The lake itself ate up all the snow until mid-December. Then, after it froze over, the snow swept across it in drifts and made a mazeof corridors wide enough for cargo iceboats, with walls of snow higher than ca.n.a.l banks. Iceboat masts could be seen running along the tops. Sometimes a brave soul would go aloft in a balloon to direct a snow-shoveling crew in cutting the walls of the maze so that the iceboats would have a straighter path from one side of the lake to the other. But within a week or less, the maze would be restored by shifting winds and drift-filled cuts, and the iceboat men once again had to guess, call out to one another, and sometimes halt to climb a bank and peer around. And then when winter really came, in January, the snow completely covered the lake, and transportation across it required horses and sleds.
That December the ice was empty and unmarred, as perfect as a mirror, and iceboats were able to wing about like martins and kingfishers. They tracked their ways across the flawless gla.s.s like glaziers" cutting wheels. The Penns had crossed the lake at eighty miles per hour. Willa was dumbfounded. As he had held her on his lap, in the wind, Isaac Penn explained. This was Dutcha"as if saying so could account for the speed, the sliding, the great knives on the slick ice. But Willa accepted it without question. It was Dutch. That explained it. No need to wonder anymore. The idea was within its warm wool sock. Giddiness, speed, sea horizons, and azure ice were Dutch, and the child held tight to the magic of the word.
Not so the telegraph man who climbed aboard his flyer with a message for Isaac Penn and shot across the ice in the dark, heading for the eastern sh.o.r.e, where a cl.u.s.ter of lights marked the Penn summer house ablaze with the festivities of Christmas. The telegraph man held his lines tightly in gloves of fur and leather. His hands were cramped with exertion, his arms near to falling off, his face knotted up to trace the shortest path across the black ice. At first the lights appeared not to get closer. Then they gradually got biggerf until, at the end, he seemed to be speeding toward them faster than light itself. He had to whoa his iceboat like a horsea"slackening the sail, dragging the brake, then lifting the brake, and coming about. He made the flyer creep and crawl the last half-mile to the Penns dock, and every now and then he patted the telegram to summon if its yellow crunch the a.s.surance that it had not been blown out of his vest.
Isaac Penn was known for lugubrious depressions, deep melancholia, moments of heavenly equilibrium, and mad flights of happiness and joy. His moods infected everyone around him. When Isaac Penn was down, the world was grayer than London"s rain-laden trees. When Isaac Penn was up, it was every room bursting forth with tympanums and bra.s.s; a medieval street fair of the heart; the Midwest in May; flights of soaring birds; it was Willa"s laugh rolling about, as capricious and dependable as the surf. That night in the Lake of the Coheeries the summer house was as bright as a candle in a paper cup. It was the evening before Christmas Eve, and Isaac Penn pranced about like a mad goat. He danced with Willa, stooping way down; he boxed with Harry; they did reels in front of the fire, with the rug rolled backa"the servants, too, and the closest neighbors, the Gamelys. Knees flew into the air, followed by dancing hose and puppetlike legs. Dresses twisted in light yellow overjoyed with torque and pitch. Rum, champagne, cakes, and roasts were everywhere. (Well, not everywhere: they weren"t in the fireplace, or on top of the harp, or pasted on the ceiling.) The house was warm and bright. Even the cats danced.
The telegraph man knocked at the door. When they opened it, there he was, covered with snow and ice, a bush in winter. When he entered, he shielded his eyes against the light, which came at him throbbing like a drum, and he walked around as if he were a cinch bug, making little circles, stopping short stubbornly. They gave him a cup of daffodil punch, and as his mustache icicles melted into it, the great big standy-up circus organ played "Turkey in the Straw," he said,"Telegram."
My, but he was surpriseda"even scareda"by their reaction. They danced and applauded like a bunch of lunatics." All I said was *telegram,"" he protested," not *the second coming.""
"G.o.d bless you!" they screamed, and applauded once more, stunning the man who had just spent a dark hour fleeing like a spirit over the floor of ice." A telegram! A telegram!"
Lunatics, he thought to himself, typical downstate lunatics. Then he gave them the telegram. Harry read it: "*Cannot come Lake of the Coheeries Christmas. Will spend Christmas dancing at Mouquin"s with Peter Lake. I love you all. My life is ablaze. Kiss Willa especially. Beverly.*"
As Isaac Penn stood in the middle of the floor, puzzled, the dance music played on. Mouquin"s? How could Beverly dance at Mouquin"s? It was hot and crowded. What was she going to do to herself? And who the h.e.l.l was Peter Lake?
