"Fair speech is more rare than the emerald found by slave maidens
on the pebbles."--PTAH-HOTEP.
At ten o'clock, next morning, I was summoned from my sleep by the bell
of the telephone beside my bed. It was not a pleasant sleep, although I
had not returned to my apartment until dawn. Nightmare doubts galloped
ruthless hoofs over any repose.
Phillida's voice came over the wire to me like the morning song of a
bird.
"Good-morning, Cousin Roger. We are going to take the train in a few
moments. But I could not leave New York without telling you how happy I
am. Are you--did I wake you up? I was afraid that I might, but Ethan
said you would like me to call, even so."
"My dear, it was the kindest thought you ever had," I told her
fervently.
"Was it?" she hesitated. "Then--were they pretty dreadful to you at
home?"
"Quite!"
"Do you suppose they will _do_ anything dreadful about us?"
"No. Nothing."
It did not seem necessary to tell her that Aunt Caroline did not know
where the runaways had gone, and was thereby debarred from hasty action.
Phillida's father had privately agreed with me in this.
"I am so very happy, Cousin Roger!"
"I am glad, Phil."
"And you will come to the farm soon?"
"Soon," I promised.
So the nightmares of immediate anxiety for her galloped themselves away,
routed for that time. Like my gold-fish when their bowl has been unduly
shaken, I sank down again into the quieted waters of my little world and
absorption in my own affairs. There have been hours when I wondered if I
was of more importance than they, as a matter of cosmic fact.
A month passed before I kept my promise to go to the farm in
Connecticut.
As a first reason, I wanted to leave my young couple alone for a period
of adjustment. Also, I was curious to see how they would handle the
business left to them. I held telephone conversations with Phillida, and
with various contractors now and then. I sent out the furnishings for my
own room. Everything else I purposely left to the experimenters.
There was a second reason, more obscure. I wanted to keep for a while
the little mystery of the lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the
dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare incident in a prosaic
age. My table had been bare of such delicately spiced morsels, and I
relished the savor of this one upon my palate. I was not quite ready to
find her in the matter-of-fact daughter of some neighbor, who had sought
shelter from the storm in that supposedly empty house and probably
mistaken me for a tramp.
Perhaps I was equally reluctant to go back and prove that the adventure
was ended, that she had been a bird of passage who had gone on with no
thought of return.
With all these delays, and the fact that my work really kept me busy in
town, April was verging toward May when I finally saw the last of my
luggage put into the car and started on my fifty-mile drive to the house
by the lake. I did not take this first visit very seriously, or intend
it to be over long. To be a constraint upon the household I had
established, or assume a right there, was far from the course I planned.
It was not certain Vere and I would be comfortable housemates. But to
stay away altogether would have hurt Phillida as much as to stay too
long, I considered. Probably a week would be about enough for this time.
So lightly, so ignorantly, I stepped from the first great division of my
life into the second; not hearing the closing of the gate through which
there was no turning back.