now," said the woman. "There is so much pain and sickness that one
woman's hands--or one hundred--would avail little enough to stem the
tide. So it is organized and attended to by a few who do nothing else,
and thus the others are left free."
"Free for what?" said the Countess, suddenly; "to seek rest?"
The woman looked coldly at her. "I do not know who you are," she said,
"nor what you do here, but it is plain to see, at least, that you are a
young woman. I am not. At your age, believe me, I did not rest. I have
done better work of its kind than your tapestries. I have done other
work, too--I have borne and reared children and they have children of
their own. I have tended to his death a good man and laid him in his
grave. My work is done. Now I look for some quiet room with a window to
face the autumn sunsets, that I may sit by it, and think, and find out
what life may be, perhaps, before I leave it. Why do you goad me on and
seem to seek to prevent me?"
The Countess ran to her and kneeled by her and seized her hand.
"I goad you because I must, dear guest," she said; "believe me, I
know--none better--what you have done. The tapestry which you drew
to-day shall meet eyes you do not dream on now; the phoenix that made
pattern for our Gildres here shall teach more than him. And it is in
such that you must rest. For women were not made to sit and think what
life may be--trust me for it. We are running streams, that muddy if we
settle. We have to live, and find life out in living. Did it not seem
clearer to you, what time you leaned so wisely over my heedless little
Mawdlyn?"
Now the woman breathed hard, as one who runs a race, and stared at her
who spoke.
"Yes, it did--I knew it did!" she cried, "but who are you that tell me
this so young? And if you have learned so much, you are far too wise
and necessary to those you teach to risk your life in this terrible
cold, visiting wood-cutters!"
"If I am young, dear guest, I am yet not so young that I have not known
this," said she of the coronet, "that I learned what I know on just such
visitings! Mothers of Sorrow are we all, dear friend, and if we hold
ourselves too far from sorrow, we are no true mothers of the world we
make. If all did a little, there would be no need of a few who should do
all--or so it seems to us on the Dunes."
"But we think--in my city--that these unhappy ones, the poor, the sick,
the ignorant, gain more from the few who should do all," she argued.
"Maybe. But you gain the less who fail to do them," said the Countess.
"Child," said the woman, sternly, "the poor were not created for our
discipline."
"I do not know how you know that," said the Countess.
At this the woman's eyes grew wide, and she stared at the embroidery
frames and the stags' heads and the arras, and all the quiet maidens in
their looped skirts, with eyes that saw them not. At last she sighed and
rose from her carved chair humbly.
"Thank God, I am not too old to learn!" she said; "I see I have not
earned my rest, while so many of the world lack theirs. Perhaps in
heaven, if I win there, I may take it. But it is hard. Once in my life,
yes, and twice, I was all for urging on and doing, and two women, in
strange places, one very old and one of middle age, taught me sharply
that it might not be, and bridled and haltered my young strength. Now
that I am content to be nothing, you, a young woman, urge me on. Are you
the third, then? How many more must there be?"
Then the Countess rose and threw herself on her knees before her and
kissed her trembling hand.
"No more, no more, O mother of six!" she cried, sobbing, "and be sure
that only the fine gold must needs be so harried by the great Smithy!
But it could not be that such as thou shouldst end at a sunset window.
Rather die fighting as did my good lord, and leave the quiet for them
that mourn!"
"I will do so," said the woman, "but how have you learned such wisdom,
being so young?"
"When my lord died," said the Countess, "I was as one mad, and set
myself toward the convent, to end there, praying for him. But a very
holy hermit that lives beneath Merlin Oak, in the very midst and heart
of the Dunes, to whom I brought a relic from Jerusalem as a pious
offering, set me right and told me I was not made for a religious. 'It
may be, my daughter, that in too much thought on your religion you will
lose it,' he said, 'and end in tears and kissings of the Feet, for which
not many of the saints have power, for long. Make of thy deep heart a
crystal spring, with continual bubbling, which is despised of the wise
fools of this world, but ordained forever from the Throne.'"
"And yet he learned his wisdom from meditating in solitude, and freedom
from the cares of every day?" said the woman softly.
"He was a man," said the Countess, "and it is permitted to them to go
into the desert and think. Ah, consider only, dear friend, for how
little time had that good man of yours to do, or your father, with that
seed of life which you and your mother must bear for days and months of
days, till it should be born indeed! One hour with him--and he hath
given you work for years. And hath he sleepless nights and breathless
days, then? Nay, indeed! He is off to new dreams by morning, and there
is only you to watch that they shall be no dreams, but realities. And
when that watch is over, then look for the dawn indeed--but not this
side the Dunes!"
