Seraphita’s breast, and, laying its bill close to her mouth, it
breathed a soul into her, and then the dove just vanished, and
Seraphita was dead.
‘Then, because God had been good to him, and had given Seraphita a soul
again, her father built an orphan asylum and called it after her, “The
Seraphita”; and you can see it over there, with the sun shining on
it--it looks like gold.’
‘It is a pretty story, Pepita; but do _you_ believe she had no soul?’
‘The Señora knows I am English on my father’s side, but my mother was
Spanish.’
‘So you are half Spanish, and _half_ believe it; is that so, Pepita?’
‘Yes, Señora.’
[Illustration]
THE VOICE.
He saw her first on a Wednesday in May. She was sitting on the back
door-step, doing nothing but just watching him plow. It looked as
if that was what she was doing, so he tried to seem a little more
unconscious than he had, when he really was unconscious, and every time
he turned at the end of the furrow he glanced up at her from under his
soft felt hat, which he wore pulled low over his eyes. She sat still,
and he plowed ten furrows; the field was small; the apple-trees were
in blossom, but the air was cool. He thought she would go in soon, but
she sat with her hands idly in her lap. He had never seen a girl sit
still for so long before; what was she waiting for? It seemed as if she
wanted to speak to him, but that could not be. Who was she, anyhow?
He didn’t know anybody lived in the house; they must have moved in
very lately, maybe yesterday, and maybe she really did want to ask him
something; perhaps they hadn’t brought any potatoes with them--could
she want to ask him if he had any to sell? Perhaps she was lonesome;
but a boy couldn’t go and talk to a girl just because she looked
lonesome. How slim she was, and she didn’t look a bit like the Legget
girls, who lived in the white house at the Crossing. How pretty the
house looked with someone in it; he liked a brown house best anyway;
it was a pity his mother had taken a notion to paint their own house
white--it never had been the same to him since then.
Now the girl, whoever she was, was going in. No, she was just standing
up to see him better; how queer! She was more slender than he first
had thought, and foreign-looking, too, with black hair and eyes, and
her hair was braided in two long braids--it made her look young; how
old was she, anyway? He had plowed now till he was almost opposite to
her door, and only three apple-trees distant. If she sat there till he
plowed to the corner of her garden he would say ‘Good-afternoon.’
He plowed till he was within two furrows of the corner. He had not
looked up at the end of the last furrow, and now he was turning again
towards her. She was gone.
Thursday, he carried out the potatoes to plant. It was warmer than
yesterday, and the south wind was blowing off the apple-blossoms. They
fell from her garden into the furrows on his land, and he dropped the
potatoes into pink and white rifts.
He looked almost every minute to see her come out of the door.
The house was very still, and they had not taken the boards down
that had been nailed over the pantry windows to keep the storms from
breaking the glass, and there were no curtains up. They couldn’t have
been there long. Probably there was nobody but her and her mother, and
they would have to wait for some neighbor to come in and help them take
those boards down, and start the pump working. He would wash up after
supper, and go over there. He could help them a lot before dark.
He would ask his mother to send over something to eat while they were
getting settled. The neighbors always did that when folks moved into
the neighborhood.
She was standing at the door now. It was certain she was older than
he first thought--she must be seventeen, or even older; he would be
nineteen in October.
She certainly wanted to speak to him; she didn’t exactly beckon to him,
but she sort of waited as if she expected him to come. He laid the bag
of potatoes down and vaulted over the fence. He stumbled awkwardly as
he landed, and that was so ridiculous. She had a pretty, bright smile
when he looked up after brushing off the soft dirt from his knees; it
wasn’t a mocking smile either, only such a happy smile, as if she knew
he would come. He stepped over the narrow bed of rhubarb, between the
currant bushes, and then she was gone. Probably she had gone to call
her mother. He waited a whole minute or more on the steps. Yes, she
could have seen him quite well from there, better than he had seen her,
because the sun had been in his eyes, and she was sitting in the shade.
She did not come out, and so he pushed the door open a little
wider--she had left it almost half open. The hallway was dark at first,
and it was not furnished. There was not even a mat at the door.
Why didn’t she come back? It was so still he could almost hear his
heart beat, and besides he was a little embarrassed. He couldn’t go
away, and he didn’t know exactly what to do.