PETER Lake was all fear, when, shortly before Christmas, he took himself and the white horse (or, as he now called him, Athansor) up to the Penn house high on the cloudy park"s northwest flank. He remembered Beverly best not for the dazed moments in love, and not for the way she had changed him when he saw her at the piano, but for the way she had looked when he left. She was standing at the back of the stairs, in a harsh northern light that softened in the golden mist of her disarrayed hair. She looked at him with unmatchable simplicity. Her expression said nothing, reflected nothing; in it was no ambition for him, no snare, no plan. Not even affection. Perhaps she was too tired to do anything but gaze at him without a thought. There were no barriers between them then, and he would always remember her standing alone at the foot of the stairs, about to ascend into the cold crest of light which broke like surf against her hair. That was Beverly.
The house she lived in was unsuited to such ravishing simplicity, for it was an essay in whimsy, ingenuity, and laughter. It was stronger than the upturned hull of an ark, bristling with impediments, and as inviting as the round green wreath that hung on the front door. The front door itself was pale blue, almost gray. Had Pearly pa.s.sed by, he would have stopped." I know how these things work," Peter Lake said under his breath, addressing the wreath." It was too fast, too fast. Such a rapid conversion is bound to have a middling end. She"ll be embarra.s.sed to death just to see me. She won"t be able to look at me. Then she"ll get mad. Four minutes after that, I"ll be back on the street."
The door swung out at him, which was quite a surprise, for front doors usually opened in. The surprise was evident on his face, so Jayga said," Mr. Penn says that doors should open out, like the breach on a parrot or something. He says that he likes to pack peopleinto the house as if he was loading a doll glenn. I don"t know what he means by it, but the doors swing out. What"s your business?" She gave him a quick up and down." We don"t have no trade entrance." "Beverly."
Jayga looked this way and that, and then said," Oh Lord!" Thinking that she could turn back the clock, she asked," What"s your business? We don"t got no trade entrance."
"Beverly," Peter Lake answered calmly.
"Beverly who?"
"Beverly Penn."
"Miss Beverly Penn? The Miss?"
"Miss Beverly Penn," Peter Lake echoed," the Miss."
"You?" Jayga asked in astonishment." You don"t look like no Harberd boy."
"Me. I"m not a Harberd boy. I"m just like you, ya folia?" Tremendously disturbed, Jayga took him up to the roof, where Beverly lay on a deck chair, her face to the clouds. It was almost warm in the protected enclosure, and she seemed more rested, and stronger, than she had been when he had met her. In fact, she was a study in equanimity, as tranquil as the steady subdued gray of the low roof of clouds. How beautiful she was. She suggested to him the qualities of strength and sureness which he, a man always on the run, longed for most. She made him feel as if his battles were behind him, and she excited in him, for the first time, the desire to be married. He enjoyed the thought of the handsome couple he imagined they might be. This, and more, followed from just a glance.
Jayga went downstairs, all stirred up, as servants often are onbehalf of their masters. Peter Lake sat down on an uncushioned deck chair opposite Beverly"s. His charcoal-colored coat made eaves and dormers about his knees. If he had had a hat (he didn"t wear a hat), he would have taken it off. The city was preparing for Christmas.
Though they both could feel the oncoming tension, there was peace.
Then occurred a rare thing about which men and women sometimes dream. They carried on a full conversation in complete silence, discerning feelings, plans, exclamations, jokes, opinions, laughter, and dreamsa"rapidly, silently, inexplicably. Their eyes and faces were as mobile as changing light upon a mottled sandbar when clear water agitates above it. Peter Lake sometimes stole big horse-choker diamonds; white, yellow, or rose. And during the lovely hours before his rendezvous with the fence, he spent much time entranced by the light dancing through them. They, like Beverly and Peter Lake, seemed to be able to speak in silence.
Much that was strange, not for its substance, but for the way in which it was communicated, pa.s.sed between them without resistance. Yes, they were delighted by one another"s image in daylight, outside. He was handsome and she beautiful, and it was a pleasant surprise to receive a gift greater than even memory could give. They confided in one another that they were in love. Marriage seemed to be an excellent idea, for what had they to worry about in the way of unseen hurdles when it was likely that she would not last another year?
