"Yet love, mere love, is beautiful indeed,
And worthy of acceptation."
Next day the village was stirred to its depths when Hiram Green passed
through the streets, bringing from his pasture his white horse, striped
with purple paint, or dye, until it looked like an exotic zebra.
With this horse he brought his groceries from town; behind it many a
school-teacher had driven in vainglorious ease. Hiram had gone for it
that day with intent to do the little Methodist parson honour, by
taking him for a drive, a plan necessarily postponed by the hilarious
appearance of the horse, which looked out from a pair of artistically
drawn purple spectacles upon the excitement which its appearance
created.
Hiram was furious, the Misses Green were rampant, the parson piously
indignant, and even meek Mrs. Green lifted up her voice in wrath.
The horse was escorted to the barn-yard, to be subjected to such a
course of scrubbing as never fell to the lot of an Ovidian horse
before; but aniline dyes are hard to eradicate. That day, and for many
days after, the horse went about contentedly in a pale purple coat.
There was no direct evidence to convict any one of the prank; but Hiram
had refused to give the Slick family any further credit at his store,
and from the clothes-line of the Slick house, some garments, dipped in
purple dye, flaunted derisively in the breeze. Tommy Slick and Nip
went about looking as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths; and all
Mrs. Slick was ever heard to say about the matter was:
"Let 'em come to me and just as much as hint that Tommy done it!
I'll--but just let 'em once, that's all."
And whilst nobody showed a disposition to hinder any one else from
making the accusation, still no one volunteered to voice the general
opinion regarding the matter to Mrs. Slick. Besides, secretly, every
one felt a sort of sneaking satisfaction over the matter.
Andrew and Judith, to confess the truth, thought it a huge joke, and at
Judith's instigation, they made a long journey across the fields to
Hiram's pasture lot, to see the horse; and when they beheld him
placidly purple, munching away in supreme content, they laughed till
their voices rang out through the wood.
Judith recalled the purple smears on Tommy's pail the day she had met
him, and felt an unholy joy of participation in the plot. Judith
didn't like the Greens. As she and Mrs. Morris passed them going to
Andrew's, one sentence had rung out clearly to Judith's ears: "My!
Ain't she pinched!" That was enough. The Greens never found favour in
the eyes of Judith.
Andrew, as he had promised to do, went to see Judith's bird's nest the
day after her visit to his farm. At that meeting, and in many more
such sweet hours which followed, Judith and Andrew lived in the joy of
the moment. Their hearts were young, the world was fresh and fair; the
one loved deeply, and the other--well--for the time she had forgotten
her ambition, forgotten the marvellous gift that made holy the air she
breathed, or only remembered it for the pleasure it gave this young
countryman; she had forgotten that her name was famous, whispered from
lip to lip throughout the musical world; she had forgotten the
intoxication of success, the wine of applause; she had forgotten the
great debt she owed the man who had made her what she was, a debt that
she could only requite in one way, by singing. So surely she must have
sipped some Nepenthe of present happiness or future hope! Lotos lands
are very sweet, but rarely so satisfying as these two found them.
It seems to outrage our sense of proportion, to think of a young farmer
aspiring to the hand of one who showed every promise of being the
world's _prima donna_. To us it seems grotesque almost, and Andrew
seems ridiculously egotistical in hoping that this song-bird would
abide in his love-woven cage of rushes, when the doors of so many
golden nets were open to her. But Andrew's daring was perhaps
excusable.
It is true, her voice had led him to her first, and he always heard it
as a devotee might hear the voices of angels strike through his
prayers; but after that first meeting, Andrew had always seen the
_woman_ in her, not the songstress. He did not love her for her
singing, her beauty, nor her gentle breeding. He loved her for
herself--the truest love of all. For a love founded upon any gift is a
frail thing, a banner hung upon a reed. The reed may break, and the
banner no longer lifted up may not care to enwrap the broken stem which
before upheld it. What does England's greatest woman poet say?
"If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only."
