Part 3
For weeks after the children left I enjoyed being alone, and the freedom from effort which it brought. But as the winter wore on, the loneliness proved a lure to introspection and self-pity—those quicksands of despair which encircle the country of enforced idleness; and as I lay under my windows or beneath the trees I began, for pleasure and companionship, to write the story of our happy life and of the children’s growing up. But the note-book proved desperately heavy, and the few pages I filled took weeks instead of days; until at last I ceased the effort until I should be stronger, as I had ceased so many other things in this journeying into the Land of Idleness.
I made a new acquaintance that winter—a wretched little blue devil to whom I gave the name of Grumpy, and with whom I battled from morning till night, and especially from night till morning. It is not pain that blue devils thrive on—I had proved that all these many years; it is idleness that gives them their chance for mischief—the helpless idleness of utter exhaustion, when one’s thoughts hang vacant, and body nor mind can longer force its way past the wall of pain to move, however slowly, in the beautiful outside world of human effort and achievement.
So Grumpy came to Bird Corners. Satan himself knows no self-respecting devil would have stayed on the premises after the way I treated the creature; but blue devils respect neither themselves nor anybody else. An hour after I had flung him out by the heels he would bob up by the sofa in the finest fettle imaginable, grinning at my exhaustion from our late encounter. The most I ever could be sure of doing was keeping him invisible to every one else; but he made up for that in the nights. Still, one adjusts one’s self to the inevitable in time; and blue devils are all in the day’s work, I suppose, like the dentist or a cold in one’s head. One gets through with the visitation somehow, and laughs afterward because, for the time, at least, it is over.
When the children came home in the summer there was trouble, of course. Doctors came and went, though I had privately done my full duty by them long before; and I swallowed a deal of nasty stuff which did absolutely no good, except that it soothed the feelings of the family.
By the end of the summer David was insisting on something radical; and when he went back to college he took me with him, and deposited me in a northern sanitarium, where I was to lie flat on my back three months, and be made over as good as new.
This was not only radical, but revolutionary. Chatterton had never before furnished an inmate for a sanitarium. The word, indeed, was commonly understood as a polite euphemism for a lunatic asylum. The sentiments of the kin ranged all the way from Grace Wood’s anxious hopefulness to Cousin Jane’s frank curiosity concerning what new kind of craziness Lyddy had been up to now, to make John Bird feel like she had to be shut up in a private mad-house. She took my part, however, so far as to say, both to my face and behind my back, that I wasn’t a mite crazier than I’d been all my life; and if folks could get along with me this long it did look like a pity they couldn’t put up with me a while longer, and save disgracing the family. There was nothing the matter with me, Cousin Jane opined, beyond being spoiled to death, and lazy; and, anyway, it was flying in the face of Providence to go on living if your time had come to die.
As to going North, she never did believe in wasting money on conceited Yankee doctors when there were so many struggling physicians at home, to say nothing of the heathen in foreign lands who were dropping into hell-fire so many a minute for lack of any kind of doctors, good or bad, to keep them alive until the missionaries could get to them.
“But it’s no use preachin’ to selfish ears,” she concluded, drawing her heavy silk wrap about her ample shoulders and settling her bonnet strings. “I’ve been wastin’ my breath, of course.”
It seemed a pity that she should, whether from my point of view or her own; so I smiled as sympathetically as I could, and offered my cheek for her farewell salute. She bestowed it impressively.
“Well, good-bye, Lyddy. I suppose I won’t see you again in this life; an’ in the other one failin’ wits won’t trouble us, I trust. I want you to know I don’t hold any of your foolishness against you, child: I reckon you never did have sense like the rest of us.”
She went out with her ponderous, firm tread, and Caro flitted to my side, her head thrown up, ruffling like an angry wren.
“Mammy Lil, its a shame you made me promise to be good! Do let me run after her and——” She caught my eye and broke into bubbling laughter, dropping her head on my pillows and snuggling her little nose under my chin.
“Of course it’s funny,” she admitted presently; “and if you will laugh, I have to. But I can’t see how she can be so wooden-headed and yet be alive.”
