child—heard them night after night; and when she went home to the little
brown house to light the fire on the hearth and let down the warm red
curtains, she fell into sweet, sad reveries; and when she blew out her
candle for the night, she fell asleep and dreamed new dreams, and her
heart was stirred with the rustling of new-born hopes that rose and took
wing like birds startled from their nests.
V
“Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,
A poet or a friend to find:
Behold, he watches at the door!
Behold his shadow on the floor!”
EMERSON’S _Saadi_.
LYDDY BUTTERFIELD’S hen turkey was of a roving disposition. She had
never appreciated her luxurious country quarters in Edgewood, and was
seemingly anxious to return to the modest back yard in her native city.
At any rate, she was in the habit of straying far from home, and the
habit was growing upon her to such an extent that she would even lead her
docile little gobblers down to visit Anthony Croft’s hens and share their
corn.
Lyddy had caught her at it once, and was now pursuing her to that end for
the second time. She paused in front of the house, but there were no
turkeys to be seen. Could they have wandered up the hill road—the
discontented, “traipsing,” exasperating things? She started in that
direction, when she heard a crash in the Croft kitchen, and then the
sound of a boy’s voice coming from an inner room—a weak and querulous
voice, as if the child were ill.
She drew nearer, in spite of her dread of meeting people, or above all of
intruding, and saw Anthony Croft standing over the stove, with an
expression of utter helplessness on his usually placid face. She had
never really seen him before in the daylight, and there was something
about his appearance that startled her. The teakettle was on the floor,
and a sea of water was flooding the man’s feet, yet he seemed to be
gazing into vacancy. Presently he stooped, and fumbled gropingly for the
kettle. It was too hot to be touched with impunity, and he finally left
it in a despairing sort of way, and walked in the direction of a shelf,
from under which a row of coats was hanging. The boy called again in a
louder and more insistent tone, ending in a whimper of restless pain.
This seemed to make the man more nervous than ever. His hands went
patiently over and over the shelf, then paused at each separate nail.
“Bless the poor dear!” thought Lyddy. “Is he trying to find his hat, or
what is he trying to do? I wonder if he is music mad?” and she drew
still nearer the steps.
At this moment he turned and came rapidly toward the door. She looked
straight in his face. There was no mistaking it: he was blind. The
magician who had told her, through his violin, secrets that she had
scarcely dreamed of, the wizard who had set her heart to throbbing and
aching and longing as it had never throbbed and ached and longed before,
the being who had worn a halo of romance and genius to her simple mind,
was stone blind! A wave of impetuous anguish, as sharp and passionate as
any she had ever felt for her own misfortunes, swept over her soul at the
spectacle of the man’s helplessness. His sightless eyes struck her like
a blow. But there was no time to lose. She was directly in his path: if
she stood still he would certainly walk over her, and if she moved he
would hear her, so, on the spur of the moment, she gave a nervous cough
and said, “Good-morning, Mr. Croft.”
He stopped short. “Who is it?” he asked.
“I am—it is—I am—your new neighbour,” said Lyddy, with a trembling
attempt at cheerfulness.
“Oh, Miss Butterfield! I should have called up to see you before this if
it hadn’t been for the boy’s sickness. But I am a good-for-nothing
neighbour, as you have doubtless heard. Nobody expects anything of me.”
(“Nobody expects anything of me.” Her own plaint, uttered in her own
tone!)
“I don’t know about that,” she answered swiftly. “You’ve given me, for
one, a great deal of pleasure with your wonderful music. I often hear
you as you play after supper, and it has kept me from being lonesome.
That isn’t very much, to be sure.”
“You are fond of music, then?”
“I didn’t know I was; I never heard any before,” said Lyddy simply; “but
it seems to help people to say things they couldn’t say for themselves,
don’t you think so? It comforts me even to hear it, and I think it must
be still more beautiful to make it.”
Now, Lyddy Ann Butterfield had no sooner uttered this commonplace speech
than the reflection darted through her mind like a lightning flash that
she had never spoken a bit of her heart out like this in all her life
before. The reason came to her in the same flash: she was not being
looked at; her disfigured face was hidden. This man, at least, could not
shrink, turn away, shiver, affect indifference, fix his eyes on hers with
a fascinated horror, as others had done. Her heart was divided between a
great throb of pity and sympathy for him and an irresistible sense of
gratitude for herself. Sure of protection and comprehension, her lovely
soul came out of her poor eyes and sat in the sunshine. She spoke her
mind at ease, as we utter sacred things sometimes under cover of
darkness.
