Part 4

‘One day, when Seraphita was out walking, she came across some little boys who were stoning a black kitten to kill it--for everybody knows that black cats belong to the Devil. And Seraphita ran right in among the flying stones, and not one of them hit her, for the Devil held his hand between her and the stones, and she caught up the Devil’s kitten and hugged it tight, while the stones fell at her feet, and the boys cried out, “Devil’s brat! Devil’s cat!”’

‘Pepita,’ said I, ‘she seems to me to have been a very nice, soft-hearted little girl.’

‘Oh, no! Señora Maria Madalena, you see black cats belong to the Devil, and if she had had any soul she couldn’t have taken one in her arms.

‘She carried it home, and she used to feed it, and she had to hide it away, because, of course, nobody wanted to have a Devil’s cat around, and the cat would run and jump into Seraphita’s arms whenever she came near; but it would fly like mad, and its hair would all stand on end, when anyone else came around, which shows--does it not?--that something was wrong. And another thing showed that all was not right with Seraphita: the priest began to teach her, and she learned faster than any child should. There was an evil spirit that whispered the words into her ear, so that she did not have to study.

‘She had power over horses, too, and if she just put her lips to a horse’s ear he would turn and rub his nose on her face. You see, horses have no souls, and they knew that Seraphita hadn’t any.

‘And, besides that, she always looked very old and grave when anybody was near; but when she was alone in the fields or in the woods she would laugh out loud, and they could hear her talk with the birds, for she knew bird-language; and she would lean over the water and talk to herself, or to the fishes. Oh, it was true, she had no soul!’

‘Well, what became of her?’ I asked, as Pepita paused, to emphasize her statement.

‘She grew up so beautiful that strangers would stop in the street and look at her as she passed; but, of course, everybody soon found out all about her, and then they would not look at her--at least they would not look her in the eye, unless they had a charm on.’

‘Do you mean that she had the “evil eye”?’

‘Oh, yes! why, she could make anyone have bad luck just by looking at them, and she could make flowers grow and blossom, and be more colors than any other flowers. She knew she had the “evil eye,” for she never went anywhere, or visited the sick or the poor, though she had plenty of money. She used to send the priest with food or clothes. You see, _she_ knew.’

‘And what became of poor little Seraphita?’

‘Why, you see, when she was about twenty years old she was very ill again, and she lay in a trance for three days. The doctors wouldn’t go near her, and her own old nurse had died, and they couldn’t get anyone to take care of her, till finally the priest sent to the convent for one of the Sisters. She was a very good woman, and she went to the house, and, creeping on her hands and knees, so that the Devil could not get hold of her, she went right into the room and prayed all night. Her prayers went straight up to Heaven; and she prayed that Seraphita might die, and that before she died her soul should be given back to her.

‘And, Señora Maria Madalena, just as the sky began to grow pink in the east, and the white mist blew across the vega, and the birds began to call, what do you think happened?

‘A beautiful white dove flew into the window and alighted on Seraphita’s breast, and, laying its bill close to her mouth, it breathed a soul into her, and then the dove just vanished, and Seraphita was dead.

‘Then, because God had been good to him, and had given Seraphita a soul again, her father built an orphan asylum and called it after her, “The Seraphita”; and you can see it over there, with the sun shining on it--it looks like gold.’

‘It is a pretty story, Pepita; but do _you_ believe she had no soul?’

‘The Señora knows I am English on my father’s side, but my mother was Spanish.’

‘So you are half Spanish, and _half_ believe it; is that so, Pepita?’

‘Yes, Señora.’

THE VOICE.