"For love's sake only"--that should be the supreme reason of every
passion. Love, "the fulfilling of the law," the beginning and end of
all things.
And thus, inasmuch as this great justification was his, Andrew was
justified.
Nor did he seek with rude hands to snatch his happiness hastily. As
one pauses with hushed heart, when he comes in woodland places upon
some new sweet flower, or sees through a cleft of the mountains the
glory of the sun, or gathers to his breast some soul-satisfying truth,
so Andrew paused ere raising the cup of this great joy to his lips. He
felt he must purify his hands ere he advanced to stretch them forth for
the draught. And should it be denied him?
Thought ceased there--beyond was chaos.
And Judith gathered the flowers of the hour with eager fingers,
trembling with new joy, finding in their perfume complete satisfaction,
looking neither before nor after, as a butterfly revels in the
sunshine, forgetting the chill of by-gone days, unrecking of the bitter
blasts to come.
The days became weeks, and the earth grew glad with fruits and flowers
and growing grain. During all this time Judith was learning of the
people about her, prying with her tender eyes into the pathos of their
narrow lives, appreciating keenly the unconscious humour displayed in
their processes of thought, marvelling at their stolid disregard of the
Beautiful.
Rufus and the grey cat knew her well, and Miss Myers was devoted to her.
Mrs. Morris and Miss Myers had grounded her thoroughly in the family
history of the villagers, and she knew as much about them as about the
others, for Miss Myers told her about Mrs. Morris, and _vice versa_.
And Judith had developed a keen interest in all the doings of the
village people, of whom old Sam Symmons was her favourite, the
redoubtable Tommy Slick being a good second. Old Sam liked her, and
prophesied freely that she would soon be mistress of Andrew Cutler's
house. Suse pretended not to be much impressed with Judith; it was not
to be expected that any marriageable girl in the neighbourhood would
particularly admire the strange woman who had led away captive the most
eligible man for miles around, and, besides, Suse had a love affair of
her own upon her hands. The rest of the village girls contented
themselves with giggling when Andrew and Judith passed, whispering
among themselves that "There didn't seem to be much sign of Miss Myers
moving out, and if she was going to live with Andrew and his wife, it
was as well he hadn't chosen any of _them_, for _they_ wouldn't stand
_that_"--reflections which consoled them very much evidently, and
which, being entirely harmless to any one else, were quite admissible.
Judith thought this rustic life very quaint and idyllic to look
at--like one of Hardy's stories, only hearing the same relation to a
story that a game of chess, played as they play it sometimes in the
East, with living pawns, does to the more prosaic pastime pondered over
upon a table.
The village appealed to her as a skilfully set scene, begirt by a
beautiful background of changing fields and sky--a stage whereon was
enacted an interminable drama, in whose scenes all the constituents of
humble life were blended.
It never occurred to her that she was the heroine of the story--the
queen of the animated chess board, an actress in the life play. Poor
Judith! She thought herself only a spectator, and, as such, deemed
herself secure from all the pains and penalties of the play.
Judith always laughed, though sometimes for shame she strove to hide
the laughter when Tommy Slick was before the footlights. Tommy had
been making a hilarious record for himself at school. To begin with,
Tommy was nearly ten years old, and had been allowed to run wild at
home, hence he was utterly ignorant of the world of letters, but wide
awake to the vital facts in the world of men: for Tommy's intellect was
precocious and practical.