"Then let me go back," said the woman quietly, "and do for the sake of
the doing what once I longed to do for the sake of the world. Though
now my powers are less and I doubt I shall accomplish very much."
"Have no fear," said the Countess gladly, "have no fear, my sister.
Alys, bring what you know for my sister," and Alys went out and returned
with a silver coronet on a cushion, studded with sapphires. The young
Gildres knelt low to offer it, and as the Countess bade her, she herself
put it upon her own head, and they walked stately together, lighted by
the page and attended by the maidens, to a great beamed bedchamber with
a crucifix on the wall and a high carved bed of state raised upon a
dais, and with pillows of silk and curtains of rich tapestry.
"Now rest, dear sister, and say good-bye to me," said this Countess, and
when they had laid her, robed and crowned, upon the bed, she kissed her
on the mouth.
"Shall I never see you again?" said the woman.
"Ask rather if you never saw me before," said she, and then, "look at
me!"
The cold moon shone through the leaded pane and struck her face full,
and as the woman looked it seemed that wrinkles grew about her eyes and
that the moonlight turned her hair as white as snow.
"You are the Bee-woman!" she cried.
"Look again," said the Countess.
And now her cheeks were like warm russet apples and her shoulders were
broad.
"You are the Dame at the Farm!" said the woman, "and I thought you
young!"
"It may be, dear sister, that when we meet again I shall be younger
still," she said, and her voice was like the tolling of sweet bells
across the autumn fields, "for then age will be neither here nor there!"
Now she was again the young Countess among her maidens, and what had
passed might have been a dream.
Yet as she of the silver coronet passed slowly into a sweet sleep, where
bees hummed and soft chanting from the chapel mourned the dead, she
caught the hand of her who stood by the bed and questioned her.
"Tell me, mother and sister," she whispered, "why in my lessons, I must
ever find the truth under such strange forms? Why do you who must teach
me wear the garments of another age, another country?"
Now a trouble came over the face of the Countess and she shivered in the
moonlight.
"Ask me not, sister and daughter--and yet I must answer if thou ask me,
who wearest a crown. I cannot tell why this is laid upon me--although it
is well known to be so. Nor have any but a wonderful and holy few
learned in any other wise. I cannot tell ... sometimes I think that
though the lessons were set in each dish and coat and friendly hand of
everyday--as Our Lady knows they are, for the matter of that!--you
cannot read them, out there. They are too plain, perhaps. So all must be
put before the eyes too full for sight in a manner (as one should call
it) quaint. Though truly one thing has never been more quaint than
another! But I do not speak clearly.... Good night, my sister."
Now she heard a sob and knew it was from young Gildres.
"Shall I never see her again, then, my lady?" he whispered.
"Why, that is as may be, Gildres," said the Countess, "but I do think
so. It comes to me that when this my sister sets forth she shall pass
through here, and thou shalt accompany her farther on. Do then thy
service here the more diligently, as in the hope of it."
"Madam, I will," said he joyfully, and she,
"Now soothe her hand, Alys, with me, for she should be sleeping now."
Then they took each a hand and stroked it, and she lost herself in
sleep, dreamless, save for the winter moonlight and the chanting and the
hum of bees.
When she woke her hand was still held, but very firmly, and the humming
was seen to be the revolving of light discs under their dome of glass.
"Ah! Now we have a steady pulse," said the doctor, "and you--too dear a
friend to lose by your own folly!--I shall not scold you yet. But what a
fright to give me! A little more and you would have found your Lethe
oversoon, old friend."
She shook her head and smiled. "No longer, no longer!" she said. "So
long as the current bears me, I am for that River of Life that you and I
must keep at flood."
* * * * *
Now that she has dropped these strange tales, and gone too far for me to
hear her voice, I find that in picking them up they have lost much of
the force and clearness her telling gave them. Yet I cannot see that I
have left anything out. It may be that my dull pen has clouded them.
Blame me, then, and not the tales, for they were made most wonderfully
plain to me.
That things very real occurred to her, no one could doubt who could
hear her relate them. And if they have grown unreal and feeble in the
telling, the fault must be wholly mine--the imperfect and unsuccessful
scribe.
THE END
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Madness of Philip
Her Fiance
Memoirs of a Baby
Middle-Aged Love Stories
Whom the Gods Destroyed
Domestic Adventures
The Imp and the Angel
Poems
An Idyll of All Fools' Day
Fables for the Fair
Ten to Seventeen (a Boarding School Diary)
Smith College Stories
Sister's Vocation
End of Project Gutenberg's In the Border Country, by Josephine Daskam Bacon