He saw her first on a Wednesday in May. She was sitting on the back door-step, doing nothing but just watching him plow. It looked as if that was what she was doing, so he tried to seem a little more unconscious than he had, when he really was unconscious, and every time he turned at the end of the furrow he glanced up at her from under his soft felt hat, which he wore pulled low over his eyes. She sat still, and he plowed ten furrows; the field was small; the apple-trees were in blossom, but the air was cool. He thought she would go in soon, but she sat with her hands idly in her lap. He had never seen a girl sit still for so long before; what was she waiting for? It seemed as if she wanted to speak to him, but that could not be. Who was she, anyhow? He didn’t know anybody lived in the house; they must have moved in very lately, maybe yesterday, and maybe she really did want to ask him something; perhaps they hadn’t brought any potatoes with them--could she want to ask him if he had any to sell? Perhaps she was lonesome; but a boy couldn’t go and talk to a girl just because she looked lonesome. How slim she was, and she didn’t look a bit like the Legget girls, who lived in the white house at the Crossing. How pretty the house looked with someone in it; he liked a brown house best anyway; it was a pity his mother had taken a notion to paint their own house white--it never had been the same to him since then.

Now the girl, whoever she was, was going in. No, she was just standing up to see him better; how queer! She was more slender than he first had thought, and foreign-looking, too, with black hair and eyes, and her hair was braided in two long braids--it made her look young; how old was she, anyway? He had plowed now till he was almost opposite to her door, and only three apple-trees distant. If she sat there till he plowed to the corner of her garden he would say ‘Good-afternoon.’

He plowed till he was within two furrows of the corner. He had not looked up at the end of the last furrow, and now he was turning again towards her. She was gone.

Thursday, he carried out the potatoes to plant. It was warmer than yesterday, and the south wind was blowing off the apple-blossoms. They fell from her garden into the furrows on his land, and he dropped the potatoes into pink and white rifts.

He looked almost every minute to see her come out of the door.

The house was very still, and they had not taken the boards down that had been nailed over the pantry windows to keep the storms from breaking the glass, and there were no curtains up. They couldn’t have been there long. Probably there was nobody but her and her mother, and they would have to wait for some neighbor to come in and help them take those boards down, and start the pump working. He would wash up after supper, and go over there. He could help them a lot before dark.

He would ask his mother to send over something to eat while they were getting settled. The neighbors always did that when folks moved into the neighborhood.

She was standing at the door now. It was certain she was older than he first thought--she must be seventeen, or even older; he would be nineteen in October.

She certainly wanted to speak to him; she didn’t exactly beckon to him, but she sort of waited as if she expected him to come. He laid the bag of potatoes down and vaulted over the fence. He stumbled awkwardly as he landed, and that was so ridiculous. She had a pretty, bright smile when he looked up after brushing off the soft dirt from his knees; it wasn’t a mocking smile either, only such a happy smile, as if she knew he would come. He stepped over the narrow bed of rhubarb, between the currant bushes, and then she was gone. Probably she had gone to call her mother. He waited a whole minute or more on the steps. Yes, she could have seen him quite well from there, better than he had seen her, because the sun had been in his eyes, and she was sitting in the shade.

She did not come out, and so he pushed the door open a little wider--she had left it almost half open. The hallway was dark at first, and it was not furnished. There was not even a mat at the door.

Why didn’t she come back? It was so still he could almost hear his heart beat, and besides he was a little embarrassed. He couldn’t go away, and he didn’t know exactly what to do.

He knocked on the open door. The sound went all over the house, and the dust where it had been disturbed was making the sunbeam in the kitchen beyond look like a regular golden beam. No one answered, but he heard a footstep in the sitting-room; he walked in; there was no one there; he grew curious, and his embarrassment wore off, for the girl was evidently more shy than he.

He went through the living-room. There was no furniture there either, but there were lots of flying dust particles, so that somebody had evidently just been through. He opened the door into the kitchen; nobody was there, but the stairs creaked ever so slightly. She was going up-stairs. He went swiftly into the hall, but could see no one. He walked clumsily up-stairs; how much more noise he made than she had. They would probably have a rag carpet on them later. Who were they anyway, and why did she run away from him?

The rooms up-stairs were connected by doors. He followed the footsteps from one room to another. At the end of the back one, which had a sloping roof on one side, there were very narrow stairs which led to the attic. The door at the foot of the stairs closed right before him. He was angry, and spoke up:

‘Does anyone here want to speak to me?’

There was no answer, and again he seemed to hear his own heart-beats.

