Indeed, to have remembered that morning at Miss Deborah Ware’s was
enough to bring back to us the very youth of which the morning was a
part. It seems to Pelleas and me that most of the beautiful things
that have come to us have been a part of our old age, as if in a kind
of tender compensation. But that beautiful happening of our youth we
love to remember, the more because it befell in the very week of our
betrothal. And though our betrothal was more than fifty years ago, I
suppose to be quite truthful that there is very little about those days
that I do not recall; or if there be any forgotten moments I grieve
to confess them. There are, however, I find to my amazement, many
excellent people who conscientiously remember the dates of the Norman
Conquest and the fall of Constantinople, and who are yet obliged to
stop to think on what day their betrothal fell. As for me I would far
rather offend my conscience in a matter of Turks than in a matter of
love-knots.
On a delicate day in May, Eighteen Hundred and Forty-five, Pelleas and
I were quite other people. And I do protest that the lane where we were
walking was different, too. I have never seen it since that summer; but
I cannot believe that it now wears anything like the same fabric of
shadow, the same curve of hedgerow or that season’s pattern of flowers.
The lane ran between the Low Grounds and the property of the Governor,
on one side the thatched cots of the mill folk and the woodsmen, and on
the other the Governor’s great mansion, a treasure-house of rare canvas
and curio. That morning the lane was a kind of causeway between two
worlds, and there was no sterner boundary than a hedge of early wild
roses. I remember how, stepping with Pelleas along that way of sun, I
loved him for his young strength and his blue eyes and his splendid
shoulders and for the way he looked down at me, but I think that he
must have loved me chiefly for my gown of roses and for the roses in my
hat. For I took very little account of life save its roses and I must
believe that a sense of roses was my most lovable quality. We were I
recall occupied chiefly in gathering roses from the hedgerow to fill my
reticule.
“Now, suppose,” Pelleas said, busy in a corner of green where the bloom
was thickest, “suppose we were to find that the hedges go on and never
stop, and that all there is to the world is this lane, and that we
could walk here forever?”
I nodded. That was very like my conception of the world, and the
speculation of Pelleas did not impress me as far wrong.
“Do you wish this morning could last forever, Etarre, do you?” asked
Pelleas, looking down at me.
“Yes,” said I truthfully, “I do.” I hope that there is no one in the
world who could not from his soul say that at least once of some hour
of Spring and youth. In such a moment, it is my belief, the spirit
is very near entering upon its own immortality--for I have always
held that immortality must begin at some beautiful moment in this
life. Though as for me, at that moment, I confess myself to have been
thinking of nothing more immortal than the adorable way that Pelleas
had of saying my name.
“But by and by,” Pelleas went on, “I think we would come to a garden.
Who ever heard of a love story without a garden? And it will be a
‘different’ garden from all the rest--the trees will be higher and the
shadows will be made differently and instead of echoes there will be
music. And there will be fountains--fountains everywhere; and when one
has gone in the garden a fountain will spring up at the gate and no
one can get out--ever. What do you think of that for a garden?” asked
Pelleas.
“I think,” said I, “that the garden we will come to will be Miss
Deborah Ware’s.”
For in fact I was carrying a message to Miss Deborah Ware, a kinswoman
of my mother’s, and I had met Pelleas only by some heavenly chance as
he crossed the common.
“And who is Miss Deborah Ware?” asked Pelleas, doubtfully, as if
weighing the matter of entering her garden.
“She owns a gold thimble,” I explained, “that once belonged to Marie
Antoinette. She prefers wooden sabots to all other shoes. And she
paints most beautiful pictures.”
“Ah,” said Pelleas, enlightened, “so _that_ is who she is. And how does
she look, pray?”
“I am certain that she looks like the Queen of Sheba,” I told him.
“And, moreover, all her caps are crown-shaped.”
“_Now_ I know how the Queen of Sheba looked,” cried Pelleas,
triumphantly. “She looked like the crowns of Miss Deborah’s caps. Do
you happen to know what the toll is to leave this lane?”
