The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck Part 22

He patted the boy's head and latterly resumed: "I am afraid of you, Anne. Whenever I am imagining vain things or st.i.tching romantic possibilities, like embroideries, about the fabric of my past, I always find the real you in my path, as undeniable as a gas-bill. I don't believe you ever dare to think, because there is no telling what it might lead to. You are simply una.s.sailably armored by the courage of other people's convictions."

Her candid eyes met his over the boy's bright head. "And what in the world are you talking about?"

"I am lamenting. I am rending the air and beating my breast on account of your obstinate preference for being always in the right. I do wish you would endeavor to impersonate a human being a trifle more convincingly----"

But the great gong, booming out for luncheon, interrupted him at this point, and Colonel Musgrave was never permitted to finish his complaint against Anne's unimaginativeness.

IV

On that same Sunday morning, while Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave contended with little Roger's boredom on the lawn before Matocton, Patricia and Charteris met by accident on the seventh terrace of the gardens. Patricia had mentioned casually at the breakfast-table that she intended to spend the forenoon on this terrace unsabbatically making notes for a paper on "The Symbolism of Dante," which she was to read before the Lichfield Woman's Club in October; but Mr. Charteris had not overheard her.

He was seated on the front porch, working out a somewhat difficult point in his new book, when it had first occurred to him that this particular terrace would be an inspiring and appropriate place in which to think the matter over, undisturbed, he said. And it was impossible he should have known that anyone was there, as the seventh terrace happens to be the only one that, being planted with beech-trees, is completely screened from observation. From the house, you cannot see anything that happens there.

It was a curious accident, though. It really seemed, now that Patricia had put an ending to their meetings in the maple-grove, Fate was conspiring to bring them together.

However, as Mr. Charteris pointed out, there could be no possible objection to this conspiracy, since they had decided that their friendship was to be of a purely platonic nature. It was a severe trial to him, he confessed, to be forced to put aside certain dreams he had had of the future--mad dreams, perhaps, but such as had seemed very dear and very plausible to his impractical artistic temperament.

Still, it heartened him to hope that their friendship--since it was to be no more--might prove a survival, or rather a veritable renaissance, of the beautiful old Greek spirit in such matters. And, though the blind chance that mismanaged the world had chained them to uncongenial, though certainly well-meaning, persons, this was no logical reason why he and Patricia should be deprived of the pleasures of intellectual intercourse. Their souls were too closely akin.

For Mr. Charteris admitted that his soul was Grecian to the core, and out of place and puzzled and very lonely in a sordid, bustling world; and he a.s.sured Patricia--she did not object if he called her Patricia?--that her own soul possessed all the beauty and purity and calm of an Aphrodite sculptured by Phidias. It was such a soul as Horace might have loved, as Theocritus might have hymned in glad Greek song.

Patricia flushed, and dissented somewhat.

"Frankly, _mon ami_," she said, "you are far too attractive for your company to be quite safe. You are such an adept in the nameless little attentions that women love--so profuse with lesser sugar-plums of speech and action--that after two weeks one's husband is really necessary as an antidote. Sugar-plums are good, but, like all palatable things, unwholesome. So I shall prescribe Rudolph's company for myself, to ward off an attack of moral indigestion. I am very glad he has come back--really glad," she added, conscientiously. "Poor old Rudolph! what between his interminable antiquities and those demented sections of the alphabet--What are those things, _mon ami_, that are always going up and down in Wall Street?"

"Elevators?" Mr. Charteris suggested.

"Oh, you jay-bird! I mean those N.P.'s and N.Y.C.'s and those other letters that are always having flurries and panics and pa.s.sed dividends.

They keep him incredibly busy."

And she sighed, tolerantly. Patricia had come within the last two weeks to believe that she was neglected, if not positively ill-treated, by her husband; and she had no earthly objection to Mr. Charteris thinking likewise. Her face expressed patient resignation now, as they walked under the close-matted foliage of the beech-trees, which made a pleasant, sun-flecked gloom about them.

Patricia removed her hat--the morning really was rather close--and paused where a sunbeam fell upon her copper-colored hair, and glorified her wistful countenance. She sighed once more, and added a finishing touch to the portrait of a _femme incomprise_.

"Pray, don't think, _mon ami_," she said very earnestly, "that I am blaming Rudolph! I suppose no wife can ever hope to have any part in her husband's inner life."

"Not in her own husband's, of course," said Charteris, cryptically.

"No, for while a woman gives her heart all at once, men crumble theirs away, as one feeds bread to birds--a crumb to this woman, a crumb to that--and such a little crumb, sometimes! And his wife gets what is left over."

"Pray, where did you read that?" said Charteris.

"I didn't read it anywhere. It was simply a thought that came to me,"

Patricia lied, gently. "But don't let's try to be clever. Cleverness is always a tax, but before luncheon it is an extortion. Personally, it makes me feel as if I had attended a welsh-rabbit supper the night before. Your wife must be very patient."

