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In the Border Country
[Illustration]
[Illustration: On a low stool there sat an old woman....]
[Illustration]
In the Border Country.
by
Josephine Daskam Bacon.
Clara Elsene Peck, Decorator.
New York Doubleday, Page & Company,
1909
THE HUT IN THE WOODS
Copyright, 1908, by P.F. Collier & Son.
THE FARM BY THE FOREST
Copyright, 1908, by P.F. Collier & Son.
THE CASTLE ON THE DUNES
Copyright, 1909, by Harper & Brothers.
IN THE BORDER COUNTRY
Copyright, 1909, by Josephine D. Bacon.
[Illustration]
Contents
page
I. The Hut in the woods 3
II. The Farm by the Forest 39
III. The Castle on the Dunes 89
[Illustration]
Illustrations
On a low stool there sat an old woman.... Frontispiece
Facing page
The glass of that window has strange properties. 28
There were no lights but the great moon. 54
The Dame stood high on wooden clogs and hummed
a ballad. 62
Here they sat down to tapestry work, green and blue
and russet weavings. 116
The First Lesson
In the Border Country
THE HUT IN THE WOOD
The woman who told me this, and other strange tales which I may one day
try to put together, had no gift of writing, but only a pathetic regard
for those who had. I say pathetic, because to me her extraordinary
experiences so far outvalue the tinkling art of recording them as to
make her simple admiration for the artist little short of absurd. She
had herself a pretty talent for painting, of which I knew her to have
made much in the years before we met. It was, indeed, because I
remembered what hopes she had encouraged in her teachers in this and
older countries, and how eagerly she had laboured at her craft, finding
no trick of technique too slight, no repetition too arduous, no
sacrifice too great, if only they might justify their faith in her,
that I asked her one day, when I had come to know her well, why it was
that she had stopped so suddenly in the work that many of us had learned
to know before we knew her. For now she paints only quaint toys for her
many lovely children, or designs beautiful gardens for her husband,
himself an able artist and her first teacher, or works at the wonderful
robes in which he paints her, burning in the autumn woods or mist-like
through spring boughs.
We sat, that morning, I remember, on the edge of the wood that finishes
their wide estate among the hills, looking down its green mazy aisles,
listening to the droning of the June air, lapped in the delicious peace
of early summer. "Why did you?" I asked, "what happened?"
She gave me a long look.
"I have often thought I would tell you," she said, "for you can tell the
others. When I hear this warm, droning noise, this time of the year, it
always reminds me----"
She looked at me, but I knew that she saw something or someone else.
After a long pause her lips began to form a word, when suddenly she drew
a short, frightened breath.
"What--do you smell it, too? Am I going away again--_what_ is that
odour?"
I sniffed the air. A dull, sweet taste flavoured it, unpleasant, vaguely
terrifying. I looked about carefully and caught sight of a wide-mouthed
bottle lying on its side, the cork half loosened. A brown moth fluttered
feebly in the bottle.
"It is only chloroform," I assured her, remembering that the two oldest
children were collecting butterflies, and I tightened the cork.
"Oh, yes," she said, a deep and unaccountable relief in her voice, "I
see. That odour has the strangest effect on me ever since----" she
waited a long time. At last she said she would try to tell me
something, if I would ask her questions to make it easier for her, and
never discuss it afterward unless she should invite the discussion.
I do not, of course, pretend to tell the story as she told it to me. It
was broken by long pauses and many questions on my part. Her phrasing,
though wonderfully effective at times, was empty and inadequate at
others, when she simply could not say what she meant, neither pen nor
tongue being her natural medium of expression. But if the style that I
have used is not hers, it best translates, at least, the mood into which
she threw me.
* * * * *
The surgeon, who knew her well, took her hand on the threshold of the
operating room.
"Even now, dear friend," he said, "we may turn back. You know what I
think of this."
"You promised me!" she cried eagerly. "I have your word that I should
not risk this."
"You have my word," said he, "that in your present state of mind and
under the present conditions you should not risk it. But I am by no
means sure that you could not change both your state of mind and the
conditions. If you say you cannot, then, indeed, I will not let you risk
it. But if you would only say you could! Then I would risk anything.
Will you not say it?"
"I cannot say it," she said. "Open the door!"
"Listen!" said the surgeon; "if when you are on the table, if even when
the ether is at your lips, you will raise your finger, I will stop it.
Will you remember? For you, too, you know, run a risk in doing this."
"I shall remember," she said, "but I shall not raise my finger." And he
opened the door.
Her mind was so busy with a rush of memories and plans, crowded
together at will to shut out her fear, that she was unconscious of the
little bustle about her, the blunt, crude details of preparation.
"Breathe deeply, please," someone said in her ear, "harder, harder
still--so!"
"I am breathing deeply, I am! How can I do this forever? I tell you I
_am_ breathing deeply!" she screamed to them, but they paid no
attention. The surgeon's face looked sadly at her and receded, small and
fine, to an infinite distance. Though she called loudly to them, she
realized that in some way the sound did not reach them, that it was
useless. She prayed that they might not think her unconscious, for she
had never reasoned more clearly. Now her ankles were submerged, now her
knees, now her hips, now it was at her chest, now her throat.
