CHAPTER X

PETER PREFERS THE PORCH

"You 're quite sure you want me?" asked Peter Bell.

"Quite sure," replied Murray Townsend. The two pairs of eyes looked into each other.

Peter's gaze shifted to his father. "I 'll do it under one condition," he said. "That father gives up factory work and goes to live at the old farm."

Mr. Harrison Townsend turned also toward Mr. Joseph Bell. He smiled slightly, noting the hesitation of the other man.

"It's time you and I retired, Bell," said he. "I 've been getting to the point for a long time. Let's make a bargain of it. If you 'll go back to the farm, I 'll come and spend a good share of my time there. I 'd like to help with the haying. I should enjoy watching the cows come home. I 'll venture to say I could drive a mowing-machine--for an hour or two."

The four men occupied the small rear porch of the house in Gay Street, looking out on Nancy's garden. Peter lay upon a couch, his leg in splints, his hands in bandages. After a few days at the hospital he had been brought home, to spend the long hours of his recovery where he could bear them best. The other three were close by, Murray nearest. He had put off making his proposition to Peter until he and his father could arrive at a perfect agreement as to every term of the offer.

Joseph Bell met his son's meaning gaze with understanding. He knew nothing counted with Peter as did the anxiety over his father's physical condition. He had kept his boy a long time upon the rack, because of his own unwillingness to give up his old work. But the work was taken away from him now; there would be a considerable interval before the Armstrongs would be ready for him again; and he could hardly think of trying for a new position. Meanwhile, the haying season was approaching. He thought with longing of the scent of the newly cut grass. He could not work hard out under the sun, he knew that; but--he could play at work. And his friend, Harrison Townsend, rich man though he was, was offering to play, too.

He looked at Peter and smiled, under his short gray beard. Peter smiled back entreatingly. Slowly Joseph Bell nodded. "All right, Peter," he said. "I'll let you have your way at last."

For a moment Peter could not speak. He lay with dropped eyelids, fighting lest the sudden relief from the long strain should unman him before these who had been paying tribute to his manhood. But after a short space he looked from Mr. Townsend to his son.

"I 'll come," said he, and forgetting his bandaged hands, started to hold one out. Then he smiled whimsically, and added in an odd tone, "If you 're not afraid of the bad omen in taking on a man with a pair of hands like these?"

"Not much, when we remember what put them in that shape!" declared Murray, in a tone of great satisfaction; and his father gave an emphatic assent.

"What do you think 's going to happen _now_?" cried Nancy, rushing out upon Peter's porch, a week later.

"Give it up. But nothing can surprise me, after recent events," replied Peter, removing his gaze for a moment from the morning newspaper pinned up in front of him to the excited face of his sister, but looking immediately back again at the absorbing column of business news he had been with some difficulty perusing. His hands had been slow in recovering from the severe injuries they had received.

"This will. Somebody's going to be married."

"Remarkable. But such events have occurred before in the history of nations," replied her brother, abstractedly.

"Not at the Townsend house, for Murray married Jane over here. Ah, ha! I thought you 'd give me your undivided attention at last," crowed Nancy, triumphantly.

Peter did his best to look unconcerned, but his heart had begun to thump quite suddenly and disconcertingly. He waited. He forgot the newspaper.

"Have n't you noticed how devoted Brant Hille has been for the last year?" Nancy demanded.

"No."

"Then you 've been blind."

"I 've been busy."

"How oddly you speak! Is your throat sore?"

"Don't tease, Nan. I'm not up to it." It was no use trying to look unconcerned.

Nancy saw, and took pity on him, as she might not have done if he had been upon his feet. "It's Olive, then--though I believe I could have made you think it was Shirley. It's not Brant Hille's fault that it is n't, I can tell you that. Olive's going to marry an Englishman she met last summer abroad--Mr. Arthur Crewe of Manchester. It's just announced. The wedding 's to be the first of July. You 'll be on crutches, Peter. Is n't that lucky? You can go."

