The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories Part 8

That summer Ambrose went to Europe, and spent his holiday in a frugal walking-tour through Brittany. When he came back he seemed refreshed by his respite from business cares and from the interminable revision of his cherished scheme; while contact with the concrete manifestations of beauty had, as usual, renewed his flagging ardour.

"By Jove," he cried, "whenever I indulged my unworthy eyes in a long gaze at one of those big things--picture or church or statue--I kept saying to myself: 'You lucky devil, you, to be able to provide such a sight as that for eyes that can make some good use of it! Isn't it better to give fifty fellows a chance to paint or carve or build, than to be able to daub canvas or punch clay in a corner all by yourself?'"

"Well," I said, when he had worked off his first ebullition, "when is the foundation stone to be laid?"

His excitement dropped. "The foundation stone--?"

"When are you going to touch the electric b.u.t.ton that sets the thing going?"

Paul, with his hands in his sagging pockets, began to pace the library hearth-rug--I can see him now, setting his shabby red slippers between its ramified cabbages.

"My dear fellow, there are one or two points to be considered still--one or two new suggestions I picked up over there--"

I sat silent, and he paused before me, flushing to the roots of his thin hair. "You think I've had time enough--that I ought to have put the thing through before this? I suppose you're right; I can see that even Ned Halidon thinks so; and he has always understood my difficulties better than you have."

This insinuation exasperated me. "Ned would have put it through years ago!" I broke out.

Paul pulled at his straggling moustache. "You mean he has more executive capacity? More--no, it's not that; he's not afraid to spend money, and I am!" he suddenly exclaimed.

He had never before alluded to this weakness to either of us, and I sat abashed, suffering from his evident distress. But he remained planted before me, his little legs wide apart, his eyes fixed on mine in an agony of voluntary self-exposure.

"That's my trouble, and I know it. Big sums frighten me--I can't look them in the face. By George, I wish Ned had the carrying out of this scheme--I wish he could spend my money for me!" His face was lit by the reflection of a pa.s.sing thought. "Do you know, I shouldn't wonder if I dropped out of the running before either of you chaps, and in case I do I've half a mind to leave everything in trust to Halidon, and let him put the job through for me."

"Much better have your own fun with it," I retorted; but he shook his head, saying with a sigh as he turned away: "It's _not_ fun to me--that's the worst of it."

Halidon, to whom I could not help repeating our talk, was amused and touched by his friend's thought.

"Heaven knows what will become of the scheme, if Paul doesn't live to carry it out. There are a lot of hungry Ambrose cousins who will make one gulp of his money, and never give a dollar to the work. Jove, it _would_ be a fine thing to have the carrying out of such a plan--but he'll do it yet, you'll see he'll do it yet!" cried Ned, his old faith in his friend flaming up again through the wet blanket of fact.

II

PAUL AMBROSE did not die and leave his fortune to Halidon, but the following summer he did something far more unexpected. He went abroad again, and came back married. Now our busy fancy had never seen Paul married. Even Ned recognized the vague unlikelihood of such a metamorphosis.

"He'd stick at the parson's fee--not to mention the best man's scarf-pin. And I should hate," Ned added sentimentally, "to see 'the touch of a woman's hand' desecrate the sublime ugliness of the ancestral home. Think of such a house made 'cozy'!"

But when the news came he would own neither to surprise nor to disappointment.

"Goodbye, poor Academy!" I exclaimed, tossing over the bridegroom's eight-page rhapsody to Halidon, who had received its duplicate by the same post.

"Now, why the deuce do you say that?" he growled. "I never saw such a beast as you are for imputing mean motives."

To defend myself from this accusation I put out my hand and recovered Paul's letter.

"Here: listen to this. 'Studying art in Paris when I met her--"the vision and the faculty divine, but lacking the accomplishment," etc....

A little ethereal profile, like one of Piero della Francesca's angels ... not rich, thank heaven, _but not afraid of money_, and already enamored of my project for fertilizing my sterile millions...'"

