XVIII

Happiness to wake at dawn and lie listening to the birds, to bathe in the crackling copper-lined tub, and go leaping down through the soaking grass to get a brown and yellow pansy all beaded with dew for his buttonhole; to eat strawberries and mud, and presently at breakfast, with the girls beaming on him, more strawberries, and coffee with thick, yellow cream instead of chalk and water and bluing (“Really chalk and water and bluing?” Lily wanted to know) brown eggs Albert had brought in an hour ago, corn bread, and ham still sputtering and sizzling in the dish. Home again!

And that morning he met Lucy Hawthorn.

They all went to the Leafs, even Maggie, who said she was too old for such gadding and had a hundred things she had to do at home, anyway. But Victor wanted her to come.

The dark cedar trees half hid the blue stone house with its low bay-windows, and swept the shaven lawn that unrolled to the stone breakwater against which the river was clucking and slapping now, and from which at low tide the river mud spread like wet chocolate icing. The air above the round beds of heliotrope quivered with fragrance.

“Well, Victor! How does it seem to be home?”

“Hello, Victor! How did you leave Fair Harvard?”

“Mrs. Hawthorn, Mr. Campion.”

Mrs. Hawthorn, sitting in the lovely, liquid shadow of her lilac parasol, gave him her famous smile, while she took in every detail through the little black lace veil that came just to the tip of her nose.

Prentice Page with ferns inside his hat to keep off the sun, looking like a faun from the forest, played with May against pretty Fannie and Maggie in her manly straw sailor, and Lily good-naturedly trotted after the balls, protesting, “Oh, I like to, really, truly I do, I’d loads rather!”

The ball bounced gently from tiny racquet to tiny racquet across the casual sagging of the low net. The girls in their eelskin dresses and long ruffled skirts held on their hats as they played, but Lucy, sitting on the grass with Victor, had taken hers off, and the sun gleamed on the pale brown silk sweep of her hair from the cloud of soft frizz on her forehead to the low knot of braids like shining brown nuts. She was all pink and cream, her little ears, her tender little nose, the delicate soft curve of her chin, candid and young. The rose, fringed about with other sweetnesses, heliotrope, pinks, and rose geranium leaves, is the heart of the nosegay; and in the lovely surrounding of sunny fragrant air, kind happy voices, being home again, the relief of having told, Lucy was the rose.

“What funny little gold pigs on your bracelet!”

“They’re porte-bonheurs. Aren’t they sweet? I love my piggie-wiggies!”

“Lucky pigs! Oh, look! Three brown butterflies have settled on your skirt!”

“Where? Oh, you mean those bows! But real flowers are the most fashionable trimming now, so why not real butterflies?”

“Happy thought! How about real fruit and vegetables? A ball gown with a spinach what-do-you-call-em gored on the bias with tomatoes, and a cabbage for a bouquet!”

“Oh, Mr. Campion, don’t! You’re giving me a stitch in my side! But you mustn’t call my butterfly bows brown⁠—that color’s ‘Bottled Cloves,’ if you please, Sir!”

“Live and learn! What color is this lovely dress?”

“This old rag? What color would you say?”

“Sky-blue pink!”

“Go to the foot of the class! It’s ‘Marguerite Blue,’ and Fannie’s blue is called ‘Heavy Eyes.’ ”

“They sound like drinks⁠—‘Lady’s Smiles’ and ‘Morning-Glories.’ ”

“I’m afraid everything sounds like a drink to you fast Harvard men⁠—I suppose you’re all dreadfully wild. I’m frightened to death of you.”

“Oh, say not so,” said Victor, looking as wild as he could.

“Did you graduate this year, Mr. Campion?”

“Well, no⁠—”

“Oh, you’re going back!”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t think I will go back next year. The fact is, I feel as if I ought to stay here and take care of my sisters and look after the estate, you know.”

“Oh, I do think that’s wonderful!” said Lucy’s soft voice, and Lucy’s forget-me-not eyes said, “How noble you are! How noble!”

Prentice and May were cooling off in the shade, while Victor and Lucy took their places.

