"Ah, I see what you mean," said Gaites, with a kind of finality, as his
friend Birkwall walked him homeward through the loveliest of the lovely
old Burymouth streets. Something equivalent had been in his mind and on
his tongue at every dramatic instant of the afternoon; and, in fact,
ever since he had arrived from the station at Birkwall's door, where
Mrs. Birkwall met them and welcomed him. He had been sufficiently
impressed with the aristocratic quiet of the vast square white old
wooden house, standing behind a high white board fence, in two acres of
gardened ground; but the fine hallway with its broad low stairway, the
stately drawing-room with its carving, the library with its panelling
and portraits, and the dining-room with its tall wainscoting, united to
give him a sense of the pride of life in old Burymouth such as the raw
splendors of the millionaire houses in New York had never imparted to
him.
"They knew how to do it, they knew how to do it!" he exclaimed, meaning
the people who had such houses built; and he said the same thing of the
other Burymouth houses which Birkwall showed him, by grace of their
owners, after the mid-day dinner, which Gaites kept calling luncheon.
"Be sure you get back in good time for _tea_," said Mrs. Birkwall for a
parting charge to her husband; and she bade Gaites, "Remember that it
_is_ tea, please; _not_ dinner;" and he was tempted to kiss his hand to
her with as much courtly gallantry as he could; for, standing under the
transom of the slender-pillared portal to watch them away, she looked
most distinctly descended from ancestors, and not merely the daughter of
a father and mother, as most women do. Gaites said as much to Birkwall,
and when they got home Birkwall repeated it to his wife, without
injuring Gaites with her. If he saw what Birkwall had meant in marrying
her, and settling down to his literary life with her in the atmosphere
of such a quiet place as Burymouth, when he might have chosen money and
unrest in New York, she on her side saw what her husband meant in liking
the shrewd, able fellow who had such a vein of gay romance in his
practicality, and such an intelligent and respectful sympathy with her
tradition and environment.
She sent and asked several of her friends to meet him at tea; and if in
that New England disproportion of the sexes which at Burymouth is
intensified almost to a pure gynocracy these friends were nearly all
women, he found them even more agreeable than if they had been nearly
all men. It seemed to him that he had never heard better talk than that
of these sequestered ladies, who were so well bred and so well read, so
humorous and so dignified, who loved to laugh and who loved to think. It
was all like something in a pleasant book, and Gaites was not altogether
to blame if it went to his head, and after the talk had been of
Burymouth, in which he professed so acceptable an interest, and then of
novels, of which he had read about as many as they, he confided to the
whole table his experience with Miss Phyllis Desmond's piano. He managed
the psychology of the little incident so well that he imparted the very
quality he meant them to feel in it.
"How perfectly charming!" said one of the ladies. "I don't wonder you
fell in love with the name. It's fit for a shepherdess of high degree."
"If _I_ were a man," said the girl across the table who was not less
sweetly a girl because she would never see thirty-nine again, "I should
simply drop everything and follow that piano to Phyllis Desmond's door."
"It's quite what I should like to do," Gaites responded, with a
well-affected air of passionate regret. "But I'm promised at Kent
Harbor--"
She did not wait for him to say more, but submitted, "Oh, well, if
you're going to Kent _Harbor_, of course!" as if that would excuse and
explain any sort of dereliction; and then the talk went on about Kent
Harbor till Mrs. Birkwall asked, generally, as if it were part of the
Kent Harbor inquiry, "Didn't I hear that the Ashwoods were going to
their place at Upper Merritt, this year?"
Then there arose a dispute, which divided the company into nearly equal
parties; as to whether the Ashwoods had got home from Europe yet. But it
all ended in bringing the talk back to Phyllis Desmond's piano again,
and in urging its pursuit upon Gaites, as something he owed to romance;
at least he ought to do it for their sake, for now they should all be
upon pins and needles till they knew who she was, and what she _could_
be doing at Lower Merritt, N. H.
At one time he had it on his tongue to say that there seemed to be
something like infection in his interest in that piano, and he was going
to speak of the young girl who seemed to share it, simply because she
saw him staring at it, and who faltered so long with him before the
freight-depot that she came near getting no seat in the train for
Burymouth. But just at that moment the dispute about the Ashwoods
renewed itself upon some fresh evidence which one of the ladies
recollected and offered; and Gaites's chance passed. When it came again
he had no longer the wish to seize it. A lingering soreness from his
experience with that young girl made itself felt in his nether
consciousness. He forbore the more easily because, mixed with this pain,
was a certain insecurity as to her quality which he was afraid might
impart itself to those patrician presences at the table. They would be
nice, and they would be appreciative,--but would they feel that she was
a lady, exactly, when he owned to the somewhat poverty-stricken
simplicity of her dress in some details, more especially her thread
gloves, which he could not consistently make kid? He was all the more
bound to keep her from slight because he felt a little, a very little
ashamed of her.