"Well, why the deuce--?" Ned began again, as though I had convicted myself out of my friend's mouth; and I could only grumble obscurely: "It's all too pat."

He brushed aside my misgivings. "Thank heaven, she can't paint, any how. And now that I think of it, Paul's just the kind of chap who ought to have a dozen children."

"Ah, then indeed: goodbye, poor Academy!" I croaked.

The lady was lovely, of that there could be no doubt; and if Paul now for a time forgot the Academy, his doing so was but a vindication of his s.e.x. Halidon had only a glimpse of the returning couple before he was himself s.n.a.t.c.hed up in one of the chariots of adventure that seemed perpetually waiting at his door. This time he was going to the far East in the train of a "special mission," and his head was humming with new hopes and ardors; but he had time for a last word with me about Ambrose.

"You'll see--you'll see!" he summed up hopefully as we parted; and what I was to see was, of course, the crowning pinnacle of the Academy lifting itself against the horizon of the immediate future.

It was in the nature of things that I should, meanwhile, see less than formerly of the projector of that unrealized structure. Paul had a personal dread of society, but he wished to show his wife to the world, and I was not often a spectator on these occasions. Paul indeed, good fellow, tried to maintain the pretense of an unbroken intercourse, and to this end I was asked to dine now and then; but when I went I found guests of a new type, who, after dinner, talked of sport and stocks, while their host blinked at them silently through the smoke of his cheap cigars.

The first innovation that struck me was a sudden improvement in the quality of the cigars. Was this Daisy's doing? (Mrs. Ambrose was Daisy.) It was hard to tell--she produced her results so noiselessly.

With her fair bent head and vague smile, she seemed to watch life flow by without, as yet, trusting anything of her own to its current. But she was watching, at any rate, and anything might come of that. Such modifications as she produced were as yet almost imperceptible to any but the trained observer. I saw that Paul wished her to be well dressed, but also that he suffered her to drive in a hired brougham, and to have her door opened by the raw-boned Celt who had b.u.mped down the dishes on his bachelor table. The drawing-room curtains were renewed, but this change served only to accentuate the enormities of the carpet, and perhaps discouraged Mrs. Ambrose from farther experiments. At any rate, the desecrating touch that Halidon had affected to dread made no other inroads on the serried ugliness of the Ambrose interior.

In the early summer, when Ned returned, the Ambroses had flown to Europe again--and the Academy was still on paper.

"Well, what do you make of her?" the traveller asked, as we sat over our first dinner together.

"Too many things--and they don't hang together. Perhaps she's still in the chrysalis stage."

"Has Paul chucked the scheme altogether?"

"No. He sent for me and we had a talk about it just before he sailed."

"And what impression did you get?"

"That he had waited to send for me _till_ just before he sailed."

"Oh, there you go again!" I offered no denial, and after a pause he asked: "Did _she_ ever talk to you about it?"

"Yes. Once or twice--in s.n.a.t.c.hes."

"Well--?"

"She thinks it all _too_ beautiful. She would like to see beauty put within the reach of everyone."

"And the practical side--?"

"She says she doesn't understand business."

Halidon rose with a shrug. "Very likely you frightened her with your ugly sardonic grin."

"It's not my fault if my smile doesn't add to the sum-total of beauty."

"Well," he said, ignoring me, "next winter we shall see."

But the next winter did not bring Ambrose back. A brief line, written in November from the Italian lakes, told me that he had "a rotten cough," and that the doctors were packing him off to Egypt. Would I see the architects for him, and explain to the trustees? (The Academy already had trustees, and all the rest of its official hierarchy.) And would they all excuse his not writing more than a word? He was really too groggy--but a little warm weather would set him up again, and he would certainly come home in the spring.

He came home in the spring--in the hold of the ship, with his widow several decks above. The funeral services were attended by all the officers of the Academy, and by two of the young fellows who had won the travelling scholarships, and who shed tears of genuine grief when their benefactor was committed to the grave.