After SunsetCarved in dull ebony, one somber rowOf straight palms, etched in sudden, sharp relief,Against a molten-copper afterglow....Oh, Hour of Enchantment, past belief,When down the garden paths the peacocks go,In plumed splendor and with stately tread.Across the shadowed valleys cool winds blow,From where the smoke-blue mountain rears its head.Beyond the world's rim, slips the ghost-wan Day,To draw Night's curtain close about her bedAnd set a star to light her to her rest,While Evening, shaking free her dusky hair,Lures every weary bird to seek its nest,And, kissing shut the tired eyes of care,Lulls Earth to peace upon her gentle breast.
After Sunset
Carved in dull ebony, one somber rowOf straight palms, etched in sudden, sharp relief,Against a molten-copper afterglow....Oh, Hour of Enchantment, past belief,When down the garden paths the peacocks go,In plumed splendor and with stately tread.Across the shadowed valleys cool winds blow,From where the smoke-blue mountain rears its head.Beyond the world's rim, slips the ghost-wan Day,To draw Night's curtain close about her bedAnd set a star to light her to her rest,While Evening, shaking free her dusky hair,Lures every weary bird to seek its nest,And, kissing shut the tired eyes of care,Lulls Earth to peace upon her gentle breast.
"I didn't mean you to know," I said, as he took the verse away from me again and put it back in his pocket.
"But you told Wright," said he.
"That was different," I answered, firmly.
"Mad?"
"N-No!"
He slipped his arm around me.
"Mavis," he said very softly, "Mavis with the amber hair and the deep brown eyes. Mavis, child and poet and—all mine."
"You're not laughing?" I asked anxiously. "I mean, about the verses?"
"Laughing?" he raised his head from my hair. My cap had fallen off, and it blew in wildest confusion about my face and his. "I'm very far from laughing. I'm proud and happy. But," said he, with a change of tone, "to steal my thunder! You'll be dabbling in my pill-boxes yet! I suppose I may as well reconcile myself to being known as 'the husband of Mavis Denton.' Appalling outlook!"
"Is it?" I asked impishly.
"Well—in that sense at least. 'Husband of The Poetess.' It wounds my masculine pride."
"It shouldn't," said I, triumphantly, "if it ever happened—which, of course, it won't. But I will be quite content to be known as Richard Warren's wife—"
"You dear! But, of course, you have a better disposition than I have—"
"I haven't! I'm a petulant, snappish, mean—"
"You're the loveliest thing God ever made!"
And so on, ad infinitum.
The lazy, happy trip over, we sailed importantly into New York once more. Father and Uncle John were on the dock, two bronzed, happy men, and it was late that night before I got to sleep, in that same, old-fashioned room, my head in a perfect whirl. How we had talked and laughed, questioned and answered! From the twinkle in Uncle John's eyes, the tenderest, most quizzical twinkle, I half-suspected that he knew more than I had thought. He didn't say so, but if he didn't know—well, he had developed perfectly miraculous powers of teasing since I had left. But he was a dear. And it was so amazing to sit there and listen to him and Bill discuss thenew volume, and to put my little, critical oar in now and then, while Father sat by, my hand in his, a look of the most wonderful content on his face. They had great difficulty to persuade me to go to bed. It was fascinating to linger in the smoky old room, with its rows and rows of books and its untidy, comfortable, masculine atmosphere. After I had three times refused to leave them, Bill unceremoniously picked me up and carried me up the stairs, kicking, and losing my slippers on the way.
Did I say that a wire was waiting for me when I reached Uncle John's?
"Love to You Both," it read. "Will be with You Wednesday at the Latest," and it was addressed to me, and signed, "Mother." Wednesday was two days off. I spent the intervening time in the outrageous shops, Bill stalking uneasily behind me, deferred to by the lithe, wonderfully coiffured, purring Goddesses who paraded mannequin after pretty mannequin before my startled eyes. I think, however, that Bill was a little more embarrassed than I.
"How they live," he said to me, seriously, on one occasion, "I don't see. I should think they'd spend most of their time in a pneumonia ward!"
We drove in the Park one afternoon. It was gay with Spring flowers and pretty girls. We had a hansom, because I had read about them in books. Coming back, through the falling dusk, with the lights of the city twinkling out, yellow and beckoning, and the great, massive bulk of the Plaza, illuminated like a birthday cake, just ahead, I suddenly conceived an affection for New York. But I didn't want to live there.
"Next time we come," said Bill, "in the Fall, perhaps, I want to take you to the theatres and to the gayest restaurants,and concerts. Why, you funny child, your eyes are as big as saucers!"
Our lean horse stumbled just then, and the hansom gave a seasick lurch. I felt as people mounting camels must feel. When the horse and I had somewhat recovered, I answered,
"I'd love it! And you'll teach me to dance—sometime?—May I?"