"Mouquin"s?" Peter Lake asked, breaking the silence." I can"t go to Mouquin"s."
"But I want to," said Beverly, with complete disregard for Peter Lake"s objection, chattering away selfishly as they descended the stairs." I can wear my mother"s gown. The clothes that she had are now at the peak of fashion. I have her blue-and-white silk dress."
"That"s fine," said Peter Lake." That"s just fine. But..."
"And Mouquin"s, they say, is a yellow wooden building that, on the outside, seems to be an ordinary boardinghouse, but is like a French dancing hall inside, with bal.u.s.trades of marble, banks of ferns, an orchestra, and people coming, and going, and dancing. They dance as if no one else is therea"the people who are in love. And everyone is dressed to the nines, my father said. He said that what makes the place so wonderful, so happy, is that it has a sad edge."
"A sad edge indeed," said Peter Lake, settling back into a brown velvet couch in the library." A sad edge indeed, especially for me. 1 can"t go to Mouquin"s. Mouquin"s is where Pearly Soames practically lives." Then he told her of how Pearly had vowed to drive a sword into him, and that, despite Pearly"s clumsiness and ba.n.a.lity (Pearly often hit his head on things, tripped, and closed doors on his fingers), he honored his promises and was capable of achieving the most extraordinary ends." I"ve been to Mouquin"s, you see, and it isn"t that great. At least it doesn"t seem to be worth dying for."
Beverly lay back against the brown velvet and closed her eyes. The heat was beginning to make her tired in a lovely and contentious fashion. Jayga tried to busy herself in the kitchen, but could not resist spying on them, and went every minute or so to the opening over the hunt board to peer down the long dark hall toward the library and its red walls and bright lamps. Mouquin"s moved before Beverly"s eyes in a vision suggesting nothing less than a new world, a mute and snowy Russian Easter compressed within the translucent chamber of an alabaster viewing egg, a sort of miniature paradise which, if entered, might be the scene of miracles. She thought, recklessly, that dancing at Mouquin"s could drive out the disease, flood it with devastating light, and provide a curtain of time and beauty through which she might pa.s.s to another side where there was no such thing as fever, and where those who loved one another lived forever. Peter Lake"s difficulties with Pearly seemed slight.
"I can"t imagine," she said," that Pearly would harm you while you danced with me." "Is that so!"
"Yes. I feel very strongly, though I don"t know why, that you are safe with me, anywherea"Mouquin"s included, Pearly"s bedchamber included, the darkest hole in the tombs included."
Peter Lake was amazeda"not only at the presumption that she was capable of protecting him, but because he, for some reason, believed her." I"d rather not test your powers, if it"s all right with you," he said, anyway, for safety"s sake.
"I want to go to Mouquin"s!" she screamed so loudly that Jayga jumped up and banged her head on a caldron that was hanging above her. Unable to cry out in pain, she did a long and silent Morris Dance.
I tell you that no harm will come to you there. It"s more of a risk for mea"to go in a carriage in a mountain of stiff clothes, to dance, to drink, to sit in a hot, tense, happy room. Pearly won"t touch you."
He believed her. When she was tired she was stranger than anoracle, talking in certainties and p.r.o.nouncements, insistent, selfish, delirious. She leaned back again, exhausted. He could hear only the sound of her breathing, a clock pendulum, and something thumpingaround in the kitchen. To dance with Beverly at Mouqum"s might very well stand Pearly on his head. And if it didn"t, so what. It would be a fine finish. He would drink plenty of champagne, and all the haut monde, the beau monde, and the low monde freely intermixing at Mouquin"s would see his demise. What the h.e.l.l, he thought, it"s the quick turns that mean you"re alive.
"All right," he said." I"ll go with you to Mouquin"s. But let"s wait until New Year"s Eve, when they"ll be going full blast."
"Good," she replied." That way, we"ll have time to go to the Lake of the Coheeries, where my family is. I want to see my father, and Willa. I want you to meet them."
She sounded weak, drifting off. He wondered what he would be drawn into by this pretty young girl who often spoke in the manner of a will. He had no idea of where it might lead, but he did know that he loved her.
"To the Lake of the Coheeries?" he asked." Well then, to the Lake of the Coheeries."
