“Yes, but suppose you were a king. Then couldn’t you be proud?”
“Foo! A king. I’m afraid not many Quakers were kings. Or, no, come to think of it, perhaps they all were! And perhaps they all were proud!”
“Well, if I was a king, I’d be proud, and I’m proud anyway!”
“You look out you don’t have a fall, like old doctor Humpty-Dumpty. And all the king’s horses—!”
“Ho ho, don’t be silly. Humpty-Dumpty was nothing but an egg! And now come on. And shall we go along the little path by the rope walk and into the woods? To the secret place?”
“Yes, all aboard for the secret place.”
The morning had perceptibly darkened, the sea fog lay close and smothering above the oak woods, the pine trees, the leaf-strewn wood path; above the fog there must be clouds; it looked like rain. A pungent smell of burning leaves rankled in the air, too, the smudge fires of autumn, smoke of the consuming world. On this path, in the snow, in winter — Buzzer on her little red sled, the leggined legs stuck out stiffly before her, going to the golf links — he must remember tomorrow to get the sled out of the cellar, and take a look, too, at the jugs of elderberry wine on the top of the cellar wall. And Paul’s dandelion wine. And the snow shovels.… The woods were silent, dripping; a chickadee chattered angrily, a catbird wailed; and at the secret place — the little hollow of pine needles and pine cones under a solitary great boulder of granite, green-lichened, surrounded by pines — while Buzzer built a house of pine twigs, and stood pine cones around them as trees, he opened the blue letter.
No salutation — no signature. A single sheet closely and neatly written, written calmly and unhurriedly, too, as one could see by the care with which the margins had been kept, the text precisely balanced on the page. The longest letter she had ever written to him — which could have, of course, only one meaning — perhaps it would be better not to read it at all—? The burden of it was already manifest in the sudden closing of his heart.
I think I know how it is with you, I think you will know how it is with me. Do you remember how we met, that first time in Washington Street, after we had come out of the vaudeville theater? I suddenly saw you again on the sidewalk, looking down at me, and I said, well, where did you come from, and you, without even so much as taking your hat off, said Oh, I fell from heaven. As casual as that, and of course if I hadn’t had too many cocktails for lunch at the Touraine there’d never have been any meeting at all. We’ve been very happy, haven’t we? Maybe because it was all just as casual and light as that. And I never felt that I was taking anything away from Enid, or any pangs of conscience, until I began to feel that you were beginning to have pangs of conscience. You have begun, haven’t you? And it’s funny, but I don’t really mind that at all, in fact I like it, for it makes me like you better — not that I didn’t like you anyway — and makes me like Enid better too. And Buzzer. But I expect we both knew it was bound to happen some day, and both kept a little something in reserve, so that when the time did come it wouldn’t hurt too much — isn’t that it?
So, I think you’d better not come to see me any more. And I think you will like to know that I’m going to be married, next month, to the man you talked to on the telephone once, by mistake — remember? — and whose little painting of the Concord River you liked. I hope you’ll be happy, all three of you — I’m sure I’m going to be happy myself — but it was fun, wasn’t it? I shall always be glad it happened, and grateful.
Grateful! Dear delightful Nora grateful! He began to read the letter again, but found he couldn’t. The words were too good, too true, too tender, the direct and rich honesty was more than he could bear, so much more than he could ever possibly have deserved; and abruptly he felt that if he didn’t shout, or do something violent, he would burst into tears. He sat quite still for a moment, looked up through the red boughs of a pine tree into the gray fog, then suddenly he put out a hand, seized Buzzer by one ankle, pulled her to him, and hugged her passionately.
“She’s grateful!” he shouted. “She says she’s grateful!”
“Daddy, you put me down this instant! Look what you’ve done to my house!”
“I can’t help it, my pet, she says she’s grateful!”
“Who’s grateful! Now put me down!”
“Mother Nature, that’s who. Did you ever have a pine tree tell you she was grateful? Did you? No, I’ll bet you didn’t.”
“Don’t be silly! And you’re scratching me, too. You didn’t shave!”
“I did too shave, you wretch — you and your houses!”
“You’ve spoiled it, see? All those trees knocked down, and the house. Now you’ll have to help me fix it up again!”
“You give me one kiss, and I’ll help you fix it up again.”
“There. Now put me down. You ought to know better!”
“All right. We’ll fix your palace up, my pet, and surround it with a grove of cedar of Lebanon and shittim wood, and put the Queen of Sheba in it, and King Solomon, too, and a lot of angels and archangels and cherubim and seraphim, and we’ll have a procession of kings for them, and music of dulcimers and cymbals and shawms and — sub-tone clarinets. And then, when we’ve done all that, what do you think — before the rain comes, which might be any minute now, we’ll go skulking like Indians by the secret trail down through the primeval forests to the river, and then we’ll prowl all the way home along the shore, keeping invisible, with our tomahawks in our hands.”
“Where are our tomahawks?”
“Here, this is a likely looking tomahawk, and here’s another.”
“And nobody will see us?”
“Shhhh, we mustn’t talk, you know. We must be stealthy!”
“Shhh! Are we ready?”
“Not a sound now — and be careful not to step on twigs! I’ll go first, to blaze the trail, and you follow. Come on!”
From the wet sand bluffs by the river, when they emerged into the wide peace of fog, they could just make out the pale yellow sand bluffs of the golf links, opposite, and a solitary figure stooping to pick up a ball on the ninth green, solemnly replacing the metal flag in the hole. They slid down the slope of sand, filling their shoes; sat for a moment on the matted eel-grass, sea-smelling — the curled stiff wave of eel grass which everywhere lined the shores of the river — to empty out the sand; then resumed their prowl over alternate stretches of beach and tangle. The tide was out, the water waveless, leaden, fog-stilled; through the fog, in the direction of Paul’s lagoon, came the chug-chug of an invisible motorboat, and the cawing of crows. Bayberry and beach plum, mussel shells, clam shells — carapaces of horseshoe crabs, the little ones golden, the larger ones almost black — their footsteps crunched and snapped and crackled amongst these. They were in the wilderness — tomahawk in hand they were revisiting the Indian wilderness, the wilderness unchanged since the beginning of time. Unchanged? Unchanged save by a dream, perhaps — the dream threading the thickets, the fog, the beds of bubbling eel grass, the hushed and overcast noon, exactly as his own world, all morning, had been threaded and changed by the indiscreet dream about Nora. But now, subtly, that had altered again — it was as if, now, through the fog, a single beam of soft light had plunged downward to that obscure shape of shifting and involved struggle, had quickly lighted and lightened the sinister intricacies of the unknown, lighted the lifted hand, brightened the dark face before it turned away — so that suddenly the delicious embrace, the air-borne embrace, had shed all its burden of sorrow and pathos, all pang and pain, and become wholly benign. The secret was suddenly sunlit, the Rubenslike sensuality was sunlit, and the face, which was half Nora’s and half Enid’s, no longer reproached him in desolation as it turned away, but instead — or so it seemed — looked up at him almost merrily before it vanished. Had the dream changed? But how could a dream change afterwards? He must simply have been mistaken about it, not at the time seen it quite clearly — just as he had not known after all that the ecstatic and anguished face was as much Enid’s as Nora’s. Had Nora’s letter done this? I think I know how it is with you, I think you will know how it is with me.