Peelite

“ Nichola’s rose, fading in my lace, gave out a fragrance to which some influence in the room was akin; and we both knew.
I said: “Pelleas, I have been remembering that morning long ago at Miss Deborah Ware’s—and our Fountain of Gardens. When we were twenty-something, like Lisa and Eric.”
“But so have I been thinking of that!” Pelleas cried. And we nodded, smiling, for we love to have that happen. Perhaps it makes us momentarily believe that we are each other, and no aid asked of science to bring it about. ”

“ When one is seventy and closes one’s eyes it is wonderful how the whole world grows youthful. And when I had almost dozed that tender rustling brought me back so happily that I could hardly tell which was memory of that other little head upon my arm and which was now. At midnight and twice later when the baby’s food had to be warmed it was I who did this, and the old familiar helplessness of Pelleas in this little presence delighted me beyond measure. ”

“ But though I held the flowers to my face I, who can even detect the nameless fragrance of old lace, could divine in them no slightest perfume. I held them toward Pelleas, dozing in a deep chair, and when he had lifted them to his face he too shook his head.
“It is strange,” he said; “I would say that they have no odour.”
“They’ve such a beautiful smell,” said the child, sighing, and took back her flowers with that which immediately struck Pelleas and me as a kind of pathetic resignation. ”

“ George Peele now set spurs to his horse, and rode to the inn, where he was cordially received: the hostess clapped her hands; the ostler laughed; the tapster leaped; the chamberlain ran to the gentleman's house, and told him of the arrival of the doctor. The squire sent for Peele at once, and forced him to accept twenty pounds for having cured him of his consumption. But whether the cure was the result of some herbs that chanced to go into the pot, or was due to the confidence the sick man had in the science of George Peele, none can say. ”

“ Mont Pelée, the most awful evidence of natural force to be seen in the world to-day—La Pelée, majestic, terrible, overpowering, has been in evidence from starlight to starlight, but it is the ashen blank that was once the city of the Saint of the Rock that stands out most clearly in the kaleidoscopic maze slipping backward and forward before our eyes. ”

“ On their right hand was the open sea, and on their left old Pelion rose, while the clouds crawled round his dark pine forests, and his caps of summer snow. And their hearts yearned for the dear old mountain, as they thought of pleasant days gone by, and of the sports of their boyhood, and their hunting, and their schooling in the cave beneath the cliff. And at last Peleus spoke: "Let us land here, friends, and climb the dear old hill once more. We are going on a fearful journey: who knows if we shall see Pelion again? Let us go up to Cheiron our master, and ask his blessing ere we start. ”

“ And there on my pillow I saw as she hastened away the great pink tea rose that had blossomed only that day from the rose plant in her own window where she had tended it for months.
Pelleas was in the library across the hall from the drawing-room where those two dear little people were. I opened the library door softly and went in and stood close beside his chair before he turned. Pelleas is not in the least deaf, as we both know; he is simply no longer distracted by small, unnecessary noises. ”

“ At that we hesitated no longer but advanced boldly across the moonlit green. And when I saw that the figure in the portico wore a frock of pink and when I saw her lift her hand in a way sweetly familiar, I began to suspect that the time was not yet come when Pelleas and I were to vanish in such bright wise. Manifestly Pelleas had come to the same conclusion, for when he reached a broad, flat rock beneath a birch he beckoned me to sit there in the shadow where we could watch these strange offices. ”

“ Pelleas said meditatively, “I suspect people of ideas. They seem sometimes to have ideas when they have no minds. I dare say they are acted on by emanations.”
“But, Pelleas,” I said, “think of old Nichola going alone to that hospital on her Thursday evenings. [Pg 327] Think of her understanding that Helping is why, and quoting from Isaiah!”
“She believes,” Pelleas meditated, “that our sun is the largest body in all the systems and that our moon is next in size. But for all that she knows Helping is why. That the carpenter must encourage the goldsmith. ”

