The Lovely Lady | Page 8

you are and keep moving."
"I see," said Peter, looking thoughtfully into the fire, in imitation of Mr.
Dassonville. And there being no more advice forthcoming he began to
wonder if he ought to sit a while from politeness, as people did in
Bloombury, or go at once. Mrs. Dassonville got up and came behind
her husband's chair.
"Don't you think you ought to tell him, David, that there are other
things worth having besides money; better worth?"
"You, perhaps." Mr. Dassonville took the hand of his wife laid on his
shoulder and held it against his cheek; it brought out for Peter suddenly,
how many years younger she was, and what he had heard of Mr.
Dassonville having married her from among the summer folk who

came to Harmony for the pine woods and the sea air. "Ah, but I'm not
sure I'd have you without a great deal of it. It takes money to raise rare
plants like you. But I ought to say," still holding his wife's hand to his
cheek and watching Peter across it, "that I think it is a very good sign
that you are willing to ask. The most of poor men will sit about and rail
and envy the rich, but hardly one would think to ask how it is done, or
believe if he were told. They've a notion it's all gouging and luck, and
you couldn't beat that out of them if you tried. Very few of them
understand how simple success is; it isn't easy often, but it is always
simple."
Peter supposed that he really ought to go after that, though he did not
know how to manage it until Mrs. Dassonville smiled at him over her
husband's shoulder and asked him what sort of work he did. "Oh, if you
know about gardens," she interrupted him, "you can help a little. There
are such a lot of things coming up in mine that I don't know the names
of."
It flashed out to Peter long afterward that she had simply provided an
easy way for him to get out of the house now that his visit was
terminated. She held the white fold of her shawl over her head with one
hand and gathered the trailing skirts with the other. They rustled as she
moved like the leaves of the elms at night above the roof, as she led
him along the walk where little straight spears of green and blunt
flower crowns faintly tinged with colour came up thickly in the borders.
So by degrees she got him down past the hyacinth beds and the
nodding buds of the daffodils to the gate and on the road again, walking
home in the chill early twilight with the pricking of a pleasant
excitement in his veins.
It was that, perhaps, and the sense of having got so much more out of it
than any account of his visit would justify, that kept Peter from saying
much to his mother that night about his talk with the rich man; he asked
her instead if she had ever seen Mrs. Dassonville.
"Yes," she assured him. "Mr. Dassonville drove her over to Mrs.
Tillinghurst's funeral in October. They had only been married a little
while then; she is the second Mrs. Dassonville, you know; the first died

years ago. I thought her a very lovely lady."
"A lovely lady," Peter said the phrase under his breath. The sound of it
was like the soft drawing of silken skirts.
His mother looked at him across the supper table and was pleased to
see the renewal of cheerfulness, and then, motherlike, sighed to think
that Peter was getting so old now that if he didn't choose to tell her
things she had no right to ask him. "Your walk has done you good,"
was all she said, and it must have been the case, for that very night as
soon as his head had touched the pillow he was off again, as he hadn't
been since Ellen fell ill, to the House of the Shining Walls. It rose
stately against a blur of leafless woods and crocus-coloured sky. The
garden before it was all full of spring bulbs and the scent of daffodils.
The Princess came walking in it as before, but she was no Princess now,
merely a woman with her dark hair brushed up in a half moon from her
brow and her skirts drawing after her with a silken rustle; her face was
dim and sweet, with only a faint, a very faint, reminder of Ada, and her
name was the Lovely Lady.

PART TWO
IN WHICH PETER BECOMES INVISIBLE ON THE WAY TO
GROWING RICH

PART TWO
IN WHICH PETER BECOMES INVISIBLE ON THE WAY TO
GROWING RICH