Walter Pieterse Part 15

"What is that?"

"Oh, they're going to get married. Don't you know?"

Walter was ashamed not to know such a simple thing; and, as is often the case, he was ashamed of being ashamed.

"Certainly, of course I know. I hadn't understood right well. Emma--will you marry me?"

For the moment Emma was unable to accommodate him, as she was engage with her mother; but as soon as she was free she would consider the matter, and Walter would probably be favored. She looked at him sweetly--and then the game called her to another part of the yard.

Love is the instinct for unity--and the instinct for multiplicity. As everywhere, nature is simple here in principle, but manifold in application. The love of a thief means: Come, we will go steal together. The servant of the Word unites with his loved one in prayer and psalm, etc., every animal after his kind.

Or is this instinct to share, to be together, to be united at the same the instinct for the good?

In Walter's case it was, even though he himself did not know it. Had he not, in the name of Cecilia, liberated a bird that fluttered about its narrow cage in distress? Of course Cecilia had laughed and asked Walter if he was crazy. She did not know that there was any connection between his sympathy for the poor little bird and the beating of his heart when he scratched her name on the frozen window-pane in the back room. Perhaps she would have understood if she had loved Walter; but that was impossible, because he still wore his jacket stuffed in his trousers.

At all events, it was not possible for him to think of anything bad when he called "Omicron." He had now forgotten Cecilia, and would have been greatly surprised if she had appeared in answer to his call. Little Emma would have come nearer meeting his requirements.

Walter felt that he must know just how the young man was proceeding with Betty in the bower. He soon found an excuse to separate himself from his companions; and then he heard all sorts of things that did not make him much wiser.

"Yes, I said so too. In May----"

"Certainly, on account of the top story----"

"It's annoying! And what does your mother say?"

"Hm--she says we must wait another year, that it isn't respectable to get married in such a hurry--it's just as if----"

"Four years----"

"Yes, four years. Louw and Anna have been engaged for seven."

Walter was proud that he knew exactly what it all meant. To rent an upper story together, preferably in May!--that was the way he understood it.

"And do you get that press for the linen?"

"No, mother wants to keep it. But if we will only wait a year she will give us another one--a small one."

"The big one would have been nicer."

"I think so too, but she says young people don't need a big press. But when my sister was married she got a big one."

"Tell them you want a big one too."

"It's no use."

"Try it. I won't marry without that big one."

"I will make them----"

This is a fair sample of what Walter overheard. He was dissatisfied and slipped away and hid himself, lost in thought. He didn't even know himself what was the matter with him; but when Emma came and called him he looked as if he had been thinking of anything else but presses and vacant flats, for in a tone at once joyous and fearful he cried:

"Could it be she--my little sister?"

It was evening now, and the children were to continue their games indoors. As the little party was tired, one of the grown-ups was going to tell a story.

Just what "grown-up" had been requisitioned to narrate the story of Paradise and Peri, I don't know. Anyway the story hardly harmonized with Betty's engagement and that love-obstructing clothes-press. But just as Fortune is said to smile on everyone once in a lifetime, so, in the midst of the flatness and insipidity of everyday life, it seems that something always happens which gives that one who lays hold of it opportunity to lift himself above the ordinary and commonplace. To the drowning man a voice calls: "Stretch out thy arms, thou canst swim."

"After Peri had begged long, but in vain, at the gates of paradise to be admitted to the land of the blessed, she brought at last, as the most beautiful thing in the world, the sigh of a repentant sinner; and she found favor with the keeper of the gate on account of the sacredness of the gift she had brought----"

"Let's play forfeits now!" cried Gustave.

"Forfeits! Forfeits!" everybody called out after him.

And they played forfeits. p.a.w.ns were redeemed; and of course there was some kissing done. Riddles were given that n.o.body could guess; and who ever knew must not tell--a usual condition in this game.

"Heavy, heavy hangs over your head; what shall the owner do to possess it?"

"Stand on one leg for five minutes."

"Let him jump over a straw--or recite a poem!"

"No, a fable--la cigale, or something like that."

"Yes, yes!"

It was Walter's p.a.w.n.

"I don't know any fable," he said, embarra.s.sed; "and I don't know French either."

"I will help you," cried Emma. "Le pere, du pere----"

"That's no fable! Go ahead, Walter!"

For some of the party it was a joy that Walter knew no Fable and no French. If it were only known how often one can do a kindness by being stupid, perhaps many, out of love for humanity, would affect stupidity.

But Walter did not think of the pleasure of the others--which he could not have understood. He wept, and was angry at Master Pennewip, who had taught him no French and no fable.

"Forward, Walter, forward!" insisted the holder of the p.a.w.n.

"It needn't be French. Just tell a fable."

"But I don't know what a fable is."

"Oh, it's a story with animals."

"Yes, or with trees! Le chene un jour dit au roseau--don't you see, you can have one without animals."

"Yes, yes, a fable is just a story--nothing else. You can have in it anything you want to."