“She isn’t alive very much, poor soul!” I answered, soberly enough. “I don’t think anybody really lives except so far as they understand life—and people. When you think of it in that way, Cousin Jane has lived in a closer confinement all her life than I’ll be when I get to the asylum.”
* * * * *
That was three years ago, and more, and I am here at the sanitarium yet, though the Peon is coming to take me home next month. It was I who set the limit of my stay at three months, when I came; I was determined to be well by that time. I even had Caro put my note-book in my trunk, because I expected to fill it before I came back. That is why I am writing this chapter, a few lines at a time, on good days: I am determined to do something that I planned doing, before I go back.
It would take more note-books than my trunk could hold to tell the story of the kindness shown me here; of the patience, skill, and resourcefulness which have fought for me when I could no longer fight for myself. And it is good to be in a place like this for awhile, to learn what human nature is capable of under racking, tearing strain. The courage one finds, the high-hearted endurance of plain, ordinary people, the brave good cheer of men and women whose pain-lined faces choke one’s throat with tears! I have seen these things so often these last eighteen months—or at least in so much of them as I could be carried, lying flat in a wheeled-chair, out on one of the balconies, where I could catch glimpses of the struggles that were going on around me.
It is not all loss, this suffering. Sickness does bring out hidden ugliness and weakness, for it searches soul and body to the inmost core. But there is more good hidden than there is evil; and in the stress of suffering the most ordinary people blossom into a loveliness of soul which reveals them as of the company of the saints. Life is so narrow and commonplace to the average experience that it can only make a narrow and commonplace appeal. “The trivial round, the common task” has, for so many, no large connections; and the depths of their natures are never stirred until their every-day world lies in ruins about them, and to live at all they must discover new resources in
“—_that true world within the world we see_,”
and gain a true perspective and a new horizon.
And the funny folk in a place like this—they would fill volumes, too! Of course they are pitiful; but I never could see the harm of laughter over pitifulness, if only one doesn’t laugh unkindly. For some of them never find new resources. Disaster leads them, not to discovery, but to an _impasse_; and they revenge themselves on the inexplicable by endless incongruities of thought and action.
The patient who really helped me most was a dear old lady who, though forbidden, like the rest, to talk to me, felt it her heaven-sent mission to cheer me up. Whenever she saw me deposited on the porch she flew out, wringing her hands in sympathy, and exclaiming, “Oh, _what_ is life without health!” It really is a good deal when you come to think of it; and the old lady’s reiterations elicited a string of mental replies as long as from western New York to Bird Corners, and kept me in ammunition for Grumpy.
For Grumpy has been at this sanitarium for three years and seven weeks. But the Peon has been here, too, and David—and Cousin Jane! Caro I have not seen in all these years: Cousin Jane doesn’t consider it decent for a young girl to be allowed in a place where women may be seen in the halls in kimonos, and men are allowed to sit in wheeled-chairs on the balconies, shamelessly clad in their bath robes, with heaven knows what garments, or lack of garments, underneath. Caro should not set foot in the place; and no entreaties could move her. But Caro has written, every week of the world; and, to make up for my not having her, Cousin Jane paid me a visit herself. She felt it her duty, she said, to find out what kind of a place it was that John Bird had shut Lyddy up in; and if the rest of the family wouldn’t look after me, she would. So she came, suspicious and inquisitorial, and melted visibly under the tactful suavity of the physician in charge,—“the Head,” as we called him. She even began to help him, ministering to the patients after a fashion all her own. She had it out with one of them, a metaphysical lady, a very unorthodox person, and left her in a state of collapse. In no uncertain tones she expressed her views on hen-pecking to another, an elderly lady with a liver and a youthful husband. I don’t know what would have happened further if I had not been inspired to beguile her into going down into the treatment rooms for a Turkish bath. She came up purple with wrath, and began to pack her trunk, declaring that she washed her hands of the place forever; and if I wanted to stay there and have my morals corrupted, I could; but for her part she was going back to her own bathtub, and the religion she was brought up in. And go she did, that night.
