AT LAST
Stafford waited for the Far Away Lady in the morning--she was to come to
breakfast at ten o'clock--and met her as she entered the Cassowary. They
went into the dining car together, and, as they seated themselves, she
noted the added buoyancy of his look and was prepared for anything. The
breakfast ordered, he leaned back and asked complacently:
"What do you think of clocks?"
The Far Away Lady looked at him in mild amazement: "Are you not a trifle
vague?" she asked. "Is not that like what I have heard you call too much
of a 'general proposition'? How can I answer you when I do not know what
you mean?"
"Oh, well, maybe it was only a sort of 'general proposition,' but it was
in earnest. This, my dear, is an important subject. They have clocks in
houses, do they not? Now, it so happens that I am mightily interested in
a home and, so, am necessarily interested in clocks. This home is not
yet made, but it is as sure as anything within man's mortal scope may
be, and clocks are part of the general theme. My dear lady, help me
out."
She looked upon him indulgently in his lunacy. She understood, as she
had the day before, though now the understanding was simple, since she
had the key to his mood. Besides, even in the exuberance of his
feelings, he was apparently, not quite so royally driveling, as on the
occasion of his first outbreak. Her look grew almost motherly as he
checked himself suddenly and informed her that he was pinching his arm
to be sure that everything was true.
"Yes," he continued, "there is a great deal to clocks. They are
wonderfully cheering and companionable. Their ticking, after a little,
never annoys you, and you somehow, come to really need it and to feel a
loss when the clock is stopped. It is, in a way, like the sound of the
cricket on the hearth. While it is ticking you feel as if you had
something alive and friendly about you."
"I like clocks, too," said the Far Away Lady, smiling into his foolish
face.
"I had two clocks in China," went on the beaming Stafford, "and I had
them with me wherever I was stationed. The transportation of such things
was a nuisance, but they paid their way. One was a pretty clock with a
softly beaming face, who struck the hours with a delightful chime. The
other was a little alarm clock, and he was noisy and tough. He was a
profligate. He became confidential with me, but there was always a
certain reservation. Our souls never got absolutely close together, but
he was a bulwark and a brother. He was all there. The charming clock
with the chime I called St. Cecelia, and the little tough clock I called
Billy. Sweetheart, you can hardly imagine what a comfort the two were to
me. Away off there in the gray wastes of a vast territory, an engineer
solving his problems practically alone, longing occasionally for
companionship and finding it not among the alien Russian assistants or
among the flat-faced Celestial laborers--well, then I'd go in to St.
Cecelia and Billy, and she would console softly and Billy would tick and
swear with me in the most intimate companionship and understanding, and
brace me up. Why, my girl, that clock was my right hand man and my
adviser. I don't suppose he really advised, but he was somehow, always
on deck. Billy and St. Cecelia are both in my baggage now."
"Billy appeals to me," said the lady. "Did he always awaken you?"
"No," admitted Stafford, "I was usually awakened by the racket of the
coolies. Their clatter and chatter made them worse than sparrows. It
wasn't Billy's utility as an alarm clock which endeared him, but a sort
of personal affection which developed in me because he really deserved
it. We were drawn together. St. Cecelia and I respected and admired each
other, but Billy was such a flagrant fellow and whooped it up so when he
struck that I got rather to lean upon him when I had anything
approaching the blues. I had them, sometimes," said he more slowly and
looking at her earnestly, "but Billy always sounded a note of reckless
plunging ahead and hopefulness."
Here he stopped talking, apparently seized with a sudden inspiration.
Then, after a moment, he went on in the most casual manner: "By the way,
dear, why can't we have Billy in the kitchen of the Shack? His hands
show clearly against his face and he'd be excessively good to boil eggs
by."
The fair countenance of the woman became suffused and the depths of her
eyes were suddenly peopled beyond all the vision of any fate-reader's
crystal. All the nymphs of love and sweet regard were there. She, like
him, had been dreaming much of the Shack since their parting of the
night before, and the knowledge that he also had been thinking of it,
was something wonderful to her. He, too, then had been having fancies
about the Shack, the dream home by the side of the water, the vision of
the past, the certainty, now, of the future. They would never abandon
that idea. And now there came to her--she could see nothing else--the
miserable scene of the years past, the shore and the blue lake waters
and the man with bursting heart drawing a picture which was at the time
indeed a fantasy, talking bravely, seeking to hide his own suffering and
make hers less, to gloss over the hard aspect of the parting,--and
failing miserably.
She reached her hand across and put it in that of Stafford:
"We will have Billy and St. Cecelia both," she whispered.
Now these were not young people in their 'teens nor in the early
twenties, yet they said and did what is now being told of them. Is the
gold of the world, are all its great passions and vast affection, but
for the callow!
"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four," saith
the venerable and justly popular author of Proverbs, and he concludes
and crowns the list with "the way of a man with a maid." He might have
made the same comment regarding the way of a maid with a man, but either
way is insignificant in comparison with the ways of an intelligent man
and woman in the full flux and prime of life, and who have learned.