He stood quite still, wondering whether to go away or to follow the footsteps, which he heard faintly overhead.

He followed the footsteps; the stairs were steep, and opened into the middle of the long garret, and nobody was in sight. But the agitated dust danced in the sunbeam which streamed way across the room. It was very clean up there--no lumber of any sort, no old furniture, no old trunks, no old papers or such litter--and it was as quiet as death. His heart beat now with excitement, not embarrassment. His quick eye saw that there was no other room, and that there was no place to hide except behind the chimney that ran through the front part and up through the roof. He walked over to it. It seemed a long walk, it was so quiet and queer, and he felt as if he were being watched.

There was no one behind the chimney. He went all around it.

Now he felt quite himself again. He had been a fool, or else asleep, and he put his foot on the first stair, saying aloud ‘Good-bye,’ which meant ‘good-bye to my foolishness.’

A timid voice said, ‘Oh, don’t go!’

He stood with his lips parted, his damp hair clinging to his forehead where his cap had pressed it, his head bent forward to listen, every nerve tingling.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘Close beside you, here at your right hand.’

‘I don’t see you.’

‘No, you can’t see me now.’

‘Why can’t I see you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the voice sighed.

‘Was that you I saw yesterday on the steps?’

‘Yes, I was watching you plow, and I wanted to speak to you.’

‘I knew it, and that is why I came in. Can’t I see you?’

Again the sigh blew across his face.

‘What do you mean by my not being able to see you?’

‘_Can_ you see me?’

‘No, not now; but I saw you at the door, before you came up here.’

‘But you could not hear me then.’

‘I hear you now.’

‘Yes, but you do not see me.’

‘Can’t you be seen and heard too at the same time?’

Again a soft piteous sigh.

‘I want to know who you are, and why you can’t be seen and heard too.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I must go now, if you won’t let me see you.’

‘Oh, don’t go!’

He stood irresolute; he was not one bit frightened, only he was aching to see her of the voice, and to know who she was. Then he asked:

‘Can’t I _ever_ see you again?’

‘Oh, yes!’ said the voice, and it seemed to vibrate all around him, a dancing voice full of joy and hope.

He smiled with it, and then there was laughter all around him, moving here and there gaily.

‘I want to see you now.’

‘Then I can’t talk with you any more.’

‘Never mind, let me see you.’

A sigh, a soft moaning sound, a rustle as of garments, and she stood before him.

He had not been embarrassed by the voice, but now his heart began to beat, and he said, quite as he had meant to when he first went into the house:

‘Is there anything I can do to help you settle?’

That was an absurd thing to say to this slim, wistful girl, who stood looking at him. It was the natural boy asserting itself against the unknown, the unexpected.

Then he turned his head and looked into her eyes. They were the sweetest eyes he had ever seen. He had never before looked deep into any human eyes.

Then, home and circumstances, field and world, all became to him a dream, and only this maiden without a voice, this voice floating into empty air, became to him his world.

Outside, the apple-blossoms floated down from her trees to his land, the potatoes lay unplanted. Vainly that night the cows waited for his hand to milk them. The real had become the shadow; he was in a new world. Illusive voice! vanishing shape to deal with!

Within, a wild delicious hope that he, he might at last unite voice and shape.

So from the plough-boy is the poet born.

THE SCARF.

It is interesting to see a man handle delicate fabrics. The mind involuntarily estimates the strength of the man in its superabundance, comparing it to the task. The contrast makes it picturesque.

Mark watched his friend Rob as he sat drawing the thin, Eastern-looking scarf through his hands; his hands were good to look at--firm and shapely. The scarf was sheer, almost of the texture of a cobweb; it was white, with an ivory tint where the folds gave it substance. It clung now and then to his hand, or yielded reluctantly as he drew it from his sleeve where it had floated.

There was silence in the room, emphasized by the restless throbbing of the city below. The sails out on the bay dipped and courtesied in the fresh evening wind, and the ripples flushed red under the slanting sun.

‘Rob,’ said the older man, ‘all the same, I don’t like it; it isn’t like you.’

