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-Project Gutenberg's In the Garden of Delight, by Lily Hardy Hammond
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: In the Garden of Delight
-
-Author: Lily Hardy Hammond
-
-Release Date: November 12, 2020 [EBook #63729]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed
-Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
-
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-                            IN THE GARDEN OF
-                                DELIGHT
-
-
-                                   BY
-
-                             L. H. HAMMOND
-
-               AUTHOR OF “THE MASTER-WORD,” “IN BLACK AND
-                              WHITE,” ETC.
-
-
-                                NEW YORK
-                       THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
-                               PUBLISHERS
-
-
-
-
-                            COPYRIGHT, 1916,
-                      BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
-
-
-
-
-                                   To
-
-                           LUCY AND CALDWELL
-
-                 IN MEMORY OF THE WHEELED-CHAIR SUMMER
-                             AT PEN-Y-BRYN
-
-
-
-
-                                CONTENTS
-
-
-                                CHAPTER               PAGE
-                  I. A COUNTRY CHILD                     1
-                 II. BIRD CORNERS                       16
-                III. IN MAKE-BELIEVE                    37
-                 IV. THE DARK O’ THE YEAR               57
-                  V. PREMONITIONS                       81
-                 VI. BEFORE THE DAWN                   115
-                VII. SPRING MAGIC                      126
-               VIII. BLACKBIRD DIPLOMACY               150
-                 IX. THE PROOF OF COURAGE              169
-                  X. THE ROUTING OF UNCLE JASON        186
-                 XI. WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT       204
-                XII. IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT          229
-               XIII. WHILE THE NEST WAS BUILDING       241
-
-
-
-
-                                   I
-                            A COUNTRY CHILD
-
-
-THERE is one thing, at least, in this puzzling world which, though
-everything changes it, nothing can spoil: and that is out-of-doors. Long
-ago, when this place was stately old Cedarhurst instead of home-y Bird
-Corners, and I a wilful small girl climbing trees and tearing my frocks
-whenever Great-aunt Virginia and Great-aunt Letitia were both looking
-the other way at the same time—a coincidence as blissful as it was
-infrequent—I thought being outdoors was heaven enough for anybody.
-
-In the long winter afternoons I sat by the big wood fire in the back
-parlor and hemmed towels and napkins—when I wasn’t pulling out
-yesterday’s work because Great-aunt Virginia found the stitches too big:
-and I looked out at the cold, bare hills, blue and beautiful against the
-pale sky, and longed to play over them like the winds, and to be whirled
-up into the air like the brown leaves which scurried about them all
-winter long. And in the spring, when the budding branches draped the
-trees with jewelled mists, all silver and green and gold and ruby-red, I
-wished the great-aunts had learned to play on the grass with their whole
-selves, instead of just with their fingers on the big old rosewood
-piano, which stood stiff and square in the front parlor, an instrument
-of torture to rebellious hands that longed to be pulling wild-flowers,
-and to ears tuned to catch the songs of birds. And in summer time, when
-the rain blotted out the hills, and every leaf of every tree sang the
-Song of the Rushing Winds; when the lightning ran zig-zag all over the
-sky and the thunder jarred the house—oh, why should great-aunts call
-one indoors, and shut the free winds out, and put cotton in their ears,
-and make little girls come away from the windows, and the chimneys, and
-every place where they wanted to be, instead of leaving them out in the
-rain to be drenched like the flowers and shake themselves dry like the
-birds?
-
-And in autumn—but those memories are too painful! On frosty days the
-house was shut tight, the log fires kindled, and my small person swathed
-in insufferable flannels—flannels!—in a Tennessee October! And when I
-rebelled, there were fearsome tales of children who had died of
-pneumonia, or gone into consumption, because their misguided relatives
-had allowed them to play outdoors in the cold.
-
-And yet outdoors was never more beautiful. Some of the hills were far
-and blue, and some were near and green, or brown with stubble, or yellow
-with stalks of corn. The grass in the pasture was greenest green; and
-when I slipped out on the back porch the sycamores down by the brook
-rustled their drying leaves and called me as loud as they dared. And the
-doves flew by in flocks, and the killdeers whirred up from the valley
-with wild, free cries, and the field-larks sang on the fence-posts, or
-lighted on the short, sweet grass, the white of their outer tail
-feathers shining in the sun. But Great-aunt Letitia would call me back
-to the parlor, where she made tea, which she and Great-aunt Virginia
-drank, sitting in rosewood arm-chairs, dressed in soft shimmering silks,
-with cobwebby lace about their throats.
-
-I myself balanced unhappily upon one of the big square ottomans, too
-small to get far enough back on it to have any purchase against the
-slippery horsehair, and painfully conscious of Great-aunt Virginia’s
-eyes on my awkwardly swinging feet. I kept my place as best I could,
-holding a bit of egg-shell china, and sipping my odious cambric tea.
-
-This was the chosen time to instill proper principles of conduct into my
-callous little soul. The gentle old aunts made a duet of it, and I
-always thought they practiced it together beforehand, like a “piece” on
-the piano. It was really very easy not to hear!
-
-I always sat on the ottoman nearest the center table. The other was
-nearer the east window, and showed the long front drive bordered by the
-stiff lines of cedars, which gave Cedarhurst its name before the
-great-aunts were born. But the one by the table had the double advantage
-of giving me a dutiful appearance, being equally distant from both of
-the arm-chairs, and of allowing me, by an almost imperceptible sliding
-to one corner, to look out of the silver-maple window to the jug of
-water I kept in the center of the seven trunks, a drinking fountain for
-all the birds of the place. I sat very still during the duet, my head
-raised a little to see the lowest branches, where the birds always
-alighted; and I often quite forgot my cambric tea until Great-aunt
-Letitia gently reminded me of it. My docility touched them very much. I
-heard Great-aunt Letitia tell Great-aunt Virginia one day that she was
-afraid I would never live to grow up, my expression was so rapt when
-they urged my duty upon me; and she felt as though there were an
-invisible halo above my little brown head. I was running in through the
-hall when I heard this, and stopped in breathless amazement. I had no
-thought of eavesdropping, but I saw Great-aunt Virginia wipe her eyes;
-and Great-aunt Letitia almost sniffed. I sat stiller than ever after
-that, and rolled my eyes a little; and Great-aunt Letitia sent for the
-doctor, who said I needed calico dresses and mud pies. The great-aunts
-were shocked at first, but the doctor was firm. And after that I played
-outdoors unless the thermometer was very unkind and the wind in an
-especially dangerous quarter.
-
-There are really two of the-most-beautiful-place-in-the-world. One of
-them is the real outdoors; and the other is outdoors in the Land of
-Make-Believe. The advantage of the real outdoors is that its loveliness
-is ready-made. One invents nothing; one merely opens eyes and ears and
-soul to drink in beauty and joy, and learns, almost without knowing it,
-the most curious and interesting things. The advantage of Make-Believe
-is that when things are as they shouldn’t be, one can instantly step
-over into that blessed country and make them be exactly what they
-should. No one ever sees you do it, either, or guesses that you can make
-a world in a twinkling, out of dreams. It has all the charm and mystery
-of a fairy ring, or fern seed, or Aladdin’s lamp. One’s body can perch
-on a horsehair piano stool, twisting one’s two little meat legs about
-its one fat leg of rosewood, and great-aunts may be sure you are
-practising scales most faithfully; and all the time you are really
-running races in the wind with charming, dirty children who tear their
-dresses all day long, and never had their hair in curl-papers in their
-lives.
-
-And that is only the beginning. For one can learn so well the road to
-that dear land that one never forgets it, even in grown-up days. There
-is never any sickness in Make-Believe. One can walk and run there
-always, though one’s body lies weak and helpless, or drags slowly about,
-year after year, in a world that is full of pain. One can slip away from
-the long, black, sleepless nights into a lovely world where imagination
-is the motive power, and all one needs and all one longs for lie ready
-to one’s hand.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-It was the January after I was sixteen that Cedarhurst burned down. It
-was a bitter cold time; and the heaviest snow I had ever seen turned my
-familiar world into fairyland under the winter moon.
-
-It was Great-aunt Letitia who found the fire. She had been looking for
-it all her life. One of the most familiar memories of my childhood is
-the waking at night to hear a soft rustle past my open door—the doors
-were always left open that we might smell the fire when we really had
-one—and to see Great-aunt Letitia, her white hair tucked away under a
-dainty nightcap and the light of her candle bringing out soft gleams in
-her flowered silk dressing gown, as she followed her highbred nose to
-the spot where it assured her a fire had broken out. It used to frighten
-me at first; but I grew too accustomed to it even to wake. So it taxed
-my credulity to the utmost when, on that bitter night, she roused me to
-tell me with tense white lips that Cedarhurst was in flames.
-
-How the fire started, we never knew. It burst through the floor of the
-empty guest room first, and the ceiling of the dining-room below it. But
-however it started, it was there; and there was no one to fight it but
-two fragile old ladies, a half-grown girl, and the terrified Negroes. It
-was before the days of rural telephones, and the house was in ruins
-before any one in the village knew our need. We carried the news
-ourselves when we drove into Chatterton in the gray dawn, shivering with
-cold. We were all fully dressed, of course; the great-aunts would have
-perished in the flames before they would have shocked the stars of
-heaven by appearing outdoors in the mildest disarray. And we saved the
-family silver, a portrait or two, great-grandmother’s sewing table, a
-few books, and the clothes upon our backs.
-
-On the way to the village Great-aunt Virginia said we had much to be
-thankful for in that our lives were spared; but hers, had we known it,
-was already lost. She had stood in the snow after the flames barred all
-access to the house, until the roof fell in and her birthplace was a
-mass of ruins; and before we had been a week at the home of her nephew,
-Cousin William Wrenn, she had died of pneumonia, leaving Great-aunt
-Letitia and me, as she told us in the parting, alone and unprotected
-save for the Father of all, to whom she trusted us.
-
-But Great-aunt Letitia, whom every one expected to wither and droop
-without her sister’s sheltering care, developed an amazing power of
-decision. She seemed crushed at first. But on the fourth day after
-Great-aunt Virginia had been laid to rest in the hillside burial ground
-at home, she came into the family sitting room, looking, in her deep
-mourning, very tall and white and frail, and announced that she had
-decided not to rebuild Cedarhurst, but to go to the city to live.
-
-I could scarcely believe my ears. The city’s outmost edge was only
-fifteen miles away, but even the village of Chatterton, peopled largely
-by our own relatives, seemed crowded and bustling after the wide quiet
-of the fields at home. That this frail, retiring old lady should
-contemplate a plunge into the vortex of a city whose inhabitants were
-numbered by tens of thousands—really several tens—seemed madness. But
-her determination was fixed.
-
-“This dear child needs the advantages of city life,” she declared. “I
-always found the country exceedingly quiet myself, and-er not
-altogether—progressive. But I deferred to Sister Virginia’s judgment.
-Now, however—” her voice trembled a moment, and then went on quite
-steadily—“the responsibility is mine, and I cannot shirk it. I think
-Lydia should have city advantages. I shall go there and devote myself to
-her education, and prepare for her entrance into society at the proper
-time.”
-
-Argument was of no avail. When I avouched my preference for the country
-she said quietly that I knew nothing of the city yet, and that every one
-should try more than one side of life before making a final choice. She
-was very gentle, but Great-aunt Virginia herself could not have been
-more inflexible. We went, to the envy of my cousin, Billy Wrenn, and to
-my own silent and passionate grief.
-
-As I grew older, Aunt Letitia grew younger—younger, that is, in her
-ideas and in her desires for me. She cared far more than I about my
-clothes, and took a livelier interest in possible lovers. I understood,
-beneath this late blossoming of pleasure in what she called gay life,
-the starved aspirations of her own youth, shut away in the seclusion of
-her beautiful home during the many years of her widowed mother’s
-invalidism and morbid grieving for her husband. There were times when
-her dead-and-gone girlhood rose to life in her eyes, and a soft color
-tinged her delicate cheeks, as she imagined for me some small social
-triumph or admired me in some new dress. I divined that she was
-immensely interested in my men friends, though her shyness in discussing
-them was even greater than her interest. I wondered often if she had a
-love-story of her own; but I never knew. My own love-story, when it
-came, gave her great happiness; and for three years after my marriage
-she lived with us in great content, and passed out at last in utter
-peace.
-
-My husband is known in our family circle as the Peon, since he entered
-into a contract to work for me without wages for life. He brought into
-our home at our marriage his brother’s orphaned child, David Bird, a
-little fellow four years of age, who flatly refused to call me auntie
-and dubbed me Mammy Lil. That was many years ago; and as the time has
-passed the Peon and I have realized with deepening gratitude our debt to
-the little child who has given our home its crowning joy. But for David
-we would have been childless, growing old alone; for we owe Caro to
-David, too. I have never flattered myself that we could have captured
-and held the heart of that tricksey birdling if David had not added to
-our attractions childhood’s lure to a child.
-
-For our years in the city, however, we found David sufficient in
-himself. He has grown up like the Peon’s own son, sturdy, steady, large
-of body and of heart. He has stood well in his classes without much
-effort; but more because it is his disposition to do thoroughly whatever
-he does at all than because of any great love for books. He is
-deliberate in manner, and somewhat slow of speech; and his steady gray
-eyes seem made to look facts in the face. He has always moved in
-straight lines, mentally and physically, cutting through obstacles which
-Caro would flutter around in a twinkling; yet somehow he arrived at the
-goal in time to secure whatever he set out to obtain. He was rather too
-solemn as a child, and regarded me, apparently, somewhat as the Peon did
-at times, with an air of amused and affectionate tolerance. I used to
-hunt through his small personality for the spark of fun I was sure lay
-hidden there, and as the years passed I caught the glint of it more and
-more frequently; but it was really Caro who brought it out into the
-open, and set it, a perpetual signal, in his eyes.
-
-I found it easy to awaken in him my own love of outdoors, and together
-we made friends with such birds as could be enticed to our shady yard in
-the city’s outer circle. We were sworn comrades in our enmity to the
-English sparrows, and the bond of a common foe was one of the many
-things that drew us into a fellowship unusually close. The Peon used to
-say that no boy came to genuine manhood without something in the way of
-an evil to hate and to fight; and for my part I joyfully set up the
-English sparrows as the embodiment of all wickedness, to be destroyed
-beak and tail. My own objections to them were the result of long
-watching; but David’s hatred sprang to life full-fledged the morning we
-found four of the wretched bullies fighting one small chickadee, which
-hung head downward from a twig of privet, his eyes shut tight, his claws
-clenched, and his throat and breast exposed to his enemies’ vicious
-bills. I think some deep thirst for justice seized the child’s soul at
-sight of the helpless victim, and ever since he has been mindful of weak
-things in a way surprising in a boy so ruggedly strong.
-
-He has been wonderfully mindful of me, always. Long before we left the
-city I had learned to enjoy outdoors from a cot under the trees in the
-back yard. The pain which was to be by turns my companion, my jailer,
-and my emancipator had already laid upon me an iron hand. I was up and
-about when the Peon was at home; but when he came in unexpectedly he
-learned to look for me under the drooping silver maples in the yard; and
-my old-time love of birds was an easy explanation of the many-cushioned
-cot and the long hours I daily spent upon it.
-
-David filled the birds’ drinking fountain for me when he came home to
-leave his books and get his bat or his football; and I would lie there,
-watching my visitors, wondering at the variety of birds to be seen in a
-city yard, and wishing the sparrows’ duels were less on the harmless
-French order. They never fought because they needed to do it; it was
-always for something perfectly futile and foolish. They would leave all
-the food I could scatter to tear one crumb from a neighbor. For it is
-English sparrow nature never to be satisfied with what they have, to
-want only what some one else is enjoying, and to get it for themselves
-if they can. David and I were fully agreed that if anything more hateful
-was ever created we wished to be spared acquaintance with it.
-
-
-
-
-                                   II
-                              BIRD CORNERS
-
-
-IT is to Uncle Milton that I owe our return to the country, and all the
-delights of Bird Corners.
-
-Uncle Milton is an inheritance from my great-aunts and Cedarhurst, where
-he had the finest flowers and the most flourishing vegetable garden in
-the country. He is a lean old Negro, tall, and straight as a pine. His
-features are finely cut; and with his gray hair, long gray moustache,
-regular features, and skin like polished bronze, he makes a
-distinguished appearance, even in his old blue jeans. He is a real lover
-of the outdoor world, and the earth and the plants know it. He bends
-over the flower-beds lovingly, with eyes that see, not dirt, but all
-dirt’s possibilities of beauty and life. There is never a plant set
-carelessly nor a seed that falls by chance. No wonder all he touches
-grows!
-
-That he went to town with Great-aunt Letitia, and stayed there afterward
-with me, spoke eloquently of the strength of affection between us. But
-after my great-aunt’s death he did not accept the situation without
-constant protests, and the advice which my youth and ignorance demanded.
-
-“You ain’t got no mo’ business in de city dan I is, Miss Lil,” he said
-spring after spring, as I sat on the grass by the flower-beds and
-watched his fork go in and out like clock-work, leaving behind it long
-rows of fresh-turned earth. “You done los’ all dem roses you had in yo’
-face at home. Ef Miss Ferginny done lived she wouldn’ put up wid dis
-foolishness not er minute.”
-
-“But the city is more convenient for Mr. Bird,” I would explain. “Some
-day when he is rich enough he expects to give up business, and then we
-will go back.”
-
-“He’ll be givin’ up his wife fus’ news you know,” growled the old man,
-stopping to thin the thick border of violets. “An’ he’ll be goin’ to
-bury you dar by Miss Ferginny and Miss ’Titia befo’ he goes retirin’
-from business ef he don’ look out. We-all got er plenty ter live on
-now—you got er plenty widout his’n; en ef you ain’t, I kin make er
-plenty outen dat groun’. Hit’s de riches’ lan’ in Davis’son county. I
-made hit pay befo’, en I kin do hit agin, stidder was’in’ it on po’
-white-trash renters like you all do. But I ’clare to gracious, Miss Lil,
-ef you-all don’ go, I will. I been mixin’ up wid town niggers till I’m
-plumb wo’ out wid ’em. Dis is de las’ spring Milton’ll fix yo’ flowers
-in dis mizzable little cramped-up lot.”
-
-He had said this so often that I regarded it as one of Nature’s regular
-spring processes; and beyond a sudden deeper stirring of my constant
-homesickness, his threats passed unnoticed. But one February morning he
-came out and stood by my cot under the trees with a face at once elated
-and downcast.
-
-“Are you going to begin the spring work today?” I asked in delight.
-
-He looked embarrassed.
-
-“Hit’s sorter early to rake dem leaves offen de beds yit,” he said. Then
-he hesitated. “I ’spec I ain’t gwinter be able ter do de wuk no mo’.”
-
-“Are you sick?” I asked anxiously. Then I saw the new look in his face,
-and gasped. “You’re going to the country!” I cried.
-
-“Yassum, I is. I can’t stan’ it yere no longer, Miss Lil: I’m er gittin’
-too ole fer town; I des bleeged ter go out whar God made de worl’ en
-breathe free en be er man ergin, befo’ I die.”
-
-The years had slipped from him like a cloak. I looked at him
-enviously—just as an English sparrow might look at some bird of
-stronger flight, I reflected suddenly, and scowled at one of my greedy
-kinsman in the walk, trying to gobble all the best crumbs at once.
-
-“I’m glad for you,” I said honestly. “When do you go?”
-
-“When my mont’s out. But I hates ter go, Miss Lil.”
-
-“What am I to do here?” I demanded, the sparrow in me refusing to be
-quenched altogether.
-
-“I’ll do de bes’ I kin,” he said. “I been lookin’ roun’ fer you all
-winter. But dese town niggers is a onery set, fer sho’. When you-all
-comes home Milton’s comin’ back.”
-
-“Never mind,” I said; “we’ll manage somehow.”
-
-I closed my eyes because they were getting full of tears. He moved away,
-and I let the tears come. I wanted the country, too; and more and more
-as my illness grew, and it became increasingly difficult to take my part
-in the busy city life. The more one’s bodily freedom is restricted by
-weakness and pain, the more one longs for the unconfined spaces of earth
-and air, for wide horizons and sweeping winds, and wings that flash far
-up into the sunshine, above the shadows where one must lie, conning the
-hard lesson of patient idleness. And I wanted Uncle Milton—the visible
-link between me and that dear world of hill and sky for which I longed.
-Return to it seemed so bright a possibility while another heart, even
-this old Negro’s, held it as dear as I. If he went from me he would
-leave my hope bereft. I lay with closed eyes, absorbed in longing for
-that dear receding vision of delight.
-
-“Don’ you see how bad she wanter go, Marse John?” said Uncle Milton
-again, close beside me. I sprang up in amazement, to find him and the
-Peon by my cot. “She ain’t gwine ter say a word ef she think hit’ll
-discommerdate you; but de chile’s e’en erbout breakin’ her heart fer de
-country, same as I is.”
-
-“Uncle Milton,” I began indignantly; but the old man brushed my words
-aside.
-
-“You en Marse John fight hit out, honey,” he said. “Mek ’er tell de
-trufe, Marse John. Hit’s you en her fer it now; Milton’s done his bes’.”
-
-He turned deliberately and walked out of the yard.
-
-It did not take the Peon long to get the facts, to answer all my
-objections as to the inconvenience to himself, and to settle finally our
-immediate return. We would rebuild Cedarhurst at once.
-
-“Oh, no,” I cried, “not Cedarhurst! Let us build our own home, all
-sunshine and out-of-doors! It isn’t the old house that I love; it was
-too cold and stately and dark—such an indoors kind of house. It’s the
-hills I’m homesick for, and the sky, and the biggest maple, and the
-pasture, and the sycamores down by the brook.”
-
-“But we can’t sleep in the maple,” objected the Peon, “nor eat in the
-pasture when it rains. There must be a house.”
-
-“Oh, of course. But let it be our house—not Great-aunt Virginia’s. You
-may really build it any way you please if only you will have porches
-enough, and so many windows that wherever you sit you can lift your eyes
-and look right out, miles and miles and miles. And I’d like all the
-rooms to have a southern exposure, of course, on account of the breeze
-and the sun, and east windows for winter mornings, and west windows for
-the sunsets. I don’t care about the rest.”
-
-“I insist upon bath-rooms and a kitchen,” said the Peon; “mere scenery
-is not a sufficient sanitary basis for life. But what shall we call
-it—Cedarhurst?”
-
-“Oh, no! Just a plain, every day, home-y name—something that belongs to
-us and the birds. Why, we’re Birds ourselves, Peon, dear. Let’s be
-sociable and call it Bird Corners.”
-
-“But there aren’t any corners,” said the practical Peon; “the place lies
-straight along the pike.”
-
-That is a man’s way. He thinks he must face facts and shape his course
-accordingly, poor slave to the visible that he is. But a woman conquers
-facts by turning her back upon them, and playing they are something
-else.
-
-“The birds will make the corners,” I explained patiently. “Before I’ve
-been putting out crumbs a month there’ll be bird pikes cutting through
-the place at every conceivable angle, and crossing each other under that
-seven-trunked maple where my cot will be. And if that won’t be bird
-corners, what will?”
-
-So we prepared for our homing flight. Uncle Milton went out at once to
-trim the trees and prune the shrubbery and vines; and the occasional
-days he bestowed on us in town were full of delight for me, filled as
-they were with reports of progress at home. For it was home, before dirt
-had been broken for the house; the city dwelling was a mere temporary
-shelter.
-
-“De jonquils out home is showin’ up fine,” he announced one morning in
-mid-February; “hit’s time to sorter stir up dese yere lazy town flowers.
-En I’ll trim de trees, too, seein’ I’m ’bout done wid ’em out home. I
-’spec de city folks what’ll live yere atter we-all gone’ll want what
-little dab er trees dey got in dis yard.”
-
-He looked scornfully at the back yard, generous in size, after the
-fashion of our Southern cities, and shaded with fine old trees. But a
-little later, high in the hackberry, his love of all earth-rooted things
-swept contempt from his heart, and his dark old face shone with
-happiness as he wielded the hatchet with rhythmic strokes.
-
-That is always the beginning of the spring work—the severance of death
-from life, that life may rise again, even out of death. Where would life
-draw this dead matter next? To darkness first, to growth most surely,
-and perchance, some day, to wings. And the dark old man with the happy
-face was servitor of life—life for the dead as for the living; for
-death is but the underside of life.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-We went home early in May. The house would not be finished until
-October; but outdoors was all ready for us, and we could not waste the
-summer for lack of a house.
-
-“You know,” I argued to the Peon, “we had a beautiful time in the
-mountains last summer; and we slept in a two-roomed cottage with only
-weather-boarding between us and the trees outside. Why can’t we have a
-shed with a gasoline stove, and a couple of tents to live in?”
-
-So we had them. The Peon and David drove in to Chatterton daily and took
-the train for business and school; and I fed the birds and followed
-Uncle Milton, and drank in the changing beauties of earth and sky. And
-all summer we watched our home grow, from cellar to roof-tree, till it
-became a thing complete, and fitted into the landscape for which it was
-designed.
-
-We set it on the old home’s hill, which overlooked the countryside, and
-faced it toward the sunrising. The dark lines of cedars which had
-bordered the approach to the old house were left at one side, and the
-road, curving from their upper end, swept into full sunshine and passed
-under a great beech, which spread its tiers of leaves above the doorway.
-It is an unpretentious house, rambling about pretty much as it pleases
-in its efforts to give southern and eastern and western exposures to all
-the rooms. Porches are everywhere, and the windows either open on them,
-like doors, or stop a little above the floor at low, cushioned seats,
-which tempt one to sink down and wonder once again at the beauty of this
-fair country of middle Tennessee. There are no curtains at the windows,
-nor mats of vines outside. But up the widely-separated columns of the
-porches run clematis and jasmines which cross the great openings in
-narrow bands, above and below. So all summer the fretwork of green
-leaves frames the landscape, a perfect, yet everchanging picture in each
-of the wide spaces. The east end of the living-room is of glass, and my
-flowers flourish there in winter time. In my own room the bed stands in
-a deep recess formed all of windows on the three sides. A low seat runs
-under them within reach of the bed. All through the dark, sleepless
-night I can lie there and watch for the first paling of the eastern sky,
-and follow the level light as it moves softly along the southern hills,
-creating the shadows which make the light so clear.
-
-It must be confessed that some of the kin at Chatterton thought my wits
-astray that first summer, and the Peon but a soft-headed, poor-spirited
-creature for giving way to my whimsies. Camping out was not as popular
-then as it is now; and the older members of the family did not hesitate
-to commiserate the Peon and David. That they professed to enjoy our long
-picnic only added to the heinousness of my folly.
-
-Cousin Chadwell Grackle and his wife were among my first callers. Cousin
-Chad is always to the front when anything new crops up in the family. He
-has cried the sins and shortcomings of the whole usual order so long
-that even he is half bored with them, and the prospect of something new
-to criticise whets his social appetite to the keenest possible edge.
-Cousin Jane is his reflection and echo. If she were not, even her stolid
-nerves could scarcely have endured his painful type of piety without
-disaster.
-
-They drove up one sunshiny morning, after they had seen the Peon and
-David pass on their way to town. I was on the cot under the biggest
-maple. Its seven trunks fall apart like long-stemmed flowers in a vase,
-spreading into a great green tent whose leafy curtains droop in a circle
-full seventy feet across.
-
-The blackbirds were my principal guests that morning, a sanctimonious
-crew in sleek black coats, solemn, censorious, and self-satisfied to the
-last degree. All birds which walk instead of hopping are
-awkward-looking; but none are as preposterous as the blackbirds, because
-none of them put on such sanctified airs. As they moved about this
-morning, their heads thrust meekly forward, ducking modestly as they
-stepped, they appeared to be meditating on their neighbors’ sins. But
-they had their tribe’s keen eye for the main chance, and it was a swift
-bird and a wary one which secured a big crumb with these feathered
-Chadbands in the yard.
-
-I looked up at the sound of wheels and nearly choked with swallowing my
-laughter. Cousin Chad and Cousin Jane did look so sleek and proper, that
-as I rose to meet them I could not refrain from throwing some extra
-crumbs on the grass for possible additions to my breakfasting guests.
-
-They descended ponderously and looked at me with the apprehensive
-scrutiny one might bestow on a lunatic who is liable to break out
-immediately in a fresh place.
-
-“How are you, Lyddy?” inquired Cousin Jane, with sepulchral anxiety.
-Cousin Chad, busy with the hitching-post, listened with his back as well
-as with his ears. They both know perfectly that I have always been Lil
-to everyone except the great-aunts, and that Lyddy has been an
-abomination to the entire family connection, and especially to me, since
-they first invented it in my childhood. That is why they stick to it.
-They believe in chastenings, do my cousins, the Grackles—particularly
-when they are the chasteners.
-
-“I’m perfectly well,” I answered, with added emphasis to my usual
-formula. “Come and sit down. There’s no need to ask how you and Cousin
-Chad are; you look the picture of health.”
-
-“Appearances don’t do to go by, Lyddy,” she answered solemnly, sinking
-ponderously on a creaking campstool. “Chadwell’s been havin’ sciatica,
-and I’ve stayed awake nights with him till I’m just about worn out. But
-I’ve never made my afflictions an excuse for shirkin’ my duty. We came
-over to say that as you seem to be without a roof over your heads we’d
-take you to board till your house is finished—if it ever is.”
-
-She glanced contemptuously at the amorphous piles of building material
-just beyond us.
-
-“You can have the second spare bed-room upstairs,” put in Cousin Chad.
-“It’s more to my interest to put you in the front one; but livin’ comes
-high any way you take it, and I want to consider you. I reckon John
-ain’t able to spend much, with all this building on hand. The back
-room’s small, but you three can make out in it. If you want the other,
-of course it will cost more. You can come over this evening after John
-gets home, and he and I can settle the terms after supper.”
-
-I kept my face quite straight, and made a handsome contribution to
-current fiction.
-
-“It’s so kind of you. John will appreciate it as much as I. But we
-really enjoy camping, and would not give it up even for those lovely
-rooms of yours, Cousin Chad. Thank you so much.”
-
-Cousin Jane’s rubicund complexion assumed a purplish hue.
-
-“Do you intend to kill that delicate child of Henry Bird’s, making him
-sleep out in the weather all summer?” she demanded.
-
-“No,” I said, considering; “I don’t intend to kill him, exactly. And he
-isn’t at all delicate.”
-
-“Well, he will be by the time you get through with him—if he ain’t
-dead,” broke in Cousin Chad. “Lyddy, it’s my duty to speak plainly, and
-I’ll not shirk it. Letitia spoiled you from the time you were born, and
-John Bird seems bent on keeping it up. David will pay the penalty for
-it. We do a very different part by the orphan the Lord made it our duty
-to take charge of, I can assure you. Caroline Wrenn’s health is taken
-care of, with a view to her future usefulness as a Christian. But of
-course you’ll stick to your own ways.—Well, I’ve warned you: my
-conscience is clear. Come, Jane: we’d better be going.”
-
-“I’m glad your conscience is clear, Cousin Chad. I know that’s a comfort
-to you, if I’m not. But we can be good friends, can’t we, even though
-our ideas are different?”
-
-“I shall not turn my back upon you if you’re in trouble, Lyddy, if
-that’s what you mean,” he answered. “I hope I know my duty better than
-that. But when you want help again you must ask for it. I don’t intend
-to offer it.”
-
-“That’s a bargain, then,” I said; “and we must both remember it.”
