middle-morning that streamed across her white bed. Her mind was as clear
as the mind of a child and she laughed a little as she sprang from the
great deep bed and put on the clean short petticoat and buckled shoes
that lay beside it, glad that her own dusty garments were not there. She
wound her long braids about her head and pinned a blue kerchief over her
shoulders, then she slipped down the stairs and through the great
kitchen with its twinkling pans and sanded stone floor. A woman, bent
over the wide fireplace, turned her head in its white cap and spoke to
her:
"Dame is in the dairy--'tis built over the brook. Perhaps you will take
this with you?"
She lifted the willow-woven basket in her hand and went out through the
door across the barnyard, where the doves preened themselves among the
clean straw, and found the little stone house above the brook. All about
her she heard the busy noises of the country morning; soft voices, men's
calls, the stamping of farm horses, the clatter of the household ware,
the splash of cleansing water poured, the hissing kettle; but she saw
no one. It seemed to her that eyes were upon her and that pauses in the
cheery bustle followed her as she walked, but whenever she stopped and
tried to meet these eyes there was no one. She moved alone among the
unseen workers, and yet she knew they watched her.
In the cool stone dairy the Dame stood at work, pressing and patting at
the soft coloured butter. Beaded brown jars of cream were by her and
great, fair pans of milk, mounds and balls of primrose-tinted butter,
white cheeses wrapped in grape-leaves, clotted cream that quivered at a
touch, tall pitchers of whey, loppered milk ready for the spoon and
buttermilk in new-washed churns. Through the moist freshness of the
stone room the brook ran, chuckling and lapping; great stones roughly
mortared together made the floor on either side of it; the Dame stood
high on wooden clogs and hummed a ballad wherein the birds sang in the
morning, but at night the eggs were broken, and the wind was high and
scattered the fledglings.
[Illustration: The Dame stood high on wooden clogs and hummed a ballad.]
Even the freshness of her late rest in her heart, her eyes filled at the
Dame's song, and often afterward she thought of it when the wind was
rising.
"And did you rest well?" said the Dame to her when the song was done.
"Never so well since I was a child," she said. "I have come to thank you
for all your care, and to ask you when you can send me home, for I have
no idea where I am, and I am sure I have come a long way."
"A long way, indeed!" said the Dame, and looked at her strangely, but
when she questioned her this busy Dame only smiled, and told her that it
was good to hear of her freshening sleep but no surprise, since all made
the same report of the Farm.
"It seems the air here is so pure that a few hours of it do more for the
body than days of other parts of the countryside," she said, and when
her visitor asked again, "But where am I?" she only answered:
"But are you not ready for your breakfast, then?"
"Indeed I am," said she, "but I fear I have come away from it, to find
you."
"Nay," said the Dame, "you have brought it with you," and pointed to the
basket. She opened it and spread the wheaten rolls, the jar of honey,
the brown, new-laid egg and the clean, homespun napkin upon the Dame's
table and ate with wonderful relish, supplying herself with sweet butter
and yellow milk from the stores about her, and while she ate and the
Dame worked, they talked.
"You must be very busy, Dame, to be up with the dawn," she said.
"Why, that is so," said the Dame, "but women must needs be busy, as you
know well, I have no doubt."
She sighed and twisted her idle hands.
"I do not know that I can truly say I am always busy," she said
thoughtfully, "but I know that I have much to do--so much that I cannot
do it," and again she sighed.
"Why, that is odd," said the Dame, patting her butter; "I have so much
to do that I _must_ do it."
She knit her brows and tried to think of an answer, but the answers that
came to her mind had a foolish sound as she tried them over, so she said
nothing.
"The Farm lets no one rest," the Dame went on, "and you must know that
everything you brought with you this morning, the willow basket, the
napkin, the egg, the wheaten flour, the honey, all were made here, and
that means much work for many hands."
Now this put her in mind of something she had thought of before.
"But surely this is not the usual fashion in this country," she said
curiously, "nor your quaint-figured gowns, nor much else about the
place, for that matter. All this labour in flax and willow and
dairy-house seems like some old picture or some ancient song--who has
devised it, pray?"
"Aye, we keep the old ways," said the Dame quietly; "there must be some
to do it or they will be lost, I am thinking."
"But so near the city," she said, and again the Dame looked strangely at
her.
"Are we so near, then?" said she.
