As she dressed, the next morning, she heard Mimy singing, but no stir of
her hosts. The sun was shining. In at window streamed life-giving air.
Her mind was upon the evening before and its current of happenings. As
she had gone to sleep with the sea, of which they had read, about her,
so now the three songs to which they had listened returned to mind,
returned almost to sense. That was one remarkable thing about this
place--the great vividness and depth of perception.... She knew the
difference between usual or even intent thinking and intuition. Her
intuitions had not been vigorous--she had looked at them with a kind of
gray wonder, as at pale children from afar. They came at long intervals,
but were never forgotten. It now seemed that this was a good clime for
them.
She stood still in the middle of her room. Her mind opened. "'Oh, that
we two were maying!' That is man and woman love, time out of mind; love
and cry of love! It is Romeo and Juliet, it is Tristan and Isolde. 'Oh,
that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come into His
presence!' That is religious love that goes up from man and woman love.
That is the onward going, the seeking of Great Lovers. 'And the world
shall go up with a shout unto God.' That is when we move and feel and
think, not as men and women, but as Humanity. The Great Mating."
The little firmament closed like eyelids and hid the greater. She was a
small, gray woman, and she had beaten about in the intellect, and when
gleams came like this she had taken them and promptly, when the sky
closed, had doubted if they had ever existed. But to-day she was less
inclined to doubt. There remained a faint luminousness in mind, a sense
of depth behind feeling. She thought, "If I could stay in that garden I
should indeed know bloom and music!" She moved about the room. "The
point is that there _is_ such a garden."
She finished dressing, and went downstairs. Zinia met her in the hall.
"Good mahning! I hope you slept well? Miss Marget says you're to have
breakfast on the porch. It's so warm and beautiful this mahning."
"She has had hers?"
"Yes'm. She said tell you Sweet Rocket was home. I put the table here.
But if it's too sunny I can move it."
"It's not too sunny. I like sun," said Miss Darcy.
"I like it, too," said Zinia, and departed kitchenward. Anna Darcy sat
and slowly ate Catawba grapes. The porch was wide, the table placed
between high, mellowed pillars. Beyond them the autumn turf ran to great
trees colored like Venetian glass. The river crescent sparkled in light.
Beyond it she saw the fields and the woods through which they had
driven. All was closed by the mountain wall, very soft and gracious in
the sun, in the still, warm air.
Zinia brought coffee and rolls. There was honey upon the table, and an
old blue basket-dish filled with red-amber grapes. Zinia was very dark,
supple, and strong. She had large, kind, African eyes, and beautiful
teeth, and she moved with an ample and conscious majesty. Miss Darcy
loved to watch her.
The evening before, a collie lay upon the steps. Miss Darcy asked of
him.
"Tam? He's gone with Mr. Dick."
Zinia stood by a pillar, watching with kind eyes the visitor's evident
enjoyment of her breakfast. Miss Darcy had noted before, and noted now,
the lack of any servility at Sweet Rocket. They all seemed too much a
part of one another for that. But there was also that fine courtesy and
feeling that did not speak out of the way when speech was not wanted.
They all seemed to sail upon some inner current of understanding.
She finished breakfast, and, rising, helped Zinia to carry away the
table. Dining room and pantry shone clean and simple. Zinia had flowers
in the pantry, and upon the shelf below the china press an open book.
Miss Darcy glanced. "What are you reading?--_Pilgrim's Progress?_"
"Yes'm," said Zinia, in her rich voice. "I like that girl Mercy."
The house was clean and sunny; still, and yet singing somehow, like a
great shell held to ear. She walked about, and at last went out into the
high morning and the flower garden. The brick paths glistened. Box
smelled sweet, mignonette and citronalis. Around flowed bird life and a
vast insect life. Multitudinous song and hum and chirr fell into
harmony. She walked up and down the paths and partook of garden
amusements, then went out by a wicket gate and found herself near the
outdoor kitchen. A brown four-year-old was seated on the stone step. She
stopped before him. "Good morning!"
"Mahning."
"What is your name?"
"Just So."
"Just So?"
"Yass'm."
Mimy appeared in the doorway. Mimy was a small woman with a face like a
carved cherry stone for wrinkles. "He's my grandson, ma'am, Just So."
"I heard you singing," said Miss Darcy. "I loved it."
"Singing's like butter on the griddle," said Mimy. "It helps you turn
things!" She sighed portentously, and then she groaned. "I've had a lot
of things to turn! Yes'm, I've lived long and turned a lot of things!"
