Part 5

“I don't care in the least for that!” she declared; “only one thing is really important to me... something, oh, so different.” Suddenly she laid her hand upon his sleeve, and, pitifully white, faced him. “I've had the beautifullest feeling about you,” she whispered; “Anthony, tell me truly, are you... good?” A sob rose uncontrollably in his throat, and his eyes filled with tears that spilled over his cheeks. For a moment he struggled to check them, then, unashamed, slipped onto his knees before her and held her tightly in his arms. “No one in the world can say that I am not--what you mean.”

She stooped, and sat beside him on the stone, holding his hand close to her slight body. “My dream,” she said simply. “I didn't understand it at first; you see, I was only a child. And then when I grew older, and--and heard things, it seemed impossible. That sort of goodness only bored other girls... they liked men of the world, men with a past. I thought perhaps I was only morbid, and lost trust in--in you.”

“It was a kind of accident,” he admitted; “I never thought about it the way you did. It seemed young to me.”

“I don't believe it was an accident in the least,” she insisted. A mist rose greyly from the darker surface of the stream, and settled cold and clammy about Anthony's face. It drew about them in wavering garlands, growing steadily denser. Eliza was sitting now pressed against him, and he felt a shiver run through her. “You are cold!” he cried instantly, and rose, lifting her to her feet. She smiled, in his arms, and he bent down and kissed her. She clung to him with a deep sigh, and met his lips steadily with her own. The mist slipped like a veil over Eliza's head and drops of moisture shone in her hair. Anthony turned and unfastened the canoe; and, suddenly conscious of the length of their delay, he urged it with long sweeps over the stream. Beyond the lilacs, distilling their potent sweetness in the dark, Eliza was motionless, silent, a flicker of white in the gloom.

They swept almost immediately into the broad reach where they had started. The lights from the windows of a boat house, the voices of the others, streamed gaily over the water. He felt Eliza tremble as he lifted her ashore.

“It's happiness,” she told him; “I am ever so warm inside.”

XVII

BY his plate at the lunch table he discovered, the following day, a small, lavender envelope stamped and addressed to Anthony Ball, Esq. He slipped it hastily into his pocket, and managed but a short-lived pretext of eating. Then, with the letter yet unopened, he left Ellerton, and penetrated into the heart of the countryside.

He stopped, finally, under a fence that crossed a hill, on a slope of wild strawberries. The hill fell away in an unbroken sweep of undulating, blue-green wheat; trees filled the hollow, with a roof and thread of silver water drawn through the lush leaves; on either hand chocolate loam bore the tender ripple of young com; and beyond, crossed by the shifting shadows of slow-drifting clouds, hill and wood and pasture spread a mellow mosaic of summer.

He tore open the envelope with a reluctant delight. At the top of the sheet E D was stamped severely in mauve. “My very dear,” he read. He stopped, suddenly unable to proceed; the countryside swam in his vision; he gulped an ecstatic, convulsive breath, and proceeded:

“It's too wonderful--I can't realize that you exist, and that I have found you in such a great world. Isn't it strange how real dreams are; just now the real world seems the dream, and my dear home, my mother, shadows compared to the thoughts that fill my brain of you, you, you.

“But I am writing mostly to tell you something that, perhaps, you didn't fully understand yesterday--and yet I think you must have--that, if you really want me, I am absolutely your own. I couldn't help it if I wanted to, and, oh, I don't want to! I let a man at Etretat kiss me, and I am glad I did, for it made me understand that I must wait for you.

“I won't write any more now because my head aches. From Eliza who loves you utterly.” Then he saw that she had written on the following page: “Don't worry about money and the future; I have my own, all we shall need for years, and we can do something together.”

He laid the letter beside him on the grass. The welling song of a catbird sounded unsupportably sweet, and a peaceful column of smoke rose bluely from the chimney below: it carried him in imagination to a dwelling set in a still, green garden, where birds filled the branches with melody, and Eliza and himself walked hand in hand and kissed. Night would gather in about their joy, their windows would shine with the golden lamp of their seclusion, their voices mingle... sink... sacred.

He dreamed for a long while; the sunlight vanished from the slope below him, from the darkling trees, touched only the farthest hills with a rosy glow. As the sun sank an errant air whispered in the wheat, and scattered the pungent aroma of the wild strawberries. A voice called thinly from the swales, and cows gathered indistinctly about a gate. Anthony rose. The world was one vast harmony in which he struck the highest, happiest note. Beyond the near hills the lilac glitter of the Ellerton lights sprang palely up on the blue dusk. As he made his way home, Anthony's brain teemed with delightful projects, with anticipation, the thought of the house in the hollow--abode of love, steeped in night.

