Mary Austin - The Lovely Lady

The walls of the Wonderful House rose up straight and shining, pale greenish gold as the slant sunlight on the orchard grass under the apple trees; the windows that sprang arching to the summer blueness let in the scent of the cluster rose at the turn of the fence, beginning to rise above the dusty smell of the country roads, and the evening clamour of the birds in Bloombury wood. As it dimmed and withdrew, the shining of the walls came out more clearly. Peter saw then that they were all of coloured pictures wrought flat upon the gold, and as the glow of it increased they began to swell and stir like a wood waking. They leaned out from the walls, looking all one way toward the increasing light and tap-tap of the Princess' feet along the halls.

"Peter, oh, Peter!"

The tap-tapping grew sharp and nearer like the sound of a crutch on a wooden veranda, and the voice was Ellen's.

"Oh, Peter, you are always a-reading and a-reading!"

Peter rolled off the long settle where he had been stretched and put the book in his pocket apologetically.

"I was just going to quit," he said; "did you want anything, Ellen?"

"The picnic is coming back; I thought we could go down to the turn to meet them. Mrs. Sibley said she would save me some things from the luncheon."

If there was a little sting to Peter in Ellen's eagerness, it was evidence at least, how completely he and his mother had kept her from realizing that it was chiefly because of their not being able to afford the well-filled basket demanded by a Bloombury picnic that they had not accepted the invitation. Ellen had thought it was because Bet, the mare, could not be spared all day from the ploughing nor Peter from hoeing the garden, and her mother was too busy with the plaid gingham dress she was making for the minister's wife, to do any baking. It meant to Ellen, the broken fragments of the luncheon, just so much of what a picnic should mean: the ride in the dusty morning, swings under the trees, easy games that she could play, lemonade, pails and pails of it, pink ham sandwiches and frosted cake; and if Ellen could have any of these, she was having a little piece of the picnic. What it would have meant particularly to Peter over and above a day let loose, the arching elms, the deep fern of Bloombury wood, might have been some passages, perhaps, which could be taken home and made over into the groundwork of new and interesting adventures in the House from which Ellen had recalled him. There was a girl with June apple cheeks and bright brown eyes at that picnic, who could have given points to princesses.

He followed the tapping of his sister's crutch along the thick, bitter smelling dust of the road, rising more and more heavily as the dew gathered, until they came to the turn by the cluster rose and heard below them on the bridge, the din of the wheels and the gay laughter of the picnickers.

"Hi, Peter!"

"Hello, Ellen!"

"Awful sorry you couldn't come … had a bully time.... Killed a copperhead and two water snakes."

"Here, Ellen, catch ahold of this!"

And while she was about it the June apple girl leaned over the end-board of the wagon, and spoke softly to Peter.

"We're going over to Harvey's pasture next Wednesday afternoon, berrying, in the Democrat wagon with our team; Jim Harvey's going to drive. We made it up to-day. Surely you can get away for an afternoon?" That was what the voice said. "To be with me," the eyes added.

"I don't know.... I'd like it...."

It was not altogether the calculation as to how much earlier he would have to get up that morning to be able to take an hour off in the afternoon, that made Peter hesitate, but the sudden swimming of his senses about the point of meeting eyes. "I'll tell you what," he said, "you come by for Ellen, and I'll walk over about four and ride home with you."

"Oh," said the girl; she did not know quite whether to triumph at having gained so much or to be disappointed at so little. "I'll be expecting you."

The horses creaked forward in the harness, the dust puffed up from under the wheels and drowned the smell of the wilding rose, it fell thick on the petals and a little on Peter's spirit, too, as he followed Ellen back to the house, though it never occurred to him to think any more of it than that he had been working too long in the hot sun and was very tired. It did not, however, prevent his eating his share of the picnic dainties as he sat with his mother and Ellen on the veranda. Then as the soft flitter of the bats' wings began in the dusk, he kissed them both and went early up to bed.

Peter's room was close under the roof and that was close under the elm boughs; all hours he could hear them finger it with soft rustling touches. The bed was pulled to the window that gave upon the downslope of the hill; at the foot of it one saw the white bloom-faces of the alders lift and bow above the folded leaves, and the rising of the river damp across the pastures. All the light reflected from the sky above Bloombury wood was no more than enough to make a glimmer on the glass of a picture that hung at the foot of Peter's bed. It served to show the gilt of the narrow frame and the soft black of the print upon which Peter had looked so many times that he thought now he was still seeing it as he lay staring in the dusk—a picture of a young man in bright armour with loosened hair, riding down a particularly lumpy and swollen dragon. Flames came out of the creature's mouth in the immemorial fashion of dragons, but the young man was not hurt by them. He sat there lightly, his horse curvetting, his lance thrust down the dragon's throat and coming out of the back of his head, doing a great deed easily, the way people like to think of great things being done. It was a very narrow picture, so narrow that you might think that it had something to do with the dragon's doubling on himself and the charger's forefeet being up in the air to keep within the limits of the frame, and the exclusion from it of the Princess whom, as his father had told him the story, the young knight George had rescued from those devouring jaws. It came out now, quite clearly, that she must have had cheeks as red as June apples and eyes like the pools of spring rain in Bloombury wood, and her not being there in the picture was only a greater security for her awaiting him at this moment in the House with the Shining Walls.

There was, for the boy still staring at it through the dusk, something particularly personal in the picture, for ever since his father had died, three years ago, Peter had had a dragon of his own to fight. Its name was Mortgage. It had its lair in Lawyer Keplinger's office, from which it threatened twice yearly to come out and eat up his mother and Ellen and the little house and farm, and required to have its mouth stopped with great wads of interest which took all Peter's laborious days to scrape together. This year, however, he had hopes, if the garden turned out well, of lopping off a limb or a claw of the dragon by way of a payment on the principal, which somehow seemed to bring the Princess so much nearer, that as Peter lay quite comfortably staring up at the glimmer on the wall, the four gold lines of the frame began to stretch up and out and the dark block of the picture to recede until it became the great hall of a palace again, and there was the Princess coming toward him in a golden shimmer.

There was just such another glow on the afternoon when Peter walked over to the berrying and came up with the apple-cheeked girl whose name was Ada, a good half mile from the others. As they climbed together over uneven ground she gave him her hand to hold, and there was very little to say and no need of saying it until they came to the hill overlooking the pasture, yellowing toward the end of summer, full of late bloom and misty colour passing insensibly into light. Threads of gossamer caught on the ends of the scrub or floated free, glinting as they turned and bellied in the windless air, to trick the imagination with the hint of robed, invisible presences.