The dream-like Arabian Night unexpectedness which had descended on Neale
the evening before, on the roof, continued shimmeringly to wrap
everything in improbability. Instead of receiving his unfamiliar name
with the vague, conventional smile of a new acquaintance, the girl
raised her eyebrows high in a long, delicate arch and cried out, "You
are! Really! The one who has inherited Crittenden's?" Seeing Neale's
look of almost appalled amazement, she broke into a sudden laugh. Neale
had never heard any one laugh like that, almost like some one singing,
so clear and purely produced was its little trill. And yet it had been
as sudden and spontaneous as a gush of water from a spring.
"I don't wonder you look astonished," she told him. "But you see when I
was a little girl I used often to play in and out of old Mr.
Crittenden's house and mill. I've never seen anything since in all my
life that seemed as wonderful and mighty to me as the way the saw used
to gnash its teeth at the great logs and slowly, shriekingly tear them
apart into boards. Didn't you use to love the moss on the old
water-wheel, too?"
"I never saw the mill or the house," he told her. "I never saw my
great-uncle but once or twice in my life." He was too amazed to do
anything but answer her literally and baldly.
"Why, how in the world...?" she began to ask, and then as a bell from
one of the innumerable church belfries outside began clangorously to
strike the hour, she glanced at her wrist-watch, and shook her head.
"It's breakfast-time," she said. She nodded, smiled and turned away,
stepping down the corridor with a light, supple gait. Neale had never
seen any one walk like that, as though every step were in time to music.
He went back to his room to wash his hands and brush his clothes, which
showed signs of contact with dusty Roman walls and roofs. When, ten
minutes later, he went into the dining-room, five or six people were
already at table, Livingstone among them. Miss Oldham, the head of the
pension, introduced the newcomer to the others, mentioning names on both
sides. To Neale's surprise, Miss Allen did not explain (as he had opened
his mouth to do) that she had already seen and talked to Mr. Crittenden
that morning. Instead, she now gave him the conventional smile he had
expected ten minutes before, accepted the introduction as though she had
never seen his face and went on drinking her cafe-au-lait.
More Arabian Nights. What did _this_ mean? Neale swallowed the reference
he had begun to their earlier meeting. Miss Oldham said to him with the
wearily playful accent of the conscientious pension-keeper, fostering
cheerful talk around her table, "I understand, Mr. Crittenden, that you
and Miss Allen are in a way related, as I might say."
Livingstone joined in with his usual sprightliness: "Yes, Crittenden,
why didn't you tell me you had a fellow-townswoman in Rome? Last evening
when I went back into the salon and told the assembled company about you
and your inheritance there was Mademoiselle Allaine, who had often, in
her remote childhood, climbed on the respected knees of Monsieur your
Great-uncle."
Miss Allen smiled quietly over her cup, remarked that it would have
taken a bolder child than she had ever been to climb on the knees of old
Mr. Crittenden, and, looking at her watch, rose to go. "Music, divine
music?" inquired Livingstone.
"Yes, divine music," she answered lightly. "We are getting ready to play
at a soiree at Donna Antonia Pierleoni's. I'm due there at half past
nine to try out the piano in a new position in the room."
"Clear out there by half-past nine!" cried Livingstone, as if exhausted
by the idea.
She did not seem to consider that this required any answer, made a
graceful inclination of the head to the company at table and went off.
Neale was repeating to himself, in mortal terror of forgetting it,
"Pierleoni. Pierleoni." He drank his coffee and ate his roll as though
he had a train to catch, and, rushing back to his room, seized his hat
and made off to the nearest cafe to consult the directory. With a sigh
of relief he found that there was only one Pierleoni, and that the
address was indeed as Livingstone had said, far away in the rich, new,
fashionable quarter. He set off on foot, but before he had walked five
minutes he was overcome with panic lest he be late, and hailed a rickety
cab. Thinking of nothing but the precious address which he had committed
to memory, he shouted it out to the cabman. Half-way there, he suddenly
remembered that he had no possible business at that address. He had a
horrid vision of driving up to the door, having the _portiere_ ask him
his errand, perhaps of having Miss Allen look out of the window and see
the scene.
This threw him into such a fright that for an instant he could think of
no escape and sat passive, borne along to his fate by the unconscious
cabman. Then his wits came back to him, he called out to the cabman to
drive to number seventy-five and not a hundred and twenty; and having
thus snatched himself from destruction, perceived that they were even
then turning into the street. At number seventy-five he descended,
hastily paid the driver a good deal more than was due him, stepped into
the house, inquired if a gentleman by the name of Robinson lived there,
professed surprise and regret on hearing that he did not and walked on,
settling his necktie nervously.
