This morning, the 3d of June, I went out to pick the first dish
of strawberries for my breakfast. As I was stooping down I heard
a timid, playful voice at the window like the echo of a year ago:
"Are you the gardener?"
Since Georgiana will not marry me, if she would only let me alone!
"Old man, are you the gardener?"
"Yes, I'm the gardener. I _know_ what _you_ are."
"How much do you ask for your strawberries?"
"They come high. _Nothing_ of mine is to be as cheap hereafter as
it has been."
"I am so glad--for your sake. I should like to possess _something_
of yours, but I suppose everything is too high now."
"Entirely too high!"
"If I only could have foreseen that there would be an increase of
value! As for me, I have felt that I am getting cheaper lately.
I may have to _give_ myself away soon. If I only knew of some one
who loved the lower animals."
"The fox, for instance?"
"Yes; do you know of any one who would accept the present of a
fox?"
"Ahem! I wouldn't mind having a _tame_ fox. I don't care much
for wild foxes."
"Oh, this one would get tame--in time."
"I don't believe I know of any one just at present."
"Very well. Sylvia will get the highest mark in arithmetic. And
Joe is distinguishing himself at West Point. That's what I wanted
to tell you. I'll send you over the cream and sugar, and hope you
will enjoy all your berries. _We_ shall buy some in the market-house
next week."
Later in the forenoon I sent the strawberries over to Georgiana.
I have a variety that is the shape of the human heart, and when
ripe it matches in color that brighter current of the heart through
which runs the hidden history of our passions. All over the top
of the dish I carefully laid these heart-shaped berries, and under
the biggest one, at the very top, I slipped this little note: "Look
at the shape of them, Georgiana! I send them all to you. They
are perishable."
This afternoon Georgiana sent back the empty dish, and inside the
napkin was this note: "They are exactly the shape and color of my
emery needle-bag. I have been polishing my needles in it for many
years."
Later, as I was walking to town, I met Georgiana and her mother
coming out. No explanation had ever been made to the mother of
that goose of a gate in our division fence; and as Georgiana had
declined to accept the sign, I determined to show her that the gate
could now stand for something else. So I said: "Mrs. Cobb, when
you send your servants over for green corn, you can let them come
through that little gate. It will be more convenient."
Only, I was so angry and confused that I called her Mrs. Corn,
and said that when she sent her little Cobbs over . . . my green
servants, etc.
After Georgiana's last treatment of me I resolved not to let her
talk to me out of her window. So about nine o'clock this morning
I took a Negro boy and set him to picking the berries, while I
stood by, directing him in a deep, manly voice as to the best way
of managing that intricate business. Presently I heard Georgiana
begin to sing to herself behind the curtains.
"Hurry up and fill that cup," I said to him, savagely. "And that
will do this morning. You can go to the mill. The meal's nearly
out."
When he was gone I called, in an undertone: "Georgiana! Come to
the window! Please! Oh, Georgiana!"
But the song went on. What was the matter? I could not endure
it. There was one way by which perhaps she could be brought. I
whistled long and loud again and again. The curtains parted a
little space.
"I was merely whistling to the _bird_," I said.
"I knew it," she answered, looking as I had never seen her.
"Whenever you speak to _him_ your voice is full of confidence and
of love. I believe in it and like to hear it."
"What do you mean, Georgiana?" I cried, imploringly.
"Ah, Adam!" she said, with a rush of feeling. It was the first time
she had ever called me by name. She bent her face down. Over it
there passed a look of sweetness and sadness indescribably blended.
"Ah, Adam! you have asked me many times to _marry_ you! Make me
believe once that you _love_ me! Make me feel that I could trust
myself to you for life!"
"What else can I do?" I answered, stirred to the deepest that was
in me, throwing my arms backward, and standing with an open breast
into which she might gaze.
And she did search my eyes and face in silence.
"What more," I cried again, "in God's name?"
She rested her face on her palm, looking thoughtfully across the
yard. Over there the red-bird was singing. Suddenly she leaned
down towards me. Love was on her face now. But her eyes held
mine with the determination to wrest from them the last truth they
might contain, and her voice trembled with doubt:
"Would you put the red-bird in a cage for me? Would you be willing
to do that for me, Adam?"
At those whimsical, cruel words I shall never be able to reveal
all that I felt--the surprise, the sorrow, the pain. Scenes of
boyhood flashed through my memory. A conscience built up through
years of experience stood close by me with admonition. I saw the
love on her face, the hope with which she hung upon my reply, as
though it would decide everything between us. I did not hesitate;
my hands dropped to my side, the warmth died out of my heart as
out of spent ashes, and I answered her, with cold reproach,
"I--will--not!"
