"What in the world are we going to see?" asked Marsh. "You forget you haven't given us the least idea."

"You are going to see," Marise set herself to amuse them, "you're going to see a rite of the worship of beauty which Ashley, Vermont, has created out of its own inner consciousness."

She had succeeded in amusing at least one of them, for at this Mr. Marsh gave her the not disagreeable shock of that singular, loud laugh of his.

It was in conversation like something-or-other in the orchestra ... the cymbals, that must be it ... made you jump, and tingle with answering vibrations.

"Ashleyians in the role of worshipers of beauty!" he cried, out of the soft, moist, dense darkness about them.

"None so blind as those who won't see," she persisted. "Just because they go to it in overalls and gingham ap.r.o.ns, instead of peplums and sandals."

"What _is_ a night-blooming cereal?" asked Mr. Welles, patient of the verbose by-play of his companions that never got anybody anywhere.

What an old dear Mr. Welles was! thought Marise. It was like having the sweetest old uncle bestowed on you as a pendant to dear Cousin Hetty.

"... -eus, not -eal," murmured Marsh; "not that I know any more than you what it is."

Marise felt suddenly wrought upon by the mildness of the spring air, the high, tuneful shrillness of the frogs' voices, the darkness, sweet and thick. She would not amuse them; no, she would really tell them, move them. She chose the deeper intonations of her voice, she selected her words with care, she played upon her own feeling, quickening it into genuine emotion as she spoke. She would make them feel it too.

"It is a plant of the cactus family, as native to America as is Ashley's peculiar sense of beauty which you won't acknowledge. It is as ugly to look at, the plant is, all spines and thick, graceless, fleshy pads; as ugly as Ashley life looks to you. And this crabbed, ungainly plant-creature is faithfully, religiously tended all the year around by the wife of a farmer, because once a year, just once, it puts forth a wonderful exotic flower of extreme beauty. When the bud begins to show its color she sends out word to all her neighbors to be ready. And we are all ready. For days, in the back of our minds as we go about our dull, routine life, there is the thought that the cereus is near to bloom. Nelly and her grim husband hang over it day by day, watching it slowly prepare for its hour of glory. Sometimes when they cannot decide just the time it will open, they sit up all through a long night, hour after hour of darkness and silence, to make sure that it does not bloom unseen. When they see that it is about to open, they fling open their doors, wishing above everything else to share that beauty with their fellows. Their children are sent to announce, as you heard Toucle say tonight, 'The cereus is going to bloom.' And all up and down this end of the valley, in those ugly little wooden houses that look so mean and dreary to you, everywhere people tired from their day's struggle with the earth, rise up and go their pilgrimage through the night ... for what? To see something rare and beautiful."

She stopped speaking. On one side of her she heard the voice of the older man say with a quiver, "Well, I can understand why your neighbors love you."

With entire unexpectedness Marsh answered fiercely from the other side, "_They_ don't love her! They're not capable of it!"

Marise started, as though a charged electric wire had fallen across her arm. Why was there so often a note of anger in his voice?

For a moment they advanced silently, pacing forward, side by side, unseen but not unfelt by each of the others.

The road turned now and they were before the little house, every window alight, the great pine somber and high before it. The children and Toucle were waiting at the door. They all went in together, shaking hands with the mistress of the house, neatly dressed, with a clean, white flounced ap.r.o.n. "Nelly's garment of ceremony!" thought Marise.

Nelly acknowledged, with a graceful, silent inclination of her shining blonde head, the presence of the two strangers whom Marise presented to her. What an inscrutable fascination Nelly's silence gave to her! You never knew what strange thoughts were going on behind that proud taciturnity. She showed the guests to chairs, of which a great many, mostly already filled, stood about the center table, on which sprawled the great, spiny, unlovely plant. Marise sat down, taking little Mark on her knees. Elly leaned against her. Paul sat close beside old Mr.

Welles. Their eyes were on the big pink bud enthroned in the uncomeliness of the shapeless leafpads.

