NEW RELATIONS
“Little Windows,” Mount Hebron, N. C.,
October 20th.
_Dearest Carin_:
Yes, the letter is from Azalea, though she is in a place that neither you
nor she ever heard of before.
“Little Windows.”
Are you wondering what they are, or what it is?
It is the name of a cottage on the top of Mount Hebron. You have seen
Hebron, looking like a cloud, from the top of our own Mount Tennyson.
The cottage belongs to Mr. and Mrs. David Knox, and, Oh, Carin, they—
But I must begin at the beginning.
In my last letter I told you how wretched Father McBirney was feeling.
Well, he grew worse and worse, till at last he did not know a moment when
he was free from pain. Jim and I tried to keep things going, but it was
hard. We began to grow anxious about money and the bare necessaries.
Then I said:
“I’m going out to see about the mountain chairs. I’m going to ride
Paprika over the mountains and get up the contracts with the
chair-makers. Then, if they’ll not haul them to market, Jim must.”
Mother objected. So did Father. I reminded them how they had always
said that a woman was perfectly safe in these mountains. But it was
different, it seemed, when the woman was their own girl. However, I
overcame their objections, and one rainy morning I set forth on my pony
with my saddlebags well packed with food and clothing, and with carefully
written directions from Father McBirney in my pocket.
“Stick to them there orders,” said Pa, “and you can’t go wrong, Zalie.
Except, maybe at the Trillers. I said for you to go to where the branch
turns by the two black gums, but it might so be that Triller has cut down
them gums. Seems as if he can’t take no rest while there’s a tree
standin’ around his place. But anyhow, if you follow the branch after it
takes a bend—that is to say, after you have taken the right-hand road
turning off from the Session’s pike—then you can’t a-miss it.”
“I don’t mean to miss it,” I declared. “Don’t you worry, you two.”
Jim wasn’t at home. I made a point of going while he was down at Lee
with some timber. He never would have let me go in peace.
I was not at all afraid. Indeed, I was very happy. I grew up on the
road, as you remember, Carin. It isn’t as if I always had been
house-bound. The woods were very still and lovely, with gray veils
falling in among the trees, and the distance all hidden. The great tree
trunks with their green moss and their lichen looked beautiful. I had
been feeling a little gray in my mind, and the day just suited me.
By noon, though, I was chilly and rather miserable, though my raincoat
kept me dry enough. But I was longing for a house, as you may well
imagine, and just then, sure enough, I saw a tiny cabin in a clearing. I
slipped off Paprika, and knocked at the door. No one answered. A smell
of wood smoke came out from the chimney and I knew there was a fire
inside, and I did want awfully to sit by it. Really, my teeth were
chattering. So I tried the door. It was not locked, and I went in and
crouched before the fire in the great blackened fireplace. It was very
homy, with its great kettle of soup hanging over the coals, and its
comfortable mountain chairs, thickly padded with cushions covered with
butternut homespun. There were braided rugs on the floor, and in the
darkest corner, one lofty bedstead with posts and a wonderful pieced
bedquilt. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that everything was
_outrageously_ clean, but on the other hand, it was not disagreeably
unclean—just an easy medium. Anyway, the fire was a blessing and the
soup a temptation.
So what do you think I did?
Yielded to temptation, of course. I dished myself out a good helping of
the soup, took some of my own bread from my lunch box, and ate till I was
satisfied. Meantime, I had got as warm as toast and felt as if I had
lived in that house forever. Then I took a little snapshot picture of
myself from my notebook and laid it on the table with some loaf sugar,
some coffee and a fine piece of Mother McBirney’s honey cake, and wrote:
_This is the picture of the girl who sat by your fire and ate some of
your soup_. _It is the first time she ever helped herself to
anything_, _but she enjoyed it so much that she means to stop again
the next time she is passing and see if there is some more of that
delicious soup and to ask how it is made_. _Here are some little
presents_, _which please accept_.
_Azalea McBirney_.
Well, this is just an incident, and I only mention it to show you what a
happy time I had at the beginning. I could not dream how things would
change with me.