For myself, these three years must remain in the silence in which they have been spent. The pain I wish to forget; today’s pain is enough. And the helplessness and idleness, so much worse than the pain—that too, I would shut from my memory. But the kindness which has filled these years—that is an eternal possession. And the loveliness of this little valley is mine always, cut off as it is in my thoughts as a place apart from all my real world and life, shut in and hidden by its beautiful circling hills. I have called it the Enchanted Valley, because it seemed sometimes as if some spell had caught and bound me to it forever. But now that I am to go free at last I can forget all that, and remember only the enchantment of its beauty, and the kindness of those who dwell in it. The Land of Make-Believe, too, is as near me as under the trees at home. I have had beautiful times in Make-Believe, day and night, and especially at night. I have seen Caro there, you may be sure! I made a jingle about it not long ago which tells the real story of these long years better than anything else I could write.
_IN MAKE-BELIEVE_
_Oh, beautiful country of Make-Believe,_ _Where in childhood I learned to play!_ _I’m not bound fast to a bed—not I!_ _Nor racked with pain till I want to cry:_ _I’m over the hills and away!_
_Poor body that lies here and cannot sleep,_ _I’m sorry to leave you so;_ _But the children are calling from far away;_ _In Make-Believe, where it’s time to play,_ _And you can’t walk, you know._
_I fly on the wings of thought, myself,_ _While the wind shrieks behind me “Wait!”_ _For he never can fly as fast as thought,_ _And, he howls because he thinks he ought;—_ _But here I am at the gate._
_No narrow, smothering walls for me,_ _Nor life shut in from the sky,_ _When Make-Believe is all outdoors,_ _With beautiful grass instead of floors,_ _And to reach it one needs but try._
_There is ice back there; but in Make-Believe_ _There’s just what you happen to choose:_ _Soft spring-time colors with silver sheen,_ _Or cool wood-reaches of summer green,_ _Or the sparkle of autumn dews._
_Oh, the woodland rambles in Make-Believe!_ _The fields where daisies grow!_ _The level light on the evening hills,_ _The wild bird-song that leaps and thrills,_ _And the rose of the sunset’s glow!_
_How the children chatter in Make-Believe,_ _Just as at home they do!_ _How close they cuddle, with laugh and kiss,_ _To tell their secrets, nor ever miss_ _Aught else if they have but you!_
_All the people you love are in Make-Believe,_ _The living, and those called dead;_ _And all the people you’d like to know—_ _The wise of the earth, both high and low,_ _And the heroes of days long fled._
_And they know what’s worth while in Make-Believe_ _That to give is the blessed way;_ _That courage, and laughter, and love, are wise;_ _That the sun shines back of the cloudiest skies;_ _That there’s end to the longest day._
_They talk of high things in Make-Believe,_ _And they love e’en the tiniest joke_ _And they take you sailing o’er land and sea;_ _And they’d know all the places you’d like to be_ _If never a word you spoke._
_But the sun is up in that wintry world;_ _And the nurse will put in her head_ _And ask, “Is the pain any better, my dear?_ _Did you sleep a little? The doctor’s here.”—_ _Well, so am I here——in bed!_
And now it is mid-November, for the weeks have passed by as I lay here, writing a bit as I could; and I am to be home Thanksgiving morning; not home in Make-Believe, but home in real Bird Corners, down in Tennessee! David is there, for good, now, running the farm as he planned, but helping the Peon in his office, too; and Caro is coming home for Christmas, and to stay “forever,” she says, in June; and I am to get well—some day—at home. I can walk quite a little already—twenty yards sometimes; and the bad days are better than they used to be, and farther apart. Even Grumpy must admit that good bad days are encouraging!
* * * * *
_All_ the people you love in Make-Believe? Not quite all—not Ella. Somehow I can’t look for her there any more; not since the day the letter came back unopened. We were together in Make-Believe always before that. But when I see her again it will be when Make-Believe will have disappeared, with the world we see, and the real world will be plain to sight. But everybody else was there—even pious, pompous Cousin Chad, and foolish, kind-hearted, exasperating Cousin Jane.