"Oh!" said Elly, under her breath, "it's not open yet! We're going to _see_ it open, this time!" She stared at it, her lips parted. Her mother looked at her, tenderly aware that the child was storing away an impression to last her life long. Dear, strangely compounded little Elly, with her mysticism, and her greediness and her love of beauty all jumbled together! A neighbor leaned from her chair to say to Mrs.

Crittenden, "Warm for this time of year, ain't it?" And another remarked, looking at Mark's little trousers, "That material come out real good, didn't it? I made up what I got of it, into a dress for Pearl." They both spoke in low tones, but constrained or sepulchral, for they smiled and nodded as though they had meant something else and deeper than what they had said. They looked with a kindly expression for moment at the Crittenden children and then turned back to their gaze on the flower-bud.

Nelly Powers, walking with a singular lightness for so tall a woman, ushered in another group of visitors--a tall, unshaven farmer, his wife, three little children clumping in on shapeless cow-hide boots, and a baby, fast asleep, its round bonneted head tucked in the hollow of its mother's gingham-clad shoulder. They sat down, nodding silent greetings to the other neighbors. In turning to salute them, Marise caught a glimpse of Mr. Marsh, fixing his brilliant scrutiny first on one and then on another of the company. At that moment he was gazing at Nelly Powers, "taking her in" thought Marise, from her beautiful hair to those preposterously high-heeled shoes she always would wear on her shapely feet. His face was impa.s.sive. When he looked neutral like that, the curious irregularity of his features came out strongly. He looked like that bust of Julius Caesar, the b.u.mpy, big-nosed, strong-chinned one, all but that thick, closely cut, low-growing head of dark hair.

She glanced at Mr. Welles, and was surprised to find that he was looking neither at the people nor the plant. His arm was around his favorite Paul, but his gaze seemed turned inward, as though he were thinking of something very far away. He looked tired and old, it seemed to her, and without that quietly shining aspect of peace which she found so touching. Perhaps he was tired. Perhaps she ought not to have brought him out, this evening, for that long walk over rough country roads. How much older he was than his real age in years! His life had used him up.

There must have been some inner maladjustment in it!

There was a little stir in the company, a small inarticulate sound from Elly. Marise saw everyone's eyes turn to the center of the room and looked back to the plant. The big pink bud was beginning visibly to swell.

A silence came into the room. No one coughed, or stirred, or sc.r.a.ped a chair-leg. It was as though a sound would have wounded the flower. All those human souls bowed themselves. Almost a light shone upon them ... a phrase from Dante came to Marise's mind ... "_la mia menta fu percossa da un fulgore_ ..."

With a quick involuntary turn she looked at Marsh, fearing his mockery of her, "quoting the _Paradiso_, about Vermont farmers!" as though he could know, for all those sharp eyes of his, what was going on hidden in her mind!

All this came and went in an instant, for she now saw that one big, shining petal was slowly, slowly, but quite visibly uncurling at the tip. From that moment on, she saw nothing, felt nothing but the opening flower, lived only in the incredibly leisurely, masterful motion with which the grotesquely shaped protecting petals curled themselves back from the center. Their motion was so slow that the mind was lost in dreaminess in following it. Had that last one moved? No, it stood still, poised breathlessly ... and yet, there before them, revealed, exultant, the starry heart of the great flower shimmered in the lamp-light.

Then she realized that she had not breathed. She drew in a great marveling aspiration, and heard everyone about her do the same. They turned to each other with inarticulate exclamations, shaking their heads wonderingly, their lips a little apart as they drew long breaths.

Two very old women, rubbing their age-dimmed eyes, stood up, tiptoed to the table, and bent above the miraculously fine texture of the flower their worn and wrinkled faces. The petals cast a clear, rosy reflection upon their sallow cheeks. Some of the younger mothers took their little children over to the table and lifting them up till their round shining eyes were on a level with the flower, let them gaze their fill at the mysterious splendor of stamen and pistil.

"Would you like to go quite close and look at it, children?" Marise asked her own brood.

The little boys stepped forward at once, curiously, but Elly said, "No, oh _no!_" and backed off till she stood leaning against Toucle's knee.

