"The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'."
--THE COURTIN'.
I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the country air afloat with
motes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even
the young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered hot with
yellow sparkles.
The house was transformed. The cream-colored stucco that hid its homely
walls, deep, arched porches that took the place of the old shallow
affairs, scarlet Spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been--all
united in giving it the gayest, most modern air imaginable. A gravel
drive curved in beneath the new porte-cochere, inviting the wheels of my
car to explore. Grass had been put in order, flower-beds laid out. The
new dam was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested a swamp. If
the place had appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out its
arms to me and laughed an invitation.
As I stepped from my car, I heard running feet and a girl sped around
the veranda to meet me. She cast herself into my arms before I fairly
realized this was Phillida. A Phillida as new to my eyes as the house!
After the first greetings I held her off to analyze the change.
She was tanned and actually rosy. The corners of her once sad little
mouth turned up instead of down and developed--I looked twice--yes,
developed a dimple. The dull hair I always had seen brushed plainly
back, now was parted on one side and fluffed itself across her forehead
and about her cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness. She was attired
in a China-blue linen frock with a scarlet sash knotted in front quite
daringly, for Phillida.
"Why, Phil, how pretty we are!" I admired.
She looked up at me like a praised little girl, and smoothed the sash. I
noticed she wore above her wedding ring that "diamond" which once had
adorned Vere's finger so distastefully to me. It shone bravely in the
sunlight with quite a display of fire. Tracing my gaze, she held out her
hand for me to see.
"Yes, it was his, Cousin Roger. Of course, we have not very much money
yet, and I do not care about all the engagement rings that ever were
thought of. But, I was afraid people up here might notice that I had
none and think slightingly of Ethan. So I asked him, and we went to a
jeweler, who made it smaller to fit me. It is not a false stone, you
know. It is a white topaz, and I love it better than the biggest
diamond."
"Then you are still happy?"
"Forever and ever, world without end," she answered solemnly.
We went in.
Sun and sweet wind had worked white magic in the long-closed house.
Quaint furniture, no longer dust-grimed but lustrous with cleanliness
and polish, had quite a different air. Fresh upholstery in cheerful
tints, fresh paper on the walls, good rugs, order and daintiness
everywhere changed the interior out of my recognition. Already the
atmosphere of home and cheer was established.
"Come see your rooms," Phillida invited, enraptured by my admiration.
"They are so pretty!"
She ran up the stairs, around the passage, and ushered me into the room
of graceful adventure and grotesque nightmare. I stopped on the
threshold.
I had ordered the partition removed between the two chambers on this
side, giving me one large room. This, with the little bathroom attached,
occupied the entire large frontage of the house. This long, spacious
room; floors covered by my Chinese rugs, walls echoing the rugs'
smoke-blue, my piano in a bright corner, my special easychairs and
writing-table in their due places, welcomed me with such familiar
comfort that I could not identify the neglected chamber where I had
slept one night in the old bed with the four pineapple-topped posts. The
windows were opened, and white curtains with their over-draperies of
blue silk were swinging in and out on a fresh breeze where the Horror of
my dream had seemed to press itself against the black panes. Decidedly,
I must have had a bad attack of indigestion that night!
"See how nice?" Phillida was urging appreciation at my side. "We swung
those lovely old hangings from the arch, so they can be drawn across the
bedroom end of your room, if you like. Although I do not know why you
_should_ like, everything is so pretty! Your long Venetian mirror came
safely, and all your darling lamps. And--and I hope you like it so well,
Cousin Roger, that you will stay here always!"
When she left me alone, I walked to the different windows, contemplating
the stretches of lawn dotted with budding apple trees and the lake that
lay beyond shining in the sun. Was Phillida's charming wish to become a
fact, I wondered? Could this rest and calm hold me content here, where I
had meant merely to pause and pass on? I looked at the yellow country
road meandering past the lake into unseen distance. Should I ever see my
Lady of the Beautiful Tresses come that way, or travel that road to
where she lived? If I did meet her, would she forgive me the loss of her
braid? There would be a test for the sweetness of her disposition!
When a chiming dinner-gong summoned me downstairs, I found Vere awaiting
me beside Phillida. We shook hands, and he made some brief, pleasant
speech about their having expected me sooner. If pale, timid Phil had
become a surprising butterfly, Vere had taken the reverse progress
toward the sober grub. I like him better in outing clothes, although he
showed even more the unusual good looks which so unreasonably prejudiced
me against him. If he felt any strain in our meeting, his slow, tranquil
trick of speech and manner covered it. I hope I did as well! It was then
I discovered that his wife's pet name for him fitted like a glove. She
called him "Drawls."
The luncheon was good; cooked and served by a middle-aged Swedish woman
named Cristina. Afterward, I was conducted into the kitchen by the lady
of the house, to view the new fittings and improvements. Most odd and
pretty it was to see Phillida in that role of housewife, and to watch
her pride in Vere and deference to him. Let me record that I never saw
the daughter of Aunt Caroline fail in this settled course toward her
husband. Whether it was born of revulsion from her mother's hectoring
domestic methods, or of consciousness that outsiders might rate Vere
below his wife in station and education, so her respect for him must
forbid their slight, I do not know. But I never saw her oppose him or
speak rudely to him before other people. I suppose they may have had the
usual conjugal differings, neither of them being angelic. If so, no
outsider ever glimpsed the fact.
We spoke of nothing serious on that first day. They both showed me the
various improvements finished or progressing, indoors or out.
We dined as agreeably as we had lunched. Quite early, afterward, I
excused myself, and left together the two who were still on their
honeymoon.
At the door of my room, I pushed a wall-switch that lighted
simultaneously three lamps. In this I had repeated the arrangement used
by me for years in my city apartment. I have a demand for light
somewhere in my make-up, and no reason for not indulging it. There
flashed out of the dusk a large lamp upon my writing-table, a tall
floor-lamp beside the piano, and a reading-lamp on a stand beside my bed
at the far end of the room. All three were shaded in a smoke-blue and
rose-color effect that long since had caught my fancy for night work;
the shades inset with imitation semi-precious stones, rough-cut things
of sapphire, tourmaline-pink and baroque pearl.
I lay emphasis upon this, to make clear how normal, serene and even
familiar in effect was the room into which I came. Yet, as I closed the
door behind me and stood in that softly brilliant radiance, a shudder
shook me from head to foot with the violence of an electric shock. A
sense of suffocation caught at my throat like an unseen hand.
Both sensations were gone in the time of a drawn breath, leaving only
astonishment in their wake. Presently I went on with the purpose that
had brought me upstairs; lifting a portfolio to the table and beginning
to unpack the work which I had been doing in New York. As I laid out the
first sheets of music, there drifted to my ears that vague sound from
the lake I had heard on my first night visit here, while I stood on the
tumble-down porch. The sound that was like the smack of glutinous lips,
or some creature drawing itself out of thick, viscid slime. As before, I
wondered what movement of the shallow waters could produce that result.
Not the tide, now, for the new dam was up and the lake cut off from Long
Island Sound. The pouring of the waterfall flowed on as a reminder of
that fact.
The sound was not repeated. The dusk outside the windows offered nothing
unusual to be seen. I finished my unpacking and sat down at my
writing-table.
I am not accustomed to heed time. There never has been anyone to care
what hours I kept, and I work best at night. Midnight was long past when
I thought of rest.
I declare that I thought of nothing more; not even recalling the vague
unease felt on entering the room. A day spent in the fresh air, followed
by an evening of hard work and journeyings between the piano and table,
had left me utterly weary. When I lay down, it was to sleep at once.