"Well," said Bill gravely, "I'm not much of a dancer—too big and all that. I always step on the dear things' feet. But you may, I think, and we'll take lessons together, if you like—"
"I'd adore it!" I said.
My husband drew me close—,
"You baby," he said. "Sometimes I think I have been selfish, tying you down to a cross old husband before you've had your good times—"
"Don't want any good times without you!" I said, obstinately.
"All right," said he. "We'll have them together. I'll renew my youth!"
"Don't be absurd! You're a mere infant!"
"Second childhood," he said, "you've been an elixir of youth to me; of life itself."
"You do say such nice things," I sighed. "That comes of being a poet!"
"Poet be hanged!" said Bill. "It comes of being in love—with—you—with you—"
That was a very nice drive. After all, the hansom has advantages. One can sit awfully close, and hold hands under the shiny, wooden apron.
Wednesday Mother came. I called her that right off. She was the dearest thing, with such curly red hair andeyes the color of Bill's, only a different shape. She was littler than I even, with hands and feet that were wholly ridiculous. Father was immediately enchanted with her. The four of us had a long talk, all one soft Spring day, interrupted by Uncle John, and by getting Peter and Sarah safely off to Green Hill. And then, while I was resting, she had her talk with her son, and came to me later, after I had gone to bed.
She curled up beside me in a wonderful blue negligée which made her look like a girl. And we talked—and talked.
"You're the nicest thing that Bill has given me," I said, happily, before she left, "and Bill's the nicest thing you could give me. You don't feel," I begged, "that I am taking him away from you—?"
"I love you," she answered, the laughter gone from her eyes, and her face very sweet to see, "for yourself—for Bill too, but most of all for yourself. I have wanted this since he first wrote me about you. I have prayed for it every night. You were so exactly the sort of a girl I wanted my boy to marry—"
"But," I said, "I was just a little, bed-ridden, useless creature then—"
"I knew that Bill would cure you," said Mother. "He always gets what he wants—"
"Doesn't he though?" I interrupted, proudly.
"And he wanted you!"
"I love him so," I whispered against the soft lace at her breast.
She put her arms very closely around me. I don't know why I cried.
And then, she talked to me. Just as my own Mother would have done—very gravely and tenderly for a longhalf-hour. When she left my room, I lay awake a long time, thinking about her and Bill, wondering if I could ever be to him all that she had said I would be. I was happy, a little frightened, and so grateful—so grateful.
CHAPTER XXII
The entire household saw us off on our motor trip. Uncle John beaming, Mrs. Cardigan and the maids waving hands and aprons, Mother smiling at us through a mist. She was coming to Green Hill as soon as we were settled, and help me with my first housekeeping. She had demurred at first when I begged her to: had said that "young people were better off alone." But I, and then Bill, when he found how much I really wanted her and finally Father had overridden all her objections. I didn't tell my menfolk that it was delightful to have someone to whom you could talk "Bill" by the hour, and who never grew tired of listening and encouraging and interrupting with paeans of praise of her own.
"What will she think of Mercedes?" I asked, as we rolled through the city, out toward the sunshine and open spaces.
"She'll like her," said Bill. "Mother's a judge, and she adopted Wright long ago."
"Those two wild children," I said, tolerantly.
The maddest cablegram had come to us just before we left. I was still convulsed by it:
Mercedes willing wedding in fall out of my head with happiness everything wonderful thank you a thousand times will see you very soon most marvelous girl in the world sends her love so doI."WRIGHT"
Mercedes willing wedding in fall out of my head with happiness everything wonderful thank you a thousand times will see you very soon most marvelous girl in the world sends her love so doI.
"WRIGHT"
"I suppose they expect us to be surprised," I said. "Ostriches!"
"I always knew you were a matchmaker," said Bill, "you certainly staged the whole thing well."
"I had her out to amuse you, not Wright," said I, with partial truth.
"Oh, you did, did you? 'The best laid plans'—. Didn't you know that I haven't had eyes or ears for another woman since that first night you insulted me—"
"'Doctor Jumpy!'" said I, in delighted recollection.
"If it weren't that I have to drive the car—" said Bill.
"Perhaps, later, you could stop—" I suggested.
He stopped in the midst of the still considerable traffic. And then we sped on again, leaving a breathless, open-mouthed policeman struck into stone, behind us.
"Boston," said I to Bill, after we had been there for two hours, "is the darnedest place!"
"What's the matter with it? Cradle of American culture and everythin'."
"Reminds me of Havana," I said.
"Havana! You're insane!" Bill laid his fork down and gazed at me in amazement over the table in the Copley Plaza.