He knocked on the open door. The sound went all over the house, and the
dust where it had been disturbed was making the sunbeam in the kitchen
beyond look like a regular golden beam. No one answered, but he heard
a footstep in the sitting-room; he walked in; there was no one there;
he grew curious, and his embarrassment wore off, for the girl was
evidently more shy than he.
He went through the living-room. There was no furniture there either,
but there were lots of flying dust particles, so that somebody had
evidently just been through. He opened the door into the kitchen;
nobody was there, but the stairs creaked ever so slightly. She was
going up-stairs. He went swiftly into the hall, but could see no one.
He walked clumsily up-stairs; how much more noise he made than she had.
They would probably have a rag carpet on them later. Who were they
anyway, and why did she run away from him?
The rooms up-stairs were connected by doors. He followed the footsteps
from one room to another. At the end of the back one, which had a
sloping roof on one side, there were very narrow stairs which led to
the attic. The door at the foot of the stairs closed right before him.
He was angry, and spoke up:
‘Does anyone here want to speak to me?’
There was no answer, and again he seemed to hear his own heart-beats.
He stood quite still, wondering whether to go away or to follow the
footsteps, which he heard faintly overhead.
He followed the footsteps; the stairs were steep, and opened into the
middle of the long garret, and nobody was in sight. But the agitated
dust danced in the sunbeam which streamed way across the room. It was
very clean up there--no lumber of any sort, no old furniture, no old
trunks, no old papers or such litter--and it was as quiet as death.
His heart beat now with excitement, not embarrassment. His quick eye
saw that there was no other room, and that there was no place to hide
except behind the chimney that ran through the front part and up
through the roof. He walked over to it. It seemed a long walk, it was
so quiet and queer, and he felt as if he were being watched.
There was no one behind the chimney. He went all around it.
Now he felt quite himself again. He had been a fool, or else asleep,
and he put his foot on the first stair, saying aloud ‘Good-bye,’ which
meant ‘good-bye to my foolishness.’
A timid voice said, ‘Oh, don’t go!’
He stood with his lips parted, his damp hair clinging to his forehead
where his cap had pressed it, his head bent forward to listen, every
nerve tingling.
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Close beside you, here at your right hand.’
‘I don’t see you.’
‘No, you can’t see me now.’
‘Why can’t I see you?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the voice sighed.
‘Was that you I saw yesterday on the steps?’
‘Yes, I was watching you plow, and I wanted to speak to you.’
‘I knew it, and that is why I came in. Can’t I see you?’
Again the sigh blew across his face.
‘What do you mean by my not being able to see you?’
‘_Can_ you see me?’
‘No, not now; but I saw you at the door, before you came up here.’
‘But you could not hear me then.’
‘I hear you now.’
‘Yes, but you do not see me.’
‘Can’t you be seen and heard too at the same time?’
Again a soft piteous sigh.
‘I want to know who you are, and why you can’t be seen and heard too.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I must go now, if you won’t let me see you.’
‘Oh, don’t go!’
He stood irresolute; he was not one bit frightened, only he was aching
to see her of the voice, and to know who she was. Then he asked:
‘Can’t I _ever_ see you again?’
‘Oh, yes!’ said the voice, and it seemed to vibrate all around him, a
dancing voice full of joy and hope.
He smiled with it, and then there was laughter all around him, moving
here and there gaily.
‘I want to see you now.’
‘Then I can’t talk with you any more.’
‘Never mind, let me see you.’
A sigh, a soft moaning sound, a rustle as of garments, and she stood
before him.
He had not been embarrassed by the voice, but now his heart began to
beat, and he said, quite as he had meant to when he first went into the
house:
‘Is there anything I can do to help you settle?’
That was an absurd thing to say to this slim, wistful girl, who stood
looking at him. It was the natural boy asserting itself against the
unknown, the unexpected.
Then he turned his head and looked into her eyes. They were the
sweetest eyes he had ever seen. He had never before looked deep into
any human eyes.
Then, home and circumstances, field and world, all became to him a
dream, and only this maiden without a voice, this voice floating into
empty air, became to him his world.
Outside, the apple-blossoms floated down from her trees to his land,
the potatoes lay unplanted. Vainly that night the cows waited for his
hand to milk them. The real had become the shadow; he was in a new
world. Illusive voice! vanishing shape to deal with!
Within, a wild delicious hope that he, he might at last unite voice and
shape.
So from the plough-boy is the poet born.
[Illustration]
THE SCARF.
It is interesting to see a man handle delicate fabrics. The mind
involuntarily estimates the strength of the man in its superabundance,
comparing it to the task. The contrast makes it picturesque.