"It is all over--you can begin now!" she said deeply, and in order to
save herself from a sickening struggle, she bent her soul, as one bends
one's body to dive under a combing breaker, and dipped under the wave
that threatened her.
Just as one slips through the breathless surf she slipped through, and
left them. She heard someone breathing heavily in the room she had left
and hurried away from the horrid sound, intending to find her room and
change the loose gray gown and the soft fur-lined boots she had put on
for her journey to the terrible room. But the hoarse, heavy breathing
followed her and threw her into a panic of fear, so that she turned into
a side corridor and ran blindly down it, stumbling through a little
narrow door at the end of it. The door swung to with a long sigh and she
heard the breathing no more.
As she rested in the little room, which was perfectly empty, a door at
the other side of it opened suddenly and a woman rushed in. She, too,
had on a long gown, and her dark hair hung in two thick braids, one over
each shoulder.
"Can you tell me the way out?" she said quickly, "I can't stay here--I
can't breathe."
"But you aren't dressed--we must find our rooms first."
"No, no! There are nurses everywhere. We shall be seen! Come this way,"
and she pointed, shaking, to a long window that opened on a fire escape.
The steps were broad and easy; a moment and they were in the street.
"Here is my carriage--I saw it from the window. Let me take you where
you want to go," said the woman; "home, directly, James."
The door of the carriage was swinging wide; they had only to step in. As
they sank on the seat the fat coachman leaned out and slammed it.
"Drat that door!" he said loudly. "She'll have to go back to the factory
again." The footman made some remark and the coachman swore angrily.
"I think I see myself standing here two hours!" he growled. "The gray's
nervous as it is. I'm going up through the Park and let them out a
little at the other end."
The carriage started. The woman half rose in it and tapped imperiously
on the glass.
"James! James!" she cried, but no one answered her. She pressed the knob
of the door, but it did not turn.
"I can't make him hear?" she complained, "what shall I do? What do you
think is the matter--he acts as if there were nobody in the carriage!"
They looked fearfully at each other.
"He will stop surely--somewhere," said the other, but her heart felt
chilled. She could not think--she dared not.
They trotted swiftly on; her companion's eyes were fixed ahead of her,
her lips moved.
"Hail Mary!" she muttered, and then, "now and at the hour of our death!"
"Don't say that, don't!" she begged the woman, but still the mutterings
went on. The door of the carriage swung open; the horses dropped to a
walk. All around were trees and grass; great rocks lined the driveway.
"I could slip behind the bushes and my gown would not be noticed," she
thought feverishly, "for I cannot bear to hear her," and as the carriage
almost halted she swung herself easily down from the low step.
"Now and at the hour of our death!" she heard as the carriage rolled on,
and shuddered when the coachman slammed the door upon that pale, crazed
creature.
Behind the bushes she was well screened, and the few people that drove
and walked through the wild, beautiful woodland never looked in her
direction. Once a couple, intertwined and deep in each other's eyes,
almost ran against her, but though she drew away, startled and
apologizing, they walked on with no reply to her excuses.
Her heart sank strangely.
"I wish they had spoken to me," she whispered to herself. "I wish I
could think better--I know there is something wrong. The next person I
meet I will ask----"
But she walked steadily away from the great driveway, deeper and deeper
into the wood.
"In a moment I will stop and think this out--in a moment," she murmured,
but she did not stop; she ran like a hunted animal, farther and farther.
The wood was utterly quiet. Sometimes a little furry beast slipped
across the narrow path she ran along, sometimes a large bird flapped
heavily into the air ahead of her; but no person walked or called.
Soon a great fatigue seized her, and hunger. She moved languidly; her
legs seemed to walk of themselves.
"I must eat--I must rest," she moaned, "but why did they not speak to
me?"
At last she realized that she could drag herself no farther, that she
was alone and lost, fearful and worn out, in a dense wood.
"I will get to that little path," she said, trembling, "and there I
will drop, and if I must think, I must."
She staggered up the little path, and it lead to a tiny hut, the colour
of the four great trees that stood about it. Its door hung wide open,
and in the middle of it, on a low stool, there sat an old woman, wrapped
in a long cloak, looking kindly at her.
She threw herself across the threshold and fell upon the earthen floor.
"Oh, will _you_ speak to me? Will _you_ see me? Pray, pray answer me!"
she cried.
"And why should I not see you, my child?" said the old woman.
She gasped with joy.
"I don't know--I thought--the coachman slammed the door--I don't know
what I thought! It was terrible!" she panted.
"I know, I know," said the old woman; "but you are here now. You can
rest now. It took you a long time, you are so strong. Look, I have a bed
for you!"
She looked, and in the corner of the hut was a couch of pine boughs,
odorous and soft.
"You may lie on my cloak," said the old woman, and spread it on the
springy couch. She dropped on it.
"Oh, I ache!--every bone in me aches!" she sobbed, and for the first
time she wept.
"That is right," said the old woman, and soothed her with her hand, "now
sleep, and I will have something for you when you wake."
Her body sank, relaxed, upon the soft boughs, and it was as if a sponge
were wiped across her mind, and she slept.
Time passed over her; she had no way of knowing if they were minutes or
hours that ran by.
When she awoke, a gentle, steady humming filled the air; a murmurous,
musical sound that calmed every sense. It was like the turning of a
great wheel or the rocking of an old cradle.