The color died out of her face also. Her eyes still rested on
mine, but now with pitying sadness.
"I feared it," she murmured, audibly, but to herself, and the
curtains fell together.
Four days have passed. Georgiana has cast me off. Her curtains
are closed except when she is not there. I have tried to see her;
she excuses herself. I have written; my letters come back unread.
I have lain in wait for her on the streets; she will not talk with
me. The tie between us has been severed. With her it could never
have been affection.
And for what? I ask myself over and over and over--for what? Was
she jealous of the bird, and did she require that I should put it
out of the way? Sometimes women do that. Did she take that means
of forcing me to a test? Women do that. Did she wish to show
her power over me, demanding the one thing she knew would be the
hardest for me to grant? Women do that. Did she crave the pleasure
of seeing me do wrong to humor her caprice? Women do that. But
not one these things can I even associate with the thought of
Georgiana. I have in every way to have her explain, to explain
myself. She will neither give nor receive an explanation.
I had supposed that her unnatural request would have been the end
of my love, but it has not; that her treatment since would have
fatally stung my pride, but it has not. I understand neither; forgive
both; love her now with that added pain which comes from a man's
discovering that the woman dearest to him must be pardoned--pardoned
as long as he shall live.
Never since have I been able to look at the red-bird with the old
gladness. He is the reminder of my loss. Reminder? Do I ever
forget? Am I not thinking of that before his notes lash my memory
at dawn? All day can they do more than furrow deeper the channel
of unforgetfulness? Little does he dream what my friendship for
him has cost me. But this solace I have at heart--that I was not
even tempted to betray him.
Three days more have passed. No sign yet that Georgiana will
relent soon or ever. Each day the strain becomes harder to bear.
My mind has dwelt upon my last meeting with her, until the truth
about it weavers upon my memory like vague, uncertain shadows.
She doubted my love for her. What proof was it she demanded? I
must stop looking at the red-bird, lying here and there under the
trees, and listening to him as he sings above me. My eyes devour
him whenever he crosses my path with an uncomprehended fascination
that is pain. How gentle he has become, and how, without intending
it, I have deepened the perils of his life by the very gentleness
that I have brought upon him. Twice already the fate of his species
has struck at him, but I have pledged myself to be his friend.
This is his happiest season; a few days now, and he will hear the
call of his young in the nest.
I shut myself in my workshop in the yard this morning. I did not
wish my servants to know. In there I made a bird-trap such as I
had often used when a boy. And late this afternoon I went to town
and bought a bird-cage. I was afraid the merchant would misjudge
me, and explained. He scanned my face silently. To-morrow I will
snare the red-bird down behind the pines long enough to impress on
his memory a life-long suspicion of every such artifice, and then
I will set him free again in his wide world of light. Above all
things, I must see to it that he does not wound himself or have
the least feather broken.
It is far past midnight now, and I have not slept or wished for
slumber.
Constantly since darkness came on I have been watching Georgiana's
window for the light of her candle, but there has been no kindly
glimmer yet. The only radiance shed upon the gloom outside comes
from the heavens. Great cage-shaped white clouds are swung up to
the firmament, and within these pale, gentle, imprisoned lightnings
flutter feebly to escape, fall back, rise, and try again and again,
and fail.
. . . _A little after dark this evening I carried the red-bird
over to Georgiana_. . . .
I have seen her so little of late that I did not know she had
been away from home for days. But she expected to-night, or, at
furthest, to-morrow morning. I left the bird with the servant at
the door, who could hardly believe what he saw. As I passed out
of my front gate on my way there, the boy who returns about that
time from the pasture for his cows joined me as I hurried along,
attracted by the fluttering of the bird in the cage.
"Is it the red-bird? _I_ tried to ketch him once," he said,
with entire forgiveness of me, as having served him right, "but
I caught something else. I'll never forget _that_ whipping. Oh,
but _wouldn't_ I like to have him! Mr. Moss, you wouldn't mind
my trying to ketch one of them little bits o' brown fellows, would
you, that hops around under them pine-trees? They ain't no account
to nobody. Oh my! but _wouldn't_ I like to have him! May I bring
_my_ trap some time, and will you help me to ketch one o' them
little bits o' brown ones? You can beat _me_ ketchin' 'em!"
Several times to-night I have gone across and listened under
Georgiana's window. The servant must have set the cage in her
room, for, as I listened, I am sure I heard the red-bird beating
his head and breast against the wires. Awhile ago I went again,
and did not hear him. I waited a long time. . . . _He may
be quieted_. . . .
