like a coward this day! And now the day is ended—lived through forever.
And I can remember it unashamed.
VI
BEFORE THE DAWN
_March 18th._ If the outward pressure of necessity for self-control be
great enough to balance the inward pressure of pain, one can keep fairly
steady. But a week after the Peon left on one of those long western
trips something came up that made it necessary for David to drop
everything and go to Atlanta. He was detained there beyond his
expectations, and then wrote me he must go to New York before returning
home. He begged me again, as when he first left, to send for Grace; but
I did not want her. At first it was a relief to be alone, with no need
for effort or concealment. Afterwards, I did not want her because her
sympathy would have been more than I could bear.
It wasn’t just the day’s pain, or the night’s—one can usually manage
that somehow. What Grumpy did was to set today’s pain by that of
yesterday, and the day before that; to add last week’s to last year’s,
to the pain of ten years, twenty years, back. He applied his
recollections like a mustard plaster, and rubbed them in like a
liniment. Then he took tomorrow, and next year, and the year after that,
and built them all into one long _via dolorosa_—a life-time path of
pain. I might have stood that; I have before. But beside the pain he set
the idleness—this horrible, useless idleness. That is the killing part!
He set it all before me, as plain in the black and sleepless nights as
in the day: and while I cowered, he gibed and threatened till I feared
to look ahead and dared not hope. And when I tried to run away to
Make-Believe, for the first time in all my life I could not find the
way! That finished everything.
So I lay still and silent one age-long night, shut fast in my body at
last, the slow tears dripping on my pillow on either side. Suddenly, in
the dawning, a purpose leaped within me; Ella should come to me—here,
in this very room, from which I could no longer escape. If Make-Believe
were closed to me, I would command her here. I would tell her
everything: I could not bear it in silence any more.
Since we first went to the city I had loved her. And after Great-aunt
Letitia died, until she went North to live, she had been constantly in
my home. And after that—oh, we knew the way to Make-Believe, we two!
Never a day but we met there, for many a year. She knew all about the
pain, though we never spoke of it. It wasn’t merely that words were
unnecessary, but that pain, in her presence, seemed so small a part of
life. Nothing really mattered but love and kindness and happy human
laughter.
Yet she had never had a real home, nor even a care-free childhood. Her
life had been one long sacrifice for those who took her bounty as their
right. But the laughing blue eyes, the heart of kindness, the sturdy,
sensible, joyous spirit of her, blended of love and humor and common
sense! The children in the streets ran after her, and tired faces
brightened as she passed.
For three years and a half now I had not seen her, even in Make-Believe,
where I met every one else I love, both living and dead. Somehow I could
not pretend about her any more, after that strange day when my letter
came back unopened—the happy letter I had written to tell her I was
going to a sanitarium to be made over new, so that I could come and pay
her a “really truly” visit on my way home. She never saw the letter.
They sent it back unopened; and I could not play about her any more.
But now, if I must stay shut in my body, she must come. She should never
leave me. I would tell her every day just how hard life was. And she
would be sorry for me; she would understand. I reached out with all the
life left in me to draw her out of Make-Believe, now shut against me,
and bring her to share my prison, and to hear my complaints.
* * * * *
I turned my head upon the pillow and lifted my heavy lids. She was
coming toward the bed. I raised my arms feebly, and her own were round
me. My head fell on her breast, and I lay there, drawing long, sobbing
breaths, while she stroked my hair with firm and gentle fingers. There
was no need for speech: her touch was always plainer than other people’s
words.
But presently I was aware of a difference in her touch, a something new
and strange. I whispered weakly, without opening my eyes.
“What is it dear? What troubles you? Why don’t you speak to me?”
Silence. Only that tender, pitying touch.
“I knew you’d be sorry for me,” I whispered on; “and oh, I want you to
be! I wouldn’t have called you if it were real, you know—I wouldn’t
hurt you for the world. But nothing can hurt you now. Isn’t Love so
plain to you, and the end of things, and the reasons why they must
be—isn’t all that so shining clear to you that even my being like this
can’t hurt? Tell me about it. I want to know it is clear to
somebody—I’m so far gone in the dark.”
Still no answer.
“Then be sorry for me,” I went on, dashing my desperate pleading against
that strange, disquieting silence. “I’ve borne so much. I must tell
somebody, and it isn’t fair to talk about it to them here at home. I’ve
never talked to anybody before, even to you. I’ve never even cried,
never once, except all by myself in the dark. And I’m such a coward
about everything, and specially about pain; I’ve been so afraid of it
all my life. And it never stops. It’s been years, Ella, years and years.
