The Other Two (Gale)

by Zona Gale

By ZONA GALE

PELLEAS has a little niece who, when she sits in my room in the sun, combing her gold-brown hair, looks for all the bright world like a mermaid. I told her this when, on the morning after her arrival to pay us a visit, I found her sitting in my sunny south window, with her hair all about her shoulders.

“Enid,” said I, “if I could tie your hair back with a rainbow and set you on a tall blue and white wave, you would be a mermaid. And by the way,” I added, “perhaps you can tell me something I have always wondered: how the mermaids in the sea-pictures keep their hair so dry.”

For answer Enid smiled absently, and shook back her mist of curls, and looked at me meditatively, and sighed dolorously. But Enid is twenty, and twenty is both meditative and dolorous, so I went on tranquilly putting sachets in my old lace; for I, at seventy, have sunk some of my meditations and all of my dolor in such little joys as tenderly arranging my one box of rare old lace. That seems a small lesson for life to have taught, and yet it was bitterly hard to learn.

At length Enid said:

“Aunt Ettarre, were you ever in love?”

Is it not curious what fragrance floats in the room immediately that question is asked? Of course it may have been the orris and the rose-leaves in my hands, yet I fancy that it was a presence.

“If forty-eight years of being in love,” I reminded her, “would seem to you fair proof that I——”

“Oh, that kind,” said Enid vaguely. “But I mean, were you ever in love so that you were miserable about everything else, and you thought all the time Somebody couldn't possibly be in love with you, and so that seeing the postman made your heart beat the way it used at school-exhibition, and so that you kept the paper that had come around flowers——”

Enid saw me smiling—not at her. Heaven forbid!—but at the great collection of rubbish in the world saved because somebody beloved has touched it. Bless the world—what a deliciously haunted place it is, with more than enough of these priceless treasures to fill everybody's bureau-drawer!

“Dear me, yes, indeed,” I said. “Do you think my hair was always straight on rainy days, as it is now?”

Enid sighed again, even more dolorously, and shook her head.

“It couldn't have been the same,” she murmured decidedly.

Poor, dear Twenty, that never will believe that Seventy could have been “the same!” But I forgot to sigh at that, so concerned was I at this breaking of Enid's exquisite reticence—that enviable flowery armor of young womanhood. So I waited, folding and refolding my old Mechlin, till I had won her confidence.

He was a blessed young lawyer, it developed, with very long lashes and a high sense of honor inextricably confused with lofty ambition and the most beautiful manners. Enid's father's sole objection to him was the youth of them both; the young lawyer, I elicited, was one year and five months older than Enid.

“But it isn't as if he hadn't seen the world,” said Enid magnificently. “He has been graduated from college a year, and he has been abroad twice—once when he was nine, and then for two months last summer. And he has read everything, and he says he has—he calls it 'exploited' everything, and found that love is the only thing in the world. Oh, Aunt Ettarre,” said Enid with awe, “and then think of his loving me!”

“When am I going to meet him?” I asked; and, as I expected, Enid flung herself down at my knee and clasped her hands over the old Mechlin.

“Oh, would you—would you? Papa said he would trust me this week to you and Uncle Pelleas. Might he call—might he come this afternoon?” she cried.

Below stairs I told Pelleas about it, and he sighed and looked in the fire, and said: “Bless me, I used to wheel her mother in a go-cart,” and then smiled back at me.

“Why, of course he may call,” he said; “any fine fellow who is honestly in love is as welcome here as a king.”

“Well, then,” said I to Pelleas, taking a wise though base advantage of his enthusiasm, “let's go down together and tell Nicola to have tea on the best tray at five this afternoon.”

Pelleas looked at me doubtfully.

“She's making raised doughnuts,” he demurred.

Nevertheless we descended to the kitchen and braved our old servant together. She was picking the doughnuts from the hot lard as delicately as if she had been selecting violets for essences near her native Capri. She did not deign to turn or speak as we slipped in the door. Even when Pelleas had put the case to her gracefully, dwelling on the lightness of the delicacies desired that afternoon, she did not vouchsafe reply until she had brought a colander, filled with her hot, brown dainties, to the table. Then she rested her hands on each side of the pan. Her gray hair was brushed smoothly back from her withered face, and a blue kerchief was knotted about her rugged throat.

