respectable that they’ve gone further in than the flesh, and taken
hold of the ego proper. You couldn’t rest, even here. The war-cry
would follow you.”
“You don’t waste words, Wyllis, but you never miss fire. I talk more
than you do, without saying half so much. You must have learned the
art of silence from these taciturn Norwegians. I think I like silent
men.”
“Naturally,” said Wyllis, “since you have decided to marry the most
brilliant talker you know.”
Both were silent for a time, listening to the sighing of the hot
wind through the parched morning-glory vines. Margaret spoke first.
“Tell me, Wyllis, were many of the Norwegians you used to know as
interesting as Eric Hermannson?”
“Who, Siegfried? Well, no. He used to be the flower of the Norwegian
youth in my day, and he’s rather an exception, even now. He has
retrograded, though. The bonds of the soil have tightened on him, I
fancy.”
“Siegfried? Come, that’s rather good, Wyllis. He looks like a
dragon-slayer. What is it that makes him so different from the
others? I can talk to him; he seems quite like a human being.”
“Well,” said Wyllis, meditatively, “I don’t read Bourget as much as
my cultured sister, and I’m not so well up in analysis, but I fancy
it’s because one keeps cherishing a perfectly unwarranted suspicion
that under that big, hulking anatomy of his, he may conceal a soul
somewhere. Nicht wahr?”
“Something like that,” said Margaret, thoughtfully, “except that
it’s more than a suspicion, and it isn’t groundless. He has one, and
he makes it known, somehow, without speaking.”
“I always have my doubts about loquacious souls,” Wyllis remarked,
with the unbelieving smile that had grown habitual with him.
Margaret went on, not heeding the interruption. “I knew it from the
first, when he told me about the suicide of his cousin, the
Bernstein boy. That kind of blunt pathos can’t be summoned at will
in anybody. The earlier novelists rose to it, sometimes,
unconsciously. But last night when I sang for him I was doubly sure.
Oh, I haven’t told you about that yet! Better light your pipe again.
You see, he stumbled in on me in the dark when I was pumping away at
that old parlor organ to please Mrs. Lockhart. It’s her household
fetish and I’ve forgotten how many pounds of butter she made and
sold to buy it. Well, Eric stumbled in, and in some inarticulate
manner made me understand that he wanted me to sing for him. I sang
just the old things, of course. It’s queer to sing familiar things
here at the world’s end. It makes one think how the hearts of men
have carried them around the world, into the wastes of Iceland and
the jungles of Africa and the islands of the Pacific. I think if one
lived here long enough one would quite forget how to be trivial, and
would read only the great books that we never get time to read in
the world, and would remember only the great music, and the things
that are really worth while would stand out clearly against that
horizon over there. And of course I played the intermezzo from
‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ for him; it goes rather better on an organ
than most things do. He shuffled his feet and twisted his big hands
up into knots and blurted out that he didn’t know there was any
music like that in the world. Why, there were tears in his voice,
Wyllis! Yes, like Rossetti, I heard his tears. Then it dawned upon
me that it was probably the first good music he had ever heard in
all his life. Think of it, to care for music as he does and never to
hear it, never to know that it exists on earth! To long for it as we
long for other perfect experiences that never come. I can’t tell you
what music means to that man. I never saw any one so susceptible to
it. It gave him speech, he became alive. When I had finished the
intermezzo, he began telling me about a little crippled brother who
died and whom he loved and used to carry everywhere in his arms. He
did not wait for encouragement. He took up the story and told it
slowly, as if to himself, just sort of rose up and told his own woe
to answer Mascagni’s. It overcame me.”
“Poor devil,” said Wyllis, looking at her with mysterious eyes, “and
so you’ve given him a new woe. Now he’ll go on wanting Grieg and
Schubert the rest of his days and never getting them. That’s a
girl’s philanthropy for you!”
Jerry Lockhart came out of the house screwing his chin over the
unusual luxury of a stiff white collar, which his wife insisted upon
as a necessary article of toilet while Miss Elliot was at the house.
Jerry sat down on the step and smiled his broad, red smile at
Margaret.
“Well, I’ve got the music for your dance, Miss Elliot. Olaf Oleson
will bring his accordion and Mollie will play the organ, when she
isn’t lookin’ after the grub, and a little chap from Frenchtown will
bring his fiddle—though the French don’t mix with the Norwegians
much.”
“Delightful! Mr. Lockhart, that dance will be the feature of our
trip, and it’s so nice of you to get it up for us. We’ll see the
Norwegians in character at last,” cried Margaret, cordially.
“See here, Lockhart, I’ll settle with you for backing her in this
scheme,” said Wyllis, sitting up and knocking the ashes out of his pipe.
“She’s done crazy things enough on this trip, but to talk of dancing
all night with a gang of half-mad Norwegians and taking the carriage
at four to catch the six o’clock train out of Riverton—well, it’s
tommy-rot, that’s what it is!”
“Wyllis, I leave it to your sovereign power of reason to decide
whether it isn’t easier to stay up all night than to get up at three
in the morning. To get up at three, think what that means! No, sir,
I prefer to keep my vigil and then get into a sleeper.”
“But what do you want with the Norwegians? I thought you were tired
of dancing.”
“So I am, with some people. But I want to see a Norwegian dance, and
I intend to. Come, Wyllis, you know how seldom it is that one really
wants to do anything nowadays. I wonder when I have really wanted to
go to a party before. It will be something to remember next month at
Newport, when we have to and don’t want to. Remember your own theory
that contrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable.
This is my party and Mr. Lockhart’s; your whole duty to-morrow night
will consist in being nice to the Norwegian girls. I’ll warrant you
were adept enough at it once. And you’d better be very nice indeed,
for if there are many such young valkyrs as Eric’s sister among
them, they would simply tie you up in a knot if they suspected you
were guying them.”
Wyllis groaned and sank back into the hammock to consider his fate,
while his sister went on.
“And the guests, Mr. Lockhart, did they accept?”
Lockhart took out his knife and began sharpening it on the sole of
his plowshoe.
“Well, I guess we’ll have a couple dozen. You see it’s pretty hard
to get a crowd together here any more. Most of ‘em have gone over to
the Free Gospellers, and they’d rather put their feet in the fire
than shake ‘em to a fiddle.”
Margaret made a gesture of impatience.
“Those Free Gospellers have just cast an evil spell over this
country, haven’t they?”
“Well,” said Lockhart, cautiously, “I don’t just like to pass
judgment on any Christian sect, but if you’re to know the chosen by