And oh, I can’t bear it any more! You don’t know what it’s like just to
be still and suffer when you can’t _do_ anything. It wasn’t so bad when
I could keep going; I could fight. But now I can’t fight any more. I
want to die. I think God ought to let me die.—I’ve tried; I’ve tried my
best so long. And I can’t try any more.”
The words were scarcely breathed, and I stopped in exhaustion, the slow
tears dropping on her breast.
Still she did not speak. Deeper and deeper sank her silence, pressed in
by that strange, tender touch.
Suddenly I shivered, and my eyes flew wide. Her own were full of love
and sorrow—a sorrow that looked past all my complaints to something
deeper and more vital. I shrank away from her.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t any more; I can’t.”
Behind the sorrow in her eyes a light was kindled; but it only
frightened me the more.
“I have tried,” I protested. “I’ve done nothing else the most of my
life. Is there no pity, even in you?”
Still she gazed; and something in her look called to something dead in
me. I shook my head feebly and closed my eyes; but through the shut lids
her gaze commanded.
“I have come to the end,” I persisted; “and if you do not understand,
there is nothing left. I can’t try any more, and I won’t. Go away.”
I gasped as I said it, and opened my eyes again. Her look pierced and
held me like the point of a sword. I turned my head from side to side,
shivering, but there was no escape. The dead thing in me stirred to life
and dragged itself up to look truth in the face once more.
“Yes,” I said, “It is true. I can’t because I won’t. I thought I
wouldn’t because I couldn’t, but that is a lie. I can endure if I
will—and if I can, I must. But will it never end?”
She lifted her head a little. Her eyes shone, and a smile curved the
sweet corners of her mouth. It was not the old, brave, happy laughter,
but something wiser and more compelling—the overflow of an exhaustless
joy.
“You _know_,” I whispered. “You learned it even in your life down here.
And to keep on trying is to conquer, isn’t it?—even though one fails
with every breath. And the only irreparable calamity is to turn coward
and quit.”
Her face was heavenly sweet.
“I must never send for you again?” I asked, like a child. “Not to say
things are hard, or to cry?—But if I play, in the real Make-Believe,
will you talk to me there as you used? If I see you there I won’t need
you this way again. Good-bye.”
Her fingers brushed my hair once more as I lay back on the pillow; and
then I knew she was gone.—O bravest friend! Not even in my own coward
thoughts could your courage be bent to the service of fear; to think of
you was to find strength, even against my will!
For a long time I lay there, while the slow day passed and twilight
deepened again into night. All her life passed before me—its
selflessness, its courage, its joy. No creature that knew her went
unblessed of her. What gifts pain brought, what power of helpfulness,
what fullness of life and love!
Suddenly, there in the deep stillness, it was as if the night were drawn
away like a veil; and I saw out to the very edges of the world, and back
into far-off ages, and on into days that are yet to be; and everywhere
was light. And the light came from countless faces; and I knew that to
each one pain had come—pain of body or pain of soul—and because of the
pain they had found the light. And down, under the light, looking up to
it, drawn by it, stumbling forward by it, were those to whom the vision
had not come. And I—was I offered such a fellowship only to run away in
fear?
The veil of night fell dark again, but a song was in my heart. When
daylight came I wrote it down—the song my friend had given me. It is
called
_THE INITIATES_
_Wide as the world their company,_
_Many the paths they tread;_
_Here may a toil-worn peasant be,_
_Yonder a crownèd head._
_Famed or unknown, each one must fare_
_Forth on a bidden way;_
_That which awaits no man may share,_
_Lonely ’mid throngs are they._
_Yet comrades all they come to be:_
_Far-sundered, yet one line,_
_They march in this great company,_
_Deep in their souls its sign._
_How shall ye know them? Some there be_
_So wasted and worn and weak,_
_So anguished in body, ye all may see_
_They bear the sign ye seek._
_But some in this brotherhood there be_
_Who in such secret wise_
_Meet suffering, no man may see_
_Wherein their sorrow lies._
_Their laughter rings out true and free,_
_Ye look for the sign in vain,_
_Nor guess they are of this company,_
_Marked with the mark of pain._
_Thus shall ye know them: On their eyes_
_Falls the light of things unseen;_
_Their pain-cleared vision sweeps the skies_
_And the hearts of men, I ween;_
_The things that pass, and the things that remain,_
_Lie open to their sight,_
_And that which they learn as they dwell with pain_
_Gives strength to the world, and light._
_Patient, and wise, and glad they be,_
_Rich with love’s own increase—_
_They of this world-wide company_
_Who suffer, and find peace._
_Freed as by fire? Yet the fire shall pass,_
_And the freedom shall stand for aye;_
_And what would be the hope for the mass_
_If these should shrink in dismay?_
_So may I cast aside all fear;_
_So may my soul aspire;_
_So may I climb pain’s pathway drear_
_To heights of my soul’s desire._
_And there, with heart grown wise to see,_
_Counting nor loss nor gain._
_May I serve with this brave company_
_Who bear the mark of pain!_
VII
SPRING MAGIC
_April 2nd._ The Peon came home ten days ago, and David a day later.
