freedom of the fields, the delicious pressure of the warm, velvet
air against her body. Red Rufus purred as he went, rejoicing with
his vagabond comrade. Just how or when she began to know that she
was not asleep, just why the knowledge did not alarm her, it would
be hard to say. But when the truth came to her, the friendly,
powdered stars had been above her long enough to accustom her to
their winking; the tiny, tentative noises of the night had sounded
in her ears till they comforted and reassured her; the vast and
empty field stretches meant only freedom and exhilaration. In a
sudden delirium of joy she slipped between the bars of a rolling
meadow and ran at full speed down its long, grassy slope, her
nightgown streaming behind her, her slender, childish legs white as
ivory against the greenish-black all around her. Beside her bounded
the great cat with shining, gemlike eyes. They rolled down the last
reaches of the slope, and all the Milky Way wondered at them, but
never a sound broke the solemn quiet of the night: the ecstasy was
noiseless.
[Illustration: Caroline danced, bowing and posturing in a bewitched
abandon, around the tinkling, glistening fountain.]
Her face buried in sweet clover, she panted, prone on the grass.
"Let's go right on, Rufus, and run away, and do just as we please!"
she whispered to the nestling cat. "If I can't do like the boys do,
I don't want to stay home--the fellows laugh at me! I'd rather be
whipped than sent to bed like a girl. I _won't_ be a young lady--I
_won't_!"
Rufus purred approvingly.
"If I only had some trousers!" she mourned, softly; "a boy can do
_anything_!"
Across the quiet night there cut a thin, shrill cry: a little,
fretful pipe that brought instantly before the mind some hushed,
white room with a shaded light and a tiny basket bed. Caroline sat
up and stared about her: such cries did not come from open fields.
Hardly a stone's throw from her there was a small knoll, and behind
it what might have been a large, projecting boulder suddenly flashed
into red light and showed itself for a dormer window; a cottage had
evidently hidden behind the little hill. Curiously Caroline
approached it and walked softly up the knoll.
Almost on the top she paused and peered into the unshaded window.
These householders had no fear of peeping neighbors, for only the
moon and the night moths found them out, and the simple bedroom was
framed like some old naïve interior, realistic with the tremendous
realism of the Great Artist.
The high, old-fashioned footboard of the bed faced the dormer
window, and Caroline could see only the upper portion of the woman's
figure as she leaned over a small crib beside her, her heavy dark
hair falling across her cheek, and lifted up with careful slowness
the tiny creature that wailed in it. Beside her, as he supported
himself anxiously on his elbow, the broad chest and shoulders of her
young husband rose above the screening footboard. The mother gazed
hungrily at the doll-like, writhing object, passed her hand over its
downy forehead, smiled with relief into its opening eyes, and gave
it her breast.
Instantly the wail ceased. A slow, placid smile--and yet, not quite
a smile--it was rather an elemental content, a gratified drifting
into the warm current of the stream of this world's being--spread
over the woman's face; the man's long arm wrapped around his
wealth, at once protecting and defiant; his head flung back against
the world, while his eyes studied humbly the mystery that he
grasped. The night lamp behind them threw a halo around the mother
and her child, and the great trinity of all times and all faiths
gleamed immortal upon the canvas of the simple room--its only
spectator a child.
In her, malleable to all the influences of the revealing night,
fairly disembodied, in her detached and flitting presence, the scene
woke dim, coiled memories of an infancy that stirred and pained her
even as it left her forever, and frightened longing for the
motherhood that life was holding for her. No longer an infant, not
yet a woman, this creature that was both felt the helplessness of
one, the yearning of the other, and as she pressed the nestling cat
tightly to her little breast two great, eager tears slipped down her
hot cheeks, and a gulping sob, half loneliness, half pure
excitement, broke into the gentle stillness of the lighted room.
"Who's there?"
The man's voice rang like a sudden pistol shot in the night; before
Caroline's fascinated gaze the gleaming, softly colored picture
faded and vanished into the engulfing darkness, as the lamp went out
and a dark, scudding mackerel cloud flew over the moon.
Instinctively she fled softly down the knoll, instinctively she
dropped behind a bush at the bottom. She heard the rattle of the
window pane as the man pushed himself half out of the window; she
heard him call back to the waiting room behind him!
"It's a cat, dear--I saw it, plain. It's pretty bright out here. But
I thought I saw something white beside it, too. I guess I'll take a
look around outside."