In the early afternoon I visited two of the houses to which I was to go,
and arranged about the number and kinds of chairs the men were to
furnish. I drew up contracts for them to sign, for I thought that would
be businesslike. Anyway, it pleased me to do it, and I think the
chair-makers liked it too. It gave both of us a nice efficient feeling.
They wanted me to stay at the last house I visited, and there was such a
darling little baby there that I almost did, but I decided that I’d
better be getting on and try to reach the Triller’s before sundown.
Paprika was getting a bit fagged, but I know how quickly she rests up, so
I hurried her along, getting, I confess, just a trifle worried as I found
myself on strange roads, with the mist settling all about me.
It was very still. The mist seemed to muffle everything. No birds were
singing, and I could not hear any creature in the woods, nor any falling
water, and as there was no wind, the trees were motionless. Everything
rested under a gray enchantment, and it gave me a very strange feeling.
Yet I liked it. I felt as if something were going to happen.
And something did. But, Carin, it was not in the least what I would have
imagined or wished for. It was as different as it could possibly be.
I have said that everything was very still—Oh, perfectly still. Then
came a noise from afar, like a gathering wind, yet not a leaf stirred on
the trees. The sound grew louder and louder. It seemed like a tempest.
I trembled and so did Paprika. A moment later around the turn of the
gray road came a sort of monster—an awful thing, all snout and flaming
eyes. I knew in one terrible second what it was, of course.
An automobile—the first I ever had seen, face to face and eye to eye.
Paprika, who had not looked at pictures to any great extent—except,
perhaps, those on bill boards—did not know at all what it was. She gave
one wild scream like a wounded horse and dashed straight up the bank.
Then she looked back over her shoulder as if doubting her senses, saw the
horrible thing again, heard its roaring and snuffling, and plunged on.
There in the thick of the woods, with the mist still gathering, I could
not see how to guide her, and anyway, she was beyond management. So, in
a moment more I felt myself—I who never had been thrown in my life—going
over her head.
And that was all, Carin dear, for four days, so they tell me. Four days.
You will wonder where I was when I opened my eyes. This letter paper
will tell you. I was, and I am, at “Little Windows,” which is the name,
as I have already explained, of a cottage on the top of Mount Hebron. Of
course I can not say for sure that it is the loveliest place in the
world, for I have seen but few places, not being like you, Carin,
darling, forever going to beautiful spots. But at any rate it is lovely
beyond my power to describe, with its great valleys and gulches, and its
near acquaintance with stars and sun risings and moon settings.
When first I opened my eyes I was in a quiet bedroom. The walls were
silver gray, and of wood. There were no pictures. The little windows
were without curtains and looked right out at the wonderful world. It
was sunset and from where I lay I could see it, crimson as the banners of
a king. I could hear a fire leaping and rejoicing in some room beyond,
and voices—two voices. A man and a woman were talking together, rather
anxiously, I thought.
“They are talking of me,” I decided. And then I began to remember.
“Is my neck broken?” I asked myself. And I wriggled it. It wriggled in
the good old way.
“It’s my back!” I decided. So I tried to sit up. I was pretty dizzy,
but my back worked perfectly. I tried both legs and both arms. They
were just as active as I could wish. I poked my ribs. They appeared to
be in their right places. And then I grew frightfully weary. I wanted
to cry, yet I felt it would be too much of an effort. It seemed as if I
were sinking down, down through gray mist. Everything floated away from
before me, and I knew nothing more for a time.
Then somebody brought in a light. It was not a very large or a very
bright light, but it managed to reach the queer, shadowy place where I
was living, and to make me open my eyes.
“How do you do, ma’am?” I heard myself saying.
The lady who carried the lamp nearly dropped it. But she controlled
herself and set it on a table. Then she came and hung over me and said
in a voice that trembled:
“I’m very well, thank you. How are you?”
We have both laughed about it since—about our speaking to each other in
that queer formal way. But we had to make some sort of a beginning, and
perhaps that was as good as any.
“I am all right, thank you, ma’am,” I said. “I tried myself all over a
while ago, and there is nothing broken.”
“No,” said the lady, “there is nothing broken.” But she looked at me
doubtfully, and with a queer kind of curiosity.