"What is that?" she asked faintly.
"They are my bees, child," said the old woman. "They have come home."
She was slender, with brown eyes like brook water, and though she was
wrinkled finely, she was straight and strong, for she lifted up her
guest and half carried her to the opposite corner of the hut.
"Now wash," she said, "and then you must eat."
A cold, deep spring welled up in that corner, and as she plunged her
face into it she opened her hot eyes to let the icy water cool them--and
gazed at the white moon far below her and the small stars.
All space seemed spread before her and she drew out, frightened, but
when she glanced quickly at the spring from above, she thought she must
have dreamed, for it was like any other spring, only a little deeper.
Then she washed her hands till they tingled and warmed. When she had
braided her hair afresh she turned and saw that the old woman had set
out a meal for her on the low stool; a brown loaf, a comb of golden
honey and an earthen jug of milk.
"Eat, my child," she said.
She fell upon the food and it was like wine and meat to her. The blood
ran swiftly through her veins again and she forgot the terror and
fatigue and the cloud in her mind.
"You are most kind to me, mother," she said, for she had lived in the
old countries where it is easy to speak kindly to the old; "how do you
happen to live here? I should have died but for you. All my courage had
gone and it seemed that some terrible thing must be true, but I dared
not think what it might be. Now I am strong again and I will thank you
and go on."
"Where will you go, my child?" said the old woman.
She looked out of the door and saw that the wood was so dense that only
a dim light pierced through the boughs far above her head.
"It is always twilight here," said the old woman.
"But you can tell me the way, surely you know the way out?" she begged.
"I know my way," said the old woman, "but not your way. I come from the
other side."
"And how do you come?" she asked, almost fearfully, for something about
the old woman began to frighten her.
"I follow my bees," said the old woman.
"But I cannot wait for your bees," she cried, vexed and alarmed. "I must
get back--I was mad to have come here. I have work to do. Everything has
gone wrong with me since--since--oh, I must go back and get at my work!"
"And what is your work?" the old woman asked.
"I am an artist," she said.
"What is that?"
"I paint pictures," she said.
"Why do you do that?" asked the old woman.
"Why? Why?" she repeated. "Why does anyone do his work? Because I am
told by good workmen that I do it well, and that I shall every year do
it better. Because I would give up food and sleep for it. Because I
shall, if I live, some day do some one thing that will be remembered
after I am past all work."
"You will never do that with a picture," said the old woman quietly.
She stamped her foot upon the earthen floor.
"How dare you say so, you?" she cried. "What do you know of art or the
great world of cities beyond this horrible wood? What are you?"
"They call me the Bee-woman, in this part of the wood," she answered,
"but I have many duties. What are yours?"
"I have told you," she said sullenly, for under the other's eyes her own
fell.
"Not so," said the Bee-woman quickly, a hand on her shoulder, "you have
told me only your pleasures. I do not ask you for what you _would_
sacrifice food and sleep--though you seem unable to go without either
for very long--but for what you _should_ sacrifice them?"
She clasped her hands and faced the Bee-woman proudly.
"Art is the one thing in this world that makes these two the same," said
she, "to the artist his art is both his pleasure and his duty."
"That is the reason that artists are not women, then," replied the
Bee-woman, "for their duties cannot be their pleasures very long or very
often."
At this she would have run away, but her knees were still weak, and the
thought of the trackless woods stopped her heart a moment with fear.
"A Bee-woman may know much of bees," she said coldly, "but the world
beyond this wood has a wider space to overlook, and while you have been
growing old in the wood, mother, the humming of your charges has
stopped your ears to the voices of the young who fill the world outside.
They would tell you, if you could understand, that Art is the one word
that is one for men and women."
"My child," said the Bee-woman, "so long as bees hive and trees root in
the earth there will be no such word. For the words of the world were
made to match the things of the world, and that is so in this wood and
out of it."
She looked at the Bee-woman and felt troubled and on the eve of
something great and sad.
"You are no common peasant woman, I am sure," she said gently, "and
indeed, I have heard wiser and more travelled persons than you say very
much the thing that I think you mean. But like you, they were old."
"That is to say, that they had seen more of the life they speak of, I
suppose," said the Bee-woman.
"But the world moves, mother," she said.
"That is to say, that it runs round and round, I suppose," said the
Bee-woman, "but not that it gets any farther from the sun."
"But women have learned many new things since you were young, mother."
"That is to say, that they have all the more to teach their children, I
suppose," said the Bee-woman, "and they had more than a little, before."
"Who spoke of children?" she cried harshly, "not I! I spoke of work--the
world's work, that I am free to do!"
"So long as bees hive and seeds fly on the wind," said the Bee-woman,
"the world has one work for you to do, and you are bound, not free, to
do it!"
Then she sank on the floor beside the old woman and began to beg her,
for it seemed to her, as often it seems in dreams, that before she could
go any farther she must win over this one who stood between her and
where she would go.
"You think me vain," she cried, "but, indeed, with me this is no girlish
fancy, mother. Men greater and wiser than I have told me that mine will
be work for which the world will be the better."
"I think that they have spoken truly, my child," said the Bee-woman,
"and that is why I was waiting for you."
"Then let me go and work!" she cried, and rose from her knees.