"Because it's so different," I said, "but the streets aren't much wider, so there. And after all, I think I could fall in love with the Common, and even Back Bay. There's something very solid about it all."
As we left the city and went on through the lovely Massachusetts country, I became more and more enamoured of my own unknown New England. And Bill, delightful companion, grew positively instructive. I learned a little history by the way, and we poked around and explored, in a very leisurely manner.
Wellesley, dignified and gracious, fascinated me. We went up to the college and spent a happy half-day there with one of the professors who had been a school friend of Bill's, no, our Mother's. But I couldn't help thinking of Mercedes! My bright, tropical bird, caged in a classroom, filing to chapel with hundreds of other girls, part of a crowd. I determined to go some day to Vassar and see her Waterloo for myself.
Pride's Crossing filled me with envy. I liked the beautifully kept lawns and the wonderful, garden-encircled houses. But I fell so deeply in love with Gloucester, even the fish, that Bill despaired of ever getting me away.
"Wait till you see Salem!" he said, "I'll probably have to tuck a door in the back-seat. You'll want one, I know. Jolliest doors in the world."
Magnolia, Salem, Plymouth, they went by like dreams. The big hotels where we stayed, the water, the Spring skies, the first reticent flowers, and finally, the funny little Cape towns: Hyannis Port, with its beaches and docks, its high Sunset Hill, where we watched the sun go down red and purple over the quiet bay, and where we saw the white sails of the fishing-crafts lift like wings against the morning sky—it was all so lovely, so new, so untarnished for me. I even loved the grey fog that swept in at night, like soft veils. And everywhere, serious or gay, always the perfect comrade, was Bill. I would lie awake in the mornings listening to him splash in the shower or whistling to himself in his room, not calling out good morning to him for five whole minutes, just happy at having him so near.
But Provincetown!
We came into it on a wonderful, clear morning, into that sleepy, little town, girdled with sand, on the edge of thewide, blue bay. Some of the cottages were open, even as early as it was in the season, and the little streets were bright with people. Our Inn was close down on the beach, a dark-red, rambling building, built half a century before, and beautifully remodelled for modern purposes. There were ships' lanterns and clocks within, a wide, glassed verandah on which one consumed quantities of delicious food and salt air, a ship's rope for the banister of the stairway which led, steeply, up to the second floor. Beyond the landing was my room, with three great windows fronting the bay. One could almost have flung a stone into the water from them.
The room was in rose-color, like my own room at home, and cool, dull green. Counter-pane, chair cushions, curtains, and dressing-table rioted with delightfully impossible roses, and the whole room smelled of salt and sun and the little lavender and rose-leaf bags I found in bureau-drawers and on closet-shelves. And my bath was big and white, a tiled, immaculate room, with cross-stitched towels and washrags, sweet-scented soaps and a dazzling array of bottles and toothbrush-mugs.
"How can I clean my razor on this?" demanded Bill, appearing in my room with a little towel held at arm's length. He surveyed the silken baskets of flowers designed upon it, with an air of deep concern.
"Oh, but you mustn't!" I said, snatching it from him in dismay.
"Oh, but I must!" he contradicted. "Look at this beard! We left Chatham so early this morning that I didn't get a moment to shave."
I rubbed my cheek against the square, firm chin.
"Ouch!"
"I told you so!"
"Come with me," I said, with dignity, and led him into his own bathroom, where I produced for him certain small towels, hanging under a legend "For your razor," and left him chuckling.
Bill's room was blue and yellow, and he complained that it was far too pretty for a man. We were still arguing about it when we went forth to survey the town. I popped in and out of shops like "an agitated rabbit," according to Bill, and bought armsful of bayberry candles, little delicate water-colors, and about six old, brass knockers; the last named purchases moving Bill to say that he supposed we would have to put one on the garage and another on the hen-coop.
The little inn was deserted save for us, the maids, an amiable and remarkable colored cook, and the adorable little lady who was our hostess. She had a tenderness for brides and grooms! Bill recalled her as having said so on the one occasion he had lunched with her, in Provincetown, in the "dark ages before I met you, Mavis," and I think she was happy to have us there. At all events, she never said so if she was not, and we stayed for two, wonderful weeks.
It was too early for swimming, of course, even for Bill's iron constitution, but we spent hours on the yellow sands, watching the boats, and the sunlight shifting over the water. Once a battleship steamed in and anchored not far away, and that evening there were Navy men in the porch-dining-room, quite beautiful in their uniforms, very splendid to look at, under the soft lights of the ships' lanterns, lingering over their coffee and cigars.