“Who's comin'?” she demanded; but if Nicola were to ask to see our bank-book, I think that we could hardly deny her.

“It's a friend of Miss Enid's,” Pelleas explained.

“Man?” inquired Nicola grimly.

Pelleas admitted it. I, fancying myself wiser in the conceits of Nicola, ventured something else.

“I think, Nicola,” I said, “that they—that he—that they—and I thought if you had some of those crumpets—”

“Yah!” exclaimed Nicola. “So there's to be two pair o' you!”

Then something wonderful happened. Nicola slipped both hands beneath her floury-apron and rolled up her arms in its calico length, and put her head on one side and smiled—such a strange, crinkled smile, interfering with all her worn features at once.

“My father had many goats,” said Nicola without warning, “and one summer I went with him to buy more—though that was before my bones were all turned to cracked iron, you may be sure. And there was a young shepherd——”

At that very moment a sharp snapping and crackling came from the kettle, and Nicola wheel with a frown.

“So,” she shrilled angrily, “you come down here, letting my lard get too hot to go near to! Is it not that I am baking? And as for the tea, it may be that there isn't any. Go away!”

“Pelleas,” said I, as we climbed the stairs, “if it were not that Nicola is too old to work anywhere else——”

“I know it,” nodded Pelleas, frowning.

This is the dialogue in which we take part after each of Nicola's daily impertinences.

At four o'clock that afternoon I sat up from my nap and heard a little tap at my door. Enid came in, her hair a glory about her flushed face, her little blue-embroidered frock shimmering and ruffling to her feet.

“Oh, Aunt Ettarre,” she cried, “put on your gray gown and your Mechlin fichu, will you? and come down right away—well, almost right away,” she added naïvely.

“Perhaps I have a letter to write first,” I assured her; and then the bell rang, and Enid, her eyes like stars, tapped down the stairs.

I was a long time about my dressing. The gray grosgrain silk is for very special occasions, and I had not worn my Mechlin collar since Pelleas's birthday, nearly a year ago. When I had them both on and my silver comb in my hair, I was terrified to hear Nicola's step outside my door. I bade her enter, with the trepidation of one thieving the preserves. She thrust her head in at the door, and stood transfixed at the sight of so much grandeur. She was very scornful.

“Yah,” she said grimly, “I hope you've got your neck well packed with flannel under that slimpsy stuff. One would say you dress lightly, lightly, for fear of missing the rheumatism!”

She suddenly banged the door, and went crookedly down the passage before I had a chance to remention the tea. In a moment she came back, threw open my door, and flung something on the bed.

“There,” she said crossly, “put it on! No need to dress as if you was ninety!”

And there on my pillow I saw, as she hastened away, the great pink tea-rose that had blossomed only that day from the rose-plant in her own window, where she had tended it for months. I put the rose in the lace of my dress, and, being a very foolish old woman, failed to keep back my tears.

Pelleas was in the library across the hall from the drawing-room where those two dear little people were. I opened the library-door softly and went in and stood close beside his chair before he turned. Pelleas is not in the least deaf, as we both know; he is simply no longer distracted by small, unnecessary noises.

He looked up smiling, and then sprang to his feet and suddenly caught my hands and held me at arm's-length, and kissed my lips, and bade me turn about slowly, slowly, so that he might see. One would think that I had never worn my old grosgrain and the Mechlin! I told him so, half crying for very happiness. And we talked a little about the first night that I had worn it—oh, so many years before! and about many things in which the very, sunshine of the room had no part, because these things were so much more luminous.

At last, when the clock struck five, Pelleas and I crossed the hall to the drawing-room door. At the foot of the stairs he stopped for a minute.

“Do you remember, Ettarre,” he said, “the night that I 'spoke' to your father, and you waited in the drawing-room, half dead with alarm, as you made me believe?”

“Ah, yes,” I cried, “and how my father used to say that you won his heart by your very beginning. 'I can't talk about it, sir,' you said, 'but you see, sir, you can—and will you?'”

We laughed together, as we are never tired of laughing tenderly over that, and I remembered, tenderly, too, the old blue-and-white drawing-room, with the spindle-legged chairs and the stiff curtains, where I had waited breathlessly that night, in my flowered delaine gown, while Pelleas “spoke” to father. I was trembling when he came back, I recall, and he took me in his arms and kissed away my fear. And someway, the thought of the girl in the flowered delaine dress, who was I, and of the eager, buoyant young lad who was Pelleas, must have shone in the faces of us both when we entered our drawing-room now, reverently, as if to meet our long-gone selves.

