After that life took on a mysterious fragrance and beauty that made
every hour of it an intoxication to the master and mistress of
Crownlands. The fact that their secret was all their own was all the
more enchanting. To the domestic staff, to the children, to the outside
world, life went upon its usual smooth way. Mr. Carter would be in town
to-night, Mr. Carter was detained at the office, Mrs. Carter was
chaperoning the young people, there were flowers for Mrs. Carter. That
was all Bottomley and Pilgrim and Ward and Nina saw.
But to Harriet and Richard the delicious, secret game of
hide-and-go-seek made everything else in the world insignificant.
Harriet opened the boxes of flowers he sent her with a heart
suffocating with joy. Richard consented to be absent from the dinner
table over which she presided with an agony of renunciation that almost
made him feel ill. When he chanced one day to meet her with Nina, in a
breezy, awninged summer restaurant, the sight of the slender figure
thrilled him as he had never been thrilled by any woman he had ever
known. He was to speak to her, to hear her voice! One day he bought her
shoes; in the shop she looked at him for approval. He thought the
shoes, low shoes with buckles, that showed the silk-clad ankle, very
suitable and pretty. He was thrown into sudden confusion when the shoe
clerk turned to him with a murmured mention of the price.
Ten dollars? Richard fumbled for his purse. He had met her walking
alone in the Avenue; she had said that she must get shoes. Hundreds of
other men were presumably buying their wives shoes, up and down the
brilliant street. But Richard found the adventure shaking to the soul.
"They're lovely shoes," Harriet said, as they walked out into the
sunshine. She told him that she was to meet Nina at his mother's at
five. Richard, with sudden eagerness, wondered if she would spend the
interval in having tea somewhere, but instead they went into a
bookshop, and she carried a new book triumphantly away. "It's a
frightful day in town," Harriet said, "and if we're a little early we
may all get away to the country that much sooner!"
She established herself contentedly beside him when they did finally
start for Crownlands. Ward, beside Hansen, did most of the talking;
Nina was silent, and Harriet noticed that she was very pale. Richard
was repeating to himself one phrase all the way; a phrase that he found
so thrilling and absorbing that it was enough to keep him from speaking
aloud, or listening to what the others said.
"I love her--I love her--I love her!" thought Richard. And sometimes he
glanced sidewise at her, her beautiful hair rippling in thick waves
under the thin veil, her face a little pale from the heat of the day,
her glorious eyes faintly shadowed. When the swift movement of the car
brought her shoulder against his, their eyes met for a smiling second,
and it seemed to Richard that his heart brimmed with the most delicious
emotion that he had ever known.
Nina complained of a headache when they reached home, and went early to
bed. Harriet, when she had tubbed and changed to an evening gown,
glanced in at Nina, and thought the girl asleep. There were men guests
for dinner, and afterward there was bridge. Harriet sat with Madame
Carter for awhile, for the old lady had also dined upstairs, went about
the house upon her usual errands, and, going to her own room, found
Nina reading, at about ten o'clock. Nina did not look up or speak as
Harriet came in.
The door that led to Richard's room was not only unlocked, but actually
ajar. Harriet gave it a surprised glance, and spoke to Nina, in the
next room.
"Nina, did you unlock this door?"
"What door?" Nina called. "Oh, yes!" she added. "I did."
"Oh," Harriet murmured. And she stepped to the door, and looked into
Richard's room.
It was a sort of upstairs sitting room, furnished simply, in man
fashion, with deep leather chairs on each side of the fireplace, broad
tables carrying only the essential lamps and ashtrays, a shabby desk
where Richard kept personal papers, and bookshelves crammed with
novels. Harriet, making a timid round, saw Balzac and Dickens, Dumas
and Fielding, several Shakespeares and a complete Meredith, jostling
elbows with modern novels in bright jackets, and yellow French romances
losing their paper covers.
With a great sense of adventure she looked down from the unfamiliar
windows at a new perspective of driveway and garden, peeped into the
big square bedroom beyond. Two large photographs of Nina and Ward and
an oil painting of his mother were here; there had been several
pictures of Isabelle once, Harriet knew, but these had long ago
disappeared.
Suddenly her heart turned to water; some tiny sound in the silence
warning her that someone had entered. She turned, discovered here in
the very centre of his own private apartment. He was standing not three
feet away from her. For a second they stared at each other with a sort
of mutual trepidation.