"Oh, yes, I 'll dance at the wedding!" agreed Peter, looking as if the shot that missed him had come uncomfortably close.

"It's going to be a big wedding--a gorgeous one. Is n't that like Olive? Shirley's to be maid of honour, and there 'll be six bridesmaids. Six ushers--and you 'd have been one if you had n't broken your leg. Olive told me so."

"Compensation in all things," murmured Peter.

"The best man is the Englishman's brother. Olive says he 's stunning. Would n't it be funny if he and Shirley should take a fancy to each other? The maid of honour and the best man often do, you know."

"Very interesting. I should say you had been taking a course of novels, you 're so full of possible plots." And Peter eyed his newspaper as if he preferred its practical columns to his sister's outlines of sentimental situations. Nancy laughed.

"Shirley's to have a vacation, for a week before the wedding. Perhaps she 'll find time to get over to see you oftener, then."

"She 's been over to see me."

"How many times?"

"Twice."

"For how long?"

"Five minutes, the first time, three, the second."

"How many other people present?"

"A dozen or so."

"Have a satisfactory visit?"

"Oh, very!" Peter hit the newspaper with his elbow, and it fell down. "What have you got it in for me this morning for, Sis?" he demanded, wrathfully.

Nancy stopped laughing and looked serious. "It won't hurt you any. It may wake you up. I just want you to know that I 'm honestly and truly worried about Brant Hille."

Then she vanished, and Peter lay wishing he had two good legs, that he might get up and go and see for himself just how much all this meant. He read the newspaper no more that morning; it lay forgotten on the floor where it had fallen.

The weeks went by slowly enough to the convalescent, impatient to begin his new work, and full of plans for it. Long talks with Murray helped most to make the waiting endurable, and the two young men grew to know and respect each other still more deeply than ever before. Everybody was kind. Both Mr. and Mrs. Townsend came often to see Peter; and even Olive, although at times distraught with the business of preparation for her approaching marriage, found a half-hour now and then in which to slip across to Gay Street and talk with him.

At these times she found decided refreshment in his society, for Peter's ideas on the subject of matrimony were both novel and sensible, and in after years she often found herself remembering and putting into practice one or another of his quizzical maxims, founded on much shrewd observation.

"You are coming to my wedding, you know," she said, on the last of these occasions, three days before the date set for that event. "And I want you at dinner the evening before, so you may get to know Mr. Crewe, and he you, as well as you can in one short evening. I'm so disappointed he could n't be here all this week, as he planned."

"Dinners?--weddings?--on these sticks?" scoffed Peter, that day promoted to crutches and finding them as yet merely invitations to ironic humour.

"Certainly. If you make them an excuse for staying away, I shall never forgive you."

"Please let me off from the dinner. If you 'll put me in the porch, and let me be found there afterward, I 'll agree, but I can't hobble out to the table on crutches of torture."

"Not even to take out Shirley?" Olive glanced at him mischievously, and saw him colour slightly as he answered:

"That would be an inducement if anything would. But I 'm sure you 'll adopt my point of view if I beg you to."

"Then I shall have to send her in with Geoffrey Crewe--or Brant Hille."

"Will the men stay behind when the ladies come out?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then I prefer the porch," persisted Peter, comfortably; and Olive acknowledged that he had chosen the wiser part.

So on Tuesday evening, when Shirley, in the midst of a rainbow-tinted group of young women, floated airily out from the brightly lighted and oppressively warm dining-room to the cool, softly lighted recesses of the great porch, it was with a sense of refreshing change that she went straight to the big chair by a pillar, where Peter sat waiting for her. As she dropped into a low seat by his side, she thought she had never seen him show to greater advantage, although he could not rise to do her honour, and could only say, with a straight, upward glance, "This is kind of you. I 've been thinking for an hour how you 'd look when you came out that door."

"Do I look it?"

