The last day of March and of Cherry's visit broke clear and blue, and
with it spring seemed to have come on a rush of perfume and green
beauty. Days had been soft and warm before; this day was hot, and
flushed with colour and splendour. There were iris in the dewy grass
under the oaks, but in the sunshine every trace of winter's damp had
disappeared. Larks whirled up from the fields, and the bridal-wreath
and syringa bushes were mounds of creamy bloom.
Alix and Cherry washed each other's hair in the old fashion, and came
trailing down with towels and combs to the garden. The doctor joined
them in the midst of their tossing and spreading, and sat smoking
peacefully on the porch steps.
"Oh, heavens, how I love this sort of weather!" Alix exclaimed,
flinging her brown mane backward, her tall figure slender in a faded
kimono. She sat down crosswise on her chair, locked her arms about its
back, dropped her face on them, and yawned luxuriously. "Dad and
Peter," she went on, suddenly sitting erect, "will get all this nice
clean hair full of cigar smoke to-night, so what's the use, anyway?"
"To-night's the night we go to Peter?" Cherry stated rather than asked.
"Do you remember," she glanced at her father, who was reading his
paper, "do you remember when Dad always used to scold us for being rude
to Peter?"
"Well, I'd rather go to Peter's for dinner than anywhere else I ever
go!" Alix remarked, dreamily. "Seriously, I mean it!" she repeated as
Cherry looked at her in amused surprise. "In the first place, I love
his bungalow--tiny as it is, it has the whole of a little canyon to
itself, and the prettiest view in the valley, I think. And then I love
the messy sitting room, with all the books and music, and I love the
way Peter entertains. I wish," she added, simply, "that I liked Peter
half as well as I do his house!"
"Peter's a dear!" Cherry contended.
"Oh, I know he is!" Alix said, quickly. "Peter's always been a dear, of
course. But I mean in a special sense--" finished Alix with an entirely
unembarrassed grin.
Cherry, through a glittering cloud of hair, looked at her steadily.
Suddenly she gave an odd laugh.
"Do you know I never thought of Peter like that?" she said.
Alix nodded with a cautious look at her father who was out of hearing.
"No, nor I! We've always taken him rather for granted," she admitted.
"Only I've been rather wishing, lately, that Peter wasn't such an
unflattering, big-brotherish, every-day-neighbour sort of person."
Still Cherry regarded her steadily with an awakening look in her eyes.
"Why lately?" she asked.
"Because," said Alix, briskly and unromantically, "I think Peter would
like me to--well, to stop taking him for granted!"
"But Peter's lame--" Cherry submitted, doubtfully.
"You can't call a shortness left from a broken leg LAME!" Alix
protested. "Peter isn't brawny, but he's never been ill. And he's not a
child. He's thirty-seven. And I imagine he's awfully lonely. And then I
imagine it would please Dad--" "Dad has always been ridiculously fond
of him," Cherry said, thoughtfully. Peter--possibly in love with Alix!
She had never even suspected it. Peter's attitude toward them all had
been more paternal than anything else. Cherry and her sister could not
remember life without Peter, but he had always been Dad's friend,
rather than theirs. He had rebuked them; he had patiently asked them
not to chatter so; he had criticized their grammar and their clothes
and their friends.
Peter and Alix. Well, there was something rather pleasant in the
thought after all, if Alix didn't mind his ugliness and thinness.
Cherry thought about it all day. She had had no thought of money a year
or two ago; but she was more experienced now. And Peter was rich.
Ordinarily she would have said that she was not going to change for
Peter's dinner; but this afternoon, without mentioning the fact, she
quietly got into one of her prettiest dresses; a dress that had been
made in the long-ago excitement of trousseau days. Peter as a rather
autocratic and critical neighbour was one thing; as a possible
brother-in-law he was another.
She came downstairs to find her father waiting, and they walked away
through the woods together. Alix had already gone up to Peter's house
to play tennis. They walked slowly through the lovely aisles of the
trees, crossing a road or two, climbing steadily upward under great
redwoods. The forest was thinning with oaks and madrone trees, and they
found the sunlight again high on the crest of the ridge before a turn
of the trail brought them in view of Peter's bungalow. It was a shabby
little place, all porch and slope of rough brown roof, set in a
wilderness of wild flowers and overlooking long descending slopes of
hillside that stretched far away to the very bay and marshes at the
ocean mouth.
To-night the spring sunshine streamed across it with broad shadows, the
mountains' rough crest stood against a wide expanse of sunset sky.