"I"m glad," she said, so softly that he could hardly hear her.
A LITTLE pine was lashed to the tall black stack of the Albany boat. Its branches were bent back from steady combat with the wind. But no matter, it was still a Christmas tree. Peter Lake and Beverly drove into a dark hold where Athansor would stay in a comfortable stable with two or three other horses, and where the sleigh was then bolted to the deck. Clear electric lights suddenly came up full as the generator was coupled to newly idling engines. Peter Lake and Beverly, he in his gray coat and she in a smooth fortune of sable, suddenly became brightly visible to one another. He satisfied himself that Athansor was well set, and then took Beverly"s arm to lead her upstairs to their cabina"not that he knew where he was going, although she did. She had occupied that cabin a hundred times.
As they were about to go inside, Peter Lake looked over the rail at the dock below. Vendors were selling hot loaves of bread, chestnuts, tea, and coffee." I ought to get some bread and tea for the pa.s.sage. No, tea will cool; beer, I suppose, would be better."
"It isn"t necessary," she answered.
"Why? We have to eat."
"There"s a restaurant on board, and if you want you can summon a steward at four o"clock in the morning and order roast oysters, hot rum, ribs of beef, and everything that goes with anything that strikes your fancy."
"In that case," Peter Lake replied," to h.e.l.l with chestnuts."
The cabin was on two decks. Downstairs were a large dining table over which hung a gimballed oil lamp (left, after electrification, at Isaac Penn"s request), captain"s beds, bunk beds, a desk, a settee, and a complete bathroom. Upstairs were another sea bed, and a few leather chairs facing a plate-gla.s.s window that looked out to starboard. Since the boat left at noon to go upriver, the starboard view showed all the intricacies the sun could illumine.
"This is our cabin," Beverly said." The Brayton Ives carries newsprint for The Sun down from Glens Falls. The line does well on account of the paper, so they keep this cabin for us whenever we want to use it. We have to pay, but at the rate for a regular cabin. They"re small, but they"re all right. Once, when we were children, Harry and I stayed in one, because there were so many Penns going to the lake that all the beds were taken."
The boat cast off and moved into the ice-free channel. Without removing their coats, they fell back on one of the beds and kissed all the way to Riverdale. Even above the throb of the engines they could hear bra.s.s bands on the Upper West Side, and faint choirs from within the smaller churches. But they didn"t get up until Riverdale, when they went out on deck and saw a wilderness. Whitened palisades, rolling hills, glimmering iced trees, and the Tappan Zee miles ahead broadening like a route to the poles were their Christmas, and the hot drumlike sounds of the engine their Christmas music.
At Tarrytown, the setting sun made steeples, towers, and brick buildings on the hill as red and orange as tropical fruit. By the time they pa.s.sed Ossining, dusk had fallen and the snow-covered fields were blue and violet. All the houses of Ossining, ranged upward on the hills, glowed like fireflies from light within as happy families and unhappy families, and those that were neither and both, gathered around pre-Christmas dinners in the Dutch style. And, undoubtedly, there were a few boys still on the ponds, racing in near-darknessdown the narrow cleared lanes which ran like cold canyons through walls of oak and cattail. The river at Ossining was so wide, beautiful, and still, the shelf of ice on Croton Bay so endless and arctic, the mountains to the north so mountainly, the woods on the east bank so lovely, the fields and orchards so beckoning with the lights of fine houses at their edges or in the hollows of hills, that Peter Lake and Beverly stayed on deck though the wind made their faces frozen and numb.
Haverstraw Bay was mainly open, but the channel was littered with enormous blocks of ice against which the iron-sheathed prow of the Brayton Ives smashed on the downstroke. Each time this happened, it was as if ten thousand bells had been rolled down a great staircase. This combined well with the great pressure of the wind, the straining of the engine, and the miscellaneous blasts of the steam whistle. Peter Lake and Beverly, faces stoked to fire by the north wind, watched the ship charge one white slab after another and crush it into floating confetti or simply crack it in half.
The mountains into which the rives wound, now whitened by winter, were, in summer, green and rolling hills, or high brown ridges covered with lightning-killed trees in which armies of eagles had their enormous nests. Not even half a day out of New York, were shadowy valleys so dark and deserted that they might have been on the frontier. No lights could be seen north of Haverstraw, and Verplanck, where iceboats reigned, was all in bed or by the fire, with lamps extinguished. The hills were barren, the water black, the ice thickening with each sally of the Brayton Ives. But she kept on smashing into it; and the rougher it got, the more she fought.