Ah, if any one had said to me that I would ever do what I have
done, with what full, deep joy could I have throttled the lie in
his throat! I put the trap under one of the trees where I have
been used to feed him. When it fell he was not greatly frightened.
He clutched the side of it, and looked out at me. My own mind supplied
his words: "Help! I'm caught! Take me out! You promised!" When
I transferred him to the cage, for a moment his confidence lasted
still. He mounted the perch, shook his plumage, and spoke out
bravely and cheerily. Then all at once came on the terror.
The dawn came on this morning with its old splendor. The birds
in my yard, as of old, poured forth their songs. But those loud,
long, clear, melodious, deep-hearted, passionate, best-loved notes!
As the chorus swelled from shadowy shrubs and vines to the sparking
tree-tops I listened for some sound from Georgiana's room, but over
there I saw only the soft, slow flapping of the white curtains like
signals of distress.
Towards ten o'clock, wandering restless, I snatched up a book, which
I had no wish to read, and went to the arbor where I had so often
discoursed to Sylvia about children's cruelty to birds. Through
the fluttering leaves the sunlight dripped as a weightless shower
of gold, and the long pendants of young fruit swayed gently in
their cool waxen greenness. Where some rotting planks crossed the
top of the arbor a blue-jay sat on her coarse nest; and presently
the mate flew to her with a worm, and then talked to her in a low
voice, as much as saying that they must now leave the place forever.
I was thinking how love softens even the voice of this file-throated
screamer, when along the garden walk came the rustle of a woman's
clothes, and, springing up, I stood face to face with Georgiana.
"What have you done?" she implored.
"What have _you_ done? I answered as quickly.
"Oh, Adam, _Adam_! You have killed it! How could you? How could
you?"
". . . Is he dead, Georgiana? Is he dead?. . ."
I forgot everything else, and pulling my hat down over my eyes,
turned from her in the helpless shock of silence that came with
those irreparable words.
Then in ungovernable anger, suffering, remorse, I turned upon her
where she sat: "It is _you_ who killed him! Why do you come here
to blame me? And now you pretend to be sorry. You felt no pity
when pity would have done some good. Trifler! Hypocrite!
"It is false!" she cried, her words flashing from her whole
countenance, her form drawn up to repel the shock of the blow.
"Did you not ask me for him?"
"No!"
"Oh, deny it all! It is a falsehood--invented by me on the spot.
You know nothing of it! You did not ask me to do this! And when
I have yielded, you have not run to reproach me here and to cry,
'How could you? How could you?'"
"No! No! Every word of it--"
"Untruth added to it all! Oh, that I should have been so deceived,
blinded, taken in!"
"Adam!"
"Lovely innocence! It is too much! Go away!"
"I will not _stand_ this any longer!" she cried. "I _will_ go
away; but not till I have told you why I have acted as I have."
"It is too late for that! I do not care to hear!"
"Then you _shall_ hear!" she replied. "You shall know that it is
because I have believed you capable of speaking to me as you have
just spoken; believed you at heart unsparing and unjust. You think
I asked you to do what you have done? No! I asked you whether
you would be willing to do it; and when you said you would _not_,
I saw then--by your voice, your eyes, your whole face and manner--that
you _would_. Saw it as plainly at that moment, in spite of your
denial, as I see it now--the cruelty in you, the unfaithfulness,
the willingness to betray. It was for _this_ reason--not because
I heard you refuse, but because I saw you consent--that I could
not forgive you."
She paused abruptly and looked across into my face. What she may
now have read in it I do not know. Then anger swept her on:
"How often had I not heard you bitter and contemptuous towards
people because _they_ are treacherous, cruel! How often have you
talked of _your_ love of nature, of _our_ inhumanity towards lower
creatures! But what have _you_ done?
"You set your fancy upon one of these creatures, lie in wait for
it, beset it with kindness, persevere in overcoming its wildness.
You are amused, delighted, proud of your success. One day--you
remember?--it sang as you had always wished to hear it. It annoyed
you, and you threw a stone at it. With a little less angry aim
you would have killed it. I have never seen anything more inhuman.
How do I know that some day you would not be tired of me, and throw
a stone at _me_? When a woman submits to this once, she will have
them thrown at her whenever she sings at the wrong time, and she
will never know when the right time is.
"Then you thought you were asked to sacrifice it, and now you have
done that. How do I know that some day you might not be tempted
to sacrifice me?" She paused, her voice breaking, and remained
silent, as if unable to get beyond that thought.
"If you have finished," I said, very quietly, "I have something to
say to you, and we need not meet after this.