She knit her brows and it seemed that her mind, so clear since she woke,
was clouded as to all before that; only the feeling of some great
trouble, some dusty hurry, some ruinous failure haunted her. Also for
the first time that day she found herself afraid.
"You have not yet told me the name of this town," she said, trying to be
calm.
"It is not a town, my dear, it is called the Farm," said the Dame,
putting the finished rolls of butter in a brown crock; "there is no town
near us."
"But there must be!" she persisted; "you are teasing me. There are
always towns, and they are never far from each other in these parts."
"I do not know them, then," said the Dame, gathering her keys and
leaving the dairy, "though in truth, my dear, I am a poor judge of such
matters, for beyond the Farm--and it is large--I do not go, being too
busy always."
"Do you mean," she cried, following through the barnyard, "that you
spend all the seasons on this Farm? It is not possible!"
"And why is it not possible?" the Dame asked, looking at her for the
first time a little sternly, and she saw that in spite of her smooth
country skin she was a woman of middle age; "the seasons are all full.
In the spring there is planting, in the summer there is picking, in the
autumn there is storing, in the winter there is spinning."
Now these were simple words and plain to understand, and yet something
about them troubled her greatly and she felt that she must find an
answer for them or know no peace at all.
"That is all very well," she said quickly, "but you are leaving out
something without which all the seasons are empty and the year a dull
affair."
"And what is that, then?" asked the Dame.
"Pleasure," she said.
"I find pleasure in them all," the Dame said, "and so do those about
me."
"But they are all work--they are things that must be done!" she cried,
tugging at the Dame's sleeve as she crossed the kitchen threshold; "true
pleasure is a thing apart--we must have both, surely."
The Dame blew a little silver whistle hanging among her keys and at once
there was a bustle and a running and some dozen maids came hurrying from
all parts of the rambling farm-house to hear her orders. But before she
busied herself with these she spoke to her guest.
"My dear," she said, "if you come to my time of life and have not found
your pleasure in your work, you will never find it in this world. Sit
down and think of this."
She sat down upon a carven chest by the open window, where the asters
sent out a spicy odour and the hum of bees was not too far distant, and
dropped her chin into the cup of her hands and thought.
Meantime, the Dame laid out for each girl her task, not hurried nor yet
slow, but so that each was started fairly.
"You, Lotte, order the cordial-room so that there is room for the new
bottles and write them down in the store-book. Remember to leave no
drippings nor spillings, nor do I look to see my best napkins used for
this. Janet, find Big Hans and make the apple-cellar ready for the
barrels. Lois, I warn you that I shall go through all the chambers soon,
and if all is as well there as when last I peeped under the beds and
through the panes and looked at my face in the coppers, when the
shoemaker comes, after Michaelmas, there shall be a pair of trim red
shoes for those busy feet, and no cost to your father. Trude, the old
hen-wife has more of her aches and pains to-day, and you must feed the
pullets their extra grain and see to the eggs. Elspeth, the linen is all
in to-day and 'tis for you to count it. Joan, if thy sparrow's tongue
can hold still for an hour, thou shalt come with me and give out the
stores for the pantry and kitchen. Perhaps a bit of potted quince will
hold thy teeth together. Hannah, I know, is wise and trusty, and can
busy herself as I would, with no telling what and where. But I could not
trust you two, Margot and Mary, and old Greta must keep you by her with
the candle-work. And should she box your ears, come not into my
storeroom with your cryings, but work the harder for it. You others,
help in the kitchen, and make ready for the men when they are done with
the apples, and hungry. If Will comes to ask about the ale, he may see
me in the pantry, but I have no time for Dyrk and his accounts to-day.
Nay, now, Sparrow, there is no need to pull at my skirt! 'Tis strange,
indeed, that the miller's matters must always be looked into when thou
art with me."
They scattered each to her work, and some sang together in rounds and
catches and some were silent, but all grew quickly busy. There was but
one idle, and she, ashamed of this and trying to still the fear that
hung behind her thoughts, followed the fair-haired Elspeth to the
linen-room and watched her lift the fragrant white matters from the deep
willow crates and pile them on the deeper shelves among twists of blue
lavender and strewings of old roses.
"Shall I trouble you by talking?" she asked her, and Elspeth shook her
head shyly and answered:
"No, madam, except when I must count the piles, and then I will tell
you."
