The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck Part 21

Mrs. Charteris, therefore, added, with emphasis: "I am really disgracefully happy."

"Glad to hear it," said Musgrave, placidly. "So am I."

"Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph, you are hopeless!" she sighed. "And you used to make such a nice lover!"

Mrs. Charteris looked out over the river, which was like melting gold, and for a moment was silent.

"I was frightfully in love with you, Rudolph," she said, as half in wonder. "After--after that horrible time when my parents forced us to behave rationally, I wept--oh, I must have wept deluges! I firmly intended to pine away to an early grave. And that second time I liked you too, but then--there was Jack, you see."

"H'm!" said Colonel Musgrave; "yes, I see."

"I want you to continue to be friends with Jack," she went on, and her face lighted up, and her voice grew tender. "He has the artistic temperament, and naturally that makes him sensitive, and a trifle irritable at times. It takes so little to upset him, you see, for he feels so acutely what he calls the discords of life. I think most men are jealous of his talents; so they call him selfish and finicky and conceited. He isn't really, you know. Only, he can't help feeling a little superior to the majority of men, and his artistic temperament leads him to magnify the lesser mishaps of life--such as the steak being overdone, or missing a train. Oh, really, a thing like that worries him as much as the loss of a fortune, or a death in the family, would upset anyone else. Jack says there are no such things as trifles in a harmonious and well-proportioned life, and I suppose that's true to men of genius. Of course, I am rather a Philistine, and I grate on him at times--that is, I used to, but he says I have improved wonderfully. And so we are ridiculously happy, Jack and I."

Musgrave cast about vainly for an appropriate speech. Then he compromised with his conscience, and said: "Your husband is a very clever man."

"Isn't he?" She had flushed for pleasure at hearing him praised. Oh, yes, Anne loved Jack Charteris! There was no questioning that; it was written in her face, was vibrant in her voice as she spoke of him.

"Now, really, Rudolph, aren't his books wonderful? I don't appreciate them, of course, for I'm not clever, but I know you do. I don't see why men think him selfish. I know better. You have to live with Jack to really appreciate him. And every day I discover some new side of his character that makes him dearer to me. He's so clever--and so n.o.ble.

Why, I remember--Well, before Jack made his first hit with _Astaroth's Lackey_, he lived with his sister. They hadn't any money, and, of course, Jack couldn't be expected to take a clerks.h.i.+p or anything like that, because business details make his head ache, poor boy. So, his sister taught school, and he lived with her. They were very happy--his sister simply adores him, and I am positively jealous of her sometimes--but, unfortunately, the bank in which she kept her money failed one day. I remember it was just before he asked me to marry him, and told me, in his dear, laughing manner, that he hadn't a penny in the world, and that we would have to live on bread and cheese and kisses. Of course, I had a plenty for us both, though, so we weren't really in danger of being reduced to that. Well, I wanted to make his sister an allowance. But Jack pointed out, with considerable reason, that one person could live very comfortably on an income that had formerly supported two. He said it wasn't right I should be burdened with the support of his family. Jack was so sensitive, you see, lest people might think he was making a mercenary marriage, and that his sister was profiting by it. Now, I call that one of the n.o.blest things I ever heard of, for he is devotedly attached to his sister, and, naturally, it is a great grief to him to see her compelled to work for a living. His last book was dedicated to her, and the dedication is one of the most tender and pathetic things I ever read."

Musgrave was hardly conscious of what she was saying. She was not particularly intelligent, this handsome, cheery woman, but her voice, and the richness and sweetness of it, and the vitality of her laugh, contented his soul.

Anne was different; the knowledge came again to him quite simply that Anne was different, and in the nature of things must always be a little different from all other people--even Patricia Musgrave. He had no desire to tell Anne Charteris of this, no idea that it would affect in any way the tenor of his life. He merely accepted the fact that she was, after all, Anne Willoughby, and that her dear presence seemed, somehow, to strengthen and cheer and comfort and content beyond the reach of expression.