They looked as solemn as owls, and developed a tendency to neglect their
business and sit in my room which was fast getting on my nerves. So I
rose up and put a stop to it. You simply can’t lie still in peace when
your eyes won’t stay open, if you have any consciousness that somebody
is watching you while he’s pretending to read a book. And I don’t need a
doctor. I’ve been like this, and worse, a thousand times, and the Head
said when I came home I was bound to get well crab-fashion—going
backward lots of the time. So I laid down the law that if my eyes were
shut and I didn’t speak when they opened the door, my family was to be
sensible and go away.
That was why I didn’t look when the door opened one day last week. I was
thinking of all the Head had said about backsets, and how, when they
ended, I would come out of them more and more quickly, and they’d be
farther and farther apart; and I was wondering how fast I’d go, once I
had finished with this one. When the door opened I hadn’t the energy to
spare for talking—I needed it for my cheerful speculations. But,
instead of going away, my visitor came quietly in. Then I heard a little
gasp, a soft rustle beside me, and little warm hands caught mine—Caro’s
hands! She was there on her knees, her face hidden in the bedclothes,
and crying as if her heart would break! Caro crying was a sight to
galvanize a graven image: I sat up straight in the bed and drew her to
me.
“Dear, what is it?” I implored. “Tell me quick: I’ll fix it!”
She bubbled with laughter as she caught me in her arms and eased me back
on the pillow, dropping a tear and a kiss on my nose.
“You darling! If you were at your own funeral and heard one of us
crying, you’d hop right up and straighten things out for us, wouldn’t
you? There’s not a thing the matter with me except I’ve been so homesick
for you all winter I couldn’t stand it any longer: and now I’m crying
because I’m so glad I’m home.”
“But Caro——”
“Don’t ‘Caro’ me and don’t ‘but’ me, for I’ve come to stay. Mammy Lil,
you’re an accomplished liar; but when your writing kept looking like
chicken-tracks, I knew better than to believe a word of your sprawly,
rickety tales that trailed all over the sheet. And I _hate_ music. And
besides, I can drive the family to drink with what I know already.”
“But Daddy Jack, dear, and Cousin Jane.”
Caro laughed again.
“Daddy Jack says he wrote for me yesterday—after I’d started, all by my
smart self. And I’ll tell Cousin Jane after a while. She’ll have
something brand-new to lecture us about for the next twenty-five years.
I feel like Carnegie and Rockefeller rolled into one: it isn’t often she
gets the benefaction of an enormity like this, is it?”
It had been a cloudy morning, dark, and wet with the night’s rain; but
now the sunlight swept across the hills and up from the branch, and
struck through the soft colors shimmering about the trees like rainbows
in a mist. The Peon and David tiptoed in, beaming.
“You’d better let us go by and break the news to them at Cousin Chad’s,”
said David; “you’ll get a shock over the ’phone if they aren’t
prepared.”
“I’m going over there this afternoon,” said Caro calmly. “I’m going all
by myself and engineer Cousin Jane through the boiling-over process;
she’ll be all right when she settles down to a simmer. Now get out, both
of you: Mammy Lil and I want to rest.”
She slipped into her kimono and stretched herself beside me, holding my
arm across her breast and stroking it with a light touch which expressed
everything without words. Once in awhile she talked a little in her own
sweet, whimsical way, and then lapsed again into the silence of utter
content.
I turned my head to speak to her presently, and found her gone. The
shadows, which had been dancing up toward the house when the sun came
out, had lengthened all down the lawn to the valley, and across it to
the hills on the other side. I lay watching them with that long-lost
sense of refreshment which follows unbroken sleep. Down by the gate
David was letting in Caro’s pony-cart and climbing to a seat beside her.