Mark watched his friend Rob as he sat drawing the thin, Eastern-looking
scarf through his hands; his hands were good to look at--firm and
shapely. The scarf was sheer, almost of the texture of a cobweb; it was
white, with an ivory tint where the folds gave it substance. It clung
now and then to his hand, or yielded reluctantly as he drew it from his
sleeve where it had floated.
There was silence in the room, emphasized by the restless throbbing of
the city below. The sails out on the bay dipped and courtesied in the
fresh evening wind, and the ripples flushed red under the slanting sun.
‘Rob,’ said the older man, ‘all the same, I don’t like it; it isn’t
like you.’
‘I am sorry you don’t like it, and it _is_ like me,’ said the other,
slowly. ‘I have always counted acts as the man. How would you construe
it if I said: “Your acts I like, but I don’t like you”? That isn’t
reasonable.’
‘You are splitting hairs, and I can’t match you at that. What I mean
in plain English is, that I don’t see why your finding a scarf should
necessitate or excuse you for breaking an engagement.’
‘I didn’t find the scarf; it found me. And I didn’t break the
engagement; an engagement, to my thinking, is not breakable; breaking
suggests force; an engagement dissolves. What is it but the outward
wording of an inward state of mind existing between two mutually
attracted people? the state of mind being changed--lo!--pff!’
‘You exasperate me beyond words, Rob, with your this and your that,
all of it as thin as your scarf; and, what is worse, you do not seem
to feel the gravity of it all, not in the least. You say in August,
“Mark, congratulate me, I am the happiest man alive; I am going to be
married.” In October you say, “Mark, I am a subject for congratulation,
I am a disengaged man.”
‘As a friend of both yours and Mabel’s, I ask why, and you answer by
holding up that miserable, dangling scarf, and say: “This is why; I
found this, and I am going across the water to find the owner.”’
‘Excuse me, but I said “This scarf found me”--therein lies a great
difference.’
‘It is all so trivial I wouldn’t forgive any man living but you.’
‘Thank you.’
The scarf, floated by the breeze, caught on Rob’s shoulder; he drew it
slowly down; it lengthened out with the gentle strain and fell in a
misty heap to his knee.
‘Do put that cussed thing away,’ said Mark, irritably, ‘and tell me, if
you are ever going to, where it came from.’
‘I can tell you that better when I have found out myself.’
‘Who is she?’
‘She is a slender woman, neither dark nor light; her hair is
fluffy--not crimped; her eyes are red-brown in some lights, and she
wears soft raiment.’
‘When did you meet her?’
‘I haven’t met her yet.’
‘And what about Mabel?’
‘Oh, she is all right,’ said Rob, optimistically. ‘What I liked about
her at first is exactly what I like now--she is so sensible; you can’t
tell how sensible she is, Mark. She says I am preoccupied, and she
doesn’t think I am earnest. She is right; I am not what she calls
earnest.’
‘You told her about the scarf, of course?’
‘No, that wouldn’t interest her. Now, tenement houses are in her line.
If I had invested in a tenement house she would have found me no end
interesting; but this kind of a thing isn’t appreciated by her; she
isn’t in it.’
‘I call it puerile and ridiculous,’ said Mark, hotly.
‘I don’t think you are quite right, then. What kind of a fabric should
you take it to be?’
Mark took it in his hand. Whatever he did, he did sincerely and with
care. He held the scarf up to the light; he bent his head over it and
scrutinized it through his glasses; then he sniffed at it to see if it
had any perfume, and stretched the meshes to see if it were hand-woven.
At last he said:
‘I don’t think I know anything about it. It is made of wool, not
silk; it is all delicate as a cobweb, but it does not call to my mind
any stuff I ever saw. I should say it might have come from the East,
possibly from India or even from Greece--Milesian wool.’
‘Yes, Milesian wool--it must be that,’ said Rob, enthusiastically.
‘You are not in earnest when you tell me you do not know anything more
about it than I do?’
‘I am in earnest, but I can’t say exactly that; and yet I know nothing
about the scarf except how it came to me; you would call me practical,
sane--not a dreamer?’
