Part 11

“You’re the darlingest mother! If you weren’t, I’d be ashamed to tell you. Mammy Lil, I’ve wished sometimes I could murder myself, this last year; I’ve been so cross. It began last summer while I was home on vacation. Everybody in Chatterton made love to Milly or me last summer, except David. He was just as he always was—sweet to both of us, but specially careful of me because he was my brother. And I didn’t feel the same to him at all. I—Mammy Lil, I was as foolish about David as those boys were about us two girls: I was in love with him, over head and ears.” She paused while I stroked her hair.

“You can’t think how ashamed I was. And of course I treated him like a yellow dog. And he behaved _perfectly_. I was sure, though, that he didn’t suspect—he, nor any one else. And then, at the end of the summer, Cousin Jane told me that David and I were to marry. I didn’t believe you’d ever talked to her about it, of course; but I saw in a flash what it would mean to you—and that David might do it to please you. And I was afraid Cousin Jane suspected what a fool I was. And she went to David, too, and told me that, and told him she’d told me. I did want to wring Cousin Jane’s neck; and I think yet she deserved it!

“David and I had a talk. She just butted our heads together till we had to. He said he’d always cared; but he had made up his mind to wait till I was through school and you were at home again: it wasn’t fair not to. He was lovely. But he was so quiet—and so confident, it seemed to me. I tried to lay him out; I was mad. And he wouldn’t blame me a bit for being mad; but he said he hadn’t asked for any answer yet, and wouldn’t take one till he did ask for it; and that we mustn’t worry you with Cousin Jane’s nonsense, and all that.

“Things rocked along at Christmas, except that I cared more than ever. But when I came back last spring to stay, as soon as you were really better, David began to show me that he—you know, Mammy Lil, how much little things can be made to mean. And I began to see he did care just as I did. We were so happy in April! Only, I kept staving the end of it off. I didn’t want to be pinned down too soon. But David—he understood.

“Then Cousin Jane had to take a hand again. She’d found out Bob White wanted to marry me—or thought he did; and Bob is what she calls a ‘catch.’ She nabbed me that day, as I was coming home from Milly’s, and said the hatefullest things you ever heard in your life—that everybody said I was ‘setting my cap’ for David and pretending to be taking care of you when I was just running after him; and that David had given her to understand he felt very badly about it, because he knew you and I wanted it so much!

“I knew as well as I knew my name that was a lie out of whole cloth; but I was just as angry as if it were true. I never had been reconciled to caring about him before he spoke, anyway. So I went to Cousin Jane’s, as she told me to, and listened to Bob White’s praises till I was sick of everything under the sun. And when David and I went out that afternoon—Mammy Lil, can’t you understand?”

“Dear, I did it myself, once; I ought to understand. But I paid for it afterwards, as you have done. When you’re an old lady like me you’ll know better.”

“I know better now,” she said, with a sudden quiver in her voice. “I—I killed David’s respect for me that afternoon.”

“Nonsense, child,” I exclaimed, “he knows you—and loves you—too well for that.”

“He doesn’t love me at all; he can’t. I let him think—I pretended—I’d just been flirting with him; to lead Bob on.” Her voice died in a shamed silence.

This was serious news, considering David’s nature. If he believed she really cared for some one else, I knew it would take a long time for the notion to work out of his head; and while it was in there he wouldn’t stir. And I had promised not to interfere. I stroked her soft hair in silence for a minute.

“David will never change in his love for you, dear,” I said; “it’s too truly a part of him for that. And when people really love one another, they come together, somehow, soon or late; your Daddy Jack and I were hopelessly separated for weeks.”

“We’ve been separated nearly three months,” said Caro, dolefully; “eleven weeks and four days today. But I’m not going to talk about David any more. What hurts me most of all is the way I’ve treated you. You ought to hate me if you don’t. I—”

I laid my hand over her mouth.

