"Anything you want, gentlemen," he said, "you have only to ask for it."
When Mary reached home that evening, you can imagine how Aunt Patty and Aunt Cordelia listened to her recital, their white heads nodding at the periods, their cheeks pink with pride. Now and then they exchanged glances. "Our baby!" these glances seemed to say, and then turned back to Mary with such love and admiration that finally the object of this pantomime could stand it no longer, but had to kiss them both till their cheeks turned pinker than ever and they gasped for breath.
That night, when Mary went to her room and stood at the window, looking out at the world below and the sky above, she threw out her arms and, turning her face to the moonlight, she felt that world-old wish to express the inexpressible, to put immortal yearnings into mortal words.
Life—thankfulness for life—a joy so deep that it wasn't far from pain—hoping—longing-yearning … for what? Mary herself could not have told you—perhaps to be one with the starlight and the scent of flowers—to have the freedom of infinity—to express the inexpressible—
For a long time she stood at the window, the moon looking down upon her and bathing her face in its radiance…. Insensibly then the earth recalled her and her thoughts began to return to the events of the day.
"Oh, yes," she suddenly said to herself, "I knew there was something….
I wonder why the accountants stared at Burdon so…."
CHAPTER XXVIII
Far away, that same moon was watching another scene—a ship on the
Southern sea throbbing its way to New York.
It was a steamer just out of Rio, its drawing rooms and upper decks filled with tourists doubly happy because they were going home.
On the steerage deck below, in the apron of a kitchen worker, a man was standing with his elbows on the rail—an uncertain figure in the moonlight. Once when he turned to look at the deck above, a lamp shone upon him. If you had been there you would have seen that while a beard covered much of his face, his cheeks were wasted and his eyes looked as though he needed rest.