XVIII

ELLIE was in the garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated dinner. “Father wants to see you,” she called; “at the Club, of course.” He wondered absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted. The rooms occupied the second story of the edifice that housed the administration of the county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd that moved noisily toward an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was silent, save for the click of invisible billiard balls.

His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man woke, clearing his throat sharply. “Well, Anthony,” he nodded. Anthony found a chair.

His father leaned forward, regarding him with a keen, kindly gaze. “I'm told the garage has gone up,” he commenced.

“Sam took his car away; it was Alfred's infernal tinkering; he can't leave a machine alone.”

“Did you close affairs satisfactorily, stop solvent?”

“There's a little debt of about six dollars.”

The other sought his wallet, and, removing a rubber band, counted six dollars into Anthony's hand. “Meet that in the morning.” He leaned hack, tapping the wallet with deliberate fingers. “I suppose you have no plan for the immediate future,” he observed.

“Nothing right now.”

“I have one for you, though, as 'right now' as this week.”

Anthony listened respectfully, his thoughts still dwelling upon the beauty of the dusk without, of life. “You have tried a number of things in the past few years without success. I have started you in a small way again and again, only to observe the familiar course of a failure inevitable from your shiftless habits. You are not a bad boy, but you have no ability to concentrate, like a stream spread all over the meadow--you have no course. You're a loiterer.”

“Yes, sir,” said Anthony, from the midst of his abstraction.

“You are too old for that now, either it must stop at once, or you will become definitely worthless. I am going to make a determined effort--I am going to send you to California, your brother-in-law writes that he can give you something.”

The term California sounded in Anthony's brain like the unexpected clash of an immense hell. It banished his pleasant revery in disordered shreds, filling him with sudden dismay.

“I telegraphed Albert yesterday,” the even tones continued, “and have his answer in my pocket. You are to go out to him immediately.”

“But that's impossible,” Anthony interrupted; “it just can't be done.”

“Why not?”

He found himself completely at a loss to give adequate expression to his reason for remaining in Ellerton. His joy was so new that he had scarcely formulated it to himself, it evaded words, defied definition--it was a thing of dreams, a vision in a shining garment, a fountain of life at the bottom of his heart.

“Come; why not?”

“I don't want to go away from Ellerton... just now.”

“That is precisely what you must do. I can understand your desire to remain close by your mother--she has an excuse for you, assistance, at every turn.”

“That isn't the reason; it's... it's,” he boggled horribly, “a girl.”

“Indeed,” his father remarked dryly.

Anthony shrunk painfully from the unsympathetic voice of the elder. A new defiance of his father welled hotly within him, corrupting the bonds of discipline that had held him lovingly to his parent throughout the past. A chasm opened between them; and, when Anthony spoke again, it was with a voice of insipient insubordination.

“It isn't the silly stuff you think,” he told the other; “I'm engaged!”

“What on?” pithily came the inquiry. “Unfortunately I can't afford the luxury of a daughter-in-law. I thought you were something more of a man than to bring your wife into your mother's house.”

“I sha'n't; we can get along until I... find work.”

“Do you mean that your wife will support you?”

“Not altogether; she will help until--until--” he stopped miserably before the anger confronting him in the other's gaze: it was useless to explain, he thought; But if his father laughed at him, at his love, he would leave the room and never see him again. “I can't see why money is so damned holy!” he broke out; “why it matters so infernally where it comes from; it seems to me only a dirty detail.”

“It is the measure of a man's honor,” the elder Ball told him inexorably; “how it is made or got stamps you in the world. I am surprised to hear that you would even consider taking it from a woman, surprised and hurt. It shows all the more clearly the necessity for your going at once into a hard, healthy existence. Your mother will get you ready; a couple of days should do it.”

“... all unexpected,” Anthony muttered; “I must think about it, see some one. I'll--I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it,” he enunciated more hopefully, “to-morrow--”

“Entirely unnecessary,” his father interrupted, “nothing to be gained by delay or further talk. The thing's arranged.”

“I think I won't go,” Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the paper, smoothing out the creases. “Very well,” he replied; “I dare say your mother will do something for you.--Women are the natural source of supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming.” A barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from the other.

Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled at him with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket, remembered her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in the square below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain beat on his consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing. A sea of misery swept over him in which he struggled like a spent swimmer--Eliza was the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It wasn't fair--a sob almost mastered him--to ask him to go away now, when he had but found her.

“It's not Siberia,” he heard his father say, “nor a life sentence; if this--this 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in California than idle in Ellerton.”

“I don't want to go away from her,” he whispered; “the world's such a hell of a big, empty place... things happen.” He dashed some bright tears from his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through the window at the tops of the maple trees--a black tracery of foliage against the lights below.

“Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity to return.” Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony, in the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to the gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room.

XIX

IT was Saturday night, Bay Street was thronged, the stores brilliantly lit. He saw in the distance the red and blue jars of illuminated water that advertised Doctor Allhop's drugstore, and turned abruptly on his heel. In the seclusion of his room he once more read Eliza's letter: it was a superlative document of sweet commonsense, the soul of nobility, of wisdom, of tenderness, of divine generosity. In its light all other suggestions, considerations, courses, seemed tawdry and ignoble. The boasted wisdom of a world of old men, of material experience, seemed only the mean makeshifts for base and unworthy ends. The ecstasy sweeping from his heart to his brain, the delicious fancies, the rare harmonies, that haunted him, the ineffable perfume of invisible lilacs--these were the true material from which to fashion life, these were the high things, the important. And youth was the time to grasp them: a swift premonition seized him of the coldness, the ineptitude, the disease, of old age.

For the first time in his life he thought of death in definite connection with himself: he was turning out the gas, preparatory for sleep; and, at the instantaneous darkness, he thought, with a gasp of fear, it would be like that. He stood trembling as a full realization of disillusion mastered him; all his hot, swinging blood, the instinctive longing for perpetuation aroused in him by Eliza, in sick revolt. Fearsome images filled his mind... the hole in the clay--closed; putrefaction; the linked mass of worms. In feverish haste he lit the gas; his body was wet with sweat; his heart pounding unsteadily.

The familiar aspect of his room somewhat reassured him; the thought dimmed, slowly conquered by the flooding tide of his living. Then he realized that Eliza too must die, and his terrors vanished before a loving pity for her earthly fragility. Finally, death itself assumed a less threatening guise; peace stole imperceptibly into his heart. A vague belief, new born of his passion, that dying was not the end of all, rose within him--there must be a struggle, heights to win, gulfs to cross, a faith to keep. With steady fingers he turned out the gas.--Eliza was his faith: he fell into a sound slumber.

XX

HE made no comment when, in the morning, his mother made tentative piles of his clothing. He would see Eliza that afternoon, and then announce their decision. His mother attempted to fathom his feeling at the prospect of the journey, the separation from Ellerton; but, the memory of his father's cutting words still rankling in his mind, he evaded her questioning.

“If you are going to be miserable out there,” she told him, enveloping him in the affection of her steady, grey gaze, “something else might be found. I can always help--”

“You don't understand these things,” he interrupted her brusquely, annoyed by his father's prescience. They were sitting in her sewing room, a pile of his socks at her side. She wore her familiar, severe garb, the steelbowed spectacles directed upon the needle flashing steadily in her assured fingers. She was eternally laboring for her children, Anthony realized with a pang of affection. His earliest memories were charged with her unflagging care, the touch of her smooth and tireless hands, the defense of her energetic voice.

He must tell her about his engagement, but not until he had seen Eliza again, when something definite would be agreed upon. It was immensely difficult for him to talk about the subject nearest his heart-words diminished and misrepresented it: he wanted to brood over it, secretly, for days.

XXI

LATER he dressed with scrupulous exactitude, and proceeded directly to Hydrangea House. The afternoon was sultry, the air full of the soothing drone of summer insects, the dust of the road rose in heavy puffs about his feet. He crossed the stream and fields, saturated with sunlight, and came to the pillared portico of his destination.

“Miss Dreen,” Anthony said, stepping forward into the opening door.

“Miss Dreen cannot see you,” the servant returned without hesitation. Anthony drew back, momentarily repelled; but, before he could question this announcement, he heard grinding wheels on the gravel drive. Turning, he saw a motor stop, and Mrs. Dreen descend, followed by a man with a somber, deeply-scored countenance. Anthony moved forward eagerly as she mounted the steps. “Mrs. Dreen,” he asked; “can you tell me-” She passed with a confused, blank face, without stopping or acknowledging his salutation, and the door closed softly upon her and her companion.

A momentary flame of anger within Anthony quickly sank to cold consternation. Eliza had told her parents and they had dismissed the idea and him. It was evident they had forbidden her to see him. He walked indecisively down the steps, still carrying his hat, and stopped mechanically on the driveway. He gazed blindly over a brilliant, scarlet bed of geraniums, over the extended lawn, the rolling hills of Ellerton. Then his courage returned, stiffened by the obstacles which apparently confronted him: he would show them that he was not to be lightly dismissed; no power on earth should separate him from Eliza.

