change with someone else, who also wanted to change, but not with him.
The women whose duty it was to scrub floors wanted to work at the looms,
but those at the looms aspired to the big airy room where the bolts of
cloth were measured and rolled up.
"The men who had been told to wash windows wanted to make patterns, the
man in charge of the ventilating apparatus wanted to work in the office,
and the man who was in charge of the office, weary and jaded beyond all
power of words to portray, wanted a place at the loom and a pay-envelope
every Saturday night instead of a commission upon his sales.
"Those who were supposed to weave blue cloth with white dots upon it
wanted to make white cloth with blue dots upon it, but, it seemed, there
was no market for the white cloth with the blue dots and they could not
be made to understand it.
"The boy who attended to the door of the factory wanted to keep books in
the office; the men who were supposed to work in the shipping room
wanted to cut out the samples that were sent to different firms to order
from. The girls who wrote letters and filed the correspondence wanted to
draw designs for new patterns--oh, a great many wanted to draw designs!
[Sidenote: The Spirit of Love]
"The man who did the designing was complaining of a headache, and wanted
to be doorkeeper, that he might have plenty of fresh air. The man who
was supposed to oil the machinery wanted to wash the windows--he said it
was a cleaner job; and the messengers were tired of going back and forth
all day--they wanted to sit quietly and write letters.
"Suddenly an imperious voice called out: 'Each to his own work!' They
hesitated for a moment, then obeyed, and presently everything was
changed. From confusion and disorder it resolved itself into perfect
harmony, for each one was doing his own work and doing it well.
"And, as they worked, the Spirit of Love came among them and the workers
began to sing at their tasks. Each one did not only his own work but
helped his neighbour with his. They became eager to do all they could
instead of as little as they might and still escape censure, and the
face of each one was shining with joy.
"When I awoke I was saying aloud: 'Each to his own work!' For some time
I did not know it was only a dream, but gradually the meaning of it
became clear. Edith, did you ever stop to think that the millennium
could be brought about in less than one hour, if each did his own work
well and in a spirit of love? It is we ourselves who are out of
harmony, not things as they are, and, having once attained harmony,
everything will become right.
[Sidenote: Joy through Service]
"And so, beloved, my love for you has been as a great light in my soul.
I need no more than to give it without ceasing, and to renew, through
human service, not only my love for you, but the love for all which
leads to brotherhood.
"I have come to see that joy comes through what we give, not through
what we take; happiness through serving, not through being served; and
peace through labour, not rest.
"I thought, at first, that I loved you, but it seems to have grown a
hundred-fold. No barriers may divide us from one another, nor earth with
all its seas sunder us apart, for through love has come union, not only
with you but the whole world.
"And so, good-night--heart of my heart, life of my life, and soul of my
soul.
"A. M."
* * * * *
"DEAR AND EVER DEARER:
"Your letter lies against my heart where I feel it with every rising
breath. I, too, have longed for you, a thousand times, and in a thousand
ways.
"Always as the tide of the night turns, I wake and think of you. When
through the darkness comes no response, I smile to myself, knowing you
are asleep, then I sleep also. But sometimes, in an instant, the
darkness becomes alive and throbs with eager messages, as love surges
from my heart to yours and from yours to mine.
[Sidenote: The Open Door]
"I, too, have come into the way of service, of brotherhood. It may seem
a strange thing to write, or even to say, but you, who have never failed
to understand me, will understand this. I never cared so much for my
husband as I do now; I was never less conscious of myself, never more
eager to ask nothing and give all. And, through this change in me has
come about a change in him. Instead of each of us selfishly demanding
what we conceive to be our 'rights,' each strives unselfishly to please
the other--to see who can give the most.
"You have taken nothing away that belongs to anyone else, dear--the love
I bear you is yours alone, but, through it, I have some way more to
give; he is the richer, because of you.
"Like you, I have seen before me a multitude of openings, all leading,
through ways of self-sacrifice, to the sure finding of one's self. The
more love you give, the more you have; it is, in a way, like the old
legend of the man who found he could take to Heaven with him only those
things which he had given away.
