Part 12

There was a ring of pride in the jesting voice, a glow of pride in the smiling face. Richard Meredith, watching her from the hammock, noticed both. She was glad for the Valley, but there was more gladness beyond that; gladness and pride and—yes, there was tenderness too. It meant much to her that her people were to have their neighborhood house; but it meant even more to her that this one man was to give it to them, that they had found their way to his heart, and that he was finding his way to theirs. Meredith’s face gave no sign of anything save civil interest; but he drew back a little further into the shadow of the vines that clambered over the veranda trellis, and watched the girl and the man who leaned toward each other in the white moonlight, talking eagerly and with an intimate understanding that was new to him but prehistoric to them.

They altogether forgot him, when they went into the lamp-lighted room to figure on changes in the club house; but, as he sat there in the shadow, feeling oddly old and tired, a little figure slipped out through the French windows and tucked herself cozily into the hammock beside him.

“Which do you think would be nicer to have—a piano or a phonograph?” Pegeen asked confidentially, gathering him, as a matter of course, into intimacy of discussion and planning.

The man smiled in the dusk. She was so small and sweet and friendly and—though that he could not know—so sure he needed seeing to.

“I’ll give you both, for your neighborhood house, Pegeen,” he said—but added quickly, “if Mr. Archibald doesn’t object.”

“Why, he’d be _glad_,” she insisted stoutly, though back in her own mind there was a doubt. “That’s perfectly sweet of you. Oh, dear, it does seem as if God must have been working on that club for years and years. Everything’s going so beautifully. Only Deacon Ransom’ll have a fit about the billiard table. He won’t fit hard enough to keep him away though, and Miss Moran says he’s just got to let Sally come. I wish she’d get a beau down there and run off with him. Honestly I do. I’d help—if he’s nice. Do you know, I think a piano and a phonograph’s an awful lot for you to give. I wouldn’t want anything but the phonograph, but you see the mothers are so proud if their daughters can play some pieces and when there’s an entertainment, they always want the girls to show off; so it seems as if we really did need a piano. I’m going to tell everybody that you thought it up all by yourself, and Miss Moran didn’t have a thing to do with it. I shouldn’t wonder if you’d think of lots of things like that after a while. It isn’t a bit hard, after you once get started—not if anybody’s nice inside, like you. I guess city folks have to get new glasses to see country folks right, and some of them don’t ever bother to do it; but the awfully nice ones, like you and Miss Moran and Mr. Archibald, do. And then, after they put on the new glasses, they see so many kind things to do that they work like the very old Scratch to catch up with themselves.”

Meredith pulled the child’s head down against his shoulder and rumpled the thick curls with a gentle hand.

“It’s late for me to be changing glasses or ways, Peg,” he said softly; and his voice matched the gray of his hair. “Do you think I could ever catch up with myself, if I didn’t have Miss Moran to help me?”

Peggy reached up and gave the hand on her hair a loving little pat.

“Why, it’d be as easy as can be for you,” she assured him. “If you ever begin neighboring—in earnest, you know—I bet you’ll be perfectly splendid at it. Of course it’d be lovely to have Miss Moran help—but she wouldn’t need to. She started Mr. Archibald, but look at him now! I get jealous of the neighbors sometimes just for a minute; and he’s done most of it all by himself. Miss Moran hasn’t helped him atall, since you came.”

“I’ve an idea she has kept right on helping him—in a way,” the man said slowly,—“and then he’s had you to see to him, Pegeen.”

XIV

A tidal wave of excitement rolled through the Valley when news of the Neighborhood Club was noised about; and, when, on the evening of September fourth, the house was thrown open to the public, only the bedridden stayed away. The doors were open at seven o’clock; and at eight, the house was full to the eaves.

