After all it smacked finely of medieval days, this command from the lady of the manor to appear before her. Annoyance began to vanish; even the insolence of the flunkey was in the picture. It was fame, there was no question about it.
“And, Robin Adair, you writer of tales, here’s a subject made to your hand,” he quoted.
Oh, he’d act the part well! A hint more disarray than usual about his costume, his oldest coat and trousers—he had two day suits now, this possessor of a cottage—must certainly be worn, with the peacock feather at its jauntiest angle. He must also allow himself a slight air of swagger, as of one conferring a favour; in appearance the vagabond they regarded him, in manner a Kubelik stepping with assurance before his audience.
Peter began to be pleased; to look forward to the appointed hour with interest. It was the writer in him, the man who sees, in any novel situation in which he may find himself, new material for his pen.
“Fate,” quoth Peter to himself, “is thrusting another rôle upon me.” And then as children—and grown-ups for the matter of that—count cherry stones, he ticked them off on his fingers. “Gentleman, scamp, jail-bird, tramp, author, writer of letters to an Unknown Fair One, and piper to the lady of the manor. Peter, my son, what else have the Fates in store for you?” And then he gave a little involuntary sigh, for after all, was not the chief rôle assigned to him—the [Pg 106]one which superseded all others—that of a lonely man?
“Fool!” cried Peter to his heart. “Does not the sun shine for you, the wind blow for you, and the birds sing for you? Have you not free and untrammelled communion with Nature in all her varying moods?”
But all the same the very enumeration of the many rôles seemed to have emphasized the one more strongly.
At a quarter to four Peter, in his oldest and shabbiest garments, with the peacock feather extremely jaunty in his shabby felt hat and his whistle-pipe in his pocket, set off for the white house on the hill.
It was a still sunny day, like many of its predecessors that summer. June had taken the earth into a warm, peaceful grasp. There was a restfulness about the atmosphere, a quiet assurance of continued heat and sunshine. A faint breeze came softly from the west, barely stirring the leaves on the hedges. To the east were great masses of luminous cloud, piled like snow-mountains, motionless and still. The dust [Pg 107]lay thick and powdery in the lane, whitening Peter’s boots; the grass, too, was powdered, but slightly, for there was little traffic this way. Peter, to whom the passing of a vehicle was somewhat of an event, barely ever counted more than two or three in the day.