He stood staring about him, his eyes wide open enough now. From one detail to another his quick, keen-eyed glance roved, lingering an instant on certain points where artful touches of colour relieved the more subdued general tone of the furnishings. The room suggested, above all things, quiet and repose, yet there was a soft and mellow cheer about it which made it anything but sombre. Its browns and blues and ivories wrought out an exquisite harmony. The furniture was simple but solid, the roomy high-backed davenport luxurious with its many pillows. The walls showed a few good pictures--how good, it might not be that Red Pepper fully understood. But he did understand, with every sense, that it was such a room as a man might look upon and be proud to call his home.
But he was silent so long that Ellen looked up at him, to make sure that there was no displeasure in his face. Instead she found there deeper feeling than she expected. He returned her look, and she discovered that he was not finding it easy to tell her what he thought of it all. She led him to the couch and drew him down beside her. He put his arm about her, and with her head upon his shoulder the pair sat for some time in a silence which Ellen would not end. But at length, looking into the fire, his head resting against hers, Burns broke the stillness.
"I suppose I"m an impressionable chap," he said, "but I wasn"t prepared for just this. I knew it would be a beautiful room, if you saw to it, but I had no possible notion how beautiful it would be. There is just one thing about it that breaks me up a bit. Perhaps you won"t understand, but I can"t help wishing I could have done the work for you instead of you for me. It isn"t the work, either, it"s the--love."
"And you couldn"t have spared enough of that to furnish a room with?"
He laughed, drawing her even closer then he had held her before. "I"ll trust you to corner me, every time," he said. "Yes, I could have spared love enough--no doubt of that. But it seems as if it were the man who should put the house in order for the woman he brings home."
"You have excellent taste," said she demurely, "but I never should credit you with the discriminations and fastidiousnesses of a decorator.
And why should you want to take away from me the happiness of making my own nest? Don"t you know it"s the home-maker who finds most joy in the home? Yet--it"s the home-comer I want to have find the joy. Do you think you can rest in this room, Red?"
He drew a deep, contented breath. "Every minute I am in it. And from the time I first begin to think about it, coming toward it. Home! It"s Paradise! This great, deep, all-embracing blue thing we"re sitting in--is it made of down and velvet?"
"Precisely that. Velvet to cover it, down in the pillows. I hope you"ll have many a splendid nap here."
"You"ll spoil me," he declared, "if you let me sleep here. I"m used to catching forty winks in my old leather chair in the office, while I wait for a summons."
Her face grew very tender. "I know. James Macauley has told me more than one tale of hours spent there, when you needed sounder sleep. It"s a hard life, and it"s going to be my delight to try to make it easier."
Red Pepper sat up. "It"s not a hard life, dear,--it"s one of many compensations. And now that I have one permanent compensation I"m never going to think I"m being badly used, no matter what goes wrong.
Come, let"s stroll about. I want to look at every separate thing. This piano--surely the sum I gave you didn"t cover that? It looks like one of the sort that are not bought two-for-a-quarter."
"No, Red, that was mine. It came from my old home with Aunt Lucy--that and the desk-bookcase, and two of the chairs. And Aunt Lucy gave me this big rug, made from the old drawing-room carpet. I built the whole room on the rug colourings. You don"t mind, do you, dear?--my using these few things that belonged to me in my girlhood, in South Carolina?"
"In your girlhood? Not--in your Washington life?"
"No, Red."
She looked straight up into his eyes, reading in the sudden glowing of them under their heavy brows the feeling he could not conceal that he could bear to have about his house no remote suggestion of her former marriage.
"All right, dearest," he answered quickly. "I"m a brute, I know, but--you"re mine now. Will you play for me? I believe I"m fond of music."
"Of course you are. But first, let"s go upstairs. I"m almost as proud of our guest-rooms as of this."
"Guest-rooms?" repeated Burns, a few minutes later, when he had examined everything in the living-room and p.r.o.nounced all things excellent. "We"re to have guests, are we? But not right away?"
"I thought you"d be eager to entertain those bachelor friends you mentioned, so I lost no time in getting a second room ready for them."