He was a fine, handsome fellow, this young lover of Enid's, and their sweet confusion and their little dignities were enchanting. Pelleas and I sat on the red sofa and beamed at them, and the little fire tossed and leaped on the hearth, and the shadows gathered in the corners and fell upon us; but on Enid and her lover the fire-light rested lovingly. Oh, what a wonderful hour it was for our plain little drawing-room, doomed for so many weary years past to have been the home of talk about wars and rumors of wars, and relatives and their stupid doings, and even about the matches made by shadowy lovers whom it never might see! And lo, now the shabby room was called upon to harbor young love itself! No wonder that the sober bindings on the shelves tried, in the yellow fire-light, to give golden news from their own storied hearts, that beat with the hearts of other lovers; no wonder that the Huguenot twain on the wall smiled with tears, for very joy; no wonder that the wax-blossoms on the mantel looked like a bridal wreath. At last, at last the poor room, long deprived of its brightest uses, was habited by young love!

Presently Pelleas startled me from my reverie.

“It's quarter past five," he murmured, “and no tea.”

So Nicola intended to do as she pleased, and she was pleased to send no tea at all, and the rose was but a sop to Cerbera! And I had so counted on seeing these young lovers in the delicate intimacy of their first tea! But even in that moment of my disappointment, I heard the stair-door creak, and then I heard her coming up, one step at a time, so that I knew her to be laden with the tray.

Pelleas hastened to open the door for her, and we were both fain to gasp with astonishment. For in came Nicola, splendid in the newest and bluest of dresses, with—wonder of all!—a white cap and apron, the despised badge of servitude, which I could never persuade her to wear. And when she had set the tray on the little table I had much ado to keep from grasping her old hands. For she had brought the best silver, the best china, the best doilies—and oh, such white chicken sandwiches, such delicately toasted and buttered crumpets, such odorous tea and thick cream, and, to crown all, a silver dish of bonbons!

I tried to look my gratitude to her, and I saw her standing by the fire, tranquilly inspecting Enid's young lover and pretty Enid herself, who was helping him to place my chair. And then, very slowly, Nicola began rolling her wrinkled arms in her crisp white apron, as she had in the morning, and, very slowly, with her head on one side, she began to speak.

“My father had many goats in Capri,” she abruptly began again, “and one summer I went with him to buy more. And at noon my father left me in the valley while he went to look at some hill-flocks. As for me, I sat by a tree to eat my lunch of goat's cheese and bread, and a young shepherd of those parts came and brought me berries, and a little pat of sweet butter, and we shared them. I did not see him again—but now I have made you a little pat of sweet butter,” said Nicola, nodding her old gray head.

We were all silent; and Pelleas and I were spellbound, for it was as if this old, withered, silent woman had suddenly pulled aside her robe and looked into her own heart, and had given us news of its ancient beating. Old Nicola—to have harbored such an hour of Arcady as this! And at that moment she turned on me with fury.

“For the love of heaven!” she cried, terribly, “why sit there, stock-still, till the crumpets are stone-cold and the tea as red as the tail of a fox? Eat!”

She was out of the room like a whirlwind, and clattering down the stairs. And for a moment we all looked silently in each other's faces, and smiled a little—but tenderly, as if some unknown dead lover had lifted his head from his grave.

Therefore we drank our tea very happily, and Enid's young lover, with his whole heart in his eager face, told us quite simply of his love for her, and begged us to help him. And we all well-nigh laughed and cried together at the bright business of life.

It was a very memorable and precious hour—such an hour as may not come to you till, as is true of Pelleas and me, you can no longer find expression for the boy's happiness and the girl's happiness in your own old hearts, save in the happiness of the young hearts about you.

When the shadows had quite fallen and the young lover was gone, and Enid had slipped away to her room to dream alone, Pelleas and I sat long over the fire beside the deserted tea-table. Nicola's rose, fading on my lace, gave out a heavenly fragrance, and the room was filled with little spirits and presences to which the perfume was akin—young hope, young prayer, young dreams.

Pellet stirred slightly and smiled at me.