"All around me I see the pitiful mistakes that masquerade as
marriage--women who have no virtues save one tied like millstones to
some of earth's noblemen; great-hearted and great-souled women mated
with clods. I see people insanely jealous of one another, suspicious,
fault-finding, malicious; covertly sending barbed shafts to one another
through the medium of general conversation. As if love were ever to be
held captive, or be won by cords and chains! As if the freest thing on
earth would for a moment enter into bondage, or minister unto
selfishness when it is, of itself, unselfishness! Passion-slaved and
self-bound, they never see beyond their own horizon, nor guess that the
great truths of life and love lie just beyond their reach.
[Sidenote: A Plea for Rosemary]
"Looking back, I can see one thing that you may have missed. This love
of ours has brought joy to you and to me, and, indirectly, happiness to
my husband. It has not affected your mother, one way or another, but it
has hurt Rosemary--taken away from her the one thing that made her
sordid life worth while.
"Dear, can't you see your way clear to make it right with her--to give
back at least as much as she had before I came into your life? You will
take nothing from me by doing so, for my place with you is secure and
beyond the reach of change, as you know yours is with me.
"But, just because the full moon has risen upon midnight, shall we
refuse to look at the stars? Believe me, all the lesser loves have
their rightful place, which should be more definitely assured because of
the greater light.
[Sidenote: Rosemary's Need]
"I am pleading not only for her, but for you. Tell her everything, if
you choose, or if you feel that you must in order to be honest. I am
sure you can make her understand.
"The door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is
closed against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her;
to admit her, too, into full fellowship through striving and through
love.
"She will help you with your vineyard people, and, perhaps, come to
peace that way. Her unhappy face as I saw it last haunts me--I cannot
help feeling that I am in some way responsible. She needs you and what
you can give her, more, perhaps, than I, who shall never have it again.
"Never! The word, as I write it, tolls through my consciousness like a
funeral knell. Never to see your face again, or to touch your hand, or
to hear you say you love me. Never to feel your arms holding me close,
your heart beating against mine, never to thrill with ecstasy in every
fibre of me in answer to your kiss.
"Only the silence, broken, perhaps, by an occasional letter, and the
call in the night, bridging the darkness and distance between us, to be
answered for one little hour by love, surging from one to the other and
back again.
[Sidenote: Caught in a Web]
"And yet these thoughts of ours are as a weaver's shuttle, plying
endlessly through the web of night and space and time. One thought may
make a slender thread, indeed, but what of the countless thoughts that
fly back and forth, weaving and interweaving as they go? Shall they not
make first a thread, and then a cord, then a web, and then a fabric,
until, at last, there is no separation, but that of the body, which
counts for naught?
"Dear Heart, you mean so much to me, are so much. From you and from your
love for me I take fresh courage every day. From your strength I make
sure of my own strength, from your tenderness I gather compassion, and
from your steadfastness I gain the hope that leads me onward, the belief
that enables me to face each day bravely and with a smile.
"Deep in my heart, I hold fast to one great joy. Sometimes I close the
door quickly upon it and bar up the passage, lest anyone should guess
that there, within a bare white chamber, is erected the high altar of my
soul, where the lights shine far into the shadows, in spite of rock-hewn
portals, closed and barred.
"The knowledge of your love I have with me always, to steady me, to
guide me, to uplift me, to make even a grave warm and sweet. And to you,
with my own hands, I have brought the divine fire that shall not fail,
so what more need we ask of God, save that somewhere, sometime, in His
infinite compassion, we may be together, even though it may be in the
House not Made with Hands?
[Sidenote: Edith to Alden]
"Remember that I long for you, dream of you, hope for you, believe in
you, pray for you, and, above all else, love you, love you--love you.
And in all the ways of Heaven and for always, I am thine.
"E."
XXIII
Betrothal
[Sidenote: On the Hills by the Vineyard]
Desolation lay upon the vineyard. The fairy lace had been rudely torn
aside by invading storms and the Secret Spinners had entered upon their
long sleep. The dead leaves rustled back and forth, shivering with the
cold, when the winds came down upon the river from the hill. Caught, now
and then, upon some whirling gust, the leaves were blown to the surface
of the river itself, and, like scuttled craft, swept hastily to ports
unknown.
Rosemary escaped from the house early in the afternoon. Unable to go to
the Hill of the Muses, or up the river-road, she had taken a long,
roundabout path around the outskirts of the village and so reached the
hills back of the vineyard. The air of the valley seemed to suffocate
her; she longed to climb to the silent places, where the four winds of
heaven kept tryst.