"Go quickly, indeed," said the Bee-woman, "but work with flesh and
blood, as does God the Creator, not with paint and canvas, as does man,
the mimic!"
Then this old bee woman grew tall and terrible to her, and she saw that
she had been led into the wood as into a trap and that she must fight
hard for her freedom.
"I do not know what you are!" she cried wildly, "but you talk like an
old song mumbled over the hearthstone, and it is to the hearthstone that
you would chain me. Was I given eyes that can sweep the horizon only to
turn them downward to that narrow hearth?"
"My child," said the old woman, and her voice was like a bell that tolls
across the ancient fields, "so long as bees hive and fire burns on the
hearths of men will the daughters of men walk in this wood and tell me
that the hearth is narrow; and yet it is wider than the width of the
womb whence all men come, and wider than the width of the grave whither
all men go. And all men know this."
She put her hand over her heart, as one who covers a wound, and her hand
touched a folded paper under her gray gown. She drew it out in triumph
and her face grew bright.
"Not all men, mother, not all men!" she boasted. "See--I took this with
me when I went in to the trial from which I escaped. (Though what I have
suffered in this wood is worse than that from which I ran away.) Read
this letter from my husband, and you will see that not all men would
chain their mates--that to-day the jailer himself throws away the key!"
"Read me the letter," said the Bee-woman. And she read:
"_I love you because you think my thoughts with me, because our work is
the same and we understand each other. Let us work on together hand in
hand._"
"Now dip this letter in the spring," said the Bee-woman, "and read it to
me again. For now the paper can show you only what the pen has written."
Wondering, she dipped it in the spring, and the writing, which had been
black, turned blood red and was not the same when she read it:
"_I love you because your eyes are blue and have drowned my heart,
because after I have done my work, which I cannot explain to you, I lie
in your arms and cease to think. Give me a son with your eyes, for I
shall never understand you._"
She crushed the paper in her hand and flung it out of the door of the
hut.
"Then he lied to me!" she said bitterly, "fool that I am!"
"If you had been a fool he would not have needed to lie to you," said
the Bee-woman. "But you are one of those for whom no price is too
great."
"Oh, oh!" she wept, "I am deceived! God and the world have deceived me!
But I will not be beaten. I will show him--and you--that I am not the
weak thing you think me. This very moment, if only I had the colours, I
could paint as never before. I feel it. The very pain will help me. If
only I had the colours!"
"There are always colours," said the Bee-woman, "if not of one kind,
then of another. But you cannot get them for nothing."
"I will pay any price," she said.
"Will you take the crimson from the blood of your cheeks?" said the
Bee-woman. "Will you take the fresh blue from your eyes, the ivory
white from your teeth, the ruddy gold from your hair, and the thick
softness of it for brushes? Will you?"
She shuddered.
"I know what you mean," she said, "but oh, it is hard! I--I cannot."
"Then you are a fool," said the Bee-woman quietly. "There is no man
living who would not give all that and give it with a smile, for his
work. You are not a great artist."
She wrung her hands.
"You are right, you are right," she moaned, "and I am not worthy. If
colours are my weapons to win fame, how should I grudge them? I will
give them up."
"Then indeed you are a fool," said the Bee-woman sternly, "for you throw
away your most powerful weapon before the fight begins. You are not a
great woman."
She fell with her face to the earthen floor and lay quiet, while the
bees hummed outside the hut like the turning of a great wheel or the
rocking of an old cradle.
"Then all that I have learned," she muttered at last, "is useless? All
that I have worked and anguished for? All that I have saved even my
suffering for, prizing it and never grudging, because it would help my
work? No man could do more."
"You think so?" said the Bee-woman. "Get up, my child, and look out of
the latticed window at the back of my cottage. Do not think what you see
there is close before you, for the glass of that window has strange
properties and the part of the wood which it shows you is far, far from
here."
She raised herself and walked to the casement, shading her eyes with her
hand, for a red glow struck the single pane and blinded her.
"Before you look," said the Bee-woman, "tell me if you remember that
picture of yours which you think the best?"
"Do I remember it?" she repeated, "can I ever forget it? A year of my
life has gone into it. The year that I was married."
[Illustration: The glass of that window has strange properties.]
"Do you think it worth that year?" said the Bee-woman.
"It could not have been done with less," she said.
"Now look," said the Bee-woman, "and tell me what you see."
She went to the casement, and it seemed as if the aged trees formed a
long, long aisle out from it, narrow and bright, and at the end was a
sunny glade.
"I see a young man," she said, "laughing and singing to himself in the
sun."
"Has he suffered?" asked the Bee-woman.
"No, he is hardly more than a boy. His hair curls like a boy's. His face
has never known a care."
"What is he doing?" asked the Bee-woman.
"He is eating fruit and painting a picture on a white cottage wall. The
children and the old men are watching him."
"Do you watch him, too," said the Bee-woman, folding her hands in her
lap.
Soon she gave a little cry.
"What! what!" she murmured, "how can he do that--he is but a boy!"
"Is he weeping?" asked the Bee-woman. "Has he shut out the world?"
"He is smiling," she answered, "and as he works he talks. Oh! he is
painting my picture, mine! Who is he? Mother, who is he?"
"Does he paint well?" asked the Bee-woman.
She did not answer.
"It is nearly done," she whispered, "and he smiles as he works. What
blue, what glistening white! Mother, who is that boy?"