"My imagination fell a long way short. It's months since I 've seen you in this sort of thing."

He indicated her gauzy evening frock of pale rose-colour. A wreath of tiny rosebuds crowned her hair; a little silver basket of roses, ribbon-tied, lay in her lap, a dinner favour like those the others carried, but suiting her attire with special charm.

"Do you remember our first party?" asked Shirley, smiling at him.

"I certainly do," Peter assured her. "You had on a white dress and pink ribbons--pink slippers, too. You came up and slid your hand into mine, because you saw I was feeling lonely. You were jolly kind to me that night, and I never forgot it. I suppose I was a pitiful object, standing there looking on, all by myself."

"You did n't look pitiful at all, but rather superior, if I remember, like a big St. Bernard, condescending to watch the antics of a lot of frolicsome terriers."

Peter threw back his head and laughed low, with a gleam of white teeth. Whatever there might have been that was odd about Peter's appearance at that first party, there could be no criticism of his looks to-night.

Olive, taking critical note of Shirley's companion, owned that she should feel no hesitation in presenting him to Mr. Arthur Crewe and his brother as a connection of the family. When that moment arrived, the American and the Englishmen appeared to take a frank liking to one another on the spot, for the Crewes both sat down to talk, and Peter, sitting up, met them half-way in a cordial effort to become acquainted in the brief time allotted them.

"Will you tell me what you think of him?" It was Olive, slipping for a moment toward the end of the evening into the chair by Peter's, he being temporarily left to himself.

"I think he's a man," said Peter, heartily, and to the point. "There 's nothing better I could say than that, is there?"

"I suppose not, being one yourself. A woman would think it necessary to add a number of complimentary things about his appearance and his manner and all that."

"I could do that, at a pinch," said Peter, smiling, "for my memory would tell me that they were all right, though I thought nothing about them at the time. I was looking to see what it was you were going to marry, and I found out--as far as a half-hour's talk would show it. I wish you great happiness, Olive--and I believe you 'll get it."

"Thank you," and Olive was gone again, being in constant demand, as the central figure of the occasion. She found time, however, to ask much the same question of Arthur Crewe concerning Peter Bell, and received so nearly the same sort of answer that she laughed, and told him of the similarity in the two estimates.

"I am flattered," said Crewe, "for I don't know when I 've met a young American I 've liked better. He 's both frank and reserved--a combination which appeals to me. It looks a bit as if you were going to have him in the family, I believe you told me? I sincerely hope you will--though, if you don't mind my saying it, now that I see your sister, I feel as if I 'd like to leave Geoffrey here for the summer, with deliberate intention. I fancy it's too late for that, though."

"I 'm glad you like Peter. It would be too unkind to the family to take more than one daughter to England."

"See how well Geoffrey appreciates his privileges?" whispered Crewe, indicating his brother, as that personable young man went by with Shirley, his manner suggesting concentration of attention upon the subject in hand. Then he looked in Peter's direction. "The chap in the chair isn't deserted, is he? I think each bridesmaid has taken a turn at him, and he seems equal to them all."

However this might have been, Peter found himself thoroughly weary at the end of the evening, and glad to be put into a wheeled chair and taken home, ignominious as that mode of departure seemed. Arthur Crewe insisted on walking at Peter's elbow, all the way round to the house in Gay Street and the two parted with friendly warmth of good-will on each side.

According to Nancy, who kept Peter informed, Geoffrey Crewe neglected none of the opportunities afforded him by his brief visit, and in one way and another Shirley was kept busy all the next day. The wedding was to take place in the evening, so Peter had plenty of time to rest and reflect on the advantages an able-bodied man has over a temporary cripple, as he caught glimpses, from time to time, of such sights as Shirley driving off in the trap with the younger Englishman, or sitting beside Brant Hille as he took a portion of the bridal party away for a spin in his big green car.

