embroidery. I thought the others were off for the station when Caro came
flying back, pinning her hat on as she ran.
“Mammy Lil, Milly needs some lessons in ornithology. Prod some of the
birds till they chase the jay: and be sure you tell her what turncoats
the rice-birds are.” Her eyes danced.
“The rice-birds?” I inquired stupidly. “Why should I tell her about
them? They’re not here anyway.”
“One of them’s here,” she said gravely; “I’ve seen him.
‘_Robert of Lincoln is gaily dressed_’—
“Beware of bobolinks, Milly: they’re worse than jabberwoks;” and she
dabbed a little kiss on the end of my nose and was off.
Milly flushed to the roots of her hair, looking at me shyly.
“He and Caro are great friends,” she said; “you know she’d never joke
about him if she didn’t like him. She calls him Reedbird, Rice-bird, and
Bobolink, and says that so many _aliases_ are sure proof of villainy.
Sometimes when she begins to discourse on birds before Uncle Jason she
scares me out of my wits. But luckily he doesn’t know one bird from
another, except the ones that bother his crops. To think how he has
lived in the country, all his life, and never seen anything in earth or
sky except crops and money! I do feel sorry for him, Cousin Lil; but I
can’t feel as sorry as mother does, because I get so angry with him.
He’s—he’s insufferable sometimes.”
“Why don’t you make him behave?” I asked.
Her face paled.
“Make him?” she repeated wonderingly. “How on earth could anybody make
Uncle Jason do anything? Caro calls him jay-bird, and that’s just what
he is.—Look there!”
The thrushes were actually breaking bread with me this morning; and as
Milly spoke a jay dropped from his hiding-place overhead, and managed to
light on both of them at once as they pecked peacefully side by side.
They dashed madly away and dropped under the beech, panting, their
breast-feathers bristling with fear.
Milly was quite white.
“That is what he is like, even when you’re trying so hard to please
him,” she said. “I can’t imagine what would happen if you opposed him.”
Her underlip quivered a little, and her eyes filled with tears.
“I’ll show you what would happen if that jay will just hang around here
till a catbird comes,” I said. “There are plenty of them about, and a
catbird stands no nonsense from anybody.”
The jay elected to remain. He chased the cardinal, and tormented the
thrushes till they flew away to the brook. Then he perched overhead,
preened his feathers, and surveyed the world with an air of impeccable
virtue,—tyrant and Pharisee in one. Presently, after the fashion of his
kind, he began to peer and pry, leaning forward and thrusting his bill
out with an evident intention to stick it into the business of the first
neighbor who happened in reach.
It was just then that the catbird came for his lunch. The jay perked his
head eagerly, thrust out his meddlesome beak, dropped to the innocent’s
back, and lit there with vicious pecks. The catbird, panic-stricken,
scrambled out and dashed to the hackberry, while the jay gobbled in true
jay fashion, and I lay feeling that Providence had slapped me in the
face—an overhasty conclusion, as our criticisms of Providence
frequently are. The catbird, after due meditation, came back to the
maple, and delivered his opinion of the jay in vitriolic language. The
jay, scornfully unheeding, flew to a neighboring limb, tucked a big
crumb under his toes, and proceeded to eat it. The catbird returned to
his lunch; and when the jay dropped again, he hopped sideways, turned,
and faced his tormentor. He spread out his wings and tail and began
dancing furiously up and down, as if he were set on springs, not moving
an inch from his place, and uttering discordant cries. The jay gave back
amazedly. The catbird hopped a hop nearer, resumed his dance, and
repeated his former remarks. The jay backed; the catbird hopped nearer,
and danced. The jay dashed up against the maple trunk, where he clung to
the bark like a woodpecker, looking down apprehensively, while the
catbird continued his dance and his deliverance on jay manners. It was
more than the bully’s nerves could stand. In another moment he was off
to the pasture, and the catbird’s ruffled plumage lay sleek again as he
turned back to the crumbs.
Milly was pale with excitement, her eyes wide.
“Do you think—” she breathed, and paused, afraid of her own question.
“I know it,” I said confidently. “Just try it awhile.”
“But mother,” objected Milly; “you know he’d take it out on her.”
“Isn’t your mother going to stay with your grandmother some time next
month, while your uncle and aunt take that trip North they’re planning?
Do it then.”
The child was absolutely white.
“I—oh, I couldn’t, Cousin Lil! If I began, I’d be afraid to go on. He’d
make me give in.”