Bill scraped acquaintance with them, of course, with the consequence that we had tea one afternoon aboard the ship, with the most cordial and charming hosts in theworld. I had not been there half an hour, palpitant with excitement, before every unmarried officer present had gotten me aside on one pretext or another and shown me the picture of "the prettiest girl in the world, Mrs. Denton!" And I will say for the Benedicts too, that their tiny cabins were filled with pictures of wives and babies. It was a very pleasant tea-hour, but Bill hurried me home long before I was tired of deck and guns, mascot—a frisky goat named "Narcissus," and the crowds of amusing sailor-boys in their infantile garb.
"Haven't had you to myself for a dog's age," he growled. "What did those men mean, carrying you off like that, with their 'Mrs. Denton, please come with me,' or 'Oh, Mrs. Denton, I've got something to show you.' Jackasses!"
"I thought them very nice," said I demurely, "especially that tall one with all the gold braid and the fascinating eyes."
"Fascinating eyes! Ye Gods! Never again, young woman!" and he hustled me out of the ship's boat, across the sand and into the house, lest, as he said, "The eyes-fellow should be standing with field glasses on the deck waiting to wave to you again!"
When we were in our rooms again, and I had called him to hook me up—we were dressing for dinner—he came in and, fumbling with those clever surgeon's fingers at the hooks of my frock, swept me and the frock suddenly and breathlessly into his arms.
"Don't keep me waiting too long, Mavis," he said, very low.
I put my arms around his neck and said something in his ear. And after a moment he kissed me, very gently, and let me go. It was ten minutes before I realized thathe had gone without completing his task of lady's maid.
That night a full moon rose, golden and glamorous, over the bay. Bill and I walked out on the sands, quite late. I had on a wooly, white coat over my thin dress, and had changed to more sensible shoes. After all, I thought, it was worth a dozen Cubas, the keen, salt air, and the dear home country, just stirring under the breath of Spring.
"Happy?" asked Bill, as we sat down on some driftwood logs and watched the ever-widening golden wake of the moon-boat.
I leaned my head against his shoulder and nodded.
"You've never looked so beautiful," he said, "as tonight."
I drew his tall head down to mine,
"Do you think so?" I whispered, and then, very softly, "I love you, my husband—"
Together, in the full glory of the moonlight, we walked in silence back to the house. The lights gleamed above in my rose and green bedroom, and the door was open between—
CHAPTER XXIII
Green HillJune.
Has it seemed long to you, little Diary? Yet it is just a year since my first entry was made. I'm writing now in my room with the windows wide. Bill has just called up to me that my pink rose-bush is in flower. I must go down and see. I can hear Mother on the lawn talking to Mrs. Goodrich and Father and Peter. Or is it Wiggles? She employs almost the same tone toward both of them. And Sarah, a good ten years younger than last year, is out where the new cottage is soon to be. She has the builder with her, and I know that they are disagreeing. It will be a boon to Sarah to have the Simpson tribe—as much of it as are carpenters—working on her house for her. A pretty revenge!
"A new Doctor has come to Green Hill!" Just a year ago—Diary—and since then so much has happened. So much sorrow and happiness, loss and gain. It is hard to believe that it is I who write, Mavis of Green Hill.
The people have been so good since I came home: so glad for me. They tell me I look a different person—and why not, pray? For I am strong and well and most divinely happy, Diary, and it is pleasant to be able to write that down for you—after all the despondencies I did not spare your pages.
There's the new house to build—and this one to remodelin the Fall—and the garage already under way. It will be ready for Silas to putter about in by the time he comes North. And in August we are to expect Mercedes, which means Wright, of course. I have been able to persuade the Howells that Cuba is all very well, but Mercedes must be married from my house—and they have consented. I think that Mr. Howells is glad that it will be so.
The reviewers have been kind to Bill's new book. It was rushed through and appeared early this month. The secret has been let out, of course, and the poor villagers of Green Hill are mightily embarrassed at having harbored a famous poet for so long without knowing it. And they get the name quite confused. It's "Doctor Warren" half the time!
My dear old Dr. Mac has been to see us more than once. We've had wonderful evenings, in the late June dusk, a happy family, lacking nothing, content with just living and loving—
Mother and Dr. Mac are such friends. She actually flirts with him, in her Dresden China way, and he growls. But he likes it. I am sure he is half in love with her already—he couldn't very well help being.
Bill's here—his hand on my shoulder, smelling nicely of damp, new earth!
"Go away!"
"Why?"
"I'm writing!"
"So I see—but what, little wife?"
"The end of a story."
And under his eyes, Diary, I have turned back your pages and drawn a thick, black line through that pitiful entry made on my wedding day—drawn a thicker, blacker line through that sombre little word "Finis."
"Kiss me, William Denton!"
And now, with his kiss on my lips, I have turned back to what I have just written and am writing, letter by letter, with a steady hand and a high heart, between laughter and tears, two firm, exultant words:
THE BEGINNING