The servant had only obeyed Mrs. Dreen's direction; Eliza, he was certain, had no choice in the matter of his reception. Then, unexpectedly, he remembered his father's words, the latter's contemptuous reference to all appeals to women. He must go to Mr. Dreen, and straightforwardly state his position, tell him... _what?_ Why, that he, Anthony Ball, loved Eliza, desired her, had come to take her away... _where?_ In all the world he had no place prepared for her. He drove his hand into his pocket, and discovered a quarter of a dollar and some odd pennies--all that he possessed. Suddenly he laughed, a short, sorry merriment that stopped in a dry gasp. He turned and ran, stumbling over the grass, through the hot dust, toward Ellerton. Two years, he thought, California; California and two years.

XXII

ANTHONY sat late into the night composing an explanatory and farewell letter to Eliza:

“Your family would laugh at me,” he wrote; “I couldn't show them a dollar. And although my father has done a great deal for me he wouldn't do this. I couldn't expect him to. Mother might help, she is like you, but I could not very well live between two women, could I? The only hope is California for a couple of years. You know how much I want to stay with you, how hard this is to write, when our engagement, everything, is so new and wonderful. But it would only be harder later. If I had seen you this afternoon I would never have left you. I am going to-morrow night. This will come to you in the morning, and I will be home if you send me a message. I would like to see you again before I go away in order to come back to you forever. I would like to hear you say again that you love me. Sometimes I think it never really happened. If I don't see you again before I leave, remember I shall never change, I shall love you always and not forget the least thing you said. I wish now I had studied so that I could write better. Remember that I belong to you, when you want me I will come to you if it's around the world, I would come to you if I were dead I think. Good-bye, dear, dear Eliza, until tomorrow anyhow, and that's a long while to be without seeing you or hearing your voice.”

At the announcement of his agreement to go West, the attitude of his father had changed greatly; his hand continually sought Anthony's shoulder; he consulted gravely, as it were with an equal, with regard to trains, precautions, new climates. His mother busied herself over his clothes, her rare speech brusque and hurried. To Anthony she seemed suddenly old, _grey_; her hands trembled, and necessary stitches were uneven.

He was aware that the mail for Hydrangea House was collected before noon, and he sat expectantly in the room overlooking the street. It was dark and cool, there were creamy tea roses in the Canton jar now, while in the street it was hot and bright. A sere engraving of Joseph Bonaparte in regal robes gazed serenely from the wall. The hour for lunch arrived without any message from Eliza. Throughout the afternoon he dropped his pressing affairs find descended to the street... nothing.

His heart grew heavy with doubts, with fears--his letter had been intercepted; or, if Eliza had received it, her answer had been diverted. Perhaps she had at last realized that he was unfit for her love. The impulse almost mastered him to go once more to Hydrangea House, but pride prevented; his unhappiness hardened, grew bitter, suspicious. Then he again read her letter, and its patent sincerity swept away all doubt; Eliza was unwavering; if not now he would find her at the end of two years, unchanged, warm, beautiful.

He was summoned to dinner, where he found the delicacies he especially liked. The plates were liberally filled, all made a pretence at eating, but, at the end, the food remained hardly touched. The forced conversation fell into sudden, disturbing silences. His father sharpened the carving knife twice, which, for shad roe, was scarcely necessary; his mother scolded the servant without cause; even Ellie was affected, and smiled at him with a bright tenderness.

He was to leave Ellerton at midnight, when he would be enabled to connect with a western express, and it was arranged for him to spend a last hour at the Club with his father. Ellie and the servant stood upon the pavement, his mother was upstairs in the sewing room... where he entered softly.

At the Club the billiard room was dark, the tables shrouded, but from a room at the end of the hall came the murmur of the nightly coon-can players. They seated themselves at a table, and his father ordered beer and cigars. It was the first time that he had acknowledged Anthony to possess the discretion of maturity, and he raised the stein to his lips with the feeling that it was a sacrament of his manhood, an earnest and pledge of his success.

The midnight train emerged from the gloom of the station, passed through the outskirts of Ellerton, detached rows of dark dwellings, by the grounds of the Baseball Association, its fence still plastered with the gaudy circus posters, into the dim fields and shining streams. Anthony stood on the last, swinging platform, gazing back at the gloom that enveloped Ellerton, at the place where Hydrangea House was hid by the hills. An acute misery possessed him--the unsettled maimer of his departure from Eliza, her silence, struggled in his thoughts with the attempt to realize the necessity of the course he had adopted to bring about a final and lasting joy. He wondered if Eliza would understand the need for his going; but, assured of her wise sympathy, he felt that she would; and a measure of content settled upon him. The engine swung about a curve, disappearing into the obscurity of a wood. “Eliza,” he cried aloud, “Eliza, be here when I come back to you!”