-
-Cousin Jane looked at me sharply, but Cousin Chad was already heaving
-her into the buggy, and she turned to get a good grip on the side. The
-vehicle creaked as she settled in it, and groaned when Cousin Chad sank
-beside her.
-
-“Good-bye, Lyddy,” she said. “We’ve done our best. I hope you won’t
-regret it.”
-
-This quite upset me, and after the cedars hid them I lay laughing until
-the thought of poor little Caro suddenly sobered me. What were they
-doing to Billy’s child? I must make friends with Cousin Jane, somehow,
-and entice the little thing over to Bird Corners as much as possible.
-
-There was no one else whom our erratic manner of life really
-scandalized, except Cousin Jason Blue; and he, as he took occasion to
-tell me when he met me out driving one day with Caro, never made a fool
-of himself like Chad Grackle by meddling. If a woman wanted to follow
-her nature and behave like a lunatic, and her husband chose to allow it,
-it was none of his business; so he shrugged his shoulders and passed on.
-
-Cousin Jason and the Grackles are the only kin I have in all Chatterton
-whose kinship I would discount if I could; but there is no denying they
-belong in the family. Cousin Chad’s father was my grandmother’s third
-half-cousin on my father’s side; and Cousin Jason’s mother was Cousin
-Lysander Hilliard’s step-daughter by his second marriage: there could
-scarcely be anything plainer than that.
-
-And if Cousin Jason had his drawbacks, there are none about his
-half-sister, Grace, fifteen years his junior, and, except Ella, the
-dearest friend I have. She married George Wood soon after I married the
-Peon, and they have a daughter, Milly, about the age of Caro Wrenn.
-
-David took kindly to country life, and to his numerous
-cousins-by-marriage. There were plenty of boys among them; and though at
-first they resented David’s city ways, their respect for him grew
-immensely when they found how far he could bat a ball; and after he had
-whipped Bob White in single combat he was admitted to Chatterton boydom
-as a comrade in full fellowship. There was no particular reason for his
-fighting Bob, so far as we dull grown-ups could discover, except that
-Bob was the leader of his set, and a fight was considered the necessary
-initiation to membership. As soon as this was made clear to him, David
-had painstakingly trodden on Bob’s toes, and the preliminaries were
-arranged at once. The boys were excellent friends, before and afterward;
-and the Peon would not allow me to discuss the matter with David. They
-talked it out in private, and reached some amicable male conclusion of
-their own.
-
-Of the girl cousins David was loftily tolerant, excepting Caro Wrenn.
-She was five years old the spring we came back to the country, when
-David was half-past nine. Her mother had died when she was born, and her
-father, Billy Wrenn, had gone to Colorado three years afterward, to die
-there of consumption. He made Cousin Chad Caro’s guardian before he
-died, knowing, as we all did, Cousin Chad’s remarkable ability in
-reaping financial harvests from even the smallest investments; but he
-left the child herself with her mother’s sister, Sally Martin, never
-dreaming that death would again bereave the little creature of a
-mother’s love. Sally died, quite suddenly, less than a year after Billy;
-and Cousin Chad and Cousin Jane, intent, as usual, on doing their
-impeccable duty, assumed sole care of the little heiress, and installed
-her in their own childless and virtuous home.
-
-A more incongruous setting for her could scarcely have been found. She
-was a tiny creature, with rose-leaf skin, great hazel eyes, a mop of
-red-brown curls, and a mouth where laughter bubbled all day long. Quick
-and bird-like in all her movements, she flitted in and out of the most
-unexpected recesses in the twinkling of an eye, with endless flutterings
-of hands and skirts and sweet gurglings of suppressed laughter. Almost
-from her cradle she sang—queer little soft croonings which slipped into
-tunes before she could speak their words. Cousin Jane scarcely knew what
-to make of her, and was torn between a sincere desire to do her
-Spartanly-Christian duty by her, and her solemn puzzlement over what she
-considered the child’s combination of depravity and charm. Even Cousin
-Jane could not be very severe with her; but she had an uneasy sense of
-spoiling her every time she forebore the rod, so that I found her more
-than willing to turn the child over to me for the greater part of the
-time.
-
-This arrangement gave my revered relative ample warrant for looking
-closely into my household affairs and reproving me for everything she
-did and didn’t discover; it was her duty to know all about a place where
-dear Caroline spent so much of her time. And when Caro departed from
-Cousin Jane’s ideals, as she did with every movement of body and mind,
-it was a great relief to my pious cousin to be able publicly to disavow
-all responsibility for the child’s shortcomings. What, as she constantly
-inquired, could one expect of Caroline when that scatter-brained Lyddy
-would persist in encouraging the child in her flightiness? She published
-abroad her own powerlessness to control either Caro or the situation,
-and openly washed her hands of the consequences.
-
-Caro and I bore up as best we could, and the Peon and David stood by us
-nobly. David, indeed, was ready to fight his idol’s battles with Cousin
-Jane herself. In fact, he grew up with a lack of respect for that
-excellent lady which tempted her to assume the role of a prophet, in
-which capacity she dwelt at large on the penitentiary as David’s
-ultimate place of residence. Caro always responded to these
-prognostications that, if Davy went to the penimtentium, she would go,
-too, as soon as she was big enough, and keep house for him, and make the
-cook give them ice-cream every day that came. And so the matter rested.
-
-
-
-
-                                  III
-                            IN MAKE-BELIEVE
-
-
-IT is four years since I wrote those last words. Not long after, Caro
-went away to school. David went North to college that year, and was only
-coming home for the regular holidays. He still held to his boyhood
-preference, and was determined to be a scientific farmer: and since the
-Peon and I were to have him with us always, we wanted him to have a few
-years quite away from us in which to make his own adjustments to life.
-So they left us the same week, David with all a boy’s love to hold him
-back, and a young man’s eagerness to urge him away; and Caro in as
-nearly easterly weather as her sunny nature ever experienced.
-
-It was Cousin Jane who first decided on Caro’s banishment. For the sake
-of her own peace of mind she had of late years resigned the child almost
-entirely to me; but every now and then she had what Caro called a “qualm
-spell.” During these painful periods Caro resided with the Grackles,
-strictly, not even coming over to take lunch with me. She arose at five
-and extinguished her light at nine; and pinned on the wall beside her
-bureau, in Cousin Jane’s firm handwriting, was a schedule of useful
-occupations for each of the intervening sixteen hours.
-
-She had so much time for devotions, so much for meals, so much for
-school, for study, for “domestic occupations,” for “improving and useful
-reading,” and for “practical sewing.” Cousin Jane never allowed precious
-time wasted on fancy work; and if she thought it was all like the awful
-things she had in her parlor I don’t in the least blame her for thinking
-it wicked.
-
-However, Caro’s time was laid out for her as exactly as the squares on a
-checker-board. She fed the chickens, argued with the old biddies who
-wanted to “set” in the wrong place, and wheedled the arrogant old Buff
-Orpington, who ruled the hens and Cousin Jane with ease and contempt,
-into doing whatever she wanted of him. She made butter that drew
-near-smiles to Cousin Jane’s stiff lips, and evolved cakes that called
-forth lectures to Cousin Chad on the sin of gluttony. She sewed, without
-a murmur, or a particle of trimming, undergarments of good, reliable,
-ever-wearing domestic. She was always foresighted enough to make ample
-allowance for their shrinking when washed; whereby she both pleased
-Cousin Jane and insured an excellent fit for little black Josie when she
-returned to us with a halo of virtue above her red-brown curls. She read
-history till she could put me to the blush. She washed the best tea-cups
-and the Persian cat. She dusted the parlor daily. And from her early
-childhood she made irreproachable jam.
-
-It really was excellent training for her; thorough good discipline, as
-Cousin Jane would say; especially as it was interspersed with “spells of
-Bird-Cornering,” during which she sojourned with the Peon and me. For
-the period of discipline always followed an accustomed round. It began
-with a Cousin Jane all severity, lynx-eyed to drag poor Caro’s
-delinquencies to light and overcome them by unsparing criticism. But
-Caro has always made play of everything, finding by the talisman of her
-own happy heart the hidden beauty, or laughter, of the ugliest and
-solemnest things. She did all Cousin Jane found for her to do—which is
-saying a good deal—not only cheerfully, but with whole-souled delight,
-as if it were her very meat and drink. Doing it that way, she did it
-beyond criticism; and Cousin Jane would begin to relax, unwillingly,
-unable to find a flaw, yet with an uneasy feeling that something must be
-wrong, or Caro couldn’t possibly be enjoying herself so much. When she
-set herself to mortify Caro’s girlish vanity the child met her more than
-half-way. She did her best to “slick” her curls, and donned shapeless
-gingham aprons as joyously as though they were made of jewels and lace.
-Cousin Jane would find herself being mollified to the point of
-indulgence in spite of herself; and about that time Caro would come
-flying into the yard at Bird Corners and drop fluttering beside me, her
-eyes shining with the pure joy of living and the love of living things.
-
-“I’m back again, Mammy Lil,” she would laugh, whirling about on one toe.
-“Cousin Jane hasn’t scolded me for four days, and yesterday she almost
-patted my head; so I knew she thought I’d had training enough for the
-present, and I’d be coming back home in a jiffy. They’re so good to me
-in their funny way I’m most ashamed to be glad to come home to you—but
-I am, all the same. Where’s Josie? I’ve made three new petticoats and a
-night gown for her, out of muslin strong enough to climb trees.”
-
-The truth was that when Caro came back to me it was because Cousin Jane
-had detected in her own soul symptoms of the child’s being made an idol:
-she had to get rid of her to recover her own moral poise. But she still
-intended to do her full duty by her: so when Caro was fifteen she was
-sent to boarding school, to remain at least five years. By that time
-Cousin Jane hoped to have re-established her own imperturbability
-without unduly exposing her charge to the dangerous influences of Bird
-Corners.
-
-We had a battle royal concerning the school she should go to, and to
-this day Cousin Jane thinks she won. She really has no more idea about
-schools than a chinquapin worm, living fat and contented in its own
-sufficient little world; and I knew she’d be for sending the child to
-some fifth-rate country “college” where she’d be taught poor music and
-worse French, and be worked to death learning things the way they
-aren’t. So I wrote, ostentatiously, for the catalogue of one of the most
-exclusive, nonsensical, and extravagant “finishing schools”; and
-privately ordered sent to Cousin Jane one from the school I wished Caro
-to attend. It was a sensible place where she’d be taken care of, and
-given a chance to grow up to the best of herself in body and mind. I
-plead for the finishing school, and sniffed diligently at the other,
-even advocating the dreaded “college” as preferable; whereby I had the
-comfort of having Caro sent where I wanted her, with Cousin Jane’s mind
-so definitely set on keeping her there that I knew her education was
-provided for.
-
-Caro rebelled against going. For the first time in her life she did not
-want to please us.
-
-“You’re not well enough to do without me and David, too, Mammy Lil,” she
-insisted; “it’s just a pretense that you don’t need me; and I don’t care
-whether I’m educated or not.”
-
-She yielded to the inevitable between tears and laughter.
-
-“Anyway,” she reflected, “there’s Make-Believe left: you’ll never get
-rid of me there, will you? I’ll come there every day of the world, and
-David, too: and ten times a day if you want me.”
-
-It was a genuine relief to have her go; it was becoming most difficult
-to blind her bright eyes to my illness. It was much simpler to keep up
-appearances with the Peon, who left home early and returned late, and
-who was often called away for days together. If I sat up as usual when
-he was in the house it was becoming necessary to lie quite still all
-day.
-
-For weeks after the children left I enjoyed being alone, and the freedom
-from effort which it brought. But as the winter wore on, the loneliness
-proved a lure to introspection and self-pity—those quicksands of
-despair which encircle the country of enforced idleness; and as I lay
-under my windows or beneath the trees I began, for pleasure and
-companionship, to write the story of our happy life and of the
-children’s growing up. But the note-book proved desperately heavy, and
-the few pages I filled took weeks instead of days; until at last I
-ceased the effort until I should be stronger, as I had ceased so many
-other things in this journeying into the Land of Idleness.
-
-I made a new acquaintance that winter—a wretched little blue devil to
-whom I gave the name of Grumpy, and with whom I battled from morning
-till night, and especially from night till morning. It is not pain that
-blue devils thrive on—I had proved that all these many years; it is
-idleness that gives them their chance for mischief—the helpless
-idleness of utter exhaustion, when one’s thoughts hang vacant, and body
-nor mind can longer force its way past the wall of pain to move, however
-slowly, in the beautiful outside world of human effort and achievement.
-
-So Grumpy came to Bird Corners. Satan himself knows no self-respecting
-devil would have stayed on the premises after the way I treated the
-creature; but blue devils respect neither themselves nor anybody else.
-An hour after I had flung him out by the heels he would bob up by the
-sofa in the finest fettle imaginable, grinning at my exhaustion from our
-late encounter. The most I ever could be sure of doing was keeping him
-invisible to every one else; but he made up for that in the nights.
-Still, one adjusts one’s self to the inevitable in time; and blue devils
-are all in the day’s work, I suppose, like the dentist or a cold in
-one’s head. One gets through with the visitation somehow, and laughs
-afterward because, for the time, at least, it is over.
-
-When the children came home in the summer there was trouble, of course.
-Doctors came and went, though I had privately done my full duty by them
-long before; and I swallowed a deal of nasty stuff which did absolutely
-no good, except that it soothed the feelings of the family.
-
-By the end of the summer David was insisting on something radical; and
-when he went back to college he took me with him, and deposited me in a
-northern sanitarium, where I was to lie flat on my back three months,
-and be made over as good as new.
-
-This was not only radical, but revolutionary. Chatterton had never
-before furnished an inmate for a sanitarium. The word, indeed, was
-commonly understood as a polite euphemism for a lunatic asylum. The
-sentiments of the kin ranged all the way from Grace Wood’s anxious
-hopefulness to Cousin Jane’s frank curiosity concerning what new kind of
-craziness Lyddy had been up to now, to make John Bird feel like she had
-to be shut up in a private mad-house. She took my part, however, so far
-as to say, both to my face and behind my back, that I wasn’t a mite
-crazier than I’d been all my life; and if folks could get along with me
-this long it did look like a pity they couldn’t put up with me a while
-longer, and save disgracing the family. There was nothing the matter
-with me, Cousin Jane opined, beyond being spoiled to death, and lazy;
-and, anyway, it was flying in the face of Providence to go on living if
-your time had come to die.
-
-As to going North, she never did believe in wasting money on conceited
-Yankee doctors when there were so many struggling physicians at home, to
-say nothing of the heathen in foreign lands who were dropping into
-hell-fire so many a minute for lack of any kind of doctors, good or bad,
-to keep them alive until the missionaries could get to them.
-
-“But it’s no use preachin’ to selfish ears,” she concluded, drawing her
-heavy silk wrap about her ample shoulders and settling her bonnet
-strings. “I’ve been wastin’ my breath, of course.”
-
-It seemed a pity that she should, whether from my point of view or her
-own; so I smiled as sympathetically as I could, and offered my cheek for
-her farewell salute. She bestowed it impressively.
-
-“Well, good-bye, Lyddy. I suppose I won’t see you again in this life;
-an’ in the other one failin’ wits won’t trouble us, I trust. I want you
-to know I don’t hold any of your foolishness against you, child: I
-reckon you never did have sense like the rest of us.”
-
-She went out with her ponderous, firm tread, and Caro flitted to my
-side, her head thrown up, ruffling like an angry wren.
-
-“Mammy Lil, its a shame you made me promise to be good! Do let me run
-after her and——” She caught my eye and broke into bubbling laughter,
-dropping her head on my pillows and snuggling her little nose under my
-chin.
-
-“Of course it’s funny,” she admitted presently; “and if you will laugh,
-I have to. But I can’t see how she can be so wooden-headed and yet be
-alive.”
-
-“She isn’t alive very much, poor soul!” I answered, soberly enough. “I
-don’t think anybody really lives except so far as they understand
-life—and people. When you think of it in that way, Cousin Jane has
-lived in a closer confinement all her life than I’ll be when I get to
-the asylum.”
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-That was three years ago, and more, and I am here at the sanitarium yet,
-though the Peon is coming to take me home next month. It was I who set
-the limit of my stay at three months, when I came; I was determined to
-be well by that time. I even had Caro put my note-book in my trunk,
-because I expected to fill it before I came back. That is why I am
-writing this chapter, a few lines at a time, on good days: I am
-determined to do something that I planned doing, before I go back.
-
-It would take more note-books than my trunk could hold to tell the story
-of the kindness shown me here; of the patience, skill, and
-resourcefulness which have fought for me when I could no longer fight
-for myself. And it is good to be in a place like this for awhile, to
-learn what human nature is capable of under racking, tearing strain. The
-courage one finds, the high-hearted endurance of plain, ordinary people,
-the brave good cheer of men and women whose pain-lined faces choke one’s
-throat with tears! I have seen these things so often these last eighteen
-months—or at least in so much of them as I could be carried, lying flat
-in a wheeled-chair, out on one of the balconies, where I could catch
-glimpses of the struggles that were going on around me.
-
-It is not all loss, this suffering. Sickness does bring out hidden
-ugliness and weakness, for it searches soul and body to the inmost core.
-But there is more good hidden than there is evil; and in the stress of
-suffering the most ordinary people blossom into a loveliness of soul
-which reveals them as of the company of the saints. Life is so narrow
-and commonplace to the average experience that it can only make a narrow
-and commonplace appeal. “The trivial round, the common task” has, for so
-many, no large connections; and the depths of their natures are never
-stirred until their every-day world lies in ruins about them, and to
-live at all they must discover new resources in
-
-    “—_that true world within the world we see_,”
-
-and gain a true perspective and a new horizon.
-
-And the funny folk in a place like this—they would fill volumes, too!
-Of course they are pitiful; but I never could see the harm of laughter
-over pitifulness, if only one doesn’t laugh unkindly. For some of them
-never find new resources. Disaster leads them, not to discovery, but to
-an _impasse_; and they revenge themselves on the inexplicable by endless
-incongruities of thought and action.
-
-The patient who really helped me most was a dear old lady who, though
-forbidden, like the rest, to talk to me, felt it her heaven-sent mission
-to cheer me up. Whenever she saw me deposited on the porch she flew out,
-wringing her hands in sympathy, and exclaiming, “Oh, _what_ is life
-without health!” It really is a good deal when you come to think of it;
-and the old lady’s reiterations elicited a string of mental replies as
-long as from western New York to Bird Corners, and kept me in ammunition
-for Grumpy.
-
-For Grumpy has been at this sanitarium for three years and seven weeks.
-But the Peon has been here, too, and David—and Cousin Jane! Caro I have
-not seen in all these years: Cousin Jane doesn’t consider it decent for
-a young girl to be allowed in a place where women may be seen in the
-halls in kimonos, and men are allowed to sit in wheeled-chairs on the
-balconies, shamelessly clad in their bath robes, with heaven knows what
-garments, or lack of garments, underneath. Caro should not set foot in
-the place; and no entreaties could move her. But Caro has written, every
-week of the world; and, to make up for my not having her, Cousin Jane
-paid me a visit herself. She felt it her duty, she said, to find out
-what kind of a place it was that John Bird had shut Lyddy up in; and if
-the rest of the family wouldn’t look after me, she would. So she came,
-suspicious and inquisitorial, and melted visibly under the tactful
-suavity of the physician in charge,—“the Head,” as we called him. She
-even began to help him, ministering to the patients after a fashion all
-her own. She had it out with one of them, a metaphysical lady, a very
-unorthodox person, and left her in a state of collapse. In no uncertain
-tones she expressed her views on hen-pecking to another, an elderly lady
-with a liver and a youthful husband. I don’t know what would have
-happened further if I had not been inspired to beguile her into going
-down into the treatment rooms for a Turkish bath. She came up purple
-with wrath, and began to pack her trunk, declaring that she washed her
-hands of the place forever; and if I wanted to stay there and have my
-morals corrupted, I could; but for her part she was going back to her
-own bathtub, and the religion she was brought up in. And go she did,
-that night.
-
-For myself, these three years must remain in the silence in which they
-have been spent. The pain I wish to forget; today’s pain is enough. And
-the helplessness and idleness, so much worse than the pain—that too, I
-would shut from my memory. But the kindness which has filled these
-years—that is an eternal possession. And the loveliness of this little
-valley is mine always, cut off as it is in my thoughts as a place apart
-from all my real world and life, shut in and hidden by its beautiful
-circling hills. I have called it the Enchanted Valley, because it seemed
-sometimes as if some spell had caught and bound me to it forever. But
-now that I am to go free at last I can forget all that, and remember
-only the enchantment of its beauty, and the kindness of those who dwell
-in it. The Land of Make-Believe, too, is as near me as under the trees
-at home. I have had beautiful times in Make-Believe, day and night, and
-especially at night. I have seen Caro there, you may be sure! I made a
-jingle about it not long ago which tells the real story of these long
-years better than anything else I could write.
-
-              _IN MAKE-BELIEVE_
-
-    _Oh, beautiful country of Make-Believe,_
-      _Where in childhood I learned to play!_
-    _I’m not bound fast to a bed—not I!_
-    _Nor racked with pain till I want to cry:_
-      _I’m over the hills and away!_
-
-    _Poor body that lies here and cannot sleep,_
-      _I’m sorry to leave you so;_
-    _But the children are calling from far away;_
-    _In Make-Believe, where it’s time to play,_
-      _And you can’t walk, you know._
-
-    _I fly on the wings of thought, myself,_
-      _While the wind shrieks behind me “Wait!”_
-    _For he never can fly as fast as thought,_
-    _And, he howls because he thinks he ought;—_
-      _But here I am at the gate._
-
-    _No narrow, smothering walls for me,_
-      _Nor life shut in from the sky,_
-    _When Make-Believe is all outdoors,_
-    _With beautiful grass instead of floors,_
-      _And to reach it one needs but try._
-
-    _There is ice back there; but in Make-Believe_
-      _There’s just what you happen to choose:_
-    _Soft spring-time colors with silver sheen,_
-    _Or cool wood-reaches of summer green,_
-      _Or the sparkle of autumn dews._
-
-    _Oh, the woodland rambles in Make-Believe!_
-      _The fields where daisies grow!_
-    _The level light on the evening hills,_
-    _The wild bird-song that leaps and thrills,_
-      _And the rose of the sunset’s glow!_
-
-    _How the children chatter in Make-Believe,_
-      _Just as at home they do!_
-    _How close they cuddle, with laugh and kiss,_
-    _To tell their secrets, nor ever miss_
-      _Aught else if they have but you!_
-
-    _All the people you love are in Make-Believe,_
-      _The living, and those called dead;_
-    _And all the people you’d like to know—_
-    _The wise of the earth, both high and low,_
-      _And the heroes of days long fled._
-
-    _And they know what’s worth while in Make-Believe_
-      _That to give is the blessed way;_
-    _That courage, and laughter, and love, are wise;_
-    _That the sun shines back of the cloudiest skies;_
-      _That there’s end to the longest day._
-
-    _They talk of high things in Make-Believe,_
-      _And they love e’en the tiniest joke_
-    _And they take you sailing o’er land and sea;_
-    _And they’d know all the places you’d like to be_
-      _If never a word you spoke._
-
-    _But the sun is up in that wintry world;_
-      _And the nurse will put in her head_
-    _And ask, “Is the pain any better, my dear?_
-    _Did you sleep a little? The doctor’s here.”—_
-      _Well, so am I here——in bed!_
-
-And now it is mid-November, for the weeks have passed by as I lay here,
-writing a bit as I could; and I am to be home Thanksgiving morning; not
-home in Make-Believe, but home in real Bird Corners, down in Tennessee!
-David is there, for good, now, running the farm as he planned, but
-helping the Peon in his office, too; and Caro is coming home for
-Christmas, and to stay “forever,” she says, in June; and I am to get
-well—some day—at home. I can walk quite a little already—twenty yards
-sometimes; and the bad days are better than they used to be, and farther
-apart. Even Grumpy must admit that good bad days are encouraging!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_All_ the people you love in Make-Believe? Not quite all—not Ella.
-Somehow I can’t look for her there any more; not since the day the
-letter came back unopened. We were together in Make-Believe always
-before that. But when I see her again it will be when Make-Believe will
-have disappeared, with the world we see, and the real world will be
-plain to sight. But everybody else was there—even pious, pompous Cousin
-Chad, and foolish, kind-hearted, exasperating Cousin Jane.
-
-And now it’s day after tomorrow, and the Peon is coming in four days!
-
-
-
-
-                                   IV
-                          THE DARK O’ THE YEAR
-
-
-_November 30th._ The deepest joys can never be put into words; but lying
-here in my own dear room, close under the long windows which form its
-eastern side, and looking out across the valley to the familiar hills
-beyond, I know there is one spot on the map more beautiful than anything
-Make-Believe can show. The Peon and David left me only an hour ago—the
-real ones, I mean; and out on the lawn Uncle Milton is pretending to
-rake invisible leaves, looking towards my windows every few minutes to
-assure himself that I am really here.
-
-Near the wall of honeysuckle along the pasture fence the cardinal and
-his wife are flitting about, just as I left them three years ago; and in
-the lilac outside my window, where all the spring-time beauty sleeps
-safe in the sheltering buds, a Carolina wren proclaims the triumph of
-days to come. His spring song is a bubbling rhapsody of present love and
-delight; but his winter song is vibrant with the joy of things unseen.
-He sings as one who carries spring in his heart always, as vivid a
-reality in December as when all the woods are green. To doubts,
-questions and hopes he has one answer, and he gives it joyously under
-the darkest skies. Will earth awake again? Will sunshine come? Will life
-reign in evident triumph, and winter and darkness pass? _Sur-e-ly,
-sur-e-ly, sur-e-ly, sure!_ The rich notes thrill with the joy of
-assurance, and shake him bodily as he stands with up-thrown head and
-pulsing throat, wagging from beak to tail.
-
-But like many another of the sons of the prophets, his gift of open
-vision lies close to his love of fun. His tail jerks with a wildness
-suggestive of broken gearings in his little insides, as he dashes into
-his score again _accelerando_, singing it _da capo_ with a comical
-exaggeration of his former style. _Sure-ly, sure-ly, sure-ly, sure!_ He
-cocks his head, flirts his tail, gives me a sharp look from his sharper
-eye, and whisks around the house in a twinkling.
-
-And Grace Wood is coming to see me tomorrow! I have been good and waited
-until I am quite rested, and now I am to have my reward. But I did not
-know until I came home that George died two years ago. There were never
-two people happier together than they; and yet she has gone on writing
-to me all this time, the same sunshiny, hopeful, heartening letters she
-sent me when I first left home. That was always Grace’s way; everything
-that came to her, hurt or pleasure, went out from her again only as help
-to somebody who needed it.
-
-I haven’t seen Cousin Jane yet, and David says she’s been simmering for
-days and is liable to boil over any minute. She came an hour after I
-reached home, though requested to stay away until I sent for her; but
-the Peon caught her at my door and turned her back. She insisted she had
-something of the greatest importance to explain to me; but the Peon is
-an awesome person when he does lay down the law, and she hasn’t been
-back since. I can’t help wondering if it is something about Caro—though
-it can’t be, for I’ve been Caro’s “mother-confessor” too long to be
-learning anything about her from Cousin Jane. Besides, Caro will be here
-herself in three more weeks—after all these years and years!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_December 9th._ Grace came, her old dear self, unchanged except that the
-look of detachment from herself was deepened in her clear, sweet eyes,
-and about her smiling, tender mouth.
-
-We spoke of George as if he were still with her—as indeed I think he
-is—and of Milly, now quite grown, and sharing with Caro the honors of
-Chatterton belledom.
-
-We had a beautiful time together, and chatted and giggled as we have
-done these forty years whenever occasion offered; and she went away
-promising to come soon again if I would keep on getting better. And so I
-would have done but for Cousin Jane. She was driving down the pike and
-saw Grace, with her own eyes, coming through the gate. She drove on down
-the road a bit till Grace was out of sight, and then swooped down on me
-like a blackbird on a worm. Josie tried to stop her at the front door;
-but she had known Josie from her pickaninny days; and if she hadn’t, it
-wouldn’t have mattered, for Cousin Jane is not a person to be frustrated
-by darkies.
-
-She knocked once, sepulchrally, on my door, and opened it on the
-instant. She wore her best Sunday air, and eyed me like a familiar of
-the Holy Office about to put a heretic through a course of sprouts.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-“Well, Lyddy,” she began, settling weightily into Grace’s chair, “so you
-lived to get back home, after all. I hope you’re as grateful to
-Providence as you ought to be.”
-
-Her tone made it evident that, though she might hope it, she certainly
-didn’t expect it.
-
-“You’ve gone off mightily in your looks,” she continued; “not that you
-weren’t always sorter peaked an’ skinny-lookin’—‘slender,’ Letitia used
-to call it! Do you think your mind’s gettin’ straight any?”
-
-“It’s straight, what there is of it,” I said; “but I’m tired just now,
-Cousin Jane; I can’t talk very well. You see Grace has been here——”
-
-“Didn’t I see her?” she demanded indignantly. “That’s why I came. If you
-can see a chatterer like her, I reckon you can see me. I told John Bird
-I wanted to see you about Caroline.”
-
-My tired eyes opened at once.
-
-“What is it?” I asked.
-
-“Caroline is gettin’ grown-up; she was nineteen last June. I’ve tried my
-best to keep beaux and foolishness away from her, but everything in
-town, looks like, was after her last summer; and the worst of it was,
-Caroline liked it.”
-
-The corners of my mouth took an upward curve.
-
-“You wait till I get through, missy, an’ you’ll be laughin’ the other
-side of your mouth. Caroline is hail-fellow-well-met with every boy in
-this town except David Bird; and she knows perfectly well, for I told
-her, that Chadwell and I and you and John Bird intend her to marry
-David.”
-
-The room swam round, and I closed my eyes. Speech was impossible.
-
-“Good land, Lyddy! Don’t go to faintin’—I didn’t know you were such a
-baby. You needn’t get so scared, child. Jane Grackle is pretty safe to
-get her own way, and long as your way’s my way you’ll get yours, too.
-She’ll marry him yet; young folks haven’t any sense; they need managin’,
-and I——”
-
-“For heaven’s sake don’t try to manage Caro,” I gasped. “And as for
-telling her I intended her to marry David—go, before you say something
-else that will make forgiveness impossible!”
-
-Cousin Jane turned purple. I saw that as my eyes closed again. She rose
-stiffly, with rustling skirts.
-
-“If I didn’t know you’d lost what little sense the Lord gave you, Lyddy
-Bird, I’d box your ears for your impudence. I’ll go when I get ready,
-miss. I didn’t tell Caroline you _said_ you intended her to marry
-David—I know you’ve never said a word about it: I just took it as a
-matter of course. Chadwell and I feel it our duty to provide for
-her—not in money, of course; she has quite a tidy little fortune of her
-own, and of course you and John Bird expect to leave David all you’ve
-got; they won’t need anything from us. But we want to see her settled:
-an’ David’s steady an’ reliable an’ a real good business boy, for all
-you’ve raised him so harum-scarum; an’ it stands to reason, with your
-keepin’ Caroline all the time like you did, an’ throwin’ away the good
-stout clothes I provided for her to waste your own money in fol-de-rols,
-an’ good as adoptin’ her, you might say, that you’d picked her out for
-David an’ meant to leave them your money. Don’t you?”