‘I am sorry you don’t like it, and it _is_ like me,’ said the other, slowly. ‘I have always counted acts as the man. How would you construe it if I said: “Your acts I like, but I don’t like you”? That isn’t reasonable.’

‘You are splitting hairs, and I can’t match you at that. What I mean in plain English is, that I don’t see why your finding a scarf should necessitate or excuse you for breaking an engagement.’

‘I didn’t find the scarf; it found me. And I didn’t break the engagement; an engagement, to my thinking, is not breakable; breaking suggests force; an engagement dissolves. What is it but the outward wording of an inward state of mind existing between two mutually attracted people? the state of mind being changed--lo!--pff!’

‘You exasperate me beyond words, Rob, with your this and your that, all of it as thin as your scarf; and, what is worse, you do not seem to feel the gravity of it all, not in the least. You say in August, “Mark, congratulate me, I am the happiest man alive; I am going to be married.” In October you say, “Mark, I am a subject for congratulation, I am a disengaged man.”

‘As a friend of both yours and Mabel’s, I ask why, and you answer by holding up that miserable, dangling scarf, and say: “This is why; I found this, and I am going across the water to find the owner.”’

‘Excuse me, but I said “This scarf found me”--therein lies a great difference.’

‘It is all so trivial I wouldn’t forgive any man living but you.’

‘Thank you.’

The scarf, floated by the breeze, caught on Rob’s shoulder; he drew it slowly down; it lengthened out with the gentle strain and fell in a misty heap to his knee.

‘Do put that cussed thing away,’ said Mark, irritably, ‘and tell me, if you are ever going to, where it came from.’

‘I can tell you that better when I have found out myself.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She is a slender woman, neither dark nor light; her hair is fluffy--not crimped; her eyes are red-brown in some lights, and she wears soft raiment.’

‘When did you meet her?’

‘I haven’t met her yet.’

‘And what about Mabel?’

‘Oh, she is all right,’ said Rob, optimistically. ‘What I liked about her at first is exactly what I like now--she is so sensible; you can’t tell how sensible she is, Mark. She says I am preoccupied, and she doesn’t think I am earnest. She is right; I am not what she calls earnest.’

‘You told her about the scarf, of course?’

‘No, that wouldn’t interest her. Now, tenement houses are in her line. If I had invested in a tenement house she would have found me no end interesting; but this kind of a thing isn’t appreciated by her; she isn’t in it.’

‘I call it puerile and ridiculous,’ said Mark, hotly.

‘I don’t think you are quite right, then. What kind of a fabric should you take it to be?’

Mark took it in his hand. Whatever he did, he did sincerely and with care. He held the scarf up to the light; he bent his head over it and scrutinized it through his glasses; then he sniffed at it to see if it had any perfume, and stretched the meshes to see if it were hand-woven. At last he said:

‘I don’t think I know anything about it. It is made of wool, not silk; it is all delicate as a cobweb, but it does not call to my mind any stuff I ever saw. I should say it might have come from the East, possibly from India or even from Greece--Milesian wool.’

‘Yes, Milesian wool--it must be that,’ said Rob, enthusiastically.

‘You are not in earnest when you tell me you do not know anything more about it than I do?’

‘I am in earnest, but I can’t say exactly that; and yet I know nothing about the scarf except how it came to me; you would call me practical, sane--not a dreamer?’

‘Not a dreamer, if by that you mean that you are sufficiently on the earth to know how to live; but you are a mixture. I saw an old tinker yesterday--a tinker and umbrella-mender combined--a little gray tramp of a fellow, about sixty years old, stubby beard, dirty, self-possessed, master of himself and of the world so far as he was concerned in it, with an optimistic vein in spite of some hard luck, and with the most beautiful clear eyes I ever saw. He was a wanderer--a traveller, I might say. He had seen the greater part of America, and understood it, too, and he had seen it all on foot or by means of stolen car-rides. He fairly made me long to travel, with his tales of Colorado; he was immensely interesting. I talked with him for over an hour while he mended my umbrella and put a new ferule on my cane; and all the time, while I was listening to him, I was thinking: “Now, here is my friend Rob, just as he would have been without the mixture”--the mixture being, of course, your scholarly tastes and your money, half-tinker and half-student. I have no doubt but the tinker had tastes, too, but he hadn’t the money.’

