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Side of the Angels

<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> On going down-stairs, Thor looked about him for Rosie Fay. She was nowhere to be seen, and the house was cheerless. He could imagine that to an ambitious woman circumscribed by its dreary neatness Duck Rock with its thirty feet of water might be a welcome change. Continuing his search when he went outside, he gazed round what was left of the old orchard. He remembered Fay—a slim fellow with a gentle, dreamy face and starry eyes. He had seen him occasionally during the past eighteen years, though rarely. As a matter of fact, Fay's greenhouses lay on that part of the shore of Thorley's Pond most out of the way of the pedestrian. Only of late had new roads wormed themselves up the steep northern bank of the pond, bringing from the city well-to-do, country-loving souls who desired space and sunshine. It was a satisfaction to Thor's father, Archie Masterman, that only the best type of suburban residence was going up among these sylvan glades, and that the property was justifying his foresight as an investor. The young man could understand that it should be so, for the spot was picturesque. Sheltered from the north by a range of wooded hills, it was like a great green cup held out to the sunshine. The region was favorable, therefore, to the raising of early "garden-truck." Whenever the frost was out of the ground, oblongs of green things growing in straight lines gave a special freshness to the landscape, while from any of the knolls over which the township clambered clusters of greenhouses glinted like distant sheets of water. One had to get them in contrast to the sparkling blue eye of Thorley's Pond to perceive that they were not tiny lakes. With so pleasing a view, hemmed in by the haze of the city toward the south, and a hint of the Atlantic south of that, there was every reason why Fay's plot of land should appreciate in value. On these grounds it became comprehensible to Thor that his father might raise the rent and still not be an instrument of oppression. It was consoling to him to perceive this. It helped to allay certain uncomfortable suspicions that had risen in his mind since coming home, and which were not easy to dispel. He caught sight at last of Rosie's dull-green frock in the one hothouse in which there were flowers. Through the glass roof he could see the red disks of poinsettias and the crimson or white of azaleas coming into bloom. The other two houses sheltered long, level rectangles of tender green, representing lettuce in different stages of the crop. A bow-legged Italian was closing the skylights that had been opened for the milder part of the day; another Italian replaced the covers on hot-beds that might have contained violets. From the high furnace chimney a plume of yellow-brown smoke floated heavily on the windless air. The place looked undermanned and forlorn. On opening the door he was met by the sweet, warm odor of damp earth and green things growing and blossoming. Pausing in her work, the girl looked down the half-length of the greenhouse as a hint for him to advance. He went toward her between feathery banks of gray-green carnations, on which the long, oval, compact buds were loosening their sheaths to display the dawn-pink within. Half covered up by a coarse apron or pinafore, she stood at a high table, like a counter, against a background of poinsettias. "We don't go in for flowers, really," she explained to him, after he had given her certain directions concerning her mother. "It would be better if we didn't try to raise them at all." Thor, whose ear was sensitive, noticed that her voice was pleasant to listen to, and her speech marked by a simple, unaffected refinement. He lingered because he was interested in her work. He found a kind of fascination in watching her as she took a moist red flower-pot from one end of the table, threw in a handful or two of earth from the heap at the other end, then a root that looked like a cluster of yellow, crescent-shaped onions, then a little more earth, after which she turned to place the flower-pot as one of the row on the floor behind her. There was something rhythmic in her movements. Each detail took the same amount of action and time. She might have been working to music. Her left hand made precisely the same gesture with each flower-pot she took from the line in which they lay telescoped together. Her right hand described the same graceful curve with every impatient, petulant handful of earth. "Why do you raise them, then?" he asked, for the sake of saying something. She answered, wearily: "Oh, it's father. He can't make up his mind what to do. Or, rather, he makes up his mind both ways at once. Because some people make a good thing out of raising flowers he thinks he'll do that. And because others do a big business in garden-stuff, he thinks he'll do that." "And so he falls between two stools. I see." "It's no use being a market-gardener," she went on, disdainfully tossing the earth into another pot, "unless you're a big market-gardener, and it's no use being a florist unless you're a big florist. Everything has to be big nowadays to make it pay. And the trouble with father is that he does so many things small. He sees big," she analyzed, continuing her work—"so big that he goes all to pieces when he tries to carry his ideas out." "And you think that if he concentrated his forces on raising garden-stuff—" She explained further: People had to have lettuce and radishes and carrots and cucumbers whatever happened, whereas flowers were