And now it’s day after tomorrow, and the Peon is coming in four days!
IV THE DARK O’ THE YEAR
_November 30th._ The deepest joys can never be put into words; but lying here in my own dear room, close under the long windows which form its eastern side, and looking out across the valley to the familiar hills beyond, I know there is one spot on the map more beautiful than anything Make-Believe can show. The Peon and David left me only an hour ago—the real ones, I mean; and out on the lawn Uncle Milton is pretending to rake invisible leaves, looking towards my windows every few minutes to assure himself that I am really here.
Near the wall of honeysuckle along the pasture fence the cardinal and his wife are flitting about, just as I left them three years ago; and in the lilac outside my window, where all the spring-time beauty sleeps safe in the sheltering buds, a Carolina wren proclaims the triumph of days to come. His spring song is a bubbling rhapsody of present love and delight; but his winter song is vibrant with the joy of things unseen. He sings as one who carries spring in his heart always, as vivid a reality in December as when all the woods are green. To doubts, questions and hopes he has one answer, and he gives it joyously under the darkest skies. Will earth awake again? Will sunshine come? Will life reign in evident triumph, and winter and darkness pass? _Sur-e-ly, sur-e-ly, sur-e-ly, sure!_ The rich notes thrill with the joy of assurance, and shake him bodily as he stands with up-thrown head and pulsing throat, wagging from beak to tail.
But like many another of the sons of the prophets, his gift of open vision lies close to his love of fun. His tail jerks with a wildness suggestive of broken gearings in his little insides, as he dashes into his score again _accelerando_, singing it _da capo_ with a comical exaggeration of his former style. _Sure-ly, sure-ly, sure-ly, sure!_ He cocks his head, flirts his tail, gives me a sharp look from his sharper eye, and whisks around the house in a twinkling.
And Grace Wood is coming to see me tomorrow! I have been good and waited until I am quite rested, and now I am to have my reward. But I did not know until I came home that George died two years ago. There were never two people happier together than they; and yet she has gone on writing to me all this time, the same sunshiny, hopeful, heartening letters she sent me when I first left home. That was always Grace’s way; everything that came to her, hurt or pleasure, went out from her again only as help to somebody who needed it.
I haven’t seen Cousin Jane yet, and David says she’s been simmering for days and is liable to boil over any minute. She came an hour after I reached home, though requested to stay away until I sent for her; but the Peon caught her at my door and turned her back. She insisted she had something of the greatest importance to explain to me; but the Peon is an awesome person when he does lay down the law, and she hasn’t been back since. I can’t help wondering if it is something about Caro—though it can’t be, for I’ve been Caro’s “mother-confessor” too long to be learning anything about her from Cousin Jane. Besides, Caro will be here herself in three more weeks—after all these years and years!
* * * * *
_December 9th._ Grace came, her old dear self, unchanged except that the look of detachment from herself was deepened in her clear, sweet eyes, and about her smiling, tender mouth.
We spoke of George as if he were still with her—as indeed I think he is—and of Milly, now quite grown, and sharing with Caro the honors of Chatterton belledom.
We had a beautiful time together, and chatted and giggled as we have done these forty years whenever occasion offered; and she went away promising to come soon again if I would keep on getting better. And so I would have done but for Cousin Jane. She was driving down the pike and saw Grace, with her own eyes, coming through the gate. She drove on down the road a bit till Grace was out of sight, and then swooped down on me like a blackbird on a worm. Josie tried to stop her at the front door; but she had known Josie from her pickaninny days; and if she hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered, for Cousin Jane is not a person to be frustrated by darkies.
She knocked once, sepulchrally, on my door, and opened it on the instant. She wore her best Sunday air, and eyed me like a familiar of the Holy Office about to put a heretic through a course of sprouts.
* * * * *
“Well, Lyddy,” she began, settling weightily into Grace’s chair, “so you lived to get back home, after all. I hope you’re as grateful to Providence as you ought to be.”
Her tone made it evident that, though she might hope it, she certainly didn’t expect it.
