Part 17 (1/2)

”He was seventy then. He is still seventy,” I returned.

”Stage-driving, you know, is conducive----”

”I used to think I'd like to be a stage-driver when I grew up,” she interrupted. ”You would see so much of the world with so little trouble, just holding the reins as the horses ambled along. How our ideas change, David!”

It was on the old and unchanged ideas that I wanted to dwell. The new would bring me back all too quickly to ancestral portraits, to imposing fireplaces and costly bear-skin rugs. I a.s.sented readily to her self-evident proposition and brushed it aside for the most interesting matter of Joseph Hicks.

”You used to love to drive,” I said. ”I can see you now wheedling Joe into letting you have the reins. Don't you remember his telling you that no self-respecting woman was ever seen driving more than one horse?”

”How shocked he would be could he see how I handle four,” she said.

Should we never get out of the shadow of costly things, out of the clutch of changed ideas? For a moment I had a picture of Penelope on the box of a coach, ribbons and whip in hand, with four smart cobs stepping to the music of jingling harness, with bandy-legged grooms on the boot, and beside her some perfectly tailored creature in a glistening top-hat. It was a gallant picture, and one in which there was no part for me. Metaphorically I hurled at it a missile of the common clay of which, after all, we were both made. Surely fis.h.i.+ng was a subject on which her ideas could not change.

”Do you remember the great expeditions we used to have along the creek?” I said.

”Remember them? Why, David, I never could forget such days as those.”

She leaned forward, with her hands clasped in her lap, as though to bring herself into closer touch with the kindred spirit on the divan.

”I often laugh over the time I caught the big turtle on my hook. You remember--we were on the bridge at the end of the meadow, and I thought I had captured a whale, and when I saw it I was so astonished that I went head-first into the water.”

”And I dived after you,” I cried excitedly, ”into two feet of water and three feet of mud.”

”And we both ran home soaking wet and covered with green slime,” she went on rapidly. ”Will you ever forget her look when mother----”

”Mother?” There was in my exclamation a note of surprise in which was almost lost the delight I felt in her use of that word.

She caught the surprise alone, and spoke now as though offended at what she thought my protest. ”Yes, mother. Why, David, don't you remember I always called her mother? And she was the only mother I ever knew--even if only for a brief summer.”

”I was glad, Penelope,” I said. ”Yet you surprised me just a little, because I feared that so much had come into your life you might have forgotten----”

”Forgotten?” she returned with a gesture of impatience. ”You do not grant me much heart if you think I could ever forget those who took me in when I was homeless, the mother who tucked me into bed every night, who taught me the first prayer I ever uttered.” She paused for a moment, and sat with her eyes fixed on her clasped hands. I, too, was silent. Suddenly she looked up. ”You are right, David; I had forgotten. I was ungrateful, too; but seeing you again and talking with you has brought those days very near to me. When I have thought of your father and mother it was as though they lived in another world, as though, if I would, I could never see them, they were so far away.”

She leaned back in her chair and broke into a little laugh. ”How foolish of me! Why, David, we shall go to see them--you and I and Uncle Rufus. We shall go very soon, David.” Her slender figure was clear-cut in the firelight and a hand was held out to me in invitation.

Had the world been mine to give, how gladly would I have lost it for the right to answer her as she asked; to go with her and to walk by the creek to that deep sea of our childhood where she had caught the turtle; to ride with her again over the mountain road where we had careered so madly on the white mule; to sit with her on the humble back steps and watch the sun sink into the mountains, and listen to the sheep in the meadow, the night-hawk in the sky, the rustle of the wind in the trees--to the valley's lullaby. From this I was held by the vital fact still unrevealed. I folded my arms and looked at the floor, to shut from my eyes the idle vision of the days to which Penelope would lead me, to shut from them Penelope herself sitting very straight, with head high, so that I had fancied the blue bow tossing there.

”We'll go in May,” she said with a sweep of a small hand, as though our great adventure were settled. ”We will go when the orchards are in blossom, David. The valley is loveliest then.”

To go in May! To go when the hills were clad in the pink and white!

To sit with her on the gra.s.sy barn-bridge in the evening as we had sat in the old days watching the mountains sink into the night, listening to the last faint echoes of the valley as she turned to restful sleep.

Had the universe been mine to give, I would have bartered it for the power to answer her as she asked. Such joys as these I dared not even dream of now, but still I had not the strength to cut myself forever from the last faint hope of them. I looked up into her face aglow with prospect of a return to those simple, kindly days; into her eyes, kindled with that same light that glowed in them in the old time when she would slip her hands so trustingly in mine as we trudged together over the fields. I could say nothing.

”Why, David!” she cried, and again a hand was held out to me in appeal.

”Don't you want to go with us?”

I laughed. And what a struggle I had to force into that laugh a note of happy gayety! I sat on the edge of the divan, very erect, pulling at my fingers, for I was no longer David Malcolm, a dreaming boy; I was a man with a vital fact to meet. Meeting it, I must become to her as any other man she knew--a formal creature, a lay figure for the barber's and tailor's art, with a gift of talking inanities.

”It's not because I don't want to go,” I said. I was glad that I was in the shadow, for though my voice was steady I felt the blood leave my face. ”But you see--there is something I have been wanting to tell you. I'm to be married.”

”Oh!” she exclaimed.

If I had hoped to hear more of a cry of pain than that one exclamation of surprise, I must have been disappointed. But I cherished no such hope now. I was utterly miserable. I was awkward and ill at ease.