They slept through a night of charging and pitching, and dreamt of circling the earth like angels, with hands outspread to guide their flight. Smoke sometimes curled in the open window and burnt their sleeping eyes, but it soon curled out again, and they found themselves high above the sea, or whistling over some dark range or mountains deep in central Asia. Then, feeling as if their lives had been spent charging the ice, they awoke to a subzero dawn and a great commotion on deck.
"What have we got to burn?" the captain screamed from his wheelhouse.
"Oak and pitch pine, sir," answered a deckhand from the ice-cluttered forecastle." And a shipment of mahogany," he added as an afterthought.
"Start with the pitch pine. Cover that with oak. If we don"t have full steam, throw in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned mahogany. We"ll pay for it."
The Brayton Ives had come to Conn Hook, where the river was so narrow that the ice seemed like a straight marble road. They had to drive themselves up on the brittle shelf (as if the ship were a mechanical duck flipper out of a pond) and break it with the sidewheeler"s enormous weight. This was no mere river navigation; it was winter war.
The ship backed a quarter of a mile through the shattered plates it had just broken, and rested as the wood moved on a chain of hands into the mouth of the boiler. The furnaces screamed with summer, and could be heard throughout the fields. Pressure mounted. The chief engineer squinted at his gauges, watching them climb. Three columns of colored water pa.s.sed warning bands of red. He held his breatha"1, 750a"1, 800a"1, 850a"1, 900a"1, 950a"1, 975a"2, 000! He shifted the boat into full speed, wondering if the machinery would tolerate the strain or provide yet another fatal explosion on the river. Gears and decoupled governors spun into invisibility. Viscous oil thinned. Shafts began to smoke, even though cabin boys doused them with buckets of cold water. The paddles began to spin, digging a trench in the river water and vaporizing it like a saw. The Brayton Ives ran its quarter-mile as fast as a cannon sh.e.l.l, and hit the ice. In slow but unstoppable motion it climbed the shelf and keeled its way for a thousand feet. Centered in the channel as before, paddlewheels chipping the ice like milling machines gone mad, the Brayton Ives had skidded so far out of the water that crew members and captain, Peter Lake and Beverly now standing on the listing third deck, weren"t sure what had happened or where they were.
Explode!" said the chief engineer as he pulled the safety valveand a rush of steam shot high over the Hudson with a whistle that could be heard at the northern end of Lake Champlain. As the whistle grew weaker, they found themselves listing high and dry on the ice.
The wheels had stopped turning. The open water from which theyhad sprung was so far back that they couldn"t see it. The Brayton Ives looked like a toy ship in a winter window dressing.
A man near the bow started to move, but the captain gestured for him to stop. Like everyone else, the captain was listening. Eyes darted from the white river to the ship"s master standing with raised hands. A minute pa.s.sed, two minutes, three, and four. After five minutes, the nonbelievers were sure that the captain had put the ship out of service until a caisson of dynamite could be brought from West Point. But the captain remained on the open bridge, his hands still in the same position, listening.
"Look," said Beverly," he"s smiling." He had broken into a satisfied smile, and his arms had dropped to his side. The deck crew thought that he was taking the defeat with humor, and they began to laugh. He shook his finger at them, and looked over their heads.
Every eye on the ship turned to the north, from which a noise like the sustained crack of a whip echoed down the valley. A black line dividing the ice spread toward them. The captain had known what was going to happen long before anyone else (which was why he was the captain). Then the world seemed to collapse as the solidified river split in two for miles and the ship fell with a roar into a chasm of liberated water. A way was open before them as clear as a slip between piers. They got up steam and proceeded calmly to the northa"where there seemed to be no people, but only mountains, lakes, reedy snow-filled steppes, and winter G.o.ds who played with storms and stars.
JAYGA had watched as Peter Lake and Beverly packed the sleigh, hitched up Athansor, and drove off, bundled in furs. Then, a minute later, she had run to the police station to deafen the desk sergeant with a tale from one of the pieces of Shakespearean tragedy that she had seen declaimed in the beer halls. It was a loose cross between Oth.e.l.lo, Lear, Hamlet, and When We Were Young in Killarney, Molly, delivered with a combination of speed and thunder which came too thickly to admit of much grammar.
