PRIMAL FORCES
"Comin' in to supper, Brand? The horn has blew!" Mr. Wisk paused, one
foot uplifted for the next step.
To realize what a tribute to the blind man's personality lay in this
pause, one must have known Mr. Wisk. As his internal clock pointed the
approach of supper time he had been standing, poised for flight, an
elderly and ramshackle Mercury on a half-dug potato hill. At sound of
the horn he started, head bent forward, nose pointing as straight for
the kitchen as ever porker's for the trough. He would not have stopped
to put away his spade, because the corner behind the right-hand door
jamb of the barn had been long since appropriated by him for this
purpose; he could reach it without breaking step or slackening his pace.
Probably nothing on earth would have checked him except the very sight
that now met his eyes: the blind man standing just inside the door,
feeling over various things on a shelf so high that he (a very tall man)
could but just reach it. Mr. Wisk hesitated; it was his happy boast
never to have been late to a meal since he came to manhood.
"Want--want I should help you?" he quavered.
"No, thank you, Wisk! I'll be in presently, tell Mrs. Bailey. I have to
look for something just a minute, tell her."
He smiled at the sigh of conscious heroism which drifted back from the
departing Wisk; but the smile faded quickly, and his face was anxious
enough as his fingers closed round one object and another on the shelf;
a bottle, a jar, a row of paper bags neatly tied with twine. To the
casual eye these bags were all alike; one must read the label, see the
skull and crossbones, to distinguish them; the blind man needed no
labels.
"Lime, Paris green, Bordeaux mixture, arsenate of lead--one, two, three,
four--there should be five. Lime, Paris green, Bordeaux mixture--_where
is the hellebore_?"
He paused, his hand resting in an empty space between two bags. The
hellebore should be there; it was always there. He had used it himself
yesterday. He had counted these objects every night for the past ten
years, and never before had one been missing. No one but he could reach
the shelf; even Jacob Bailey had to stand on the bucket to get at it,
and the rule was strict that none but one of these two was ever to touch
any object on it. Brand stood pondering, with bent head, his hand still
on the shelf. Who had been in the barn this afternoon? He himself,
Jacob, Pippin, and the child. No one else--except the little girl; Brand
always called Flora May the little girl. She had been there, not half an
hour ago; he had heard her step, had spoken to her, but she did not
answer. In one of her odd spells, probably, poor child! But she could
not reach the shelf, even if--
The supper table was less gay than usual that evening; silence prevailed
instead of the usual cheerful chatter. A stranger, glancing round the
table, would have seen for the most part faces absent or absorbed. Jacob
was thinking about Pippin, regretting that the chaplain had failed to
have that talk with him, wondering how he should himself make the matter
clear to the boy. His wife was disturbed about Flora May who was
evidently on the verge of one of her odd spells, for she had acted
strangely all day, and she looked wrong to-night. When she crumbled her
bread and didn't seem to know the way to her mouth, look out for
trouble!
In the minds of Miss Pudgkins and Mr. Wisk the same thought reigned
supreme. The pie looked to be smaller than common; would she cut it in
six and fetch in another, or would she make it go round? Miss Whetstone
was inwardly lamenting that she had not told Mr. Hadley of Jonas
Cattermole's having been two years in the legislature. He'd see plain
enough then that folks was folks, even if they found it convenient to
board a spell with relations that happened to hold a town office. Miss
Whetstone raised her nose loftily, and told Mr. Wisk with a grand air
that she would trouble him for just a mite of them pickles if he could
spare any.
And Mary?
Mary had changed her seat, with a murmured excuse about a draft on her
back. She had usually sat between Jacob Bailey and Flora May, sat there
with an inward protest. She shrank from contact with the imbecile girl:
the instinctive shrinking of the healthy from the sick, the unconscious
cruelty of the normal toward the abnormal. Hitherto she had given no
sign of this, ashamed of an instinct that was yet too strong for her;
conscious, too, under the skin of her mind, of the warmth of compassion,
the tenderness of courtesy, with which Pippin always treated the poor
girl. If she had been the First Lady of the Land, he could have shown
her no more attention, Mary thought.
