Part 4

How much longer she would have stayed there I don’t know. Her voice, near and strident as it was, was drifting off into a world that seemed far away, when the door opened with soft quickness and David was in the room.

Before he could speak Cousin Jane was lumbering away, his eyes driving her like bayonets. He poured out something and held it to my lips, and then sat stroking my hand as gently as Caro could have done. And for days and nights I lay here in the clutch of the old weakness and the old pain, and scarcely heeding either in the blackness of this new fear. I have been trying for days to write it all down, thinking maybe I could face it better so, and find some way of deliverance from Cousin Jane’s cataclysmic diplomacy.

That Caro should marry David! Has there ever been a time when I didn’t hope for it? And I have never said it, even to the Peon himself, for fear the very walls should carry the secret and make the hope impossible: and now! If Jane Grackle—but there’s no use railing; when one’s hopes are in ruins it takes all one’s strength to face the disaster; if I waste mine in reproaches I shall turn coward, and then Grumpy will rule my world.

* * * * *

_December 17th._ Gray days, with sullen skies which will neither shine nor storm. The mocking-birds have entered their winter silence, and eye me indifferently as they hop about under my windows picking up the crumbs which Josie scatters daily for my feathered guests. They never come together at this time of the year. Each goes his own path in solitude as well as in silence. But the flickers are more sociable, and the wrens are always in pairs. The cardinal and his wife come together every morning, she gently indifferent as usual, and he the devoted lover of all the year around.

Over in the pasture the meadow-larks sing half-heartedly, and a titmouse protests sturdily against their sentimental pathos. He is pecking at a magnolia seed tucked under his toes as he sits in the beech at breakfast. “_Here! Here! Here! Here!_” he exclaims. He believes in making the best of things, does the titmouse, and holds his crest as high these dark, raw days as when he goes courting in a world that is in gala attire for the occasion.

And if the pain isn’t better yet, the weakness is; and that is always the worst part of it. I shall be out in my wheeled-chair yet, by the time Caro comes. And as to Cousin Jane’s nonsense, she may make mischief—has made it, evidently; but if they’re really made for each other, as I have hoped for so long, surely an old woman’s foolish tongue can never ruin their lives. _Sur-e-ly, sur-e-ly, sur-e-ly, sure!_ Oh, bless the little red-brown seer! He tilts on the lilac bush a second, winks at me distinctly, and is off with a whisk of his tail which says plainly, “Don’t be more of a fool than you must be, old pal!” and I won’t.

* * * * *

_December 24th._ How full of happiness one’s world can be! Caro is not much bigger than her feathered namesake out of doors, but the place overflows with her presence.

I was afraid Cousin Jane wouldn’t let her stay here after the late unpleasantness, and was lying on the south porch the other day, trying to devise some way to make my peace with her, when she drove around the house and over the grass, and stopped her buggy close to my chair.

“Oh, Cousin Jane, I’m so glad to see you!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been wanting to ask you to let Caro come straight to me and stay with us while she’s at home. I haven’t had her for three years, Cousin Jane; and I can make it all right with her about David, I’m sure.”

“I knew you could do something if you were a mind to try,” she said, with her severest kiss-of-peace manner, which always aroused an unreasonable combativeness in my unregenerate soul. “I am perfectly willing, Lyddy, to let by-gones be by-gones. I never bear malice, even against ill-tempered folks. I came over to say if you’d do what you could with Caroline, I’d let her stay here. She always was keen to please you—why, I never could see; but she is; and I’ll not let my personal feelin’s stand in the way when it comes to dischargin’ my duty to that poor motherless girl. She can come.”

“Thank you, Cousin Jane,” I said heartily.

“You’re welcome, Lyddy, you’re welcome: I don’t hold anything against you. I want to set you a Christian example: maybe it’ll have some effect on you, now you’re all broken down with havin’ too much of your own way. Looks like, with all the afflictions the Lord’s sent on you, an’ old as you are, you might be learnin’ better.”