“You seem to have had an accident; what can I do to help you?” she asked.
“Nothing, thank you. The boy has been sick for some days, but he seems
worse since last night. Nothing is in its right place in the house, so I
have given up trying to find anything, and am just going to Edgewood to
see if somebody will help me for a few days.”
“Uncle Tony! Uncle To-ny! where are you? Do give me another drink, I’m
so hot!” came the boy’s voice from within.
“Coming, laddie! I don’t believe he ought to drink so much water, but
what can I do? He is burning up with fever.”
“Now look here, Mr. Croft,” and Lydia’s tone was cheerfully decisive.
“You sit down in that rocker, please, and let me command the ship for a
while. This is one of the cases where a woman is necessary. First and
foremost, what were you hunting for?”
“My hat and the butter,” said Anthony meekly, and at this unique
combination they both laughed. Lyddy’s laugh was particularly fresh,
childlike, and pleased; one that would have astonished the Reynolds
children. She had seldom laughed heartily since little Rufus had cried
and told her she frightened him when she twisted her face so.
“Your hat is in the wood-box, and I’ll find the butter in the twinkling
of an eye, though why you want it now is more than—My patience, Mr.
Croft, your hand is burned to a blister!”
“Don’t mind me. Be good enough to look at the boy and tell me what ails
him; nothing else matters much.”
“I will with pleasure, but let me ease you a little first. Here’s a rag
that will be just the thing,” and Lyddy, suiting the pretty action to the
mendacious word, took a good handkerchief from her pocket and tore it in
three strips, after spreading it with tallow from a candle heated over
the stove. This done, she bound up the burned hand skilfully, and,
crossing the dining-room, disappeared within the little chamber door
beyond. She came out presently, and said half hesitatingly, “Would
you—mind—going out in the orchard for an hour or so? You seem to be
rather in the way here, and I should like the place to myself, if you’ll
excuse me for saying so. I’m ever so much more capable than Mrs. Buck;
won’t you give me a trial, sir? Here’s your violin and your hat. I’ll
call you if you can help or advise me.”
“But I can’t let a stranger come in and do my housework,” he objected.
“I can’t, you know, though I appreciate your kindness all the same.”
“I am your nearest neighbour, and your only one, for that matter,” said
Lyddy firmly; “it’s nothing more than right that I should look after that
sick child, and I must do it. I haven’t got a thing to do in my own
house. I am nothing but a poor lonely old maid, who’s been used to
children all her life, and likes nothing better than to work over them.”
A calm settled upon Anthony’s perturbed spirit, as he sat under the
apple-trees and heard Lyddy going to and fro in the cottage. “She isn’t
any old maid,” he thought; “she doesn’t step like one; she has soft shoes
and a springy walk. She must be a very handsome woman, with a hand like
that; and such a voice!—I knew the moment she spoke that she didn’t
belong in this village.”
As a matter of fact, his keen ear had caught the melody in Lyddy’s voice,
a voice full of dignity, sweetness, and reserve power. His sense of
touch, too, had captured the beauty of her hand, and held it in
remembrance—the soft palm, the fine skin, supple fingers, smooth nails,
and firm round wrist. These charms would never have been noted by any
seeing man in Edgewood, but they were revealed to Anthony Croft while
Lyddy, like the good Samaritan, bound up his wounds. It is these saving
stars that light the eternal darkness of the blind.
Lyddy thought she had met her Waterloo when, with arms akimbo, she gazed
about the Croft establishment, which was a scene of desolation for the
moment. Anthony’s cousin from Bridgton was in the habit of visiting him
every two months for a solemn house-cleaning, and Mrs. Buck from Pleasant
River came every Saturday and Monday for baking and washing. Between
times Davy and his uncle did the housework together; and although it was
respectably done, there was no pink-and-white daintiness about it, you
may be sure.
Lyddy came out to the apple-trees in about an hour, laughing nervously as
she said, “I’m sorry to have taken a mean advantage of you, Mr. Croft,
but I know everything you have in your house, and exactly where it is. I
couldn’t help it, you see, when I was making things tidy. It would do
you good to look at the boy. His room was too light, and the flies were
devouring him. I swept him and dusted him, put on clean sheets and
pillow-slips, sponged him with bay rum, brushed his hair, drove out the
flies, and tacked a green curtain up to the window. Fifteen minutes
after he was sleeping like a kitten. He has a sore throat and
considerable fever. Could you—can you—at least, will you, go up to my
house on an errand?”
