about Caro, and behold, he knew all about it!
Cousin Chad had been in town and came out on the same train with him
yesterday afternoon. He couldn’t refrain from crowing a little about
Caro and his dear Jane—so capable and sensible, so equal to every
emergency. And it was her doing, after all: I know she never intended
for me to know it. But she met Caro in the road on her way back from
Grace’s that day, and made the child go by home with her. Then she—to
quote Cousin Chad—“was able to make her see the indelicacy of her
establishing herself in the same house with a young man whom gossips
were accusing her of trying to capture!” The Peon at this point
expressed polite dissent from Cousin Chad’s approval of his wife’s
tactful performance; and my pious relative waxed righteously indignant,
and assumed the air of a protector of the defenceless orphan. Whereupon
the Peon took refuge in his paper and Cousin Chad simmered in that
condemnatory silence of his which always seemed to me worse than any
possible swear-words.
But the Peon doesn’t feel at all upset about Caro and David; the only
thing that troubles him is that I should be left alone again during the
day. So far as David is concerned, the Peon thinks Caro would never have
gone if she hadn’t cared for him, to some extent, at least, in the way
Cousin Jane accused her of doing—which is certainly reasonable enough.
And as to her loving David and yet treating him as I’m sure she did, the
Peon begs me to remember some rather cold-blooded performances of my own
in our courting days.
“Do you remember the night after Jessie Martin’s wedding?” he demanded.
“After that night, and your marrying me six months later, I lost my
faith in a girl’s ‘no.’ If I had it to go over again, I’d not lose a
night’s sleep on account of it, my lady: and so I told David as he drove
me home from the station.”
“Oh, you told him, then?”
“I did. And I told him to give Caro plenty of rope, and your Cousin Jane
would soon hang herself with it.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much of anything. He seems to think Mrs. Grackle only furnished the
occasion for Caro’s real feeling toward him to come to the front. He’s
pretty sore, I imagine. But don’t you worry your dear head. Lovers would
miss half the fun of the game if they couldn’t be drowned in misery now
and then. Just let them alone and let them get all that’s coming to
them. They’ll work through it somehow, and straighten it out to their
perfect satisfaction when they get ready—and not before.”
“You didn’t let it alone,” I said reproachfully.
“No,” he said; “that’s why I’m so well posted about the course to
pursue. I’ve done all that’s necessary myself.”
His eyes laughed a little, and I laughed back. Maybe I was a true
prophet after all. Anyway, I musn’t look like a graveyard just because
we’re all lonesome, and David is so quiet as he comes and goes. And if
I’m not to look like a graveyard, the best way is not to feel like one.
* * * * *
_May 17th._ Things are happening so fast they make my head swim. David
is gone, too; and I feel like an old hen who has raised a pair of wild
geese and seen them go flying out of sight in opposite directions.
He fixed it all with the Peon before he said a word to me. Then he sat
by my cot, with those coaxing ways of his—I knew some kind of a wrench
was coming. He wanted to go out to Washington and take charge of the
Peon’s apple orchard there and finish planting the land. He’d been
thinking of it for some time. The only reason he hesitated about going
was the leaving me alone: but I needed Caro more than I needed him; and
if he went—.
“But oh, my dear, I don’t!” I cried. “You are my first, my best of
children! And as for having Caro—I’ll have her when the time comes of
which I told you the other night. I don’t want her before.”
“Then you’d rather I wouldn’t go?” he asked, trying to keep the
disappointment out of his voice. “You’ve had such an awful pull, little
mother, and been so brave about it: and I know Caro and I helped to
drain the life out of you before you went away. I’ll stay if you want me
to.” He bent his head above my hand, and I saw his mouth was set.
“I’d not hold you a minute, boy,” I said; “distance can’t separate us.
I’ve never been separated from you yet, and never will be while you love
me. It isn’t your being near me that I want: it’s your emancipation,
through life, into freedom of life. The more living you do, the closer
we’ll come together, though the living be done on the other side of the
globe. When would you like to start?”
“Tonight?” he said, inquiringly.
“Tonight,” I answered. “And the farm here?”
“Uncle Milton knows what to do. And I’ve made Uncle Jack a schedule to
follow. It will be all right.”
“And you’re going for how long?”
“Forever and a day. Tell Caro so.”
“Very well,” I said, “I’ll tell Caro forever and a day. But what shall I
tell this old lady who loves you so?”
