Part 6
One is a vision of her as a playful child-companion who is with me in all my summer days, and shares all her quaint thoughts with me, and asks me countless questions and accepts my dictum as gospel.
One is a vision of her as a sister--one of that kind who has the best of all things in life whilst I must take the poor things; one of the kind that is to be married to a count from over the seas, and I must work and hurry to get her frocks ready for the wedding--and then go back to live in a small, dead village all the days of my life.
One is a vision of her as the quiet martyr-sister who comes at my call and retires at my bidding--and in this part my friend Annabel Lee walks with exceeding beauty.
One is a vision of her as a strong elderly friend who stands between me and all icy blasts, who lays out my daily life, who quiets my foolish excitement with her calmness and wisdom.
One is a vision of her as one who knows no law, who leads me in strange highways and byways, and whose mind for me is a labyrinth wherein I walk in piteous confusion.
One is a vision of her as an extremely wicked person whom I regard with fear, whom it behooves me to hate, but whom I love.
One is a vision of her as a woman of any age who is, above all, uncompromising and unsympathetic. If I am joyous, she is placid; if I am heavy of heart, she is placid; if I am full of anticipation, she is placid; if I am in despair, she is placid.
One is a vision of her as a shadow among shadows. She is not real, I say to myself. One day I shall awake and find her vanished--without pain and without “sadness of farewell,” and as if she had not been.
One is a vision of her as one who is in the world and of the world, and like the rest of the world. And when I contemplate her thus my thought is, the best thing of all is to be in the world and of the world, and like the rest of the world,--to have the quality of humanness, to know the world so well as to be able to select the best of its treasures, and to make useful that in it which is useless.
But all these visions are vapory. There is not one of them that is my friend Annabel Lee. ’Tis the expressions of her lily face that give me these visions--not that which she says nor that which she does. In truth she is, in some way, like all the visions, but each is mingled so much with herself that the type is lost.
And my friend Annabel Lee, though she sits with the book of the two pages open before her and seems much interested in all that she finds in it, has yet the look of one who, if any one asked to borrow the book from her, would close it quickly and give it up readily with no regret. And after she had given away the book, it seems as if she would pick up a flower from somewhere near, and twirl the stem in her thumb and finger, and glance out the window.
Not that she has a contempt for the present as for the future, but that it seems she is not dependent on the book of the two pages for her thought of it.
But also there is method in her contempt for the future. For she deigns to consider that the future becomes the present, as one day follows after another. But she touches it not in good faith until it is indeed the present.
My friend Annabel Lee, times, sits playing upon a little, old lute.
“The future,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “is like a lute with no strings. You cannot play upon such a lute and fill the long, long corridors in your brain with the thin, sweet, meaningless music. You can but sit stupidly staring into the cavity and thinking how joyous will be the music that shall come forth some day, as from time to time your lute is strung with strings--whereas you might better at that moment go out into your garden and fill the cavity with tomatoes and make haste with them to market. And while you sit dreaming over your stringless lute, in your impatience you press upon the stops and press too much and too often, so that when at last your lute is strung the stops will not work right, but will stick fast in one position. And when your other hand touches the strings there will be horrible discord--always horrible discord.
“I have never,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “yet seen any one dreaming over an unstrung lute who did not finger the stops.”
Having said this, my friend Annabel Lee gazed out over my head at the flat, green Atlantic sea, and her hand went upon and about her lute-strings, and there came out music. And the stops worked right, like stops that had not been tampered with in the lute’s unstrung days.
And the music that came out was like yellow wine to the head, and went not only into the corridors but into the towers as well, and low down by the moat and within and without the outer wall, and into the dungeon where had not been music before.
XVIII
ANOTHER VISION OF MY FRIEND ANNABEL LEE
And I have a vision of my friend Annabel Lee as a princess in a tall, tall castle by the side of the sea--a castle made of dull red granite that glows a gorgeous crimson in the light of the setting sun.
And all day long there is no sign of life about the dull red castle, and also the winds are low and the blue water is very quiet. Far down the shore are only a few gulls flying, and wild ducks riding on the waves.
There is nothing moving on the jagged rocks for miles about the red castle, but there are growing in crevices some wild green weeds that are full of fair sweet life. And all day the sky is pale blue.
The windows in the red castle are of thick, dark glass and are grated and mullioned and set about with iron. The look of these windows is rigid and bitter and it shuts out everything that is without.
The battlements of the castle are high and narrow and fearsome-looking and dark and very sullen. Were I upon the battlements I would gladly plunge off from them down upon the rocks, some hundreds of feet, and be dashed to pieces--or into the deep sea. But below there is a turret and a belfry, but no bell, and the turret is a sheltered and safe retreat looking out upon all. One who had not been content before in the world might be at last content within the turret of this tall, red castle by the side of the sea.