"The young miss and her swan done canteloped," said Jayga to the desk sergeant." I knew he weren"t no quality. Bezooks, he hangs around all night, he does. Lend me your ears! Fourscore and twenty-nine years ago, I did remember from the p.r.i.c.k of tails what when he was loft to give and crovet with sateen robes and silken duvets. Hath thee no grime?"
"What was that?" the sergeant wanted to know." Are you here to report a crime?"
"Bezooks I am! d.a.m.n your face, piebald strumpet!" She thought that if she were to talk to the police on behalf of the Penns, this was the way to do it. And so it went, as Jayga manufactured details that drew the sergeant toward her until his stomach smothered the police blotter like a small hippo reclining upon a pocket Bible. Peter Lake had strange red eyes. Lightning danced from his whip. The horse could fly (she had seen it in the air, circling the house while its master was inside). Begging her mistress to stay, she had clutched at her heels and thrown herself in front of the sleigh, but to no avail. After half an hour of shrieking, when the tale was told, Jayga exclaimed," Oh! I left my biscuits in the oven!" and disappeared from the station house so quickly that the police thought they had dreamed her.
Telegrams sparked to and fro between The Sun and the Lake of the Coheeries. The telegraph man worked harder that Christmas than ever before, and made an iceboat track across the lake straighter than the barrel of a Sharps rifle.
BEVERLY MISSING STOP JAYGA SAYS ELOPED WITH SEER STOP ADVISE STOP.
WHAT QUESTION MARK EXCLAMATION POINT FIND HER STOP CHECK THE ROOF STOP LOOK EVERYWHERE STOP.
EVERYONE LOOKING EVERYWHERE STOP CANNOT FIND HER STOP ADVISE STOP.
LOOK HARDER STOP.
STILL CANNOT FIND BEVERLY STOP.
LOOK EVERYWHERE STOP.
WHERE IS EVERYWHERE QUESTION MARK STOP.
DO YOU WANT SPECIFICS QUESTION MARK STOP.
YES STOP.
HOSPITALS HOTELS WAREHOUSES RESTAURANTS BAKERIES ROPEWALKS STABLES CARGO VESSELS DAIRY BARNS PRODUCE TERMINALS BREWERIES GREENHOUSES ABATTOIRS BATHS POULTRY MARKETS GOVERNMENT OFFICES RETAIL ESTABLISHMENTS WELDING LOFTS INDUSTRIAL GARAGES GYMNASIUMS FORGES SCHOOLS ART STUDIOS HIRING HALLS DANCE PALACES LIBRARIES THEATERS OYSTER BARS POTTERY BARNS SQUASH COURTS PRINTING HOUSES AUCTION PLACES LABORATORIES TELEPHONE EXCHANGES RAILROAD STATIONS BEAUTY PARLORS MORGUES PIERS ARMORIES COFFEE SHOPS CLUBS KILNS MUSEUMS POLICE STATIONS BICYCLE TRACKS TANNERIES JAILS BARBERSHOPS REHEARSAL ROOMS BANKS BARS CONVENTS MONASTERIES SALAD KITCHENS STEAMSHIP TERMINALS CHURCHES GALLERIES CONFERENCE CENTERS Wh.o.r.eHOUSES MUSIC SCHOOLS AEROPLANE HANGARS AND OBSERVATION TOWERS STOP.
DID YOU LOOK IN THE BAs.e.m.e.nT STOP.
YES STOP.
The Brayton Ives halted at the foot of high mountains along the river"s west bank, and a ramp was put down onto the ice. All was serene as engines idled and hissed, and no movement could be sensed. And then Athansor came bursting out of the side of the ship, his hooves thundering on the ramp, pulling behind him the sleigh with Peter Lake and Beverly. Before the sailors could haul in the planks, Athansor was galloping on the white roads that led into and over the mountains. There were no railings at the thousand-foot drops, butonly ice-clad trees and evergreen bushes long encased in thick sarcophagi of snow. They went up and up, ricocheting left and right in terrifying skids, crossing the frozen mountains under a cloudless polar sky. Finally they halted in a small notch and looked west at the greatest plain Peter Lake had ever seen. It stretched for hundreds of miles in three directions, and was covered with forests, fields, rivers, towns, and the Lake of the Coheeriesa"twenty miles distant, silent, snow-covered, wider than the call of a French horn, shimmering on its horizon with white illusory waves, a separate kingdom of the unrecorded frontier. They almost flew down the mountain, and then Athansor ran at ferocious speed along a wide, straight, and snowy road that led to the lake.
