THE PASSING OF TIME
It was winter. The snow was blowing past the windows in blinding
drifts, and the road in front of the Ballards' home was fast filling
to the tops of the fences. A bright wood-fire was burning in the great
cookstove, which had been brought into the living room for warmth and
to economize steps, as all the work of the household devolved on Mary
and little Betty, since Martha spent the week days at the Deans in the
village in order to attend the high school.
Mary gazed anxiously now and then through the fast-frosting window
panes on the opaque whiteness of the storm without, where the trees
tossed their bare branches weirdly, like threatening gray phantoms,
grotesque and dimly seen through the driving snow. It was Friday
afternoon and still early, and brave, busy little Martha always came
home on Fridays after school to help her mother on Saturdays.
"Oh, I hope Martha hasn't started," said Mary. "Look out, Bertrand.
This is the wildest storm we have had this year."
"Mrs. Dean would never allow her to set out in this storm, I'm sure,"
said Bertrand. "I cautioned her yesterday when I was there never to
start when the weather seemed like a blizzard."
Bertrand had painted in his studio above as long as the light
remained, and now he was washing his brushes, carefully swishing the
water out of them and drawing each one between his lips to shape it
properly before laying it down. Mary laid the babe in her arms in its
crib, and rocked it a moment while she and Bertrand chatted.
A long winter and summer had passed since the troops marched away from
Leauvite, and now another winter was passing. For a year and a bit
more, little Janey, the babe now being hushed to sleep, had been a
member of the family circle. Thus it was that Mary Ballard seldom went
to the village, and Betty learned her lessons at home as best she
could, and tended the baby and helped her mother. But Bertrand and his
wife had plenty to talk about; for he went out and saw their friends
in the village, led the choir on Sundays, taught the Bible class,
heard all the news, and talked it over with Mary.
Thus, in one way or another, all the new books found their way into
the Ballards' home, were read and commented on, even though books were
not written so much for commercial purposes then as now, and their
writers were looked up to with more respect than criticism. The
_Atlantic Monthly_ and _Littell's Living Age_, _Harper's Magazine_,
and the _New York Tribune_ also brought up a variety of subjects for
discussion. Now and then a new poem by Whittier, or Bryant, or some
other of the small galaxy of poets who justly were becoming the
nation's pride, would appear and be read aloud to Mary as she prepared
their meals, or washed the dishes or ironed small garments, while
Betty listened with intent eyes and ears, as she helped her mother or
tended the baby.
That afternoon, while the storm soughed without, the cow and horse
were comfortably quartered in their small stable, which was banked
with straw to keep out the cold. Indoors, Jamie was whittling behind
the warm cookstove over a newspaper spread to catch the chips, while
Bobby played quietly in a corner with two gray kittens and a worsted
ball. Janey was asleep in the crib which Betty jogged now and then
while she knit on a sock for the soldiers,--Mary and the two little
girls were always knitting socks for the soldiers these days in their
spare moments and during the long winter evenings,--Mary was kneading
white loaves of bread with floury hands, and Bertrand sat close beside
the window to catch the last rays of daylight by which to read the war
news.
Bertrand always read the war news first,--news of battles and lists of
wounded and slain and imprisoned, and saddest of all, lists of the
missing,--following closely the movements of their own company of
"boys" from Leauvite. Mary listened always with a thought of the
shadow in the banker's home, and the mother there, watching and
waiting for the return of her boy. Although their own home was safe,
the sorrow of other homes, devastated and mourning, weighed heavily
upon Mary Ballard, and she needed to listen to the stirring editorials
of the _Tribune_, which Bertrand read with dramatic intensity, to
bolster up her faith in the rightness of this war between men who
ought to be brothers in their hopes and ambitions for the national
life of their great country.
"I suppose it is too great a thing to ask--that such a tremendous and
mixed nation as ours should be knit together for the good of all men
in a spirit of brotherly love--but what a thing to ask for! What a
thing to try for! If I were a man, I would pray that I might gain
influence over my fellows just for that--just--for that," said Mary.
