It was a very merry luncheon. I remember chiefly the epergne of clematis, and the border of the wall paper done in crocuses, and the sun flooding through leaded glass. Those were the days when an epergne of clematis and a border of crocuses and the like seemed to me to be inclusive of the law and the prophets, and I felt a luxury of pity for every one who had not this special grace of understanding. I think that I even felt a little stir of pity for Miss Deborah Ware. Yes, I decided, Miss Deborah was like mother’s Sweet-william that would not blossom in the colours of the seed catalogue but showed forth amazing hues of its own. Such as that entrance fee to Arcady.
We lingered at table until Miss Deborah’s two models were announced—the two who were sitting for her “Betrothed.”
“They are adorable little people,” she said. “You must see them before you go. They make me think of ripe apples and robin redbreasts and mornings in the country. Even if it were not so I would like them for their shyness. The little maid—her name is Mitty Greaves—is in the prettiest panic every time I look at her; and Joel, the young lover, actually blushes when the clock strikes.”
She went away to the studio and Pelleas and I looked at each other in sudden abashment to find ourselves together, taking our coffee alone. It might have been our own table in a land of clematis, beside our very fountain of gardens itself. Pelleas stretched his hand across the table for mine, and we lingered there in magnificent disregard of coffee until the sun slanted away and the sweet drowsiness of the afternoon was in the garden. Then we wandered back to the studio and sat in the window-seat opposite our Wonderful Picture and in murmurs disposed for all time, as we thought, of that extraordinary promise which Miss Deborah had demanded.
“This picture,” Pelleas said solemnly, “never could make anybody so happy as it makes us. For it is our garden that we planned in the lane this morning.... The picture will always bring back this morning to us, Etarre. It is our garden. It couldn’t be the same to any one else.”
“If we were to give it to any one, Pelleas,” I recall saying, “it must be to some one who would understand what the garden means better than we.”
“Yes,” he assented; “some one who walks there all day long. Some one who ‘walks in beauty’ all the time.”
Thereafter we fancied ourselves standing by the shrine and looking in the well, and we saw our dreams take shape in the nebulous fall of the fountain. Of our betrothal week it seems to me that that hour is sweetest to recall when I sat throned in the window-seat in my gown of roses, and Pelleas at my feet talked of our life to be. I think that there came to us from the wall the sound of the piping in our garden. Perhaps, although we had not then seen their faces, the mere presence of those other lovers was a part of our delight.
Presently Miss Deborah Ware pushed aside the curtain in the far end of the studio.
“Now they are going to rest for a little,” she said, “and I must go down to the kitchen. But you may go about, anywhere you like.”