“Tell her I’ll come at the drop of a hat or the click of a telegraph,
day or night, whenever she wants me—forever and a day. And Mammy
Lil—what’s the use of talking? You understand.”
He pushed his head up under my hand as a signal that one of the rare
pettings was in order: and presently he picked me up in his strong arms
and carried me to his room, where I lay on the bed and watched him pack
his trunk in utter defiance of all known principles of the art.
He found some comfort in doing it, too. His face shows care and lack of
sleep, but he whistled a bit as he dropped his shooting boots on the
bosom of a shirt, and made a soft place for the butt of his gun with a
felt hat. He isn’t entirely hopeless about the outcome, no matter how
miserable he is: it is poor little Caro who will get the heaviest end of
the mischief Cousin Jane’s meddling has produced. And that thick-headed,
thick-skinned old Pharisee will go scot free herself. Oh, dear! I’d like
to be good! But it is such a strenuous undertaking with Cousin Jane in
the family: St. John himself couldn’t manage it; and I never was cut out
for a saint.
IX
THE PROOF OF COURAGE
_May 20th._ Caro did not come back until yesterday, though she called
the Peon up daily to ask how I was and to send her love. She did not
allude to David, and the Peon volunteered no information. But yesterday
she dashed in at the gate, driving like a young Jehu, flung the reins to
Uncle Milton, who was at work among the roses at the other end of the
house, and came flying across the lawn to my cot.
“Oh, Mammy Lil, are you all alone? Has David really gone—to stay, I
mean?”
I told her his plans.
She sat on the edge of the cot, her head held high, her eyes sparkling.
“It’s a shame!” she exclaimed indignantly; “how could he have the heart
to leave you so?”
I looked at her quizzically. I had been feeling rather forlorn; but
suddenly the comical side of my woes presented itself, as it so kindly
and so often does, and I wanted to laugh.
“Who ran first?” I inquired.
She flushed to the roots of her curly hair and slipped to the grass
beside me, her pretty head on my shoulder.
“We’re pigs, both of us,” she averred contritely. “But, Mammy Lil, David
is the worst pig. He really could have stayed: and I—couldn’t. Anyway,
I’m glad he’s gone; it’s just about the decentest thing he’s done.”
“You are a consistent child,” I observed, stroking her hair; “but, Caro
dear, I’m not accustomed to hearing David criticized from the standpoint
of decency, and we won’t begin now. And I wanted him to go very much.”
“Well, anyway, I can come back. I’ll never leave you here by yourself.
I’ll go back and pack up this evening, and come home first thing in the
morning.”
I shook my head. I had been thinking about it all these long, lonesome
days. They are both my children, but David has the first right to our
home; and with Caro installed here he will not come back to it. Besides,
it isn’t fair. And if they will fight at cross-purposes we must all take
the consequences together. I know I am rather a dishevelled shuttle-cock
to do duty between their clashing wills; but they will have to have it
out, now that they have begun it. And if that hard-hearted little sinner
came back here, she’d convince herself in no time that David is the
sinner and she is the one and only saint. It never did take long for
staying at Cousin Jane’s to pall on Caro; and she’ll probably see things
from various points of view before she concludes her experiment.
Poor little soul, she cried dreadfully. She even tried to work on my
sympathies by telling me how Cousin Jane serves up Bob White’s
perfections morning, noon, and night. This was welcome news to me, and
helped me to disguise the very fluid condition of my supposedly hard
heart. I must confess we both cried before she went back: but Caro owned
it was fair.
I feel like a yellow dog, of course. One always does when one stands for
a painful justice—it’s part of the job. I felt the same shame when she
was a little thing and I let her bite the red pepper she snatched in the
garden the minute I told her not to touch it. It burns my own mouth to
this day. But Caro never snatched against orders again.
And there’s no sense in listening to Grumpy’s prophecies. Where is the
pleasure of growing old if one can’t learn to distil from one’s
experiences the essential oil of hope? When the Peon and I fell out,
hopelessly, desperately, eternally, about six months before we were
married, I was just a young thing, and quite pardonable in my belief
that my life was ruined forever by the cataclysm. But from the
vantage-ground of twenty-odd years of additional living I should be able
to detect the flimsiness of the average impenetrable barrier. I don’t
think Caro cares for any one else, at least; and if they’re not meddled
with they’ll work it out their own way, which must be the best way for
the Peon and me. And if he and I can’t enjoy ourselves very much just
now, why, we don’t want to when the children are miserable; so that’s
all right, of course.