"Ah," replied her husband, with fond optimism, "you need not say 'If I
were a man,' for that. It is the women who have the influence; don't
you know that, Mary?"
Mary looked down at her work, an incredulous smile playing about her
lips.
"Well, my dear?" Bertrand loved a response.
"Well, Bertrand? Men do like to talk about our 'sweet influence,'
don't they?" Then she laughed outright.
"But, Mary--but, Mary, it is true. Women do more with their influence
than men can do with their guns," and Bertrand really meant what he
said. Dusky shadows filled the room, but if the light had been
stronger, he would have seen that little ironical smile still playing
about his wife's lips.
"Did you see Judge Logan again about those Waupaca lots?"
Bertrand wondered what the lots had to do with the subject, but
suffered the digression patiently, for the feminine mind was not
supposed to be coherent. "Yes, my love; I saw him yesterday."
"What did you do about them? I hope you refused."
"No, my dear. I thought best not. He showed me very conclusively that
in time they will be worth more--much more--than the debt."
"Then why did he offer them to you for the debt? The portrait you
painted for him will be worth more, too, in time, than the debt. You
remember when you asked me what I thought, I said we needed the money
more now."
"Yes, I remember; but this plan is a looking toward the future. I
didn't think it wise to refuse."
Mary said nothing, but went out, returning presently with two lighted
candles. Bertrand was replenishing the fire. Had he been looking at
her face with the light of the candles on it as she carried them, he
would have noticed that little smile about her lips.
"I'm very glad we brought the bees in yesterday," he said. "This storm
would have made it impossible to do it to-day, and we should have lost
them."
"How about those lectures, dear? The 'boys' are all gone now, and you
won't have them to take up your time evenings, so you can easily
prepare them. They will take you into the city now and then, and that
will keep you in touch with the world outside this village." Bertrand
had been requested to give a series of lectures on art in one of the
colleges in the city. He had been well pleased and had accepted, but
later had refused because of certain dictatorship exercised by the
Board, which he felt infringed on his province of a suitable selection
of subjects. He was silent for a moment. Again Mary had irrelevantly
and abruptly changed the subject of conversation. Where was the
connection between bees and lectures? "I really wish you would, dear,"
urged Mary.
"You still wish it after the affront the Board has given me?"
"I know, but what do they know about art? I would give the lectures if
it was only to be able--incidentally--to teach them something. Be a
little conciliatory, dear."
"I will make no concessions. If I give the lectures, I must be allowed
to select my courses. It is my province."
"Did you see Elder Craigmile about it?"
"I did."
"And what did he say?"
"He seemed to think the Board was right."
"I knew he would. You remember I asked you not to go to him about it,
and that was why."
"Why did you think so? He assumes to be my friend."
"Because people who don't know anything about art always are satisfied
with their own opinions. They don't know anything to upset them. He
knows more than some of them, but how much is that? Enough to know
that he owns some fine paintings; but you taught him their value, now,
didn't you?" Bertrand smiled, but said nothing, and his wife
continued. "Prepare the lectures, dear, for my sake. I love to know
that you are doing such work."
"I can't. The action of the Board is an insult to my intelligence.
What are you smiling about?"
"About you, dear."
"Mary, why, Mary! I--"
But Mary only smiled the more. "You love my irrelevance and
inconsistency, you say,--"
"I love any weakness that is yours, Mary. What are you keeping back
from me?"
"The weakness that is mine, dear." Again Mary laughed outright. "It
would be useless to tell you--or to try to explain. I love you, isn't
that enough?"
Bertrand thought it ought to be, but was not sure, and said so. Then
Mary laughed again, and he kissed her, shaking his head dubiously, and
took up his violin for solace. Thus an hour passed; then Betty set the
table for supper, and the long evening followed like many another
evening, filled with the companionship only comfortably married
people know, while Bertrand read from the poets.
