# The Blue Window/Chapter 30

THE news of Sally's elopement came late to Crispin. There were things to be done to the little house on the Potomac, and he had snatched at the lovely fall days in which to do them, taking a short vacation from his office. He left instructions that no mail except his personal letters should be forwarded. He liked the thought of the detachment. There was no telephone. He would be alone to think of Hildegarde. That was enough. He wanted nothing more.
Totally unaware of the emotional hurricane which had swept Round Hill, he cooked three meals a day with the assured technic of a man who has lived much out of doors. He washed his dishes, swept and garnished his own quarters, and moved about the house deftly, fitting in open shelves for books, putting a last coat of paint on a garden bench, making everything ready for the woman who would promise him nothing, but who would come some day walking up the path to open the door with her silver key. And he would find her sitting by his fire! He would admit no doubts. She was his to the end of the world!
The emptiness of the house disturbed him not a bit! He peopled it with future occupants and found much ​content. He saw Hildegarde in every room, but most often by the fireplace. His hearth was for her delight. Somebody else had said that, and the phrase pleased him. And the hearth would be for the delight, too, of their friends. Hospitality was such a wonderful thing! There would be his family and Hildegarde's old aunts, the people from Round Hill.
And up from Mount Vernon would come the shades of their distinguished neighbors—riding along the road in a big barouche, walking in the garden. How Hildegarde would love the make-believe on this historic soil!
And far away in the future . . . around the hearth . . . a small and shining troop . . . flitting back and forth in the firelight . . . finding fairy tales in the coals. Far away in the future, yes, but with the door flung wide for them when they came. . . .
It was on the night of the fifth day that he rode to Mount Vernon—a wonderful night with a hunter's moon. The river, stretched inertly like a great golden monster, slept between the low hills. When he came to the great mansion he saw that the windows were dark, yet in imagination he saw them lighted, with strains of music drifting out on the tides of moonlight. Once upon a time, under other moons, boats had come up to this landing place with freight of belles and beaux. Carriages galloping over the rough roads had deposited other loads of beauty and gallantry. In the shadows of the great trees had been this rendezvous and that—he seemed even now to glimpse the flutter of a scarf, the shine of a buckle, to catch a note of low laughter, the throbbing cadence of a passionate avowal.
​The thought did not sadden him. Great passions were of the soul, and lasted throughout eternity. He would adore Hildegarde until the sun grew cold. Somewhere in some celestial sphere those other lovers lived out their spiritual destinies.
The youth in him would listen to no doctrine of annihilation. His blood was warm. Hope was his heritage. He felt that if Hildegarde were there, he could make her see things as he saw them. That nothing mattered in the whole wide world but youth and love and faith in life.
On the way home, he stopped at a neighbor's to get the cream for his mornings coffee. As he stood in the kitchen, an old newspaper was spread out on the table. His eye caught the headlines. . . . Sally's name! Winslow's! The whole thing was there in great black lines—little Sally had run away with Meriweather!
He asked for the paper and got it. He read the details sitting by his fire. Good work! Winslow had got what was coming to him!
He wondered what Hildegarde thought of it. He'd call her up in the morning. She must have thought his silence strange under the circumstances. And he'd wire to Merry.
When he went to bed he found it hard to sleep. He had set up a cot in the screened porch, and the moonlight washed over him.
When at last he drifted into slumber, he began to dream. At first the thing was nebulous, vague. He saw forms floating as in a fog. Then, all at once, as if a strong wind had blown the forms away, he was aware of a vast blue space, and of a voice crying, "Crispin, ​Crispin." And the space seemed marked by a lattice, as if a great window stretched from horizon to horizon and from the sky above to the earth that was under it, and out from the window the voice kept crying, "Crispin!" And all through the night he caught the echo of that cry. And the voice was Hildegarde's!
When he waked in the morning he found himself restless, unhappy. He could not shake off the impression of his dream. Yet it was a peach of a morning! The hills were red and green and gold in the autumn sun—there was the incessant chatter of flocking birds, the chrysanthemums in the garden were like bobbing balloons as the breeze swept through them, and up the river came the Norfolk boat, with its hoarse whistle of salutation to passing craft.
He went down to the river for a bath, and came back wrapped in his mackintosh and with his hair tight-curled to find the neighbor from whom he had borrowed the paper at his gate. The neighbor, returning from the cross-roads store which was also the post-office, had brought a special delivery letter for Crispin.
"They asked me to give it to you," he said, "I signed for it."
Crispin said, "Thank you." Tore it open. Read it.
Then he spoke of the beauty of the morning. He said that his bath in the river had been cold but corking. He said . . . "Darling, darling, may I open your door with my silver key?" . . . he said he was going to cook a big breakfast and eat every bit of it. He said that it was kind of the neighbor to invite him over but . . . "Darling, darling, may I open your door with my silver key?" . . . but he thought he ​wouldn't. . . . Yes, on second thought he would accept the invitation to breakfast. He wanted to telephone a telegram. If they would promise not to do anything but put on an extra plate . . . "Darling, darling. . . !"
As he talked, Crispin seemed to the neighbor calm and coherent. The neighbor could not know, of course, the tumult of Crispin's thoughts, the ecstacy which thrilled to the hastily-scrawled words which he had read. He wished the neighbor would go.
The neighbor went.
Crispin had held the letter crushed in his hand. He opened it now, read again the few lines, read them aloud: "Darling, darling, may I open your door with my silver key?"
He laid the letter against his lips, waved it aloft. Laughed. Why, the thing had come! The incredible thing! She loved him!
"Darling, darling. . . ."
The address she had given was that of the farm. She had offered no explanations. He wanted none. They would have hours henceforth for explanations.
And now, "May I open your door with my silver key?"
The wonderfulness of her. The dearness. Elizabeth's daughter. His wife.