He told himself that he was acting like an imbecile, but he could not
seem to consider that important fact seriously. Having started in to do
anything, naturally he liked to put it through. Everybody did. And he
really would like to know how under the sun a dark-eyed girl in Rome
happened to know anything about his Great-uncle Burton. Any one would
feel a natural human curiosity on that score. And he had only five days
in Rome.
The idea that he had only five days in Rome fell on him like a
thunderbolt, as though he had had no idea of it till that moment. Had
he said he had only five days in Rome?
He walked along, looking up at the green waves of feathery foliage which
foamed down over the fawn-colored walls from the verdure of the gardens
inside. What a beautiful spot Rome was! He had not begun to appreciate
it on his last visit. It was wonderful! Such light! He had never seen
such sunlight anywhere.
Ah, here was number a hundred and twenty, a fine great doorway in the
wall, with a gleaming brass plate, marked Pierleoni, at which Neale
looked with pleasure. He walked on some distance, as far as he could go
and keep the house in view, and, crossing over, walked slowly back. He
was not now in the least ashamed of his conduct. By this time it seemed
quite natural and suitable to him, just what any one would have done in
his place. Of course he wanted to know about his great-uncle. Who would
not?
He had made the trip to the end of the street and back perhaps a dozen
times, his pulse beating more and more quickly, when from a distance he
saw a little door beside the great one open, and a tall girl in a
familiar light gray street-dress step out. But she was not alone. Beside
her walked a man, a tall, stooped old man with a black coat and a
wide-brimmed black felt hat. The girl's hand was on his arm. Neale felt
as astonished and grieved as though he had caught his best friend
cheating him at cards. It had never occurred to him that she might not
be alone! And yet he now remembered that she had said "we."
He walked along behind them at a considerable distance, feeling for the
first time rather foolish, a sensation which instantly took wings as he
saw them, after turning into another street, stop at a door in the wall
and ring. Perhaps she was going to leave him there. Neale gave a great
start forward.
But perhaps she was going in with him? He halted where he stood, feeling
very sick of himself and angrily resolving to turn his back on them and
go off about his business. He had never played the born fool so in his
life!
But he did not turn his back on them. He stood observing them, while
they went through a leave-taking which seemed to him very formal and
long-drawn-out; and when the old man went in and the infernal gate
actually shut behind him, Neale started forward with a bound.
But he reflected at once that it was too absurd to meet her here, in a
quarter of Rome where no business of his could possibly have brought him
at that hour. The cautious, adroit thing to do was to walk along behind
her at a distance, till she had turned into a thoroughfare with shops,
where he might conceivably be strolling. While he was making this
sagacious plan, his feet bore him rapidly up beside her, where he took
off his hat and said, "Good morning, Miss Allen," with a wide smile of
satisfaction which he knew must look nothing less than imbecile.
Well, he had done what he had set out to do.
She gave him a "good morning, Mr. Crittenden," that showed no surprise,
and with great tact began the talk on the only basis which gave him a
reasonable claim on her time. "You want to hear how somebody in Rome
knows about your great-uncle Burton, don't you? I'm afraid it's like so
many other things that sound mysterious and interesting. It will only be
quite flat and commonplace when you really know. It is no more than
this. When I was a little girl in America, and then later when I was in
college for a couple of years, I was sent to spend my summers in Ashley,
visiting an old cousin of my father's." She looked at him from under her
broad-brimmed blue hat, with a mock-regretful air, one eyebrow raised
whimsically, and made a little apologetic gesture with her shoulders.
"That's all," she said, smiling and shaking her head.
"Oh, _no_, it's not all!" Neale cried to himself with intense
conviction.
Aloud he said, "But I want to hear more about what kind of a place it
is. You see, to tell the truth, I'd forgotten that I had any Great-uncle
Burton. And I never was in Ashley. Think of being in Florence and
getting a letter saying that a saw-mill in Vermont has suddenly become
yours!"
"I should call it a most nice sort of surprise," remarked the girl with
a quaintly un-English turn of phrase which he had already noticed and
thought the most delightful thing in the world.
"And I'm on my way back to America now to see about it."
"What does that mean--to 'see about it'?" she inquired.
"Oh, sell it, of course."
She was horrified. "_Sell_ it? To whom?"
"Oh, to anybody who'll buy it."
"Sell that darling old house, and those glorious elms. Sell that
beautiful leaded-glass door, with the cool white marble steps leading up
to it, and the big peony-bushes, and the syringas and that cold pure
spring-water that runs all day and all night in the wooden trough. Sell
that home! And to anybody!" She paused where she was, looking at him out
of wide, shocked eyes. Neale was profoundly thankful for anything that
would make her look straight at him like that.