As to their misery, I have at least come far enough in life myself to
know that it has—or will have—its mitigations. I never yet have been
in a hole—and heaven knows life has been a procession of holes these
last years—that I didn’t get out of it with some added capacity of
living that made being in holes worth while. Why should I begrudge the
children their own hole-adventures and discoveries, their own enrichment
of life?
* * * * *
_May 22nd._ The Peon comes home early these days and takes me out for a
ride. I can sit in my chair or lie down at will; and he wheels me over
the soft grass to all the places I’ve been longing to see and have only
beheld in Make-Believe. We go down to the brook nearly every day about
sunset and watch the birds quenching their thirst before bedtime. There
are many song sparrows down there; and the killdeers haunt the banks at
all time, whirring up when startled with wild cries, their breasts and
lifted wings flashing snow-white beneath, and the rich salmon of the
lower back gleaming as they rise from the valley into the level sunlight
along the brow of the hill. The Peon flattens my chair to a couch, and
throws himself on the grass or sits on the roots of a sycamore, while we
talk of all the years that the children have been growing up with us,
and of what the future is to bring. We are both very strenuously
cheerful. And indeed, in our hearts, we do hope honestly to have them
both at home again some day. Only it seems rather a long way off
sometimes; and the house is so very quiet when we go back.
Sometimes we go back to the spot we picked out years ago as the one
where we thought David might like to build his home some day; for though
we always hoped to have him with us, we never wanted to rob him of a
home of his own. We had never said to one another that we hoped for Caro
to make the home for him—to put it into words seemed to infringe on
their right to settle that great matter, each to their own heart’s wish:
but we had hoped it without words. We go there now, and hope for it
openly, bridging our separation with happy dreams, and comforting one
another with assurances it is not always easy to feel.
David has not been long enough at his journey’s end for a letter mailed
there to reach us; but it seems as if he had been gone for months. And
poor little Caro looks so wistful when she starts back to Cousin Jane’s
that I feel as though I have been turning her out of doors for the most
of my life. It is really not to be borne very much longer. The Peon’s
sister wants us to go to her next month, at her summer home in the
mountains of Pennsylvania; and Caro will have to come home in time to
get me ready. We can spend the summer together, at least.
But before I go I want to see plainer sailing for Milly and Bobolink, as
Caro disrespectfully styles Mr. Lincoln. Grace was here for a little
while today to tell me good-bye. She is off to stay with George’s mother
while the old lady’s daughter takes a trip. Milly was with her, and
promised to come back soon. She said she wanted to talk to me, and from
the anxious air with which she said it, I’m hoping she is seriously
thinking of turning on that jay-bird uncle of hers and teaching him a
few of the things he needs to learn.
* * * * *
_May 25th._ A golden day, after a night of drenching rain. The sky is
like October, and under it the winds are at play. And why, when sunshine
fills the world, should one suffer one’s eyes to be blinded to it by any
mote of pain or trouble held close enough to shut out all the light? I
will keep mine at arm’s length, if I die for it, and see around it and
over it, yes, and through it, into this beautiful, wonderful world! If
one’s feet can’t travel, aren’t one’s eyes an open road of escape?
* * * * *
_May 27th._ Three sleepless nights, a dead weight of weariness,
loneliness to the heart’s core, and pain that wrings the flesh—these
are among Grumpy’s stock-in-trade this morning, and he flaunts them and
a dozen other things, wherever I turn my thoughts. He has heaped up,
mountain high, the things I want and can’t have; and there he sits,
grinning at the void they leave in my idle, useless life. I must fill
that hole, or go under. What have I left?
First, the Peon’s love, and the children’s, and that of my friends.
Love: and the Love from which love came. By the time all that is stowed
away in the void, it has rather a “gone” look about it—for a void. And
Grumpy’s grin has a tuck in it.
Then a sense of humor—the most blessed thing, save love itself, ever
given to human kind. It keeps one sane and balanced where without it one
would go mad. A source of justice it is, a bond of sympathy, a destroyer
of egotism, a solace in suffering, a staff to courage, an open door of
escape from all that is unbearable in life.
Next, the power to hold my tongue when things hurt, and to keep the
whine out of my voice when I’m nothing but whine inside.