"Hello!" he said; then matter-of-factly, "I brought home a paper
to-night; I wanted Unger to see it! I left it in the suit I wore."
He stepped to the dressing room, and groped in a pocket, without moving
his pleasant look from her.
"Giving my room the once over?" he said.
"Nina left the door open. I've never been in here before," Harriet
said, trying to make her voice as natural as his own. Confused and
ashamed, she was hardly conscious of what she said.
"Here we are!" Richard glanced at the paper he had found. "See here,"
he said, presently, going to a window, "come here a minute, I want to
show you this! You see," they were both looking out into the moonlight
now, "you see, this is where I propose to build on that big room
downstairs, throw the library into the blue room, and have a big
sleeping porch upstairs here," he explained. "Perfectly feasible, and
yet it will make a different house of it!"
Harriet commented interestedly enough. But she heard his voice rather
than his words, and saw only the well-groomed, black-clad figure, the
shining patent-leather shoes, the fine hand that indicated the changes.
Perhaps he was conscious of confusion, too, for his words stopped, and
presently they were looking at each other in a strange silence, Richard
still smiling, Harriet wide eyed.
Then suddenly his strong arms held her close, and her blue, frightened
eyes were close to his, and she felt everything else in the world slip
away from her except the exquisite knowledge that she loved this man
with all her heart and soul.
"I want to tell you something," Richard said, quickly and incoherently.
"I want you to know that I love you--I think I've always loved you!
This wasn't in our bond, I know, but I think I couldn't have wanted you
so without loving you! If--if the time comes, Harriet, when you can
care for me, you'll tell me, won't you? That's all I want, just to know
that you will tell me. You're going to tell me, yourself! I'm going to
make you love me! I'll be patient--I'll not hurry you--but some day
you'll have to tell me that I've--I've won you!"
He had spoken swiftly, almost sternly, with a sort of desperate
determination. Now he freed her arms as suddenly as he had grasped
them, and added, in a lower tone:
"Until that time I'll not--not even--kiss the top of your hair,
Harriet," he said.
In the mad rushing of her senses she could not find the right word, but
she detained him with an entreating hand. Her eyes, shining with a look
that he had never seen there before, were fixed on his. But Richard did
not look at her eyes, he looked down at the hand she had laid on his
own.
"I don't think," Harriet said, breathlessly, "that I can ever like you
any more than I do!"
She had meant it for surrender; her heart was beating wildly with the
glorious shame of a proud woman who gives herself. But Richard was not
looking at the betraying eyes. In the great new love that had swept him
from all his old moorings there was a deep humility. He only heard her
say that she could never learn to love him. He bent his head over her
finger tips, and kissed them, as he said quietly:
"But I'm going to try to make you, just the same!"
Then he was gone, and Harriet was standing alone in the softly lighted
room. For a few moments she remained perfectly still, with her white
hands pressed to her burning cheeks. Then, shaken with joy and
surprise, with a delicious terror and something of a child's innocent
chagrin, she went noiselessly back to her own room, closed the
communicating door, and undressed with pauses for the dreams that would
come creeping over body and soul, and hold her in their exquisite
stillness for long minutes together.
She was brushing her hair when Nina suddenly appeared, and came
lifelessly in to sit on the edge of Harriet's bed. "I want to ask you
something!" Nina said, in an odd voice. "And, Harriet, I want you to
tell me the truth!"
Harriet, turning, faced her between two curtains of rippling gold. She
saw a new Nina, a subdued, thoughtful, serious woman in the old
confident Nina's place.
"But first I ought to tell you that I wasn't with Amy to-day!" Nina
said.
"Oh, Nina! Must we begin that sort of thing?" Harriet reproached her.
But she was puzzled by Nina's manner. "Back to school-girl tricks!" she
said.
"Never back to a school-girl," Nina said, with trembling lips. "No,"
she added, passionately, "I'll never be that again. Harriet," she went
on, "I've written Royal three times, since my birthday, and I've seen
him twice."
"You saw him to-day?" Harriet ventured.
"I went there this afternoon," Nina admitted, heavily. Then suddenly,
"Harriet, did my father pay him--did he take money--to break our
engagement?"
"Nina, what a horrible thought! Of course not!" Harriet could
fortunately answer in perfect honesty.
"Oh, Harriet," the girl caught her hands, turning sick and imploring
eyes toward her, "are you sure?"