“ High overhead, above the crater of the mass, hung a cloud of vapor, like a shadow on the evening sky. Pelle, as he wandered, had been gazing at this streak of shadow; it was the dense exhalation of all the creatures in the heart of the mass below, the reek of rotting material and inferior fuel. Now, among other consequences of victory, there would be a thorough cleansing of the dens of poverty. A dream floated before him, of comfortable little dwellings for the workers, each with its little garden and its well-weeded paths. It would repay a man then to go home after the day’s fatigue! ”

“ Meanwhile I rearranged my old gown, longing for Nichola, who has a genius in more than cookery. To be sure Pelleas did his best to help me, though he knows no more of such matters than the spirits [Pg 104] of the air; he can button very well but to hook is utterly beyond his simple art. However, he attended to everything else. After dark on Thursday he smuggled some roses into the house and though I set the pitcher in my closet I could smell the flowers distinctly while we were at dinner. It is frightful to have a conscience that can produce not only terrors but fragrances. ”

“ Pelleas cried, resolutely, “let us go anyway. We can walk beside the curb slowly. And after all, we do not belong to Nichola.” Really, [Pg 5] 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.
With one accord we slipped from the drawing-room and toiled up the stairs. ”

“ The sudden flame of energy that Pelle’s youth had called to life within him had died down, leaving a pathetic old man, who had been out in the cold all his life, and was now luxuriating in a few late rays of evening sun. ”

“ Pelleas assented gravely. “I could almost find it in my heart to advertise. How [Pg 73] should we word it? ‘Pelleas and Etarre, Promoters of Love Stories Unlimited. Office Hours from Time to Eternity—’”
He broke off smiling, but not at any fancied impracticality.
“Why not?” said I. “The world needs us. You yourself said that the world is the shape of a dollar instead of a heart.”
“Ah, I’m not so sure, though,” Pelleas returned with an air of confidence. “We don’t know the ways of the North Pole. Perhaps we shall yet find that the world is the shape of a heart.” ”

“ Sometime I shall write a letter to those who are of all men the bluest, and the substance of it will be: Go and put on the teakettle.
I sat by the fire while Pelleas, by devious ways of pantry and refrigerator, sought out the milk, and we were very merry over warming it, for it was a wonderful occasion. Pelleas spilled a great deal of milk on Nichola’s perfectly polished griddles—O, I could not have loved him if in such a pleasant experience his hands had been perfectly firm and indifferent. Nichola’s hands would have been quite firm. That brown old woman has no tremors and no tears. ”

“ We were grown hungry for the sea. All winter long over our drawing-room fire we had talked about the sea. We had pretended that the roar of the elevated trains was the charge and retreat of the breakers and we had remembered a certain summer years before, when—Pelleas still being able to model and I to write so that a few were deceived—we had taken a cottage having a great view and no room, and we had spent one of the summers which [Pg 118] are torches to the years to follow. ”

“ I saw Pelleas whirl in concern, and I was conscious of the instant lull in the animated talk. Then the [Pg 282] Scotch butler recovered himself and in full Highland costume, with bare knees, he sprang to his post quite as if this had been at the head of a mountain pass and threw wide the door.
“Upon my word!” I heard exclaiming a fine, magnetic voice, “upon my word, a party. Let us blush and withdraw.” ”

“ Peele's wanton mode of life involved him in endless anxieties. He may indeed be held innocent of part, or possibly of the whole, of the discreditable escapades detailed in the ‘Merry conceited Jests of George Peele, sometime a Student in Oxford,’ which was entered in the ‘Stationers' Registers’ in 1605, and of which the earliest known edition appeared in 1607, nine years or more after his death. ”

“ Pelleas turned the glasses on the magnolias. “On my soul,” he exclaimed, “I thought I saw a tanager!” And when we had stood for a moment to watch hopefully and had been disappointed (“Why shouldn’t an early tanager come, to help us to believe?” he wondered) , he gave a vital spark to what I had said about the path:—
“I suppose that that little path really has no ending,” he said; “you cannot end direction. Yes, the path of In-the-Spring must run right away to the end of the world.” ”