Yet Musgrave recognized her lack of cleverness, and liked and admired her none the less. A vision of Patricia arose--a vision of a dainty, shallow, Dresden-china face with a surprising quant.i.ty of vivid hair about it. Patricia was beautiful; and Patricia was clever, in her pinchbeck way. But Rudolph Musgrave doubted very much if her mocking eyes now ever softened into that brooding, sacred tenderness he had seen in Anne's eyes; and he likewise questioned if a hurried, happy thrill ran through Patricia's voice when Patricia spoke of her husband.

"You have unquestionably married an unusual man," Musgrave said. "I--by Jove, you know, I fancy my wife finds him almost as attractive as you do."

"Ah, Rudolph, I can't fancy anyone whom--whom you loved caring for anyone else. Don't I remember, sir, how irresistible you can be when you choose?"

Anne laughed, and raised plump hands to heaven.

"Really, though, women pursue him to a perfectly indecent extent. I have to watch over him carefully; not that I distrust him, of course, for--dear Jack!--he is so devoted to me, and cares so little for other women, that Joseph would seem in comparison only a depraved _roue_. But the _women_--why, Rudolph, there was an Italian countess at Rome--the impudent minx!--who actually made me believe--However, Jack explained all that, after I had made both a spectacle and a nuisance of myself, and he had behaved so n.o.bly in the entire affair that for days afterwards I was positively limp with repentance. Then in Paris that flighty Mrs. Hardress--but he explained that, too. Some women are shameless, Rudolph," Mrs. Charteris concluded, and sighed her pity for them.

"Utterly so," Musgrave a.s.sented, gravely.

He was feeling a thought uncomfortable. To him the place had grown portentous. The sun was low, and the long shadows of the trees were black on the dim lawn. People were a.s.sembling for supper, and pa.s.sing to and fro under low-hanging branches; and the gaily-colored gowns of the women glimmered through a faint blue haze like that with which Boucher and Watteau and Fragonard loved to veil, and thereby to make wistful, somehow, the antics of those fine parroquet-like manikins who figure in their _fetes galantes._

Inside the house, someone was playing an unpleasant sort of air on the piano--an air which was quite needlessly creepy and haunting and insistent. It all seemed like a grim bit out of a play. The tenderness and pride that shone in Anne's eyes as she boasted of her happiness troubled Rudolph Musgrave. He had a perfectly unreasonable desire to carry her away, by force, if necessary, and to protect her from clever people, and to buy things for her.

"So, I am an old, old married woman now, and--and I think in some ways I suit Jack better than a more brilliant person might. I am glad your wife has taken a fancy to him. And I want you to profit by her example.

Jack says she is one of the most attractive women he ever met. He asked me to-day why I didn't do my hair like hers. She must make you very happy, Rudolph?"

"My wife," Colonel Musgrave said, "is in my partial opinion, a very clever and very beautiful woman."

"Yes; cleverness and beauty are sufficient to make any man happy, I suppose," Anne hazarded. "Jack says, though--_Are_ cleverness and beauty the main things in life, Rudolph?"

"Undoubtedly," he protested.

"Now, that," she said, judicially, "shows the difference in men. Jack says a man loves a woman, not for her beauty or any other quality she possesses, but just because she is the woman he loves and can't help loving."

"Ah! I dare say that is the usual reason. Yes," said Colonel Musgrave,--"because she is the woman he loves and cannot help loving!"

Anne clapped her hands. "Ah, so I have penetrated your indifference at last, sir!"

Impulsively, she laid her hand upon his arm, and spoke with earnestness.

"Dear Rudolph, I am so glad you've found the woman you can really love.

Jack says there is only one possible woman in the world for each man, and that only in a month of Sundays does he find her."

"Yes." said Musgrave. He had risen, and was looking down in friendly fas.h.i.+on into her honest, lovely eyes. "Yes, there is only one possible woman. And--yes, I think I found her, Anne, some years ago."

III

Thus it befell that all pa.s.sed smoothly with Rudolph Musgrave and Anne Charteris, with whom he was not in the least in love any longer (he reflected), although in the nature of things she must always seem to him a little different from all other people.

