“Won’t that be good! And I’ll
act in it. And then some time when we have more
money”—old Adam’s death was
always thus tactfully alluded to—“we’ll
build a magnificent estate, won’t we?”
“Oh, yes, with private swimming pools.”
“Dozens of them. And private rivers.
Oh, I wish it were now.”
Odd coincidence—he had just been wishing
that very thing. They plunged like divers into
the dark eddying crowd and emerging in the cool fifties
sauntered indolently homeward, infinitely romantic
to each other ... both were walking alone in a dispassionate
garden with a ghost found in a dream.
Halcyon days like boats drifting along slow-moving
rivers; spring evenings full of a plaintive melancholy
that made the past beautiful and bitter, bidding them
look back and see that the loves of other summers
long gone were dead with the forgotten waltzes of their
years. Always the most poignant moments were
when some artificial barrier kept them apart:
in the theatre their hands would steal together, join,
give and return gentle pressures through the long
dark; in crowded rooms they would form words with
their lips for each other’s eyes—not
knowing that they were but following in the footsteps
of dusty generations but comprehending dimly that
if truth is the end of life happiness is a mode of
it, to be cherished in its brief and tremulous moment.
And then, one fairy night, May became June. Sixteen
days now—fifteen—fourteen——
Just before the engagement was announced Anthony had
gone up to Tarrytown to see his grandfather, who,
a little more wizened and grizzly as time played its
ultimate chuckling tricks, greeted the news with profound
cynicism.
“Oh, you’re going to get married, are
you?” He said this with such a dubious mildness
and shook his head up and down so many times that
Anthony was not a little depressed. While he was
unaware of his grandfather’s intentions he presumed
that a large part of the money would come to him.
A good deal would go in charities, of course; a good
deal to carry on the business of reform.
“Are you going to work?”
“Why—” temporized Anthony,
somewhat disconcerted. “I am working.
You know—”
“Ah, I mean work,” said Adam Patch dispassionately.
“I’m not quite sure yet what I’ll
do. I’m not exactly a beggar, grampa,”
he asserted with some spirit.
The old man considered this with eyes half closed.
Then almost apologetically he asked:
“How much do you save a year?”
“Nothing so far—”
“And so after just managing to get along on
your money you’ve decided that by some miracle
two of you can get along on it.”
“Gloria has some money of her own. Enough
to buy clothes.”
“How much?”
Without considering this question impertinent, Anthony
answered it.