There is a difference indescribable between youth and those who have
come to the understanding comprehension of what is the greatest thing in
the world. They own the consciousness of its magnitude, a knowledge
which the others lack. Talk about love-making! Theirs is the
unconscious, intense and honest art of the old masters.
He dawdled on in his day dream: "You know about the dogs, don't
you?"--she nodded--"and we'll have chickens, of course, far from
the house and garden, snow-white Leghorns, since they lay
voraciously--'voracious' is the word--and eggs are the spice of life.
There'll be other things to eat, too, and in sunny cleared places in the
wood there will be the most voluptuous asparagus and strawberry beds in
the world, and, as for the eye and nose, your own flower garden, near
the Shack,--Have we not talked of it, somewhere, before?--what a garden
that will be! I know it already, because I know your fancies. No park
gardening there, but the natural beauty and abandon of nature with a
friend at hand. I can shut my eyes and see the roses and the dahlias and
the hollyhocks and the old-fashioned pinks and the lilacs and all the
old flowers and shrubs and a host of the newer ones which have won a
deserved place since Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, and there is in my
nostrils a blending of perfumes that makes any mention of Araby the
Blest seem puerile, while the desert that 'shall rejoice and blossom as
the rose' will be but as a sand spit compared with our responsive but
untamed estate.
"And," he continued, "there is a fad of my own which I have not yet
mentioned. I am going to be a benefactor of mankind--I suppose it was in
me and had to come out--and our jungle home will afford the opportunity
for carrying out my beneficent designs. I am going to make a domestic
bird of one of the most desirable of birds existent. I refer to the
quail, the bird that whistles on country fences and doesn't on toast.
I'm going to get a lot of them and treat them as if they were and had
always been part of the family. They shall have a great wire-covered
range and all conveniences of an outdoor home, and I'm going to keep on
raising them and experimenting and trying until I have a really tame
quail, one with atrophied wings and a trusting heart. That we'll do,
dear, and coming generations shall rise up and call us blessed."
She looked upon him still indulgently. It was all concerning their life
across the lake, and slight wonder was it that she was at one with him
in his dreaming, he the man of action, the man with the sense of humor
and perception of the grotesque, who always laughed at things,--that he
should thus idle so happily in fancy with the Shack and its
surroundings, well, she felt in its fullness love's compliment to her.
She knew the keynote of it all and but encouraged him with speaking
eyes. He was looking out of the window now but he turned to her in a
moment:
"It seems to me," he said, "that we are already getting a little of the
flavor of our own country. I'll be imagining the Pines of Saginaw next.
Look out upon that expanse of snow."--The train was tearing down through
the Des Moines valley now--"That is snow, real snow, no tremendous,
swirling, threatening drifts, no dead expanse with bare, bleak spots,
but instead, a great soft mantle, protecting the germs of the coming
crops and the ally, not the enemy of man. How white it is, as it has a
right to be. It means well. It is cold, but it is second cousin to the
seeds and to our own kind of spring. It is well connected."
There was something to the lover's dreams and vaporings. The quality of
earth and air was changing imperceptibly but surely. The spirit of the
Lake Region was abroad and had wandered even into Iowa.
The shadows of the telegraph poles, slanting eastward, became longer and
longer. Stafford, abandoning reluctantly his pictures of the future when
the two should be together, laughed quietly:
"Will you always be so patient?" he asked.
She laughed as well: "I'm afraid, big boy, that there does not live a
wise woman who cares who would not be always patient listening when the
theme was such and the object such. Did I not say that ponderously and
nicely?" she added. And he but laughed again.
They made their way to the Cassowary, for there were many hand-shakings
and genial partings in progress there and the two were, necessarily, a
part of the scene. More than one lasting friendship had been formed in
the luxurious Cassowary.
Evening was near. Already the Pillar of Cloud by day looming above the
shore of the great lake was plainly visible. The slower way through the
city was made, the train came to a stand-still and upon the ears of its
inmates broke all the varied station sounds, the calls of starters, the
clangor of engine bells, the trucks and the shouting of cabmen outside.
Stafford assisted the Far Away Lady--the Far Away Lady no longer--to
alight from the platform:
"The harshness is over," he said. "We will never part again."
"Never," she said, and then, "It has been a long time."
She had brightened her grey traveling dress with a rose-colored ribbon
at her throat, and her cheeks were rose-colored, too.
"I would have come sooner, had I known," said the man.
And they went out into the world together.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
The author used symbols which are not displayable in text.
full: a small vertical line (forming somewhat of an uppercase "I")
a small horizontal line on the right bottom (thus forming somewhat
of an uppercase "L")
a small vertical line closing the right bottom (thus forming
a square box with no top line)
lastly, a small diagonal line from half-way up the right vertical
pointing upper-left (thus forming somewhat of an uppercase "Y")
box: all of the lines of the "full" symbol, surrounded by another box
vertical: a small vertical line (forming somewhat of an uppercase "I")
ell: a small vertical line (forming somewhat of an uppercase "I")
a small horizontal line on the right bottom (thus forming somewhat
of an uppercase "L")