There was a sound of movement behind the window, and, caught in an
ecstasy of terror, Caroline turned at right angles from the fields
and ran to the road that gleamed white, far on the other side of the
cottage. Panting, she won it, crossed it, and fairly safe behind the
low growth of wayside brushes that fringed its other side, she
dashed along, farther and farther from the cottage, more and more
frightened with every gasping breath.
On and on she flew, light as a skimming leaf in the wind, the cat
bounding in easy, flexible curves beside her. Now a little brown
cottage in its plot of land sent them into the road for a moment;
now some tiny pond, a mirror for the sprinkled heavens, broke into
their course, and they skirted it more slowly, peering continuously
into its jeweled depths. With them their hurrying shadows, black on
the road, fainter on the grass, fled ceaselessly, hardly more quiet
than they. A very intoxication of fear, a panic terror almost
delicious, drove Caroline through the night, though after a while
she ran more slowly. Utterly ignorant of where she was, reckless
of where she might go, she swung along under the streaming moon,
no white moth or whispering leaf more wholly a part of the night
than she.
Whatever idea of going back she might have had was lost long ago;
however little she might have meant to range so far, she was now
beyond any turning. No wood creature, no skipping faun or startled
dryad dancing under the moon could have belonged more utterly than
she to the fragrant, mysterious world around her. The bright,
bustling life of every day, its clatter of food and drink, its
smarts and fatigues, its settled routine of work and play, all
seemed as far behind her as some old tale of another life, half
forgotten now.
Just as her pace subsided into a little skipping trot, a thick hedge
sprang up across their path, driving them into the road, and
continued, stiff and tall, along its edge. The pure pleasure of
conquering its prickly stiffness sent Caroline through it, tearing
one sleeve from her nightgown and dragging a great rent in one side
of it. Emerging into a magnificent sweep of clipped turf, where
wide, leafy boughs spread dappled moon shadows, they made for a
whispering, clucking fountain that threw a diamond column straight
toward the stars, only to break at the top into a beaded mist and
clink musically back to its marble basin. Its rhythmic tinkle, the
four ball-shaped box trees at either corner, the carved whiteness of
the marble basin, and the massive pillar-fronted stone house beyond
it, all spread a glamour of fairyland and foreign courts. Caroline
bowed gravely to the cat, and, seizing his feathery paws, danced,
bowing and posturing, in a bewitched abandon around the tinkling,
glistening fountain. The plumy tail of Red Rufus flew behind him as
he twirled, his little feet pattered furiously after Caroline's
twinkling sandals. Stooping over the fountain, she threw a silvery
handful high in the air and ran to catch it on her head.
As she stood at last, panting and dazed with her mad circling, she
was aware of the low murmur of a voice, rising and falling in a
steady measure, reaching out of the dim bulk of the great house,
dark and sunk in sleep before her. For a moment a chill fear struck
to the bottom of her little heart: was some weird spell aimed at
her, some malignant eye spying on her? She stood frozen to the spot,
the tiny drops of sweat cooling on her forehead, while the droning
sounded in her ears. Then, out of the very core of her terror, some
inexplicable impulse urged her on to face it, and she crept, step by
step, the cat tight in her nervous grasp, around the corner of the
great house, toward the sound.
This corner was a wing, set at right angles to the main building,
and as she rounded it she found herself at the edge of an inner
court. In the opposite wing, looking straight across the court, was
a lighted room with a long French window opening directly on the
shaven turf, and in the center of this window there sat in a high,
carved chair a very old woman. She was carefully dressed in deep
black, with pure white ruffles at her neck and around her shrunken
wrists, and a lace cap on her thin, white hair. Her feet were on a
carved foot-stool, and a quaint silver lamp, set on a slender table
at her side, threw a stream of light across the court. Her face,
lined with countless wrinkles, was bent upon a large book in her
lap; from its pages she read in a low, steady voice--the
passionless, almost terrifying voice of great and weary age:
"_Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all
generations._
"_Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou
hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting
to everlasting thou art God._"
Caroline stared, fascinated, down the path of lamplight. It marked a
bed of yellow tulips with a broad band; they stood motionless, as if
carved in ivory.
[Illustration: Across the court was a lighted room with a long
French window, and in the center of this window there sat in a high,
carved chair a very old woman.]