But to-night there was something more; Mary was afraid. The look she had
met, out there by the barn, the dreadful look which seemed to strike
like a sword at her springing hope and lay it cold and dead--she
shuddered now at thought of it; she would not meet it again. If she had
turned her eyes toward Flora May, she would have seen the beautiful face
sombre but quiet, the eyes cast down, the girl's whole air listless and
brooding; only--if she had looked longer--she might have seen now and
then the heavy white lids tremble, lift a little way, and a glance dart
from under the long lashes toward Pippin where he sat opposite her.
Mary dared not look at Pippin either, for she felt his eyes upon her.
Not yet, not before all these people, could she give him back look for
look, tell him silently all that was crying out within her; but soon,
soon, Pippin! Meantime she had drawn the child Peppino into the seat
next her, and was lavishing on him all the innocent wiles of the
child-hungry woman; and the child nestled close to her, and looked up at
her with adoring eyes. Pippin would see, would understand. All would be
well.
Pippin saw, but did not understand. He had wrestled and overcome, but
the stress of conflict was still upon him, the air was still full of the
clash of arms, the sound of great wings. His shadow world was gone,
swept away into nothingness; and of the actual flesh-and-blood realities
he saw nothing except Mary Blossom. There she sat opposite him, in all
her loveliness; surely he might look at her now, might for once take his
fill of gazing on the lovely head with its clustering hair ("The color
of a yearlin' heifer--Poor old mutt! What a way to speak of it! Wouldn't
that give you a pain?"), on the long dark lashes against the exquisite
curve of the rose-white cheek, on the perfect mouth--
Pippin's eyes grew misty; the world fell away from him--say, rather, it
narrowed to a point, and life and death and every other creature were
merged in that fair head of the love he thought he had lost.
"Flora May!" Mrs. Bailey spoke abruptly, almost sharply; every one
started. "Wake up, Flora, and set up straight; you're all slid down in
your chair. Here! Take this cup o' tea to Miss Blossom, dear!"
The brooding face lightened, sharpened, in a strange way; the girl rose
with a swift, sudden movement, and went obediently to the end of the
table to take the cup. If Mrs. Bailey had looked up then--but she was
busy over her tea things.
"You put the sugar in, dearie--she likes two lumps--and cream! Mr.
Brand, you ready for another cup?"
Pippin had started with the rest, when Mrs. Bailey spoke. Now his eyes
followed Flora May for a moment; she had turned her back to the table,
and was--what was she doing?
An old-fashioned mirror hung against the wall, dim with age, yet not so
dim but that Pippin saw in it the graceful figure of the girl reflected.
She paused, the cup in her left hand, drew from her bosom a folded
paper, shook into the cup what looked like a white powder, replaced the
paper carefully. Now what was that poor thing doing? Putting salt in
Mary's tea for a joke like? Lacking reason, they were like monkeys, some
way--
Then the girl lifted her head, and Pippin saw her eyes. In a flash he
was beside her, and had taken the cup from her hand; now he lifted it,
smiling, as if to drink.
"I guess that's my cup, ain't it, Miss Flora May? I guess Mis' Bailey
made a mistake for once!"
It all happened in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Before the cup
touched his lips, the girl struck it out of his hand. It fell with a
sharp crash on the floor. She threw up her arms with a cry which rang
through the house, and darted out into the night.
"She's got a spell on her!" said Jacob Bailey, rising quickly. "It's
been coming on this week past, m' wife says. Come, Pippin; come, Wisk!
We'll have to find the poor child and bring her home."
He spoke sadly, but without surprise, as of a thing well known.
"You come too, Brand! Oftentimes she'll answer your voice when she won't
another. The barn first!"
"She was there this afternoon," said the blind man, following. "Likely
she's gone to put back something she--borrowed!"
Not in the barn; not in the corncrib, where she used to sit by the hour,
crooning her wordless songs; not in the kennel with old Rover, where
they had found her more than once, poor thing, her arms around the dumb
creature who perhaps--who knows?--was nearer her dumb mind than the
human beings around her.
"This way!" said Brand. "Here's a thread of her dress on the gatepost.
She's gone to the wood lot."