“What’s the use of being older than you if I can’t understand, child? And I’ve travelled every step of the way before. Everything that isn’t right will come right between you and David; but with you and me everything is right already. Just drop your troubles under the trees, dearie, as I do, and open your heart to the hills and the sky. Isn’t today worth yesterday’s storm?”

She sat up and looked across the Valley. The mountains stood out in the afternoon sunlight all the clearer for the long shadows already gathering in the hollows; each leaf and grass blade was shining fresh after the rain, and everywhere was a flutter and stir of wings. A nuthatch crept down a locust trunk before us, a yellow-billed cuckoo slipped by overhead; and all down the hillside the swallows swept in long, beautiful curves, their bright breasts shining against the sun.

“Dear,” I said presently, “don’t you see, out of doors here, how wise it is to take the long look at life? The mountains make me ashamed of my fretting. And life is working toward this beauty all the time; the winters in the way don’t matter; they pass. And yet before they pass they teach us to love life better when it re-appears. When your happiness is safe in your hands once more, you won’t hurt it again for a child’s anger or a fool’s speech. I know; for I learned it, too.”

She laid her cheek against my hand in silence, and we watched together while the sun went down. The blue shadows overflowed the hollows of the mountains and met across the green ridges on their sides. Against that shadowed background the poplars of the Garden, smitten by the last rays of sunlight, shone like silver, and the locusts like fronds of gold.

Far below, in the Valley, lay the peace of the coming twilight, and all about us were the soft murmuring of birdlings settling down to rest, and of mothers crooning over them as they slept. And at last the gardener came over from the Madam’s, and wheeled me back, with Caro by my side.

* * * * *

_August 2nd._ The Peon is with David now, and I shall soon be having news. He did not start as early as he hoped, and was detained on the way; but being there at last, he will soon be able to tell me something definite about David’s coming home. I haven’t meddled a meddle: not that I’ve earned any frill to my halo thereby; it’s just that I know by my own past Caro would catch up with me if I tried it, even if I hadn’t promised David. So I’m pinning my hopes to the Peon: he has been so very non-committal that he must have something on his mind. But I can’t share these hopes with Caro, and they wouldn’t help her if I could: she is in that stage of penitence where it is against her principles for her to accept consolation, so far as David is concerned. Her misery, poor little soul, is the only comfort she can allow herself; and if her happiness is to have a thorough recovery, the process cannot be hurried.

* * * * *

_August 5th._ I woke at half-past four this morning to find a fat white cloud sitting on the lawn outside, as if he owned the premises. Not a mountain visible; and beneath the locusts’ misty arches the trees on the neighboring lawn gleam pale and uncertain, mere grey-green ghosts of living things.

The cloud isn’t altogether outside. My books on the stand beside me are arching their covers with the dampness, and my field-glasses are moist to the touch; the room feels dank and uncanny, and the heavy air is hard to breathe. One needs a mental rain-coat on a day like this—especially when no letters come from a sky-larking Peon!

* * * * *

_August 8th._ Days of rain on the parched earth. Gray days, with soft mists heaped against the mountains, blending earth and sky in one. Days when one’s horizon is lost—not gone, but withdrawn from sight; days when the mountains have vanished and the valleys melted away, and nothing is very clear to consciousness but this small bed and the pain which lies upon it. If mists crept as close about one’s inner vision, doubt would seem normal on days like this, and despair the quintessence of common sense. Yet under the veiling vapors the brown grass is growing green again, the hard earth soft, instinct with power, and prodigal of gifts once more.

Now comes a distant roll of thunder, a wind that sweeps the vapors from the grass as tears are wiped from sodden eyes, a flash of blinding light, a bending and tossing of leaf-laden boughs; and over the mountain the storm-cloud rises, black against the pale gray of the sky. Then up the valley comes the wall of water; and behind it the world is new.

* * * * *

A special delivery letter from the Peon! Caro stood by while I opened it, asking nothing, but her color coming and going. It was only a few lines; but it said he would be here on the tenth. He has written not a word since he has been out there about the things nearest to all our hearts; but at least we shall know something in two days more.

