The tent was pitched, and dusk began to settle. The thrushes were
filling the cathedral with chimes, and the windows began to glow. He
felt like a vandal. The owner of this sacred place would never willingly
destroy her church of Rheims, with its vesper windows and vesper bells,
and the winds of eternity lingering among its columns.
At last came the tinkling summons, very faint and far. He arose and
emerged upon the rocks. He would never have guessed that there had been
a shower that day. Save for one low panel of cloud, all heaven was
luminous above his young love there in the west. In that line of
ultramarine a single light burned for him. Above it the tender reds of
the open sky, and below it the tender reds of water, all tenderly bright
from shore to shore.
Presently into that pure beauty someone had the courage to paddle a
canoe. He looked, and saw that it was the doctor himself, facing forward
to see the sunset, and followed by a silvery wedge. Marvin clambered
down the rocks and followed the silver.
The point of light slowly became a window. By day a house is mostly a
house, but when its evening lights shine out, it becomes a home. He was
rowing home. And as he landed and walked up the path, he wished that he
might never leave this place or her.
He strolled in and presented himself in the kitchen, holding out his
hand. She had not forgotten. A new cake of soap was visible, with towels
bleached in the sun. She proceeded to fill a basin with hot water,
testing it on the hypothesis that what suited her would suit him. Then
she dried her hands, unbuttoned the sleeve of his blouse, and rolled it
back.
Shades of old chemists gathered in the kitchen to watch the experiment.
They never come when hands are ungratefully washed, but here were
Geoffrey and Scheele, Chevreul and Leblanc, to watch their discoveries
comfort a hand in which they were interested. They were for him. But the
soft electricity of the emulsification was less comforting to Marvin
than the soft electricity of her touch.
At last he was triumphantly dried and ready for supper, and curious to
know what she had managed to assemble out of her empty storeroom.
He soon found out. There were fresh eggs, each a marvel of organization.
There was baked macaroni with a crust of cheese. There were beautiful
biscuits with never an atom of sodium left in them. There was strawberry
jam transformed by its Indian name of bashkeeminsigun, which sounds more
delicious. And there was fragrant oolong, concealing rubidium in its
leaves. She had made a feast out of nothing, but he knew she could
hardly do it again.
“Do you mind telling me what we shall have for breakfast?”
“Buckwheat cakes.”
“With maple syrup?”
“Why, I guess so. And for dinner tomorrow we’ll have bass chowder.”
“I beg leave to doubt that. Bass don’t run till September.”
“Mr. Mahan, there are bass within a foot of your island. Tomorrow I
shall come and catch one under your very nose.”
“I’ll bet you don’t. I’ll have him all caught before you get there, and
make you pay me eighty cents a pound for him.”
They exchanged mischievous glances and both looked down. Minute by
minute they were approaching the point where nothing short of violence
would separate them. Had he been sodium and she chlorine, they would
have turned into table salt before the astonished father’s eyes. And
indeed Ambrose Rich was not blind. He saw his disaster steadily
approaching, and resigned himself with the courage of a historian.
After supper Marvin sat down in the library and lighted the pipe that of
late he had rarely touched. He wished to hear Dr. Rich talk, and he
wished to see if Jean would slip out of the house to borrow maple syrup.
When the soft rattle of dishes ceased in the kitchen, there was silence.
She had departed, and he imagined her paddling up the river to Miss
Mabel’s.
So he opened up the subject of grain, and soon had the scholar tracing
it from the earliest days. He learned that long before Christ the farms
of Italy had passed from the small holders and that these were herded in
barracks. He learned of the effort of Gracchus to limit farms to two
hundred and fifty acres, an effort that cost him his life. He heard how
the younger brother tried to liberate the farmers by curbing the power
of the senate, and how Caius had to kill himself to escape the
senatorial mob.
He was astonished to be told that the revolt of his own British
ancestors under Queen Boadicea was probably caused by the sudden
withdrawal of a gigantic mortgage held by the moralist Seneca. Such were
the things that ruined Rome. The picture grew blacker and blacker till
it reached the reign of Domitian, when half of Italy lay uncultivated,
and the farms of plundered Greece refused to yield another crop. The
earth seemed about to be inherited by two surviving classes—the money
lenders who devoured everything, and their slaves who could live on
nothing. The thrilling recital took up an hour, and was full of
wholesome warning for America.
But there was still no sound in the kitchen.
A question or two started the terse eloquence again. New emperors
discussed the situation. Nothing could eventually save Rome from
exhaustion, but something might be done to defer the collapse. He saw a
system of state loans developed and the agriculture of northern Italy
restored. He saw farm colonies established for time-expired soldiers. He
saw the profits of state banks devoted to education. He beheld the
franchise granted to women, and two Julias sitting in the senate. He saw
every effort made to restore the sacredness of marriage, though that was
the most hopeless enterprise of all, since it had become a matter of
commercial contract. As Tacitus put it, the advantages of childlessness
prevailed.
He listened to a keen analysis of the money system, with its progressive
contraction. And when finally the doctor unexpectedly revealed an
intimate knowledge of American farm loans and farm colonies, Marvin
vowed to himself that this man should lecture at Yale.
The second lecture was hardly over when he heard the screen door of the
kitchen lightly open and shut. He rose and expressed his gratitude for
what he had learned, and when Jean appeared in the door of the library,
all glowing with exercise, he went forward and took her by the hand.
“Do I need to tell you that this has been the happiest day of my life?”
She glanced down shyly. “I’m glad you liked it.”