"_For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday
when it is past, and as a watch in the night._"
The grave, steady voice flowed out and mingled with the silver
lamplight; the marble sill of the long window was white like the
sill of a tomb.
"_We spend our years as a tale that is told._
"_The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and
if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is
their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off,
and we fly away._"
The hot excitement of this magic night cooled slowly; over
Caroline's bubbling spirit there fell a mild, strange calm. A breath
from the very caverns of the infinite stole out along the path of
that silver lamp, and in the grave, surrendered voice there sounded
for the child upon life's threshold echoes of the final tolling.
Entranced by the measured cadences, Caroline stepped forward
unconsciously and stood, white against the gray stone, full in the
path of the lamp. The heavy, wrinkled lids raised themselves from
the deep-set eyes, and the aged reader gazed calmly at the little
figure across the court. The withered old hands clasped each other.
"Jemmy! O _Jemmy_!"
Caroline never moved.
"It _is_ you, Jemmy!"
The faded eyes devoured the little white figure.
"I thought you'd never come, Jemmy--but I knew they'd send you. I'm
all ready. Don't you think I'm afraid, Jemmy: I'm eighty-four years
old, and I want to go."
Caroline hardly breathed; a nameless awe held her motionless and
silent.
"You see, I don't sleep much any more, Jemmy," the old, toneless
voice went on, "and hardly any at night. They're very kind, all of
them, but I'm--I'm eighty-four years old, and I want to go."
The ivory tulips gleamed under the stars; the silver lamp, burned
lower and lower: its oil was nearly gone.
"And you brought your yellow kitty, too, Jemmy! To think of that!
Did they think I wouldn't know my baby? It's only fifty years, ...
shall I come now, Jemmy?"
The silver lamp went out. In the starlight Caroline saw the lace cap
droop forward, as the the old woman's head settled gently on her
breast. Her hands lay clasped on the great volume; her deep-set eyes
were closed. She read no more from the book, and the child, awed and
sober, stole like a shadow behind the gray wall and left the quiet
figure in the carved chair.
Her feet fell into a tiny graveled path, and she drifted aimlessly
along it, musing on the meaning of what she had heard. Almost she
had persuaded herself that the gray stone building was an enchanted
palace, and herself a fairy messenger sent to break the spell, when
the delight of pushing through a tiny turnstile and finding a
running brook with a waterfall in it close at hand, drove everything
else from her mind. The grounds had completely changed their
character by now: the turnstile marked the end of cultivation, and
the little path, no longer graveled, wound through the wild
woodland. Here and there a boulder blocked the way; the undergrowth
became dense; great clumps of fern and rhododendron sent out their
heavy, rank odors. Now and again the spicy scent of warm pines and
cedars prepared the ear for the gentle, ceaseless rustle of their
stiff foliage; little scufflings and chitterings at the ground level
told of wood-people wakened by the presence of Red Rufus.
A strange whitish bulk that glimmered through the thinning
foreground, too big for even a big boulder, too symmetrical and
quiet for a waterfall, tempted Caroline on, and she pressed forward
hastily, lost in speculation, when a sudden odor foreign to the
woods stopped her short at the very edge of a little glade, and she
paused, sniffing curiously.
A man, bareheaded, with grizzled curly hair, turned suddenly, not
ten feet from her, and stared dumfounded at her, his twisted, brown
cigar an inch from his lips.
The torn-out sleeve of her nightgown had bared one side to her
waist: the great rent that slit the lower half of the garment left
one slender leg uncovered above her white knee. A spray of wild
azalea wreathed her dark tumbled hair, and Rufus, his plumy tail
curled around her feet in the shadow, and his green eyes flaming,
might have been a baby panther. She leaned one hand on the rough
bark of a chestnut and gazed with startled eyes at the man; it
seemed that the forest must swallow her at a breath from a human
throat.
He lifted one hand and pinched the back of the other with it till
his face contorted with the pain.
"Then there _are_ such things!" he said softly; "well, why not?"
He moved forward almost imperceptibly.
"If I were younger, I should know you were not possible," he
muttered, "but now I know that I have never doubted you--really."
Again he took a small step. Caroline, paralyzed with fear and
embarrassment, for she thought he was merely teasing her a little
before he punished her--his pleasant, low voice and whimsical
manners brought her back suddenly to the ordinary world and the
stern facts of her escapade--shivered slightly, but did not attempt
flight.