-
-I swept together my floating wits, steadied them with a supreme effort,
-and considered for an instant, while I felt Cousin Jane’s angry stare
-battering at my closed lids. I must tell her something, and nothing.
-
-“Caro and David are like our own children,” I said weakly; “we want
-their happiness, and nothing else. If they love one another as brother
-and sister, it’s quite to be expected, don’t you think? Whatever made
-you think we wanted a marriage, brought up as they have been?”
-
-“Do you mean you won’t leave them the money?”
-
-“I mean money has nothing to do with it. We expect to do all we can for
-them, and to let them be happy in their own ways, not in ours.”
-
-“Well, any way suits Caroline that’s not my way an’ that makes
-mischief—I can see that plain enough, an’ I told her so. I scolded her
-good. An’ it’s my opinion David’s in love with her. I caught him lookin’
-at her one day when they were fishin’ down by the mill, an’ I just
-happened to go by in the buggy. I couldn’t get a word out of him when I
-asked him about it; an’ when I told him I’d given Caroline a talkin’-to,
-an’ I’d set my head on his havin’ her, he glared at me as if I was
-tryin’ to murder him, an’ told me to let Caroline alone, an’ let her
-marry whoever she wanted to. He ain’t been near me since, an’ won’t
-hardly speak to me; an’ Caroline behaved like a spitfire when I went to
-her about it. But I believe David’s willin’ if she’d be—but she ain’t,
-yet. You may as well know there’s goin’ to be trouble when she comes
-home. It ain’t like it used to be; an’ you’d better get up out of that
-bed an’ be gettin’ ready to help straighten things out.”
-
-How much longer she would have stayed there I don’t know. Her voice,
-near and strident as it was, was drifting off into a world that seemed
-far away, when the door opened with soft quickness and David was in the
-room.
-
-Before he could speak Cousin Jane was lumbering away, his eyes driving
-her like bayonets. He poured out something and held it to my lips, and
-then sat stroking my hand as gently as Caro could have done. And for
-days and nights I lay here in the clutch of the old weakness and the old
-pain, and scarcely heeding either in the blackness of this new fear. I
-have been trying for days to write it all down, thinking maybe I could
-face it better so, and find some way of deliverance from Cousin Jane’s
-cataclysmic diplomacy.
-
-That Caro should marry David! Has there ever been a time when I didn’t
-hope for it? And I have never said it, even to the Peon himself, for
-fear the very walls should carry the secret and make the hope
-impossible: and now! If Jane Grackle—but there’s no use railing; when
-one’s hopes are in ruins it takes all one’s strength to face the
-disaster; if I waste mine in reproaches I shall turn coward, and then
-Grumpy will rule my world.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_December 17th._ Gray days, with sullen skies which will neither shine
-nor storm. The mocking-birds have entered their winter silence, and eye
-me indifferently as they hop about under my windows picking up the
-crumbs which Josie scatters daily for my feathered guests. They never
-come together at this time of the year. Each goes his own path in
-solitude as well as in silence. But the flickers are more sociable, and
-the wrens are always in pairs. The cardinal and his wife come together
-every morning, she gently indifferent as usual, and he the devoted lover
-of all the year around.
-
-Over in the pasture the meadow-larks sing half-heartedly, and a titmouse
-protests sturdily against their sentimental pathos. He is pecking at a
-magnolia seed tucked under his toes as he sits in the beech at
-breakfast. “_Here! Here! Here! Here!_” he exclaims. He believes in
-making the best of things, does the titmouse, and holds his crest as
-high these dark, raw days as when he goes courting in a world that is in
-gala attire for the occasion.
-
-And if the pain isn’t better yet, the weakness is; and that is always
-the worst part of it. I shall be out in my wheeled-chair yet, by the
-time Caro comes. And as to Cousin Jane’s nonsense, she may make
-mischief—has made it, evidently; but if they’re really made for each
-other, as I have hoped for so long, surely an old woman’s foolish tongue
-can never ruin their lives. _Sur-e-ly, sur-e-ly, sur-e-ly, sure!_ Oh,
-bless the little red-brown seer! He tilts on the lilac bush a second,
-winks at me distinctly, and is off with a whisk of his tail which says
-plainly, “Don’t be more of a fool than you must be, old pal!” and I
-won’t.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_December 24th._ How full of happiness one’s world can be! Caro is not
-much bigger than her feathered namesake out of doors, but the place
-overflows with her presence.
-
-I was afraid Cousin Jane wouldn’t let her stay here after the late
-unpleasantness, and was lying on the south porch the other day, trying
-to devise some way to make my peace with her, when she drove around the
-house and over the grass, and stopped her buggy close to my chair.
-
-“Oh, Cousin Jane, I’m so glad to see you!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been
-wanting to ask you to let Caro come straight to me and stay with us
-while she’s at home. I haven’t had her for three years, Cousin Jane; and
-I can make it all right with her about David, I’m sure.”
-
-“I knew you could do something if you were a mind to try,” she said,
-with her severest kiss-of-peace manner, which always aroused an
-unreasonable combativeness in my unregenerate soul. “I am perfectly
-willing, Lyddy, to let by-gones be by-gones. I never bear malice, even
-against ill-tempered folks. I came over to say if you’d do what you
-could with Caroline, I’d let her stay here. She always was keen to
-please you—why, I never could see; but she is; and I’ll not let my
-personal feelin’s stand in the way when it comes to dischargin’ my duty
-to that poor motherless girl. She can come.”
-
-“Thank you, Cousin Jane,” I said heartily.
-
-“You’re welcome, Lyddy, you’re welcome: I don’t hold anything against
-you. I want to set you a Christian example: maybe it’ll have some effect
-on you, now you’re all broken down with havin’ too much of your own way.
-Looks like, with all the afflictions the Lord’s sent on you, an’ old as
-you are, you might be learnin’ better.”
-
-I suppose I am a sinner; but somehow, all my life, whenever Cousin Jane
-takes her religion in both hands and tries to ram it into me in her best
-pile-driver manner, my own scuttles off and dives into the first
-rat-hole it can find; and I have a dreadful time dragging it out again
-and making it help me behave. So I took a long look at the blackbirds
-under the maple, piously jabbing the English sparrows to discourage
-their greediness about crumbs, before I said soberly:
-
-“I don’t believe the Lord sent me any afflictions. I think He just tries
-to teach me how to get the good out of what comes, and to rise by it. I
-think that’s one of His special jobs in this world—trying to turn our
-afflictions into wings.”
-
-“Well, we all know you’re sorter half-cracked, Lyddy,” said Cousin Jane,
-with a manner intended to be genial. She was evidently bent on not
-quarreling. “Just do your best for Caroline.” She gathered up the reins.
-
-“Cousin Jane,” I said quickly, “don’t say a word more to Caro
-about—those things. Please.”
-
-“I’ll do as I see fit, Lyddy,” she answered stiffly. “Bein’ willin’ to
-let you help don’t mean I can trust you to manage things. Well,
-good-bye. Do try to get up an’ take some exercise; it’ll do you good.
-I’m a worker, myself, an’ always was; an’ you see how strong I am—not
-but what I could complain if I wanted to, like some.” She disappeared
-around the house, tucking her buggy-robe closely around her with one
-hand as she drove.
-
-So yesterday morning I was out on the front porch, watching the road
-with my glasses; and there they came, whirling in from the pike in the
-open car, the top being down that I might see her afar off. Caro was
-driving, and David beamed beside her, while the Peon beamed on the back
-seat.
-
-The whole place feels her presence, and overflows with her music, her
-laughter, her sweet and tricksy ways. She is off with the young folks in
-Chatterton now, helping with the Christmas tree at the church; but
-before she left she wheeled me out to my cot under the maple tree—or
-superintended Uncle Milton’s doing it, while she fluttered about with
-the pillows, and scolded us for letting her do all the work. She
-scattered crumbs for the birds, just as she used to, and then cuddled
-down on the same little stool where she used to sit, her curly brown
-head on my pillows. Not Make-Believe any more, thank heaven, but Caro,
-and the real Bird Corners!
-
-We were silent awhile, and then she began to talk—all the loving
-nonsense and little intimate confidences that had always come when we
-were alone. But not a word of David, nor of Cousin Jane. I could not let
-our first talk begin a silence between us, so I told her what had
-happened. She had flushed a little at first, but her laughter bubbled as
-she kissed me.
-
-“Sweet Mammy, don’t you think I know Cousin Jane? I knew you never said
-it, nor meant it. And I’m sure you’d let me marry the man in the moon,
-if I wanted to. I did get mad with her for talking to David—that rather
-passed bounds. But David’s a darling, and as sensible as can be. We
-thrashed it all out afterwards, and we aren’t going to make ourselves
-unhappy because Cousin Jane’s a born donkey and can’t help it. Don’t you
-bother about it a minute. We’ll both of us get married some of these
-days, and you’ll have four children to love you instead of two.”
-
-“And there isn’t anybody else yet?” I asked, my face turning to hers as
-I lay, and her clear eyes looking into mine.
-
-“I don’t think there is with David,” she said, considering; “but as for
-me—Mammy Lil, would you rather be a young man’s darling, or marry a
-very old and rich and apoplectic gentleman, worry him to death fast, and
-be happy and independent forever after?”
-
-“Who is the young man?”
-
-“Oh, anybody; I haven’t decided; but I suppose I could get one. You know
-I wrote you about the boys last summer, and how wild Cousin Jane was.
-She was more fun than the boys. You don’t really want me to marry, do
-you? I’m having such a good time.” She sat up and waved her hand.
-“There’s Milly, and I must go. Now, lie here and be good till I get
-back, and I’ll never marry anybody you don’t want me to.” And she ran
-down to the gate, pinning her hat on as she went.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_December 30th._ Note-books are superfluous when I can have Caro. It is
-so good to see one so pretty, so eager, so joyous, so young in body and
-soul. She is the very spirit of youth, with her swift, outgoing life,
-her quick response to it on all sides, her gay resourcefulness in the
-little emergencies of her small world. I forget my body, and all its
-pain-worn helplessness, while she dances through the house. It doesn’t
-matter so much that I must watch in idleness while the life I love
-sweeps by, if somebody else has my own vivid joy in it—a joy unhampered
-by weariness or pain. No wonder the girls can’t stir without her, nor
-resent it that she draws the boys as honey draws flies.
-
-I can’t see that she cares to draw any one of them yet, though she
-dearly loves to draw them all. She is in that kitten stage which comes
-to every girl alive. She wants to play, and she finds the new game
-fascinating. What the boys find it doesn’t concern her yet; she is
-exploring the possibilities of the game.
-
-How David feels toward her is more than I can tell. He is as frankly
-fond of her as when he used to carry her across the muddy places down by
-the brook, and tell her fairy tales while they popped corn by the winter
-fire. But as to that look in his eyes whereof Cousin Jane prated—well,
-I’ve never seen it; and I rather doubt if she did either.
-
-Yet somehow I can’t help the uneasy feeling that she has hoodooed my
-secret hopes. She never had influence enough to counteract anything
-other members of the family might elect to do; but whomever she sided
-with was a subject for condolence. She could never be suppressed when
-she espoused a cause, and her well-meant activities were invariably
-fatal to the best-laid plans. What have I done that, in addition to all
-my other afflictions, Cousin Jane should thrust herself upon me as an
-ally? I had counted so comfortingly upon her opposition. David was never
-fond of her, and it is only of late years that she has ceased to predict
-for him a future of State support. It isn’t that she’s fond of the boy
-now; it’s because Cousin Chad found out how he managed that affair for
-the Peon last winter, and because the farm here at Bird Corners is
-becoming one of the show places, agriculturally, of this part of the
-State. And if a richer suitor appears she’ll discard David like an old
-shoe.
-
-I confess I am taking great comfort in the very apparent devotion of
-David’s old antagonist, Robert White. He is older than David, and is
-advancing rapidly in one of the largest banks in the city, of which his
-father is an important director. Bob is a nice fellow, little spoiled by
-prosperity, and his prospective fortune quite overshadows David’s—in
-fact, he is one of the “catches” of this part of the State. He has been
-staying out here at his father’s ever since Caro came home, and makes no
-secret of the reason. If Cousin Jane becomes aware of him she will
-espouse his cause, _con amore_, and my own hopes will have a rosier
-appearance. Poor Bob! I don’t bear him a bit of malice; but I must shunt
-Cousin Jane off on somebody!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_January 5th._ Caro left us last night, protesting as she went, and
-insisting that she would come home in defiance of everybody if I had any
-more backsets. But we all want her to finish the year under her new
-singing-master: her voice is really wonderful, and she ought not to stop
-yet. The six months will be gone before we know it; and then she will
-come to stay.
-
-For myself, I have stored up delight enough in these ten days to
-brighten this dark January weather for weeks to come. And the days are
-already lengthening. Spring is on the way, in fact—and summer won’t be
-far behind.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_January 10th._ What winter colors could bedeck the world I never knew
-until today!
-
-First came the rain—a soft, misty down-dropping which fell noiselessly
-on the half-frozen earth, softening the icy ridges in the road beyond
-the porch, till they crunched under Uncle Milton’s heavy feet and
-splashed into the water collecting in their ruts. Long before sunset
-they wheeled me back to my room, where the thickening clouds shut us
-into a twilight gloom, through which the north wind’s voice cut icily.
-
-By morning the clouds were gone, and with them had vanished the
-work-a-day earth. In its place is a world of faery, of glitter, of fire,
-of pallid white. Over all the fields the snow lies thick, down to the
-very edge of the brook. But above the snow, from the smallest weed whose
-skeleton shakes in the bitter wind to the topmost twig of the tallest
-tree, is silver and fire and ice. The stubble is all one elfin glitter;
-and beyond the gate, along the pike, where dried golden-rod, poke-berry,
-mustard, and all earth’s wild outcast beauty blossomed months before,
-are billows of frost-wrought loveliness as pure as pearls and as
-delicate as the fronds of ferns.
-
-Overhead the sky is deepest blue, rich foil and background for the
-trees, all silver here, all glitter there, and everywhere starred with
-flashing points of red and blue and orange, as some jagged point of ice
-catches the sunlight and tears it into dazzling shreds of color.
-
-Deep blue, overhead; but everywhere along the horizon a soft, colorless,
-distant sky, across which the half-congealed moisture of the air draw
-its dimming yet invisible veil. The hills are pale, aloof; but here and
-there the low sun strikes them and smites the glory of their tree-tops
-into a halo of pearl and fire about their brows. And what may be the
-beauty of life more abundant when the beauty of life withdrawn clutches
-the heart like this?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_January 13th._ There is nobody to fellowship with today but the
-blackbirds and the English sparrows. David is off lecturing at some
-farmers’ institutes, and the Peon left this morning for a week’s trip.
-Grumpy is here, as usual, and the pain in my spine; but I am not of a
-mind to fellowship with them; they can sulk together in the corner if
-they want to.
-
-Eh, but when the dark shuts out even the scandal-mongering sparrows, the
-room is a bit empty and lonesome-looking! Grumpy and the back don’t
-count; they are both in the skeleton-closet. But the key seems lost, and
-they have an unpleasant way of peeping through the crack of the door.
-There’s no sense in staying here this night, so it’s ho, for
-Make-Believe for me!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_January 15th._ When one can’t have the big things one wants, one can at
-least play with the little things one has; and in doing so may learn
-with growing thankfulness how great a resource a little thing may
-become.
-
-There are so many playthings in the world—no need is left unsupplied.
-When one is too ill to think and too weak to look, there are fleeting
-glimpses, through half-shut lids, of blue sky beyond one’s windows, of a
-drifting cloud, a flash of wings, or the waving of boughs in the wind;
-beautiful pictures which return uncalled-for to float above that sea of
-pain wherein one rocks, and to steady one with a half-consciousness of
-an upper world of beauty and peace, real, though beyond one’s reach.
-
-And when one can think a little—oh, so many things! One cannot possibly
-be cut off from life if one’s heart be in it. It isn’t the moving of
-one’s body that counts, but the clasping of life with the heart. We
-really live to the exact extent we _care_, and so find the interest with
-which every atom and phase of life is stored.
-
-    “_He brought an eye for all he saw._”
-
-Was ever anything more beautiful said of any one than that? And that is
-what I pray for—the seeing eye; that, whether my body be well or ill, I
-may enter in at the open doors which swing wide on every hand, and see,
-and love, and rejoice; understanding where I may, and happy where I may
-not to watch, to learn, to wonder like a child.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_January 15th._ The real freedom of life is measured not by one’s
-liberty to do as one likes, but by the things one can afford to do
-without. And there is no poverty in such freedom: it is through the
-enrichment of the inner life that one’s resources grow great enough to
-enable one to dispense with the outward things once so necessary.
-
-
-
-
-                                   V
-                              PREMONITIONS
-
-
-_January 21st._ This is one of those beautiful, balmy days which
-sometimes come, late in January, to convince the veriest blind pessimist
-that spring is on the way. The chickadees are half mad, flying headlong
-from tree to tree, and singing their gay little winter score with an
-_abandon_ unknown before. The titmice are whistling cheerily; and the
-jays, though not a hint of spring sweetness softens their harsh tones,
-are dancing a little in the hackberry as they squawk. The wren is
-singing rapturously, as he has done all these sunless weeks, not because
-of spring-time and April air, but because love and life are always
-present with him, and nothing else matters.
-
-The mocking-bird is still solitary, wrapped in contemplation, like some
-prophet of old. Nor is the cardinal singing yet. But his not singing is
-no sign of faint-heartedness. Yesterday he perched in the tulip-tree and
-_said_ “Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!” soberly, decidedly, as if the sweet
-reasonableness of good cheer had grown upon him through the dark January
-weather. He will be singing it soon.
-
-There! I’ve been out on the porch, and written in my note-book on a bad
-day—the best bad day I’ve had yet; and when bad days are best bad days
-Grumpy may as well take a back seat.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_January 28th._ Best bad days are all very well; but a combination of
-best bad days and Cousin Jane is more grandeur than my feeble frame can
-live up to. It has taken me a week to catch up.
-
-She drove up just as I closed my note-book—quite in time to catch me in
-the act.
-
-“Tsck!” she said in disgust, as she whirled my chair about with a strong
-hand and wheeled me unceremoniously into the house. “I suppose you want
-to put your eyes out next, and have everybody pityin’ your afflictions
-when you’ve made yourself blind layin’ flat on your back an’ scribblin’
-nonsense—poetry, like enough!” Contempt could no further go.
-
-“I’m sure you never heard of my writing poetry in your life, Cousin
-Jane,” I protested meekly.
-
-“No, an’ I don’t want to. I know just the kind of stuff it ’ud be. But I
-don’t see what else you get to write layin’ out there all by yourself,
-with nothin’ to see, an’ no sensible occupation to keep you busy. I
-never could abide an idler.”
-
-“When did you hear from Caro?” I inquired. In the interest of peace, a
-change of subject seemed advisable.
-
-“Why, Caroline’s careless about writin’—which of course I might have
-expected, seein’ the way you brought her up. But Bob White’s been up
-there lately, an’ I saw him when I went to town yesterday. I met him on
-the street, while I was goin’ to get my new glasses, an’ he took me up
-to the new hotel to lunch.”
-
-She bridled with pleasure, and I coughed to strangle my laugh of
-delight. Bob White paying court to Cousin Jane, without my meddling the
-least little bit!
-
-“We had four courses,” she went on in happy retrospection. “I didn’t
-know there was such a nice place in town. I don’t eat much lunch usually
-when I go—looks like it ain’t right to waste the Lord’s money just
-pamperin’ the flesh, as you might say; an’ besides, I’d rather save it.
-I never did hold by spendin’ money for foolishness like you an’ John
-Bird.”
-
-I’m sure the Peon and I haven’t been on the simplest kind of a lark for
-years; and when we went it was usually a picnic in the woods with the
-children, and the plainest of home-made lunches; but I received this
-snub in silence. Cousin Jane plunged on with her news.
-
-“Bob’s heels over head in love with Caroline—that’s easy to see. It ’ud
-be a good match for her, too.”
-
-“But you said you wanted David for her,” I objected in as dolorous a
-voice as I could muster.
-
-“I ain’t so favorable to David as I was,” she answered frankly. “He’s
-got a mighty ugly temper. He flared up at me downright impudent that
-time I spoke to him about Caroline; an’ he good as turned me out of your
-room one day, without opening his mouth. He’d lead Caroline a hard life.
-Of course I didn’t say a word to Bob, but I saw by the way he went on
-how it was. A keen business man like him don’t go a hundred miles out of
-his way to visit a girl for nothin’. I know.”
-
-“But you thought David cared,” I pleaded.
-
-“If he does, let him do somethin’ to prove it, ’stead o’ settin’ like a
-bump on a log. I ain’t goin’ to help him another mite.”
-
-Cousin Jane’s visits certainly add to one’s list of mercies. I’ve been
-telling Grumpy all the week that nothing can be very bad as long as she
-no longer smiles on David, but afflicts Bob White with her disastrous
-friendship. My clouds are silver-lined indeed!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_January 29._ The first spring signs the birds give us: we must look
-skyward for them, past earth altogether. The next spring signs are
-hidden deep, in those dark places where sunlight never comes. For the
-violets which empurple the long borders, like the song of the Carolina
-wren, are not a sign of spring, but a constant witness to ever-present
-life. They bloom every month of the winter, just as the bird sings. The
-spring-time message is brought by something of a frailer courage than
-theirs—something which must needs retrace steps the violets have never
-taken.
-
-So today, as the Peon wheeled me out to the maple, he stopped at one of
-the jonquil beds while I climbed down to brush aside the leaves which
-protect the bulbs from frost, and to stir the earth with loving fingers.
-Not yet. Life is at work, I know, but too deep down to be seen as yet. I
-drew the leaves back again, my hands shaking a little with the joy of
-grubbing in the dirt again—real outdoor dirt, that runs clear through
-to blue sky on the other side, instead of stopping at a saucer six
-inches from the top of a pot. How many years! Would I ever make up for
-the lost years, I wondered, and then caught my breath and the Peon’s
-hand with a laugh. For the cardinal was singing again—_Cheer! Cheer!
-Cheer! A-wet-year! A-wet-year! Cheer! Cheer!_
-
-It was a dull, cloudy day; but vision had come to him, and what he saw
-he would live up to. He sat on the grape arbor, back of the jonquil bed,
-and sang, deliberately at first, stout-heartedly, but with a rising tide
-of joy—_A-wet-year! Cheer! Cheer!_ A wet year seems to be his idea of
-heaven and spring-time rolled into one. Rain—and swelling life! The
-lost years will be made good yet. And shall one grudge the time for
-rain?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_January 30th._ I ventured on the subject of Caro with David last night,
-and find myself wondering many things. The fact that I have always
-admitted the children’s full right to reserve from me any secret they
-wished to keep largely accounts, I believe, for the closeness of their
-confidence. And I didn’t intend to pry now—only to open a way in case
-he chose to take it, as I used sometimes to make confidences easy for
-him as a child.
-
-“Bob White is laying siege to Cousin Jane’s favor, Davy, dear,” I said,
-using the baby name he still loves in our private talks. “She has sold
-him her good-will for a four-course lunch.”
-
-David laughed a little.
-
-“Worst affliction could happen to him, I should think. What on earth
-does he want with it?”
-
-“She thinks he’s in love with Caro.”
-
-“Probably is. Most of the fellows are; and Bob’s nobody’s fool.”
-
-He had cuddled his brown head under my hand as he sat on a stool by my
-bed, and I couldn’t see his face. His voice was so very natural that it
-suggested an effort to make it so.
-
-“Well, I doubt if he displayed any special wisdom when he tried to win
-Cousin Jane over—if he tried,” I said. “When you go courting, I don’t
-think you’ll spend much time on the girl’s guardians.”
-
-“Not much time on anybody, you mean, till I get things settled.”
-
-“And you’d rather I waited with the rest, dear, wouldn’t you?”
-
-He lifted his head and sat facing me, stroking my hand.
-
-“I couldn’t talk about it, little Mammy, even to you. But I wouldn’t
-mind your knowing about it if you could understand without words. You
-have always done that when I couldn’t talk.”
-
-His eyes met mine fully, his heart unveiled behind them. That is one of
-the beautiful things about David’s reserve—the secret door he opens
-into it for one whom he truly loves.
-
-“I do understand,” I said slowly. “But, remember, dear, a woman loves to
-be loved. You musn’t have any reserves with her when the time comes. Let
-her understand your love is great enough to justify the demands it makes
-upon her. If she hurts you at first, don’t try to shield her by letting
-her think it’s a light matter. Be as honest with her as you are with
-yourself. And you’ll win her, dear; I know you will. And you’ll do it
-all by yourself, with no meddling nor helping from anybody.”
-
-He straightened his broad shoulders.
-
-“I’ll do it that way or not at all, little Mammy. Suppose somebody
-else—even you—helped me to win her; it would be up to me to hold her,
-wouldn’t it? And how could I ever be sure of doing it if I hadn’t been
-enough for her at the start, by myself? If I’m not enough—if I can’t
-make myself enough—I couldn’t afford to have her at all.”
-
-He rose to his full six feet of height and stretched his clenched hands
-above his head.
-
-“That stool cramps my legs these days,” he said. “I remember how proud I
-was when I found I could sit on it squarely and get my toes to the
-floor. Legs change, don’t they? But the only way I change is to love
-more the folks I love at all. Goodnight, you sweetest mother a boy ever
-had.”
-
-He bent down, rubbing his cheek against mine in the dear caress of his
-baby days, and went out. He never was a boy to kiss one; but he always
-loved to stroke my hand, and to touch my cheek with his. He always
-loved, too, for me to receive his caresses passively; it is only when he
-tucks his close-cropped head under my hand that petting from me is in
-order.
-
-So he loves Caro. Half of my hope has come true. And here I lie,
-trembling with fear. Is there any greater mockery than a hope wrecked by
-a half fulfilment? If Caro—Now isn’t Grumpy a clever imp? I’ve faced
-him down and out about the pain for nearly three weeks, and shut him up
-in the skeleton-closet with all the gruesome things I’m determined not
-to be nagged about; and so he sneaks out on an entirely new tack, and
-flaunts David and Caro at me instead of my own spinal column, which is
-his customary trade-mark! But if I don’t want him associating with my
-own anatomy, which heaven knows is too depraved to be further
-contaminated, why should he aspire to the children’s company? And if
-David loves Caro, isn’t that proof I was right in thinking they were
-made for each other, and that Caro’s love will answer his? _Sur-e-ly,
-sur-e-ly, sur-e-ly, sure!_ Just hear her bird-double out of doors:
-Grumpy as a prophet isn’t in it with the little red-brown wren!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_February 7th._ Milly came to see me today. Grace has been for more than
-a month with George’s mother, who has been very ill. I was lying here
-thinking of her as I watched the jays outside, and of what Caro said
-when she was at home.
-
-Caro never could stand Cousin Jason, and has called him Cousin Jay ever
-since the first summer we came to Bird Corners. I took her to spend the
-day at Grace’s, and she went with Milly and her nurse down to the brook
-to wade. The brook divides Cousin Jason’s land from theirs; and the
-children, finding some of his hogs in Grace’s pasture, drove them before
-them with much laughter and little clods of earth. Cousin Jason, hearing
-his squealing beasts, came charging down the hill in a fury and jabbed
-his petty wrath straight to poor little Milly’s heart. She was always a
-timid creature, like her mother, and, like her mother, unkindness made
-her physically ill; so she wept miserably, poor baby, while her
-half-uncle stormed. But Caro flamed into wrath as fierce as his own. She
-had been feeding the birds that morning, and had jumped from the stool
-by my cot afterward a dozen times to scatter the jay-birds, who were out
-in unusual force, and bent on pecking off the head of any other bird who
-ventured to take a crumb. She sprang in front of Milly now, ruffling
-like an angry wren.
-
-“Go home, you horrid—jay-bird!” she shrieked; “you peck, an’ peck, an’
-peck, _all_ the time! I hate you! Cousin Jay, Cousin Jay!”
-
-He stared at the mite, speechless, with purpling face. Milly gasped with
-fright, and old Aunt Susan, as she afterwards declared, “done choke
-herse’f ’mos’ ter death swallerin’ her laff.”
-
-Caro took Milly by the hand.
-
-“Let’s go home an’ play party,” she proposed calmly; “we don’t like pigs
-and jay-birds.” And back they went.
-
-Cousin Jason was immensely impressed. He told me about it afterwards,
-himself, and declared that he wished Milly had a little of Caro’s
-“spunk.”
-
-He even tried, in his not very happy fashion, to be friends with the
-child, and has always treated her with more consideration than any one
-else he knows. But Caro will have none of him, and to this day calls him
-Cousin Jay to his face. He is a man of large bulk, with a face at once
-sharp and heavy, as unlike Grace in body as he is in soul. And I’m
-afraid he makes life pretty hard for her.
-
-When her husband died, Grace was left sole mistress of his estate—which
-included, according to our beautiful state law, the plantation she
-inherited from her father. But her brother calmly assumed the management
-of everything. Cousin Jason is really a Mohammedan born out of due
-place. He cannot conceive of a woman’s having mind or soul of her own,
-much less rights; and he proposes, in all honesty, to do his next-of-kin
-duty by the widowed family fool. Grace, I suppose, was too broken by
-grief to realize what she was doing; but in any event she would probably
-have given way to him; she spent her girlhood, as she now spends her
-widowhood, trying to keep her half-brother in a good humor. She yielded
-to him absolutely, even to giving him power of attorney over all her
-belongings, and to vacating her own pretty rose-colored bed-room, with
-its private bath, on the first floor of her home. Cousin Jay never liked
-to sleep upstairs; it was too far from his work, he said.
-
-He has certainly, the Peon says, made everything pay well; he has Cousin
-Chad’s own genius for money-making. But he does not believe in spending
-money, nor, of course, in giving it; nor in being bothered with “idle
-gossiping women who ought to be at home minding their husbands’
-affairs.” (He is never conscious of a woman except as the appendage of
-some man.) So Grace controls neither her own money nor her own home. All
-her gracious hospitality, her wise open-handedness to those in need, is
-a thing of the past. It is difficult for Milly even to have ordinary
-visitors, except in the afternoons; and if it were not for the child’s
-other-worldly beauty, before which the judgments applied to most girls
-are abashed, one would almost call her dresses shabby. But it is not
-easy to think of her dress, the girl herself so charms one.
-
-She has been telling me a little of her troubles, poor child; they have
-been hard to manage in her mother’s absence. Chief among them, as I
-infer, mainly from what she did not say, is the difficulty of being
-properly courteous to Robert Lincoln, without calling down Cousin
-Jason’s boorish wrath on the young man’s head, as well as her own.
-
-“You see it isn’t as if he were one of us, Cousin Lil,” she said, her
-soft cheeks flushed, her eyes large with unshed tears: “he’s a
-Northerner, you know, a New Englander. He’s interested in the interurban
-lines they’re building and projecting here in Tennessee, and he really
-lives in the city—I mean his headquarters are there. And when he comes
-down here to see us, why, it isn’t real Southern hospitality not to ask
-him to a single meal. But I daren’t. And once Uncle Jason came right
-into the parlor and banged the fire-irons around and glared and kept
-looking at his watch. And it was only half-past nine, Cousin Lil. That
-was just after Caro went back; and he really hasn’t been here since. I
-do hate for _Northern_ people to think——” a tear slid down one cheek;
-but the slight shrinking of her pretty hand showed me she could not bear
-to be petted just now; she did not want sympathy, but help. She
-swallowed hard and went on.
