"It is so splendid! A sugar maple, isn't it? And that one?"
"Mountain linden. It puts on a clear, pale gold, like the old saints'
haloes."
"I hear water."
"It is the little stream that we cross. See how sweet and clear and
sounding it goes! Hemlock Run. All right, Daniel!"
Daniel bent mouth to water and drank.
"No check rein?"
"No."
Gray horse and old phaeton moved again. The wood grew richer and deeper.
"We are nearing the river."
"And then, in Richmond, you heard about Sweet Rocket?"
"Aunt Hester had a letter from Alder. Richard Linden, old Major Linden's
nephew, had bought Sweet Rocket. I was glad that some one who must love
it was there. Aunt Hester said that he had visited it once or twice as a
young boy. He would remember it then as I remembered it. The second
letter said that he was almost blind, and alone on the place save for
the colored people. Then I saw his advertisement in the Richmond papers.
He wanted a secretary, one who could read aloud well. So I answered, and
was taken--five years ago."
"How old a man is he?"
"He is forty-seven and I am forty-four."
"You have inner youth--higher youth."
"Yes. Childhood there. So has he."
"Do you love him, Marget?"
"Love him? Yes! But not the once-time way, if that is what you mean. As
he loves me, but not the once-time way. So we shall not marry, in the
once-time way. But we live here together all the same."
"Well, if it is as fair as this road--"
"It is just a simple house in the bent arm of a little river and with
hills all around, and behind the hills, mountains. There are fields and
an orchard and garden. It is hidden like a lost place, and happy like a
place for evermore finding itself."
"Tell me about Mr. Linden."
"No, let us wait for that. Or I can tell outward things--how we live?"
"Yes."
"He has only a small, fixed income. It wouldn't at all go round the
year, so we farm. We have an excellent man, Roger Carter, who lives in
the overseer's house. Wheat, corn, buckwheat, hay, and apples! So we
live and can buy--though with an elegant spareness--books and red-seal
Victor records and more and more flowers for the flower garden."
"Of course you have help about the house?"
"There are two colored men and a boy, and Mimy the cook and Zinia the
housemaid. But with the home garden and cornfield and orchard and the
two cows and the chickens and ducks and Daniel and Whitefoot and Bess
there is more than enough to do. You will be surprised to see how much
he does himself."
"How can he see?"
"He can tell light from darkness, and the dim mass of things. And then,
when you are blind, you grow so skillful with the other senses! And of
course in a measure all of us are eyes to him. He has a great, strong
body. He hoes and digs. He knows always what is beneath his fingers. He
can weed a garden as well as I can. He gathers fruit and berries and
vegetables and knows the perfect from the imperfect. He does no end of
things. Perhaps he may work with his hands four hours a day."
"And then?"
"There are letters. I write them, and I keep his accounts, and, of
course, the house. Then we read. It is a sandwiched business, but we
must average three hours a day with books. He gets up very early and
walks before breakfast, and usually again in the afternoon. Sometimes I
drive him on this road. Sometimes I walk with him, sometimes he goes
alone. After supper we read, or listen to the Victor singing and
playing, or we talk, or sit by the fire, still and thinking. Or on the
porch steps when weather is warm, where I can see and he can image the
stars."
"I see a good life."
"We are not without neighbors, though it seems so lonely. And then folk
come to us. His blindness was an accident, you know. He has had life in
the world as I have had life in the world. We _have_ life in the world."
"He is one, then, that may be loved?"
"He is a great poet, though he would never call himself so. He just
feels and acts so.... I think his face is beautiful."
"I think that your face is beautiful," thought Miss Darcy.
The tawny road turned a little east. Trees yet green, trees that wore
the one color the year round, blended with golden trees and scarlet
trees. Wild grapes with twisted and shaggy stems and yellowing leaves,
with blue grapes hanging over, ran and mounted, held by the forest arms
up to the sun. Sumac that was somehow like the Indian, that seemed to
hold memories of the Indian in the land, grew in each minute clearing.
There arose a little, rustling wind, the ineffable blue air moving
lightly. Brown butterflies abounded. The sense grew strong of
remoteness, of calm that was not indolence, of beauty gathered and at
home.
Miss Darcy moved a little. Marget Land turned toward her. "You feel it,
don't you?"
"Yes."
"They that come feel it. They are drawn. There are centers of
integration. This is one. I do not know who started it. Probably many,
working in at different times. But now it is in action."
"Is that mysticism?"
"No. It is fact."
The forest stopped with clean decision. The road ran through fields
where the corn had been cut and shocked. The shocks stood in rows like
brown wigwams. Daniel and the phaeton came down to a little river, very
clear, falling and murmuring over stones above and below a ford, but at
the ford a mirror, reflecting autumn hills and heaven. Across the ford
stretched a little pebbly beach, crowned with trees and grass, and
behind the trees stood a brick house, old-red, not so large as large
houses go, but of excellent line. It had a porch with Doric pillars,
weather-softened. It stood among fine trees in a small valley shut in on
all sides by hills and mountains, all forested to the top. Only the road
and the river seemed to have way out and in, only road and river and
air and birds. Valley and colored mountain walls were proportioned,
modeled, tinted to some wide and deep artist's taste. The tone was rest
without weakness, movement without fury, solitude that had all company.
"How could you help but love it!" said the visiting woman.
"I don't try to help it.... If it burned down--if the hills sank and the
wood was destroyed--still it would endure, and still I could come here.
Now we cross the river. Look at the bright stones and the minnows,
gliding, darting!"
Up from the river, across the pebbly shore, rose cedars dark and tall.
"They are like warders. Only there's nothing, really, to ward out. All
things may meet here. We go this way, to the back of the house."
"It feels enchanted."
"It is so simple. You might call it meek. There are people who pass who
say, 'How lonely!'"
They were now at the back of the house, where the road skirted the
flower garden. Here was the back door, with three rounded, moss-grown
steps of stone. Daniel and the phaeton stood still. The two women left
the vehicle. A colored man appeared. "Miss Darcy, this is Mancy. Mancy,
this is Miss Darcy, come to stay with us as long as she will."
Mancy, tall and spare, with an Indian great-grandmother, said that he
was glad to see her, and took her bags. In the brick kitchen in the
yard, Mimy was singing:
"Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home--"