“Your mother won’t go for several weeks,” I said easily; “don’t look so
frightened. There’s nothing to be done today.—What a pretty pattern
that is you’re working; let me see.”
We sheered away from Cousin Jason, and took up the subject of Robert
Lincoln’s perfections, which proved numerous. Then we had lunch under
the maple; and when the Peon came home Milly went back.
* * * * *
_April 21st._ Caro telephoned me she would stay all night at Cousin
Jane’s, and did not come home till yesterday noon. I was out under the
maple again, and watched her through my glasses, as she drove in from
the pike in Cousin Jane’s buggy, with a small darkey beside her to take
the horse back. The buggy was loaded with bundles, which she toppled out
on the grass beside me before jumping after them herself. She sat on the
edge of the cot, and plunged into her tale and her packages together.
“Do you know what took Cousin Jane up to town, Mammy Lil? She’d seen an
advertisement of one of those cheap stores down on Union Street about a
sale of all-linen handkerchiefs for three-and-a-half cents, only twelve
to a customer. And she traipsed all the way to town to invest forty-two
cents in handkerchiefs for the missionary box—two for the mama
missionary and two each for the five kids. Wouldn’t you just love, if
you were a little kid missionary, to have two whole
three-and-a-half-cent handkerchiefs of your very own—a fresh one every
week of the world? Mammy Lil, sometimes I’m real fond of Cousin Jane,
cranky as she is, and sometimes I want to slap her. But I didn’t: I just
bought some decent handkerchiefs, so they can use Cousin Jane’s for
window screens—they’re coarse enough. Then Bob White turned up and we
went to lunch. They both pretended it was an accident, but I don’t
believe it; and Cousin Jane frisked like a rhinocerous, and was so
pleased ‘over our little tête-a-tête,’ as she was pleased to call our
triangular lunch, that I nearly died. And Bob was—no, it wasn’t Bob; it
was I. I was just cross. So I wasn’t a bit nice—you know I really can
be horrid, Mammy Lil, when I put my mind to it. I’m sorry; I’ll make it
up to Bob next time I see him; but Cousin Jane is such a donkey!
Goodness knows, though, I paid for that in full!”
She broke into rippling laughter.
“What did you do?”
“Why, she was just huffy—awfully. She’d hardly speak to me; and I was
in such a good humor again! We’d gone back to the stores, and I’d bought
some lovely lawns—one for you, and one for me, and one for Mrs.
Missionary. Let me show you.”
She jerked a bundle out of the pile and displayed her purchases, her
head cocked meditatively on one side.
“Yours is lavender and mine pale green. They’ll have lots of lace on
them, and we’ll both look ravishing. I got Mrs. Missionary a blue. My
instinct is that she’s sallow and red-headed; so I resisted the
blandishments of a pink one that was two cents a yard cheaper, and
bought this. Cousin Jane says it will fade. But that was after I
pacified her: she wouldn’t speak before.”
“How did you manage it?”
“Why, I told her I was sorry I was cross—I really was—and I said I’d
go home with her and make Cousin Chad one of those frozen puddings. I
didn’t dare offer to make it for her, but she eats as much of it as he
does, which is saying a good deal. She softened visibly; so we hurried
for the first train, and I worked like a black slave to get it done in
time. They ate like anything, and I let them both give me good advice
till bedtime; and this morning I made the butter for her, and we parted
like twins.”
I laughed and patted her hand. She raised one eyebrow and looked
thoughtful.
“Cousin Jane and Cousin Chad think it’s time I was married,” she
observed.
“To whom?”
“That’s a secondary consideration, though important. But Cousin Jane was
married at sixteen. I’m already an old maid of twenty—or will be next
month; and if I go off in my looks, I won’t find it so easy to go off
matrimonially. Besides, I’m flighty and bad tempered, and a husband will
be good discipline. And Bob White is a very nice young man who would
probably put up with my temper more than most. And he’s rich. And Cousin
Jane thinks if I try hard enough maybe I can get him. What do you think
of it, Mammy Lil?” She pursed her mouth and frowned judicially.
“I think Jane Grackle’s a goose—and you’re another,” I said, laughing.
“There comes David. Call him to wheel me back to the porch.”
* * * * *
_April 29th._ Summer is coming everywhere. The pasture fence is a long
wall of bloom, and the odor of honeysuckle fills the air. A wonderful
place for bird-babies that will be soon! For ten days the roses have
been blossoming, and Uncle Milton’s flower-beds are beautiful to see.
And I—the earth isn’t the only dead thing that rises into life! There’s
another miracle coming to pass: for I am getting well!