“They’re perfectly wild about it,” Pegeen confided happily to Archibald as she passed him in the hall. “Every blessed soul’s doing something—even Deacon Ransom. He was as snippy as could be, when he came; and he said the billard table was an invitation to sin, but now he’s out in the bowling alley in his shirt sleeves, beating Mr. Nelson all to pieces and as proud as Mr. Neal’s turkey gobbler because he can do it. And Sallie Ransom is sitting out on the side steps with Joe Trevor. I sort of think he’s courting. And Mrs. Neal’s dancing with Dr. Fullerton. You ought to see her. She’s as light on her feet as if she didn’t weigh more’n I do. And Mr. Colby is playing checkers with Mr. Frisbie. Mrs. Frisbie thinks it’s worldly for a minister. And Mr. Meredith is teaching some of the boys billiards and Miss Moran is cutting cake. We’re going to have refreshments pretty soon, because the children have to go home early and it’s their club just as much as the old folks’, isn’t it? They ought to grow up into splendid neighbors, getting such a lovely start here. It’s the very best time I ever had, Mr. Archibald. It is really.” She flew on down the hall and Archibald found his way to the kitchen, where the Smiling Lady with a corps of willing helpers was making ready to feed the crowd. She was tired but radiant, and she waved a sticky knife at him as he appeared in the doorway.

“It isn’t a success. It’s a furor,” she called gaily. “Everybody wants to join.”

He crossed the room and stood watching her as she worked. They had been much together, in the weeks of preparation for this night, sharing plans and hopes and dreams, working, side by side, for the good of the neighbors they loved, for her own people whom he had made his own people too. It had been sweet, perilously sweet. There had been times when the words he must not say had trembled on his lips, times when he had felt a blessed surety that the closeness meant as much to her as to him; but he had held fast to his idea of honor. He liked Richard Meredith. The older man had won his friendship against all the heavy odds. There was something about him in which one believed, something behind the outward reserve that gripped and held. He so confidently expected decency that in his quiet there was a compelling force. One did not fail men like Meredith—nor women like the Smiling Lady; and so he had fought hard and kept faith with both of them.

But she was so dear—so unspeakably dear. His heart ached with its desire as he looked down at her; and, glancing up, as she sent one of her helpers away with a laden tray she surprised the desperate longing in his eyes. An answer leaped into her own face. Eyes, lips, cheeks, were flooded with it. For an instant, they stood so, alone in the crowd. Then as swiftly as it had come, the revelation faded from the girl’s face. Only the flush lingered as she turned to her work again; but there was a curious little thrill in her voice when she tried to greet Jerry and Rosy Johnston’s demand for chocolate cake, with her usual light gaiety.

“And you with three pieces of cake apiece tucked away inside of you this minute!” she protested.

“No toklate,” Jerry assured her solemnly.

“No toklate,” echoed Rosy, with an accent of reproach in her solemnity. The Smiling Lady swept the two into her arms and kissed both sticky faces with surprising fervor. The twins endured it. They even hugged her warmly, though hastily; but they did not, for a moment, lose sight of the main issue.

“_Now_ toklate!” they chorused hopefully, as they emerged from the embrace; and, laughing, pink cheeked, shining eyed, she cut them huge slices of chocolate cake and sent them on their way, smeared, gorged, but rejoicing.

“It’s all wrong,” she acknowledged shamefacedly. “They’ll be sick, I suppose; but; they did want it so dreadfully. I couldn’t say ‘no.’ ”

Then, realizing the recklessness of admitting weakness in the face of great longing, she dropped the cake knife and fled to the pantry, leaving Archibald exultant but tempest-tossed. He was sure now, absolutely sure. She loved him, not Meredith. Her face had said it, beyond shadow of doubt, in the moment when her guard was down. His heart sang for gladness—and yet he had no right to be glad. It would have been better if the unhappiness could all have been his. That she loved him would make no difference in the outcome of things. She would put away the love and keep her word to the man she had promised to marry. He was sure of that and though the sacrifice of two lives for one might be all wrong, though it might not be for the ultimate happiness of even the one, he knew that he would only hurt her, not shake her resolve, if he should fight for his own. And then there was Meredith. Meredith and he were friends now.

The man who could not have _his_ chocolate cake turned and went out through the kitchen door into the friendly, sheltering dark.

The house was ablaze with lights. Through the open windows came a stream of sound, laughter, chatter of voices, the click of billiard balls, the clatter of dishes, the music of the phonograph, the shuffle and tap of dancing feet. The Valley was neighboring happily, whole-heartedly, as it never had neighbored before; but, out in the night, beyond reach of the far-flung light, the man who had brought the thing about leaned his arms upon the top rail of a fence, hid his face against them and fought hard against old enemies, against bitterness and discouragement and a loneliness of which he had almost lost the trick, in months of living among neighbors.