“Certainly I can. I know it inside and out as well as my own.”
“Very good. On the clock shelf in the sitting-room there is a bottle of
sweet spirits of nitre; it’s the only bottle there, so you can’t make any
mistake. It will help until the doctor comes. I wonder you didn’t send
for him yesterday?”
“Davy wouldn’t have him,” apologised his uncle.
“_Wouldn’t_ he?” inquired Lyddy with cheerful scorn. “He has you under
pretty good control, hasn’t he? But children are unmerciful tyrants.”
“Couldn’t you coax him into it before you go home?” asked Anthony in a
wheedling voice.
“I can try; but it isn’t likely I can influence him, if you can’t.
Still, if we both fail, I really don’t see what’s to prevent our sending
for the doctor in spite of him. He is as weak as a baby, you know, and
can’t sit up in bed: what could he do? I will risk the consequences, if
you will!”
There was a note of such amiable and winning sarcasm in all this, such a
cheery, invincible courage, such a friendly neighbourliness and
co-operation, above all, such a different tone from any he was accustomed
to hear in Edgewood, that Anthony Croft felt warmed through to the core.
As he walked quickly along the road, he conjured up a vision of autumn
beauty from the few hints nature gave even to her sightless ones on this
glorious morning—the rustle of a few fallen leaves under his feet, the
clear wine of the air, the full rush of the swollen river, the whisking
of the squirrels in the boughs, the crunch of their teeth on the nuts,
the spicy odour of the apples lying under the trees. He missed his
mother that morning more than he had missed her for years. How neat she
was, how thrifty, how comfortable, and how comforting! His life was so
dreary and aimless; and was it the best or the right one for Davy, with
his talent and dawning ambition? Would it not be better to have Mrs.
Buck live with them altogether, instead of coming twice a week, as
heretofore? No; he shrank from that with a hopeless aversion born of
Saturday and Monday dinners in her company. He could hear her pour her
coffee into the saucer; hear the scraping of the cup on the rim, and know
that she was setting it sloppily down on the cloth. He could remember
her noisy drinking, the weight of her elbow on the table, the creaking of
her dress under the pressure of superabundant flesh. Besides, she had
tried to scrub his favourite violin with sapolio. No, anything was
better than Mrs. Buck as a constancy.
He took off his hat unconsciously as he entered Lyddy’s sitting-room. A
gentle breeze blew one of the full red curtains towards him till it
fluttered about his shoulders like a frolicsome, teasing hand. There was
a sweet pungent odour of pine-boughs, a canary sang in the window, the
clock was trimmed with a blackberry vine; he knew the prickles, and they
called up to his mind the glowing tints he had loved so well. His
sensitive hand, that carried a divining rod in every finger-tip, met a
vase on the shelf, and, travelling upward, touched a full branch of alder
berries tied about with a ribbon. The ribbon would be red; the woman who
arranged this room would make no mistake; for in one morning Anthony
Croft had penetrated the secret of Lyddy’s true personality, and in a
measure had sounded the shallows that led to the depths of her nature.
Lyddy went home at seven o’clock that night rather reluctantly. The
doctor had said Mr. Croft could sit up with the boy unless he grew much
worse, and there was no propriety in her staying longer unless there was
danger.
“You have been very good to me,” Anthony said gravely, as he shook her
hand at parting—“very good.”
They stood together on the doorstep. A distant bell called to evening
prayer-meeting; the restless murmur of the river and the whisper of the
wind in the pines broke the twilight stillness. The long, quiet day
together, part of it spent by the sick child’s bedside, had brought the
two strangers curiously near to each other.
“The house hasn’t seemed so sweet and fresh since my mother died,” he
went on, as he dropped her hand, “and I haven’t had so many flowers and
green things in it since I lost my eyesight.”
“Was it long ago?”
“Ten years. Is that long?”
“Long to bear a burden.”
“I hope you know little of burden-bearing?”
“I know little else.”
“I might have guessed it from the alacrity with which you took up Davy’s
and mine. You must be very happy to have the power to make things
straight and sunny and wholesome; to breathe your strength into
helplessness such as mine. I thank you, and I envy you. Good-night.”