Since, with a man's helplessness in such matters, he could not do
the family mending, or knit for the soldiers, or remodel old garments
into new, it behooved him to render such tasks pleasant for the busy
hand and brain that must devise and create and make much out of little
for economy's sake; and this Bertrand did to Mary's complete
satisfaction.
Evenings like these were Betty's school, and they seemed all the
schooling she was likely to get, for the family funds were barely
sufficient to cover the expenses of one child at a time. But, as Mary
said, "It's not so bad for Betty to be kept at home, for she will read
and study, anyway, because she likes it, and it won't hurt her to
learn to be practical as well;" and no doubt Mary was right.
Bertrand was himself a poet in his appreciation and fineness of
choice, and he read for Mary with all the effectiveness and warmth of
color that he would put into a recitation for a large audience,
carried on solely by his one sympathetic listener and his love for
what he read; while Betty, in her corner close to the lamp behind her
father's chair, listened unnoticed, with eager soul, rapt and
uplifted.
As Bertrand read he commented. "These men who are writing like this
are doing for this country what the Lake Poets did for England. They
are making true literature for the nation, and saving it from
banality. They are going to live. They will be classed some day with
Wordsworth and all the rest of the best. Hear this from James Russell
Lowell. It's about a violin, and is called 'In the Twilight.' It's
worthy of Shelley." And Bertrand read the poem through, while Mary
let her knitting fall in her lap and listened. He loved to see her
listen in that way.
"Read again the verse that begins: 'O my life.' I seem to like it
best." And he read it over:--
"O my life, have we not had seasons
That only said, Live and rejoice?
That asked not for causes and reasons,
But made us all feeling and voice?
When we went with the winds in their blowing,
When Nature and we were peers,
And we seemed to share in the flowing
Of the inexhaustible years?
Have we not from the earth drawn juices
Too fine for earth's sordid uses?
Have I heard, have I seen
All I feel, all I know?
Doth my heart overween?
Or could it have been
Long ago?"
"And the next, Bertrand. I love to hear them over again." And he
read:--
"Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show,
A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know,
As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!"
"And the last verse, father. I like the last best," cried Betty,
suddenly.
"Why, my deary. I thought you were gone to bed."
"No, mother lets me sit up a little while longer when you're reading.
I like to hear you." And he read for her the last verse:--
"And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs my brain,
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak it and show it,
This pleasure more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,
The world should once more have a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad,
Long ago!"
Then, wishing to know more of the secret springs of his little
daughter's life, he asked: "Why do you love that stanza best, Betty,
my dear?"
Betty blushed crimson to the roots of her hair, for what she carried
in her heart was too precious to tell, but she meant to be a poet.
Even then, in the pocket of her calico dress lay a little book and a
stubbed lead pencil, and in the book was already the beginning of her
great epic. Her father had said the epic was a thing of the past, that
in the future none would be written, for that it was a form of
expressions that belonged to the world's youth, and that age brought
philosophy and introspection, but not epics.
She meant to surprise her father some day with this poem. The great
world was so full of mystery--of seductive beauty and terror and of
strange, enticing charm! She saw and felt it always. Even now, in the
driving, whirling storm without, in the darkness of her chamber, or
when she looked through the frosted panes into the starry skies at
midnight, always it was there all about her,--a something unexpressed,
unseen, but close--close to her,--the mystery which throbbed through
all her small being, and which she was one day to find out and
understand and put into her great epic.
She thought over her father's question, hardly knowing why she liked
that last stanza best. She slowly wound up her ball of yarn and thrust
the needles through it, and dropped it into her mother's workbasket
before she replied; then, taking up her candle, she looked shyly in
her father's eyes.
"Because I like where it says: 'This pleasure more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so.'" Then she was gone, hurrying away lest
they should question her further and learn about the little book in
her pocket.
Thus time passed with the Ballards, many days swiftly flying, laden
with a fair share of sweetness and pleasure, and much of harassment
and toil, but in the main bringing happiness.