-
-“And you know next morning at breakfast I spoke to him—not to
-criticise, you know, nor anger him, of course. I told him not to be
-afraid that I would forget his wishes; that I told every one it kept him
-awake to have anyone stirring after ten o’clock at night, and that
-Mother and I always closed the house then; and I said it was only
-half-past nine last night.”
-
-“What did he say?”
-
-“Why, he just stormed, like he always does, you know. He said he wanted
-to go to bed early. And he got up without eating his breakfast, and
-slammed the door and went out. I had to run clear to the barn after him
-and beg and beg, before he would come back.”
-
-“What on earth did you want him back for?” I inquired.
-
-“Why, to eat his breakfast. He hadn’t had his coffee, and he’d have had
-a headache without it.”
-
-“Milly Wood!” I gasped.
-
-“Mother always coaxes him back,” said Milly, with gentle finality; “at
-least, she always tries. Sometimes he won’t come, and then she takes it
-to him herself. You know he has terrible headaches sometimes.”
-
-“But, dear, if you would only face him down just once.”
-
-“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Milly, shrinking. “And Mother would never get
-over it. You don’t know how she feels about Uncle Jason. She says he’s
-never had the best of life, because he never has known the love that can
-give its all. She’s sorry for him, and she wants us to make up to him
-for what he has missed.”
-
-“Well, you’ll never do it,” I said. “Nobody but Jason Blue can ever make
-good that loss to him.”
-
-“Sometimes I think Mother ought to require some things of him,” she
-said; “but she won’t; and I know I’ll never make it harder for her by
-doing what she doesn’t want. But I wish he didn’t live at home.”
-
-She kissed me, smiling rather forlornly, and went away, while I lay here
-wondering about Mr. Lincoln, whom I have never seen. But David and Caro
-liked him, which is sufficient passport to my favor.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_February 12th._ The mocking-birds have a constant fascination for
-me—the charm of a complex nature which touches life on many sides. One
-can know a robin by heart in a single season, and predict with one’s
-eyes shut the doings of any one of the tribe; but a mocking-bird is a
-different proposition.
-
-His song throbs with the pure joy of living. It is the song of one in
-the world and of it, and rejoicing so to be; yet there is in it a
-haunting suggestion of aloofness, of mystery, of something beyond one’s
-ken. It is as if his joy had deeper foundations than sunshine and
-plenty; as if he had lived through pain, clear to the other side of it,
-and learned that it, too, is good.
-
-His powers of mimicry, I think, are greatly exaggerated. He does not
-really sing other birds’ songs, as his cousin, the catbird, does; he
-merely experiments with their notes—a stave from a thrasher here, a
-light-flung oriole measure there, a thrush note, piercing sweet, a bit
-of the wren’s summer trill. It is as if he would try life on all sides
-and look at it from every point of view; his ear is keen for the music
-from every throat. But always, through all this imaginative performance,
-he clings to the integrity of his own message. One may hear a catbird
-for an hour, and, unless one sees the blithe gray mime among the leaves,
-never suspect his real identity. But all a mocking-bird’s borrowed notes
-are woven into the texture of his own song, which wholly claims him as
-the melody rises, sweeping him with it bodily up to heaven, and carrying
-the listener’s heart with him. His is the rapture of open vision,
-feathered mystic that he is.
-
-Now, a bird like that one would expect to be a recluse, dwelling apart
-in cloistered green, afar from his fellows and from mankind; but the
-mocking-bird flatly declines that rôle. He is a bird of affairs,
-friendly and neighborly withal, a haunter of men’s doorways and
-house-vines, and a public-spirited citizen who rejoices to succor the
-oppressed. For he has a fine, full-fledged temper of his own, and any
-amount of fighting blood. He rarely seeks a quarrel; but if one be
-thrust upon him, either by aggressions attempted upon his own rights or
-by the call of another bird in distress, he accepts the combat with
-alacrity, and carries it joyously to a triumphant conclusion. And three
-minutes after the enemy is routed his voice floats down from the highest
-perch in the vicinity as if he were singing at heaven’s gate. He has
-fought for all he is worth, yet not a feather of his spirit is ruffled.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_February 15th._ When I can catch Grumpy and call him to his face by his
-right name, he always disappears; but blue devils are so very clever at
-disguising themselves, and at concentrating one’s attention on their
-instruments of torture!
-
-This morning, for instance, he hid under the foot of my bed, and kept
-poking up all sorts of things where I couldn’t help seeing them; the
-things the Peon and David need me to get well for; the things I long to
-do; the idleness I so desperately hate—for he can make even an
-abstraction visible, being a very clever devil indeed. Then he held up
-the pain, turning it round and round, and counting off the time like a
-clock—minutes, hours, days, months, years, and never an end in sight. I
-had to look out of the window in self-defense; and there I saw a
-kinglet.
-
-Except the winter wren and the humming-bird, the kinglets are the
-smallest birds we have. But they make up in energy what they lack in
-size; and this one dashed about as if his very life depended on his
-getting his breakfast in ten seconds and catching the seven-thirty
-breeze to Somewhere. Grayish-olive, of course; but was his crown of
-ruby-red, or of orange, crimson and black? And why should a mite of the
-tree-tops be so inconsiderate as to carry his trade-mark on the top of
-his head?
-
-I was almost in despair about him—for when you meet a bird, it is of
-consuming importance to know whose acquaintance you have the pleasure of
-making—when he took pity on me of his own sweet will. Perhaps the
-breeze was a thought late, and he had a moment to spare: but he perched
-on a twig just outside the window, bowed his tiny head toward me, thrust
-one claw up between his wing and his body, and scratched the back of his
-neck for the whole of one second and a half!
-
-Golden-crowned! The cunningest striped pate, red in the middle, with a
-yellow band on each side, a black band next the yellow, and a white line
-over his eye. Then he flung up his head as boldly as though it were
-mountain-high, jerked his wee tail-feathers frantically, and squeaked in
-the finest and most wiry of voices, the astonishing information that it
-was only Grumpy under the bed, at his old tricks—a creature for nobody
-to pay attention to. And as soon as he found himself discovered, my blue
-devil took himself off.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_February 20th._ If I can’t go outdoors, outdoors can come to me! The
-windows are all open this morning, and my bed so close under them that I
-can lie here and stretch my hand into the outside world, where the lilac
-is rapidly leafing and the elms and maples are all abloom. A moment ago
-Uncle Milton stepped into view, one hand holding his hat and the other
-filled with jonquils.
-
-“Is you gittin’ er little better, honey?” he inquired. “Hit’s gittin’
-spring-time now, en Milton wants ter see you ridin’ roun’ in dat ar
-cheer you got. Ef we-all puts er mattress in it, don’ you reckon we kin
-git you down ter de holler by de gate? Des see what come f’um down dat
-er way dis mawnin’—dem holler jonquils allus did beat dese yere up on
-de hill.”
-
-He reached the flowers through the window and laid them upon the
-bed—the first flowers of the awakening year; for the violets are
-ageless, belonging neither to the new year nor to the old. I caught up
-the golden beauty with a gasp of joy.
-
-“Oh, thank you, Uncle Milton! I knew spring was coming true before long!
-And I’ll be walking down there when they bloom again: don’t think I’m
-going to live in beds and wheeled-chairs forever.”
-
-His brown old face beamed.
-
-“Dat’s de talk!” he exclaimed gleefully. “Ef dat ain’t de Forest sperrit
-my name ain’t Milton, sho’! You look like yo’ pa endurin’ er de war. You
-keep talkin’ dat erway, honey, en feelin’ dat erway, too. Hit’s sperrit
-en spunk what cyores folks a sight mo’ dan doctors en physicin, I lay my
-little Missy gwinter be runnin’ roun’ yere yet, makin’ ole Milton hop.”
-He walked off, chuckling to himself.
-
-Josie brought me a vase, and I set the flowers in it as flowers should
-be set, lovingly, and one by one. It has been years since I have been
-down in that hollow, just this side of where the road turns out into the
-pike; but I can see it as if I were there this minute—the maples
-blooming overhead, the meadow-larks flashing the white of their
-tail-feathers as they fly, singing, on the hill beyond; the twigs in the
-strip of woodland down the road, shining yellow, tan, and red with the
-rising sap. The blue-grass is under foot, soft and thick, and all
-through it rise the spears of the jonquil leaves, and the swinging,
-golden bells. Along the fence runs the broad band of iris, matted close,
-the pointed leaves already taller than the jonquils. Cardinals and
-mocking-birds are calling all up the hillside; and down under the
-willows and sycamores at the water’s edge the myrtle warblers are
-swarming, and thinking of donning their gay spring suits. Oh, I can see
-it all, all! A little wind is dancing along the hillside, and the
-branches touch one another softly, the dry, scraping, winter sound all
-gone. The wren’s spring song is in full blast, the bluebirds are
-twittering, and even the jays’ voices are turning sweet. The breath of
-life is everywhere, and the joy of it. I can feel the wind in my hair,
-and the grass under my flying feet—_My flying feet_! For a moment I had
-forgotten. But here are the four close walls, the narrow bed, the
-endless, wrenching pain. And I could not walk even to my sofa today,
-though the Peon’s life were my reward.—Eh, well, and what of that? Did
-I not run in Make-Believe? And shall I shut my eyes to joy and beauty
-because my locomotive apparatus is laid up for a few repairs? I may be
-walking clear out to the hall again before the week is out, and be out
-in my chair on the porch tomorrow. Love and sunshine really are enough,
-no matter what Grumpy says—even love without the sunshine: and here are
-both, and flowers besides, and the spring-time everywhere out of doors.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_February 25th._ Grace was here yesterday. She has a way of dropping in
-when she is most wanted and leaving a trail of sunshine behind her. She
-is a quiet little body, never hurried or fretted, and she has a genius
-for discovering, in the most unlikely places, virtues invisible to the
-naked eye. She sees the wrong and mean things, too—she’s not at all a
-goody-goody person; but she keeps the wrong and the wrong-doers so
-entirely distinct and separate that you wonder how you were ever so
-stupid as to confuse them. She’s really devoted to that cranky old
-half-brother of hers. She is always commiserating him because he did not
-have her mother, and his own died when he was born. She’ll explain and
-expound him till you think he really is noble, only he never had a
-chance to learn how to do noble things.
-
-It is certainly a pity, however, that his education is in such a
-backward stage. Robert Lincoln and Milly are becoming much more than
-friends; and Cousin Jason’s infantile ignorance of other people’s rights
-is anything but conductive to comfort under the circumstances. But
-Grace’s one idea, as usual, is that dear brother Jason must not be
-crossed. He takes it so hard, poor fellow, when things don’t go as he
-wishes. And if Mr. Lincoln is as seriously fond of Milly as he professes
-to be, he may as well make up his mind to be satisfied with winning her,
-if he can succeed in doing it, and not be too exacting with her
-relatives.
-
-Poor Grace! As if I don’t know the kind of young-ladyhood she believes
-in Milly’s having, and is simply aching to give her! But evidently
-Cousin Jason’s will is to be law.
-
-The truth is, as I told Grace, Cousin Jason is just like Cousin
-Chad—though they’d both foam at the mouth to hear me say it. But
-they’ve neither of them any sense of proportion. That’s why they have no
-sense of humor, nor power to get their own personalities in proper
-perspective with other people and their rights. But why, asks Grace
-calmly, shouldn’t we be as sorry for a person born with no sense of
-proportion as for a person born with only one eye? Of course the lack of
-a sense of humor is harder on the kin than the lack of an eye would
-be—Grace admitted that handsomely; but in neither case was the
-afflicted party to blame. And didn’t one really deserve more sympathy
-when his affliction necessitated his also being a bore?
-
-We fell to giggling as we discussed this knotty point; and I was so far
-converted to Grace’s charitable views that I had Uncle Milton get a
-basket of double jonquils for her to take to Cousin Jane. Cousin Jane
-always did admire my double jonquils, and somehow her own never succeed.
-I like the single ones much better myself; the others, like my revered
-relative, are too clumsy and fat. I told Grace to say I sent them to her
-on the principle of sweets to the sweet. And now I’ll be having another
-visitation, for my sins!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_February 27th._ Pitch dark when I woke this morning; and pain to make
-one clench one’s teeth. Grumpy is not hilarious company at such times,
-but occasionally he helps by overdoing things.
-
-This morning, for instance, he began about the unendingness of
-things—sickness, and the long night, and all that—till it struck me
-all at once it really was morning that second, and only looked like
-night. Besides, the pain is like this, often, when I don’t feel blue a
-bit: so it isn’t the pain that makes me miserable—it’s my own mood
-about the pain; and if a seasoned old party like me can’t manage her own
-moods, what’s the world coming to?
-
-Only, sometimes I can’t manage them, and I don’t know why. They sweep
-over me like the waves of the sea, and trample me like wild horses. It
-isn’t often like that; but when it is, I know I’m in for it—and also
-that I’m dead sure to get out of it after a while. I’m lying here—this
-racketty old body, with a piece of me, myself, inside it, just about as
-miserable as such a combination can get to be. And the rest of me is
-hanging around outside, looking on, and saying, “Just lie low and keep
-quiet, old lady. It’s tough, but it won’t last. Lay your nose to the
-wind and let it howl. If it blows you even on both sides, you’ll get out
-of it without being crank-sided, and that’s the best you can do.” So I
-lie here; and after awhile the comfort of knowing it’s just a mood soaks
-in till I can feel it and get the good of it—and then the storm is
-past. I come out of it, too, with my self-respect unimpaired; because,
-no matter how it raged inside, I did keep quiet on the outside till it
-blew over.
-
-So it blew over this time also. And after awhile even Grumpy was forced
-to admit that it was morning, for all the world was drenched with light.
-The long, level beams slipped across the hills as the sun rose, and
-touched the tree-tops, one by one; and behold, life had risen—in the
-night. Every twig of the tulip-tree was tipped with green where the
-great terminal buds had burst their sheaths; and down by the brook a
-fairy mist of color clung tenuously about the willows. The mocking-bird
-was in a rapture of prophecy in the maple; and the English sparrows were
-actually housebuilding in a beautiful hole in the scarlet oak.
-
-Nobody else thinks of nest building yet; but among the birds, as among
-humans, the increase of population is most rapid where one would fain
-find it least. These sparrows will be rearing half a dozen families
-before the year is out—good, large families, too; and it behooves them
-to select their apartment early in the season. That hole belongs to the
-wrens, but that’s of no consequence to the sparrows, who have the
-pleasant habit of taking whatever they want.
-
-It must be owned they are a hardworking tribe, even though their works
-be evil. If the fathers left their wives to do all the work, after the
-bluebirds’ fashion, some of the broods would surely starve; the mothers
-would succumb to nervous prostration before all the mouths could be
-filled. But the head of the family rolls up his feathers and pitches
-right in, from nest building days until frost. Nuisances though they be,
-there isn’t a shirker among them; and they will drop their petty
-personal squabbles instantly, to make common cause against any bird, big
-or little, not of sparrow feather. But they shall not have the wren’s
-hole for all that—not while Uncle Milton can climb a tree for me.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_March 6th._ The blackbirds are falling in love. Even sensible, lovely
-creatures are a bit comical when hard hit by the tender passion. In its
-first inflammatory stages it so utterly destroys the patient’s sense of
-proportion that one smiles even when one’s heart is aglow with sympathy.
-But a blackbird lover, a sleek, slick gentleman, oppressed with more
-dignity than an archbishop could carry gracefully, trying to unlimber
-enough to convince his _inamorata_ that he desires her favor when he
-merely wishes to air his perfections for her dazzlement!
-
-One flies to a branch in plain sight of the greedy black gang, gobbling
-crumbs below, and meditates. Shall he condescend, or shall he not? Well,
-maybe she is worth it; and it will display his feathers to an admiring
-world. He ducks a little, spreads wings and tail, rises a-tiptoe, and
-says something through his nose to call attention to his noble self,
-though a compliment may be tacked on in the last note. I know that’s
-just the way Cousin Chad did it when he courted Cousin Jane. And think
-of the laughterless depths of Cousin Jane’s soul that she found it a
-performance to take seriously! Things are pretty much evened up in this
-life, after all. It is true Cousin Jane has no back; but think of a
-blackbird husband—and of me with the Peon!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_March 10th._ Rain, rain, rain. I’ve been examining my mercies this
-morning to see which of them can stand the strain of a three-days’ cold
-down-pour, a week of almost utter sleeplessness, and a spine that is
-conducive to profanity. The mercies look badly frazzled; but they were
-all right the other day, and couldn’t possibly wear out as fast as this.
-I suppose it’s the same old trouble—my eyes are moth-eaten, and need to
-be done up in camphor at once.
-
-Anyway, it’s a piece of a mercy that if I had to get so much worse I did
-it in weather when I couldn’t go outdoors if I were able. It is awfully
-cold. Grumpy says it will frost when it clears off, and all the peaches
-will be killed. Cheerful, isn’t it, when David’s pet peach-orchard
-experiment is in full bloom for the first time? But the peach trees are
-like us humans: they never can tell what is ahead of them. They have to
-go on in the dark with such capital of good-will and ignorance as they
-possess, and take the consequences without kicking.
-
-I think the titmice might be counted as mercies today. The other birds
-have disappeared, but the titmice are as jaunty as possible in their
-trim gray rain coats, whistling like boys calling dogs.
-
-And pray, if a titmouse can keep his crest starched in this down-pour,
-why should the spirit of mortal be limp?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_March 12th._ If one be born a coward, one cannot help that; and what
-one cannot help is no disgrace, but a burden to be carried in patience
-to the end of life.
-
-But in my childhood it came to me that though one be born a coward
-beyond escape, it is never necessary to behave like one. That has been
-my comfort a thousand times, and it is my comfort tonight—a comfort
-great enough to hold me steady in the iron grip of pain.
-
-Coward I am, and will be, to the end of life. But I have not behaved
-like a coward this day! And now the day is ended—lived through forever.
-And I can remember it unashamed.
-
-
-
-
-                                   VI
-                            BEFORE THE DAWN
-
-
-_March 18th._ If the outward pressure of necessity for self-control be
-great enough to balance the inward pressure of pain, one can keep fairly
-steady. But a week after the Peon left on one of those long western
-trips something came up that made it necessary for David to drop
-everything and go to Atlanta. He was detained there beyond his
-expectations, and then wrote me he must go to New York before returning
-home. He begged me again, as when he first left, to send for Grace; but
-I did not want her. At first it was a relief to be alone, with no need
-for effort or concealment. Afterwards, I did not want her because her
-sympathy would have been more than I could bear.
-
-It wasn’t just the day’s pain, or the night’s—one can usually manage
-that somehow. What Grumpy did was to set today’s pain by that of
-yesterday, and the day before that; to add last week’s to last year’s,
-to the pain of ten years, twenty years, back. He applied his
-recollections like a mustard plaster, and rubbed them in like a
-liniment. Then he took tomorrow, and next year, and the year after that,
-and built them all into one long _via dolorosa_—a life-time path of
-pain. I might have stood that; I have before. But beside the pain he set
-the idleness—this horrible, useless idleness. That is the killing part!
-He set it all before me, as plain in the black and sleepless nights as
-in the day: and while I cowered, he gibed and threatened till I feared
-to look ahead and dared not hope. And when I tried to run away to
-Make-Believe, for the first time in all my life I could not find the
-way! That finished everything.
-
-So I lay still and silent one age-long night, shut fast in my body at
-last, the slow tears dripping on my pillow on either side. Suddenly, in
-the dawning, a purpose leaped within me; Ella should come to me—here,
-in this very room, from which I could no longer escape. If Make-Believe
-were closed to me, I would command her here. I would tell her
-everything: I could not bear it in silence any more.
-
-Since we first went to the city I had loved her. And after Great-aunt
-Letitia died, until she went North to live, she had been constantly in
-my home. And after that—oh, we knew the way to Make-Believe, we two!
-Never a day but we met there, for many a year. She knew all about the
-pain, though we never spoke of it. It wasn’t merely that words were
-unnecessary, but that pain, in her presence, seemed so small a part of
-life. Nothing really mattered but love and kindness and happy human
-laughter.
-
-Yet she had never had a real home, nor even a care-free childhood. Her
-life had been one long sacrifice for those who took her bounty as their
-right. But the laughing blue eyes, the heart of kindness, the sturdy,
-sensible, joyous spirit of her, blended of love and humor and common
-sense! The children in the streets ran after her, and tired faces
-brightened as she passed.
-
-For three years and a half now I had not seen her, even in Make-Believe,
-where I met every one else I love, both living and dead. Somehow I could
-not pretend about her any more, after that strange day when my letter
-came back unopened—the happy letter I had written to tell her I was
-going to a sanitarium to be made over new, so that I could come and pay
-her a “really truly” visit on my way home. She never saw the letter.
-They sent it back unopened; and I could not play about her any more.
-
-But now, if I must stay shut in my body, she must come. She should never
-leave me. I would tell her every day just how hard life was. And she
-would be sorry for me; she would understand. I reached out with all the
-life left in me to draw her out of Make-Believe, now shut against me,
-and bring her to share my prison, and to hear my complaints.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-I turned my head upon the pillow and lifted my heavy lids. She was
-coming toward the bed. I raised my arms feebly, and her own were round
-me. My head fell on her breast, and I lay there, drawing long, sobbing
-breaths, while she stroked my hair with firm and gentle fingers. There
-was no need for speech: her touch was always plainer than other people’s
-words.
-
-But presently I was aware of a difference in her touch, a something new
-and strange. I whispered weakly, without opening my eyes.
-
-“What is it dear? What troubles you? Why don’t you speak to me?”
-
-Silence. Only that tender, pitying touch.
-
-“I knew you’d be sorry for me,” I whispered on; “and oh, I want you to
-be! I wouldn’t have called you if it were real, you know—I wouldn’t
-hurt you for the world. But nothing can hurt you now. Isn’t Love so
-plain to you, and the end of things, and the reasons why they must
-be—isn’t all that so shining clear to you that even my being like this
-can’t hurt? Tell me about it. I want to know it is clear to
-somebody—I’m so far gone in the dark.”
-
-Still no answer.
-
-“Then be sorry for me,” I went on, dashing my desperate pleading against
-that strange, disquieting silence. “I’ve borne so much. I must tell
-somebody, and it isn’t fair to talk about it to them here at home. I’ve
-never talked to anybody before, even to you. I’ve never even cried,
-never once, except all by myself in the dark. And I’m such a coward
-about everything, and specially about pain; I’ve been so afraid of it
-all my life. And it never stops. It’s been years, Ella, years and years.
-And oh, I can’t bear it any more! You don’t know what it’s like just to
-be still and suffer when you can’t _do_ anything. It wasn’t so bad when
-I could keep going; I could fight. But now I can’t fight any more. I
-want to die. I think God ought to let me die.—I’ve tried; I’ve tried my
-best so long. And I can’t try any more.”
-
-The words were scarcely breathed, and I stopped in exhaustion, the slow
-tears dropping on her breast.
-
-Still she did not speak. Deeper and deeper sank her silence, pressed in
-by that strange, tender touch.
-
-Suddenly I shivered, and my eyes flew wide. Her own were full of love
-and sorrow—a sorrow that looked past all my complaints to something
-deeper and more vital. I shrank away from her.
-
-“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t any more; I can’t.”
-
-Behind the sorrow in her eyes a light was kindled; but it only
-frightened me the more.
-
-“I have tried,” I protested. “I’ve done nothing else the most of my
-life. Is there no pity, even in you?”
-
-Still she gazed; and something in her look called to something dead in
-me. I shook my head feebly and closed my eyes; but through the shut lids
-her gaze commanded.
-
-“I have come to the end,” I persisted; “and if you do not understand,
-there is nothing left. I can’t try any more, and I won’t. Go away.”
-
-I gasped as I said it, and opened my eyes again. Her look pierced and
-held me like the point of a sword. I turned my head from side to side,
-shivering, but there was no escape. The dead thing in me stirred to life
-and dragged itself up to look truth in the face once more.
-
-“Yes,” I said, “It is true. I can’t because I won’t. I thought I
-wouldn’t because I couldn’t, but that is a lie. I can endure if I
-will—and if I can, I must. But will it never end?”
-
-She lifted her head a little. Her eyes shone, and a smile curved the
-sweet corners of her mouth. It was not the old, brave, happy laughter,
-but something wiser and more compelling—the overflow of an exhaustless
-joy.
-
-“You _know_,” I whispered. “You learned it even in your life down here.
-And to keep on trying is to conquer, isn’t it?—even though one fails
-with every breath. And the only irreparable calamity is to turn coward
-and quit.”
-
-Her face was heavenly sweet.
-
-“I must never send for you again?” I asked, like a child. “Not to say
-things are hard, or to cry?—But if I play, in the real Make-Believe,
-will you talk to me there as you used? If I see you there I won’t need
-you this way again. Good-bye.”
-
-Her fingers brushed my hair once more as I lay back on the pillow; and
-then I knew she was gone.—O bravest friend! Not even in my own coward
-thoughts could your courage be bent to the service of fear; to think of
-you was to find strength, even against my will!
-
-For a long time I lay there, while the slow day passed and twilight
-deepened again into night. All her life passed before me—its
-selflessness, its courage, its joy. No creature that knew her went
-unblessed of her. What gifts pain brought, what power of helpfulness,
-what fullness of life and love!
-
-Suddenly, there in the deep stillness, it was as if the night were drawn
-away like a veil; and I saw out to the very edges of the world, and back
-into far-off ages, and on into days that are yet to be; and everywhere
-was light. And the light came from countless faces; and I knew that to
-each one pain had come—pain of body or pain of soul—and because of the
-pain they had found the light. And down, under the light, looking up to
-it, drawn by it, stumbling forward by it, were those to whom the vision
-had not come. And I—was I offered such a fellowship only to run away in
-fear?
-
-The veil of night fell dark again, but a song was in my heart. When
-daylight came I wrote it down—the song my friend had given me. It is
-called
-
-           _THE INITIATES_
-
-    _Wide as the world their company,_
-      _Many the paths they tread;_
-    _Here may a toil-worn peasant be,_
-      _Yonder a crownèd head._
-    _Famed or unknown, each one must fare_
-      _Forth on a bidden way;_
-    _That which awaits no man may share,_
-      _Lonely ’mid throngs are they._
-    _Yet comrades all they come to be:_
-      _Far-sundered, yet one line,_
-    _They march in this great company,_
-      _Deep in their souls its sign._
-
-    _How shall ye know them? Some there be_
-      _So wasted and worn and weak,_
-    _So anguished in body, ye all may see_
-      _They bear the sign ye seek._
-    _But some in this brotherhood there be_
-      _Who in such secret wise_
-    _Meet suffering, no man may see_
-      _Wherein their sorrow lies._
-    _Their laughter rings out true and free,_
-      _Ye look for the sign in vain,_
-    _Nor guess they are of this company,_
-      _Marked with the mark of pain._
-
-    _Thus shall ye know them: On their eyes_
-      _Falls the light of things unseen;_
-    _Their pain-cleared vision sweeps the skies_
-      _And the hearts of men, I ween;_
-    _The things that pass, and the things that remain,_
-      _Lie open to their sight,_
-    _And that which they learn as they dwell with pain_
-      _Gives strength to the world, and light._
-    _Patient, and wise, and glad they be,_
-      _Rich with love’s own increase—_
-    _They of this world-wide company_
-      _Who suffer, and find peace._
-
-    _Freed as by fire? Yet the fire shall pass,_
-      _And the freedom shall stand for aye;_
-    _And what would be the hope for the mass_
-      _If these should shrink in dismay?_
-    _So may I cast aside all fear;_
-      _So may my soul aspire;_
-    _So may I climb pain’s pathway drear_
-      _To heights of my soul’s desire._
-    _And there, with heart grown wise to see,_
-      _Counting nor loss nor gain._
-    _May I serve with this brave company_
-      _Who bear the mark of pain!_
-
-
-
-
-                                  VII
-                              SPRING MAGIC
-
-
-_April 2nd._ The Peon came home ten days ago, and David a day later.
-They looked as solemn as owls, and developed a tendency to neglect their
-business and sit in my room which was fast getting on my nerves. So I
-rose up and put a stop to it. You simply can’t lie still in peace when
-your eyes won’t stay open, if you have any consciousness that somebody
-is watching you while he’s pretending to read a book. And I don’t need a
-doctor. I’ve been like this, and worse, a thousand times, and the Head
-said when I came home I was bound to get well crab-fashion—going
-backward lots of the time. So I laid down the law that if my eyes were
-shut and I didn’t speak when they opened the door, my family was to be
-sensible and go away.
-
-That was why I didn’t look when the door opened one day last week. I was
-thinking of all the Head had said about backsets, and how, when they
-ended, I would come out of them more and more quickly, and they’d be
-farther and farther apart; and I was wondering how fast I’d go, once I
-had finished with this one. When the door opened I hadn’t the energy to
-spare for talking—I needed it for my cheerful speculations. But,
-instead of going away, my visitor came quietly in. Then I heard a little
-gasp, a soft rustle beside me, and little warm hands caught mine—Caro’s
-hands! She was there on her knees, her face hidden in the bedclothes,
-and crying as if her heart would break! Caro crying was a sight to
-galvanize a graven image: I sat up straight in the bed and drew her to
-me.
-
-“Dear, what is it?” I implored. “Tell me quick: I’ll fix it!”
-
-She bubbled with laughter as she caught me in her arms and eased me back
-on the pillow, dropping a tear and a kiss on my nose.
-
-“You darling! If you were at your own funeral and heard one of us
-crying, you’d hop right up and straighten things out for us, wouldn’t
-you? There’s not a thing the matter with me except I’ve been so homesick
-for you all winter I couldn’t stand it any longer: and now I’m crying
-because I’m so glad I’m home.”
-
-“But Caro——”
-
-“Don’t ‘Caro’ me and don’t ‘but’ me, for I’ve come to stay. Mammy Lil,
-you’re an accomplished liar; but when your writing kept looking like
-chicken-tracks, I knew better than to believe a word of your sprawly,
-rickety tales that trailed all over the sheet. And I _hate_ music. And
-besides, I can drive the family to drink with what I know already.”
-
-“But Daddy Jack, dear, and Cousin Jane.”
-
-Caro laughed again.
-
-“Daddy Jack says he wrote for me yesterday—after I’d started, all by my
-smart self. And I’ll tell Cousin Jane after a while. She’ll have
-something brand-new to lecture us about for the next twenty-five years.
-I feel like Carnegie and Rockefeller rolled into one: it isn’t often she
-gets the benefaction of an enormity like this, is it?”
-
-It had been a cloudy morning, dark, and wet with the night’s rain; but
-now the sunlight swept across the hills and up from the branch, and
-struck through the soft colors shimmering about the trees like rainbows
-in a mist. The Peon and David tiptoed in, beaming.
-
-“You’d better let us go by and break the news to them at Cousin Chad’s,”
-said David; “you’ll get a shock over the ’phone if they aren’t
-prepared.”
-
-“I’m going over there this afternoon,” said Caro calmly. “I’m going all
-by myself and engineer Cousin Jane through the boiling-over process;
-she’ll be all right when she settles down to a simmer. Now get out, both
-of you: Mammy Lil and I want to rest.”
-
-She slipped into her kimono and stretched herself beside me, holding my
-arm across her breast and stroking it with a light touch which expressed
-everything without words. Once in awhile she talked a little in her own
-sweet, whimsical way, and then lapsed again into the silence of utter
-content.
