What a wonderful hour it was for our plain drawing-room, for so many years doomed to be merely the home of talk about war and rumours of war and relatives and their colourless doings and even about matches made for shadowy lovers whom it never might see. And now the room was called on to harbour Young Love itself. No wonder that the sober bindings on the shelves tried in the yellow firelight to give news from their own storied hearts that beat with the hearts of other lovers. No wonder that the flowers on the mantel looked perilously like a bridal wreath. At last, at last the poor room long deprived of its brightest uses was habited by Young Love.
Presently Pelleas startled me from my reverie.
“It’s twenty past five,” he murmured, “and no tea.”
So Nichola intended to do as she pleased, and she was pleased to send no tea at all, and the rose was but a sop to Cerbera. And I had so counted on seeing those young lovers in the delicate intimacy of their first tea. But even in that moment of my disappointment the stair door creaked and then I heard her coming up, one step at a time, so that I knew her to be laden with the tray.
Pelleas hastened to open the door for her and we were both fain to gasp with astonishment. For in Nichola came splendid in the newest and bluest of dresses with—wonder of all!—a white cap and apron to which only very stately occasions can persuade her. And when she had set the tray on the table I had much ado to keep from grasping her brown hands. For she had brought the guest-silver, my Royal Sèvres, my prettiest doilies and O, such thin, white, chicken sandwiches, such odorous tea and thick cream, and to crown all a silver dish of bonbons.
I tried to look my gratitude to her and I saw her standing by the fire tranquilly inspecting Lisa’s young lover and pretty Lisa herself who was helping him to place my chair. And it may have been a trick of the firelight, but I fancied that I detected on Nichola’s face that expression of the morning, as if her features were a little out of drawing, by way of bodying forth some unwonted thought. Then very slowly she rolled her arms in her crisp white apron as she had done in the morning and very slowly she began to speak.
“My father had many goats in Capri,” she said again, “and one Summer I went with him to buy more. And at noon my father left me in the valley while he went to look at some hill flocks. As for me I sat by a tree to eat my lunch of goat’s cheese and bread, and a young shepherd of those parts came and brought me berries and a little pat of sweet butter and we shared them. I did not see him again, but now I have made you a little pat of sweet butter,” said Nichola, nodding.
We were all silent, and Pelleas and I were spellbound; for it was as if this old, withered, silent woman had suddenly caught aside her robe and had looked into her own heart and given us news of its ancient beating. Old Nichola to have harboured such an hour of Arcady as this! And at that moment she turned to me with a kind of fury.
“For the love of heaven,” she cried terribly, “why sit there stock-still till the crumpets are stone cold and the tea as red as the tail of a fox? Eat!”
She was out of the room like a whirlwind and clattering down the stairs. And for a moment we all looked silently in each other’s faces and smiled a little—but tenderly, as if some unknown lover had lifted his head from his grave.