A Touch of Sun and Other Stories | Page 2

go back in a few days."
The gate clashed to. A stout man in a blaze of white duck came up the path, lifting his cork helmet slightly to air the top of his head. As he approached it could be seen that his duck was of a modified whiteness, and that his beard, even in that forcing weather, could not be less than a two days' growth. He threw his entire weight on the steps one by one, as he mounted them slowly. The curtains were parted for him from within.
"Well, Margaret?"
"Well, dear old man! How hot you look! Why do you not carry an umbrella?"
"Because I haven't got you here to make me. What brought you back in such weather? Where is your telegram?"
"I did not telegraph. There was no need. I simply had to speak to you at once--about something that could not be written."
"Well, it's good to have a look at you again. But you are going straight back, you know. Can't take any chances on such weather as this."
Mr. Thorne sank copiously into a piazza chair, and pulled forward another for his wife.
She sat on the edge of it, smiling at him with wistful satisfaction. Her profile had a delicate, bird-like slant. Pale, crisped auburn hair powdered with gray, hair that looked like burnt-out ashes, she wore swept back from a small, tense face, full of fine lines and fleeting expressions. She had taken off her high, close neckwear, and the wanness of her throat showed above a collarless shirt-waist.
"Don't look at me; I am a wreck!" she implored, with a little exhausted laugh. "I wonder where my keys are? I must get on something cool before dinner."
"Ito has all the keys somewhere. Ito's a gentleman. He takes beautiful care of me, only he won't let me drink as much shasta as I want. What is that? Iced tea? Bad, bad before dinner! I'm going to watch you now. You are not looking a bit well. Is there any of that decoction left? Well, it is bad; gets on the nerves, too much of it. The problem of existence here is, What shall we drink, and how much of it can we drink?"
Mrs. Thorne laughed out a little sigh. "I have brought you a problem. But we will talk when it is cooler. Don't you--don't you shave but twice a week when I am away, Henry?"
"I shave every day, when I think of it. I never go anywhere, and I don't have anybody here if I can possibly avoid it. It is all a man can do to live and be up to his work."
"I know; it's frightful to work in such weather. How the mill roars! It starts the blood to hear it. Last spring it sounded like a cataract; now it roars like heat behind furnace doors. Which is your room now?"
"O Lord! I sleep anywhere; begin in my bed generally and end of the piazza floor. It will be the grass if this keeps on."
"Mrs. Thorne continued to laugh spasmodically at her husband's careless speeches, not at what he said so much as through content in his familiar way of saying things. Under their light household talk, graver, questioning looks were exchanged, the unappeased glances of friends long separated, who realize on meeting again that letters have told them nothing.
"Why didn't you write me about this terrible heat?"
"Why didn't you write me that you were not well?"
"I am well."
"You don't look it--anything but."
"I am always ghastly after a journey. It isn't a question of health that brought me. But--never mind. Ring for Ito, will you? I want my keys."
At dinner she looked ten years younger, sitting opposite him in her summery lawns and laces. She tasted the cold wine soup, but ate nothing, watching her husband's appetite with the mixed wonder and concern that thirty years' knowledge of its capacities had not diminished. He studied her face meanwhile; he was accustomed to reading faces, and hers he knew by line and precept. He listened to her choked little laughs and hurried speeches. All her talk was mere postponement; she was fighting for time. Hence he argued that the trouble which had sent her flying home to him from the mountains was not fancy-bred. Of her imaginary troubles she was ready enough to speak.
The moon had risen, a red, dry-weather moon, when they walked out into the garden and climbed the slope under low orchard boughs. The trees were young, too quickly grown; like child mothers, they had lost their natural symmetry, overburdened with hasty fruition. Each slender parent trunk was the centre of a host of artificial props, which saved the sinking boughs from breaking. Under one of these low green tents they stopped and handled the great fruit that fell at a