"You haven't given me anything," she began, reproachfully.
"What could I give that would compare with these?" His hand swept toward the exquisite display. "What could I give--"
"There's one thing," softly.
"What?"
"That copy of 'Treasure Island' that your mother gave you long ago."
Dead silence. Then, unsteadily: "Why should you want that?"
"Because your mother--loved you."
Again dead silence. Hare did not look at her. His hand clenched the arm of his chair. His face was white. Then, very low, "Why do you--make it hard for me?"
"Because I want--the book"; she was smiling at him with her eyes like stars. "I want to read it with the eyes of the little boy--with the eyes of the little boy who looked into the future and saw life as a great adventure; who looked into the future--and dreamed."
He had a vision, too, of that little boy, reading, in the old house in the Maine woods, by the light of an oil-lamp, on Christmas Eve, with the snow blowing outside as it blew to-night.
"And your mother loved you because she loved your father," the girl's voice went on, "and you were all very happy up there in the forest. Do you remember that you told me about it on the ship?--you were happy, although you were poor, and hadn't any books but 'Treasure Island' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' But your mother was happy--because she--loved your father."
As she repeated it, she leaned forward. "Could you think of your mother as having been happy with any one else but your father?" she asked. "Could you think of her as having never married him, of having gone through the rest of her days a half-woman, because he would not--take her--into his life? Can you think that all the money in the world--all the money in the whole world--would--would have made up--"
The room seemed to darken. Hare was conscious that her face was hidden in her hands, that he stumbled toward her, that he knelt beside her--that she was in his arms.
"Hush," he was saying in that beating darkness of emotion. "Hush, don't cry--I--I will never let you go--"
When the storm had spent itself and when at last she met his long gaze, he whispered, "I'm not sure now that it is right--"
"You will be sure as the years go on," she whispered back; then, tremulously: "but I--I could never have--talked that way if I had thought of you as the man. I had to think of you as the little boy--who dreamed."
THE CANOPY BED
"My great-grandfather slept in it," Van Alen told the caretaker, as she ushered him into the big stuffy bedroom.
The old woman set her candlestick down on the quaint dresser. "He must have been a little man," she said; "none of my sons could sleep in it. Their feet would hang over."
Van Alen eyed the big bed curiously. All his life he had heard of it, and now he had traveled far to see it. It was a lumbering structure of great width and of strangely disproportionate length. And the coverlet and the canopy were of rose-colored chintz.
"I think I shall fit it," he said slowly.
Mrs. Brand's critical glance weighed his smallness, his immaculateness, his difference from her own great sons.
"Yes," she said, with the open rudeness of the country-bred; "yes, you ain't very big."
Van Alen winced. Even from the lips of this uncouth woman the truth struck hard. But he carried the topic forward with the light ease of a man of the world.
"My grandfather had the bed sawed to his own length," he explained; "did you ever hear the story?"
"No," she said; "I ain't been here long. They kept the house shut up till this year."
"Well, I'll tell you when I come down," and Van Alen opened his bag with a finality that sent the old woman to the door.
"Supper's ready," she told him, "whenever you are."
At the supper table the four big sons towered above Van Alen. They ate with appetites like giants, and they had big ways and hearty laughs that seemed to dwarf their guest into insignificance.
But the insignificance was that of body only, for Van Alen, fresh from the outside world and a good talker at all times, dominated the table conversationally.
To what he had to say the men listened eagerly, and the girl who waited on the table listened.
She was a vivid personality, with burnished hair, flaming cheeks, eyes like the sea. Her hands, as she passed the biscuits, were white, and the fingers went down delicately to little points. Van Alen, noting these things keenly, knew that she was out of her place, and wondered how she came there.
At the end of the meal he told the story of the Canopy Bed.
"My great-grandfather was a little man, and very sensitive about his height. In the days of his early manhood he spent much time in devising ways to deceive people into thinking him taller. He surrounded himself with big things, had a big bed made, wore high-heeled boots, and the crown of his hat was so tall that he was almost overbalanced.
"But for all that, he was a little man among the sturdy men of his generation, and if it had not been for the Revolution I think he would have died railing at fate. But the war brought him opportunity. My little great-grandfather fought in it, and won great honors, and straight back home he came and had the bed sawed off! He wanted future generations to see what a little man could do, and his will provided that this house should not be sold, and that, when his sons and grandsons had proved themselves worthy of it by some achievement, they should come here and sleep. I think he swaggered a little when he wrote that will, and he has put his descendants in an embarrassing position. We can never sleep in the canopy bed without taking more upon ourselves than modesty permits!"
He laughed, and instinctively his eyes sought those of the girl who waited on the table. Somehow he felt that she was the only one who could understand.
She came back at him with a question: "What have you done?"
"I have written a book," he told her.
She shook her head, and there were little sparks of light in her eyes. "I don't believe that was what your grandfather meant," she said, slowly.
They stared at her--three of the brothers with their knives and forks uplifted, the fourth, a blond Titanic youngster, with his elbows on the table, his face turned up to her, as to the sun.
"I don't believe he meant something done with your brains, but something fine, heroic--" There was a hint of scorn in her voice.
Van Alen flushed. He was fresh from the adulation of his bookish world.
"I should not have come," he explained, uncomfortably, "if my mother had not desired that I preserve the tradition of the family."
"It is a great thing to write a book"--she was leaning forward, aflame with interest--"but I don't believe he meant just that--"
He laughed. "Then I am not to sleep in the canopy bed?"
The girl laughed too. "Not unless you want to be haunted by his ghost."
With a backward flashing glance, she went into the kitchen, and Van Alen, lighting a cigarette, started to explore the old house.
Except for the wing, occupied by the caretaker, nothing had been disturbed since the family, seeking new fortunes in the city, had left the old homestead to decay among the desolate fields that yielded now a meagre living for Mrs. Brand and her four strapping sons.
In the old parlor, where the ancient furniture showed ghostlike shapes in the dimness, and the dead air was like a tomb, Van Alen found a picture of his great-grandfather.
The little man had been painted without flattery. There he sat--Lilliputian on the great charger! At that moment Van Alen hated him--that Hop-o'-my-Thumb of another age, founder of a pigmy race, who, by his braggart will, had that night brought upon this one of his descendants the scorn of a woman.
And even as he thought of her, she came in, with the yellow flare of a candle lighting her vivid face.
"I thought you might need a light," she said; "it grows dark so soon."
As he took the candle from her, he said abruptly: "I shall not sleep in the canopy bed; there is a couch in the room."
"Oh," her tone was startled, "you shouldn't have taken all that I said in earnest."
"But you meant it?"
"In a way, yes. I have been in here so often and have looked at your grandfather's picture. He was a great little man--you can tell from his eyes--they seem to speak at times."
"To you?"
"Yes. Of how he hated to be little, and how he triumphed when fame came at last."
"I hate to be little--"
It was the first time that he had ever owned it. Even as a tiny boy he had brazened it out, boasting of his mental achievements and slurring the weakness of his stunted body.
"I know," she had shut the kitchen door behind her, and they were standing in the hallway alone, "I know. Every man must want to be big."
She was only the girl who had waited on the table, but as she stood there, looking at him with luminous eyes, he burned with dull resentment, envying the blond boy who had sprawled at the head of the supper table. After all, it was to such a man as Otto Brand that this woman would some day turn.
He spoke almost roughly: "Size isn't everything." She flushed. "How rude you must think me," she said; "but I have been so interested in dissecting your grandfather that I forgot--you--"