Not in the wood lot; no answer to the calls of friendly, tender voices.
"Flora! Flora May! Where be you, little gal? Speak up, won't you?"
Further on, through the meadows, guided by the blind man's unerring
fingers which found here a broken twig, there a shred of cotton, here
again a knot of ribbon caught in a bramble wreath; searching, calling,
searching, through weary hours.
So at last to the distant pasture where the lily pond gleamed under the
moon.
There they found her, poor Flora May. Lying among the lily pads, her
lovely hair twined about the brown stems, her fair face turned upwards,
the clear shallow water dimpling and wavering above her, so that she
seemed to smile at them in faint, disdainful mockery; so they found her,
lying quietly in the place of her rest.
* * * * *
"Don't cry, mother! don't ye! the Lord has took His poor lamb home.
Don't take on so, Lucy!"
Thus Jacob, patting his wife's shoulder with clumsy, tender hand. He had
never seen her so overcome; the calm, self-contained woman was crying
and sobbing like a child.
But now she collected herself with an effort, and dried her eyes.
"I know, Jacob! I know I hadn't ought; I know she's better off;
but--'tis so pitiful! Oh, 'tis so pitiful! She couldn't help it, my poor
girl; she couldn't help it. 'Twas stronger than her. And, oh, Jacob, I
can't but think--if her father had been--different--"
"There, Lucy! There! Such things is beyond us."
"They hadn't ought to be!" cried Lucy Bailey, and her tears broke out
afresh. "They hadn't ought to be beyond us. The Lord intended we should
live clean and decent, and made us accordin'; and them as don't, it's
their children must pay, like the Bible says. But what keeps comin' back
and back on my mind is--she was so innocent and so pretty! Full as
pretty as what Mary is, to my thinkin'. Seein' her lyin' there, so
pretty--oh, so pretty! I couldn't but think--I couldn't but think--if
she had had a fair chance--"
If she had had a fair chance! So Pippin thought, as he stood by the
little white bed in the narrow room. He had carried her home in his
young strong arms, had laid her here--reverently, as he would have laid
a royal princess--on the bed where she had tossed and moaned her heart
out for him; now she had no thought for him, she was all for sleep. He
had left her to the women, and gone to join the older men, a sorrowful
little group about the kitchen fire; but now, when all the house was
still, there could be no harm in his entering the quiet room once more,
humbly, with bowed head, to say a word of farewell to the poor sweet
pretty creatur'; to say a little prayer, too, and maybe--whisperin'
like, not to wake a soul--to sing a little hymn, seeing she used to set
by his singing. He looked round the room, neat and bare, yet a girl's
room, with pretty touches here and there: a bird's nest on a mossy twig,
a bunch of feathery grasses in a graceful jug, bright Christmas cards
framing the little mirror, drooping over them a necklace of wooden beads
carved by Brand for his little girl. Beside these things, on a stand by
the bedside, some pond lilies in a glass bowl, drooping with folded
petals. Pippin shivered, and his eyes turned to the still figure, the
white lovely face.
Kneeling humbly by the humble bed, he said his prayer; then raised his
head, and softly, softly, a golden thread of sound--sure no one could
hear!--his voice stole out in the hymn she had loved best:
"There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you!
"On the other side of Jordan,
In the green fields of Eden,
Where the tree of life is blooming,
There is rest for your soul!"
Pippin rose and stood for some moments looking down on the quiet face;
then he made his reverence--bowing lower than usual, with a gesture of
his hands as if taking leave of something high and noble--and turned
away.
Closing the door softly, he paused, looking into the darkness of the
passage with wistful eyes. He was very, very lonely; his heart was sad
as death. Could he--might he not, once more, call up to comfort him the
shadow faces he had loved so well? Now? Just this once! He bent forward,
his eyes fixed intently.
"Ma!" he said softly. "You there?"
A moment's pause; then a sob broke from him and he turned to go.
But then--oh, then!--came a rustle of something soft, came a flash of
something white. Two arms were flung round his neck, pressing him close,
close; a radiant head lay on his shoulder.
"Will I do?" cried Mary Blossom. "Oh, Pippin, Pippin! Will I do
instead?"