All this month I’ve held my breath like a coward, and turned my head,
afraid to look joy in the face. It has come near so often before; and
each time the pain has snatched me back and bound me hand and foot. So I
said I would never inflict on myself the agony of disappointment again.
But I just can’t live up to that foolishness, and I’m so glad I can’t.
If this isn’t the ending, but just a blossoming oasis in a desert way,
shall I miss the joy of that? It’s nearer the end than the last one was,
anyway, and better and brighter and bigger. If it isn’t fulfillment, it
is prophecy, and that’s the next best thing. Some day it will come—the
Head said so. I am to be part of life again—I! I! Some day I shall go
in and out again among my kind, with power enough of living in me to
make hours atone for days, and months for years. Nothing shall pass me
that is mine! It is human life I want, not birds and trees and flowers:
they’re beautiful, but they aren’t enough—I can afford to let myself
say it now, because the other is so near, so near! I used to be part of
life here, long, long after I was sick: there was nothing I couldn’t
help about, nobody who didn’t smile at me as I passed: in every face I
saw a memory of kindness given and received. And I’m going back to it,
to my real life.—Ah, soon or late, what matter? _I’m going back!_
Though a thousand downfalls be in the way, I’ll make it yet: and be this
fulfilment, or only prophecy, I open my heart to joy!
VIII
BLACKBIRD DIPLOMACY
_May 9th._ Something is dreadfully wrong with Caro, and for once she
does not give me her confidence. She went to Milly’s night before last
quite her own bright self, and came back to lunch yesterday another
creature. A shower came up just after lunch, so I lay on my porch sofa
until it passed, with David and Caro for company. I imagine things had
gone wrong at the table. I saw, by Caro’s bright color and the high way
she carried her pretty head when she came home, that trouble was brewing
for somebody, and she probably found David’s sunny and unsuspicious good
humor the negative complement of her own surcharged spirit. There had
been at least a minor explosion; for when they came out to me they were
both making an effort to appear quite like themselves. But Caro’s eyes
were danger-signals; and, though David smiled and his voice had its
usual deep evenness, his eyes kept a furtive and brooding watch on hers.
She seemed in the gayest of spirits, yet there was some jangle in the
mirth which had always rung sweet and true before.
The thunder was rattling overhead, and the wind-blown curtains of the
rain shut out the hills beyond. David walked to the end of the porch and
studied the clouds for a little before he came back.
“I was afraid this storm would spoil the drive you promised me
yesterday,—” he began.
Caro’s eyes sparkled.
“You need not resort to the weather as an excuse,” she said, “I don’t
want to go at all.”
David stared, and a slow color burned under his tanned skin. Then he
looked half-amused.
“Caro must have been having some kind of an extra tilt with Cousin
Jason, Mammy Lil,” he said, “and she thinks I’m an old jay, too, and
keeps ruffling her feathers at me.—I was about to say that the sun
would be out inside of an hour, and by five o’clock the roads will be in
the pink of condition. I’ll show you what Peggy can really do in the way
of speed.”
“I told you I don’t want to go,” said Caro, angrily.
“I beg pardon,” said David easily; “you told me you would go. I couldn’t
possibly be mistaken.”
I was looking at Caro in open-eyed amazement. She had never spoken to
David that way in her life—nor to any one since she had ceased to be a
child. She caught my look, and colored deeply. Then she cuddled her face
against mine so that neither David nor I could see it.
“Dear Mammy Lil, don’t look as if you didn’t know me,” she said, with a
sudden little catch in her voice; “I’ve always told you I’m hateful, and
you won’t believe it; when I convince you, don’t quit loving me.”
“You silly child,” I answered, patting the red-brown coil of curls;
“I’ll never quit loving you, whether I’m dead or alive. But I was afraid
you weren’t well.”
She laughed and pecked my cheek.
“I’m well as ever was.—Have Peggy ready, David: I’d like to go sixty
miles an hour.—Oh, dear, I’m losing all my hairpins!”
She wasn’t at all. But she caught her hair with both hands, and vanished
through one of the long windows. David looked after her with the set
look which I had learned to know when he was little more than a baby.
Then he, too, kissed me, and walked away, after putting the stand with
my bell and a plate of biscuits on it close beside me.
I lay there puzzled and troubled. The rain stopped presently, and I
crumbled the biscuits and flung them out on the grass, watching the
birds idly.