There are love, laughter, and silence; and as void-fillers they go a
long way. But there are other things for the chinks. For I can read a
little and write a little, and think a little, as against the black
idleness of those three years. And beauty—wind in the tree-tops, the
arching blue, the flicker of light and shade—beauty everywhere, in
fact; and back of beauty the Thought that designed both it and the eyes
to see it. Oh, it is a beautiful world! And though one’s body lies idle,
one’s thoughts may go everywhere, and are everywhere at home. And may
not endurance itself, however passive, yet rise to the point of
achievement, if only one endure in the right way? And if liberty be
measured by one’s capacity to do without—oh, how can any walls of
suffering shut one in when the way up is always open—up, to the
presence of God?
* * * * *
_May 28th._ Whenever I think I’ve overcome a temptation, and can afford
to rest, something else comes pouncing and catches me napping. This time
it was Cousin Jane. I’m not a bit sorry I sent her home—it was high
time for her to go. But I needn’t have been so blazing mad when I did
it.
She hasn’t been near me for ages, but she came at last, exactly when she
very specially should have kept away. So as I lay there on the porch
sofa—for I couldn’t get out in the yard this week—I heard the familiar
pile-driver tread, and opened my eyes to behold her at the corner of the
porch, personified virtue, somewhat overheated by the afternoon sun, and
looking rather limp about the collar. But there was nothing limp about
her stolid mouth, nor in her hard black eyes. She had come for a
purpose, and was not displeased to think I wouldn’t enjoy it.
I’ve been afraid of Cousin Jane all my life. I used to run at the sound
of her voice when I was a child at Cedarhurst. More than once I have
been gently, but firmly, extracted from a closet by Great-aunt Letitia,
and led to her presence to perform the rites required by politeness to
even the most unpleasant kin. Somehow it all came back to me—the
childish, unreasoning fear. I was so weak, the pain so biting sharp; I
could not bear unkindness, too. I turned my head toward the long windows
with a wild thought of escape; but when my heart is like this, I can
scarcely walk, and I could never have reached my room. Besides, she
would come after me: so I made a virtue of necessity and lifted my hand.
She saved me the trouble of speaking.
“Good land alive, Lyddy! Are you mopin’ around yet, makin’ out like
you’re half dead? I wonder John Bird doesn’t go crazy! I heard you were
rompin’ all over the place, throwin’ the birds enough biscuit to feed
all the poor folks in town, if you only had religion enough to think
about them instead of your own silly whims.”
She came close and settled herself heavily in the Peon’s chair, waving
her fan vigorously. She reached across me to the stand on the other
side, and rang my bell sharply. Josie appeared at once.
“Go draw me some fresh water, straight out of the well,” she commanded.
It was one of her hobbies to ignore the Peon’s water system, and to
assume that we depended on a well and a windlass, as she boasted that
she still did herself.
“Wouldn’t you rather have a glass of lemonade?” I inquired. “And bring
some wafers, Josie.”
Josie’s mother makes wonderful old-time wafers, as thin as paper and as
crisp as frosty air. They are beautifully rolled, and melt in one’s
mouth: no other cook in the county can achieve them. Cousin Jane ate the
entire plateful, and her manner, as she turned to me once more, was a
shade less like that of a regiment charging a redoubt.
“What did David go off for?” she demanded. “Have you and John Bird
turned him loose? I can’t get a thing out of Caroline, and I know
something’s wrong somewhere. What is it?”
“He went to look after some business,” I said.
“Oh, you can tell that to the neighbors that ain’t kin,” she said
scornfully. “I want to know what’s wrong. He’s done somethin’, I know,
an’ Caroline’s ashamed of it. I can’t get a thing out of her, but she’s
a changed girl. An’ more than that, she’s standin’ in her own light.
She’s that flighty an’ cross Bob White looks like he don’t know what to
make of it. Men ain’t goin’ to stand too much foolishness, an’ first
news you know, Caroline can’t get him if she wants him. I’m talkin’
plain, but it’s time.”
“Why don’t you talk to Caro?” I suggested.
“Good land, Lyddy, do you reckon I ain’t? But it’s like water on a
duck’s back—in one ear and out the other. An’ besides”—with a sudden
deep craft in her beady eyes—“you have to be careful with girls—at
least, a person with tact does. I don’t come right out with things to
Caroline, like you would. But I just thought I’d get together all the
things David’s been doin’ an’ lay ’em before her. I don’t suppose you
let her know the half of it, whatever it was. Was it somethin’ about
money, or has he been getting into fast ways, drinkin’, or playin’
cards, or—worse? I always knew he would get into mischief sooner or
later—he pretends to be so steady: I’ve just been waitin’ for it to
come. Why, what’s the matter, Lyddy? What do you want?”