There was an autumnal chill in the air. The quiet stars looked down frostily from infinite heights. All the warm, companioning summer had slipped away.

Archibald straightened his shoulders and moved slowly toward the house. He had come to the end of summer’s trail.

There were two figures on the side door steps and Archibald caught a few words in a man’s voice. He veered away hastily, smiling a little, as he went toward the front door. Joe Trevor was unquestionably “courting”! To be alone with the one girl and to have the right to speak!—Lucky Joe!—even though Deacon Ransom was in the offing.

It was long after midnight, before festivities flagged and the older folk began to talk of homegoing; but Archibald and Nora Moran did not come within speaking distance again, until the final ebbing surge of the crowd flung them together in the big assembly room on the main floor. Good-bys had begun and the two stood side by side, shaking the hands of crowding neighbors and smiling into the friendly faces. Suddenly a boy’s voice shouted “Three cheers for Mr. Archibald!” The homegoers turned back and gave the cheers with a will.

“Speech! Speech!” Dr. Fullerton called. The cry was taken up and echoed through the house.

Archibald’s face reddened but there was a fine glow of happiness in it.

“I’m no talker, friends,” he said. His voice shook a little as he spoke. “I’m afraid I couldn’t even paint what I feel. It’s the sort of thing there’s no way of telling; but there’s one thing I do want to say. The Valley has given me more than I ever can pay; and, if you like Neighborhood House, I’m very happy; for I’ve had a hand in it. Miss Moran and Mr. Meredith and Dr. Fullerton and I have worked together to make the thing possible; but, though Miss Moran started me on the right track, it was Peggy O’Neill who taught me to neighbor. Neighborhood House came out of Pegeen’s heart. If you must thank somebody, thank her.”

“Pegeen! Pegeen! Peggy! Peg!” The whole crowd was calling—men, boys, women, girls—calling for Pegeen. Out on the stairs, where, with Richard Meredith, she had been caught in the crush, the small girl clung to the baluster, sobbing with excitement.

“Come, Peg. They want you.” Meredith lifted her in his arms, carried her down the steps and through the close pressing throng to where Archibald and the Smiling Lady stood, and set her on a chair beside them. Standing so, she could look over the crowd and be seen by all.

“Peg! Peg! Peg!” The greeting came with a roar.

Pegeen stood, smiling, trembling, her sensitive child face all a-quiver with feeling.

“Say something to them, Peg,” Archibald urged. She threw out her arms in a swift, inclusive gesture.

“Oh, I love you all so much!” she cried, in a choked little voice. “I love every single blessed one of you!”

There was no doubting it. Her face told it even more convincingly than her voice. She loved them all—and they knew it. No matter whom she happened to be seeing to, she was the Valley’s Pegeen.

“Three cheers for Peg!” Jimmy Dawes whooped shrilly, and the crowd responded with deafening enthusiasm, while Pegeen clung to Archibald’s shoulder and laughed and cried and loved everybody harder than ever.

“Do you know,” she said to Mrs. Benderby that night, after she had knelt beside her bed for a long time. “I might exactly as well get up. I’m so terribly happy I can’t think of a single solitary thing to pray for.”

Richard Meredith stayed at the house under the maples on the night of the club house-warming; and when he came down to breakfast the next morning, he looked peculiarly tired and worn.

“You didn’t sleep well, Dick,” his hostess said reproachfully, as they went out to the veranda after breakfast.

“Well, no; not as well as usual. Too much festivity. The thing went off with a tremendous bang, didn’t it?”

She nodded laughing assent; but he noticed that she too showed signs of a wakeful night. Her eyes were tired and there were faint, purplish shadows beneath them.

“Wasn’t Pegeen adorable?” she said. A wave of tenderness swept from Meredith’s mouth to his eyes and tarried there.

“It’s chronic with Pegeen.” His voice, too, held tenderness. “I wonder what life will do with that big tender heart of hers.”

“Hurt it.”

