Sophy went out, while Charlotte "saw about supper," and wandered alone
but not lonely through the grounds. It was "sundown," as they say in
Virginia. All the west was gold above the darkling violet of the
mountains. She went along one of the old brick walks towards the garden.
From the stable the scent of horses and fresh straw blew towards her,
mingling with the perfume of the June roses. This, too, meant home. The
stable was at the foot of the garden. Ever since she could remember,
when the wind was due west, the scent of "horse" had mingled with the
scent of flowers.
The garden lay in terraces connected by flights of wooden steps. She sat
down on the first flight, between two damask-rose trees, and watched the
swallows wheeling to nest against the dim gold of the sky. A great bush
of calacanthus spread at her feet. She gathered some of the little,
hard, maroon-coloured blossoms, and put them inside the breast of her
gown. They would only give out their full sweetness thus warmed. Their
perfume of strawberries-in-the-sun and fresh vanilla was the very
essence of "home." The _tank-tonk_ of cowbells sounded along the meadow
field. The cows, just milked, were grazing leisurely again. Frogs
crooned softly from the mill-pond. A screech-owl trilled.
The soft, fluctuant ebb and flow of blowing foliage--like an aerial
surge playing along skyey strands--came to her from the lawn above. She
turned and lay at full length in the warm grass--breast to breast with
the earth of home. Her heart beat strong and warm against it--her lips
pressed it. And a strange, tender, universal thrill such as she had
never known, ran through her as she thus clasped and kissed the soil
from which she had sprung, and to which she would one day return....
And suddenly it seemed to her that the greatest gift the gods could send
her would be the wish to write again. Ah, if she, the poet that was her
truest self, could only rise again! It was not a "resurrection" but a
"_risorgimento_" that she longed for. The word came to her with its
memory of Amaldi. But he seemed now only like one of the sad phantoms in
her phantasmal past. Nothing, not even the lost spirit of poetry, seemed
to her so unreal as her past, leaning secure as she now did on the warm
earth of home.
"_Risorgo_.... I rise again...." she murmured, pulling the purple-headed
meadow-grass from its close sheath, and nibbling the yellow-white waxen
stalks absently. That was a home-taste! She stopped thinking more
serious thoughts, to smile down at the nibbled stalk in her hand. "You
taste of childhood...." she said to the blade of grass. Then she rose to
her feet. Charlotte was calling her. As she went towards the house she
mused:
"If I ever write another book of verse, I shall call it
'_Risorgimento_.'"
For the next two years, winter and summer, Sophy remained at
Sweet-Waters. She felt herself a rich woman in these days, for Gerald
had insisted on continuing the allowance that he had made Cecil, to her
and Cecil's son. This allowance she found to be two thousand pounds a
year. Now that she had become a widow with a son to care for, she grew
thrifty. During these two years at Sweet-Waters, Judge Macon invested
for her every penny of her allowance, with the exception of four hundred
pounds a year. This sum, together with her own income of one thousand
dollars, enabled her to share the expenses of the household and provide
comfortably for herself and Bobby in all other respects. She remembered
that at any moment Gerald might marry, and the allowance cease. She
knew, of course, that in case Gerald died without issue, Bobby would
succeed to the title. About the property, whether it were all entailed
or only a part of it, she did not know. She had been quite happy to find
that under the English Guardianship of Infants Act, 1886, she, the
mother, was sole guardian of her son, as Cecil had appointed no other.
One of her greatest trials, after the first shock of her husband's
death, had been the dread that Lady Wychcote might have some control
over Bobby. It was with bitter reluctance that his grandmother parted
with him. She had exacted a promise from Sophy that she would not allow
too long a time to elapse before bringing him back to England. "Five
years ... I must have five years all to myself," Sophy had answered. It
seemed to her that, even in five years' time, she would not be able to
come to Dynehurst without horror.
"Do you propose to make an American of Cecil's son?" Lady Wychcote had
asked bitterly.
"No. I realise that Bobby must be educated in England. But he will only
be seven years old in five years from now. I am not so unreasonable as
you think me. If I am to live to take care of him I must go home for a
time," Sophy had answered.
The quiet magic of that first homecoming held through the years that
followed. If a rose could "shut and be a bud again" it would feel much
as Sophy felt during those tranquil years at Sweet-Waters.
Her nephews adored her. She had "a way" with boys. When she went to
ride, they usually scuttled along on their ponies, one at either rein.
Her "guard of honour" she called them. Joey, the eldest, went to school
in winter, but Charlotte taught Jack herself--he was only eight. And he
used to make Joey glum with envy during the holidays by telling him of
how, in the autumn evenings, Aunt Sophy and he (Jack) would roast
chestnuts together before tea--while she told him "Jim hummers of fairy
stories."
Sophy read a good deal, but nothing that could touch her too nearly. She
was afraid of stirring the deeper self that seemed so sound asleep.
It was odd how bits of her own girlish verse had kept haunting her ever
since her return. One she often thought of at this time:
"Frailly partitioned is the Inn of Life:
I will go very softly, lest perchance
I rouse the traveller Sorrow...."
During the autumn of her first year at Sweet-Waters a strange quickening
came to her spirit. It came swift and sudden, without warning, as such
things always come. "Whereas I was blind, now I see," said the man
restored to sight by miracle. Whereas Sophy's creative will had been
dead within her, now it lived. It was like the immemorially old and ever
new mystery of conception. Her mind was with child--in a supreme, sweet
pang it revealed itself. The triumphant blue of an October sky glowed
through her window. It was ablaze with silver cloud-sails. Sophy knelt
gazing up at this splendour, and within her all was splendour--a glory
of thanksgiving--a glory of conscious fertility. The majestic blue of
the sky seemed to her like God manifest.