"I trapped the _bird_; you trapped _me_. I understood you to ask
something of me, to cast me off when I refused it. Such was my
faith in you that beneath your words I did not look for a snare. How
hard it was for me to forgive you what you asked is my own affair
now; but forgive you I did. How hard it was to grant it, that also
is now, and will always be, my own secret. I beg you merely to
believe this: knowing it to be all that you have described--and
far more than you can ever understand--still, I did it. Had you
demanded of me something worse, I should have granted that. If
you think a man will not do wrong for a woman, you are mistaken.
If you think men always love the wrong that they do for the women
whom they love, you are mistaken again.
"You have held up my faults to me. I knew them before. I have
not loved them. Do not think that I am trying to make a virtue out
of anything I say; but in all my thoughts of you there has been no
fault of yours that I have not hidden from my sight, and have not
resolved as best I could never to see. Yet do not dream that I
have found you faultless.
"You fear I might sacrifice you to something else. It is possible.
Every man resists temptation only to a certain point; every man
has his price. It is a risk you will run with any.
"If you doubt that a man is capable of sacrificing one thing that
he loves to another that he loves more, tempt him, lie in wait for
his weakness, ensnare him in the toils of his greater passion, and
learn the truth.
"I make no defence--believe all that you say. But had you loved
me, I might have been all this, and it would have been nothing."
With this I walked slowly out of the arbor, but Georgiana stood
beside me. Her light touch was on my arm.
"Let me see things clearly!"
"You have a lifetime in which to see things clearly," I answered.
"How can that concern me now?" And I passed on into the house.
During the morning I wandered restless. For a while I lay on the
grass down behind the pines. How deep and clear are the covered
springs of memory! All at once it was a morning in my boyhood on
my father's farm. I, a little Saul of Tarsus among the birds, was
on my way to the hedge-rows and woods, as to Damascus, breathing
out threatenings and slaughter. Then suddenly the childish miracle,
which no doubt had been preparing silently within my nature, wrought
itself out; for from the distant forest trees, from the old orchard,
from thicket and fence, from the wide green meadows, and down out
of the depths of the blue sky itself, a vast chorus of innocent
creatures sang to my newly opened ears the same words: "Why
persecutest thou me?" One sang it with indignation; another with
remonstrance; still another with resignation; others yet with
ethereal sadness or wild elusive pain. Once more the house-wren
aloud, "_per-se-cu-test--per-se-cu-test--per-se-cu-test--per-se-cu-test_!"
And as I peeped into the brush-pile, again the brown thrush, building
within, said, "_thou--thou--thou_!"
Through all the years since I had thought myself changed, and craved
no greater glory than to be accounted the chief of their apostles.
But now I was stained once more with the old guilt, and once more
I could hear the birds in my yard singing that old, old chorus
against man's inhumanity.
Towards the middle of the afternoon I went away across the country--by
any direction; I cared not what. On my way back I passed through
a large rear lot belonging to my neighbors, and adjoining my own,
in which is my stable. There has lately been imported into this
part of Kentucky from England the much-prized breed of the beautiful
white Berkshire. As I crossed the lot, near the milk-trough,
ash-heap, and paring of fruit and vegetables thrown from my neighbor's
kitchen, I saw a litter of these pigs having their awkward sport
over some strange red plaything, which one after another of them
would shake with all its might, root and tear at, or tread into
greater shapelessness. It was all there was left of him.
I entered my long yard. If I could have been spared the sight
of that! The sun was setting. Around me was the last peace and
beauty of the world. Through a narrow avenue of trees I could see
my house, and on its clustering vines fell the angry red of the
sun darting across the cool green fields.
The last hour of light touches the birds as it touches us. When
they sing in the morning, it is with the happiness of the earth;
but as the shadows fall strangely about them, and the helplessness
of the night comes on, their voices seem to be lifted up like the
loftiest poetry of the human spirit, with sympathy for realities
and mysteries past all understanding.
A great choir was hymning now. On the tops of the sweet old
honeysuckles the cat-birds; robins in the low boughs of maples; on
the high limb of the elm the silvery-throated lark, who had stopped
as he passed from meadow to meadow; on a fence rail of the distant
wheat-field the quail--and many another. I walked to and fro,
receiving the voice of each as a spear hurled at my body. The sun
sank. The shadows rushed on and deepened. Suddenly, as I turned
once more in my path, I caught sight of the figure of Georgiana
moving straight towards me from the direction of the garden. She
was bareheaded, dressed in white; and she advanced over the smooth
lawn, through evergreens and shrubs, with a gentle grace and dignity
of movement such as I had never beheld. I kept my weary pace, and
when she came up I did not lift my eyes.
"Adam!" she said, with gentle reproach. I stood still then, but
with my face turned away.
"Forgive me!" All girlishness was gone out of her voice. It was
the woman at last.