"Is it as well done as your picture?" asked the Bee-woman.
"It is better done," she whispered through her tears, "and he has gone
and left it. He has given it to a village girl for a kiss! Oh, how could
he leave it?"
"Because he can do many more, my child," said the Bee-woman, "and life
has not yet touched him."
"Tell me his name," she said, and turned from the window, pale and sad.
"His name neither the world or this wood has yet troubled to learn,"
said the Bee-woman, "but he will be called a great painter before long."
"How long?" she asked.
"I forget if you call them days or years," said the Bee-woman, "but they
will not be many."
"Who taught him?" she asked.
"Everyone," said the Bee-woman, "the village girl, for one. But many
will learn from him."
She knelt again upon the earthen floor and looked the woman in the
eyes....
"I do not know, my child," said the Bee-woman, "I can only tell you that
you must paint what you have learned, with tears; he can paint he knows
not what, and he smiles. I ask you, which of you will go furthest?"
"Ask me no more, mother," she said faintly, "but tell me this: why is
life so cruel? For you know everything and this wood is not what I
thought."
"Child," said the Bee-woman, "for I suppose you call it cruel because it
does not please you, why life is as it is, I do not know; but that it is
so no one can doubt who has tried to make it otherwise and failed. Now,
what will you do?"
She bent her head before the eyes of the Bee-woman, ashamed, because in
her deep brown eyes she saw reflected her lost years.
"What shall I do?" she asked meekly.
"Go back, child," said the Bee-woman, and her voice warmed like summer
sunshine on the wall at noon, "go back and let men make pictures: do you
make men!"
Then outside the door she saw the little path and suddenly she seemed to
know where it would lead and how, and she had no fear at all of the
wood.
"Good-bye, mother, God keep you!" she said and stepped over the
threshold.
"So long as I keep my bees, child, God will doubtless keep me," said the
Bee-woman, "and that is true in this wood and out of it. Now hurry back,
for you have stayed almost too long."
She waved her hand and turned from the hut, threading her way among the
trees.
"I must go back, I must go back!" she said to herself, and moved more
and more quickly, for something drew her almost off the ground.
Once she thought she heard a low cry behind her, and as she looked back
she saw some one running hotly through the wood across her track.
She called aloud to help the poor creature, for she saw that it was a
woman in deadly terror, wrapped in a long gown, with two great braids of
dark hair, that hit against her back like whips, who turned her pale,
crazed face--and it was the woman in whose carriage she had driven to
the edge of the wood.
"Come back!" she called, "this is the way! Come back!"
But the runner clasped her shaking hands upon her heart and leaned hotly
forward in one last burst of speed, and fell fainting across the
threshold of the Bee-woman's hut.
Then a panic terror caught the woman who had left that hut, a terror to
which her first fright was as nothing.
"In God's name," she screamed, "where am I? _What am I_? Who is that
wrinkled woman with young eyes? What wood is this?"
So screaming she whirled about and missed her footing, and fell heavily
over the root of a great tree, striking her head in the fall.
A sickening pain washed in great waves through every nerve, and she
struggled, turning her head feebly from side to side, closing her eyes
against the blinding light that pierced her brain like knives.
The tall trees swam and wavered before her, the boughs tossed and swayed
and receded till they were like a forest seen in a picture. Then she saw
that they were framed in a window, with empty space behind them, and
that she was staring at them from a bed in a strange room.
Over her eyes bent two brown eyes, young and kind.
"Do you see me? Can you speak to me?" she heard.
"I do not hear the bees," she muttered, "I miss them. And yet you are
the Bee-woman, are you not? I know your eyes----"
"I am the nurse," said the voice, "there are no bees here. You hear the
rumbling in the street below. I am glad to see you open your eyes--we
were growing worried. You remember you are at the hospital, do you not?
Would you like to see your husband? He is just outside the door."
She looked long at the nurse. "My husband," she murmured. "Oh, yes.
Does he know that I got away? How did you bring me back here? Tell the
doctor that--that I could not bear it and that he must take me through
without it. He--he will be glad--"
"The operation is over," said the nurse, "and you have nothing to bear,
now. You are just coming out of the ether. Do you understand? Everything
is all right. You have only to lie quiet, now, and you may see your
husband, if you wish. He wanted to see you as soon as you were safely
out of the wood, he said."
The tears gathered in her eyes, but she was too weak to wipe them.
"'Out of the wood,'" she whispered, "'out of the wood'! So that is what
they mean! But he will never go into that wood ... yes, call him in."
The Next Lesson
THE FARM BY THE FOREST
It was years afterward, and in October, the very climax of a late and
lingering autumn, that I sat by my friend one afternoon in the ripe
orchard and knew suddenly that we were going to speak of one of those
strange experiences of hers that, for me, set her more effectually apart
from others than any of her many and varied gifts and graces. As before,
we fell into the matter suddenly, with no warning, and at a light
question from me the like of which I must have asked her many times with
no such answer as I then got.
