CROSSROADS
Mallowbanks, November 15.
_Carin_, _always best and dearest_:
Here I am, back again. Back from England, back from Italy. The first
seemed to me like the great Mother of my Mind; the second like the
eternal Mother of my Soul. Always, as long as I live, I shall dream of
them.
And this is a good place for dreaming. Indeed, there is little else to
do here. The old house lies in perpetual quiet. The garden is dead
again. You will remember that I have only seen it when it was dead. I
did not mean to do it, but by accident, when I was walking in it, I came
on the little pool where my darling grandmother was drowned, and there
were the three swans, aimlessly floating about, just as they did that
terrible twilight.
But I don’t know that the swans go about any more aimlessly than we do
here in the house. There is very little coming and going, for we are in
mourning. Uncle does not take a daily paper. He says it frets him and
that there is really no use. He says he can get all the essentials from
the _Weekly Eyrie_. And so, I suppose, he can. But all this helps to
keep us very quiet. It is as if we lived in an ivory tower. We might be
enchanted, so little do we know of other lives than our own.
I said something like this to Aunt Lorena, and she replied:
“It is only the reaction after your journey. A person is likely to feel
rather let down on first coming home from a tour. Can you not amuse
yourself, Azalea, thinking over the places you have seen? Oughtn’t you
to be taking up your French again? I think I had better arrange for
Monsieur Angier to come from Charleston once a week to teach you.”
I thanked her, and went away to my room, presumably to do as she
recommended and “think.” But thinking is not living, Carin, and I want
to live. I don’t want to remember. I want to do! I’m tired of having
other people do things for me; I’m tired of being treated as if I were
better than other people; I’m tired of being cheated of my youth by being
made to act as if I were seventy.
Yes, that is what it amounts to. I am being cheated of my youth. I am
so strong and well, so restless and full of energy that I nearly expire
in this soft house, where everyone goes quietly, and where we must not
even pass things at the table lest we break rules.
Carin, I want to “reach” for the bread and to eat it with mountain honey,
and I’m starving for one of Ma McBirney’s corn cakes, and I’d like better
than anything to have some bacon and eggs for _dinner_—with just barely
enough to go around.
I tell you, I’m eating too much, I’m sleeping too much. I’m moping too
much! I wish I could get on Paprika’s back and go scurrying down the
valley, whooping as I go.
Well, let’s talk of something else.
You say that Mrs. Kitchell is really going to marry the feed store man.
That is fine. I must think what to send her for a wedding present. I
shall make it something quite gorgeous—nothing sensible at all. She has
had so much good sense in her life that she must be nearly dead of it. I
think I’ll get her a table lamp with a rose-colored shade, and perhaps a
rose silk table cover to go with it. Dear Anne Kitchell! I’m so glad
some rose color is coming into her life.
What about the Mountain Industries? Is she going to give up the
superintendence of them? If so, who is to take her place?
You say someone has bought the little bench on Mount Tennyson that I
loved so much. Can it really be so? Of course I might have expected it,
for it was the best building place on the whole mountain. But, Oh, my
spring of sweet water, and my darling tulip trees—which it appears aren’t
mine, after all, and now never will be.
That was where I was going to build my little shack and hold open house.
Everyone who went by was to be at liberty to stop there, and I was going
to share with them whatever I had, and to listen to their stories, and to
give them comfort. Now I share nothing. No one tells me anything. I
give comfort to no one.
But there I am, mooning again and making myself sound very ungrateful in
the bargain. But I’ll tell you, Carin, Uncle David and Aunt Lorena do
not really need me. They are as kind as they can be, and of course we
have some very social and happy hours together, but the whole truth of it
is that they are quite bound up in each other and do not really need
anyone else at all in their lives. Never having had any children, and
having found each other so satisfying, the presence of another person in
the house is more of an interruption than a satisfaction to them. No, I
know I am not needed here. That realization is growing on me. Perhaps
it is my fault. Maybe I have not made myself needed. But at any rate,
this is the rather melancholy truth.
Yet _is_ it a melancholy truth? Why not cheerfully face the fact? Why
not look the whole situation in the face?
