The Lovely Lady | Page 4

himself in the way of a hall for dancing, thrown out from the House of the Shining Walls, in which he and the Princess Ada, to lovely, soundless strains, had whirled away, and found occasion to say things to each other such as no ballroom could afford;--bright star pointed occasions which broke and scattered before the little hints of sound that crept up the stair to advise him that Ellen was stifling back the pain for fear of waking him. They had moved Ellen's bed downstairs as a way of getting on better with the possibility of her being bedridden all that winter, and the tiny whispered moan recalled him to the dread that as the half yearly term came around, what with doctor's bills and delicacies, the mortgage dragon would have not even his sop of interest, and remain whole and threatening as before.
When Ellen was able to sit up in bed the mother moved her sewing in beside it. Then Peter would sit on the other side of the lamp with a book, and the walls of the House rose up from its pages gilded finely, and the lights would come out and the dancing begin, but before he could get more than a word with the Princess, he would hear Ellen:
"Peter, oh, Peter! I wish you wouldn't be always with your nose in a book. I wish you would talk sometimes."
"What about, Ellen?"
"Oh, Peter, you are the worst. I should think you would take some interest in things."
"What sort of things?" Peter wished to know.
"Why, who comes in the store, and what they say, and everything."
"Mrs. Sleason wanted us to open a kit of mackerel to see if she'd like it," began Peter literally, "and we persuaded her to take two cans of sardines instead. Does that interest you?"
"Have you sold any of the blue tartan yet?"
"Ada Brown bought seven yards of it."
"Oh, Peter! And trimmings?"
"Six yards of black velvet ribbon--yes, I forgot--Mrs. Blackman is to make it up for her. I heard Mrs. Brown say she would call for the linings."
"She's having it made up for Jim Harvey's birthday," Ellen guessed shrewdly. "He's twenty-one, you know.... People say she's engaged to him."
Peter felt the walls of the House which had stood out waiting for him during this interlude, fall inward into the gulf of blackness. Nobody said anything for two or three ticks of the large kitchen clock, and then Ellen burst out:
"I think she's a nasty, flirty, stuck-up thing; that's what I think!"
"Shs--hss! Ellen," said her mother.
"Peter," demanded Ellen, "are you reading again?"
"I beg your pardon, Ellen." Peter did not know that he had turned a page.
"Don't you ever wish for anything for yourself, Peter? Don't you wish you were rich?"
"No, Ellen, I don't know that I ever do."
But as the winter got on and the news of Ada Brown's engagement was confirmed, he must have wished it a great many times.
One evening late in January he was sitting with his mother very quietly by the kitchen stove, the front of which was opened to throw out the heat; there was the good smell of the supper in the room, for though he had a meal with the Greenslets at six, his mother always made a point of having something hot for him when he came in from bedding down the mare, and the steam of it on the window-panes made dull smears of the reflected light. The shade of the lamp was drawn down until the ceiling of the room was all in shadow save for the bright escape from the chimney which shone directly overhead, round and yellow as twenty dollars, and as Peter leaned back in his chair, looking up, it might have been that resemblance which gave a turn to his thoughts and led him to say to his mother:
"Why did my father never get rich?"
"I hardly know, Peter. He used to say that he couldn't afford it. There were so many other things he wished to do; and I wished them, too. When we were young we did them together. Then your father was the sort of man who always gave too much and took too little. I remember his saying once that no one who loved his fellowman very much, could get rich."
"Do you wish he had?"
"I don't know that either. No, not if he was happier the way he was. And we were happy. Things would have come out all right if it hadn't been for the accident when the thresher broke, and his being ill so long afterward. And my people weren't so kind as they might have been. You see, they always thought him a little queer. Before we were married, before we were even engaged, he had had a little money. It had been left