"My wife," cried Charteris, in turn resolved to screen an unappreciative mate, "is the most dear and most kind-hearted among the Philistines. And yet, at times, I grant you--"

"Oh, but, of course!" Patricia said impatiently. "I don't for a moment question that your wife is an angel."

"And why?" His eyebrows lifted, and he smiled.

"Why, wasn't it an angel," Patricia queried, all impishness now, "who kept the first man and woman out of paradise?"

"If--if I thought you meant that----!" he cried; and then he shrugged his shoulders. "My wife's virtues merit a better husband than Fate has accorded her. Anne is the best woman I have ever known."

Patricia was not unnaturally irritated. After all, one does not take the trouble to meet a man accidentally in a plantation of young beech-trees in order to hear him discourse of his wife's good qualities; and besides, Mr. Charteris was speaking in a disagreeably solemn manner, rather as if he fancied himself in a cathedral.

Therefore Patricia cast down her eyes again, and said:

"Men of genius are so rarely understood by their wives."

"We will waive the question of genius." Mr. Charteris laughed heartily, but he had flushed with pleasure.

"I suppose," he continued, pacing up and down with cat-like fervor, "that matrimony is always more or less of a compromise--like two convicts chained together trying to catch each other's gait. After a while, they succeed to a certain extent; the chain is still heavy, of course, but it does not gall them as poignantly as it used to do. And I fear the artistic temperament is not suited to marriage; its capacity for suffering is too great."

Mr. Charteris caught his breath in shuddering fashion, and he paused before Patricia. After a moment he grasped her by both wrists.

"We are chained fast enough, my lady," he cried, bitterly, "and our sentence is for life! There are green fields yonder, but our allotted place is here in the prison-yard. There is laughter yonder in the fields, and the scent of wild flowers floats in to us at times when we are weary, and the whispering trees sway their branches over the prison-wall, and their fruit is good to look on, and they hang within reach--ah, we might reach them very easily! But this is forbidden fruit, my lady; and it is not included in our wholesome prison-fare. And so don't think of it! We have been happy, you and I, for a little. We might--don't think of it! Don't dare think of it! Go back and help your husband drag his chain; it galls him as sorely as it does you. It galls us all. It is the heaviest chain was ever forged; but we do not dare shake it off!"

"I--oh, Jack, Jack, don't you dare to talk to me like that! We must be brave. We must be sensible." Patricia, regardless of her skirts, sat down upon the ground, and produced a pocket-handkerchief. "I--oh, what do you mean by making me so unhappy?" she demanded, indignantly.

"Ah, Patricia," he murmured, as he knelt beside her, "how can you hope to have a man ever talk to you in a sane fashion? You shouldn't have such eyes, Patricia! They are purple and fathomless like the ocean, and when a man looks into them too long his sanity grows weak, and sinks and drowns in their cool depths, and the man must babble out his foolish heart to you. Oh, but indeed, you shouldn't have such eyes, Patricia!

They are dangerous, and to ask anybody to believe in their splendor is an insult to his intelligence, and besides, they are much too bright to wear in the morning. They are bad form, Patricia."

"We must be sensible," she babbled. "Your wife is here; my husband is here. And we--we aren't children or madmen, Jack dear. So we really must be sensible, I suppose. Oh, Jack," she cried, upon a sudden; "this isn't honorable!"

"Why, no! Poor little Anne!"

Mr. Charteris's eyes grew tender for a moment, because his wife, in a fashion, was dear to him. Then he laughed, very musically.

"And how can a man remember honor, Patricia, when the choice lies between honor and you? You shouldn't have such hair, Patricia! It is a net spun out of the raw stuff of fire and blood and of portentous sunsets; and its tendrils have curled around what little honor I ever boasted, and they hold it fast, Patricia. It is dishonorable to love you, but I cannot think of that when I am with you and hear you speak.

And when I am not with you, just to remember that dear voice is enough to set my pulses beating faster. Oh, Patricia, you shouldn't have such a voice!"

Charteris broke off in speech. "'Scuse me for interruptin'," the old mulattress Virginia was saying, "but Mis' Pilkins sen' me say lunch raydy, Miss Patrisy."

Virginia seemed to notice nothing out-of-the-way. Having delivered her message, she went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an idol's. But Patricia shivered.

"She frightens me, _mon ami_. Yes, that old woman always gives me gooseflesh, and I don't know why--because she is as deaf as a post--and I simply can't get rid of her. She is a sort of symbol--she, and how many others, I wonder!... Oh, well, let's hurry."

So Mr. Charteris was never permitted to finish his complaint against Patricia's voice.

It was absolutely imperative they should be on time for luncheon; for, as Patricia pointed out, the majority of people are censorious and lose no opportunity for saying nasty things. They are even capable of sneering at a purely platonic friendship which is attempting to preserve the beautiful old Greek spirit.

She was chattering either of her plans for the autumn, or of Dante and the discovery of his missing cantos, or else of how abominably Bob Townsend had treated Rosalind Jemmett, and they had almost reached the upper terrace--little Roger, indeed, his red head blazing in the sunlight, was already sidling by shy instalments toward them--when Patricia moaned inconsequently and for no ascertainable cause fainted.