Cherry's skirt brushed the gold dust from masses and masses of
buttercups. The tennis was over, but just over; Peter and Alix were
sitting, still panting, on the rail of the wide, open porch, and
shouted as the others came up.
"You missed doubles!" called Alix. "The grandest we ever did! Doubles
with the Thompsons and three sets straight to us--six-two, six-two, and
six-two again! They've gone. Oh, heavens, I never had such tennis. Oh,
Peter, when you stood there at the net and just curved your hand like a
cup"--Alix gave an enthusiastic imitation--"and over she went, and game
and set!"
Cherry, sinking white and frilly into a chair, smiled indulgently. The
walk had given her a wild-rose colour, and even Alix was struck with
her extraordinary beauty. Alix had wheeled about on the rail to face
the porch, and Peter had gotten to his feet and was hospitably pushing
basket chairs about. Now he gave Alix a critical look.
"You're disgracefully dirty!" he said, fraternally.
"I know it," she answered, calmly. "Have I time to tub?"
"All the time in the world!" he answered.
"Are any clothes of mine here?" further demanded Alix, rising lazily.
"Yes, there's a blouse. It's in the linen closet; ask Kow for it or get
it yourself when you get your towels. You left it the day you changed
here after we all climbed the mountain. I hope you people are going to
get enough to eat," Peter added, flinging himself into a chair beside
Cherry.
"He's been cooking it since breakfast!" Alix remarked, departing. Peter
laughed guiltily, and Cherry, too. It was only an exaggeration of the
simple truth. He loved to cook, and his meals were famous.
"It's very pleasant to me to have Alix so much at home here," Cherry
said, when Alix was gone, and the doctor wandering happily about the
garden. "I don't know what we'd do if any one ever usurped our places
here!"
She had said it deliberately; the fascination of her recent discovery
was too strong to resist. The man flushed suddenly. For a full minute
he did not speak, and Cherry was surprised to find herself a little
thrilled and even frightened by his silence.
"What put that into your head?" he asked, presently, smoking with his
eyes fixed upon the valley far below.
"Just--being here," she answered. And as he glanced over his shoulder
he met her smile.
"You've been here a thousand times without ever paying me a
compliment!" he reminded her.
Cherry considered this, her brows drawn a trifle together.
"Perhaps," she offered, presently, "it's because there are so many
changes, Peter; my marriage, Anne's--everything different! It just came
to me that it is nice to have this always the same."
"Perhaps Alix will come up here and help keep it so some day," the man
said, deliberately. Cherry's look of elaborate surprise and pleasure
died before his serious glance. She was silent for a moment.
"Why don't you ask her?" she said in a low, thoughtful tone, trembling,
eager to preserve his mood without a false note.
"I have," he answered simply. Cherry's heart jumped with a sudden
unexpected emotion. What was it? Not pleasure, not all surprise--surely
there could be no jealousy mixed with her feeling for Peter's plans?
But she was dazed with the rush of feeling; hurt in some fashion she
could not stop to dissect now. Only this morning she had felt that
Peter was not good enough for Alix; now, suddenly, he began to seem
admirable and dear and unlike everybody else--
"And she said no?" she stammered in confusion.
"She said no. Or, at least, I intimated that I was a lonely old
affectionate man with this and that to offer, and she intimated that
that wasn't enough. It was all--" he laughed--"It was all extremely
sketchy!"
"Peter, but what does she want?" There was actual sisterly indignation
in Cherry's tone.
"Oh, Alix is quite right!" he answered, lightly. "I ought to have
said--I ought to explain--that I had told her, only a few days
previously, that I had always loved somebody else!"
"Oh-h-h!" Cherry was enlightened. She visualized an affair in the last
years of the old century for Peter.
"Oh, and--and she didn't love you?" Cherry asked.
"The lady? She was unfortunately married before I had a chance to ask
her," said Peter.
"Oh-h-h!" Cherry said again, impressed, "and you'll never get over it?"
she asked, timidly. "Peter, I never knew that!" she added as he was
silent. "Does--does Dad know?"
"Nobody knows but Alix, and she only knows the bare facts," he assured
her.
"Oh!" Cherry could think of nothing to add to the sympathetic little
monosyllable. Twilight was reaching even the hilltop, the canyons were
rilling with violet shadows; the sweet, pungent odour of the first dew,
falling on warm dust, crept across the garden.
"Finished with the shower!" shrieked Alix from the warm darkness inside
the doorway. "Hurry up, Peter, something smells utterly grand!"
