Now I speak of Miriam and myself when we were ten--and eleven--and
twelve--and thirteen. Even so, how we can divide from all the
rest--take ourselves out of painting, canvas and frame, swim away,
two waves of the sea, rise and float off, two violins, from the
orchestra? The orchestra and the sea and the painting, canvas and
frame, are Miriam and me.
But we still explain the new by the old....
I cannot remember when, at Restwell or Flowerfield, I first made the
acquaintance of my cousin Miriam. We must have been very young
children. Casting back, I have the feeling of having been always
with her.
In the days before we went to Madam Black, in the Flowerfield
Octobers and the Restwell Junes, it was John, Miriam, and I. And
always, in a measure, it has been John, Miriam, and I. It was so the
four years at Flowerfield. But inside the triangle she and I paired
with spontaneity, vigor, and thoroughness. The three of us roamed
together, learned, worked, and played together. It was brothers and
sister, a simple, deep familiarity, a give and take, impersonally
sound. But at last, within the general one-and-threeness, Miriam and
I sat on one throne.
She was oil to my fire and I was oil to hers. Our flames shot up,
blended, coruscated, sang. All vases held more, every color had
lamps behind it, every word rang with a doubled power. Salt, zest,
importance, showered into everything undertaken. When we were
together light penetrated farther, was intenser--warmth was warmer....
But now we were children still. Yet we would have said in those
days, too, "I _understand_ Michael."--"I _understand_ Miriam."
We are in the barn at Flowerfield, in the hayloft. It is Saturday
morning. There is a fine rain--we cannot go after walnuts as we had
planned. We lie in a scooped-out place in the hay. Around us are
shaggy, fragrant walls; before us, one great open square through
which comes the moist air and gray light, and a dim, shifting view of
autumn hills. The roof is the peaked roof of a brown tent. Against
the beams are barn-swallows' nests, old and empty. The swallows are
flying south. The hay smells dry and sweet. We have wine-sap apples
and the _Arabian Nights_. John has, besides, a piece of red,
fragrant cedar and a jack-knife. He is making a set of checkers. I
am the story-teller. I tell the story of the "Fisherman and the
Genie." John listens, carving his round checkers. Miriam, half
buried in the hay, listens. We know all the fat blue volume from
"Ali Baba" to "Sinbad." We have learned from Madam Black something
of how to tell stories. We had rather tell them than read them from
the book.
I tell. I have told the story before--we all know it--but I am on
the spiral above the last telling, and the auditors are above the
last listening. And it is a good story-telling day. The genie comes
out of the bottle. "I see him," says Miriam, rising on her elbow.
(The audience always interrupts, assists.) "He curls that way," she
demonstrated with her free arm. "Thick and smoky! Round and round
and up! He hides the sea.--There's the bottle. It's hard and round
and small. It looks like an acorn under a tree."
John, whittling, nodded. "I reckon that fisherman's frightened! I
reckon he's thinking he's let out Satan!"
"I tell you I _do_ see it!" said Miriam. She sat up, cross-legged,
tailor fashion. Her hands rested on her knees. "But I'm safe! He
can't get me. I'm everywhere."
"If you're everywhere you're right where the genie is. You're
_him_," said John. "You're just seeing yourself."
The fisherman and the genie argue together. The fisherman seems
about to meet destruction. Then his wits work and he gets the genie
back into the bottle. When he lets him out again he is a reasonable
quantity, a harnessed energy. He takes the fisherman into the
apparent desert where is the strange pool in the midst of barrenness.
The fisherman, having the clue to wealth, goes fishing and takes four
fish, white, red, blue, and yellow.
Miriam's voice rises again. "I _see_ them. I know their names:
Mussulman, Parsee, Christian, Jew!"
John again answers. "Of course you know them! If you didn't know
the story, and then knew them, that would be something!"
"I couldn't know them unless I knew them. How could I? But I know
them higher and deeper and faster and louder. I know them like
that!" She began to clap her hands together. "Mussulman, Parsee,
Christian, Jew!"
"Now he takes them to the Sultan," directed John. I continue to tell
the story and we go on to the King of the Black Isles who was half
man and half marble.... The barn and the slanting rain and the
warmth and the fragrance of the hay, the smell of the cedar, the
taste of the wine-saps leave the screen.
It is March. The robins are here. The plowed earth pleases them.