He was galloping like a fire horse, on the sleigh path that paralleled the iceboat road, when Beverly stood up and said," That"s my family!" indicating an iceboat zipping toward them in the trench. Isaac Penn recognized his own sleigh, and released the sail as he pushed the brake into the ice, sending up a rooster tail of glitter. In the sound of the horse"s deep breathing and the luffing of the sail, the Penns stared at Beverly and Peter Lake, and they stared back. Though no one could think of anything to say, Willa leaned over and reached for Beverlya"her favorite, her darling. Peter Lake jumped from the sleigh and lifted the child into Beverly"s arms. Willa seemed like a little bear frisking with its mother, because both she and her sister were clothed in shiny black fur, and Beverly held her as if she would never let go.
Willa closed her eyes and slept contentedly; the iceboat was pivoted around; Peter Lake cracked the whip; and they raced to the house on the lakesh.o.r.e under a sky of solid delft azure." Drive hard, Peter Lake, drive hard," said Beverly, holding the child.
He had never had a family. But there he was, suddenly, almost husband and father. Small scenes can be so beautiful that they change a man forever. He would never forget that noontime on a lake of ice, nor would he ever forget her words.
"Drive hard," she had said. He would. Things were different. All he wanted now was love.
THEY slept until evening, Beverly in a specially constructed loggia outside, and Peter Lake in an upstairs bedroom. He awoke in complete darkness and struggled through halls and pa.s.sageways until he found himself in a huge room, staring at two fires and the Penns, all of whom were wide-awake, including Beverly, who had come in from the cold. Peter Lake announced that he had to go to see his horse, and backed out the front door. The air was a mountain of crystal through which a bright moon shone. He followed the sled tracks to the stable, where he peeked in at Athansor dreaming contentedly under a thick scarlet blanket. Clearheaded, Peter Lake returned to the house, and found that everyone except Isaac Penn was busy in the kitchen cooking up a feast to feed the Huns, the Mongols, and the Eskimos. Isaac Penn was enthroned in a leather chair, staring at the fire, tapping his thin fingers on the heavy arm.
Peter Lake sat down on a wooden bench next to the fireplace and looked Isaac Penn squarely in the eyes. He expected yet another staring contest, as with Pearly. Peter Lake knew that powerful men could cut people down to size with their eyes, and often did. Jackson Mead and Mootfowl had done it benevolently, but they had done it. Thus, Peter Lake expected to be raked, combed, and shaken down, because Isaac Penn was much more than Pearly"s match. Indeed, to Isaac Penn, Pearly was just a sharp-toothed puppy. This was because Isaac Penn was the man behind the city"s mirror. He had almost supreme power over the city"s conception of itself, and, by small adjustments, could hypnotize and entrance it. If he wished, he could have it flail its limbs in an alarming fit. He could scare it to death, empty its streets, or make it want to hide in a hole. Because Isaac Penn could move New York in such a way that its strength would shame the giants of the earth, or lift the city"s hand to have it flick the dust from a baby"s eye, Peter Lake expected one of those meetings where he was made to feel like an aspiring young gnat.
What a surprise, then, when Isaac Penn looked him in the eye and said quite sheepishly (he even looked slightly like a sheep, which was probably what accounted for the wonderful expression that so distinguished Willa from other childrena"Beverly did not look like a sheep),"Um, ah, do you take wine with your meals?"
"Sometimes," answered Peter Lake.
"Good, we"ll have wine tonight. Would claret be all right with you? Chateau Moules du Lac, ninety-eight?"
"Oh yes, anything," replied Peter Lake." But isn"t it p.r.o.nounced *claray"?"
"No. Claret. You say the *t," just as in *filet."
"Filet? I thought it was *filay.*
"No. Filet, just as in wallet. You don"t say *wallay,* do you? You say wallet. Same with filet and claret." Isaac Penn leaned back in his chair. Peter Lake was beginning to feel at ease. Why, he thought, did I expect anything other than this rather timid old fellow?
"You know what?" said Isaac Penn." Sir?"