"It was this extraordinary night that brought you out, of course,"
he went on, again slightly shortening the distance between them,
"you and the little cub. It was a moon out of five thousand, I
admit. Do you live in that chestnut?"
With a sudden agile bound he covered the space between them and
seized her by the shoulder.
"Aha!" he cried, "I have--good heavens, it _is_ a child!"
"Of course I am--I'm Caroline," she murmured writhing under his
grasp.
He pulled her out into the little glade.
"Oh! you're Caroline, are you?" he repeated, thoughtfully; "dear me,
you gave me quite a turn, Caroline. Where did you come from--the big
house?"
"I came from a long way," she said briefly. "I was--I was taking a
walk. Where do you live? Don't you ever to go bed?"
The man chuckled.
"I have been feeling adventures in my bones all day," he said,
"and here they are; a child and a cat. If you will come with
me, Mademoiselle, I will show you where I live."
He led the way gravely to the dim, white object, and Caroline
perceived it to be a tent, pitched by the side of a spring that
poured through a tiny pipe set into the rock. The tent flap was
tied back, and she saw inside it a narrow cot, covered with a
coarse blue blanket, a roughly made table, spread with a game
of solitaire, and a small leather trunk. On the further side of
the tent there smoked, in a rude, improvised oven of stones, a
dying fire. Above it, under a shelf nailed to the tree, hung a
few simple utensils; two or three large stumps had been hacked
into the semblance of seats.
To one of these stumps the man led Caroline, and, seating her, he
turned to the shelf above the fire and fumbled among the pots and
pans there, producing finally a buttered roll, a piece of maple
sugar, and a small fruit tart.
"You must be hungry," he said simply, and Caroline ate greedily.
After he had brought her a tin cup of the spring water, he selected
a brown pipe from a half dozen on the shelf and began filling it
from a leather pouch that hung on the tree.
"Now let's hear all about it," he said easily.
"I am running away," said Caroline abruptly. At that moment it
really seemed that she had planned her flight from the hour that
left her, tear-stained and disgraced, in her little bed.
"They didn't treat you well?" he suggested, picking out a red ember
from the coals on the point of a knife and applying it to the pipe.
"I'm not to wear my knickers any more," Caroline said, with a gulp,
"and my bathing suit has to have a skirt. I've got to stop p-playing
with the b-boys--so much, that is," she added, honestly.
The man turned his head slightly.
"That seems hard," he said; "what's the reason?"
"I'm 'most twelve," said Caroline; "you have to be a young lady,
then."
"I see," the man said. He looked at her thoughtfully. "I suppose you
_would_ look larger in more clothes," he added.
"That's it," she assured him, "I do. That's just it."
"And so you expect to avoid all this by running away?" he asked,
settling into his own stump seat. "I am afraid you can't do it."
Caroline set her teeth. He regarded her quizzically.
"See here," he went on, "I wish you'd take my advice in this
matter."
They confronted each other in the starlight, a strange pair before
the dying fire. The moon had gone, and the stars, though bright,
seemed less solid and less certainly gold than before. A cool breeze
swept through the wood and Caroline shivered in her torn nightdress.
The man stepped into the tent and returned with a long army cloak.
This he wrapped round her and resumed his seat, with Rufus on his
knee.
"My name," he said, "is Peter. Everybody calls me that--just Peter.
I don't know exactly why it is, but a lot of people--all over--have
got into the way of taking my advice. Perhaps because I've knocked
about all over the world more or less, and haven't got any wife or
children or brothers and sisters of my own to advise, so I take it
out on everybody else. Perhaps because I try to put myself in the
other fellow's place before I advise him. Perhaps because I've had a
little trouble of my own, here and there, and haven't forgotten it.
Anyhow, I get used to talking things over."
A gentle stirring seemed to pass through the woods: the birds spoke
softly back and forth, a squirrel chattered. Again that cool wind
swept over the trees.
"Now, take it this week," the man went on, puffing steadily; "you
wouldn't believe the people just about here who've asked for my
advice. I usually camp up here for a week or so in the summer--the
people who own the property like to have me here--and the first day
I unpacked, up comes a nice girl--I used to make birch whistles for
her mother--to tell me all about her young man. She brought me that
spray of honeysuckle over the pipes--grows over the front gate. She
wants to marry him before her father gets to like him, but she hates
to run away. 'Would you advise me to, Peter?' she says. And I
advised her to wait.
"Then there's my friend the blacksmith. He lives in a queer little
house with dormer windows under a hill, just off the county road.