Her voice was gloom, and yet carried more than a suspicion of rich
chuckle. She enjoyed her old woes, disaster had grown so shallow. "I,
too," thought the visitor, "have had a lot of things to turn! I, too,
have come to where I can stand back and see the drama and feel the play
thrill!"
Just So was a solemn young one. He sat and gazed as though in
contemplation of the many things he would have to turn. Then a brown hen
came by, and he put out a brown toe and dug in the earth, and said,
"Shoo!" and laughed. Miss Darcy left him playing with a string of spools
and a broken coffee mill. Mimy in the kitchen was toasting coffee and
singing. The coffee smelled better than good, the singing was without
age in the voice.
"Who built the Ark?
Oh, Noah built the Ark!
It rained forty days,
And it rained forty nights!
'There ain't any sun and there ain't any heights!'
Oh, Noah built the Ark!"
Miss Darcy's path led on to the barn. Cocks and hens, white and red,
held the barnyard. She watched them with pleasure, and the sun on the
gray walls and the barn swallows going in and out. Then she found Mancy
sitting under a shed, mending a wagon shaft.
"Good morning!"
"Good morning!"
"It's a lovely day."
"It is so, ma'am! You're from the city, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"I hope you like Sweet Rocket?"
"I do. It makes you feel whole."
Mancy glanced at her. He was a long, brown man, with features between
negro and Indian. What you liked very much was his smile. It dropped
over his face slowly, like sun on brown hills, out of quiet, cloudy
weather. "That's a true saying!" he offered. "That's what I think about
heaven. We'll just feel and know that we're well and whole."
The school-teacher's mind said: "The negro is a religious character. He
is always willing to talk of the Lord and of heaven."
"All the little torn bits coming together," finished Mancy.
He sat mending the wagon shaft. It came to her, standing watching him,
to say something of the distracted and warring earth. His slow smile
stole again over his face. "Yes'm. We hurt ourselves right often."
"You call it that--hurting oneself?"
"Yes'm. What do you call it?"
"I don't know.... I suppose it _is_ hurting one's self--suicidal mania!"
she thought. "Perhaps all the history I have ever taught has been the
story of self hurt and self heal--perhaps we fight our self in Europe
and Asia and America. Perhaps, in the tissue wide as space, centers here
and centers there are beginning to learn self heal above self hurt--"
She stood looking at the mountains while Mancy worked on at the wagon
shaft. Presently she said, "You would say that this was a very lonely
place, but I have touched a thousand things since I came that run out
and touch everywhere!"
"Mountains aren't walls," said Mancy.
She left the barn and walked on to the orchard. The apples had been
gathered, but a few red orbs yet hung from the branches. She walked
beneath the trees and she thought of old, dull troubles and anxieties
that had attended her life. This morning light seemed at work among
them, disintegrating them.
The sun came down between the trees. The air blew soft and fine. She
returned to the house, and upon the porch steps found Mrs. Cliff with
baskets to sell, woven of white-oak splits, in a mountain cabin, by her
son and herself. She was waiting for Marget and seemed content to wait
as long as the sun shone. She wore a faded calico and a brown sunbonnet,
and she dipped snuff.
"Good morning!"
"Mornin'!"
Mrs. Cliff put her snuffbox in her pocket. "Don't you want to buy a
basket? These three are fer Miss Marget."
Miss Darcy examined and admired. "I'd like this little one." Mrs. Cliff
put it aside. "I hain't seen you here before."
"I've just come. You've got a lovely country."
"Yaas. We think so. Do you see yon clearing on mountain? I come from
thar." Miss Darcy sat down, and she and the mountain woman talked of
basket weaving and of the times, which Mrs. Cliff said were hard. "What
do you think sugar is? An' what you got to give fer a pair of shoes?
You've got to sit an' fergit, even while you're rememberin', or you
don't git nowhar! I wish Jesus Christ would come on back!"
"He is somewhat needed," Anna Darcy agreed.
"I had a funny thing happen to me yesterday," said Mrs. Cliff. "I had
jest finished that basket. I was setting on the step an' awful tired,
an' I shet my eyes an' leaned my head back against the door. An jest
like that I thought, 'He's in little bits in all of us, an' we've got to
put him together.' An' jest thinking it, all in a minute I felt so big
and rested! But it couldn't last. I wish it would come again."
Marget's voice was heard, speaking to Zinia. "She's come back. They're
mighty kind folk here!"
"I know that."
"They _like_ doin' you a good turn," said Mrs. Cliff, and, getting to
her feet, gathered up her baskets.