For, Oh, Carin, there is a place where I am needed. It is at Lee, at the
Mountain Industries. I know that no one else can look after them as well
as I. Who else knows so many of the mountain people? With whom would
they be as free and friendly as with Azalea McBirney, the waif-girl they
saw grow up among them, the girl they taught to weave and sew and knit?
And now that I have been so much with people of a different sort, I mean
with the friends of my uncle and aunt, I am fairly well qualified to meet
the other sort of people, too, the visitors to Lee, who are the patrons
of the Industries. Yes, I should feel quite at ease with them now. I
think I would know ways of bringing them and the mountain people
together.
That introduces me to a perfectly beautiful thought! What is more, it is
the first time I have reached it. I am glad I came across it when I was
writing to you, because that lets you in at the find. It is this: All I
have lived and experienced the last year has simply been a part of my
preparation for doing what I always wanted to do. It has made me twice
as fit as I was before, to be the friend and teacher of my dear mountain
people. Isn’t that so, Sister Carin? Am I not ready now to come back to
Lee and take my place there, and to spin my silver web? Oh, Carin, now,
at last, I can be the woman your dear father and mother wanted me to be.
I can serve the people toward whom I feel the greatest loyalty—the people
of the mountains, to whom, for Mother McBirney’s sake, I owe endless
gratitude. But gratitude quite aside, I want to do it for myself. I
want to be helped in helping them. I want to live in broadening their
lives.
So I think I am going to make up my mind to come back to Lee.
Yes, I think I am.
. . .
I can feel myself making up my mind!
. . .
It is made up!
I am going over to Delight Ravanel’s to tell her about it. She will
object, and then I can listen to my own arguments and make myself sure I
am doing right. Then I shall come home and let Uncle David and Aunt
Lorena know.
How excited I am!
I have just rung for young James to saddle Bess. Now I shall put on my
riding habit.
Carin, don’t you wish you were going to be along?
_Hastily and happily_,
_Azalea_.
Monrepos, one hour later.
Carin, Miss Ravanel understands everything. She says she will stand by
me. She quite agrees that I must do something, and that I have a right
to live my life in my own way, just so it is not a selfish way. Now,
giving up a fortune for the sake of liberty can’t be selfish, can it?
Maybe it can. That is another thing I’ll have to think about.
Because, you understand, do you not, that going back to Lee will mean
going back to freedom? I shall claim my privilege of giving up the money
grandmother left me, and of framing my life as seems to suit my
conscience and desire—my deep heart’s desire—the best. That was where I
stood before I went to Europe, and it is where, after all this time, I
still stand. I have tried to see things as my relatives wished me to,
but I have not succeeded. I want to be myself, to make my own choice in
matters that concern my happiness, and to be free to use my own powers.
Dear Carin, while I was merely considering in a vague, abstract way
whether or not I should be able to marry the man of Uncle David’s choice,
it was not so hard. He might, by some possibility, choose the right man.
But that young man I wrote you of when I was abroad, is expected here
soon. His father and Uncle David went to the University of Virginia
together, and he is all that Uncle David thinks a man should be. He is a
fine fellow, too, Gerald Hargreaves is. I concede that. I want him to
be happy—with someone else. He is cultivated, handsome, rich, gracious
and good-tempered. This recommends him. But it does not make me love
him. It might, only—
You know of what my _only_ consists. I cannot forget Keefe. I never
hear from him. I no longer even write to Mary Cecily, his sister. She
stopped writing me, first, and I inferred that Keefe had, in his pride
and sadness, asked her to do so. He would not have any roundabout
communications. He would hear from me straight or not at all. So of
course I stopped writing.
Yet I feel that he remembers. Oh, Carin, I feel that he does. But
whether he does or not really makes no difference. I must be true to my
own heart, and that will not let me say “I love you” to any man save
Keefe.
If I were the old-fashioned sort of a girl, I suppose I should not be
writing in this way, so frankly and unashamed. But what have I to be
ashamed of? I cannot think it is wrong to love Keefe. It seems the
rightest thing in the world to me. I feel no confusion of any sort about
it. I know my own mind. I can look in it as if it were a nice clean
mirror, and I see Keefe there every time.
