"What do you think she means when she says 'her good'? Is it like
feeling God's near?" I asked. She shook her head.
"I don't believe it," she said. "It's more human than that. I think it's
someone _out there_ that Moira loves--"
"How you talk!" I said. "Someone out there! If you keep on like this
you'll be fey, as my old grandmother used to call it."
"Well," she said, "when you get to where I am, lots of things that seem
curious at first thought don't seem a mite more curious than birth or
death. Not as curious even, when you come to think about it. What's
there so curious I'd like to know, Jane McQuarry, about sensing the
feelings of somebody else off to a distance? How about your own mother,
the night your brother was lost at sea; didn't she know that and hadn't
you all mourned him dead for two months before the real word came to
you?"
I couldn't deny this, and I felt that the wind was taken out of my
sails. I suppose it was all along with that feeling of hers, with not
making a difference between those that were dead and those that were
not. All the world was mysterious, and she had a sense of the wonder of
the least blade of grass in it, so the things that were not so usual as
you might say didn't disturb her any.
"Why," says she, "sometimes I sit in a maze just to look at this room."
"Why, what ails this room?" said I.
'T was a room like many you've seen hereabouts, with a good horse-hair
sofy and the mahogany furniture nice and shiny from being varnished
every spring, and over the sofy was thrown a fur rug made in lozenges of
harp seal and some other fur and a dark fur border. It was real
pretty--it was always wonderful to me that folks like Eskimos can make
the things they do. There was some little walrus ivory carvings on the
what-not, and on the mantel a row of pink mounted shells, and the model
of her father's barkentine when he was in the China trade was on the
wall in a glass case.
There's many rooms alike here in this town, with the furniture kept so
nice and the things the men's brought back with 'em from the north and
south, as you'd expect in a seafaring town--
"What ails this room?" I said.
"Why, it's the folks who made it," says she. "So many and from so far.
The whole world's here!" She went on like that until it seemed to me the
room was full of folks--savages and Eskimos and seafaring men dead a
long while ago, all of 'em. It was wonderful if you looked at it that
way.
"So," she said, jumping out on me sudden, "what's there strange about
Moira feeling like she does when there's rooms like this? It's less
common, but it's no more wonderful."
I saw what she meant, though at the time her explanation of Moira seemed
just nonsense to me. Though I'll say I could tell myself when Moira lost
what she called "her good." She'd be like a lost child; she'd be like a
plant without water and without sun.
Except for that she grew up just like any other girl, a favorite with
the children, and a lovely dancer. Only there it was--she had something
that other children didn't. It came and went, and when it went away she
would grow dim like a smoky lamp. I got so used to it that it just
seemed to me like a part of Moira. Nothing that marked her off from
nobody, or that gave you anything like a queer and creepy feeling about
her. Quite the contrary. She just seemed to have an abiding loveliness
about her that everybody else ought to have but didn't, not so much.
When Kenneth Everett came along, "Well," thinks I, "I might have saved
myself the worry." For worry I always had for fear that this other
feeling of hers would cut her off from the regular things in life. It
would have been all very well in another time in the world when a girl
could go off and be a saint, but there was no such place for a girl to
go in a town like ours.
There was no one but Moira for Kenneth from the first. He was as dark as
she was fair; sunlight and starshine they seemed to me. It used to make
me happy just to see him come storming in calling out, "Moira!" from the
time he passed the Rose of Sharon bush at the gate.
Things in those days seemed right to me. Maybe I didn't see far enough;
maybe I wanted too much for her--all the things it seems to me a woman
in this life ought to have--and that I hadn't understood what made
Moira the way she was. No wonder he loved her. I wish I could make you
feel the way Moira looked. You had to feel it in your heart some way.
She was fair and her face was tanned with the wind to a lovely golden
color and her cheeks were smooth like ripe fruit and her eyes were blue
and steady, so dark sometimes they seemed black--seeing eyes, that
looked beyond what Mis' MacFarland called "the veil of things." She
always seemed to me as if the spirit of the sea and the dunes between
them was more her father and mother than anything else. That's a
fanciful idea, but she gave you thoughts like that. She was the kind
that makes even plain bodies like me fanciful.
There was days when she looked to me like something out of a lovely
dream--if you can imagine a girl that's been dreamed by the sea and the
dunes come true.
I can't quite tell when I first sensed what Kenneth felt about the times
Moira was _away_, for as she went to the back country--you know how wild
and secret that back country behind the town is--so there was what you
might call the back country of the spirit she used to go to. I guess I
found out how he felt one afternoon when he was waiting for her to come
back from the dunes. She flew in as if she was helped by wings and she
was _listening_--I'd got so used to it by now, it was so part of her,
that I forgot how it might strike lots of folks.
He jumped toward her. "Oh, I've been waiting such a time, Moira! I'm so
glad you're back!"
