i wondered somewhat that peter did not come out of his house to fetch us. he was not even about the little yard when we went up the walk, though he knew that we must arrive but a few moments after he did. little child ran away to pick bouncing bet and sweet clover in the long, rank grass of the unkept garden. and miggy and i went and stood on the porch before peter's door, and i knew what i intended.
"rap!" i said to miggy.
she looked at me in surprise—i have not often commanded her like that. but i wanted to see her stand at peter's door asking for admission. and i think that peter had wanted it too and that this was why he had not come to the gate to fetch us. i guessed it by the light on his face when, in the middle of miggy's knock, he caught open the door. i like to remember his face as it looked at that moment, with the little twist of mouth and lifting of brow which gave him a peculiar sweetness and[pg 294] na?veté, curiously contradicted by the way his eyes were when they met miggy's.
"how long it took you," he said. "come in. come in."
we went in, and i looked at miggy. for i did not want her to step in that house as she would have stepped in a house that was just a house. is it not wonderful how some front doors are front doors plus? i do not know plus what—that is one of those good little in-between things which we know without always naming. but there are some front doors which are to me boards and glass and a tinkling cymbal bell; while other doors of no better architecture let me within dear depths of homes which are to houses what friends are to inhabitants. it was so that i would have had miggy go within peter's house,—not as within doors, but as within arms.
we entered directly from the porch into the small parlour—the kind of man's parlour that makes a woman long to take it on her lap and tend it. there were no curtains. between the windows was a big table filled with neat piles of newspapers and weeklies till there should be time to look them over. the shelf had a lamp, not filled, a clock, not going, and a pile of seed catalogues. on two walls were three calendars with big hollyhocks and puppies and ladies in sunbonnets. the entire inner[pg 295] wall was occupied by a map of the state—why does a man so cherish a map of something, hung up somewhere? on the organ was a row of blue books—what is it that men are always looking for in blue books? in a corner, on the floor, stood a shotgun. the wood stove had been "left up" all summer to save putting it up in the fall—this business of getting a stove on rollers and jacking it up and remembering where it stood so that the pipe will fit means, in the village, a day of annual masculine sacrifice to the feminine foolishness of wanting stoves down in summer. there was nothing disorderly about the room; but it was dressed with no sash or hair ribbon or coral beads, as a man dresses his little girl.
"we don't use this room much," peter said. "we sit in here sometimes in summer, but i think when a man sits in his parlour he always feels like he was being buried from it, same as they're used for."
"why—" said miggy, and stopped. what she was going to say it was not important to know, but i was glad that she had been going to say it. something, perhaps, about this being a very pretty room if there were somebody to give it a touch or two.
peter was obviously eager to be in the next room, and that, he explained, would have been the dining[pg 296] room, only he had taken it for his own, and they ate in the kitchen. i think that i had never heard him mention his father at all, and this "we" of his now was a lonelier thing than any lonely "i."
"this is my room," he said as we entered it. "it's where i live when i'm not at the works. come and let me show you."
so peter showed miggy his room, and he showed it to me, too, though i do not think that he was conscious of that. it was a big room, bare of floor and, save for the inescapable flowery calendar, bare of walls. there was a shelf of books—not many, but according to peter's nature sufficiently well-selected to plead for him: "look at us. who could love us and not be worth while?"—bad enough logic, in all conscience, to please any lover. miggy hardly looked at the books. she so exasperatingly took it for granted that a man must be everything in general that it left hardly anything for him to be in particular. but peter made her look, and he let me look too, and i supplied the comments and miggy occasionally did her three little nods. the writing table peter had made from a box, and by this miggy was equally untouched. all men, it appeared, should be able to make writing tables from boxes. with the linen table cover it was a little different—this peter's mother had once worked in cross-stitch for his room, and miggy lifted an end and looked at it.
[pg 297]
"she took all those stitches for you!" she said. "there's one broken," she showed him.