Lyddy turned on her heel without a word; her mind was beyond and above
words. The sky seemed to have descended upon, enveloped her, caught her
up into its heaven, as she rose into unaccustomed heights of feeling,
like Elijah in his chariot of fire. She very happy! She with
power—power to make things straight and sunny and wholesome! She able to
breathe strength into helplessness, even a consecrated, God-smitten
helplessness like his! She not only to be thanked, but envied!
Her house seemed strange to her that night. She went to bed in the dark,
dreading even the light of a candle; and before she turned down her
counterpane she flung herself on her knees, and poured out her soul in a
prayer that had been growing, waiting, and waited for, perhaps, for
years:
“O Lord, I thank Thee for health and strength and life. I never could do
it before, but I thank Thee to-night for life on any terms. I thank Thee
for this home; for the chance of helping another human creature, stricken
like myself; for the privilege of ministering to a motherless child.
Make me to long only for the beauty of holiness, and to be satisfied if I
attain to it. Wash my soul pure and clean, and let that be the only
mirror in which I see my face. I have tried to be useful. Forgive me if
it always seemed so hard and dreary a life. Forgive me if I am too happy
because for one short day I have really helped in a beautiful way, and
found a friend who saw, because he was blind, the real _me_ underneath;
the me that never was burned by the fire; the me that isn’t disfigured,
unless my wicked discontent has done it; the me that has lived on and on
and on, starving to death for the friendship and sympathy and love that
come to other women. I have spent my forty years in the wilderness,
feeding on wrath and bitterness and tears. Forgive me, Lord, and give me
one more vision of the blessed land of Canaan, even if I never dwell
there.”
VI
“Nor less the eternal poles
Of tendency distribute souls.
There need no vows to bind
Whom not each other seek, but find.”
EMERSON’S Celestial Love.
DAVY’S sickness was a lingering one. Mrs. Buck came for two or three
hours a day, but Lyddy was the self-installed angel of the house; and
before a week had passed the boy’s thin arms were around her neck, his
head on her loving shoulder, and his cheek pressed against hers. Anthony
could hear them talk, as he sat in the kitchen busy at his work. Musical
instruments were still brought him to repair, though less frequently than
of yore, and he could still make many parts of violins far better than
his seeing competitors. A friend and pupil sat by his side in the winter
evenings and supplemented his weakness, helping and learning alternately,
while his blind master’s skill filled him with wonder and despair. The
years of struggle for perfection had not been wasted; and though the eye
that once detected the deviation of a hair’s breadth could no longer tell
the true from the false, yet nature had been busy with her divine work of
compensation. The one sense stricken with death, she poured floods of
new life and vigour into the others. Touch became something more than
the stupid, empty grasp of things we seeing mortals know, and in place of
the two eyes he had lost he now had ten in every finger-tip. As for
odours, let other folk be proud of smelling musk and lavender, but let
him tell you by a quiver of the nostrils the various kinds of so-called
scentless flowers, and let him bend his ear and interpret secrets that
the universe is ever whispering to us who are pent in partial deafness
because, forsooth, we see.
He often paused to hear Lydia’s low, soothing tones and the boy’s weak
treble. Anthony had said to him once, “Miss Butterfield is very
beautiful, isn’t she, Davy? You haven’t painted me a picture of her yet.
How does she look?”
Davy was stricken at first with silent embarrassment. He was a truthful
child, but in this he could no more have told the whole truth than he
could have cut off his hand. He was knit to Lyddy by every tie of
gratitude and affection. He would sit for hours with his expectant face
pressed against the window-pane, and when he saw her coming down the
shady road he was filled with a sense of impending comfort and joy.
“No,” he said hesitatingly, “she isn’t pretty, nunky, but she’s sweet and
nice and dear. Everything on her shines, it’s so clean; and when she
comes through the trees, with her white apron and her purple calico
dress, your heart jumps, because you know she’s going to make everything
pleasant. Her hair has a pretty wave in it, and her hand is soft on your
forehead; and it’s ’most worth while being sick just to have her in the
house.”
Meanwhile, so truly is “praise our fructifying sun,” Lydia bloomed into a
hundred hitherto unsuspected graces of mind and heart and speech. A sly
sense of humour woke into life, and a positive talent for conversation,
latent hitherto because she had never known any one who cared to drop a
plummet into the crystal springs of her consciousness. When the violin
was laid away, she would sit in the twilight, by Davy’s sofa, his thin
hand in hers, and talk with Anthony about books and flowers and music,
and about the meaning of life too—its burdens and mistakes, and joys and
sorrows; groping with him in the darkness to find a clue to God’s
purposes.
