“Is it,” asked our old serving-woman, who rules us as if she had brought us from Italy and we had not, more than forty years before, tempted her from her native Capri, “is it that you are mad, with this ice everywhere, everywhere?”
“It is Easter morning, Nichola,” I said, with the mildness of one who supports a perfect cause.
“Our Lady knows it is so,” Nichola said, setting down her smoking burden, “but the streets are so thick with ice that one breaks one’s head a thousand times. You must not think of so much as stepping in the ar-y.”
She left the room, and the honey-brown cakes cooled while Pelleas and I looked at each other aghast. To miss our Easter service for the first time in our life together! The thought was hardly to be borne. We reasoned with Nichola when she came back and I think that Pelleas even stamped his foot under the table; but she only brought more cakes and shook her head, the impertinent old woman who has conceived that she must take care of us.
“One breaks one’s head a thousand times,” she obstinately repeated. “Our Lady would not wish it. Danger is not holy.”
To tell the truth, as Pelleas and I looked sorrowfully from the window above the Ascension lilies we knew that there was reason in the situation, for the streets were perilous even to see. None the less we were frankly resentful, for it is bad enough to have a disagreeable matter occur without having reason on its side. As for our carriage, that went long ago together with the days when Pelleas could model and I could write so that a few were deceived; and as for a cab to our far downtown church and back, that was not to be considered. For several years now we have stepped, as Nichola would say, softly, softly from one security to another so that we need not give up our house; and even now we are seldom sure that one month’s comfort will keep its troth with the next. Since it was too icy to walk to the car we must needs remain where we were.
“I suppose,” said I, as if it were a matter of opinion, “that it is really Easter uptown too. But some way—”
“I know,” Pelleas said. Really, of all the pleasures of this world I think that the “I know” of Pelleas in answer to something I have left unsaid is the last to be foregone. I hope that there is no one who does not have this delight.
“Pelleas—” I began tremblingly to suggest.
“Ah, well now,” Pelleas cried, resolutely, “let us go anyway. We can walk beside the curb slowly. And after all, we do not belong to Nichola.” Really, of all the pleasures of this world I think that the daring of Pelleas in moments when I am cowardly is quite the last to be renounced. I hope that there is no one who has not the delight of living near some one a bit braver than himself.