“Will you love me then as much as you love me now?” I asked inevitably;
and when Pelleas had answered with the unavoidable “More,” I dare say
that I promptly rebuked him with youth’s “But could you love me more?”
And I am certain that he must have answered with the usual divine logic
of “No, sweetheart.”
By which it will be seen that a May day in Eighteen Hundred and
Forty-five was as modern as love itself.
Then for no reason at all we looked toward the west window; and there
in the embrasure across the width of the great room were standing Mitty
Greaves and Joel, Miss Deborah’s little lover-models, and both Mitty’s
hands were crushed in Joel’s hands and he was looking into her lifted
eyes as if he were settling for all time some such question as had just
been gladdening us.
They did not see us. And as swiftly as if we had been the guilty ones,
as indeed we were, we stole back to the other end of the studio,
breathless with our secret. We felt such fellowship with all the world
and particularly the world of lovers that so to have surprised them
was, in a manner, a kind of delicious justification of ourselves. It
was like having met ourselves in another world where the heavenly
principle which we already knew maintained with a heavenly persistence.
“I dare say,” murmured Pelleas joyously, “I dare say that they think
they love each other as much as we do.”
We were sitting in the window-seat, a little awed by our sudden sense
of being sharers in such a universal secret, when Miss Deborah came
back and forthwith summoned us all before the open fire. She had
brought a great plate of home-made candy, thick with nuts.
“Mitty and Joel,” she said leisurely, “shall I tell you a secret? You
are not the only ones who are in love. For these two friends here are
like to be married before you are.”
Dear little Mitty in her starched white muslin frock--I can see her
now, how she blushed and lifted her shy eyes. Mitty was the daughter of
a laundress in the Low Grounds and I remember the scrupulous purity of
her white, threadbare gown. Miss Deborah had told us that her very hair
looked ironed and that it had long been her opinion that her mother
starched her flaxen braids. And Joel, in his open-throated blue blouse,
could no more have kept the adoration from his eyes when he looked at
Mitty than he could have kept his shifting brown hands quiet on his
knees. They belonged to the little wild-bird people, a variety that I
have since come to love and to seek out.
“And why,” Pelleas asked then, “are we likely to be married first? For
I’m afraid we have a whole year to wait.”
I recall that Miss Deborah tried to turn aside that question by asking
us quickly how we had been amusing ourselves; and when Pelleas told her
that we had been sitting before our Wonderful Picture she talked about
the picture almost as if she wished to keep us silent.
“Up at the Governor’s house,” said Miss Deborah, “they have wanted for
years to buy it. The Governor saw it when I had it in town. But the
picture is yours now, for all that. Don’t you think that is a pretty
picture, Mitty?” she asked.
At this little Mitty looked up, proud and pleased to be appealed to,
and turned shyly to our Wonderful Picture--the picture that gave
Pelleas and me a new sense of happiness whenever we looked at it; and
she said with an hesitation that was like another grace:--
“Yes’m. It’s the loveliest green, all over it. It’s the colour of the
moss on the roof of our woodshed.”
Ah, poor little Mitty, I remember thinking almost passionately. Why
was it that she was shut out from the kind of joy that came to Pelleas
and me in our picture? It was as if their love were indeed of another
world, in another sense than we had thought. For this picture that
had opened a kind of paradise to us was to these other lovers merely
suggestive of Mitty’s woodshed roof down in the Low Grounds.
“Shall you be married by the autumn?” Pelleas asked of them then
somewhat hurriedly.
And at that Miss Deborah fell silent as if she had done her best to
make us understand; and Mitty answered him.
“Oh, no, sir,” she said hesitatingly. “You see, it’s Joel’s
father--he’s hurt in the woods--a tree fell on him--he can’t ever work
no more, they think. And so Joel’s got the family for a while.”
“Joel’s got the family for a while.” We knew what that meant, even
before Pelleas’ sympathetic questioning brought out the fact that six
were dependent on him, boy that he was, with his own right to toil. He
talked bravely, even buoyantly, of his prospects on his pittance at
the mill. And little Mitty listened and looked up at him adoringly and
faced with perfect courage the prospect of those years of loneliness
and waiting. As I heard them talk and as their plans unfolded shyly
in the warmth of our eager interest, I think there came to me for the
first time the sad wondering that must come upon us all: How should it
be that Pelleas and I had so much and they so little? how should it be
that to us there were the Spring lanes, the May roses, the fountain of
gardens--and to them the burden of the day?
_To us the fountain of gardens._ The thought was as poignant as a
summons. Ay, to us the joy of the garden, the possession of its beauty;
and why then, since we possessed its spirit, should the mere magic of
the canvas be ours? We could part with that and by no means lose our
garden, for the garden would be ours always. But the value that the
world would set upon the picture itself, the value that they would set
upon it at the Governor’s house where were walls of rare canvas and
curio--was this what Miss Deborah had meant, I wondered? Here on the
day that we had received it were there come two to whom Miss Deborah’s
gift would give greater happiness than to us?
I looked at Pelleas and I think that in that moment was worked our
first miracle of understanding, and to this day we do not know to whom
the wish came first. But Pelleas smiled and I nodded a little and he
knew and he turned to Miss Deborah; and I leaned toward Mitty and spoke
most incoherently I fear, to keep her attention from what Miss Deborah
should say. But for all that I heard perfectly:--
“Would it be enough?” Miss Deborah repeated. “Dear boy, the picture
would keep the whole family like kings for a year. Since you ask me,
you know.”