I sat straight up and rang the bell. Josie ran out.
“Get me my chair, Josie, quick,” I said. She whirled it to my side, and
I stepped in unaided.
“Take me to my room,” I told her, “and leave me there while you tell
Uncle Milton to get Mrs. Grackle’s buggy and to open the gate for her.
She is going home at once. Then come back and help me to bed. Do not
come back until I send for you, Cousin Jane: I am not well.”
She stared at me, speechless and apoplectic, and as Josie arranged my
pillows I saw her driving between the cedars. And above all my anger
about David and my consciousness that Great-aunt Letitia would be
ashamed of me, above the weakness, and above the tearing, throbbing
pain, is the exhilaration of knowing that for once in my life I wasn’t
afraid of Cousin Jane. I never will be afraid of her again!
* * * * *
_May 31st._ Trying all one’s life to see things from other peoples’
point of view has this advantage in sickness: it helps one to stand
apart from the suffering and to look at it from without, even when
whelmed in it, and almost overwhelmed. One sees it as if it were someone
else’s sickness, taking the long view of it, as a doctor does. He is
sorry for the pain, of course; he knows it is bad. But he expects it.
And he expects the backsets, and the blues, and the
can-I-ever-get-wells, and all the rest of it. Those things are part of
the process of recovery, and do not affect the final outcome. Once past
a certain point, the road leads inevitably to one sure goal; the
windings in and out don’t count, nor the ups and downs; one is advancing
all the time. Now, if a doctor, who doesn’t need it, can get that
comfort out of my aches and pains, why shouldn’t I get it, who need it
so much?
* * * * *
_June 1st._ Out under the maple again today, and the stars in their
courses fighting for me! And why, when a miracle like this happens for
Milly and Bobolink, should I despair of David and Caro?
Milly came to see me to have that long talk she spoke about. She had
been telephoning every day to know when she could come, so I had Josie
call her the moment I found I could go out. And just suppose I had been
well enough yesterday—what a misfortune that would have been!
She scattered the crumbs for me, and settled beside me to pour out what
Caro calls “her uncle-ish woes;” and while she was doing it, the
wood-thrush flew down, only to be shouldered away from the feast by a
mannerless jay. Somehow it made me feel perfectly hopeless about Milly,
poor little soft, sweet thing, and my eyes filled up with tears; but
when I had winked them dry, the thrush went back. The jay pecked at him
savagely, and he dashed half-way round the hydrangeas in terror. Milly
saw him and caught her breath.
“Uncle Jason _is_ like that,” she said, with a little catch in her
voice; “and I can’t stand against him—I can’t! Don’t you see how
helpless the thrush is, Cousin Lil?”
But the thrush had stopped in mid-flight. His breast was puffed out like
a tiny balloon, the trembling of his legs plain to be seen; he quivered
from head to foot. But he turned slowly, his legs shaking under him, and
hopped deliberately toward his tormentor, his head high, his swollen
breast making a ruff of feathers visible on either side of his back. He
went close to the jay and pecked toward him in the air. The jay,
startled, gave back an inch. The thrush, still trembling, hopped nearer
and pecked, as steadily as if his legs were in their normal condition.
The bully backed again. The thrush hopped and pecked.
Milly had leaned forward, her hand on mine. Her face was white and she
was breathing quickly.
The jay continued to back. The wood-thrush followed him, inch by inch,
unyielding, yet in mortal fear. At last the big coward could stand it no
longer. He spread his wings and vanished across the brook. The thrush
stood trembling a moment, his feathers slowly flattening along his
sides, and then returned quietly to his lunch. Milly rose, a new light
in her soft eyes.
“If he can, I can,” she said steadily. “I don’t need to talk any more,
Cousin Lil: I’m going home and _do_.”
X
THE ROUTING OF UNCLE JASON
_June 2nd._ I’m afraid I haven’t inherited the family grace of
hospitality; for the further I get from Cousin Jane’s visit the more
glad I am that I sent her home. And it isn’t all on David’s account
either, though I could never have done it but for what she said of him.
Yet since it is done I remember her life-time disregard of the small
courtesies of life. I wonder if it were not more cowardice in me than
kindness that for so long I meekly allowed it, and thereby encouraged
her, so far as lay in my power, to ride rough-shod over all the rules of
politeness.