I suppose I am a sinner; but somehow, all my life, whenever Cousin Jane takes her religion in both hands and tries to ram it into me in her best pile-driver manner, my own scuttles off and dives into the first rat-hole it can find; and I have a dreadful time dragging it out again and making it help me behave. So I took a long look at the blackbirds under the maple, piously jabbing the English sparrows to discourage their greediness about crumbs, before I said soberly:

“I don’t believe the Lord sent me any afflictions. I think He just tries to teach me how to get the good out of what comes, and to rise by it. I think that’s one of His special jobs in this world—trying to turn our afflictions into wings.”

“Well, we all know you’re sorter half-cracked, Lyddy,” said Cousin Jane, with a manner intended to be genial. She was evidently bent on not quarreling. “Just do your best for Caroline.” She gathered up the reins.

“Cousin Jane,” I said quickly, “don’t say a word more to Caro about—those things. Please.”

“I’ll do as I see fit, Lyddy,” she answered stiffly. “Bein’ willin’ to let you help don’t mean I can trust you to manage things. Well, good-bye. Do try to get up an’ take some exercise; it’ll do you good. I’m a worker, myself, an’ always was; an’ you see how strong I am—not but what I could complain if I wanted to, like some.” She disappeared around the house, tucking her buggy-robe closely around her with one hand as she drove.

So yesterday morning I was out on the front porch, watching the road with my glasses; and there they came, whirling in from the pike in the open car, the top being down that I might see her afar off. Caro was driving, and David beamed beside her, while the Peon beamed on the back seat.

The whole place feels her presence, and overflows with her music, her laughter, her sweet and tricksy ways. She is off with the young folks in Chatterton now, helping with the Christmas tree at the church; but before she left she wheeled me out to my cot under the maple tree—or superintended Uncle Milton’s doing it, while she fluttered about with the pillows, and scolded us for letting her do all the work. She scattered crumbs for the birds, just as she used to, and then cuddled down on the same little stool where she used to sit, her curly brown head on my pillows. Not Make-Believe any more, thank heaven, but Caro, and the real Bird Corners!

We were silent awhile, and then she began to talk—all the loving nonsense and little intimate confidences that had always come when we were alone. But not a word of David, nor of Cousin Jane. I could not let our first talk begin a silence between us, so I told her what had happened. She had flushed a little at first, but her laughter bubbled as she kissed me.

“Sweet Mammy, don’t you think I know Cousin Jane? I knew you never said it, nor meant it. And I’m sure you’d let me marry the man in the moon, if I wanted to. I did get mad with her for talking to David—that rather passed bounds. But David’s a darling, and as sensible as can be. We thrashed it all out afterwards, and we aren’t going to make ourselves unhappy because Cousin Jane’s a born donkey and can’t help it. Don’t you bother about it a minute. We’ll both of us get married some of these days, and you’ll have four children to love you instead of two.”

“And there isn’t anybody else yet?” I asked, my face turning to hers as I lay, and her clear eyes looking into mine.

“I don’t think there is with David,” she said, considering; “but as for me—Mammy Lil, would you rather be a young man’s darling, or marry a very old and rich and apoplectic gentleman, worry him to death fast, and be happy and independent forever after?”

“Who is the young man?”

“Oh, anybody; I haven’t decided; but I suppose I could get one. You know I wrote you about the boys last summer, and how wild Cousin Jane was. She was more fun than the boys. You don’t really want me to marry, do you? I’m having such a good time.” She sat up and waved her hand. “There’s Milly, and I must go. Now, lie here and be good till I get back, and I’ll never marry anybody you don’t want me to.” And she ran down to the gate, pinning her hat on as she went.

* * * * *

_December 30th._ Note-books are superfluous when I can have Caro. It is so good to see one so pretty, so eager, so joyous, so young in body and soul. She is the very spirit of youth, with her swift, outgoing life, her quick response to it on all sides, her gay resourcefulness in the little emergencies of her small world. I forget my body, and all its pain-worn helplessness, while she dances through the house. It doesn’t matter so much that I must watch in idleness while the life I love sweeps by, if somebody else has my own vivid joy in it—a joy unhampered by weariness or pain. No wonder the girls can’t stir without her, nor resent it that she draws the boys as honey draws flies.

