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Page 34
"I've often wondered," mused the Colonel, "why it is so much more
pleasant to entertain than it is to be entertained. I'd rather have a
guest any day than to be one."
"And yet," returned Allison, "if you are a guest, you can get away any
time you want to, within reasonable limits. If you're entertaining,
you've got to keep it going until they all want to go."
"In that case, it might be better for us if we went to Crosbys'."
"We can do that, too. I think it would be fun, though, to have 'em here.
We need another man in one sense, though not in another."
"I have frequently had occasion to observe," remarked the Colonel, "that
many promising dinners are wholly spoiled by the idea that there must be
an equal number of men and women. One uncongenial guest can ruin a
dinner more easily than a poor salad--and that is saying a great deal."
"Your salad days aren't over yet, evidently."
"I hope not."
The hour of talk had done the Colonel a great deal of good, and he was
quite himself again. Some new magazines had come in the afternoon mail
and lay on the library table. He fingered the paper knife absently as he
tore off the outer wrappings and threw them into the fire.
"I believe I'll go up and work for a couple of hours," said Allison,
"and then we'll go out for a walk."
"All right, lad. I'll be ready."
Even after the strains of the violin sounded faintly from upstairs,
accompanied by a rhythmic tread as Allison walked to and fro, Colonel
Kent did not begin to cut the leaves.
Instead, he sat gazing into the fire, thinking. Quite unconsciously, for
years, he had been carrying a heavy burden--the fear that Allison would
marry and that his marriage would bring separation. Now he was greatly
reassured. "And yet," he thought, "there's no telling what a woman may
do."
The sense that his work was done still haunted him, and, resolutely, he
tried to push it aside. "While there's life, there's work," he said to
himself. He knew, however, as he had not known before, that Allison was
past the need of his father, except for companionship.
The old house seemed familiar, yet as though it belonged to another
life. He remembered the building of it, when, with a girl's golden head
upon his shoulder, they had studied plans together far into the night.
As though it were yesterday, their delight at the real beginning came
back. There was another radiant hour, when the rough flooring for the
first story was laid, and, with bare scantlings reared, skeleton-like,
all around them, they actually went into their own house.
One by one, through the vanished years, he sought out the links that
bound him to the past. The day the bride came home from the honeymoon,
and knelt, with him, upon the hearth-stone, to light their first fire
together; the day she came to him, smiling, to whisper to him the secret
that lay beneath her heart; the long waiting, half fearful and half
sweet, then the hours of terror that made an eternity of a night, then
the dawn, that brought the ultimate, unbroken peace which only God can
change.
Over there, in front of the fireplace in the library, the little mother
had lain in her last sleep. The heavy scent of tuberoses, the rumble of
wheels, the slow sound of many feet, and the tiny, wailing cry that
followed them when he and she went out of their house together for the
last time--it all came back, but, mercifully, without pain.
Were it not for this divine forgetting, few of us could bear life. One
can recall only the fact of suffering, never the suffering itself. When
a sorrow is once healed, it leaves only a tender memory, to come back,
perhaps, in many a twilight hour, with tears from which the bitterness
has been distilled.
Slowly, too, by the wonderful magic of the years, unknown joys reveal
themselves and stand before us, as though risen from the dead. At such
and such a time, we were happy, but we did not know it. In the midst of
sorrow, the joy comes back, not reproachfully, but to beckon us on, with
clearer sight, to those which lie on the path beyond.
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