"Do you always do this work?" she said.
"No, madam," Elspeth answered her, "the Dame will have each girl learn
all manner of work, so we take it turn about. Before this I was at the
washing, and beat the linen on the brook-stones--oh, it was fine to see
the fresh air blow through it and sweeten all so quickly! Then Margot
and Mary taught me clear-starching. Last year I tied the herbs and
tended the herb-attic; I grew the rosemary and sweet-basil in my own
garden, and Big Hans brought us marjoram. There is no thyme and summer
savoury like the Dame's, though."
"And what does the Dame pay you for all this?" she asked.
"Each of us has a great piece of the fine weaving--enough for
body-linen," said Elspeth, "and some of the coarser to lay aside for our
chests; a gown and shoes at Christmas; a goose to send home at
Michaelmas (and Dame always adds a good flitch of bacon--she is so
generous, the Dame!) and a gold piece at Easter. When little Myrta was
married she had a silk gown and a great bag of fine flour and pillows
and mattress for her bed. And it is well known that Joan will have a
silver porringer and spoons and the carved chest with real Damask
napkins."
"And you have no sports--no games? You slave here the year round for a
flitch of bacon and a bit of linen?"
"No, indeed, madam; it is not so! We are always having a treat! Why,
think now: at Christmas, the holidays, the gifts, the carols and the
games, with fiddler and spiced wine and all manner of cakes; at harvest,
the great dance, the prizes, the ale; at Easter, the church trimming,
the gold-pieces sent home and the pick of the lambs for the one that
does best at Catechism (but that is the little ones); at mid-summer, the
fairings----"
"And who come to these fairs?" she asked quickly.
Elspeth hung her head and coloured, glancing about as one caught in a
trap.
"Enough of this nonsense!" the woman cried, upsetting the spotless linen
angrily. "Tell me where I am and what game you play here! I will go
myself and soon be quit of this wonderful Farm of yours and this
masquerading Dame!"
"Elspeth," said the grave voice of the Dame herself, "you will be always
at the talk, my child, and now you have made trouble, and you, my dear,
if I were to tell you where you were, how would it help you to go
elsewhere? Listen to me. Through yonder door you may go at this moment,
but I advise you not to go without the great hound, for much is on the
moors that is far from safe. And at the end he will only bring you here,
for he knows no other way, and you would wander endlessly there."
She looked, and around the edge of the tilled land she saw mile upon
mile of desolate moor. Rushing to the window at the end of the hall,
she saw the pasture-land she had come through and beyond that a deep
forest.
"But I came over water ..." she murmured, and the Dame said gravely:
"I know. All who come here come over water. But they do not go back over
it."
Then her eyes grew wide with terror, not at the Dame's simple words, but
at something strange that seemed to lie behind them, and she gave her
hand to the Dame and walked quietly beside her to the orchard.
Here among the ripe fruit they sat down, the Dame busy at knitting,
herself with twisted, idle hands, and she fought away her fear as she
saw the stalwart men and the merry girls at work upon the clover-scented
piles.
"Why am I afraid? These are simple people working--they are real; they
talk and sing!" she said to herself, but her hands trembled and the high
sun seemed to her more like the unreal glory of the coloured windows in
some great church than the sun she knew.
Hardly was the Dame seated when two fine young boys ran toward her,
struggling with each other to reach her first.
"Oh, mother, I have learned my book!" cried one, and the other, "Oh,
dear mother, I can do the sum now!"
She kissed them fondly and told them she would hear them soon.
"And where are your sisters?" she asked them.
"Alda is among her doves and Grizel is coming to you for help with the
hood she is knitting," said one, and the other:
"But May Ellen is with Joan down in the nut-bins, and mother, they are
quarrelling about young Dyrk! Each will have it that he likes her best,
the foolish things!"
"Run, then, Roger, and bring them to me," said the Dame; "they are o'er
young for such quarrels. We will set them at the apples."
Now, before the Dame had gone once around her knitting she was called
from it ten times. Would the Dame have them bring in the russets first?
Would the Dame look to the new honey, for they dared not take off the
bees alone? Would the Dame hear a sum? Would the Dame say which of two
disputants had the right? Would the Dame see the miller? Would she take
the pay for the gray mare? And such like questionings that left her
alone not a moment.
She who sat idle plucked at the Dame's sleeve and spoke timidly to her.