"i can mend that," peter said proudly, "i'll show you my needle kit."
at this she laughed out suddenly with, "needle kit! what a real regular old bachelor you are, aren't you?"
"i can't help that," said peter, with "and the same cannot be said for you" sticking from the sentence.
on the table lay the cannery account books, and one was open at a full page of weary little figures.
"is this where you sit nights and do your work and read?" miggy demanded.
"right here," peter told her, "every night of the year, 'most. except when i come to see you."
miggy stood looking at the table and the wooden chair.
"that's funny," she remarked finally, with an air of meditative surprise; "they know you so much better than i do, don't they?"
"well," peter said gravely, "they haven't been thought about as much as you have, miggy—that's one thing."
"thinking's nothing," said miggy, merrily; "sometimes you get a tune in your head and you can't get it out."
"sit down at the table," said peter, abruptly.[pg 298] "sit down!" he repeated, when her look questioned him. "i want to see you there."
she obeyed him, laughing a little, and quite in the woman's way of pretending that obedience is a choice. peter looked at her. it is true that he had been doing nothing else all the while, but now that she sat at the table—his table—he looked more than before.
"well," he said, "well, well." as a man says when he has a present and has no idea what to say about it.
peter's photographs were on the wall above the table, and peter suddenly leaned past miggy and took down the picture of his mother and put it in her hand, without saying anything. for the first time miggy met his eyes.
"your mother," she said, "why, peter. she looked—oh, peter, she looked like you!"
peter nodded. "yes, i do look like she did," he said; "i'm always so glad."
"she knew you when you were a little bit of a baby, peter," miggy advanced suddenly.
peter admitted it gravely. she had.
"well," said miggy, as peter had said it. "well."
there was a picture of peter's father as a young man,—black, curly-haired, black-moustached, the cheeks slightly tinted in the picture, his hands laid trimly along his knees. the face was weak, empty,[pg 299] but it held that mere confidence of youth which always gives a special sting to the grief of unfulfilment. over this they passed, saying nothing. it struck me that in the delicacy of that silence it was almost as if miggy shared something with peter. also, it struck me pleasantly that miggy's indifference to the personalities of divers aunts in straight bangs and long basques was slightly exaggerated, especially when, "i never thought about your having any aunts," she observed.
and then peter took down a tiny picture of the sort we call in the village "card size," and gave it to her.
"guess who," he said.
it was a little boy of not more than five, in a straight black coat dress, buttoned in the front and trimmed with broad black velvet strips, and having a white scalloped collar and white cuffs. one hand was resting on the back of a camp-chair and the other held a black helmet cap. the shoes had double rows of buttons, and for some secret reason the photographer had had the child laboriously cross one foot negligently over the other. the fine head, light-curled, was resting in the horns of that ex-device that steadied one out of all semblance to self. but in spite of the man who had made the picture, the little boy was so wholly adorable that you wanted to say so.
[pg 300]
"peter!" miggy said, "it's you."
i do not know how she knew. i think that i would not have known. but miggy knew, and her knowing made me understand something which evidently she herself did not understand. for she looked at the picture and looked at it, a strange, surprised smile on her face. and,
"well, well, well," she said again. "i never thought about that before. i mean about you. then."
"would—would you want that picture, miggy?" peter asked; "you can have it if you do."
"can i really?" said miggy. "well, i do want it. goodness...."
"i always kind of thought," peter said slowly, "that when i have a son he'll look something like that. he might, you know."
peter was leaning beside her, elbows on the table, and miggy looked up at him over the picture of the child, and made her three little nods.
"yes," she said, "you would want your little boy to look like you."
"and i'd want him named peter. it's a homely old name, but i'd want him to have it."