She was alone, as always. She sighed as she remembered how lonely she
had been all her life. Except Alden, there had never been anyone to
whom she could talk freely. Even at school, the other children had, by
common consent, avoided the solitary, silent child who sat apart,
always, in brown gingham or brown alpaca, and taking refuge in the
fierce pride that often shields an abnormal sensitiveness.
[Sidenote: In Real Life]
She sat down upon the cold, damp earth and leaned against a tree,
wondering if it would not be possible for her to take cold and die. In
the books, people died when they wanted to, or, what was more to the
point, when other people wanted them to. It was wonderful, when you came
to think of it, how Death invariably aided Art.
But, in real life, things were pitifully different. People who ought not
to die did so, and those who could well be spared clung to mortal
existence as though they had drunk deeply of the fabled fountain of
immortal youth.
Descending to personalities, Rosemary reflected upon the ironical Fate
that had taken her father and mother away from her, and spared
Grandmother and Aunt Matilda. Or, if she could have gone with her father
and mother, it would have been all right--Rosemary had no deep longing
for life considered simply as existence. Bitterness and the passion of
revolt swayed her for the moment, though she knew that the mood would
pass, as it always did, when she took her soul into the sanctuary of
the hills.
[Sidenote: A Mystery]
Dispassionately she observed her feet, stretched out in front of her,
and compared them with Mrs. Lee's. Rosemary's shoes were heavy and
coarse, they had low, broad heels and had been patched and mended until
the village cobbler had proclaimed himself at the end of his resources.
Once or twice she had said, half-fearfully, that she needed new shoes,
but Grandmother had not seemed to hear.
Father had meant for her to have everything she wanted--he had said so,
in the letter which at that moment lay against Rosemary's bitter young
heart. He would have given her a pair of slippers like those Mrs. Lee
had worn the day she went there to tea--black satin, with high heels and
thin soles, cunningly embroidered with tiny steel beads. How small and
soft the foot had seemed above the slipper; how subtly the flesh had
gleamed through the fine black silk stocking!
She wondered whether father knew. No, probably not, for if he did, he
would find some way to come and have it out with Grandmother--she was
sure of that. God knew, of course--God knew everything, but why had He
allowed Grandmother to do it? It was an inscrutable mystery to her that
a Being with infinite power should allow things to go wrong.
For the moment Rosemary's faith wavered, then re-asserted itself. It
was she who did not understand: the ways of the Everlasting were not her
ways, and, moreover, they were beyond her finite comprehension. If she
waited, and trusted, and meanwhile did the best she could, everything
would be right somewhere, sometime. That must be what Heaven was, a
place where things were always right for everybody.
[Sidenote: Startled]
Gradually her resentment passed away. The impassioned yearning for life,
in all its fulness, that once had shaken her to the depths of her soul,
had ceased to trouble or to beckon. It had become merely a question of
getting through with this as creditably and easily as she might, and
passing on to the next, whatever that might prove to be.
The ground upon which she sat was cold and damp. Rosemary shivered a
little and was glad. Release might come in that way, though she doubted
it. She was too hopelessly healthy ever to take cold, and in all her
five and twenty years had never had a day's illness.
A step beside her startled her and a kindly voice said: "Why, Rosemary!
You'll take cold!"
Crimson with embarrassment she sprang to her feet, shaking the soil from
her skirts. "I--I didn't hear you coming," she stammered. "I must go."
[Sidenote: New Plans]
"Please don't," Alden responded. "Remember how long it is since I've
seen you. How did you happen to come up here?"
"Because--oh, I don't know! I've come sometimes to see the vineyard.
I've--I've liked to watch the people at work," she concluded, lamely. "I
see so few people, you know."
Alden's face softened with vague tenderness. "Was it just this last
Summer you've been coming, or has it been all along?"
"I've always come--ever since I was big enough to climb the hill. I--I
used to steal grapes sometimes," she confessed, "before I knew it was
wrong."
"You can have all the grapes you want," he laughed. "I'll send you a
basket every day, if you want them, as long as the season lasts. Why
didn't you tell me before?"
"I--I never thought," she answered. She might have added that she was
not accustomed to the idea of any sort of gift, but she did not put the
thought into words.