"Nina, dear, your father would have told me!"
"He might not--he might not!" Nina said, feverishly. "But if he
did----!" she whispered, half to herself. "That's Pilgrim, I rang for
her," she said, of a knock on her own door. "Ask my father to come up,
will you?" she said to the maid, when Pilgrim appeared. "We'll settle
it now!"
"Mr. Carter is just coming up," Pilgrim said. And a moment later
Richard, with an interested face, came through Nina's room, and joined
them. Harriet had had time only to knot her hair back carelessly, and
slip into the most formal of her big Chinese coats.
"Father," Nina said, when they three were alone together, "did Royal
Blondin take a check from you ten days ago?"
Richard, taken unaware, glanced sharply at Harriet, who shook her head,
with an anxious look. He sat down beside Nina on the bed, and put a
fatherly arm about her.
"Ah, Father, DON'T put me off!" the girl begged. "I wrote him, after my
birthday," she said, "and told him that money made no difference to me.
He didn't answer. Then I got Bruce Hopper to ask his mother to have
Blondin meet her at the club for tea, and I saw him then. Bruce," Nina
cast in, still in the new, self-contained tone, "has been wonderful
about it! I know he only seems a silent sort of boy, but I'll never
forget what he's done for me! Royal," she resumed, "didn't want to see
me, and said he had promised Father that it was OVER. He--but I needn't
tell you all he said. It sounded----" Nina clung to her father's hands,
and shut her eyes. "It sounded so--so false!" she whispered, bitterly.
"So I went to his studio to-day!" she presently continued. "And--there
were two or three women there, but it wasn't that. They were--well,
perhaps they were just having fun. But----" And Nina looked pitifully
from Harriet's sympathetic face to her father's troubled eyes. "But
I've not been having much fun!" she faltered, with a suddenly trembling
mouth. "I've been planning--PRAYING!--that somehow it would come out
right. He told me to-day that he had promised not to see or speak to me
for two years," she said, slowly. "I--Father, I KNEW that he had a
reason! He was changed. I never saw him so! And two hours ago," she
pointed to the door that led into her father's room, "two hours ago I
went in there," she said, "and I looked over your own check book.
Father, did you write him a check? Was that the stub that had 'R.B.' on
it?"
Richard looked at her sorrowfully.
"I'm sorry, Nina," he said, simply. "I told him you should not know,
from me! I would have spared you that."
For a few minutes there was silence in the room. Then Nina said
bravely, through tears:
"I don't know why you should be sorry for what will save me months of
slow worry, all at one blow! You and Harriet needn't worry any more.
I'm cured. I've been a fool, I let him flatter me and lie to me," said
this new Nina, with bitter courage, "but I'm over it now. I'm sorry I
gave you so much trouble, Father----"
"My darling girl," her father said, tenderly. "I only wish I could
spare you all this!"
"Better now than two or three years after we were married," Nina said.
"Plenty of girls find it out then! Father, I want you to get that
check, through the clearing-house, for me," she said, heroically, "and
I want to keep it. If ever I'm a fool about a man again, I'll take it
out and look at it!"
"I have it, I told Fox to get it to-day," Richard said. "You shall have
it!"
Nina had turned suddenly white; it was as if a last little hope had
been killed.
"You have it!" she whispered. "He cashed it, then!"
"He cashed it the next morning," Richard said. Nina was silent for a
moment.
"How you must laugh at me, Harriet!" she said then.
"I? Laugh at you!" Harriet said, stricken. "My darling girl, I am the
last woman in the world who could do that! I was only your age, Nina,
when I met him--you know that story. Why, Nina, you're but eighteen,
after all, you'll have many and many an affair before the right man
comes along," Harriet said. "You'll look back on this some day, and
say, 'It was an experience, and I learned from it! It is only going to
make me happier and more sure when the man whom I really love comes to
me!' Aren't you much richer now, in actual knowledge of men, than Amy
and Francesca, who haven't had anything but school flirtations?"
Nina, sitting between Richard and Harriet on the bed, looked wistfully
from one face to another.
