“The very room,
coz she was in,
Seemed warm from floor
to ceilin’.”
- THE
COURTIN’.
I arrived at noon, when a bright sun
set the country air afloat with motes like dust
of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light.
Even the young grass had gold in its green, and the
lake glittered hot with yellow sparkles.
The house was transformed. The
cream-colored stucco that hid its homely walls, deep,
arched porches that took the place of the old shallow
affairs, scarlet Spanish tiles where bleached shingles
had been all united in giving it the gayest,
most modern air imaginable. A gravel drive curved
in beneath the new porte-cochère, inviting
the wheels of my car to explore. Grass had been
put in order, flower-beds laid out. The new dam
was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested
a swamp. If the place had appealed to me in its
dreary neglect, now it held out its arms to me and
laughed an invitation.
As I stepped from my car, I heard
running feet and a girl sped around the veranda to
meet me. She cast herself into my arms before
I fairly realized this was Phillida. A Phillida
as new to my eyes as the house! After the first
greetings I held her off to analyze the change.
She was tanned and actually rosy.
The corners of her once sad little mouth turned up
instead of down and developed I looked twice yes,
developed a dimple. The dull hair I always had
seen brushed plainly back, now was parted on one side
and fluffed itself across her forehead and about her
cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness. She
was attired in a China-blue linen frock with a scarlet
sash knotted in front quite daringly, for Phillida.
“Why, Phil, how pretty we are!” I admired.
She looked up at me like a praised
little girl, and smoothed the sash. I noticed
she wore above her wedding ring that “diamond”
which once had adorned Vere’s finger so distastefully
to me. It shone bravely in the sunlight with
quite a display of fire. Tracing my gaze, she
held out her hand for me to see.
“Yes, it was his, Cousin Roger.
Of course, we have not very much money yet, and I
do not care about all the engagement rings that ever
were thought of. But, I was afraid people up
here might notice that I had none and think slightingly
of Ethan. So I asked him, and we went to a jeweler,
who made it smaller to fit me. It is not a false
stone, you know. It is a white topaz, and I love
it better than the biggest diamond.”
“Then you are still happy?”
“Forever and ever, world without end,”
she answered solemnly.
We went in.
Sun and sweet wind had worked white
magic in the long-closed house. Quaint furniture,
no longer dust-grimed but lustrous with cleanliness
and polish, had quite a different air. Fresh upholstery
in cheerful tints, fresh paper on the walls, good
rugs, order and daintiness everywhere changed the
interior out of my recognition. Already the atmosphere
of home and cheer was established.
“Come see your rooms,”
Phillida invited, enraptured by my admiration.
“They are so pretty!”
She ran up the stairs, around the
passage, and ushered me into the room of graceful
adventure and grotesque nightmare. I stopped on
the threshold.
I had ordered the partition removed
between the two chambers on this side, giving me one
large room. This, with the little bathroom attached,
occupied the entire large frontage of the house.
This long, spacious room; floors covered by my Chinese
rugs, walls echoing the rugs’ smoke-blue, my
piano in a bright corner, my special easychairs and
writing-table in their due places, welcomed me with
such familiar comfort that I could not identify the
neglected chamber where I had slept one night in the
old bed with the four pineapple-topped posts.
The windows were opened, and white curtains with their
over-draperies of blue silk were swinging in and out
on a fresh breeze where the Horror of my dream had
seemed to press itself against the black panes.
Decidedly, I must have had a bad attack of indigestion
that night!
“See how nice?” Phillida
was urging appreciation at my side. “We
swung those lovely old hangings from the arch, so
they can be drawn across the bedroom end of your room,
if you like. Although I do not know why you should
like, everything is so pretty! Your long Venetian
mirror came safely, and all your darling lamps.
And and I hope you like it so well, Cousin
Roger, that you will stay here always!”