-
-I turned my head to speak to her presently, and found her gone. The
-shadows, which had been dancing up toward the house when the sun came
-out, had lengthened all down the lawn to the valley, and across it to
-the hills on the other side. I lay watching them with that long-lost
-sense of refreshment which follows unbroken sleep. Down by the gate
-David was letting in Caro’s pony-cart and climbing to a seat beside her.
-Presently their laughter floated through the windows, and then she was
-in the room again, perched on the window-seat by the bed.
-
-“I’m trying not to be proud, Mammy Lil,” she observed in a chastened
-voice; “but Cousin Jane is done to a turn, and almost cool enough to set
-away in the cellar. She’s pleased with me, too; she said if she just
-could have kept Lyddy from meddlin’ she believed she could have raised
-me up to be a real comfort to her. Why didn’t you let her? She gave me
-some outing cloth to make into petticoats for a missionary box that’s to
-go west. Who but Aunt Jane would bestow fuzzy petticoats on missionaries
-in the spring? But she bought the stuff at a bargain sale for four cents
-a yard, and feels that it’s providential; and we can put in plenty
-ourselves to make up for it.”
-
-“And she won’t fuss about your staying here?” I asked anxiously.
-
-“Why, of course she’ll fuss; how could she get any fun out of it if she
-didn’t? But she’s fussed all she’s going to right now; and next time
-I’ll make some more petticoats, or cut down her fifth-best winter coat
-for one of the little missionaries to wear on the Fourth of July.
-——Don’t look so horrified, Mammy Lil; you know I’ll never let it get
-in the box! Now lie still like a good child till I fix your supper. I’m
-going to feed you myself,” and she fluttered away, singing under her
-breath.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_April 5th._ Caro is in the window-seat, feather-stitching the
-missionary petticoats, with one eye on the birds in the yard. The jays
-have always roused her special ire; and yesterday one flew to the
-hackberry, in plain sight, with a little naked nestling dead in his
-wicked bill, tucked it coolly under his toes against the bark, and
-devoured it before our eyes. This morning, in the intervals of
-courtship, they have diverted themselves with crumb-snatching. They sit
-on a limb above the scattered morsels where a dozen or more birds are
-feasting. There is bread in abundance for all, but the jays love
-hectoring even better than eating. One will watch till some bird picks
-up a crumb, and then drop like lead upon his astonished victim. The
-unfortunate drops the crumb, of course; and before he collects his
-scattered wits the jay is back aloft with the morsel safe under his
-toes, picking leisurely. Caro sat laughing and scolding till a little
-red-brown wren flew down and was pounced upon in a twinkling. The wren
-dropped his crumb, but turned upon the bully with lightning quickness
-and a volcanic explosion of wrath utterly out of proportion to his size.
-The big bird, amazed at the onset, flew up to his perch in a panic, and
-Caro clapped her hands.
-
-“Oh, grand! grand!” she cried; “don’t I wish Milly Wood were here to
-see! I told her yesterday if she’d lay Cousin Jason out she could manage
-him: and just look at that blessed wren.”
-
-“Milly isn’t a wren, though,” I said: “she hasn’t a glimmering of the
-wren’s gift of speaking his mind. Look at the wood-thrush, dear; you see
-the difference? When the wood-thrush turns on a jay, I’ll have hopes of
-Grace and Milly—and not before.”
-
-The two wood-thrushes have been in the yard for days, the shyest,
-gentlest of creatures, ready to fly off at the flutter of a leaf. They
-have not touched the crumbs yet, but hop nearer every day. The jay
-watched one of them extract a worm from the soil, however, and lit upon
-him plummet-fashion. The wood-thrush dropped his half-swallowed morsel
-and fled in a panic to the black ash, where my glasses revealed him, his
-breast feathers bristling with terror, a mere puff-ball of fear.
-
-“That’s Milly,” I said.
-
-“But, Mammy Lil, anything can run a jay if it will only stand up to
-him,” persisted Caro; “I don’t see why Milly submits to it. She can’t
-ask Mr. Lincoln to a single meal. When he comes out in the afternoon he
-has to motor all the way to Chatterton for his supper and then go back;
-and Cousin Jay goes in the parlor when he does come, and glares at him
-and looks at his watch, and yawns—he’s simply insufferable. I’ve asked
-them both over here; Milly can stay all night, you know. But she says
-she won’t dare to come often, or Uncle Jason won’t like it. Not like it,
-indeed! I wish he belonged to me—I’d ‘uncle’ him!—There, that
-petticoat’s all ready to proclaim Cousin Jane’s thriftiness in clothing
-our dear missionaries on the frontier. I’ll make them for the sake of
-family peace: but I’m blessed if I’ll take them to church to be packed:
-she can escort her offering herself.”
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_April 8th._
-
-            _COMPANIONSHIP_
-
-    _Afar in heaven is Love? Ah, no!_
-    _Follow the path where wild-flowers blow;_
-    _Store in thy heart the songs which swell_
-    _From wayside hedgerow, wood and fell;_
-    _Mark where the young year’s opening leaf_
-    _Answers the wail of doubt and grief,_
-    _And where, fresh burgeoning after rain,_
-    _Life learns the inner heart of pain._
-    _Let care and passion sink to rest,_
-    _Calmed ’neath wide skies on earth’s green breast;_
-    _And hearken while the steadfast hills_
-    _Breathe strength to fainting human wills._
-    _And through this changing, fair disguise_
-    _Know thou Love’s voice, and meet Love’s eyes!_
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_April 10th._ Out on the porch again, in the warm, sweet air, with all
-birddom for company. Caro has gone driving with Bob White, after
-wheeling me here for my own pleasure and for the Peon’s astonishment
-when he comes home.
-
-The robins have a secret in the seven-trunked maple. The leaves are so
-thick no one could guess it except by their vigilance in guarding the
-tree. They have made a law that no jay, of any age, sex, or size, shall
-alight in it, nor poke his bill among its branches, nor brush it with
-his wings in flight; and the law they have promulgated they are ready to
-enforce. Dark and bloody tales are told of jays—tales of cast-out eggs,
-of murdered babies, and stolen nests; wherefore no jay shall frequent
-that maple, “then, since nor henceforward.” Hence, wild curiosity among
-the jays, agitated caucuses in the pasture oak, and unanimous decision
-to visit that maple at all hazards, singly, and in groups. They watch
-till the robins are at some distance, and fly up to the tree on the far
-side, three or four strong, while the robins, their backs to their
-threatened castle, drag forth reluctant worms by the middle. They seem
-absorbed in their hunt, but they know! In the twinkling of an eye they
-are at the maple, and no jay may abide their coming.
-
-Nor will the robins, after these aggressions, tolerate the jays
-elsewhere. They may be pecking at the foot of a tree when a jay alights
-noiselessly in its topmost branch. They see, apparently, through the top
-of their skulls; and one jay or six, it is all the same to them. They
-dash up with the _élan_ of a picked regiment, and again the jays shriek
-and fly. Not a jay has pecked on this lawn this whole afternoon, nor
-roosted while the robins pecked. Time and again they have sallied in
-from the pasture, and as often they have dashed squawking back. It is a
-strenuous life for the blue-coats: but it certainly keeps things
-peaceful for the rest. The wood-thrushes have ventured near today, and a
-pair of chippies have come up on the porch, almost to my chair.
-
-Yesterday evening a dozen mocking-birds were here on the lawn, singing
-singly, answering one another, and joining again and again in choruses
-that whelmed the grove in melody.
-
-I lay in the growing twilight listening to them and thinking once more
-of all that passes, and of all that can never pass, when suddenly
-through the closing dark came the wild, sweet song of the wood-thrush,
-the first I had heard this year: _U-o-lee! U-o-lee!_ The three notes
-form a perfect minor chord; and at their end a sudden spray of rapid
-tinkling notes, and the song again repeated, and again.
-
-They say the thrushes have two sets of vocal chords, long and short, and
-the double vibration accounts for the splendid richness of their tones.
-But when those wild, appealing notes call through the gathering darkness
-one thinks, not of anatomy, but of the _Sursum Corda_ in a church, and
-of all the souls who shrink before some cup of suffering and yet accept
-it, not merely with courage, but with clear vision of the joy beyond.
-
-Up from the brook the song came, and far out on the road it was
-answered: _U-o-lee! U-o-lee!_ What magic fills the haunting notes with
-subtle suggestions of human weakness, of trembling courage, of faith no
-suffering can slay? And when they ceased, the mocking-birds took up the
-theme and carried it, far into the moonlit night, to its inevitable and
-triumphant conclusion—the song of the victor on the heights who has
-conquered in the lowest depths.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_April 19th._ Cousin Jane insisted on Caro’s going to town with her
-yesterday, ostensibly to do some shopping, but really, I think, to give
-Bob White a chance to take them both to lunch. Bob comes out pretty
-often, and is as assiduous in his attentions as Caro will permit. I
-cannot see that she especially favors either him or David. She goes more
-with David, but her attitude toward him is so frankly affectionate that
-it is not as encouraging as it might be. He meets her quite on her own
-ground, and appears entirely satisfied. Everybody, in fact, seems
-contented except Bob White and Cousin Jane, to whom Bob pays strenuous
-court. Caro went with her to town with her usual light-hearted
-acquiescence in any plan proposed. She takes life as it comes, and makes
-a joyful occasion of the most commonplace happenings. But before she
-would agree to go she made Milly promise to come and spend the day with
-me: and this morning the two of them, with the Peon’s and David’s
-assistance, escorted me out to the maple tree in a triumphal procession,
-and established me on a cot in the real outdoors.
-
-Milly scattered the crumbs for me, and sat by my cot with her
-embroidery. I thought the others were off for the station when Caro came
-flying back, pinning her hat on as she ran.
-
-“Mammy Lil, Milly needs some lessons in ornithology. Prod some of the
-birds till they chase the jay: and be sure you tell her what turncoats
-the rice-birds are.” Her eyes danced.
-
-“The rice-birds?” I inquired stupidly. “Why should I tell her about
-them? They’re not here anyway.”
-
-“One of them’s here,” she said gravely; “I’ve seen him.
-
-    ‘_Robert of Lincoln is gaily dressed_’—
-
-“Beware of bobolinks, Milly: they’re worse than jabberwoks;” and she
-dabbed a little kiss on the end of my nose and was off.
-
-Milly flushed to the roots of her hair, looking at me shyly.
-
-“He and Caro are great friends,” she said; “you know she’d never joke
-about him if she didn’t like him. She calls him Reedbird, Rice-bird, and
-Bobolink, and says that so many _aliases_ are sure proof of villainy.
-Sometimes when she begins to discourse on birds before Uncle Jason she
-scares me out of my wits. But luckily he doesn’t know one bird from
-another, except the ones that bother his crops. To think how he has
-lived in the country, all his life, and never seen anything in earth or
-sky except crops and money! I do feel sorry for him, Cousin Lil; but I
-can’t feel as sorry as mother does, because I get so angry with him.
-He’s—he’s insufferable sometimes.”
-
-“Why don’t you make him behave?” I asked.
-
-Her face paled.
-
-“Make him?” she repeated wonderingly. “How on earth could anybody make
-Uncle Jason do anything? Caro calls him jay-bird, and that’s just what
-he is.—Look there!”
-
-The thrushes were actually breaking bread with me this morning; and as
-Milly spoke a jay dropped from his hiding-place overhead, and managed to
-light on both of them at once as they pecked peacefully side by side.
-They dashed madly away and dropped under the beech, panting, their
-breast-feathers bristling with fear.
-
-Milly was quite white.
-
-“That is what he is like, even when you’re trying so hard to please
-him,” she said. “I can’t imagine what would happen if you opposed him.”
-Her underlip quivered a little, and her eyes filled with tears.
-
-“I’ll show you what would happen if that jay will just hang around here
-till a catbird comes,” I said. “There are plenty of them about, and a
-catbird stands no nonsense from anybody.”
-
-The jay elected to remain. He chased the cardinal, and tormented the
-thrushes till they flew away to the brook. Then he perched overhead,
-preened his feathers, and surveyed the world with an air of impeccable
-virtue,—tyrant and Pharisee in one. Presently, after the fashion of his
-kind, he began to peer and pry, leaning forward and thrusting his bill
-out with an evident intention to stick it into the business of the first
-neighbor who happened in reach.
-
-It was just then that the catbird came for his lunch. The jay perked his
-head eagerly, thrust out his meddlesome beak, dropped to the innocent’s
-back, and lit there with vicious pecks. The catbird, panic-stricken,
-scrambled out and dashed to the hackberry, while the jay gobbled in true
-jay fashion, and I lay feeling that Providence had slapped me in the
-face—an overhasty conclusion, as our criticisms of Providence
-frequently are. The catbird, after due meditation, came back to the
-maple, and delivered his opinion of the jay in vitriolic language. The
-jay, scornfully unheeding, flew to a neighboring limb, tucked a big
-crumb under his toes, and proceeded to eat it. The catbird returned to
-his lunch; and when the jay dropped again, he hopped sideways, turned,
-and faced his tormentor. He spread out his wings and tail and began
-dancing furiously up and down, as if he were set on springs, not moving
-an inch from his place, and uttering discordant cries. The jay gave back
-amazedly. The catbird hopped a hop nearer, resumed his dance, and
-repeated his former remarks. The jay backed; the catbird hopped nearer,
-and danced. The jay dashed up against the maple trunk, where he clung to
-the bark like a woodpecker, looking down apprehensively, while the
-catbird continued his dance and his deliverance on jay manners. It was
-more than the bully’s nerves could stand. In another moment he was off
-to the pasture, and the catbird’s ruffled plumage lay sleek again as he
-turned back to the crumbs.
-
-Milly was pale with excitement, her eyes wide.
-
-“Do you think—” she breathed, and paused, afraid of her own question.
-
-“I know it,” I said confidently. “Just try it awhile.”
-
-“But mother,” objected Milly; “you know he’d take it out on her.”
-
-“Isn’t your mother going to stay with your grandmother some time next
-month, while your uncle and aunt take that trip North they’re planning?
-Do it then.”
-
-The child was absolutely white.
-
-“I—oh, I couldn’t, Cousin Lil! If I began, I’d be afraid to go on. He’d
-make me give in.”
-
-“Your mother won’t go for several weeks,” I said easily; “don’t look so
-frightened. There’s nothing to be done today.—What a pretty pattern
-that is you’re working; let me see.”
-
-We sheered away from Cousin Jason, and took up the subject of Robert
-Lincoln’s perfections, which proved numerous. Then we had lunch under
-the maple; and when the Peon came home Milly went back.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_April 21st._ Caro telephoned me she would stay all night at Cousin
-Jane’s, and did not come home till yesterday noon. I was out under the
-maple again, and watched her through my glasses, as she drove in from
-the pike in Cousin Jane’s buggy, with a small darkey beside her to take
-the horse back. The buggy was loaded with bundles, which she toppled out
-on the grass beside me before jumping after them herself. She sat on the
-edge of the cot, and plunged into her tale and her packages together.
-
-“Do you know what took Cousin Jane up to town, Mammy Lil? She’d seen an
-advertisement of one of those cheap stores down on Union Street about a
-sale of all-linen handkerchiefs for three-and-a-half cents, only twelve
-to a customer. And she traipsed all the way to town to invest forty-two
-cents in handkerchiefs for the missionary box—two for the mama
-missionary and two each for the five kids. Wouldn’t you just love, if
-you were a little kid missionary, to have two whole
-three-and-a-half-cent handkerchiefs of your very own—a fresh one every
-week of the world? Mammy Lil, sometimes I’m real fond of Cousin Jane,
-cranky as she is, and sometimes I want to slap her. But I didn’t: I just
-bought some decent handkerchiefs, so they can use Cousin Jane’s for
-window screens—they’re coarse enough. Then Bob White turned up and we
-went to lunch. They both pretended it was an accident, but I don’t
-believe it; and Cousin Jane frisked like a rhinocerous, and was so
-pleased ‘over our little tête-a-tête,’ as she was pleased to call our
-triangular lunch, that I nearly died. And Bob was—no, it wasn’t Bob; it
-was I. I was just cross. So I wasn’t a bit nice—you know I really can
-be horrid, Mammy Lil, when I put my mind to it. I’m sorry; I’ll make it
-up to Bob next time I see him; but Cousin Jane is such a donkey!
-Goodness knows, though, I paid for that in full!”
-
-She broke into rippling laughter.
-
-“What did you do?”
-
-“Why, she was just huffy—awfully. She’d hardly speak to me; and I was
-in such a good humor again! We’d gone back to the stores, and I’d bought
-some lovely lawns—one for you, and one for me, and one for Mrs.
-Missionary. Let me show you.”
-
-She jerked a bundle out of the pile and displayed her purchases, her
-head cocked meditatively on one side.
-
-“Yours is lavender and mine pale green. They’ll have lots of lace on
-them, and we’ll both look ravishing. I got Mrs. Missionary a blue. My
-instinct is that she’s sallow and red-headed; so I resisted the
-blandishments of a pink one that was two cents a yard cheaper, and
-bought this. Cousin Jane says it will fade. But that was after I
-pacified her: she wouldn’t speak before.”
-
-“How did you manage it?”
-
-“Why, I told her I was sorry I was cross—I really was—and I said I’d
-go home with her and make Cousin Chad one of those frozen puddings. I
-didn’t dare offer to make it for her, but she eats as much of it as he
-does, which is saying a good deal. She softened visibly; so we hurried
-for the first train, and I worked like a black slave to get it done in
-time. They ate like anything, and I let them both give me good advice
-till bedtime; and this morning I made the butter for her, and we parted
-like twins.”
-
-I laughed and patted her hand. She raised one eyebrow and looked
-thoughtful.
-
-“Cousin Jane and Cousin Chad think it’s time I was married,” she
-observed.
-
-“To whom?”
-
-“That’s a secondary consideration, though important. But Cousin Jane was
-married at sixteen. I’m already an old maid of twenty—or will be next
-month; and if I go off in my looks, I won’t find it so easy to go off
-matrimonially. Besides, I’m flighty and bad tempered, and a husband will
-be good discipline. And Bob White is a very nice young man who would
-probably put up with my temper more than most. And he’s rich. And Cousin
-Jane thinks if I try hard enough maybe I can get him. What do you think
-of it, Mammy Lil?” She pursed her mouth and frowned judicially.
-
-“I think Jane Grackle’s a goose—and you’re another,” I said, laughing.
-“There comes David. Call him to wheel me back to the porch.”
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_April 29th._ Summer is coming everywhere. The pasture fence is a long
-wall of bloom, and the odor of honeysuckle fills the air. A wonderful
-place for bird-babies that will be soon! For ten days the roses have
-been blossoming, and Uncle Milton’s flower-beds are beautiful to see.
-And I—the earth isn’t the only dead thing that rises into life! There’s
-another miracle coming to pass: for I am getting well!
-
-All this month I’ve held my breath like a coward, and turned my head,
-afraid to look joy in the face. It has come near so often before; and
-each time the pain has snatched me back and bound me hand and foot. So I
-said I would never inflict on myself the agony of disappointment again.
-But I just can’t live up to that foolishness, and I’m so glad I can’t.
-If this isn’t the ending, but just a blossoming oasis in a desert way,
-shall I miss the joy of that? It’s nearer the end than the last one was,
-anyway, and better and brighter and bigger. If it isn’t fulfillment, it
-is prophecy, and that’s the next best thing. Some day it will come—the
-Head said so. I am to be part of life again—I! I! Some day I shall go
-in and out again among my kind, with power enough of living in me to
-make hours atone for days, and months for years. Nothing shall pass me
-that is mine! It is human life I want, not birds and trees and flowers:
-they’re beautiful, but they aren’t enough—I can afford to let myself
-say it now, because the other is so near, so near! I used to be part of
-life here, long, long after I was sick: there was nothing I couldn’t
-help about, nobody who didn’t smile at me as I passed: in every face I
-saw a memory of kindness given and received. And I’m going back to it,
-to my real life.—Ah, soon or late, what matter? _I’m going back!_
-Though a thousand downfalls be in the way, I’ll make it yet: and be this
-fulfilment, or only prophecy, I open my heart to joy!
-
-
-
-
-                                  VIII
-                          BLACKBIRD DIPLOMACY
-
-
-_May 9th._ Something is dreadfully wrong with Caro, and for once she
-does not give me her confidence. She went to Milly’s night before last
-quite her own bright self, and came back to lunch yesterday another
-creature. A shower came up just after lunch, so I lay on my porch sofa
-until it passed, with David and Caro for company. I imagine things had
-gone wrong at the table. I saw, by Caro’s bright color and the high way
-she carried her pretty head when she came home, that trouble was brewing
-for somebody, and she probably found David’s sunny and unsuspicious good
-humor the negative complement of her own surcharged spirit. There had
-been at least a minor explosion; for when they came out to me they were
-both making an effort to appear quite like themselves. But Caro’s eyes
-were danger-signals; and, though David smiled and his voice had its
-usual deep evenness, his eyes kept a furtive and brooding watch on hers.
-She seemed in the gayest of spirits, yet there was some jangle in the
-mirth which had always rung sweet and true before.
-
-The thunder was rattling overhead, and the wind-blown curtains of the
-rain shut out the hills beyond. David walked to the end of the porch and
-studied the clouds for a little before he came back.
-
-“I was afraid this storm would spoil the drive you promised me
-yesterday,—” he began.
-
-Caro’s eyes sparkled.
-
-“You need not resort to the weather as an excuse,” she said, “I don’t
-want to go at all.”
-
-David stared, and a slow color burned under his tanned skin. Then he
-looked half-amused.
-
-“Caro must have been having some kind of an extra tilt with Cousin
-Jason, Mammy Lil,” he said, “and she thinks I’m an old jay, too, and
-keeps ruffling her feathers at me.—I was about to say that the sun
-would be out inside of an hour, and by five o’clock the roads will be in
-the pink of condition. I’ll show you what Peggy can really do in the way
-of speed.”
-
-“I told you I don’t want to go,” said Caro, angrily.
-
-“I beg pardon,” said David easily; “you told me you would go. I couldn’t
-possibly be mistaken.”
-
-I was looking at Caro in open-eyed amazement. She had never spoken to
-David that way in her life—nor to any one since she had ceased to be a
-child. She caught my look, and colored deeply. Then she cuddled her face
-against mine so that neither David nor I could see it.
-
-“Dear Mammy Lil, don’t look as if you didn’t know me,” she said, with a
-sudden little catch in her voice; “I’ve always told you I’m hateful, and
-you won’t believe it; when I convince you, don’t quit loving me.”
-
-“You silly child,” I answered, patting the red-brown coil of curls;
-“I’ll never quit loving you, whether I’m dead or alive. But I was afraid
-you weren’t well.”
-
-She laughed and pecked my cheek.
-
-“I’m well as ever was.—Have Peggy ready, David: I’d like to go sixty
-miles an hour.—Oh, dear, I’m losing all my hairpins!”
-
-She wasn’t at all. But she caught her hair with both hands, and vanished
-through one of the long windows. David looked after her with the set
-look which I had learned to know when he was little more than a baby.
-Then he, too, kissed me, and walked away, after putting the stand with
-my bell and a plate of biscuits on it close beside me.
-
-I lay there puzzled and troubled. The rain stopped presently, and I
-crumbled the biscuits and flung them out on the grass, watching the
-birds idly.
-
-Promptly at five David drove round with Peggy, his favorite mare, her
-beautiful head held as high as Caro’s own, and as free from torments of
-check-rein and blinders. She shone like satin, and stepped with a proud
-consciousness of her own worth and her master’s confidence in her. David
-sat chatting with me during the ten minutes Caro kept him waiting. She
-had on the pale green lawn when she came out, and a most fetching hat
-which she had herself concocted to go with it. I beheld her adornment
-with dismay. The lawn was more lace than lawn, and I knew she had
-planned it for what she called a “partyfied” dress. She usually went
-driving with David bareheaded, and in whatever garments she happened to
-have on. Her finery boded him no good; and I realized with a sinking
-heart that if I had had the wit to keep my astonishment out of my face
-she would have stuck to her first refusal, and the drive would have been
-postponed to a more auspicious day. David was riding to disaster—and I
-had opened the way.
-
-It was almost dark when they came home, and I had been back in bed for
-some time. Caro came in looking distractingly pretty, and sweeter than a
-naughty child should. I knew by the lavish bounty of her caresses that
-she had treated David very badly indeed, and was torn between a desire
-to take her in my arms and get the whole story out of her, and a wish to
-set her in the corner till she should return to her normal state of
-mind. But I remembered what I had promised David months ago, and
-repressed my itch to meddle. She had always confided in me before, and
-unless she did now I must be dumb.
-
-David, I did not see until morning. He had brought Caro home and had
-returned at once to Chatterton, sending me word he had an engagement and
-would not be at home until after I was asleep. It was after midnight
-when I heard him come in. This morning he came to my room as usual, but
-his eyes looked as if he had not slept. I pretended to see nothing,
-because he wished it.—But what had happened to Caro? If she had been at
-Cousin Jane’s I might have suspected some mischief-making; but she went
-only to Grace’s. Whatever caused the change, it goes deep. She has been
-in her own room all day, and I have not even heard her sing.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 12th._ Caro has left us and gone to Cousin Jane’s—gone there to
-live. She went day before yesterday, and I have felt too stunned to
-think.
-
-She stayed in her room all day, except at lunch time, and came out late
-in the afternoon, looking white and tired, but with that same danger
-signal in her eyes. I was under the maple, and she sat on the stool
-beside my cot.
-
-“Mammy Lil,” she began, with a forced lightness, as though she spoke
-only of trifles, “I’ve been packing my traps today. You’re so much
-better now, you don’t really need me all the time, and I think I ought
-to go to Cousin Jane. Cousin Chad’s my real guardian, you know; and
-they’ve been awfully good about lending me to you when you were so
-sick.”
-
-I felt blinded at first by the blow. “Lending” me Caro—when she had
-never stayed a whole month together away from me since she was seven
-years old, except for the years at boarding school! My head swam, and
-there was such a roaring in my ears I couldn’t hear all she said. She
-wasn’t looking at me, but her voice went on with the foolish words, till
-I pulled myself together.
-
-“Has Cousin Jane been trying to make you think it’s your duty to go and
-wait on her, Caro, after you’ve grown up in this, your real home? She
-doesn’t need you, child; there’s no call for such a sacrifice.”
-
-“She hasn’t said a word about needing me,” protested Caro. “I just think
-I ought to go.”
-
-“Are you sure—forgive me, dearie—but do you really think she wants you
-there to live—for always?”
-
-“I telephoned her this morning. I’m sure she’s delighted. She does love
-me,—only it’s in her queer way.”
-
-“Caro—” I said, and stopped. We had lived in her and for her so many
-years. I could not suggest that she owed us anything. The tears came to
-my eyes, but I held them back.
-
-“Dear,” I went on, “I’ve never tried to force your confidence, and I
-can’t now. Something is wrong, I know—some trifle, probably, that a
-little honest frankness would set right. But I know when we are young we
-come to a place where we must manage our own affairs, no matter how we
-bungle them or how many hearts we break; it’s the way we all learn at
-times. But darling, remember that my love waits to help you, if you ever
-want its service. And, whatever you do, Caro, don’t do it in anger like
-a child. It is the mark of a woman to walk in love, and to serve love
-only, even where she must give the deepest hurt.”
-
-She sat looking across the hills, only her profile toward me, but I saw
-her lip quiver. She dropped her head on my shoulder and snuggled her
-face under my chin.
-
-“You’re the sweetest mammy! You know I love you—more than ever I did in
-my life. And I’m coming to see you so often you’ll think I’m living
-here. But I’m sure I ought to go. There’s the buggy now; Cousin Jane
-said she’d send it over. My trunk is all ready; she’ll send for that,
-too. I thought I’d rather you’d tell Daddy Jack and David good-bye for
-me. Won’t you let me take you back to the house first?”
-
-“No,” I said; “David will help me, and your Daddy Jack. It isn’t time
-yet.”
-
-She caught her breath a little, kissed me with a sorry effort at
-playfulness, and went towards the buggy. I watched it driving out the
-gate to the pike.
-
-Neither David nor the Peon came, and after awhile Josie came out to say
-that “Mr. John” had telephoned he would have to spend the night in the
-city. She wheeled me to the porch, and I was back in bed before David
-came in. I was thankful for once that the Peon was away.
-
-David went to his solitary dinner, and then sat by me in the twilight,
-stroking my hand.
-
-“What struck Caro to go off again?” he asked, in a tone he tried hard to
-make casual. “Josie says she told her she was off for a visit.”
-
-“She went to Cousin Jane’s—went to stay, I mean. She’ll change her mind
-in a few days, I suppose. She has been upset for a day or two.”
-
-“To Cousin Jane’s—to stay?” he repeated in bewilderment. “And left you
-here—like this?” he added in indignant unbelief.
-
-“Dear, something drove her. She’s unhappy about something—there’s some
-mistake: and the need to keep it to herself is on her. It makes me
-feel—oh, Davy, boy, I’ve always thought I was a real mother to you
-children; but I’m only the best substitute for a mother you’ve known. If
-I were truly Caro’s mother—if I had done all I thought I was doing—the
-child would have told me. You are both suffering for nothing—because I
-failed.”
-
-He bent his cheek to mine.
-
-“You’ve never failed in anything, sweetest mother in the world. And Caro
-loves you just as I do—I’d swear it. Sometimes you can’t help hurting
-the people you love best. I—I’m hurting you myself; and I can’t help
-it. I’d give my right hand to help it; but I can’t—yet.”
-
-“There’s no need, Davy, dear,” I said steadily, glad that the dark had
-fallen to curtain my eyes. “Don’t try to be anything with me, or to say
-anything, but what is natural and right to you. The one thing I couldn’t
-get over, dear, would be your playing a part with me. I understand; and
-I can wait—a life-time, if you wish.”
-
-He kissed my hand, and sat there till the moon rose over the eastern
-hills and strewed the lawn with shadows. A mocking-bird stirred in his
-sleep and sang softly to himself. I could not speak. I lay straining my
-eyes through the dark to see his face, but it was all in the shadow. He
-rose to go at last, and, before I knew it, unbidden words had risen from
-some subconscious depth and uttered themselves through my lips.
-
-“David,” I said, with a sudden, foolish up-lift of my heart, “I’m going
-to be walking all about by Thanksgiving; and before the year is out I
-will help with my own hands to decorate this house for your and Caro’s
-wedding. I don’t know how I know it; but I do!”
-
-“Amen,” said David solemnly. “Mammy Lil, you’re a corker when it comes
-to prophesying. Keep up the habit; it’s sure comforting; and you always
-could see further through a stone wall than anybody else.”
-
-He had—or feigned—more faith in my prophecy than I had myself. I felt
-like a fool who has published his folly to the world. And as I lay
-there, tearless and sleepless the long night through, I had no hope for
-David, and only a dull anguish at thought of the girl I had called my
-daughter so long.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 13th._ The world is all in a mist this morning as the sky blossoms
-above the eastern hills. The wren sings first, bringing the tears for
-which my lids have burned all night. A cardinal calls somewhere—_Cheer!