“More beauteous than ever, May⁠—whose heart are you breaking now?”

“Oh, I’ve settled down to being an old maid, Prentice. I’ve decided I’d rather paddle my own canoe.”

“Tell that to the marines! Those eyes will never let you.”

She crossed her slender ankles, pulling up her skirt a little, and touched his face with the spray of heliotrope she had been holding to her lips.

“The slave brushes the flies away from the face of the Sultan,” she murmured.

“Look at that girl, Bessie!” Mrs. Hawthorn said to Mrs. Leaf. “Look at the amount of ankle she’s showing⁠—and making such eyes at Prentice. You can see he’s laughing at her.”

“Robert was very much taken with her several years ago⁠—I thought something might come of it, but then he lost interest, for some reason⁠—that seems to be the way with May Campion and her young men, and I’m sure I don’t know why.”

“Don’t you, my dear? I do. She’s so distressingly eager.”

“But she’s very pretty and animated.”

“Much too animated. I’m sure she’s been told it suits her, so she’s always on the sparkle, no matter what one’s saying. I find her exhausting. And can that color be natural? I think it was a lucky escape for Robert.”

“Well, I was relieved, I must say. She gets so excited, and sort of wild looking sometimes, and there is a queer streak in the family⁠—her cousin Mrs. Blow, went raving crazy a couple of years ago, and died from running out into a blizzard with nothing on but her nightgown; and you know anything like that makes one so nervous.”

Carpus came over the lawn with a clucking pitcher of lemonade, and they sat together on the grass, drinking and talking.

“Let me read your palm, Prentice⁠—oh, what a trail of broken hearts I see!”

“What do you think? My cruel husband wouldn’t take me to see Bernhardt in La Dame aux Camelias! He said he was afraid my French wasn’t bad enough!”

“Are you fond of the light fantastic, Miss Hawthorn?”

“A little more lemonade, if you please⁠—whoa, Emma!”

“Oh, my dear! Don’t mention jersey dresses! The times I’ve had getting out of mine!”

“Gracious, Maggie, how strong minded you sound! Don’t tell us you’re one of the Shrieking Sisterhood!”

Long trailing golden wings of sunlit air quivered over them⁠—over them all⁠—over Lucy.

And Victor, drunken with happiness, showing off to her, pretended his tennis racquet was a banjo, and strummed on it, singing:

“ ‘Ping Wing, the Pieman’s son,
Was the very worst boy in all Canton;
He ate his mother’s pickled mice,’ ”

(Screams from the ladies!)

“ ‘And threw the cat on the boiling rice,
And when he’d eaten her, said he:
“Me wonders where the mew-cat be!” ’ ”

For the first time in his life he really saw his home, because Lucy was going to see it. He nearly drove his sisters crazy.

“Maggie! Maggie! One of the calla lilies on the fountain is broken!”

“Oh, Victor! That was broken off before you were born.”

“Well, did you know that the second pine tree on the drive is nearly dead?”

It seemed to him that the whole house, the whole place, was falling to pieces, that as he looked cracks and blotches appeared on walls lightly held together by cobwebs.

Fat Lily, scarlet and streaming, hurled herself up the terraces with the lawnmower, Maggie laundered the muslin curtains and rewashed the best china with its light red seaweed pattern, May cut owls and bats and crescent moons out of dark brown paper and made a new dado of them for the parlor. And Victor, drunk with nervousness, bumped into them all, ran upstairs, forgot what he had come for, ran down again, and wished he had never been born.

The day was like an accordion. First it stretched out for ever so long, and then⁠—swish!⁠—it was folded up to almost nothing. If he didn’t hurry, he wouldn’t be dressed by the time they came! Even if he did hurry, it was too late now. And he tried to decide whether to wear his blue tie that really was the color of his eyes, or the raspberry-red one that stood for a passionate nature and Harvard. With shaking fingers he tied the blue, took it off, tried the red, half untied it, tied it again, looked at himself severely in the glass, took it off in a frantic hurry. He couldn’t decide, he simply couldn’t! In a panic he saw himself changing his tie all night⁠—all his life⁠—forever and ever, red, blue, red, blue, red, blue⁠—

“May!”