I can’t see that she cares to draw any one of them yet, though she dearly loves to draw them all. She is in that kitten stage which comes to every girl alive. She wants to play, and she finds the new game fascinating. What the boys find it doesn’t concern her yet; she is exploring the possibilities of the game.

How David feels toward her is more than I can tell. He is as frankly fond of her as when he used to carry her across the muddy places down by the brook, and tell her fairy tales while they popped corn by the winter fire. But as to that look in his eyes whereof Cousin Jane prated—well, I’ve never seen it; and I rather doubt if she did either.

Yet somehow I can’t help the uneasy feeling that she has hoodooed my secret hopes. She never had influence enough to counteract anything other members of the family might elect to do; but whomever she sided with was a subject for condolence. She could never be suppressed when she espoused a cause, and her well-meant activities were invariably fatal to the best-laid plans. What have I done that, in addition to all my other afflictions, Cousin Jane should thrust herself upon me as an ally? I had counted so comfortingly upon her opposition. David was never fond of her, and it is only of late years that she has ceased to predict for him a future of State support. It isn’t that she’s fond of the boy now; it’s because Cousin Chad found out how he managed that affair for the Peon last winter, and because the farm here at Bird Corners is becoming one of the show places, agriculturally, of this part of the State. And if a richer suitor appears she’ll discard David like an old shoe.

I confess I am taking great comfort in the very apparent devotion of David’s old antagonist, Robert White. He is older than David, and is advancing rapidly in one of the largest banks in the city, of which his father is an important director. Bob is a nice fellow, little spoiled by prosperity, and his prospective fortune quite overshadows David’s—in fact, he is one of the “catches” of this part of the State. He has been staying out here at his father’s ever since Caro came home, and makes no secret of the reason. If Cousin Jane becomes aware of him she will espouse his cause, _con amore_, and my own hopes will have a rosier appearance. Poor Bob! I don’t bear him a bit of malice; but I must shunt Cousin Jane off on somebody!

* * * * *

_January 5th._ Caro left us last night, protesting as she went, and insisting that she would come home in defiance of everybody if I had any more backsets. But we all want her to finish the year under her new singing-master: her voice is really wonderful, and she ought not to stop yet. The six months will be gone before we know it; and then she will come to stay.

For myself, I have stored up delight enough in these ten days to brighten this dark January weather for weeks to come. And the days are already lengthening. Spring is on the way, in fact—and summer won’t be far behind.

* * * * *

_January 10th._ What winter colors could bedeck the world I never knew until today!

First came the rain—a soft, misty down-dropping which fell noiselessly on the half-frozen earth, softening the icy ridges in the road beyond the porch, till they crunched under Uncle Milton’s heavy feet and splashed into the water collecting in their ruts. Long before sunset they wheeled me back to my room, where the thickening clouds shut us into a twilight gloom, through which the north wind’s voice cut icily.

By morning the clouds were gone, and with them had vanished the work-a-day earth. In its place is a world of faery, of glitter, of fire, of pallid white. Over all the fields the snow lies thick, down to the very edge of the brook. But above the snow, from the smallest weed whose skeleton shakes in the bitter wind to the topmost twig of the tallest tree, is silver and fire and ice. The stubble is all one elfin glitter; and beyond the gate, along the pike, where dried golden-rod, poke-berry, mustard, and all earth’s wild outcast beauty blossomed months before, are billows of frost-wrought loveliness as pure as pearls and as delicate as the fronds of ferns.

Overhead the sky is deepest blue, rich foil and background for the trees, all silver here, all glitter there, and everywhere starred with flashing points of red and blue and orange, as some jagged point of ice catches the sunlight and tears it into dazzling shreds of color.

Deep blue, overhead; but everywhere along the horizon a soft, colorless, distant sky, across which the half-congealed moisture of the air draw its dimming yet invisible veil. The hills are pale, aloof; but here and there the low sun strikes them and smites the glory of their tree-tops into a halo of pearl and fire about their brows. And what may be the beauty of life more abundant when the beauty of life withdrawn clutches the heart like this?