Promptly at five David drove round with Peggy, his favorite mare, her
beautiful head held as high as Caro’s own, and as free from torments of
check-rein and blinders. She shone like satin, and stepped with a proud
consciousness of her own worth and her master’s confidence in her. David
sat chatting with me during the ten minutes Caro kept him waiting. She
had on the pale green lawn when she came out, and a most fetching hat
which she had herself concocted to go with it. I beheld her adornment
with dismay. The lawn was more lace than lawn, and I knew she had
planned it for what she called a “partyfied” dress. She usually went
driving with David bareheaded, and in whatever garments she happened to
have on. Her finery boded him no good; and I realized with a sinking
heart that if I had had the wit to keep my astonishment out of my face
she would have stuck to her first refusal, and the drive would have been
postponed to a more auspicious day. David was riding to disaster—and I
had opened the way.
It was almost dark when they came home, and I had been back in bed for
some time. Caro came in looking distractingly pretty, and sweeter than a
naughty child should. I knew by the lavish bounty of her caresses that
she had treated David very badly indeed, and was torn between a desire
to take her in my arms and get the whole story out of her, and a wish to
set her in the corner till she should return to her normal state of
mind. But I remembered what I had promised David months ago, and
repressed my itch to meddle. She had always confided in me before, and
unless she did now I must be dumb.
David, I did not see until morning. He had brought Caro home and had
returned at once to Chatterton, sending me word he had an engagement and
would not be at home until after I was asleep. It was after midnight
when I heard him come in. This morning he came to my room as usual, but
his eyes looked as if he had not slept. I pretended to see nothing,
because he wished it.—But what had happened to Caro? If she had been at
Cousin Jane’s I might have suspected some mischief-making; but she went
only to Grace’s. Whatever caused the change, it goes deep. She has been
in her own room all day, and I have not even heard her sing.
* * * * *
_May 12th._ Caro has left us and gone to Cousin Jane’s—gone there to
live. She went day before yesterday, and I have felt too stunned to
think.
She stayed in her room all day, except at lunch time, and came out late
in the afternoon, looking white and tired, but with that same danger
signal in her eyes. I was under the maple, and she sat on the stool
beside my cot.
“Mammy Lil,” she began, with a forced lightness, as though she spoke
only of trifles, “I’ve been packing my traps today. You’re so much
better now, you don’t really need me all the time, and I think I ought
to go to Cousin Jane. Cousin Chad’s my real guardian, you know; and
they’ve been awfully good about lending me to you when you were so
sick.”
I felt blinded at first by the blow. “Lending” me Caro—when she had
never stayed a whole month together away from me since she was seven
years old, except for the years at boarding school! My head swam, and
there was such a roaring in my ears I couldn’t hear all she said. She
wasn’t looking at me, but her voice went on with the foolish words, till
I pulled myself together.
“Has Cousin Jane been trying to make you think it’s your duty to go and
wait on her, Caro, after you’ve grown up in this, your real home? She
doesn’t need you, child; there’s no call for such a sacrifice.”
“She hasn’t said a word about needing me,” protested Caro. “I just think
I ought to go.”
“Are you sure—forgive me, dearie—but do you really think she wants you
there to live—for always?”
“I telephoned her this morning. I’m sure she’s delighted. She does love
me,—only it’s in her queer way.”
“Caro—” I said, and stopped. We had lived in her and for her so many
years. I could not suggest that she owed us anything. The tears came to
my eyes, but I held them back.
“Dear,” I went on, “I’ve never tried to force your confidence, and I
can’t now. Something is wrong, I know—some trifle, probably, that a
little honest frankness would set right. But I know when we are young we
come to a place where we must manage our own affairs, no matter how we
bungle them or how many hearts we break; it’s the way we all learn at
times. But darling, remember that my love waits to help you, if you ever
want its service. And, whatever you do, Caro, don’t do it in anger like
a child. It is the mark of a woman to walk in love, and to serve love
only, even where she must give the deepest hurt.”
She sat looking across the hills, only her profile toward me, but I saw
her lip quiver. She dropped her head on my shoulder and snuggled her
face under my chin.
“You’re the sweetest mammy! You know I love you—more than ever I did in
my life. And I’m coming to see you so often you’ll think I’m living
here. But I’m sure I ought to go. There’s the buggy now; Cousin Jane
said she’d send it over. My trunk is all ready; she’ll send for that,
too. I thought I’d rather you’d tell Daddy Jack and David good-bye for
me. Won’t you let me take you back to the house first?”
“No,” I said; “David will help me, and your Daddy Jack. It isn’t time
yet.”