"That's the chicken thing!" Peter shouted back, springing up to
disappear in the direction of the bathroom. Cherry sat on, silent,
wrapped still in the new spell of the pleasant voice, the strangely
appealing and yet masterful personality.
The dinner straggled as all Peter's dinners did; Alix mixed a
salad-dressing; Peter himself flashed in and out of the tiny, hot
kitchen a hundred times. Kow, in immaculate linen, came back and forth
in leisurely table-setting. Suddenly everything was ready; the crisp,
smoking-hot French loaf, the big, brown jar of bubbling and odorous
chicken, the lettuce curled in its bowl, the long-necked bottles in
their straw cases, and cheeses and crackers and olives and figs and
tiny fish in oil and marrons in fluted paper that were a part of all
Peter's dinners.
After dinner they watched the moon rise, until Alix drifted in to the
piano and Peter followed her, and the others came in, too, to sit
beside the fire. As usual it was midnight before any one thought of
ending one of Peter's evenings.
And all through the pleasant, quiet hours, and when he bundled them up
in his own big loose coats to drive them home, Cherry was thinking of
him in this new light; Peter loving a woman, and denied. The knowledge
seemed to fling a strange glamour about him; she saw new charm in him,
or perhaps, as she told herself, she saw for the first time how
charming he really was. His speech seemed actually the pleasanter for
the stammer at which they had all laughed years ago; the slight limp
lent its own touch of individuality, and the man's blunt criticisms of
books and music, politics and people, were softened by his humour, his
genuine humility, and his eager hospitality.
Next day she took occasion to mention Peter and his affairs to Alix.
Alix turned fiery red, but laughed hardily.
"If he considers that an offer, he can consider it a refusal, I guess,"
she said, boyishly embarrassed. "I like him--I'm crazy about him. But I
don't want any party in ringlets and crinolines to come floating from
the dead past over my child's innocent cradle--"
"Alix, you're awful!" Cherry laughed. "You couldn't talk that way if
you loved him!"
"What way?" Alix demanded.
"Oh, about his--well, his children!"
"I should think that would be just the proof that I do love him," Alix
persisted idly in her musical, mischievous voice. "I certainly wouldn't
want to talk of the children of a man I DIDN'T--"
"Oh, Alix, don't!" Cherry protested. "Anyway, you know better."
Alix laughed.
"I suppose I do. I suppose I ought to be a mass of blushes. The truth
is, I like kids, and I don't like husbands--" Alix confessed, with
engaging candour.
"You don't know anything about husbands!" Cherry laughed.
"I know lots of men I'd like to go off with for a few months," Alix
pursued. "But then I'd like to come home again! I don't see why that
isn't perfectly reasonable--"
"Well, it's not!" Cherry declared almost crossly. "That isn't marriage.
You belong where your husband is, and you--you are always glad to be
with him--"
"But suppose you get tired of him, like a job or a boarding-house, or
any of your other friends?" Alix persisted idly.
"Well, you aren't supposed to!" Cherry said, feebly. Alix let her have
the last word; it was only due to her superior experience, she thought
crossly. But half an hour later, lying wakeful, and thinking that she
would miss dear old Cherry to-morrow, she fancied she heard something
like a sob from Cherry's bed, and her whole heart softened with
sympathy for her sister.
They came downstairs together the next day in mid-afternoon, both
hatted and wrapped for the trip, for Peter was to take Cherry as far as
Sausalito in the car, and Martin by a fortunate chance was to meet them
there at the ferryboat for San Francisco. Mill Valley was not more than
an hour's ride from the ferry. Alix was to drive down and return with
Peter. Cherry said good-bye to her father in the porch; she seemed more
of a puzzled child than ever.
"I've had a wonderful visit, Dad--" she began bravely. Suddenly the
tears came. She buried her face against her father's shabby old office
coat and his arms went about her. Alix laughed awkwardly, and Peter
shut his teeth. Anne, who had very properly come over to say good-bye
to her cousin, got in the back seat of the car and Alix took the seat
beside her.
"Take a picture of Peter and me with the suitcases!" she said. "We must
look so domestic!"
"Get in here, Cherry," Peter said, opening the door of the seat beside
his own. "Doctor, we'll be back in about an hour--"
"Without Cherry!" her father said with a rueful smile.
"Without Cherry!" Peter echoed, looking at her gravely.