* * * * *

_January 13th._ There is nobody to fellowship with today but the blackbirds and the English sparrows. David is off lecturing at some farmers’ institutes, and the Peon left this morning for a week’s trip. Grumpy is here, as usual, and the pain in my spine; but I am not of a mind to fellowship with them; they can sulk together in the corner if they want to.

Eh, but when the dark shuts out even the scandal-mongering sparrows, the room is a bit empty and lonesome-looking! Grumpy and the back don’t count; they are both in the skeleton-closet. But the key seems lost, and they have an unpleasant way of peeping through the crack of the door. There’s no sense in staying here this night, so it’s ho, for Make-Believe for me!

* * * * *

_January 15th._ When one can’t have the big things one wants, one can at least play with the little things one has; and in doing so may learn with growing thankfulness how great a resource a little thing may become.

There are so many playthings in the world—no need is left unsupplied. When one is too ill to think and too weak to look, there are fleeting glimpses, through half-shut lids, of blue sky beyond one’s windows, of a drifting cloud, a flash of wings, or the waving of boughs in the wind; beautiful pictures which return uncalled-for to float above that sea of pain wherein one rocks, and to steady one with a half-consciousness of an upper world of beauty and peace, real, though beyond one’s reach.

And when one can think a little—oh, so many things! One cannot possibly be cut off from life if one’s heart be in it. It isn’t the moving of one’s body that counts, but the clasping of life with the heart. We really live to the exact extent we _care_, and so find the interest with which every atom and phase of life is stored.

“_He brought an eye for all he saw._”

Was ever anything more beautiful said of any one than that? And that is what I pray for—the seeing eye; that, whether my body be well or ill, I may enter in at the open doors which swing wide on every hand, and see, and love, and rejoice; understanding where I may, and happy where I may not to watch, to learn, to wonder like a child.

* * * * *

_January 15th._ The real freedom of life is measured not by one’s liberty to do as one likes, but by the things one can afford to do without. And there is no poverty in such freedom: it is through the enrichment of the inner life that one’s resources grow great enough to enable one to dispense with the outward things once so necessary.

V PREMONITIONS

_January 21st._ This is one of those beautiful, balmy days which sometimes come, late in January, to convince the veriest blind pessimist that spring is on the way. The chickadees are half mad, flying headlong from tree to tree, and singing their gay little winter score with an _abandon_ unknown before. The titmice are whistling cheerily; and the jays, though not a hint of spring sweetness softens their harsh tones, are dancing a little in the hackberry as they squawk. The wren is singing rapturously, as he has done all these sunless weeks, not because of spring-time and April air, but because love and life are always present with him, and nothing else matters.

The mocking-bird is still solitary, wrapped in contemplation, like some prophet of old. Nor is the cardinal singing yet. But his not singing is no sign of faint-heartedness. Yesterday he perched in the tulip-tree and _said_ “Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!” soberly, decidedly, as if the sweet reasonableness of good cheer had grown upon him through the dark January weather. He will be singing it soon.

There! I’ve been out on the porch, and written in my note-book on a bad day—the best bad day I’ve had yet; and when bad days are best bad days Grumpy may as well take a back seat.

* * * * *

_January 28th._ Best bad days are all very well; but a combination of best bad days and Cousin Jane is more grandeur than my feeble frame can live up to. It has taken me a week to catch up.

She drove up just as I closed my note-book—quite in time to catch me in the act.

“Tsck!” she said in disgust, as she whirled my chair about with a strong hand and wheeled me unceremoniously into the house. “I suppose you want to put your eyes out next, and have everybody pityin’ your afflictions when you’ve made yourself blind layin’ flat on your back an’ scribblin’ nonsense—poetry, like enough!” Contempt could no further go.

“I’m sure you never heard of my writing poetry in your life, Cousin Jane,” I protested meekly.

“No, an’ I don’t want to. I know just the kind of stuff it ’ud be. But I don’t see what else you get to write layin’ out there all by yourself, with nothin’ to see, an’ no sensible occupation to keep you busy. I never could abide an idler.”