"One could not work at some great matter, Dame, with so many calls aside
from it, I think."
"I think so, too, my dear," the Dame answered her, "and that is why I
will be knitting, which is no great matter from which to be called
aside."
She bit her lip, and thought, and spoke again.
"Great laws must be made, Dame, and these who make them must keep away
from these stinging gnats."
"I know that well," said the Dame, and looked straight at her, "but I,
thank God, need never make great laws, but only teach my household to
obey them."
She sighed, but spoke again.
"It is not only laws, Dame, but beautiful things the world over must not
be disturbed in the making. You could not make a great picture or a
great song with Roger and Grizel pulling you here and there."
"And that is true, too," the Dame said, "but I need not make great
songs, thank God, but only teach them to my children."
"And still there must be great songs," she said.
"And still there must be great children," said the Dame.
"I know, I know!" she cried, and pressed her hands to her forehead. "I
learned that once--in a deep wood. And I have the children. But I would
make great pictures, too. Not instead of the children, but with them,
Dame, with them!"
"You cannot, nor any other woman," said the Dame, and turned to her
knitting.
"But if I tried, if I tried ..." she pleaded.
"It is not by trying that these things are done," said the Dame coldly,
"Lotte will not lift the load of russets yonder though she break her
back at it, little fool. See, now she is so tired that Hans must carry
both them and her."
"She is a country girl," said the pale woman, eagerly.
"Outside and inside she is made after the pattern of yourself and all
other women," said the Dame, "and the one truth is true for us all."
"Good Dame," she said, after a moment, while the wagons creaked through
the orchard and the girls laughed as the sun slipped lower, "what if I
strove no more for greatness, but only made me little pictures to
pleasure a few that love me and myself?"
"Why, as for that," said the Dame more kindly--"have a care there,
Roger, you will hurt your sister if you play too roughly with her!--as
for that, I can see no harm in it. Neither can I see how it should be
worth any woman's while, if the thing be not great, and she knows it. It
is a child's game."
"That is true," she said bitterly, "though how you should know it who
pass your days on a petty farm, far from the great world, I cannot see."
"If you come to my time of life, my dear, and still think that the world
is great or petty by so much as it is near a farm or far from it, you
will not be having much content in your old age," said the Dame. "Now I
must put my mind upon the heel of this stocking."
She wept aloud and saw now that not for nothing had she come upon this
secret Farm and that in this glowing orchard she was to learn her
hardest lesson. The Dame spoke again, and finally.
"Listen!" she said, "for this is the way of it. No woman living will
ever do a great work who could not have borne great children, and if she
can bear great children she can do no other great work. Else she would
be as God Almighty, who has made both the poet and the poem, the painter
and his picture. For He made it before the painter could see it. Now, go
and help them with the apples, for the sun is setting and there are yet
a few to gather."
She stumbled forward and threw herself upon the fragrant heaps and
toiled till the breath left her, nor did she talk any more to Elspeth,
who worked beside her, nor to Joan who picked behind. Her back ached and
her arms wearied with their load; her legs began again to tremble and
her breath came short. And all the time her brows were knotted with a
teasing thought and her lips moved ceaselessly. Suddenly she rushed
toward the placid Dame and fell on her knees before her.
"Oh, Dame," she cried, "must we always labour so? Can we never achieve,
but must we ever do those tasks which the night will undo again? These
apples will not stand for the world to see that I picked them; your
dairy work is unwoven like a dream. Must it be so?"
"My dear," said the Dame, and her smile was sweeter than the sunlight
through the coloured boughs, "it must be always so. Even as the day dies
every night and is born with the dawn; even as the orchard leaves but to
blossom and blossoms but to fruit, and all is to do another year; even
as God makes the harvest for us to spoil, and smiles and makes another;
so must women weave what the year will wear and wash what the day will
soil. And man, her greatest work, will one day die and moulder into
roses that other men shall one day pick. Our men-children finish their
lovely toys and set them on the shelf, but our work is too great that
we should ever finish it; it is so great that it must needs be made of
many tiny matters, done now and again like the growing rains and
sheltering snows. We can never be at rest--till God himself rests. Do
you understand what I would be saying?"
She wept and laid her head in the Dame's lap and the yellow apples fell
about her knees as she knelt. But she answered:
"Yes, dear Dame, I understand. But, oh, Dame, why is it so?"
