The first of March was still deep winter in Grosvenor, but during the night
the southwest wind had begun to blow, coming in at Isabelle's window with
the cool freshness of anticipated spring. The day was calm and soft, with
films of cloud floating over the hills, and the indefinable suggestion of
change in the air, of the breaking of the frost. The southwest wind had
brought with it from the low land the haze, as if it had come from far warm
countries about the Gulf, where the flowers were already blooming and the
birds preparing for the northward flight. It touched the earth through the
thick mantle of ice and snow, and underneath in the rocky crust of frozen
ground there was the movement of water. The brooks on the hills began to
gurgle below the ice.
Up there in the north the snow had come early in the autumn, covering as
with a warm blanket this rocky crust before the frost could strike deep.
"An early spring," Sol Short announced at dinner, a dreamy look in his
eyes, like the soft sky outside, the look of unconscious gladness that
rises in man at the thought of the coming year, the great revival of
life.... That afternoon Margaret and Isabelle drove over the snowy upland,
where the deep drifts in the fields had shrivelled perceptibly, sucked by
the warm sun above and the opening earth beneath. The runners of the sleigh
cut into the trodden snow, and in the sheltered levels of the road the
horse's feet plashed in slush. The birches and alders lifted their bare
stems hardily from the retreating drifts. Soft violet lights hovered in the
valleys.
"It is coming, Spring!" Margaret cried.
"Remember, Mr. Short said there would be many a freeze before it really
came to stay!"
"Yes, but it is the first call; I feel it all through me."
The week before Ned had left the hospital, and for the first time in three
years had sat at the table with his brother and sister. His face had lost
wholly the gray look of disappointed childhood. Spring, arrested, was
coming to him at last....
As they climbed upward into the hills the stern aspect of winter returned,
with the deep drifts of snow, the untracked road. When they topped the Pass
and looked down over the village and beyond to the northern mountains, the
wind caught the sharp edges of the drifts and swept a snowy foam in their
faces. But the sun was sinking into a gulf of misty azure and gold, and the
breath of awakening earth was rising to meet the sun.
Up here it was still winter, the Past; beneath was the sign of change, the
coming of the New. And as Isabelle contemplated the broad sweep below, her
heart was still, waiting for whatever should come out of the New.
The sun fell behind the Altar, as they called the flat top of Belton's
Mountain, and all about the hills played the upward radiance from its
descending beams.... Margaret touched the loafing horse with the whip, and
he jogged down into the forest-covered road.
"Rob Falkner lands to-day in New York," Margaret remarked with a steady
voice.
Isabelle started from her revery and asked:--
"Does he mean to go back to Panama?"
"I don't believe he knows yet. The life down there is, of course, terribly
lonely and unfruitful. The work is interesting. I think he would like to go
on with it until he had finished his part. But there are changes; the man
he went out with has resigned."
Margaret wanted to talk about him, apparently, for she continued:--
"He has done some very good work,--has been in charge of a difficult
cut,--and he has been specially mentioned several times. Did you see the
illustrated article in the last _People's_? There were sketches and
photographs of his section.... But he hasn't been well lately, had a touch
of fever, and needs a rest."
"My husband wrote that they were to be divorced--he had heard so."
"I don't believe it," Margaret replied evenly. "His wife hasn't been down
there.... It isn't exactly the place for a woman, at least for one who
can't stand monotony, loneliness, and hardship. She has been in Europe with
her mother, this last year."
"You know I used to know her very well years ago. She was very pretty then.
Everybody liked Bessie," Isabelle mused.
And later she remarked:--
"Singular that _her_ marriage should be such a failure."
"Is it singular that any given marriage should be a failure?" Margaret
asked with a touch of her old irony. "It is more singular to me that any
marriage, made as they must be made to-day, should be anything but a dismal
failure."
"But Bessie was the kind to be adored. She was pretty, and clever, and
amusing,--a great talker and crazy about people. She had real social
instinct,--the kind you read of in books, you know. She could make her
circle anywhere. She couldn't be alone five minutes,--people clustered
around her like bees. Her life might have been a romance, you would
suppose,--pretty girl, poor, marries an ambitious, clever man, who arrives
with her social help, goes into politics--oh, anything you will!"
