“I’ve never seen you so quiet before,” she said. “You really can be nice. Happy?”
“Terribly!”
The roof of the front porch had been turned into an outdoor terrace, and here, wrapped up against the cool evening, they had their coffee and peppermints in long deck chairs. They were above the treetops; and as their eyes widened in the darkness they could see the river by starlight. The hoot of a wandering owl; then the kind air, the whispering air, crept round them.
“Oh, my God, it is so sweet—so sweet!” he sighed, as he fumbled for her hand and felt it slip confidently into his. Suddenly he was ruthless, tearing it all down:
“Too darn’ sweet for me, I guess. Sharon, I’m a bum. I’m not so bad as a preacher, or I wouldn’t be if I had the chance, but me—I’m no good. I have cut out the booze and tobacco—for you—I really have! But I used to drink like a fish, and till I met you I never thought any woman except my mother was any good. I’m just a second-rate traveling man. I came from Paris, Kansas, and I’m not even up to that hick burg, because they are hardworking and decent there, and I’m not even that. And you—you’re not only a prophetess, which you sure are, the real big thing, but you’re a Falconer. Family! Old Servants! This old house! Oh, it’s no use! You’re too big for me. Just because I do love you. Terribly. Because I can’t lie to you!”
He had put away her slim hand, but it came creeping back over his, her fingers tracing the valleys between his knuckles while she murmured:
“You will be big! I’ll make you! And perhaps I’m a prophetess, a little bit, but I’m also a good liar. You see I’m not a Falconer. There ain’t any! My name is Katie Jonas. I was born in Utica. My dad worked on a brickyard. I picked out the name Sharon Falconer while I was a stenographer. I never saw this house till two years ago; I never saw these old family servants till then—they worked for the folks that owned the place—and even they weren’t Falconers—they had the aristocratic name of Sprugg! Incidentally, this place isn’t a quarter paid for. And yet I’m not a liar! I’m not! I am Sharon Falconer now! I’ve made her—by prayer and by having a right to be her! And you’re going to stop being poor Elmer Gantry of Paris, Kansas. You’re going to be the Reverend Dr. Gantry, the great captain of souls! Oh, I’m glad you don’t come from anywhere in particular! Cecil Aylston—oh, I guess he does love me, but I always feel he’s laughing at me. Hang him, he notices the infinitives I split and not the souls I save! But you—Oh, you will serve me—won’t you?”
“Forever!”
And there was little said then. Even the agreement that she was to get rid of Cecil, to make Elmer her permanent assistant, was reached in a few casual assents. He was certain that the steely film of her dominance was withdrawn.
Yet when they went in, she said gaily that they must be early abed; up early tomorrow; and that she would take ten pounds off him at tennis.
When he whispered, “Where is your room, sweet?” she laughed with a chilling impersonality, “You’ll never know, poor lamb!”
Elmer the bold, Elmer the enterprising, went clumping off to his room, and solemnly he undressed, wistfully he stood by the window, his soul riding out on the darkness to incomprehensible destinations. He humped into bed and dropped toward sleep, too weary with fighting her resistance to lie thinking of possible tomorrows.
He heard a tiny scratching noise. It seemed to him that it was the doorknob turning. He sat up, throbbing. The sound was frightened away, but began again, a faint grating, and the bottom of the door swished slowly on the carpet. The fan of pale light from the hall widened and, craning, he could see her, but only as a ghost, a white film.
He held out his arms, desperately, and presently she stumbled against them.
“No! Please!” Hers was the voice of a sleepwalker. “I just came in to say good night and tuck you into bed. Such a bothered unhappy child! Into bed. I’ll kiss you good night and run.”
His head burrowed into the pillow. Her hand touched his cheek lightly, yet through her fingers, he believed, flowed a current which lulled him into slumber, a slumber momentary but deep with contentment.
With effort he said, “You too—you need comforting, maybe you need bossing, when I get over being scared of you.”
“No. I must take my loneliness alone. I’m different, whether it’s cursed or blessed. But—lonely—yes—lonely.”
He was sharply awake as her fingers slipped up his cheek, across his temple, into his swart hair.
“Your hair is so thick,” she said drowsily.
“Your heart beats so. Dear Sharon—”
Suddenly, clutching his arm, she cried, “Come! It is the call!”
He was bewildered as he followed her, white in her nightgown trimmed at the throat with white fur, out of his room, down the hall, up a steep little stairway to her own apartments; the more bewildered to go from that genteel corridor, with its forget-me-not wallpaper and stiff engravings of Virginia worthies, into a furnace of scarlet.
Her bedroom was as insane as an Oriental cozy corner of 1895—a couch high on carven ivory posts, covered with a mandarin coat; unlighted brass lamps in the likeness of mosques and pagodas; gilt papier-mâché armor on the walls; a wide dressing-table with a score of cosmetics in odd Parisian bottles; tall candlesticks, the twisted and flowered candles lighted; and over everything a hint of incense.
She opened a closet, tossed a robe to him, cried, “For the service of the