‘Not a dreamer, if by that you mean that you are sufficiently on
the earth to know how to live; but you are a mixture. I saw an old
tinker yesterday--a tinker and umbrella-mender combined--a little
gray tramp of a fellow, about sixty years old, stubby beard, dirty,
self-possessed, master of himself and of the world so far as he was
concerned in it, with an optimistic vein in spite of some hard luck,
and with the most beautiful clear eyes I ever saw. He was a wanderer--a
traveller, I might say. He had seen the greater part of America, and
understood it, too, and he had seen it all on foot or by means of
stolen car-rides. He fairly made me long to travel, with his tales
of Colorado; he was immensely interesting. I talked with him for
over an hour while he mended my umbrella and put a new ferule on my
cane; and all the time, while I was listening to him, I was thinking:
“Now, here is my friend Rob, just as he would have been without the
mixture”--the mixture being, of course, your scholarly tastes and your
money, half-tinker and half-student. I have no doubt but the tinker had
tastes, too, but he hadn’t the money.’
‘I like the picture of your tinker.’
‘Yes, you do, that is the trouble; and it’s the tinker part of you that
breaks an engagement for a scarf.’
‘What would you have me do--tell Mabel that I am earnest and
interesting, and beg her to marry a tinker?’
‘No, I fancy the thing is better as it is; but I hope the scholar will
have his chance some day. You are thirty?’
‘Thirty and one.’
‘Some study, much travel; a little business--not enough for an anchor;
wit in one pocket, wisdom late in coming--name, Robert Dudley.’
‘And till now a friend of Mark’s.’
‘Always that.’
Rob folded the scarf slowly. It clung to his fingers; it caught
wherever chance blew it; it was fluttered against his face while he
carefully squared the corners together and patiently rolled its misty
length into pocket size.
‘Mabel,’ he said, meditatively and impartially, ‘is much too good for
me; she is moral, without being morbid; she is dignified, without being
stiff; she is generous, but not weak. She reads people as she reads
books. At first she thought I, as a book, was interesting, that I had
an ethical flavor; but she found I was only a sort of art for art’s
sake literature, and she laid me down. I did not interest her more.
She has no sense of humor, and it never occurred to her that her one
chance of cultivating it was to marry me. Now _she_ will be different.’
‘Yes, she will, and some day I shall discover, under a tinker’s garb,
my old friend Bob, mending umbrellas for a living, the mixture having
lost its savor and the money gone.’
‘I have never heard you stick so to a simile--it seems to please you. I
like your tinker idea, but I deny the outcome.’
‘Well, good-bye. I am sorry for it all.’
‘No need for that; Mabel is rid of her tinker--_so_ far, so good; the
rest “lies on the knees of the Gods.”’
‘As you will. Good-bye; I will see you off on Saturday.’
A moment later, Rob spoke sharply over the balustrade:
‘One minute more; come back, I want a last word. Sit there, will you,
just where I sat; no, don’t move the chair, let it face the table. Now
lean your hands on your chin, so; now look up--what do you see?’
‘What do I see? I see myself--a portion of myself--in the glass.’
‘Hitch the chair this way, so that you can see your full face--now?’
‘Well, what of it?’
‘Tell me exactly what you see, in every detail.’
Rob had darkened the room and lit the gas; it was burning just in front
and over Mark’s head, lighting up his face and shoulders, but leaving
the room dark behind him.
‘What do I see? I see my face and head, my collar and tie, and my
shoulders, and my arms down to the elbows, and of course the table
where they rest.’
‘What do you see behind you?’
‘I see--I seem to see the wall or door, I can’t tell exactly which, it
is dark behind there.’
‘Can you see the pictures on the wall?’
‘Yes, by canting my head slightly, I see a frame. I can’t tell what the
picture is, though; I am near-sighted at best.’
‘Yes, I know. I don’t want that picture to come into your range of
vision; hold your head straight.’
‘Then I see nothing but myself,’ said Mark, turning round to see what
really was behind him, and why he was put through these tactics. There
was nothing behind him. Rob stood at the side of the table; but now he
sat down, and said:
‘I want your attention and your friendliest belief in what I am going
to tell you. I am quite in earnest, and I assume that you will credit
every word I say. The interpretation you give it will be your own--I
shall not combat it; but up to the point when you can consider it as a
whole, I want you to hold your judgment in suspense.’
The two men sat facing each other, Rob’s face being animated by his
resolve to put his thought into words, to weigh his problem in the
scales of an alien mind, to try and see himself and his idea through
other eyes than his own. Mark’s face was quiet, attentive, and delicate
in its expression of suspended judgment. He was a man who held
friendship as a sacred obligation, and was ready to meet a demand with
single-minded generosity.