XII IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT

_August 10th._ They are having a picnic supper on Bare Rock this evening, from which nobody in the house is excused but myself. I am glad they are all gone, for I need a little solitude, in this sudden whirlwind of happiness, to catch my breath and take a twist on my emotions.

For the Peon, who is so literally truthful that nobody dares to suspect him of juggling with words, deliberately stole a march on us and walked in twenty-four hours ahead of time—with David! Caro and I were over in the Garden. I was just where I am now, between the altheas and the locusts; but Caro, who had been wandering restlessly about, had gone down the hillside, out of sight, following an unknown bird-note. I was looking at the poplar branch where the caterpillars had clustered. They had left it stripped of everything but the leaf-stalks, which stood out now from the bare twigs at every angle, like drunken pins in a cushion. But the birds had days ago avenged both the branch and me, for not a crawler was visible on the tree. I was looking at it idly when the Peon and David suddenly stood under it, coming round the big bed of hydrangeas between it and the gate!

I scarcely saw the Peon for looking at David; but David was looking for somebody else.

“Where’s Caro?” he demanded, as he kissed me. “They said at the house she was over here with you.”

“She’s beyond that little corner of woods,” I said; “go around there and you’ll see her.”

As he went I fell upon the Peon, and extracted the hitherto suppressed information that Bob White’s engagement to some visitor from Kentucky had been announced last month. The Peon had forgotten her name; but he carried the news to David, who decided it was time for him to see Caro at once. And the mischief of a time he was taking about it, too, the Peon observed impatiently; didn’t they intend to take us into the secret before midnight?

As it was still half an hour to sunset, I reproved him properly; but I was myself beginning to fear something had gone wrong when they appeared at last. The dusk had fallen, and I could not see their faces clearly; but I heard a soft, happy laugh from Caro before they came around the corner of the woods, and I knew everything was all right.

David had certainly not wasted his time. They were already considering the house that must be built on the knoll the Peon and I had selected years ago. It seems he had picked it out himself, and Caro had agreed to it, in her mud-pie days. Now, having waited so long, and finding Caro in a mood of undreamed-of submissiveness, he had taken matters into his own hands, and decided that he would go home as soon as they could settle on the plans, and begin the house at once.

“We’ll need it, even so, before we can possibly get into it,” he observed to me. “Do you remember what you said to me that night about our wedding? I told Caro about it this afternoon, and she couldn’t deny that we ought not to start out in life by disgracing you as a prophet. So it’s to be before Christmas—in September, I think.”

“I think you’ve lost your wits,” replied Caro. “It won’t be Christmas if Mammy Lil isn’t walking about everywhere by Thanksgiving. She needn’t expect us to live up to her prophecies if she won’t do it herself.”

“But I will,” I replied cheerfully; “I feel it in my bones.”

“It’s surely time,” said David, turning my chair to the gate. The Peon and Caro walked on ahead, and the boy bent down and rubbed my cheek with his.

“Sweet Mammy, I know I’ve been hard on you these months; but we’ll both make it up to you now. Forgive us this time, and let us help to make you well at last.”

* * * * *

_August 22nd._ What beautiful, happy days we have had! I showed the Peon all the wonders of the Garden; and David and Caro strayed in and out, sometimes with the Madam and her other guests, and sometimes in that dual solitude lovers crave.

I told the Peon about Grumpy one day. I never had mentioned him before, because I never had been quite sure, if I did, that it wouldn’t break the spell I had woven, and allow him to appear to others as well as to me. But I’m not afraid of him any more.

The Peon is so satisfactory! He never thought of laughing at me, but took in the situation at once. He said the best way to make sure of getting rid of the wretch was for him to carry Grumpy away when he went. He could put him in his suit-case—for Grumpy really is the tiniest creature imaginable to make all the trouble he does; and he could throw him out of the car window as they were crossing some deep gorge in the mountains where no human habitation had ever been. A blue devil can’t possibly live where there are no people; so there’d be an end of his mischief forever.