He's got a new baby, and he was afraid it wouldn't pull through. He
knew I'd seen a lot of babies--black and red and yellow--and _he_
wanted my advice. 'Peter, what'll I do?' he says, 'what'll I do?'
"'Why, just wait, Harvey. He'll live. Just wait,' I told him."
Caroline listened with interest. He might have been talking to his
equal in years, from his tone.
"Then, oddly enough," he continued, "here's my old friend in the big
house up yonder--and she _is_ old--and what do you think she's
worried about? She's afraid she _won't_ die! 'Oh, Peter,' she says
to me--she's fond of me because I'm the same age as a little boy of
hers that died--'it seems to me that I can't wait, Peter! What shall
I do?' she says. And I tell _her_ to wait. 'Dear old friend,' said I
to her last night, 'it will come. It's bound to come. Just be
patient.'"
He paused and knocked his pipe empty.
"Now, as to your case," he said, "I know how you feel. I'm sorry for
you--by the Lord, I'm sorry for you! But what's the use of running
away? You'll keep on growing up, you know. It's one of the things
that doesn't stop. You can't beat the game by wearing knickers, you
know. And then, there'd come a time when you'd want to quit,
anyhow."
She shook her head.
"Really, you would," he assured her, persuasively. "They all do."
"That's what Uncle Joe says," she admitted, "and Aunt Edith. She
changed her mind, she says--"
"Are you talking about Joe Holt?" Peter demanded.
"Yes--do you know him? He lives in a big white house with wistaria
on the side," Caroline cried joyfully.
"I was a senior when he was a freshman," said Peter. "Then he's
taken the Washburn house."
"Do you know Aunt Edith, too?" asked Caroline.
"Yes," said Peter, after a pause, "yes, I know Aunt Edith--or used
to. But I didn't know she--they were up in this country. I haven't
seen her--them for a good while. Does--does she sing yet?"
"Oh, yes, but not on the stage any more, you know," Caroline
explained.
"I see. Does she sing, I wonder, a song about--Oh, something about
'my heart'?"
"'My heart's own heart,' you mean," Caroline said importantly; "yes,
indeed. It's her encore song."
"I see," said Peter again.
He looked into the fire, and there was a long silence. After a while
he shook his shoulders like a water-dog.
"Now, Caroline," he said briskly, "here's the way of this business.
You can't wear knickers until you're one of the boys, and you can't
be one of the boys until you wear knickers. Do you see? So you don't
get anywhere."
Caroline looked puzzled. She was suddenly overcome with sleep, and
the old familiar names and ways tasted of home and comfort to her
soul.
"You're too nice to be a boy, Caroline," said Peter, leaning over
her and brushing her azalea-crowned hair tenderly with his lips. "If
you persist in this plan of running away to be a boy, some boy,
growing up anxiously, somewhere, will never forgive you! Take my
advice, and wait--will you? Say 'Yes, Peter.'"
"Yes, Peter," Caroline murmured, drowsily.
"Good girl! Then I'll take you home with my little donkey. I don't
believe they've missed you yet. You've come four miles, though, you
little gypsy!"
He disappeared behind the trees, and Caroline nodded. Later she woke
sufficiently to find herself and Rufus on the blue blanket on the
bottom of a little donkey cart; Peter stood by the gentle,
long-eared head.
"Thank you, Peter," she murmured, half asleep, "and you'll see Aunt
Edith, won't you?"
"I don't believe so," he said, very low. "Not yet. Tell her Peter
brought you back. Just Peter. But he can't come yet. Get up, Jenny!"
They wound out by an old wood road. A cool spiciness flowed though
the green aisles, and as the tiny donkey struck into a dog trot, the
man striding easily at her head, a far-away cock crowed shrilly and
the dawn gleamed white.
IX
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
"Caroline!" Henry D. Thoreau cocked one brindled ear cannily and
rapped sharply with his tail on the piazza floor, but there was no
other answer to the call. "Caroline!" The insistent voice rang
louder; it was a very determined voice. A sleepy Angora cat scowled
reprovingly at its violence; a gray and pink parrot mimicked its
hortatory note, but after that the midsummer silence settled down
again. Only the bees droned heavily among the heavy August roses.
"Don't nag her, dear; it doesn't do any good," a sleepy contralto,
rich as creamy chocolate, crooned out of a scarlet-fringed hammock.