I knew he'd seen she was "away" and he was putting himself between her
and whatever it was. For a moment she stood looking at him puzzled, as
if it had taken her a minute to come back, and then she was as glad to
see him as he was her.
"Well," thinks I, "when she gets married all her odd ways will go."
I took to watching them, and then and again I'd see him, as you might
say, bring her back to real earth from the shining spot to which her
thoughts went. Then sometimes after he'd go she'd be restless like she
was when she was little when she'd lost "her good."
I could tell Mis' MacFarland was watching her, too, as she'd sit there
praying like she did so much of the time, though it often seemed to me
that her prayers wasn't so much prayers as a kind of getting near to
those she loved.
I was sure then, as I ever was of anything, that Moira loved Kenneth. At
the sound of his voice, light would come to her eyes and color to her
face and her hand would fly to her breast as if there wasn't enough air
in the world for her to breathe. Yet there was something else, too. She
was always sort of escaping from him and then coming back to him like a
half-tamed bird, and all the time he came nearer and nearer to her
heart. All the time he had more of her thoughts. He fought for them.
He loved her. It seemed he understood her. He sensed all that was in her
heart, the way one does with those we love. He'd look at her sometimes
with such anxious eyes as if he was afraid for her, as if he wanted to
save her from something. I couldn't blame him. I'd felt that way myself,
but I'd gotten used to her ways.
Now I saw all over again that there was strange thoughts in her
heart--thoughts that don't rightly belong in the kind of world we live
in now.
It seems queer to you, I suppose, and kind of crazy, but I couldn't
someway see what would become of Moira without "her good." If you'd
lived with her the way I did all those years you'd have seen something
beautiful reflected in her like the reflection of a star in a little
pool at evening, only I couldn't see the star myself, just the
reflection of it, but she saw the star.
I couldn't blame Kenneth; he wanted for her all the things I'd wanted
for her always--and I couldn't bring myself to feel that the reflection
of a star was better than the warm light of the fire from the hearth,
but it was the star that had made her so lovely.
All this time Mis' MacFarland talked liked nothing was going on and all
the time I knew she was watchin'. I'd try and sound her and she'd manage
not to answer.
There came a time when I couldn't hold in. Moira'd been out all day on
the dunes and toward night the fog had swept over us.
She came back out of the fog with a look on her face like a lost soul. I
knew what had happened--I knew what was wrong--yet I couldn't help
crying out:
"What's the matter?"
She just looked at me the way animals do when they suffer and can't
understand. Her mouth was white and her eyes were dark, as if she was in
pain, and when Kenneth came she ran to him as if she would have thrown
herself in his arms to hide. They went out on the porch and that was
when I could hold in no longer.
"What do you think about it?" I asked Mis' MacFarland right plain out.
"About what?" she asked.
I looked to where they was sitting. 'T was a wet night; the windows and
trees seemed like they was crying. The great drops that fell from them,
plop--plop, was like tears. There was a rainbow around the street light
that made it look like the moon had dropped down close. Mis' MacFarland
looked at them and she just shut her mouth and she shook her head and I
could tell she wasn't pleased. Then says she:
"Look!"
The light fell on Moira's face and she was seeing out into the night and
I knew she was _out there_. Kenneth spoke and she answered and yet she
wasn't with him.
He got up and walked up and down. He spoke again, and again she
answered, but Moira's voice answered without Moira. Her face was shining
like silver.
_She'd heard_--she'd found it again.
Then he stood in front of her and said in a strange sort of a voice:
"Moira, what are you doing?"
"Dreaming," she said.
"What are you dreaming about?"
"I don't know--"
"It's not about me, it's nothing about me. Moira, look at me!"
I tell you his tone made my heart bleed. She didn't answer, but looked
out into the fog in that absorbed, happy way of hers.
"Moira," he said again, "Moira!" He couldn't get her; he couldn't reach
her, any more than if she'd stepped into another world. He put his hands
on her shoulders and turned her to him.
"Moira!" he said; his voice was husky with fear. "What do you find out
there?" She turned to him as in a dream. She looked at him and she
looked like some spirit when she spoke.
"I find the one I love!" she said.
"What do you mean?" he said. "What do you mean?"
"The one I love," she said again.
"Do you mean there's someone you love better than you do me?"
She nodded, with that flooding look of wonder on her face.
"I didn't know," she said next. "I didn't know--not--until now--all
about it."
"All about it?" he cried.
"Yes, the meaning of what I felt--that it's someone as real as you, as
real as me--that I love someone out there--someone I can't see."
"Moira!" His voice sent shivers down my back. "You're crazy--you're
mad--you mean--you mean--you love someone you've never met--someone you
_can't see_?" She nodded.
"I've loved him always," she said. "All my life I've known him for ever
and ever--I know him more than anything in the world--from the time I
could think he has lived in my heart--I didn't know him until now--I
only suffered when he wasn't there, and went wandering and searching for
him--and you've kept me from him--for I didn't know--"
"Moira," he called to her in his pain, "don't think these things--don't
feel these things--"
But she only looked at him kindly and as if she were a long way off.