All about us lay the windfalls, piled evenly, rich heaps of sunset
colour. The better fruit gleamed through the boughs like fairy lamps and
great ladders leaned against these on which the men climbed, picking
carefully. Below them the maidservants, laughing and excited at this
pleasant change of labour, handed the baskets and filled the gaping
barrels. And up the ladders and through the trees and among the tinted
heaps raced and played the children of the house, sniffing the heady
flavour of the rich fruit, teasing the maids, cajoling the men,
staggering under the heavy baskets, pelting each other, even, with the
crimson and yellow globes, bringing each specially large and perfect one
to their mother for congratulation. She, stopping for the moment her
strange, jewelled embroidery, that alone would have marked her for an
artist of high powers, would lean over each boy and girl, murmuring her
praise, soothing in the same breath the unlucky ones who had not found
the most gorgeous fruit, warning the men not to trouble the yet unready
apples, quieting the maids if they grew too boisterous, an eye and an
ear for everyone and everything.
As the lowering sun struck full on the nearest heap of red and gold, and
turned the russet fruit on the bough to bronze nuggets wrapped in
leaves of wonderfully wrought jade, a sudden thought tempted me and I
spoke quickly, glancing slyly at her calm, contented face.
"Look at that colour!" I said, "does it not cry out to you to be
painted? Does it not make you remember that spring orchard of yours that
everyone praised so, and from which the great Master predicted your
future? Would you not like to escape from all this pleasant, tiny
bustle, this network of ceaseless demands upon your hands, your heart,
your brain, and once again attack a real work?"
She looked curiously at me.
"A real work?" she repeated.
"I mean an enduring work," I explained, "a thing from which you can lift
your hand some day and say, 'This is done. To the best of my power it is
finished. Let it stand, and judge me by it.'"
She nodded her head slowly and I saw that she was not really looking at
me, though she seemed to be, but beyond me, across the splendid orchard
piles, into the stacked gold of the corn far afield.
"That's it," she murmured, "that's just what I told her--'an enduring
work.' And what was it she said to me? Oh! I am going again--I am partly
there now! Don't you see it? Is that the Lower Orchard? Are those the
gray gables of the Farm?"
Her voice thrilled strangely and her eyes were staring, vague: it was as
if she hung between sleep and waking. I looked where she pointed, but it
was only an enormous ledge of gray rock, curiously slanted, and I said
so, softly.
"It is only a rock, broken at the gable angle, dear."
Then she faced me, herself perfectly.
"Oh, you think so?" she answered me with a smile.
The words were strange enough in themselves, but without them her
manner would have taught me that she was going to speak of stranger
things yet, and I was not disappointed.
"It was just such a day as this," she began, "and the smell of the
apples always takes me back, though never as strongly as now. We were in
the orchard ... ah, my dear, you will tell it wonderfully well when I
have told you, and many will learn as I have learned, but you can never
make them see the Dame as I saw her!"
Then she told me the tale of that adventure.
* * * * *
"What you need," said her friend, the great physician, "is change.
Change and rest. Where can you go and be sure of absolute quiet?"
"I cannot tell you," she said wearily, "there is always something that I
must do----"
"----or think that you must do," he interrupted her.
"It is all the same," she said.
He sighed, and looked at her quietly for a long time.
"It has taken me fifty years to learn that, my dear child," said he,
"and you toss it at me in a moment's talk. Since you have learned it,
why are you not well and happy?"
"Since I have learned it, I can never be," she told him, and again he
looked long at her.
"What is that that you are trying to do?" he asked her at last. "Think
carefully and tell me in one sentence."
"I have already thought carefully," she said, "and I can tell you. I am
trying to live my husband's life, which I ought not to give up, my
children's life, which I must not give up, and my own life, which I
cannot give up."
He looked even longer than before at her and the late sun slipped down
the polished fittings of his desk and down the gilded covers of the
book-filled shelves behind him. Longer than before he looked and the
lines deepened in his face and his eyes seemed to grow deeper in his
head as she looked back at him. At last he spoke.
"My child," he said, "if I were a poor and hungry doctor it is not to be
doubted that I should give you something in a bottle and tell you to
come to me again. But I am a wealthy physician and I can afford to tell
you truth. I can do nothing for you. You must cure yourself, or fail to
do it so completely that I shall be needed to enable you to fail again.
When you have repeated this last process sufficiently, I shall no longer
be thus enabled and you will die. That is all."
"Die?" said she; "I shall die?"
"You will die," he said, "with everything that the world calls good
fortune in your lap. With no excuse for doing so, but with every reason
to be glad that you are doing so. Leaving behind you someone who needed
you and more whom you needed. Now go home and think, and before you go,
drink this."
Silently he poured out for her a tiny glassful of some colourless,
aromatic liquid and in silence she drank it and left the room, where the
dying sun glinted upon the gilded books. It seemed to her that he
touched a bell on the desk with his hand, and though the cordial had
already begun to affect her head strangely, she was able to observe that
it was in answer to this bell that his office nurse appeared at the door
as she reached it and put a steadying arm behind her.
"Come this way," said the nurse, "and sit a moment; do you feel a little
dizzy?"
"A little," she answered, and her voice seemed to come from far away; "I
am afraid that drink was stronger than it should have been ... if I
could sit down ... the doctor...."
She knew that the nurse was helping her to a couch in a tiny room she
had never been in before; she knew that she sank upon it and that the
nurse settled her upon a bright crimson cushion; she heard her soothing
murmur and nodded to show that she was not alarmed, only vexed at her
own weakness, and then she ceased to struggle with the overwhelming
drowsiness that oppressed her, and slept.