She caught her breath a little, kissed me with a sorry effort at
playfulness, and went towards the buggy. I watched it driving out the
gate to the pike.
Neither David nor the Peon came, and after awhile Josie came out to say
that “Mr. John” had telephoned he would have to spend the night in the
city. She wheeled me to the porch, and I was back in bed before David
came in. I was thankful for once that the Peon was away.
David went to his solitary dinner, and then sat by me in the twilight,
stroking my hand.
“What struck Caro to go off again?” he asked, in a tone he tried hard to
make casual. “Josie says she told her she was off for a visit.”
“She went to Cousin Jane’s—went to stay, I mean. She’ll change her mind
in a few days, I suppose. She has been upset for a day or two.”
“To Cousin Jane’s—to stay?” he repeated in bewilderment. “And left you
here—like this?” he added in indignant unbelief.
“Dear, something drove her. She’s unhappy about something—there’s some
mistake: and the need to keep it to herself is on her. It makes me
feel—oh, Davy, boy, I’ve always thought I was a real mother to you
children; but I’m only the best substitute for a mother you’ve known. If
I were truly Caro’s mother—if I had done all I thought I was doing—the
child would have told me. You are both suffering for nothing—because I
failed.”
He bent his cheek to mine.
“You’ve never failed in anything, sweetest mother in the world. And Caro
loves you just as I do—I’d swear it. Sometimes you can’t help hurting
the people you love best. I—I’m hurting you myself; and I can’t help
it. I’d give my right hand to help it; but I can’t—yet.”
“There’s no need, Davy, dear,” I said steadily, glad that the dark had
fallen to curtain my eyes. “Don’t try to be anything with me, or to say
anything, but what is natural and right to you. The one thing I couldn’t
get over, dear, would be your playing a part with me. I understand; and
I can wait—a life-time, if you wish.”
He kissed my hand, and sat there till the moon rose over the eastern
hills and strewed the lawn with shadows. A mocking-bird stirred in his
sleep and sang softly to himself. I could not speak. I lay straining my
eyes through the dark to see his face, but it was all in the shadow. He
rose to go at last, and, before I knew it, unbidden words had risen from
some subconscious depth and uttered themselves through my lips.
“David,” I said, with a sudden, foolish up-lift of my heart, “I’m going
to be walking all about by Thanksgiving; and before the year is out I
will help with my own hands to decorate this house for your and Caro’s
wedding. I don’t know how I know it; but I do!”
“Amen,” said David solemnly. “Mammy Lil, you’re a corker when it comes
to prophesying. Keep up the habit; it’s sure comforting; and you always
could see further through a stone wall than anybody else.”
He had—or feigned—more faith in my prophecy than I had myself. I felt
like a fool who has published his folly to the world. And as I lay
there, tearless and sleepless the long night through, I had no hope for
David, and only a dull anguish at thought of the girl I had called my
daughter so long.
* * * * *
_May 13th._ The world is all in a mist this morning as the sky blossoms
above the eastern hills. The wren sings first, bringing the tears for
which my lids have burned all night. A cardinal calls somewhere—_Cheer!
Cheer!_—no, it is a mocking-bird, for his own notes bubble out after
his cardinal call, before he wanders into a thrasher’s song, repeating
his notes as carefully as “the wise thrush” himself. There he is, on the
topmost twig of that mist-dimmed oak. He has tuned his voice to the
oriole’s carol now, but again his own notes bubble through. Now he
scolds like an angry wren, following the tirade with harsh cries and the
blackbird’s censorious _tsck!_ Then he slips into a catbird melody—a
jumble of music, jeering, and captious squawks. Gradually the music
overflows all else. Clearer and sweeter grow the notes, slow, soft, and
wondrous pure. His head is thrown up in rapture while the flood of
melody rises and swells till it sweeps him bodily into air. He opens his
mist-gray wings and tail, spreading to the light the gleaming white of
the in-folded feathers, and rises through the vapors to clearer air,
singing as one to whom all mists are crystal clearness, all darkness as
the light. He trembles at the height an instant, poised above the
vapor-shrouded earth, while his song floats upward to the heaven of
which it speaks,—a blending of calm and rapture, of aspiration and
peace. Back to his perch he falls, still singing, content with earth as
with heaven, and rises once again, to poise an instant, to fall, to
rise, again and yet again.
It is the Song of the Open Vision. Haunting, appealing, alluring, the
rapturous notes search the listener’s heart to draw response from every
memory of mist-drenched darkness dissolved in growing light.
* * * * *