And it befell, too, that the following noon--this day being a Sunday, warm, clear, and somnolent--Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot to serve against an enemy then hara.s.sing his majesty's equanimity and by him, revilingly, designated as Nothing-to-do.

And so Anne made for Roger--as she had learned to do for her dead son--in addition to a respectable navy of paper boats, a vast number of "boxes" and "Nantucket sinks" and "picture frames" and "footb.a.l.l.s." She had used up the greater part of a magazine before the imp grew tired of her novel accomplishments.

For as he invidiously observed, "I can make them for myself now, most as good as you, only I always tear the bottom of the boat when you pull it out, and my sinks are kind of wobbly. And besides, I've made up a story just like your husband gets money for doing. And if I had a quarter I would buy that green and yellow snake in the toy-store window and wiggle it at people and scare them into fits."

"Sonnikins," said Colonel Musgrave, "suppose you tell us the story, and then we will see if it is really worth a quarter, and try to save you from this unblus.h.i.+ng mendicancy."

"Well, G.o.d bless Father and Mother and little cousins--Oh, no, that's what I say at night." Roger's voice now altered, a.s.suming shrill singsong cadences. His pensive gravity would have appeared excessive if manifested by the Great Sphinx. "What I meant to say was that once upon a time when the Battle of Gettysburg was going on and houses were being robbed and burned, and my dear grandfather was being shot through the heart, a certain house, where the richest man in town lived, was having feast and merriment, never dreaming of any harm, or thinking of their little child Rachel, who was on the front porch watching the battle and screaming with joy at every man that fell dead. One dark-faced man was struck with a bullet and was hurt. He saw the child laughing at him and his heart was full of revenge. So that night, when all had gone to bed, the old dark-faced man went softly in the house and got the little girl and set the house on fire. And he carried her out in the mountains, and is that worth a quarter?"

"Good heavens, no!" said Anne. "How dare you leave us in such harrowing suspense?"

"Well, a whole lot more happened, because all the while Rachel was asleep. When she woke up, she did not know where under the sun she was.

So she walked along for about an hour and came to a little village, and after a few minutes she came to a large rock, and guess who she met? She met her father, and when he saw her he hugged her so hard that when he got through she did not have any breath left in her. And they walked along, and after a while they came to the wood, and it was now about six o'clock, and it was very dark, and just then nine robbers jumped out from behind the trees, and they took a pistol and shot Rachel's father, and the child fainted. Her papa was dead, so she dug a hole and buried him, and went right back home. And of course that was all, and if I had that snake, I wouldn't try to scare you with it, father, anyhow."

So Colonel Musgrave gave his son a well-earned coin, as the colonel considered, and it having been decreed, "Now, father, _you_ tell a story," obediently read aloud from a fat red-covered book. The tale was of the colonel's selecting, and it dealt with a shepherdess and a chimney-sweep.

"And so," the colonel perorated, "the little china people remained together, and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces--And the tale is a parable, my son. You will find that out some day. I wish you didn't have to."

"But is that all, father?"

"You will find it rather more than enough, sonnikins, when you begin to interpret. Yes, that is all. Only you are to remember always that they climbed to the very top of the chimney, where they could see the stars, before they decided to go back and live upon the parlor table under the brand-new looking-gla.s.s. For the stars are disconcertingly unconcerned when you have climbed to them, and so altogether unimpressed by your achievement that it is the nature of all china people to slink home again, precisely as your Rachel did--and as Mrs. Charteris will a.s.sure you."

"I?" said Anne. "Now, honestly, Rudolph, I was thinking you ought not to let him sit upon the gra.s.s, because he really has a cold. And if I were you, I would give him a good dose of castor-oil to-night. Some people give it in lemon-juice, I know, but I found with my boy that peppermint is rather less disagreeable. And you could easily send somebody over to the store at the station----"

Anne broke off short. "Was I being inadequate again? I am sorry, but with children you never know what a cold may lead to, and I really do not believe it good for him to sit in this damp gra.s.s."

"Sonnikins," said Rudolph Musgrave, "you had better climb up into my lap, before you and I are Podsnapped from the universe by the only embodiment of common-sense just now within our reach."