‘I like the picture of your tinker.’

‘Yes, you do, that is the trouble; and it’s the tinker part of you that breaks an engagement for a scarf.’

‘What would you have me do--tell Mabel that I am earnest and interesting, and beg her to marry a tinker?’

‘No, I fancy the thing is better as it is; but I hope the scholar will have his chance some day. You are thirty?’

‘Thirty and one.’

‘Some study, much travel; a little business--not enough for an anchor; wit in one pocket, wisdom late in coming--name, Robert Dudley.’

‘And till now a friend of Mark’s.’

‘Always that.’

Rob folded the scarf slowly. It clung to his fingers; it caught wherever chance blew it; it was fluttered against his face while he carefully squared the corners together and patiently rolled its misty length into pocket size.

‘Mabel,’ he said, meditatively and impartially, ‘is much too good for me; she is moral, without being morbid; she is dignified, without being stiff; she is generous, but not weak. She reads people as she reads books. At first she thought I, as a book, was interesting, that I had an ethical flavor; but she found I was only a sort of art for art’s sake literature, and she laid me down. I did not interest her more. She has no sense of humor, and it never occurred to her that her one chance of cultivating it was to marry me. Now _she_ will be different.’

‘Yes, she will, and some day I shall discover, under a tinker’s garb, my old friend Bob, mending umbrellas for a living, the mixture having lost its savor and the money gone.’

‘I have never heard you stick so to a simile--it seems to please you. I like your tinker idea, but I deny the outcome.’

‘Well, good-bye. I am sorry for it all.’

‘No need for that; Mabel is rid of her tinker--_so_ far, so good; the rest “lies on the knees of the Gods.”’

‘As you will. Good-bye; I will see you off on Saturday.’

A moment later, Rob spoke sharply over the balustrade:

‘One minute more; come back, I want a last word. Sit there, will you, just where I sat; no, don’t move the chair, let it face the table. Now lean your hands on your chin, so; now look up--what do you see?’

‘What do I see? I see myself--a portion of myself--in the glass.’

‘Hitch the chair this way, so that you can see your full face--now?’

‘Well, what of it?’

‘Tell me exactly what you see, in every detail.’

Rob had darkened the room and lit the gas; it was burning just in front and over Mark’s head, lighting up his face and shoulders, but leaving the room dark behind him.

‘What do I see? I see my face and head, my collar and tie, and my shoulders, and my arms down to the elbows, and of course the table where they rest.’

‘What do you see behind you?’

‘I see--I seem to see the wall or door, I can’t tell exactly which, it is dark behind there.’

‘Can you see the pictures on the wall?’

‘Yes, by canting my head slightly, I see a frame. I can’t tell what the picture is, though; I am near-sighted at best.’

‘Yes, I know. I don’t want that picture to come into your range of vision; hold your head straight.’

‘Then I see nothing but myself,’ said Mark, turning round to see what really was behind him, and why he was put through these tactics. There was nothing behind him. Rob stood at the side of the table; but now he sat down, and said:

‘I want your attention and your friendliest belief in what I am going to tell you. I am quite in earnest, and I assume that you will credit every word I say. The interpretation you give it will be your own--I shall not combat it; but up to the point when you can consider it as a whole, I want you to hold your judgment in suspense.’

The two men sat facing each other, Rob’s face being animated by his resolve to put his thought into words, to weigh his problem in the scales of an alien mind, to try and see himself and his idea through other eyes than his own. Mark’s face was quiet, attentive, and delicate in its expression of suspended judgment. He was a man who held friendship as a sacred obligation, and was ready to meet a demand with single-minded generosity.

‘A month ago,’ said Rob, slowly weighing each word, ‘I came home from Mabel’s. We had come to an understanding as to the time for our wedding.’

Mark moved restlessly, and shaded his eyes with his hand.