"peter isn't a homely name," said miggy, in a manner of surprise. "yes, of course you'd want him—"
the sentence fell between them unfinished. and[pg 301] i thought that miggy's face, still somewhat saddened by the little kenneth and now tender with its look for the picture, was lightly touched with a glowing of colour. but then i saw that this would be the light of the sunset on her cheeks, for now the west was become a glory of rose and yellow, so that it held captive her eyes. it is too frail a thing for me to have grasped by sense, but the moment seemed to say—and could give no reason—that our sunset compact miggy kept then without remembering the compact.
it almost startled me when out in the unkept garden little child began to sing. we had nearly forgotten her and we could not see her, so that she might have been any other little child wandering in the sweet clover, or merely a little voice coming in with the western light:—
"i like to stand in this great air
and see the sun go down.
it shows me a bright veil to wear
and such a pretty gown.
oh, i can see a playmate there
far up in splendour town!"
"look here," said peter to miggy; and i went over to the sunset window and let them go on alone.
he led her about the room, and she still had the little picture in her hand. from the bureau, with its small array of cheap brushes and boxes, she[pg 302] turned abruptly away. i think that she may have felt as i felt about the splash of rose on the rose-breasted grosbeak's throat—that i ought not to have been looking. beyond was a little old dry-goods box for odds and ends, a box which must have known, with a kind of feminine intelligence, that it ought to be covered with cretonne. on this box miggy knelt to read peter's high school diploma, and she stopped before a picture of the house where he was born. "was it there?" she asked. "doesn't that seem funny?" which manifestly it did not seem. "is that where your violin lives?" she asked, when they came to its corner—surely a way of betrayal that she had thought of it as living somewhere else. and all the while she carried the picture in her hand, and the sunset glorified the room, and little child was singing in the garden.
"peter," said miggy, "i don't believe a man who can play the violin can sew. give me the needle kit. i'm going to mend the table cover—may i?"
might she! peter, his face shining, brought out his red flannel needle-book—he kept it on the shelf with his shaving things!—and, his face shining more, sat on a creaking camp-chair and watched her.
"miggy," he said, as she caught the threads skilfully together, "i don't believe i've ever seen you sew. i know i never have."
[pg 303]
"this isn't sewing," miggy said.
"it's near enough like it to suit me," said peter.
he drew a breath long, and looked about him. i knew how he was seeing the bare room, lamp-lighted, and himself trying to work in spite of the longing that teased and possessed him and bade him give it up and lean back and think of her; or of tossing on the hard couch in the tyranny of living his last hour with her and of living, too, the hours that might never be. and here she was in this room—his room. peter dropped his head on his hand and his eyes did not leave her face save to venture an occasional swift, ecstatic excursion to her fingers.
simply and all quietly, as nature sends her gifts, miracles moved toward completion while miggy sewed. the impulse to do for him this trifling service was like a signal, and when she took up the needle for him i think that women whose hands had long lain quiet stirred within her blood. as for peter—but these little housewifely things which enlighten a woman merely tease a man, who already knows their import and longs for all sweet fragments of time to be merged in the long possession.
miggy gave the needle back to peter and he took it—needle, red book, and hand.
"miggy!" he said, and the name on his lips was like another name. and it was as if she were in some place remote and he were calling her.
[pg 304]
she looked at him as if she knew the call. since the world began, only for one reason does a man call a woman like that.
"what is it you want?" she said—and her voice was very sweet and very tired.
"i want more of you!" said peter cary.
she may have tried to say something, but her voice trembled away.
"i thought it would be everything—your coming here to-day," peter said. "i've wanted it and wanted it. and what does it amount to? nothing, except to make me wild with wanting you never to go away. i dread to think of your leaving me here—shutting the door and being gone. if it was just plain wanting you i could meet that, and beat it, like i do the things down to the works. but it isn't that. it's like it was something big—bigger than me, and outside of me, and it gets hold of me, and it's like it asked for you without my knowing. i can't do anything that you aren't some of it. it isn't fair, miggy. i want more of you—all of you—all the time, miggy, all the time...."
i should have liked to see miggy's face when she looked at peter, whose eyes were giving her everything and were asking everything of her; but i was studying the sunset, glory upon glory, to match the glory here. and the singing of little child began[pg 305] again, like that of a little voice vagrant in the red west....