As I did not know--did anybody ever know?--and as we were even then at
the end of the lane, my ignorance was rebuked and I paid the toll and I
fancy repeated the lesson--it was a matter of honour to the sun and the
wild roses not to let it be otherwise. And we crossed the West Meadow
by the long way and at the last--at the very last, and nearly noon!--we
reached the cottage where Miss Deborah Ware had come to spend the
Summer and engage in the unmaidenly pursuit of painting pictures.
To tell the truth our Summer community of good Knickerbocker folk were
inclined to question Miss Deborah’s good taste. Not that they objected
to the paint, but the lack of virtue seemed to lie in the canvas. If
Miss Deborah had painted candle-shades or china porringers or watered
silk panels or flowerpots, no one, I think, would have murmured. But
when they learned that she painted _pictures_ they spread and lifted
their fans.
“Miss Deborah Ware would ape the men,” they said sternly. And when they
saw her studio apron made of ticking and having a bib they tried to
remonstrate with my mother, her kinswoman.
“She is a great beauty, for her age,” said the women. “But Beauty is as
Beauty does,” they reminded her.
“Deborah does as Deborah is,” my mother answered, smiling.
Miss Deborah was wearing the apron of ticking that morning that we went
to see her--Pelleas and I, who were rather basely making her an excuse
for the joy of our morning together. But Miss Deborah would have been
the last to condemn that. She was in a room overlooking the valley, and
a flood of north light poured on her easel and her idle palette. Miss
Deborah was breakfasting; and she explained that she had had a great
fit for working very early; and she gave us some delicious tea and
crumpets.
“This is the tea,” she told us, “that Cupid and Psyche always drank.
At least I suppose that is what the Japanese label says. Or perhaps
it says Aucassin and Nicolette.... I am a bit back in my Japanese.”
And immediately Miss Deborah nodded at me a little and murmured that I
crimsoned as prettily as either of these ladies.
Then: “They tell me that you two are betrothed,” she said, leaning back
in her chair. “Why is that?”
At that I blushed again and so I have no doubt did Pelleas, for we had
not so much as said that word in each other’s presence and to hear it
pronounced aloud was the most heavenly torture.
“I suppose you are very much in love,” she answered her question
meditatively. “Well, I believe you. I believe you so thoroughly that I
would like to paint you. What barbarism it is,” she went on, “that they
don’t allow young lovers to have their portraits painted together while
they are betrothed! Could there be a more delicious bit of history
added to any portrait gallery? And what if the marriage never did come
off--saving your presence? The history might be all the more delicious
for the separation, and the canvas would be quite as valuable. I am at
this moment painting two dear little peasant folk whose people flatter
me by being delighted. I think that I must really speak to your
mother, child, about painting you,” she said.
At that I stole a glance at Pelleas and surprised him at the same
pastime. And in that moment I do not think that either the history or
the taste of the portrait greatly occupied us; for neither of us could
pass with serenity the idea of the sittings. Together, mornings, in
that still, sun-flooded studio. What joy for those other lovers. In
those days one had only to mention an impossibly romantic situation for
Pelleas and me to live it out in imagination to its minutest joy.
“Of course she will not consent,” Miss Deborah added philosophically,
“so if I were you I would have another crumpet. My crumpets are
considerably better than my portraits. And my cook does the crumpets.”
She leaned forward in her low chair, and Pelleas and I looked at her
in a kind of awe. She was like mother’s Sweet-william that never would
blossom in the seed-book colours but came out unexpectedly in the most
amazing variegations. She sat with one long, slim hand propping her
face, a face attenuated, whimsical in line, with full red mouth and
eyes that never bothered with what went on before them so long as this
did not obstruct their view.
“What do you think of that picture above your heads?” she asked.
We looked, glad to be set at our ease. Then Pelleas and I turned to
each other in delicious trepidation. For there on the wall of Miss
Deborah’s studio was a picture of the very garden that we two had meant
to find. We recognized it at once--our garden, where Pelleas had said
the Spring lane would lead between the hedgerows and where the shadows
would fall differently and the echoes be long drawn to music.