"But, you see," he told her, "I hadn't the least idea about that darling
old house, or the elms or the spring-water or anything. I never heard a
word about it till this minute. I think the only thing is for you to
start in and tell me everything."
As she hesitated, professing with an outward opening of her palms that
she really didn't know exactly where to begin, he prompted her.
"Well, begin at the beginning. How in the world do you get there?"
"Oh, if you want to know from the beginning," she told him, "I must tell
you at once that you change cars at Hoosick Junction. Always, always, no
matter from which direction you approach, you must change cars at
Hoosick Junction, and wait an hour or so there." Seeing on his face a
rather strange expression, she feared that he had lost the point of her
little pleasantry, and inquired, "But perhaps it is that you do not know
Hoosick Junction."
"Oh, yes, I know Hoosick Junction all right." He said it with a long
breath of wonder. "_I_ changed cars at Hoosick Junction to get here!"
"Eh bien, and then a train finally takes you from Hoosick Junction. You
sit pressing your little nose against the window, waiting to see the
mountains, and when the first one heaves up softly, all blue against the
horizon, you feel a happy ache in your throat, and you look harder than
ever. And by and by some one calls out 'Shley!' (you know he means
Ashley) and you take your little satchel and stumble down the aisle, and
the conductor lifts you down the steps and there is dear old Cousin
Hetty with her wrinkled face shining on you. She only gives you a dry
little peck on your lips, quick and hard, and says, 'Well, Marise, you
got here, I see,' but you feel all over you, _warm_, how glad she is to
see you. And you hug her a great deal till she says, 'there! there!' but
you know she likes it very much."
She was talking as she walked, as if her words were set to music, her
voice all little ripples, and bright upward and downward swoops like
swallows flying, her hands and arms and shoulders and eyebrows acting a
delicate pantomime of illustration, the pale, pure olive of her face
flushed slightly with her animation. Every time she flashed a quick look
up at him to make sure he was not bored, Neale caught his breath. He
felt as though he were drinking the strongest kind of wine, he had the
half-scared, half-enchanted feeling of a man who knows he is going to
get very drunk, and has little idea of what will happen when he does.
"Yes, and then, and then?" he prompted her, eagerly.
"Well, and then you get into a phaeton. Oh, I don't suppose you have
ever seen a phaeton!"
"Yes, I have," he contradicted her. "I've driven my grandfather miles in
one when I was a little boy."
"Oh, you _know_, then, about this sort of--you have perhaps lived in a
place like Ashley?" She was as eager as though it had been a question of
finding that they were of the same family.
"I spent all my summers in West Adams, not so very far from Vermont."
"Ah then, you can understand what I tell you!" she said with
satisfaction. "And in the phaeton you jog through the village, past the
church, under the elms, with the white houses each under its thick
green trees, and such green, green grass everywhere--not like Italy, all
brown and parched; and then down the road till the turn-off for
Crittenden's. For, you see, I also go to Crittenden's. My Cousin Hetty's
home is one of the three or four houses that stand around your
great-uncle's house and mill. And so up the road to Crittenden's between
the mountains closer and higher, up into the quiet valley." Her voice
deepened on the last words, and so did her eyes. She was silent a
moment, looking out unseeingly on the tropical palms and bright, huge
flowers of the Pincian Gardens through which they were now walking.
"Eh bien, since it's you who are going home, you drive on a little
farther than my Cousin Hetty's house, until up before you slopes a
lovely meadow, smooth, bright, shining green, like the enamel green
field in the Limbo where Dante puts Electra and Hector and Caesar. At the
top of the slope, a long line of splendid, splendid elms, like this, you
know ..." with her two hands and a free, upward gesture of her arms, she
showed the airy opening-out of the wineglass elms, "and back of them a
long old house, ever so long, because everything is fastened along
together, house, porch, woodshed, hay-barn, carriage-shed, horse-barn."
She laughed at the recollection, turning to him. "You've seen those long
New England farm-homes? I remember a city man said once that you could
see the head of the lady of the house leaning from one window and the
head of a cow from another. He thought that the most crushing thing that
could be said, but _I_ think those homes perfectly delightful, homely,
with a _cachet_ of their own, not copied from houses in other countries.
And really, you know," she turned serious, thinking suddenly that
perhaps he needed reassurance, "really, it's just as _clean_ as any
other way of living. You're just as far away from the animals as with
any other barn, because you have so much woodshed and hay-barn and
things between you."