He woke next morning in a wide, low, square chamber to the singing of
robins in the garden, from which at breakfast he had luscious
strawberries, and heaped bowls of June roses. When he started for his
train, he parted with Mrs. Birkwall as old friends as he was with her
husband; and he completed her conquest by running back to her from the
gate, and asking, with a great air of secrecy, but loud enough for
Birkwall to hear, whether she thought she could find him another girl in
Burymouth, with just such a house and garden, and exactly like herself
in every way.
"Hundreds!" she shouted, and stood a graceful figure between the fluted
pillars of the portal, waving her hand to them till they were out of
sight behind the corner of the high board fence, over which the garden
trees hung caressingly, and brushed Gaites's shoulder in a shy, fond
farewell.
It had all been as nice as it could be, and he said so again and again
to Birkwall, who _would_ go to the train with him, and who would _not_
let him carry his own hand-bag. The good fellow clung hospitably to it,
after Gaites had rechecked his trunk for Kent Harbor, and insisted upon
carrying it as they walked up and down the platform together at the
station. It seemed that the train from Boston which the Kent Harbor
train was to connect with was ten minutes late, and after some turns
they prolonged their promenade northward as far as the freight-depot,
Birkwall in the abstraction of a plot for a novel which he was seizing
these last moments to outline to his friend, and Gaites with a secret
shame for the hope which was springing in his breast.
On a side track stood a freight-car, from which the customary men in
silk caps were pulling the freight, and standing it about loosely on the
platform. The car was detached from the parent train, which had left it
not only orphaned on this siding, but apparently disabled; for Gaites
heard the men talking about not having cut it out a minute too soon. One
of them called, in at the broad low door, to some one inside, "All out?"
and a voice from far within responded, "Case here, yet; _I_ can't handle
it alone."
The others went into the car, and then, with an interval for some heavy
bumping and some strong language, they reappeared at the door with the
case, which Gaites was by this time not surprised to find inscribed with
the name and address of Miss Phyllis Desmond. He remained watching it,
while the men got it on the platform, so wholly inattentive to
Birkwall's plot that the most besotted young author could not have
failed to feel his want of interest. Birkwall then turned his vision
outward upon the object which engrossed his friend, and started with an
"Oh, hello!" and slapped him on the back.
Gaites nodded in proud assent, and Birkwall went on: "I thought you were
faking the name last night; but I didn't want to give you away. It was
the real thing, wasn't it, after all."
"The real thing," said Gaites, with his most toothful smile, and he
laughed for pleasure in his friend's astonishment.
"Well," Birkwall resumed, "she seems to be following _you_ up, old
fellow. This will be great for Polly, and for Miss Seaward, who wanted
you to follow _her_ up; and for all Burymouth, for that matter. Why,
Gaites, you'll be the tea-table talk for a week; you'll be married to
that girl before you know it. What is the use of flying in the face of
Providence? Come! There's time enough to get a ticket, and have your
check changed from Kent Harbor to Lower Merritt, and the Hill Country
express will be along here at nine o'clock. You can't let that poor
thing start off on her travels alone again!"
Gaites flushed in a joyful confusion, and put the joke by as well as he
could. But he was beginning to feel it not altogether a joke; it had
acquired an element of mystery, of fatality, which flattered while it
awed him; and he could not be easy till he had asked one of the
freight-handlers what had happened to the car. He got an answer--flung
over the man's shoulder--which seemed willing enough, but was wholly
unintelligible in the clang and clatter of a passenger-train which came
pulling in from the southward.
"Here's the Hill Country express now!" said Birkwall. "You won't change
your mind? Well, your Kent Harbor train backs down after this goes out.
Don't worry about the piano. I'll find out what's happened to the car it
was in, and I'll see that it's put into a good strong one, next time."
"Do! That's a good fellow!" said Gaites, and in repeated promises,
demanded and given, to come again, they passed the time till the Hill
Country train pulled out and the Kent Harbor train backed down.