“When did you hear from Caro?” I inquired. In the interest of peace, a change of subject seemed advisable.

“Why, Caroline’s careless about writin’—which of course I might have expected, seein’ the way you brought her up. But Bob White’s been up there lately, an’ I saw him when I went to town yesterday. I met him on the street, while I was goin’ to get my new glasses, an’ he took me up to the new hotel to lunch.”

She bridled with pleasure, and I coughed to strangle my laugh of delight. Bob White paying court to Cousin Jane, without my meddling the least little bit!

“We had four courses,” she went on in happy retrospection. “I didn’t know there was such a nice place in town. I don’t eat much lunch usually when I go—looks like it ain’t right to waste the Lord’s money just pamperin’ the flesh, as you might say; an’ besides, I’d rather save it. I never did hold by spendin’ money for foolishness like you an’ John Bird.”

I’m sure the Peon and I haven’t been on the simplest kind of a lark for years; and when we went it was usually a picnic in the woods with the children, and the plainest of home-made lunches; but I received this snub in silence. Cousin Jane plunged on with her news.

“Bob’s heels over head in love with Caroline—that’s easy to see. It ’ud be a good match for her, too.”

“But you said you wanted David for her,” I objected in as dolorous a voice as I could muster.

“I ain’t so favorable to David as I was,” she answered frankly. “He’s got a mighty ugly temper. He flared up at me downright impudent that time I spoke to him about Caroline; an’ he good as turned me out of your room one day, without opening his mouth. He’d lead Caroline a hard life. Of course I didn’t say a word to Bob, but I saw by the way he went on how it was. A keen business man like him don’t go a hundred miles out of his way to visit a girl for nothin’. I know.”

“But you thought David cared,” I pleaded.

“If he does, let him do somethin’ to prove it, ’stead o’ settin’ like a bump on a log. I ain’t goin’ to help him another mite.”

Cousin Jane’s visits certainly add to one’s list of mercies. I’ve been telling Grumpy all the week that nothing can be very bad as long as she no longer smiles on David, but afflicts Bob White with her disastrous friendship. My clouds are silver-lined indeed!

* * * * *

_January 29._ The first spring signs the birds give us: we must look skyward for them, past earth altogether. The next spring signs are hidden deep, in those dark places where sunlight never comes. For the violets which empurple the long borders, like the song of the Carolina wren, are not a sign of spring, but a constant witness to ever-present life. They bloom every month of the winter, just as the bird sings. The spring-time message is brought by something of a frailer courage than theirs—something which must needs retrace steps the violets have never taken.

So today, as the Peon wheeled me out to the maple, he stopped at one of the jonquil beds while I climbed down to brush aside the leaves which protect the bulbs from frost, and to stir the earth with loving fingers. Not yet. Life is at work, I know, but too deep down to be seen as yet. I drew the leaves back again, my hands shaking a little with the joy of grubbing in the dirt again—real outdoor dirt, that runs clear through to blue sky on the other side, instead of stopping at a saucer six inches from the top of a pot. How many years! Would I ever make up for the lost years, I wondered, and then caught my breath and the Peon’s hand with a laugh. For the cardinal was singing again—_Cheer! Cheer! Cheer! A-wet-year! A-wet-year! Cheer! Cheer!_

It was a dull, cloudy day; but vision had come to him, and what he saw he would live up to. He sat on the grape arbor, back of the jonquil bed, and sang, deliberately at first, stout-heartedly, but with a rising tide of joy—_A-wet-year! Cheer! Cheer!_ A wet year seems to be his idea of heaven and spring-time rolled into one. Rain—and swelling life! The lost years will be made good yet. And shall one grudge the time for rain?

* * * * *

_January 30th._ I ventured on the subject of Caro with David last night, and find myself wondering many things. The fact that I have always admitted the children’s full right to reserve from me any secret they wished to keep largely accounts, I believe, for the closeness of their confidence. And I didn’t intend to pry now—only to open a way in case he chose to take it, as I used sometimes to make confidences easy for him as a child.