-Cheer!_—no, it is a mocking-bird, for his own notes bubble out after
-his cardinal call, before he wanders into a thrasher’s song, repeating
-his notes as carefully as “the wise thrush” himself. There he is, on the
-topmost twig of that mist-dimmed oak. He has tuned his voice to the
-oriole’s carol now, but again his own notes bubble through. Now he
-scolds like an angry wren, following the tirade with harsh cries and the
-blackbird’s censorious _tsck!_ Then he slips into a catbird melody—a
-jumble of music, jeering, and captious squawks. Gradually the music
-overflows all else. Clearer and sweeter grow the notes, slow, soft, and
-wondrous pure. His head is thrown up in rapture while the flood of
-melody rises and swells till it sweeps him bodily into air. He opens his
-mist-gray wings and tail, spreading to the light the gleaming white of
-the in-folded feathers, and rises through the vapors to clearer air,
-singing as one to whom all mists are crystal clearness, all darkness as
-the light. He trembles at the height an instant, poised above the
-vapor-shrouded earth, while his song floats upward to the heaven of
-which it speaks,—a blending of calm and rapture, of aspiration and
-peace. Back to his perch he falls, still singing, content with earth as
-with heaven, and rises once again, to poise an instant, to fall, to
-rise, again and yet again.
-
-It is the Song of the Open Vision. Haunting, appealing, alluring, the
-rapturous notes search the listener’s heart to draw response from every
-memory of mist-drenched darkness dissolved in growing light.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 14th._ The Peon is the comfort of my life. I dreaded telling him
-about Caro, and behold, he knew all about it!
-
-Cousin Chad had been in town and came out on the same train with him
-yesterday afternoon. He couldn’t refrain from crowing a little about
-Caro and his dear Jane—so capable and sensible, so equal to every
-emergency. And it was her doing, after all: I know she never intended
-for me to know it. But she met Caro in the road on her way back from
-Grace’s that day, and made the child go by home with her. Then she—to
-quote Cousin Chad—“was able to make her see the indelicacy of her
-establishing herself in the same house with a young man whom gossips
-were accusing her of trying to capture!” The Peon at this point
-expressed polite dissent from Cousin Chad’s approval of his wife’s
-tactful performance; and my pious relative waxed righteously indignant,
-and assumed the air of a protector of the defenceless orphan. Whereupon
-the Peon took refuge in his paper and Cousin Chad simmered in that
-condemnatory silence of his which always seemed to me worse than any
-possible swear-words.
-
-But the Peon doesn’t feel at all upset about Caro and David; the only
-thing that troubles him is that I should be left alone again during the
-day. So far as David is concerned, the Peon thinks Caro would never have
-gone if she hadn’t cared for him, to some extent, at least, in the way
-Cousin Jane accused her of doing—which is certainly reasonable enough.
-And as to her loving David and yet treating him as I’m sure she did, the
-Peon begs me to remember some rather cold-blooded performances of my own
-in our courting days.
-
-“Do you remember the night after Jessie Martin’s wedding?” he demanded.
-“After that night, and your marrying me six months later, I lost my
-faith in a girl’s ‘no.’ If I had it to go over again, I’d not lose a
-night’s sleep on account of it, my lady: and so I told David as he drove
-me home from the station.”
-
-“Oh, you told him, then?”
-
-“I did. And I told him to give Caro plenty of rope, and your Cousin Jane
-would soon hang herself with it.”
-
-“What did he say?”
-
-“Not much of anything. He seems to think Mrs. Grackle only furnished the
-occasion for Caro’s real feeling toward him to come to the front. He’s
-pretty sore, I imagine. But don’t you worry your dear head. Lovers would
-miss half the fun of the game if they couldn’t be drowned in misery now
-and then. Just let them alone and let them get all that’s coming to
-them. They’ll work through it somehow, and straighten it out to their
-perfect satisfaction when they get ready—and not before.”
-
-“You didn’t let it alone,” I said reproachfully.
-
-“No,” he said; “that’s why I’m so well posted about the course to
-pursue. I’ve done all that’s necessary myself.”
-
-His eyes laughed a little, and I laughed back. Maybe I was a true
-prophet after all. Anyway, I musn’t look like a graveyard just because
-we’re all lonesome, and David is so quiet as he comes and goes. And if
-I’m not to look like a graveyard, the best way is not to feel like one.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 17th._ Things are happening so fast they make my head swim. David
-is gone, too; and I feel like an old hen who has raised a pair of wild
-geese and seen them go flying out of sight in opposite directions.
-
-He fixed it all with the Peon before he said a word to me. Then he sat
-by my cot, with those coaxing ways of his—I knew some kind of a wrench
-was coming. He wanted to go out to Washington and take charge of the
-Peon’s apple orchard there and finish planting the land. He’d been
-thinking of it for some time. The only reason he hesitated about going
-was the leaving me alone: but I needed Caro more than I needed him; and
-if he went—.
-
-“But oh, my dear, I don’t!” I cried. “You are my first, my best of
-children! And as for having Caro—I’ll have her when the time comes of
-which I told you the other night. I don’t want her before.”
-
-“Then you’d rather I wouldn’t go?” he asked, trying to keep the
-disappointment out of his voice. “You’ve had such an awful pull, little
-mother, and been so brave about it: and I know Caro and I helped to
-drain the life out of you before you went away. I’ll stay if you want me
-to.” He bent his head above my hand, and I saw his mouth was set.
-
-“I’d not hold you a minute, boy,” I said; “distance can’t separate us.
-I’ve never been separated from you yet, and never will be while you love
-me. It isn’t your being near me that I want: it’s your emancipation,
-through life, into freedom of life. The more living you do, the closer
-we’ll come together, though the living be done on the other side of the
-globe. When would you like to start?”
-
-“Tonight?” he said, inquiringly.
-
-“Tonight,” I answered. “And the farm here?”
-
-“Uncle Milton knows what to do. And I’ve made Uncle Jack a schedule to
-follow. It will be all right.”
-
-“And you’re going for how long?”
-
-“Forever and a day. Tell Caro so.”
-
-“Very well,” I said, “I’ll tell Caro forever and a day. But what shall I
-tell this old lady who loves you so?”
-
-“Tell her I’ll come at the drop of a hat or the click of a telegraph,
-day or night, whenever she wants me—forever and a day. And Mammy
-Lil—what’s the use of talking? You understand.”
-
-He pushed his head up under my hand as a signal that one of the rare
-pettings was in order: and presently he picked me up in his strong arms
-and carried me to his room, where I lay on the bed and watched him pack
-his trunk in utter defiance of all known principles of the art.
-
-He found some comfort in doing it, too. His face shows care and lack of
-sleep, but he whistled a bit as he dropped his shooting boots on the
-bosom of a shirt, and made a soft place for the butt of his gun with a
-felt hat. He isn’t entirely hopeless about the outcome, no matter how
-miserable he is: it is poor little Caro who will get the heaviest end of
-the mischief Cousin Jane’s meddling has produced. And that thick-headed,
-thick-skinned old Pharisee will go scot free herself. Oh, dear! I’d like
-to be good! But it is such a strenuous undertaking with Cousin Jane in
-the family: St. John himself couldn’t manage it; and I never was cut out
-for a saint.
-
-
-
-
-                                   IX
-                          THE PROOF OF COURAGE
-
-
-_May 20th._ Caro did not come back until yesterday, though she called
-the Peon up daily to ask how I was and to send her love. She did not
-allude to David, and the Peon volunteered no information. But yesterday
-she dashed in at the gate, driving like a young Jehu, flung the reins to
-Uncle Milton, who was at work among the roses at the other end of the
-house, and came flying across the lawn to my cot.
-
-“Oh, Mammy Lil, are you all alone? Has David really gone—to stay, I
-mean?”
-
-I told her his plans.
-
-She sat on the edge of the cot, her head held high, her eyes sparkling.
-
-“It’s a shame!” she exclaimed indignantly; “how could he have the heart
-to leave you so?”
-
-I looked at her quizzically. I had been feeling rather forlorn; but
-suddenly the comical side of my woes presented itself, as it so kindly
-and so often does, and I wanted to laugh.
-
-“Who ran first?” I inquired.
-
-She flushed to the roots of her curly hair and slipped to the grass
-beside me, her pretty head on my shoulder.
-
-“We’re pigs, both of us,” she averred contritely. “But, Mammy Lil, David
-is the worst pig. He really could have stayed: and I—couldn’t. Anyway,
-I’m glad he’s gone; it’s just about the decentest thing he’s done.”
-
-“You are a consistent child,” I observed, stroking her hair; “but, Caro
-dear, I’m not accustomed to hearing David criticized from the standpoint
-of decency, and we won’t begin now. And I wanted him to go very much.”
-
-“Well, anyway, I can come back. I’ll never leave you here by yourself.
-I’ll go back and pack up this evening, and come home first thing in the
-morning.”
-
-I shook my head. I had been thinking about it all these long, lonesome
-days. They are both my children, but David has the first right to our
-home; and with Caro installed here he will not come back to it. Besides,
-it isn’t fair. And if they will fight at cross-purposes we must all take
-the consequences together. I know I am rather a dishevelled shuttle-cock
-to do duty between their clashing wills; but they will have to have it
-out, now that they have begun it. And if that hard-hearted little sinner
-came back here, she’d convince herself in no time that David is the
-sinner and she is the one and only saint. It never did take long for
-staying at Cousin Jane’s to pall on Caro; and she’ll probably see things
-from various points of view before she concludes her experiment.
-
-Poor little soul, she cried dreadfully. She even tried to work on my
-sympathies by telling me how Cousin Jane serves up Bob White’s
-perfections morning, noon, and night. This was welcome news to me, and
-helped me to disguise the very fluid condition of my supposedly hard
-heart. I must confess we both cried before she went back: but Caro owned
-it was fair.
-
-I feel like a yellow dog, of course. One always does when one stands for
-a painful justice—it’s part of the job. I felt the same shame when she
-was a little thing and I let her bite the red pepper she snatched in the
-garden the minute I told her not to touch it. It burns my own mouth to
-this day. But Caro never snatched against orders again.
-
-And there’s no sense in listening to Grumpy’s prophecies. Where is the
-pleasure of growing old if one can’t learn to distil from one’s
-experiences the essential oil of hope? When the Peon and I fell out,
-hopelessly, desperately, eternally, about six months before we were
-married, I was just a young thing, and quite pardonable in my belief
-that my life was ruined forever by the cataclysm. But from the
-vantage-ground of twenty-odd years of additional living I should be able
-to detect the flimsiness of the average impenetrable barrier. I don’t
-think Caro cares for any one else, at least; and if they’re not meddled
-with they’ll work it out their own way, which must be the best way for
-the Peon and me. And if he and I can’t enjoy ourselves very much just
-now, why, we don’t want to when the children are miserable; so that’s
-all right, of course.
-
-As to their misery, I have at least come far enough in life myself to
-know that it has—or will have—its mitigations. I never yet have been
-in a hole—and heaven knows life has been a procession of holes these
-last years—that I didn’t get out of it with some added capacity of
-living that made being in holes worth while. Why should I begrudge the
-children their own hole-adventures and discoveries, their own enrichment
-of life?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 22nd._ The Peon comes home early these days and takes me out for a
-ride. I can sit in my chair or lie down at will; and he wheels me over
-the soft grass to all the places I’ve been longing to see and have only
-beheld in Make-Believe. We go down to the brook nearly every day about
-sunset and watch the birds quenching their thirst before bedtime. There
-are many song sparrows down there; and the killdeers haunt the banks at
-all time, whirring up when startled with wild cries, their breasts and
-lifted wings flashing snow-white beneath, and the rich salmon of the
-lower back gleaming as they rise from the valley into the level sunlight
-along the brow of the hill. The Peon flattens my chair to a couch, and
-throws himself on the grass or sits on the roots of a sycamore, while we
-talk of all the years that the children have been growing up with us,
-and of what the future is to bring. We are both very strenuously
-cheerful. And indeed, in our hearts, we do hope honestly to have them
-both at home again some day. Only it seems rather a long way off
-sometimes; and the house is so very quiet when we go back.
-
-Sometimes we go back to the spot we picked out years ago as the one
-where we thought David might like to build his home some day; for though
-we always hoped to have him with us, we never wanted to rob him of a
-home of his own. We had never said to one another that we hoped for Caro
-to make the home for him—to put it into words seemed to infringe on
-their right to settle that great matter, each to their own heart’s wish:
-but we had hoped it without words. We go there now, and hope for it
-openly, bridging our separation with happy dreams, and comforting one
-another with assurances it is not always easy to feel.
-
-David has not been long enough at his journey’s end for a letter mailed
-there to reach us; but it seems as if he had been gone for months. And
-poor little Caro looks so wistful when she starts back to Cousin Jane’s
-that I feel as though I have been turning her out of doors for the most
-of my life. It is really not to be borne very much longer. The Peon’s
-sister wants us to go to her next month, at her summer home in the
-mountains of Pennsylvania; and Caro will have to come home in time to
-get me ready. We can spend the summer together, at least.
-
-But before I go I want to see plainer sailing for Milly and Bobolink, as
-Caro disrespectfully styles Mr. Lincoln. Grace was here for a little
-while today to tell me good-bye. She is off to stay with George’s mother
-while the old lady’s daughter takes a trip. Milly was with her, and
-promised to come back soon. She said she wanted to talk to me, and from
-the anxious air with which she said it, I’m hoping she is seriously
-thinking of turning on that jay-bird uncle of hers and teaching him a
-few of the things he needs to learn.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 25th._ A golden day, after a night of drenching rain. The sky is
-like October, and under it the winds are at play. And why, when sunshine
-fills the world, should one suffer one’s eyes to be blinded to it by any
-mote of pain or trouble held close enough to shut out all the light? I
-will keep mine at arm’s length, if I die for it, and see around it and
-over it, yes, and through it, into this beautiful, wonderful world! If
-one’s feet can’t travel, aren’t one’s eyes an open road of escape?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 27th._ Three sleepless nights, a dead weight of weariness,
-loneliness to the heart’s core, and pain that wrings the flesh—these
-are among Grumpy’s stock-in-trade this morning, and he flaunts them and
-a dozen other things, wherever I turn my thoughts. He has heaped up,
-mountain high, the things I want and can’t have; and there he sits,
-grinning at the void they leave in my idle, useless life. I must fill
-that hole, or go under. What have I left?
-
-First, the Peon’s love, and the children’s, and that of my friends.
-Love: and the Love from which love came. By the time all that is stowed
-away in the void, it has rather a “gone” look about it—for a void. And
-Grumpy’s grin has a tuck in it.
-
-Then a sense of humor—the most blessed thing, save love itself, ever
-given to human kind. It keeps one sane and balanced where without it one
-would go mad. A source of justice it is, a bond of sympathy, a destroyer
-of egotism, a solace in suffering, a staff to courage, an open door of
-escape from all that is unbearable in life.
-
-Next, the power to hold my tongue when things hurt, and to keep the
-whine out of my voice when I’m nothing but whine inside.
-
-There are love, laughter, and silence; and as void-fillers they go a
-long way. But there are other things for the chinks. For I can read a
-little and write a little, and think a little, as against the black
-idleness of those three years. And beauty—wind in the tree-tops, the
-arching blue, the flicker of light and shade—beauty everywhere, in
-fact; and back of beauty the Thought that designed both it and the eyes
-to see it. Oh, it is a beautiful world! And though one’s body lies idle,
-one’s thoughts may go everywhere, and are everywhere at home. And may
-not endurance itself, however passive, yet rise to the point of
-achievement, if only one endure in the right way? And if liberty be
-measured by one’s capacity to do without—oh, how can any walls of
-suffering shut one in when the way up is always open—up, to the
-presence of God?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 28th._ Whenever I think I’ve overcome a temptation, and can afford
-to rest, something else comes pouncing and catches me napping. This time
-it was Cousin Jane. I’m not a bit sorry I sent her home—it was high
-time for her to go. But I needn’t have been so blazing mad when I did
-it.
-
-She hasn’t been near me for ages, but she came at last, exactly when she
-very specially should have kept away. So as I lay there on the porch
-sofa—for I couldn’t get out in the yard this week—I heard the familiar
-pile-driver tread, and opened my eyes to behold her at the corner of the
-porch, personified virtue, somewhat overheated by the afternoon sun, and
-looking rather limp about the collar. But there was nothing limp about
-her stolid mouth, nor in her hard black eyes. She had come for a
-purpose, and was not displeased to think I wouldn’t enjoy it.
-
-I’ve been afraid of Cousin Jane all my life. I used to run at the sound
-of her voice when I was a child at Cedarhurst. More than once I have
-been gently, but firmly, extracted from a closet by Great-aunt Letitia,
-and led to her presence to perform the rites required by politeness to
-even the most unpleasant kin. Somehow it all came back to me—the
-childish, unreasoning fear. I was so weak, the pain so biting sharp; I
-could not bear unkindness, too. I turned my head toward the long windows
-with a wild thought of escape; but when my heart is like this, I can
-scarcely walk, and I could never have reached my room. Besides, she
-would come after me: so I made a virtue of necessity and lifted my hand.
-She saved me the trouble of speaking.
-
-“Good land alive, Lyddy! Are you mopin’ around yet, makin’ out like
-you’re half dead? I wonder John Bird doesn’t go crazy! I heard you were
-rompin’ all over the place, throwin’ the birds enough biscuit to feed
-all the poor folks in town, if you only had religion enough to think
-about them instead of your own silly whims.”
-
-She came close and settled herself heavily in the Peon’s chair, waving
-her fan vigorously. She reached across me to the stand on the other
-side, and rang my bell sharply. Josie appeared at once.
-
-“Go draw me some fresh water, straight out of the well,” she commanded.
-It was one of her hobbies to ignore the Peon’s water system, and to
-assume that we depended on a well and a windlass, as she boasted that
-she still did herself.
-
-“Wouldn’t you rather have a glass of lemonade?” I inquired. “And bring
-some wafers, Josie.”
-
-Josie’s mother makes wonderful old-time wafers, as thin as paper and as
-crisp as frosty air. They are beautifully rolled, and melt in one’s
-mouth: no other cook in the county can achieve them. Cousin Jane ate the
-entire plateful, and her manner, as she turned to me once more, was a
-shade less like that of a regiment charging a redoubt.
-
-“What did David go off for?” she demanded. “Have you and John Bird
-turned him loose? I can’t get a thing out of Caroline, and I know
-something’s wrong somewhere. What is it?”
-
-“He went to look after some business,” I said.
-
-“Oh, you can tell that to the neighbors that ain’t kin,” she said
-scornfully. “I want to know what’s wrong. He’s done somethin’, I know,
-an’ Caroline’s ashamed of it. I can’t get a thing out of her, but she’s
-a changed girl. An’ more than that, she’s standin’ in her own light.
-She’s that flighty an’ cross Bob White looks like he don’t know what to
-make of it. Men ain’t goin’ to stand too much foolishness, an’ first
-news you know, Caroline can’t get him if she wants him. I’m talkin’
-plain, but it’s time.”
-
-“Why don’t you talk to Caro?” I suggested.
-
-“Good land, Lyddy, do you reckon I ain’t? But it’s like water on a
-duck’s back—in one ear and out the other. An’ besides”—with a sudden
-deep craft in her beady eyes—“you have to be careful with girls—at
-least, a person with tact does. I don’t come right out with things to
-Caroline, like you would. But I just thought I’d get together all the
-things David’s been doin’ an’ lay ’em before her. I don’t suppose you
-let her know the half of it, whatever it was. Was it somethin’ about
-money, or has he been getting into fast ways, drinkin’, or playin’
-cards, or—worse? I always knew he would get into mischief sooner or
-later—he pretends to be so steady: I’ve just been waitin’ for it to
-come. Why, what’s the matter, Lyddy? What do you want?”
-
-I sat straight up and rang the bell. Josie ran out.
-
-“Get me my chair, Josie, quick,” I said. She whirled it to my side, and
-I stepped in unaided.
-
-“Take me to my room,” I told her, “and leave me there while you tell
-Uncle Milton to get Mrs. Grackle’s buggy and to open the gate for her.
-She is going home at once. Then come back and help me to bed. Do not
-come back until I send for you, Cousin Jane: I am not well.”
-
-She stared at me, speechless and apoplectic, and as Josie arranged my
-pillows I saw her driving between the cedars. And above all my anger
-about David and my consciousness that Great-aunt Letitia would be
-ashamed of me, above the weakness, and above the tearing, throbbing
-pain, is the exhilaration of knowing that for once in my life I wasn’t
-afraid of Cousin Jane. I never will be afraid of her again!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_May 31st._ Trying all one’s life to see things from other peoples’
-point of view has this advantage in sickness: it helps one to stand
-apart from the suffering and to look at it from without, even when
-whelmed in it, and almost overwhelmed. One sees it as if it were someone
-else’s sickness, taking the long view of it, as a doctor does. He is
-sorry for the pain, of course; he knows it is bad. But he expects it.
-And he expects the backsets, and the blues, and the
-can-I-ever-get-wells, and all the rest of it. Those things are part of
-the process of recovery, and do not affect the final outcome. Once past
-a certain point, the road leads inevitably to one sure goal; the
-windings in and out don’t count, nor the ups and downs; one is advancing
-all the time. Now, if a doctor, who doesn’t need it, can get that
-comfort out of my aches and pains, why shouldn’t I get it, who need it
-so much?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 1st._ Out under the maple again today, and the stars in their
-courses fighting for me! And why, when a miracle like this happens for
-Milly and Bobolink, should I despair of David and Caro?
-
-Milly came to see me to have that long talk she spoke about. She had
-been telephoning every day to know when she could come, so I had Josie
-call her the moment I found I could go out. And just suppose I had been
-well enough yesterday—what a misfortune that would have been!
-
-She scattered the crumbs for me, and settled beside me to pour out what
-Caro calls “her uncle-ish woes;” and while she was doing it, the
-wood-thrush flew down, only to be shouldered away from the feast by a
-mannerless jay. Somehow it made me feel perfectly hopeless about Milly,
-poor little soft, sweet thing, and my eyes filled up with tears; but
-when I had winked them dry, the thrush went back. The jay pecked at him
-savagely, and he dashed half-way round the hydrangeas in terror. Milly
-saw him and caught her breath.
-
-“Uncle Jason _is_ like that,” she said, with a little catch in her
-voice; “and I can’t stand against him—I can’t! Don’t you see how
-helpless the thrush is, Cousin Lil?”
-
-But the thrush had stopped in mid-flight. His breast was puffed out like
-a tiny balloon, the trembling of his legs plain to be seen; he quivered
-from head to foot. But he turned slowly, his legs shaking under him, and
-hopped deliberately toward his tormentor, his head high, his swollen
-breast making a ruff of feathers visible on either side of his back. He
-went close to the jay and pecked toward him in the air. The jay,
-startled, gave back an inch. The thrush, still trembling, hopped nearer
-and pecked, as steadily as if his legs were in their normal condition.
-The bully backed again. The thrush hopped and pecked.
-
-Milly had leaned forward, her hand on mine. Her face was white and she
-was breathing quickly.
-
-The jay continued to back. The wood-thrush followed him, inch by inch,
-unyielding, yet in mortal fear. At last the big coward could stand it no
-longer. He spread his wings and vanished across the brook. The thrush
-stood trembling a moment, his feathers slowly flattening along his
-sides, and then returned quietly to his lunch. Milly rose, a new light
-in her soft eyes.
-
-“If he can, I can,” she said steadily. “I don’t need to talk any more,
-Cousin Lil: I’m going home and _do_.”
-
-
-
-
-                                   X
-                       THE ROUTING OF UNCLE JASON
-
-
-_June 2nd._ I’m afraid I haven’t inherited the family grace of
-hospitality; for the further I get from Cousin Jane’s visit the more
-glad I am that I sent her home. And it isn’t all on David’s account
-either, though I could never have done it but for what she said of him.
-Yet since it is done I remember her life-time disregard of the small
-courtesies of life. I wonder if it were not more cowardice in me than
-kindness that for so long I meekly allowed it, and thereby encouraged
-her, so far as lay in my power, to ride rough-shod over all the rules of
-politeness.
-
-I do believe that decent manners, even to one’s junior kinfolks, are an
-essential part of decent morals; one can commit as dastardly crimes with
-an ill-tempered tongue as with a lying one. And what right has she to
-plume herself on her frankness, as if that were a justification for such
-ill manners as cut the joy and fellowship of life at the root? I think
-our ideas of morals need standardizing, at least to the point where we
-can no longer, by bad temper and worse behavior, inflict misery at will
-on those about us, sowing on every side the seeds of anger or contempt,
-and yet remain a highly respected member of society and a shining light
-in the church.—Yet, after all, I’m making a deal of a pother about
-trifles. It is what we do ourselves that counts, not what is done to us.
-In the face of the void, at the land’s end, the hurts one has suffered
-will disappear; it is the hurts one has inflicted that will be lions in
-the way. And if I have really hurt Cousin Jane—well, when I’m a little
-stronger I’ll try my best to get straight with her. For the present, I
-am here in bed again, with the birds outside for company—and a visit
-from Caro to look forward to. She telephoned a while ago that she had
-been spending the night with Milly and would be over before lunch. So
-Cousin Jason hasn’t annihilated the child, at least.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 3rd._ Milly really did go home and begin. She went by for Caro
-yesterday afternoon on her way home, and they found Cousin Jason in a
-thunderous mood. Milly was quietly determined. He had left the breakfast
-table that morning in a temper, after his frequent fashion: and Milly,
-in her brand-new fashion, had refrained from running after him and
-imploring him to have pity on his poor head, and drink his coffee. He
-had fumed around on the porches for some time, waiting for her to take
-her cue, and had finally disappeared. He came back at eleven with a
-headache, slamming all the doors, notwithstanding, and demanded hot
-coffee at once. Milly, however, had forseen this contingency and
-prepared for it. The cook’s daughter was ill, and she had allowed her to
-go down there as soon as breakfast was over and stay until time to cook
-dinner. It was the housemaid’s regular day off, and she had already
-departed, not to return until the late afternoon. As Uncle Jason had
-ordered cold lunches for the summer, the girl had fixed everything for
-him, and left it in the refrigerator. Joe, the house man, would serve
-it. Milly herself, who was just leaving the house as her uncle came in,
-had an engagement in Chatterton for lunch and must hurry; but if he
-wanted coffee Joe could make a fire for him, though he could not brew
-any drinkable beverage. But Uncle Jason had always said he could make
-better coffee than her mother’s cooks, and it would take only a few
-minutes. It was too bad about the headache; he should have taken his
-coffee at breakfast. And Milly drove off, a vision of gentle serenity,
-and left him gasping in the hall.
-
-Caro went back with her in time for dinner. Milly had passed the pale
-stage and was in unwonted and most becoming excitement. Caro, of course,
-was enraptured with the whole situation. She is the only soul alive who
-ever held Cousin Jason in check; and now she infuriated him with her
-innocent remarks, and made him laugh the next moment in spite of
-himself, which made him more furious still. After dinner they retired to
-Milly’s room and discussed Bobolink’s perfections—and David’s, I
-wonder?—until the latest of late bedtimes.
-
-At breakfast Cousin Jason was more than crabbed; but he drank the last
-of his coffee, and made quite a hearty meal before pronouncing the very
-excellent waffles unfit for human consumption and slamming the
-dining-room door after him as he went out. Caro had then seen Milly off
-to the city, where she was to do a little shopping and “take a bobolink
-lunch,” and would go back to spend the night with her.
-
-Caro will stay there all the time Grace is away. She is in the highest
-of spirits over the prospect, not only because a battle with Cousin
-Jason has been one of her life-long desires; but because she is more
-than weary of Cousin Jane, and her blunderbuss manner of forcing
-conversation anent Bob White. Caro won’t say much about it—for fear, I
-devoutly hope, that I may draw inferences in David’s favor; but she is
-unconcealably bored with Bob, and his money, and his pedigree and
-connections, clear back to Noah. I doubt if the boy ever had a chance
-with her; but if he had—or would have had without Cousin Jane’s
-disastrous approval of him—it is only a might-have-been henceforth. I
-feel a little sorry for him, but not much. He was crazy about Olive
-Wilson last year, and will be crazy about somebody else before long.
-He’s one of those fellows who find a pretty girl a necessary adjunct to
-life, and if one can’t be had, he will cheerfully and whole-heartedly
-look for another. When he gets her, he will settle down with her
-contentedly, and make a devoted and exemplary spouse.
-
-Of course I keep David posted. And of course he wants me to. But he
-never alludes to Caro in his letters, which are long and interesting,
-and determinedly cheerful. The little sinner asks for them unblushingly
-every time she comes over, and is delighted that “dear David” is
-enjoying himself so, and is so in love with the West. She is
-ostentatiously fond of him, in a lofty, elder-sisterly manner, and makes
-frequent inquiries about his health, which appears to be unromantically
-robust. I cannot see the slightest change in her, except for a
-wistfulness in her pretty eyes, when she has to say good-bye and go
-away; and sometimes a fleeting quiver in her smile when she finds me
-back in bed, as she has done so often of late. I am glad we are to leave
-together soon, for I can scarcely bear this continual sending her away.
-I don’t think she can mind going, busy and active as she is, as I mind
-having her go. I really am a very old lady to be so upset with youthful
-love affairs: I’m positively decrepit. But if one will have the fun of
-having children, I suppose one must pay the piper sometimes.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 6th._ I think I am learning the art of living; and isn’t that
-worth a bit of pain? It is to discover the best in the present moment,
-though it be no larger than a needle in a haystack, and getting the good
-of it while one has it. One can relax one’s mind by force of will, and
-hold it open to small pleasures and tiny interests; and such little
-things may become one’s salvation in desperate straits! I think that is
-one of life’s greatest needs, especially as one grows older, or if one
-is ill—that one should guard and cherish the capacity for enjoyment of
-trifles. It is to the soul what elasticity of the arteries is to the
-body; for through it the currents of our thoughts and feelings run in
-swift and wholesome tides, to the upbuilding of the inner life.
-
-And there’s always something. Though the children have run away, I have
-the birds.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 7th._ Milly has crossed her Rubicon, sure enough. I was propped up
-in bed yesterday evening, with my tray before me, and the Peon was
-eating his dinner from a flower-garnished table beside me, when there
-came a sudden gust of laughter in the hall, and a moment later she and
-Caro came in the room.
-
-“Oh, Mammy Lil, won’t you please give us something to eat?” Caro
-besought. “Just a bite of your fried chicken, Daddy Jack, for two
-beautiful damsels in distress; and a pinch of oats or something for a
-poor little pin-feathered bird we’ve got in the hall that’s most mad
-enough to chew nails—or would be if he were not a saint.”
-
-“Mr. Lincoln is in the parlor, Cousin John,” said Milly. “We don’t want
-any dinner, of course—he’s going back to town in a few minutes; he just
-drove us over from home. We want to stay all night—Caro and I.”
-
-The Peon was already in the hall. Milly looked wonderfully pretty, with
-that light in her eyes, and a soft color in her cheeks, like fire behind
-a pearl.
-
-“Indeed we do want dinner!” exclaimed Caro. “Come along and help me
-forage. There’s no use in Bobolink’s going back. He can stay at the
-hotel in Chatterton tonight, and get back in plenty of time for his
-business in the morning.—Poor Mammy Lil! We’re not telling you a thing;
-but I’ll come back in a minute with the whole tale, as soon as I get
-dinner started.”
-
-She dropped a kiss on the end of my nose—her favorite spot for such
-attentions—and went out, drawing Milly after her. I heard them in the
-dining-room with the servants, and then Caro’s gay voice in the parlor a
-moment; and then she came back to me. She picked a drumstick from the
-Peon’s dish, and sat on my bed gnawing it, joyfully reminiscent of her
-recent adventures.
