THIRTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
THE GREAT PRINCE HOUSE
There were calms and conquests on the brow of Vina Nettleton. She had been in Nantucket one whole day alone, before David Cairns came. Such a day availeth much, but she shuddered a little at the joy she took in the prospect of his coming. Vina had learned what his absence meant a month before, when three entire days elapsed without a call from Cairns at the studio. He had been away on a certain happiness venture…. There had been no word yet, but here, Nantucket—Vina breathed deeply at the name. Almost every day their thoughts had turned a sentence upon this meeting…. He stepped forth from the little steamer late in the afternoon in a brisk proprietory fashion, but the treasures of boyhood were shining in his eyes; and he searched her face deeply, as if to detect if mortal illness had begun its work amid the terrible uncertainties of separation.
"Do you remember, at first, I was to find you down among the wharves with Moby Dick?" she said.
"To-morrow morning—for that," he replied.
She showed him the way to his hotel, and the house where she was a guest. But they supped together.
… They walked in Lily Lane in the dusk.
"It's too dark to see the Prince Gardens," she told him. "They're the finest on the Island, and the house is the finest in Lily Lane…. There doesn't seem to be a light. I wonder if the old sisters are gone?… The Princes were a great family here years and years ago, but gradually they died out and dwindled away, until last summer there were only two old maiden-aunts left—lovely, low-voiced old gentlewomen, whom it was so hard to pay for their flowers. But they lived from their gardens and now they're gone, it seems. I must ask to-morrow what has become of them. And yet, the gardens are kept up. Can you see the great house back in the shadows among the trees?"
Cairns believed he could make out something like the contour of a house in denser shadow.
"The fragrance of the gardens is lovelier than ever," Vina went on, "and listen to the great trees whispering back to the sea!"
They walked along the shore, and stared across toward Spain, and talked long of Beth and Bedient…. And once Vina stretched out her arms oversea, and said:
"Oh, I feel so strange and wonderful!"
Cairns started to speak, but forbore….
They met early in the morning, down upon the deserted water-front. An hour of drifting brought them back to Lily Lane. There was a virginal pallor in the sunlight, different from the ruddy summer of the Mainland, as the honey of April is paler and sweeter than the heartier essence of July flowerings. The wind breathed of a hundred years ago, and the sublime patience of the women who hurried down Lily Lane (faded but mystic eyes that lost themselves oversea through thousand-day voyages), to welcome their knight-errants, bearing home the marrow of leviathans….
"The gardens are kept up," Vina said, standing on the walk, before the Prince house. "Perhaps the old sisters are still there, and we may get some flowers from them——"
"I think, if you'll let me walk ahead and talk with the gardener,"
Cairns said, "we'll be allowed to go in—at least, for some flowers."
She laughed at the audacity of a stranger in Nantucket, but bade him try.
"If you fail, it's my turn," she added.
Cairns seemed to have little trouble in negotiating with the gardener, and presently beckoned.
"I've done very well for a stranger," he whispered. "We're to have the flowers. More than that, we are to look through the house. The sisters are away——"
"David——"
"But I told him who you were—about your friends and relatives in
Nan—here…. I assure you, he believes we have never set foot out of
New England."
There was a sweet seasoning in the house; decades of flowers and winds, spare living, gentle voices and infallible cleanliness—that perfumed texture which years of fineness alone can bring to a life or to a house.
"See, the table is set for two!" Vina whispered, "as if the sisters were to be back for dinner. Everything is just as they left it."
They moved about the front rooms, filled with trophies from the deep, a
Nantucketer's treasures—bits of pottery from China, weavings from the
Indies, lacquers from Japan—over all, spicy reminders of far
archipelagoes, and the clean fragrance of cedar.
On the mantel in the parlor stood a full-rigged ship, a whaling-ship, with her trying-house and small-boats—a full ship, homeward bound….
The gardener had left them to their own ways.
"That's because he knows your folks," Cairns said softly. "Shall we look upstairs?"
"Oh, do you think we'd better?"
"Don't you want to?"
"Yes——"
"It isn't a liberty—when we have the proper spirit."
"Isn't it, David?" … With hushed voices and light steps, they passed up and through the sunny rooms. Fresh flowers everywhere, and one bright room with two small white beds.
"The maiden-aunts," Cairns said hoarsely.
At length, he held open for her to enter, the door of the great front room, filled with Northern brightness from a skylight of modern proportions.
"Why, David," she whispered raptly, "it's like a studio! It is a studio!"
And then she saw the scaffoldings, the ladders and panels which do not belong to a painter.
She faced him….
The room was filled with adoration that enchanted the light. The branches of the trees about the lower windows, softly harped the sound of the sea … Vina's hands were pressed strangely to her breast, as she crossed to an open window…. And there she stood, face averted, and not moving her hands, until she felt him near.
* * * * *
"But I must tell you that the thought was not mine first of all, Vina," Cairns was saying an hour afterward. "You used to talk to me a great deal about Nantucket—about the houses in Lily Lane, the little heads about the table, and how you walked by, watching hungrily like a night-bird—peering in at simple happiness. I couldn't forget that, and I told Bedient—how you loved Nantucket. One night at the club, he said: 'Buy one of those houses, David, and let her find out some summer morning slowly—that it is hers—and watch her face.' Then he suggested that we both come over here to see about it. That's what took us away a month ago."
There was a soft light about her face, not of the room. Cairns saw it as she regarded him steadily for a moment. "I love your telling me that, David," she said.
"I could hardly hold the happiness of it so long," he added. "Last night it was hard, too…. So Bedient and I came over and met the maiden-aunts. Such a rare time we had together—and yet, deep within, he was suffering."
"He went away almost immediately afterward, didn't he?"
"Yes…. Vina, do you think he couldn't make Beth forget the Other?"
"No, David."
Her unqualified answer aroused him. "I haven't seen Beth for weeks," he said. "She has been out of town mostly. I must see her now."
"Yes?"
"Vina, what a crude boy, I was—not to have known you—all these years.
It seems as if I had to know Bedient first."
"Perhaps, I did too, David."
"And Vina, it was a word of Beth's that started me thinking about you—that made me realize you were in the world…. This moment I would give her my arms, my eyes—for that word of hers."
"She is the truest woman I have ever known," Vina said.
… "The Other is back in New York," Cairns told her a moment later. "I saw him an hour before leaving, but not to speak to…. How strange it would be——"
Vina shook her head.
"Come back to New York with me to-day!" he said suddenly. "Our friends are there. You wouldn't trust anyone to pack the panels you'll need for work here…. Then we'll come back together for the long summer's work—will you?"
"Yes."
There was a quick step below—not the step of the man of flowers. Vina glanced at Cairns, who was smiling.
"I've arranged for servants, of course," he said. "I think dinner is nearly ready…. The table wasn't set for maiden-aunts——"
"The long summer's work together——" she said, in an awed voice.
"But first, our dinner together—you and I—here—oh, Vina!"
"… But, David,… you said—dinner first!"