"oh, i can see a playmate there,
far up in splendour town!"
miggy heard her, and remembered.
"peter, peter!" she cried, "i couldn't—i never could bring us two on you to support."
peter gave her hands a little shake, as if he would have shaken her. i think that he would have shaken her if it had been two or three thousand years earlier in the world's history.
"you two!" he cried; "why, miggy, when we marry do i want—or do you want—that it should stay just you and me? we want children. i want you for their mother as much as i want you for my wife."
it was the voice of the paramount, compelling spirit, the sovereign voice of the family, calling through the wilderness. peter knew,—this fine, vital boy seeking his own happiness; he gropingly understood this mighty thing, and he was trying his best to serve it. and, without knowing that she knew, miggy knew too ... and the seal that she knew was in what was in the sunset. and as far removed from these things as the sunset itself was all miggy's cheap cynicism about love and all the triviality of her criticism of peter.
miggy stood motionless, looking at peter. and[pg 306] then, like an evil spell which began to work, another presence was in the room....
somewhile before i had begun to hear the sound, as a faint undercurrent to consciousness; an unimportant, unpleasant, insisting sound that somehow interfered. gradually it had come nearer and had interfered more and had mingled harshly with the tender treble of little child. now, from peter's gate the sound besieged my ears and entered the room and explained itself to us all—
"my mary anna mary, what you mean i never know,
you don't make me merry, very, but you make me sorry, oh—"
the "oh" prolonged, undulatory, exploring the air....
i knew what it was, and they knew. at the sound of his father's voice, drunken, piteous, peter dropped miggy's hands and his head went down and he stood silent, like a smitten thing. my own heart sank, for i knew what miggy had felt, and i thought i knew what she would feel now. so here was another unfulfilled intention, another plan gone astray in an unperfected order.
peter had turned somewhat away before he spoke.
"i'll have to go now," he said quietly, "i guess you'll excuse me."
he went toward the kitchen door ashamed, miserable, all the brightness and vitality gone from[pg 307] him. i am sorry that he did not see miggy's face when she lifted it. i saw it, and i could have sung as i looked. not for peter or for miggy, but for the sake of something greater than they, something that touched her hand, commanded "look at me," bade her follow with us all.
before peter reached the door she overtook him, stood before him, put her hands together for a moment, and then laid one swiftly on his cheek.
"peter," she said, "that don't make any difference. that don't make any difference."
no doubt he understood her words, but i think what he understood best was her hand on his cheek. he caught her shoulders and looked and looked....
"honest—honest, don't it?" he searched her.
you would not have said that her answer to that was wholly direct. she only let fall her hand from his cheek to his shoulder, and,
"peter," she said, "is it like this?"
"yes," he said simply, "it's like this."
and then what she said was ever so slightly muffled, as if at last she had dropped her head in that sweet confusion which she had never seemed to know; as if at last she was looking at peter as if he was peter.
"then i don't ever want to be any place where you aren't," she told him.
[pg 308]
"miggy!" peter cried, "take care what you say. remember—he'd live with us."
she made her three little nods.
"so he will," she answered, "so he will. he—and my little sister—and all of us."
peter's answer was a shout.
"say it out!" he cried, "say you will. miggy! i've got to hear you say it out!"
"peter, peter," she said, "i want to marry you."
he took her in his arms and in the room was the glory upon glory of the west, a thing of wings and doors ajar. and strong as the light, there prevailed about them the soul of the family, that distributes burdens, shares responsibilities, accepts what is and what is to come. its voice was in the voice of little child singing in the garden, and of old cary babbling at the gate. its heart was the need of peter and miggy, each for the other. i saw in their faces the fine freedoms of the sunset, that sunset where miggy and little child and i had agreed that a certain spirit lives. and it did but tally with the momentous utterance of these things and of the evening when miggy spoke again.
"go now—you go to him," she said, "we'll wait. and—peter—when you come back, i want to see everything in the room again."