When she left me alone, I walked to
the different windows, contemplating the stretches
of lawn dotted with budding apple trees and the lake
that lay beyond shining in the sun. Was Phillida’s
charming wish to become a fact, I wondered? Could
this rest and calm hold me content here, where I had
meant merely to pause and pass on? I looked at
the yellow country road meandering past the lake into
unseen distance. Should I ever see my Lady of
the Beautiful Tresses come that way, or travel that
road to where she lived? If I did meet her, would
she forgive me the loss of her braid? There would
be a test for the sweetness of her disposition!
When a chiming dinner-gong summoned
me downstairs, I found Vere awaiting me beside Phillida.
We shook hands, and he made some brief, pleasant speech
about their having expected me sooner. If pale,
timid Phil had become a surprising butterfly, Vere
had taken the reverse progress toward the sober grub.
I like him better in outing clothes, although he showed
even more the unusual good looks which so unreasonably
prejudiced me against him. If he felt any strain
in our meeting, his slow, tranquil trick of speech
and manner covered it. I hope I did as well!
It was then I discovered that his wife’s pet
name for him fitted like a glove. She called
him “Drawls.”
The luncheon was good; cooked and
served by a middle-aged Swedish woman named Cristina.
Afterward, I was conducted into the kitchen by the
lady of the house, to view the new fittings and improvements.
Most odd and pretty it was to see Phillida in that
rôle of housewife, and to watch her pride in Vere
and deference to him. Let me record that I never
saw the daughter of Aunt Caroline fail in this settled
course toward her husband. Whether it was born
of revulsion from her mother’s hectoring domestic
methods, or of consciousness that outsiders might rate
Vere below his wife in station and education, so her
respect for him must forbid their slight, I do not
know. But I never saw her oppose him or speak
rudely to him before other people. I suppose they
may have had the usual conjugal differings, neither
of them being angelic. If so, no outsider ever
glimpsed the fact.
We spoke of nothing serious on that
first day. They both showed me the various improvements
finished or progressing, indoors or out.
We dined as agreeably as we had lunched.
Quite early, afterward, I excused myself, and left
together the two who were still on their honeymoon.
At the door of my room, I pushed a
wall-switch that lighted simultaneously three lamps.
In this I had repeated the arrangement used by me
for years in my city apartment. I have a demand
for light somewhere in my make-up, and no reason for
not indulging it. There flashed out of the dusk
a large lamp upon my writing-table, a tall floor-lamp
beside the piano, and a reading-lamp on a stand beside
my bed at the far end of the room. All three
were shaded in a smoke-blue and rose-color effect
that long since had caught my fancy for night work;
the shades inset with imitation semi-precious stones,
rough-cut things of sapphire, tourmaline-pink and
baroque pearl.
I lay emphasis upon this, to make
clear how normal, serene and even familiar in effect
was the room into which I came. Yet, as I closed
the door behind me and stood in that softly brilliant
radiance, a shudder shook me from head to foot with
the violence of an electric shock. A sense of
suffocation caught at my throat like an unseen hand.
Both sensations were gone in the time
of a drawn breath, leaving only astonishment in their
wake. Presently I went on with the purpose that
had brought me upstairs; lifting a portfolio to the
table and beginning to unpack the work which I had
been doing in New York. As I laid out the first
sheets of music, there drifted to my ears that vague
sound from the lake I had heard on my first night
visit here, while I stood on the tumble-down porch.
The sound that was like the smack of glutinous lips,
or some creature drawing itself out of thick, viscid
slime. As before, I wondered what movement of
the shallow waters could produce that result.
Not the tide, now, for the new dam was up and the lake
cut off from Long Island Sound. The pouring of
the waterfall flowed on as a reminder of that fact.
The sound was not repeated. The
dusk outside the windows offered nothing unusual to
be seen. I finished my unpacking and sat down
at my writing-table.
I am not accustomed to heed time.
There never has been anyone to care what hours I kept,
and I work best at night. Midnight was long past
when I thought of rest.
I declare that I thought of nothing
more; not even recalling the vague unease felt on
entering the room. A day spent in the fresh air,
followed by an evening of hard work and journeyings
between the piano and table, had left me utterly weary.
When I lay down, it was to sleep at once.