-
-“Mammy Lil,” she began impressively, “jay-baiting is the grandest sport
-ever invented. Milly doesn’t appreciate the fun of it as much as she
-might, but she’s dead game; and I’ve been having the time of my life.”
-
-“It’s too bad that Mr. Lincoln couldn’t have been kept free from it,
-dear. How did that happen?”
-
-“Why, that wasn’t our fault at all. He often comes out in the afternoon
-and takes Milly out in his car. Then he goes to the hotel in Chatterton
-for supper, and comes back for the evening. He hardly ever sees Cousin
-Jay, and when he does, there’s never been any trouble since that time
-Milly told you about; she’s made him leave at half-past nine ever since.
-
-“They came back early from their drive because I was to be there, and he
-stopped for a little visit before dinner. He doesn’t stop usually—they
-stay out till the last minute; and Cousin Jay just jumped to the
-conclusion Milly had asked him to dinner. We have been teaching Cousin
-Jay to eat all the breakfast he wants before he leaves the table, and
-one or two other things, too. If he’s too horrid at dinner we go to our
-room afterward, and leave him all the evening with nobody to quarrel at.
-And I suppose he just meant to get even. He came out and told Milly and
-me to go in the house and get ready for dinner, for he was tired of
-waiting for us. And then he turned around to Mr. Lincoln—he hadn’t
-spoken to him at all—and said, ‘It’s time for you to be going, young
-man, and you needn’t come back after supper. I’m tired of your hanging
-around here.’ And then he turned on his heel and walked to the house.
-Oh, I was so mad I could hear my hair crackle! Just feel how crisped-up
-and woolly it is.”
-
-She bent forward on the bed and pushed her soft curls under my hand,
-burrowing her nose in the covers.
-
-“What did Mr. Lincoln do?”
-
-“Just behaved like an angel. He didn’t have a thought but for Milly. He
-forgot all about me, and spoke to her as if they were alone. Mammy Lil,
-that man’s sweet. He’ll do for Milly, and I told him so afterwards. But
-Milly was a perfect joy. She gave Bobolink one adoring look. It went to
-my very toes, so I don’t know what it did to him; and then she said, in
-the quietest way:
-
-“Won’t you stay here for a few minutes and wait for me? I’m coming
-back.”
-
-“And he said he’d wait till doomsday, of course! and she took my hand
-without a word, and into the house we went. It wasn’t nearly dinner
-time. We went by the back way, and she stopped in the kitchen long
-enough to tell Jule she wouldn’t be home for several days, and what to
-do for Cousin Jason. Then we went upstairs and packed a couple of
-suitcases, and I called Joe to take them down stairs. We all went down
-the front way, and there he was in the hall.”
-
-“‘What the deuce are you doing?’ he snapped.
-
-“‘I’m going out of this house,’ said Milly, as quietly as if she’d said
-she were going out on the porch; ‘and I’m not coming back till you learn
-your place in it.’
-
-“‘I reckon you’ll learn some sense when your mother comes home,’ he
-sneered. ‘Go play the fool if you want to.’
-
-“Milly didn’t seem to hear him; and somehow that still, deep anger of
-hers made me ashamed to sputter, so I never said a word. He slammed the
-door behind us, and we all got in Bobolink’s car and came over.
-
-“Milly told him what she had said to Cousin Jay, and they fixed
-everything in two minutes. Milly won’t write a word to Cousin Grace,
-because she’s just obliged to stay with old Mrs. Wood till her daughter
-gets back, and there’s no use in worrying her. I know you’ll let Milly
-stay here; and when Cousin Grace comes back, if she’ll make Cousin Jay
-behave, or go away, Milly will go home and wait to be married till her
-mother wishes. But if Cousin Grace won’t stop him, Milly’s going to
-marry Bobolink right off, in church, with just the clothes she has. And
-I think she’s exactly right.”
-
-“She’s right to come here and wait for Grace to settle it,” I said; “and
-Grace will settle it right, I know.”
-
-But I was half afraid, even as I said it. Cousin Jason has bent Grace
-like a reed from her babyhood, and almost—perhaps not quite—broken
-her. Could she stand against him, even if she would?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 9th._ Could she indeed? As if love couldn’t set the gentlest face
-like a flint!
-
-We were all in here this morning, Milly and Caro both busy with a lace-y
-frock for the bride-to-be—“just in case she has to be a bride next
-week”—when I saw Grace driving up. I did not tell them she was coming,
-and her arms were around Milly before the child knew she was there.
-
-“You darling!” said Grace; “you’ll have to forgive me dear, as Robert
-has done. He’s coming out this afternoon to take dinner and spend the
-night.”
-
-Milly gave a little gasp, and then dropped her head on her mother’s
-shoulder and began to cry. Caro snatched up the filmy stuff they were
-working on, threw it over Milly like a bridal veil, and pirouetted
-around the two, crooning the dolefulest tune imaginable, her eyes
-dancing with fun. Grace looked up.
-
-“Don’t stop petting Milly a minute,” Caro exhorted; “she’s a perfect
-heroine, and Bobolink’s a dear. I’m just singing a requiem for my
-jay-bird kin.”
-
-“But, Mother,” asked Milly, sitting up, “how ever did you hear about it?
-And how did you happen to come home so soon? And when did you
-see—Robert?” She blushed beautifully as she called his name.
-
-“Your uncle telephoned me night before last. I knew he had everything
-wrong, of course; but I was sure that enough was the matter for me to
-come home and see about it. It was all right to leave Mother, for Annie
-promised to stay, and Mary is coming the last of the week. So I
-telephoned Robert to meet me in town yesterday at twelve o’clock. I
-stayed there last night because there were several things to do in
-taking business affairs into my own hands again; and before I saw
-Brother Jason I had to think out clearly what I wished to say.”
-
-“Have you seen him?”
-
-“Yes, I went there first this morning.” She hesitated, a troubled look
-in her eyes. Milly drew her closer.
-
-“Poor mother!” she said.
-
-“It is your uncle who needs sympathy, dear, though he will not have it.
-And I know it is partly my fault, and partly the whole family’s, as well
-as his. We have all given up to him all our lives, under color of being
-kind and patient and magnanimous, and all that, when at the bottom we
-were just afraid to oppose him; and he—suffers.”
-
-“O, Mother, I’m sorry!” cried Milly. “I’ll give up!”
-
-“Now, Cousin Grace, I call that a shame,” broke in Caro. “No matter what
-you and Milly do, you make a fault and a penance out of it to shield him
-and hurt yourselves. It isn’t fair. He knows he’s outrageous, and he
-doesn’t care; and I just think he ought to be hurt, to find out what
-he’s been doing to other people. If he’s gone, do let Milly enjoy
-herself, for once. But is he gone, really?”
-
-“He’s going,” said Grace. “I wanted him to stay, as my guest, and not as
-the master of the house. But he—he was very angry. He is to leave this
-morning, while I am here. He’s going back to his own house and live
-there all alone.”
-
-“And a mighty good thing for him,” declared Caro. “When I used to
-indulge in tantrums like his, Mammy Lil always made me go stay by myself
-till I was what she called a social creature. I think I’ll go over and
-see Cousin Jason and tell him about it. I could always come back the
-second I was willing to be polite, and so can he. Think of Cousin
-Jason’s emerging a social creature! Butterflies and caterpillars won’t
-be in it. But if Milly isn’t to be married next week, when do we begin
-on the trousseau?”
-
-The talk passed into a discussion of clothes, and drifted about that
-interesting topic till time for them to go home. They found their house
-empty, except for the servants. Cousin Jason had gone, as he said,
-without eating again beneath his sister’s roof.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 16th._ I suppose the excitement of Cousin Jason’s deposition was a
-little too much for me: I’ve been curled up dead-’possum-fashion for a
-week. Now I’m uncurling again, and showing that, like the ’possum, I’m
-not so dead as I look. Caro came back, whether or no, and took charge of
-me. It is a great comfort to have her.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 19th._ A slow pull and a hard one. But I make it, inch by inch.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 21st._ Courage, patience and laughter—life would be impossible
-without them. Yet the first necessity, and the last, is love. If one
-only loves enough, one can fight anything, and fight always, while
-breath and consciousness last.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_June 24th._
-
-            _WHEN WINGS GO BY_
-
-    _A flash of wings across my window-pane!_
-    _Fallen these narrow walls; and sky-arched plain,_
-    _Fern-haunted pool, white foam of summer seas,_
-    _Blue, dawn-steeped mountains, dusk of forest trees—_
-    _All things free wings may seek, or near or far—_
-    _Sweep round this bed, where pain and stillness are._
-    _A prisoned life? When any moment brings_
-    _A far horizon, and the sense of wings?_
-
-
-
-
-                                   XI
-                      WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT
-
-
-_July 7th._ I have seen the woods in summer time again! It was winter
-when I left home for those three years, and winter when I went back;
-and, though one does not think of the country passed in a winter journey
-as dead—for the winter’s story of life reserved is as vivid as the
-summer one of life out-poured—yet one longs to see, far out-spread in
-breeze and sunshine, the close-shut life of the winter buds.
-
-As soon as the doctor would allow it, the Peon and Caro brought me here.
-We came through the mountains nearly all the way—one long splendor of
-rhododendrons, wild phlox, azaleas, laurel, and briar rose, all in
-glorious bloom; and above them the green billows of the trees, with
-great masses of chestnut blooms for foam. And everywhere the mountains
-themselves, green and dark near at hand, and blue and faint in the
-distance; and between them the valleys, heaped with beauty and
-over-flowing with life.
-
-The Boss and the Madam met us in Baltimore, and brought us to this
-heavenly place. My room is downstairs, with windows on three sides, and
-wide doors opening on a quiet end of the wide piazza, which nearly
-encircles the house. I can be wheeled there, straight from the bed, to a
-couch-like hammock, where a cranky back may be as comfortable as its own
-bad temper will allow; and my bed is under a long row of windows, just
-as it is at home. I can look out across the small plateau, occupied by
-the cottage grounds, to mountains, near and far, and to the glory of the
-sunset skies. And again, from the porch, on mountains, and slopes where
-the summer cottagers have set their beautiful homes.
-
-I was ashamed to come here in this battered condition; when the Madam
-wrote for us I expected to be walking all about by the time I came. But
-they would have me, and the Peon and Caro were of the same mind. For
-myself, I can scarcely imagine a lovelier place to get well in; the
-loving-kindness indoors is as fine a tonic as the mountain air outside.
-
-I have not seen any of the Peon’s family in all these years of my
-invalidism, but I find them in spirit just where I left them—and in
-body, too, for that matter; for health and love and happiness are a
-combination to defy time, and the heads of the household are still a
-bridal pair. Their youthful names for one another, long since adopted by
-the rest of us, suit their sunny middle-age as well as ever; so the
-“Boss” and the “Madam” they remain.
-
-One of the daughters is married, and will make but a brief visit this
-summer. The other, known as Hazel-eyes, is the light of the big house; a
-quiet little body, wonderfully pretty, her mother’s shadow and her
-father’s adorer.
-
-The Peon stayed only a couple of days, and went back to our empty nest.
-He is to go West before long, and will come here on his return to tell
-me all about David.
-
-Caro is restless and unusually silent, not doing herself justice among
-strangers. The child has been severely taxed in the last few weeks, and
-shows it plainly. The roses are all gone, and her eyes are tired and
-sad. She seems like a new Caro whom I must learn to know. I know I was
-ill for awhile, though not as ill as they thought; and she never saw me
-suffer that way before. But it isn’t that which clouds her bright
-eyes—it can’t be, no matter what she says, now that I am past the worst
-of it. I wonder will she ever open her heart to me about David. She used
-to tell me everything. I always said the test of my success in mothering
-her would come with her falling in love; if she came to me with that, I
-would know I had done my work aright. And now I see that I have failed.
-If I had been her real mother I would have known better how to reach
-her. It is a real motherhood to me, of course, but not to Caro—and
-perhaps not even to David. So I must lie here and wait, like any other
-outsider, till everybody knows how it turns out.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_July 9th._ Yesterday Caro wheeled me out to the line of locusts, which
-cuts this plateau in half and divides the Boss’s grounds from his
-neighbor’s. A song sparrow came to call at once, a dear little fellow,
-all streaks and music. They sing here all day long—they and the winter
-wrens.
-
-A flicker has a clamorous brood in the tallest locust; they cry every
-moment, except when their wail is gagged by a worm. Their parents toil
-incessantly, but I should think their nerves would be on edge. The
-bluebird mothers, too, are hard at work, for there are dozens of
-bluebird babies to feed, and bluebird fathers never turn a wing or lend
-a bill to their upbringing. The babies are cunning, speckled things,
-their big round eyes ringed with white, giving them an expression of
-child-like wonder.
-
-This afternoon I am out on my end of the porch, in the hammock. Caro has
-gone with Hazel-eyes and a party of young folks on an expedition to Bare
-Rock—a great shelf of granite which juts out near the top of the
-mountain to the north of us, and from which there is a wonderful view.
-The Madam is entertaining visitors on the other side of the porch, and I
-am finding the solitude I need a constant temptation to Grumpyish
-thoughts.
-
-When one wants to bog down, there are always such unassailable reasons
-for doing it! I have faced Grumpy down and out about the pain. And I’ve
-done fairly well about the idleness; that isn’t a losing fight, at
-least. But I’m just bowled over about the children. And it isn’t
-altogether that they’re suffering, though that hurts. It’s because
-they’re suffering away from me, and I can’t do anything until they
-choose to take me into their confidence.
-
-I’ve been lying here thinking how Grumpy must be enjoying my
-back-sliding till I’ve made up my mind to fight him to a finish on this
-also. They have a right to their secrets and to their own lives; it’s
-the right and natural way. I never repaid Great-aunt Letitia’s love to
-her, any more than she repaid her mother’s. You don’t pay love back; you
-pay it forward. The great-aunts paid their love-debt, not to their
-mother, but to me; and I’ve paid what I owed them to David and Caro; and
-Caro and David won’t pay to me—they can’t; they’ll pay it to children
-yet unborn. Why can’t I accept the law, and be glad? It’s trying to grab
-what isn’t one’s share that makes all the trouble in life, anyway. I’ve
-always said the most secure possession was the one carried in an open
-handle and free to fly at a breath: I’ll carry the children that way
-now. And for amusement, there are still the birds.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_July 10th._ As I lay on the porch this afternoon, facing the great
-mountain to the north, the long fingers of the westering light touched
-the foamy white tops of the chestnut trees, still crowned with their
-mist of bloom. The light slid across the hollows of the mountain-side,
-filling the long curves with dark green shadows, a soft, deep background
-for the maples of the nearer lawns, all golden green in the full
-sunlight, and for the silver of the wind-ruffled poplars. Locust trees
-are on every side, a survival of the native forests. Where the light is
-reflected from their leaves, they are a dark bluish green; but where the
-sun strikes through them, each leaflet is shining gold, and the long
-leaves sway at the end of every branch like giant fronds gleaming under
-some Midas touch.
-
-But even the locusts are far away, across the many-acred lawn. The trees
-near the house are too young and small to shelter birds; and if I go out
-to the locusts their foliage is too light and too high to shade my eyes
-from the glare: so I have been missing the birds. If I could stay with
-the others it wouldn’t matter; but I must lie alone, and in silence,
-resting between lines when I write; and Grumpy is boring company. So
-I’ve been casting envious looks at a place across the road. A long hedge
-of blossoming privet hides everything but the tree-tops, but there are
-dozens of them; and wings flash in and out. It is a large place, larger
-than this; I know there’s a corner in it there I wouldn’t be in the way.
-The sense of something near and unknown, yet knowable, draws me daily.
-The Garden of Delight I call it, and listen for the songs which float
-from it, and long for its shade and sunshine.
-
-When the Madam came to sit with me I confessed my daft condition to her,
-and she went across the road to the Garden’s owners—two ladies who are
-friends of hers—and returned presently with the freedom of the Garden
-for me and my chair. I am to go tomorrow.
-
-I wonder sometimes if people dream of the pleasure they can give through
-little things. To these ladies I suppose their bit of hospitality is a
-trifle soon forgotten; but to me it is pure delight. It will hearten me
-for my fight a thousand times, and lift me clear above the pain a
-thousand more. It is hard to keep steady when one is so happy. The long,
-filmy curves of wind-swept silver in the evening sky grow suddenly dim;
-and when they wheel me back to bed I am “fair lifted,” as the Scotch
-say, and wait joyfully in the darkness for such sleep as night may
-bring.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_July 11th._ The Garden of Delight! A close-shaven sward from which the
-tiniest bird stands up distinctly; and trees, and trees, and trees!
-Shrubs and vines, rose-beds, azaleas, tall altheas, clumps of iris,
-masses of old-fashioned lilies, tangles of honeysuckles on the fences,
-beds of early phlox, ragged robins, larkspur, and ferns—all things cool
-and quiet and sweet. In the dense shade of tall shrubs they have left
-me, the feathery locusts waving overhead, and before me a hitherto
-unsuspected vista of beauty—the long, long valley which leads to
-Gettysburg, with the mountains guarding it on either side.
-
-Beyond the greensward lies a beautiful bit of wilderness—ferns and wild
-flowers under thick-set trees; beyond that, close-shaven grass again,
-then a bit of clover, and a tangle out of the very heart of the woods.
-And everywhere are birds. And I, who have longed for the woods for
-years, and who have never dreamed of finding them outside of the land of
-Make-Believe, I am here, far off, a thousand miles from everywhere,
-alone with the sky and the winds and the wild mountains, in a silence of
-upper air! One can bear one’s body in a place like this: it doesn’t
-matter that it cannot run, nor walk. One’s mind can run, and fly, and
-rise so high that the pain lies far below, lost, vanished, like a pebble
-in the valley when one looks from a free mountain peak against the sky.
-For one glorious hour I have run away from it—this pain that wrenches
-and grips; I have been free, free! And so my hope grows bold, and I
-reach out to touch that happy future when I shall be free in body as
-well as in mind: it will come—some day!
-
-And oh, foolish one, remember, and learn! For the Garden of Delight was
-close at hand all the time, only I hadn’t the wit to reach it till my
-body was carried thither. But there is always a Garden, if one can find
-it—a Garden of Delight, hidden behind the hedge!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_July 15th._ The birds are not kind today, even here in the Garden. It
-is a grey evening, for one thing, and the light is bad for spying out
-secrets among the leaves. The weather is misty and damp, promising the
-rain we need; but everything is dry from recent heat, and the insects
-may be less juicy than usual, and not very tempting eating. Anyway, the
-birds are not here.
-
-The mist, with the dim light of the evening sun upon it, spreads a film
-of silver over the blues and greens of the mountains. Down in the valley
-it deepens till all the colors are faint and soft, from the pale stubble
-of the nearer wheatfields all up the long valley between the mountains,
-to where the dim blue of the great battlefield melts into the dim blue
-of the sky above it.
-
-It was down this Valley, over the road at my feet, that the men of the
-Southern army tramped after the battle was lost. My own kinsmen were
-there, following their great leader with the rest, as he passed through
-the Valley of Defeat. How much seemed lost to them, who can say? But to
-us of a later generation how plain it is that nothing was lost at
-Gettysburg which it were well to keep. The really priceless thing they
-brought away unharmed—the courage which could accept defeat, and turn,
-without a murmur, in the wreck of the old order, to the upbuilding of a
-new world. That was a struggle which the world even now knows little of,
-though it was as wide as the South and as long as a generation’s
-life-time. It was fought singly, and in silence, in each individual
-life. Each soul bled inwardly, and only God saw the wounds. But I have
-sprung from men who fought that fight. Let me look at the Valley, and
-learn.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_July 18th._ The wind is at play in the mountains today, and sweeps up
-the Valley with a sound as of rushing waters, bending the trees before
-it. The long shadows under the swaying branches know not a moment’s
-rest; and the racing clouds shift the shafts of sunlight so rapidly from
-place to place that the very earth seems moving, like the lightest leaf.
-Few birds are abroad, save the robins, which battle against the unseen
-powers of the air, only to be blown like autumn leaves. A thrasher,
-dashed suddenly in front of me, began at once a philosophic hunt for
-worms—one place was as good as another, no doubt; but a young robin,
-the black of his crown still separated from the dark ear-coverts by
-bands of gray, crouches frightened where he falls. His half-drooped
-wings show a power which explains his venturing abroad; he is full
-grown, though not yet in full robin dress. He is learning the old lesson
-of the young: that there are things in life which not even grown-ups can
-do; and that his liberty is merely a liberty to adjust himself to forces
-which he cannot hope to control. No wonder he looks a bit dazed!
-
-The Mistress of the Garden comes out presently to look after her
-flowers. Her face is good to see, and her voice to listen to. Her eyes
-have the look of one who dwells in that place of peace where happiness
-and sorrow are fused into one, and are known as equal essentials of the
-highest joy. She is a lover of Nature, too. One inevitably comes to be,
-I think, as one travels the long road to serenity of soul. One may
-observe Nature in youth, no doubt, and love it, too, somewhat; but the
-real sense of kinship with it is a matter of living, and of growth.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_July 25th._ Blessed be trees and sunshine, the open sky, and the free
-winds which fill it! And blessed be the freshness and promise of the new
-day, coming alike to the light-hearted and to those pain-weary and
-discouraged.
-
-And the promise never fails. For, whether the new day brings escape or
-courage, relief or a growing power of patience, whether it means joy or
-peace, it brings good, and only good; and so through all the soul its
-_sursum corda_ rings with sweetness and command.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_July 28th._ After wheeling me over to the Garden yesterday afternoon,
-Caro left me, to join in an expedition to Bare Rock. When she had gone,
-I discovered to my horror that I had been deposited beneath the branch
-of a poplar tree on which some hundreds of caterpillars had just been
-hatched out. They were so thick that heads, tails and sides touched
-everywhere, as they lay on leaves and stems; not one could move a hair’s
-breadth without knocking off the others or climbing over them. What they
-thought of my proximity I had no means of finding out; but for me it was
-not a joyful occasion. I could move neither my chair nor myself; so I
-lay there, gazing up at the wretched things till I began turning into a
-caterpillar myself, and felt fuzz and wriggles sprouting all over me.
-But before the transformation was too far advanced to be checked, I
-heard Caro’s voice behind me.
-
-“Mammy Lil, I don’t want to go walking. May I stay and talk to you?”
-
-I had been feeling specially lonesome of late. I kept telling myself I
-was getting morbid from long illness and solitude; but it seemed to me
-that Caro almost avoided me. She waited on me most thoughtfully; but her
-errands done, she disappeared. There was no more of that dear
-companionship, when she used to sit near me, reading, or embroidering,
-while she sang dreamily to herself, or cuddled her head against mine on
-the pillows in a fellowship which needed no words. Children can’t
-possibly understand how bereft one feels, shut out. I knew she loved me
-too well to hurt me; yet I had missed her, under the same roof with her,
-more than I had missed David far away: the boy had never shut me out
-like that.
-
-But her voice was different as she asked her question now. I remembered
-how, years ago, she used to come out of her periods of seclusion in the
-parlor “nice and social,” as she would sweetly announce, and confess her
-little soul inside out, clear to her very toes. Before I saw her face I
-knew the barrier was gone, and I was to have her confidence at last.
-
-But, first of all, I craved deliverance from the caterpillars. Some of
-them had hunched themselves up ominously, as if they were about to jump
-down and float across my nose on silken threads. I was very unhappy
-indeed.
-
-Caro squealed in horror when she saw my plight, and snatched me back
-from my impending doom. She wheeled me across the shaven grass to the
-edge of the wood-tangle, and sat on a rock beside me, facing the long
-Valley once filled with marching men—men who marched from the disaster
-of outward defeat to the victory of inner conquest.
-
-“Mammy Lil,” she inquired presently, “do you love me any more at all?”
-
-I turned my face to her without speaking. Her eyes filled with sudden
-tears, and she laid her cheek against my hand.
-
-“You’re the darlingest mother! If you weren’t, I’d be ashamed to tell
-you. Mammy Lil, I’ve wished sometimes I could murder myself, this last
-year; I’ve been so cross. It began last summer while I was home on
-vacation. Everybody in Chatterton made love to Milly or me last summer,
-except David. He was just as he always was—sweet to both of us, but
-specially careful of me because he was my brother. And I didn’t feel the
-same to him at all. I—Mammy Lil, I was as foolish about David as those
-boys were about us two girls: I was in love with him, over head and
-ears.” She paused while I stroked her hair.
-
-“You can’t think how ashamed I was. And of course I treated him like a
-yellow dog. And he behaved _perfectly_. I was sure, though, that he
-didn’t suspect—he, nor any one else. And then, at the end of the
-summer, Cousin Jane told me that David and I were to marry. I didn’t
-believe you’d ever talked to her about it, of course; but I saw in a
-flash what it would mean to you—and that David might do it to please
-you. And I was afraid Cousin Jane suspected what a fool I was. And she
-went to David, too, and told me that, and told him she’d told me. I did
-want to wring Cousin Jane’s neck; and I think yet she deserved it!
-
-“David and I had a talk. She just butted our heads together till we had
-to. He said he’d always cared; but he had made up his mind to wait till
-I was through school and you were at home again: it wasn’t fair not to.
-He was lovely. But he was so quiet—and so confident, it seemed to me. I
-tried to lay him out; I was mad. And he wouldn’t blame me a bit for
-being mad; but he said he hadn’t asked for any answer yet, and wouldn’t
-take one till he did ask for it; and that we mustn’t worry you with
-Cousin Jane’s nonsense, and all that.
-
-“Things rocked along at Christmas, except that I cared more than ever.
-But when I came back last spring to stay, as soon as you were really
-better, David began to show me that he—you know, Mammy Lil, how much
-little things can be made to mean. And I began to see he did care just
-as I did. We were so happy in April! Only, I kept staving the end of it
-off. I didn’t want to be pinned down too soon. But David—he understood.
-
-“Then Cousin Jane had to take a hand again. She’d found out Bob White
-wanted to marry me—or thought he did; and Bob is what she calls a
-‘catch.’ She nabbed me that day, as I was coming home from Milly’s, and
-said the hatefullest things you ever heard in your life—that everybody
-said I was ‘setting my cap’ for David and pretending to be taking care
-of you when I was just running after him; and that David had given her
-to understand he felt very badly about it, because he knew you and I
-wanted it so much!
-
-“I knew as well as I knew my name that was a lie out of whole cloth; but
-I was just as angry as if it were true. I never had been reconciled to
-caring about him before he spoke, anyway. So I went to Cousin Jane’s, as
-she told me to, and listened to Bob White’s praises till I was sick of
-everything under the sun. And when David and I went out that
-afternoon—Mammy Lil, can’t you understand?”
-
-“Dear, I did it myself, once; I ought to understand. But I paid for it
-afterwards, as you have done. When you’re an old lady like me you’ll
-know better.”
-
-“I know better now,” she said, with a sudden quiver in her voice. “I—I
-killed David’s respect for me that afternoon.”
-
-“Nonsense, child,” I exclaimed, “he knows you—and loves you—too well
-for that.”
-
-“He doesn’t love me at all; he can’t. I let him think—I pretended—I’d
-just been flirting with him; to lead Bob on.” Her voice died in a shamed
-silence.
-
-This was serious news, considering David’s nature. If he believed she
-really cared for some one else, I knew it would take a long time for the
-notion to work out of his head; and while it was in there he wouldn’t
-stir. And I had promised not to interfere. I stroked her soft hair in
-silence for a minute.
-
-“David will never change in his love for you, dear,” I said; “it’s too
-truly a part of him for that. And when people really love one another,
-they come together, somehow, soon or late; your Daddy Jack and I were
-hopelessly separated for weeks.”
-
-“We’ve been separated nearly three months,” said Caro, dolefully;
-“eleven weeks and four days today. But I’m not going to talk about David
-any more. What hurts me most of all is the way I’ve treated you. You
-ought to hate me if you don’t. I—”
-
-I laid my hand over her mouth.
-
-“What’s the use of being older than you if I can’t understand, child?
-And I’ve travelled every step of the way before. Everything that isn’t
-right will come right between you and David; but with you and me
-everything is right already. Just drop your troubles under the trees,
-dearie, as I do, and open your heart to the hills and the sky. Isn’t
-today worth yesterday’s storm?”
-
-She sat up and looked across the Valley. The mountains stood out in the
-afternoon sunlight all the clearer for the long shadows already
-gathering in the hollows; each leaf and grass blade was shining fresh
-after the rain, and everywhere was a flutter and stir of wings. A
-nuthatch crept down a locust trunk before us, a yellow-billed cuckoo
-slipped by overhead; and all down the hillside the swallows swept in
-long, beautiful curves, their bright breasts shining against the sun.
-
-“Dear,” I said presently, “don’t you see, out of doors here, how wise it
-is to take the long look at life? The mountains make me ashamed of my
-fretting. And life is working toward this beauty all the time; the
-winters in the way don’t matter; they pass. And yet before they pass
-they teach us to love life better when it re-appears. When your
-happiness is safe in your hands once more, you won’t hurt it again for a
-child’s anger or a fool’s speech. I know; for I learned it, too.”
-
-She laid her cheek against my hand in silence, and we watched together
-while the sun went down. The blue shadows overflowed the hollows of the
-mountains and met across the green ridges on their sides. Against that
-shadowed background the poplars of the Garden, smitten by the last rays
-of sunlight, shone like silver, and the locusts like fronds of gold.
-
-Far below, in the Valley, lay the peace of the coming twilight, and all
-about us were the soft murmuring of birdlings settling down to rest, and
-of mothers crooning over them as they slept. And at last the gardener
-came over from the Madam’s, and wheeled me back, with Caro by my side.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_August 2nd._ The Peon is with David now, and I shall soon be having
-news. He did not start as early as he hoped, and was detained on the
-way; but being there at last, he will soon be able to tell me something
-definite about David’s coming home. I haven’t meddled a meddle: not that
-I’ve earned any frill to my halo thereby; it’s just that I know by my
-own past Caro would catch up with me if I tried it, even if I hadn’t
-promised David. So I’m pinning my hopes to the Peon: he has been so very
-non-committal that he must have something on his mind. But I can’t share
-these hopes with Caro, and they wouldn’t help her if I could: she is in
-that stage of penitence where it is against her principles for her to
-accept consolation, so far as David is concerned. Her misery, poor
-little soul, is the only comfort she can allow herself; and if her
-happiness is to have a thorough recovery, the process cannot be hurried.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_August 5th._ I woke at half-past four this morning to find a fat white
-cloud sitting on the lawn outside, as if he owned the premises. Not a
-mountain visible; and beneath the locusts’ misty arches the trees on the
-neighboring lawn gleam pale and uncertain, mere grey-green ghosts of
-living things.
-
-The cloud isn’t altogether outside. My books on the stand beside me are
-arching their covers with the dampness, and my field-glasses are moist
-to the touch; the room feels dank and uncanny, and the heavy air is hard
-to breathe. One needs a mental rain-coat on a day like this—especially
-when no letters come from a sky-larking Peon!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_August 8th._ Days of rain on the parched earth. Gray days, with soft
-mists heaped against the mountains, blending earth and sky in one. Days
-when one’s horizon is lost—not gone, but withdrawn from sight; days
-when the mountains have vanished and the valleys melted away, and
-nothing is very clear to consciousness but this small bed and the pain
-which lies upon it. If mists crept as close about one’s inner vision,
-doubt would seem normal on days like this, and despair the quintessence
-of common sense. Yet under the veiling vapors the brown grass is growing
-green again, the hard earth soft, instinct with power, and prodigal of
-gifts once more.