It was then that Cherry saw in Peter's expression something that she
did not forget for many, many months--never quite forgot. He wore a
rough tramping costume to-day, a Sunday, and he was halfway up the
porch steps, ready to carry bags to the waiting motor car. His eyes
were fixed upon her with something so yearning, so loving, so troubled
in their gaze that a thrill went through Cherry from head to foot. He
instantly averted his look, turned to the car, fumbled with the gears;
they were off. He was to drive them all the way to Sausalito; Alix
commented joyously upon the beauty of the day.
Cherry, tied trimly into a hat that was all big daisies, was silent for
a while. But when Alix and Anne commenced an interested conversation in
the back seat, she suddenly said regretfully:
"Oh, I hate to go away this time! I mind it more even than the first
time!"
Peter, edging smoothly about a wide blue puddle, nodded
sympathetically, but did not answer.
"I envy Alix--" Cherry said in idle mischief. She knew that the subject
was not a safe one, but was irresistibly impelled to pursue it.
"Alix?" said Peter, after a silence long enough to make her feel
ashamed of herself.
"Yes. Her young man lives in Mill Valley, right near home!" elucidated
Cherry.
"Am I Alix's young man?" he asked, amused.
"Well, aren't you?"
"I don't know. I've never been any one's young man," said Peter.
"Whoever the woman who treated you meanly is--I hate her!" Cherry began
again. "Unless," she added, "unless she was very young, and you never
told her!"
This time he did not answer at all, and they spun along in utter
silence. But when they were nearing Sausalito, Cherry said almost
timidly:
"I think perhaps it would make her happy--and proud, to know that you
admired her, Peter. I don't know who she is, of course, but almost any
woman would feel that. This visit, somehow, has made me feel as if you
and I had really begun a new friendship on our own account, not just
the old friendship. And I shall often think of that talk we had a week
ago, and-think of you, too. N-n-next time you fall in love I hope you
will be luckier!"
Silence. But he gave her his quick, friendly smile. Cherry dared not
speak again.
"Last stop--all out!" Alix exclaimed. "You get tickets, Peter. Hurray,
there's Martin!"
Unexpectedly Martin's big figure came toward them from the ferry gate.
Some ore from the mine had to be assayed in San Francisco, and he had
volunteered to make the trip so that he might meet his wife and bring
her back with him to Red Creek. Time hanging on his hands in the city,
he had crossed the bay for the pleasure of the return trip with Cherry.
He met them beamingly. There was a little confusion of greeting and
good-byes. Alix and Peter watched the others at the railing until the
ferryboat turned. Martin smiled over Anne's head; Cherry, both little
white-gloved hands on the rail, blue eyes and a glint of bright hair
showing under the daisies on her hat, her small figure enveloped in a
big loose coat, looked as if she would like to cry again.
"It must be fun to be married, and go off to strange places with your
beau!" Alix decided. "I'm hungry, Peter; let's go over there and treat
ourselves to fried oysters!"
"Let's go home," he said, unsympathetically. "I'm not hungry."
"Oh, VERY well!" Alix agreed, airily, jumping into the seat beside him.
"Though what has given you a grouch I really am at a loss to imagine!"
she added under her breath.
"I don't hear you!" shouted Peter, who was suddenly rushing the engine.
"You weren't intended to!" she shouted back. And until they were
halfway home, and Alix laughed out in sudden shame and good-nature not
another word was spoken. The bright weather had changed suddenly, and a
wet spring cloud was spreading over the sky.
"Love me, Peter?" Alix asked, suddenly.
"Not always!" he answered, briefly and sincerely. Fog was creeping over
the marshes, the air was full of damp chill. A memory of the
coat-enveloped figure and the blue eyes that smiled wistfully under a
daisied hat was wringing his heart.
"Listen," began Alix again. "Let's stop for Dad, it's going to pour.
And let's go up to your house to eat?"
Silence.
"We can play duets all evening!" Alix added, temptingly.
"Little and Anne coming back?" Peter asked, unwillingly.
"No; they're dining with the Quelquechoses--those bright-faced,
freckled cousins of his," Alix answered.
"I don't know that I've got anything up there to eat!" Peter said,
gloomily.
"Ooo--say!" Alix said, brightening suddenly with her incorrigible
childishness of expression. "Kow's got eggs and cream, hasn't he? I'll
make that new thing I was telling you about--it's delicious. Oh, and an
onion--" she broke off in concern.
"He has an onion," Peter admitted. "What dish?" he asked, interested in
spite of himself, as Alix fell into a rapturous reverie.
"Well, you fry a chopped onion," Alix began, "and then you have a lot
of hard-boiled eggs--" In another moment they were deep in culinary
details.