Supper at the Shorts' was the pleasantest time of the day. The small, plain room, warm and light and homely, the old blacksmith's contented face as he sat at the head of his table and served the food, glancing now and then with a meaning look at his wife, mutely talking with her, and the two friends in light summer dresses chatting of the day,—it was all so remote from the bustle of life, so simply peaceful that to Isabelle supper at the Shorts' was the symbol of Grosvenor life as much as Renault's hospital. It was the hour when the blacksmith's ripest wisdom and best humor came to the surface; when, having pounded existence and lassitude out of iron and wood in the little shop down the street, he relaxed the muscles of his tired body and looked over to his wife and found the world good.
"Theirs is the figure of perfect marriage," Margaret had said; "interlocked activity, with emotional satisfaction. Mrs. Short's climax of the day is her hot supper laid before her lord…. Do you see how they talk without words across the table? They know what the other is thinking always. So the Shorts have found what so many millions miss,—a real marriage!"
To-night when Falkner came back with Margaret for supper, this note of perfect domesticity was at its best. Mr. Short had gone to the cellar for a bottle of cider wine in honor of the guest from Panama, and his wife rustled in black silk. She had made a marvellous cake that sat proudly on the sideboard, looking down on the feast. The blacksmith carved the hot meat, and in his gentle voice talked to the stranger.
"You must have found it hard work when the snow got soft on the hills. As I felt the sun coming down warm, I said to myself, 'Those shoes will seem as big as cart-wheels to him.'… You were up by Belton's? There's big timber in there still, back on the mountain, where they found it too hard to get out. You come across a great log now and then that looks like a fallen giant…. But I remember on my father's farm, twenty miles from here in the back country, when I was a boy"—
He held the carving-knife suspended above the steak, lost in the vista of years. These anecdotal attacks worried his wife, who feared for her hot food; but the others encouraged him.
—"there were trees lying on the ground in the pasture rotting, that must have been five feet through at the butt end. I used to sit atop of them and think how big they would have been standing up with their tops waving…. Yes, wood was cheap in those days."…
Isabelle, as she watched Margaret and Falkner, was puzzled. Margaret in her rose-colored tea-gown was like a glowing coal, but Falkner seemed glum and listless. "Tired, poor man!" Mrs. Short thought, and the blacksmith had full scope for his memories. But gradually Falkner became interested and asked questions. As a boy he had lived in the country, and in the atmosphere of the Shorts the warm memories of those days revived, and he talked of his own country up in the "big timber" of Michigan. Margaret, resting her head on her hands, watched his eager eyes. She knew, so well, what was in his mind below his memories. 'These good people have all this! these simple people, just the plain, elementary, ordinary things of life,—a peaceful shelter, warmth, comfort, happiness. And we, she and I, might have this and so much more,—a thousand interests and ecstasies, but we who are still young must live on in cheerless separation, missing all this—and for what?'
She read it in his eyes. She knew the man-nature, how it develops when middle life comes,—the desire for home, for the settled and ordered spot, the accustomed shelter. When the zest of the wandering days no longer thrills, the adventurous and experimenting impulse is spent, that is what man, even a passionate lover, craves to find in a woman,—peace and the ordered life. And she could give it to this man, who had never had it,—companionship and comradeship as well, and make an inner spot of peace where the man might withdraw from the fighting world. Oh, she knew how to fit his life like a spirit! …
When Falkner rose to leave, Margaret slipped on a long coat, saying:—
"I will show you the way to the Inn; you would never find it alone!"