I have just told Delight Ravanel all this. And what do you think she
did? She kissed me! I had looked for a sharp scolding.
So I am going back home greatly cheered and strengthened. Yet I realize
that it is a hard task I have before me—the hardest that ever has come to
me. How I do hope I shall prove myself brave. I want to be brave more
than anything. I mustn’t cry! I won’t cry! It is too important a
matter to cry about.
Miss Ravanel says she will come to Lee to visit me. She hasn’t been
anywhere for twelve years, except to Charleston now and then, and
sometimes to a distant neighbor’s. I want her to come and show my
mountain women how to make blue and white work. It is a kind of
embroidery and lace combined, made on a linen base. She says she will.
Isn’t she a dear? I hope you’ll not mind her wrinkles and think her old.
She looks a little old, but she’s really very young, judged by the things
that count.
Well, she has given me encouragement and tea and sponge cake and this
beautiful promise to come and visit me in what she calls my exile.
Exile! In Lee! Near you and all the others I love best. The only
drawback to the whole thing will be seeing somebody else’s house go up on
my treasured building site. I do hope to goodness that whoever is
building it will put up a charming house. I couldn’t stand it to see an
ugly one there.
I’m writing this while Miss Delight is down contracting with a man for
six live turkeys. I can’t imagine what she is going to do with them.
How could she eat them all by herself, or even with her servants to help?
There are only two and neither has any teeth to speak of. Perhaps she
likes to hear turkeys gobble. I agree with her that it is a cheerful
sound.
Well, she is returning. Farewell. I will have Miss Ravanel’s man mail
this letter for me.
_Excitedly and rather fearfully_,
_Azalea_.
* * * * *
Mallowbanks, November 18.
_My Carin_:
It is done, my dear, it is done. I am free. And the getting of the
freedom has not been so terrible as I feared it would be.
I went home from Miss Ravanel’s that afternoon with my courage, as you
remember, screwed to the sticking point. It was a glorious afternoon,
Carin, and although the summer was gone, everywhere there were things to
remind me of how plenteous it had been. I had not ridden far before I
came to the Knox estate, which is marked by low stone posts with the
letter “K” upon the top. The sunshine was over everything—over the wide,
well-kept fields, the beautiful woodlands, the creeks, the broad, noisy
shallows, the winding roads, the houses of the tenants and the noble
structure of Mallowbanks. If ever there was a fair domain it is this.
And half of it is mine—or was mine. I have given it up—resigned all
claim to it. I can hardly realize it yet. But I must soon set my hand
to certain signatures, and then my sacrifice will be made regular and
legal, and Azalea will go out of this house as poor as when she entered
it. Almost, that is. For it is true that I shall have an annuity which
will last as long as I do, and will provide for my needs. Once, I
suppose, I would have called that a fortune. But it seems very little
now. Since I came here, I have spent more a month on gifts than this
will come to.
But never mind all that. I must tell you what happened. As I said, it
was a glorious afternoon, and I found my uncle and aunt sitting in the
great hallway before a fire, laughing and talking together very happily.
When I saw how contented they were with each other, and how perfectly
they fitted into that beautiful home, I was able to comfort myself by
thinking of all they had to make their life rich. They did not, as I
have so often said, really need me.
So, without even waiting to change from my habit to my house garments, I
went up to them and kissed them both, and then I stood by the side of the
great fireplace and prayed for the right words to come. All I could
think of was this—or something like this:
“Uncle David,” I began, “Aunt Lorena, I have come to say something very
important.”
Uncle David looked up sharply. I had had a letter that morning from
Gerald Hargreaves and he knew it. I think he thought that what I had to
say related to that. So I shook my head at him, and he knew I had been
reading his thoughts.
“It has to do,” I said, “with a princess who was not fit to be a
princess. She was a princess with a very queer life. She had her high
inheritance, but she was born in poverty for all of that, and she was
reared in poverty, and in the days when she was poor she used to dream
that some day her kingdom would be given to her, and that she would find
her own people and live with them, beloved and loving. There was no
reason to suppose this dream would ever come true, and certainly the
princess never supposed it would. Dreaming the dream was just a game
that she played to pass away the time.