When she woke it was dark in the room. In the street the electric lights
glowed, and the people passed steadily by the window; was it midnight,
she wondered, or only early dusk? How strange that the doctor and the
nurse had forgotten her!
"But, of course he would not have wished me waked," she said, and rose,
straightened her dress, waited a moment, and then pulled impatiently at
an old-fashioned bell-rope that hung by the door. There was no answer.
Again she rang, but the house lay dark and silent. A little housemaid
with brown, startled eyes, came at last, just as she was beginning to
grow alarmed at the darkness and stillness, and stared at her.
"Was it you that rang, madam?" asked this little housemaid; "the doctor
is out: he will not be back to-night."
"And the nurse?" she inquired, vexed at this lack of thought of her.
"The nurse has gone long ago, madam, for the night."
A flood of nervous anger broke over her.
"How disgraceful!" she cried; "how unkind! To leave me here like this!
What time is it, pray?"
"It is very late, madam; I could not tell you the hour."
The little housemaid yawned and pressed her tumbled cap straight.
She bit her lips to keep herself from angry tears and rushed through the
heavy street door, down the stone steps, out upon the pavement. Angrily
she sped along, brushing by the people, who, in turn, stumbled rudely
against her. The jostling crowd brimmed her eyes; she walked as one in a
mist.
"How cruel everyone is to me!" she whispered to herself and walked
faster. Suddenly a thought came to her. Where was she going? Surely she
ought not to attempt to walk all the way to her home, so late at night?
She must call a carriage. She fumbled vaguely in the little bag at her
wrist, but no purse was there; only a few small coins.
"I must get into a street-car," she thought dully, and just then a
noisy, lighted street-car rushed toward her on a cross-street and she
entered it as it stopped to take in a group of workmen. They shouldered
by her roughly, and one of them laid his greasy bundle half upon her
lap; she shrunk into a corner. She held out her coin to the brisk
collector, but he passed her by, took one from all of the others, and
left her, shaking, haunted by a nameless dread.
"Here is my fare!" she called to him, but he, whistling, left her in her
corner.
She hid her face in her hands and tried to control her whirling
thoughts, but her brain raced like a mill stream and her legs shook
under her trailing skirt. All too late she remembered that her carriage
was waiting for her at the doctor's: she ought not to have rushed into
the street. She was giddy and confused, and knew that her mind was the
mind of one in the grip of fever. On and on the street-car rumbled; one
by one the workmen brushed by her and got out.
"Have I been here hours or minutes?" she wondered, but dared not speak.
Now she was alone in the car. She peered through the window and saw that
it was passing over water; the lights blurred in the dark, shining
mirror below.
"Oh, this is wrong! I should never have come this way!" she moaned, and
knew that she was lost, lost and alone.
When she dared look through the window again the water was gone, and she
felt the motion of the car to be slower. Soon it had stopped. Trembling,
she rose from her corner and walked unsteadily to the door.
"Will you kindly tell me where we are? I have made a mistake," she said
to the man who had refused to take her money.
He looked at her and spoke to his companion.
"I suppose we're booked for the usual half-hour wait, Jim," he said; "I
don't see any green light."
She cried aloud and rushed out of it.
"I think I am mad!" she wept. "I wish I had died with my head on that
crimson cushion! What will happen to me? That cruel doctor will have
killed me!"
"What is it, madam? Can I help you?"
A soft voice spoke close to her and she grasped the arm of a slender,
girlish creature who turned two brown, startled eyes up at her. Now it
was for joy that she wept, and clung to the girl, whom her confused
brain took to be the brown-eyed housemaid who had spoken to her last.
"Indeed, indeed, you can help me!" she cried. "I am lost--I have come
into the country, it seems, a long way, in a terrible street-car where
no one would speak to me, and I ought to be in the city, in my home, for
I am afraid I am very ill: I seem to be in a sort of fever. Do you know
where we are? I have never been here. When will it be day?"
"Very soon, madam," said the little maid, supporting her firmly for all
her slenderness, "and I know well where we are. Come home with me; Karen
and I plan to be at the Farm by daybreak."
She looked, and there beside them stood a tiny donkey, saddled with a
sort of leather chair, and almost at the level of his rough, thin
shoulder stood a great sleek-coated hound.
"Let me help you into the saddle, madam," the little maid went on, "and
you will find how well you sit there. I am very strong, and I can walk
beside."
As in a dream she let the girl half lift her into the seat, and the
donkey walked easily along, the hound stepping nobly by them, his
mistress leading the sure-footed beast.
There were no lights but the great moon and the kindly little stars, and
no streets but narrow lanes, winding through feathery maples and stocky
oaks that would be sulphur-yellow and iron-red with the sun behind them,
but were now only their own whispering ghosts.
"This must be far from the city," she said softly, and the little maid
answered:
"I do not know, madam; I was never there. We have come far, Karen and I,
but not from the way you were running. We are going to the Farm to help
in the orchard. The Dame sent for me and father always wishes to oblige
the Dame. So we came at once."
"And can you send someone back with me?"
"I do not know, madam. The Dame will take care of it."
"I will pay whatever is right--I am not poor," she muttered, holding to
one side of the saddle.