Tommy's father was wont to say of this, his youngest hope, "Tommy
hain't much of a letter sharp, but he'd be good on a horse trade," and
his judgment was about correct. His mother, as a preliminary to
Tommy's appearance, called upon Suse, and informed her that "Tommy was
a right smart young un, but delikit." Of the first fact Suse was well
aware: of the truth of the latter statement she never could convince
herself. Did she not, in common with the rest of the village, remember
well the day when Tommy and his father furnished forth entertainment
for the whole community? The fashion of it did not suggest any extreme
debility upon Tommy's part. It was in this wise:
One day Tommy, having incited his irascible father even more than
usual, perceived blood in his parent's eye, and concluded to run. The
chase led up the village street, to the vacant lot where the old store
had been burned down. The fleet and flying Tommy, turning here, had
perceived his father in full pursuit, and, evidently doubting his own
staying powers, had taken to a tree, shinning up a tall, slender,
swaying poplar with precocious celerity. He climbed to the very top,
and, undaunted by the slenderness of his perch (for the tree bent
beneath his weight as a stalk of grain beneath a bird), clung
comfortably there, whilst his father, unable to follow up the slender
stem, stood at the foot, and alternately threatened, cajoled and
cursed. When he resorted to swearing as a safety valve for his wrath,
Tommy exchanged oaths genially and freely with him, until Slick, Sen.,
in a paroxysm of rage, shook the tree continuously and violently, so
that Tommy took an earthward flight, fortunately for him landing on a
pile of old straw.
His father, somewhat cooled down by the spectacle of Tommy shooting
through the air, approached him, and as a preliminary, asked him if he
was hurt. This gave Tommy an opportunity which he at once improved.
He made no reply.
And thereupon Suse and the rest of the Ovidians were regaled by seeing
Tommy's father carrying his son home tenderly, stepping carefully so as
not to jar the presumably broken bones.
This progress Tommy rendered as arduous as possible, by lying perfectly
limp in his father's arms; in fact, making himself dead weight, and
letting his long legs dangle helplessly down, to meet his father's
knee-caps, or shins, at every step, with the brass toes of his heavy
boots. It was not reported that Tommy suffered much from this
experience.
Tommy had a fine fund of profanity, which served as a spicy garnish to
his deep sense of humour, a genial and easy self-possession, unfailing
confidence in his own powers, and a dog he was willing to back against
any other in the village, except Hiram Green's brindle bull pup.
The first day Tommy went to school, Suse had the "infant" class up
before one of the alphabet tablets by the window, and Tommy, affable
and completely at ease, came with them. Most children--Ovidian
children--when they came to school for the first time, were somewhat
abashed by the novelty of their surroundings, given to starting at
every sound, stumbling over the legs of desks, and getting hopelessly
entangled with the other pupils, in their efforts to obliterate
themselves from the teacher's notice. Not so, Tommy. No teacher ever
born had terrors for him; the legs outstretched to trip him on his way
up the aisle, were withdrawn, tingling from the kicks of Tommy's brass
toes. When he was half-way up the aisle, it occurred to him to take a
short-cut, so he wriggled between two desks, and landed with a slide
over the third, to find most of the class assembled. A sharp pinch of
an arm, his elbow applied vigorously to a side, a vicious kick upon a
shin, cleared his way of three boys. Then he planted himself at the
head of the class, next Suse, and prepared to receive the seeds of
knowledge.
But his eyes wandered, first with a look all about, then abstractedly
to the window. But the abstraction vanished, and a look of intense
eagerness made his eyes bright, as they bent in absorbed interest upon
one spot, where his disreputable dog, who had followed him to school,
_à la_ Mary's sheep, was harassing the life out of a fat and grunting
pig, which he had, in his own proper person, surrounded: for, heading
off the pig in whatever direction she turned, he seemingly converted
himself into twenty disreputable dogs. Having bewildered the pig with
a few lightning rushes round it, with a sharp nip at its tail, ears, or
nose, as he could best get in a flying bite, he planted himself like a
lion in the way, and yelped red-mouthed derision and insult at the
impotent foe, who was too fat to follow, either mentally or bodily, the
gyrations of its agile tormentor.
"Tommy!" said Suse. (Tommy paid no heed.) "Tommy!" repeated she, more
imperatively. (No sign from Tommy.) "Tommy Slick!!" accentuating her
voice by a sharp rap of her pointer on a desk. Just then the owner of
the pig came along, kicked Nip, and Tommy came back to sublunary
affairs.
"All right, Suse," he said obligingly, "I'm yer man."
At that Suse felt the foundations of her throne tottering.
