"So let us laugh, lest vain rememberings
Breed, as of old, some rude bucolic cry
Of awkward anguishes, of dreams that die
Without decorum, of Love lacking wings
Yet striving you-ward in his flounderings
Eternally,--as now, even when I lie
As I lie now, who know that you and I
Exist and heed not lesser happenings.
"I was. I am. I will be. Eh, no doubt
For some sufficient cause, I drift, defer,
Equivocate, dream, hazard, grow more stout,
Age, am no longer Love's idolater,--
And yet I could and would not live without
Your faith that heartens and your doubts which spur."
LIONEL CROCHARD. _Palinodia_.
I
So weeks and months, and presently irrevocable years, passed tranquilly;
and nothing very important seemed to happen nowadays, either for good or
ill; and Rudolph Musgrave was content enough.
True, there befell, and with increasing frequency, periods when one must
lie abed, and be coaxed into taking interminable medicines, and be
ministered unto generally, because one was of a certain age nowadays,
and must be prudent. But even such necessities, these underhanded
indignities of time, had their alleviations. Trained nurses, for
example, were uncommonly well-informed and agreeable young women, when
you came to know them--and quite lady-like, too, for all that in our
topsy-turvy days these girls had to work for their living. Unthinkable
as it seemed, the colonel found that his night-nurse, a Miss Ramsay, was
actually by birth a Ramsay of Blenheim; and for a little the discovery
depressed him. But to be made much of, upon whatever terms, was always
treatment to which the colonel submitted only too docilely. And,
besides, in this queer, comfortable, just half-waking state, the
colonel found one had the drollest dreams, evolving fancies such as were
really a credit to one's imagination....
For instance, one very often imagined that Patricia was more close at
hand nowadays.... No, she was not here in the room, of course, but
outside, in the street, at the corner below, where the letterbox stood.
Yes, she was undoubtedly there, the colonel reflected drowsily. And they
had been so certain her return could only result in unhappiness, and
they were so wise, that whilst she waited for her opportunity Patricia
herself began to be a little uneasy. She had patrolled the block six
times before the chance came.
And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave, drowsily pleased by his own
inventiveness, that Patricia was glad this afternoon was so hot that no
one was abroad except the small boy at the corner house, who sat upon
the bottom porch-step, and, as children so often do, appeared intently
to appraise the world at large with an inexplicable air of
disappointment.
"Now think how Rudolph would feel,"--the colonel whimsically played at
reading Patricia's reflection--"if I were to be arrested as a suspicious
character--that's what the newspapers always call them, I think--on his
very doorstep! And he must have been home a half-hour ago at least,
because I know it's after five. But the side-gate's latched, and I can't
ring the door-bell--if only because it would be too ridiculous to have
to ask the maid to tell Colonel Musgrave his wife wanted to see him.
Besides, I don't know the new house-girl. I wish now we hadn't let old
Mary go, even though she was so undependable about thorough-cleaning."
And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave that Patricia was tired of pacing
before the row of houses, each so like the other, and compared herself
to Gulliver astray upon a Brobdingnagian bookshelf which held a "library
set" of some huge author. She had lost interest, too, in the new house
upon the other side.
"If things were different I would have to call on them. But as it is, I
am spared that bother at least," said Patricia, just as if being dead
did not change people at all.
Then a colored woman, trim and frillily-capped, came out of the watched
house. She bore some eight or nine letters in one hand, and fanned
herself with them in a leisurely flat-footed progress to the mailbox at
the lower corner.
"She looks capable," was Patricia's grudging commentary, in slipping
through the doorway into the twilight of the hall. "But it isn't safe to
leave the front-door open like this. One never knows--No, I can tell by
the look of her she's the sort that can't be induced to sleep on the
lot, and takes mysterious bundles home at night."