“Do you remember that you were hurt?” she asked. “That you were thrown
from your horse and hurt?”
I nodded.
“My pony?” I asked. “Is she well?”
“Oh, yes, she’s all right. She wasn’t hurt. But you were, and my
husband—it was his machine that frightened your pony—picked you up and
brought you here.”
“Thank you,” I said. Then I began to wish she would go away and leave me
alone. I wanted to go back into that queer, gray, silent place of mine
again, where sort of shadowy things went by in a long procession, without
one of them stopping to bother me with questions. I did think I would
enjoy looking at the lady and see what she was like, but I was too lazy
and so I decided I would do that another time. Only I could see that she
was tall, that her hair was golden, and that she was very thin. That
seemed enough for the present; so I closed my eyes.
Then presently I felt someone putting something between my lips. It was
soup. And that made me laugh. I thought about the house where I had
helped myself to the soup. I had liked it better than this—it had had
more flavor.
“What are you laughing about?” asked the lady.
I felt terribly silly. I remembered something from “Alice.”
“Soup of the evening, beautiful soup,” I said. Then I laughed some more.
I couldn’t quit. Suddenly I heard a voice roaring:
“Stop that!”
So I stopped and looked to see who had spoken to me that way. It was a
tall man—a terribly tall man. The shadow of him ran along the floor for
yards and doubled up on the ceiling.
“Who are you?” I asked. I was quite angry.
Then he bowed—and you ought to have seen that shadow bow at the same
time. It was the funniest thing, and it nearly set me off again, but I
crumpled up the sheet in my hands and squeezed it as hard as I could to
keep from giggling.
“David Knox,” said the gentleman, “who was unfortunate enough to be the
cause of all of your trouble.”
“I am glad to meet you,” I said politely. His bow was so nice I forgave
him for yelling: “Stop that!”
“Lorena,” he said under his voice, “I think everything is going to be all
right.”
Now you wouldn’t think that remark would make me laugh, would you? Oh,
Carin, I’m so ashamed of it, now I remember. But I began to sing:
“‘The years roll slowly by, Lorena,’” and then when I couldn’t think of
the next line I cried: “Why doesn’t somebody tell me what comes next?”
Well, they told me if I didn’t keep still they would go out and leave me
alone. I didn’t want to be left alone, because just then I took a sort
of turn and was afraid to sink down into that gray, still place where I
had been. So I said:
“Oh, please stay, please stay, and I will tell you why I laughed at the
soup.”
So before they could stop me I had told them about it.
“Some day,” I said, “I am going back and call on that woman. I will give
her some patterns for weaving, and maybe she will have some old, old ones
that she will give me.”
“Can you weave?” asked the lady. “You are very young and—and not a
mountain girl, are you?”
“Oh, I’m a mountain girl,” I said, remembering back just as far as dear
Mother McBirney and the cabin with my bedroom in the loft. “I’m Azalea
McBirney of Tennyson Mountain, and I’m—I’m a weaver.”
“Azalea,” murmured the lady. “That was the name of poor Jack’s wife,
wasn’t it? I always thought it a sweet name.”
Something shot through my brain. It was like a stroke of lightning. It
was the strangest thing that ever happened to me. In a second, by some
power I can’t explain, I began to know things. I saw them as if they
were a vision. I sat right up in bed, and pushed my hair back from my
face. I recollect that I kept pushing it back and pushing it back, as if
it got in between me and what I wanted to understand.
“What Jack? What Jack?” I demanded.
“Jack Knox, my dead brother,” said the man soothingly. “No one you know
I am sure, my dear. Don’t excite yourself, please.”
“Jack Knox! Jack Knox!” I said. “That was the man that married my
little mama and left her to care for me alone. Jack Knox! No, I don’t
know him. I don’t remember him at all. And I’m glad of it. Jack Knox!
Jack Knox!”
You know it isn’t like me, Carin, to feel angry at anyone. But my mind
seemed to have no resistance. Whatever idea got into it insisted on
raging around in it. I couldn’t stop it. I was ashamed, and yet I
couldn’t manage myself.