It was seldom that the Smiling Lady was pessimistic. Meredith looked at her quickly and the tenderness in his face was not all for Pegeen.

“Yes,” he agreed, “and she’ll love her way straight through the hurt. I can’t believe that even life can be unrelentingly hard to Pegeen. Life isn’t often unrelentingly hard.”

For a moment or two, he stood silent, leaning against a veranda pillar and twirling a spray of belated honeysuckle bloom nervously in his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter than usual, and there was nothing more disturbing than grave friendliness in his face.

“I’ve been thinking, dear,” he said. “I’m afraid life’s been a bit hard for _you_, lately. All the love in the world won’t prevent mistakes; and I guess we’ve made mistakes—you and I—and your father.”

The girl in the willow chair looked up at him in swift question; but he went on without allowing her to speak.

“You see, your father was my friend. He believed in me and he couldn’t die easily, leaving you all alone; so, because he knew I loved you better than all the world, he planned that I should stand between you and the world. He meant it for your happiness—and I was glad and proud—and you were willing—but we were blind, all three of us. We did not look along the road ahead.”

The girl made a little gesture of protest. He dropped into a chair beside her, caught the slender brown hands, and held them.

“Look at me, dear,” he begged. “Surely you’re not afraid of me. You’re afraid of hurting me. That’s it—and you can’t save me from the hurt. I was afraid of it right at first, after your father went away. You were very young and I knew that youth called to youth; but so many younger men came and went away. It was easy to see you didn’t care for any of them; and, in time, I began to believe that I could make you happy. I loved you as well as any man could and you loved me—in a way—and trusted me, and there was no one else. But even then I had sense enough not to hurry you. So I waited—and then the thing I had almost forgotten to fear happened.”

The low, steady voice broke, and for a moment fell into silence. Then he went on:

“I felt, as soon as I came back here this summer, that things were different; and after a while I began to understand what the difference was; but I waited to make sure. Last night I knew. Tell me, Nora—We owe each other frankness—Tell me—there _is_ some one else now?”

She raised her eyes full of tears to meet his that were full of pain.

“Yes,” she said, and there was a sob in the word. “I love you dearly; but—there is some one else.”

He stooped his head and kissed the hands he held.

“Don’t cry, child. You mustn’t cry. You should have told me long ago, instead of waiting for my blundering brain to understand. It’s all right. When I stood on the club house stairs last night and looked at you and Archibald among your neighbors—you so proud of him and he so proud of you, and the neighbors so proud of both of you—I realized how absolutely right it was. It isn’t easy to give you up—but it would be harder to have you and not make you happy—and I’m not going to drop out of your life. We’ve been friends too long for that. Don’t worry over having hurt me. I’m not going to be miserable. I’ve rather a notion to try my hand at neighboring. Peggy’s flatteringly sure I’d do well at it, if I could get a good running start. Look happy, dear. I think you are going to _be_ very happy—but there’s one thing I want from Archibald and you. I want a share in Pegeen.”

She smiled at him through her tears.

“Daddy always told me you were the finest gentleman in the world,” she said, “and I think he was right.”

He went away after that, leaving her to the happiness she was too tender-hearted to show him, and he said good-by cheerfully, unemotionally; but he went down the road, with white lips and unseeing eyes, and, when he appeared at the door of the shack, Mrs. Benderby, who was sitting there, rose in alarm at the sight of his face.

“Mr. Archibald’s away for a walk.”

Meredith made no sign that he had heard.

“Pegeen,” he said unsteadily. “I want Pegeen.”

XV

Archibald’s walk had taken him Witch Hill way. Golden rod and wild asters were making merry along the roadside; and, in the wood’s heart, gleams of crimson and gold were glinting through the green. Summer was gone; but magic lingered; and the old enchantment worked in the man’s brain and heart. He had never followed that climbing road without the Smiling Lady at his side and his heart was sick for her, for the eyes with the sea waves in them, for the sun-kissed hair, and the smiling lips, and the singing voice, and all the warm gladness of her. He had known it would be like that; and yet he had come. There were days when wisdom did not wear the look of a virtue; and this afternoon, when Pegeen was busy with housework and even Wiggles had wandered away on important business of his own, the man who had been trying to be contented gave up trying and set out to keep tryst with memory, beside a hilltop well, where on a summer day a witch had sat, smiling and weaving spells.