“What?”

“Shall I wear my blue tie or my red?”

“Good gracious, I don’t care⁠—blue!”

Oh, what a relief!

“Victor!”

“Hello!”

“Hurry yup!”

“All right!” And he sat down on the edge of his bed, his clasped hands squeezed between his knees, and lapsed into a dream of Lucy.

“Goodnight⁠—we’ve had a lovely time! Goodnight!”

“Goodnight! Goodnight!”

“I’ll push the shutters to, May, if you’ll bolt them.”

“Do you know, Fannie’s getting fat! But her dress was real pretty, wasn’t it? I loved those bands of terra-cotta ribbon embroidered with trails of jasmine. I could fix over my pale green Cashmere that way.”

“Lossie waited pretty well for just coming in, don’t you think? And ain’t it heavenly to think of the dishes all washed!”

“It seemed to me you had to do an awful lot of whispering,” May said discouragingly. “And my goodness, Lily, I was never so mortified in my life as I was at the way you kept smiling at her!”

But Lily hadn’t been able to help it, for she had remembered the way Lossie used to play “Company to Dinner” with them when they were children, in the tender green light under the beech tree, and she had almost expected to find slices of peony petal ham and maple seed fried potatoes on the plates that Lossie’s black hand set before them, and mud-and-water coffee in the cups.

“Well, I thought she did pretty well,” Maggie repeated. “But I oughtn’t to have trusted her to make the coffee⁠—how could she have gotten it that way? It was just like mud and water.”

“Was there any ice-cream left? Doesn’t anybody want some?”

“Lily! Don’t yawn that way⁠—you’ll dislocate your jaw! Goodnight, Victor! Aren’t you going to say goodnight?”

Victor, floating up the stairs, came out of his trance with a start.

“Oh⁠—goodnight!”

“Can you see why he’s so moony about Lucy? Really, it’s a good thing she’s going home soon. She’s a right nice little thing, but she hasn’t enough sense to say boo to a goose.”

The clouds washed over the moon like thin waves, the whole sky was flowing. In the few clear patches the stars were pale in the flood of silver light. Feathery dark clouds, clouds thin as gauze, streaming over the moon.

Maggie looked out at the night, yawning, thinking how early she would have to get up to look after her newly hatched chickens. And as she looked, another moon rose in her heart, a great bubble of apricot pink floated up from the river, and she and Edward watched it, speaking to each other without words.

May looked out at the night before she lay down beside Lily, placidly sleeping with her fringe in a row of cocoons on her forehead. Oh, the moon made you feel queer! Why had she acted like such a cheap fool in the garden after supper? Oh, why had she let Prentice say those things, flattering and insolent? She knew she had been crazy to think he meant them when she saw him in the lamplight again, saying goodbye in the hall, with Fannie’s pretty ringed hand dangling through his arm. Perhaps, lying in bed before they went to sleep, he would tell her about it, laughing a little, and Fannie would laugh, too, pityingly, and say, “Poor old May!”

Oh! She crushed her cold hands against her blazing face.

Victor leaned out his window looking up at the sky. Of course, he had thought he was in love, hundreds of times, but this was different.

Lucy! Lucy!

“You are a dove, Lucy, my Lucy. You are a little white lamb. You are everything that is gentle and pure⁠—

“It’s like praying to think of you, Lucy⁠—

“Well, really, Lucy, I don’t call myself an authority⁠—oh, no, no, you are too kind⁠—but since you ask for my opinion⁠—”

Suddenly he put his head down in his arms, loving her.

“It means waiting, darling.”

And he could imagine her answering:

“I would wait for you forever.”

“Lucy, I come to you stained and scarred⁠—”

(Oh, those glasses of beer at Billy Park’s! Oh, the last horsecar jingling out to Cambridge!)

“Oh, Lucy, I think you’re so lovely!”

The clouds flowed over the moon, from the river he heard the wash of the tide coming in. Through all his being he felt the stir, the flow of the night, the clouds, the waves, the faintly breathing wind, the people all over the world who were awake, who were loving each other.