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diff --git a/old/63729-0.txt b/old/63729-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d54342b..0000000 --- a/old/63729-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5785 +0,0 @@ -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] - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's In the Garden of Delight, by Lily Hardy Hammond - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT *** - -***** This file should be named 63729-0.txt or 63729-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/7/2/63729/ - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed -Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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