In the afternoon, mindful of the temptations of the window, she had
Tommy's class up before the blackboard, where, printing the alphabet a
letter at a time, she made the class name them. Tommy kept his
attention pretty closely fixed until N was reached; then he became
absent-minded. He was meditating his revenge upon the pig's owner for
kicking Nip. The only step he had decided upon was to try conclusions,
immediately after school, with the man's son. The latter was two years
older than Tommy, and a good half-head taller, but Tommy never
considered such paltry details when an affront to Nip was to be wiped
out.
Tommy's mind was engrossed with further plans when Suse, after
elaborately executing a capital S upon the blackboard, addressed him,
not without some trepidation.
"Tommy, that's S." (No response.)
"Tommy," she said with angry dignity, "you must look at the blackboard.
That letter is S."
"Oh, is it?" said Tommy, in a pleasantly interested tone, "I always did
wonder what the little crooked devil was." For the remainder of
Tommy's first day at school Suse felt that her glory was a delusion and
a snare.
Judith carefully concealed from Mrs. Morris her enjoyment of Tommy's
pranks, the former having no patience with "them two imps," as she
designated Tommy and Nip. For, once, Mrs. Morris had been expecting
company, and the better to entertain them, had baked a batch of pumpkin
pies, it being the season when such delicacies were in order. She set
them out on a bench in the front porch to cool, taking the precaution
to make sure that the collie and the cat were safe in the kitchen.
When Mrs. Morris returned, some half-hour later, she found a row of
empty pie plates, and sitting beside them, looking at them with the
dissatisfied expression of a dog still hungry, was Tommy Slick's dog
Nip. Nip fled from the face of Mrs. Morris towards Andrew's woods,
where Tommy was gathering hickory nuts, sped upon his way by an earthen
flower pot flung with a vigorous but inaccurate hand. Ever since that
day Mrs. Morris had cherished a deep hatred of Tommy and his dog.
Judith, as the days passed, was very happy; but happy in a blind,
unreasoning fashion. With persistent self-delusion she put behind her
the fact that this dream-like summer was but an interlude in her life.
True, at first she persistently took short views, and only interested
herself in matters a day or two beyond the present, but gradually she
slipped into the habit of speaking and thinking as if she were to be
there always.
Now and then there were times when the colder light of reason showed
her plainly how factitious this evanescent happiness was. These moods
came upon her like so many physical shocks, leaving her feeling much
older, much quieter, robbing her life of radiance and giving her almost
a distaste for the simple scenes which had created delusions which bade
fair to cost her so dear. Sometimes when the clear radiance of the
moon shone in upon her at night, she lay and thought of the brilliant
scenes, the well-nigh certain triumphs which awaited her--for, immature
as she might be in some things, she was mistress of her art and _knew_
it, but her cheeks no longer flushed as they had wont to do, her eyes
no longer kindled at the dream: instead, her face set into a cold
dignity and her eyes looked out in the moonlight, out into the future
with a look of prescient martyrdom--the martyrdom of lonely Genius!
The look of those whose brows smooth themselves for the crown of
solitary success, that coronal which has so often crushed its wearer,
so often obscured the eyes it overshadowed, so that they no longer
beheld peace and joy!
But at the first sound of Andrew's footsteps, always eager, hasty,
hopeful as they approached her, these shadows vanished, and in their
place shone the dawn of a newer light.
She had never before been considered as a woman, but always as a
singer; and her womanhood recognizing the tribute paid to it, stirred
into life, responded to the feeling which evoked it, and demanded right
of way.
There is something dominant in the woman-heart when roused. Judith's
nature held deeper depths than she herself wot of--sweet springs for
the lilies of love to grow in; reservoirs of feeling, long unsuspected,
but now brimming to the brink, threatening to break every barrier, and
flood their way over the ruin of her life schemes, her painfully
constructed temple of Art, the airy fabric of her ambition; but one
obstacle could not be swept aside--the benefits received. When Judith
thought of what she owed her manager, then her heart grew faint within
her; but, as excessive pain at length numbs sensation, so this thought
became one of the accepted facts of her life, the life she was enjoying
so much.