Presently their laughter floated through the windows, and then she was
in the room again, perched on the window-seat by the bed.
“I’m trying not to be proud, Mammy Lil,” she observed in a chastened
voice; “but Cousin Jane is done to a turn, and almost cool enough to set
away in the cellar. She’s pleased with me, too; she said if she just
could have kept Lyddy from meddlin’ she believed she could have raised
me up to be a real comfort to her. Why didn’t you let her? She gave me
some outing cloth to make into petticoats for a missionary box that’s to
go west. Who but Aunt Jane would bestow fuzzy petticoats on missionaries
in the spring? But she bought the stuff at a bargain sale for four cents
a yard, and feels that it’s providential; and we can put in plenty
ourselves to make up for it.”
“And she won’t fuss about your staying here?” I asked anxiously.
“Why, of course she’ll fuss; how could she get any fun out of it if she
didn’t? But she’s fussed all she’s going to right now; and next time
I’ll make some more petticoats, or cut down her fifth-best winter coat
for one of the little missionaries to wear on the Fourth of July.
——Don’t look so horrified, Mammy Lil; you know I’ll never let it get
in the box! Now lie still like a good child till I fix your supper. I’m
going to feed you myself,” and she fluttered away, singing under her
breath.
* * * * *
_April 5th._ Caro is in the window-seat, feather-stitching the
missionary petticoats, with one eye on the birds in the yard. The jays
have always roused her special ire; and yesterday one flew to the
hackberry, in plain sight, with a little naked nestling dead in his
wicked bill, tucked it coolly under his toes against the bark, and
devoured it before our eyes. This morning, in the intervals of
courtship, they have diverted themselves with crumb-snatching. They sit
on a limb above the scattered morsels where a dozen or more birds are
feasting. There is bread in abundance for all, but the jays love
hectoring even better than eating. One will watch till some bird picks
up a crumb, and then drop like lead upon his astonished victim. The
unfortunate drops the crumb, of course; and before he collects his
scattered wits the jay is back aloft with the morsel safe under his
toes, picking leisurely. Caro sat laughing and scolding till a little
red-brown wren flew down and was pounced upon in a twinkling. The wren
dropped his crumb, but turned upon the bully with lightning quickness
and a volcanic explosion of wrath utterly out of proportion to his size.
The big bird, amazed at the onset, flew up to his perch in a panic, and
Caro clapped her hands.
“Oh, grand! grand!” she cried; “don’t I wish Milly Wood were here to
see! I told her yesterday if she’d lay Cousin Jason out she could manage
him: and just look at that blessed wren.”
“Milly isn’t a wren, though,” I said: “she hasn’t a glimmering of the
wren’s gift of speaking his mind. Look at the wood-thrush, dear; you see
the difference? When the wood-thrush turns on a jay, I’ll have hopes of
Grace and Milly—and not before.”
The two wood-thrushes have been in the yard for days, the shyest,
gentlest of creatures, ready to fly off at the flutter of a leaf. They
have not touched the crumbs yet, but hop nearer every day. The jay
watched one of them extract a worm from the soil, however, and lit upon
him plummet-fashion. The wood-thrush dropped his half-swallowed morsel
and fled in a panic to the black ash, where my glasses revealed him, his
breast feathers bristling with terror, a mere puff-ball of fear.
“That’s Milly,” I said.
“But, Mammy Lil, anything can run a jay if it will only stand up to
him,” persisted Caro; “I don’t see why Milly submits to it. She can’t
ask Mr. Lincoln to a single meal. When he comes out in the afternoon he
has to motor all the way to Chatterton for his supper and then go back;
and Cousin Jay goes in the parlor when he does come, and glares at him
and looks at his watch, and yawns—he’s simply insufferable. I’ve asked
them both over here; Milly can stay all night, you know. But she says
she won’t dare to come often, or Uncle Jason won’t like it. Not like it,
indeed! I wish he belonged to me—I’d ‘uncle’ him!—There, that
petticoat’s all ready to proclaim Cousin Jane’s thriftiness in clothing
our dear missionaries on the frontier. I’ll make them for the sake of
family peace: but I’m blessed if I’ll take them to church to be packed:
she can escort her offering herself.”