I cannot tell what there may have been about that picture so to move
us, and to this day I do not know what place it strove to show.
But, O, I remember the green of it, the tender, early green, the
half-evident boughs of indeterminate bloom, the sense of freshness, of
sweet surprise at some meaning of the year, the well, the shrine, the
shepherd with his pipes, the incommunicable spirit of rhythm and of
echo....
“Do you like it?” asked Miss Deborah smiling, and I was abashed to find
my eyes filled with tears.
“I think that this,” Pelleas answered quaintly, “will be the soul of
Spring, Miss Deborah; and the outdoors this morning will be the body.”
“I dare say,” said Miss Deborah, nodding; “though I fancy more things
are souls than we give them credit for,” she added.
Miss Deborah looked at us, her chin in her hand. And after a moment to
our great amazement she said:--
“I shall give you this picture for a wedding gift, I think. And I tell
you now so that if you are tempted to break the engagement you will
think twice. Is it a picture that you want to live with?”
It was not only a picture that we wanted to live with; it was a picture
whose spell would be eternal. And “Did you paint it, Miss Deborah?” we
asked in our simplicity.
Miss Deborah shook her head and named a great name, then just beginning
to be reverenced.
“He paints pictures better than his cook makes crumpets,” she said,
“and the quality is not usual. Spend the day with me,” she added
abruptly. “I would like you to see the little lovers who are sitting
for my ‘Betrothed.’ I will send a message to your mother, Etarre. Sit
there while I work. I like to think of you there.”
Whereupon she went off to her easel before the north light, and Pelleas
and I sat in the quiet room with our Wonderful Picture and talked of it.
“There must be such a place,” said Pelleas simply, “or he wouldn’t have
painted it. He _couldn’t_, you know. There must be a place a little
like it.”
“Yes, a little like it,” I assented, “with the fountain at the gate the
way you said.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find it?” Pelleas went on. “To come upon
it quite suddenly when we didn’t know. In Etruria, or Tuscany, or
Tempe.”
Yes, it would be wonderful and before all things wonderful.
“We would know it at once,” he added. “We would have to know it,
whatever way we came, by the well or by the path or by the shrine.”
Yes, we agreed, we would have to know it. What wonder to step together
over that green with the rhythm and echo of the pipes to lure us to the
way. If once we found it we would never leave it, we settled that, too.
For this was the week of our betrothal, and it did not occur to us that
one must seek more than gardens. So we talked, and in the mists of our
happy fancy Pelleas suddenly set a reality that made our hearts beat
more joyously than for their dreams.
“Think, dear,” he said, “this picture will hang in our home.”
It would--it would. We looked at it with new eyes. In our home.
Eventually Miss Deborah Ware came back, one hand in the pocket of her
ticking apron.
“You two make me think of that picture,” she said. “That is why I have
given it to you, I believe. It is such a kind of heaven-and-earth
place, with the upper air to breathe, and what little ballast there is
would be flowers and pipes of Pan. But _I_ don’t find fault with that.
Personally I believe that is the only air there is, and I’m certain
it’s the only proper ballast. You recognize the place in the picture,
don’t you?”
We looked at each other in some alarm at the idea of being told; but we
ought to have trusted Miss Deborah.
“‘A fountain of gardens,’” she quoted, “‘a well of living waters and
streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow
upon my garden, that the spices may flow out.’ I don’t know if that
is what he meant,” she added, “but that is what he painted. ‘Awake, O
north wind; and come, thou south,’ is undoubtedly what that shepherd
is piping. Come to luncheon. Perhaps we shall find goat’s-milk cheese
and Bibline wine and pure white honey. In case we do not, would steamed
clams do?”
“Miss Deborah,” said Pelleas, as we followed her down the studio, “we
mean to go to that garden, the real garden, you know. We’ve been saying
so now.”
In the studio door she turned and faced us, nodding her understanding.
“Go there,” she said. “But whether you ever go to the real garden or
not, mind you live in this one. And one thing more: Mind you pay your
entrance fee,” she said.
At this, remembering as I do how our world was stuff of dreams, I think
that we both must have looked a bit bewildered. _Entrance fee._ What
had our fountain of gardens to do with an entrance fee?