Away at the meeting of the sea and the sky there is a narrow line that is not pale blue like the sky nor dark blue like the sea, but is only pale thin air. And I look at it expecting to see--But in the bright daylight I never know what I expect to see in the line of thin air at the meeting of the pale and the dark.
And so then all day everything is dead quiet, and my friend Annabel Lee is a princess inside the red castle.
How fair a princess is my friend Annabel Lee!
I fancy her in a beautiful white gown embroidered with gold threads. The gown is long and narrow and fits closely about the waist, and trails on the ground. And upon the left forefinger of the princess a great old silver ring set with an unpolished turquoise.
The rooms inside the red castle are fit rooms for such a princess. They are dark and high and narrow, and are adorned with frescoes and wall-paintings, and the thick windows of dark glass shine with marvelous, myriad coloring where the light shows through. Before some of the windows bits of cut glass are hung, and these catch the sunbeams and straightway countless rainbows fall upon the gown and the hands and the hair of the princess.
When the sun sets a great bar of deep golden light falls from afar upon the red castle, and it becomes magnificent with crimson. The dark glass of the windows glows like old copper. The battlements are tipped with gold, and all is like a great flower that has but just bloomed.
After the sun has set and the crimson has faded once more from the red castle, and the copper from the windows, and before the light of day has gone, the sea and the sky take on different shades and different meanings, and the gulls and the wild ducks come up from far down the shore, and the rocks echo with their wild noises. The sky is full of flying cloud-racks and the water rises high and has crests of white foam.
But the line at the horizon looks still the same.
Then the princess in her white gown opens a door high up in the tall castle and comes out under the turret. She comes forward to the railing and leans upon it with her fair chin resting in her hand.
I see her there across a long stretch of dark water, her white frock gleaming in the pale light--so high up and all--and a multitude of thoughts come upon me.
The princess looks at the thin line of sky opposite her, and looks so steadfastly that I turn my eyes from her and look there also.
And now there are manifold scenes there.
There is a scene of a knight going forth to do battle, with his black charger and his shining steel armor. And he wears an orange plume in his helmet. His going is a brave thing. He is in the rising of his youth and strength. And for this reason I--and the princess on the turret--can see him falling gloriously in a fierce battle, with death in his veins, and the charger wandering off with no rider into the night. And the princess looks with envy upon one who can go forth and fall in battle.
There is a scene of a young woman in a small room working hard and persistently by a dim light at some exquisitely fine needlework upon an immense linen oblong. And her shoulders are bent and her eyes are strained and her hands are weary and her nerves shattered and crying out. But she does not leave off her work. She and her work are like an ant carrying away a desert grain by grain, and like one miserable person building up a pyramid, and like one counting all the stars. One does not know whose is the linen or why she works, or whether money will be given her for it. But one may know that verily she will have her reward. Such people working like that in small rooms, and all, with wearied nerves, always have their reward. And the princess on the turret looked out at the woman as if she with her linen and her needle were the fortunate one.
There is a scene of French Canadians cutting hay and raking it early in the summer afternoon--women and men. The day is so beautifully hot and the perfume of the grass is so sweet that a tall red castle by the side of the sea is the dreariest place of all. The princess looks out from her turret with desolate purple eyes. She looks at the ring upon her forefinger--and together with her I wonder why all people were not made French Canadians making hay in the fields. Over their heads is the air of the green French Canadian country; under their feet is the soft French Canadian hay. And they have appetites for their food.
There is a scene of a child playing in the mud under a green willow. She has a large pewter spoon to dip up great lumps of mud, and she takes up the lumps in her two hands and pats them and shapes them and lays them down in rows on a shingle. Water runs down through the meadow near by where she sits and she dips it up also in the spoon to thin out the mud. The rows of mud-cakes on the shingle are very neat and arranged with infinite care. The princess forgets to envy the child and her mud-cakes in the interest she takes in the making of them. Her face and her purple eyes even take on an indefinite look of contentment in that she is in the same world with so fit a thing.
Having looked long at the visions the princess takes her eyes from the line of thin sky and looks down into the tumbled dark water.
When all is seen, says the princess, there is nothing better than wild, dark water that is too vast to be measured and that is good for a thousand of years, and that contains yet as good fish as ever came out of it. It gives up pink shells upon the sand in the kindness of its heart, and it sends wild whistling gales up to the pinnacles of my red castle to sing for me and to tell me many stories. And it has wild winds wandering in and upon the high walls and caves along its rugged coast--and if I knew not that they were winds I would surely think them the voices of sea-maids singing--high, thin, piercing voices mingled with the sound of long, washing waves. And it gives out dreary lonesome cries--a loon calling in the night mists a mile away, and wild geese honking--so that I know there are things in it and upon it a hundred times wilder and lonesomer than I. And it sends good ships driving against these great rocks, and dashes them to pieces, and human beings go down with them to rest for a thousand of years in the depths, so that I know it loves human beings well, and has need of them. In the forenoon of a day in July it melts my heart with its glad, warm sunshine and dazzles my eyes and fills me with comfort--and I know that life is a safe thing. When all is seen, says the princess, there is nothing better.
