“The heart is
a small thing, but desireth great matters. It
is not
sufficient for a kite’s
dinner, yet the whole world is not
sufficient for it.” - HUGO
DE ANIMA.
That evening Vere and I settled the
business details of the developments he had planned.
Also while we three were quietly together, I launched
a discussion that had been gathering in my mind all
day while I watched Phillida.
“You are doing as efficient
work as Vere,” I told her. “In fact,
you are a most moderate pair! I gave you an open
bank account, Phil; and you have furnished the house
for so little that I am amazed. And it is all
so gay, so freshly pretty! Being an ignorant man,
the details are beyond me. But one
servant? Aren’t you working yourself too
hard? I had expected you to need several.
Of course, we are not counting Vere’s outdoor
force.”
She turned in her low chair beside
the lamp and glanced toward the window behind her,
before replying. I noticed the action, because
a moment before Vere had turned precisely the same
way.
“It is good of you to think
of those things, Cousin Roger,” she declared.
“But, I want to be a real wife to Drawls.
I do, indeed! And I have it all to learn because
I was not brought up for that. Look at this dish-towel
I am hemming. Cristina would laugh at the stitches
if she dared, yet they are better than when I began.
Some day I shall sew fine things. So it is with
all my housekeeping. I think we should begin as
we mean to go on, so I have furnished the house for us.
Perhaps if it had been for you alone, I should have
chosen satin-wood and tapestry instead of willow and
cretonne. The same way about Cristina. If
Ethan and I are to save and earn this lovely place,
as you offered, we cannot afford more than one maid.
You understand what I am trying to explain, don’t
you?”
“Yes,” I assented.
“Surely! What were you looking for, just
now, behind you?”
“I? Oh, nothing! I
just fancied someone had passed by the window and
stared in. I can’t imagine what made me
fancy that. Unless the cat”
She hesitated.
“Bagheera is asleep under Mr.
Locke’s chair,” Vere observed casually.
“Truly, Cousin Roger, I love
the way we are living,” she resumed. “It
is very miserable of me, I daresay, not to be more
intellectual after all Father and Mother labored with
me. But it is so! I want to live this way
all my life; to be busy, and plan things with Ethan,
and make them come true together.”
Under cover of the table she put her
hand into Vere’s, and silence held us a little
while. I watched Bagheera the cat, who sat beside
my chair staring with unblinking yellow eyes toward
the window across the room. Did I imagine a slight
uneasiness in those eyes, a wary readiness in gathered
limbs and muscles bulking under the old cat’s
scant fur? Now the tail twitched with a lashing
movement.
Presently Bagheera looked away and
relaxed. A moment more, and he curled down, composing
himself to sleep.
“You like the place, Phil?”
I questioned. “You do not find it lonely
here, or in any way depressing?”
The candor of her surprise told me
that no dweller between the worlds had visited her.
“Cousin Roger? This darling house?
Why?”
I passed that question safely, and
after a few minutes bade them good-night. They
had a fashion of gazing at one another that made it
a matter of necessary kindness to leave them alone
together.
As I made my solitary way upstairs,
I will not deny a growing excitement, or that dread
fought with my resolution. Who would keep tryst
with me tonight? The Horror or the lady?
Both; as each time before? If so, which one would
come first, and what might be my measure of success
or failure? If some trick were being played upon
me, I meant to pluck it out of the mystery.
The quietly pleasant room received
me without a hint of the unusual. I lighted the
lamps and sat down to my work.
The house was still by ten o’clock,
all lights out except mine. At midnight I lay
down in the dark, the pomander under my pillow.
Whether I put the gold ball there from sentiment,
or from some absurd fancy about its perfume and mystic
carving being somehow a talisman against evil, or
because I feared the trinket might be taken from me
during the night, I should be troubled to answer.
I did place it there, and lay lapped in its sweet
odor while the moments dragged past; heavy, slow-footed
moments of strain and dreadful expectation scarcely
relieved by a hope uneasy as fear.
The cock crowed for the first hour;
and for the second. I slept, at last. When
I awoke, level sun-rays were striking across the world.
Nothing had happened.