Olive had chosen to be married at home, so every effort at effective decoration had been expended upon the house and grounds in Worthington Square. For a hot night in July, it was expected that the outdoor arrangements would be most popular, and the great lawn, with its natural beauties of landscape-gardening enhanced by the devices of electricity and Chinese lanterns, flowers and bunting, was like a fairyland.

"If a fellow's will amounted to anything, a scene like this would make him get on his legs, if both of them were only just out of the repair-shop!" groaned Peter, as he was brought through the gates by Rufus at an early hour. He took note of the paths winding away through the grounds, made enticing to promenades by every witchery of art, and his imagination already pictured Shirley, in her maid-of-honour attire, floating away down one of them, devotedly attended by Brant Hille or Geoffrey Crewe.

"Cheer up. The wounded-hero role is awfully taking with the girls, you know," consoled Rufus, divining the tantalising effect of this stage setting upon his handicapped brother.

"Wounded hero be shot!" retorted Peter.

"It would be the most soothing thing that could happen to him. Would you like to change places with him, instead of being able to dash about in search of what you want?"

"I shouldn't mind, if my crippled condition seemed to have the hypnotic effect yours did last evening. According to Nancy, the bride-elect was n't in it with you at posing as an interesting figure. She said the bridesmaids were four deep around you."

"Kind-hearted things--they were nearly the finish of me. When I become a society man please notify my family. I shall not have the brains, myself."

"I will. Where will you be placed for the ceremony?"

"Behind a screen of palms, if possible," requested Peter. He did not get his wish literally, but by grace of a special plea to one of the ushers, he was put in an inconspicuous place of great advantage, where he could not only view the entire scene, but could watch the bridal party during its whole course, from stair-landing to improvised altar beneath a vine-covered canopy at one end of the long drawing-room.

Olive made a strikingly beautiful bride, as her friends had known she would, and her bridesmaids were nearly all more than ordinarily fair--or seemed so in their picturesque garb. But to Peter, in all the bridal party there was only one face and figure worth more than a moment's glance. And when the maid-of-honour finally turned away from the altar to take her position by the side of the best man for the ceremonies of reception and congratulation which followed upon the conclusion of the marriage service, the one onlooker who could not get up and take his place in the gay company forming in line to greet the bridal party, was feeling more than ever like a stranded canal-boat in the company of a fleet of racing yachts.

They came to him, however, when they were free--Olive Crewe and her husband, Shirley and Mr. Geoffrey Crewe, several of the bridesmaids, and even Brant Hille, and Peter said all the things that were expected of him, and said them well. He might be no "society man," as he had said, but he possessed the self-command and quickness of wit which take the place of familiarity with such situations. Arthur Crewe liked him better than ever as the two shook hands, and Peter spoke his quiet but earnest words of felicitation and prophecy for the future.

"I 'm sorry I can't be here to see you when you get about again," said Crewe, at parting. "I can quite fancy the energy and enthusiasm you put into your work."

"I don't need to see you at yours to be sure you 're a steam-engine both at project and performance," responded Peter, smiling.

"We 'd work jolly well together, I venture to say," said the Englishman. "Perhaps we'll have the chance some day."

"I wish we might," and Peter gave the friendly hand a hearty grip. "Good-bye--good-bye. The best of luck."

Peter sat alone upon the Townsend porch, waiting for someone to come and take him home. Everything was over; the bridal pair had gone; the last lingerers along the lantern-lighted paths among the shrubbery had straggled in and reluctantly taken their departure. The big marquee in the centre of the lawn, where supper had been served, was empty except for scurrying caterer's men. The string orchestra stationed in the summer-house had at last stopped playing, mopped their perspiring heads, and packed up their instruments. Mrs. Townsend had betaken herself to her room in a state of collapse, requiring the attendance of her husband and Jane; and Murray paced up and down the upper hall, thinking to himself that he had never before realised what unpleasant things weddings were when they occurred in one's own family.