The maples are fire-tipped, the bloodroot blooms. A roaring wind
goes around the house and shakes the trees. There is a swing
fastened to a great outstretching bough of the tulip-tree. The bough
is high, the ropes of the swing are long, the board is wide. Miriam
and I stand here, swinging. We have gotten a great start, we go
higher and higher, we bend together, rise together, the wind is in
our hair. We go up, we go out, the leaves swirl up after us, we are
as high as the high windows. We are drawn back, we rush forward,
high, high. The wind is strong about us, there is delight, there is
thrill! We shut our eyes. The swing seems to have left the
tulip-tree. We seem to be going away, away, through the air. We are
high as a cloud and far as the mountains. Flowerfield quits us--we
are in the air--there is not even the swing. We are birds flying....
We are one bird, flying, great-winged. The space we are in cracks
wide. There is other space. We feel exhilaration that becomes a
pounding thrill, a huge chord vibration. Some one calls us from the
house. We come back. We are swinging high, that is all, up and out,
but locked still to the tulip-tree.
It is yet March, and cold, with a sudden spear from the north. There
is a great wood fire in the school-room, burning at dusk. Miriam and
I sit on two hassocks, on either side the hearth, watching the fire.
Catherine and Lewis are in the room, but they seem to be quiet. John
sprawls on the hearth-rug, reading _Ivanhoe_. Madam Black, in the
parlor, two rooms away, is playing Beethoven. Miriam and I sit very
still. The fire.... Pine feeds it. The flames bend, roar together,
rise superb. Suddenly, again, as in the swing, Miriam and I flow
into one. The "she" and "I," the "twoness," come into "weness." But
the "weness" itself--and that is the increase--springs into a new
"Iness." Something, flashing together, uses the "twoness," but as we
use arms or hands. More than that, the very room comes in. The
fire, the logs that burn, the forest just behind them--the walls and
the furniture--Catherine and Lewis by the window, John and Madam
Black come in. The music comes in. It is quite simple, but very
satisfying. Catherine and Lewis, by the window, fall out over their
box of colors. And there is again the school-room fire, and Miriam
and Michael sitting upon hassocks.
It is the same springtime. We are thirteen. Madam Black is going.
Presently I shall return to Restwell. October will come, but it will
not bring me to Flowerfield. I am going to Hilltop Academy, in
Whitechurch. That is an old school, reconstituted, invigorated, said
to be full of promise. John is going, too. He will live at Restwell
as I have lived at Flowerfield. The old South is behind us, and
around us are the middle 'seventies. Miriam's going to school is of
less importance than is John's. She will have lessons at home with
Aunt Kate. In a year or two, perhaps, she may go to Richmond, to a
school there, staying with the Warringers.
There is a hillside of dark trees, white pine and hemlock, sloping
steeply to a brook that here proceeds with a deep, sliding stillness,
and here plunges from ledge to ledge like a white-maned water-steed.
John, Miriam, and I come to this place. We have been gathering
wake-robins on the other side the hill, where there is a sunnier
wood. Then we pass around the shoulder to the shaded side, cool and
old. We sit down on the brown-scented earth, clean save for a mat of
needles and fallen cones. We have great bunches of the wake-robins,
the pink and the white. We put them down on the cool earth in the
deep shade. John and I are going to Restwell in a week. Meantime
the three of us are pursuing one of our inner travels. We lift, at
will, from the great book and reservoir of otherselves, _compagnons
de voyage_. Our present scene is set in the island of the Swiss
Family Robinson. But the characters who figure are from other
provinces. Ourselves of course, Uncas from _The Last of the
Mohicans_; Gurth from _Ivanhoe_; a Knight and a Lady, first found in
the _Faery Queen_; Ariel, Oberon, and Titania; and Ulysses the Greek
wanderer. I think, to-day, that it is a good choice and suited to an
isle of all climes and products.
We take up our adventures where we left them, over the hilltop. They
have their reality--the reality of music, of dream, of play, of
lacework, of dance, of art. Our bodies rest under the pine-trees,
but the image-making self has swooped to the island. There we follow
Uncas through a wood that spreads as far and climbs as high as we
desire. Uncas finds directions, Gurth fells the trees. Ulysses--and
we--make whatever plan there lies ahead; Uriel, with moth wings,
flies beside us--but Oberon and Titania only look out doubtfully from
ferny recesses. We are making a road for the Knight and the Lady.
Eventually we mean to build a castle--seven castles, like those the
King of China built for his daughter. When we need to expand the
island we expand it. When we need more and different persons, hey,
presto! in they tumble! Oh, life of Uncas and of Gurth--life of
Ariel--life of Ulysses--life of the Knight and the Lady!