-
-Now comes a distant roll of thunder, a wind that sweeps the vapors from
-the grass as tears are wiped from sodden eyes, a flash of blinding
-light, a bending and tossing of leaf-laden boughs; and over the mountain
-the storm-cloud rises, black against the pale gray of the sky. Then up
-the valley comes the wall of water; and behind it the world is new.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-A special delivery letter from the Peon! Caro stood by while I opened
-it, asking nothing, but her color coming and going. It was only a few
-lines; but it said he would be here on the tenth. He has written not a
-word since he has been out there about the things nearest to all our
-hearts; but at least we shall know something in two days more.
-
-
-
-
-                                  XII
-                        IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT
-
-
-_August 10th._ They are having a picnic supper on Bare Rock this
-evening, from which nobody in the house is excused but myself. I am glad
-they are all gone, for I need a little solitude, in this sudden
-whirlwind of happiness, to catch my breath and take a twist on my
-emotions.
-
-For the Peon, who is so literally truthful that nobody dares to suspect
-him of juggling with words, deliberately stole a march on us and walked
-in twenty-four hours ahead of time—with David! Caro and I were over in
-the Garden. I was just where I am now, between the altheas and the
-locusts; but Caro, who had been wandering restlessly about, had gone
-down the hillside, out of sight, following an unknown bird-note. I was
-looking at the poplar branch where the caterpillars had clustered. They
-had left it stripped of everything but the leaf-stalks, which stood out
-now from the bare twigs at every angle, like drunken pins in a cushion.
-But the birds had days ago avenged both the branch and me, for not a
-crawler was visible on the tree. I was looking at it idly when the Peon
-and David suddenly stood under it, coming round the big bed of
-hydrangeas between it and the gate!
-
-I scarcely saw the Peon for looking at David; but David was looking for
-somebody else.
-
-“Where’s Caro?” he demanded, as he kissed me. “They said at the house
-she was over here with you.”
-
-“She’s beyond that little corner of woods,” I said; “go around there and
-you’ll see her.”
-
-As he went I fell upon the Peon, and extracted the hitherto suppressed
-information that Bob White’s engagement to some visitor from Kentucky
-had been announced last month. The Peon had forgotten her name; but he
-carried the news to David, who decided it was time for him to see Caro
-at once. And the mischief of a time he was taking about it, too, the
-Peon observed impatiently; didn’t they intend to take us into the secret
-before midnight?
-
-As it was still half an hour to sunset, I reproved him properly; but I
-was myself beginning to fear something had gone wrong when they appeared
-at last. The dusk had fallen, and I could not see their faces clearly;
-but I heard a soft, happy laugh from Caro before they came around the
-corner of the woods, and I knew everything was all right.
-
-David had certainly not wasted his time. They were already considering
-the house that must be built on the knoll the Peon and I had selected
-years ago. It seems he had picked it out himself, and Caro had agreed to
-it, in her mud-pie days. Now, having waited so long, and finding Caro in
-a mood of undreamed-of submissiveness, he had taken matters into his own
-hands, and decided that he would go home as soon as they could settle on
-the plans, and begin the house at once.
-
-“We’ll need it, even so, before we can possibly get into it,” he
-observed to me. “Do you remember what you said to me that night about
-our wedding? I told Caro about it this afternoon, and she couldn’t deny
-that we ought not to start out in life by disgracing you as a prophet.
-So it’s to be before Christmas—in September, I think.”
-
-“I think you’ve lost your wits,” replied Caro. “It won’t be Christmas if
-Mammy Lil isn’t walking about everywhere by Thanksgiving. She needn’t
-expect us to live up to her prophecies if she won’t do it herself.”
-
-“But I will,” I replied cheerfully; “I feel it in my bones.”
-
-“It’s surely time,” said David, turning my chair to the gate. The Peon
-and Caro walked on ahead, and the boy bent down and rubbed my cheek with
-his.
-
-“Sweet Mammy, I know I’ve been hard on you these months; but we’ll both
-make it up to you now. Forgive us this time, and let us help to make you
-well at last.”
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_August 22nd._ What beautiful, happy days we have had! I showed the Peon
-all the wonders of the Garden; and David and Caro strayed in and out,
-sometimes with the Madam and her other guests, and sometimes in that
-dual solitude lovers crave.
-
-I told the Peon about Grumpy one day. I never had mentioned him before,
-because I never had been quite sure, if I did, that it wouldn’t break
-the spell I had woven, and allow him to appear to others as well as to
-me. But I’m not afraid of him any more.
-
-The Peon is so satisfactory! He never thought of laughing at me, but
-took in the situation at once. He said the best way to make sure of
-getting rid of the wretch was for him to carry Grumpy away when he went.
-He could put him in his suit-case—for Grumpy really is the tiniest
-creature imaginable to make all the trouble he does; and he could throw
-him out of the car window as they were crossing some deep gorge in the
-mountains where no human habitation had ever been. A blue devil can’t
-possibly live where there are no people; so there’d be an end of his
-mischief forever.
-
-Wasn’t that the cleverest scheme? We caught him together yesterday
-afternoon, and rammed him into the suit-case, good and tight. And I told
-the Peon, before he went, that if he did many more stunts like that,
-he’d be a very satisfactory playmate for me when the children are grown
-up and in their own house.
-
-And that is the end of Grumpy.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_August 23rd._ They have gone back, taking the plans for the house with
-them. Caro and David sketched them together, and he will have them
-worked out at home.
-
-I think Caro half envies him the pleasure of beginning the nest
-building, and wants to be there to see; but nobody is willing for me to
-go back before the first of October; and the child has a deal of
-shopping to do. I will wait here; and Caro will go to New York and visit
-Edith Mason, while she selects her bridal plumage.
-
-I find the birds most joyful company these days, and am planning to
-cultivate their acquaintance in a less formal manner; for I intend to
-get out of this chair.
-
-A wheeled-chair is really an exasperating place to study birds from: I
-wonder I never realized it before. This very day the trees are full of
-them—new birds, many of them, gathering for the fall migration. They
-have been playing hide-and-seek with me all the afternoon—a charming
-game if one can do one’s own part of it, and go seeking when the other
-hides; but if you can’t, it’s not so hilarious. They poke unknown heads
-through the leaves, and survey me coolly. They whisk tails I can’t even
-guess at from behind a limb, and are gone. They sing high overhead, with
-only a bit of their under feathers visible, or flirt a half-seen wing
-behind an opening in the leaves. Sorting heads, tails, and middles is a
-hopeless job when you haven’t an idea which belongs to which. If it were
-only a Chinese puzzle, you’d know when it was solved; but a tail with
-any other head would look as sweet! I’ve thought all summer that if a
-hyper-developed sense of touch can serve the blind for eyes, surely time
-and patience could do the work of feet for me; but I’m thinking patience
-may cease to be a virtue soon!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_August 26th._ We have had two days of storm. They mark both a beginning
-and an end; for a subtle change has passed over the mountains and
-lingers, though wind and rain be gone. A tinge of brown, merely
-suspected before, has deepened and spread until it challenges and
-commands the eye. Some of the nearer trees look seared, and the poplars,
-especially, look withered and old. But there is a beauty of soul deeper
-than that of the flesh and of youth: and the depth and power of Nature’s
-charm, like the freedom of our own souls, can be best measured by the
-number and splendor of the things which can be laid aside. All the
-glamour of the young spring, the splendid lavishness of summer days, the
-riot of color and sunshine—these things, which yearly draw us with new
-fascination and delight, are but the broidered outer curtain of the
-temple. They lure us past them, into the inner court, to a strength
-which knows no defeat, to an abundance which can afford to be stripped;
-to Law which cannot be thwarted nor checked; and beyond Law to a Power
-which reason can neither explain nor explain away.
-
-For myself, I have my message; the hills have spoken it. And the pain
-which wrenches is back where it belongs, in the second place—or the
-twentieth. Moreover, it will pass—tomorrow, or next year, or in a
-life-time: it is not of the things which remain.
-
-And now the clouds are breaking for a sunset glory, and the porch where
-I lie, and the lawn beyond it, even the shadowed mountains—all, all,
-are flooded with splendid light.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_August 29th._ A letter from Cousin Jane at last! Caro and I both wrote
-to her while David was here, but she had not vouchsafed a reply. David
-had a satisfactory interview with Cousin Chad, after his return, but
-reported Cousin Jane’s reception of him as one befitting an unrepentant
-prodigal who had brought his swine home with him. So we have been
-looking forward to the reception of a letter from her as a very solemn
-occasion indeed. She seems inclined, however, to temper her disapproval
-to Caro. She doesn’t expect her to be happy long, she says; and she
-handsomely offers not to disturb her present dreams, but to wait until
-Caro is disillusioned, when she hopes her “I told you so” will do some
-good. She does not intend, however, to cause any breach in the family,
-her principles forbidding her to quarrel even with me; and she is
-perfectly willing to continue her efforts to set me a proper example.
-
-I suppose, on the whole, that’s doing pretty well for Cousin Jane. I
-don’t intend to have any breach in the family, myself, especially over
-the children’s wedding; and Caro and I will find some way to appease her
-when we go home.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_August 30th._ What bird is that? He is in the locust yonder, only his
-breast visible. It is a vivid yellow, with four irregular scarlet
-spots—three on one side and one on the other—and across his breast a
-long zig-zag line of scarlet like a jagged wound. There isn’t any bird
-like that: I know it; and if he doesn’t, he ought to. Yet there he sits,
-as calm as if he were in all the books and had as much right in the
-Garden as I. I have watched him, and recorded him, yet he doesn’t move.
-
-Well, I’ll just make him: I’m not tied to this chair!
-
-A scarlet tanager, moulting! No wonder I never saw that before. He is
-always scarlet-and-black when he goes through Tennessee in the spring,
-and yellow and olive when he goes back in the fall. He looks like the
-clown in a circus now, and I don’t wonder that he seeks the seclusion of
-the mountains to change his clothes. He is gone, of course, before I can
-apologize for my intrusion; and I suppose his opinion of me is scarcely
-fit to print.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_September 18th._ Caro is back from New York, and we leave a week from
-today. We have decided to shave a few days off the limit set by the
-Peon: if we don’t hurry, David will have that house half finished before
-we get there, and we want to see it go up from the beginning ourselves.
-Besides, Caro wants a little time with Milly. Her wedding is set for the
-last of October, and Caro’s is to be six weeks later. I’m afraid it will
-take strenuous work to get Cousin Jane where we want her by that time;
-but if we go home and start on her at once, the thing may be done.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_September 24th._ The last day in the Garden! The Mistress has been out,
-and I have been trying, in rather a bungling way, to make her understand
-what she has done for me. Neither she nor the Madam can know the whole
-of it, and I hope they never will; for they would have to live in the
-same prison-house to understand what a door of escape means.
-
-Eh, but the summer is over, and I count my stay by hours!—Yes; but the
-summer will never end. Even when the prison is lost sight of, the door
-of escape will remain a delight. The things that hurt pass, and are
-forgotten; things not understood change and grow clear: but joy does not
-change, not kindness, nor anything that makes life worth while. And so,
-good-bye to the Garden.
-
-
-
-
-                                  XIII
-                      WHILE THE NEST WAS BUILDING
-
-
-_September 30th._ We reached home three days ago, having forestalled the
-possibility of orders not to come by concealing our plans until we were
-on the way.
-
-The house is no house at all yet, of course. Caro calls it the Perchery
-at present, and says she will give it a name when we can all sit in it,
-instead of roosting on stones outside and staring at the place where it
-is going to be. But the cellar is finished, anyway, and is of ample
-proportions, as a country cellar should be; and until we get something
-else to admire, we find it an absorbing subject of contemplation. Even
-Cousin Jane was delighted with it, and still more with Caro’s promise to
-go home with her and stay until after the wedding.
-
-Caro went over there as soon as I was settled in bed for a rest, and
-came back glowing with triumph. Cousin Jane was coming in the morning to
-spend the day, and to take the child back home with her in the evening.
-
-“And oh, Mammy Lil, she’s perfectly charmed with David, and quite
-certain she picked him out for me! The shock of it nearly bowled me over
-for a minute. You know that big New York bank that failed a week or two
-ago? Everybody thought Bob’s father’s bank was mixed up in it, and there
-was a regular run on it. David and Daddy Jack were too full of the
-Perchery to mention it; but it converted Cousin Jane straight through.
-The bank’s all right—I asked David about it, driving home—but you
-can’t make Cousin Jane believe it. She thinks a bank should be above
-suspicion by anybody, and if it isn’t, it’s a whited sepulchre
-forevermore. So she’s delighted that she had the good sense to pass over
-a fellow like Bob, who comes from a family of speculators, and choose
-for me a good, steady, kind, reliable business man like David Bird,
-instead. I wish you could hear her, Mammy Lil; she’s downright edifying.
-And she fairly beamed on David, though he hadn’t been near her for
-weeks. Everything’s all right, if only the hot weather doesn’t make you
-sick. If they’d told us how hot it was, I wouldn’t have brought you
-home.”
-
-The heat was extraordinary for the time of the year, and still continues
-so; but it didn’t keep Cousin Jane at home, though usually she won’t
-budge unless it’s cool.
-
-She was in high good humor, and evidenced it by a peck on my cheek and
-the remark that I must be getting better, for I really didn’t look so
-very many years older than I was. She approved of the plans for the
-house, especially when she found it was to be our wedding gift to Caro;
-and she went out “to perch,” at Caro’s invitation, and admired every
-stone in the foundations. Then she came in and settled seriously down to
-the subject of clothes.
-
-It seems that Grace is lavishing on Milly’s outfit all the pretty things
-Cousin Jason prevented her from giving the child in her girlhood; and
-Cousin Jane’s family pride has risen in a most desirable and unexpected
-manner to demand that Caro shall be as well provided for as her cousin;
-so Caro can prepare in peace. Cousin Jane even proposes to help her,
-tooth and nail. Caro and I are a little daunted by this excess of zeal,
-Cousin Jane’s taste—or lack of it—being a byword in the family. But
-Caro will find a way to manage her; and we have already settled the
-question of the dress she is to wear at the wedding. I had Caro buy it
-for me in New York—a soft, rich, silken fabric—and it is to be made by
-the best dressmaker in the city. If we left it to Cousin Jane, she would
-get old black Sally to make it, at seventy-five cents a day; she says
-it’s sinful to waste money on town dress-makers.
-
-But she doesn’t mind my wasting it for her. If there was a corner of her
-heart still congealed it melted when she took the silk between her
-finger and thumb, and fully tested its quality.
-
-“It’s an elegant present, Lyddy,” she declared graciously, “an’ I don’t
-mind taking it from you one mite. I’ve always said you meant well; an’
-it ain’t your fault if you’re foolish.”
-
-Could I ask for a handsomer coat of white-wash than that?
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_October 2nd._ Last night was sticky, hot, and still, with the stars
-flaming overhead, as though they were trying to burn the heavens. I fell
-asleep at last, to be wakened suddenly by a sound as if the wind were
-ripping the sky off the earth, and ten million tons of water were
-sluicing through the hole. The world was all one glare of light, with
-sudden, momentary breaks of darkness, while a roar as of a thousand
-batteries surged up from every quarter of the heavens, and filled to
-bursting the black void above our heads. I sprang up to close the
-windows, my ankles brushed by quick, ghostly touches, as loose papers
-skittered over the floor.
-
-The Peon and David came in, in hastily donned attire, for the storm was
-altogether out of the ordinary. The house trembled like a living thing,
-and in the air about us we could feel the crackle of the blinding light.
-Then came a crash that split the earth. A moment later, through the
-surging billows of water hurled through the wind-rent air, we saw a
-sudden, leaping light, red in the white electric glare. A huddled
-company of straw-stacks had been struck by the descending bolt, and not
-even that flood of water could quench the flames. The heavy clouds,
-weighted almost to earth, caught the sullen glow beneath them, and as
-they were flung onward and upward by the screaming wind, carried the
-lurid colors of destruction far into the blackness overhead. One moment
-a world of blinding white, as the lightning blotted out everything but
-its own wild glare. The next, a red and lowering world, sullen,
-portentous, with the evil color spreading, climbing, licking out on all
-sides in an orgy of ruin and waste whose greed defied the cataracts of
-water, and made the wild wind its minister and slave.
-
-The air rocked with the thunderous down-pour under the crashing clouds.
-One of the maples fell prone in the lightning’s glare; and from every
-side came the sound of rending wood as branches were wrenched and split
-and hurled across the lawn. The house shook, while around us and above
-us the Titans fought. In the presence of that unveiled power one’s own
-small life dwindled to nothingness. One marveled that human feebleness
-yet held a place in a world so charged with forces, the least of which
-could wipe out all human effort and leave the earth as bare as a
-new-sponged slate.
-
-Yet the fury passed. The Titans screamed and fought, but their power
-waned. The wind wavered and sank, sobbing like a beaten child; the rain
-splashed dully, dripping from porches and eaves; the thunder died on
-distant hills, and the lightnings grew fitful and weak. Even the
-storm-born flames were spent, until only a hot coal of light glowed
-under the breaking clouds. A star shone here and there, mirrored in the
-rain-pools of the drenched fields.
-
-David opened the windows, and we drank in the freshness of the
-storm-cleansed air. The new-washed leaves, still green with summer time,
-whispered in the quietness, and here and there a cricket chirped, or a
-night-bird called to its mate. Power was veiled again, withdrawn; and
-life that had trembled in the balance resumed its wonted course.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_October 9th._ I asked Grace today about Cousin Jason. I knew she was
-worrying over something. Milly might be happy, but she wasn’t. So I
-asked her how he did.
-
-“He won’t speak to me, Lil, at all. I have been there two or three
-times; but he wouldn’t see me.”
-
-“Isn’t he coming to the wedding?” I asked.
-
-“I wrote to ask him that—to show him we really wanted him; but he sent
-the letter back.”
-
-Her eyes filled with unwonted tears, and I had a sudden desire to jerk
-my jay-bird cousin’s feathers out by the roots.
-
-“You’ll just have to train your thoughts to keep away from him, Grace,”
-I said. “I know you can, for I’ve steered my own clear of a lot of
-things I simply don’t dare to fool with. Don’t shake your head at me,
-madam! Do you think Milly doesn’t see that look in your eyes when you
-sit and think about Cousin Jason? Are you going to let him hurt her?”
-
-“No, I’m not,” she said firmly. “I’ll make my eyes behave.”
-
-“Then you’ll have to make your thoughts behave behind your eyes. You let
-Cousin Jason alone. If you’ll quit paying attention to him long enough,
-he’ll come round; but as long as you give him a chance to rebuff you,
-he’ll amuse himself doing it.”
-
-Grace laughed.
-
-“Shall I follow your advice or your example—you door-mat for Cousin
-Jane?”
-
-I laughed myself.
-
-“Never mind. We can find out how to do a thing perfectly, many a time,
-just by doing it the way it shouldn’t be done. And I did send Cousin
-Jane home once. I know the recording angel put that down to my credit.”
-
-We fell to talking of her plans. Milly and her husband are to live with
-her, he going in to his business daily, like the Peon. But Grace wants
-them to have this first winter alone together. So as soon as they get
-back from their wedding trip, and Caro is married, she expects to go
-away with George’s niece, and spend the winter travelling.
-
-The Peon and I will stay at Bird Corners. The children will be gone for
-five or six weeks, and by the time they come home the Perchery will
-almost be ready for them to begin feathering their nest—And to think
-it’s the real Bird Corners, and not Make-Believe at all!
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_October 16th._ The young mocking-birds are learning to sing, and their
-efforts are altogether charming. They sit apart, crooning, each to
-himself, trying their score over and over, thoughtfully, with pauses in
-which they seem to search their memories for forgotten notes. It is as
-if melody had come with them from the land of dreams, and they were
-trying to catch and hold the elusive sweetness, and teach it to come at
-their command. The soft, dreamy music floats through the October
-sunshine, at once a memory and a hope. It is a song of the garnered
-years, an inheritance from old days of love and aspiration, and it
-presages days of love and aspiration yet to be. But more than both of
-these, it voices the peace of autumn days, when the earth has finished
-the long year’s toil, and turns to its hard-won rest in the quiet of the
-misty sunshine.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_October 20th._ I don’t need my note-book these days. When one can do so
-much living with people the birds are no longer a necessity. I hear
-their songs and calls, and know them for the voices of my friends—real
-friends for life. But Caro comes over nearly every day, and always there
-is so much to talk about. And often Cousin Jane comes too; and it’s
-positively exhilarating to see the way Caro and I are corrupting her
-morals. That old lady is getting as worldly-minded as if there were not
-a blackbird saint in existence.
-
-The dressmaker made her get a modern corset to be fitted in, and she’s
-so pleased with herself in it that she wears it all the time. She really
-looks like another person, for Caro has coaxed her into curl-papers o’
-nights, and the soft gray fluff around her face is amazingly different
-from the wide part with the flat straight bands plastered over her
-temples and ears. The old Buff Orpington doesn’t know her any more, and
-Caro says he shrieks and runs at the sight of her.
-
-Everybody in Chatterton notices the change, and tells her she looks
-years younger—as she does; and the other evening Cousin Chad took up
-the tale, and grew positively sentimental, right before Caro. Cousin
-Jane blushed and bridled as she must have done over forty years ago, and
-next day she bought the prettiest stuff for a house dress, and carried
-it to the wedding-gown dressmaker to make! She says it’s every woman’s
-Christian duty to be attractive in her own home, and that if Chadwell
-will be a boy and like frippery, she’ll have to give in to him; the Lord
-didn’t give men much sense anyway, and you just have to humor them
-along, like children.
-
-I feel rather ashamed of myself, I must confess. I’ve been laughing at
-her all these years, like all the rest of the family, and been cross
-with her inside, often. And what she needed most was for somebody to see
-the simple human need for praise and petting under all her strident
-aggressiveness; for as soon as she got it she blossomed out like this! I
-said as much to Caro today, and she cocked her head suddenly to one side
-as if she heard someone calling her. Then she jumped up, laughing, spun
-around on one toe, and caught me in her arms. She said I’d given her
-such a big idea I’d taken her breath away. She wouldn’t tell me what it
-was, but ran off to the buggy and drove singing down to the gate.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_October 24th._ Caro has given me the shock of my life. I’ve seen she
-had some kind of bee in her bonnet for three or four days, but she was
-bent on being mysterious, so I didn’t tease.
-
-Yesterday, as I sat on the side porch, whipping lace, I saw her buggy
-coming out from between the cedars, and Cousin Jason was in it! Caro was
-beaming, as usual, and Cousin Jason looked as if he were having a good
-time, and embarrassed to know what to do with it. I went to meet them as
-they drove toward the Perchery.
-
-He greeted me awkwardly, and explained that Caro wanted him to see her
-house, and that he’d had no more sense than to give in to her and come.
-Caro dashed at him at once.
-
-“You mean you had sense enough to come,” she corrected. “Cousin Jason
-really has lots of sense, Mammy Lil, only he thought it was nonsense and
-tried his best to hide it. We’re going up to town together tomorrow on a
-lark—just we two.”
-
-“I haven’t promised yet,” he growled.
-
-“You needn’t promise,” said Caro sweetly. “I told you it wasn’t
-necessary. All you need to do is to go.”
-
-She made him admire the house and the plans; and when he objected to her
-numerous closets she assured him that his ideas were all wrong, and that
-the lack of closets in his own house was the root of most of his
-troubles; he needed them to pack his skeletons in, instead of
-entertaining them in public. They went off together presently; but Caro
-promised to come back this evening and spend the night. I knew I should
-have the tale then.
-
-She came, and the three of us had dinner together, the Peon being in
-town. And now that she and David are at the piano in the next room, I
-must finish the story.
-
-She went straight from here the other day to Cousin Jason’s, and told
-him she wanted him to come to Milly’s wedding and give the bride away.
-He was too amazed to be angry at first; and when he did get angry, Caro
-stood her ground, kept her temper, and gave him what she called a
-preachment—a mixture of fun, coaxing, and straight-from-the-shoulder
-talking. She made no impression, apparently, so when she was ready to go
-she left, assuring him cheerfully that she would be back in the morning
-and take the matter up with him again.
-
-He had always liked Caro, and her sheer audacity pleased him. She took
-her work the next morning and spent the day. When Cousin Jason grew
-weary of argument, he went out on the farm; but Caro was there when he
-came back. She had carried over various good things to eat, and gave him
-a lunch such as he hadn’t enjoyed since he left Grace’s. She argued,
-coaxed, ridiculed, and scolded. And by the time David, who was sworn to
-secrecy, came by to take her driving, Cousin Jason had promised to think
-the matter over.
-
-I don’t believe it was what the child said that impressed his stubborn
-nature; he simply found Caro herself irresistible.
-
-When she left him that day, his anger with Grace, she said, was really a
-crumbling ruin; but he didn’t realize it; so she went back next morning
-to topple it to its fall. By the middle of the afternoon he had said
-that if he could be convinced Grace really wanted him, he would go. Caro
-immediately challenged him to go there with her to dinner that night,
-take Grace by surprise, and see for himself. When he refused she taunted
-him with backing out of his own test, and dared him to the scratch. She
-telephoned Grace finally that she wanted to bring a friend to dinner,
-and they drove over together.
-
-“Milly and Bobolink were out in his car,” she said; “and Cousin Grace
-didn’t see us coming. We walked right in on her in the living-room
-before she knew he was there.” Caro paused to wipe her eyes. “I’ll cry
-for six months whenever I think about it. I don’t see how Cousin Grace
-can care so much—he’s been so hateful to her. I thought she was going
-to faint at first. Then she stood there speechless, her hands stretched
-out, and her face the most beautiful thing I ever saw. He called her
-name and went toward her, and she just slipped into his arms with one
-long sob, as if her heart were breaking. And I went out and shut the
-door.”
-
-When Milly came in she was plainly overjoyed, for her mother’s sake, if
-not for his; and Bobolink, Caro declared, behaved like an archangel. She
-inconsistently elucidated this remark by explaining that he had been
-brought up on a farm and was as crazy about the country as I am myself;
-and he has always kept up his knowledge of agriculture and his interest
-in it. Cousin Jason, who had taken him for what he politely terms a city
-fool, thawed visibly toward him during the evening. And before he left
-he had promised to give the bride away.
-
-Caro, who believes in striking while the iron is hot, offered to go to
-town with him the next day to order his dress-suit for the occasion. As
-the wedding is to be on the twenty-ninth, there is certainly no time to
-lose. But Cousin Jason, who has scorned conventionality all his life,
-balked instantly, and declared that if he had to make a fool of himself
-to do it he wouldn’t come to the wedding at all.
-
-Grace agreed at once to his wearing anything he chose; but Caro was
-resolved to carry her point.
-
-“You see, Mammy Lil, he was just in retreat, and I had to rout him. If I
-had let him make a stand about the clothes he’d wear I’d have been
-throwing away my victory. So I told him he had to have a dress-suit.
-He’d need it for my wedding as well as Milly’s. I didn’t tell him before
-Cousin Grace; I waited till he drove me back to Cousin Jane’s. And next
-day I went over again to sit up with him about it.”
-
-“He ought to have admired your persistence.”
-
-“That’s just what I told him. He began to weaken a little, so I brought
-him over and showed him the Perchery as a reward. And he went this very
-day. The tailor said he couldn’t make it in time, and Cousin Jason
-crowed and said he’d told me so. But I explained to the tailor that he
-could make it, and that he had it to do. So he agreed. We bought gloves,
-and a tie, and everything; and I made him get his hair cut, and he’s
-going to look scrumptious. You really haven’t an idea what can be done
-with an old relation till you begin to furbish him up.”
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_October 30th._ Milly was married in church, and she and Cousin Jason
-and Grace stopped by here on their way to the wedding for me to see
-them. Milly was beautiful, and no bride but Caro could be sweeter; and
-Grace, all in silvery gray, with that deep light in her eyes, was like
-nothing but the Moonlight Sonata. As to Cousin Jason, he was furbished
-almost past recognition; and my admiration pleased him like a boy.
-
-Caro fluttered about them, radiant in her bridesmaid’s dress, and
-followed by David’s adoring eyes. The Peon escorted Grace; and after
-awhile I watched the carriages coming back. Before they left for the
-station Caro telephoned me, and Uncle Milton wheeled me down to the
-gate, where I waved my handkerchief and cast my handful of rice as they
-drove by, Milly’s exquisite face alight with a look her husband may well
-carry in his heart always.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_November 29th._ How fast the days slip by! Milly came home early in the
-week, and yesterday was the Thanksgiving I prophesied about to David
-last spring.
-
-Certainly I am going all about the house; and to emphasize my success as
-a seer we had a family gathering at Thanksgiving dinner. The bride and
-groom were here, of course, and Grace, who leaves as soon as Caro is
-married, and Cousin Jason—resplendent, by the way, in his dress-suit,
-which he considered a capital joke on Caro. Cousin Jane looked not a day
-over fifty, and Cousin Chad had done some furbishing himself to keep her
-company.
-
-To think of a dinner party at Bird Corners again, after all these years!
-The Peon and I beamed at one another from the ends of the table; and in
-the centre, the bride and groom faced the bride-and-groom-to-be, with
-the older people tucked in at the corners. And it was all so good to see
-and hear—such a fairy tale come true—that, as I lie here today
-resting, I am just too happy for words.
-
-David and Caro are to be married next Wednesday—married here, at Bird
-Corners. I dare not risk going to the church yet, and Cousin Jane’s is
-quite as far away. Besides, both the children want it here, and it is
-and always has been Caro’s home as well as David’s. Cousin Jane has
-really been sweet about it; and it is all settled that she and Caro are
-to come over in time for me to help dress the bride. Grace is coming
-tomorrow, and will stay with me until it is all over and she goes away
-herself.
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-_December 9th._ The wedding day was perfect—cloudless blue, and the
-little red wren singing his matins in the lilac almost before it was
-light. I am glad the child is a winter bride. She can afford to ignore
-the seasons, for she carries spring-time in her heart, like her namesake
-out of doors.
-
-It was all beautiful, and I with my own hands helped to make it so. But
-nothing about it is very clear to me except the look in the children’s
-eyes—_our_ children, both of them, at last. Caro’s joy had sobered her,
-so that she walked the earth in radiance, instead of fluttering,
-light-winged, above it; but David’s joy had set him on the heights. Oh,
-my son, my son, child of my soul always! I could not have borne the look
-upon his face if I had not known Caro through and through. But now I am
-not afraid.
-
-Grace went the day after the wedding, and left me in a world where real
-and Make-Believe are blended into one. The Peon comes home early, and
-together we walk across the grass to the Perchery, and talk of how he
-wheeled me there in those sorrowful days last spring, when it seemed the
-knoll would never know the nest we longed to see there. And in the
-evening we sit in the firelight together, and hear the childish voices
-of long ago in the room, and childish feet in the hall. And we laugh
-over the good old days, and smile over the new days, which are better.
-And before I go to bed we go to the window and look at the children’s
-house, standing clear against the stars. And they come and stand beside
-us there, their tiny hands in ours—the dear, long-ago little children,
-who will be with us always, though the big children, dearer still, come
-and go across the grass between their home and ours.
-
-                                THE END
-
-                 *        *        *        *        *
-
-Transcriber’s Notes:
-
-Punctuation and obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without
-note. When variation in spelling or hyphenation occurred, majority use
-has been employed.
-
-[End of _In the Garden of Delight_, by Lily Hardy Hammond]
-
-
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