To the elderly man, whose nose had been too close to the grindstone to permit of dalliance, and who now, monied and retired, found himself terribly alone in the pale sun of St.Martin's Summer, and to the little charming woman of forty, led back to life by an ardent and impetuous girl, this quite ordinary everyday incident, which seemed to them to be touched by romance, came at a moment when both were pathetically receptive.They arranged to meet again, they met again, and one fine afternoon while Joan was at a theater with Alice, he spoke and she listened.It was in the more than usually hotel-like drawing-room of their mutual hotel.People were having tea, and the band was playing.There was a jangle of voices, the jingle of a musical comedy, the movement of waiters.Under the leaves of a tame palm which once had known the gorgeous freedom of a semi-tropical forest he stumbled over a proposal, the honest, fearful, pulsating proposal of a man who conceived that he was trying hopelessly to hitch his wagon to a star, and she, tremulous, amazed, and on the verge of tears, accepted him.Hers presumably the dreadful ordeal of facing an incredulous daughter and two sarcastic parents-in-law and his of standing for judgment before them,--argument, discussion, satire, irony, abuse even,--a quiet and determined marriage and a new and beautiful life.
"What a delightful room," said Mrs.Harley."It looks so comfortable for a drawing-room that it must have been furnished by a man.""We'll have a house in town by October, around here, and I'll bet it won't be uncomfortable when you've finished with it."The raucous shouts of men crying an "extra" took Harley quickly to the open window.He watched one scare-monger edge his way up one side of the street and another, whose voice was like the jagged edge of a rusty saw, bandy leg his way up the other side."Sounds like big sea battle," he said, after listening carefully."Six German warships sunk, five British.Horrible loss of life.But I may be wrong.These men do their best not to be quite understood.Only six German ships! I wish the whole fleet of those dirty dogs could be sunk to the bottom."There was nothing neutral or blind-eyed about George Harley.He had followed all the moves that had forced the war upon the nations whose spineless and inefficient governments had so long been playing the policy of the ostrich.He had nothing but detestation for the vile and ruthless methods of the German war party and nation and nothing but contempt for the allied politicians who had made such methods possible.He had followed the course of the war with pain, anguish and bated breath, thrilling at the supreme bravery of the Belgians and the French, and the First Hundred Thousand, thanking God for the miracle that saved Paris from desecration, and paying honest tribute to the giant effort of the British to wipe out the stain of a scandalous and criminal unpreparedness.He had squirmed with humiliation at the attempts of the little, dreadful clever people of his own country,--professors, parsons, pacifists and pro-Germans,--to prove that it was the duty of the United States to stand aloof and unmoved in the face of a menace which affected herself in no less a degree than it affected the nations then fighting for their lives, and had watched with increasing alarm the fatuous complacency of Congress which continued to deceive itself into believing that a great stretch of mere water rendered the country immune from taking its honest part in its own war."Oh, my God," he had said in his heart, as all clear-sighted Americans had been saying, "has commercialism eaten into our very vitals? Has the good red blood of the early pioneers turned to water? Are we without the nerve any longer to read the writing on the wall?" And the only times that his national pride had been able to raise its head beneath the weight of shame and foreboding were those when he passed the windows of Red Cross Depots and caught sight of a roomful of good and noble women feverishly at work on bandages; when he read of the keen and splendid training voluntarily undergone by the far-sighted men who were making Plattsburg the nucleus of an officers'
training corps, when he was told how many of his young and red-blooded fellow-countrymen had taken up arms with the Canadian contingents or had slipped over to France as ambulance men.What would he not have given to be young again!
He heaved a great sigh and turned back to the precious little woman who had placed her life into his hands for love.The hoarse alarming voices receded into the distance, leaving their curious echo behind.
"What were we talking about?" he asked."Oh, ah, yes.The house.
Lil, during the few days that I have to be in the city, let's find the house, let's nose around and choose the roof under which you and I will spend all the rest of our honeymoon.What do you say, dear?""I'd love it, Geordie; I'd just love it.A little house, smaller than this, with windows that catch the sun, quite near the Park, so that we can toddle across and watch the children playing.Wouldn't that be nice? And now I think I'll ring for some one to show me Joan's room and creep in and suggest that she gets up."But there was no need.The door opened, and Joan came in, with eyes like stars.