"Come over here, Rosemary. I want to show you something--tell you about
some new plans of mine."
He led her to the group of workers' houses back of the pines. A great
deal of repairing had been done and every house was habitable, if not
actually comfortable. They had all been furnished with quiet good taste,
and had been freshly whitewashed, both inside and out. There was a
great pile of cots and a stack of new blankets.
[Sidenote: The Hospital]
"What is it?" asked Rosemary, much interested.
"The Marsh Tuberculosis Hospital," he answered. His face was beaming.
"I--I don't understand."
"Don't you? Well, it's simple enough. If I hadn't been all kinds of an
idiot and blindly selfish I'd have thought of it before. One of the men
who came to pick grapes this year has a wife at home with tuberculosis.
All she needs is to lie on a cot outdoors and have plenty of fresh eggs
and milk. He's coming to-morrow, with her, and his two children. The
girl will learn housekeeping from mother daytimes and the boy will go to
school. I have room for several others if I can find them, and I have
people in town hunting them up for me. See?"
"Oh!" said Rosemary. "How beautiful! How good you are!"
"Not good," said Alden, shamefacedly, digging at the soil with his heel.
"Merely decent--that's all." He took a spring cot out of the pile,
spread a blanket upon it, and invited Rosemary to sit down.
"It is beautiful," she insisted, "no matter what you say. How lovely it
must be to be able to do things for people--to give them what they
need! Oh," she breathed, "if I could only help!"
[Sidenote: The Gift and the Giver]
Alden looked at her keenly. "You can, Rosemary."
"How?"
"I don't know, but there's always a way, if one wants to help."
"I have nothing to give," she murmured. "I haven't anything of my own
but my mother's watch, and that won't go, so it wouldn't be of any use
to anybody."
"Someone said once," he continued, "that 'the gift without the giver is
bare.' That means that what you give doesn't count unless you also give
yourself."
"To give yourself,'" she repeated; then, all at once, her face
illumined. "I see now!" she cried. "I can give myself! They'll need
someone to take care of them, and I can do that. I can cook and scrub
floors and keep everything clean, and--but Grandmother won't let me,"
she concluded, sadly.
A paragraph from Edith's letter flashed vividly into his memory: "_The
door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is closed
against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her; to
admit her, too, into full fellowship, through striving and through
love._"
His heart yearned toward her unspeakably. They belonged to one another
in ways that Edith had no part in and never could have. Suddenly,
without looking at her, he said: "Rosemary, will you marry me?"
[Sidenote: What For?]
She turned to him, startled, then averted her face. Every vestige of
colour was gone, even from her lips. "Don't!" she said, brokenly. "Don't
make fun of me. I must go."
She rose to her feet, trembling, but he caught her hand and held her
back. "Look at me, dear. I'm not making fun of you. I mean it--every
word."
She sat down beside him, then, well out of reach of his outstretched
hand. "What for?" she asked, curiously.
"Because I want you."
"I--I don't understand."
"Don't you love me?"
"You have no right to ask me that." Her tone was harsh and tremulous
with suppressed emotion.
"No," he agreed, after a pause, "I suppose I haven't." She did not
answer, so, after a little, he rose and stood before her, forcing her
eyes to meet his.
"Do you--know?" he asked.
Rosemary hesitated for a moment. "Yes, I--know," she said, in a
different tone.
"And that was why you----"
"Yes." Her voice was scarcely audible now.
"It wasn't true, then, that you didn't love me?"
[Sidenote: Alden Confesses]
She turned upon him fiercely. "What right have you to ask me all these
questions?" she cried, passionately. "What have you to offer me? How can
you take all I have to give and give me nothing in return? What is your
love worth? What do you think I am? The plaything of an idle hour,
something to be taken up or cast aside whenever you may choose, to be
treated kindly or brutally as your fancy may dictate, to be insulted by
your pity--by what you call your love? No, a thousand times no!"
His face was very white and his mouth twitched, but in a moment he had
gained, in a measure, his self-control. "I don't blame you in the least,
Rosemary. I deserve it all, I know. But, before you condemn me utterly,
will you listen to me for a few moments?"
She assented, by the merest inclination of her head.