“You don’t know what that means?” she said. “I thought as much. Then I
think I must ask you to promise me something.”
She went across the hall to the dining-room, and we followed wondering.
“Just you keep the picture,” said Miss Deborah Ware, “until it will
make some one else happier than it makes you. And then give it away.
Will you remember? Do you get the idea of the entrance fee to the
garden? And you promise? It’s just as I thought--we’ve steamed clams
instead of ambrosia. Are you sorry you stopped?”
It was a very merry luncheon. I remember chiefly the epergne of
clematis, and the border of the wall paper done in crocuses, and the
sun flooding through leaded glass. Those were the days when an epergne
of clematis and a border of crocuses and the like seemed to me to be
inclusive of the law and the prophets, and I felt a luxury of pity for
every one who had not this special grace of understanding. I think
that I even felt a little stir of pity for Miss Deborah Ware. Yes, I
decided, Miss Deborah was like mother’s Sweet-william that would not
blossom in the colours of the seed catalogue but showed forth amazing
hues of its own. Such as that entrance fee to Arcady.
We lingered at table until Miss Deborah’s two models were
announced--the two who were sitting for her “Betrothed.”
“They are adorable little people,” she said. “You must see them before
you go. They make me think of ripe apples and robin redbreasts and
mornings in the country. Even if it were not so I would like them for
their shyness. The little maid--her name is Mitty Greaves--is in the
prettiest panic every time I look at her; and Joel, the young lover,
actually blushes when the clock strikes.”
She went away to the studio and Pelleas and I looked at each other in
sudden abashment to find ourselves together, taking our coffee alone.
It might have been our own table in a land of clematis, beside our very
fountain of gardens itself. Pelleas stretched his hand across the table
for mine, and we lingered there in magnificent disregard of coffee
until the sun slanted away and the sweet drowsiness of the afternoon
was in the garden. Then we wandered back to the studio and sat in the
window-seat opposite our Wonderful Picture and in murmurs disposed
for all time, as we thought, of that extraordinary promise which Miss
Deborah had demanded.
“This picture,” Pelleas said solemnly, “never could make anybody so
happy as it makes us. For it _is_ our garden that we planned in the
lane this morning.... The picture will always bring back this morning
to us, Etarre. It is our garden. It _couldn’t_ be the same to any one
else.”
“If we were to give it to any one, Pelleas,” I recall saying, “it must
be to some one who would understand what the garden means better than
we.”
“Yes,” he assented; “some one who walks there all day long. Some one
who ‘walks in beauty’ all the time.”
Thereafter we fancied ourselves standing by the shrine and looking in
the well, and we saw our dreams take shape in the nebulous fall of
the fountain. Of our betrothal week it seems to me that that hour is
sweetest to recall when I sat throned in the window-seat in my gown of
roses, and Pelleas at my feet talked of our life to be. I think that
there came to us from the wall the sound of the piping in our garden.
Perhaps, although we had not then seen their faces, the mere presence
of those other lovers was a part of our delight.
Presently Miss Deborah Ware pushed aside the curtain in the far end of
the studio.
“Now they are going to rest for a little,” she said, “and I must go
down to the kitchen. But you may go about, anywhere you like.”
It fell so silent in the studio that Pelleas and I fancied those other
lovers to have gone out through the glass doors into the garden. And
when Pelleas proposed that we go to the north window and look away over
the valley I think that we must have believed ourselves to be alone
in the studio. At all events I recall that as we went up the room,
lingering before a cast or a sketch or a bit of brass, Pelleas had
slipped his arm about me; and his arm was still about me when we stood
before the north window and he said:--
“Etarre--have you thought of something? Have you thought that some day
we shall stand before the picture of our garden _when we are old_?”
This was a surprising reflection and we stood looking in each other’s
eyes trying to fathom the mystery which we have not fathomed yet, for
even now we go wondering how it can be that we, who _were_ we, are yet
_not_ we; and still the love, the love persists. I know of nothing more
wonderful in the world than that.