"The Dame will know, madam," the little maid repeated, and they went on
their way under a lightening sky, for the dawn was coming up white, and
even now the moon was paling.
She had no way of telling how long that journey was, for more than once
her head nodded forward on her breast and she knew that she fell into a
kind of sleep that was not wholly sleep, for she was aware of the little
donkey's gentle gait, of the winding, leaf-strewn paths, of the winking
stars. Once they went through a bit of rolling pasture-land where the
cattle drowsed, dim, misty bulks on either hand, and the steaming breath
of a curious horse bathed her startled face. He galloped away and his
hurrying feet woke her to the sense that the dawn was upon them. The
light was now a pale rosy glow and straight from its heart a beaming
arrow struck upon a long brown gable that she took for one of the great
ledges of massive rock that time and again had risen beside them. But
the little maid knew better, and skipped beside the hound.
[Illustration: There were no lights but the great moon.]
"See, madam," she cried, "here is the Farm! And there is my little
window in the roof! And there are the doves above the long barn."
She looked and saw that all these things were so, but great weariness
filled her and she could think of nothing but the long way back, for she
knew that they had come a great way from the city.
"This may all be well for you, child, but it is not the same to me," she
said sadly.
"And why not, madam? The Dame is kind to all," the little maid replied,
and urged the donkey on.
"What is your name?" she asked, looking for the first time at her guide
in the full light of early day. The girl was quaintly dressed, she saw,
with a black bodice laced across her young body, a shorter skirt than
grown girls wear now, and a scarlet ribbon twisted among the long, dark
braids that hung down her shoulders. She had travelled much in older
countries than her own and to her eyes this girl had the air of a
winsome little peasant that knew her simple station and was happy in it.
"Joan is my name, madam--and I have been told that the miller's Dyrk has
called the new brown foal for me--the finest one at the Farm!" she said
with a bubble of laughter.
"Now, madam, we are here at last. Let me help you down, and we will
surprise the Dame for once, for not often does one catch her asleep. She
will be the first always--and here she is!"
They were in the very dooryard of a thriving, deep-eaved farm-house.
Asters glistened with dew about the doorstep, a straw-filled kennel for
the great hound stood close by, the cocks welcomed in the day from
behind a trim green hedge, and slowly across the back-stretching meadow
came home a file of sleek, heavy-uddered cattle. She stared at them
unseeing, for her head reeled, but Joan mistook her staring and began to
prattle:
"You are surprised, no doubt, madam, to see the cows come in from the
pasture this early, but here at the Farm the air is so dry and pure that
they leave them in the fields all night, and the milk tastes of honey
and meadow grass, the miller's Dyrk does say----"
"Child, child, will you never be done with your chatter? The stranger is
sick--too sick, I see, to mind herself of the Farm's cows. Help me to
take her in!"
"You must be the Dame," she said, and tried to look steadily at the
woman who came out of the oaken door to lead her in. She was a strong,
sturdy woman, neither tall nor short, with brown, smooth hair and a
brown, smooth skin with red blood beneath. Her eyes were like brook
water in the sun, that runs over clean pebbles, and she was
deep-chested, and stood firm in her quaintly buckled shoes. She wore a
chintz gown dyed with little red and yellow flowers that was looped up
over the hips, and at her waist hung a bunch of heavy, wrought keys.
"Nay, now, never try to talk," she said, and put a strong arm about her
drooping guest. "You are past talking, poor thing! You have done far too
much--for others, I'll be bound. Rest first, and then talk after that.
Help her up the stairs, now, Joan, and hush thy chatter."
"But you do not know why I am here," she murmured, leaning hard upon the
black oaken rail of the polished stair.
"I know you are here, do I not?" the Dame answered quietly; "I should
not get you to bed the quicker, whatever I knew. Softly, Joan; softly!"
One last effort and they stood within a long, low-beamed chamber, whose
leaded panes shone no more brightly than the polished floor below them.
In the centre a great posted bed reared its snowy canopy, and copper
jars of water and piles of linen and other washing gear reminded her
that she was unworthy of that white bed. On the deep window-sill bloomed
pots of gay flowers, and the tall chairs with winged backs were covered
with dim prints pictured with strange birds and lions.
"Now," said the Dame, "undress her and into the bed!"
"But I am not clean," she said; "I am dusty from the street."
"Then we will wash you clean," said the Dame. "Joan, go get warm water,
child, and the great copper, and make haste with fresh sheets; Lotte
will help you."
Deftly she was undressed and her chilled body was chafed and rubbed till
Joan and another girl came staggering under a great copper bowl a yard
wide. They filled it with steaming water which, as she crouched in it,
the Dame poured over her shaking shoulders.
"How white she is," the girls whispered; "how soft her skin must be!"
"Run Lotte," cried the Dame, "and bring me the ruby cordial from the
cordial-room, and you, Joan, get the little copper pannikin and heat
that bit of broth by the hob and warm the bedgown with the lace your
mother made for me!"
The ruby cordial was poured into the bath and a sweet and penetrating
odour filled the room. It seemed that her bones ceased to ache from that
moment, and when, wrapped in the warmed gown, nestled in fragrant
sheets, she sipped at the hot broth Joan held to her lips while Lotte
braided her long hair, a peace she had not known fell down upon her, and
pillowing her head gently she fell into a deep and restful sleep.