a luxury. Whenever money was scarce they didn't buy them. If it were not for weddings and funerals and Christmas and Easter they wouldn't buy them at all. Then, too, they were expensive to raise, and difficult. You couldn't do it by casting a little seed into the ground. Every azalea was imported from Belgium; every lily-bulb from Japan. True, the carnations were grown from slips, but if he only knew the trouble they gave! Those at which he was looking, and which had the innocent air of springing and blooming of their own accord, had been through no less than four tedious processes since the slips were taken in the preceding February. First they had been planted in sand for the root to strike; then transferred to flats, or shallow wooden boxes; then bedded out in the garden; and lastly brought into the house. If he would only consider the labor involved in all that, to say nothing of the incessant watching and watering, and keeping the house at the proper temperature by night and by day—well, he could see for himself. He did see for himself. He said so absently, because he was noting the fact that her serious, earnest eyes were of the peculiar shade which, when seen in eyes, is called green. It was still absently that he added, "And you have to work pretty hard." She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I don't mind that. Anything to live." "What are you doing there?" There was an exasperated note in her voice as she replied: "Oh, these are the Easter lilies. We have to begin on them now." "And do you do them all?" "I do, when there's no one else. Father's men keep leaving." She flung him a look he would have thought defiant if he hadn't found it frank. "I don't blame them. Half the time they're not paid." "I see. So that you fill in. Do you like it?" "Would you like doing what isn't of any use?—what will never be of any use? Would you like to be always running as hard as you can, just to fall out of the race?" He tried to smile. "I shouldn't like it for long." "Well, there's that," she said, as though he had suggested a form of consolation. "It won't be for long. It can't be. Father won't be able to go on like this." He decided to take the bull by the horns. "Is that because my father doesn't want to renew the lease?" She shrugged her shoulders again. "Oh no, not particularly. It is that—and everything else." He felt it the part of tact to make signs of going, uttering a few parting injunctions with regard to the mother as he did so. "And I wouldn't leave her too much alone," he advised. "She could easily slip out without attracting any one's attention. Tell your father I said so. I suppose he's not in the house." "He's off somewhere trying to engage a night fireman." He ignored this information to emphasize his counsels. "It's most important that while she's in this state of mind some one should be with her. And if we knew of anything she'd specially like—" She continued to work industriously. "The thing she'd like best in this world won't do her any good when it happens." She threw in a bulb with impetuous vehemence. "It's to have Matt out of jail. He will be out in the course of a few months. But he'll be—a jail-bird." "We must try to help him live that down." She turned her great greenish eyes on him again with that look which struck him as both frank and pitiful. "That's one of the things people in our position can't do. It's the first thing mother herself will think of when she sees Matt hanging about the house—for he'll never get a job." "He can help your father. He can be the night fireman." She shrugged her shoulders with the fatalistic movement he was beginning to recognize. "Father won't need a night fireman by that time." He could only say: "All the same, your mother must be watched. She can't be allowed to throw herself from Duck Rock, now, can she?" "I don't say allowed. But if she did—" "Well, what then?" "She'd be out of it. That would be something." "Admitting that it would be something for her, what would it be for your father and you?" She relaxed the energy of her hands. He had time to notice them. It hurt him to see anything so shapely coarsened with hard work. "Wouldn't it be that much?" she asked, as if reaching a conclusion. "If she were out of it, it would be a gain all round." Never having heard a human being speak like this, he was shocked. "But everything can't be so black. There must be something somewhere." She glanced up at him obliquely. Months afterward he recalled the look. Her tone, when she spoke, seemed to be throwing him a challenge as well as making an admission. "Well, there is—one thing." He spoke triumphantly. "Ah, there is one thing, then?" "Yes, but it may not happen." "Oh, lots of things may not happen. We just have to hope they will. That's all we've got to live by." There was a lovely solemnity about her. "And even if it did happen, so many people would be opposed to it that I'm not sure it would do any good, after all." "Oh, but we won't think of the people who'd be opposed to it—" "We should have to, because"—the sweet fixity of her gaze gave him an odd thrill—"because you'd be one." He laughed as he held out his hand to say good-by. "Don't be too sure. And in any case it won't matter about me." She declined to take his hand on the ground that her own was soiled with loam, but she mystified him slightly when she said: "It will matter about you; and if the thing ever happens I want you to remember that I told you so. I can't play fair; but I'll play as fair as I can." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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