"I want to be honest with you," he went on, clearing his throat, "and I
want to be honest with myself. No doubt you think I'm all kinds of a
cad, and rightly so, but, at least, I've been honest--that is, I've
tried to be.
"When I asked you to marry me, early in the Spring, I meant it, just as
I mean it now, and I was glad when you said you would. Then--she came.
"I had nothing whatever to do with her coming, in fact, I protested
against it, as mother will tell you if you ask her. I didn't know her,
and I didn't want her, but after I knew her----"
[Sidenote: Alden Was Glad]
"You did want her," said Rosemary, coldly.
"Yes, I wanted her, and she was married to another man. She had
sufficient grounds for a divorce, though she never told me what they
were, and I pleaded with her to take advantage of the opportunity. I
tried by every means in my power to persuade her, and when you--released
me----"
"You were glad," she said, finishing the sentence for him.
"Yes," he replied, in a low tone, "I was glad. She decided, finally, to
leave it to him. If he wanted her back, she would go; if he preferred
his freedom, she would give it to him. And, of course, he wanted her,
and he had the right."
"So she went."
"So she went, and it was all over, and we shall never see each other
again."
"It's too bad," said Rosemary, icily. "I'm sorry for you both."
"Listen dear," he pleaded. His face was working piteously now. "I wish I
could make you understand. I loved her, and I love her still. I shall
love her as long as I live, and perhaps even after I'm dead. And she
loves me. But, because of it, in some strange way that I don't
comprehend myself, I seem to have more love to give others.
[Sidenote: He States His Case]
"I care more for my mother because I love--Edith, and, queer as you may
think it, I care more for you. She has taken nothing away from you that
I ever gave you--you are dearer to me to-day than when I first asked you
to marry me, so long ago. I don't suppose you'll believe it, but it's
the truth."
"I believe what you tell me," Rosemary said, in a different tone, "but I
don't understand it."
"It's like this, Rosemary. My loving her has been like opening the door
into the House of Life. It's made everything different for me. It's made
me want to make the best of myself, to do things for people, to be kind
to everybody. It isn't selfishness--it's unselfishness.
"I told you once that I wanted to take you away from all that misery,
and to make you happy. It was true then, and it's true now, but, at that
time, I was bound in shallows and didn't know it. She came into my life
like an overwhelming flood, and swept me out to sea. Now I'm back in the
current again, but I shall know the shallows no more--thank God!
"If you'll believe me, I have more to give than I had then--and I want
you more. I'm very lonely, Rosemary, and shall be always, unless--but,
no, I don't want your pity; I want your love."
[Sidenote: A Philanthropic Scheme]
There was a long pause, then Rosemary spoke. "Service," she said, half
to herself, "and sacrifice. Giving, not receiving. Asking, not answer."
"Yes," returned Alden, with a sigh, "it's all of that.
"Leaving love aside," he went on, after a little, "I believe you'd be
happier here, with mother and me, than you are where you are now. You'd
be set free from all that drudgery, you could help me in my work, and,
though I'm not rich, I could give you a few of the pretty things you've
always wanted. We could go to town occasionally and see things.
Moreover, I could take care of you, and you've never been taken care of.
I don't think you'd ever be sorry, Rosemary, even though you don't love
me."
"I never said I didn't love you," the girl faltered. Her eyes were
downcast and the colour was burning upon her pale face.
"Yes, you did--up on the hill. Don't you remember?"
"I--I wasn't telling the truth," she confessed. "I've--I've always----"
"Rosemary!"
She looked at him with brimming eyes. "What you've done, or what you may
do, doesn't make any difference. It never could. If--if it depends at
all on--on the other person, I don't think--it's love."
[Sidenote: Her Very Own]
In an instant his arms were around her, and she was crying happily upon
his shoulder. "Dear, my dear! And you cared all the time?"
"All the time," she sobbed.
"What a brute I was! How I must have hurt you!"
"You couldn't help it. You didn't mean to hurt me."
"No, of course not, but, none the less I did it. I'll spend the rest of
my life trying to make up for it, dear, if you'll let me."
It flashed upon Rosemary that this was not at all like the impassioned
love-making to which she had been an unwilling witness, but, none the
less, it was sweet, and it was her very own. He wanted her, and merely
to be wanted, anywhere, gives a certain amount of satisfaction.