He was in no hurry. There were mile-stones to count along the way. Here she had leaned to look into the brook; there she had stooped to mock a bird’s call. All the little green leaves whispered of her and the red and gold leaves flamed more warmly, remembering her. Archibald wondered whether he was sorry he had come—or glad. Glad, he thought; but it was a sorry gladness.

As he neared the top of the hill, he paused, half inclined to go back, without facing the empty seat under the old oak tree; but running away was a habit he had put aside. With a queer smile that was not gay, he quickened his steps, pushed aside the branches that had grown across the path, and came out into the open. There was the well. There was the great tree. And there, on the mossy bank, in the shadow, sat the witch, smiling and weaving spells!

She sprang to her feet, at sight of him. The smiles fled; but the spells worked on. The two looked into each other’s eyes, questioning, avowing. Without telling, other than the glad surrender in her face, the man knew that the world was changed for them, that the walls were down. All wonder, and great desire, he opened his arms; and, there in the enchanted wood, where “anything might happen,” they met “the Wonderful Thing.”

Pegeen was alone in her garden, when Archibald and the Smiling Lady went to her. As she saw them coming, the soberness that had hung about her since Richard Meredith had left her a half hour earlier melted away, and she ran to meet them with a joyful little cry. It was hard that the two she loved best must have their happiness at the cost of some one else; but, after all, it was glorious that they _were_ happy.

“We’ve been talking about you, Peg,” Archibald said, when they three and Wiggles were comfortably seated on the doorstep—which was quite wide enough for four, if nobody minded crowding—and nobody did—“How would you like to go to boarding school this fall?”

Peg’s face clouded.

“It wouldn’t be far away, dear,” the Smiling Lady interposed hastily, “and we’ll be living in town after Thanksgiving; so you could spend all your Sundays and holidays with us; and then we’d all be up here together next summer.”

“It’s awfully sweet of you,” Peg was polite but unconvinced. “I’m ever so much obliged; but I guess I’ll stay right here and see to Mrs. Benderby.”

“Oh, I’ll fix Mrs. Benderby up all right,” Archibald promised. “She can board with the Neals. They want a boarder and I’ll give her an allowance that will make her comfortable. Then she won’t have to work except when she feels just like it.”

Pegeen abandoned Mrs. Benderby to a life of idle luxury, but still thought she would stay in the Valley.

“You won’t need me.” Her voice was wistful as she made the admission. “Miss Moran will see to you—and I’m not jealous, not really, you know, only I’m sort of lonesomey. There’s sure to be somebody here in the Valley that’ll need me and I feel as if I’ve just got to have somebody to see to.”

“We’ll always need you, Peg—always.” Archibald’s arm went round her and drew her close. “Even Miss Moran can’t see to me so that I won’t need you. And there are plenty of people here in the Valley who’d be the better for having you with them; but there’s something you haven’t realized yet, dear. The whole world needs seeing to; and there aren’t many people like you who have a genius for doing it. You mustn’t be wasted on two or three neighbors, here in the Valley, when outside, beyond the hills, there are thousands and thousands needing what you could give them. Don’t you see, Peg? You’ve got to reach those poor unhappy thousands and help them. Other women are doing it—doing it wonderfully. Out in Chicago there’s a woman who must have been a girl with a heart like yours; and now she’s seeing to a whole city and to men and women and children out beyond that city, all over the world. She’s only one of the many; and there’s nothing they are doing that you can’t do, if you’ll work your way to it.

“That’s what Nora and I want to help you to; and school’s the first step toward it. What do you say, Pegeen?”

The child’s face was rapt, illumined. The great blue eyes were seeing visions.

“Oh, my stars!” she murmured longingly. “If I could—if I only could! Wouldn’t it be wonderful?—better than Jizo. Of course I’ll go to school, I’d love to.”

A flash of recollection swept across the future-searching eyes.

“But I’ve got to have time enough in between to see to Mr. Meredith,” she stipulated. “He needs me.”

THE END