* * * * *
_April 8th._
_COMPANIONSHIP_
_Afar in heaven is Love? Ah, no!_
_Follow the path where wild-flowers blow;_
_Store in thy heart the songs which swell_
_From wayside hedgerow, wood and fell;_
_Mark where the young year’s opening leaf_
_Answers the wail of doubt and grief,_
_And where, fresh burgeoning after rain,_
_Life learns the inner heart of pain._
_Let care and passion sink to rest,_
_Calmed ’neath wide skies on earth’s green breast;_
_And hearken while the steadfast hills_
_Breathe strength to fainting human wills._
_And through this changing, fair disguise_
_Know thou Love’s voice, and meet Love’s eyes!_
* * * * *
_April 10th._ Out on the porch again, in the warm, sweet air, with all
birddom for company. Caro has gone driving with Bob White, after
wheeling me here for my own pleasure and for the Peon’s astonishment
when he comes home.
The robins have a secret in the seven-trunked maple. The leaves are so
thick no one could guess it except by their vigilance in guarding the
tree. They have made a law that no jay, of any age, sex, or size, shall
alight in it, nor poke his bill among its branches, nor brush it with
his wings in flight; and the law they have promulgated they are ready to
enforce. Dark and bloody tales are told of jays—tales of cast-out eggs,
of murdered babies, and stolen nests; wherefore no jay shall frequent
that maple, “then, since nor henceforward.” Hence, wild curiosity among
the jays, agitated caucuses in the pasture oak, and unanimous decision
to visit that maple at all hazards, singly, and in groups. They watch
till the robins are at some distance, and fly up to the tree on the far
side, three or four strong, while the robins, their backs to their
threatened castle, drag forth reluctant worms by the middle. They seem
absorbed in their hunt, but they know! In the twinkling of an eye they
are at the maple, and no jay may abide their coming.
Nor will the robins, after these aggressions, tolerate the jays
elsewhere. They may be pecking at the foot of a tree when a jay alights
noiselessly in its topmost branch. They see, apparently, through the top
of their skulls; and one jay or six, it is all the same to them. They
dash up with the _élan_ of a picked regiment, and again the jays shriek
and fly. Not a jay has pecked on this lawn this whole afternoon, nor
roosted while the robins pecked. Time and again they have sallied in
from the pasture, and as often they have dashed squawking back. It is a
strenuous life for the blue-coats: but it certainly keeps things
peaceful for the rest. The wood-thrushes have ventured near today, and a
pair of chippies have come up on the porch, almost to my chair.
Yesterday evening a dozen mocking-birds were here on the lawn, singing
singly, answering one another, and joining again and again in choruses
that whelmed the grove in melody.
I lay in the growing twilight listening to them and thinking once more
of all that passes, and of all that can never pass, when suddenly
through the closing dark came the wild, sweet song of the wood-thrush,
the first I had heard this year: _U-o-lee! U-o-lee!_ The three notes
form a perfect minor chord; and at their end a sudden spray of rapid
tinkling notes, and the song again repeated, and again.
They say the thrushes have two sets of vocal chords, long and short, and
the double vibration accounts for the splendid richness of their tones.
But when those wild, appealing notes call through the gathering darkness
one thinks, not of anatomy, but of the _Sursum Corda_ in a church, and
of all the souls who shrink before some cup of suffering and yet accept
it, not merely with courage, but with clear vision of the joy beyond.
Up from the brook the song came, and far out on the road it was
answered: _U-o-lee! U-o-lee!_ What magic fills the haunting notes with
subtle suggestions of human weakness, of trembling courage, of faith no
suffering can slay? And when they ceased, the mocking-birds took up the
theme and carried it, far into the moonlit night, to its inevitable and
triumphant conclusion—the song of the victor on the heights who has
conquered in the lowest depths.
* * * * *
_April 19th._ Cousin Jane insisted on Caro’s going to town with her
yesterday, ostensibly to do some shopping, but really, I think, to give
Bob White a chance to take them both to lunch. Bob comes out pretty
often, and is as assiduous in his attentions as Caro will permit. I
cannot see that she especially favors either him or David. She goes more
with David, but her attitude toward him is so frankly affectionate that
it is not as encouraging as it might be. He meets her quite on her own
ground, and appears entirely satisfied. Everybody, in fact, seems
contented except Bob White and Cousin Jane, to whom Bob pays strenuous
court. Caro went with her to town with her usual light-hearted
acquiescence in any plan proposed. She takes life as it comes, and makes
a joyful occasion of the most commonplace happenings. But before she
would agree to go she made Milly promise to come and spend the day with
me: and this morning the two of them, with the Peon’s and David’s
assistance, escorted me out to the maple tree in a triumphal procession,
and established me on a cot in the real outdoors.