The old woman put her dark hand down gently on the child's soft hair and smiled at her. How curious it was to see that grim, battered old visage smile! Elly was the only creature in the world at whom the old Indian ever smiled, indeed almost the only thing in the house which those absent old eyes ever seemed to see. Marise remembered that Toucle had smiled when she first took the baby Elly in her arms.

A little murmur of talk arose now, from the a.s.sembled neighbors. They stood up, moved about, exchanged a few laconic greetings, and began putting their wraps on. Marise remembered that Mr. Welles had seemed tired and as soon as possible set her party in motion.

"Thank you so much, Nelly, for letting us know," she said to the farmer's wife, as they came away. "It wouldn't seem like a year in our valley if we didn't see your cereus in bloom."

She took Elly's hand in one of hers, and with Mark on the other side walked down the path to the road. The darkness was intense there, because of the gigantic pine-tree which towered above the little house.

"Are you there, Paul?" she called through the blackness. The little boy's voice came back, "Yes, with Toucle, we're ahead." The two men walked behind.

Elly's hand was hot and clasped her mother's very tightly. Marise bent over the little girl and divined in the darkness that she was crying.

"Why, Elly darling, what's the matter?" she asked.

The child cried out pa.s.sionately, on a mounting note, "Nothing, nothing!

_Nothing!_" She flung her arms around her mother's neck, straining her close in a wild embrace. Little Mark, on the other side, yawned and staggered sleepily on his feet. Elly gave her mother a last kiss, and ran on ahead, calling over her shoulder, "I'm going to walk by myself!"

"_Well!_" commented the old gentleman.

Mr. Marsh had not been interested in this episode and had stood gazing admiringly up at the huge pine-tree, divining its bulk and ma.s.s against the black sky.

"Like Milton's Satan, isn't it?" was his comment as they walked on, "with apologies for the triteness of the quotation."

For a time nothing was said, and then Marsh began, "Now I've seen it, your rite of the worship of beauty. And do you know what was really there? A handful of dull, insensitive, primitive beings, hardened and calloused by manual toil and atrophied imaginations, so starved for any variety in their stupefyingly monotonous life that they welcome anything, anything at all as a break ... only if they could choose, they would infinitely prefer a two-headed calf or a bearded woman to your flower. The only reason they go to see that is because it is a curiosity, not because of its beauty, because it blooms once a year only, at night, and because there is only one of them in town. Also because everybody else goes to see it. They go to look at it only because there aren't any movies in Ashley, nor anything else. And you know all this just as well as I do."

"Oh, Mr. Welles," Marise appealed to him, "do you think that is the truth of the facts?"

The old man p.r.o.nounced judgment gently. "Well, I don't know that _any_thing is the truth. I should say that both of you told the truth about it. The truth's pretty big for any one person to tell. Isn't it all in the way you look at it?" He added, "Only personally I think Mrs.

Crittenden's the nicest way."

Marsh was delighted with this. "There! I hope you're satisfied. You've been called 'nice.' That ought to please any good American."

"I wonder, Mr. Welles," Marise said in an ostentatiously casual tone, "I wonder if Mr. Marsh had been an ancient Greek, and had stood watching the procession going up the Acropolis hill, bearing the thank-offerings from field and loom and vineyard, what do you suppose he would have seen? Dullness and insensitiveness in the eyes of those Grecian farmer-lads, no doubt, occupied entirely with keeping the oxen in line; a low vulgar stare of bucolic curiosity as the country girls, bearing their woven linen, looked up at the temple. Don't you suppose he would have thought they managed those things a great deal more artistically in Persia?"

"Well, I don't know much about the ancient Greeks," said Mr. Welles mildly, "but I guess Vincent would have been about the same wherever he lived."

"Who is satisfied with the verdict now?" triumphed Marise.

But she noticed that Marsh's attack, although she considered that she had refuted it rather neatly, had been entirely; efficacious in destroying the aura of the evening. Of the genuine warmth of feeling which the flower and the people around it had roused in her heart, not the faintest trace was left. She had only a cool interested certainty that her side had a perfectly valid foundation for arguing purposes. Mr.

Marsh had accomplished that, and more than that, a return from those other centers of feeling to her preoccupation with his own personality.