For a few minutes the lawyer stood where she had left him, watching in puzzled thought her swaying figure on the handsome horse.The girl fretted him, and yet he felt that he liked her almost in spite of himself--liked something fine and fearless he found in her dark eyes; liked, too, even while he sneered, her peculiar grace of manner.There was the making of a woman in her after all, he told himself, as he turned into the sunken road, where he saw Christopher already moving homeward.He had meant to catch up with him and join company on the way, but the young man covered ground so quickly with his great strides that at last Carraway, losing sight of him entirely, resigned himself to going leisurely about his errand.
When, a little later, he opened the unhinged whitewashed gate before the cottage, the place, as he found it, seemed to be tenanted solely by a family of young turkeys scratching beneath the damask rose-bushes in the yard.From a rear chimney a dark streak of smoke was rising, but the front of the house gave no outward sign of life, and as there came no answer to his insistent knocks he at last ventured to open the door and pass into the narrow hall.From the first room on the right a voice spoke at his entrance, and following the sound he found himself face to face with Mrs.Blake in her massive Elizabethan chair.
"There is a stranger in the room," she said rigidly, turning her sightless eyes; "speak at once.""I beg pardon most humbly for my intrusion," replied Carraway, conscious of stammering like an offending schoolboy, "but as no one answered my knock, I committed the indiscretion of opening a closed door."Awed as much by the stricken pallor of her appearance as by the inappropriate grandeur of her black brocade and her thread lace cap, he advanced slowly and stood awaiting his dismissal.
"What door?" she demanded sharply, much to his surprise.
"Yours, madam."
"Not answer your knock?" she pursued, with indignation."So that was the noise I heard, and no wonder that you entered.Why, what is the matter with the place? Where are the servants?"He humbly replied that he had seen none, to be taken up with her accustomed quickness of touch.
"Seen none! Why, there are three hundred of them, sir.Well, well, this is really too much.I shall put a butler over Boaz this very day."For an instant Carraway felt strangely tempted to turn and run as fast as he could along the sunken road--remembering, as he struggled with the impulse, that he had once been caught at the age of ten and whipped for stealing apples.Recovering with an effort his sense of dignity, he offered the suggestion that Boaz, instead of being seriously in fault, might merely have been engaged in useful occupations "somewhere at the back.""What on earth can he have to do at the back, sir?" inquired the irrepressible old lady; "but since you were so kind as to overlook our inhospitable reception, will you not be equally good and tell me your name?""I fear it won't enlighten you much," replied the lawyer modestly, "but my name happens to be Guy Carraway.""Guy--Guy Carraway," repeated Mrs.Blake, as if weighing each separate letter in some remote social scales." I've known many a Guy in my day--and that part, at least, of your name is quite familiar.There was Guy Nelson, and Guy Blair, and Guy Marshall, the greatest beau of his time--but I don't think I ever had the pleasure of meeting a Carraway before.""That is more than probable, ma'am, but I have the advantage of you, since, as a child, I was once taken out upon the street corner merely to see you go by on your way to a fancy ball, where you appeared as Diana."Mrs.Blake yielded gracefully to the skilful thrust.
"Ah, I was Lucy Corbin then," she sighed."You find few traces of her in me now, sir.""Unfortunately, your mirror cannot speak for me."She shook her head.
"You're a flatterer--a sad flatterer, I see," she returned, a little wistfully; "but it does no harm, as I tell my son, to flatter the old.It is well to strew the passage to the grave with flowers.""How well I remember that day, " said Carraway, speaking softly.
"There was a crowd about the door, waiting to see you come out, and a carpenter lifted me upon his shoulder.Your hair was as black as night, and there was a circle round your head.""A silver fillet," she corrected, with a smile in which there was a gentle archness.
"A fillet, yes; and you carried a bow and a quiver full of arrows.I declare, it seems but yesterday.""It was more than fifty years ago," murmured the old lady.Well, well, I've had my day, sir, and it was a merry one.I am almost seventy years old, I'm half dead, and stone blind into the bargain, but I can say to you that this is a cheerful world in spite of the darkness in which I linger on.I'd take it over again and gladly any day--the pleasure and the pain, the light and the darkness.Why, I sometimes think that my present blindness was given me in order that I might view the past more clearly.There's not a ball of my youth, nor a face I knew, nor even a dress I wore, that I don't see more distinctly every day.
The present is a very little part of life, sir; it's the past in which we store our treasures.""You're right, you're right," replied Carraway, drawing his chair nearer the embroidered ottoman and leaning over to stroke the yellow cat; "and I'm glad to hear so cheerful a philosophy from your lips.""It is based on a cheerful experience--I've been as you see me now only twenty years."Only twenty years! He looked mutely round the soiled whitewashed walls, where hung a noble gathering of Blake portraits in massive old gilt frames.Among them he saw the remembered face of Lucy Corbin herself, painted under a rose-garland held by smiling Loves.