Thus I have a vision of my friend Annabel Lee as a princess in a tall, red castle by the side of the sea.
But neither is this my friend Annabel Lee. For she is more fascinating still, and her castle is even taller, and a deeper red--and more than all she is herself.
XIX
THE ART OF CONTEMPLATION
Yesterday my friend Annabel Lee and I sat comfortably opposite each other at a small table, eating our luncheon. She was very fair and good-natured--and we had tiny broiled fish, and some tea with slices of lemon in it, and bread, and green lettuce sprinkled over with vinegar and oil and red pepper, and two mugs of ale.
“Food is a lovely thing, don’t you think?” said I.
“One of the best ever invented,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “Have you considered how _much_ would be gone from life if there were no food, and if we had not to eat three times every day?”
“Yes, I’ve considered it,” I replied, “and it’s a pleasure that never palls.”
“It is so much more than pleasure,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “It is a necessity and an art and a relaxation and an unburdening--and, dear me, it brings one up to the level of kings or of the beasts that perish.
“I have fancied,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “a deal table set three times every day under a beautiful yew-tree in a far country. The yew-tree would be in a pasture where cattle are grazing, and always when I sat eating at the deal table the cows would stand about watching me. Sometimes on the deal table there would be brown bread and honey; sometimes there would be salt and cantaloupe; sometimes there would be lettuce with vinegar and pepper and oil; sometimes there would be whole-wheat bread and curds and cream in a brown earthen dish; sometimes there would be walnuts and figs; sometimes there would be two little broiled fish; sometimes there would be peaches; sometimes there would be flat white biscuits and squares of brown fudge; sometimes there would be bread and cheese; sometimes there would be olives and Scotch bannocks; sometimes there would be a blue delft pot of chocolate and an egg; sometimes there would be tea and scones; sometimes there would be plum-cake; sometimes there would be bread and radishes; sometimes there would be wine and olives; sometimes there would be a strawberry tart.
“I should live over the hill from the yew-tree, and I should come there to eat at seven o’clock in the morning, and at one in the afternoon, and at seven in the evening. And meanwhile I should be busy at some work so that my eating would be as if I had earned it.”
“What sort of work would you do?” I asked.
“I might wash fine bits of lace,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “and lay them out upon a sunny grass-plot to bleach and dry. Or I might pick berries and take them to market. Or I might sit in a doorway making baskets--I should make beautiful little baskets. Or I might care for a small garden, or a flock of geese--to feed them with grains and keep them from straying away. ‘So many hours must I tend my flock, so many hours must I sport myself, so many hours must I contemplate’--I should do all these things while tending my flock, and I should tend my flock well. I should do all my work well, so that the food on the deal table, under the yew-tree, would taste as if it had been earned.
“But would it not be strange,” said my friend Annabel Lee, eating daintily of lettuce and fish, “after I had had this way of living in a country of always-summer for six months or seven months--oh, I should grow vastly weary of it! And not only should I grow weary of the garden or the geese or the baskets, and the deal table under the yew-tree, but I should grow weary of everything the fair green world could anyway offer. In the so many hours that I should contemplate I should arrive at this: there can be nothing better in the way of living than caring for a garden or a flock of geese, and going up a hill to a yew-tree to eat three times every day--_nothing_, if I do my work faithfully. So then when the gray dawn should break some morning and I should awaken and find an aching at my heart, I should know that the best had failed me, and I should see the Vast Weariness with me. ‘Hast thou found me out, oh, mine enemy!’ would run over and over in my mind. And all that day the tending of the flocks would be a hard thing, and the apples on the deal table under the yew-tree would turn to dust in my mouth.”
My friend Annabel Lee laid down her small silver fork, and placed her hands one upon another on her knee, and sat silent.
Oh, she was a beautiful, brilliant person sitting there! I wondered hazily as I watched her how much of the day’s gold sunshine she made up for me, and how much would vanish were she to vanish.
Presently she talked again.
“Much depends,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “upon the amount of contemplation that one does in one’s way of living, and upon how one’s contemplation runs. Contemplation is a thing that does a great deal of mischief. But I daresay that when it as an art is made perfect it is a rare good thing and a neat, obedient servant, and knows exactly when to enter the mind and when to leave it. And whosoever may have it, thus brought to a state of perfection, is a most fortunate possessor and must need go bravely down the world.
“Perhaps, now,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “when one is a goose-girl and goes to eat at a deal table under a green yew-tree, one should contemplate only kings in gilded palaces. One should begin at the beginning of a king’s life, it may be, and follow it step by step through heaviness and strife until one sees, in one’s vivid goose-girl fancy, the king at last tottering and white-haired and forsaken toward his lonely grave.
