Ruth had always wanted to plan a house. She had always been planning them, theoretically, in her dream castles, and technically in her
profession—but there was something very different about this one.
“This is the one thing we’re sure of—the chimney,” Billy was saying, blocking it out awkwardly on the back of an envelope. “Now what do you want?”
“Why, really, nothing much at all,” she stammered. “I—I’m afraid this is a bad time to plan a house. It’s all so new—so wonderful, somehow—it seems it wouldn’t ever make any difference where we live.”
“You think that wouldn’t stand in the way so much after a while?”
“No, but—you remember all those houses you passed on the road? The ones with frost over the windows, and the kitchen straggling off at the back, and no porches? After all I’ve believed a house should be, it seems we could just move into any of those and the things that were wrong wouldn’t matter at all.”
And then she saw something in his eyes that even she had never discovered before—a look incredible with wonder and gratitude and tenderness, and a smile back of it like the warmth of a fire that would always be there to reach out to. It was the only way Billy had of saying certain things.
“But since Nature doesn’t make any concession to such a sentiment, lovely as it is,” he reminded her, “we might find pneumonia lurking in the
house with frosty windows, and a worn-out shred of a woman, crying, in a heap at the foot of the straggling kitchen steps some day. We want our house—what is it you call it?—‘physically sound.’ ... We still have nothing but a chimney. Where do you want the living room, and all the other things I’ve heard you talk about? We can spread out all over the lot, you know. That’s the beauty of a home in the country; you don’t have to worry about the limitations of frontage or the proximity of your neighbors’ walls shutting out the light. Only, the two old pines will be here, and here. They’ll just naturally stand like pillars at each corner. They’ve been waiting for the house for a long time, and when the wind comes up at night I’ve heard them start with a low, cooing little shiver and work up to a perfect wail about it. I hope you won’t mind the noise they make. I think it’s about the knowingest sound I ever hear when I’m very lonely or very happy. I remember hearing someone say that it was like a lost soul crying, or something like that; but I imagine you’d like it. Why, I believe you first taught me to listen to it—the night we drove past the place after our ‘power demonstration.’ Do you remember?”
He remembered it now, very happily, himself, but events between had not quite blotted out other details of the time, and he added, shamedly,