"I do not know, my dear," answered the Dame, "but I know that we must
learn it or we cannot live in the world. Now sleep, for you have been
almost too long at the Farm."
She felt the Dame's strong hands upon her head, she heard the voices of
the maids and the men, crying, "Sing us a song, dear Dame! Will you not
sing us a song?"
Then the Dame began an old, sad ballad of a knight that loved a lady
and went for her sake to fight the Pagans; but the moon rose cold over
her marble tomb when he came back, and her falcon wailed beneath his
hood. There was much more of this quaint sorrow and though she never
could remember it she thought of it always when she walked in orchards.
Then she felt that she was being lifted, and in her dream she heard the
Dame's deep voice:
"Push her through the wicket--hurry, Joan, she must be off the Farm soon
or it will be too late, poor child! Is Karen saddled? Push her!--make
haste, make haste! I hear the river--make haste, there! Push!"
"I will not leave the Farm! I will not!" she muttered and struggled to
wake and fight with Joan. The red sun cut her opening eyes like a knife,
she fought the arms that held her arms and struggled awake, staring into
Joan's brown eyes.
But was it Joan? Joan wore no white cap, no tight black dress. The red
glow in her eyes, was it the sun or a crimson cushion beneath her head?
Whose stern, bearded lips unbent and smiled at her?
"Push, keep pushing!" he said, and raised and lowered her arms.
"Smell this, dear friend," and a strong, smarting odour filled her
nostrils, so that she coughed and choked.
"That is better," said someone; "we were frightened. Why did you not
tell us your heart was weaker than usual?"
The office nurse fanned her; a strong light was in her face.
"The doctor felt terribly about you--that cordial was not so very
strong, he thought. You are all right, now?"
"It was Lotte that kept the cordial-room," she said vaguely, but with
speaking her mind cleared and she came to herself again.
"Was I--was it for long?" she asked.
"It was longer than we liked," said the nurse; "of course, you had no
idea of what was happening to you. We tried everything."
"I know that a great deal happened," she said; "let me see the doctor
before I go."
The Last Lesson
THE CASTLE ON THE DUNES
I saw much of my friend as the years hurried by us; years in which I
seemed to myself to lag shamefully, sometimes, and win nothing new out
of life, but from which she drew fresh vigour of spirit with every
season.
Many things she taught me, and of them all I best remember the one she
told me last, when I had known her twenty years. She was at that time
fully sixty, with a fine crown of silver hair, a tall, full figure and
piercing dark eyes, for as she grew older her whole regard grew, as it
seemed to me, keener and more commanding, and not, as with some women,
softer and less powerful.
I had been with her all the white winter evening, on one of those
errands of discerning charity that occupied so many of her hours and
thoughts--dangerously many, as we who loved her would often say,
considering that she spent herself unnecessarily upon much for which
others might well have acted deputy. The sun had set early, for it was
midwinter, and white points of winter stars were pricking through the
frozen sky. The snow, iced over with a glistening crust, sent back pale
reflections to the bars of cold green and thin rosy glows that stood for
sunset, and a threatening wind began to rise, that shook down little
icicles from the window ledge and made the stiff, chill branches of the
oaks and beeches creak warningly.
I shivered to myself with pleasure and thanked sincerely the slender
girl that brought hot tea to me and unwrapped my long furs. It was not
my friend's daughter--the youngest of these was now happily married, and
she would have been alone, were it not for the girls that she kept with
her, training and guiding them into some of the wisdom and charm that
distinguished her gracious self--a sort of unchartered school, where
less gifted mothers sought eagerly to install their daughters.
As she accepted the services of two of these, and dispatched by a
messenger some comforts to be sent to the suffering creature we had just
returned from visiting, I lingered by the window and saw the first
shadowy flakes of a new storm. The wind rose quickly to a howl, an icy
branch tapped at the pane; we had narrowly escaped a dangerous
home-coming. I could not resist a somewhat pettish complaint.
"Don't you think," I began, "that you have earned a rest from these
expeditions, these insistent girls of yours, this constant
responsibility? You are magnificently strong and well--yes; but even
your vitality has its limits and too many people hang upon you, my dear!
Do you shake us all off for a while and do something for yourself, your
own pleasure and relaxation. Surely at your age you deserve rest! Your
own have ceased to need you--why invite others?"