I felt the lady, Mrs. Knox, taking hold of me with those long, soft, cool
hands of hers and forcing me back on the bed.
“Lie still,” she begged. “Do lie still, Miss Azalea. You mustn’t care
about anything. No one shall do you any harm, and we’ll not even let
troublesome ideas come near you if we can help it.”
“Did you not say,” said the gentleman, “that your name was McBirney?”
“Yes, yes, McBirney. Don’t you know Ma and Pa McBirney? Why, everyone
knows them. They take orphans in. At least they took me in. They would
have taken my little mama in, only she was dead, so they put her beneath
the Pride of India tree beside their own Molly. You can go see for
yourself. You will know the house by the Pride of India tree and the
gourds before the door. The gourds are for the martins—dozens and dozens
of martins. The martins will show you the way if you like. Or the
bees—thousands of bees.”
“Hush, hush,” whispered the lady. “David, go and take the light. Hush,
Azalea, hush. It is all right. Your little mama would want you to
hush.”
She began singing the song with her own name in it.
“The years roll slowly by, Lorena.”
I went to sleep. But this time it was different. I did not seem to be
sinking into that chilly gray place where the visions were. I just went
to sleep the way I ought.
The next morning when I awoke I was quite sensible and calm. I saw the
world as it was, and remembered all my life, and knew that I had come by
a strange, strange chance, among my dead father’s people. David Knox was
his elder brother, and Lorena Knox, with her yellow hair and her long
cool hands, was David’s wife. It made me deeply satisfied—not exactly
happy, but deeply satisfied.
I ate the breakfast they brought me, and after a while I was taken out
into the sitting room. It was a beautiful room, large and square and
quiet, with a great fireplace of gray stone, and more little uncurtained
windows looking out at the green and purple world. So then I sat up and
looked at these people.
“I have never before seen anyone save my little poor mama who belonged to
me,” I said. “It is very strange, to be here with you.”
“Do you like it?” asked Mrs. Knox.
“I am a little afraid,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I want you to like me and I am afraid you may not.”
“Oh, but why? We already do!”
“Do you? Oh, I’m glad. Life has been—”
“How has it been?”
“Lonesome, sometimes. Interesting, of course, and nice, but lonesome. I
was always taking favors from other people. I had no one of my own.
There was only—only the Pride of India tree with mama under it. I used
to go out and talk to it, but—”
“Hush,” said the lady. “Do not weep, Azalea. Save all your strength for
our sakes. I cannot doubt that what you tell me is true. I want you to
see something.”
She brought me a little album open at the face of a young man. Carin,
darling, when I looked at it, I knew it was the face of my father. It
was like my own face, only a man’s and bolder. And yet, so like!
“My father!” I said. “I never saw his face before.”
“It is wonderfully like your own,” said Mr. Knox. “And now you must call
me your Uncle David, Azalea; and you must call my dear wife your Aunt
Lorena. Remember, you must never feel lonely any more.”
Then I suddenly thought of Mother McBirney waiting for me, and watching
and watching the road, and praying and wondering, and I cried out:
“Oh, my dear Mother McBirney! I can never leave her—never!”
“But someone else has a claim on you now,” said my Uncle David. Carin,
think of having a right really to write that: “My Uncle David!”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“I do not mean your Aunt Lorena and myself,” he said. “I mean that you
have a grandmother and that it will be the happiest hour of her old age
when she takes the daughter of her favorite son in her arms.”
“Not a grandmother? A grandmother of my own?”
“Indeed you have, and a very wonderful and proud old lady she is. The
grief of her life was the waywardness of her son. She cannot realize
that he is dead. We have to watch her lest she steal out to meet him in
secret as she did in the old days when his father turned him from home.
She used to creep from the house to meet him and to take him money, for
she lived in the light of his handsome countenance. So it is your duty,
Azalea, to go to her.”
“A grandmother,” I said, “of my very own!”
It seemed wonderful—like having a mother, only more majestic. I can’t
explain what I felt.
And I can’t write any more just now, darling Carin. My aunt has kept
warning me that I must put my pen down. So I obey. Another day you
shall know the rest.
_As always_,
_Azalea_.