“ I’ve never found out that it stops at all. It is infinite strength and I can use it and be it when I like.’ Beaten?” said Pelleas; “I can no more be beaten than I can be smothered in the open air. That strength is exhaustless, like the air. ”

“ Pelleas admitted, “yes, it is unnatural. [Pg 315] But when one does one’s worst it gets more unnatural than ever.”
Hobart Eddy looked critically at the fire.
“But, Good Lord,” he said helplessly, “suppose—suppose a black beetle argues that way, and does his best, and lives to a good old beetle age. And suppose another black beetle gives up in the beginning, and takes some morphine-for-beetles, and next minute gets crushed by a watering cart. What then?”
“But I,” said Pelleas with admirable dignity, “am not a beetle.” ”

“ It was so good to be here, and the feeling sank gently over Pelle every time a cow licked herself, or the warm vapor rose from freshly- falling dung. Every sound was like a mother’s caress, and every thing was a familiar toy, with which a bright world could be built. ”

“ Now at that time Sir Pellias wore about his neck the collar of emeralds and opal stones and gold which the Lady of the Lake had given to him. Wherefore, when the Lady Ettard looked upon him, that necklace drew her heart unto him with very great enchantment. Wherefore she smiled upon Sir Pellias very cheerfully and gave him her hand and caused him to arise from that place where he kneeled. And she said to him, “Sir Knight, thou art a very famous warrior; for I suppose there is not anybody who knoweth aught of chivalry but hath heard of the fame of Sir Pellias, the Gentle Knight. ”

“ For Pelleas and I, merely because we are seventy and white-haired and frightened to cross streets, are not near enough to death to treat each other so coldly as do half the middle-aged. I cannot imagine a breakfast at which we two would separate the morning paper and intrude stocks and society upon our companionship and our omelet. ”

“ In the fourth act the moon shone on a little châlet in the leaves and one saw that there are love and sacrifice and good will enough to carry on the world in spite of its other connections. It was a play which made me thankful that Pelleas and I have clung to each other through society and poverty [Pg 36] and dyspepsia and never have allied ourselves with the other side. And if any one thinks that there is a middle ground I, who am seventy, know far better. ”

“ The darkness was ingrained in them; Pelle was always reminded of the “underground people” at home. So the base of the cliffs had opened before his eyes in childhood, and he had shudderingly watched the dwarfs pottering about their accursed treasure. Here they moved about like greedy goblins, tearing away the foundations from under the careless beings in the “Ark,” so that one day these might well fall into the cellars—and in the meantime they devoured them hair and hide. ”

“ I never see a stupid young person without applying the inanimate object rule and longing to comfort him with it.
“Etarre,” Miss Willie said, “you and Pelleas come over for tea this afternoon. I am alone and I have a lame shoulder.”
“I’ll come with pleasure,” said I readily, “but Pelleas is away.”
“O,” Miss Willie said without proper regret, “Pelleas is away.”
For a moment she thought.
“Etarre,” she said, “let’s lunch downtown together and go to a matinée.” ”

“ But once safely in the lordly sitting room of our suite, with its canopies and a dais, and epergnes filled with orchids, I had but to look at Pelleas to feel wonderfully at home. It is a blessed thing to love some one so much that you feel at home together in any place of deserts or perils or even lordly rooms filled with orchids. ”

“ If a white man's foot ever treads that floor, Pélé will surely claim him for her victim. In the twinkling of an eye, like a feather in the flame, Pélé will shrivel him in her wrath to ashes."
I knew then what was happening up above. The priest of Pélé had come forth to the crater in his sacrificial garb, attended by his acolytes, and was performing a sort of dedicator death-service over Pélé's own chosen victim, before the flames rose up to embrace and devour me! ”