"I'll try to make it so, Harriet!" she said. And somewhat timidly she
added, "Father--and Harriet--shall you feel dreadfully if I say that I
don't want to go to Brazil? I'll tell you why. Ward is going out to the
Gardiner ranch, and Bruce is going, too, and it seems to me that riding
and camping and living in the open air will be--well, will seem better
to me than just being on the steamer! I dread seeing strange places and
meeting people," said Nina. "The Gardiner girls were simply darling to
me the term they were in school, and--don't you remember, Harriet?--we
were the only people who took them out for Christmas and Easter
holidays, and they like me! And--if you wouldn't be too disappointed,
Harriet, I believe I would like it better!"
"My darling girl," Harriet said, warmly, "you must do what seems right
to you. But you won't need me?" she added, tactfully.
"Well, you see Mrs. Gardiner and Mrs. Hopper are sisters," Nina
explained, readily, "and they'll be with us. But if you'd LIKE to
come--we are going camping in the most glorious canon that you ever
saw!" Nina interrupted herself with sudden enthusiasm. "And I am so
glad I really can ride! I'd feel so horribly if I couldn't!"
"I think you'll have a wonderful two months of it," Harriet said, "and
then Granny'll be coming West, to spend the winter in Santa Barbara,
and that will be delightful, too! And now, Nina love, it's after eleven
o'clock," she ended with a change of tone, "and you have had a terrible
day! We will have to do some more shopping to-morrow afternoon, and try
on the riding habits, and do a thousand things. And, Nina," Richard
heard her add tenderly, when his daughter had given him a rather sober
good-night kiss at the door of her room, "whenever you feel sad and
depressed about it, just remember to say to yourself, 'This won't last!
In a few months the sting will all be gone!'"
"Nina is in safe hands!" Richard said to himself, thankfully, as he
closed the door. He carried a memory of Harriet's earnest eyes, her
low, eager voice, her encouraging arm about Nina's shoulders.
They were all at breakfast when he came down the next morning.
His mother, in one of the lacy, flowing robes she always wore before
noon, laid down a letter half-read, to smile at him. Ward, his dark
head very sleek above his informal summer costume, was deep in talk
with Bruce Hopper, who had evidently ridden over from the country club,
and was in a well-fitting, shabby jersey that became his somewhat lanky
frame. Nina, somewhat silent, but interested in everything, wore an
expression of quiet self-possession that her father found touching.
Nina was growing up, he thought.
Completing the group, and officiating at the foot of the table, was the
radiant Harriet. She looked as fresh as one of the creamy rosebuds that
were massed in the dull blue bowl before her, her shining hair framing
the dusky forehead like dull gold wings, the frail sleeves of her blue
gown falling back from her rounded arm.
"You're late, my son," said Madame Carter, as he kissed her temple.
"Never mind," Harriet said, serenely, "I've just this instant come, and
he saves my face! Do turn that toast, Ward!" she added. And to the
maid, "Mr. Carter's fruit, Mollie, please."
Breakfast was the least formal of all the informal meals at Crownlands.
Bottomley was never in evidence until the late luncheon; mail and
newspapers, and the morning gaiety of the young people all made for
cheerful disorder.
"If you're going into town at ten, Father, we'll go, too," Nina
suggested. "But I can't," she was heard to murmur in an undertone to
the disappointed Bruce. "I have to get CLOTHES, don't I?"
"Oh, Brazil--Brazil--Brazil!" the youth said, disgustedly. "I hate the
sound of it!"
"THESE clothes are for the ranch," Nina said, smiling. Both her father
and Harriet augured well from the youth's instantly transformed face.
"Say--honestly?" he asked, ineloquently, with an irrepressible grin.
"I think so," Nina murmured. The rest of their conversation was
inaudible; they presently wandered forth to finish it on the tennis
court. Ward followed his grandmother upstairs, and Harriet and Richard
were left to finish their breakfast alone.
"You look tired," Harriet said, rising, when his omelette came in, and
pausing beside the head of the table for an instant on her way to the
pantry.
"I had a bad night," Richard admitted. "But that's not all you're going
to have for breakfast?" he protested.
"I never have more!" Harriet smiled. "I'm sorry about the bad night,"
said she.
"I couldn't help thinking----" Richard began.
"What is it, Mollie?" he added, harshly, to the hovering maid.
"Nothing--no matter--sir," Mollie stammered, retreating. "It was just
that the man about the sheep came, sir----" she faltered.
"The sheep!" Richard echoed, frowning. Harriet laughed gaily.