As for Shirley, no one had laid eyes upon her since the moment when the Townsend landau had driven away, with everybody throwing confetti, and Olive, leaning out, had flung her bouquet straight at her sister's feet. Everybody had laughed as Shirley picked it up, but the girl had run away with the white bridal roses crushed close against her breast, her lips set tight and her eyes brilliant with unshed tears. She and Olive had been more to each other during this last year than ever before--and England, as a place of permanent residence, seemed a very, very long way off.

It was odd that at the last everybody seemed to have forgotten Peter. Ross, laughing with a pretty girl, had walked directly past him and gone home, unmindful. Peter had supposed he would come back, but he did not. The servants were busy, the quiet of the deserted porch restful, and Peter leaned his head against one of the tall white pillars, thinking less of the evening that was past than of the future that was, coming--so soon as he could walk sturdily about once more.

Up through the narrowest and least conspicuous path of all, one which few of the wedding revelers had noticed because its entrance was designedly unlighted, came a slim white figure with bent head. Peter, gazing dreamily out over the lawn, saw it at once, and recognised it with a start of gladness.

Shirley came on across the velvety grass without looking up, and slowly ascended the porch steps with her eyes still cast down. Reaching the top, she turned about and stood leaning against the pillar, on the other side of which was Peter's chair, without noticing his presence, staring off at the rainbow-tinted lights, and seeing a little misty halo about each one.

When she had stood motionless there for some time, Peter spoke, so quietly that he hardly startled her. She turned about with a little choking breath, said, "Oh, is it you?" in a tone of relief, and resumed her former position.

"I wish I could help make it easier," said Peter, very gently. "You 've made things easier for me so many times, first and last."

"You do," said Shirley, in a half-whisper.

"Do I? I'm glad. But how?"

"Just by being there."

Peter's face lighted up. This was a most unusual tribute from his independent little friend. He got slowly to his crutches, and with a greater effort than he had yet made, came stumping round to her side of the pillar, and stood near her, leaning against a great green tub which held a towering palm. He felt somehow as if he must be literally upon his feet in order to stand by her in this crisis.

Both were silent again for some minutes, until suddenly Shirley looked round at him, and exclaimed, "Why, I mustn't let you stand like this! Please sit down again."

"Not unless you do."

"Why? I 'm not tired."

"But I want to be near you. I 've done nothing all the evening but envy the men who could get about and do things for you."

"You 'll soon be walking off at your usual breakneck pace," said Shirley, the colour coming back with a rush into cheeks which had been pale since Olive went.

"To the office--yes--your office. I can hardly wait. But I wonder sometimes if I can keep my wits and do my work there."

"Why not?"

"Don't you know why?"

Shirley's little moist ball of a handkerchief was all at once being clutched very tight in her fingers. She shook her head.

"I think you do. I think you must know why I 'm half out of my head with the prospect of being manager of the new house of Townsend & Son."

"I 'm glad that you like the prospect," said Shirley, in the lowest of voices, and looking anywhere but at Peter.

"Are you? Do _you_ like it?"

"Very much."

Peter forgot his crutches, and one of them fell with a rattle at Shirley's feet. She would have bent to pick it up, but he prevented her, and laboriously reached for it himself.

"I 'm not going," said Peter, deliberately, "to let you wait on me, when all in life I want is the chance to serve you--all my life."

"It would be a very poor partnership," said Shirley, in a half-whisper, after a minute--and Peter's heart stopped beating--"if the serving were all on one side"--and Peter's heart went thumping on again, though not in proper rhythm.

"Partnership! _Is_ it a partnership, Shirley?"

She nodded. But she moved three steps out of reach. Peter made a hasty movement, and both crutches slipped down to the floor with a crash, and slid away off the edge of the porch to the ground. Peter glared after them. Then he looked at Shirley, standing there, rose-cheeked, her tear-wet eyes now full of laughter.

"Oh, _please_ get them for me, dear!" he pleaded. "Or--no--never mind the crutches! Just--_come here_!"