"Well, I don"t know." Burns was mounting the stairs, his arm about his wife"s shoulders. "By the way, Ellen, I don"t believe I ever went up these stairs before. Comfortable, aren"t they? I"m glad there"s covering on them. I never like to hear people racketing up and down bare stairs, be they never so polished and fine. That comes of my instincts for quiet on my patients" account, I suppose. About the guests--we don"t need to have any for a year or two, do we?"
"Why, Red!" Ellen began to laugh. "I thought you were the most hospitable man in the world."
"All in good time," agreed her husband, comfortably. He looked in at the door of the gray-and-rose room, as he spoke. "Well, well!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
"Well, well!"
And again he was silent, staring. When he spoke:
"Would you mind going over there and sitting down in that willow chair with the high back?" he requested.
His wife acceded, and crossing the room smiled back at him from the depths of the white willow chair, her dark head against its cushioning of soft, mingled tints of pale gray and glowing rose. Red Pepper nodded at her.
"I thought so," said he. "This is no guest-room. This is your room."
"Oh, no, dear. My place is downstairs, with you--unless--you don"t want me there."
He crossed the room also and stood before her, his hands thrust into his pockets. "This is your room," he repeated. "It"s easy enough to recognize it. It looks just like you. I"ve been uncomfortable about you downstairs, whenever I had to leave you. You"ll be safe here, with every window wide open."
She looked up at him, mutely smiling, but something in her eyes told him that all was not yet said. Red Pepper leaned still lower and kissed her.
"It will be easy enough to have an extension of the telephone brought up here," he added--and found her arms about his neck. But she shook her head. "Don"t settle it so quickly," she urged.
"You said there was another guest-room," he reminded her presently. "The bachelor"s room. Is it next door?"
They went together to look at the bachelor"s room. Burns surveyed it with satisfaction.
"The jolliest room for the purpose I ever saw," he confessed. "And I know the bachelor who will sleep in it. He"s downstairs now, in the small room out of ours."
"Bob? Why, Red--"
"We"ll have a door cut through. The telephones shall be in there, then they won"t disturb you. They won"t bother Bob a minute. And when I come in at 2 a.m. I can slip in here, shove the boy over against the wall, and be asleep in two minutes."
"Red! All my preparations for the bachelor! The desk,--the reading-light by the bed--"
"They suit me admirably. I never saw a better arrangement. The two rooms together make a perfect suite--when the door is cut through."
"And where will you put our guests? There"s only one more room on this floor, of any size."
"Let"s go and see."
Catching up a bra.s.s candlestick from the bachelor"s desk, Burns lit it and proceeded to explore, Ellen following. There were dancing lights in her eyes as she watched him.
"Here"s your fourth room," said he, throwing open a door at the back of the hall.
"This box? It can"t be made a really comfortable room, even if I do my best with it. Your bachelor will not stay long."
"Best not make him too comfortable. n.o.body wants him to stay long." And Red Pepper closed the door again, with an air of having settled the matter to his entire satisfaction. "Besides," he added, "if he"s really a desirable chap, and we want him around more than a day or two, he can bunk in my old room downstairs. When he"s not there I"ll use it for an annex to my offices. Somebody"s always needing to be put to bed for an hour or two. Amy Mathewson will revel in that extra s.p.a.ce. Her long suit is making people comfortable, and smoothing the upper sheet under their chins."
"Redfield Pepper, please consider this carefully," said his wife, as they returned to the gray-and-rose room. "Remember how long you have had that downstairs room,--you are attached to it, perhaps, more than you think.
You have been a bachelor yourself a good while--"
"And am supposed to be old and set in my ways," interpolated her listener. He stood before her with folded arms, a judicial expression on his brow. Beneath his coppery hair his black eyebrows drew together a little above a pair of hazel eyes which sparkled with a whimsical light which somewhat impaired the gravity of the expression.
"You are wonted to your ways--naturally," Ellen pursued. "It will not be so convenient for you, having your rooms up here. I am quite contented there, with you, and not in the least afraid with Cynthia sleeping down there too--and the little bachelor. Think twice, Red, before you decide on this arrangement."
He glanced at the wall between the two rooms. "Where would be a good place to have the door cut through? What"s behind that curtain? A clothes-press?"
He advanced to the curtain and swept it aside. It hung in a doorway, and was of a heavy gray material, with an applied border of the gray-and-rose chintz. As he moved it light burst through from the other side of the wall, and Burns found himself looking into the "bachelor"s room" next door.