“No, not quite! If he had he wouldn’t have been angry at me when I went to him to discuss these matters!”
“So you’ve talked to him! Then, of course, you came to me prejudiced in his favor! I don’t call that being fair. And if he asked you to talk to me—”
Her eyes flashed indignantly.
“It’s rather funny that both of you should be so afraid of that. Nothing is further from the truth!”
“I know you mean to be kind, and I know it wasn’t easy for you to come to me. But you can see that matters have gone too far—after the heartache and the gossip—”
“The heartache is deplorable, and the gossip isn’t agreeable,” he assented readily. “We mustn’t let the chatter of the neighbors worry us. Think how a reconciliation would dull the knives of the expectant cynics and hearten the good people—and they are the majority, after all—who want to see the gospel of happiness and love rule this good old world. As for things having gone too far, nothing’s been done, no irrevocable step taken—”
“You don’t understand, then,—” and there was a note of triumph in this,—“I’ve brought a suit; it will be determined in October.”
“October,” replied the Poet, with his provoking irrelevance, “is a month of delight, ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.’ The warmth of summer still hovering; the last flowers challenging the frost to do its worst; plans for the indoor life of winter—the fire, cozy talks that aren’t possible anywhere but at the hearthside; the friendly lamp and the neglected book calling us back. I don’t think you and Miles are going to have a very happy winter of it under different roofs. I’m sure I’ll miss the thought of you, running upstairs on tiptoe when you thought you heard Marjorie. Miles was always reading Kipling aloud and we’d forget ourselves and laugh till you’d hush us and run away in a panic. You know,” he continued, “your cottage wasn’t only a place for you to live in; it was my house of dreams—a house of realities that were dreams come true. I’ve sat by the table many a time when you didn’t know I was there—an intruder stealing in, a cheerful sort of ghost, sensible of an unspoken welcome. Odd, isn’t it, about the spirit of place? Not a great many places really take hold of most of us; but they have a way of haunting us; or maybe it’s the other way round and we haunt them, and without knowing how we get into them. We explore strange frontiers into undiscovered countries; we cross from our own existences into other people’s lives,—lose identity, feel, see as other people do,—and then lift our heads, rub our eyes, and become our old selves again—but not quite. We are likely to be wiser and more just and tolerant. And it’s discouraging,” he went on, “to go to your house of dreams and find it plastered with ‘for rent’ and ‘for sale’ signs—or worse yet, to let yourself in with your old key to find only ghosts there! That’s what I’ve been doing. Your bungalow is empty—doubly empty—for the last tenant didn’t stay long; the ghosts were probably too much for him! But I’m there—in spirit, you might say. If the owner knew how much I loaf there, in a disembodied sort of fashion, he’d begin to charge me rent! But it’s mighty lonesome—nobody around to dig out old songs and play the airs for me, as you used to, while I limped along with Miles’s old banjo.”
He spoke with a certain air of injury, as though after all he were the chief sufferer from the passing of the old familiar faces from his house of dreams. He complained as a guest might who suddenly finds that his hosts have taken their departure without warning, leaving him sitting at their fireside all unconscious of their flight.
Elizabeth was surprised to find that his interposition in this fashion impressed her more than the counsels of other friends who, supporting her cause loyally, urged her to maintain her “stand” and recommended sharp reprisals. She had not recovered from her amazement that this shyest and most unobtrusive of men should have come to her in any guise; and when he spoke of his house of dreams—her house with its old-fashioned garden that contained the flowers he scattered oftenest through his poems—she was half-persuaded that he was really a sad, wistful visitor of this house of dreams—her house—that symbolized for him contentment and peace.