And the days were so long, and so sweet, that it seemed impossible that
the end would ever come. But it was already midsummer, the harvest
fields were brightening beneath the sun, the little school-house was
closed for the summer holidays; from the orchards came the odour of
ripe harvest apples, and the sun-bonneted women gathered wild
raspberries from the fences, or picked currants in the garden.
And Judith had herself grown infinitely charming; for she was not
letting all the sunshine slip from her. As the ruby crystal holds the
rays which gives it its roseate charm, so Judith was absorbing the
beauties about her, and giving them forth in a gentle radiation of
womanly graces.
When one part of a nature is nurtured to the exclusion of the rest, it
is not strange that the whole suffers somewhat. Judith, taught only to
sing, to look well, to win applause by merit, or clever finesse, had
known perhaps too little of real womanliness, save the intuitional
impulses of her strong, sweet nature. She was wont to be a little
petulant, a little self-absorbed, and a little, just a little,
arrogant. These blemishes had been chastened into a sweet womanliness,
capricious perhaps, but charming. Not but what there were tempests in
her summer. As the summer showers swept across the fields, so tears
crossed her happy dream.
The interest she took in every detail of his daily occupation amused
and touched Andrew very much, but now and then he, in a measure,
misunderstood her, which was not wonderful, considering how widely
severed their modes of life and methods of thought had been. Once he
laughed at some views she was expressing, grave conclusions she had
arrived at after long thought and minute observation. Andrew laughed
outright. Her remarks related to one of the simplest facts of outdoor
life, always so well known to Andrew that he hardly apprehended the
marvel of it. At his laugh the colour flooded her face, tears sprang
to her eyes, she was wounded to the quick. She tried to disguise her
feelings as bravely as possible, fighting off a burst of hysteric
tears, making commonplace remarks in a tone strained and muffled by
reason of the lump in her throat. Andrew's heart ached with regret.
He wanted to take her in his arms, and holding her to his breast win
from her a silent pardon, offer her a mute but eloquent apology. He
dare not yet. A quick sense of her childishness in some matters came
to him, a knowledge that if ever he won her, he must be prepared to be
patient, prepared to learn much, to teach her many things. Judith saw
that he had noticed her distress, knew he was sorry, and tried in an
unselfish woman's way, to make him think that she had not minded. The
very tenderness which Andrew's voice and manner assumed, pressed home
the sting of that laugh. As they parted that night, the tears were
heavy beneath Judith's lids. For a fleeting moment as they said
good-night, she looked at him. She was standing within the shadow of
the porch, but the star-shine revealed those tears.
"My poor little girl, I'm so sorry," said Andrew, his dark face pale in
the dusk.
"It doesn't matter, really. I think my head aches--I mean--good
night," she said.
"You are not angry?" Andrew's voice was chill with despair, regret.
"No, no--oh, I'm not angry, not a bit, I--" He caught her hands, her
composure was failing her.
"Oh, _do_ let me go," she half whispered, "you are bad to me." Then
she fled. Andrew turned away, white to the lips.
When they met again, the joy of seeing each other made them happy.
Judith was so lovingly eager to make him forget her last words to him,
he was so tenderly anxious not to wound her, and each was a little in
awe of the other. For they had learned one of the most sacred lessons
of love, learned what a terrible power to inflict suffering each held
over the other. But their love was sanctified by this dual
illumination, and as their eyes met, a little shyly, now and then,
there seemed to pass between them a two-fold message, a promise and a
plea.
And they parted again, with definite words of love still unspoken.
But the time was not far off. Andrew's arms were yearning for their
birthright, and Judith's head was weary for his breast.
Yet fears assailed her, too. One's head may be sore aweary for the
pillow, yet the thought of frightsome dreams may make one tremble on
the verge of rest, and hesitate ere yielding to the sweetest slumber.