CHAPTER XXIX
AT LAST
Stafford waited for the Far Away Lady in the morning--she was to come tobreakfast at ten o'clock--and met her as she entered the Cassowary. Theywent into the dining car together, and, as they seated themselves, shenoted the added buoyancy of his look and was prepared for anything. Thebreakfast 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 triflevague?" she asked. "Is not that like what I have heard you call too muchof a 'general proposition'? How can I answer you when I do not know whatyou mean?"
"Oh, well, maybe it was only a sort of 'general proposition,' but it wasin earnest. This, my dear, is an important subject. They have clocks inhouses, do they not? Now, it so happens that I am mightily interested ina home and, so, am necessarily interested in clocks. This home is notyet made, but it is as sure as anything within man's mortal scope maybe, and clocks are part of the general theme. My dear lady, help meout."
She looked upon him indulgently in his lunacy. She understood, as shehad the day before, though now the understanding was simple, since shehad the key to his mood. Besides, even in the exuberance of hisfeelings, he was apparently, not quite so royally driveling, as on theoccasion of his first outbreak. Her look grew almost motherly as hechecked himself suddenly and informed her that he was pinching his armto be sure that everything was true.
"Yes," he continued, "there is a great deal to clocks. They arewonderfully cheering and companionable. Their ticking, after a little,never annoys you, and you somehow, come to really need it and to feel aloss when the clock is stopped. It is, in a way, like the sound of thecricket on the hearth. While it is ticking you feel as if you hadsomething alive and friendly about you."
"I like clocks, too," said the Far Away Lady, smiling into his foolishface.
"I had two clocks in China," went on the beaming Stafford, "and I hadthem with me wherever I was stationed. The transportation of such thingswas a nuisance, but they paid their way. One was a pretty clock with asoftly beaming face, who struck the hours with a delightful chime. Theother was a little alarm clock, and he was noisy and tough. He was aprofligate. He became confidential with me, but there was always acertain reservation. Our souls never got absolutely close together, buthe was a bulwark and a brother. He was all there. The charming clockwith the chime I called St. Cecelia, and the little tough clock I calledBilly. Sweetheart, you can hardly imagine what a comfort the two were tome. Away off there in the gray wastes of a vast territory, an engineersolving his problems practically alone, longing occasionally forcompanionship and finding it not among the alien Russian assistants oramong 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 andswear with me in the most intimate companionship and understanding, andbrace me up. Why, my girl, that clock was my right hand man and myadviser. I don't suppose he really advised, but he was somehow, alwayson 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 thecoolies. Their clatter and chatter made them worse than sparrows. Itwasn't Billy's utility as an alarm clock which endeared him, but a sortof personal affection which developed in me because he really deservedit. We were drawn together. St. Cecelia and I respected and admired eachother, but Billy was such a flagrant fellow and whooped it up so when hestruck that I got rather to lean upon him when I had anythingapproaching the blues. I had them, sometimes," said he more slowly andlooking at her earnestly, "but Billy always sounded a note of recklessplunging 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 handsshow clearly against his face and he'd be excessively good to boil eggsby."
The fair countenance of the woman became suffused and the depths of hereyes were suddenly peopled beyond all the vision of any fate-reader'scrystal. All the nymphs of love and sweet regard were there. She, likehim, had been dreaming much of the Shack since their parting of thenight before, and the knowledge that he also had been thinking of it,was something wonderful to her. He, too, then had been having fanciesabout the Shack, the dream home by the side of the water, the vision ofthe past, the certainty, now, of the future. They would never abandonthat idea. And now there came to her--she could see nothing else--themiserable scene of the years past, the shore and the blue lake watersand the man with bursting heart drawing a picture which was at the timeindeed a fantasy, talking bravely, seeking to hide his own suffering andmake hers less, to gloss over the hard aspect of the parting,--andfailing 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 earlytwenties, yet they said and did what is now being told of them. Is thegold of the world, are all its great passions and vast affection, butfor the callow!
"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four," saiththe venerable and justly popular author of Proverbs, and he concludesand crowns the list with "the way of a man with a maid." He might havemade the same comment regarding the way of a maid with a man, but eitherway is insignificant in comparison with the ways of an intelligent manand woman in the full flux and prime of life, and who have learned.There is a difference indescribable between youth and those who havecome to the understanding comprehension of what is the greatest thing inthe world. They own the consciousness of its magnitude, a knowledgewhich the others lack. Talk about love-making! Theirs is theunconscious, intense and honest art of the old masters.
He dawdled on in his day dream: "You know about the dogs, don'tyou?"--she nodded--"and we'll have chickens, of course, far fromthe house and garden, snow-white Leghorns, since they layvoraciously--'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 thewood there will be the most voluptuous asparagus and strawberry beds inthe world, and, as for the eye and nose, your own flower garden, nearthe Shack,--Have we not talked of it, somewhere, before?--what a gardenthat will be! I know it already, because I know your fancies. No parkgardening there, but the natural beauty and abandon of nature with afriend at hand. I can shut my eyes and see the roses and the dahlias andthe hollyhocks and the old-fashioned pinks and the lilacs and all theold flowers and shrubs and a host of the newer ones which have won adeserved place since Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, and there is in mynostrils a blending of perfumes that makes any mention of Araby theBlest seem puerile, while the desert that 'shall rejoice and blossom asthe rose' will be but as a sand spit compared with our responsive butuntamed estate.
"And," he continued, "there is a fad of my own which I have not yetmentioned. I am going to be a benefactor of mankind--I suppose it was inme and had to come out--and our jungle home will afford the opportunityfor carrying out my beneficent designs. I am going to make a domesticbird of one of the most desirable of birds existent. I refer to thequail, 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 hadalways been part of the family. They shall have a great wire-coveredrange and all conveniences of an outdoor home, and I'm going to keep onraising them and experimenting and trying until I have a really tamequail, 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 lifeacross the lake, and slight wonder was it that she was at one with himin his dreaming, he the man of action, the man with the sense of humorand perception of the grotesque, who always laughed at things,--that heshould thus idle so happily in fancy with the Shack an
d itssurroundings, well, she felt in its fullness love's compliment to her.She knew the keynote of it all and but encouraged him with speakingeyes. He was looking out of the window now but he turned to her in amoment:
"It seems to me," he said, "that we are already getting a little of theflavor 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 throughthe 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 comingcrops and the ally, not the enemy of man. How white it is, as it has aright to be. It means well. It is cold, but it is second cousin to theseeds and to our own kind of spring. It is well connected."
There was something to the lover's dreams and vaporings. The quality ofearth and air was changing imperceptibly but surely. The spirit of theLake Region was abroad and had wandered even into Iowa.
The shadows of the telegraph poles, slanting eastward, became longer andlonger. Stafford, abandoning reluctantly his pictures of the future whenthe 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 awise woman who cares who would not be always patient listening when thetheme was such and the object such. Did I not say that ponderously andnicely?" she added. And he but laughed again.
They made their way to the Cassowary, for there were many hand-shakingsand genial partings in progress there and the two were, necessarily, apart of the scene. More than one lasting friendship had been formed inthe luxurious Cassowary.
Evening was near. Already the Pillar of Cloud by day looming above theshore of the great lake was plainly visible. The slower way through thecity was made, the train came to a stand-still and upon the ears of itsinmates broke all the varied station sounds, the calls of starters, theclangor of engine bells, the trucks and the shouting of cabmen outside.
Stafford assisted the Far Away Lady--the Far Away Lady no longer--toalight 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 ribbonat 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")
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