He got to his feet with a vigorous precision of movement which the other

admired. "Well, he's grown to be considerable of a man," he thought to

himself. "A pity his father couldn't have lived to see it, all that

aliveness that had bothered them so much, down at last where he's got

his grip on it. And enough of it, plenty of it, oceans of it, left so

that he is still about forty times more alive than anybody else." He

looked tolerantly with his tired elderly amusement at the other,

stepping about, surveying the room and every object in it.

The younger brought himself up short in front of a framed photograph.

"Why, here's a château-fort I don't know!" he said with an abrupt

Advertisement..

accent. He added, with some vehemence, "I never even heard of it, I'm

sure. And it's authentic, evidently."

The older man sat perfectly still. He did not know what a shatto four

was, nor had he the slightest desire to ask and bring the information

down on him, given as the other would give it, pressingly, vividly, so

that you had to listen whether you wanted to or not. Heaven knew he did

not want to know about whatever it was, this time. Not about that, nor

anything else. He only wanted to rest and have a little life before it

was too late. It was already too late for any but the quietest sort. But

that was no matter. He wouldn't have liked the other kind very well

probably. He certainly had detested the sort of "life" he'd experienced

in business. The quietest sort was what he had always wanted and never

got. And now it really seemed as though he was going to have it. For all

his fatigued pose in the old arm-chair, his heart beat faster at the

idea. He hadn't got used to being free yet. He'd heard people say that

when you were first married it was like that, you couldn't realize it.

He'd heard one of the men at the office say that for a long time, every

time he heard his bride's skirts rustle, he had to turn his head to make

sure she was really there. Well, he would like now to get up and look

out of that window and see if his garden was really there. His garden!

He thought with a secret feeling, half pity and half shame, of those

yellowed old seed catalogues which had come, varnished and brilliant and

new, year after year, so long ago, which he'd looked at so hard and so

long, in the evenings, and put away to get yellow and sallow like his

face . . . and his hopes. It must be almost time to "make garden," he

thought. He had heard them saying at the store that the sap was

beginning to run in the maple-trees. He would have just time to get

himself settled in his house . . . he felt an absurd young flush come up

under his grizzled beard at this phrase . . . "his house," his own house,

with bookshelves, and a garden. How he loved it all already! He sat very

still, feeling those savagely lopped-off tendrils put out their curling

fingers once more, this time unafraid. He sat there in the comfortable

old arm-chair at rest as never before. He thought, "This is the way I'm

going to feel right along, every day, all the time," and closed his

eyes.




Most Popular