Wasn’t that the cleverest scheme? We caught him together yesterday afternoon, and rammed him into the suit-case, good and tight. And I told the Peon, before he went, that if he did many more stunts like that, he’d be a very satisfactory playmate for me when the children are grown up and in their own house.

And that is the end of Grumpy.

* * * * *

_August 23rd._ They have gone back, taking the plans for the house with them. Caro and David sketched them together, and he will have them worked out at home.

I think Caro half envies him the pleasure of beginning the nest building, and wants to be there to see; but nobody is willing for me to go back before the first of October; and the child has a deal of shopping to do. I will wait here; and Caro will go to New York and visit Edith Mason, while she selects her bridal plumage.

I find the birds most joyful company these days, and am planning to cultivate their acquaintance in a less formal manner; for I intend to get out of this chair.

A wheeled-chair is really an exasperating place to study birds from: I wonder I never realized it before. This very day the trees are full of them—new birds, many of them, gathering for the fall migration. They have been playing hide-and-seek with me all the afternoon—a charming game if one can do one’s own part of it, and go seeking when the other hides; but if you can’t, it’s not so hilarious. They poke unknown heads through the leaves, and survey me coolly. They whisk tails I can’t even guess at from behind a limb, and are gone. They sing high overhead, with only a bit of their under feathers visible, or flirt a half-seen wing behind an opening in the leaves. Sorting heads, tails, and middles is a hopeless job when you haven’t an idea which belongs to which. If it were only a Chinese puzzle, you’d know when it was solved; but a tail with any other head would look as sweet! I’ve thought all summer that if a hyper-developed sense of touch can serve the blind for eyes, surely time and patience could do the work of feet for me; but I’m thinking patience may cease to be a virtue soon!

* * * * *

_August 26th._ We have had two days of storm. They mark both a beginning and an end; for a subtle change has passed over the mountains and lingers, though wind and rain be gone. A tinge of brown, merely suspected before, has deepened and spread until it challenges and commands the eye. Some of the nearer trees look seared, and the poplars, especially, look withered and old. But there is a beauty of soul deeper than that of the flesh and of youth: and the depth and power of Nature’s charm, like the freedom of our own souls, can be best measured by the number and splendor of the things which can be laid aside. All the glamour of the young spring, the splendid lavishness of summer days, the riot of color and sunshine—these things, which yearly draw us with new fascination and delight, are but the broidered outer curtain of the temple. They lure us past them, into the inner court, to a strength which knows no defeat, to an abundance which can afford to be stripped; to Law which cannot be thwarted nor checked; and beyond Law to a Power which reason can neither explain nor explain away.

For myself, I have my message; the hills have spoken it. And the pain which wrenches is back where it belongs, in the second place—or the twentieth. Moreover, it will pass—tomorrow, or next year, or in a life-time: it is not of the things which remain.

And now the clouds are breaking for a sunset glory, and the porch where I lie, and the lawn beyond it, even the shadowed mountains—all, all, are flooded with splendid light.

* * * * *

_August 29th._ A letter from Cousin Jane at last! Caro and I both wrote to her while David was here, but she had not vouchsafed a reply. David had a satisfactory interview with Cousin Chad, after his return, but reported Cousin Jane’s reception of him as one befitting an unrepentant prodigal who had brought his swine home with him. So we have been looking forward to the reception of a letter from her as a very solemn occasion indeed. She seems inclined, however, to temper her disapproval to Caro. She doesn’t expect her to be happy long, she says; and she handsomely offers not to disturb her present dreams, but to wait until Caro is disillusioned, when she hopes her “I told you so” will do some good. She does not intend, however, to cause any breach in the family, her principles forbidding her to quarrel even with me; and she is perfectly willing to continue her efforts to set me a proper example.

I suppose, on the whole, that’s doing pretty well for Cousin Jane. I don’t intend to have any breach in the family, myself, especially over the children’s wedding; and Caro and I will find some way to appease her when we go home.