“Then, one day, by the strangest chance, her people found her—her own
people—and so kind and noble were they that they at once acknowledged her
and took her to her own kingdom—though it might all have been theirs had
they not been so good and true that it was a pleasure to them to do right
and to divide it between themselves and her. They did all they could to
make the princess happy. The great house and the garden, the fields and
woods, were for her to enjoy. She was taken on a journey to beautiful
lands. She was given tutors and books, gowns and jewels, a horse after
her own heart and many luxuries which it would take too long to name.
But there was one thing she did not have, and that was the right to make
her own choice of the sort of life she wished to lead. She must stay
within her kingdom, she must marry the prince that her kin should choose,
and she must live as became one of her rank.
“Now it so happened that the manner in which the princess had been reared
did not make it possible for her to consent to this, although she wished
from the bottom of her heart to pay full duty to these kind and true
kinsmen of hers. But she had a higher duty yet than that, and that was
to be true to her own soul. Day by day and hour by hour this truth grew
upon her: that it would be a great sin for her not to be what she was
made to be. ‘Be what thou art’ she had once read in a book. ‘Be what
thou art.’ She could not forget it. It seemed to her that there was
great wisdom in that saying.
“So she has come to tell her dear kinspeople that she must let the
fortune go. The houses and lands, the streams and forests, are dear to
her, but they are not so dear as liberty. No, not nearly so dear. But
there is one thing that is dear to her beyond words, and that is the love
of her kinspeople, and that she never means to let go if she can hold on
to it. Whatever the cords are that tied them and her together, she wants
to make stronger and faster, for as long as she lives she will love them
and be grateful to them.
“Yet she must be free. Will they understand, and forgive?”
Then I cried. I said I wouldn’t, that I mustn’t; but I did. Not with
sobs. No, but those miserable tears simply poured out of my eyes over my
cheeks and I couldn’t stop them. And Aunt Lorena cried, too. Only she
cried slowly. She sat with her long hands clasped and let the big, lazy
tears roll down her cheeks. As for Uncle David, he grew red and then
white, and for what seemed a long time I stood there, waiting, until
after a long time Uncle David said:
“Come to me, child,” and I went to him, and kneeled down by him, and he
brushed back my hair and kissed me on the forehead.
“You were never,” he said in a voice that trembled a little, “so true a
Knox as you are to-day, my dear.”
Oh, Carin, wasn’t that beautiful? I had been afraid of his disapproval,
but now I seemed, in a way I cannot describe, almost more afraid of his
approval. It was hard for me to stand his kindness when I had been so
determined to go my way.
Then I heard Aunt Lorena talking, but for a moment or two my heart and
brain were in such an uproar that I could not really make out what she
was saying. But at last the words got through to me.
“We know, Azalea, many things which you, perhaps, do not give us credit
for knowing. We know that you are full of ambition and that the life
here seems meaningless to you. Life has trained you in a different
school from what it has us. We believe if you had waited, you would have
come to see opportunities for great good in this life here, but since it
truly does not appeal to you, I for one think you ought to be allowed to
go your way and live the life you like. I know—we know—that there lies
behind this resolution your determination to have a free choice in other
matters than your vocation. Am I not right in this?”
“Yes,” I said, and found the courage to look straight into her eyes.
“I do not blame you,” she said. “I married the man I loved, and I
believe every woman should do that if she can.”
“At any price?” asked Uncle David, looking first at me and then at her.
“Oh, at any price consistent with honor,” she said.
“The price you pay is a large one,” he said to me. “I doubt if you
appreciate how large.”
“It would mean nothing to me if my heart always hung heavily in me,” I
said.
“No,” he agreed.
“No,” echoed Aunt Lorena.
They are very tender with me. They deeply regret the conditions of the
will, but they have no power to change them. As for me, I do not wish
any change made. I want all left as my little grandmother desired. I
resent nothing. I have too much for which to be thankful.
Carin, it seems incredible, but in a few days I shall be at Lee. I will
wire you when I am coming. Ride up to see Mother McBirney. Let her know
everything. Tell everyone I am coming home. Oh, how my heart beats at
thought of it! I can write no more. I cannot see my page for these
silly tears.
_Azalea_.