To see her face with that quite new, housekeeping, matter-of-fact,
practical look gave him the most absurd and illogical amusement. He
laughed outright. "Oh, don't think for a moment that I would object," he
cried gaily. "I'm not a bit fastidious. I wouldn't care _how_ near the
cows were--if they were nice cows!"
She thought for an instant he might be laughing at her, and peered
keenly into his face, a more openly observing look than she had as yet
given him. What she saw evidently reassured her, for she went on with a
lighter tone, "Truly it has its own sort of architectural beauty. It
doesn't have a bit of the packing-box, brought-in-and-dumped-down look
that most dwelling-houses have, no matter how they're planned. It seems
to have grown that way. The long, low old farm-house, weathered so
beautifully, it looks like an outcrop of the very earth itself, like a
ridge or rock or a fold in a field."
It was about at this time that Neale began to lose the capacity of
listening to what she was saying. With the best will in the world he
could not keep his mind on it. He found that he felt a giddy, dazzled
uncertainty of where he was putting his feet and tried to pull himself
together. He must really notice a little more what he was about. Her
quick, rising and falling, articulate speech, her quick, flashing
changes of expression, the play of her flexible hands and shoulders--no,
how could he listen to what she was saying?
But she was asking him a question now. She was saying, "You're not
really going to _sell_ all that, to just _any_body?"
"But really," he answered, helplessly honest, "it sounds wonderful as
you tell it, but what could _I_ do with it? I couldn't very well go to
_live_ in Ashley, Vermont, could I?"
"Why not?" she asked. "A good many people have."
"Well! But ..." he began, incapable of forming any answer, incapable of
thinking of anything but the dark softness of her gaze on him. What was
it they were talking about? Oh, yes, about selling out at Ashley. "Oh,
but I have other plans. I am just about to go to China."
"_China!_ Why to China?"
Neale lost his head entirely ... "notice more what he was about?" He had
not the least idea what he was about. He said to her rather wildly, "I
hardly know myself why I am going to China. I'd like, if you will let
me--I'd like ever so much to tell you--about it. And see what you
think. You know about Ashley, don't you see?" He was aware that the
last of what he had said had no shadow of connection with the first, but
that seemed of no importance whatever to him.
They were standing now near a low wall, under some thick dark ilex
trees, a fountain dripping musically before them. Mechanically they sat
down, looking earnestly at each other. "You see," began Neale, "I'm
trying to find my way. I was in business in the States, and getting
along all right ... 'getting on,' I mean, as they say. And then I got to
wondering. It seemed as though, as though ... I wasn't sure it was what
I wanted to do with my life, just to buy low and sell high, all my life
long. Perhaps there was more to it than I could make out. It certainly
seemed to suit a lot of folks, fine. But I couldn't seem to see it. I
was all right. Nothing the matter. Only I couldn't ... why, I tell you,
I felt like a perfectly good torch that wouldn't catch on fire. I
couldn't seem to _care_ enough about it to make it worth while to really
tear in and do it. And I thought maybe if I got off a little way from
it ... sometimes you do see the sense of things better that way. So I
went away. I took a year off. I'd saved a little money, enough for that.
And I've been trying to figure something out. Of course I've been
enjoying the traveling around, too. Perhaps that's the real reason why I
want to go to China, just to keep going, see new things, get away, keep
free. But I think about the other a good deal ... what can I do with my
life ... that's sort of _worth while_, you know, if only in a very small
way. I'm a very ordinary man, no gifts, no talents, but I have lots of
energy and health. It seems as though there ought to be _some_thing ...
doesn't it?"
He had stumbled on, breathlessly, involuntarily, hardly aware that he
was speaking at all, aware only that she was listening. With her head
bent, her eyes fixed on the ground, the pure pale olive of her face like
a pearl in the shadow of her hat, she was listening intently. He knew,
as he had never known anything else, that she was listening to what he
really meant, not to what he was saying in those poor, plain, broken
words.
And yet, how could he go on?
The sudden plunge he had made, deep into an element new to him, the
utter strangeness of his having thus spoken out what he had before but
shyly glanced at, the awfulness of having opened his heart to the day,
his shut, shut heart.... Good God, what was he doing?
At his silence, she raised her face towards him. To his amazement her
eyes were shining wet with tears. And yet there was no sadness in her
face. She was smiling at him, a wavering, misty smile.
She stood up, made a little, flexible, eloquent gesture with her hands
and arms and shoulders, as if to explain to him that she could not trust
herself to speak, and, still smiling at him, the tears still in her
eyes, walked rapidly away.