* * * * *

_August 30th._ What bird is that? He is in the locust yonder, only his breast visible. It is a vivid yellow, with four irregular scarlet spots—three on one side and one on the other—and across his breast a long zig-zag line of scarlet like a jagged wound. There isn’t any bird like that: I know it; and if he doesn’t, he ought to. Yet there he sits, as calm as if he were in all the books and had as much right in the Garden as I. I have watched him, and recorded him, yet he doesn’t move.

Well, I’ll just make him: I’m not tied to this chair!

A scarlet tanager, moulting! No wonder I never saw that before. He is always scarlet-and-black when he goes through Tennessee in the spring, and yellow and olive when he goes back in the fall. He looks like the clown in a circus now, and I don’t wonder that he seeks the seclusion of the mountains to change his clothes. He is gone, of course, before I can apologize for my intrusion; and I suppose his opinion of me is scarcely fit to print.

* * * * *

_September 18th._ Caro is back from New York, and we leave a week from today. We have decided to shave a few days off the limit set by the Peon: if we don’t hurry, David will have that house half finished before we get there, and we want to see it go up from the beginning ourselves. Besides, Caro wants a little time with Milly. Her wedding is set for the last of October, and Caro’s is to be six weeks later. I’m afraid it will take strenuous work to get Cousin Jane where we want her by that time; but if we go home and start on her at once, the thing may be done.

* * * * *

_September 24th._ The last day in the Garden! The Mistress has been out, and I have been trying, in rather a bungling way, to make her understand what she has done for me. Neither she nor the Madam can know the whole of it, and I hope they never will; for they would have to live in the same prison-house to understand what a door of escape means.

Eh, but the summer is over, and I count my stay by hours!—Yes; but the summer will never end. Even when the prison is lost sight of, the door of escape will remain a delight. The things that hurt pass, and are forgotten; things not understood change and grow clear: but joy does not change, not kindness, nor anything that makes life worth while. And so, good-bye to the Garden.

XIII WHILE THE NEST WAS BUILDING

_September 30th._ We reached home three days ago, having forestalled the possibility of orders not to come by concealing our plans until we were on the way.

The house is no house at all yet, of course. Caro calls it the Perchery at present, and says she will give it a name when we can all sit in it, instead of roosting on stones outside and staring at the place where it is going to be. But the cellar is finished, anyway, and is of ample proportions, as a country cellar should be; and until we get something else to admire, we find it an absorbing subject of contemplation. Even Cousin Jane was delighted with it, and still more with Caro’s promise to go home with her and stay until after the wedding.

Caro went over there as soon as I was settled in bed for a rest, and came back glowing with triumph. Cousin Jane was coming in the morning to spend the day, and to take the child back home with her in the evening.

“And oh, Mammy Lil, she’s perfectly charmed with David, and quite certain she picked him out for me! The shock of it nearly bowled me over for a minute. You know that big New York bank that failed a week or two ago? Everybody thought Bob’s father’s bank was mixed up in it, and there was a regular run on it. David and Daddy Jack were too full of the Perchery to mention it; but it converted Cousin Jane straight through. The bank’s all right—I asked David about it, driving home—but you can’t make Cousin Jane believe it. She thinks a bank should be above suspicion by anybody, and if it isn’t, it’s a whited sepulchre forevermore. So she’s delighted that she had the good sense to pass over a fellow like Bob, who comes from a family of speculators, and choose for me a good, steady, kind, reliable business man like David Bird, instead. I wish you could hear her, Mammy Lil; she’s downright edifying. And she fairly beamed on David, though he hadn’t been near her for weeks. Everything’s all right, if only the hot weather doesn’t make you sick. If they’d told us how hot it was, I wouldn’t have brought you home.”

The heat was extraordinary for the time of the year, and still continues so; but it didn’t keep Cousin Jane at home, though usually she won’t budge unless it’s cool.