“Or else one should contemplate the life of a laborer who must eat husks all his days, and is not worthy of his hire, and goes from bad to worse and becomes a beggar.
“Or else one should contemplate the being of a sweet maid whose life is a fair, round, rose garden, and the thorns safely hidden and the stems pruned, and all. And one should likewise follow her step by step to her grave, or, if one so fancies, to the culmination of all happiness and success.
“For the idea is that in all one’s contemplation, when one is a goose-girl, one should contemplate anything and everything except the being and condition of a goose-girl.
“But a better idea still,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “would be to not contemplate at all, you know, but eat the radishes and other things, under the yew-tree, and rejoice.
“At any rate,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “we need not contemplate _now_--what with these two little fishes and these green, crisp leaves.”
She picked up her small silver fork again and went to eating lettuce.
And presently we both lifted our mugs of good ale and drank to that which would be a better idea still.
XX
CONCERNING LITTLE WILLY KAATENSTEIN
I had one day given my friend Annabel Lee the bare outline of the facts in a case, and I asked her if she would kindly make a story from it and tell it me.
So my friend Annabel Lee told me a little story that also runs in my mind, someway, in measure and rhythm.
“There lived in a town in Montana,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “not very long ago, in a quiet street, a family of that sort of persons which is called Jewish. And it is so short a time ago that they are there yet.
“Their name was Kaatenstein.
“There was Mrs. Kaatenstein and Mr. Kaatenstein and the four young children, Harry Kaatenstein and Leah Kaatenstein and Jenny Kaatenstein and little Willy Kaatenstein.
“And there was the hired girl whose name was Emma.
“And there was Uncle Will, Mrs. Kaatenstein’s brother, who lived with them.
“Mrs. Kaatenstein was short and dark and sometimes quite cross, and she always put up fruit in its season, with the help of the hired girl, and the kitchen was then very warm.
“And Mr. Kaatenstein was also dark, but was a tall, slim man, and was kind and fond of the children, especially the two little girls. Mrs. Kaatenstein was fond of the children also, but mostly fond of the two boys.
“And Harry Kaatenstein was much like his mother, only he was not so dark, and he was ten years old.
“And Leah Kaatenstein was ten years old also--the two were twins--and she had an eye for strict economy, and wore plain gingham frocks, and had a long dark braid of hair, and played with very homely dolls.
“And Jenny Kaatenstein was seven years old and was most uncommonly fat, and was rarely seen without a bit of unleavened bread in her hand--for the children were allowed to have all that they wanted of unleavened bread. They did not want very much of it, except Jenny. And they all preferred to eat leavened bread spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar--but they couldn’t have as much as they wanted of that.
“And little Willy Kaatenstein was only four and pronounced all his words correctly and seemed sometimes possessed of the wisdom of the serpent. He had very curly hair, and it seemed an unwritten law that whenever a grown-up lady passed by and saw the children playing on the walk in front of their house she must stop and exclaim what a pretty boy little Willy was and ask him for one of his curls. Whereat little Willy would stare up into the grown-up lady’s face in a most disconcerting fashion and perhaps ask her for one of _her_ curls. Or if the groceryman or the butcher would stop on his way to the kitchen and ask little Willy what was his name and how old was he, little Willy would answer with surprising promptness, and directly would ask the groceryman or the butcher what was _his_ name and how old was _he_.
“And Emma, the hired girl, was raw-boned and big-fisted and frightfully cold-blooded and unsympathetic. And she had a sister who came to see her and sat in the hot kitchen talking, while Emma pared potatoes or scrubbed the floor. The sister’s name was Juley, and she sometimes brought strange, green candy to the children, which their mother never allowed them to eat. And sometimes Juley brought them chewing-gum, which they were not allowed to chew.
“And Uncle Will was a short, stout man, with a face that was nearly always flushed. He seemed fond of beer. There were a great many cases of beer in the cellar which belonged to Uncle Will. And there were cases full of beer-bottles that had all been emptied, and the children would have liked to sell the bottles, but they were not allowed to sell bottles. Uncle Will was also fond of little Willy, and on summer evenings when he and Mr. Kaatenstein were at home, and after they had eaten dinner, Uncle Will might have been heard inviting little Willy, in his hoarse, facetious voice, to come and have a glass of beer with him. And when little Willy, with his short curls and his small white suit, would come and just taste of the beer and would make a wry mouth and shed a few abortive tears over its bitterness, Uncle Will would laugh very heartily and jovially indeed.
“Mrs. Kaatenstein had a great many ducks and geese in the back-yard and spent much time among them, fattening them to eat and fussing over them, in the forenoons. So the children never played there in the forenoon.