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Book 2Three
As Lucy was coming in from the orchard just before sunset, she found Pauline waiting for her on the back porch, with a cape over her shoulders.
"Lucy, you`ll take cold, you shouldn`t be out there after four o`clock without a coat on. I never could make you wear clothes enough when you were little. It`s just the same now. Mrs. Ramsay called up again and wants to speak to you. You will have to go there tonight."
Lucy said she supposed she must. There was only one thing she really liked to do in the evening. She and her father had been playing some sonatas of Mozart after he came home from the shop. He had a harsh tone on the violin, but he seemed to enjoy playing with her so much that she enjoyed it, too.
After supper she walked toward the town and turned into the street that people jokingly called Quality Street, because Mrs. Ramsay lived at one end of it and the Gordons at the other. Mrs. Ramsay was sitting in her high-backed chair beside the big front window, the shades up and the silk curtains drawn back. This had always been her way, though her house was so near the sidewalk that every passer-by could gaze in; her neighbours sometimes said it looked as if she were giving a reception to the street. As a little girl Lucy had loved to come to this house; such comfortable rooms, old- fashioned furniture, and soft, flowered carpets. She used to like the feeling that here there was a long distance between the parlour and the kitchen, that they were not always being mixed up together as they were at home. Mrs. Ramsay was then the only woman in town who kept two maids; now Mrs. Harry Gordon kept a man and his wife, Pauline had told her.
Lucy kissed Mrs. Ramsay`s cheek and sat down at her side, on the bamboo stool with the red cushion where she used to sit when she was learning to crochet. Nothing ever changed in this house, and there was something in the air of it that one was glad to come back to. The house had some reality, had colour and warmth, because the woman who made it and ruled it had those things in her nature.
"Lucy, dear, you aren`t treating me as well as you always used to. Have I grown too old for you, at last?"
Lucy murmured that she didn`t like to visit her friends when she was dull and out of sorts. She had stayed in the city and worked all summer, and that didn`t turn out very well. "When fall came, I was not good for anything. My teacher`s wife packed my things for me--and I let her do it, think of that!"
Mrs. Ramsay patted her hand. So it wasn`t that Lucy had displeased her teacher and been sent away, as some people said.
"Well, my dear, if you don`t feel like talking, you might come in and play for me sometimes. I had the piano tuned as soon as I heard you were home. And there it stands. Madge never touches it."
Lucy brightened. "Would you like that? I think I would! We have only the old upright at home, you know. The one in father`s shop is a little better, but it bothers me to have people coming in and out. I didn`t use to mind it when I was a girl."
"A girl? Good gracious, what are you now, I`d like to know? No, you mustn`t practise much while you are at home. You look tired, my dear, and you walk tired. You need a long rest in country air, and there`s no air like the Platte valley. Denver`s too high, and Chicago`s too low. There are no autumns like ours, anywhere. The fall we spent in Scotland, I count lost out of my life. Mr. Ramsay would have it, and he got enough of it!"
Yes, Lucy said, she was glad to be at home. A whole year of the city had been too much.
"But it was a good year, wasn`t it? You must have been enjoying your work, or you wouldn`t have stayed. And I hope you had plenty of fun along with it. I don`t like to see young people with talent take it too seriously. Life is short; gather roses while you may. I`m sure you gathered a few."
Lucy smiled indulgently. "A few."
"Make it as many as you can, Lucy. Nothing really matters but living. Get all you can out of it. I`m an old woman, and I know. Accomplishments are the ornaments of life, they come second. Sometimes people disappoint us, and sometimes we disappoint ourselves; but the thing is, to go right on living. You`ve hardly begun yet. Don`t let a backward spring discourage you. There`s a long summer before you, and everything rights itself in time."
Lucy sat wondering why it was she could not talk to her old friend. On her way down here tonight, she had been thinking she would ask Mrs. Ramsay to summon Harry Gordon to this very parlour some afternoon (no one refused any request of hers), to give her a chance to talk with him, and to be present at the interview. But now she found she couldn`t do it. She rose with a sigh and went over to the piano.
She played for nearly an hour. She liked playing on this piano again; it was the only good one in town. Long ago she had supposed it must be one of the best in the world. Mrs. Ramsay sat straight in her high-backed chair, her elbow on the arm, her head resting lightly on the tips of her fingers.
Had Mrs. Ramsay turned and looked out of the window, she would have seen a man`s tall figure go somewhat pompously by. (The blind was still up, and the interior of the lighted room was as clear to the passer-by as a stage setting when the theatre is dark.) At the corner he did not go straight north as his way led, but turned and walked west, along the sidewalk that bordered Mrs. Ramsay`s flower garden and carriage-house. He had been seized by a fierce impulse to go straight to her front door and into the parlour,--he almost did it. Now he meant to walk round the block and look in on that scene again. But by the time he reached the west corner he had recovered himself, and he resumed his way north. It had only knocked him out of his course one block, his pride told him; that wasn`t much of a knock!
In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching. On the sidewalks along which everybody comes and goes, you must, if you walk abroad at all, at some time pass within a few inches of the man who cheated and betrayed you, or the woman you desire more than anything else in the world. Her skirt brushes against you. You say good-morning, and go on. It is a close shave. Out in the world the escapes are not so narrow.
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