"But the real thing," Margaret observed.
"What do you mean?"
"Love! ... Love that understands and helps."
"Well, I saw the most dazzling future for her when she used to give garden
parties in Torso, with only two unattached men who were possible in the
place! And at least she might have had a small home in the suburbs and an
adoring husband home at five-thirty,--but she wasn't that kind.... Poor
Bess! I am sorry for her."
"I suppose the reason why a man and a woman hurt instead of help each other
in marriage is never known to any one but themselves," Margaret observed
dryly, urging on the horse. "And perhaps not even to themselves!"
There was a change in Margaret, an inner ferment that displayed itself in
the haze in her clear eyes,--the look of one whose mind broods over the
past,--a heightened color, a controlled restlessness of mood. 'No, it is
not settled,' thought Isabelle. 'Poor Margaret!' She went about her many
duties with the same silent sureness, the same poise as before. Whatever
was happening to her was according to the discipline of her nature,
controlled, suppressed. 'If she would only splutter,' Isabelle wished,
'instead of looking like a glowing sphinx!'
"Margaret!" she exclaimed in the evening, after a long silence between
them. "You are so young--so pretty these days!"
"You think so? Thanks!" Margaret replied, stretching her thin arms above
her head, which was crushed against one of Mrs. Short's hard pillows. "I
suppose it is the Indian summer, the last warm glow before the end!" She
opened her trembling lips in one of her ironical smiles. "There always
comes a time of ripeness to a woman before she goes over the hill into old
age."
"Nonsense! You are younger than you were twelve years ago!"
"Yes, I am younger in a sense than I ever was. I am well and strong, and I
am in equilibrium, as I never was before.... And it's more than that. We
become more vital if we survive the tangle of youth. We see more--we feel
more! When I hear girls talk about love, I always want to say: 'What do you
know, what _can_ you know about it! Love isn't born in a woman before she
is thirty,--she hasn't the power. She can have children, but she can't love
a man.'"
Margaret pressed her hands tensely together and murmured to herself, "For
love is born with the soul,--and is the last thing that comes into the
heart!"
Isabelle with caressing impulsiveness put her arms about the slight figure.
"I love you, Margaret; it seems as if you were the only person I really
loved now! It has been heaven to be with you all these weeks. You calm me,
you breathe peace to me.... And I want to help you, now."
Margaret smiled sadly and drew Isabelle's dark head to her and kissed it.
"Nobody can help, dear.... It will come right! It must come right, I am
sure."
With the feelings that are beyond expression they held each other thus.
Finally Margaret said in a low voice:--
"Rob comes day after to-morrow; he will be at the Inn."
Isabelle rose from the couch with a sudden revulsion in her heart. After
all, was this calm, this peace that she had admired in Margaret and longed
to possess herself, this Something which she had achieved and which seemed
to put her beyond and above ordinary women, nothing but the woman's
satisfaction in love, whose lover is seeking her? She found herself almost
despising Margaret unreasonably. Some man! That created the firmament of
women's heaven, with its sun and its moon and its stars. Remembered
caresses and expected joys,--the woman's bliss of yielding to her chosen
master,--was that all!
Margaret, following Isabelle with her eyes, seemed to comprehend this
sudden change in her heart. But she merely remarked:--
"He cannot stay long,--only a couple of days, I believe."
"Tell me," Isabelle demanded sharply, as if she had the right to know, must
know, "what are you going to do?"
Margaret closed her eyes, and after a time of utter stillness she said in a
voice beseechingly tender:--
"Dear, perhaps I do not know, yet."
Her eyes were wet with unaccustomed tears. Stretching a hand to Isabelle
and smiling again, she murmured:--
"Whatever it will be, you must trust that it will be right for me and for
him,--you must know that."
Isabelle pressed her hand gently:--
"Forgive me."
"And some day I will tell you."