“Oh, Pilate, do be quiet!”
She stood up and David saw her a dark pretty girl, too slender for her height. She saw him and walked toward him, a trowel in her earthy hand, and there was mud on her forehead where she had brushed aside her hair.
“Hello,” she said, “what do you want?”
“I am looking for the river,” David said. “I want a swim.”
“Well, the path goes there.” She pointed with the trowel. “You’ll find some decrepit wooden steps and at the bottom of them is the river. If you don’t trust the steps you’ll have to slide down the cliff. It’s not too steep.”
“Thanks,” David said and lingered. She stirred his imagination. “What a beautiful house,” he said.
The girl came toward him and stood a little distance from him. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?” she agreed. “It’s my home. We don’t live here in the winter since my father died, but we come as early as we can in the spring, my mother and I, so that I can get the flower beds into shape. Still, it’s July before I get it anything like the way I want it.”
He restrained his curiosity. Why had she no help? “It’s a job,” he said. “I shouldn’t like to have to do it all myself. Haven’t you any neighbors?”
“No,” she said rather shortly. She was not thinking of him, that was clear, she was biting the edge of her crimson lower lip. Her mouth was very pretty, almost perfect in its bow, but it was too small. Her smooth olive skin was flawless, and her dark brown eyes were clear. Her hair was straight and she wore it pulled back tightly from her face and knotted rather high from her nape. The hand that held the trowel was small, too, and just now badly scratched and very dirty.
“The place is for sale,” she said abruptly.
So that was what she had been trying to say, he thought, she had been trying to decide whether she could bear to say it. He could see that she loved the house.
“I am sorry to hear that, since it is your home,” he said gravely.
“Oh, it’s no use!” She made the words a sudden cry and she threw down the trowel. “I know we can’t keep it up. Mother tries to do the housework and I try to do the gardening, and we can’t. We used to have six servants here and they were always busy.”
“I can imagine that,” he said, wanting to help her not to weep. “We have a place in Maine something like it. My mother is dead, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back there.”
At this moment his own inspiration came to him. If the house was for sale, why should not his father buy it and make it the center of the school? There could not be a better site, the trees were old and handsome, the gardens ready to cultivate again, and the house had the air of life about it, in spite of its present state. It did not seem remote, it was not a piece of wilderness, it was a place where people had lived and could still live.
“Look here,” he said to the girl, “this seems very brash, perhaps, but it happens that my father is looking for a place to found a theological seminary as a memorial to my mother, and it occurs to me that this might be the place — if you really must sell, that is.”
The girl looked at him, her dark eyes penetrating.
“No?” he asked, half smiling.
“I am frightened,” she replied. “I was almost daring God to help me, hating him, really, because I am so desperate. I know this is our last summer. My mother can’t go on, and I couldn’t possibly manage alone. But what does one do? I haven’t been taught how to earn my living. And I was just saying, God, if you don’t help me now, I’ll never say another prayer, or I’ll never believe in you again. Then Pilate screeched.”
“I suppose many a prayer has been answered by coincidence,” David said, hesitating for the right words. The girl was so intense, so vivid in her darkness. “I might say that God answered my prayer, too, that I find the place I wanted to find for my father.”
His native prudence touched him at this point. The matter of price was not his concern and he must not discuss it, or seem too eager.
“Come inside,” the girl said. “You’ll want to see the rooms. There are twenty of them, quite large.”
“I ought to introduce myself — David MacArd.”
“I am Olivia Dessard.” She put out an earth-soiled right hand and he clasped it for a second. “Mother will be glad to see you. We don’t have guests any more.”
She led the way along the brick path and up the stately steps to the wide porch beneath the pillars, and then into an immense hall which ran straight through the house and opened upon a wide terrace and the vista of the curving river. “Please wait in the drawing room,” she commanded him with a gesture. “I will find my mother.”
He went into a room of fading magnificence, a museum of mahogany pieces of French furniture and tapestries. It was clean, the furniture dusted, and upon the center table was a bowl of small white lilies. He sat down in a highback chair and waited. Great windows stretched from ceiling to floor, and at the end of the room a marble mantelpiece supported a group of Watteau figurines. The place was well beloved, he could see that, and the more he looked about him, the more enamored he was of his idea.
He heard footsteps but no voices, and then Olivia came, holding by the hand a small grey-haired woman with a tired imperious face. “This is my mother, Mr. MacArd.”
“Mrs. Dessard,” David said. He put out his hand and took a hot swollen little hand, still soapy from dishwashing, he supposed, or scrubbing of some sort.
“Olivia is so impetuous,” Mrs. Dessard said in a high voice. “I hadn’t time to dry my hands properly. You must excuse the dampness.”
He decided to come to the point. “Your daughter has told me of your courage, Mrs. Dessard. I admire it immensely.”
Mrs. Dessard sank down on a satin covered chair. “Olivia says you are interested in buying the house for a religious purpose. That would make me be very happy. I have always been religious, although our faith has been sorely tried in late years. But God works in mysterious ways and maybe this was all planned.” She broke off, her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she shook her head. “You mustn’t mind me. The loss of my dear husband—” her voice broke on the words.
“Miss Dessard told me,” David said gently.
Olivia interrupted. “Is your father David Hardworth MacArd? Mother asked me.”
David turned to her. “Yes, he is,” he said unwillingly.
“We read about your mother’s death,” Mrs. Dessard said. She had got the better of her tears. “We met once or twice, I think, at Mrs. Astor’s parties. But we have lived very much abroad. My dear husband was French, not Catholic, however. His family was Huguenot, but they did not emigrate further than Holland, and then they went back again. Mr. Dessard had business in New York and Paris. Olivia is our only child, though we lost an infant son—”
“Mother, Mr. MacArd is not interested in our family history,” Olivia said.
Mrs. Dessard bridled. “I am sure he is, Olivia. It is important to know with whom one deals and he will want to tell his father. Mr. Dessard lost his fortune in the panic, Mr. MacArd; else we would never have been left as we are now. We could live in Paris, of course, and indeed we own a small house there, inherited from Olivia’s grandfather Dessard, but she loves America. She will not live in France.”
“I love this house,” Olivia said wilfully.
Mrs. Dessard turned to her with the impatience of old unended argument. “I know, my dear, and so do I, but what can we do?”
Olivia turned to David impetuously. “Will you let us come and visit you sometimes?”