“You’ve gone off mightily in your looks,” she continued; “not that you weren’t always sorter peaked an’ skinny-lookin’—‘slender,’ Letitia used to call it! Do you think your mind’s gettin’ straight any?”
“It’s straight, what there is of it,” I said; “but I’m tired just now, Cousin Jane; I can’t talk very well. You see Grace has been here——”
“Didn’t I see her?” she demanded indignantly. “That’s why I came. If you can see a chatterer like her, I reckon you can see me. I told John Bird I wanted to see you about Caroline.”
My tired eyes opened at once.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Caroline is gettin’ grown-up; she was nineteen last June. I’ve tried my best to keep beaux and foolishness away from her, but everything in town, looks like, was after her last summer; and the worst of it was, Caroline liked it.”
The corners of my mouth took an upward curve.
“You wait till I get through, missy, an’ you’ll be laughin’ the other side of your mouth. Caroline is hail-fellow-well-met with every boy in this town except David Bird; and she knows perfectly well, for I told her, that Chadwell and I and you and John Bird intend her to marry David.”
The room swam round, and I closed my eyes. Speech was impossible.
“Good land, Lyddy! Don’t go to faintin’—I didn’t know you were such a baby. You needn’t get so scared, child. Jane Grackle is pretty safe to get her own way, and long as your way’s my way you’ll get yours, too. She’ll marry him yet; young folks haven’t any sense; they need managin’, and I——”
“For heaven’s sake don’t try to manage Caro,” I gasped. “And as for telling her I intended her to marry David—go, before you say something else that will make forgiveness impossible!”
Cousin Jane turned purple. I saw that as my eyes closed again. She rose stiffly, with rustling skirts.
“If I didn’t know you’d lost what little sense the Lord gave you, Lyddy Bird, I’d box your ears for your impudence. I’ll go when I get ready, miss. I didn’t tell Caroline you _said_ you intended her to marry David—I know you’ve never said a word about it: I just took it as a matter of course. Chadwell and I feel it our duty to provide for her—not in money, of course; she has quite a tidy little fortune of her own, and of course you and John Bird expect to leave David all you’ve got; they won’t need anything from us. But we want to see her settled: an’ David’s steady an’ reliable an’ a real good business boy, for all you’ve raised him so harum-scarum; an’ it stands to reason, with your keepin’ Caroline all the time like you did, an’ throwin’ away the good stout clothes I provided for her to waste your own money in fol-de-rols, an’ good as adoptin’ her, you might say, that you’d picked her out for David an’ meant to leave them your money. Don’t you?”
I swept together my floating wits, steadied them with a supreme effort, and considered for an instant, while I felt Cousin Jane’s angry stare battering at my closed lids. I must tell her something, and nothing.
“Caro and David are like our own children,” I said weakly; “we want their happiness, and nothing else. If they love one another as brother and sister, it’s quite to be expected, don’t you think? Whatever made you think we wanted a marriage, brought up as they have been?”
“Do you mean you won’t leave them the money?”
“I mean money has nothing to do with it. We expect to do all we can for them, and to let them be happy in their own ways, not in ours.”
“Well, any way suits Caroline that’s not my way an’ that makes mischief—I can see that plain enough, an’ I told her so. I scolded her good. An’ it’s my opinion David’s in love with her. I caught him lookin’ at her one day when they were fishin’ down by the mill, an’ I just happened to go by in the buggy. I couldn’t get a word out of him when I asked him about it; an’ when I told him I’d given Caroline a talkin’-to, an’ I’d set my head on his havin’ her, he glared at me as if I was tryin’ to murder him, an’ told me to let Caroline alone, an’ let her marry whoever she wanted to. He ain’t been near me since, an’ won’t hardly speak to me; an’ Caroline behaved like a spitfire when I went to her about it. But I believe David’s willin’ if she’d be—but she ain’t, yet. You may as well know there’s goin’ to be trouble when she comes home. It ain’t like it used to be; an’ you’d better get up out of that bed an’ be gettin’ ready to help straighten things out.”