"I love him," she said, "better than life."
He stared at her then, and I saw what was in his mind. He thought she
was crazy--stark, staring crazy. Next he said, "Good night, Moira--my
darling, Moira." And he stumbled out into the fog like a man that's been
struck blind.
But I knew she wasn't crazy. Maybe 't was living with Mis' MacFarland
made me believe things like that. Maybe 't was Moira herself. But I
didn't feel she was any more crazy than I do when I've heard folks
recite, "I know that my Redeemer liveth."
But this isn't the end--this isn't the strangest part! Listen to what
happened next.
There was a storm after the fog and strange vessels came into the
port--and Moira came to Mis' MacFarland and her eyes were starry and
says she:
"I'm going to get 'em to put me aboard that vessel," and she points to a
bark which is a rare thing to see nowadays in these waters.
"He's out there," says she.
I didn't doubt her--I didn't doubt her any more than if she'd said the
sun was shining when my own eyes were blinded by the light of it.
"Go, then," says Mis' MacFarland.
I tell you Moira was dragged out of that house as by a magnet. The sky
had cleared and lay far off and cold, and the wrack of the broken clouds
was burning itself up in the west when I saw a dory cast off from the
vessel.
It was a queer procession came up our path, some foreign-looking
sailors, and they carried a man on a sort of stretcher, and Moira walked
alongside of him. I saw three things about him the same way you see a
whole country in a flash of lightning.
One was that he was the strangest, the most beautiful man I had ever
looked on, and I saw that he was dying.
Then in the next breath I knew he belonged to Moira more than anyone on
earth ever had or would. Then all of a sudden it was as if a hand caught
hold of my heart and squeezed the blood from it like water out of a
sponge, for all at the same time I saw that they hadn't been born at the
right time for each other and that they had only a moment to look into
each other's faces--before the darkness of death could swallow him.
I couldn't bear it. I wanted to cry out to God that this miracle had
come to pass only to be wiped out like a mark in the sand. He was as
different from anyone I'd ever seen as Moira was. How can I say to you
what I saw and felt. I knew that he belonged to Moira and Moira belonged
to him. If I'd have met him at the ends of the earth I'd have known
that they belonged together. We all dream about things like this when
we're young--about there being a perfect love for us somewhere on
earth--but there isn't, because we're not good enough.
The perfect flower can't bloom in most gardens. What these two had was
love beyond love--the thing that poor, blundering mankind's been working
for and straining toward all down the ages.
Love was what they had, not dimmed and tarnished, not the little flicker
that comes for a moment and is gone, like in most of our lives, but the
pure fire. The love that mankind tries to find in God--the final wonder.
Some of us, at most, have a day or hour--a vision that's as far off and
dim as northern lights.
Mis' MacFarland and me looked at each other and, without saying
anything, we walked from the room. I saw tears streaming down her face
and then I realized that I couldn't see for my own, I was crying the way
you may do twice in your life, if you're lucky, because you've seen
something so beautiful, poor, weak human nature can't bear it.
After a long time Mis' MacFarland spoke.
"It has to happen on earth, once in a while," she said, "the heart's
desire to millions and millions of people living and dead--the dream of
all who know the meaning of love. Sometimes it must come true."
That's how it made me feel, and I've always wanted to be a witness to
what I saw--but there aren't many to whom you dare to tell it.
After a time we went back and he was lying there, his face shining like
Moira's had when she'd found him in the dark spaces where she'd had to
search for him. His hair was like dark silver, and his eyes were young
like Moira's and blue as the sea at dawn. Wisdom was what was in his
face, and love--and he lay there, quiet, holding Moira's hand in his.
But even as I looked a change came over him and I saw the end wasn't far
away, and Moira saw it and clung fast to him.
"Take me with you," she said. "I have found you and can't leave you.
I've looked for you so often and I couldn't find you. We lost each
other so many times and the road together was so blind."
"It's all the same," he said, "she knows." He nodded to Mis' MacFarland.
"It's all the same."
Mis' MacFarland motioned to me and I came to her and I was trembling
like a leaf.
"It's only walking into another room," she said.
Moira sat beside him, his hand in hers, pleading with her eyes. He
turned to Mis' MacFarland--"You make her understand," he said, "we all
have to wait our turn. You make her understand that we're all the same."
And we knew that he was talking about life and death. And then, as I
watched, I saw the life of him was ebbing out and saw that Moira knew
it. And then he was gone, just like the slow turning out of a light.
Moira turned to Mis' MacFarland and looked at her, and then I saw she'd
gotten to the other side of grief, to where Mis' MacFarland was--to the
place where there wasn't any death.
"THE FAT OF THE LAND"[21]
[Note 21: Copyright, 1919, by The Century Company. Copyright, 1920,
by Anzia Yezierska.]