"Oh, yes!" she said. "I told you I had ordered two or three young
sheep," she explained, "to keep our lawns cropped. They look so
adorable, and they do it so nicely! Has he got them, Mollie?" she
added, eagerly. "Oh, I must see them! I'll be back in exactly five
minutes, Mr. Carter," she said.
"What are we supposed to do with them in winter?" Richard asked,
smiling.
"Oh, they will have a little--a little byre!" she answered, readily.
"You'll--you'll like them!" And he heard her joyous voice following
Mollie away.
Richard pushed back his plate, and looked irresolutely after her. Then
suddenly he rose, and walked through the pantry, asking two startled
maids for Mrs. Carter. Etelka had been several years in the house
without ever seeing "him" in this neighbourhood before.
Richard crossed a sunshiny brick-walled yard, where linen was drying,
and went through a brick gateway that gave on a neglected little lane.
The lane had once been the driveway for a carriage and a prancing pair,
but there were only riding horses at Crownlands now, and three of these
were looking over the wall at the grass-grown road. And Richard found
Harriet here.
She was on her knees, in the pleasant green shadow of the old sycamores
and maples, her back was toward him, she was looking up into the face
of the old stableman, Trotter, who stood before her, his crooked,
dwarfed old figure still further bent, as he held two strong young ewes
by their thick, woolly shoulders.
As Trotter gave him a respectful good morning, Harriet sprang to her
feet, and whirled about, and Richard saw the woodeny stiff legs of a
very young lamb dangling from her arms, and the lamb's meek little
black-rubber face close to the beautiful face he loved.
"Oh, Richard!" she said, carried away by her own delight. "Look at it!
Isn't it the sweetest darling baby that ever was! Oh, you sweet!" she
said, putting her lips to the little woolly head.
"You are!" Richard said quite without premeditation.
Harriet laughed, surrendered the little lamb to Trotter, and followed
the old man's departure to the stables with an anxious warning.
"They're to have this little enclosure all to themselves," she
explained to Richard, when they were alone. "He's going to build them a
little shed." And as Richard, his back leaning against the low brick
wall, made no immediate attempt to move, she looked at him expectantly.
"Shall we go back?" she suggested.
"That sounded very pleasant to me," Richard said, with deliberate
irrelevance.
Harriet looked at him in puzzled silence.
"I mean your calling me Richard," he said.
She flushed brightly, and laughed.
"Did I? I always think of you as Richard!" she explained.
"So you abandon me on the Brazil trip?" he asked, watching her
seriously.
"Well----?" Harriet shrugged. "I thought you had to go," she added.
"I'm--I'll confess I'm disappointed. But to have Nina want to do
anything is such a relief to me that I'm only going to think of that!"
"Yes, I have to go," Richard said, slowly. "I must be there for a month
at least. But I'm disappointed, too. I got thinking of it, in the
night--I couldn't sleep! I'm disappointed, too." He fell silent. "I
wish," he said, hesitatingly, "that you had not told me that you--you
don't feel that you--are going to love me!" he said. "I love you with
all my heart and soul. It--well, it's all I think of, now. I want----"
He turned, and picking an ivy leaf from the wall, looked at it intently
for a moment, and tore it apart before he let it fall. "However," he
said, philosophically, smiling at her, "we'll let that wait!"
Harriet, close to him, laid one hand upon his shoulder.
"You misunderstood me," she said, steadily. "What I said was that I
could not love you more than I do! Aren't you--ever--going to
understand?"
For a long minute they looked straight into each other's eyes.
"Harriet, do you mean it?" Richard said then, simply.
"Yes," she answered, "I mean it! I've always meant it. I've always
loved you, I think. No man could want any woman to love him more!"
The blue eyes so near his own were misty with sudden tears. In the
deserted little lane, in the blue summer morning and the green shade of
the sycamores, they were alone. Richard put his arms about her.
And for a moment he held all the beauty and fragrance and laughter and
tears that was Harriet close to his heart; the soft hair tumbled, the
brown, firm young hand resting on his shoulder, the warm cheek against
his own.
A breeze rustled through the branches high above them; the blue river,
beyond the brick wall, flowed on in an even sheet of satin; two birds
looped the enclosure in a sudden twittering flight; and from the stable
region came the plaintive bleating of a mother sheep. But to Harriet
and Richard the world was all their own.
"My wife!" said Richard Carter.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Harriet and the Piper, by Kathleen Norris