled primness--these shook him with their
intimate beauty.
"Tired, dear?" He put up his hands and caught hers.
"Not a bit. I sighed through sheer animal comfort, I think."
"You've earned a holiday--busy since morning with the house. Get your
wraps; you don't choose the club--let's go up to the crest, and watch
for Canopus.... If we're in luck, he'll be visible in a quarter of an
hour."
They reached the vantage place; despite the fitful waverings of the
horizon air, they saw the star's golden torch drag fierily over the
tree-fretted heights of Shadow Mountain. There was a sullen reddish
smolder over the face of this alien sun; but the brief glimpse of the
burning visitant from southern skies was an unforgettable experience.
"If we could only watch it from the old top of the mountain."
"The old top, Pelham?"
He traced Nathaniel Guild's idea of the mighty sky-piercing ridge that
had once united the iron strata of this crest and the West Adamsville
one, with an overlap of sandstone whose grayed relics still crumbled in
the small hills flanking the two iron ranges.
"It shrivels our puny importance, doesn't it, dear, to think of the
former majesty of these hills!"
"We're as important to ourselves, Pelham."
Together in spirit they climbed the airy darkness that had been the old
mountain; their fancies winged back to the shaken ages before man's weak
restlessness hid in trees and caves, and came out into the open, to
clear away and shape the forests, and split apart the everlasting hills
for the malleable wealth hid within them.
But the ecstatic moods could not last forever. The graying embers of the
strike re-won their efforts; the inevitable selfishnesses and
littlenesses of life came in, to break the filmy web of romance and
delight. Man can stay on the high peaks, whether of spirituality or
intellect, of surging emotion or unstrung sentiment, but a little while;
their rarefied atmosphere, the height of man's upward groping, will not
sustain vigorous animal life. When such moments come, if we are in tune
we pass into their magnetic sway whole-heartedly; let the little daily
frets, the appetites and prejudices, be in control, and the height is
unclimbed, the high emotion lifting another passes unnoticed over our
stooping backs.
The two differing personalities found life together a perpetual welter
of adjustment. Insofar as they were adaptable, these adjustments were
easy; but neither his training, as a favored first son, nor her
self-sure nature, helped cushion the continual shocks. Neither had
reached the opinionated thirties, when inconsiderate habits have rutted
too deeply to permit habitual considerateness; but the two determined
wills had no easy task to come to agreement upon even small details of
the home life.
Pelham's "picturesque" pipes, as he reminded her the unmarried Jane had
always described them, showed a depraved tendency to roost wherever
their master finished with them.
"But, darling, you _must_ remember," she insisted, in affectionate
exasperation. "Lily found one on the piano this morning; I barely moved
the sugar bowl, and look at this table cloth! Your old ashes have made
it simply filthy. The hall table's marked; your bureau----"
"I always mean to put 'em on the rack," he urged in contrition.
She sniffed distastefully, holding out the offender at the end of dainty
fingers. "Here it is."
Again, he would become unreasonably exasperated when she insisted upon
asking what meat he would prefer for dinner, when she had him to shop
with her. "Mm-hmm, it's a lovely steak," he would agree abstractedly.
"Yes, I like ham, too.... Or a roast. Darling, I don't care. Get
anything."
She felt aggrieved at his callousness upon the momentous topic.
Upon other matters connected with eating he was not so unopinionated.
"Just look here, Jane! Lily's douched the potatoes in fat again. You
know that fried starch----"
"Yes, dear, I know ... by now. You needn't eat any; she'll bring some
mashed ones for you."
He grinned surlily. "I'll try a few, Jane; I like them, though they're
not good for me.... Another spoonful, please."
The country club was another viand of contention. Jane had never enjoyed
the inconsequential chatter and watery flirtations that were its chief
offer; Pelham found in them a forgetfulness from strike worries and the
increasing financial problem.
The week after their sight of Canopus, he announced a determination to
drop by for tennis with Lane Cullom, and the dinner afterwards.
"You may see Hollis; it's his spring holiday," his wife observed without
inflection.
"I saw he was back. I don't mind, if he doesn't.... Sure you don't want
to come? For dinner, or afterwards for a few minutes?"
"Dances are so boring, Pell."
"Once in a while I like 'em."
"I'll go next week, if you go then.... Don't make a scene with Hollis."
He jerked with needless viciousness at his belt. "Why make such an
assumption? I'm not going to make a scene."
Her pen scratched raspingly over the businesslike letter-heads of the
State Suffrage Association. "You almost had a fight with John Birrell,
at the bowling tournament."
"You exaggerate everything, Jane. There was nothing like it----"
"You told me----"
"I told you, very plainly, that there would have been a fight, if we
hadn't held in our tempers. He's a decent fellow; he's still sore about
my mining report. The State is again investigating them."
She did not look up.
"Good-night, dear," planting an indecisive kiss on her hair.
"Good-night."
Probably Hollis would be in uniform, he reflected. The boy hadn't lost
any time in joining the Yale Battery, when the President's initial break
with Germany foreshadowed war.
Just after dinner, his brother Ned charged up. "Hell-o, Pell! Didn't
expect to see me, did you? Father let me come, because Hollis was here."
"Aren't we the young sport!"
"There he is--Hey, Hollis! Here's Pell!"
The brother, fine-looking in his well-pressed khaki, came over
unhurriedly. "Hello, Pelham. How you making out?"
"Oh, all right. I'm working for the United Charities, you know--Labor
Legislation Committee."
"Still fooling with that socialist crew?"
"I'm still a member of the party, Hollis."
"You aren't a foreigner; why don't you get out?"
Pelham's eyes snapped. "Why not learn something about the movement,
before you pass judgment on it?"
"You'll wake up soon. The heads of the movement are all pro-German;
everybody says so. The government's liable to arrest 'em any minute."