Davy had long afternoons at Lyddy’s house as the autumn grew into winter.
He read to her while she sewed rags for a new sitting-room carpet, and
they played dominoes and checkers together in the twilight before
supper-time—suppers that were a feast to the boy, after Mrs. Buck’s
cookery. Anthony brought his violin sometimes of an evening, and Almira
Berry, the next neighbour on the road to the Mills, would drop in and
join the little party. Almira used to sing “Auld Robin Gray,” “What Will
You Do, Love,” and “Robin Adair,” to the great enjoyment of everybody;
and she persuaded Lyddy to buy the old church melodeon, and learn to sing
alto in “Oh, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast,” “Gently, Gently Sighs the
Breeze,” and “I Know a Bank.” Nobody sighed for the gaieties and
advantages of a great city when, these concerts being over, Lyddy would
pass crisp seedcakes and raspberry shrub, doughnuts and cider, or hot
popped corn and molasses candy.
“But there, she can afford to,” said Aunt Hitty Tarbox; “she’s pretty
middlin’ wealthy for Edgewood. And it’s lucky she is, for she ’bout
feeds that boy o’ Croft’s. No wonder he wants her to fill him up, after
six years of the Widder Buck’s victuals. Aurelia Buck can take good
flour and sugar, sweet butter and fresh eggs, and in ten strokes of her
hand she can make ’em into something the very hogs’ll turn away from. I
declare, it brings the tears to my eyes sometimes when I see her coming
out of Croft’s Saturday afternoons, and think of the stone crocks full of
nasty messes she’s left behind her for that innocent man and boy to eat
up . . . Anthony goes to see Miss Butterfield consid’able often. Of
course it’s awstensibly to walk home with Davy, or do an errand or
something, but everybody knows better. She went down to Croft’s pretty
nearly every day when his cousin Maria from Bridgton come to house-clean.
Maria suspicioned something, I guess. Anyhow, she asked me if Miss
Butterfield’s two hundred a year was in gov’ment bonds. Anthony’s
eyesight ain’t good, but I guess he could make out to cut cowpons off . . .
It would be strange if them two left-overs should take an’ marry each
other; though, come to think of it, I don’t know’s ’t would neither.
He’s blind, to be sure, and can’t see her scarred face. It’s a pity she
ain’t deef, so ’t she can’t hear his everlastin’ fiddle. She’s lucky to
get any kind of a husband; she’s too humbly to choose. I declare, she
reminds me of a Jack-o’-lantern, though if you look at the back of her,
or see her in meetin’ with a thick veil on, she’s about the best
appearin’ woman in Edgewood . . . I never seen anybody stiffen up as
Anthony has. He had me make him three white shirts and three gingham
ones, with collars and cuffs on all of ’em. It seems as if six shirts at
one time must mean something out o’ the common!”
Aunt Hitty was right; it did mean something out of the common. It meant
the growth of an all-engrossing, grateful, divinely tender passion
between two love-starved souls. On the one hand, Lyddy, who though she
had scarcely known the meaning of love in all her dreary life, yet was as
full to the brim of all sweet, womanly possibilities of loving and giving
as any pretty woman; on the other, the blind violin maker, who had never
loved any woman but his mother, and who was in the direst need of womanly
sympathy and affection.
Anthony Croft, being ministered unto by Lyddy’s kind hands, hearing her
sweet voice and her soft footstep, saw her as God sees, knowing the best;
forgiving the worst, like God, and forgetting it, still more like God, I
think.
And Lyddy? There is no pen worthy to write of Lyddy. Her joy lay deep
in her heart like a jewel at the bottom of a clear pool; so deep that no
ripple or ruffle on the surface could disturb the hidden treasure. If
God had smitten these two with one hand, he had held out the other in
tender benediction.
There had been a scene of unspeakable solemnity when Anthony first told
Lyddy that he loved her, and asked her to be his wife. He had heard all
her sad history by this time, though not from her own lips, and his heart
went out to her all the more for the heavy cross that had been laid upon
her. He had the wit and wisdom to put her affliction quite out of the
question, and allude only to her sacrifice in marrying a blind man,
hopelessly and helplessly dependent on her sweet offices for the rest of
his life, if she, in her womanly mercy, would love him and help him bear
his burdens.