Nightshade and wistaria. The lusty poison-vine and the delicate
climbing tendrils. The evil and the pure. Their snake-like stems wound
about each other, twining in sinuous intimacy, the cardinal berries
flaunting alone where the fragrant purple blooms had long since fallen.
They clung to each other, the enmeshed and alien branches veiling a
sightless trunk, whose rotted limbs, barkless and neglected, projected
bare knobs complainingly from the vagrant tangle. It drew Margaret’s
steps, and she went closer. The dogs that had followed yelping at
her heels, after she had tired of throwing sticks for them to fetch,
now went nosing off across the orchard in canine unsympathy with her
reflective mood. She stood a monochrome, in roughish brown tweed,
under the dappling shadows.
“Miss Langdon, I believe?”
The deep, resonant voice recalled her. She saw a smooth-shaven face
with the rounded outline that belongs to youth, and is but rarely the
heritage of age, surmounted by the striking incongruity of perfectly
milk-white hair. His lips were thin and firm, suggesting at one
time strength and firmness, and the glance which met her from the
frank, hazel eyes was one of open friendliness. His clerical coat was
close-buttoned to his vigorous chin.
“I am Dr. Craig,” he said, “rector of Trinity parish. I heard that Mrs.
Drennen had a cousin visiting her, and I came out to ask you to come
to our Sabbath services. We haven’t as ambitious a choir, perhaps, as
you have in your city church,” he said, smiling, “--though we have
one tenor voice which I think quite remarkable--but we offer the same
message and just as warm a welcome.”
Her loneliness had wanted just such a greeting. “I shall be glad to
come!” she answered. “I passed the church only yesterday and sat awhile
in the porch to rest. It is so peaceful, set among the trees!”
“You seemed entirely out of the world as I walked up the path,” he
said. “I could almost see you think.”
“I was looking at this.” She pointed to the clustering vines.
“What an audacious climber! Its berries have the color of rubies. And a
wistaria, too!”
“I was thinking when you came,” she continued hesitatingly, “what a
pity it was that the two should have ever grown together. The wistaria
has an odor like far-away incense, and its leaves are tender and
delicate-veined, like a climbing soul. The nightshade is dark green and
its berries are sin-color. They don’t belong together, and now nobody
in the world could ever pull them apart without killing them both.
Isn’t it a pity?”
“Ah, there is where I think you err! That bold, aspiring sap is just
what the pallid wistaria needs. Its perfume is less insipid for the
mingling earth-smell of the other. It climbs higher and reaches further
for the other’s strength. The flora of nature follows the same great
law as humanity. Opposite elements combine to make the strongest men
and women. One of the most valuable, I think, of the suggestions we get
from the vegetable creation is the thought of its comprehensive good.
Nothing that is useful is bad, and there is nothing that has not its
use. What we know is, the higher grows and develops by means of the
lower.” His fine face lifted as he spoke with conscious dignity.
To Margaret, in the untiring challenge of her self-questionings, his
view brought an unworded solace. Her mind grasped eagerly at his
thought, puzzled by itself, yet reaching for the visible spirituality
of the man. His face, calm and with a tinge of almost priestly
asceticism, was a tacit reassurance. A wish to hear him speak, to talk
to him, came to her. He had lived longer than she, he knew so much
more! If she could only ask him! If she only knew how to begin! If some
instinct could only whisper to his mind’s ear the benumbing question
her whole being battled with, without her having to put it into words!
Even if she could--even if he could guess it--he might misunderstand.
No girl ever had such thoughts before! They were only hers--only hers,
to hide, to bury in silence! She blushed hotly to think that she had
ever thought of voicing it to the air. A guilty horror, lest her face
might betray what she was thinking, bathed her. She could never, never
tell it! There could be no help from outside. Her mind must struggle
with it alone.
She started visibly, with a feeling that she had been overheard, at a
crunching step behind them. Her companion greeted the arrival with the
heartiness of an old acquaintance.
“Ah, Condy,” he said, “much obliged for that salve of yours. It has
quite made a new dog of Birdo.”
“Thet so?” inquired the newcomer, with interest. “Et’s a powerful good
salve.” His straggling yellow beard and much-battered straw hat shed a
mellow lustre on his leathery, sun-tanned face, where twinkled clear
blue eyes.
“I’ve jest been up by th’ kennels,” he volunteered.
“I hope you found the family all well?” the rector inquired, with
gravely humorous concern.
“Toler’ble. Th’ ole mastiff won’t let me git clost ’nough t’ say more’n
howdy do. He’s wuss ’n a new town marshal!” He rasped a sulphur match
against his trouser-leg and lit his short clay pipe, hanging his head
awkwardly to do so, and disclosing the inquisitive muzzle and beady
eyes of a diminutive setter pup, which he carried under his butternut
coat, supported in his forearm. Margaret patted the cold nose, and its
owner displayed it pridefully.
“He ain’t but three weeks old,” he said, “en’ I’m a-bringin’ him up on
th’ bottle. Ef I fetch him eround he’ll make a fine setter one o’ these
days, fer he’s got good points. Look at th’ shape o’ his toes! Et goes
agin my grain t’ lose a puppy. Somehow et seems ez ef they hev ez much
right t’ live ez some other people.” His mouth relaxed broadly about
his pipe-stem, with a damp smile.
“What’s the matter with him?” asked the rector.
“Jest ailin’, puny like. Dogs ez a lot like babies; some on ’em could
be littered en’ grow up in a snowdrift, en’ others could be born in a
straw kennel en’ die ef you look at ’em. This one was so weakly thet
Bess, my ole setter, wouldn’t look at him. Jest poked him eround with
her nose, poor little devil! en’ wouldn’t give him ez much ez a lick.
Et’s a funny thing,” he continued, stuffing down the embers in his pipe
with a hard forefinger, “th’ difference there ez thet way between dogs
en’ folks. I never seen a woman yit thet wouldn’t take all kinds o’
keer fer a sick baby, but a dog puts all her nussin’ on her healthy
young uns en’ lets th’ ailin’ shift fer theirselves. Mebbe et’s because
she hez so many all at once, but I guess it’d be the same with women ef
they hed a dozen at once ez et ez now. The parson here”--he blinked at
Margaret with a suspicion of levity--“says ez how et’s because th’ dogs
ain’t got no souls. I don’t know how thet ez, but et looks ez ef et
might be so.”
The rector laughed good-humoredly as the decreasing figure silhouetted
itself against the field. “Condy’s a unique character,” he said, “but
immensely likable. He has a quaint philosophy that isn’t down in the
books, but it’s none the less interesting for that. I must be going
now,” he continued; “sermons in stones and books in running brooks
won’t do for my congregation.”
“You will go up to the house and see Lydia?”
“I have already seen her. She told me I should find you somewhere in
the fields, she thought. Your cousin is a great sufferer,” he added
gently. “She is a beautiful character--uncomplaining under a most
grievous affliction. I am deeply sorry for her, and yet”--there was
a note of perplexity in his voice--“sometimes I believe I pity her
husband even more! I am not well acquainted with him personally. I
wish I might know him better. She often speaks to me of him. Her love
for him is most exquisite; it always reminds me of the perfume of the
night-blooming-cereus.”
He took his leave of Margaret with grave courtesy and left her standing
on the leaf-littered grass, with the red berries of the nightshade
gleaming through the rank green foliage above her head.