‘A month ago,’ said Rob, slowly weighing each word, ‘I came home
from Mabel’s. We had come to an understanding as to the time for our
wedding.’
Mark moved restlessly, and shaded his eyes with his hand.
‘I sat down where you have just been sitting, and leaned my chin on
my hands as I made you do. I felt excited and disturbed. The full
significance of the next step dawned on me in all its depth and
meaning. I was carried along by my agitated thoughts, and found myself
looking at myself in the glass. I was struck, as anyone is at such a
moment, by the strangeness of my own face caught with some controlling
emotion on it. I seemed outside and apart from my usual self. As the
consciousness of observing myself came to me, I began to look more as
I usually do when I casually glance in the glass, to tie my scarf, for
instance. Then I fell to speculating on that other fellow that I had
seen when he was unawares. I suppose it is a common experience, this
meeting with oneself. I must have been quite deeply absorbed, when,
gradually, I saw over my left shoulder a shadow--no, not a shadow,
but a semblance of a face. There was a sort of golden halo or fringe
of golden hair over a pair of smiling red-brown eyes. I caught myself
smiling involuntarily in response. The eyes were above the level of my
own, as if a woman were standing there looking over my shoulder and
meeting my eyes in the glass. Mabel’s eyes are dark. _Her_ eyes were
a red-brown. I could not see her face--not that it was hidden, but it
was as if the eyes were so absorbing that they blotted out all else.
This lasted for some minutes, then I turned to see what was behind me
that would produce such an illusion. There was nothing there that could
be twisted or warped into any semblance of a face. I took the same
position again, my chin on my hands, my elbows on the table. It was
some time before I could get the vision--not till my thoughts began to
wander; then I saw those strange, beautiful eyes again, and the fluffy
golden hair, and not till I moved my head did they disappear. The eyes
smiled at me; the vision seemed warm and human--not in the faintest
degree ghostly, except that somehow I couldn’t see much but the eyes.
As I say, I was driven by curiosity to turn round, and she vanished. I
failed to call her to me again that night, and the next, and for some
days; then she came again. I had sat here for hours waiting for her.
I was determined to see what would come of it. I used to spend whole
evenings here alone, waiting. When, at last, she did come, she came
smiling, warm, human; and this time I saw her mouth--a large, mobile
mouth, less smiling than the eyes, but most lovely. She came again and
again. Once I put my hand behind me suddenly--that was a mistake. She
vanished, and it was many evenings after that before she came again.
The next time, strangely enough, I could see her more distinctly than
ever. Her eyes were not smiling; maybe that was why I could see the
rest of her face better. Then I discerned how beautiful she was. Her
chin was a perfect oval, and it terminated in a lovely point below
her gracious mouth; it was distractingly beautiful. My left hand was
hanging by my side, and I could distinctly feel her draperies brushing
tremulously against it. You will have the same sensation if you let
this scarf brush across your hand--so. This silent drama went on for
some weeks. I neglected everything for her. One day Mabel sent for
me, and told me she had noticed my abstraction and had drawn her own
conclusions, and that, if I were willing, she would like to discontinue
the engagement. Willing! I felt like a knave; I was humiliated; I
suffered, but I could say nothing. It was a different thing to sit and
smile into those red-brown eyes of my vision, and to meet Mabel’s
dark, truthful ones, and not to be able to explain anything to her;
to feel that for her there was no explanation; to know that I was
submerged in a stream of life of which she had no part. Then Mabel’s
greatness saved me. She saw my suffering, and she did not press me
for any explanation, but told me frankly that she must consider our
relations as having reverted to their old standing--we must be only as
friends; that she herself saw that her interests were more and more
tending toward work among the poor, and her imagination absorbed in
plans for the general welfare, rather than in the idea of making one
man’s home supremely happy, as it undoubtedly should be made. That was
about it. It was noble of her, wasn’t it? I had no choice but to accept
her decision. That I wished for that very decision was bitterness to
me. I see now that even then I wanted the selfish comfort of being
a martyr. Mabel is the noblest woman alive; she has become my saint,
instead of my wife.’
‘But you have your phantom eyes left,’ said Mark, dryly.
‘Yes, she came again that night. In my exultant humiliation I was rash:
I closed my hand on the drapery that fluttered against it. I closed my
hand. The smiling eyes grew large with surprise and alarm, and the face
vanished--I held in my hand this scarf.’
There was silence. Then Rob continued: