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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brimming Cup, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Brimming Cup
+
+Author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher
+
+Release Date: February 7, 2005 [EBook #14957]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIMMING CUP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIMMING CUP
+
+_Dorothy Canfield_
+
+HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY NEW YORK
+
+1919
+
+_By the same author_
+
+THE SQUIRREL-CAGE
+A MONTESSORI MOTHER
+MOTHERS AND CHILDREN
+HILLSBORO PEOPLE
+THE BENT TWIG
+THE REAL MOTIVE
+FELLOW CAPTAINS
+(_With Sarah N. Cleghorn_)
+UNDERSTOOD BETSY
+HOME FIRES IN FRANCE
+THE DAY OF GLORY
+THE BRIMMING CUP
+ROUGH-HEWN
+RAW MATERIAL
+THE HOME-MAKER
+MADE-TO-ORDER STORIES
+HER SON'S WIFE
+WHY STOP LEARNING?
+THE DEEPENING STREAM
+BASQUE PEOPLE
+FABLES FOR PARENTS
+SEASONED TIMBER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                       Page
+      I.  PRELUDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    3
+     II.  INTERLUDE . . . . . . . . . . . . .   23
+
+_PART ONE_
+
+    III.  OLD MR. WELLES AND YOUNG MR. MARSH.   29
+     IV.  TABLE TALK. . . . . . . . . . . . .   48
+      V.  A LITTLE GIRL AND HER MOTHER. . . .   64
+     VI.  THINGS TAKE THEIR COURSE. . . . . .   80
+    VII.  THE NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS . . . . .   91
+   VIII.  WHAT GOES ON INSIDE . . . . . . . .  115
+     IX.  THE GENT AROUND THE LADY. . . . . .  130
+      X.  AT THE MILL . . . . . . . . . . . .  151
+
+_PART TWO_
+
+     XI.  IN AUNT HETTY'S GARDEN. . . . . . .  179
+    XII.  HEARD FROM THE STUDY. . . . . . . .  199
+   XIII.  ALONG THE EAGLE ROCK BROOK. . . . .  215
+    XIV.  BESIDE THE ONION-BED. . . . . . . .  224
+     XV.  HOME-LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . .  241
+    XVI.  MASSAGE-CREAM; THEME AND VARIATIONS  256
+   XVII.  THE SOUL OF NELLY POWERS. . . . . .  266
+
+_PART THREE_
+
+  XVIII.  BEFORE THE DAWN . . . . . . . . . .  279
+    XIX.  MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE. . . . .  285
+     XX.  A PRIMAEVAL HERITAGE. . . . . . . .  294
+    XXI.  THE COUNSEL OF THE STARS. . . . . .  302
+   XXII.  EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN . . . . .  309
+  XXIII.  MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE STARS. . .  323
+
+_PART FOUR_
+
+   XXIV.  NEALE'S RETURN. . . . . . . . . . .  331
+    XXV.  MARISE'S COMING-OF-AGE. . . . . . .  338
+   XXVI.  MARISE LOOKS AND SEES WHAT IS THERE  360
+  XXVII.  THE FALL OF THE BIG PINE. . . . . .  367
+ XXVIII.  TWO GOOD-BYES . . . . . . . . . . .  380
+   XXIX.  VIGNETTES FROM HOME-LIFE. . . . . .  390
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIMMING CUP
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_PRELUDE_
+
+SUNSET ON ROCCA DI PAPA
+
+_An Hour in the Life of Two Modern Young People_
+
+April, 1909.
+
+
+Lounging idly in the deserted little waiting-room was the usual shabby,
+bored, lonely ticket-seller, prodigiously indifferent to the grave
+beauty of the scene before him and to the throng of ancient memories
+jostling him where he stood. Without troubling to look at his watch, he
+informed the two young foreigners that they had a long hour to wait
+before the cable-railway would send a car down to the Campagna. His lazy
+nonchalance was faintly colored with the satisfaction, common to his
+profession, in the discomfiture of travelers.
+
+Their look upon him was of amazed gratitude. Evidently they did not
+understand Italian, he thought, and repeated his information more
+slowly, with an unrecognizable word or two of badly pronounced English
+thrown in. He felt slightly vexed that he could not make them feel the
+proper annoyance, and added, "It may even be so late that the signori
+would miss the connection for the last tramway car back to Rome. It is a
+long walk back to the city across the Campagna."
+
+They continued to gaze at him with delight. "I've got to tip him for
+that!" said the young man, reaching vigorously into a pocket.
+
+The girl's answering laugh, like the inward look of her eyes, showed
+only a preoccupied attention. She had the concentrated absent aspect of
+a person who has just heard vital tidings and can attend to nothing
+else. She said, "Oh, Neale, how ridiculous of you. He couldn't possibly
+have the least idea what he's done to deserve getting paid for."
+
+At the sound of her voice, the tone in which these words were
+pronounced, the ticket-seller looked at her hard, with a bold,
+intrusive, diagnosing stare: "Lovers!" he told himself conclusively. He
+accepted with a vast incuriosity as to reason the coin which the young
+foreigner put into his hand, and, ringing it suspiciously on his table,
+divided his appraising attention between its clear answer to his
+challenge, and the sound of the young man's voice as he answered his
+sweetheart, "Of course he hasn't any idea what he's done to deserve it.
+Who ever has? You don't suppose for a moment I've any idea what I've
+done to deserve mine?"
+
+The ticket-seller smiled secretly into his dark mustache. "I wonder if
+_my_ voice quivered and deepened like that, when I was courting
+Annunziata?" he asked himself. He glanced up from pocketing the coin,
+and caught the look which passed between the two. He felt as though
+someone had laid hands on him and shaken him. "_Dio mio_" he thought.
+"They are in the hottest of it."
+
+The young foreigners went across the tracks and established themselves
+on the rocks, partly out of sight, just at the brink of the great drop
+to the Campagna. The setting sun was full in their faces. But they did
+not see it, seeing only each other.
+
+Below them spread the divinely colored plain, crossed by the ancient
+yellow river, rolling its age-old memories out to the sea, a blue
+reminder of the restfulness of eternity, at the rim of the weary old
+land. Like a little cluster of tiny, tarnished pearls, Rome gleamed
+palely, remote and legendary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two young people looked at each other earnestly, with a passionate,
+single-hearted attention to their own meaning, thrusting away
+impatiently the clinging brambles of speech which laid hold on their
+every effort to move closer to each other. They did not look down, or
+away from each other's eyes as they strove to free themselves, to step
+forward, to clasp the other's outstretched hands. They reached down
+blindly, tearing at those thorny, clutching entanglements, pulling and
+tugging at those tenuous, tough words which would not let them say what
+they meant: sure, hopefully sure that in a moment . . . now . . . with the
+next breath, they would break free as no others had ever done before
+them, and crying out the truth and glory that was in them, fall into
+each other's arms.
+
+The girl was physically breathless with this effort, her lips parted,
+her eyebrows drawn together. "Neale, Neale dear, if I could only tell
+you how I want it to be, how utterly utterly _true_ I want us to be.
+Nothing's of any account except that."
+
+She moved with a shrugging, despairing gesture. "No, no, not the way
+that sounds. I don't mean, you know I don't mean any old-fashioned
+impossible vows never to change, or be any different! I know too much
+for that. I've seen too awfully much unhappiness, with people trying to
+do that. You know what I told you about my father and mother. Oh, Neale,
+it's horribly dangerous, loving anybody. I never wanted to. I never
+thought I should. But now I'm in it, I see that it's not at all
+unhappiness I'm afraid of, your getting tired of me or I of you . . .
+everybody's so weak and horrid in this world, who knows what may be
+before us? That's not what would be unendurable, sickening. That would
+make us unhappy. But what would poison us to death . . . what I'm afraid
+of, between two people who try to be what we want to be to each
+other . . . how can I say it?" She looked at him in an anguish of endeavor,
+". . . not to be true to what is deepest and most living in us . . . that
+would be the betrayal I'm afraid of. That's what I mean. No matter what it
+costs us personally, or what it brings, we must be true to that. We
+_must!_"
+
+He took her hand in his silently, and held it close. She drew a long
+troubled breath and said, "You _do_ think we can always have between us
+that loyalty to what is deep and living? It does not seem too much to
+ask, when we are willing to give up everything else for it, even
+happiness?"
+
+He gave her a long, profound look. "I'm trying to give that loyalty to
+you this minute, Marise darling," he said slowly, "when I tell you now
+that I think it a very great deal to ask of life, a very great deal for
+any human beings to try for. I should say it was much harder to get than
+happiness."
+
+She was in despair. "Do you think that?" She searched his face anxiously
+as though she found there more than in his speech. "Yes, yes, I see what
+you mean." She drew a long breath. "I can even see how fine it is of you
+to say that to me now. It's like a promise of how you will try. But oh,
+Neale, I won't _want_ life on any other terms!"
+
+She stopped, looking down at her hand in his. He tightened his clasp.
+His gaze on her darkened and deepened. "It's like sending me to get the
+apples of Hesperides," he said, looking older than she, curiously and
+suddenly older. "I want to say yes! It would be easy to say yes.
+Darling, darling Marise, you can't want it more than I! But the very
+intelligence that makes you want it, that makes me want it, shows me how
+mortally hard it would be! Think! To be loyal to what is deepest and
+most living in yourself . . . that's an undertaking for a life-time's
+effort, with all the ups and downs and growths of life. And then to try
+to know what is deepest and most living in another . . . and to try . . .
+Marise! I will try. I will try with all my might. Can anybody do more
+than try with all his might?"
+
+Their gaze into each other's eyes went far beyond the faltering words
+they spoke. She asked him in a low voice, "Couldn't you do more for me
+than for yourself? One never knows, but . . . what else is love for, but
+to give greater strength than we have?"
+
+There was a moment's silence, in which their very spirits met flame-like
+in the void, challenging, hoping, fearing. The man's face set. His
+burning look of power enveloped her like the reflection of the sun. "I
+swear you shall have it!" he said desperately, his voice shaking.
+
+She looked up at him with a passionate gratitude. "I'll never forget
+that as long as I live!" she cried out to him.
+
+The tears stood in his eyes as in hers.
+
+For the fraction of an instant, they had felt each other there, as never
+before they had felt any other human being: they had both at once caught
+a moment of flood-tide, and both together had been carried up side by
+side; the long, inevitable isolation of human lives from birth onward
+had been broken by the first real contact with another human soul. They
+felt the awed impulse to cover their eyes as before too great a glory.
+
+The tide ebbed back, and untroubled they made no effort to stop its
+ebbing. They had touched their goal, it was really there. Now they knew
+it within their reach. Appeased, assuaged, fatigued, they felt the need
+for quiet, they knew the sweetness of sobriety. They even looked away
+from each other, aware of their own bodies which for that instant had
+been left behind. They entered again into the flesh that clad their
+spirits, taking possession of their hands and feet and members, and
+taken possession of by them again. The fullness of their momentary
+satisfaction had been so complete that they felt no regret, only a
+simple, tender pleasure as of being again at home. They smiled happily
+at each other and sat silent, hand in hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now they saw the beauty before them, the vast plain, the mountains, the
+sea: harmonious, serene, ripe with maturity, evocative of all the
+centuries of conscious life which had unrolled themselves there.
+
+"It's too beautiful to be real, isn't it?" murmured the girl, "and now,
+the peaceful way I feel this minute, I don't mind it's being so old that
+it makes you feel a midge in the sunshine with only an hour or two of
+life before you. What if you are, when it's life as we feel it now, such
+a flood of it, every instant brimming with it? Neale," she turned to him
+with a sudden idea, "do you remember how Victor Hugo's 'Waterloo'
+begins?"
+
+"I should say not!" he returned promptly. "You forget I got all the
+French I know in an American university."
+
+"Well, I went to college in America, myself!"
+
+"I bet it wasn't there you learned anything about Victor Hugo's poetry,"
+he surmised skeptically. "Well, how does it begin, anyhow, and what's it
+got to do with us?"
+
+The girl was as unamused as he at his certainty that it had something to
+do with them, or she would not have mentioned it. She explained, "It's
+not a famous line at all, nothing I ever heard anybody else admire. We
+had to learn the poem by heart, when I was a little girl and went to
+school in Bayonne. It starts out,
+
+     'Waterloo, Waterloo, morne plaine
+     Comme une onde qui bout dans une urne trop pleine,'
+
+And that second line always stuck in my head for the picture it made. I
+could see it, so vividly, an urn boiling over with the great gush of
+water springing up in it. It gave me a feeling, inside, a real physical
+feeling, I mean. I wanted, oh so awfully, sometime to be so filled with
+some emotion, something great and fine, that I would be an urn too full,
+gushing up in a great flooding rush. I could see the smooth, thick curl
+of the water surging up and out!"
+
+She stopped to look at him and exclaim, "Why, you're listening! You're
+interested. Neale, I believe you are the only person in the world who
+can really pay attention to what somebody else says. Everybody else just
+goes on thinking his own thoughts."
+
+He smiled at this fancy, and said, "Go on."
+
+"Well, I don't know whether that feeling was already in me, waiting for
+something to express it, or whether that phrase in the poem started it.
+But it was, for ever so long, the most important thing in the world to
+me. I was about fourteen years old then, and of course, being a good
+deal with Catholics, I thought probably it was religious ecstasy that
+was going to be the great flood that would brim my cup full. I used to
+go up the hill in Bayonne to the Cathedral every day and stay there for
+hours, trying to work up an ecstasy. I managed nearly to faint away once
+or twice, which was _some_thing of course. But I couldn't feel that
+great tide I'd dreamed of. And then, little by little . . . oh, lots of
+things came between the idea and my thinking about it. Mother was . . .
+I've told you how Mother was at that time. And what an unhappy time it
+was at home. I was pretty busy at the house because she was away so
+much. And Father and I hung together because there wasn't anybody else
+to hang to: and all sorts of ugly things happened, and I didn't have the
+time or the heart to think about being 'an urn too full.'"
+
+She stopped, smiling happily, as though those had not been tragic words
+which he had just spoken, thinking not of them but of something else,
+which now came out, "And then, oh Neale, that day, on the piazza in
+front of St. Peter's, when we stood together, and felt the spray of the
+fountains blown on us, and you looked at me and spoke out. . . . Oh, Neale,
+_Neale_, what a moment to have lived through! Well, when we went on into
+the church, and I knelt there for a while, so struck down with joy that
+I couldn't stand on my feet, all those wild bursts of excitement, and
+incredulity and happiness, that kept surging up and drenching me . . . I
+had a queer feeling, that awfully threadbare feeling of having been
+there before, or felt that before; that it was familiar, although it was
+so new. Then it came to me, 'Why, I have it, what I used to pray for.
+Now at last I am the urn too full!' And it was true, I could feel, just
+as I dreamed, the upsurging of the feeling, brimming over, boiling up,
+brimming over. . . . And another phrase came into my mind, an English one.
+I said to myself, 'The fullness of life.' Now I know what it is."
+
+She turned to him, and caught at his hand. "Oh, Neale, now I _do_ know
+what it is, how utterly hideous it would be to have to live without it,
+to feel only the mean little trickle that seems mostly all that people
+have."
+
+"Well, I'll never have to get along without it, as long as I have you,"
+he said confidently.
+
+"And I refuse to live a _minute_, if it goes back on me!" she cried.
+
+"I imagine that old folks would think we are talking very young,"
+suggested the man casually.
+
+"Don't speak of them!" She cast them away into non-existence with a
+gesture.
+
+They sank into a reverie, smiling to themselves.
+
+"How the fountains shone in the sun, that day," she murmured; "the spray
+they cast on us was all tiny opals and diamonds."
+
+"You're sure you aren't going to be sorry to go back to America to live,
+to leave all that?" asked the man. "I get anxious about that sometimes.
+It seems an awful jump to go away from such beautiful historic things,
+back to a narrow little mountain town."
+
+"I'd like to know what right you have to call it narrow, when you've
+never even seen it," she returned.
+
+"Well, anybody could make a pretty fair guess that a small Vermont town
+isn't going to be so very _wide_," he advanced reasonably.
+
+"It may not be wide, but it's deep," she replied.
+
+He laughed at her certainty. "You were about eleven years old when you
+saw it last, weren't you?"
+
+"No, you've got it wrong. It was when we came to France to live that I
+was eleven, and of course I stopped going to Ashley regularly for
+vacations then. But I went back for several summers in the old house
+with Cousin Hetty, when I was in America for college, after Mother
+died."
+
+"Oh well, I don't care what it's like," he said, "except that it's the
+place where I'm going to live with you. Any place on earth would seem
+wide enough and deep enough, if I had you there."
+
+"Isn't it funny," she mused, "that I should know so much more about it
+than you? To think how I played all around your uncle's mill and house,
+lots of times when I was a little girl, and never dreamed . . ."
+
+"No funnier than all the rest of it," he demurred. "Once you grant our
+existing and happening to meet out of all the millions of people in the
+world, you can't think up anything funnier. Just the little
+two-for-a-cent queerness of our happening to meet in Rome instead of in
+Brooklyn, and your happening to know the town where my uncle lived and
+owned the mill he left me . . . that can't hold a candle for queerness,
+for wonderfulness, compared to my having ever laid eyes on you. Suppose
+I'd never come to Rome at all? When I got the news of Uncle Burton's
+death and the bequest, I was almost planning to sail from Genoa and not
+come to southern Italy at all."
+
+She shook her head confidently. "You can't scare me with any such
+hideous possibilities. It's not possible that we shouldn't ever have
+met, both of us being in the world. Didn't you ever study chemistry?
+Didn't they teach you there are certain elements that just _will_ come
+together, no matter how you mix them up with other things?"
+
+He made no answer, gazing out across the plain far below them, mellowing
+richly in the ever-softening light of the sunset.
+
+She looked doubtfully at his profile, rather lean, with the beginning
+already drawn of the deep American line from the Corner of the nose to
+the mouth, that is partly humorous and partly grim. "Don't you believe
+that, Neale, that we would have come together somehow, anyhow?" she
+asked, "even if you had gone straight back from Genoa to Ashley? Maybe
+it might have been up there after you'd begun to run the mill. Maybe I'd
+have gone back to America and gone up to visit Cousin Hetty again."
+
+He was still silent.
+
+She said urgently, as if in alarm, "Neale, you don't believe that we
+could have passed all our lives and never have _seen_ each other?"
+
+He turned on her his deep-set eyes, full of tenderness and humor and
+uncertainty, and shook his head. "Yes, dear, I do believe that," he said
+regretfully. "I don't see how I can help believing it. Why, I hadn't the
+faintest idea of going back to settle in Ashley before I met you. I had
+taken Uncle Burton's mill and his bequest of four thousand dollars as a
+sort of joke. What could I do with them, without anything else? And what
+on earth did I want to do with them? Nothing! As far as I had any plans
+at all, it was to go home, see Father and Mother for a while, get
+through the legal complications of inheritance, sell the mill and house
+. . . I wouldn't have thought of such a thing as bothering even to go to
+Ashley to look at them . . . and then take the money and go off somewhere,
+somewhere different, and far away: to China maybe. I was pretty restless
+in my mind, pretty sure that nothing in our civilization was worth the
+candle, you know, before you arrived on the scene to put everything in
+focus. And if I had done all that, while you were still here in Rome,
+running up and down your scales, honestly . . . I know I sound awfully
+literal . . . but I don't see how we ever could have met, do you, dear?"
+
+He offered her this, with a look half of apology, half of simple
+courage.
+
+She considered it and him seriously, studying his face and eyes,
+listening retrospectively to the accent of his words, and immensely
+astonished him by suddenly flashing a kiss on his cheek. "You're
+miraculous!" she said. "You don't know how it feels; as though I'd been
+floundering in a marsh, deeper and deeper, and then all at once, when I
+thought I'd come to know there wasn't anything in the world _but_ marsh,
+to come out on beautiful, fine, clean earth, where I feel the very
+strength of ages under my feet. You don't _know_ how good it seems to
+have a silly, romantic remark like what I said, answered the way you
+did, telling the truth; how _good_ it feels to be pulled down to what's
+what, and to know you can do it and really love me too."
+
+He had been so startled and moved by her kiss that he had heard her
+words but vaguely. "I don't seem to catch hold of all that. What's it
+all about?"
+
+"It's all about the fact that I really begin to believe that you will be
+loyal and tell me the truth," she told him.
+
+He saw cause for gravity in this, remembering the great moment so
+shortly back of them, and said with a surprised and hurt accent, "Didn't
+you believe me, when I said I would?"
+
+She took up his hand in hers and said rapidly, "Dear Neale, I did
+believe it, for just a moment, and I can't believe anything good of
+anybody for longer than that, not _really_ in my heart of hearts. And
+it's my turn to tell you some truth when I tell you about that unbelief,
+what I've hardly even ever told myself, right out in words."
+
+He was listening now, fixing on her a look of profound, intelligent
+attention, as she went on, stumbling, reaching out for words, discarding
+those she found, only her steady gaze giving coherence to her statement.
+"You know, living the way I have . . . I've told you . . . I've seen a
+great deal more than most girls have. And then, half brought up in France
+with people who are clever and have their eyes wide open, people who
+really count, I've seen how they don't believe in humans, or goodness, or
+anything that's not base. They know life is mostly bad and cruel and
+dull and low, and above all that it's bound to fool you if you trust to
+it, or get off your guard a single minute. They don't _teach_ you that,
+you know; but you see it's what they believe and what they spend all
+their energies trying to dodge a little, all they think they can. Then
+everything you read, except the silly little Bibliothèque-Rose sort of
+thing, makes you know that it's true . . . Anatole France, and Maupassant,
+and Schnitzler. Of course back in America you find lots of nice people
+who don't believe that. But they're so sweet you know they'd swallow
+anything that made things look pleasant. So you don't dare take their
+word for anything. They won't even look at what's bad in everybody's
+life, they just pretend it's not there, not in _their_ husbands, or
+wives or children, and so you know they're fooled." She lowered her
+voice, which faltered a little, but she still continued to look straight
+into his eyes, "And as for love, why, I've just hated the sound of the
+name and . . . I'm horribly afraid of it, even now."
+
+He asked her gravely, "Don't you love me? Don't you think that I love
+you?"
+
+She looked at him piteously, wincing, bracing herself with an effort to
+be brave. "I must try to be as honest as I want you to be. Yes, I love
+you, Neale, with all my heart a thousand times more than I ever dreamed
+I could love anybody. But how do I know that I'm not somehow fooling
+myself: but that maybe all that huge unconscious inheritance from all my
+miserable ancestors hasn't _got_ me, somehow, and you too? How do I know
+that I'm not being fooled by Nature and fooling you with fine words?"
+
+She hesitated, probing deep into her heart, and brought out now, like a
+great and unexpected treasure, "But, Neale, listen! I _don't_ think that
+about you! I don't believe you're being fooled. Why, I believe in you
+more than in myself!" She was amazed at this and radiant.
+
+Then she asked him, "Neale, how do _you_ manage about all this? What do
+you feel about all the capacity for being low and bad, that everybody
+has? Aren't you afraid that they'll get the best of us, inevitably,
+unless we let ourselves get so dull, and second-rate and passive, that
+we can't even be bad? Are you afraid of being fooled? Do you believe in
+yourself at all?"
+
+He was silent for some time, his eyes steadily fixed on some invisible
+realm. When he spoke it was with a firm, natural, unshaken accent. "Why,
+yes, I think it very likely that I am being fooled all the time. But I
+don't think it matters the least bit in the world beside the fact that I
+love you. That's big enough to overtop everything else."
+
+He raised his voice and spoke out boldly to the undefined specter in her
+mind. "And if it's the mating instinct you mean, that may be fooling
+both of us, because of our youth and bodily health . . . good heavens!
+Isn't our love deep enough to absorb that a million times over, like the
+water of a little brook flowing into the sea? Do you think _that_, which
+is only a little trickle and a harmless and natural and healthy little
+trickle, could unsalt the great ocean of its savor? Why, Marise, all
+that you're so afraid of, all that they've made you so afraid of, . . .
+it's like the little surface waves . . . well, call it the big storm waves
+if you want to . . . but nothing at all, the biggest of them, compared to
+the stillness in the depths of the sea. Why, I love you! Do I believe in
+myself? Of course I believe in myself, because I have you."
+
+She drew a long sigh and, closing her eyes, murmured, "I feel as though
+I were lifted up on a great rock." After a moment, opening her eyes, she
+said, "You are better than I, you know. I'm not at all sure that I could
+say that. I never knew before that I was weak. But then I never met
+strength before."
+
+"You're not weak," he told her; adding quaintly, "maybe a little
+overballasted; with brains and sensitiveness and under-ballasted with
+experience, that's all. But you haven't had much chance to take on any
+other cargo, as yet."
+
+She was nettled at this, and leaving her slow, wide-winged poise in the
+upper airs, she veered and with swallow-like swiftness darted down on
+him. "That sounds patronizing and elder-brotherish," she told him. "I've
+taken on all sorts of cargo that you don't know anything about. In ever
+so many ways you seem positively . . . naïve! You needn't go thinking that
+I'm always highstrung and fanciful. I never showed that side to anybody
+before, never! Always kept it shut up and locked down and danced and
+whooped it up before the door. You know how everybody always thinks of
+me as laughing all the time. I do wish everything hadn't been said
+already so many times. If it weren't that it's been said so often, I'd
+like to say that I have always been laughing to keep from crying."
+
+"Why don't you say it, if that is what you mean?" he proposed.
+
+She looked at him marveling. "I'm so fatuous about you!" she exclaimed;
+"the least little thing you say, I see the most wonderful possibilities
+in it. I know _you'd_ say what you meant, no matter how many thousands
+had said it before. And since I know it's not stupidness in you, why, it
+seems to me just splendidly and simply courageous, a kind of courage I'd
+never thought of before. I see now, how, after all, those stupid people
+had me beaten, because I'd always thought that a person either had to be
+stupid so that he didn't _know_ he was saying something everybody else
+had said, or else not say it, even if he wanted to, ever so much, and it
+was just what he meant."
+
+"Don't you think maybe you're too much bothered about other people,
+anyhow?" he suggested, mildly; "whether they're stupid or have said
+things or not? What difference does it make, if it's a question of what
+you yourself feel? I'd be just as satisfied if you gave _all_ your time
+to discovering the wonderful possibilities in what I say. It would give
+me a chance to conceal the fact that I get all out of breath trying to
+follow what you mean."
+
+This surprised her into a sudden laugh, outright and ringing. He looked
+down at her sparkling face, brilliant in its mirth as a child's, and
+said seriously, "You must instantly think of something perfectly prosaic
+and commonplace to say, or I shall be forced to take you in my arms and
+kiss you a great many times, which might have Lord knows what effect on
+that gloomy-minded ticket-seller back of us who already has his
+suspicions."
+
+She rose instantly to the possibilities and said smoothly, swiftly,
+whimsically, with the accent of drollery, "I'm very particular about
+what sort of frying-pan I use. I insist on having a separate one for the
+_fritures_ of fish, and another for the omelets, used only for that: I'm
+a very fine and conscientious housekeeper, I'd have you know, and all
+the while we lived in Bayonne I ran the house because Mother never got
+used to French housekeeping ways. I was the one who went to market . . .
+oh, the gorgeous things you get in the Bayonne market, near enough
+Spain, you know, for real Malaga grapes with the aroma still on them,
+and for Spanish quince-paste. I bossed the old Basque woman we had for
+cook and learned how to cook from her, using a great many onions for
+everything. And I learned how to keep house by the light of nature,
+since it had to be done. And I'm awfully excited about having a house of
+my own, just as though I weren't the extremely clever, cynical,
+disillusioned, fascinating musical genius everybody knows me to be: only
+let me warn you that the old house we are going to live in will need
+lots done to it. Your uncle never opened the dreadful room he called the
+parlor, and never used the south wing at all, where all the sunshine
+comes in. And the pantry arrangements are simply humorous, they're so
+inadequate. I don't know how much of that four thousand dollars you are
+going to want to spare for remodeling the mill, but I will tell you
+now, that I will go on strike if you don't give me a better cook-stove
+than your Uncle's Touclé had to work with."
+
+He had been listening with an appreciative grin to her nimble-witted
+chatter, but at this he brought her up short by an astonished, "Who had?
+What had? What's that . . . Touclé?"
+
+She laughed aloud again, delighted at having startled him into
+curiosity. "Touclé. Touclé. Don't you think it a pretty name? Will you
+believe me when I say I know all about Ashley?"
+
+"Oh, go on, tell me!" he begged. "You don't mean to say that my Uncle
+Benton had pep enough to have a scandal in his life?"
+
+"What do _you_ know about your uncle?"
+
+"Oh, I'd seen him a few times, though I'd never been up to Ashley. As
+long as Grandfather was alive and the mill at Adams Center was running,
+Uncle Burton used to go there to see his father, and I always used to be
+hanging around Grandfather and the mill, and the woods. I was crazy
+about it all, as a boy, used to work right along with the mill-hands,
+and out chopping with the lumbermen. Maybe Uncle Burton noticed that."
+He was struck with a sudden idea, "By George, maybe _that_ was why he
+left me the mill!" He cast his eye retrospectively on this idea and was
+silent for a moment, emerging from his meditation to say, wonderingly,
+"Well, it certainly is _queer_, how things come out, how one thing hangs
+on another. It's enough to addle your brains, to try to start to follow
+back all the ways things happen . . . ways you'd never thought of as of
+the least importance."
+
+"Your Uncle Burton was of some importance to _us_," she told him. "Miss
+Oldham at the _pension_ said that she had just met a new American, down
+from Genoa, and when I heard your name I said, 'Oh, I used to know an
+old Mr. Crittenden who ran a wood-working factory up in Vermont, where I
+used to visit an old cousin of mine,' and that was why Miss Oldham
+introduced us, that silly way, as cousins."
+
+He said, pouncingly, "You're running on, inconsequently, just to divert
+my mind from asking you again who or what Touclé is."
+
+"You can ask and ask all you like," she defied him, laughing. "I'm not
+going to tell you. I've got to have _some_ secrets from you, to keep up
+the traditions of self-respecting womanhood. And anyhow I couldn't tell
+you, because she is different from everything else. You'll see for
+yourself, when we get there. If she's still alive." She offered a
+compromise, "I'll tell you what. If she's dead, I'll sit down and tell
+you about her. If she's still alive, you'll find out. She's an Ashley
+institution, Touclé is. As symbolic as the Cumean Sybil. I don't believe
+she'll be dead. I don't believe she'll _ever_ be dead."
+
+"You've let the cat out of the bag enough so I've lost my interest in
+her," he professed. "I can make a guess that she's some old woman, and I
+bet you I won't see anything remarkable in her. Except that wild name.
+Is it Miss Touclé, or Mrs. Touclé?"
+
+The girl burst into laughter at this, foolish, light-hearted mirth which
+drenched the air all about her with the perfume of young gaiety. "Is it
+Miss Druid, or Mrs. Druid?" was all she would say.
+
+She looked up at him, her eyes shining, and cried between her gusts of
+laughter, as if astonished, "Why, I do believe we are going to be happy
+together. I do believe it's going to be fun to live with you."
+
+His appalled surprise that she had again fallen into the pit of
+incredulity was, this time, only half humorous. "For God's sake, what
+_did_ you think!"
+
+She answered, reasonably, "Well, nobody ever is happy together, either
+in books or out of them. Of all the million, million love-affairs that
+have happened, does anybody ever claim any one to have been happy?"
+
+His breath was taken away. He asked helplessly, "Well, why _are_ you
+marrying me?"
+
+She replied very seriously, "Because I can't help myself, dear Neale.
+Isn't that the only reason you're marrying me?"
+
+He looked at her long, his nostrils quivering a little, gave a short
+exclamation which seemed to carry away all his impatience, and finally
+said, quietly enough, "Why, yes, of course, if that's the way you want
+to put it. You can say it in a thousand thousand different ways."
+
+He added with a sudden fury, "And never one of them will come anywhere
+near expressing it. Look here, Marise, I don't believe you have the
+faintest, faintest idea how big this thing is. All these fool clever
+ways of talking about it . . . they're just a screen set up in front of
+it, to my mind. It's enough sight bigger than just you or me, or
+happiness or unhappiness. It's the meaning of everything!"
+
+She considered this thoughtfully. "I don't believe I really know what
+you mean," she said, "or anyhow that I _feel_ what you mean. I have had
+dreams sometimes, that I'm in something awfully big and irresistible
+like a great river, flowing somewhere; but I've never felt it in waking
+hours. I wish I could. It's lovely in dreams. You evidently do, even
+awake."
+
+He said, confidently, "You will, later on."
+
+She ventured, "You mean, maybe, that I'm so shaken up by the little
+surface waves, chopping back and forth, that I don't feel the big
+current."
+
+"It's there. Whether you feel it or not," he made final answer to her
+doubt.
+
+She murmured, "I wonder if there is anything in that silly,
+old-fashioned notion that men are stronger than women, and that women
+must lean on men's strength, to live?"
+
+"Everybody's got to lean on his own strength, sooner or later," he told
+her with a touch of grimness.
+
+"You just won't be romantic!" she cried admiringly.
+
+"I really love you, Marise," he answered profoundly; and on this
+rock-like assurance she sank down with a long breath of trust.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was dipping into the sea now, emblazoning the sky with a last
+flaming half-circle of pure color, but the light had left the dusky
+edges of the world. Already the far mountains were dimmed, and the
+plain, passing from one deep twilight color to another more somber, was
+quietly sinking into darkness as into the strong loving arms of ultimate
+dissolution.
+
+The girl spoke in a dreamy twilight tone, "Neale dear, this is not a
+romantic idea . . . honestly, I do wish we could both die right here and
+never go down to the plain any more. Don't you feel that? Not at all?"
+
+His voice rang out, resonant and harsh as a bugle-note, "No, I do not,
+not at all, not for a single moment. I've too much ahead of me to feel
+that. And so have you!"
+
+"There comes the cable-car, climbing up to get us," she said faintly.
+"And we will go down from this high place of safety into that dark
+plain, and we will have to cross it, painfully, step by step. _Dare_ you
+promise me we will not lose our way?" she challenged him.
+
+"I don't promise you anything about it," he answered, taking her hand in
+his. "Only I'm not a bit afraid of the plain, nor the way that's before
+us. Come along with me, and let's see what's there."
+
+"Do you think you know where we are going, across that plain?" she asked
+him painfully; "even where we are to _try_ to go?"
+
+"No, I don't know, now," he answered undismayed. "But I think we will
+know it as we go along because we will be together."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The darkness, folding itself like a velvet mantle about the far
+mountains, deepened, and her voice deepened with it. "Can you even
+promise that we won't lose each other there?" she asked somberly.
+
+At this he suddenly took her into his arms, silently, bending his face
+to hers, his insistent eyes bringing hers up to meet his gaze. She could
+feel the strong throbbing of his heart all through her own body.
+
+She clung to him as though she were drowning. And indeed she felt that
+she was. Life burst over them with a roar, a superb flooding tide on
+whose strong swelling bosom they felt themselves rising, rising
+illimitably.
+
+The sun had now wholly set, leaving to darkness the old, old plain,
+soaked with humanity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_INTERLUDE_
+
+     March 15, 1920.
+        8:30 A.M.
+
+
+Marise fitted little Mark's cap down over his ears and buttoned his blue
+reefer coat close to his throat.
+
+"Now you big children," she said, with an anxious accent, to Paul and
+Elly standing with their school-books done up in straps, "be sure to
+keep an eye on Mark at recess-time. Don't let him run and get all hot
+and then sit down in the wind without his coat. Remember, it's his first
+day at school, and he's only six."
+
+She kissed his round, smooth, rosy cheek once more, and let him go. Elly
+stooped and took her little brother's mittened hand in hers. She said
+nothing, but her look on the little boy's face was loving and maternal.
+
+Paul assured his mother seriously, "Oh, I'll look out for Mark, all
+right."
+
+Mark wriggled and said, "_I_ can looken out for myself wivout Paul!"
+
+Their mother looked for a moment deep into the eyes of her older son, so
+clear, so quiet, so unchanging and true. "You're a good boy, Paul, a
+real comfort," she told him.
+
+To herself she thought, "Yes, all his life he'll look out for people and
+get no thanks for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She followed the children to the door, wondering at her heavy heart.
+What could it come from? There was nothing in life for her to fear of
+course, except for the children, and it was absurd to fear for them.
+They were all safe; safe and strong and rooted deep in health, and
+little Mark was stepping off gallantly into his own life as the others
+had done. But she felt afraid. What could she be afraid of? As she
+opened the door, their advance was halted by the rush upon them of
+Paul's dog, frantic with delight to see the children ready to be off,
+springing up on Paul, bounding down the path, racing back to the door,
+all quivering eager exultation. "Ah, he's going _with_ the children!"
+thought Marise wistfully.
+
+She could not bear to let them leave her and stood with them in the open
+door-way for a moment. Elly rubbed her soft cheek against her mother's
+hand. Paul, seeing his mother shiver in the keen March air, said,
+"Mother, if Father were here he'd make you go in. That's a thin dress.
+And your teeth are just chattering."
+
+"Yes, you're right, Paul," she agreed; "it's foolish of me!"
+
+The children gave her a hearty round of good-bye hugs and kisses,
+briskly and energetically performed, and went down the stone-flagged
+path to the road. They were chattering to each other as they went. Their
+voices sounded at first loud and gay in their mother's ears. Then they
+sank to a murmur, as the children ran along the road. The dog bounded
+about them in circles, barking joyfully, but this sound too grew fainter
+and fainter.
+
+When the murmur died away to silence, there seemed no sound left in the
+stark gray valley, empty and motionless between the steep dark walls of
+pine-covered mountains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise stood for a long time looking after the children. They were
+climbing up the long hilly road now, growing smaller and smaller. How
+far away they were, already! And that very strength and vigor of which
+she was so proud, which she had so cherished and fostered, how rapidly
+it carried them along the road that led away from her!
+
+They were almost at the top of the hill now. Perhaps they would turn
+there and wave to her.
+
+No, of course now, she was foolish to think of such a thing. Children
+never remembered the people they left behind. And she was now only
+somebody whom they were leaving behind. She felt the cold penetrate
+deeper and deeper into her heart, and knew she ought to go back into the
+house. But she could not take her eyes from the children. She thought to
+herself bitterly, "This is the beginning of the end. I've been feeling
+how, in their hearts, they want to escape from me when I try to hold
+them, or when I try to make them let me into their lives. I've given
+everything to them, but they never think of that. _I_ think of it! Every
+time I look at them I see all those endless hours of sacred sacrifice.
+But when they look at me, do they see any of that? No! Never! They only
+see the Obstacle in the way of their getting what they want. And so they
+want to run away from it. Just as they're doing now."
+
+She looked after them, yearning. Although they were so far, she could
+see them plainly in the thin mountain air. They were running mostly,
+once in a while stopping to throw a stone or look up into a tree. Then
+they scampered on like squirrels, the fox-terrier bounding ahead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now they were at the top where the road turned. Perhaps, after all, they
+_would_ remember and glance back and wave their hands to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now they had disappeared, without a backward look.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She continued gazing at the vacant road. It seemed to her that the
+children had taken everything with them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A gust of icy wind blew down sharply from the mountain, still
+snow-covered, and struck at her like a sword. She turned and went back
+shivering, into the empty house.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+OLD MR. WELLES AND YOUNG MR. MARSH
+
+_An Hour in the Life of Mr. Ormsby Welles, aet. 67_
+
+     March 15, 1920.
+        3:00 P.M.
+
+
+Having lifted the knocker and let it fall, the two men stood gazing with
+varying degrees of attention at the closed white-painted old door. The
+younger, the one with the round dark head and quick dark eyes, seemed
+extremely interested in the door, and examined it competently, its
+harmoniously disposed wide panels, the shapely fan-light over it, the
+small panes of greenish old glass on each side. "Beautiful old bits you
+get occasionally in these out-of-the-way holes," he remarked. But the
+older man was aware of nothing so concrete and material. He saw the door
+as he saw everything else that day, through a haze. Chiefly he was
+concerned as to what lay behind the door. . . . "My neighbors," he thought,
+"the first I ever had."
+
+The sun shone down through the bare, beautiful twigs of the leafless
+elms, in a still air, transparent and colorless.
+
+The handle of the door turned, the door opened. The older man was too
+astonished by what he saw to speak, but after an instant's pause the
+younger one asked if Mr. and Mrs. Crittenden were at home and could see
+callers. The lean, aged, leather-colored woman, with shiny opaque black
+eyes, opened the door wider and silently ushered them into the house.
+
+As long as she was in sight they preserved a prudent silence as profound
+as hers, but when she had left them seated, and disappeared, they turned
+to each other with lifted eyebrows. "Well, what was _that_, do you
+suppose?" exclaimed the Younger. He seemed extremely interested and
+amused. "I'm not so sure, Mr. Welles, about your being safe in never
+locking your doors at night, as they all tell you, up here. With that
+for a neighbor!"
+
+The older man had a friendly smile for the facetious intention of this.
+"I guess I won't have anything that'd be worth locking doors on," he
+said. He looked about him still smiling, his pleasant old eyes full of a
+fresh satisfaction in what he saw. The room was charming to his gaze,
+cheerful and homey. "I don't believe I'm going to have anything to
+complain of, with the folks that live in this house," he said, "any more
+than with any of the rest of it."
+
+The other nodded. "Yes, it's a very good room," he agreed. After a
+longer inspection, he added with a slight accent of surprise, "An oddly
+good room; stunning! Look at the color in those curtains and the walls,
+and the arrangement of those prints over that Chippendale sewing-table.
+I wonder if it's accidental. You wouldn't think you'd find anybody up
+here who could achieve it consciously."
+
+He got to his feet with a vigorous precision of movement which the other
+admired. "Well, he's grown to be considerable of a man," he thought to
+himself. "A pity his father couldn't have lived to see it, all that
+aliveness that had bothered them so much, down at last where he's got
+his grip on it. And enough of it, plenty of it, oceans of it, left so
+that he is still about forty times more alive than anybody else." He
+looked tolerantly with his tired elderly amusement at the other,
+stepping about, surveying the room and every object in it.
+
+The younger brought himself up short in front of a framed photograph.
+"Why, here's a château-fort I don't know!" he said with an abrupt
+accent. He added, with some vehemence, "I never even heard of it, I'm
+sure. And it's authentic, evidently."
+
+The older man sat perfectly still. He did not know what a shatto four
+was, nor had he the slightest desire to ask and bring the information
+down on him, given as the other would give it, pressingly, vividly, so
+that you had to listen whether you wanted to or not. Heaven knew he did
+not want to know about whatever it was, this time. Not about that, nor
+anything else. He only wanted to rest and have a little life before it
+was too late. It was already too late for any but the quietest sort. But
+that was no matter. He wouldn't have liked the other kind very well
+probably. He certainly had detested the sort of "life" he'd experienced
+in business. The quietest sort was what he had always wanted and never
+got. And now it really seemed as though he was going to have it. For all
+his fatigued pose in the old arm-chair, his heart beat faster at the
+idea. He hadn't got used to being free yet. He'd heard people say that
+when you were first married it was like that, you couldn't realize it.
+He'd heard one of the men at the office say that for a long time, every
+time he heard his bride's skirts rustle, he had to turn his head to make
+sure she was really there. Well, he would like now to get up and look
+out of that window and see if his garden was really there. _His garden!_
+He thought with a secret feeling, half pity and half shame, of those
+yellowed old seed catalogues which had come, varnished and brilliant and
+new, year after year, so long ago, which he'd looked at so hard and so
+long, in the evenings, and put away to get yellow and sallow like his
+face . . . and his hopes. It must be almost time to "make garden," he
+thought. He had heard them saying at the store that the sap was
+beginning to run in the maple-trees. He would have just time to get
+himself settled in his house . . . he felt an absurd young flush come up
+under his grizzled beard at this phrase . . . "his house," his own house,
+with bookshelves, and a garden. How he loved it all already! He sat very
+still, feeling those savagely lopped-off tendrils put out their curling
+fingers once more, this time unafraid. He sat there in the comfortable
+old arm-chair at rest as never before. He thought, "This is the way I'm
+going to feel right along, every day, all the time," and closed his
+eyes.
+
+He opened them again in a moment, moved subconsciously by the life-time
+habit of making sure what Vincent was up to. He smiled at the keen look
+of alert, prick-eared attention which the other was still giving to that
+room! Lord, how Vincent did love to get things all figured out! He
+probably had, by this time, an exact diagram of the owners of the house
+all drawn up in his mind and would probably spend the hour of their
+call, seeing if it fitted. Not that _they_ would have any notion he was
+doing anything but talk a blue streak, or was thinking of anything but
+introducing an old friend.
+
+One thing he wanted in his garden was plenty of gladioli. Those poor,
+spindling, watery ones he had tried to grow in the window-box, he'd
+forget that failure in a whole big row all along the terrace, tall and
+strong, standing up straight in the country sunshine. What was the
+address of that man who made a specialty of gladioli? He ought to have
+noted it down. "Vincent," he asked, "do you remember the address of that
+Mr. Schwatzkummerer who grew nothing but gladioli?" Vincent was looking
+with an expression of extreme astonishment at the sheet of music on the
+piano. He started at the question, stared, recollected himself, laughed,
+and said, "Heavens, no, Mr. Welles!" and went back into his own world.
+There were lots of things, Mr. Welles reflected, that Vincent did _not_
+care about just as hard as he cared about others.
+
+In a moment the younger man came and sat down on the short, high-armed
+sofa. Mr. Welles thought he looked puzzled, a very unusual expression on
+that face. Maybe, after all, he hadn't got the owners of the house so
+well-plotted out as he thought he ought to. He himself, going on with
+his own concerns, remarked, "Well, the name must be in the Long Island
+telephone directory. When you go back you could look it up and send me
+word."
+
+"Whose name?" asked Vincent blankly.
+
+"Schwatzkummerer," said the other.
+
+"_What_!" cried Vincent incredulously, and then, "Oh yes," and then,
+"Sure, yes, I'll look it up. I'm going back Thursday on the night train.
+I won't leave the Grand Central without going to a telephone booth,
+looking it up, and sending it to you on a postcard, mailed there. It
+ought to be here on the morning mail Saturday."
+
+The older man knew perfectly well that he was being a little laughed at,
+for his absorption in gladioli, and not minding it at all, laughed
+himself, peaceably. "It would take a great deal more than a little of
+Vincent's fun," he thought, "to make me feel anything but peaceable
+here." He was quite used to having people set him down as a harmless,
+worn-out old duffer, and he did not object to this conception of his
+character. It made a convenient screen behind which he could carry on
+his own observation and meditation uninterrupted.
+
+"Here comes somebody," said Vincent and turned his quick eyes toward the
+door, with an eager expression of attention. He really _must_ have been
+stumped by something in the room, thought Mr. Welles, and meant to
+figure it out from the owners of the house themselves.
+
+The tall, quiet-looking lady with the long dark eyes, who now came in
+alone, excusing herself for keeping them waiting, must of course be Mrs.
+Crittenden, Mr. Welles knew. He wished he could get to his feet as
+Vincent did, looking as though he had got there by a bound or a spring
+and were ready for another. He lifted himself out of his arm-chair with
+a heaviness he knew seemed all the heavier by contrast, took the slim
+hand Mrs. Crittenden offered him, looked at her as hard as he dared, and
+sank again into the arm-chair, as she motioned him to do. He had had a
+long experience in judging people quickly by the expression of their
+faces, and in that short length of time he had decided thankfully that
+he was really, just as he had hoped, going to like his new neighbor as
+much as all the rest of it. He gave her a propitiatory smile, hoping she
+might like him a little, too, and hoping also that she would not mind
+Vincent. Sometimes people did, especially nice ladies such as evidently
+Mrs. Crittenden was. He observed that as usual Vincent had cut in ahead
+of everybody else, had mentioned their names, both of them, and was
+talking with that . . . well, the way he _did_, which people either liked
+very much or couldn't abide. He looked at Vincent as he talked. He was
+not a great talker himself, which gave him a great deal of practice in
+watching people who did. He often felt that he _saw_ more than he heard,
+so much more did people's faces express than their words.
+
+He noticed that the younger man was smiling a good deal, showing those
+fine teeth of his, and he had one of those instantaneously-gone,
+flash-light reminiscences of elderly people, . . . the day when Mr. Marsh
+had been called away from the office and had asked him to go with little
+Vincent to keep an appointment with the dentist. Heavens! How the kid
+had roared and kicked! And now he sat there, smiling, "making a call,"
+probably with that very filling in his tooth, grown-up, not even so very
+young any more, with a little gray in his thick hair, what people often
+called a good-looking man. How life did run between your fingers! Well,
+he would close his hand tight upon what was left to him. He noticed
+further that as Vincent talked, his eyes fixed on his interlocutor, his
+vigorous hands caressed with a slow circular motion the rounded arms of
+his chair. "What a three-ringed circus that fellow is," he thought. "I
+bet that the lady thinks he hasn't another idea in his head but
+introducing an old friend, and all the time he's taking her in, every
+inch of her, and three to one, what he'll talk about most afterwards is
+the smooth hard feeling of those polished arm-chairs." Vincent was
+saying, ". . . and so, we heard in a round-about way too long to bother
+you with, about the small old house next door being for sale, and how
+very quiet and peaceful a spot this is, and the Company bought it for
+Mr. Welles for a permanent home, now he has retired."
+
+"Pretty fine of them!" murmured the older man dutifully, to the lady.
+
+Vincent went on, "Oh, it's only the smallest way for them to show their
+sense of his life-time devotion to their interests. There's no
+estimating what we all owe him, for his steadiness and loyalty and good
+judgment, especially during that hard period, near the beginning. _You_
+know, when all electrical businesses were so entirely on trial still.
+Nobody knew whether they were going to succeed or not. My father was one
+of the Directors from the first and I've been brought up in the
+tradition of how much the small beginning Company is indebted to Mr.
+Welles, during the years when they went down so near the edge of ruin
+that they could see the receiver looking in through the open door."
+
+Welles moved protestingly. He never had liked the business and he didn't
+like reminders that he owed his present comfort to it. Besides this was
+reading his own epitaph. He thought he must be looking very foolish to
+Mrs. Crittenden. Vincent continued, "But of course that's of no great
+importance up here. What's more to the purpose is that Mr. Welles is a
+great lover of country life and growing things, and he's been forced to
+keep his nose on a city grindstone all his life until just now. I think
+I can guarantee that you'll find him a very appreciative neighbor,
+especially if you have plenty of gladioli in your garden."
+
+This last was one of what Welles called "Vincent's sidewipes," which he
+could inlay so deftly that they seemed an integral part of the
+conversation. He wondered what Mrs. Crittenden would say, if Vincent
+ever got through his gabble and gave her a chance. She was turning to
+him now, smiling, and beginning to speak. What a nice voice she had! How
+nice that she should have such a voice!
+
+"I'm more than glad to have you both come in to see me, and I'm
+delighted that Mr. Welles is going to settle here. But Mr. . . ." she
+hesitated an instant, recalled the name, and went on, "Mr. Marsh doesn't
+need to explain you any more. It's evident that you don't know Ashley,
+or you'd realize that I've already heard a great deal more about you
+than Mr. Marsh would be likely to tell me, very likely a good deal more
+than is true. I know for instance, . . ." she laughed and corrected
+herself, ". . . at least I've been told, what the purchase price of the
+house was. I know how Harry Wood's sister-in-law's friend told you about
+Ashley and the house in the first place. I know how many years you were
+in the service of the Company, and how your pension was voted
+unanimously by the Directors, and about the silver loving-cup your
+fellow employees in the office gave you when you retired; and indeed
+every single thing about you, except the exact relation of the elderly
+invalid to whose care you gave up so generously so much of your life;
+I'm not sure whether I she was an aunt or a second-cousin." She paused
+an instant to give them a chance to comment on this, but finding them
+still quite speechless, she went on. "And now I know another thing, that
+you like gladioli, and that is a real bond."
+
+She was interrupted here by a great explosive laugh from Vincent. It was
+his comment on her speech to them, and for a time he made no other,
+eyeing her appreciatively as she and Mr. Welles talked garden together,
+and from time to time chuckling to himself. She gave him once a sidelong
+amused glance, evidently liking his capacity to laugh at seeing the
+ground cut away from under his feet, evidently quite aware that he was
+still thinking about that, and not at all about Mr. Welles and
+tulip-beds. Welles was relieved at this. Apparently she was going to
+"take" Vincent the right way. Some ladies were frightfully rubbed the
+wrong way by that strange great laugh of Vincent's. And what she knew
+about gardening! And not only about gardening in general, but about his
+own garden. He was astounded at her knowledge apparently of every inch
+of the quadrangle of soil back of his house, and at the revelations she
+made to him of what could lie sleeping under a mysterious blank surface
+of earth. Why, a piece of old ground was like a person. You had to know
+it, to have any idea of all that was hidden in its bosom, good and bad.
+"There never was such a place for pigweed as the lower end of your
+vegetable lot," she told him; "you'll have to get up nights to fight it
+if there is plenty of rain this summer." And again, "Be careful about
+not digging too close to the east wall of your terrace. There is a
+border of peonies there, splendid pink ones, and you're likely to break
+off the shoots. They don't show so early as the red ones near the walk,
+that get more sun."
+
+"Did you ever use to _live_ in that house?" he asked her, respectful of
+her mastery of its secrets.
+
+She laughed. "No, oh no. We've lived right here all the eleven years of
+our life in Vermont. But there's another side to the local wireless
+information-bureau that let me know all about you before you ever got
+here. We all know all about everybody and everything, you know. If you
+live in the country you're really married to humanity, for better or for
+worse, not just on speaking terms with it, as you are in the city. Why,
+I know about your garden because I have stood a thousand, thousand times
+leaning on my hoe in my own garden, discussing those peonies with old
+Mrs. Belham who lived there before you." This seemed to bring up some
+picture into her mind at which she looked for a moment, turning from it
+to the man beside her, with a warmth in her voice which went to his
+heart. "It's been forlorn having that dear little old house empty and
+cold. I can't _tell_ you how glad I am you have come to warm it, and
+live in it."
+
+The wonder of it overcame Mr. Welles like a wave. "I can't believe I'm
+really going to!" he cried desperately. "It doesn't seem _possible_!" He
+felt shamed, knowing that he had burst out too violently. What could she
+know of what lay back of him, that he was escaped from! What could she
+think of him, but that he was a foolish, bitter old man?
+
+She did not seem to think that, looking at him attentively as though she
+wanted to make out just what he meant. Perhaps she did make out, for she
+now said gently, "I believe you are going to like it, Mr. Welles. I
+believe you are going to find here what, . . . what you deserve to find."
+She said quietly, "I hope we shall be good neighbors to you."
+
+She spoke so kindly, her look on him was so humane that he felt the
+water coming to his eyes. He was in a foolishly emotional state, these
+first days. The least little thing threw him off the track. It really
+_did_ seem hardly possible that it was all true. That the long grind at
+the office was over, the business he had always hated and detested, and
+the long, hateful slavery at the flat finished at last, and that he had
+come to live out what was left to him in this lovely, peaceful valley,
+in that quiet welcoming little house, with this sweet woman next door!
+He swallowed. The corners of his mouth twitched. What an old lunatic he
+was. But he did not dare trust himself to speak again.
+
+Now Vincent's voice rose. What a length of time Vincent had been
+silent,--he who never took a back seat for anybody! What had he been
+doing all this time, sitting there and staring at them with those
+awfully brilliant eyes of his? Very likely he had seen the silly weak
+tears so near the surface, had caught the sentimental twitch of the
+mouth. Yes, quite certainly, for, now he was showing his tact by
+changing the subject, changing it with a vengeance. "Mrs. Crittenden,"
+he was saying, "my curiosity has been touched by that very fine
+photograph over there. I don't recognize the castle it shows."
+
+"That's in Bayonne," she said, and paused, her eyes speculatively on
+him.
+
+"No, Heavens no! You don't need to tell me that it's not Bayonne, New
+Jersey!" he answered her unspoken question violently. This made her
+laugh, opening her long eyes a little. He went on, "I've been as far as
+Pau, but never went into the Basque country."
+
+"Oh, Pau." She said no more than this, but Welles had the impression
+that these words somehow had made a comment on Vincent's information.
+Vincent seemed to think so too, and curiously enough not to think it a
+very favorable comment. He looked, what he almost never looked, a little
+nettled, and spoke a little stiffly. "It's a very fine specimen," he
+said briefly, looking again at the photograph.
+
+"Oh, it looks very much finer and bigger in the photograph than it
+really is," she told them. "It's only a bandbox of a thing compared with
+Coucy or Pierrefonds or any of the northern ones. It was built, you
+know, like the Cathedral at Bayonne, when the Plantagenets still held
+that country, but after they were practically pretty near English, and
+both the château and the Gothic cathedral seem queer aliens among the
+southern natives. I have the photograph up there on the wall only
+because of early associations. I lived opposite it long ago when I was a
+little girl."
+
+This, to Mr. Welles, was indistinguishable from the usual talk of people
+who have been "abroad." To tell the truth they always sounded to him
+more or less "showing-off," though he humbly tried to think it was only
+because he could never take any part in such talk. He certainly did not
+see anything in the speech to make Vincent look at her, almost with his
+jaw dropped. He himself paid little attention to what she was now
+saying, because he could not keep his mind from the lingering sweet
+intonations of her voice. What difference did it make where she had
+lived as a little girl? She was going to live next door to him now; what
+an awfully nice woman she was, and quite a good-looking woman too, with
+a very nice figure, although not in her very first youth, of course. How
+old could she be? Between thirty and forty of course, but You couldn't
+tell where. His personal taste was not for such a long face as hers. But
+you didn't notice that when she smiled. He liked the way she did her
+black hair, too, so smooth and shining and close to her head. It looked
+as though she'd really combed and brushed it, and most women's hair
+didn't.
+
+She turned to him now, again, and said, "Is this your very first call in
+Ashley? Because if it is, I mustn't miss the opportunity to cut in ahead
+of all the other gossips, and give you a great deal of information. You
+might just as well have it all in one piece now, and get it straight, as
+take it in little snippets from old Mrs. Powers, when she comes to bring
+your milk, this evening. You see I know that you are to get your milk of
+the Powers, and that they have plucked up courage to ask you eight cents
+a quart although the price around here has been, till now, six cents.
+You'll be obliged to listen to a great many more details from Mrs.
+Powers than from me, even those she knows nothing about. But of course
+you must be introduced to the Powers, _in toto_ too. Old Mrs. Powers, a
+very lively old widow, lives on her farm nearly at the foot of Deer
+Hollow. Her married son and his family live with her. In this house,
+there is first of all my husband. I'm so sorry he is away in Canada just
+now, on lumbering business. He is Neale Crittenden, a Williams man, who
+in his youth had thoughts of exploring the world but who has turned out
+head of the 'Crittenden Manufacturing Company,' which is the
+high-sounding name of a smallish wood-working business on the other side
+of the field next our house. You can see the buildings and probably hear
+the saws from your garden. Properly speaking, you know, you don't live
+in Ashley but in 'Crittenden's' and your house constitutes one quarter
+of all the residences in that settlement. There are yours, and ours, the
+mill-buildings, the house where an old cousin of mine lives, and the
+Powers' house, although that is so far away, nearly half a mile, that it
+is really only a farm-house in the country. _We_, you see, are the
+suburb of Ashley."
+
+Marsh laughed out again at this, and she laughed with him, their eyes,
+shining with amusement, meeting in a friendly glance.
+
+"The mill is the most important member of Crittenden's, of course. Part
+of the mill-building is pre-Revolutionary, and very picturesque. In the
+life-time of my husband's uncle, it still ran by water-power with a
+beautiful, enormous old mossy water-wheel. But since we took it over,
+we've had to put in modern machinery very prosaically and run it on its
+waste of slabs, mostly. All sorts of small, unimportant objects are
+manufactured there, things you never heard of probably. Backs of
+hair-brushes, wooden casters to put under beds and chairs, rollers for
+cotton mills. As soon as my husband returns, I'll ask him to take you
+through it. That and the old church are the only historic monuments in
+town."
+
+She stopped and asked him meditatively, "What else do you suppose I need
+to forestall old Mrs. Powers on? My old Cousin Hetty perhaps. She has a
+last name, Allen--yes, some connection with Ethan Allen. I am, myself.
+But everybody has always called her Miss Hetty till few people remember
+that she has another name. She was born there in the old house below
+'the Burning,' and she has lived there for eighty years, and that is all
+her saga. You can't see her house from here, but it is part of
+Crittenden's all the same, although it is a mile away by the main road
+as you go towards the Dug-Way. But you can reach it in six or seven
+minutes from here by a back lane, through the Eagle Rock woods."
+
+"What nice names!" Mr. Welles luxuriated in them. "The Eagle Rock woods.
+The Dug-Way. The Burning. Deer Hollow."
+
+"I bet you don't know what they mean," Vincent challenged him. Vincent
+was always throwing challenges, at everything. But by this time he had
+learned how to dodge them. "No, I don't know, and I don't care if I
+don't," he answered happily.
+
+It pleased him that Mrs. Crittenden found this amusing, so that she
+looked at him laughing. How her eyes glistened when she laughed. It made
+you laugh back. He risked another small attempt at facetiousness. "Go on
+with the census of Crittenden's," he told her. "I want to know all about
+my future fellow-citizens. You haven't even finished up this house,
+anybody but your husband."
+
+"There is myself. You see me. There is nothing more to that. And there
+are the three children, Paul, Elly, and Mark, . . ." She paused here
+rather abruptly, and the whimsical accent of good-humored mockery
+disappeared. For an instant her face changed into something quite
+different from what they had seen. Mr. Welles could not at all make out
+the expression which very passingly had flickered across her eyes with a
+smoke-like vagueness and rapidity. He had the queerest fancy that she
+looked somehow scared,--but of course that was preposterous.
+
+"Your call," she told them both, "happens to fall on a day which marks a
+turning-point in our family life. This is the very first day in ten
+years, since Paul's birth, that I have not had at least one of the
+children beside me. Today is the opening of spring term in our country
+school, and my little Mark went off this morning, for the first time,
+with his brother and sister. I have been alone until you came." She
+stopped for a moment. Mr. Welles wished that Vincent could get over his
+habit of staring at people so. She went on, "I have felt very queer
+indeed, all day. It's as though . . . you know, when you have been walking
+up and up a long flight of stairs, and you go automatically putting one
+foot up and then the other, and then suddenly . . . your upraised foot
+falls back with a jar. You've come to the top, and, for an instant, you
+have a gone feeling without your stairs to climb."
+
+It occurred to Mr. Welles that really perhaps the reason why some nice
+ladies did not like Vincent was just because of his habit of looking at
+them so hard. He could have no idea how piercingly bright his eyes
+looked when he fixed them on a speaker like that. And now Mrs.
+Crittenden was looking back at him, and would notice it. _He_ could
+understand how a refined lady would feel as though somebody were almost
+trying to find a key-hole to look in at her,--to have anybody pounce on
+her so, with his eyes, as Vincent did. She couldn't know, of course,
+that Vincent went pouncing on ladies and baggagemen and office boys, and
+old friends, just the same way. He bestirred himself to think of
+something to say. "I wish I could get up my nerve to ask you, Mrs.
+Crittenden, about one other person in this house," he ventured, "the old
+woman . . . the old lady . . . who let us in the door."
+
+At the sound of his voice Mrs. Crittenden looked away from Vincent
+quickly and looked at him for a perceptible moment before she heard what
+he had said. Then she explained, smiling, "Oh, she would object very
+much to being labeled with the finicky title of 'lady.' That was Touclé,
+our queer old Indian woman,--all that is left of old America here. She
+belongs to our house, or perhaps I should say it belongs to her. She was
+born here, a million years ago, more or less, when there were still a
+few basket-making Indians left in the valley. Her father and mother both
+died, and she was brought up by the old Great-uncle Crittenden's family.
+Then my husband's Uncle Burton inherited the house and brought his bride
+here, and Touclé just stayed on. She always makes herself useful enough
+to pay for her food and lodging. And when his wife died an elderly
+woman, Touclé still just stayed on, till he died, and then she went
+right on staying here in the empty house, till my husband and I got
+here. We were married in Rome, and made the long trip here without
+stopping at all. It was dawn, a June morning, when we arrived. We walked
+all the way from the station at Ashley out to the old house, here at
+Crittenden's. And . . . I'll never forget the astounded expression on my
+husband's face when Touclé rose up out of the long grass in the front
+yard and bade me welcome. She'd known me as a little girl when I used to
+visit here. She will outlive all of us, Touclé will, and be watching
+from her room in the woodshed chamber on the dawn of Judgment Day when
+the stars begin to fall."
+
+Mr. Welles felt a trifle bewildered by this, and showed it. She
+explained further, "But seriously, I must tell you that she is a
+perfectly harmless and quite uninteresting old herb-gatherer, although
+the children in the village are a little afraid of her, because she is
+an Indian, the only one they have ever seen. She really _is_ an Indian
+too. She knows every inch of our valley and the mountains better than
+any lumberman or hunter or fisherman in Ashley. She often goes off and
+doesn't come back for days. I haven't the least idea where she stays.
+But she's very good to our children when she's here, and I like her
+capacity for monumental silence. It gives her very occasional remarks an
+oracular air, even though you know it's only because she doesn't often
+open her lips. She helps a little with the house-work, too, although she
+always looks so absent-minded, as though she were thinking of something
+very far away. She's quite capable of preparing a good meal, for all she
+never seems to notice what she's up to. And she's the last member of our
+family except the very coming-and-going little maids I get once in a
+while. Ashley is unlike the rest of the world in that it is hard to get
+domestic servants here.
+
+"Now let me see, whom next to introduce to you. You know all your
+immediate neighbors now. I shall have to begin on Ashley itself. Perhaps
+our minister and his wife. They live in the high-porticoed,
+tall-pillared white old house next door to the church in the village, on
+the opposite side from the church-yard. They are Ashleyans of the oldest
+rock. Both of them were born here, and have always lived here. Mr.
+Bayweather is seventy-five years old and has never had any other parish.
+I do believe the very best thing I can do for you is to send you
+straight to them, this minute. There's nothing Mr. Bayweather doesn't
+know about the place or the people. He has a collection of Ashleyana of
+all sorts, records, deeds, titles, old letters, family trees. And for
+the last forty years he has been very busy writing a history of Ashley."
+
+"A history of _Ashley_?" exclaimed Vincent.
+
+"A history of Ashley," she answered, level-browed.
+
+Mr. Welles had the impression that a "side-wipe" had been exchanged in
+which he had not shared.
+
+Vincent now asked irrelevantly, "Do you go to church yourself?"
+
+"Oh yes," she answered, "I go, I like to go. And I take the children."
+She turned her head so that she looked down at her long hands in her
+lap, as she added, "I think going to church is a _refining_ influence in
+children's lives, don't you?"
+
+To Mr. Welles' horror this provoked from Vincent one of his great
+laughs. And this time he was sure that Mrs. Crittenden would take
+offense, for she looked up, distinctly startled, really quite as though
+he _had_ looked in through the key-hole. But Vincent went on laughing.
+He even said, impudently, "Ah, now I've caught you, Mrs. Crittenden;
+you're too used to keeping your jokes to yourself. And they're much too
+good for that."
+
+She looked at him hard, with a certain wonder in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, there's no necromancy about it," he told her. "I've been reading
+the titles of your books and glancing over your music before you came
+in. And I can put two and two together. Who are you making fun of to
+yourself? Who first got off that lovely speech about the refining
+influence of church?"
+
+She laughed a little, half-uneasily, a brighter color mounting to her
+smooth oval cheeks. "That's one of Mrs. Bayweather's favorite maxims,"
+she admitted. She added, "But I really _do_ like to go to church."
+
+Mr. Welles felt an apprehension about the turn things were taking.
+Vincent, he felt sure, was on the verge of being up to something. And he
+did not want to risk offending Mrs. Crittenden. He stood up. "Thank you
+very much for telling us about the minister and his wife, Mrs.
+Crittenden. I think we'll go right along down to the village now, and
+pay a call on them. There'll be time enough before dinner." Vincent of
+course got up too, at this, saying, "He's the most perfect old
+housekeeper, you know. He's kept the neatest flat for himself and that
+aged aunt of his for seventy years."
+
+"_Seventy!_" cried Mr. Welles, scandalized at the exaggeration.
+
+"Oh, more or less," said Vincent, laughing. Mr. Welles noticed with no
+enthusiasm that his eyes were extremely bright, that he smiled almost
+incessantly, that he stepped with an excess of his usual bounce.
+Evidently something had set him off into one of his fits of wild high
+spirits. You could almost feel the electricity sparkle from him, as it
+does from a cat on a cold day. Personally, Mr. Welles preferred not to
+touch cats when they were like that.
+
+"When are you going back to the city, Mr. Marsh?" asked Mrs. Crittenden,
+as they said good-bye at the door.
+
+Vincent was standing below her on the marble step. He looked up at her
+now, and something about his expression made Mr. Welles think again of
+glossy fur emitting sparks. He said, "I'll lay you a wager, Mrs.
+Crittenden, that there is one thing your Ashley underground news-service
+has not told you about us, and that is, that I've come up not only to
+help Mr. Welles install himself in his new home, but to take a somewhat
+prolonged rest-cure myself. I've always meant to see more of this
+picturesque part of Vermont. I've a notion that the air of this lovely
+spot will do me a world of good."
+
+As Mr. Welles opened his mouth, perhaps rather wide, in the beginning of
+a remark, he cut in briskly with, "You're worrying about
+Schwatzkummerer, I know. Never you fear. I'll get hold of his address,
+all right." He explained briefly to Mrs. Crittenden, startled by the
+portentous name. "Just a specialist in gladiolus seeds."
+
+"_Bulbs!_" cried Mr. Welles, in involuntary correction, and knew as he
+spoke that he had been switched off to a side-track.
+
+"Oh well, bulbs be it," Vincent conceded the point indulgently. He took
+off his hat in a final salutation to Mrs. Crittenden, and grasping his
+elderly friend by the arm, moved with him down the flag-paved path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TABLE TALK
+
+_An Hour in the Home Life of Mrs. Neale Crittenden, aet. 34_
+
+
+March 20.
+
+As she and Paul carried the table out to the windless, sunny side-porch,
+Marise was struck by a hospitable inspiration. "You and Elly go on
+setting the table," she told the children, and ran across the side-yard
+to the hedge. She leaned over this, calling, "Mr. Welles! Mr. Welles!"
+and when he came to the door, "The children and I are just celebrating
+this first really warm day by having lunch out of doors. Won't you and
+Mr. Marsh come and join us?"
+
+By the time the explanations and protestations and renewals of the
+invitation were over and she brought them back to the porch, Paul and
+Elly had almost finished setting the table. Elly nodded a
+country-child's silent greeting to the newcomers. Paul said, "Oh goody!
+Mr. Welles, you sit by me."
+
+Marise was pleased at the friendship growing up between the gentle old
+man and her little boy.
+
+"Elly, don't you want me to sit by you?" asked Marsh with a playful
+accent.
+
+Elly looked down at the plate she was setting on the table. "If you want
+to," she said neutrally.
+
+Her mother smiled inwardly. How amusingly Elly had acquired as only a
+child could acquire an accent, the exact astringent, controlled brevity
+of the mountain idiom.
+
+"I think Elly means that she would like it very much, Mr. Marsh," she
+said laughingly. "You'll soon learn to translate Vermontese into
+ordinary talk, if you stay on here."
+
+She herself went through the house into the kitchen and began placing
+on the wheel-tray all the components of the lunch, telling them over to
+herself to be sure she missed none. "Meat, macaroni, spinach, hot
+plates, bread, butter, water . . . a pretty plain meal to invite city
+people to share. Here, I'll open a bottle of olives. Paul, help me get
+this through the door."
+
+As he pulled at the other end of the wheeled tray, Paul said that Mark
+had gone upstairs to wash his hands, ages ago, and was probably still
+fooling around in the soap-suds, and like as not leaving the soap in the
+water.
+
+"Paul the responsible!" thought his mother. As they passed the foot of
+the stairs she called up, "Mark! Come along, dear. Lunch is served. All
+ready," she announced as they pushed the tray out on the porch.
+
+The two men turned around from where they had been gazing up at the
+mountain. "What is that great cliff of bare rock called?" asked Mr.
+Marsh.
+
+"Those are the Eagle Rocks," explained Marise, sitting down and
+motioning them to their places. "Elly dear, don't spread it on your
+bread so _thick_. If Mr. Bayweather were here he could probably tell you
+why they are called that. I have known but I've forgotten. There's some
+sort of tradition, I believe . . . no, I see you are getting ready to hear
+it called the Maiden's Leap where the Indian girl leaped off to escape
+an unwelcome lover. But it's not that this time: something or other
+about Tories and an American spy . . . ask Mr. Bayweather."
+
+"Heaven forfend!" exclaimed Mr. Marsh.
+
+Marise was amused. "Oh, you've been lectured to on local history, I
+see," she surmised.
+
+"_I_ found it very interesting," said Mr. Welles, loyally. "Though
+perhaps he does try to give you a little too much at one sitting."
+
+"Mr. Welles," said Paul, with his mouth full, "fishing season begins in
+ten days."
+
+Marise decided that she would really have to have a rest from telling
+Paul not to talk with food in his mouth, and said nothing.
+
+Mr. Welles confessed that he had never gone fishing in his life, and
+asked if Paul would take him.
+
+"Sure!" said Paul. "Mother and I go, lots."
+
+Mr. Marsh looked at Marise inquiringly. "Yes," she said, "I'm a
+confirmed fisherman. Some of the earliest and happiest recollections I
+have, are of fishing these brooks when I was a little girl."
+
+"Here?" asked Mr. Welles. "I thought you lived in France."
+
+"There's time in a child's life to live in various places," she
+explained. "I spent part of my childhood and youth here with my dear old
+cousin. The place is full of associations for me. Will you have your
+spinach now, or later? It'll keep hot all right if you'd rather wait."
+
+"What is this delicious dish?" asked Mr. Marsh. "It tastes like a man's
+version of creamed chicken, which is always a little too lady-like for
+me."
+
+"It's a _blanquette de veau_, and you may be sure I learned to make it
+in one of the French incarnations, not a Vermont one."
+
+Paul stirred and asked, "Mother, where _is_ Mark? He'll be late for
+school, if he doesn't hurry."
+
+"That's so," she said, and reflected how often one used that phrase in
+response to one of Paul's solid and unanswerable statements.
+
+Mark appeared just then and she began to laugh helplessly. His hands
+were wetly, pinkly, unnaturally clean, but his round, rosy, sunny little
+face was appallingly streaked and black.
+
+Paul did not laugh. He said in horrified reproach, "Oh, Mark! You never
+_touched_ your face! It's piggy dirty."
+
+Mark was staggered for a moment, but nothing staggered him long. "I
+don't get microbes off my face into my food," he said calmly. "And you
+bet there aren't any microbes left on my hands." He went on, looking at
+the table disapprovingly, "Mother, there isn't a many on the table
+_this_ day, and I wanted a many."
+
+"The stew's awful good," said Paul, putting away a large quantity.
+
+"'Very,' not 'awful,' and don't hold your fork like that," corrected
+Marise, half-heartedly, thinking that she herself did not like the
+insipid phrase "very good" nor did she consider the way a fork was held
+so very essential to salvation. "How much of life is convention, any way
+you arrange it," she thought, "even in such an entirely unconventional
+one as ours."
+
+"It _is_ good," said Mark, taking his first mouthful. Evidently he had
+not taken the remarks about his face at all seriously.
+
+"See here, Mark," his mother put it to him as man to man, "do you think
+you ought to sit down to the table looking like that?"
+
+Mark wriggled, took another mouthful, and got up mournfully.
+
+Paul was touched. "Here, I'll go up with you and get it over quick," he
+said. Marise gave him a quick approving glance. That was the best side
+of Paul. You could say what you pleased about the faults of American and
+French family life, but at any rate the children didn't hate each other,
+as English children seemed to, in novels at least. It was only last week
+that Paul had fought the big French Canadian boy in his room at school,
+because he had made fun of Elly's rubber boots.
+
+As the little boys clattered out she said to the two guests, "I don't
+know whether you're used to children. If you're not, you must be feeling
+as though you were taking lunch in a boiler factory."
+
+Mr. Welles answered, "I never knew what I was missing before.
+Especially Paul. That first evening when you sent him over with the
+cake, as he stood in the door, I thought, 'I wish _I_ could have had a
+little son like that!'"
+
+"We'll share him with you, Mr. Welles." Marise was touched by the
+wistfulness of his tone. She noticed that Mr. Marsh had made no comment
+on the children. He was perhaps one of the people who never looked at
+them, unless they ran into him. Eugenia Mills was like that, quite
+sincerely.
+
+"May I have a little more of the _blanquette_, if I won't be considered
+a glutton?" asked Mr. Marsh now. "I've sent to the city for an
+invaluable factotum of mine to come and look out for us here, and when
+he comes, I hope you'll give him the recipe."
+
+The little boys clattered back and began to eat again, in haste with
+frequent demands for their mother to tell them what time it was. In
+spite of this precaution, the clock advanced so relentlessly that they
+were obliged to set off, the three of them, before dessert was eaten,
+with an apple in one hand and a cookie in the other.
+
+The two men leaned back in their chairs with long breaths, which Marise
+interpreted as relief. "Strenuous, three of them at once, aren't they?"
+she said. "A New York friend of mine always says she can take the
+vibration-cure, only by listening to family talk at our table."
+
+"What's the vibration-cure?" asked Mr. Welles seriously.
+
+"Oh, _I_ don't know!" confessed Marise. "I'm too busy to keep up with
+the latest fads in cures as Eugenia does. You may meet her there this
+summer, by the way. She usually spends a part of the summer with us. She
+is a very old school-friend of mine."
+
+"French or Vermont incarnation?" inquired Marsh casually. "May I smoke?
+Won't you have a cigarette, yourself?"
+
+"Oh, _French!_" Marise was immensely amused, and then, remembering that
+the joke was not apparent, "If you'd ever seen her, even for a moment,
+you'd know why I laugh. She is the embodiment of sophisticated
+cosmopolitanism, an expert on all sorts of esoteric, aesthetic and
+philosophic matters, book-binding, historic lace, the Vedanta creed,
+Chinese porcelains, Provençal poetry, Persian shawls . . ."
+
+"What nationality is she, herself?" inquired Mr. Welles with some
+curiosity.
+
+Marise laughed. "She was born in Arkansas, and brought up in Minnesota,
+what did you suppose? No European could ever take culture so seriously.
+You know how any convert always has a thousand times more fervor than
+the fatigued members of the faith who were born to it."
+
+"Like Henry James, perhaps?" suggested Marsh.
+
+"Yes, I always envied Henry James the conviction he seems to have had,
+all his life, that Europeans are a good deal more unlike other people
+than I ever found them. It may be obtuseness on my part, but I never
+could see that people who lived in the Basses-Pyrénées are any more
+cultivated or had any broader horizons than people who live in the Green
+Mountains. My own experience is that when you actually live with people,
+day after day, year after year, you find about the same range of
+possibilities in any group of them. But I never advance this theory to
+Eugenia, who would be horrified to know that I find a strong family
+likeness between her New York circle and my neighbors here."
+
+She had been aware that Marsh was looking at her as she spoke. What a
+singular, piercing eye he had! It made her a little restive, as at a
+too-intimate contact, to be looked at so intently, although she was
+quite aware that there was a good deal of admiration in the look. She
+wondered what he was thinking about her; for it was evident that he was
+thinking about her, as he sent out that penetrating gaze.
+
+But perhaps not, after all; for he now said as if in answer to her last
+remark, "I have my own way of believing that, too, that all people are
+made of the same stuff. Mostly I find them perfectly negligible, too
+utterly without savor even to glance at. Once in a thousand years, it
+seems to me, you come across a human being who's alive as you are, who
+speaks your language, is your own kind, belongs to you. When you do,
+good Lord! What a moment!"
+
+He pronounced this in a perfectly impersonal tone, but something about
+the quality of his voice made Marise flash a quick glance at him. His
+eyes met hers with a sudden, bold deepening of their gaze. Marise's
+first impulse was to be startled and displeased, but in an instant a
+quick fear of being ridiculous had voiced itself and was saying to her,
+"Don't be countrified. It's only that I've had no contact with
+people-of-the-world for a year now. That's the sort of thing they get
+their amusement from. It would make him laugh to have it resented."
+Aloud she said, rather at random, "I usually go down once a season to
+the city for a visit to this old friend of mine, and other friends
+there. But this last winter I didn't get up the energy to do that."
+
+"I should think," said Mr. Welles, "that last winter you'd have used up
+all your energy on other things, from what Mrs. Powers tells me about
+the big chorus you always lead here in winters."
+
+"That does take up a lot of time," she admitted. "But it's a generator
+of energy, leading a chorus is, not a spender of it."
+
+"Oh, come!" protested Marsh. "You can't put that over on me. To do it as
+I gather you do . . . heavens! You must pour out your energy and
+personality as though you'd cut your arteries and let the red flood
+come."
+
+"You pour it out all right," she agreed, "but you get it back a thousand
+times over." She spoke seriously, the topic was vital to her, her eyes
+turned inward on a recollection. "It's amazing. It's enough to make a
+mystic out of a granite boulder. I don't know how many times I've
+dragged myself to a practice-evening dog-tired physically with work and
+care of the children, stale morally, sure that I had nothing in me that
+was profitable for any purpose, feeling that I'd do anything to be
+allowed to stay at home, to doze on the couch and read a poor novel."
+She paused, forgetting to whom she was speaking, forgetting she was not
+alone, touched and stirred with a breath from those evenings.
+
+"Well . . . ?" prompted Mr. Marsh. She wondered if she were mistaken in
+thinking he sounded a little irritable.
+
+"Well," she answered, "it has not failed a single time. I have never
+come back otherwise than stronger, and rested, the fatigue and staleness
+all gone, buried deep in something living." She had a moment of
+self-consciousness here, was afraid that she had been carried away to
+seem high-flown or pretentious, and added hastily and humorously, "You
+mustn't think that it's because I'm making anything wonderful out of my
+chorus of country boys and girls and their fathers and mothers. It's no
+notable success that puts wings to my feet as I come home from that
+work. It's only the music, the hearty satisfying singing-out, by
+ordinary people, of what too often lies withering in their hearts."
+
+She was aware that she was speaking not to sympathizers. Mr. Welles
+looked vague, evidently had no idea what she meant. Mr. Marsh's face
+looked closed tight, as though he would not open to let in a word of
+what she was saying. He almost looked hostile. Why should he? When she
+stopped, a little abashed at having been carried along by her feelings,
+Mr. Marsh put in lightly, with no attempt at transition, "All that's
+very well. But you can't make me believe that by choice you live up her
+all the year around. You must nearly perish away with homesickness for
+the big world, you who so evidently belong in it."
+
+"Where is the big world?" she challenged him, laughing. "When you're
+young you want to go all round the globe to look for it. And when you've
+gone, don't you find that your world everywhere is about as big as you
+are?"
+
+Mr. Marsh eyed her hard, and shook his head, with a little scornful
+downward thrust of the corners of his mouth, as though he were an augur
+who refused to lend himself to the traditional necessity to keep up the
+appearance of believing in an exploded religion. "_You_ know where the
+big world is," he said firmly. "It's where there are only people who
+don't have to work, who have plenty of money and brains and beautiful
+possessions and gracious ways of living, and few moral scruples." He
+defined it with a sovereign disregard for softening phrases.
+
+She opposed to this a meditative, "Oh, I suppose the real reason why I
+go less and less to New York, is that it doesn't interest me as it used
+to. Human significance is what makes interest for me, and when you're
+used to looking deep into human lives out of a complete knowledge of
+them as we do up here, it's very tantalizing and tormenting and after a
+while gets boring, the superficial, incoherent glimpses you get in such
+a smooth, glib-tongued circle as the people I happen to know in New
+York. It's like trying to read something in a language of which you know
+only a few words, and having the book shown to you by jerks at that!"
+
+Mr. Marsh remarked speculatively, as though they were speaking of some
+quite abstract topic, "It may also be possibly that you are succumbing
+to habit and inertia and routine."
+
+She was startled again, and nettled . . . and alarmed. What a rude thing
+to say! But the words were no sooner out of his mouth than she had felt
+a scared wonder if perhaps they were not true. She had not thought of
+that possibility.
+
+"I should think you would like the concerts, anyhow," suggested Mr.
+Welles.
+
+"Yes," said Marise, with the intonation that made the affirmation almost
+a negative. "Yes, of course. But there too . . . music means so much to
+me, so very much. It makes me sick to see it pawed over as it is among
+people who make their livings out of it; used as it so often is as a
+background for the personal vanity or greed of the performer. Take an
+ordinary afternoon solo concert given by a pianist or singer . . . it
+always seems to me that the music they make is almost an unconsidered
+by-product with them. What they're really after is something else."
+
+Marsh agreed with her, with a hearty relish, "Yes, musicians are an
+unspeakable bunch!
+
+"I suppose," Marise went on, "that I ought not to let that part of it
+spoil concert music for me. And it doesn't, of course. I've had some
+wonderful times . . . people who play in orchestra and make chamber-music
+are the real thing. But the music you make yourself . . . the music we
+make up here . . . well, perhaps my taste for it is like one's liking
+(some people call it perverse) for French Primitive painting, or the
+something so awfully touching and heart-felt that was lost when the
+Renaissance came up over the Alps with all its knowingness."
+
+"You're not pretending that you get Vermonters to make music?" protested
+Marsh, highly amused at the notion.
+
+"I don't know," she admitted, "whether it is music or not. But it is
+something alive." She fell into a muse, "Queer, what a spider-web of
+tenuous complication human relationships are. I never would have
+thought, probably, of trying anything of the sort if it hadn't been for
+a childhood recollection. . . . French incarnation this time," she said
+lightly to Marsh. "When I was a little girl, a young priest, just a
+young parish priest, in one of the poor hill-parishes of the Basque
+country, began to teach the people of his parish really to sing some of
+the church chants. I never knew much about the details of what he did,
+and never spoke to him in my life, but from across half the world he has
+reached out to touch this cornet of America. By the time I was a young
+lady, he had two or three big country choruses under his direction. We
+used to drive up fist to one and then to another of those hill-towns,
+all white-washed houses and plane-tree atriums, and sober-eyed Basques,
+to hear them sing. It was beautiful. I never have had a more complete
+expression of beauty in all my life. It seemed to me the very soul of
+music; those simple people singing, not for pay, not for notoriety, out
+of the fullness of their hearts. It has been one of the things I never
+forgot, a standard, and a standard that most music produced on platforms
+before costly audiences doesn't come up to."
+
+"I've never been able to make anything out of music, myself," confessed
+Mr. Welles. "Perhaps you can convert me. I almost believe so."
+
+"'Gene Powers sings!" cried Marise spiritedly. "And if he does . . ."
+
+"Any relation to the lively old lady who brings our milk?"
+
+"Her son. Haven't you seen him yet? A powerfully built granite rock of a
+man. Silent as a granite rock too, as far as small talk goes. But he
+turns out to have a bass voice that is my joy. It's done something for
+him, too, I think, really and truly, without sentimental exaggeration at
+all. He suffered a great injustice some six or seven years ago, that
+turned him black and bitter, and it's only since he has been singing in
+our winter choir that he has been willing to mix again with anyone."
+
+She paused for a moment, and eyed them calculatingly. It occurred to her
+that she had been talking about music and herself quite enough. She
+would change the subject to something matter-of-fact. "See here, you'll
+be sure to have to hear all that story from Mr. Bayweather in relentless
+detail. It might be your salvation to be able to say that I had told
+you, without mentioning that it was in a severely abridged form. He'd
+want to start back in the eighteenth century, and tell you all about
+that discreditable and unreconstructed Tory ancestor of mine who, when
+he was exiled from Ashley, is said to have carried off part of the town
+documents with him to Canada. Whether he did or not (Mr. Bayweather has
+a theory, I believe, that he buried them in a copper kettle on Peg-Top
+Hill), the fact remains that an important part of the records of Ashley
+are missing and that has made a lot of trouble with titles to land
+around here. Several times, unscrupulous land-grabbers have taken
+advantage of the vagueness of the titles to cheat farmers out of their
+inheritance. The Powers case is typical. There always have been Powerses
+living right there, where they do now; that big pine that towers up so
+over their house was planted by 'Gene's great-grandfather. And they
+always owned an immense tract of wild mountain land, up beyond the Eagle
+Rock range, along the side of the Red-Brook marsh. But after paying
+taxes on it for generations all during the time when it was too far away
+to make it profitable to lumber, it was snatched away from them, seven
+years ago, just as modern methods and higher prices for spruce would
+have made it very valuable. A lawyer from New Hampshire named Lowder
+turned the trick. I won't bother you going into the legal details--a
+question of a fake warranty deed, against 'Gene's quit-claim deed, which
+was all he had in absence of those missing pages from the town records.
+As a matter of fact, the lawyer hasn't dared to cut the lumber off it
+yet, because his claim is pretty flimsy; but flimsy or not, the law
+regards it as slightly better than 'Gene's. The result is that 'Gene
+can't sell it and daren't cut it for fear of being involved in a
+law-suit that he couldn't possibly pay for. So the Powers are poor
+farmers, scratching a difficult living out of sterile soil, instead of
+being well-to-do proprietors of a profitable estate of wood-land. And
+when we see how very hard they all have to work, and how soured and
+gloomy it has made 'Gene, and how many pleasures the Powers' children
+are denied, we all join in when Mrs. Powers delivers herself of her
+white-hot opinion of New Hampshire lawyers! I remember perfectly that
+Mr. Lowder,--one of the smooth-shaven, thin-lipped, fish-mouthed
+variety, with a pugnacious jaw and an intimidating habit of talking his
+New Hampshire dialect out of the corner of his mouth. The poor Powers
+were as helpless as rabbits before him."
+
+It all came up before her as she talked, that horrid encounter with
+commercial ruthlessness: she saw again poor 'Gene's outraged face of
+helpless anger, felt again the heat of sympathetic indignation she and
+Neale had felt, recognized again the poison which triumphant
+unrighteousness leaves behind. She shook her head impatiently, to shake
+off the memory, and said aloud, "Oh, it makes me sick to remember it! We
+couldn't believe, any of us, that such bare-faced iniquity could
+succeed."
+
+"There's a good deal of bare-faced iniquity riding around prosperously
+in high-powered cars," said Mr. Welles, with a lively accent of
+bitterness. "You have to get used to it in business life. It's very
+likely that your wicked Mr. Lowder in private life in New Hampshire is a
+good husband and father, and contributes to all the charitable
+organizations."
+
+"I won't change _my_ conception of him as a pasty-faced demon," insisted
+Marise.
+
+It appeared that Mr. Marsh's appetite for local history was so slight as
+to be cloyed even by the very much abbreviated account she had given
+them, for he now said, hiding a small yawn, with no effort to conceal
+the fact that he had been bored, "Mrs. Crittenden, I've heard from Mr.
+Welles' house the most tantalizing snatches from your piano. Won't you,
+now we're close to it, put the final touch to our delightful lunch-party
+by letting us hear it?"
+
+Marise was annoyed by his _grand seigneur_ air of certainty of his own
+importance, and piqued that she had failed to hold his interest. Both
+impressions were of a quicker vivacity than was at all the habit of her
+maturity. She told herself, surprised, that she had not felt this little
+sharp sting of wounded personal vanity since she was a girl. What did
+she care whether she had bored him or not? But it was with all her
+faculties awakened and keen that she sat down before the piano and
+called out to them, "What would you like?"
+
+They returned the usual protestations that they would like anything she
+would play, and after a moment's hesitation . . . it was always a leap in
+the dark to play to people about whose musical capacities you hadn't the
+faintest idea . . . she took out the Beethoven Sonata album and turned to
+the Sonata Pathétique. Beethoven of the early middle period was the
+safest guess with such entirely unknown listeners. For all that she
+really knew, they might want her to play Chaminade and Moskowsky. Mr.
+Welles, the nice old man, might find even them above his comprehension.
+And as for Marsh, she thought with a resentful toss of her head that he
+was capable of saying off-hand, that he was really bored by all
+music--and conveying by his manner that it was entirely the fault of the
+music. Well, she would show him how she could play, at least.
+
+She laid her hands on the keys; and across those little smarting,
+trivial personalities there struck the clear, assured dignity and worth
+of her old friend . . . was there ever such a friend as that rough old
+German who had died so long before she was born? No one could say the
+human race was ignoble or had never deserved to live, who knew his
+voice. In a moment she was herself again.
+
+Those well-remembered opening chords, they were by this time not merely
+musical sounds. They had become something within her, of her own being,
+rich with a thousand clustered nameless associations, something that
+thrilled and sang and lived a full harmonious life of its own. That
+first pearling down-dropping arabesque of treble notes, not only her
+fingers played those, but every fiber in her, answering like the
+vibrating wood of a violin, its very cells rearranged in the pattern
+which the notes had so many times called into existence . . . by the time
+she had finished she had almost forgotten that she had listeners.
+
+And when, sitting for a moment, coming back slowly from Beethoven's
+existence to her own, she heard no sound or stir from the porch, she
+had only a quiet smile of tolerant amusement. Apparently she had not
+guessed right as to their tastes. Or perhaps she had played them to
+sleep.
+
+As for herself, she was hungry for more; she reached out her hand
+towards that world of high, purified beauty which miraculously was
+always there, with open doors of gold and ivory. . . .
+
+What now? What did she know by heart? The Largo in the Chopin Sonata.
+That would do to come after Beethoven.
+
+The first plunge into this did not so intimately startle and stir her as
+the Beethoven movement had done. It was always like that, she thought as
+she played, the sound of the first note, the first chord struck when one
+had not played for a day or so; it was having one's closed eyes unsealed
+to the daylight anew, an incredulous rapture. But after that, though you
+didn't go on quaking and bowing your head, though you were no longer
+surprised to find music still there, better than you could possibly
+remember it, though you took it for granted, how deeply and solidly and
+steadfastly you lived in it and on it! It made you like the child in the
+Wordsworth sonnet, "A beauteous evening, calm and free"; it took you in
+to worship quite simply and naturally at the Temple's inner shrine; and
+you adored none the less although you were not "breathless with
+adoration," like the nun; because it was a whole world given to you, not
+a mere pang of joy; because you could live and move and be blessedly and
+securely at home in it.
+
+She finished the last note of the Largo and sat quiet for a moment. Then
+she knew that someone had come into the room behind her. She turned
+about, facing with serene, wide brows whatever might be there.
+
+The first meeting with the eyes of the man who stood there moved her. So
+he too deeply and greatly loved music! His face was quite other from the
+hawk-like, intent, boldly imperious countenance which she had seen
+before. Those piercing eyes were softened and quietly shining. The
+arrogant lines about the mouth that could look so bitter and skeptical,
+were as sweet and candid as a child's.
+
+He smiled at her, a good, grateful, peaceful smile, and nodded, as
+though now they understood each other with no more need for words. "Go
+on . . . go on!" was all he said, very gently and softly. He sank down in
+an arm-chair and leaned his head back in the relaxed pose of listening.
+
+He looked quite and exactly what Marise was feeling.
+
+It was with a stir of all her pulses, a pride, a glory, a new sympathy
+in her heart, that she turned back to the piano.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A LITTLE GIRL AND HER MOTHER
+
+_An Afternoon in the Life of Elly Crittenden, aet. 8 Years_
+
+
+April 6.
+
+Elly Crittenden had meant to go straight home from school as usual with
+the other children, Paul and Mark, and Addle and Ralph Powers. And as
+usual somehow she was ever so far behind them, so far that there wasn't
+any use trying to catch up. Paul was hurrying to go over and see that
+new old man next door, as usual. She might as well not try, and just
+give up, and get home ever so late, the way she always did. Oh well,
+Father wasn't at home, and Mother wouldn't scold, and it was nice to
+walk along just as slow as you wanted to, and feel your rubber boots
+squizzle into the mud. How _good_ it did seem to have real mud, after
+the long winter of snow! And it was nice to hear the brooks everywhere,
+making that dear little noise and to see them flashing every-which-way
+in the sun, as they tumbled along downhill. And it was nice to smell
+that smell . . . what _was_ that sort of smell that made you know the
+sugaring-off had begun? You couldn't smell the hot boiling sap all the
+way from the mountain-sides, but what you did smell made you think of
+the little bark-covered sap-houses up in the far woods, with smoke and
+white steam coming out from all their cracks, as though there was
+somebody inside magicking charms and making a great cloud to cover it,
+like Klingsor or the witch-ladies in the Arabian Nights. There was a
+piece of music Mother played, that was like that. You could almost see
+the white clouds begin to come streeling out between the piano-keys, and
+drift all around her. All but her face that always looked through.
+
+The sun shone down so warm on her head, she thought she might take off
+her woolen cap. Why, yes, it was plenty warm enough. Oh, how good it
+felt! How _good_ it did feel! Like somebody actually touching your hair
+with a warm, soft hand. And the air, that cool, cool air, all damp with
+the thousand little brooks, it felt just as good to be cool, when you
+tossed your hair and the wind could get into it. How _good_ it did feel
+to be bare-headed, after all that long winter! Cool inside your hair at
+the roots, and warm outside where the sun pressed on it. Cool wind and
+warm sun, two different things that added up to make one lovely feel for
+a little girl. The way your hair tugged at its roots, all streaming
+away; every single little hair tied tight to your head at one end, and
+yet so wildly loose at the other; tight, strong, firm, and yet light and
+limber and flag-flapping . . . it was like being warm and cool at the same
+time, so different and yet the same.
+
+And there, underneath all this fluttering and tossing and differences,
+there were your legs going on just as dumb and steady as ever, stodge,
+stodge, stodge! She looked down at them with interest and appreciation
+of their faithful, dutiful service, and with affection at the rubber
+boots. She owed those to Mother. Paul had scared her so, when he said,
+so stone-wally, the way Paul always spoke as if that settled everything,
+that _none_ of the little girls at school wore rubber boots, and he
+thought Elly oughtn't to be allowed to look so queer. It made him almost
+ashamed of his sister, he said. But Mother had somehow . . . what _had_
+she said to fix it? . . . oh well, something or other that left her her
+rubber boots and yet Paul wasn't mad any more.
+
+And what could she _do_ without rubber boots, when she wanted to wade
+through a brook, like this one, and the brooks were as they were now,
+all running spang full to the very edge with snow-water, the way this
+one did? Oo . . . Ooh . . . Ooh! how queer it did feel, to be standing most
+up to your knees this way, with the current curling by, all cold and
+snaky, feeling the fast-going water making your boot-legs shake like
+Aunt Hetty's old cheeks when she laughed, and yet your feet as _dry_
+inside! How could they feel as cold as that, without being wet, as
+though they were magicked? That was a _real_ difference, even more than
+the wind cool inside your hair and the sun warm on the outside; or your
+hair tied tight at one end and all wobbly loose at the other. But this
+wasn't a nice difference. It didn't add up to make a nice feeling, but a
+sort of queer one, and if she stood there another minute, staring down
+into that swirly, snatchy water, she'd fall right over into it . . . it
+seemed to be snatching at _her!_ Oh gracious! This wasn't much better!
+on the squelchy dead grass of the meadow that looked like real ground
+and yet you sank right into it. Oh, it was _horridly_ soft, like
+touching the hand of that new man that had come to live with the old
+gentleman next door. She must hurry as fast as she could . . . it felt as
+though it was sucking at her feet, trying to pull her down altogether
+like the girl with the red shoes, and she didn't have any loaves of
+bread to throw down to step on . . .
+
+Well, there! this was better, as the ground started uphill. There was
+firm ground under her feet. Yes, not mud, nor soaked, flabby
+meadow-land, but solid earth, _solid, solid!_ She stamped on it with
+delight. It was just as nice to have solid things _very_ solid, as it
+was to have floaty things like clouds _very_ floaty. What was horrid was
+to have a thing that _looked_ solid, and yet was all soft, like gelatine
+pudding when you touched it.
+
+Well, for goodness' sake, where was she? Where had she come to, without
+thinking a single thing about it? Right on the ridge overlooking Aunt
+Hetty's house to be sure, on those rocks that hang over it, so you could
+almost throw a stone down any one of the chimneys. She might just as
+well go down and make Aunt Hetty a visit now she was so near, and walk
+home by the side-road. Of course Paul would say, nothing could keep him
+from saying, that she had planned to do that very thing, right along,
+and when she left the school-house headed straight for Aunt Hetty's
+cookie-jar. Well, _let_ him! She could just tell him, she'd never
+_dreamed_ of such a thing, till she found herself on those rocks.
+
+She walked more and more slowly, letting herself down cautiously from
+one ledge to another, and presently stopped altogether, facing a beech
+tree, its trunk slowly twisted into a spiral because it was so hard to
+keep alive on those rocks. She was straight in front of it, staring into
+its gray white-blotched bark. Now if _Mother_ asked her, of course she'd
+have to say, yes, she had planned to, _sort of_ but not quite. Mother
+would understand. There wasn't any use trying to tell things how they
+really were to Paul, because to him things weren't ever
+sort-of-but-not-quite. They either were or they weren't. But Mother
+always knew, both ways, hers and Paul's.
+
+She stepped forward and downward now, lightened. Her legs stretched out
+to carry her from one mossed rock to another. "Striding," that was what
+she was doing. Now she knew just what "striding" meant. What fun it was
+to _feel_ what a word meant! Then when you used it, you could feel it
+lie down flat in the sentence, and fit into the other words, like a
+piece in a jig-saw puzzle when you got it into the right place.
+Gracious! How fast you could "stride" down those rocks into Aunt Hetty's
+back yard!
+
+Hello! Here at the bottom was some snow, a great big drift of it still
+left, all gray and shrunk and honey-combed with rain and wind, with a
+little trickle of water running away softly and quietly from underneath
+it, like a secret. Well, think of there being still _snow_ left anywhere
+except on top of the mountains! She had just been thinking all the
+afternoon how _good_ it seemed to have the snow all gone, and here she
+ran right into some, as if you'd been talking about a person, saying how
+sick and tired you were of everlastingly seeing him around, and there he
+was, right outside the window and hearing it all, and knowing it wasn't
+_his_ fault he was still hanging on. You'd feel bad to know he'd heard.
+She felt bad now! After all, the fun the snow had given them, all that
+winter, sleighing and snow-shoeing and ski-running and sliding downhill.
+And when she remembered how _glad_ she'd been to see the first snow, how
+she and little Mark had run to the window to see the first flakes, and
+had hollered, Oh goody, _goody!_ And here was all there was left, just
+one poor old forgotten dirty drift, melting away as fast as it _could_,
+so's to get itself out of the way. She stood looking down on it
+compassionately, and presently, stooping over, gave it a friendly,
+comforting pat with one mittened hand.
+
+Then she was pierced with an arrow of hunger, terrible, devouring
+starvation! Why was it she was always so _much_ hungrier just as she got
+out of school, than ever at meal-times? She did hope this wouldn't be
+one of those awful days when Aunt Hetty's old Agnes had let the
+cookie-jar get empty!
+
+She walked on fast, now, across the back yard where the hens, just as
+happy as she was to be on solid ground, pottered around dreamily, their
+eyes half-shut up. . . . Elly could just think how good the sun must feel
+on their feathers! She could imagine perfectly how it would be to have
+feathers instead of skin and hair. She went into the kitchen door.
+Nobody was there. She went through into the pantry. Nobody there!
+Nobody, that is, except the cookie-jar, larger than any other object in
+the room, looming up like a wash-tub. She lifted the old cracked plate
+kept on it for cover. _Oh_, it was _full_,--a fresh baking! And raisins
+in them! The water ran into her mouth in a little gush. Oh _my_, how
+good and cracklesome they looked! And how beautifully the sugar
+sprinkled on them would grit against your teeth as you ate it! Oh
+_gracious!_
+
+She put her hand in and touched one. There was nothing that felt like a
+freshly baked cookie; even through your mitten you could _know_, with
+your eyes shut, it was a cookie. She took hold of one, and stood
+perfectly still. She could take that, just as easy! Nobody would miss
+it, with the jar so full. Aunt Hetty and Agnes were probably
+house-cleaning, like everybody else, upstairs. Nobody would ever know.
+The water of desire was at the very corners of her mouth now. She felt
+her insides surging up and down in longing. _Nobody_ would know!
+
+She opened her hand, put the cookie back, laid the plate on the top of
+the jar, and walked out of the pantry. Of course she couldn't do that.
+What had she been thinking of,--such a stealy, common thing, and she
+_Mother's_ daughter!
+
+But, oh! It was awful, having to be up to Mother! She sniffed forlornly
+and drew her mitten across her nose. She _had_ wanted it so! And she was
+just _dying_, she was so hungry. And Mother wouldn't even let her _ask_
+people for things to eat. Suppose Aunt Hetty didn't think to ask her!
+
+She went through the dining-room, into the hall, and called upstairs,
+"Aunt Hetty! Aunt Hetty!" She was almost crying she felt so sorry for
+herself.
+
+"Yis," came back a faint voice, very thin and high, the way old people's
+voices sounded when they tried to call loud. "Up in the east-wing
+garret."
+
+She mounted the stairs heavily, pulling herself along by those spindling
+old red balustrades, just like so many old laths, noticing that her
+rubber boots left big hunks of mud on the white-painted stairs, but too
+miserable to care.
+
+The door to the east-wing garret was open. Aunt Hetty was there, bossing
+Agnes, and they were both "dudsing," as Elly called it to herself,
+leaning over trunks, disappearing in and out of closets, turning inside
+out old bags of truck, sorting over, and, for all Elly could see,
+putting the old duds back again, just where they had been before.
+Grown-ups did seem to run round in circles, so much of their time!
+
+She sat down wearily on an ugly little old trunk near the door. Aunt
+Hetty shut up a drawer in a dresser, turned to Elly, and said, "Mercy,
+child, what's the matter? Has the teacher been scolding you?"
+
+"No, Aunt Hetty," said Elly faintly, looking out of the window.
+
+"Anybody sick at your house?" asked Aunt Hetty, coming towards the
+little girl.
+
+"No," said Elly, shaking her head.
+
+"Don't you feel well?" asked Aunt Hetty, laying one wrinkled, shaky old
+hand on her shoulder.
+
+"No, Aunt Hetty," said Elly, her eyes large and sad.
+
+"Maybe she's hungry," suggested Agnes, in a muffled voice from the
+depths of a closet.
+
+"Are you?" asked Aunt Hetty.
+
+"Yes," cried Elly.
+
+Aunt Hetty laughed. "Well, I don't know if there are any cookies in the
+house or not," she said, "we've been so busy house-cleaning. Agnes, did
+you bake any cookies this morning?"
+
+Elly was struck into stupor at this. Think of not _knowing_ if there
+were any cookies in the house!
+
+Agnes appeared, tiny and old and stooped and wrinkled, like her
+mistress. She had a big, rolled-up woolen-covered comforter in her arms,
+over which she nodded. "Yes, I made some. You told me to make some every
+Wednesday," she said. She went on, looking anxiously at Aunt Hetty,
+"There ain't any moth-holes in this. Was this the comfortable you meant?
+I thought this was the one you told me to leave out of the camphor
+chest. I thought you told me . . ."
+
+"You know where to find the cookies, don't you, Elly?" asked Aunt Hetty,
+over her shoulder, trotting rapidly like a little dry, wind-blown leaf,
+towards Agnes and the comforter.
+
+"Oh _yes_, Aunt Hetty!" shouted Elly, halfway down the stairs.
+
+Aunt Hetty called after her, "Take all you want . . . three or four. They
+won't hurt you. There's no egg in our recipe."
+
+Elly was there again, in the empty pantry, before the cookie-jar. She
+lifted the cracked plate again. . . . But, oh! how differently she did
+feel now! . . . and she had a shock of pure, almost solemn, happiness at
+the sight of the cookies. She had not only been good and done as Mother
+would want her to, but she was going to have _four_ of those cookies.
+Three _or_ four, Aunt Hetty had said! As if anybody would take three if
+he was let to have four! Which ones had the most raisins? She knew of
+course it wasn't _so very_ nice to pick and choose that way, but she
+knew Mother would let her, only just laugh a little and say it was a
+pity to be eight years old if you couldn't be a little greedy!
+
+Oh, how happy she was! How light she felt! How she floated back up the
+stairs! What a perfectly sweet old thing Aunt Hetty was! And what a nice
+old house she had, though not so nice as home, of course. What pretty
+mahogany balusters, and nice white stairs! Too bad she had brought in
+that mud. But they were house-cleaning anyhow. A little bit more to
+clean up, that was all. And what _luck_ that they were in the east-room
+garret, the one that had all the old things in it, the hoop-skirts and
+the shells and the old scoop-bonnets, and the four-poster bed and those
+fascinating old cretonne bags full of treasures.
+
+She sat down near the door on the darling little old hair-covered trunk
+that had been Great-grandfather's, and watched the two old women at
+work. The first cookie had disappeared now, and the second was well on
+the way. She felt a great appeasement in her insides. She leaned back
+against the old dresses hung on the wall and drew a long breath.
+
+"Well," said Aunt Hetty, "you've got neighbors up your way, so they tell
+me. Funny thing, a city man coming up here to live. He'll never stick it
+out. The summer maybe. But that's all. You just see, come autumn, if he
+don't light out for New York again."
+
+Elly made no comment on this. She often heard her elders say that she
+was not a talkative child, and that it was hard to get anything out of
+her. That was because mostly they wanted to know about things she
+hadn't once thought of noticing, and weren't a bit interested when she
+tried to talk about what she _had_ noticed. Just imagine trying to tell
+Aunt Hetty about that poor old gray snow-bank out in her woods, all
+lonely and scrumpled up! She went on eating her cookie.
+
+"How does he like it, anyhow?" asked Aunt Hetty, bending the upper part
+of her out of the window to shake something. "And what kind of a critter
+is he?"
+
+"Well, he's rather an old man," said Elly. She added conscientiously,
+trying to be chatty, "Paul's crazy about him. He goes over there all the
+time to visit. I like him all right. The old man seems to like it here
+all right. They both of them do."
+
+"Both?" said Aunt Hetty, curving herself back into the room again.
+
+"Oh, the other one isn't going to _live_ here, like Mr. Welles. He's
+just come to get Mr. Welles settled, and to make him a visit. His name
+is Mr. Marsh."
+
+"Well, what's _he_ like?" asked Aunt Hetty, folding together the old
+wadded petticoat she had been shaking.
+
+"Oh, he's all right too," said Elly. She wasn't going to say anything
+about that funny softness of his hands, she didn't like, because that
+would be like speaking about the snow-drift; something Aunt Hetty would
+just laugh at, and call one of her notions.
+
+"Well, what do they _do_ with themselves, two great hulking men set off
+by themselves?"
+
+Elly tried seriously to remember what they did do. "I don't see them, of
+course, much in the morning before I go to school. I guess they get up
+and have their breakfast, the way anybody does."
+
+Aunt Hetty snorted a little, "Gracious, child, a person needs a
+corkscrew to get anything out of you. I mean all day, with no chores, or
+farmin', or _any_thing."
+
+"I don't _know_," Elly confessed. "Mr. Clark, of course, he's busy
+cooking and washing dishes and keeping house, but . . ."
+
+"Are there _three_ of them?" Aunt Hetty stopped her dudsing in her
+astonishment. "I thought you said two."
+
+"Oh well, Mr. Marsh sent down to the city and had this Mr. Clark come up
+to work for them. He doesn't call him 'Mr. Clark'--just 'Clark,' short
+like that. I guess he's Mr. Marsh's hired man in the city. Only he can
+do everything in the house, too. But I don't feel like calling him
+'Clark' because he's grown-up, and so I call him '_Mr._ Clark.'" She did
+not tell Aunt Hetty that she sort of wanted to make up to him for being
+somebody's servant and being called like one. It made her mad and she
+wanted to show he could be a mister as well as anybody. She began on the
+third cookie. What else could she say to Aunt Hetty, who always wanted
+to know the news so? She brought out, "Well, _I_ tell you, in the
+afternoon, when I get home, mostly old Mr. Welles is out in his garden."
+
+"_Gardin_!" cried Aunt Hetty. "Mercy on us, making garden the fore-part
+of April. Where does he think he's living? Florida?"
+
+"I don't believe he's exactly making garden," said Elly. "He just sort
+of pokes around there, and looks at things. And sometimes he sits down
+on the bench and just _sits_ there. He's pretty old, I guess, and he
+walks kind of tired, always."
+
+"Does the other one?" asked Aunt Hetty.
+
+This made Elly sit up, and say very loud, "No, _indeedy_!" She really
+hadn't thought before how very _un_tired Mr. Marsh always seemed. She
+added, "No, the other one doesn't walk tired, nor he doesn't poke around
+in the garden. He takes long tramps way back of the mountains, over
+Burnham way."
+
+"For goodness' sakes, what's he find up there?"
+
+"He likes it. He comes over and borrows our maps and things to study,
+and he gets Mother to tell him all about everything. He gets Touclé to
+tell him about the back trails, too."
+
+"Well, he's a smart one if he can get a word out of Touclé."
+
+"Yes, he does. Everybody talks to him. You _have_ to if he starts in.
+He's very lively."
+
+"Does he get _you_ to talk?" asked Aunt Hetty, laughing at the idea.
+
+"Well, some," stated Elly soberly. She did not say that Mr. Marsh always
+seemed to her to be trying to get some secret out of her. She didn't
+_have_ any secret that she knew of, but that was the way he made her
+feel. She dodged him mostly, when she could.
+
+"What's the news from your father?"
+
+"Oh, he's all right," said Elly. She fell to thinking of Father and
+wishing he would come back.
+
+"When's he going to get through his business, up there?"
+
+"Before long, I guess. Mother said maybe he'd be back here next month."
+Elly was aware that she was again not being talkative. She tried to
+think of something to add. "I'm very much obliged for these cookies,"
+she said. "They are awfully good."
+
+"They're the kind your mother always liked, when she was your age," said
+Aunt Hetty casually. "I remember how she used to sit right there on
+Father's hair-trunk and eat them and watch me just like you now."
+
+At this statement Elly could feel her thoughts getting bigger and longer
+and higher, like something being opened out. "And the heaven was removed
+as a scroll when it is rolled up." That sentence she'd heard in church
+and never understood, and always wondered what was behind, what they had
+seen when the scroll was rolled up. . . . Something inside her now seemed
+to roll up as though she were going to see what was behind it. How much
+longer time was than you thought! Mother had sat there as a little girl
+. . . a little girl like her. Mother who was now grown-up and _finished_,
+knowing everything, never changing, never making any mistakes. Why, how
+_could_ she have been a little girl! And such a short time ago that Aunt
+Hetty remembered her sitting there, right there, maybe come in from
+walking across that very meadow, and down those very rocks. _What had
+she been thinking about, that other little girl who had been Mother?_
+"Why" . . . Elly stopped eating, stopped breathing for a moment. "Why, she
+herself would stop being a little girl, and would grow up and be a
+Mother!" She had always known that, of course, but she had never _felt_
+it till that moment. It made her feel very sober; more than sober,
+rather holy. Yes, that was the word,--holy,--like the hymn. Perhaps some
+day another little girl would sit there, and be just as surprised to
+know that _her_ mother had been really and truly a little girl too, and
+would feel queer and shy at the idea, and all the time her mother had
+been only _Elly_. But would she _be_ Elly any more, when she was grown
+up? What would have happened to Elly? And after that little girl,
+another; and one before Mother; and back as far as you could see, and
+forwards as far as you could see. It was like a procession, all half in
+the dark, marching forward, one after another, little girls, mothers,
+mothers and little girls, and then more . . . what for . . . oh, _what
+for?_
+
+She was a little scared. She wished she could get right up and go _home_
+to Mother. But the procession wouldn't stop . . . wouldn't stop. . . .
+
+Aunt Hetty hung up the last bag. "There," she said, "that's all we can
+do here today. Elly, you'd better run along home. The sun'll be down
+behind the mountain _now_ before you get there."
+
+Elly snatched at the voice, at the words, at Aunt Hetty's wrinkled,
+shaking old hand. She jumped up from the trunk. Something in her face
+made Aunt Hetty say, "Well, you look as though you'd most dropped to
+sleep there in the sun. It does make a person feel lazy this first warm
+March sun. I declare this morning I didn't want to go to work
+house-cleaning. I wanted to go and spend the day with the hens, singing
+over that little dozy ca-a-a-a they do, in the sun, and stretch one leg
+and one wing till they most broke off, and ruffle up all my feathers
+and let 'em settle back very slow, and then just _set_."
+
+They had started downstairs before Aunt Hetty had finished this, the
+little girl holding tightly to the wrinkled old hand. How peaceful Aunt
+Hetty was! Even the smell of her black woolen dresses always had a
+_quiet_ smell. And she must see all those hunks of mud on the white
+stairs, but she never said a word. Elly squeezed her hand a little
+tighter.
+
+What was it she had been thinking about on the hair-trunk that made her
+so glad to feel Aunt Hetty peaceful? Oh yes, that Mother had been there,
+where she was, when she was a little girl. Well, gracious! What of that?
+She'd always known that Mother had visited Aunt Hetty a lot and that
+Aunt Hetty had been awfully good to her, and that Mother loved Aunt
+Hetty like everything. What had made it seem so queer, all of a sudden?
+
+"Well," said Aunt Hetty at the front door, "step along now. I don't want
+you should be late for supper." She tipped her head to look around the
+edge of the top of the door and said, "Well, I declare, just see that
+moon showing itself before ever the sun gets down."
+
+She walked down the path a little way with Elly, who still held her
+hand. They stood together looking up at the mountain, very high and blue
+against the sky that was green . . . yes, it really was a pale, clear
+green, at the top of the mountain-line. People always said the sky was
+blue, except at sunset-time, like now, when it was filling the Notch
+right to the top with every color that could be.
+
+"The lilacs will begin to swell soon," said Aunt Hetty.
+
+"I saw some pussy-willows out, today," answered Elly.
+
+The old woman and the little girl lifted their heads, threw them back,
+and looked up long into the sky, purely, palely high above them.
+
+"It's quite a sightly place to live, Crittenden's is," said Aunt Hetty.
+
+Elly said nothing, it being inconceivable to her that she could live
+anywhere else.
+
+"Well, good-bye," said Aunt Hetty. It did not occur to her to kiss the
+little girl. It did not occur to Elly to want a kiss. They squeezed
+their hands together a little bit more, and then Elly went down the
+road, walking very carefully.
+
+Why did she walk so carefully, she wondered? She felt as though she were
+carrying a cup, full up to the brim of something. And she mustn't let it
+spill. What was it so full of? Aunt Hetty's peacefulness, maybe.
+
+Or maybe just because it was beginning to get twilight. That always made
+you feel as though something was being poured softly into you, that you
+mustn't spill. She was glad the side-road was so grass-grown. You could
+walk on it, so still, like this, and never make a sound.
+
+She thought again of Father and wished he would come home. She _liked_
+Father. He was solid. He was solid like that solid earth she liked so
+much to walk on. It was just such a comfort to feel him. Father was like
+the solid ground and Mother was like the floaty clouds. Why, yes, they
+were _every_ way like what she had been thinking about. . . . Father was
+the warm sun on the outside, and Mother was the cool wind on the inside.
+Father was the end that was tied tight and firm so you _knew_ you
+couldn't lose it, and Mother was the end that streamed out like flags in
+the wind. But they weren't either of them like that slinky, swirly
+water, licking at you, in such a hurry to get on past you and get what
+it was scrambling to get, whatever that was.
+
+Well, of all things! There was old Mr. Welles, coming towards her. _He_
+must be out taking a walk too. How slowly he went! And kept looking up
+the way she and Aunt Hetty had, at the sky and the mountains. He was
+quite close now. Why . . . why, he didn't know she was there. He had gone
+right by her and never even saw her and yet had been so close she could
+see his face plainly. He must have been looking very hard at the
+mountains. But it wasn't hard the way he was looking, it was soft. How
+soft his face had looked, almost quivery, almost. . . . But that was silly
+to think of . . . almost as though he felt like crying. And yet all
+shining and quiet, too, as if he'd been in church.
+
+Well, it _was_ a little bit like being in church, when you could see the
+twilight come down very slow like this, and settle on the tree-tops and
+then down through them towards you. You always felt as though it was
+going to do something to you when it got to you; something peaceful,
+like old Aunt Hetty.
+
+She was at her own front path now, it was really almost dark. Mother was
+playing the piano. But not for either of the boys. It was grown-up music
+she was playing. Elly hesitated on the flagged stones. Maybe she was
+playing for Mr. Marsh again. She advanced slowly. Yes, there he was,
+sitting on the door-step, across the open door, leaning back his head,
+smoking, sometimes looking out at the sunset, and sometimes looking in
+towards the piano.
+
+Elly made a wide circuit under the apple-trees, and went in the
+side-door. Touclé was only just setting the table. Elly would have
+plenty of time to get off her rubber boots, look up her old felt
+slippers, and put them on before supper time. Gracious! Her stockings
+were wet. She'd have to change them, too. She'd just stay upstairs till
+Mr. Marsh went away. She didn't feel to talk to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When out of her window she saw him step back across the grass to Mr.
+Welles' house, Elly came downstairs at once. The light in the
+living-room made her blink, after all that outdoor twilight and the
+indoor darkness of her room upstairs.
+
+Mother was still at the piano, her hands on the keys, but not playing.
+At the sight of her, Elly's heart filled and brightened. Her busy, busy
+thoughts stopped for the first time that day. She felt as you do when
+you've been rowing a boat a long time and finally, almost where you
+want to go, you stop and let her slide in on her own movement, quiet and
+soft and smooth, and reach out your hand to take hold of the
+landing-place. Elly reached out her arm and put it around Mother's neck.
+She stood perfectly quiet. There wasn't any need to be anything _but_
+quiet now you'd got to where you were going.
+
+She had been out on the rim of the wheel, all around and around it, and
+up and down the spokes. But now she was at the center where all the
+spokes ended.
+
+She closed her eyes and laid her head on Mother's soft shoulder.
+
+"Did you have a good walk, all by yourself, dear?" asked Mother.
+
+"Oh yes, it was all right," said Elly.
+
+"Your feet aren't wet, are they?"
+
+"No," said Elly, "I took off my boots just as soon as I came in, and
+changed my stockings."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THINGS TAKE THEIR COURSE
+
+
+_A Couple of Hours from Mr. Welles' New Life_.
+
+
+I
+
+April 10.
+
+One of the many things which surprised Mr. Welles was that he seemed to
+need less sleep than in the city. Long hours in bed had been one of the
+longed-for elements of the haven of rest which his retiring from the
+office was to be. Especially as he had dragged himself from bed to stop
+the relentless snarl of his alarm-clock, had he hoped for late morning
+sleeps in his new home, when he could wake up at seven, feel himself
+still heavy, unrefreshed, unready for the day, and turn on the pillow to
+take another dose of oblivion.
+
+But here, after the first ten days of almost prostrate relaxation, he
+found himself waking even before the dawn, and lying awake in his bed,
+waiting almost impatiently for the light to come so that he could rise
+to another day. He learned all the sounds of the late night and early
+morning, and how they had different voices in the dark; the faint
+whisper of the maple-branches, the occasional stir and muffled chirp of
+a bird, the hushed, secret murmur of the little brook which ran between
+his garden and the Crittenden yard, and the distant, deeper note of the
+Necronsett River as it rolled down the Ashley valley to The Notch. He
+could almost tell, without opening his eyes, when the sky grew light
+over the Eagle Rocks, by the way the night voices lifted, and carried
+their sweet, muted notes up to a clearer, brighter singing.
+
+When that change in the night-voices came, he sat up in bed, turning
+his face from the window, for he did not want any mere partial glimpse
+for his first contact with the day, and got into his clothes, moving
+cautiously not to waken Vincent, who always sat up till all hours and
+slept till ten. Down the stairs in his stocking-feet, his shoes in his
+hand; a pause in the living-room to thread and fasten shoe-laces; and
+then, his silly old heart beating fast, his hand on the door-knob. The
+door slowly opened, and the garden, his own shining garden, offered
+itself to him anew, so fresh in the dew and the pale gold of the
+slanting morning sun-rays, that he was apt to swallow hard as he first
+stepped out into it and stood still, with bare head lifted, drawing one
+long breath after another.
+
+He was seldom alone in those early hours, although the house slept
+profoundly behind him; a robin, the only bird whose name he was sure of,
+hopped heavily and vigorously about on the sparkling grass; a little
+brown bird of whose name he had not the slightest notion, but whose
+voice he knew very well by this time, poured out a continuous cascade of
+quick, high, eager notes from the top of the elm; a large toad squatted
+peaceably in the sun, the loose skin over its forehead throbbing
+rhythmically with the life in it; and over on the steps of the
+Crittendens' kitchen, the old Indian woman, as motionless as the toad,
+fixed her opaque black eyes on the rising sun, while something about
+her, he could never decide what, throbbed rhythmically with the life in
+her. Mr. Welles had never in all his life been so aware of the rising
+sun, had never so felt it like something in himself as on those mornings
+when he walked in his garden and glanced over at the old Indian.
+
+Presently, the Crittenden house woke, so to speak, with one eye, and
+took on the aspect of a house in which someone is astir. First came the
+fox-terrier, inevitable precursor of his little master, and then,
+stepping around Touclé as though she were a tree or a rock, came his
+little partner Paul, his freckled face shining with soap and the
+earliness of the hour. Mr. Welles was apt to swallow hard again, when
+he felt the child's rough, strong fingers slip into his.
+
+"Hello, Mr. Welles," said Paul.
+
+"Hello, Paul," said Mr. Welles.
+
+"I thought sure I'd beat you to it for once, this morning," was what
+Paul invariably said first. "I can't seem to wake up as early as you and
+Touclé."
+
+Then he would bring out his plan for that particular morning walk.
+
+"Maybe we might have time to have me show you the back-road by Cousin
+Hetty's, and get back by the men's short-cut before breakfast, maybe?
+Perhaps?"
+
+"We could try it," admitted Mr. Welles, cautiously. It tickled him to
+answer Paul in his own prudent idiom. Then they set off, surrounded and
+encompassed by the circles of mad delight which Médor wove about them,
+rushing at them once in a while, in a spasm of adoration, to leap up and
+lick Paul's face.
+
+Thus on one of these mornings in April, they were on the back-road to
+Cousin Hetty's, the right-hand side solemn and dark with tall pines,
+where the ground sloped up towards the Eagle Rocks; jungle-like with
+blackberry brambles and young pines on the left side where it had been
+lumbered some years ago. Paul pointed out proudly the thrifty growth of
+the new pines and explained it by showing the several large trees left
+standing at intervals down the slope towards the Ashley valley. "Father
+always has them do that, so the seeds from the old trees will seed up
+the bare ground again. Gosh! You'd ought to hear him light into the
+choppers when they forget to leave the seed-pines or when they cut under
+six inches butt diameter."
+
+Mr. Welles had no more notion what cutting under six inches butt
+diameter meant than he had of the name of the little brown bird who sang
+so sweetly in his elm; but Paul's voice and that of the nameless bird
+gave him the same pleasure. He tightened his hold of the tough, sinewy
+little fingers, and looked up through the glorious brown columns of the
+great pines towards where the sky-line showed, luminous, far up the
+slope.
+
+"That's the top of the Eagle Rocks, where you see the sky," explained
+his small cicerone, seeing the direction of his eyes. "The Powerses lost
+a lot of sheep off over them, last year. A dog must ha' started running
+them down in the pasture. And you know what fools sheep are. Once they
+get scared they can't think of anything to do except just to keep
+a-running till something gets in their way. About half of the Powers
+flock just ran themselves off the top of the Rocks, although the dog had
+stopped chasing them, way down in the valley. There wasn't enough of
+them left, even to sell to the butcher in Ashley for mutton. Ralph
+Powers, he's about as old as I am, maybe a little bit older, well, his
+father had given him a ewe and two twin lambs for his own, and didn't
+they all three get killed that day! Ralph felt awful bad about it. He
+don't ever seem to have any luck, Ralph don't."
+
+. . . How sweet it was, Mr. Welles thought to himself, how awfully sweet
+to be walking in such pine-woods, on the early morning, preceded by such
+a wildly happy little dog, with a little boy whose treble voice ran on
+and on, whose strong little hand clasped yours so tightly, and who
+turned up to you eyes of such clear trust! Was he the same man who for
+such endless years had been a part of the flotsam cast out every morning
+into the muddy, brawling flood of the city street and swept along to
+work which had always made him uneasy and suspicious of it?
+
+"There's the whistle," said Paul, holding up a finger. "Father has the
+first one blown at half-past six, so's the men can have time to get
+their things ready and start; and not have to hurry."
+
+At this a faint stirring of interest in what the child was saying broke
+through the golden haze of the day-dream in which Mr. Welles was
+walking. "Where do they come from anyhow, the men who work in your
+father's mill?" he asked. "Where do they live? There are so few homes at
+Crittenden's."
+
+"Oh, they live mostly over the hill in the village, in Ashley. There are
+lots of old houses there, and once in a while now they even have to
+build a new one, since the old ones are all filled up. Mr. Bayweather
+says that before Father and Mother came here to live and really run the
+mill, that Ashley Street was all full of empty houses, without a light
+in them, that the old folks had died out of. But now the men have bought
+them up and live in them. It's just as bright, nights! With windows
+lighted up all over. Father's had the electric current run over there
+from the mill, now, and that doesn't cost anything except . . ."
+
+Mr. Welles' curiosity satisfied, he fell back into his old shimmer of
+content and walked along, hearing Paul's voice only as one of the
+morning sounds of the newly awakened world.
+
+Presently he was summoned out of this day-dream by a tug at his hand.
+Paul gave out the word of command, "We turn here, so's to get into the
+men's short-cut."
+
+This proved to be a hard-trodden path, lying like a loosely thrown-down
+string, over the hill pasture-land which cut Ashley village off from
+Crittenden's mill. It was to get around this rough tract that the road
+had to make so long a detour.
+
+"Oh, I see," said Mr. Welles. "I'd been thinking that it must bother
+them a lot to come the two miles along the road from the village."
+
+"Sure," said Paul. "Only the ones that have got Fords come that way.
+This is ever so much shorter. Those that step along fast can make it
+easy in twelve or fifteen minutes. There they come now, the first of
+them." He nodded backward along the path where a distant dark line of
+men came treading swiftly and steadily forward, tin pails glistening in
+their hands.
+
+"Some of those in that first bunch are really choppers by rights," Paul
+diagnosed them with a practised eye, "but of course nobody does much
+chopping come warmer weather. But Father never lays off any men unless
+they want to be. He fixes some jobs for them in the lumber-yard or in
+the mill, so they live here all the year around, same's the regular
+hands."
+
+The two stood still now, watching the men as their long, powerful
+strides brought them rapidly nearer. Back of them the sun rose up
+splendid in the sparkling, dustless mountain air. The pasture grass on
+either side of the sinuous path lay shining in the dew. Before them the
+path led through a grove of slim, white birches, tremulous in a pale
+cloud of light green.
+
+"Well, they've got a pretty good way to get to their work, all right,"
+commented Mr. Welles.
+
+"Yep, pretty good," agreed Paul. "It's got tramped down so it's quite
+smooth."
+
+A detachment of the file of tall, strongly built, roughly dressed men
+had now reached them, and with friendly, careless nods and greetings to
+Paul, they swung by, smoking, whistling, calling out random remarks and
+jokes back and forth along the line.
+
+"Hello, Frank. Hello, Mike. Hello, Harry. Hello, Jom-bastiste. Hello,
+Jim." Paul made answer to their repeated, familiar, "Hello, Paul."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Welles drew back humbly from out their path. These were men, useful
+to the world, strong for labor. He must needs stand back with the child.
+
+With entire unexpectedness, he felt a wistful envy of those men, still
+valid, still fit for something. For a moment it did not seem as sweet as
+he had thought it would always be, to feel himself old, old and
+useless.
+
+
+II
+
+April 12.
+
+He was impatient to be at the real work of gardening and one morning
+applied seriously to Mrs. Crittenden to be set at work. Surely this must
+be late enough, even in this "suburb of the North Pole," as Vincent
+called Vermont. Well, yes, Mrs. Crittenden conceded to him, stopping her
+rapid manipulation of an oiled mop on the floor of her living-room, if
+he was in such a hurry, he could start getting the ground ready for the
+sweet peas. It wouldn't do any harm to plant them now, though it might
+not do any good either; and he mustn't be surprised to find occasional
+chunks of earth still frozen. She would be over in a little while to
+show him about it. Let him get his pick-mattock, spade, and rake ready,
+up by the corner of his stone wall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was waiting there, ten minutes later, the new implements (bought at
+Mrs. Crittenden's direction days and days ago) leaning against the wall.
+The sun was strong and sweet on his bared white head, the cool earth
+alive under his feet, freed from the tension of frost which had held it
+like stone when he had first trod his garden. He leaned against the
+stone wall, laid a century ago by who knew what other gardener, and
+looked down respectfully at the strip of ground along the stones. There
+it lay, blank and brown, shabby with the litter of broken, sodden stems
+of last year's weeds, and unsightly with half-rotten lumps of manure.
+And that would feed and nourish . . .
+
+For an instant there stood there before his flower-loving eyes the
+joyful tangle of fresh green vines, the pearly many-colored flesh of the
+petals, their cunning, involved symmetry of form--all sprung from a
+handful of wrinkled yellow seeds and that ugly mixture of powdered stone
+and rotten decay.
+
+It was a wonderful business, he thought.
+
+Mrs. Crittenden emerged from her house now, in a short skirt, rough
+heavy shoes, and old flannel shirt. She looked, he thought, ever so trig
+and energetic and nice; but suddenly aware that Vincent was gazing idly
+out of an upper window at them, he guessed that the other man would not
+admire the costume. Vincent was so terribly particular about how ladies
+dressed, he thought to himself, as he moved forward, mattock in hand.
+
+"I'm ashamed to show you how dumb I am about the use of these tools," he
+told her, laughing shamefacedly. "I don't suppose you'll believe me, but
+honestly I never had a pick-mattock in my hand till I went down to the
+store to buy one. I might as well go the whole hog and confess I'd never
+even heard of one till you told me to get it. Is this the way you use
+it?" He jabbed ineffectually at the earth with the mattock, using a
+short tight blow with a half-arm movement. The tool jarred itself half
+an inch into the ground and was almost twisted out of his hand.
+
+"No, not quite," she said, taking the heavy tool out of his hand. If she
+were aware of the idle figure at the upper window, she gave no sign of
+it. She laid her strong, long, flexible hands on the handle, saying,
+"So, you hold it this way. Then you swing it up, back of your head.
+There's a sort of knack to that. You'll soon catch it. And then, if the
+ground isn't very hard, you don't need to use any strength at all on the
+downward stroke. Let Old Mother Gravity do the work. If you aim it
+right, its own weight is enough for ordinary garden soil, that's not in
+sod. Now watch."
+
+She swung the heavy tool up, shining in the bright air, all her tall,
+supple body drawn up by the swing of her arms, cried out, "See, now I
+relax and just let it fall," and bending with the downward rush of the
+blade, drove it deep into the brown earth. A forward thrust of the long
+handle ("See, you use it like a lever," she explained), a small
+earthquake in the soil, and the tool was free for another stroke.
+
+At her feet was a pool of freshly stirred fragments of earth, loose,
+friable, and moist, from which there rose in a gust of the spring
+breeze, an odor unknown to the old man and thrilling.
+
+He stooped down, thrust his hand into the open breast of earth, and took
+up a handful of the soil which had lain locked in frost for half a year
+and was now free for life again. Over it his eyes met those of the
+beautiful woman beside him.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, there's nothing like it, the smell of the first earth
+stirred every spring."
+
+He told her, wistfully, "It's the very first stirred in all my life."
+
+They had both lowered their voices instinctively, seeing Vincent emerge
+from the house-door and saunter towards them immaculate in a gray suit.
+Mr. Welles was not at all glad to see him at this moment. "Here, let me
+have the mattock," he said, taking it out of Mrs. Crittenden's hands, "I
+want to try it myself."
+
+He felt an anticipatory impatience of Vincent's everlasting talk, to
+which Mrs. Crittenden always had, of course, to give a polite attention;
+and imitating as well as he could, the free, upward swing of his
+neighbor, he began working off his impatience on the unresisting earth.
+But he could not help hearing that, just as he expected, Vincent plunged
+at once into his queer, abrupt talk. He always seemed to think he was
+going right on with something that had been said before, but really, for
+the most part, as far as Mr. Welles could see, what he said had nothing
+to do with anything. Mrs. Crittenden must really be a very smart woman,
+he reflected, to seem to know what he meant, and always to have an
+answer ready.
+
+Vincent, shaking his head, and looking hard at Mrs. Crittenden's rough
+clothes and the handful of earth in her fingers, said with an air of
+enforced patience with obvious unreasonableness, "You're on the wrong
+track, you know. You're just all off. Of course with you it can't be
+pose as it looks when other people do it. It must be simply
+muddle-headed thinking."
+
+He added, very seriously, "You infuriate me."
+
+Mr. Welles, pecking feebly at the ground, the heavy mattock apparently
+invested with a malicious life of its own, twisting perversely, heavily
+lop-sided in his hands, thought that this did not sound like a polite
+thing to say to a lady. And yet the way Vincent said it made it sound
+like a compliment, somehow. No, not that; but as though it were awfully
+important to him what Mrs. Crittenden did. Perhaps that counted as a
+compliment.
+
+He caught only a part of Mrs. Crittenden's answer, which she gave,
+lightly laughing, as though she did not wish to admit that Vincent could
+be so serious as he sounded. The only part he really heard was when she
+ended, ". . . oh, if we are ever going to succeed in forcing order on the
+natural disorder of the world, it's going to take everybody's shoulder
+to the wheel. Women can't stay ornamental and leisurely, and elegant,
+nor even always nice to look at."
+
+Mr. Welles, amazed at the straining effort he needed to put forth to
+manage that swing which Mrs. Crittenden did so easily, took less than
+his usual small interest in the line of talk which Vincent was so fond
+of springing on their neighbor. He heard him say, with his air of always
+stating a foregone conclusion, something so admitted that it needed no
+emphasis, "It's Haroldbellwrightism, pure and simple, to imagine that
+anything you can ever do, that anybody can ever do, will help bring
+about the kind of order _you're_ talking about, order for everybody. The
+only kind of order there ever will be, is what you get when you grab a
+little of what you want out of the chaos, for your own self, while
+there's still time, and hold on to it. That's the only way to get
+anywhere for yourself. And as for doing something for other people, the
+only satisfaction you can give anybody is in beauty."
+
+Mr. Welles swam out of the breakers into clear water. Suddenly he caught
+the knack of the upward swing, and had the immense satisfaction of
+bringing the mattock down squarely, buried to the head in the earth.
+
+"There!" he said proudly to Mrs. Crittenden, "how's that for fine?"
+
+He looked up at her, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He wondered for
+an instant if she really looked troubled, or if he only imagined it.
+There was no doubt about how Vincent looked, as though he thought Mr.
+Welles, exulting over a blow with a mattock, an old imbecile in his
+dotage.
+
+Mr. Welles never cared very much whether he seemed to Vincent like an
+old imbecile or not, and certainly less than nothing about it today,
+intoxicated as he was with the air, the sun, and his new mastery over
+the soil. He set his hands lovingly to the tool and again and again
+swung it high over his head, while Vincent and Mrs. Crittenden strolled
+away, still talking. . . . "Doesn't it depend on what you mean by
+'beauty'?" Mrs. Crittenden was saying.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS
+
+_An Evening in the Life of Mrs. Neale Crittenden_
+
+
+April 20.
+
+Nowadays she so seldom spoke or acted without knowing perfectly well
+what she was about, that Marise startled herself almost as much as her
+callers by turning over that leaf in the photograph album quickly and
+saying with abruptness, "No, never mind about that one. It's nothing
+interesting."
+
+Of course this brought out from Paul and little Mark, hanging over her
+shoulder and knee, the to-be-expected shouts of, "Oh, let's see it! What
+is it?"
+
+Marise perceived that they scented something fine and exciting such as
+Mother was always trying to keep from them, like one man choking another
+over the edge of a cliff, or a woman lying on her back with the blood
+all running from her throat. Whenever pictures like that were in any of
+the magazines that came into the house, Marise took them away from the
+little boys, although she knew helplessly that this naturally made them
+extremely keen not to miss any chance to catch a glimpse of such a one.
+She could see that they thought it queer, there being anything so
+exciting in this old album of dull snapshots and geographical
+picture-postcards of places and churches and ruins and things that
+Father and Mother had seen, so long ago. But you never could tell. The
+way Mother had spoken, the sound of her voice, the way she had flapped
+down the page quick, the little boys' practised ears and eyes had
+identified all that to a certainty with the actions that accompanied
+pictures she didn't want them to see. So, of course, they clamored, "Oh
+_yes_, Mother, just one look!"
+
+Elly as usual said nothing, looking up into Mother's face. Marise was
+extremely annoyed. She was glad that Elly was the only one who was
+looking at her, because, of course, dear old Mr. Welles' unobservant
+eyes didn't count. She was glad that Mr. Marsh kept his gaze downward on
+the photograph marked "Rome from the Pincian Gardens," although through
+the top of his dark, close-cropped head she could fairly feel the
+racing, inquiring speculations whirling about. Nor had she any right to
+resent that. She supposed people had a right to what went on in their
+own heads, so long as they kept it to themselves. And it had been
+unexpectedly delicate and fine, the way he had come to understand,
+without a syllable spoken on either side, that that piercing look of his
+made her uneasy; and how he had promised her, wordlessly always, to bend
+it on her no more.
+
+_Why_ in the world had it made her uneasy, and why, a thousand times
+why, had she felt this sudden unwillingness to look at the perfectly
+commonplace photograph, in this company? Something had burst up from the
+subconscious and flashed its way into action, moving her tongue to speak
+and her hand to action before she had the faintest idea it was there . . .
+like an action of youth! And see what a silly position it had put her
+in!
+
+The little boys had succeeded with the inspired tactlessness of children
+in emphasizing and exaggerating what she had wished could be passed over
+unnoticed, a gesture of hers as inexplicable to her as to them. Oh well,
+the best thing, of course, was to carry it off matter-of-factly, turn
+the leaf back, and _let_ them see it. And then refute them by insisting
+on the literal truth of what she had said.
+
+"There!" she said carelessly; "look at it then."
+
+The little boys bent their eager faces over it. Paul read out the title
+as he had been doing for the other photographs, "'View of the Campagna
+from the top of the cable-railway at Rocca di Papa. Rome in the
+distance.'"
+
+She had to sustain, for an instant, an astonished and disconcerted look
+from all those eyes. It made her quite genuinely break into a laugh. It
+was really a joke on them. She said to the little boys mischievously,
+"What did Mother say? Do you find it very interesting?"
+
+Paul and Mark stared hard at the very dull photograph of a cliff and a
+plain and not even a single person or donkey in it, and gave
+up the riddle. Mother certainly _had_ spoken to them in that
+hide-it-away-from-the-children voice, and yet there was nothing there.
+
+Marise knew that they felt somehow that Mother had unfairly slipped out
+between their fingers, as grown-ups are always doing. Well, it wasn't
+fair. She hated taking advantage of them like that. It was a sort of sin
+against their awakening capacity to put two and two together and make a
+human total, and understand what went on about them.
+
+But it hadn't been against _their_ capacity to put two and two together
+that she had instinctively thrown up that warding-off arm, which hadn't
+at all warded off attention, but rather drawn it hard and scrutinizing,
+in spite of those down-dropped sharp eyes. Well, there was no sum he
+could do with only two, and slight probability he would ever get the
+other two to put with it . . . whatever the other two might be.
+
+Mr. Welles' pleasant old voice said, "It's a very pretty picture, I'm
+sure. They certainly have very fine views about the Eternal City. I envy
+you your acquaintance with all those historic spots. What is the next
+one?"
+
+Dear old Mr. Welles! What a restful presence! How unutterably sweet and
+uncomplicated life could be with a good big dose of simplicity holding
+everything in a clear solution, so that it never occurred to you that
+what things seemed was very different from what they were.
+
+"Ready to turn over, dears?" she asked the little boys. This time she
+was in her usual control of the machine, regulated what she did from
+the first motion to the last, made her voice casual but not elaborately
+so, and put one arm around Mark's slim little shoulder with just the
+right degree of uninterest in those old and faded photographs.
+
+Very deep down, at the edge of consciousness, something asked her, "Why
+did you try to hide that photograph?"
+
+She could not answer this question. She didn't know why, any more than
+the little boys did. And it wouldn't do now, with the need to be
+mistress-of-the-house till a call ended, to stop to try to think it out.
+Later on, tonight, after the children were in bed, when she was brushing
+her hair . . . oh, probably she'd find as you so often did, when you went
+after the cause of some unexpected little feeling, that it came from a
+meaningless fortuitous association of ideas, like Elly's hatred of
+grape-jelly because she had once taken some bitter medicine in it.
+
+"'View of the Roman Aqueduct, taken from the tramway line to Tivoli,'"
+read out Paul.
+
+"Very pretty view," said Mr. Welles.
+
+Mr. Marsh's silences were as abysmal as his speech was Niagara-like on
+occasion. He said nothing.
+
+Elly stirred and looked toward the doorway. Touclé stood there, her
+shoe-button eyes not blinking in the lamp-light although she probably
+had been sitting on the steps of the kitchen, looking out into the
+darkness, in the long, motionless vigil which made up Touclé's evenings.
+As they all turned their faces towards her, she said, "The cereus is
+going to bloom tonight," and disappeared.
+
+Marise welcomed this diversion. Ever since that absurd little gesture
+about the photograph, she had felt thickening about her . . . what? What
+you call "depression" (whatever that meant), the dull hooded apparition
+that came blackly and laid its leaden hand on your heart. This news was
+just the thing. It would change what was threatening to stand stagnant
+and charge it with fresh running currents. She got up briskly to her
+feet.
+
+"Come on, children," she said. "I'll let you sit up beyond bed-time
+tonight. Scatter quick, and put on your things. We'll all go down the
+road to the Powers house and see the cereus in bloom."
+
+The children ducked quickly out of the room, thudding along softly in
+their felt slippers. Scramblings, chatterings, and stamping sounded back
+from the front hall, as they put on their boots and wraps.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to come, too?" she asked the men, rescuing them from
+the rather high-and-dry position in which this unexpected incident had
+left them. It was plainly, from their faces, as inexplicable as
+unexpected. She explained, drawing a long, plain, black silk scarf
+closely about her head and shoulders, "Why, yes, do come. It's an
+occasion as uniquely Ashleyian as pelota is Basque. You, Mr. Marsh, with
+your exhaustive inquiries into the habits and manners of Vermont
+mountaineers, your data won't be complete unless you've seen Nelly
+Powers' night-blooming cereus in its one hour of glory. Seriously, I
+assure you, you won't encounter anything like it, anywhere else."
+
+As Marsh looked at her, she noted with an inward amusement that her
+words had lighted a smouldering glow of carefully repressed exasperation
+in his eyes. It made her feel quite gay and young to be teasing somebody
+again. She was only paying him back in his own coin. He himself was
+always telling everybody about his deep interest in the curious quaint
+ways of these mountaineers. And if he didn't have a deep interest in
+their curious quaint ways, what else could he give as a reason for
+staying on in the valley?
+
+The men turned away to get their hats. She settled the folds of her
+heavy black silk mantilla more closely about her head, glancing at
+herself in the mirror. She smiled back with sympathy at the smiling face
+she saw there. It was not so often since the war that she saw her own
+face lighted with mirth.
+
+Gravely, something deep on the edge of the unconscious called up to her,
+"You are talking and feeling like a coquette."
+
+She was indignant at this, up in arms to defend human freedom. "Oh, what
+a hateful, little-villagey, prudish, nasty-minded idea!" she cried to
+herself. "Who would have thought that narrowness and priggishness could
+rub off on a person's mind like that! Mrs. Bayweather could have thought
+that! Mercy! As if one civilized being can't indulge in a light touch or
+two in human intercourse with another!"
+
+The two men were ready now and all the party of six jostled each other
+cheerfully as they went out of the front door. Paul had secured the hand
+of old Mr. Welles and led him along with an air of proprietary
+affection.
+
+"Don't you turn out the lamp, or lock the door, or _any_thing?" asked
+the old man, now.
+
+"Oh no, we won't be gone long. It's not more than half a mile to the
+Powers'. There's not a soul in the valley who would think of going in
+and rummaging . . . let alone taking anything. And we never have tramps.
+We are too far from the railroad," said Marise.
+
+"_Well!_" exclaimed the other, looking back as they went down the path,
+"it certainly looks queer to me, the door standing open into this black
+night, and the light shining in that empty room."
+
+Elly looked back too. She slipped her hand out of her mother's and ran
+towards the house. She darted up to the door and stood there, poised
+like a swallow, looking in.
+
+"What does she want?" asked Mr. Welles with the naïve conviction of the
+elderly bachelor that the mother must know everything in the child's
+mind.
+
+"I don't know," admitted Marise. "Nobody ever knows exactly what is in
+Elly's mind when she does things. Maybe she is looking to see that her
+kitten is safe."
+
+The little girl ran back to them.
+
+"What did you want, dear?" asked her mother.
+
+"I just wanted to look at it again," said Elly. "I _like_ it, like that,
+all quiet, with nobody in it. The furniture looks as though it were
+having a good rest from us."
+
+"Oh, listen to the frogs!" screamed Mark, out of the darkness where he
+had run to join Touclé.
+
+Elly and Paul sprang forward to join their little brother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What in the world are we going to see?" asked Marsh. "You forget you
+haven't given us the least idea."
+
+"You are going to see," Marise set herself to amuse them, "you're going
+to see a rite of the worship of beauty which Ashley, Vermont, has
+created out of its own inner consciousness."
+
+She had succeeded in amusing at least one of them, for at this Mr. Marsh
+gave her the not disagreeable shock of that singular, loud laugh of his.
+It was in conversation like something-or-other in the orchestra . . . the
+cymbals, that must be it . . . made you jump, and tingle with answering
+vibrations.
+
+"Ashleyians in the rôle of worshipers of beauty!" he cried, out of the
+soft, moist, dense darkness about them.
+
+"None so blind as those who won't see," she persisted. "Just because
+they go to it in overalls and gingham aprons, instead of peplums and
+sandals."
+
+"What _is_ a night-blooming cereal?" asked Mr. Welles, patient of the
+verbose by-play of his companions that never got anybody anywhere.
+
+What an old dear Mr. Welles was! thought Marise. It was like having the
+sweetest old uncle bestowed on you as a pendant to dear Cousin Hetty.
+
+". . . -eus, not -eal," murmured Marsh; "not that I know any more than you
+what it is."
+
+Marise felt suddenly wrought upon by the mildness of the spring air,
+the high, tuneful shrillness of the frogs' voices, the darkness, sweet
+and thick. She would not amuse them; no, she would really tell them,
+move them. She chose the deeper intonations of her voice, she selected
+her words with care, she played upon her own feeling, quickening it into
+genuine emotion as she spoke. She would make them feel it too.
+
+"It is a plant of the cactus family, as native to America as is Ashley's
+peculiar sense of beauty which you won't acknowledge. It is as ugly to
+look at, the plant is, all spines and thick, graceless, fleshy pads; as
+ugly as Ashley life looks to you. And this crabbed, ungainly
+plant-creature is faithfully, religiously tended all the year around by
+the wife of a farmer, because once a year, just once, it puts forth a
+wonderful exotic flower of extreme beauty. When the bud begins to show
+its color she sends out word to all her neighbors to be ready. And we
+are all ready. For days, in the back of our minds as we go about our
+dull, routine life, there is the thought that the cereus is near to
+bloom. Nelly and her grim husband hang over it day by day, watching it
+slowly prepare for its hour of glory. Sometimes when they cannot decide
+just the time it will open, they sit up all through a long night, hour
+after hour of darkness and silence, to make sure that it does not bloom
+unseen. When they see that it is about to open, they fling open their
+doors, wishing above everything else to share that beauty with their
+fellows. Their children are sent to announce, as you heard Touclé say
+tonight, 'The cereus is going to bloom.' And all up and down this end of
+the valley, in those ugly little wooden houses that look so mean and
+dreary to you, everywhere people tired from their day's struggle with
+the earth, rise up and go their pilgrimage through the night . . . for
+what? To see something rare and beautiful."
+
+She stopped speaking. On one side of her she heard the voice of the
+older man say with a quiver, "Well, I can understand why your neighbors
+love you."
+
+With entire unexpectedness Marsh answered fiercely from the other side,
+"_They_ don't love her! They're not capable of it!"
+
+Marise started, as though a charged electric wire had fallen across her
+arm. Why was there so often a note of anger in his voice?
+
+For a moment they advanced silently, pacing forward, side by side,
+unseen but not unfelt by each of the others.
+
+The road turned now and they were before the little house, every window
+alight, the great pine somber and high before it. The children and
+Touclé were waiting at the door. They all went in together, shaking
+hands with the mistress of the house, neatly dressed, with a clean,
+white flounced apron. "Nelly's garment of ceremony!" thought Marise.
+
+Nelly acknowledged, with a graceful, silent inclination of her shining
+blonde head, the presence of the two strangers whom Marise presented to
+her. What an inscrutable fascination Nelly's silence gave to her! You
+never knew what strange thoughts were going on behind that proud
+taciturnity. She showed the guests to chairs, of which a great many,
+mostly already filled, stood about the center table, on which sprawled
+the great, spiny, unlovely plant. Marise sat down, taking little Mark on
+her knees. Elly leaned against her. Paul sat close beside old Mr.
+Welles. Their eyes were on the big pink bud enthroned in the
+uncomeliness of the shapeless leafpads.
+
+"Oh!" said Elly, under her breath, "it's not open yet! We're going to
+_see_ it open, this time!" She stared at it, her lips parted. Her mother
+looked at her, tenderly aware that the child was storing away an
+impression to last her life long. Dear, strangely compounded little
+Elly, with her mysticism, and her greediness and her love of beauty all
+jumbled together! A neighbor leaned from her chair to say to Mrs.
+Crittenden, "Warm for this time of year, ain't it?" And another
+remarked, looking at Mark's little trousers, "That material come out
+real good, didn't it? I made up what I got of it, into a dress for
+Pearl." They both spoke in low tones, but constrained or sepulchral, for
+they smiled and nodded as though they had meant something else and
+deeper than what they had said. They looked with a kindly expression for
+moment at the Crittenden children and then turned back to their gaze on
+the flower-bud.
+
+Nelly Powers, walking with a singular lightness for so tall a woman,
+ushered in another group of visitors--a tall, unshaven farmer, his wife,
+three little children clumping in on shapeless cow-hide boots, and a
+baby, fast asleep, its round bonneted head tucked in the hollow of its
+mother's gingham-clad shoulder. They sat down, nodding silent greetings
+to the other neighbors. In turning to salute them, Marise caught a
+glimpse of Mr. Marsh, fixing his brilliant scrutiny first on one and
+then on another of the company. At that moment he was gazing at Nelly
+Powers, "taking her in" thought Marise, from her beautiful hair to those
+preposterously high-heeled shoes she always would wear on her shapely
+feet. His face was impassive. When he looked neutral like that, the
+curious irregularity of his features came out strongly. He looked like
+that bust of Julius Caesar, the bumpy, big-nosed, strong-chinned one,
+all but that thick, closely cut, low-growing head of dark hair.
+
+She glanced at Mr. Welles, and was surprised to find that he was looking
+neither at the people nor the plant. His arm was around his favorite
+Paul, but his gaze seemed turned inward, as though he were thinking of
+something very far away. He looked tired and old, it seemed to her, and
+without that quietly shining aspect of peace which she found so
+touching. Perhaps he was tired. Perhaps she ought not to have brought
+him out, this evening, for that long walk over rough country roads. How
+much older he was than his real age in years! His life had used him up.
+There must have been some inner maladjustment in it!
+
+There was a little stir in the company, a small inarticulate sound from
+Elly. Marise saw everyone's eyes turn to the center of the room and
+looked back to the plant. The big pink bud was beginning visibly to
+swell.
+
+A silence came into the room. No one coughed, or stirred, or scraped a
+chair-leg. It was as though a sound would have wounded the flower. All
+those human souls bowed themselves. Almost a light shone upon them . . . a
+phrase from Dante came to Marise's mind . . . "_la mia menta fu percossa
+da un fulgore_ . . ."
+
+With a quick involuntary turn she looked at Marsh, fearing his mockery
+of her, "quoting the _Paradiso_, about Vermont farmers!" as though he
+could know, for all those sharp eyes of his, what was going on hidden in
+her mind!
+
+All this came and went in an instant, for she now saw that one big,
+shining petal was slowly, slowly, but quite visibly uncurling at the
+tip. From that moment on, she saw nothing, felt nothing but the opening
+flower, lived only in the incredibly leisurely, masterful motion with
+which the grotesquely shaped protecting petals curled themselves back
+from the center. Their motion was so slow that the mind was lost in
+dreaminess in following it. Had that last one moved? No, it stood still,
+poised breathlessly . . . and yet, there before them, revealed, exultant,
+the starry heart of the great flower shimmered in the lamp-light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then she realized that she had not breathed. She drew in a great
+marveling aspiration, and heard everyone about her do the same. They
+turned to each other with inarticulate exclamations, shaking their heads
+wonderingly, their lips a little apart as they drew long breaths.
+
+Two very old women, rubbing their age-dimmed eyes, stood up, tiptoed to
+the table, and bent above the miraculously fine texture of the flower
+their worn and wrinkled faces. The petals cast a clear, rosy reflection
+upon their sallow cheeks. Some of the younger mothers took their little
+children over to the table and lifting them up till their round shining
+eyes were on a level with the flower, let them gaze their fill at the
+mysterious splendor of stamen and pistil.
+
+"Would you like to go quite close and look at it, children?" Marise
+asked her own brood.
+
+The little boys stepped forward at once, curiously, but Elly said, "No,
+oh _no!_" and backed off till she stood leaning against Touclé's knee.
+The old woman put her dark hand down gently on the child's soft hair and
+smiled at her. How curious it was to see that grim, battered old visage
+smile! Elly was the only creature in the world at whom the old Indian
+ever smiled, indeed almost the only thing in the house which those
+absent old eyes ever seemed to see. Marise remembered that Touclé had
+smiled when she first took the baby Elly in her arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little murmur of talk arose now, from the assembled neighbors. They
+stood up, moved about, exchanged a few laconic greetings, and began
+putting their wraps on. Marise remembered that Mr. Welles had seemed
+tired and as soon as possible set her party in motion.
+
+"Thank you so much, Nelly, for letting us know," she said to the
+farmer's wife, as they came away. "It wouldn't seem like a year in our
+valley if we didn't see your cereus in bloom."
+
+She took Elly's hand in one of hers, and with Mark on the other side
+walked down the path to the road. The darkness was intense there,
+because of the gigantic pine-tree which towered above the little house.
+"Are you there, Paul?" she called through the blackness. The little
+boy's voice came back, "Yes, with Touclé, we're ahead." The two men
+walked behind.
+
+Elly's hand was hot and clasped her mother's very tightly. Marise bent
+over the little girl and divined in the darkness that she was crying.
+"Why, Elly darling, what's the matter?" she asked.
+
+The child cried out passionately, on a mounting note, "Nothing, nothing!
+_Nothing!_" She flung her arms around her mother's neck, straining her
+close in a wild embrace. Little Mark, on the other side, yawned and
+staggered sleepily on his feet. Elly gave her mother a last kiss, and
+ran on ahead, calling over her shoulder, "I'm going to walk by myself!"
+
+"_Well!_" commented the old gentleman.
+
+Mr. Marsh had not been interested in this episode and had stood gazing
+admiringly up at the huge pine-tree, divining its bulk and mass against
+the black sky.
+
+"Like Milton's Satan, isn't it?" was his comment as they walked on,
+"with apologies for the triteness of the quotation."
+
+For a time nothing was said, and then Marsh began, "Now I've seen it,
+your rite of the worship of beauty. And do you know what was really
+there? A handful of dull, insensitive, primitive beings, hardened and
+calloused by manual toil and atrophied imaginations, so starved for any
+variety in their stupefyingly monotonous life that they welcome
+anything, anything at all as a break . . . only if they could choose, they
+would infinitely prefer a two-headed calf or a bearded woman to your
+flower. The only reason they go to see that is because it is a
+curiosity, not because of its beauty, because it blooms once a year
+only, at night, and because there is only one of them in town. Also
+because everybody else goes to see it. They go to look at it only
+because there aren't any movies in Ashley, nor anything else. And you
+know all this just as well as I do."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Welles," Marise appealed to him, "do you think that is the
+truth of the facts?"
+
+The old man pronounced judgment gently. "Well, I don't know that
+_any_thing is the truth. I should say that both of you told the truth
+about it. The truth's pretty big for any one person to tell. Isn't it
+all in the way you look at it?" He added, "Only personally I think Mrs.
+Crittenden's the nicest way."
+
+Marsh was delighted with this. "There! I hope you're satisfied. You've
+been called 'nice.' That ought to please any good American."
+
+"I wonder, Mr. Welles," Marise said in an ostentatiously casual tone, "I
+wonder if Mr. Marsh had been an ancient Greek, and had stood watching
+the procession going up the Acropolis hill, bearing the thank-offerings
+from field and loom and vineyard, what do you suppose he would have
+seen? Dullness and insensitiveness in the eyes of those Grecian
+farmer-lads, no doubt, occupied entirely with keeping the oxen in line;
+a low vulgar stare of bucolic curiosity as the country girls, bearing
+their woven linen, looked up at the temple. Don't you suppose he would
+have thought they managed those things a great deal more artistically in
+Persia?"
+
+"Well, I don't know much about the ancient Greeks," said Mr. Welles
+mildly, "but I guess Vincent would have been about the same wherever he
+lived."
+
+"Who is satisfied with the verdict now?" triumphed Marise.
+
+But she noticed that Marsh's attack, although she considered that she
+had refuted it rather neatly, had been entirely; efficacious in
+destroying the aura of the evening. Of the genuine warmth of feeling
+which the flower and the people around it had roused in her heart, not
+the faintest trace was left. She had only a cool interested certainty
+that her side had a perfectly valid foundation for arguing purposes. Mr.
+Marsh had accomplished that, and more than that, a return from those
+other centers of feeling to her preoccupation with his own personality.
+
+He now went on, "But I'm glad to have gone. I saw a great deal else
+there than your eccentric plant and the vacancy of mind of those sons of
+toil, cursed, soul-destroying toil. For one thing, I saw a woman of
+very great beauty. And that is always so much gained."
+
+"Oh yes," cried Marise, "that's so. I forgot that you could see that.
+I've grown so used to the fact that people here don't understand how
+splendidly handsome Nelly Powers is. Their taste doesn't run to the
+statuesque, you know. They call that grand silent calm of her,
+stupidness! Ever since 'Gene brought her here as a bride, a year after
+we came to live in Crittenden's, I have gone out of my way to look at
+her. You should see her hanging out the clothes on a windy day. One
+sculptured massive pose after another. But even to see her walk across
+the room and bend that shining head is thrilling."
+
+"I saw something else, too," went on Marsh, a cool voice speaking out of
+the darkness. "I saw that her black, dour husband is furiously in love
+with her and furiously jealous of that tall, ruddy fellow with an
+expressive face, who stood by the door in shirt-sleeves and never took
+his eyes from her."
+
+Marise was silent, startled by this shouting out of something she had
+preferred not to formulate.
+
+"Vincent, you see too much," said Mr. Welles resignedly. The phrase ran
+from his tongue as though it were a familiar one.
+
+Marise said slowly, "I've sometimes thought that Frank Warner did go to
+the Powers' a good deal, but I haven't wanted to think anything more."
+
+"What possible reason in the world have you for not wanting to?" asked
+Marsh with the most authentic accent of vivid and astonished curiosity.
+
+"What reason . . . ?" she repeated blankly.
+
+He said dispassionately, "I don't like to hear _you_ make such a flat,
+conventional, rubber-stamp comment. Why in the world shouldn't she love
+a fine, ardent, _living_ man, better than that knotty, dead branch of a
+husband? A beautiful woman and a living, strong, vital man, they belong
+together. Whom God hath joined . . . Don't try to tell me that your
+judgment is maimed by the Chinese shoes of outworn ideas, such as the
+binding nature of a mediaeval ceremony. That doesn't marry anybody, and
+you know it. If she's really married to her husband, all right. But if
+she loves another man, and knows in her heart that she would live a
+thousand times more fully, more deeply with him . . . why, she's _not_
+married to her husband, and nothing can make her. You know that!"
+
+Marise sprang at the chance to turn his own weapons of mockery against
+him. "Upon my word, who's idealizing the Yankee mountaineer now?" she
+cried, laughing out as she spoke at the idea of her literal-minded
+neighbors dressed up in those trailing rhetorical robes. "I thought you
+said they were so dull and insensitive they could feel nothing but an
+interest in two-headed calves, and here they are, characters in an
+Italian opera. I only wish Nelly Powers were capable of understanding
+those grand languages of yours and then know what she thought of your
+idea of what's in her mind. And as for 'Gene's jealousy, I'll swear that
+it amounts to no more than a vague dislike for Frank Warner's 'all the
+time hanging around and gassin' instead of stickin' to work.' And you
+forget, in your fine modern clean-sweep, a few old-fashioned facts like
+the existence of three Powers children, dependent on their mother."
+
+"You're just fencing, not really talking," he answered imperturbably.
+"You can't pretend to be sincere in trying to pull that antimacassar
+home-and-mother stuff on me. Ask Bernard Shaw, ask Freud, ask Mrs.
+Gilman, how good it is for children's stronger, better selves, to live
+in the enervating, hot-house concentration on them of an unbalanced,
+undeveloped woman, who has let everything else in her personality
+atrophy except her morbid preoccupation with her own offspring. That's
+really the meaning of what's sentimentally called 'mothering.' Probably
+it would be the best thing in the world for the Powers children if
+their mother ran away with that fine broth of a lad."
+
+"But Nelly loves her children and they love her!" Marise brought this
+out abruptly, impulsively, and felt, as she heard the words, that they
+had a flat, naïve sound, out of key with the general color of this talk,
+like a C Major chord introduced into Debussy nuances.
+
+"Not much she doesn't, nor they her. Any honest observer of life knows
+that the only sincere relation possible between the young and the old
+(after the babies are weaned) is hostility. We hated our elders, because
+they got in our way. And they'll hate us as soon as they get the
+strength to, because we'll be in their way. And we will hate them
+because they will want to push us off the scene. It's impossible to
+ignore the gulf. Most human tragedies come from trying to pretend it's
+not there."
+
+"Why, Mr. Welles," cried Marise again, "what do you say to such talk?
+Don't you find him perfectly preposterous?"
+
+Mr. Welles answered a little absently. "Oh, I'm pretty well used to him,
+by now. And all his friends in the city are talking like that now. It's
+the fashion. I'm so old that I've seen a good many fashions in talk come
+and go. I never could see that people _acted_ any differently, no matter
+which way they talk." As he finished, he drew a long sigh, which had
+obviously no connection with what he had been saying. With the sigh,
+came an emanation from him of dispirited fatigue. Marise wished she
+dared draw his hand upon her arm and ask him to lean on her as they
+walked.
+
+Nothing more was said for a time. Marise lost herself in the outdoor
+wideness of impression that always came to her under a night sky, where
+she felt infinity hovering near. She was aware of nothing but the faint
+voice of the pines, the distant diminuendo of the frog's song, the firm
+elastic quality of the ground under her feet, so different from the iron
+rigidity of the winter earth, and the cool soft pressure of the
+night-air on her cheeks, when, like something thrust into her mind from
+the outside, there rose into her consciousness, articulate and complete,
+the reason why she had shrunk from looking at the photograph of Rocca di
+Papa. It was because it was painful to her, intimately painful and
+humiliating to remember how she and Neale had felt there, the wild, high
+things they had said to each other, that astounding flood of feeling
+which had swept them away at the last. What had become of all that?
+Where now was that high tide?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of course she loved Neale, and he loved her; there was nobody like
+Neale, yes, all that; but oh! the living flood had been ebbing, ebbing
+out of their hearts. They were not _alive_ as they had been alive when
+they had clung to each other, there on that age-old rock, and felt the
+tide of all the ages lift them high.
+
+It must have been ebbing for a long time before she realized it because,
+hurried, absorbed, surrounded incessantly by small cares as she was,
+hustled and jostled in her rôle of mother and mistress-of-the-house in
+servantless America, with the primitive American need to do so much with
+her own hands, she had not even had the time to know the stupid, tragic
+thing that was happening to her . . . that she was turning into a slow,
+vegetating plant instead of a human being. And now she understood the
+meaning of the strange dejection she had felt the day when little Mark
+went off to school with the others. How curiously jaded and apprehensive
+she had felt that morning, and when she had gone downstairs to see the
+callers who arrived that day. That was the first time she had _felt_
+that the tide was ebbing.
+
+All this went through her mind with the cruel swiftness of a
+sword-flash. And the first reaction to it, involuntary and reflex, was
+to crush it instantly down, lest the man walking at her side should be
+aware of it. It had come to her with such loud precision that it seemed
+it must have been audible.
+
+As she found herself still on the dark country road, cloaked and
+protected by the blackness of the starless night, she was struck with
+wonder, as though she had never thought of it before, at the human body,
+its opaque, inscrutable mystery, the locked, sealed strong-box of
+unimaginable secrets which it is. There they were, the three of them,
+stepping side by side, brushing each other as they moved; and as remote
+from each other as though they were on different stars. What were the
+thoughts, powerful, complex, under perfect control, which were being
+marshaled in that round, dark head? She felt a little afraid to think;
+and turned from the idea to the other man with relief. She knew (she
+told herself) as though she saw inside, the tired, gentle, simple,
+wistful thoughts that filled the white head on her other side.
+
+With this, they were again at the house, where the children and Touclé
+had preceded them. Paul was laughing and saying, "Elly's the looniest
+kid! She's just been saying that Father is like . . ." Elly, in a panic,
+sprang up at him, clapping her hand over his mouth, crying out, "No,
+Paul, you shan't tell! _Don't!_"
+
+The older, stronger child pulled himself away and, holding her at arm's
+length, continued, "She said Father was like the end of her hair that's
+fastened into her head, and Mother was the end that flaps in the wind,
+and Mr. Marsh was like the Eagle Rock brook, swirly and hurrying the way
+it is in the spring."
+
+Elly, half crying, came to her mother. "Mother, it's nasty-horrid in
+Paul to tell when I didn't want him to."
+
+Marise began taking off the little girl's coat. "It wasn't very kind in
+Paul, but there was nothing in those funny little fancies to hide,
+dear."
+
+"I didn't care about you and Father!" explained the child. "Only . . ."
+She looked at Mr. Marsh from under downbent brows.
+
+"Why, Elly, I am very much complimented, I'm sure," Marsh hastened to
+tell her, "to be compared with such a remarkably nice thing as a brook
+in spring-time. I didn't suppose any young lady would ever have such a
+poetic idea about me."
+
+"Oh . . ." breathed Elly, relieved, "well . . ."
+
+"Do you suppose you little folks can get yourselves to bed without me?"
+asked Marise. "If one of you big children will unbutton Mark in the
+back, he can manage the rest. I must set a bread-sponge before I go
+upstairs."
+
+They clung to her imploringly. "But you'll be upstairs in time to kiss
+us good-night in our beds," begged Elly and Mark together. Paul also
+visibly hung on his mother's answer.
+
+Marise looked down into their clear eyes and eager faces, reaching out
+to her ardently, and she felt her heart melt. What darlings they were!
+What inestimable treasures! How sweet to be loved like that!
+
+She stooped over them and gathered them all into a great armful, kissing
+them indiscriminately. "Yes, of course, I will . . . and give you an extra
+kiss now!" she cried.
+
+She felt Marsh's eyes on her, sardonically.
+
+She straightened herself, saying with affectionate roughness, "There,
+that's enough. Scamper along with you. And don't run around with bare
+feet!"
+
+She thought to herself that she supposed this was the sort of thing
+Marsh meant when he spoke about hot-house enervating concentration. She
+had been more stung by that remark of his than she had been willing to
+acknowledge to Marsh or to herself.
+
+But for the moment, any further reflection on it was cut short by the
+aspect of Mr. Welles' face. He had sunk into a chair near the lamp, with
+an attitude and an expression of such weariness, that Marise moved
+quickly to him. "See here, Mr. Welles," she said impulsively, "you have
+something on your mind, and I've got the mother-habit so fastened on me
+that I can't be discreet and pretend not to notice it. I want to make
+you say what the trouble is, and then flu it right, just as I would for
+one of mine."
+
+The old man looked up at her gratefully and reaching out one of his
+wrinkled hands took hers in it. "It does me good to have you so nice to
+me," he said, "but I'm afraid even you can't fix it right. I've had a
+rather distressing letter today, and I can't seem to get it out of my
+mind."
+
+"Schwatzkummerer can't send the gladioli," conjectured Marsh.
+
+For the first time since he had entered the house, Marise felt a passing
+dislike for him. She had often felt him to be hard and ruthless, but she
+had never seen anything cheap in him, before, she thought.
+
+"What was your letter?" she asked the older man.
+
+"Oh, nothing in the least remarkable, nothing new," he said heavily.
+"I've got a cousin whom I haven't seen since she was a little little
+girl, though she must be somewhere near my age, now. She has been a
+teacher in a school for Negroes, down in Georgia, for years, most of her
+life. But I had sort of lost track of her, till I had to send her some
+little family trinkets that were left after my old aunt died. Her
+letter, that I received today, is in answer to that. And while she was
+writing, she gave me her news, and told me a good deal about conditions
+down there. Pretty bad, I should think it, pretty bad."
+
+A little spasm crossed his face. He shook his head, as though to shake
+off a clinging filament of importunate thought.
+
+"What's the trouble? Do they need money, the school?" asked Marise with
+a vague idea of getting up a contribution.
+
+"No, my cousin didn't say anything about that. It's not so simple. It's
+the way the Negroes are treated. No, not lynchings, I knew about them.
+But I knew they don't happen every day. What I hadn't any idea of, till
+her letter came, was how every day, every minute of every day, they're
+subject to indignity that they can't avoid, how they're made to feel
+themselves outsiders and unwelcome in their own country. She says the
+Southern white people are willing to give them anything that will make
+good day-laborers of them, almost anything in fact except the thing they
+can't rise without, ordinary human respect. It made a very painful
+impression on my mind, her letter, very. She gave such instances. I
+haven't been able to get it out of my mind. For instance, one of the
+small things she told me . . . it seems incredible . . . is that Southern
+white people won't give the ordinary title of respect of Mr. or Mrs. or
+Dr. even to a highly educated Negro. They call them by their first
+names, like servants. Think what an hourly pin-prick of insult that must
+be. Ever since her letter came, I've been thinking about it, the things
+she told me, about what happens when they try to raise themselves and
+refine themselves, how they're made to suffer intimately for trying to
+be what I thought we all wanted all Americans to be." He looked at
+Marise with troubled eyes. "I've been thinking how it would feel to be a
+Negro myself. What a different life would be in front of your little
+Elly if she had Negro blood!"
+
+Marise had listened to him in profound silence. Sheer, unmixed
+astonishment filled her mind, up to the brim. Of all the totally
+unexpected things for Mr. Welles to get wrought up about!
+
+She drew a long breath. How eternally disconcerting human beings are!
+There she had been so fatuously sure, out there on the walk home, that
+she knew exactly what was in that old white head. And all the time it
+had been this. Who could have made the faintest guess at that? It
+occurred to her for the first time that possibly more went on under Mr.
+Welles' gently fatigued exterior than she thought.
+
+She found not a word to say, so violent and abrupt was the transition of
+subject. It was as though she had been gazing down through a powerful
+magnifying glass, trying to untangle with her eyes a complicated twist
+of moral fibers, inextricably bound up with each other, the moral
+fibers that made up her life . . . and in the midst of this, someone had
+roughly shouted in her ear, "Look up there, at that distant cliff.
+There's a rock on it, all ready to fall off!"
+
+She could not be expected all of a sudden, that way, to re-focus her
+eyes. And the rock was so far away. And she had such a dim sense of the
+people who might be endangered by it. And the confusion here, under the
+microscope of her attention, was so vital and immediate, needing to be
+understood and straightened before she could go on with her life.
+
+She looked at the old man in an astonishment which she knew must seem
+fairly stupid to him, but she could not bring out anything else. What
+was it to her, whether a Negro physician was called Dr. or "Jo"?
+
+Mr. Welles patted her hand, released it, smiled at her kindly, and stood
+up. "I'm pretty tired. I guess we'd better be getting along home,
+Vincent and I."
+
+"Well, I should say we _would_ better be getting along home to bed!"
+agreed the other man, coming forward and slipping his arm under the
+older man's. "I'll tuck you up, my old friend, with a good hot toddy
+inside you, and let you sleep off this outrageously crazy daylight
+nightmare you've cooked up for yourself. And don't wake up with the fate
+of the Japanese factory-hand sitting on your chest, or you'll get hard
+to live with."
+
+Mr. Welles answered this with literal good faith. "Oh, the Japanese
+factory-hands, they're not on the conscience of Americans."
+
+"But, when I see an aged and harmless inhabitant of Ashley, Vermont,
+stretching his poor old protesting conscience till it cracks, to make it
+reach clear down to the Georgia Negroes, how do I know where he's going
+to stop?"
+
+The old man turned to their hostess. "Well, good-night, Mrs. Crittenden.
+I enjoyed seeing that wonderful flower very much. I wonder if I could
+grow one like it? It would be something to look forward to, to have the
+flower open in your own house."
+
+To Marise he looked so sweet and good, and like a tired old child, that
+she longed to kiss him good-night, as she had her own. But even as she
+felt the impulse, she had again a startled sense of how much more goes
+on under the human surface than ever appears. Evidently Mr. Welles, too,
+was a locked and sealed strong-box of secrets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the doorway Marsh stopped abruptly and said, looking at the dense,
+lustreless black silk wrap about Marise's head and shoulders, "What's
+that thing? I meant to ask you when you put it on."
+
+She felt as she often did when he spoke to her, as startled as though he
+had touched her. What an extraordinarily living presence he was, so that
+a word from him was almost like an actual personal contact. But she took
+care not to show this. She looked down casually at the soft, opaque
+folds of her wrap. "Oh, this is a thousand years old. It dates from the
+Bayonne days. It's Basque. It's their variation, I imagine, on the
+Spanish mantilla. They never wear hats, the Basque women. The little
+girls, when they have made their first communion, wear a scarf of light
+net, or open transparent lace. And when they marry they wear this. It's
+made of a special sort of silk, woven just for this purpose. As far away
+as you can see a woman in the Basque country, if she wears this, you
+know she's married."
+
+"Oh, you do, do you?" said Marsh, going out after his companion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were very far from the Negroes in Georgia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WHAT GOES ON INSIDE
+
+_Half an Hour in the Life of a Modern Woman_
+
+
+May 8.
+
+Marise looked at the clock. They all three looked at the clock. On
+school mornings the clock dominated their every instant. Marise often
+thought that the swinging of its great pendulum was as threatening as
+the Pendulum that swung in the Pit. Back and forth, back and forth,
+bringing nearer and nearer the knife-edge of its dire threat that nine
+o'clock would come and the children not be in school. Somehow they must
+all manage to break the bonds that held them there and escape from the
+death-trap before the fatal swinging menace reached them. The stroke of
+nine, booming out in that house, would be like the Crack o' Doom to the
+children.
+
+Marise told Paul not to eat so fast, and said to Elly, who was finishing
+her lessons and her breakfast together, "I let you do this, this one
+time, Elly, but I don't want you to let it happen again. You had plenty
+of time yesterday to get that done."
+
+She stirred her coffee and thought wistfully, "What a policeman I must
+seem to the children. I wish I could manage it some other way."
+
+Elly, her eyes on the book, murmured in a low chanting rhythm, her mouth
+full of oatmeal, "Delaware River, Newcastle, Brandywine, East Branch,
+West Branch, Crum Creek, Schuylkill."
+
+Paul looked round at the clock again. His mother noted the gesture, the
+tension of his attitude, his preoccupied expression, and had a quick
+inner vision of a dirty, ragged, ignorant, gloriously free little boy on
+a raft on the Mississippi river, for whom life was not measured out by
+the clock, in thimbleful doses, but who floated in a golden liberty on
+the very ocean of eternity. "Why can't we bring them up like Huckleberry
+Finns!" she thought, protestingly, pressing her lips together.
+
+Then she laughed inwardly at the thought of certain sophisticated
+friends and their opinion of her life. "I daresay we do seem to be
+bringing them up like Huckleberry Finns, in the minds of any of the New
+York friends, Eugenia Mills for instance!" She remembered with a passing
+gust of amusement the expression of slightly scared distaste which
+Eugenia had for the children. "Too crudely quivering lumps of
+life-matter for Eugenia's taste," she thought, and then, "I wonder what
+Marsh's feeling towards children really is, children in general. He
+seems to have the greatest capacity to ignore their existence at all. Or
+does he only seem to do that, because I have grown so morbidly conscious
+of their existence as the only thing vital in life? That's what he
+thinks, evidently. Well, I'd like to have him live a mother's life and
+see how he'd escape it!"
+
+"Mother," said Paul seriously, "Mother, Mark isn't even awake yet, and
+he'll never be ready for school."
+
+"Oh, his teacher had to go to a wedding today. Don't you remember? He
+doesn't have any school till the afternoon session."
+
+She thought to herself, "What a sense of responsibility Paul has! He is
+going to be one of the pillars of the earth, one of those miraculous
+human beings who are mixed in just the right proportions, so that they
+aren't pulled two ways at once. _Two_ ways! Most of us are pulled a
+thousand ways! It is one of the injustices of the earth that such people
+aren't loved as much as impulsive, selfish, brilliant natures like dear
+little Mark's. Paul has had such a restful personality! Even when he
+was a baby, he was so straight-backed and robust. There's no yellow
+streak in Paul, such as too much imagination lets in. I know all about
+that yellow streak, alas!"
+
+The little boy reached down lovingly, and patted the dog, sitting in a
+rigid attitude of expectancy by his side. As the child turned the light
+of his countenance on those adoring dog eyes, the animal broke from his
+tenseness into a wriggling fever of joy.
+
+"'Oh, my God, my dear little God!'" quoted Marise to herself, watching
+uneasily the animal's ecstasy of worship. "I wish dogs wouldn't take us
+so seriously. We don't know so much more than they, about anything." She
+thought, further, noticing the sweetness of the protecting look which
+Paul gave to Médor, "All animals love Paul, anyhow. Animals know more
+than humans about lots of things. They haven't that horrid perverse
+streak in them that makes humans dislike people who are too often in the
+right. Paul is like my poor father. Only I'm here to see that Paul is
+loved as Father wasn't. Médor is not the only one to love Paul. _I_ love
+Paul. I love him all the more because he doesn't get his fair share of
+love. And old Mr. Welles loves him, too, bless him!"
+
+"Roanoke River, Staunton River, Dan River," murmured Elly, swallowing
+down her chocolate. She stroked a kitten curled up on her lap.
+
+"What shall I have for lunch today?" thought Marise. "There are enough
+potatoes left to have them creamed."
+
+Like a stab came the thought, "Creamed potatoes to please our palates
+and thousands of babies in Vienna without milk enough to _live_!" She
+shook the thought off, saying to herself, "Well, would it make any
+difference to those Viennese babies if I deprived my children of
+palatable food?" and was aware of a deep murmur within her, saying only
+half-articulately, "No, it wouldn't make any literal difference to those
+babies, but it might make a difference to you. You are taking another
+step along the road of hardening of heart."
+
+All this had been the merest muted arpeggio accompaniment to the steady
+practical advance of her housekeeper's mind. "And beefsteak . . . Mark
+likes that. At fifty cents a pound! What awful prices. Well, Neale
+writes that the Canadian lumber is coming through. That'll mean a fair
+profit. What better use can we put profit to, than in buying the best
+food for our children's growth. Beefsteak is not a sinful luxury!"
+
+The arpeggio accompaniment began murmuring, "But the Powers children.
+Nelly and 'Gene can't afford fifty cents a pound for beefsteak. Perhaps
+part of their little Ralph's queerness and abnormality comes from lack
+of proper food. And those white-cheeked little Putnam children in the
+valley. They probably don't taste meat, except pork, more than once a
+week." She protested sharply, "But if their father won't work steadily,
+when there is always work to be had?" And heard the murmuring answer,
+"Why should the children suffer because of something they can't change?"
+
+She drew a long breath, brushed all this away with an effort, asking
+herself defiantly, "Oh, what has all this to do with _us_?" And was
+aware of the answer, "It has everything to do with us, only I can't
+figure it out."
+
+Impatiently she proposed to herself, "But while I'm trying to figure it
+out, wouldn't I better just go ahead and have beefsteak today?" and
+wearily, "Yes, of course, we'll have beefsteak as usual. That's the way
+I always decide things."
+
+She buttered a piece of toast and began to eat it, thinking, "I'm a
+lovely specimen, anyhow, of a clear-headed, thoughtful modern woman,
+muddling along as I do."
+
+The clock struck the half-hour. Paul rose as though the sound had lifted
+him bodily from his seat. Elly did not hear, her eyes fixed dreamily on
+her kitten, stroking its rounded head, lost in the sensation of the
+softness of the fur.
+
+Her mother put out a reluctant hand and touched her quietly. "Come, dear
+Elly, about time to start to school."
+
+As she leaned across the table, stretching her neck towards the child,
+she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the other side of the
+room, and thought, "Oh, how awful! I begin to look as Cousin Hetty does,
+with that scrawny neck. . . ."
+
+She repulsed the thought vigorously. "Well, what does it matter if I do?
+There's nothing in my life, any more, that depends on my looking young."
+
+At this thought, something perfectly inchoate, which she did not
+recognize, began clawing at her. She pushed it off, scornfully, and
+turned to Elly, who got up from the table and began collecting her books
+into her school-bag. Her face was rosy and calm with the sweet ineffable
+confidence of a good child who has only good intentions. As she packed
+her books together, she said, "Well, I'm ready. I've done my grammar,
+indefinite pronouns, and I can say all those river-tributaries
+backwards. So now I can start. Good-bye, Mother dear." Marise bent to
+kiss the shining little face. "Good-bye, Elly."
+
+To herself she thought, as her face was close to the child's, "I wonder
+if I look to my little girl as Cousin Hetty used to look to me?" and
+startled and shocked that the idea kept recurring to her, assuming an
+importance she was not willing to give it, she cried out to herself,
+"Oh, stop being so paltry about that!"
+
+Aloud she said, "Don't forget to put your rubbers on. Have you a clean
+handkerchief? Oh, _Elly_, look at your nails! Here, hand me the
+nail-file over there, Paul. I'll clean them more quickly than you,
+dear."
+
+As she cleaned the nails, one eye on the grimly relentless clock, the
+ideas flicked through her mind like quick, darting flames. "What
+mediaeval nonsense we do stuff into the school-children's head. What an
+infamous advantage we take of the darlings' trust in us and their
+docility to our purposes! My dear little daughter with her bright face
+of desire-to-do-her-best! What wretched chaff she is getting for that
+quick, imaginative brain of hers! It's not so bad for Paul, but . . . oh,
+even for him what nonsense! Rules of grammar, names of figures of
+speech . . . stuff left over from scholastic hair-splitting! And the
+tributaries of rivers . . . !" She glanced up for an instant and was struck
+into remorse by the tranquil expression of peace in the little girl's
+clear eyes, bent affectionately on her mother. "Oh, my poor, darling
+little daughter," she thought, "how _can_ you trust anything in this
+weak and wicked world as you trust your broken reed of a mother? I don't
+know, dear child, any more than you do, where we are going, nor how we
+are going to get there. We are just stumbling along, your father and I,
+as best we can, dragging you and your brothers along with us. And all we
+can do for you, or for each other, is to love you and . . ."
+
+Elly withdrew her hand. "There, Mother, I know they're clean enough now.
+I'm afraid I'll be late if I don't go. And you know she scolds like
+everything if anybody's late." She repeated in a rapid murmur, "The
+tributaries of the Delaware on the left bank are . . ."
+
+Her mother's mind went back with a jerk to the question of
+river-tributaries. "And what's the use of cramming her memory with facts
+she could find in three minutes in any Atlas if by any strange chance
+she should ever ever need to know about the tributaries of the Delaware.
+As well set her to learning the first page of the Telephone Directory!
+Why don't I do the honest thing by her and say to her that all that is
+poppy-cock?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An inner dialogue flashed out, lunge, parry, riposte, like rapier blades
+at play. "Because if I told her it is nonsense, that would undermine her
+faith in her teacher and her respect for her."
+
+"But why _should_ she respect her teacher if her teacher does not
+deserve that sort of respect? Ought even a little child to respect
+anything or anybody merely because of a position of authority and not
+because of intrinsic worth? No, of course not."
+
+"Oh, you know that's only wild talk. Of course you couldn't send the
+child to school, and keep her under her teacher, unless you preserve the
+form of upholding the teacher's authority."
+
+"Yes, but in Heaven's name, why _do_ we send her to school? She could
+learn twenty times more, anywhere else."
+
+"Because sending her to school keeps her in touch with other children,
+with her fellow-beings, keeps her from being 'queer' or different. She
+might suffer from it as she grew up, might desire more than anything in
+the world to be like others."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Elly had been staring at her mother's face for a moment, and now said,
+"Mother, what _makes_ you look so awfully serious?"
+
+Marise said ruefully, "It's pretty hard to explain to a little girl. I
+was wondering whether I was as good a mother to you as I ought to be."
+
+Elly was astonished to the limit of astonishment at this idea. "Why,
+Mother, how _could_ you be any better than you are?" She threw herself
+on her mother's neck, crying, "Mother, I wish you never looked serious.
+I wish you were always laughing and cutting up, the way you used to.
+Seems to me since the war is over, you're more soberer than you were
+before, even, when you were so worried about Father in France. I'd
+rather you'd scold me than look serious."
+
+Paul came around the table, and shouldered his way against Elly up to a
+place where he touched his mother. "Is that masculine jealousy, or real
+affection?" she asked herself, and then, "Oh, what a _beast_! To be
+analyzing my own children!" And then, "But how am I ever going to know
+what they're like if I don't analyze them?"
+
+The dog, seeing the children standing up, half ready to go out, began
+barking and frisking, and wriggling his way to where they stood all
+intertwined, stood up with his fore-paws against Paul. The kitten had
+been startled by his approach and ran rapidly up Marise as though she
+had been a tree, pausing on her shoulder to paw at a loosened hair-pin.
+
+Marise let herself go on this wave of eager young life, and thrust down
+into the dark all the razor-edged questions. "Oh, children! children!
+take the kitten off my back!" she said, laughing and squirming. "She's
+tickling me with her whiskers. Oh, _ow_!" She was reduced to helpless
+mirth, stooping her head, reaching up futilely for the kitten, who had
+retreated to the nape of her neck and was pricking sharp little
+pin-pointed claws through to the skin. The children danced about chiming
+out peals of laughter. The dog barked excitedly, standing on his
+hind-legs, and pawing first at one and then at another. Then Paul looked
+at the clock, and they all looked at the clock. The children, flushed
+with fun, crammed on their caps, thrust their arms into coats, bestowed
+indiscriminate kisses on their mother and the kitten, and vanished for
+the morning, followed by the dog, pleading with little whines to be
+taken along too. The kitten got down and began soberly to wash her face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an instant of appalling silence in the house, the silence that
+is like no other, the silence that comes when the children have just
+gone. Through it, heavy-footed and ruthless, Marise felt something
+advancing on her, something which she dreaded and would not look at.
+
+From above came a sweet, high, little call, "Mo-o-o-ther!" Oh, a
+respite--Mark was awake!
+
+His mother sprang upstairs to snatch at him as he lay, rosy and smiling
+and sleepy. She bent over him intoxicated by his beauty, by the
+flower-perfection of his skin, by the softness of his sleep-washed eyes.
+
+She heard almost as distinctly as though the voice were in her ear, "Oh,
+you mothers use your children as other people use drugs. The
+child-habit, the drug-habit, the baby-habit, the morphine habit . . . two
+different ways of getting away from reality." That was what Marsh had
+said one day. What terribly tarnishing things he did say. How they did
+make you question everything. She wondered what Neale would say to them.
+
+She hoped to have a letter from Neale today. She hoped so, suddenly,
+again, with such intensity, such longing, such passion that she said to
+herself, "What nonsense that was, that came into my head, out on the
+road in the dark, the other night, that Neale and I had let the
+flood-tide of emotion ebb out of our hearts! What could have put such a
+notion into my head?" What crazy, fanciful creatures women are! Always
+reaching out for the moon. Yes, that must have been the matter with her
+lately, that Neale was away. She missed him so, his strength and courage
+and affection.
+
+"I'm awfully hungry," remarked Mark in her ear. "I feel the hole right
+_here_." He laid a small shapely hand on the center of his pajama-clad
+body, but he kept the other hand and arm around his mother's neck, and
+held her close where he had pulled her to him in his little bed. As he
+spoke he rubbed his peach-like cheek softly against hers.
+
+A warm odor of sleep and youth and clean, soaped skin came up from him.
+His mother buried her face in it as in a flower.
+
+"Ooh!" he cried, laughing richly, "you're tickling me."
+
+"I _mean_ to tickle you!" she told him savagely, worrying him as a
+mother-cat does her kitten. He laughed delightedly, and wriggled to
+escape her, kicking his legs, pushing at her softly with his hands,
+reaching for the spot back of her ear. "I'll tickle _you_," he crowed,
+tussling with her, disarranging her hair, thudding his little body
+against her breast, as he thrashed about. The silent house rang with
+their laughter and cries.
+
+They were both flushed, with lustrous eyes, when the little boy finally
+squirmed himself with a bump off the bed and slid to the floor.
+
+At this point the kitten came walking in, innocent-eyed and grave. Mark
+scrambled towards her on his hands and knees. She retreated with a comic
+series of stiff-legged, sideways jumps, that made him roll on the floor,
+chuckling and giggling, and grabbing futilely for the kitten's paws.
+
+Marise had stood up and was putting the loosened strands of her hair
+back in place. The spell was broken. Looking down on the laughing child,
+she said dutifully, "Mark, the floor's cold. You mustn't lie down on it.
+And, anyhow, you're ever so late this morning. Hop up, dear, and get
+into your clothes."
+
+"Oh, Mother, _you_ dress me!" he begged, rolling over to look up at her
+pleadingly.
+
+She shook her head. "Now, Mark, that's silly. A great big boy like you,
+who goes to school. Get up quick and start right in before you take
+cold."
+
+He scrambled to his feet and padded to her side on rosy bare feet.
+"Mother, you'll have to 'tay here, anyhow. You know I can't do those
+back buttons. And I always get my drawer-legs twisted up with my both
+legs inside my one leg."
+
+Marise compromised. "Well, yes, if you'll hurry. But not if you dawdle.
+Mother has a lot to do this morning. Remember, I won't help you with a
+single thing you can do yourself."
+
+The child obediently unbuttoned his pajamas and stepping out of them
+reached for his undershirt. His mother, looking at him, fell mentally on
+her knees before the beautiful, living body. "Oh, my son, the straight,
+strong darling! My precious little son!" She shook with that foolish
+aching anguish of mothers, intolerable. . . . "Why must he stop being so
+pure, so _safe_? How can I live when I am no longer strong enough to
+protect him?"
+
+Mark remarked plaintively, shrugging himself into the sleeves of his
+shirt, "I've roden on a horse, and I've roden on a dog, and I've even
+roden on a cow, but I've never roden on a camel, and I _want_ to."
+
+The characteristic Mark-like unexpectedness of this made her smile.
+
+"You probably will, some day," she said, sitting down.
+
+"But I've never even _sawn_ a camel," complained Mark. "And Elly and
+Paul have, and a elephant too."
+
+"Well, you're big enough to be taken to the circus this year," his
+mother promised him. "This very summer we'll take you."
+
+"But I want to go _now_!" clamored Mark, with his usual disregard of
+possibilities, done in the grand style.
+
+"Don't dawdle," said his mother, looking around for something to read,
+so that she would seem less accessible to conversation. She found the
+newspaper under her hand, on the table, and picked it up. She had only
+glanced at the head-lines yesterday. It took a lot of moral courage to
+read the newspapers in these days. As she read, her face changed,
+darkened, set.
+
+The little boy, struggling with his underwear, looked at her and decided
+not to ask for help.
+
+She was thinking as she read, "The Treaty muddle worse than ever. Great
+Britain sending around to all her colonies asking for the biggest navy
+in the world. Our own navy constantly enlarged at enormous cost.
+Constantinople to be left Turkish because nobody wants anybody else to
+have it. Armenian babies dying like flies and evening cloaks advertised
+to sell for six hundred dollars. Italy land-grabbing. France frankly for
+anything except the plain acceptance of the principles we thought the
+war was to foster. The same reaction from those principles starting on a
+grand scale in America. Men in prison for having an opinion . . . what a
+hideous bad joke on all the world that fought for the Allies and for the
+holy principles they claimed! To think how we were straining every nerve
+in a sacred cause two years ago. Neale's enlistment. Those endless
+months of loneliness. That constant terror about him. And homes like
+that all over the world . . . with _this_ as the result. Could it have
+been worse if we had all just grabbed what we could get for ourselves,
+and had what satisfaction we could out of the baser pleasures?"
+
+She felt a mounting wave of horror and nausea, and knowing well from
+experience what was on its way, fought desperately to ward it off,
+reading hurriedly a real-estate item in the newspaper, an account of a
+flood in the West, trying in vain to fix her mind on what she read. But
+she could not stop the advance of what was coming. She let the newspaper
+fall with a shudder as the thought arrived, hissing, gliding with
+venomous swiftness along the familiar path it had so often taken to her
+heart . . . "suppose this reactionary outburst of hate and greed and
+intolerance and imperialistic ambitions all around, means that the
+'peace' is an armed truce only, and that in fifteen years the whole
+nightmare will start over."
+
+She looked down at the little boy, applying himself seriously to his
+buttons. "In fifteen years' time my baby will be a man of twenty-one."
+
+Wild cries broke out in her heart. "No, oh no! I couldn't live through
+another. To see them all go, husband and sons! Not another war! Let me
+live quickly, anyhow, somehow, to get it over with . . . and die before it
+comes."
+
+The little boy had been twisting himself despairingly, and now said in a
+small voice, "Mother, I've tried and I've tried and I can't do that back
+button."
+
+His mother heard his voice and looked down at him uncomprehendingly for
+a moment. He said, less resigned, impatience pricking through his tone,
+"Mother, I _told_ you I never could reach that button behind."
+
+She bent from her chair, mechanically secured the little garment, and
+then, leaning back, looked down moodily at her feet. The little boy
+began silently to put on and lace up his shoes.
+
+Marise was aware of a dimming of the light in the inner room of her
+consciousness, as though one window after another were being darkened. A
+hushed, mournful twilight fell in her heart. Melancholy came and sat
+down with her, black-robed. What could one feel except Melancholy at the
+sight of the world of humanity, poor world, war-ridden, broken in
+health, ruined in hope, the very nerves of action cut by the betrayal of
+its desperate efforts to be something more than base.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was that really Melancholy? Something else slid into her mind, something
+watchful. She sat perfectly still so that no chance movement should
+disturb that mood till it could be examined and challenged. There was
+certainly something else in her heart beside sorrow over the miseries of
+the after-war world.
+
+She persisted in her probing search, felt a cold ray of daylight strike
+into that gloom and recognized with amazement and chagrin what else it
+was! Disgusting! There in the very bottom of her mind, lay still that
+discomfort at beginning to look like Cousin Hetty! And so that wound to
+her vanity had slowly risen again into her consciousness and clothed
+itself in the ampler, nobler garments of impersonal Melancholy. . . .
+"_Oh_," she cried aloud, impatiently, contemptuous of herself, "what
+picayune creatures human beings are! I'm ashamed to be one!"
+
+She started up and went to the window, looking out blankly at the
+mountain wall, as she had at the newspaper, not seeing what was there,
+her eyes turned inward. "Wait now, wait. Don't go off, half-cocked. Go
+clear through with this thing," she exhorted herself. "There _must_ be
+more in it than mere childish, silly vanity." She probed deep and
+brought up, "Yes, there is more to it. In the first place I was priggish
+and hypocritical when I tried to pretend that it was nothing to me when
+I looked in the glass and saw for the first time that my youth has begun
+to leave me. That was Anglo-Saxon pretense, trying to seem to myself
+made of finer stuff than I really am. It's really not cheerful for any
+woman, no matter on what plane, to know that the days of her physical
+flowering are numbered. I'd have done better to look straight at that,
+and have it out with myself."
+
+She moved her head very slightly, from side to side. "But there was more
+than that. There was more than that. What was it?" She leaned her ear as
+if to listen, her eyes very large and fixed. "Yes, there _was_ the war,
+and the awfulness of our disappointment in it, too, after all. There was
+the counsel of despair about everything, the pressure on us all to think
+that all efforts to be more than base are delusions. We were so terribly
+fooled with our idealistic hopes about the war . . . who knows but that we
+are being fooled again when we try for the higher planes of life?
+Perhaps those people are right who say that to grab for the pleasures of
+the senses is the best . . . those are _real_ pleasures, at least. Who
+knows if there is anything else?"
+
+Something like a little, far-away tolling said to her, "There was
+something else. There was something else."
+
+This time she knew what it was. "Yes, there was that other aspect of the
+loss of physical youth, when you think that the pleasures of the senses
+are perhaps all there are. There was the inevitable despairing wonder if
+I had begun to have out of my youth all it could have given, whether
+. . ."
+
+There tolled in her ear, "Something else, something else there." But now
+she would not look, put her hands over her eyes, and stood in the dark,
+fighting hard lest a ray of light should show her what might be there.
+
+A voice sounded beside her. Touclé was saying, "Have you got one of your
+headaches? The mail carrier just went by. Here are the letters."
+
+She took down her hands, and opened her eyes. She felt that something
+important hung on there being a letter from Neale. She snatched at the
+handful of envelopes and sorted them over, her fingers trembling. Yes,
+there it was, the plain stamped envelope with Neale's firm regular
+handwriting.
+
+She felt as though she were a diver whose lungs had almost collapsed,
+who was being drawn with heavenly swiftness up to the surface of the
+water. She tore open the envelope and read, "Dearest Marise." It was as
+though she had heard his voice.
+
+She drew in a great audible breath and began to read. What a relief it
+was to feel herself all one person, not two or three, probing hatefully
+into each other!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But there was something she had not done, some teasing, unimportant
+thing, she ought to finish before going on with the letter. She looked
+up vacantly, half-absently, wondering what it was. Her eyes fell on
+Touclé. Touclé was looking at her, Touclé who so seldom looked at
+anything. She felt a momentary confusion as though surprised by another
+person in a room she had thought empty. And after that, uneasiness. She
+did not want Touclé to go on looking at her.
+
+"Mark hasn't had his breakfast yet," she said to the old Indian woman.
+"Won't you take him downstairs, please, and give him a dish of porridge
+for me?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"The Gent Around the Lady
+
+and
+
+The Lady Round the Gent"
+
+_An Evening in the Life of Mr. Vincent Marsh_
+
+May 25.
+
+
+"Come in, come in!" cried an old black-clad woman, with a white apron,
+who opened the door wider into the flaring brilliance of the lamp-lit
+kitchen. "I'm _real_ glad you felt to come to one of our dances. They're
+old-fashioned, but _we_ like 'em." She closed the door behind them and
+added cordially, "Now Mr. Welles is going to live here, he'll have to
+learn to shake his feet along with the rest of us."
+
+Mr. Welles was frankly terrified at the idea. "Why, I never dreamed of
+dancing in all my life!" he cried. "I only came to look on." He
+hesitated to divest himself of his overcoat, panic-struck and meditating
+flight. Vincent fell upon him from one side and the lively old woman
+from the other. Together they stripped the older man of his wraps.
+"Never too late to learn," old Mrs. Powers assured him briskly. "You
+dance with _me_ and I'll shove ye around, all right. There ain't a
+quadrille ever danced that I couldn't do backwards with my eyes shut, as
+soon as the music strikes up." She motioned them towards the door, "Step
+right this way. The folks that have come are all in the settin'-room."
+
+As they followed her, Vincent said, "Mrs. Powers, aren't you going to
+dance with me, too?"
+
+"Oh, of course I be," she answered smartly, "if you ask me."
+
+"Then I ask you now," he urged, "for the first dance. Only I don't know
+any more than Mr. Welles how to dance a quadrille. But I'm not afraid."
+
+"I guess there ain't much ye _be_ afraid of," she said admiringly. They
+came now into the dining-room and caught beyond that a glimpse of the
+living-room. Both wore such an unusual aspect of elegance and grace that
+Vincent stared, stopping to look about him. "Looks queer, don't it,"
+said Mrs. Powers, "with the furniture all gone. We always move out
+everything we _can_, up garret, so's to leave room for dancing."
+
+Oh yes, that was it, Vincent thought; the shinily varnished cheap
+furniture had almost disappeared, and the excellent proportions of the
+old rooms could be seen. Lamps glowed from every shelf, their golden
+light softened by great sprays of green branches with tender young
+leaves, which were fastened everywhere over the doors, the windows,
+banked in the corner The house smelled like a forest, indescribably
+fresh and spicy.
+
+"There ain't many flowers yet; too early," explained Mrs. Powers
+apologetically, "so we had to git green stuff out'n the woods to kind of
+dress us up. 'Gene he _would_ have some pine boughs too. He's crazy
+about pine-trees. I always thought that was one reason why he took it so
+hard when we was done out of our wood-land. He thinks as much of that
+big pine in front of the house as he does of a person. And tonight he's
+got the far room all done up with pine boughs."
+
+They arrived in the living-room now, where the women and children
+clustered on one side, and the men on the other, their lean boldly
+marked faces startlingly clear-cut in the splendor of fresh shaves. The
+women were mostly in light-colored waists and dark skirts, their hair
+carefully dressed. Vincent noticed, as he nodded to them before taking
+his place with the men, that not a single one had put powder on her
+face. Their eyes looked shining with anticipation. They leaned their
+heads together and chatted in low tones, laughing and glancing sideways
+at the group of men on the other side of the room. Vincent wondered at
+the presence of the children. When she arrived, he would ask Marise
+about that. At the inward mention of the name he felt a little shock,
+which was not altogether pleasurable. He narrowed his eyes and shook his
+head slightly, as though to toss a lock of hair from his forehead, a
+gesture which was habitual with him when he felt, with displeasure, an
+unexpected emotion not summoned by his will. It passed at once.
+
+On joining the dark-suited group of men he found himself next to young
+Frank Warner, leaning, loose-jointed and powerful, against the wall, and
+not joining in the talk of weather, pigs, roads, and spring plowing
+which rose from the others. Vincent looked at him with approval. He felt
+strongly drawn to this splendid, primitive creature, and knew perfectly
+well why. He liked anybody who had pep enough to have an original
+feeling, not one prescribed by the ritual and tabu of his particular
+tribe.
+
+"Hello, Frank," he said. "Have a cigarette?
+
+"We'll have to go out if we smoke," said Frank.
+
+"Well, why shouldn't we?" suggested Vincent, looking around him.
+"There's nothing to do here, yet."
+
+Frank tore himself loose from the supporting wall with a jerk, and
+nodded. Together they stepped out of the front door, unused by the
+guests, who all entered by the kitchen. At first it was as though they
+had plunged into black velvet curtains, so great was the contrast with
+the yellow radiance of the room they had left. They looked back through
+the unshaded windows and saw the room as though it were an illustration
+in a book, or a scene in a moving-picture play, the men grouped in a
+dark mass on one side, the women, smiling, bending their heads towards
+each other, the lamps glowing on the green branches and on the shining
+eyes of all those pleasure-expectant human beings.
+
+As they looked, Nelly Powers came in from another room, doubtless the
+"far room" of which her mother-in-law had spoken. She was carrying a
+large tray full of cups. She braced herself against the weight of the
+earthenware and balancing herself with a free swinging motion on her
+high-heeled shoes walked with an accentuation of her usual vigorous
+poise.
+
+"By George, she's a beauty!" cried Vincent, not sorry to have an
+opportunity to talk of her with his companion.
+
+Frank made no comment. Vincent laughed to himself at the enormous
+capacity for silence of these savages, routing to the imagination of a
+civilized being. He went on, determined to get some expression from the
+other, "She's one of the very handsomest women I ever saw anywhere."
+
+Frank stirred in the darkness as though he were about to speak. Vincent
+cocked his ear and prepared to listen with all the prodigious sharpness
+of which he knew himself capable. If he could only once make this yokel
+speak her name, he'd know . . . all he wanted to know.
+
+Frank said, "Yes, she's good-looking, all right."
+
+Vincent kept silence, pondering every tone and overtone of the remark.
+He was astonished to find that he had no more direct light than ever on
+what he wanted to know. He laughed again at his own discomfiture. There
+were the two extremes, the super-sophisticated person who could control
+his voice so that it did not give him away, and the utter rustic whose
+voice had such a brute inexpressiveness that his meaning was as
+effectively hidden. He would try again. He said casually, "She's an
+enough-sight better-looking specimen than her husband. However does it
+happen that the best-looking women are always caught by that sort of
+chimpanzees? How did she ever happen to marry 'Gene, anyhow?"
+
+The other man answered, literally. "I don't know how she did happen to
+marry him. She don't come from around here. 'Gene was off working in a
+mill, down in Massachusetts, Adams way, and they got married there. They
+only come back here to live after they'd had all that trouble with
+lawyers and lost their wood-land. 'Gene's father died about that time.
+It cut him pretty hard. And 'Gene and his wife they come back to run the
+farm."
+
+At this point they saw, looking in at the lighted dumb-show in the
+house, that new arrivals had come. Vincent felt a premonitory clap of
+his heart and set his teeth in his cigarette. Yes, Marise had come, now
+appeared in the doorway, tall, framed in green-leafed branches, the
+smooth pale oval of her face lighted by the subtle smile, those dark
+long eyes! By God! What would he not give to know what went on behind
+that smile, those eyes!
+
+She was unwinding from her head the close, black nun-like wrap that
+those narrow primitive country-women far away on the other side of the
+globe had chosen to express their being united to another human being.
+And a proper lugubrious symbol it made for their lugubrious,
+prison-like, primitive view of the matter.
+
+Now she had it off. Her sleek, gleaming dark head stood poised on her
+long, thick, white throat. What a woman! What she could be in any
+civilized setting!
+
+She was talking to Nelly Powers now, who had come back and stood facing
+her in one of those superb poses of hers, her yellow braids heavy as
+gold. It was Brunhilda talking to Leonardo da Vinci's Ste. Anne. No,
+heavens no! Not a saint, a musty, penitential negation like a saint!
+Only of course, the Ste. Anne wasn't a saint either, but da Vinci's
+glorious Renaissance stunt at showing what an endlessly desirable woman
+he could make if he put his mind on it.
+
+"What say, we go in," suggested Frank, casting away the butt of his
+cigarette. "I think I hear old Nate beginning to tune up."
+
+They opened the door and stepped back, the laughing confusion of their
+blinking entrance, blinded by the lights, carrying off the first moments
+of greeting. In the midst of this, Vincent heard the front door open
+and, startled to think that anyone else had used that exit, turned his
+head, and saw with some dismay that 'Gene had followed them in. How
+near had he been to them in the black night while they talked of his
+wife's mismated beauty? He walked past them giving no sign, his strong
+long arms hanging a little in front of his body as he moved, his
+shoulders stooped apparently with their own weight. From the dining-room
+came a sound which Vincent did not recognize as the voice of any
+instrument he had ever heard: a series of extraordinarily rapid staccato
+scrapes, playing over and over a primitively simple sequence of notes.
+He stepped to the door to see what instrument was being used and saw an
+old man with a white beard and long white hair, tipped back in a chair,
+his eyes half shut, his long legs stretched out in front of him, patting
+with one thick boot. Under his chin was a violin, on the strings of
+which he jiggled his bow back and forth spasmodically, an infinitesimal
+length of the horse-hair being used for each stroke, so that there was
+no sonority in the tones. Vincent gazed at him with astonishment. He had
+not known that you could make a violin, a real violin, sound like that.
+
+Old Mrs. Powers said at his elbow, "The first sets are forming, Mr.
+Marsh." She called across to Frank Warner, standing very straight with
+Nelly Powers' hand on his arm, "Frank, you call off, wun't ye?"
+
+Instantly the young man, evidently waiting for the signal, sent out a
+long clear shout, "First sets _fo-orming!_"
+
+Vincent was startled by the electrifying quality of the human voice when
+not hushed to its usual smothered conversational dullness.
+
+"Two sets formed in the living-room! Two in the dining-room! One in the
+far room!" chanted Frank. He drew a deep breath which visibly swelled
+his great chest and sang out, resonantly, "Promenade _to_ your places!"
+
+He set the example, marching off through the throng with Nelly by his
+side.
+
+"Frank, he generally calls off," explained old Mrs. Powers. "It's in
+his family to. His father always did before him." She looked around her,
+discerned something intelligible in what looked like crowding confusion
+to Vincent and told him hurriedly, "Look-y-here, we'll have to git a
+move on, if we git into a set. They're all full here." Frank appeared in
+the doorway, alone, and lifted a long high arm. "_One_ couple needed in
+the far room!" he proclaimed with stentorian dignity and seriousness.
+
+"Here we are!" shouted old Mrs. Powers, scrambling her way through the
+crowd, and pulling Vincent after her. He could see now that the couples
+about him were indeed in their places, hand in hand, facing each other,
+gravely elate and confident. The younger ones were swinging their bodies
+slightly, in time to the sharply marked beat of the fiddle, and in the
+older ones, the pulse throbbed almost visibly as they waited.
+
+He felt the breath of pines on him, resinous, penetrating, stimulating.
+He was in a small, square room with a low ceiling, dense and green with
+pine-boughs, fastened to the walls. The odor was as strange an
+accompaniment to dancing as was that furiously whirling primitive
+iteration of the fiddle.
+
+"Over here!" cried Mrs. Powers, dragging masterfully at her partner. She
+gave a sigh of satisfaction, caught at his hand and held it high. "All
+ready, Frank," she said.
+
+Facing them, near the doorway stood Frank and Nelly, their heads up,
+Nelly's small high-heeled shoe thrust forward, their clasped hands held
+high. Vincent felt his blood move more quickly at the spectacle they
+made. On one side stood Marise Crittenden, her fingers clasped by the
+huge knotted hand of 'Gene Powers, and on the other was rounded, rosy
+old Mr. Bayweather holding by the hand the oldest Powers child, a pretty
+blonde girl of twelve.
+
+Frank's voice pealed out above the jig-jig-jigging of the fiddle.
+"_Salute_ your partners!"
+
+Vincent had a qualm of a feeling he thought he had left behind him with
+his boyhood, real embarrassment, fear of appearing at a disadvantage.
+What in the world did their antiquated lingo _mean?_ Was he to _kiss_
+that old woman?
+
+Mrs. Powers said reassuringly, "Don't you worry. Just do what the others
+do."
+
+As she spoke she was holding out her skirts and dipping to a courtesy. A
+little later, he caught at the idea and sketched a bow such as to his
+astonishment he saw the other men executing. Was he in old Versailles or
+Vermont?
+
+He felt his hand seized by the old woman's. Such a hearty zest was in
+her every action that he looked at her amazed.
+
+"Balance to the corners, right!" chanted Frank, sending his voice out
+like a bugle so that it might be heard in all the rooms.
+
+With perfect precision, and poise, the men and women of the couples
+separated, stepped swayingly, each towards the nearest of the couple to
+their right, and retreated.
+
+"Balance to corners, left!"
+
+The same movement was executed to the other side.
+
+"First couple forward and back!" shouted Frank.
+
+Marise and 'Gene advanced, hand in hand, to meet the old clergyman and
+the little girl. They met in the middle, poised an instant on the top
+wave of rhythm and stepped back, every footfall, every movement, their
+very breathing, in time to the beat-beat-beat of the fiddle's air which
+filled the room as insistently as the odor of the pines.
+
+Mrs. Powers nodded her white head to it and tapped her foot. Marsh had
+not ventured to remove his eyes from the weaving interplay of the
+dancers in his own set. Now, for an instant, he glanced beyond them into
+the next room. He received an impression of rapid, incessant, intricate
+shifting to and fro, the whole throng of dancers in movement as swift
+and disconcerting to the eyes as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. It
+made him literally dizzy to see it, and he turned his eyes back to his
+own set.
+
+The air changed, but not the rhythm, and all the men broke out in a
+hoarse chant, singing to a whirring, rapid tune,
+
+     "_Oh_, pass right through and never mind who
+       And leave the girl behind you.
+     Now come right back on the same old track
+       And _swing_ the girl behind you!"
+
+In obedience to these chanted commands, the four who were executing the
+figure went through labyrinthine manoeuvers, forward and back, dividing
+and reuniting. The old clergyman held out his hand to Mrs. Crittenden,
+laughing as he swung her briskly about. 'Gene bent his great bulk
+solemnly to swing his own little daughter. Then with neat exactitude, on
+the stroke of the beat, they were all back in their places.
+
+"_Second_ couple forward and back!" sang out Frank, prolonging the
+syllables in an intoned chant like a muezzin calling from a tower.
+Vincent felt himself being pushed and shoved by Mrs. Powers through the
+intricate figure.
+
+     "Now come right back on the same old track
+       And _swing_ the girl behind you!"
+
+The men shouted loudly, stamping in time, with such a relish for the
+beat of the rhythm that it sang itself through to the motor-centers and
+set them throbbing. Vincent found himself holding Nelly Powers at arm's
+length and swinging her till his head whirled. She was as light as
+sea-foam, dreamy, her blue eyes shining.
+
+"_Grand_ right and left!" shouted Frank.
+
+Vincent's hand was seized by the little Powers girl. She swung him
+competently and passed him on to her mother, who swam past him like a
+goddess, a golden aroma of health and vivid sensual seduction trailing
+from her as she moved.
+
+Then it was Marise's hand in his . . . how strange, how strange . . . that
+hand which knew the secrets of Debussy's heart. . . . She grasped his
+fingers firmly and looked at him full, laughingly, her face as open as
+a child's . . . the many-sided tantalizing creature! She pulled him about
+and was gone.
+
+And there was old Mrs. Powers in her place, absurdly light and elastic,
+treading the floor in her flat, old-woman's shoes with brilliant
+precision.
+
+"_All_ promenade!" cried Frank, this time his voice exultant that the
+end was successfully reached.
+
+He seized Nelly by the waist and danced with her the length of the room,
+followed by the other couples. The music stopped. He released her
+instantly, made a strange, stiff little bow, and turned away. The set
+was over.
+
+"There!" said Mrs. Powers, breathing quickly. "'Twan't so hard as you
+thought 'twas goin' to be, was it?"
+
+"Good-evening," said Mr. Bayweather on the other side, wiping the pink
+roll at the back of his neck. "What do you think of our aboriginal
+folk-dancing? I'll warrant you did not think there was a place in the
+United States where the eighteenth century dances had had an
+uninterrupted existence, did you?"
+
+"I assure you I had never thought about the subject at all," said
+Vincent, edging away rapidly towards escape.
+
+"Fascinating historical phenomenon, I call it," said the clergyman.
+"Analogous to the persistence of certain parts of old English speech
+which is to be observed in the talk of our people. For instance in the
+eighteenth century English vocabulary, the phrase . . ."
+
+His voice died away in the voices of the people Vincent had put
+resolutely between them shoving his way through the crowd, recklessly.
+He was struck by the aspect of the people, their blood warmed, their
+lips moist, their eyes gleaming. The rooms were growing hot, and the
+odor of pines was heavy in the air.
+
+He found himself next to Nelly Powers, and asked her to dance with him,
+"although I don't know at all how to do it," he explained. She smiled,
+silently, indifferently, confidently, and laid her hand on his arm in
+token of accepting his invitation. Vincent had a passing fancy that she
+did not care at all with whom she danced, that the motion itself was
+enough for her. But he reflected that it was probably that she did not
+care at all whether she danced with _him_.
+
+From the other end of the room came Frank's deep-mouthed shout, "The set
+is forming! Promenade _to_ your places!"
+
+Nelly moved swiftly in that direction and again Vincent found himself
+opposite Frank, dancing this time with Marise Crittenden.
+
+The music broke out into its shaking, quavering iteration of the pulse
+of the dance.
+
+"Salute your partners!"
+
+This time Vincent knew what to do, and turning, bowed low to Nelly, who
+made him a deep courtesy, her toe pointed, instep high, her eyes
+shining, looking straight at him but evidently not seeing him. The music
+seemed to float her off on a cloud.
+
+"Chassay _to_ the corners, right!"
+
+Vincent untangled the difference between "chassay" and "balance" and
+acquitted himself. Now that his first panic of astonishment was over, he
+observed that the figures of the dance were of great simplicity, all but
+the central part, the climax.
+
+When the preliminary part was over, the music changed and again the men
+broke out into their accompanying chant. This time it ran,
+
+     "The gent around the lady
+            _and_
+     The lady around the gent.
+            _Then_
+     The lady around the lady
+            _and_
+     The gent around the gent."
+
+Somewhere in the hypnotic to-and-fro of those swaying, poised, alert
+human figures, he encountered Marise, coming on her suddenly, and
+finding her standing stock-still.
+
+"_Around_ me!" she commanded, imperatively, nodding and laughing. "Just
+as the song says."
+
+     "The gent around the lady,"
+
+sang the men.
+
+Frank was circling about Nelly, his eyes on hers, treading lightly, his
+tall body apparently weighing no more than thistle-down. It was as
+though he were weaving a charm.
+
+Vincent ended his circle.
+
+The men sang, "_And_ the lady round the gent."
+
+Marise and Nelly stepped off, overlaying the men's invisible circle with
+one of their own.
+
+The room beyond boiled with the dervish-like whirling of the dancers.
+The fiddle rose louder and shriller, faster and faster. The men sang at
+the tops of their voices, and beat time heavily. Under cover of this
+rolling clamor, Vincent called out boldly to Marise, "A symbol of life!
+A symbol of our life!" and did not know if she heard him.
+
+              "_Then_
+     The lady around the lady."
+
+Nelly and Marise circled each other.
+
+              "_And_
+     The gent around the gent."
+
+He and Frank followed them.
+
+His head was turning, the room staggered around him. Nelly's warm,
+vibrant hand was again in his. They were in their places. Frank's voice
+rose, resounding, "_Pro_menade all!"
+
+Nelly abandoned herself to his arms, in the one brief moment of close
+physical contact of the dance. They raced to the end of the room.
+
+The music stopped abruptly, but it went on in his head.
+
+The odor of pines rose pungent in the momentary silence. Everyone was
+breathing rapidly. Nelly put up a hand to touch her hair. Vincent,
+reflecting that he would never acquire the native-born capacity for
+abstaining from chatter, said, because he felt he must say something,
+"What a pleasant smell those pine-branches give."
+
+She turned her white neck to glance into the small room lined with the
+fragrant branches, and remarked, clearly and dispassionately, "I don't
+like the smell."
+
+Vincent was interested. He continued, "Well, you must have a great deal
+of it, whether you like it or not, from that great specimen by your
+front door."
+
+She looked at him calmly, her eyes as blue as precious stones. "The old
+pine-tree," she said, "I wish it were cut down, darkening the house the
+way it does." She spoke with a sovereign impassivity, no trace of
+feeling in her tone. She turned away.
+
+Vincent found himself saying almost audibly, "Oh _ho_!" He had the
+sensation, very agreeable to him, of combining two clues to make a
+certainty. He wished he could lay his hands on a clue to put with Marise
+Crittenden's shrinking from the photograph of the Rocca di Papa.
+
+He had not spoken to Marise that evening, save the first greetings, and
+his impudent shout to her in the dance, and now turned to find her. On
+the other side of the room she was installed, looking extraordinarily
+young and girl-like, between Mr. Welles and Mr. Bayweather, fanning
+first one and then the other elderly gentleman and talking to them with
+animation. They were both in need of fanning, puffing and panting hard.
+Mr. Welles indeed was hardly recognizable, the usual pale quiet of his
+face broken into red and glistening laughter.
+
+"I see you've been dancing," said Vincent, coming to a halt in front of
+the group and wishing the two old gentlemen in the middle of next week.
+
+"Old Mrs. Powers got me," explained Mr. Welles. "You never saw anything
+so absurd in your life." He went on to the others, "You simply can't
+imagine how remarkable this is, for me. I never, _never_ danced and I no
+more thought I ever _would_ . . ."
+
+Mr. Bayweather ran his handkerchief around and around his neck in an
+endeavor to save his clerical collar from complete ruin, and said,
+panting still, "Best thing in the world for you, Mr. Welles."
+
+"Yes indeed," echoed Marise. "We'll have to prescribe a dance for you
+every week. You look like a boy, and you've been looking rather tired
+lately." She had an idea and added, accusingly, "I do believe you've
+gone on tormenting yourself about the Negro problem!"
+
+"Yes, he has!" Mr. Bayweather unexpectedly put in. "And he's not the
+only person he torments about it. Only yesterday when he came down to
+the rectory to see some old deeds, didn't he expatiate on that subject
+and succeed in spoiling the afternoon. I had never been forced to think
+so much about it in all my life. He made me very uncomfortable, very!
+What's the use of going miles out of your way, I say, out of the station
+to which it has pleased God to place us? I believe in leaving such
+insoluble problems to a Divine Providence."
+
+Marise was evidently highly amused by this exposition of one variety of
+ministerial principle, and looked up at Vincent over her fan, her eyes
+sparkling with mockery. He savored with an intimate pleasure her
+certainty that he would follow the train of her thought; and he decided
+to try to get another rise out of the round-eyed little clergyman. "Oh,
+if it weren't the Negro problem, Mr. Bayweather, it would be free-will
+or predestination, or capital and labor. Mr. Welles suffers from a
+duty-complex, inflamed to a morbid degree by a life-long compliance to a
+mediaeval conception of family responsibility."
+
+Mr. Bayweather's eyes became rounder than ever at this, and Vincent went
+on, much amused, "Mr. Welles has done his duty with discomfort to
+himself so long that he has the habit. His life at Ashley seems too
+unnaturally peaceful to him. I'd just as soon he took it out with
+worrying about the Negroes. They are so safely far away. I had been on
+the point of communicating to him my doubts as to the civic virtues of
+the Martians, as a safety valve for him."
+
+Marise laughed out, as round a peal as little Mark's, but she evidently
+thought they had gone far enough with their fooling, for she now brought
+the talk back to a safe, literal level by crying, "Well, there's one
+thing sure, Mr. Welles can't worry his head about _any_ of the
+always-with-us difficulties of life, as long as he is dancing art Ashley
+quadrille."
+
+Mr. Welles concurred in this with feeling. "I'd no idea I would ever
+experience anything so . . . so . . . well, I tell you, I thought I'd left
+_fun_ behind me, years and years ago."
+
+"Oh, what you've had is nothing compared to what you're going to have,"
+Marise told him. "Just wait till old Nate strikes up the opening bars of
+'The Whirlwind' and see the roof of the house fly off. See here," she
+laid her hand on his arm. "This is leap-year. I solemnly engage you to
+dance 'The Whirlwind' with me." She made the gesture of the little-boy
+athlete, feeling the biceps of one arm, moving her forearm up and down.
+"I'm in good health, and good muscle, because I've been out stirring up
+the asparagus bed with a spading-fork. I can shove you around as well as
+old Mrs. Powers, if I do say it who shouldn't."
+
+Vincent looked down at her, bubbling with light-hearted merriment, and
+thought, "There is no end to the variety of her moods!"
+
+She glanced up at him, caught his eyes on her and misinterpreted their
+wondering expression. "You think I'm just silly and childish, don't
+you?" she told him challengingly. "Oh, don't be such an everlasting
+adult. Life's not so serious as all that!"
+
+He stirred to try to protest, but she went on, "It's dancing that sets
+me off. Nelly Powers and I are crazy about it. And so far as my
+observation of life extends, our dances here are the only social
+functions left in the world, that people really _enjoy_ and don't go to
+merely because it's the thing to. It always goes to my head to see
+people enjoy themselves. It's so sweet."
+
+Mr. Welles gave her one of his affectionate pats on her hand. Vincent
+asked her casually, "What's the idea of making a family party of it and
+bringing the children too?"
+
+She answered dashingly, "If I answer you in your own language, I'd say
+that it's because their households are in such a low and lamentably
+primitive condition that they haven't any slave-labor to leave the
+children with, and so bring them along out of mere brute necessity. If I
+answer you in another vocabulary, I'd say that there is a close feeling
+of family unity, and they _like_ to have their children with them when
+they are having a good time, and find it pleasant to see mothers dancing
+with their little boys and fathers with their little girls."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without the slightest premonition of what his next question was to bring
+out, and only putting it to keep the talk going, Vincent challenged her,
+"Why don't you bring your own, then?" He kept down with difficulty the
+exclamation which he inwardly added, "If you only knew what a relief it
+is to see you for once, without that intrusive, tiresome bunch of
+children!"
+
+"Why, sometimes I do," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "But I
+just had a telegram from my husband saying that he is able to get home a
+little sooner than he thought, and will be here early tomorrow morning.
+And the children voted to go to bed early so they could be up bright
+and early to see him."
+
+Vincent continued looking down on her blankly for an instant, after she
+had finished this reasonable explanation. He was startled by the wave of
+anger which spurted up over him like flame.
+
+He heard Mr. Welles make some suitable comment, "How nice." He himself
+said, "Oh really," in a neutral tone, and turned away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a moment he saw nothing of what was before him, and then realized
+that he had moved next to Frank Warner, who was standing by Nelly
+Powers, and asking her to dance with him again. She was shaking her
+head, and looking about the room uneasily. Vincent felt a gust of anger
+again. "Oh, go _to_ it, Frank!" he said, in a low fierce tone. "Take her
+out again, as often as you like. Why shouldn't you?"
+
+Nelly gave him one of her enigmatic looks, deep and inscrutable,
+shrugged her shoulders, put her hand on Frank's arm, and walked off with
+him.
+
+"They're the handsomest couple in the room," said Vincent, at random to
+a farmer near him, who looked at him astonished by the heat of his
+accent. And then, seeing that Nelly's husband was in possible earshot,
+Vincent raised his voice recklessly. "They're the handsomest couple in
+the room," he repeated resentfully. "They ought always to dance
+together."
+
+If 'Gene heard, he did not show it, the granite impassivity of his harsh
+face unmoved.
+
+Vincent went on towards the door, his nerves a little relieved by this
+outburst. He would go out and have another cigarette, he thought, and
+then take his old man-child home to bed. What were they doing in this
+absurd place?
+
+The music began to skirl again as he stepped out and closed the door
+behind him.
+
+He drew in deeply the fresh night-air, and looking upward saw that the
+clouds had broken away and that the stars were out, innumerable,
+thick-sown, studding with gold the narrow roof of sky which, rising from
+the mountains on either side, arched itself over the valley. He stood
+staring before him, frowning, forgetting what he had come out to do. He
+told himself that coming from that yelling confusion inside, and the
+glare of those garish lamps, he was stupefied by the great silence of
+the night. There was nothing clear in his mind, only a turmoil of
+eddying sensations which he could not name. He walked down to the huge
+dark pine, the pine which 'Gene Powers loved like a person, and which
+his wife wished were cut down. What a ghastly prison marriage was, he
+thought, a thing as hostile to the free human spirit as an iron
+ball-and-chain.
+
+He looked back at the little house, tiny as an insect before the great
+bulk of the mountains, dwarfed by the gigantic tree, ridiculous,
+despicable in the face of Nature, like the human life it sheltered. From
+its every window poured a flood of yellow light that was drunk up in a
+twinkling by the vastness of the night's obscurity.
+
+He leaned against the straight, sternly unyielding bole of the tree,
+folding his arms and staring at the house. What a beastly joke the whole
+business of living!
+
+A thousand ugly recollections poured their venom upon him from his past
+life. Life, this little moment of blind, sensual groping and grabbing
+for something worth while that did not exist, save in the stultification
+of the intelligence. All that you reached for, so frantically, it was
+only another handful of mud, when you held it.
+
+Past the yellow squares of the windows, he saw the shapes of the
+dancers, insect-tiny, footing it to and fro. And in one of those
+silhouettes he recognized Marise Crittenden.
+
+He turned away from the sight and struck his fist against the rough bark
+of the tree. What an insane waste and confusion ruled everywhere in
+human life! A woman like that to be squandered . . . an intelligence fine
+and supple, a talent penetrating and rare like hers for music, a strange
+personal beauty like that of no other woman, a depth one felt like
+mid-ocean, a capacity for fun like a child's and a vitality of
+personality, a power for passion that pulsed from her so that to touch
+her hand casually set one thrilling . . . ! And good God! What was destiny
+doing with her? Spending that gold like water on three brats incapable
+of distinguishing between her and any good-natured woman who would put
+on their shoes and wash their faces for them. Any paid Irish nurse could
+do for them what their mother bent the priceless treasure of her
+temperament to accomplish. The Irish nurse would do it better, for she
+would not be aware of anything else better, which she might do, and
+their mother knew well enough what she sacrificed . . . or if she did not
+know it yet, she would, soon. She had betrayed that to him, the very
+first time he had seen her, that astonishing first day, when, breathing
+out her vivid charm like an aureole of gold mist, she had sat there
+before him, quite simply the woman most to his taste he had even seen
+. . . _here_! That day when she had spoken about the queerness of her
+feeling "lost" when little Mark went off to school, because for the
+first time in years she had had an hour or so free from those ruthless
+little leeches who spent their lives in draining her vitality. He had
+known, if she had not, the significance of that feeling of hers, the
+first time she had had a moment to raise her eyes from her trivial task
+and see that she had been tricked into a prison. That very day he had
+wanted to cry out to her, as impersonally as one feels towards a
+beautiful bird caught in a net, "Now, _now_, burst through, and spread
+your wings where you belong."
+
+It was like wiping up the floor with cloth of gold. In order that those
+three perfectly commonplace, valueless human lives might be added to the
+world's wretched population, a nature as rare as a jewel was being
+slowly ground away. What were the treasures to whom she was being
+sacrificed? Paul, the greasy, well-intentioned, priggish burgher he
+would make; Elly, almost half-witted, a child who stared at you like an
+imbecile when asked a question, and who evidently scarcely knew that her
+mother existed, save as cook and care-taker. And Mark, the passionate,
+gross, greedy baby. There were the three walls of the prison where she
+was shut away from any life worthy of her.
+
+And the fourth wall . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The blackness dropped deeper about him, and within him. There they were
+dancing, those idiots, dancing on a volcano if ever human beings did, in
+the little sultry respite from the tornado which was called the
+world-peace. Well, that was less idiotic than working, at least. How
+soon before it would break again, the final destructive hurricane, born
+of nothing but the malignant folly of human hearts, and sweep away all
+that they now agonized and sweated to keep? What silly weakness to spend
+the respite in anything but getting as much of what you wanted as you
+could, before it was all gone in the big final smash-up, and the yellow
+or black man were on top.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With a bitter relish he felt sunk deep in one of his rank reactions
+against life and human beings. Now at least he was on bed-rock. There
+was a certain hard, quiet restfulness in scorning it all so
+whole-heartedly as either stupid or base.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this a woman's face hung suddenly there in the blackness. Her long
+eyes seemed to look directly into his, a full revealing look such as
+they had never given him in reality. His hard quiet was broken by an
+agitation he could not control. No, no, there was something there that
+was not mud. He had thought he would live and die without meeting it.
+And there it was, giving to paltry life a meaning, after all, a
+troubling and immortal meaning.
+
+A frosty breath blew down upon him from the mountains. A long shudder
+ran through him.
+
+The sensation moved him to a sweeping change of mood, to a furious
+resentment as at an indignity. God! What was he doing? Who was this
+moping in the dark like a boy?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great night stood huge and breathless above him as before, but now
+he saw only the lamp-lit house, tiny as an insect, but vibrant with
+eager and joyous life. With a strong, resolute step he went rapidly back
+to the door, opened it wide, stepped in, and walked across the floor to
+Marise Crittenden. "You're going to dance the next dance with _me_, you
+know," he told her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AT THE MILL
+
+I
+
+_An Afternoon in the Life of Mr. Neale Crittenden, aet. 38_
+
+May 27.
+
+
+The stenographer, a pale, thin boy, with a scarred face, and very white
+hands, limped over to the manager's desk with a pile of letters to be
+signed. "There, Captain Crittenden," he said, pride in his accent.
+
+Neale was surprised and pleased. "All done, Arthur?" He looked over the
+work hastily. "Good work, good work." He leaned back, looking up at the
+other. "How about it, anyhow, Arthur? Is it going to work out all
+right?"
+
+The stenographer looked at him hard and swallowed visibly. "I never
+dreamed I'd be fit to do anything I like half so well. I thought when I
+was in the hospital that I was done for, for sure. Captain Crittenden,
+if you only knew what my mother and I think about what you've done for
+. . ."
+
+Neale dodged hastily. "That's all right. That's all right. If you like
+it, that's all that's necessary. And I'm not Captain any more."
+
+"I forget, sir," said the other apologetically.
+
+"Can you sit down and take a second batch right now? I want to get
+through early. Mrs. Crittenden's going to bring some visitors to see the
+place this afternoon, and I'll have to be with them more or less."
+
+He looked at the clock. It was half-past three. Marise had said she
+would be there about four. He gave a calculating glance at the stack of
+letters. He would never be able to get through those. "We'll have to get
+a move on," he remarked. "Things got pretty well piled up while I was
+away."
+
+He began to dictate rapidly, steadily, the end of a sentence clearly in
+his mind before he pronounced the first word. He liked to dictate and
+enjoyed doing it well. The pale young stenographer bent over his
+note-book, his disfigured face intent and serious.
+
+"Turned out all right, Arthur has," thought Neale to himself. "I wasn't
+so far off, when I thought of the business college for him." Then he
+applied himself single-mindedly to his dictation, taking up one letter
+after another, with hardly a pause in his voice. But for all his
+diligence, he had not come to the bottom of the pile when four o'clock
+struck; nor ten minutes later when, glancing out of the window, he saw
+Marise and the children with Mr. Bayweather and the two other men coming
+across the mill-yard. Evidently Mr. Bayweather had dropped in just as
+they were going to start and had come along. He stopped dictating and
+looked at the group with a certain interest. Marise and the children had
+had a good deal to say yesterday about the newcomers to Crittenden's.
+
+It seemed to him that the impression he had received of them had been as
+inaccurate as such second-hand impressions were apt to be. The older man
+was just like any elderly business man, for all he could see, nothing so
+especially attractive about him, although Marise had said in her ardent
+way that he was "the sort of old American you love on sight, the kind
+that makes you home-sick when you meet him in Europe." And as for Mr.
+Marsh, he couldn't see any signs of his being such a record-breaking
+live-wire as they had all said. He walked along quietly enough, and was
+evidently as resigned as any of them to letting Mr. Bayweather do all
+the talking. On the other hand, none of them had told him what a
+striking-looking fellow he was, so tall, and with such a bold carriage
+of that round dark head.
+
+"Here they come, Arthur," he remarked. "No more time. But I'll try to
+squeeze in a minute or two, while they are here, to finish up these last
+ones."
+
+The young man followed the direction of his eyes and nodded. He
+continued looking at the advancing group for a moment, and as he stood
+up, "You could tell that Mr. Marsh is a millionaire by the way his
+clothes fit, couldn't you?" he remarked, turning to go back to his desk
+in the outer office.
+
+They were coming down the hall now. Neale went forward to open the door,
+met and breasted the wave of children who after hugging casually at his
+knees and arms, swept by; and stepped forward to be presented to the
+newcomers. They had not crossed the threshold, before his first
+impression was reversed in one case. Marsh was a live-wire all right.
+Now that he had seen his eyes, he knew what Elly had meant when she said
+that when he looked at you it was like lightning.
+
+Mr. Bayweather barely waited for the first greetings to be pronounced
+before he burst out, "Do they say, 'backwards and forwards' or 'back and
+forth'?"
+
+Neale laughed. Old Bayweather was perennial. "Backwards and forwards, of
+course," he said. "English people always say everything the longest
+possible way." He explained to the others, "Mr. Bayweather is an
+impassioned philologist . . ."
+
+"So I have gathered," commented Marsh.
+
+". . . and whenever any friends of his go on travels, they are always
+asked to bring back some philological information about the region where
+they go."
+
+He turned to Marise (how sweet she looked in that thin yellow dress).
+"Where do you want your personally conducted to begin, dear?" he asked
+her. (Lord! How good it seemed to get back to Marise!)
+
+Mr. Bayweather cut in hastily, "If I may be permitted to suggest, I
+think a history of the mill would be advisable as a beginning. I will be
+glad to tell the newcomers about this. I've just been working the
+subject up for a chapter in history of Ashley."
+
+Neale caught an anguished side-glance from Marise and sent back to her a
+shrugged message of helplessness in the face of Destiny. The man didn't
+live who could head old Bayweather off when he got started on local
+history. And besides, this would give him time to get those last three
+letters finished. Aloud he said, "I wouldn't dare say a word about
+history in Mr. Bayweather's presence. I have a few letters to finish.
+I'll just step into the outer office and be ready to start when you've
+heard the history lecture." He turned to the children, who were tapping
+on the typewriter. "Look here, kids, you'd be better off where you won't
+break anything. Get along with you out into the mill-yard and play on
+the lumber-piles, why don't you? Paul, you see if you can tell yellow
+birch from oak this time!"
+
+He and the children beat a retreat together into the outer office, where
+he bent over Arthur's desk and began to dictate in a low voice,
+catching, as he did so, an occasional rotund phrase from the
+disquisition in the other room. ". . . the glorious spirit of manly
+independence of the Green Mountain Boys . . ."
+
+To himself Neale thought, "He'd call it bolshevism if he met it today
+. . ."
+
+". . . second building erected in the new settlement, 1766, as a
+fort. . . . No, _no_, Mr. Marsh, _not_ against the Indians! Our early
+settlers _here_ never had any trouble with the Indians."
+
+Neale laughed to himself at the clergyman's resentment of any ignorance
+of any detail of Ashley's unimportant history.
+
+". . . as a fort against the York State men in the land-grant quarrels
+with New Hampshire and New York, before the Revolution." Neale, smiling
+inwardly, bet himself a nickel that neither of the two strangers had
+ever heard of the Vermont land-grant quarrels, and found himself vastly
+tickled by the profound silence they kept on the subject. They were
+evidently scared to death of starting old Bayweather off on another
+line. They were safe enough, if they only knew it. It was inconceivable
+to Mr. Bayweather that any grown person should not know all about early
+Vermont history.
+
+At this point Marise came out of the office, her face between laughter
+and exasperation. She clasped her hands together and said, "Can't you do
+_any_thing?"
+
+"In a minute," he told her. "I'll just finish these two letters and then
+I'll go and break him off short."
+
+Marise went on to the accountant's desk, to ask about his wife, who sang
+in her winter chorus.
+
+He dictated rapidly: "No more contracts will go out to you if this
+stripping of the mountain-land continues. Our original contract has in
+it the clause which I always insist on, that trees smaller than six
+inches through the butt shall not be cut. You will please give your
+choppers definite orders on this point, and understand that logs under
+the specified size will not be accepted at the mill." He held out to the
+stenographer the letter he was answering. "Here, Arthur, copy the name
+and address off this. It's one of those French-Canadian names, hard to
+spell if you don't see it."
+
+He paused an instant to hear how far Mr. Bayweather had progressed, and
+heard him saying, "In the decade from 1850 on, there was a terrible and
+scandalous devastation of the mountain-land . . ." and said to himself,
+"Halfway through the century. I'll have time to go on a while. All
+ready, Arthur." He dictated: "On birch brush-backs of the model
+specified, we can furnish you any number up to . . ." He wound his way
+swiftly and surely through a maze of figures and specifications without
+consulting a paper or record, and drawing breath at the end, heard Mr.
+Bayweather pronouncing his own name. ". . . Mr. Crittenden has taught us
+all a great deal about the economic aspects of a situation with which we
+had had years of more familiarity than he. His idea is that this
+mountainous part of New England is really not fit for agriculture.
+Farming in the usual sense has been a losing venture ever since the
+Civil War high prices for wool ceased. Only the bottoms of the valleys
+are fit for crops. Most of our county is essentially forest-land. And
+his idea of the proper use to make of it, is to have a smallish
+industrial population engaged in wood-working, who would use the bits of
+arable land in the valleys as gardens to raise their own food. He has
+almost entirely reorganized the life of our valley, along these lines,
+and I daresay he cannot at all realize himself the prodigious change
+from hopelessness and slow death to energy and forward-looking activity
+which his intelligent grasp of the situation has brought to this corner
+of the earth."
+
+The young stenographer had heard this too, and had caught the frown of
+annoyance which the personal reference brought to Neale's forehead. He
+leaned forward and said earnestly, "It's so, Captain . . . Mr. Crittenden.
+It's _so_!"
+
+Mr. Bayweather went on, "There is enough wood in the forests within
+reach of the mill to keep a moderate-sized wood-working factory going
+indefinitely, cutting by rotation and taking care to leave enough trees
+for natural reforestration. But of course that has not been the American
+way of going at things. Instead of that steady, continuous use of the
+woods, which Mr. Crittenden has shown to be possible, furnishing good,
+well-paid work at home for the men who would be otherwise forced off
+into cities, our poor mountains have been lumbered every generation or
+so, on an immense, murderous, slashing scale, to make a big sum of money
+for somebody in one operation. When old Mr. Burton Crittenden's nephew
+came to town it was a different story. Mr. Neale Crittenden's ideal of
+the lumber business is, as I conceive it, as much a service to mankind
+as a doctor's is."
+
+Neale winced, and shook his head impatiently. How ministers did put the
+Sunday-school rubber-stamp on everything they talked about--even
+legitimate business.
+
+"And as Mrs. Crittenden's free-handed generosity with her musical
+talent has transformed the life of the region as much as Mr.
+Crittenden's high and disinterested . . ."
+
+"Oh _Gosh_, Arthur, never mind about the rest!" murmured Neale, moving
+back quickly into the inner office to create a diversion. "All ready?"
+he asked in a loud, hearty voice, as he came up to them. "Up to 1920 by
+this time, Mr. Bayweather?" He turned to Marsh, "I'm afraid there is
+very little to interest you, with your experience of production on a
+giant scale, in a business so small that the owner and manager knows
+every man by name and everything about him."
+
+"You couldn't show me anything more _out_ of my own experience,"
+answered Marsh, "than just that. And as for what I know about production
+on a giant scale, I can tell you it's not much. I did try to hook on,
+once or twice, years ago--to find out something about the business that
+my father spent his life in helping to build up, but it always ended in
+my being shooed out of the office by a rather irritable manager who knew
+I knew nothing about any of it, and who evidently hated above everything
+else, having amateur directors come horning in on what was no party of
+theirs. 'If they get their dividends all right, what more do they want?'
+was his motto. I never was able to make any sense out of it. It's all on
+such a preposterously big scale now. Once in a while, touring, I have
+come across one of our branch establishments and have stopped my car to
+see the men come out of the buildings at quitting-time. That's as close
+as I have ever come. Do you really know their _names_?"
+
+"I can't pronounce all the French-Canadian names to suit them, but I
+know them all, yes. Most of them are just the overflow of the rural
+population around here."
+
+He said to himself in congratulation, "Between us, we pried old
+Bayweather loose from his soft soap, pretty neatly," and gave the man
+before him a look of friendly understanding. He was a little startled,
+for an instant, by the expression in the other's bright eyes, which he
+found fixed on him with an intentness almost disconcerting. "Does he
+think I'm trying to put something over on him?" he asked himself with a
+passing astonishment, "or is he trying to put something over on me?"
+Then he remembered that everyone had spoken of Marsh's eyes as peculiar;
+it was probably just his habit. "He can look right through me and out at
+the other side, for all _I_ care!" he thought indifferently, meeting the
+other's gaze with a faintly humorous sense of something absurd.
+
+Marise had come back now, and was saying, "You really must get started,
+Neale, the men will be quitting work soon."
+
+"Yes, yes, this minute," he told her, and led the way with Mr. Welles,
+leaving Marise and Mr. Bayweather to be showman for Mr. Marsh. He now
+remembered that he had not heard the older man say a single word as yet,
+and surmised that he probably never said much when the fluent Mr. Marsh
+was with him. He wondered a little, as they made their way to the
+saw-mill, what Marise saw in either of them to interest her so much. Oh
+well, they were a change, of course, from Ashley and Crittenden's
+people, and different from the Eugenia Mills bunch, in New York, too.
+
+He stood now, beside Mr. Welles, in the saw-mill, the ringing high
+crescendo scream of the saws filling the air. Marise stood at the other
+end talking animatedly to the two she had with her. Marise was a wonder
+on conversation anyhow. What could she find to say, now, for instance?
+What in the world was there to say to an ex-office manager of a big
+electrical company about a wood-working business?
+
+His eyes were caught by what one of the men was doing and he yelled at
+him sharply, "Look out there, Harry! Stop that! What do I have a guard
+rail there for, anyhow?"
+
+"What was the matter?" asked Mr. Welles, startled.
+
+"Oh, nothing much. One of the men dodging under a safety device to save
+him a couple of steps. They get so reckless about those saws. You have
+to look out for them like a bunch of bad children."
+
+Mr. Welles looked at him earnestly. "Are you . . . have you . . . Mr.
+Bayweather has told us so much about all you do for the men . . . how they
+are all devoted to you."
+
+Neale looked and felt annoyed. Bayweather and his palaver! "I don't do
+anything for them, except give them as good wages as the business will
+stand, and as much responsibility for running things as they'll take.
+Beyond that, I let them alone. I don't believe in what's known as
+'welfare work.' I wouldn't want them messing around in my private life,
+and I don't believe they'd like me in theirs."
+
+The necessity to raise his voice to a shout in order to make himself
+heard above the tearing scream of the saws made him sound very abrupt
+and peremptory, more so than he had meant. As he finished speaking his
+eyes met those of the older man, and were held by the clarity and candor
+of the other's gaze. They were like a child's eyes in that old face. It
+was as though he had been abrupt and impatient to Elly or Mark.
+
+As he looked he saw more than candor and clarity. He saw a deep
+weariness.
+
+Neale smoothed his forehead, a little ashamed of his petulance, and drew
+his companion further from the saws where the noise was less. He meant
+to say something apologetic, but the right phrase did not come to him.
+And as Mr. Welles said nothing further, they walked on in silence. They
+passed through the first and second floors of the mill, where the
+handling of the smaller pieces was done, and neither of them spoke a
+word. Neale looked about him at the familiar, familiar scene, and found
+it too dull to make any comment on. What was there to say? This was the
+way you manufactured brush-backs and wooden boxes and such-like things,
+and that was all. The older men bent over their lathes quietly, the
+occasional woman-worker smartly hammering small nails into the holes
+already bored for her, the big husky boys shoved the trucks around, the
+elevator droned up and down, the belts flicked as they sped around and
+around. Blest if he could think of any explanation to make to a grown
+man on so simple and everyday a scene. And yet he did not enjoy this
+silence because it seemed like a continuation of his grumpiness of a few
+minutes ago. Well, the next time the old fellow said anything, he'd fall
+over himself to be nice in his answer.
+
+Presently as they came to the outside door, Mr. Welles remarked with a
+gentle dignity, in evident allusion to Neale's cutting him short, "I
+only meant that I was very much interested in what I see here, and that
+I would like very much to know more about it."
+
+Neale felt he fairly owed him an apology. He began to understand what
+Marise meant when she had said the old fellow was one you loved on
+sight. It was her way, emotionally heightened as usual, of saying that
+he was really a very nice old codger. "I'll be glad to tell you anything
+you want to know, Mr. Welles," he said. "But I haven't any idea what it
+is that interests you. You fire ahead and ask questions and I'll agree
+to answer them."
+
+"That's what I'd like, all right. And remember if I ask anything you
+don't want to talk about . . ." He referred evidently to Neale's
+impatience of a few minutes ago.
+
+"There aren't any trade secrets in the wood-working business," said
+Neale, laughing. "Better come along and see our drying-room as we talk.
+We've had to make some concession to modern haste and use kiln-drying,
+although I season first in the old way as long as possible." They
+stepped out of the door and started across the mill-yard.
+
+Mr. Welles said with a very faint smile in the corner of his pale old
+lips, "I don't believe you want to show me any of this, Mr. Crittenden.
+And honestly that isn't what interests me about it. I wouldn't know a
+drying-room from a steam-laundry."
+
+Neale stopped short, and surveyed his companion with amusement and
+admiration. "Good for you!" he cried. "Tell the truth and shame the
+devil and set an example to all honest men. Mr. Welles, you have my
+esteem."
+
+The old man had a shy smile at this. "I don't tell the truth that way to
+everybody," he said demurely.
+
+Neale liked him more and more. "Sir, I am yours to command," he said,
+sitting down on the steps, "ask ahead!"
+
+Mr. Welles turned serious, and hesitated. "Mr. Bayweather said . . ." He
+began and looked anxiously at Neale.
+
+"I won't bite even if he did," Neale reassured him.
+
+Mr. Welles looked at him with the pleasantest expression in his eyes.
+"It's a great relief to find that we can get on with one another," he
+said, "for I must admit to you that I have fallen a complete victim to
+Mrs. Crittenden. I . . . I love your wife." He brought it out with a
+quaint, humorous roundness.
+
+"You can't get up any discussion with me about that," said Neale. "I do
+myself."
+
+They both laughed, and Mr. Welles said, "But you see, caring such a lot
+about her, it was a matter of great importance to me what kind of
+husband she had. I find actually seeing you very exciting."
+
+"You're the first who ever found it so, I'm sure," said Neale, amused at
+the idea.
+
+"But it wasn't this I wanted to say," said Mr. Welles. He went back and
+said again, "Mr. Bayweather said your idea of business is service, like
+a doctor's?"
+
+Neale winced at the Bayweather priggishness of this way of putting it,
+but remembering his remorse for his earlier brusqueness, he restrained
+himself to good humor and the admission, "Making allowance for
+ministerial jargon, that's something like a fair statement."
+
+He was astonished at the seriousness with which Mr. Welles took this.
+What was it to him? The old man looked at him, deeply, unaccountably,
+evidently entirely at a loss. "Mr. Crittenden," he said abruptly, "to
+speak right out, that sounded to me like the notion of a nice
+idealistic woman, who has never been in business. You see I've _been_ in
+a business office all my life!"
+
+Neale found his liking for the gentle, troubled old man enough for him
+to say truthfully, "Mr. Welles, I don't mind talking to you about it.
+Sure, yes I can understand how having a minister put it that way. . . .
+Lord! How the old boy does spill over! And yet why should I care? I'm
+ashamed of letting harmless Mr. Bayweather get on my nerves so."
+
+Mr. Welles started to speak, found no words, and waved an arm as if to
+imply that _he_ understood perfectly. This made Neale laugh a little,
+and gave him a picture of the helplessness of a newcomer to Ashley,
+before the flood-tide of Mr. Bayweather's local learning.
+
+He went on, "He sort of taints an honest idea, doesn't he, by his
+high-falutin' way of going on about it?"
+
+He hesitated, trying to think of simple words to sum up what he had,
+after all, never exactly formulated because it had been so much an
+attitude he and Marise had silently grown into. It was hard, he found,
+to hit on any expression that said what he wanted to; but after all, it
+wasn't so very important whether he did or not. He was only trying to
+make a nice tired old man think himself enough respected to be seriously
+talked to. He'd just ramble on, till Marise brought the other visitors
+up to them.
+
+And yet as he talked, he got rather interested in his statement of it. A
+comparison of baseball and tennis ethics came into his mind as apposite,
+and quite tickled him by its aptness. Mr. Welles threw in an occasional
+remark. He was no man's fool, it soon appeared, for all his mildness.
+And for a time he seemed to be interested.
+
+But presently Neale noticed that the other was looking absent and no
+longer made any comments. That was what happened, Neale reflected with
+an inward smile, as he slowed down and prepared to stop, when anybody
+succeeded in getting you started on your hobby. They were bored. They
+didn't really want to know after all. It was like trying to tell folks
+about your travels.
+
+But he was astonished to the limit of astonishment by what Mr. Welles
+brought out in the silence which finally dropped between them. The old
+man looked at him very hard and asked, "Mr. Crittenden, do you know
+anything about the treatment of the Negroes in the South?"
+
+Neale sat up blinking. "Why no, nothing special, except that it's a
+fearful knot we don't seem to get untied," he said. "I contribute to the
+support of an agricultural school in Georgia, but I'm afraid I never
+take much time to read the reports they send me. Why do you ask?"
+
+"Oh, no particular reason. I have a relative down there, that's all."
+
+Marise and the others came out of a door at the far-end of the building
+now, and advanced towards them slowly. Neale and Mr. Welles watched
+them.
+
+Neale was struck again by Marsh's appearance. As far away as you could
+see him, he held the eye. "An unusual man, your friend Mr. Marsh," he
+remarked. "Mrs. Crittenden tells me that he is one of the people who
+have been everywhere and done everything and seen everybody. He looks
+the part."
+
+Mr. Welles made no comment on this for a moment, his eyes on the
+advancing group. Marise had raised her parasol of yellow silk. It made a
+shimmering halo for her dark, gleaming hair, as she turned her head
+towards Marsh, her eyes narrowed and shining as she laughed at something
+he said.
+
+Then the old man remarked, "Yes, he's unusual, all right, Vincent is. He
+has his father's energy and push." He added in a final characterization,
+"I've known him ever since he was a little boy, and I never knew him not
+to get what he went after."
+
+
+II
+
+_How the Same Thing Looked to Mr. Welles_
+
+As they walked along towards the mill, Mr. Welles had a distinct
+impression that he was going to dislike the mill-owner, and as distinct
+a certainty as to where that impression came from. He had received too
+many by the same route not to recognize the shipping label. Not that
+Vincent had ever said a single slighting word about Mr. Crittenden. He
+couldn't have, very well, since they neither of them had ever laid eyes
+on him. But Vincent never needed words to convey impressions into other
+people's minds. He had a thousand other ways better than words. Vincent
+could be silent, knock off the ashes from his cigarette, recross his
+legs, and lean back in his chair in a manner that slammed an impression
+into your head as though he had yelled it at you.
+
+But to be fair to Vincent, Mr. Welles thought probably he had been more
+than ready to soak up an impression like the one he felt. They'd had
+such an awfully good time with Mrs. Crittenden and the children, it
+stood to reason the head of the house would seem to them like a
+butter-in and an outsider in a happy-family group.
+
+More than this, too. As they came within hearing of the industrial
+activity of the mill, and he felt his heart sink and turn sore and
+bitter, Mr. Welles realized that Vincent had very little to do with his
+dread of meeting the mill-owner. It was not Mr. Crittenden he shrank
+from, it was the mill-owner, the business man . . . business itself.
+
+Mr. Welles hated and feared the sound of the word and knew that it had
+him cowed, because in his long life he had known it to be the only
+reality in the world of men. And in that world he had known the only
+reality to be that if you didn't cut the other fellow's throat first he
+would cut yours. There wasn't any other reality. He had heard
+impractical, womanish men say there was, and try to prove it, only to
+have their economic throats cut considerably more promptly than any
+others. He had done his little indirect share of the throat-cutting
+always. He was not denying the need to do it. Only he had never found it
+a very cheerful atmosphere in which to pass one's life. And now he had
+escaped, to the only other reality, the pleasant, gentle, slightly
+unreal world of women, nice women, and children and gardens. He was so
+old now that there was no shame in his sinking into that for what time
+he had left, as other old fellows sank into an easy-chair. Only he
+wished that he could have got along without being reminded so vividly,
+as he would be by this trip to the business-world, of what paid for the
+arm-chair, supported the nice women and children. He wished he hadn't
+had to come here, to be forced to remember again that the inevitable
+foundation for all that was pleasant and livable in private life was the
+grim determination on the part of a strong man to give his strength to
+"taking it out of the hide" of his competitors, his workmen, and the
+public. He'd had a vacation from that, and it made him appallingly
+depressed to take another dose of it now. He sincerely wished that sweet
+Mrs. Crittenden were a widow with a small income from some impersonal
+source with no uncomfortable human associations with it. He recalled
+with a sad cynicism the story Mrs. Crittenden had told them about the
+clever and forceful lawyer who had played the dirty trick on the farmer
+here in Ashley, and done him out of his wood-land. She had been very
+much wrought up about that, the poor lady, without having the least idea
+that probably her husband's business-life was full of such
+knifings-in-the-back, all with the purpose of making a quiet life for
+her and the children.
+
+Well, there was nothing for it but to go on. It wouldn't last long, and
+Mr. Welles' back was practised in bowing to weather he didn't like but
+which passed if you waited a while.
+
+They were going up the hall now, towards a door marked "Office," the
+children scampering ahead. The door was opening. The tall man who stood
+there, nodding a welcome to them, must be Mr. Crittenden.
+
+So that was the kind of man he was. Nothing special about him. Just a
+nice-looking American business-man, with a quiet, calm manner and a
+friendly face.
+
+To the conversation which followed and which, like all such
+conversations, amounted to nothing at all, Mr. Welles made no
+contribution. What was the use? Mr. Bayweather and Vincent were there.
+The conversation would not flag. So he had the usual good chance of the
+silent person to use his eyes. He looked mostly at Mr. Crittenden. Well,
+he wasn't so bad. They were usually nice enough men in personal
+relations, business men. This one had good eyes, very nice when he
+looked at the children or his wife. They were often good family men,
+too. There was something about him, however, that wasn't just like all
+others. What was it? Not clothes. His suit was cut off the same piece
+with forty million other American business-suits. Not looks, although
+there was an outdoor ruddiness of skin and clearness of eye that made
+him look a little like a sailor. Oh yes, Mr. Welles had it. It was his
+voice. Whenever he spoke, there was something . . . something _natural_
+about his voice, as though it didn't ever say things he didn't mean.
+
+Well, for Heaven's sake here was the old minister started off again on
+one of his historical spiels. Mr. Welles glanced cautiously at Vincent
+to see if he were in danger of blowing up, and found him looking
+unexpectedly thoughtful. He was evidently not paying the least attention
+to Mr. Bayweather's account of the eighteenth century quarrel between
+New Hampshire and Vermont. He was apparently thinking of something else,
+very hard.
+
+He himself leaned back in his chair, but half of one absent ear given to
+Mr. Bayweather's lecture, and enjoyed himself looking at Mrs.
+Crittenden. She was pretty, Mrs. Crittenden was. He hadn't been sure
+the first day, but now he had had a chance to get used to her face being
+so long and sort of pointed, and her eyes long too, and her black
+eyebrows running back almost into her hair, he liked every bit of her
+face. It looked so different from anybody else's. He noticed with an
+inward smile that she was fidgety under Mr. Bayweather's historical
+talk. _He_ was the only person with any patience in that whole bunch.
+But at what a price had he acquired it!
+
+By and by Mrs. Crittenden got up quietly and went out into the other
+office as if on an errand.
+
+Mr. Bayweather took advantage of her absence to tell them a lot about
+how much the Crittendens had done for the whole region and what a golden
+thing Mrs. Crittenden's music had been for everybody, and about an
+original conception of business which Mr. Crittenden seemed to have. Mr.
+Welles was not interested in music, but he was in business and he would
+have liked to hear a great deal more about this, but just at this point,
+as if to cut the clergyman off, in came Mr. Crttenden, very brisk and
+prompt, ready to take them around the mill.
+
+Vincent stood up. They all stood up. Mr. Welles noted that Vincent had
+quite come out of his brown study and was now all there. He was as he
+usually was, a wire charged with a very high-voltage current.
+
+They went out now, all of them together, but soon broke up into two
+groups. He stayed behind with Mr. Crittenden and pretended to look at
+the machinery of the saw-mill, which he found very boring indeed, as he
+hadn't the slightest comprehension of a single cog in it. But there was
+something there at which he really looked. It was the expression of Mr.
+Crittenden's face as he walked about, and it was the expression on the
+faces of the men as they looked at the boss.
+
+Mr. Welles, not being a talker, had had a great deal of opportunity to
+study the faces of others, and he had become rather a specialist in
+expressions. Part of his usefulness in the office had come from that.
+He had catalogued in his mind the different looks on human faces, and
+most of them connected with any form of business organization were
+infinitely familiar to him, from the way the casual itinerant temporary
+laborer looked at the boss of his gang, to the way the star salesman
+looked at the head of the house.
+
+But here was a new variety to him, these frank and familiar glances
+thrown in answer to the nodded greeting or short sentence of the boss as
+he walked about. They were not so much friendly (although they were that
+too), as they were familiar and open, as though nothing lay hidden
+behind the apparent expression. It was not often that Mr. Welles had
+encountered that, a look that seemed to hide nothing.
+
+He wondered if he could find out anything about this from Mr. Crittenden
+and put a question to him about his relations with his men. He tried to
+make it tactful and sensible-sounding, but as he said the words, he knew
+just how flat and parlor-reformerish they sounded; and it didn't
+surprise him a bit to have the business-man bristle up and snap his head
+off. It had sounded as though he didn't know a thing about business--he,
+the very marrow of whose bones was soaked in a bitter knowledge that the
+only thing that could keep it going was the fear of death in every man's
+heart, lest the others get ahead of him and trample him down.
+
+He decided that he wouldn't say another thing, just endure the temporary
+boredom of being trotted about to have things explained to him, which he
+hadn't any intention of trying to understand.
+
+But Mr. Crittenden did not try to explain. Perhaps he was bored himself,
+perhaps he guessed the visitor's ignorance. He just walked around from
+one part of the big, sunshiny shops to another, taking advantage of this
+opportunity to look things over for his own purposes. And everywhere he
+went, he gave and received back that curious, new look of openness.
+
+It was not noisy here as in the saw-mill, but very quiet and peaceful,
+the bee-like whirring of the belts on the pulleys the loudest continuous
+sound. It was clean, too. The hardwood floor was being swept clean of
+sawdust and shavings all the time, by a lame old man, who pottered
+tranquilly about, sweeping and cleaning and putting the trash in a big
+box on a truck. When he had it full, he beckoned to a burly lad, shoving
+a truck across the room, and called in a clear, natural, friendly voice,
+"Hey, Nat, come on over." The big lad came, whistling, pushed the box
+off full, and brought it back empty, still whistling airily.
+
+There were a good many work-people in sight. Mr. Welles made a guessing
+estimate that the business must keep about two hundred busy. And there
+was not one who looked harried by his work. The big, cluttered place
+heaped high with piles of curiously shaped pieces of wood, filled with
+oddly contrived saws and lathes and knives and buffers for sawing and
+turning and polishing and fitting those bits of wood, was brooded over
+as by something palpable by an emanation of order. Mr. Welles did not
+understand a detail of what he was looking at, but from the whole, his
+mind, experienced in business, took in a singularly fresh impression
+that everybody there knew what he was up to, in every sense of the word.
+
+He and Mr. Crittenden stood for a time looking at and chatting to a
+gray-haired man who was polishing smoothly planed oval bits of board. He
+stopped as they talked, ran his fingers over the satin-smoothed surface
+with evident pleasure, and remarked to his employer, "Mighty fine maple
+we're getting from the Warner lot. See the grain in that!"
+
+He held it up admiringly, turning it so that the light would show it at
+its best, and looked at it respectfully. "There's no wood like maple,"
+he said. Mr. Crittenden answered, "Yep. The Warner land is just right
+for slow-growing trees." He took it out of the workman's hand, looked it
+over more closely with an evident intelligent certainty of what to look
+for, and handed it back with a nod that signified his appreciation of
+the wood and of the workmanship which had brought it to that state.
+
+There had been about that tiny, casual human contact a quality which Mr.
+Welles did not recognize. His curiosity rose again. He wondered if he
+might not succeed in getting some explanation out of the manufacturer,
+if he went about it very tactfully. He would wait for his chance. He
+began to perceive with some surprise that he was on the point of quite
+liking Mrs. Crittenden's husband.
+
+So he tried another question, after a while, very cautiously, and was
+surprised to find Mr. Crittenden no longer snappish, but quite friendly.
+It occurred to him as the pleasantest possibility that he might find his
+liking for the other man returned. That _would_ be a new present hung on
+the Christmas tree of his life in Vermont.
+
+On the strength of this possibility, and banking on the friendliness in
+the other man's eyes, he drove straight at it, the phrase which the
+minister had used when he said that Mr. Crittenden thought of business
+as an ideal service to humanity as much as doctoring. That had sounded
+so ignorant and ministerial he hadn't even thought of it seriously, till
+after this contact with the man of whom it had been said. The best way
+with Crittenden was evidently the direct one. He had seen that in the
+first five minutes of observation of him. So he would simply tell him
+how bookish and impossible it had sounded, and see what he had to say.
+He'd probably laugh and say the minister had it all wrong, of course,
+regular minister's idea.
+
+And so presently they were off, on a real talk, beyond what he had hoped
+for, and Crittenden was telling him really what he had meant. He was
+saying in his firm, natural, easy voice, as though he saw nothing
+specially to be self-conscious about in it, "Why, of course I don't rank
+lumbering and wood-working with medicine. Wood isn't as vital to human
+life as quinine, or a knowledge of what to do in typhoid fever. But
+after all, wood is something that people have to have, isn't it?
+Somebody has to get it out and work it up into usable shape. If he can
+do this, get it out of the woods without spoiling the future of the
+forests, drying up the rivers and all that, and have it transformed into
+some finished product that people need in their lives, it's a sort of
+plain, everyday service, isn't it? And to do this work as economically
+as it can be managed, taking as low a price as you can get along with
+instead of screwing as high a price as possible out of the people who
+have to have it, what's the matter with that, as an interesting problem
+in ingenuity? I tell you, Mr. Welles, you ought to talk to my wife about
+this. It's as much her idea as mine. We worked it out together, little
+by little. It was when Elly was a baby. She was the second child, you
+know, and we began to feel grown-up. By that time I was pretty sure I
+could make a go of the business. And we first began to figure out what
+we were up to. Tried to see what sort of a go we wanted the business to
+have. We first began to make some sense out of what we were doing in
+life."
+
+Mr. Welles found himself overwhelmed by a reminiscent ache at this
+phrase and burst out, his words tinged with the bitterness he tried to
+keep out of his mind, "Isn't that an awful moment when you first try to
+make some sense out of what you are doing in life! But suppose you had
+gone on doing it, always, always, till you were an old man, and never
+succeeded! Suppose all you seemed to be accomplishing was to be able to
+hand over to the sons of the directors more money than was good for
+them? I tell you, Mr. Crittenden, I've often wished that once, just
+once, before I died I could be _sure_ that I had done anything that was
+of any use to anybody." He went on, nodding his head, "What struck me so
+about what Mr. Bayweather said is that I've often thought about doctors
+myself, and envied them. They take money for what they do, of course,
+but they miss lots of chances to make more, just so's to be of some use.
+I've often thought when they were running the prices up and up in our
+office just because they could, that a doctor would be put out of his
+profession in no time by public opinion, if he ever tried to screw the
+last cent out of everybody, the way business men do as a matter of
+course."
+
+Mr. Crittenden protested meditatively against this. "Oh, don't you think
+maybe there's a drift the other way among decent business people now?
+Why, when Marise and I were first trying to get it clear in our own
+heads, we kept it pretty dark, I tell you, that we weren't in it only
+for what money we could make, because we knew how loony we'd seem to
+anybody else. But don't you see any signs that lately maybe the same
+idea is striking lots of people in America?"
+
+"No, I do _not_!" said Mr. Welles emphatically. "With a profiteer on
+every corner!
+
+"But look-y-here, the howl about profiteers, isn't that something new?
+Isn't that a dumb sort of application to business of the doctor's
+standard of service? Twenty years ago, would anybody have thought of
+doing anything but uneasily admiring a grocer who made all the money he
+could out of his business? 'Why shouldn't he?' people would have thought
+then. Everybody else did. Twenty years ago, would anybody have dreamed
+of legally preventing a rich man from buying all the coal he wanted,
+whether there was enough for everybody, or not?"
+
+Mr. Welles considered this in unconvinced silence. Mr. Crittenden went
+on, "Why, sometimes it looks to me like the difference between what's
+legitimate in baseball and in tennis. Every ball-player will try to
+bluff the umpire that he's safe when he knows the baseman tagged him
+three feet from the bag; and public opinion upholds him in his bluff if
+he can get away with it. But like as not, the very same man who lies
+like a trooper on the diamond, if he went off that very afternoon to
+play tennis would never dream of announcing 'out' if his opponent's ball
+really had landed in the court,--not if it cost him the sett and
+match,--whether anybody was looking at him or not. It's 'the thing' to
+try to get anything you can put over in baseball, anything the umpire
+can't catch you at. And it's not 'the thing' in tennis. Most of the time
+you don't even have any umpire. That's it: that's not such a bad way to
+put it. My wife and I wanted to run our business on the tennis standard
+and not on the baseball one. Because I believe, ultimately you know, in
+fixing things,--everything,--national life as well, so that we'll need
+as few umpires as possible. Once get the tennis standard adopted . . ."
+
+Mr. Welles said mournfully, "Don't get started on politics. I'm too old
+to have any hopes of that!"
+
+"Right you are there," said Mr. Crittenden. "Economic organization is
+the word. That's one thing that keeps me so interested in my little
+economic laboratory here. Political parties are as prehistoric as the
+mastodon, if they only knew it."
+
+Mr. Welles said, "But the queer thing is that you make it work."
+
+"Oh, anybody with a head for business could make it work. You've got to
+know how to manage your machine before you can make it go, of course.
+But that's not saying you have to drive it somewhere you don't want to
+get to. I don't say that that workman back there who was making such a
+beautiful job of polishing that maple could make it go. He couldn't."
+
+Mr. Welles persisted. "But I've always thought, I've always _seen_ it,
+or thought I had . . . that life-and-death competition is the only
+stimulus that's strong enough to stir men up to the prodigious effort
+they have to put out to _make_ a go of their business, start the machine
+running. That, and the certainty of all they could get out of the
+consumer as a reward. You know it's held that there's a sort of mystic
+identity between all you can get out of the consumer and the exact
+amount of profit that'll just make the business go."
+
+Mr. Crittenden said comfortably, as though he were talking of something
+that did not alarm him, "Oh well, the best of the feudal seigneurs
+mournfully believed that a sharp sword and a long lance in their own
+hands were the strongholds of society. The wolf-pack idea of business
+will go the same way." He explained in answer to Mr. Welles' vagueness
+as to this term, "You know, the conception that if you're going to get
+hair brushes or rubber coats or mattresses or what-not enough for
+humanity manufactured, the only way is to have the group engaged in it
+form a wolf-pack, hunting down the public to extract from it as much
+money as possible. The salesmen and advertisers take care of this
+extracting. Then this money's to be fought for, by the people engaged in
+the process, as wolves fight over the carcass of the deer they have
+brought down together. This is the fight between the directors of labor
+and the working-men. It's ridiculous to hold that such a wasteful and
+incoherent system is the only one that will arouse men's energies enough
+to get them into action. It's absurd to think that business men . . .
+they're the flower of the nation, they're America's specialty, you know
+. . . can only find their opportunity for service to their fellow-men by
+such haphazard contracts with public service as helping raise money for
+a library or heading a movement for better housing of the poor, when
+they don't know anything about the housing of the poor, nor what it
+ought to be. Their opportunity for public service is right in their own
+legitimate businesses, and don't you forget it. Everybody's business is
+his best way to public service, and doing it that way, you'd put out of
+operation the professional uplifters who uplift as a business, and can't
+help being priggish and self-conscious about it. It makes me tired the
+way professional idealists don't see their big chance. They'll take all
+the money they can get from business for hospitals, and laboratories,
+and to investigate the sleeping sickness or the boll-weevil, but that
+business itself could rank with public libraries and hospitals as an
+ideal element in the life on the globe . . . they can't open their minds
+wide enough to take in that."
+
+Mr. Welles had been following this with an almost painful interest and
+surprise. He found it very agitating, very upsetting. Suppose there had
+been something there, all the time. He must try to think it out more.
+Perhaps it was not true. But here sat a man who had made it work. Why
+hadn't he thought of it in time? Now it was too late. Too late for him
+to do anything. Anything? The voice of the man beside him grew dim to
+him, as, uneasy and uncertain, his spirits sank lower and lower. Suppose
+all the time there had been a way out besides beating the retreat to the
+women, the children, and the gardens? Only now it was too late! What was
+the use of thinking of it all?
+
+For a moment he forgot where he was. It seemed to him that there was
+something waiting for him to think of it . . .
+
+But oddly enough, all that presented itself to him, when he tried to
+look, was the story that had nothing to do with anything, which his
+cousin had told him in a recent letter, of the fiery sensitive young
+Negro doctor, who had worked his way through medical school, and
+hospital-training, gone South to practise, and how he had been treated
+by the white people in the town where he had settled. He wondered if she
+hadn't exaggerated all that. But she gave such definite details. Perhaps
+Mr. Crittenden knew something about that problem. Perhaps he had an idea
+about that, too, that might be of help. He would ask him.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IN AUNT HETTY'S GARDEN
+
+I
+
+
+June 10.
+
+Marise bent to kiss the soft withered cheek. "Elly is a _real_
+Vermonter, but I'm not. She can get along with just 'Hello, Aunt Hetty,'
+but that's not enough for me," she said tenderly to the old woman; "I
+have to kiss you."
+
+"Oh, you can do as you like, for all of me," answered the other with an
+unsparing indifference.
+
+Marise laughed at the quality of this, taking the shaky old hand in hers
+with a certainty of affection returned. She went on, "This is a regular
+descent on you, Cousin Hetty. I've come to show you off, you and the
+house and the garden. This is Mr. Welles who has settled next door to
+us, you know, and this is Mr. Marsh who is visiting him for a time. And
+here are the children, and Eugenia Mills came up from the city
+last night and will be here perhaps, if she gets up energy after
+her afternoon nap, and Neale is coming over from the mill after
+closing hours, and we've brought along a basket supper and, if
+you'll let us, we're going to eat it out in your garden, under
+Great-great-grandmother's willow-tree."
+
+Cousin Hetty nodded dry, though not uncordial greetings to the strangers
+and said crisply, "You're welcome enough to sit around anywhere you can
+find, and eat your lunch here, but where you're going to find anything
+to show off, beats me."
+
+"Mr. Welles is interested in gardens and wants to look at yours."
+
+"Not much to look at," said the old lady uncompromisingly.
+
+"I don't want to look at a _garden_!" clamored little Mark, outraged at
+the idea. "I want to be let go up to Aunt Hetty's yattic where the sword
+and 'pinning-wheel are."
+
+"Would all you children like that best?" asked Marise.
+
+Their old kinswoman answered for them, "You'd better believe they would.
+You always did yourself. Run along, now, children, and don't fall on the
+attic stairs and hurt yourselves on the wool-hetchels."
+
+The fox-terrier, who had hung in an anguish of uncertainty and hope and
+fear on the incomprehensible words passing between little Mark and the
+grown-ups, perceiving now that the children ran clattering towards the
+stairs, took a few agitated steps after them, and ran back to Marise,
+shivering, begging with his eyes, in a wriggling terror lest he be
+forbidden to follow them into the fun. Marise motioned him along up the
+stairs, saying with a laughing, indulgent, amused accent, "Yes, yes,
+poor Médor, you can go along with the children if you want to."
+
+The steel sinews of the dog's legs stretched taut on the instant, in a
+great bound of relief. He whirled with a ludicrous and undignified
+haste, slipping, his toe-nails clicking on the bare floor, tore across
+the room and dashed up the stairs, drunk with joy.
+
+"If strong emotions are what one wants out of life," commented Marise
+lightly, to Marsh, "one ought to be born a nervous little dog, given
+over to the whimsical tyranny of humans."
+
+"There are other ways of coming by strong emotions," answered Marsh, not
+lightly at all.
+
+"What in the world are wool-hetchels?" asked Mr. Welles as the grown-ups
+went along the hall towards the side-door.
+
+"Why, when I was a girl, and we spun our own wool yarn . . ." began Cousin
+Hetty, trotting beside him and turning her old face up to his.
+
+Marsh stopped short in the hall-way with a challenging abruptness that
+brought Marise to a standstill also. The older people went on down the
+long dusky hail to the door and out into the garden, not noticing that
+the other two had stopped. The door swung shut behind them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise felt the man's dark eyes on her, searching, determined. They were
+far from those first days, she thought, when he had tacitly agreed not
+to look at her like that, very far from those first days of delicacy and
+lightness of touch.
+
+With a determination as firm as his own, she made her face and eyes
+opaque, and said on a resolutely gay note, "What's the matter? Can't you
+stand any more information about early times in Vermont? You must have
+been having too heavy a dose of Mr. Bayweather. But _I_ like it, you
+know. I find it awfully interesting to know so in detail about any past
+period of human life; as much so . . . why not? . . . as researches into
+which provinces of France used half-timber houses, and how late?"
+
+"You like a great many things!" he said impatiently.
+
+"We must get out into the garden with the others, or Cousin Hetty will
+be telling her old-time stories before we arrive," she answered, moving
+towards the door.
+
+She felt her pulse knocking loud and swift. Strange how a casual
+interchange of words with him would excite and agitate her. But it had
+been more than that. Everything _was_, with him.
+
+He gave the sidewise toss of his head, which had come to be so familiar
+to her, as though he were tossing a lock of hair from his forehead, but
+he said nothing more, following her down the long hall in silence.
+
+It was as though she had physically felt the steel of his blade slide
+gratingly once more down from her parry. Her mental attitude had been so
+entirely that of a fencer, on the alert, watchfully defensive against
+the quick-flashing attack of the opponent, that she had an instant's
+absurd fear of letting him walk behind her, as though she might feel a
+thrust in the back. "How ridiculous of me!" she told herself with an
+inward laugh of genuine amusement. "Women are as bad as fox-terriers
+for inventing exciting occasions out of nothing at all."
+
+Then in a gust of deep anger, instantly come, instantly gone, "Why do I
+tolerate this for a moment? I was perfectly all right before. Why don't
+I simply send him about his business, as I would any other bold
+meddler?"
+
+But after this, with an abrupt shift to another plane, "That would be
+acting preposterously, like a silly, self-consciously virtuous matron.
+What earthly difference does it make to me what a casual visitor to our
+town says or does to amuse himself in his casual stay, that may end at
+any moment? And how scarifyingly he would laugh at me, if he knew what
+comic relics of old prudish reflexes are stirred up by the contact with
+his mere human livingness. Heavens! How he would laugh to know me
+capable of being so 'guindée,' so personal, fearing like any school-girl
+a flirtation in any man's conversation. He must never see a trace of
+that. No matter how startled I ever am, he mustn't see anything but a
+smooth, amused surface. It would be intolerable to have him laugh at
+me."
+
+Her hand was on the latch, when a deep, muffled murmur from the depths
+admonished her, "Personal vanity . . . that's what's at the bottom of all
+that you are telling yourself. It is a vain woman speaking, and fearing
+a wound to her vanity."
+
+She resented this, pushed it back, and clicked the latch up firmly,
+stepping out into the transparent gold of the late-afternoon sunshine.
+She turned her head as her companion came up behind her on the garden
+path, half expecting to have his eyes meet hers with a visible shade of
+sardonic mockery, and prepared to meet it halfway with a similar
+amusement at the absurdity of human beings, herself included.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was not looking at her at all, but straight before him, unconscious
+for an instant that she had turned her eyes on him, and in this instant
+before the customary mask of self-consciousness dropped over his face,
+she read there, plain and startling to see, unmistakable to her grown
+woman's experience of life, the marks of a deep, and painful, and
+present emotion.
+
+All of her hair-splitting speculations withered to nothing. She did not
+even wonder what it was that moved him so strangely and dreadfully.
+There was no room for thought in the profound awed impersonal sympathy
+which with a great hush came upon her at the sight of another human
+being in pain.
+
+He felt some intimate emanation from her, turned towards her, and for
+the faintest fraction of time they looked at each other through a rent
+in the veil of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cousin Hetty's old voice called them cheerfully, "Over here, this way
+under the willow-tree."
+
+They turned in that direction, to hear her saying, ". . . that was in 1763
+and of course they came on horseback, using the Indian trails the men
+had learned during the French-and-Indian wars. Great-grandmother (she
+was a twelve-year-old girl then) had brought along a willow switch from
+their home in Connecticut. When the whole lot of them decided to settle
+here in the valley, and her folks took this land to be theirs, she stuck
+her willow switch into the ground, alongside the brook here, and this is
+the tree it grew to be. Looks pretty battered up, don't it, like other
+old folks."
+
+Mr. Welles tipped his pale, quiet face back to look up at the great
+tree, stretching its huge, stiff old limbs mutilated by time and
+weather, across the tiny, crystal brook dimpling and smiling and
+murmuring among its many-colored pebbles. "Queer, isn't it," he
+speculated, "how old the tree has grown, and how the brook has stayed
+just as young as ever."
+
+"It's the other way around between 'Gene Powers' house and his
+pine-tree," commented Aunt Hetty. "The pine-tree gets bigger and finer
+and stronger all the time, seems 'sthough, and the house gets more
+battered and feeble-looking."
+
+Marise looked across at Marsh and found his eyes on her with an
+expression she rarely saw in them, almost a peaceful look, as of a man
+who has had something infinitely satisfying fall to his lot. He smiled
+at her gently, a good, quiet smile, and looked away into the extravagant
+splendor of a row of peonies.
+
+Marise felt an inexplicable happiness, clear and sunny like the light in
+the old garden. She sat down on the bench and fell into a more relaxed
+and restful pose than she had known for some time. What a sweet and
+gracious thing life could be after all! Could there be a lovelier place
+on earth than here among Cousin Hetty's flower-children. Dear old Cousin
+Hetty, with her wrinkled, stiff exterior, and those bright living eyes
+of hers. She was the willow-tree outside and the brook inside, that's
+what she was. What tender childhood recollections were bound up with the
+sight of that quiet old face.
+
+"And those rose-bushes," continued the old woman, "are all cuttings my
+great-great-grandmother brought up from Connecticut, and _they_ came
+from cuttings our folks brought over from England, in 1634. If 'twas a
+little later in the season, and they were in bloom, you'd see how
+they're not nearly so I double as most roses. The petals are bigger and
+not so curled up, more like wild roses."
+
+She sat down beside the others on the long wooden bench, and added, "I
+never dig around one of those bushes, nor cut a rose to put in a vase,
+without I feel as though Great-great-grandmother and Grandmother and all
+the rest were in me, still alive."
+
+"Don't you think," asked Marise of the two men, "that there is something
+awfully sweet about feeling yourself a part of the past generations,
+like that? As we do here. To have such a familiarity with any corner of
+the earth . . . well, it seems to me like music, the more familiar it is,
+the dearer and closer it is . . . and when there are several generations
+of familiarity back of you. . . . I always feel as though my life were a
+part of something much bigger than just _my_ life, when I feel it a
+continuation of their lives, as much as of my own childhood. It always
+seems deep and quieting to me."
+
+Mr. Welles assented wistfully, "It makes me envious."
+
+Marsh shook his head, sending up a meditative puff of smoke. "If you
+want to know how it really strikes me, I'll have to say it sounds plain
+sleepy to me. Deep and quieting all right, sure enough. But so's opium.
+And in my experience, most things just get duller and duller, the more
+familiar they are. I don't begin to have time in my life for the living
+I want to do, my own self! I can't let my grandmothers and grandfathers
+come shoving in for another whirl at it. They've had their turn. And my
+turn isn't a minute too long for me. Your notion looks to me . . . lots of
+old accepted notions look like that to me . . . like a good big dose of
+soothing syrup to get people safely past the time in their existences
+when they might do some sure-enough personal living on their own hook."
+He paused and added in a meditative murmur, "That time is so damn short
+as it is!"
+
+He turned hastily to the old lady with an apology. "Why, I _beg_ your
+pardon! I didn't realize I had gone on talking aloud. I was just
+thinking along to myself. You see, your soothing syrup is working on me,
+the garden, the sun, the stillness, all the grandmothers and
+grandfathers sitting around. I am almost half asleep."
+
+"I'm an old maid, I know," said Cousin Hetty piquantly. "But I'm not a
+proper Massachusetts old maid. I'm Vermont, and a swear-word or two
+don't scare me. I was brought up on first-hand stories of Ethan Allen's
+talk, and . . ."
+
+Marise broke in hastily, in mock alarm, "Now, Cousin Hetty, don't you
+start in on the story of Ethan Allen and the cowshed that was too short.
+I won't have our city visitors scandalized by our lack of . . ."
+
+Cousin Hetty's laughter cut her short, as merry and young a sound as the
+voice of the brook. "I hadn't thought of that story in years!" she said.
+She and Marise laughed together, looking at each other. But they said
+nothing else.
+
+"Aren't you going to _tell_ us?" asked Mr. Welles with a genuine
+aggrieved surprise which tickled Cousin Hetty into more laughter.
+
+"I shall not rest day or night, till I have found someone who knows that
+story," said Marsh, adding, "Old Mrs. Powers must know it. And _she_
+will love to tell it to me. It is evidently the sort of story which is
+her great specialty."
+
+They all laughed, foolishly, light-heartedly.
+
+Marise consciously delighted in the laughter, in the silly, light tone
+of their talk, in the feeling of confidence and security which bathed
+her as warmly as the new wine of the spring sunshine. She thought
+passingly, swiftly, with her habitual, satiric wonder at her own
+fancifulness, of her earlier notions about steel blades and passes and
+parries, and being afraid to walk down the hall with her "opponent" back
+of her.
+
+Her opponent, this potent, significant personality, lounging on the
+bench beside her, resting in the interval of a life the intensity of
+which was out of her world altogether, the life, all power, of a modern
+rich man in great affairs; controlling vast forces, swaying and shaping
+the lives of thousands of weaker men as no potentate had ever done,
+living in the instants he allowed himself for personal life (she felt
+again the pang of her sympathy for his look of fierce, inexplicable
+pain) with a concentration in harmony with the great scale of his other
+activities. It was, just as the cheap novels called it, a sort, a bad,
+inhuman, colorful, fascinating sort of modern version of the superman's
+life, she reflected. She had been ridiculous to project her village
+insignificance into that large-scale landscape.
+
+A distant whistle blew a long, full note, filling the valley with its
+vibrations.
+
+"Is that a train, at this hour?" murmured Mr. Welles. His voice was sunk
+to a somnolent monotone, his hands folded over his waistcoat moved
+slowly and rhythmically with his breathing. It was evident that he did
+not in the least care whether it was a train or not.
+
+"Oh _no!_" said Marise, severely, disapproving the vagueness and
+inaccuracy of his observation. "That's the mill-whistle, blowing the
+closing-hour. You're no true Ashleyan, not to have learned the
+difference between the voices of the different whistles of the day."
+
+She turned to Marsh, tilting her wings for a capricious flight. "I think
+it's part of the stubborn stiff-jointedness of human imagination, don't
+you, that we don't hear the beauty of those great steam-whistles. I
+wonder if it's not unconscious art that gave to our mighty machines such
+voices of qower."
+
+"Isn't it perhaps ostentatious to call the family saw-mill a 'mighty
+machine'?" inquired Marsh mildly. He sat at the end of the bench, his
+arm along the back behind Mr. Welles, his head turned to the side, his
+soft hat pulled low over his forehead, looking at the garden and at
+Marise out of half-shut, sleepy eyes.
+
+Marise went on, drawing breath for a longer flight. "When the train
+comes sweeping up the valley, trailing its great beautiful banner of
+smoke, I feel as though it were the crescendo announcing something, and
+at the crossing, when that noble rounded note blares out . . . why, it's
+the music for the setting. Nothing else could cope with the depth of the
+valley, the highness and blackness of its mountain walls, and the
+steepness of the Eagle Rocks."
+
+"I call that going some, 'noble rounded note'!" murmured Marsh, lifting
+his eyebrows with a visible effort and letting his eyes fall half shut,
+against the brilliance of the sunshine.
+
+Marise laughed, and persisted. "Just because its called a
+steam-whistle, we won't hear its beauty and grandeur, till something
+else has been invented to take its place, and then we'll look back
+sentimentally and regret it."
+
+"Maybe _you_ will," conceded Marsh.
+
+The two elder looked on, idly amused at this give-and-take.
+
+"And I don't suppose," continued Marise, "to take another instance of
+modern lack of imagination, that you have ever noticed, as an element of
+picturesque power in modern life, the splendid puissance of the traffic
+cop's presence in a city street."
+
+They all had a protesting laugh at this, startled for an instant from
+their dreaminess.
+
+"Yes, and if I could think of more grandiloquent words to express him,
+I'd use them," said Marise defiantly, launching out into yet more
+outrageous flights of rhetoric. "I could stand for hours on a street
+corner, admiring the completeness with which he is transfigured out of
+the human limitations of his mere personality, how he feels, flaming
+through his every vein and artery, the invincible power of THE LAW,
+freely set over themselves by all those turbulent, unruly human beings,
+surging around him in their fiery speed-genii. He raises his arm. It is
+not a human arm, it is the decree of the entire race. And as far as it
+can be seen, all those wilful fierce creatures bow themselves to it. The
+current boils past him in one direction. He lets it go till he thinks
+fit to stop it. He sounds his whistle, and raises his arm again in that
+inimitable gesture of omnipotence. And again they bow themselves. Now
+that the priest before the altar no longer sways humanity as he did, is
+there anywhere else, any other such visible embodiment of might,
+majesty, and power as . . ."
+
+"Gracious me, Marise!" warned her old cousin. "I know you're only
+running on with your foolishness, but I think you're going pretty far
+when you mix a policeman up with priests and altars and things. I don't
+believe Mr. Bayweather would like that very well."
+
+"He wouldn't mind," demurred Marise. "He'd think it an interesting
+historical parallel."
+
+"Mrs. Bayweather would have a thing or two to say."
+
+"Right you are. _Mrs._ Bayweather would certainly say something!" agreed
+Marise.
+
+She stood up. "I'm hypnotized into perfect good-for-nothingness like the
+rest of you by the loveliness of the afternoon and the niceness of
+everybody. Here it is almost eating-time and I haven't even opened the
+baskets. No, don't you move," she commanded the others, beginning to
+stir from their nirvana to make dutiful offers of help. "I'll call the
+children. And Neale will be here in a moment."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went back to the house, down the long walk, under the grape-arbor,
+still only faintly shaded with sprigs of pale green. She was calling,
+"Children! _Children!_ Come and help with the supper."
+
+She vanished into the house. There was a moment or two of intense quiet,
+in which the almost horizontal rays of the setting sun poured a flood of
+palpable gold on the three motionless figures in the garden.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then she emerged again, her husband beside her, carrying the largest of
+the baskets, the children struggling with other baskets, a pail, an
+ice-cream-freezer, while the dog wove circles about them, wrought to
+exaltation by the complicated smell of the eatables.
+
+"Neale was just coming in the front gate," she explained, as he nodded
+familiarly to the men and bent to kiss the old woman's cheek. "Cousin
+Hetty, just _look_ at Elly in that night-cap of Great-aunt Pauline's.
+Doesn't she look the image of that old daguerreotype of Grandmother? See
+here, Mark, who said you could trail that sword out here? That belongs
+in the attic."
+
+"Oh, let him, let him," said Cousin Hetty peaceably.
+
+"There's nothing much less breakable than a sword. He can't hurt it."
+
+"I've woren it lots of times before," said Mark. "Aunt Hetty always let
+me to. Favver, won't you 'trap it tight to me, so's I won't 'traddle it
+so much."
+
+"Mother," said Elly, coming up close to Marise, as she stood unpacking
+the dishes, "I was looking inside that old diary, the one in the red
+leather cover, your grandmother's, I guess, the diary she wrote when she
+was a young lady. And she was having a perfectly dreadful time whether
+she could believe the Doctrine of the Trinity. She seemed to feel so bad
+about it. She wrote how she couldn't sleep nights, and cried, and
+everything. It was the Holy Ghost she couldn't make any sense out of.
+Mother, what in the world _is_ the Doctrine of the Trinity?
+
+"For mercy's sakes!" cried Cousin Hetty. "I never saw such a family!
+Elly, what won't you be up to, next? I can't call that a proper thing
+for a little girl to talk about, right out, so."
+
+"Mother, _you_ tell me," said Elly, looking up into her mother's face
+with the expression of tranquil trust which was like a visible radiance.
+Marise always felt scared, she told herself, when Elly looked at her
+like that. She made a little helpless shrugged gesture of surrender with
+her shoulders, setting down on the table a plate of cold sliced lamb.
+"Elly, darling, I can't stop just this minute to tell you about it, and
+anyhow I don't understand any more about it than Grandmother did. But I
+don't care if I don't. The first quiet minute we have together, I'll
+tell you enough so you can understand why _she_ cared."
+
+"All right, when I go to bed tonight I'll remind you to," Elly made the
+engagement definite. She added, with a shout, "Oh, Mother, _chicken_
+sandwiches! Oh, I didn't know we were going to have _chicken_
+sandwiches. Mother, can't we begin now? I'm awfully hungry."
+
+"Hello," said Neale, looking back toward the house. "Here comes Eugenia,
+arisen from her nap. Paul, run back into the house and bring out another
+chair. Marise, have you explained who Eugenia is?"
+
+"Oh là, là, no!" exclaimed Marise. "I forgot they didn't know her.
+Quick, you do it, Neale."
+
+"Old friend of my wife's, sort of half-cousin several-times removed,
+schoolmates in France together, the kind of old family friend who comes
+and goes in the house at will," said Neale rapidly. "Cultivated,
+artistic, and so on."
+
+"Oh, _Neale_, how slightingly you put it!" cried Marise under her
+breath. "She's made herself into one of the rarest and most finished
+creations!"
+
+Neale went on rapidly, in a low tone as the newcomer stepped slowly down
+the path, "She toils not, neither does she spin . . . doesn't have to.
+Highbrow, very, and yet stylish, very! Most unusual combination." He
+added as final information, "Spinster, by conviction," as he stepped
+forward to greet her.
+
+The other two men stood up to be presented to the newcomer, who, making
+everything to Marise's eyes seem rough and countrified, advanced towards
+them, self-possessed, and indifferent to all those eyes turned on her.
+In her gleaming, supple dress of satin-like ivory jersey, she looked
+some tiny, finished, jewel-object, infinitely breakable, at which one
+ought only to look if it were safely behind glass.
+
+"There is someone of Marsh's own world, the 'great world' he speaks of,"
+thought Marise. She was not aware of any wistfulness in her recognition
+of this fact, but she was moved to stand closer to her husband, and once
+as she moved about, setting the table, to lay her fingers for an instant
+on his hand.
+
+"We're going to have ice-cream, Eugenia," announced Paul, leaning on the
+arm of her chair after she and all the others were seated again.
+
+"That's good news," she said equably. She laid a small, beautiful hand
+on the child's shoulder, and with a smooth, imperceptible movement, set
+him a little further from her. Paul did not observe this manoeuver, but
+his mother did, with an inward smile. "Paul, don't hang on Eugenia like
+that," she called to him.
+
+"But she smells so sweet!" protested the little boy.
+
+Mr. Welles held out a sympathizing hand and drew the child to him. He
+too had seen that gesture.
+
+"Come here, all you little folks," ordered Marise, now seriously
+beginning to serve the meal, "and start waiting on the table."
+
+"Cold lamb!" cried Cousin Hetty with enthusiasm. "I'm so glad. Agnes
+won't touch mutton or lamb. She says they taste so like a sheep. And so
+we don't often have it."
+
+"Paul, can you be trusted to pour the hot chocolate?" asked his mother.
+"No, Neale, don't get up. I want to see if the children can't do it
+all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From where she sat at the foot of the table, she directed the
+operations. The children stepped about, serious, responsible, their rosy
+faces translucent in the long, searching, level rays sent up by the sun,
+low in The Notch. Dishes clicked lightly, knives and forks jingled, cups
+were set back with little clinking noises on saucers. All these indoor
+sounds were oddly diminished and unresonant under the open sky, just as
+the chatting, laughing flow of the voices, even though it rose at times
+to bursts of mirth which the children's shouts made noisy, never drowned
+out the sweet, secret talk of the brook to itself.
+
+Marise was aware of all this, richly and happily aware of the
+complexities of an impression whose total seemed to her, for the moment,
+felicity itself. It pleased her, all, every bit of it, pleased and
+amused her; the dear children, Paul worshiping at the shrine of
+Eugenia's elegancies, Mark the absurd darling with that grotesque sword
+between his legs, Elly devouring her favorite sandwich with impassioned
+satisfaction and wondering about the Holy Ghost; Cousin Hetty, ageless,
+pungent, and savory as one of her herbs; Mr. Welles, the old tired
+darling come into his haven, loving Paul as he would his own grandson;
+Eugenia orchid-like against their apple-blossom rusticity; Marsh . . . how
+tremendously more _simpático_ he had seemed this afternoon than ever
+before, as though one might really like him, and not just find him
+exciting and interesting; Neale, dear Neale with his calm eyes into
+which it did everyone good to look. All of them at ease, friendly,
+enjoying food, the visible world, and each other. Where, after all, were
+those traditional, troubling, insoluble intricacies of human
+relationships which had been tormenting her and darkening her sky? It
+was all so good and simple if one could only remain good and simple
+oneself. There was no lightning to fear in that lucent sunset air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently, as the talk turned on flowers and the dates of their
+blooming, Eugenia said to her casually, "Marisette, here we are the
+first of June and past, and the roses here are less advanced than they
+were at Tivoli the last of March. Do you remember the day when a lot of
+us sat outdoors and ate a picnic dinner, just as we do now? It was the
+day we climbed Monte Cavo."
+
+Marise explained, "Miss Mills is a friend who dates back even before my
+husband's time, back to our student days in Rome." To Eugenia she said,
+"You're giving us both away and showing how long ago it is, and how
+you've forgotten about details. We never could have climbed up Monte
+Cavo, the day we went to Tivoli. They don't go on the same excursion, at
+all."
+
+"That's true," agreed Eugenia indifferently, "you're right. Monte Cavo
+goes with the Rocca di Papa expedition."
+
+Before she could imagine a possible reason, Marise felt her hands go
+cold and moist. The sky seemed to darken and lower above her. Eugenia
+went on, "And I never went to Rocca di Papa with you, at all, I'm sure
+of that. That was a trip you took after you had dropped me for Neale. In
+fact, it was on that very expedition that you got formally engaged,
+don't you remember? You and Neale walked over from Monte Cavo and only
+just caught the last car down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ridiculous! Preposterous! Marise told herself that it was not possible
+that her hands were trembling so. It was merely a physical reaction,
+such as one had when startled by some trivial sudden event. But she
+couldn't make them stop trembling. She couldn't make them stop.
+
+What nonsense to be so agitated. Nobody could remember the name from
+that evening, weeks and weeks ago. And what if they did? What could they
+make of it?
+
+It seemed to her that dusk had fallen in the garden. Where was that
+lucent sunset air?
+
+She heard Eugenia's voice going on, and Neale chiming in with a laugh,
+and did not understand what they said. Surely everybody must have
+forgotten.
+
+She hazarded a quick glance at Mr. Welles' face and drew a long breath
+of relief. He had forgotten, that was evident. She looked beyond him to
+Marsh. He too would certainly have forgotten.
+
+He was waiting for her eyes. And when they met his, she felt the
+lightning flash. He had not forgotten.
+
+
+II
+
+Marsh suddenly found it unbearable. He wasn't used to keeping the curb
+on himself like this, and he hadn't the least intention of learning how
+to do it. A fierce, physical irritability overcame him, and he stopped
+short in the hall, just because he could not stand the silly chatter
+that was always flowing from these silly people about their foolish
+affairs. If they only knew what he was leaving unsaid!
+
+He had not meant to make Marise halt, too, his movement having been a
+mere unconsidered reflex, but of course she did stop, apparently
+surprised by the brusqueness of his action, and faced him there in the
+dusky hall-way. She was so close to him that he could see every detail
+of her face and person, just as he could at night when he closed his
+eyes; so close that for an instant he felt her breath on his face. He
+ground his teeth, minded, that instant, to throw down the trumpery
+little wall of convention. It couldn't stand, he knew with an
+experienced certainty of his own power that it couldn't stand for an
+instant against him. The day he chose to put his shoulder to it, down it
+would go in a heap of rubble.
+
+But the wall was not all. Usually it was all. But with this woman it was
+nothing, a mere accident. Beyond it she stood, valid, and looked at him
+out of those long eyes of hers. _What was in her mind?_ She looked at
+him now, quietly, just as usual, made some light casual remark, and
+effortlessly, as though she had some malign and invincible charm, she
+had passed from out his power again, and was walking with that straight,
+sure tread of hers, down to the door.
+
+If he could have done it, he would have struck at her from behind.
+
+He could get no hold on her, could not take the first step. All during
+those weeks and weeks, he had thrown out his net, and had caught enough
+facts, Lord knows. But had he any certainty that he had put them
+together right? He had not yet caught in her any one tone or look or
+phrase that would give him the unmistakable clue. He had set down words
+and words and words that would tell him what her life really was, if he
+only knew the alphabet of her language. He might be making a fool of
+himself with his almost certainty that she was conscious of having
+outgrown, like a splendid tropical tree, the wretched little
+kitchen-garden where fate had transplanted her. When he could stamp down
+his heat of feeling and let his intelligence have a moment's play, he
+was perfectly capable of seeing that he might be misinterpreting
+everything he had observed. For instance, that evening over the
+photograph-album with her betrayal of some strong feeling of distaste
+for the place near Rome. It was evident, from her tone, her look, her
+gesture, that the name of it brought up some acutely distasteful memory
+to her, but that could mean anything, or nothing. It might be merely
+some sordid accident, as that a drunken workman had said something
+brutal to her there. Women of her sort, he knew, never forgot those
+things. Or any one of a thousand such incidents. He would never know the
+significance of that gesture of shrinking of hers.
+
+As he walked behind her, he looked hard at her back, with its
+undulating, vase-like beauty, so close to him; and felt her immeasurably
+distant. She opened the door now and went out into the sunlight,
+stepping a little to one side as though to make room for him to come up
+beside her. He found that he knew every turn of her head, every poise of
+her shoulders and action of her hands, the whole rhythm of her body, as
+though they were his own. And there she passed from him, far and remote.
+
+A sudden certainty of fore-ordained defeat came over him, as he had
+never known before. He was amazed at the violence of his pain,
+intolerable, intolerable!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She turned her head quickly and caught his eyes in this instant of
+inexplicable suffering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What miraculous thing happened then? It seemed to him that her face
+wavered in golden rays, from the radiance of her eyes. For she did not
+withdraw her gaze. She looked at him with an instant, profound sympathy
+and pity, no longer herself, transfigured, divine by the depth of her
+humanity.
+
+The sore bitterness went out from his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A voice called. She turned away. He felt himself following her. He
+looked about him, light-headed with relief from pain. The quiet,
+flowering world shimmered rainbow-like. What a strange power one human
+being could have with another that a look could be an event!
+
+He walked more slowly, feeling with a curious pleasure the insatiable
+desire for possession ebbing from him. Why not let it ebb entirely? Why
+not enjoy the ineffable sweetness of what he could have? That was what
+would please her, what she would like, what she would give, freely. In
+this moment of hush, he quite saw how it would be possible, although he
+had never for a moment before in his life believed it. Yes, possible and
+lovely. After all, he must stop sometime, and take the slower pace. Why
+not now, when there was a certain and great prize to be won . . . ?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+People talked around him. He talked and did not know his own words.
+Marise spun those sparkling webs of nonsense of hers, and made him
+laugh, but the next moment he could not have told what she had said. He
+must somehow have been very tired to take such intense pleasure in being
+at rest.
+
+Her husband came, that rough and energetic husband. The children came,
+the children whose restless, selfish, noisy preying on their mother
+usually annoyed him so, and still the charm was not broken. Marise, as
+she always did when her husband and children were there, retreated into
+a remote plane of futile busyness with details that servants should have
+cared for; answering the children's silly questions, belonging to
+everyone, her personal existence blotted out. But this time he felt
+still, deep within him, the penetrating sweetness of her eyes as she had
+looked at him.
+
+A tiresome, sophisticated friend of Marise's came, too, somehow
+intruding another personality into the circle, already too full, and yet
+he was but vaguely irritated by her. She only brought out by contrast
+the thrilling quality of Marise's golden presence. He basked in that, as
+in the sunshine, and thought of nothing else.
+
+Possibilities he had never dreamed of, stretched before him,
+possibilities of almost impersonal and yet desirable existence. Perhaps
+this was the turning-point of his life. He supposed there really was
+one, sometime, for everybody.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+". . . Rocca di Papa . . ." someone had said. Or had he dreamed it? He
+awoke with an inward bound, like a man springing up from sleep at a
+sudden noise. His first look was for Marise. She was pale. He had not
+dreamed it.
+
+The voice went on . . . the newcomer's, the one they called Eugenia . . .
+yes, she had known them in Italy. Marise had just said they had been
+friends before her marriage.
+
+The voice went on. How he listened as though crouched before the keyhole
+of a door! Only three or four sentences, quite casual and trivial in
+content, pronounced in that self-consciously cosmopolitan accent. Then
+the voice stopped.
+
+It had said enough for him. Now he knew. Now he had that clue.
+
+He had the sensation of rising to his full height, exultantly, every
+faculty as alert as though he had never been drugged to sleep by those
+weak notions of renunciation. The consciousness of power was like a
+sweet taste in his mouth. The deep, fundamental, inalienable need for
+possession stretched itself, titanic and mighty, refreshed, reposed, and
+strengthened by the involuntary rest it had had.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He fixed his eyes on Marise, waiting for the first interchange of a
+look. He could see that her hands were trembling; and smiled to himself.
+She was looking at the old man.
+
+Now, in a moment she would look at him.
+
+There were her eyes. She had looked at him. Thunder rolled in his ears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HEARD FROM THE STUDY
+
+
+June 20.
+
+From his desk in the inner room where he finally buckled down to those
+estimates about the popple-wood casters, Neale could follow, more or
+less closely, as his attention varied, the evening activities of the
+household.
+
+First there had been the clinking and laughter from the dining-room and
+kitchen where Marise and the children cleared off the table and washed
+the dishes. How sweet their voices sounded, all light and gay! Every
+occasion for being with their mother was fun for the kids. How happy
+Marise made them! And how they throve in that happiness like little
+plants in the sunshine!
+
+When you really looked at what went on about you, how funny and silly
+lots of traditional ideas did seem. That notion, solemnly accepted by
+the would-be sophisticated moderns, for instance, that a woman of beauty
+and intelligence was being wasted unless she was engaged in being the
+"emotional inspiration" of some man's life: which meant in plain
+English, stimulating his sexual desire to that fever-heat which they
+called impassioned living. As if there were not a thousand other forms
+of deep fulfilment in life. People who thought that, how narrow and
+cramped they seemed, and blinded to the bigness and variety of life! But
+then, of course, everybody hadn't had under his eyes a creature
+genuinely rich and various, like Marise, and hadn't seen how all
+children feasted on her charm like bees on honey, and how old people
+adored her, and how, just by being herself, she enriched and civilized
+every life that touched her, and made every place she lived in a home
+for the human spirit. And Heaven knew she was, with all that, the real
+emotional inspiration of a man's life, a man who loved her a thousand
+times more than in his ignorant and passionate youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Come, this wasn't work. He might as well have stayed out with the family
+and helped with the dishes. This was being like Eugenia Mills, who
+always somehow had something to do upstairs when there was any work to
+do downstairs. Eugenia was a woman who somehow managed to stand from
+under life, anyhow, had been the most successful draft-dodger he knew.
+No call had been urgent enough to get _her_ to the recruiting station to
+shoulder her share of what everybody had to do. But what did she get out
+of her successful shirking? She was in plain process of drying up and
+blowing away.
+
+He turned to his desk and drew out the papers which had the figures and
+estimates on that popple. He would see if the Warner woodlot had as much
+popple and basswood on it as they thought. It would, of course, be
+easiest to get it off that lot, if there were enough of it to fill the
+order for casters. The Hemmingway lot and the Dornwood lot oughtn't to
+be lumbered except in winter, with snow for the sleds. But you could
+haul straight downhill from the Warner lot, even on wheels, using the
+back lane in the Eagle Rocks woods. There was a period of close
+attention to his papers, when he heard nothing at all of what went on in
+the rooms next his study. His mind was working with the rapid, trained
+exactitude which was a delight to him, with a sure, firm grasp on the
+whole problem in all its complicated parts.
+
+Finally he nodded with satisfaction, pushed the papers away, and lighted
+his pipe, contentedly. He had it by the tail.
+
+He leaned back in his chair, drawing on the newly lighted pipe and
+ruminating again. He thought to himself that he would like to see any
+other man in the valley who could make an estimate like that, and be
+sure of it, who would know what facts to gather and where to get them,
+on the cost of cutting and hauling in different seasons, on mill-work
+and transportation and overhead expenses, and how to market and where,
+and how to get money and how to get credit and how to manage these
+cranky independent Yankees and the hot-tempered irresponsible Canucks.
+It was all very well for advanced radicals to say that the common
+workmen in a business were as good as the head of the concern. They
+weren't and that was all there was to be said about it. Any one of them,
+any single one of his employees, put in his place as manager, would run
+the business into a hole as deep as hell inside six months. And if you
+put the whole lot of them at it, it would only be six weeks instead of
+six months before the bust-up.
+
+There again, what people kept saying about life, things clever people
+said and that got accepted as the clever things _to_ say, how awfully
+beside the mark they seem to you, when you found out actual facts by
+coming up against them. What a difference some first-hand experience
+with what you were talking about, did make with what you said. What
+clever folks ought to say was not that the workmen were as good as the
+head or the same sort of flesh and blood, because they weren't; but that
+the head exploited his natural capacities out of all proportion, getting
+such an outrageous share of the money they all made together, for doing
+what was natural to him, and what he enjoyed doing. Take himself for
+instance. If by some freak, he could make more money out of being one of
+the hands, would he go down in the ranks, stand at a machine all day and
+cut the same wooden shapes, hour after hour: or drive a team day after
+day where somebody else told him to go? You bet your life he wouldn't!
+He didn't need all the money he could squeeze out of everybody
+concerned, to make him do his job as manager. His real pay was the
+feeling of managing, of doing a job he was fitted for, and that was
+worth doing.
+
+How fine it had always been of Marise to back him up in that view of
+the business, not to want him to cheat the umpire, even if he could get
+away with it, even though it would have meant enough sight more money
+for them, even though the umpire didn't exist as yet, except in his own
+conscience, in his own idea of what he was up to in his business. Never
+once had Marise had a moment of that backward-looking hankering for more
+money that turned so many women into pillars of salt and their husbands
+into legalized sneak-thieves.
+
+He pulled out some of the letters from Canada about the Powers case, and
+fingered them over a little. He had brought them home this evening, and
+it wasn't the first time either, to try to get a good hour alone with
+Marise to talk it over with her. He frowned as he reflected that he
+seemed to have had mighty little chance for talking anything over with
+Marise since his return. There always seemed to be somebody sticking
+around; one of the two men next door, who didn't have anything to do
+_but_ stick around, or Eugenia, who appeared to have settled down
+entirely on them this time. Well, perhaps it was just as well to wait a
+little longer and say nothing about it, till he had those last final
+verifications in his hands.
+
+What in thunder did Eugenia come to visit them for, anyhow? Their way of
+life must make her sick. Why did she bother? Oh, probably her old
+affection for Marise. They had been girls together, of course, and
+Marise had been good to her. Women thought more of those old-time
+relations than men. Well, he could stand Eugenia if she could stand
+them, he guessed. But she wasn't one who grew on him with the years.
+
+He had less and less patience with those fussy little ways, found less
+and less amusing those frequent, small cat-like gestures of hers,
+picking off an invisible thread from her sleeve, rolling it up to an
+invisible ball between her white finger and thumb, and casting it
+delicately away; or settling a ring, or brushing off invisible dust with
+a flick of a polished finger-nail; all these manoeuvers executed with
+such leisure and easy deliberation that they didn't make her seem
+restless, and you knew she calculated that effect. A man who had had
+years with a real, living woman like Marise, didn't know whether to
+laugh or swear at such mannerisms and the self-consciousness that
+underlay them.
+
+There she was coming down the stairs now, when she heard Marise at the
+piano, with the children, and knew there was no more work to be done.
+Pshaw! He had meant to go out and join the others, but now he would wait
+a while, till he had finished his pipe. A pipe beside Eugenia's perfumed
+cigarettes always seemed so gross. And he wanted to lounge at his ease,
+stretch out in his arm-chair with his feet on another. Could you do
+that, with Eugenia fashion-plating herself on the sofa?
+
+He leaned back smoking peacefully, listening to Marise's voice brimming
+up all around the children's as they romped through "The raggle-taggle
+gypsies, oh!"
+
+What a mastery of the piano Marise had, subduing it to the slender pipe
+of those child-voices as long as they sang, and rolling out sumptuous
+harmonies in the intervals of the song. Lucky kids! Lucky kids! to have
+childhood memories like that.
+
+He heard Paul say, "Now let's sing 'Massa's in the cold, cold ground,'"
+and Elly shriek out, "No, Mother, _no!_ It's so _terribly_ sad! I can't
+stand it!" And Paul answer with that certainty of his always being in
+the right, "Aw, Elly, it's not fair. Is it, Mother, fair to have Elly
+keep us from singing one of the nicest songs we have, just because she's
+so foolish?"
+
+His father frowned. Queer about Paul. He'd do anything for Elly if he
+thought her in trouble, would stand up for her against the biggest bully
+of the school-yard. But he couldn't keep himself from . . . it was perhaps
+because Paul could not _understand_ that . . . now how could Marise meet
+this little problem in family equity, he wondered? Her solutions of the
+children's knots always tickled him.
+
+She was saying, "Let's see. Elly, it doesn't look to me as though you
+had any right to keep Paul from singing a song he likes. And, Paul, it
+doesn't seem as though you had any right to make Elly listen to a song
+that makes her cry. Let's settle it this way. We can't move the piano,
+but we can move Elly. Elly dear, suppose you go 'way out through the
+kitchen and shut both doors and stand on the back porch. Touclé will
+probably be there, looking out, the way she does evenings, so you won't
+be alone. I'll send Mark out to get you when we're through. And because
+it's not very much fun to stand out in the dark, you can stop and get
+yourself a piece of cocoanut cake as you go through the pantry."
+
+Neale laughed silently to himself as he heard the doors open and shut
+and Elly's light tread die away. How perfectly Marise understood her
+little daughter! It wasn't only over the piano that Marise had a
+mastery, but over everybody's nature. She played on them as surely, as
+richly as on any instrument. That's what he called real art-in-life. Why
+wasn't it creative art, as much as anything, her Blondin-like accuracy
+of poise among all the conflicting elements of family-life, the warring
+interests of the different temperaments, ages, sexes, natures? Why
+wasn't it an artistic creation, the unbroken happiness and harmony she
+drew out of those elements, as much as the picture the painter drew out
+of the reds and blues and yellows on his palette? If it gave an actor a
+high and disinterested pleasure when he had an inspiration, or heard
+himself give out a true and freshly found intonation, or make exactly
+the right gesture, whether anybody in the audience applauded him or not,
+why wouldn't the mother of a family and maker of a home have the same
+pleasure, and by heck! just as high and disinterested, when she had once
+more turned the trick, had an inspiration, and found a course that all
+her charges, young and old, could steer together? Well, there was one,
+anyhow, of Marise's audience who often gave her a silent hand-clap of
+admiration.
+
+The wailing, lugubrious notes of the negro lament rose now, Paul's voice
+loud and clear and full of relish. "It takes a heavy stimulant to give
+Paul his sensations," thought his father. "What would take the hide
+right off of Elly, just gives him an agreeable tingle." His pipe went
+out as he listened, and he reached for a match. The song stopped.
+Someone had come in. He heard Paul's voice cry joyfully, "Oh goody, Mr.
+Welles, come on up to the piano."
+
+Neale leaned forward with a slightly unpleasant stirring of his blood
+and listened to see if the old man had come alone. No, of course he
+hadn't. He never did.
+
+There was Eugenia's voice saying, "Good-evening, Mr. Marsh." She would
+move over for him on the sofa and annex him with a look. Well, let her
+have him. He was her kind more than theirs, the Lord knew. Probably he
+was used to having that sort of woman annex him.
+
+Neale moved his head restlessly and shifted his position. His pipe and
+his arm-chair had lost their savor. The room seemed hot to him and he
+got up to open a window. Standing there by the open sash, looking out
+into the blue, misty glory of an overclouded moonlight night, he decided
+that he would not go in at all, and join them. He felt tired and out of
+sorts, he found. And they were such infernal talkers, Eugenia and Marsh.
+It wore you out to hear them, especially as you felt all the time that
+their speculations on life and human nature were so _far_ off, that it
+would be just wasting your breath to try to set them right. He'd stay
+here in the study and smoke and maybe doze off a little, till they went
+away. Marise had known he had business figuring to do, and she would
+have a perfectly valid excuse to give them for his non-appearance. Not
+that he had any illusions as to anybody there missing him at all.
+
+He heard Mark's little voice sound shrilly from the pantry, "Come on,
+Elly. It's all right. I've even putten away the book that's got that
+song."
+
+Some splendid, surging shouts from the piano and the voices began on
+"The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Neale could hear Mr. Welles' shaky
+old bass booming away this time. He was probably sitting down with Paul
+on his knees. It was really nice of the old codger to take such a fancy
+to Paul, and be able to see those sterling qualities of his, through
+Paul's surface unloveliness that came mostly from his slowness of
+imagination.
+
+The voices stopped; Elly said, "That song sounds as if it were proud of
+itself." Her father's heart melted in the utter prostration of
+tenderness he felt for his little daughter. How like Elly! What a quick
+intelligence animated the sensitive, touching, appealing, defenseless
+darling that Elly was! Marise must have been a little girl like that.
+Think of her growing up in such an atmosphere of disunion and
+flightiness as that weak mother of hers must have given her. Queer, how
+Marise didn't seem to have a trace of that weakness, unless it was that
+funny physical impressionableness of hers, that she could laugh at
+herself, but that still wrought on her, so that if measles were going
+the rounds, she could see symptoms of measles in everything the children
+did or didn't do; or that well-known habit of hers, that even the
+children laughed about with her, of feeling things crawling all over her
+for hours after she had seen a caterpillar. Well, that was only the
+other side of her extraordinary sensitiveness, that made her know how
+everybody was feeling, and what to do to make him feel better. She had
+often said that she would certainly die if she ever tried to study
+medicine, because as fast as she read of a symptom she would have it,
+herself. But she wouldn't die. She'd live and make a cracker-jack of a
+doctor, if she'd ever tried it, enough sight better than some callous
+brute of a boy with no imagination.
+
+"One more song before bed-time," announced Marise. "And we'll let Mark
+choose. It's his turn."
+
+A long silence, in which Neale amusedly divined Mark torn between his
+many favorites. Finally the high sweet little treble, "Well, let's make
+it 'Down Among the Dead Men.'"
+
+At which Neale laughed silently again. What a circus the kids were!
+
+The clock struck nine as they finished this, and Neale heard the stir
+and shifting of chairs. Paul said, "Mother, Mr. Welles and I have fixed
+it up, that he's going to put us to bed tonight, if you'll let him."
+Amused surprise from Marise: Mr. Welles' voice saying he really would
+like it, never had seen any children in their nightgowns except in the
+movies; Paul saying, "Gracious! We don't wear nightgowns like women. We
+wear pajamas!"; Mark's voice crying, "We'll show you how we play
+foot-fight on the rug. We have to do that barefoot, so each one can
+tickle ourselves;" as usual, no sound from Elly probably still reveling
+in the proudness of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
+
+A clatter of feet on the stairs, the chirping voices muffled by the
+shutting of a door overhead, and Eugenia's voice, musical and carefully
+modulated, saying, "Well, Marisette, you look perfectly worn out with
+fatigue. You haven't looked a bit well lately, anyhow. And I'm not
+surprised. The way those children take it out of you!"
+
+"Damn that woman!" thought Neale. That sterile life of hers had starved
+out from her even the capacity to understand a really human existence
+when she saw it. Not that she had _ever_ seemed to have any considerable
+seed-bed of human possibilities to be starved, even in youth, if he
+could judge from his memory, now very dim, of how she had seemed to him
+in Rome, when he had first met her, along with Marise. He remembered
+that he had said of her fantastically, to a fellow in the _pension_,
+that she reminded him of a spool of silk thread. And now the silk thread
+had all been wound off, and there was only the bare wooden spool left.
+
+"It's not surprising that Mrs. Crittenden gets tired," commented
+Marsh's voice. "She does the work of four or five persons."
+
+"Yes," agreed Eugenia, "I don't know how she does it . . . cook, nurse,
+teacher, housekeeper, welfare-worker, seamstress, gardener . . ."
+
+"Oh, let up, let up!" Neale heard Marise say, with an impatience that
+pleased him. She must have been at the piano as she spoke, for at once
+there rose, smiting to the heart, the solemn, glorious, hopeless chords
+of the last part of the Pathetic Symphony. Heavens! How Marise could
+play!
+
+When the last dull, dreary, beautiful note had vibrated into silence,
+Eugenia murmured, "Doesn't that always make you want to crawl under the
+sod and pull the daisies over you?"
+
+"Ashes, ashes, not daisies," corrected Marsh, dreamily.
+
+There was, thought Neale listening critically to their intonations, a
+voluptuous, perverse pleasure in despair which he found very
+distasteful. Despair was a real and honest and deadly emotion. Folks
+with appetites sated by having everything they wanted, oughtn't to use
+despair as a sort of condiment to perk up their jaded zest in life.
+"Confounded play-actors!" he thought, and wondered what Marise's
+reaction to them was.
+
+He foresaw that it was going to be too much for his patience to listen
+to them. He would get too hot under the collar and be snappish,
+afterwards. Luckily he was in the library. There were better voices to
+listen to. He got up, ran his forefinger along a shelf, and took down a
+volume of Trevelyan, "Garbaldi and the Thousand." The well-worn volume
+opened of itself at a familiar passage, the description of the battle of
+Calatafimi. His eye lighted in anticipation. There was a man's book, he
+thought. But his pipe was out. He laid the book down to light it before
+he began to read. In spite of himself he listened to hear what they were
+saying now in the next room. Eugenia was talking and he didn't like what
+she was saying about those recurrent dreams of Marise's, because he knew
+it was making poor Marise squirm. She had such a queer, Elly-like
+shyness about that notion of hers, Marise had. It evidently meant more
+to her than she had ever been able to make him understand. He couldn't
+see why she cared so much about it, hated to have it talked about
+casually. But he wasn't Eugenia. If Marise didn't want it talked about
+casually, by George he wasn't the one who would mention it. They'd
+hardly ever spoken of them, those dreams, even to each other. People had
+a right to moral privacy, if they wanted it, he supposed, even married
+women. There was nothing so ruthless anyhow as an old childhood friend,
+to whom you had made foolish youthful confidences and who brought them
+out any time he felt like it.
+
+"You ought to have those dreams of yours psycho-analyzed, Marisette,"
+Eugenia was saying. To Marsh she went on in explanation, "Mrs.
+Crittenden has always had a queer kind of dream. I remember her telling
+me about them, years ago, when we were girls together, and nobody
+guessed there was anything in dreams. She dreams she is in some
+tremendous rapid motion, a leaf on a great river-current, or a bird
+blown by a great wind, or foam driven along by storm-waves, isn't that
+it, Marisonne?"
+
+Neale did not need the sound of Marise's voice to know how she hated
+this. She said, rather shortly for her, as though she didn't want to say
+a word about it, and yet couldn't leave it uncorrected, "Not exactly. I
+don't dream I'm the leaf on the current. I dream I _am_ the current
+myself, part of it. I'm the wind, not the bird blown by it; the wave
+itself; it's too hard to explain."
+
+"Do you still have those dreams once in a while, Marisette, and do you
+still love them as much?"
+
+"Oh yes, sometimes."
+
+"And have you ever had the same sensation in your waking moments? I
+remember so well you used to say that was what you longed for, some
+experience in real life that would make you have that glorious sense of
+irresistible forward movement. We used to think," said Eugenia, "that
+perhaps falling in love would give it to you."
+
+"No," said Marise. "I've never felt it, out of my dreams."
+
+Neale was sorry he had elected to stay in the study. If he were out
+there now, he could change the conversation, come to her rescue.
+Couldn't Eugenia see that she was bothering Marise!
+
+"What do you suppose Freud would make out of such dreams?" asked
+Eugenia, evidently of Marsh.
+
+"Why, it sounds simple enough to me," said Marsh, and Neale was obliged
+to hand it to him that the very sound of his voice had a living, real,
+genuine accent that was a relief after Eugenia. He didn't talk
+half-chewed and wholly undigested nonsense, the way Eugenia did. Neale
+had heard enough of his ideas to know that he didn't agree with a word
+the man said, but at least it was a vital and intelligent personality
+talking.
+
+"Why, it sounds simple enough to me. Americans have fadded the thing
+into imbecility, so that the very phrase has become such a bromide one
+hates to pronounce it. But of course the commonplace that all dreams are
+expressions of suppressed desires is true. And it's very apparent that
+Mrs. Crittenden's desire is a very fine one for freedom and power and
+momentum. She's evidently not a back-water personality. Though one would
+hardly need psycho-analysis to guess that!" He changed the subject as
+masterfully as Neale could have done. "See here, Mrs. Crittenden, that
+Tschaikowsky whetted my appetite for more. Don't you feel like playing
+again?"
+
+The idea came over Neale, and in spite of his uneasy irritation, it
+tickled his fancy, that possibly Marsh found Eugenia just as deadly as
+he did.
+
+Marise jumped at the chance to turn the talk, for in an instant the
+piano began to chant again, not Tschaikowsky, Neale noted, but some of
+the new people whom Marise was working over lately. He couldn't
+understand a note of them, nor keep his mind on them, nor even try to
+remember their names. He had been able to get just as far as Debussy and
+no further, he thought whimsically, before his brain-channels hardened
+in incipient middle-age.
+
+He plunged into Trevelyan and the heart-quickening ups and downs of
+battle.
+
+Some time after this, he was pulled back from those critical and
+glorious hours by the consciousness, gradually forcing itself on him on
+two discomforts; his pipe had gone out and Eugenia was at it again. He
+scratched a match and listened in spite of himself to that smooth liquid
+voice. She was still harping on psycho-analysis. Wasn't she just the
+kind of woman for whom that would have an irresistible fascination! He
+gathered that Marise was objecting to it, just as sweepingly as Eugenia
+was approving. How women did hate half-tones and reasonable
+qualifications!
+
+"I'm a gardener," Marise was saying, "and I know a thing or two about
+natural processes. The thing to do with a manure pile is not to paw it
+over and over, but to put it safely away in the dark, underground, and
+never bother your head about it again except to watch the beauty and
+vitality of the flowers and grains that spring from the earth it has
+fertilized."
+
+Neale as he held the lifted match over his pipe, shook his head. That
+was all very well, put picturesquely as Marise always put things; but
+you couldn't knock an idea on the head just with an apt metaphor. There
+was a great deal more to be said about it, even if fool half-baked
+faddists like Eugenia did make it ridiculous. In the first place it was
+nothing so new. Everybody who had ever encountered a crisis in his life
+and conquered it, had . . . why, he himself . . .
+
+He felt his heart beat faster, and before he knew what was coming, he
+felt a great, heart-quickening gust of fresh salt air blow over him, and
+felt himself far from the book-tainted stagnant air of that indoor
+room. He forgot to light his pipe and sat motionless, holding the
+burning match till it flared up at the end and scorched his fingers.
+Then he dropped it with a startled oath, and looked quickly around him.
+
+In that instant he had lived over again the moment in Nova Scotia when
+he had gone down to the harbor just as the battered little tramp steamer
+was pulling out, bound for China.
+
+Good God! What an astonishing onslaught that had been! How from some
+great, fierce, unguessed appetite, the longing for wandering, lawless
+freedom had burst up! Marise, the children, their safe, snug
+middle-class life, how they had seemed only so many drag-anchors to cut
+himself loose from and make out to the open sea! If the steamer had been
+still close enough to the dock so that he could have jumped aboard, how
+he would have leaped! He might have been one of those men who
+disappeared mysteriously, from out a prosperous and happy life, and are
+never heard of again. But it hadn't been close enough. The green oily
+water widened between them; and he had gone back with a burning heart to
+that deadly little country hotel.
+
+Well, had he buried it and forced himself to think no more about it? No.
+Not on your life he hadn't. He'd stood up to himself. He'd asked himself
+what the hell was the matter, and he'd gone after it, as any grown man
+would. It hadn't been fun. He remembered that the sweat had run down his
+face as though he'd been handling planks in the lumber-yard in
+midsummer.
+
+And what had he found? He'd found that he'd never got over the jolt it
+had given him, there on that aimless youthful trip through Italy, with
+China and the Eastern seas before him, to fall in love and have all
+those plans for wandering cut off by the need for a safe, stable life.
+
+Then he'd gone on. He'd asked himself, if that's so, _then_ what? He
+hadn't pulled any of the moralizing stern-duty stuff; he knew Marise
+would rather die than have him doing for her something he hated, out of
+stern duty. It was an insult, anyhow, unless it was a positively
+helpless cripple in question, to do things for people out of duty only.
+And to mix what folks called "duty" up with love, that was the devil. So
+he hadn't.
+
+That was the sort of thing Marise had meant, so long ago, when they were
+first engaged, that was the sort of thing she had asked him never to do.
+He'd promised he never would, and this wasn't the first time the promise
+had held him straight to what was, after all, the only decent course
+with a woman like Marise, as strong as she was fine. Anything else would
+be treating her like a child, or a dependent, as he'd hate to have her
+treat him, or anybody treat him.
+
+So this time he'd asked himself right out, what he really wanted and
+needed in life, and he'd been ready, honestly ready, to take any answer
+he got, and dree his weird accordingly, as the best thing for everybody
+concerned, as the only honest thing, as the only thing that would put
+any bed-rock under him, as what Marise would want him to do. If it meant
+tramp-steamers, why it had to be tramp-steamers. Something could be
+managed for Marise and the children.
+
+This was what he had asked. And what answer had he got? Why, of course,
+he hankered for the double-jointed, lawless freedom that the
+tramp-steamer stood for. He guessed everybody wanted that, more or less.
+But he wanted Marise and the children a damn sight more. And not only
+Marise and the children. He hadn't let himself lay it all on their
+backs, and play the martyr's rôle of the forcibly domesticated wild
+male. No, he wanted the life he had, outside the family, his own line of
+work; he wanted the sureness of it, the coherence of it, the permanence
+of it, the clear conscience he had about what he was doing in the world,
+the knowledge that he was creating something, helping men to use the
+natural resources of the world without exploiting either the natural
+resources or the men; he wanted the sense of deserved power over other
+human beings. That was what he really wanted most of all. You could
+call it smug and safe and bourgeois if you liked. But the plain fact
+remained that it had more of what really counted for him than any other
+life he could see possible. And when he looked at it, hard, with his
+eyes open, why the tramp-steamer to China sailed out of school-boy
+theatrical clouds and showed herself for the shabby, sordid little
+substitute for a real life she would have been to him.
+
+He'd have liked to have that too, of course. You'd _like_ to have
+everything! But you can't. And it is only immature boys who whimper
+because you can't have your cake and eat it too. That was all there was
+to that.
+
+What he had dug for was to find his deepest and most permanent desires,
+and when he had found them, he'd come home with a happy heart.
+
+It even seemed to him that he had been happier and quieter than before.
+Well, maybe Marise's metaphor had something in it, for all it was so
+flowery and high-falutin. Maybe she would say that what he had done was
+exactly what she'd described, to dig it under the ground and let it
+fertilize and enrich his life.
+
+Oh Lord! how a figure of speech always wound you up in knots if you
+tried to use it to say anything definite!
+
+He relighted his pipe, this time with a steady hand, and a cool eye; and
+turned to Trevelyan and Garibaldi again. He'd take that other side of
+himself out in books, he guessed.
+
+He had now arrived at the crucial moment of the battle, and lifted his
+head and his heart in anticipation of the way Garibaldi met that moment.
+He read, "To experienced eyes the battle seemed lost. Bixio said to
+Garibaldi, 'General, I fear we ought to retreat.' Garibaldi looked up as
+though a serpent had stung him. '_Here we make Italy or die!_' he said."
+
+"That's the talk!" cried Neale, to himself. The brave words resounded in
+the air about him, and drowned out the voices from the next room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ALONG THE EAGLE ROCK BROOK
+
+
+July 1.
+
+Paul was very much pleased that Mr. Welles agreed with him so perfectly
+about the hour and place for lunch. But then Mr. Welles was awfully nice
+about agreeing. He said, now, "Yes, I believe this would be the best
+place. Here by the pool, on that big rock, as you say. We'll be drier
+there. Yesterday's rain has made everything in the woods pretty wet.
+That's a good idea of yours, to build our fire on the rock, with water
+all around. The fire couldn't possibly spread." Paul looked proudly at
+the rain-soaked trees and wet soggy leaves which his forethought had
+saved from destruction and strode across the brook in his rubber boots,
+with the first installment of dry pine branches.
+
+"Aren't you tired?" he said protectingly to his companion. "Whyn't you
+sit down over there and undo the lunch-basket? I'll make camp. Father
+showed me how to make a campfire with only one match."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Welles. "I do feel a little leg-weary. I'm not so
+used to these mountain scrambles as you are."
+
+"I'll clean the fish, too," said Paul; "maybe you don't like to. Elly
+can't abide it." He did not say that he did not like it very well
+himself, having always to get over the sick feeling it gave him.
+
+"I never did it in my life," confessed Mr. Welles. "You see I always
+lived in towns till now."
+
+Paul felt very sorry for Mr. Welles, and shook his head pityingly as he
+went off for more firewood.
+
+When he had collected a lot, he began to lay the sticks. He did it just
+as Father had showed him, but it seemed lots harder to get them right.
+And it took a lot more than one match to get it started. He didn't have
+a bit of breath left in him, by the time he finally got it going. And
+my, weren't his hands black! But he felt very much set up, all the same,
+that he had done it. In his heart Paul knew that there was nothing
+anybody could do which he could not.
+
+They hung the slimpsy slices of bacon from forked sticks, Paul showing
+Mr. Welles how to thread his on, and began to cook them around the edges
+of the fire, while the two little trout frizzled in the frying-pan. "I'm
+so glad we got that last one," commented Paul. "One wouldn't have been
+very much."
+
+"Yes, it's much better to have one apiece," agreed Mr. Welles.
+
+When the bacon was done (only burned a little at the edges, and still
+soft in the thicker places in the center of the slice), and the fish the
+right brown, and 'most shrunk up to nothing, they each of them put a
+trout and a piece of bacon on his slice of bread and butter, and
+gracious! didn't it taste good.
+
+"You must have done this before," said Mr. Welles, respectfully; "you
+seem to know a good deal about camping."
+
+"Oh, I'm a good camper, all right," agreed Paul. "Mother and I have gone
+off in the woods, lots of times. When I was littler, I used to get
+spells when I was bad. I do still, even now, once in a while."
+
+Mr. Welles did not smile, but continued gravely eating his bread and
+bacon, his eyes on the little boy.
+
+"I don't know what's the matter. I feel all snarled up inside. And then
+the first thing you know I've done something awful. Mother can tell when
+it first gets started in me, the least little teenty bit. _How_ can she
+tell? And then she takes me off camping. She pretends it's because she's
+feeling snarled up, herself. But it's not. She never is. Why not?"
+
+He considered this in silence, chewing slowly on a vast mouthful of
+bread. "Anyhow, we leave the little children with Touclé, if she's
+there," (he stopped here an instant to inspect Mr. Welles to make sure
+he was not laughing because he had called Elly and Mark the "little
+children." But Mr. Welles was not laughing at him. He was listening,
+_really_ listening, the way grown-ups almost never did, to hear what you
+had to say. He did like Mr. Welles. He went on,) "or if Touclé's off
+somewheres in the woods herself, we leave them down at the Powers' to
+play with Addie and Ralph, and we light out for the woods, Mother and I.
+The snarleder up I feel, the further we go. We don't fish or anything.
+Just leg it, till I feel better. Then we make a fire and eat."
+
+He swallowed visibly a huge lump of unchewed bread, and said, uncorking
+a thermos bottle, "I asked Mother to put up some hot coffee."
+
+Mr. Welles seemed surprised. "Why, do you drink coffee?"
+
+"Oh no, none of us kids ever take it. But I thought you'd like some.
+Grown-up folks mostly do, when they eat out-of-doors."
+
+Mr. Welles took the cup of steaming coffee, ready sugared and creamed,
+without even saying thank you, but in a minute, as they began their
+second round of sandwiches, filled this time with cold ham from home, he
+said, "You've got quite a way of looking out for folks, haven't you?
+
+"I like to," said Paul.
+
+"_I_ always liked to," said Mr. Welles.
+
+"I guess you've done quite a lot of it," conjectured the little boy.
+
+"Quite a lot," said the old man, thoughtfully.
+
+Paul never liked to be left behind and now spoke out, "Well, I expect
+I'll do a good deal, too."
+
+"Most likely you will," agreed the old man.
+
+He spoke a little absently, and after a minute said, "Paul, talking
+about looking out for folks makes me think of something that's bothering
+me like everything lately. I can't make up my mind about whether I
+ought to go on, looking out for folks, if I know folks that need it. I
+keep hearing from somebody who lives down South, that the colored folks
+aren't getting a real square deal. I keep wondering if maybe I oughtn't
+to go and live there and help her look out for them."
+
+Paul was so astonished at this that he opened his mouth wide, without
+speaking. When he could get his breath, he shouted, "Why, Mr. Welles, go
+away from Ashley to live!" He stared hard at the old man, thinking he
+must have got it twisted. But Mr. Welles did not set him straight, only
+stared down at the ground with a pale, bothered-looking face and sort of
+twitched his mouth to one side.
+
+The little boy moved over closer to him, and said, looking up at him
+with all his might, "Aw, Mr. Welles, I _wish't_ you wouldn't! I _like_
+your being here. There's lot of things I've got planned we could do
+together."
+
+It seemed to him that the old man looked older and more tired at this.
+He closed his eyes and did not answer. Paul felt better. Mr. Welles
+couldn't have been in earnest.
+
+How still it was in the woods that day. Not the least little flutter
+from any leaf. The sunlight looked as green, as green, coming down
+through the trees that way, like the light in church when the sun came
+in through the stained-glass windows.
+
+The only thing that budged at all was a bird . . . was it a flicker? . . .
+he couldn't make out. It kept hopping around in that big beech tree
+across the brook. Probably it was worried about its nest and didn't like
+to have people so near. And yet they sat as still, he and Mr. Welles, as
+still as a tree, or the shiny water in the pool.
+
+Mr. Welles opened his eyes and took the little boy's rough, calloused
+hand in his. "See here, Paul, maybe you can help me make up my mind."
+
+Paul squared his shoulders.
+
+"It's this way. I'm pretty nearly used up, not good for much any more.
+And the Electrical Company wanted to fix everything the nicest way for
+me to live. And they have. I hadn't any idea anything could be so nice
+as living next door to you folks in such a place as Crittenden's. And
+then making friends with you. I'd always wanted a little boy, but I
+thought I was so old, no little boy would bother with me."
+
+He squeezed the child's fingers and looked down on him lovingly. For a
+moment Paul's heart swelled up so he couldn't speak. Then he said, in a
+husky voice, "I _like_ to." He took a large bite from his sandwich and
+repeated roughly, his mouth full, "I _like_ to."
+
+Neither said anything more for a moment. The flicker . . . yes, it was a
+flicker . . . in the big beech kept changing her position, flying down
+from a top-branch to a lower one, and then back again. Paul made out the
+hole in the old trunk of the tree where she'd probably put her nest, and
+wondered why she didn't go back to it.
+
+"Have you got to the Civil War, in your history yet, Paul?"
+
+"Gee, yes, 'way past it. Up to the Philadelphia Exposition."
+
+Mr. Welles said nothing for a minute and Paul could see by his
+expression that he was trying to think of some simple baby way to say
+what he wanted to. Gracious! didn't he know Paul was in the seventh
+grade? "_I_ can understand all right," he said roughly.
+
+Mr. Welles said, "Well, all right. If you can, you'll do more than I
+can. You know how the colored people got their freedom then. But
+something very bad had been going on there in slavery, for ever so long.
+And bad things that go on for a long time, can't be straightened out in
+a hurry. And so far, it's been too much for everybody, to get this
+straightened out. The colored people . . . they're made to suffer all the
+time for being born the way they are. And that's not right . . . in
+America . . ."
+
+"Why don't they stand up for themselves?" asked Paul scornfully. He'd
+like to see anybody who would make him suffer for being born the way he
+was.
+
+Mr. Welles hesitated again. "It looks to me this way. People can fight
+for some things . . . their property, and their vote and their work. And I
+guess the colored people have got to fight for those, themselves. But
+there are some other things . . . some of the nicest . . . why, if you
+fight for them, you tear them all to pieces, trying to get them."
+
+Paul did not have the least idea what this meant.
+
+"If what you want is to have people respect what you are worth, why, if
+you fight them to make them, then you spoil what you're worth. Anyhow,
+even if you don't spoil it, fighting about it doesn't put you in any
+state of mind to go on being your best. That's a pretty hard job for
+anybody."
+
+Paul found this very dull. His attention wandered back to that queer
+flicker, so excited about something.
+
+The old man tried to get at him again. "Look here, Paul, Americans that
+happen to be colored people ought to have every bit of the same chance
+to amount to their best that any Americans have, oughtn't they?"
+
+Paul saw this. But he didn't see what Mr. Welles could do about it, and
+said so.
+
+"Well, I couldn't do a great deal," said the old man sadly, "but more
+than if I stayed here. It looks as though they needed, as much as
+anything else, people to just have the same feeling towards them that
+you have for anybody who's trying to make the best of himself. And I
+could do that."
+
+Paul got the impression at last that Mr. Welles was in earnest about
+this. It made him feel anxious. "Oh _dear_!" he said, kicking the toe of
+his rubber boot against the rock. He couldn't think of anything to say,
+except that he hated the idea of Mr. Welles going.
+
+But just then he was startled by a sharp cry of distress from the bird,
+who flew out wildly from the beech, poised herself in the air, beating
+her wings and calling in a loud scream. The old man, unused to forests
+and their inhabitants, noticed this but vaguely, and was surprised by
+Paul's instant response. "There must be a snake after her eggs," he said
+excitedly. "I'll go over and chase him off."
+
+He started across the pool, gave a cry, and stood still, petrified.
+Before their eyes, without a breath of wind, the hugh beech solemnly
+bowed itself and with a great roar of branches, whipping and crushing
+the trees about, it fell, its full length thundering on the ground, a
+great mat of shaggy roots uptorn, leaving an open wound in the stony
+mountain soil. Then, in a minute, it was all as still as before.
+
+Paul was scared almost to death. He scrambled back to the rock, his
+knees shaking, his stomach sick, and clung to Mr. Welles with all his
+might. "What made it fall? There's no wind! What made it fall?" he
+cried, burying his face in the old man's coat. "It might just as easy
+have fallen this way, on us, and killed us! What made it fall?"
+
+Mr. Welles patted Paul's shoulder, and said, "There, there," till Paul's
+teeth stopped chattering and he began to be a little ashamed of showing
+how it had startled him. He was also a little put out that Mr. Welles
+had remained so unmoved. "You don't know how dangerous a big tree _is_,
+when it falls!" he said, accusingly, to defend himself. "If you'd lived
+here more, and heard some of the stories . . . ! Nate Hewitt had his back
+broken with a tree falling on him. But he was cutting that one down, and
+it fell too soon. Nobody had touched this one! And there isn't any wind.
+What _made_ it fall? Most every winter, some man in the lumber camp on
+the mountain gets killed or smashed up, and lots of horses too."
+
+He felt much better now, and he did want to find out whatever had made
+that tree fall. He sat up, and looked back at it, just a mess of broken
+branches and upset leaves, where a minute before there had been a tall
+living tree! "I'm going over to see what made it fall," he said.
+
+He splashed across the pool and poked around with a stick in the hole
+in the ground, and almost right away he saw what the reason was. He ran
+back to tell Mr. Welles. "I see now. The brook had kept sidling over
+that way, and washed the earth from under the rocks. It just didn't have
+enough ground left to hold on to."
+
+He felt all right now he knew some simple reason for what had looked so
+crazy. He looked up confidently at the old man, and was struck into awed
+silence by the expression of Mr. Welles' face.
+
+"Paul," said Mr. Welles, and his voice wasn't steady, "I guess what I
+ought to try to be is one more drop of water in the brook."
+
+Paul stared hard. He did not understand this either, but he understood
+the expression in that tired, old face. Mr. Welles went on, "That wrong
+feeling about colored people, not wanting them to be respected as much
+as any American, is . . . that's a tree that's got to come down. I'm too
+old to take an axe to it. And, anyhow, if you cut that sort of thing
+down with an axe, the roots generally live and start all over again. If
+we can just wash the ground out from under it, with enough people
+thinking differently, maybe it'll fall, roots and all, of its own
+weight. If I go and live there and just am one more person who respects
+them when they deserve it, it'll help _that_ much, maybe, don't you
+think?"
+
+Paul had understood more what Mr. Welles' face and voice said to him
+than the words. He kept on looking into the old man's eyes. Something
+deep inside Paul said "yes" to what Mr. Welles' eyes were asking him.
+
+"How about it, Paul?" asked the old man.
+
+The child gave a start, climbed up beside him, and took hold of his
+hand. "How about it? How about it?" asked Mr. Welles in a very low tone.
+
+The little boy nodded. "Maybe," he said briefly. His lips shook.
+Presently he sniffed and drew his sleeve across his nose. He held the
+old hand tightly.
+
+"Oh dear!" he said again, in a small, miserable voice.
+
+The old man made no answer.
+
+The two sat motionless, leaning against each other. A ray of sun found
+the newly opened spot in the roof of the woods, and it seemed to Paul it
+pointed a long steady finger down on the fallen beech.
+
+At first Paul's throat ached, and his eyes smarted. He felt heavy and
+sore, as though he hadn't eaten the right thing for lunch.
+
+But by and by this went away. A quiet came all over him, so that he was
+better than happy. He laid his head against Mr. Welles' shoulder and
+looked up into the worn, pale old face, which was now also very quiet
+and still as though he too were better than happy.
+
+He held Paul close to him.
+
+Paul had a great many mixed-up thoughts. But there was one that was
+clear. He said to himself solemnly, "I guess I know who I want to be
+like when I grow up."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By and by, he stirred and said, "Well, I guess I better start to pack
+up. Don't you bother. I'll pack the things away. Mother showed me how to
+clean the frying-pan with sand and moss."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BESIDE THE ONION-BED
+
+
+July 10.
+
+Marise pulled nervously and rapidly at the weeds among the onions, and
+wiped away with her sleeve the drops that ran down her hot, red face.
+She was not rebellious at the dusty, tiresome task, nor aware of the
+merciless heat of the early-summer sun. She was not indeed thinking at
+all of what she was doing, except that the physical effort of stooping
+and reaching and pulling was a relief to her, made slightly less
+oppressive the thunder-heavy moral atmosphere she breathed. She was
+trying to think, but the different impressions came rushing into her
+mind with such vehement haste that they dashed against each other
+brutally, to her entire confusion.
+
+When she tried to think out an answer to this perfectly preposterous
+idea of old Mr. Welles, why should a thousand other horrifying ideas
+which she had been keeping at bay pour in through the door, once opened
+to probing thought? What possible connection could there be between such
+a fantastic crazy notion as his, and those other heaving, looming
+possibilities which rolled themselves higher and murkier the longer she
+refused to look at them? She snatched at the weeds, twitching them up,
+flinging them down, reaching, straining, the sun molten on her back, the
+sweat stinging on her face. It was a silly impression of course, but it
+seemed to her that if she hurried fast enough with the weeds, those
+thoughts and doubts could not catch up with her.
+
+She had put them off, and put them off while Neale was away, because
+they scared her, and she didn't want to look at them without Neale. But
+he had been back for weeks now and still she put them off. All those
+tarnishing sayings, those careless, casual negations of what she had
+taken for axioms; that challenge to her whole life dropped from time to
+time as though it were an accepted commonplace with all intelligent
+beings. . . .
+
+Was her love for the children only an inverted form of sensual egotism,
+an enervating slavery for them, really only a snatched-up substitute for
+the personal life which was ebbing away from her? Was her attitude
+towards her beloved music a lazy, self-indulgent one, to keep it to
+herself and the valley here? Was that growing indifference of hers to
+dress and trips to the city, and seeing Eugenia's smart crowd there, a
+sign of mental dry-rot? Was it a betrayal of what was alive in her own
+personality to go on adapting herself to the inevitable changes in her
+relations with Neale, compromising, rather than . . ."
+
+"Aren't you awfully hot to go on doing that?" asked Neale, coming up
+behind her, from the road. She was startled because she had not heard
+him approach on the soft, cultivated ground of the garden. And as she
+turned her wet, crimson face up to his, he was startled himself. "Why,
+what's the matter, dear?" he asked anxiously.
+
+She sank back to a sitting position, drawing a long breath, mopping her
+forehead with her sleeve, as unconscious of her looks before Neale as
+though she had still been alone. She motioned him down beside her. "Oh,
+Neale, I'm so glad! How'd you happen to be so early? Maybe if we stay
+right out here, where the children won't know where we are, we can have
+a few minutes quite to ourselves. Touclé is going to get tea tonight.
+Neale, sit down a minute. I want to tell you something. I'm awfully
+upset. I went over to help Mr. Welles transplant his Brussels sprouts,
+and we got to talking. Neale, what do you suppose has been in his mind
+all this time we've been thinking him so happy and contented here?"
+
+"Doesn't he like Crittenden's? Find it dull?"
+
+"No, no, not that, a bit. He _loves_ it. It's heart-breaking to see how
+much he loves it!" She stopped, her voice shaking a little, and waited
+till she could get it under control. Her husband took her stained, dusty
+hand in his. She gave his fingers a little pressure, absently, not
+noting what she did, and seeing the corner of his handkerchief showing
+in the pocket of his shirt, she pulled it out with a nervous jerk, and
+wiped her face all over with it.
+
+He waited in silence.
+
+"Listen, Neale, I know it will sound perfectly crazy to you, at first.
+But you might as well believe it, for he is serious. It seems he's been
+getting lots more letters from that niece or cousin of his, down in
+Georgia. She tells him about things, how the Negroes are treated, all
+the Jim Crow business carried into every single detail of every single
+minute of every single day. It seems they're not badly treated as long
+as they'll stay day-laborers or servants, but . . . oh well, there's no
+need to go on with telling you . . . _you_ know. We all know well enough
+what the American attitude is. Only I didn't think it could be so bad,
+or so everlastingly kept up every minute, as this cousin tells him. I
+suppose she ought to know. She's lived there for forty years. She keeps
+citing instances she's seen." Marise broke out with a fierce, blaming
+sharpness, "I don't see what _business_ she had, writing him that way. I
+think it was beastly of her. Why couldn't she let him alone!"
+
+She felt her husband waiting patiently for her to quiet down and go on
+more coherently, and knew that his patience came from a long
+acquaintance with her mental habits, a certainty that her outbursts of
+feeling generally did quiet down if one waited: and across her genuine
+absorption in the story she was telling there flitted, bat-like, a
+distaste far being known so well as all that! There was something
+indiscreet and belittling in it, she thought, with an inward fastidious
+recoil. But this had gone, entirely, in a moment, and she was rushing
+on, "And, Neale, what _do_ you think? She has worked on him, and he has
+worked on himself till he's got himself in a morbid state. He thinks
+perhaps he ought to leave Ashley that he loves so much and go down to
+live where this horrid cousin lives. . . ."
+
+Her husband's astonishment at this was as great as she could have
+desired. None of Neale's usual, unsurprised acceptance of everything
+that happened as being in the nature of things, which occasionally so
+rubbed her the wrong way, and seemed to her so wilfully phlegmatic. He
+was sincerely amazed and astounded; that was plain from his exclamation,
+his tone, his face. Of course he wasn't as outraged as she, but that
+wasn't to be expected, since he hadn't seen so much of that dear old
+life-worn man, nor grown so protectingly fond of him. She revelled in
+Neale's astonishment as bearing out her own feeling. "Isn't it crazy,
+Neale! Don't you think it crazy! Is there the slightest justification
+for it? You feel, just as I do, don't you, that it's a perfectly
+unbalanced, fanatical, _fool_ish thing to think of doing, his going down
+into that hopeless mess?"
+
+But her husband had had a moment's time, while she exclaimed, to get
+back to his usual unhurried post in life. "It's certainly about as
+unexpected as anything I ever heard of," he admitted. "I should have to
+know a lot more about it, before I could be sure what to think."
+
+An old impatience, at an old variance between their ways of thought,
+came out with an edge in Marise's tone as she said hotly, "Oh, _Neale_,
+don't take that line of yours! You know all there is to know, now! What
+else could you find out? You know how he's given all his life to looking
+out for his family, ending up with years of that bed-ridden old aunt the
+others wished on to him, just because he was too soft-hearted to get out
+from under. You know how anxious the Company was to do something to make
+up to him for all the years of service he gave them. And you know how
+happy he has been here, how he's loved it all, and fathered every root
+and seed in his garden, and how he and Paul have struck up such a sweet
+affection, and how he could be happier and happier." She struck her
+hands together. "Oh, Neale, I can't have him do such a foolish, useless
+thing, and spoil his life! It's not as if he'd be of any use down in
+Georgia. You know how the Southern white people detest Northerners
+coming down and interfering with the Negroes. Maybe they're wrong. But
+they're the people who live there. What could _he_ do against them? What
+under the sun could one tired-out old man accomplish in a situation that
+every American knows to be simply impossible?" She looked hard at her
+husband's thoughtful face and threw herself against him with a petulant
+gesture. "Now, Neale, don't go and justify him! Don't say you think he's
+right."
+
+He put his arm about her shoulders, hot and wet under their gingham
+covering, and she leaned against him, the gesture as unconsidered and
+unconscious for the one as the other. "No, I'm not going to try to
+justify him. I suppose I think he's very foolish. But I must say it
+shows a pretty fine spirit. I take off my hat to his intention."
+
+"Oh yes, his intention . . ." conceded Marise. "He's an old saint, of
+course. Only he mustn't be allowed to ruin his life and break
+everybody's heart, even if he is a saint."
+
+"That's the way saints usually run their business, isn't it?" asked
+Neale. "And I'd like to know how anybody's going to keep him from doing
+it, if he decides he ought to."
+
+"Oh yes, we can," urged Marise, sitting up with energy. "We can, every
+one of us, throw ourselves against it, argue with him, tell him that it
+seems to us not only foolish, and exaggerated, and morbid, but conceited
+as if he thought what _he_ did would count so very much. We can make him
+feel that it would be sort of cheating the Company, after what they've
+done for him; we can just mass all our personalities against it, use
+moral suasion, get excited, work on his feelings . . . she has done that,
+that cousin!"
+
+"I wouldn't want to do that," said Neale quietly. "You can, if you think
+best."
+
+She recognized a familiar emergence of granite in his voice and aspect
+and cried out on it passionately, "Now, _Neale_!"
+
+He knew perfectly well what this meant, without further words from her.
+They looked at each other, an unspoken battle going on with extreme
+rapidity between them, over ground intimately familiar. In the middle of
+this, she broke violently into words, quite sure that he would know at
+which point she took it up. "You carry that idea to perfectly impossible
+lengths, Neale. Don't you ever admit that we ought to try to make other
+people act the way we think best, even when we _know_ we're right and
+they're wrong?"
+
+"Yes," admitted her husband, "I should think we were bound to. If we
+ever _were_ sure we were right and they wrong."
+
+She gave the impression of vibrating with impatience and cried out,
+"That's pettifogging. Of course there are times when we are sure.
+Suppose you saw a little child about to take hold of the red-hot end of
+a poker?"
+
+"A child is different," he opposed her. "All grown-ups are responsible
+for all children. I suppose I'd keep him from taking hold of it. And yet
+I'm not dead sure I'd be right. If I thought he was only just going to
+touch it, to see if it really would burn him as people had told him, I
+guess I'd let him."
+
+"You always get around things," she said blamingly, "but there _are_
+cases when you could be sure. Suppose you saw Aunt Hetty just about to
+take poison, or Frank Warner getting Nelly Powers to run away with him?"
+
+He was startled by this, and asked quickly with a change of tone,
+"Whatever made you think of that? Are Frank and Nelly . . . ?"
+
+"Oh, it just came into my head. No, I haven't heard anybody has said
+anything, noticed anything. But I had a sort of notion that 'Gene
+doesn't like Frank hanging around the house so much."
+
+"Well . . ." commented her husband, with a lively accent of surprise. "I
+hadn't dreamed of such a thing. And it throws a light on something I
+happened to see this afternoon, on my way home. I came round the back
+way, the ravine road below the Eagle Rocks. I wanted to see about some
+popple we're thinking of buying from the Warners, on the shoulder beyond
+the Rocks. It didn't occur to me, of course, that anybody else would be
+up there, but just at the peak of the shoulder I saw 'Gene Powers, lying
+down beside a big beech-tree. He didn't hear me, walking on the
+pine-needles. And for a minute I stood there, and honestly didn't know
+what to do."
+
+"How do you mean . . . 'lying down'?" asked Marise, not visualizing the
+scene. "As though he were sick?"
+
+"No, not a bit that way. Not on his back, but on his face, looking over
+the edge of the ridge. All strung up like a bow, his head down between
+his shoulders and shot forwards like a cat stalking something. _I_ tell
+you, he made me think of a hunter when he thinks he sees a deer. I
+thought probably he had. I've seen a buck and some does up there lately.
+Then he saw me and jumped up very quickly and came down past me. I was
+going to say, just for the sake of saying something, 'Laying your plans
+for next deer-week?' But as he went by and nodded, he looked at me with
+such an odd expression that I thought I'd better not. The idea came to
+me that maybe 'Gene does poach and occasionally take a deer out of
+season. Meat is so high it wouldn't be surprising. They have a pretty
+hard time scraping along. I don't know as I'd blame him if he did shoot
+a deer once in a while.
+
+"Well, after I'd been on beyond and made my estimate on the popple, I
+came back that way. And as I passed where he'd been lying, I thought,
+just for curiosity, I'd go up and see if I could see what he'd been
+looking at so hard. I got up to the big beech where he'd been, and
+looked over. And I got the surprise of my life. He couldn't have been
+looking at deer, for on the other side the cliff drops down sheer, and
+you look right off into air, across the valley. I was so surprised I
+stood there, taken aback. The afternoon train went up the valley while I
+stood there, staring. It looked so tiny. You're really very high on
+those Rocks. I noticed you could see your Cousin Hetty's house from
+there, and the mill and the Powers house. That looked like a child's
+plaything, so little, under the big pine. And just as I looked at that,
+I saw a man come out from the house, get on a horse, and ride away."
+
+"Why, that must have been Frank," said Marise. "He rides that roan mare
+of his as much as he drives her."
+
+"Yes, that's what came into my mind when you spoke his name just now in
+connection with Nelly. I hadn't thought anything of it, before."
+
+There was a moment's silence as they looked at each other.
+
+"Oh, _Neale_!" said Marise, on a deep note. "How awful! You don't
+suppose there is anything in his jealousy. . . . Nelly is as inscrutable in
+her way as 'Gene."
+
+"Heavens! how should I know? But my guess is that 'Gene is making a fool
+of himself for nothing. Nelly doesn't strike me as being the sort of
+woman to . . ."
+
+"But Frank is awfully good-looking and dashing, and lots younger than
+'Gene. And Nelly is young too and perfectly stunning to look at. And
+she's not one of our native valley girls, you know. It may seem very
+dull and cooped-up here, so far from town, and shops. She may envy her
+sisters, still living back in West Adams with city life around them."
+
+"Oh, it's possible enough, I suppose," admitted Neale. "But she seems
+perfectly contented, and thinks the world of the children."
+
+Marise's face clouded. The phrase had recalled her dark preoccupations
+of a moment ago. "Lots of people nowadays would say she seems to be fond
+of the children because she is using them to fill up a lack in her
+life," she said somberly; "that 'Gene no longer satisfied her, and that
+she fed on the children because she was starving emotionally." Her
+husband making no comment on this, she went on, "Neale, don't you think
+that people are saying horrid, distressing things nowadays? About
+marriage I mean, and all relations between men and women and between
+parents and children?" Her heart was beating faster as she finished this
+question. The subject was broached at last. Where would it lead them?
+Where would it lead them? She shut her eyes at the thought.
+
+"There's a good deal to be said about all that, that's pretty horrid and
+perfectly true," remarked Neale casually. He tilted his hat further over
+his eyes and leaned back, propping himself on one elbow.
+
+"_Neale_!" she protested, shocked and repelled. She had hoped for
+something very different from Neale. But she thought, in a momentary
+exasperation with him, she might have known she would not get it. He
+always took everything so abstractedly, so impersonally.
+
+"I don't see any use in pretending there's not," he advanced with a
+reasonable, considering air. "I don't see that intimate human
+relationships are in any _more_ of a mess than other human relations.
+International ones, for instance, just now. But they certainly are in
+considerable of a mess, in a great many cases. It is evident that lots
+of times they're managed all wrong."
+
+Marise was so acutely disappointed that she felt a quavering ache in her
+throat, and kept silence for a moment. So this was what she had looked
+forward to, as a help. What was Neale there _for_, if not for her to
+lean against, to protect her, to be a defending wall about her? He was
+so strong and so clearheaded, he could be such a wall if he chose. How
+stern and hard he was, the core of him!
+
+"Neale," she said after a moment, "I wonder if you even _know_ what
+things are being said about what we've always believed in . . . motherhood
+for instance, and marriage?"
+
+She had been unable to keep the quaver out of her voice, and at the
+sound of it, he sat up instantly, astonished, solicitous, tender. "Why,
+darling, what's the matter?" he said again, moving closer to her,
+bending over her.
+
+"How _can_ you think such things without their making you perfectly
+miserable, without making you want to go straight and cut your throat?"
+she cried out on his callousness.
+
+He put his arm about her again, not absently this time, and drew her
+close. She thought angrily, "He thinks it's just a fit of nerves I can
+be soothed out of like a child," and pulled away from him.
+
+He looked at her, his attentive, intelligent look, and let his arm drop.
+And yet, although he was serious now, she was sure that he saw only that
+the subject agitated her, and did not see any possibility that it might
+touch them both, personally.
+
+"I have to think whatever I'm convinced is true, whether it makes me
+miserable or not, don't I?" he said gently. "And it does make me
+miserable, of course. Who can help being miserable at the spectacle of
+such rich possibilities as human life is full of, mismanaged and spoiled
+and lost?"
+
+"But, Neale, do you realize that people are thinking, books are being
+written to prove that parents' love for their children is only
+self-love, hypocritically disguised, and sometimes even sexual love
+camouflaged; and that anybody is better for the children to be with than
+their mother; and that married people, after the first flare-up of
+passion is over, hate each other instead of loving?"
+
+"I daresay there's a certain amount of truth in that, occasionally. It
+would certainly explain some of the inexplicable things we all see
+happen in family life," he remarked.
+
+Marise started and cried out piercingly, "Neale, how can you say such
+things to _me_!"
+
+He looked at her keenly again, keenly and penetratingly, and said, "I'm
+not one of those who think it inherent in the nature of women to take
+abstract propositions personally always. But I do think they will have
+to make a big effort to get themselves out of a mighty old acquired
+habit of thinking every general observation is directed at them
+personally."
+
+She flashed out indignantly at him, "How can you help taking it
+personally when it shakes the very foundations of our life?"
+
+He was astonished enough at this to suit even her. His face showed the
+most genuine amazed incapacity to understand her. "Shakes the . . . why,
+Marise dear, what are you talking about? You don't have to believe about
+_yourself_ all the generalizing guesses that people are writing down in
+books, do you, if it contradicts your own experience? Just because you
+read that lots of American men had flat-foot and were refused at the
+recruiting station for that, you don't have to think your own feet flat,
+do you? If you do think so, all you have to do is to start out and walk
+on them, to know for sure they're all right. Heavens and earth! People
+of our age, who have really lived, don't need somebody in a book to tell
+them what's happening to them. Don't you _know_ whether you really love
+Elly and Mark and Paul? If you don't, I should think a few minutes'
+thought and recollection of the last ten years would tell you, all
+right. Don't you _know_ whether we hate each other, you and I?"
+
+Marise drew a long breath of relief. This was the sort of talk she
+wanted. She clutched at the strong hand which seemed at last held out to
+her. She did so want to be talked out of it all. "Oh good! then, Neale,
+you don't believe any of that sort of talk? You were only saying so for
+argument."
+
+He withdrew the hand. "Yes, I do believe a good deal of as a general
+proposition. What I'm saying, what I'm always saying, dear, and trying
+my best to live, is that everybody must decide for himself when a
+general proposition applies to him, what to believe about his own life
+and its values. Nobody else can tell him."
+
+She approached along another line. "But, Neale, that's all very well for
+you, because you have so much withstandingness in you. But for me, there
+are things so sacred, so intimate, so much a part of me, that only to
+have some rough hand laid on them, to have them pulled out and pawed
+over and thought about . . . it frightens me so, sets me in such a quiver!
+And they don't seem the same again. _Aren't_ there things in life so
+high and delicate that they can't stand questioning?"
+
+He considered this a long time, visibly putting all his intelligence on
+it. "I can't say, for you," he finally brought out. "You're so much
+finer and more sensitive than I. But I've never in all these years seen
+that your fineness and your sensitiveness make you any less strong in
+the last analysis. You suffer more, respond more to all the implications
+of things; but I don't see that there is any reason to think there's any
+inherent weakness in you that need make you afraid to look at facts."
+
+He presented this testimony to her, seriously, gravely. It took her
+breath, coming from him. She could only look at him in speechless
+gratitude and swallow hard. Finally she said, falteringly, "You're too
+good, Neale, to say that. I don't deserve it. I'm awfully weak, many
+times."
+
+"I wouldn't say it, if it weren't so," he answered, "and I didn't say
+you weren't weak sometimes. I said you were strong when all was said and
+done."
+
+Even in her emotion, she had an instant's inward smile at the Neale-like
+quality of this. She went on, "But don't you think there is such a thing
+as spoiling beautiful elements in life, with handling them, questioning
+them, for natures that aren't naturally belligerent and ready to fight
+for what they want to keep? For instance, when somebody says that
+children in a marriage are like drift-wood left high on the rocks of a
+dwindled stream, tokens of a flood-time of passion now gone by. . . ." She
+did not tell him who had said this. Nor did he ask. But she thought by
+his expression that he knew it had been Vincent Marsh.
+
+He said heartily, "I should just call that a nasty-minded remark from
+somebody who didn't know what he was talking about. And let it go at
+that."
+
+"There, you see," she told him, "that rouses your instinct to resist, to
+fight back. But it doesn't mine. It just makes me sick."
+
+"Marise, I'm afraid that you _have_ to fight for what you want to keep
+in this world. I don't see any way out of it. And I don't believe that
+anybody else can do your fighting for you. You ask if it's not possible
+to have beautiful, intimate things spoiled by questioning, criticisms,
+doubts. Yes, I do think it is, for young people, who haven't learned
+anything of life at first hand. I think they ought to be protected till
+they have been able to accumulate some actual experience of life. That's
+the only weapon for self-defense anybody can have, what he has learned
+of life, himself. Young people are apt to believe what older people tell
+them about life, because they don't know anything about it, yet,
+themselves, and I think you ought to be careful what is questioned in
+their presence. But I don't see that mature people ought to be protected
+unless you want to keep them childish, as women used to be kept. Nothing
+is your own, if you haven't made it so, and kept it so."
+
+"But, Neale, it's so sickeningly _hard_! Why do it? Why, when everything
+seems all right, pry into the deep and hidden roots of things? I don't
+_want_ to think about the possibility of some dreadful dry-rot happening
+to married people's feelings towards each other, as they get older and
+get used to each other. It's soiling to my imagination. What's the use?"
+
+She had so hoped he would help her to sweep them all back to the cellar
+labeled "morbid" and lock them down in the dark again. Any other man
+would, she thought, amazed at him, _any_ other husband! She focussed all
+her personality passionately to force him to answer as she wished.
+
+He fell into another thoughtful silence, glanced up at her once sharply
+and looked down again. She always felt afraid of him when he looked like
+that. No, not afraid of him, but of the relentless thing he was going to
+say. Presently he said it. "What's the use? Why, the very fact you seem
+afraid of it . . . I can't imagine why . . . shows there would be some use.
+To turn your back on anything you're afraid of, that's fatal, always. It
+springs on you from behind."
+
+She cried out to him in a sudden anguish that was beyond her control,
+"But _suppose you face it and still it springs_!"
+
+Her aspect, her accent, her shaken voice gave him a great start. He
+faced her. He looked at her as though he saw her for the first time that
+day. And he grew very pale as he looked. Something wordless passed
+between them. Now he knew at last what she was afraid of.
+
+But he did not flinch. He said desperately, in a harsh voice, "You have
+to take what comes to you in life," and was grimly silent.
+
+Then with a gesture as though to put away something incredible,
+approaching him, he went on more quietly, "But my experience is that it
+doesn't dare spring if you walk right up to it. Generally you find
+you're less afraid of everything in the world, after that."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had been frightened, stabbed through and through by the look they
+had interchanged, by the wordless something which had passed between
+them. But now she wondered suddenly, passionately, amazedly, if he had
+really understood all the dagger-like possibilities of their talk.
+
+"Neale," she challenged him, "don't you put _any_ limits on this? Isn't
+there _any_where you'd stop out of sheer respect? Nothing too hallowed
+by . . ."
+
+"Nothing. Nothing," he answered her, his face pale, his eyes deep and
+enduring. "It's lying down, not to answer the challenge when it comes.
+How do you know what you have to deal with if you won't look to see?
+You may find out that something you have been trusting is growing out of
+a poisonous root. That does happen. What's the use of pretending that it
+couldn't to you, as to anybody else? And what's the use of having lived
+honestly, if you haven't grown brave enough to do whatever needs to be
+done? If you are scared by the idea that your motherhood may be only
+inverted sensuality, or if you think there is any possibility that the
+children would be better off in other hands, or if you think . . . if you
+think there is any other terrifying possibility in our life here, for
+God's sake look into your own heart and see for yourself! It all sounds
+like nonsense to me, but . . ."
+
+She snatched at the straw, she who longed so for help. "Oh, Neale, if
+_you_ think so, I know . . ."
+
+"I won't _have_ you taking my word for it!" he told her roughly. "_I_
+can't tell what's back of what you do. And you oughtn't to take my word
+for it if I tried to. Nobody on earth can make your decision for you,
+but you yourself." The drops stood out on his forehead as he spoke, and
+ran down his pale face.
+
+She quivered and was silent for a moment. Then, "Neale, where shall I
+get the strength to do that?" she asked.
+
+He looked full in her face. "I don't know anywhere to go for strength
+but out of one's naked human heart," he said.
+
+She shrank from the rigor of this with a qualm of actual fear. "I think
+I must have something else," she told him wildly.
+
+"I don't know," he returned. "I don't know at all about that. I'm no
+mystic. I can't help you there, dear. But I know, as well as I know
+anything on earth, that anything that's worth having in anybody's life,
+his parent-hood, his marriage, his love, his ambition, can stand any
+honest challenge it can be put to. If it can't, it's not valid and ought
+to be changed or discarded." His gaze on her was immeasurably steady.
+
+She longed unspeakably for something else from him, some warming,
+comforting assurance of help, some heartening, stimulating encouragement
+along that stark, bleak way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Somehow they were standing up now, both pale, looking profoundly into
+each other's eyes. Something almost palpable, of which not a word had
+been spoken aloud, came and stood there between them, and through it
+they still looked at each other. They had left words far behind now, in
+the fierce velocity of their thoughts.
+
+And yet with the almost physical unity of their years of life together,
+each knew the other's thoughts.
+
+She flung herself against him as though she had cried out to him. He put
+his arms strongly, tenderly about her, as though he had answered.
+
+With no words she had cried out, silently, desperately to him, "Hold me!
+Hold me!"
+
+And with no words, he had answered, silently, desperately, "No one can
+hold you but yourself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A shouting babble of voices rose in the distance. The children crying to
+each other came out of the house-door and raced down the flag-stone
+walk. "There they are! In the garden! By the onion-bed! Father! Mother!
+We've been looking for you everywhere. Touclé says if you'll let her,
+she'll boil down some maple syrup for us to wax on ice for dessert."
+
+They poured into the garden, children, cat and fox-terrier, noisy,
+insistent, clamorous. Mark, always frankly greedy of his mother's
+attention, pushed in jealously between his parents, clinging to his
+mother's knees. He looked up in her face and laughed out, his merry
+peal, "Oh, Mother, what a dirty face! You've been suspiring and then
+you've wiped your forehead with your dirty hand, the way you say I
+mustn't. How funny you look! And you've got a great, long tear in your
+sleeve, too."
+
+Behind them, tiny, smooth and glistening, Eugenia Mills strolled to the
+edge of the garden, as far as the flag-stones went, and stood waiting,
+palpably incapable of taking her delicate bronze slippers into the dust.
+
+"You've missed a kitchen call from that lively, earthy old Mrs. Powers
+and her handsome daughter-in-law," she announced casually. "Touclé says
+they brought some eggs. What a stunning creature that Nelly is! There's
+temperament for you! Can't you just feel the smouldering, primitive fire
+hidden under that scornful silence of hers?"
+
+"Mother, may we tell Touclé to put the syrup on to boil?" begged Elly.
+Her hair was tangled and tousled, with bits of bark sticking in it, and
+dried mud was caked on her hands and bare legs. Marise thought of the
+repugnance she must have aroused in Eugenia.
+
+"Mother," said Paul, "Mr. Welles is going to give me a fishing-rod, he
+says. A _real_ one. Boughten."
+
+"Oh, I want one too!" cried Mark, jumping up and down. "I want one too."
+
+"You're too little. Mother, _isn't_ Mark too little? And anyhow, he
+always breaks everything. You do, Mark, you know you do. I take _care_
+of my things!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Someone in the confusion stepped on the fox-terrier's toes and he set up
+a shrill, aggrieved yelping. The children pawed at her with dirty hands.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Marsh," said Eugenia, looking over her shoulder at
+the dark-haired figure in flannels approaching from the other house. She
+turned and strolled across the grass to meet him, as white and gleaming
+as he.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sick qualm of self-contempt shook Marise. For, high and clear above
+everything else, there had come into her mind a quick discomfort at the
+contrast between her appearance and that of Eugenia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+HOME LIFE
+
+
+July 20.
+
+The heat was appalling even early in the morning, right after breakfast.
+There were always three or four such terrific days, even up here in the
+mountains, to remind you that you lived in America and had to take your
+part of the ferocious extremes of the American climate.
+
+And of course this had to be the time when Touclé went off for one of
+her wandering disappearances. Marise could tell that by the aspect of
+the old woman as she entered the kitchen that morning, her reticule bag
+bulging out with whatever mysterious provisions Touclé took with her.
+You never missed anything from the kitchen.
+
+Marise felt herself in such a nervously heightened state of
+sensitiveness to everything and everybody in those days, that it did not
+surprise her to find that for the first time she received something more
+than a quaint and amusing impression from the old aborigine. She had
+never noticed it before, but sometimes there was something about
+Touclé's strange, battered, leathery old face . . . what was it? The idea
+came to her a new one, that Touclé was also a person, not merely a
+curious and enigmatic phenomenon.
+
+Touclé was preparing to depart in the silent, unceremonious,
+absent-minded way she did everything, as though she were the only person
+in the world. She opened the screen door, stepped out into the torrid
+glare of the sunshine and, a stooped, shabby, feeble old figure, trudged
+down the path.
+
+"Where does she go?" thought Marise, and "What was that expression on
+her face I could not name?"
+
+Impulsively she went out quickly herself, and followed after the old
+woman.
+
+"Touclé! Touclé!" she called, and wondered if her voice in these days
+sounded to everyone as nervous and uncertain as it did to her.
+
+The old woman turned and waited till the younger had overtaken her. They
+were under the dense shade of an old maple, beside the road, as they
+stood looking at each other.
+
+As she had followed, Marise regretted her impulse, and had wondered what
+in the world she could find to say, but now that she saw again the
+expression in the other's face, she cried out longingly, "Touclé, where
+do you go that makes you look peaceful?"
+
+The old woman glanced at her, a faint surprise appearing in her deeply
+lined face. Then she looked at her, without surprise, seriously as
+though to see what she might read in the younger woman's eyes. She stood
+for a long moment, thinking. Finally she sat down on the grass under the
+maple-tree, and motioned Marise to sit beside her. She meditated for a
+long time, and then said, hesitatingly, "I don't know as a white person
+could understand. White people . . . nobody ever asked me before."
+
+She sat silent, her broad, dusty feet in their elastic-sided, worn,
+run-over shoes straight before her, the thick, horny eyelids dropped
+over her eyes, her scarred old face carved into innumerable deep lines.
+Marise wondered if she had forgotten that anyone else was there. She
+turned her own eyes away, finally, and looking at the mountains saw that
+black thunderclouds were rolling up over the Eagle Rocks. Then the old
+woman said, her eyes still dropped, "I tell you how my uncle told me,
+seventy-five years ago. He said people are like fish in an underground
+brook, in a black cave. He said there is a place, away far off from
+where they live, where there is a crack in the rock. If they went 'way
+off they could get a glimpse of what daylight is. And about once in so
+often they need to swim there and look out at the daylight. If they
+don't, they lose their eyesight from always being in the dark. He said
+that a lot of Indians don't care whether they lose their eyesight or
+not, so long's they can go on eating and swimming around. But good
+Indians do. He said that as far as he could make out, none of the white
+people care. He said maybe they've lost their eyes altogether."
+
+Without a move of her sagging, unlovely old body, she turned her deep
+black eyes on the flushed, quivering, beautiful woman beside her.
+"That's where I go," she answered. "I go 'way off to be by myself, and
+get a glimpse of what daylight is."
+
+She got up to her feet, shifted her reticule from one hand to the other,
+and without a backward look trudged slowly down the dusty road, a
+stooped, shabby, feeble old figure.
+
+Marise saw her turn into a wood-road that led up towards the mountain,
+and disappear. Her own heart was burning as she looked. Nobody would
+help her in her need. Touclé went away to find peace, and left her in
+the black cave. Neale stood. . . .
+
+A child's shriek of pain and loud wailing calls for "Mother! Mother!
+_Mother!_" sent her back running breathlessly to the house. Mark had
+fallen out of the swing and the sharp corner of the board had struck
+him, he said, "in the eye! in the eye!" He was shrieking and holding
+both hands frantically over his left eye. This time it might be serious,
+might have injured the eye-ball. Those swing-boards were deadly. Marise
+snatched up the screaming child and carried him into the kitchen,
+terrible perspectives of blindness hag-riding her imagination; saying to
+herself with one breath, "It's probably nothing," and in the next seeing
+Mark groping his way about the world with a cane, all his life long.
+
+She opened the first-aid box on the kitchen-shelf, pulled out a roll of
+bandage and a length of gauze, sat down with Mark in her lap near the
+faucet, and wet the gauze in cold water. Then she tried in vain to
+induce him to take down his hands so that she could see where the blow
+had struck.
+
+But the terrified, hysterical child was incapable of hearing what she
+said, incapable of doing anything but scream louder and louder when she
+tried to pull down those desperately tight little hands held with
+frantic tenseness over the hurt eye. Marise could feel all his little
+body, quivering and taut. His shrieks were like those of someone
+undergoing the most violent torture.
+
+She herself responded nervously and automatically to his condition, felt
+herself begin to tighten up, and knew that she was equally ready to
+shake him furiously, or to burst into anguished tears of sympathy for
+his pain.
+
+Wait now . . . wait . . . what was the thing to do for Mark? What would
+untie those knots of fright and shock? For Paul it would have been talk
+of the bicycle he was to have for his birthday; for Elly a fairy-story
+or a piece of candy! For Mark . . .
+
+High above the tumult of Mark's shrieks and her own spasmodic reactions
+to them, she sent her intelligence circling quietly . . . and in an
+instant . . . oh yes, that was the thing. "Listen, Mark," she said in his
+ear, stopping her effort to take down his hands, "Mother's learned a new
+song, a _new_ one, awfully funny. And ever so long too, the way you like
+them." She put her arms about him and began, hearing herself with
+difficulty through his cries.
+
+     "On yonder hill there stands a damsel,
+     Who she is, I do not know."
+
+("How preposterous we must sound, if Eugenia is listening," she thought
+to herself, as she sang, "out-yelling each other this way!")
+
+     "I'll go and court her for her beauty.
+     She must answer 'yes' or 'no.'"
+
+As usual Mark fell helpless before the combination of music and a story.
+His cries diminished in volume. She said in his ear, "And then the Lady
+sings," and she tuned her voice to a young-ladyish, high sweetness and
+sang,
+
+     "My father was a Spanish Captain,
+     Went to sea a month ago,"
+
+Mark made a great effort and choked down his cries to heaving sobs as he
+tried to listen,
+
+     "First he kissed me, then he left me;
+     Bade me always answer 'no.'"
+
+She told the little boy, now looking up at her out of the one eye not
+covered by his hands, "Then the gentleman says to her," she made her
+voice loud and hearty and bluff,
+
+     "Oh, Madam, in your face is beauty,
+     On your lips red roses grow.
+     Will you take me for your lover?
+     Madam, answer 'yes' or 'no.'"
+
+She explained in an aside to Mark, "But her father had told her she must
+always answer just the one thing, 'no,' so she had to say," she turned
+up in the mincing, ladylike key again, and sang,
+
+     "Oh no, John, no, John, no."
+
+Mark drew a long quivering breath through parted lips and sat silent,
+his one eye fixed on his mother, who now sang in the loud, lusty voice,
+
+     "Oh, Madam, since you are so cruel,
+     And that you do scorn me so,
+     If I may not be your lover,
+     Madam, will you let me go?"
+
+And in the high, prim voice, she answered herself,
+
+     "Oh no, John, no, John, _no!_"
+
+A faint smile hovered near Mark's flushed face. He leaned towards his
+mother as she sang, and took down his hands so that he could see her
+better. Marise noted instantly, with a silent exclamation of relief that
+the red angry mark was quite outside the eye-socket, harmless on the
+bone at one side. Much ado about nothing as usual with the children. Why
+_did_ she get so frightened each time? Another one of Mark's hairbreadth
+escapes.
+
+She reached for the cold wet compress and went on, singing loudly and
+boldly, with a facetious wag of her head, (how tired she was of all this
+manoeuvering!),
+
+     "Then I will stay with you forever
+     If you will not be unkind."
+
+She applied the cold compress on the hurt spot and put out her hand for
+the bandage-roll, singing with an ostentatiously humorous accent and
+thinking with exasperation how all this was delaying her in the thousand
+things to do in the house,
+
+     "Madam, I have vowed to love you;
+     Would you have me change my mind?"
+
+She wound the bandage around and around the little boy's head, so that
+it held the compress in place, singing in the high, sweet voice,
+
+     "Oh no, John, no, John, NO."
+
+She went on with a heavy, mock solemnity, in the loud voice,
+
+     "Oh, hark, I hear the church-bells ringing;
+     Will you come and be my wife?"
+
+She pinned the bandage in place at the back of Mark's head,
+
+     "Or, dear Madam, have you settled
+     To live single all your life?"
+
+She gathered the child up to her, his head on her shoulder, his face
+turned to her, his bare, dusty, wiry little legs wriggling and soiling
+her white skirt; and sang, rollickingly,
+
+     "Oh no, John, no, John, NO!"
+
+"There, that's all," she said in her natural voice, looking down at
+Mark. She said to herself rebelliously, "I've expended enough
+personality and energy on this performance to play a Beethoven sonata at
+a concert," and found she was quoting something Vincent Marsh had said
+about her life, the day before.
+
+There was a moment while the joke slowly penetrated to Mark's
+six-year-old brain. And then he laughed out, delightedly, "Oh, Mother,
+that's a beaut! Sing it again. Sing it again! Now I know what's coming,
+I'll like it such a lots betterer."
+
+Marise cried out in indignant protest, "Mark! When I've sat here for ten
+minutes singing to you, and all the work to do, and the sun getting like
+red-hot fire every minute."
+
+"What must you got to do?" asked Mark, challengingly.
+
+"Well, the very first thing is to get dinner ready and in the fireless
+cooker, so we can turn out the oil-stove and cool off this terrible
+kitchen."
+
+Mark looked up at her and smiled. He had recently lost a front tooth and
+this added a quaintness to the splendor of his irresistible smile. "You
+could sing as you get the dinner ready," he said insinuatingly, "and
+I'll help you."
+
+Marise smothered an impulse to shout to the child, "No, no, go away! Go
+away! I can't have you bothering around. I've got to be by myself, or I
+don't know what will happen!" She thought of Touclé, off in the green
+and silent woods, in a blessed solitude. She thought of Eugenia up in
+her shaded room, stretched on the chaise-longue in a thin silk
+room-gown, she thought of Neale and his stern eyes . . . she looked down
+on the dusty, tanned, tousle-headed little boy, with the bandage around
+his head, his one eye looking up at her pleadingly, his dirty little
+hand clutching at the fold of her skirt; and drearily and unwillingly
+she summoned herself to self-control. "All right, Mark, that's true. I
+could sing while I peel the potatoes. You could wash them for me. That
+would help."
+
+They installed themselves for this work. The acrid smell of
+potato-parings rose in the furnace-like heat of the kitchen, along with
+the singing voice, asking and answering itself. Mark listened with all
+his might, laughing and wriggling with appreciation. When his mother had
+finished and was putting the potatoes into the boiling water, he said
+exultantly, "He got around _her_, all right, I should say what!"
+
+Paul burst in now, saying, "Mother, Mother!" He stopped short and asked,
+"What you got on your head, Mark?"
+
+The little boy looked surprised, put his hand up, felt the bandage, and
+said with an off-hand air, "Oh, I bunked my head on the corner of the
+swing-board."
+
+"I know," said Paul, "I've done it lots of times." He went on, "Mother,
+my pig has lice. You can just _see_ them crawling around under his hair.
+And I got out the oil Father said to use, but I can't do it. It says on
+the can to rub it on with a stiff little brush. I don't see how ever in
+the world you're going to get your pig to stand still while you do it.
+When I try to, he just squeals, and runs away."
+
+His mother said with decision, from where she stooped before the open
+ice-box door, "Paul, if there is anything in the world I know nothing
+about, it is pigs. I haven't the slightest idea what to do." She shut
+the heavy door with a bang more energetic than was necessary to latch
+it, and came back towards the stove with a raw, red piece of uncooked
+meat on a plate.
+
+"Oh, how nasty meat looks, raw," said Mark, with an accent of disgust.
+
+"You eat it with a good appetite when I've cooked it," remarked his
+mother, somewhat grimly, putting it in a hot pan over the fire. An odor
+of searing fibers and smoke and frying onions rose up in the hot, still
+air of the kitchen.
+
+"If I could have guessed we'd have such weather, I'd never have ordered
+a pot-roast," thought Marise, vexed.
+
+"Please, Mother, _please_," begged Paul.
+
+"Please what?" asked his mother, who had forgotten the pig.
+
+"Henry!" said Paul. "If you could see how he scratches and scratches and
+how the behind of his ears is all scabs he's so bitten."
+
+"Wouldn't Eugenia and Vincent Marsh love this conversation?" thought
+Marise, turning the meat in the pan and starting back from the spatters
+of hot fat.
+
+"Mother, don't you see, I agreed to take care of him, with Father, and
+so I _have_ to. He's just like my child. You wouldn't let one of _us_
+have lice all over, and scabs on our . . ."
+
+"Oh stop, Paul, for Heaven's sake!" said his mother.
+
+Through the smoke and smell and heat, the sensation of her underclothing
+sticking hotly to her limbs, the constant dogging fear and excitement
+that beset her, and the causeless twanging of her nerves, there traveled
+to her brain, along a channel worn smooth by the habit of her thought
+about the children, the question, "What is it that makes Paul care so
+much about this?" And the answer, almost lost in the reverberation of
+all those other questions and answers in her head, was, "It comes from
+what is best in Paul, his feeling of personal responsibility for the
+welfare of others. That mustn't be hindered." Aloud, almost
+automatically, she said, in a neutral tone, "Paul, I don't think I can
+do a single thing for you and Henry, but I'll go with you and look at
+him and see if I can think of anything. Just wait till I get this and
+the potatoes in the fireless cooker."
+
+Paul made a visible effort, almost as though he were swallowing
+something too large for his throat, and said ungraciously, "I suppose I
+ought to help you in here, then."
+
+"I suppose so," said his mother roughly, in an exact imitation of his
+manner.
+
+Paul looked at her quickly, laughing a little, sheepishly. He waited a
+moment, during which time Mark announced that he was going out to the
+sand-pile, and then said, in a pleasant tone, "What can I do?"
+
+His mother nodded at him with a smile, refrained from the spoken word of
+approbation which she knew he would hate, and took thought as to what he
+might do that would afflict him least. "You can go and sweep off the
+front porch, and straighten out the cushions and chairs, and water the
+porch-box geraniums."
+
+He disappeared, whistling loudly, "Massa's in the cold, cold ground."
+Marise hoped automatically that Elly was not in earshot to hear this.
+
+She felt herself tired to the point of exhaustion by the necessity
+always to be divining somebody's inner processes, putting herself in
+somebody's else skin and doing the thing that would reach him in the
+right way. She would like, an instant, just an instant, to be in her own
+skin, she thought, penetrated with a sense of the unstable equilibrium
+of personal relations. To keep the peace in a household of young and old
+highly differentiated personalities was a feat of the Blondin variety;
+the least inattention, the least failure in judgment, and opportunities
+were lost forever. Her sense of the impermanence of the harmony between
+them all had grown upon her of late, like an obsession. It seemed to her
+that her face must wear the strained, propitiatory smile she had so
+despised in her youth on the faces of older woman, mothers of families.
+Now she knew from what it came . . . balancing perpetually on a tight-rope
+from which . . .
+
+Oh, her very soul felt crumpled with all this pressure from the outside,
+never-ending!
+
+The worst was not the always recurring physical demands, the dressing
+and undressing the children, preparing their food and keeping them
+clean. The crushing part was the moral strain; to carry their lives
+always with you, incalculably different from each other and from your
+own. And not only their present lives, but the insoluble question of how
+their present lives were affecting their future. Never for a moment from
+the time they are born, to be free from the thought, "Where are they?
+What are they doing? Is that the best thing for them?" till every
+individual thought of your own was shattered, till your intelligence was
+atrophied, till your sensibilities to finer things were dulled and
+blunted.
+
+Paul came back. "About ready for Henry?" he asked. "I've finished the
+porch."
+
+She put the two tightly closed kettles inside the fireless cooker and
+shut down the lid. "Yes, ready for Henry," she said.
+
+She washed her hot, moist face in cold water, drank a glass, put on a
+broad-brimmed garden hat, and set out for the field back of the barn.
+The kitchen had been hot, but it seemed cool compared to the heat into
+which they stepped from the door. It startled Marise so that she drew
+back for an instant. It seemed to her like walking through molten metal.
+"Mercy! what heat!" she murmured.
+
+"Yes, ain't it great?" said Paul, looking off, down the field, "just
+what the corn needs."
+
+"You should say 'isn't,' not 'ain't,'" corrected his mother.
+
+"But it'll be cooler soon," said Paul. "There's a big thunderstorm
+coming up. See, around the corner of the mountain. See how black it is
+now, over the Eagle Rocks" He took her hand in his bramble-scarred
+little fingers, and led her along, talking proudly of his own virtue.
+"I've moved Henry's pen today, fresh, so's to get him on new grass, and
+I put it under the shade of this butternut tree."
+
+They were beside the pen now, looking over the fence at the grotesque
+animal, twitching his gross and horribly flexible snout, as he peered up
+at them out of his small, intelligent eyes, sunk in fat, and almost
+hidden by the fleshy, hairy triangles of his ear-flaps.
+
+"Don't you think Henry is a _very_ handsome pig?" asked Paul.
+
+"I think you take very good care of him," she answered. "Now what is the
+matter about the oil you can't put on? Doesn't he like it?"
+
+"He hasn't felt it yet. He won't even let me try. Look!" The child
+climbed over the fence and made a quick grab at the animal, which gave
+an alarmed, startled grunt, wheeled with astonishing nimbleness, and
+darted away in a short-legged gallop.
+
+"Look there, that's the way he always does!" said Paul in an aggrieved
+tone.
+
+Marise considered the pig for a moment. He had turned again and was once
+more staring at her, his quivering, fleshy snout in the air, a
+singularly alert expression of attention animating his heavy-jowled
+countenance.
+
+"Are there any things he specially likes?" she asked Paul.
+
+"He likes to eat, of course, being a pig," said Paul, "and he loves you
+to scratch his back with a stick."
+
+"Oh, then it's easy. Come outside the pen. Now listen. You go back to
+the barn and get whatever it is you feed him. Then you put that in the
+trough, and let him begin to eat, quietly. Then take your oil and your
+brush, and moving very slowly so that you don't startle him, lean over
+the fence and begin to brush it on his back where he likes to be rubbed.
+If he likes the feel of it, he'll probably stand still. I'll wait here,
+till you see how it comes out."
+
+She moved away a few paces, and sank down on the grass under the tree,
+as though the heat had flung her there. The grass crisped drily under
+her, as though it too were parched.
+
+She closed her eyes and felt the sun beating palpably on the lids . . .
+or was it that hot inward pulse still throbbing . . . ? Why wouldn't Neale
+do it for her? Why wouldn't he put out that strength of his and crush
+out this strange agitation of hers, _forbid_ it to her? Then there was
+nothing in her but intense discomfort, as though that were a universe of
+its own. A low, distant growl of thunder shook the air with a muffled,
+muted roar.
+
+After a time, a little voice back of her announced in a low, cautious
+tone, "Mother, it _works!_ Henry loves it!"
+
+She turned her head and saw the little boy vigorously rubbing the ears
+and flanks of the pig, which stood perfectly still, its eyes half shut,
+rapt in a beatitude of satisfaction.
+
+Marise turned her head away and slid down lower on the grass, so that
+she lay with her face on her arm. She was shaking from head to foot as
+though with sobs. But she was not crying. She was laughing hysterically.
+"Even for the pig!" she was saying to herself. "A symbol of my life!"
+
+She lay there a long time after this nervous fit of laughter had
+stopped, till she heard Paul saying, "There, I've put it on every inch
+of him." He added with a special intonation, "And now I guess maybe I'd
+better go in swimming."
+
+At this Marise sat up quickly, with an instant experienced divination of
+what she would see.
+
+In answer to her appalled look on him, he murmured apologetically, "I
+didn't know I was getting so _much_ on me. It sort of spattered."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was, of course, as she led the deplorable object towards the house
+that they encountered Eugenia under a green-lined white parasol, on the
+way back from the garden, carrying an armful of sweet-peas.
+
+"I thought I'd fill the vases with fresh flowers before the rain came,"
+she murmured, visibly sheering off from Paul.
+
+"Eugenia ought not to carry sweet-peas," thought Marise. "It ought
+always to be orchids."
+
+In the bath-room as she and Paul took off his oil-soaked clothes, Mark's
+little voice called to her, "Mother! Mo-o-other!"
+
+"Yes, what is it?" she answered, suspending operations for a moment to
+hear.
+
+"Mother, if I had to kill all the ants in the world," called Mark, "I'd
+a great deal rather they were all gathered up together in a heap than
+running around every-which-way, wouldn't you?"
+
+"For goodness' _sakes,_ what a silly baby thing to say!" commented Paul
+with energy.
+
+Marise called heartily to Mark, "Yes indeed I would, dear."
+
+Paul asked curiously, "Mother, how can you answer him like that, such a
+_fool_ thing!"
+
+Marise felt another wave of hysterical laughter mounting, at the idea of
+the difficulty in perceiving the difference in degree of flatness
+between Mark's remarks and those of Paul.
+
+But it suddenly occurred to her that this was the time for Elly's hour
+at the piano, and she heard no sound. She hastily laid out the clean
+clothes for Paul, saw him started on the scrub in the bath-tub, and ran
+downstairs to see if she could find Elly, before the storm broke,
+turning over in her mind Elly's favorite nooks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The air was as heavy as noxious gas in the breathless pause before the
+arrival of the rain.
+
+In the darkened, shaded hall stood a man's figure, the face turned up
+towards her, the look on it meant for her, her only, not the useful
+house-mother, but that living core of her own self, buried, hidden, put
+off, choked and starved as she had felt it to be, all that morning. That
+self rose up now, passionately grateful to be recognized, and looked
+back at him.
+
+Thunder rolled among the distant hills.
+
+She felt her pulse whirling with an excitement that made her lean
+against the wall, as he took a great stride towards her, crying out,
+"Oh, make an end . . . make an end of this. . . ."
+
+The door behind him opened, and Elly ran in, red-faced and dusty.
+"Mother, Mother, Reddy has come off her nest. And there are twelve
+hatched out of the fourteen eggs! Mother, they are such darlings! I wish
+you'd come and see. Mother, if I practise _good_, won't you come
+afterwards and look at them?"
+
+"You should say 'practise well,' not 'good,'" said Marise, her accent
+openly ironical.
+
+The wind, precursor of the storm falling suddenly on the valley, shook
+the trees till they roared.
+
+Over the child's head she exchanged with Vincent Marsh a long reckless
+look, the meaning of which she made no effort to understand, the abandon
+of which she made no effort to restrain.
+
+With a dry, clattering, immediate rattle, without distance or dignity,
+the thunder broke threateningly over the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+MASSAGE-CREAM; THEME AND VARIATIONS
+
+July 20.
+
+The hardest thing for Eugenia about these terribly hard days of suspense
+was to keep her self-control in her own room. Of course for her as for
+any civilized being, it was always possible to keep herself in hand with
+people looking on. But for years she had not had to struggle so when
+alone, for poise and self-mastery. Her room at the Crittendens', which
+had been hers so long, and which Marise had let her furnish with her own
+things, was no longer the haven of refuge it had been from the bitter,
+raw crudity of the Vermont life. She tried to fill the empty hours of
+Neale's daily absences from the house with some of the fastidious,
+delicate occupations of which she had so many, but they seemed brittle
+in her hot hands, and broke when she tried to lean on them. A dozen
+times a day she interrupted herself to glance with apprehension at her
+reflection in the mirror, the Florentine mirror with the frame of brown
+wood carved, with the light, restrained touch of a good period, into
+those tasteful slender columns. And every time she looked, she was
+horrified and alarmed to see deep lines of thought, of hope, of
+impatience, of emotion, criss-crossing fatally on her face.
+
+Then she would sit down before her curving dressing-table, gather the
+folds of her Persian room-dress about her, lift up her soul and go
+through those mental and physical relaxing exercises which the wonderful
+lecturer of last winter had explained. She let her head and shoulders
+and neck droop like a wilted flower-stem, while she took into her mind
+the greater beauty of a wilted flower over the crass rigidity of a
+growing one; she breathed deeply and slowly and rhythmically, and
+summoned to her mind far-off and rarely, difficultly, beautiful things;
+the tranquil resignation of Chinese roofs, tempered with the merry human
+note of their tilted corners; Arabian traceries; cunningly wrought,
+depraved wood-carvings in the corners of Gothic cathedrals; the gay and
+amusing pink rotundities of a Boucher ceiling. When she felt her face
+calm and unlined again, she put on a little massage cream, to make
+doubly sure, and rubbed it along where the lines of emotion had been.
+
+But half an hour afterwards, as she lay stretched in the chaise-longue
+by the window, reading Claudel, or Strindberg, or Rémy de Gourmont, she
+would suddenly find that she was not thinking of what was on the page,
+that she saw there only Marise's troubled eyes while she and Marsh
+talked about the inevitable and essential indifference of children to
+their parents and the healthiness of this instinct; about the
+foolishness of the parents' notion that they would be formative elements
+in the children's lives; or on the other hand, if the parents did
+succeed in forcing themselves into the children's lives, the danger of
+sexual mother-complexes. Eugenia found that instead of thrilling
+voluptuously, as she knew she ought, to the precious pain and
+bewilderment of one of the thwarted characters of James Joyce, she was,
+with a disconcerting and painful eagerness of her own, bringing up to
+mind the daunted silence Marise kept when they mentioned the fact that
+of course everybody nowadays knew that children are much better off in a
+big, numerous, robust group than in the nervous, tight isolation of
+family life; and that a really trained educator could look out for them
+much better than any mother, because he could let them alone as a mother
+never could.
+
+She found that such evocations of facts poignantly vital to her
+personally, were devastatingly more troubling to her facial calm than
+any most sickening picture in d'Annunzio's portrayal of small-town
+humanity in which she was trying to take the proper, shocked interest.
+Despite all her effort to remain tranquil she would guess by the stir of
+her pulses that probably she had lost control of herself again, and
+going to the mirror would catch her face all strained and tense in a
+breathless suspense.
+
+But if there was one thing which life had taught her, it was persevering
+patience. She drew from the enameled bonbonnière one of the curious,
+hard sweet-meats from Southern China; lifted to her face the spicy-sweet
+spikes of the swamp-orchid in her Venetian glass vase; turned her eyes
+on the reproduction of the Gauguin _Ja Orana Maria_, and began to draw
+long, rhythmic breaths, calling on all her senses to come to her rescue.
+She let her arms and her head and her shoulders go limp again, and fixed
+her attention on rare and beautiful things of beauty . . . abandoning
+herself to the pictures called up by a volume of translated Japanese
+poems she had recently read . . . temples in groves . . . bells in the
+mist . . . rain on willow-trees . . . snow falling without wind. . . .
+How delicate and suggestive those poems were! How much finer, more subtle
+than anything in the Aryan languages!
+
+She came to herself cautiously, glanced at her face in the mirror, and
+reached for the carved ivory pot of massage cream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She decided then she would sew a little, instead of reading. The frill
+of lace in her net dress needed to be changed . . . such a bore having to
+leave your maid behind. She moved to the small, black-lacquered table
+where her work-box stood and leaned on it for a moment, watching the dim
+reflection of her pointed white fingers in the glistening surface of the
+wood. They did not look like Marise's brown, uncared-for hands. She
+opened the inlaid box and took from it the thimble which she had bought
+in Siena, the little antique masterpiece of North Italian gold-work.
+What a fulfilment of oneself it was to make life beautiful by
+beautifying all its implements. What a revelation it might be to Neale,
+how a woman could make everything she touched exquisite, to Neale who
+had only known Marise, subdued helplessly to the roughness of the rough
+things about her, Marise who had capitulated to America and surrendered
+to the ugliness of American life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But none of that, none of that! She was near the danger line again. She
+felt the flesh on her face begin to grow tense, and with her beautiful,
+delicate fore-fingers she smoothed her eyebrows into relaxed calm again.
+
+She must keep herself occupied, incessantly; that was the only thing
+possible. She had been about to have recourse to the old, old
+tranquillizer of women, the setting of fine stitches. She would fix her
+mind on that . . . a frill of lace for the net dress . . . which lace? She
+lifted the cover from the long, satin-covered box and fingered over the
+laces in it, forcing herself to feel the suitable reaction to their
+differing physiognomies, to admire the robustness of the
+Carrick-Macross, the boldness of design of the Argentan, the complicated
+fineness of the English Point. She decided, as harmonizing best with the
+temperament of the net dress, on Malines, a strip of this perfect,
+first-Napoleon Malines. What an aristocratic lace it was, with its
+cobwebby _fond-de-neige_ background and its fourpetaled flowers in the
+scrolls. Americans were barbarians indeed that Malines was so little
+known; in fact hardly recognized at all. Most Americans would probably
+take this priceless creation in her hand for something bought at a
+ten-cent store, because of its simplicity and classic reticence of
+design. They always wanted, as they would say themselves, something more
+to show for their money. Their only idea of "real lace," as they
+vulgarly called it (as if anything could be lace that wasn't real), was
+that showy, awful Brussels, manufactured for exportation, which was sold
+in those terrible tourists' shops in Belgium, with the sprawling
+patterns made out of coarse braid and appliquéd on, not an organic part
+of the life of the design.
+
+She stopped her work for a moment to look more closely at the filmy lace
+in her hand, to note if the mesh of the réseau were circular or
+hexagonal. She fancied that she was the only American woman of her
+acquaintance who knew the difference, who had the least culture in the
+matter of lace . . . except Marise, of course, and it was positively worse
+for Marise to have been initiated and then turn back to commonness, than
+for those other well-meaning, Philistine American women who were at
+least innocently ignorant. Having known the exquisite lore of lace, how
+could Marise have let it and all the rest of the lore of civilization
+drop for these coarse occupations of hers, now? How could she have let
+life coarsen her, as it had, how could she have fallen into such common
+ways, with her sun-browned hair, and her roughened hands, and her
+inexactly adjusted dresses, and the fatal middle-aged lines beginning to
+show from the corner of the ear down into the neck, and not an effort
+made to stop them. But as to wrinkles, of course a woman as unrestrained
+as Marise was bound to get them early. She had never learned the ABC of
+woman's wisdom, the steady cult of self-care, self-beautifying,
+self-refining. How long would it be before Neale . . .
+
+No! None of that! She must get back to impersonal thoughts. What was it
+she had selected as subject for consideration? It had been lace. What
+about lace? Lace . . . ? Her mind balked, openly rebellious. She could not
+make it think of lace again. She was in a panic, and cast about her for
+some strong defense . . . oh! just the thing . . . the new hat.
+
+She would try on the new hat which had just come from New York. She had
+been waiting for a leisurely moment, really to be able to put her
+attention on that.
+
+She opened the gaily printed round pasteboard box, and took out the
+creation. She put it on with care, low over her eyebrows, adjusting it
+carefully by feel, before she looked at herself to get the first
+impression. Then, hand-glass in hand, she began to study it seriously
+from various angles. When she was convinced that from every view-point
+her profile had the unlovely and inharmonious silhouette fashionable
+that summer, she drew a long breath of relief, and took it off gently,
+looking at it with pleasure. Nothing gives one such self-confidence, she
+reflected, as the certainty of having the right sort of hat. How much
+better "chic" was than beauty!
+
+With the hat still in her hand, her very eyes on it, she saw there
+before her, as plainly as though in a crystal ball, Marise's attitude as
+she had stood with Marsh that evening before at the far end of the
+garden. Her body drawn towards his, the poise of her head, all of her
+listening intently while he talked . . . one could see how he was
+dominating her. A man with such a personality as his, regularly hypnotic
+when he chose, and practised in handling women, he would be able to do
+anything he liked with an impressionable creature like Marise, who as a
+girl was always under the influence of something or other. It was
+evident that he could put any idea he liked into Marise's head just by
+looking at her hard enough. She had seen him do it . . . helped him do it,
+for that matter!
+
+And so Neale must have seen. Anybody could! And Neale was not raising a
+hand, nor so much as lifting an eyebrow, just letting things take their
+course.
+
+_What could that mean except that he would welcome_ . . .
+
+Oh Heavens! her pulse was hammering again. She sprang up and ran to the
+mirror. Yes, the mirror showed a face that scared her; haggard and
+pinched with a fierce desire.
+
+There were not only lines now, there was a hollow in the cheek . . . or
+was that a shadow? It made her look a thousand years old. Massage would
+do that no good! And she had no faith in any of those "flesh-foods."
+Perhaps she was underweight. The hideous strain and suspense of the last
+weeks had told on her. Perhaps she would better omit those morning
+exercises for a time, in this intense heat. Perhaps she would better
+take cream with her oatmeal again. Or perhaps cream of wheat would be
+better than oatmeal. How ghastly that made her look! But perhaps it was
+only a shadow. She could not summon courage enough to move and see.
+Finally she took up her hand-mirror, framed in creamy ivory, with a
+carved jade bead hanging from it by a green silk cord. She went to the
+window to get a better light on her face. She examined it, holding her
+breath; and drew a long, long sigh of respite and relief. It _had_ been
+only a shadow!
+
+But what a fright it had given her! Her heart was quivering yet. What
+unending vigilance it took to protect yourself from deep emotions. When
+it wasn't one, it was another, that sprang on you unawares.
+
+Another one _was_ there, ready to spring also, the suddenly conceived
+possibility, like an idea thrust into her mind from the outside, that
+there might be some active part she could play in what was going on in
+this house. People did sometimes. If some chance for this offered . . .
+you never could tell when . . . a word might be . . . perhaps something to
+turn Marise from Neale long enough to . . .
+
+She cast this idea off with shame for its crudeness. What vulgar raw
+things would come into your head when you let your mind roam idly . . .
+like cheap melodrama . . .
+
+She would try the Vedanta deep-breathing exercises this time to quiet
+herself; and after them, breathing in and out through one nostril, and
+thinking of the Infinite, as the Yogi had told her.
+
+She lay down flat on the bed for this, kicking off her quilted satin
+_mules_, and wriggling her toes loose in their lace-like silk stockings.
+She would lie on her back, look up at the ceiling, and fix her mind on
+the movement up and down of her navel in breathing, as the Vedanta
+priest recommended to quiet the spirit. Perhaps she could even say,
+
+"Om . . . om . . . om . . ."
+
+as they did.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No, no she couldn't. She still had vestiges of that stupid, gross
+Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness clinging to her. But she would outgrow
+them, yet.
+
+She lay there quiet and breathed slowly, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
+And into her mind there slowly slid a cypress-shaded walk with Rome far
+below on one side, and a sun-ripened, golden, old wall on the other. She
+stood there with Marise, both so young, so young! And down the path
+towards them came a tall figure, with a bold clear face, a tender
+full-lipped mouth, and eyes that both smiled and were steady.
+
+Helplessly she watched him come, groaning in spirit at what she knew
+would happen; but she could not escape till the ache in her throat
+swelled and broke, as she saw that his eyes were for Marise and his
+words, and all of his very self for which she . . .
+
+So many years . . . so many years . . . with so much else in the
+world . . . not to have been able to cure that one ache . . . and she did
+not want to suffer . . . she wanted to be at rest, and have what she
+needed. The tears rose brimming to her eyes, and ran down on each side of
+her face to the pillow. Poor Eugenia! Poor Eugenia!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was almost broken this time, but not entirely. There was some fight
+left in her. She got up from the bed, clenched her hands tightly, and
+stood in the middle of the floor, gathering herself together.
+
+Down with it! Down! Down! Just now, at this time, when such an utterly
+unexpected dawn of a possible escape . . . to give way again.
+
+She thought suddenly, "Suppose I give up the New-Thought way, always
+distracting your attention to something else, always suppressing your
+desire, resisting the pull you want to yield to. Suppose I try the Freud
+way, bringing the desire up boldly, letting yourself go, unresisting."
+It was worth trying.
+
+She sat down in a chair, her elbows on the dressing-table, and let
+herself go, gorgeously, wholly, epically, as she had been longing to
+ever since she had first intercepted that magnetic interchange of looks
+between Marsh and Marise, the day after her arrival, the day of the
+picnic-supper in that stupid old woman's garden. That was when she had
+first known that something was up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Why, how easy it was to let yourself go! They were right, the Freudians,
+it was the natural thing to do, you did yourself a violence when you
+refused to. It was like sailing off above the clouds on familiar wings,
+although it was the first time she had tried them. . . . Marise would fall
+wholly under Marsh's spell, would run away and be divorced. Neale would
+never raise a hand against her doing this. Eugenia saw from his aloof
+attitude that it was nothing to him one way or the other. Any man who
+cared for his wife would fight for her, of course.
+
+And it was so manifestly the best thing for Marise too, to have a very
+wealthy man looking out for her, that there could be no disturbing
+reflexes of regret or remorse for anybody to disturb the perfection of
+this fore-ordained adjustment to the Infinite. Then with the children
+away at school for all the year, except a week or two with their father
+. . . fine, modern, perfect schools, the kind where the children were
+always out of doors, Florida in winter and New England hills in summer.
+Those schools were horribly expensive . . . what was all her money for?
+. . . but they had the best class of wealthy children, carefully selected
+for their social position, and the teachers were so well paid that of
+course they did their jobs better than parents.
+
+Then Neale, freed from slavery to those insufferable children, released
+from the ignoble, grinding narrowness of this petty manufacturing
+business, free to roam the world as she knew he had always longed to
+do . . . what a life they could have . . . India with Neale . . .
+China . . . Paris . . . they would avoid Rome perhaps because of
+unwelcome memories . . . Norway in summer-time. Think of seeing Neale
+fishing a Norway salmon brook . . . she and Neale on a steamer
+together . . . together . . .
+
+She caught sight of her face in the mirror . . . that radiant, smiling,
+triumphant, _young_ face, hers!
+
+Yes, the Freud way was the best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+THE SOUL OF NELLY POWERS
+
+July 20.
+
+The big pine was good for one thing, anyhow, if it did keep the house as
+dark as a cellar with the black shade it made. The side-porch was nice
+and cool even on a hot summer day, just right for making butter. If it
+wasn't for the horrid pitch-piny smell the tree wouldn't be so bad. The
+churning was getting along fine too. The dasher was beginning to go the
+blob-blob way that showed in a minute or two the butter would be there.
+It had been a real good idea to get up early and get the work out of the
+way so that the churning could be done before it got so hot. A
+thunder-storm was coming, too, probably. You could feel it in the air.
+There, perhaps the butter had come, now. Nelly pushed the dasher down
+slowly and drew it back with care, turning her ear to listen expertly to
+the sound it made. No, not yet, there wasn't that watery splash yet that
+came after it had separated.
+
+She went on with the regular rhythmic motion, her eyes fixed dreamily on
+the round hole in the cover of the churn, through which the
+dasher-handle went up and down and which was now rimmed with thick
+yellow cream. She loved to churn, Nelly thought. She loved to have milk
+to look out for, anyhow, from the time it came in from the barn, warm
+and foamy and sweet-smelling, till the time when she had taken off the
+thick, sour cream, like shammy-skin, and then poured the loppered milk
+spatteringly into the pigs' trough. She liked seeing how the pigs loved
+it, sucking it up, their eyes half shut because it tasted so good. There
+wasn't anything that was better than giving people or animals what they
+liked to eat. It made her feel good all over to throw corn to the hens
+and see how they scrabbled for it. She just loved to get a bag of stick
+candy at the store, when she went to town, and see how Addie and Ralph
+and little 'Gene jumped up and down when they saw it.
+
+And then it was so nice to be fore-handed and get the churning out of
+the way before noon. She would have time this afternoon after the dishes
+were done, to sit right down with that sprigged calico dress for little
+Addie. She could get the seams all run up on the machine before
+supper-time, and have the hand-work, buttonholes and finishing, for
+pick-up work for odd minutes. She just loved to sit and sew, in a room
+all nice and picked up, and know the house-work was done.
+
+That would be a _real_ pretty dress, she thought, with the pink sprigs
+and the pink feather-stitching in mercerized cotton she was going to put
+on it. Addie would look sweet in it. And if it was washed careful and
+dried in the shade it wouldn't fade so much. It was a good bright pink
+to start with. Only Addie ought to have a new hat to wear with it. A
+white straw with pink flowers on it. But that would cost a couple of
+dollars, anyhow, everything was so dear now. Oh well, 'Gene would let
+her buy it. 'Gene would let her do most anything.
+
+She thought with pity of her sisters, mill-hands in West Adams still, or
+married to mill-hands, men who got drunk on the sly and didn't work
+regular, and wanted a full half of all they made for themselves. 'Gene
+and his mother were always scolding about the money they could have had
+if they'd kept that wood-land on the mountain. They'd ought to ha' been
+really poor the way she had been, so's you didn't know where the next
+meal was coming from, or how the rent was going to be paid. She had been
+awfully lucky to get 'Gene, who let her decide how much money ought to
+be spent on the children's clothes and hers, and never said a thing, or
+scolded or bothered. He was kind of _funny_, 'Gene was, always so sober
+and solemn, and it was a _sort_ of bother to have him so crazy about her
+still. That had been all right when they were engaged, and first
+married. She had liked it all right then, although it always seemed sort
+of foolish to her. But men _were_ that way! Only now, when there were
+three children and another one coming, and the house to be kept nice,
+and the work done up right, and the farmwork and everything going so
+good, and so much on her mind, why, it seemed as though they'd ought to
+have other things to think about beside kissings and huggings. Not that
+'Gene didn't do his share of the work. He was a fine farmer, as good as
+anybody in the valley. But he never could settle down, and be
+comfortable and quiet with her, like it was natural for old married
+folks to do. If she went by him, close, so her arm touched him, why
+then, if nobody was there he'd grab at her and kiss her and rumple her
+hair, and set her all back in her work. With all she had to do and think
+of, and she did her work as good as anybody if she did say it who
+shouldn't, she had her day planned before she turned her feet out of bed
+in the morning. And she liked to have things go the way she planned
+them. She _liked_ 'Gene all right, only she had her work to get done.
+
+She churned meditatively, looking off towards the mountain where the
+Eagle Rocks heaved themselves up stiff and straight and high. 'Gene's
+mother came to the door, asked if the butter was coming all right,
+looked at her, and said, "My! Nelly, you get better looking every day
+you live," and went back to her bread-baking.
+
+Nelly went on with her reflections about 'Gene. It was more than just
+that he bothered her and put her back with her work. She really didn't
+think it was just exactly nice and refined to be so crazy about anybody
+as that. Well, there was a streak in the Powerses that wasn't refined.
+'Gene's mother! gracious! When she got going, laughing and carrying-on,
+what wouldn't she say, right out before anybody! And dancing still like
+a young girl! And that hateful old Mrs. Hewitt, just after they'd moved
+back to Ashley, didn't she have to go and tell her about 'Gene's being
+born too soon after his father and mother were married? 'Gene took it
+from his mother she supposed; he wa'an't to blame, really. But she hoped
+Addie and Ralph would be _like_ her folks. Not but what the Powerses
+were good-hearted enough. 'Gene was a good man, if he was queer, and an
+awful good papa to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. None of her sisters
+had got a man half so good. That sprigged dress would look good with
+feather-stitching around the hem, too. Why hadn't she thought of that
+before? She hadn't got enough mercerized thread in the house, she didn't
+believe, to do it all; and it was such a nuisance to run out of the
+thread you had to have, and nobody going to the village for goodness
+knows when, with the farmwork behind the way it was, on account of the
+rains.
+
+She shifted her position and happened to bring one of her feet into
+view. Without disturbing a single beat of the regular rhythm of the
+dasher, she tilted her head to look at it with approbation. If there was
+one thing she was particular about it was her shoes. She took such
+comfort in having them nice. They could say what they pleased, folks
+could, but high heels _suited_ her feet. Maybe some folks, that had
+great broad feet like that old Indian Touclé, felt better in those
+awful, sloppy old gunboats they called "Common-sense shoes," but _she_
+didn't! It would make her sick to wear them! How they did look! Was
+there anything so pretty, anyhow, as a fine-leather shoe with a nice
+pointed toe, and a pretty, curved-in heel? It made you feel refined, and
+as good as anybody, even if you had on a calico dress with it. That was
+another nice thing about 'Gene, how he'd stand up for her about wearing
+the kind of shoes she wanted. Let anybody start to pick on her about it,
+if 'twas his own mother, he'd shut 'em up short, and say Nelly could
+wear what she liked he guessed. Even when the doctor had said so strict
+that she hadn't ought to wear them in the time before the babies came,
+'Gene never said a word, when he saw her doing it.
+
+There, the butter was just almost there. She could hear the buttermilk
+begin to swash! She turned her head to call to her mother-in-law to
+bring a pitcher for the buttermilk, when a sound of galloping hoofs
+echoed from the road. Nelly frowned, released her hold on the dasher,
+listened an instant, and ran into the house. She went right upstairs to
+her room as provoked as she could be. Well, she would make the bed and
+do the room-work anyhow, so's not to waste _all_ that time. She'd be
+that much ahead, anyhow. And as soon as Frank had finished chinning with
+Mother Powers, and had gone, she'd go back and finish her churning. She
+felt mad all through at the thought of that cream left at just the wrong
+minute, just as it was separating. Suppose Frank hung round and _hung_
+around, the way he did often, and the sun got higher and the cream got
+too warm, and she'd have to put in ice, and go down cellar with it, and
+fuss over it all the rest of the day? She was furious and thumped the
+pillows hard, with her doubled-up fist. But if she went down, Frank'd
+hang around worse, and talk so foolish she'd want to slap him. He wa'n't
+more'n half-witted, sometimes, she thought. What was the _matter_ with
+men, anyhow? They didn't seem to have as much sense as so many calves!
+You'd think Frank would think up something better to do than to bother
+the life out of busy folks, sprawling around all over creation the way
+he did. But she never had any luck! Before Frank it had been that old
+Mrs. Hewitt, nosing around to see what she could pick fault with in a
+person's housekeeping, looking under the sink if you left her alone in
+the kitchen for a minute, and opening your dresser drawers right before
+your face and eyes. Well, Frank was getting to be most as much of a
+nuisance. He didn't peek and snoop the way Mrs. Hewitt did, but he
+_bothered_; and he was getting so impudent, too! He had the big-head
+because he was the best dancer in the valley, that was what was the
+matter with him, and he knew she liked to dance with him. Well, she did.
+But she would like to dance with anybody who danced good. If 'Gene
+didn't clump so with his feet, she'd love to dance with him. And Frank
+needn't think he was so much either. That city man who was staying with
+the old man next to the Crittendens was just as good a dancer as Frank,
+just exactly as light on his feet. She didn't like him a bit. She
+thought he was just plain fresh, the way he told Frank to go on dancing
+with her. What was it to him! But she'd dance with him just the same, if
+she got the chance. How she just loved to dance! Something seemed to get
+into her, when the music struck up. She hardly knew what she was doing,
+felt as though she was floating around on that thick, soft moss you
+walked on when you went blue-berrying on the Burning above the Eagle
+Rocks . . . all springly. . . . If you could only dance by yourself,
+without having to bother with partners, that was what would be nice.
+
+She stepped to the door to listen, and heard 'Gene's mother cackling
+away like an old hen. How she would carry on, with anybody that came
+along! She hadn't never settled down, not a bit really, for all she had
+been married and was a widow and was old. It wa'n't nice to be so lively
+as that, at her age. But she _wasn't_ nice, Mother Powers wasn't, for
+all she was good to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. Nelly liked nice
+people, she thought, as she went back to shake the rag rugs out of the
+window; refined ladies like Mrs. Bayweather, the minister's wife. That
+was the way _she_ wanted to be, and have little Addie grow up. She
+lingered at the window a moment looking up at the thick dark branches of
+the big pine. How horrid it was to have that great tree so close to the
+house! It shaded the bedroom so that there was a musty smell no matter
+how much it was aired. And the needles dropped down so messy too, and
+spoiled the grass.
+
+Frank's voice came up the stairs, bold, laughing, "Nelly, Nelly, come
+down here a minute. I want to ask you something!"
+
+"I can't," she called back. Didn't he have the nerve!
+
+"Why can't you?" the skeptical question came from halfway up the stairs.
+"I saw you on the side-porch, just as I came up."
+
+Nelly cast about for an excuse. Of course you had to have some _reason_
+for saying you couldn't see a neighbor who came in. She had an
+inspiration. "I'm washing my hair," she called back, taking out the
+hair-pins hastily, as she spoke. The great coils came tumbling down on
+her shoulders. She soused them in the water pitcher, and went to the
+door, opening it a crack, tipping her head forward so that the water
+streamed on the floor. "Can't you ask Mother Powers for whatever it is?"
+she said impatiently. She wished as she spoke that she could ever speak
+right out sharp and scratchy the way other people did. She was too easy,
+that was the trouble.
+
+"Well," said Frank, astonished, "you be, for a fact."
+
+He went back down the stairs, and Nelly shut the door. She was hot all
+over with impatience about that butter. When it wasn't one thing to keep
+her from her work, it was another. Her hair all wet now. And such a job
+to dry it!
+
+She heard voices in the kitchen, and the screen-door open. Thank
+goodness, Frank was going away! Oh my! Maybe he was going to the
+village! He could bring some of the pink mercerized cotton on his way
+back. He might as well be of _some_ use in the world. She thrust her
+head out of the window. "Frank, Frank, wait a minute!" she called. She
+ran back to her work-basket, cut a length from a spool of thread, wound
+it around a bit of paper, and went again to the window. "Say, Frank, get
+me two spools of cotton to match that, will you, at Warner and Hardy's."
+
+He rode his horse past the big pine, under her window, and stood up in
+the stirrups, looking up boldly at her, her hair in thick wet curls
+about her face. "I'd do anything for you!" he said jokingly, catching
+at the paper she threw down to him.
+
+She slammed the window down hard. How provoking he was! But anyhow she
+would have enough thread to feather-stitch that hem. She'd got that much
+out of him. The thought made up to her for some of the annoyance of the
+morning. She put a towel around her shoulders under her wet hair, and
+waited till he was actually out of sight around the bend of the road. It
+seemed to her that she saw something stir in the long grass in the
+meadow there. Could the woodchucks be getting so close to the house as
+that? She'd have to tie Towser up by her lettuce, nights, if they were.
+
+Gracious, there it was thundering, off behind the Rocks! She'd have to
+hustle, if she got the butter done before the storm came. When Frank had
+really disappeared, she ran downstairs, and rushed out to her churn. She
+felt of it anxiously, her face clearing to note that it seemed no warmer
+than when she had left it. Maybe it was all right still. She began to
+plunge the dasher up and down. Well, it had gone back some, she could
+tell by the feel, but not so much, she guessed, but what she could make
+it come all right.
+
+As she churned, she thought again of Frank Warner. This was the limit!
+He got so on her nerves, she declared to herself she didn't care if he
+_never_ danced with her again. She wished she had more spunk, like some
+girls, and could just send him packing. But she never could think of any
+sharp things to say to folks, in time. She was too easy, she knew that,
+always had been. Look how long she had put up with Mrs. Hewitt's
+snooping around. And then in the end she had got cold feet and had had
+to sick 'Gene on to her, to tell her they didn't want her sitting around
+all the time and sponging off them at meal-times.
+
+But somehow she didn't want to ask 'Gene to speak to Frank that way. She
+was afraid somehow it would get 'Gene excited. Mostly he was so still,
+and then all of a sudden he'd flare up and she never could see a thing
+to make him then more than any time. The best thing to do with Gene was
+to keep him quiet, just as much as she could, not do anything to get him
+started. That was why she never went close up to him or put her arms
+around his neck of her own accord. She'd _like_ to pet him and make over
+him, the way she did over the children, but it always seemed to get him
+so stirred up and everything. Men were funny, anyhow! She often had
+thought how nice it would be if 'Gene could only be another woman. They
+could have such good times together.
+
+Why, here was 'Gene himself come in from cultivating corn right in the
+middle of the morning. Maybe he wanted a drink. He came up on the porch,
+without looking at her and went into the house. How heavy he walked. But
+then he always did. That was the trouble with his dancing. You had to
+step light, to be a good dancer.
+
+There was a crack of thunder again, nearer than the first one. She heard
+him ask his mother, "Frank Warner been here?"
+
+And Mother Powers say, "Yes, he come in to ask if we could loan him our
+compass. He's going to go up tomorrow in the Eagle Rock woods to run out
+the line between the Warner and the Benson woodlots. The Warners have
+sold the popple on theirs to the Crittenden mill, and Frank says the
+blazes are all barked over, they're so old."
+
+Oh goody! thought Nelly, there the butter was, come all at once. The
+buttermilk was splashing like water. Yes, even there around the hole you
+could see the little yellow specks. Well, she needn't have got so
+provoked, after all. That was fine. Now she could get at that sprigged
+dress for Addie, after all, this afternoon.
+
+'Gene came out on the porch again. She looked at him and smiled. She
+felt very happy and relieved that the butter had come so that she could
+finish working it over before noon.
+
+'Gene glowered at her smiling face and at her hair curling and shining
+all down her back. How cross he looked! Oh bother! Excited too. Well,
+what could the matter be, _now_? She should think any man would be
+satisfied to come in, right in the middle of the morning like that,
+without any warning, and find his house as spick and span as a pin, and
+the butter churned and half the day's work out of the way. She'd like to
+know what more he wanted? Who else could do any better? Oh bother! How
+queer men were!
+
+Yes, it would really be lots nicer if there were only women and children
+in the world. Gracious! how that lightning made her jump! The storm had
+got there quicker'n she'd thought. But the butter had come, so it was
+all right.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+BEFORE THE DAWN
+
+July 21.
+
+Neale had lain so long with his eyes on the place where the window ought
+to be, that finally he was half persuaded he could see it, a faintly
+paler square against the black of the room. Very soon dawn would come in
+that window, and another day would begin.
+
+At the thought the muscles of his forearms contracted, drawing his
+fingers into rigidly clenched fists, and for a moment he did not
+breathe.
+
+Then he conquered it again; threw off the worst of the pain that had
+sprung upon him when he had wakened suddenly, hours before, with the
+fear at last there before him, visible in the darkness.
+
+What was this like? Where before had he endured this eternity of
+waiting? Yes, it was in France, the night when they waited for the
+attack to break, every man haggard with the tension, from dark till just
+before dawn.
+
+He lay still, feeling Marise's breathing faintly stirring the bed.
+
+There in France it had been a strain almost beyond human power to keep
+from rushing out of the trenches with bayonets fixed, to meet the
+threatened danger, to beat it back, to conquer it, or to die and escape
+the suspense. Now there was the same strain. He had the weapons in his
+hands, weapons of passion, and indignation and entreaty and reproach,
+against which Marise would not stand for a moment.
+
+But there in France that would have meant possibly an insignificant
+local success and the greater victory all along the line imperiled. And
+here that was true again. There hadn't been anything to do then but
+wait. There was nothing to do now but wait.
+
+Yes, but it was harder to wait now! There in France they had at least
+known that finally the suspense would end in the fury of combat. They
+would have the chance to resist, to conquer, to impose their will. And
+now there was no active part for him. He must wait on, and hold back his
+hand from the attack which would give him the appearance of victory, and
+which would mean everlasting defeat for him, for Marise, the death and
+ruin of what they had tried to be for each other, to build up out of
+their life together.
+
+What did he mean by that? Wasn't he fooling himself with words, with
+priggish phrases? It was so easy to do that. And he was so mortally
+fatigued with this struggle in the dark. He had been thinking about it
+so deeply, so desperately, ever since he had faced it there, squarely,
+those endless black hours ago. He might have lost his way.
+
+Now, once more, slowly, step by step, once more over the terrible road
+that led him here. Perhaps there was another way he had overlooked.
+Perhaps this time it would lead him to something less intolerable. Quiet
+now, steady, all that he had of courage and honesty and knowledge of
+Marise, and of life, and of himself, put to work.
+
+His brain began again to plod up the treadmill it had labored on for so
+many black hours. He set himself to get it clear in his own mind,
+forcing those fierce, burning thoughts of his into words, as if he had
+been speaking aloud. "Now, now here I am. What must I do? What ought I
+to do? There must be some answer if I can only think clearly, feel
+aright. _What is it that I want?_"
+
+The answer burst from him, as though in a cry of torture from his brain,
+his body, his passion, his soul, "_I want Marise!_"
+
+And at this expression of overmastering desire, memory flooded his mind
+with a stream of unforgotten pictures of their life together; Marise
+facing him at the breakfast table; Marise walking with him in the autumn
+woods; Marise with Paul a baby in her arms; Marise, almost unknown then,
+the flame-like divinity of her soul only guessed-at, looking into his
+eyes as the Campagna faded into darkness below them. "What was it she
+asked me then? Whether I knew the way across the dark plain? I was a
+confident young fool then. I was sure I could find the way, _with her_.
+I've been thinking all these years that we were finding it, step by step
+. . . till now. And now, what is it I am afraid of? I'm afraid she finds
+herself cramped, wants a fuller existence, regrets . . . no, that's
+dodging. There's no use lying to myself. I'm afraid that Marise is in
+love with Vincent Marsh. Good God! no! It can't be that . . . not Marise!
+This is all nonsense. This is something left over from sleep and a bad
+dream. I must wake up. I must wake up and find it not true."
+
+He lay perfectly still, his fists clenched tight, perspiration standing
+out on his rigid body. Then sternly he forced his mind to go forward
+again, step by step.
+
+"I suppose it's possible. Other women have. There's a lot in her that
+must be starved here. I may not be enough for her. She was so young
+then. She has grown so greatly. What right have I to try to hold her if
+she is tired of it all, needs something else?"
+
+He hesitated, shrinking back as from fire, from the answer he knew he
+must give. At last he forced it out, "I haven't any right. I don't want
+her to stay if she wants to go. I want Marise. But even more I want her
+to be happy."
+
+The thought, with all its implications, terrified him like a
+death-sentence, but he repeated it grimly, pressing it home fiercely, "I
+want her to be happy."
+
+He realized where this thought would lead him, and in a panic wildly
+fought against going on. He had tried to hold himself resolute and
+steady, but he was nothing now save a flame of resentment. "Happy! She
+won't be happy that way! She can't love that man! She's being carried
+away by that damnable sensibility of hers. It would be the most hideous,
+insane mistake. What am I thinking of . . . all these _words_! What I must
+do is to keep her from ruining her life."
+
+On the heels of this outcry, there glided in insinuatingly a soft-spoken
+crowd of tempting, seductive possibilities. Marise was so sensitive, so
+impressionable, so easily moved, so defenseless when her emotions were
+aroused. Hadn't he the right, the duty, he who knew her better than
+anyone else, to protect her against herself? Wasn't he deceiving himself
+by fantastic notions? It would be so easy to act the ardent, passionate
+young lover again . . . but when had he ever "acted" anything for Marise!
+No matter, no matter, this was life or death; what was a lie when life
+and death hung in the balance? He could play on her devotion to the
+children, throw all the weight of his personality, work on her emotions.
+That was what people did to gain their point. Everybody did it. And he
+could win if he did. He could hold her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Like the solemn tolling of a great bell there rang, through all this
+hurried, despairing clutching at the endurable and lesser, a call to the
+great and intolerable. The immensity of his love for Marise loomed up,
+far greater than he; and before that sacred thing he hung his head, and
+felt his heart breaking.
+
+"No, that won't do. Not when it is Marise who is in question. The best,
+the very best I can conceive is what I must give to Marise. A cage could
+not hold her, not anything but her body, and to force her decision would
+be to make a cage. No, I mustn't use the children either. They are hers
+as much as mine. If all is not right between us, what would it avail
+them to be with us? They must take what life brings them, like the rest
+of us. If the years Marise and I have passed together, if what we have
+been to each other, and are to each other, if that is not enough, then
+nothing is enough. That would be a trick to play on her . . . to use my
+knowledge of her vulnerable points to win. That is not what I want. What
+_do_ I want? I want Marise to be happy."
+
+He had advanced a step since the last time he had told himself this, for
+now he said it with a dreadful calm, his heart aching but not faltering.
+
+But he could go no further. There were limits to what he could endure.
+He fell into a trance-like state of passivity, his body and mind
+exhausted.
+
+As he lay thus, fallen and prostrate, there soared up out of a part of
+him that was neither mind nor body, but was nevertheless himself,
+something swift and beautiful and living, something great enough at last
+to measure its greatness with the immensity of his love for Marise.
+
+What was it?
+
+It was this . . . for a moment he had it all clear, as though he had died
+and it were something told him in another world . . . he did not want
+Marise for himself; he did not even want her to be happy; he wanted her
+to be herself, to be all that Marise could ever grow to be, he wanted
+her to attain her full stature so far as any human being could do this
+in this life.
+
+And to do that she must be free.
+
+For an instant he looked full at this, his heart flooded with glory. And
+then the light went out.
+
+He was there in the blackness again, unhappy beyond any suffering he had
+thought he could bear.
+
+He lay still, feeling Marise beside him, the slow, quiet rhythm of her
+breathing. Was she awake or sleeping? What would happen if he should
+allow the fear and suffering which racked him to become articulate? If
+he should cry out to her, she would not turn away. He knew Marise. She
+would never turn away from fear and suffering. "But I can't do that. I
+won't work on her sympathy. I've promised to be true to what's deepest
+and truest in us both. I have been, by God! and I will be. If our
+married life has been worth anything, it's because we've both been free
+and honest . . . true with one another. This is her ordeal. She must act
+for herself. Better die than use my strength to force her against her
+own nature. If I decide . . . no matter how sure I am I'm right . . . it
+won't be her decision. Nothing would be decided. I must go on just as
+before . . ." he groaned, "that will take all the strength I have."
+
+It was clear to him now; the only endurable future for them, such as
+they were to each other, would come from Marise's acting with her own
+strength on her own decision. By all that was sacred, he would never by
+word or act hamper that decision. He would be himself, honestly. Marise
+ought to know what that self was.
+
+He had thought that this resolve would bring to him another of these
+terrible racking instants of anguish, but instead there came almost a
+calm upon him, as though the pain had passed and left him in peace, or
+as though a quiet light had shone out in the darkness. Perhaps the dawn
+had come. No, the square of the window was still only faintly felt in
+the blacker mass of the silent room.
+
+Then he knew why the pain had left him. It had been driven away by the
+certainty that there was a worse fear than any he knew, or ever would
+know. No matter what risk or catastrophe lay before them, Marise would
+never look at him out her clear eyes and act a thing that was not true.
+Marise would always be Marise. Why then, whatever came he could bear it.
+
+Life might be cruel and pitiless, but it was not base, when it had among
+its gifts such a certainty as that, rock-like under his feet, bearing
+him up in his pain.
+
+He moved to her in the bed, felt for her hand and put it gently to his
+lips.
+
+Then, holding it in his, on his breast, he turned his eyes towards the
+window, waiting for the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE
+
+
+July 2.
+
+That early morning talk with Mr. Welles had left Marise trembling with
+helpless sorrow and exasperation. She sat on the bench where he had left
+her, and felt the nervous tears stinging her eyes. When she looked up
+and saw Vincent Marsh was standing there, extremely pale, as visibly
+shaken as she, as visibly little in control of himself, she burst out,
+"So you too know. He has just told me that he is really going. The very
+date is set. His cousin has a room in her boarding house engaged for
+him. He's going to work as a clerk to pay for the extra expenses of the
+life there. _Oh!_" She struck her hand on the back of the bench.
+
+Vincent Marsh sat down beside her, his eyes on hers. He said in a
+curious, low voice, rough and husky, "I wish you would do something for
+me. I wish you would think with all your might, deeply, just why you are
+so opposed to his doing what evidently seems to him a very saintly and
+heroic action; and then tell me why it is."
+
+Marise felt this as a challenge. He was always challenging everything.
+This time she was more than ready. "I don't need any time to think of
+reasons!" she cried. "It's obvious to anyone with any sense for the
+reality of human values, who isn't fooled by threadbare old words. It's
+one of those wasteful, futile, exasperating tricks people play on
+themselves in the name of 'duty.' He's throwing away something real and
+true, something that could add to the richness of human life, he's
+throwing away the happiness that comes of living as suits his nature,
+and so creating a harmony that enriches everybody who touches him. And
+what's he doing it for? To satisfy a morbid need for self-sacrifice.
+He's going to do harm, in all probability, mix up a situation already
+complicated beyond solution, and why is he? So that he can indulge
+himself in the perverse pleasure of the rasp of a hair-shirt. He doesn't
+really use his intelligence to think, to keep a true sense of
+proportions; he takes an outworn and false old ideal of self-sacrifice,
+and uses it not to do anybody any real good, but to put a martyr's crown
+on his head."
+
+She became conscious that her words were having a singular effect upon
+Vincent. A dark flush had come over all his face. His gaze on her was
+extraordinary in its intentness, in its eagerness, in its fierceness.
+She stopped suddenly, as though he had broken in on what she was saying.
+
+He did not stir from his place, but to her he seemed to tower taller.
+Into his dark, intent face came an exultant look of power and authority
+which fell on her like a hot wind. With a loud knocking of her heart she
+knew. Before he spoke, she knew what he would say. And he saw that.
+
+He opened those burning lips and said in the same low voice, rough with
+its intensity, "You see what you have done. You have spoken for me. You
+have said at last what I have been silently and desperately calling out
+to you. You know what has happened. You have said it, it is obvious to
+anyone with any sense of human values. Make an end! Make an end! Come
+away from a position where only an outworn old ideal holds you to
+futility and waste. Come away where you will really live and know the
+fullness of life. Come away from that false notion of duty which makes
+you do for the children what you know is not best for them, only because
+it is the traditional thing to do, only because it gives you a martyr's
+crown to wear. I don't say anything now, as I would to any other woman
+in the world, as I would have said to you weeks ago before I knew all
+that you are . . . I don't say anything about the imbecility of keeping
+such a woman as you are here in this narrow, drab hole, this sordid
+prison . . . you born, if ever a human being was, to rich and warm and
+harmonious living! It is your birthright. Let me give it to you. All
+that, even that, a whole world of beauty and fullness waiting for you to
+create it to glorious being, all that is nothing compared to what has
+come to pass between us, you and me; compared to that other world of
+impassioned living existence that is waiting for you. Come away from the
+man who is nothing more to you than the house you live in . . . nothing
+but a habit."
+
+She started at this, moving out of the stony immobility in which she
+gazed at him, listened to him. She did not know that she had moved, was
+incapable of willing to do so. It had been a mere reflex start as though
+she had been struck. But at the sight of it, the flame in his eyes
+leaped up. "No, no, no!" he cried with an insistent triumph, "he is
+nothing more to you than a habit. And you are nothing more to him. You
+were right, on that evening when you shrank away from the sight of the
+place in Italy where in your ignorant youth you made the mistake of
+trying to join your life to his. There is not a breath you draw, not a
+turn of your head or body . . . I know them all . . . that does not prove
+that he is nothing to you now. I have seen you take a handkerchief from
+his pocket as you would take it from a bureau-drawer. I have seen him
+set you on one side, to pass through a door, as he would set a chair on
+one side. You don't even see him any more when you look at him, and he
+doesn't see you. Whatever there may have been between you, if there was
+ever anything real, it is dead now, dead and buried . . . and you the most
+living woman who ever wore flesh and blood! And I am a living man! You
+know, I don't need to say it, you know what happens when our looks meet.
+Our looks only! Life flares up like a torch in both of us. You know if I
+but brush against your skirt, how I cannot speak! You know how when our
+hands touch, every drop of blood in our two bodies burns! You are a
+grown woman. You know life as well as I do. You know what this means.
+You are no longer even a part of his life. You are all of mine. Look at
+me now."
+
+He flung out his hands, shaking uncontrollably. "Do you see how I show
+this, say this anywhere, tell this to you here, now, where anyone could
+hear me? I am not ashamed of it. It is not a thing to hide. It is a
+thing to glory in. It is the only honestly living thing in all our
+miserable human life, the passion of a man and a woman for each other.
+It is the only thing that moves us out of our cowardly lethargy of
+dead-and-alive egotism. The thing that is really base and false is to
+pretend that what is dead is still alive. Your marriage is dead. Your
+children do not need you as you pretend. Let yourself go in this flood
+that is sweeping us along. I had never thought to know it. I could fall
+down and worship you because you have shown it to me. But I will show it
+to you, that and the significance of what you will be when you are no
+longer smothered and starved. In all this scrawling ant-heap of
+humanity, there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live.
+And we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing,
+to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny. But
+we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the only
+truth. That . . . and you and I!"
+
+In the distance, someone called Marise's name. He thought she made a
+move, and said, leaning towards her, the heat of his body burning
+through to her arm where he touched her, "No, no, none of those trivial,
+foolish interruptions that tie you hand and foot, can tie us any longer.
+They have no real strength. They can't stand for an instant against
+something alive. All that rattles in your ears, that keeps you from
+knowing what you really are . . ."
+
+Someone was hurrying down the walk towards them, hidden by the hedge.
+Marise could not have turned her head if her life had hung on the
+action.
+
+Vincent looked straight at her, straight and deep and strong into her
+eyes, and for an instant his burning lips were pressed on hers. The
+contact was terrible, momentous.
+
+When he went on speaking, without haste, unafraid although the hurrying
+steps were almost there, she could scarcely hear his voice, although it
+was urgent and puissant as the impact of his eyes. "You can't get away
+from this now. It is here. It has been said. It lives between us, and
+you are not strong enough, no power on earth is strong enough, to put it
+down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then the outer world broke in on them, swept between them with an
+outcry. Someone was there, someone who drew short sobbing breaths, who
+caught at her and clung to her. It was Cousin Hetty's old Agnes . . . why
+in the world was she here? . . . and she was saying in a loud voice as
+though she had no control of it, "Oh, oh! Come quick! Come quick!"
+
+Marise stood up, carrying the old woman with her. She was entirely
+certain now that she was in a nightmare, from which she would presently
+awake, wet with cold sweat.
+
+"Come! Come!" cried the old woman, beating her hands on Marise's arm.
+"Perhaps it ain't too late. Perhaps you can do something."
+
+"What has happened?" asked Marise, making her voice sharp and imperative
+to pierce the other's agitation.
+
+"I don't know. I don't know," sobbed Agnes. "She didn't come down for
+breakfast. I went up to see . . . oh, go quick! Go quick!"
+
+She went down, half on the bench, half on the ground.
+
+Marise and Marsh stood for an instant, petrified.
+
+There was only the smallest part of Marise's consciousness which was
+alive to this. Most of it lay numbed and bewildered, still hearing, like
+a roll of thunder, the voice of Vincent Marsh.
+
+Then she turned. "Look out for her, will you," she said briefly. "No,
+don't come with me. I'll go by the back road. It's the quickest, but
+it's too narrow for a car. You drive to Ashley and bring the doctor in
+your car."
+
+She ran down the path and around the house to the road, not feeling the
+blinding heat of the sun. She ran along the dusty road, a few steps from
+the house before the turn into the narrow lane. She felt nothing at all
+but a great need for haste.
+
+As she ran, putting all her strength into her running, there were
+moments when she forgot why she was hurrying, where she was going, what
+had happened; but she did not slacken her pace. She was on the narrow
+back road now, in the dense shade of the pines below the Eagle Rocks. In
+five minutes she would be at Cousin Hetty's. That was where she was
+going.
+
+She was running more slowly now over the rough, uneven, stony road, and
+she was aware, more than of anything else, of a pain in her chest where
+she could not draw a long breath. It seemed to her that she must be now
+wholly in the bad dream, for she had the nightmare sensation of running
+with all her strength and not advancing at all. The somber, thick-set
+pines seemed to be implacably in the same place, no matter how she tried
+to pass them, to leave them behind, to hurry on. Everything else in the
+silent, breathless, midsummer forest was rooted immovably deep in the
+earth. She alone was killing herself with haste, and yet futilely . . .
+not able to get forward, not able to . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then, fit to turn her brain, the forest drew aside and showed her
+another nightmare figure, a man, far away to her right, running down the
+steep incline that sloped up to the Rocks. A man running as she had been
+wishing she could run, a powerful, roughly dressed man, rapt in a
+passion of headlong flight, that cast him down the rough slope, over the
+rocks, through the brambles, as though his flight were part of an
+endless fall.
+
+Marise stopped stock-still, shocked out of every sensation but the
+age-old woman's instinct of fear and concealment.
+
+The man plunged forward, not seeing her where she stood on the road
+across which he now burst, flinging himself out of the pines on one side
+and into the thicket of undergrowth on the other.
+
+Far from him as she was, Marise could hear, through the forest hush, the
+terrible sound of his breathing as he ran, as he stumbled, as he
+struggled to his feet, fighting crazily with the thick undergrowth.
+Those loud hoarse gasps . . . it was as though he were being choked to
+death by a hand on his throat.
+
+He was gone, down the slope towards the valley road. The leaves closed
+together behind him. The forest was impenetrably silent again. Marise
+knew who he was, then, recognized him for 'Gene Powers beyond any doubt.
+
+She felt a strange mixture of pity and scorn and envy. To be so
+primitive as that . . . to think, even for an instant's madness, that you
+could run away on your own two poor human feet from whatever life
+brought to you!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She herself was hurrying forward again. What was she going to? What had
+she left behind? The passage of the other runner had not taken a single
+moment's time. She was now at the path which led to Cousin Hetty's
+side-door.
+
+She darted along this, and found herself in the yard before the door,
+open as Agnes had left it when she rushed out for help.
+
+A tea-kettle on the kitchen-stove sang in a low murmur. The clock ticked
+loudly, wagging its pendulum back and forth. The cat, stretched at full
+length on the floor in a yellow square of sunlight, lifted a drowsy head
+and looked at her. There was a smell of freshly made coffee in the air.
+As she stood there for an instant till the whirling in her head should
+stop, a stick of wood in the fire broke and fell together.
+
+Marise went through into the dining-room where the table laid for
+breakfast stood in a quiet expectancy. The old house, well-kept and
+well-loved, wore a tranquil expression of permanence and security.
+
+But out in the dusky hail, the white stairs stood palely motioning up.
+There Marise felt a singular heavy coolness in the stagnant air. She
+went up the stairs, leaning on the balustrade, and found herself facing
+an open door.
+
+Beyond it, in a shuttered and shaded room, stood a still white bed. And
+on the bed, still and white and distant, lay something dead. It was not
+Cousin Hetty. That austere, cold face, proud and stern, was not Cousin
+Hetty's. It was her grandmother's, her father's, her uncle's face, whom
+Cousin Hetty had never at all resembled. It was the family shell which
+Cousin Hetty had for a time inhabited.
+
+Marise came forward and crossed the threshold. Immediately she was aware
+of a palpable change in the atmosphere. The room was densely filled with
+silence, which folded her about coldly. She sank down on a chair. She
+sat motionless, looking at what lay there so quiet, at the unimaginable
+emptiness and remoteness of that human countenance.
+
+This was the end. She had come to the end of her running and her haste
+and her effort to help. All the paltry agitations and sorrows, the
+strains and defeats and poor joys, they were all hurrying forward to
+meet this end.
+
+All the scruples, and sacrifices, and tearing asunder of human desires
+to make them fit words that were called ideals, all amounted to this
+same nothingness in the end.
+
+What was Cousin Hetty's life now, with its tiny inhibitions, its little
+passivities? The same nothingness it would have been, had she grasped
+boldly at life's realities and taken whatever she wanted.
+
+And all Cousin Hetty's mother's sacrifices for her, her mother's hopes
+for her, the slow transfusion of her mother's life to hers; that was all
+dead now, had been of no avail against this nothingness. Some day Elly
+would lie like that, and all that she had done for Elly, or could do for
+her, would be only a pinch of ashes. If she, if Cousin Hetty, if Cousin
+Hetty's mother, if Elly, if all of them, took hotly whatever the hours
+had to give, they could not more certainly be brought to nothingness and
+oblivion in the end. . . .
+
+Those dreams of her . . . being one with a great current, sweeping forward
+. . . what pitiful delusions! . . . There was nothing that swept forward.
+There were only futile storms of froth and excitement that whirled you
+about to no end, one after another. One died down and left you becalmed
+and stagnant, and another rose. And that would die down in its turn.
+Until at the end, shipwreck, and a sinking to this darkly silent abyss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A PRIMAEVAL HERITAGE
+
+
+July 21. Evening.
+
+Cousin Hetty lay coldly dead; and Marise felt herself blown upon by an
+icy breath that froze her numb. The doctor had come and gone, queerly,
+and bustlingly alive and full of talk and explanations; Agnes had come
+back and, silently weeping, had walked endlessly and aimlessly around
+the house, with a broom in her idle hand; one after another of the
+neighbors had come and gone, queerly alive as usual, they too, for all
+their hushed and awkward manners; Neale had come, seeming to feel that
+cold breath as little as the others.
+
+And now Neale was gone, after everything had been decided, all the
+incredibly multitudinous details that must be decided. The funeral was
+set for the day after tomorrow, and until then, everything in
+everybody's life was to stop stock-still, as a matter of course. Because
+Agnes was in terror of being left alone for an instant, Marise would not
+even leave the house until after the funeral, and one of the thousand
+petty unescapable details she and Neale had talked of in the hushed
+voice which the house imposed on all in it, was the decision as to which
+dress and hat were to be sent to her from the wardrobe at home.
+
+She was to stay there with Agnes, she, who was all the family old Cousin
+Hetty had left, for the last watch over what lay up there on the bed in
+her bedroom. Neale would look out for the children (there was no one
+else for the moment, Touclé was gone, Eugenia quite useless), would
+telegraph the few old friends who would care to know the news, would
+see Mr. Bayweather about the funeral, would telephone the man in West
+Ashley who dug graves, would do what was to be done outside; and she
+would do what was to be done inside, as now, when she sat on the stairs
+waiting in case the undertaker needed something.
+
+She was glad that the undertaker was only quiet, white-bearded old Mr.
+Hadley, who for so many, many years had given his silent services to the
+dead of Ashley that he had come to seem not quite a living figure
+himself, hushed and stilled by his association with everlasting
+stillness. Marise, cold and numbed with that icy breath upon her, knew
+now why the old undertaker was always silent and absent. A strange life
+he must have had. She had never thought of it till she had seen him come
+into that house, where she and Agnes waited for him, uncertain, abashed,
+not knowing what to do. Into how many such houses he must have gone,
+with that same quiet look of unsurprised acceptance of what everybody
+knew was coming sometime and nobody ever expected to come at all. How
+extraordinary that it had never occurred to her that Cousin Hetty, old
+as she was, would some day die. You never really believed that anybody
+in your own life was ever going to die, or change; any more than you
+really believed that you yourself were ever going to grow old, or
+change; or that the children were ever really going to grow up. That
+threadbare old phrase about the death of old people, "it always comes as
+a shock," that was true of all the inevitable things that happened in
+life which you saw happen to everyone else, and never believed would
+happen to you.
+
+This was the last tie with the past gone, the last person disappeared
+for whom she was still the little girl she felt herself now, the little
+girl who had lost her way and wanted someone to put her back in the
+path. She had a moment of very simple, sweet sorrow, sitting there alone
+in the hall, warm tears streaming down her cheeks and falling on her
+hands. Cousin Hetty gone, dear old Cousin Hetty, with her bright living
+eyes, and her love for all that was young. How much she owed her . . .
+those troubled years of her youth when Cousin Hetty and the old house
+were unfailing shelter. What shelter had she now?
+
+The pendulum of her mind swung back . . . of course this was silly
+traditional repeating of superstitious old words. There was no shelter;
+there could be none in this life. No one could show her the path,
+because there _was_ no path; and anyone who pretended to show it was
+only a charlatan who traded on moments of weakness like this.
+
+Mr. Hadley opened the door quietly and asked in that seldom-heard voice
+of his for a couple of soft, clean towels. Where did Cousin Hetty keep
+her towels? In the chest of drawers at the end of the hall. An odor of
+cloves came up spicily into the air as Marise opened the drawer. How
+like Cousin Hetty to have that instead of the faded, sentimental
+lavender. She had perhaps put those towels away there last night, with
+her busy, shaking old hands, so still now. All dead, the quaintness, the
+vitality, the zest in life, the new love for little Elly, all dead now,
+as though it had never been, availing nothing. There was nothing that
+did not die.
+
+She handed in the towels and sat down again on the stairs leaning her
+head against the wall. What time could it be? Was it still daylight? . . .
+No, there was a lamp lighted down there. What could she have been doing
+all day, she and Agnes and the doctor and Mr. Hadley? She wondered if
+the children were all right, and if Neale would remember, when he washed
+Mark's face, that there was a bruise on his temple where the swing-board
+had struck him. Was that only yesterday morning! Was it possible that it
+was only last night that she had lain awake in the darkness, trying to
+think, trying to know what she was feeling, burning with excitement, as
+one by one those boldly forward-thrusting movements came back to her
+from the time when he had cried out so angrily, "_They_ can't love her.
+They're not capable of it!" to the time when they had exchanged that
+long reckless gaze over Elly's head! And now there was the triumphant
+glory of security which had been in his kiss . . . why, that was this
+morning, only a few hours ago! Even through her cold numbed lassitude
+she shrank again before the flare-up of that excitement, and burned in
+it. She tried to put this behind her at once, to wait, like all the
+rest, till this truce should be over, and she should once more be back
+in that mêlée of agitation the thought of which turned her sick with
+confusion. She was not strong enough for life, if this was what it
+brought, these fierce, clawing passions that did not wait for your
+bidding to go or come, but left you as though you were dead and then
+pounced on you like tigers. She had not iron in her either to live
+ruthlessly, or to stamp out that upward leap of flame which meant the
+renewal of priceless youth and passion. Between these alternatives, she
+_could_ make no decision, she could not, it would tear her in pieces to
+do it.
+
+The pendulum swung back again, and all this went out, leaving her
+mortally tired. Agnes came to the foot of the stairs, a little,
+withered, stricken old figure, her apron at her eyes. From behind it she
+murmured humbly, between swallowing hard, that she had made some tea and
+there was bread and butter ready, and should she boil an egg?
+
+A good and healing pity came into Marise's heart. Poor old Agnes, it was
+the end of the world for her, of course. And how touching, how tragic,
+how unjust, the fate of dependents, to turn from one source of commands
+to another. She ran downstairs on tip-toe and put her arm around the old
+woman's shoulder. "I haven't said anything yet, Agnes," she told her,
+"because this has come on us so suddenly. But of course Mr. Crittenden
+and I will always look out for you. Cousin Hetty . . . you were her best
+friend."
+
+The old woman laid her head down on the other's shoulder and wept aloud.
+"I miss her so. I miss her so," she said over and over.
+
+"The thing to do for her," thought Marise, as she patted the thin
+heaving shoulders, "is to give her something to work at." Aloud she
+said, "Agnes, we must get the front room downstairs ready. Mr. Hadley
+wants to have Cousin Hetty brought down there. Before we eat we might as
+well get the larger pieces of furniture moved out."
+
+Agnes stood up, docilely submitting herself to the command, stopped
+crying, and went with Marise into the dim old room, in which nothing had
+been changed since the day, twenty years ago, when the furniture had
+been put back in place after Cousin Hetty's old mother had lain there,
+for the last time.
+
+The two women began to work, and almost at once Agnes was herself again,
+stepping about briskly, restored by the familiarity of being once more
+under the direction of another. They pulled out the long haircloth sofa,
+moved the spindle-legged old chairs into the dining-room, and carried
+out one by one the drawers from the high-boy in the corner. From one of
+these drawers a yellowed paper fell out. Marise picked it up and glanced
+at it. It was a letter dated 1851, the blank page of which had been used
+for a game of Consequences. The foolish incoherencies lay there in the
+faded ink just as they had been read out, bringing with them the
+laughter of those people, so long dead now, who had written them down in
+that pointed, old-fashioned handwriting. Marise stood looking at it
+while Agnes swept the other room. Cousin Hetty had been ten years old in
+1851, just as old as Paul was now. Her mother had probably left
+something she wanted to do, to sit down and laugh with her little
+daughter over this trivial game. A ghostly echo of that long-silent
+laughter fell faintly and coldly on her ear. So soon gone. Was it worth
+while to do it at all? Such an effort, such a fatigue lay before those
+children one tried to keep laughing, and then . . .
+
+Someone came in behind her, without knocking or ringing. People had been
+coming and going unannounced in that house all the day as though death
+had made it their own home. Agnes came to the door, Marise looked up
+and saw Nelly Powers standing in the door-way, the second time she had
+been there. "I come over again," she said, "to bring you some hot
+biscuit and honey. I knew you wouldn't feel to do much cooking." She
+added, "I put the biscuits in the oven as I come through, so they'd keep
+warm."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Nelly, that's very kind and thoughtful," said Marise. As
+she spoke and looked at the splendid, enigmatic woman standing there,
+the richness of her vitality vibrating about her, she saw again the
+nightmare vision of 'Gene and heard the terrible breathing that had
+resounded in the Eagle Rock woods. She was overwhelmed, as so often
+before in her life, by an amazement at the astounding difference between
+the aspect of things and what they really were. She had never entirely
+outgrown the wildness of surprise which this always brought to her. She
+and Nelly, looking at each other so calmly, and speaking of hot
+biscuits!
+
+She listened as though it were an ironically incongruous speech in a
+play to Agnes' conscientious country attempt to make conversation with
+the caller, "Hot today, ain't it? Yesterday's storm didn't seem to do
+much good." And to Nelly's answer on the same note, "Yes, but it's good
+for the corn to have it hot. 'Gene's been out cultivating his, all day
+long."
+
+"Ah, not all day! Not all day!" Marise kept the thought to herself. She
+had a vision of the man goaded beyond endurance, leaving his horses
+plodding in the row, while he fled blindly, to escape the unescapable.
+
+An old resentment, centuries and ages older than she was, a primaeval
+heritage from the past, flamed up unexpectedly in her heart. _There_ was
+a man, she thought, who had kept the capacity really to love his wife;
+passionately to suffer; whose cold intelligence had not chilled down to
+. . ."
+
+"Well, I guess I must be going now," said Nelly in the speech of the
+valley. She went away through the side-door, opening and shutting it
+with meticulous care, so that it would not make a sound. . . . As though a
+sound could reach Cousin Hetty now!
+
+"I don't like her biscuits," said Agnes. "She always puts too much sody
+in." She added, in what was evidently the expression of an old dislike,
+"And don't she look a fool, a great hulking critter like her, wearing
+such shoes, teeterin' along on them heels."
+
+"Oh well," said Marise, vaguely, "it's her idea of how to look pretty."
+
+"They must cost an awful sight too," Agnes went on, scoldingly, "laced
+halfway up her leg that way. And the Powerses as poor as Job's turkey.
+The money she puts into them shoes'd do 'em enough sight more good if
+'twas saved up and put into a manure spreader, I call it."
+
+She had taken the biscuits out of the oven and was holding them
+suspiciously to her nose, when someone came in at the front door and
+walked down the hall with the hushed, self-conscious, lugubrious tip-toe
+step of the day. It was Mr. Bayweather, his round old face rather pale.
+"I'm shocked, unutterably shocked by this news," he said, and indeed he
+looked badly shaken and scared. It came to Marise that Cousin Hetty had
+been of about his age. He shook her hand and looked about for a chair.
+"I came to see about which hymns you would like sung," he said. "Do you
+know if Miss Hetty had any favorites?" He broke off to say, "Mrs.
+Bayweather wished me to be sure to excuse her to you for not coming with
+me tonight to see if there was anything she could do. But she was
+stopped by old Mrs. Warner, just as we were leaving the house. Frank, it
+seems, went off early this morning to survey some lines in the woods
+somewhere on the mountain, and was to be back to lunch. He didn't come
+then and hasn't showed up at all yet. Mrs. Warner wanted my wife to
+telephone up to North Ashley to see if he had perhaps gone there to
+spend the night with his aunt. The line was busy of course, and Mrs.
+Bayweather was still trying to get them on the wire when I had to come
+away. If she had no special favorites, I think that 'Lead, Kindly Light,
+Amid th' Encircling Gloom' is always suitable, don't you?"
+
+Something seemed to explode inside Marise's mind, and like a resultant
+black cloud of smoke a huge and ominous possibility loomed up, so
+darkly, so unexpectedly, that she had no breath to answer the
+clergyman's question. Those lines Frank Warner had gone to survey ran
+through the Eagle Rock woods!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Or would you think an Easter one, like 'The Strife Is O'er, the Battle
+Won,' more appropriate?" suggested Mr. Bayweather to her silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Agnes started. "Who's that come bursting into the kitchen?" she cried,
+turning towards the door.
+
+It seemed to Marise, afterwards, that she had known at that moment who
+had come and what the tidings were.
+
+Agnes started towards the door to open it. But it was flung open
+abruptly from the outside. Touclé stood there, her hat gone from her
+head, her rusty black clothes torn and disarranged.
+
+Marise knew what she was about to announce.
+
+She cried out to them, "Frank Warner has fallen off the Eagle Rocks. I
+found him there, at the bottom, half an hour ago, dead."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The savage old flame, centuries and ages older than she, flared for an
+instant high and smoky in Marise's heart. "_There_ is a man who knows
+how to fight for his wife and keep her!" she thought fiercely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE COUNSEL OF THE STARS
+
+
+July 21. Night.
+
+It had been arranged that for the two nights before the funeral Agnes
+was to sleep in the front bedroom, on one side of Cousin Hetty's room,
+and Marise in the small hall bedroom on the other side, the same room
+and the same bed in which she had slept as a little girl. Nothing had
+been changed there, since those days. The same heavy white pitcher and
+basin stood in the old wash-stand with the sunken top and hinged cover;
+the same oval white soap-dish, the same ornamental spatter-work frame in
+dark walnut hung over the narrow walnut bedstead.
+
+As she undressed in the space between the bed and the wash-stand, the
+past came up before her in a sudden splashing wave of recollection which
+for a moment engulfed her. It had all been a dream, all that had
+happened since then, and she was again eight years old, with nothing in
+the world but bad dreams to fear, and Cousin Hetty there at hand as a
+refuge even against bad dreams. How many times she had wakened,
+terrified, her heart beating hammer-strokes against her ribs, and
+trotted shivering, in her night-gown, into Cousin Hetty's room.
+
+"Cousin Hetty! Cousin Hetty!"
+
+"What? What's that? Oh, you, Marise. What's the matter? Notions again?"
+
+"Oh, Cousin Hetty, it was an _awful_ dream this time. Can't I get into
+bed with you?"
+
+"Why yes, come along, you silly child."
+
+The fumbling approach to the bed, the sheets held open, the kind old
+hand outstretched, and then the haven . . . her head on the same pillow
+with that of the brave old woman who was afraid of nothing, who drew her
+up close and safe and with comforting assurance instantly fell asleep
+again. And then the delicious, slow fading of the terrors before the
+obliterating hand of sleep, the delicious slow sinking into
+forgetfulness of everything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Standing there, clad in the splendor of her physical maturity, Marise
+shivered uncontrollably again, and quaked and feared. It was all a bad
+dream, all of it, and now as then Cousin Hetty lay safe and quiet,
+wrapped in sleep which was the only escape. Marise turned sick with
+longing to go again, now, to seek out Cousin Hetty and to lie down by
+her to share that safe and cold and dreamless quiet.
+
+She flung back over her shoulder the long shining dark braid which her
+fingers had been automatically twisting, and stood for a moment
+motionless. She was suffering acutely, but the pain came from a source
+so deep, so confused, so inarticulate, that she could not name it, could
+not bring to bear on it any of the resources of her intelligence and
+will. She could only bend under it as under a crushing burden, and
+suffer as an animal endures pain, dumbly, stupidly.
+
+After a time a small knock sounded, and Agnes's voice asked through the
+door if Miss Marise thought the door to . . . to . . . if the "other" door
+ought to be open or shut. It was shut now. What did people do as a
+general thing?
+
+Marise opened her own door and looked down on the old figure in the
+straight, yellowed night-gown, the knotted, big-veined hand shielding
+the candle from the wandering summer breeze which blew an occasional
+silent, fragrant breath in from the open windows.
+
+"I don't know what people do as a rule," she answered, and then asked,
+"How did Miss Hetty like best to have it, herself?"
+
+"Oh, open, always."
+
+"We'd better open it, then."
+
+The old servant swayed before the closed door, the candlestick shaking
+in her hand. She looked up at Marise timidly. "You do it," she said
+under her breath.
+
+Marise felt a faint pitying scorn, stepped past Agnes, lifted the latch,
+and opened the door wide into the blackness of the other room.
+
+The dense silence seemed to come out, coldly and softly. For Marise it
+had the sweetness of a longed-for anaesthetic, it had the very odor of
+the dreamless quiet into which she longed to sink. But Agnes shrank
+away, drew hastily closer to Marise, and whispered in a sudden panic,
+"Oh, don't it scare you? Aren't you afraid to be here all alone, just
+you and me? We'd ought to have had a man stay too."
+
+Marise tried to answer simply and kindly, "No, I'm not afraid. It is
+only all that is left of dear Cousin Hetty." But the impatience and
+contemptuous surprise which she kept out of her words and voice were
+felt none the less by the old woman. She drooped submissively as under a
+reproach. "I know it's foolish," she murmured, "I know it's foolish."
+
+She began again to weep, the tears filling her faded eyes and running
+quietly down her wrinkled old cheeks. "You don't know how gone I feel
+without her!" she mourned. "I'd always had her to tell me what to do.
+Thirty-five years now, every day, she's been here to tell me what to do.
+I can't make it seem true, that it's her lying in there. Seems as though
+every minute she'd come in, stepping quick, the way she did. And I
+fairly open my mouth to ask her, 'Now Miss Hetty, what shall I do next?'
+and then it all comes over me."
+
+Marise's impatience and scorn were flooded by an immense sympathy. What
+a pitiable thing a dependent is! Poor old Agnes! She leaned down to the
+humble, docile old face, and put her cheek against it. "I'll do my best
+to take Cousin Hetty's place for you," she said gently, and then, "Now
+you'd better go back to bed. There's a hard day ahead of us."
+
+Agnes responded with relief to the tone of authority. She said with a
+reassured accent, "Well, it's all right if _you're_ not afraid," turned
+and shuffled down the hall, comforted and obedient.
+
+Marise saw her go into her room, heard the creak of the bed as she lay
+down on it, and then the old voice, "Miss Marise, will it be all right
+if I leave my candle burning, just this once?"
+
+"Yes, yes, Agnes, that'll be all right," she answered. "Go to sleep
+now." As she went back into her own room, she thought passingly to
+herself, "Strange that anyone can live so long and grow up so little."
+
+She herself opened her bed, lay down on it resolutely, and blew out her
+candle.
+
+Instantly the room seemed suffocatingly full of a thousand flying,
+disconnected pictures. The talk with Agnes had changed her mood. The
+dull, leaden weight of that numbing burden of inarticulate pain was
+broken into innumerable fragments. For a time, before she could collect
+herself to self-control, her thoughts whirled and roared in her head
+like a machine disconnected from its work, racing furiously till it
+threatens to shake itself to pieces. Everything seemed to come at once.
+
+Frank Warner was dead. What would that mean to Nelly Powers?
+
+Had there been enough bread left in the house till someone could drive
+the Ford to Ashley and buy some more?
+
+Ought she to wear mourning for Cousin Hetty?
+
+What had happened on the Eagle Rocks? Had Frank and 'Gene quarreled, or
+had 'Gene crept up behind Frank as he sighted along the compass?
+
+How would they get Cousin Hetty's friends from the station at Ashley,
+out to the house, such feeble old people as they were? It would be
+better to have the services all at the church.
+
+Had anything been decided about hymns? Someone had said something about
+it, but what had she . . . oh, of course that had been the moment when
+Touclé had come in, and Mr. Bayweather had rushed away to tell Frank's
+mother. Frank's mother. His mother! Suppose that were to happen to Mark,
+or Paul? No, not such thoughts. They mustn't be let in at all, or you
+went mad.
+
+Was it true that Elly cared nothing about her, that children didn't, for
+grown-ups, that she was nothing in Elly's life?
+
+She was glad that Touclé had come back. There would be someone to help
+Neale with the children. . . .
+
+_Neale_ . . . the name brought her up abruptly. Her mind, hurrying,
+breathless, panting, was stopped by the name, as by a great rock in the
+path. There was an instant of blankness, as she faced it, as though it
+were a name she did not know. When she said that name, everything
+stopped going around in her head. She moved restlessly in her bed.
+
+And then, as though she had gone around the rock, the rapid, pattering,
+painful rush of those incoherent ideas began again. Queer that nobody
+there, Mr. Bayweather, Agnes, Touclé, none of them seemed to realize
+that Frank had not fallen, that 'Gene had . . . but of course she
+remembered they hadn't any idea of a possible connection between Frank
+and the Powers, and she had been the only one to see 'Gene in that
+terrible flight from the Rocks. Nelly had thought he had been
+cultivating corn all day. Of course nobody would think of anything but
+an accident. Nobody would ever know.
+
+Yes, it was true; it was true that she would touch Neale and never know
+it, never feel it . . . how closely that had been observed, that she could
+take a handkerchief from his pocket as from a piece of furniture. It was
+true that Neale and she knew each other now till there was no hidden
+corner, no mystery, no possibility of a single unexpected thing between
+them. She had not realized it, but it was true. How could she not have
+seen that his presence left her wholly unmoved, indifferent now? But how
+could she have known it, so gradual had been the coming of satiety,
+until she had to contrast with it this fierce burning response to a
+fierce and new emotion? . . .
+
+Had she thought "indifference"? and "satiety"? Of whom had she been
+thinking? Not of _Neale_! Was that what had come of the great hour on
+Rocca di Papa? _Was that what human beings were?_
+
+She had gone further this time, but now she was brought up short by the
+same blankness at the name of Neale, the same impossibility to think at
+all. She could not think about Neale tonight. All that must be put off
+till she was more like herself, till she was more steady. She was
+reeling now, with shock after shock; Cousin Hetty's death, 'Gene's
+dreadful secret, the discovery no longer to be evaded of what Vincent
+Marsh meant and was. . . .
+
+She felt a sudden hurried impatient haste to be with Vincent again, to
+feel again the choking throb when she first saw him, the constant scared
+uncertainty of what he might say, what she might feel, what they both
+might do, from one moment to the next . . . she could forget, in those
+fiery and potent draughts, everything, all this that was so hard and
+painful and that she could not understand and that was such a torment to
+try to understand. Everything would be swept away except . . .
+
+As though she had whirled suddenly about to see what was lurking there
+behind her, she whirled about and found the thought, "But I ought to
+tell someone, tell the police, that I saw 'Gene Powers running away
+after he had killed the man who wanted to take his wife from him."
+
+Instantly there spoke out a bitter voice, "No, I shall tell no one.
+'Gene has known how to keep Nelly. Let him have her for all his life."
+
+Another voice answered, "Frank's mother . . . his mother!"
+
+And both of these were drowned by a tide of sickness as the recollection
+came upon her of that dreadful haste, those horrible labored breaths.
+
+She sat up with a great sweeping gesture of her arms, as though she must
+fight for air. The little room seemed palpably crammed with those
+jostling, shouting, battling thoughts. She slid from the bed and went to
+the window, leaning far out from it, and looking up at the sky,
+immeasurably high and black, studded thick with stars.
+
+They looked down disdainfully at her fever and misery. A chilling
+consolation fell from them upon her, like a cold dew. She felt herself
+shrink to imperceptible proportions. What did they matter, the struggles
+of the maggots who crawled about the folds of the globe, itself the most
+trifling and insignificant of all the countless worlds which people the
+aimless disorder of the universe? What difference did it make? Anything
+they did was so soon indistinguishable from anything else. The easiest
+way . . . to yield to whatever had the strongest present force . . . that
+was as good as any other way in the great and blind confusion of it all.
+
+After she had gone back to bed, she could still see the silent multitude
+of stars above her, enormous, remote beyond imagination, and it was
+under their thin, cold, indifferent gaze that she finally fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN
+
+
+July 22.
+
+Agnes brought upstairs an armful of white roses. "The lady that visits
+at your house, she brought them from your garden and she wants to see
+you if she can."
+
+Eugenia of course. That was unexpected. She must have made an effort to
+do that, she who hated sickness and death and all dark things.
+
+"Yes, tell her I will be down in a moment. Take her in a glass of cold
+water, too, will you please, Agnes. The walk over here must have been
+terribly hot for her."
+
+The roses showed that. They were warm to the touch and as she looked at
+them intently, at their white clear faces, familiar to her as those of
+human beings, bent on her with a mute message from the garden, she saw
+they had begun to droop imperceptibly, that the close, fine texture of
+their petals had begun ever so slightly to wither. She sprinkled them,
+put their stems deep into water and went downstairs, wiping her moist
+hands on her handkerchief.
+
+Eugenia in mauve organdie stood up from the deep Windsor chair where she
+had sunk down, and came forward silently to greet her. They kissed each
+other ceremoniously in token of the fact that a death lay between them
+and the last time they had met . . . was it only yesterday morning?
+
+"Were you able to sleep at all, Marise? You look shockingly tired."
+
+"Oh yes, thanks. I slept well enough. Are the children all right?"
+
+Eugenia nodded, "Yes, as usual."
+
+"Did their father tell them the news of Cousin Hetty's death? How did
+they take it? Elly perhaps was . . ."
+
+Eugenia did not know about this, had not happened to hear anybody say.
+But old Touclé was back, at least, to do the work.
+
+"I knew she must be," said Marise. "She was here last night. It was she,
+you know, who found Frank Warner's body at the foot of . . . of course
+you've heard of that?"
+
+Eugenia made a little wry face. Of course she had heard of that, she
+said with an accent of distaste. Everybody was talking about the
+melodramatic accident, as probably they would still be talking about it
+a hundred years from now, up here where nothing happened. People had
+come all the way from North Ashley to look at the place, and some of the
+men and boys had gone around up to the top of the Eagle Rocks to see
+where Frank had lost his footing. They found his surveyor's compass
+still set upon its staff. It was where the line ran very near the edge
+and Frank must have stepped over the cliff as he was sighting along it.
+They could see torn leaves and stripped twigs as though he had tried to
+save himself as he fell.
+
+She stopped speaking. Marise found herself too sick and shaken to
+venture any comment. There was rather a long silence, such as was
+natural and suitable under the circumstances, in that house. Presently
+Marise broke this to ask if anyone knew how Frank's mother had taken the
+news, although she knew of course Eugenia was the last person of whom to
+ask such a question. As she expected, Eugenia had only lifted eyebrows,
+a faint slow shake of her head and a small graceful shrug of her
+shoulders, her usual formula for conveying her ignorance of common
+facts, and her indifference to that ignorance.
+
+But Marise, looking at her, as they sat opposite each other in the
+twilight of the closely shuttered room, was struck by the fact that
+Eugenia did not seem wholly like herself. Her outward aspect was the
+same, the usual exquisite exactitude of detail, every blond hair shining
+and in its place, the flawless perfection of her flesh as miraculous as
+ever, her tiny white shoe untouched by dust through which she must have
+walked to reach the house. But there was something . . . in her eyes,
+perhaps . . . which now looked back at Marise with an expression which
+Marise did not understand or recognize. If it had not been impossible to
+think it of Eugenia, Marise would have imagined that her eyes looked
+troubled, excited. Was it possible that even in her safe ivory tower of
+aloofness from life, she had felt the jarring blow of the brutally
+immediate tragedy of the Eagle Rocks? Or perhaps even Cousin Hetty's
+disappearance . . . she had always hated reminders of death.
+
+As Marise, surprised, looked at her and wondered thus passingly if she
+felt any reverberation from the tragedy-laden air about them, Eugenia's
+face hardened back into its usual smooth calm; over the eyes that had
+been for an instant transparent and alive with troubled brightness, slid
+their acquired expression of benignant indifference. She answered
+Marise's faintly inquiring gaze by getting up as if to go, remarking in
+a clear low tone (she was the only person who had come into the house
+who had not succumbed to that foolish, instinctive muffling of the
+voice), "I forgot to give you a message from Neale. He is obliged to be
+away today, on business, something about a deed to some wood-land."
+
+Marise was slightly surprised. "Where is he going?" she asked. "In the
+Ford? On the train?" How little she had thought about the mill of late,
+that she should be so entirely blank as to this business trip.
+
+"Oh, I didn't even try to understand," said Eugenia, smoothing the
+shining silk of her parasol. "Business finds no echo in me, you know. A
+man came to supper last night, unexpectedly, and they talked
+interminably about some deal, lumbering, lines, surveys, deeds . . . till
+Touclé came in with the news of the accident. The man was from New
+Hampshire, with that droll, flat New Hampshire accent. You know how they
+talk, 'bahn' and 'yahd' for barn and yard."
+
+The words "New Hampshire" and "deeds" stirred a disagreeable association
+of ideas in Marise's mind. The shyster lawyer who had done the Powers
+out of their inheritance had come from New Hampshire. However, she
+supposed there were other people in the state besides dishonest lawyers.
+
+Eugenia went on casually. "It seemed quite important. Neale was absorbed
+by it. He told me afterward, Neale did, that the man had acted as agent
+for him some years ago in securing a big tract of wood-land around here,
+something that had been hard to get hold of."
+
+Marise was startled and showed it by a quick lift of her head. She had
+never known Neale to employ an agent. She looked hard at Eugenia's
+quiet, indifferent face. The other seemed not to notice her surprise,
+and returned her look with a long clear gaze, which apparently referred
+to her hair, for she now remarked in just the tone she had used for the
+news about Neale, "That way of arranging your coiffure _is_ singularly
+becoming to you. Mr. Marsh was speaking about it the other day, but I
+hadn't specially noticed it. He's right. It gives you that swathed
+close-coifed Leonardo da Vinci look." She put her handkerchief into a
+small bag of mauve linen, embroidered with white and pale-green crewels,
+and took up her parasol.
+
+Marise felt something menacing in the air. Eugenia frightened her a
+little with that glass-smooth look of hers. The best thing to do was to
+let her go without another word. And yet she heard her voice asking,
+urgently, peremptorily, "What was the name of the man from New
+Hampshire?"
+
+Eugenia said, "What man from New Hampshire?" and then, under Marise's
+silent gaze, corrected herself and changed her tone. "Oh yes, let me
+see: Neale introduced him, of course. Why, some not uncommon name, and
+yet not like Smith or Jones. It began with an L, I believe."
+
+Marise said to herself, "I will not say another word about this," and
+aloud she said roughly, brusquely, "It wasn't Lowder, of course."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Eugenia, "you're right. It was Lowder. I _thought_ it
+was probably something you'd know about. Neale always tells you
+everything."
+
+She looked away and remarked, "I suppose you will inherit the furniture
+of this house? There are nice bits. This Windsor chair; and I thought I
+saw a Chippendale buffet in the dining-room."
+
+Marise, immobile in her chair, repeated, "It wasn't Lowder. You didn't
+say it was Lowder."
+
+"Yes, it was Lowder," said Eugenia clearly. "And now you speak of it
+once more, I remember one more thing about their talk although I didn't
+try to understand much of it. It was all connected with the Powers
+family. It was their woodlot which this Mr. Lowder had bought for Neale.
+I was surprised to know that they had ever had any wood-land. They have
+always seemed too sordidly poverty-stricken. But it seems this was the
+only way Neale could get hold of it, because they refused to sell
+otherwise."
+
+She looked again at Marise, a long, steady, and entirely opaque gaze
+which Marise returned mutely, incapable of uttering a word. She had the
+feeling of leaning with all her weight against an inner-door that must
+be kept shut.
+
+"Did Neale _tell_ you this man had secured the Powers woodlot for him,
+for Neale, for our mill?" she heard her voice asking, faint in the
+distance, far off from where she had flung herself against that door.
+
+"Why yes, why not? Not very recently he said, some time ago. We had
+quite a talk about it afterwards. It must be something you've
+forgotten," said Eugenia. She took up a card from the table and fanned
+herself as she spoke, her eyes not quitting Marise's face. "It's going
+to be as hot as it was yesterday," she said with resignation. "Doesn't
+it make you long for a dusky, high-ceilinged Roman room with a cool,
+red-tiled floor, and somebody out in the street shouting through your
+closed shutters, 'Ricotta! Ricotta!'" she asked lightly.
+
+Marise looked at her blankly. She wished she could lean forward and
+touch Eugenia to make sure she was really standing there. What was it
+she had been saying? She could not have understood a word of it. It was
+impossible that it should be what it seemed to mean,--impossible!
+
+A door somewhere in the house opened and shut, and steps approached. The
+two women turned their eyes towards the hall-door. Old Mrs. Powers
+walked in unceremoniously, her gingham dress dusty, her lean face deeply
+flushed by the heat, a tin pan in her hands, covered with a
+blue-and-white checked cloth.
+
+"I thought maybe you'd relish some fresh doughnuts as well as anything,"
+she said briskly, with no preliminary of greeting.
+
+Something about the atmosphere of the room struck her oddly for all the
+composed faces and quiet postures of the two occupants. She brought out
+as near an apology for intruding, as her phraseless upbringing would
+permit her. "I didn't see Agnes in the kitchen as I come through, so I
+come right along, to find somebody," she said, a little abashed.
+
+Marise was incapable of speaking to her, but she made a silent gesture
+of thanks, and, moving forward, took the pan from the older woman's
+hand.
+
+Mrs. Powers went on, "If 'twouldn't bother you, could you put them in
+your jar now, and let me take the pan back with me? We hain't got any
+too many dishes, you know."
+
+Marise went out to the pantry with the older woman, feeling with
+astonishment the floor hard and firm under her feet as usual, the walls
+upright about her. Only something at the back of her throat contracted
+to a knot, relaxed, contracted, with a singular, disagreeable,
+involuntary regularity.
+
+"You look down sick, Mis' Crittenden," said Mrs. Powers with a
+respectful admiration for the suitability of this appearance. "And there
+ain't nothing surprising that you should. Did you ever see anybody go
+off more sudden than Miss Hetty? Such a good woman she was, too. It must
+ha' gi'n you an awful turn." She poured the doughnuts into the jar and,
+folding the checked cloth, went on, "But I look at it this way. 'Twas a
+quick end, and a peaceful end without no pain. And if you'd seen as many
+old people drag along for years, as I have, stranglin' and chokin' and
+half-dead, why, you'd feel to be thankful Miss Hetty was spared that.
+And you too!"
+
+"Marise," said Eugenia, coming to the pantry door, "your neighbors
+wanted me, of course, to bring you all their sympathetic condolence. Mr.
+Welles asked me to tell you that he would send all the flowers in his
+garden to the church for the service tomorrow. And Mr. Marsh was very
+anxious to see you today, to arrange about the use of his car in meeting
+the people who may come on the train tomorrow, to attend the funeral. He
+said he would run over here any time today, if you would send Agnes to
+tell him when you would see him. He said he wouldn't leave the house all
+day, to be ready to come at any time you would let him."
+
+Mrs. Powers was filled with satisfaction at such conduct. "Now that's
+what I call real neighborly," she said. "And both on 'em new to our ways
+too. That Mr. Welles is a real nice old man, anyhow. . . . There! I call
+him 'old' and I bet he's younger than I be. He acts so kind o' settled
+down to stay. But Mr. Marsh don't act so. That's the kind man I like to
+see, up-and-coming, so you never know what he's a-goin' to do next."
+
+Eugenia waited through this, for some answer, and still waited
+persistently, her eyes on Marise's face.
+
+Marise aroused herself. She must make some comment, of course. "Please
+thank them both very much," she said finally, and turned away to set the
+jar on a shelf.
+
+"Well, you goin'?" said Mrs. Powers, behind her, evidently to Eugenia.
+"Well, good-bye, see you at the funeral tomorrow, I s'pose."
+
+Marise looked around and caught a silent, graceful salutation of
+farewell from Eugenia, who disappeared down the hall, the front door
+closing gently behind her.
+
+Mrs. Powers began again abruptly, "Folks is sayin' that Frank Warner
+must ha' been drinking, but I don't believe it. He wa'n't no drinker.
+And where'd he git it, if he was? It was heedless, that's what it was.
+He always was a heedless critter from a little boy up. He was the one
+that skated right ahead into the hole and most drowned him, and he was
+fooling with his gran'father's shot-gun when it went off and most blew
+him to pieces. 'S a wonder he lived to grow up: he come so nigh breaking
+his neck, before this."
+
+Marise was surprised to hear Eugenia's voice again, "Marise, I stepped
+back to ask you if there are any errands I could do for you, any
+messages to take. I pass by the door of Mr. Welles' house. I could
+perfectly easily stop there and tell Mr. Marsh he could see you now, for
+instance."
+
+Marise seemed to see her from afar. She heard what she said, but she was
+aware of it only as an interruption. There was a question she must ask
+old Mrs. Powers. How could she think of anything else till that had been
+answered? She said to Eugenia at random, using the first phrase that
+came into her mind, "No, no. Later. Some other time."
+
+Eugenia hesitated, took a step away from the door, and then came back
+in, deliberately, close to Marise. She spoke to her in Italian, very
+clearly, "He is not a man who will wait."
+
+To this Marise, wholly engrossed in her inner struggle, opposed a stupid
+blankness, an incapacity to think of what Eugenia was saying, long
+enough to understand it. In that dark inner room, where she kept the
+door shut against the horror that was trying to come in, she dared not
+for an instant look away. She merely shook her head and motioned
+impatiently with her hand. Why did not Eugenia go away?
+
+And yet when Eugenia had gone, she could not bring the words out because
+of that strange contraction of her throat.
+
+"My! but you ought to go and lie down," said Mrs. Powers
+compassionately. "You're as white as a sheet. Why don't you just give up
+for a while? Agnes and I'll tend to things."
+
+Marise was filled with terror at the idea of not getting her answer, and
+spoke quickly, abruptly. "Mrs. Powers, you never heard, did you, you
+never thought, in that trouble about losing your wood-land . . . nobody
+ever thought that Mr. Lowder was only an agent for someone else, whose
+name wasn't to be known then."
+
+"Oh sure," said Mrs. Powers readily. "'Gene found out from a man that
+had lived in his town in New Hampshire that Lowder didn't do no
+lumbering of his own. He just makes a business of dirty deals like that
+for pay. He always surmised it to be some lumber-company; somebody that
+runs a mill. Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing, darn
+'em!"
+
+Marise leaned against the pantry shelf. The old woman glanced at her
+face, gave a cry, and pushed her into a chair, running for water. At the
+sound, Agnes came trotting, and showed a scared rabbit-like face. "She's
+just beat out with the shock of Miss Hetty's going off so sudden,"
+explained Mrs. Powers to Agnes.
+
+Marise got to her feet angrily. She had entirely forgotten that Cousin
+Hetty was dead, or that she was in her house. She was shocked that for a
+moment she had relaxed her steady pressure against that opening door.
+She flung herself against it now. What could she do next?
+
+Instantly, clearly, as though she had heard someone saying it to her,
+she thought, "Why, of course, all I have to do is to go and ask Neale
+about it!"
+
+It was so simple. Somehow, of course, Neale could give the answer she
+must have. Why had she not thought of that the instant Eugenia had begun
+to speak?
+
+She drank the glass of water Agnes gave her and said, "Mrs. Powers,
+could you do something for me? I promised I would stay here till the
+funeral and I know Agnes is afraid to stay alone. Would you mind waiting
+here for perhaps half an hour till I could get to the mill and back?
+There is something important I must see to."
+
+Mrs. Powers hesitated. "Well now, Mis' Crittenden, there ain't nothing I
+wouldn't do for you. But I'm kind o' _funny_ about dead folks. I don't
+believe I'd be much good to Agnes because I feel just the way she does.
+But I'll run over to the house and get Nelly and 'Gene to come. I guess
+the four of us together won't be nervous about staying. 'Gene ain't
+workin' today. He got a sunstroke or something yesterday, in the sun,
+cultivatin' his corn and he don't feel just right in his head, he says."
+
+She went out of the door as she spoke, calling over her shoulder, "I
+wun't be gone long."
+
+Marise sat down again, there in the pantry, leaned her head against the
+door and looked steadily at the shelves before her, full of dishes and
+jars and bottles and empty jelly glasses. In her mind there was only one
+thing, a fixed resolve not to think at all, of anything, until she had
+been to Neale's office and had Neale explain it to her. Surely he would
+not have started on that trip whatever it was. It was so early still.
+She must not think about it at all, until she had asked Neale. Eugenia
+had probably made a mistake about the name. Even if Neale had gone she
+would be able to ask about the name and find that Eugenia had made a
+mistake. That would make everything all right. Of course Eugenia had
+made a mistake about the name.
+
+She was still staring fixedly at the shelves, frowning and beginning
+again to count all the things on them, when Mrs. Powers' voice sounded
+from the kitchen. "I met 'em on the way is why I'm back so soon," she
+explained to Agnes. "Nelly had some flowers to bring. And they've been
+down by the river and got a great lot of ferns too."
+
+Marise started up, for an instant distracted from her concentration on
+what Eugenia had said. This was the first time she had seen Nelly and
+'Gene since Frank's death. How would they look? How did people go on
+living? How would they speak, and how could they listen to anything but
+their own thoughts? What had Frank's death meant to Nelly?
+
+She turned shrinkingly towards Nelly. Nelly was bending down and
+flicking the dust from her shoes with her handkerchief. When she stood
+up, she looked straight at Marise. Under the thick-springing,
+smooth-brushed abundance of her shining fair hair, her eyes, blue as
+precious stones, looked out with the deep quiet which always seemed so
+inscrutable to the other woman.
+
+She held out an armful of flowers. "I thought you'd like the white phlox
+the best. I had a lot of pink too, but I remembered Mrs. Bayweather said
+white is best at such times."
+
+Marise drew a long breath. What superb self-control!
+
+"Were the biscuits good?" asked Nelly, turning to Agnes. "I was afraid
+afterward maybe they weren't baked enough."
+
+Marise was swept to her feet. If Nelly could master her nerves like
+that, she could do better herself. She took the flowers, carried them to
+the kitchen, and set them in a panful of water. She had not yet looked
+at 'Gene.
+
+She went to find an umbrella to shield her hatless head from the sun,
+and on her way out only, cast a swift glance at 'Gene. That was enough.
+All the blazing, dusty way to the mill, she saw hanging terribly before
+her that haggard ashy face.
+
+At the mill, she paused in the doorway of the lower office, looking in
+on the three desk-workers, tapping on their machines, leaning sideways
+to consult note-books. The young war-cripple, Neale's special protégé,
+seeing her, got to his feet to ask her what he could do for her.
+
+Marise considered him for a moment before she answered. _Was_ there
+anything he could do for her? Why had she come? All she could remember
+for the moment was that singular contraction of her throat, which had
+come back now.
+
+Then she remembered, "Is Mr. Crittenden here?"
+
+"No, he was called away for the day, urgent business in New Hampshire."
+
+Marise looked about her helplessly. "May I sit down for a moment?"
+
+The young stenographer ran, limping and eager, to offer her a chair, and
+then, shyly, swung his swivel chair towards her, not wishing to go back
+to his work, uncertain what to say to his employer's wife.
+
+"When will Mr. Crittenden be back?" asked Marise, although she knew the
+answer.
+
+"No later than tonight, he said," answered the stenographer. "He spoke
+particularly about coming back because of Miss Hetty Allen's funeral."
+
+"Yes, of course," said Marise.
+
+There was nothing more to be said, she knew that, nothing more to be
+done, until Neale came back. But it seemed physically impossible for her
+to live until then, with the clutch in her throat.
+
+She ought to get up now, at once, and go back to Cousin Hetty's. The
+Powers were waiting for her return. But her consternation at finding
+Neale really gone was a blow from which she needed a breathing time to
+recover. She couldn't have it so. She could never endure a whole day
+with this possibility like a threatening powder-mine under her feet,
+ready to go off and bring her inner world to ruin and despair. She put
+her hand out to take her umbrella and struggled up.
+
+"Any message to leave for Mr. Crittenden?" asked the stenographer,
+seeing her ready to go.
+
+She shook her head. Her eye fell on the waste-paper basket beside the
+desk. On one of the empty envelopes, torn in two, the words, "Return to
+C.K. Lowder," stood out clearly. She turned away and stood motionless,
+one hand at her temple. She was thinking to herself, "This is simply
+incredible. There is some monstrous mistake. If I could only think of a
+way to find it out before it kills me."
+
+She became aware that the young cripple was looking at her anxiously,
+and saw in his startled, agitated face a reflection of what hers must
+be. She made an effort to speak quietly, and heard herself say, "Do you
+happen to remember if Mr. Crittenden was alone as he drove away?"
+
+"Oh no," said the other. "He had had someone with him ever since the
+afternoon train came in yesterday. Mr. Crittenden drove the car in
+himself to the Ashley station to meet him. Somebody here on business."
+
+"What sort of a man, do you remember?" asked Marise.
+
+"Well, a clean-shaven man, with a queer thin long mouth, like the
+pictures of William Jennings Bryan's. And he talked out of one corner of
+it, the way . . . see here, Mrs. Crittenden, you look awfully tired.
+Wouldn't you better sit down and rest a moment more?"
+
+Marise shook her head with an impatient gesture. Now she needed to get
+away from that office as much as she had wished to go to it. The place
+was hateful to her. The young man's eyes were intolerable. He was one of
+the people, one of the many, many people who had grown up trusting in
+Neale.
+
+She swung suddenly to a furious incredulity about the whole thing. It
+was nonsense! None of it could be true. What were all these people
+saying to her, Eugenia, Mrs. Powers, this boy . . . ? She would never
+forgive them for trying to do such an infamous thing. They were trying
+to make her believe that Neale had been back of Lowder in the low-down
+swindle that had been practised on the Powers. They were trying to make
+her believe that for seven years Neale had been lying to her with every
+breath he drew. Because other men could lie, they thought they could
+make her believe that Neale did. Because other women's husbands had done
+base things in business, they thought she would be capable of believing
+that about Neale. They didn't know how preposterous it was, how close
+she and Neale had always been, how deeply a part of the whole aspect of
+life to her, Neale's attitude toward his work had become. Those people
+did not realize what they were trying to make her believe, it was not
+only that her husband had been the instigator of a mean little cheat
+which had cost years of suffering to helpless neighbors, it was the
+total destruction of all that she had thought Neale to be . . . _thought_
+him? Known him to be.
+
+"I must get back at once," she said, with a resentful accent and moved
+towards the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE STARS
+
+
+July 22.
+
+She passed out from the office into the yellow glare of the sun, her
+feet moving steadily forward, with no volition of hers, along the dusty
+road. And as steadily, with as little volition of hers, march, march,
+came . . . first what Eugenia had said, the advance from that to Mrs.
+Powers' words, from that to the stenographer's, to the name on the
+envelope . . . and then like the door to a white-hot blast-furnace thrown
+open in her face, came the searing conception of the possibility that it
+might be true, and all the world lost.
+
+The extremity and horror of this aroused her to a last effort at
+self-preservation so that she flung the door shut by a fierce incapacity
+to believe any of those relentless facts which hung one from another
+with their horrible enchaining progression. No, she had been dreaming.
+It was all preposterous!
+
+The heat wavered up from the hot earth in visible pulsations and there
+pulsed through her similar rhythmic waves of feeling; the beginning . . .
+what Eugenia had said, had said that _Neale had told her_ . . . what Mrs.
+Powers had said, "Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing" . . .
+what the stenographer had said . . . the name on the envelope . . .
+_suppose it should be true_.
+
+She was at Cousin Hetty's door now; a give-and-take of women's voices
+sounding within. "Here's Mrs. Crittenden back. Come on, Nelly, we better
+be going. There's all the work to do."
+
+Marise went in and sat down, looking at them with stony indifference, at
+'Gene this time as well as at the women. The drawn sickness of his ashy
+face did not move her in the least now. What did she care what he did,
+what anyone did, till she knew whether she had ever had Neale or not?
+The women's chatter sounded remote and foolish in her ears.
+
+If Neale had done that . . . if that was the man he was . . . but of course
+it was preposterous, and she had been dreaming. What was that that
+Eugenia had said? The descent into hell began again step by step.
+
+The Powers went out, the old woman still talking, chattering, as if
+anything mattered now.
+
+After they were gone, Agnes ran to the door calling, "Mis' Powers! You
+forgot your pan and towel after all!" And there was Mrs. Powers again,
+talking, talking.
+
+She had been saying something that needed an answer apparently, for now
+she stood waiting, expectant.
+
+"What was that, Mrs. Powers? I was thinking of something else."
+
+"I was just tellin' you that there's going to be a big change over to
+our house. 'Gene, he told Nelly, as he was setting here waiting for you,
+how he was going to cut down the big pine one of these days, like she
+always wanted him to. You know, the one that shades the house so.
+'Gene's grandfather planted it, and he's always set the greatest store
+by it. Used to say he'd just as soon cut his grandmother's throat as
+chop it down. But Nelly, she's all housekeeper and she never did like
+the musty way the shade makes our best room smell. I never thought to
+see the day 'Gene would give in to her about that. He's gi'n in to her
+about everything else though. Only last night he was tellin' her, he was
+going to take something out'n the savings-bank and buy her an organ for
+Addie to learn to play on, that Nelly always hankered after. Seems
+'sthough he can't do enough for Nelly, don't it?"
+
+Marise looked at her coldly, incapable of paying enough attention to her
+to make any comment on what she said. Let them cut down all the trees in
+the valley, and each other's throats into the bargain, if Neale had . . .
+if there had never been her Neale, the Neale she thought she had been
+living with, all these years.
+
+Mrs. Powers had gone finally, and the house was silent at last, so
+silent that she could now hear quite clearly, as though Eugenia still
+sat there, what the sweet musical voice was saying over and over. Why
+had they gone away and left her alone to face this deadly peril which
+advanced on her step by step without mercy, time after time? Now there
+was nothing to do but to wait and stand it off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was sitting in the same chair, her umbrella still in her hand,
+waiting, when Agnes came in to say that she had lunch ready. She turned
+eyes of astonished anger and rebuke on her. "I don't want anything to
+eat," she said in so strange a voice that Agnes crept back to the
+kitchen, shuffling and scared.
+
+She was still sitting there, looking fixedly before her, and frowning,
+when Agnes came to the door to say timidly that the gentleman had come
+about using his car to meet the train, and wanted to know if he could
+see Mrs. Crittenden.
+
+Marise looked at her, frowning, and shook her head. But it was not until
+late that night that she understood the words that Agnes had spoken.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was still sitting there, rigid, waiting, when Agnes brought in a
+lighted lamp, and Marise saw that evening had come. The light was
+extremely disagreeable to her eyes. She got up stiffly, and went
+outdoors to the porch, sitting down on the steps.
+
+The stars were beginning to come out now. The sight of them suggested
+something painful, some impression that belonged to that other world
+that had existed before this day, before she had conceived the
+possibility that Neale might not be Neale, might never have been Neale,
+that there was no such thing for her as human integrity. Was it she who
+had leaned out from the window and felt herself despised by the height
+and vastness of the stars? From the height and vastness of her need, she
+looked down on them now, and found them nothing, mere pin-pricks in the
+sky, compared to this towering doubt of her, this moral need which
+shouted down all the mere matter on the earth and in the heavens above
+the earth. Something eternal was at stake now, the faith in
+righteousness of a human soul.
+
+She had thought childishly, shallowly last night that she had had no
+faith, and could live with none. That was because she had not conceived
+what it would be to try to live without faith, because she had not
+conceived that the very ground under her feet could give way. At that
+very moment she had had a faith as boundless as the universe, and had
+forgotten it. And now it was put in doubt. She could not live without
+it. It was the only vital thing for her.
+
+Was she the woman who had felt forced into acquiescing when Vincent
+Marsh had said so boldly and violently, that she loved her husband no
+more, that he was nothing to her now? It seemed to her at this moment
+that it was a matter of the utmost unimportance whether she _loved_ him
+or not; but she could not live without believing him. That was all. She
+could not live without that. Life would be too utterly base . . .
+
+Neale nothing to her? She did not know _what_ he was to her, but the
+mere possibility of losing her faith in him was like death. It was a
+thousand times worse than death, which was merely material. This
+mattered a great deal more than the physical death of someone's body . . .
+it was the murder, minute by minute, hour by hour, month by month, year
+by year of all her married life, of all she had found lovable and
+tolerable and beautiful and real in life.
+
+Of course this could not be true . . . of course not . . . but if it were
+true, she would find the corrosive poison of a false double meaning in
+every remembered hour. She did not believe any of those hideously
+marshaled facts, but if they were true, she would go back over all those
+recollections of their life together and kill them one by one, because
+every hour of her life had been founded on the most unthinking, the most
+absolute, the most recklessly certain trust in Neale. To know that past
+in peril, which she had counted on as safe, more surely than on anything
+in life, so surely that she had almost dismissed it from her mind like a
+treasure laid away in a safe hiding-place . . . to know those memories in
+danger was a new torture that had never before been devised for any
+human being. No one had the safe and consecrated past taken from him.
+Its pricelessness shone on her with a blinding light. What if it should
+be taken away, if she should find she had never had it, at all . . . ?
+
+The idea was so acute an anguish to her that she startled herself by a
+cry of suffering.
+
+Agnes' voice behind her asked tremblingly, "Did you call me, Miss
+Marise?"
+
+Marise shifted her position, drew a breath, and answered in a hard tone,
+"No."
+
+She knew with one corner of her mind that Agnes must be terrified. What
+if she were? Marise's life-long habit of divining another's need and
+ministering to it, vanished like a handful of dust in a storm. What did
+she care about Agnes? What did she care about anything in the world but
+that she should have back again what she had valued so little as to lose
+it from her mind altogether? All of her own energy was strained in the
+bitterness of keeping her soul alive till Neale should come. She had not
+the smallest atom of strength to care about the needs of anyone else.
+
+She looked up at the stars, disdainful of them. How small they were, how
+unimportant in the scheme of things, so much less able to give
+significance to the universe, than the presence of integrity in a human
+soul.
+
+If she could have Neale back again, as she had always had him without
+thinking of it, if she could have her faith in him again, the skies
+might shrivel up like a scroll, but something eternal would remain in
+her life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to her that she heard a faint sound in the distance, on the
+road, and her strength ran out of her like water. She tried to stand up
+but could not.
+
+Yes, it was the car, approaching. The two glaring headlights swept the
+white road, stopped, and went out. For an instant the dark mass stood
+motionless in the starlight. Then something moved, a man's tall figure
+came up the path.
+
+"Is that you, Marise?" asked Neale's voice.
+
+She had not breath to speak, but all of her being cried out silently to
+him the question which had had all the day such a desperate meaning for
+her, "Is that _you_, Neale?"
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+NEALE'S RETURN
+
+July 22. Evening.
+
+He stooped to kiss her and sank down beside her where she sat cowering
+in the dark. Although she could not see his face clearly Marise knew
+from his manner that he was very tired, from the way he sat down, taking
+off his cap, and his attitude as he leaned his head back against the
+pillar. She knew this without thinking about it, mechanically, with the
+automatic certainty of a long-since acquired knowledge of him. And when
+he spoke, although his voice was quiet and level, she felt a great
+fatigue in his accent.
+
+But he spoke with his usual natural intonation, which he evidently tried
+to make cheerful. "I'm awfully glad you're still up, dear. I was afraid
+you'd be too tired, with the funeral coming tomorrow. But I couldn't get
+here any sooner. I've been clear over the mountain today. And I've done
+a pretty good stroke of business that I'm in a hurry to tell you about.
+You remember, don't you, how the Powers lost the title to their big
+woodlot? I don't know if you happen to remember all the details, how a
+lawyer named Lowder . . ."
+
+"I remember," said Marise, speaking for the first time, "all about it."
+
+"Well," went on Neale, wearily but steadily, "up in Nova Scotia this
+time, talking with one of the old women in town, I ran across a local
+tradition that, in a town about ten miles inland, some of the families
+were descended from Tory Yankees who'd been exiled from New England,
+after the Revolution. I thought it was worth looking up, and one day I
+ran up there to see if I could find out anything about them. It was
+Sunday and I had to . . ."
+
+Marise was beside herself, her heart racing wildly. She took hold of his
+arm and shook it with all her might. "Neale, quick! quick! Leave out all
+that. _What did you do?_"
+
+She could see that he was surprised by her fierce impatience, and for an
+instant taken aback by the roughness of the interruption. He stared at
+her. How _slow_ Neale was!
+
+He began, "But, dear, why do you care so much about it? You can't
+understand about what I did, if I don't tell you this part, the
+beginning, how I . . ." Then, feeling her begin to tremble uncontrollably,
+he said hastily, "Why, of course, Marise, if you want to know the end
+first. The upshot of it all is that I've got it straightened out, about
+the Powers woodlot. I got track of those missing leaves from the Ashley
+Town Records. They really were carried away by that uncle of yours. I
+found them up in Canada. I had a certified copy and tracing made of
+them. It's been a long complicated business, and the things only came in
+yesterday's mail, after you'd been called over here. But I'd been in
+correspondence with Lowder, and when I had my proofs in hand, I
+telephoned him and made him come over yesterday afternoon. It was one of
+the biggest satisfactions I ever expect to have, when I shoved those
+papers under his nose and watched him curl up. Then I took him back
+today, myself, to his own office, not to let him out of my sight, till
+it was all settled. There was a great deal more to it . . . two or three
+hours of fight. I bluffed some, about action by the bar-association,
+disbarment, a possible indictment for perjury, and seemed to hit a weak
+spot. And finally I saw him with my own eyes burn up that fake
+warranty-deed. And that's all there is to that. Just as soon as we can
+get this certified copy admitted and entered on our Town Records, 'Gene
+can have possession of his own wood-land. Isn't that good news?"
+
+He paused and added with a tired, tolerant, kindly accent, "Now Nelly
+will have fourteen pairs of new shoes, each laced higher up than the
+others, and I won't be the one to grudge them to her."
+
+He waited for a comment and, when none came, went on doggedly making
+talk in that resolutely natural tone of his. "Now that you know the end,
+and that it all came out right, you ought to listen to some details, for
+they are queer. The missing pages weren't in that first town I struck at
+all. Nothing there but a record of a family of Simmonses who had come
+from Ashley in 1778. They had . . ."
+
+Marise heard nothing more of what he said, although his voice went on
+with words the meaning of which she could not grasp. It did not seem to
+her that she had really understood with the whole of her brain anything
+he had said, or that she had been able to take in the significance of
+it. She could think of nothing but a frightening sensation all over her
+body, as though the life were ebbing out of it. Every nerve and fiber in
+her seemed to have gone slack, beyond anything she had ever conceived.
+She could feel herself more and more unstrung and loosened like a violin
+string let down and down. The throbbing ache in her throat was gone.
+Everything was gone. She sat helpless and felt it slip away, till
+somewhere in the center of her body this ebbing of strength had run so
+far that it was a terrifying pain, like the approach of death. She was
+in a physical panic of alarm, but unable to make a sound, to turn her
+head.
+
+It was when she heard a loud insistent ringing in her head, and saw the
+stars waver and grow dim that she knew she was fainting away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then she was lying on the sofa in Cousin Hetty's sitting-room, Neale
+bending over her, holding a handkerchief which smelled of ammonia, and
+Agnes, very white, saying in an agitated voice, "It's because she hasn't
+eaten a thing all day. She wouldn't touch her lunch or supper. It's been
+turrible to see her."
+
+Marise's head felt quite clear and lucid now; her consciousness as if
+washed clean by its temporary absence from life. She tried to sit up and
+smile at Neale and Agnes. She had never fainted away in all her life
+before. She felt very apologetic and weak. And she felt herself in a
+queer, literal way another person.
+
+Neale sat down by her now and put his arm around her. His face was grave
+and solicitous, but not frightened, as Agnes was. It was like Neale not
+to lose his head. He said to Agnes, "Give me that cup of cocoa," and
+when it came, he held it to Marise's lips. "Take a good swallow of
+that," he said quietly.
+
+Marise was amazed to find that the hot sweet smell of the cocoa aroused
+in her a keen sensation of hunger. She drank eagerly, and taking in her
+hand the piece of bread and butter which Neale offered to her, she began
+to eat it with a child's appetite. She was not ashamed or self-conscious
+in showing this before Neale. One never needed to live up to any pose
+before Neale. His mere presence in the room brought you back, she
+thought, to a sense of reality. Sometimes if you had been particularly
+up in the air, it made you feel a little flat as she certainly did now.
+But how profoundly alive it made you feel, Neale's sense of things as
+they were.
+
+The food was delicious. She ate and drank unabashedly, finding it an
+exquisite sensation to feel her body once more normal, her usual home,
+and not a scaring, almost hostile entity, apart from her. When she
+finished, she leaned against Neale's shoulder with a long breath. For an
+instant, she had no emotion but relieved, homely, bodily comfort.
+
+"Well, for Heaven's sake!" said Neale, looking down at her.
+
+"I know it," she said. "I'm an awful fool."
+
+"No, you're not," he contradicted. "That's what makes me so provoked
+with you now, going without eating since morning."
+
+Agnes put in, "It's the suddenness of it that was such a shock. It takes
+me just so, too, comes over me as I start to put a mouthful of food into
+my mouth. I can't get it down. And you don't know how _lost_ I feel not
+to have Miss Hetty here to tell me what to eat. I feel so gone!"
+
+"You must go to bed this minute," said Neale. "I'll go right back to the
+children."
+
+He remembered suddenly. "By George, I haven't had anything to eat since
+noon, myself." He gave Marise an apologetic glance. "I guess I haven't
+any stones to throw at your foolishness."
+
+Agnes ran to get him another cup of cocoa and some more bread and
+butter. Marise leaned back on the sofa and watched him eat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was aware of a physical release from tension that was like a new
+birth. She looked at her husband as she had not looked at him for years.
+And yet she knew every line and hollow of that rugged face. What she
+seemed not to have seen before, was what had grown up little by little,
+the expression of his face, the expression which gave his presence its
+significance, the expression which he had not inherited like his
+features, but which his life had wrought out there.
+
+Before her very eyes there seemed still present the strange, alien look
+of the dead face upstairs, from which the expression had gone, and with
+it everything. That vision hung, a cold and solemn warning in her mind,
+and through it she looked at the living face before her and saw it as
+she had never done before.
+
+In the clean, new, sweet lucidity of her just-returned consciousness she
+saw what she was not to forget, something like a steady, visible light,
+which was Neale's life. That was Neale himself. And as she looked at him
+silently, she thought it no wonder that she had been literally almost
+frightened to death by the mere possibility that it had not existed. She
+had been right in thinking that there was something there which would
+outlast the mere stars.
+
+He looked up, found her eyes on him, and smiled at her. She found the
+gentleness of his eyes so touching that she felt the tears mounting to
+her own. . . . But she winked them back. There had been enough foolishness
+from her, for one day.
+
+Neale leaned back in his chair now, looked around for his; cap, took it
+up, and looked back at her, quietly, still smiling a little. Marise
+thought, "Neale is as _natural_ in his life as a very great actor is in
+his art. Whatever he does, even to the most trifling gesture, is done
+with so great a simplicity that it makes people like me feel fussy and
+paltry."
+
+There was a moment's silence, Neale frankly very tired, looking rather
+haggard and grim, giving himself a moment's respite in his chair before
+standing up to go; Marise passive, drawing long quiet breaths, her hands
+folded on her knees; Agnes, her back to the other two, hanging about the
+sideboard, opening and shutting the drawers, and shifting their contents
+aimlessly from one to the other.
+
+Then Agnes turned, and showed a shamed, nervous old face. "I don't know
+what's got into me, Miss Marise, that I ain't no good to myself nor
+anybody else. I'm afraid to go back into the kitchen alone." She
+explained to Neale, "I never was in the house with a dead body before,
+Mr. Crittenden, and I act like a baby about it, scared to let Mrs.
+Crittenden out of my sight. If I'm alone for a minute, seems 'sthough
+. . ." She glanced over her shoulder fearfully and ended lamely, "Seems
+'sthough I don't know what might happen."
+
+"I won't leave you alone, Agnes, till it is all over," said Marise, and
+this time she kept contempt not only out of her voice, but out of her
+heart. She was truly only very sorry for the old woman with her foolish
+fears.
+
+Agnes blinked and pressed her lips together, the water in her eyes.
+"I'm awful glad to hear you say that!" she said fervently.
+
+Marise closed her eyes for a moment. It had suddenly come to her that
+this promise to Agnes meant that she could not see Neale alone till
+after the funeral, tomorrow, when she went back into life again. And she
+found that she immensely wanted to see him alone this very hour, now!
+And Agnes would be there . . . !
+
+She opened her eyes and saw Neale standing up, his cap in his hand,
+looking at her, rough and brown and tall and tired and strong; so
+familiar, every line and pose and color of him; as familiar and
+unexciting, as much a part of her, as her own hand.
+
+As their eyes met in the profound look of intimate interpenetration
+which can pass only between a man and a woman who have been part of each
+other, she felt herself putting to him clearly, piercingly, the question
+which till then she had not known how to form, "_Neale, what do you want
+me to do?_"
+
+She must have said it aloud, and said it with an accent which carried
+its prodigious import, for she saw him turn very white, saw his eyes
+deepen, his chest lift in a great heave. He came towards her, evidently
+not able to speak for a moment. Then he took her hands . . . the memory of
+a thousand other times was in his touch . . .
+
+He looked at her as though he could never turn his eyes away. The
+corners of his mouth twitched and drew down.
+
+He said, in a deep, trembling, solemn voice, "Marise, my darling, I want
+you always to do what is best for _you_ to do."
+
+He drew a deep, deep breath as though it had taken all his strength to
+say that; and went on, "What is deepest and most living in you . . . that
+is what must go on living."
+
+He released one hand and held it out towards her as though he were
+taking an oath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+MARISE'S COMING-OF-AGE
+
+
+July 23. Dawn
+
+Even after the old child, Agnes, had been soothed and reassured, over
+and over, till she had fallen asleep, and the house lay profoundly
+quiet, Marise felt not the slightest approach of drowsiness or even of
+fatigue. She lay down on her bed, but could not close her eyes. They
+remained wide open, looking not at a wild confusion of incoherent images
+as they had the night before, but straight into blackness and vacancy.
+
+It was strange how from the brawling turmoil of impressions which had
+shouted and cried out to her the night before, and had wrought her to
+frenzy by their insane insistence, not an echo reached her now. Her mind
+was as silent and intent as the old house, keeping its last mute watch
+over its mistress. Intent on what? She did not know. On something that
+was waiting for her, on something for which she was waiting.
+
+In an immense hush, like the dusky silence in a cathedral aisle or in
+the dark heart of the woods, there was something there waiting for her
+to go and find it.
+
+That hush had fallen on her at the sight of Neale's face, at the sound
+of his voice, as he had looked at her and spoken to her, at the last,
+just before he went away back to the children. Those furiously racing
+pulses of hers had been stilled by it into this steady rhythm which now
+beat quietly through her. The clashing thoughts which had risen with
+malevolent swiftness, like high, battling shadowy genii, and had torn
+her in pieces as they fought back and forth, were stilled as though a
+master-word had been spoken which they must all obey.
+
+The old house, silent under the stars, lay quiet in its vigil about her,
+but slept no more than she; the old house which had been a part of her
+childhood and her youth now watched over her entry into another part of
+her journey.
+
+For as she lay there, wide-awake, watching the light of the candle, she
+felt that she knew what was waiting for her, what she must go to find.
+It was her maturity.
+
+And as she lay quiet, her ears ringing in the solemn hush which Neale's
+look and voice had laid about her, she felt slowly coming into her, like
+a tide from a great ocean, the strength to go forward. She lay still,
+watching the candle-flame, hovering above the wick which tied it to the
+candle, reaching up, reaching up, never for a moment flagging in that
+transmutation of the dead matter below it, into something shining and
+alive.
+
+She felt the quiet strength come into her like a tide. And presently, as
+naturally as a child wakes in the morning, refreshed, and feels the
+impulse to rise to active effort again, she sat up in bed, folded her
+arms around her knees, and began to think.
+
+Really to think this time, not merely to be the helpless battle-field
+over which hurtling projectiles of fierce emotions passed back and
+forth! She set her life fairly there before her, and began to try to
+understand it.
+
+As she took this first step and saw the long journey stretching out
+before her, she knew on what staff she leaned. It was Neale's belief
+that she was strong and not weak, that she could find out, if she tried,
+what was deepest and most living in her heart. With this in her hand,
+with that great protecting hush about her, she set forth. She was afraid
+of what she might find, but she set forth.
+
+She must begin at the beginning this time, and go steadily forward from
+one step to the next, not her usual involuntary plunge, not the usual
+closing over her head of those yelling waters of too vivid impression.
+
+The beginning had been . . . yes, the first conscious beginning had been
+the going away of little Mark, out of his babyhood into his own
+child-life. He had gone out and left an empty place behind him, which
+till then had been filled with the insistent ever-present need for care
+for the physical weakness of babyhood. And she had known that never
+again would Mark fill that place.
+
+Emptiness, silence, solitude in the place of constant activity; it had
+frightened her, had set before her a vision that her life had reached
+its peak, and henceforth would go down the decline. Into that empty
+place had come a ringing, peremptory call back to personal and physical
+youth and excitement and burning sensations. And with that blinding
+rebirth of physical youth had come a doubt of all that had seemed the
+recompense for the loss of it, had come the conception that she might be
+letting herself be fooled and tricked out of the only real things.
+
+There had been many parts to this: her revolt from the mere physical
+drudgery of her life, from giving so much of her strength to the dull,
+unsavory, material things. This summer, a thousand times in a thousand
+ways, there had been brought home to her by Vincent, by Eugenia, the
+fact that there were lives so arranged that other people did all the
+drudgery, and left one free to perceive nothing but the beauty and
+delicacy of existence. Now, straight at it! With all the knowledge of
+herself and of life which she had gathered,--straight at it, to see what
+this meant! Did their entire freedom from drudgery give them a keener
+sense of the beauty and delicacy of existence? Were they more deeply
+alive because of the ease of their lives?
+
+She cast about her for evidence, in a firm, orderly search among the
+materials which life had brought to her. Had she seen anything which
+could give evidence on that? There was Eugenia; Eugenia and her friends
+had always lived that life of rich possessions and well-served ease.
+What had it made of them? Was their sense of beauty deeper and more
+living because of it? No, not in the least.
+
+She turned her inward eye on Eugenia's life, on the lives of the people
+in that circle, in a long searching gaze. Was it deep in eternal values?
+Was it made up of a constant recurrence of sensitive aliveness to what
+is most worth responding to? Odd, that it did not seem to be! They were
+petulant, and bored, and troubled about minute flaws in their ease, far
+more than they were deep in communion with beauty.
+
+Another piece of evidence came knocking at the door now, a picture of
+quaint and humble homeliness . . . herself standing before the stove with
+the roast on a plate, and little Mark saying fastidiously, "Oh, how
+nasty raw meat looks!" She recalled her passing impatience with the
+childishness of that comment, her passing sense of the puerile ignorance
+of the inherent unity of things, in such an attitude of eagerness to
+feed on results and unwillingness to take one's share of what leads up
+to results. Yes, it was more there, than in looking at Eugenia, that she
+could find evidence. Did she want to be of those who sat afar off and
+were served with the fine and delicate food of life, and knew nothing of
+the unsavory process of preparing it? It had seemed to her this summer,
+a thousand times with Vincent's eyes on her, scornful of her present
+life, that she did want it, that she wanted that more than anything
+else. Now let her look full at it. She was a grown woman now, who could
+foresee what it would mean.
+
+She looked full at it, set herself there in her imagination, in the
+remote ivory tower and looked out from its carven windows at the rough
+world where she had lived and worked, and from which she would
+henceforth be protected . . . and shut out. She looked long, and in the
+profound silence, both within and without her, she listened to the
+deepest of the voices in her heart.
+
+And she knew that it was too late for that. She had lived, and she could
+not blot out what life had brought to her. She could never now, with a
+tranquil heart, go into the ivory tower. It would do her no good to shut
+and bar the golden door a hundred times behind her, because she would
+have with her, everywhere she went, wrought into the very fiber of her
+being, a guilty sense of all the effort and daily strain and struggle in
+which she did not share.
+
+She saw no material good accomplished by taking her share. The existence
+in the world of so much drudgery and unlovely slavery to material
+processes was an insoluble mystery; but a life in which her part of it
+would be taken by other people and added to their own burdens . . . no,
+she had grown into something which could not endure that!
+
+Perhaps this was one of the hard, unwelcome lessons that the war had
+brought to her. She remembered how she had hated the simple comforts of
+home, the safety, the roof over her head, because they were being paid
+for by such hideous sufferings on the part of others; how she had been
+ashamed to lie down in her warm bed when she thought of Neale and his
+comrades in the trench-mud, in the cold horror of the long drenching
+nights, awaiting the attack; and she had turned sick to see the long
+trains of soldiers going out while she stayed safely behind and bore no
+part in the wretchedness which war is. There had been no way for her to
+take her part in that heavy payment for her safety and comfort; but the
+bitterness of those days had shocked her imagination alive to the shame
+of sharing and enjoying what she had not helped to pay for, to the
+disharmony of having more than your share while other people have less
+than theirs.
+
+This was nothing she had consciously sought for. She felt no dutiful
+welcome that it had come; she bent under it as under a burden. But it
+was there. Life had made her into one of the human beings capable of
+feeling that responsibility, each for all, and the war had driven it
+home, deep into her heart, whence she could not pluck it out.
+
+She might never have known it, never have thought of it, if she had
+been safely protected by ignorance of what life is like. But now she
+knew, living had taught her; and that knowledge was irrevocably part of
+the woman she had become.
+
+Wait now! Was this only habit, routine, dulled lack of divining
+imagination of what another life could be? That was the challenge
+Vincent would throw down. She gazed steadily at the wall before her, and
+called up, detail by detail, the life which Vincent Marsh thought the
+only one that meant richness and abundance for the human spirit. It hung
+there, a shimmering mass of lovely colors and exquisite textures and
+fineness and delicacy and beauty. And as she looked at it, it took on
+the shape of a glorious, uprooted plant, cut off from the very source of
+life, its glossy surfaces already beginning to wither and dull in the
+sure approach of corruption and decay. But what beauties were there to
+pluck, lovely fading beauties, poignant and exquisite sensations, which
+she was capable of savoring, which she sadly knew she would live and die
+without having known, a heritage into which she would never enter;
+because she had known the unforgettable taste of the other heritage,
+alive and rooted deep!
+
+This faded out and left her staring at the blank wall again, feeling old
+and stern.
+
+Nothing more came for a moment, and restless, feeling no bodily fatigue
+at all, she got out of her bed, took up the candle, and stepped
+aimlessly out into the hall. The old clock at the end struck a muffled
+stroke, as if to greet her. She held up her candle to look at it.
+Half-past two in the morning. A long time till dawn would come.
+
+She hesitated a moment and turned towards the door of a garret room
+which stood open. She had not been in there for so long,--years perhaps;
+but as a child she had often played there among the old things, come
+down from the dead, who were kept in such friendly recollection in this
+house. Near the door there had been an old, flat-topped, hair-covered
+trunk . . . yes, here it was, just as it had been. Nothing ever changed
+here. She sat down on it, the candle on the floor beside her, and saw
+herself as a little girl playing among the old things.
+
+A little girl! And now she was the mother of a little girl. So short a
+time had passed! She understood so very little more than when she had
+been the little girl herself. Yet now there was Elly who came and stood
+by her, and looked at her, and asked with all her eyes and lips and
+being, "Mother, what is the meaning of life?"
+
+What answer had she to give? Was she at all more fit than anyone else to
+try to give Elly the unknowable answer to that dark question? Was there
+any deep spiritual reality which counted at all, which one human being
+could give to another? Did we really live on desert islands, cut off so
+wholly from each other by the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea? And if we
+did, why break one's heart in the vain effort to do the impossible, to
+get from human beings what they could not give?
+
+Her heart ached in an old bitterness at the doubt. Did her children . . .
+could they . . . give her the love she wanted from them, in answer to her
+gift of her life to them? They were already beginning to go away from
+her, to be estranged from her, to shut her out of their lives, to live
+their lives with no place for her in them.
+
+She sat there on the old trunk and saw the endless procession of parents
+and children passing before her, the children so soon parents, all
+driven forward by what they could not understand, yearning and starving
+for what was not given them, all wrapped and dimmed in the twilight of
+their doubt and ignorance. Where were they going? And why? So many of
+them, so many!
+
+Her humbled spirit was prostrate before their mystery, before the
+vastness of the whole, of which she and her children were only a part, a
+tiny, lowly part.
+
+With this humbling sense of the greatness of the whole, something
+swollen and sore in her heart gave over its aching, as though a
+quieting hand had been laid on it. She drew a long breath. Oh, from what
+did it come, this rest from that sore bitterness?
+
+It came from this, that she had somehow been shown that what she wanted
+was not love from her children for herself. That was trying to drive a
+bargain to make them pay for something they had never asked to have.
+What she wanted was not to get love, to get a place in their lives for
+herself, to get anything from them, but to give them all that lay in her
+to give. If that was what she wanted, why, nothing, nothing could take
+it away. And it was truly . . . in this hour of silence and searching . . .
+she saw that it was truly what she wanted. It was something in her which
+had grown insensibly to life and strength, during all those uncounted
+hours of humble service to the children. And it was something golden and
+immortal in her poor, flawed, human heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A warm bright wave of feeling swept over her . . . there, distinct and
+rounded against the shadowy confused procession of abstract ideas about
+parents and children, there stood looking at her out of their clear
+loving eyes, Paul and Elly and little Mark, alive, there, a part of her;
+not only themselves but her children; not only her children but
+themselves; human life which she and Neale had created out of the stuff
+of the universe. They looked at her and in their regard was the clear
+distillation of the innumerable past hours when they had looked at her
+with love and trust.
+
+At the sight of them, her own children, her heart swelled and opened
+wide to a conception of something greater and deeper in motherhood than
+she had had; but which she could have if she could deserve it; something
+so wide and sun-flooded that the old selfish, possessive,
+never-satisfied ache which had called itself love withered away, its
+power to hurt and poison her gone.
+
+She had no words for this . . . she could not even try to understand it.
+It was as solemn a birth-hour to her, as the hour when she had first
+heard the cry of her new-born babies . . . she was one mother then, she
+had become another mother now. She turned to bless the torment of
+bitter, doubting questioning of what she had called mother-love, which
+had forced her forward blindly struggling, till she found this
+divination of a greater possibility.
+
+She had been trying to span the unfathomable with a mean and grasping
+desire. Now she knew what she must try to do; to give up the lesser and
+receive the greater.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This passed and left her, looking straight before her at the flickering
+shadows, leaping among the dusky corners of the dark slant-ceilinged
+room. The old clock struck three in the hall behind her.
+
+She felt tired now, as she had after the other travail which had given
+her her children, and leaned her head on her hand. Where did she
+herself, her own personal self come in, with all this? It was always a
+call to more effort which came. To get the great good things of life how
+much you had to give! How much of what seemed dearly yourself, you had
+to leave behind as you went forward! Her childhood was startlingly
+called up by this old garret, where nothing had changed: she could still
+see herself, running about there, happily absorbed in the vital
+trivialities of her ten years. She had not forgotten them, she knew
+exactly the thrill felt by that shadowy little girl as she leaned over
+the old chest yonder, and pulled out the deep-fringed shawl and quilted
+petticoat.
+
+It had been sweet to be a little girl, she thought wistfully, to have
+had no past, to know only the shining present of every day with no
+ominous, difficult future beyond it. Ineffably sweet too was the aroma
+of perfect trust in the strength and wisdom of grown-up people, which
+tinctured deep with certainty every profoundest layer of her
+consciousness. Ineffably sweet . . . and lost forever. There was no human
+being in the world as wise and strong as poor old Cousin Hetty had
+seemed to her then. A kingdom of security from which she was now shut
+out.
+
+And the games, the fantastic plays,--how whole and rounded and entire,
+the pleasure in them! She remembered the rainy day she had played
+paper-dolls here once, with little Margaret Congdon . . . dead, years ago,
+that much-loved playmate of past summer days . . . and how they had taken
+the chest for the house for Margaret's dolls, and the hair-trunk where
+she sat, for hers; how they had arranged them with the smallest of
+playthings, with paste-board furniture, and bits of colored tissue paper
+for rugs, and pieces of silk and linen from the rag-bag for bed-clothes;
+how they had hummed and whistled to themselves as they worked (she could
+hear them now!); and how the aromatic woodsy smell of the unfinished old
+room and the drone of the rain on the roof had been a part of their deep
+content.
+
+Nothing had changed in that room, except the woman who sat there.
+
+She got up with a sudden impulse, and threw back the lid of the trunk. A
+faint musty odor rose from it, as though it had been shut up for very
+long. And . . . why, there it was, the doll's room, just as they had left
+it, how long ago! How like this house! How like Cousin Hetty never to
+have touched it!
+
+She sat down on the floor and, lifting the candle, looked in at the
+yellowed old playthings, the flimsy, spineless paper-dolls, the faded
+silk rags, the discolored bits of papers, the misshapen staggering
+paste-board chairs and bed, which had seemed so delightful and
+enchanting to her then, far better than any actual room she knew. A
+homesickness for the past came over her. It was not only Margaret who
+was dead. The other little girl who had played there, who had hung so
+lovingly over this creation of her fancy, was dead too, Marise thought
+with a backward look of longing.
+
+And then the honest, unsparing habit of her life with Neale shook her
+roughly. This was sentimentalizing. If she could, would she give up what
+she had now and go back to being the little girl, deeply satisfied with
+make-shift toys, which were only the foreshadowings of what was to come?
+If she could, would she exchange her actual room at home, for this, even
+to have again all the unquestioning trust in everyone and everything of
+the child who had died in her heart? Would she choose to give up the
+home where her living children had been born, at no matter what cost of
+horrid pain to herself, and were growing up to no matter what dark
+uncertainties in life, for this toy inhabited by paper-dolls? No, no,
+she had gone on, gone on, and left this behind. Nor would she, if she
+could, exchange the darker, heavier, richer gifts for the bright small
+trinkets of the past.
+
+All this ran fluently from her mind, with a swiftness and clarity which
+seemed as shallow as it was rapid; but now there sounded in her ears a
+warning roar of deeper waters to which this was carrying her.
+
+Before she knew what was coming, she braced herself to meet it; and
+holding hard and ineffectually, felt herself helplessly swept out and
+flung to the fury of the waves . . . and she met them with an answering
+tumult of welcome. That was what Vincent Marsh could do for her, wanted
+to do for her,--that wonderful, miraculous thing,--give back to her
+something she had thought she had left behind forever; he could take
+her, in the strength of her maturity with all the richness of growth,
+and carry her back to live over again the fierce, concentrated intensity
+of newly-born passion which had come into her life, and gone, before she
+had had the capacity to understand or wholly feel it. He could lift her
+from the dulled routine of life beginning to fade and lose its colors,
+and carry her back to the glorious forgetfulness of every created thing,
+save one man and one woman.
+
+She had had a glimpse of that, in the first year of her married life,
+had had it, and little by little had lost it. It had crumbled away
+insensibly, between her fingers, with use, with familiarity, with the
+hateful blunting of sensitiveness which life's battering always brings.
+But she could have it again; with a grown woman's strength and depth of
+feeling, she could have the inheritance of youth. She had spent it, but
+now she could have it again. That was what Vincent meant.
+
+He seemed to lean over her now, his burning, quivering hand on hers. She
+felt a deep hot flush rise to her face, all over her body. She was like
+a crimson rose, offering the splendor of its maturity to be plucked. Let
+her have the courage to know that its end and aim and fulfilment lay in
+being plucked and gloriously worn before the coming of the inevitable
+end! Thus and thus only could one find certainty, before death came, of
+having lived as deeply as lay in one to live.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the glowing pride and defiance with which she felt herself rise
+to the challenge, felt herself strong to break and surmount all
+obstacles within and without, which stood in the way of that fulfilment
+of her complete self, she had heard . . . the slightest of
+trivialities . . . a thought gone as soon as it was conceived . . .
+nothing of the slightest consequence . . . harmless . . .
+insignificant . . . yet why should it give off the betraying clink of
+something flawed and cracked? . . . She had heard . . . it must have
+come from some corner of her own mind . . . something like this, "Set
+such an alternative between routine, traditional, narrow domestic life,
+and the mightiness and richness of mature passion, before a modern, free
+European woman, and see how quickly she would grasp with all her soul for
+passion."
+
+What was there about this, the veriest flying mote among a thousand
+others in the air, so to awaken in Marise's heart a deep vibration of
+alarm? Why should she not have said that? she asked herself, angry and
+scared. Why was it not a natural thought to have had? She felt herself
+menaced by an unexpected enemy, and flew to arms.
+
+Into the rich, hot, perfumed shrine which Vincent's remembered words and
+look had built there about her, there blew a thin cool breath from the
+outside, through some crack opened by that casual thought. Before she
+even knew from whence it came, Marise cried out on it, in a fury of
+resentment . . . and shivered in it.
+
+With no apparent volition of her own, she felt something very strong
+within her raise a mighty head and look about, stirred to watchfulness
+and suspicion by that luckless phrase.
+
+She recognized it . . . the habit of honesty of thought, not native to
+Marise's heart, but planted there by her relation with Neale's stark,
+plain integrity. Feeding unchecked on its own food, during the long
+years of her marriage it had grown insensibly stronger and stronger,
+till now, tyrant and master, with the irresistible strength of conscious
+power, it could quell with a look all the rest of her nature, rich in
+colored possibilities of seductive self-deceit, sweet illusions, lovely
+falsities.
+
+She could no more stop its advance now, straight though it made its way
+over treasures she fain would keep, than she could stop the beating of
+her heart.
+
+A ruthless question or two . . . "Why did you say that about what a
+modern, free European woman would do in your place? Are you trying to
+play up to some trumpery notion of a rôle to fill? And more than this,
+did you really mean in your heart an actual, living woman of another
+race, such as you knew in Europe; or did you mean somebody in an
+Italian, or a French, or a Scandinavian book?" Marise writhed against
+the indignity of this, protested fiercely, angrily against the
+incriminating imputation in it . . . and with the same breath admitted it
+true.
+
+It was true. She was horrified and lost in grief and humiliation at the
+cheapened aspect of what had looked so rich before. Had there been in
+truth an element of such trashy copying of the conventional pose of
+revolt in what had seemed so rushingly spontaneous? Oh no, no . . . not
+that!
+
+She turned away and away from the possibility that she had been
+partially living up to other people's ideas, finding it intolerable; and
+was met again and again by the relentless thrust of that acquired
+honesty of thought which had worn such deep grooves in her mind in all
+these years of unbroken practice of it. "You are not somebody in a book,
+you are not a symbol of modern woman who must make the gestures
+appropriate for your part . . ." One by one, that relentless power seated
+in her many-colored tumultuous heart put out the flaring torches.
+
+It had grown too strong for her, that habit of honesty of thought and
+action. If this struggle with it had come years before she could have
+mastered it, flinging against it the irresistible suppleness and
+lightness of her ignorant youth. But now, freighted heavily with
+experience of reality, she could not turn and bend quickly enough to
+escape it.
+
+It had profited too well by all those honest years with Neale . . . never
+to have been weakened by a falsehood between them, by a shade of
+pretense of something more, or different from what really was there.
+That habit held her mercilessly to see what was there now. She could no
+more look at what was there and think it something else, than she could
+look with her physical eyes at a tree and call it a dragon.
+
+If it had only been traditional morality, reproaching her with
+traditional complaints about the overstepping of traditional bounds, how
+she could have overwhelmed it, drowned out its feeble old voice, with
+eloquent appeals for the right to growth, to freedom, to the generous
+expansion of the soul, of the personality, which Vincent Marsh could
+give. But honesty only asked her neutrally, "Is it really growth and
+freedom, and generous expansion of the soul?" Poor Marise felt her arms
+fall to her side, piteous and defenseless. No, it was not.
+
+It was with the flatness of accent which she hated, which was so hard
+for her, that she made the admission. It was physical excitement,--that
+was what it was. Physical excitement, that was what Vincent Marsh could
+give her which Neale no longer could. . . . That and great ease of life,
+which Neale never would. There was a pause in which she shivered,
+humiliated. She added lamely to this, a guessed-at possibility for
+aesthetic sympathy and understanding, perhaps more than Neale could . . .
+and broke off with a qualm of sickness. How horrid this was! How it
+offended a deep sense of personal dignity and decency! How infinitely
+more beautiful and gracious those rolling clouds of vagueness and
+impulsive illusion!
+
+But at least, when it had extracted the plain, bare statement which it
+had hunted down through the many-recessed corners of her heart, that
+stern sense of reality let her alone. She no longer felt like a beetle
+impaled on a pin. She was free now to move as she liked and look
+unmolested at what she pleased. Honesty had no more power over her than
+to make sure she saw what she was pretending to look at.
+
+But at what a diminished pile she had now to look, tarnished and faded
+like the once-loved bits of bright-colored silk and paper. She felt
+robbed and cried out in a pain which seemed to her to come from her very
+heart, that something living and vital and precious to her had been
+killed by that rough handling. But one warning look from the clear eyes
+of honesty forced her, lamenting, to give up even this. If it had been
+living and precious and vital to her, it would have survived anything
+that honesty could have done to it.
+
+But something had survived, something to be reckoned with, something
+which no tyrant, overbearing honesty could put out of her life . . . the
+possibility for being carried away in the deep full current of passion,
+fed by all the multitudinous streams of ripened personality. If that
+was all that was left, was not that enough? It had been for thousands of
+other women. . . .
+
+No, not that; honesty woke to menace again. What thousands of other
+women had done had no bearing here. She was not thousands of other
+women. She was herself, herself. Would it be enough for her?
+
+Honesty issued a decree of impartial justice. Let her look at it with a
+mature woman's experienced divination of reality, let her look at it as
+it would be and see for herself if it would be enough. She was no girl
+whose ignorance rendered her incapable of judging until she had
+literally experienced. She was no bound-woman, bullied by the tyranny of
+an outgrown past, forced to revolt in order to attain the freedom
+without which no human decision can be taken. Neale's strong hand had
+opened the door to freedom and she could see what the bound-women could
+not . . . that freedom is not the end, but only the beginning.
+
+It was as though something were holding her gripped and upright there,
+staring before her, motionless, till she had put herself to the last
+supreme test. She closed her eyes, and sat so immobile, rapt in the
+prodigious effort of her imagination and will, that she barely breathed.
+How would it be? Would it be enough? She plunged the plummet down, past
+the fury and rage of the storm on the surface, past the teeming life of
+the senses, down to the depths of consciousness. . . .
+
+And what she brought up from those depths was a warning distaste, a
+something offending to her, to all of her, now she was aware of it.
+
+She was amazed. Why should she taste an acrid muddy flavor of dregs in
+that offered cup of heavy aromatic wine, she who had all her life
+thanked Heaven for her freedom from the ignominy of feeling it debasing
+to be a woman who loved? It was glorious to be a woman who loved. There
+had been no dregs left from those sweet, light, heady draughts she and
+Neale had drunk together in their youth, nor in the quieter satisfying
+draughts they knew now. What was the meaning of that odor of decay about
+what seemed so living, so hotly more living than what she had? Why
+should she have this unmistakable prescience of something stale and
+tainting which she had never felt? Was she too old for passion? But she
+was in the height of her physical flowering, and physically she cried
+out for it. Could it be that, having spent the heritage of youth, she
+could not have it again? Could it be that one could not go back, there,
+any more than . . .
+
+Oh, what did that bring to mind? What was that fleeting cobweb of
+thought that seemed a recurrence of a sensation only recently passed?
+When she had tried to tell herself that full-fruited passion was worth
+all else in life, was the one great and real thing worth all the many
+small shams . . . what was it she had felt?
+
+She groped among the loose-hanging filaments of impression and brought
+it out to see. It seemed to be . . . could it have been, the same startled
+recoil as at the notion of getting back the peace of childhood by giving
+up her home for the toy-house; her living children for the dolls?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, for the great trial of strength. Back! Push back all those
+thick-clustering, intruding, distracting traditional ideas of other
+people on both sides; the revolt on one hand, the feeble resignation on
+the other; what other women did; what people had said. . . . Let her wipe
+all that off from the too-receptive tablets of her mind. Out of sight
+with all that. This was _her_ life, _her_ question, hers alone. Let her
+stand alone with her own self and her own life, and, with honesty as
+witness, ask herself the question . . . would she, if she could, give up
+what she was now, with her myriads of roots, deep-set in the soil of
+human life, in order to bear the one red rose, splendid though it might
+be?
+
+That was the question.
+
+With no conscious volition of hers, the answer was there, plain and
+irrefutable as a fact in the physical world. No, she would not choose to
+do that. She had gone on, gone on beyond that. She was almost bewildered
+by the peremptory certainty with which that answer came, as though it
+had lain inherent in the very question.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now another question crowded forward, darkly confused, charged with
+a thousand complex associations and emotions. There had been something
+displeasing and preposterous in the idea of trying to stoop her grown
+stature and simplify her complex tastes and adult interests back into
+the narrow limits of a child's toy-house. Could it be that she felt
+something of the same displeasure when she set herself fully to conceive
+what it would be to cramp herself and her complex interests and adult
+affections back to . . .
+
+But at this there came a wild protesting clamor, bursting out to prevent
+her from completing this thought; loud, urgent voices, men's, women's,
+with that desperate certainty of their ground which always struck down
+any guard Marise had been able to put up. They cried her down as a
+traitor to the fullness of life, those voices, shouting her down with
+all the unquestioned authority she had encountered so many times on that
+terribly vital thing, the printed page; they clashed in their fury and
+all but drowned each other out. Only disconnected words reached her, but
+she recognized the well-known sentences from which they came . . .
+"puritanism . . . abundance of personality . . . freedom of
+development . . . nothing else vital in human existence . . .
+prudishness . . . conventionality . . . our only possible contact with
+the life-purpose . . . with the end of passion life declines and dies."
+
+The first onslaught took Marise's breath, as though a literal storm had
+burst around her. She was shaken as she had been shaken so many times
+before. She lost her hold on her staff . . . _what had that staff been?_
+
+At the thought, the master-words came to her mind again; and all fell
+quiet and in a great hush waited on her advance. Neale had said, "What
+is deepest and most living in _you_." Well, what _was_ deepest and most
+living in her? That was what she was trying to find out. That was what
+those voices were trying to cry her down from finding.
+
+For the first time in all her life, she drew an inspiration from Neale's
+resistance to opposition, knew something of the joy of battle. What
+right had those people to cry her down? She would not submit to it.
+
+She would go back to the place where she had been set upon by other
+people's voices, other people's thoughts, and she would go on steadily,
+thinking her own.
+
+She had been thinking that there _was_ the same displeasure and distaste
+as when she had thought of returning to her literal childhood, when she
+set herself fully to conceive what it would be to cramp herself and
+simplify her complex interests and affections back to the narrow limits
+of passion, which like her play with dolls had been only a foreshadowing
+of something greater to come.
+
+She spoke it out boldly now, and was amazed that not one of the
+clamorous voices dared resist the authenticity of her statement. But
+after all, how would they dare? This was what she had found in her own
+heart, what they had not been able, for all their clamor, to prevent her
+from seeing. She had been strong enough to beat them, to stand out
+against them, to say that she saw what she really did see, and felt what
+she really did feel. She did not feel what traditionally she should
+feel, that is what a primitive Italian woman might feel, all of whose
+emotional life had found no other outlet than sex. . . .
+
+Well, if it was so, it was so. For better or for worse, that was the
+kind of woman she had become, with the simple, forthright physical life
+subordinate, humble; like a pleasant, lovable child playing among the
+strong, full-grown, thought-freighted interests and richly varied
+sympathies and half-impersonal joys and sorrows which had taken
+possession of her days. And she could not think that the child could
+ever again be master of her destiny, any more than (save in a moment of
+false sentimentality) she could think that she would like to have her
+horizon again limited by a doll-house. To be herself was to go on, not
+to go back, now that she knew what she had become. It seemed to her that
+never before had she stood straight up.
+
+And in plain fact she found that somehow she had risen to her feet and
+was now standing, her head up, almost touching the rafters of the slant
+ceiling. She could have laughed out, to find herself so free. She knew
+now why she had never known the joy of battle. It was because she had
+been afraid. And she had been afraid because she had never dared to
+enter the battle, had always sent others in to do her fighting for her.
+Now she had been forced into it and had won. And there was nothing to be
+afraid of, there!
+
+She spread out her arms in a great gesture of liberation. How had she
+ever lived before, under the shadow of that coward fear? This . . . this
+. . . she had a moment of vision . . . this was what Neale had been trying
+to do for her, all these years, unconsciously, not able to tell her what
+it was, driving at the mark only with the inarticulate wisdom of his
+love for her, his divination of her need. He had seen her, shivering and
+shrinking in the shallow waters, and had longed for her sake to have her
+strike out boldly into the deep. But even if he had been ever so able to
+tell her, she would not have understood till she had fought her way
+through those ravening breakers, beyond them, out into the sustaining
+ocean.
+
+How long it took, how _long_ for men and women to make the smallest
+advance! And how the free were the only ones who could help to liberate
+the bound. How she had fought against Neale's effort to set her free,
+had cried to him that she dared not risk herself on the depths, that he
+must have the strength to swim for her . . . and how Neale, doggedly sure
+of the simple truth, too simple for her to see, had held to the
+certainty that his effort would not make her strong, and that she would
+only be free if she were strong.
+
+Neale being his own master, a free citizen of life, knew what a kingdom
+he owned, and with a magnanimity unparalleled could not rest till she
+had entered hers. She, not divining what she had not known, had only
+wished to make the use of his strength which would have weakened her.
+Had there ever before been any man who refused to let the woman he loved
+weaken herself by the use of his strength? Had a man ever before held
+out his strong hand to a woman to help her forward, not to hold her
+fast?
+
+Her life was her own. She stood in it, knowing it to be an impregnable
+fortress, knowing that from it she could now look abroad fearlessly and
+understandingly, knowing that from it she could look at things and men
+and the world and see what was there. From it she could, as if for the
+first time, look at Vincent Marsh when next she saw him; she would look
+to see what was really there. That was all. She would look at him and
+see what he was, and then she would know the meaning of what had
+happened, and what she was to do. And no power on earth could prevent
+her from doing it. The inner bar that had shut her in was broken. She
+was a free woman, free from that something in her heart that was afraid.
+For the moment she could think of nothing else beyond the richness of
+that freedom. Why, here was the total fulfilment she had longed for.
+Here was the life more abundant, within, within her own heart, waiting
+for her!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old clock in the hall behind her sounded four muffled strokes and,
+as if it had wakened her, Agnes stirred in her bed and cried out in a
+loud voice of terror, "Oh, come quick, Miss Marise! Come!"
+
+Marise went through the hail and to her door, and saw the frightened old
+eyes glaring over the pulled-up sheet. "Oh . . . oh . . . it's you . . . I
+thought. . . . Oh, Miss Marise, don't you see anything standing in that
+corner? Didn't you hear. . . . Oh, Miss Marise, I must have had a bad
+dream. I thought . . ." Her teeth were chattering. She did not know what
+she was saying.
+
+"It's all right, Agnes," said Marise soothingly, stepping into the room.
+"The big clock just struck four. That probably wakened you."
+
+She sat down on the bed and laid her hand firmly on Agnes' shoulder,
+looking into the startled old eyes, which grew a little quieter now that
+someone else was there. What a pitiable creature Agnes' dependence on
+Cousin Hetty had made of her.
+
+Like the boom from a great bell came the thought, "That is what I wanted
+Neale to make of me, when the crucial moment came, a dependent . . . but
+he would not."
+
+"What time did you say it is?" Agnes asked, still breathing quickly but
+with a beginning of a return to her normal voice.
+
+"Four o'clock," answered Marise gently, as to a child. "It must be
+almost light outside. The last night when you have anything to fear is
+over now."
+
+She went to the window and opened the shutter. The ineffable sacred
+pureness of another dawn came in, gray, tranquil, penetrating.
+
+At the sight of it, the dear light of everyday, Marise felt the thankful
+tears come to her eyes.
+
+"See, Agnes," she said in an unsteady voice, "daylight has come. You can
+look around for yourself, and see that there is nothing to be afraid
+of."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+MARISE LOOKS AND SEES WHAT IS THERE
+
+
+_A Torch in a Living Tree_
+
+July 24.
+
+Not since his fiery, ungovernable youth had Vincent felt anything like
+the splendid surge of rich desire and exultant certainty which sent him
+forward at a bound along the wood-road into which he had seen Marise
+turn. The moment he had been watching for had come at last, after these
+three hideous days of sudden arrest and pause. The forced inaction had
+been a sensation physically intolerable to him, as though he had been
+frozen immobile with every nerve and muscle strained for a great leap.
+
+He felt himself taking the leap now, with such a furious, triumphant
+sense of power released, that he came up beside her like a wind in the
+forest, calling her name loudly, his hands outflung, his face glowing,
+on fire with joy and his need for her.
+
+For an instant he was dumfounded by the quiet face she turned on him, by
+his instant perception of a profound change in her, by an expression in
+her long dark eyes which was new to him, which he felt to be ominous to
+him. But he was no untried boy to be cast down or disconcerted by sudden
+alterations of mood in a woman. He was a man, with a man's trained
+tenacity of purpose and experienced quickness of resource.
+
+He wasted no time. "What has happened to you?" he demanded, peremptorily
+as by right to know, and with the inner certainty of over-riding it,
+whatever it was.
+
+She did not seem tacitly or otherwise to deny his right to know, but
+she seemed to have no words for it, continuing to look at him silently,
+intently, with no hostility, with a sort of steady, wondering attention
+in her face, usually so sensitively changing. He felt a resentment at
+its quiet, at its lack of that instant responsiveness to his look which
+had given him such moments of exquisite pleasure, which had been her
+own, her wonderful gift to him. She was looking at him now as she might
+have looked at any one else, merely in order to see what was there.
+
+Well, he would show her what was there! The will to conquer rose high
+and strong in him, with an element of fierceness it had not had before
+because no resistance had called it out. He did not show this, indeed
+only allowed it the smallest corner of his consciousness, keeping all
+the rest tautly on the alert for the first indication of an opening, for
+the first hint of where to throw his strength.
+
+But standing in suspense on the alert was the last rôle he could long
+endure, and in a moment, when she did not answer, he took a step towards
+her, towering above her, his hands on her shoulders, pouring out with a
+hot sense of release all his longing into the cry, "Marise, Marise my
+own, what has happened to you?"
+
+How he hated the quiet of her face! With what hungry impatience he
+watched to see it break. How surely he counted on its disappearance at
+his touch. For he had the certainty of his power to kindle her left
+intact from the last time he had seen her, tinder to his spark,
+helplessly played upon by his voice.
+
+But now it was as though he had held a torch aloft into the green
+branches of a living tree. A twitch of surface agitation on her face and
+that was all.
+
+And when she spoke, as she did at once, the sound of her voice was
+strange and alien to him. With an extreme directness, and with a deep
+sincerity of accent which, even to his ears, made his own impassioned
+outcry to her sound inflated and false, she said earnestly, "I don't
+believe I can tell you what has happened. I don't believe you could
+understand it."
+
+He did not believe a word of this, but with his brilliant suppleness of
+mind he perceived that he was in the wrong key. She was not, for the
+moment, to be kindled to flame, she who miraculously was never the same.
+Perhaps it was the moment for a thrust of sheer power, straight at the
+obstacle, for of course he knew the obstacle.
+
+"I know what has happened," he said, "without your telling me. Your
+husband has made a scene, and overborne you, and is trying to force you
+back into the hen-yard of domestic virtue. . . ." He changed his manner. He
+said in a low, beautiful, persuasive voice, his eyes deeply on her, sure
+of himself with that sureness that no one had ever resisted, "But you
+can never do that now, you bird-of-paradise! You would only . . ."
+
+He was brought up short by a change in her. This time his words had had
+the power to move her face from the quiet he hated. It was suddenly
+alive with a strong emotion. But what emotion? He could not guess at its
+meaning, nor why she should step quickly away, shaking his hands from
+her shoulders, and looking at him sadly, her eyebrows drawn up as if in
+pain. He hung uncertain, daunted by his inability to read her face,
+feeling for the first time an instantly dismissed doubt of his mastery
+over her.
+
+She said very quickly, with the accent and manner of one who, shocked
+and pitying, tries to save another from going on with an involuntary
+disclosure in him of something shaming and unworthy.
+
+"No, oh no! Not that. Neale has done nothing . . . said nothing . . .
+except as he always has, to leave me quite free, all free."
+
+As he was silent for a moment, watchful, not especially moved by her
+words, which seemed to him unimportant, but alarmed by some special
+significance which they seemed to have for her, she went on with the
+single, only note of blame or reproach which was to come into her voice.
+"Oh, how _could_ you think that?" she said to him, with a deep quavering
+disappointment, as though she were ashamed of him.
+
+He knew that he was the cause of the disappointment, although he could
+not imagine why, and he regretted having made a false move; but he was
+not deeply concerned by this passage. He did not see how it could have
+any importance, or touch what lay at issue between them. These were all
+womanish, up-in-the-air passes and parries. He had only not yet found
+his opening.
+
+He flung his head back impatiently. "If it is not that, what is it?" he
+demanded. "A return of hide-bound scruples about the children? You know
+that they must live their own lives, not yours, and that anything that
+gives you greater richness and power makes you a better mother."
+
+"Oh yes, I know that," she answered. "I have thought of that, myself."
+
+But he had a baffled feeling that this was not at all the admission the
+words would make it seem.
+
+His impatience began to burn high, and a dawning alarm to translate
+itself into anger. He would not be played with, by any woman who ever
+lived! "Marise," he said roughly, "what under the sun is it?" In his
+tone was all his contemptuous dismissal of it, whatever it might be . . .
+outworn moral qualms, fear of the world's opinion, inertia, cowardice,
+hair-splitting scruples, or some morbid physical revulsion . . . there was
+not one of them which he knew he could not instantly pounce on and shake
+to rags.
+
+Marise stood very still, her eyes bent downward. "Aren't you going to
+answer me?" he said, furious.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, I'm going to answer you," she said, without raising
+her eyes. He understood that he must wait, and stood opposite to her,
+close to her, looking at her, all the strength of his passion in that
+avid gaze.
+
+She was stamped on his mind in every detail as she looked at that
+instant, infinitely desirable, infinitely alluring, in her thin white
+dress, her full supple woman's body erect and firm with a strong life of
+its own, her long sensitive hands clasped before her . . . how many times
+in his dreams had he held them in his . . . her shining dark hair bound
+smoothly about her head and down low on each side of her rounded
+forehead. Her thick white eyelids, down-dropped, were lowered over her
+eyes, and her mouth with its full lips and deep corners . . . at the sight
+of her mouth on which he had laid that burning kiss, Vincent felt a
+barrier within him give way . . . here he was at last with the woman he
+loved, the woman who was going to give herself to him . . . Good God! all
+these words . . . what did they mean? Nothing. He swept her into his arms
+and drew her face to his, his eyes closed, lost in the wonder and
+ecstasy of having reached his goal at last.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did not make the startled virginal resistance of a girl. She drew
+away from him quietly . . . the hatred for that quiet was murderous in him
+. . . and shook her head. Why, it was almost gently that she shook her
+head.
+
+How dared she act gently to him, as though he were a boy who had made a
+mistake! How dared she not be stirred and mastered! He felt his head
+burning hot with anger, and knew that his face must be suffused with
+red.
+
+And hers was not, it was quiet. He could have stamped with rage, and
+shaken her. He wanted to hurt her at once, deeply, to pierce her and
+sting her back to life. "Do you mean," he said brutally, "that you find,
+after all, that you are a cold, narrow, cowardly, provincial woman,
+stunted by your life, so that you are incapable of feeling a generous
+heat?"
+
+As she remained silent, he was stung by the expression on her face which
+he did not understand. He went on vindictively snatching up to drive
+home his thrust the sharpest and cruelest weapon he could conceive,
+"_Perhaps you find you are too old?_"
+
+At this she looked away from him for an instant, up to the lower
+branches of the oak under which they stood. She seemed to reflect, and
+when she brought her eyes back to his, she answered, "Yes, I think that
+is it. I find I am too old."
+
+He was for years to ponder on the strangeness of the accent with which
+she said this, without regret, with that damnable gentleness as though
+to hide from him a truth he might find hard to bear, or be incapable of
+understanding.
+
+How could any woman say "I find I am too old" with that unregretting
+accent? Was it not the worst of calamities for all women to grow old?
+What was there left for a woman when she grew old?
+
+But how preposterous, her saying that, she who stood there in the
+absolute perfection of her bloom!
+
+He found that he did not know what to say next. That tolerant
+acquiescence of hers in what he had meant to sting intolerably . . . it
+was as though he had put all his force into a blow that would stun, and
+somehow missing his aim, encountering no resistance, was toppling
+forward with the impetus of his own effort. He recovered himself and
+looked at her, choking, "You don't mean . . ." he began challenging her
+incredulously, and could go no further.
+
+For she nodded, her eyes on his with that singular expression in them
+which he did not understand, and which he intensely resented.
+
+He was so angry that for a moment he could not speak. He was aware of
+nothing but anger. "It's impotence and weakness on your part, that's all
+it is!" he cast out at her, hating her savagely as he spoke, "no matter
+what fine words you've decided to call it to cloak your own feebleness.
+It's the littleness of the vital spark in you. Or it's cowardly inertia,
+turning from the real fulfilment that calls for you, back to chips and
+straw because you are used to them. It's being a small, poor, weak,
+cowed creature, traditional-minded, instead of the splendid, brave,
+living woman I thought I loved. I am _glad_ to leave you behind, to have
+no more of you in my life. I have no use for thin-blooded cowards."
+
+She made no answer at all, not a word. His flaming eyes fell away from
+her face. He turned from her abruptly and walked rapidly away, not
+looking back.
+
+Then he found he had ceased to advance rapidly, had stopped and was
+standing still, wrung in so dreadful a pain that his hand was at his
+side as though he had been stabbed. With no thought, with no awareness
+of what he was doing, he ran back to her, his hands outstretched,
+suffering so that he must have help. He did not mean to speak, did not
+know what he was to say . . . he cried out to her, "Marise, Marise . . . I
+love you! _What can I do?_"
+
+The cry was desperate, involuntary, forcing its way out from unfathomed
+depths of feeling below all his anger and resentment, and tearing him to
+pieces as it came. It was as though he had taken his heart out and flung
+it at her feet.
+
+Her face changed instantly and was quiveringly alight with a pale and
+guilty agitation. "No . . . oh _no_, Vincent! I thought you only . . . I
+had thought you could not really . . . Vincent, forgive me! Forgive me!"
+She took one of his hands in both hers . . . the last unforgotten touch
+he was ever to have of her. . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came to him through those words which he did not understand that she
+was pitying him; and stung to the quick, he drew back from her,
+frowning, with an angry toss of his head.
+
+Instantly she drew back also, as though she had misinterpreted
+something.
+
+He stood for an instant looking full at her as though he did not see
+her; and then with a wide gesture of utter bewilderment, strange from
+him, he passed her without a look.
+
+This time he did not turn back, but continued steadily and resolutely on
+his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FALL OF THE BIG PINE
+
+
+August 2.
+
+I
+
+When Marise reached the place on the wood-road where she had had that
+last talk with Vincent Marsh, she stopped, postponing for a moment the
+errand to the Powers which she had so eagerly undertaken. She stood
+there, looking up into the far green tops of the pines, seeing again
+that strange, angry, bewildered gesture with which he had renounced
+trying to make anything out of her, and had turned away.
+
+It remained with her, constantly, as the symbol of what had happened,
+and she looked at it gravely and understandingly. Then, very swiftly,
+she saw again that passing aspect of his which had so terribly
+frightened her, felt again the fear that he might be really suffering,
+that she might really have done a hurt to another human being.
+
+This brought her a momentary return of the agitation it had caused in
+her that day, and she sat down abruptly on a tree-trunk, her knees
+trembling, her hands cold.
+
+That fear had come as so totally unexpected a possibility, something
+which his every aspect and tone and word up to then had seemed to
+contradict. Strange, how unmoved he had left her, till that moment!
+Strange the impression of him, that first time after she had known
+herself strong enough to stand up and be herself, not the responsive
+instrument played on by every passing impression. Strange, how instantly
+he had felt that, and how passionate had been his resentment of her
+standing up to be herself, her being a grown woman, a human being, and
+not a flower to be plucked. How he had hated it, and alas! how
+lamentable his hatred of it had made him appear. What a blow he had
+dealt to her conception of him by his instant assumption that a change
+in her could only mean that Neale had been bullying her. It had been
+_hard_ to see him so far away and diminished as that had made him seem,
+so entirely outside her world. It had dealt a back-hand blow to her own
+self-esteem to have him seem vulgar.
+
+How strange an experience for her altogether, to be able to stand firm
+against noise and urgent clamor and confusion, and to see, in spite of
+it, what she was looking at; to see, back of the powerful magnetic
+personality, the undeveloped and tyrannical soul, the cramped mind
+without experience or conception of breadth and freedom in the relations
+between human beings; to be able to hear Vincent cry out on her with
+that fierce, masterful certainty of himself, that she was acting from
+cowed and traditional-minded motives and not to believe a word of it,
+because it was not true; not even to feel the scared throb of alarm at
+the very idea that it might be true; to have it make no impression on
+her save pity that Vincent should be imprisoned in a feeling of which
+possession was so great a part that failure to possess turned all the
+rest to poison and sickness.
+
+What had happened to her, in truth, that she had this new steadfastness?
+She had told Vincent he could not understand it. Did she understand it
+herself? She leaned her chin on her two hands looking deep into the
+green recesses of the forest. High above her head, a wind swayed the
+tops of the pines and sang loudly; but down between the great brown
+columns of their trunks, not a breath stirred. The thick-set,
+myriad-leaved young maples held all their complicated delicately-edged
+foliage motionless in perfect calm.
+
+It was very still in the depths of Marise's complicated mind also,
+although the wind stirred the surface. Yes, she knew what had happened
+to her. She had seen it completely happen to three other human beings,
+miraculously, unbelievably, certainly; had seen the babies who could
+not tell light from dark, heat from cold, emerge by the mere process of
+healthful living into keenly sensitive beings accurately alive to every
+minutest variation of the visible world. It must be that like them she
+had simply learned to tell moral light from dark, heat from cold, by the
+mere process of healthful living. What happened to the child who at one
+time could not grasp the multiplication table, and a few years later, if
+only he were properly fed and cared for, had somehow so wholly changed,
+although still the same, that he found his way lightly among geometric
+conceptions, and only a few years after that was probing with expert
+fingers at some unsolved problem of astronomy? He had grown up, that was
+all. By calling the miracle a familiar name we veiled the marvel of it.
+Insensibly to him, with no visible change from one day to the next, he
+had acquired a totally different conception of the universe, a totally
+different valuation of everything in life.
+
+That was what had happened to her. She had grown up . . . why should not a
+woman grow up to other valuations of things as well as her comrade in
+life?
+
+And it had happened to her as it did to the child, because someone
+stronger than she had protected her while she was growing . . . not
+protected from effort, as though one should try to protect the child
+from learning his lessons. . . . Back there, such ages ago in Italy, in her
+ignorant . . . how ignorant! . . . and frightened girlhood, she had begged
+Neale, without knowing what she did, to help her grow up, to help her
+save what was worth saving in her, to help her untangle from the
+many-colored confusion of her nature what was best worth keeping. And
+Neale had done it, had clung steadily to his divination of what was
+strong in her, in spite of her clamor to him to let it go.
+
+But Vincent had not grown up, was back there still in confusion, holding
+desperately with all that terrific strength of his to what could not be
+held, to what was impermanent and passing in its nature. Why should he
+do that? Neale knew better than that. Then she saw why: it was because
+Vincent conceived of nothing but emptiness if he let it go, and horribly
+feared that imaginary emptiness. Out of the incalculable richness of her
+kingdom she wondered again at his blindness. . . . And made a pitying guess
+at the reason for it . . . perhaps for him it was _not_ imaginary. Perhaps
+one of the terms of the bargain he had made with life was that there
+_should_ be nothing later but emptiness for him. Yes, she saw that. She
+would have made that bargain, too, if it had not been for Neale. She
+would have been holding terrified to what was not to be held; with
+nothing but that between her and the abyss. Who was she to blame Vincent
+for his blindness?
+
+That, perhaps, had been the meaning of that singular last moment of
+their talk together, which had frightened her so, with its sudden plunge
+below the surface, into the real depths, when, changed wholly into
+someone else, he had run back to her, his hands outstretched, his eyes
+frightened, his lips trembling . . . perhaps he had felt the abyss there
+just before him. For an instant there, he had made her think of Paul,
+made her remember that Vincent himself had, so short a time ago, been a
+little boy too. She had been so shocked and racked by pity and remorse,
+that she would have been capable of any folly to comfort him. Perhaps
+she had seen there for an instant the man Vincent might have been, and
+had seen that she could have loved that man.
+
+But how instantly it had passed! He had not suffered that instant of
+true feeling to have space to live, but had burned it up with the return
+of his pride, his resentment that anyone save himself should try to
+stand upright, with the return of the devouring desire-for-possession of
+the man who had always possessed everything he had coveted. There was
+something sad in being able to see the littleness of life which
+underlay the power and might of personality in a man like Vincent. He
+could have been something else.
+
+She wondered why there should slide into her mood, just now, a faint
+tinge of regret. . . . Why should there be anything there but the bright
+gladness of thanksgiving for the liberation from the chains which her
+own nature might have forged about her? She had at last stepped outside
+the narrow circle of personal desire, and found all the world open to
+her. And yet there was room in her heart for a shade of wistful wonder
+if perhaps all this did not mean that she might be sliding from the
+ranks of those who feel and do, into the ranks of those who only
+understand.
+
+But one glance at the life that lay before her scattered this hanging
+mist-cloud . . . good heavens! what feeling and doing lay there before
+her!
+
+Had she thought that Neale was nothing to her because he had become all
+in all to her so that he penetrated all her life, so that she did not
+live an instant alone? Had she thought the loss of the amusing trinket
+of physical newness could stand against the gain of an affection ill
+massy gold? Would she, to buy moments of excitement, lose an instant of
+the precious certainty of sympathy and trust and understanding which she
+and Neale had bought and paid for, hour by hour, year by year of honest
+life-in-common? Where was real life for her? Had she not known? Where
+were the real depths, where the real food for the whole woman she had
+grown to be? Neale had opened the door so that she could go away from
+him if that was what she needed, or go back to stand by his side; and
+through the open door had come the flood of daylight which had shown her
+that she could not go back to stand by his side because she had been
+there all the time, had never left it, never could leave it, any more
+than she could leave half of her body in one place, and go on to
+another.
+
+
+II
+
+There was other feeling and doing now, too, before her, this instant,
+which she had forgotten, idling here in her much-loved forest, as much a
+part of her home as her piano or her own roof-tree. She had been trying
+to understand what had been happening that summer. Let her try first of
+all to understand what she must do in that perfectly definite and
+concrete dilemma in which she had been placed by that strange sight of
+'Gene Powers, fleeing back from the Eagle Rocks. She must look squarely
+at what she supposed was the legal obligation . . . she instantly felt a
+woman's impatience of the word legal as against human, and could not
+entertain the thought of the obligations of the situation. She must see,
+and think and try to understand, with Neale to help her. She had not yet
+had time to tell Neale.
+
+But not today. Today she was only the bearer of the good tidings to
+Nelly and 'Gene, tidings which would wipe out for her the recollection
+of a day which was shameful to her, the day when she had conceived the
+possibility of believing some thing base against Neale. It was not that
+she had believed it,--no, she had stood it off till Neale came back. But
+there was shame for her in those recurrent spasms of horror when she had
+conceived the possibility that she might believe it. There had been
+proof of it, of course, Eugenia's positive statement . . . strange how
+Eugenia could have so entirely misunderstood the affair! . . . But what was
+mere proof against human certainty? No, she had been attacked suddenly
+and for an instant had failed to rise to defend what was hers to defend.
+It was a failure to live down.
+
+She stood up and moved forward along the path, changing the thick
+envelope in one hand to the other. She had already lost time. She ought
+to have been by this time through the forest and out in the edge of the
+Powers pasture.
+
+She became aware that for some time she had heard a distant sound, a
+faint toc-toc-toc, like the sound of chopping. This being associated in
+her mind with snow and winter woods, she had not thought it could be the
+sound of the axe which it seemed to be. Nobody could be felling trees in
+the height of the farming season, and on this day of swooning heat. But
+as she came to the edge of the woods and turned into the path along the
+brook, she heard it more plainly, unmistakable this time, not far now,
+the ringing blows delivered with the power and rhythmic stroke of the
+trained chopper. It came not from the woods at all, she now perceived,
+but from the open farming land, from the other side of the pasture,
+beyond the Powers house.
+
+But there were no woods there, only the Powers' big pine which towered
+up, darkly glorious, into the shimmering summer haze.
+
+As she looked at it wondering, it came into her mind had somebody told
+her, or had she overheard it somewhere? . . . that 'Gene had promised Nelly
+at last to cut down the big pine he and his fathers had so cherished.
+
+Could it be that? What a sacrifice! And to a foolish whim of Nelly's.
+There had been no musty smell in the house till Nelly came there to keep
+the shutters closed so that the sun would not fade the carpets. The old
+pine was one of the most splendid things of beauty in the valley. And it
+was something vital in 'Gene's strange, choked, inarticulate life. She
+stopped to listen a moment, feeling a chill of apprehension and
+foreboding. It was dreadful to have 'Gene do that. It was as though he
+were cutting at his own strength, cutting off one of his own members to
+please his wife. Poor 'Gene! He would do that too, now, if Nelly asked
+him.
+
+The resonant winter note rang out loud, strange in that sultry summer
+air. She looked from afar at the tree, holding its mighty crest high
+above the tiny house, high above the tiny human beings who had doomed
+it. So many winters, so many summers, so many suns and moons and rains
+and snows had gone to make it what it was. Like the men who had planted
+it and lived beneath its shade, it had drawn silently from the depths of
+the earth and the airy treasures of the sky food to grow strong and live
+its life. And now to be killed in an hour, in attempted expiation of a
+deed for which it bore no guilt!
+
+Marise was coming closer now. The axe-strokes stopped for a moment as
+though the chopper drew breath. The silence was heavy over the
+breathless summer field.
+
+But by the time she had arrived at the back door of the house, the
+axe-blows were renewed, loud, immediate, shocking palpably on her ear.
+She knocked, but knew that the ringing clamor of the axe drowned out the
+sound. Through the screen-door she saw old Mrs. Powers, standing by the
+table, ironing, and stepped in. The three children were in the pantry,
+beyond, Ralph spreading some bread and butter for his little brother and
+sister. Ralph was always good to the younger children, although he was
+so queer and un-childlike! Nelly was not there. Mrs. Powers looked up at
+Marise, and nodded. She looked disturbed and absent. "We're at it, you
+see," she said, jerking her head back towards the front of the house. "I
+told you 'bout 'Gene's sayin' he'd gi'n in to Nelly about the big pine."
+
+Marise made a gesture of dismay at this confirmation. The old woman went
+on, "Funny thing . . . I ain't a Powers by birth, Lord knows, and I never
+thought I set no store by their old pine tree. It always sort o' riled
+me, how much 'Gene's father thought of it, and 'Gene after him . . . sort
+of silly, seems like. But just now when we was all out there, and 'Gene
+heaved up his axe and hit the first whack at it . . . well, I can't tell
+you . . . it give me a turn most as if he'd chopped right into _me_
+somewhere. I got up and come into the house, and I set to ironin', as
+fast as I could clip it, to keep my mind off'n it. I made the children
+come in too, because it ain't no place for kids around, when a tree
+that size comes down."
+
+Marise demurred, "'Gene is such a fine chopper, he knows to a hair where
+he'll lay it, of course."
+
+"Well, even so, who knows what notion a kid will take into his head?
+They was playin' right there on a pile of pole-wood 'Gene's brought in
+from the woods and ain't got sawed up into stove-lengths yet. I didn't
+want to take no chances; maybe they wouldn't ha' moved quick enough when
+their papa yelled to them. No, ma'am, I made 'em come in, and here
+they'll stay. Nelly, she's out there, walkin' round and round watchin'
+'Gene. She's awfully set up havin' it come down. 'Gene he's told her
+he'll give her the money from the lumber in it. There'll be a sight of
+boards, too. It's the biggest pine in the valley."
+
+Marise went to the window and looked at the scene, penetrated by the
+strangeness of the difference between its outer and inner aspect: 'Gene,
+his faded blue overalls tucked into his plowman's heavy cow-hide boots,
+his shirt open over his great throat and chest, his long corded arms
+rising and falling with the steady effortless rhythm of the master
+woodsman. Nelly, in one of her immaculate blue ginghams, a white apron
+over it, a white frilled shade-hat on her head, her smartly shod small
+feet, treading the ground with that inimitable light step of hers,
+circling slowly about, looking at 'Gene as he worked, looking up at the
+crown of the tree, high, so insolently high above her head, soon to be
+brought low by a wish from her heart, soon to be turned into money for
+her to spend.
+
+"I came over to talk to 'Gene and Nelly about some business," Marise
+said, over her shoulder, to Mrs. Powers, not able to take her eyes from
+the trio in the drama out there, "but I'd better wait till the tree is
+down before I speak to them."
+
+"'Twon't be long now. 'Gene's been at it quite a while, and he's
+stavin' away like all possessed. Seems as if, now he's started in, he
+couldn't get it over with quick enough to suit him. He acted awful queer
+about it, I thought."
+
+She left her ironing and, looking over her shoulder at the children,
+came closer to where Marise stood. Then she stepped back and shut the
+door to the pantry. "Mis' Crittenden," she said in an anxious troubled
+voice, "'Gene ain't right these days. He acts to me like he's comin'
+down with a sick spell, or something. He ain't _right_. Today Nelly told
+me she woke up in the night last night and 'Gene wasn't there. She
+hollered to him, and he didn't answer. It scared her like everything,
+and she scrambled out of bed and lighted the lamp, and she said she
+'most fainted away, when she see 'Gene, rolled up in a blanket, lying on
+the floor, over against the wall, his eyes wide open looking at her. She
+said she let out a yell . . . it scairt the life out of her . . . and 'Gene
+he got right up. She says to him, 'For the Lord's sake, 'Gene, what
+_ails_ you?' And what do you suppose he says to her, he says, 'I didn't
+know whether you wanted me there or not, Nelly.' What do you think of
+that? She says back, 'For goodness' sake, 'Gene Powers, where _would_
+you be nights, except in your own bed!' He got back and for all Nelly
+knows slept all right the rest of the night. She says she guesses he
+must have had some sort of funny dream, and not been really all waked up
+yet. But it must ha' gi'n her a turn, for all she ain't one of the
+nervous kind."
+
+Marise turned sick with shocked pity. The two women looked at each
+other, silently with shadowed eyes of foreboding. Mrs. Powers shook her
+head, and turned back into the pantry, shutting the door behind her.
+Marise heard her speaking to the children, in the cheerful, bantering,
+affectionate, grandmother tone she had always had for them. She was
+brave, old Mrs. Powers, she always said she could "stand up to things."
+She was the sort of woman who can always be depended on to keep life
+going, no matter what happens; who never gives up, who can always go on
+taking care of the children.
+
+Marise herself did not feel at all brave. She sat down heavily in a
+chair by the window looking out at the man who for his wife's sake was
+killing something vital and alive. He had done that before, 'Gene had.
+He went at it now with a furious haste which had something dreadful in
+it.
+
+Nelly, who had sat down to rest on the pile of brush and poles, seemed a
+carved and painted statuette of ivory and gold.
+
+She took off her ruffled pretty hat, and laid it down on the white-birch
+poles, so that she could tip her head far back and see the very top of
+the tree. Her braids shone molten in the sunshine. Her beautiful face
+was impassive, secreting behind a screen all that Marise was sure she
+must have been feeling.
+
+'Gene, catching sight of her now, in a side-glance, stopped abruptly in
+the middle of a swing, and shouted to her to "get off that brush-pile.
+That's jus' where I'm lottin' on layin' the tree."
+
+Somewhat startled, Nelly sprang up and moved around to the other side,
+back of him, although she called protestingly, "Gracious, you're not
+_near_ through yet!"
+
+'Gene made no answer, returning to the fury of his assault on what he so
+much loved. The great trunk now had a gaping raw gash in its side. Nelly
+idled back of him, looking up at the tree, down at him. What was she
+thinking about?
+
+Marise wondered if someone with second-sight could have seen Frank
+Warner, there between the husband and wife? 'Gene's face was still gray
+in spite of the heat and his fierce exertion. Glistening streams of
+perspiration ran down his cheeks.
+
+What did the future hold for 'Gene? What possible escape was there from
+the tragic net he had wrapped stranglingly around himself?
+
+Very distantly, like something dreamed, it came to Marise that once for
+an instant the simple, violent solution had seemed the right one to her.
+_Could she have thought that?_
+
+What a haunted house was the human heart, with phantoms from the
+long-dead past intruding their uninvited ghastly death's-heads among the
+living.
+
+The axe-strokes stopped; so suddenly that the ear went on hearing them,
+ghost-like, in the intense silence. 'Gene stood upright, lifting his
+wet, gray face. "She's coming now," he said.
+
+Marise looked out, astonished. To her eyes the tree stood as massively
+firm as she had ever seen it. But 'Gene's attitude was of strained,
+expectant certainty: he stood near Nelly and as she looked up at the
+tree, he looked at her. At that look Marise felt the cold perspiration
+on her own temples.
+
+Nelly stepped sideways a little, tipping her head to see, and cried out,
+"Yes, I see it beginning to slant. How _slow_ it goes!
+
+"It'll go fast enough in a minute," said 'Gene.
+
+Of what followed, not an instant ever had for Marise the quality of
+reality. It always remained for her a superb and hideous dream,
+something symbolical, glorious, and horrible which had taken place in
+her brain, not in the lives of human beings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nelly, . . . looking down suddenly to see where the tree would fall,
+crying out, "Oh, I left my hat where it'll . . ." and darting, light as a
+feather, towards it.
+
+'Gene, making a great futile gesture to stop her, as she passed him,
+shouting at her, with a horrified glance up at the slowly leaning tree,
+"Come back! Come back!"
+
+Nelly on the brush-pile, her hat in her hand, whirling to return, supple
+and swift, suddenly caught by the heel and flung headlong . . . up again
+in an instant, and falling again, to her knees this time. Up once more
+with a desperate haste, writhing and pulling at her shoe, held by its
+high heel, deep between the knotty poles.
+
+'Gene, bounding from his place of safety, there at her feet, tearing in
+a frenzy at the poles, at her shoe. . . .
+
+Above them the great tree bearing down on them the solemn vengeful
+shadow of its fall.
+
+Someone was screaming. It was Nelly. She was screaming, "'Gene! 'Gene!
+'Gene!" her face shrunken in terror, her white lips open.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then, that last gesture of 'Gene's when he took Nelly into his great
+arms, closely, hiding her face on his shoulder, as the huge tree,
+roaring downward, bore them both to the earth, forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+TWO GOOD-BYES
+
+
+August 10.
+
+Marise welcomed the bother about the details of Eugenia's departure and
+Mr. Welles', and flung herself into them with a frightened desire for
+something that would drown out the roaring wind of tragedy which filled
+her ears in every pause of the day's activities, and woke her up at
+night out of the soundest sleep. Night after night, she found herself
+sitting up in bed, her night-gown and hair damp with perspiration,
+Nelly's scream ringing knife-like in her ears. Then, rigid and wide-eyed
+she saw it all again, what had happened in those thirty seconds which
+had summed up and ended the lives of 'Gene and Nelly.
+
+But one night as she sat thus in her bed, hammered upon beyond
+endurance, she saw as though she had not seen it before what 'Gene had
+finally done, his disregard of possible safety for himself, his abandon
+of his futile, desperate effort to free Nelly from the tangle where her
+childish vanity had cast her, the grandeur and completeness of his
+gesture when he had taken Nelly into his strong arms, to die with her.
+Marise found herself crying as she had not cried for years. The picture,
+burned into her memory, stood there endlessly in the black night till
+she understood it. The tears came raining down her face, and with them
+went the strained, wild horror of the memory.
+
+But the shadow and darkness hung about her like a cloud, through which
+she only dimly saw the neat, unhurried grace of Eugenia's preparations
+for departure and far travels, and felt only a dimmed, vague echo of the
+emotion she had thought to feel at the disappearance of Mr. Welles,
+poor, weary, futile old crusader on his Rosinante.
+
+On that last morning of their stay she drove with them to the station,
+still giving only a half-attention to the small episodes of their
+departure. She did see and smile at the characteristic quality of an
+instinctive gesture of Eugenia's as they stepped up on the platform of
+the station. Two oddly-shaped pieces of metal stood there, obviously
+parts of a large machine. Paul stumbled over them as he climbed out of
+the car, and held tight to Mr. Welles' hand to save himself from a fall.
+Eugenia saw them instantly from afar as an element in life which
+threatened the spotlessness of her gray traveling cloak, and as she
+passed them she drew the thick folds of velvet-like wool about her
+closely. Marise thought to herself, "That's Eugenia's gesture as she
+goes through the world."
+
+Neale turned off his switch, listened a moment to see if the Ford were
+boiling from the long climb up the hill to the station, and now made one
+long-legged step to the platform. He started towards Eugenia with the
+evident intention of making some casual pleasant remarks, such as are
+demanded by decency for a departing guest, but in his turn his eyes
+caught the curiously shaped pieces of metal. He stopped short, his face
+lighted up with pleasure and surprise. All consciousness of anyone else
+on the platform disappeared from his expression. "Hello!" he said to
+himself, "those mandrels here." He picked up one in his strong hands on
+which the metal left a gray dust, and inspected it. He might have been
+entirely alone in his shop at the mill.
+
+Marise noted with envy how he gave all of himself to that momentary
+examination, entirely escaped from any awareness of that tyrannical self
+which in her own heart always clamored like a spoiled child for
+attention. The impersonal concentration of his look as he turned the
+metal about between those strong dusty hands, gave to his face the calm,
+freed expression not to be bought for any less price than a greater
+interest in one's work than in one's self. "They'll do," pronounced
+Neale. This was evidently a thought spoken aloud, for it did not occur
+to him to make any pretense of including the two women in his interest.
+He set down the casting he held, and went off into the freight-house,
+calling loudly, "Charlie! Charlie! Those mandrels have come. I wish
+you'd . . ." his voice died away as he walked further into the dusky
+freight-shed.
+
+Marise happening to glance at Eugenia now, caught on her face an
+expression which she took to be annoyance at a breach of manners. She
+reflected, "Eugenia must find Neale's abrupt American ways perfectly
+barbaric." And she was surprised to feel for the first time a rather
+scornful indifference to all that was involved in Eugenia's finding them
+barbaric. Heavens! What did it matter? In a world so filled with awful
+and portentous and glorious human possibilities, how could you bother
+about such things?
+
+There was a silence. Mr. Welles and Paul had been standing near,
+aimlessly, but now, evidently taking the silence for the inevitable
+flatness of the flat period of waiting for a train, Mr. Welles drew the
+little boy away. They walked down the cinder-covered side-tracks,
+towards where the single baggage truck stood, loaded with elegant,
+leather-covered boxes and wicker basket-trunks, marked "E. Mills. S.S.
+Savoie. Compagnie Générale Transatlantique." Among them, out of place
+and drab, stood one banal department-store trunk labeled, "Welles. 320
+Maple Avenue. Macon, Georgia."
+
+The departure of the old man and the little boy left the two women
+alone. Eugenia stepped closer to Marise and took her hand in her own
+gloved fingers. She looked at it intently, with the expression of one
+who is trying to find words for a complicated feeling. Marise made an
+effort to put herself in the receptive mood which would make the saying
+of it easier, but failed. The fall of the big pine roared too loudly in
+her ears. She looked without sympathy or admiration at Eugenia's
+perfection of aspect. "To look like that, she must care for looks more
+than anything else. What can she know about any real human feeling?"
+Marise asked herself, with an intolerance she could not mitigate.
+
+And yet as she continued to peer at Eugenia through that dark cloud of
+tragedy, it seemed to her that Eugenia showed signs of some real human
+emotion. As she gazed at her in the crude brilliance of the gaudy
+morning sun, she saw for the first time signs of years in Eugenia's
+exquisite small face. There was not a line visible, nor a faltering of
+the firmness of the well-cared-for flesh, but over it all was a faint,
+hardly discernible flaccid fatigue of texture.
+
+But perhaps she imagined it, for even as she looked, and felt her heart
+soften to think what this would mean to Eugenia, an inner wave of
+resolution reached the surface of the other woman's face, and there was
+Eugenia as she always had been, something of loveliness immutable.
+
+She said impulsively, "Eugenia, it's a stupidly conventional thing to
+say, but it's a pity you never married."
+
+As Eugenia only looked at her, quietly, she ventured further, "You might
+really be happier, you know. There is a great deal of happiness in the
+right marriage." She had never said so much to Eugenia.
+
+Eugenia let Marise's hand drop and with it, evidently, whatever
+intention she might have had of saying something difficult to express.
+Instead, she advanced with her fastidious, delicate note of irony, "I
+don't deny the happiness, if that sort of happiness is what one is
+after. But I think my appetite for it . . . that sort . . . is perhaps not
+quite robust enough to relish it."
+
+Marise roused herself to try to put a light note of cheerfulness into
+this last conversation. "You mean that it seems to you like the coarsely
+heaped-up goodies set before a farmhand in a country kitchen . . . chicken
+and butter and honey and fruit and coffee, all good but so profuse and
+jumbled that they make you turn away?"
+
+"I didn't give that definition of domestic life," corrected Eugenia,
+with a faint smile, "that's one of _your_ fantasies."
+
+"Well, it's true that you get life served up to you rather pell-mell,
+lots of it, take-it-as-it-comes," admitted Marise, "but for a gross
+nature like mine, once you've had that, you're lost. You know you'd
+starve to death on the delicate slice of toasted bread served on old
+china. You give up and fairly enjoy wallowing in the trough."
+
+She had been struck by that unwonted look of fatigue on Eugenia's face,
+had tried to make her laugh, and now, with an effort, laughed with her.
+She had forgotten her passing notion that Eugenia had something special
+to say. What could she have? They had gone over that astonishing
+misconception of hers about the Powers woodlot, and she had quite made
+Marise understand how hopelessly incapable she was of distinguishing one
+business detail from another. There could be nothing else that Eugenia
+could wish to say.
+
+"How in the world shall I get through the winter?" Eugenia now wondered
+aloud. "Biskra and the Sahara perhaps . . . if I could only get away from
+the hideous band of tourists. They say there are swarms of
+war-profiteers from Italy now, everywhere, low-class people with money
+for the first time." She added with a greater accent of wonder, "How in
+the world are _you_ going to get through the winter?"
+
+Marise was struck into momentary silence by the oddness of the idea.
+There were phrases in Eugenia's language which were literally
+non-translatable into hers, representing as they did ideas that did not
+exist there. "Oh, we never have to consider that," she answered, not
+finding a more accurate phrase. "There won't be time enough to do all
+we'll try to do, all we'll have to do. There's living. That takes a lot
+of time and energy. And I'll have the chorus as usual. I'm going to try
+some Mendelssohn this year. The young people who have been singing for
+five or six years are quite capable of the 'Elijah.' And then any of the
+valley children who really want to, come to me for lessons, you know.
+The people in North Ashley have asked me to start a chorus there this
+year, too. And in the mill, Neale has a plan to try to get the men to
+work out for themselves some standards of what concerns them especially,
+what a day's work really is, at any given job, don't you know."
+
+What an imbecile she was, she thought, to try to talk about such things
+to Eugenia, who could not, in the nature of things, understand what she
+was driving at. But apparently Eugenia had found something
+understandable there, for she now said sharply, startled, "Won't that
+mean less income for you?"
+
+She did not say, "_Even_ less," but it was implied in the energy of her
+accent.
+
+Marise hesitated, brought up short by the solidity of the intangible
+barrier between their two languages. There were phrases in her own
+tongue which could not be translated into Eugenia's, because they
+represented ideas not existing there. She finally said vaguely, "Oh
+perhaps not."
+
+Her pause had been enough for Eugenia to drop back into her own world.
+She said thoughtfully, "I've half a notion to try going straight on
+beyond Biskra, to the south, if I could find a caravan that would take
+me. That would be something new. Biskra is so commonplace now that it
+has been discovered and exploited." She went on, with a deep, wistful
+note of plaintiveness in her voice, "But _every_thing's so commonplace
+now!" and added, "There's Java. I've never been to Java."
+
+It came over Marise with a shock of strangeness that this was the end of
+Eugenia in her life. Somehow she knew, as though Eugenia had told her,
+that she was never coming back again. As they stood there, so close
+together, in the attitude of friends, they were so far apart that each
+could scarcely recognize who the other was. Their paths which in youth
+had lain so close to each other as to seem identical, how widely they
+had been separated by a slight divergence of aim! Marise was struck by
+her sudden perception of this. It had been going on for years, she could
+understand that now. Why should she only see it in this quiet, silent,
+neutral moment?
+
+An impalpable emanation of feeling reached her from the other woman. She
+had a divination that it was pain. Perhaps Eugenia was also suddenly
+realizing that she had grown irrevocably apart from an old friend.
+
+The old tenderness felt for the girl Eugenia had been, by the girl
+Marise had been, looked wistfully down the years at the end.
+
+Marise opened her arms wide and took Eugenia into them for a close,
+deeply moved embrace.
+
+"Good-bye, Eugenia," she said, with sadness.
+
+"Good-bye, Marise," said Eugenia, looking at her strangely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Neale came back now, frankly consulting his watch with Neale's bluntness
+in such matters. "Train's due in a minute or two," he said. "Where's Mr.
+Welles?"
+
+Marise said, "Over there, with Paul. I'll go tell them."
+
+She found them both, hand in hand, sitting on the edge of the truck
+which carried the leather-covered boxes and wicker basket-trunks, bound
+for Biskra or beyond, or Java; and the square department-store trunk
+bound for Maple Avenue, Macon, Georgia.
+
+"Mother," said Paul, "Mr. Welles has promised me that he'll come up and
+visit us summers."
+
+"There's no house in the world where you'll be more welcome," said
+Marise with all her heart, holding out her hand.
+
+Mr. Welles shook it hard, and held it in both his. As the train whistled
+screamingly at the crossing, he looked earnestly into her face and tried
+to tell her something, but the words would not come.
+
+As she read in his pale old face and steady eyes what he would have
+said, Marise cried out to herself that there do not exist in the world
+any things more halting and futile than words. She put her arms around
+his neck and kissed him. "Good-bye, dear Mr. Welles," was all she said,
+but in the clinging of his old arms about her, and in the quivering,
+shining face he showed as they moved down the platform together, she
+knew that he too had not needed words.
+
+Paul clung to his hand till the last moment, gazing up at him
+constantly, silently. Marise looked down on the little boy's tanned,
+freckled, sober face and strained, rapidly winking eyes, and had the
+intuition, "This is one of the moments Paul will never forget. He will
+always be able to shut his eyes and see this old Don Quixote setting
+forth." With a rush of her old, jealous, possessive mother-love, she
+longed to share this with him and to have him know that she shared it;
+to put her arms around him and _make him let her in_. But she knew
+better now. She yearned over him silently, and did not touch him.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Paul," said Mr. Welles, shaking hands with him.
+
+"Well, good-bye," said Paul dryly, setting his jaw hard.
+
+"Oh, this is the day-coach!" cried Eugenia. "Where is the drawing-room
+car?"
+
+"At the far end," said the conductor with the sweeping gesture of a man
+used to talking with his arms.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Welles," said Eugenia, giving him for an instant a small,
+pearl-gray hand. "Boa voyage! Good luck!"
+
+"Same to you," said the old gentleman, scrambling up the unswept,
+cinder-covered steps into the day-coach.
+
+At the front end of the train, the baggage man was tumbling into the
+express car the fine, leather-covered boxes and the one square trunk.
+
+Neale carried Eugenia's two small bags down to the drawing-room car and
+now handed them to the porter.
+
+The two women kissed each other on both cheeks, hurriedly, as someone
+cried, "All aboard!"
+
+Eugenia took Neale's outstretched hand. "Good-bye, Neale," she said.
+
+With the porter's aid, she mounted the rubber-covered steps into the
+mahogany and upholstery of the drawing-room car.
+
+"Good luck, Eugenia! Bon voyage!" called Neale after her.
+
+She did not turn around or look back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise noted that characteristically Eugenia had forgotten Paul. But
+Paul had forgotten her, too, and was now back near the day-coach
+searching one window after another.
+
+The conductor signaled widely, the whistle shrieked, the wheels groaned.
+Neale drew Marise a little back out of the whirl of dust and stood
+holding her arm for an instant.
+
+It seemed to Marise as they stood thus, Neale holding her arm, that she
+caught a last glimpse of Eugenia behind plate-glass, looking at them
+gravely, steadily.
+
+Paul suddenly caught sight of Mr. Welles' face at a window, snatched off
+his cap, and waved it frantically, over and over, long after the train
+was only an echoing roar from down the tracks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the mountain-silence settled down about them calmly, and they could
+hear their own hearts beat, and knew the thoughts in their minds.
+
+As they went back to their battered Ford, Marise said thoughtfully,
+"Somehow I believe that it will be a long time before we see Eugenia
+again."
+
+Neale permitted himself no comment on this, nor showed the alteration of
+a line in his face as he stepped into the car and turned on the switch,
+but Marise cried out to him accusingly, "You might as well say it right
+out, that you can support life if it is."
+
+Neale laughed a little and put his foot on the starter. "Get in the back
+seat, Paul," was all he said, as the little boy came up silently from
+the other side of the station.
+
+He added as they started up the hill road, "First time in my life I was
+ever sort of sorry for Eugenia. It seemed to me this morning that she
+was beginning to show her age."
+
+Marise hid the fact that she had had the same idea and opposed, "Eugenia
+would laugh at that from you, the husband of such a frankly middle-aged
+thing as I."
+
+Neale was silent for a moment, and then, "You'll always look younger
+than she. No, not younger, that's not it, at all. It's _living_, you
+look. I tell you what, she's a cut flower in a vase, that's beginning to
+wilt, and you're a living plant."
+
+"Why, _Neale_!" said Marise, astonished and touched.
+
+"Yes, quite a flight of fancy for me, wasn't it?" commented Neale
+casually, leaning forward to change the carburetor adjustment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise felt Paul lean over her shoulder from the back of the car. "Say,
+Mother," he said in her ear, "would you just as soon get in back with me
+for a while?"
+
+Neale stopped the care. Marise stepped out and in, and seated herself
+beside Paul. He had apparently nothing to say, after all, looking
+fixedly down at his bare brown feet.
+
+But presently he moved nearer to his mother and leaned his head against
+her breast. This time she put her arm around him and held him close to
+her, the tears in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+VIGNETTES FROM HOME LIFE
+
+I
+
+
+August 20.
+
+Paul had been sent for blue-berries through the Eagle Rock woods to the
+high upland pasture where the Powers cows fed during the day. On the
+upper edge of that, skirting a tract of slash left from an old cutting,
+was a berry-patch, familiar to all the children of Crittenden's valley.
+
+When at four o'clock there was no sign of him, and then at five still
+none, Marise began to feel uneasy, although she told herself that
+nothing in the world could happen to Paul on that well-known
+mountain-side. He had taken Médor with him, who would certainly have
+come for help if Paul had fallen and hurt himself. She excused herself
+to the tall, awkward lad from North Ashley come to try over his part in
+a quartet, asked Touclé to help Elly set the supper things on the table
+if she should be late, and set off at a rapid pace by the short-cut over
+the ledges.
+
+As she hurried over the rough trail, frankly hastening, now frankly
+alarmed, she thought that probably for all the life-time of the people
+in the valley the death of Frank Warner would set a sinister element of
+lurking danger in those familiar wooded slopes. Nothing _could_ have
+happened to Paul, but still she hurried faster and faster, and as she
+came near the upper edge of the pasture she began to shout loudly,
+"Paul! Paul!" and to send out the high yodel-cry that was the family
+assembly call. That act of shouting brought her a step nearer to panic.
+
+But almost at once she heard the little boy's answer, not far from her
+saw his dog bounding through the bushes, and as she emerged from the
+woods into the open pasture she saw Paul running towards her, pail in
+hand, evidently astonished to know her there. But there was about him
+something more than astonishment, something which Marise's mother-eye
+catalogued as furtitve, that consciousness of something to hide which
+always looks to grown-ups like guilt. She gave no sign of seeing this,
+however, stopping short to catch her breath, smiling at him, and
+wondering with great intensity what in the world it could be. He looked
+a little frightened.
+
+He came up to her, answering her smile uneasily, and she saw that he had
+only a few berries in his pail. At this she was relieved, thinking that
+possibly all that had happened was that he had lingered to play. But
+when she glanced back at his face, she had the impression that there was
+something more, very much more. He had received some indelible
+impression and it was his instinct to hide it from his mother. Her heart
+sank forebodingly.
+
+"What is the best thing to do?" she asked herself. "To speak about it
+first, or to wait till he does?"
+
+She sat down on a stone, fanning herself with her hat, watching him,
+trying to make out the meaning of every shift of expression, turn of
+eye, position of his hands, carriage of his head, bringing to this all
+her accumulated knowledge of Paul, afire with the sudden passion to
+protect him which had flamed up with her intuition that something had
+happened to him.
+
+(Come and gone with the dry rapidity of fingers snapped, she had
+thought, "The point is, that other people may be more clever than
+mothers, but nobody else _cares_ enough, always, always to try to
+understand!")
+
+"I thought I'd come up and walk back with you," she offered.
+
+"I haven't got very many," said Paul, abashed, looking down at the few,
+blue, bloom-covered balls in the bottom of his shining tin pail. "I was
+trying to hurry up and get enough for supper, anyhow."
+
+Marise in spite of herself, moved by pity for his confusion, offered him
+a way out. It always seemed to her too dreadful for anyone not to have a
+way out, even if it implied a fib. "Weren't there very many on the
+bushes?" she asked.
+
+But he refused it with a characteristic integrity. "Oh yes, there were
+lots there," he said.
+
+A silence fell. The little dog, sensitively aware of something wrong,
+whined uneasily, and pawed at Paul's hand. But Paul did not look down at
+him. He stood, his bare feet wide apart, the empty pail in his hand,
+looking down the beautiful green slope of the pasture, golden now in the
+long rays from the sun poised low on the line of the mountains opposite.
+
+Marise looked at him, seeing nothing in all the world but that tanned,
+freckled, anxious little face. With what an utter unexpectedness did
+these moments of crisis spring on you; something vital there, and no
+warning, no chance to think.
+
+"Anything the matter, Paul?" she said gently.
+
+He nodded, silent.
+
+"Anything you can tell Mother?" she asked, still more gently.
+
+Paul said gruffly, "I don't know: it's about Ralph Powers. He was up
+here this afternoon." He looked down at his brown, bramble-scratched
+legs.
+
+Marise's imagination gave an unbridled leap of fear. She had always felt
+something strange and abnormal about Ralph. But she thought, "I mustn't
+tyrannize over Paul, even by a too-waiting expectant silence," and
+stooped over with the pretext of tying her shoe. A lump came to her
+throat. How terribly, helplessly, you _cared_ about what came to your
+children!
+
+When she lifted her head, Paul had come nearer her and was looking down
+at her, with troubled eyes. "Say, Mother, he didn't _say_ not to tell
+you. Do you suppose it would be fair?"
+
+She made a great effort at loyalty and said, "I can't tell, Paul. You
+saw him. You know better than I, if you think he meant you not to tell.
+Try to remember if he said anything about it."
+
+Paul thought hard. "You wouldn't tell anybody?" he asked.
+
+"Not if you don't want me to," she answered.
+
+Paul sat down by her and drew a long breath. "I don't believe he would
+care, your knowing it, if you never told anybody else, nor said anything
+to him. Mother, I was going along, up there by the big rock where the
+white birches grow, and I saw Ralph. . . . He was in front of a sort of
+table he'd fixed up with a long piece of slate-stone, and he had some
+queer-shaped stones on it . . . oh, _Mother_ . . . he was crying so, and
+talking to himself! And when he saw me he got as mad! And he told me
+about it, just as mad all the time, as though he was mad at me. Mother,
+it's an altar!
+
+"An altar!" said Marise, stupidly, utterly disconcerted by the word, so
+totally other than what her fears had been foreboding.
+
+"Yes, an altar, and he says the stones on it are idols, and he bows down
+and worships them, the way the Bible says it's wicked to."
+
+Marise was too much astonished to open her lips.
+
+Paul said, "Mother, Ralph says he hates God, and isn't going to say his
+prayers to him any more. He says God let his father and mother both get
+killed, and he don't know what the devil could do any worse than that.
+He said he started in having an altar to idols because he thought from
+what the Bible said that if you did you'd be so wicked lightning would
+strike you dead. But it didn't, and now he doesn't believe _any_thing.
+So he's going on, having idols because the Bible says not to."
+
+Marise's first rounded and exclusive emotion was of immense relief.
+Nothing had happened to her own son, and beside this relief, nothing for
+the moment seemed of any consequence. She drew Paul to her with a long
+breath of what was, she recognized it the moment afterward, her old,
+clear, undiluted, ferocious, hateful mother-egotism. For that instant
+she had not cared an atom what happened to another woman's child, so
+long as hers was safe.
+
+But the next instant, the awareness of her hard heart cut across her
+like the lash of a whip. She shrank under it, horrified. She hung her
+head guilty and ashamed, divining the extremity of the other child's
+misery.
+
+As she sat there, with her living arms around her own little son, the
+boy whose mother was dead came and stood before her in imagination,
+showing those festering, uncared-for wounds of sorrow and bitterness and
+loneliness, and furious, unavailing revolt from suffering too great to
+be borne.
+
+She felt the guilt driven out from her narrow heart as it swelled larger
+to take him in. Any child who needed a mother so much, was _her own
+child_. He had no longer any mother who would care enough to try to
+understand, but _she_ would care enough.
+
+"He bowed down and worshiped," said Paul, in a shocked, frightened
+voice. "He knocked his head on the stones and cried like anything. He
+said he hated God."
+
+"Oh!" cried Marise, intolerably stung by sympathy and pity. She started
+up to her feet, her heart burning, the tears on her cheeks. Her arms
+ached with emptiness till she should have drawn that suffering into
+them.
+
+Paul said shyly, "Say, Mother, it's _awful_ hard on those Powers kids,
+isn't it, not having anybody but their grandmother. Say, Mother, don't
+you think maybe we could . . . we could . . ." He turned his freckled,
+tanned, serious little face up to hers.
+
+His mother stooped to kiss him, furiously, burningly, passionately, as
+she did not often kiss Paul, and he clung to her with all the strength
+of his strong little arms. "Yes, yes, you darling, you darling," she
+told him brokenly. "Yes, yes, yes."
+
+
+II
+
+September 10.
+
+Marise was slowly going through a passage of Scriabine, which had just
+come in the mail. She was absorbed in the difficulties and novelties of
+it, her ear alert to catch a clue to the meaning of those new rhythms
+and progressions, her mind opened wide to understand them when she heard
+them.
+
+It was with an effort that she brought her attention back to Elly, who
+had come in behind her and was saying something urgently. Marise turned
+around on the piano-stool, her head humming with the unfamiliar,
+tantalizing beauties and intricacies of the page she had left half
+unread, and considered the little girl for an instant before she heard
+what she said. How Elly did grow! That dress was already much too small
+for her.
+
+Well, Elly was not the only one who had grown out of her old clothes
+this summer . . . the old garments that had been large enough and now must
+be laid aside! . . . Elly was saying, "Mother, one of my chickens looks
+sick, and I don't know what to do. I _wish_ you'd come!"
+
+Marise began a process of mentally weighing which was more important,
+Scriabine or Elly's chicken. Elly looked at her mother with imploring
+eyes. "Mother, he looked awfully sick. And he is my nicest little
+Downy-head, the one I've always loved the best. I've tried to take such
+good care of him. Mother, I'm _worried_ about him."
+
+Marise decided that Scriabine had at least the capacity to wait, while
+the chicken might not. She got up, saying, "All right, Elly, we'll see
+what we can do."
+
+Elly pulled her along rapidly to the chicken-yard where grossly
+self-satisfied hens scratched in trash and filth undiscriminatingly,
+and complacently called their families to share what they had found
+there, or indeed at times apparently to admire them for having found
+nothing. Marise stood regarding them with a composed, ironic eye. It was
+good, she reflected, to be able to know that that was the way you looked
+from the outside, and not to care a bit because you knew firmly that
+there was something else there that made all the difference. All the
+same, it was a very good thing to have had the scaring thought that you
+were like that . . . "there but for the grace of God. . . ." Was it
+complacent to say that? Oh, what did it matter what you called
+it,--complacent or not, if you knew! It all came back to not caring so
+much about what things could be called, if you knew what they were.
+
+Elly had disappeared into the chicken-house and now came back with a
+perplexed face. "Downy-head was there, by the nests, and now he's gone."
+Marise caught in the child's eyes the realness of her anxiety and
+thrilled to it, as she always did to any real emotion. "I'll help you
+look," she said, turning her eyes about the chicken-yard, crowded with
+voluble, intently self-centered, feathered personalities. "Which hen is
+his mother, Elly?
+
+"This one, Old Speckle. Oh, Mother, there he is, lying down. He must be
+feeling worse!" She ran forward and stooped over a little panting yellow
+ball. Across the intervening space and beyond all those carelessly alive
+bodies, Marise's eyes caught the unmistakable aspect of death in the
+tiny creature lying there.
+
+"Mother!" cried Elly, "his eyes look so! He can't get his breath.
+_Mother!_" Marise felt the child's agitation and alarm knock at her
+heart. She looked down helplessly at the dying creature. That tiny, tiny
+scrap of down-covered flesh to be alive, to contain the miracle and
+mystery of life, and now to be struggling, all alone, with the miracle
+and mystery of death!
+
+The little thing opened its glazing eyes once more, drew a long breath,
+and lay still. An age-old inherited knowledge and experience told Elly
+what bad happened. She gave a scream, picked it up and held it in her
+cupped hands, her little face drawn in horrified incredulity. She looked
+up at her mother and said in a whisper, "Mother, he's _dead_."
+
+Marise nodded silently. Poor Elly! She wished she could think of
+something comforting to say. But what is there to say? For her there had
+never been anything but stoic silence. The mother hen clucked
+unconcernedly at their feet, and with coaxing guttural sounds called the
+rest of the chickens to eat a grain. The strong ammonia smell of the
+chicken-yard rose in the sunshine. Elly stood perfectly still, the
+little ball of yellow down in her hand, her face pale.
+
+Marise looked down on her with infinite sympathy. Her child, flesh of
+her flesh, meeting in this uncouth place the revelation of the black
+gulf! But she remained silent, not knowing what to say.
+
+Elly spoke in a low voice, "But, Mother, how _can_ he be dead, just so
+quick while we were looking at him? Mother, he was alive a minute ago.
+He was breathing. He looked at me. He knew me. And in just a minute like
+that . . . nothing!"
+
+She looked around her wildly. "_Mother, where has his life gone to?_"
+
+Marise put her arm around the little girl's shoulders tenderly, but she
+still only shook her head without a word. She did not know any more than
+Elly where his life had gone. And surely loving silence was better than
+tinkling words of falseness.
+
+Elly looked up at her, glistening drops of sweat standing on her
+temples. "Mother," she asked, urgently, in a loud, frightened whisper,
+"Mother, do we die like that? Mother, will _you_ die like that? All in a
+moment . . . and then . . . nothing?"
+
+It came like thunder, then, what Marise had never thought to feel. With
+a clap, she found that this time she had something to answer, something
+to say to Elly. Looking deep, deep into Elly's eyes, she said firmly
+with a certainty as profound as it was new to her, "No, Elly, I don't
+believe we do die like that . . . all in a moment . . . nothing."
+
+She was astonished by what she said, astonished by the sudden
+overflowing of something she had not known was there, but which was so
+great that her heart could not contain it, "comme une onde qui bout dans
+une urne trop pleine." And she was as moved as she was astonished. Elly
+came into her arms with a comforted gasp. They clung to each other
+closely, Marise's ears humming with the unfamiliar beauty and intricacy
+of that new page at which she had had that instant's glimpse. Here was a
+new harmony, a new progression, a new rhythm to which her ear had just
+opened . . . heard here in this uncouth place!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, after the children were in bed, she stopped her reading of
+the new music for a moment to say to Neale, "You know those ideas that
+other people are better for children than their parents are?"
+
+"Yes," said Neale, laying down the baseball page of his newspaper,
+instantly all there, looking at her intently.
+
+"Well, I don't believe a word of it," said Marise.
+
+"I should say it depended on which parents and on which children were
+meant," advanced Neale guardedly.
+
+Marise had at first an affectionate smile for this, and then a laugh.
+She got up from the piano-stool and went to kiss him. He said with a
+whimsical suspicion of this, "Why so?"
+
+"Because you are so entirely you," she told him, and went back to
+Scriabine.
+
+
+III
+
+September 22.
+
+It was the half-hour of pause after lunch. The children played idly with
+the fox-terrier and lounged on the steps of the side-porch, strong and
+brown, living cups filled to the brim with life. Neale had pushed his
+chair back from the table, lighted his pipe, and sat meditating.
+Presently he put out his hand and laid it on Marise's, who had turned to
+look down the sun-flooded valley.
+
+It was high-noon, dreamy, entranced, all the world golden with the
+magnificent weather as a holly-hock is golden with pollen. From the
+brook came the living voice of the water, with the special note of brave
+clarity it always had for brilliant noons.
+
+It seemed to Marise that she too was all gold-powdered with the
+magnificence of life, that in her heart there sang a clear living voice
+that did not fear high-noons.
+
+
+IV
+
+October.
+
+Would Vincent come back at all? Marise had wondered so often. Not
+Vincent in the flesh; that last angry bewildered gesture had finality in
+it. He had given her up then, totally. But would he come back to haunt
+her in those inevitable moments of flat ebb-tide in life, when what
+should be moist and living, withered and crisped in the merciless
+drought of drudgery and routine? She feared it, frankly dreaded it at
+first, and tried to think how to brace herself against it. But it was
+not then that tie came, not when she was toiling with dishes to wash, or
+vegetables to pare, or the endless care of the children's never-in-order
+clothes. Instead she found in those moments, which had been arid before,
+a curious new savor, a salt without which life would seem insipid,
+something which gave her appetite for the rest. "This is all Tolstoyan
+nonsense and sentimentality," she told herself mockingly, "there is
+nothing sacred about scrubbing the floor." Or on another day, "I wonder
+if it's a twist of the absurd mediaeval ascetic perversity left over?"
+Or again, "All it does for me is to take off the curse of belonging to
+the bourgeoisie." But no matter what skeptical name she called it, nor
+how much she minimized the reality of it, she felt some odd value in it
+which she would not have gone without. Once she said to herself, "It's
+ballast, to a person like me," although she did not know exactly what
+this meant. And another time she said, "Perhaps it's that I'm making an
+honest effort to do my share." But it was true and real, the fact that
+after such work the reading of the day's news of the world brought her a
+less oppressive sense of guilt. And stranger than this, music had
+greater vitality for her. She felt it a deeper, richer soil than even
+she had dreamed of, and struck her roots profoundly into depths which
+kept her whole complicated organism poised, steady, and upright.
+
+And here it was that Vincent came back. Not the Vincent of the hawk-like
+imperious face, or burning eyes of desire, which had seemed to him his
+realest self. But the Vincent who had come in from the porch that day in
+March when she had first played to him, who had smiled at her, the good,
+grateful, peaceful smile, and had said to her music, "Go on, go on." It
+was the same Vincent of the afternoon in Cousin Hetty's garden when the
+vulture of the desire to possess had left him for a moment in peace.
+Often and often he came thus as she played and leaned his head back and
+said, "Go on." And thus Marise knew he would always come. And thus she
+welcomed him.
+
+This was what was left of him in the house he had so filled with his
+smoky, flaming brilliance.
+
+
+V
+
+December.
+
+They had been talking around the fire of the stars and their names and
+stories, she and Neale and the children. Presently interest overcoming
+inertia they decided to go out and see if the clouds had blown away so
+that the stars could be seen. They huddled on hastily found wraps,
+thrust their feet into flapping, unbuckled overshoes, and leaving the
+still, warm, lamp-lit room, they shuffled out, laughing and talking,
+into the snow which lay thick and still before the house.
+
+At first they carried out between them so much of the house atmosphere
+that it hung about them like warm fog, shielding them from the fiercely
+pure, still cold of the air, and from the brilliant glitter of the
+myriad-eyed black sky. They went on talking and laughing, pointing out
+the constellations they knew, and trying to find others in the spangled
+vault over their heads.
+
+"A bear!" cried Mark. "I could draw a better bear than that any day!"
+And from Paul, "They can call it Orion's belt all they want to, but
+there's no belt to it!" And from Elly, "Aldebaran! Aldebaran! Red-eyed
+Aldebaran!"
+
+But little by little the house-air began to be thinned about them, to
+blow away from between them in wisps and wreathes, off into the
+blackness. The warmed, lighted house dwindled to nothing. There were
+only the great cold black sky and the small cold white earth. Their
+voices were lowered; they stood very still, close together, their heads
+tipped back, their faces and hearts upraised silently to receive the
+immensity above and about them.
+
+Elly murmured under her breath, "Doesn't it seem funny, our world being
+just one of all those, and such a little one, and here we are, just
+these few of us, standing on the world and looking at it all."
+
+Marise thought, "We seem to be the only living things in all creation."
+In that huge, black, cold glittering universe how tiny was the little
+glow of life they made!
+
+Tiny but unquenchable! Those myriads of hard staring eyes could not look
+down the immortal handful of human life and love which she and Neale had
+created between them.
+
+There was a silence, filled with still, breathless cold; with enormous
+space, with infinity.
+
+Marise felt a rigorous shudder run over her, as though something vital
+were coming to her, like the rending pang of pain which heralds
+child-birth. After this, did she close her eyes for a moment, or did it
+come to her while she continued to gaze wide-eyed at the stern greatness
+of the universe? What was this old, familiar, unknown sensation?
+
+. . . as though, on a long journey in the dark it had grown light, so that
+she had suddenly recognized which way she was going.
+
+Then she knew what it was. Conscious and awake, she was feeling herself
+one with the great current, advancing with an irresistible might,
+majesty and power, in which she shared, to which she gave her part.
+
+
+VI
+
+January.
+
+She was putting away the clean sheets from the washing on the shelves at
+the end of the hall, upstairs, her mind entirely on the prosaic task,
+wondering when she would have to replace some of the older ones, and
+wishing she could put off buying till the outrageous post-war prices
+went down. Someone stirred behind her and she turned her head quickly to
+see who was there. It was Neale, come in early. He was standing, looking
+at her back; and in the instant before he saw that she had turned, she
+caught the expression on his face, the tender fathomless affection that
+was there.
+
+A warm gush of happiness surged up all over her. She felt a sudden
+intense physical well-being, as though her breath came more smoothly,
+her blood ran more sweetly in her veins.
+
+"Oh, _Neale_!" she said, under her breath, flushing and turning to him.
+He looked at her, his strong, resolute face and clear eyes smiled, and
+opening his arms he drew her into them. The ineffable memory of all the
+priceless past, the ineffable certainty of the priceless future was in
+their kiss.
+
+That evening, after a long golden hour at the piano, she chanced to take
+down the Largo in the Chopin sonata. As she began it, something stirred
+in her mind, some memory that instantly lived with the first notes of
+the music. How thick-clustered with associations music became, waking a
+hundred echoes and overtones!
+
+This was the memory of the time when she had played it, almost a year
+ago, and had thought how intimacy and familiarity with music but
+deepened and enriched and strengthened its hold on you. It was only the
+lower pleasures of which one grew tired,--had enough. The others grew
+with your growing capacity to hold them. She remembered how that day she
+had recalled the Wordsworth sonnet, "A beauteous evening, calm and
+free," and had thought that music took you in to worship quite simply
+and naturally at the Temple's inner shrine, that you adored none the
+less although you were at home there and not breathless with adoration
+like the nun: because it was a whole world given to you, not a mere pang
+of joy, because you could live and move and be blessedly and securely at
+home there.
+
+She finished the last note of the Largo and sat silent. She was thinking
+that her marriage was like that, too.
+
+Presently she got up, took out the old portfolio of photographs, and
+pinned upon the wall over the piano the view taken from Rocca di Papa.
+
+
+VII
+
+February 24.
+
+Marise had been drilling the chorus in the Town Hall of Ashley after the
+men's working-hours, and now in the dimming light of the early evening
+was going home on snow-shoes, over the hill-path. She liked to use
+snow-shoes and occasionally said that she could walk more easily and
+more lightly on them than on bare ground. She trod over the tops of the
+deep drifts with an accentuation of her usual strong free step.
+
+The snow fell thickly and steadily, a cold, finely-spun, straight-hung
+curtain, veiling all the muffled sleeping valley. There was an
+inconceivable silence about her as she drew her snow-shoes over the
+velvet-like masses of the snow. But within her were ringing echoes of
+the rhythms and cadences of the afternoon's struggle, imperfectly sung
+most of them, haltingly, or dully, or feebly, or with a loud
+misunderstanding of the phrase. At the recollection of these failures,
+she clenched her hands hard inside her fur gloves with an indomitable
+resolution to draw something better from her singers the next time.
+
+But mingled with them was a moment of splendor. It was when the men had
+tried over the passage she had explained to them the week before. She
+had not known then, she did not know now, how clearly or definitely she
+had reached them with her summary of the situation of the drama: the
+desperate straits of the Israelites after the three-year drought, the
+trial by fire and water before the scorning aristocracy, Elijah stark
+and alone against all the priesthood of Baal, the extremity of despair
+of the people . . . and then the coming of the longed-for rain that
+loosened the terrible tension and released their hearts in the great
+groaning cry of thanksgiving. She had wondered how clearly or definitely
+she had reached their understanding, but she knew that she had reached
+their hearts, when suddenly she had heard all those men's voices pealing
+out, pure and strong and solemn and free, as she had dreamed that phrase
+could be sung.
+
+[Illustration: Thanks be to God! He laveth the thirsty land.]
+
+The piercing sweetness of the pleasure this had brought to her came over
+her again in a wave. She halted on the crest of the hill, and for a
+moment in place of the purples and blues of the late snowy afternoon
+there hung before her eyes the powerful, roughly clad bodies of those
+vigorous men, their weather-beaten faces, their granite impassivity,
+under which her eye had caught the triumph of the moment, warming them
+as it did her, with the purest of joys this side of heaven, the
+consciousness of having made music worthily. The whole valley seemed to
+be filled to its brim with that shout of exultation. It had taken all of
+her patience, and will-power, and knowledge of her art and of these
+people to achieve that moment. But it had lifted her high, high above
+the smallness of life, up to a rich realm of security in joy.
+
+The snow fell more and more thickly, covering her as she stood with a
+fine, soft mantle of white. She had heard the men that afternoon saying
+they had seen signs of the winter break-up, and she wondered at it now,
+looking about the frozen, buried, beautiful valley and up to the frozen
+towering mountains, breathing in the cold air, as pure as the ether
+itself. It seemed to her that spring was as remote and unreal and
+impossible an imagination of the heart as a child's fairy-tale.
+
+Then suddenly, bursting out of the dimming distance, close in front of
+her, flying low, silently, strongly, a pair of wild geese went winging
+off towards the north, their gray shapes the only moving thing in all
+the frost-held world.
+
+Marise drew a great breath of delight in their strong and purposeful
+vitality. She looked after them, her heart rising and singing with
+comradely pride in them. She would have liked to shout an exultant
+greeting after them, "Hurrah!"
+
+They went beating off, fast and straight, for their unseen destination,
+while, treading the velvet-like snow-drifts with her strong free tread,
+Marise went home.
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+
+VIII
+
+March 2.
+
+It was the first warm day of the year. The hard-frozen ruts of the road
+thawed on top and glistened. The snow-banks shrank visibly from one hour
+to the next under a warm wind and a hazy sun. The mountains were
+unbelievably beautiful and seductive in a shimmer of blue and silver.
+The children had brought home a branch of pussy-willows, and as Marise
+and Neale stood for a moment at the open door breathing in the new
+softness, they saw Touclé, old and stooped and shabby, her reticule bag
+bulging, her flat feet in enormous overshoes plodding up the road
+towards the mountain.
+
+They smiled at one another. It was in truth the first day of spring.
+Marise said, after a pause, "Do you know what she goes off for?"
+
+Neale shook his head with a wide indifference as to the reason. "Because
+she's an Injun," he conjectured casually.
+
+"She told me once," said Marise, with a sudden wonder what Neale would
+think of that glimpse into the old mystic's mind, how he would (for she
+knew beforehand he would) escape the wistfulness which struck at her
+even now, at the thought of that door to peace. She repeated to him word
+for word what Touclé had told her on that hot August day.
+
+Neale gave her his usual careful attention. Marise thought to herself,
+"Neale is the only person I ever knew who could listen to other people's
+ideas." But when she finished he made no comment. She asked him, "Did
+you ever think that old carven-image had that in her? How profound a
+disdain for us busy-about-nothing white people she must have!"
+
+Neale nodded. "Most likely. Everybody has a good deal of disdain for
+other people's ideals."
+
+"Well, you haven't for hers, have you?" challenged Marise. Neale looked
+thoughtful. "I'm no mystic. Their way of managing life often looks to me
+like sort of lying down on the job. I'm no mystic and I'm no fish. Looks
+to me as though the thing to do isn't to go off in a far corner to get
+your momentary glimpse of daylight, but to batter a hole in the roof of
+your cave and let daylight in where you live all the time. I can't help
+being suspicious of a daylight that's so uncertain you have to go away
+from life and hold your breath before you can see it for a minute. I
+want it where I do my work."
+
+Marise looked at him, thinking deeply. That was just what Neale did. But
+when she looked back at the old Indian woman, just now turning into the
+wood-road, she sighed wistfully, and did not know why.
+
+There was so very much growing always to be done in life.
+
+
+IX
+
+March 10.
+
+(_A letter from Eugenia_:)
+
+". . . I'm planning perhaps to make the trip to the temples in the Malay
+jungle. Biskra was deadly, and Italy worse . . . vulgarity and commonness
+everywhere. What an absolutely dreary outlook wherever one turns one's
+eyes! There is no corner of the modern world that is not vulgar and
+common. Democracy has done its horrible leveling down with a vengeance
+. . ."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(_A letter from Mr. Welles_:)
+
+". . . The life here is full of interest and change, and it's like dew on
+my dusty old heart to see the vitality of the joy-in-life of these
+half-disinherited people. I'm ashamed to tell you how they seem to love
+me and how good they are to me. Their warmness of heart and their zest
+in life. . . . I'm just swept back into youth again. It makes me very much
+mortified when I think what a corking good time I am having and what
+sanctimonious martyr's airs I put on about coming down here. Of course a
+certain amount of my feeling younger and brisker comes from the fact
+that, working as I am, nobody feels about me the laid-on-the-shelf
+compassion which everybody (and me too) was feeling before. I _am_
+somebody here and every time I say 'Dr. Martin' to a well-educated Negro
+physician whom another white man has just hailed as 'Andy' I feel not
+only a real sense of righteous satisfaction but the joyful mischievous
+fun that a small boy has. Give my love to Paul (speaking of small boys)
+and tell him I'm saving up for the fishing-pole I am going to use when I
+go fishing with him next summer. He said in his last letter he wanted to
+come down here and make me a visit; but you tell him I think he'd better
+get his growth before he does that."
+
+
+X
+
+March 15, 1921.
+
+From a profound sleep, serene warm infinity of rest, Marise was wakened
+by a little outcry near the bed, a sobbing voice saying through
+chattering teeth, "Mother! Father!"
+
+Still drowned in sleep, Marise cried out, "What? What's that?" and then,
+"Oh, you, Elly. What's the matter, dear? Notions again?"
+
+"Oh, Mother, it was an awful dream this time. Can't I get into bed with
+you?"
+
+"Why yes, come along, you dear little silly."
+
+The fumbling approach to the bed, Marise holding the sheets open and
+stretching out her hand through the cold darkness towards the little
+fingers groping for her; the clutch at her hand with a quick anguish of
+relief and joy. "Oh, _Mother!_"
+
+Then the shivering body rolling into bed, the little cold arms tight
+around her neck, the cold smooth petal-like cheek against hers.
+
+Marise reached over beyond Elly and tucked the covers in with one arm,
+drew the child closer to her, and herself drew closer to Neale. She
+wondered if he had been awakened by Elly's voice, and the little stir in
+the room, and hoped he had not. He had been off on a very long hard
+tramp over mountain trails the day before, and had been tired at night.
+Perhaps if he had been wakened by Elly he would drowse off again at once
+as she felt herself doing now, conscious sleepily and happily of Elly's
+dear tender limbs on one side of her and of Neale's dear strong body on
+the other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The strong March wind chanted loudly outside in the leafless
+maple-boughs. As Marise felt her eyelids falling shut again it seemed to
+her, half-awake, half-asleep, that the wind was shouting out the refrain
+of an old song she had heard in her childhood, "There's room for all!
+There's room for all! What had it meant, that refrain? She tried
+drowsily to remember, but instead felt herself richly falling asleep
+again, her hands, her arms, her body.
+
+"There's room for all! There's room for all!"
+
+She was almost asleep. . . .
+
+Someone was speaking again. Elly's voice, calmer now, wistful and
+wondering, as though she were lying awake and trying to think.
+
+"Mother."
+
+"Yes, dear, what is it?
+
+"Mother, aren't you and father afraid of anything?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise was wide-awake now, thinking hard. She felt Neale stir, grope for
+her hand and hold it firmly . . . Neale's strong hand!
+
+She knew what she was saying. Yes, she knew all that it meant when she
+answered, "No, Elly, I don't believe we are."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Brimming Cup, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brimming Cup, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Brimming Cup
+
+Author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher
+
+Release Date: February 7, 2005 [EBook #14957]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIMMING CUP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<h1>THE BRIMMING CUP</h1>
+<h2><i>Dorothy Canfield</i></h2>
+<div class='center'>HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY - NEW YORK<br />
+<br />
+1919<br />
+<br />
+<i>By the same author</i><br />
+<br />
+THE SQUIRREL-CAGE<br />
+A MONTESSORI MOTHER<br />
+MOTHERS AND CHILDREN<br />
+HILLSBORO PEOPLE<br />
+THE BENT TWIG<br />
+THE REAL MOTIVE<br />
+FELLOW CAPTAINS (<i>With Sarah N. Cleghorn</i>)<br />
+UNDERSTOOD BETSY<br />
+HOME FIRES IN FRANCE<br />
+THE DAY OF GLORY<br />
+THE BRIMMING CUP<br />
+ROUGH-HEWN<br />
+RAW MATERIAL<br />
+THE HOME-MAKER<br />
+MADE-TO-ORDER STORIES<br />
+HER SON'S WIFE<br />
+WHY STOP LEARNING?<br />
+THE DEEPENING STREAM<br />
+BASQUE PEOPLE<br />
+FABLES FOR PARENTS<br />
+SEASONED TIMBER</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr>
+<td align='right'></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'>CHAPTER</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align='right'>Page</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I">PRELUDE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">3</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_II">INTERLUDE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">23</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan='3' align='center'><i><a href="#PART_I">PART
+ONE</a></i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III">OLD MR. WELLES AND YOUNG MR.
+MARSH</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">29</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">TABLE TALK</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">48</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V">A LITTLE GIRL AND HER MOTHER</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">64</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">THINGS TAKE THEIR COURSE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">80</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">THE NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">91</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">WHAT GOES ON INSIDE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">115</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">THE GENT AROUND THE LADY</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">130</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_X">AT THE MILL</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">151</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan='3' align='center'><i><a href="#PART_II">PART
+TWO</a></i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">IN AUNT HETTY'S GARDEN</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">179</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">HEARD FROM THE STUDY</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">199</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">ALONG THE EAGLE ROCK BROOK</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">215</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">BESIDE THE ONION-BED</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">224</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">HOME-LIFE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">241</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">MASSAGE-CREAM; THEME AND
+VARIATIONS</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">256</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">THE SOUL OF NELLY POWERS</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">266</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan='3' align='center'><i><a href="#PART_III">PART
+THREE</a></i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">BEFORE THE DAWN</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">279</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">285</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">A PRIMAEVAL HERITAGE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">294</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">THE COUNSEL OF THE STARS</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">302</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">309</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE
+STARS</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">323</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan='3' align='center'><i><a href="#PART_IV">PART
+FOUR</a></i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">NEALE'S RETURN</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">331</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">MARISE'S COMING-OF-AGE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">338</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">MARISE LOOKS AND SEES WHAT IS
+THERE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">360</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">THE FALL OF THE BIG PINE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">367</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">TWO GOOD-BYES</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">380</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">VIGNETTES FROM HOME-LIFE</a></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">390</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>THE BRIMMING CUP</h1>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h3><i>PRELUDE</i></h3>
+<h3>SUNSET ON ROCCA DI PAPA</h3>
+<div class='center'><i>An Hour in the Life of Two Modern Young
+People</i><br />
+<br />
+April, 1909.</div>
+<p>Lounging idly in the deserted little waiting-room was the usual
+shabby, bored, lonely ticket-seller, prodigiously indifferent to
+the grave beauty of the scene before him and to the throng of
+ancient memories jostling him where he stood. Without troubling to
+look at his watch, he informed the two young foreigners that they
+had a long hour to wait before the cable-railway would send a car
+down to the Campagna. His lazy nonchalance was faintly colored with
+the satisfaction, common to his profession, in the discomfiture of
+travelers.</p>
+<p>Their look upon him was of amazed gratitude. Evidently they did
+not understand Italian, he thought, and repeated his information
+more slowly, with an unrecognizable word or two of badly pronounced
+English thrown in. He felt slightly vexed that he could not make
+them feel the proper annoyance, and added, "It may even be so late
+that the signori would miss the connection for the last tramway car
+back to Rome. It is a long walk back to the city across the
+Campagna."</p>
+<p>They continued to gaze at him with delight. "I've got to tip him
+for that!" said the young man, reaching vigorously into a
+pocket.</p>
+<p>The girl's answering laugh, like the inward look of her eyes,
+showed only a preoccupied attention. She had the concentrated
+absent aspect of a person who has just heard vital tidings and can
+attend to nothing else. She said, "Oh, Neale, how ridiculous of
+you. He couldn't possibly have the least idea what he's done to
+deserve getting paid for."</p>
+<p>At the sound of her voice, the tone in which these words were
+pronounced, the ticket-seller looked at her hard, with a bold,
+intrusive, diagnosing stare: "Lovers!" he told himself
+conclusively. He accepted with a vast incuriosity as to reason the
+coin which the young foreigner put into his hand, and, ringing it
+suspiciously on his table, divided his appraising attention between
+its clear answer to his challenge, and the sound of the young man's
+voice as he answered his sweetheart, "Of course he hasn't any idea
+what he's done to deserve it. Who ever has? You don't suppose for a
+moment I've any idea what I've done to deserve mine?"</p>
+<p>The ticket-seller smiled secretly into his dark mustache. "I
+wonder if <i>my</i> voice quivered and deepened like that, when I
+was courting Annunziata?" he asked himself. He glanced up from
+pocketing the coin, and caught the look which passed between the
+two. He felt as though someone had laid hands on him and shaken
+him. "<i>Dio mio</i>" he thought. "They are in the hottest of
+it."</p>
+<p>The young foreigners went across the tracks and established
+themselves on the rocks, partly out of sight, just at the brink of
+the great drop to the Campagna. The setting sun was full in their
+faces. But they did not see it, seeing only each other.</p>
+<p>Below them spread the divinely colored plain, crossed by the
+ancient yellow river, rolling its age-old memories out to the sea,
+a blue reminder of the restfulness of eternity, at the rim of the
+weary old land. Like a little cluster of tiny, tarnished pearls,
+Rome gleamed palely, remote and legendary.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The two young people looked at each other earnestly, with a
+passionate, single-hearted attention to their own meaning,
+thrusting away impatiently the clinging brambles of speech which
+laid hold on their every effort to move closer to each other. They
+did not look down, or away from each other's eyes as they strove to
+free themselves, to step forward, to clasp the other's outstretched
+hands. They reached down blindly, tearing at those thorny,
+clutching entanglements, pulling and tugging at those tenuous,
+tough words which would not let them say what they meant: sure,
+hopefully sure that in a moment . . . now . . . with the next
+breath, they would break free as no others had ever done before
+them, and crying out the truth and glory that was in them, fall
+into each other's arms.</p>
+<p>The girl was physically breathless with this effort, her lips
+parted, her eyebrows drawn together. "Neale, Neale dear, if I could
+only tell you how I want it to be, how utterly utterly <i>true</i>
+I want us to be. Nothing's of any account except that."</p>
+<p>She moved with a shrugging, despairing gesture. "No, no, not the
+way that sounds. I don't mean, you know I don't mean any
+old-fashioned impossible vows never to change, or be any different!
+I know too much for that. I've seen too awfully much unhappiness,
+with people trying to do that. You know what I told you about my
+father and mother. Oh, Neale, it's horribly dangerous, loving
+anybody. I never wanted to. I never thought I should. But now I'm
+in it, I see that it's not at all unhappiness I'm afraid of, your
+getting tired of me or I of you . . . everybody's so weak and
+horrid in this world, who knows what may be before us? That's not
+what would be unendurable, sickening. That would make us unhappy.
+But what would poison us to death . . . what I'm afraid of, between
+two people who try to be what we want to be to each other . . . how
+can I say it?" She looked at him in an anguish of endeavor, ". . .
+not to be true to what is deepest and most living in us . . . that
+would be the betrayal I'm afraid of. That's what I mean. No matter
+what it costs us personally, or what it brings, we must be true to
+that. We <i>must!</i>"</p>
+<p>He took her hand in his silently, and held it close. She drew a
+long troubled breath and said, "You <i>do</i> think we can always
+have between us that loyalty to what is deep and living? It does
+not seem too much to ask, when we are willing to give up everything
+else for it, even happiness?"</p>
+<p>He gave her a long, profound look. "I'm trying to give that
+loyalty to you this minute, Marise darling," he said slowly, "when
+I tell you now that I think it a very great deal to ask of life, a
+very great deal for any human beings to try for. I should say it
+was much harder to get than happiness."</p>
+<p>She was in despair. "Do you think that?" She searched his face
+anxiously as though she found there more than in his speech. "Yes,
+yes, I see what you mean." She drew a long breath. "I can even see
+how fine it is of you to say that to me now. It's like a promise of
+how you will try. But oh, Neale, I won't <i>want</i> life on any
+other terms!"</p>
+<p>She stopped, looking down at her hand in his. He tightened his
+clasp. His gaze on her darkened and deepened. "It's like sending me
+to get the apples of Hesperides," he said, looking older than she,
+curiously and suddenly older. "I want to say yes! It would be easy
+to say yes. Darling, darling Marise, you can't want it more than I!
+But the very intelligence that makes you want it, that makes me
+want it, shows me how mortally hard it would be! Think! To be loyal
+to what is deepest and most living in yourself . . . that's an
+undertaking for a life-time's effort, with all the ups and downs
+and growths of life. And then to try to know what is deepest and
+most living in another . . . and to try . . . Marise! I will try. I
+will try with all my might. Can anybody do more than try with all
+his might?"</p>
+<p>Their gaze into each other's eyes went far beyond the faltering
+words they spoke. She asked him in a low voice, "Couldn't you do
+more for me than for yourself? One never knows, but . . . what else
+is love for, but to give greater strength than we have?"</p>
+<p>There was a moment's silence, in which their very spirits met
+flame-like in the void, challenging, hoping, fearing. The man's
+face set. His burning look of power enveloped her like the
+reflection of the sun. "I swear you shall have it!" he said
+desperately, his voice shaking.</p>
+<p>She looked up at him with a passionate gratitude. "I'll never
+forget that as long as I live!" she cried out to him.</p>
+<p>The tears stood in his eyes as in hers.</p>
+<p>For the fraction of an instant, they had felt each other there,
+as never before they had felt any other human being: they had both
+at once caught a moment of flood-tide, and both together had been
+carried up side by side; the long, inevitable isolation of human
+lives from birth onward had been broken by the first real contact
+with another human soul. They felt the awed impulse to cover their
+eyes as before too great a glory.</p>
+<p>The tide ebbed back, and untroubled they made no effort to stop
+its ebbing. They had touched their goal, it was really there. Now
+they knew it within their reach. Appeased, assuaged, fatigued, they
+felt the need for quiet, they knew the sweetness of sobriety. They
+even looked away from each other, aware of their own bodies which
+for that instant had been left behind. They entered again into the
+flesh that clad their spirits, taking possession of their hands and
+feet and members, and taken possession of by them again. The
+fullness of their momentary satisfaction had been so complete that
+they felt no regret, only a simple, tender pleasure as of being
+again at home. They smiled happily at each other and sat silent,
+hand in hand.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Now they saw the beauty before them, the vast plain, the
+mountains, the sea: harmonious, serene, ripe with maturity,
+evocative of all the centuries of conscious life which had unrolled
+themselves there.</p>
+<p>"It's too beautiful to be real, isn't it?" murmured the girl,
+"and now, the peaceful way I feel this minute, I don't mind it's
+being so old that it makes you feel a midge in the sunshine with
+only an hour or two of life before you. What if you are, when it's
+life as we feel it now, such a flood of it, every instant brimming
+with it? Neale," she turned to him with a sudden idea, "do you
+remember how Victor Hugo's 'Waterloo' begins?"</p>
+<p>"I should say not!" he returned promptly. "You forget I got all
+the French I know in an American university."</p>
+<p>"Well, I went to college in America, myself!"</p>
+<p>"I bet it wasn't there you learned anything about Victor Hugo's
+poetry," he surmised skeptically. "Well, how does it begin, anyhow,
+and what's it got to do with us?"</p>
+<p>The girl was as unamused as he at his certainty that it had
+something to do with them, or she would not have mentioned it. She
+explained, "It's not a famous line at all, nothing I ever heard
+anybody else admire. We had to learn the poem by heart, when I was
+a little girl and went to school in Bayonne. It starts out,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>'Waterloo, Waterloo, morne plaine<br />
+Comme une onde qui bout dans une urne trop pleine,'</div>
+<p>And that second line always stuck in my head for the picture it
+made. I could see it, so vividly, an urn boiling over with the
+great gush of water springing up in it. It gave me a feeling,
+inside, a real physical feeling, I mean. I wanted, oh so awfully,
+sometime to be so filled with some emotion, something great and
+fine, that I would be an urn too full, gushing up in a great
+flooding rush. I could see the smooth, thick curl of the water
+surging up and out!"</p>
+<p>She stopped to look at him and exclaim, "Why, you're listening!
+You're interested. Neale, I believe you are the only person in the
+world who can really pay attention to what somebody else says.
+Everybody else just goes on thinking his own thoughts."</p>
+<p>He smiled at this fancy, and said, "Go on."</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't know whether that feeling was already in me,
+waiting for something to express it, or whether that phrase in the
+poem started it. But it was, for ever so long, the most important
+thing in the world to me. I was about fourteen years old then, and
+of course, being a good deal with Catholics, I thought probably it
+was religious ecstasy that was going to be the great flood that
+would brim my cup full. I used to go up the hill in Bayonne to the
+Cathedral every day and stay there for hours, trying to work up an
+ecstasy. I managed nearly to faint away once or twice, which was
+<i>some</i>thing of course. But I couldn't feel that great tide I'd
+dreamed of. And then, little by little . . . oh, lots of things
+came between the idea and my thinking about it. Mother was . . .
+I've told you how Mother was at that time. And what an unhappy time
+it was at home. I was pretty busy at the house because she was away
+so much. And Father and I hung together because there wasn't
+anybody else to hang to: and all sorts of ugly things happened, and
+I didn't have the time or the heart to think about being 'an urn
+too full.'"</p>
+<p>She stopped, smiling happily, as though those had not been
+tragic words which he had just spoken, thinking not of them but of
+something else, which now came out, "And then, oh Neale, that day,
+on the piazza in front of St. Peter's, when we stood together, and
+felt the spray of the fountains blown on us, and you looked at me
+and spoke out. . . . Oh, Neale, <i>Neale</i>, what a moment to have
+lived through! Well, when we went on into the church, and I knelt
+there for a while, so struck down with joy that I couldn't stand on
+my feet, all those wild bursts of excitement, and incredulity and
+happiness, that kept surging up and drenching me . . . I had a
+queer feeling, that awfully threadbare feeling of having been there
+before, or felt that before; that it was familiar, although it was
+so new. Then it came to me, 'Why, I have it, what I used to pray
+for. Now at last I am the urn too full!' And it was true, I could
+feel, just as I dreamed, the upsurging of the feeling, brimming
+over, boiling up, brimming over. . . . And another phrase came into
+my mind, an English one. I said to myself, 'The fullness of life.'
+Now I know what it is."</p>
+<p>She turned to him, and caught at his hand. "Oh, Neale, now I
+<i>do</i> know what it is, how utterly hideous it would be to have
+to live without it, to feel only the mean little trickle that seems
+mostly all that people have."</p>
+<p>"Well, I'll never have to get along without it, as long as I
+have you," he said confidently.</p>
+<p>"And I refuse to live a <i>minute</i>, if it goes back on me!"
+she cried.</p>
+<p>"I imagine that old folks would think we are talking very
+young," suggested the man casually.</p>
+<p>"Don't speak of them!" She cast them away into non-existence
+with a gesture.</p>
+<p>They sank into a reverie, smiling to themselves.</p>
+<p>"How the fountains shone in the sun, that day," she murmured;
+"the spray they cast on us was all tiny opals and diamonds."</p>
+<p>"You're sure you aren't going to be sorry to go back to America
+to live, to leave all that?" asked the man. "I get anxious about
+that sometimes. It seems an awful jump to go away from such
+beautiful historic things, back to a narrow little mountain
+town."</p>
+<p>"I'd like to know what right you have to call it narrow, when
+you've never even seen it," she returned.</p>
+<p>"Well, anybody could make a pretty fair guess that a small
+Vermont town isn't going to be so very <i>wide</i>," he advanced
+reasonably.</p>
+<p>"It may not be wide, but it's deep," she replied.</p>
+<p>He laughed at her certainty. "You were about eleven years old
+when you saw it last, weren't you?"</p>
+<p>"No, you've got it wrong. It was when we came to France to live
+that I was eleven, and of course I stopped going to Ashley
+regularly for vacations then. But I went back for several summers
+in the old house with Cousin Hetty, when I was in America for
+college, after Mother died."</p>
+<p>"Oh well, I don't care what it's like," he said, "except that
+it's the place where I'm going to live with you. Any place on earth
+would seem wide enough and deep enough, if I had you there."</p>
+<p>"Isn't it funny," she mused, "that I should know so much more
+about it than you? To think how I played all around your uncle's
+mill and house, lots of times when I was a little girl, and never
+dreamed . . ."</p>
+<p>"No funnier than all the rest of it," he demurred. "Once you
+grant our existing and happening to meet out of all the millions of
+people in the world, you can't think up anything funnier. Just the
+little two-for-a-cent queerness of our happening to meet in Rome
+instead of in Brooklyn, and your happening to know the town where
+my uncle lived and owned the mill he left me . . . that can't hold
+a candle for queerness, for wonderfulness, compared to my having
+ever laid eyes on you. Suppose I'd never come to Rome at all? When
+I got the news of Uncle Burton's death and the bequest, I was
+almost planning to sail from Genoa and not come to southern Italy
+at all."</p>
+<p>She shook her head confidently. "You can't scare me with any
+such hideous possibilities. It's not possible that we shouldn't
+ever have met, both of us being in the world. Didn't you ever study
+chemistry? Didn't they teach you there are certain elements that
+just <i>will</i> come together, no matter how you mix them up with
+other things?"</p>
+<p>He made no answer, gazing out across the plain far below them,
+mellowing richly in the ever-softening light of the sunset.</p>
+<p>She looked doubtfully at his profile, rather lean, with the
+beginning already drawn of the deep American line from the Corner
+of the nose to the mouth, that is partly humorous and partly grim.
+"Don't you believe that, Neale, that we would have come together
+somehow, anyhow?" she asked, "even if you had gone straight back
+from Genoa to Ashley? Maybe it might have been up there after you'd
+begun to run the mill. Maybe I'd have gone back to America and gone
+up to visit Cousin Hetty again."</p>
+<p>He was still silent.</p>
+<p>She said urgently, as if in alarm, "Neale, you don't believe
+that we could have passed all our lives and never have <i>seen</i>
+each other?"</p>
+<p>He turned on her his deep-set eyes, full of tenderness and humor
+and uncertainty, and shook his head. "Yes, dear, I do believe
+that," he said regretfully. "I don't see how I can help believing
+it. Why, I hadn't the faintest idea of going back to settle in
+Ashley before I met you. I had taken Uncle Burton's mill and his
+bequest of four thousand dollars as a sort of joke. What could I do
+with them, without anything else? And what on earth did I want to
+do with them? Nothing! As far as I had any plans at all, it was to
+go home, see Father and Mother for a while, get through the legal
+complications of inheritance, sell the mill and house . . . I
+wouldn't have thought of such a thing as bothering even to go to
+Ashley to look at them . . . and then take the money and go off
+somewhere, somewhere different, and far away: to China maybe. I was
+pretty restless in my mind, pretty sure that nothing in our
+civilization was worth the candle, you know, before you arrived on
+the scene to put everything in focus. And if I had done all that,
+while you were still here in Rome, running up and down your scales,
+honestly . . . I know I sound awfully literal . . . but I don't see
+how we ever could have met, do you, dear?"</p>
+<p>He offered her this, with a look half of apology, half of simple
+courage.</p>
+<p>She considered it and him seriously, studying his face and eyes,
+listening retrospectively to the accent of his words, and immensely
+astonished him by suddenly flashing a kiss on his cheek. "You're
+miraculous!" she said. "You don't know how it feels; as though I'd
+been floundering in a marsh, deeper and deeper, and then all at
+once, when I thought I'd come to know there wasn't anything in the
+world <i>but</i> marsh, to come out on beautiful, fine, clean
+earth, where I feel the very strength of ages under my feet. You
+don't <i>know</i> how good it seems to have a silly, romantic
+remark like what I said, answered the way you did, telling the
+truth; how <i>good</i> it feels to be pulled down to what's what,
+and to know you can do it and really love me too."</p>
+<p>He had been so startled and moved by her kiss that he had heard
+her words but vaguely. "I don't seem to catch hold of all that.
+What's it all about?"</p>
+<p>"It's all about the fact that I really begin to believe that you
+will be loyal and tell me the truth," she told him.</p>
+<p>He saw cause for gravity in this, remembering the great moment
+so shortly back of them, and said with a surprised and hurt accent,
+"Didn't you believe me, when I said I would?"</p>
+<p>She took up his hand in hers and said rapidly, "Dear Neale, I
+did believe it, for just a moment, and I can't believe anything
+good of anybody for longer than that, not <i>really</i> in my heart
+of hearts. And it's my turn to tell you some truth when I tell you
+about that unbelief, what I've hardly even ever told myself, right
+out in words."</p>
+<p>He was listening now, fixing on her a look of profound,
+intelligent attention, as she went on, stumbling, reaching out for
+words, discarding those she found, only her steady gaze giving
+coherence to her statement. "You know, living the way I have . . .
+I've told you . . . I've seen a great deal more than most girls
+have. And then, half brought up in France with people who are
+clever and have their eyes wide open, people who really count, I've
+seen how they don't believe in humans, or goodness, or anything
+that's not base. They know life is mostly bad and cruel and dull
+and low, and above all that it's bound to fool you if you trust to
+it, or get off your guard a single minute. They don't <i>teach</i>
+you that, you know; but you see it's what they believe and what
+they spend all their energies trying to dodge a little, all they
+think they can. Then everything you read, except the silly little
+Biblioth&egrave;que-Rose sort of thing, makes you know that it's
+true . . . Anatole France, and Maupassant, and Schnitzler. Of
+course back in America you find lots of nice people who don't
+believe that. But they're so sweet you know they'd swallow anything
+that made things look pleasant. So you don't dare take their word
+for anything. They won't even look at what's bad in everybody's
+life, they just pretend it's not there, not in <i>their</i>
+husbands, or wives or children, and so you know they're fooled."
+She lowered her voice, which faltered a little, but she still
+continued to look straight into his eyes, "And as for love, why,
+I've just hated the sound of the name and . . . I'm horribly afraid
+of it, even now."</p>
+<p>He asked her gravely, "Don't you love me? Don't you think that I
+love you?"</p>
+<p>She looked at him piteously, wincing, bracing herself with an
+effort to be brave. "I must try to be as honest as I want you to
+be. Yes, I love you, Neale, with all my heart a thousand times more
+than I ever dreamed I could love anybody. But how do I know that
+I'm not somehow fooling myself: but that maybe all that huge
+unconscious inheritance from all my miserable ancestors hasn't
+<i>got</i> me, somehow, and you too? How do I know that I'm not
+being fooled by Nature and fooling you with fine words?"</p>
+<p>She hesitated, probing deep into her heart, and brought out now,
+like a great and unexpected treasure, "But, Neale, listen! I
+<i>don't</i> think that about you! I don't believe you're being
+fooled. Why, I believe in you more than in myself!" She was amazed
+at this and radiant.</p>
+<p>Then she asked him, "Neale, how do <i>you</i> manage about all
+this? What do you feel about all the capacity for being low and
+bad, that everybody has? Aren't you afraid that they'll get the
+best of us, inevitably, unless we let ourselves get so dull, and
+second-rate and passive, that we can't even be bad? Are you afraid
+of being fooled? Do you believe in yourself at all?"</p>
+<p>He was silent for some time, his eyes steadily fixed on some
+invisible realm. When he spoke it was with a firm, natural,
+unshaken accent. "Why, yes, I think it very likely that I am being
+fooled all the time. But I don't think it matters the least bit in
+the world beside the fact that I love you. That's big enough to
+overtop everything else."</p>
+<p>He raised his voice and spoke out boldly to the undefined
+specter in her mind. "And if it's the mating instinct you mean,
+that may be fooling both of us, because of our youth and bodily
+health . . . good heavens! Isn't our love deep enough to absorb
+that a million times over, like the water of a little brook flowing
+into the sea? Do you think <i>that</i>, which is only a little
+trickle and a harmless and natural and healthy little trickle,
+could unsalt the great ocean of its savor? Why, Marise, all that
+you're so afraid of, all that they've made you so afraid of, . . .
+it's like the little surface waves . . . well, call it the big
+storm waves if you want to . . . but nothing at all, the biggest of
+them, compared to the stillness in the depths of the sea. Why, I
+love you! Do I believe in myself? Of course I believe in myself,
+because I have you."</p>
+<p>She drew a long sigh and, closing her eyes, murmured, "I feel as
+though I were lifted up on a great rock." After a moment, opening
+her eyes, she said, "You are better than I, you know. I'm not at
+all sure that I could say that. I never knew before that I was
+weak. But then I never met strength before."</p>
+<p>"You're not weak," he told her; adding quaintly, "maybe a little
+overballasted; with brains and sensitiveness and under-ballasted
+with experience, that's all. But you haven't had much chance to
+take on any other cargo, as yet."</p>
+<p>She was nettled at this, and leaving her slow, wide-winged poise
+in the upper airs, she veered and with swallow-like swiftness
+darted down on him. "That sounds patronizing and elder-brotherish,"
+she told him. "I've taken on all sorts of cargo that you don't know
+anything about. In ever so many ways you seem positively . . .
+na&iuml;ve! You needn't go thinking that I'm always highstrung and
+fanciful. I never showed that side to anybody before, never! Always
+kept it shut up and locked down and danced and whooped it up before
+the door. You know how everybody always thinks of me as laughing
+all the time. I do wish everything hadn't been said already so many
+times. If it weren't that it's been said so often, I'd like to say
+that I have always been laughing to keep from crying."</p>
+<p>"Why don't you say it, if that is what you mean?" he
+proposed.</p>
+<p>She looked at him marveling. "I'm so fatuous about you!" she
+exclaimed; "the least little thing you say, I see the most
+wonderful possibilities in it. I know <i>you'd</i> say what you
+meant, no matter how many thousands had said it before. And since I
+know it's not stupidness in you, why, it seems to me just
+splendidly and simply courageous, a kind of courage I'd never
+thought of before. I see now, how, after all, those stupid people
+had me beaten, because I'd always thought that a person either had
+to be stupid so that he didn't <i>know</i> he was saying something
+everybody else had said, or else not say it, even if he wanted to,
+ever so much, and it was just what he meant."</p>
+<p>"Don't you think maybe you're too much bothered about other
+people, anyhow?" he suggested, mildly; "whether they're stupid or
+have said things or not? What difference does it make, if it's a
+question of what you yourself feel? I'd be just as satisfied if you
+gave <i>all</i> your time to discovering the wonderful
+possibilities in what I say. It would give me a chance to conceal
+the fact that I get all out of breath trying to follow what you
+mean."</p>
+<p>This surprised her into a sudden laugh, outright and ringing. He
+looked down at her sparkling face, brilliant in its mirth as a
+child's, and said seriously, "You must instantly think of something
+perfectly prosaic and commonplace to say, or I shall be forced to
+take you in my arms and kiss you a great many times, which might
+have Lord knows what effect on that gloomy-minded ticket-seller
+back of us who already has his suspicions."</p>
+<p>She rose instantly to the possibilities and said smoothly,
+swiftly, whimsically, with the accent of drollery, "I'm very
+particular about what sort of frying-pan I use. I insist on having
+a separate one for the <i>fritures</i> of fish, and another for the
+omelets, used only for that: I'm a very fine and conscientious
+housekeeper, I'd have you know, and all the while we lived in
+Bayonne I ran the house because Mother never got used to French
+housekeeping ways. I was the one who went to market . . . oh, the
+gorgeous things you get in the Bayonne market, near enough Spain,
+you know, for real Malaga grapes with the aroma still on them, and
+for Spanish quince-paste. I bossed the old Basque woman we had for
+cook and learned how to cook from her, using a great many onions
+for everything. And I learned how to keep house by the light of
+nature, since it had to be done. And I'm awfully excited about
+having a house of my own, just as though I weren't the extremely
+clever, cynical, disillusioned, fascinating musical genius
+everybody knows me to be: only let me warn you that the old house
+we are going to live in will need lots done to it. Your uncle never
+opened the dreadful room he called the parlor, and never used the
+south wing at all, where all the sunshine comes in. And the pantry
+arrangements are simply humorous, they're so inadequate. I don't
+know how much of that four thousand dollars you are going to want
+to spare for remodeling the mill, but I will tell you now, that I
+will go on strike if you don't give me a better cook-stove than
+your Uncle's Toucl&eacute; had to work with."</p>
+<p>He had been listening with an appreciative grin to her
+nimble-witted chatter, but at this he brought her up short by an
+astonished, "Who had? What had? What's that . . .
+Toucl&eacute;?"</p>
+<p>She laughed aloud again, delighted at having startled him into
+curiosity. "Toucl&eacute;. Toucl&eacute;. Don't you think it a
+pretty name? Will you believe me when I say I know all about
+Ashley?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, go on, tell me!" he begged. "You don't mean to say that my
+Uncle Benton had pep enough to have a scandal in his life?"</p>
+<p>"What do <i>you</i> know about your uncle?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'd seen him a few times, though I'd never been up to
+Ashley. As long as Grandfather was alive and the mill at Adams
+Center was running, Uncle Burton used to go there to see his
+father, and I always used to be hanging around Grandfather and the
+mill, and the woods. I was crazy about it all, as a boy, used to
+work right along with the mill-hands, and out chopping with the
+lumbermen. Maybe Uncle Burton noticed that." He was struck with a
+sudden idea, "By George, maybe <i>that</i> was why he left me the
+mill!" He cast his eye retrospectively on this idea and was silent
+for a moment, emerging from his meditation to say, wonderingly,
+"Well, it certainly is <i>queer</i>, how things come out, how one
+thing hangs on another. It's enough to addle your brains, to try to
+start to follow back all the ways things happen . . . ways you'd
+never thought of as of the least importance."</p>
+<p>"Your Uncle Burton was of some importance to <i>us</i>," she
+told him. "Miss Oldham at the <i>pension</i> said that she had just
+met a new American, down from Genoa, and when I heard your name I
+said, 'Oh, I used to know an old Mr. Crittenden who ran a
+wood-working factory up in Vermont, where I used to visit an old
+cousin of mine,' and that was why Miss Oldham introduced us, that
+silly way, as cousins."</p>
+<p>He said, pouncingly, "You're running on, inconsequently, just to
+divert my mind from asking you again who or what Toucl&eacute;
+is."</p>
+<p>"You can ask and ask all you like," she defied him, laughing.
+"I'm not going to tell you. I've got to have <i>some</i> secrets
+from you, to keep up the traditions of self-respecting womanhood.
+And anyhow I couldn't tell you, because she is different from
+everything else. You'll see for yourself, when we get there. If
+she's still alive." She offered a compromise, "I'll tell you what.
+If she's dead, I'll sit down and tell you about her. If she's still
+alive, you'll find out. She's an Ashley institution, Toucl&eacute;
+is. As symbolic as the Cumean Sybil. I don't believe she'll be
+dead. I don't believe she'll <i>ever</i> be dead."</p>
+<p>"You've let the cat out of the bag enough so I've lost my
+interest in her," he professed. "I can make a guess that she's some
+old woman, and I bet you I won't see anything remarkable in her.
+Except that wild name. Is it Miss Toucl&eacute;, or Mrs.
+Toucl&eacute;?"</p>
+<p>The girl burst into laughter at this, foolish, light-hearted
+mirth which drenched the air all about her with the perfume of
+young gaiety. "Is it Miss Druid, or Mrs. Druid?" was all she would
+say.</p>
+<p>She looked up at him, her eyes shining, and cried between her
+gusts of laughter, as if astonished, "Why, I do believe we are
+going to be happy together. I do believe it's going to be fun to
+live with you."</p>
+<p>His appalled surprise that she had again fallen into the pit of
+incredulity was, this time, only half humorous. "For God's sake,
+what <i>did</i> you think!"</p>
+<p>She answered, reasonably, "Well, nobody ever is happy together,
+either in books or out of them. Of all the million, million
+love-affairs that have happened, does anybody ever claim any one to
+have been happy?"</p>
+<p>His breath was taken away. He asked helplessly, "Well, why
+<i>are</i> you marrying me?"</p>
+<p>She replied very seriously, "Because I can't help myself, dear
+Neale. Isn't that the only reason you're marrying me?"</p>
+<p>He looked at her long, his nostrils quivering a little, gave a
+short exclamation which seemed to carry away all his impatience,
+and finally said, quietly enough, "Why, yes, of course, if that's
+the way you want to put it. You can say it in a thousand thousand
+different ways."</p>
+<p>He added with a sudden fury, "And never one of them will come
+anywhere near expressing it. Look here, Marise, I don't believe you
+have the faintest, faintest idea how big this thing is. All these
+fool clever ways of talking about it . . . they're just a screen
+set up in front of it, to my mind. It's enough sight bigger than
+just you or me, or happiness or unhappiness. It's the meaning of
+everything!"</p>
+<p>She considered this thoughtfully. "I don't believe I really know
+what you mean," she said, "or anyhow that I <i>feel</i> what you
+mean. I have had dreams sometimes, that I'm in something awfully
+big and irresistible like a great river, flowing somewhere; but
+I've never felt it in waking hours. I wish I could. It's lovely in
+dreams. You evidently do, even awake."</p>
+<p>He said, confidently, "You will, later on."</p>
+<p>She ventured, "You mean, maybe, that I'm so shaken up by the
+little surface waves, chopping back and forth, that I don't feel
+the big current."</p>
+<p>"It's there. Whether you feel it or not," he made final answer
+to her doubt.</p>
+<p>She murmured, "I wonder if there is anything in that silly,
+old-fashioned notion that men are stronger than women, and that
+women must lean on men's strength, to live?"</p>
+<p>"Everybody's got to lean on his own strength, sooner or later,"
+he told her with a touch of grimness.</p>
+<p>"You just won't be romantic!" she cried admiringly.</p>
+<p>"I really love you, Marise," he answered profoundly; and on this
+rock-like assurance she sank down with a long breath of trust.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The sun was dipping into the sea now, emblazoning the sky with a
+last flaming half-circle of pure color, but the light had left the
+dusky edges of the world. Already the far mountains were dimmed,
+and the plain, passing from one deep twilight color to another more
+somber, was quietly sinking into darkness as into the strong loving
+arms of ultimate dissolution.</p>
+<p>The girl spoke in a dreamy twilight tone, "Neale dear, this is
+not a romantic idea . . . honestly, I do wish we could both die
+right here and never go down to the plain any more. Don't you feel
+that? Not at all?"</p>
+<p>His voice rang out, resonant and harsh as a bugle-note, "No, I
+do not, not at all, not for a single moment. I've too much ahead of
+me to feel that. And so have you!"</p>
+<p>"There comes the cable-car, climbing up to get us," she said
+faintly. "And we will go down from this high place of safety into
+that dark plain, and we will have to cross it, painfully, step by
+step. <i>Dare</i> you promise me we will not lose our way?" she
+challenged him.</p>
+<p>"I don't promise you anything about it," he answered, taking her
+hand in his. "Only I'm not a bit afraid of the plain, nor the way
+that's before us. Come along with me, and let's see what's
+there."</p>
+<p>"Do you think you know where we are going, across that plain?"
+she asked him painfully; "even where we are to <i>try</i> to
+go?"</p>
+<p>"No, I don't know, now," he answered undismayed. "But I think we
+will know it as we go along because we will be together."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The darkness, folding itself like a velvet mantle about the far
+mountains, deepened, and her voice deepened with it. "Can you even
+promise that we won't lose each other there?" she asked
+somberly.</p>
+<p>At this he suddenly took her into his arms, silently, bending
+his face to hers, his insistent eyes bringing hers up to meet his
+gaze. She could feel the strong throbbing of his heart all through
+her own body.</p>
+<p>She clung to him as though she were drowning. And indeed she
+felt that she was. Life burst over them with a roar, a superb
+flooding tide on whose strong swelling bosom they felt themselves
+rising, rising illimitably.</p>
+<p>The sun had now wholly set, leaving to darkness the old, old
+plain, soaked with humanity.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3><i>INTERLUDE</i></h3>
+<div class='center'>March 15, 1920.<br />
+8:30 A.M.</div>
+<p>Marise fitted little Mark's cap down over his ears and buttoned
+his blue reefer coat close to his throat.</p>
+<p>"Now you big children," she said, with an anxious accent, to
+Paul and Elly standing with their school-books done up in straps,
+"be sure to keep an eye on Mark at recess-time. Don't let him run
+and get all hot and then sit down in the wind without his coat.
+Remember, it's his first day at school, and he's only six."</p>
+<p>She kissed his round, smooth, rosy cheek once more, and let him
+go. Elly stooped and took her little brother's mittened hand in
+hers. She said nothing, but her look on the little boy's face was
+loving and maternal.</p>
+<p>Paul assured his mother seriously, "Oh, I'll look out for Mark,
+all right."</p>
+<p>Mark wriggled and said, "<i>I</i> can looken out for myself
+wivout Paul!"</p>
+<p>Their mother looked for a moment deep into the eyes of her older
+son, so clear, so quiet, so unchanging and true. "You're a good
+boy, Paul, a real comfort," she told him.</p>
+<p>To herself she thought, "Yes, all his life he'll look out for
+people and get no thanks for it."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She followed the children to the door, wondering at her heavy
+heart. What could it come from? There was nothing in life for her
+to fear of course, except for the children, and it was absurd to
+fear for them. They were all safe; safe and strong and rooted deep
+in health, and little Mark was stepping off gallantly into his own
+life as the others had done. But she felt afraid. What could she be
+afraid of? As she opened the door, their advance was halted by the
+rush upon them of Paul's dog, frantic with delight to see the
+children ready to be off, springing up on Paul, bounding down the
+path, racing back to the door, all quivering eager exultation. "Ah,
+he's going <i>with</i> the children!" thought Marise wistfully.</p>
+<p>She could not bear to let them leave her and stood with them in
+the open door-way for a moment. Elly rubbed her soft cheek against
+her mother's hand. Paul, seeing his mother shiver in the keen March
+air, said, "Mother, if Father were here he'd make you go in. That's
+a thin dress. And your teeth are just chattering."</p>
+<p>"Yes, you're right, Paul," she agreed; "it's foolish of me!"</p>
+<p>The children gave her a hearty round of good-bye hugs and
+kisses, briskly and energetically performed, and went down the
+stone-flagged path to the road. They were chattering to each other
+as they went. Their voices sounded at first loud and gay in their
+mother's ears. Then they sank to a murmur, as the children ran
+along the road. The dog bounded about them in circles, barking
+joyfully, but this sound too grew fainter and fainter.</p>
+<p>When the murmur died away to silence, there seemed no sound left
+in the stark gray valley, empty and motionless between the steep
+dark walls of pine-covered mountains.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Marise stood for a long time looking after the children. They
+were climbing up the long hilly road now, growing smaller and
+smaller. How far away they were, already! And that very strength
+and vigor of which she was so proud, which she had so cherished and
+fostered, how rapidly it carried them along the road that led away
+from her!</p>
+<p>They were almost at the top of the hill now. Perhaps they would
+turn there and wave to her.</p>
+<p>No, of course now, she was foolish to think of such a thing.
+Children never remembered the people they left behind. And she was
+now only somebody whom they were leaving behind. She felt the cold
+penetrate deeper and deeper into her heart, and knew she ought to
+go back into the house. But she could not take her eyes from the
+children. She thought to herself bitterly, "This is the beginning
+of the end. I've been feeling how, in their hearts, they want to
+escape from me when I try to hold them, or when I try to make them
+let me into their lives. I've given everything to them, but they
+never think of that. <i>I</i> think of it! Every time I look at
+them I see all those endless hours of sacred sacrifice. But when
+they look at me, do they see any of that? No! Never! They only see
+the Obstacle in the way of their getting what they want. And so
+they want to run away from it. Just as they're doing now."</p>
+<p>She looked after them, yearning. Although they were so far, she
+could see them plainly in the thin mountain air. They were running
+mostly, once in a while stopping to throw a stone or look up into a
+tree. Then they scampered on like squirrels, the fox-terrier
+bounding ahead.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Now they were at the top where the road turned. Perhaps, after
+all, they <i>would</i> remember and glance back and wave their
+hands to her.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Now they had disappeared, without a backward look.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She continued gazing at the vacant road. It seemed to her that
+the children had taken everything with them.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>A gust of icy wind blew down sharply from the mountain, still
+snow-covered, and struck at her like a sword. She turned and went
+back shivering, into the empty house.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>OLD MR. WELLES AND YOUNG MR. MARSH</h3>
+<div class='center'><i>An Hour in the Life of Mr. Ormsby Welles,
+aet. 67</i><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">March 15, 1920.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">3:00 P.M.</span></div>
+<p>Having lifted the knocker and let it fall, the two men stood
+gazing with varying degrees of attention at the closed
+white-painted old door. The younger, the one with the round dark
+head and quick dark eyes, seemed extremely interested in the door,
+and examined it competently, its harmoniously disposed wide panels,
+the shapely fan-light over it, the small panes of greenish old
+glass on each side. "Beautiful old bits you get occasionally in
+these out-of-the-way holes," he remarked. But the older man was
+aware of nothing so concrete and material. He saw the door as he
+saw everything else that day, through a haze. Chiefly he was
+concerned as to what lay behind the door. . . . "My neighbors," he
+thought, "the first I ever had."</p>
+<p>The sun shone down through the bare, beautiful twigs of the
+leafless elms, in a still air, transparent and colorless.</p>
+<p>The handle of the door turned, the door opened. The older man
+was too astonished by what he saw to speak, but after an instant's
+pause the younger one asked if Mr. and Mrs. Crittenden were at home
+and could see callers. The lean, aged, leather-colored woman, with
+shiny opaque black eyes, opened the door wider and silently ushered
+them into the house.</p>
+<p>As long as she was in sight they preserved a prudent silence as
+profound as hers, but when she had left them seated, and
+disappeared, they turned to each other with lifted eyebrows. "Well,
+what was <i>that</i>, do you suppose?" exclaimed the Younger. He
+seemed extremely interested and amused. "I'm not so sure, Mr.
+Welles, about your being safe in never locking your doors at night,
+as they all tell you, up here. With that for a neighbor!"</p>
+<p>The older man had a friendly smile for the facetious intention
+of this. "I guess I won't have anything that'd be worth locking
+doors on," he said. He looked about him still smiling, his pleasant
+old eyes full of a fresh satisfaction in what he saw. The room was
+charming to his gaze, cheerful and homey. "I don't believe I'm
+going to have anything to complain of, with the folks that live in
+this house," he said, "any more than with any of the rest of
+it."</p>
+<p>The other nodded. "Yes, it's a very good room," he agreed. After
+a longer inspection, he added with a slight accent of surprise, "An
+oddly good room; stunning! Look at the color in those curtains and
+the walls, and the arrangement of those prints over that
+Chippendale sewing-table. I wonder if it's accidental. You wouldn't
+think you'd find anybody up here who could achieve it
+consciously."</p>
+<p>He got to his feet with a vigorous precision of movement which
+the other admired. "Well, he's grown to be considerable of a man,"
+he thought to himself. "A pity his father couldn't have lived to
+see it, all that aliveness that had bothered them so much, down at
+last where he's got his grip on it. And enough of it, plenty of it,
+oceans of it, left so that he is still about forty times more alive
+than anybody else." He looked tolerantly with his tired elderly
+amusement at the other, stepping about, surveying the room and
+every object in it.</p>
+<p>The younger brought himself up short in front of a framed
+photograph. "Why, here's a ch&acirc;teau-fort I don't know!" he
+said with an abrupt accent. He added, with some vehemence, "I never
+even heard of it, I'm sure. And it's authentic, evidently."</p>
+<p>The older man sat perfectly still. He did not know what a shatto
+four was, nor had he the slightest desire to ask and bring the
+information down on him, given as the other would give it,
+pressingly, vividly, so that you had to listen whether you wanted
+to or not. Heaven knew he did not want to know about whatever it
+was, this time. Not about that, nor anything else. He only wanted
+to rest and have a little life before it was too late. It was
+already too late for any but the quietest sort. But that was no
+matter. He wouldn't have liked the other kind very well probably.
+He certainly had detested the sort of "life" he'd experienced in
+business. The quietest sort was what he had always wanted and never
+got. And now it really seemed as though he was going to have it.
+For all his fatigued pose in the old arm-chair, his heart beat
+faster at the idea. He hadn't got used to being free yet. He'd
+heard people say that when you were first married it was like that,
+you couldn't realize it. He'd heard one of the men at the office
+say that for a long time, every time he heard his bride's skirts
+rustle, he had to turn his head to make sure she was really there.
+Well, he would like now to get up and look out of that window and
+see if his garden was really there. <i>His garden!</i> He thought
+with a secret feeling, half pity and half shame, of those yellowed
+old seed catalogues which had come, varnished and brilliant and
+new, year after year, so long ago, which he'd looked at so hard and
+so long, in the evenings, and put away to get yellow and sallow
+like his face . . . and his hopes. It must be almost time to "make
+garden," he thought. He had heard them saying at the store that the
+sap was beginning to run in the maple-trees. He would have just
+time to get himself settled in his house . . . he felt an absurd
+young flush come up under his grizzled beard at this phrase . . .
+"his house," his own house, with bookshelves, and a garden. How he
+loved it all already! He sat very still, feeling those savagely
+lopped-off tendrils put out their curling fingers once more, this
+time unafraid. He sat there in the comfortable old arm-chair at
+rest as never before. He thought, "This is the way I'm going to
+feel right along, every day, all the time," and closed his
+eyes.</p>
+<p>He opened them again in a moment, moved subconsciously by the
+life-time habit of making sure what Vincent was up to. He smiled at
+the keen look of alert, prick-eared attention which the other was
+still giving to that room! Lord, how Vincent did love to get things
+all figured out! He probably had, by this time, an exact diagram of
+the owners of the house all drawn up in his mind and would probably
+spend the hour of their call, seeing if it fitted. Not that
+<i>they</i> would have any notion he was doing anything but talk a
+blue streak, or was thinking of anything but introducing an old
+friend.</p>
+<p>One thing he wanted in his garden was plenty of gladioli. Those
+poor, spindling, watery ones he had tried to grow in the
+window-box, he'd forget that failure in a whole big row all along
+the terrace, tall and strong, standing up straight in the country
+sunshine. What was the address of that man who made a specialty of
+gladioli? He ought to have noted it down. "Vincent," he asked, "do
+you remember the address of that Mr. Schwatzkummerer who grew
+nothing but gladioli?" Vincent was looking with an expression of
+extreme astonishment at the sheet of music on the piano. He started
+at the question, stared, recollected himself, laughed, and said,
+"Heavens, no, Mr. Welles!" and went back into his own world. There
+were lots of things, Mr. Welles reflected, that Vincent did
+<i>not</i> care about just as hard as he cared about others.</p>
+<p>In a moment the younger man came and sat down on the short,
+high-armed sofa. Mr. Welles thought he looked puzzled, a very
+unusual expression on that face. Maybe, after all, he hadn't got
+the owners of the house so well-plotted out as he thought he ought
+to. He himself, going on with his own concerns, remarked, "Well,
+the name must be in the Long Island telephone directory. When you
+go back you could look it up and send me word."</p>
+<p>"Whose name?" asked Vincent blankly.</p>
+<p>"Schwatzkummerer," said the other.</p>
+<p>"<i>What</i>!" cried Vincent incredulously, and then, "Oh yes,"
+and then, "Sure, yes, I'll look it up. I'm going back Thursday on
+the night train. I won't leave the Grand Central without going to a
+telephone booth, looking it up, and sending it to you on a
+postcard, mailed there. It ought to be here on the morning mail
+Saturday."</p>
+<p>The older man knew perfectly well that he was being a little
+laughed at, for his absorption in gladioli, and not minding it at
+all, laughed himself, peaceably. "It would take a great deal more
+than a little of Vincent's fun," he thought, "to make me feel
+anything but peaceable here." He was quite used to having people
+set him down as a harmless, worn-out old duffer, and he did not
+object to this conception of his character. It made a convenient
+screen behind which he could carry on his own observation and
+meditation uninterrupted.</p>
+<p>"Here comes somebody," said Vincent and turned his quick eyes
+toward the door, with an eager expression of attention. He really
+<i>must</i> have been stumped by something in the room, thought Mr.
+Welles, and meant to figure it out from the owners of the house
+themselves.</p>
+<p>The tall, quiet-looking lady with the long dark eyes, who now
+came in alone, excusing herself for keeping them waiting, must of
+course be Mrs. Crittenden, Mr. Welles knew. He wished he could get
+to his feet as Vincent did, looking as though he had got there by a
+bound or a spring and were ready for another. He lifted himself out
+of his arm-chair with a heaviness he knew seemed all the heavier by
+contrast, took the slim hand Mrs. Crittenden offered him, looked at
+her as hard as he dared, and sank again into the arm-chair, as she
+motioned him to do. He had had a long experience in judging people
+quickly by the expression of their faces, and in that short length
+of time he had decided thankfully that he was really, just as he
+had hoped, going to like his new neighbor as much as all the rest
+of it. He gave her a propitiatory smile, hoping she might like him
+a little, too, and hoping also that she would not mind Vincent.
+Sometimes people did, especially nice ladies such as evidently Mrs.
+Crittenden was. He observed that as usual Vincent had cut in ahead
+of everybody else, had mentioned their names, both of them, and was
+talking with that . . . well, the way he <i>did</i>, which people
+either liked very much or couldn't abide. He looked at Vincent as
+he talked. He was not a great talker himself, which gave him a
+great deal of practice in watching people who did. He often felt
+that he <i>saw</i> more than he heard, so much more did people's
+faces express than their words.</p>
+<p>He noticed that the younger man was smiling a good deal, showing
+those fine teeth of his, and he had one of those
+instantaneously-gone, flash-light reminiscences of elderly people,
+. . . the day when Mr. Marsh had been called away from the office
+and had asked him to go with little Vincent to keep an appointment
+with the dentist. Heavens! How the kid had roared and kicked! And
+now he sat there, smiling, "making a call," probably with that very
+filling in his tooth, grown-up, not even so very young any more,
+with a little gray in his thick hair, what people often called a
+good-looking man. How life did run between your fingers! Well, he
+would close his hand tight upon what was left to him. He noticed
+further that as Vincent talked, his eyes fixed on his interlocutor,
+his vigorous hands caressed with a slow circular motion the rounded
+arms of his chair. "What a three-ringed circus that fellow is," he
+thought. "I bet that the lady thinks he hasn't another idea in his
+head but introducing an old friend, and all the time he's taking
+her in, every inch of her, and three to one, what he'll talk about
+most afterwards is the smooth hard feeling of those polished
+arm-chairs." Vincent was saying, ". . . and so, we heard in a
+round-about way too long to bother you with, about the small old
+house next door being for sale, and how very quiet and peaceful a
+spot this is, and the Company bought it for Mr. Welles for a
+permanent home, now he has retired."</p>
+<p>"Pretty fine of them!" murmured the older man dutifully, to the
+lady.</p>
+<p>Vincent went on, "Oh, it's only the smallest way for them to
+show their sense of his life-time devotion to their interests.
+There's no estimating what we all owe him, for his steadiness and
+loyalty and good judgment, especially during that hard period, near
+the beginning. <i>You</i> know, when all electrical businesses were
+so entirely on trial still. Nobody knew whether they were going to
+succeed or not. My father was one of the Directors from the first
+and I've been brought up in the tradition of how much the small
+beginning Company is indebted to Mr. Welles, during the years when
+they went down so near the edge of ruin that they could see the
+receiver looking in through the open door."</p>
+<p>Welles moved protestingly. He never had liked the business and
+he didn't like reminders that he owed his present comfort to it.
+Besides this was reading his own epitaph. He thought he must be
+looking very foolish to Mrs. Crittenden. Vincent continued, "But of
+course that's of no great importance up here. What's more to the
+purpose is that Mr. Welles is a great lover of country life and
+growing things, and he's been forced to keep his nose on a city
+grindstone all his life until just now. I think I can guarantee
+that you'll find him a very appreciative neighbor, especially if
+you have plenty of gladioli in your garden."</p>
+<p>This last was one of what Welles called "Vincent's sidewipes,"
+which he could inlay so deftly that they seemed an integral part of
+the conversation. He wondered what Mrs. Crittenden would say, if
+Vincent ever got through his gabble and gave her a chance. She was
+turning to him now, smiling, and beginning to speak. What a nice
+voice she had! How nice that she should have such a voice!</p>
+<p>"I'm more than glad to have you both come in to see me, and I'm
+delighted that Mr. Welles is going to settle here. But Mr. . . ."
+she hesitated an instant, recalled the name, and went on, "Mr.
+Marsh doesn't need to explain you any more. It's evident that you
+don't know Ashley, or you'd realize that I've already heard a great
+deal more about you than Mr. Marsh would be likely to tell me, very
+likely a good deal more than is true. I know for instance, . . ."
+she laughed and corrected herself, ". . . at least I've been told,
+what the purchase price of the house was. I know how Harry Wood's
+sister-in-law's friend told you about Ashley and the house in the
+first place. I know how many years you were in the service of the
+Company, and how your pension was voted unanimously by the
+Directors, and about the silver loving-cup your fellow employees in
+the office gave you when you retired; and indeed every single thing
+about you, except the exact relation of the elderly invalid to
+whose care you gave up so generously so much of your life; I'm not
+sure whether I she was an aunt or a second-cousin." She paused an
+instant to give them a chance to comment on this, but finding them
+still quite speechless, she went on. "And now I know another thing,
+that you like gladioli, and that is a real bond."</p>
+<p>She was interrupted here by a great explosive laugh from
+Vincent. It was his comment on her speech to them, and for a time
+he made no other, eyeing her appreciatively as she and Mr. Welles
+talked garden together, and from time to time chuckling to himself.
+She gave him once a sidelong amused glance, evidently liking his
+capacity to laugh at seeing the ground cut away from under his
+feet, evidently quite aware that he was still thinking about that,
+and not at all about Mr. Welles and tulip-beds. Welles was relieved
+at this. Apparently she was going to "take" Vincent the right way.
+Some ladies were frightfully rubbed the wrong way by that strange
+great laugh of Vincent's. And what she knew about gardening! And
+not only about gardening in general, but about his own garden. He
+was astounded at her knowledge apparently of every inch of the
+quadrangle of soil back of his house, and at the revelations she
+made to him of what could lie sleeping under a mysterious blank
+surface of earth. Why, a piece of old ground was like a person. You
+had to know it, to have any idea of all that was hidden in its
+bosom, good and bad. "There never was such a place for pigweed as
+the lower end of your vegetable lot," she told him; "you'll have to
+get up nights to fight it if there is plenty of rain this summer."
+And again, "Be careful about not digging too close to the east wall
+of your terrace. There is a border of peonies there, splendid pink
+ones, and you're likely to break off the shoots. They don't show so
+early as the red ones near the walk, that get more sun."</p>
+<p>"Did you ever use to <i>live</i> in that house?" he asked her,
+respectful of her mastery of its secrets.</p>
+<p>She laughed. "No, oh no. We've lived right here all the eleven
+years of our life in Vermont. But there's another side to the local
+wireless information-bureau that let me know all about you before
+you ever got here. We all know all about everybody and everything,
+you know. If you live in the country you're really married to
+humanity, for better or for worse, not just on speaking terms with
+it, as you are in the city. Why, I know about your garden because I
+have stood a thousand, thousand times leaning on my hoe in my own
+garden, discussing those peonies with old Mrs. Belham who lived
+there before you." This seemed to bring up some picture into her
+mind at which she looked for a moment, turning from it to the man
+beside her, with a warmth in her voice which went to his heart.
+"It's been forlorn having that dear little old house empty and
+cold. I can't <i>tell</i> you how glad I am you have come to warm
+it, and live in it."</p>
+<p>The wonder of it overcame Mr. Welles like a wave. "I can't
+believe I'm really going to!" he cried desperately. "It doesn't
+seem <i>possible</i>!" He felt shamed, knowing that he had burst
+out too violently. What could she know of what lay back of him,
+that he was escaped from! What could she think of him, but that he
+was a foolish, bitter old man?</p>
+<p>She did not seem to think that, looking at him attentively as
+though she wanted to make out just what he meant. Perhaps she did
+make out, for she now said gently, "I believe you are going to like
+it, Mr. Welles. I believe you are going to find here what, . . .
+what you deserve to find." She said quietly, "I hope we shall be
+good neighbors to you."</p>
+<p>She spoke so kindly, her look on him was so humane that he felt
+the water coming to his eyes. He was in a foolishly emotional
+state, these first days. The least little thing threw him off the
+track. It really <i>did</i> seem hardly possible that it was all
+true. That the long grind at the office was over, the business he
+had always hated and detested, and the long, hateful slavery at the
+flat finished at last, and that he had come to live out what was
+left to him in this lovely, peaceful valley, in that quiet
+welcoming little house, with this sweet woman next door! He
+swallowed. The corners of his mouth twitched. What an old lunatic
+he was. But he did not dare trust himself to speak again.</p>
+<p>Now Vincent's voice rose. What a length of time Vincent had been
+silent,&mdash;he who never took a back seat for anybody! What had
+he been doing all this time, sitting there and staring at them with
+those awfully brilliant eyes of his? Very likely he had seen the
+silly weak tears so near the surface, had caught the sentimental
+twitch of the mouth. Yes, quite certainly, for, now he was showing
+his tact by changing the subject, changing it with a vengeance.
+"Mrs. Crittenden," he was saying, "my curiosity has been touched by
+that very fine photograph over there. I don't recognize the castle
+it shows."</p>
+<p>"That's in Bayonne," she said, and paused, her eyes
+speculatively on him.</p>
+<p>"No, Heavens no! You don't need to tell me that it's not
+Bayonne, New Jersey!" he answered her unspoken question violently.
+This made her laugh, opening her long eyes a little. He went on,
+"I've been as far as Pau, but never went into the Basque
+country."</p>
+<p>"Oh, Pau." She said no more than this, but Welles had the
+impression that these words somehow had made a comment on Vincent's
+information. Vincent seemed to think so too, and curiously enough
+not to think it a very favorable comment. He looked, what he almost
+never looked, a little nettled, and spoke a little stiffly. "It's a
+very fine specimen," he said briefly, looking again at the
+photograph.</p>
+<p>"Oh, it looks very much finer and bigger in the photograph than
+it really is," she told them. "It's only a bandbox of a thing
+compared with Coucy or Pierrefonds or any of the northern ones. It
+was built, you know, like the Cathedral at Bayonne, when the
+Plantagenets still held that country, but after they were
+practically pretty near English, and both the ch&acirc;teau and the
+Gothic cathedral seem queer aliens among the southern natives. I
+have the photograph up there on the wall only because of early
+associations. I lived opposite it long ago when I was a little
+girl."</p>
+<p>This, to Mr. Welles, was indistinguishable from the usual talk
+of people who have been "abroad." To tell the truth they always
+sounded to him more or less "showing-off," though he humbly tried
+to think it was only because he could never take any part in such
+talk. He certainly did not see anything in the speech to make
+Vincent look at her, almost with his jaw dropped. He himself paid
+little attention to what she was now saying, because he could not
+keep his mind from the lingering sweet intonations of her voice.
+What difference did it make where she had lived as a little girl?
+She was going to live next door to him now; what an awfully nice
+woman she was, and quite a good-looking woman too, with a very nice
+figure, although not in her very first youth, of course. How old
+could she be? Between thirty and forty of course, but You couldn't
+tell where. His personal taste was not for such a long face as
+hers. But you didn't notice that when she smiled. He liked the way
+she did her black hair, too, so smooth and shining and close to her
+head. It looked as though she'd really combed and brushed it, and
+most women's hair didn't.</p>
+<p>She turned to him now, again, and said, "Is this your very first
+call in Ashley? Because if it is, I mustn't miss the opportunity to
+cut in ahead of all the other gossips, and give you a great deal of
+information. You might just as well have it all in one piece now,
+and get it straight, as take it in little snippets from old Mrs.
+Powers, when she comes to bring your milk, this evening. You see I
+know that you are to get your milk of the Powers, and that they
+have plucked up courage to ask you eight cents a quart although the
+price around here has been, till now, six cents. You'll be obliged
+to listen to a great many more details from Mrs. Powers than from
+me, even those she knows nothing about. But of course you must be
+introduced to the Powers, <i>in toto</i> too. Old Mrs. Powers, a
+very lively old widow, lives on her farm nearly at the foot of Deer
+Hollow. Her married son and his family live with her. In this
+house, there is first of all my husband. I'm so sorry he is away in
+Canada just now, on lumbering business. He is Neale Crittenden, a
+Williams man, who in his youth had thoughts of exploring the world
+but who has turned out head of the 'Crittenden Manufacturing
+Company,' which is the high-sounding name of a smallish
+wood-working business on the other side of the field next our
+house. You can see the buildings and probably hear the saws from
+your garden. Properly speaking, you know, you don't live in Ashley
+but in 'Crittenden's' and your house constitutes one quarter of all
+the residences in that settlement. There are yours, and ours, the
+mill-buildings, the house where an old cousin of mine lives, and
+the Powers' house, although that is so far away, nearly half a
+mile, that it is really only a farm-house in the country.
+<i>We</i>, you see, are the suburb of Ashley."</p>
+<p>Marsh laughed out again at this, and she laughed with him, their
+eyes, shining with amusement, meeting in a friendly glance.</p>
+<p>"The mill is the most important member of Crittenden's, of
+course. Part of the mill-building is pre-Revolutionary, and very
+picturesque. In the life-time of my husband's uncle, it still ran
+by water-power with a beautiful, enormous old mossy water-wheel.
+But since we took it over, we've had to put in modern machinery
+very prosaically and run it on its waste of slabs, mostly. All
+sorts of small, unimportant objects are manufactured there, things
+you never heard of probably. Backs of hair-brushes, wooden casters
+to put under beds and chairs, rollers for cotton mills. As soon as
+my husband returns, I'll ask him to take you through it. That and
+the old church are the only historic monuments in town."</p>
+<p>She stopped and asked him meditatively, "What else do you
+suppose I need to forestall old Mrs. Powers on? My old Cousin Hetty
+perhaps. She has a last name, Allen&mdash;yes, some connection with
+Ethan Allen. I am, myself. But everybody has always called her Miss
+Hetty till few people remember that she has another name. She was
+born there in the old house below 'the Burning,' and she has lived
+there for eighty years, and that is all her saga. You can't see her
+house from here, but it is part of Crittenden's all the same,
+although it is a mile away by the main road as you go towards the
+Dug-Way. But you can reach it in six or seven minutes from here by
+a back lane, through the Eagle Rock woods."</p>
+<p>"What nice names!" Mr. Welles luxuriated in them. "The Eagle
+Rock woods. The Dug-Way. The Burning. Deer Hollow."</p>
+<p>"I bet you don't know what they mean," Vincent challenged him.
+Vincent was always throwing challenges, at everything. But by this
+time he had learned how to dodge them. "No, I don't know, and I
+don't care if I don't," he answered happily.</p>
+<p>It pleased him that Mrs. Crittenden found this amusing, so that
+she looked at him laughing. How her eyes glistened when she
+laughed. It made you laugh back. He risked another small attempt at
+facetiousness. "Go on with the census of Crittenden's," he told
+her. "I want to know all about my future fellow-citizens. You
+haven't even finished up this house, anybody but your husband."</p>
+<p>"There is myself. You see me. There is nothing more to that. And
+there are the three children, Paul, Elly, and Mark, . . ." She
+paused here rather abruptly, and the whimsical accent of
+good-humored mockery disappeared. For an instant her face changed
+into something quite different from what they had seen. Mr. Welles
+could not at all make out the expression which very passingly had
+flickered across her eyes with a smoke-like vagueness and rapidity.
+He had the queerest fancy that she looked somehow scared,&mdash;but
+of course that was preposterous.</p>
+<p>"Your call," she told them both, "happens to fall on a day which
+marks a turning-point in our family life. This is the very first
+day in ten years, since Paul's birth, that I have not had at least
+one of the children beside me. Today is the opening of spring term
+in our country school, and my little Mark went off this morning,
+for the first time, with his brother and sister. I have been alone
+until you came." She stopped for a moment. Mr. Welles wished that
+Vincent could get over his habit of staring at people so. She went
+on, "I have felt very queer indeed, all day. It's as though . . .
+you know, when you have been walking up and up a long flight of
+stairs, and you go automatically putting one foot up and then the
+other, and then suddenly . . . your upraised foot falls back with a
+jar. You've come to the top, and, for an instant, you have a gone
+feeling without your stairs to climb."</p>
+<p>It occurred to Mr. Welles that really perhaps the reason why
+some nice ladies did not like Vincent was just because of his habit
+of looking at them so hard. He could have no idea how piercingly
+bright his eyes looked when he fixed them on a speaker like that.
+And now Mrs. Crittenden was looking back at him, and would notice
+it. <i>He</i> could understand how a refined lady would feel as
+though somebody were almost trying to find a key-hole to look in at
+her,&mdash;to have anybody pounce on her so, with his eyes, as
+Vincent did. She couldn't know, of course, that Vincent went
+pouncing on ladies and baggagemen and office boys, and old friends,
+just the same way. He bestirred himself to think of something to
+say. "I wish I could get up my nerve to ask you, Mrs. Crittenden,
+about one other person in this house," he ventured, "the old woman
+. . . the old lady . . . who let us in the door."</p>
+<p>At the sound of his voice Mrs. Crittenden looked away from
+Vincent quickly and looked at him for a perceptible moment before
+she heard what he had said. Then she explained, smiling, "Oh, she
+would object very much to being labeled with the finicky title of
+'lady.' That was Toucl&eacute;, our queer old Indian
+woman,&mdash;all that is left of old America here. She belongs to
+our house, or perhaps I should say it belongs to her. She was born
+here, a million years ago, more or less, when there were still a
+few basket-making Indians left in the valley. Her father and mother
+both died, and she was brought up by the old Great-uncle
+Crittenden's family. Then my husband's Uncle Burton inherited the
+house and brought his bride here, and Toucl&eacute; just stayed on.
+She always makes herself useful enough to pay for her food and
+lodging. And when his wife died an elderly woman, Toucl&eacute;
+still just stayed on, till he died, and then she went right on
+staying here in the empty house, till my husband and I got here. We
+were married in Rome, and made the long trip here without stopping
+at all. It was dawn, a June morning, when we arrived. We walked all
+the way from the station at Ashley out to the old house, here at
+Crittenden's. And . . . I'll never forget the astounded expression
+on my husband's face when Toucl&eacute; rose up out of the long
+grass in the front yard and bade me welcome. She'd known me as a
+little girl when I used to visit here. She will outlive all of us,
+Toucl&eacute; will, and be watching from her room in the woodshed
+chamber on the dawn of Judgment Day when the stars begin to
+fall."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles felt a trifle bewildered by this, and showed it. She
+explained further, "But seriously, I must tell you that she is a
+perfectly harmless and quite uninteresting old herb-gatherer,
+although the children in the village are a little afraid of her,
+because she is an Indian, the only one they have ever seen. She
+really <i>is</i> an Indian too. She knows every inch of our valley
+and the mountains better than any lumberman or hunter or fisherman
+in Ashley. She often goes off and doesn't come back for days. I
+haven't the least idea where she stays. But she's very good to our
+children when she's here, and I like her capacity for monumental
+silence. It gives her very occasional remarks an oracular air, even
+though you know it's only because she doesn't often open her lips.
+She helps a little with the house-work, too, although she always
+looks so absent-minded, as though she were thinking of something
+very far away. She's quite capable of preparing a good meal, for
+all she never seems to notice what she's up to. And she's the last
+member of our family except the very coming-and-going little maids
+I get once in a while. Ashley is unlike the rest of the world in
+that it is hard to get domestic servants here.</p>
+<p>"Now let me see, whom next to introduce to you. You know all
+your immediate neighbors now. I shall have to begin on Ashley
+itself. Perhaps our minister and his wife. They live in the
+high-porticoed, tall-pillared white old house next door to the
+church in the village, on the opposite side from the church-yard.
+They are Ashleyans of the oldest rock. Both of them were born here,
+and have always lived here. Mr. Bayweather is seventy-five years
+old and has never had any other parish. I do believe the very best
+thing I can do for you is to send you straight to them, this
+minute. There's nothing Mr. Bayweather doesn't know about the place
+or the people. He has a collection of Ashleyana of all sorts,
+records, deeds, titles, old letters, family trees. And for the last
+forty years he has been very busy writing a history of Ashley."</p>
+<p>"A history of <i>Ashley</i>?" exclaimed Vincent.</p>
+<p>"A history of Ashley," she answered, level-browed.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles had the impression that a "side-wipe" had been
+exchanged in which he had not shared.</p>
+<p>Vincent now asked irrelevantly, "Do you go to church
+yourself?"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes," she answered, "I go, I like to go. And I take the
+children." She turned her head so that she looked down at her long
+hands in her lap, as she added, "I think going to church is a
+<i>refining</i> influence in children's lives, don't you?"</p>
+<p>To Mr. Welles' horror this provoked from Vincent one of his
+great laughs. And this time he was sure that Mrs. Crittenden would
+take offense, for she looked up, distinctly startled, really quite
+as though he <i>had</i> looked in through the key-hole. But Vincent
+went on laughing. He even said, impudently, "Ah, now I've caught
+you, Mrs. Crittenden; you're too used to keeping your jokes to
+yourself. And they're much too good for that."</p>
+<p>She looked at him hard, with a certain wonder in her eyes.</p>
+<p>"Oh, there's no necromancy about it," he told her. "I've been
+reading the titles of your books and glancing over your music
+before you came in. And I can put two and two together. Who are you
+making fun of to yourself? Who first got off that lovely speech
+about the refining influence of church?"</p>
+<p>She laughed a little, half-uneasily, a brighter color mounting
+to her smooth oval cheeks. "That's one of Mrs. Bayweather's
+favorite maxims," she admitted. She added, "But I really <i>do</i>
+like to go to church."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles felt an apprehension about the turn things were
+taking. Vincent, he felt sure, was on the verge of being up to
+something. And he did not want to risk offending Mrs. Crittenden.
+He stood up. "Thank you very much for telling us about the minister
+and his wife, Mrs. Crittenden. I think we'll go right along down to
+the village now, and pay a call on them. There'll be time enough
+before dinner." Vincent of course got up too, at this, saying,
+"He's the most perfect old housekeeper, you know. He's kept the
+neatest flat for himself and that aged aunt of his for seventy
+years."</p>
+<p>"<i>Seventy!</i>" cried Mr. Welles, scandalized at the
+exaggeration.</p>
+<p>"Oh, more or less," said Vincent, laughing. Mr. Welles noticed
+with no enthusiasm that his eyes were extremely bright, that he
+smiled almost incessantly, that he stepped with an excess of his
+usual bounce. Evidently something had set him off into one of his
+fits of wild high spirits. You could almost feel the electricity
+sparkle from him, as it does from a cat on a cold day. Personally,
+Mr. Welles preferred not to touch cats when they were like
+that.</p>
+<p>"When are you going back to the city, Mr. Marsh?" asked Mrs.
+Crittenden, as they said good-bye at the door.</p>
+<p>Vincent was standing below her on the marble step. He looked up
+at her now, and something about his expression made Mr. Welles
+think again of glossy fur emitting sparks. He said, "I'll lay you a
+wager, Mrs. Crittenden, that there is one thing your Ashley
+underground news-service has not told you about us, and that is,
+that I've come up not only to help Mr. Welles install himself in
+his new home, but to take a somewhat prolonged rest-cure myself.
+I've always meant to see more of this picturesque part of Vermont.
+I've a notion that the air of this lovely spot will do me a world
+of good."</p>
+<p>As Mr. Welles opened his mouth, perhaps rather wide, in the
+beginning of a remark, he cut in briskly with, "You're worrying
+about Schwatzkummerer, I know. Never you fear. I'll get hold of his
+address, all right." He explained briefly to Mrs. Crittenden,
+startled by the portentous name. "Just a specialist in gladiolus
+seeds."</p>
+<p>"<i>Bulbs!</i>" cried Mr. Welles, in involuntary correction, and
+knew as he spoke that he had been switched off to a side-track.</p>
+<p>"Oh well, bulbs be it," Vincent conceded the point indulgently.
+He took off his hat in a final salutation to Mrs. Crittenden, and
+grasping his elderly friend by the arm, moved with him down the
+flag-paved path.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>TABLE TALK</h3>
+<div class='center'><i>An Hour in the Home Life of Mrs. Neale
+Crittenden, aet. 34</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+March 20.
+<br />
+</div>
+<p>As she and Paul carried the table out to the windless, sunny
+side-porch, Marise was struck by a hospitable inspiration. "You and
+Elly go on setting the table," she told the children, and ran
+across the side-yard to the hedge. She leaned over this, calling,
+"Mr. Welles! Mr. Welles!" and when he came to the door, "The
+children and I are just celebrating this first really warm day by
+having lunch out of doors. Won't you and Mr. Marsh come and join
+us?"</p>
+<p>By the time the explanations and protestations and renewals of
+the invitation were over and she brought them back to the porch,
+Paul and Elly had almost finished setting the table. Elly nodded a
+country-child's silent greeting to the newcomers. Paul said, "Oh
+goody! Mr. Welles, you sit by me."</p>
+<p>Marise was pleased at the friendship growing up between the
+gentle old man and her little boy.</p>
+<p>"Elly, don't you want me to sit by you?" asked Marsh with a
+playful accent.</p>
+<p>Elly looked down at the plate she was setting on the table. "If
+you want to," she said neutrally.</p>
+<p>Her mother smiled inwardly. How amusingly Elly had acquired as
+only a child could acquire an accent, the exact astringent,
+controlled brevity of the mountain idiom.</p>
+<p>"I think Elly means that she would like it very much, Mr.
+Marsh," she said laughingly. "You'll soon learn to translate
+Vermontese into ordinary talk, if you stay on here."</p>
+<p>She herself went through the house into the kitchen and began
+placing on the wheel-tray all the components of the lunch, telling
+them over to herself to be sure she missed none. "Meat, macaroni,
+spinach, hot plates, bread, butter, water . . . a pretty plain meal
+to invite city people to share. Here, I'll open a bottle of olives.
+Paul, help me get this through the door."</p>
+<p>As he pulled at the other end of the wheeled tray, Paul said
+that Mark had gone upstairs to wash his hands, ages ago, and was
+probably still fooling around in the soap-suds, and like as not
+leaving the soap in the water.</p>
+<p>"Paul the responsible!" thought his mother. As they passed the
+foot of the stairs she called up, "Mark! Come along, dear. Lunch is
+served. All ready," she announced as they pushed the tray out on
+the porch.</p>
+<p>The two men turned around from where they had been gazing up at
+the mountain. "What is that great cliff of bare rock called?" asked
+Mr. Marsh.</p>
+<p>"Those are the Eagle Rocks," explained Marise, sitting down and
+motioning them to their places. "Elly dear, don't spread it on your
+bread so <i>thick</i>. If Mr. Bayweather were here he could
+probably tell you why they are called that. I have known but I've
+forgotten. There's some sort of tradition, I believe . . . no, I
+see you are getting ready to hear it called the Maiden's Leap where
+the Indian girl leaped off to escape an unwelcome lover. But it's
+not that this time: something or other about Tories and an American
+spy . . . ask Mr. Bayweather."</p>
+<p>"Heaven forfend!" exclaimed Mr. Marsh.</p>
+<p>Marise was amused. "Oh, you've been lectured to on local
+history, I see," she surmised.</p>
+<p>"<i>I</i> found it very interesting," said Mr. Welles, loyally.
+"Though perhaps he does try to give you a little too much at one
+sitting."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Welles," said Paul, with his mouth full, "fishing season
+begins in ten days."</p>
+<p>Marise decided that she would really have to have a rest from
+telling Paul not to talk with food in his mouth, and said
+nothing.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles confessed that he had never gone fishing in his life,
+and asked if Paul would take him.</p>
+<p>"Sure!" said Paul. "Mother and I go, lots."</p>
+<p>Mr. Marsh looked at Marise inquiringly. "Yes," she said, "I'm a
+confirmed fisherman. Some of the earliest and happiest
+recollections I have, are of fishing these brooks when I was a
+little girl."</p>
+<p>"Here?" asked Mr. Welles. "I thought you lived in France."</p>
+<p>"There's time in a child's life to live in various places," she
+explained. "I spent part of my childhood and youth here with my
+dear old cousin. The place is full of associations for me. Will you
+have your spinach now, or later? It'll keep hot all right if you'd
+rather wait."</p>
+<p>"What is this delicious dish?" asked Mr. Marsh. "It tastes like
+a man's version of creamed chicken, which is always a little too
+lady-like for me."</p>
+<p>"It's a <i>blanquette de veau</i>, and you may be sure I learned
+to make it in one of the French incarnations, not a Vermont
+one."</p>
+<p>Paul stirred and asked, "Mother, where <i>is</i> Mark? He'll be
+late for school, if he doesn't hurry."</p>
+<p>"That's so," she said, and reflected how often one used that
+phrase in response to one of Paul's solid and unanswerable
+statements.</p>
+<p>Mark appeared just then and she began to laugh helplessly. His
+hands were wetly, pinkly, unnaturally clean, but his round, rosy,
+sunny little face was appallingly streaked and black.</p>
+<p>Paul did not laugh. He said in horrified reproach, "Oh, Mark!
+You never <i>touched</i> your face! It's piggy dirty."</p>
+<p>Mark was staggered for a moment, but nothing staggered him long.
+"I don't get microbes off my face into my food," he said calmly.
+"And you bet there aren't any microbes left on my hands." He went
+on, looking at the table disapprovingly, "Mother, there isn't a
+many on the table <i>this</i> day, and I wanted a many."</p>
+<p>"The stew's awful good," said Paul, putting away a large
+quantity.</p>
+<p>"'Very,' not 'awful,' and don't hold your fork like that,"
+corrected Marise, half-heartedly, thinking that she herself did not
+like the insipid phrase "very good" nor did she consider the way a
+fork was held so very essential to salvation. "How much of life is
+convention, any way you arrange it," she thought, "even in such an
+entirely unconventional one as ours."</p>
+<p>"It <i>is</i> good," said Mark, taking his first mouthful.
+Evidently he had not taken the remarks about his face at all
+seriously.</p>
+<p>"See here, Mark," his mother put it to him as man to man, "do
+you think you ought to sit down to the table looking like
+that?"</p>
+<p>Mark wriggled, took another mouthful, and got up mournfully.</p>
+<p>Paul was touched. "Here, I'll go up with you and get it over
+quick," he said. Marise gave him a quick approving glance. That was
+the best side of Paul. You could say what you pleased about the
+faults of American and French family life, but at any rate the
+children didn't hate each other, as English children seemed to, in
+novels at least. It was only last week that Paul had fought the big
+French Canadian boy in his room at school, because he had made fun
+of Elly's rubber boots.</p>
+<p>As the little boys clattered out she said to the two guests, "I
+don't know whether you're used to children. If you're not, you must
+be feeling as though you were taking lunch in a boiler
+factory."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles answered, "I never knew what I was missing before.
+Especially Paul. That first evening when you sent him over with the
+cake, as he stood in the door, I thought, 'I wish <i>I</i> could
+have had a little son like that!'"</p>
+<p>"We'll share him with you, Mr. Welles." Marise was touched by
+the wistfulness of his tone. She noticed that Mr. Marsh had made no
+comment on the children. He was perhaps one of the people who never
+looked at them, unless they ran into him. Eugenia Mills was like
+that, quite sincerely.</p>
+<p>"May I have a little more of the <i>blanquette</i>, if I won't
+be considered a glutton?" asked Mr. Marsh now. "I've sent to the
+city for an invaluable factotum of mine to come and look out for us
+here, and when he comes, I hope you'll give him the recipe."</p>
+<p>The little boys clattered back and began to eat again, in haste
+with frequent demands for their mother to tell them what time it
+was. In spite of this precaution, the clock advanced so
+relentlessly that they were obliged to set off, the three of them,
+before dessert was eaten, with an apple in one hand and a cookie in
+the other.</p>
+<p>The two men leaned back in their chairs with long breaths, which
+Marise interpreted as relief. "Strenuous, three of them at once,
+aren't they?" she said. "A New York friend of mine always says she
+can take the vibration-cure, only by listening to family talk at
+our table."</p>
+<p>"What's the vibration-cure?" asked Mr. Welles seriously.</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>I</i> don't know!" confessed Marise. "I'm too busy to
+keep up with the latest fads in cures as Eugenia does. You may meet
+her there this summer, by the way. She usually spends a part of the
+summer with us. She is a very old school-friend of mine."</p>
+<p>"French or Vermont incarnation?" inquired Marsh casually. "May I
+smoke? Won't you have a cigarette, yourself?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>French!</i>" Marise was immensely amused, and then,
+remembering that the joke was not apparent, "If you'd ever seen
+her, even for a moment, you'd know why I laugh. She is the
+embodiment of sophisticated cosmopolitanism, an expert on all sorts
+of esoteric, aesthetic and philosophic matters, book-binding,
+historic lace, the Vedanta creed, Chinese porcelains,
+Proven&ccedil;al poetry, Persian shawls . . ."</p>
+<p>"What nationality is she, herself?" inquired Mr. Welles with
+some curiosity.</p>
+<p>Marise laughed. "She was born in Arkansas, and brought up in
+Minnesota, what did you suppose? No European could ever take
+culture so seriously. You know how any convert always has a
+thousand times more fervor than the fatigued members of the faith
+who were born to it."</p>
+<p>"Like Henry James, perhaps?" suggested Marsh.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I always envied Henry James the conviction he seems to
+have had, all his life, that Europeans are a good deal more unlike
+other people than I ever found them. It may be obtuseness on my
+part, but I never could see that people who lived in the
+Basses-Pyr&eacute;n&eacute;es are any more cultivated or had any
+broader horizons than people who live in the Green Mountains. My
+own experience is that when you actually live with people, day
+after day, year after year, you find about the same range of
+possibilities in any group of them. But I never advance this theory
+to Eugenia, who would be horrified to know that I find a strong
+family likeness between her New York circle and my neighbors
+here."</p>
+<p>She had been aware that Marsh was looking at her as she spoke.
+What a singular, piercing eye he had! It made her a little restive,
+as at a too-intimate contact, to be looked at so intently, although
+she was quite aware that there was a good deal of admiration in the
+look. She wondered what he was thinking about her; for it was
+evident that he was thinking about her, as he sent out that
+penetrating gaze.</p>
+<p>But perhaps not, after all; for he now said as if in answer to
+her last remark, "I have my own way of believing that, too, that
+all people are made of the same stuff. Mostly I find them perfectly
+negligible, too utterly without savor even to glance at. Once in a
+thousand years, it seems to me, you come across a human being who's
+alive as you are, who speaks your language, is your own kind,
+belongs to you. When you do, good Lord! What a moment!"</p>
+<p>He pronounced this in a perfectly impersonal tone, but something
+about the quality of his voice made Marise flash a quick glance at
+him. His eyes met hers with a sudden, bold deepening of their gaze.
+Marise's first impulse was to be startled and displeased, but in an
+instant a quick fear of being ridiculous had voiced itself and was
+saying to her, "Don't be countrified. It's only that I've had no
+contact with people-of-the-world for a year now. That's the sort of
+thing they get their amusement from. It would make him laugh to
+have it resented." Aloud she said, rather at random, "I usually go
+down once a season to the city for a visit to this old friend of
+mine, and other friends there. But this last winter I didn't get up
+the energy to do that."</p>
+<p>"I should think," said Mr. Welles, "that last winter you'd have
+used up all your energy on other things, from what Mrs. Powers
+tells me about the big chorus you always lead here in winters."</p>
+<p>"That does take up a lot of time," she admitted. "But it's a
+generator of energy, leading a chorus is, not a spender of it."</p>
+<p>"Oh, come!" protested Marsh. "You can't put that over on me. To
+do it as I gather you do . . . heavens! You must pour out your
+energy and personality as though you'd cut your arteries and let
+the red flood come."</p>
+<p>"You pour it out all right," she agreed, "but you get it back a
+thousand times over." She spoke seriously, the topic was vital to
+her, her eyes turned inward on a recollection. "It's amazing. It's
+enough to make a mystic out of a granite boulder. I don't know how
+many times I've dragged myself to a practice-evening dog-tired
+physically with work and care of the children, stale morally, sure
+that I had nothing in me that was profitable for any purpose,
+feeling that I'd do anything to be allowed to stay at home, to doze
+on the couch and read a poor novel." She paused, forgetting to whom
+she was speaking, forgetting she was not alone, touched and stirred
+with a breath from those evenings.</p>
+<p>"Well . . . ?" prompted Mr. Marsh. She wondered if she were
+mistaken in thinking he sounded a little irritable.</p>
+<p>"Well," she answered, "it has not failed a single time. I have
+never come back otherwise than stronger, and rested, the fatigue
+and staleness all gone, buried deep in something living." She had a
+moment of self-consciousness here, was afraid that she had been
+carried away to seem high-flown or pretentious, and added hastily
+and humorously, "You mustn't think that it's because I'm making
+anything wonderful out of my chorus of country boys and girls and
+their fathers and mothers. It's no notable success that puts wings
+to my feet as I come home from that work. It's only the music, the
+hearty satisfying singing-out, by ordinary people, of what too
+often lies withering in their hearts."</p>
+<p>She was aware that she was speaking not to sympathizers. Mr.
+Welles looked vague, evidently had no idea what she meant. Mr.
+Marsh's face looked closed tight, as though he would not open to
+let in a word of what she was saying. He almost looked hostile. Why
+should he? When she stopped, a little abashed at having been
+carried along by her feelings, Mr. Marsh put in lightly, with no
+attempt at transition, "All that's very well. But you can't make me
+believe that by choice you live up her all the year around. You
+must nearly perish away with homesickness for the big world, you
+who so evidently belong in it."</p>
+<p>"Where is the big world?" she challenged him, laughing. "When
+you're young you want to go all round the globe to look for it. And
+when you've gone, don't you find that your world everywhere is
+about as big as you are?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Marsh eyed her hard, and shook his head, with a little
+scornful downward thrust of the corners of his mouth, as though he
+were an augur who refused to lend himself to the traditional
+necessity to keep up the appearance of believing in an exploded
+religion. "<i>You</i> know where the big world is," he said firmly.
+"It's where there are only people who don't have to work, who have
+plenty of money and brains and beautiful possessions and gracious
+ways of living, and few moral scruples." He defined it with a
+sovereign disregard for softening phrases.</p>
+<p>She opposed to this a meditative, "Oh, I suppose the real reason
+why I go less and less to New York, is that it doesn't interest me
+as it used to. Human significance is what makes interest for me,
+and when you're used to looking deep into human lives out of a
+complete knowledge of them as we do up here, it's very tantalizing
+and tormenting and after a while gets boring, the superficial,
+incoherent glimpses you get in such a smooth, glib-tongued circle
+as the people I happen to know in New York. It's like trying to
+read something in a language of which you know only a few words,
+and having the book shown to you by jerks at that!"</p>
+<p>Mr. Marsh remarked speculatively, as though they were speaking
+of some quite abstract topic, "It may also be possibly that you are
+succumbing to habit and inertia and routine."</p>
+<p>She was startled again, and nettled . . . and alarmed. What a
+rude thing to say! But the words were no sooner out of his mouth
+than she had felt a scared wonder if perhaps they were not true.
+She had not thought of that possibility.</p>
+<p>"I should think you would like the concerts, anyhow," suggested
+Mr. Welles.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Marise, with the intonation that made the
+affirmation almost a negative. "Yes, of course. But there too . . .
+music means so much to me, so very much. It makes me sick to see it
+pawed over as it is among people who make their livings out of it;
+used as it so often is as a background for the personal vanity or
+greed of the performer. Take an ordinary afternoon solo concert
+given by a pianist or singer . . . it always seems to me that the
+music they make is almost an unconsidered by-product with them.
+What they're really after is something else."</p>
+<p>Marsh agreed with her, with a hearty relish, "Yes, musicians are
+an unspeakable bunch!</p>
+<p>"I suppose," Marise went on, "that I ought not to let that part
+of it spoil concert music for me. And it doesn't, of course. I've
+had some wonderful times . . . people who play in orchestra and
+make chamber-music are the real thing. But the music you make
+yourself . . . the music we make up here . . . well, perhaps my
+taste for it is like one's liking (some people call it perverse)
+for French Primitive painting, or the something so awfully touching
+and heart-felt that was lost when the Renaissance came up over the
+Alps with all its knowingness."</p>
+<p>"You're not pretending that you get Vermonters to make music?"
+protested Marsh, highly amused at the notion.</p>
+<p>"I don't know," she admitted, "whether it is music or not. But
+it is something alive." She fell into a muse, "Queer, what a
+spider-web of tenuous complication human relationships are. I never
+would have thought, probably, of trying anything of the sort if it
+hadn't been for a childhood recollection. . . . French incarnation
+this time," she said lightly to Marsh. "When I was a little girl, a
+young priest, just a young parish priest, in one of the poor
+hill-parishes of the Basque country, began to teach the people of
+his parish really to sing some of the church chants. I never knew
+much about the details of what he did, and never spoke to him in my
+life, but from across half the world he has reached out to touch
+this cornet of America. By the time I was a young lady, he had two
+or three big country choruses under his direction. We used to drive
+up fist to one and then to another of those hill-towns, all
+white-washed houses and plane-tree atriums, and sober-eyed Basques,
+to hear them sing. It was beautiful. I never have had a more
+complete expression of beauty in all my life. It seemed to me the
+very soul of music; those simple people singing, not for pay, not
+for notoriety, out of the fullness of their hearts. It has been one
+of the things I never forgot, a standard, and a standard that most
+music produced on platforms before costly audiences doesn't come up
+to."</p>
+<p>"I've never been able to make anything out of music, myself,"
+confessed Mr. Welles. "Perhaps you can convert me. I almost believe
+so."</p>
+<p>"'Gene Powers sings!" cried Marise spiritedly. "And if he does .
+. ."</p>
+<p>"Any relation to the lively old lady who brings our milk?"</p>
+<p>"Her son. Haven't you seen him yet? A powerfully built granite
+rock of a man. Silent as a granite rock too, as far as small talk
+goes. But he turns out to have a bass voice that is my joy. It's
+done something for him, too, I think, really and truly, without
+sentimental exaggeration at all. He suffered a great injustice some
+six or seven years ago, that turned him black and bitter, and it's
+only since he has been singing in our winter choir that he has been
+willing to mix again with anyone."</p>
+<p>She paused for a moment, and eyed them calculatingly. It
+occurred to her that she had been talking about music and herself
+quite enough. She would change the subject to something
+matter-of-fact. "See here, you'll be sure to have to hear all that
+story from Mr. Bayweather in relentless detail. It might be your
+salvation to be able to say that I had told you, without mentioning
+that it was in a severely abridged form. He'd want to start back in
+the eighteenth century, and tell you all about that discreditable
+and unreconstructed Tory ancestor of mine who, when he was exiled
+from Ashley, is said to have carried off part of the town documents
+with him to Canada. Whether he did or not (Mr. Bayweather has a
+theory, I believe, that he buried them in a copper kettle on
+Peg-Top Hill), the fact remains that an important part of the
+records of Ashley are missing and that has made a lot of trouble
+with titles to land around here. Several times, unscrupulous
+land-grabbers have taken advantage of the vagueness of the titles
+to cheat farmers out of their inheritance. The Powers case is
+typical. There always have been Powerses living right there, where
+they do now; that big pine that towers up so over their house was
+planted by 'Gene's great-grandfather. And they always owned an
+immense tract of wild mountain land, up beyond the Eagle Rock
+range, along the side of the Red-Brook marsh. But after paying
+taxes on it for generations all during the time when it was too far
+away to make it profitable to lumber, it was snatched away from
+them, seven years ago, just as modern methods and higher prices for
+spruce would have made it very valuable. A lawyer from New
+Hampshire named Lowder turned the trick. I won't bother you going
+into the legal details&mdash;a question of a fake warranty deed,
+against 'Gene's quit-claim deed, which was all he had in absence of
+those missing pages from the town records. As a matter of fact, the
+lawyer hasn't dared to cut the lumber off it yet, because his claim
+is pretty flimsy; but flimsy or not, the law regards it as slightly
+better than 'Gene's. The result is that 'Gene can't sell it and
+daren't cut it for fear of being involved in a law-suit that he
+couldn't possibly pay for. So the Powers are poor farmers,
+scratching a difficult living out of sterile soil, instead of being
+well-to-do proprietors of a profitable estate of wood-land. And
+when we see how very hard they all have to work, and how soured and
+gloomy it has made 'Gene, and how many pleasures the Powers'
+children are denied, we all join in when Mrs. Powers delivers
+herself of her white-hot opinion of New Hampshire lawyers! I
+remember perfectly that Mr. Lowder,&mdash;one of the smooth-shaven,
+thin-lipped, fish-mouthed variety, with a pugnacious jaw and an
+intimidating habit of talking his New Hampshire dialect out of the
+corner of his mouth. The poor Powers were as helpless as rabbits
+before him."</p>
+<p>It all came up before her as she talked, that horrid encounter
+with commercial ruthlessness: she saw again poor 'Gene's outraged
+face of helpless anger, felt again the heat of sympathetic
+indignation she and Neale had felt, recognized again the poison
+which triumphant unrighteousness leaves behind. She shook her head
+impatiently, to shake off the memory, and said aloud, "Oh, it makes
+me sick to remember it! We couldn't believe, any of us, that such
+bare-faced iniquity could succeed."</p>
+<p>"There's a good deal of bare-faced iniquity riding around
+prosperously in high-powered cars," said Mr. Welles, with a lively
+accent of bitterness. "You have to get used to it in business life.
+It's very likely that your wicked Mr. Lowder in private life in New
+Hampshire is a good husband and father, and contributes to all the
+charitable organizations."</p>
+<p>"I won't change <i>my</i> conception of him as a pasty-faced
+demon," insisted Marise.</p>
+<p>It appeared that Mr. Marsh's appetite for local history was so
+slight as to be cloyed even by the very much abbreviated account
+she had given them, for he now said, hiding a small yawn, with no
+effort to conceal the fact that he had been bored, "Mrs.
+Crittenden, I've heard from Mr. Welles' house the most tantalizing
+snatches from your piano. Won't you, now we're close to it, put the
+final touch to our delightful lunch-party by letting us hear
+it?"</p>
+<p>Marise was annoyed by his <i>grand seigneur</i> air of certainty
+of his own importance, and piqued that she had failed to hold his
+interest. Both impressions were of a quicker vivacity than was at
+all the habit of her maturity. She told herself, surprised, that
+she had not felt this little sharp sting of wounded personal vanity
+since she was a girl. What did she care whether she had bored him
+or not? But it was with all her faculties awakened and keen that
+she sat down before the piano and called out to them, "What would
+you like?"</p>
+<p>They returned the usual protestations that they would like
+anything she would play, and after a moment's hesitation . . . it
+was always a leap in the dark to play to people about whose musical
+capacities you hadn't the faintest idea . . . she took out the
+Beethoven Sonata album and turned to the Sonata Path&eacute;tique.
+Beethoven of the early middle period was the safest guess with such
+entirely unknown listeners. For all that she really knew, they
+might want her to play Chaminade and Moskowsky. Mr. Welles, the
+nice old man, might find even them above his comprehension. And as
+for Marsh, she thought with a resentful toss of her head that he
+was capable of saying off-hand, that he was really bored by all
+music&mdash;and conveying by his manner that it was entirely the
+fault of the music. Well, she would show him how she could play, at
+least.</p>
+<p>She laid her hands on the keys; and across those little
+smarting, trivial personalities there struck the clear, assured
+dignity and worth of her old friend . . . was there ever such a
+friend as that rough old German who had died so long before she was
+born? No one could say the human race was ignoble or had never
+deserved to live, who knew his voice. In a moment she was herself
+again.</p>
+<p>Those well-remembered opening chords, they were by this time not
+merely musical sounds. They had become something within her, of her
+own being, rich with a thousand clustered nameless associations,
+something that thrilled and sang and lived a full harmonious life
+of its own. That first pearling down-dropping arabesque of treble
+notes, not only her fingers played those, but every fiber in her,
+answering like the vibrating wood of a violin, its very cells
+rearranged in the pattern which the notes had so many times called
+into existence . . . by the time she had finished she had almost
+forgotten that she had listeners.</p>
+<p>And when, sitting for a moment, coming back slowly from
+Beethoven's existence to her own, she heard no sound or stir from
+the porch, she had only a quiet smile of tolerant amusement.
+Apparently she had not guessed right as to their tastes. Or perhaps
+she had played them to sleep.</p>
+<p>As for herself, she was hungry for more; she reached out her
+hand towards that world of high, purified beauty which miraculously
+was always there, with open doors of gold and ivory. . . .</p>
+<p>What now? What did she know by heart? The Largo in the Chopin
+Sonata. That would do to come after Beethoven.</p>
+<p>The first plunge into this did not so intimately startle and
+stir her as the Beethoven movement had done. It was always like
+that, she thought as she played, the sound of the first note, the
+first chord struck when one had not played for a day or so; it was
+having one's closed eyes unsealed to the daylight anew, an
+incredulous rapture. But after that, though you didn't go on
+quaking and bowing your head, though you were no longer surprised
+to find music still there, better than you could possibly remember
+it, though you took it for granted, how deeply and solidly and
+steadfastly you lived in it and on it! It made you like the child
+in the Wordsworth sonnet, "A beauteous evening, calm and free"; it
+took you in to worship quite simply and naturally at the Temple's
+inner shrine; and you adored none the less although you were not
+"breathless with adoration," like the nun; because it was a whole
+world given to you, not a mere pang of joy; because you could live
+and move and be blessedly and securely at home in it.</p>
+<p>She finished the last note of the Largo and sat quiet for a
+moment. Then she knew that someone had come into the room behind
+her. She turned about, facing with serene, wide brows whatever
+might be there.</p>
+<p>The first meeting with the eyes of the man who stood there moved
+her. So he too deeply and greatly loved music! His face was quite
+other from the hawk-like, intent, boldly imperious countenance
+which she had seen before. Those piercing eyes were softened and
+quietly shining. The arrogant lines about the mouth that could look
+so bitter and skeptical, were as sweet and candid as a child's.</p>
+<p>He smiled at her, a good, grateful, peaceful smile, and nodded,
+as though now they understood each other with no more need for
+words. "Go on . . . go on!" was all he said, very gently and
+softly. He sank down in an arm-chair and leaned his head back in
+the relaxed pose of listening.</p>
+<p>He looked quite and exactly what Marise was feeling.</p>
+<p>It was with a stir of all her pulses, a pride, a glory, a new
+sympathy in her heart, that she turned back to the piano.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>A LITTLE GIRL AND HER MOTHER</h3>
+<div class='center'><i>An Afternoon in the Life of Elly Crittenden,
+aet. 8 Years</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+April 6.
+<br /></div>
+<p>Elly Crittenden had meant to go straight home from school as
+usual with the other children, Paul and Mark, and Addle and Ralph
+Powers. And as usual somehow she was ever so far behind them, so
+far that there wasn't any use trying to catch up. Paul was hurrying
+to go over and see that new old man next door, as usual. She might
+as well not try, and just give up, and get home ever so late, the
+way she always did. Oh well, Father wasn't at home, and Mother
+wouldn't scold, and it was nice to walk along just as slow as you
+wanted to, and feel your rubber boots squizzle into the mud. How
+<i>good</i> it did seem to have real mud, after the long winter of
+snow! And it was nice to hear the brooks everywhere, making that
+dear little noise and to see them flashing every-which-way in the
+sun, as they tumbled along downhill. And it was nice to smell that
+smell . . . what <i>was</i> that sort of smell that made you know
+the sugaring-off had begun? You couldn't smell the hot boiling sap
+all the way from the mountain-sides, but what you did smell made
+you think of the little bark-covered sap-houses up in the far
+woods, with smoke and white steam coming out from all their cracks,
+as though there was somebody inside magicking charms and making a
+great cloud to cover it, like Klingsor or the witch-ladies in the
+Arabian Nights. There was a piece of music Mother played, that was
+like that. You could almost see the white clouds begin to come
+streeling out between the piano-keys, and drift all around her. All
+but her face that always looked through.</p>
+<p>The sun shone down so warm on her head, she thought she might
+take off her woolen cap. Why, yes, it was plenty warm enough. Oh,
+how good it felt! How <i>good</i> it did feel! Like somebody
+actually touching your hair with a warm, soft hand. And the air,
+that cool, cool air, all damp with the thousand little brooks, it
+felt just as good to be cool, when you tossed your hair and the
+wind could get into it. How <i>good</i> it did feel to be
+bare-headed, after all that long winter! Cool inside your hair at
+the roots, and warm outside where the sun pressed on it. Cool wind
+and warm sun, two different things that added up to make one lovely
+feel for a little girl. The way your hair tugged at its roots, all
+streaming away; every single little hair tied tight to your head at
+one end, and yet so wildly loose at the other; tight, strong, firm,
+and yet light and limber and flag-flapping . . . it was like being
+warm and cool at the same time, so different and yet the same.</p>
+<p>And there, underneath all this fluttering and tossing and
+differences, there were your legs going on just as dumb and steady
+as ever, stodge, stodge, stodge! She looked down at them with
+interest and appreciation of their faithful, dutiful service, and
+with affection at the rubber boots. She owed those to Mother. Paul
+had scared her so, when he said, so stone-wally, the way Paul
+always spoke as if that settled everything, that <i>none</i> of the
+little girls at school wore rubber boots, and he thought Elly
+oughtn't to be allowed to look so queer. It made him almost ashamed
+of his sister, he said. But Mother had somehow . . . what
+<i>had</i> she said to fix it? . . . oh well, something or other
+that left her her rubber boots and yet Paul wasn't mad any
+more.</p>
+<p>And what could she <i>do</i> without rubber boots, when she
+wanted to wade through a brook, like this one, and the brooks were
+as they were now, all running spang full to the very edge with
+snow-water, the way this one did? Oo . . . Ooh . . . Ooh! how queer
+it did feel, to be standing most up to your knees this way, with
+the current curling by, all cold and snaky, feeling the fast-going
+water making your boot-legs shake like Aunt Hetty's old cheeks when
+she laughed, and yet your feet as <i>dry</i> inside! How could they
+feel as cold as that, without being wet, as though they were
+magicked? That was a <i>real</i> difference, even more than the
+wind cool inside your hair and the sun warm on the outside; or your
+hair tied tight at one end and all wobbly loose at the other. But
+this wasn't a nice difference. It didn't add up to make a nice
+feeling, but a sort of queer one, and if she stood there another
+minute, staring down into that swirly, snatchy water, she'd fall
+right over into it . . . it seemed to be snatching at <i>her!</i>
+Oh gracious! This wasn't much better! on the squelchy dead grass of
+the meadow that looked like real ground and yet you sank right into
+it. Oh, it was <i>horridly</i> soft, like touching the hand of that
+new man that had come to live with the old gentleman next door. She
+must hurry as fast as she could . . . it felt as though it was
+sucking at her feet, trying to pull her down altogether like the
+girl with the red shoes, and she didn't have any loaves of bread to
+throw down to step on . . .</p>
+<p>Well, there! this was better, as the ground started uphill.
+There was firm ground under her feet. Yes, not mud, nor soaked,
+flabby meadow-land, but solid earth, <i>solid, solid!</i> She
+stamped on it with delight. It was just as nice to have solid
+things <i>very</i> solid, as it was to have floaty things like
+clouds <i>very</i> floaty. What was horrid was to have a thing that
+<i>looked</i> solid, and yet was all soft, like gelatine pudding
+when you touched it.</p>
+<p>Well, for goodness' sake, where was she? Where had she come to,
+without thinking a single thing about it? Right on the ridge
+overlooking Aunt Hetty's house to be sure, on those rocks that hang
+over it, so you could almost throw a stone down any one of the
+chimneys. She might just as well go down and make Aunt Hetty a
+visit now she was so near, and walk home by the side-road. Of
+course Paul would say, nothing could keep him from saying, that she
+had planned to do that very thing, right along, and when she left
+the school-house headed straight for Aunt Hetty's cookie-jar. Well,
+<i>let</i> him! She could just tell him, she'd never <i>dreamed</i>
+of such a thing, till she found herself on those rocks.</p>
+<p>She walked more and more slowly, letting herself down cautiously
+from one ledge to another, and presently stopped altogether, facing
+a beech tree, its trunk slowly twisted into a spiral because it was
+so hard to keep alive on those rocks. She was straight in front of
+it, staring into its gray white-blotched bark. Now if <i>Mother</i>
+asked her, of course she'd have to say, yes, she had planned to,
+<i>sort of</i> but not quite. Mother would understand. There wasn't
+any use trying to tell things how they really were to Paul, because
+to him things weren't ever sort-of-but-not-quite. They either were
+or they weren't. But Mother always knew, both ways, hers and
+Paul's.</p>
+<p>She stepped forward and downward now, lightened. Her legs
+stretched out to carry her from one mossed rock to another.
+"Striding," that was what she was doing. Now she knew just what
+"striding" meant. What fun it was to <i>feel</i> what a word meant!
+Then when you used it, you could feel it lie down flat in the
+sentence, and fit into the other words, like a piece in a jig-saw
+puzzle when you got it into the right place. Gracious! How fast you
+could "stride" down those rocks into Aunt Hetty's back yard!</p>
+<p>Hello! Here at the bottom was some snow, a great big drift of it
+still left, all gray and shrunk and honey-combed with rain and
+wind, with a little trickle of water running away softly and
+quietly from underneath it, like a secret. Well, think of there
+being still <i>snow</i> left anywhere except on top of the
+mountains! She had just been thinking all the afternoon how
+<i>good</i> it seemed to have the snow all gone, and here she ran
+right into some, as if you'd been talking about a person, saying
+how sick and tired you were of everlastingly seeing him around, and
+there he was, right outside the window and hearing it all, and
+knowing it wasn't <i>his</i> fault he was still hanging on. You'd
+feel bad to know he'd heard. She felt bad now! After all, the fun
+the snow had given them, all that winter, sleighing and
+snow-shoeing and ski-running and sliding downhill. And when she
+remembered how <i>glad</i> she'd been to see the first snow, how
+she and little Mark had run to the window to see the first flakes,
+and had hollered, Oh goody, <i>goody!</i> And here was all there
+was left, just one poor old forgotten dirty drift, melting away as
+fast as it <i>could</i>, so's to get itself out of the way. She
+stood looking down on it compassionately, and presently, stooping
+over, gave it a friendly, comforting pat with one mittened
+hand.</p>
+<p>Then she was pierced with an arrow of hunger, terrible,
+devouring starvation! Why was it she was always so <i>much</i>
+hungrier just as she got out of school, than ever at meal-times?
+She did hope this wouldn't be one of those awful days when Aunt
+Hetty's old Agnes had let the cookie-jar get empty!</p>
+<p>She walked on fast, now, across the back yard where the hens,
+just as happy as she was to be on solid ground, pottered around
+dreamily, their eyes half-shut up. . . . Elly could just think how
+good the sun must feel on their feathers! She could imagine
+perfectly how it would be to have feathers instead of skin and
+hair. She went into the kitchen door. Nobody was there. She went
+through into the pantry. Nobody there! Nobody, that is, except the
+cookie-jar, larger than any other object in the room, looming up
+like a wash-tub. She lifted the old cracked plate kept on it for
+cover. <i>Oh</i>, it was <i>full</i>,&mdash;a fresh baking! And
+raisins in them! The water ran into her mouth in a little gush. Oh
+<i>my</i>, how good and cracklesome they looked! And how
+beautifully the sugar sprinkled on them would grit against your
+teeth as you ate it! Oh <i>gracious!</i></p>
+<p>She put her hand in and touched one. There was nothing that felt
+like a freshly baked cookie; even through your mitten you could
+<i>know</i>, with your eyes shut, it was a cookie. She took hold of
+one, and stood perfectly still. She could take that, just as easy!
+Nobody would miss it, with the jar so full. Aunt Hetty and Agnes
+were probably house-cleaning, like everybody else, upstairs. Nobody
+would ever know. The water of desire was at the very corners of her
+mouth now. She felt her insides surging up and down in longing.
+<i>Nobody</i> would know!</p>
+<p>She opened her hand, put the cookie back, laid the plate on the
+top of the jar, and walked out of the pantry. Of course she
+couldn't do that. What had she been thinking of,&mdash;such a
+stealy, common thing, and she <i>Mother's</i> daughter!</p>
+<p>But, oh! It was awful, having to be up to Mother! She sniffed
+forlornly and drew her mitten across her nose. She <i>had</i>
+wanted it so! And she was just <i>dying</i>, she was so hungry. And
+Mother wouldn't even let her <i>ask</i> people for things to eat.
+Suppose Aunt Hetty didn't think to ask her!</p>
+<p>She went through the dining-room, into the hall, and called
+upstairs, "Aunt Hetty! Aunt Hetty!" She was almost crying she felt
+so sorry for herself.</p>
+<p>"Yis," came back a faint voice, very thin and high, the way old
+people's voices sounded when they tried to call loud. "Up in the
+east-wing garret."</p>
+<p>She mounted the stairs heavily, pulling herself along by those
+spindling old red balustrades, just like so many old laths,
+noticing that her rubber boots left big hunks of mud on the
+white-painted stairs, but too miserable to care.</p>
+<p>The door to the east-wing garret was open. Aunt Hetty was there,
+bossing Agnes, and they were both "dudsing," as Elly called it to
+herself, leaning over trunks, disappearing in and out of closets,
+turning inside out old bags of truck, sorting over, and, for all
+Elly could see, putting the old duds back again, just where they
+had been before. Grown-ups did seem to run round in circles, so
+much of their time!</p>
+<p>She sat down wearily on an ugly little old trunk near the door.
+Aunt Hetty shut up a drawer in a dresser, turned to Elly, and said,
+"Mercy, child, what's the matter? Has the teacher been scolding
+you?"</p>
+<p>"No, Aunt Hetty," said Elly faintly, looking out of the
+window.</p>
+<p>"Anybody sick at your house?" asked Aunt Hetty, coming towards
+the little girl.</p>
+<p>"No," said Elly, shaking her head.</p>
+<p>"Don't you feel well?" asked Aunt Hetty, laying one wrinkled,
+shaky old hand on her shoulder.</p>
+<p>"No, Aunt Hetty," said Elly, her eyes large and sad.</p>
+<p>"Maybe she's hungry," suggested Agnes, in a muffled voice from
+the depths of a closet.</p>
+<p>"Are you?" asked Aunt Hetty.</p>
+<p>"<small>YES</small>," cried Elly.</p>
+<p>Aunt Hetty laughed. "Well, I don't know if there are any cookies
+in the house or not," she said, "we've been so busy house-cleaning.
+Agnes, did you bake any cookies this morning?"</p>
+<p>Elly was struck into stupor at this. Think of not <i>knowing</i>
+if there were any cookies in the house!</p>
+<p>Agnes appeared, tiny and old and stooped and wrinkled, like her
+mistress. She had a big, rolled-up woolen-covered comforter in her
+arms, over which she nodded. "Yes, I made some. You told me to make
+some every Wednesday," she said. She went on, looking anxiously at
+Aunt Hetty, "There ain't any moth-holes in this. Was this the
+comfortable you meant? I thought this was the one you told me to
+leave out of the camphor chest. I thought you told me . . ."</p>
+<p>"You know where to find the cookies, don't you, Elly?" asked
+Aunt Hetty, over her shoulder, trotting rapidly like a little dry,
+wind-blown leaf, towards Agnes and the comforter.</p>
+<p>"Oh <i>yes</i>, Aunt Hetty!" shouted Elly, halfway down the
+stairs.</p>
+<p>Aunt Hetty called after her, "Take all you want . . . three or
+four. They won't hurt you. There's no egg in our recipe."</p>
+<p>Elly was there again, in the empty pantry, before the
+cookie-jar. She lifted the cracked plate again. . . . But, oh! how
+differently she did feel now! . . . and she had a shock of pure,
+almost solemn, happiness at the sight of the cookies. She had not
+only been good and done as Mother would want her to, but she was
+going to have <i>four</i> of those cookies. Three <i>or</i> four,
+Aunt Hetty had said! As if anybody would take three if he was let
+to have four! Which ones had the most raisins? She knew of course
+it wasn't <i>so very</i> nice to pick and choose that way, but she
+knew Mother would let her, only just laugh a little and say it was
+a pity to be eight years old if you couldn't be a little
+greedy!</p>
+<p>Oh, how happy she was! How light she felt! How she floated back
+up the stairs! What a perfectly sweet old thing Aunt Hetty was! And
+what a nice old house she had, though not so nice as home, of
+course. What pretty mahogany balusters, and nice white stairs! Too
+bad she had brought in that mud. But they were house-cleaning
+anyhow. A little bit more to clean up, that was all. And what
+<i>luck</i> that they were in the east-room garret, the one that
+had all the old things in it, the hoop-skirts and the shells and
+the old scoop-bonnets, and the four-poster bed and those
+fascinating old cretonne bags full of treasures.</p>
+<p>She sat down near the door on the darling little old
+hair-covered trunk that had been Great-grandfather's, and watched
+the two old women at work. The first cookie had disappeared now,
+and the second was well on the way. She felt a great appeasement in
+her insides. She leaned back against the old dresses hung on the
+wall and drew a long breath.</p>
+<p>"Well," said Aunt Hetty, "you've got neighbors up your way, so
+they tell me. Funny thing, a city man coming up here to live. He'll
+never stick it out. The summer maybe. But that's all. You just see,
+come autumn, if he don't light out for New York again."</p>
+<p>Elly made no comment on this. She often heard her elders say
+that she was not a talkative child, and that it was hard to get
+anything out of her. That was because mostly they wanted to know
+about things she hadn't once thought of noticing, and weren't a bit
+interested when she tried to talk about what she <i>had</i>
+noticed. Just imagine trying to tell Aunt Hetty about that poor old
+gray snow-bank out in her woods, all lonely and scrumpled up! She
+went on eating her cookie.</p>
+<p>"How does he like it, anyhow?" asked Aunt Hetty, bending the
+upper part of her out of the window to shake something. "And what
+kind of a critter is he?"</p>
+<p>"Well, he's rather an old man," said Elly. She added
+conscientiously, trying to be chatty, "Paul's crazy about him. He
+goes over there all the time to visit. I like him all right. The
+old man seems to like it here all right. They both of them do."</p>
+<p>"Both?" said Aunt Hetty, curving herself back into the room
+again.</p>
+<p>"Oh, the other one isn't going to <i>live</i> here, like Mr.
+Welles. He's just come to get Mr. Welles settled, and to make him a
+visit. His name is Mr. Marsh."</p>
+<p>"Well, what's <i>he</i> like?" asked Aunt Hetty, folding
+together the old wadded petticoat she had been shaking.</p>
+<p>"Oh, he's all right too," said Elly. She wasn't going to say
+anything about that funny softness of his hands, she didn't like,
+because that would be like speaking about the snow-drift; something
+Aunt Hetty would just laugh at, and call one of her notions.</p>
+<p>"Well, what do they <i>do</i> with themselves, two great hulking
+men set off by themselves?"</p>
+<p>Elly tried seriously to remember what they did do. "I don't see
+them, of course, much in the morning before I go to school. I guess
+they get up and have their breakfast, the way anybody does."</p>
+<p>Aunt Hetty snorted a little, "Gracious, child, a person needs a
+corkscrew to get anything out of you. I mean all day, with no
+chores, or farmin', or <i>any</i>thing."</p>
+<p>"I don't <i>know</i>," Elly confessed. "Mr. Clark, of course,
+he's busy cooking and washing dishes and keeping house, but . .
+."</p>
+<p>"Are there <i>three</i> of them?" Aunt Hetty stopped her dudsing
+in her astonishment. "I thought you said two."</p>
+<p>"Oh well, Mr. Marsh sent down to the city and had this Mr. Clark
+come up to work for them. He doesn't call him 'Mr.
+Clark'&mdash;just 'Clark,' short like that. I guess he's Mr.
+Marsh's hired man in the city. Only he can do everything in the
+house, too. But I don't feel like calling him 'Clark' because he's
+grown-up, and so I call him '<i>Mr.</i> Clark.'" She did not tell
+Aunt Hetty that she sort of wanted to make up to him for being
+somebody's servant and being called like one. It made her mad and
+she wanted to show he could be a mister as well as anybody. She
+began on the third cookie. What else could she say to Aunt Hetty,
+who always wanted to know the news so? She brought out, "Well,
+<i>I</i> tell you, in the afternoon, when I get home, mostly old
+Mr. Welles is out in his garden."</p>
+<p>"<i>Gardin</i>!" cried Aunt Hetty. "Mercy on us, making garden
+the fore-part of April. Where does he think he's living?
+Florida?"</p>
+<p>"I don't believe he's exactly making garden," said Elly. "He
+just sort of pokes around there, and looks at things. And sometimes
+he sits down on the bench and just <i>sits</i> there. He's pretty
+old, I guess, and he walks kind of tired, always."</p>
+<p>"Does the other one?" asked Aunt Hetty.</p>
+<p>This made Elly sit up, and say very loud, "No, <i>indeedy</i>!"
+She really hadn't thought before how very <i>un</i>tired Mr. Marsh
+always seemed. She added, "No, the other one doesn't walk tired,
+nor he doesn't poke around in the garden. He takes long tramps way
+back of the mountains, over Burnham way."</p>
+<p>"For goodness' sakes, what's he find up there?"</p>
+<p>"He likes it. He comes over and borrows our maps and things to
+study, and he gets Mother to tell him all about everything. He gets
+Toucl&eacute; to tell him about the back trails, too."</p>
+<p>"Well, he's a smart one if he can get a word out of
+Toucl&eacute;."</p>
+<p>"Yes, he does. Everybody talks to him. You <i>have</i> to if he
+starts in. He's very lively."</p>
+<p>"Does he get <i>you</i> to talk?" asked Aunt Hetty, laughing at
+the idea.</p>
+<p>"Well, some," stated Elly soberly. She did not say that Mr.
+Marsh always seemed to her to be trying to get some secret out of
+her. She didn't <i>have</i> any secret that she knew of, but that
+was the way he made her feel. She dodged him mostly, when she
+could.</p>
+<p>"What's the news from your father?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, he's all right," said Elly. She fell to thinking of Father
+and wishing he would come back.</p>
+<p>"When's he going to get through his business, up there?"</p>
+<p>"Before long, I guess. Mother said maybe he'd be back here next
+month." Elly was aware that she was again not being talkative. She
+tried to think of something to add. "I'm very much obliged for
+these cookies," she said. "They are awfully good."</p>
+<p>"They're the kind your mother always liked, when she was your
+age," said Aunt Hetty casually. "I remember how she used to sit
+right there on Father's hair-trunk and eat them and watch me just
+like you now."</p>
+<p>At this statement Elly could feel her thoughts getting bigger
+and longer and higher, like something being opened out. "And the
+heaven was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up." That sentence
+she'd heard in church and never understood, and always wondered
+what was behind, what they had seen when the scroll was rolled up.
+. . . Something inside her now seemed to roll up as though she were
+going to see what was behind it. How much longer time was than you
+thought! Mother had sat there as a little girl . . . a little girl
+like her. Mother who was now grown-up and <i>finished</i>, knowing
+everything, never changing, never making any mistakes. Why, how
+<i>could</i> she have been a little girl! And such a short time ago
+that Aunt Hetty remembered her sitting there, right there, maybe
+come in from walking across that very meadow, and down those very
+rocks. <i>What had she been thinking about, that other little girl
+who had been Mother?</i> "Why" . . . Elly stopped eating, stopped
+breathing for a moment. "Why, she herself would stop being a little
+girl, and would grow up and be a Mother!" She had always known
+that, of course, but she had never <i>felt</i> it till that moment.
+It made her feel very sober; more than sober, rather holy. Yes,
+that was the word,&mdash;holy,&mdash;like the hymn. Perhaps some
+day another little girl would sit there, and be just as surprised
+to know that <i>her</i> mother had been really and truly a little
+girl too, and would feel queer and shy at the idea, and all the
+time her mother had been only <i>Elly</i>. But would she <i>be</i>
+Elly any more, when she was grown up? What would have happened to
+Elly? And after that little girl, another; and one before Mother;
+and back as far as you could see, and forwards as far as you could
+see. It was like a procession, all half in the dark, marching
+forward, one after another, little girls, mothers, mothers and
+little girls, and then more . . . what for . . . oh, <i>what
+for?</i></p>
+<p>She was a little scared. She wished she could get right up and
+go <i>home</i> to Mother. But the procession wouldn't stop . . .
+wouldn't stop. . . .</p>
+<p>Aunt Hetty hung up the last bag. "There," she said, "that's all
+we can do here today. Elly, you'd better run along home. The sun'll
+be down behind the mountain <i>now</i> before you get there."</p>
+<p>Elly snatched at the voice, at the words, at Aunt Hetty's
+wrinkled, shaking old hand. She jumped up from the trunk. Something
+in her face made Aunt Hetty say, "Well, you look as though you'd
+most dropped to sleep there in the sun. It does make a person feel
+lazy this first warm March sun. I declare this morning I didn't
+want to go to work house-cleaning. I wanted to go and spend the day
+with the hens, singing over that little dozy ca-a-a-a they do, in
+the sun, and stretch one leg and one wing till they most broke off,
+and ruffle up all my feathers and let 'em settle back very slow,
+and then just <i>set</i>."</p>
+<p>They had started downstairs before Aunt Hetty had finished this,
+the little girl holding tightly to the wrinkled old hand. How
+peaceful Aunt Hetty was! Even the smell of her black woolen dresses
+always had a <i>quiet</i> smell. And she must see all those hunks
+of mud on the white stairs, but she never said a word. Elly
+squeezed her hand a little tighter.</p>
+<p>What was it she had been thinking about on the hair-trunk that
+made her so glad to feel Aunt Hetty peaceful? Oh yes, that Mother
+had been there, where she was, when she was a little girl. Well,
+gracious! What of that? She'd always known that Mother had visited
+Aunt Hetty a lot and that Aunt Hetty had been awfully good to her,
+and that Mother loved Aunt Hetty like everything. What had made it
+seem so queer, all of a sudden?</p>
+<p>"Well," said Aunt Hetty at the front door, "step along now. I
+don't want you should be late for supper." She tipped her head to
+look around the edge of the top of the door and said, "Well, I
+declare, just see that moon showing itself before ever the sun gets
+down."</p>
+<p>She walked down the path a little way with Elly, who still held
+her hand. They stood together looking up at the mountain, very high
+and blue against the sky that was green . . . yes, it really was a
+pale, clear green, at the top of the mountain-line. People always
+said the sky was blue, except at sunset-time, like now, when it was
+filling the Notch right to the top with every color that could
+be.</p>
+<p>"The lilacs will begin to swell soon," said Aunt Hetty.</p>
+<p>"I saw some pussy-willows out, today," answered Elly.</p>
+<p>The old woman and the little girl lifted their heads, threw them
+back, and looked up long into the sky, purely, palely high above
+them.</p>
+<p>"It's quite a sightly place to live, Crittenden's is," said Aunt
+Hetty.</p>
+<p>Elly said nothing, it being inconceivable to her that she could
+live anywhere else.</p>
+<p>"Well, good-bye," said Aunt Hetty. It did not occur to her to
+kiss the little girl. It did not occur to Elly to want a kiss. They
+squeezed their hands together a little bit more, and then Elly went
+down the road, walking very carefully.</p>
+<p>Why did she walk so carefully, she wondered? She felt as though
+she were carrying a cup, full up to the brim of something. And she
+mustn't let it spill. What was it so full of? Aunt Hetty's
+peacefulness, maybe.</p>
+<p>Or maybe just because it was beginning to get twilight. That
+always made you feel as though something was being poured softly
+into you, that you mustn't spill. She was glad the side-road was so
+grass-grown. You could walk on it, so still, like this, and never
+make a sound.</p>
+<p>She thought again of Father and wished he would come home. She
+<i>liked</i> Father. He was solid. He was solid like that solid
+earth she liked so much to walk on. It was just such a comfort to
+feel him. Father was like the solid ground and Mother was like the
+floaty clouds. Why, yes, they were <i>every</i> way like what she
+had been thinking about. . . . Father was the warm sun on the
+outside, and Mother was the cool wind on the inside. Father was the
+end that was tied tight and firm so you <i>knew</i> you couldn't
+lose it, and Mother was the end that streamed out like flags in the
+wind. But they weren't either of them like that slinky, swirly
+water, licking at you, in such a hurry to get on past you and get
+what it was scrambling to get, whatever that was.</p>
+<p>Well, of all things! There was old Mr. Welles, coming towards
+her. <i>He</i> must be out taking a walk too. How slowly he went!
+And kept looking up the way she and Aunt Hetty had, at the sky and
+the mountains. He was quite close now. Why . . . why, he didn't
+know she was there. He had gone right by her and never even saw her
+and yet had been so close she could see his face plainly. He must
+have been looking very hard at the mountains. But it wasn't hard
+the way he was looking, it was soft. How soft his face had looked,
+almost quivery, almost. . . . But that was silly to think of . . .
+almost as though he felt like crying. And yet all shining and
+quiet, too, as if he'd been in church.</p>
+<p>Well, it <i>was</i> a little bit like being in church, when you
+could see the twilight come down very slow like this, and settle on
+the tree-tops and then down through them towards you. You always
+felt as though it was going to do something to you when it got to
+you; something peaceful, like old Aunt Hetty.</p>
+<p>She was at her own front path now, it was really almost dark.
+Mother was playing the piano. But not for either of the boys. It
+was grown-up music she was playing. Elly hesitated on the flagged
+stones. Maybe she was playing for Mr. Marsh again. She advanced
+slowly. Yes, there he was, sitting on the door-step, across the
+open door, leaning back his head, smoking, sometimes looking out at
+the sunset, and sometimes looking in towards the piano.</p>
+<p>Elly made a wide circuit under the apple-trees, and went in the
+side-door. Toucl&eacute; was only just setting the table. Elly
+would have plenty of time to get off her rubber boots, look up her
+old felt slippers, and put them on before supper time. Gracious!
+Her stockings were wet. She'd have to change them, too. She'd just
+stay upstairs till Mr. Marsh went away. She didn't feel to talk to
+him.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>When out of her window she saw him step back across the grass to
+Mr. Welles' house, Elly came downstairs at once. The light in the
+living-room made her blink, after all that outdoor twilight and the
+indoor darkness of her room upstairs.</p>
+<p>Mother was still at the piano, her hands on the keys, but not
+playing. At the sight of her, Elly's heart filled and brightened.
+Her busy, busy thoughts stopped for the first time that day. She
+felt as you do when you've been rowing a boat a long time and
+finally, almost where you want to go, you stop and let her slide in
+on her own movement, quiet and soft and smooth, and reach out your
+hand to take hold of the landing-place. Elly reached out her arm
+and put it around Mother's neck. She stood perfectly quiet. There
+wasn't any need to be anything <i>but</i> quiet now you'd got to
+where you were going.</p>
+<p>She had been out on the rim of the wheel, all around and around
+it, and up and down the spokes. But now she was at the center where
+all the spokes ended.</p>
+<p>She closed her eyes and laid her head on Mother's soft
+shoulder.</p>
+<p>"Did you have a good walk, all by yourself, dear?" asked
+Mother.</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, it was all right," said Elly.</p>
+<p>"Your feet aren't wet, are they?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Elly, "I took off my boots just as soon as I came in,
+and changed my stockings."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>THINGS TAKE THEIR COURSE</h3>
+<div class='center'><i>A Couple of Hours from Mr. Welles' New
+Life</i>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<b>I</b><br />
+<br />
+April 10.
+<br /></div>
+<p>One of the many things which surprised Mr. Welles was that he
+seemed to need less sleep than in the city. Long hours in bed had
+been one of the longed-for elements of the haven of rest which his
+retiring from the office was to be. Especially as he had dragged
+himself from bed to stop the relentless snarl of his alarm-clock,
+had he hoped for late morning sleeps in his new home, when he could
+wake up at seven, feel himself still heavy, unrefreshed, unready
+for the day, and turn on the pillow to take another dose of
+oblivion.</p>
+<p>But here, after the first ten days of almost prostrate
+relaxation, he found himself waking even before the dawn, and lying
+awake in his bed, waiting almost impatiently for the light to come
+so that he could rise to another day. He learned all the sounds of
+the late night and early morning, and how they had different voices
+in the dark; the faint whisper of the maple-branches, the
+occasional stir and muffled chirp of a bird, the hushed, secret
+murmur of the little brook which ran between his garden and the
+Crittenden yard, and the distant, deeper note of the Necronsett
+River as it rolled down the Ashley valley to The Notch. He could
+almost tell, without opening his eyes, when the sky grew light over
+the Eagle Rocks, by the way the night voices lifted, and carried
+their sweet, muted notes up to a clearer, brighter singing.</p>
+<p>When that change in the night-voices came, he sat up in bed,
+turning his face from the window, for he did not want any mere
+partial glimpse for his first contact with the day, and got into
+his clothes, moving cautiously not to waken Vincent, who always sat
+up till all hours and slept till ten. Down the stairs in his
+stocking-feet, his shoes in his hand; a pause in the living-room to
+thread and fasten shoe-laces; and then, his silly old heart beating
+fast, his hand on the door-knob. The door slowly opened, and the
+garden, his own shining garden, offered itself to him anew, so
+fresh in the dew and the pale gold of the slanting morning
+sun-rays, that he was apt to swallow hard as he first stepped out
+into it and stood still, with bare head lifted, drawing one long
+breath after another.</p>
+<p>He was seldom alone in those early hours, although the house
+slept profoundly behind him; a robin, the only bird whose name he
+was sure of, hopped heavily and vigorously about on the sparkling
+grass; a little brown bird of whose name he had not the slightest
+notion, but whose voice he knew very well by this time, poured out
+a continuous cascade of quick, high, eager notes from the top of
+the elm; a large toad squatted peaceably in the sun, the loose skin
+over its forehead throbbing rhythmically with the life in it; and
+over on the steps of the Crittendens' kitchen, the old Indian
+woman, as motionless as the toad, fixed her opaque black eyes on
+the rising sun, while something about her, he could never decide
+what, throbbed rhythmically with the life in her. Mr. Welles had
+never in all his life been so aware of the rising sun, had never so
+felt it like something in himself as on those mornings when he
+walked in his garden and glanced over at the old Indian.</p>
+<p>Presently, the Crittenden house woke, so to speak, with one eye,
+and took on the aspect of a house in which someone is astir. First
+came the fox-terrier, inevitable precursor of his little master,
+and then, stepping around Toucl&eacute; as though she were a tree
+or a rock, came his little partner Paul, his freckled face shining
+with soap and the earliness of the hour. Mr. Welles was apt to
+swallow hard again, when he felt the child's rough, strong fingers
+slip into his.</p>
+<p>"Hello, Mr. Welles," said Paul.</p>
+<p>"Hello, Paul," said Mr. Welles.</p>
+<p>"I thought sure I'd beat you to it for once, this morning," was
+what Paul invariably said first. "I can't seem to wake up as early
+as you and Toucl&eacute;."</p>
+<p>Then he would bring out his plan for that particular morning
+walk.</p>
+<p>"Maybe we might have time to have me show you the back-road by
+Cousin Hetty's, and get back by the men's short-cut before
+breakfast, maybe? Perhaps?"</p>
+<p>"We could try it," admitted Mr. Welles, cautiously. It tickled
+him to answer Paul in his own prudent idiom. Then they set off,
+surrounded and encompassed by the circles of mad delight which
+M&eacute;dor wove about them, rushing at them once in a while, in a
+spasm of adoration, to leap up and lick Paul's face.</p>
+<p>Thus on one of these mornings in April, they were on the
+back-road to Cousin Hetty's, the right-hand side solemn and dark
+with tall pines, where the ground sloped up towards the Eagle
+Rocks; jungle-like with blackberry brambles and young pines on the
+left side where it had been lumbered some years ago. Paul pointed
+out proudly the thrifty growth of the new pines and explained it by
+showing the several large trees left standing at intervals down the
+slope towards the Ashley valley. "Father always has them do that,
+so the seeds from the old trees will seed up the bare ground again.
+Gosh! You'd ought to hear him light into the choppers when they
+forget to leave the seed-pines or when they cut under six inches
+butt diameter."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles had no more notion what cutting under six inches butt
+diameter meant than he had of the name of the little brown bird who
+sang so sweetly in his elm; but Paul's voice and that of the
+nameless bird gave him the same pleasure. He tightened his hold of
+the tough, sinewy little fingers, and looked up through the
+glorious brown columns of the great pines towards where the
+sky-line showed, luminous, far up the slope.</p>
+<p>"That's the top of the Eagle Rocks, where you see the sky,"
+explained his small cicerone, seeing the direction of his eyes.
+"The Powerses lost a lot of sheep off over them, last year. A dog
+must ha' started running them down in the pasture. And you know
+what fools sheep are. Once they get scared they can't think of
+anything to do except just to keep a-running till something gets in
+their way. About half of the Powers flock just ran themselves off
+the top of the Rocks, although the dog had stopped chasing them,
+way down in the valley. There wasn't enough of them left, even to
+sell to the butcher in Ashley for mutton. Ralph Powers, he's about
+as old as I am, maybe a little bit older, well, his father had
+given him a ewe and two twin lambs for his own, and didn't they all
+three get killed that day! Ralph felt awful bad about it. He don't
+ever seem to have any luck, Ralph don't."</p>
+<p>. . . How sweet it was, Mr. Welles thought to himself, how
+awfully sweet to be walking in such pine-woods, on the early
+morning, preceded by such a wildly happy little dog, with a little
+boy whose treble voice ran on and on, whose strong little hand
+clasped yours so tightly, and who turned up to you eyes of such
+clear trust! Was he the same man who for such endless years had
+been a part of the flotsam cast out every morning into the muddy,
+brawling flood of the city street and swept along to work which had
+always made him uneasy and suspicious of it?</p>
+<p>"There's the whistle," said Paul, holding up a finger. "Father
+has the first one blown at half-past six, so's the men can have
+time to get their things ready and start; and not have to
+hurry."</p>
+<p>At this a faint stirring of interest in what the child was
+saying broke through the golden haze of the day-dream in which Mr.
+Welles was walking. "Where do they come from anyhow, the men who
+work in your father's mill?" he asked. "Where do they live? There
+are so few homes at Crittenden's."</p>
+<p>"Oh, they live mostly over the hill in the village, in Ashley.
+There are lots of old houses there, and once in a while now they
+even have to build a new one, since the old ones are all filled up.
+Mr. Bayweather says that before Father and Mother came here to live
+and really run the mill, that Ashley Street was all full of empty
+houses, without a light in them, that the old folks had died out
+of. But now the men have bought them up and live in them. It's just
+as bright, nights! With windows lighted up all over. Father's had
+the electric current run over there from the mill, now, and that
+doesn't cost anything except . . ."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles' curiosity satisfied, he fell back into his old
+shimmer of content and walked along, hearing Paul's voice only as
+one of the morning sounds of the newly awakened world.</p>
+<p>Presently he was summoned out of this day-dream by a tug at his
+hand. Paul gave out the word of command, "We turn here, so's to get
+into the men's short-cut."</p>
+<p>This proved to be a hard-trodden path, lying like a loosely
+thrown-down string, over the hill pasture-land which cut Ashley
+village off from Crittenden's mill. It was to get around this rough
+tract that the road had to make so long a detour.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I see," said Mr. Welles. "I'd been thinking that it must
+bother them a lot to come the two miles along the road from the
+village."</p>
+<p>"Sure," said Paul. "Only the ones that have got Fords come that
+way. This is ever so much shorter. Those that step along fast can
+make it easy in twelve or fifteen minutes. There they come now, the
+first of them." He nodded backward along the path where a distant
+dark line of men came treading swiftly and steadily forward, tin
+pails glistening in their hands.</p>
+<p>"Some of those in that first bunch are really choppers by
+rights," Paul diagnosed them with a practised eye, "but of course
+nobody does much chopping come warmer weather. But Father never
+lays off any men unless they want to be. He fixes some jobs for
+them in the lumber-yard or in the mill, so they live here all the
+year around, same's the regular hands."</p>
+<p>The two stood still now, watching the men as their long,
+powerful strides brought them rapidly nearer. Back of them the sun
+rose up splendid in the sparkling, dustless mountain air. The
+pasture grass on either side of the sinuous path lay shining in the
+dew. Before them the path led through a grove of slim, white
+birches, tremulous in a pale cloud of light green.</p>
+<p>"Well, they've got a pretty good way to get to their work, all
+right," commented Mr. Welles.</p>
+<p>"Yep, pretty good," agreed Paul. "It's got tramped down so it's
+quite smooth."</p>
+<p>A detachment of the file of tall, strongly built, roughly
+dressed men had now reached them, and with friendly, careless nods
+and greetings to Paul, they swung by, smoking, whistling, calling
+out random remarks and jokes back and forth along the line.</p>
+<p>"Hello, Frank. Hello, Mike. Hello, Harry. Hello, Jom-bastiste.
+Hello, Jim." Paul made answer to their repeated, familiar, "Hello,
+Paul."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Mr. Welles drew back humbly from out their path. These were men,
+useful to the world, strong for labor. He must needs stand back
+with the child.</p>
+<p>With entire unexpectedness, he felt a wistful envy of those men,
+still valid, still fit for something. For a moment it did not seem
+as sweet as he had thought it would always be, to feel himself old,
+old and useless.</p>
+<div class='center'><br />
+<b>II</b><br />
+<br />
+April 12.
+<br /></div>
+<p>He was impatient to be at the real work of gardening and one
+morning applied seriously to Mrs. Crittenden to be set at work.
+Surely this must be late enough, even in this "suburb of the North
+Pole," as Vincent called Vermont. Well, yes, Mrs. Crittenden
+conceded to him, stopping her rapid manipulation of an oiled mop on
+the floor of her living-room, if he was in such a hurry, he could
+start getting the ground ready for the sweet peas. It wouldn't do
+any harm to plant them now, though it might not do any good either;
+and he mustn't be surprised to find occasional chunks of earth
+still frozen. She would be over in a little while to show him about
+it. Let him get his pick-mattock, spade, and rake ready, up by the
+corner of his stone wall.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>He was waiting there, ten minutes later, the new implements
+(bought at Mrs. Crittenden's direction days and days ago) leaning
+against the wall. The sun was strong and sweet on his bared white
+head, the cool earth alive under his feet, freed from the tension
+of frost which had held it like stone when he had first trod his
+garden. He leaned against the stone wall, laid a century ago by who
+knew what other gardener, and looked down respectfully at the strip
+of ground along the stones. There it lay, blank and brown, shabby
+with the litter of broken, sodden stems of last year's weeds, and
+unsightly with half-rotten lumps of manure. And that would feed and
+nourish . . .</p>
+<p>For an instant there stood there before his flower-loving eyes
+the joyful tangle of fresh green vines, the pearly many-colored
+flesh of the petals, their cunning, involved symmetry of
+form&mdash;all sprung from a handful of wrinkled yellow seeds and
+that ugly mixture of powdered stone and rotten decay.</p>
+<p>It was a wonderful business, he thought.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Crittenden emerged from her house now, in a short skirt,
+rough heavy shoes, and old flannel shirt. She looked, he thought,
+ever so trig and energetic and nice; but suddenly aware that
+Vincent was gazing idly out of an upper window at them, he guessed
+that the other man would not admire the costume. Vincent was so
+terribly particular about how ladies dressed, he thought to
+himself, as he moved forward, mattock in hand.</p>
+<p>"I'm ashamed to show you how dumb I am about the use of these
+tools," he told her, laughing shamefacedly. "I don't suppose you'll
+believe me, but honestly I never had a pick-mattock in my hand till
+I went down to the store to buy one. I might as well go the whole
+hog and confess I'd never even heard of one till you told me to get
+it. Is this the way you use it?" He jabbed ineffectually at the
+earth with the mattock, using a short tight blow with a half-arm
+movement. The tool jarred itself half an inch into the ground and
+was almost twisted out of his hand.</p>
+<p>"No, not quite," she said, taking the heavy tool out of his
+hand. If she were aware of the idle figure at the upper window, she
+gave no sign of it. She laid her strong, long, flexible hands on
+the handle, saying, "So, you hold it this way. Then you swing it
+up, back of your head. There's a sort of knack to that. You'll soon
+catch it. And then, if the ground isn't very hard, you don't need
+to use any strength at all on the downward stroke. Let Old Mother
+Gravity do the work. If you aim it right, its own weight is enough
+for ordinary garden soil, that's not in sod. Now watch."</p>
+<p>She swung the heavy tool up, shining in the bright air, all her
+tall, supple body drawn up by the swing of her arms, cried out,
+"See, now I relax and just let it fall," and bending with the
+downward rush of the blade, drove it deep into the brown earth. A
+forward thrust of the long handle ("See, you use it like a lever,"
+she explained), a small earthquake in the soil, and the tool was
+free for another stroke.</p>
+<p>At her feet was a pool of freshly stirred fragments of earth,
+loose, friable, and moist, from which there rose in a gust of the
+spring breeze, an odor unknown to the old man and thrilling.</p>
+<p>He stooped down, thrust his hand into the open breast of earth,
+and took up a handful of the soil which had lain locked in frost
+for half a year and was now free for life again. Over it his eyes
+met those of the beautiful woman beside him.</p>
+<p>She nodded. "Yes, there's nothing like it, the smell of the
+first earth stirred every spring."</p>
+<p>He told her, wistfully, "It's the very first stirred in all my
+life."</p>
+<p>They had both lowered their voices instinctively, seeing Vincent
+emerge from the house-door and saunter towards them immaculate in a
+gray suit. Mr. Welles was not at all glad to see him at this
+moment. "Here, let me have the mattock," he said, taking it out of
+Mrs. Crittenden's hands, "I want to try it myself."</p>
+<p>He felt an anticipatory impatience of Vincent's everlasting
+talk, to which Mrs. Crittenden always had, of course, to give a
+polite attention; and imitating as well as he could, the free,
+upward swing of his neighbor, he began working off his impatience
+on the unresisting earth. But he could not help hearing that, just
+as he expected, Vincent plunged at once into his queer, abrupt
+talk. He always seemed to think he was going right on with
+something that had been said before, but really, for the most part,
+as far as Mr. Welles could see, what he said had nothing to do with
+anything. Mrs. Crittenden must really be a very smart woman, he
+reflected, to seem to know what he meant, and always to have an
+answer ready.</p>
+<p>Vincent, shaking his head, and looking hard at Mrs. Crittenden's
+rough clothes and the handful of earth in her fingers, said with an
+air of enforced patience with obvious unreasonableness, "You're on
+the wrong track, you know. You're just all off. Of course with you
+it can't be pose as it looks when other people do it. It must be
+simply muddle-headed thinking."</p>
+<p>He added, very seriously, "You infuriate me."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles, pecking feebly at the ground, the heavy mattock
+apparently invested with a malicious life of its own, twisting
+perversely, heavily lop-sided in his hands, thought that this did
+not sound like a polite thing to say to a lady. And yet the way
+Vincent said it made it sound like a compliment, somehow. No, not
+that; but as though it were awfully important to him what Mrs.
+Crittenden did. Perhaps that counted as a compliment.</p>
+<p>He caught only a part of Mrs. Crittenden's answer, which she
+gave, lightly laughing, as though she did not wish to admit that
+Vincent could be so serious as he sounded. The only part he really
+heard was when she ended, ". . . oh, if we are ever going to
+succeed in forcing order on the natural disorder of the world, it's
+going to take everybody's shoulder to the wheel. Women can't stay
+ornamental and leisurely, and elegant, nor even always nice to look
+at."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles, amazed at the straining effort he needed to put
+forth to manage that swing which Mrs. Crittenden did so easily,
+took less than his usual small interest in the line of talk which
+Vincent was so fond of springing on their neighbor. He heard him
+say, with his air of always stating a foregone conclusion,
+something so admitted that it needed no emphasis, "It's
+Haroldbellwrightism, pure and simple, to imagine that anything you
+can ever do, that anybody can ever do, will help bring about the
+kind of order <i>you're</i> talking about, order for everybody. The
+only kind of order there ever will be, is what you get when you
+grab a little of what you want out of the chaos, for your own self,
+while there's still time, and hold on to it. That's the only way to
+get anywhere for yourself. And as for doing something for other
+people, the only satisfaction you can give anybody is in
+beauty."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles swam out of the breakers into clear water. Suddenly
+he caught the knack of the upward swing, and had the immense
+satisfaction of bringing the mattock down squarely, buried to the
+head in the earth.</p>
+<p>"There!" he said proudly to Mrs. Crittenden, "how's that for
+fine?"</p>
+<p>He looked up at her, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He
+wondered for an instant if she really looked troubled, or if he
+only imagined it. There was no doubt about how Vincent looked, as
+though he thought Mr. Welles, exulting over a blow with a mattock,
+an old imbecile in his dotage.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles never cared very much whether he seemed to Vincent
+like an old imbecile or not, and certainly less than nothing about
+it today, intoxicated as he was with the air, the sun, and his new
+mastery over the soil. He set his hands lovingly to the tool and
+again and again swung it high over his head, while Vincent and Mrs.
+Crittenden strolled away, still talking. . . . "Doesn't it depend
+on what you mean by 'beauty'?" Mrs. Crittenden was saying.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<h3>THE NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS</h3>
+<div class='center'><i>An Evening in the Life of Mrs. Neale
+Crittenden</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+April 20.
+<br /></div>
+<p>Nowadays she so seldom spoke or acted without knowing perfectly
+well what she was about, that Marise startled herself almost as
+much as her callers by turning over that leaf in the photograph
+album quickly and saying with abruptness, "No, never mind about
+that one. It's nothing interesting."</p>
+<p>Of course this brought out from Paul and little Mark, hanging
+over her shoulder and knee, the to-be-expected shouts of, "Oh,
+let's see it! What is it?"</p>
+<p>Marise perceived that they scented something fine and exciting
+such as Mother was always trying to keep from them, like one man
+choking another over the edge of a cliff, or a woman lying on her
+back with the blood all running from her throat. Whenever pictures
+like that were in any of the magazines that came into the house,
+Marise took them away from the little boys, although she knew
+helplessly that this naturally made them extremely keen not to miss
+any chance to catch a glimpse of such a one. She could see that
+they thought it queer, there being anything so exciting in this old
+album of dull snapshots and geographical picture-postcards of
+places and churches and ruins and things that Father and Mother had
+seen, so long ago. But you never could tell. The way Mother had
+spoken, the sound of her voice, the way she had flapped down the
+page quick, the little boys' practised ears and eyes had identified
+all that to a certainty with the actions that accompanied pictures
+she didn't want them to see. So, of course, they clamored, "Oh
+<i>yes</i>, Mother, just one look!"</p>
+<p>Elly as usual said nothing, looking up into Mother's face.
+Marise was extremely annoyed. She was glad that Elly was the only
+one who was looking at her, because, of course, dear old Mr.
+Welles' unobservant eyes didn't count. She was glad that Mr. Marsh
+kept his gaze downward on the photograph marked "Rome from the
+Pincian Gardens," although through the top of his dark,
+close-cropped head she could fairly feel the racing, inquiring
+speculations whirling about. Nor had she any right to resent that.
+She supposed people had a right to what went on in their own heads,
+so long as they kept it to themselves. And it had been unexpectedly
+delicate and fine, the way he had come to understand, without a
+syllable spoken on either side, that that piercing look of his made
+her uneasy; and how he had promised her, wordlessly always, to bend
+it on her no more.</p>
+<p><i>Why</i> in the world had it made her uneasy, and why, a
+thousand times why, had she felt this sudden unwillingness to look
+at the perfectly commonplace photograph, in this company? Something
+had burst up from the subconscious and flashed its way into action,
+moving her tongue to speak and her hand to action before she had
+the faintest idea it was there . . . like an action of youth! And
+see what a silly position it had put her in!</p>
+<p>The little boys had succeeded with the inspired tactlessness of
+children in emphasizing and exaggerating what she had wished could
+be passed over unnoticed, a gesture of hers as inexplicable to her
+as to them. Oh well, the best thing, of course, was to carry it off
+matter-of-factly, turn the leaf back, and <i>let</i> them see it.
+And then refute them by insisting on the literal truth of what she
+had said.</p>
+<p>"There!" she said carelessly; "look at it then."</p>
+<p>The little boys bent their eager faces over it. Paul read out
+the title as he had been doing for the other photographs, "'View of
+the Campagna from the top of the cable-railway at Rocca di Papa.
+Rome in the distance.'"</p>
+<p>She had to sustain, for an instant, an astonished and
+disconcerted look from all those eyes. It made her quite genuinely
+break into a laugh. It was really a joke on them. She said to the
+little boys mischievously, "What did Mother say? Do you find it
+very interesting?"</p>
+<p>Paul and Mark stared hard at the very dull photograph of a cliff
+and a plain and not even a single person or donkey in it, and gave
+up the riddle. Mother certainly <i>had</i> spoken to them in that
+hide-it-away-from-the-children voice, and yet there was nothing
+there.</p>
+<p>Marise knew that they felt somehow that Mother had unfairly
+slipped out between their fingers, as grown-ups are always doing.
+Well, it wasn't fair. She hated taking advantage of them like that.
+It was a sort of sin against their awakening capacity to put two
+and two together and make a human total, and understand what went
+on about them.</p>
+<p>But it hadn't been against <i>their</i> capacity to put two and
+two together that she had instinctively thrown up that warding-off
+arm, which hadn't at all warded off attention, but rather drawn it
+hard and scrutinizing, in spite of those down-dropped sharp eyes.
+Well, there was no sum he could do with only two, and slight
+probability he would ever get the other two to put with it . . .
+whatever the other two might be.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles' pleasant old voice said, "It's a very pretty
+picture, I'm sure. They certainly have very fine views about the
+Eternal City. I envy you your acquaintance with all those historic
+spots. What is the next one?"</p>
+<p>Dear old Mr. Welles! What a restful presence! How unutterably
+sweet and uncomplicated life could be with a good big dose of
+simplicity holding everything in a clear solution, so that it never
+occurred to you that what things seemed was very different from
+what they were.</p>
+<p>"Ready to turn over, dears?" she asked the little boys. This
+time she was in her usual control of the machine, regulated what
+she did from the first motion to the last, made her voice casual
+but not elaborately so, and put one arm around Mark's slim little
+shoulder with just the right degree of uninterest in those old and
+faded photographs.</p>
+<p>Very deep down, at the edge of consciousness, something asked
+her, "Why did you try to hide that photograph?"</p>
+<p>She could not answer this question. She didn't know why, any
+more than the little boys did. And it wouldn't do now, with the
+need to be mistress-of-the-house till a call ended, to stop to try
+to think it out. Later on, tonight, after the children were in bed,
+when she was brushing her hair . . . oh, probably she'd find as you
+so often did, when you went after the cause of some unexpected
+little feeling, that it came from a meaningless fortuitous
+association of ideas, like Elly's hatred of grape-jelly because she
+had once taken some bitter medicine in it.</p>
+<p>"'View of the Roman Aqueduct, taken from the tramway line to
+Tivoli,'" read out Paul.</p>
+<p>"Very pretty view," said Mr. Welles.</p>
+<p>Mr. Marsh's silences were as abysmal as his speech was
+Niagara-like on occasion. He said nothing.</p>
+<p>Elly stirred and looked toward the doorway. Toucl&eacute; stood
+there, her shoe-button eyes not blinking in the lamp-light although
+she probably had been sitting on the steps of the kitchen, looking
+out into the darkness, in the long, motionless vigil which made up
+Toucl&eacute;'s evenings. As they all turned their faces towards
+her, she said, "The cereus is going to bloom tonight," and
+disappeared.</p>
+<p>Marise welcomed this diversion. Ever since that absurd little
+gesture about the photograph, she had felt thickening about her . .
+. what? What you call "depression" (whatever that meant), the dull
+hooded apparition that came blackly and laid its leaden hand on
+your heart. This news was just the thing. It would change what was
+threatening to stand stagnant and charge it with fresh running
+currents. She got up briskly to her feet.</p>
+<p>"Come on, children," she said. "I'll let you sit up beyond
+bed-time tonight. Scatter quick, and put on your things. We'll all
+go down the road to the Powers house and see the cereus in
+bloom."</p>
+<p>The children ducked quickly out of the room, thudding along
+softly in their felt slippers. Scramblings, chatterings, and
+stamping sounded back from the front hall, as they put on their
+boots and wraps.</p>
+<p>"Wouldn't you like to come, too?" she asked the men, rescuing
+them from the rather high-and-dry position in which this unexpected
+incident had left them. It was plainly, from their faces, as
+inexplicable as unexpected. She explained, drawing a long, plain,
+black silk scarf closely about her head and shoulders, "Why, yes,
+do come. It's an occasion as uniquely Ashleyian as pelota is
+Basque. You, Mr. Marsh, with your exhaustive inquiries into the
+habits and manners of Vermont mountaineers, your data won't be
+complete unless you've seen Nelly Powers' night-blooming cereus in
+its one hour of glory. Seriously, I assure you, you won't encounter
+anything like it, anywhere else."</p>
+<p>As Marsh looked at her, she noted with an inward amusement that
+her words had lighted a smouldering glow of carefully repressed
+exasperation in his eyes. It made her feel quite gay and young to
+be teasing somebody again. She was only paying him back in his own
+coin. He himself was always telling everybody about his deep
+interest in the curious quaint ways of these mountaineers. And if
+he didn't have a deep interest in their curious quaint ways, what
+else could he give as a reason for staying on in the valley?</p>
+<p>The men turned away to get their hats. She settled the folds of
+her heavy black silk mantilla more closely about her head, glancing
+at herself in the mirror. She smiled back with sympathy at the
+smiling face she saw there. It was not so often since the war that
+she saw her own face lighted with mirth.</p>
+<p>Gravely, something deep on the edge of the unconscious called up
+to her, "You are talking and feeling like a coquette."</p>
+<p>She was indignant at this, up in arms to defend human freedom.
+"Oh, what a hateful, little-villagey, prudish, nasty-minded idea!"
+she cried to herself. "Who would have thought that narrowness and
+priggishness could rub off on a person's mind like that! Mrs.
+Bayweather could have thought that! Mercy! As if one civilized
+being can't indulge in a light touch or two in human intercourse
+with another!"</p>
+<p>The two men were ready now and all the party of six jostled each
+other cheerfully as they went out of the front door. Paul had
+secured the hand of old Mr. Welles and led him along with an air of
+proprietary affection.</p>
+<p>"Don't you turn out the lamp, or lock the door, or
+<i>any</i>thing?" asked the old man, now.</p>
+<p>"Oh no, we won't be gone long. It's not more than half a mile to
+the Powers'. There's not a soul in the valley who would think of
+going in and rummaging . . . let alone taking anything. And we
+never have tramps. We are too far from the railroad," said
+Marise.</p>
+<p>"<i>Well!</i>" exclaimed the other, looking back as they went
+down the path, "it certainly looks queer to me, the door standing
+open into this black night, and the light shining in that empty
+room."</p>
+<p>Elly looked back too. She slipped her hand out of her mother's
+and ran towards the house. She darted up to the door and stood
+there, poised like a swallow, looking in.</p>
+<p>"What does she want?" asked Mr. Welles with the na&iuml;ve
+conviction of the elderly bachelor that the mother must know
+everything in the child's mind.</p>
+<p>"I don't know," admitted Marise. "Nobody ever knows exactly what
+is in Elly's mind when she does things. Maybe she is looking to see
+that her kitten is safe."</p>
+<p>The little girl ran back to them.</p>
+<p>"What did you want, dear?" asked her mother.</p>
+<p>"I just wanted to look at it again," said Elly. "I <i>like</i>
+it, like that, all quiet, with nobody in it. The furniture looks as
+though it were having a good rest from us."</p>
+<p>"Oh, listen to the frogs!" screamed Mark, out of the darkness
+where he had run to join Toucl&eacute;.</p>
+<p>Elly and Paul sprang forward to join their little brother.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>"What in the world are we going to see?" asked Marsh. "You
+forget you haven't given us the least idea."</p>
+<p>"You are going to see," Marise set herself to amuse them,
+"you're going to see a rite of the worship of beauty which Ashley,
+Vermont, has created out of its own inner consciousness."</p>
+<p>She had succeeded in amusing at least one of them, for at this
+Mr. Marsh gave her the not disagreeable shock of that singular,
+loud laugh of his. It was in conversation like something-or-other
+in the orchestra . . . the cymbals, that must be it . . . made you
+jump, and tingle with answering vibrations.</p>
+<p>"Ashleyians in the r&ocirc;le of worshipers of beauty!" he
+cried, out of the soft, moist, dense darkness about them.</p>
+<p>"None so blind as those who won't see," she persisted. "Just
+because they go to it in overalls and gingham aprons, instead of
+peplums and sandals."</p>
+<p>"What <i>is</i> a night-blooming cereal?" asked Mr. Welles,
+patient of the verbose by-play of his companions that never got
+anybody anywhere.</p>
+<p>What an old dear Mr. Welles was! thought Marise. It was like
+having the sweetest old uncle bestowed on you as a pendant to dear
+Cousin Hetty.</p>
+<p>". . . -eus, not -eal," murmured Marsh; "not that I know any
+more than you what it is."</p>
+<p>Marise felt suddenly wrought upon by the mildness of the spring
+air, the high, tuneful shrillness of the frogs' voices, the
+darkness, sweet and thick. She would not amuse them; no, she would
+really tell them, move them. She chose the deeper intonations of
+her voice, she selected her words with care, she played upon her
+own feeling, quickening it into genuine emotion as she spoke. She
+would make them feel it too.</p>
+<p>"It is a plant of the cactus family, as native to America as is
+Ashley's peculiar sense of beauty which you won't acknowledge. It
+is as ugly to look at, the plant is, all spines and thick,
+graceless, fleshy pads; as ugly as Ashley life looks to you. And
+this crabbed, ungainly plant-creature is faithfully, religiously
+tended all the year around by the wife of a farmer, because once a
+year, just once, it puts forth a wonderful exotic flower of extreme
+beauty. When the bud begins to show its color she sends out word to
+all her neighbors to be ready. And we are all ready. For days, in
+the back of our minds as we go about our dull, routine life, there
+is the thought that the cereus is near to bloom. Nelly and her grim
+husband hang over it day by day, watching it slowly prepare for its
+hour of glory. Sometimes when they cannot decide just the time it
+will open, they sit up all through a long night, hour after hour of
+darkness and silence, to make sure that it does not bloom unseen.
+When they see that it is about to open, they fling open their
+doors, wishing above everything else to share that beauty with
+their fellows. Their children are sent to announce, as you heard
+Toucl&eacute; say tonight, 'The cereus is going to bloom.' And all
+up and down this end of the valley, in those ugly little wooden
+houses that look so mean and dreary to you, everywhere people tired
+from their day's struggle with the earth, rise up and go their
+pilgrimage through the night . . . for what? To see something rare
+and beautiful."</p>
+<p>She stopped speaking. On one side of her she heard the voice of
+the older man say with a quiver, "Well, I can understand why your
+neighbors love you."</p>
+<p>With entire unexpectedness Marsh answered fiercely from the
+other side, "<i>They</i> don't love her! They're not capable of
+it!"</p>
+<p>Marise started, as though a charged electric wire had fallen
+across her arm. Why was there so often a note of anger in his
+voice?</p>
+<p>For a moment they advanced silently, pacing forward, side by
+side, unseen but not unfelt by each of the others.</p>
+<p>The road turned now and they were before the little house, every
+window alight, the great pine somber and high before it. The
+children and Toucl&eacute; were waiting at the door. They all went
+in together, shaking hands with the mistress of the house, neatly
+dressed, with a clean, white flounced apron. "Nelly's garment of
+ceremony!" thought Marise.</p>
+<p>Nelly acknowledged, with a graceful, silent inclination of her
+shining blonde head, the presence of the two strangers whom Marise
+presented to her. What an inscrutable fascination Nelly's silence
+gave to her! You never knew what strange thoughts were going on
+behind that proud taciturnity. She showed the guests to chairs, of
+which a great many, mostly already filled, stood about the center
+table, on which sprawled the great, spiny, unlovely plant. Marise
+sat down, taking little Mark on her knees. Elly leaned against her.
+Paul sat close beside old Mr. Welles. Their eyes were on the big
+pink bud enthroned in the uncomeliness of the shapeless
+leafpads.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" said Elly, under her breath, "it's not open yet! We're
+going to <i>see</i> it open, this time!" She stared at it, her lips
+parted. Her mother looked at her, tenderly aware that the child was
+storing away an impression to last her life long. Dear, strangely
+compounded little Elly, with her mysticism, and her greediness and
+her love of beauty all jumbled together! A neighbor leaned from her
+chair to say to Mrs. Crittenden, "Warm for this time of year, ain't
+it?" And another remarked, looking at Mark's little trousers, "That
+material come out real good, didn't it? I made up what I got of it,
+into a dress for Pearl." They both spoke in low tones, but
+constrained or sepulchral, for they smiled and nodded as though
+they had meant something else and deeper than what they had said.
+They looked with a kindly expression for moment at the Crittenden
+children and then turned back to their gaze on the flower-bud.</p>
+<p>Nelly Powers, walking with a singular lightness for so tall a
+woman, ushered in another group of visitors&mdash;a tall, unshaven
+farmer, his wife, three little children clumping in on shapeless
+cow-hide boots, and a baby, fast asleep, its round bonneted head
+tucked in the hollow of its mother's gingham-clad shoulder. They
+sat down, nodding silent greetings to the other neighbors. In
+turning to salute them, Marise caught a glimpse of Mr. Marsh,
+fixing his brilliant scrutiny first on one and then on another of
+the company. At that moment he was gazing at Nelly Powers, "taking
+her in" thought Marise, from her beautiful hair to those
+preposterously high-heeled shoes she always would wear on her
+shapely feet. His face was impassive. When he looked neutral like
+that, the curious irregularity of his features came out strongly.
+He looked like that bust of Julius Caesar, the bumpy, big-nosed,
+strong-chinned one, all but that thick, closely cut, low-growing
+head of dark hair.</p>
+<p>She glanced at Mr. Welles, and was surprised to find that he was
+looking neither at the people nor the plant. His arm was around his
+favorite Paul, but his gaze seemed turned inward, as though he were
+thinking of something very far away. He looked tired and old, it
+seemed to her, and without that quietly shining aspect of peace
+which she found so touching. Perhaps he was tired. Perhaps she
+ought not to have brought him out, this evening, for that long walk
+over rough country roads. How much older he was than his real age
+in years! His life had used him up. There must have been some inner
+maladjustment in it!</p>
+<p>There was a little stir in the company, a small inarticulate
+sound from Elly. Marise saw everyone's eyes turn to the center of
+the room and looked back to the plant. The big pink bud was
+beginning visibly to swell.</p>
+<p>A silence came into the room. No one coughed, or stirred, or
+scraped a chair-leg. It was as though a sound would have wounded
+the flower. All those human souls bowed themselves. Almost a light
+shone upon them . . . a phrase from Dante came to Marise's mind . .
+. "<i>la mia menta fu percossa da un fulgore</i> . . ."</p>
+<p>With a quick involuntary turn she looked at Marsh, fearing his
+mockery of her, "quoting the <i>Paradiso</i>, about Vermont
+farmers!" as though he could know, for all those sharp eyes of his,
+what was going on hidden in her mind!</p>
+<p>All this came and went in an instant, for she now saw that one
+big, shining petal was slowly, slowly, but quite visibly uncurling
+at the tip. From that moment on, she saw nothing, felt nothing but
+the opening flower, lived only in the incredibly leisurely,
+masterful motion with which the grotesquely shaped protecting
+petals curled themselves back from the center. Their motion was so
+slow that the mind was lost in dreaminess in following it. Had that
+last one moved? No, it stood still, poised breathlessly . . . and
+yet, there before them, revealed, exultant, the starry heart of the
+great flower shimmered in the lamp-light.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Then she realized that she had not breathed. She drew in a great
+marveling aspiration, and heard everyone about her do the same.
+They turned to each other with inarticulate exclamations, shaking
+their heads wonderingly, their lips a little apart as they drew
+long breaths.</p>
+<p>Two very old women, rubbing their age-dimmed eyes, stood up,
+tiptoed to the table, and bent above the miraculously fine texture
+of the flower their worn and wrinkled faces. The petals cast a
+clear, rosy reflection upon their sallow cheeks. Some of the
+younger mothers took their little children over to the table and
+lifting them up till their round shining eyes were on a level with
+the flower, let them gaze their fill at the mysterious splendor of
+stamen and pistil.</p>
+<p>"Would you like to go quite close and look at it, children?"
+Marise asked her own brood.</p>
+<p>The little boys stepped forward at once, curiously, but Elly
+said, "No, oh <i>no!</i>" and backed off till she stood leaning
+against Toucl&eacute;'s knee. The old woman put her dark hand down
+gently on the child's soft hair and smiled at her. How curious it
+was to see that grim, battered old visage smile! Elly was the only
+creature in the world at whom the old Indian ever smiled, indeed
+almost the only thing in the house which those absent old eyes ever
+seemed to see. Marise remembered that Toucl&eacute; had smiled when
+she first took the baby Elly in her arms.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>A little murmur of talk arose now, from the assembled neighbors.
+They stood up, moved about, exchanged a few laconic greetings, and
+began putting their wraps on. Marise remembered that Mr. Welles had
+seemed tired and as soon as possible set her party in motion.</p>
+<p>"Thank you so much, Nelly, for letting us know," she said to the
+farmer's wife, as they came away. "It wouldn't seem like a year in
+our valley if we didn't see your cereus in bloom."</p>
+<p>She took Elly's hand in one of hers, and with Mark on the other
+side walked down the path to the road. The darkness was intense
+there, because of the gigantic pine-tree which towered above the
+little house. "Are you there, Paul?" she called through the
+blackness. The little boy's voice came back, "Yes, with
+Toucl&eacute;, we're ahead." The two men walked behind.</p>
+<p>Elly's hand was hot and clasped her mother's very tightly.
+Marise bent over the little girl and divined in the darkness that
+she was crying. "Why, Elly darling, what's the matter?" she
+asked.</p>
+<p>The child cried out passionately, on a mounting note, "Nothing,
+nothing! <i>Nothing!</i>" She flung her arms around her mother's
+neck, straining her close in a wild embrace. Little Mark, on the
+other side, yawned and staggered sleepily on his feet. Elly gave
+her mother a last kiss, and ran on ahead, calling over her
+shoulder, "I'm going to walk by myself!"</p>
+<p>"<i>Well!</i>" commented the old gentleman.</p>
+<p>Mr. Marsh had not been interested in this episode and had stood
+gazing admiringly up at the huge pine-tree, divining its bulk and
+mass against the black sky.</p>
+<p>"Like Milton's Satan, isn't it?" was his comment as they walked
+on, "with apologies for the triteness of the quotation."</p>
+<p>For a time nothing was said, and then Marsh began, "Now I've
+seen it, your rite of the worship of beauty. And do you know what
+was really there? A handful of dull, insensitive, primitive beings,
+hardened and calloused by manual toil and atrophied imaginations,
+so starved for any variety in their stupefyingly monotonous life
+that they welcome anything, anything at all as a break . . . only
+if they could choose, they would infinitely prefer a two-headed
+calf or a bearded woman to your flower. The only reason they go to
+see that is because it is a curiosity, not because of its beauty,
+because it blooms once a year only, at night, and because there is
+only one of them in town. Also because everybody else goes to see
+it. They go to look at it only because there aren't any movies in
+Ashley, nor anything else. And you know all this just as well as I
+do."</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Welles," Marise appealed to him, "do you think that is
+the truth of the facts?"</p>
+<p>The old man pronounced judgment gently. "Well, I don't know that
+<i>any</i>thing is the truth. I should say that both of you told
+the truth about it. The truth's pretty big for any one person to
+tell. Isn't it all in the way you look at it?" He added, "Only
+personally I think Mrs. Crittenden's the nicest way."</p>
+<p>Marsh was delighted with this. "There! I hope you're satisfied.
+You've been called 'nice.' That ought to please any good
+American."</p>
+<p>"I wonder, Mr. Welles," Marise said in an ostentatiously casual
+tone, "I wonder if Mr. Marsh had been an ancient Greek, and had
+stood watching the procession going up the Acropolis hill, bearing
+the thank-offerings from field and loom and vineyard, what do you
+suppose he would have seen? Dullness and insensitiveness in the
+eyes of those Grecian farmer-lads, no doubt, occupied entirely with
+keeping the oxen in line; a low vulgar stare of bucolic curiosity
+as the country girls, bearing their woven linen, looked up at the
+temple. Don't you suppose he would have thought they managed those
+things a great deal more artistically in Persia?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't know much about the ancient Greeks," said Mr.
+Welles mildly, "but I guess Vincent would have been about the same
+wherever he lived."</p>
+<p>"Who is satisfied with the verdict now?" triumphed Marise.</p>
+<p>But she noticed that Marsh's attack, although she considered
+that she had refuted it rather neatly, had been entirely;
+efficacious in destroying the aura of the evening. Of the genuine
+warmth of feeling which the flower and the people around it had
+roused in her heart, not the faintest trace was left. She had only
+a cool interested certainty that her side had a perfectly valid
+foundation for arguing purposes. Mr. Marsh had accomplished that,
+and more than that, a return from those other centers of feeling to
+her preoccupation with his own personality.</p>
+<p>He now went on, "But I'm glad to have gone. I saw a great deal
+else there than your eccentric plant and the vacancy of mind of
+those sons of toil, cursed, soul-destroying toil. For one thing, I
+saw a woman of very great beauty. And that is always so much
+gained."</p>
+<p>"Oh yes," cried Marise, "that's so. I forgot that you could see
+that. I've grown so used to the fact that people here don't
+understand how splendidly handsome Nelly Powers is. Their taste
+doesn't run to the statuesque, you know. They call that grand
+silent calm of her, stupidness! Ever since 'Gene brought her here
+as a bride, a year after we came to live in Crittenden's, I have
+gone out of my way to look at her. You should see her hanging out
+the clothes on a windy day. One sculptured massive pose after
+another. But even to see her walk across the room and bend that
+shining head is thrilling."</p>
+<p>"I saw something else, too," went on Marsh, a cool voice
+speaking out of the darkness. "I saw that her black, dour husband
+is furiously in love with her and furiously jealous of that tall,
+ruddy fellow with an expressive face, who stood by the door in
+shirt-sleeves and never took his eyes from her."</p>
+<p>Marise was silent, startled by this shouting out of something
+she had preferred not to formulate.</p>
+<p>"Vincent, you see too much," said Mr. Welles resignedly. The
+phrase ran from his tongue as though it were a familiar one.</p>
+<p>Marise said slowly, "I've sometimes thought that Frank Warner
+did go to the Powers' a good deal, but I haven't wanted to think
+anything more."</p>
+<p>"What possible reason in the world have you for not wanting to?"
+asked Marsh with the most authentic accent of vivid and astonished
+curiosity.</p>
+<p>"What reason . . . ?" she repeated blankly.</p>
+<p>He said dispassionately, "I don't like to hear <i>you</i> make
+such a flat, conventional, rubber-stamp comment. Why in the world
+shouldn't she love a fine, ardent, <i>living</i> man, better than
+that knotty, dead branch of a husband? A beautiful woman and a
+living, strong, vital man, they belong together. Whom God hath
+joined . . . Don't try to tell me that your judgment is maimed by
+the Chinese shoes of outworn ideas, such as the binding nature of a
+mediaeval ceremony. That doesn't marry anybody, and you know it. If
+she's really married to her husband, all right. But if she loves
+another man, and knows in her heart that she would live a thousand
+times more fully, more deeply with him . . . why, she's <i>not</i>
+married to her husband, and nothing can make her. You know
+that!"</p>
+<p>Marise sprang at the chance to turn his own weapons of mockery
+against him. "Upon my word, who's idealizing the Yankee mountaineer
+now?" she cried, laughing out as she spoke at the idea of her
+literal-minded neighbors dressed up in those trailing rhetorical
+robes. "I thought you said they were so dull and insensitive they
+could feel nothing but an interest in two-headed calves, and here
+they are, characters in an Italian opera. I only wish Nelly Powers
+were capable of understanding those grand languages of yours and
+then know what she thought of your idea of what's in her mind. And
+as for 'Gene's jealousy, I'll swear that it amounts to no more than
+a vague dislike for Frank Warner's 'all the time hanging around and
+gassin' instead of stickin' to work.' And you forget, in your fine
+modern clean-sweep, a few old-fashioned facts like the existence of
+three Powers children, dependent on their mother."</p>
+<p>"You're just fencing, not really talking," he answered
+imperturbably. "You can't pretend to be sincere in trying to pull
+that antimacassar home-and-mother stuff on me. Ask Bernard Shaw,
+ask Freud, ask Mrs. Gilman, how good it is for children's stronger,
+better selves, to live in the enervating, hot-house concentration
+on them of an unbalanced, undeveloped woman, who has let everything
+else in her personality atrophy except her morbid preoccupation
+with her own offspring. That's really the meaning of what's
+sentimentally called 'mothering.' Probably it would be the best
+thing in the world for the Powers children if their mother ran away
+with that fine broth of a lad."</p>
+<p>"But Nelly loves her children and they love her!" Marise brought
+this out abruptly, impulsively, and felt, as she heard the words,
+that they had a flat, na&iuml;ve sound, out of key with the general
+color of this talk, like a C Major chord introduced into Debussy
+nuances.</p>
+<p>"Not much she doesn't, nor they her. Any honest observer of life
+knows that the only sincere relation possible between the young and
+the old (after the babies are weaned) is hostility. We hated our
+elders, because they got in our way. And they'll hate us as soon as
+they get the strength to, because we'll be in their way. And we
+will hate them because they will want to push us off the scene.
+It's impossible to ignore the gulf. Most human tragedies come from
+trying to pretend it's not there."</p>
+<p>"Why, Mr. Welles," cried Marise again, "what do you say to such
+talk? Don't you find him perfectly preposterous?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles answered a little absently. "Oh, I'm pretty well used
+to him, by now. And all his friends in the city are talking like
+that now. It's the fashion. I'm so old that I've seen a good many
+fashions in talk come and go. I never could see that people
+<i>acted</i> any differently, no matter which way they talk." As he
+finished, he drew a long sigh, which had obviously no connection
+with what he had been saying. With the sigh, came an emanation from
+him of dispirited fatigue. Marise wished she dared draw his hand
+upon her arm and ask him to lean on her as they walked.</p>
+<p>Nothing more was said for a time. Marise lost herself in the
+outdoor wideness of impression that always came to her under a
+night sky, where she felt infinity hovering near. She was aware of
+nothing but the faint voice of the pines, the distant diminuendo of
+the frog's song, the firm elastic quality of the ground under her
+feet, so different from the iron rigidity of the winter earth, and
+the cool soft pressure of the night-air on her cheeks, when, like
+something thrust into her mind from the outside, there rose into
+her consciousness, articulate and complete, the reason why she had
+shrunk from looking at the photograph of Rocca di Papa. It was
+because it was painful to her, intimately painful and humiliating
+to remember how she and Neale had felt there, the wild, high things
+they had said to each other, that astounding flood of feeling which
+had swept them away at the last. What had become of all that? Where
+now was that high tide?</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Of course she loved Neale, and he loved her; there was nobody
+like Neale, yes, all that; but oh! the living flood had been
+ebbing, ebbing out of their hearts. They were not <i>alive</i> as
+they had been alive when they had clung to each other, there on
+that age-old rock, and felt the tide of all the ages lift them
+high.</p>
+<p>It must have been ebbing for a long time before she realized it
+because, hurried, absorbed, surrounded incessantly by small cares
+as she was, hustled and jostled in her r&ocirc;le of mother and
+mistress-of-the-house in servantless America, with the primitive
+American need to do so much with her own hands, she had not even
+had the time to know the stupid, tragic thing that was happening to
+her . . . that she was turning into a slow, vegetating plant
+instead of a human being. And now she understood the meaning of the
+strange dejection she had felt the day when little Mark went off to
+school with the others. How curiously jaded and apprehensive she
+had felt that morning, and when she had gone downstairs to see the
+callers who arrived that day. That was the first time she had
+<i>felt</i> that the tide was ebbing.</p>
+<p>All this went through her mind with the cruel swiftness of a
+sword-flash. And the first reaction to it, involuntary and reflex,
+was to crush it instantly down, lest the man walking at her side
+should be aware of it. It had come to her with such loud precision
+that it seemed it must have been audible.</p>
+<p>As she found herself still on the dark country road, cloaked and
+protected by the blackness of the starless night, she was struck
+with wonder, as though she had never thought of it before, at the
+human body, its opaque, inscrutable mystery, the locked, sealed
+strong-box of unimaginable secrets which it is. There they were,
+the three of them, stepping side by side, brushing each other as
+they moved; and as remote from each other as though they were on
+different stars. What were the thoughts, powerful, complex, under
+perfect control, which were being marshaled in that round, dark
+head? She felt a little afraid to think; and turned from the idea
+to the other man with relief. She knew (she told herself) as though
+she saw inside, the tired, gentle, simple, wistful thoughts that
+filled the white head on her other side.</p>
+<p>With this, they were again at the house, where the children and
+Toucl&eacute; had preceded them. Paul was laughing and saying,
+"Elly's the looniest kid! She's just been saying that Father is
+like . . ." Elly, in a panic, sprang up at him, clapping her hand
+over his mouth, crying out, "No, Paul, you shan't tell!
+<i>Don't!</i>"</p>
+<p>The older, stronger child pulled himself away and, holding her
+at arm's length, continued, "She said Father was like the end of
+her hair that's fastened into her head, and Mother was the end that
+flaps in the wind, and Mr. Marsh was like the Eagle Rock brook,
+swirly and hurrying the way it is in the spring."</p>
+<p>Elly, half crying, came to her mother. "Mother, it's
+nasty-horrid in Paul to tell when I didn't want him to."</p>
+<p>Marise began taking off the little girl's coat. "It wasn't very
+kind in Paul, but there was nothing in those funny little fancies
+to hide, dear."</p>
+<p>"I didn't care about you and Father!" explained the child. "Only
+. . ." She looked at Mr. Marsh from under downbent brows.</p>
+<p>"Why, Elly, I am very much complimented, I'm sure," Marsh
+hastened to tell her, "to be compared with such a remarkably nice
+thing as a brook in spring-time. I didn't suppose any young lady
+would ever have such a poetic idea about me."</p>
+<p>"Oh . . ." breathed Elly, relieved, "well . . ."</p>
+<p>"Do you suppose you little folks can get yourselves to bed
+without me?" asked Marise. "If one of you big children will
+unbutton Mark in the back, he can manage the rest. I must set a
+bread-sponge before I go upstairs."</p>
+<p>They clung to her imploringly. "But you'll be upstairs in time
+to kiss us good-night in our beds," begged Elly and Mark together.
+Paul also visibly hung on his mother's answer.</p>
+<p>Marise looked down into their clear eyes and eager faces,
+reaching out to her ardently, and she felt her heart melt. What
+darlings they were! What inestimable treasures! How sweet to be
+loved like that!</p>
+<p>She stooped over them and gathered them all into a great armful,
+kissing them indiscriminately. "Yes, of course, I will . . . and
+give you an extra kiss now!" she cried.</p>
+<p>She felt Marsh's eyes on her, sardonically.</p>
+<p>She straightened herself, saying with affectionate roughness,
+"There, that's enough. Scamper along with you. And don't run around
+with bare feet!"</p>
+<p>She thought to herself that she supposed this was the sort of
+thing Marsh meant when he spoke about hot-house enervating
+concentration. She had been more stung by that remark of his than
+she had been willing to acknowledge to Marsh or to herself.</p>
+<p>But for the moment, any further reflection on it was cut short
+by the aspect of Mr. Welles' face. He had sunk into a chair near
+the lamp, with an attitude and an expression of such weariness,
+that Marise moved quickly to him. "See here, Mr. Welles," she said
+impulsively, "you have something on your mind, and I've got the
+mother-habit so fastened on me that I can't be discreet and pretend
+not to notice it. I want to make you say what the trouble is, and
+then flu it right, just as I would for one of mine."</p>
+<p>The old man looked up at her gratefully and reaching out one of
+his wrinkled hands took hers in it. "It does me good to have you so
+nice to me," he said, "but I'm afraid even you can't fix it right.
+I've had a rather distressing letter today, and I can't seem to get
+it out of my mind."</p>
+<p>"Schwatzkummerer can't send the gladioli," conjectured
+Marsh.</p>
+<p>For the first time since he had entered the house, Marise felt a
+passing dislike for him. She had often felt him to be hard and
+ruthless, but she had never seen anything cheap in him, before, she
+thought.</p>
+<p>"What was your letter?" she asked the older man.</p>
+<p>"Oh, nothing in the least remarkable, nothing new," he said
+heavily. "I've got a cousin whom I haven't seen since she was a
+little little girl, though she must be somewhere near my age, now.
+She has been a teacher in a school for Negroes, down in Georgia,
+for years, most of her life. But I had sort of lost track of her,
+till I had to send her some little family trinkets that were left
+after my old aunt died. Her letter, that I received today, is in
+answer to that. And while she was writing, she gave me her news,
+and told me a good deal about conditions down there. Pretty bad, I
+should think it, pretty bad."</p>
+<p>A little spasm crossed his face. He shook his head, as though to
+shake off a clinging filament of importunate thought.</p>
+<p>"What's the trouble? Do they need money, the school?" asked
+Marise with a vague idea of getting up a contribution.</p>
+<p>"No, my cousin didn't say anything about that. It's not so
+simple. It's the way the Negroes are treated. No, not lynchings, I
+knew about them. But I knew they don't happen every day. What I
+hadn't any idea of, till her letter came, was how every day, every
+minute of every day, they're subject to indignity that they can't
+avoid, how they're made to feel themselves outsiders and unwelcome
+in their own country. She says the Southern white people are
+willing to give them anything that will make good day-laborers of
+them, almost anything in fact except the thing they can't rise
+without, ordinary human respect. It made a very painful impression
+on my mind, her letter, very. She gave such instances. I haven't
+been able to get it out of my mind. For instance, one of the small
+things she told me . . . it seems incredible . . . is that Southern
+white people won't give the ordinary title of respect of Mr. or
+Mrs. or Dr. even to a highly educated Negro. They call them by
+their first names, like servants. Think what an hourly pin-prick of
+insult that must be. Ever since her letter came, I've been thinking
+about it, the things she told me, about what happens when they try
+to raise themselves and refine themselves, how they're made to
+suffer intimately for trying to be what I thought we all wanted all
+Americans to be." He looked at Marise with troubled eyes. "I've
+been thinking how it would feel to be a Negro myself. What a
+different life would be in front of your little Elly if she had
+Negro blood!"</p>
+<p>Marise had listened to him in profound silence. Sheer, unmixed
+astonishment filled her mind, up to the brim. Of all the totally
+unexpected things for Mr. Welles to get wrought up about!</p>
+<p>She drew a long breath. How eternally disconcerting human beings
+are! There she had been so fatuously sure, out there on the walk
+home, that she knew exactly what was in that old white head. And
+all the time it had been this. Who could have made the faintest
+guess at that? It occurred to her for the first time that possibly
+more went on under Mr. Welles' gently fatigued exterior than she
+thought.</p>
+<p>She found not a word to say, so violent and abrupt was the
+transition of subject. It was as though she had been gazing down
+through a powerful magnifying glass, trying to untangle with her
+eyes a complicated twist of moral fibers, inextricably bound up
+with each other, the moral fibers that made up her life . . . and
+in the midst of this, someone had roughly shouted in her ear, "Look
+up there, at that distant cliff. There's a rock on it, all ready to
+fall off!"</p>
+<p>She could not be expected all of a sudden, that way, to re-focus
+her eyes. And the rock was so far away. And she had such a dim
+sense of the people who might be endangered by it. And the
+confusion here, under the microscope of her attention, was so vital
+and immediate, needing to be understood and straightened before she
+could go on with her life.</p>
+<p>She looked at the old man in an astonishment which she knew must
+seem fairly stupid to him, but she could not bring out anything
+else. What was it to her, whether a Negro physician was called Dr.
+or "Jo"?</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles patted her hand, released it, smiled at her kindly,
+and stood up. "I'm pretty tired. I guess we'd better be getting
+along home, Vincent and I."</p>
+<p>"Well, I should say we <i>would</i> better be getting along home
+to bed!" agreed the other man, coming forward and slipping his arm
+under the older man's. "I'll tuck you up, my old friend, with a
+good hot toddy inside you, and let you sleep off this outrageously
+crazy daylight nightmare you've cooked up for yourself. And don't
+wake up with the fate of the Japanese factory-hand sitting on your
+chest, or you'll get hard to live with."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles answered this with literal good faith. "Oh, the
+Japanese factory-hands, they're not on the conscience of
+Americans."</p>
+<p>"But, when I see an aged and harmless inhabitant of Ashley,
+Vermont, stretching his poor old protesting conscience till it
+cracks, to make it reach clear down to the Georgia Negroes, how do
+I know where he's going to stop?"</p>
+<p>The old man turned to their hostess. "Well, good-night, Mrs.
+Crittenden. I enjoyed seeing that wonderful flower very much. I
+wonder if I could grow one like it? It would be something to look
+forward to, to have the flower open in your own house."</p>
+<p>To Marise he looked so sweet and good, and like a tired old
+child, that she longed to kiss him good-night, as she had her own.
+But even as she felt the impulse, she had again a startled sense of
+how much more goes on under the human surface than ever appears.
+Evidently Mr. Welles, too, was a locked and sealed strong-box of
+secrets.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>In the doorway Marsh stopped abruptly and said, looking at the
+dense, lustreless black silk wrap about Marise's head and
+shoulders, "What's that thing? I meant to ask you when you put it
+on."</p>
+<p>She felt as she often did when he spoke to her, as startled as
+though he had touched her. What an extraordinarily living presence
+he was, so that a word from him was almost like an actual personal
+contact. But she took care not to show this. She looked down
+casually at the soft, opaque folds of her wrap. "Oh, this is a
+thousand years old. It dates from the Bayonne days. It's Basque.
+It's their variation, I imagine, on the Spanish mantilla. They
+never wear hats, the Basque women. The little girls, when they have
+made their first communion, wear a scarf of light net, or open
+transparent lace. And when they marry they wear this. It's made of
+a special sort of silk, woven just for this purpose. As far away as
+you can see a woman in the Basque country, if she wears this, you
+know she's married."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you do, do you?" said Marsh, going out after his
+companion.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>They were very far from the Negroes in Georgia.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>WHAT GOES ON INSIDE</h3>
+<div class='center'><i>Half an Hour in the Life of a Modern
+Woman</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+May 8.</div>
+<p>Marise looked at the clock. They all three looked at the clock.
+On school mornings the clock dominated their every instant. Marise
+often thought that the swinging of its great pendulum was as
+threatening as the Pendulum that swung in the Pit. Back and forth,
+back and forth, bringing nearer and nearer the knife-edge of its
+dire threat that nine o'clock would come and the children not be in
+school. Somehow they must all manage to break the bonds that held
+them there and escape from the death-trap before the fatal swinging
+menace reached them. The stroke of nine, booming out in that house,
+would be like the Crack o' Doom to the children.</p>
+<p>Marise told Paul not to eat so fast, and said to Elly, who was
+finishing her lessons and her breakfast together, "I let you do
+this, this one time, Elly, but I don't want you to let it happen
+again. You had plenty of time yesterday to get that done."</p>
+<p>She stirred her coffee and thought wistfully, "What a policeman
+I must seem to the children. I wish I could manage it some other
+way."</p>
+<p>Elly, her eyes on the book, murmured in a low chanting rhythm,
+her mouth full of oatmeal, "Delaware River, Newcastle, Brandywine,
+East Branch, West Branch, Crum Creek, Schuylkill."</p>
+<p>Paul looked round at the clock again. His mother noted the
+gesture, the tension of his attitude, his preoccupied expression,
+and had a quick inner vision of a dirty, ragged, ignorant,
+gloriously free little boy on a raft on the Mississippi river, for
+whom life was not measured out by the clock, in thimbleful doses,
+but who floated in a golden liberty on the very ocean of eternity.
+"Why can't we bring them up like Huckleberry Finns!" she thought,
+protestingly, pressing her lips together.</p>
+<p>Then she laughed inwardly at the thought of certain
+sophisticated friends and their opinion of her life. "I daresay we
+do seem to be bringing them up like Huckleberry Finns, in the minds
+of any of the New York friends, Eugenia Mills for instance!" She
+remembered with a passing gust of amusement the expression of
+slightly scared distaste which Eugenia had for the children. "Too
+crudely quivering lumps of life-matter for Eugenia's taste," she
+thought, and then, "I wonder what Marsh's feeling towards children
+really is, children in general. He seems to have the greatest
+capacity to ignore their existence at all. Or does he only seem to
+do that, because I have grown so morbidly conscious of their
+existence as the only thing vital in life? That's what he thinks,
+evidently. Well, I'd like to have him live a mother's life and see
+how he'd escape it!"</p>
+<p>"Mother," said Paul seriously, "Mother, Mark isn't even awake
+yet, and he'll never be ready for school."</p>
+<p>"Oh, his teacher had to go to a wedding today. Don't you
+remember? He doesn't have any school till the afternoon
+session."</p>
+<p>She thought to herself, "What a sense of responsibility Paul
+has! He is going to be one of the pillars of the earth, one of
+those miraculous human beings who are mixed in just the right
+proportions, so that they aren't pulled two ways at once.
+<i>Two</i> ways! Most of us are pulled a thousand ways! It is one
+of the injustices of the earth that such people aren't loved as
+much as impulsive, selfish, brilliant natures like dear little
+Mark's. Paul has had such a restful personality! Even when he was a
+baby, he was so straight-backed and robust. There's no yellow
+streak in Paul, such as too much imagination lets in. I know all
+about that yellow streak, alas!"</p>
+<p>The little boy reached down lovingly, and patted the dog,
+sitting in a rigid attitude of expectancy by his side. As the child
+turned the light of his countenance on those adoring dog eyes, the
+animal broke from his tenseness into a wriggling fever of joy.</p>
+<p>"'Oh, my God, my dear little God!'" quoted Marise to herself,
+watching uneasily the animal's ecstasy of worship. "I wish dogs
+wouldn't take us so seriously. We don't know so much more than
+they, about anything." She thought, further, noticing the sweetness
+of the protecting look which Paul gave to M&eacute;dor, "All
+animals love Paul, anyhow. Animals know more than humans about lots
+of things. They haven't that horrid perverse streak in them that
+makes humans dislike people who are too often in the right. Paul is
+like my poor father. Only I'm here to see that Paul is loved as
+Father wasn't. M&eacute;dor is not the only one to love Paul.
+<i>I</i> love Paul. I love him all the more because he doesn't get
+his fair share of love. And old Mr. Welles loves him, too, bless
+him!"</p>
+<p>"Roanoke River, Staunton River, Dan River," murmured Elly,
+swallowing down her chocolate. She stroked a kitten curled up on
+her lap.</p>
+<p>"What shall I have for lunch today?" thought Marise. "There are
+enough potatoes left to have them creamed."</p>
+<p>Like a stab came the thought, "Creamed potatoes to please our
+palates and thousands of babies in Vienna without milk enough to
+<i>live</i>!" She shook the thought off, saying to herself, "Well,
+would it make any difference to those Viennese babies if I deprived
+my children of palatable food?" and was aware of a deep murmur
+within her, saying only half-articulately, "No, it wouldn't make
+any literal difference to those babies, but it might make a
+difference to you. You are taking another step along the road of
+hardening of heart."</p>
+<p>All this had been the merest muted arpeggio accompaniment to the
+steady practical advance of her housekeeper's mind. "And beefsteak
+. . . Mark likes that. At fifty cents a pound! What awful prices.
+Well, Neale writes that the Canadian lumber is coming through.
+That'll mean a fair profit. What better use can we put profit to,
+than in buying the best food for our children's growth. Beefsteak
+is not a sinful luxury!"</p>
+<p>The arpeggio accompaniment began murmuring, "But the Powers
+children. Nelly and 'Gene can't afford fifty cents a pound for
+beefsteak. Perhaps part of their little Ralph's queerness and
+abnormality comes from lack of proper food. And those white-cheeked
+little Putnam children in the valley. They probably don't taste
+meat, except pork, more than once a week." She protested sharply,
+"But if their father won't work steadily, when there is always work
+to be had?" And heard the murmuring answer, "Why should the
+children suffer because of something they can't change?"</p>
+<p>She drew a long breath, brushed all this away with an effort,
+asking herself defiantly, "Oh, what has all this to do with
+<i>us</i>?" And was aware of the answer, "It has everything to do
+with us, only I can't figure it out."</p>
+<p>Impatiently she proposed to herself, "But while I'm trying to
+figure it out, wouldn't I better just go ahead and have beefsteak
+today?" and wearily, "Yes, of course, we'll have beefsteak as
+usual. That's the way I always decide things."</p>
+<p>She buttered a piece of toast and began to eat it, thinking,
+"I'm a lovely specimen, anyhow, of a clear-headed, thoughtful
+modern woman, muddling along as I do."</p>
+<p>The clock struck the half-hour. Paul rose as though the sound
+had lifted him bodily from his seat. Elly did not hear, her eyes
+fixed dreamily on her kitten, stroking its rounded head, lost in
+the sensation of the softness of the fur.</p>
+<p>Her mother put out a reluctant hand and touched her quietly.
+"Come, dear Elly, about time to start to school."</p>
+<p>As she leaned across the table, stretching her neck towards the
+child, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the other
+side of the room, and thought, "Oh, how awful! I begin to look as
+Cousin Hetty does, with that scrawny neck. . . ."</p>
+<p>She repulsed the thought vigorously. "Well, what does it matter
+if I do? There's nothing in my life, any more, that depends on my
+looking young."</p>
+<p>At this thought, something perfectly inchoate, which she did not
+recognize, began clawing at her. She pushed it off, scornfully, and
+turned to Elly, who got up from the table and began collecting her
+books into her school-bag. Her face was rosy and calm with the
+sweet ineffable confidence of a good child who has only good
+intentions. As she packed her books together, she said, "Well, I'm
+ready. I've done my grammar, indefinite pronouns, and I can say all
+those river-tributaries backwards. So now I can start. Good-bye,
+Mother dear." Marise bent to kiss the shining little face.
+"Good-bye, Elly."</p>
+<p>To herself she thought, as her face was close to the child's, "I
+wonder if I look to my little girl as Cousin Hetty used to look to
+me?" and startled and shocked that the idea kept recurring to her,
+assuming an importance she was not willing to give it, she cried
+out to herself, "Oh, stop being so paltry about that!"</p>
+<p>Aloud she said, "Don't forget to put your rubbers on. Have you a
+clean handkerchief? Oh, <i>Elly</i>, look at your nails! Here, hand
+me the nail-file over there, Paul. I'll clean them more quickly
+than you, dear."</p>
+<p>As she cleaned the nails, one eye on the grimly relentless
+clock, the ideas flicked through her mind like quick, darting
+flames. "What mediaeval nonsense we do stuff into the
+school-children's head. What an infamous advantage we take of the
+darlings' trust in us and their docility to our purposes! My dear
+little daughter with her bright face of desire-to-do-her-best! What
+wretched chaff she is getting for that quick, imaginative brain of
+hers! It's not so bad for Paul, but . . . oh, even for him what
+nonsense! Rules of grammar, names of figures of speech . . . stuff
+left over from scholastic hair-splitting! And the tributaries of
+rivers . . . !" She glanced up for an instant and was struck into
+remorse by the tranquil expression of peace in the little girl's
+clear eyes, bent affectionately on her mother. "Oh, my poor,
+darling little daughter," she thought, "how <i>can</i> you trust
+anything in this weak and wicked world as you trust your broken
+reed of a mother? I don't know, dear child, any more than you do,
+where we are going, nor how we are going to get there. We are just
+stumbling along, your father and I, as best we can, dragging you
+and your brothers along with us. And all we can do for you, or for
+each other, is to love you and . . ."</p>
+<p>Elly withdrew her hand. "There, Mother, I know they're clean
+enough now. I'm afraid I'll be late if I don't go. And you know she
+scolds like everything if anybody's late." She repeated in a rapid
+murmur, "The tributaries of the Delaware on the left bank are . .
+."</p>
+<p>Her mother's mind went back with a jerk to the question of
+river-tributaries. "And what's the use of cramming her memory with
+facts she could find in three minutes in any Atlas if by any
+strange chance she should ever ever need to know about the
+tributaries of the Delaware. As well set her to learning the first
+page of the Telephone Directory! Why don't I do the honest thing by
+her and say to her that all that is poppy-cock?"</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>An inner dialogue flashed out, lunge, parry, riposte, like
+rapier blades at play. "Because if I told her it is nonsense, that
+would undermine her faith in her teacher and her respect for
+her."</p>
+<p>"But why <i>should</i> she respect her teacher if her teacher
+does not deserve that sort of respect? Ought even a little child to
+respect anything or anybody merely because of a position of
+authority and not because of intrinsic worth? No, of course
+not."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you know that's only wild talk. Of course you couldn't send
+the child to school, and keep her under her teacher, unless you
+preserve the form of upholding the teacher's authority."</p>
+<p>"Yes, but in Heaven's name, why <i>do</i> we send her to school?
+She could learn twenty times more, anywhere else."</p>
+<p>"Because sending her to school keeps her in touch with other
+children, with her fellow-beings, keeps her from being 'queer' or
+different. She might suffer from it as she grew up, might desire
+more than anything in the world to be like others."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Elly had been staring at her mother's face for a moment, and now
+said, "Mother, what <i>makes</i> you look so awfully serious?"</p>
+<p>Marise said ruefully, "It's pretty hard to explain to a little
+girl. I was wondering whether I was as good a mother to you as I
+ought to be."</p>
+<p>Elly was astonished to the limit of astonishment at this idea.
+"Why, Mother, how <i>could</i> you be any better than you are?" She
+threw herself on her mother's neck, crying, "Mother, I wish you
+never looked serious. I wish you were always laughing and cutting
+up, the way you used to. Seems to me since the war is over, you're
+more soberer than you were before, even, when you were so worried
+about Father in France. I'd rather you'd scold me than look
+serious."</p>
+<p>Paul came around the table, and shouldered his way against Elly
+up to a place where he touched his mother. "Is that masculine
+jealousy, or real affection?" she asked herself, and then, "Oh,
+what a <i>beast</i>! To be analyzing my own children!" And then,
+"But how am I ever going to know what they're like if I don't
+analyze them?"</p>
+<p>The dog, seeing the children standing up, half ready to go out,
+began barking and frisking, and wriggling his way to where they
+stood all intertwined, stood up with his fore-paws against Paul.
+The kitten had been startled by his approach and ran rapidly up
+Marise as though she had been a tree, pausing on her shoulder to
+paw at a loosened hair-pin.</p>
+<p>Marise let herself go on this wave of eager young life, and
+thrust down into the dark all the razor-edged questions. "Oh,
+children! children! take the kitten off my back!" she said,
+laughing and squirming. "She's tickling me with her whiskers. Oh,
+<i>ow</i>!" She was reduced to helpless mirth, stooping her head,
+reaching up futilely for the kitten, who had retreated to the nape
+of her neck and was pricking sharp little pin-pointed claws through
+to the skin. The children danced about chiming out peals of
+laughter. The dog barked excitedly, standing on his hind-legs, and
+pawing first at one and then at another. Then Paul looked at the
+clock, and they all looked at the clock. The children, flushed with
+fun, crammed on their caps, thrust their arms into coats, bestowed
+indiscriminate kisses on their mother and the kitten, and vanished
+for the morning, followed by the dog, pleading with little whines
+to be taken along too. The kitten got down and began soberly to
+wash her face.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>There was an instant of appalling silence in the house, the
+silence that is like no other, the silence that comes when the
+children have just gone. Through it, heavy-footed and ruthless,
+Marise felt something advancing on her, something which she dreaded
+and would not look at.</p>
+<p>From above came a sweet, high, little call, "Mo-o-o-ther!" Oh, a
+respite&mdash;Mark was awake!</p>
+<p>His mother sprang upstairs to snatch at him as he lay, rosy and
+smiling and sleepy. She bent over him intoxicated by his beauty, by
+the flower-perfection of his skin, by the softness of his
+sleep-washed eyes.</p>
+<p>She heard almost as distinctly as though the voice were in her
+ear, "Oh, you mothers use your children as other people use drugs.
+The child-habit, the drug-habit, the baby-habit, the morphine habit
+. . . two different ways of getting away from reality." That was
+what Marsh had said one day. What terribly tarnishing things he did
+say. How they did make you question everything. She wondered what
+Neale would say to them.</p>
+<p>She hoped to have a letter from Neale today. She hoped so,
+suddenly, again, with such intensity, such longing, such passion
+that she said to herself, "What nonsense that was, that came into
+my head, out on the road in the dark, the other night, that Neale
+and I had let the flood-tide of emotion ebb out of our hearts! What
+could have put such a notion into my head?" What crazy, fanciful
+creatures women are! Always reaching out for the moon. Yes, that
+must have been the matter with her lately, that Neale was away. She
+missed him so, his strength and courage and affection.</p>
+<p>"I'm awfully hungry," remarked Mark in her ear. "I feel the hole
+right <i>here</i>." He laid a small shapely hand on the center of
+his pajama-clad body, but he kept the other hand and arm around his
+mother's neck, and held her close where he had pulled her to him in
+his little bed. As he spoke he rubbed his peach-like cheek softly
+against hers.</p>
+<p>A warm odor of sleep and youth and clean, soaped skin came up
+from him. His mother buried her face in it as in a flower.</p>
+<p>"Ooh!" he cried, laughing richly, "you're tickling me."</p>
+<p>"I <i>mean</i> to tickle you!" she told him savagely, worrying
+him as a mother-cat does her kitten. He laughed delightedly, and
+wriggled to escape her, kicking his legs, pushing at her softly
+with his hands, reaching for the spot back of her ear. "I'll tickle
+<i>you</i>," he crowed, tussling with her, disarranging her hair,
+thudding his little body against her breast, as he thrashed about.
+The silent house rang with their laughter and cries.</p>
+<p>They were both flushed, with lustrous eyes, when the little boy
+finally squirmed himself with a bump off the bed and slid to the
+floor.</p>
+<p>At this point the kitten came walking in, innocent-eyed and
+grave. Mark scrambled towards her on his hands and knees. She
+retreated with a comic series of stiff-legged, sideways jumps, that
+made him roll on the floor, chuckling and giggling, and grabbing
+futilely for the kitten's paws.</p>
+<p>Marise had stood up and was putting the loosened strands of her
+hair back in place. The spell was broken. Looking down on the
+laughing child, she said dutifully, "Mark, the floor's cold. You
+mustn't lie down on it. And, anyhow, you're ever so late this
+morning. Hop up, dear, and get into your clothes."</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mother, <i>you</i> dress me!" he begged, rolling over to
+look up at her pleadingly.</p>
+<p>She shook her head. "Now, Mark, that's silly. A great big boy
+like you, who goes to school. Get up quick and start right in
+before you take cold."</p>
+<p>He scrambled to his feet and padded to her side on rosy bare
+feet. "Mother, you'll have to 'tay here, anyhow. You know I can't
+do those back buttons. And I always get my drawer-legs twisted up
+with my both legs inside my one leg."</p>
+<p>Marise compromised. "Well, yes, if you'll hurry. But not if you
+dawdle. Mother has a lot to do this morning. Remember, I won't help
+you with a single thing you can do yourself."</p>
+<p>The child obediently unbuttoned his pajamas and stepping out of
+them reached for his undershirt. His mother, looking at him, fell
+mentally on her knees before the beautiful, living body. "Oh, my
+son, the straight, strong darling! My precious little son!" She
+shook with that foolish aching anguish of mothers, intolerable. . .
+. "Why must he stop being so pure, so <i>safe</i>? How can I live
+when I am no longer strong enough to protect him?"</p>
+<p>Mark remarked plaintively, shrugging himself into the sleeves of
+his shirt, "I've roden on a horse, and I've roden on a dog, and
+I've even roden on a cow, but I've never roden on a camel, and I
+<i>want</i> to."</p>
+<p>The characteristic Mark-like unexpectedness of this made her
+smile.</p>
+<p>"You probably will, some day," she said, sitting down.</p>
+<p>"But I've never even <i>sawn</i> a camel," complained Mark. "And
+Elly and Paul have, and a elephant too."</p>
+<p>"Well, you're big enough to be taken to the circus this year,"
+his mother promised him. "This very summer we'll take you."</p>
+<p>"But I want to go <i>now</i>!" clamored Mark, with his usual
+disregard of possibilities, done in the grand style.</p>
+<p>"Don't dawdle," said his mother, looking around for something to
+read, so that she would seem less accessible to conversation. She
+found the newspaper under her hand, on the table, and picked it up.
+She had only glanced at the head-lines yesterday. It took a lot of
+moral courage to read the newspapers in these days. As she read,
+her face changed, darkened, set.</p>
+<p>The little boy, struggling with his underwear, looked at her and
+decided not to ask for help.</p>
+<p>She was thinking as she read, "The Treaty muddle worse than
+ever. Great Britain sending around to all her colonies asking for
+the biggest navy in the world. Our own navy constantly enlarged at
+enormous cost. Constantinople to be left Turkish because nobody
+wants anybody else to have it. Armenian babies dying like flies and
+evening cloaks advertised to sell for six hundred dollars. Italy
+land-grabbing. France frankly for anything except the plain
+acceptance of the principles we thought the war was to foster. The
+same reaction from those principles starting on a grand scale in
+America. Men in prison for having an opinion . . . what a hideous
+bad joke on all the world that fought for the Allies and for the
+holy principles they claimed! To think how we were straining every
+nerve in a sacred cause two years ago. Neale's enlistment. Those
+endless months of loneliness. That constant terror about him. And
+homes like that all over the world . . . with <i>this</i> as the
+result. Could it have been worse if we had all just grabbed what we
+could get for ourselves, and had what satisfaction we could out of
+the baser pleasures?"</p>
+<p>She felt a mounting wave of horror and nausea, and knowing well
+from experience what was on its way, fought desperately to ward it
+off, reading hurriedly a real-estate item in the newspaper, an
+account of a flood in the West, trying in vain to fix her mind on
+what she read. But she could not stop the advance of what was
+coming. She let the newspaper fall with a shudder as the thought
+arrived, hissing, gliding with venomous swiftness along the
+familiar path it had so often taken to her heart . . . "suppose
+this reactionary outburst of hate and greed and intolerance and
+imperialistic ambitions all around, means that the 'peace' is an
+armed truce only, and that in fifteen years the whole nightmare
+will start over."</p>
+<p>She looked down at the little boy, applying himself seriously to
+his buttons. "In fifteen years' time my baby will be a man of
+twenty-one."</p>
+<p>Wild cries broke out in her heart. "No, oh no! I couldn't live
+through another. To see them all go, husband and sons! Not another
+war! Let me live quickly, anyhow, somehow, to get it over with . .
+. and die before it comes."</p>
+<p>The little boy had been twisting himself despairingly, and now
+said in a small voice, "Mother, I've tried and I've tried and I
+can't do that back button."</p>
+<p>His mother heard his voice and looked down at him
+uncomprehendingly for a moment. He said, less resigned, impatience
+pricking through his tone, "Mother, I <i>told</i> you I never could
+reach that button behind."</p>
+<p>She bent from her chair, mechanically secured the little
+garment, and then, leaning back, looked down moodily at her feet.
+The little boy began silently to put on and lace up his shoes.</p>
+<p>Marise was aware of a dimming of the light in the inner room of
+her consciousness, as though one window after another were being
+darkened. A hushed, mournful twilight fell in her heart. Melancholy
+came and sat down with her, black-robed. What could one feel except
+Melancholy at the sight of the world of humanity, poor world,
+war-ridden, broken in health, ruined in hope, the very nerves of
+action cut by the betrayal of its desperate efforts to be something
+more than base.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Was that really Melancholy? Something else slid into her mind,
+something watchful. She sat perfectly still so that no chance
+movement should disturb that mood till it could be examined and
+challenged. There was certainly something else in her heart beside
+sorrow over the miseries of the after-war world.</p>
+<p>She persisted in her probing search, felt a cold ray of daylight
+strike into that gloom and recognized with amazement and chagrin
+what else it was! Disgusting! There in the very bottom of her mind,
+lay still that discomfort at beginning to look like Cousin Hetty!
+And so that wound to her vanity had slowly risen again into her
+consciousness and clothed itself in the ampler, nobler garments of
+impersonal Melancholy. . . . "<i>Oh</i>," she cried aloud,
+impatiently, contemptuous of herself, "what picayune creatures
+human beings are! I'm ashamed to be one!"</p>
+<p>She started up and went to the window, looking out blankly at
+the mountain wall, as she had at the newspaper, not seeing what was
+there, her eyes turned inward. "Wait now, wait. Don't go off,
+half-cocked. Go clear through with this thing," she exhorted
+herself. "There <i>must</i> be more in it than mere childish, silly
+vanity." She probed deep and brought up, "Yes, there is more to it.
+In the first place I was priggish and hypocritical when I tried to
+pretend that it was nothing to me when I looked in the glass and
+saw for the first time that my youth has begun to leave me. That
+was Anglo-Saxon pretense, trying to seem to myself made of finer
+stuff than I really am. It's really not cheerful for any woman, no
+matter on what plane, to know that the days of her physical
+flowering are numbered. I'd have done better to look straight at
+that, and have it out with myself."</p>
+<p>She moved her head very slightly, from side to side. "But there
+was more than that. There was more than that. What was it?" She
+leaned her ear as if to listen, her eyes very large and fixed.
+"Yes, there <i>was</i> the war, and the awfulness of our
+disappointment in it, too, after all. There was the counsel of
+despair about everything, the pressure on us all to think that all
+efforts to be more than base are delusions. We were so terribly
+fooled with our idealistic hopes about the war . . . who knows but
+that we are being fooled again when we try for the higher planes of
+life? Perhaps those people are right who say that to grab for the
+pleasures of the senses is the best . . . those are <i>real</i>
+pleasures, at least. Who knows if there is anything else?"</p>
+<p>Something like a little, far-away tolling said to her, "There
+was something else. There was something else."</p>
+<p>This time she knew what it was. "Yes, there was that other
+aspect of the loss of physical youth, when you think that the
+pleasures of the senses are perhaps all there are. There was the
+inevitable despairing wonder if I had begun to have out of my youth
+all it could have given, whether . . ."</p>
+<p>There tolled in her ear, "Something else, something else there."
+But now she would not look, put her hands over her eyes, and stood
+in the dark, fighting hard lest a ray of light should show her what
+might be there.</p>
+<p>A voice sounded beside her. Toucl&eacute; was saying, "Have you
+got one of your headaches? The mail carrier just went by. Here are
+the letters."</p>
+<p>She took down her hands, and opened her eyes. She felt that
+something important hung on there being a letter from Neale. She
+snatched at the handful of envelopes and sorted them over, her
+fingers trembling. Yes, there it was, the plain stamped envelope
+with Neale's firm regular handwriting.</p>
+<p>She felt as though she were a diver whose lungs had almost
+collapsed, who was being drawn with heavenly swiftness up to the
+surface of the water. She tore open the envelope and read, "Dearest
+Marise." It was as though she had heard his voice.</p>
+<p>She drew in a great audible breath and began to read. What a
+relief it was to feel herself all one person, not two or three,
+probing hatefully into each other!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>But there was something she had not done, some teasing,
+unimportant thing, she ought to finish before going on with the
+letter. She looked up vacantly, half-absently, wondering what it
+was. Her eyes fell on Toucl&eacute;. Toucl&eacute; was looking at
+her, Toucl&eacute; who so seldom looked at anything. She felt a
+momentary confusion as though surprised by another person in a room
+she had thought empty. And after that, uneasiness. She did not want
+Toucl&eacute; to go on looking at her.</p>
+<p>"Mark hasn't had his breakfast yet," she said to the old Indian
+woman. "Won't you take him downstairs, please, and give him a dish
+of porridge for me?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<div>
+<h3>"The Gent Around the Lady<br />
+<br />
+and<br />
+<br />
+The Lady Round the Gent"</h3>
+</div>
+<div class='center'><i>An Evening in the Life of Mr. Vincent
+Marsh</i><br />
+<br />
+May 25.</div>
+<p>"Come in, come in!" cried an old black-clad woman, with a white
+apron, who opened the door wider into the flaring brilliance of the
+lamp-lit kitchen. "I'm <i>real</i> glad you felt to come to one of
+our dances. They're old-fashioned, but <i>we</i> like 'em." She
+closed the door behind them and added cordially, "Now Mr. Welles is
+going to live here, he'll have to learn to shake his feet along
+with the rest of us."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles was frankly terrified at the idea. "Why, I never
+dreamed of dancing in all my life!" he cried. "I only came to look
+on." He hesitated to divest himself of his overcoat, panic-struck
+and meditating flight. Vincent fell upon him from one side and the
+lively old woman from the other. Together they stripped the older
+man of his wraps. "Never too late to learn," old Mrs. Powers
+assured him briskly. "You dance with <i>me</i> and I'll shove ye
+around, all right. There ain't a quadrille ever danced that I
+couldn't do backwards with my eyes shut, as soon as the music
+strikes up." She motioned them towards the door, "Step right this
+way. The folks that have come are all in the settin'-room."</p>
+<p>As they followed her, Vincent said, "Mrs. Powers, aren't you
+going to dance with me, too?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, of course I be," she answered smartly, "if you ask me."</p>
+<p>"Then I ask you now," he urged, "for the first dance. Only I
+don't know any more than Mr. Welles how to dance a quadrille. But
+I'm not afraid."</p>
+<p>"I guess there ain't much ye <i>be</i> afraid of," she said
+admiringly. They came now into the dining-room and caught beyond
+that a glimpse of the living-room. Both wore such an unusual aspect
+of elegance and grace that Vincent stared, stopping to look about
+him. "Looks queer, don't it," said Mrs. Powers, "with the furniture
+all gone. We always move out everything we <i>can</i>, up garret,
+so's to leave room for dancing."</p>
+<p>Oh yes, that was it, Vincent thought; the shinily varnished
+cheap furniture had almost disappeared, and the excellent
+proportions of the old rooms could be seen. Lamps glowed from every
+shelf, their golden light softened by great sprays of green
+branches with tender young leaves, which were fastened everywhere
+over the doors, the windows, banked in the corner The house smelled
+like a forest, indescribably fresh and spicy.</p>
+<p>"There ain't many flowers yet; too early," explained Mrs. Powers
+apologetically, "so we had to git green stuff out'n the woods to
+kind of dress us up. 'Gene he <i>would</i> have some pine boughs
+too. He's crazy about pine-trees. I always thought that was one
+reason why he took it so hard when we was done out of our
+wood-land. He thinks as much of that big pine in front of the house
+as he does of a person. And tonight he's got the far room all done
+up with pine boughs."</p>
+<p>They arrived in the living-room now, where the women and
+children clustered on one side, and the men on the other, their
+lean boldly marked faces startlingly clear-cut in the splendor of
+fresh shaves. The women were mostly in light-colored waists and
+dark skirts, their hair carefully dressed. Vincent noticed, as he
+nodded to them before taking his place with the men, that not a
+single one had put powder on her face. Their eyes looked shining
+with anticipation. They leaned their heads together and chatted in
+low tones, laughing and glancing sideways at the group of men on
+the other side of the room. Vincent wondered at the presence of the
+children. When she arrived, he would ask Marise about that. At the
+inward mention of the name he felt a little shock, which was not
+altogether pleasurable. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head
+slightly, as though to toss a lock of hair from his forehead, a
+gesture which was habitual with him when he felt, with displeasure,
+an unexpected emotion not summoned by his will. It passed at
+once.</p>
+<p>On joining the dark-suited group of men he found himself next to
+young Frank Warner, leaning, loose-jointed and powerful, against
+the wall, and not joining in the talk of weather, pigs, roads, and
+spring plowing which rose from the others. Vincent looked at him
+with approval. He felt strongly drawn to this splendid, primitive
+creature, and knew perfectly well why. He liked anybody who had pep
+enough to have an original feeling, not one prescribed by the
+ritual and tabu of his particular tribe.</p>
+<p>"Hello, Frank," he said. "Have a cigarette?</p>
+<p>"We'll have to go out if we smoke," said Frank.</p>
+<p>"Well, why shouldn't we?" suggested Vincent, looking around him.
+"There's nothing to do here, yet."</p>
+<p>Frank tore himself loose from the supporting wall with a jerk,
+and nodded. Together they stepped out of the front door, unused by
+the guests, who all entered by the kitchen. At first it was as
+though they had plunged into black velvet curtains, so great was
+the contrast with the yellow radiance of the room they had left.
+They looked back through the unshaded windows and saw the room as
+though it were an illustration in a book, or a scene in a
+moving-picture play, the men grouped in a dark mass on one side,
+the women, smiling, bending their heads towards each other, the
+lamps glowing on the green branches and on the shining eyes of all
+those pleasure-expectant human beings.</p>
+<p>As they looked, Nelly Powers came in from another room,
+doubtless the "far room" of which her mother-in-law had spoken. She
+was carrying a large tray full of cups. She braced herself against
+the weight of the earthenware and balancing herself with a free
+swinging motion on her high-heeled shoes walked with an
+accentuation of her usual vigorous poise.</p>
+<p>"By George, she's a beauty!" cried Vincent, not sorry to have an
+opportunity to talk of her with his companion.</p>
+<p>Frank made no comment. Vincent laughed to himself at the
+enormous capacity for silence of these savages, routing to the
+imagination of a civilized being. He went on, determined to get
+some expression from the other, "She's one of the very handsomest
+women I ever saw anywhere."</p>
+<p>Frank stirred in the darkness as though he were about to speak.
+Vincent cocked his ear and prepared to listen with all the
+prodigious sharpness of which he knew himself capable. If he could
+only once make this yokel speak her name, he'd know . . . all he
+wanted to know.</p>
+<p>Frank said, "Yes, she's good-looking, all right."</p>
+<p>Vincent kept silence, pondering every tone and overtone of the
+remark. He was astonished to find that he had no more direct light
+than ever on what he wanted to know. He laughed again at his own
+discomfiture. There were the two extremes, the super-sophisticated
+person who could control his voice so that it did not give him
+away, and the utter rustic whose voice had such a brute
+inexpressiveness that his meaning was as effectively hidden. He
+would try again. He said casually, "She's an enough-sight
+better-looking specimen than her husband. However does it happen
+that the best-looking women are always caught by that sort of
+chimpanzees? How did she ever happen to marry 'Gene, anyhow?"</p>
+<p>The other man answered, literally. "I don't know how she did
+happen to marry him. She don't come from around here. 'Gene was off
+working in a mill, down in Massachusetts, Adams way, and they got
+married there. They only come back here to live after they'd had
+all that trouble with lawyers and lost their wood-land. 'Gene's
+father died about that time. It cut him pretty hard. And 'Gene and
+his wife they come back to run the farm."</p>
+<p>At this point they saw, looking in at the lighted dumb-show in
+the house, that new arrivals had come. Vincent felt a premonitory
+clap of his heart and set his teeth in his cigarette. Yes, Marise
+had come, now appeared in the doorway, tall, framed in green-leafed
+branches, the smooth pale oval of her face lighted by the subtle
+smile, those dark long eyes! By God! What would he not give to know
+what went on behind that smile, those eyes!</p>
+<p>She was unwinding from her head the close, black nun-like wrap
+that those narrow primitive country-women far away on the other
+side of the globe had chosen to express their being united to
+another human being. And a proper lugubrious symbol it made for
+their lugubrious, prison-like, primitive view of the matter.</p>
+<p>Now she had it off. Her sleek, gleaming dark head stood poised
+on her long, thick, white throat. What a woman! What she could be
+in any civilized setting!</p>
+<p>She was talking to Nelly Powers now, who had come back and stood
+facing her in one of those superb poses of hers, her yellow braids
+heavy as gold. It was Brunhilda talking to Leonardo da Vinci's Ste.
+Anne. No, heavens no! Not a saint, a musty, penitential negation
+like a saint! Only of course, the Ste. Anne wasn't a saint either,
+but da Vinci's glorious Renaissance stunt at showing what an
+endlessly desirable woman he could make if he put his mind on
+it.</p>
+<p>"What say, we go in," suggested Frank, casting away the butt of
+his cigarette. "I think I hear old Nate beginning to tune up."</p>
+<p>They opened the door and stepped back, the laughing confusion of
+their blinking entrance, blinded by the lights, carrying off the
+first moments of greeting. In the midst of this, Vincent heard the
+front door open and, startled to think that anyone else had used
+that exit, turned his head, and saw with some dismay that 'Gene had
+followed them in. How near had he been to them in the black night
+while they talked of his wife's mismated beauty? He walked past
+them giving no sign, his strong long arms hanging a little in front
+of his body as he moved, his shoulders stooped apparently with
+their own weight. From the dining-room came a sound which Vincent
+did not recognize as the voice of any instrument he had ever heard:
+a series of extraordinarily rapid staccato scrapes, playing over
+and over a primitively simple sequence of notes. He stepped to the
+door to see what instrument was being used and saw an old man with
+a white beard and long white hair, tipped back in a chair, his eyes
+half shut, his long legs stretched out in front of him, patting
+with one thick boot. Under his chin was a violin, on the strings of
+which he jiggled his bow back and forth spasmodically, an
+infinitesimal length of the horse-hair being used for each stroke,
+so that there was no sonority in the tones. Vincent gazed at him
+with astonishment. He had not known that you could make a violin, a
+real violin, sound like that.</p>
+<p>Old Mrs. Powers said at his elbow, "The first sets are forming,
+Mr. Marsh." She called across to Frank Warner, standing very
+straight with Nelly Powers' hand on his arm, "Frank, you call off,
+wun't ye?"</p>
+<p>Instantly the young man, evidently waiting for the signal, sent
+out a long clear shout, "First sets <i>fo-orming!</i>"</p>
+<p>Vincent was startled by the electrifying quality of the human
+voice when not hushed to its usual smothered conversational
+dullness.</p>
+<p>"Two sets formed in the living-room! Two in the dining-room! One
+in the far room!" chanted Frank. He drew a deep breath which
+visibly swelled his great chest and sang out, resonantly,
+"Promenade <i>to</i> your places!"</p>
+<p>He set the example, marching off through the throng with Nelly
+by his side.</p>
+<p>"Frank, he generally calls off," explained old Mrs. Powers.
+"It's in his family to. His father always did before him." She
+looked around her, discerned something intelligible in what looked
+like crowding confusion to Vincent and told him hurriedly,
+"Look-y-here, we'll have to git a move on, if we git into a set.
+They're all full here." Frank appeared in the doorway, alone, and
+lifted a long high arm. "<i>One</i> couple needed in the far room!"
+he proclaimed with stentorian dignity and seriousness.</p>
+<p>"Here we are!" shouted old Mrs. Powers, scrambling her way
+through the crowd, and pulling Vincent after her. He could see now
+that the couples about him were indeed in their places, hand in
+hand, facing each other, gravely elate and confident. The younger
+ones were swinging their bodies slightly, in time to the sharply
+marked beat of the fiddle, and in the older ones, the pulse
+throbbed almost visibly as they waited.</p>
+<p>He felt the breath of pines on him, resinous, penetrating,
+stimulating. He was in a small, square room with a low ceiling,
+dense and green with pine-boughs, fastened to the walls. The odor
+was as strange an accompaniment to dancing as was that furiously
+whirling primitive iteration of the fiddle.</p>
+<p>"Over here!" cried Mrs. Powers, dragging masterfully at her
+partner. She gave a sigh of satisfaction, caught at his hand and
+held it high. "All ready, Frank," she said.</p>
+<p>Facing them, near the doorway stood Frank and Nelly, their heads
+up, Nelly's small high-heeled shoe thrust forward, their clasped
+hands held high. Vincent felt his blood move more quickly at the
+spectacle they made. On one side stood Marise Crittenden, her
+fingers clasped by the huge knotted hand of 'Gene Powers, and on
+the other was rounded, rosy old Mr. Bayweather holding by the hand
+the oldest Powers child, a pretty blonde girl of twelve.</p>
+<p>Frank's voice pealed out above the jig-jig-jigging of the
+fiddle. "<i>Salute</i> your partners!"</p>
+<p>Vincent had a qualm of a feeling he thought he had left behind
+him with his boyhood, real embarrassment, fear of appearing at a
+disadvantage. What in the world did their antiquated lingo
+<i>mean?</i> Was he to <i>kiss</i> that old woman?</p>
+<p>Mrs. Powers said reassuringly, "Don't you worry. Just do what
+the others do."</p>
+<p>As she spoke she was holding out her skirts and dipping to a
+courtesy. A little later, he caught at the idea and sketched a bow
+such as to his astonishment he saw the other men executing. Was he
+in old Versailles or Vermont?</p>
+<p>He felt his hand seized by the old woman's. Such a hearty zest
+was in her every action that he looked at her amazed.</p>
+<p>"Balance to the corners, right!" chanted Frank, sending his
+voice out like a bugle so that it might be heard in all the
+rooms.</p>
+<p>With perfect precision, and poise, the men and women of the
+couples separated, stepped swayingly, each towards the nearest of
+the couple to their right, and retreated.</p>
+<p>"Balance to corners, left!"</p>
+<p>The same movement was executed to the other side.</p>
+<p>"First couple forward and back!" shouted Frank.</p>
+<p>Marise and 'Gene advanced, hand in hand, to meet the old
+clergyman and the little girl. They met in the middle, poised an
+instant on the top wave of rhythm and stepped back, every footfall,
+every movement, their very breathing, in time to the beat-beat-beat
+of the fiddle's air which filled the room as insistently as the
+odor of the pines.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Powers nodded her white head to it and tapped her foot.
+Marsh had not ventured to remove his eyes from the weaving
+interplay of the dancers in his own set. Now, for an instant, he
+glanced beyond them into the next room. He received an impression
+of rapid, incessant, intricate shifting to and fro, the whole
+throng of dancers in movement as swift and disconcerting to the
+eyes as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. It made him literally
+dizzy to see it, and he turned his eyes back to his own set.</p>
+<p>The air changed, but not the rhythm, and all the men broke out
+in a hoarse chant, singing to a whirring, rapid tune,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"<i>Oh</i>, pass right through and never
+mind who<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And leave the girl behind
+you.</span><br />
+Now come right back on the same old track<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And <i>swing</i> the girl behind
+you!"</span></div>
+<p>In obedience to these chanted commands, the four who were
+executing the figure went through labyrinthine manoeuvers, forward
+and back, dividing and reuniting. The old clergyman held out his
+hand to Mrs. Crittenden, laughing as he swung her briskly about.
+'Gene bent his great bulk solemnly to swing his own little
+daughter. Then with neat exactitude, on the stroke of the beat,
+they were all back in their places.</p>
+<p>"<i>Second</i> couple forward and back!" sang out Frank,
+prolonging the syllables in an intoned chant like a muezzin calling
+from a tower. Vincent felt himself being pushed and shoved by Mrs.
+Powers through the intricate figure.</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Now come right back on the same old
+track<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And <i>swing</i> the girl behind
+you!"</span></div>
+<p>The men shouted loudly, stamping in time, with such a relish for
+the beat of the rhythm that it sang itself through to the
+motor-centers and set them throbbing. Vincent found himself holding
+Nelly Powers at arm's length and swinging her till his head
+whirled. She was as light as sea-foam, dreamy, her blue eyes
+shining.</p>
+<p>"<i>Grand</i> right and left!" shouted Frank.</p>
+<p>Vincent's hand was seized by the little Powers girl. She swung
+him competently and passed him on to her mother, who swam past him
+like a goddess, a golden aroma of health and vivid sensual
+seduction trailing from her as she moved.</p>
+<p>Then it was Marise's hand in his . . . how strange, how strange
+. . . that hand which knew the secrets of Debussy's heart. . . .
+She grasped his fingers firmly and looked at him full, laughingly,
+her face as open as a child's . . . the many-sided tantalizing
+creature! She pulled him about and was gone.</p>
+<p>And there was old Mrs. Powers in her place, absurdly light and
+elastic, treading the floor in her flat, old-woman's shoes with
+brilliant precision.</p>
+<p>"<i>All</i> promenade!" cried Frank, this time his voice
+exultant that the end was successfully reached.</p>
+<p>He seized Nelly by the waist and danced with her the length of
+the room, followed by the other couples. The music stopped. He
+released her instantly, made a strange, stiff little bow, and
+turned away. The set was over.</p>
+<p>"There!" said Mrs. Powers, breathing quickly. "'Twan't so hard
+as you thought 'twas goin' to be, was it?"</p>
+<p>"Good-evening," said Mr. Bayweather on the other side, wiping
+the pink roll at the back of his neck. "What do you think of our
+aboriginal folk-dancing? I'll warrant you did not think there was a
+place in the United States where the eighteenth century dances had
+had an uninterrupted existence, did you?"</p>
+<p>"I assure you I had never thought about the subject at all,"
+said Vincent, edging away rapidly towards escape.</p>
+<p>"Fascinating historical phenomenon, I call it," said the
+clergyman. "Analogous to the persistence of certain parts of old
+English speech which is to be observed in the talk of our people.
+For instance in the eighteenth century English vocabulary, the
+phrase . . ."</p>
+<p>His voice died away in the voices of the people Vincent had put
+resolutely between them shoving his way through the crowd,
+recklessly. He was struck by the aspect of the people, their blood
+warmed, their lips moist, their eyes gleaming. The rooms were
+growing hot, and the odor of pines was heavy in the air.</p>
+<p>He found himself next to Nelly Powers, and asked her to dance
+with him, "although I don't know at all how to do it," he
+explained. She smiled, silently, indifferently, confidently, and
+laid her hand on his arm in token of accepting his invitation.
+Vincent had a passing fancy that she did not care at all with whom
+she danced, that the motion itself was enough for her. But he
+reflected that it was probably that she did not care at all whether
+she danced with <i>him</i>.</p>
+<p>From the other end of the room came Frank's deep-mouthed shout,
+"The set is forming! Promenade <i>to</i> your places!"</p>
+<p>Nelly moved swiftly in that direction and again Vincent found
+himself opposite Frank, dancing this time with Marise
+Crittenden.</p>
+<p>The music broke out into its shaking, quavering iteration of the
+pulse of the dance.</p>
+<p>"Salute your partners!"</p>
+<p>This time Vincent knew what to do, and turning, bowed low to
+Nelly, who made him a deep courtesy, her toe pointed, instep high,
+her eyes shining, looking straight at him but evidently not seeing
+him. The music seemed to float her off on a cloud.</p>
+<p>"Chassay <i>to</i> the corners, right!"</p>
+<p>Vincent untangled the difference between "chassay" and "balance"
+and acquitted himself. Now that his first panic of astonishment was
+over, he observed that the figures of the dance were of great
+simplicity, all but the central part, the climax.</p>
+<p>When the preliminary part was over, the music changed and again
+the men broke out into their accompanying chant. This time it
+ran,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"The gent around the lady<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>and</i></span><br />
+The lady around the gent.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>Then</i></span><br />
+The lady around the lady<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>and</i></span><br />
+The gent around the gent."</div>
+<p>Somewhere in the hypnotic to-and-fro of those swaying, poised,
+alert human figures, he encountered Marise, coming on her suddenly,
+and finding her standing stock-still.</p>
+<p>"<i>Around</i> me!" she commanded, imperatively, nodding and
+laughing. "Just as the song says."</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"The gent around the lady,"</div>
+<p>sang the men.</p>
+<p>Frank was circling about Nelly, his eyes on hers, treading
+lightly, his tall body apparently weighing no more than
+thistle-down. It was as though he were weaving a charm.</p>
+<p>Vincent ended his circle.</p>
+<p>The men sang, "<i>And</i> the lady round the gent."</p>
+<p>Marise and Nelly stepped off, overlaying the men's invisible
+circle with one of their own.</p>
+<p>The room beyond boiled with the dervish-like whirling of the
+dancers. The fiddle rose louder and shriller, faster and faster.
+The men sang at the tops of their voices, and beat time heavily.
+Under cover of this rolling clamor, Vincent called out boldly to
+Marise, "A symbol of life! A symbol of our life!" and did not know
+if she heard him.</p>
+<div class='blockquot'><span style=
+"margin-left: 4.5em;">"<i>Then</i></span><br />
+The lady around the lady."</div>
+<p>Nelly and Marise circled each other.</p>
+<div class='blockquot'><span style=
+"margin-left: 4.5em;">"<i>And</i></span><br />
+The gent around the gent."</div>
+<p>He and Frank followed them.</p>
+<p>His head was turning, the room staggered around him. Nelly's
+warm, vibrant hand was again in his. They were in their places.
+Frank's voice rose, resounding, "<i>Pro</i>menade all!"</p>
+<p>Nelly abandoned herself to his arms, in the one brief moment of
+close physical contact of the dance. They raced to the end of the
+room.</p>
+<p>The music stopped abruptly, but it went on in his head.</p>
+<p>The odor of pines rose pungent in the momentary silence.
+Everyone was breathing rapidly. Nelly put up a hand to touch her
+hair. Vincent, reflecting that he would never acquire the
+native-born capacity for abstaining from chatter, said, because he
+felt he must say something, "What a pleasant smell those
+pine-branches give."</p>
+<p>She turned her white neck to glance into the small room lined
+with the fragrant branches, and remarked, clearly and
+dispassionately, "I don't like the smell."</p>
+<p>Vincent was interested. He continued, "Well, you must have a
+great deal of it, whether you like it or not, from that great
+specimen by your front door."</p>
+<p>She looked at him calmly, her eyes as blue as precious stones.
+"The old pine-tree," she said, "I wish it were cut down, darkening
+the house the way it does." She spoke with a sovereign impassivity,
+no trace of feeling in her tone. She turned away.</p>
+<p>Vincent found himself saying almost audibly, "Oh <i>ho</i>!" He
+had the sensation, very agreeable to him, of combining two clues to
+make a certainty. He wished he could lay his hands on a clue to put
+with Marise Crittenden's shrinking from the photograph of the Rocca
+di Papa.</p>
+<p>He had not spoken to Marise that evening, save the first
+greetings, and his impudent shout to her in the dance, and now
+turned to find her. On the other side of the room she was
+installed, looking extraordinarily young and girl-like, between Mr.
+Welles and Mr. Bayweather, fanning first one and then the other
+elderly gentleman and talking to them with animation. They were
+both in need of fanning, puffing and panting hard. Mr. Welles
+indeed was hardly recognizable, the usual pale quiet of his face
+broken into red and glistening laughter.</p>
+<p>"I see you've been dancing," said Vincent, coming to a halt in
+front of the group and wishing the two old gentlemen in the middle
+of next week.</p>
+<p>"Old Mrs. Powers got me," explained Mr. Welles. "You never saw
+anything so absurd in your life." He went on to the others, "You
+simply can't imagine how remarkable this is, for me. I never,
+<i>never</i> danced and I no more thought I ever <i>would</i> . .
+."</p>
+<p>Mr. Bayweather ran his handkerchief around and around his neck
+in an endeavor to save his clerical collar from complete ruin, and
+said, panting still, "Best thing in the world for you, Mr.
+Welles."</p>
+<p>"Yes indeed," echoed Marise. "We'll have to prescribe a dance
+for you every week. You look like a boy, and you've been looking
+rather tired lately." She had an idea and added, accusingly, "I do
+believe you've gone on tormenting yourself about the Negro
+problem!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, he has!" Mr. Bayweather unexpectedly put in. "And he's not
+the only person he torments about it. Only yesterday when he came
+down to the rectory to see some old deeds, didn't he expatiate on
+that subject and succeed in spoiling the afternoon. I had never
+been forced to think so much about it in all my life. He made me
+very uncomfortable, very! What's the use of going miles out of your
+way, I say, out of the station to which it has pleased God to place
+us? I believe in leaving such insoluble problems to a Divine
+Providence."</p>
+<p>Marise was evidently highly amused by this exposition of one
+variety of ministerial principle, and looked up at Vincent over her
+fan, her eyes sparkling with mockery. He savored with an intimate
+pleasure her certainty that he would follow the train of her
+thought; and he decided to try to get another rise out of the
+round-eyed little clergyman. "Oh, if it weren't the Negro problem,
+Mr. Bayweather, it would be free-will or predestination, or capital
+and labor. Mr. Welles suffers from a duty-complex, inflamed to a
+morbid degree by a life-long compliance to a mediaeval conception
+of family responsibility."</p>
+<p>Mr. Bayweather's eyes became rounder than ever at this, and
+Vincent went on, much amused, "Mr. Welles has done his duty with
+discomfort to himself so long that he has the habit. His life at
+Ashley seems too unnaturally peaceful to him. I'd just as soon he
+took it out with worrying about the Negroes. They are so safely far
+away. I had been on the point of communicating to him my doubts as
+to the civic virtues of the Martians, as a safety valve for
+him."</p>
+<p>Marise laughed out, as round a peal as little Mark's, but she
+evidently thought they had gone far enough with their fooling, for
+she now brought the talk back to a safe, literal level by crying,
+"Well, there's one thing sure, Mr. Welles can't worry his head
+about <i>any</i> of the always-with-us difficulties of life, as
+long as he is dancing art Ashley quadrille."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles concurred in this with feeling. "I'd no idea I would
+ever experience anything so . . . so . . . well, I tell you, I
+thought I'd left <i>fun</i> behind me, years and years ago."</p>
+<p>"Oh, what you've had is nothing compared to what you're going to
+have," Marise told him. "Just wait till old Nate strikes up the
+opening bars of 'The Whirlwind' and see the roof of the house fly
+off. See here," she laid her hand on his arm. "This is leap-year. I
+solemnly engage you to dance 'The Whirlwind' with me." She made the
+gesture of the little-boy athlete, feeling the biceps of one arm,
+moving her forearm up and down. "I'm in good health, and good
+muscle, because I've been out stirring up the asparagus bed with a
+spading-fork. I can shove you around as well as old Mrs. Powers, if
+I do say it who shouldn't."</p>
+<p>Vincent looked down at her, bubbling with light-hearted
+merriment, and thought, "There is no end to the variety of her
+moods!"</p>
+<p>She glanced up at him, caught his eyes on her and misinterpreted
+their wondering expression. "You think I'm just silly and childish,
+don't you?" she told him challengingly. "Oh, don't be such an
+everlasting adult. Life's not so serious as all that!"</p>
+<p>He stirred to try to protest, but she went on, "It's dancing
+that sets me off. Nelly Powers and I are crazy about it. And so far
+as my observation of life extends, our dances here are the only
+social functions left in the world, that people really <i>enjoy</i>
+and don't go to merely because it's the thing to. It always goes to
+my head to see people enjoy themselves. It's so sweet."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles gave her one of his affectionate pats on her hand.
+Vincent asked her casually, "What's the idea of making a family
+party of it and bringing the children too?"</p>
+<p>She answered dashingly, "If I answer you in your own language,
+I'd say that it's because their households are in such a low and
+lamentably primitive condition that they haven't any slave-labor to
+leave the children with, and so bring them along out of mere brute
+necessity. If I answer you in another vocabulary, I'd say that
+there is a close feeling of family unity, and they <i>like</i> to
+have their children with them when they are having a good time, and
+find it pleasant to see mothers dancing with their little boys and
+fathers with their little girls."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Without the slightest premonition of what his next question was
+to bring out, and only putting it to keep the talk going, Vincent
+challenged her, "Why don't you bring your own, then?" He kept down
+with difficulty the exclamation which he inwardly added, "If you
+only knew what a relief it is to see you for once, without that
+intrusive, tiresome bunch of children!"</p>
+<p>"Why, sometimes I do," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone.
+"But I just had a telegram from my husband saying that he is able
+to get home a little sooner than he thought, and will be here early
+tomorrow morning. And the children voted to go to bed early so they
+could be up bright and early to see him."</p>
+<p>Vincent continued looking down on her blankly for an instant,
+after she had finished this reasonable explanation. He was startled
+by the wave of anger which spurted up over him like flame.</p>
+<p>He heard Mr. Welles make some suitable comment, "How nice." He
+himself said, "Oh really," in a neutral tone, and turned away.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>For a moment he saw nothing of what was before him, and then
+realized that he had moved next to Frank Warner, who was standing
+by Nelly Powers, and asking her to dance with him again. She was
+shaking her head, and looking about the room uneasily. Vincent felt
+a gust of anger again. "Oh, go <i>to</i> it, Frank!" he said, in a
+low fierce tone. "Take her out again, as often as you like. Why
+shouldn't you?"</p>
+<p>Nelly gave him one of her enigmatic looks, deep and inscrutable,
+shrugged her shoulders, put her hand on Frank's arm, and walked off
+with him.</p>
+<p>"They're the handsomest couple in the room," said Vincent, at
+random to a farmer near him, who looked at him astonished by the
+heat of his accent. And then, seeing that Nelly's husband was in
+possible earshot, Vincent raised his voice recklessly. "They're the
+handsomest couple in the room," he repeated resentfully. "They
+ought always to dance together."</p>
+<p>If 'Gene heard, he did not show it, the granite impassivity of
+his harsh face unmoved.</p>
+<p>Vincent went on towards the door, his nerves a little relieved
+by this outburst. He would go out and have another cigarette, he
+thought, and then take his old man-child home to bed. What were
+they doing in this absurd place?</p>
+<p>The music began to skirl again as he stepped out and closed the
+door behind him.</p>
+<p>He drew in deeply the fresh night-air, and looking upward saw
+that the clouds had broken away and that the stars were out,
+innumerable, thick-sown, studding with gold the narrow roof of sky
+which, rising from the mountains on either side, arched itself over
+the valley. He stood staring before him, frowning, forgetting what
+he had come out to do. He told himself that coming from that
+yelling confusion inside, and the glare of those garish lamps, he
+was stupefied by the great silence of the night. There was nothing
+clear in his mind, only a turmoil of eddying sensations which he
+could not name. He walked down to the huge dark pine, the pine
+which 'Gene Powers loved like a person, and which his wife wished
+were cut down. What a ghastly prison marriage was, he thought, a
+thing as hostile to the free human spirit as an iron
+ball-and-chain.</p>
+<p>He looked back at the little house, tiny as an insect before the
+great bulk of the mountains, dwarfed by the gigantic tree,
+ridiculous, despicable in the face of Nature, like the human life
+it sheltered. From its every window poured a flood of yellow light
+that was drunk up in a twinkling by the vastness of the night's
+obscurity.</p>
+<p>He leaned against the straight, sternly unyielding bole of the
+tree, folding his arms and staring at the house. What a beastly
+joke the whole business of living!</p>
+<p>A thousand ugly recollections poured their venom upon him from
+his past life. Life, this little moment of blind, sensual groping
+and grabbing for something worth while that did not exist, save in
+the stultification of the intelligence. All that you reached for,
+so frantically, it was only another handful of mud, when you held
+it.</p>
+<p>Past the yellow squares of the windows, he saw the shapes of the
+dancers, insect-tiny, footing it to and fro. And in one of those
+silhouettes he recognized Marise Crittenden.</p>
+<p>He turned away from the sight and struck his fist against the
+rough bark of the tree. What an insane waste and confusion ruled
+everywhere in human life! A woman like that to be squandered . . .
+an intelligence fine and supple, a talent penetrating and rare like
+hers for music, a strange personal beauty like that of no other
+woman, a depth one felt like mid-ocean, a capacity for fun like a
+child's and a vitality of personality, a power for passion that
+pulsed from her so that to touch her hand casually set one
+thrilling . . . ! And good God! What was destiny doing with her?
+Spending that gold like water on three brats incapable of
+distinguishing between her and any good-natured woman who would put
+on their shoes and wash their faces for them. Any paid Irish nurse
+could do for them what their mother bent the priceless treasure of
+her temperament to accomplish. The Irish nurse would do it better,
+for she would not be aware of anything else better, which she might
+do, and their mother knew well enough what she sacrificed . . . or
+if she did not know it yet, she would, soon. She had betrayed that
+to him, the very first time he had seen her, that astonishing first
+day, when, breathing out her vivid charm like an aureole of gold
+mist, she had sat there before him, quite simply the woman most to
+his taste he had even seen . . . <i>here</i>! That day when she had
+spoken about the queerness of her feeling "lost" when little Mark
+went off to school, because for the first time in years she had had
+an hour or so free from those ruthless little leeches who spent
+their lives in draining her vitality. He had known, if she had not,
+the significance of that feeling of hers, the first time she had
+had a moment to raise her eyes from her trivial task and see that
+she had been tricked into a prison. That very day he had wanted to
+cry out to her, as impersonally as one feels towards a beautiful
+bird caught in a net, "Now, <i>now</i>, burst through, and spread
+your wings where you belong."</p>
+<p>It was like wiping up the floor with cloth of gold. In order
+that those three perfectly commonplace, valueless human lives might
+be added to the world's wretched population, a nature as rare as a
+jewel was being slowly ground away. What were the treasures to whom
+she was being sacrificed? Paul, the greasy, well-intentioned,
+priggish burgher he would make; Elly, almost half-witted, a child
+who stared at you like an imbecile when asked a question, and who
+evidently scarcely knew that her mother existed, save as cook and
+care-taker. And Mark, the passionate, gross, greedy baby. There
+were the three walls of the prison where she was shut away from any
+life worthy of her.</p>
+<p>And the fourth wall . . .</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The blackness dropped deeper about him, and within him. There
+they were dancing, those idiots, dancing on a volcano if ever human
+beings did, in the little sultry respite from the tornado which was
+called the world-peace. Well, that was less idiotic than working,
+at least. How soon before it would break again, the final
+destructive hurricane, born of nothing but the malignant folly of
+human hearts, and sweep away all that they now agonized and sweated
+to keep? What silly weakness to spend the respite in anything but
+getting as much of what you wanted as you could, before it was all
+gone in the big final smash-up, and the yellow or black man were on
+top.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>With a bitter relish he felt sunk deep in one of his rank
+reactions against life and human beings. Now at least he was on
+bed-rock. There was a certain hard, quiet restfulness in scorning
+it all so whole-heartedly as either stupid or base.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>At this a woman's face hung suddenly there in the blackness. Her
+long eyes seemed to look directly into his, a full revealing look
+such as they had never given him in reality. His hard quiet was
+broken by an agitation he could not control. No, no, there was
+something there that was not mud. He had thought he would live and
+die without meeting it. And there it was, giving to paltry life a
+meaning, after all, a troubling and immortal meaning.</p>
+<p>A frosty breath blew down upon him from the mountains. A long
+shudder ran through him.</p>
+<p>The sensation moved him to a sweeping change of mood, to a
+furious resentment as at an indignity. God! What was he doing? Who
+was this moping in the dark like a boy?</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The great night stood huge and breathless above him as before,
+but now he saw only the lamp-lit house, tiny as an insect, but
+vibrant with eager and joyous life. With a strong, resolute step he
+went rapidly back to the door, opened it wide, stepped in, and
+walked across the floor to Marise Crittenden. "You're going to
+dance the next dance with <i>me</i>, you know," he told her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>AT THE MILL</h3>
+<div class='center'><br />
+<b>I</b><br />
+<br />
+<i>An Afternoon in the Life of Mr. Neale Crittenden, aet.
+38</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+May 27.</div>
+<p>The stenographer, a pale, thin boy, with a scarred face, and
+very white hands, limped over to the manager's desk with a pile of
+letters to be signed. "There, Captain Crittenden," he said, pride
+in his accent.</p>
+<p>Neale was surprised and pleased. "All done, Arthur?" He looked
+over the work hastily. "Good work, good work." He leaned back,
+looking up at the other. "How about it, anyhow, Arthur? Is it going
+to work out all right?"</p>
+<p>The stenographer looked at him hard and swallowed visibly. "I
+never dreamed I'd be fit to do anything I like half so well. I
+thought when I was in the hospital that I was done for, for sure.
+Captain Crittenden, if you only knew what my mother and I think
+about what you've done for . . ."</p>
+<p>Neale dodged hastily. "That's all right. That's all right. If
+you like it, that's all that's necessary. And I'm not Captain any
+more."</p>
+<p>"I forget, sir," said the other apologetically.</p>
+<p>"Can you sit down and take a second batch right now? I want to
+get through early. Mrs. Crittenden's going to bring some visitors
+to see the place this afternoon, and I'll have to be with them more
+or less."</p>
+<p>He looked at the clock. It was half-past three. Marise had said
+she would be there about four. He gave a calculating glance at the
+stack of letters. He would never be able to get through those.
+"We'll have to get a move on," he remarked. "Things got pretty well
+piled up while I was away."</p>
+<p>He began to dictate rapidly, steadily, the end of a sentence
+clearly in his mind before he pronounced the first word. He liked
+to dictate and enjoyed doing it well. The pale young stenographer
+bent over his note-book, his disfigured face intent and
+serious.</p>
+<p>"Turned out all right, Arthur has," thought Neale to himself. "I
+wasn't so far off, when I thought of the business college for him."
+Then he applied himself single-mindedly to his dictation, taking up
+one letter after another, with hardly a pause in his voice. But for
+all his diligence, he had not come to the bottom of the pile when
+four o'clock struck; nor ten minutes later when, glancing out of
+the window, he saw Marise and the children with Mr. Bayweather and
+the two other men coming across the mill-yard. Evidently Mr.
+Bayweather had dropped in just as they were going to start and had
+come along. He stopped dictating and looked at the group with a
+certain interest. Marise and the children had had a good deal to
+say yesterday about the newcomers to Crittenden's.</p>
+<p>It seemed to him that the impression he had received of them had
+been as inaccurate as such second-hand impressions were apt to be.
+The older man was just like any elderly business man, for all he
+could see, nothing so especially attractive about him, although
+Marise had said in her ardent way that he was "the sort of old
+American you love on sight, the kind that makes you home-sick when
+you meet him in Europe." And as for Mr. Marsh, he couldn't see any
+signs of his being such a record-breaking live-wire as they had all
+said. He walked along quietly enough, and was evidently as resigned
+as any of them to letting Mr. Bayweather do all the talking. On the
+other hand, none of them had told him what a striking-looking
+fellow he was, so tall, and with such a bold carriage of that round
+dark head.</p>
+<p>"Here they come, Arthur," he remarked. "No more time. But I'll
+try to squeeze in a minute or two, while they are here, to finish
+up these last ones."</p>
+<p>The young man followed the direction of his eyes and nodded. He
+continued looking at the advancing group for a moment, and as he
+stood up, "You could tell that Mr. Marsh is a millionaire by the
+way his clothes fit, couldn't you?" he remarked, turning to go back
+to his desk in the outer office.</p>
+<p>They were coming down the hall now. Neale went forward to open
+the door, met and breasted the wave of children who after hugging
+casually at his knees and arms, swept by; and stepped forward to be
+presented to the newcomers. They had not crossed the threshold,
+before his first impression was reversed in one case. Marsh was a
+live-wire all right. Now that he had seen his eyes, he knew what
+Elly had meant when she said that when he looked at you it was like
+lightning.</p>
+<p>Mr. Bayweather barely waited for the first greetings to be
+pronounced before he burst out, "Do they say, 'backwards and
+forwards' or 'back and forth'?"</p>
+<p>Neale laughed. Old Bayweather was perennial. "Backwards and
+forwards, of course," he said. "English people always say
+everything the longest possible way." He explained to the others,
+"Mr. Bayweather is an impassioned philologist . . ."</p>
+<p>"So I have gathered," commented Marsh.</p>
+<p>". . . and whenever any friends of his go on travels, they are
+always asked to bring back some philological information about the
+region where they go."</p>
+<p>He turned to Marise (how sweet she looked in that thin yellow
+dress). "Where do you want your personally conducted to begin,
+dear?" he asked her. (Lord! How good it seemed to get back to
+Marise!)</p>
+<p>Mr. Bayweather cut in hastily, "If I may be permitted to
+suggest, I think a history of the mill would be advisable as a
+beginning. I will be glad to tell the newcomers about this. I've
+just been working the subject up for a chapter in history of
+Ashley."</p>
+<p>Neale caught an anguished side-glance from Marise and sent back
+to her a shrugged message of helplessness in the face of Destiny.
+The man didn't live who could head old Bayweather off when he got
+started on local history. And besides, this would give him time to
+get those last three letters finished. Aloud he said, "I wouldn't
+dare say a word about history in Mr. Bayweather's presence. I have
+a few letters to finish. I'll just step into the outer office and
+be ready to start when you've heard the history lecture." He turned
+to the children, who were tapping on the typewriter. "Look here,
+kids, you'd be better off where you won't break anything. Get along
+with you out into the mill-yard and play on the lumber-piles, why
+don't you? Paul, you see if you can tell yellow birch from oak this
+time!"</p>
+<p>He and the children beat a retreat together into the outer
+office, where he bent over Arthur's desk and began to dictate in a
+low voice, catching, as he did so, an occasional rotund phrase from
+the disquisition in the other room. ". . . the glorious spirit of
+manly independence of the Green Mountain Boys . . ."</p>
+<p>To himself Neale thought, "He'd call it bolshevism if he met it
+today . . ."</p>
+<p>". . . second building erected in the new settlement, 1766, as a
+fort. . . . No, <i>no</i>, Mr. Marsh, <i>not</i> against the
+Indians! Our early settlers <i>here</i> never had any trouble with
+the Indians."</p>
+<p>Neale laughed to himself at the clergyman's resentment of any
+ignorance of any detail of Ashley's unimportant history.</p>
+<p>". . . as a fort against the York State men in the land-grant
+quarrels with New Hampshire and New York, before the Revolution."
+Neale, smiling inwardly, bet himself a nickel that neither of the
+two strangers had ever heard of the Vermont land-grant quarrels,
+and found himself vastly tickled by the profound silence they kept
+on the subject. They were evidently scared to death of starting old
+Bayweather off on another line. They were safe enough, if they only
+knew it. It was inconceivable to Mr. Bayweather that any grown
+person should not know all about early Vermont history.</p>
+<p>At this point Marise came out of the office, her face between
+laughter and exasperation. She clasped her hands together and said,
+"Can't you do <i>any</i>thing?"</p>
+<p>"In a minute," he told her. "I'll just finish these two letters
+and then I'll go and break him off short."</p>
+<p>Marise went on to the accountant's desk, to ask about his wife,
+who sang in her winter chorus.</p>
+<p>He dictated rapidly: "No more contracts will go out to you if
+this stripping of the mountain-land continues. Our original
+contract has in it the clause which I always insist on, that trees
+smaller than six inches through the butt shall not be cut. You will
+please give your choppers definite orders on this point, and
+understand that logs under the specified size will not be accepted
+at the mill." He held out to the stenographer the letter he was
+answering. "Here, Arthur, copy the name and address off this. It's
+one of those French-Canadian names, hard to spell if you don't see
+it."</p>
+<p>He paused an instant to hear how far Mr. Bayweather had
+progressed, and heard him saying, "In the decade from 1850 on,
+there was a terrible and scandalous devastation of the
+mountain-land . . ." and said to himself, "Halfway through the
+century. I'll have time to go on a while. All ready, Arthur." He
+dictated: "On birch brush-backs of the model specified, we can
+furnish you any number up to . . ." He wound his way swiftly and
+surely through a maze of figures and specifications without
+consulting a paper or record, and drawing breath at the end, heard
+Mr. Bayweather pronouncing his own name. ". . . Mr. Crittenden has
+taught us all a great deal about the economic aspects of a
+situation with which we had had years of more familiarity than he.
+His idea is that this mountainous part of New England is really not
+fit for agriculture. Farming in the usual sense has been a losing
+venture ever since the Civil War high prices for wool ceased. Only
+the bottoms of the valleys are fit for crops. Most of our county is
+essentially forest-land. And his idea of the proper use to make of
+it, is to have a smallish industrial population engaged in
+wood-working, who would use the bits of arable land in the valleys
+as gardens to raise their own food. He has almost entirely
+reorganized the life of our valley, along these lines, and I
+daresay he cannot at all realize himself the prodigious change from
+hopelessness and slow death to energy and forward-looking activity
+which his intelligent grasp of the situation has brought to this
+corner of the earth."</p>
+<p>The young stenographer had heard this too, and had caught the
+frown of annoyance which the personal reference brought to Neale's
+forehead. He leaned forward and said earnestly, "It's so, Captain .
+. . Mr. Crittenden. It's <i>so</i>!"</p>
+<p>Mr. Bayweather went on, "There is enough wood in the forests
+within reach of the mill to keep a moderate-sized wood-working
+factory going indefinitely, cutting by rotation and taking care to
+leave enough trees for natural reforestration. But of course that
+has not been the American way of going at things. Instead of that
+steady, continuous use of the woods, which Mr. Crittenden has shown
+to be possible, furnishing good, well-paid work at home for the men
+who would be otherwise forced off into cities, our poor mountains
+have been lumbered every generation or so, on an immense,
+murderous, slashing scale, to make a big sum of money for somebody
+in one operation. When old Mr. Burton Crittenden's nephew came to
+town it was a different story. Mr. Neale Crittenden's ideal of the
+lumber business is, as I conceive it, as much a service to mankind
+as a doctor's is."</p>
+<p>Neale winced, and shook his head impatiently. How ministers did
+put the Sunday-school rubber-stamp on everything they talked
+about&mdash;even legitimate business.</p>
+<p>"And as Mrs. Crittenden's free-handed generosity with her
+musical talent has transformed the life of the region as much as
+Mr. Crittenden's high and disinterested . . ."</p>
+<p>"Oh <i>Gosh</i>, Arthur, never mind about the rest!" murmured
+Neale, moving back quickly into the inner office to create a
+diversion. "All ready?" he asked in a loud, hearty voice, as he
+came up to them. "Up to 1920 by this time, Mr. Bayweather?" He
+turned to Marsh, "I'm afraid there is very little to interest you,
+with your experience of production on a giant scale, in a business
+so small that the owner and manager knows every man by name and
+everything about him."</p>
+<p>"You couldn't show me anything more <i>out</i> of my own
+experience," answered Marsh, "than just that. And as for what I
+know about production on a giant scale, I can tell you it's not
+much. I did try to hook on, once or twice, years ago&mdash;to find
+out something about the business that my father spent his life in
+helping to build up, but it always ended in my being shooed out of
+the office by a rather irritable manager who knew I knew nothing
+about any of it, and who evidently hated above everything else,
+having amateur directors come horning in on what was no party of
+theirs. 'If they get their dividends all right, what more do they
+want?' was his motto. I never was able to make any sense out of it.
+It's all on such a preposterously big scale now. Once in a while,
+touring, I have come across one of our branch establishments and
+have stopped my car to see the men come out of the buildings at
+quitting-time. That's as close as I have ever come. Do you really
+know their <i>names</i>?"</p>
+<p>"I can't pronounce all the French-Canadian names to suit them,
+but I know them all, yes. Most of them are just the overflow of the
+rural population around here."</p>
+<p>He said to himself in congratulation, "Between us, we pried old
+Bayweather loose from his soft soap, pretty neatly," and gave the
+man before him a look of friendly understanding. He was a little
+startled, for an instant, by the expression in the other's bright
+eyes, which he found fixed on him with an intentness almost
+disconcerting. "Does he think I'm trying to put something over on
+him?" he asked himself with a passing astonishment, "or is he
+trying to put something over on me?" Then he remembered that
+everyone had spoken of Marsh's eyes as peculiar; it was probably
+just his habit. "He can look right through me and out at the other
+side, for all <i>I</i> care!" he thought indifferently, meeting the
+other's gaze with a faintly humorous sense of something absurd.</p>
+<p>Marise had come back now, and was saying, "You really must get
+started, Neale, the men will be quitting work soon."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, this minute," he told her, and led the way with Mr.
+Welles, leaving Marise and Mr. Bayweather to be showman for Mr.
+Marsh. He now remembered that he had not heard the older man say a
+single word as yet, and surmised that he probably never said much
+when the fluent Mr. Marsh was with him. He wondered a little, as
+they made their way to the saw-mill, what Marise saw in either of
+them to interest her so much. Oh well, they were a change, of
+course, from Ashley and Crittenden's people, and different from the
+Eugenia Mills bunch, in New York, too.</p>
+<p>He stood now, beside Mr. Welles, in the saw-mill, the ringing
+high crescendo scream of the saws filling the air. Marise stood at
+the other end talking animatedly to the two she had with her.
+Marise was a wonder on conversation anyhow. What could she find to
+say, now, for instance? What in the world was there to say to an
+ex-office manager of a big electrical company about a wood-working
+business?</p>
+<p>His eyes were caught by what one of the men was doing and he
+yelled at him sharply, "Look out there, Harry! Stop that! What do I
+have a guard rail there for, anyhow?"</p>
+<p>"What was the matter?" asked Mr. Welles, startled.</p>
+<p>"Oh, nothing much. One of the men dodging under a safety device
+to save him a couple of steps. They get so reckless about those
+saws. You have to look out for them like a bunch of bad
+children."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles looked at him earnestly. "Are you . . . have you . .
+. Mr. Bayweather has told us so much about all you do for the men .
+. . how they are all devoted to you."</p>
+<p>Neale looked and felt annoyed. Bayweather and his palaver! "I
+don't do anything for them, except give them as good wages as the
+business will stand, and as much responsibility for running things
+as they'll take. Beyond that, I let them alone. I don't believe in
+what's known as 'welfare work.' I wouldn't want them messing around
+in my private life, and I don't believe they'd like me in
+theirs."</p>
+<p>The necessity to raise his voice to a shout in order to make
+himself heard above the tearing scream of the saws made him sound
+very abrupt and peremptory, more so than he had meant. As he
+finished speaking his eyes met those of the older man, and were
+held by the clarity and candor of the other's gaze. They were like
+a child's eyes in that old face. It was as though he had been
+abrupt and impatient to Elly or Mark.</p>
+<p>As he looked he saw more than candor and clarity. He saw a deep
+weariness.</p>
+<p>Neale smoothed his forehead, a little ashamed of his petulance,
+and drew his companion further from the saws where the noise was
+less. He meant to say something apologetic, but the right phrase
+did not come to him. And as Mr. Welles said nothing further, they
+walked on in silence. They passed through the first and second
+floors of the mill, where the handling of the smaller pieces was
+done, and neither of them spoke a word. Neale looked about him at
+the familiar, familiar scene, and found it too dull to make any
+comment on. What was there to say? This was the way you
+manufactured brush-backs and wooden boxes and such-like things, and
+that was all. The older men bent over their lathes quietly, the
+occasional woman-worker smartly hammering small nails into the
+holes already bored for her, the big husky boys shoved the trucks
+around, the elevator droned up and down, the belts flicked as they
+sped around and around. Blest if he could think of any explanation
+to make to a grown man on so simple and everyday a scene. And yet
+he did not enjoy this silence because it seemed like a continuation
+of his grumpiness of a few minutes ago. Well, the next time the old
+fellow said anything, he'd fall over himself to be nice in his
+answer.</p>
+<p>Presently as they came to the outside door, Mr. Welles remarked
+with a gentle dignity, in evident allusion to Neale's cutting him
+short, "I only meant that I was very much interested in what I see
+here, and that I would like very much to know more about it."</p>
+<p>Neale felt he fairly owed him an apology. He began to understand
+what Marise meant when she had said the old fellow was one you
+loved on sight. It was her way, emotionally heightened as usual, of
+saying that he was really a very nice old codger. "I'll be glad to
+tell you anything you want to know, Mr. Welles," he said. "But I
+haven't any idea what it is that interests you. You fire ahead and
+ask questions and I'll agree to answer them."</p>
+<p>"That's what I'd like, all right. And remember if I ask anything
+you don't want to talk about . . ." He referred evidently to
+Neale's impatience of a few minutes ago.</p>
+<p>"There aren't any trade secrets in the wood-working business,"
+said Neale, laughing. "Better come along and see our drying-room as
+we talk. We've had to make some concession to modern haste and use
+kiln-drying, although I season first in the old way as long as
+possible." They stepped out of the door and started across the
+mill-yard.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles said with a very faint smile in the corner of his
+pale old lips, "I don't believe you want to show me any of this,
+Mr. Crittenden. And honestly that isn't what interests me about it.
+I wouldn't know a drying-room from a steam-laundry."</p>
+<p>Neale stopped short, and surveyed his companion with amusement
+and admiration. "Good for you!" he cried. "Tell the truth and shame
+the devil and set an example to all honest men. Mr. Welles, you
+have my esteem."</p>
+<p>The old man had a shy smile at this. "I don't tell the truth
+that way to everybody," he said demurely.</p>
+<p>Neale liked him more and more. "Sir, I am yours to command," he
+said, sitting down on the steps, "ask ahead!"</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles turned serious, and hesitated. "Mr. Bayweather said .
+. ." He began and looked anxiously at Neale.</p>
+<p>"I won't bite even if he did," Neale reassured him.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles looked at him with the pleasantest expression in his
+eyes. "It's a great relief to find that we can get on with one
+another," he said, "for I must admit to you that I have fallen a
+complete victim to Mrs. Crittenden. I . . . I love your wife." He
+brought it out with a quaint, humorous roundness.</p>
+<p>"You can't get up any discussion with me about that," said
+Neale. "I do myself."</p>
+<p>They both laughed, and Mr. Welles said, "But you see, caring
+such a lot about her, it was a matter of great importance to me
+what kind of husband she had. I find actually seeing you very
+exciting."</p>
+<p>"You're the first who ever found it so, I'm sure," said Neale,
+amused at the idea.</p>
+<p>"But it wasn't this I wanted to say," said Mr. Welles. He went
+back and said again, "Mr. Bayweather said your idea of business is
+service, like a doctor's?"</p>
+<p>Neale winced at the Bayweather priggishness of this way of
+putting it, but remembering his remorse for his earlier
+brusqueness, he restrained himself to good humor and the admission,
+"Making allowance for ministerial jargon, that's something like a
+fair statement."</p>
+<p>He was astonished at the seriousness with which Mr. Welles took
+this. What was it to him? The old man looked at him, deeply,
+unaccountably, evidently entirely at a loss. "Mr. Crittenden," he
+said abruptly, "to speak right out, that sounded to me like the
+notion of a nice idealistic woman, who has never been in business.
+You see I've <i>been</i> in a business office all my life!"</p>
+<p>Neale found his liking for the gentle, troubled old man enough
+for him to say truthfully, "Mr. Welles, I don't mind talking to you
+about it. Sure, yes I can understand how having a minister put it
+that way. . . . Lord! How the old boy does spill over! And yet why
+should I care? I'm ashamed of letting harmless Mr. Bayweather get
+on my nerves so."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles started to speak, found no words, and waved an arm as
+if to imply that <i>he</i> understood perfectly. This made Neale
+laugh a little, and gave him a picture of the helplessness of a
+newcomer to Ashley, before the flood-tide of Mr. Bayweather's local
+learning.</p>
+<p>He went on, "He sort of taints an honest idea, doesn't he, by
+his high-falutin' way of going on about it?"</p>
+<p>He hesitated, trying to think of simple words to sum up what he
+had, after all, never exactly formulated because it had been so
+much an attitude he and Marise had silently grown into. It was
+hard, he found, to hit on any expression that said what he wanted
+to; but after all, it wasn't so very important whether he did or
+not. He was only trying to make a nice tired old man think himself
+enough respected to be seriously talked to. He'd just ramble on,
+till Marise brought the other visitors up to them.</p>
+<p>And yet as he talked, he got rather interested in his statement
+of it. A comparison of baseball and tennis ethics came into his
+mind as apposite, and quite tickled him by its aptness. Mr. Welles
+threw in an occasional remark. He was no man's fool, it soon
+appeared, for all his mildness. And for a time he seemed to be
+interested.</p>
+<p>But presently Neale noticed that the other was looking absent
+and no longer made any comments. That was what happened, Neale
+reflected with an inward smile, as he slowed down and prepared to
+stop, when anybody succeeded in getting you started on your hobby.
+They were bored. They didn't really want to know after all. It was
+like trying to tell folks about your travels.</p>
+<p>But he was astonished to the limit of astonishment by what Mr.
+Welles brought out in the silence which finally dropped between
+them. The old man looked at him very hard and asked, "Mr.
+Crittenden, do you know anything about the treatment of the Negroes
+in the South?"</p>
+<p>Neale sat up blinking. "Why no, nothing special, except that
+it's a fearful knot we don't seem to get untied," he said. "I
+contribute to the support of an agricultural school in Georgia, but
+I'm afraid I never take much time to read the reports they send me.
+Why do you ask?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, no particular reason. I have a relative down there, that's
+all."</p>
+<p>Marise and the others came out of a door at the far-end of the
+building now, and advanced towards them slowly. Neale and Mr.
+Welles watched them.</p>
+<p>Neale was struck again by Marsh's appearance. As far away as you
+could see him, he held the eye. "An unusual man, your friend Mr.
+Marsh," he remarked. "Mrs. Crittenden tells me that he is one of
+the people who have been everywhere and done everything and seen
+everybody. He looks the part."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles made no comment on this for a moment, his eyes on the
+advancing group. Marise had raised her parasol of yellow silk. It
+made a shimmering halo for her dark, gleaming hair, as she turned
+her head towards Marsh, her eyes narrowed and shining as she
+laughed at something he said.</p>
+<p>Then the old man remarked, "Yes, he's unusual, all right,
+Vincent is. He has his father's energy and push." He added in a
+final characterization, "I've known him ever since he was a little
+boy, and I never knew him not to get what he went after."</p>
+<div class='center'><br />
+<b>II</b><br />
+<br />
+<i>How the Same Thing Looked to Mr. Welles</i></div>
+<p>As they walked along towards the mill, Mr. Welles had a distinct
+impression that he was going to dislike the mill-owner, and as
+distinct a certainty as to where that impression came from. He had
+received too many by the same route not to recognize the shipping
+label. Not that Vincent had ever said a single slighting word about
+Mr. Crittenden. He couldn't have, very well, since they neither of
+them had ever laid eyes on him. But Vincent never needed words to
+convey impressions into other people's minds. He had a thousand
+other ways better than words. Vincent could be silent, knock off
+the ashes from his cigarette, recross his legs, and lean back in
+his chair in a manner that slammed an impression into your head as
+though he had yelled it at you.</p>
+<p>But to be fair to Vincent, Mr. Welles thought probably he had
+been more than ready to soak up an impression like the one he felt.
+They'd had such an awfully good time with Mrs. Crittenden and the
+children, it stood to reason the head of the house would seem to
+them like a butter-in and an outsider in a happy-family group.</p>
+<p>More than this, too. As they came within hearing of the
+industrial activity of the mill, and he felt his heart sink and
+turn sore and bitter, Mr. Welles realized that Vincent had very
+little to do with his dread of meeting the mill-owner. It was not
+Mr. Crittenden he shrank from, it was the mill-owner, the business
+man . . . business itself.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles hated and feared the sound of the word and knew that
+it had him cowed, because in his long life he had known it to be
+the only reality in the world of men. And in that world he had
+known the only reality to be that if you didn't cut the other
+fellow's throat first he would cut yours. There wasn't any other
+reality. He had heard impractical, womanish men say there was, and
+try to prove it, only to have their economic throats cut
+considerably more promptly than any others. He had done his little
+indirect share of the throat-cutting always. He was not denying the
+need to do it. Only he had never found it a very cheerful
+atmosphere in which to pass one's life. And now he had escaped, to
+the only other reality, the pleasant, gentle, slightly unreal world
+of women, nice women, and children and gardens. He was so old now
+that there was no shame in his sinking into that for what time he
+had left, as other old fellows sank into an easy-chair. Only he
+wished that he could have got along without being reminded so
+vividly, as he would be by this trip to the business-world, of what
+paid for the arm-chair, supported the nice women and children. He
+wished he hadn't had to come here, to be forced to remember again
+that the inevitable foundation for all that was pleasant and
+livable in private life was the grim determination on the part of a
+strong man to give his strength to "taking it out of the hide" of
+his competitors, his workmen, and the public. He'd had a vacation
+from that, and it made him appallingly depressed to take another
+dose of it now. He sincerely wished that sweet Mrs. Crittenden were
+a widow with a small income from some impersonal source with no
+uncomfortable human associations with it. He recalled with a sad
+cynicism the story Mrs. Crittenden had told them about the clever
+and forceful lawyer who had played the dirty trick on the farmer
+here in Ashley, and done him out of his wood-land. She had been
+very much wrought up about that, the poor lady, without having the
+least idea that probably her husband's business-life was full of
+such knifings-in-the-back, all with the purpose of making a quiet
+life for her and the children.</p>
+<p>Well, there was nothing for it but to go on. It wouldn't last
+long, and Mr. Welles' back was practised in bowing to weather he
+didn't like but which passed if you waited a while.</p>
+<p>They were going up the hall now, towards a door marked "Office,"
+the children scampering ahead. The door was opening. The tall man
+who stood there, nodding a welcome to them, must be Mr.
+Crittenden.</p>
+<p>So that was the kind of man he was. Nothing special about him.
+Just a nice-looking American business-man, with a quiet, calm
+manner and a friendly face.</p>
+<p>To the conversation which followed and which, like all such
+conversations, amounted to nothing at all, Mr. Welles made no
+contribution. What was the use? Mr. Bayweather and Vincent were
+there. The conversation would not flag. So he had the usual good
+chance of the silent person to use his eyes. He looked mostly at
+Mr. Crittenden. Well, he wasn't so bad. They were usually nice
+enough men in personal relations, business men. This one had good
+eyes, very nice when he looked at the children or his wife. They
+were often good family men, too. There was something about him,
+however, that wasn't just like all others. What was it? Not
+clothes. His suit was cut off the same piece with forty million
+other American business-suits. Not looks, although there was an
+outdoor ruddiness of skin and clearness of eye that made him look a
+little like a sailor. Oh yes, Mr. Welles had it. It was his voice.
+Whenever he spoke, there was something . . . something
+<i>natural</i> about his voice, as though it didn't ever say things
+he didn't mean.</p>
+<p>Well, for Heaven's sake here was the old minister started off
+again on one of his historical spiels. Mr. Welles glanced
+cautiously at Vincent to see if he were in danger of blowing up,
+and found him looking unexpectedly thoughtful. He was evidently not
+paying the least attention to Mr. Bayweather's account of the
+eighteenth century quarrel between New Hampshire and Vermont. He
+was apparently thinking of something else, very hard.</p>
+<p>He himself leaned back in his chair, but half of one absent ear
+given to Mr. Bayweather's lecture, and enjoyed himself looking at
+Mrs. Crittenden. She was pretty, Mrs. Crittenden was. He hadn't
+been sure the first day, but now he had had a chance to get used to
+her face being so long and sort of pointed, and her eyes long too,
+and her black eyebrows running back almost into her hair, he liked
+every bit of her face. It looked so different from anybody else's.
+He noticed with an inward smile that she was fidgety under Mr.
+Bayweather's historical talk. <i>He</i> was the only person with
+any patience in that whole bunch. But at what a price had he
+acquired it!</p>
+<p>By and by Mrs. Crittenden got up quietly and went out into the
+other office as if on an errand.</p>
+<p>Mr. Bayweather took advantage of her absence to tell them a lot
+about how much the Crittendens had done for the whole region and
+what a golden thing Mrs. Crittenden's music had been for everybody,
+and about an original conception of business which Mr. Crittenden
+seemed to have. Mr. Welles was not interested in music, but he was
+in business and he would have liked to hear a great deal more about
+this, but just at this point, as if to cut the clergyman off, in
+came Mr. Crttenden, very brisk and prompt, ready to take them
+around the mill.</p>
+<p>Vincent stood up. They all stood up. Mr. Welles noted that
+Vincent had quite come out of his brown study and was now all
+there. He was as he usually was, a wire charged with a very
+high-voltage current.</p>
+<p>They went out now, all of them together, but soon broke up into
+two groups. He stayed behind with Mr. Crittenden and pretended to
+look at the machinery of the saw-mill, which he found very boring
+indeed, as he hadn't the slightest comprehension of a single cog in
+it. But there was something there at which he really looked. It was
+the expression of Mr. Crittenden's face as he walked about, and it
+was the expression on the faces of the men as they looked at the
+boss.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles, not being a talker, had had a great deal of
+opportunity to study the faces of others, and he had become rather
+a specialist in expressions. Part of his usefulness in the office
+had come from that. He had catalogued in his mind the different
+looks on human faces, and most of them connected with any form of
+business organization were infinitely familiar to him, from the way
+the casual itinerant temporary laborer looked at the boss of his
+gang, to the way the star salesman looked at the head of the
+house.</p>
+<p>But here was a new variety to him, these frank and familiar
+glances thrown in answer to the nodded greeting or short sentence
+of the boss as he walked about. They were not so much friendly
+(although they were that too), as they were familiar and open, as
+though nothing lay hidden behind the apparent expression. It was
+not often that Mr. Welles had encountered that, a look that seemed
+to hide nothing.</p>
+<p>He wondered if he could find out anything about this from Mr.
+Crittenden and put a question to him about his relations with his
+men. He tried to make it tactful and sensible-sounding, but as he
+said the words, he knew just how flat and parlor-reformerish they
+sounded; and it didn't surprise him a bit to have the business-man
+bristle up and snap his head off. It had sounded as though he
+didn't know a thing about business&mdash;he, the very marrow of
+whose bones was soaked in a bitter knowledge that the only thing
+that could keep it going was the fear of death in every man's
+heart, lest the others get ahead of him and trample him down.</p>
+<p>He decided that he wouldn't say another thing, just endure the
+temporary boredom of being trotted about to have things explained
+to him, which he hadn't any intention of trying to understand.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Crittenden did not try to explain. Perhaps he was bored
+himself, perhaps he guessed the visitor's ignorance. He just walked
+around from one part of the big, sunshiny shops to another, taking
+advantage of this opportunity to look things over for his own
+purposes. And everywhere he went, he gave and received back that
+curious, new look of openness.</p>
+<p>It was not noisy here as in the saw-mill, but very quiet and
+peaceful, the bee-like whirring of the belts on the pulleys the
+loudest continuous sound. It was clean, too. The hardwood floor was
+being swept clean of sawdust and shavings all the time, by a lame
+old man, who pottered tranquilly about, sweeping and cleaning and
+putting the trash in a big box on a truck. When he had it full, he
+beckoned to a burly lad, shoving a truck across the room, and
+called in a clear, natural, friendly voice, "Hey, Nat, come on
+over." The big lad came, whistling, pushed the box off full, and
+brought it back empty, still whistling airily.</p>
+<p>There were a good many work-people in sight. Mr. Welles made a
+guessing estimate that the business must keep about two hundred
+busy. And there was not one who looked harried by his work. The
+big, cluttered place heaped high with piles of curiously shaped
+pieces of wood, filled with oddly contrived saws and lathes and
+knives and buffers for sawing and turning and polishing and fitting
+those bits of wood, was brooded over as by something palpable by an
+emanation of order. Mr. Welles did not understand a detail of what
+he was looking at, but from the whole, his mind, experienced in
+business, took in a singularly fresh impression that everybody
+there knew what he was up to, in every sense of the word.</p>
+<p>He and Mr. Crittenden stood for a time looking at and chatting
+to a gray-haired man who was polishing smoothly planed oval bits of
+board. He stopped as they talked, ran his fingers over the
+satin-smoothed surface with evident pleasure, and remarked to his
+employer, "Mighty fine maple we're getting from the Warner lot. See
+the grain in that!"</p>
+<p>He held it up admiringly, turning it so that the light would
+show it at its best, and looked at it respectfully. "There's no
+wood like maple," he said. Mr. Crittenden answered, "Yep. The
+Warner land is just right for slow-growing trees." He took it out
+of the workman's hand, looked it over more closely with an evident
+intelligent certainty of what to look for, and handed it back with
+a nod that signified his appreciation of the wood and of the
+workmanship which had brought it to that state.</p>
+<p>There had been about that tiny, casual human contact a quality
+which Mr. Welles did not recognize. His curiosity rose again. He
+wondered if he might not succeed in getting some explanation out of
+the manufacturer, if he went about it very tactfully. He would wait
+for his chance. He began to perceive with some surprise that he was
+on the point of quite liking Mrs. Crittenden's husband.</p>
+<p>So he tried another question, after a while, very cautiously,
+and was surprised to find Mr. Crittenden no longer snappish, but
+quite friendly. It occurred to him as the pleasantest possibility
+that he might find his liking for the other man returned. That
+<i>would</i> be a new present hung on the Christmas tree of his
+life in Vermont.</p>
+<p>On the strength of this possibility, and banking on the
+friendliness in the other man's eyes, he drove straight at it, the
+phrase which the minister had used when he said that Mr. Crittenden
+thought of business as an ideal service to humanity as much as
+doctoring. That had sounded so ignorant and ministerial he hadn't
+even thought of it seriously, till after this contact with the man
+of whom it had been said. The best way with Crittenden was
+evidently the direct one. He had seen that in the first five
+minutes of observation of him. So he would simply tell him how
+bookish and impossible it had sounded, and see what he had to say.
+He'd probably laugh and say the minister had it all wrong, of
+course, regular minister's idea.</p>
+<p>And so presently they were off, on a real talk, beyond what he
+had hoped for, and Crittenden was telling him really what he had
+meant. He was saying in his firm, natural, easy voice, as though he
+saw nothing specially to be self-conscious about in it, "Why, of
+course I don't rank lumbering and wood-working with medicine. Wood
+isn't as vital to human life as quinine, or a knowledge of what to
+do in typhoid fever. But after all, wood is something that people
+have to have, isn't it? Somebody has to get it out and work it up
+into usable shape. If he can do this, get it out of the woods
+without spoiling the future of the forests, drying up the rivers
+and all that, and have it transformed into some finished product
+that people need in their lives, it's a sort of plain, everyday
+service, isn't it? And to do this work as economically as it can be
+managed, taking as low a price as you can get along with instead of
+screwing as high a price as possible out of the people who have to
+have it, what's the matter with that, as an interesting problem in
+ingenuity? I tell you, Mr. Welles, you ought to talk to my wife
+about this. It's as much her idea as mine. We worked it out
+together, little by little. It was when Elly was a baby. She was
+the second child, you know, and we began to feel grown-up. By that
+time I was pretty sure I could make a go of the business. And we
+first began to figure out what we were up to. Tried to see what
+sort of a go we wanted the business to have. We first began to make
+some sense out of what we were doing in life."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles found himself overwhelmed by a reminiscent ache at
+this phrase and burst out, his words tinged with the bitterness he
+tried to keep out of his mind, "Isn't that an awful moment when you
+first try to make some sense out of what you are doing in life! But
+suppose you had gone on doing it, always, always, till you were an
+old man, and never succeeded! Suppose all you seemed to be
+accomplishing was to be able to hand over to the sons of the
+directors more money than was good for them? I tell you, Mr.
+Crittenden, I've often wished that once, just once, before I died I
+could be <i>sure</i> that I had done anything that was of any use
+to anybody." He went on, nodding his head, "What struck me so about
+what Mr. Bayweather said is that I've often thought about doctors
+myself, and envied them. They take money for what they do, of
+course, but they miss lots of chances to make more, just so's to be
+of some use. I've often thought when they were running the prices
+up and up in our office just because they could, that a doctor
+would be put out of his profession in no time by public opinion, if
+he ever tried to screw the last cent out of everybody, the way
+business men do as a matter of course."</p>
+<p>Mr. Crittenden protested meditatively against this. "Oh, don't
+you think maybe there's a drift the other way among decent business
+people now? Why, when Marise and I were first trying to get it
+clear in our own heads, we kept it pretty dark, I tell you, that we
+weren't in it only for what money we could make, because we knew
+how loony we'd seem to anybody else. But don't you see any signs
+that lately maybe the same idea is striking lots of people in
+America?"</p>
+<p>"No, I do <i>not</i>!" said Mr. Welles emphatically. "With a
+profiteer on every corner!</p>
+<p>"But look-y-here, the howl about profiteers, isn't that
+something new? Isn't that a dumb sort of application to business of
+the doctor's standard of service? Twenty years ago, would anybody
+have thought of doing anything but uneasily admiring a grocer who
+made all the money he could out of his business? 'Why shouldn't
+he?' people would have thought then. Everybody else did. Twenty
+years ago, would anybody have dreamed of legally preventing a rich
+man from buying all the coal he wanted, whether there was enough
+for everybody, or not?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles considered this in unconvinced silence. Mr.
+Crittenden went on, "Why, sometimes it looks to me like the
+difference between what's legitimate in baseball and in tennis.
+Every ball-player will try to bluff the umpire that he's safe when
+he knows the baseman tagged him three feet from the bag; and public
+opinion upholds him in his bluff if he can get away with it. But
+like as not, the very same man who lies like a trooper on the
+diamond, if he went off that very afternoon to play tennis would
+never dream of announcing 'out' if his opponent's ball really had
+landed in the court,&mdash;not if it cost him the sett and
+match,&mdash;whether anybody was looking at him or not. It's 'the
+thing' to try to get anything you can put over in baseball,
+anything the umpire can't catch you at. And it's not 'the thing' in
+tennis. Most of the time you don't even have any umpire. That's it:
+that's not such a bad way to put it. My wife and I wanted to run
+our business on the tennis standard and not on the baseball one.
+Because I believe, ultimately you know, in fixing
+things,&mdash;everything,&mdash;national life as well, so that
+we'll need as few umpires as possible. Once get the tennis standard
+adopted . . ."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles said mournfully, "Don't get started on politics. I'm
+too old to have any hopes of that!"</p>
+<p>"Right you are there," said Mr. Crittenden. "Economic
+organization is the word. That's one thing that keeps me so
+interested in my little economic laboratory here. Political parties
+are as prehistoric as the mastodon, if they only knew it."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles said, "But the queer thing is that you make it
+work."</p>
+<p>"Oh, anybody with a head for business could make it work. You've
+got to know how to manage your machine before you can make it go,
+of course. But that's not saying you have to drive it somewhere you
+don't want to get to. I don't say that that workman back there who
+was making such a beautiful job of polishing that maple could make
+it go. He couldn't."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles persisted. "But I've always thought, I've always
+<i>seen</i> it, or thought I had . . . that life-and-death
+competition is the only stimulus that's strong enough to stir men
+up to the prodigious effort they have to put out to <i>make</i> a
+go of their business, start the machine running. That, and the
+certainty of all they could get out of the consumer as a reward.
+You know it's held that there's a sort of mystic identity between
+all you can get out of the consumer and the exact amount of profit
+that'll just make the business go."</p>
+<p>Mr. Crittenden said comfortably, as though he were talking of
+something that did not alarm him, "Oh well, the best of the feudal
+seigneurs mournfully believed that a sharp sword and a long lance
+in their own hands were the strongholds of society. The wolf-pack
+idea of business will go the same way." He explained in answer to
+Mr. Welles' vagueness as to this term, "You know, the conception
+that if you're going to get hair brushes or rubber coats or
+mattresses or what-not enough for humanity manufactured, the only
+way is to have the group engaged in it form a wolf-pack, hunting
+down the public to extract from it as much money as possible. The
+salesmen and advertisers take care of this extracting. Then this
+money's to be fought for, by the people engaged in the process, as
+wolves fight over the carcass of the deer they have brought down
+together. This is the fight between the directors of labor and the
+working-men. It's ridiculous to hold that such a wasteful and
+incoherent system is the only one that will arouse men's energies
+enough to get them into action. It's absurd to think that business
+men . . . they're the flower of the nation, they're America's
+specialty, you know . . . can only find their opportunity for
+service to their fellow-men by such haphazard contracts with public
+service as helping raise money for a library or heading a movement
+for better housing of the poor, when they don't know anything about
+the housing of the poor, nor what it ought to be. Their opportunity
+for public service is right in their own legitimate businesses, and
+don't you forget it. Everybody's business is his best way to public
+service, and doing it that way, you'd put out of operation the
+professional uplifters who uplift as a business, and can't help
+being priggish and self-conscious about it. It makes me tired the
+way professional idealists don't see their big chance. They'll take
+all the money they can get from business for hospitals, and
+laboratories, and to investigate the sleeping sickness or the
+boll-weevil, but that business itself could rank with public
+libraries and hospitals as an ideal element in the life on the
+globe . . . they can't open their minds wide enough to take in
+that."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles had been following this with an almost painful
+interest and surprise. He found it very agitating, very upsetting.
+Suppose there had been something there, all the time. He must try
+to think it out more. Perhaps it was not true. But here sat a man
+who had made it work. Why hadn't he thought of it in time? Now it
+was too late. Too late for him to do anything. Anything? The voice
+of the man beside him grew dim to him, as, uneasy and uncertain,
+his spirits sank lower and lower. Suppose all the time there had
+been a way out besides beating the retreat to the women, the
+children, and the gardens? Only now it was too late! What was the
+use of thinking of it all?</p>
+<p>For a moment he forgot where he was. It seemed to him that there
+was something waiting for him to think of it . . .</p>
+<p>But oddly enough, all that presented itself to him, when he
+tried to look, was the story that had nothing to do with anything,
+which his cousin had told him in a recent letter, of the fiery
+sensitive young Negro doctor, who had worked his way through
+medical school, and hospital-training, gone South to practise, and
+how he had been treated by the white people in the town where he
+had settled. He wondered if she hadn't exaggerated all that. But
+she gave such definite details. Perhaps Mr. Crittenden knew
+something about that problem. Perhaps he had an idea about that,
+too, that might be of help. He would ask him.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h3>IN AUNT HETTY'S GARDEN</h3>
+<div class='center'><b>I</b><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+June 10.</div>
+<p>Marise bent to kiss the soft withered cheek. "Elly is a
+<i>real</i> Vermonter, but I'm not. She can get along with just
+'Hello, Aunt Hetty,' but that's not enough for me," she said
+tenderly to the old woman; "I have to kiss you."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you can do as you like, for all of me," answered the other
+with an unsparing indifference.</p>
+<p>Marise laughed at the quality of this, taking the shaky old hand
+in hers with a certainty of affection returned. She went on, "This
+is a regular descent on you, Cousin Hetty. I've come to show you
+off, you and the house and the garden. This is Mr. Welles who has
+settled next door to us, you know, and this is Mr. Marsh who is
+visiting him for a time. And here are the children, and Eugenia
+Mills came up from the city last night and will be here perhaps, if
+she gets up energy after her afternoon nap, and Neale is coming
+over from the mill after closing hours, and we've brought along a
+basket supper and, if you'll let us, we're going to eat it out in
+your garden, under Great-great-grandmother's willow-tree."</p>
+<p>Cousin Hetty nodded dry, though not uncordial greetings to the
+strangers and said crisply, "You're welcome enough to sit around
+anywhere you can find, and eat your lunch here, but where you're
+going to find anything to show off, beats me."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Welles is interested in gardens and wants to look at
+yours."</p>
+<p>"Not much to look at," said the old lady uncompromisingly.</p>
+<p>"I don't want to look at a <i>garden</i>!" clamored little Mark,
+outraged at the idea. "I want to be let go up to Aunt Hetty's
+yattic where the sword and 'pinning-wheel are."</p>
+<p>"Would all you children like that best?" asked Marise.</p>
+<p>Their old kinswoman answered for them, "You'd better believe
+they would. You always did yourself. Run along, now, children, and
+don't fall on the attic stairs and hurt yourselves on the
+wool-hetchels."</p>
+<p>The fox-terrier, who had hung in an anguish of uncertainty and
+hope and fear on the incomprehensible words passing between little
+Mark and the grown-ups, perceiving now that the children ran
+clattering towards the stairs, took a few agitated steps after
+them, and ran back to Marise, shivering, begging with his eyes, in
+a wriggling terror lest he be forbidden to follow them into the
+fun. Marise motioned him along up the stairs, saying with a
+laughing, indulgent, amused accent, "Yes, yes, poor M&eacute;dor,
+you can go along with the children if you want to."</p>
+<p>The steel sinews of the dog's legs stretched taut on the
+instant, in a great bound of relief. He whirled with a ludicrous
+and undignified haste, slipping, his toe-nails clicking on the bare
+floor, tore across the room and dashed up the stairs, drunk with
+joy.</p>
+<p>"If strong emotions are what one wants out of life," commented
+Marise lightly, to Marsh, "one ought to be born a nervous little
+dog, given over to the whimsical tyranny of humans."</p>
+<p>"There are other ways of coming by strong emotions," answered
+Marsh, not lightly at all.</p>
+<p>"What in the world are wool-hetchels?" asked Mr. Welles as the
+grown-ups went along the hall towards the side-door.</p>
+<p>"Why, when I was a girl, and we spun our own wool yarn . . ."
+began Cousin Hetty, trotting beside him and turning her old face up
+to his.</p>
+<p>Marsh stopped short in the hall-way with a challenging
+abruptness that brought Marise to a standstill also. The older
+people went on down the long dusky hail to the door and out into
+the garden, not noticing that the other two had stopped. The door
+swung shut behind them.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Marise felt the man's dark eyes on her, searching, determined.
+They were far from those first days, she thought, when he had
+tacitly agreed not to look at her like that, very far from those
+first days of delicacy and lightness of touch.</p>
+<p>With a determination as firm as his own, she made her face and
+eyes opaque, and said on a resolutely gay note, "What's the matter?
+Can't you stand any more information about early times in Vermont?
+You must have been having too heavy a dose of Mr. Bayweather. But
+<i>I</i> like it, you know. I find it awfully interesting to know
+so in detail about any past period of human life; as much so . . .
+why not? . . . as researches into which provinces of France used
+half-timber houses, and how late?"</p>
+<p>"You like a great many things!" he said impatiently.</p>
+<p>"We must get out into the garden with the others, or Cousin
+Hetty will be telling her old-time stories before we arrive," she
+answered, moving towards the door.</p>
+<p>She felt her pulse knocking loud and swift. Strange how a casual
+interchange of words with him would excite and agitate her. But it
+had been more than that. Everything <i>was</i>, with him.</p>
+<p>He gave the sidewise toss of his head, which had come to be so
+familiar to her, as though he were tossing a lock of hair from his
+forehead, but he said nothing more, following her down the long
+hall in silence.</p>
+<p>It was as though she had physically felt the steel of his blade
+slide gratingly once more down from her parry. Her mental attitude
+had been so entirely that of a fencer, on the alert, watchfully
+defensive against the quick-flashing attack of the opponent, that
+she had an instant's absurd fear of letting him walk behind her, as
+though she might feel a thrust in the back. "How ridiculous of me!"
+she told herself with an inward laugh of genuine amusement. "Women
+are as bad as fox-terriers for inventing exciting occasions out of
+nothing at all."</p>
+<p>Then in a gust of deep anger, instantly come, instantly gone,
+"Why do I tolerate this for a moment? I was perfectly all right
+before. Why don't I simply send him about his business, as I would
+any other bold meddler?"</p>
+<p>But after this, with an abrupt shift to another plane, "That
+would be acting preposterously, like a silly, self-consciously
+virtuous matron. What earthly difference does it make to me what a
+casual visitor to our town says or does to amuse himself in his
+casual stay, that may end at any moment? And how scarifyingly he
+would laugh at me, if he knew what comic relics of old prudish
+reflexes are stirred up by the contact with his mere human
+livingness. Heavens! How he would laugh to know me capable of being
+so 'guind&eacute;e,' so personal, fearing like any school-girl a
+flirtation in any man's conversation. He must never see a trace of
+that. No matter how startled I ever am, he mustn't see anything but
+a smooth, amused surface. It would be intolerable to have him laugh
+at me."</p>
+<p>Her hand was on the latch, when a deep, muffled murmur from the
+depths admonished her, "Personal vanity . . . that's what's at the
+bottom of all that you are telling yourself. It is a vain woman
+speaking, and fearing a wound to her vanity."</p>
+<p>She resented this, pushed it back, and clicked the latch up
+firmly, stepping out into the transparent gold of the
+late-afternoon sunshine. She turned her head as her companion came
+up behind her on the garden path, half expecting to have his eyes
+meet hers with a visible shade of sardonic mockery, and prepared to
+meet it halfway with a similar amusement at the absurdity of human
+beings, herself included.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>He was not looking at her at all, but straight before him,
+unconscious for an instant that she had turned her eyes on him, and
+in this instant before the customary mask of self-consciousness
+dropped over his face, she read there, plain and startling to see,
+unmistakable to her grown woman's experience of life, the marks of
+a deep, and painful, and present emotion.</p>
+<p>All of her hair-splitting speculations withered to nothing. She
+did not even wonder what it was that moved him so strangely and
+dreadfully. There was no room for thought in the profound awed
+impersonal sympathy which with a great hush came upon her at the
+sight of another human being in pain.</p>
+<p>He felt some intimate emanation from her, turned towards her,
+and for the faintest fraction of time they looked at each other
+through a rent in the veil of life.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Cousin Hetty's old voice called them cheerfully, "Over here,
+this way under the willow-tree."</p>
+<p>They turned in that direction, to hear her saying, ". . . that
+was in 1763 and of course they came on horseback, using the Indian
+trails the men had learned during the French-and-Indian wars.
+Great-grandmother (she was a twelve-year-old girl then) had brought
+along a willow switch from their home in Connecticut. When the
+whole lot of them decided to settle here in the valley, and her
+folks took this land to be theirs, she stuck her willow switch into
+the ground, alongside the brook here, and this is the tree it grew
+to be. Looks pretty battered up, don't it, like other old
+folks."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles tipped his pale, quiet face back to look up at the
+great tree, stretching its huge, stiff old limbs mutilated by time
+and weather, across the tiny, crystal brook dimpling and smiling
+and murmuring among its many-colored pebbles. "Queer, isn't it," he
+speculated, "how old the tree has grown, and how the brook has
+stayed just as young as ever."</p>
+<p>"It's the other way around between 'Gene Powers' house and his
+pine-tree," commented Aunt Hetty. "The pine-tree gets bigger and
+finer and stronger all the time, seems 'sthough, and the house gets
+more battered and feeble-looking."</p>
+<p>Marise looked across at Marsh and found his eyes on her with an
+expression she rarely saw in them, almost a peaceful look, as of a
+man who has had something infinitely satisfying fall to his lot. He
+smiled at her gently, a good, quiet smile, and looked away into the
+extravagant splendor of a row of peonies.</p>
+<p>Marise felt an inexplicable happiness, clear and sunny like the
+light in the old garden. She sat down on the bench and fell into a
+more relaxed and restful pose than she had known for some time.
+What a sweet and gracious thing life could be after all! Could
+there be a lovelier place on earth than here among Cousin Hetty's
+flower-children. Dear old Cousin Hetty, with her wrinkled, stiff
+exterior, and those bright living eyes of hers. She was the
+willow-tree outside and the brook inside, that's what she was. What
+tender childhood recollections were bound up with the sight of that
+quiet old face.</p>
+<p>"And those rose-bushes," continued the old woman, "are all
+cuttings my great-great-grandmother brought up from Connecticut,
+and <i>they</i> came from cuttings our folks brought over from
+England, in 1634. If 'twas a little later in the season, and they
+were in bloom, you'd see how they're not nearly so I double as most
+roses. The petals are bigger and not so curled up, more like wild
+roses."</p>
+<p>She sat down beside the others on the long wooden bench, and
+added, "I never dig around one of those bushes, nor cut a rose to
+put in a vase, without I feel as though Great-great-grandmother and
+Grandmother and all the rest were in me, still alive."</p>
+<p>"Don't you think," asked Marise of the two men, "that there is
+something awfully sweet about feeling yourself a part of the past
+generations, like that? As we do here. To have such a familiarity
+with any corner of the earth . . . well, it seems to me like music,
+the more familiar it is, the dearer and closer it is . . . and when
+there are several generations of familiarity back of you. . . . I
+always feel as though my life were a part of something much bigger
+than just <i>my</i> life, when I feel it a continuation of their
+lives, as much as of my own childhood. It always seems deep and
+quieting to me."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles assented wistfully, "It makes me envious."</p>
+<p>Marsh shook his head, sending up a meditative puff of smoke. "If
+you want to know how it really strikes me, I'll have to say it
+sounds plain sleepy to me. Deep and quieting all right, sure
+enough. But so's opium. And in my experience, most things just get
+duller and duller, the more familiar they are. I don't begin to
+have time in my life for the living I want to do, my own self! I
+can't let my grandmothers and grandfathers come shoving in for
+another whirl at it. They've had their turn. And my turn isn't a
+minute too long for me. Your notion looks to me . . . lots of old
+accepted notions look like that to me . . . like a good big dose of
+soothing syrup to get people safely past the time in their
+existences when they might do some sure-enough personal living on
+their own hook." He paused and added in a meditative murmur, "That
+time is so damn short as it is!"</p>
+<p>He turned hastily to the old lady with an apology. "Why, I
+<i>beg</i> your pardon! I didn't realize I had gone on talking
+aloud. I was just thinking along to myself. You see, your soothing
+syrup is working on me, the garden, the sun, the stillness, all the
+grandmothers and grandfathers sitting around. I am almost half
+asleep."</p>
+<p>"I'm an old maid, I know," said Cousin Hetty piquantly. "But I'm
+not a proper Massachusetts old maid. I'm Vermont, and a swear-word
+or two don't scare me. I was brought up on first-hand stories of
+Ethan Allen's talk, and . . ."</p>
+<p>Marise broke in hastily, in mock alarm, "Now, Cousin Hetty,
+don't you start in on the story of Ethan Allen and the cowshed that
+was too short. I won't have our city visitors scandalized by our
+lack of . . ."</p>
+<p>Cousin Hetty's laughter cut her short, as merry and young a
+sound as the voice of the brook. "I hadn't thought of that story in
+years!" she said. She and Marise laughed together, looking at each
+other. But they said nothing else.</p>
+<p>"Aren't you going to <i>tell</i> us?" asked Mr. Welles with a
+genuine aggrieved surprise which tickled Cousin Hetty into more
+laughter.</p>
+<p>"I shall not rest day or night, till I have found someone who
+knows that story," said Marsh, adding, "Old Mrs. Powers must know
+it. And <i>she</i> will love to tell it to me. It is evidently the
+sort of story which is her great specialty."</p>
+<p>They all laughed, foolishly, light-heartedly.</p>
+<p>Marise consciously delighted in the laughter, in the silly,
+light tone of their talk, in the feeling of confidence and security
+which bathed her as warmly as the new wine of the spring sunshine.
+She thought passingly, swiftly, with her habitual, satiric wonder
+at her own fancifulness, of her earlier notions about steel blades
+and passes and parries, and being afraid to walk down the hall with
+her "opponent" back of her.</p>
+<p>Her opponent, this potent, significant personality, lounging on
+the bench beside her, resting in the interval of a life the
+intensity of which was out of her world altogether, the life, all
+power, of a modern rich man in great affairs; controlling vast
+forces, swaying and shaping the lives of thousands of weaker men as
+no potentate had ever done, living in the instants he allowed
+himself for personal life (she felt again the pang of her sympathy
+for his look of fierce, inexplicable pain) with a concentration in
+harmony with the great scale of his other activities. It was, just
+as the cheap novels called it, a sort, a bad, inhuman, colorful,
+fascinating sort of modern version of the superman's life, she
+reflected. She had been ridiculous to project her village
+insignificance into that large-scale landscape.</p>
+<p>A distant whistle blew a long, full note, filling the valley
+with its vibrations.</p>
+<p>"Is that a train, at this hour?" murmured Mr. Welles. His voice
+was sunk to a somnolent monotone, his hands folded over his
+waistcoat moved slowly and rhythmically with his breathing. It was
+evident that he did not in the least care whether it was a train or
+not.</p>
+<p>"Oh <i>no!</i>" said Marise, severely, disapproving the
+vagueness and inaccuracy of his observation. "That's the
+mill-whistle, blowing the closing-hour. You're no true Ashleyan,
+not to have learned the difference between the voices of the
+different whistles of the day."</p>
+<p>She turned to Marsh, tilting her wings for a capricious flight.
+"I think it's part of the stubborn stiff-jointedness of human
+imagination, don't you, that we don't hear the beauty of those
+great steam-whistles. I wonder if it's not unconscious art that
+gave to our mighty machines such voices of qower."</p>
+<p>"Isn't it perhaps ostentatious to call the family saw-mill a
+'mighty machine'?" inquired Marsh mildly. He sat at the end of the
+bench, his arm along the back behind Mr. Welles, his head turned to
+the side, his soft hat pulled low over his forehead, looking at the
+garden and at Marise out of half-shut, sleepy eyes.</p>
+<p>Marise went on, drawing breath for a longer flight. "When the
+train comes sweeping up the valley, trailing its great beautiful
+banner of smoke, I feel as though it were the crescendo announcing
+something, and at the crossing, when that noble rounded note blares
+out . . . why, it's the music for the setting. Nothing else could
+cope with the depth of the valley, the highness and blackness of
+its mountain walls, and the steepness of the Eagle Rocks."</p>
+<p>"I call that going some, 'noble rounded note'!" murmured Marsh,
+lifting his eyebrows with a visible effort and letting his eyes
+fall half shut, against the brilliance of the sunshine.</p>
+<p>Marise laughed, and persisted. "Just because its called a
+steam-whistle, we won't hear its beauty and grandeur, till
+something else has been invented to take its place, and then we'll
+look back sentimentally and regret it."</p>
+<p>"Maybe <i>you</i> will," conceded Marsh.</p>
+<p>The two elder looked on, idly amused at this give-and-take.</p>
+<p>"And I don't suppose," continued Marise, "to take another
+instance of modern lack of imagination, that you have ever noticed,
+as an element of picturesque power in modern life, the splendid
+puissance of the traffic cop's presence in a city street."</p>
+<p>They all had a protesting laugh at this, startled for an instant
+from their dreaminess.</p>
+<p>"Yes, and if I could think of more grandiloquent words to
+express him, I'd use them," said Marise defiantly, launching out
+into yet more outrageous flights of rhetoric. "I could stand for
+hours on a street corner, admiring the completeness with which he
+is transfigured out of the human limitations of his mere
+personality, how he feels, flaming through his every vein and
+artery, the invincible power of THE LAW, freely set over themselves
+by all those turbulent, unruly human beings, surging around him in
+their fiery speed-genii. He raises his arm. It is not a human arm,
+it is the decree of the entire race. And as far as it can be seen,
+all those wilful fierce creatures bow themselves to it. The current
+boils past him in one direction. He lets it go till he thinks fit
+to stop it. He sounds his whistle, and raises his arm again in that
+inimitable gesture of omnipotence. And again they bow themselves.
+Now that the priest before the altar no longer sways humanity as he
+did, is there anywhere else, any other such visible embodiment of
+might, majesty, and power as . . ."</p>
+<p>"Gracious me, Marise!" warned her old cousin. "I know you're
+only running on with your foolishness, but I think you're going
+pretty far when you mix a policeman up with priests and altars and
+things. I don't believe Mr. Bayweather would like that very
+well."</p>
+<p>"He wouldn't mind," demurred Marise. "He'd think it an
+interesting historical parallel."</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bayweather would have a thing or two to say."</p>
+<p>"Right you are. <i>Mrs.</i> Bayweather would certainly say
+something!" agreed Marise.</p>
+<p>She stood up. "I'm hypnotized into perfect good-for-nothingness
+like the rest of you by the loveliness of the afternoon and the
+niceness of everybody. Here it is almost eating-time and I haven't
+even opened the baskets. No, don't you move," she commanded the
+others, beginning to stir from their nirvana to make dutiful offers
+of help. "I'll call the children. And Neale will be here in a
+moment."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She went back to the house, down the long walk, under the
+grape-arbor, still only faintly shaded with sprigs of pale green.
+She was calling, "Children! <i>Children!</i> Come and help with the
+supper."</p>
+<p>She vanished into the house. There was a moment or two of
+intense quiet, in which the almost horizontal rays of the setting
+sun poured a flood of palpable gold on the three motionless figures
+in the garden.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Then she emerged again, her husband beside her, carrying the
+largest of the baskets, the children struggling with other baskets,
+a pail, an ice-cream-freezer, while the dog wove circles about
+them, wrought to exaltation by the complicated smell of the
+eatables.</p>
+<p>"Neale was just coming in the front gate," she explained, as he
+nodded familiarly to the men and bent to kiss the old woman's
+cheek. "Cousin Hetty, just <i>look</i> at Elly in that night-cap of
+Great-aunt Pauline's. Doesn't she look the image of that old
+daguerreotype of Grandmother? See here, Mark, who said you could
+trail that sword out here? That belongs in the attic."</p>
+<p>"Oh, let him, let him," said Cousin Hetty peaceably.</p>
+<p>"There's nothing much less breakable than a sword. He can't hurt
+it."</p>
+<p>"I've woren it lots of times before," said Mark. "Aunt Hetty
+always let me to. Favver, won't you 'trap it tight to me, so's I
+won't 'traddle it so much."</p>
+<p>"Mother," said Elly, coming up close to Marise, as she stood
+unpacking the dishes, "I was looking inside that old diary, the one
+in the red leather cover, your grandmother's, I guess, the diary
+she wrote when she was a young lady. And she was having a perfectly
+dreadful time whether she could believe the Doctrine of the
+Trinity. She seemed to feel so bad about it. She wrote how she
+couldn't sleep nights, and cried, and everything. It was the Holy
+Ghost she couldn't make any sense out of. Mother, what in the world
+<i>is</i> the Doctrine of the Trinity?</p>
+<p>"For mercy's sakes!" cried Cousin Hetty. "I never saw such a
+family! Elly, what won't you be up to, next? I can't call that a
+proper thing for a little girl to talk about, right out, so."</p>
+<p>"Mother, <i>you</i> tell me," said Elly, looking up into her
+mother's face with the expression of tranquil trust which was like
+a visible radiance. Marise always felt scared, she told herself,
+when Elly looked at her like that. She made a little helpless
+shrugged gesture of surrender with her shoulders, setting down on
+the table a plate of cold sliced lamb. "Elly, darling, I can't stop
+just this minute to tell you about it, and anyhow I don't
+understand any more about it than Grandmother did. But I don't care
+if I don't. The first quiet minute we have together, I'll tell you
+enough so you can understand why <i>she</i> cared."</p>
+<p>"All right, when I go to bed tonight I'll remind you to," Elly
+made the engagement definite. She added, with a shout, "Oh, Mother,
+<i>chicken</i> sandwiches! Oh, I didn't know we were going to have
+<i>chicken</i> sandwiches. Mother, can't we begin now? I'm awfully
+hungry."</p>
+<p>"Hello," said Neale, looking back toward the house. "Here comes
+Eugenia, arisen from her nap. Paul, run back into the house and
+bring out another chair. Marise, have you explained who Eugenia
+is?"</p>
+<p>"Oh l&agrave;, l&agrave;, no!" exclaimed Marise. "I forgot they
+didn't know her. Quick, you do it, Neale."</p>
+<p>"Old friend of my wife's, sort of half-cousin several-times
+removed, schoolmates in France together, the kind of old family
+friend who comes and goes in the house at will," said Neale
+rapidly. "Cultivated, artistic, and so on."</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>Neale</i>, how slightingly you put it!" cried Marise
+under her breath. "She's made herself into one of the rarest and
+most finished creations!"</p>
+<p>Neale went on rapidly, in a low tone as the newcomer stepped
+slowly down the path, "She toils not, neither does she spin . . .
+doesn't have to. Highbrow, very, and yet stylish, very! Most
+unusual combination." He added as final information, "Spinster, by
+conviction," as he stepped forward to greet her.</p>
+<p>The other two men stood up to be presented to the newcomer, who,
+making everything to Marise's eyes seem rough and countrified,
+advanced towards them, self-possessed, and indifferent to all those
+eyes turned on her. In her gleaming, supple dress of satin-like
+ivory jersey, she looked some tiny, finished, jewel-object,
+infinitely breakable, at which one ought only to look if it were
+safely behind glass.</p>
+<p>"There is someone of Marsh's own world, the 'great world' he
+speaks of," thought Marise. She was not aware of any wistfulness in
+her recognition of this fact, but she was moved to stand closer to
+her husband, and once as she moved about, setting the table, to lay
+her fingers for an instant on his hand.</p>
+<p>"We're going to have ice-cream, Eugenia," announced Paul,
+leaning on the arm of her chair after she and all the others were
+seated again.</p>
+<p>"That's good news," she said equably. She laid a small,
+beautiful hand on the child's shoulder, and with a smooth,
+imperceptible movement, set him a little further from her. Paul did
+not observe this manoeuver, but his mother did, with an inward
+smile. "Paul, don't hang on Eugenia like that," she called to
+him.</p>
+<p>"But she smells so sweet!" protested the little boy.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles held out a sympathizing hand and drew the child to
+him. He too had seen that gesture.</p>
+<p>"Come here, all you little folks," ordered Marise, now seriously
+beginning to serve the meal, "and start waiting on the table."</p>
+<p>"Cold lamb!" cried Cousin Hetty with enthusiasm. "I'm so glad.
+Agnes won't touch mutton or lamb. She says they taste so like a
+sheep. And so we don't often have it."</p>
+<p>"Paul, can you be trusted to pour the hot chocolate?" asked his
+mother. "No, Neale, don't get up. I want to see if the children
+can't do it all."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>From where she sat at the foot of the table, she directed the
+operations. The children stepped about, serious, responsible, their
+rosy faces translucent in the long, searching, level rays sent up
+by the sun, low in The Notch. Dishes clicked lightly, knives and
+forks jingled, cups were set back with little clinking noises on
+saucers. All these indoor sounds were oddly diminished and
+unresonant under the open sky, just as the chatting, laughing flow
+of the voices, even though it rose at times to bursts of mirth
+which the children's shouts made noisy, never drowned out the
+sweet, secret talk of the brook to itself.</p>
+<p>Marise was aware of all this, richly and happily aware of the
+complexities of an impression whose total seemed to her, for the
+moment, felicity itself. It pleased her, all, every bit of it,
+pleased and amused her; the dear children, Paul worshiping at the
+shrine of Eugenia's elegancies, Mark the absurd darling with that
+grotesque sword between his legs, Elly devouring her favorite
+sandwich with impassioned satisfaction and wondering about the Holy
+Ghost; Cousin Hetty, ageless, pungent, and savory as one of her
+herbs; Mr. Welles, the old tired darling come into his haven,
+loving Paul as he would his own grandson; Eugenia orchid-like
+against their apple-blossom rusticity; Marsh . . . how tremendously
+more <i>simp&aacute;tico</i> he had seemed this afternoon than ever
+before, as though one might really like him, and not just find him
+exciting and interesting; Neale, dear Neale with his calm eyes into
+which it did everyone good to look. All of them at ease, friendly,
+enjoying food, the visible world, and each other. Where, after all,
+were those traditional, troubling, insoluble intricacies of human
+relationships which had been tormenting her and darkening her sky?
+It was all so good and simple if one could only remain good and
+simple oneself. There was no lightning to fear in that lucent
+sunset air.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Presently, as the talk turned on flowers and the dates of their
+blooming, Eugenia said to her casually, "Marisette, here we are the
+first of June and past, and the roses here are less advanced than
+they were at Tivoli the last of March. Do you remember the day when
+a lot of us sat outdoors and ate a picnic dinner, just as we do
+now? It was the day we climbed Monte Cavo."</p>
+<p>Marise explained, "Miss Mills is a friend who dates back even
+before my husband's time, back to our student days in Rome." To
+Eugenia she said, "You're giving us both away and showing how long
+ago it is, and how you've forgotten about details. We never could
+have climbed up Monte Cavo, the day we went to Tivoli. They don't
+go on the same excursion, at all."</p>
+<p>"That's true," agreed Eugenia indifferently, "you're right.
+Monte Cavo goes with the Rocca di Papa expedition."</p>
+<p>Before she could imagine a possible reason, Marise felt her
+hands go cold and moist. The sky seemed to darken and lower above
+her. Eugenia went on, "And I never went to Rocca di Papa with you,
+at all, I'm sure of that. That was a trip you took after you had
+dropped me for Neale. In fact, it was on that very expedition that
+you got formally engaged, don't you remember? You and Neale walked
+over from Monte Cavo and only just caught the last car down."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Ridiculous! Preposterous! Marise told herself that it was not
+possible that her hands were trembling so. It was merely a physical
+reaction, such as one had when startled by some trivial sudden
+event. But she couldn't make them stop trembling. She couldn't make
+them stop.</p>
+<p>What nonsense to be so agitated. Nobody could remember the name
+from that evening, weeks and weeks ago. And what if they did? What
+could they make of it?</p>
+<p>It seemed to her that dusk had fallen in the garden. Where was
+that lucent sunset air?</p>
+<p>She heard Eugenia's voice going on, and Neale chiming in with a
+laugh, and did not understand what they said. Surely everybody must
+have forgotten.</p>
+<p>She hazarded a quick glance at Mr. Welles' face and drew a long
+breath of relief. He had forgotten, that was evident. She looked
+beyond him to Marsh. He too would certainly have forgotten.</p>
+<p>He was waiting for her eyes. And when they met his, she felt the
+lightning flash. He had not forgotten.</p>
+<div class='center'><br />
+<b>II</b></div>
+<p>Marsh suddenly found it unbearable. He wasn't used to keeping
+the curb on himself like this, and he hadn't the least intention of
+learning how to do it. A fierce, physical irritability overcame
+him, and he stopped short in the hall, just because he could not
+stand the silly chatter that was always flowing from these silly
+people about their foolish affairs. If they only knew what he was
+leaving unsaid!</p>
+<p>He had not meant to make Marise halt, too, his movement having
+been a mere unconsidered reflex, but of course she did stop,
+apparently surprised by the brusqueness of his action, and faced
+him there in the dusky hall-way. She was so close to him that he
+could see every detail of her face and person, just as he could at
+night when he closed his eyes; so close that for an instant he felt
+her breath on his face. He ground his teeth, minded, that instant,
+to throw down the trumpery little wall of convention. It couldn't
+stand, he knew with an experienced certainty of his own power that
+it couldn't stand for an instant against him. The day he chose to
+put his shoulder to it, down it would go in a heap of rubble.</p>
+<p>But the wall was not all. Usually it was all. But with this
+woman it was nothing, a mere accident. Beyond it she stood, valid,
+and looked at him out of those long eyes of hers. <i>What was in
+her mind?</i> She looked at him now, quietly, just as usual, made
+some light casual remark, and effortlessly, as though she had some
+malign and invincible charm, she had passed from out his power
+again, and was walking with that straight, sure tread of hers, down
+to the door.</p>
+<p>If he could have done it, he would have struck at her from
+behind.</p>
+<p>He could get no hold on her, could not take the first step. All
+during those weeks and weeks, he had thrown out his net, and had
+caught enough facts, Lord knows. But had he any certainty that he
+had put them together right? He had not yet caught in her any one
+tone or look or phrase that would give him the unmistakable clue.
+He had set down words and words and words that would tell him what
+her life really was, if he only knew the alphabet of her language.
+He might be making a fool of himself with his almost certainty that
+she was conscious of having outgrown, like a splendid tropical
+tree, the wretched little kitchen-garden where fate had
+transplanted her. When he could stamp down his heat of feeling and
+let his intelligence have a moment's play, he was perfectly capable
+of seeing that he might be misinterpreting everything he had
+observed. For instance, that evening over the photograph-album with
+her betrayal of some strong feeling of distaste for the place near
+Rome. It was evident, from her tone, her look, her gesture, that
+the name of it brought up some acutely distasteful memory to her,
+but that could mean anything, or nothing. It might be merely some
+sordid accident, as that a drunken workman had said something
+brutal to her there. Women of her sort, he knew, never forgot those
+things. Or any one of a thousand such incidents. He would never
+know the significance of that gesture of shrinking of hers.</p>
+<p>As he walked behind her, he looked hard at her back, with its
+undulating, vase-like beauty, so close to him; and felt her
+immeasurably distant. She opened the door now and went out into the
+sunlight, stepping a little to one side as though to make room for
+him to come up beside her. He found that he knew every turn of her
+head, every poise of her shoulders and action of her hands, the
+whole rhythm of her body, as though they were his own. And there
+she passed from him, far and remote.</p>
+<p>A sudden certainty of fore-ordained defeat came over him, as he
+had never known before. He was amazed at the violence of his pain,
+intolerable, intolerable!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She turned her head quickly and caught his eyes in this instant
+of inexplicable suffering.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>What miraculous thing happened then? It seemed to him that her
+face wavered in golden rays, from the radiance of her eyes. For she
+did not withdraw her gaze. She looked at him with an instant,
+profound sympathy and pity, no longer herself, transfigured, divine
+by the depth of her humanity.</p>
+<p>The sore bitterness went out from his heart.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>A voice called. She turned away. He felt himself following her.
+He looked about him, light-headed with relief from pain. The quiet,
+flowering world shimmered rainbow-like. What a strange power one
+human being could have with another that a look could be an
+event!</p>
+<p>He walked more slowly, feeling with a curious pleasure the
+insatiable desire for possession ebbing from him. Why not let it
+ebb entirely? Why not enjoy the ineffable sweetness of what he
+could have? That was what would please her, what she would like,
+what she would give, freely. In this moment of hush, he quite saw
+how it would be possible, although he had never for a moment before
+in his life believed it. Yes, possible and lovely. After all, he
+must stop sometime, and take the slower pace. Why not now, when
+there was a certain and great prize to be won . . . ?</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>People talked around him. He talked and did not know his own
+words. Marise spun those sparkling webs of nonsense of hers, and
+made him laugh, but the next moment he could not have told what she
+had said. He must somehow have been very tired to take such intense
+pleasure in being at rest.</p>
+<p>Her husband came, that rough and energetic husband. The children
+came, the children whose restless, selfish, noisy preying on their
+mother usually annoyed him so, and still the charm was not broken.
+Marise, as she always did when her husband and children were there,
+retreated into a remote plane of futile busyness with details that
+servants should have cared for; answering the children's silly
+questions, belonging to everyone, her personal existence blotted
+out. But this time he felt still, deep within him, the penetrating
+sweetness of her eyes as she had looked at him.</p>
+<p>A tiresome, sophisticated friend of Marise's came, too, somehow
+intruding another personality into the circle, already too full,
+and yet he was but vaguely irritated by her. She only brought out
+by contrast the thrilling quality of Marise's golden presence. He
+basked in that, as in the sunshine, and thought of nothing
+else.</p>
+<p>Possibilities he had never dreamed of, stretched before him,
+possibilities of almost impersonal and yet desirable existence.
+Perhaps this was the turning-point of his life. He supposed there
+really was one, sometime, for everybody.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>". . . Rocca di Papa . . ." someone had said. Or had he dreamed
+it? He awoke with an inward bound, like a man springing up from
+sleep at a sudden noise. His first look was for Marise. She was
+pale. He had not dreamed it.</p>
+<p>The voice went on . . . the newcomer's, the one they called
+Eugenia . . . yes, she had known them in Italy. Marise had just
+said they had been friends before her marriage.</p>
+<p>The voice went on. How he listened as though crouched before the
+keyhole of a door! Only three or four sentences, quite casual and
+trivial in content, pronounced in that self-consciously
+cosmopolitan accent. Then the voice stopped.</p>
+<p>It had said enough for him. Now he knew. Now he had that
+clue.</p>
+<p>He had the sensation of rising to his full height, exultantly,
+every faculty as alert as though he had never been drugged to sleep
+by those weak notions of renunciation. The consciousness of power
+was like a sweet taste in his mouth. The deep, fundamental,
+inalienable need for possession stretched itself, titanic and
+mighty, refreshed, reposed, and strengthened by the involuntary
+rest it had had.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>He fixed his eyes on Marise, waiting for the first interchange
+of a look. He could see that her hands were trembling; and smiled
+to himself. She was looking at the old man.</p>
+<p>Now, in a moment she would look at him.</p>
+<p>There were her eyes. She had looked at him. Thunder rolled in
+his ears.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<h3>HEARD FROM THE STUDY</h3>
+<div class='center'>June 20.</div>
+<p>From his desk in the inner room where he finally buckled down to
+those estimates about the popple-wood casters, Neale could follow,
+more or less closely, as his attention varied, the evening
+activities of the household.</p>
+<p>First there had been the clinking and laughter from the
+dining-room and kitchen where Marise and the children cleared off
+the table and washed the dishes. How sweet their voices sounded,
+all light and gay! Every occasion for being with their mother was
+fun for the kids. How happy Marise made them! And how they throve
+in that happiness like little plants in the sunshine!</p>
+<p>When you really looked at what went on about you, how funny and
+silly lots of traditional ideas did seem. That notion, solemnly
+accepted by the would-be sophisticated moderns, for instance, that
+a woman of beauty and intelligence was being wasted unless she was
+engaged in being the "emotional inspiration" of some man's life:
+which meant in plain English, stimulating his sexual desire to that
+fever-heat which they called impassioned living. As if there were
+not a thousand other forms of deep fulfilment in life. People who
+thought that, how narrow and cramped they seemed, and blinded to
+the bigness and variety of life! But then, of course, everybody
+hadn't had under his eyes a creature genuinely rich and various,
+like Marise, and hadn't seen how all children feasted on her charm
+like bees on honey, and how old people adored her, and how, just by
+being herself, she enriched and civilized every life that touched
+her, and made every place she lived in a home for the human spirit.
+And Heaven knew she was, with all that, the real emotional
+inspiration of a man's life, a man who loved her a thousand times
+more than in his ignorant and passionate youth.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Come, this wasn't work. He might as well have stayed out with
+the family and helped with the dishes. This was being like Eugenia
+Mills, who always somehow had something to do upstairs when there
+was any work to do downstairs. Eugenia was a woman who somehow
+managed to stand from under life, anyhow, had been the most
+successful draft-dodger he knew. No call had been urgent enough to
+get <i>her</i> to the recruiting station to shoulder her share of
+what everybody had to do. But what did she get out of her
+successful shirking? She was in plain process of drying up and
+blowing away.</p>
+<p>He turned to his desk and drew out the papers which had the
+figures and estimates on that popple. He would see if the Warner
+woodlot had as much popple and basswood on it as they thought. It
+would, of course, be easiest to get it off that lot, if there were
+enough of it to fill the order for casters. The Hemmingway lot and
+the Dornwood lot oughtn't to be lumbered except in winter, with
+snow for the sleds. But you could haul straight downhill from the
+Warner lot, even on wheels, using the back lane in the Eagle Rocks
+woods. There was a period of close attention to his papers, when he
+heard nothing at all of what went on in the rooms next his study.
+His mind was working with the rapid, trained exactitude which was a
+delight to him, with a sure, firm grasp on the whole problem in all
+its complicated parts.</p>
+<p>Finally he nodded with satisfaction, pushed the papers away, and
+lighted his pipe, contentedly. He had it by the tail.</p>
+<p>He leaned back in his chair, drawing on the newly lighted pipe
+and ruminating again. He thought to himself that he would like to
+see any other man in the valley who could make an estimate like
+that, and be sure of it, who would know what facts to gather and
+where to get them, on the cost of cutting and hauling in different
+seasons, on mill-work and transportation and overhead expenses, and
+how to market and where, and how to get money and how to get credit
+and how to manage these cranky independent Yankees and the
+hot-tempered irresponsible Canucks. It was all very well for
+advanced radicals to say that the common workmen in a business were
+as good as the head of the concern. They weren't and that was all
+there was to be said about it. Any one of them, any single one of
+his employees, put in his place as manager, would run the business
+into a hole as deep as hell inside six months. And if you put the
+whole lot of them at it, it would only be six weeks instead of six
+months before the bust-up.</p>
+<p>There again, what people kept saying about life, things clever
+people said and that got accepted as the clever things <i>to</i>
+say, how awfully beside the mark they seem to you, when you found
+out actual facts by coming up against them. What a difference some
+first-hand experience with what you were talking about, did make
+with what you said. What clever folks ought to say was not that the
+workmen were as good as the head or the same sort of flesh and
+blood, because they weren't; but that the head exploited his
+natural capacities out of all proportion, getting such an
+outrageous share of the money they all made together, for doing
+what was natural to him, and what he enjoyed doing. Take himself
+for instance. If by some freak, he could make more money out of
+being one of the hands, would he go down in the ranks, stand at a
+machine all day and cut the same wooden shapes, hour after hour: or
+drive a team day after day where somebody else told him to go? You
+bet your life he wouldn't! He didn't need all the money he could
+squeeze out of everybody concerned, to make him do his job as
+manager. His real pay was the feeling of managing, of doing a job
+he was fitted for, and that was worth doing.</p>
+<p>How fine it had always been of Marise to back him up in that
+view of the business, not to want him to cheat the umpire, even if
+he could get away with it, even though it would have meant enough
+sight more money for them, even though the umpire didn't exist as
+yet, except in his own conscience, in his own idea of what he was
+up to in his business. Never once had Marise had a moment of that
+backward-looking hankering for more money that turned so many women
+into pillars of salt and their husbands into legalized
+sneak-thieves.</p>
+<p>He pulled out some of the letters from Canada about the Powers
+case, and fingered them over a little. He had brought them home
+this evening, and it wasn't the first time either, to try to get a
+good hour alone with Marise to talk it over with her. He frowned as
+he reflected that he seemed to have had mighty little chance for
+talking anything over with Marise since his return. There always
+seemed to be somebody sticking around; one of the two men next
+door, who didn't have anything to do <i>but</i> stick around, or
+Eugenia, who appeared to have settled down entirely on them this
+time. Well, perhaps it was just as well to wait a little longer and
+say nothing about it, till he had those last final verifications in
+his hands.</p>
+<p>What in thunder did Eugenia come to visit them for, anyhow?
+Their way of life must make her sick. Why did she bother? Oh,
+probably her old affection for Marise. They had been girls
+together, of course, and Marise had been good to her. Women thought
+more of those old-time relations than men. Well, he could stand
+Eugenia if she could stand them, he guessed. But she wasn't one who
+grew on him with the years.</p>
+<p>He had less and less patience with those fussy little ways,
+found less and less amusing those frequent, small cat-like gestures
+of hers, picking off an invisible thread from her sleeve, rolling
+it up to an invisible ball between her white finger and thumb, and
+casting it delicately away; or settling a ring, or brushing off
+invisible dust with a flick of a polished finger-nail; all these
+manoeuvers executed with such leisure and easy deliberation that
+they didn't make her seem restless, and you knew she calculated
+that effect. A man who had had years with a real, living woman like
+Marise, didn't know whether to laugh or swear at such mannerisms
+and the self-consciousness that underlay them.</p>
+<p>There she was coming down the stairs now, when she heard Marise
+at the piano, with the children, and knew there was no more work to
+be done. Pshaw! He had meant to go out and join the others, but now
+he would wait a while, till he had finished his pipe. A pipe beside
+Eugenia's perfumed cigarettes always seemed so gross. And he wanted
+to lounge at his ease, stretch out in his arm-chair with his feet
+on another. Could you do that, with Eugenia fashion-plating herself
+on the sofa?</p>
+<p>He leaned back smoking peacefully, listening to Marise's voice
+brimming up all around the children's as they romped through "The
+raggle-taggle gypsies, oh!"</p>
+<p>What a mastery of the piano Marise had, subduing it to the
+slender pipe of those child-voices as long as they sang, and
+rolling out sumptuous harmonies in the intervals of the song. Lucky
+kids! Lucky kids! to have childhood memories like that.</p>
+<p>He heard Paul say, "Now let's sing 'Massa's in the cold, cold
+ground,'" and Elly shriek out, "No, Mother, <i>no!</i> It's so
+<i>terribly</i> sad! I can't stand it!" And Paul answer with that
+certainty of his always being in the right, "Aw, Elly, it's not
+fair. Is it, Mother, fair to have Elly keep us from singing one of
+the nicest songs we have, just because she's so foolish?"</p>
+<p>His father frowned. Queer about Paul. He'd do anything for Elly
+if he thought her in trouble, would stand up for her against the
+biggest bully of the school-yard. But he couldn't keep himself from
+. . . it was perhaps because Paul could not <i>understand</i> that
+. . . now how could Marise meet this little problem in family
+equity, he wondered? Her solutions of the children's knots always
+tickled him.</p>
+<p>She was saying, "Let's see. Elly, it doesn't look to me as
+though you had any right to keep Paul from singing a song he likes.
+And, Paul, it doesn't seem as though you had any right to make Elly
+listen to a song that makes her cry. Let's settle it this way. We
+can't move the piano, but we can move Elly. Elly dear, suppose you
+go 'way out through the kitchen and shut both doors and stand on
+the back porch. Toucl&eacute; will probably be there, looking out,
+the way she does evenings, so you won't be alone. I'll send Mark
+out to get you when we're through. And because it's not very much
+fun to stand out in the dark, you can stop and get yourself a piece
+of cocoanut cake as you go through the pantry."</p>
+<p>Neale laughed silently to himself as he heard the doors open and
+shut and Elly's light tread die away. How perfectly Marise
+understood her little daughter! It wasn't only over the piano that
+Marise had a mastery, but over everybody's nature. She played on
+them as surely, as richly as on any instrument. That's what he
+called real art-in-life. Why wasn't it creative art, as much as
+anything, her Blondin-like accuracy of poise among all the
+conflicting elements of family-life, the warring interests of the
+different temperaments, ages, sexes, natures? Why wasn't it an
+artistic creation, the unbroken happiness and harmony she drew out
+of those elements, as much as the picture the painter drew out of
+the reds and blues and yellows on his palette? If it gave an actor
+a high and disinterested pleasure when he had an inspiration, or
+heard himself give out a true and freshly found intonation, or make
+exactly the right gesture, whether anybody in the audience
+applauded him or not, why wouldn't the mother of a family and maker
+of a home have the same pleasure, and by heck! just as high and
+disinterested, when she had once more turned the trick, had an
+inspiration, and found a course that all her charges, young and
+old, could steer together? Well, there was one, anyhow, of Marise's
+audience who often gave her a silent hand-clap of admiration.</p>
+<p>The wailing, lugubrious notes of the negro lament rose now,
+Paul's voice loud and clear and full of relish. "It takes a heavy
+stimulant to give Paul his sensations," thought his father. "What
+would take the hide right off of Elly, just gives him an agreeable
+tingle." His pipe went out as he listened, and he reached for a
+match. The song stopped. Someone had come in. He heard Paul's voice
+cry joyfully, "Oh goody, Mr. Welles, come on up to the piano."</p>
+<p>Neale leaned forward with a slightly unpleasant stirring of his
+blood and listened to see if the old man had come alone. No, of
+course he hadn't. He never did.</p>
+<p>There was Eugenia's voice saying, "Good-evening, Mr. Marsh." She
+would move over for him on the sofa and annex him with a look.
+Well, let her have him. He was her kind more than theirs, the Lord
+knew. Probably he was used to having that sort of woman annex
+him.</p>
+<p>Neale moved his head restlessly and shifted his position. His
+pipe and his arm-chair had lost their savor. The room seemed hot to
+him and he got up to open a window. Standing there by the open
+sash, looking out into the blue, misty glory of an overclouded
+moonlight night, he decided that he would not go in at all, and
+join them. He felt tired and out of sorts, he found. And they were
+such infernal talkers, Eugenia and Marsh. It wore you out to hear
+them, especially as you felt all the time that their speculations
+on life and human nature were so <i>far</i> off, that it would be
+just wasting your breath to try to set them right. He'd stay here
+in the study and smoke and maybe doze off a little, till they went
+away. Marise had known he had business figuring to do, and she
+would have a perfectly valid excuse to give them for his
+non-appearance. Not that he had any illusions as to anybody there
+missing him at all.</p>
+<p>He heard Mark's little voice sound shrilly from the pantry,
+"Come on, Elly. It's all right. I've even putten away the book
+that's got that song."</p>
+<p>Some splendid, surging shouts from the piano and the voices
+began on "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Neale could hear Mr.
+Welles' shaky old bass booming away this time. He was probably
+sitting down with Paul on his knees. It was really nice of the old
+codger to take such a fancy to Paul, and be able to see those
+sterling qualities of his, through Paul's surface unloveliness that
+came mostly from his slowness of imagination.</p>
+<p>The voices stopped; Elly said, "That song sounds as if it were
+proud of itself." Her father's heart melted in the utter
+prostration of tenderness he felt for his little daughter. How like
+Elly! What a quick intelligence animated the sensitive, touching,
+appealing, defenseless darling that Elly was! Marise must have been
+a little girl like that. Think of her growing up in such an
+atmosphere of disunion and flightiness as that weak mother of hers
+must have given her. Queer, how Marise didn't seem to have a trace
+of that weakness, unless it was that funny physical
+impressionableness of hers, that she could laugh at herself, but
+that still wrought on her, so that if measles were going the
+rounds, she could see symptoms of measles in everything the
+children did or didn't do; or that well-known habit of hers, that
+even the children laughed about with her, of feeling things
+crawling all over her for hours after she had seen a caterpillar.
+Well, that was only the other side of her extraordinary
+sensitiveness, that made her know how everybody was feeling, and
+what to do to make him feel better. She had often said that she
+would certainly die if she ever tried to study medicine, because as
+fast as she read of a symptom she would have it, herself. But she
+wouldn't die. She'd live and make a cracker-jack of a doctor, if
+she'd ever tried it, enough sight better than some callous brute of
+a boy with no imagination.</p>
+<p>"One more song before bed-time," announced Marise. "And we'll
+let Mark choose. It's his turn."</p>
+<p>A long silence, in which Neale amusedly divined Mark torn
+between his many favorites. Finally the high sweet little treble,
+"Well, let's make it 'Down Among the Dead Men.'"</p>
+<p>At which Neale laughed silently again. What a circus the kids
+were!</p>
+<p>The clock struck nine as they finished this, and Neale heard the
+stir and shifting of chairs. Paul said, "Mother, Mr. Welles and I
+have fixed it up, that he's going to put us to bed tonight, if
+you'll let him." Amused surprise from Marise: Mr. Welles' voice
+saying he really would like it, never had seen any children in
+their nightgowns except in the movies; Paul saying, "Gracious! We
+don't wear nightgowns like women. We wear pajamas!"; Mark's voice
+crying, "We'll show you how we play foot-fight on the rug. We have
+to do that barefoot, so each one can tickle ourselves;" as usual,
+no sound from Elly probably still reveling in the proudness of "The
+Battle Hymn of the Republic."</p>
+<p>A clatter of feet on the stairs, the chirping voices muffled by
+the shutting of a door overhead, and Eugenia's voice, musical and
+carefully modulated, saying, "Well, Marisette, you look perfectly
+worn out with fatigue. You haven't looked a bit well lately,
+anyhow. And I'm not surprised. The way those children take it out
+of you!"</p>
+<p>"Damn that woman!" thought Neale. That sterile life of hers had
+starved out from her even the capacity to understand a really human
+existence when she saw it. Not that she had <i>ever</i> seemed to
+have any considerable seed-bed of human possibilities to be
+starved, even in youth, if he could judge from his memory, now very
+dim, of how she had seemed to him in Rome, when he had first met
+her, along with Marise. He remembered that he had said of her
+fantastically, to a fellow in the <i>pension</i>, that she reminded
+him of a spool of silk thread. And now the silk thread had all been
+wound off, and there was only the bare wooden spool left.</p>
+<p>"It's not surprising that Mrs. Crittenden gets tired," commented
+Marsh's voice. "She does the work of four or five persons."</p>
+<p>"Yes," agreed Eugenia, "I don't know how she does it . . . cook,
+nurse, teacher, housekeeper, welfare-worker, seamstress, gardener .
+. ."</p>
+<p>"Oh, let up, let up!" Neale heard Marise say, with an impatience
+that pleased him. She must have been at the piano as she spoke, for
+at once there rose, smiting to the heart, the solemn, glorious,
+hopeless chords of the last part of the Pathetic Symphony. Heavens!
+How Marise could play!</p>
+<p>When the last dull, dreary, beautiful note had vibrated into
+silence, Eugenia murmured, "Doesn't that always make you want to
+crawl under the sod and pull the daisies over you?"</p>
+<p>"Ashes, ashes, not daisies," corrected Marsh, dreamily.</p>
+<p>There was, thought Neale listening critically to their
+intonations, a voluptuous, perverse pleasure in despair which he
+found very distasteful. Despair was a real and honest and deadly
+emotion. Folks with appetites sated by having everything they
+wanted, oughtn't to use despair as a sort of condiment to perk up
+their jaded zest in life. "Confounded play-actors!" he thought, and
+wondered what Marise's reaction to them was.</p>
+<p>He foresaw that it was going to be too much for his patience to
+listen to them. He would get too hot under the collar and be
+snappish, afterwards. Luckily he was in the library. There were
+better voices to listen to. He got up, ran his forefinger along a
+shelf, and took down a volume of Trevelyan, "Garbaldi and the
+Thousand." The well-worn volume opened of itself at a familiar
+passage, the description of the battle of Calatafimi. His eye
+lighted in anticipation. There was a man's book, he thought. But
+his pipe was out. He laid the book down to light it before he began
+to read. In spite of himself he listened to hear what they were
+saying now in the next room. Eugenia was talking and he didn't like
+what she was saying about those recurrent dreams of Marise's,
+because he knew it was making poor Marise squirm. She had such a
+queer, Elly-like shyness about that notion of hers, Marise had. It
+evidently meant more to her than she had ever been able to make him
+understand. He couldn't see why she cared so much about it, hated
+to have it talked about casually. But he wasn't Eugenia. If Marise
+didn't want it talked about casually, by George he wasn't the one
+who would mention it. They'd hardly ever spoken of them, those
+dreams, even to each other. People had a right to moral privacy, if
+they wanted it, he supposed, even married women. There was nothing
+so ruthless anyhow as an old childhood friend, to whom you had made
+foolish youthful confidences and who brought them out any time he
+felt like it.</p>
+<p>"You ought to have those dreams of yours psycho-analyzed,
+Marisette," Eugenia was saying. To Marsh she went on in
+explanation, "Mrs. Crittenden has always had a queer kind of dream.
+I remember her telling me about them, years ago, when we were girls
+together, and nobody guessed there was anything in dreams. She
+dreams she is in some tremendous rapid motion, a leaf on a great
+river-current, or a bird blown by a great wind, or foam driven
+along by storm-waves, isn't that it, Marisonne?"</p>
+<p>Neale did not need the sound of Marise's voice to know how she
+hated this. She said, rather shortly for her, as though she didn't
+want to say a word about it, and yet couldn't leave it uncorrected,
+"Not exactly. I don't dream I'm the leaf on the current. I dream I
+<i>am</i> the current myself, part of it. I'm the wind, not the
+bird blown by it; the wave itself; it's too hard to explain."</p>
+<p>"Do you still have those dreams once in a while, Marisette, and
+do you still love them as much?"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, sometimes."</p>
+<p>"And have you ever had the same sensation in your waking
+moments? I remember so well you used to say that was what you
+longed for, some experience in real life that would make you have
+that glorious sense of irresistible forward movement. We used to
+think," said Eugenia, "that perhaps falling in love would give it
+to you."</p>
+<p>"No," said Marise. "I've never felt it, out of my dreams."</p>
+<p>Neale was sorry he had elected to stay in the study. If he were
+out there now, he could change the conversation, come to her
+rescue. Couldn't Eugenia see that she was bothering Marise!</p>
+<p>"What do you suppose Freud would make out of such dreams?" asked
+Eugenia, evidently of Marsh.</p>
+<p>"Why, it sounds simple enough to me," said Marsh, and Neale was
+obliged to hand it to him that the very sound of his voice had a
+living, real, genuine accent that was a relief after Eugenia. He
+didn't talk half-chewed and wholly undigested nonsense, the way
+Eugenia did. Neale had heard enough of his ideas to know that he
+didn't agree with a word the man said, but at least it was a vital
+and intelligent personality talking.</p>
+<p>"Why, it sounds simple enough to me. Americans have fadded the
+thing into imbecility, so that the very phrase has become such a
+bromide one hates to pronounce it. But of course the commonplace
+that all dreams are expressions of suppressed desires is true. And
+it's very apparent that Mrs. Crittenden's desire is a very fine one
+for freedom and power and momentum. She's evidently not a
+back-water personality. Though one would hardly need
+psycho-analysis to guess that!" He changed the subject as
+masterfully as Neale could have done. "See here, Mrs. Crittenden,
+that Tschaikowsky whetted my appetite for more. Don't you feel like
+playing again?"</p>
+<p>The idea came over Neale, and in spite of his uneasy irritation,
+it tickled his fancy, that possibly Marsh found Eugenia just as
+deadly as he did.</p>
+<p>Marise jumped at the chance to turn the talk, for in an instant
+the piano began to chant again, not Tschaikowsky, Neale noted, but
+some of the new people whom Marise was working over lately. He
+couldn't understand a note of them, nor keep his mind on them, nor
+even try to remember their names. He had been able to get just as
+far as Debussy and no further, he thought whimsically, before his
+brain-channels hardened in incipient middle-age.</p>
+<p>He plunged into Trevelyan and the heart-quickening ups and downs
+of battle.</p>
+<p>Some time after this, he was pulled back from those critical and
+glorious hours by the consciousness, gradually forcing itself on
+him on two discomforts; his pipe had gone out and Eugenia was at it
+again. He scratched a match and listened in spite of himself to
+that smooth liquid voice. She was still harping on psycho-analysis.
+Wasn't she just the kind of woman for whom that would have an
+irresistible fascination! He gathered that Marise was objecting to
+it, just as sweepingly as Eugenia was approving. How women did hate
+half-tones and reasonable qualifications!</p>
+<p>"I'm a gardener," Marise was saying, "and I know a thing or two
+about natural processes. The thing to do with a manure pile is not
+to paw it over and over, but to put it safely away in the dark,
+underground, and never bother your head about it again except to
+watch the beauty and vitality of the flowers and grains that spring
+from the earth it has fertilized."</p>
+<p>Neale as he held the lifted match over his pipe, shook his head.
+That was all very well, put picturesquely as Marise always put
+things; but you couldn't knock an idea on the head just with an apt
+metaphor. There was a great deal more to be said about it, even if
+fool half-baked faddists like Eugenia did make it ridiculous. In
+the first place it was nothing so new. Everybody who had ever
+encountered a crisis in his life and conquered it, had . . . why,
+he himself . . .</p>
+<p>He felt his heart beat faster, and before he knew what was
+coming, he felt a great, heart-quickening gust of fresh salt air
+blow over him, and felt himself far from the book-tainted stagnant
+air of that indoor room. He forgot to light his pipe and sat
+motionless, holding the burning match till it flared up at the end
+and scorched his fingers. Then he dropped it with a startled oath,
+and looked quickly around him.</p>
+<p>In that instant he had lived over again the moment in Nova
+Scotia when he had gone down to the harbor just as the battered
+little tramp steamer was pulling out, bound for China.</p>
+<p>Good God! What an astonishing onslaught that had been! How from
+some great, fierce, unguessed appetite, the longing for wandering,
+lawless freedom had burst up! Marise, the children, their safe,
+snug middle-class life, how they had seemed only so many
+drag-anchors to cut himself loose from and make out to the open
+sea! If the steamer had been still close enough to the dock so that
+he could have jumped aboard, how he would have leaped! He might
+have been one of those men who disappeared mysteriously, from out a
+prosperous and happy life, and are never heard of again. But it
+hadn't been close enough. The green oily water widened between
+them; and he had gone back with a burning heart to that deadly
+little country hotel.</p>
+<p>Well, had he buried it and forced himself to think no more about
+it? No. Not on your life he hadn't. He'd stood up to himself. He'd
+asked himself what the hell was the matter, and he'd gone after it,
+as any grown man would. It hadn't been fun. He remembered that the
+sweat had run down his face as though he'd been handling planks in
+the lumber-yard in midsummer.</p>
+<p>And what had he found? He'd found that he'd never got over the
+jolt it had given him, there on that aimless youthful trip through
+Italy, with China and the Eastern seas before him, to fall in love
+and have all those plans for wandering cut off by the need for a
+safe, stable life.</p>
+<p>Then he'd gone on. He'd asked himself, if that's so, <i>then</i>
+what? He hadn't pulled any of the moralizing stern-duty stuff; he
+knew Marise would rather die than have him doing for her something
+he hated, out of stern duty. It was an insult, anyhow, unless it
+was a positively helpless cripple in question, to do things for
+people out of duty only. And to mix what folks called "duty" up
+with love, that was the devil. So he hadn't.</p>
+<p>That was the sort of thing Marise had meant, so long ago, when
+they were first engaged, that was the sort of thing she had asked
+him never to do. He'd promised he never would, and this wasn't the
+first time the promise had held him straight to what was, after
+all, the only decent course with a woman like Marise, as strong as
+she was fine. Anything else would be treating her like a child, or
+a dependent, as he'd hate to have her treat him, or anybody treat
+him.</p>
+<p>So this time he'd asked himself right out, what he really wanted
+and needed in life, and he'd been ready, honestly ready, to take
+any answer he got, and dree his weird accordingly, as the best
+thing for everybody concerned, as the only honest thing, as the
+only thing that would put any bed-rock under him, as what Marise
+would want him to do. If it meant tramp-steamers, why it had to be
+tramp-steamers. Something could be managed for Marise and the
+children.</p>
+<p>This was what he had asked. And what answer had he got? Why, of
+course, he hankered for the double-jointed, lawless freedom that
+the tramp-steamer stood for. He guessed everybody wanted that, more
+or less. But he wanted Marise and the children a damn sight more.
+And not only Marise and the children. He hadn't let himself lay it
+all on their backs, and play the martyr's r&ocirc;le of the
+forcibly domesticated wild male. No, he wanted the life he had,
+outside the family, his own line of work; he wanted the sureness of
+it, the coherence of it, the permanence of it, the clear conscience
+he had about what he was doing in the world, the knowledge that he
+was creating something, helping men to use the natural resources of
+the world without exploiting either the natural resources or the
+men; he wanted the sense of deserved power over other human beings.
+That was what he really wanted most of all. You could call it smug
+and safe and bourgeois if you liked. But the plain fact remained
+that it had more of what really counted for him than any other life
+he could see possible. And when he looked at it, hard, with his
+eyes open, why the tramp-steamer to China sailed out of school-boy
+theatrical clouds and showed herself for the shabby, sordid little
+substitute for a real life she would have been to him.</p>
+<p>He'd have liked to have that too, of course. You'd <i>like</i>
+to have everything! But you can't. And it is only immature boys who
+whimper because you can't have your cake and eat it too. That was
+all there was to that.</p>
+<p>What he had dug for was to find his deepest and most permanent
+desires, and when he had found them, he'd come home with a happy
+heart.</p>
+<p>It even seemed to him that he had been happier and quieter than
+before. Well, maybe Marise's metaphor had something in it, for all
+it was so flowery and high-falutin. Maybe she would say that what
+he had done was exactly what she'd described, to dig it under the
+ground and let it fertilize and enrich his life.</p>
+<p>Oh Lord! how a figure of speech always wound you up in knots if
+you tried to use it to say anything definite!</p>
+<p>He relighted his pipe, this time with a steady hand, and a cool
+eye; and turned to Trevelyan and Garibaldi again. He'd take that
+other side of himself out in books, he guessed.</p>
+<p>He had now arrived at the crucial moment of the battle, and
+lifted his head and his heart in anticipation of the way Garibaldi
+met that moment. He read, "To experienced eyes the battle seemed
+lost. Bixio said to Garibaldi, 'General, I fear we ought to
+retreat.' Garibaldi looked up as though a serpent had stung him.
+'<i>Here we make Italy or die!</i>' he said."</p>
+<p>"That's the talk!" cried Neale, to himself. The brave words
+resounded in the air about him, and drowned out the voices from the
+next room.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>ALONG THE EAGLE ROCK BROOK</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 1.</div>
+<p>Paul was very much pleased that Mr. Welles agreed with him so
+perfectly about the hour and place for lunch. But then Mr. Welles
+was awfully nice about agreeing. He said, now, "Yes, I believe this
+would be the best place. Here by the pool, on that big rock, as you
+say. We'll be drier there. Yesterday's rain has made everything in
+the woods pretty wet. That's a good idea of yours, to build our
+fire on the rock, with water all around. The fire couldn't possibly
+spread." Paul looked proudly at the rain-soaked trees and wet soggy
+leaves which his forethought had saved from destruction and strode
+across the brook in his rubber boots, with the first installment of
+dry pine branches.</p>
+<p>"Aren't you tired?" he said protectingly to his companion.
+"Whyn't you sit down over there and undo the lunch-basket? I'll
+make camp. Father showed me how to make a campfire with only one
+match."</p>
+<p>"All right," said Mr. Welles. "I do feel a little leg-weary. I'm
+not so used to these mountain scrambles as you are."</p>
+<p>"I'll clean the fish, too," said Paul; "maybe you don't like to.
+Elly can't abide it." He did not say that he did not like it very
+well himself, having always to get over the sick feeling it gave
+him.</p>
+<p>"I never did it in my life," confessed Mr. Welles. "You see I
+always lived in towns till now."</p>
+<p>Paul felt very sorry for Mr. Welles, and shook his head
+pityingly as he went off for more firewood.</p>
+<p>When he had collected a lot, he began to lay the sticks. He did
+it just as Father had showed him, but it seemed lots harder to get
+them right. And it took a lot more than one match to get it
+started. He didn't have a bit of breath left in him, by the time he
+finally got it going. And my, weren't his hands black! But he felt
+very much set up, all the same, that he had done it. In his heart
+Paul knew that there was nothing anybody could do which he could
+not.</p>
+<p>They hung the slimpsy slices of bacon from forked sticks, Paul
+showing Mr. Welles how to thread his on, and began to cook them
+around the edges of the fire, while the two little trout frizzled
+in the frying-pan. "I'm so glad we got that last one," commented
+Paul. "One wouldn't have been very much."</p>
+<p>"Yes, it's much better to have one apiece," agreed Mr.
+Welles.</p>
+<p>When the bacon was done (only burned a little at the edges, and
+still soft in the thicker places in the center of the slice), and
+the fish the right brown, and 'most shrunk up to nothing, they each
+of them put a trout and a piece of bacon on his slice of bread and
+butter, and gracious! didn't it taste good.</p>
+<p>"You must have done this before," said Mr. Welles, respectfully;
+"you seem to know a good deal about camping."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'm a good camper, all right," agreed Paul. "Mother and I
+have gone off in the woods, lots of times. When I was littler, I
+used to get spells when I was bad. I do still, even now, once in a
+while."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles did not smile, but continued gravely eating his bread
+and bacon, his eyes on the little boy.</p>
+<p>"I don't know what's the matter. I feel all snarled up inside.
+And then the first thing you know I've done something awful. Mother
+can tell when it first gets started in me, the least little teenty
+bit. <i>How</i> can she tell? And then she takes me off camping.
+She pretends it's because she's feeling snarled up, herself. But
+it's not. She never is. Why not?"</p>
+<p>He considered this in silence, chewing slowly on a vast mouthful
+of bread. "Anyhow, we leave the little children with Toucl&eacute;,
+if she's there," (he stopped here an instant to inspect Mr. Welles
+to make sure he was not laughing because he had called Elly and
+Mark the "little children." But Mr. Welles was not laughing at him.
+He was listening, <i>really</i> listening, the way grown-ups almost
+never did, to hear what you had to say. He did like Mr. Welles. He
+went on,) "or if Toucl&eacute;'s off somewheres in the woods
+herself, we leave them down at the Powers' to play with Addie and
+Ralph, and we light out for the woods, Mother and I. The snarleder
+up I feel, the further we go. We don't fish or anything. Just leg
+it, till I feel better. Then we make a fire and eat."</p>
+<p>He swallowed visibly a huge lump of unchewed bread, and said,
+uncorking a thermos bottle, "I asked Mother to put up some hot
+coffee."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles seemed surprised. "Why, do you drink coffee?"</p>
+<p>"Oh no, none of us kids ever take it. But I thought you'd like
+some. Grown-up folks mostly do, when they eat out-of-doors."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles took the cup of steaming coffee, ready sugared and
+creamed, without even saying thank you, but in a minute, as they
+began their second round of sandwiches, filled this time with cold
+ham from home, he said, "You've got quite a way of looking out for
+folks, haven't you?</p>
+<p>"I like to," said Paul.</p>
+<p>"<i>I</i> always liked to," said Mr. Welles.</p>
+<p>"I guess you've done quite a lot of it," conjectured the little
+boy.</p>
+<p>"Quite a lot," said the old man, thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>Paul never liked to be left behind and now spoke out, "Well, I
+expect I'll do a good deal, too."</p>
+<p>"Most likely you will," agreed the old man.</p>
+<p>He spoke a little absently, and after a minute said, "Paul,
+talking about looking out for folks makes me think of something
+that's bothering me like everything lately. I can't make up my mind
+about whether I ought to go on, looking out for folks, if I know
+folks that need it. I keep hearing from somebody who lives down
+South, that the colored folks aren't getting a real square deal. I
+keep wondering if maybe I oughtn't to go and live there and help
+her look out for them."</p>
+<p>Paul was so astonished at this that he opened his mouth wide,
+without speaking. When he could get his breath, he shouted, "Why,
+Mr. Welles, go away from Ashley to live!" He stared hard at the old
+man, thinking he must have got it twisted. But Mr. Welles did not
+set him straight, only stared down at the ground with a pale,
+bothered-looking face and sort of twitched his mouth to one
+side.</p>
+<p>The little boy moved over closer to him, and said, looking up at
+him with all his might, "Aw, Mr. Welles, I <i>wish't</i> you
+wouldn't! I <i>like</i> your being here. There's lot of things I've
+got planned we could do together."</p>
+<p>It seemed to him that the old man looked older and more tired at
+this. He closed his eyes and did not answer. Paul felt better. Mr.
+Welles couldn't have been in earnest.</p>
+<p>How still it was in the woods that day. Not the least little
+flutter from any leaf. The sunlight looked as green, as green,
+coming down through the trees that way, like the light in church
+when the sun came in through the stained-glass windows.</p>
+<p>The only thing that budged at all was a bird . . . was it a
+flicker? . . . he couldn't make out. It kept hopping around in that
+big beech tree across the brook. Probably it was worried about its
+nest and didn't like to have people so near. And yet they sat as
+still, he and Mr. Welles, as still as a tree, or the shiny water in
+the pool.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles opened his eyes and took the little boy's rough,
+calloused hand in his. "See here, Paul, maybe you can help me make
+up my mind."</p>
+<p>Paul squared his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"It's this way. I'm pretty nearly used up, not good for much any
+more. And the Electrical Company wanted to fix everything the
+nicest way for me to live. And they have. I hadn't any idea
+anything could be so nice as living next door to you folks in such
+a place as Crittenden's. And then making friends with you. I'd
+always wanted a little boy, but I thought I was so old, no little
+boy would bother with me."</p>
+<p>He squeezed the child's fingers and looked down on him lovingly.
+For a moment Paul's heart swelled up so he couldn't speak. Then he
+said, in a husky voice, "I <i>like</i> to." He took a large bite
+from his sandwich and repeated roughly, his mouth full, "I
+<i>like</i> to."</p>
+<p>Neither said anything more for a moment. The flicker . . . yes,
+it was a flicker . . . in the big beech kept changing her position,
+flying down from a top-branch to a lower one, and then back again.
+Paul made out the hole in the old trunk of the tree where she'd
+probably put her nest, and wondered why she didn't go back to
+it.</p>
+<p>"Have you got to the Civil War, in your history yet, Paul?"</p>
+<p>"Gee, yes, 'way past it. Up to the Philadelphia Exposition."</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles said nothing for a minute and Paul could see by his
+expression that he was trying to think of some simple baby way to
+say what he wanted to. Gracious! didn't he know Paul was in the
+seventh grade? "<i>I</i> can understand all right," he said
+roughly.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles said, "Well, all right. If you can, you'll do more
+than I can. You know how the colored people got their freedom then.
+But something very bad had been going on there in slavery, for ever
+so long. And bad things that go on for a long time, can't be
+straightened out in a hurry. And so far, it's been too much for
+everybody, to get this straightened out. The colored people . . .
+they're made to suffer all the time for being born the way they
+are. And that's not right . . . in America . . ."</p>
+<p>"Why don't they stand up for themselves?" asked Paul scornfully.
+He'd like to see anybody who would make him suffer for being born
+the way he was.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles hesitated again. "It looks to me this way. People can
+fight for some things . . . their property, and their vote and
+their work. And I guess the colored people have got to fight for
+those, themselves. But there are some other things . . . some of
+the nicest . . . why, if you fight for them, you tear them all to
+pieces, trying to get them."</p>
+<p>Paul did not have the least idea what this meant.</p>
+<p>"If what you want is to have people respect what you are worth,
+why, if you fight them to make them, then you spoil what you're
+worth. Anyhow, even if you don't spoil it, fighting about it
+doesn't put you in any state of mind to go on being your best.
+That's a pretty hard job for anybody."</p>
+<p>Paul found this very dull. His attention wandered back to that
+queer flicker, so excited about something.</p>
+<p>The old man tried to get at him again. "Look here, Paul,
+Americans that happen to be colored people ought to have every bit
+of the same chance to amount to their best that any Americans have,
+oughtn't they?"</p>
+<p>Paul saw this. But he didn't see what Mr. Welles could do about
+it, and said so.</p>
+<p>"Well, I couldn't do a great deal," said the old man sadly, "but
+more than if I stayed here. It looks as though they needed, as much
+as anything else, people to just have the same feeling towards them
+that you have for anybody who's trying to make the best of himself.
+And I could do that."</p>
+<p>Paul got the impression at last that Mr. Welles was in earnest
+about this. It made him feel anxious. "Oh <i>dear</i>!" he said,
+kicking the toe of his rubber boot against the rock. He couldn't
+think of anything to say, except that he hated the idea of Mr.
+Welles going.</p>
+<p>But just then he was startled by a sharp cry of distress from
+the bird, who flew out wildly from the beech, poised herself in the
+air, beating her wings and calling in a loud scream. The old man,
+unused to forests and their inhabitants, noticed this but vaguely,
+and was surprised by Paul's instant response. "There must be a
+snake after her eggs," he said excitedly. "I'll go over and chase
+him off."</p>
+<p>He started across the pool, gave a cry, and stood still,
+petrified. Before their eyes, without a breath of wind, the hugh
+beech solemnly bowed itself and with a great roar of branches,
+whipping and crushing the trees about, it fell, its full length
+thundering on the ground, a great mat of shaggy roots uptorn,
+leaving an open wound in the stony mountain soil. Then, in a
+minute, it was all as still as before.</p>
+<p>Paul was scared almost to death. He scrambled back to the rock,
+his knees shaking, his stomach sick, and clung to Mr. Welles with
+all his might. "What made it fall? There's no wind! What made it
+fall?" he cried, burying his face in the old man's coat. "It might
+just as easy have fallen this way, on us, and killed us! What made
+it fall?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles patted Paul's shoulder, and said, "There, there,"
+till Paul's teeth stopped chattering and he began to be a little
+ashamed of showing how it had startled him. He was also a little
+put out that Mr. Welles had remained so unmoved. "You don't know
+how dangerous a big tree <i>is</i>, when it falls!" he said,
+accusingly, to defend himself. "If you'd lived here more, and heard
+some of the stories . . . ! Nate Hewitt had his back broken with a
+tree falling on him. But he was cutting that one down, and it fell
+too soon. Nobody had touched this one! And there isn't any wind.
+What <i>made</i> it fall? Most every winter, some man in the lumber
+camp on the mountain gets killed or smashed up, and lots of horses
+too."</p>
+<p>He felt much better now, and he did want to find out whatever
+had made that tree fall. He sat up, and looked back at it, just a
+mess of broken branches and upset leaves, where a minute before
+there had been a tall living tree! "I'm going over to see what made
+it fall," he said.</p>
+<p>He splashed across the pool and poked around with a stick in the
+hole in the ground, and almost right away he saw what the reason
+was. He ran back to tell Mr. Welles. "I see now. The brook had kept
+sidling over that way, and washed the earth from under the rocks.
+It just didn't have enough ground left to hold on to."</p>
+<p>He felt all right now he knew some simple reason for what had
+looked so crazy. He looked up confidently at the old man, and was
+struck into awed silence by the expression of Mr. Welles' face.</p>
+<p>"Paul," said Mr. Welles, and his voice wasn't steady, "I guess
+what I ought to try to be is one more drop of water in the
+brook."</p>
+<p>Paul stared hard. He did not understand this either, but he
+understood the expression in that tired, old face. Mr. Welles went
+on, "That wrong feeling about colored people, not wanting them to
+be respected as much as any American, is . . . that's a tree that's
+got to come down. I'm too old to take an axe to it. And, anyhow, if
+you cut that sort of thing down with an axe, the roots generally
+live and start all over again. If we can just wash the ground out
+from under it, with enough people thinking differently, maybe it'll
+fall, roots and all, of its own weight. If I go and live there and
+just am one more person who respects them when they deserve it,
+it'll help <i>that</i> much, maybe, don't you think?"</p>
+<p>Paul had understood more what Mr. Welles' face and voice said to
+him than the words. He kept on looking into the old man's eyes.
+Something deep inside Paul said "yes" to what Mr. Welles' eyes were
+asking him.</p>
+<p>"How about it, Paul?" asked the old man.</p>
+<p>The child gave a start, climbed up beside him, and took hold of
+his hand. "How about it? How about it?" asked Mr. Welles in a very
+low tone.</p>
+<p>The little boy nodded. "Maybe," he said briefly. His lips shook.
+Presently he sniffed and drew his sleeve across his nose. He held
+the old hand tightly.</p>
+<p>"Oh dear!" he said again, in a small, miserable voice.</p>
+<p>The old man made no answer.</p>
+<p>The two sat motionless, leaning against each other. A ray of sun
+found the newly opened spot in the roof of the woods, and it seemed
+to Paul it pointed a long steady finger down on the fallen
+beech.</p>
+<p>At first Paul's throat ached, and his eyes smarted. He felt
+heavy and sore, as though he hadn't eaten the right thing for
+lunch.</p>
+<p>But by and by this went away. A quiet came all over him, so that
+he was better than happy. He laid his head against Mr. Welles'
+shoulder and looked up into the worn, pale old face, which was now
+also very quiet and still as though he too were better than
+happy.</p>
+<p>He held Paul close to him.</p>
+<p>Paul had a great many mixed-up thoughts. But there was one that
+was clear. He said to himself solemnly, "I guess I know who I want
+to be like when I grow up."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>By and by, he stirred and said, "Well, I guess I better start to
+pack up. Don't you bother. I'll pack the things away. Mother showed
+me how to clean the frying-pan with sand and moss."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>BESIDE THE ONION-BED</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 10.</div>
+<p>Marise pulled nervously and rapidly at the weeds among the
+onions, and wiped away with her sleeve the drops that ran down her
+hot, red face. She was not rebellious at the dusty, tiresome task,
+nor aware of the merciless heat of the early-summer sun. She was
+not indeed thinking at all of what she was doing, except that the
+physical effort of stooping and reaching and pulling was a relief
+to her, made slightly less oppressive the thunder-heavy moral
+atmosphere she breathed. She was trying to think, but the different
+impressions came rushing into her mind with such vehement haste
+that they dashed against each other brutally, to her entire
+confusion.</p>
+<p>When she tried to think out an answer to this perfectly
+preposterous idea of old Mr. Welles, why should a thousand other
+horrifying ideas which she had been keeping at bay pour in through
+the door, once opened to probing thought? What possible connection
+could there be between such a fantastic crazy notion as his, and
+those other heaving, looming possibilities which rolled themselves
+higher and murkier the longer she refused to look at them? She
+snatched at the weeds, twitching them up, flinging them down,
+reaching, straining, the sun molten on her back, the sweat stinging
+on her face. It was a silly impression of course, but it seemed to
+her that if she hurried fast enough with the weeds, those thoughts
+and doubts could not catch up with her.</p>
+<p>She had put them off, and put them off while Neale was away,
+because they scared her, and she didn't want to look at them
+without Neale. But he had been back for weeks now and still she put
+them off. All those tarnishing sayings, those careless, casual
+negations of what she had taken for axioms; that challenge to her
+whole life dropped from time to time as though it were an accepted
+commonplace with all intelligent beings. . . .</p>
+<p>Was her love for the children only an inverted form of sensual
+egotism, an enervating slavery for them, really only a snatched-up
+substitute for the personal life which was ebbing away from her?
+Was her attitude towards her beloved music a lazy, self-indulgent
+one, to keep it to herself and the valley here? Was that growing
+indifference of hers to dress and trips to the city, and seeing
+Eugenia's smart crowd there, a sign of mental dry-rot? Was it a
+betrayal of what was alive in her own personality to go on adapting
+herself to the inevitable changes in her relations with Neale,
+compromising, rather than . . ."</p>
+<p>"Aren't you awfully hot to go on doing that?" asked Neale,
+coming up behind her, from the road. She was startled because she
+had not heard him approach on the soft, cultivated ground of the
+garden. And as she turned her wet, crimson face up to his, he was
+startled himself. "Why, what's the matter, dear?" he asked
+anxiously.</p>
+<p>She sank back to a sitting position, drawing a long breath,
+mopping her forehead with her sleeve, as unconscious of her looks
+before Neale as though she had still been alone. She motioned him
+down beside her. "Oh, Neale, I'm so glad! How'd you happen to be so
+early? Maybe if we stay right out here, where the children won't
+know where we are, we can have a few minutes quite to ourselves.
+Toucl&eacute; is going to get tea tonight. Neale, sit down a
+minute. I want to tell you something. I'm awfully upset. I went
+over to help Mr. Welles transplant his Brussels sprouts, and we got
+to talking. Neale, what do you suppose has been in his mind all
+this time we've been thinking him so happy and contented here?"</p>
+<p>"Doesn't he like Crittenden's? Find it dull?"</p>
+<p>"No, no, not that, a bit. He <i>loves</i> it. It's
+heart-breaking to see how much he loves it!" She stopped, her voice
+shaking a little, and waited till she could get it under control.
+Her husband took her stained, dusty hand in his. She gave his
+fingers a little pressure, absently, not noting what she did, and
+seeing the corner of his handkerchief showing in the pocket of his
+shirt, she pulled it out with a nervous jerk, and wiped her face
+all over with it.</p>
+<p>He waited in silence.</p>
+<p>"Listen, Neale, I know it will sound perfectly crazy to you, at
+first. But you might as well believe it, for he is serious. It
+seems he's been getting lots more letters from that niece or cousin
+of his, down in Georgia. She tells him about things, how the
+Negroes are treated, all the Jim Crow business carried into every
+single detail of every single minute of every single day. It seems
+they're not badly treated as long as they'll stay day-laborers or
+servants, but . . . oh well, there's no need to go on with telling
+you . . . <i>you</i> know. We all know well enough what the
+American attitude is. Only I didn't think it could be so bad, or so
+everlastingly kept up every minute, as this cousin tells him. I
+suppose she ought to know. She's lived there for forty years. She
+keeps citing instances she's seen." Marise broke out with a fierce,
+blaming sharpness, "I don't see what <i>business</i> she had,
+writing him that way. I think it was beastly of her. Why couldn't
+she let him alone!"</p>
+<p>She felt her husband waiting patiently for her to quiet down and
+go on more coherently, and knew that his patience came from a long
+acquaintance with her mental habits, a certainty that her outbursts
+of feeling generally did quiet down if one waited: and across her
+genuine absorption in the story she was telling there flitted,
+bat-like, a distaste far being known so well as all that! There was
+something indiscreet and belittling in it, she thought, with an
+inward fastidious recoil. But this had gone, entirely, in a moment,
+and she was rushing on, "And, Neale, what <i>do</i> you think? She
+has worked on him, and he has worked on himself till he's got
+himself in a morbid state. He thinks perhaps he ought to leave
+Ashley that he loves so much and go down to live where this horrid
+cousin lives. . . ."</p>
+<p>Her husband's astonishment at this was as great as she could
+have desired. None of Neale's usual, unsurprised acceptance of
+everything that happened as being in the nature of things, which
+occasionally so rubbed her the wrong way, and seemed to her so
+wilfully phlegmatic. He was sincerely amazed and astounded; that
+was plain from his exclamation, his tone, his face. Of course he
+wasn't as outraged as she, but that wasn't to be expected, since he
+hadn't seen so much of that dear old life-worn man, nor grown so
+protectingly fond of him. She revelled in Neale's astonishment as
+bearing out her own feeling. "Isn't it crazy, Neale! Don't you
+think it crazy! Is there the slightest justification for it? You
+feel, just as I do, don't you, that it's a perfectly unbalanced,
+fanatical, <i>fool</i>ish thing to think of doing, his going down
+into that hopeless mess?"</p>
+<p>But her husband had had a moment's time, while she exclaimed, to
+get back to his usual unhurried post in life. "It's certainly about
+as unexpected as anything I ever heard of," he admitted. "I should
+have to know a lot more about it, before I could be sure what to
+think."</p>
+<p>An old impatience, at an old variance between their ways of
+thought, came out with an edge in Marise's tone as she said hotly,
+"Oh, <i>Neale</i>, don't take that line of yours! You know all
+there is to know, now! What else could you find out? You know how
+he's given all his life to looking out for his family, ending up
+with years of that bed-ridden old aunt the others wished on to him,
+just because he was too soft-hearted to get out from under. You
+know how anxious the Company was to do something to make up to him
+for all the years of service he gave them. And you know how happy
+he has been here, how he's loved it all, and fathered every root
+and seed in his garden, and how he and Paul have struck up such a
+sweet affection, and how he could be happier and happier." She
+struck her hands together. "Oh, Neale, I can't have him do such a
+foolish, useless thing, and spoil his life! It's not as if he'd be
+of any use down in Georgia. You know how the Southern white people
+detest Northerners coming down and interfering with the Negroes.
+Maybe they're wrong. But they're the people who live there. What
+could <i>he</i> do against them? What under the sun could one
+tired-out old man accomplish in a situation that every American
+knows to be simply impossible?" She looked hard at her husband's
+thoughtful face and threw herself against him with a petulant
+gesture. "Now, Neale, don't go and justify him! Don't say you think
+he's right."</p>
+<p>He put his arm about her shoulders, hot and wet under their
+gingham covering, and she leaned against him, the gesture as
+unconsidered and unconscious for the one as the other. "No, I'm not
+going to try to justify him. I suppose I think he's very foolish.
+But I must say it shows a pretty fine spirit. I take off my hat to
+his intention."</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, his intention . . ." conceded Marise. "He's an old
+saint, of course. Only he mustn't be allowed to ruin his life and
+break everybody's heart, even if he is a saint."</p>
+<p>"That's the way saints usually run their business, isn't it?"
+asked Neale. "And I'd like to know how anybody's going to keep him
+from doing it, if he decides he ought to."</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, we can," urged Marise, sitting up with energy. "We can,
+every one of us, throw ourselves against it, argue with him, tell
+him that it seems to us not only foolish, and exaggerated, and
+morbid, but conceited as if he thought what <i>he</i> did would
+count so very much. We can make him feel that it would be sort of
+cheating the Company, after what they've done for him; we can just
+mass all our personalities against it, use moral suasion, get
+excited, work on his feelings . . . she has done that, that
+cousin!"</p>
+<p>"I wouldn't want to do that," said Neale quietly. "You can, if
+you think best."</p>
+<p>She recognized a familiar emergence of granite in his voice and
+aspect and cried out on it passionately, "Now, <i>Neale</i>!"</p>
+<p>He knew perfectly well what this meant, without further words
+from her. They looked at each other, an unspoken battle going on
+with extreme rapidity between them, over ground intimately
+familiar. In the middle of this, she broke violently into words,
+quite sure that he would know at which point she took it up. "You
+carry that idea to perfectly impossible lengths, Neale. Don't you
+ever admit that we ought to try to make other people act the way we
+think best, even when we <i>know</i> we're right and they're
+wrong?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," admitted her husband, "I should think we were bound to.
+If we ever <i>were</i> sure we were right and they wrong."</p>
+<p>She gave the impression of vibrating with impatience and cried
+out, "That's pettifogging. Of course there are times when we are
+sure. Suppose you saw a little child about to take hold of the
+red-hot end of a poker?"</p>
+<p>"A child is different," he opposed her. "All grown-ups are
+responsible for all children. I suppose I'd keep him from taking
+hold of it. And yet I'm not dead sure I'd be right. If I thought he
+was only just going to touch it, to see if it really would burn him
+as people had told him, I guess I'd let him."</p>
+<p>"You always get around things," she said blamingly, "but there
+<i>are</i> cases when you could be sure. Suppose you saw Aunt Hetty
+just about to take poison, or Frank Warner getting Nelly Powers to
+run away with him?"</p>
+<p>He was startled by this, and asked quickly with a change of
+tone, "Whatever made you think of that? Are Frank and Nelly . . .
+?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, it just came into my head. No, I haven't heard anybody has
+said anything, noticed anything. But I had a sort of notion that
+'Gene doesn't like Frank hanging around the house so much."</p>
+<p>"Well . . ." commented her husband, with a lively accent of
+surprise. "I hadn't dreamed of such a thing. And it throws a light
+on something I happened to see this afternoon, on my way home. I
+came round the back way, the ravine road below the Eagle Rocks. I
+wanted to see about some popple we're thinking of buying from the
+Warners, on the shoulder beyond the Rocks. It didn't occur to me,
+of course, that anybody else would be up there, but just at the
+peak of the shoulder I saw 'Gene Powers, lying down beside a big
+beech-tree. He didn't hear me, walking on the pine-needles. And for
+a minute I stood there, and honestly didn't know what to do."</p>
+<p>"How do you mean . . . 'lying down'?" asked Marise, not
+visualizing the scene. "As though he were sick?"</p>
+<p>"No, not a bit that way. Not on his back, but on his face,
+looking over the edge of the ridge. All strung up like a bow, his
+head down between his shoulders and shot forwards like a cat
+stalking something. <i>I</i> tell you, he made me think of a hunter
+when he thinks he sees a deer. I thought probably he had. I've seen
+a buck and some does up there lately. Then he saw me and jumped up
+very quickly and came down past me. I was going to say, just for
+the sake of saying something, 'Laying your plans for next
+deer-week?' But as he went by and nodded, he looked at me with such
+an odd expression that I thought I'd better not. The idea came to
+me that maybe 'Gene does poach and occasionally take a deer out of
+season. Meat is so high it wouldn't be surprising. They have a
+pretty hard time scraping along. I don't know as I'd blame him if
+he did shoot a deer once in a while.</p>
+<p>"Well, after I'd been on beyond and made my estimate on the
+popple, I came back that way. And as I passed where he'd been
+lying, I thought, just for curiosity, I'd go up and see if I could
+see what he'd been looking at so hard. I got up to the big beech
+where he'd been, and looked over. And I got the surprise of my
+life. He couldn't have been looking at deer, for on the other side
+the cliff drops down sheer, and you look right off into air, across
+the valley. I was so surprised I stood there, taken aback. The
+afternoon train went up the valley while I stood there, staring. It
+looked so tiny. You're really very high on those Rocks. I noticed
+you could see your Cousin Hetty's house from there, and the mill
+and the Powers house. That looked like a child's plaything, so
+little, under the big pine. And just as I looked at that, I saw a
+man come out from the house, get on a horse, and ride away."</p>
+<p>"Why, that must have been Frank," said Marise. "He rides that
+roan mare of his as much as he drives her."</p>
+<p>"Yes, that's what came into my mind when you spoke his name just
+now in connection with Nelly. I hadn't thought anything of it,
+before."</p>
+<p>There was a moment's silence as they looked at each other.</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>Neale</i>!" said Marise, on a deep note. "How awful! You
+don't suppose there is anything in his jealousy. . . . Nelly is as
+inscrutable in her way as 'Gene."</p>
+<p>"Heavens! how should I know? But my guess is that 'Gene is
+making a fool of himself for nothing. Nelly doesn't strike me as
+being the sort of woman to . . ."</p>
+<p>"But Frank is awfully good-looking and dashing, and lots younger
+than 'Gene. And Nelly is young too and perfectly stunning to look
+at. And she's not one of our native valley girls, you know. It may
+seem very dull and cooped-up here, so far from town, and shops. She
+may envy her sisters, still living back in West Adams with city
+life around them."</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's possible enough, I suppose," admitted Neale. "But she
+seems perfectly contented, and thinks the world of the
+children."</p>
+<p>Marise's face clouded. The phrase had recalled her dark
+preoccupations of a moment ago. "Lots of people nowadays would say
+she seems to be fond of the children because she is using them to
+fill up a lack in her life," she said somberly; "that 'Gene no
+longer satisfied her, and that she fed on the children because she
+was starving emotionally." Her husband making no comment on this,
+she went on, "Neale, don't you think that people are saying horrid,
+distressing things nowadays? About marriage I mean, and all
+relations between men and women and between parents and children?"
+Her heart was beating faster as she finished this question. The
+subject was broached at last. Where would it lead them? Where would
+it lead them? She shut her eyes at the thought.</p>
+<p>"There's a good deal to be said about all that, that's pretty
+horrid and perfectly true," remarked Neale casually. He tilted his
+hat further over his eyes and leaned back, propping himself on one
+elbow.</p>
+<p>"<i>Neale</i>!" she protested, shocked and repelled. She had
+hoped for something very different from Neale. But she thought, in
+a momentary exasperation with him, she might have known she would
+not get it. He always took everything so abstractedly, so
+impersonally.</p>
+<p>"I don't see any use in pretending there's not," he advanced
+with a reasonable, considering air. "I don't see that intimate
+human relationships are in any <i>more</i> of a mess than other
+human relations. International ones, for instance, just now. But
+they certainly are in considerable of a mess, in a great many
+cases. It is evident that lots of times they're managed all
+wrong."</p>
+<p>Marise was so acutely disappointed that she felt a quavering
+ache in her throat, and kept silence for a moment. So this was what
+she had looked forward to, as a help. What was Neale there
+<i>for</i>, if not for her to lean against, to protect her, to be a
+defending wall about her? He was so strong and so clearheaded, he
+could be such a wall if he chose. How stern and hard he was, the
+core of him!</p>
+<p>"Neale," she said after a moment, "I wonder if you even
+<i>know</i> what things are being said about what we've always
+believed in . . . motherhood for instance, and marriage?"</p>
+<p>She had been unable to keep the quaver out of her voice, and at
+the sound of it, he sat up instantly, astonished, solicitous,
+tender. "Why, darling, what's the matter?" he said again, moving
+closer to her, bending over her.</p>
+<p>"How <i>can</i> you think such things without their making you
+perfectly miserable, without making you want to go straight and cut
+your throat?" she cried out on his callousness.</p>
+<p>He put his arm about her again, not absently this time, and drew
+her close. She thought angrily, "He thinks it's just a fit of
+nerves I can be soothed out of like a child," and pulled away from
+him.</p>
+<p>He looked at her, his attentive, intelligent look, and let his
+arm drop. And yet, although he was serious now, she was sure that
+he saw only that the subject agitated her, and did not see any
+possibility that it might touch them both, personally.</p>
+<p>"I have to think whatever I'm convinced is true, whether it
+makes me miserable or not, don't I?" he said gently. "And it does
+make me miserable, of course. Who can help being miserable at the
+spectacle of such rich possibilities as human life is full of,
+mismanaged and spoiled and lost?"</p>
+<p>"But, Neale, do you realize that people are thinking, books are
+being written to prove that parents' love for their children is
+only self-love, hypocritically disguised, and sometimes even sexual
+love camouflaged; and that anybody is better for the children to be
+with than their mother; and that married people, after the first
+flare-up of passion is over, hate each other instead of
+loving?"</p>
+<p>"I daresay there's a certain amount of truth in that,
+occasionally. It would certainly explain some of the inexplicable
+things we all see happen in family life," he remarked.</p>
+<p>Marise started and cried out piercingly, "Neale, how can you say
+such things to <i>me</i>!"</p>
+<p>He looked at her keenly again, keenly and penetratingly, and
+said, "I'm not one of those who think it inherent in the nature of
+women to take abstract propositions personally always. But I do
+think they will have to make a big effort to get themselves out of
+a mighty old acquired habit of thinking every general observation
+is directed at them personally."</p>
+<p>She flashed out indignantly at him, "How can you help taking it
+personally when it shakes the very foundations of our life?"</p>
+<p>He was astonished enough at this to suit even her. His face
+showed the most genuine amazed incapacity to understand her.
+"Shakes the . . . why, Marise dear, what are you talking about? You
+don't have to believe about <i>yourself</i> all the generalizing
+guesses that people are writing down in books, do you, if it
+contradicts your own experience? Just because you read that lots of
+American men had flat-foot and were refused at the recruiting
+station for that, you don't have to think your own feet flat, do
+you? If you do think so, all you have to do is to start out and
+walk on them, to know for sure they're all right. Heavens and
+earth! People of our age, who have really lived, don't need
+somebody in a book to tell them what's happening to them. Don't you
+<i>know</i> whether you really love Elly and Mark and Paul? If you
+don't, I should think a few minutes' thought and recollection of
+the last ten years would tell you, all right. Don't you <i>know</i>
+whether we hate each other, you and I?"</p>
+<p>Marise drew a long breath of relief. This was the sort of talk
+she wanted. She clutched at the strong hand which seemed at last
+held out to her. She did so want to be talked out of it all. "Oh
+good! then, Neale, you don't believe any of that sort of talk? You
+were only saying so for argument."</p>
+<p>He withdrew the hand. "Yes, I do believe a good deal of as a
+general proposition. What I'm saying, what I'm always saying, dear,
+and trying my best to live, is that everybody must decide for
+himself when a general proposition applies to him, what to believe
+about his own life and its values. Nobody else can tell him."</p>
+<p>She approached along another line. "But, Neale, that's all very
+well for you, because you have so much withstandingness in you. But
+for me, there are things so sacred, so intimate, so much a part of
+me, that only to have some rough hand laid on them, to have them
+pulled out and pawed over and thought about . . . it frightens me
+so, sets me in such a quiver! And they don't seem the same again.
+<i>Aren't</i> there things in life so high and delicate that they
+can't stand questioning?"</p>
+<p>He considered this a long time, visibly putting all his
+intelligence on it. "I can't say, for you," he finally brought out.
+"You're so much finer and more sensitive than I. But I've never in
+all these years seen that your fineness and your sensitiveness make
+you any less strong in the last analysis. You suffer more, respond
+more to all the implications of things; but I don't see that there
+is any reason to think there's any inherent weakness in you that
+need make you afraid to look at facts."</p>
+<p>He presented this testimony to her, seriously, gravely. It took
+her breath, coming from him. She could only look at him in
+speechless gratitude and swallow hard. Finally she said,
+falteringly, "You're too good, Neale, to say that. I don't deserve
+it. I'm awfully weak, many times."</p>
+<p>"I wouldn't say it, if it weren't so," he answered, "and I
+didn't say you weren't weak sometimes. I said you were strong when
+all was said and done."</p>
+<p>Even in her emotion, she had an instant's inward smile at the
+Neale-like quality of this. She went on, "But don't you think there
+is such a thing as spoiling beautiful elements in life, with
+handling them, questioning them, for natures that aren't naturally
+belligerent and ready to fight for what they want to keep? For
+instance, when somebody says that children in a marriage are like
+drift-wood left high on the rocks of a dwindled stream, tokens of a
+flood-time of passion now gone by. . . ." She did not tell him who
+had said this. Nor did he ask. But she thought by his expression
+that he knew it had been Vincent Marsh.</p>
+<p>He said heartily, "I should just call that a nasty-minded remark
+from somebody who didn't know what he was talking about. And let it
+go at that."</p>
+<p>"There, you see," she told him, "that rouses your instinct to
+resist, to fight back. But it doesn't mine. It just makes me
+sick."</p>
+<p>"Marise, I'm afraid that you <i>have</i> to fight for what you
+want to keep in this world. I don't see any way out of it. And I
+don't believe that anybody else can do your fighting for you. You
+ask if it's not possible to have beautiful, intimate things spoiled
+by questioning, criticisms, doubts. Yes, I do think it is, for
+young people, who haven't learned anything of life at first hand. I
+think they ought to be protected till they have been able to
+accumulate some actual experience of life. That's the only weapon
+for self-defense anybody can have, what he has learned of life,
+himself. Young people are apt to believe what older people tell
+them about life, because they don't know anything about it, yet,
+themselves, and I think you ought to be careful what is questioned
+in their presence. But I don't see that mature people ought to be
+protected unless you want to keep them childish, as women used to
+be kept. Nothing is your own, if you haven't made it so, and kept
+it so."</p>
+<p>"But, Neale, it's so sickeningly <i>hard</i>! Why do it? Why,
+when everything seems all right, pry into the deep and hidden roots
+of things? I don't <i>want</i> to think about the possibility of
+some dreadful dry-rot happening to married people's feelings
+towards each other, as they get older and get used to each other.
+It's soiling to my imagination. What's the use?"</p>
+<p>She had so hoped he would help her to sweep them all back to the
+cellar labeled "morbid" and lock them down in the dark again. Any
+other man would, she thought, amazed at him, <i>any</i> other
+husband! She focussed all her personality passionately to force him
+to answer as she wished.</p>
+<p>He fell into another thoughtful silence, glanced up at her once
+sharply and looked down again. She always felt afraid of him when
+he looked like that. No, not afraid of him, but of the relentless
+thing he was going to say. Presently he said it. "What's the use?
+Why, the very fact you seem afraid of it . . . I can't imagine why
+. . . shows there would be some use. To turn your back on anything
+you're afraid of, that's fatal, always. It springs on you from
+behind."</p>
+<p>She cried out to him in a sudden anguish that was beyond her
+control, "But <i>suppose you face it and still it springs</i>!"</p>
+<p>Her aspect, her accent, her shaken voice gave him a great start.
+He faced her. He looked at her as though he saw her for the first
+time that day. And he grew very pale as he looked. Something
+wordless passed between them. Now he knew at last what she was
+afraid of.</p>
+<p>But he did not flinch. He said desperately, in a harsh voice,
+"You have to take what comes to you in life," and was grimly
+silent.</p>
+<p>Then with a gesture as though to put away something incredible,
+approaching him, he went on more quietly, "But my experience is
+that it doesn't dare spring if you walk right up to it. Generally
+you find you're less afraid of everything in the world, after
+that."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She had been frightened, stabbed through and through by the look
+they had interchanged, by the wordless something which had passed
+between them. But now she wondered suddenly, passionately,
+amazedly, if he had really understood all the dagger-like
+possibilities of their talk.</p>
+<p>"Neale," she challenged him, "don't you put <i>any</i> limits on
+this? Isn't there <i>any</i>where you'd stop out of sheer respect?
+Nothing too hallowed by . . ."</p>
+<p>"Nothing. Nothing," he answered her, his face pale, his eyes
+deep and enduring. "It's lying down, not to answer the challenge
+when it comes. How do you know what you have to deal with if you
+won't look to see? You may find out that something you have been
+trusting is growing out of a poisonous root. That does happen.
+What's the use of pretending that it couldn't to you, as to anybody
+else? And what's the use of having lived honestly, if you haven't
+grown brave enough to do whatever needs to be done? If you are
+scared by the idea that your motherhood may be only inverted
+sensuality, or if you think there is any possibility that the
+children would be better off in other hands, or if you think . . .
+if you think there is any other terrifying possibility in our life
+here, for God's sake look into your own heart and see for yourself!
+It all sounds like nonsense to me, but . . ."</p>
+<p>She snatched at the straw, she who longed so for help. "Oh,
+Neale, if <i>you</i> think so, I know . . ."</p>
+<p>"I won't <i>have</i> you taking my word for it!" he told her
+roughly. "<i>I</i> can't tell what's back of what you do. And you
+oughtn't to take my word for it if I tried to. Nobody on earth can
+make your decision for you, but you yourself." The drops stood out
+on his forehead as he spoke, and ran down his pale face.</p>
+<p>She quivered and was silent for a moment. Then, "Neale, where
+shall I get the strength to do that?" she asked.</p>
+<p>He looked full in her face. "I don't know anywhere to go for
+strength but out of one's naked human heart," he said.</p>
+<p>She shrank from the rigor of this with a qualm of actual fear.
+"I think I must have something else," she told him wildly.</p>
+<p>"I don't know," he returned. "I don't know at all about that.
+I'm no mystic. I can't help you there, dear. But I know, as well as
+I know anything on earth, that anything that's worth having in
+anybody's life, his parent-hood, his marriage, his love, his
+ambition, can stand any honest challenge it can be put to. If it
+can't, it's not valid and ought to be changed or discarded." His
+gaze on her was immeasurably steady.</p>
+<p>She longed unspeakably for something else from him, some
+warming, comforting assurance of help, some heartening, stimulating
+encouragement along that stark, bleak way.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Somehow they were standing up now, both pale, looking profoundly
+into each other's eyes. Something almost palpable, of which not a
+word had been spoken aloud, came and stood there between them, and
+through it they still looked at each other. They had left words far
+behind now, in the fierce velocity of their thoughts.</p>
+<p>And yet with the almost physical unity of their years of life
+together, each knew the other's thoughts.</p>
+<p>She flung herself against him as though she had cried out to
+him. He put his arms strongly, tenderly about her, as though he had
+answered.</p>
+<p>With no words she had cried out, silently, desperately to him,
+"Hold me! Hold me!"</p>
+<p>And with no words, he had answered, silently, desperately, "No
+one can hold you but yourself."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>A shouting babble of voices rose in the distance. The children
+crying to each other came out of the house-door and raced down the
+flag-stone walk. "There they are! In the garden! By the onion-bed!
+Father! Mother! We've been looking for you everywhere.
+Toucl&eacute; says if you'll let her, she'll boil down some maple
+syrup for us to wax on ice for dessert."</p>
+<p>They poured into the garden, children, cat and fox-terrier,
+noisy, insistent, clamorous. Mark, always frankly greedy of his
+mother's attention, pushed in jealously between his parents,
+clinging to his mother's knees. He looked up in her face and
+laughed out, his merry peal, "Oh, Mother, what a dirty face! You've
+been suspiring and then you've wiped your forehead with your dirty
+hand, the way you say I mustn't. How funny you look! And you've got
+a great, long tear in your sleeve, too."</p>
+<p>Behind them, tiny, smooth and glistening, Eugenia Mills strolled
+to the edge of the garden, as far as the flag-stones went, and
+stood waiting, palpably incapable of taking her delicate bronze
+slippers into the dust.</p>
+<p>"You've missed a kitchen call from that lively, earthy old Mrs.
+Powers and her handsome daughter-in-law," she announced casually.
+"Toucl&eacute; says they brought some eggs. What a stunning
+creature that Nelly is! There's temperament for you! Can't you just
+feel the smouldering, primitive fire hidden under that scornful
+silence of hers?"</p>
+<p>"Mother, may we tell Toucl&eacute; to put the syrup on to boil?"
+begged Elly. Her hair was tangled and tousled, with bits of bark
+sticking in it, and dried mud was caked on her hands and bare legs.
+Marise thought of the repugnance she must have aroused in
+Eugenia.</p>
+<p>"Mother," said Paul, "Mr. Welles is going to give me a
+fishing-rod, he says. A <i>real</i> one. Boughten."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I want one too!" cried Mark, jumping up and down. "I want
+one too."</p>
+<p>"You're too little. Mother, <i>isn't</i> Mark too little? And
+anyhow, he always breaks everything. You do, Mark, you know you do.
+I take <i>care</i> of my things!"</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Someone in the confusion stepped on the fox-terrier's toes and
+he set up a shrill, aggrieved yelping. The children pawed at her
+with dirty hands.</p>
+<p>"Good-evening, Mr. Marsh," said Eugenia, looking over her
+shoulder at the dark-haired figure in flannels approaching from the
+other house. She turned and strolled across the grass to meet him,
+as white and gleaming as he.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>A sick qualm of self-contempt shook Marise. For, high and clear
+above everything else, there had come into her mind a quick
+discomfort at the contrast between her appearance and that of
+Eugenia.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<h3>HOME LIFE</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 20.</div>
+<p>The heat was appalling even early in the morning, right after
+breakfast. There were always three or four such terrific days, even
+up here in the mountains, to remind you that you lived in America
+and had to take your part of the ferocious extremes of the American
+climate.</p>
+<p>And of course this had to be the time when Toucl&eacute; went
+off for one of her wandering disappearances. Marise could tell that
+by the aspect of the old woman as she entered the kitchen that
+morning, her reticule bag bulging out with whatever mysterious
+provisions Toucl&eacute; took with her. You never missed anything
+from the kitchen.</p>
+<p>Marise felt herself in such a nervously heightened state of
+sensitiveness to everything and everybody in those days, that it
+did not surprise her to find that for the first time she received
+something more than a quaint and amusing impression from the old
+aborigine. She had never noticed it before, but sometimes there was
+something about Toucl&eacute;'s strange, battered, leathery old
+face . . . what was it? The idea came to her a new one, that
+Toucl&eacute; was also a person, not merely a curious and enigmatic
+phenomenon.</p>
+<p>Toucl&eacute; was preparing to depart in the silent,
+unceremonious, absent-minded way she did everything, as though she
+were the only person in the world. She opened the screen door,
+stepped out into the torrid glare of the sunshine and, a stooped,
+shabby, feeble old figure, trudged down the path.</p>
+<p>"Where does she go?" thought Marise, and "What was that
+expression on her face I could not name?"</p>
+<p>Impulsively she went out quickly herself, and followed after the
+old woman.</p>
+<p>"Toucl&eacute;! Toucl&eacute;!" she called, and wondered if her
+voice in these days sounded to everyone as nervous and uncertain as
+it did to her.</p>
+<p>The old woman turned and waited till the younger had overtaken
+her. They were under the dense shade of an old maple, beside the
+road, as they stood looking at each other.</p>
+<p>As she had followed, Marise regretted her impulse, and had
+wondered what in the world she could find to say, but now that she
+saw again the expression in the other's face, she cried out
+longingly, "Toucl&eacute;, where do you go that makes you look
+peaceful?"</p>
+<p>The old woman glanced at her, a faint surprise appearing in her
+deeply lined face. Then she looked at her, without surprise,
+seriously as though to see what she might read in the younger
+woman's eyes. She stood for a long moment, thinking. Finally she
+sat down on the grass under the maple-tree, and motioned Marise to
+sit beside her. She meditated for a long time, and then said,
+hesitatingly, "I don't know as a white person could understand.
+White people . . . nobody ever asked me before."</p>
+<p>She sat silent, her broad, dusty feet in their elastic-sided,
+worn, run-over shoes straight before her, the thick, horny eyelids
+dropped over her eyes, her scarred old face carved into innumerable
+deep lines. Marise wondered if she had forgotten that anyone else
+was there. She turned her own eyes away, finally, and looking at
+the mountains saw that black thunderclouds were rolling up over the
+Eagle Rocks. Then the old woman said, her eyes still dropped, "I
+tell you how my uncle told me, seventy-five years ago. He said
+people are like fish in an underground brook, in a black cave. He
+said there is a place, away far off from where they live, where
+there is a crack in the rock. If they went 'way off they could get
+a glimpse of what daylight is. And about once in so often they need
+to swim there and look out at the daylight. If they don't, they
+lose their eyesight from always being in the dark. He said that a
+lot of Indians don't care whether they lose their eyesight or not,
+so long's they can go on eating and swimming around. But good
+Indians do. He said that as far as he could make out, none of the
+white people care. He said maybe they've lost their eyes
+altogether."</p>
+<p>Without a move of her sagging, unlovely old body, she turned her
+deep black eyes on the flushed, quivering, beautiful woman beside
+her. "That's where I go," she answered. "I go 'way off to be by
+myself, and get a glimpse of what daylight is."</p>
+<p>She got up to her feet, shifted her reticule from one hand to
+the other, and without a backward look trudged slowly down the
+dusty road, a stooped, shabby, feeble old figure.</p>
+<p>Marise saw her turn into a wood-road that led up towards the
+mountain, and disappear. Her own heart was burning as she looked.
+Nobody would help her in her need. Toucl&eacute; went away to find
+peace, and left her in the black cave. Neale stood. . . .</p>
+<p>A child's shriek of pain and loud wailing calls for "Mother!
+Mother! <i>Mother!</i>" sent her back running breathlessly to the
+house. Mark had fallen out of the swing and the sharp corner of the
+board had struck him, he said, "in the eye! in the eye!" He was
+shrieking and holding both hands frantically over his left eye.
+This time it might be serious, might have injured the eye-ball.
+Those swing-boards were deadly. Marise snatched up the screaming
+child and carried him into the kitchen, terrible perspectives of
+blindness hag-riding her imagination; saying to herself with one
+breath, "It's probably nothing," and in the next seeing Mark
+groping his way about the world with a cane, all his life long.</p>
+<p>She opened the first-aid box on the kitchen-shelf, pulled out a
+roll of bandage and a length of gauze, sat down with Mark in her
+lap near the faucet, and wet the gauze in cold water. Then she
+tried in vain to induce him to take down his hands so that she
+could see where the blow had struck.</p>
+<p>But the terrified, hysterical child was incapable of hearing
+what she said, incapable of doing anything but scream louder and
+louder when she tried to pull down those desperately tight little
+hands held with frantic tenseness over the hurt eye. Marise could
+feel all his little body, quivering and taut. His shrieks were like
+those of someone undergoing the most violent torture.</p>
+<p>She herself responded nervously and automatically to his
+condition, felt herself begin to tighten up, and knew that she was
+equally ready to shake him furiously, or to burst into anguished
+tears of sympathy for his pain.</p>
+<p>Wait now . . . wait . . . what was the thing to do for Mark?
+What would untie those knots of fright and shock? For Paul it would
+have been talk of the bicycle he was to have for his birthday; for
+Elly a fairy-story or a piece of candy! For Mark . . .</p>
+<p>High above the tumult of Mark's shrieks and her own spasmodic
+reactions to them, she sent her intelligence circling quietly . . .
+and in an instant . . . oh yes, that was the thing. "Listen, Mark,"
+she said in his ear, stopping her effort to take down his hands,
+"Mother's learned a new song, a <i>new</i> one, awfully funny. And
+ever so long too, the way you like them." She put her arms about
+him and began, hearing herself with difficulty through his
+cries.</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"On yonder hill there stands a damsel,<br />
+Who she is, I do not know."</div>
+<p>("How preposterous we must sound, if Eugenia is listening," she
+thought to herself, as she sang, "out-yelling each other this
+way!")</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"I'll go and court her for her beauty.<br />
+She must answer 'yes' or 'no.'"</div>
+<p>As usual Mark fell helpless before the combination of music and
+a story. His cries diminished in volume. She said in his ear, "And
+then the Lady sings," and she tuned her voice to a young-ladyish,
+high sweetness and sang,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"My father was a Spanish Captain,<br />
+Went to sea a month ago,"</div>
+<p>Mark made a great effort and choked down his cries to heaving
+sobs as he tried to listen,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"First he kissed me, then he left me;<br />
+Bade me always answer 'no.'"</div>
+<p>She told the little boy, now looking up at her out of the one
+eye not covered by his hands, "Then the gentleman says to her," she
+made her voice loud and hearty and bluff,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Oh, Madam, in your face is beauty,<br />
+On your lips red roses grow.<br />
+Will you take me for your lover?<br />
+Madam, answer 'yes' or 'no.'"</div>
+<p>She explained in an aside to Mark, "But her father had told her
+she must always answer just the one thing, 'no,' so she had to
+say," she turned up in the mincing, ladylike key again, and
+sang,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Oh no, John, no, John, no."</div>
+<p>Mark drew a long quivering breath through parted lips and sat
+silent, his one eye fixed on his mother, who now sang in the loud,
+lusty voice,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Oh, Madam, since you are so cruel,<br />
+And that you do scorn me so,<br />
+If I may not be your lover,<br />
+Madam, will you let me go?"</div>
+<p>And in the high, prim voice, she answered herself,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Oh no, John, no, John, <i>no!</i>"</div>
+<p>A faint smile hovered near Mark's flushed face. He leaned
+towards his mother as she sang, and took down his hands so that he
+could see her better. Marise noted instantly, with a silent
+exclamation of relief that the red angry mark was quite outside the
+eye-socket, harmless on the bone at one side. Much ado about
+nothing as usual with the children. Why <i>did</i> she get so
+frightened each time? Another one of Mark's hairbreadth
+escapes.</p>
+<p>She reached for the cold wet compress and went on, singing
+loudly and boldly, with a facetious wag of her head, (how tired she
+was of all this manoeuvering!),</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Then I will stay with you forever<br />
+If you will not be unkind."</div>
+<p>She applied the cold compress on the hurt spot and put out her
+hand for the bandage-roll, singing with an ostentatiously humorous
+accent and thinking with exasperation how all this was delaying her
+in the thousand things to do in the house,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Madam, I have vowed to love you;<br />
+Would you have me change my mind?"</div>
+<p>She wound the bandage around and around the little boy's head,
+so that it held the compress in place, singing in the high, sweet
+voice,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Oh no, John, no, John, NO."</div>
+<p>She went on with a heavy, mock solemnity, in the loud voice,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Oh, hark, I hear the church-bells
+ringing;<br />
+Will you come and be my wife?"</div>
+<p>She pinned the bandage in place at the back of Mark's head,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Or, dear Madam, have you settled<br />
+To live single all your life?"</div>
+<p>She gathered the child up to her, his head on her shoulder, his
+face turned to her, his bare, dusty, wiry little legs wriggling and
+soiling her white skirt; and sang, rollickingly,</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>"Oh no, John, no, John, NO!"</div>
+<p>"There, that's all," she said in her natural voice, looking down
+at Mark. She said to herself rebelliously, "I've expended enough
+personality and energy on this performance to play a Beethoven
+sonata at a concert," and found she was quoting something Vincent
+Marsh had said about her life, the day before.</p>
+<p>There was a moment while the joke slowly penetrated to Mark's
+six-year-old brain. And then he laughed out, delightedly, "Oh,
+Mother, that's a beaut! Sing it again. Sing it again! Now I know
+what's coming, I'll like it such a lots betterer."</p>
+<p>Marise cried out in indignant protest, "Mark! When I've sat here
+for ten minutes singing to you, and all the work to do, and the sun
+getting like red-hot fire every minute."</p>
+<p>"What must you got to do?" asked Mark, challengingly.</p>
+<p>"Well, the very first thing is to get dinner ready and in the
+fireless cooker, so we can turn out the oil-stove and cool off this
+terrible kitchen."</p>
+<p>Mark looked up at her and smiled. He had recently lost a front
+tooth and this added a quaintness to the splendor of his
+irresistible smile. "You could sing as you get the dinner ready,"
+he said insinuatingly, "and I'll help you."</p>
+<p>Marise smothered an impulse to shout to the child, "No, no, go
+away! Go away! I can't have you bothering around. I've got to be by
+myself, or I don't know what will happen!" She thought of
+Toucl&eacute;, off in the green and silent woods, in a blessed
+solitude. She thought of Eugenia up in her shaded room, stretched
+on the chaise-longue in a thin silk room-gown, she thought of Neale
+and his stern eyes . . . she looked down on the dusty, tanned,
+tousle-headed little boy, with the bandage around his head, his one
+eye looking up at her pleadingly, his dirty little hand clutching
+at the fold of her skirt; and drearily and unwillingly she summoned
+herself to self-control. "All right, Mark, that's true. I could
+sing while I peel the potatoes. You could wash them for me. That
+would help."</p>
+<p>They installed themselves for this work. The acrid smell of
+potato-parings rose in the furnace-like heat of the kitchen, along
+with the singing voice, asking and answering itself. Mark listened
+with all his might, laughing and wriggling with appreciation. When
+his mother had finished and was putting the potatoes into the
+boiling water, he said exultantly, "He got around <i>her</i>, all
+right, I should say what!"</p>
+<p>Paul burst in now, saying, "Mother, Mother!" He stopped short
+and asked, "What you got on your head, Mark?"</p>
+<p>The little boy looked surprised, put his hand up, felt the
+bandage, and said with an off-hand air, "Oh, I bunked my head on
+the corner of the swing-board."</p>
+<p>"I know," said Paul, "I've done it lots of times." He went on,
+"Mother, my pig has lice. You can just <i>see</i> them crawling
+around under his hair. And I got out the oil Father said to use,
+but I can't do it. It says on the can to rub it on with a stiff
+little brush. I don't see how ever in the world you're going to get
+your pig to stand still while you do it. When I try to, he just
+squeals, and runs away."</p>
+<p>His mother said with decision, from where she stooped before the
+open ice-box door, "Paul, if there is anything in the world I know
+nothing about, it is pigs. I haven't the slightest idea what to
+do." She shut the heavy door with a bang more energetic than was
+necessary to latch it, and came back towards the stove with a raw,
+red piece of uncooked meat on a plate.</p>
+<p>"Oh, how nasty meat looks, raw," said Mark, with an accent of
+disgust.</p>
+<p>"You eat it with a good appetite when I've cooked it," remarked
+his mother, somewhat grimly, putting it in a hot pan over the fire.
+An odor of searing fibers and smoke and frying onions rose up in
+the hot, still air of the kitchen.</p>
+<p>"If I could have guessed we'd have such weather, I'd never have
+ordered a pot-roast," thought Marise, vexed.</p>
+<p>"Please, Mother, <i>please</i>," begged Paul.</p>
+<p>"Please what?" asked his mother, who had forgotten the pig.</p>
+<p>"Henry!" said Paul. "If you could see how he scratches and
+scratches and how the behind of his ears is all scabs he's so
+bitten."</p>
+<p>"Wouldn't Eugenia and Vincent Marsh love this conversation?"
+thought Marise, turning the meat in the pan and starting back from
+the spatters of hot fat.</p>
+<p>"Mother, don't you see, I agreed to take care of him, with
+Father, and so I <i>have</i> to. He's just like my child. You
+wouldn't let one of <i>us</i> have lice all over, and scabs on our
+. . ."</p>
+<p>"Oh stop, Paul, for Heaven's sake!" said his mother.</p>
+<p>Through the smoke and smell and heat, the sensation of her
+underclothing sticking hotly to her limbs, the constant dogging
+fear and excitement that beset her, and the causeless twanging of
+her nerves, there traveled to her brain, along a channel worn
+smooth by the habit of her thought about the children, the
+question, "What is it that makes Paul care so much about this?" And
+the answer, almost lost in the reverberation of all those other
+questions and answers in her head, was, "It comes from what is best
+in Paul, his feeling of personal responsibility for the welfare of
+others. That mustn't be hindered." Aloud, almost automatically, she
+said, in a neutral tone, "Paul, I don't think I can do a single
+thing for you and Henry, but I'll go with you and look at him and
+see if I can think of anything. Just wait till I get this and the
+potatoes in the fireless cooker."</p>
+<p>Paul made a visible effort, almost as though he were swallowing
+something too large for his throat, and said ungraciously, "I
+suppose I ought to help you in here, then."</p>
+<p>"I suppose so," said his mother roughly, in an exact imitation
+of his manner.</p>
+<p>Paul looked at her quickly, laughing a little, sheepishly. He
+waited a moment, during which time Mark announced that he was going
+out to the sand-pile, and then said, in a pleasant tone, "What can
+I do?"</p>
+<p>His mother nodded at him with a smile, refrained from the spoken
+word of approbation which she knew he would hate, and took thought
+as to what he might do that would afflict him least. "You can go
+and sweep off the front porch, and straighten out the cushions and
+chairs, and water the porch-box geraniums."</p>
+<p>He disappeared, whistling loudly, "Massa's in the cold, cold
+ground." Marise hoped automatically that Elly was not in earshot to
+hear this.</p>
+<p>She felt herself tired to the point of exhaustion by the
+necessity always to be divining somebody's inner processes, putting
+herself in somebody's else skin and doing the thing that would
+reach him in the right way. She would like, an instant, just an
+instant, to be in her own skin, she thought, penetrated with a
+sense of the unstable equilibrium of personal relations. To keep
+the peace in a household of young and old highly differentiated
+personalities was a feat of the Blondin variety; the least
+inattention, the least failure in judgment, and opportunities were
+lost forever. Her sense of the impermanence of the harmony between
+them all had grown upon her of late, like an obsession. It seemed
+to her that her face must wear the strained, propitiatory smile she
+had so despised in her youth on the faces of older woman, mothers
+of families. Now she knew from what it came . . . balancing
+perpetually on a tight-rope from which . . .</p>
+<p>Oh, her very soul felt crumpled with all this pressure from the
+outside, never-ending!</p>
+<p>The worst was not the always recurring physical demands, the
+dressing and undressing the children, preparing their food and
+keeping them clean. The crushing part was the moral strain; to
+carry their lives always with you, incalculably different from each
+other and from your own. And not only their present lives, but the
+insoluble question of how their present lives were affecting their
+future. Never for a moment from the time they are born, to be free
+from the thought, "Where are they? What are they doing? Is that the
+best thing for them?" till every individual thought of your own was
+shattered, till your intelligence was atrophied, till your
+sensibilities to finer things were dulled and blunted.</p>
+<p>Paul came back. "About ready for Henry?" he asked. "I've
+finished the porch."</p>
+<p>She put the two tightly closed kettles inside the fireless
+cooker and shut down the lid. "Yes, ready for Henry," she said.</p>
+<p>She washed her hot, moist face in cold water, drank a glass, put
+on a broad-brimmed garden hat, and set out for the field back of
+the barn. The kitchen had been hot, but it seemed cool compared to
+the heat into which they stepped from the door. It startled Marise
+so that she drew back for an instant. It seemed to her like walking
+through molten metal. "Mercy! what heat!" she murmured.</p>
+<p>"Yes, ain't it great?" said Paul, looking off, down the field,
+"just what the corn needs."</p>
+<p>"You should say 'isn't,' not 'ain't,'" corrected his mother.</p>
+<p>"But it'll be cooler soon," said Paul. "There's a big
+thunderstorm coming up. See, around the corner of the mountain. See
+how black it is now, over the Eagle Rocks" He took her hand in his
+bramble-scarred little fingers, and led her along, talking proudly
+of his own virtue. "I've moved Henry's pen today, fresh, so's to
+get him on new grass, and I put it under the shade of this
+butternut tree."</p>
+<p>They were beside the pen now, looking over the fence at the
+grotesque animal, twitching his gross and horribly flexible snout,
+as he peered up at them out of his small, intelligent eyes, sunk in
+fat, and almost hidden by the fleshy, hairy triangles of his
+ear-flaps.</p>
+<p>"Don't you think Henry is a <i>very</i> handsome pig?" asked
+Paul.</p>
+<p>"I think you take very good care of him," she answered. "Now
+what is the matter about the oil you can't put on? Doesn't he like
+it?"</p>
+<p>"He hasn't felt it yet. He won't even let me try. Look!" The
+child climbed over the fence and made a quick grab at the animal,
+which gave an alarmed, startled grunt, wheeled with astonishing
+nimbleness, and darted away in a short-legged gallop.</p>
+<p>"Look there, that's the way he always does!" said Paul in an
+aggrieved tone.</p>
+<p>Marise considered the pig for a moment. He had turned again and
+was once more staring at her, his quivering, fleshy snout in the
+air, a singularly alert expression of attention animating his
+heavy-jowled countenance.</p>
+<p>"Are there any things he specially likes?" she asked Paul.</p>
+<p>"He likes to eat, of course, being a pig," said Paul, "and he
+loves you to scratch his back with a stick."</p>
+<p>"Oh, then it's easy. Come outside the pen. Now listen. You go
+back to the barn and get whatever it is you feed him. Then you put
+that in the trough, and let him begin to eat, quietly. Then take
+your oil and your brush, and moving very slowly so that you don't
+startle him, lean over the fence and begin to brush it on his back
+where he likes to be rubbed. If he likes the feel of it, he'll
+probably stand still. I'll wait here, till you see how it comes
+out."</p>
+<p>She moved away a few paces, and sank down on the grass under the
+tree, as though the heat had flung her there. The grass crisped
+drily under her, as though it too were parched.</p>
+<p>She closed her eyes and felt the sun beating palpably on the
+lids . . . or was it that hot inward pulse still throbbing . . . ?
+Why wouldn't Neale do it for her? Why wouldn't he put out that
+strength of his and crush out this strange agitation of hers,
+<i>forbid</i> it to her? Then there was nothing in her but intense
+discomfort, as though that were a universe of its own. A low,
+distant growl of thunder shook the air with a muffled, muted
+roar.</p>
+<p>After a time, a little voice back of her announced in a low,
+cautious tone, "Mother, it <i>works!</i> Henry loves it!"</p>
+<p>She turned her head and saw the little boy vigorously rubbing
+the ears and flanks of the pig, which stood perfectly still, its
+eyes half shut, rapt in a beatitude of satisfaction.</p>
+<p>Marise turned her head away and slid down lower on the grass, so
+that she lay with her face on her arm. She was shaking from head to
+foot as though with sobs. But she was not crying. She was laughing
+hysterically. "Even for the pig!" she was saying to herself. "A
+symbol of my life!"</p>
+<p>She lay there a long time after this nervous fit of laughter had
+stopped, till she heard Paul saying, "There, I've put it on every
+inch of him." He added with a special intonation, "And now I guess
+maybe I'd better go in swimming."</p>
+<p>At this Marise sat up quickly, with an instant experienced
+divination of what she would see.</p>
+<p>In answer to her appalled look on him, he murmured
+apologetically, "I didn't know I was getting so <i>much</i> on me.
+It sort of spattered."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>It was, of course, as she led the deplorable object towards the
+house that they encountered Eugenia under a green-lined white
+parasol, on the way back from the garden, carrying an armful of
+sweet-peas.</p>
+<p>"I thought I'd fill the vases with fresh flowers before the rain
+came," she murmured, visibly sheering off from Paul.</p>
+<p>"Eugenia ought not to carry sweet-peas," thought Marise. "It
+ought always to be orchids."</p>
+<p>In the bath-room as she and Paul took off his oil-soaked
+clothes, Mark's little voice called to her, "Mother!
+Mo-o-other!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, what is it?" she answered, suspending operations for a
+moment to hear.</p>
+<p>"Mother, if I had to kill all the ants in the world," called
+Mark, "I'd a great deal rather they were all gathered up together
+in a heap than running around every-which-way, wouldn't you?"</p>
+<p>"For goodness' <i>sakes,</i> what a silly baby thing to say!"
+commented Paul with energy.</p>
+<p>Marise called heartily to Mark, "Yes indeed I would, dear."</p>
+<p>Paul asked curiously, "Mother, how can you answer him like that,
+such a <i>fool</i> thing!"</p>
+<p>Marise felt another wave of hysterical laughter mounting, at the
+idea of the difficulty in perceiving the difference in degree of
+flatness between Mark's remarks and those of Paul.</p>
+<p>But it suddenly occurred to her that this was the time for
+Elly's hour at the piano, and she heard no sound. She hastily laid
+out the clean clothes for Paul, saw him started on the scrub in the
+bath-tub, and ran downstairs to see if she could find Elly, before
+the storm broke, turning over in her mind Elly's favorite
+nooks.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The air was as heavy as noxious gas in the breathless pause
+before the arrival of the rain.</p>
+<p>In the darkened, shaded hall stood a man's figure, the face
+turned up towards her, the look on it meant for her, her only, not
+the useful house-mother, but that living core of her own self,
+buried, hidden, put off, choked and starved as she had felt it to
+be, all that morning. That self rose up now, passionately grateful
+to be recognized, and looked back at him.</p>
+<p>Thunder rolled among the distant hills.</p>
+<p>She felt her pulse whirling with an excitement that made her
+lean against the wall, as he took a great stride towards her,
+crying out, "Oh, make an end . . . make an end of this. . . ."</p>
+<p>The door behind him opened, and Elly ran in, red-faced and
+dusty. "Mother, Mother, Reddy has come off her nest. And there are
+twelve hatched out of the fourteen eggs! Mother, they are such
+darlings! I wish you'd come and see. Mother, if I practise
+<i>good</i>, won't you come afterwards and look at them?"</p>
+<p>"You should say 'practise well,' not 'good,'" said Marise, her
+accent openly ironical.</p>
+<p>The wind, precursor of the storm falling suddenly on the valley,
+shook the trees till they roared.</p>
+<p>Over the child's head she exchanged with Vincent Marsh a long
+reckless look, the meaning of which she made no effort to
+understand, the abandon of which she made no effort to
+restrain.</p>
+<p>With a dry, clattering, immediate rattle, without distance or
+dignity, the thunder broke threateningly over the house.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<h3>MASSAGE-CREAM; THEME AND VARIATIONS</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 20.</div>
+<p>The hardest thing for Eugenia about these terribly hard days of
+suspense was to keep her self-control in her own room. Of course
+for her as for any civilized being, it was always possible to keep
+herself in hand with people looking on. But for years she had not
+had to struggle so when alone, for poise and self-mastery. Her room
+at the Crittendens', which had been hers so long, and which Marise
+had let her furnish with her own things, was no longer the haven of
+refuge it had been from the bitter, raw crudity of the Vermont
+life. She tried to fill the empty hours of Neale's daily absences
+from the house with some of the fastidious, delicate occupations of
+which she had so many, but they seemed brittle in her hot hands,
+and broke when she tried to lean on them. A dozen times a day she
+interrupted herself to glance with apprehension at her reflection
+in the mirror, the Florentine mirror with the frame of brown wood
+carved, with the light, restrained touch of a good period, into
+those tasteful slender columns. And every time she looked, she was
+horrified and alarmed to see deep lines of thought, of hope, of
+impatience, of emotion, criss-crossing fatally on her face.</p>
+<p>Then she would sit down before her curving dressing-table,
+gather the folds of her Persian room-dress about her, lift up her
+soul and go through those mental and physical relaxing exercises
+which the wonderful lecturer of last winter had explained. She let
+her head and shoulders and neck droop like a wilted flower-stem,
+while she took into her mind the greater beauty of a wilted flower
+over the crass rigidity of a growing one; she breathed deeply and
+slowly and rhythmically, and summoned to her mind far-off and
+rarely, difficultly, beautiful things; the tranquil resignation of
+Chinese roofs, tempered with the merry human note of their tilted
+corners; Arabian traceries; cunningly wrought, depraved
+wood-carvings in the corners of Gothic cathedrals; the gay and
+amusing pink rotundities of a Boucher ceiling. When she felt her
+face calm and unlined again, she put on a little massage cream, to
+make doubly sure, and rubbed it along where the lines of emotion
+had been.</p>
+<p>But half an hour afterwards, as she lay stretched in the
+chaise-longue by the window, reading Claudel, or Strindberg, or
+R&eacute;my de Gourmont, she would suddenly find that she was not
+thinking of what was on the page, that she saw there only Marise's
+troubled eyes while she and Marsh talked about the inevitable and
+essential indifference of children to their parents and the
+healthiness of this instinct; about the foolishness of the parents'
+notion that they would be formative elements in the children's
+lives; or on the other hand, if the parents did succeed in forcing
+themselves into the children's lives, the danger of sexual
+mother-complexes. Eugenia found that instead of thrilling
+voluptuously, as she knew she ought, to the precious pain and
+bewilderment of one of the thwarted characters of James Joyce, she
+was, with a disconcerting and painful eagerness of her own,
+bringing up to mind the daunted silence Marise kept when they
+mentioned the fact that of course everybody nowadays knew that
+children are much better off in a big, numerous, robust group than
+in the nervous, tight isolation of family life; and that a really
+trained educator could look out for them much better than any
+mother, because he could let them alone as a mother never
+could.</p>
+<p>She found that such evocations of facts poignantly vital to her
+personally, were devastatingly more troubling to her facial calm
+than any most sickening picture in d'Annunzio's portrayal of
+small-town humanity in which she was trying to take the proper,
+shocked interest. Despite all her effort to remain tranquil she
+would guess by the stir of her pulses that probably she had lost
+control of herself again, and going to the mirror would catch her
+face all strained and tense in a breathless suspense.</p>
+<p>But if there was one thing which life had taught her, it was
+persevering patience. She drew from the enameled bonbonni&egrave;re
+one of the curious, hard sweet-meats from Southern China; lifted to
+her face the spicy-sweet spikes of the swamp-orchid in her Venetian
+glass vase; turned her eyes on the reproduction of the Gauguin
+<i>Ja Orana Maria</i>, and began to draw long, rhythmic breaths,
+calling on all her senses to come to her rescue. She let her arms
+and her head and her shoulders go limp again, and fixed her
+attention on rare and beautiful things of beauty . . . abandoning
+herself to the pictures called up by a volume of translated
+Japanese poems she had recently read . . . temples in groves . . .
+bells in the mist . . . rain on willow-trees . . . snow falling
+without wind. . . . How delicate and suggestive those poems were!
+How much finer, more subtle than anything in the Aryan
+languages!</p>
+<p>She came to herself cautiously, glanced at her face in the
+mirror, and reached for the carved ivory pot of massage cream.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She decided then she would sew a little, instead of reading. The
+frill of lace in her net dress needed to be changed . . . such a
+bore having to leave your maid behind. She moved to the small,
+black-lacquered table where her work-box stood and leaned on it for
+a moment, watching the dim reflection of her pointed white fingers
+in the glistening surface of the wood. They did not look like
+Marise's brown, uncared-for hands. She opened the inlaid box and
+took from it the thimble which she had bought in Siena, the little
+antique masterpiece of North Italian gold-work. What a fulfilment
+of oneself it was to make life beautiful by beautifying all its
+implements. What a revelation it might be to Neale, how a woman
+could make everything she touched exquisite, to Neale who had only
+known Marise, subdued helplessly to the roughness of the rough
+things about her, Marise who had capitulated to America and
+surrendered to the ugliness of American life.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>But none of that, none of that! She was near the danger line
+again. She felt the flesh on her face begin to grow tense, and with
+her beautiful, delicate fore-fingers she smoothed her eyebrows into
+relaxed calm again.</p>
+<p>She must keep herself occupied, incessantly; that was the only
+thing possible. She had been about to have recourse to the old, old
+tranquillizer of women, the setting of fine stitches. She would fix
+her mind on that . . . a frill of lace for the net dress . . .
+which lace? She lifted the cover from the long, satin-covered box
+and fingered over the laces in it, forcing herself to feel the
+suitable reaction to their differing physiognomies, to admire the
+robustness of the Carrick-Macross, the boldness of design of the
+Argentan, the complicated fineness of the English Point. She
+decided, as harmonizing best with the temperament of the net dress,
+on Malines, a strip of this perfect, first-Napoleon Malines. What
+an aristocratic lace it was, with its cobwebby <i>fond-de-neige</i>
+background and its fourpetaled flowers in the scrolls. Americans
+were barbarians indeed that Malines was so little known; in fact
+hardly recognized at all. Most Americans would probably take this
+priceless creation in her hand for something bought at a ten-cent
+store, because of its simplicity and classic reticence of design.
+They always wanted, as they would say themselves, something more to
+show for their money. Their only idea of "real lace," as they
+vulgarly called it (as if anything could be lace that wasn't real),
+was that showy, awful Brussels, manufactured for exportation, which
+was sold in those terrible tourists' shops in Belgium, with the
+sprawling patterns made out of coarse braid and appliqu&eacute;d
+on, not an organic part of the life of the design.</p>
+<p>She stopped her work for a moment to look more closely at the
+filmy lace in her hand, to note if the mesh of the r&eacute;seau
+were circular or hexagonal. She fancied that she was the only
+American woman of her acquaintance who knew the difference, who had
+the least culture in the matter of lace . . . except Marise, of
+course, and it was positively worse for Marise to have been
+initiated and then turn back to commonness, than for those other
+well-meaning, Philistine American women who were at least
+innocently ignorant. Having known the exquisite lore of lace, how
+could Marise have let it and all the rest of the lore of
+civilization drop for these coarse occupations of hers, now? How
+could she have let life coarsen her, as it had, how could she have
+fallen into such common ways, with her sun-browned hair, and her
+roughened hands, and her inexactly adjusted dresses, and the fatal
+middle-aged lines beginning to show from the corner of the ear down
+into the neck, and not an effort made to stop them. But as to
+wrinkles, of course a woman as unrestrained as Marise was bound to
+get them early. She had never learned the ABC of woman's wisdom,
+the steady cult of self-care, self-beautifying, self-refining. How
+long would it be before Neale . . .</p>
+<p>No! None of that! She must get back to impersonal thoughts. What
+was it she had selected as subject for consideration? It had been
+lace. What about lace? Lace . . . ? Her mind balked, openly
+rebellious. She could not make it think of lace again. She was in a
+panic, and cast about her for some strong defense . . . oh! just
+the thing . . . the new hat.</p>
+<p>She would try on the new hat which had just come from New York.
+She had been waiting for a leisurely moment, really to be able to
+put her attention on that.</p>
+<p>She opened the gaily printed round pasteboard box, and took out
+the creation. She put it on with care, low over her eyebrows,
+adjusting it carefully by feel, before she looked at herself to get
+the first impression. Then, hand-glass in hand, she began to study
+it seriously from various angles. When she was convinced that from
+every view-point her profile had the unlovely and inharmonious
+silhouette fashionable that summer, she drew a long breath of
+relief, and took it off gently, looking at it with pleasure.
+Nothing gives one such self-confidence, she reflected, as the
+certainty of having the right sort of hat. How much better "chic"
+was than beauty!</p>
+<p>With the hat still in her hand, her very eyes on it, she saw
+there before her, as plainly as though in a crystal ball, Marise's
+attitude as she had stood with Marsh that evening before at the far
+end of the garden. Her body drawn towards his, the poise of her
+head, all of her listening intently while he talked . . . one could
+see how he was dominating her. A man with such a personality as
+his, regularly hypnotic when he chose, and practised in handling
+women, he would be able to do anything he liked with an
+impressionable creature like Marise, who as a girl was always under
+the influence of something or other. It was evident that he could
+put any idea he liked into Marise's head just by looking at her
+hard enough. She had seen him do it . . . helped him do it, for
+that matter!</p>
+<p>And so Neale must have seen. Anybody could! And Neale was not
+raising a hand, nor so much as lifting an eyebrow, just letting
+things take their course.</p>
+<p><i>What could that mean except that he would welcome</i> . .
+.</p>
+<p>Oh Heavens! her pulse was hammering again. She sprang up and ran
+to the mirror. Yes, the mirror showed a face that scared her;
+haggard and pinched with a fierce desire.</p>
+<p>There were not only lines now, there was a hollow in the cheek .
+. . or was that a shadow? It made her look a thousand years old.
+Massage would do that no good! And she had no faith in any of those
+"flesh-foods." Perhaps she was underweight. The hideous strain and
+suspense of the last weeks had told on her. Perhaps she would
+better omit those morning exercises for a time, in this intense
+heat. Perhaps she would better take cream with her oatmeal again.
+Or perhaps cream of wheat would be better than oatmeal. How ghastly
+that made her look! But perhaps it was only a shadow. She could not
+summon courage enough to move and see. Finally she took up her
+hand-mirror, framed in creamy ivory, with a carved jade bead
+hanging from it by a green silk cord. She went to the window to get
+a better light on her face. She examined it, holding her breath;
+and drew a long, long sigh of respite and relief. It <i>had</i>
+been only a shadow!</p>
+<p>But what a fright it had given her! Her heart was quivering yet.
+What unending vigilance it took to protect yourself from deep
+emotions. When it wasn't one, it was another, that sprang on you
+unawares.</p>
+<p>Another one <i>was</i> there, ready to spring also, the suddenly
+conceived possibility, like an idea thrust into her mind from the
+outside, that there might be some active part she could play in
+what was going on in this house. People did sometimes. If some
+chance for this offered . . . you never could tell when . . . a
+word might be . . . perhaps something to turn Marise from Neale
+long enough to . . .</p>
+<p>She cast this idea off with shame for its crudeness. What vulgar
+raw things would come into your head when you let your mind roam
+idly . . . like cheap melodrama . . .</p>
+<p>She would try the Vedanta deep-breathing exercises this time to
+quiet herself; and after them, breathing in and out through one
+nostril, and thinking of the Infinite, as the Yogi had told
+her.</p>
+<p>She lay down flat on the bed for this, kicking off her quilted
+satin <i>mules</i>, and wriggling her toes loose in their lace-like
+silk stockings. She would lie on her back, look up at the ceiling,
+and fix her mind on the movement up and down of her navel in
+breathing, as the Vedanta priest recommended to quiet the spirit.
+Perhaps she could even say,</p>
+<p>"Om . . . om . . . om . . ."</p>
+<p>as they did.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>No, no she couldn't. She still had vestiges of that stupid,
+gross Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness clinging to her. But she would
+outgrow them, yet.</p>
+<p>She lay there quiet and breathed slowly, her eyes fixed on the
+ceiling. And into her mind there slowly slid a cypress-shaded walk
+with Rome far below on one side, and a sun-ripened, golden, old
+wall on the other. She stood there with Marise, both so young, so
+young! And down the path towards them came a tall figure, with a
+bold clear face, a tender full-lipped mouth, and eyes that both
+smiled and were steady.</p>
+<p>Helplessly she watched him come, groaning in spirit at what she
+knew would happen; but she could not escape till the ache in her
+throat swelled and broke, as she saw that his eyes were for Marise
+and his words, and all of his very self for which she . . .</p>
+<p>So many years . . . so many years . . . with so much else in the
+world . . . not to have been able to cure that one ache . . . and
+she did not want to suffer . . . she wanted to be at rest, and have
+what she needed. The tears rose brimming to her eyes, and ran down
+on each side of her face to the pillow. Poor Eugenia! Poor
+Eugenia!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She was almost broken this time, but not entirely. There was
+some fight left in her. She got up from the bed, clenched her hands
+tightly, and stood in the middle of the floor, gathering herself
+together.</p>
+<p>Down with it! Down! Down! Just now, at this time, when such an
+utterly unexpected dawn of a possible escape . . . to give way
+again.</p>
+<p>She thought suddenly, "Suppose I give up the New-Thought way,
+always distracting your attention to something else, always
+suppressing your desire, resisting the pull you want to yield to.
+Suppose I try the Freud way, bringing the desire up boldly, letting
+yourself go, unresisting." It was worth trying.</p>
+<p>She sat down in a chair, her elbows on the dressing-table, and
+let herself go, gorgeously, wholly, epically, as she had been
+longing to ever since she had first intercepted that magnetic
+interchange of looks between Marsh and Marise, the day after her
+arrival, the day of the picnic-supper in that stupid old woman's
+garden. That was when she had first known that something was
+up.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Why, how easy it was to let yourself go! They were right, the
+Freudians, it was the natural thing to do, you did yourself a
+violence when you refused to. It was like sailing off above the
+clouds on familiar wings, although it was the first time she had
+tried them. . . . Marise would fall wholly under Marsh's spell,
+would run away and be divorced. Neale would never raise a hand
+against her doing this. Eugenia saw from his aloof attitude that it
+was nothing to him one way or the other. Any man who cared for his
+wife would fight for her, of course.</p>
+<p>And it was so manifestly the best thing for Marise too, to have
+a very wealthy man looking out for her, that there could be no
+disturbing reflexes of regret or remorse for anybody to disturb the
+perfection of this fore-ordained adjustment to the Infinite. Then
+with the children away at school for all the year, except a week or
+two with their father . . . fine, modern, perfect schools, the kind
+where the children were always out of doors, Florida in winter and
+New England hills in summer. Those schools were horribly expensive
+. . . what was all her money for? . . . but they had the best class
+of wealthy children, carefully selected for their social position,
+and the teachers were so well paid that of course they did their
+jobs better than parents.</p>
+<p>Then Neale, freed from slavery to those insufferable children,
+released from the ignoble, grinding narrowness of this petty
+manufacturing business, free to roam the world as she knew he had
+always longed to do . . . what a life they could have . . . India
+with Neale . . . China . . . Paris . . . they would avoid Rome
+perhaps because of unwelcome memories . . . Norway in summer-time.
+Think of seeing Neale fishing a Norway salmon brook . . . she and
+Neale on a steamer together . . . together . . .</p>
+<p>She caught sight of her face in the mirror . . . that radiant,
+smiling, triumphant, <i>young</i> face, hers!</p>
+<p>Yes, the Freud way was the best.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<h3>THE SOUL OF NELLY POWERS</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 20.</div>
+<p>The big pine was good for one thing, anyhow, if it did keep the
+house as dark as a cellar with the black shade it made. The
+side-porch was nice and cool even on a hot summer day, just right
+for making butter. If it wasn't for the horrid pitch-piny smell the
+tree wouldn't be so bad. The churning was getting along fine too.
+The dasher was beginning to go the blob-blob way that showed in a
+minute or two the butter would be there. It had been a real good
+idea to get up early and get the work out of the way so that the
+churning could be done before it got so hot. A thunder-storm was
+coming, too, probably. You could feel it in the air. There, perhaps
+the butter had come, now. Nelly pushed the dasher down slowly and
+drew it back with care, turning her ear to listen expertly to the
+sound it made. No, not yet, there wasn't that watery splash yet
+that came after it had separated.</p>
+<p>She went on with the regular rhythmic motion, her eyes fixed
+dreamily on the round hole in the cover of the churn, through which
+the dasher-handle went up and down and which was now rimmed with
+thick yellow cream. She loved to churn, Nelly thought. She loved to
+have milk to look out for, anyhow, from the time it came in from
+the barn, warm and foamy and sweet-smelling, till the time when she
+had taken off the thick, sour cream, like shammy-skin, and then
+poured the loppered milk spatteringly into the pigs' trough. She
+liked seeing how the pigs loved it, sucking it up, their eyes half
+shut because it tasted so good. There wasn't anything that was
+better than giving people or animals what they liked to eat. It
+made her feel good all over to throw corn to the hens and see how
+they scrabbled for it. She just loved to get a bag of stick candy
+at the store, when she went to town, and see how Addie and Ralph
+and little 'Gene jumped up and down when they saw it.</p>
+<p>And then it was so nice to be fore-handed and get the churning
+out of the way before noon. She would have time this afternoon
+after the dishes were done, to sit right down with that sprigged
+calico dress for little Addie. She could get the seams all run up
+on the machine before supper-time, and have the hand-work,
+buttonholes and finishing, for pick-up work for odd minutes. She
+just loved to sit and sew, in a room all nice and picked up, and
+know the house-work was done.</p>
+<p>That would be a <i>real</i> pretty dress, she thought, with the
+pink sprigs and the pink feather-stitching in mercerized cotton she
+was going to put on it. Addie would look sweet in it. And if it was
+washed careful and dried in the shade it wouldn't fade so much. It
+was a good bright pink to start with. Only Addie ought to have a
+new hat to wear with it. A white straw with pink flowers on it. But
+that would cost a couple of dollars, anyhow, everything was so dear
+now. Oh well, 'Gene would let her buy it. 'Gene would let her do
+most anything.</p>
+<p>She thought with pity of her sisters, mill-hands in West Adams
+still, or married to mill-hands, men who got drunk on the sly and
+didn't work regular, and wanted a full half of all they made for
+themselves. 'Gene and his mother were always scolding about the
+money they could have had if they'd kept that wood-land on the
+mountain. They'd ought to ha' been really poor the way she had
+been, so's you didn't know where the next meal was coming from, or
+how the rent was going to be paid. She had been awfully lucky to
+get 'Gene, who let her decide how much money ought to be spent on
+the children's clothes and hers, and never said a thing, or scolded
+or bothered. He was kind of <i>funny</i>, 'Gene was, always so
+sober and solemn, and it was a <i>sort</i> of bother to have him so
+crazy about her still. That had been all right when they were
+engaged, and first married. She had liked it all right then,
+although it always seemed sort of foolish to her. But men
+<i>were</i> that way! Only now, when there were three children and
+another one coming, and the house to be kept nice, and the work
+done up right, and the farmwork and everything going so good, and
+so much on her mind, why, it seemed as though they'd ought to have
+other things to think about beside kissings and huggings. Not that
+'Gene didn't do his share of the work. He was a fine farmer, as
+good as anybody in the valley. But he never could settle down, and
+be comfortable and quiet with her, like it was natural for old
+married folks to do. If she went by him, close, so her arm touched
+him, why then, if nobody was there he'd grab at her and kiss her
+and rumple her hair, and set her all back in her work. With all she
+had to do and think of, and she did her work as good as anybody if
+she did say it who shouldn't, she had her day planned before she
+turned her feet out of bed in the morning. And she liked to have
+things go the way she planned them. She <i>liked</i> 'Gene all
+right, only she had her work to get done.</p>
+<p>She churned meditatively, looking off towards the mountain where
+the Eagle Rocks heaved themselves up stiff and straight and high.
+'Gene's mother came to the door, asked if the butter was coming all
+right, looked at her, and said, "My! Nelly, you get better looking
+every day you live," and went back to her bread-baking.</p>
+<p>Nelly went on with her reflections about 'Gene. It was more than
+just that he bothered her and put her back with her work. She
+really didn't think it was just exactly nice and refined to be so
+crazy about anybody as that. Well, there was a streak in the
+Powerses that wasn't refined. 'Gene's mother! gracious! When she
+got going, laughing and carrying-on, what wouldn't she say, right
+out before anybody! And dancing still like a young girl! And that
+hateful old Mrs. Hewitt, just after they'd moved back to Ashley,
+didn't she have to go and tell her about 'Gene's being born too
+soon after his father and mother were married? 'Gene took it from
+his mother she supposed; he wa'an't to blame, really. But she hoped
+Addie and Ralph would be <i>like</i> her folks. Not but what the
+Powerses were good-hearted enough. 'Gene was a good man, if he was
+queer, and an awful good papa to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene.
+None of her sisters had got a man half so good. That sprigged dress
+would look good with feather-stitching around the hem, too. Why
+hadn't she thought of that before? She hadn't got enough mercerized
+thread in the house, she didn't believe, to do it all; and it was
+such a nuisance to run out of the thread you had to have, and
+nobody going to the village for goodness knows when, with the
+farmwork behind the way it was, on account of the rains.</p>
+<p>She shifted her position and happened to bring one of her feet
+into view. Without disturbing a single beat of the regular rhythm
+of the dasher, she tilted her head to look at it with approbation.
+If there was one thing she was particular about it was her shoes.
+She took such comfort in having them nice. They could say what they
+pleased, folks could, but high heels <i>suited</i> her feet. Maybe
+some folks, that had great broad feet like that old Indian
+Toucl&eacute;, felt better in those awful, sloppy old gunboats they
+called "Common-sense shoes," but <i>she</i> didn't! It would make
+her sick to wear them! How they did look! Was there anything so
+pretty, anyhow, as a fine-leather shoe with a nice pointed toe, and
+a pretty, curved-in heel? It made you feel refined, and as good as
+anybody, even if you had on a calico dress with it. That was
+another nice thing about 'Gene, how he'd stand up for her about
+wearing the kind of shoes she wanted. Let anybody start to pick on
+her about it, if 'twas his own mother, he'd shut 'em up short, and
+say Nelly could wear what she liked he guessed. Even when the
+doctor had said so strict that she hadn't ought to wear them in the
+time before the babies came, 'Gene never said a word, when he saw
+her doing it.</p>
+<p>There, the butter was just almost there. She could hear the
+buttermilk begin to swash! She turned her head to call to her
+mother-in-law to bring a pitcher for the buttermilk, when a sound
+of galloping hoofs echoed from the road. Nelly frowned, released
+her hold on the dasher, listened an instant, and ran into the
+house. She went right upstairs to her room as provoked as she could
+be. Well, she would make the bed and do the room-work anyhow, so's
+not to waste <i>all</i> that time. She'd be that much ahead,
+anyhow. And as soon as Frank had finished chinning with Mother
+Powers, and had gone, she'd go back and finish her churning. She
+felt mad all through at the thought of that cream left at just the
+wrong minute, just as it was separating. Suppose Frank hung round
+and <i>hung</i> around, the way he did often, and the sun got
+higher and the cream got too warm, and she'd have to put in ice,
+and go down cellar with it, and fuss over it all the rest of the
+day? She was furious and thumped the pillows hard, with her
+doubled-up fist. But if she went down, Frank'd hang around worse,
+and talk so foolish she'd want to slap him. He wa'n't more'n
+half-witted, sometimes, she thought. What was the <i>matter</i>
+with men, anyhow? They didn't seem to have as much sense as so many
+calves! You'd think Frank would think up something better to do
+than to bother the life out of busy folks, sprawling around all
+over creation the way he did. But she never had any luck! Before
+Frank it had been that old Mrs. Hewitt, nosing around to see what
+she could pick fault with in a person's housekeeping, looking under
+the sink if you left her alone in the kitchen for a minute, and
+opening your dresser drawers right before your face and eyes. Well,
+Frank was getting to be most as much of a nuisance. He didn't peek
+and snoop the way Mrs. Hewitt did, but he <i>bothered</i>; and he
+was getting so impudent, too! He had the big-head because he was
+the best dancer in the valley, that was what was the matter with
+him, and he knew she liked to dance with him. Well, she did. But
+she would like to dance with anybody who danced good. If 'Gene
+didn't clump so with his feet, she'd love to dance with him. And
+Frank needn't think he was so much either. That city man who was
+staying with the old man next to the Crittendens was just as good a
+dancer as Frank, just exactly as light on his feet. She didn't like
+him a bit. She thought he was just plain fresh, the way he told
+Frank to go on dancing with her. What was it to him! But she'd
+dance with him just the same, if she got the chance. How she just
+loved to dance! Something seemed to get into her, when the music
+struck up. She hardly knew what she was doing, felt as though she
+was floating around on that thick, soft moss you walked on when you
+went blue-berrying on the Burning above the Eagle Rocks . . . all
+springly. . . . If you could only dance by yourself, without having
+to bother with partners, that was what would be nice.</p>
+<p>She stepped to the door to listen, and heard 'Gene's mother
+cackling away like an old hen. How she would carry on, with anybody
+that came along! She hadn't never settled down, not a bit really,
+for all she had been married and was a widow and was old. It wa'n't
+nice to be so lively as that, at her age. But she <i>wasn't</i>
+nice, Mother Powers wasn't, for all she was good to Addie and Ralph
+and little 'Gene. Nelly liked nice people, she thought, as she went
+back to shake the rag rugs out of the window; refined ladies like
+Mrs. Bayweather, the minister's wife. That was the way <i>she</i>
+wanted to be, and have little Addie grow up. She lingered at the
+window a moment looking up at the thick dark branches of the big
+pine. How horrid it was to have that great tree so close to the
+house! It shaded the bedroom so that there was a musty smell no
+matter how much it was aired. And the needles dropped down so messy
+too, and spoiled the grass.</p>
+<p>Frank's voice came up the stairs, bold, laughing, "Nelly, Nelly,
+come down here a minute. I want to ask you something!"</p>
+<p>"I can't," she called back. Didn't he have the nerve!</p>
+<p>"Why can't you?" the skeptical question came from halfway up the
+stairs. "I saw you on the side-porch, just as I came up."</p>
+<p>Nelly cast about for an excuse. Of course you had to have some
+<i>reason</i> for saying you couldn't see a neighbor who came in.
+She had an inspiration. "I'm washing my hair," she called back,
+taking out the hair-pins hastily, as she spoke. The great coils
+came tumbling down on her shoulders. She soused them in the water
+pitcher, and went to the door, opening it a crack, tipping her head
+forward so that the water streamed on the floor. "Can't you ask
+Mother Powers for whatever it is?" she said impatiently. She wished
+as she spoke that she could ever speak right out sharp and scratchy
+the way other people did. She was too easy, that was the
+trouble.</p>
+<p>"Well," said Frank, astonished, "you be, for a fact."</p>
+<p>He went back down the stairs, and Nelly shut the door. She was
+hot all over with impatience about that butter. When it wasn't one
+thing to keep her from her work, it was another. Her hair all wet
+now. And such a job to dry it!</p>
+<p>She heard voices in the kitchen, and the screen-door open. Thank
+goodness, Frank was going away! Oh my! Maybe he was going to the
+village! He could bring some of the pink mercerized cotton on his
+way back. He might as well be of <i>some</i> use in the world. She
+thrust her head out of the window. "Frank, Frank, wait a minute!"
+she called. She ran back to her work-basket, cut a length from a
+spool of thread, wound it around a bit of paper, and went again to
+the window. "Say, Frank, get me two spools of cotton to match that,
+will you, at Warner and Hardy's."</p>
+<p>He rode his horse past the big pine, under her window, and stood
+up in the stirrups, looking up boldly at her, her hair in thick wet
+curls about her face. "I'd do anything for you!" he said jokingly,
+catching at the paper she threw down to him.</p>
+<p>She slammed the window down hard. How provoking he was! But
+anyhow she would have enough thread to feather-stitch that hem.
+She'd got that much out of him. The thought made up to her for some
+of the annoyance of the morning. She put a towel around her
+shoulders under her wet hair, and waited till he was actually out
+of sight around the bend of the road. It seemed to her that she saw
+something stir in the long grass in the meadow there. Could the
+woodchucks be getting so close to the house as that? She'd have to
+tie Towser up by her lettuce, nights, if they were.</p>
+<p>Gracious, there it was thundering, off behind the Rocks! She'd
+have to hustle, if she got the butter done before the storm came.
+When Frank had really disappeared, she ran downstairs, and rushed
+out to her churn. She felt of it anxiously, her face clearing to
+note that it seemed no warmer than when she had left it. Maybe it
+was all right still. She began to plunge the dasher up and down.
+Well, it had gone back some, she could tell by the feel, but not so
+much, she guessed, but what she could make it come all right.</p>
+<p>As she churned, she thought again of Frank Warner. This was the
+limit! He got so on her nerves, she declared to herself she didn't
+care if he <i>never</i> danced with her again. She wished she had
+more spunk, like some girls, and could just send him packing. But
+she never could think of any sharp things to say to folks, in time.
+She was too easy, she knew that, always had been. Look how long she
+had put up with Mrs. Hewitt's snooping around. And then in the end
+she had got cold feet and had had to sick 'Gene on to her, to tell
+her they didn't want her sitting around all the time and sponging
+off them at meal-times.</p>
+<p>But somehow she didn't want to ask 'Gene to speak to Frank that
+way. She was afraid somehow it would get 'Gene excited. Mostly he
+was so still, and then all of a sudden he'd flare up and she never
+could see a thing to make him then more than any time. The best
+thing to do with Gene was to keep him quiet, just as much as she
+could, not do anything to get him started. That was why she never
+went close up to him or put her arms around his neck of her own
+accord. She'd <i>like</i> to pet him and make over him, the way she
+did over the children, but it always seemed to get him so stirred
+up and everything. Men were funny, anyhow! She often had thought
+how nice it would be if 'Gene could only be another woman. They
+could have such good times together.</p>
+<p>Why, here was 'Gene himself come in from cultivating corn right
+in the middle of the morning. Maybe he wanted a drink. He came up
+on the porch, without looking at her and went into the house. How
+heavy he walked. But then he always did. That was the trouble with
+his dancing. You had to step light, to be a good dancer.</p>
+<p>There was a crack of thunder again, nearer than the first one.
+She heard him ask his mother, "Frank Warner been here?"</p>
+<p>And Mother Powers say, "Yes, he come in to ask if we could loan
+him our compass. He's going to go up tomorrow in the Eagle Rock
+woods to run out the line between the Warner and the Benson
+woodlots. The Warners have sold the popple on theirs to the
+Crittenden mill, and Frank says the blazes are all barked over,
+they're so old."</p>
+<p>Oh goody! thought Nelly, there the butter was, come all at once.
+The buttermilk was splashing like water. Yes, even there around the
+hole you could see the little yellow specks. Well, she needn't have
+got so provoked, after all. That was fine. Now she could get at
+that sprigged dress for Addie, after all, this afternoon.</p>
+<p>'Gene came out on the porch again. She looked at him and smiled.
+She felt very happy and relieved that the butter had come so that
+she could finish working it over before noon.</p>
+<p>'Gene glowered at her smiling face and at her hair curling and
+shining all down her back. How cross he looked! Oh bother! Excited
+too. Well, what could the matter be, <i>now</i>? She should think
+any man would be satisfied to come in, right in the middle of the
+morning like that, without any warning, and find his house as spick
+and span as a pin, and the butter churned and half the day's work
+out of the way. She'd like to know what more he wanted? Who else
+could do any better? Oh bother! How queer men were!</p>
+<p>Yes, it would really be lots nicer if there were only women and
+children in the world. Gracious! how that lightning made her jump!
+The storm had got there quicker'n she'd thought. But the butter had
+come, so it was all right.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III</h2>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER
+XVIII</h2>
+<h3>BEFORE THE DAWN</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 21.</div>
+<p>Neale had lain so long with his eyes on the place where the
+window ought to be, that finally he was half persuaded he could see
+it, a faintly paler square against the black of the room. Very soon
+dawn would come in that window, and another day would begin.</p>
+<p>At the thought the muscles of his forearms contracted, drawing
+his fingers into rigidly clenched fists, and for a moment he did
+not breathe.</p>
+<p>Then he conquered it again; threw off the worst of the pain that
+had sprung upon him when he had wakened suddenly, hours before,
+with the fear at last there before him, visible in the
+darkness.</p>
+<p>What was this like? Where before had he endured this eternity of
+waiting? Yes, it was in France, the night when they waited for the
+attack to break, every man haggard with the tension, from dark till
+just before dawn.</p>
+<p>He lay still, feeling Marise's breathing faintly stirring the
+bed.</p>
+<p>There in France it had been a strain almost beyond human power
+to keep from rushing out of the trenches with bayonets fixed, to
+meet the threatened danger, to beat it back, to conquer it, or to
+die and escape the suspense. Now there was the same strain. He had
+the weapons in his hands, weapons of passion, and indignation and
+entreaty and reproach, against which Marise would not stand for a
+moment.</p>
+<p>But there in France that would have meant possibly an
+insignificant local success and the greater victory all along the
+line imperiled. And here that was true again. There hadn't been
+anything to do then but wait. There was nothing to do now but
+wait.</p>
+<p>Yes, but it was harder to wait now! There in France they had at
+least known that finally the suspense would end in the fury of
+combat. They would have the chance to resist, to conquer, to impose
+their will. And now there was no active part for him. He must wait
+on, and hold back his hand from the attack which would give him the
+appearance of victory, and which would mean everlasting defeat for
+him, for Marise, the death and ruin of what they had tried to be
+for each other, to build up out of their life together.</p>
+<p>What did he mean by that? Wasn't he fooling himself with words,
+with priggish phrases? It was so easy to do that. And he was so
+mortally fatigued with this struggle in the dark. He had been
+thinking about it so deeply, so desperately, ever since he had
+faced it there, squarely, those endless black hours ago. He might
+have lost his way.</p>
+<p>Now, once more, slowly, step by step, once more over the
+terrible road that led him here. Perhaps there was another way he
+had overlooked. Perhaps this time it would lead him to something
+less intolerable. Quiet now, steady, all that he had of courage and
+honesty and knowledge of Marise, and of life, and of himself, put
+to work.</p>
+<p>His brain began again to plod up the treadmill it had labored on
+for so many black hours. He set himself to get it clear in his own
+mind, forcing those fierce, burning thoughts of his into words, as
+if he had been speaking aloud. "Now, now here I am. What must I do?
+What ought I to do? There must be some answer if I can only think
+clearly, feel aright. <i>What is it that I want?</i>"</p>
+<p>The answer burst from him, as though in a cry of torture from
+his brain, his body, his passion, his soul, "<i>I want
+Marise!</i>"</p>
+<p>And at this expression of overmastering desire, memory flooded
+his mind with a stream of unforgotten pictures of their life
+together; Marise facing him at the breakfast table; Marise walking
+with him in the autumn woods; Marise with Paul a baby in her arms;
+Marise, almost unknown then, the flame-like divinity of her soul
+only guessed-at, looking into his eyes as the Campagna faded into
+darkness below them. "What was it she asked me then? Whether I knew
+the way across the dark plain? I was a confident young fool then. I
+was sure I could find the way, <i>with her</i>. I've been thinking
+all these years that we were finding it, step by step . . . till
+now. And now, what is it I am afraid of? I'm afraid she finds
+herself cramped, wants a fuller existence, regrets . . . no, that's
+dodging. There's no use lying to myself. I'm afraid that Marise is
+in love with Vincent Marsh. Good God! no! It can't be that . . .
+not Marise! This is all nonsense. This is something left over from
+sleep and a bad dream. I must wake up. I must wake up and find it
+not true."</p>
+<p>He lay perfectly still, his fists clenched tight, perspiration
+standing out on his rigid body. Then sternly he forced his mind to
+go forward again, step by step.</p>
+<p>"I suppose it's possible. Other women have. There's a lot in her
+that must be starved here. I may not be enough for her. She was so
+young then. She has grown so greatly. What right have I to try to
+hold her if she is tired of it all, needs something else?"</p>
+<p>He hesitated, shrinking back as from fire, from the answer he
+knew he must give. At last he forced it out, "I haven't any right.
+I don't want her to stay if she wants to go. I want Marise. But
+even more I want her to be happy."</p>
+<p>The thought, with all its implications, terrified him like a
+death-sentence, but he repeated it grimly, pressing it home
+fiercely, "I want her to be happy."</p>
+<p>He realized where this thought would lead him, and in a panic
+wildly fought against going on. He had tried to hold himself
+resolute and steady, but he was nothing now save a flame of
+resentment. "Happy! She won't be happy that way! She can't love
+that man! She's being carried away by that damnable sensibility of
+hers. It would be the most hideous, insane mistake. What am I
+thinking of . . . all these <i>words</i>! What I must do is to keep
+her from ruining her life."</p>
+<p>On the heels of this outcry, there glided in insinuatingly a
+soft-spoken crowd of tempting, seductive possibilities. Marise was
+so sensitive, so impressionable, so easily moved, so defenseless
+when her emotions were aroused. Hadn't he the right, the duty, he
+who knew her better than anyone else, to protect her against
+herself? Wasn't he deceiving himself by fantastic notions? It would
+be so easy to act the ardent, passionate young lover again . . .
+but when had he ever "acted" anything for Marise! No matter, no
+matter, this was life or death; what was a lie when life and death
+hung in the balance? He could play on her devotion to the children,
+throw all the weight of his personality, work on her emotions. That
+was what people did to gain their point. Everybody did it. And he
+could win if he did. He could hold her.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Like the solemn tolling of a great bell there rang, through all
+this hurried, despairing clutching at the endurable and lesser, a
+call to the great and intolerable. The immensity of his love for
+Marise loomed up, far greater than he; and before that sacred thing
+he hung his head, and felt his heart breaking.</p>
+<p>"No, that won't do. Not when it is Marise who is in question.
+The best, the very best I can conceive is what I must give to
+Marise. A cage could not hold her, not anything but her body, and
+to force her decision would be to make a cage. No, I mustn't use
+the children either. They are hers as much as mine. If all is not
+right between us, what would it avail them to be with us? They must
+take what life brings them, like the rest of us. If the years
+Marise and I have passed together, if what we have been to each
+other, and are to each other, if that is not enough, then nothing
+is enough. That would be a trick to play on her . . . to use my
+knowledge of her vulnerable points to win. That is not what I want.
+What <i>do</i> I want? I want Marise to be happy."</p>
+<p>He had advanced a step since the last time he had told himself
+this, for now he said it with a dreadful calm, his heart aching but
+not faltering.</p>
+<p>But he could go no further. There were limits to what he could
+endure. He fell into a trance-like state of passivity, his body and
+mind exhausted.</p>
+<p>As he lay thus, fallen and prostrate, there soared up out of a
+part of him that was neither mind nor body, but was nevertheless
+himself, something swift and beautiful and living, something great
+enough at last to measure its greatness with the immensity of his
+love for Marise.</p>
+<p>What was it?</p>
+<p>It was this . . . for a moment he had it all clear, as though he
+had died and it were something told him in another world . . . he
+did not want Marise for himself; he did not even want her to be
+happy; he wanted her to be herself, to be all that Marise could
+ever grow to be, he wanted her to attain her full stature so far as
+any human being could do this in this life.</p>
+<p>And to do that she must be free.</p>
+<p>For an instant he looked full at this, his heart flooded with
+glory. And then the light went out.</p>
+<p>He was there in the blackness again, unhappy beyond any
+suffering he had thought he could bear.</p>
+<p>He lay still, feeling Marise beside him, the slow, quiet rhythm
+of her breathing. Was she awake or sleeping? What would happen if
+he should allow the fear and suffering which racked him to become
+articulate? If he should cry out to her, she would not turn away.
+He knew Marise. She would never turn away from fear and suffering.
+"But I can't do that. I won't work on her sympathy. I've promised
+to be true to what's deepest and truest in us both. I have been, by
+God! and I will be. If our married life has been worth anything,
+it's because we've both been free and honest . . . true with one
+another. This is her ordeal. She must act for herself. Better die
+than use my strength to force her against her own nature. If I
+decide . . . no matter how sure I am I'm right . . . it won't be
+her decision. Nothing would be decided. I must go on just as before
+. . ." he groaned, "that will take all the strength I have."</p>
+<p>It was clear to him now; the only endurable future for them,
+such as they were to each other, would come from Marise's acting
+with her own strength on her own decision. By all that was sacred,
+he would never by word or act hamper that decision. He would be
+himself, honestly. Marise ought to know what that self was.</p>
+<p>He had thought that this resolve would bring to him another of
+these terrible racking instants of anguish, but instead there came
+almost a calm upon him, as though the pain had passed and left him
+in peace, or as though a quiet light had shone out in the darkness.
+Perhaps the dawn had come. No, the square of the window was still
+only faintly felt in the blacker mass of the silent room.</p>
+<p>Then he knew why the pain had left him. It had been driven away
+by the certainty that there was a worse fear than any he knew, or
+ever would know. No matter what risk or catastrophe lay before
+them, Marise would never look at him out her clear eyes and act a
+thing that was not true. Marise would always be Marise. Why then,
+whatever came he could bear it.</p>
+<p>Life might be cruel and pitiless, but it was not base, when it
+had among its gifts such a certainty as that, rock-like under his
+feet, bearing him up in his pain.</p>
+<p>He moved to her in the bed, felt for her hand and put it gently
+to his lips.</p>
+<p>Then, holding it in his, on his breast, he turned his eyes
+towards the window, waiting for the dawn.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<h3>MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 2.</div>
+<p>That early morning talk with Mr. Welles had left Marise
+trembling with helpless sorrow and exasperation. She sat on the
+bench where he had left her, and felt the nervous tears stinging
+her eyes. When she looked up and saw Vincent Marsh was standing
+there, extremely pale, as visibly shaken as she, as visibly little
+in control of himself, she burst out, "So you too know. He has just
+told me that he is really going. The very date is set. His cousin
+has a room in her boarding house engaged for him. He's going to
+work as a clerk to pay for the extra expenses of the life there.
+<i>Oh!</i>" She struck her hand on the back of the bench.</p>
+<p>Vincent Marsh sat down beside her, his eyes on hers. He said in
+a curious, low voice, rough and husky, "I wish you would do
+something for me. I wish you would think with all your might,
+deeply, just why you are so opposed to his doing what evidently
+seems to him a very saintly and heroic action; and then tell me why
+it is."</p>
+<p>Marise felt this as a challenge. He was always challenging
+everything. This time she was more than ready. "I don't need any
+time to think of reasons!" she cried. "It's obvious to anyone with
+any sense for the reality of human values, who isn't fooled by
+threadbare old words. It's one of those wasteful, futile,
+exasperating tricks people play on themselves in the name of
+'duty.' He's throwing away something real and true, something that
+could add to the richness of human life, he's throwing away the
+happiness that comes of living as suits his nature, and so creating
+a harmony that enriches everybody who touches him. And what's he
+doing it for? To satisfy a morbid need for self-sacrifice. He's
+going to do harm, in all probability, mix up a situation already
+complicated beyond solution, and why is he? So that he can indulge
+himself in the perverse pleasure of the rasp of a hair-shirt. He
+doesn't really use his intelligence to think, to keep a true sense
+of proportions; he takes an outworn and false old ideal of
+self-sacrifice, and uses it not to do anybody any real good, but to
+put a martyr's crown on his head."</p>
+<p>She became conscious that her words were having a singular
+effect upon Vincent. A dark flush had come over all his face. His
+gaze on her was extraordinary in its intentness, in its eagerness,
+in its fierceness. She stopped suddenly, as though he had broken in
+on what she was saying.</p>
+<p>He did not stir from his place, but to her he seemed to tower
+taller. Into his dark, intent face came an exultant look of power
+and authority which fell on her like a hot wind. With a loud
+knocking of her heart she knew. Before he spoke, she knew what he
+would say. And he saw that.</p>
+<p>He opened those burning lips and said in the same low voice,
+rough with its intensity, "You see what you have done. You have
+spoken for me. You have said at last what I have been silently and
+desperately calling out to you. You know what has happened. You
+have said it, it is obvious to anyone with any sense of human
+values. Make an end! Make an end! Come away from a position where
+only an outworn old ideal holds you to futility and waste. Come
+away where you will really live and know the fullness of life. Come
+away from that false notion of duty which makes you do for the
+children what you know is not best for them, only because it is the
+traditional thing to do, only because it gives you a martyr's crown
+to wear. I don't say anything now, as I would to any other woman in
+the world, as I would have said to you weeks ago before I knew all
+that you are . . . I don't say anything about the imbecility of
+keeping such a woman as you are here in this narrow, drab hole,
+this sordid prison . . . you born, if ever a human being was, to
+rich and warm and harmonious living! It is your birthright. Let me
+give it to you. All that, even that, a whole world of beauty and
+fullness waiting for you to create it to glorious being, all that
+is nothing compared to what has come to pass between us, you and
+me; compared to that other world of impassioned living existence
+that is waiting for you. Come away from the man who is nothing more
+to you than the house you live in . . . nothing but a habit."</p>
+<p>She started at this, moving out of the stony immobility in which
+she gazed at him, listened to him. She did not know that she had
+moved, was incapable of willing to do so. It had been a mere reflex
+start as though she had been struck. But at the sight of it, the
+flame in his eyes leaped up. "No, no, no!" he cried with an
+insistent triumph, "he is nothing more to you than a habit. And you
+are nothing more to him. You were right, on that evening when you
+shrank away from the sight of the place in Italy where in your
+ignorant youth you made the mistake of trying to join your life to
+his. There is not a breath you draw, not a turn of your head or
+body . . . I know them all . . . that does not prove that he is
+nothing to you now. I have seen you take a handkerchief from his
+pocket as you would take it from a bureau-drawer. I have seen him
+set you on one side, to pass through a door, as he would set a
+chair on one side. You don't even see him any more when you look at
+him, and he doesn't see you. Whatever there may have been between
+you, if there was ever anything real, it is dead now, dead and
+buried . . . and you the most living woman who ever wore flesh and
+blood! And I am a living man! You know, I don't need to say it, you
+know what happens when our looks meet. Our looks only! Life flares
+up like a torch in both of us. You know if I but brush against your
+skirt, how I cannot speak! You know how when our hands touch, every
+drop of blood in our two bodies burns! You are a grown woman. You
+know life as well as I do. You know what this means. You are no
+longer even a part of his life. You are all of mine. Look at me
+now."</p>
+<p>He flung out his hands, shaking uncontrollably. "Do you see how
+I show this, say this anywhere, tell this to you here, now, where
+anyone could hear me? I am not ashamed of it. It is not a thing to
+hide. It is a thing to glory in. It is the only honestly living
+thing in all our miserable human life, the passion of a man and a
+woman for each other. It is the only thing that moves us out of our
+cowardly lethargy of dead-and-alive egotism. The thing that is
+really base and false is to pretend that what is dead is still
+alive. Your marriage is dead. Your children do not need you as you
+pretend. Let yourself go in this flood that is sweeping us along. I
+had never thought to know it. I could fall down and worship you
+because you have shown it to me. But I will show it to you, that
+and the significance of what you will be when you are no longer
+smothered and starved. In all this scrawling ant-heap of humanity,
+there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live. And
+we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing,
+to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny.
+But we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the
+only truth. That . . . and you and I!"</p>
+<p>In the distance, someone called Marise's name. He thought she
+made a move, and said, leaning towards her, the heat of his body
+burning through to her arm where he touched her, "No, no, none of
+those trivial, foolish interruptions that tie you hand and foot,
+can tie us any longer. They have no real strength. They can't stand
+for an instant against something alive. All that rattles in your
+ears, that keeps you from knowing what you really are . . ."</p>
+<p>Someone was hurrying down the walk towards them, hidden by the
+hedge. Marise could not have turned her head if her life had hung
+on the action.</p>
+<p>Vincent looked straight at her, straight and deep and strong
+into her eyes, and for an instant his burning lips were pressed on
+hers. The contact was terrible, momentous.</p>
+<p>When he went on speaking, without haste, unafraid although the
+hurrying steps were almost there, she could scarcely hear his
+voice, although it was urgent and puissant as the impact of his
+eyes. "You can't get away from this now. It is here. It has been
+said. It lives between us, and you are not strong enough, no power
+on earth is strong enough, to put it down."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>And then the outer world broke in on them, swept between them
+with an outcry. Someone was there, someone who drew short sobbing
+breaths, who caught at her and clung to her. It was Cousin Hetty's
+old Agnes . . . why in the world was she here? . . . and she was
+saying in a loud voice as though she had no control of it, "Oh, oh!
+Come quick! Come quick!"</p>
+<p>Marise stood up, carrying the old woman with her. She was
+entirely certain now that she was in a nightmare, from which she
+would presently awake, wet with cold sweat.</p>
+<p>"Come! Come!" cried the old woman, beating her hands on Marise's
+arm. "Perhaps it ain't too late. Perhaps you can do something."</p>
+<p>"What has happened?" asked Marise, making her voice sharp and
+imperative to pierce the other's agitation.</p>
+<p>"I don't know. I don't know," sobbed Agnes. "She didn't come
+down for breakfast. I went up to see . . . oh, go quick! Go
+quick!"</p>
+<p>She went down, half on the bench, half on the ground.</p>
+<p>Marise and Marsh stood for an instant, petrified.</p>
+<p>There was only the smallest part of Marise's consciousness which
+was alive to this. Most of it lay numbed and bewildered, still
+hearing, like a roll of thunder, the voice of Vincent Marsh.</p>
+<p>Then she turned. "Look out for her, will you," she said briefly.
+"No, don't come with me. I'll go by the back road. It's the
+quickest, but it's too narrow for a car. You drive to Ashley and
+bring the doctor in your car."</p>
+<p>She ran down the path and around the house to the road, not
+feeling the blinding heat of the sun. She ran along the dusty road,
+a few steps from the house before the turn into the narrow lane.
+She felt nothing at all but a great need for haste.</p>
+<p>As she ran, putting all her strength into her running, there
+were moments when she forgot why she was hurrying, where she was
+going, what had happened; but she did not slacken her pace. She was
+on the narrow back road now, in the dense shade of the pines below
+the Eagle Rocks. In five minutes she would be at Cousin Hetty's.
+That was where she was going.</p>
+<p>She was running more slowly now over the rough, uneven, stony
+road, and she was aware, more than of anything else, of a pain in
+her chest where she could not draw a long breath. It seemed to her
+that she must be now wholly in the bad dream, for she had the
+nightmare sensation of running with all her strength and not
+advancing at all. The somber, thick-set pines seemed to be
+implacably in the same place, no matter how she tried to pass them,
+to leave them behind, to hurry on. Everything else in the silent,
+breathless, midsummer forest was rooted immovably deep in the
+earth. She alone was killing herself with haste, and yet futilely .
+. . not able to get forward, not able to . . .</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>And then, fit to turn her brain, the forest drew aside and
+showed her another nightmare figure, a man, far away to her right,
+running down the steep incline that sloped up to the Rocks. A man
+running as she had been wishing she could run, a powerful, roughly
+dressed man, rapt in a passion of headlong flight, that cast him
+down the rough slope, over the rocks, through the brambles, as
+though his flight were part of an endless fall.</p>
+<p>Marise stopped stock-still, shocked out of every sensation but
+the age-old woman's instinct of fear and concealment.</p>
+<p>The man plunged forward, not seeing her where she stood on the
+road across which he now burst, flinging himself out of the pines
+on one side and into the thicket of undergrowth on the other.</p>
+<p>Far from him as she was, Marise could hear, through the forest
+hush, the terrible sound of his breathing as he ran, as he
+stumbled, as he struggled to his feet, fighting crazily with the
+thick undergrowth. Those loud hoarse gasps . . . it was as though
+he were being choked to death by a hand on his throat.</p>
+<p>He was gone, down the slope towards the valley road. The leaves
+closed together behind him. The forest was impenetrably silent
+again. Marise knew who he was, then, recognized him for 'Gene
+Powers beyond any doubt.</p>
+<p>She felt a strange mixture of pity and scorn and envy. To be so
+primitive as that . . . to think, even for an instant's madness,
+that you could run away on your own two poor human feet from
+whatever life brought to you!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She herself was hurrying forward again. What was she going to?
+What had she left behind? The passage of the other runner had not
+taken a single moment's time. She was now at the path which led to
+Cousin Hetty's side-door.</p>
+<p>She darted along this, and found herself in the yard before the
+door, open as Agnes had left it when she rushed out for help.</p>
+<p>A tea-kettle on the kitchen-stove sang in a low murmur. The
+clock ticked loudly, wagging its pendulum back and forth. The cat,
+stretched at full length on the floor in a yellow square of
+sunlight, lifted a drowsy head and looked at her. There was a smell
+of freshly made coffee in the air. As she stood there for an
+instant till the whirling in her head should stop, a stick of wood
+in the fire broke and fell together.</p>
+<p>Marise went through into the dining-room where the table laid
+for breakfast stood in a quiet expectancy. The old house, well-kept
+and well-loved, wore a tranquil expression of permanence and
+security.</p>
+<p>But out in the dusky hail, the white stairs stood palely
+motioning up. There Marise felt a singular heavy coolness in the
+stagnant air. She went up the stairs, leaning on the balustrade,
+and found herself facing an open door.</p>
+<p>Beyond it, in a shuttered and shaded room, stood a still white
+bed. And on the bed, still and white and distant, lay something
+dead. It was not Cousin Hetty. That austere, cold face, proud and
+stern, was not Cousin Hetty's. It was her grandmother's, her
+father's, her uncle's face, whom Cousin Hetty had never at all
+resembled. It was the family shell which Cousin Hetty had for a
+time inhabited.</p>
+<p>Marise came forward and crossed the threshold. Immediately she
+was aware of a palpable change in the atmosphere. The room was
+densely filled with silence, which folded her about coldly. She
+sank down on a chair. She sat motionless, looking at what lay there
+so quiet, at the unimaginable emptiness and remoteness of that
+human countenance.</p>
+<p>This was the end. She had come to the end of her running and her
+haste and her effort to help. All the paltry agitations and
+sorrows, the strains and defeats and poor joys, they were all
+hurrying forward to meet this end.</p>
+<p>All the scruples, and sacrifices, and tearing asunder of human
+desires to make them fit words that were called ideals, all
+amounted to this same nothingness in the end.</p>
+<p>What was Cousin Hetty's life now, with its tiny inhibitions, its
+little passivities? The same nothingness it would have been, had
+she grasped boldly at life's realities and taken whatever she
+wanted.</p>
+<p>And all Cousin Hetty's mother's sacrifices for her, her mother's
+hopes for her, the slow transfusion of her mother's life to hers;
+that was all dead now, had been of no avail against this
+nothingness. Some day Elly would lie like that, and all that she
+had done for Elly, or could do for her, would be only a pinch of
+ashes. If she, if Cousin Hetty, if Cousin Hetty's mother, if Elly,
+if all of them, took hotly whatever the hours had to give, they
+could not more certainly be brought to nothingness and oblivion in
+the end. . . .</p>
+<p>Those dreams of her . . . being one with a great current,
+sweeping forward . . . what pitiful delusions! . . . There was
+nothing that swept forward. There were only futile storms of froth
+and excitement that whirled you about to no end, one after another.
+One died down and left you becalmed and stagnant, and another rose.
+And that would die down in its turn. Until at the end, shipwreck,
+and a sinking to this darkly silent abyss.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<h3>A PRIMAEVAL HERITAGE</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 21. Evening.</div>
+<p>Cousin Hetty lay coldly dead; and Marise felt herself blown upon
+by an icy breath that froze her numb. The doctor had come and gone,
+queerly, and bustlingly alive and full of talk and explanations;
+Agnes had come back and, silently weeping, had walked endlessly and
+aimlessly around the house, with a broom in her idle hand; one
+after another of the neighbors had come and gone, queerly alive as
+usual, they too, for all their hushed and awkward manners; Neale
+had come, seeming to feel that cold breath as little as the
+others.</p>
+<p>And now Neale was gone, after everything had been decided, all
+the incredibly multitudinous details that must be decided. The
+funeral was set for the day after tomorrow, and until then,
+everything in everybody's life was to stop stock-still, as a matter
+of course. Because Agnes was in terror of being left alone for an
+instant, Marise would not even leave the house until after the
+funeral, and one of the thousand petty unescapable details she and
+Neale had talked of in the hushed voice which the house imposed on
+all in it, was the decision as to which dress and hat were to be
+sent to her from the wardrobe at home.</p>
+<p>She was to stay there with Agnes, she, who was all the family
+old Cousin Hetty had left, for the last watch over what lay up
+there on the bed in her bedroom. Neale would look out for the
+children (there was no one else for the moment, Toucl&eacute; was
+gone, Eugenia quite useless), would telegraph the few old friends
+who would care to know the news, would see Mr. Bayweather about the
+funeral, would telephone the man in West Ashley who dug graves,
+would do what was to be done outside; and she would do what was to
+be done inside, as now, when she sat on the stairs waiting in case
+the undertaker needed something.</p>
+<p>She was glad that the undertaker was only quiet, white-bearded
+old Mr. Hadley, who for so many, many years had given his silent
+services to the dead of Ashley that he had come to seem not quite a
+living figure himself, hushed and stilled by his association with
+everlasting stillness. Marise, cold and numbed with that icy breath
+upon her, knew now why the old undertaker was always silent and
+absent. A strange life he must have had. She had never thought of
+it till she had seen him come into that house, where she and Agnes
+waited for him, uncertain, abashed, not knowing what to do. Into
+how many such houses he must have gone, with that same quiet look
+of unsurprised acceptance of what everybody knew was coming
+sometime and nobody ever expected to come at all. How extraordinary
+that it had never occurred to her that Cousin Hetty, old as she
+was, would some day die. You never really believed that anybody in
+your own life was ever going to die, or change; any more than you
+really believed that you yourself were ever going to grow old, or
+change; or that the children were ever really going to grow up.
+That threadbare old phrase about the death of old people, "it
+always comes as a shock," that was true of all the inevitable
+things that happened in life which you saw happen to everyone else,
+and never believed would happen to you.</p>
+<p>This was the last tie with the past gone, the last person
+disappeared for whom she was still the little girl she felt herself
+now, the little girl who had lost her way and wanted someone to put
+her back in the path. She had a moment of very simple, sweet
+sorrow, sitting there alone in the hall, warm tears streaming down
+her cheeks and falling on her hands. Cousin Hetty gone, dear old
+Cousin Hetty, with her bright living eyes, and her love for all
+that was young. How much she owed her . . . those troubled years of
+her youth when Cousin Hetty and the old house were unfailing
+shelter. What shelter had she now?</p>
+<p>The pendulum of her mind swung back . . . of course this was
+silly traditional repeating of superstitious old words. There was
+no shelter; there could be none in this life. No one could show her
+the path, because there <i>was</i> no path; and anyone who
+pretended to show it was only a charlatan who traded on moments of
+weakness like this.</p>
+<p>Mr. Hadley opened the door quietly and asked in that
+seldom-heard voice of his for a couple of soft, clean towels. Where
+did Cousin Hetty keep her towels? In the chest of drawers at the
+end of the hall. An odor of cloves came up spicily into the air as
+Marise opened the drawer. How like Cousin Hetty to have that
+instead of the faded, sentimental lavender. She had perhaps put
+those towels away there last night, with her busy, shaking old
+hands, so still now. All dead, the quaintness, the vitality, the
+zest in life, the new love for little Elly, all dead now, as though
+it had never been, availing nothing. There was nothing that did not
+die.</p>
+<p>She handed in the towels and sat down again on the stairs
+leaning her head against the wall. What time could it be? Was it
+still daylight? . . . No, there was a lamp lighted down there. What
+could she have been doing all day, she and Agnes and the doctor and
+Mr. Hadley? She wondered if the children were all right, and if
+Neale would remember, when he washed Mark's face, that there was a
+bruise on his temple where the swing-board had struck him. Was that
+only yesterday morning! Was it possible that it was only last night
+that she had lain awake in the darkness, trying to think, trying to
+know what she was feeling, burning with excitement, as one by one
+those boldly forward-thrusting movements came back to her from the
+time when he had cried out so angrily, "<i>They</i> can't love her.
+They're not capable of it!" to the time when they had exchanged
+that long reckless gaze over Elly's head! And now there was the
+triumphant glory of security which had been in his kiss . . . why,
+that was this morning, only a few hours ago! Even through her cold
+numbed lassitude she shrank again before the flare-up of that
+excitement, and burned in it. She tried to put this behind her at
+once, to wait, like all the rest, till this truce should be over,
+and she should once more be back in that m&ecirc;l&eacute;e of
+agitation the thought of which turned her sick with confusion. She
+was not strong enough for life, if this was what it brought, these
+fierce, clawing passions that did not wait for your bidding to go
+or come, but left you as though you were dead and then pounced on
+you like tigers. She had not iron in her either to live ruthlessly,
+or to stamp out that upward leap of flame which meant the renewal
+of priceless youth and passion. Between these alternatives, she
+<i>could</i> make no decision, she could not, it would tear her in
+pieces to do it.</p>
+<p>The pendulum swung back again, and all this went out, leaving
+her mortally tired. Agnes came to the foot of the stairs, a little,
+withered, stricken old figure, her apron at her eyes. From behind
+it she murmured humbly, between swallowing hard, that she had made
+some tea and there was bread and butter ready, and should she boil
+an egg?</p>
+<p>A good and healing pity came into Marise's heart. Poor old
+Agnes, it was the end of the world for her, of course. And how
+touching, how tragic, how unjust, the fate of dependents, to turn
+from one source of commands to another. She ran downstairs on
+tip-toe and put her arm around the old woman's shoulder. "I haven't
+said anything yet, Agnes," she told her, "because this has come on
+us so suddenly. But of course Mr. Crittenden and I will always look
+out for you. Cousin Hetty . . . you were her best friend."</p>
+<p>The old woman laid her head down on the other's shoulder and
+wept aloud. "I miss her so. I miss her so," she said over and
+over.</p>
+<p>"The thing to do for her," thought Marise, as she patted the
+thin heaving shoulders, "is to give her something to work at."
+Aloud she said, "Agnes, we must get the front room downstairs
+ready. Mr. Hadley wants to have Cousin Hetty brought down there.
+Before we eat we might as well get the larger pieces of furniture
+moved out."</p>
+<p>Agnes stood up, docilely submitting herself to the command,
+stopped crying, and went with Marise into the dim old room, in
+which nothing had been changed since the day, twenty years ago,
+when the furniture had been put back in place after Cousin Hetty's
+old mother had lain there, for the last time.</p>
+<p>The two women began to work, and almost at once Agnes was
+herself again, stepping about briskly, restored by the familiarity
+of being once more under the direction of another. They pulled out
+the long haircloth sofa, moved the spindle-legged old chairs into
+the dining-room, and carried out one by one the drawers from the
+high-boy in the corner. From one of these drawers a yellowed paper
+fell out. Marise picked it up and glanced at it. It was a letter
+dated 1851, the blank page of which had been used for a game of
+Consequences. The foolish incoherencies lay there in the faded ink
+just as they had been read out, bringing with them the laughter of
+those people, so long dead now, who had written them down in that
+pointed, old-fashioned handwriting. Marise stood looking at it
+while Agnes swept the other room. Cousin Hetty had been ten years
+old in 1851, just as old as Paul was now. Her mother had probably
+left something she wanted to do, to sit down and laugh with her
+little daughter over this trivial game. A ghostly echo of that
+long-silent laughter fell faintly and coldly on her ear. So soon
+gone. Was it worth while to do it at all? Such an effort, such a
+fatigue lay before those children one tried to keep laughing, and
+then . . .</p>
+<p>Someone came in behind her, without knocking or ringing. People
+had been coming and going unannounced in that house all the day as
+though death had made it their own home. Agnes came to the door,
+Marise looked up and saw Nelly Powers standing in the door-way, the
+second time she had been there. "I come over again," she said, "to
+bring you some hot biscuit and honey. I knew you wouldn't feel to
+do much cooking." She added, "I put the biscuits in the oven as I
+come through, so they'd keep warm."</p>
+<p>"Oh, thank you, Nelly, that's very kind and thoughtful," said
+Marise. As she spoke and looked at the splendid, enigmatic woman
+standing there, the richness of her vitality vibrating about her,
+she saw again the nightmare vision of 'Gene and heard the terrible
+breathing that had resounded in the Eagle Rock woods. She was
+overwhelmed, as so often before in her life, by an amazement at the
+astounding difference between the aspect of things and what they
+really were. She had never entirely outgrown the wildness of
+surprise which this always brought to her. She and Nelly, looking
+at each other so calmly, and speaking of hot biscuits!</p>
+<p>She listened as though it were an ironically incongruous speech
+in a play to Agnes' conscientious country attempt to make
+conversation with the caller, "Hot today, ain't it? Yesterday's
+storm didn't seem to do much good." And to Nelly's answer on the
+same note, "Yes, but it's good for the corn to have it hot. 'Gene's
+been out cultivating his, all day long."</p>
+<p>"Ah, not all day! Not all day!" Marise kept the thought to
+herself. She had a vision of the man goaded beyond endurance,
+leaving his horses plodding in the row, while he fled blindly, to
+escape the unescapable.</p>
+<p>An old resentment, centuries and ages older than she was, a
+primaeval heritage from the past, flamed up unexpectedly in her
+heart. <i>There</i> was a man, she thought, who had kept the
+capacity really to love his wife; passionately to suffer; whose
+cold intelligence had not chilled down to . . ."</p>
+<p>"Well, I guess I must be going now," said Nelly in the speech of
+the valley. She went away through the side-door, opening and
+shutting it with meticulous care, so that it would not make a
+sound. . . . As though a sound could reach Cousin Hetty now!</p>
+<p>"I don't like her biscuits," said Agnes. "She always puts too
+much sody in." She added, in what was evidently the expression of
+an old dislike, "And don't she look a fool, a great hulking critter
+like her, wearing such shoes, teeterin' along on them heels."</p>
+<p>"Oh well," said Marise, vaguely, "it's her idea of how to look
+pretty."</p>
+<p>"They must cost an awful sight too," Agnes went on, scoldingly,
+"laced halfway up her leg that way. And the Powerses as poor as
+Job's turkey. The money she puts into them shoes'd do 'em enough
+sight more good if 'twas saved up and put into a manure spreader, I
+call it."</p>
+<p>She had taken the biscuits out of the oven and was holding them
+suspiciously to her nose, when someone came in at the front door
+and walked down the hall with the hushed, self-conscious,
+lugubrious tip-toe step of the day. It was Mr. Bayweather, his
+round old face rather pale. "I'm shocked, unutterably shocked by
+this news," he said, and indeed he looked badly shaken and scared.
+It came to Marise that Cousin Hetty had been of about his age. He
+shook her hand and looked about for a chair. "I came to see about
+which hymns you would like sung," he said. "Do you know if Miss
+Hetty had any favorites?" He broke off to say, "Mrs. Bayweather
+wished me to be sure to excuse her to you for not coming with me
+tonight to see if there was anything she could do. But she was
+stopped by old Mrs. Warner, just as we were leaving the house.
+Frank, it seems, went off early this morning to survey some lines
+in the woods somewhere on the mountain, and was to be back to
+lunch. He didn't come then and hasn't showed up at all yet. Mrs.
+Warner wanted my wife to telephone up to North Ashley to see if he
+had perhaps gone there to spend the night with his aunt. The line
+was busy of course, and Mrs. Bayweather was still trying to get
+them on the wire when I had to come away. If she had no special
+favorites, I think that 'Lead, Kindly Light, Amid th' Encircling
+Gloom' is always suitable, don't you?"</p>
+<p>Something seemed to explode inside Marise's mind, and like a
+resultant black cloud of smoke a huge and ominous possibility
+loomed up, so darkly, so unexpectedly, that she had no breath to
+answer the clergyman's question. Those lines Frank Warner had gone
+to survey ran through the Eagle Rock woods!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>"Or would you think an Easter one, like 'The Strife Is O'er, the
+Battle Won,' more appropriate?" suggested Mr. Bayweather to her
+silence.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Agnes started. "Who's that come bursting into the kitchen?" she
+cried, turning towards the door.</p>
+<p>It seemed to Marise, afterwards, that she had known at that
+moment who had come and what the tidings were.</p>
+<p>Agnes started towards the door to open it. But it was flung open
+abruptly from the outside. Toucl&eacute; stood there, her hat gone
+from her head, her rusty black clothes torn and disarranged.</p>
+<p>Marise knew what she was about to announce.</p>
+<p>She cried out to them, "Frank Warner has fallen off the Eagle
+Rocks. I found him there, at the bottom, half an hour ago,
+dead."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The savage old flame, centuries and ages older than she, flared
+for an instant high and smoky in Marise's heart. "<i>There</i> is a
+man who knows how to fight for his wife and keep her!" she thought
+fiercely.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<h3>THE COUNSEL OF THE STARS</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 21. Night.</div>
+<p>It had been arranged that for the two nights before the funeral
+Agnes was to sleep in the front bedroom, on one side of Cousin
+Hetty's room, and Marise in the small hall bedroom on the other
+side, the same room and the same bed in which she had slept as a
+little girl. Nothing had been changed there, since those days. The
+same heavy white pitcher and basin stood in the old wash-stand with
+the sunken top and hinged cover; the same oval white soap-dish, the
+same ornamental spatter-work frame in dark walnut hung over the
+narrow walnut bedstead.</p>
+<p>As she undressed in the space between the bed and the
+wash-stand, the past came up before her in a sudden splashing wave
+of recollection which for a moment engulfed her. It had all been a
+dream, all that had happened since then, and she was again eight
+years old, with nothing in the world but bad dreams to fear, and
+Cousin Hetty there at hand as a refuge even against bad dreams. How
+many times she had wakened, terrified, her heart beating
+hammer-strokes against her ribs, and trotted shivering, in her
+night-gown, into Cousin Hetty's room.</p>
+<p>"Cousin Hetty! Cousin Hetty!"</p>
+<p>"What? What's that? Oh, you, Marise. What's the matter? Notions
+again?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, Cousin Hetty, it was an <i>awful</i> dream this time. Can't
+I get into bed with you?"</p>
+<p>"Why yes, come along, you silly child."</p>
+<p>The fumbling approach to the bed, the sheets held open, the kind
+old hand outstretched, and then the haven . . . her head on the
+same pillow with that of the brave old woman who was afraid of
+nothing, who drew her up close and safe and with comforting
+assurance instantly fell asleep again. And then the delicious, slow
+fading of the terrors before the obliterating hand of sleep, the
+delicious slow sinking into forgetfulness of everything.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Standing there, clad in the splendor of her physical maturity,
+Marise shivered uncontrollably again, and quaked and feared. It was
+all a bad dream, all of it, and now as then Cousin Hetty lay safe
+and quiet, wrapped in sleep which was the only escape. Marise
+turned sick with longing to go again, now, to seek out Cousin Hetty
+and to lie down by her to share that safe and cold and dreamless
+quiet.</p>
+<p>She flung back over her shoulder the long shining dark braid
+which her fingers had been automatically twisting, and stood for a
+moment motionless. She was suffering acutely, but the pain came
+from a source so deep, so confused, so inarticulate, that she could
+not name it, could not bring to bear on it any of the resources of
+her intelligence and will. She could only bend under it as under a
+crushing burden, and suffer as an animal endures pain, dumbly,
+stupidly.</p>
+<p>After a time a small knock sounded, and Agnes's voice asked
+through the door if Miss Marise thought the door to . . . to . . .
+if the "other" door ought to be open or shut. It was shut now. What
+did people do as a general thing?</p>
+<p>Marise opened her own door and looked down on the old figure in
+the straight, yellowed night-gown, the knotted, big-veined hand
+shielding the candle from the wandering summer breeze which blew an
+occasional silent, fragrant breath in from the open windows.</p>
+<p>"I don't know what people do as a rule," she answered, and then
+asked, "How did Miss Hetty like best to have it, herself?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, open, always."</p>
+<p>"We'd better open it, then."</p>
+<p>The old servant swayed before the closed door, the candlestick
+shaking in her hand. She looked up at Marise timidly. "You do it,"
+she said under her breath.</p>
+<p>Marise felt a faint pitying scorn, stepped past Agnes, lifted
+the latch, and opened the door wide into the blackness of the other
+room.</p>
+<p>The dense silence seemed to come out, coldly and softly. For
+Marise it had the sweetness of a longed-for anaesthetic, it had the
+very odor of the dreamless quiet into which she longed to sink. But
+Agnes shrank away, drew hastily closer to Marise, and whispered in
+a sudden panic, "Oh, don't it scare you? Aren't you afraid to be
+here all alone, just you and me? We'd ought to have had a man stay
+too."</p>
+<p>Marise tried to answer simply and kindly, "No, I'm not afraid.
+It is only all that is left of dear Cousin Hetty." But the
+impatience and contemptuous surprise which she kept out of her
+words and voice were felt none the less by the old woman. She
+drooped submissively as under a reproach. "I know it's foolish,"
+she murmured, "I know it's foolish."</p>
+<p>She began again to weep, the tears filling her faded eyes and
+running quietly down her wrinkled old cheeks. "You don't know how
+gone I feel without her!" she mourned. "I'd always had her to tell
+me what to do. Thirty-five years now, every day, she's been here to
+tell me what to do. I can't make it seem true, that it's her lying
+in there. Seems as though every minute she'd come in, stepping
+quick, the way she did. And I fairly open my mouth to ask her, 'Now
+Miss Hetty, what shall I do next?' and then it all comes over
+me."</p>
+<p>Marise's impatience and scorn were flooded by an immense
+sympathy. What a pitiable thing a dependent is! Poor old Agnes! She
+leaned down to the humble, docile old face, and put her cheek
+against it. "I'll do my best to take Cousin Hetty's place for you,"
+she said gently, and then, "Now you'd better go back to bed.
+There's a hard day ahead of us."</p>
+<p>Agnes responded with relief to the tone of authority. She said
+with a reassured accent, "Well, it's all right if <i>you're</i> not
+afraid," turned and shuffled down the hall, comforted and
+obedient.</p>
+<p>Marise saw her go into her room, heard the creak of the bed as
+she lay down on it, and then the old voice, "Miss Marise, will it
+be all right if I leave my candle burning, just this once?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, Agnes, that'll be all right," she answered. "Go to
+sleep now." As she went back into her own room, she thought
+passingly to herself, "Strange that anyone can live so long and
+grow up so little."</p>
+<p>She herself opened her bed, lay down on it resolutely, and blew
+out her candle.</p>
+<p>Instantly the room seemed suffocatingly full of a thousand
+flying, disconnected pictures. The talk with Agnes had changed her
+mood. The dull, leaden weight of that numbing burden of
+inarticulate pain was broken into innumerable fragments. For a
+time, before she could collect herself to self-control, her
+thoughts whirled and roared in her head like a machine disconnected
+from its work, racing furiously till it threatens to shake itself
+to pieces. Everything seemed to come at once.</p>
+<p>Frank Warner was dead. What would that mean to Nelly Powers?</p>
+<p>Had there been enough bread left in the house till someone could
+drive the Ford to Ashley and buy some more?</p>
+<p>Ought she to wear mourning for Cousin Hetty?</p>
+<p>What had happened on the Eagle Rocks? Had Frank and 'Gene
+quarreled, or had 'Gene crept up behind Frank as he sighted along
+the compass?</p>
+<p>How would they get Cousin Hetty's friends from the station at
+Ashley, out to the house, such feeble old people as they were? It
+would be better to have the services all at the church.</p>
+<p>Had anything been decided about hymns? Someone had said
+something about it, but what had she . . . oh, of course that had
+been the moment when Toucl&eacute; had come in, and Mr. Bayweather
+had rushed away to tell Frank's mother. Frank's mother. His mother!
+Suppose that were to happen to Mark, or Paul? No, not such
+thoughts. They mustn't be let in at all, or you went mad.</p>
+<p>Was it true that Elly cared nothing about her, that children
+didn't, for grown-ups, that she was nothing in Elly's life?</p>
+<p>She was glad that Toucl&eacute; had come back. There would be
+someone to help Neale with the children. . . .</p>
+<p><i>Neale</i> . . . the name brought her up abruptly. Her mind,
+hurrying, breathless, panting, was stopped by the name, as by a
+great rock in the path. There was an instant of blankness, as she
+faced it, as though it were a name she did not know. When she said
+that name, everything stopped going around in her head. She moved
+restlessly in her bed.</p>
+<p>And then, as though she had gone around the rock, the rapid,
+pattering, painful rush of those incoherent ideas began again.
+Queer that nobody there, Mr. Bayweather, Agnes, Toucl&eacute;, none
+of them seemed to realize that Frank had not fallen, that 'Gene had
+. . . but of course she remembered they hadn't any idea of a
+possible connection between Frank and the Powers, and she had been
+the only one to see 'Gene in that terrible flight from the Rocks.
+Nelly had thought he had been cultivating corn all day. Of course
+nobody would think of anything but an accident. Nobody would ever
+know.</p>
+<p>Yes, it was true; it was true that she would touch Neale and
+never know it, never feel it . . . how closely that had been
+observed, that she could take a handkerchief from his pocket as
+from a piece of furniture. It was true that Neale and she knew each
+other now till there was no hidden corner, no mystery, no
+possibility of a single unexpected thing between them. She had not
+realized it, but it was true. How could she not have seen that his
+presence left her wholly unmoved, indifferent now? But how could
+she have known it, so gradual had been the coming of satiety, until
+she had to contrast with it this fierce burning response to a
+fierce and new emotion? . . .</p>
+<p>Had she thought "indifference"? and "satiety"? Of whom had she
+been thinking? Not of <i>Neale</i>! Was that what had come of the
+great hour on Rocca di Papa? <i>Was that what human beings
+were?</i></p>
+<p>She had gone further this time, but now she was brought up short
+by the same blankness at the name of Neale, the same impossibility
+to think at all. She could not think about Neale tonight. All that
+must be put off till she was more like herself, till she was more
+steady. She was reeling now, with shock after shock; Cousin Hetty's
+death, 'Gene's dreadful secret, the discovery no longer to be
+evaded of what Vincent Marsh meant and was. . . .</p>
+<p>She felt a sudden hurried impatient haste to be with Vincent
+again, to feel again the choking throb when she first saw him, the
+constant scared uncertainty of what he might say, what she might
+feel, what they both might do, from one moment to the next . . .
+she could forget, in those fiery and potent draughts, everything,
+all this that was so hard and painful and that she could not
+understand and that was such a torment to try to understand.
+Everything would be swept away except . . .</p>
+<p>As though she had whirled suddenly about to see what was lurking
+there behind her, she whirled about and found the thought, "But I
+ought to tell someone, tell the police, that I saw 'Gene Powers
+running away after he had killed the man who wanted to take his
+wife from him."</p>
+<p>Instantly there spoke out a bitter voice, "No, I shall tell no
+one. 'Gene has known how to keep Nelly. Let him have her for all
+his life."</p>
+<p>Another voice answered, "Frank's mother . . . his mother!"</p>
+<p>And both of these were drowned by a tide of sickness as the
+recollection came upon her of that dreadful haste, those horrible
+labored breaths.</p>
+<p>She sat up with a great sweeping gesture of her arms, as though
+she must fight for air. The little room seemed palpably crammed
+with those jostling, shouting, battling thoughts. She slid from the
+bed and went to the window, leaning far out from it, and looking up
+at the sky, immeasurably high and black, studded thick with
+stars.</p>
+<p>They looked down disdainfully at her fever and misery. A
+chilling consolation fell from them upon her, like a cold dew. She
+felt herself shrink to imperceptible proportions. What did they
+matter, the struggles of the maggots who crawled about the folds of
+the globe, itself the most trifling and insignificant of all the
+countless worlds which people the aimless disorder of the universe?
+What difference did it make? Anything they did was so soon
+indistinguishable from anything else. The easiest way . . . to
+yield to whatever had the strongest present force . . . that was as
+good as any other way in the great and blind confusion of it
+all.</p>
+<p>After she had gone back to bed, she could still see the silent
+multitude of stars above her, enormous, remote beyond imagination,
+and it was under their thin, cold, indifferent gaze that she
+finally fell asleep.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 22.</div>
+<p>Agnes brought upstairs an armful of white roses. "The lady that
+visits at your house, she brought them from your garden and she
+wants to see you if she can."</p>
+<p>Eugenia of course. That was unexpected. She must have made an
+effort to do that, she who hated sickness and death and all dark
+things.</p>
+<p>"Yes, tell her I will be down in a moment. Take her in a glass
+of cold water, too, will you please, Agnes. The walk over here must
+have been terribly hot for her."</p>
+<p>The roses showed that. They were warm to the touch and as she
+looked at them intently, at their white clear faces, familiar to
+her as those of human beings, bent on her with a mute message from
+the garden, she saw they had begun to droop imperceptibly, that the
+close, fine texture of their petals had begun ever so slightly to
+wither. She sprinkled them, put their stems deep into water and
+went downstairs, wiping her moist hands on her handkerchief.</p>
+<p>Eugenia in mauve organdie stood up from the deep Windsor chair
+where she had sunk down, and came forward silently to greet her.
+They kissed each other ceremoniously in token of the fact that a
+death lay between them and the last time they had met . . . was it
+only yesterday morning?</p>
+<p>"Were you able to sleep at all, Marise? You look shockingly
+tired."</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, thanks. I slept well enough. Are the children all
+right?"</p>
+<p>Eugenia nodded, "Yes, as usual."</p>
+<p>"Did their father tell them the news of Cousin Hetty's death?
+How did they take it? Elly perhaps was . . ."</p>
+<p>Eugenia did not know about this, had not happened to hear
+anybody say. But old Toucl&eacute; was back, at least, to do the
+work.</p>
+<p>"I knew she must be," said Marise. "She was here last night. It
+was she, you know, who found Frank Warner's body at the foot of . .
+. of course you've heard of that?"</p>
+<p>Eugenia made a little wry face. Of course she had heard of that,
+she said with an accent of distaste. Everybody was talking about
+the melodramatic accident, as probably they would still be talking
+about it a hundred years from now, up here where nothing happened.
+People had come all the way from North Ashley to look at the place,
+and some of the men and boys had gone around up to the top of the
+Eagle Rocks to see where Frank had lost his footing. They found his
+surveyor's compass still set upon its staff. It was where the line
+ran very near the edge and Frank must have stepped over the cliff
+as he was sighting along it. They could see torn leaves and
+stripped twigs as though he had tried to save himself as he
+fell.</p>
+<p>She stopped speaking. Marise found herself too sick and shaken
+to venture any comment. There was rather a long silence, such as
+was natural and suitable under the circumstances, in that house.
+Presently Marise broke this to ask if anyone knew how Frank's
+mother had taken the news, although she knew of course Eugenia was
+the last person of whom to ask such a question. As she expected,
+Eugenia had only lifted eyebrows, a faint slow shake of her head
+and a small graceful shrug of her shoulders, her usual formula for
+conveying her ignorance of common facts, and her indifference to
+that ignorance.</p>
+<p>But Marise, looking at her, as they sat opposite each other in
+the twilight of the closely shuttered room, was struck by the fact
+that Eugenia did not seem wholly like herself. Her outward aspect
+was the same, the usual exquisite exactitude of detail, every blond
+hair shining and in its place, the flawless perfection of her flesh
+as miraculous as ever, her tiny white shoe untouched by dust
+through which she must have walked to reach the house. But there
+was something . . . in her eyes, perhaps . . . which now looked
+back at Marise with an expression which Marise did not understand
+or recognize. If it had not been impossible to think it of Eugenia,
+Marise would have imagined that her eyes looked troubled, excited.
+Was it possible that even in her safe ivory tower of aloofness from
+life, she had felt the jarring blow of the brutally immediate
+tragedy of the Eagle Rocks? Or perhaps even Cousin Hetty's
+disappearance . . . she had always hated reminders of death.</p>
+<p>As Marise, surprised, looked at her and wondered thus passingly
+if she felt any reverberation from the tragedy-laden air about
+them, Eugenia's face hardened back into its usual smooth calm; over
+the eyes that had been for an instant transparent and alive with
+troubled brightness, slid their acquired expression of benignant
+indifference. She answered Marise's faintly inquiring gaze by
+getting up as if to go, remarking in a clear low tone (she was the
+only person who had come into the house who had not succumbed to
+that foolish, instinctive muffling of the voice), "I forgot to give
+you a message from Neale. He is obliged to be away today, on
+business, something about a deed to some wood-land."</p>
+<p>Marise was slightly surprised. "Where is he going?" she asked.
+"In the Ford? On the train?" How little she had thought about the
+mill of late, that she should be so entirely blank as to this
+business trip.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I didn't even try to understand," said Eugenia, smoothing
+the shining silk of her parasol. "Business finds no echo in me, you
+know. A man came to supper last night, unexpectedly, and they
+talked interminably about some deal, lumbering, lines, surveys,
+deeds . . . till Toucl&eacute; came in with the news of the
+accident. The man was from New Hampshire, with that droll, flat New
+Hampshire accent. You know how they talk, 'bahn' and 'yahd' for
+barn and yard."</p>
+<p>The words "New Hampshire" and "deeds" stirred a disagreeable
+association of ideas in Marise's mind. The shyster lawyer who had
+done the Powers out of their inheritance had come from New
+Hampshire. However, she supposed there were other people in the
+state besides dishonest lawyers.</p>
+<p>Eugenia went on casually. "It seemed quite important. Neale was
+absorbed by it. He told me afterward, Neale did, that the man had
+acted as agent for him some years ago in securing a big tract of
+wood-land around here, something that had been hard to get hold
+of."</p>
+<p>Marise was startled and showed it by a quick lift of her head.
+She had never known Neale to employ an agent. She looked hard at
+Eugenia's quiet, indifferent face. The other seemed not to notice
+her surprise, and returned her look with a long clear gaze, which
+apparently referred to her hair, for she now remarked in just the
+tone she had used for the news about Neale, "That way of arranging
+your coiffure <i>is</i> singularly becoming to you. Mr. Marsh was
+speaking about it the other day, but I hadn't specially noticed it.
+He's right. It gives you that swathed close-coifed Leonardo da
+Vinci look." She put her handkerchief into a small bag of mauve
+linen, embroidered with white and pale-green crewels, and took up
+her parasol.</p>
+<p>Marise felt something menacing in the air. Eugenia frightened
+her a little with that glass-smooth look of hers. The best thing to
+do was to let her go without another word. And yet she heard her
+voice asking, urgently, peremptorily, "What was the name of the man
+from New Hampshire?"</p>
+<p>Eugenia said, "What man from New Hampshire?" and then, under
+Marise's silent gaze, corrected herself and changed her tone. "Oh
+yes, let me see: Neale introduced him, of course. Why, some not
+uncommon name, and yet not like Smith or Jones. It began with an L,
+I believe."</p>
+<p>Marise said to herself, "I will not say another word about
+this," and aloud she said roughly, brusquely, "It wasn't Lowder, of
+course."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes," said Eugenia, "you're right. It was Lowder. I
+<i>thought</i> it was probably something you'd know about. Neale
+always tells you everything."</p>
+<p>She looked away and remarked, "I suppose you will inherit the
+furniture of this house? There are nice bits. This Windsor chair;
+and I thought I saw a Chippendale buffet in the dining-room."</p>
+<p>Marise, immobile in her chair, repeated, "It wasn't Lowder. You
+didn't say it was Lowder."</p>
+<p>"Yes, it was Lowder," said Eugenia clearly. "And now you speak
+of it once more, I remember one more thing about their talk
+although I didn't try to understand much of it. It was all
+connected with the Powers family. It was their woodlot which this
+Mr. Lowder had bought for Neale. I was surprised to know that they
+had ever had any wood-land. They have always seemed too sordidly
+poverty-stricken. But it seems this was the only way Neale could
+get hold of it, because they refused to sell otherwise."</p>
+<p>She looked again at Marise, a long, steady, and entirely opaque
+gaze which Marise returned mutely, incapable of uttering a word.
+She had the feeling of leaning with all her weight against an
+inner-door that must be kept shut.</p>
+<p>"Did Neale <i>tell</i> you this man had secured the Powers
+woodlot for him, for Neale, for our mill?" she heard her voice
+asking, faint in the distance, far off from where she had flung
+herself against that door.</p>
+<p>"Why yes, why not? Not very recently he said, some time ago. We
+had quite a talk about it afterwards. It must be something you've
+forgotten," said Eugenia. She took up a card from the table and
+fanned herself as she spoke, her eyes not quitting Marise's face.
+"It's going to be as hot as it was yesterday," she said with
+resignation. "Doesn't it make you long for a dusky, high-ceilinged
+Roman room with a cool, red-tiled floor, and somebody out in the
+street shouting through your closed shutters, 'Ricotta! Ricotta!'"
+she asked lightly.</p>
+<p>Marise looked at her blankly. She wished she could lean forward
+and touch Eugenia to make sure she was really standing there. What
+was it she had been saying? She could not have understood a word of
+it. It was impossible that it should be what it seemed to
+mean,&mdash;impossible!</p>
+<p>A door somewhere in the house opened and shut, and steps
+approached. The two women turned their eyes towards the hall-door.
+Old Mrs. Powers walked in unceremoniously, her gingham dress dusty,
+her lean face deeply flushed by the heat, a tin pan in her hands,
+covered with a blue-and-white checked cloth.</p>
+<p>"I thought maybe you'd relish some fresh doughnuts as well as
+anything," she said briskly, with no preliminary of greeting.</p>
+<p>Something about the atmosphere of the room struck her oddly for
+all the composed faces and quiet postures of the two occupants. She
+brought out as near an apology for intruding, as her phraseless
+upbringing would permit her. "I didn't see Agnes in the kitchen as
+I come through, so I come right along, to find somebody," she said,
+a little abashed.</p>
+<p>Marise was incapable of speaking to her, but she made a silent
+gesture of thanks, and, moving forward, took the pan from the older
+woman's hand.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Powers went on, "If 'twouldn't bother you, could you put
+them in your jar now, and let me take the pan back with me? We
+hain't got any too many dishes, you know."</p>
+<p>Marise went out to the pantry with the older woman, feeling with
+astonishment the floor hard and firm under her feet as usual, the
+walls upright about her. Only something at the back of her throat
+contracted to a knot, relaxed, contracted, with a singular,
+disagreeable, involuntary regularity.</p>
+<p>"You look down sick, Mis' Crittenden," said Mrs. Powers with a
+respectful admiration for the suitability of this appearance. "And
+there ain't nothing surprising that you should. Did you ever see
+anybody go off more sudden than Miss Hetty? Such a good woman she
+was, too. It must ha' gi'n you an awful turn." She poured the
+doughnuts into the jar and, folding the checked cloth, went on,
+"But I look at it this way. 'Twas a quick end, and a peaceful end
+without no pain. And if you'd seen as many old people drag along
+for years, as I have, stranglin' and chokin' and half-dead, why,
+you'd feel to be thankful Miss Hetty was spared that. And you
+too!"</p>
+<p>"Marise," said Eugenia, coming to the pantry door, "your
+neighbors wanted me, of course, to bring you all their sympathetic
+condolence. Mr. Welles asked me to tell you that he would send all
+the flowers in his garden to the church for the service tomorrow.
+And Mr. Marsh was very anxious to see you today, to arrange about
+the use of his car in meeting the people who may come on the train
+tomorrow, to attend the funeral. He said he would run over here any
+time today, if you would send Agnes to tell him when you would see
+him. He said he wouldn't leave the house all day, to be ready to
+come at any time you would let him."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Powers was filled with satisfaction at such conduct. "Now
+that's what I call real neighborly," she said. "And both on 'em new
+to our ways too. That Mr. Welles is a real nice old man, anyhow. .
+. . There! I call him 'old' and I bet he's younger than I be. He
+acts so kind o' settled down to stay. But Mr. Marsh don't act so.
+That's the kind man I like to see, up-and-coming, so you never know
+what he's a-goin' to do next."</p>
+<p>Eugenia waited through this, for some answer, and still waited
+persistently, her eyes on Marise's face.</p>
+<p>Marise aroused herself. She must make some comment, of course.
+"Please thank them both very much," she said finally, and turned
+away to set the jar on a shelf.</p>
+<p>"Well, you goin'?" said Mrs. Powers, behind her, evidently to
+Eugenia. "Well, good-bye, see you at the funeral tomorrow, I
+s'pose."</p>
+<p>Marise looked around and caught a silent, graceful salutation of
+farewell from Eugenia, who disappeared down the hall, the front
+door closing gently behind her.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Powers began again abruptly, "Folks is sayin' that Frank
+Warner must ha' been drinking, but I don't believe it. He wa'n't no
+drinker. And where'd he git it, if he was? It was heedless, that's
+what it was. He always was a heedless critter from a little boy up.
+He was the one that skated right ahead into the hole and most
+drowned him, and he was fooling with his gran'father's shot-gun
+when it went off and most blew him to pieces. 'S a wonder he lived
+to grow up: he come so nigh breaking his neck, before this."</p>
+<p>Marise was surprised to hear Eugenia's voice again, "Marise, I
+stepped back to ask you if there are any errands I could do for
+you, any messages to take. I pass by the door of Mr. Welles' house.
+I could perfectly easily stop there and tell Mr. Marsh he could see
+you now, for instance."</p>
+<p>Marise seemed to see her from afar. She heard what she said, but
+she was aware of it only as an interruption. There was a question
+she must ask old Mrs. Powers. How could she think of anything else
+till that had been answered? She said to Eugenia at random, using
+the first phrase that came into her mind, "No, no. Later. Some
+other time."</p>
+<p>Eugenia hesitated, took a step away from the door, and then came
+back in, deliberately, close to Marise. She spoke to her in
+Italian, very clearly, "He is not a man who will wait."</p>
+<p>To this Marise, wholly engrossed in her inner struggle, opposed
+a stupid blankness, an incapacity to think of what Eugenia was
+saying, long enough to understand it. In that dark inner room,
+where she kept the door shut against the horror that was trying to
+come in, she dared not for an instant look away. She merely shook
+her head and motioned impatiently with her hand. Why did not
+Eugenia go away?</p>
+<p>And yet when Eugenia had gone, she could not bring the words out
+because of that strange contraction of her throat.</p>
+<p>"My! but you ought to go and lie down," said Mrs. Powers
+compassionately. "You're as white as a sheet. Why don't you just
+give up for a while? Agnes and I'll tend to things."</p>
+<p>Marise was filled with terror at the idea of not getting her
+answer, and spoke quickly, abruptly. "Mrs. Powers, you never heard,
+did you, you never thought, in that trouble about losing your
+wood-land . . . nobody ever thought that Mr. Lowder was only an
+agent for someone else, whose name wasn't to be known then."</p>
+<p>"Oh sure," said Mrs. Powers readily. "'Gene found out from a man
+that had lived in his town in New Hampshire that Lowder didn't do
+no lumbering of his own. He just makes a business of dirty deals
+like that for pay. He always surmised it to be some lumber-company;
+somebody that runs a mill. Lots of men that run mills do that sort
+of thing, darn 'em!"</p>
+<p>Marise leaned against the pantry shelf. The old woman glanced at
+her face, gave a cry, and pushed her into a chair, running for
+water. At the sound, Agnes came trotting, and showed a scared
+rabbit-like face. "She's just beat out with the shock of Miss
+Hetty's going off so sudden," explained Mrs. Powers to Agnes.</p>
+<p>Marise got to her feet angrily. She had entirely forgotten that
+Cousin Hetty was dead, or that she was in her house. She was
+shocked that for a moment she had relaxed her steady pressure
+against that opening door. She flung herself against it now. What
+could she do next?</p>
+<p>Instantly, clearly, as though she had heard someone saying it to
+her, she thought, "Why, of course, all I have to do is to go and
+ask Neale about it!"</p>
+<p>It was so simple. Somehow, of course, Neale could give the
+answer she must have. Why had she not thought of that the instant
+Eugenia had begun to speak?</p>
+<p>She drank the glass of water Agnes gave her and said, "Mrs.
+Powers, could you do something for me? I promised I would stay here
+till the funeral and I know Agnes is afraid to stay alone. Would
+you mind waiting here for perhaps half an hour till I could get to
+the mill and back? There is something important I must see to."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Powers hesitated. "Well now, Mis' Crittenden, there ain't
+nothing I wouldn't do for you. But I'm kind o' <i>funny</i> about
+dead folks. I don't believe I'd be much good to Agnes because I
+feel just the way she does. But I'll run over to the house and get
+Nelly and 'Gene to come. I guess the four of us together won't be
+nervous about staying. 'Gene ain't workin' today. He got a
+sunstroke or something yesterday, in the sun, cultivatin' his corn
+and he don't feel just right in his head, he says."</p>
+<p>She went out of the door as she spoke, calling over her
+shoulder, "I wun't be gone long."</p>
+<p>Marise sat down again, there in the pantry, leaned her head
+against the door and looked steadily at the shelves before her,
+full of dishes and jars and bottles and empty jelly glasses. In her
+mind there was only one thing, a fixed resolve not to think at all,
+of anything, until she had been to Neale's office and had Neale
+explain it to her. Surely he would not have started on that trip
+whatever it was. It was so early still. She must not think about it
+at all, until she had asked Neale. Eugenia had probably made a
+mistake about the name. Even if Neale had gone she would be able to
+ask about the name and find that Eugenia had made a mistake. That
+would make everything all right. Of course Eugenia had made a
+mistake about the name.</p>
+<p>She was still staring fixedly at the shelves, frowning and
+beginning again to count all the things on them, when Mrs. Powers'
+voice sounded from the kitchen. "I met 'em on the way is why I'm
+back so soon," she explained to Agnes. "Nelly had some flowers to
+bring. And they've been down by the river and got a great lot of
+ferns too."</p>
+<p>Marise started up, for an instant distracted from her
+concentration on what Eugenia had said. This was the first time she
+had seen Nelly and 'Gene since Frank's death. How would they look?
+How did people go on living? How would they speak, and how could
+they listen to anything but their own thoughts? What had Frank's
+death meant to Nelly?</p>
+<p>She turned shrinkingly towards Nelly. Nelly was bending down and
+flicking the dust from her shoes with her handkerchief. When she
+stood up, she looked straight at Marise. Under the thick-springing,
+smooth-brushed abundance of her shining fair hair, her eyes, blue
+as precious stones, looked out with the deep quiet which always
+seemed so inscrutable to the other woman.</p>
+<p>She held out an armful of flowers. "I thought you'd like the
+white phlox the best. I had a lot of pink too, but I remembered
+Mrs. Bayweather said white is best at such times."</p>
+<p>Marise drew a long breath. What superb self-control!</p>
+<p>"Were the biscuits good?" asked Nelly, turning to Agnes. "I was
+afraid afterward maybe they weren't baked enough."</p>
+<p>Marise was swept to her feet. If Nelly could master her nerves
+like that, she could do better herself. She took the flowers,
+carried them to the kitchen, and set them in a panful of water. She
+had not yet looked at 'Gene.</p>
+<p>She went to find an umbrella to shield her hatless head from the
+sun, and on her way out only, cast a swift glance at 'Gene. That
+was enough. All the blazing, dusty way to the mill, she saw hanging
+terribly before her that haggard ashy face.</p>
+<p>At the mill, she paused in the doorway of the lower office,
+looking in on the three desk-workers, tapping on their machines,
+leaning sideways to consult note-books. The young war-cripple,
+Neale's special prot&eacute;g&eacute;, seeing her, got to his feet
+to ask her what he could do for her.</p>
+<p>Marise considered him for a moment before she answered.
+<i>Was</i> there anything he could do for her? Why had she come?
+All she could remember for the moment was that singular contraction
+of her throat, which had come back now.</p>
+<p>Then she remembered, "Is Mr. Crittenden here?"</p>
+<p>"No, he was called away for the day, urgent business in New
+Hampshire."</p>
+<p>Marise looked about her helplessly. "May I sit down for a
+moment?"</p>
+<p>The young stenographer ran, limping and eager, to offer her a
+chair, and then, shyly, swung his swivel chair towards her, not
+wishing to go back to his work, uncertain what to say to his
+employer's wife.</p>
+<p>"When will Mr. Crittenden be back?" asked Marise, although she
+knew the answer.</p>
+<p>"No later than tonight, he said," answered the stenographer. "He
+spoke particularly about coming back because of Miss Hetty Allen's
+funeral."</p>
+<p>"Yes, of course," said Marise.</p>
+<p>There was nothing more to be said, she knew that, nothing more
+to be done, until Neale came back. But it seemed physically
+impossible for her to live until then, with the clutch in her
+throat.</p>
+<p>She ought to get up now, at once, and go back to Cousin Hetty's.
+The Powers were waiting for her return. But her consternation at
+finding Neale really gone was a blow from which she needed a
+breathing time to recover. She couldn't have it so. She could never
+endure a whole day with this possibility like a threatening
+powder-mine under her feet, ready to go off and bring her inner
+world to ruin and despair. She put her hand out to take her
+umbrella and struggled up.</p>
+<p>"Any message to leave for Mr. Crittenden?" asked the
+stenographer, seeing her ready to go.</p>
+<p>She shook her head. Her eye fell on the waste-paper basket
+beside the desk. On one of the empty envelopes, torn in two, the
+words, "Return to C.K. Lowder," stood out clearly. She turned away
+and stood motionless, one hand at her temple. She was thinking to
+herself, "This is simply incredible. There is some monstrous
+mistake. If I could only think of a way to find it out before it
+kills me."</p>
+<p>She became aware that the young cripple was looking at her
+anxiously, and saw in his startled, agitated face a reflection of
+what hers must be. She made an effort to speak quietly, and heard
+herself say, "Do you happen to remember if Mr. Crittenden was alone
+as he drove away?"</p>
+<p>"Oh no," said the other. "He had had someone with him ever since
+the afternoon train came in yesterday. Mr. Crittenden drove the car
+in himself to the Ashley station to meet him. Somebody here on
+business."</p>
+<p>"What sort of a man, do you remember?" asked Marise.</p>
+<p>"Well, a clean-shaven man, with a queer thin long mouth, like
+the pictures of William Jennings Bryan's. And he talked out of one
+corner of it, the way . . . see here, Mrs. Crittenden, you look
+awfully tired. Wouldn't you better sit down and rest a moment
+more?"</p>
+<p>Marise shook her head with an impatient gesture. Now she needed
+to get away from that office as much as she had wished to go to it.
+The place was hateful to her. The young man's eyes were
+intolerable. He was one of the people, one of the many, many people
+who had grown up trusting in Neale.</p>
+<p>She swung suddenly to a furious incredulity about the whole
+thing. It was nonsense! None of it could be true. What were all
+these people saying to her, Eugenia, Mrs. Powers, this boy . . . ?
+She would never forgive them for trying to do such an infamous
+thing. They were trying to make her believe that Neale had been
+back of Lowder in the low-down swindle that had been practised on
+the Powers. They were trying to make her believe that for seven
+years Neale had been lying to her with every breath he drew.
+Because other men could lie, they thought they could make her
+believe that Neale did. Because other women's husbands had done
+base things in business, they thought she would be capable of
+believing that about Neale. They didn't know how preposterous it
+was, how close she and Neale had always been, how deeply a part of
+the whole aspect of life to her, Neale's attitude toward his work
+had become. Those people did not realize what they were trying to
+make her believe, it was not only that her husband had been the
+instigator of a mean little cheat which had cost years of suffering
+to helpless neighbors, it was the total destruction of all that she
+had thought Neale to be . . . <i>thought</i> him? Known him to
+be.</p>
+<p>"I must get back at once," she said, with a resentful accent and
+moved towards the door.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER
+XXIII</h2>
+<h3>MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE STARS</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 22.</div>
+<p>She passed out from the office into the yellow glare of the sun,
+her feet moving steadily forward, with no volition of hers, along
+the dusty road. And as steadily, with as little volition of hers,
+march, march, came . . . first what Eugenia had said, the advance
+from that to Mrs. Powers' words, from that to the stenographer's,
+to the name on the envelope . . . and then like the door to a
+white-hot blast-furnace thrown open in her face, came the searing
+conception of the possibility that it might be true, and all the
+world lost.</p>
+<p>The extremity and horror of this aroused her to a last effort at
+self-preservation so that she flung the door shut by a fierce
+incapacity to believe any of those relentless facts which hung one
+from another with their horrible enchaining progression. No, she
+had been dreaming. It was all preposterous!</p>
+<p>The heat wavered up from the hot earth in visible pulsations and
+there pulsed through her similar rhythmic waves of feeling; the
+beginning . . . what Eugenia had said, had said that <i>Neale had
+told her</i> . . . what Mrs. Powers had said, "Lots of men that run
+mills do that sort of thing" . . . what the stenographer had said .
+. . the name on the envelope . . . <i>suppose it should be
+true</i>.</p>
+<p>She was at Cousin Hetty's door now; a give-and-take of women's
+voices sounding within. "Here's Mrs. Crittenden back. Come on,
+Nelly, we better be going. There's all the work to do."</p>
+<p>Marise went in and sat down, looking at them with stony
+indifference, at 'Gene this time as well as at the women. The drawn
+sickness of his ashy face did not move her in the least now. What
+did she care what he did, what anyone did, till she knew whether
+she had ever had Neale or not? The women's chatter sounded remote
+and foolish in her ears.</p>
+<p>If Neale had done that . . . if that was the man he was . . .
+but of course it was preposterous, and she had been dreaming. What
+was that that Eugenia had said? The descent into hell began again
+step by step.</p>
+<p>The Powers went out, the old woman still talking, chattering, as
+if anything mattered now.</p>
+<p>After they were gone, Agnes ran to the door calling, "Mis'
+Powers! You forgot your pan and towel after all!" And there was
+Mrs. Powers again, talking, talking.</p>
+<p>She had been saying something that needed an answer apparently,
+for now she stood waiting, expectant.</p>
+<p>"What was that, Mrs. Powers? I was thinking of something
+else."</p>
+<p>"I was just tellin' you that there's going to be a big change
+over to our house. 'Gene, he told Nelly, as he was setting here
+waiting for you, how he was going to cut down the big pine one of
+these days, like she always wanted him to. You know, the one that
+shades the house so. 'Gene's grandfather planted it, and he's
+always set the greatest store by it. Used to say he'd just as soon
+cut his grandmother's throat as chop it down. But Nelly, she's all
+housekeeper and she never did like the musty way the shade makes
+our best room smell. I never thought to see the day 'Gene would
+give in to her about that. He's gi'n in to her about everything
+else though. Only last night he was tellin' her, he was going to
+take something out'n the savings-bank and buy her an organ for
+Addie to learn to play on, that Nelly always hankered after. Seems
+'sthough he can't do enough for Nelly, don't it?"</p>
+<p>Marise looked at her coldly, incapable of paying enough
+attention to her to make any comment on what she said. Let them cut
+down all the trees in the valley, and each other's throats into the
+bargain, if Neale had . . . if there had never been her Neale, the
+Neale she thought she had been living with, all these years.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Powers had gone finally, and the house was silent at last,
+so silent that she could now hear quite clearly, as though Eugenia
+still sat there, what the sweet musical voice was saying over and
+over. Why had they gone away and left her alone to face this deadly
+peril which advanced on her step by step without mercy, time after
+time? Now there was nothing to do but to wait and stand it off.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She was sitting in the same chair, her umbrella still in her
+hand, waiting, when Agnes came in to say that she had lunch ready.
+She turned eyes of astonished anger and rebuke on her. "I don't
+want anything to eat," she said in so strange a voice that Agnes
+crept back to the kitchen, shuffling and scared.</p>
+<p>She was still sitting there, looking fixedly before her, and
+frowning, when Agnes came to the door to say timidly that the
+gentleman had come about using his car to meet the train, and
+wanted to know if he could see Mrs. Crittenden.</p>
+<p>Marise looked at her, frowning, and shook her head. But it was
+not until late that night that she understood the words that Agnes
+had spoken.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She was still sitting there, rigid, waiting, when Agnes brought
+in a lighted lamp, and Marise saw that evening had come. The light
+was extremely disagreeable to her eyes. She got up stiffly, and
+went outdoors to the porch, sitting down on the steps.</p>
+<p>The stars were beginning to come out now. The sight of them
+suggested something painful, some impression that belonged to that
+other world that had existed before this day, before she had
+conceived the possibility that Neale might not be Neale, might
+never have been Neale, that there was no such thing for her as
+human integrity. Was it she who had leaned out from the window and
+felt herself despised by the height and vastness of the stars? From
+the height and vastness of her need, she looked down on them now,
+and found them nothing, mere pin-pricks in the sky, compared to
+this towering doubt of her, this moral need which shouted down all
+the mere matter on the earth and in the heavens above the earth.
+Something eternal was at stake now, the faith in righteousness of a
+human soul.</p>
+<p>She had thought childishly, shallowly last night that she had
+had no faith, and could live with none. That was because she had
+not conceived what it would be to try to live without faith,
+because she had not conceived that the very ground under her feet
+could give way. At that very moment she had had a faith as
+boundless as the universe, and had forgotten it. And now it was put
+in doubt. She could not live without it. It was the only vital
+thing for her.</p>
+<p>Was she the woman who had felt forced into acquiescing when
+Vincent Marsh had said so boldly and violently, that she loved her
+husband no more, that he was nothing to her now? It seemed to her
+at this moment that it was a matter of the utmost unimportance
+whether she <i>loved</i> him or not; but she could not live without
+believing him. That was all. She could not live without that. Life
+would be too utterly base . . .</p>
+<p>Neale nothing to her? She did not know <i>what</i> he was to
+her, but the mere possibility of losing her faith in him was like
+death. It was a thousand times worse than death, which was merely
+material. This mattered a great deal more than the physical death
+of someone's body . . . it was the murder, minute by minute, hour
+by hour, month by month, year by year of all her married life, of
+all she had found lovable and tolerable and beautiful and real in
+life.</p>
+<p>Of course this could not be true . . . of course not . . . but
+if it were true, she would find the corrosive poison of a false
+double meaning in every remembered hour. She did not believe any of
+those hideously marshaled facts, but if they were true, she would
+go back over all those recollections of their life together and
+kill them one by one, because every hour of her life had been
+founded on the most unthinking, the most absolute, the most
+recklessly certain trust in Neale. To know that past in peril,
+which she had counted on as safe, more surely than on anything in
+life, so surely that she had almost dismissed it from her mind like
+a treasure laid away in a safe hiding-place . . . to know those
+memories in danger was a new torture that had never before been
+devised for any human being. No one had the safe and consecrated
+past taken from him. Its pricelessness shone on her with a blinding
+light. What if it should be taken away, if she should find she had
+never had it, at all . . . ?</p>
+<p>The idea was so acute an anguish to her that she startled
+herself by a cry of suffering.</p>
+<p>Agnes' voice behind her asked tremblingly, "Did you call me,
+Miss Marise?"</p>
+<p>Marise shifted her position, drew a breath, and answered in a
+hard tone, "No."</p>
+<p>She knew with one corner of her mind that Agnes must be
+terrified. What if she were? Marise's life-long habit of divining
+another's need and ministering to it, vanished like a handful of
+dust in a storm. What did she care about Agnes? What did she care
+about anything in the world but that she should have back again
+what she had valued so little as to lose it from her mind
+altogether? All of her own energy was strained in the bitterness of
+keeping her soul alive till Neale should come. She had not the
+smallest atom of strength to care about the needs of anyone
+else.</p>
+<p>She looked up at the stars, disdainful of them. How small they
+were, how unimportant in the scheme of things, so much less able to
+give significance to the universe, than the presence of integrity
+in a human soul.</p>
+<p>If she could have Neale back again, as she had always had him
+without thinking of it, if she could have her faith in him again,
+the skies might shrivel up like a scroll, but something eternal
+would remain in her life.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>It seemed to her that she heard a faint sound in the distance,
+on the road, and her strength ran out of her like water. She tried
+to stand up but could not.</p>
+<p>Yes, it was the car, approaching. The two glaring headlights
+swept the white road, stopped, and went out. For an instant the
+dark mass stood motionless in the starlight. Then something moved,
+a man's tall figure came up the path.</p>
+<p>"Is that you, Marise?" asked Neale's voice.</p>
+<p>She had not breath to speak, but all of her being cried out
+silently to him the question which had had all the day such a
+desperate meaning for her, "Is that <i>you</i>, Neale?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_IV" id="PART_IV"></a>PART IV</h2>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<h3>NEALE'S RETURN</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 22. Evening.</div>
+<p>He stooped to kiss her and sank down beside her where she sat
+cowering in the dark. Although she could not see his face clearly
+Marise knew from his manner that he was very tired, from the way he
+sat down, taking off his cap, and his attitude as he leaned his
+head back against the pillar. She knew this without thinking about
+it, mechanically, with the automatic certainty of a long-since
+acquired knowledge of him. And when he spoke, although his voice
+was quiet and level, she felt a great fatigue in his accent.</p>
+<p>But he spoke with his usual natural intonation, which he
+evidently tried to make cheerful. "I'm awfully glad you're still
+up, dear. I was afraid you'd be too tired, with the funeral coming
+tomorrow. But I couldn't get here any sooner. I've been clear over
+the mountain today. And I've done a pretty good stroke of business
+that I'm in a hurry to tell you about. You remember, don't you, how
+the Powers lost the title to their big woodlot? I don't know if you
+happen to remember all the details, how a lawyer named Lowder . .
+."</p>
+<p>"I remember," said Marise, speaking for the first time, "all
+about it."</p>
+<p>"Well," went on Neale, wearily but steadily, "up in Nova Scotia
+this time, talking with one of the old women in town, I ran across
+a local tradition that, in a town about ten miles inland, some of
+the families were descended from Tory Yankees who'd been exiled
+from New England, after the Revolution. I thought it was worth
+looking up, and one day I ran up there to see if I could find out
+anything about them. It was Sunday and I had to . . ."</p>
+<p>Marise was beside herself, her heart racing wildly. She took
+hold of his arm and shook it with all her might. "Neale, quick!
+quick! Leave out all that. <i>What did you do?</i>"</p>
+<p>She could see that he was surprised by her fierce impatience,
+and for an instant taken aback by the roughness of the
+interruption. He stared at her. How <i>slow</i> Neale was!</p>
+<p>He began, "But, dear, why do you care so much about it? You
+can't understand about what I did, if I don't tell you this part,
+the beginning, how I . . ." Then, feeling her begin to tremble
+uncontrollably, he said hastily, "Why, of course, Marise, if you
+want to know the end first. The upshot of it all is that I've got
+it straightened out, about the Powers woodlot. I got track of those
+missing leaves from the Ashley Town Records. They really were
+carried away by that uncle of yours. I found them up in Canada. I
+had a certified copy and tracing made of them. It's been a long
+complicated business, and the things only came in yesterday's mail,
+after you'd been called over here. But I'd been in correspondence
+with Lowder, and when I had my proofs in hand, I telephoned him and
+made him come over yesterday afternoon. It was one of the biggest
+satisfactions I ever expect to have, when I shoved those papers
+under his nose and watched him curl up. Then I took him back today,
+myself, to his own office, not to let him out of my sight, till it
+was all settled. There was a great deal more to it . . . two or
+three hours of fight. I bluffed some, about action by the
+bar-association, disbarment, a possible indictment for perjury, and
+seemed to hit a weak spot. And finally I saw him with my own eyes
+burn up that fake warranty-deed. And that's all there is to that.
+Just as soon as we can get this certified copy admitted and entered
+on our Town Records, 'Gene can have possession of his own
+wood-land. Isn't that good news?"</p>
+<p>He paused and added with a tired, tolerant, kindly accent, "Now
+Nelly will have fourteen pairs of new shoes, each laced higher up
+than the others, and I won't be the one to grudge them to her."</p>
+<p>He waited for a comment and, when none came, went on doggedly
+making talk in that resolutely natural tone of his. "Now that you
+know the end, and that it all came out right, you ought to listen
+to some details, for they are queer. The missing pages weren't in
+that first town I struck at all. Nothing there but a record of a
+family of Simmonses who had come from Ashley in 1778. They had . .
+."</p>
+<p>Marise heard nothing more of what he said, although his voice
+went on with words the meaning of which she could not grasp. It did
+not seem to her that she had really understood with the whole of
+her brain anything he had said, or that she had been able to take
+in the significance of it. She could think of nothing but a
+frightening sensation all over her body, as though the life were
+ebbing out of it. Every nerve and fiber in her seemed to have gone
+slack, beyond anything she had ever conceived. She could feel
+herself more and more unstrung and loosened like a violin string
+let down and down. The throbbing ache in her throat was gone.
+Everything was gone. She sat helpless and felt it slip away, till
+somewhere in the center of her body this ebbing of strength had run
+so far that it was a terrifying pain, like the approach of death.
+She was in a physical panic of alarm, but unable to make a sound,
+to turn her head.</p>
+<p>It was when she heard a loud insistent ringing in her head, and
+saw the stars waver and grow dim that she knew she was fainting
+away.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Then she was lying on the sofa in Cousin Hetty's sitting-room,
+Neale bending over her, holding a handkerchief which smelled of
+ammonia, and Agnes, very white, saying in an agitated voice, "It's
+because she hasn't eaten a thing all day. She wouldn't touch her
+lunch or supper. It's been turrible to see her."</p>
+<p>Marise's head felt quite clear and lucid now; her consciousness
+as if washed clean by its temporary absence from life. She tried to
+sit up and smile at Neale and Agnes. She had never fainted away in
+all her life before. She felt very apologetic and weak. And she
+felt herself in a queer, literal way another person.</p>
+<p>Neale sat down by her now and put his arm around her. His face
+was grave and solicitous, but not frightened, as Agnes was. It was
+like Neale not to lose his head. He said to Agnes, "Give me that
+cup of cocoa," and when it came, he held it to Marise's lips. "Take
+a good swallow of that," he said quietly.</p>
+<p>Marise was amazed to find that the hot sweet smell of the cocoa
+aroused in her a keen sensation of hunger. She drank eagerly, and
+taking in her hand the piece of bread and butter which Neale
+offered to her, she began to eat it with a child's appetite. She
+was not ashamed or self-conscious in showing this before Neale. One
+never needed to live up to any pose before Neale. His mere presence
+in the room brought you back, she thought, to a sense of reality.
+Sometimes if you had been particularly up in the air, it made you
+feel a little flat as she certainly did now. But how profoundly
+alive it made you feel, Neale's sense of things as they were.</p>
+<p>The food was delicious. She ate and drank unabashedly, finding
+it an exquisite sensation to feel her body once more normal, her
+usual home, and not a scaring, almost hostile entity, apart from
+her. When she finished, she leaned against Neale's shoulder with a
+long breath. For an instant, she had no emotion but relieved,
+homely, bodily comfort.</p>
+<p>"Well, for Heaven's sake!" said Neale, looking down at her.</p>
+<p>"I know it," she said. "I'm an awful fool."</p>
+<p>"No, you're not," he contradicted. "That's what makes me so
+provoked with you now, going without eating since morning."</p>
+<p>Agnes put in, "It's the suddenness of it that was such a shock.
+It takes me just so, too, comes over me as I start to put a
+mouthful of food into my mouth. I can't get it down. And you don't
+know how <i>lost</i> I feel not to have Miss Hetty here to tell me
+what to eat. I feel so gone!"</p>
+<p>"You must go to bed this minute," said Neale. "I'll go right
+back to the children."</p>
+<p>He remembered suddenly. "By George, I haven't had anything to
+eat since noon, myself." He gave Marise an apologetic glance. "I
+guess I haven't any stones to throw at your foolishness."</p>
+<p>Agnes ran to get him another cup of cocoa and some more bread
+and butter. Marise leaned back on the sofa and watched him eat.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She was aware of a physical release from tension that was like a
+new birth. She looked at her husband as she had not looked at him
+for years. And yet she knew every line and hollow of that rugged
+face. What she seemed not to have seen before, was what had grown
+up little by little, the expression of his face, the expression
+which gave his presence its significance, the expression which he
+had not inherited like his features, but which his life had wrought
+out there.</p>
+<p>Before her very eyes there seemed still present the strange,
+alien look of the dead face upstairs, from which the expression had
+gone, and with it everything. That vision hung, a cold and solemn
+warning in her mind, and through it she looked at the living face
+before her and saw it as she had never done before.</p>
+<p>In the clean, new, sweet lucidity of her just-returned
+consciousness she saw what she was not to forget, something like a
+steady, visible light, which was Neale's life. That was Neale
+himself. And as she looked at him silently, she thought it no
+wonder that she had been literally almost frightened to death by
+the mere possibility that it had not existed. She had been right in
+thinking that there was something there which would outlast the
+mere stars.</p>
+<p>He looked up, found her eyes on him, and smiled at her. She
+found the gentleness of his eyes so touching that she felt the
+tears mounting to her own. . . . But she winked them back. There
+had been enough foolishness from her, for one day.</p>
+<p>Neale leaned back in his chair now, looked around for his; cap,
+took it up, and looked back at her, quietly, still smiling a
+little. Marise thought, "Neale is as <i>natural</i> in his life as
+a very great actor is in his art. Whatever he does, even to the
+most trifling gesture, is done with so great a simplicity that it
+makes people like me feel fussy and paltry."</p>
+<p>There was a moment's silence, Neale frankly very tired, looking
+rather haggard and grim, giving himself a moment's respite in his
+chair before standing up to go; Marise passive, drawing long quiet
+breaths, her hands folded on her knees; Agnes, her back to the
+other two, hanging about the sideboard, opening and shutting the
+drawers, and shifting their contents aimlessly from one to the
+other.</p>
+<p>Then Agnes turned, and showed a shamed, nervous old face. "I
+don't know what's got into me, Miss Marise, that I ain't no good to
+myself nor anybody else. I'm afraid to go back into the kitchen
+alone." She explained to Neale, "I never was in the house with a
+dead body before, Mr. Crittenden, and I act like a baby about it,
+scared to let Mrs. Crittenden out of my sight. If I'm alone for a
+minute, seems 'sthough . . ." She glanced over her shoulder
+fearfully and ended lamely, "Seems 'sthough I don't know what might
+happen."</p>
+<p>"I won't leave you alone, Agnes, till it is all over," said
+Marise, and this time she kept contempt not only out of her voice,
+but out of her heart. She was truly only very sorry for the old
+woman with her foolish fears.</p>
+<p>Agnes blinked and pressed her lips together, the water in her
+eyes. "I'm awful glad to hear you say that!" she said
+fervently.</p>
+<p>Marise closed her eyes for a moment. It had suddenly come to her
+that this promise to Agnes meant that she could not see Neale alone
+till after the funeral, tomorrow, when she went back into life
+again. And she found that she immensely wanted to see him alone
+this very hour, now! And Agnes would be there . . . !</p>
+<p>She opened her eyes and saw Neale standing up, his cap in his
+hand, looking at her, rough and brown and tall and tired and
+strong; so familiar, every line and pose and color of him; as
+familiar and unexciting, as much a part of her, as her own
+hand.</p>
+<p>As their eyes met in the profound look of intimate
+interpenetration which can pass only between a man and a woman who
+have been part of each other, she felt herself putting to him
+clearly, piercingly, the question which till then she had not known
+how to form, "<i>Neale, what do you want me to do?</i>"</p>
+<p>She must have said it aloud, and said it with an accent which
+carried its prodigious import, for she saw him turn very white, saw
+his eyes deepen, his chest lift in a great heave. He came towards
+her, evidently not able to speak for a moment. Then he took her
+hands . . . the memory of a thousand other times was in his touch .
+. .</p>
+<p>He looked at her as though he could never turn his eyes away.
+The corners of his mouth twitched and drew down.</p>
+<p>He said, in a deep, trembling, solemn voice, "Marise, my
+darling, I want you always to do what is best for <i>you</i> to
+do."</p>
+<p>He drew a deep, deep breath as though it had taken all his
+strength to say that; and went on, "What is deepest and most living
+in you . . . that is what must go on living."</p>
+<p>He released one hand and held it out towards her as though he
+were taking an oath.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<h3>MARISE'S COMING-OF-AGE</h3>
+<div class='center'>July 23. Dawn</div>
+<p>Even after the old child, Agnes, had been soothed and reassured,
+over and over, till she had fallen asleep, and the house lay
+profoundly quiet, Marise felt not the slightest approach of
+drowsiness or even of fatigue. She lay down on her bed, but could
+not close her eyes. They remained wide open, looking not at a wild
+confusion of incoherent images as they had the night before, but
+straight into blackness and vacancy.</p>
+<p>It was strange how from the brawling turmoil of impressions
+which had shouted and cried out to her the night before, and had
+wrought her to frenzy by their insane insistence, not an echo
+reached her now. Her mind was as silent and intent as the old
+house, keeping its last mute watch over its mistress. Intent on
+what? She did not know. On something that was waiting for her, on
+something for which she was waiting.</p>
+<p>In an immense hush, like the dusky silence in a cathedral aisle
+or in the dark heart of the woods, there was something there
+waiting for her to go and find it.</p>
+<p>That hush had fallen on her at the sight of Neale's face, at the
+sound of his voice, as he had looked at her and spoken to her, at
+the last, just before he went away back to the children. Those
+furiously racing pulses of hers had been stilled by it into this
+steady rhythm which now beat quietly through her. The clashing
+thoughts which had risen with malevolent swiftness, like high,
+battling shadowy genii, and had torn her in pieces as they fought
+back and forth, were stilled as though a master-word had been
+spoken which they must all obey.</p>
+<p>The old house, silent under the stars, lay quiet in its vigil
+about her, but slept no more than she; the old house which had been
+a part of her childhood and her youth now watched over her entry
+into another part of her journey.</p>
+<p>For as she lay there, wide-awake, watching the light of the
+candle, she felt that she knew what was waiting for her, what she
+must go to find. It was her maturity.</p>
+<p>And as she lay quiet, her ears ringing in the solemn hush which
+Neale's look and voice had laid about her, she felt slowly coming
+into her, like a tide from a great ocean, the strength to go
+forward. She lay still, watching the candle-flame, hovering above
+the wick which tied it to the candle, reaching up, reaching up,
+never for a moment flagging in that transmutation of the dead
+matter below it, into something shining and alive.</p>
+<p>She felt the quiet strength come into her like a tide. And
+presently, as naturally as a child wakes in the morning, refreshed,
+and feels the impulse to rise to active effort again, she sat up in
+bed, folded her arms around her knees, and began to think.</p>
+<p>Really to think this time, not merely to be the helpless
+battle-field over which hurtling projectiles of fierce emotions
+passed back and forth! She set her life fairly there before her,
+and began to try to understand it.</p>
+<p>As she took this first step and saw the long journey stretching
+out before her, she knew on what staff she leaned. It was Neale's
+belief that she was strong and not weak, that she could find out,
+if she tried, what was deepest and most living in her heart. With
+this in her hand, with that great protecting hush about her, she
+set forth. She was afraid of what she might find, but she set
+forth.</p>
+<p>She must begin at the beginning this time, and go steadily
+forward from one step to the next, not her usual involuntary
+plunge, not the usual closing over her head of those yelling waters
+of too vivid impression.</p>
+<p>The beginning had been . . . yes, the first conscious beginning
+had been the going away of little Mark, out of his babyhood into
+his own child-life. He had gone out and left an empty place behind
+him, which till then had been filled with the insistent
+ever-present need for care for the physical weakness of babyhood.
+And she had known that never again would Mark fill that place.</p>
+<p>Emptiness, silence, solitude in the place of constant activity;
+it had frightened her, had set before her a vision that her life
+had reached its peak, and henceforth would go down the decline.
+Into that empty place had come a ringing, peremptory call back to
+personal and physical youth and excitement and burning sensations.
+And with that blinding rebirth of physical youth had come a doubt
+of all that had seemed the recompense for the loss of it, had come
+the conception that she might be letting herself be fooled and
+tricked out of the only real things.</p>
+<p>There had been many parts to this: her revolt from the mere
+physical drudgery of her life, from giving so much of her strength
+to the dull, unsavory, material things. This summer, a thousand
+times in a thousand ways, there had been brought home to her by
+Vincent, by Eugenia, the fact that there were lives so arranged
+that other people did all the drudgery, and left one free to
+perceive nothing but the beauty and delicacy of existence. Now,
+straight at it! With all the knowledge of herself and of life which
+she had gathered,&mdash;straight at it, to see what this meant! Did
+their entire freedom from drudgery give them a keener sense of the
+beauty and delicacy of existence? Were they more deeply alive
+because of the ease of their lives?</p>
+<p>She cast about her for evidence, in a firm, orderly search among
+the materials which life had brought to her. Had she seen anything
+which could give evidence on that? There was Eugenia; Eugenia and
+her friends had always lived that life of rich possessions and
+well-served ease. What had it made of them? Was their sense of
+beauty deeper and more living because of it? No, not in the
+least.</p>
+<p>She turned her inward eye on Eugenia's life, on the lives of the
+people in that circle, in a long searching gaze. Was it deep in
+eternal values? Was it made up of a constant recurrence of
+sensitive aliveness to what is most worth responding to? Odd, that
+it did not seem to be! They were petulant, and bored, and troubled
+about minute flaws in their ease, far more than they were deep in
+communion with beauty.</p>
+<p>Another piece of evidence came knocking at the door now, a
+picture of quaint and humble homeliness . . . herself standing
+before the stove with the roast on a plate, and little Mark saying
+fastidiously, "Oh, how nasty raw meat looks!" She recalled her
+passing impatience with the childishness of that comment, her
+passing sense of the puerile ignorance of the inherent unity of
+things, in such an attitude of eagerness to feed on results and
+unwillingness to take one's share of what leads up to results. Yes,
+it was more there, than in looking at Eugenia, that she could find
+evidence. Did she want to be of those who sat afar off and were
+served with the fine and delicate food of life, and knew nothing of
+the unsavory process of preparing it? It had seemed to her this
+summer, a thousand times with Vincent's eyes on her, scornful of
+her present life, that she did want it, that she wanted that more
+than anything else. Now let her look full at it. She was a grown
+woman now, who could foresee what it would mean.</p>
+<p>She looked full at it, set herself there in her imagination, in
+the remote ivory tower and looked out from its carven windows at
+the rough world where she had lived and worked, and from which she
+would henceforth be protected . . . and shut out. She looked long,
+and in the profound silence, both within and without her, she
+listened to the deepest of the voices in her heart.</p>
+<p>And she knew that it was too late for that. She had lived, and
+she could not blot out what life had brought to her. She could
+never now, with a tranquil heart, go into the ivory tower. It would
+do her no good to shut and bar the golden door a hundred times
+behind her, because she would have with her, everywhere she went,
+wrought into the very fiber of her being, a guilty sense of all the
+effort and daily strain and struggle in which she did not
+share.</p>
+<p>She saw no material good accomplished by taking her share. The
+existence in the world of so much drudgery and unlovely slavery to
+material processes was an insoluble mystery; but a life in which
+her part of it would be taken by other people and added to their
+own burdens . . . no, she had grown into something which could not
+endure that!</p>
+<p>Perhaps this was one of the hard, unwelcome lessons that the war
+had brought to her. She remembered how she had hated the simple
+comforts of home, the safety, the roof over her head, because they
+were being paid for by such hideous sufferings on the part of
+others; how she had been ashamed to lie down in her warm bed when
+she thought of Neale and his comrades in the trench-mud, in the
+cold horror of the long drenching nights, awaiting the attack; and
+she had turned sick to see the long trains of soldiers going out
+while she stayed safely behind and bore no part in the wretchedness
+which war is. There had been no way for her to take her part in
+that heavy payment for her safety and comfort; but the bitterness
+of those days had shocked her imagination alive to the shame of
+sharing and enjoying what she had not helped to pay for, to the
+disharmony of having more than your share while other people have
+less than theirs.</p>
+<p>This was nothing she had consciously sought for. She felt no
+dutiful welcome that it had come; she bent under it as under a
+burden. But it was there. Life had made her into one of the human
+beings capable of feeling that responsibility, each for all, and
+the war had driven it home, deep into her heart, whence she could
+not pluck it out.</p>
+<p>She might never have known it, never have thought of it, if she
+had been safely protected by ignorance of what life is like. But
+now she knew, living had taught her; and that knowledge was
+irrevocably part of the woman she had become.</p>
+<p>Wait now! Was this only habit, routine, dulled lack of divining
+imagination of what another life could be? That was the challenge
+Vincent would throw down. She gazed steadily at the wall before
+her, and called up, detail by detail, the life which Vincent Marsh
+thought the only one that meant richness and abundance for the
+human spirit. It hung there, a shimmering mass of lovely colors and
+exquisite textures and fineness and delicacy and beauty. And as she
+looked at it, it took on the shape of a glorious, uprooted plant,
+cut off from the very source of life, its glossy surfaces already
+beginning to wither and dull in the sure approach of corruption and
+decay. But what beauties were there to pluck, lovely fading
+beauties, poignant and exquisite sensations, which she was capable
+of savoring, which she sadly knew she would live and die without
+having known, a heritage into which she would never enter; because
+she had known the unforgettable taste of the other heritage, alive
+and rooted deep!</p>
+<p>This faded out and left her staring at the blank wall again,
+feeling old and stern.</p>
+<p>Nothing more came for a moment, and restless, feeling no bodily
+fatigue at all, she got out of her bed, took up the candle, and
+stepped aimlessly out into the hall. The old clock at the end
+struck a muffled stroke, as if to greet her. She held up her candle
+to look at it. Half-past two in the morning. A long time till dawn
+would come.</p>
+<p>She hesitated a moment and turned towards the door of a garret
+room which stood open. She had not been in there for so
+long,&mdash;years perhaps; but as a child she had often played
+there among the old things, come down from the dead, who were kept
+in such friendly recollection in this house. Near the door there
+had been an old, flat-topped, hair-covered trunk . . . yes, here it
+was, just as it had been. Nothing ever changed here. She sat down
+on it, the candle on the floor beside her, and saw herself as a
+little girl playing among the old things.</p>
+<p>A little girl! And now she was the mother of a little girl. So
+short a time had passed! She understood so very little more than
+when she had been the little girl herself. Yet now there was Elly
+who came and stood by her, and looked at her, and asked with all
+her eyes and lips and being, "Mother, what is the meaning of
+life?"</p>
+<p>What answer had she to give? Was she at all more fit than anyone
+else to try to give Elly the unknowable answer to that dark
+question? Was there any deep spiritual reality which counted at
+all, which one human being could give to another? Did we really
+live on desert islands, cut off so wholly from each other by the
+unplumbed, salt, estranging sea? And if we did, why break one's
+heart in the vain effort to do the impossible, to get from human
+beings what they could not give?</p>
+<p>Her heart ached in an old bitterness at the doubt. Did her
+children . . . could they . . . give her the love she wanted from
+them, in answer to her gift of her life to them? They were already
+beginning to go away from her, to be estranged from her, to shut
+her out of their lives, to live their lives with no place for her
+in them.</p>
+<p>She sat there on the old trunk and saw the endless procession of
+parents and children passing before her, the children so soon
+parents, all driven forward by what they could not understand,
+yearning and starving for what was not given them, all wrapped and
+dimmed in the twilight of their doubt and ignorance. Where were
+they going? And why? So many of them, so many!</p>
+<p>Her humbled spirit was prostrate before their mystery, before
+the vastness of the whole, of which she and her children were only
+a part, a tiny, lowly part.</p>
+<p>With this humbling sense of the greatness of the whole,
+something swollen and sore in her heart gave over its aching, as
+though a quieting hand had been laid on it. She drew a long breath.
+Oh, from what did it come, this rest from that sore bitterness?</p>
+<p>It came from this, that she had somehow been shown that what she
+wanted was not love from her children for herself. That was trying
+to drive a bargain to make them pay for something they had never
+asked to have. What she wanted was not to get love, to get a place
+in their lives for herself, to get anything from them, but to give
+them all that lay in her to give. If that was what she wanted, why,
+nothing, nothing could take it away. And it was truly . . . in this
+hour of silence and searching . . . she saw that it was truly what
+she wanted. It was something in her which had grown insensibly to
+life and strength, during all those uncounted hours of humble
+service to the children. And it was something golden and immortal
+in her poor, flawed, human heart.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>A warm bright wave of feeling swept over her . . . there,
+distinct and rounded against the shadowy confused procession of
+abstract ideas about parents and children, there stood looking at
+her out of their clear loving eyes, Paul and Elly and little Mark,
+alive, there, a part of her; not only themselves but her children;
+not only her children but themselves; human life which she and
+Neale had created out of the stuff of the universe. They looked at
+her and in their regard was the clear distillation of the
+innumerable past hours when they had looked at her with love and
+trust.</p>
+<p>At the sight of them, her own children, her heart swelled and
+opened wide to a conception of something greater and deeper in
+motherhood than she had had; but which she could have if she could
+deserve it; something so wide and sun-flooded that the old selfish,
+possessive, never-satisfied ache which had called itself love
+withered away, its power to hurt and poison her gone.</p>
+<p>She had no words for this . . . she could not even try to
+understand it. It was as solemn a birth-hour to her, as the hour
+when she had first heard the cry of her new-born babies . . . she
+was one mother then, she had become another mother now. She turned
+to bless the torment of bitter, doubting questioning of what she
+had called mother-love, which had forced her forward blindly
+struggling, till she found this divination of a greater
+possibility.</p>
+<p>She had been trying to span the unfathomable with a mean and
+grasping desire. Now she knew what she must try to do; to give up
+the lesser and receive the greater.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>This passed and left her, looking straight before her at the
+flickering shadows, leaping among the dusky corners of the dark
+slant-ceilinged room. The old clock struck three in the hall behind
+her.</p>
+<p>She felt tired now, as she had after the other travail which had
+given her her children, and leaned her head on her hand. Where did
+she herself, her own personal self come in, with all this? It was
+always a call to more effort which came. To get the great good
+things of life how much you had to give! How much of what seemed
+dearly yourself, you had to leave behind as you went forward! Her
+childhood was startlingly called up by this old garret, where
+nothing had changed: she could still see herself, running about
+there, happily absorbed in the vital trivialities of her ten years.
+She had not forgotten them, she knew exactly the thrill felt by
+that shadowy little girl as she leaned over the old chest yonder,
+and pulled out the deep-fringed shawl and quilted petticoat.</p>
+<p>It had been sweet to be a little girl, she thought wistfully, to
+have had no past, to know only the shining present of every day
+with no ominous, difficult future beyond it. Ineffably sweet too
+was the aroma of perfect trust in the strength and wisdom of
+grown-up people, which tinctured deep with certainty every
+profoundest layer of her consciousness. Ineffably sweet . . . and
+lost forever. There was no human being in the world as wise and
+strong as poor old Cousin Hetty had seemed to her then. A kingdom
+of security from which she was now shut out.</p>
+<p>And the games, the fantastic plays,&mdash;how whole and rounded
+and entire, the pleasure in them! She remembered the rainy day she
+had played paper-dolls here once, with little Margaret Congdon . .
+. dead, years ago, that much-loved playmate of past summer days . .
+. and how they had taken the chest for the house for Margaret's
+dolls, and the hair-trunk where she sat, for hers; how they had
+arranged them with the smallest of playthings, with paste-board
+furniture, and bits of colored tissue paper for rugs, and pieces of
+silk and linen from the rag-bag for bed-clothes; how they had
+hummed and whistled to themselves as they worked (she could hear
+them now!); and how the aromatic woodsy smell of the unfinished old
+room and the drone of the rain on the roof had been a part of their
+deep content.</p>
+<p>Nothing had changed in that room, except the woman who sat
+there.</p>
+<p>She got up with a sudden impulse, and threw back the lid of the
+trunk. A faint musty odor rose from it, as though it had been shut
+up for very long. And . . . why, there it was, the doll's room,
+just as they had left it, how long ago! How like this house! How
+like Cousin Hetty never to have touched it!</p>
+<p>She sat down on the floor and, lifting the candle, looked in at
+the yellowed old playthings, the flimsy, spineless paper-dolls, the
+faded silk rags, the discolored bits of papers, the misshapen
+staggering paste-board chairs and bed, which had seemed so
+delightful and enchanting to her then, far better than any actual
+room she knew. A homesickness for the past came over her. It was
+not only Margaret who was dead. The other little girl who had
+played there, who had hung so lovingly over this creation of her
+fancy, was dead too, Marise thought with a backward look of
+longing.</p>
+<p>And then the honest, unsparing habit of her life with Neale
+shook her roughly. This was sentimentalizing. If she could, would
+she give up what she had now and go back to being the little girl,
+deeply satisfied with make-shift toys, which were only the
+foreshadowings of what was to come? If she could, would she
+exchange her actual room at home, for this, even to have again all
+the unquestioning trust in everyone and everything of the child who
+had died in her heart? Would she choose to give up the home where
+her living children had been born, at no matter what cost of horrid
+pain to herself, and were growing up to no matter what dark
+uncertainties in life, for this toy inhabited by paper-dolls? No,
+no, she had gone on, gone on, and left this behind. Nor would she,
+if she could, exchange the darker, heavier, richer gifts for the
+bright small trinkets of the past.</p>
+<p>All this ran fluently from her mind, with a swiftness and
+clarity which seemed as shallow as it was rapid; but now there
+sounded in her ears a warning roar of deeper waters to which this
+was carrying her.</p>
+<p>Before she knew what was coming, she braced herself to meet it;
+and holding hard and ineffectually, felt herself helplessly swept
+out and flung to the fury of the waves . . . and she met them with
+an answering tumult of welcome. That was what Vincent Marsh could
+do for her, wanted to do for her,&mdash;that wonderful, miraculous
+thing,&mdash;give back to her something she had thought she had
+left behind forever; he could take her, in the strength of her
+maturity with all the richness of growth, and carry her back to
+live over again the fierce, concentrated intensity of newly-born
+passion which had come into her life, and gone, before she had had
+the capacity to understand or wholly feel it. He could lift her
+from the dulled routine of life beginning to fade and lose its
+colors, and carry her back to the glorious forgetfulness of every
+created thing, save one man and one woman.</p>
+<p>She had had a glimpse of that, in the first year of her married
+life, had had it, and little by little had lost it. It had crumbled
+away insensibly, between her fingers, with use, with familiarity,
+with the hateful blunting of sensitiveness which life's battering
+always brings. But she could have it again; with a grown woman's
+strength and depth of feeling, she could have the inheritance of
+youth. She had spent it, but now she could have it again. That was
+what Vincent meant.</p>
+<p>He seemed to lean over her now, his burning, quivering hand on
+hers. She felt a deep hot flush rise to her face, all over her
+body. She was like a crimson rose, offering the splendor of its
+maturity to be plucked. Let her have the courage to know that its
+end and aim and fulfilment lay in being plucked and gloriously worn
+before the coming of the inevitable end! Thus and thus only could
+one find certainty, before death came, of having lived as deeply as
+lay in one to live.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Through the glowing pride and defiance with which she felt
+herself rise to the challenge, felt herself strong to break and
+surmount all obstacles within and without, which stood in the way
+of that fulfilment of her complete self, she had heard . . . the
+slightest of trivialities . . . a thought gone as soon as it was
+conceived . . . nothing of the slightest consequence . . . harmless
+. . . insignificant . . . yet why should it give off the betraying
+clink of something flawed and cracked? . . . She had heard . . . it
+must have come from some corner of her own mind . . . something
+like this, "Set such an alternative between routine, traditional,
+narrow domestic life, and the mightiness and richness of mature
+passion, before a modern, free European woman, and see how quickly
+she would grasp with all her soul for passion."</p>
+<p>What was there about this, the veriest flying mote among a
+thousand others in the air, so to awaken in Marise's heart a deep
+vibration of alarm? Why should she not have said that? she asked
+herself, angry and scared. Why was it not a natural thought to have
+had? She felt herself menaced by an unexpected enemy, and flew to
+arms.</p>
+<p>Into the rich, hot, perfumed shrine which Vincent's remembered
+words and look had built there about her, there blew a thin cool
+breath from the outside, through some crack opened by that casual
+thought. Before she even knew from whence it came, Marise cried out
+on it, in a fury of resentment . . . and shivered in it.</p>
+<p>With no apparent volition of her own, she felt something very
+strong within her raise a mighty head and look about, stirred to
+watchfulness and suspicion by that luckless phrase.</p>
+<p>She recognized it . . . the habit of honesty of thought, not
+native to Marise's heart, but planted there by her relation with
+Neale's stark, plain integrity. Feeding unchecked on its own food,
+during the long years of her marriage it had grown insensibly
+stronger and stronger, till now, tyrant and master, with the
+irresistible strength of conscious power, it could quell with a
+look all the rest of her nature, rich in colored possibilities of
+seductive self-deceit, sweet illusions, lovely falsities.</p>
+<p>She could no more stop its advance now, straight though it made
+its way over treasures she fain would keep, than she could stop the
+beating of her heart.</p>
+<p>A ruthless question or two . . . "Why did you say that about
+what a modern, free European woman would do in your place? Are you
+trying to play up to some trumpery notion of a r&ocirc;le to fill?
+And more than this, did you really mean in your heart an actual,
+living woman of another race, such as you knew in Europe; or did
+you mean somebody in an Italian, or a French, or a Scandinavian
+book?" Marise writhed against the indignity of this, protested
+fiercely, angrily against the incriminating imputation in it . . .
+and with the same breath admitted it true.</p>
+<p>It was true. She was horrified and lost in grief and humiliation
+at the cheapened aspect of what had looked so rich before. Had
+there been in truth an element of such trashy copying of the
+conventional pose of revolt in what had seemed so rushingly
+spontaneous? Oh no, no . . . not that!</p>
+<p>She turned away and away from the possibility that she had been
+partially living up to other people's ideas, finding it
+intolerable; and was met again and again by the relentless thrust
+of that acquired honesty of thought which had worn such deep
+grooves in her mind in all these years of unbroken practice of it.
+"You are not somebody in a book, you are not a symbol of modern
+woman who must make the gestures appropriate for your part . . ."
+One by one, that relentless power seated in her many-colored
+tumultuous heart put out the flaring torches.</p>
+<p>It had grown too strong for her, that habit of honesty of
+thought and action. If this struggle with it had come years before
+she could have mastered it, flinging against it the irresistible
+suppleness and lightness of her ignorant youth. But now, freighted
+heavily with experience of reality, she could not turn and bend
+quickly enough to escape it.</p>
+<p>It had profited too well by all those honest years with Neale .
+. . never to have been weakened by a falsehood between them, by a
+shade of pretense of something more, or different from what really
+was there. That habit held her mercilessly to see what was there
+now. She could no more look at what was there and think it
+something else, than she could look with her physical eyes at a
+tree and call it a dragon.</p>
+<p>If it had only been traditional morality, reproaching her with
+traditional complaints about the overstepping of traditional
+bounds, how she could have overwhelmed it, drowned out its feeble
+old voice, with eloquent appeals for the right to growth, to
+freedom, to the generous expansion of the soul, of the personality,
+which Vincent Marsh could give. But honesty only asked her
+neutrally, "Is it really growth and freedom, and generous expansion
+of the soul?" Poor Marise felt her arms fall to her side, piteous
+and defenseless. No, it was not.</p>
+<p>It was with the flatness of accent which she hated, which was so
+hard for her, that she made the admission. It was physical
+excitement,&mdash;that was what it was. Physical excitement, that
+was what Vincent Marsh could give her which Neale no longer could.
+. . . That and great ease of life, which Neale never would. There
+was a pause in which she shivered, humiliated. She added lamely to
+this, a guessed-at possibility for aesthetic sympathy and
+understanding, perhaps more than Neale could . . . and broke off
+with a qualm of sickness. How horrid this was! How it offended a
+deep sense of personal dignity and decency! How infinitely more
+beautiful and gracious those rolling clouds of vagueness and
+impulsive illusion!</p>
+<p>But at least, when it had extracted the plain, bare statement
+which it had hunted down through the many-recessed corners of her
+heart, that stern sense of reality let her alone. She no longer
+felt like a beetle impaled on a pin. She was free now to move as
+she liked and look unmolested at what she pleased. Honesty had no
+more power over her than to make sure she saw what she was
+pretending to look at.</p>
+<p>But at what a diminished pile she had now to look, tarnished and
+faded like the once-loved bits of bright-colored silk and paper.
+She felt robbed and cried out in a pain which seemed to her to come
+from her very heart, that something living and vital and precious
+to her had been killed by that rough handling. But one warning look
+from the clear eyes of honesty forced her, lamenting, to give up
+even this. If it had been living and precious and vital to her, it
+would have survived anything that honesty could have done to
+it.</p>
+<p>But something had survived, something to be reckoned with,
+something which no tyrant, overbearing honesty could put out of her
+life . . . the possibility for being carried away in the deep full
+current of passion, fed by all the multitudinous streams of ripened
+personality. If that was all that was left, was not that enough? It
+had been for thousands of other women. . . .</p>
+<p>No, not that; honesty woke to menace again. What thousands of
+other women had done had no bearing here. She was not thousands of
+other women. She was herself, herself. Would it be enough for
+her?</p>
+<p>Honesty issued a decree of impartial justice. Let her look at it
+with a mature woman's experienced divination of reality, let her
+look at it as it would be and see for herself if it would be
+enough. She was no girl whose ignorance rendered her incapable of
+judging until she had literally experienced. She was no
+bound-woman, bullied by the tyranny of an outgrown past, forced to
+revolt in order to attain the freedom without which no human
+decision can be taken. Neale's strong hand had opened the door to
+freedom and she could see what the bound-women could not . . . that
+freedom is not the end, but only the beginning.</p>
+<p>It was as though something were holding her gripped and upright
+there, staring before her, motionless, till she had put herself to
+the last supreme test. She closed her eyes, and sat so immobile,
+rapt in the prodigious effort of her imagination and will, that she
+barely breathed. How would it be? Would it be enough? She plunged
+the plummet down, past the fury and rage of the storm on the
+surface, past the teeming life of the senses, down to the depths of
+consciousness. . . .</p>
+<p>And what she brought up from those depths was a warning
+distaste, a something offending to her, to all of her, now she was
+aware of it.</p>
+<p>She was amazed. Why should she taste an acrid muddy flavor of
+dregs in that offered cup of heavy aromatic wine, she who had all
+her life thanked Heaven for her freedom from the ignominy of
+feeling it debasing to be a woman who loved? It was glorious to be
+a woman who loved. There had been no dregs left from those sweet,
+light, heady draughts she and Neale had drunk together in their
+youth, nor in the quieter satisfying draughts they knew now. What
+was the meaning of that odor of decay about what seemed so living,
+so hotly more living than what she had? Why should she have this
+unmistakable prescience of something stale and tainting which she
+had never felt? Was she too old for passion? But she was in the
+height of her physical flowering, and physically she cried out for
+it. Could it be that, having spent the heritage of youth, she could
+not have it again? Could it be that one could not go back, there,
+any more than . . .</p>
+<p>Oh, what did that bring to mind? What was that fleeting cobweb
+of thought that seemed a recurrence of a sensation only recently
+passed? When she had tried to tell herself that full-fruited
+passion was worth all else in life, was the one great and real
+thing worth all the many small shams . . . what was it she had
+felt?</p>
+<p>She groped among the loose-hanging filaments of impression and
+brought it out to see. It seemed to be . . . could it have been,
+the same startled recoil as at the notion of getting back the peace
+of childhood by giving up her home for the toy-house; her living
+children for the dolls?</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Now, for the great trial of strength. Back! Push back all those
+thick-clustering, intruding, distracting traditional ideas of other
+people on both sides; the revolt on one hand, the feeble
+resignation on the other; what other women did; what people had
+said. . . . Let her wipe all that off from the too-receptive
+tablets of her mind. Out of sight with all that. This was
+<i>her</i> life, <i>her</i> question, hers alone. Let her stand
+alone with her own self and her own life, and, with honesty as
+witness, ask herself the question . . . would she, if she could,
+give up what she was now, with her myriads of roots, deep-set in
+the soil of human life, in order to bear the one red rose, splendid
+though it might be?</p>
+<p>That was the question.</p>
+<p>With no conscious volition of hers, the answer was there, plain
+and irrefutable as a fact in the physical world. No, she would not
+choose to do that. She had gone on, gone on beyond that. She was
+almost bewildered by the peremptory certainty with which that
+answer came, as though it had lain inherent in the very
+question.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>And now another question crowded forward, darkly confused,
+charged with a thousand complex associations and emotions. There
+had been something displeasing and preposterous in the idea of
+trying to stoop her grown stature and simplify her complex tastes
+and adult interests back into the narrow limits of a child's
+toy-house. Could it be that she felt something of the same
+displeasure when she set herself fully to conceive what it would be
+to cramp herself and her complex interests and adult affections
+back to . . .</p>
+<p>But at this there came a wild protesting clamor, bursting out to
+prevent her from completing this thought; loud, urgent voices,
+men's, women's, with that desperate certainty of their ground which
+always struck down any guard Marise had been able to put up. They
+cried her down as a traitor to the fullness of life, those voices,
+shouting her down with all the unquestioned authority she had
+encountered so many times on that terribly vital thing, the printed
+page; they clashed in their fury and all but drowned each other
+out. Only disconnected words reached her, but she recognized the
+well-known sentences from which they came . . . "puritanism . . .
+abundance of personality . . . freedom of development . . . nothing
+else vital in human existence . . . prudishness . . .
+conventionality . . . our only possible contact with the
+life-purpose . . . with the end of passion life declines and
+dies."</p>
+<p>The first onslaught took Marise's breath, as though a literal
+storm had burst around her. She was shaken as she had been shaken
+so many times before. She lost her hold on her staff . . . <i>what
+had that staff been?</i></p>
+<p>At the thought, the master-words came to her mind again; and all
+fell quiet and in a great hush waited on her advance. Neale had
+said, "What is deepest and most living in <i>you</i>." Well, what
+<i>was</i> deepest and most living in her? That was what she was
+trying to find out. That was what those voices were trying to cry
+her down from finding.</p>
+<p>For the first time in all her life, she drew an inspiration from
+Neale's resistance to opposition, knew something of the joy of
+battle. What right had those people to cry her down? She would not
+submit to it.</p>
+<p>She would go back to the place where she had been set upon by
+other people's voices, other people's thoughts, and she would go on
+steadily, thinking her own.</p>
+<p>She had been thinking that there <i>was</i> the same displeasure
+and distaste as when she had thought of returning to her literal
+childhood, when she set herself fully to conceive what it would be
+to cramp herself and simplify her complex interests and affections
+back to the narrow limits of passion, which like her play with
+dolls had been only a foreshadowing of something greater to
+come.</p>
+<p>She spoke it out boldly now, and was amazed that not one of the
+clamorous voices dared resist the authenticity of her statement.
+But after all, how would they dare? This was what she had found in
+her own heart, what they had not been able, for all their clamor,
+to prevent her from seeing. She had been strong enough to beat
+them, to stand out against them, to say that she saw what she
+really did see, and felt what she really did feel. She did not feel
+what traditionally she should feel, that is what a primitive
+Italian woman might feel, all of whose emotional life had found no
+other outlet than sex. . . .</p>
+<p>Well, if it was so, it was so. For better or for worse, that was
+the kind of woman she had become, with the simple, forthright
+physical life subordinate, humble; like a pleasant, lovable child
+playing among the strong, full-grown, thought-freighted interests
+and richly varied sympathies and half-impersonal joys and sorrows
+which had taken possession of her days. And she could not think
+that the child could ever again be master of her destiny, any more
+than (save in a moment of false sentimentality) she could think
+that she would like to have her horizon again limited by a
+doll-house. To be herself was to go on, not to go back, now that
+she knew what she had become. It seemed to her that never before
+had she stood straight up.</p>
+<p>And in plain fact she found that somehow she had risen to her
+feet and was now standing, her head up, almost touching the rafters
+of the slant ceiling. She could have laughed out, to find herself
+so free. She knew now why she had never known the joy of battle. It
+was because she had been afraid. And she had been afraid because
+she had never dared to enter the battle, had always sent others in
+to do her fighting for her. Now she had been forced into it and had
+won. And there was nothing to be afraid of, there!</p>
+<p>She spread out her arms in a great gesture of liberation. How
+had she ever lived before, under the shadow of that coward fear?
+This . . . this . . . she had a moment of vision . . . this was
+what Neale had been trying to do for her, all these years,
+unconsciously, not able to tell her what it was, driving at the
+mark only with the inarticulate wisdom of his love for her, his
+divination of her need. He had seen her, shivering and shrinking in
+the shallow waters, and had longed for her sake to have her strike
+out boldly into the deep. But even if he had been ever so able to
+tell her, she would not have understood till she had fought her way
+through those ravening breakers, beyond them, out into the
+sustaining ocean.</p>
+<p>How long it took, how <i>long</i> for men and women to make the
+smallest advance! And how the free were the only ones who could
+help to liberate the bound. How she had fought against Neale's
+effort to set her free, had cried to him that she dared not risk
+herself on the depths, that he must have the strength to swim for
+her . . . and how Neale, doggedly sure of the simple truth, too
+simple for her to see, had held to the certainty that his effort
+would not make her strong, and that she would only be free if she
+were strong.</p>
+<p>Neale being his own master, a free citizen of life, knew what a
+kingdom he owned, and with a magnanimity unparalleled could not
+rest till she had entered hers. She, not divining what she had not
+known, had only wished to make the use of his strength which would
+have weakened her. Had there ever before been any man who refused
+to let the woman he loved weaken herself by the use of his
+strength? Had a man ever before held out his strong hand to a woman
+to help her forward, not to hold her fast?</p>
+<p>Her life was her own. She stood in it, knowing it to be an
+impregnable fortress, knowing that from it she could now look
+abroad fearlessly and understandingly, knowing that from it she
+could look at things and men and the world and see what was there.
+From it she could, as if for the first time, look at Vincent Marsh
+when next she saw him; she would look to see what was really there.
+That was all. She would look at him and see what he was, and then
+she would know the meaning of what had happened, and what she was
+to do. And no power on earth could prevent her from doing it. The
+inner bar that had shut her in was broken. She was a free woman,
+free from that something in her heart that was afraid. For the
+moment she could think of nothing else beyond the richness of that
+freedom. Why, here was the total fulfilment she had longed for.
+Here was the life more abundant, within, within her own heart,
+waiting for her!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The old clock in the hall behind her sounded four muffled
+strokes and, as if it had wakened her, Agnes stirred in her bed and
+cried out in a loud voice of terror, "Oh, come quick, Miss Marise!
+Come!"</p>
+<p>Marise went through the hail and to her door, and saw the
+frightened old eyes glaring over the pulled-up sheet. "Oh . . . oh
+. . . it's you . . . I thought. . . . Oh, Miss Marise, don't you
+see anything standing in that corner? Didn't you hear. . . . Oh,
+Miss Marise, I must have had a bad dream. I thought . . ." Her
+teeth were chattering. She did not know what she was saying.</p>
+<p>"It's all right, Agnes," said Marise soothingly, stepping into
+the room. "The big clock just struck four. That probably wakened
+you."</p>
+<p>She sat down on the bed and laid her hand firmly on Agnes'
+shoulder, looking into the startled old eyes, which grew a little
+quieter now that someone else was there. What a pitiable creature
+Agnes' dependence on Cousin Hetty had made of her.</p>
+<p>Like the boom from a great bell came the thought, "That is what
+I wanted Neale to make of me, when the crucial moment came, a
+dependent . . . but he would not."</p>
+<p>"What time did you say it is?" Agnes asked, still breathing
+quickly but with a beginning of a return to her normal voice.</p>
+<p>"Four o'clock," answered Marise gently, as to a child. "It must
+be almost light outside. The last night when you have anything to
+fear is over now."</p>
+<p>She went to the window and opened the shutter. The ineffable
+sacred pureness of another dawn came in, gray, tranquil,
+penetrating.</p>
+<p>At the sight of it, the dear light of everyday, Marise felt the
+thankful tears come to her eyes.</p>
+<p>"See, Agnes," she said in an unsteady voice, "daylight has come.
+You can look around for yourself, and see that there is nothing to
+be afraid of."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<h3>MARISE LOOKS AND SEES WHAT IS THERE</h3>
+<div class='center'><i>A Torch in a Living Tree</i><br />
+<br />
+July 24.</div>
+<p>Not since his fiery, ungovernable youth had Vincent felt
+anything like the splendid surge of rich desire and exultant
+certainty which sent him forward at a bound along the wood-road
+into which he had seen Marise turn. The moment he had been watching
+for had come at last, after these three hideous days of sudden
+arrest and pause. The forced inaction had been a sensation
+physically intolerable to him, as though he had been frozen
+immobile with every nerve and muscle strained for a great leap.</p>
+<p>He felt himself taking the leap now, with such a furious,
+triumphant sense of power released, that he came up beside her like
+a wind in the forest, calling her name loudly, his hands outflung,
+his face glowing, on fire with joy and his need for her.</p>
+<p>For an instant he was dumfounded by the quiet face she turned on
+him, by his instant perception of a profound change in her, by an
+expression in her long dark eyes which was new to him, which he
+felt to be ominous to him. But he was no untried boy to be cast
+down or disconcerted by sudden alterations of mood in a woman. He
+was a man, with a man's trained tenacity of purpose and experienced
+quickness of resource.</p>
+<p>He wasted no time. "What has happened to you?" he demanded,
+peremptorily as by right to know, and with the inner certainty of
+over-riding it, whatever it was.</p>
+<p>She did not seem tacitly or otherwise to deny his right to know,
+but she seemed to have no words for it, continuing to look at him
+silently, intently, with no hostility, with a sort of steady,
+wondering attention in her face, usually so sensitively changing.
+He felt a resentment at its quiet, at its lack of that instant
+responsiveness to his look which had given him such moments of
+exquisite pleasure, which had been her own, her wonderful gift to
+him. She was looking at him now as she might have looked at any one
+else, merely in order to see what was there.</p>
+<p>Well, he would show her what was there! The will to conquer rose
+high and strong in him, with an element of fierceness it had not
+had before because no resistance had called it out. He did not show
+this, indeed only allowed it the smallest corner of his
+consciousness, keeping all the rest tautly on the alert for the
+first indication of an opening, for the first hint of where to
+throw his strength.</p>
+<p>But standing in suspense on the alert was the last r&ocirc;le he
+could long endure, and in a moment, when she did not answer, he
+took a step towards her, towering above her, his hands on her
+shoulders, pouring out with a hot sense of release all his longing
+into the cry, "Marise, Marise my own, what has happened to
+you?"</p>
+<p>How he hated the quiet of her face! With what hungry impatience
+he watched to see it break. How surely he counted on its
+disappearance at his touch. For he had the certainty of his power
+to kindle her left intact from the last time he had seen her,
+tinder to his spark, helplessly played upon by his voice.</p>
+<p>But now it was as though he had held a torch aloft into the
+green branches of a living tree. A twitch of surface agitation on
+her face and that was all.</p>
+<p>And when she spoke, as she did at once, the sound of her voice
+was strange and alien to him. With an extreme directness, and with
+a deep sincerity of accent which, even to his ears, made his own
+impassioned outcry to her sound inflated and false, she said
+earnestly, "I don't believe I can tell you what has happened. I
+don't believe you could understand it."</p>
+<p>He did not believe a word of this, but with his brilliant
+suppleness of mind he perceived that he was in the wrong key. She
+was not, for the moment, to be kindled to flame, she who
+miraculously was never the same. Perhaps it was the moment for a
+thrust of sheer power, straight at the obstacle, for of course he
+knew the obstacle.</p>
+<p>"I know what has happened," he said, "without your telling me.
+Your husband has made a scene, and overborne you, and is trying to
+force you back into the hen-yard of domestic virtue. . . ." He
+changed his manner. He said in a low, beautiful, persuasive voice,
+his eyes deeply on her, sure of himself with that sureness that no
+one had ever resisted, "But you can never do that now, you
+bird-of-paradise! You would only . . ."</p>
+<p>He was brought up short by a change in her. This time his words
+had had the power to move her face from the quiet he hated. It was
+suddenly alive with a strong emotion. But what emotion? He could
+not guess at its meaning, nor why she should step quickly away,
+shaking his hands from her shoulders, and looking at him sadly, her
+eyebrows drawn up as if in pain. He hung uncertain, daunted by his
+inability to read her face, feeling for the first time an instantly
+dismissed doubt of his mastery over her.</p>
+<p>She said very quickly, with the accent and manner of one who,
+shocked and pitying, tries to save another from going on with an
+involuntary disclosure in him of something shaming and
+unworthy.</p>
+<p>"No, oh no! Not that. Neale has done nothing . . . said nothing
+. . . except as he always has, to leave me quite free, all
+free."</p>
+<p>As he was silent for a moment, watchful, not especially moved by
+her words, which seemed to him unimportant, but alarmed by some
+special significance which they seemed to have for her, she went on
+with the single, only note of blame or reproach which was to come
+into her voice. "Oh, how <i>could</i> you think that?" she said to
+him, with a deep quavering disappointment, as though she were
+ashamed of him.</p>
+<p>He knew that he was the cause of the disappointment, although he
+could not imagine why, and he regretted having made a false move;
+but he was not deeply concerned by this passage. He did not see how
+it could have any importance, or touch what lay at issue between
+them. These were all womanish, up-in-the-air passes and parries. He
+had only not yet found his opening.</p>
+<p>He flung his head back impatiently. "If it is not that, what is
+it?" he demanded. "A return of hide-bound scruples about the
+children? You know that they must live their own lives, not yours,
+and that anything that gives you greater richness and power makes
+you a better mother."</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, I know that," she answered. "I have thought of that,
+myself."</p>
+<p>But he had a baffled feeling that this was not at all the
+admission the words would make it seem.</p>
+<p>His impatience began to burn high, and a dawning alarm to
+translate itself into anger. He would not be played with, by any
+woman who ever lived! "Marise," he said roughly, "what under the
+sun is it?" In his tone was all his contemptuous dismissal of it,
+whatever it might be . . . outworn moral qualms, fear of the
+world's opinion, inertia, cowardice, hair-splitting scruples, or
+some morbid physical revulsion . . . there was not one of them
+which he knew he could not instantly pounce on and shake to
+rags.</p>
+<p>Marise stood very still, her eyes bent downward. "Aren't you
+going to answer me?" he said, furious.</p>
+<p>She nodded. "Yes, I'm going to answer you," she said, without
+raising her eyes. He understood that he must wait, and stood
+opposite to her, close to her, looking at her, all the strength of
+his passion in that avid gaze.</p>
+<p>She was stamped on his mind in every detail as she looked at
+that instant, infinitely desirable, infinitely alluring, in her
+thin white dress, her full supple woman's body erect and firm with
+a strong life of its own, her long sensitive hands clasped before
+her . . . how many times in his dreams had he held them in his . .
+. her shining dark hair bound smoothly about her head and down low
+on each side of her rounded forehead. Her thick white eyelids,
+down-dropped, were lowered over her eyes, and her mouth with its
+full lips and deep corners . . . at the sight of her mouth on which
+he had laid that burning kiss, Vincent felt a barrier within him
+give way . . . here he was at last with the woman he loved, the
+woman who was going to give herself to him . . . Good God! all
+these words . . . what did they mean? Nothing. He swept her into
+his arms and drew her face to his, his eyes closed, lost in the
+wonder and ecstasy of having reached his goal at last.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>She did not make the startled virginal resistance of a girl. She
+drew away from him quietly . . . the hatred for that quiet was
+murderous in him . . . and shook her head. Why, it was almost
+gently that she shook her head.</p>
+<p>How dared she act gently to him, as though he were a boy who had
+made a mistake! How dared she not be stirred and mastered! He felt
+his head burning hot with anger, and knew that his face must be
+suffused with red.</p>
+<p>And hers was not, it was quiet. He could have stamped with rage,
+and shaken her. He wanted to hurt her at once, deeply, to pierce
+her and sting her back to life. "Do you mean," he said brutally,
+"that you find, after all, that you are a cold, narrow, cowardly,
+provincial woman, stunted by your life, so that you are incapable
+of feeling a generous heat?"</p>
+<p>As she remained silent, he was stung by the expression on her
+face which he did not understand. He went on vindictively snatching
+up to drive home his thrust the sharpest and cruelest weapon he
+could conceive, "<i>Perhaps you find you are too old?</i>"</p>
+<p>At this she looked away from him for an instant, up to the lower
+branches of the oak under which they stood. She seemed to reflect,
+and when she brought her eyes back to his, she answered, "Yes, I
+think that is it. I find I am too old."</p>
+<p>He was for years to ponder on the strangeness of the accent with
+which she said this, without regret, with that damnable gentleness
+as though to hide from him a truth he might find hard to bear, or
+be incapable of understanding.</p>
+<p>How could any woman say "I find I am too old" with that
+unregretting accent? Was it not the worst of calamities for all
+women to grow old? What was there left for a woman when she grew
+old?</p>
+<p>But how preposterous, her saying that, she who stood there in
+the absolute perfection of her bloom!</p>
+<p>He found that he did not know what to say next. That tolerant
+acquiescence of hers in what he had meant to sting intolerably . .
+. it was as though he had put all his force into a blow that would
+stun, and somehow missing his aim, encountering no resistance, was
+toppling forward with the impetus of his own effort. He recovered
+himself and looked at her, choking, "You don't mean . . ." he began
+challenging her incredulously, and could go no further.</p>
+<p>For she nodded, her eyes on his with that singular expression in
+them which he did not understand, and which he intensely
+resented.</p>
+<p>He was so angry that for a moment he could not speak. He was
+aware of nothing but anger. "It's impotence and weakness on your
+part, that's all it is!" he cast out at her, hating her savagely as
+he spoke, "no matter what fine words you've decided to call it to
+cloak your own feebleness. It's the littleness of the vital spark
+in you. Or it's cowardly inertia, turning from the real fulfilment
+that calls for you, back to chips and straw because you are used to
+them. It's being a small, poor, weak, cowed creature,
+traditional-minded, instead of the splendid, brave, living woman I
+thought I loved. I am <i>glad</i> to leave you behind, to have no
+more of you in my life. I have no use for thin-blooded
+cowards."</p>
+<p>She made no answer at all, not a word. His flaming eyes fell
+away from her face. He turned from her abruptly and walked rapidly
+away, not looking back.</p>
+<p>Then he found he had ceased to advance rapidly, had stopped and
+was standing still, wrung in so dreadful a pain that his hand was
+at his side as though he had been stabbed. With no thought, with no
+awareness of what he was doing, he ran back to her, his hands
+outstretched, suffering so that he must have help. He did not mean
+to speak, did not know what he was to say . . . he cried out to
+her, "Marise, Marise . . . I love you! <i>What can I do?</i>"</p>
+<p>The cry was desperate, involuntary, forcing its way out from
+unfathomed depths of feeling below all his anger and resentment,
+and tearing him to pieces as it came. It was as though he had taken
+his heart out and flung it at her feet.</p>
+<p>Her face changed instantly and was quiveringly alight with a
+pale and guilty agitation. "No . . . oh <i>no</i>, Vincent! I
+thought you only . . . I had thought you could not really . . .
+Vincent, forgive me! Forgive me!" She took one of his hands in both
+hers . . . the last unforgotten touch he was ever to have of her. .
+. .</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>It came to him through those words which he did not understand
+that she was pitying him; and stung to the quick, he drew back from
+her, frowning, with an angry toss of his head.</p>
+<p>Instantly she drew back also, as though she had misinterpreted
+something.</p>
+<p>He stood for an instant looking full at her as though he did not
+see her; and then with a wide gesture of utter bewilderment,
+strange from him, he passed her without a look.</p>
+<p>This time he did not turn back, but continued steadily and
+resolutely on his way.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER
+XXVII</h2>
+<h3>THE FALL OF THE BIG PINE</h3>
+<div class='center'>August 2.<br />
+<br />
+<b>I</b></div>
+<p>When Marise reached the place on the wood-road where she had had
+that last talk with Vincent Marsh, she stopped, postponing for a
+moment the errand to the Powers which she had so eagerly
+undertaken. She stood there, looking up into the far green tops of
+the pines, seeing again that strange, angry, bewildered gesture
+with which he had renounced trying to make anything out of her, and
+had turned away.</p>
+<p>It remained with her, constantly, as the symbol of what had
+happened, and she looked at it gravely and understandingly. Then,
+very swiftly, she saw again that passing aspect of his which had so
+terribly frightened her, felt again the fear that he might be
+really suffering, that she might really have done a hurt to another
+human being.</p>
+<p>This brought her a momentary return of the agitation it had
+caused in her that day, and she sat down abruptly on a tree-trunk,
+her knees trembling, her hands cold.</p>
+<p>That fear had come as so totally unexpected a possibility,
+something which his every aspect and tone and word up to then had
+seemed to contradict. Strange, how unmoved he had left her, till
+that moment! Strange the impression of him, that first time after
+she had known herself strong enough to stand up and be herself, not
+the responsive instrument played on by every passing impression.
+Strange, how instantly he had felt that, and how passionate had
+been his resentment of her standing up to be herself, her being a
+grown woman, a human being, and not a flower to be plucked. How he
+had hated it, and alas! how lamentable his hatred of it had made
+him appear. What a blow he had dealt to her conception of him by
+his instant assumption that a change in her could only mean that
+Neale had been bullying her. It had been <i>hard</i> to see him so
+far away and diminished as that had made him seem, so entirely
+outside her world. It had dealt a back-hand blow to her own
+self-esteem to have him seem vulgar.</p>
+<p>How strange an experience for her altogether, to be able to
+stand firm against noise and urgent clamor and confusion, and to
+see, in spite of it, what she was looking at; to see, back of the
+powerful magnetic personality, the undeveloped and tyrannical soul,
+the cramped mind without experience or conception of breadth and
+freedom in the relations between human beings; to be able to hear
+Vincent cry out on her with that fierce, masterful certainty of
+himself, that she was acting from cowed and traditional-minded
+motives and not to believe a word of it, because it was not true;
+not even to feel the scared throb of alarm at the very idea that it
+might be true; to have it make no impression on her save pity that
+Vincent should be imprisoned in a feeling of which possession was
+so great a part that failure to possess turned all the rest to
+poison and sickness.</p>
+<p>What had happened to her, in truth, that she had this new
+steadfastness? She had told Vincent he could not understand it. Did
+she understand it herself? She leaned her chin on her two hands
+looking deep into the green recesses of the forest. High above her
+head, a wind swayed the tops of the pines and sang loudly; but down
+between the great brown columns of their trunks, not a breath
+stirred. The thick-set, myriad-leaved young maples held all their
+complicated delicately-edged foliage motionless in perfect
+calm.</p>
+<p>It was very still in the depths of Marise's complicated mind
+also, although the wind stirred the surface. Yes, she knew what had
+happened to her. She had seen it completely happen to three other
+human beings, miraculously, unbelievably, certainly; had seen the
+babies who could not tell light from dark, heat from cold, emerge
+by the mere process of healthful living into keenly sensitive
+beings accurately alive to every minutest variation of the visible
+world. It must be that like them she had simply learned to tell
+moral light from dark, heat from cold, by the mere process of
+healthful living. What happened to the child who at one time could
+not grasp the multiplication table, and a few years later, if only
+he were properly fed and cared for, had somehow so wholly changed,
+although still the same, that he found his way lightly among
+geometric conceptions, and only a few years after that was probing
+with expert fingers at some unsolved problem of astronomy? He had
+grown up, that was all. By calling the miracle a familiar name we
+veiled the marvel of it. Insensibly to him, with no visible change
+from one day to the next, he had acquired a totally different
+conception of the universe, a totally different valuation of
+everything in life.</p>
+<p>That was what had happened to her. She had grown up . . . why
+should not a woman grow up to other valuations of things as well as
+her comrade in life?</p>
+<p>And it had happened to her as it did to the child, because
+someone stronger than she had protected her while she was growing .
+. . not protected from effort, as though one should try to protect
+the child from learning his lessons. . . . Back there, such ages
+ago in Italy, in her ignorant . . . how ignorant! . . . and
+frightened girlhood, she had begged Neale, without knowing what she
+did, to help her grow up, to help her save what was worth saving in
+her, to help her untangle from the many-colored confusion of her
+nature what was best worth keeping. And Neale had done it, had
+clung steadily to his divination of what was strong in her, in
+spite of her clamor to him to let it go.</p>
+<p>But Vincent had not grown up, was back there still in confusion,
+holding desperately with all that terrific strength of his to what
+could not be held, to what was impermanent and passing in its
+nature. Why should he do that? Neale knew better than that. Then
+she saw why: it was because Vincent conceived of nothing but
+emptiness if he let it go, and horribly feared that imaginary
+emptiness. Out of the incalculable richness of her kingdom she
+wondered again at his blindness. . . . And made a pitying guess at
+the reason for it . . . perhaps for him it was <i>not</i>
+imaginary. Perhaps one of the terms of the bargain he had made with
+life was that there <i>should</i> be nothing later but emptiness
+for him. Yes, she saw that. She would have made that bargain, too,
+if it had not been for Neale. She would have been holding terrified
+to what was not to be held; with nothing but that between her and
+the abyss. Who was she to blame Vincent for his blindness?</p>
+<p>That, perhaps, had been the meaning of that singular last moment
+of their talk together, which had frightened her so, with its
+sudden plunge below the surface, into the real depths, when,
+changed wholly into someone else, he had run back to her, his hands
+outstretched, his eyes frightened, his lips trembling . . . perhaps
+he had felt the abyss there just before him. For an instant there,
+he had made her think of Paul, made her remember that Vincent
+himself had, so short a time ago, been a little boy too. She had
+been so shocked and racked by pity and remorse, that she would have
+been capable of any folly to comfort him. Perhaps she had seen
+there for an instant the man Vincent might have been, and had seen
+that she could have loved that man.</p>
+<p>But how instantly it had passed! He had not suffered that
+instant of true feeling to have space to live, but had burned it up
+with the return of his pride, his resentment that anyone save
+himself should try to stand upright, with the return of the
+devouring desire-for-possession of the man who had always possessed
+everything he had coveted. There was something sad in being able to
+see the littleness of life which underlay the power and might of
+personality in a man like Vincent. He could have been something
+else.</p>
+<p>She wondered why there should slide into her mood, just now, a
+faint tinge of regret. . . . Why should there be anything there but
+the bright gladness of thanksgiving for the liberation from the
+chains which her own nature might have forged about her? She had at
+last stepped outside the narrow circle of personal desire, and
+found all the world open to her. And yet there was room in her
+heart for a shade of wistful wonder if perhaps all this did not
+mean that she might be sliding from the ranks of those who feel and
+do, into the ranks of those who only understand.</p>
+<p>But one glance at the life that lay before her scattered this
+hanging mist-cloud . . . good heavens! what feeling and doing lay
+there before her!</p>
+<p>Had she thought that Neale was nothing to her because he had
+become all in all to her so that he penetrated all her life, so
+that she did not live an instant alone? Had she thought the loss of
+the amusing trinket of physical newness could stand against the
+gain of an affection ill massy gold? Would she, to buy moments of
+excitement, lose an instant of the precious certainty of sympathy
+and trust and understanding which she and Neale had bought and paid
+for, hour by hour, year by year of honest life-in-common? Where was
+real life for her? Had she not known? Where were the real depths,
+where the real food for the whole woman she had grown to be? Neale
+had opened the door so that she could go away from him if that was
+what she needed, or go back to stand by his side; and through the
+open door had come the flood of daylight which had shown her that
+she could not go back to stand by his side because she had been
+there all the time, had never left it, never could leave it, any
+more than she could leave half of her body in one place, and go on
+to another.</p>
+<div class='center'><br />
+<b>II</b></div>
+<p>There was other feeling and doing now, too, before her, this
+instant, which she had forgotten, idling here in her much-loved
+forest, as much a part of her home as her piano or her own
+roof-tree. She had been trying to understand what had been
+happening that summer. Let her try first of all to understand what
+she must do in that perfectly definite and concrete dilemma in
+which she had been placed by that strange sight of 'Gene Powers,
+fleeing back from the Eagle Rocks. She must look squarely at what
+she supposed was the legal obligation . . . she instantly felt a
+woman's impatience of the word legal as against human, and could
+not entertain the thought of the obligations of the situation. She
+must see, and think and try to understand, with Neale to help her.
+She had not yet had time to tell Neale.</p>
+<p>But not today. Today she was only the bearer of the good tidings
+to Nelly and 'Gene, tidings which would wipe out for her the
+recollection of a day which was shameful to her, the day when she
+had conceived the possibility of believing some thing base against
+Neale. It was not that she had believed it,&mdash;no, she had stood
+it off till Neale came back. But there was shame for her in those
+recurrent spasms of horror when she had conceived the possibility
+that she might believe it. There had been proof of it, of course,
+Eugenia's positive statement . . . strange how Eugenia could have
+so entirely misunderstood the affair! . . . But what was mere proof
+against human certainty? No, she had been attacked suddenly and for
+an instant had failed to rise to defend what was hers to defend. It
+was a failure to live down.</p>
+<p>She stood up and moved forward along the path, changing the
+thick envelope in one hand to the other. She had already lost time.
+She ought to have been by this time through the forest and out in
+the edge of the Powers pasture.</p>
+<p>She became aware that for some time she had heard a distant
+sound, a faint toc-toc-toc, like the sound of chopping. This being
+associated in her mind with snow and winter woods, she had not
+thought it could be the sound of the axe which it seemed to be.
+Nobody could be felling trees in the height of the farming season,
+and on this day of swooning heat. But as she came to the edge of
+the woods and turned into the path along the brook, she heard it
+more plainly, unmistakable this time, not far now, the ringing
+blows delivered with the power and rhythmic stroke of the trained
+chopper. It came not from the woods at all, she now perceived, but
+from the open farming land, from the other side of the pasture,
+beyond the Powers house.</p>
+<p>But there were no woods there, only the Powers' big pine which
+towered up, darkly glorious, into the shimmering summer haze.</p>
+<p>As she looked at it wondering, it came into her mind had
+somebody told her, or had she overheard it somewhere? . . . that
+'Gene had promised Nelly at last to cut down the big pine he and
+his fathers had so cherished.</p>
+<p>Could it be that? What a sacrifice! And to a foolish whim of
+Nelly's. There had been no musty smell in the house till Nelly came
+there to keep the shutters closed so that the sun would not fade
+the carpets. The old pine was one of the most splendid things of
+beauty in the valley. And it was something vital in 'Gene's
+strange, choked, inarticulate life. She stopped to listen a moment,
+feeling a chill of apprehension and foreboding. It was dreadful to
+have 'Gene do that. It was as though he were cutting at his own
+strength, cutting off one of his own members to please his wife.
+Poor 'Gene! He would do that too, now, if Nelly asked him.</p>
+<p>The resonant winter note rang out loud, strange in that sultry
+summer air. She looked from afar at the tree, holding its mighty
+crest high above the tiny house, high above the tiny human beings
+who had doomed it. So many winters, so many summers, so many suns
+and moons and rains and snows had gone to make it what it was. Like
+the men who had planted it and lived beneath its shade, it had
+drawn silently from the depths of the earth and the airy treasures
+of the sky food to grow strong and live its life. And now to be
+killed in an hour, in attempted expiation of a deed for which it
+bore no guilt!</p>
+<p>Marise was coming closer now. The axe-strokes stopped for a
+moment as though the chopper drew breath. The silence was heavy
+over the breathless summer field.</p>
+<p>But by the time she had arrived at the back door of the house,
+the axe-blows were renewed, loud, immediate, shocking palpably on
+her ear. She knocked, but knew that the ringing clamor of the axe
+drowned out the sound. Through the screen-door she saw old Mrs.
+Powers, standing by the table, ironing, and stepped in. The three
+children were in the pantry, beyond, Ralph spreading some bread and
+butter for his little brother and sister. Ralph was always good to
+the younger children, although he was so queer and un-childlike!
+Nelly was not there. Mrs. Powers looked up at Marise, and nodded.
+She looked disturbed and absent. "We're at it, you see," she said,
+jerking her head back towards the front of the house. "I told you
+'bout 'Gene's sayin' he'd gi'n in to Nelly about the big pine."</p>
+<p>Marise made a gesture of dismay at this confirmation. The old
+woman went on, "Funny thing . . . I ain't a Powers by birth, Lord
+knows, and I never thought I set no store by their old pine tree.
+It always sort o' riled me, how much 'Gene's father thought of it,
+and 'Gene after him . . . sort of silly, seems like. But just now
+when we was all out there, and 'Gene heaved up his axe and hit the
+first whack at it . . . well, I can't tell you . . . it give me a
+turn most as if he'd chopped right into <i>me</i> somewhere. I got
+up and come into the house, and I set to ironin', as fast as I
+could clip it, to keep my mind off'n it. I made the children come
+in too, because it ain't no place for kids around, when a tree that
+size comes down."</p>
+<p>Marise demurred, "'Gene is such a fine chopper, he knows to a
+hair where he'll lay it, of course."</p>
+<p>"Well, even so, who knows what notion a kid will take into his
+head? They was playin' right there on a pile of pole-wood 'Gene's
+brought in from the woods and ain't got sawed up into stove-lengths
+yet. I didn't want to take no chances; maybe they wouldn't ha'
+moved quick enough when their papa yelled to them. No, ma'am, I
+made 'em come in, and here they'll stay. Nelly, she's out there,
+walkin' round and round watchin' 'Gene. She's awfully set up havin'
+it come down. 'Gene he's told her he'll give her the money from the
+lumber in it. There'll be a sight of boards, too. It's the biggest
+pine in the valley."</p>
+<p>Marise went to the window and looked at the scene, penetrated by
+the strangeness of the difference between its outer and inner
+aspect: 'Gene, his faded blue overalls tucked into his plowman's
+heavy cow-hide boots, his shirt open over his great throat and
+chest, his long corded arms rising and falling with the steady
+effortless rhythm of the master woodsman. Nelly, in one of her
+immaculate blue ginghams, a white apron over it, a white frilled
+shade-hat on her head, her smartly shod small feet, treading the
+ground with that inimitable light step of hers, circling slowly
+about, looking at 'Gene as he worked, looking up at the crown of
+the tree, high, so insolently high above her head, soon to be
+brought low by a wish from her heart, soon to be turned into money
+for her to spend.</p>
+<p>"I came over to talk to 'Gene and Nelly about some business,"
+Marise said, over her shoulder, to Mrs. Powers, not able to take
+her eyes from the trio in the drama out there, "but I'd better wait
+till the tree is down before I speak to them."</p>
+<p>"'Twon't be long now. 'Gene's been at it quite a while, and he's
+stavin' away like all possessed. Seems as if, now he's started in,
+he couldn't get it over with quick enough to suit him. He acted
+awful queer about it, I thought."</p>
+<p>She left her ironing and, looking over her shoulder at the
+children, came closer to where Marise stood. Then she stepped back
+and shut the door to the pantry. "Mis' Crittenden," she said in an
+anxious troubled voice, "'Gene ain't right these days. He acts to
+me like he's comin' down with a sick spell, or something. He ain't
+<i>right</i>. Today Nelly told me she woke up in the night last
+night and 'Gene wasn't there. She hollered to him, and he didn't
+answer. It scared her like everything, and she scrambled out of bed
+and lighted the lamp, and she said she 'most fainted away, when she
+see 'Gene, rolled up in a blanket, lying on the floor, over against
+the wall, his eyes wide open looking at her. She said she let out a
+yell . . . it scairt the life out of her . . . and 'Gene he got
+right up. She says to him, 'For the Lord's sake, 'Gene, what
+<i>ails</i> you?' And what do you suppose he says to her, he says,
+'I didn't know whether you wanted me there or not, Nelly.' What do
+you think of that? She says back, 'For goodness' sake, 'Gene
+Powers, where <i>would</i> you be nights, except in your own bed!'
+He got back and for all Nelly knows slept all right the rest of the
+night. She says she guesses he must have had some sort of funny
+dream, and not been really all waked up yet. But it must ha' gi'n
+her a turn, for all she ain't one of the nervous kind."</p>
+<p>Marise turned sick with shocked pity. The two women looked at
+each other, silently with shadowed eyes of foreboding. Mrs. Powers
+shook her head, and turned back into the pantry, shutting the door
+behind her. Marise heard her speaking to the children, in the
+cheerful, bantering, affectionate, grandmother tone she had always
+had for them. She was brave, old Mrs. Powers, she always said she
+could "stand up to things." She was the sort of woman who can
+always be depended on to keep life going, no matter what happens;
+who never gives up, who can always go on taking care of the
+children.</p>
+<p>Marise herself did not feel at all brave. She sat down heavily
+in a chair by the window looking out at the man who for his wife's
+sake was killing something vital and alive. He had done that
+before, 'Gene had. He went at it now with a furious haste which had
+something dreadful in it.</p>
+<p>Nelly, who had sat down to rest on the pile of brush and poles,
+seemed a carved and painted statuette of ivory and gold.</p>
+<p>She took off her ruffled pretty hat, and laid it down on the
+white-birch poles, so that she could tip her head far back and see
+the very top of the tree. Her braids shone molten in the sunshine.
+Her beautiful face was impassive, secreting behind a screen all
+that Marise was sure she must have been feeling.</p>
+<p>'Gene, catching sight of her now, in a side-glance, stopped
+abruptly in the middle of a swing, and shouted to her to "get off
+that brush-pile. That's jus' where I'm lottin' on layin' the
+tree."</p>
+<p>Somewhat startled, Nelly sprang up and moved around to the other
+side, back of him, although she called protestingly, "Gracious,
+you're not <i>near</i> through yet!"</p>
+<p>'Gene made no answer, returning to the fury of his assault on
+what he so much loved. The great trunk now had a gaping raw gash in
+its side. Nelly idled back of him, looking up at the tree, down at
+him. What was she thinking about?</p>
+<p>Marise wondered if someone with second-sight could have seen
+Frank Warner, there between the husband and wife? 'Gene's face was
+still gray in spite of the heat and his fierce exertion. Glistening
+streams of perspiration ran down his cheeks.</p>
+<p>What did the future hold for 'Gene? What possible escape was
+there from the tragic net he had wrapped stranglingly around
+himself?</p>
+<p>Very distantly, like something dreamed, it came to Marise that
+once for an instant the simple, violent solution had seemed the
+right one to her. <i>Could she have thought that?</i></p>
+<p>What a haunted house was the human heart, with phantoms from the
+long-dead past intruding their uninvited ghastly death's-heads
+among the living.</p>
+<p>The axe-strokes stopped; so suddenly that the ear went on
+hearing them, ghost-like, in the intense silence. 'Gene stood
+upright, lifting his wet, gray face. "She's coming now," he
+said.</p>
+<p>Marise looked out, astonished. To her eyes the tree stood as
+massively firm as she had ever seen it. But 'Gene's attitude was of
+strained, expectant certainty: he stood near Nelly and as she
+looked up at the tree, he looked at her. At that look Marise felt
+the cold perspiration on her own temples.</p>
+<p>Nelly stepped sideways a little, tipping her head to see, and
+cried out, "Yes, I see it beginning to slant. How <i>slow</i> it
+goes!</p>
+<p>"It'll go fast enough in a minute," said 'Gene.</p>
+<p>Of what followed, not an instant ever had for Marise the quality
+of reality. It always remained for her a superb and hideous dream,
+something symbolical, glorious, and horrible which had taken place
+in her brain, not in the lives of human beings.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Nelly, . . . looking down suddenly to see where the tree would
+fall, crying out, "Oh, I left my hat where it'll . . ." and
+darting, light as a feather, towards it.</p>
+<p>'Gene, making a great futile gesture to stop her, as she passed
+him, shouting at her, with a horrified glance up at the slowly
+leaning tree, "Come back! Come back!"</p>
+<p>Nelly on the brush-pile, her hat in her hand, whirling to
+return, supple and swift, suddenly caught by the heel and flung
+headlong . . . up again in an instant, and falling again, to her
+knees this time. Up once more with a desperate haste, writhing and
+pulling at her shoe, held by its high heel, deep between the knotty
+poles.</p>
+<p>'Gene, bounding from his place of safety, there at her feet,
+tearing in a frenzy at the poles, at her shoe. . . .</p>
+<p>Above them the great tree bearing down on them the solemn
+vengeful shadow of its fall.</p>
+<p>Someone was screaming. It was Nelly. She was screaming, "'Gene!
+'Gene! 'Gene!" her face shrunken in terror, her white lips
+open.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>And then, that last gesture of 'Gene's when he took Nelly into
+his great arms, closely, hiding her face on his shoulder, as the
+huge tree, roaring downward, bore them both to the earth,
+forever.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER
+XXVIII</h2>
+<h3>TWO GOOD-BYES</h3>
+<div class='center'>August 10.</div>
+<p>Marise welcomed the bother about the details of Eugenia's
+departure and Mr. Welles', and flung herself into them with a
+frightened desire for something that would drown out the roaring
+wind of tragedy which filled her ears in every pause of the day's
+activities, and woke her up at night out of the soundest sleep.
+Night after night, she found herself sitting up in bed, her
+night-gown and hair damp with perspiration, Nelly's scream ringing
+knife-like in her ears. Then, rigid and wide-eyed she saw it all
+again, what had happened in those thirty seconds which had summed
+up and ended the lives of 'Gene and Nelly.</p>
+<p>But one night as she sat thus in her bed, hammered upon beyond
+endurance, she saw as though she had not seen it before what 'Gene
+had finally done, his disregard of possible safety for himself, his
+abandon of his futile, desperate effort to free Nelly from the
+tangle where her childish vanity had cast her, the grandeur and
+completeness of his gesture when he had taken Nelly into his strong
+arms, to die with her. Marise found herself crying as she had not
+cried for years. The picture, burned into her memory, stood there
+endlessly in the black night till she understood it. The tears came
+raining down her face, and with them went the strained, wild horror
+of the memory.</p>
+<p>But the shadow and darkness hung about her like a cloud, through
+which she only dimly saw the neat, unhurried grace of Eugenia's
+preparations for departure and far travels, and felt only a dimmed,
+vague echo of the emotion she had thought to feel at the
+disappearance of Mr. Welles, poor, weary, futile old crusader on
+his Rosinante.</p>
+<p>On that last morning of their stay she drove with them to the
+station, still giving only a half-attention to the small episodes
+of their departure. She did see and smile at the characteristic
+quality of an instinctive gesture of Eugenia's as they stepped up
+on the platform of the station. Two oddly-shaped pieces of metal
+stood there, obviously parts of a large machine. Paul stumbled over
+them as he climbed out of the car, and held tight to Mr. Welles'
+hand to save himself from a fall. Eugenia saw them instantly from
+afar as an element in life which threatened the spotlessness of her
+gray traveling cloak, and as she passed them she drew the thick
+folds of velvet-like wool about her closely. Marise thought to
+herself, "That's Eugenia's gesture as she goes through the
+world."</p>
+<p>Neale turned off his switch, listened a moment to see if the
+Ford were boiling from the long climb up the hill to the station,
+and now made one long-legged step to the platform. He started
+towards Eugenia with the evident intention of making some casual
+pleasant remarks, such as are demanded by decency for a departing
+guest, but in his turn his eyes caught the curiously shaped pieces
+of metal. He stopped short, his face lighted up with pleasure and
+surprise. All consciousness of anyone else on the platform
+disappeared from his expression. "Hello!" he said to himself,
+"those mandrels here." He picked up one in his strong hands on
+which the metal left a gray dust, and inspected it. He might have
+been entirely alone in his shop at the mill.</p>
+<p>Marise noted with envy how he gave all of himself to that
+momentary examination, entirely escaped from any awareness of that
+tyrannical self which in her own heart always clamored like a
+spoiled child for attention. The impersonal concentration of his
+look as he turned the metal about between those strong dusty hands,
+gave to his face the calm, freed expression not to be bought for
+any less price than a greater interest in one's work than in one's
+self. "They'll do," pronounced Neale. This was evidently a thought
+spoken aloud, for it did not occur to him to make any pretense of
+including the two women in his interest. He set down the casting he
+held, and went off into the freight-house, calling loudly,
+"Charlie! Charlie! Those mandrels have come. I wish you'd . . ."
+his voice died away as he walked further into the dusky
+freight-shed.</p>
+<p>Marise happening to glance at Eugenia now, caught on her face an
+expression which she took to be annoyance at a breach of manners.
+She reflected, "Eugenia must find Neale's abrupt American ways
+perfectly barbaric." And she was surprised to feel for the first
+time a rather scornful indifference to all that was involved in
+Eugenia's finding them barbaric. Heavens! What did it matter? In a
+world so filled with awful and portentous and glorious human
+possibilities, how could you bother about such things?</p>
+<p>There was a silence. Mr. Welles and Paul had been standing near,
+aimlessly, but now, evidently taking the silence for the inevitable
+flatness of the flat period of waiting for a train, Mr. Welles drew
+the little boy away. They walked down the cinder-covered
+side-tracks, towards where the single baggage truck stood, loaded
+with elegant, leather-covered boxes and wicker basket-trunks,
+marked "E. Mills. S.S. Savoie. Compagnie G&eacute;n&eacute;rale
+Transatlantique." Among them, out of place and drab, stood one
+banal department-store trunk labeled, "Welles. 320 Maple Avenue.
+Macon, Georgia."</p>
+<p>The departure of the old man and the little boy left the two
+women alone. Eugenia stepped closer to Marise and took her hand in
+her own gloved fingers. She looked at it intently, with the
+expression of one who is trying to find words for a complicated
+feeling. Marise made an effort to put herself in the receptive mood
+which would make the saying of it easier, but failed. The fall of
+the big pine roared too loudly in her ears. She looked without
+sympathy or admiration at Eugenia's perfection of aspect. "To look
+like that, she must care for looks more than anything else. What
+can she know about any real human feeling?" Marise asked herself,
+with an intolerance she could not mitigate.</p>
+<p>And yet as she continued to peer at Eugenia through that dark
+cloud of tragedy, it seemed to her that Eugenia showed signs of
+some real human emotion. As she gazed at her in the crude
+brilliance of the gaudy morning sun, she saw for the first time
+signs of years in Eugenia's exquisite small face. There was not a
+line visible, nor a faltering of the firmness of the well-cared-for
+flesh, but over it all was a faint, hardly discernible flaccid
+fatigue of texture.</p>
+<p>But perhaps she imagined it, for even as she looked, and felt
+her heart soften to think what this would mean to Eugenia, an inner
+wave of resolution reached the surface of the other woman's face,
+and there was Eugenia as she always had been, something of
+loveliness immutable.</p>
+<p>She said impulsively, "Eugenia, it's a stupidly conventional
+thing to say, but it's a pity you never married."</p>
+<p>As Eugenia only looked at her, quietly, she ventured further,
+"You might really be happier, you know. There is a great deal of
+happiness in the right marriage." She had never said so much to
+Eugenia.</p>
+<p>Eugenia let Marise's hand drop and with it, evidently, whatever
+intention she might have had of saying something difficult to
+express. Instead, she advanced with her fastidious, delicate note
+of irony, "I don't deny the happiness, if that sort of happiness is
+what one is after. But I think my appetite for it . . . that sort .
+. . is perhaps not quite robust enough to relish it."</p>
+<p>Marise roused herself to try to put a light note of cheerfulness
+into this last conversation. "You mean that it seems to you like
+the coarsely heaped-up goodies set before a farmhand in a country
+kitchen . . . chicken and butter and honey and fruit and coffee,
+all good but so profuse and jumbled that they make you turn
+away?"</p>
+<p>"I didn't give that definition of domestic life," corrected
+Eugenia, with a faint smile, "that's one of <i>your</i>
+fantasies."</p>
+<p>"Well, it's true that you get life served up to you rather
+pell-mell, lots of it, take-it-as-it-comes," admitted Marise, "but
+for a gross nature like mine, once you've had that, you're lost.
+You know you'd starve to death on the delicate slice of toasted
+bread served on old china. You give up and fairly enjoy wallowing
+in the trough."</p>
+<p>She had been struck by that unwonted look of fatigue on
+Eugenia's face, had tried to make her laugh, and now, with an
+effort, laughed with her. She had forgotten her passing notion that
+Eugenia had something special to say. What could she have? They had
+gone over that astonishing misconception of hers about the Powers
+woodlot, and she had quite made Marise understand how hopelessly
+incapable she was of distinguishing one business detail from
+another. There could be nothing else that Eugenia could wish to
+say.</p>
+<p>"How in the world shall I get through the winter?" Eugenia now
+wondered aloud. "Biskra and the Sahara perhaps . . . if I could
+only get away from the hideous band of tourists. They say there are
+swarms of war-profiteers from Italy now, everywhere, low-class
+people with money for the first time." She added with a greater
+accent of wonder, "How in the world are <i>you</i> going to get
+through the winter?"</p>
+<p>Marise was struck into momentary silence by the oddness of the
+idea. There were phrases in Eugenia's language which were literally
+non-translatable into hers, representing as they did ideas that did
+not exist there. "Oh, we never have to consider that," she
+answered, not finding a more accurate phrase. "There won't be time
+enough to do all we'll try to do, all we'll have to do. There's
+living. That takes a lot of time and energy. And I'll have the
+chorus as usual. I'm going to try some Mendelssohn this year. The
+young people who have been singing for five or six years are quite
+capable of the 'Elijah.' And then any of the valley children who
+really want to, come to me for lessons, you know. The people in
+North Ashley have asked me to start a chorus there this year, too.
+And in the mill, Neale has a plan to try to get the men to work out
+for themselves some standards of what concerns them especially,
+what a day's work really is, at any given job, don't you know."</p>
+<p>What an imbecile she was, she thought, to try to talk about such
+things to Eugenia, who could not, in the nature of things,
+understand what she was driving at. But apparently Eugenia had
+found something understandable there, for she now said sharply,
+startled, "Won't that mean less income for you?"</p>
+<p>She did not say, "<i>Even</i> less," but it was implied in the
+energy of her accent.</p>
+<p>Marise hesitated, brought up short by the solidity of the
+intangible barrier between their two languages. There were phrases
+in her own tongue which could not be translated into Eugenia's,
+because they represented ideas not existing there. She finally said
+vaguely, "Oh perhaps not."</p>
+<p>Her pause had been enough for Eugenia to drop back into her own
+world. She said thoughtfully, "I've half a notion to try going
+straight on beyond Biskra, to the south, if I could find a caravan
+that would take me. That would be something new. Biskra is so
+commonplace now that it has been discovered and exploited." She
+went on, with a deep, wistful note of plaintiveness in her voice,
+"But <i>every</i>thing's so commonplace now!" and added, "There's
+Java. I've never been to Java."</p>
+<p>It came over Marise with a shock of strangeness that this was
+the end of Eugenia in her life. Somehow she knew, as though Eugenia
+had told her, that she was never coming back again. As they stood
+there, so close together, in the attitude of friends, they were so
+far apart that each could scarcely recognize who the other was.
+Their paths which in youth had lain so close to each other as to
+seem identical, how widely they had been separated by a slight
+divergence of aim! Marise was struck by her sudden perception of
+this. It had been going on for years, she could understand that
+now. Why should she only see it in this quiet, silent, neutral
+moment?</p>
+<p>An impalpable emanation of feeling reached her from the other
+woman. She had a divination that it was pain. Perhaps Eugenia was
+also suddenly realizing that she had grown irrevocably apart from
+an old friend.</p>
+<p>The old tenderness felt for the girl Eugenia had been, by the
+girl Marise had been, looked wistfully down the years at the
+end.</p>
+<p>Marise opened her arms wide and took Eugenia into them for a
+close, deeply moved embrace.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye, Eugenia," she said, with sadness.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye, Marise," said Eugenia, looking at her strangely.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Neale came back now, frankly consulting his watch with Neale's
+bluntness in such matters. "Train's due in a minute or two," he
+said. "Where's Mr. Welles?"</p>
+<p>Marise said, "Over there, with Paul. I'll go tell them."</p>
+<p>She found them both, hand in hand, sitting on the edge of the
+truck which carried the leather-covered boxes and wicker
+basket-trunks, bound for Biskra or beyond, or Java; and the square
+department-store trunk bound for Maple Avenue, Macon, Georgia.</p>
+<p>"Mother," said Paul, "Mr. Welles has promised me that he'll come
+up and visit us summers."</p>
+<p>"There's no house in the world where you'll be more welcome,"
+said Marise with all her heart, holding out her hand.</p>
+<p>Mr. Welles shook it hard, and held it in both his. As the train
+whistled screamingly at the crossing, he looked earnestly into her
+face and tried to tell her something, but the words would not
+come.</p>
+<p>As she read in his pale old face and steady eyes what he would
+have said, Marise cried out to herself that there do not exist in
+the world any things more halting and futile than words. She put
+her arms around his neck and kissed him. "Good-bye, dear Mr.
+Welles," was all she said, but in the clinging of his old arms
+about her, and in the quivering, shining face he showed as they
+moved down the platform together, she knew that he too had not
+needed words.</p>
+<p>Paul clung to his hand till the last moment, gazing up at him
+constantly, silently. Marise looked down on the little boy's
+tanned, freckled, sober face and strained, rapidly winking eyes,
+and had the intuition, "This is one of the moments Paul will never
+forget. He will always be able to shut his eyes and see this old
+Don Quixote setting forth." With a rush of her old, jealous,
+possessive mother-love, she longed to share this with him and to
+have him know that she shared it; to put her arms around him and
+<i>make him let her in</i>. But she knew better now. She yearned
+over him silently, and did not touch him.</p>
+<p>"Well, good-bye, Paul," said Mr. Welles, shaking hands with
+him.</p>
+<p>"Well, good-bye," said Paul dryly, setting his jaw hard.</p>
+<p>"Oh, this is the day-coach!" cried Eugenia. "Where is the
+drawing-room car?"</p>
+<p>"At the far end," said the conductor with the sweeping gesture
+of a man used to talking with his arms.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye, Mr. Welles," said Eugenia, giving him for an instant
+a small, pearl-gray hand. "Boa voyage! Good luck!"</p>
+<p>"Same to you," said the old gentleman, scrambling up the
+unswept, cinder-covered steps into the day-coach.</p>
+<p>At the front end of the train, the baggage man was tumbling into
+the express car the fine, leather-covered boxes and the one square
+trunk.</p>
+<p>Neale carried Eugenia's two small bags down to the drawing-room
+car and now handed them to the porter.</p>
+<p>The two women kissed each other on both cheeks, hurriedly, as
+someone cried, "All aboard!"</p>
+<p>Eugenia took Neale's outstretched hand. "Good-bye, Neale," she
+said.</p>
+<p>With the porter's aid, she mounted the rubber-covered steps into
+the mahogany and upholstery of the drawing-room car.</p>
+<p>"Good luck, Eugenia! Bon voyage!" called Neale after her.</p>
+<p>She did not turn around or look back.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Marise noted that characteristically Eugenia had forgotten Paul.
+But Paul had forgotten her, too, and was now back near the
+day-coach searching one window after another.</p>
+<p>The conductor signaled widely, the whistle shrieked, the wheels
+groaned. Neale drew Marise a little back out of the whirl of dust
+and stood holding her arm for an instant.</p>
+<p>It seemed to Marise as they stood thus, Neale holding her arm,
+that she caught a last glimpse of Eugenia behind plate-glass,
+looking at them gravely, steadily.</p>
+<p>Paul suddenly caught sight of Mr. Welles' face at a window,
+snatched off his cap, and waved it frantically, over and over, long
+after the train was only an echoing roar from down the tracks.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Then the mountain-silence settled down about them calmly, and
+they could hear their own hearts beat, and knew the thoughts in
+their minds.</p>
+<p>As they went back to their battered Ford, Marise said
+thoughtfully, "Somehow I believe that it will be a long time before
+we see Eugenia again."</p>
+<p>Neale permitted himself no comment on this, nor showed the
+alteration of a line in his face as he stepped into the car and
+turned on the switch, but Marise cried out to him accusingly, "You
+might as well say it right out, that you can support life if it
+is."</p>
+<p>Neale laughed a little and put his foot on the starter. "Get in
+the back seat, Paul," was all he said, as the little boy came up
+silently from the other side of the station.</p>
+<p>He added as they started up the hill road, "First time in my
+life I was ever sort of sorry for Eugenia. It seemed to me this
+morning that she was beginning to show her age."</p>
+<p>Marise hid the fact that she had had the same idea and opposed,
+"Eugenia would laugh at that from you, the husband of such a
+frankly middle-aged thing as I."</p>
+<p>Neale was silent for a moment, and then, "You'll always look
+younger than she. No, not younger, that's not it, at all. It's
+<i>living</i>, you look. I tell you what, she's a cut flower in a
+vase, that's beginning to wilt, and you're a living plant."</p>
+<p>"Why, <i>Neale</i>!" said Marise, astonished and touched.</p>
+<p>"Yes, quite a flight of fancy for me, wasn't it?" commented
+Neale casually, leaning forward to change the carburetor
+adjustment.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Marise felt Paul lean over her shoulder from the back of the
+car. "Say, Mother," he said in her ear, "would you just as soon get
+in back with me for a while?"</p>
+<p>Neale stopped the care. Marise stepped out and in, and seated
+herself beside Paul. He had apparently nothing to say, after all,
+looking fixedly down at his bare brown feet.</p>
+<p>But presently he moved nearer to his mother and leaned his head
+against her breast. This time she put her arm around him and held
+him close to her, the tears in her eyes.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+<h3>VIGNETTES FROM HOME LIFE</h3>
+<div class='center'><b>I</b><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+August 20.</div>
+<p>Paul had been sent for blue-berries through the Eagle Rock woods
+to the high upland pasture where the Powers cows fed during the
+day. On the upper edge of that, skirting a tract of slash left from
+an old cutting, was a berry-patch, familiar to all the children of
+Crittenden's valley.</p>
+<p>When at four o'clock there was no sign of him, and then at five
+still none, Marise began to feel uneasy, although she told herself
+that nothing in the world could happen to Paul on that well-known
+mountain-side. He had taken M&eacute;dor with him, who would
+certainly have come for help if Paul had fallen and hurt himself.
+She excused herself to the tall, awkward lad from North Ashley come
+to try over his part in a quartet, asked Toucl&eacute; to help Elly
+set the supper things on the table if she should be late, and set
+off at a rapid pace by the short-cut over the ledges.</p>
+<p>As she hurried over the rough trail, frankly hastening, now
+frankly alarmed, she thought that probably for all the life-time of
+the people in the valley the death of Frank Warner would set a
+sinister element of lurking danger in those familiar wooded slopes.
+Nothing <i>could</i> have happened to Paul, but still she hurried
+faster and faster, and as she came near the upper edge of the
+pasture she began to shout loudly, "Paul! Paul!" and to send out
+the high yodel-cry that was the family assembly call. That act of
+shouting brought her a step nearer to panic.</p>
+<p>But almost at once she heard the little boy's answer, not far
+from her saw his dog bounding through the bushes, and as she
+emerged from the woods into the open pasture she saw Paul running
+towards her, pail in hand, evidently astonished to know her there.
+But there was about him something more than astonishment, something
+which Marise's mother-eye catalogued as furtitve, that
+consciousness of something to hide which always looks to grown-ups
+like guilt. She gave no sign of seeing this, however, stopping
+short to catch her breath, smiling at him, and wondering with great
+intensity what in the world it could be. He looked a little
+frightened.</p>
+<p>He came up to her, answering her smile uneasily, and she saw
+that he had only a few berries in his pail. At this she was
+relieved, thinking that possibly all that had happened was that he
+had lingered to play. But when she glanced back at his face, she
+had the impression that there was something more, very much more.
+He had received some indelible impression and it was his instinct
+to hide it from his mother. Her heart sank forebodingly.</p>
+<p>"What is the best thing to do?" she asked herself. "To speak
+about it first, or to wait till he does?"</p>
+<p>She sat down on a stone, fanning herself with her hat, watching
+him, trying to make out the meaning of every shift of expression,
+turn of eye, position of his hands, carriage of his head, bringing
+to this all her accumulated knowledge of Paul, afire with the
+sudden passion to protect him which had flamed up with her
+intuition that something had happened to him.</p>
+<p>(Come and gone with the dry rapidity of fingers snapped, she had
+thought, "The point is, that other people may be more clever than
+mothers, but nobody else <i>cares</i> enough, always, always to try
+to understand!")</p>
+<p>"I thought I'd come up and walk back with you," she offered.</p>
+<p>"I haven't got very many," said Paul, abashed, looking down at
+the few, blue, bloom-covered balls in the bottom of his shining tin
+pail. "I was trying to hurry up and get enough for supper,
+anyhow."</p>
+<p>Marise in spite of herself, moved by pity for his confusion,
+offered him a way out. It always seemed to her too dreadful for
+anyone not to have a way out, even if it implied a fib. "Weren't
+there very many on the bushes?" she asked.</p>
+<p>But he refused it with a characteristic integrity. "Oh yes,
+there were lots there," he said.</p>
+<p>A silence fell. The little dog, sensitively aware of something
+wrong, whined uneasily, and pawed at Paul's hand. But Paul did not
+look down at him. He stood, his bare feet wide apart, the empty
+pail in his hand, looking down the beautiful green slope of the
+pasture, golden now in the long rays from the sun poised low on the
+line of the mountains opposite.</p>
+<p>Marise looked at him, seeing nothing in all the world but that
+tanned, freckled, anxious little face. With what an utter
+unexpectedness did these moments of crisis spring on you; something
+vital there, and no warning, no chance to think.</p>
+<p>"Anything the matter, Paul?" she said gently.</p>
+<p>He nodded, silent.</p>
+<p>"Anything you can tell Mother?" she asked, still more
+gently.</p>
+<p>Paul said gruffly, "I don't know: it's about Ralph Powers. He
+was up here this afternoon." He looked down at his brown,
+bramble-scratched legs.</p>
+<p>Marise's imagination gave an unbridled leap of fear. She had
+always felt something strange and abnormal about Ralph. But she
+thought, "I mustn't tyrannize over Paul, even by a too-waiting
+expectant silence," and stooped over with the pretext of tying her
+shoe. A lump came to her throat. How terribly, helplessly, you
+<i>cared</i> about what came to your children!</p>
+<p>When she lifted her head, Paul had come nearer her and was
+looking down at her, with troubled eyes. "Say, Mother, he didn't
+<i>say</i> not to tell you. Do you suppose it would be fair?"</p>
+<p>She made a great effort at loyalty and said, "I can't tell,
+Paul. You saw him. You know better than I, if you think he meant
+you not to tell. Try to remember if he said anything about it."</p>
+<p>Paul thought hard. "You wouldn't tell anybody?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Not if you don't want me to," she answered.</p>
+<p>Paul sat down by her and drew a long breath. "I don't believe he
+would care, your knowing it, if you never told anybody else, nor
+said anything to him. Mother, I was going along, up there by the
+big rock where the white birches grow, and I saw Ralph. . . . He
+was in front of a sort of table he'd fixed up with a long piece of
+slate-stone, and he had some queer-shaped stones on it . . . oh,
+<i>Mother</i> . . . he was crying so, and talking to himself! And
+when he saw me he got as mad! And he told me about it, just as mad
+all the time, as though he was mad at me. Mother, it's an
+altar!</p>
+<p>"An altar!" said Marise, stupidly, utterly disconcerted by the
+word, so totally other than what her fears had been foreboding.</p>
+<p>"Yes, an altar, and he says the stones on it are idols, and he
+bows down and worships them, the way the Bible says it's wicked
+to."</p>
+<p>Marise was too much astonished to open her lips.</p>
+<p>Paul said, "Mother, Ralph says he hates God, and isn't going to
+say his prayers to him any more. He says God let his father and
+mother both get killed, and he don't know what the devil could do
+any worse than that. He said he started in having an altar to idols
+because he thought from what the Bible said that if you did you'd
+be so wicked lightning would strike you dead. But it didn't, and
+now he doesn't believe <i>any</i>thing. So he's going on, having
+idols because the Bible says not to."</p>
+<p>Marise's first rounded and exclusive emotion was of immense
+relief. Nothing had happened to her own son, and beside this
+relief, nothing for the moment seemed of any consequence. She drew
+Paul to her with a long breath of what was, she recognized it the
+moment afterward, her old, clear, undiluted, ferocious, hateful
+mother-egotism. For that instant she had not cared an atom what
+happened to another woman's child, so long as hers was safe.</p>
+<p>But the next instant, the awareness of her hard heart cut across
+her like the lash of a whip. She shrank under it, horrified. She
+hung her head guilty and ashamed, divining the extremity of the
+other child's misery.</p>
+<p>As she sat there, with her living arms around her own little
+son, the boy whose mother was dead came and stood before her in
+imagination, showing those festering, uncared-for wounds of sorrow
+and bitterness and loneliness, and furious, unavailing revolt from
+suffering too great to be borne.</p>
+<p>She felt the guilt driven out from her narrow heart as it
+swelled larger to take him in. Any child who needed a mother so
+much, was <i>her own child</i>. He had no longer any mother who
+would care enough to try to understand, but <i>she</i> would care
+enough.</p>
+<p>"He bowed down and worshiped," said Paul, in a shocked,
+frightened voice. "He knocked his head on the stones and cried like
+anything. He said he hated God."</p>
+<p>"Oh!" cried Marise, intolerably stung by sympathy and pity. She
+started up to her feet, her heart burning, the tears on her cheeks.
+Her arms ached with emptiness till she should have drawn that
+suffering into them.</p>
+<p>Paul said shyly, "Say, Mother, it's <i>awful</i> hard on those
+Powers kids, isn't it, not having anybody but their grandmother.
+Say, Mother, don't you think maybe we could . . . we could . . ."
+He turned his freckled, tanned, serious little face up to hers.</p>
+<p>His mother stooped to kiss him, furiously, burningly,
+passionately, as she did not often kiss Paul, and he clung to her
+with all the strength of his strong little arms. "Yes, yes, you
+darling, you darling," she told him brokenly. "Yes, yes, yes."</p>
+<div class='center'><b>II</b><br />
+<br />
+September 10.</div>
+<p>Marise was slowly going through a passage of Scriabine, which
+had just come in the mail. She was absorbed in the difficulties and
+novelties of it, her ear alert to catch a clue to the meaning of
+those new rhythms and progressions, her mind opened wide to
+understand them when she heard them.</p>
+<p>It was with an effort that she brought her attention back to
+Elly, who had come in behind her and was saying something urgently.
+Marise turned around on the piano-stool, her head humming with the
+unfamiliar, tantalizing beauties and intricacies of the page she
+had left half unread, and considered the little girl for an instant
+before she heard what she said. How Elly did grow! That dress was
+already much too small for her.</p>
+<p>Well, Elly was not the only one who had grown out of her old
+clothes this summer . . . the old garments that had been large
+enough and now must be laid aside! . . . Elly was saying, "Mother,
+one of my chickens looks sick, and I don't know what to do. I
+<i>wish</i> you'd come!"</p>
+<p>Marise began a process of mentally weighing which was more
+important, Scriabine or Elly's chicken. Elly looked at her mother
+with imploring eyes. "Mother, he looked awfully sick. And he is my
+nicest little Downy-head, the one I've always loved the best. I've
+tried to take such good care of him. Mother, I'm <i>worried</i>
+about him."</p>
+<p>Marise decided that Scriabine had at least the capacity to wait,
+while the chicken might not. She got up, saying, "All right, Elly,
+we'll see what we can do."</p>
+<p>Elly pulled her along rapidly to the chicken-yard where grossly
+self-satisfied hens scratched in trash and filth
+undiscriminatingly, and complacently called their families to share
+what they had found there, or indeed at times apparently to admire
+them for having found nothing. Marise stood regarding them with a
+composed, ironic eye. It was good, she reflected, to be able to
+know that that was the way you looked from the outside, and not to
+care a bit because you knew firmly that there was something else
+there that made all the difference. All the same, it was a very
+good thing to have had the scaring thought that you were like that
+. . . "there but for the grace of God. . . ." Was it complacent to
+say that? Oh, what did it matter what you called
+it,&mdash;complacent or not, if you knew! It all came back to not
+caring so much about what things could be called, if you knew what
+they were.</p>
+<p>Elly had disappeared into the chicken-house and now came back
+with a perplexed face. "Downy-head was there, by the nests, and now
+he's gone." Marise caught in the child's eyes the realness of her
+anxiety and thrilled to it, as she always did to any real emotion.
+"I'll help you look," she said, turning her eyes about the
+chicken-yard, crowded with voluble, intently self-centered,
+feathered personalities. "Which hen is his mother, Elly?</p>
+<p>"This one, Old Speckle. Oh, Mother, there he is, lying down. He
+must be feeling worse!" She ran forward and stooped over a little
+panting yellow ball. Across the intervening space and beyond all
+those carelessly alive bodies, Marise's eyes caught the
+unmistakable aspect of death in the tiny creature lying there.</p>
+<p>"Mother!" cried Elly, "his eyes look so! He can't get his
+breath. <i>Mother!</i>" Marise felt the child's agitation and alarm
+knock at her heart. She looked down helplessly at the dying
+creature. That tiny, tiny scrap of down-covered flesh to be alive,
+to contain the miracle and mystery of life, and now to be
+struggling, all alone, with the miracle and mystery of death!</p>
+<p>The little thing opened its glazing eyes once more, drew a long
+breath, and lay still. An age-old inherited knowledge and
+experience told Elly what bad happened. She gave a scream, picked
+it up and held it in her cupped hands, her little face drawn in
+horrified incredulity. She looked up at her mother and said in a
+whisper, "Mother, he's <i>dead</i>."</p>
+<p>Marise nodded silently. Poor Elly! She wished she could think of
+something comforting to say. But what is there to say? For her
+there had never been anything but stoic silence. The mother hen
+clucked unconcernedly at their feet, and with coaxing guttural
+sounds called the rest of the chickens to eat a grain. The strong
+ammonia smell of the chicken-yard rose in the sunshine. Elly stood
+perfectly still, the little ball of yellow down in her hand, her
+face pale.</p>
+<p>Marise looked down on her with infinite sympathy. Her child,
+flesh of her flesh, meeting in this uncouth place the revelation of
+the black gulf! But she remained silent, not knowing what to
+say.</p>
+<p>Elly spoke in a low voice, "But, Mother, how <i>can</i> he be
+dead, just so quick while we were looking at him? Mother, he was
+alive a minute ago. He was breathing. He looked at me. He knew me.
+And in just a minute like that . . . nothing!"</p>
+<p>She looked around her wildly. "<i>Mother, where has his life
+gone to?</i>"</p>
+<p>Marise put her arm around the little girl's shoulders tenderly,
+but she still only shook her head without a word. She did not know
+any more than Elly where his life had gone. And surely loving
+silence was better than tinkling words of falseness.</p>
+<p>Elly looked up at her, glistening drops of sweat standing on her
+temples. "Mother," she asked, urgently, in a loud, frightened
+whisper, "Mother, do we die like that? Mother, will <i>you</i> die
+like that? All in a moment . . . and then . . . nothing?"</p>
+<p>It came like thunder, then, what Marise had never thought to
+feel. With a clap, she found that this time she had something to
+answer, something to say to Elly. Looking deep, deep into Elly's
+eyes, she said firmly with a certainty as profound as it was new to
+her, "No, Elly, I don't believe we do die like that . . . all in a
+moment . . . nothing."</p>
+<p>She was astonished by what she said, astonished by the sudden
+overflowing of something she had not known was there, but which was
+so great that her heart could not contain it, "comme une onde qui
+bout dans une urne trop pleine." And she was as moved as she was
+astonished. Elly came into her arms with a comforted gasp. They
+clung to each other closely, Marise's ears humming with the
+unfamiliar beauty and intricacy of that new page at which she had
+had that instant's glimpse. Here was a new harmony, a new
+progression, a new rhythm to which her ear had just opened . . .
+heard here in this uncouth place!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>That evening, after the children were in bed, she stopped her
+reading of the new music for a moment to say to Neale, "You know
+those ideas that other people are better for children than their
+parents are?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Neale, laying down the baseball page of his
+newspaper, instantly all there, looking at her intently.</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't believe a word of it," said Marise.</p>
+<p>"I should say it depended on which parents and on which children
+were meant," advanced Neale guardedly.</p>
+<p>Marise had at first an affectionate smile for this, and then a
+laugh. She got up from the piano-stool and went to kiss him. He
+said with a whimsical suspicion of this, "Why so?"</p>
+<p>"Because you are so entirely you," she told him, and went back
+to Scriabine.</p>
+<div class='center'><b>III</b><br />
+<br />
+September 22.</div>
+<p>It was the half-hour of pause after lunch. The children played
+idly with the fox-terrier and lounged on the steps of the
+side-porch, strong and brown, living cups filled to the brim with
+life. Neale had pushed his chair back from the table, lighted his
+pipe, and sat meditating. Presently he put out his hand and laid it
+on Marise's, who had turned to look down the sun-flooded
+valley.</p>
+<p>It was high-noon, dreamy, entranced, all the world golden with
+the magnificent weather as a holly-hock is golden with pollen. From
+the brook came the living voice of the water, with the special note
+of brave clarity it always had for brilliant noons.</p>
+<p>It seemed to Marise that she too was all gold-powdered with the
+magnificence of life, that in her heart there sang a clear living
+voice that did not fear high-noons.</p>
+<div class='center'><b>IV</b><br />
+<br />
+October.</div>
+<p>Would Vincent come back at all? Marise had wondered so often.
+Not Vincent in the flesh; that last angry bewildered gesture had
+finality in it. He had given her up then, totally. But would he
+come back to haunt her in those inevitable moments of flat ebb-tide
+in life, when what should be moist and living, withered and crisped
+in the merciless drought of drudgery and routine? She feared it,
+frankly dreaded it at first, and tried to think how to brace
+herself against it. But it was not then that tie came, not when she
+was toiling with dishes to wash, or vegetables to pare, or the
+endless care of the children's never-in-order clothes. Instead she
+found in those moments, which had been arid before, a curious new
+savor, a salt without which life would seem insipid, something
+which gave her appetite for the rest. "This is all Tolstoyan
+nonsense and sentimentality," she told herself mockingly, "there is
+nothing sacred about scrubbing the floor." Or on another day, "I
+wonder if it's a twist of the absurd mediaeval ascetic perversity
+left over?" Or again, "All it does for me is to take off the curse
+of belonging to the bourgeoisie." But no matter what skeptical name
+she called it, nor how much she minimized the reality of it, she
+felt some odd value in it which she would not have gone without.
+Once she said to herself, "It's ballast, to a person like me,"
+although she did not know exactly what this meant. And another time
+she said, "Perhaps it's that I'm making an honest effort to do my
+share." But it was true and real, the fact that after such work the
+reading of the day's news of the world brought her a less
+oppressive sense of guilt. And stranger than this, music had
+greater vitality for her. She felt it a deeper, richer soil than
+even she had dreamed of, and struck her roots profoundly into
+depths which kept her whole complicated organism poised, steady,
+and upright.</p>
+<p>And here it was that Vincent came back. Not the Vincent of the
+hawk-like imperious face, or burning eyes of desire, which had
+seemed to him his realest self. But the Vincent who had come in
+from the porch that day in March when she had first played to him,
+who had smiled at her, the good, grateful, peaceful smile, and had
+said to her music, "Go on, go on." It was the same Vincent of the
+afternoon in Cousin Hetty's garden when the vulture of the desire
+to possess had left him for a moment in peace. Often and often he
+came thus as she played and leaned his head back and said, "Go on."
+And thus Marise knew he would always come. And thus she welcomed
+him.</p>
+<p>This was what was left of him in the house he had so filled with
+his smoky, flaming brilliance.</p>
+<div class='center'><b>V</b><br />
+<br />
+December.</div>
+<p>They had been talking around the fire of the stars and their
+names and stories, she and Neale and the children. Presently
+interest overcoming inertia they decided to go out and see if the
+clouds had blown away so that the stars could be seen. They huddled
+on hastily found wraps, thrust their feet into flapping, unbuckled
+overshoes, and leaving the still, warm, lamp-lit room, they
+shuffled out, laughing and talking, into the snow which lay thick
+and still before the house.</p>
+<p>At first they carried out between them so much of the house
+atmosphere that it hung about them like warm fog, shielding them
+from the fiercely pure, still cold of the air, and from the
+brilliant glitter of the myriad-eyed black sky. They went on
+talking and laughing, pointing out the constellations they knew,
+and trying to find others in the spangled vault over their
+heads.</p>
+<p>"A bear!" cried Mark. "I could draw a better bear than that any
+day!" And from Paul, "They can call it Orion's belt all they want
+to, but there's no belt to it!" And from Elly, "Aldebaran!
+Aldebaran! Red-eyed Aldebaran!"</p>
+<p>But little by little the house-air began to be thinned about
+them, to blow away from between them in wisps and wreathes, off
+into the blackness. The warmed, lighted house dwindled to nothing.
+There were only the great cold black sky and the small cold white
+earth. Their voices were lowered; they stood very still, close
+together, their heads tipped back, their faces and hearts upraised
+silently to receive the immensity above and about them.</p>
+<p>Elly murmured under her breath, "Doesn't it seem funny, our
+world being just one of all those, and such a little one, and here
+we are, just these few of us, standing on the world and looking at
+it all."</p>
+<p>Marise thought, "We seem to be the only living things in all
+creation." In that huge, black, cold glittering universe how tiny
+was the little glow of life they made!</p>
+<p>Tiny but unquenchable! Those myriads of hard staring eyes could
+not look down the immortal handful of human life and love which she
+and Neale had created between them.</p>
+<p>There was a silence, filled with still, breathless cold; with
+enormous space, with infinity.</p>
+<p>Marise felt a rigorous shudder run over her, as though something
+vital were coming to her, like the rending pang of pain which
+heralds child-birth. After this, did she close her eyes for a
+moment, or did it come to her while she continued to gaze wide-eyed
+at the stern greatness of the universe? What was this old,
+familiar, unknown sensation?</p>
+<p>. . . as though, on a long journey in the dark it had grown
+light, so that she had suddenly recognized which way she was
+going.</p>
+<p>Then she knew what it was. Conscious and awake, she was feeling
+herself one with the great current, advancing with an irresistible
+might, majesty and power, in which she shared, to which she gave
+her part.</p>
+<div class='center'><b>VI</b><br />
+<br />
+January.</div>
+<p>She was putting away the clean sheets from the washing on the
+shelves at the end of the hall, upstairs, her mind entirely on the
+prosaic task, wondering when she would have to replace some of the
+older ones, and wishing she could put off buying till the
+outrageous post-war prices went down. Someone stirred behind her
+and she turned her head quickly to see who was there. It was Neale,
+come in early. He was standing, looking at her back; and in the
+instant before he saw that she had turned, she caught the
+expression on his face, the tender fathomless affection that was
+there.</p>
+<p>A warm gush of happiness surged up all over her. She felt a
+sudden intense physical well-being, as though her breath came more
+smoothly, her blood ran more sweetly in her veins.</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>Neale</i>!" she said, under her breath, flushing and
+turning to him. He looked at her, his strong, resolute face and
+clear eyes smiled, and opening his arms he drew her into them. The
+ineffable memory of all the priceless past, the ineffable certainty
+of the priceless future was in their kiss.</p>
+<p>That evening, after a long golden hour at the piano, she chanced
+to take down the Largo in the Chopin sonata. As she began it,
+something stirred in her mind, some memory that instantly lived
+with the first notes of the music. How thick-clustered with
+associations music became, waking a hundred echoes and
+overtones!</p>
+<p>This was the memory of the time when she had played it, almost a
+year ago, and had thought how intimacy and familiarity with music
+but deepened and enriched and strengthened its hold on you. It was
+only the lower pleasures of which one grew tired,&mdash;had enough.
+The others grew with your growing capacity to hold them. She
+remembered how that day she had recalled the Wordsworth sonnet, "A
+beauteous evening, calm and free," and had thought that music took
+you in to worship quite simply and naturally at the Temple's inner
+shrine, that you adored none the less although you were at home
+there and not breathless with adoration like the nun: because it
+was a whole world given to you, not a mere pang of joy, because you
+could live and move and be blessedly and securely at home
+there.</p>
+<p>She finished the last note of the Largo and sat silent. She was
+thinking that her marriage was like that, too.</p>
+<p>Presently she got up, took out the old portfolio of photographs,
+and pinned upon the wall over the piano the view taken from Rocca
+di Papa.</p>
+<div class='center'><b>VII</b><br />
+<br />
+February 24.</div>
+<p>Marise had been drilling the chorus in the Town Hall of Ashley
+after the men's working-hours, and now in the dimming light of the
+early evening was going home on snow-shoes, over the hill-path. She
+liked to use snow-shoes and occasionally said that she could walk
+more easily and more lightly on them than on bare ground. She trod
+over the tops of the deep drifts with an accentuation of her usual
+strong free step.</p>
+<p>The snow fell thickly and steadily, a cold, finely-spun,
+straight-hung curtain, veiling all the muffled sleeping valley.
+There was an inconceivable silence about her as she drew her
+snow-shoes over the velvet-like masses of the snow. But within her
+were ringing echoes of the rhythms and cadences of the afternoon's
+struggle, imperfectly sung most of them, haltingly, or dully, or
+feebly, or with a loud misunderstanding of the phrase. At the
+recollection of these failures, she clenched her hands hard inside
+her fur gloves with an indomitable resolution to draw something
+better from her singers the next time.</p>
+<p>But mingled with them was a moment of splendor. It was when the
+men had tried over the passage she had explained to them the week
+before. She had not known then, she did not know now, how clearly
+or definitely she had reached them with her summary of the
+situation of the drama: the desperate straits of the Israelites
+after the three-year drought, the trial by fire and water before
+the scorning aristocracy, Elijah stark and alone against all the
+priesthood of Baal, the extremity of despair of the people . . .
+and then the coming of the longed-for rain that loosened the
+terrible tension and released their hearts in the great groaning
+cry of thanksgiving. She had wondered how clearly or definitely she
+had reached their understanding, but she knew that she had reached
+their hearts, when suddenly she had heard all those men's voices
+pealing out, pure and strong and solemn and free, as she had
+dreamed that phrase could be sung.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<img src="images/409.png" width="80%" alt="" title="" />
+<br />
+<br /></div>
+<p>The piercing sweetness of the pleasure this had brought to her
+came over her again in a wave. She halted on the crest of the hill,
+and for a moment in place of the purples and blues of the late
+snowy afternoon there hung before her eyes the powerful, roughly
+clad bodies of those vigorous men, their weather-beaten faces,
+their granite impassivity, under which her eye had caught the
+triumph of the moment, warming them as it did her, with the purest
+of joys this side of heaven, the consciousness of having made music
+worthily. The whole valley seemed to be filled to its brim with
+that shout of exultation. It had taken all of her patience, and
+will-power, and knowledge of her art and of these people to achieve
+that moment. But it had lifted her high, high above the smallness
+of life, up to a rich realm of security in joy.</p>
+<p>The snow fell more and more thickly, covering her as she stood
+with a fine, soft mantle of white. She had heard the men that
+afternoon saying they had seen signs of the winter break-up, and
+she wondered at it now, looking about the frozen, buried, beautiful
+valley and up to the frozen towering mountains, breathing in the
+cold air, as pure as the ether itself. It seemed to her that spring
+was as remote and unreal and impossible an imagination of the heart
+as a child's fairy-tale.</p>
+<p>Then suddenly, bursting out of the dimming distance, close in
+front of her, flying low, silently, strongly, a pair of wild geese
+went winging off towards the north, their gray shapes the only
+moving thing in all the frost-held world.</p>
+<p>Marise drew a great breath of delight in their strong and
+purposeful vitality. She looked after them, her heart rising and
+singing with comradely pride in them. She would have liked to shout
+an exultant greeting after them, "Hurrah!"</p>
+<p>They went beating off, fast and straight, for their unseen
+destination, while, treading the velvet-like snow-drifts with her
+strong free tread, Marise went home.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<img src="images/410.png" width="80%" alt="" title="" />
+<br />
+<br /></div>
+<div class='center'><b>VIII</b><br />
+<br />
+March 2.</div>
+<p>It was the first warm day of the year. The hard-frozen ruts of
+the road thawed on top and glistened. The snow-banks shrank visibly
+from one hour to the next under a warm wind and a hazy sun. The
+mountains were unbelievably beautiful and seductive in a shimmer of
+blue and silver. The children had brought home a branch of
+pussy-willows, and as Marise and Neale stood for a moment at the
+open door breathing in the new softness, they saw Toucl&eacute;,
+old and stooped and shabby, her reticule bag bulging, her flat feet
+in enormous overshoes plodding up the road towards the
+mountain.</p>
+<p>They smiled at one another. It was in truth the first day of
+spring. Marise said, after a pause, "Do you know what she goes off
+for?"</p>
+<p>Neale shook his head with a wide indifference as to the reason.
+"Because she's an Injun," he conjectured casually.</p>
+<p>"She told me once," said Marise, with a sudden wonder what Neale
+would think of that glimpse into the old mystic's mind, how he
+would (for she knew beforehand he would) escape the wistfulness
+which struck at her even now, at the thought of that door to peace.
+She repeated to him word for word what Toucl&eacute; had told her
+on that hot August day.</p>
+<p>Neale gave her his usual careful attention. Marise thought to
+herself, "Neale is the only person I ever knew who could listen to
+other people's ideas." But when she finished he made no comment.
+She asked him, "Did you ever think that old carven-image had that
+in her? How profound a disdain for us busy-about-nothing white
+people she must have!"</p>
+<p>Neale nodded. "Most likely. Everybody has a good deal of disdain
+for other people's ideals."</p>
+<p>"Well, you haven't for hers, have you?" challenged Marise. Neale
+looked thoughtful. "I'm no mystic. Their way of managing life often
+looks to me like sort of lying down on the job. I'm no mystic and
+I'm no fish. Looks to me as though the thing to do isn't to go off
+in a far corner to get your momentary glimpse of daylight, but to
+batter a hole in the roof of your cave and let daylight in where
+you live all the time. I can't help being suspicious of a daylight
+that's so uncertain you have to go away from life and hold your
+breath before you can see it for a minute. I want it where I do my
+work."</p>
+<p>Marise looked at him, thinking deeply. That was just what Neale
+did. But when she looked back at the old Indian woman, just now
+turning into the wood-road, she sighed wistfully, and did not know
+why.</p>
+<p>There was so very much growing always to be done in life.</p>
+<div class='center'><b>IX</b><br />
+<br />
+March 10.<br />
+<br />
+(<i>A letter from Eugenia</i>:)</div>
+<p>". . . I'm planning perhaps to make the trip to the temples in
+the Malay jungle. Biskra was deadly, and Italy worse . . .
+vulgarity and commonness everywhere. What an absolutely dreary
+outlook wherever one turns one's eyes! There is no corner of the
+modern world that is not vulgar and common. Democracy has done its
+horrible leveling down with a vengeance . . ."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>(<i>A letter from Mr. Welles</i>:)</p>
+<p>". . . The life here is full of interest and change, and it's
+like dew on my dusty old heart to see the vitality of the
+joy-in-life of these half-disinherited people. I'm ashamed to tell
+you how they seem to love me and how good they are to me. Their
+warmness of heart and their zest in life. . . . I'm just swept back
+into youth again. It makes me very much mortified when I think what
+a corking good time I am having and what sanctimonious martyr's
+airs I put on about coming down here. Of course a certain amount of
+my feeling younger and brisker comes from the fact that, working as
+I am, nobody feels about me the laid-on-the-shelf compassion which
+everybody (and me too) was feeling before. I <i>am</i> somebody
+here and every time I say 'Dr. Martin' to a well-educated Negro
+physician whom another white man has just hailed as 'Andy' I feel
+not only a real sense of righteous satisfaction but the joyful
+mischievous fun that a small boy has. Give my love to Paul
+(speaking of small boys) and tell him I'm saving up for the
+fishing-pole I am going to use when I go fishing with him next
+summer. He said in his last letter he wanted to come down here and
+make me a visit; but you tell him I think he'd better get his
+growth before he does that."</p>
+<div class='center'><b>X</b><br />
+<br />
+March 15, 1921.</div>
+<p>From a profound sleep, serene warm infinity of rest, Marise was
+wakened by a little outcry near the bed, a sobbing voice saying
+through chattering teeth, "Mother! Father!"</p>
+<p>Still drowned in sleep, Marise cried out, "What? What's that?"
+and then, "Oh, you, Elly. What's the matter, dear? Notions
+again?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mother, it was an awful dream this time. Can't I get into
+bed with you?"</p>
+<p>"Why yes, come along, you dear little silly."</p>
+<p>The fumbling approach to the bed, Marise holding the sheets open
+and stretching out her hand through the cold darkness towards the
+little fingers groping for her; the clutch at her hand with a quick
+anguish of relief and joy. "Oh, <i>Mother!</i>"</p>
+<p>Then the shivering body rolling into bed, the little cold arms
+tight around her neck, the cold smooth petal-like cheek against
+hers.</p>
+<p>Marise reached over beyond Elly and tucked the covers in with
+one arm, drew the child closer to her, and herself drew closer to
+Neale. She wondered if he had been awakened by Elly's voice, and
+the little stir in the room, and hoped he had not. He had been off
+on a very long hard tramp over mountain trails the day before, and
+had been tired at night. Perhaps if he had been wakened by Elly he
+would drowse off again at once as she felt herself doing now,
+conscious sleepily and happily of Elly's dear tender limbs on one
+side of her and of Neale's dear strong body on the other.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>The strong March wind chanted loudly outside in the leafless
+maple-boughs. As Marise felt her eyelids falling shut again it
+seemed to her, half-awake, half-asleep, that the wind was shouting
+out the refrain of an old song she had heard in her childhood,
+"There's room for all! There's room for all! What had it meant,
+that refrain? She tried drowsily to remember, but instead felt
+herself richly falling asleep again, her hands, her arms, her
+body.</p>
+<p>"There's room for all! There's room for all!"</p>
+<p>She was almost asleep. . . .</p>
+<p>Someone was speaking again. Elly's voice, calmer now, wistful
+and wondering, as though she were lying awake and trying to
+think.</p>
+<p>"Mother."</p>
+<p>"Yes, dear, what is it?</p>
+<p>"Mother, aren't you and father afraid of anything?"</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Marise was wide-awake now, thinking hard. She felt Neale stir,
+grope for her hand and hold it firmly . . . Neale's strong
+hand!</p>
+<p>She knew what she was saying. Yes, she knew all that it meant
+when she answered, "No, Elly, I don't believe we are."</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Brimming Cup, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brimming Cup, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Brimming Cup
+
+Author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher
+
+Release Date: February 7, 2005 [EBook #14957]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIMMING CUP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIMMING CUP
+
+_Dorothy Canfield_
+
+HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY NEW YORK
+
+1919
+
+_By the same author_
+
+THE SQUIRREL-CAGE
+A MONTESSORI MOTHER
+MOTHERS AND CHILDREN
+HILLSBORO PEOPLE
+THE BENT TWIG
+THE REAL MOTIVE
+FELLOW CAPTAINS
+(_With Sarah N. Cleghorn_)
+UNDERSTOOD BETSY
+HOME FIRES IN FRANCE
+THE DAY OF GLORY
+THE BRIMMING CUP
+ROUGH-HEWN
+RAW MATERIAL
+THE HOME-MAKER
+MADE-TO-ORDER STORIES
+HER SON'S WIFE
+WHY STOP LEARNING?
+THE DEEPENING STREAM
+BASQUE PEOPLE
+FABLES FOR PARENTS
+SEASONED TIMBER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                       Page
+      I.  PRELUDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    3
+     II.  INTERLUDE . . . . . . . . . . . . .   23
+
+_PART ONE_
+
+    III.  OLD MR. WELLES AND YOUNG MR. MARSH.   29
+     IV.  TABLE TALK. . . . . . . . . . . . .   48
+      V.  A LITTLE GIRL AND HER MOTHER. . . .   64
+     VI.  THINGS TAKE THEIR COURSE. . . . . .   80
+    VII.  THE NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS . . . . .   91
+   VIII.  WHAT GOES ON INSIDE . . . . . . . .  115
+     IX.  THE GENT AROUND THE LADY. . . . . .  130
+      X.  AT THE MILL . . . . . . . . . . . .  151
+
+_PART TWO_
+
+     XI.  IN AUNT HETTY'S GARDEN. . . . . . .  179
+    XII.  HEARD FROM THE STUDY. . . . . . . .  199
+   XIII.  ALONG THE EAGLE ROCK BROOK. . . . .  215
+    XIV.  BESIDE THE ONION-BED. . . . . . . .  224
+     XV.  HOME-LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . .  241
+    XVI.  MASSAGE-CREAM; THEME AND VARIATIONS  256
+   XVII.  THE SOUL OF NELLY POWERS. . . . . .  266
+
+_PART THREE_
+
+  XVIII.  BEFORE THE DAWN . . . . . . . . . .  279
+    XIX.  MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE. . . . .  285
+     XX.  A PRIMAEVAL HERITAGE. . . . . . . .  294
+    XXI.  THE COUNSEL OF THE STARS. . . . . .  302
+   XXII.  EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN . . . . .  309
+  XXIII.  MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE STARS. . .  323
+
+_PART FOUR_
+
+   XXIV.  NEALE'S RETURN. . . . . . . . . . .  331
+    XXV.  MARISE'S COMING-OF-AGE. . . . . . .  338
+   XXVI.  MARISE LOOKS AND SEES WHAT IS THERE  360
+  XXVII.  THE FALL OF THE BIG PINE. . . . . .  367
+ XXVIII.  TWO GOOD-BYES . . . . . . . . . . .  380
+   XXIX.  VIGNETTES FROM HOME-LIFE. . . . . .  390
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIMMING CUP
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_PRELUDE_
+
+SUNSET ON ROCCA DI PAPA
+
+_An Hour in the Life of Two Modern Young People_
+
+April, 1909.
+
+
+Lounging idly in the deserted little waiting-room was the usual shabby,
+bored, lonely ticket-seller, prodigiously indifferent to the grave
+beauty of the scene before him and to the throng of ancient memories
+jostling him where he stood. Without troubling to look at his watch, he
+informed the two young foreigners that they had a long hour to wait
+before the cable-railway would send a car down to the Campagna. His lazy
+nonchalance was faintly colored with the satisfaction, common to his
+profession, in the discomfiture of travelers.
+
+Their look upon him was of amazed gratitude. Evidently they did not
+understand Italian, he thought, and repeated his information more
+slowly, with an unrecognizable word or two of badly pronounced English
+thrown in. He felt slightly vexed that he could not make them feel the
+proper annoyance, and added, "It may even be so late that the signori
+would miss the connection for the last tramway car back to Rome. It is a
+long walk back to the city across the Campagna."
+
+They continued to gaze at him with delight. "I've got to tip him for
+that!" said the young man, reaching vigorously into a pocket.
+
+The girl's answering laugh, like the inward look of her eyes, showed
+only a preoccupied attention. She had the concentrated absent aspect of
+a person who has just heard vital tidings and can attend to nothing
+else. She said, "Oh, Neale, how ridiculous of you. He couldn't possibly
+have the least idea what he's done to deserve getting paid for."
+
+At the sound of her voice, the tone in which these words were
+pronounced, the ticket-seller looked at her hard, with a bold,
+intrusive, diagnosing stare: "Lovers!" he told himself conclusively. He
+accepted with a vast incuriosity as to reason the coin which the young
+foreigner put into his hand, and, ringing it suspiciously on his table,
+divided his appraising attention between its clear answer to his
+challenge, and the sound of the young man's voice as he answered his
+sweetheart, "Of course he hasn't any idea what he's done to deserve it.
+Who ever has? You don't suppose for a moment I've any idea what I've
+done to deserve mine?"
+
+The ticket-seller smiled secretly into his dark mustache. "I wonder if
+_my_ voice quivered and deepened like that, when I was courting
+Annunziata?" he asked himself. He glanced up from pocketing the coin,
+and caught the look which passed between the two. He felt as though
+someone had laid hands on him and shaken him. "_Dio mio_" he thought.
+"They are in the hottest of it."
+
+The young foreigners went across the tracks and established themselves
+on the rocks, partly out of sight, just at the brink of the great drop
+to the Campagna. The setting sun was full in their faces. But they did
+not see it, seeing only each other.
+
+Below them spread the divinely colored plain, crossed by the ancient
+yellow river, rolling its age-old memories out to the sea, a blue
+reminder of the restfulness of eternity, at the rim of the weary old
+land. Like a little cluster of tiny, tarnished pearls, Rome gleamed
+palely, remote and legendary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two young people looked at each other earnestly, with a passionate,
+single-hearted attention to their own meaning, thrusting away
+impatiently the clinging brambles of speech which laid hold on their
+every effort to move closer to each other. They did not look down, or
+away from each other's eyes as they strove to free themselves, to step
+forward, to clasp the other's outstretched hands. They reached down
+blindly, tearing at those thorny, clutching entanglements, pulling and
+tugging at those tenuous, tough words which would not let them say what
+they meant: sure, hopefully sure that in a moment . . . now . . . with the
+next breath, they would break free as no others had ever done before
+them, and crying out the truth and glory that was in them, fall into
+each other's arms.
+
+The girl was physically breathless with this effort, her lips parted,
+her eyebrows drawn together. "Neale, Neale dear, if I could only tell
+you how I want it to be, how utterly utterly _true_ I want us to be.
+Nothing's of any account except that."
+
+She moved with a shrugging, despairing gesture. "No, no, not the way
+that sounds. I don't mean, you know I don't mean any old-fashioned
+impossible vows never to change, or be any different! I know too much
+for that. I've seen too awfully much unhappiness, with people trying to
+do that. You know what I told you about my father and mother. Oh, Neale,
+it's horribly dangerous, loving anybody. I never wanted to. I never
+thought I should. But now I'm in it, I see that it's not at all
+unhappiness I'm afraid of, your getting tired of me or I of you . . .
+everybody's so weak and horrid in this world, who knows what may be
+before us? That's not what would be unendurable, sickening. That would
+make us unhappy. But what would poison us to death . . . what I'm afraid
+of, between two people who try to be what we want to be to each
+other . . . how can I say it?" She looked at him in an anguish of endeavor,
+". . . not to be true to what is deepest and most living in us . . . that
+would be the betrayal I'm afraid of. That's what I mean. No matter what it
+costs us personally, or what it brings, we must be true to that. We
+_must!_"
+
+He took her hand in his silently, and held it close. She drew a long
+troubled breath and said, "You _do_ think we can always have between us
+that loyalty to what is deep and living? It does not seem too much to
+ask, when we are willing to give up everything else for it, even
+happiness?"
+
+He gave her a long, profound look. "I'm trying to give that loyalty to
+you this minute, Marise darling," he said slowly, "when I tell you now
+that I think it a very great deal to ask of life, a very great deal for
+any human beings to try for. I should say it was much harder to get than
+happiness."
+
+She was in despair. "Do you think that?" She searched his face anxiously
+as though she found there more than in his speech. "Yes, yes, I see what
+you mean." She drew a long breath. "I can even see how fine it is of you
+to say that to me now. It's like a promise of how you will try. But oh,
+Neale, I won't _want_ life on any other terms!"
+
+She stopped, looking down at her hand in his. He tightened his clasp.
+His gaze on her darkened and deepened. "It's like sending me to get the
+apples of Hesperides," he said, looking older than she, curiously and
+suddenly older. "I want to say yes! It would be easy to say yes.
+Darling, darling Marise, you can't want it more than I! But the very
+intelligence that makes you want it, that makes me want it, shows me how
+mortally hard it would be! Think! To be loyal to what is deepest and
+most living in yourself . . . that's an undertaking for a life-time's
+effort, with all the ups and downs and growths of life. And then to try
+to know what is deepest and most living in another . . . and to try . . .
+Marise! I will try. I will try with all my might. Can anybody do more
+than try with all his might?"
+
+Their gaze into each other's eyes went far beyond the faltering words
+they spoke. She asked him in a low voice, "Couldn't you do more for me
+than for yourself? One never knows, but . . . what else is love for, but
+to give greater strength than we have?"
+
+There was a moment's silence, in which their very spirits met flame-like
+in the void, challenging, hoping, fearing. The man's face set. His
+burning look of power enveloped her like the reflection of the sun. "I
+swear you shall have it!" he said desperately, his voice shaking.
+
+She looked up at him with a passionate gratitude. "I'll never forget
+that as long as I live!" she cried out to him.
+
+The tears stood in his eyes as in hers.
+
+For the fraction of an instant, they had felt each other there, as never
+before they had felt any other human being: they had both at once caught
+a moment of flood-tide, and both together had been carried up side by
+side; the long, inevitable isolation of human lives from birth onward
+had been broken by the first real contact with another human soul. They
+felt the awed impulse to cover their eyes as before too great a glory.
+
+The tide ebbed back, and untroubled they made no effort to stop its
+ebbing. They had touched their goal, it was really there. Now they knew
+it within their reach. Appeased, assuaged, fatigued, they felt the need
+for quiet, they knew the sweetness of sobriety. They even looked away
+from each other, aware of their own bodies which for that instant had
+been left behind. They entered again into the flesh that clad their
+spirits, taking possession of their hands and feet and members, and
+taken possession of by them again. The fullness of their momentary
+satisfaction had been so complete that they felt no regret, only a
+simple, tender pleasure as of being again at home. They smiled happily
+at each other and sat silent, hand in hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now they saw the beauty before them, the vast plain, the mountains, the
+sea: harmonious, serene, ripe with maturity, evocative of all the
+centuries of conscious life which had unrolled themselves there.
+
+"It's too beautiful to be real, isn't it?" murmured the girl, "and now,
+the peaceful way I feel this minute, I don't mind it's being so old that
+it makes you feel a midge in the sunshine with only an hour or two of
+life before you. What if you are, when it's life as we feel it now, such
+a flood of it, every instant brimming with it? Neale," she turned to him
+with a sudden idea, "do you remember how Victor Hugo's 'Waterloo'
+begins?"
+
+"I should say not!" he returned promptly. "You forget I got all the
+French I know in an American university."
+
+"Well, I went to college in America, myself!"
+
+"I bet it wasn't there you learned anything about Victor Hugo's poetry,"
+he surmised skeptically. "Well, how does it begin, anyhow, and what's it
+got to do with us?"
+
+The girl was as unamused as he at his certainty that it had something to
+do with them, or she would not have mentioned it. She explained, "It's
+not a famous line at all, nothing I ever heard anybody else admire. We
+had to learn the poem by heart, when I was a little girl and went to
+school in Bayonne. It starts out,
+
+     'Waterloo, Waterloo, morne plaine
+     Comme une onde qui bout dans une urne trop pleine,'
+
+And that second line always stuck in my head for the picture it made. I
+could see it, so vividly, an urn boiling over with the great gush of
+water springing up in it. It gave me a feeling, inside, a real physical
+feeling, I mean. I wanted, oh so awfully, sometime to be so filled with
+some emotion, something great and fine, that I would be an urn too full,
+gushing up in a great flooding rush. I could see the smooth, thick curl
+of the water surging up and out!"
+
+She stopped to look at him and exclaim, "Why, you're listening! You're
+interested. Neale, I believe you are the only person in the world who
+can really pay attention to what somebody else says. Everybody else just
+goes on thinking his own thoughts."
+
+He smiled at this fancy, and said, "Go on."
+
+"Well, I don't know whether that feeling was already in me, waiting for
+something to express it, or whether that phrase in the poem started it.
+But it was, for ever so long, the most important thing in the world to
+me. I was about fourteen years old then, and of course, being a good
+deal with Catholics, I thought probably it was religious ecstasy that
+was going to be the great flood that would brim my cup full. I used to
+go up the hill in Bayonne to the Cathedral every day and stay there for
+hours, trying to work up an ecstasy. I managed nearly to faint away once
+or twice, which was _some_thing of course. But I couldn't feel that
+great tide I'd dreamed of. And then, little by little . . . oh, lots of
+things came between the idea and my thinking about it. Mother was . . .
+I've told you how Mother was at that time. And what an unhappy time it
+was at home. I was pretty busy at the house because she was away so
+much. And Father and I hung together because there wasn't anybody else
+to hang to: and all sorts of ugly things happened, and I didn't have the
+time or the heart to think about being 'an urn too full.'"
+
+She stopped, smiling happily, as though those had not been tragic words
+which he had just spoken, thinking not of them but of something else,
+which now came out, "And then, oh Neale, that day, on the piazza in
+front of St. Peter's, when we stood together, and felt the spray of the
+fountains blown on us, and you looked at me and spoke out. . . . Oh, Neale,
+_Neale_, what a moment to have lived through! Well, when we went on into
+the church, and I knelt there for a while, so struck down with joy that
+I couldn't stand on my feet, all those wild bursts of excitement, and
+incredulity and happiness, that kept surging up and drenching me . . . I
+had a queer feeling, that awfully threadbare feeling of having been
+there before, or felt that before; that it was familiar, although it was
+so new. Then it came to me, 'Why, I have it, what I used to pray for.
+Now at last I am the urn too full!' And it was true, I could feel, just
+as I dreamed, the upsurging of the feeling, brimming over, boiling up,
+brimming over. . . . And another phrase came into my mind, an English one.
+I said to myself, 'The fullness of life.' Now I know what it is."
+
+She turned to him, and caught at his hand. "Oh, Neale, now I _do_ know
+what it is, how utterly hideous it would be to have to live without it,
+to feel only the mean little trickle that seems mostly all that people
+have."
+
+"Well, I'll never have to get along without it, as long as I have you,"
+he said confidently.
+
+"And I refuse to live a _minute_, if it goes back on me!" she cried.
+
+"I imagine that old folks would think we are talking very young,"
+suggested the man casually.
+
+"Don't speak of them!" She cast them away into non-existence with a
+gesture.
+
+They sank into a reverie, smiling to themselves.
+
+"How the fountains shone in the sun, that day," she murmured; "the spray
+they cast on us was all tiny opals and diamonds."
+
+"You're sure you aren't going to be sorry to go back to America to live,
+to leave all that?" asked the man. "I get anxious about that sometimes.
+It seems an awful jump to go away from such beautiful historic things,
+back to a narrow little mountain town."
+
+"I'd like to know what right you have to call it narrow, when you've
+never even seen it," she returned.
+
+"Well, anybody could make a pretty fair guess that a small Vermont town
+isn't going to be so very _wide_," he advanced reasonably.
+
+"It may not be wide, but it's deep," she replied.
+
+He laughed at her certainty. "You were about eleven years old when you
+saw it last, weren't you?"
+
+"No, you've got it wrong. It was when we came to France to live that I
+was eleven, and of course I stopped going to Ashley regularly for
+vacations then. But I went back for several summers in the old house
+with Cousin Hetty, when I was in America for college, after Mother
+died."
+
+"Oh well, I don't care what it's like," he said, "except that it's the
+place where I'm going to live with you. Any place on earth would seem
+wide enough and deep enough, if I had you there."
+
+"Isn't it funny," she mused, "that I should know so much more about it
+than you? To think how I played all around your uncle's mill and house,
+lots of times when I was a little girl, and never dreamed . . ."
+
+"No funnier than all the rest of it," he demurred. "Once you grant our
+existing and happening to meet out of all the millions of people in the
+world, you can't think up anything funnier. Just the little
+two-for-a-cent queerness of our happening to meet in Rome instead of in
+Brooklyn, and your happening to know the town where my uncle lived and
+owned the mill he left me . . . that can't hold a candle for queerness,
+for wonderfulness, compared to my having ever laid eyes on you. Suppose
+I'd never come to Rome at all? When I got the news of Uncle Burton's
+death and the bequest, I was almost planning to sail from Genoa and not
+come to southern Italy at all."
+
+She shook her head confidently. "You can't scare me with any such
+hideous possibilities. It's not possible that we shouldn't ever have
+met, both of us being in the world. Didn't you ever study chemistry?
+Didn't they teach you there are certain elements that just _will_ come
+together, no matter how you mix them up with other things?"
+
+He made no answer, gazing out across the plain far below them, mellowing
+richly in the ever-softening light of the sunset.
+
+She looked doubtfully at his profile, rather lean, with the beginning
+already drawn of the deep American line from the Corner of the nose to
+the mouth, that is partly humorous and partly grim. "Don't you believe
+that, Neale, that we would have come together somehow, anyhow?" she
+asked, "even if you had gone straight back from Genoa to Ashley? Maybe
+it might have been up there after you'd begun to run the mill. Maybe I'd
+have gone back to America and gone up to visit Cousin Hetty again."
+
+He was still silent.
+
+She said urgently, as if in alarm, "Neale, you don't believe that we
+could have passed all our lives and never have _seen_ each other?"
+
+He turned on her his deep-set eyes, full of tenderness and humor and
+uncertainty, and shook his head. "Yes, dear, I do believe that," he said
+regretfully. "I don't see how I can help believing it. Why, I hadn't the
+faintest idea of going back to settle in Ashley before I met you. I had
+taken Uncle Burton's mill and his bequest of four thousand dollars as a
+sort of joke. What could I do with them, without anything else? And what
+on earth did I want to do with them? Nothing! As far as I had any plans
+at all, it was to go home, see Father and Mother for a while, get
+through the legal complications of inheritance, sell the mill and house
+. . . I wouldn't have thought of such a thing as bothering even to go to
+Ashley to look at them . . . and then take the money and go off somewhere,
+somewhere different, and far away: to China maybe. I was pretty restless
+in my mind, pretty sure that nothing in our civilization was worth the
+candle, you know, before you arrived on the scene to put everything in
+focus. And if I had done all that, while you were still here in Rome,
+running up and down your scales, honestly . . . I know I sound awfully
+literal . . . but I don't see how we ever could have met, do you, dear?"
+
+He offered her this, with a look half of apology, half of simple
+courage.
+
+She considered it and him seriously, studying his face and eyes,
+listening retrospectively to the accent of his words, and immensely
+astonished him by suddenly flashing a kiss on his cheek. "You're
+miraculous!" she said. "You don't know how it feels; as though I'd been
+floundering in a marsh, deeper and deeper, and then all at once, when I
+thought I'd come to know there wasn't anything in the world _but_ marsh,
+to come out on beautiful, fine, clean earth, where I feel the very
+strength of ages under my feet. You don't _know_ how good it seems to
+have a silly, romantic remark like what I said, answered the way you
+did, telling the truth; how _good_ it feels to be pulled down to what's
+what, and to know you can do it and really love me too."
+
+He had been so startled and moved by her kiss that he had heard her
+words but vaguely. "I don't seem to catch hold of all that. What's it
+all about?"
+
+"It's all about the fact that I really begin to believe that you will be
+loyal and tell me the truth," she told him.
+
+He saw cause for gravity in this, remembering the great moment so
+shortly back of them, and said with a surprised and hurt accent, "Didn't
+you believe me, when I said I would?"
+
+She took up his hand in hers and said rapidly, "Dear Neale, I did
+believe it, for just a moment, and I can't believe anything good of
+anybody for longer than that, not _really_ in my heart of hearts. And
+it's my turn to tell you some truth when I tell you about that unbelief,
+what I've hardly even ever told myself, right out in words."
+
+He was listening now, fixing on her a look of profound, intelligent
+attention, as she went on, stumbling, reaching out for words, discarding
+those she found, only her steady gaze giving coherence to her statement.
+"You know, living the way I have . . . I've told you . . . I've seen a
+great deal more than most girls have. And then, half brought up in France
+with people who are clever and have their eyes wide open, people who
+really count, I've seen how they don't believe in humans, or goodness, or
+anything that's not base. They know life is mostly bad and cruel and
+dull and low, and above all that it's bound to fool you if you trust to
+it, or get off your guard a single minute. They don't _teach_ you that,
+you know; but you see it's what they believe and what they spend all
+their energies trying to dodge a little, all they think they can. Then
+everything you read, except the silly little Bibliotheque-Rose sort of
+thing, makes you know that it's true . . . Anatole France, and Maupassant,
+and Schnitzler. Of course back in America you find lots of nice people
+who don't believe that. But they're so sweet you know they'd swallow
+anything that made things look pleasant. So you don't dare take their
+word for anything. They won't even look at what's bad in everybody's
+life, they just pretend it's not there, not in _their_ husbands, or
+wives or children, and so you know they're fooled." She lowered her
+voice, which faltered a little, but she still continued to look straight
+into his eyes, "And as for love, why, I've just hated the sound of the
+name and . . . I'm horribly afraid of it, even now."
+
+He asked her gravely, "Don't you love me? Don't you think that I love
+you?"
+
+She looked at him piteously, wincing, bracing herself with an effort to
+be brave. "I must try to be as honest as I want you to be. Yes, I love
+you, Neale, with all my heart a thousand times more than I ever dreamed
+I could love anybody. But how do I know that I'm not somehow fooling
+myself: but that maybe all that huge unconscious inheritance from all my
+miserable ancestors hasn't _got_ me, somehow, and you too? How do I know
+that I'm not being fooled by Nature and fooling you with fine words?"
+
+She hesitated, probing deep into her heart, and brought out now, like a
+great and unexpected treasure, "But, Neale, listen! I _don't_ think that
+about you! I don't believe you're being fooled. Why, I believe in you
+more than in myself!" She was amazed at this and radiant.
+
+Then she asked him, "Neale, how do _you_ manage about all this? What do
+you feel about all the capacity for being low and bad, that everybody
+has? Aren't you afraid that they'll get the best of us, inevitably,
+unless we let ourselves get so dull, and second-rate and passive, that
+we can't even be bad? Are you afraid of being fooled? Do you believe in
+yourself at all?"
+
+He was silent for some time, his eyes steadily fixed on some invisible
+realm. When he spoke it was with a firm, natural, unshaken accent. "Why,
+yes, I think it very likely that I am being fooled all the time. But I
+don't think it matters the least bit in the world beside the fact that I
+love you. That's big enough to overtop everything else."
+
+He raised his voice and spoke out boldly to the undefined specter in her
+mind. "And if it's the mating instinct you mean, that may be fooling
+both of us, because of our youth and bodily health . . . good heavens!
+Isn't our love deep enough to absorb that a million times over, like the
+water of a little brook flowing into the sea? Do you think _that_, which
+is only a little trickle and a harmless and natural and healthy little
+trickle, could unsalt the great ocean of its savor? Why, Marise, all
+that you're so afraid of, all that they've made you so afraid of, . . .
+it's like the little surface waves . . . well, call it the big storm waves
+if you want to . . . but nothing at all, the biggest of them, compared to
+the stillness in the depths of the sea. Why, I love you! Do I believe in
+myself? Of course I believe in myself, because I have you."
+
+She drew a long sigh and, closing her eyes, murmured, "I feel as though
+I were lifted up on a great rock." After a moment, opening her eyes, she
+said, "You are better than I, you know. I'm not at all sure that I could
+say that. I never knew before that I was weak. But then I never met
+strength before."
+
+"You're not weak," he told her; adding quaintly, "maybe a little
+overballasted; with brains and sensitiveness and under-ballasted with
+experience, that's all. But you haven't had much chance to take on any
+other cargo, as yet."
+
+She was nettled at this, and leaving her slow, wide-winged poise in the
+upper airs, she veered and with swallow-like swiftness darted down on
+him. "That sounds patronizing and elder-brotherish," she told him. "I've
+taken on all sorts of cargo that you don't know anything about. In ever
+so many ways you seem positively . . . naive! You needn't go thinking that
+I'm always highstrung and fanciful. I never showed that side to anybody
+before, never! Always kept it shut up and locked down and danced and
+whooped it up before the door. You know how everybody always thinks of
+me as laughing all the time. I do wish everything hadn't been said
+already so many times. If it weren't that it's been said so often, I'd
+like to say that I have always been laughing to keep from crying."
+
+"Why don't you say it, if that is what you mean?" he proposed.
+
+She looked at him marveling. "I'm so fatuous about you!" she exclaimed;
+"the least little thing you say, I see the most wonderful possibilities
+in it. I know _you'd_ say what you meant, no matter how many thousands
+had said it before. And since I know it's not stupidness in you, why, it
+seems to me just splendidly and simply courageous, a kind of courage I'd
+never thought of before. I see now, how, after all, those stupid people
+had me beaten, because I'd always thought that a person either had to be
+stupid so that he didn't _know_ he was saying something everybody else
+had said, or else not say it, even if he wanted to, ever so much, and it
+was just what he meant."
+
+"Don't you think maybe you're too much bothered about other people,
+anyhow?" he suggested, mildly; "whether they're stupid or have said
+things or not? What difference does it make, if it's a question of what
+you yourself feel? I'd be just as satisfied if you gave _all_ your time
+to discovering the wonderful possibilities in what I say. It would give
+me a chance to conceal the fact that I get all out of breath trying to
+follow what you mean."
+
+This surprised her into a sudden laugh, outright and ringing. He looked
+down at her sparkling face, brilliant in its mirth as a child's, and
+said seriously, "You must instantly think of something perfectly prosaic
+and commonplace to say, or I shall be forced to take you in my arms and
+kiss you a great many times, which might have Lord knows what effect on
+that gloomy-minded ticket-seller back of us who already has his
+suspicions."
+
+She rose instantly to the possibilities and said smoothly, swiftly,
+whimsically, with the accent of drollery, "I'm very particular about
+what sort of frying-pan I use. I insist on having a separate one for the
+_fritures_ of fish, and another for the omelets, used only for that: I'm
+a very fine and conscientious housekeeper, I'd have you know, and all
+the while we lived in Bayonne I ran the house because Mother never got
+used to French housekeeping ways. I was the one who went to market . . .
+oh, the gorgeous things you get in the Bayonne market, near enough
+Spain, you know, for real Malaga grapes with the aroma still on them,
+and for Spanish quince-paste. I bossed the old Basque woman we had for
+cook and learned how to cook from her, using a great many onions for
+everything. And I learned how to keep house by the light of nature,
+since it had to be done. And I'm awfully excited about having a house of
+my own, just as though I weren't the extremely clever, cynical,
+disillusioned, fascinating musical genius everybody knows me to be: only
+let me warn you that the old house we are going to live in will need
+lots done to it. Your uncle never opened the dreadful room he called the
+parlor, and never used the south wing at all, where all the sunshine
+comes in. And the pantry arrangements are simply humorous, they're so
+inadequate. I don't know how much of that four thousand dollars you are
+going to want to spare for remodeling the mill, but I will tell you
+now, that I will go on strike if you don't give me a better cook-stove
+than your Uncle's Toucle had to work with."
+
+He had been listening with an appreciative grin to her nimble-witted
+chatter, but at this he brought her up short by an astonished, "Who had?
+What had? What's that . . . Toucle?"
+
+She laughed aloud again, delighted at having startled him into
+curiosity. "Toucle. Toucle. Don't you think it a pretty name? Will you
+believe me when I say I know all about Ashley?"
+
+"Oh, go on, tell me!" he begged. "You don't mean to say that my Uncle
+Benton had pep enough to have a scandal in his life?"
+
+"What do _you_ know about your uncle?"
+
+"Oh, I'd seen him a few times, though I'd never been up to Ashley. As
+long as Grandfather was alive and the mill at Adams Center was running,
+Uncle Burton used to go there to see his father, and I always used to be
+hanging around Grandfather and the mill, and the woods. I was crazy
+about it all, as a boy, used to work right along with the mill-hands,
+and out chopping with the lumbermen. Maybe Uncle Burton noticed that."
+He was struck with a sudden idea, "By George, maybe _that_ was why he
+left me the mill!" He cast his eye retrospectively on this idea and was
+silent for a moment, emerging from his meditation to say, wonderingly,
+"Well, it certainly is _queer_, how things come out, how one thing hangs
+on another. It's enough to addle your brains, to try to start to follow
+back all the ways things happen . . . ways you'd never thought of as of
+the least importance."
+
+"Your Uncle Burton was of some importance to _us_," she told him. "Miss
+Oldham at the _pension_ said that she had just met a new American, down
+from Genoa, and when I heard your name I said, 'Oh, I used to know an
+old Mr. Crittenden who ran a wood-working factory up in Vermont, where I
+used to visit an old cousin of mine,' and that was why Miss Oldham
+introduced us, that silly way, as cousins."
+
+He said, pouncingly, "You're running on, inconsequently, just to divert
+my mind from asking you again who or what Toucle is."
+
+"You can ask and ask all you like," she defied him, laughing. "I'm not
+going to tell you. I've got to have _some_ secrets from you, to keep up
+the traditions of self-respecting womanhood. And anyhow I couldn't tell
+you, because she is different from everything else. You'll see for
+yourself, when we get there. If she's still alive." She offered a
+compromise, "I'll tell you what. If she's dead, I'll sit down and tell
+you about her. If she's still alive, you'll find out. She's an Ashley
+institution, Toucle is. As symbolic as the Cumean Sybil. I don't believe
+she'll be dead. I don't believe she'll _ever_ be dead."
+
+"You've let the cat out of the bag enough so I've lost my interest in
+her," he professed. "I can make a guess that she's some old woman, and I
+bet you I won't see anything remarkable in her. Except that wild name.
+Is it Miss Toucle, or Mrs. Toucle?"
+
+The girl burst into laughter at this, foolish, light-hearted mirth which
+drenched the air all about her with the perfume of young gaiety. "Is it
+Miss Druid, or Mrs. Druid?" was all she would say.
+
+She looked up at him, her eyes shining, and cried between her gusts of
+laughter, as if astonished, "Why, I do believe we are going to be happy
+together. I do believe it's going to be fun to live with you."
+
+His appalled surprise that she had again fallen into the pit of
+incredulity was, this time, only half humorous. "For God's sake, what
+_did_ you think!"
+
+She answered, reasonably, "Well, nobody ever is happy together, either
+in books or out of them. Of all the million, million love-affairs that
+have happened, does anybody ever claim any one to have been happy?"
+
+His breath was taken away. He asked helplessly, "Well, why _are_ you
+marrying me?"
+
+She replied very seriously, "Because I can't help myself, dear Neale.
+Isn't that the only reason you're marrying me?"
+
+He looked at her long, his nostrils quivering a little, gave a short
+exclamation which seemed to carry away all his impatience, and finally
+said, quietly enough, "Why, yes, of course, if that's the way you want
+to put it. You can say it in a thousand thousand different ways."
+
+He added with a sudden fury, "And never one of them will come anywhere
+near expressing it. Look here, Marise, I don't believe you have the
+faintest, faintest idea how big this thing is. All these fool clever
+ways of talking about it . . . they're just a screen set up in front of
+it, to my mind. It's enough sight bigger than just you or me, or
+happiness or unhappiness. It's the meaning of everything!"
+
+She considered this thoughtfully. "I don't believe I really know what
+you mean," she said, "or anyhow that I _feel_ what you mean. I have had
+dreams sometimes, that I'm in something awfully big and irresistible
+like a great river, flowing somewhere; but I've never felt it in waking
+hours. I wish I could. It's lovely in dreams. You evidently do, even
+awake."
+
+He said, confidently, "You will, later on."
+
+She ventured, "You mean, maybe, that I'm so shaken up by the little
+surface waves, chopping back and forth, that I don't feel the big
+current."
+
+"It's there. Whether you feel it or not," he made final answer to her
+doubt.
+
+She murmured, "I wonder if there is anything in that silly,
+old-fashioned notion that men are stronger than women, and that women
+must lean on men's strength, to live?"
+
+"Everybody's got to lean on his own strength, sooner or later," he told
+her with a touch of grimness.
+
+"You just won't be romantic!" she cried admiringly.
+
+"I really love you, Marise," he answered profoundly; and on this
+rock-like assurance she sank down with a long breath of trust.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was dipping into the sea now, emblazoning the sky with a last
+flaming half-circle of pure color, but the light had left the dusky
+edges of the world. Already the far mountains were dimmed, and the
+plain, passing from one deep twilight color to another more somber, was
+quietly sinking into darkness as into the strong loving arms of ultimate
+dissolution.
+
+The girl spoke in a dreamy twilight tone, "Neale dear, this is not a
+romantic idea . . . honestly, I do wish we could both die right here and
+never go down to the plain any more. Don't you feel that? Not at all?"
+
+His voice rang out, resonant and harsh as a bugle-note, "No, I do not,
+not at all, not for a single moment. I've too much ahead of me to feel
+that. And so have you!"
+
+"There comes the cable-car, climbing up to get us," she said faintly.
+"And we will go down from this high place of safety into that dark
+plain, and we will have to cross it, painfully, step by step. _Dare_ you
+promise me we will not lose our way?" she challenged him.
+
+"I don't promise you anything about it," he answered, taking her hand in
+his. "Only I'm not a bit afraid of the plain, nor the way that's before
+us. Come along with me, and let's see what's there."
+
+"Do you think you know where we are going, across that plain?" she asked
+him painfully; "even where we are to _try_ to go?"
+
+"No, I don't know, now," he answered undismayed. "But I think we will
+know it as we go along because we will be together."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The darkness, folding itself like a velvet mantle about the far
+mountains, deepened, and her voice deepened with it. "Can you even
+promise that we won't lose each other there?" she asked somberly.
+
+At this he suddenly took her into his arms, silently, bending his face
+to hers, his insistent eyes bringing hers up to meet his gaze. She could
+feel the strong throbbing of his heart all through her own body.
+
+She clung to him as though she were drowning. And indeed she felt that
+she was. Life burst over them with a roar, a superb flooding tide on
+whose strong swelling bosom they felt themselves rising, rising
+illimitably.
+
+The sun had now wholly set, leaving to darkness the old, old plain,
+soaked with humanity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_INTERLUDE_
+
+     March 15, 1920.
+        8:30 A.M.
+
+
+Marise fitted little Mark's cap down over his ears and buttoned his blue
+reefer coat close to his throat.
+
+"Now you big children," she said, with an anxious accent, to Paul and
+Elly standing with their school-books done up in straps, "be sure to
+keep an eye on Mark at recess-time. Don't let him run and get all hot
+and then sit down in the wind without his coat. Remember, it's his first
+day at school, and he's only six."
+
+She kissed his round, smooth, rosy cheek once more, and let him go. Elly
+stooped and took her little brother's mittened hand in hers. She said
+nothing, but her look on the little boy's face was loving and maternal.
+
+Paul assured his mother seriously, "Oh, I'll look out for Mark, all
+right."
+
+Mark wriggled and said, "_I_ can looken out for myself wivout Paul!"
+
+Their mother looked for a moment deep into the eyes of her older son, so
+clear, so quiet, so unchanging and true. "You're a good boy, Paul, a
+real comfort," she told him.
+
+To herself she thought, "Yes, all his life he'll look out for people and
+get no thanks for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She followed the children to the door, wondering at her heavy heart.
+What could it come from? There was nothing in life for her to fear of
+course, except for the children, and it was absurd to fear for them.
+They were all safe; safe and strong and rooted deep in health, and
+little Mark was stepping off gallantly into his own life as the others
+had done. But she felt afraid. What could she be afraid of? As she
+opened the door, their advance was halted by the rush upon them of
+Paul's dog, frantic with delight to see the children ready to be off,
+springing up on Paul, bounding down the path, racing back to the door,
+all quivering eager exultation. "Ah, he's going _with_ the children!"
+thought Marise wistfully.
+
+She could not bear to let them leave her and stood with them in the open
+door-way for a moment. Elly rubbed her soft cheek against her mother's
+hand. Paul, seeing his mother shiver in the keen March air, said,
+"Mother, if Father were here he'd make you go in. That's a thin dress.
+And your teeth are just chattering."
+
+"Yes, you're right, Paul," she agreed; "it's foolish of me!"
+
+The children gave her a hearty round of good-bye hugs and kisses,
+briskly and energetically performed, and went down the stone-flagged
+path to the road. They were chattering to each other as they went. Their
+voices sounded at first loud and gay in their mother's ears. Then they
+sank to a murmur, as the children ran along the road. The dog bounded
+about them in circles, barking joyfully, but this sound too grew fainter
+and fainter.
+
+When the murmur died away to silence, there seemed no sound left in the
+stark gray valley, empty and motionless between the steep dark walls of
+pine-covered mountains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise stood for a long time looking after the children. They were
+climbing up the long hilly road now, growing smaller and smaller. How
+far away they were, already! And that very strength and vigor of which
+she was so proud, which she had so cherished and fostered, how rapidly
+it carried them along the road that led away from her!
+
+They were almost at the top of the hill now. Perhaps they would turn
+there and wave to her.
+
+No, of course now, she was foolish to think of such a thing. Children
+never remembered the people they left behind. And she was now only
+somebody whom they were leaving behind. She felt the cold penetrate
+deeper and deeper into her heart, and knew she ought to go back into the
+house. But she could not take her eyes from the children. She thought to
+herself bitterly, "This is the beginning of the end. I've been feeling
+how, in their hearts, they want to escape from me when I try to hold
+them, or when I try to make them let me into their lives. I've given
+everything to them, but they never think of that. _I_ think of it! Every
+time I look at them I see all those endless hours of sacred sacrifice.
+But when they look at me, do they see any of that? No! Never! They only
+see the Obstacle in the way of their getting what they want. And so they
+want to run away from it. Just as they're doing now."
+
+She looked after them, yearning. Although they were so far, she could
+see them plainly in the thin mountain air. They were running mostly,
+once in a while stopping to throw a stone or look up into a tree. Then
+they scampered on like squirrels, the fox-terrier bounding ahead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now they were at the top where the road turned. Perhaps, after all, they
+_would_ remember and glance back and wave their hands to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now they had disappeared, without a backward look.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She continued gazing at the vacant road. It seemed to her that the
+children had taken everything with them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A gust of icy wind blew down sharply from the mountain, still
+snow-covered, and struck at her like a sword. She turned and went back
+shivering, into the empty house.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+OLD MR. WELLES AND YOUNG MR. MARSH
+
+_An Hour in the Life of Mr. Ormsby Welles, aet. 67_
+
+     March 15, 1920.
+        3:00 P.M.
+
+
+Having lifted the knocker and let it fall, the two men stood gazing with
+varying degrees of attention at the closed white-painted old door. The
+younger, the one with the round dark head and quick dark eyes, seemed
+extremely interested in the door, and examined it competently, its
+harmoniously disposed wide panels, the shapely fan-light over it, the
+small panes of greenish old glass on each side. "Beautiful old bits you
+get occasionally in these out-of-the-way holes," he remarked. But the
+older man was aware of nothing so concrete and material. He saw the door
+as he saw everything else that day, through a haze. Chiefly he was
+concerned as to what lay behind the door. . . . "My neighbors," he thought,
+"the first I ever had."
+
+The sun shone down through the bare, beautiful twigs of the leafless
+elms, in a still air, transparent and colorless.
+
+The handle of the door turned, the door opened. The older man was too
+astonished by what he saw to speak, but after an instant's pause the
+younger one asked if Mr. and Mrs. Crittenden were at home and could see
+callers. The lean, aged, leather-colored woman, with shiny opaque black
+eyes, opened the door wider and silently ushered them into the house.
+
+As long as she was in sight they preserved a prudent silence as profound
+as hers, but when she had left them seated, and disappeared, they turned
+to each other with lifted eyebrows. "Well, what was _that_, do you
+suppose?" exclaimed the Younger. He seemed extremely interested and
+amused. "I'm not so sure, Mr. Welles, about your being safe in never
+locking your doors at night, as they all tell you, up here. With that
+for a neighbor!"
+
+The older man had a friendly smile for the facetious intention of this.
+"I guess I won't have anything that'd be worth locking doors on," he
+said. He looked about him still smiling, his pleasant old eyes full of a
+fresh satisfaction in what he saw. The room was charming to his gaze,
+cheerful and homey. "I don't believe I'm going to have anything to
+complain of, with the folks that live in this house," he said, "any more
+than with any of the rest of it."
+
+The other nodded. "Yes, it's a very good room," he agreed. After a
+longer inspection, he added with a slight accent of surprise, "An oddly
+good room; stunning! Look at the color in those curtains and the walls,
+and the arrangement of those prints over that Chippendale sewing-table.
+I wonder if it's accidental. You wouldn't think you'd find anybody up
+here who could achieve it consciously."
+
+He got to his feet with a vigorous precision of movement which the other
+admired. "Well, he's grown to be considerable of a man," he thought to
+himself. "A pity his father couldn't have lived to see it, all that
+aliveness that had bothered them so much, down at last where he's got
+his grip on it. And enough of it, plenty of it, oceans of it, left so
+that he is still about forty times more alive than anybody else." He
+looked tolerantly with his tired elderly amusement at the other,
+stepping about, surveying the room and every object in it.
+
+The younger brought himself up short in front of a framed photograph.
+"Why, here's a chateau-fort I don't know!" he said with an abrupt
+accent. He added, with some vehemence, "I never even heard of it, I'm
+sure. And it's authentic, evidently."
+
+The older man sat perfectly still. He did not know what a shatto four
+was, nor had he the slightest desire to ask and bring the information
+down on him, given as the other would give it, pressingly, vividly, so
+that you had to listen whether you wanted to or not. Heaven knew he did
+not want to know about whatever it was, this time. Not about that, nor
+anything else. He only wanted to rest and have a little life before it
+was too late. It was already too late for any but the quietest sort. But
+that was no matter. He wouldn't have liked the other kind very well
+probably. He certainly had detested the sort of "life" he'd experienced
+in business. The quietest sort was what he had always wanted and never
+got. And now it really seemed as though he was going to have it. For all
+his fatigued pose in the old arm-chair, his heart beat faster at the
+idea. He hadn't got used to being free yet. He'd heard people say that
+when you were first married it was like that, you couldn't realize it.
+He'd heard one of the men at the office say that for a long time, every
+time he heard his bride's skirts rustle, he had to turn his head to make
+sure she was really there. Well, he would like now to get up and look
+out of that window and see if his garden was really there. _His garden!_
+He thought with a secret feeling, half pity and half shame, of those
+yellowed old seed catalogues which had come, varnished and brilliant and
+new, year after year, so long ago, which he'd looked at so hard and so
+long, in the evenings, and put away to get yellow and sallow like his
+face . . . and his hopes. It must be almost time to "make garden," he
+thought. He had heard them saying at the store that the sap was
+beginning to run in the maple-trees. He would have just time to get
+himself settled in his house . . . he felt an absurd young flush come up
+under his grizzled beard at this phrase . . . "his house," his own house,
+with bookshelves, and a garden. How he loved it all already! He sat very
+still, feeling those savagely lopped-off tendrils put out their curling
+fingers once more, this time unafraid. He sat there in the comfortable
+old arm-chair at rest as never before. He thought, "This is the way I'm
+going to feel right along, every day, all the time," and closed his
+eyes.
+
+He opened them again in a moment, moved subconsciously by the life-time
+habit of making sure what Vincent was up to. He smiled at the keen look
+of alert, prick-eared attention which the other was still giving to that
+room! Lord, how Vincent did love to get things all figured out! He
+probably had, by this time, an exact diagram of the owners of the house
+all drawn up in his mind and would probably spend the hour of their
+call, seeing if it fitted. Not that _they_ would have any notion he was
+doing anything but talk a blue streak, or was thinking of anything but
+introducing an old friend.
+
+One thing he wanted in his garden was plenty of gladioli. Those poor,
+spindling, watery ones he had tried to grow in the window-box, he'd
+forget that failure in a whole big row all along the terrace, tall and
+strong, standing up straight in the country sunshine. What was the
+address of that man who made a specialty of gladioli? He ought to have
+noted it down. "Vincent," he asked, "do you remember the address of that
+Mr. Schwatzkummerer who grew nothing but gladioli?" Vincent was looking
+with an expression of extreme astonishment at the sheet of music on the
+piano. He started at the question, stared, recollected himself, laughed,
+and said, "Heavens, no, Mr. Welles!" and went back into his own world.
+There were lots of things, Mr. Welles reflected, that Vincent did _not_
+care about just as hard as he cared about others.
+
+In a moment the younger man came and sat down on the short, high-armed
+sofa. Mr. Welles thought he looked puzzled, a very unusual expression on
+that face. Maybe, after all, he hadn't got the owners of the house so
+well-plotted out as he thought he ought to. He himself, going on with
+his own concerns, remarked, "Well, the name must be in the Long Island
+telephone directory. When you go back you could look it up and send me
+word."
+
+"Whose name?" asked Vincent blankly.
+
+"Schwatzkummerer," said the other.
+
+"_What_!" cried Vincent incredulously, and then, "Oh yes," and then,
+"Sure, yes, I'll look it up. I'm going back Thursday on the night train.
+I won't leave the Grand Central without going to a telephone booth,
+looking it up, and sending it to you on a postcard, mailed there. It
+ought to be here on the morning mail Saturday."
+
+The older man knew perfectly well that he was being a little laughed at,
+for his absorption in gladioli, and not minding it at all, laughed
+himself, peaceably. "It would take a great deal more than a little of
+Vincent's fun," he thought, "to make me feel anything but peaceable
+here." He was quite used to having people set him down as a harmless,
+worn-out old duffer, and he did not object to this conception of his
+character. It made a convenient screen behind which he could carry on
+his own observation and meditation uninterrupted.
+
+"Here comes somebody," said Vincent and turned his quick eyes toward the
+door, with an eager expression of attention. He really _must_ have been
+stumped by something in the room, thought Mr. Welles, and meant to
+figure it out from the owners of the house themselves.
+
+The tall, quiet-looking lady with the long dark eyes, who now came in
+alone, excusing herself for keeping them waiting, must of course be Mrs.
+Crittenden, Mr. Welles knew. He wished he could get to his feet as
+Vincent did, looking as though he had got there by a bound or a spring
+and were ready for another. He lifted himself out of his arm-chair with
+a heaviness he knew seemed all the heavier by contrast, took the slim
+hand Mrs. Crittenden offered him, looked at her as hard as he dared, and
+sank again into the arm-chair, as she motioned him to do. He had had a
+long experience in judging people quickly by the expression of their
+faces, and in that short length of time he had decided thankfully that
+he was really, just as he had hoped, going to like his new neighbor as
+much as all the rest of it. He gave her a propitiatory smile, hoping she
+might like him a little, too, and hoping also that she would not mind
+Vincent. Sometimes people did, especially nice ladies such as evidently
+Mrs. Crittenden was. He observed that as usual Vincent had cut in ahead
+of everybody else, had mentioned their names, both of them, and was
+talking with that . . . well, the way he _did_, which people either liked
+very much or couldn't abide. He looked at Vincent as he talked. He was
+not a great talker himself, which gave him a great deal of practice in
+watching people who did. He often felt that he _saw_ more than he heard,
+so much more did people's faces express than their words.
+
+He noticed that the younger man was smiling a good deal, showing those
+fine teeth of his, and he had one of those instantaneously-gone,
+flash-light reminiscences of elderly people, . . . the day when Mr. Marsh
+had been called away from the office and had asked him to go with little
+Vincent to keep an appointment with the dentist. Heavens! How the kid
+had roared and kicked! And now he sat there, smiling, "making a call,"
+probably with that very filling in his tooth, grown-up, not even so very
+young any more, with a little gray in his thick hair, what people often
+called a good-looking man. How life did run between your fingers! Well,
+he would close his hand tight upon what was left to him. He noticed
+further that as Vincent talked, his eyes fixed on his interlocutor, his
+vigorous hands caressed with a slow circular motion the rounded arms of
+his chair. "What a three-ringed circus that fellow is," he thought. "I
+bet that the lady thinks he hasn't another idea in his head but
+introducing an old friend, and all the time he's taking her in, every
+inch of her, and three to one, what he'll talk about most afterwards is
+the smooth hard feeling of those polished arm-chairs." Vincent was
+saying, ". . . and so, we heard in a round-about way too long to bother
+you with, about the small old house next door being for sale, and how
+very quiet and peaceful a spot this is, and the Company bought it for
+Mr. Welles for a permanent home, now he has retired."
+
+"Pretty fine of them!" murmured the older man dutifully, to the lady.
+
+Vincent went on, "Oh, it's only the smallest way for them to show their
+sense of his life-time devotion to their interests. There's no
+estimating what we all owe him, for his steadiness and loyalty and good
+judgment, especially during that hard period, near the beginning. _You_
+know, when all electrical businesses were so entirely on trial still.
+Nobody knew whether they were going to succeed or not. My father was one
+of the Directors from the first and I've been brought up in the
+tradition of how much the small beginning Company is indebted to Mr.
+Welles, during the years when they went down so near the edge of ruin
+that they could see the receiver looking in through the open door."
+
+Welles moved protestingly. He never had liked the business and he didn't
+like reminders that he owed his present comfort to it. Besides this was
+reading his own epitaph. He thought he must be looking very foolish to
+Mrs. Crittenden. Vincent continued, "But of course that's of no great
+importance up here. What's more to the purpose is that Mr. Welles is a
+great lover of country life and growing things, and he's been forced to
+keep his nose on a city grindstone all his life until just now. I think
+I can guarantee that you'll find him a very appreciative neighbor,
+especially if you have plenty of gladioli in your garden."
+
+This last was one of what Welles called "Vincent's sidewipes," which he
+could inlay so deftly that they seemed an integral part of the
+conversation. He wondered what Mrs. Crittenden would say, if Vincent
+ever got through his gabble and gave her a chance. She was turning to
+him now, smiling, and beginning to speak. What a nice voice she had! How
+nice that she should have such a voice!
+
+"I'm more than glad to have you both come in to see me, and I'm
+delighted that Mr. Welles is going to settle here. But Mr. . . ." she
+hesitated an instant, recalled the name, and went on, "Mr. Marsh doesn't
+need to explain you any more. It's evident that you don't know Ashley,
+or you'd realize that I've already heard a great deal more about you
+than Mr. Marsh would be likely to tell me, very likely a good deal more
+than is true. I know for instance, . . ." she laughed and corrected
+herself, ". . . at least I've been told, what the purchase price of the
+house was. I know how Harry Wood's sister-in-law's friend told you about
+Ashley and the house in the first place. I know how many years you were
+in the service of the Company, and how your pension was voted
+unanimously by the Directors, and about the silver loving-cup your
+fellow employees in the office gave you when you retired; and indeed
+every single thing about you, except the exact relation of the elderly
+invalid to whose care you gave up so generously so much of your life;
+I'm not sure whether I she was an aunt or a second-cousin." She paused
+an instant to give them a chance to comment on this, but finding them
+still quite speechless, she went on. "And now I know another thing, that
+you like gladioli, and that is a real bond."
+
+She was interrupted here by a great explosive laugh from Vincent. It was
+his comment on her speech to them, and for a time he made no other,
+eyeing her appreciatively as she and Mr. Welles talked garden together,
+and from time to time chuckling to himself. She gave him once a sidelong
+amused glance, evidently liking his capacity to laugh at seeing the
+ground cut away from under his feet, evidently quite aware that he was
+still thinking about that, and not at all about Mr. Welles and
+tulip-beds. Welles was relieved at this. Apparently she was going to
+"take" Vincent the right way. Some ladies were frightfully rubbed the
+wrong way by that strange great laugh of Vincent's. And what she knew
+about gardening! And not only about gardening in general, but about his
+own garden. He was astounded at her knowledge apparently of every inch
+of the quadrangle of soil back of his house, and at the revelations she
+made to him of what could lie sleeping under a mysterious blank surface
+of earth. Why, a piece of old ground was like a person. You had to know
+it, to have any idea of all that was hidden in its bosom, good and bad.
+"There never was such a place for pigweed as the lower end of your
+vegetable lot," she told him; "you'll have to get up nights to fight it
+if there is plenty of rain this summer." And again, "Be careful about
+not digging too close to the east wall of your terrace. There is a
+border of peonies there, splendid pink ones, and you're likely to break
+off the shoots. They don't show so early as the red ones near the walk,
+that get more sun."
+
+"Did you ever use to _live_ in that house?" he asked her, respectful of
+her mastery of its secrets.
+
+She laughed. "No, oh no. We've lived right here all the eleven years of
+our life in Vermont. But there's another side to the local wireless
+information-bureau that let me know all about you before you ever got
+here. We all know all about everybody and everything, you know. If you
+live in the country you're really married to humanity, for better or for
+worse, not just on speaking terms with it, as you are in the city. Why,
+I know about your garden because I have stood a thousand, thousand times
+leaning on my hoe in my own garden, discussing those peonies with old
+Mrs. Belham who lived there before you." This seemed to bring up some
+picture into her mind at which she looked for a moment, turning from it
+to the man beside her, with a warmth in her voice which went to his
+heart. "It's been forlorn having that dear little old house empty and
+cold. I can't _tell_ you how glad I am you have come to warm it, and
+live in it."
+
+The wonder of it overcame Mr. Welles like a wave. "I can't believe I'm
+really going to!" he cried desperately. "It doesn't seem _possible_!" He
+felt shamed, knowing that he had burst out too violently. What could she
+know of what lay back of him, that he was escaped from! What could she
+think of him, but that he was a foolish, bitter old man?
+
+She did not seem to think that, looking at him attentively as though she
+wanted to make out just what he meant. Perhaps she did make out, for she
+now said gently, "I believe you are going to like it, Mr. Welles. I
+believe you are going to find here what, . . . what you deserve to find."
+She said quietly, "I hope we shall be good neighbors to you."
+
+She spoke so kindly, her look on him was so humane that he felt the
+water coming to his eyes. He was in a foolishly emotional state, these
+first days. The least little thing threw him off the track. It really
+_did_ seem hardly possible that it was all true. That the long grind at
+the office was over, the business he had always hated and detested, and
+the long, hateful slavery at the flat finished at last, and that he had
+come to live out what was left to him in this lovely, peaceful valley,
+in that quiet welcoming little house, with this sweet woman next door!
+He swallowed. The corners of his mouth twitched. What an old lunatic he
+was. But he did not dare trust himself to speak again.
+
+Now Vincent's voice rose. What a length of time Vincent had been
+silent,--he who never took a back seat for anybody! What had he been
+doing all this time, sitting there and staring at them with those
+awfully brilliant eyes of his? Very likely he had seen the silly weak
+tears so near the surface, had caught the sentimental twitch of the
+mouth. Yes, quite certainly, for, now he was showing his tact by
+changing the subject, changing it with a vengeance. "Mrs. Crittenden,"
+he was saying, "my curiosity has been touched by that very fine
+photograph over there. I don't recognize the castle it shows."
+
+"That's in Bayonne," she said, and paused, her eyes speculatively on
+him.
+
+"No, Heavens no! You don't need to tell me that it's not Bayonne, New
+Jersey!" he answered her unspoken question violently. This made her
+laugh, opening her long eyes a little. He went on, "I've been as far as
+Pau, but never went into the Basque country."
+
+"Oh, Pau." She said no more than this, but Welles had the impression
+that these words somehow had made a comment on Vincent's information.
+Vincent seemed to think so too, and curiously enough not to think it a
+very favorable comment. He looked, what he almost never looked, a little
+nettled, and spoke a little stiffly. "It's a very fine specimen," he
+said briefly, looking again at the photograph.
+
+"Oh, it looks very much finer and bigger in the photograph than it
+really is," she told them. "It's only a bandbox of a thing compared with
+Coucy or Pierrefonds or any of the northern ones. It was built, you
+know, like the Cathedral at Bayonne, when the Plantagenets still held
+that country, but after they were practically pretty near English, and
+both the chateau and the Gothic cathedral seem queer aliens among the
+southern natives. I have the photograph up there on the wall only
+because of early associations. I lived opposite it long ago when I was a
+little girl."
+
+This, to Mr. Welles, was indistinguishable from the usual talk of people
+who have been "abroad." To tell the truth they always sounded to him
+more or less "showing-off," though he humbly tried to think it was only
+because he could never take any part in such talk. He certainly did not
+see anything in the speech to make Vincent look at her, almost with his
+jaw dropped. He himself paid little attention to what she was now
+saying, because he could not keep his mind from the lingering sweet
+intonations of her voice. What difference did it make where she had
+lived as a little girl? She was going to live next door to him now; what
+an awfully nice woman she was, and quite a good-looking woman too, with
+a very nice figure, although not in her very first youth, of course. How
+old could she be? Between thirty and forty of course, but You couldn't
+tell where. His personal taste was not for such a long face as hers. But
+you didn't notice that when she smiled. He liked the way she did her
+black hair, too, so smooth and shining and close to her head. It looked
+as though she'd really combed and brushed it, and most women's hair
+didn't.
+
+She turned to him now, again, and said, "Is this your very first call in
+Ashley? Because if it is, I mustn't miss the opportunity to cut in ahead
+of all the other gossips, and give you a great deal of information. You
+might just as well have it all in one piece now, and get it straight, as
+take it in little snippets from old Mrs. Powers, when she comes to bring
+your milk, this evening. You see I know that you are to get your milk of
+the Powers, and that they have plucked up courage to ask you eight cents
+a quart although the price around here has been, till now, six cents.
+You'll be obliged to listen to a great many more details from Mrs.
+Powers than from me, even those she knows nothing about. But of course
+you must be introduced to the Powers, _in toto_ too. Old Mrs. Powers, a
+very lively old widow, lives on her farm nearly at the foot of Deer
+Hollow. Her married son and his family live with her. In this house,
+there is first of all my husband. I'm so sorry he is away in Canada just
+now, on lumbering business. He is Neale Crittenden, a Williams man, who
+in his youth had thoughts of exploring the world but who has turned out
+head of the 'Crittenden Manufacturing Company,' which is the
+high-sounding name of a smallish wood-working business on the other side
+of the field next our house. You can see the buildings and probably hear
+the saws from your garden. Properly speaking, you know, you don't live
+in Ashley but in 'Crittenden's' and your house constitutes one quarter
+of all the residences in that settlement. There are yours, and ours, the
+mill-buildings, the house where an old cousin of mine lives, and the
+Powers' house, although that is so far away, nearly half a mile, that it
+is really only a farm-house in the country. _We_, you see, are the
+suburb of Ashley."
+
+Marsh laughed out again at this, and she laughed with him, their eyes,
+shining with amusement, meeting in a friendly glance.
+
+"The mill is the most important member of Crittenden's, of course. Part
+of the mill-building is pre-Revolutionary, and very picturesque. In the
+life-time of my husband's uncle, it still ran by water-power with a
+beautiful, enormous old mossy water-wheel. But since we took it over,
+we've had to put in modern machinery very prosaically and run it on its
+waste of slabs, mostly. All sorts of small, unimportant objects are
+manufactured there, things you never heard of probably. Backs of
+hair-brushes, wooden casters to put under beds and chairs, rollers for
+cotton mills. As soon as my husband returns, I'll ask him to take you
+through it. That and the old church are the only historic monuments in
+town."
+
+She stopped and asked him meditatively, "What else do you suppose I need
+to forestall old Mrs. Powers on? My old Cousin Hetty perhaps. She has a
+last name, Allen--yes, some connection with Ethan Allen. I am, myself.
+But everybody has always called her Miss Hetty till few people remember
+that she has another name. She was born there in the old house below
+'the Burning,' and she has lived there for eighty years, and that is all
+her saga. You can't see her house from here, but it is part of
+Crittenden's all the same, although it is a mile away by the main road
+as you go towards the Dug-Way. But you can reach it in six or seven
+minutes from here by a back lane, through the Eagle Rock woods."
+
+"What nice names!" Mr. Welles luxuriated in them. "The Eagle Rock woods.
+The Dug-Way. The Burning. Deer Hollow."
+
+"I bet you don't know what they mean," Vincent challenged him. Vincent
+was always throwing challenges, at everything. But by this time he had
+learned how to dodge them. "No, I don't know, and I don't care if I
+don't," he answered happily.
+
+It pleased him that Mrs. Crittenden found this amusing, so that she
+looked at him laughing. How her eyes glistened when she laughed. It made
+you laugh back. He risked another small attempt at facetiousness. "Go on
+with the census of Crittenden's," he told her. "I want to know all about
+my future fellow-citizens. You haven't even finished up this house,
+anybody but your husband."
+
+"There is myself. You see me. There is nothing more to that. And there
+are the three children, Paul, Elly, and Mark, . . ." She paused here
+rather abruptly, and the whimsical accent of good-humored mockery
+disappeared. For an instant her face changed into something quite
+different from what they had seen. Mr. Welles could not at all make out
+the expression which very passingly had flickered across her eyes with a
+smoke-like vagueness and rapidity. He had the queerest fancy that she
+looked somehow scared,--but of course that was preposterous.
+
+"Your call," she told them both, "happens to fall on a day which marks a
+turning-point in our family life. This is the very first day in ten
+years, since Paul's birth, that I have not had at least one of the
+children beside me. Today is the opening of spring term in our country
+school, and my little Mark went off this morning, for the first time,
+with his brother and sister. I have been alone until you came." She
+stopped for a moment. Mr. Welles wished that Vincent could get over his
+habit of staring at people so. She went on, "I have felt very queer
+indeed, all day. It's as though . . . you know, when you have been walking
+up and up a long flight of stairs, and you go automatically putting one
+foot up and then the other, and then suddenly . . . your upraised foot
+falls back with a jar. You've come to the top, and, for an instant, you
+have a gone feeling without your stairs to climb."
+
+It occurred to Mr. Welles that really perhaps the reason why some nice
+ladies did not like Vincent was just because of his habit of looking at
+them so hard. He could have no idea how piercingly bright his eyes
+looked when he fixed them on a speaker like that. And now Mrs.
+Crittenden was looking back at him, and would notice it. _He_ could
+understand how a refined lady would feel as though somebody were almost
+trying to find a key-hole to look in at her,--to have anybody pounce on
+her so, with his eyes, as Vincent did. She couldn't know, of course,
+that Vincent went pouncing on ladies and baggagemen and office boys, and
+old friends, just the same way. He bestirred himself to think of
+something to say. "I wish I could get up my nerve to ask you, Mrs.
+Crittenden, about one other person in this house," he ventured, "the old
+woman . . . the old lady . . . who let us in the door."
+
+At the sound of his voice Mrs. Crittenden looked away from Vincent
+quickly and looked at him for a perceptible moment before she heard what
+he had said. Then she explained, smiling, "Oh, she would object very
+much to being labeled with the finicky title of 'lady.' That was Toucle,
+our queer old Indian woman,--all that is left of old America here. She
+belongs to our house, or perhaps I should say it belongs to her. She was
+born here, a million years ago, more or less, when there were still a
+few basket-making Indians left in the valley. Her father and mother both
+died, and she was brought up by the old Great-uncle Crittenden's family.
+Then my husband's Uncle Burton inherited the house and brought his bride
+here, and Toucle just stayed on. She always makes herself useful enough
+to pay for her food and lodging. And when his wife died an elderly
+woman, Toucle still just stayed on, till he died, and then she went
+right on staying here in the empty house, till my husband and I got
+here. We were married in Rome, and made the long trip here without
+stopping at all. It was dawn, a June morning, when we arrived. We walked
+all the way from the station at Ashley out to the old house, here at
+Crittenden's. And . . . I'll never forget the astounded expression on my
+husband's face when Toucle rose up out of the long grass in the front
+yard and bade me welcome. She'd known me as a little girl when I used to
+visit here. She will outlive all of us, Toucle will, and be watching
+from her room in the woodshed chamber on the dawn of Judgment Day when
+the stars begin to fall."
+
+Mr. Welles felt a trifle bewildered by this, and showed it. She
+explained further, "But seriously, I must tell you that she is a
+perfectly harmless and quite uninteresting old herb-gatherer, although
+the children in the village are a little afraid of her, because she is
+an Indian, the only one they have ever seen. She really _is_ an Indian
+too. She knows every inch of our valley and the mountains better than
+any lumberman or hunter or fisherman in Ashley. She often goes off and
+doesn't come back for days. I haven't the least idea where she stays.
+But she's very good to our children when she's here, and I like her
+capacity for monumental silence. It gives her very occasional remarks an
+oracular air, even though you know it's only because she doesn't often
+open her lips. She helps a little with the house-work, too, although she
+always looks so absent-minded, as though she were thinking of something
+very far away. She's quite capable of preparing a good meal, for all she
+never seems to notice what she's up to. And she's the last member of our
+family except the very coming-and-going little maids I get once in a
+while. Ashley is unlike the rest of the world in that it is hard to get
+domestic servants here.
+
+"Now let me see, whom next to introduce to you. You know all your
+immediate neighbors now. I shall have to begin on Ashley itself. Perhaps
+our minister and his wife. They live in the high-porticoed,
+tall-pillared white old house next door to the church in the village, on
+the opposite side from the church-yard. They are Ashleyans of the oldest
+rock. Both of them were born here, and have always lived here. Mr.
+Bayweather is seventy-five years old and has never had any other parish.
+I do believe the very best thing I can do for you is to send you
+straight to them, this minute. There's nothing Mr. Bayweather doesn't
+know about the place or the people. He has a collection of Ashleyana of
+all sorts, records, deeds, titles, old letters, family trees. And for
+the last forty years he has been very busy writing a history of Ashley."
+
+"A history of _Ashley_?" exclaimed Vincent.
+
+"A history of Ashley," she answered, level-browed.
+
+Mr. Welles had the impression that a "side-wipe" had been exchanged in
+which he had not shared.
+
+Vincent now asked irrelevantly, "Do you go to church yourself?"
+
+"Oh yes," she answered, "I go, I like to go. And I take the children."
+She turned her head so that she looked down at her long hands in her
+lap, as she added, "I think going to church is a _refining_ influence in
+children's lives, don't you?"
+
+To Mr. Welles' horror this provoked from Vincent one of his great
+laughs. And this time he was sure that Mrs. Crittenden would take
+offense, for she looked up, distinctly startled, really quite as though
+he _had_ looked in through the key-hole. But Vincent went on laughing.
+He even said, impudently, "Ah, now I've caught you, Mrs. Crittenden;
+you're too used to keeping your jokes to yourself. And they're much too
+good for that."
+
+She looked at him hard, with a certain wonder in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, there's no necromancy about it," he told her. "I've been reading
+the titles of your books and glancing over your music before you came
+in. And I can put two and two together. Who are you making fun of to
+yourself? Who first got off that lovely speech about the refining
+influence of church?"
+
+She laughed a little, half-uneasily, a brighter color mounting to her
+smooth oval cheeks. "That's one of Mrs. Bayweather's favorite maxims,"
+she admitted. She added, "But I really _do_ like to go to church."
+
+Mr. Welles felt an apprehension about the turn things were taking.
+Vincent, he felt sure, was on the verge of being up to something. And he
+did not want to risk offending Mrs. Crittenden. He stood up. "Thank you
+very much for telling us about the minister and his wife, Mrs.
+Crittenden. I think we'll go right along down to the village now, and
+pay a call on them. There'll be time enough before dinner." Vincent of
+course got up too, at this, saying, "He's the most perfect old
+housekeeper, you know. He's kept the neatest flat for himself and that
+aged aunt of his for seventy years."
+
+"_Seventy!_" cried Mr. Welles, scandalized at the exaggeration.
+
+"Oh, more or less," said Vincent, laughing. Mr. Welles noticed with no
+enthusiasm that his eyes were extremely bright, that he smiled almost
+incessantly, that he stepped with an excess of his usual bounce.
+Evidently something had set him off into one of his fits of wild high
+spirits. You could almost feel the electricity sparkle from him, as it
+does from a cat on a cold day. Personally, Mr. Welles preferred not to
+touch cats when they were like that.
+
+"When are you going back to the city, Mr. Marsh?" asked Mrs. Crittenden,
+as they said good-bye at the door.
+
+Vincent was standing below her on the marble step. He looked up at her
+now, and something about his expression made Mr. Welles think again of
+glossy fur emitting sparks. He said, "I'll lay you a wager, Mrs.
+Crittenden, that there is one thing your Ashley underground news-service
+has not told you about us, and that is, that I've come up not only to
+help Mr. Welles install himself in his new home, but to take a somewhat
+prolonged rest-cure myself. I've always meant to see more of this
+picturesque part of Vermont. I've a notion that the air of this lovely
+spot will do me a world of good."
+
+As Mr. Welles opened his mouth, perhaps rather wide, in the beginning of
+a remark, he cut in briskly with, "You're worrying about
+Schwatzkummerer, I know. Never you fear. I'll get hold of his address,
+all right." He explained briefly to Mrs. Crittenden, startled by the
+portentous name. "Just a specialist in gladiolus seeds."
+
+"_Bulbs!_" cried Mr. Welles, in involuntary correction, and knew as he
+spoke that he had been switched off to a side-track.
+
+"Oh well, bulbs be it," Vincent conceded the point indulgently. He took
+off his hat in a final salutation to Mrs. Crittenden, and grasping his
+elderly friend by the arm, moved with him down the flag-paved path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TABLE TALK
+
+_An Hour in the Home Life of Mrs. Neale Crittenden, aet. 34_
+
+
+March 20.
+
+As she and Paul carried the table out to the windless, sunny side-porch,
+Marise was struck by a hospitable inspiration. "You and Elly go on
+setting the table," she told the children, and ran across the side-yard
+to the hedge. She leaned over this, calling, "Mr. Welles! Mr. Welles!"
+and when he came to the door, "The children and I are just celebrating
+this first really warm day by having lunch out of doors. Won't you and
+Mr. Marsh come and join us?"
+
+By the time the explanations and protestations and renewals of the
+invitation were over and she brought them back to the porch, Paul and
+Elly had almost finished setting the table. Elly nodded a
+country-child's silent greeting to the newcomers. Paul said, "Oh goody!
+Mr. Welles, you sit by me."
+
+Marise was pleased at the friendship growing up between the gentle old
+man and her little boy.
+
+"Elly, don't you want me to sit by you?" asked Marsh with a playful
+accent.
+
+Elly looked down at the plate she was setting on the table. "If you want
+to," she said neutrally.
+
+Her mother smiled inwardly. How amusingly Elly had acquired as only a
+child could acquire an accent, the exact astringent, controlled brevity
+of the mountain idiom.
+
+"I think Elly means that she would like it very much, Mr. Marsh," she
+said laughingly. "You'll soon learn to translate Vermontese into
+ordinary talk, if you stay on here."
+
+She herself went through the house into the kitchen and began placing
+on the wheel-tray all the components of the lunch, telling them over to
+herself to be sure she missed none. "Meat, macaroni, spinach, hot
+plates, bread, butter, water . . . a pretty plain meal to invite city
+people to share. Here, I'll open a bottle of olives. Paul, help me get
+this through the door."
+
+As he pulled at the other end of the wheeled tray, Paul said that Mark
+had gone upstairs to wash his hands, ages ago, and was probably still
+fooling around in the soap-suds, and like as not leaving the soap in the
+water.
+
+"Paul the responsible!" thought his mother. As they passed the foot of
+the stairs she called up, "Mark! Come along, dear. Lunch is served. All
+ready," she announced as they pushed the tray out on the porch.
+
+The two men turned around from where they had been gazing up at the
+mountain. "What is that great cliff of bare rock called?" asked Mr.
+Marsh.
+
+"Those are the Eagle Rocks," explained Marise, sitting down and
+motioning them to their places. "Elly dear, don't spread it on your
+bread so _thick_. If Mr. Bayweather were here he could probably tell you
+why they are called that. I have known but I've forgotten. There's some
+sort of tradition, I believe . . . no, I see you are getting ready to hear
+it called the Maiden's Leap where the Indian girl leaped off to escape
+an unwelcome lover. But it's not that this time: something or other
+about Tories and an American spy . . . ask Mr. Bayweather."
+
+"Heaven forfend!" exclaimed Mr. Marsh.
+
+Marise was amused. "Oh, you've been lectured to on local history, I
+see," she surmised.
+
+"_I_ found it very interesting," said Mr. Welles, loyally. "Though
+perhaps he does try to give you a little too much at one sitting."
+
+"Mr. Welles," said Paul, with his mouth full, "fishing season begins in
+ten days."
+
+Marise decided that she would really have to have a rest from telling
+Paul not to talk with food in his mouth, and said nothing.
+
+Mr. Welles confessed that he had never gone fishing in his life, and
+asked if Paul would take him.
+
+"Sure!" said Paul. "Mother and I go, lots."
+
+Mr. Marsh looked at Marise inquiringly. "Yes," she said, "I'm a
+confirmed fisherman. Some of the earliest and happiest recollections I
+have, are of fishing these brooks when I was a little girl."
+
+"Here?" asked Mr. Welles. "I thought you lived in France."
+
+"There's time in a child's life to live in various places," she
+explained. "I spent part of my childhood and youth here with my dear old
+cousin. The place is full of associations for me. Will you have your
+spinach now, or later? It'll keep hot all right if you'd rather wait."
+
+"What is this delicious dish?" asked Mr. Marsh. "It tastes like a man's
+version of creamed chicken, which is always a little too lady-like for
+me."
+
+"It's a _blanquette de veau_, and you may be sure I learned to make it
+in one of the French incarnations, not a Vermont one."
+
+Paul stirred and asked, "Mother, where _is_ Mark? He'll be late for
+school, if he doesn't hurry."
+
+"That's so," she said, and reflected how often one used that phrase in
+response to one of Paul's solid and unanswerable statements.
+
+Mark appeared just then and she began to laugh helplessly. His hands
+were wetly, pinkly, unnaturally clean, but his round, rosy, sunny little
+face was appallingly streaked and black.
+
+Paul did not laugh. He said in horrified reproach, "Oh, Mark! You never
+_touched_ your face! It's piggy dirty."
+
+Mark was staggered for a moment, but nothing staggered him long. "I
+don't get microbes off my face into my food," he said calmly. "And you
+bet there aren't any microbes left on my hands." He went on, looking at
+the table disapprovingly, "Mother, there isn't a many on the table
+_this_ day, and I wanted a many."
+
+"The stew's awful good," said Paul, putting away a large quantity.
+
+"'Very,' not 'awful,' and don't hold your fork like that," corrected
+Marise, half-heartedly, thinking that she herself did not like the
+insipid phrase "very good" nor did she consider the way a fork was held
+so very essential to salvation. "How much of life is convention, any way
+you arrange it," she thought, "even in such an entirely unconventional
+one as ours."
+
+"It _is_ good," said Mark, taking his first mouthful. Evidently he had
+not taken the remarks about his face at all seriously.
+
+"See here, Mark," his mother put it to him as man to man, "do you think
+you ought to sit down to the table looking like that?"
+
+Mark wriggled, took another mouthful, and got up mournfully.
+
+Paul was touched. "Here, I'll go up with you and get it over quick," he
+said. Marise gave him a quick approving glance. That was the best side
+of Paul. You could say what you pleased about the faults of American and
+French family life, but at any rate the children didn't hate each other,
+as English children seemed to, in novels at least. It was only last week
+that Paul had fought the big French Canadian boy in his room at school,
+because he had made fun of Elly's rubber boots.
+
+As the little boys clattered out she said to the two guests, "I don't
+know whether you're used to children. If you're not, you must be feeling
+as though you were taking lunch in a boiler factory."
+
+Mr. Welles answered, "I never knew what I was missing before.
+Especially Paul. That first evening when you sent him over with the
+cake, as he stood in the door, I thought, 'I wish _I_ could have had a
+little son like that!'"
+
+"We'll share him with you, Mr. Welles." Marise was touched by the
+wistfulness of his tone. She noticed that Mr. Marsh had made no comment
+on the children. He was perhaps one of the people who never looked at
+them, unless they ran into him. Eugenia Mills was like that, quite
+sincerely.
+
+"May I have a little more of the _blanquette_, if I won't be considered
+a glutton?" asked Mr. Marsh now. "I've sent to the city for an
+invaluable factotum of mine to come and look out for us here, and when
+he comes, I hope you'll give him the recipe."
+
+The little boys clattered back and began to eat again, in haste with
+frequent demands for their mother to tell them what time it was. In
+spite of this precaution, the clock advanced so relentlessly that they
+were obliged to set off, the three of them, before dessert was eaten,
+with an apple in one hand and a cookie in the other.
+
+The two men leaned back in their chairs with long breaths, which Marise
+interpreted as relief. "Strenuous, three of them at once, aren't they?"
+she said. "A New York friend of mine always says she can take the
+vibration-cure, only by listening to family talk at our table."
+
+"What's the vibration-cure?" asked Mr. Welles seriously.
+
+"Oh, _I_ don't know!" confessed Marise. "I'm too busy to keep up with
+the latest fads in cures as Eugenia does. You may meet her there this
+summer, by the way. She usually spends a part of the summer with us. She
+is a very old school-friend of mine."
+
+"French or Vermont incarnation?" inquired Marsh casually. "May I smoke?
+Won't you have a cigarette, yourself?"
+
+"Oh, _French!_" Marise was immensely amused, and then, remembering that
+the joke was not apparent, "If you'd ever seen her, even for a moment,
+you'd know why I laugh. She is the embodiment of sophisticated
+cosmopolitanism, an expert on all sorts of esoteric, aesthetic and
+philosophic matters, book-binding, historic lace, the Vedanta creed,
+Chinese porcelains, Provencal poetry, Persian shawls . . ."
+
+"What nationality is she, herself?" inquired Mr. Welles with some
+curiosity.
+
+Marise laughed. "She was born in Arkansas, and brought up in Minnesota,
+what did you suppose? No European could ever take culture so seriously.
+You know how any convert always has a thousand times more fervor than
+the fatigued members of the faith who were born to it."
+
+"Like Henry James, perhaps?" suggested Marsh.
+
+"Yes, I always envied Henry James the conviction he seems to have had,
+all his life, that Europeans are a good deal more unlike other people
+than I ever found them. It may be obtuseness on my part, but I never
+could see that people who lived in the Basses-Pyrenees are any more
+cultivated or had any broader horizons than people who live in the Green
+Mountains. My own experience is that when you actually live with people,
+day after day, year after year, you find about the same range of
+possibilities in any group of them. But I never advance this theory to
+Eugenia, who would be horrified to know that I find a strong family
+likeness between her New York circle and my neighbors here."
+
+She had been aware that Marsh was looking at her as she spoke. What a
+singular, piercing eye he had! It made her a little restive, as at a
+too-intimate contact, to be looked at so intently, although she was
+quite aware that there was a good deal of admiration in the look. She
+wondered what he was thinking about her; for it was evident that he was
+thinking about her, as he sent out that penetrating gaze.
+
+But perhaps not, after all; for he now said as if in answer to her last
+remark, "I have my own way of believing that, too, that all people are
+made of the same stuff. Mostly I find them perfectly negligible, too
+utterly without savor even to glance at. Once in a thousand years, it
+seems to me, you come across a human being who's alive as you are, who
+speaks your language, is your own kind, belongs to you. When you do,
+good Lord! What a moment!"
+
+He pronounced this in a perfectly impersonal tone, but something about
+the quality of his voice made Marise flash a quick glance at him. His
+eyes met hers with a sudden, bold deepening of their gaze. Marise's
+first impulse was to be startled and displeased, but in an instant a
+quick fear of being ridiculous had voiced itself and was saying to her,
+"Don't be countrified. It's only that I've had no contact with
+people-of-the-world for a year now. That's the sort of thing they get
+their amusement from. It would make him laugh to have it resented."
+Aloud she said, rather at random, "I usually go down once a season to
+the city for a visit to this old friend of mine, and other friends
+there. But this last winter I didn't get up the energy to do that."
+
+"I should think," said Mr. Welles, "that last winter you'd have used up
+all your energy on other things, from what Mrs. Powers tells me about
+the big chorus you always lead here in winters."
+
+"That does take up a lot of time," she admitted. "But it's a generator
+of energy, leading a chorus is, not a spender of it."
+
+"Oh, come!" protested Marsh. "You can't put that over on me. To do it as
+I gather you do . . . heavens! You must pour out your energy and
+personality as though you'd cut your arteries and let the red flood
+come."
+
+"You pour it out all right," she agreed, "but you get it back a thousand
+times over." She spoke seriously, the topic was vital to her, her eyes
+turned inward on a recollection. "It's amazing. It's enough to make a
+mystic out of a granite boulder. I don't know how many times I've
+dragged myself to a practice-evening dog-tired physically with work and
+care of the children, stale morally, sure that I had nothing in me that
+was profitable for any purpose, feeling that I'd do anything to be
+allowed to stay at home, to doze on the couch and read a poor novel."
+She paused, forgetting to whom she was speaking, forgetting she was not
+alone, touched and stirred with a breath from those evenings.
+
+"Well . . . ?" prompted Mr. Marsh. She wondered if she were mistaken in
+thinking he sounded a little irritable.
+
+"Well," she answered, "it has not failed a single time. I have never
+come back otherwise than stronger, and rested, the fatigue and staleness
+all gone, buried deep in something living." She had a moment of
+self-consciousness here, was afraid that she had been carried away to
+seem high-flown or pretentious, and added hastily and humorously, "You
+mustn't think that it's because I'm making anything wonderful out of my
+chorus of country boys and girls and their fathers and mothers. It's no
+notable success that puts wings to my feet as I come home from that
+work. It's only the music, the hearty satisfying singing-out, by
+ordinary people, of what too often lies withering in their hearts."
+
+She was aware that she was speaking not to sympathizers. Mr. Welles
+looked vague, evidently had no idea what she meant. Mr. Marsh's face
+looked closed tight, as though he would not open to let in a word of
+what she was saying. He almost looked hostile. Why should he? When she
+stopped, a little abashed at having been carried along by her feelings,
+Mr. Marsh put in lightly, with no attempt at transition, "All that's
+very well. But you can't make me believe that by choice you live up her
+all the year around. You must nearly perish away with homesickness for
+the big world, you who so evidently belong in it."
+
+"Where is the big world?" she challenged him, laughing. "When you're
+young you want to go all round the globe to look for it. And when you've
+gone, don't you find that your world everywhere is about as big as you
+are?"
+
+Mr. Marsh eyed her hard, and shook his head, with a little scornful
+downward thrust of the corners of his mouth, as though he were an augur
+who refused to lend himself to the traditional necessity to keep up the
+appearance of believing in an exploded religion. "_You_ know where the
+big world is," he said firmly. "It's where there are only people who
+don't have to work, who have plenty of money and brains and beautiful
+possessions and gracious ways of living, and few moral scruples." He
+defined it with a sovereign disregard for softening phrases.
+
+She opposed to this a meditative, "Oh, I suppose the real reason why I
+go less and less to New York, is that it doesn't interest me as it used
+to. Human significance is what makes interest for me, and when you're
+used to looking deep into human lives out of a complete knowledge of
+them as we do up here, it's very tantalizing and tormenting and after a
+while gets boring, the superficial, incoherent glimpses you get in such
+a smooth, glib-tongued circle as the people I happen to know in New
+York. It's like trying to read something in a language of which you know
+only a few words, and having the book shown to you by jerks at that!"
+
+Mr. Marsh remarked speculatively, as though they were speaking of some
+quite abstract topic, "It may also be possibly that you are succumbing
+to habit and inertia and routine."
+
+She was startled again, and nettled . . . and alarmed. What a rude thing
+to say! But the words were no sooner out of his mouth than she had felt
+a scared wonder if perhaps they were not true. She had not thought of
+that possibility.
+
+"I should think you would like the concerts, anyhow," suggested Mr.
+Welles.
+
+"Yes," said Marise, with the intonation that made the affirmation almost
+a negative. "Yes, of course. But there too . . . music means so much to
+me, so very much. It makes me sick to see it pawed over as it is among
+people who make their livings out of it; used as it so often is as a
+background for the personal vanity or greed of the performer. Take an
+ordinary afternoon solo concert given by a pianist or singer . . . it
+always seems to me that the music they make is almost an unconsidered
+by-product with them. What they're really after is something else."
+
+Marsh agreed with her, with a hearty relish, "Yes, musicians are an
+unspeakable bunch!
+
+"I suppose," Marise went on, "that I ought not to let that part of it
+spoil concert music for me. And it doesn't, of course. I've had some
+wonderful times . . . people who play in orchestra and make chamber-music
+are the real thing. But the music you make yourself . . . the music we
+make up here . . . well, perhaps my taste for it is like one's liking
+(some people call it perverse) for French Primitive painting, or the
+something so awfully touching and heart-felt that was lost when the
+Renaissance came up over the Alps with all its knowingness."
+
+"You're not pretending that you get Vermonters to make music?" protested
+Marsh, highly amused at the notion.
+
+"I don't know," she admitted, "whether it is music or not. But it is
+something alive." She fell into a muse, "Queer, what a spider-web of
+tenuous complication human relationships are. I never would have
+thought, probably, of trying anything of the sort if it hadn't been for
+a childhood recollection. . . . French incarnation this time," she said
+lightly to Marsh. "When I was a little girl, a young priest, just a
+young parish priest, in one of the poor hill-parishes of the Basque
+country, began to teach the people of his parish really to sing some of
+the church chants. I never knew much about the details of what he did,
+and never spoke to him in my life, but from across half the world he has
+reached out to touch this cornet of America. By the time I was a young
+lady, he had two or three big country choruses under his direction. We
+used to drive up fist to one and then to another of those hill-towns,
+all white-washed houses and plane-tree atriums, and sober-eyed Basques,
+to hear them sing. It was beautiful. I never have had a more complete
+expression of beauty in all my life. It seemed to me the very soul of
+music; those simple people singing, not for pay, not for notoriety, out
+of the fullness of their hearts. It has been one of the things I never
+forgot, a standard, and a standard that most music produced on platforms
+before costly audiences doesn't come up to."
+
+"I've never been able to make anything out of music, myself," confessed
+Mr. Welles. "Perhaps you can convert me. I almost believe so."
+
+"'Gene Powers sings!" cried Marise spiritedly. "And if he does . . ."
+
+"Any relation to the lively old lady who brings our milk?"
+
+"Her son. Haven't you seen him yet? A powerfully built granite rock of a
+man. Silent as a granite rock too, as far as small talk goes. But he
+turns out to have a bass voice that is my joy. It's done something for
+him, too, I think, really and truly, without sentimental exaggeration at
+all. He suffered a great injustice some six or seven years ago, that
+turned him black and bitter, and it's only since he has been singing in
+our winter choir that he has been willing to mix again with anyone."
+
+She paused for a moment, and eyed them calculatingly. It occurred to her
+that she had been talking about music and herself quite enough. She
+would change the subject to something matter-of-fact. "See here, you'll
+be sure to have to hear all that story from Mr. Bayweather in relentless
+detail. It might be your salvation to be able to say that I had told
+you, without mentioning that it was in a severely abridged form. He'd
+want to start back in the eighteenth century, and tell you all about
+that discreditable and unreconstructed Tory ancestor of mine who, when
+he was exiled from Ashley, is said to have carried off part of the town
+documents with him to Canada. Whether he did or not (Mr. Bayweather has
+a theory, I believe, that he buried them in a copper kettle on Peg-Top
+Hill), the fact remains that an important part of the records of Ashley
+are missing and that has made a lot of trouble with titles to land
+around here. Several times, unscrupulous land-grabbers have taken
+advantage of the vagueness of the titles to cheat farmers out of their
+inheritance. The Powers case is typical. There always have been Powerses
+living right there, where they do now; that big pine that towers up so
+over their house was planted by 'Gene's great-grandfather. And they
+always owned an immense tract of wild mountain land, up beyond the Eagle
+Rock range, along the side of the Red-Brook marsh. But after paying
+taxes on it for generations all during the time when it was too far away
+to make it profitable to lumber, it was snatched away from them, seven
+years ago, just as modern methods and higher prices for spruce would
+have made it very valuable. A lawyer from New Hampshire named Lowder
+turned the trick. I won't bother you going into the legal details--a
+question of a fake warranty deed, against 'Gene's quit-claim deed, which
+was all he had in absence of those missing pages from the town records.
+As a matter of fact, the lawyer hasn't dared to cut the lumber off it
+yet, because his claim is pretty flimsy; but flimsy or not, the law
+regards it as slightly better than 'Gene's. The result is that 'Gene
+can't sell it and daren't cut it for fear of being involved in a
+law-suit that he couldn't possibly pay for. So the Powers are poor
+farmers, scratching a difficult living out of sterile soil, instead of
+being well-to-do proprietors of a profitable estate of wood-land. And
+when we see how very hard they all have to work, and how soured and
+gloomy it has made 'Gene, and how many pleasures the Powers' children
+are denied, we all join in when Mrs. Powers delivers herself of her
+white-hot opinion of New Hampshire lawyers! I remember perfectly that
+Mr. Lowder,--one of the smooth-shaven, thin-lipped, fish-mouthed
+variety, with a pugnacious jaw and an intimidating habit of talking his
+New Hampshire dialect out of the corner of his mouth. The poor Powers
+were as helpless as rabbits before him."
+
+It all came up before her as she talked, that horrid encounter with
+commercial ruthlessness: she saw again poor 'Gene's outraged face of
+helpless anger, felt again the heat of sympathetic indignation she and
+Neale had felt, recognized again the poison which triumphant
+unrighteousness leaves behind. She shook her head impatiently, to shake
+off the memory, and said aloud, "Oh, it makes me sick to remember it! We
+couldn't believe, any of us, that such bare-faced iniquity could
+succeed."
+
+"There's a good deal of bare-faced iniquity riding around prosperously
+in high-powered cars," said Mr. Welles, with a lively accent of
+bitterness. "You have to get used to it in business life. It's very
+likely that your wicked Mr. Lowder in private life in New Hampshire is a
+good husband and father, and contributes to all the charitable
+organizations."
+
+"I won't change _my_ conception of him as a pasty-faced demon," insisted
+Marise.
+
+It appeared that Mr. Marsh's appetite for local history was so slight as
+to be cloyed even by the very much abbreviated account she had given
+them, for he now said, hiding a small yawn, with no effort to conceal
+the fact that he had been bored, "Mrs. Crittenden, I've heard from Mr.
+Welles' house the most tantalizing snatches from your piano. Won't you,
+now we're close to it, put the final touch to our delightful lunch-party
+by letting us hear it?"
+
+Marise was annoyed by his _grand seigneur_ air of certainty of his own
+importance, and piqued that she had failed to hold his interest. Both
+impressions were of a quicker vivacity than was at all the habit of her
+maturity. She told herself, surprised, that she had not felt this little
+sharp sting of wounded personal vanity since she was a girl. What did
+she care whether she had bored him or not? But it was with all her
+faculties awakened and keen that she sat down before the piano and
+called out to them, "What would you like?"
+
+They returned the usual protestations that they would like anything she
+would play, and after a moment's hesitation . . . it was always a leap in
+the dark to play to people about whose musical capacities you hadn't the
+faintest idea . . . she took out the Beethoven Sonata album and turned to
+the Sonata Pathetique. Beethoven of the early middle period was the
+safest guess with such entirely unknown listeners. For all that she
+really knew, they might want her to play Chaminade and Moskowsky. Mr.
+Welles, the nice old man, might find even them above his comprehension.
+And as for Marsh, she thought with a resentful toss of her head that he
+was capable of saying off-hand, that he was really bored by all
+music--and conveying by his manner that it was entirely the fault of the
+music. Well, she would show him how she could play, at least.
+
+She laid her hands on the keys; and across those little smarting,
+trivial personalities there struck the clear, assured dignity and worth
+of her old friend . . . was there ever such a friend as that rough old
+German who had died so long before she was born? No one could say the
+human race was ignoble or had never deserved to live, who knew his
+voice. In a moment she was herself again.
+
+Those well-remembered opening chords, they were by this time not merely
+musical sounds. They had become something within her, of her own being,
+rich with a thousand clustered nameless associations, something that
+thrilled and sang and lived a full harmonious life of its own. That
+first pearling down-dropping arabesque of treble notes, not only her
+fingers played those, but every fiber in her, answering like the
+vibrating wood of a violin, its very cells rearranged in the pattern
+which the notes had so many times called into existence . . . by the time
+she had finished she had almost forgotten that she had listeners.
+
+And when, sitting for a moment, coming back slowly from Beethoven's
+existence to her own, she heard no sound or stir from the porch, she
+had only a quiet smile of tolerant amusement. Apparently she had not
+guessed right as to their tastes. Or perhaps she had played them to
+sleep.
+
+As for herself, she was hungry for more; she reached out her hand
+towards that world of high, purified beauty which miraculously was
+always there, with open doors of gold and ivory. . . .
+
+What now? What did she know by heart? The Largo in the Chopin Sonata.
+That would do to come after Beethoven.
+
+The first plunge into this did not so intimately startle and stir her as
+the Beethoven movement had done. It was always like that, she thought as
+she played, the sound of the first note, the first chord struck when one
+had not played for a day or so; it was having one's closed eyes unsealed
+to the daylight anew, an incredulous rapture. But after that, though you
+didn't go on quaking and bowing your head, though you were no longer
+surprised to find music still there, better than you could possibly
+remember it, though you took it for granted, how deeply and solidly and
+steadfastly you lived in it and on it! It made you like the child in the
+Wordsworth sonnet, "A beauteous evening, calm and free"; it took you in
+to worship quite simply and naturally at the Temple's inner shrine; and
+you adored none the less although you were not "breathless with
+adoration," like the nun; because it was a whole world given to you, not
+a mere pang of joy; because you could live and move and be blessedly and
+securely at home in it.
+
+She finished the last note of the Largo and sat quiet for a moment. Then
+she knew that someone had come into the room behind her. She turned
+about, facing with serene, wide brows whatever might be there.
+
+The first meeting with the eyes of the man who stood there moved her. So
+he too deeply and greatly loved music! His face was quite other from the
+hawk-like, intent, boldly imperious countenance which she had seen
+before. Those piercing eyes were softened and quietly shining. The
+arrogant lines about the mouth that could look so bitter and skeptical,
+were as sweet and candid as a child's.
+
+He smiled at her, a good, grateful, peaceful smile, and nodded, as
+though now they understood each other with no more need for words. "Go
+on . . . go on!" was all he said, very gently and softly. He sank down in
+an arm-chair and leaned his head back in the relaxed pose of listening.
+
+He looked quite and exactly what Marise was feeling.
+
+It was with a stir of all her pulses, a pride, a glory, a new sympathy
+in her heart, that she turned back to the piano.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A LITTLE GIRL AND HER MOTHER
+
+_An Afternoon in the Life of Elly Crittenden, aet. 8 Years_
+
+
+April 6.
+
+Elly Crittenden had meant to go straight home from school as usual with
+the other children, Paul and Mark, and Addle and Ralph Powers. And as
+usual somehow she was ever so far behind them, so far that there wasn't
+any use trying to catch up. Paul was hurrying to go over and see that
+new old man next door, as usual. She might as well not try, and just
+give up, and get home ever so late, the way she always did. Oh well,
+Father wasn't at home, and Mother wouldn't scold, and it was nice to
+walk along just as slow as you wanted to, and feel your rubber boots
+squizzle into the mud. How _good_ it did seem to have real mud, after
+the long winter of snow! And it was nice to hear the brooks everywhere,
+making that dear little noise and to see them flashing every-which-way
+in the sun, as they tumbled along downhill. And it was nice to smell
+that smell . . . what _was_ that sort of smell that made you know the
+sugaring-off had begun? You couldn't smell the hot boiling sap all the
+way from the mountain-sides, but what you did smell made you think of
+the little bark-covered sap-houses up in the far woods, with smoke and
+white steam coming out from all their cracks, as though there was
+somebody inside magicking charms and making a great cloud to cover it,
+like Klingsor or the witch-ladies in the Arabian Nights. There was a
+piece of music Mother played, that was like that. You could almost see
+the white clouds begin to come streeling out between the piano-keys, and
+drift all around her. All but her face that always looked through.
+
+The sun shone down so warm on her head, she thought she might take off
+her woolen cap. Why, yes, it was plenty warm enough. Oh, how good it
+felt! How _good_ it did feel! Like somebody actually touching your hair
+with a warm, soft hand. And the air, that cool, cool air, all damp with
+the thousand little brooks, it felt just as good to be cool, when you
+tossed your hair and the wind could get into it. How _good_ it did feel
+to be bare-headed, after all that long winter! Cool inside your hair at
+the roots, and warm outside where the sun pressed on it. Cool wind and
+warm sun, two different things that added up to make one lovely feel for
+a little girl. The way your hair tugged at its roots, all streaming
+away; every single little hair tied tight to your head at one end, and
+yet so wildly loose at the other; tight, strong, firm, and yet light and
+limber and flag-flapping . . . it was like being warm and cool at the same
+time, so different and yet the same.
+
+And there, underneath all this fluttering and tossing and differences,
+there were your legs going on just as dumb and steady as ever, stodge,
+stodge, stodge! She looked down at them with interest and appreciation
+of their faithful, dutiful service, and with affection at the rubber
+boots. She owed those to Mother. Paul had scared her so, when he said,
+so stone-wally, the way Paul always spoke as if that settled everything,
+that _none_ of the little girls at school wore rubber boots, and he
+thought Elly oughtn't to be allowed to look so queer. It made him almost
+ashamed of his sister, he said. But Mother had somehow . . . what _had_
+she said to fix it? . . . oh well, something or other that left her her
+rubber boots and yet Paul wasn't mad any more.
+
+And what could she _do_ without rubber boots, when she wanted to wade
+through a brook, like this one, and the brooks were as they were now,
+all running spang full to the very edge with snow-water, the way this
+one did? Oo . . . Ooh . . . Ooh! how queer it did feel, to be standing most
+up to your knees this way, with the current curling by, all cold and
+snaky, feeling the fast-going water making your boot-legs shake like
+Aunt Hetty's old cheeks when she laughed, and yet your feet as _dry_
+inside! How could they feel as cold as that, without being wet, as
+though they were magicked? That was a _real_ difference, even more than
+the wind cool inside your hair and the sun warm on the outside; or your
+hair tied tight at one end and all wobbly loose at the other. But this
+wasn't a nice difference. It didn't add up to make a nice feeling, but a
+sort of queer one, and if she stood there another minute, staring down
+into that swirly, snatchy water, she'd fall right over into it . . . it
+seemed to be snatching at _her!_ Oh gracious! This wasn't much better!
+on the squelchy dead grass of the meadow that looked like real ground
+and yet you sank right into it. Oh, it was _horridly_ soft, like
+touching the hand of that new man that had come to live with the old
+gentleman next door. She must hurry as fast as she could . . . it felt as
+though it was sucking at her feet, trying to pull her down altogether
+like the girl with the red shoes, and she didn't have any loaves of
+bread to throw down to step on . . .
+
+Well, there! this was better, as the ground started uphill. There was
+firm ground under her feet. Yes, not mud, nor soaked, flabby
+meadow-land, but solid earth, _solid, solid!_ She stamped on it with
+delight. It was just as nice to have solid things _very_ solid, as it
+was to have floaty things like clouds _very_ floaty. What was horrid was
+to have a thing that _looked_ solid, and yet was all soft, like gelatine
+pudding when you touched it.
+
+Well, for goodness' sake, where was she? Where had she come to, without
+thinking a single thing about it? Right on the ridge overlooking Aunt
+Hetty's house to be sure, on those rocks that hang over it, so you could
+almost throw a stone down any one of the chimneys. She might just as
+well go down and make Aunt Hetty a visit now she was so near, and walk
+home by the side-road. Of course Paul would say, nothing could keep him
+from saying, that she had planned to do that very thing, right along,
+and when she left the school-house headed straight for Aunt Hetty's
+cookie-jar. Well, _let_ him! She could just tell him, she'd never
+_dreamed_ of such a thing, till she found herself on those rocks.
+
+She walked more and more slowly, letting herself down cautiously from
+one ledge to another, and presently stopped altogether, facing a beech
+tree, its trunk slowly twisted into a spiral because it was so hard to
+keep alive on those rocks. She was straight in front of it, staring into
+its gray white-blotched bark. Now if _Mother_ asked her, of course she'd
+have to say, yes, she had planned to, _sort of_ but not quite. Mother
+would understand. There wasn't any use trying to tell things how they
+really were to Paul, because to him things weren't ever
+sort-of-but-not-quite. They either were or they weren't. But Mother
+always knew, both ways, hers and Paul's.
+
+She stepped forward and downward now, lightened. Her legs stretched out
+to carry her from one mossed rock to another. "Striding," that was what
+she was doing. Now she knew just what "striding" meant. What fun it was
+to _feel_ what a word meant! Then when you used it, you could feel it
+lie down flat in the sentence, and fit into the other words, like a
+piece in a jig-saw puzzle when you got it into the right place.
+Gracious! How fast you could "stride" down those rocks into Aunt Hetty's
+back yard!
+
+Hello! Here at the bottom was some snow, a great big drift of it still
+left, all gray and shrunk and honey-combed with rain and wind, with a
+little trickle of water running away softly and quietly from underneath
+it, like a secret. Well, think of there being still _snow_ left anywhere
+except on top of the mountains! She had just been thinking all the
+afternoon how _good_ it seemed to have the snow all gone, and here she
+ran right into some, as if you'd been talking about a person, saying how
+sick and tired you were of everlastingly seeing him around, and there he
+was, right outside the window and hearing it all, and knowing it wasn't
+_his_ fault he was still hanging on. You'd feel bad to know he'd heard.
+She felt bad now! After all, the fun the snow had given them, all that
+winter, sleighing and snow-shoeing and ski-running and sliding downhill.
+And when she remembered how _glad_ she'd been to see the first snow, how
+she and little Mark had run to the window to see the first flakes, and
+had hollered, Oh goody, _goody!_ And here was all there was left, just
+one poor old forgotten dirty drift, melting away as fast as it _could_,
+so's to get itself out of the way. She stood looking down on it
+compassionately, and presently, stooping over, gave it a friendly,
+comforting pat with one mittened hand.
+
+Then she was pierced with an arrow of hunger, terrible, devouring
+starvation! Why was it she was always so _much_ hungrier just as she got
+out of school, than ever at meal-times? She did hope this wouldn't be
+one of those awful days when Aunt Hetty's old Agnes had let the
+cookie-jar get empty!
+
+She walked on fast, now, across the back yard where the hens, just as
+happy as she was to be on solid ground, pottered around dreamily, their
+eyes half-shut up. . . . Elly could just think how good the sun must feel
+on their feathers! She could imagine perfectly how it would be to have
+feathers instead of skin and hair. She went into the kitchen door.
+Nobody was there. She went through into the pantry. Nobody there!
+Nobody, that is, except the cookie-jar, larger than any other object in
+the room, looming up like a wash-tub. She lifted the old cracked plate
+kept on it for cover. _Oh_, it was _full_,--a fresh baking! And raisins
+in them! The water ran into her mouth in a little gush. Oh _my_, how
+good and cracklesome they looked! And how beautifully the sugar
+sprinkled on them would grit against your teeth as you ate it! Oh
+_gracious!_
+
+She put her hand in and touched one. There was nothing that felt like a
+freshly baked cookie; even through your mitten you could _know_, with
+your eyes shut, it was a cookie. She took hold of one, and stood
+perfectly still. She could take that, just as easy! Nobody would miss
+it, with the jar so full. Aunt Hetty and Agnes were probably
+house-cleaning, like everybody else, upstairs. Nobody would ever know.
+The water of desire was at the very corners of her mouth now. She felt
+her insides surging up and down in longing. _Nobody_ would know!
+
+She opened her hand, put the cookie back, laid the plate on the top of
+the jar, and walked out of the pantry. Of course she couldn't do that.
+What had she been thinking of,--such a stealy, common thing, and she
+_Mother's_ daughter!
+
+But, oh! It was awful, having to be up to Mother! She sniffed forlornly
+and drew her mitten across her nose. She _had_ wanted it so! And she was
+just _dying_, she was so hungry. And Mother wouldn't even let her _ask_
+people for things to eat. Suppose Aunt Hetty didn't think to ask her!
+
+She went through the dining-room, into the hall, and called upstairs,
+"Aunt Hetty! Aunt Hetty!" She was almost crying she felt so sorry for
+herself.
+
+"Yis," came back a faint voice, very thin and high, the way old people's
+voices sounded when they tried to call loud. "Up in the east-wing
+garret."
+
+She mounted the stairs heavily, pulling herself along by those spindling
+old red balustrades, just like so many old laths, noticing that her
+rubber boots left big hunks of mud on the white-painted stairs, but too
+miserable to care.
+
+The door to the east-wing garret was open. Aunt Hetty was there, bossing
+Agnes, and they were both "dudsing," as Elly called it to herself,
+leaning over trunks, disappearing in and out of closets, turning inside
+out old bags of truck, sorting over, and, for all Elly could see,
+putting the old duds back again, just where they had been before.
+Grown-ups did seem to run round in circles, so much of their time!
+
+She sat down wearily on an ugly little old trunk near the door. Aunt
+Hetty shut up a drawer in a dresser, turned to Elly, and said, "Mercy,
+child, what's the matter? Has the teacher been scolding you?"
+
+"No, Aunt Hetty," said Elly faintly, looking out of the window.
+
+"Anybody sick at your house?" asked Aunt Hetty, coming towards the
+little girl.
+
+"No," said Elly, shaking her head.
+
+"Don't you feel well?" asked Aunt Hetty, laying one wrinkled, shaky old
+hand on her shoulder.
+
+"No, Aunt Hetty," said Elly, her eyes large and sad.
+
+"Maybe she's hungry," suggested Agnes, in a muffled voice from the
+depths of a closet.
+
+"Are you?" asked Aunt Hetty.
+
+"Yes," cried Elly.
+
+Aunt Hetty laughed. "Well, I don't know if there are any cookies in the
+house or not," she said, "we've been so busy house-cleaning. Agnes, did
+you bake any cookies this morning?"
+
+Elly was struck into stupor at this. Think of not _knowing_ if there
+were any cookies in the house!
+
+Agnes appeared, tiny and old and stooped and wrinkled, like her
+mistress. She had a big, rolled-up woolen-covered comforter in her arms,
+over which she nodded. "Yes, I made some. You told me to make some every
+Wednesday," she said. She went on, looking anxiously at Aunt Hetty,
+"There ain't any moth-holes in this. Was this the comfortable you meant?
+I thought this was the one you told me to leave out of the camphor
+chest. I thought you told me . . ."
+
+"You know where to find the cookies, don't you, Elly?" asked Aunt Hetty,
+over her shoulder, trotting rapidly like a little dry, wind-blown leaf,
+towards Agnes and the comforter.
+
+"Oh _yes_, Aunt Hetty!" shouted Elly, halfway down the stairs.
+
+Aunt Hetty called after her, "Take all you want . . . three or four. They
+won't hurt you. There's no egg in our recipe."
+
+Elly was there again, in the empty pantry, before the cookie-jar. She
+lifted the cracked plate again. . . . But, oh! how differently she did
+feel now! . . . and she had a shock of pure, almost solemn, happiness at
+the sight of the cookies. She had not only been good and done as Mother
+would want her to, but she was going to have _four_ of those cookies.
+Three _or_ four, Aunt Hetty had said! As if anybody would take three if
+he was let to have four! Which ones had the most raisins? She knew of
+course it wasn't _so very_ nice to pick and choose that way, but she
+knew Mother would let her, only just laugh a little and say it was a
+pity to be eight years old if you couldn't be a little greedy!
+
+Oh, how happy she was! How light she felt! How she floated back up the
+stairs! What a perfectly sweet old thing Aunt Hetty was! And what a nice
+old house she had, though not so nice as home, of course. What pretty
+mahogany balusters, and nice white stairs! Too bad she had brought in
+that mud. But they were house-cleaning anyhow. A little bit more to
+clean up, that was all. And what _luck_ that they were in the east-room
+garret, the one that had all the old things in it, the hoop-skirts and
+the shells and the old scoop-bonnets, and the four-poster bed and those
+fascinating old cretonne bags full of treasures.
+
+She sat down near the door on the darling little old hair-covered trunk
+that had been Great-grandfather's, and watched the two old women at
+work. The first cookie had disappeared now, and the second was well on
+the way. She felt a great appeasement in her insides. She leaned back
+against the old dresses hung on the wall and drew a long breath.
+
+"Well," said Aunt Hetty, "you've got neighbors up your way, so they tell
+me. Funny thing, a city man coming up here to live. He'll never stick it
+out. The summer maybe. But that's all. You just see, come autumn, if he
+don't light out for New York again."
+
+Elly made no comment on this. She often heard her elders say that she
+was not a talkative child, and that it was hard to get anything out of
+her. That was because mostly they wanted to know about things she
+hadn't once thought of noticing, and weren't a bit interested when she
+tried to talk about what she _had_ noticed. Just imagine trying to tell
+Aunt Hetty about that poor old gray snow-bank out in her woods, all
+lonely and scrumpled up! She went on eating her cookie.
+
+"How does he like it, anyhow?" asked Aunt Hetty, bending the upper part
+of her out of the window to shake something. "And what kind of a critter
+is he?"
+
+"Well, he's rather an old man," said Elly. She added conscientiously,
+trying to be chatty, "Paul's crazy about him. He goes over there all the
+time to visit. I like him all right. The old man seems to like it here
+all right. They both of them do."
+
+"Both?" said Aunt Hetty, curving herself back into the room again.
+
+"Oh, the other one isn't going to _live_ here, like Mr. Welles. He's
+just come to get Mr. Welles settled, and to make him a visit. His name
+is Mr. Marsh."
+
+"Well, what's _he_ like?" asked Aunt Hetty, folding together the old
+wadded petticoat she had been shaking.
+
+"Oh, he's all right too," said Elly. She wasn't going to say anything
+about that funny softness of his hands, she didn't like, because that
+would be like speaking about the snow-drift; something Aunt Hetty would
+just laugh at, and call one of her notions.
+
+"Well, what do they _do_ with themselves, two great hulking men set off
+by themselves?"
+
+Elly tried seriously to remember what they did do. "I don't see them, of
+course, much in the morning before I go to school. I guess they get up
+and have their breakfast, the way anybody does."
+
+Aunt Hetty snorted a little, "Gracious, child, a person needs a
+corkscrew to get anything out of you. I mean all day, with no chores, or
+farmin', or _any_thing."
+
+"I don't _know_," Elly confessed. "Mr. Clark, of course, he's busy
+cooking and washing dishes and keeping house, but . . ."
+
+"Are there _three_ of them?" Aunt Hetty stopped her dudsing in her
+astonishment. "I thought you said two."
+
+"Oh well, Mr. Marsh sent down to the city and had this Mr. Clark come up
+to work for them. He doesn't call him 'Mr. Clark'--just 'Clark,' short
+like that. I guess he's Mr. Marsh's hired man in the city. Only he can
+do everything in the house, too. But I don't feel like calling him
+'Clark' because he's grown-up, and so I call him '_Mr._ Clark.'" She did
+not tell Aunt Hetty that she sort of wanted to make up to him for being
+somebody's servant and being called like one. It made her mad and she
+wanted to show he could be a mister as well as anybody. She began on the
+third cookie. What else could she say to Aunt Hetty, who always wanted
+to know the news so? She brought out, "Well, _I_ tell you, in the
+afternoon, when I get home, mostly old Mr. Welles is out in his garden."
+
+"_Gardin_!" cried Aunt Hetty. "Mercy on us, making garden the fore-part
+of April. Where does he think he's living? Florida?"
+
+"I don't believe he's exactly making garden," said Elly. "He just sort
+of pokes around there, and looks at things. And sometimes he sits down
+on the bench and just _sits_ there. He's pretty old, I guess, and he
+walks kind of tired, always."
+
+"Does the other one?" asked Aunt Hetty.
+
+This made Elly sit up, and say very loud, "No, _indeedy_!" She really
+hadn't thought before how very _un_tired Mr. Marsh always seemed. She
+added, "No, the other one doesn't walk tired, nor he doesn't poke around
+in the garden. He takes long tramps way back of the mountains, over
+Burnham way."
+
+"For goodness' sakes, what's he find up there?"
+
+"He likes it. He comes over and borrows our maps and things to study,
+and he gets Mother to tell him all about everything. He gets Toucle to
+tell him about the back trails, too."
+
+"Well, he's a smart one if he can get a word out of Toucle."
+
+"Yes, he does. Everybody talks to him. You _have_ to if he starts in.
+He's very lively."
+
+"Does he get _you_ to talk?" asked Aunt Hetty, laughing at the idea.
+
+"Well, some," stated Elly soberly. She did not say that Mr. Marsh always
+seemed to her to be trying to get some secret out of her. She didn't
+_have_ any secret that she knew of, but that was the way he made her
+feel. She dodged him mostly, when she could.
+
+"What's the news from your father?"
+
+"Oh, he's all right," said Elly. She fell to thinking of Father and
+wishing he would come back.
+
+"When's he going to get through his business, up there?"
+
+"Before long, I guess. Mother said maybe he'd be back here next month."
+Elly was aware that she was again not being talkative. She tried to
+think of something to add. "I'm very much obliged for these cookies,"
+she said. "They are awfully good."
+
+"They're the kind your mother always liked, when she was your age," said
+Aunt Hetty casually. "I remember how she used to sit right there on
+Father's hair-trunk and eat them and watch me just like you now."
+
+At this statement Elly could feel her thoughts getting bigger and longer
+and higher, like something being opened out. "And the heaven was removed
+as a scroll when it is rolled up." That sentence she'd heard in church
+and never understood, and always wondered what was behind, what they had
+seen when the scroll was rolled up. . . . Something inside her now seemed
+to roll up as though she were going to see what was behind it. How much
+longer time was than you thought! Mother had sat there as a little girl
+. . . a little girl like her. Mother who was now grown-up and _finished_,
+knowing everything, never changing, never making any mistakes. Why, how
+_could_ she have been a little girl! And such a short time ago that Aunt
+Hetty remembered her sitting there, right there, maybe come in from
+walking across that very meadow, and down those very rocks. _What had
+she been thinking about, that other little girl who had been Mother?_
+"Why" . . . Elly stopped eating, stopped breathing for a moment. "Why, she
+herself would stop being a little girl, and would grow up and be a
+Mother!" She had always known that, of course, but she had never _felt_
+it till that moment. It made her feel very sober; more than sober,
+rather holy. Yes, that was the word,--holy,--like the hymn. Perhaps some
+day another little girl would sit there, and be just as surprised to
+know that _her_ mother had been really and truly a little girl too, and
+would feel queer and shy at the idea, and all the time her mother had
+been only _Elly_. But would she _be_ Elly any more, when she was grown
+up? What would have happened to Elly? And after that little girl,
+another; and one before Mother; and back as far as you could see, and
+forwards as far as you could see. It was like a procession, all half in
+the dark, marching forward, one after another, little girls, mothers,
+mothers and little girls, and then more . . . what for . . . oh, _what
+for?_
+
+She was a little scared. She wished she could get right up and go _home_
+to Mother. But the procession wouldn't stop . . . wouldn't stop. . . .
+
+Aunt Hetty hung up the last bag. "There," she said, "that's all we can
+do here today. Elly, you'd better run along home. The sun'll be down
+behind the mountain _now_ before you get there."
+
+Elly snatched at the voice, at the words, at Aunt Hetty's wrinkled,
+shaking old hand. She jumped up from the trunk. Something in her face
+made Aunt Hetty say, "Well, you look as though you'd most dropped to
+sleep there in the sun. It does make a person feel lazy this first warm
+March sun. I declare this morning I didn't want to go to work
+house-cleaning. I wanted to go and spend the day with the hens, singing
+over that little dozy ca-a-a-a they do, in the sun, and stretch one leg
+and one wing till they most broke off, and ruffle up all my feathers
+and let 'em settle back very slow, and then just _set_."
+
+They had started downstairs before Aunt Hetty had finished this, the
+little girl holding tightly to the wrinkled old hand. How peaceful Aunt
+Hetty was! Even the smell of her black woolen dresses always had a
+_quiet_ smell. And she must see all those hunks of mud on the white
+stairs, but she never said a word. Elly squeezed her hand a little
+tighter.
+
+What was it she had been thinking about on the hair-trunk that made her
+so glad to feel Aunt Hetty peaceful? Oh yes, that Mother had been there,
+where she was, when she was a little girl. Well, gracious! What of that?
+She'd always known that Mother had visited Aunt Hetty a lot and that
+Aunt Hetty had been awfully good to her, and that Mother loved Aunt
+Hetty like everything. What had made it seem so queer, all of a sudden?
+
+"Well," said Aunt Hetty at the front door, "step along now. I don't want
+you should be late for supper." She tipped her head to look around the
+edge of the top of the door and said, "Well, I declare, just see that
+moon showing itself before ever the sun gets down."
+
+She walked down the path a little way with Elly, who still held her
+hand. They stood together looking up at the mountain, very high and blue
+against the sky that was green . . . yes, it really was a pale, clear
+green, at the top of the mountain-line. People always said the sky was
+blue, except at sunset-time, like now, when it was filling the Notch
+right to the top with every color that could be.
+
+"The lilacs will begin to swell soon," said Aunt Hetty.
+
+"I saw some pussy-willows out, today," answered Elly.
+
+The old woman and the little girl lifted their heads, threw them back,
+and looked up long into the sky, purely, palely high above them.
+
+"It's quite a sightly place to live, Crittenden's is," said Aunt Hetty.
+
+Elly said nothing, it being inconceivable to her that she could live
+anywhere else.
+
+"Well, good-bye," said Aunt Hetty. It did not occur to her to kiss the
+little girl. It did not occur to Elly to want a kiss. They squeezed
+their hands together a little bit more, and then Elly went down the
+road, walking very carefully.
+
+Why did she walk so carefully, she wondered? She felt as though she were
+carrying a cup, full up to the brim of something. And she mustn't let it
+spill. What was it so full of? Aunt Hetty's peacefulness, maybe.
+
+Or maybe just because it was beginning to get twilight. That always made
+you feel as though something was being poured softly into you, that you
+mustn't spill. She was glad the side-road was so grass-grown. You could
+walk on it, so still, like this, and never make a sound.
+
+She thought again of Father and wished he would come home. She _liked_
+Father. He was solid. He was solid like that solid earth she liked so
+much to walk on. It was just such a comfort to feel him. Father was like
+the solid ground and Mother was like the floaty clouds. Why, yes, they
+were _every_ way like what she had been thinking about. . . . Father was
+the warm sun on the outside, and Mother was the cool wind on the inside.
+Father was the end that was tied tight and firm so you _knew_ you
+couldn't lose it, and Mother was the end that streamed out like flags in
+the wind. But they weren't either of them like that slinky, swirly
+water, licking at you, in such a hurry to get on past you and get what
+it was scrambling to get, whatever that was.
+
+Well, of all things! There was old Mr. Welles, coming towards her. _He_
+must be out taking a walk too. How slowly he went! And kept looking up
+the way she and Aunt Hetty had, at the sky and the mountains. He was
+quite close now. Why . . . why, he didn't know she was there. He had gone
+right by her and never even saw her and yet had been so close she could
+see his face plainly. He must have been looking very hard at the
+mountains. But it wasn't hard the way he was looking, it was soft. How
+soft his face had looked, almost quivery, almost. . . . But that was silly
+to think of . . . almost as though he felt like crying. And yet all
+shining and quiet, too, as if he'd been in church.
+
+Well, it _was_ a little bit like being in church, when you could see the
+twilight come down very slow like this, and settle on the tree-tops and
+then down through them towards you. You always felt as though it was
+going to do something to you when it got to you; something peaceful,
+like old Aunt Hetty.
+
+She was at her own front path now, it was really almost dark. Mother was
+playing the piano. But not for either of the boys. It was grown-up music
+she was playing. Elly hesitated on the flagged stones. Maybe she was
+playing for Mr. Marsh again. She advanced slowly. Yes, there he was,
+sitting on the door-step, across the open door, leaning back his head,
+smoking, sometimes looking out at the sunset, and sometimes looking in
+towards the piano.
+
+Elly made a wide circuit under the apple-trees, and went in the
+side-door. Toucle was only just setting the table. Elly would have
+plenty of time to get off her rubber boots, look up her old felt
+slippers, and put them on before supper time. Gracious! Her stockings
+were wet. She'd have to change them, too. She'd just stay upstairs till
+Mr. Marsh went away. She didn't feel to talk to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When out of her window she saw him step back across the grass to Mr.
+Welles' house, Elly came downstairs at once. The light in the
+living-room made her blink, after all that outdoor twilight and the
+indoor darkness of her room upstairs.
+
+Mother was still at the piano, her hands on the keys, but not playing.
+At the sight of her, Elly's heart filled and brightened. Her busy, busy
+thoughts stopped for the first time that day. She felt as you do when
+you've been rowing a boat a long time and finally, almost where you
+want to go, you stop and let her slide in on her own movement, quiet and
+soft and smooth, and reach out your hand to take hold of the
+landing-place. Elly reached out her arm and put it around Mother's neck.
+She stood perfectly quiet. There wasn't any need to be anything _but_
+quiet now you'd got to where you were going.
+
+She had been out on the rim of the wheel, all around and around it, and
+up and down the spokes. But now she was at the center where all the
+spokes ended.
+
+She closed her eyes and laid her head on Mother's soft shoulder.
+
+"Did you have a good walk, all by yourself, dear?" asked Mother.
+
+"Oh yes, it was all right," said Elly.
+
+"Your feet aren't wet, are they?"
+
+"No," said Elly, "I took off my boots just as soon as I came in, and
+changed my stockings."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THINGS TAKE THEIR COURSE
+
+
+_A Couple of Hours from Mr. Welles' New Life_.
+
+
+I
+
+April 10.
+
+One of the many things which surprised Mr. Welles was that he seemed to
+need less sleep than in the city. Long hours in bed had been one of the
+longed-for elements of the haven of rest which his retiring from the
+office was to be. Especially as he had dragged himself from bed to stop
+the relentless snarl of his alarm-clock, had he hoped for late morning
+sleeps in his new home, when he could wake up at seven, feel himself
+still heavy, unrefreshed, unready for the day, and turn on the pillow to
+take another dose of oblivion.
+
+But here, after the first ten days of almost prostrate relaxation, he
+found himself waking even before the dawn, and lying awake in his bed,
+waiting almost impatiently for the light to come so that he could rise
+to another day. He learned all the sounds of the late night and early
+morning, and how they had different voices in the dark; the faint
+whisper of the maple-branches, the occasional stir and muffled chirp of
+a bird, the hushed, secret murmur of the little brook which ran between
+his garden and the Crittenden yard, and the distant, deeper note of the
+Necronsett River as it rolled down the Ashley valley to The Notch. He
+could almost tell, without opening his eyes, when the sky grew light
+over the Eagle Rocks, by the way the night voices lifted, and carried
+their sweet, muted notes up to a clearer, brighter singing.
+
+When that change in the night-voices came, he sat up in bed, turning
+his face from the window, for he did not want any mere partial glimpse
+for his first contact with the day, and got into his clothes, moving
+cautiously not to waken Vincent, who always sat up till all hours and
+slept till ten. Down the stairs in his stocking-feet, his shoes in his
+hand; a pause in the living-room to thread and fasten shoe-laces; and
+then, his silly old heart beating fast, his hand on the door-knob. The
+door slowly opened, and the garden, his own shining garden, offered
+itself to him anew, so fresh in the dew and the pale gold of the
+slanting morning sun-rays, that he was apt to swallow hard as he first
+stepped out into it and stood still, with bare head lifted, drawing one
+long breath after another.
+
+He was seldom alone in those early hours, although the house slept
+profoundly behind him; a robin, the only bird whose name he was sure of,
+hopped heavily and vigorously about on the sparkling grass; a little
+brown bird of whose name he had not the slightest notion, but whose
+voice he knew very well by this time, poured out a continuous cascade of
+quick, high, eager notes from the top of the elm; a large toad squatted
+peaceably in the sun, the loose skin over its forehead throbbing
+rhythmically with the life in it; and over on the steps of the
+Crittendens' kitchen, the old Indian woman, as motionless as the toad,
+fixed her opaque black eyes on the rising sun, while something about
+her, he could never decide what, throbbed rhythmically with the life in
+her. Mr. Welles had never in all his life been so aware of the rising
+sun, had never so felt it like something in himself as on those mornings
+when he walked in his garden and glanced over at the old Indian.
+
+Presently, the Crittenden house woke, so to speak, with one eye, and
+took on the aspect of a house in which someone is astir. First came the
+fox-terrier, inevitable precursor of his little master, and then,
+stepping around Toucle as though she were a tree or a rock, came his
+little partner Paul, his freckled face shining with soap and the
+earliness of the hour. Mr. Welles was apt to swallow hard again, when
+he felt the child's rough, strong fingers slip into his.
+
+"Hello, Mr. Welles," said Paul.
+
+"Hello, Paul," said Mr. Welles.
+
+"I thought sure I'd beat you to it for once, this morning," was what
+Paul invariably said first. "I can't seem to wake up as early as you and
+Toucle."
+
+Then he would bring out his plan for that particular morning walk.
+
+"Maybe we might have time to have me show you the back-road by Cousin
+Hetty's, and get back by the men's short-cut before breakfast, maybe?
+Perhaps?"
+
+"We could try it," admitted Mr. Welles, cautiously. It tickled him to
+answer Paul in his own prudent idiom. Then they set off, surrounded and
+encompassed by the circles of mad delight which Medor wove about them,
+rushing at them once in a while, in a spasm of adoration, to leap up and
+lick Paul's face.
+
+Thus on one of these mornings in April, they were on the back-road to
+Cousin Hetty's, the right-hand side solemn and dark with tall pines,
+where the ground sloped up towards the Eagle Rocks; jungle-like with
+blackberry brambles and young pines on the left side where it had been
+lumbered some years ago. Paul pointed out proudly the thrifty growth of
+the new pines and explained it by showing the several large trees left
+standing at intervals down the slope towards the Ashley valley. "Father
+always has them do that, so the seeds from the old trees will seed up
+the bare ground again. Gosh! You'd ought to hear him light into the
+choppers when they forget to leave the seed-pines or when they cut under
+six inches butt diameter."
+
+Mr. Welles had no more notion what cutting under six inches butt
+diameter meant than he had of the name of the little brown bird who sang
+so sweetly in his elm; but Paul's voice and that of the nameless bird
+gave him the same pleasure. He tightened his hold of the tough, sinewy
+little fingers, and looked up through the glorious brown columns of the
+great pines towards where the sky-line showed, luminous, far up the
+slope.
+
+"That's the top of the Eagle Rocks, where you see the sky," explained
+his small cicerone, seeing the direction of his eyes. "The Powerses lost
+a lot of sheep off over them, last year. A dog must ha' started running
+them down in the pasture. And you know what fools sheep are. Once they
+get scared they can't think of anything to do except just to keep
+a-running till something gets in their way. About half of the Powers
+flock just ran themselves off the top of the Rocks, although the dog had
+stopped chasing them, way down in the valley. There wasn't enough of
+them left, even to sell to the butcher in Ashley for mutton. Ralph
+Powers, he's about as old as I am, maybe a little bit older, well, his
+father had given him a ewe and two twin lambs for his own, and didn't
+they all three get killed that day! Ralph felt awful bad about it. He
+don't ever seem to have any luck, Ralph don't."
+
+. . . How sweet it was, Mr. Welles thought to himself, how awfully sweet
+to be walking in such pine-woods, on the early morning, preceded by such
+a wildly happy little dog, with a little boy whose treble voice ran on
+and on, whose strong little hand clasped yours so tightly, and who
+turned up to you eyes of such clear trust! Was he the same man who for
+such endless years had been a part of the flotsam cast out every morning
+into the muddy, brawling flood of the city street and swept along to
+work which had always made him uneasy and suspicious of it?
+
+"There's the whistle," said Paul, holding up a finger. "Father has the
+first one blown at half-past six, so's the men can have time to get
+their things ready and start; and not have to hurry."
+
+At this a faint stirring of interest in what the child was saying broke
+through the golden haze of the day-dream in which Mr. Welles was
+walking. "Where do they come from anyhow, the men who work in your
+father's mill?" he asked. "Where do they live? There are so few homes at
+Crittenden's."
+
+"Oh, they live mostly over the hill in the village, in Ashley. There are
+lots of old houses there, and once in a while now they even have to
+build a new one, since the old ones are all filled up. Mr. Bayweather
+says that before Father and Mother came here to live and really run the
+mill, that Ashley Street was all full of empty houses, without a light
+in them, that the old folks had died out of. But now the men have bought
+them up and live in them. It's just as bright, nights! With windows
+lighted up all over. Father's had the electric current run over there
+from the mill, now, and that doesn't cost anything except . . ."
+
+Mr. Welles' curiosity satisfied, he fell back into his old shimmer of
+content and walked along, hearing Paul's voice only as one of the
+morning sounds of the newly awakened world.
+
+Presently he was summoned out of this day-dream by a tug at his hand.
+Paul gave out the word of command, "We turn here, so's to get into the
+men's short-cut."
+
+This proved to be a hard-trodden path, lying like a loosely thrown-down
+string, over the hill pasture-land which cut Ashley village off from
+Crittenden's mill. It was to get around this rough tract that the road
+had to make so long a detour.
+
+"Oh, I see," said Mr. Welles. "I'd been thinking that it must bother
+them a lot to come the two miles along the road from the village."
+
+"Sure," said Paul. "Only the ones that have got Fords come that way.
+This is ever so much shorter. Those that step along fast can make it
+easy in twelve or fifteen minutes. There they come now, the first of
+them." He nodded backward along the path where a distant dark line of
+men came treading swiftly and steadily forward, tin pails glistening in
+their hands.
+
+"Some of those in that first bunch are really choppers by rights," Paul
+diagnosed them with a practised eye, "but of course nobody does much
+chopping come warmer weather. But Father never lays off any men unless
+they want to be. He fixes some jobs for them in the lumber-yard or in
+the mill, so they live here all the year around, same's the regular
+hands."
+
+The two stood still now, watching the men as their long, powerful
+strides brought them rapidly nearer. Back of them the sun rose up
+splendid in the sparkling, dustless mountain air. The pasture grass on
+either side of the sinuous path lay shining in the dew. Before them the
+path led through a grove of slim, white birches, tremulous in a pale
+cloud of light green.
+
+"Well, they've got a pretty good way to get to their work, all right,"
+commented Mr. Welles.
+
+"Yep, pretty good," agreed Paul. "It's got tramped down so it's quite
+smooth."
+
+A detachment of the file of tall, strongly built, roughly dressed men
+had now reached them, and with friendly, careless nods and greetings to
+Paul, they swung by, smoking, whistling, calling out random remarks and
+jokes back and forth along the line.
+
+"Hello, Frank. Hello, Mike. Hello, Harry. Hello, Jom-bastiste. Hello,
+Jim." Paul made answer to their repeated, familiar, "Hello, Paul."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Welles drew back humbly from out their path. These were men, useful
+to the world, strong for labor. He must needs stand back with the child.
+
+With entire unexpectedness, he felt a wistful envy of those men, still
+valid, still fit for something. For a moment it did not seem as sweet as
+he had thought it would always be, to feel himself old, old and
+useless.
+
+
+II
+
+April 12.
+
+He was impatient to be at the real work of gardening and one morning
+applied seriously to Mrs. Crittenden to be set at work. Surely this must
+be late enough, even in this "suburb of the North Pole," as Vincent
+called Vermont. Well, yes, Mrs. Crittenden conceded to him, stopping her
+rapid manipulation of an oiled mop on the floor of her living-room, if
+he was in such a hurry, he could start getting the ground ready for the
+sweet peas. It wouldn't do any harm to plant them now, though it might
+not do any good either; and he mustn't be surprised to find occasional
+chunks of earth still frozen. She would be over in a little while to
+show him about it. Let him get his pick-mattock, spade, and rake ready,
+up by the corner of his stone wall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was waiting there, ten minutes later, the new implements (bought at
+Mrs. Crittenden's direction days and days ago) leaning against the wall.
+The sun was strong and sweet on his bared white head, the cool earth
+alive under his feet, freed from the tension of frost which had held it
+like stone when he had first trod his garden. He leaned against the
+stone wall, laid a century ago by who knew what other gardener, and
+looked down respectfully at the strip of ground along the stones. There
+it lay, blank and brown, shabby with the litter of broken, sodden stems
+of last year's weeds, and unsightly with half-rotten lumps of manure.
+And that would feed and nourish . . .
+
+For an instant there stood there before his flower-loving eyes the
+joyful tangle of fresh green vines, the pearly many-colored flesh of the
+petals, their cunning, involved symmetry of form--all sprung from a
+handful of wrinkled yellow seeds and that ugly mixture of powdered stone
+and rotten decay.
+
+It was a wonderful business, he thought.
+
+Mrs. Crittenden emerged from her house now, in a short skirt, rough
+heavy shoes, and old flannel shirt. She looked, he thought, ever so trig
+and energetic and nice; but suddenly aware that Vincent was gazing idly
+out of an upper window at them, he guessed that the other man would not
+admire the costume. Vincent was so terribly particular about how ladies
+dressed, he thought to himself, as he moved forward, mattock in hand.
+
+"I'm ashamed to show you how dumb I am about the use of these tools," he
+told her, laughing shamefacedly. "I don't suppose you'll believe me, but
+honestly I never had a pick-mattock in my hand till I went down to the
+store to buy one. I might as well go the whole hog and confess I'd never
+even heard of one till you told me to get it. Is this the way you use
+it?" He jabbed ineffectually at the earth with the mattock, using a
+short tight blow with a half-arm movement. The tool jarred itself half
+an inch into the ground and was almost twisted out of his hand.
+
+"No, not quite," she said, taking the heavy tool out of his hand. If she
+were aware of the idle figure at the upper window, she gave no sign of
+it. She laid her strong, long, flexible hands on the handle, saying,
+"So, you hold it this way. Then you swing it up, back of your head.
+There's a sort of knack to that. You'll soon catch it. And then, if the
+ground isn't very hard, you don't need to use any strength at all on the
+downward stroke. Let Old Mother Gravity do the work. If you aim it
+right, its own weight is enough for ordinary garden soil, that's not in
+sod. Now watch."
+
+She swung the heavy tool up, shining in the bright air, all her tall,
+supple body drawn up by the swing of her arms, cried out, "See, now I
+relax and just let it fall," and bending with the downward rush of the
+blade, drove it deep into the brown earth. A forward thrust of the long
+handle ("See, you use it like a lever," she explained), a small
+earthquake in the soil, and the tool was free for another stroke.
+
+At her feet was a pool of freshly stirred fragments of earth, loose,
+friable, and moist, from which there rose in a gust of the spring
+breeze, an odor unknown to the old man and thrilling.
+
+He stooped down, thrust his hand into the open breast of earth, and took
+up a handful of the soil which had lain locked in frost for half a year
+and was now free for life again. Over it his eyes met those of the
+beautiful woman beside him.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, there's nothing like it, the smell of the first earth
+stirred every spring."
+
+He told her, wistfully, "It's the very first stirred in all my life."
+
+They had both lowered their voices instinctively, seeing Vincent emerge
+from the house-door and saunter towards them immaculate in a gray suit.
+Mr. Welles was not at all glad to see him at this moment. "Here, let me
+have the mattock," he said, taking it out of Mrs. Crittenden's hands, "I
+want to try it myself."
+
+He felt an anticipatory impatience of Vincent's everlasting talk, to
+which Mrs. Crittenden always had, of course, to give a polite attention;
+and imitating as well as he could, the free, upward swing of his
+neighbor, he began working off his impatience on the unresisting earth.
+But he could not help hearing that, just as he expected, Vincent plunged
+at once into his queer, abrupt talk. He always seemed to think he was
+going right on with something that had been said before, but really, for
+the most part, as far as Mr. Welles could see, what he said had nothing
+to do with anything. Mrs. Crittenden must really be a very smart woman,
+he reflected, to seem to know what he meant, and always to have an
+answer ready.
+
+Vincent, shaking his head, and looking hard at Mrs. Crittenden's rough
+clothes and the handful of earth in her fingers, said with an air of
+enforced patience with obvious unreasonableness, "You're on the wrong
+track, you know. You're just all off. Of course with you it can't be
+pose as it looks when other people do it. It must be simply
+muddle-headed thinking."
+
+He added, very seriously, "You infuriate me."
+
+Mr. Welles, pecking feebly at the ground, the heavy mattock apparently
+invested with a malicious life of its own, twisting perversely, heavily
+lop-sided in his hands, thought that this did not sound like a polite
+thing to say to a lady. And yet the way Vincent said it made it sound
+like a compliment, somehow. No, not that; but as though it were awfully
+important to him what Mrs. Crittenden did. Perhaps that counted as a
+compliment.
+
+He caught only a part of Mrs. Crittenden's answer, which she gave,
+lightly laughing, as though she did not wish to admit that Vincent could
+be so serious as he sounded. The only part he really heard was when she
+ended, ". . . oh, if we are ever going to succeed in forcing order on the
+natural disorder of the world, it's going to take everybody's shoulder
+to the wheel. Women can't stay ornamental and leisurely, and elegant,
+nor even always nice to look at."
+
+Mr. Welles, amazed at the straining effort he needed to put forth to
+manage that swing which Mrs. Crittenden did so easily, took less than
+his usual small interest in the line of talk which Vincent was so fond
+of springing on their neighbor. He heard him say, with his air of always
+stating a foregone conclusion, something so admitted that it needed no
+emphasis, "It's Haroldbellwrightism, pure and simple, to imagine that
+anything you can ever do, that anybody can ever do, will help bring
+about the kind of order _you're_ talking about, order for everybody. The
+only kind of order there ever will be, is what you get when you grab a
+little of what you want out of the chaos, for your own self, while
+there's still time, and hold on to it. That's the only way to get
+anywhere for yourself. And as for doing something for other people, the
+only satisfaction you can give anybody is in beauty."
+
+Mr. Welles swam out of the breakers into clear water. Suddenly he caught
+the knack of the upward swing, and had the immense satisfaction of
+bringing the mattock down squarely, buried to the head in the earth.
+
+"There!" he said proudly to Mrs. Crittenden, "how's that for fine?"
+
+He looked up at her, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He wondered for
+an instant if she really looked troubled, or if he only imagined it.
+There was no doubt about how Vincent looked, as though he thought Mr.
+Welles, exulting over a blow with a mattock, an old imbecile in his
+dotage.
+
+Mr. Welles never cared very much whether he seemed to Vincent like an
+old imbecile or not, and certainly less than nothing about it today,
+intoxicated as he was with the air, the sun, and his new mastery over
+the soil. He set his hands lovingly to the tool and again and again
+swung it high over his head, while Vincent and Mrs. Crittenden strolled
+away, still talking. . . . "Doesn't it depend on what you mean by
+'beauty'?" Mrs. Crittenden was saying.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS
+
+_An Evening in the Life of Mrs. Neale Crittenden_
+
+
+April 20.
+
+Nowadays she so seldom spoke or acted without knowing perfectly well
+what she was about, that Marise startled herself almost as much as her
+callers by turning over that leaf in the photograph album quickly and
+saying with abruptness, "No, never mind about that one. It's nothing
+interesting."
+
+Of course this brought out from Paul and little Mark, hanging over her
+shoulder and knee, the to-be-expected shouts of, "Oh, let's see it! What
+is it?"
+
+Marise perceived that they scented something fine and exciting such as
+Mother was always trying to keep from them, like one man choking another
+over the edge of a cliff, or a woman lying on her back with the blood
+all running from her throat. Whenever pictures like that were in any of
+the magazines that came into the house, Marise took them away from the
+little boys, although she knew helplessly that this naturally made them
+extremely keen not to miss any chance to catch a glimpse of such a one.
+She could see that they thought it queer, there being anything so
+exciting in this old album of dull snapshots and geographical
+picture-postcards of places and churches and ruins and things that
+Father and Mother had seen, so long ago. But you never could tell. The
+way Mother had spoken, the sound of her voice, the way she had flapped
+down the page quick, the little boys' practised ears and eyes had
+identified all that to a certainty with the actions that accompanied
+pictures she didn't want them to see. So, of course, they clamored, "Oh
+_yes_, Mother, just one look!"
+
+Elly as usual said nothing, looking up into Mother's face. Marise was
+extremely annoyed. She was glad that Elly was the only one who was
+looking at her, because, of course, dear old Mr. Welles' unobservant
+eyes didn't count. She was glad that Mr. Marsh kept his gaze downward on
+the photograph marked "Rome from the Pincian Gardens," although through
+the top of his dark, close-cropped head she could fairly feel the
+racing, inquiring speculations whirling about. Nor had she any right to
+resent that. She supposed people had a right to what went on in their
+own heads, so long as they kept it to themselves. And it had been
+unexpectedly delicate and fine, the way he had come to understand,
+without a syllable spoken on either side, that that piercing look of his
+made her uneasy; and how he had promised her, wordlessly always, to bend
+it on her no more.
+
+_Why_ in the world had it made her uneasy, and why, a thousand times
+why, had she felt this sudden unwillingness to look at the perfectly
+commonplace photograph, in this company? Something had burst up from the
+subconscious and flashed its way into action, moving her tongue to speak
+and her hand to action before she had the faintest idea it was there . . .
+like an action of youth! And see what a silly position it had put her
+in!
+
+The little boys had succeeded with the inspired tactlessness of children
+in emphasizing and exaggerating what she had wished could be passed over
+unnoticed, a gesture of hers as inexplicable to her as to them. Oh well,
+the best thing, of course, was to carry it off matter-of-factly, turn
+the leaf back, and _let_ them see it. And then refute them by insisting
+on the literal truth of what she had said.
+
+"There!" she said carelessly; "look at it then."
+
+The little boys bent their eager faces over it. Paul read out the title
+as he had been doing for the other photographs, "'View of the Campagna
+from the top of the cable-railway at Rocca di Papa. Rome in the
+distance.'"
+
+She had to sustain, for an instant, an astonished and disconcerted look
+from all those eyes. It made her quite genuinely break into a laugh. It
+was really a joke on them. She said to the little boys mischievously,
+"What did Mother say? Do you find it very interesting?"
+
+Paul and Mark stared hard at the very dull photograph of a cliff and a
+plain and not even a single person or donkey in it, and gave
+up the riddle. Mother certainly _had_ spoken to them in that
+hide-it-away-from-the-children voice, and yet there was nothing there.
+
+Marise knew that they felt somehow that Mother had unfairly slipped out
+between their fingers, as grown-ups are always doing. Well, it wasn't
+fair. She hated taking advantage of them like that. It was a sort of sin
+against their awakening capacity to put two and two together and make a
+human total, and understand what went on about them.
+
+But it hadn't been against _their_ capacity to put two and two together
+that she had instinctively thrown up that warding-off arm, which hadn't
+at all warded off attention, but rather drawn it hard and scrutinizing,
+in spite of those down-dropped sharp eyes. Well, there was no sum he
+could do with only two, and slight probability he would ever get the
+other two to put with it . . . whatever the other two might be.
+
+Mr. Welles' pleasant old voice said, "It's a very pretty picture, I'm
+sure. They certainly have very fine views about the Eternal City. I envy
+you your acquaintance with all those historic spots. What is the next
+one?"
+
+Dear old Mr. Welles! What a restful presence! How unutterably sweet and
+uncomplicated life could be with a good big dose of simplicity holding
+everything in a clear solution, so that it never occurred to you that
+what things seemed was very different from what they were.
+
+"Ready to turn over, dears?" she asked the little boys. This time she
+was in her usual control of the machine, regulated what she did from
+the first motion to the last, made her voice casual but not elaborately
+so, and put one arm around Mark's slim little shoulder with just the
+right degree of uninterest in those old and faded photographs.
+
+Very deep down, at the edge of consciousness, something asked her, "Why
+did you try to hide that photograph?"
+
+She could not answer this question. She didn't know why, any more than
+the little boys did. And it wouldn't do now, with the need to be
+mistress-of-the-house till a call ended, to stop to try to think it out.
+Later on, tonight, after the children were in bed, when she was brushing
+her hair . . . oh, probably she'd find as you so often did, when you went
+after the cause of some unexpected little feeling, that it came from a
+meaningless fortuitous association of ideas, like Elly's hatred of
+grape-jelly because she had once taken some bitter medicine in it.
+
+"'View of the Roman Aqueduct, taken from the tramway line to Tivoli,'"
+read out Paul.
+
+"Very pretty view," said Mr. Welles.
+
+Mr. Marsh's silences were as abysmal as his speech was Niagara-like on
+occasion. He said nothing.
+
+Elly stirred and looked toward the doorway. Toucle stood there, her
+shoe-button eyes not blinking in the lamp-light although she probably
+had been sitting on the steps of the kitchen, looking out into the
+darkness, in the long, motionless vigil which made up Toucle's evenings.
+As they all turned their faces towards her, she said, "The cereus is
+going to bloom tonight," and disappeared.
+
+Marise welcomed this diversion. Ever since that absurd little gesture
+about the photograph, she had felt thickening about her . . . what? What
+you call "depression" (whatever that meant), the dull hooded apparition
+that came blackly and laid its leaden hand on your heart. This news was
+just the thing. It would change what was threatening to stand stagnant
+and charge it with fresh running currents. She got up briskly to her
+feet.
+
+"Come on, children," she said. "I'll let you sit up beyond bed-time
+tonight. Scatter quick, and put on your things. We'll all go down the
+road to the Powers house and see the cereus in bloom."
+
+The children ducked quickly out of the room, thudding along softly in
+their felt slippers. Scramblings, chatterings, and stamping sounded back
+from the front hall, as they put on their boots and wraps.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to come, too?" she asked the men, rescuing them from
+the rather high-and-dry position in which this unexpected incident had
+left them. It was plainly, from their faces, as inexplicable as
+unexpected. She explained, drawing a long, plain, black silk scarf
+closely about her head and shoulders, "Why, yes, do come. It's an
+occasion as uniquely Ashleyian as pelota is Basque. You, Mr. Marsh, with
+your exhaustive inquiries into the habits and manners of Vermont
+mountaineers, your data won't be complete unless you've seen Nelly
+Powers' night-blooming cereus in its one hour of glory. Seriously, I
+assure you, you won't encounter anything like it, anywhere else."
+
+As Marsh looked at her, she noted with an inward amusement that her
+words had lighted a smouldering glow of carefully repressed exasperation
+in his eyes. It made her feel quite gay and young to be teasing somebody
+again. She was only paying him back in his own coin. He himself was
+always telling everybody about his deep interest in the curious quaint
+ways of these mountaineers. And if he didn't have a deep interest in
+their curious quaint ways, what else could he give as a reason for
+staying on in the valley?
+
+The men turned away to get their hats. She settled the folds of her
+heavy black silk mantilla more closely about her head, glancing at
+herself in the mirror. She smiled back with sympathy at the smiling face
+she saw there. It was not so often since the war that she saw her own
+face lighted with mirth.
+
+Gravely, something deep on the edge of the unconscious called up to her,
+"You are talking and feeling like a coquette."
+
+She was indignant at this, up in arms to defend human freedom. "Oh, what
+a hateful, little-villagey, prudish, nasty-minded idea!" she cried to
+herself. "Who would have thought that narrowness and priggishness could
+rub off on a person's mind like that! Mrs. Bayweather could have thought
+that! Mercy! As if one civilized being can't indulge in a light touch or
+two in human intercourse with another!"
+
+The two men were ready now and all the party of six jostled each other
+cheerfully as they went out of the front door. Paul had secured the hand
+of old Mr. Welles and led him along with an air of proprietary
+affection.
+
+"Don't you turn out the lamp, or lock the door, or _any_thing?" asked
+the old man, now.
+
+"Oh no, we won't be gone long. It's not more than half a mile to the
+Powers'. There's not a soul in the valley who would think of going in
+and rummaging . . . let alone taking anything. And we never have tramps.
+We are too far from the railroad," said Marise.
+
+"_Well!_" exclaimed the other, looking back as they went down the path,
+"it certainly looks queer to me, the door standing open into this black
+night, and the light shining in that empty room."
+
+Elly looked back too. She slipped her hand out of her mother's and ran
+towards the house. She darted up to the door and stood there, poised
+like a swallow, looking in.
+
+"What does she want?" asked Mr. Welles with the naive conviction of the
+elderly bachelor that the mother must know everything in the child's
+mind.
+
+"I don't know," admitted Marise. "Nobody ever knows exactly what is in
+Elly's mind when she does things. Maybe she is looking to see that her
+kitten is safe."
+
+The little girl ran back to them.
+
+"What did you want, dear?" asked her mother.
+
+"I just wanted to look at it again," said Elly. "I _like_ it, like that,
+all quiet, with nobody in it. The furniture looks as though it were
+having a good rest from us."
+
+"Oh, listen to the frogs!" screamed Mark, out of the darkness where he
+had run to join Toucle.
+
+Elly and Paul sprang forward to join their little brother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What in the world are we going to see?" asked Marsh. "You forget you
+haven't given us the least idea."
+
+"You are going to see," Marise set herself to amuse them, "you're going
+to see a rite of the worship of beauty which Ashley, Vermont, has
+created out of its own inner consciousness."
+
+She had succeeded in amusing at least one of them, for at this Mr. Marsh
+gave her the not disagreeable shock of that singular, loud laugh of his.
+It was in conversation like something-or-other in the orchestra . . . the
+cymbals, that must be it . . . made you jump, and tingle with answering
+vibrations.
+
+"Ashleyians in the role of worshipers of beauty!" he cried, out of the
+soft, moist, dense darkness about them.
+
+"None so blind as those who won't see," she persisted. "Just because
+they go to it in overalls and gingham aprons, instead of peplums and
+sandals."
+
+"What _is_ a night-blooming cereal?" asked Mr. Welles, patient of the
+verbose by-play of his companions that never got anybody anywhere.
+
+What an old dear Mr. Welles was! thought Marise. It was like having the
+sweetest old uncle bestowed on you as a pendant to dear Cousin Hetty.
+
+". . . -eus, not -eal," murmured Marsh; "not that I know any more than you
+what it is."
+
+Marise felt suddenly wrought upon by the mildness of the spring air,
+the high, tuneful shrillness of the frogs' voices, the darkness, sweet
+and thick. She would not amuse them; no, she would really tell them,
+move them. She chose the deeper intonations of her voice, she selected
+her words with care, she played upon her own feeling, quickening it into
+genuine emotion as she spoke. She would make them feel it too.
+
+"It is a plant of the cactus family, as native to America as is Ashley's
+peculiar sense of beauty which you won't acknowledge. It is as ugly to
+look at, the plant is, all spines and thick, graceless, fleshy pads; as
+ugly as Ashley life looks to you. And this crabbed, ungainly
+plant-creature is faithfully, religiously tended all the year around by
+the wife of a farmer, because once a year, just once, it puts forth a
+wonderful exotic flower of extreme beauty. When the bud begins to show
+its color she sends out word to all her neighbors to be ready. And we
+are all ready. For days, in the back of our minds as we go about our
+dull, routine life, there is the thought that the cereus is near to
+bloom. Nelly and her grim husband hang over it day by day, watching it
+slowly prepare for its hour of glory. Sometimes when they cannot decide
+just the time it will open, they sit up all through a long night, hour
+after hour of darkness and silence, to make sure that it does not bloom
+unseen. When they see that it is about to open, they fling open their
+doors, wishing above everything else to share that beauty with their
+fellows. Their children are sent to announce, as you heard Toucle say
+tonight, 'The cereus is going to bloom.' And all up and down this end of
+the valley, in those ugly little wooden houses that look so mean and
+dreary to you, everywhere people tired from their day's struggle with
+the earth, rise up and go their pilgrimage through the night . . . for
+what? To see something rare and beautiful."
+
+She stopped speaking. On one side of her she heard the voice of the
+older man say with a quiver, "Well, I can understand why your neighbors
+love you."
+
+With entire unexpectedness Marsh answered fiercely from the other side,
+"_They_ don't love her! They're not capable of it!"
+
+Marise started, as though a charged electric wire had fallen across her
+arm. Why was there so often a note of anger in his voice?
+
+For a moment they advanced silently, pacing forward, side by side,
+unseen but not unfelt by each of the others.
+
+The road turned now and they were before the little house, every window
+alight, the great pine somber and high before it. The children and
+Toucle were waiting at the door. They all went in together, shaking
+hands with the mistress of the house, neatly dressed, with a clean,
+white flounced apron. "Nelly's garment of ceremony!" thought Marise.
+
+Nelly acknowledged, with a graceful, silent inclination of her shining
+blonde head, the presence of the two strangers whom Marise presented to
+her. What an inscrutable fascination Nelly's silence gave to her! You
+never knew what strange thoughts were going on behind that proud
+taciturnity. She showed the guests to chairs, of which a great many,
+mostly already filled, stood about the center table, on which sprawled
+the great, spiny, unlovely plant. Marise sat down, taking little Mark on
+her knees. Elly leaned against her. Paul sat close beside old Mr.
+Welles. Their eyes were on the big pink bud enthroned in the
+uncomeliness of the shapeless leafpads.
+
+"Oh!" said Elly, under her breath, "it's not open yet! We're going to
+_see_ it open, this time!" She stared at it, her lips parted. Her mother
+looked at her, tenderly aware that the child was storing away an
+impression to last her life long. Dear, strangely compounded little
+Elly, with her mysticism, and her greediness and her love of beauty all
+jumbled together! A neighbor leaned from her chair to say to Mrs.
+Crittenden, "Warm for this time of year, ain't it?" And another
+remarked, looking at Mark's little trousers, "That material come out
+real good, didn't it? I made up what I got of it, into a dress for
+Pearl." They both spoke in low tones, but constrained or sepulchral, for
+they smiled and nodded as though they had meant something else and
+deeper than what they had said. They looked with a kindly expression for
+moment at the Crittenden children and then turned back to their gaze on
+the flower-bud.
+
+Nelly Powers, walking with a singular lightness for so tall a woman,
+ushered in another group of visitors--a tall, unshaven farmer, his wife,
+three little children clumping in on shapeless cow-hide boots, and a
+baby, fast asleep, its round bonneted head tucked in the hollow of its
+mother's gingham-clad shoulder. They sat down, nodding silent greetings
+to the other neighbors. In turning to salute them, Marise caught a
+glimpse of Mr. Marsh, fixing his brilliant scrutiny first on one and
+then on another of the company. At that moment he was gazing at Nelly
+Powers, "taking her in" thought Marise, from her beautiful hair to those
+preposterously high-heeled shoes she always would wear on her shapely
+feet. His face was impassive. When he looked neutral like that, the
+curious irregularity of his features came out strongly. He looked like
+that bust of Julius Caesar, the bumpy, big-nosed, strong-chinned one,
+all but that thick, closely cut, low-growing head of dark hair.
+
+She glanced at Mr. Welles, and was surprised to find that he was looking
+neither at the people nor the plant. His arm was around his favorite
+Paul, but his gaze seemed turned inward, as though he were thinking of
+something very far away. He looked tired and old, it seemed to her, and
+without that quietly shining aspect of peace which she found so
+touching. Perhaps he was tired. Perhaps she ought not to have brought
+him out, this evening, for that long walk over rough country roads. How
+much older he was than his real age in years! His life had used him up.
+There must have been some inner maladjustment in it!
+
+There was a little stir in the company, a small inarticulate sound from
+Elly. Marise saw everyone's eyes turn to the center of the room and
+looked back to the plant. The big pink bud was beginning visibly to
+swell.
+
+A silence came into the room. No one coughed, or stirred, or scraped a
+chair-leg. It was as though a sound would have wounded the flower. All
+those human souls bowed themselves. Almost a light shone upon them . . . a
+phrase from Dante came to Marise's mind . . . "_la mia menta fu percossa
+da un fulgore_ . . ."
+
+With a quick involuntary turn she looked at Marsh, fearing his mockery
+of her, "quoting the _Paradiso_, about Vermont farmers!" as though he
+could know, for all those sharp eyes of his, what was going on hidden in
+her mind!
+
+All this came and went in an instant, for she now saw that one big,
+shining petal was slowly, slowly, but quite visibly uncurling at the
+tip. From that moment on, she saw nothing, felt nothing but the opening
+flower, lived only in the incredibly leisurely, masterful motion with
+which the grotesquely shaped protecting petals curled themselves back
+from the center. Their motion was so slow that the mind was lost in
+dreaminess in following it. Had that last one moved? No, it stood still,
+poised breathlessly . . . and yet, there before them, revealed, exultant,
+the starry heart of the great flower shimmered in the lamp-light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then she realized that she had not breathed. She drew in a great
+marveling aspiration, and heard everyone about her do the same. They
+turned to each other with inarticulate exclamations, shaking their heads
+wonderingly, their lips a little apart as they drew long breaths.
+
+Two very old women, rubbing their age-dimmed eyes, stood up, tiptoed to
+the table, and bent above the miraculously fine texture of the flower
+their worn and wrinkled faces. The petals cast a clear, rosy reflection
+upon their sallow cheeks. Some of the younger mothers took their little
+children over to the table and lifting them up till their round shining
+eyes were on a level with the flower, let them gaze their fill at the
+mysterious splendor of stamen and pistil.
+
+"Would you like to go quite close and look at it, children?" Marise
+asked her own brood.
+
+The little boys stepped forward at once, curiously, but Elly said, "No,
+oh _no!_" and backed off till she stood leaning against Toucle's knee.
+The old woman put her dark hand down gently on the child's soft hair and
+smiled at her. How curious it was to see that grim, battered old visage
+smile! Elly was the only creature in the world at whom the old Indian
+ever smiled, indeed almost the only thing in the house which those
+absent old eyes ever seemed to see. Marise remembered that Toucle had
+smiled when she first took the baby Elly in her arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little murmur of talk arose now, from the assembled neighbors. They
+stood up, moved about, exchanged a few laconic greetings, and began
+putting their wraps on. Marise remembered that Mr. Welles had seemed
+tired and as soon as possible set her party in motion.
+
+"Thank you so much, Nelly, for letting us know," she said to the
+farmer's wife, as they came away. "It wouldn't seem like a year in our
+valley if we didn't see your cereus in bloom."
+
+She took Elly's hand in one of hers, and with Mark on the other side
+walked down the path to the road. The darkness was intense there,
+because of the gigantic pine-tree which towered above the little house.
+"Are you there, Paul?" she called through the blackness. The little
+boy's voice came back, "Yes, with Toucle, we're ahead." The two men
+walked behind.
+
+Elly's hand was hot and clasped her mother's very tightly. Marise bent
+over the little girl and divined in the darkness that she was crying.
+"Why, Elly darling, what's the matter?" she asked.
+
+The child cried out passionately, on a mounting note, "Nothing, nothing!
+_Nothing!_" She flung her arms around her mother's neck, straining her
+close in a wild embrace. Little Mark, on the other side, yawned and
+staggered sleepily on his feet. Elly gave her mother a last kiss, and
+ran on ahead, calling over her shoulder, "I'm going to walk by myself!"
+
+"_Well!_" commented the old gentleman.
+
+Mr. Marsh had not been interested in this episode and had stood gazing
+admiringly up at the huge pine-tree, divining its bulk and mass against
+the black sky.
+
+"Like Milton's Satan, isn't it?" was his comment as they walked on,
+"with apologies for the triteness of the quotation."
+
+For a time nothing was said, and then Marsh began, "Now I've seen it,
+your rite of the worship of beauty. And do you know what was really
+there? A handful of dull, insensitive, primitive beings, hardened and
+calloused by manual toil and atrophied imaginations, so starved for any
+variety in their stupefyingly monotonous life that they welcome
+anything, anything at all as a break . . . only if they could choose, they
+would infinitely prefer a two-headed calf or a bearded woman to your
+flower. The only reason they go to see that is because it is a
+curiosity, not because of its beauty, because it blooms once a year
+only, at night, and because there is only one of them in town. Also
+because everybody else goes to see it. They go to look at it only
+because there aren't any movies in Ashley, nor anything else. And you
+know all this just as well as I do."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Welles," Marise appealed to him, "do you think that is the
+truth of the facts?"
+
+The old man pronounced judgment gently. "Well, I don't know that
+_any_thing is the truth. I should say that both of you told the truth
+about it. The truth's pretty big for any one person to tell. Isn't it
+all in the way you look at it?" He added, "Only personally I think Mrs.
+Crittenden's the nicest way."
+
+Marsh was delighted with this. "There! I hope you're satisfied. You've
+been called 'nice.' That ought to please any good American."
+
+"I wonder, Mr. Welles," Marise said in an ostentatiously casual tone, "I
+wonder if Mr. Marsh had been an ancient Greek, and had stood watching
+the procession going up the Acropolis hill, bearing the thank-offerings
+from field and loom and vineyard, what do you suppose he would have
+seen? Dullness and insensitiveness in the eyes of those Grecian
+farmer-lads, no doubt, occupied entirely with keeping the oxen in line;
+a low vulgar stare of bucolic curiosity as the country girls, bearing
+their woven linen, looked up at the temple. Don't you suppose he would
+have thought they managed those things a great deal more artistically in
+Persia?"
+
+"Well, I don't know much about the ancient Greeks," said Mr. Welles
+mildly, "but I guess Vincent would have been about the same wherever he
+lived."
+
+"Who is satisfied with the verdict now?" triumphed Marise.
+
+But she noticed that Marsh's attack, although she considered that she
+had refuted it rather neatly, had been entirely; efficacious in
+destroying the aura of the evening. Of the genuine warmth of feeling
+which the flower and the people around it had roused in her heart, not
+the faintest trace was left. She had only a cool interested certainty
+that her side had a perfectly valid foundation for arguing purposes. Mr.
+Marsh had accomplished that, and more than that, a return from those
+other centers of feeling to her preoccupation with his own personality.
+
+He now went on, "But I'm glad to have gone. I saw a great deal else
+there than your eccentric plant and the vacancy of mind of those sons of
+toil, cursed, soul-destroying toil. For one thing, I saw a woman of
+very great beauty. And that is always so much gained."
+
+"Oh yes," cried Marise, "that's so. I forgot that you could see that.
+I've grown so used to the fact that people here don't understand how
+splendidly handsome Nelly Powers is. Their taste doesn't run to the
+statuesque, you know. They call that grand silent calm of her,
+stupidness! Ever since 'Gene brought her here as a bride, a year after
+we came to live in Crittenden's, I have gone out of my way to look at
+her. You should see her hanging out the clothes on a windy day. One
+sculptured massive pose after another. But even to see her walk across
+the room and bend that shining head is thrilling."
+
+"I saw something else, too," went on Marsh, a cool voice speaking out of
+the darkness. "I saw that her black, dour husband is furiously in love
+with her and furiously jealous of that tall, ruddy fellow with an
+expressive face, who stood by the door in shirt-sleeves and never took
+his eyes from her."
+
+Marise was silent, startled by this shouting out of something she had
+preferred not to formulate.
+
+"Vincent, you see too much," said Mr. Welles resignedly. The phrase ran
+from his tongue as though it were a familiar one.
+
+Marise said slowly, "I've sometimes thought that Frank Warner did go to
+the Powers' a good deal, but I haven't wanted to think anything more."
+
+"What possible reason in the world have you for not wanting to?" asked
+Marsh with the most authentic accent of vivid and astonished curiosity.
+
+"What reason . . . ?" she repeated blankly.
+
+He said dispassionately, "I don't like to hear _you_ make such a flat,
+conventional, rubber-stamp comment. Why in the world shouldn't she love
+a fine, ardent, _living_ man, better than that knotty, dead branch of a
+husband? A beautiful woman and a living, strong, vital man, they belong
+together. Whom God hath joined . . . Don't try to tell me that your
+judgment is maimed by the Chinese shoes of outworn ideas, such as the
+binding nature of a mediaeval ceremony. That doesn't marry anybody, and
+you know it. If she's really married to her husband, all right. But if
+she loves another man, and knows in her heart that she would live a
+thousand times more fully, more deeply with him . . . why, she's _not_
+married to her husband, and nothing can make her. You know that!"
+
+Marise sprang at the chance to turn his own weapons of mockery against
+him. "Upon my word, who's idealizing the Yankee mountaineer now?" she
+cried, laughing out as she spoke at the idea of her literal-minded
+neighbors dressed up in those trailing rhetorical robes. "I thought you
+said they were so dull and insensitive they could feel nothing but an
+interest in two-headed calves, and here they are, characters in an
+Italian opera. I only wish Nelly Powers were capable of understanding
+those grand languages of yours and then know what she thought of your
+idea of what's in her mind. And as for 'Gene's jealousy, I'll swear that
+it amounts to no more than a vague dislike for Frank Warner's 'all the
+time hanging around and gassin' instead of stickin' to work.' And you
+forget, in your fine modern clean-sweep, a few old-fashioned facts like
+the existence of three Powers children, dependent on their mother."
+
+"You're just fencing, not really talking," he answered imperturbably.
+"You can't pretend to be sincere in trying to pull that antimacassar
+home-and-mother stuff on me. Ask Bernard Shaw, ask Freud, ask Mrs.
+Gilman, how good it is for children's stronger, better selves, to live
+in the enervating, hot-house concentration on them of an unbalanced,
+undeveloped woman, who has let everything else in her personality
+atrophy except her morbid preoccupation with her own offspring. That's
+really the meaning of what's sentimentally called 'mothering.' Probably
+it would be the best thing in the world for the Powers children if
+their mother ran away with that fine broth of a lad."
+
+"But Nelly loves her children and they love her!" Marise brought this
+out abruptly, impulsively, and felt, as she heard the words, that they
+had a flat, naive sound, out of key with the general color of this talk,
+like a C Major chord introduced into Debussy nuances.
+
+"Not much she doesn't, nor they her. Any honest observer of life knows
+that the only sincere relation possible between the young and the old
+(after the babies are weaned) is hostility. We hated our elders, because
+they got in our way. And they'll hate us as soon as they get the
+strength to, because we'll be in their way. And we will hate them
+because they will want to push us off the scene. It's impossible to
+ignore the gulf. Most human tragedies come from trying to pretend it's
+not there."
+
+"Why, Mr. Welles," cried Marise again, "what do you say to such talk?
+Don't you find him perfectly preposterous?"
+
+Mr. Welles answered a little absently. "Oh, I'm pretty well used to him,
+by now. And all his friends in the city are talking like that now. It's
+the fashion. I'm so old that I've seen a good many fashions in talk come
+and go. I never could see that people _acted_ any differently, no matter
+which way they talk." As he finished, he drew a long sigh, which had
+obviously no connection with what he had been saying. With the sigh,
+came an emanation from him of dispirited fatigue. Marise wished she
+dared draw his hand upon her arm and ask him to lean on her as they
+walked.
+
+Nothing more was said for a time. Marise lost herself in the outdoor
+wideness of impression that always came to her under a night sky, where
+she felt infinity hovering near. She was aware of nothing but the faint
+voice of the pines, the distant diminuendo of the frog's song, the firm
+elastic quality of the ground under her feet, so different from the iron
+rigidity of the winter earth, and the cool soft pressure of the
+night-air on her cheeks, when, like something thrust into her mind from
+the outside, there rose into her consciousness, articulate and complete,
+the reason why she had shrunk from looking at the photograph of Rocca di
+Papa. It was because it was painful to her, intimately painful and
+humiliating to remember how she and Neale had felt there, the wild, high
+things they had said to each other, that astounding flood of feeling
+which had swept them away at the last. What had become of all that?
+Where now was that high tide?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of course she loved Neale, and he loved her; there was nobody like
+Neale, yes, all that; but oh! the living flood had been ebbing, ebbing
+out of their hearts. They were not _alive_ as they had been alive when
+they had clung to each other, there on that age-old rock, and felt the
+tide of all the ages lift them high.
+
+It must have been ebbing for a long time before she realized it because,
+hurried, absorbed, surrounded incessantly by small cares as she was,
+hustled and jostled in her role of mother and mistress-of-the-house in
+servantless America, with the primitive American need to do so much with
+her own hands, she had not even had the time to know the stupid, tragic
+thing that was happening to her . . . that she was turning into a slow,
+vegetating plant instead of a human being. And now she understood the
+meaning of the strange dejection she had felt the day when little Mark
+went off to school with the others. How curiously jaded and apprehensive
+she had felt that morning, and when she had gone downstairs to see the
+callers who arrived that day. That was the first time she had _felt_
+that the tide was ebbing.
+
+All this went through her mind with the cruel swiftness of a
+sword-flash. And the first reaction to it, involuntary and reflex, was
+to crush it instantly down, lest the man walking at her side should be
+aware of it. It had come to her with such loud precision that it seemed
+it must have been audible.
+
+As she found herself still on the dark country road, cloaked and
+protected by the blackness of the starless night, she was struck with
+wonder, as though she had never thought of it before, at the human body,
+its opaque, inscrutable mystery, the locked, sealed strong-box of
+unimaginable secrets which it is. There they were, the three of them,
+stepping side by side, brushing each other as they moved; and as remote
+from each other as though they were on different stars. What were the
+thoughts, powerful, complex, under perfect control, which were being
+marshaled in that round, dark head? She felt a little afraid to think;
+and turned from the idea to the other man with relief. She knew (she
+told herself) as though she saw inside, the tired, gentle, simple,
+wistful thoughts that filled the white head on her other side.
+
+With this, they were again at the house, where the children and Toucle
+had preceded them. Paul was laughing and saying, "Elly's the looniest
+kid! She's just been saying that Father is like . . ." Elly, in a panic,
+sprang up at him, clapping her hand over his mouth, crying out, "No,
+Paul, you shan't tell! _Don't!_"
+
+The older, stronger child pulled himself away and, holding her at arm's
+length, continued, "She said Father was like the end of her hair that's
+fastened into her head, and Mother was the end that flaps in the wind,
+and Mr. Marsh was like the Eagle Rock brook, swirly and hurrying the way
+it is in the spring."
+
+Elly, half crying, came to her mother. "Mother, it's nasty-horrid in
+Paul to tell when I didn't want him to."
+
+Marise began taking off the little girl's coat. "It wasn't very kind in
+Paul, but there was nothing in those funny little fancies to hide,
+dear."
+
+"I didn't care about you and Father!" explained the child. "Only . . ."
+She looked at Mr. Marsh from under downbent brows.
+
+"Why, Elly, I am very much complimented, I'm sure," Marsh hastened to
+tell her, "to be compared with such a remarkably nice thing as a brook
+in spring-time. I didn't suppose any young lady would ever have such a
+poetic idea about me."
+
+"Oh . . ." breathed Elly, relieved, "well . . ."
+
+"Do you suppose you little folks can get yourselves to bed without me?"
+asked Marise. "If one of you big children will unbutton Mark in the
+back, he can manage the rest. I must set a bread-sponge before I go
+upstairs."
+
+They clung to her imploringly. "But you'll be upstairs in time to kiss
+us good-night in our beds," begged Elly and Mark together. Paul also
+visibly hung on his mother's answer.
+
+Marise looked down into their clear eyes and eager faces, reaching out
+to her ardently, and she felt her heart melt. What darlings they were!
+What inestimable treasures! How sweet to be loved like that!
+
+She stooped over them and gathered them all into a great armful, kissing
+them indiscriminately. "Yes, of course, I will . . . and give you an extra
+kiss now!" she cried.
+
+She felt Marsh's eyes on her, sardonically.
+
+She straightened herself, saying with affectionate roughness, "There,
+that's enough. Scamper along with you. And don't run around with bare
+feet!"
+
+She thought to herself that she supposed this was the sort of thing
+Marsh meant when he spoke about hot-house enervating concentration. She
+had been more stung by that remark of his than she had been willing to
+acknowledge to Marsh or to herself.
+
+But for the moment, any further reflection on it was cut short by the
+aspect of Mr. Welles' face. He had sunk into a chair near the lamp, with
+an attitude and an expression of such weariness, that Marise moved
+quickly to him. "See here, Mr. Welles," she said impulsively, "you have
+something on your mind, and I've got the mother-habit so fastened on me
+that I can't be discreet and pretend not to notice it. I want to make
+you say what the trouble is, and then flu it right, just as I would for
+one of mine."
+
+The old man looked up at her gratefully and reaching out one of his
+wrinkled hands took hers in it. "It does me good to have you so nice to
+me," he said, "but I'm afraid even you can't fix it right. I've had a
+rather distressing letter today, and I can't seem to get it out of my
+mind."
+
+"Schwatzkummerer can't send the gladioli," conjectured Marsh.
+
+For the first time since he had entered the house, Marise felt a passing
+dislike for him. She had often felt him to be hard and ruthless, but she
+had never seen anything cheap in him, before, she thought.
+
+"What was your letter?" she asked the older man.
+
+"Oh, nothing in the least remarkable, nothing new," he said heavily.
+"I've got a cousin whom I haven't seen since she was a little little
+girl, though she must be somewhere near my age, now. She has been a
+teacher in a school for Negroes, down in Georgia, for years, most of her
+life. But I had sort of lost track of her, till I had to send her some
+little family trinkets that were left after my old aunt died. Her
+letter, that I received today, is in answer to that. And while she was
+writing, she gave me her news, and told me a good deal about conditions
+down there. Pretty bad, I should think it, pretty bad."
+
+A little spasm crossed his face. He shook his head, as though to shake
+off a clinging filament of importunate thought.
+
+"What's the trouble? Do they need money, the school?" asked Marise with
+a vague idea of getting up a contribution.
+
+"No, my cousin didn't say anything about that. It's not so simple. It's
+the way the Negroes are treated. No, not lynchings, I knew about them.
+But I knew they don't happen every day. What I hadn't any idea of, till
+her letter came, was how every day, every minute of every day, they're
+subject to indignity that they can't avoid, how they're made to feel
+themselves outsiders and unwelcome in their own country. She says the
+Southern white people are willing to give them anything that will make
+good day-laborers of them, almost anything in fact except the thing they
+can't rise without, ordinary human respect. It made a very painful
+impression on my mind, her letter, very. She gave such instances. I
+haven't been able to get it out of my mind. For instance, one of the
+small things she told me . . . it seems incredible . . . is that Southern
+white people won't give the ordinary title of respect of Mr. or Mrs. or
+Dr. even to a highly educated Negro. They call them by their first
+names, like servants. Think what an hourly pin-prick of insult that must
+be. Ever since her letter came, I've been thinking about it, the things
+she told me, about what happens when they try to raise themselves and
+refine themselves, how they're made to suffer intimately for trying to
+be what I thought we all wanted all Americans to be." He looked at
+Marise with troubled eyes. "I've been thinking how it would feel to be a
+Negro myself. What a different life would be in front of your little
+Elly if she had Negro blood!"
+
+Marise had listened to him in profound silence. Sheer, unmixed
+astonishment filled her mind, up to the brim. Of all the totally
+unexpected things for Mr. Welles to get wrought up about!
+
+She drew a long breath. How eternally disconcerting human beings are!
+There she had been so fatuously sure, out there on the walk home, that
+she knew exactly what was in that old white head. And all the time it
+had been this. Who could have made the faintest guess at that? It
+occurred to her for the first time that possibly more went on under Mr.
+Welles' gently fatigued exterior than she thought.
+
+She found not a word to say, so violent and abrupt was the transition of
+subject. It was as though she had been gazing down through a powerful
+magnifying glass, trying to untangle with her eyes a complicated twist
+of moral fibers, inextricably bound up with each other, the moral
+fibers that made up her life . . . and in the midst of this, someone had
+roughly shouted in her ear, "Look up there, at that distant cliff.
+There's a rock on it, all ready to fall off!"
+
+She could not be expected all of a sudden, that way, to re-focus her
+eyes. And the rock was so far away. And she had such a dim sense of the
+people who might be endangered by it. And the confusion here, under the
+microscope of her attention, was so vital and immediate, needing to be
+understood and straightened before she could go on with her life.
+
+She looked at the old man in an astonishment which she knew must seem
+fairly stupid to him, but she could not bring out anything else. What
+was it to her, whether a Negro physician was called Dr. or "Jo"?
+
+Mr. Welles patted her hand, released it, smiled at her kindly, and stood
+up. "I'm pretty tired. I guess we'd better be getting along home,
+Vincent and I."
+
+"Well, I should say we _would_ better be getting along home to bed!"
+agreed the other man, coming forward and slipping his arm under the
+older man's. "I'll tuck you up, my old friend, with a good hot toddy
+inside you, and let you sleep off this outrageously crazy daylight
+nightmare you've cooked up for yourself. And don't wake up with the fate
+of the Japanese factory-hand sitting on your chest, or you'll get hard
+to live with."
+
+Mr. Welles answered this with literal good faith. "Oh, the Japanese
+factory-hands, they're not on the conscience of Americans."
+
+"But, when I see an aged and harmless inhabitant of Ashley, Vermont,
+stretching his poor old protesting conscience till it cracks, to make it
+reach clear down to the Georgia Negroes, how do I know where he's going
+to stop?"
+
+The old man turned to their hostess. "Well, good-night, Mrs. Crittenden.
+I enjoyed seeing that wonderful flower very much. I wonder if I could
+grow one like it? It would be something to look forward to, to have the
+flower open in your own house."
+
+To Marise he looked so sweet and good, and like a tired old child, that
+she longed to kiss him good-night, as she had her own. But even as she
+felt the impulse, she had again a startled sense of how much more goes
+on under the human surface than ever appears. Evidently Mr. Welles, too,
+was a locked and sealed strong-box of secrets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the doorway Marsh stopped abruptly and said, looking at the dense,
+lustreless black silk wrap about Marise's head and shoulders, "What's
+that thing? I meant to ask you when you put it on."
+
+She felt as she often did when he spoke to her, as startled as though he
+had touched her. What an extraordinarily living presence he was, so that
+a word from him was almost like an actual personal contact. But she took
+care not to show this. She looked down casually at the soft, opaque
+folds of her wrap. "Oh, this is a thousand years old. It dates from the
+Bayonne days. It's Basque. It's their variation, I imagine, on the
+Spanish mantilla. They never wear hats, the Basque women. The little
+girls, when they have made their first communion, wear a scarf of light
+net, or open transparent lace. And when they marry they wear this. It's
+made of a special sort of silk, woven just for this purpose. As far away
+as you can see a woman in the Basque country, if she wears this, you
+know she's married."
+
+"Oh, you do, do you?" said Marsh, going out after his companion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were very far from the Negroes in Georgia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WHAT GOES ON INSIDE
+
+_Half an Hour in the Life of a Modern Woman_
+
+
+May 8.
+
+Marise looked at the clock. They all three looked at the clock. On
+school mornings the clock dominated their every instant. Marise often
+thought that the swinging of its great pendulum was as threatening as
+the Pendulum that swung in the Pit. Back and forth, back and forth,
+bringing nearer and nearer the knife-edge of its dire threat that nine
+o'clock would come and the children not be in school. Somehow they must
+all manage to break the bonds that held them there and escape from the
+death-trap before the fatal swinging menace reached them. The stroke of
+nine, booming out in that house, would be like the Crack o' Doom to the
+children.
+
+Marise told Paul not to eat so fast, and said to Elly, who was finishing
+her lessons and her breakfast together, "I let you do this, this one
+time, Elly, but I don't want you to let it happen again. You had plenty
+of time yesterday to get that done."
+
+She stirred her coffee and thought wistfully, "What a policeman I must
+seem to the children. I wish I could manage it some other way."
+
+Elly, her eyes on the book, murmured in a low chanting rhythm, her mouth
+full of oatmeal, "Delaware River, Newcastle, Brandywine, East Branch,
+West Branch, Crum Creek, Schuylkill."
+
+Paul looked round at the clock again. His mother noted the gesture, the
+tension of his attitude, his preoccupied expression, and had a quick
+inner vision of a dirty, ragged, ignorant, gloriously free little boy on
+a raft on the Mississippi river, for whom life was not measured out by
+the clock, in thimbleful doses, but who floated in a golden liberty on
+the very ocean of eternity. "Why can't we bring them up like Huckleberry
+Finns!" she thought, protestingly, pressing her lips together.
+
+Then she laughed inwardly at the thought of certain sophisticated
+friends and their opinion of her life. "I daresay we do seem to be
+bringing them up like Huckleberry Finns, in the minds of any of the New
+York friends, Eugenia Mills for instance!" She remembered with a passing
+gust of amusement the expression of slightly scared distaste which
+Eugenia had for the children. "Too crudely quivering lumps of
+life-matter for Eugenia's taste," she thought, and then, "I wonder what
+Marsh's feeling towards children really is, children in general. He
+seems to have the greatest capacity to ignore their existence at all. Or
+does he only seem to do that, because I have grown so morbidly conscious
+of their existence as the only thing vital in life? That's what he
+thinks, evidently. Well, I'd like to have him live a mother's life and
+see how he'd escape it!"
+
+"Mother," said Paul seriously, "Mother, Mark isn't even awake yet, and
+he'll never be ready for school."
+
+"Oh, his teacher had to go to a wedding today. Don't you remember? He
+doesn't have any school till the afternoon session."
+
+She thought to herself, "What a sense of responsibility Paul has! He is
+going to be one of the pillars of the earth, one of those miraculous
+human beings who are mixed in just the right proportions, so that they
+aren't pulled two ways at once. _Two_ ways! Most of us are pulled a
+thousand ways! It is one of the injustices of the earth that such people
+aren't loved as much as impulsive, selfish, brilliant natures like dear
+little Mark's. Paul has had such a restful personality! Even when he
+was a baby, he was so straight-backed and robust. There's no yellow
+streak in Paul, such as too much imagination lets in. I know all about
+that yellow streak, alas!"
+
+The little boy reached down lovingly, and patted the dog, sitting in a
+rigid attitude of expectancy by his side. As the child turned the light
+of his countenance on those adoring dog eyes, the animal broke from his
+tenseness into a wriggling fever of joy.
+
+"'Oh, my God, my dear little God!'" quoted Marise to herself, watching
+uneasily the animal's ecstasy of worship. "I wish dogs wouldn't take us
+so seriously. We don't know so much more than they, about anything." She
+thought, further, noticing the sweetness of the protecting look which
+Paul gave to Medor, "All animals love Paul, anyhow. Animals know more
+than humans about lots of things. They haven't that horrid perverse
+streak in them that makes humans dislike people who are too often in the
+right. Paul is like my poor father. Only I'm here to see that Paul is
+loved as Father wasn't. Medor is not the only one to love Paul. _I_ love
+Paul. I love him all the more because he doesn't get his fair share of
+love. And old Mr. Welles loves him, too, bless him!"
+
+"Roanoke River, Staunton River, Dan River," murmured Elly, swallowing
+down her chocolate. She stroked a kitten curled up on her lap.
+
+"What shall I have for lunch today?" thought Marise. "There are enough
+potatoes left to have them creamed."
+
+Like a stab came the thought, "Creamed potatoes to please our palates
+and thousands of babies in Vienna without milk enough to _live_!" She
+shook the thought off, saying to herself, "Well, would it make any
+difference to those Viennese babies if I deprived my children of
+palatable food?" and was aware of a deep murmur within her, saying only
+half-articulately, "No, it wouldn't make any literal difference to those
+babies, but it might make a difference to you. You are taking another
+step along the road of hardening of heart."
+
+All this had been the merest muted arpeggio accompaniment to the steady
+practical advance of her housekeeper's mind. "And beefsteak . . . Mark
+likes that. At fifty cents a pound! What awful prices. Well, Neale
+writes that the Canadian lumber is coming through. That'll mean a fair
+profit. What better use can we put profit to, than in buying the best
+food for our children's growth. Beefsteak is not a sinful luxury!"
+
+The arpeggio accompaniment began murmuring, "But the Powers children.
+Nelly and 'Gene can't afford fifty cents a pound for beefsteak. Perhaps
+part of their little Ralph's queerness and abnormality comes from lack
+of proper food. And those white-cheeked little Putnam children in the
+valley. They probably don't taste meat, except pork, more than once a
+week." She protested sharply, "But if their father won't work steadily,
+when there is always work to be had?" And heard the murmuring answer,
+"Why should the children suffer because of something they can't change?"
+
+She drew a long breath, brushed all this away with an effort, asking
+herself defiantly, "Oh, what has all this to do with _us_?" And was
+aware of the answer, "It has everything to do with us, only I can't
+figure it out."
+
+Impatiently she proposed to herself, "But while I'm trying to figure it
+out, wouldn't I better just go ahead and have beefsteak today?" and
+wearily, "Yes, of course, we'll have beefsteak as usual. That's the way
+I always decide things."
+
+She buttered a piece of toast and began to eat it, thinking, "I'm a
+lovely specimen, anyhow, of a clear-headed, thoughtful modern woman,
+muddling along as I do."
+
+The clock struck the half-hour. Paul rose as though the sound had lifted
+him bodily from his seat. Elly did not hear, her eyes fixed dreamily on
+her kitten, stroking its rounded head, lost in the sensation of the
+softness of the fur.
+
+Her mother put out a reluctant hand and touched her quietly. "Come, dear
+Elly, about time to start to school."
+
+As she leaned across the table, stretching her neck towards the child,
+she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the other side of the
+room, and thought, "Oh, how awful! I begin to look as Cousin Hetty does,
+with that scrawny neck. . . ."
+
+She repulsed the thought vigorously. "Well, what does it matter if I do?
+There's nothing in my life, any more, that depends on my looking young."
+
+At this thought, something perfectly inchoate, which she did not
+recognize, began clawing at her. She pushed it off, scornfully, and
+turned to Elly, who got up from the table and began collecting her books
+into her school-bag. Her face was rosy and calm with the sweet ineffable
+confidence of a good child who has only good intentions. As she packed
+her books together, she said, "Well, I'm ready. I've done my grammar,
+indefinite pronouns, and I can say all those river-tributaries
+backwards. So now I can start. Good-bye, Mother dear." Marise bent to
+kiss the shining little face. "Good-bye, Elly."
+
+To herself she thought, as her face was close to the child's, "I wonder
+if I look to my little girl as Cousin Hetty used to look to me?" and
+startled and shocked that the idea kept recurring to her, assuming an
+importance she was not willing to give it, she cried out to herself,
+"Oh, stop being so paltry about that!"
+
+Aloud she said, "Don't forget to put your rubbers on. Have you a clean
+handkerchief? Oh, _Elly_, look at your nails! Here, hand me the
+nail-file over there, Paul. I'll clean them more quickly than you,
+dear."
+
+As she cleaned the nails, one eye on the grimly relentless clock, the
+ideas flicked through her mind like quick, darting flames. "What
+mediaeval nonsense we do stuff into the school-children's head. What an
+infamous advantage we take of the darlings' trust in us and their
+docility to our purposes! My dear little daughter with her bright face
+of desire-to-do-her-best! What wretched chaff she is getting for that
+quick, imaginative brain of hers! It's not so bad for Paul, but . . . oh,
+even for him what nonsense! Rules of grammar, names of figures of
+speech . . . stuff left over from scholastic hair-splitting! And the
+tributaries of rivers . . . !" She glanced up for an instant and was struck
+into remorse by the tranquil expression of peace in the little girl's
+clear eyes, bent affectionately on her mother. "Oh, my poor, darling
+little daughter," she thought, "how _can_ you trust anything in this
+weak and wicked world as you trust your broken reed of a mother? I don't
+know, dear child, any more than you do, where we are going, nor how we
+are going to get there. We are just stumbling along, your father and I,
+as best we can, dragging you and your brothers along with us. And all we
+can do for you, or for each other, is to love you and . . ."
+
+Elly withdrew her hand. "There, Mother, I know they're clean enough now.
+I'm afraid I'll be late if I don't go. And you know she scolds like
+everything if anybody's late." She repeated in a rapid murmur, "The
+tributaries of the Delaware on the left bank are . . ."
+
+Her mother's mind went back with a jerk to the question of
+river-tributaries. "And what's the use of cramming her memory with facts
+she could find in three minutes in any Atlas if by any strange chance
+she should ever ever need to know about the tributaries of the Delaware.
+As well set her to learning the first page of the Telephone Directory!
+Why don't I do the honest thing by her and say to her that all that is
+poppy-cock?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An inner dialogue flashed out, lunge, parry, riposte, like rapier blades
+at play. "Because if I told her it is nonsense, that would undermine her
+faith in her teacher and her respect for her."
+
+"But why _should_ she respect her teacher if her teacher does not
+deserve that sort of respect? Ought even a little child to respect
+anything or anybody merely because of a position of authority and not
+because of intrinsic worth? No, of course not."
+
+"Oh, you know that's only wild talk. Of course you couldn't send the
+child to school, and keep her under her teacher, unless you preserve the
+form of upholding the teacher's authority."
+
+"Yes, but in Heaven's name, why _do_ we send her to school? She could
+learn twenty times more, anywhere else."
+
+"Because sending her to school keeps her in touch with other children,
+with her fellow-beings, keeps her from being 'queer' or different. She
+might suffer from it as she grew up, might desire more than anything in
+the world to be like others."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Elly had been staring at her mother's face for a moment, and now said,
+"Mother, what _makes_ you look so awfully serious?"
+
+Marise said ruefully, "It's pretty hard to explain to a little girl. I
+was wondering whether I was as good a mother to you as I ought to be."
+
+Elly was astonished to the limit of astonishment at this idea. "Why,
+Mother, how _could_ you be any better than you are?" She threw herself
+on her mother's neck, crying, "Mother, I wish you never looked serious.
+I wish you were always laughing and cutting up, the way you used to.
+Seems to me since the war is over, you're more soberer than you were
+before, even, when you were so worried about Father in France. I'd
+rather you'd scold me than look serious."
+
+Paul came around the table, and shouldered his way against Elly up to a
+place where he touched his mother. "Is that masculine jealousy, or real
+affection?" she asked herself, and then, "Oh, what a _beast_! To be
+analyzing my own children!" And then, "But how am I ever going to know
+what they're like if I don't analyze them?"
+
+The dog, seeing the children standing up, half ready to go out, began
+barking and frisking, and wriggling his way to where they stood all
+intertwined, stood up with his fore-paws against Paul. The kitten had
+been startled by his approach and ran rapidly up Marise as though she
+had been a tree, pausing on her shoulder to paw at a loosened hair-pin.
+
+Marise let herself go on this wave of eager young life, and thrust down
+into the dark all the razor-edged questions. "Oh, children! children!
+take the kitten off my back!" she said, laughing and squirming. "She's
+tickling me with her whiskers. Oh, _ow_!" She was reduced to helpless
+mirth, stooping her head, reaching up futilely for the kitten, who had
+retreated to the nape of her neck and was pricking sharp little
+pin-pointed claws through to the skin. The children danced about chiming
+out peals of laughter. The dog barked excitedly, standing on his
+hind-legs, and pawing first at one and then at another. Then Paul looked
+at the clock, and they all looked at the clock. The children, flushed
+with fun, crammed on their caps, thrust their arms into coats, bestowed
+indiscriminate kisses on their mother and the kitten, and vanished for
+the morning, followed by the dog, pleading with little whines to be
+taken along too. The kitten got down and began soberly to wash her face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an instant of appalling silence in the house, the silence that
+is like no other, the silence that comes when the children have just
+gone. Through it, heavy-footed and ruthless, Marise felt something
+advancing on her, something which she dreaded and would not look at.
+
+From above came a sweet, high, little call, "Mo-o-o-ther!" Oh, a
+respite--Mark was awake!
+
+His mother sprang upstairs to snatch at him as he lay, rosy and smiling
+and sleepy. She bent over him intoxicated by his beauty, by the
+flower-perfection of his skin, by the softness of his sleep-washed eyes.
+
+She heard almost as distinctly as though the voice were in her ear, "Oh,
+you mothers use your children as other people use drugs. The
+child-habit, the drug-habit, the baby-habit, the morphine habit . . . two
+different ways of getting away from reality." That was what Marsh had
+said one day. What terribly tarnishing things he did say. How they did
+make you question everything. She wondered what Neale would say to them.
+
+She hoped to have a letter from Neale today. She hoped so, suddenly,
+again, with such intensity, such longing, such passion that she said to
+herself, "What nonsense that was, that came into my head, out on the
+road in the dark, the other night, that Neale and I had let the
+flood-tide of emotion ebb out of our hearts! What could have put such a
+notion into my head?" What crazy, fanciful creatures women are! Always
+reaching out for the moon. Yes, that must have been the matter with her
+lately, that Neale was away. She missed him so, his strength and courage
+and affection.
+
+"I'm awfully hungry," remarked Mark in her ear. "I feel the hole right
+_here_." He laid a small shapely hand on the center of his pajama-clad
+body, but he kept the other hand and arm around his mother's neck, and
+held her close where he had pulled her to him in his little bed. As he
+spoke he rubbed his peach-like cheek softly against hers.
+
+A warm odor of sleep and youth and clean, soaped skin came up from him.
+His mother buried her face in it as in a flower.
+
+"Ooh!" he cried, laughing richly, "you're tickling me."
+
+"I _mean_ to tickle you!" she told him savagely, worrying him as a
+mother-cat does her kitten. He laughed delightedly, and wriggled to
+escape her, kicking his legs, pushing at her softly with his hands,
+reaching for the spot back of her ear. "I'll tickle _you_," he crowed,
+tussling with her, disarranging her hair, thudding his little body
+against her breast, as he thrashed about. The silent house rang with
+their laughter and cries.
+
+They were both flushed, with lustrous eyes, when the little boy finally
+squirmed himself with a bump off the bed and slid to the floor.
+
+At this point the kitten came walking in, innocent-eyed and grave. Mark
+scrambled towards her on his hands and knees. She retreated with a comic
+series of stiff-legged, sideways jumps, that made him roll on the floor,
+chuckling and giggling, and grabbing futilely for the kitten's paws.
+
+Marise had stood up and was putting the loosened strands of her hair
+back in place. The spell was broken. Looking down on the laughing child,
+she said dutifully, "Mark, the floor's cold. You mustn't lie down on it.
+And, anyhow, you're ever so late this morning. Hop up, dear, and get
+into your clothes."
+
+"Oh, Mother, _you_ dress me!" he begged, rolling over to look up at her
+pleadingly.
+
+She shook her head. "Now, Mark, that's silly. A great big boy like you,
+who goes to school. Get up quick and start right in before you take
+cold."
+
+He scrambled to his feet and padded to her side on rosy bare feet.
+"Mother, you'll have to 'tay here, anyhow. You know I can't do those
+back buttons. And I always get my drawer-legs twisted up with my both
+legs inside my one leg."
+
+Marise compromised. "Well, yes, if you'll hurry. But not if you dawdle.
+Mother has a lot to do this morning. Remember, I won't help you with a
+single thing you can do yourself."
+
+The child obediently unbuttoned his pajamas and stepping out of them
+reached for his undershirt. His mother, looking at him, fell mentally on
+her knees before the beautiful, living body. "Oh, my son, the straight,
+strong darling! My precious little son!" She shook with that foolish
+aching anguish of mothers, intolerable. . . . "Why must he stop being so
+pure, so _safe_? How can I live when I am no longer strong enough to
+protect him?"
+
+Mark remarked plaintively, shrugging himself into the sleeves of his
+shirt, "I've roden on a horse, and I've roden on a dog, and I've even
+roden on a cow, but I've never roden on a camel, and I _want_ to."
+
+The characteristic Mark-like unexpectedness of this made her smile.
+
+"You probably will, some day," she said, sitting down.
+
+"But I've never even _sawn_ a camel," complained Mark. "And Elly and
+Paul have, and a elephant too."
+
+"Well, you're big enough to be taken to the circus this year," his
+mother promised him. "This very summer we'll take you."
+
+"But I want to go _now_!" clamored Mark, with his usual disregard of
+possibilities, done in the grand style.
+
+"Don't dawdle," said his mother, looking around for something to read,
+so that she would seem less accessible to conversation. She found the
+newspaper under her hand, on the table, and picked it up. She had only
+glanced at the head-lines yesterday. It took a lot of moral courage to
+read the newspapers in these days. As she read, her face changed,
+darkened, set.
+
+The little boy, struggling with his underwear, looked at her and decided
+not to ask for help.
+
+She was thinking as she read, "The Treaty muddle worse than ever. Great
+Britain sending around to all her colonies asking for the biggest navy
+in the world. Our own navy constantly enlarged at enormous cost.
+Constantinople to be left Turkish because nobody wants anybody else to
+have it. Armenian babies dying like flies and evening cloaks advertised
+to sell for six hundred dollars. Italy land-grabbing. France frankly for
+anything except the plain acceptance of the principles we thought the
+war was to foster. The same reaction from those principles starting on a
+grand scale in America. Men in prison for having an opinion . . . what a
+hideous bad joke on all the world that fought for the Allies and for the
+holy principles they claimed! To think how we were straining every nerve
+in a sacred cause two years ago. Neale's enlistment. Those endless
+months of loneliness. That constant terror about him. And homes like
+that all over the world . . . with _this_ as the result. Could it have
+been worse if we had all just grabbed what we could get for ourselves,
+and had what satisfaction we could out of the baser pleasures?"
+
+She felt a mounting wave of horror and nausea, and knowing well from
+experience what was on its way, fought desperately to ward it off,
+reading hurriedly a real-estate item in the newspaper, an account of a
+flood in the West, trying in vain to fix her mind on what she read. But
+she could not stop the advance of what was coming. She let the newspaper
+fall with a shudder as the thought arrived, hissing, gliding with
+venomous swiftness along the familiar path it had so often taken to her
+heart . . . "suppose this reactionary outburst of hate and greed and
+intolerance and imperialistic ambitions all around, means that the
+'peace' is an armed truce only, and that in fifteen years the whole
+nightmare will start over."
+
+She looked down at the little boy, applying himself seriously to his
+buttons. "In fifteen years' time my baby will be a man of twenty-one."
+
+Wild cries broke out in her heart. "No, oh no! I couldn't live through
+another. To see them all go, husband and sons! Not another war! Let me
+live quickly, anyhow, somehow, to get it over with . . . and die before it
+comes."
+
+The little boy had been twisting himself despairingly, and now said in a
+small voice, "Mother, I've tried and I've tried and I can't do that back
+button."
+
+His mother heard his voice and looked down at him uncomprehendingly for
+a moment. He said, less resigned, impatience pricking through his tone,
+"Mother, I _told_ you I never could reach that button behind."
+
+She bent from her chair, mechanically secured the little garment, and
+then, leaning back, looked down moodily at her feet. The little boy
+began silently to put on and lace up his shoes.
+
+Marise was aware of a dimming of the light in the inner room of her
+consciousness, as though one window after another were being darkened. A
+hushed, mournful twilight fell in her heart. Melancholy came and sat
+down with her, black-robed. What could one feel except Melancholy at the
+sight of the world of humanity, poor world, war-ridden, broken in
+health, ruined in hope, the very nerves of action cut by the betrayal of
+its desperate efforts to be something more than base.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was that really Melancholy? Something else slid into her mind, something
+watchful. She sat perfectly still so that no chance movement should
+disturb that mood till it could be examined and challenged. There was
+certainly something else in her heart beside sorrow over the miseries of
+the after-war world.
+
+She persisted in her probing search, felt a cold ray of daylight strike
+into that gloom and recognized with amazement and chagrin what else it
+was! Disgusting! There in the very bottom of her mind, lay still that
+discomfort at beginning to look like Cousin Hetty! And so that wound to
+her vanity had slowly risen again into her consciousness and clothed
+itself in the ampler, nobler garments of impersonal Melancholy. . . .
+"_Oh_," she cried aloud, impatiently, contemptuous of herself, "what
+picayune creatures human beings are! I'm ashamed to be one!"
+
+She started up and went to the window, looking out blankly at the
+mountain wall, as she had at the newspaper, not seeing what was there,
+her eyes turned inward. "Wait now, wait. Don't go off, half-cocked. Go
+clear through with this thing," she exhorted herself. "There _must_ be
+more in it than mere childish, silly vanity." She probed deep and
+brought up, "Yes, there is more to it. In the first place I was priggish
+and hypocritical when I tried to pretend that it was nothing to me when
+I looked in the glass and saw for the first time that my youth has begun
+to leave me. That was Anglo-Saxon pretense, trying to seem to myself
+made of finer stuff than I really am. It's really not cheerful for any
+woman, no matter on what plane, to know that the days of her physical
+flowering are numbered. I'd have done better to look straight at that,
+and have it out with myself."
+
+She moved her head very slightly, from side to side. "But there was more
+than that. There was more than that. What was it?" She leaned her ear as
+if to listen, her eyes very large and fixed. "Yes, there _was_ the war,
+and the awfulness of our disappointment in it, too, after all. There was
+the counsel of despair about everything, the pressure on us all to think
+that all efforts to be more than base are delusions. We were so terribly
+fooled with our idealistic hopes about the war . . . who knows but that we
+are being fooled again when we try for the higher planes of life?
+Perhaps those people are right who say that to grab for the pleasures of
+the senses is the best . . . those are _real_ pleasures, at least. Who
+knows if there is anything else?"
+
+Something like a little, far-away tolling said to her, "There was
+something else. There was something else."
+
+This time she knew what it was. "Yes, there was that other aspect of the
+loss of physical youth, when you think that the pleasures of the senses
+are perhaps all there are. There was the inevitable despairing wonder if
+I had begun to have out of my youth all it could have given, whether
+. . ."
+
+There tolled in her ear, "Something else, something else there." But now
+she would not look, put her hands over her eyes, and stood in the dark,
+fighting hard lest a ray of light should show her what might be there.
+
+A voice sounded beside her. Toucle was saying, "Have you got one of your
+headaches? The mail carrier just went by. Here are the letters."
+
+She took down her hands, and opened her eyes. She felt that something
+important hung on there being a letter from Neale. She snatched at the
+handful of envelopes and sorted them over, her fingers trembling. Yes,
+there it was, the plain stamped envelope with Neale's firm regular
+handwriting.
+
+She felt as though she were a diver whose lungs had almost collapsed,
+who was being drawn with heavenly swiftness up to the surface of the
+water. She tore open the envelope and read, "Dearest Marise." It was as
+though she had heard his voice.
+
+She drew in a great audible breath and began to read. What a relief it
+was to feel herself all one person, not two or three, probing hatefully
+into each other!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But there was something she had not done, some teasing, unimportant
+thing, she ought to finish before going on with the letter. She looked
+up vacantly, half-absently, wondering what it was. Her eyes fell on
+Toucle. Toucle was looking at her, Toucle who so seldom looked at
+anything. She felt a momentary confusion as though surprised by another
+person in a room she had thought empty. And after that, uneasiness. She
+did not want Toucle to go on looking at her.
+
+"Mark hasn't had his breakfast yet," she said to the old Indian woman.
+"Won't you take him downstairs, please, and give him a dish of porridge
+for me?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"The Gent Around the Lady
+
+and
+
+The Lady Round the Gent"
+
+_An Evening in the Life of Mr. Vincent Marsh_
+
+May 25.
+
+
+"Come in, come in!" cried an old black-clad woman, with a white apron,
+who opened the door wider into the flaring brilliance of the lamp-lit
+kitchen. "I'm _real_ glad you felt to come to one of our dances. They're
+old-fashioned, but _we_ like 'em." She closed the door behind them and
+added cordially, "Now Mr. Welles is going to live here, he'll have to
+learn to shake his feet along with the rest of us."
+
+Mr. Welles was frankly terrified at the idea. "Why, I never dreamed of
+dancing in all my life!" he cried. "I only came to look on." He
+hesitated to divest himself of his overcoat, panic-struck and meditating
+flight. Vincent fell upon him from one side and the lively old woman
+from the other. Together they stripped the older man of his wraps.
+"Never too late to learn," old Mrs. Powers assured him briskly. "You
+dance with _me_ and I'll shove ye around, all right. There ain't a
+quadrille ever danced that I couldn't do backwards with my eyes shut, as
+soon as the music strikes up." She motioned them towards the door, "Step
+right this way. The folks that have come are all in the settin'-room."
+
+As they followed her, Vincent said, "Mrs. Powers, aren't you going to
+dance with me, too?"
+
+"Oh, of course I be," she answered smartly, "if you ask me."
+
+"Then I ask you now," he urged, "for the first dance. Only I don't know
+any more than Mr. Welles how to dance a quadrille. But I'm not afraid."
+
+"I guess there ain't much ye _be_ afraid of," she said admiringly. They
+came now into the dining-room and caught beyond that a glimpse of the
+living-room. Both wore such an unusual aspect of elegance and grace that
+Vincent stared, stopping to look about him. "Looks queer, don't it,"
+said Mrs. Powers, "with the furniture all gone. We always move out
+everything we _can_, up garret, so's to leave room for dancing."
+
+Oh yes, that was it, Vincent thought; the shinily varnished cheap
+furniture had almost disappeared, and the excellent proportions of the
+old rooms could be seen. Lamps glowed from every shelf, their golden
+light softened by great sprays of green branches with tender young
+leaves, which were fastened everywhere over the doors, the windows,
+banked in the corner The house smelled like a forest, indescribably
+fresh and spicy.
+
+"There ain't many flowers yet; too early," explained Mrs. Powers
+apologetically, "so we had to git green stuff out'n the woods to kind of
+dress us up. 'Gene he _would_ have some pine boughs too. He's crazy
+about pine-trees. I always thought that was one reason why he took it so
+hard when we was done out of our wood-land. He thinks as much of that
+big pine in front of the house as he does of a person. And tonight he's
+got the far room all done up with pine boughs."
+
+They arrived in the living-room now, where the women and children
+clustered on one side, and the men on the other, their lean boldly
+marked faces startlingly clear-cut in the splendor of fresh shaves. The
+women were mostly in light-colored waists and dark skirts, their hair
+carefully dressed. Vincent noticed, as he nodded to them before taking
+his place with the men, that not a single one had put powder on her
+face. Their eyes looked shining with anticipation. They leaned their
+heads together and chatted in low tones, laughing and glancing sideways
+at the group of men on the other side of the room. Vincent wondered at
+the presence of the children. When she arrived, he would ask Marise
+about that. At the inward mention of the name he felt a little shock,
+which was not altogether pleasurable. He narrowed his eyes and shook his
+head slightly, as though to toss a lock of hair from his forehead, a
+gesture which was habitual with him when he felt, with displeasure, an
+unexpected emotion not summoned by his will. It passed at once.
+
+On joining the dark-suited group of men he found himself next to young
+Frank Warner, leaning, loose-jointed and powerful, against the wall, and
+not joining in the talk of weather, pigs, roads, and spring plowing
+which rose from the others. Vincent looked at him with approval. He felt
+strongly drawn to this splendid, primitive creature, and knew perfectly
+well why. He liked anybody who had pep enough to have an original
+feeling, not one prescribed by the ritual and tabu of his particular
+tribe.
+
+"Hello, Frank," he said. "Have a cigarette?
+
+"We'll have to go out if we smoke," said Frank.
+
+"Well, why shouldn't we?" suggested Vincent, looking around him.
+"There's nothing to do here, yet."
+
+Frank tore himself loose from the supporting wall with a jerk, and
+nodded. Together they stepped out of the front door, unused by the
+guests, who all entered by the kitchen. At first it was as though they
+had plunged into black velvet curtains, so great was the contrast with
+the yellow radiance of the room they had left. They looked back through
+the unshaded windows and saw the room as though it were an illustration
+in a book, or a scene in a moving-picture play, the men grouped in a
+dark mass on one side, the women, smiling, bending their heads towards
+each other, the lamps glowing on the green branches and on the shining
+eyes of all those pleasure-expectant human beings.
+
+As they looked, Nelly Powers came in from another room, doubtless the
+"far room" of which her mother-in-law had spoken. She was carrying a
+large tray full of cups. She braced herself against the weight of the
+earthenware and balancing herself with a free swinging motion on her
+high-heeled shoes walked with an accentuation of her usual vigorous
+poise.
+
+"By George, she's a beauty!" cried Vincent, not sorry to have an
+opportunity to talk of her with his companion.
+
+Frank made no comment. Vincent laughed to himself at the enormous
+capacity for silence of these savages, routing to the imagination of a
+civilized being. He went on, determined to get some expression from the
+other, "She's one of the very handsomest women I ever saw anywhere."
+
+Frank stirred in the darkness as though he were about to speak. Vincent
+cocked his ear and prepared to listen with all the prodigious sharpness
+of which he knew himself capable. If he could only once make this yokel
+speak her name, he'd know . . . all he wanted to know.
+
+Frank said, "Yes, she's good-looking, all right."
+
+Vincent kept silence, pondering every tone and overtone of the remark.
+He was astonished to find that he had no more direct light than ever on
+what he wanted to know. He laughed again at his own discomfiture. There
+were the two extremes, the super-sophisticated person who could control
+his voice so that it did not give him away, and the utter rustic whose
+voice had such a brute inexpressiveness that his meaning was as
+effectively hidden. He would try again. He said casually, "She's an
+enough-sight better-looking specimen than her husband. However does it
+happen that the best-looking women are always caught by that sort of
+chimpanzees? How did she ever happen to marry 'Gene, anyhow?"
+
+The other man answered, literally. "I don't know how she did happen to
+marry him. She don't come from around here. 'Gene was off working in a
+mill, down in Massachusetts, Adams way, and they got married there. They
+only come back here to live after they'd had all that trouble with
+lawyers and lost their wood-land. 'Gene's father died about that time.
+It cut him pretty hard. And 'Gene and his wife they come back to run the
+farm."
+
+At this point they saw, looking in at the lighted dumb-show in the
+house, that new arrivals had come. Vincent felt a premonitory clap of
+his heart and set his teeth in his cigarette. Yes, Marise had come, now
+appeared in the doorway, tall, framed in green-leafed branches, the
+smooth pale oval of her face lighted by the subtle smile, those dark
+long eyes! By God! What would he not give to know what went on behind
+that smile, those eyes!
+
+She was unwinding from her head the close, black nun-like wrap that
+those narrow primitive country-women far away on the other side of the
+globe had chosen to express their being united to another human being.
+And a proper lugubrious symbol it made for their lugubrious,
+prison-like, primitive view of the matter.
+
+Now she had it off. Her sleek, gleaming dark head stood poised on her
+long, thick, white throat. What a woman! What she could be in any
+civilized setting!
+
+She was talking to Nelly Powers now, who had come back and stood facing
+her in one of those superb poses of hers, her yellow braids heavy as
+gold. It was Brunhilda talking to Leonardo da Vinci's Ste. Anne. No,
+heavens no! Not a saint, a musty, penitential negation like a saint!
+Only of course, the Ste. Anne wasn't a saint either, but da Vinci's
+glorious Renaissance stunt at showing what an endlessly desirable woman
+he could make if he put his mind on it.
+
+"What say, we go in," suggested Frank, casting away the butt of his
+cigarette. "I think I hear old Nate beginning to tune up."
+
+They opened the door and stepped back, the laughing confusion of their
+blinking entrance, blinded by the lights, carrying off the first moments
+of greeting. In the midst of this, Vincent heard the front door open
+and, startled to think that anyone else had used that exit, turned his
+head, and saw with some dismay that 'Gene had followed them in. How
+near had he been to them in the black night while they talked of his
+wife's mismated beauty? He walked past them giving no sign, his strong
+long arms hanging a little in front of his body as he moved, his
+shoulders stooped apparently with their own weight. From the dining-room
+came a sound which Vincent did not recognize as the voice of any
+instrument he had ever heard: a series of extraordinarily rapid staccato
+scrapes, playing over and over a primitively simple sequence of notes.
+He stepped to the door to see what instrument was being used and saw an
+old man with a white beard and long white hair, tipped back in a chair,
+his eyes half shut, his long legs stretched out in front of him, patting
+with one thick boot. Under his chin was a violin, on the strings of
+which he jiggled his bow back and forth spasmodically, an infinitesimal
+length of the horse-hair being used for each stroke, so that there was
+no sonority in the tones. Vincent gazed at him with astonishment. He had
+not known that you could make a violin, a real violin, sound like that.
+
+Old Mrs. Powers said at his elbow, "The first sets are forming, Mr.
+Marsh." She called across to Frank Warner, standing very straight with
+Nelly Powers' hand on his arm, "Frank, you call off, wun't ye?"
+
+Instantly the young man, evidently waiting for the signal, sent out a
+long clear shout, "First sets _fo-orming!_"
+
+Vincent was startled by the electrifying quality of the human voice when
+not hushed to its usual smothered conversational dullness.
+
+"Two sets formed in the living-room! Two in the dining-room! One in the
+far room!" chanted Frank. He drew a deep breath which visibly swelled
+his great chest and sang out, resonantly, "Promenade _to_ your places!"
+
+He set the example, marching off through the throng with Nelly by his
+side.
+
+"Frank, he generally calls off," explained old Mrs. Powers. "It's in
+his family to. His father always did before him." She looked around her,
+discerned something intelligible in what looked like crowding confusion
+to Vincent and told him hurriedly, "Look-y-here, we'll have to git a
+move on, if we git into a set. They're all full here." Frank appeared in
+the doorway, alone, and lifted a long high arm. "_One_ couple needed in
+the far room!" he proclaimed with stentorian dignity and seriousness.
+
+"Here we are!" shouted old Mrs. Powers, scrambling her way through the
+crowd, and pulling Vincent after her. He could see now that the couples
+about him were indeed in their places, hand in hand, facing each other,
+gravely elate and confident. The younger ones were swinging their bodies
+slightly, in time to the sharply marked beat of the fiddle, and in the
+older ones, the pulse throbbed almost visibly as they waited.
+
+He felt the breath of pines on him, resinous, penetrating, stimulating.
+He was in a small, square room with a low ceiling, dense and green with
+pine-boughs, fastened to the walls. The odor was as strange an
+accompaniment to dancing as was that furiously whirling primitive
+iteration of the fiddle.
+
+"Over here!" cried Mrs. Powers, dragging masterfully at her partner. She
+gave a sigh of satisfaction, caught at his hand and held it high. "All
+ready, Frank," she said.
+
+Facing them, near the doorway stood Frank and Nelly, their heads up,
+Nelly's small high-heeled shoe thrust forward, their clasped hands held
+high. Vincent felt his blood move more quickly at the spectacle they
+made. On one side stood Marise Crittenden, her fingers clasped by the
+huge knotted hand of 'Gene Powers, and on the other was rounded, rosy
+old Mr. Bayweather holding by the hand the oldest Powers child, a pretty
+blonde girl of twelve.
+
+Frank's voice pealed out above the jig-jig-jigging of the fiddle.
+"_Salute_ your partners!"
+
+Vincent had a qualm of a feeling he thought he had left behind him with
+his boyhood, real embarrassment, fear of appearing at a disadvantage.
+What in the world did their antiquated lingo _mean?_ Was he to _kiss_
+that old woman?
+
+Mrs. Powers said reassuringly, "Don't you worry. Just do what the others
+do."
+
+As she spoke she was holding out her skirts and dipping to a courtesy. A
+little later, he caught at the idea and sketched a bow such as to his
+astonishment he saw the other men executing. Was he in old Versailles or
+Vermont?
+
+He felt his hand seized by the old woman's. Such a hearty zest was in
+her every action that he looked at her amazed.
+
+"Balance to the corners, right!" chanted Frank, sending his voice out
+like a bugle so that it might be heard in all the rooms.
+
+With perfect precision, and poise, the men and women of the couples
+separated, stepped swayingly, each towards the nearest of the couple to
+their right, and retreated.
+
+"Balance to corners, left!"
+
+The same movement was executed to the other side.
+
+"First couple forward and back!" shouted Frank.
+
+Marise and 'Gene advanced, hand in hand, to meet the old clergyman and
+the little girl. They met in the middle, poised an instant on the top
+wave of rhythm and stepped back, every footfall, every movement, their
+very breathing, in time to the beat-beat-beat of the fiddle's air which
+filled the room as insistently as the odor of the pines.
+
+Mrs. Powers nodded her white head to it and tapped her foot. Marsh had
+not ventured to remove his eyes from the weaving interplay of the
+dancers in his own set. Now, for an instant, he glanced beyond them into
+the next room. He received an impression of rapid, incessant, intricate
+shifting to and fro, the whole throng of dancers in movement as swift
+and disconcerting to the eyes as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. It
+made him literally dizzy to see it, and he turned his eyes back to his
+own set.
+
+The air changed, but not the rhythm, and all the men broke out in a
+hoarse chant, singing to a whirring, rapid tune,
+
+     "_Oh_, pass right through and never mind who
+       And leave the girl behind you.
+     Now come right back on the same old track
+       And _swing_ the girl behind you!"
+
+In obedience to these chanted commands, the four who were executing the
+figure went through labyrinthine manoeuvers, forward and back, dividing
+and reuniting. The old clergyman held out his hand to Mrs. Crittenden,
+laughing as he swung her briskly about. 'Gene bent his great bulk
+solemnly to swing his own little daughter. Then with neat exactitude, on
+the stroke of the beat, they were all back in their places.
+
+"_Second_ couple forward and back!" sang out Frank, prolonging the
+syllables in an intoned chant like a muezzin calling from a tower.
+Vincent felt himself being pushed and shoved by Mrs. Powers through the
+intricate figure.
+
+     "Now come right back on the same old track
+       And _swing_ the girl behind you!"
+
+The men shouted loudly, stamping in time, with such a relish for the
+beat of the rhythm that it sang itself through to the motor-centers and
+set them throbbing. Vincent found himself holding Nelly Powers at arm's
+length and swinging her till his head whirled. She was as light as
+sea-foam, dreamy, her blue eyes shining.
+
+"_Grand_ right and left!" shouted Frank.
+
+Vincent's hand was seized by the little Powers girl. She swung him
+competently and passed him on to her mother, who swam past him like a
+goddess, a golden aroma of health and vivid sensual seduction trailing
+from her as she moved.
+
+Then it was Marise's hand in his . . . how strange, how strange . . . that
+hand which knew the secrets of Debussy's heart. . . . She grasped his
+fingers firmly and looked at him full, laughingly, her face as open as
+a child's . . . the many-sided tantalizing creature! She pulled him about
+and was gone.
+
+And there was old Mrs. Powers in her place, absurdly light and elastic,
+treading the floor in her flat, old-woman's shoes with brilliant
+precision.
+
+"_All_ promenade!" cried Frank, this time his voice exultant that the
+end was successfully reached.
+
+He seized Nelly by the waist and danced with her the length of the room,
+followed by the other couples. The music stopped. He released her
+instantly, made a strange, stiff little bow, and turned away. The set
+was over.
+
+"There!" said Mrs. Powers, breathing quickly. "'Twan't so hard as you
+thought 'twas goin' to be, was it?"
+
+"Good-evening," said Mr. Bayweather on the other side, wiping the pink
+roll at the back of his neck. "What do you think of our aboriginal
+folk-dancing? I'll warrant you did not think there was a place in the
+United States where the eighteenth century dances had had an
+uninterrupted existence, did you?"
+
+"I assure you I had never thought about the subject at all," said
+Vincent, edging away rapidly towards escape.
+
+"Fascinating historical phenomenon, I call it," said the clergyman.
+"Analogous to the persistence of certain parts of old English speech
+which is to be observed in the talk of our people. For instance in the
+eighteenth century English vocabulary, the phrase . . ."
+
+His voice died away in the voices of the people Vincent had put
+resolutely between them shoving his way through the crowd, recklessly.
+He was struck by the aspect of the people, their blood warmed, their
+lips moist, their eyes gleaming. The rooms were growing hot, and the
+odor of pines was heavy in the air.
+
+He found himself next to Nelly Powers, and asked her to dance with him,
+"although I don't know at all how to do it," he explained. She smiled,
+silently, indifferently, confidently, and laid her hand on his arm in
+token of accepting his invitation. Vincent had a passing fancy that she
+did not care at all with whom she danced, that the motion itself was
+enough for her. But he reflected that it was probably that she did not
+care at all whether she danced with _him_.
+
+From the other end of the room came Frank's deep-mouthed shout, "The set
+is forming! Promenade _to_ your places!"
+
+Nelly moved swiftly in that direction and again Vincent found himself
+opposite Frank, dancing this time with Marise Crittenden.
+
+The music broke out into its shaking, quavering iteration of the pulse
+of the dance.
+
+"Salute your partners!"
+
+This time Vincent knew what to do, and turning, bowed low to Nelly, who
+made him a deep courtesy, her toe pointed, instep high, her eyes
+shining, looking straight at him but evidently not seeing him. The music
+seemed to float her off on a cloud.
+
+"Chassay _to_ the corners, right!"
+
+Vincent untangled the difference between "chassay" and "balance" and
+acquitted himself. Now that his first panic of astonishment was over, he
+observed that the figures of the dance were of great simplicity, all but
+the central part, the climax.
+
+When the preliminary part was over, the music changed and again the men
+broke out into their accompanying chant. This time it ran,
+
+     "The gent around the lady
+            _and_
+     The lady around the gent.
+            _Then_
+     The lady around the lady
+            _and_
+     The gent around the gent."
+
+Somewhere in the hypnotic to-and-fro of those swaying, poised, alert
+human figures, he encountered Marise, coming on her suddenly, and
+finding her standing stock-still.
+
+"_Around_ me!" she commanded, imperatively, nodding and laughing. "Just
+as the song says."
+
+     "The gent around the lady,"
+
+sang the men.
+
+Frank was circling about Nelly, his eyes on hers, treading lightly, his
+tall body apparently weighing no more than thistle-down. It was as
+though he were weaving a charm.
+
+Vincent ended his circle.
+
+The men sang, "_And_ the lady round the gent."
+
+Marise and Nelly stepped off, overlaying the men's invisible circle with
+one of their own.
+
+The room beyond boiled with the dervish-like whirling of the dancers.
+The fiddle rose louder and shriller, faster and faster. The men sang at
+the tops of their voices, and beat time heavily. Under cover of this
+rolling clamor, Vincent called out boldly to Marise, "A symbol of life!
+A symbol of our life!" and did not know if she heard him.
+
+              "_Then_
+     The lady around the lady."
+
+Nelly and Marise circled each other.
+
+              "_And_
+     The gent around the gent."
+
+He and Frank followed them.
+
+His head was turning, the room staggered around him. Nelly's warm,
+vibrant hand was again in his. They were in their places. Frank's voice
+rose, resounding, "_Pro_menade all!"
+
+Nelly abandoned herself to his arms, in the one brief moment of close
+physical contact of the dance. They raced to the end of the room.
+
+The music stopped abruptly, but it went on in his head.
+
+The odor of pines rose pungent in the momentary silence. Everyone was
+breathing rapidly. Nelly put up a hand to touch her hair. Vincent,
+reflecting that he would never acquire the native-born capacity for
+abstaining from chatter, said, because he felt he must say something,
+"What a pleasant smell those pine-branches give."
+
+She turned her white neck to glance into the small room lined with the
+fragrant branches, and remarked, clearly and dispassionately, "I don't
+like the smell."
+
+Vincent was interested. He continued, "Well, you must have a great deal
+of it, whether you like it or not, from that great specimen by your
+front door."
+
+She looked at him calmly, her eyes as blue as precious stones. "The old
+pine-tree," she said, "I wish it were cut down, darkening the house the
+way it does." She spoke with a sovereign impassivity, no trace of
+feeling in her tone. She turned away.
+
+Vincent found himself saying almost audibly, "Oh _ho_!" He had the
+sensation, very agreeable to him, of combining two clues to make a
+certainty. He wished he could lay his hands on a clue to put with Marise
+Crittenden's shrinking from the photograph of the Rocca di Papa.
+
+He had not spoken to Marise that evening, save the first greetings, and
+his impudent shout to her in the dance, and now turned to find her. On
+the other side of the room she was installed, looking extraordinarily
+young and girl-like, between Mr. Welles and Mr. Bayweather, fanning
+first one and then the other elderly gentleman and talking to them with
+animation. They were both in need of fanning, puffing and panting hard.
+Mr. Welles indeed was hardly recognizable, the usual pale quiet of his
+face broken into red and glistening laughter.
+
+"I see you've been dancing," said Vincent, coming to a halt in front of
+the group and wishing the two old gentlemen in the middle of next week.
+
+"Old Mrs. Powers got me," explained Mr. Welles. "You never saw anything
+so absurd in your life." He went on to the others, "You simply can't
+imagine how remarkable this is, for me. I never, _never_ danced and I no
+more thought I ever _would_ . . ."
+
+Mr. Bayweather ran his handkerchief around and around his neck in an
+endeavor to save his clerical collar from complete ruin, and said,
+panting still, "Best thing in the world for you, Mr. Welles."
+
+"Yes indeed," echoed Marise. "We'll have to prescribe a dance for you
+every week. You look like a boy, and you've been looking rather tired
+lately." She had an idea and added, accusingly, "I do believe you've
+gone on tormenting yourself about the Negro problem!"
+
+"Yes, he has!" Mr. Bayweather unexpectedly put in. "And he's not the
+only person he torments about it. Only yesterday when he came down to
+the rectory to see some old deeds, didn't he expatiate on that subject
+and succeed in spoiling the afternoon. I had never been forced to think
+so much about it in all my life. He made me very uncomfortable, very!
+What's the use of going miles out of your way, I say, out of the station
+to which it has pleased God to place us? I believe in leaving such
+insoluble problems to a Divine Providence."
+
+Marise was evidently highly amused by this exposition of one variety of
+ministerial principle, and looked up at Vincent over her fan, her eyes
+sparkling with mockery. He savored with an intimate pleasure her
+certainty that he would follow the train of her thought; and he decided
+to try to get another rise out of the round-eyed little clergyman. "Oh,
+if it weren't the Negro problem, Mr. Bayweather, it would be free-will
+or predestination, or capital and labor. Mr. Welles suffers from a
+duty-complex, inflamed to a morbid degree by a life-long compliance to a
+mediaeval conception of family responsibility."
+
+Mr. Bayweather's eyes became rounder than ever at this, and Vincent went
+on, much amused, "Mr. Welles has done his duty with discomfort to
+himself so long that he has the habit. His life at Ashley seems too
+unnaturally peaceful to him. I'd just as soon he took it out with
+worrying about the Negroes. They are so safely far away. I had been on
+the point of communicating to him my doubts as to the civic virtues of
+the Martians, as a safety valve for him."
+
+Marise laughed out, as round a peal as little Mark's, but she evidently
+thought they had gone far enough with their fooling, for she now brought
+the talk back to a safe, literal level by crying, "Well, there's one
+thing sure, Mr. Welles can't worry his head about _any_ of the
+always-with-us difficulties of life, as long as he is dancing art Ashley
+quadrille."
+
+Mr. Welles concurred in this with feeling. "I'd no idea I would ever
+experience anything so . . . so . . . well, I tell you, I thought I'd left
+_fun_ behind me, years and years ago."
+
+"Oh, what you've had is nothing compared to what you're going to have,"
+Marise told him. "Just wait till old Nate strikes up the opening bars of
+'The Whirlwind' and see the roof of the house fly off. See here," she
+laid her hand on his arm. "This is leap-year. I solemnly engage you to
+dance 'The Whirlwind' with me." She made the gesture of the little-boy
+athlete, feeling the biceps of one arm, moving her forearm up and down.
+"I'm in good health, and good muscle, because I've been out stirring up
+the asparagus bed with a spading-fork. I can shove you around as well as
+old Mrs. Powers, if I do say it who shouldn't."
+
+Vincent looked down at her, bubbling with light-hearted merriment, and
+thought, "There is no end to the variety of her moods!"
+
+She glanced up at him, caught his eyes on her and misinterpreted their
+wondering expression. "You think I'm just silly and childish, don't
+you?" she told him challengingly. "Oh, don't be such an everlasting
+adult. Life's not so serious as all that!"
+
+He stirred to try to protest, but she went on, "It's dancing that sets
+me off. Nelly Powers and I are crazy about it. And so far as my
+observation of life extends, our dances here are the only social
+functions left in the world, that people really _enjoy_ and don't go to
+merely because it's the thing to. It always goes to my head to see
+people enjoy themselves. It's so sweet."
+
+Mr. Welles gave her one of his affectionate pats on her hand. Vincent
+asked her casually, "What's the idea of making a family party of it and
+bringing the children too?"
+
+She answered dashingly, "If I answer you in your own language, I'd say
+that it's because their households are in such a low and lamentably
+primitive condition that they haven't any slave-labor to leave the
+children with, and so bring them along out of mere brute necessity. If I
+answer you in another vocabulary, I'd say that there is a close feeling
+of family unity, and they _like_ to have their children with them when
+they are having a good time, and find it pleasant to see mothers dancing
+with their little boys and fathers with their little girls."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without the slightest premonition of what his next question was to bring
+out, and only putting it to keep the talk going, Vincent challenged her,
+"Why don't you bring your own, then?" He kept down with difficulty the
+exclamation which he inwardly added, "If you only knew what a relief it
+is to see you for once, without that intrusive, tiresome bunch of
+children!"
+
+"Why, sometimes I do," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "But I
+just had a telegram from my husband saying that he is able to get home a
+little sooner than he thought, and will be here early tomorrow morning.
+And the children voted to go to bed early so they could be up bright
+and early to see him."
+
+Vincent continued looking down on her blankly for an instant, after she
+had finished this reasonable explanation. He was startled by the wave of
+anger which spurted up over him like flame.
+
+He heard Mr. Welles make some suitable comment, "How nice." He himself
+said, "Oh really," in a neutral tone, and turned away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a moment he saw nothing of what was before him, and then realized
+that he had moved next to Frank Warner, who was standing by Nelly
+Powers, and asking her to dance with him again. She was shaking her
+head, and looking about the room uneasily. Vincent felt a gust of anger
+again. "Oh, go _to_ it, Frank!" he said, in a low fierce tone. "Take her
+out again, as often as you like. Why shouldn't you?"
+
+Nelly gave him one of her enigmatic looks, deep and inscrutable,
+shrugged her shoulders, put her hand on Frank's arm, and walked off with
+him.
+
+"They're the handsomest couple in the room," said Vincent, at random to
+a farmer near him, who looked at him astonished by the heat of his
+accent. And then, seeing that Nelly's husband was in possible earshot,
+Vincent raised his voice recklessly. "They're the handsomest couple in
+the room," he repeated resentfully. "They ought always to dance
+together."
+
+If 'Gene heard, he did not show it, the granite impassivity of his harsh
+face unmoved.
+
+Vincent went on towards the door, his nerves a little relieved by this
+outburst. He would go out and have another cigarette, he thought, and
+then take his old man-child home to bed. What were they doing in this
+absurd place?
+
+The music began to skirl again as he stepped out and closed the door
+behind him.
+
+He drew in deeply the fresh night-air, and looking upward saw that the
+clouds had broken away and that the stars were out, innumerable,
+thick-sown, studding with gold the narrow roof of sky which, rising from
+the mountains on either side, arched itself over the valley. He stood
+staring before him, frowning, forgetting what he had come out to do. He
+told himself that coming from that yelling confusion inside, and the
+glare of those garish lamps, he was stupefied by the great silence of
+the night. There was nothing clear in his mind, only a turmoil of
+eddying sensations which he could not name. He walked down to the huge
+dark pine, the pine which 'Gene Powers loved like a person, and which
+his wife wished were cut down. What a ghastly prison marriage was, he
+thought, a thing as hostile to the free human spirit as an iron
+ball-and-chain.
+
+He looked back at the little house, tiny as an insect before the great
+bulk of the mountains, dwarfed by the gigantic tree, ridiculous,
+despicable in the face of Nature, like the human life it sheltered. From
+its every window poured a flood of yellow light that was drunk up in a
+twinkling by the vastness of the night's obscurity.
+
+He leaned against the straight, sternly unyielding bole of the tree,
+folding his arms and staring at the house. What a beastly joke the whole
+business of living!
+
+A thousand ugly recollections poured their venom upon him from his past
+life. Life, this little moment of blind, sensual groping and grabbing
+for something worth while that did not exist, save in the stultification
+of the intelligence. All that you reached for, so frantically, it was
+only another handful of mud, when you held it.
+
+Past the yellow squares of the windows, he saw the shapes of the
+dancers, insect-tiny, footing it to and fro. And in one of those
+silhouettes he recognized Marise Crittenden.
+
+He turned away from the sight and struck his fist against the rough bark
+of the tree. What an insane waste and confusion ruled everywhere in
+human life! A woman like that to be squandered . . . an intelligence fine
+and supple, a talent penetrating and rare like hers for music, a strange
+personal beauty like that of no other woman, a depth one felt like
+mid-ocean, a capacity for fun like a child's and a vitality of
+personality, a power for passion that pulsed from her so that to touch
+her hand casually set one thrilling . . . ! And good God! What was destiny
+doing with her? Spending that gold like water on three brats incapable
+of distinguishing between her and any good-natured woman who would put
+on their shoes and wash their faces for them. Any paid Irish nurse could
+do for them what their mother bent the priceless treasure of her
+temperament to accomplish. The Irish nurse would do it better, for she
+would not be aware of anything else better, which she might do, and
+their mother knew well enough what she sacrificed . . . or if she did not
+know it yet, she would, soon. She had betrayed that to him, the very
+first time he had seen her, that astonishing first day, when, breathing
+out her vivid charm like an aureole of gold mist, she had sat there
+before him, quite simply the woman most to his taste he had even seen
+. . . _here_! That day when she had spoken about the queerness of her
+feeling "lost" when little Mark went off to school, because for the
+first time in years she had had an hour or so free from those ruthless
+little leeches who spent their lives in draining her vitality. He had
+known, if she had not, the significance of that feeling of hers, the
+first time she had had a moment to raise her eyes from her trivial task
+and see that she had been tricked into a prison. That very day he had
+wanted to cry out to her, as impersonally as one feels towards a
+beautiful bird caught in a net, "Now, _now_, burst through, and spread
+your wings where you belong."
+
+It was like wiping up the floor with cloth of gold. In order that those
+three perfectly commonplace, valueless human lives might be added to the
+world's wretched population, a nature as rare as a jewel was being
+slowly ground away. What were the treasures to whom she was being
+sacrificed? Paul, the greasy, well-intentioned, priggish burgher he
+would make; Elly, almost half-witted, a child who stared at you like an
+imbecile when asked a question, and who evidently scarcely knew that her
+mother existed, save as cook and care-taker. And Mark, the passionate,
+gross, greedy baby. There were the three walls of the prison where she
+was shut away from any life worthy of her.
+
+And the fourth wall . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The blackness dropped deeper about him, and within him. There they were
+dancing, those idiots, dancing on a volcano if ever human beings did, in
+the little sultry respite from the tornado which was called the
+world-peace. Well, that was less idiotic than working, at least. How
+soon before it would break again, the final destructive hurricane, born
+of nothing but the malignant folly of human hearts, and sweep away all
+that they now agonized and sweated to keep? What silly weakness to spend
+the respite in anything but getting as much of what you wanted as you
+could, before it was all gone in the big final smash-up, and the yellow
+or black man were on top.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With a bitter relish he felt sunk deep in one of his rank reactions
+against life and human beings. Now at least he was on bed-rock. There
+was a certain hard, quiet restfulness in scorning it all so
+whole-heartedly as either stupid or base.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this a woman's face hung suddenly there in the blackness. Her long
+eyes seemed to look directly into his, a full revealing look such as
+they had never given him in reality. His hard quiet was broken by an
+agitation he could not control. No, no, there was something there that
+was not mud. He had thought he would live and die without meeting it.
+And there it was, giving to paltry life a meaning, after all, a
+troubling and immortal meaning.
+
+A frosty breath blew down upon him from the mountains. A long shudder
+ran through him.
+
+The sensation moved him to a sweeping change of mood, to a furious
+resentment as at an indignity. God! What was he doing? Who was this
+moping in the dark like a boy?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great night stood huge and breathless above him as before, but now
+he saw only the lamp-lit house, tiny as an insect, but vibrant with
+eager and joyous life. With a strong, resolute step he went rapidly back
+to the door, opened it wide, stepped in, and walked across the floor to
+Marise Crittenden. "You're going to dance the next dance with _me_, you
+know," he told her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AT THE MILL
+
+I
+
+_An Afternoon in the Life of Mr. Neale Crittenden, aet. 38_
+
+May 27.
+
+
+The stenographer, a pale, thin boy, with a scarred face, and very white
+hands, limped over to the manager's desk with a pile of letters to be
+signed. "There, Captain Crittenden," he said, pride in his accent.
+
+Neale was surprised and pleased. "All done, Arthur?" He looked over the
+work hastily. "Good work, good work." He leaned back, looking up at the
+other. "How about it, anyhow, Arthur? Is it going to work out all
+right?"
+
+The stenographer looked at him hard and swallowed visibly. "I never
+dreamed I'd be fit to do anything I like half so well. I thought when I
+was in the hospital that I was done for, for sure. Captain Crittenden,
+if you only knew what my mother and I think about what you've done for
+. . ."
+
+Neale dodged hastily. "That's all right. That's all right. If you like
+it, that's all that's necessary. And I'm not Captain any more."
+
+"I forget, sir," said the other apologetically.
+
+"Can you sit down and take a second batch right now? I want to get
+through early. Mrs. Crittenden's going to bring some visitors to see the
+place this afternoon, and I'll have to be with them more or less."
+
+He looked at the clock. It was half-past three. Marise had said she
+would be there about four. He gave a calculating glance at the stack of
+letters. He would never be able to get through those. "We'll have to get
+a move on," he remarked. "Things got pretty well piled up while I was
+away."
+
+He began to dictate rapidly, steadily, the end of a sentence clearly in
+his mind before he pronounced the first word. He liked to dictate and
+enjoyed doing it well. The pale young stenographer bent over his
+note-book, his disfigured face intent and serious.
+
+"Turned out all right, Arthur has," thought Neale to himself. "I wasn't
+so far off, when I thought of the business college for him." Then he
+applied himself single-mindedly to his dictation, taking up one letter
+after another, with hardly a pause in his voice. But for all his
+diligence, he had not come to the bottom of the pile when four o'clock
+struck; nor ten minutes later when, glancing out of the window, he saw
+Marise and the children with Mr. Bayweather and the two other men coming
+across the mill-yard. Evidently Mr. Bayweather had dropped in just as
+they were going to start and had come along. He stopped dictating and
+looked at the group with a certain interest. Marise and the children had
+had a good deal to say yesterday about the newcomers to Crittenden's.
+
+It seemed to him that the impression he had received of them had been as
+inaccurate as such second-hand impressions were apt to be. The older man
+was just like any elderly business man, for all he could see, nothing so
+especially attractive about him, although Marise had said in her ardent
+way that he was "the sort of old American you love on sight, the kind
+that makes you home-sick when you meet him in Europe." And as for Mr.
+Marsh, he couldn't see any signs of his being such a record-breaking
+live-wire as they had all said. He walked along quietly enough, and was
+evidently as resigned as any of them to letting Mr. Bayweather do all
+the talking. On the other hand, none of them had told him what a
+striking-looking fellow he was, so tall, and with such a bold carriage
+of that round dark head.
+
+"Here they come, Arthur," he remarked. "No more time. But I'll try to
+squeeze in a minute or two, while they are here, to finish up these last
+ones."
+
+The young man followed the direction of his eyes and nodded. He
+continued looking at the advancing group for a moment, and as he stood
+up, "You could tell that Mr. Marsh is a millionaire by the way his
+clothes fit, couldn't you?" he remarked, turning to go back to his desk
+in the outer office.
+
+They were coming down the hall now. Neale went forward to open the door,
+met and breasted the wave of children who after hugging casually at his
+knees and arms, swept by; and stepped forward to be presented to the
+newcomers. They had not crossed the threshold, before his first
+impression was reversed in one case. Marsh was a live-wire all right.
+Now that he had seen his eyes, he knew what Elly had meant when she said
+that when he looked at you it was like lightning.
+
+Mr. Bayweather barely waited for the first greetings to be pronounced
+before he burst out, "Do they say, 'backwards and forwards' or 'back and
+forth'?"
+
+Neale laughed. Old Bayweather was perennial. "Backwards and forwards, of
+course," he said. "English people always say everything the longest
+possible way." He explained to the others, "Mr. Bayweather is an
+impassioned philologist . . ."
+
+"So I have gathered," commented Marsh.
+
+". . . and whenever any friends of his go on travels, they are always
+asked to bring back some philological information about the region where
+they go."
+
+He turned to Marise (how sweet she looked in that thin yellow dress).
+"Where do you want your personally conducted to begin, dear?" he asked
+her. (Lord! How good it seemed to get back to Marise!)
+
+Mr. Bayweather cut in hastily, "If I may be permitted to suggest, I
+think a history of the mill would be advisable as a beginning. I will be
+glad to tell the newcomers about this. I've just been working the
+subject up for a chapter in history of Ashley."
+
+Neale caught an anguished side-glance from Marise and sent back to her a
+shrugged message of helplessness in the face of Destiny. The man didn't
+live who could head old Bayweather off when he got started on local
+history. And besides, this would give him time to get those last three
+letters finished. Aloud he said, "I wouldn't dare say a word about
+history in Mr. Bayweather's presence. I have a few letters to finish.
+I'll just step into the outer office and be ready to start when you've
+heard the history lecture." He turned to the children, who were tapping
+on the typewriter. "Look here, kids, you'd be better off where you won't
+break anything. Get along with you out into the mill-yard and play on
+the lumber-piles, why don't you? Paul, you see if you can tell yellow
+birch from oak this time!"
+
+He and the children beat a retreat together into the outer office, where
+he bent over Arthur's desk and began to dictate in a low voice,
+catching, as he did so, an occasional rotund phrase from the
+disquisition in the other room. ". . . the glorious spirit of manly
+independence of the Green Mountain Boys . . ."
+
+To himself Neale thought, "He'd call it bolshevism if he met it today
+. . ."
+
+". . . second building erected in the new settlement, 1766, as a
+fort. . . . No, _no_, Mr. Marsh, _not_ against the Indians! Our early
+settlers _here_ never had any trouble with the Indians."
+
+Neale laughed to himself at the clergyman's resentment of any ignorance
+of any detail of Ashley's unimportant history.
+
+". . . as a fort against the York State men in the land-grant quarrels
+with New Hampshire and New York, before the Revolution." Neale, smiling
+inwardly, bet himself a nickel that neither of the two strangers had
+ever heard of the Vermont land-grant quarrels, and found himself vastly
+tickled by the profound silence they kept on the subject. They were
+evidently scared to death of starting old Bayweather off on another
+line. They were safe enough, if they only knew it. It was inconceivable
+to Mr. Bayweather that any grown person should not know all about early
+Vermont history.
+
+At this point Marise came out of the office, her face between laughter
+and exasperation. She clasped her hands together and said, "Can't you do
+_any_thing?"
+
+"In a minute," he told her. "I'll just finish these two letters and then
+I'll go and break him off short."
+
+Marise went on to the accountant's desk, to ask about his wife, who sang
+in her winter chorus.
+
+He dictated rapidly: "No more contracts will go out to you if this
+stripping of the mountain-land continues. Our original contract has in
+it the clause which I always insist on, that trees smaller than six
+inches through the butt shall not be cut. You will please give your
+choppers definite orders on this point, and understand that logs under
+the specified size will not be accepted at the mill." He held out to the
+stenographer the letter he was answering. "Here, Arthur, copy the name
+and address off this. It's one of those French-Canadian names, hard to
+spell if you don't see it."
+
+He paused an instant to hear how far Mr. Bayweather had progressed, and
+heard him saying, "In the decade from 1850 on, there was a terrible and
+scandalous devastation of the mountain-land . . ." and said to himself,
+"Halfway through the century. I'll have time to go on a while. All
+ready, Arthur." He dictated: "On birch brush-backs of the model
+specified, we can furnish you any number up to . . ." He wound his way
+swiftly and surely through a maze of figures and specifications without
+consulting a paper or record, and drawing breath at the end, heard Mr.
+Bayweather pronouncing his own name. ". . . Mr. Crittenden has taught us
+all a great deal about the economic aspects of a situation with which we
+had had years of more familiarity than he. His idea is that this
+mountainous part of New England is really not fit for agriculture.
+Farming in the usual sense has been a losing venture ever since the
+Civil War high prices for wool ceased. Only the bottoms of the valleys
+are fit for crops. Most of our county is essentially forest-land. And
+his idea of the proper use to make of it, is to have a smallish
+industrial population engaged in wood-working, who would use the bits of
+arable land in the valleys as gardens to raise their own food. He has
+almost entirely reorganized the life of our valley, along these lines,
+and I daresay he cannot at all realize himself the prodigious change
+from hopelessness and slow death to energy and forward-looking activity
+which his intelligent grasp of the situation has brought to this corner
+of the earth."
+
+The young stenographer had heard this too, and had caught the frown of
+annoyance which the personal reference brought to Neale's forehead. He
+leaned forward and said earnestly, "It's so, Captain . . . Mr. Crittenden.
+It's _so_!"
+
+Mr. Bayweather went on, "There is enough wood in the forests within
+reach of the mill to keep a moderate-sized wood-working factory going
+indefinitely, cutting by rotation and taking care to leave enough trees
+for natural reforestration. But of course that has not been the American
+way of going at things. Instead of that steady, continuous use of the
+woods, which Mr. Crittenden has shown to be possible, furnishing good,
+well-paid work at home for the men who would be otherwise forced off
+into cities, our poor mountains have been lumbered every generation or
+so, on an immense, murderous, slashing scale, to make a big sum of money
+for somebody in one operation. When old Mr. Burton Crittenden's nephew
+came to town it was a different story. Mr. Neale Crittenden's ideal of
+the lumber business is, as I conceive it, as much a service to mankind
+as a doctor's is."
+
+Neale winced, and shook his head impatiently. How ministers did put the
+Sunday-school rubber-stamp on everything they talked about--even
+legitimate business.
+
+"And as Mrs. Crittenden's free-handed generosity with her musical
+talent has transformed the life of the region as much as Mr.
+Crittenden's high and disinterested . . ."
+
+"Oh _Gosh_, Arthur, never mind about the rest!" murmured Neale, moving
+back quickly into the inner office to create a diversion. "All ready?"
+he asked in a loud, hearty voice, as he came up to them. "Up to 1920 by
+this time, Mr. Bayweather?" He turned to Marsh, "I'm afraid there is
+very little to interest you, with your experience of production on a
+giant scale, in a business so small that the owner and manager knows
+every man by name and everything about him."
+
+"You couldn't show me anything more _out_ of my own experience,"
+answered Marsh, "than just that. And as for what I know about production
+on a giant scale, I can tell you it's not much. I did try to hook on,
+once or twice, years ago--to find out something about the business that
+my father spent his life in helping to build up, but it always ended in
+my being shooed out of the office by a rather irritable manager who knew
+I knew nothing about any of it, and who evidently hated above everything
+else, having amateur directors come horning in on what was no party of
+theirs. 'If they get their dividends all right, what more do they want?'
+was his motto. I never was able to make any sense out of it. It's all on
+such a preposterously big scale now. Once in a while, touring, I have
+come across one of our branch establishments and have stopped my car to
+see the men come out of the buildings at quitting-time. That's as close
+as I have ever come. Do you really know their _names_?"
+
+"I can't pronounce all the French-Canadian names to suit them, but I
+know them all, yes. Most of them are just the overflow of the rural
+population around here."
+
+He said to himself in congratulation, "Between us, we pried old
+Bayweather loose from his soft soap, pretty neatly," and gave the man
+before him a look of friendly understanding. He was a little startled,
+for an instant, by the expression in the other's bright eyes, which he
+found fixed on him with an intentness almost disconcerting. "Does he
+think I'm trying to put something over on him?" he asked himself with a
+passing astonishment, "or is he trying to put something over on me?"
+Then he remembered that everyone had spoken of Marsh's eyes as peculiar;
+it was probably just his habit. "He can look right through me and out at
+the other side, for all _I_ care!" he thought indifferently, meeting the
+other's gaze with a faintly humorous sense of something absurd.
+
+Marise had come back now, and was saying, "You really must get started,
+Neale, the men will be quitting work soon."
+
+"Yes, yes, this minute," he told her, and led the way with Mr. Welles,
+leaving Marise and Mr. Bayweather to be showman for Mr. Marsh. He now
+remembered that he had not heard the older man say a single word as yet,
+and surmised that he probably never said much when the fluent Mr. Marsh
+was with him. He wondered a little, as they made their way to the
+saw-mill, what Marise saw in either of them to interest her so much. Oh
+well, they were a change, of course, from Ashley and Crittenden's
+people, and different from the Eugenia Mills bunch, in New York, too.
+
+He stood now, beside Mr. Welles, in the saw-mill, the ringing high
+crescendo scream of the saws filling the air. Marise stood at the other
+end talking animatedly to the two she had with her. Marise was a wonder
+on conversation anyhow. What could she find to say, now, for instance?
+What in the world was there to say to an ex-office manager of a big
+electrical company about a wood-working business?
+
+His eyes were caught by what one of the men was doing and he yelled at
+him sharply, "Look out there, Harry! Stop that! What do I have a guard
+rail there for, anyhow?"
+
+"What was the matter?" asked Mr. Welles, startled.
+
+"Oh, nothing much. One of the men dodging under a safety device to save
+him a couple of steps. They get so reckless about those saws. You have
+to look out for them like a bunch of bad children."
+
+Mr. Welles looked at him earnestly. "Are you . . . have you . . . Mr.
+Bayweather has told us so much about all you do for the men . . . how they
+are all devoted to you."
+
+Neale looked and felt annoyed. Bayweather and his palaver! "I don't do
+anything for them, except give them as good wages as the business will
+stand, and as much responsibility for running things as they'll take.
+Beyond that, I let them alone. I don't believe in what's known as
+'welfare work.' I wouldn't want them messing around in my private life,
+and I don't believe they'd like me in theirs."
+
+The necessity to raise his voice to a shout in order to make himself
+heard above the tearing scream of the saws made him sound very abrupt
+and peremptory, more so than he had meant. As he finished speaking his
+eyes met those of the older man, and were held by the clarity and candor
+of the other's gaze. They were like a child's eyes in that old face. It
+was as though he had been abrupt and impatient to Elly or Mark.
+
+As he looked he saw more than candor and clarity. He saw a deep
+weariness.
+
+Neale smoothed his forehead, a little ashamed of his petulance, and drew
+his companion further from the saws where the noise was less. He meant
+to say something apologetic, but the right phrase did not come to him.
+And as Mr. Welles said nothing further, they walked on in silence. They
+passed through the first and second floors of the mill, where the
+handling of the smaller pieces was done, and neither of them spoke a
+word. Neale looked about him at the familiar, familiar scene, and found
+it too dull to make any comment on. What was there to say? This was the
+way you manufactured brush-backs and wooden boxes and such-like things,
+and that was all. The older men bent over their lathes quietly, the
+occasional woman-worker smartly hammering small nails into the holes
+already bored for her, the big husky boys shoved the trucks around, the
+elevator droned up and down, the belts flicked as they sped around and
+around. Blest if he could think of any explanation to make to a grown
+man on so simple and everyday a scene. And yet he did not enjoy this
+silence because it seemed like a continuation of his grumpiness of a few
+minutes ago. Well, the next time the old fellow said anything, he'd fall
+over himself to be nice in his answer.
+
+Presently as they came to the outside door, Mr. Welles remarked with a
+gentle dignity, in evident allusion to Neale's cutting him short, "I
+only meant that I was very much interested in what I see here, and that
+I would like very much to know more about it."
+
+Neale felt he fairly owed him an apology. He began to understand what
+Marise meant when she had said the old fellow was one you loved on
+sight. It was her way, emotionally heightened as usual, of saying that
+he was really a very nice old codger. "I'll be glad to tell you anything
+you want to know, Mr. Welles," he said. "But I haven't any idea what it
+is that interests you. You fire ahead and ask questions and I'll agree
+to answer them."
+
+"That's what I'd like, all right. And remember if I ask anything you
+don't want to talk about . . ." He referred evidently to Neale's
+impatience of a few minutes ago.
+
+"There aren't any trade secrets in the wood-working business," said
+Neale, laughing. "Better come along and see our drying-room as we talk.
+We've had to make some concession to modern haste and use kiln-drying,
+although I season first in the old way as long as possible." They
+stepped out of the door and started across the mill-yard.
+
+Mr. Welles said with a very faint smile in the corner of his pale old
+lips, "I don't believe you want to show me any of this, Mr. Crittenden.
+And honestly that isn't what interests me about it. I wouldn't know a
+drying-room from a steam-laundry."
+
+Neale stopped short, and surveyed his companion with amusement and
+admiration. "Good for you!" he cried. "Tell the truth and shame the
+devil and set an example to all honest men. Mr. Welles, you have my
+esteem."
+
+The old man had a shy smile at this. "I don't tell the truth that way to
+everybody," he said demurely.
+
+Neale liked him more and more. "Sir, I am yours to command," he said,
+sitting down on the steps, "ask ahead!"
+
+Mr. Welles turned serious, and hesitated. "Mr. Bayweather said . . ." He
+began and looked anxiously at Neale.
+
+"I won't bite even if he did," Neale reassured him.
+
+Mr. Welles looked at him with the pleasantest expression in his eyes.
+"It's a great relief to find that we can get on with one another," he
+said, "for I must admit to you that I have fallen a complete victim to
+Mrs. Crittenden. I . . . I love your wife." He brought it out with a
+quaint, humorous roundness.
+
+"You can't get up any discussion with me about that," said Neale. "I do
+myself."
+
+They both laughed, and Mr. Welles said, "But you see, caring such a lot
+about her, it was a matter of great importance to me what kind of
+husband she had. I find actually seeing you very exciting."
+
+"You're the first who ever found it so, I'm sure," said Neale, amused at
+the idea.
+
+"But it wasn't this I wanted to say," said Mr. Welles. He went back and
+said again, "Mr. Bayweather said your idea of business is service, like
+a doctor's?"
+
+Neale winced at the Bayweather priggishness of this way of putting it,
+but remembering his remorse for his earlier brusqueness, he restrained
+himself to good humor and the admission, "Making allowance for
+ministerial jargon, that's something like a fair statement."
+
+He was astonished at the seriousness with which Mr. Welles took this.
+What was it to him? The old man looked at him, deeply, unaccountably,
+evidently entirely at a loss. "Mr. Crittenden," he said abruptly, "to
+speak right out, that sounded to me like the notion of a nice
+idealistic woman, who has never been in business. You see I've _been_ in
+a business office all my life!"
+
+Neale found his liking for the gentle, troubled old man enough for him
+to say truthfully, "Mr. Welles, I don't mind talking to you about it.
+Sure, yes I can understand how having a minister put it that way. . . .
+Lord! How the old boy does spill over! And yet why should I care? I'm
+ashamed of letting harmless Mr. Bayweather get on my nerves so."
+
+Mr. Welles started to speak, found no words, and waved an arm as if to
+imply that _he_ understood perfectly. This made Neale laugh a little,
+and gave him a picture of the helplessness of a newcomer to Ashley,
+before the flood-tide of Mr. Bayweather's local learning.
+
+He went on, "He sort of taints an honest idea, doesn't he, by his
+high-falutin' way of going on about it?"
+
+He hesitated, trying to think of simple words to sum up what he had,
+after all, never exactly formulated because it had been so much an
+attitude he and Marise had silently grown into. It was hard, he found,
+to hit on any expression that said what he wanted to; but after all, it
+wasn't so very important whether he did or not. He was only trying to
+make a nice tired old man think himself enough respected to be seriously
+talked to. He'd just ramble on, till Marise brought the other visitors
+up to them.
+
+And yet as he talked, he got rather interested in his statement of it. A
+comparison of baseball and tennis ethics came into his mind as apposite,
+and quite tickled him by its aptness. Mr. Welles threw in an occasional
+remark. He was no man's fool, it soon appeared, for all his mildness.
+And for a time he seemed to be interested.
+
+But presently Neale noticed that the other was looking absent and no
+longer made any comments. That was what happened, Neale reflected with
+an inward smile, as he slowed down and prepared to stop, when anybody
+succeeded in getting you started on your hobby. They were bored. They
+didn't really want to know after all. It was like trying to tell folks
+about your travels.
+
+But he was astonished to the limit of astonishment by what Mr. Welles
+brought out in the silence which finally dropped between them. The old
+man looked at him very hard and asked, "Mr. Crittenden, do you know
+anything about the treatment of the Negroes in the South?"
+
+Neale sat up blinking. "Why no, nothing special, except that it's a
+fearful knot we don't seem to get untied," he said. "I contribute to the
+support of an agricultural school in Georgia, but I'm afraid I never
+take much time to read the reports they send me. Why do you ask?"
+
+"Oh, no particular reason. I have a relative down there, that's all."
+
+Marise and the others came out of a door at the far-end of the building
+now, and advanced towards them slowly. Neale and Mr. Welles watched
+them.
+
+Neale was struck again by Marsh's appearance. As far away as you could
+see him, he held the eye. "An unusual man, your friend Mr. Marsh," he
+remarked. "Mrs. Crittenden tells me that he is one of the people who
+have been everywhere and done everything and seen everybody. He looks
+the part."
+
+Mr. Welles made no comment on this for a moment, his eyes on the
+advancing group. Marise had raised her parasol of yellow silk. It made a
+shimmering halo for her dark, gleaming hair, as she turned her head
+towards Marsh, her eyes narrowed and shining as she laughed at something
+he said.
+
+Then the old man remarked, "Yes, he's unusual, all right, Vincent is. He
+has his father's energy and push." He added in a final characterization,
+"I've known him ever since he was a little boy, and I never knew him not
+to get what he went after."
+
+
+II
+
+_How the Same Thing Looked to Mr. Welles_
+
+As they walked along towards the mill, Mr. Welles had a distinct
+impression that he was going to dislike the mill-owner, and as distinct
+a certainty as to where that impression came from. He had received too
+many by the same route not to recognize the shipping label. Not that
+Vincent had ever said a single slighting word about Mr. Crittenden. He
+couldn't have, very well, since they neither of them had ever laid eyes
+on him. But Vincent never needed words to convey impressions into other
+people's minds. He had a thousand other ways better than words. Vincent
+could be silent, knock off the ashes from his cigarette, recross his
+legs, and lean back in his chair in a manner that slammed an impression
+into your head as though he had yelled it at you.
+
+But to be fair to Vincent, Mr. Welles thought probably he had been more
+than ready to soak up an impression like the one he felt. They'd had
+such an awfully good time with Mrs. Crittenden and the children, it
+stood to reason the head of the house would seem to them like a
+butter-in and an outsider in a happy-family group.
+
+More than this, too. As they came within hearing of the industrial
+activity of the mill, and he felt his heart sink and turn sore and
+bitter, Mr. Welles realized that Vincent had very little to do with his
+dread of meeting the mill-owner. It was not Mr. Crittenden he shrank
+from, it was the mill-owner, the business man . . . business itself.
+
+Mr. Welles hated and feared the sound of the word and knew that it had
+him cowed, because in his long life he had known it to be the only
+reality in the world of men. And in that world he had known the only
+reality to be that if you didn't cut the other fellow's throat first he
+would cut yours. There wasn't any other reality. He had heard
+impractical, womanish men say there was, and try to prove it, only to
+have their economic throats cut considerably more promptly than any
+others. He had done his little indirect share of the throat-cutting
+always. He was not denying the need to do it. Only he had never found it
+a very cheerful atmosphere in which to pass one's life. And now he had
+escaped, to the only other reality, the pleasant, gentle, slightly
+unreal world of women, nice women, and children and gardens. He was so
+old now that there was no shame in his sinking into that for what time
+he had left, as other old fellows sank into an easy-chair. Only he
+wished that he could have got along without being reminded so vividly,
+as he would be by this trip to the business-world, of what paid for the
+arm-chair, supported the nice women and children. He wished he hadn't
+had to come here, to be forced to remember again that the inevitable
+foundation for all that was pleasant and livable in private life was the
+grim determination on the part of a strong man to give his strength to
+"taking it out of the hide" of his competitors, his workmen, and the
+public. He'd had a vacation from that, and it made him appallingly
+depressed to take another dose of it now. He sincerely wished that sweet
+Mrs. Crittenden were a widow with a small income from some impersonal
+source with no uncomfortable human associations with it. He recalled
+with a sad cynicism the story Mrs. Crittenden had told them about the
+clever and forceful lawyer who had played the dirty trick on the farmer
+here in Ashley, and done him out of his wood-land. She had been very
+much wrought up about that, the poor lady, without having the least idea
+that probably her husband's business-life was full of such
+knifings-in-the-back, all with the purpose of making a quiet life for
+her and the children.
+
+Well, there was nothing for it but to go on. It wouldn't last long, and
+Mr. Welles' back was practised in bowing to weather he didn't like but
+which passed if you waited a while.
+
+They were going up the hall now, towards a door marked "Office," the
+children scampering ahead. The door was opening. The tall man who stood
+there, nodding a welcome to them, must be Mr. Crittenden.
+
+So that was the kind of man he was. Nothing special about him. Just a
+nice-looking American business-man, with a quiet, calm manner and a
+friendly face.
+
+To the conversation which followed and which, like all such
+conversations, amounted to nothing at all, Mr. Welles made no
+contribution. What was the use? Mr. Bayweather and Vincent were there.
+The conversation would not flag. So he had the usual good chance of the
+silent person to use his eyes. He looked mostly at Mr. Crittenden. Well,
+he wasn't so bad. They were usually nice enough men in personal
+relations, business men. This one had good eyes, very nice when he
+looked at the children or his wife. They were often good family men,
+too. There was something about him, however, that wasn't just like all
+others. What was it? Not clothes. His suit was cut off the same piece
+with forty million other American business-suits. Not looks, although
+there was an outdoor ruddiness of skin and clearness of eye that made
+him look a little like a sailor. Oh yes, Mr. Welles had it. It was his
+voice. Whenever he spoke, there was something . . . something _natural_
+about his voice, as though it didn't ever say things he didn't mean.
+
+Well, for Heaven's sake here was the old minister started off again on
+one of his historical spiels. Mr. Welles glanced cautiously at Vincent
+to see if he were in danger of blowing up, and found him looking
+unexpectedly thoughtful. He was evidently not paying the least attention
+to Mr. Bayweather's account of the eighteenth century quarrel between
+New Hampshire and Vermont. He was apparently thinking of something else,
+very hard.
+
+He himself leaned back in his chair, but half of one absent ear given to
+Mr. Bayweather's lecture, and enjoyed himself looking at Mrs.
+Crittenden. She was pretty, Mrs. Crittenden was. He hadn't been sure
+the first day, but now he had had a chance to get used to her face being
+so long and sort of pointed, and her eyes long too, and her black
+eyebrows running back almost into her hair, he liked every bit of her
+face. It looked so different from anybody else's. He noticed with an
+inward smile that she was fidgety under Mr. Bayweather's historical
+talk. _He_ was the only person with any patience in that whole bunch.
+But at what a price had he acquired it!
+
+By and by Mrs. Crittenden got up quietly and went out into the other
+office as if on an errand.
+
+Mr. Bayweather took advantage of her absence to tell them a lot about
+how much the Crittendens had done for the whole region and what a golden
+thing Mrs. Crittenden's music had been for everybody, and about an
+original conception of business which Mr. Crittenden seemed to have. Mr.
+Welles was not interested in music, but he was in business and he would
+have liked to hear a great deal more about this, but just at this point,
+as if to cut the clergyman off, in came Mr. Crttenden, very brisk and
+prompt, ready to take them around the mill.
+
+Vincent stood up. They all stood up. Mr. Welles noted that Vincent had
+quite come out of his brown study and was now all there. He was as he
+usually was, a wire charged with a very high-voltage current.
+
+They went out now, all of them together, but soon broke up into two
+groups. He stayed behind with Mr. Crittenden and pretended to look at
+the machinery of the saw-mill, which he found very boring indeed, as he
+hadn't the slightest comprehension of a single cog in it. But there was
+something there at which he really looked. It was the expression of Mr.
+Crittenden's face as he walked about, and it was the expression on the
+faces of the men as they looked at the boss.
+
+Mr. Welles, not being a talker, had had a great deal of opportunity to
+study the faces of others, and he had become rather a specialist in
+expressions. Part of his usefulness in the office had come from that.
+He had catalogued in his mind the different looks on human faces, and
+most of them connected with any form of business organization were
+infinitely familiar to him, from the way the casual itinerant temporary
+laborer looked at the boss of his gang, to the way the star salesman
+looked at the head of the house.
+
+But here was a new variety to him, these frank and familiar glances
+thrown in answer to the nodded greeting or short sentence of the boss as
+he walked about. They were not so much friendly (although they were that
+too), as they were familiar and open, as though nothing lay hidden
+behind the apparent expression. It was not often that Mr. Welles had
+encountered that, a look that seemed to hide nothing.
+
+He wondered if he could find out anything about this from Mr. Crittenden
+and put a question to him about his relations with his men. He tried to
+make it tactful and sensible-sounding, but as he said the words, he knew
+just how flat and parlor-reformerish they sounded; and it didn't
+surprise him a bit to have the business-man bristle up and snap his head
+off. It had sounded as though he didn't know a thing about business--he,
+the very marrow of whose bones was soaked in a bitter knowledge that the
+only thing that could keep it going was the fear of death in every man's
+heart, lest the others get ahead of him and trample him down.
+
+He decided that he wouldn't say another thing, just endure the temporary
+boredom of being trotted about to have things explained to him, which he
+hadn't any intention of trying to understand.
+
+But Mr. Crittenden did not try to explain. Perhaps he was bored himself,
+perhaps he guessed the visitor's ignorance. He just walked around from
+one part of the big, sunshiny shops to another, taking advantage of this
+opportunity to look things over for his own purposes. And everywhere he
+went, he gave and received back that curious, new look of openness.
+
+It was not noisy here as in the saw-mill, but very quiet and peaceful,
+the bee-like whirring of the belts on the pulleys the loudest continuous
+sound. It was clean, too. The hardwood floor was being swept clean of
+sawdust and shavings all the time, by a lame old man, who pottered
+tranquilly about, sweeping and cleaning and putting the trash in a big
+box on a truck. When he had it full, he beckoned to a burly lad, shoving
+a truck across the room, and called in a clear, natural, friendly voice,
+"Hey, Nat, come on over." The big lad came, whistling, pushed the box
+off full, and brought it back empty, still whistling airily.
+
+There were a good many work-people in sight. Mr. Welles made a guessing
+estimate that the business must keep about two hundred busy. And there
+was not one who looked harried by his work. The big, cluttered place
+heaped high with piles of curiously shaped pieces of wood, filled with
+oddly contrived saws and lathes and knives and buffers for sawing and
+turning and polishing and fitting those bits of wood, was brooded over
+as by something palpable by an emanation of order. Mr. Welles did not
+understand a detail of what he was looking at, but from the whole, his
+mind, experienced in business, took in a singularly fresh impression
+that everybody there knew what he was up to, in every sense of the word.
+
+He and Mr. Crittenden stood for a time looking at and chatting to a
+gray-haired man who was polishing smoothly planed oval bits of board. He
+stopped as they talked, ran his fingers over the satin-smoothed surface
+with evident pleasure, and remarked to his employer, "Mighty fine maple
+we're getting from the Warner lot. See the grain in that!"
+
+He held it up admiringly, turning it so that the light would show it at
+its best, and looked at it respectfully. "There's no wood like maple,"
+he said. Mr. Crittenden answered, "Yep. The Warner land is just right
+for slow-growing trees." He took it out of the workman's hand, looked it
+over more closely with an evident intelligent certainty of what to look
+for, and handed it back with a nod that signified his appreciation of
+the wood and of the workmanship which had brought it to that state.
+
+There had been about that tiny, casual human contact a quality which Mr.
+Welles did not recognize. His curiosity rose again. He wondered if he
+might not succeed in getting some explanation out of the manufacturer,
+if he went about it very tactfully. He would wait for his chance. He
+began to perceive with some surprise that he was on the point of quite
+liking Mrs. Crittenden's husband.
+
+So he tried another question, after a while, very cautiously, and was
+surprised to find Mr. Crittenden no longer snappish, but quite friendly.
+It occurred to him as the pleasantest possibility that he might find his
+liking for the other man returned. That _would_ be a new present hung on
+the Christmas tree of his life in Vermont.
+
+On the strength of this possibility, and banking on the friendliness in
+the other man's eyes, he drove straight at it, the phrase which the
+minister had used when he said that Mr. Crittenden thought of business
+as an ideal service to humanity as much as doctoring. That had sounded
+so ignorant and ministerial he hadn't even thought of it seriously, till
+after this contact with the man of whom it had been said. The best way
+with Crittenden was evidently the direct one. He had seen that in the
+first five minutes of observation of him. So he would simply tell him
+how bookish and impossible it had sounded, and see what he had to say.
+He'd probably laugh and say the minister had it all wrong, of course,
+regular minister's idea.
+
+And so presently they were off, on a real talk, beyond what he had hoped
+for, and Crittenden was telling him really what he had meant. He was
+saying in his firm, natural, easy voice, as though he saw nothing
+specially to be self-conscious about in it, "Why, of course I don't rank
+lumbering and wood-working with medicine. Wood isn't as vital to human
+life as quinine, or a knowledge of what to do in typhoid fever. But
+after all, wood is something that people have to have, isn't it?
+Somebody has to get it out and work it up into usable shape. If he can
+do this, get it out of the woods without spoiling the future of the
+forests, drying up the rivers and all that, and have it transformed into
+some finished product that people need in their lives, it's a sort of
+plain, everyday service, isn't it? And to do this work as economically
+as it can be managed, taking as low a price as you can get along with
+instead of screwing as high a price as possible out of the people who
+have to have it, what's the matter with that, as an interesting problem
+in ingenuity? I tell you, Mr. Welles, you ought to talk to my wife about
+this. It's as much her idea as mine. We worked it out together, little
+by little. It was when Elly was a baby. She was the second child, you
+know, and we began to feel grown-up. By that time I was pretty sure I
+could make a go of the business. And we first began to figure out what
+we were up to. Tried to see what sort of a go we wanted the business to
+have. We first began to make some sense out of what we were doing in
+life."
+
+Mr. Welles found himself overwhelmed by a reminiscent ache at this
+phrase and burst out, his words tinged with the bitterness he tried to
+keep out of his mind, "Isn't that an awful moment when you first try to
+make some sense out of what you are doing in life! But suppose you had
+gone on doing it, always, always, till you were an old man, and never
+succeeded! Suppose all you seemed to be accomplishing was to be able to
+hand over to the sons of the directors more money than was good for
+them? I tell you, Mr. Crittenden, I've often wished that once, just
+once, before I died I could be _sure_ that I had done anything that was
+of any use to anybody." He went on, nodding his head, "What struck me so
+about what Mr. Bayweather said is that I've often thought about doctors
+myself, and envied them. They take money for what they do, of course,
+but they miss lots of chances to make more, just so's to be of some use.
+I've often thought when they were running the prices up and up in our
+office just because they could, that a doctor would be put out of his
+profession in no time by public opinion, if he ever tried to screw the
+last cent out of everybody, the way business men do as a matter of
+course."
+
+Mr. Crittenden protested meditatively against this. "Oh, don't you think
+maybe there's a drift the other way among decent business people now?
+Why, when Marise and I were first trying to get it clear in our own
+heads, we kept it pretty dark, I tell you, that we weren't in it only
+for what money we could make, because we knew how loony we'd seem to
+anybody else. But don't you see any signs that lately maybe the same
+idea is striking lots of people in America?"
+
+"No, I do _not_!" said Mr. Welles emphatically. "With a profiteer on
+every corner!
+
+"But look-y-here, the howl about profiteers, isn't that something new?
+Isn't that a dumb sort of application to business of the doctor's
+standard of service? Twenty years ago, would anybody have thought of
+doing anything but uneasily admiring a grocer who made all the money he
+could out of his business? 'Why shouldn't he?' people would have thought
+then. Everybody else did. Twenty years ago, would anybody have dreamed
+of legally preventing a rich man from buying all the coal he wanted,
+whether there was enough for everybody, or not?"
+
+Mr. Welles considered this in unconvinced silence. Mr. Crittenden went
+on, "Why, sometimes it looks to me like the difference between what's
+legitimate in baseball and in tennis. Every ball-player will try to
+bluff the umpire that he's safe when he knows the baseman tagged him
+three feet from the bag; and public opinion upholds him in his bluff if
+he can get away with it. But like as not, the very same man who lies
+like a trooper on the diamond, if he went off that very afternoon to
+play tennis would never dream of announcing 'out' if his opponent's ball
+really had landed in the court,--not if it cost him the sett and
+match,--whether anybody was looking at him or not. It's 'the thing' to
+try to get anything you can put over in baseball, anything the umpire
+can't catch you at. And it's not 'the thing' in tennis. Most of the time
+you don't even have any umpire. That's it: that's not such a bad way to
+put it. My wife and I wanted to run our business on the tennis standard
+and not on the baseball one. Because I believe, ultimately you know, in
+fixing things,--everything,--national life as well, so that we'll need
+as few umpires as possible. Once get the tennis standard adopted . . ."
+
+Mr. Welles said mournfully, "Don't get started on politics. I'm too old
+to have any hopes of that!"
+
+"Right you are there," said Mr. Crittenden. "Economic organization is
+the word. That's one thing that keeps me so interested in my little
+economic laboratory here. Political parties are as prehistoric as the
+mastodon, if they only knew it."
+
+Mr. Welles said, "But the queer thing is that you make it work."
+
+"Oh, anybody with a head for business could make it work. You've got to
+know how to manage your machine before you can make it go, of course.
+But that's not saying you have to drive it somewhere you don't want to
+get to. I don't say that that workman back there who was making such a
+beautiful job of polishing that maple could make it go. He couldn't."
+
+Mr. Welles persisted. "But I've always thought, I've always _seen_ it,
+or thought I had . . . that life-and-death competition is the only
+stimulus that's strong enough to stir men up to the prodigious effort
+they have to put out to _make_ a go of their business, start the machine
+running. That, and the certainty of all they could get out of the
+consumer as a reward. You know it's held that there's a sort of mystic
+identity between all you can get out of the consumer and the exact
+amount of profit that'll just make the business go."
+
+Mr. Crittenden said comfortably, as though he were talking of something
+that did not alarm him, "Oh well, the best of the feudal seigneurs
+mournfully believed that a sharp sword and a long lance in their own
+hands were the strongholds of society. The wolf-pack idea of business
+will go the same way." He explained in answer to Mr. Welles' vagueness
+as to this term, "You know, the conception that if you're going to get
+hair brushes or rubber coats or mattresses or what-not enough for
+humanity manufactured, the only way is to have the group engaged in it
+form a wolf-pack, hunting down the public to extract from it as much
+money as possible. The salesmen and advertisers take care of this
+extracting. Then this money's to be fought for, by the people engaged in
+the process, as wolves fight over the carcass of the deer they have
+brought down together. This is the fight between the directors of labor
+and the working-men. It's ridiculous to hold that such a wasteful and
+incoherent system is the only one that will arouse men's energies enough
+to get them into action. It's absurd to think that business men . . .
+they're the flower of the nation, they're America's specialty, you know
+. . . can only find their opportunity for service to their fellow-men by
+such haphazard contracts with public service as helping raise money for
+a library or heading a movement for better housing of the poor, when
+they don't know anything about the housing of the poor, nor what it
+ought to be. Their opportunity for public service is right in their own
+legitimate businesses, and don't you forget it. Everybody's business is
+his best way to public service, and doing it that way, you'd put out of
+operation the professional uplifters who uplift as a business, and can't
+help being priggish and self-conscious about it. It makes me tired the
+way professional idealists don't see their big chance. They'll take all
+the money they can get from business for hospitals, and laboratories,
+and to investigate the sleeping sickness or the boll-weevil, but that
+business itself could rank with public libraries and hospitals as an
+ideal element in the life on the globe . . . they can't open their minds
+wide enough to take in that."
+
+Mr. Welles had been following this with an almost painful interest and
+surprise. He found it very agitating, very upsetting. Suppose there had
+been something there, all the time. He must try to think it out more.
+Perhaps it was not true. But here sat a man who had made it work. Why
+hadn't he thought of it in time? Now it was too late. Too late for him
+to do anything. Anything? The voice of the man beside him grew dim to
+him, as, uneasy and uncertain, his spirits sank lower and lower. Suppose
+all the time there had been a way out besides beating the retreat to the
+women, the children, and the gardens? Only now it was too late! What was
+the use of thinking of it all?
+
+For a moment he forgot where he was. It seemed to him that there was
+something waiting for him to think of it . . .
+
+But oddly enough, all that presented itself to him, when he tried to
+look, was the story that had nothing to do with anything, which his
+cousin had told him in a recent letter, of the fiery sensitive young
+Negro doctor, who had worked his way through medical school, and
+hospital-training, gone South to practise, and how he had been treated
+by the white people in the town where he had settled. He wondered if she
+hadn't exaggerated all that. But she gave such definite details. Perhaps
+Mr. Crittenden knew something about that problem. Perhaps he had an idea
+about that, too, that might be of help. He would ask him.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IN AUNT HETTY'S GARDEN
+
+I
+
+
+June 10.
+
+Marise bent to kiss the soft withered cheek. "Elly is a _real_
+Vermonter, but I'm not. She can get along with just 'Hello, Aunt Hetty,'
+but that's not enough for me," she said tenderly to the old woman; "I
+have to kiss you."
+
+"Oh, you can do as you like, for all of me," answered the other with an
+unsparing indifference.
+
+Marise laughed at the quality of this, taking the shaky old hand in hers
+with a certainty of affection returned. She went on, "This is a regular
+descent on you, Cousin Hetty. I've come to show you off, you and the
+house and the garden. This is Mr. Welles who has settled next door to
+us, you know, and this is Mr. Marsh who is visiting him for a time. And
+here are the children, and Eugenia Mills came up from the city
+last night and will be here perhaps, if she gets up energy after
+her afternoon nap, and Neale is coming over from the mill after
+closing hours, and we've brought along a basket supper and, if
+you'll let us, we're going to eat it out in your garden, under
+Great-great-grandmother's willow-tree."
+
+Cousin Hetty nodded dry, though not uncordial greetings to the strangers
+and said crisply, "You're welcome enough to sit around anywhere you can
+find, and eat your lunch here, but where you're going to find anything
+to show off, beats me."
+
+"Mr. Welles is interested in gardens and wants to look at yours."
+
+"Not much to look at," said the old lady uncompromisingly.
+
+"I don't want to look at a _garden_!" clamored little Mark, outraged at
+the idea. "I want to be let go up to Aunt Hetty's yattic where the sword
+and 'pinning-wheel are."
+
+"Would all you children like that best?" asked Marise.
+
+Their old kinswoman answered for them, "You'd better believe they would.
+You always did yourself. Run along, now, children, and don't fall on the
+attic stairs and hurt yourselves on the wool-hetchels."
+
+The fox-terrier, who had hung in an anguish of uncertainty and hope and
+fear on the incomprehensible words passing between little Mark and the
+grown-ups, perceiving now that the children ran clattering towards the
+stairs, took a few agitated steps after them, and ran back to Marise,
+shivering, begging with his eyes, in a wriggling terror lest he be
+forbidden to follow them into the fun. Marise motioned him along up the
+stairs, saying with a laughing, indulgent, amused accent, "Yes, yes,
+poor Medor, you can go along with the children if you want to."
+
+The steel sinews of the dog's legs stretched taut on the instant, in a
+great bound of relief. He whirled with a ludicrous and undignified
+haste, slipping, his toe-nails clicking on the bare floor, tore across
+the room and dashed up the stairs, drunk with joy.
+
+"If strong emotions are what one wants out of life," commented Marise
+lightly, to Marsh, "one ought to be born a nervous little dog, given
+over to the whimsical tyranny of humans."
+
+"There are other ways of coming by strong emotions," answered Marsh, not
+lightly at all.
+
+"What in the world are wool-hetchels?" asked Mr. Welles as the grown-ups
+went along the hall towards the side-door.
+
+"Why, when I was a girl, and we spun our own wool yarn . . ." began Cousin
+Hetty, trotting beside him and turning her old face up to his.
+
+Marsh stopped short in the hall-way with a challenging abruptness that
+brought Marise to a standstill also. The older people went on down the
+long dusky hail to the door and out into the garden, not noticing that
+the other two had stopped. The door swung shut behind them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise felt the man's dark eyes on her, searching, determined. They were
+far from those first days, she thought, when he had tacitly agreed not
+to look at her like that, very far from those first days of delicacy and
+lightness of touch.
+
+With a determination as firm as his own, she made her face and eyes
+opaque, and said on a resolutely gay note, "What's the matter? Can't you
+stand any more information about early times in Vermont? You must have
+been having too heavy a dose of Mr. Bayweather. But _I_ like it, you
+know. I find it awfully interesting to know so in detail about any past
+period of human life; as much so . . . why not? . . . as researches into
+which provinces of France used half-timber houses, and how late?"
+
+"You like a great many things!" he said impatiently.
+
+"We must get out into the garden with the others, or Cousin Hetty will
+be telling her old-time stories before we arrive," she answered, moving
+towards the door.
+
+She felt her pulse knocking loud and swift. Strange how a casual
+interchange of words with him would excite and agitate her. But it had
+been more than that. Everything _was_, with him.
+
+He gave the sidewise toss of his head, which had come to be so familiar
+to her, as though he were tossing a lock of hair from his forehead, but
+he said nothing more, following her down the long hall in silence.
+
+It was as though she had physically felt the steel of his blade slide
+gratingly once more down from her parry. Her mental attitude had been so
+entirely that of a fencer, on the alert, watchfully defensive against
+the quick-flashing attack of the opponent, that she had an instant's
+absurd fear of letting him walk behind her, as though she might feel a
+thrust in the back. "How ridiculous of me!" she told herself with an
+inward laugh of genuine amusement. "Women are as bad as fox-terriers
+for inventing exciting occasions out of nothing at all."
+
+Then in a gust of deep anger, instantly come, instantly gone, "Why do I
+tolerate this for a moment? I was perfectly all right before. Why don't
+I simply send him about his business, as I would any other bold
+meddler?"
+
+But after this, with an abrupt shift to another plane, "That would be
+acting preposterously, like a silly, self-consciously virtuous matron.
+What earthly difference does it make to me what a casual visitor to our
+town says or does to amuse himself in his casual stay, that may end at
+any moment? And how scarifyingly he would laugh at me, if he knew what
+comic relics of old prudish reflexes are stirred up by the contact with
+his mere human livingness. Heavens! How he would laugh to know me
+capable of being so 'guindee,' so personal, fearing like any school-girl
+a flirtation in any man's conversation. He must never see a trace of
+that. No matter how startled I ever am, he mustn't see anything but a
+smooth, amused surface. It would be intolerable to have him laugh at
+me."
+
+Her hand was on the latch, when a deep, muffled murmur from the depths
+admonished her, "Personal vanity . . . that's what's at the bottom of all
+that you are telling yourself. It is a vain woman speaking, and fearing
+a wound to her vanity."
+
+She resented this, pushed it back, and clicked the latch up firmly,
+stepping out into the transparent gold of the late-afternoon sunshine.
+She turned her head as her companion came up behind her on the garden
+path, half expecting to have his eyes meet hers with a visible shade of
+sardonic mockery, and prepared to meet it halfway with a similar
+amusement at the absurdity of human beings, herself included.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was not looking at her at all, but straight before him, unconscious
+for an instant that she had turned her eyes on him, and in this instant
+before the customary mask of self-consciousness dropped over his face,
+she read there, plain and startling to see, unmistakable to her grown
+woman's experience of life, the marks of a deep, and painful, and
+present emotion.
+
+All of her hair-splitting speculations withered to nothing. She did not
+even wonder what it was that moved him so strangely and dreadfully.
+There was no room for thought in the profound awed impersonal sympathy
+which with a great hush came upon her at the sight of another human
+being in pain.
+
+He felt some intimate emanation from her, turned towards her, and for
+the faintest fraction of time they looked at each other through a rent
+in the veil of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cousin Hetty's old voice called them cheerfully, "Over here, this way
+under the willow-tree."
+
+They turned in that direction, to hear her saying, ". . . that was in 1763
+and of course they came on horseback, using the Indian trails the men
+had learned during the French-and-Indian wars. Great-grandmother (she
+was a twelve-year-old girl then) had brought along a willow switch from
+their home in Connecticut. When the whole lot of them decided to settle
+here in the valley, and her folks took this land to be theirs, she stuck
+her willow switch into the ground, alongside the brook here, and this is
+the tree it grew to be. Looks pretty battered up, don't it, like other
+old folks."
+
+Mr. Welles tipped his pale, quiet face back to look up at the great
+tree, stretching its huge, stiff old limbs mutilated by time and
+weather, across the tiny, crystal brook dimpling and smiling and
+murmuring among its many-colored pebbles. "Queer, isn't it," he
+speculated, "how old the tree has grown, and how the brook has stayed
+just as young as ever."
+
+"It's the other way around between 'Gene Powers' house and his
+pine-tree," commented Aunt Hetty. "The pine-tree gets bigger and finer
+and stronger all the time, seems 'sthough, and the house gets more
+battered and feeble-looking."
+
+Marise looked across at Marsh and found his eyes on her with an
+expression she rarely saw in them, almost a peaceful look, as of a man
+who has had something infinitely satisfying fall to his lot. He smiled
+at her gently, a good, quiet smile, and looked away into the extravagant
+splendor of a row of peonies.
+
+Marise felt an inexplicable happiness, clear and sunny like the light in
+the old garden. She sat down on the bench and fell into a more relaxed
+and restful pose than she had known for some time. What a sweet and
+gracious thing life could be after all! Could there be a lovelier place
+on earth than here among Cousin Hetty's flower-children. Dear old Cousin
+Hetty, with her wrinkled, stiff exterior, and those bright living eyes
+of hers. She was the willow-tree outside and the brook inside, that's
+what she was. What tender childhood recollections were bound up with the
+sight of that quiet old face.
+
+"And those rose-bushes," continued the old woman, "are all cuttings my
+great-great-grandmother brought up from Connecticut, and _they_ came
+from cuttings our folks brought over from England, in 1634. If 'twas a
+little later in the season, and they were in bloom, you'd see how
+they're not nearly so I double as most roses. The petals are bigger and
+not so curled up, more like wild roses."
+
+She sat down beside the others on the long wooden bench, and added, "I
+never dig around one of those bushes, nor cut a rose to put in a vase,
+without I feel as though Great-great-grandmother and Grandmother and all
+the rest were in me, still alive."
+
+"Don't you think," asked Marise of the two men, "that there is something
+awfully sweet about feeling yourself a part of the past generations,
+like that? As we do here. To have such a familiarity with any corner of
+the earth . . . well, it seems to me like music, the more familiar it is,
+the dearer and closer it is . . . and when there are several generations
+of familiarity back of you. . . . I always feel as though my life were a
+part of something much bigger than just _my_ life, when I feel it a
+continuation of their lives, as much as of my own childhood. It always
+seems deep and quieting to me."
+
+Mr. Welles assented wistfully, "It makes me envious."
+
+Marsh shook his head, sending up a meditative puff of smoke. "If you
+want to know how it really strikes me, I'll have to say it sounds plain
+sleepy to me. Deep and quieting all right, sure enough. But so's opium.
+And in my experience, most things just get duller and duller, the more
+familiar they are. I don't begin to have time in my life for the living
+I want to do, my own self! I can't let my grandmothers and grandfathers
+come shoving in for another whirl at it. They've had their turn. And my
+turn isn't a minute too long for me. Your notion looks to me . . . lots of
+old accepted notions look like that to me . . . like a good big dose of
+soothing syrup to get people safely past the time in their existences
+when they might do some sure-enough personal living on their own hook."
+He paused and added in a meditative murmur, "That time is so damn short
+as it is!"
+
+He turned hastily to the old lady with an apology. "Why, I _beg_ your
+pardon! I didn't realize I had gone on talking aloud. I was just
+thinking along to myself. You see, your soothing syrup is working on me,
+the garden, the sun, the stillness, all the grandmothers and
+grandfathers sitting around. I am almost half asleep."
+
+"I'm an old maid, I know," said Cousin Hetty piquantly. "But I'm not a
+proper Massachusetts old maid. I'm Vermont, and a swear-word or two
+don't scare me. I was brought up on first-hand stories of Ethan Allen's
+talk, and . . ."
+
+Marise broke in hastily, in mock alarm, "Now, Cousin Hetty, don't you
+start in on the story of Ethan Allen and the cowshed that was too short.
+I won't have our city visitors scandalized by our lack of . . ."
+
+Cousin Hetty's laughter cut her short, as merry and young a sound as the
+voice of the brook. "I hadn't thought of that story in years!" she said.
+She and Marise laughed together, looking at each other. But they said
+nothing else.
+
+"Aren't you going to _tell_ us?" asked Mr. Welles with a genuine
+aggrieved surprise which tickled Cousin Hetty into more laughter.
+
+"I shall not rest day or night, till I have found someone who knows that
+story," said Marsh, adding, "Old Mrs. Powers must know it. And _she_
+will love to tell it to me. It is evidently the sort of story which is
+her great specialty."
+
+They all laughed, foolishly, light-heartedly.
+
+Marise consciously delighted in the laughter, in the silly, light tone
+of their talk, in the feeling of confidence and security which bathed
+her as warmly as the new wine of the spring sunshine. She thought
+passingly, swiftly, with her habitual, satiric wonder at her own
+fancifulness, of her earlier notions about steel blades and passes and
+parries, and being afraid to walk down the hall with her "opponent" back
+of her.
+
+Her opponent, this potent, significant personality, lounging on the
+bench beside her, resting in the interval of a life the intensity of
+which was out of her world altogether, the life, all power, of a modern
+rich man in great affairs; controlling vast forces, swaying and shaping
+the lives of thousands of weaker men as no potentate had ever done,
+living in the instants he allowed himself for personal life (she felt
+again the pang of her sympathy for his look of fierce, inexplicable
+pain) with a concentration in harmony with the great scale of his other
+activities. It was, just as the cheap novels called it, a sort, a bad,
+inhuman, colorful, fascinating sort of modern version of the superman's
+life, she reflected. She had been ridiculous to project her village
+insignificance into that large-scale landscape.
+
+A distant whistle blew a long, full note, filling the valley with its
+vibrations.
+
+"Is that a train, at this hour?" murmured Mr. Welles. His voice was sunk
+to a somnolent monotone, his hands folded over his waistcoat moved
+slowly and rhythmically with his breathing. It was evident that he did
+not in the least care whether it was a train or not.
+
+"Oh _no!_" said Marise, severely, disapproving the vagueness and
+inaccuracy of his observation. "That's the mill-whistle, blowing the
+closing-hour. You're no true Ashleyan, not to have learned the
+difference between the voices of the different whistles of the day."
+
+She turned to Marsh, tilting her wings for a capricious flight. "I think
+it's part of the stubborn stiff-jointedness of human imagination, don't
+you, that we don't hear the beauty of those great steam-whistles. I
+wonder if it's not unconscious art that gave to our mighty machines such
+voices of qower."
+
+"Isn't it perhaps ostentatious to call the family saw-mill a 'mighty
+machine'?" inquired Marsh mildly. He sat at the end of the bench, his
+arm along the back behind Mr. Welles, his head turned to the side, his
+soft hat pulled low over his forehead, looking at the garden and at
+Marise out of half-shut, sleepy eyes.
+
+Marise went on, drawing breath for a longer flight. "When the train
+comes sweeping up the valley, trailing its great beautiful banner of
+smoke, I feel as though it were the crescendo announcing something, and
+at the crossing, when that noble rounded note blares out . . . why, it's
+the music for the setting. Nothing else could cope with the depth of the
+valley, the highness and blackness of its mountain walls, and the
+steepness of the Eagle Rocks."
+
+"I call that going some, 'noble rounded note'!" murmured Marsh, lifting
+his eyebrows with a visible effort and letting his eyes fall half shut,
+against the brilliance of the sunshine.
+
+Marise laughed, and persisted. "Just because its called a
+steam-whistle, we won't hear its beauty and grandeur, till something
+else has been invented to take its place, and then we'll look back
+sentimentally and regret it."
+
+"Maybe _you_ will," conceded Marsh.
+
+The two elder looked on, idly amused at this give-and-take.
+
+"And I don't suppose," continued Marise, "to take another instance of
+modern lack of imagination, that you have ever noticed, as an element of
+picturesque power in modern life, the splendid puissance of the traffic
+cop's presence in a city street."
+
+They all had a protesting laugh at this, startled for an instant from
+their dreaminess.
+
+"Yes, and if I could think of more grandiloquent words to express him,
+I'd use them," said Marise defiantly, launching out into yet more
+outrageous flights of rhetoric. "I could stand for hours on a street
+corner, admiring the completeness with which he is transfigured out of
+the human limitations of his mere personality, how he feels, flaming
+through his every vein and artery, the invincible power of THE LAW,
+freely set over themselves by all those turbulent, unruly human beings,
+surging around him in their fiery speed-genii. He raises his arm. It is
+not a human arm, it is the decree of the entire race. And as far as it
+can be seen, all those wilful fierce creatures bow themselves to it. The
+current boils past him in one direction. He lets it go till he thinks
+fit to stop it. He sounds his whistle, and raises his arm again in that
+inimitable gesture of omnipotence. And again they bow themselves. Now
+that the priest before the altar no longer sways humanity as he did, is
+there anywhere else, any other such visible embodiment of might,
+majesty, and power as . . ."
+
+"Gracious me, Marise!" warned her old cousin. "I know you're only
+running on with your foolishness, but I think you're going pretty far
+when you mix a policeman up with priests and altars and things. I don't
+believe Mr. Bayweather would like that very well."
+
+"He wouldn't mind," demurred Marise. "He'd think it an interesting
+historical parallel."
+
+"Mrs. Bayweather would have a thing or two to say."
+
+"Right you are. _Mrs._ Bayweather would certainly say something!" agreed
+Marise.
+
+She stood up. "I'm hypnotized into perfect good-for-nothingness like the
+rest of you by the loveliness of the afternoon and the niceness of
+everybody. Here it is almost eating-time and I haven't even opened the
+baskets. No, don't you move," she commanded the others, beginning to
+stir from their nirvana to make dutiful offers of help. "I'll call the
+children. And Neale will be here in a moment."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went back to the house, down the long walk, under the grape-arbor,
+still only faintly shaded with sprigs of pale green. She was calling,
+"Children! _Children!_ Come and help with the supper."
+
+She vanished into the house. There was a moment or two of intense quiet,
+in which the almost horizontal rays of the setting sun poured a flood of
+palpable gold on the three motionless figures in the garden.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then she emerged again, her husband beside her, carrying the largest of
+the baskets, the children struggling with other baskets, a pail, an
+ice-cream-freezer, while the dog wove circles about them, wrought to
+exaltation by the complicated smell of the eatables.
+
+"Neale was just coming in the front gate," she explained, as he nodded
+familiarly to the men and bent to kiss the old woman's cheek. "Cousin
+Hetty, just _look_ at Elly in that night-cap of Great-aunt Pauline's.
+Doesn't she look the image of that old daguerreotype of Grandmother? See
+here, Mark, who said you could trail that sword out here? That belongs
+in the attic."
+
+"Oh, let him, let him," said Cousin Hetty peaceably.
+
+"There's nothing much less breakable than a sword. He can't hurt it."
+
+"I've woren it lots of times before," said Mark. "Aunt Hetty always let
+me to. Favver, won't you 'trap it tight to me, so's I won't 'traddle it
+so much."
+
+"Mother," said Elly, coming up close to Marise, as she stood unpacking
+the dishes, "I was looking inside that old diary, the one in the red
+leather cover, your grandmother's, I guess, the diary she wrote when she
+was a young lady. And she was having a perfectly dreadful time whether
+she could believe the Doctrine of the Trinity. She seemed to feel so bad
+about it. She wrote how she couldn't sleep nights, and cried, and
+everything. It was the Holy Ghost she couldn't make any sense out of.
+Mother, what in the world _is_ the Doctrine of the Trinity?
+
+"For mercy's sakes!" cried Cousin Hetty. "I never saw such a family!
+Elly, what won't you be up to, next? I can't call that a proper thing
+for a little girl to talk about, right out, so."
+
+"Mother, _you_ tell me," said Elly, looking up into her mother's face
+with the expression of tranquil trust which was like a visible radiance.
+Marise always felt scared, she told herself, when Elly looked at her
+like that. She made a little helpless shrugged gesture of surrender with
+her shoulders, setting down on the table a plate of cold sliced lamb.
+"Elly, darling, I can't stop just this minute to tell you about it, and
+anyhow I don't understand any more about it than Grandmother did. But I
+don't care if I don't. The first quiet minute we have together, I'll
+tell you enough so you can understand why _she_ cared."
+
+"All right, when I go to bed tonight I'll remind you to," Elly made the
+engagement definite. She added, with a shout, "Oh, Mother, _chicken_
+sandwiches! Oh, I didn't know we were going to have _chicken_
+sandwiches. Mother, can't we begin now? I'm awfully hungry."
+
+"Hello," said Neale, looking back toward the house. "Here comes Eugenia,
+arisen from her nap. Paul, run back into the house and bring out another
+chair. Marise, have you explained who Eugenia is?"
+
+"Oh la, la, no!" exclaimed Marise. "I forgot they didn't know her.
+Quick, you do it, Neale."
+
+"Old friend of my wife's, sort of half-cousin several-times removed,
+schoolmates in France together, the kind of old family friend who comes
+and goes in the house at will," said Neale rapidly. "Cultivated,
+artistic, and so on."
+
+"Oh, _Neale_, how slightingly you put it!" cried Marise under her
+breath. "She's made herself into one of the rarest and most finished
+creations!"
+
+Neale went on rapidly, in a low tone as the newcomer stepped slowly down
+the path, "She toils not, neither does she spin . . . doesn't have to.
+Highbrow, very, and yet stylish, very! Most unusual combination." He
+added as final information, "Spinster, by conviction," as he stepped
+forward to greet her.
+
+The other two men stood up to be presented to the newcomer, who, making
+everything to Marise's eyes seem rough and countrified, advanced towards
+them, self-possessed, and indifferent to all those eyes turned on her.
+In her gleaming, supple dress of satin-like ivory jersey, she looked
+some tiny, finished, jewel-object, infinitely breakable, at which one
+ought only to look if it were safely behind glass.
+
+"There is someone of Marsh's own world, the 'great world' he speaks of,"
+thought Marise. She was not aware of any wistfulness in her recognition
+of this fact, but she was moved to stand closer to her husband, and once
+as she moved about, setting the table, to lay her fingers for an instant
+on his hand.
+
+"We're going to have ice-cream, Eugenia," announced Paul, leaning on the
+arm of her chair after she and all the others were seated again.
+
+"That's good news," she said equably. She laid a small, beautiful hand
+on the child's shoulder, and with a smooth, imperceptible movement, set
+him a little further from her. Paul did not observe this manoeuver, but
+his mother did, with an inward smile. "Paul, don't hang on Eugenia like
+that," she called to him.
+
+"But she smells so sweet!" protested the little boy.
+
+Mr. Welles held out a sympathizing hand and drew the child to him. He
+too had seen that gesture.
+
+"Come here, all you little folks," ordered Marise, now seriously
+beginning to serve the meal, "and start waiting on the table."
+
+"Cold lamb!" cried Cousin Hetty with enthusiasm. "I'm so glad. Agnes
+won't touch mutton or lamb. She says they taste so like a sheep. And so
+we don't often have it."
+
+"Paul, can you be trusted to pour the hot chocolate?" asked his mother.
+"No, Neale, don't get up. I want to see if the children can't do it
+all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From where she sat at the foot of the table, she directed the
+operations. The children stepped about, serious, responsible, their rosy
+faces translucent in the long, searching, level rays sent up by the sun,
+low in The Notch. Dishes clicked lightly, knives and forks jingled, cups
+were set back with little clinking noises on saucers. All these indoor
+sounds were oddly diminished and unresonant under the open sky, just as
+the chatting, laughing flow of the voices, even though it rose at times
+to bursts of mirth which the children's shouts made noisy, never drowned
+out the sweet, secret talk of the brook to itself.
+
+Marise was aware of all this, richly and happily aware of the
+complexities of an impression whose total seemed to her, for the moment,
+felicity itself. It pleased her, all, every bit of it, pleased and
+amused her; the dear children, Paul worshiping at the shrine of
+Eugenia's elegancies, Mark the absurd darling with that grotesque sword
+between his legs, Elly devouring her favorite sandwich with impassioned
+satisfaction and wondering about the Holy Ghost; Cousin Hetty, ageless,
+pungent, and savory as one of her herbs; Mr. Welles, the old tired
+darling come into his haven, loving Paul as he would his own grandson;
+Eugenia orchid-like against their apple-blossom rusticity; Marsh . . . how
+tremendously more _simpatico_ he had seemed this afternoon than ever
+before, as though one might really like him, and not just find him
+exciting and interesting; Neale, dear Neale with his calm eyes into
+which it did everyone good to look. All of them at ease, friendly,
+enjoying food, the visible world, and each other. Where, after all, were
+those traditional, troubling, insoluble intricacies of human
+relationships which had been tormenting her and darkening her sky? It
+was all so good and simple if one could only remain good and simple
+oneself. There was no lightning to fear in that lucent sunset air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently, as the talk turned on flowers and the dates of their
+blooming, Eugenia said to her casually, "Marisette, here we are the
+first of June and past, and the roses here are less advanced than they
+were at Tivoli the last of March. Do you remember the day when a lot of
+us sat outdoors and ate a picnic dinner, just as we do now? It was the
+day we climbed Monte Cavo."
+
+Marise explained, "Miss Mills is a friend who dates back even before my
+husband's time, back to our student days in Rome." To Eugenia she said,
+"You're giving us both away and showing how long ago it is, and how
+you've forgotten about details. We never could have climbed up Monte
+Cavo, the day we went to Tivoli. They don't go on the same excursion, at
+all."
+
+"That's true," agreed Eugenia indifferently, "you're right. Monte Cavo
+goes with the Rocca di Papa expedition."
+
+Before she could imagine a possible reason, Marise felt her hands go
+cold and moist. The sky seemed to darken and lower above her. Eugenia
+went on, "And I never went to Rocca di Papa with you, at all, I'm sure
+of that. That was a trip you took after you had dropped me for Neale. In
+fact, it was on that very expedition that you got formally engaged,
+don't you remember? You and Neale walked over from Monte Cavo and only
+just caught the last car down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ridiculous! Preposterous! Marise told herself that it was not possible
+that her hands were trembling so. It was merely a physical reaction,
+such as one had when startled by some trivial sudden event. But she
+couldn't make them stop trembling. She couldn't make them stop.
+
+What nonsense to be so agitated. Nobody could remember the name from
+that evening, weeks and weeks ago. And what if they did? What could they
+make of it?
+
+It seemed to her that dusk had fallen in the garden. Where was that
+lucent sunset air?
+
+She heard Eugenia's voice going on, and Neale chiming in with a laugh,
+and did not understand what they said. Surely everybody must have
+forgotten.
+
+She hazarded a quick glance at Mr. Welles' face and drew a long breath
+of relief. He had forgotten, that was evident. She looked beyond him to
+Marsh. He too would certainly have forgotten.
+
+He was waiting for her eyes. And when they met his, she felt the
+lightning flash. He had not forgotten.
+
+
+II
+
+Marsh suddenly found it unbearable. He wasn't used to keeping the curb
+on himself like this, and he hadn't the least intention of learning how
+to do it. A fierce, physical irritability overcame him, and he stopped
+short in the hall, just because he could not stand the silly chatter
+that was always flowing from these silly people about their foolish
+affairs. If they only knew what he was leaving unsaid!
+
+He had not meant to make Marise halt, too, his movement having been a
+mere unconsidered reflex, but of course she did stop, apparently
+surprised by the brusqueness of his action, and faced him there in the
+dusky hall-way. She was so close to him that he could see every detail
+of her face and person, just as he could at night when he closed his
+eyes; so close that for an instant he felt her breath on his face. He
+ground his teeth, minded, that instant, to throw down the trumpery
+little wall of convention. It couldn't stand, he knew with an
+experienced certainty of his own power that it couldn't stand for an
+instant against him. The day he chose to put his shoulder to it, down it
+would go in a heap of rubble.
+
+But the wall was not all. Usually it was all. But with this woman it was
+nothing, a mere accident. Beyond it she stood, valid, and looked at him
+out of those long eyes of hers. _What was in her mind?_ She looked at
+him now, quietly, just as usual, made some light casual remark, and
+effortlessly, as though she had some malign and invincible charm, she
+had passed from out his power again, and was walking with that straight,
+sure tread of hers, down to the door.
+
+If he could have done it, he would have struck at her from behind.
+
+He could get no hold on her, could not take the first step. All during
+those weeks and weeks, he had thrown out his net, and had caught enough
+facts, Lord knows. But had he any certainty that he had put them
+together right? He had not yet caught in her any one tone or look or
+phrase that would give him the unmistakable clue. He had set down words
+and words and words that would tell him what her life really was, if he
+only knew the alphabet of her language. He might be making a fool of
+himself with his almost certainty that she was conscious of having
+outgrown, like a splendid tropical tree, the wretched little
+kitchen-garden where fate had transplanted her. When he could stamp down
+his heat of feeling and let his intelligence have a moment's play, he
+was perfectly capable of seeing that he might be misinterpreting
+everything he had observed. For instance, that evening over the
+photograph-album with her betrayal of some strong feeling of distaste
+for the place near Rome. It was evident, from her tone, her look, her
+gesture, that the name of it brought up some acutely distasteful memory
+to her, but that could mean anything, or nothing. It might be merely
+some sordid accident, as that a drunken workman had said something
+brutal to her there. Women of her sort, he knew, never forgot those
+things. Or any one of a thousand such incidents. He would never know the
+significance of that gesture of shrinking of hers.
+
+As he walked behind her, he looked hard at her back, with its
+undulating, vase-like beauty, so close to him; and felt her immeasurably
+distant. She opened the door now and went out into the sunlight,
+stepping a little to one side as though to make room for him to come up
+beside her. He found that he knew every turn of her head, every poise of
+her shoulders and action of her hands, the whole rhythm of her body, as
+though they were his own. And there she passed from him, far and remote.
+
+A sudden certainty of fore-ordained defeat came over him, as he had
+never known before. He was amazed at the violence of his pain,
+intolerable, intolerable!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She turned her head quickly and caught his eyes in this instant of
+inexplicable suffering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What miraculous thing happened then? It seemed to him that her face
+wavered in golden rays, from the radiance of her eyes. For she did not
+withdraw her gaze. She looked at him with an instant, profound sympathy
+and pity, no longer herself, transfigured, divine by the depth of her
+humanity.
+
+The sore bitterness went out from his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A voice called. She turned away. He felt himself following her. He
+looked about him, light-headed with relief from pain. The quiet,
+flowering world shimmered rainbow-like. What a strange power one human
+being could have with another that a look could be an event!
+
+He walked more slowly, feeling with a curious pleasure the insatiable
+desire for possession ebbing from him. Why not let it ebb entirely? Why
+not enjoy the ineffable sweetness of what he could have? That was what
+would please her, what she would like, what she would give, freely. In
+this moment of hush, he quite saw how it would be possible, although he
+had never for a moment before in his life believed it. Yes, possible and
+lovely. After all, he must stop sometime, and take the slower pace. Why
+not now, when there was a certain and great prize to be won . . . ?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+People talked around him. He talked and did not know his own words.
+Marise spun those sparkling webs of nonsense of hers, and made him
+laugh, but the next moment he could not have told what she had said. He
+must somehow have been very tired to take such intense pleasure in being
+at rest.
+
+Her husband came, that rough and energetic husband. The children came,
+the children whose restless, selfish, noisy preying on their mother
+usually annoyed him so, and still the charm was not broken. Marise, as
+she always did when her husband and children were there, retreated into
+a remote plane of futile busyness with details that servants should have
+cared for; answering the children's silly questions, belonging to
+everyone, her personal existence blotted out. But this time he felt
+still, deep within him, the penetrating sweetness of her eyes as she had
+looked at him.
+
+A tiresome, sophisticated friend of Marise's came, too, somehow
+intruding another personality into the circle, already too full, and yet
+he was but vaguely irritated by her. She only brought out by contrast
+the thrilling quality of Marise's golden presence. He basked in that, as
+in the sunshine, and thought of nothing else.
+
+Possibilities he had never dreamed of, stretched before him,
+possibilities of almost impersonal and yet desirable existence. Perhaps
+this was the turning-point of his life. He supposed there really was
+one, sometime, for everybody.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+". . . Rocca di Papa . . ." someone had said. Or had he dreamed it? He
+awoke with an inward bound, like a man springing up from sleep at a
+sudden noise. His first look was for Marise. She was pale. He had not
+dreamed it.
+
+The voice went on . . . the newcomer's, the one they called Eugenia . . .
+yes, she had known them in Italy. Marise had just said they had been
+friends before her marriage.
+
+The voice went on. How he listened as though crouched before the keyhole
+of a door! Only three or four sentences, quite casual and trivial in
+content, pronounced in that self-consciously cosmopolitan accent. Then
+the voice stopped.
+
+It had said enough for him. Now he knew. Now he had that clue.
+
+He had the sensation of rising to his full height, exultantly, every
+faculty as alert as though he had never been drugged to sleep by those
+weak notions of renunciation. The consciousness of power was like a
+sweet taste in his mouth. The deep, fundamental, inalienable need for
+possession stretched itself, titanic and mighty, refreshed, reposed, and
+strengthened by the involuntary rest it had had.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He fixed his eyes on Marise, waiting for the first interchange of a
+look. He could see that her hands were trembling; and smiled to himself.
+She was looking at the old man.
+
+Now, in a moment she would look at him.
+
+There were her eyes. She had looked at him. Thunder rolled in his ears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HEARD FROM THE STUDY
+
+
+June 20.
+
+From his desk in the inner room where he finally buckled down to those
+estimates about the popple-wood casters, Neale could follow, more or
+less closely, as his attention varied, the evening activities of the
+household.
+
+First there had been the clinking and laughter from the dining-room and
+kitchen where Marise and the children cleared off the table and washed
+the dishes. How sweet their voices sounded, all light and gay! Every
+occasion for being with their mother was fun for the kids. How happy
+Marise made them! And how they throve in that happiness like little
+plants in the sunshine!
+
+When you really looked at what went on about you, how funny and silly
+lots of traditional ideas did seem. That notion, solemnly accepted by
+the would-be sophisticated moderns, for instance, that a woman of beauty
+and intelligence was being wasted unless she was engaged in being the
+"emotional inspiration" of some man's life: which meant in plain
+English, stimulating his sexual desire to that fever-heat which they
+called impassioned living. As if there were not a thousand other forms
+of deep fulfilment in life. People who thought that, how narrow and
+cramped they seemed, and blinded to the bigness and variety of life! But
+then, of course, everybody hadn't had under his eyes a creature
+genuinely rich and various, like Marise, and hadn't seen how all
+children feasted on her charm like bees on honey, and how old people
+adored her, and how, just by being herself, she enriched and civilized
+every life that touched her, and made every place she lived in a home
+for the human spirit. And Heaven knew she was, with all that, the real
+emotional inspiration of a man's life, a man who loved her a thousand
+times more than in his ignorant and passionate youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Come, this wasn't work. He might as well have stayed out with the family
+and helped with the dishes. This was being like Eugenia Mills, who
+always somehow had something to do upstairs when there was any work to
+do downstairs. Eugenia was a woman who somehow managed to stand from
+under life, anyhow, had been the most successful draft-dodger he knew.
+No call had been urgent enough to get _her_ to the recruiting station to
+shoulder her share of what everybody had to do. But what did she get out
+of her successful shirking? She was in plain process of drying up and
+blowing away.
+
+He turned to his desk and drew out the papers which had the figures and
+estimates on that popple. He would see if the Warner woodlot had as much
+popple and basswood on it as they thought. It would, of course, be
+easiest to get it off that lot, if there were enough of it to fill the
+order for casters. The Hemmingway lot and the Dornwood lot oughtn't to
+be lumbered except in winter, with snow for the sleds. But you could
+haul straight downhill from the Warner lot, even on wheels, using the
+back lane in the Eagle Rocks woods. There was a period of close
+attention to his papers, when he heard nothing at all of what went on in
+the rooms next his study. His mind was working with the rapid, trained
+exactitude which was a delight to him, with a sure, firm grasp on the
+whole problem in all its complicated parts.
+
+Finally he nodded with satisfaction, pushed the papers away, and lighted
+his pipe, contentedly. He had it by the tail.
+
+He leaned back in his chair, drawing on the newly lighted pipe and
+ruminating again. He thought to himself that he would like to see any
+other man in the valley who could make an estimate like that, and be
+sure of it, who would know what facts to gather and where to get them,
+on the cost of cutting and hauling in different seasons, on mill-work
+and transportation and overhead expenses, and how to market and where,
+and how to get money and how to get credit and how to manage these
+cranky independent Yankees and the hot-tempered irresponsible Canucks.
+It was all very well for advanced radicals to say that the common
+workmen in a business were as good as the head of the concern. They
+weren't and that was all there was to be said about it. Any one of them,
+any single one of his employees, put in his place as manager, would run
+the business into a hole as deep as hell inside six months. And if you
+put the whole lot of them at it, it would only be six weeks instead of
+six months before the bust-up.
+
+There again, what people kept saying about life, things clever people
+said and that got accepted as the clever things _to_ say, how awfully
+beside the mark they seem to you, when you found out actual facts by
+coming up against them. What a difference some first-hand experience
+with what you were talking about, did make with what you said. What
+clever folks ought to say was not that the workmen were as good as the
+head or the same sort of flesh and blood, because they weren't; but that
+the head exploited his natural capacities out of all proportion, getting
+such an outrageous share of the money they all made together, for doing
+what was natural to him, and what he enjoyed doing. Take himself for
+instance. If by some freak, he could make more money out of being one of
+the hands, would he go down in the ranks, stand at a machine all day and
+cut the same wooden shapes, hour after hour: or drive a team day after
+day where somebody else told him to go? You bet your life he wouldn't!
+He didn't need all the money he could squeeze out of everybody
+concerned, to make him do his job as manager. His real pay was the
+feeling of managing, of doing a job he was fitted for, and that was
+worth doing.
+
+How fine it had always been of Marise to back him up in that view of
+the business, not to want him to cheat the umpire, even if he could get
+away with it, even though it would have meant enough sight more money
+for them, even though the umpire didn't exist as yet, except in his own
+conscience, in his own idea of what he was up to in his business. Never
+once had Marise had a moment of that backward-looking hankering for more
+money that turned so many women into pillars of salt and their husbands
+into legalized sneak-thieves.
+
+He pulled out some of the letters from Canada about the Powers case, and
+fingered them over a little. He had brought them home this evening, and
+it wasn't the first time either, to try to get a good hour alone with
+Marise to talk it over with her. He frowned as he reflected that he
+seemed to have had mighty little chance for talking anything over with
+Marise since his return. There always seemed to be somebody sticking
+around; one of the two men next door, who didn't have anything to do
+_but_ stick around, or Eugenia, who appeared to have settled down
+entirely on them this time. Well, perhaps it was just as well to wait a
+little longer and say nothing about it, till he had those last final
+verifications in his hands.
+
+What in thunder did Eugenia come to visit them for, anyhow? Their way of
+life must make her sick. Why did she bother? Oh, probably her old
+affection for Marise. They had been girls together, of course, and
+Marise had been good to her. Women thought more of those old-time
+relations than men. Well, he could stand Eugenia if she could stand
+them, he guessed. But she wasn't one who grew on him with the years.
+
+He had less and less patience with those fussy little ways, found less
+and less amusing those frequent, small cat-like gestures of hers,
+picking off an invisible thread from her sleeve, rolling it up to an
+invisible ball between her white finger and thumb, and casting it
+delicately away; or settling a ring, or brushing off invisible dust with
+a flick of a polished finger-nail; all these manoeuvers executed with
+such leisure and easy deliberation that they didn't make her seem
+restless, and you knew she calculated that effect. A man who had had
+years with a real, living woman like Marise, didn't know whether to
+laugh or swear at such mannerisms and the self-consciousness that
+underlay them.
+
+There she was coming down the stairs now, when she heard Marise at the
+piano, with the children, and knew there was no more work to be done.
+Pshaw! He had meant to go out and join the others, but now he would wait
+a while, till he had finished his pipe. A pipe beside Eugenia's perfumed
+cigarettes always seemed so gross. And he wanted to lounge at his ease,
+stretch out in his arm-chair with his feet on another. Could you do
+that, with Eugenia fashion-plating herself on the sofa?
+
+He leaned back smoking peacefully, listening to Marise's voice brimming
+up all around the children's as they romped through "The raggle-taggle
+gypsies, oh!"
+
+What a mastery of the piano Marise had, subduing it to the slender pipe
+of those child-voices as long as they sang, and rolling out sumptuous
+harmonies in the intervals of the song. Lucky kids! Lucky kids! to have
+childhood memories like that.
+
+He heard Paul say, "Now let's sing 'Massa's in the cold, cold ground,'"
+and Elly shriek out, "No, Mother, _no!_ It's so _terribly_ sad! I can't
+stand it!" And Paul answer with that certainty of his always being in
+the right, "Aw, Elly, it's not fair. Is it, Mother, fair to have Elly
+keep us from singing one of the nicest songs we have, just because she's
+so foolish?"
+
+His father frowned. Queer about Paul. He'd do anything for Elly if he
+thought her in trouble, would stand up for her against the biggest bully
+of the school-yard. But he couldn't keep himself from . . . it was perhaps
+because Paul could not _understand_ that . . . now how could Marise meet
+this little problem in family equity, he wondered? Her solutions of the
+children's knots always tickled him.
+
+She was saying, "Let's see. Elly, it doesn't look to me as though you
+had any right to keep Paul from singing a song he likes. And, Paul, it
+doesn't seem as though you had any right to make Elly listen to a song
+that makes her cry. Let's settle it this way. We can't move the piano,
+but we can move Elly. Elly dear, suppose you go 'way out through the
+kitchen and shut both doors and stand on the back porch. Toucle will
+probably be there, looking out, the way she does evenings, so you won't
+be alone. I'll send Mark out to get you when we're through. And because
+it's not very much fun to stand out in the dark, you can stop and get
+yourself a piece of cocoanut cake as you go through the pantry."
+
+Neale laughed silently to himself as he heard the doors open and shut
+and Elly's light tread die away. How perfectly Marise understood her
+little daughter! It wasn't only over the piano that Marise had a
+mastery, but over everybody's nature. She played on them as surely, as
+richly as on any instrument. That's what he called real art-in-life. Why
+wasn't it creative art, as much as anything, her Blondin-like accuracy
+of poise among all the conflicting elements of family-life, the warring
+interests of the different temperaments, ages, sexes, natures? Why
+wasn't it an artistic creation, the unbroken happiness and harmony she
+drew out of those elements, as much as the picture the painter drew out
+of the reds and blues and yellows on his palette? If it gave an actor a
+high and disinterested pleasure when he had an inspiration, or heard
+himself give out a true and freshly found intonation, or make exactly
+the right gesture, whether anybody in the audience applauded him or not,
+why wouldn't the mother of a family and maker of a home have the same
+pleasure, and by heck! just as high and disinterested, when she had once
+more turned the trick, had an inspiration, and found a course that all
+her charges, young and old, could steer together? Well, there was one,
+anyhow, of Marise's audience who often gave her a silent hand-clap of
+admiration.
+
+The wailing, lugubrious notes of the negro lament rose now, Paul's voice
+loud and clear and full of relish. "It takes a heavy stimulant to give
+Paul his sensations," thought his father. "What would take the hide
+right off of Elly, just gives him an agreeable tingle." His pipe went
+out as he listened, and he reached for a match. The song stopped.
+Someone had come in. He heard Paul's voice cry joyfully, "Oh goody, Mr.
+Welles, come on up to the piano."
+
+Neale leaned forward with a slightly unpleasant stirring of his blood
+and listened to see if the old man had come alone. No, of course he
+hadn't. He never did.
+
+There was Eugenia's voice saying, "Good-evening, Mr. Marsh." She would
+move over for him on the sofa and annex him with a look. Well, let her
+have him. He was her kind more than theirs, the Lord knew. Probably he
+was used to having that sort of woman annex him.
+
+Neale moved his head restlessly and shifted his position. His pipe and
+his arm-chair had lost their savor. The room seemed hot to him and he
+got up to open a window. Standing there by the open sash, looking out
+into the blue, misty glory of an overclouded moonlight night, he decided
+that he would not go in at all, and join them. He felt tired and out of
+sorts, he found. And they were such infernal talkers, Eugenia and Marsh.
+It wore you out to hear them, especially as you felt all the time that
+their speculations on life and human nature were so _far_ off, that it
+would be just wasting your breath to try to set them right. He'd stay
+here in the study and smoke and maybe doze off a little, till they went
+away. Marise had known he had business figuring to do, and she would
+have a perfectly valid excuse to give them for his non-appearance. Not
+that he had any illusions as to anybody there missing him at all.
+
+He heard Mark's little voice sound shrilly from the pantry, "Come on,
+Elly. It's all right. I've even putten away the book that's got that
+song."
+
+Some splendid, surging shouts from the piano and the voices began on
+"The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Neale could hear Mr. Welles' shaky
+old bass booming away this time. He was probably sitting down with Paul
+on his knees. It was really nice of the old codger to take such a fancy
+to Paul, and be able to see those sterling qualities of his, through
+Paul's surface unloveliness that came mostly from his slowness of
+imagination.
+
+The voices stopped; Elly said, "That song sounds as if it were proud of
+itself." Her father's heart melted in the utter prostration of
+tenderness he felt for his little daughter. How like Elly! What a quick
+intelligence animated the sensitive, touching, appealing, defenseless
+darling that Elly was! Marise must have been a little girl like that.
+Think of her growing up in such an atmosphere of disunion and
+flightiness as that weak mother of hers must have given her. Queer, how
+Marise didn't seem to have a trace of that weakness, unless it was that
+funny physical impressionableness of hers, that she could laugh at
+herself, but that still wrought on her, so that if measles were going
+the rounds, she could see symptoms of measles in everything the children
+did or didn't do; or that well-known habit of hers, that even the
+children laughed about with her, of feeling things crawling all over her
+for hours after she had seen a caterpillar. Well, that was only the
+other side of her extraordinary sensitiveness, that made her know how
+everybody was feeling, and what to do to make him feel better. She had
+often said that she would certainly die if she ever tried to study
+medicine, because as fast as she read of a symptom she would have it,
+herself. But she wouldn't die. She'd live and make a cracker-jack of a
+doctor, if she'd ever tried it, enough sight better than some callous
+brute of a boy with no imagination.
+
+"One more song before bed-time," announced Marise. "And we'll let Mark
+choose. It's his turn."
+
+A long silence, in which Neale amusedly divined Mark torn between his
+many favorites. Finally the high sweet little treble, "Well, let's make
+it 'Down Among the Dead Men.'"
+
+At which Neale laughed silently again. What a circus the kids were!
+
+The clock struck nine as they finished this, and Neale heard the stir
+and shifting of chairs. Paul said, "Mother, Mr. Welles and I have fixed
+it up, that he's going to put us to bed tonight, if you'll let him."
+Amused surprise from Marise: Mr. Welles' voice saying he really would
+like it, never had seen any children in their nightgowns except in the
+movies; Paul saying, "Gracious! We don't wear nightgowns like women. We
+wear pajamas!"; Mark's voice crying, "We'll show you how we play
+foot-fight on the rug. We have to do that barefoot, so each one can
+tickle ourselves;" as usual, no sound from Elly probably still reveling
+in the proudness of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
+
+A clatter of feet on the stairs, the chirping voices muffled by the
+shutting of a door overhead, and Eugenia's voice, musical and carefully
+modulated, saying, "Well, Marisette, you look perfectly worn out with
+fatigue. You haven't looked a bit well lately, anyhow. And I'm not
+surprised. The way those children take it out of you!"
+
+"Damn that woman!" thought Neale. That sterile life of hers had starved
+out from her even the capacity to understand a really human existence
+when she saw it. Not that she had _ever_ seemed to have any considerable
+seed-bed of human possibilities to be starved, even in youth, if he
+could judge from his memory, now very dim, of how she had seemed to him
+in Rome, when he had first met her, along with Marise. He remembered
+that he had said of her fantastically, to a fellow in the _pension_,
+that she reminded him of a spool of silk thread. And now the silk thread
+had all been wound off, and there was only the bare wooden spool left.
+
+"It's not surprising that Mrs. Crittenden gets tired," commented
+Marsh's voice. "She does the work of four or five persons."
+
+"Yes," agreed Eugenia, "I don't know how she does it . . . cook, nurse,
+teacher, housekeeper, welfare-worker, seamstress, gardener . . ."
+
+"Oh, let up, let up!" Neale heard Marise say, with an impatience that
+pleased him. She must have been at the piano as she spoke, for at once
+there rose, smiting to the heart, the solemn, glorious, hopeless chords
+of the last part of the Pathetic Symphony. Heavens! How Marise could
+play!
+
+When the last dull, dreary, beautiful note had vibrated into silence,
+Eugenia murmured, "Doesn't that always make you want to crawl under the
+sod and pull the daisies over you?"
+
+"Ashes, ashes, not daisies," corrected Marsh, dreamily.
+
+There was, thought Neale listening critically to their intonations, a
+voluptuous, perverse pleasure in despair which he found very
+distasteful. Despair was a real and honest and deadly emotion. Folks
+with appetites sated by having everything they wanted, oughtn't to use
+despair as a sort of condiment to perk up their jaded zest in life.
+"Confounded play-actors!" he thought, and wondered what Marise's
+reaction to them was.
+
+He foresaw that it was going to be too much for his patience to listen
+to them. He would get too hot under the collar and be snappish,
+afterwards. Luckily he was in the library. There were better voices to
+listen to. He got up, ran his forefinger along a shelf, and took down a
+volume of Trevelyan, "Garbaldi and the Thousand." The well-worn volume
+opened of itself at a familiar passage, the description of the battle of
+Calatafimi. His eye lighted in anticipation. There was a man's book, he
+thought. But his pipe was out. He laid the book down to light it before
+he began to read. In spite of himself he listened to hear what they were
+saying now in the next room. Eugenia was talking and he didn't like what
+she was saying about those recurrent dreams of Marise's, because he knew
+it was making poor Marise squirm. She had such a queer, Elly-like
+shyness about that notion of hers, Marise had. It evidently meant more
+to her than she had ever been able to make him understand. He couldn't
+see why she cared so much about it, hated to have it talked about
+casually. But he wasn't Eugenia. If Marise didn't want it talked about
+casually, by George he wasn't the one who would mention it. They'd
+hardly ever spoken of them, those dreams, even to each other. People had
+a right to moral privacy, if they wanted it, he supposed, even married
+women. There was nothing so ruthless anyhow as an old childhood friend,
+to whom you had made foolish youthful confidences and who brought them
+out any time he felt like it.
+
+"You ought to have those dreams of yours psycho-analyzed, Marisette,"
+Eugenia was saying. To Marsh she went on in explanation, "Mrs.
+Crittenden has always had a queer kind of dream. I remember her telling
+me about them, years ago, when we were girls together, and nobody
+guessed there was anything in dreams. She dreams she is in some
+tremendous rapid motion, a leaf on a great river-current, or a bird
+blown by a great wind, or foam driven along by storm-waves, isn't that
+it, Marisonne?"
+
+Neale did not need the sound of Marise's voice to know how she hated
+this. She said, rather shortly for her, as though she didn't want to say
+a word about it, and yet couldn't leave it uncorrected, "Not exactly. I
+don't dream I'm the leaf on the current. I dream I _am_ the current
+myself, part of it. I'm the wind, not the bird blown by it; the wave
+itself; it's too hard to explain."
+
+"Do you still have those dreams once in a while, Marisette, and do you
+still love them as much?"
+
+"Oh yes, sometimes."
+
+"And have you ever had the same sensation in your waking moments? I
+remember so well you used to say that was what you longed for, some
+experience in real life that would make you have that glorious sense of
+irresistible forward movement. We used to think," said Eugenia, "that
+perhaps falling in love would give it to you."
+
+"No," said Marise. "I've never felt it, out of my dreams."
+
+Neale was sorry he had elected to stay in the study. If he were out
+there now, he could change the conversation, come to her rescue.
+Couldn't Eugenia see that she was bothering Marise!
+
+"What do you suppose Freud would make out of such dreams?" asked
+Eugenia, evidently of Marsh.
+
+"Why, it sounds simple enough to me," said Marsh, and Neale was obliged
+to hand it to him that the very sound of his voice had a living, real,
+genuine accent that was a relief after Eugenia. He didn't talk
+half-chewed and wholly undigested nonsense, the way Eugenia did. Neale
+had heard enough of his ideas to know that he didn't agree with a word
+the man said, but at least it was a vital and intelligent personality
+talking.
+
+"Why, it sounds simple enough to me. Americans have fadded the thing
+into imbecility, so that the very phrase has become such a bromide one
+hates to pronounce it. But of course the commonplace that all dreams are
+expressions of suppressed desires is true. And it's very apparent that
+Mrs. Crittenden's desire is a very fine one for freedom and power and
+momentum. She's evidently not a back-water personality. Though one would
+hardly need psycho-analysis to guess that!" He changed the subject as
+masterfully as Neale could have done. "See here, Mrs. Crittenden, that
+Tschaikowsky whetted my appetite for more. Don't you feel like playing
+again?"
+
+The idea came over Neale, and in spite of his uneasy irritation, it
+tickled his fancy, that possibly Marsh found Eugenia just as deadly as
+he did.
+
+Marise jumped at the chance to turn the talk, for in an instant the
+piano began to chant again, not Tschaikowsky, Neale noted, but some of
+the new people whom Marise was working over lately. He couldn't
+understand a note of them, nor keep his mind on them, nor even try to
+remember their names. He had been able to get just as far as Debussy and
+no further, he thought whimsically, before his brain-channels hardened
+in incipient middle-age.
+
+He plunged into Trevelyan and the heart-quickening ups and downs of
+battle.
+
+Some time after this, he was pulled back from those critical and
+glorious hours by the consciousness, gradually forcing itself on him on
+two discomforts; his pipe had gone out and Eugenia was at it again. He
+scratched a match and listened in spite of himself to that smooth liquid
+voice. She was still harping on psycho-analysis. Wasn't she just the
+kind of woman for whom that would have an irresistible fascination! He
+gathered that Marise was objecting to it, just as sweepingly as Eugenia
+was approving. How women did hate half-tones and reasonable
+qualifications!
+
+"I'm a gardener," Marise was saying, "and I know a thing or two about
+natural processes. The thing to do with a manure pile is not to paw it
+over and over, but to put it safely away in the dark, underground, and
+never bother your head about it again except to watch the beauty and
+vitality of the flowers and grains that spring from the earth it has
+fertilized."
+
+Neale as he held the lifted match over his pipe, shook his head. That
+was all very well, put picturesquely as Marise always put things; but
+you couldn't knock an idea on the head just with an apt metaphor. There
+was a great deal more to be said about it, even if fool half-baked
+faddists like Eugenia did make it ridiculous. In the first place it was
+nothing so new. Everybody who had ever encountered a crisis in his life
+and conquered it, had . . . why, he himself . . .
+
+He felt his heart beat faster, and before he knew what was coming, he
+felt a great, heart-quickening gust of fresh salt air blow over him, and
+felt himself far from the book-tainted stagnant air of that indoor
+room. He forgot to light his pipe and sat motionless, holding the
+burning match till it flared up at the end and scorched his fingers.
+Then he dropped it with a startled oath, and looked quickly around him.
+
+In that instant he had lived over again the moment in Nova Scotia when
+he had gone down to the harbor just as the battered little tramp steamer
+was pulling out, bound for China.
+
+Good God! What an astonishing onslaught that had been! How from some
+great, fierce, unguessed appetite, the longing for wandering, lawless
+freedom had burst up! Marise, the children, their safe, snug
+middle-class life, how they had seemed only so many drag-anchors to cut
+himself loose from and make out to the open sea! If the steamer had been
+still close enough to the dock so that he could have jumped aboard, how
+he would have leaped! He might have been one of those men who
+disappeared mysteriously, from out a prosperous and happy life, and are
+never heard of again. But it hadn't been close enough. The green oily
+water widened between them; and he had gone back with a burning heart to
+that deadly little country hotel.
+
+Well, had he buried it and forced himself to think no more about it? No.
+Not on your life he hadn't. He'd stood up to himself. He'd asked himself
+what the hell was the matter, and he'd gone after it, as any grown man
+would. It hadn't been fun. He remembered that the sweat had run down his
+face as though he'd been handling planks in the lumber-yard in
+midsummer.
+
+And what had he found? He'd found that he'd never got over the jolt it
+had given him, there on that aimless youthful trip through Italy, with
+China and the Eastern seas before him, to fall in love and have all
+those plans for wandering cut off by the need for a safe, stable life.
+
+Then he'd gone on. He'd asked himself, if that's so, _then_ what? He
+hadn't pulled any of the moralizing stern-duty stuff; he knew Marise
+would rather die than have him doing for her something he hated, out of
+stern duty. It was an insult, anyhow, unless it was a positively
+helpless cripple in question, to do things for people out of duty only.
+And to mix what folks called "duty" up with love, that was the devil. So
+he hadn't.
+
+That was the sort of thing Marise had meant, so long ago, when they were
+first engaged, that was the sort of thing she had asked him never to do.
+He'd promised he never would, and this wasn't the first time the promise
+had held him straight to what was, after all, the only decent course
+with a woman like Marise, as strong as she was fine. Anything else would
+be treating her like a child, or a dependent, as he'd hate to have her
+treat him, or anybody treat him.
+
+So this time he'd asked himself right out, what he really wanted and
+needed in life, and he'd been ready, honestly ready, to take any answer
+he got, and dree his weird accordingly, as the best thing for everybody
+concerned, as the only honest thing, as the only thing that would put
+any bed-rock under him, as what Marise would want him to do. If it meant
+tramp-steamers, why it had to be tramp-steamers. Something could be
+managed for Marise and the children.
+
+This was what he had asked. And what answer had he got? Why, of course,
+he hankered for the double-jointed, lawless freedom that the
+tramp-steamer stood for. He guessed everybody wanted that, more or less.
+But he wanted Marise and the children a damn sight more. And not only
+Marise and the children. He hadn't let himself lay it all on their
+backs, and play the martyr's role of the forcibly domesticated wild
+male. No, he wanted the life he had, outside the family, his own line of
+work; he wanted the sureness of it, the coherence of it, the permanence
+of it, the clear conscience he had about what he was doing in the world,
+the knowledge that he was creating something, helping men to use the
+natural resources of the world without exploiting either the natural
+resources or the men; he wanted the sense of deserved power over other
+human beings. That was what he really wanted most of all. You could
+call it smug and safe and bourgeois if you liked. But the plain fact
+remained that it had more of what really counted for him than any other
+life he could see possible. And when he looked at it, hard, with his
+eyes open, why the tramp-steamer to China sailed out of school-boy
+theatrical clouds and showed herself for the shabby, sordid little
+substitute for a real life she would have been to him.
+
+He'd have liked to have that too, of course. You'd _like_ to have
+everything! But you can't. And it is only immature boys who whimper
+because you can't have your cake and eat it too. That was all there was
+to that.
+
+What he had dug for was to find his deepest and most permanent desires,
+and when he had found them, he'd come home with a happy heart.
+
+It even seemed to him that he had been happier and quieter than before.
+Well, maybe Marise's metaphor had something in it, for all it was so
+flowery and high-falutin. Maybe she would say that what he had done was
+exactly what she'd described, to dig it under the ground and let it
+fertilize and enrich his life.
+
+Oh Lord! how a figure of speech always wound you up in knots if you
+tried to use it to say anything definite!
+
+He relighted his pipe, this time with a steady hand, and a cool eye; and
+turned to Trevelyan and Garibaldi again. He'd take that other side of
+himself out in books, he guessed.
+
+He had now arrived at the crucial moment of the battle, and lifted his
+head and his heart in anticipation of the way Garibaldi met that moment.
+He read, "To experienced eyes the battle seemed lost. Bixio said to
+Garibaldi, 'General, I fear we ought to retreat.' Garibaldi looked up as
+though a serpent had stung him. '_Here we make Italy or die!_' he said."
+
+"That's the talk!" cried Neale, to himself. The brave words resounded in
+the air about him, and drowned out the voices from the next room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ALONG THE EAGLE ROCK BROOK
+
+
+July 1.
+
+Paul was very much pleased that Mr. Welles agreed with him so perfectly
+about the hour and place for lunch. But then Mr. Welles was awfully nice
+about agreeing. He said, now, "Yes, I believe this would be the best
+place. Here by the pool, on that big rock, as you say. We'll be drier
+there. Yesterday's rain has made everything in the woods pretty wet.
+That's a good idea of yours, to build our fire on the rock, with water
+all around. The fire couldn't possibly spread." Paul looked proudly at
+the rain-soaked trees and wet soggy leaves which his forethought had
+saved from destruction and strode across the brook in his rubber boots,
+with the first installment of dry pine branches.
+
+"Aren't you tired?" he said protectingly to his companion. "Whyn't you
+sit down over there and undo the lunch-basket? I'll make camp. Father
+showed me how to make a campfire with only one match."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Welles. "I do feel a little leg-weary. I'm not so
+used to these mountain scrambles as you are."
+
+"I'll clean the fish, too," said Paul; "maybe you don't like to. Elly
+can't abide it." He did not say that he did not like it very well
+himself, having always to get over the sick feeling it gave him.
+
+"I never did it in my life," confessed Mr. Welles. "You see I always
+lived in towns till now."
+
+Paul felt very sorry for Mr. Welles, and shook his head pityingly as he
+went off for more firewood.
+
+When he had collected a lot, he began to lay the sticks. He did it just
+as Father had showed him, but it seemed lots harder to get them right.
+And it took a lot more than one match to get it started. He didn't have
+a bit of breath left in him, by the time he finally got it going. And
+my, weren't his hands black! But he felt very much set up, all the same,
+that he had done it. In his heart Paul knew that there was nothing
+anybody could do which he could not.
+
+They hung the slimpsy slices of bacon from forked sticks, Paul showing
+Mr. Welles how to thread his on, and began to cook them around the edges
+of the fire, while the two little trout frizzled in the frying-pan. "I'm
+so glad we got that last one," commented Paul. "One wouldn't have been
+very much."
+
+"Yes, it's much better to have one apiece," agreed Mr. Welles.
+
+When the bacon was done (only burned a little at the edges, and still
+soft in the thicker places in the center of the slice), and the fish the
+right brown, and 'most shrunk up to nothing, they each of them put a
+trout and a piece of bacon on his slice of bread and butter, and
+gracious! didn't it taste good.
+
+"You must have done this before," said Mr. Welles, respectfully; "you
+seem to know a good deal about camping."
+
+"Oh, I'm a good camper, all right," agreed Paul. "Mother and I have gone
+off in the woods, lots of times. When I was littler, I used to get
+spells when I was bad. I do still, even now, once in a while."
+
+Mr. Welles did not smile, but continued gravely eating his bread and
+bacon, his eyes on the little boy.
+
+"I don't know what's the matter. I feel all snarled up inside. And then
+the first thing you know I've done something awful. Mother can tell when
+it first gets started in me, the least little teenty bit. _How_ can she
+tell? And then she takes me off camping. She pretends it's because she's
+feeling snarled up, herself. But it's not. She never is. Why not?"
+
+He considered this in silence, chewing slowly on a vast mouthful of
+bread. "Anyhow, we leave the little children with Toucle, if she's
+there," (he stopped here an instant to inspect Mr. Welles to make sure
+he was not laughing because he had called Elly and Mark the "little
+children." But Mr. Welles was not laughing at him. He was listening,
+_really_ listening, the way grown-ups almost never did, to hear what you
+had to say. He did like Mr. Welles. He went on,) "or if Toucle's off
+somewheres in the woods herself, we leave them down at the Powers' to
+play with Addie and Ralph, and we light out for the woods, Mother and I.
+The snarleder up I feel, the further we go. We don't fish or anything.
+Just leg it, till I feel better. Then we make a fire and eat."
+
+He swallowed visibly a huge lump of unchewed bread, and said, uncorking
+a thermos bottle, "I asked Mother to put up some hot coffee."
+
+Mr. Welles seemed surprised. "Why, do you drink coffee?"
+
+"Oh no, none of us kids ever take it. But I thought you'd like some.
+Grown-up folks mostly do, when they eat out-of-doors."
+
+Mr. Welles took the cup of steaming coffee, ready sugared and creamed,
+without even saying thank you, but in a minute, as they began their
+second round of sandwiches, filled this time with cold ham from home, he
+said, "You've got quite a way of looking out for folks, haven't you?
+
+"I like to," said Paul.
+
+"_I_ always liked to," said Mr. Welles.
+
+"I guess you've done quite a lot of it," conjectured the little boy.
+
+"Quite a lot," said the old man, thoughtfully.
+
+Paul never liked to be left behind and now spoke out, "Well, I expect
+I'll do a good deal, too."
+
+"Most likely you will," agreed the old man.
+
+He spoke a little absently, and after a minute said, "Paul, talking
+about looking out for folks makes me think of something that's bothering
+me like everything lately. I can't make up my mind about whether I
+ought to go on, looking out for folks, if I know folks that need it. I
+keep hearing from somebody who lives down South, that the colored folks
+aren't getting a real square deal. I keep wondering if maybe I oughtn't
+to go and live there and help her look out for them."
+
+Paul was so astonished at this that he opened his mouth wide, without
+speaking. When he could get his breath, he shouted, "Why, Mr. Welles, go
+away from Ashley to live!" He stared hard at the old man, thinking he
+must have got it twisted. But Mr. Welles did not set him straight, only
+stared down at the ground with a pale, bothered-looking face and sort of
+twitched his mouth to one side.
+
+The little boy moved over closer to him, and said, looking up at him
+with all his might, "Aw, Mr. Welles, I _wish't_ you wouldn't! I _like_
+your being here. There's lot of things I've got planned we could do
+together."
+
+It seemed to him that the old man looked older and more tired at this.
+He closed his eyes and did not answer. Paul felt better. Mr. Welles
+couldn't have been in earnest.
+
+How still it was in the woods that day. Not the least little flutter
+from any leaf. The sunlight looked as green, as green, coming down
+through the trees that way, like the light in church when the sun came
+in through the stained-glass windows.
+
+The only thing that budged at all was a bird . . . was it a flicker? . . .
+he couldn't make out. It kept hopping around in that big beech tree
+across the brook. Probably it was worried about its nest and didn't like
+to have people so near. And yet they sat as still, he and Mr. Welles, as
+still as a tree, or the shiny water in the pool.
+
+Mr. Welles opened his eyes and took the little boy's rough, calloused
+hand in his. "See here, Paul, maybe you can help me make up my mind."
+
+Paul squared his shoulders.
+
+"It's this way. I'm pretty nearly used up, not good for much any more.
+And the Electrical Company wanted to fix everything the nicest way for
+me to live. And they have. I hadn't any idea anything could be so nice
+as living next door to you folks in such a place as Crittenden's. And
+then making friends with you. I'd always wanted a little boy, but I
+thought I was so old, no little boy would bother with me."
+
+He squeezed the child's fingers and looked down on him lovingly. For a
+moment Paul's heart swelled up so he couldn't speak. Then he said, in a
+husky voice, "I _like_ to." He took a large bite from his sandwich and
+repeated roughly, his mouth full, "I _like_ to."
+
+Neither said anything more for a moment. The flicker . . . yes, it was a
+flicker . . . in the big beech kept changing her position, flying down
+from a top-branch to a lower one, and then back again. Paul made out the
+hole in the old trunk of the tree where she'd probably put her nest, and
+wondered why she didn't go back to it.
+
+"Have you got to the Civil War, in your history yet, Paul?"
+
+"Gee, yes, 'way past it. Up to the Philadelphia Exposition."
+
+Mr. Welles said nothing for a minute and Paul could see by his
+expression that he was trying to think of some simple baby way to say
+what he wanted to. Gracious! didn't he know Paul was in the seventh
+grade? "_I_ can understand all right," he said roughly.
+
+Mr. Welles said, "Well, all right. If you can, you'll do more than I
+can. You know how the colored people got their freedom then. But
+something very bad had been going on there in slavery, for ever so long.
+And bad things that go on for a long time, can't be straightened out in
+a hurry. And so far, it's been too much for everybody, to get this
+straightened out. The colored people . . . they're made to suffer all the
+time for being born the way they are. And that's not right . . . in
+America . . ."
+
+"Why don't they stand up for themselves?" asked Paul scornfully. He'd
+like to see anybody who would make him suffer for being born the way he
+was.
+
+Mr. Welles hesitated again. "It looks to me this way. People can fight
+for some things . . . their property, and their vote and their work. And I
+guess the colored people have got to fight for those, themselves. But
+there are some other things . . . some of the nicest . . . why, if you
+fight for them, you tear them all to pieces, trying to get them."
+
+Paul did not have the least idea what this meant.
+
+"If what you want is to have people respect what you are worth, why, if
+you fight them to make them, then you spoil what you're worth. Anyhow,
+even if you don't spoil it, fighting about it doesn't put you in any
+state of mind to go on being your best. That's a pretty hard job for
+anybody."
+
+Paul found this very dull. His attention wandered back to that queer
+flicker, so excited about something.
+
+The old man tried to get at him again. "Look here, Paul, Americans that
+happen to be colored people ought to have every bit of the same chance
+to amount to their best that any Americans have, oughtn't they?"
+
+Paul saw this. But he didn't see what Mr. Welles could do about it, and
+said so.
+
+"Well, I couldn't do a great deal," said the old man sadly, "but more
+than if I stayed here. It looks as though they needed, as much as
+anything else, people to just have the same feeling towards them that
+you have for anybody who's trying to make the best of himself. And I
+could do that."
+
+Paul got the impression at last that Mr. Welles was in earnest about
+this. It made him feel anxious. "Oh _dear_!" he said, kicking the toe of
+his rubber boot against the rock. He couldn't think of anything to say,
+except that he hated the idea of Mr. Welles going.
+
+But just then he was startled by a sharp cry of distress from the bird,
+who flew out wildly from the beech, poised herself in the air, beating
+her wings and calling in a loud scream. The old man, unused to forests
+and their inhabitants, noticed this but vaguely, and was surprised by
+Paul's instant response. "There must be a snake after her eggs," he said
+excitedly. "I'll go over and chase him off."
+
+He started across the pool, gave a cry, and stood still, petrified.
+Before their eyes, without a breath of wind, the hugh beech solemnly
+bowed itself and with a great roar of branches, whipping and crushing
+the trees about, it fell, its full length thundering on the ground, a
+great mat of shaggy roots uptorn, leaving an open wound in the stony
+mountain soil. Then, in a minute, it was all as still as before.
+
+Paul was scared almost to death. He scrambled back to the rock, his
+knees shaking, his stomach sick, and clung to Mr. Welles with all his
+might. "What made it fall? There's no wind! What made it fall?" he
+cried, burying his face in the old man's coat. "It might just as easy
+have fallen this way, on us, and killed us! What made it fall?"
+
+Mr. Welles patted Paul's shoulder, and said, "There, there," till Paul's
+teeth stopped chattering and he began to be a little ashamed of showing
+how it had startled him. He was also a little put out that Mr. Welles
+had remained so unmoved. "You don't know how dangerous a big tree _is_,
+when it falls!" he said, accusingly, to defend himself. "If you'd lived
+here more, and heard some of the stories . . . ! Nate Hewitt had his back
+broken with a tree falling on him. But he was cutting that one down, and
+it fell too soon. Nobody had touched this one! And there isn't any wind.
+What _made_ it fall? Most every winter, some man in the lumber camp on
+the mountain gets killed or smashed up, and lots of horses too."
+
+He felt much better now, and he did want to find out whatever had made
+that tree fall. He sat up, and looked back at it, just a mess of broken
+branches and upset leaves, where a minute before there had been a tall
+living tree! "I'm going over to see what made it fall," he said.
+
+He splashed across the pool and poked around with a stick in the hole
+in the ground, and almost right away he saw what the reason was. He ran
+back to tell Mr. Welles. "I see now. The brook had kept sidling over
+that way, and washed the earth from under the rocks. It just didn't have
+enough ground left to hold on to."
+
+He felt all right now he knew some simple reason for what had looked so
+crazy. He looked up confidently at the old man, and was struck into awed
+silence by the expression of Mr. Welles' face.
+
+"Paul," said Mr. Welles, and his voice wasn't steady, "I guess what I
+ought to try to be is one more drop of water in the brook."
+
+Paul stared hard. He did not understand this either, but he understood
+the expression in that tired, old face. Mr. Welles went on, "That wrong
+feeling about colored people, not wanting them to be respected as much
+as any American, is . . . that's a tree that's got to come down. I'm too
+old to take an axe to it. And, anyhow, if you cut that sort of thing
+down with an axe, the roots generally live and start all over again. If
+we can just wash the ground out from under it, with enough people
+thinking differently, maybe it'll fall, roots and all, of its own
+weight. If I go and live there and just am one more person who respects
+them when they deserve it, it'll help _that_ much, maybe, don't you
+think?"
+
+Paul had understood more what Mr. Welles' face and voice said to him
+than the words. He kept on looking into the old man's eyes. Something
+deep inside Paul said "yes" to what Mr. Welles' eyes were asking him.
+
+"How about it, Paul?" asked the old man.
+
+The child gave a start, climbed up beside him, and took hold of his
+hand. "How about it? How about it?" asked Mr. Welles in a very low tone.
+
+The little boy nodded. "Maybe," he said briefly. His lips shook.
+Presently he sniffed and drew his sleeve across his nose. He held the
+old hand tightly.
+
+"Oh dear!" he said again, in a small, miserable voice.
+
+The old man made no answer.
+
+The two sat motionless, leaning against each other. A ray of sun found
+the newly opened spot in the roof of the woods, and it seemed to Paul it
+pointed a long steady finger down on the fallen beech.
+
+At first Paul's throat ached, and his eyes smarted. He felt heavy and
+sore, as though he hadn't eaten the right thing for lunch.
+
+But by and by this went away. A quiet came all over him, so that he was
+better than happy. He laid his head against Mr. Welles' shoulder and
+looked up into the worn, pale old face, which was now also very quiet
+and still as though he too were better than happy.
+
+He held Paul close to him.
+
+Paul had a great many mixed-up thoughts. But there was one that was
+clear. He said to himself solemnly, "I guess I know who I want to be
+like when I grow up."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By and by, he stirred and said, "Well, I guess I better start to pack
+up. Don't you bother. I'll pack the things away. Mother showed me how to
+clean the frying-pan with sand and moss."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BESIDE THE ONION-BED
+
+
+July 10.
+
+Marise pulled nervously and rapidly at the weeds among the onions, and
+wiped away with her sleeve the drops that ran down her hot, red face.
+She was not rebellious at the dusty, tiresome task, nor aware of the
+merciless heat of the early-summer sun. She was not indeed thinking at
+all of what she was doing, except that the physical effort of stooping
+and reaching and pulling was a relief to her, made slightly less
+oppressive the thunder-heavy moral atmosphere she breathed. She was
+trying to think, but the different impressions came rushing into her
+mind with such vehement haste that they dashed against each other
+brutally, to her entire confusion.
+
+When she tried to think out an answer to this perfectly preposterous
+idea of old Mr. Welles, why should a thousand other horrifying ideas
+which she had been keeping at bay pour in through the door, once opened
+to probing thought? What possible connection could there be between such
+a fantastic crazy notion as his, and those other heaving, looming
+possibilities which rolled themselves higher and murkier the longer she
+refused to look at them? She snatched at the weeds, twitching them up,
+flinging them down, reaching, straining, the sun molten on her back, the
+sweat stinging on her face. It was a silly impression of course, but it
+seemed to her that if she hurried fast enough with the weeds, those
+thoughts and doubts could not catch up with her.
+
+She had put them off, and put them off while Neale was away, because
+they scared her, and she didn't want to look at them without Neale. But
+he had been back for weeks now and still she put them off. All those
+tarnishing sayings, those careless, casual negations of what she had
+taken for axioms; that challenge to her whole life dropped from time to
+time as though it were an accepted commonplace with all intelligent
+beings. . . .
+
+Was her love for the children only an inverted form of sensual egotism,
+an enervating slavery for them, really only a snatched-up substitute for
+the personal life which was ebbing away from her? Was her attitude
+towards her beloved music a lazy, self-indulgent one, to keep it to
+herself and the valley here? Was that growing indifference of hers to
+dress and trips to the city, and seeing Eugenia's smart crowd there, a
+sign of mental dry-rot? Was it a betrayal of what was alive in her own
+personality to go on adapting herself to the inevitable changes in her
+relations with Neale, compromising, rather than . . ."
+
+"Aren't you awfully hot to go on doing that?" asked Neale, coming up
+behind her, from the road. She was startled because she had not heard
+him approach on the soft, cultivated ground of the garden. And as she
+turned her wet, crimson face up to his, he was startled himself. "Why,
+what's the matter, dear?" he asked anxiously.
+
+She sank back to a sitting position, drawing a long breath, mopping her
+forehead with her sleeve, as unconscious of her looks before Neale as
+though she had still been alone. She motioned him down beside her. "Oh,
+Neale, I'm so glad! How'd you happen to be so early? Maybe if we stay
+right out here, where the children won't know where we are, we can have
+a few minutes quite to ourselves. Toucle is going to get tea tonight.
+Neale, sit down a minute. I want to tell you something. I'm awfully
+upset. I went over to help Mr. Welles transplant his Brussels sprouts,
+and we got to talking. Neale, what do you suppose has been in his mind
+all this time we've been thinking him so happy and contented here?"
+
+"Doesn't he like Crittenden's? Find it dull?"
+
+"No, no, not that, a bit. He _loves_ it. It's heart-breaking to see how
+much he loves it!" She stopped, her voice shaking a little, and waited
+till she could get it under control. Her husband took her stained, dusty
+hand in his. She gave his fingers a little pressure, absently, not
+noting what she did, and seeing the corner of his handkerchief showing
+in the pocket of his shirt, she pulled it out with a nervous jerk, and
+wiped her face all over with it.
+
+He waited in silence.
+
+"Listen, Neale, I know it will sound perfectly crazy to you, at first.
+But you might as well believe it, for he is serious. It seems he's been
+getting lots more letters from that niece or cousin of his, down in
+Georgia. She tells him about things, how the Negroes are treated, all
+the Jim Crow business carried into every single detail of every single
+minute of every single day. It seems they're not badly treated as long
+as they'll stay day-laborers or servants, but . . . oh well, there's no
+need to go on with telling you . . . _you_ know. We all know well enough
+what the American attitude is. Only I didn't think it could be so bad,
+or so everlastingly kept up every minute, as this cousin tells him. I
+suppose she ought to know. She's lived there for forty years. She keeps
+citing instances she's seen." Marise broke out with a fierce, blaming
+sharpness, "I don't see what _business_ she had, writing him that way. I
+think it was beastly of her. Why couldn't she let him alone!"
+
+She felt her husband waiting patiently for her to quiet down and go on
+more coherently, and knew that his patience came from a long
+acquaintance with her mental habits, a certainty that her outbursts of
+feeling generally did quiet down if one waited: and across her genuine
+absorption in the story she was telling there flitted, bat-like, a
+distaste far being known so well as all that! There was something
+indiscreet and belittling in it, she thought, with an inward fastidious
+recoil. But this had gone, entirely, in a moment, and she was rushing
+on, "And, Neale, what _do_ you think? She has worked on him, and he has
+worked on himself till he's got himself in a morbid state. He thinks
+perhaps he ought to leave Ashley that he loves so much and go down to
+live where this horrid cousin lives. . . ."
+
+Her husband's astonishment at this was as great as she could have
+desired. None of Neale's usual, unsurprised acceptance of everything
+that happened as being in the nature of things, which occasionally so
+rubbed her the wrong way, and seemed to her so wilfully phlegmatic. He
+was sincerely amazed and astounded; that was plain from his exclamation,
+his tone, his face. Of course he wasn't as outraged as she, but that
+wasn't to be expected, since he hadn't seen so much of that dear old
+life-worn man, nor grown so protectingly fond of him. She revelled in
+Neale's astonishment as bearing out her own feeling. "Isn't it crazy,
+Neale! Don't you think it crazy! Is there the slightest justification
+for it? You feel, just as I do, don't you, that it's a perfectly
+unbalanced, fanatical, _fool_ish thing to think of doing, his going down
+into that hopeless mess?"
+
+But her husband had had a moment's time, while she exclaimed, to get
+back to his usual unhurried post in life. "It's certainly about as
+unexpected as anything I ever heard of," he admitted. "I should have to
+know a lot more about it, before I could be sure what to think."
+
+An old impatience, at an old variance between their ways of thought,
+came out with an edge in Marise's tone as she said hotly, "Oh, _Neale_,
+don't take that line of yours! You know all there is to know, now! What
+else could you find out? You know how he's given all his life to looking
+out for his family, ending up with years of that bed-ridden old aunt the
+others wished on to him, just because he was too soft-hearted to get out
+from under. You know how anxious the Company was to do something to make
+up to him for all the years of service he gave them. And you know how
+happy he has been here, how he's loved it all, and fathered every root
+and seed in his garden, and how he and Paul have struck up such a sweet
+affection, and how he could be happier and happier." She struck her
+hands together. "Oh, Neale, I can't have him do such a foolish, useless
+thing, and spoil his life! It's not as if he'd be of any use down in
+Georgia. You know how the Southern white people detest Northerners
+coming down and interfering with the Negroes. Maybe they're wrong. But
+they're the people who live there. What could _he_ do against them? What
+under the sun could one tired-out old man accomplish in a situation that
+every American knows to be simply impossible?" She looked hard at her
+husband's thoughtful face and threw herself against him with a petulant
+gesture. "Now, Neale, don't go and justify him! Don't say you think he's
+right."
+
+He put his arm about her shoulders, hot and wet under their gingham
+covering, and she leaned against him, the gesture as unconsidered and
+unconscious for the one as the other. "No, I'm not going to try to
+justify him. I suppose I think he's very foolish. But I must say it
+shows a pretty fine spirit. I take off my hat to his intention."
+
+"Oh yes, his intention . . ." conceded Marise. "He's an old saint, of
+course. Only he mustn't be allowed to ruin his life and break
+everybody's heart, even if he is a saint."
+
+"That's the way saints usually run their business, isn't it?" asked
+Neale. "And I'd like to know how anybody's going to keep him from doing
+it, if he decides he ought to."
+
+"Oh yes, we can," urged Marise, sitting up with energy. "We can, every
+one of us, throw ourselves against it, argue with him, tell him that it
+seems to us not only foolish, and exaggerated, and morbid, but conceited
+as if he thought what _he_ did would count so very much. We can make him
+feel that it would be sort of cheating the Company, after what they've
+done for him; we can just mass all our personalities against it, use
+moral suasion, get excited, work on his feelings . . . she has done that,
+that cousin!"
+
+"I wouldn't want to do that," said Neale quietly. "You can, if you think
+best."
+
+She recognized a familiar emergence of granite in his voice and aspect
+and cried out on it passionately, "Now, _Neale_!"
+
+He knew perfectly well what this meant, without further words from her.
+They looked at each other, an unspoken battle going on with extreme
+rapidity between them, over ground intimately familiar. In the middle of
+this, she broke violently into words, quite sure that he would know at
+which point she took it up. "You carry that idea to perfectly impossible
+lengths, Neale. Don't you ever admit that we ought to try to make other
+people act the way we think best, even when we _know_ we're right and
+they're wrong?"
+
+"Yes," admitted her husband, "I should think we were bound to. If we
+ever _were_ sure we were right and they wrong."
+
+She gave the impression of vibrating with impatience and cried out,
+"That's pettifogging. Of course there are times when we are sure.
+Suppose you saw a little child about to take hold of the red-hot end of
+a poker?"
+
+"A child is different," he opposed her. "All grown-ups are responsible
+for all children. I suppose I'd keep him from taking hold of it. And yet
+I'm not dead sure I'd be right. If I thought he was only just going to
+touch it, to see if it really would burn him as people had told him, I
+guess I'd let him."
+
+"You always get around things," she said blamingly, "but there _are_
+cases when you could be sure. Suppose you saw Aunt Hetty just about to
+take poison, or Frank Warner getting Nelly Powers to run away with him?"
+
+He was startled by this, and asked quickly with a change of tone,
+"Whatever made you think of that? Are Frank and Nelly . . . ?"
+
+"Oh, it just came into my head. No, I haven't heard anybody has said
+anything, noticed anything. But I had a sort of notion that 'Gene
+doesn't like Frank hanging around the house so much."
+
+"Well . . ." commented her husband, with a lively accent of surprise. "I
+hadn't dreamed of such a thing. And it throws a light on something I
+happened to see this afternoon, on my way home. I came round the back
+way, the ravine road below the Eagle Rocks. I wanted to see about some
+popple we're thinking of buying from the Warners, on the shoulder beyond
+the Rocks. It didn't occur to me, of course, that anybody else would be
+up there, but just at the peak of the shoulder I saw 'Gene Powers, lying
+down beside a big beech-tree. He didn't hear me, walking on the
+pine-needles. And for a minute I stood there, and honestly didn't know
+what to do."
+
+"How do you mean . . . 'lying down'?" asked Marise, not visualizing the
+scene. "As though he were sick?"
+
+"No, not a bit that way. Not on his back, but on his face, looking over
+the edge of the ridge. All strung up like a bow, his head down between
+his shoulders and shot forwards like a cat stalking something. _I_ tell
+you, he made me think of a hunter when he thinks he sees a deer. I
+thought probably he had. I've seen a buck and some does up there lately.
+Then he saw me and jumped up very quickly and came down past me. I was
+going to say, just for the sake of saying something, 'Laying your plans
+for next deer-week?' But as he went by and nodded, he looked at me with
+such an odd expression that I thought I'd better not. The idea came to
+me that maybe 'Gene does poach and occasionally take a deer out of
+season. Meat is so high it wouldn't be surprising. They have a pretty
+hard time scraping along. I don't know as I'd blame him if he did shoot
+a deer once in a while.
+
+"Well, after I'd been on beyond and made my estimate on the popple, I
+came back that way. And as I passed where he'd been lying, I thought,
+just for curiosity, I'd go up and see if I could see what he'd been
+looking at so hard. I got up to the big beech where he'd been, and
+looked over. And I got the surprise of my life. He couldn't have been
+looking at deer, for on the other side the cliff drops down sheer, and
+you look right off into air, across the valley. I was so surprised I
+stood there, taken aback. The afternoon train went up the valley while I
+stood there, staring. It looked so tiny. You're really very high on
+those Rocks. I noticed you could see your Cousin Hetty's house from
+there, and the mill and the Powers house. That looked like a child's
+plaything, so little, under the big pine. And just as I looked at that,
+I saw a man come out from the house, get on a horse, and ride away."
+
+"Why, that must have been Frank," said Marise. "He rides that roan mare
+of his as much as he drives her."
+
+"Yes, that's what came into my mind when you spoke his name just now in
+connection with Nelly. I hadn't thought anything of it, before."
+
+There was a moment's silence as they looked at each other.
+
+"Oh, _Neale_!" said Marise, on a deep note. "How awful! You don't
+suppose there is anything in his jealousy. . . . Nelly is as inscrutable in
+her way as 'Gene."
+
+"Heavens! how should I know? But my guess is that 'Gene is making a fool
+of himself for nothing. Nelly doesn't strike me as being the sort of
+woman to . . ."
+
+"But Frank is awfully good-looking and dashing, and lots younger than
+'Gene. And Nelly is young too and perfectly stunning to look at. And
+she's not one of our native valley girls, you know. It may seem very
+dull and cooped-up here, so far from town, and shops. She may envy her
+sisters, still living back in West Adams with city life around them."
+
+"Oh, it's possible enough, I suppose," admitted Neale. "But she seems
+perfectly contented, and thinks the world of the children."
+
+Marise's face clouded. The phrase had recalled her dark preoccupations
+of a moment ago. "Lots of people nowadays would say she seems to be fond
+of the children because she is using them to fill up a lack in her
+life," she said somberly; "that 'Gene no longer satisfied her, and that
+she fed on the children because she was starving emotionally." Her
+husband making no comment on this, she went on, "Neale, don't you think
+that people are saying horrid, distressing things nowadays? About
+marriage I mean, and all relations between men and women and between
+parents and children?" Her heart was beating faster as she finished this
+question. The subject was broached at last. Where would it lead them?
+Where would it lead them? She shut her eyes at the thought.
+
+"There's a good deal to be said about all that, that's pretty horrid and
+perfectly true," remarked Neale casually. He tilted his hat further over
+his eyes and leaned back, propping himself on one elbow.
+
+"_Neale_!" she protested, shocked and repelled. She had hoped for
+something very different from Neale. But she thought, in a momentary
+exasperation with him, she might have known she would not get it. He
+always took everything so abstractedly, so impersonally.
+
+"I don't see any use in pretending there's not," he advanced with a
+reasonable, considering air. "I don't see that intimate human
+relationships are in any _more_ of a mess than other human relations.
+International ones, for instance, just now. But they certainly are in
+considerable of a mess, in a great many cases. It is evident that lots
+of times they're managed all wrong."
+
+Marise was so acutely disappointed that she felt a quavering ache in her
+throat, and kept silence for a moment. So this was what she had looked
+forward to, as a help. What was Neale there _for_, if not for her to
+lean against, to protect her, to be a defending wall about her? He was
+so strong and so clearheaded, he could be such a wall if he chose. How
+stern and hard he was, the core of him!
+
+"Neale," she said after a moment, "I wonder if you even _know_ what
+things are being said about what we've always believed in . . . motherhood
+for instance, and marriage?"
+
+She had been unable to keep the quaver out of her voice, and at the
+sound of it, he sat up instantly, astonished, solicitous, tender. "Why,
+darling, what's the matter?" he said again, moving closer to her,
+bending over her.
+
+"How _can_ you think such things without their making you perfectly
+miserable, without making you want to go straight and cut your throat?"
+she cried out on his callousness.
+
+He put his arm about her again, not absently this time, and drew her
+close. She thought angrily, "He thinks it's just a fit of nerves I can
+be soothed out of like a child," and pulled away from him.
+
+He looked at her, his attentive, intelligent look, and let his arm drop.
+And yet, although he was serious now, she was sure that he saw only that
+the subject agitated her, and did not see any possibility that it might
+touch them both, personally.
+
+"I have to think whatever I'm convinced is true, whether it makes me
+miserable or not, don't I?" he said gently. "And it does make me
+miserable, of course. Who can help being miserable at the spectacle of
+such rich possibilities as human life is full of, mismanaged and spoiled
+and lost?"
+
+"But, Neale, do you realize that people are thinking, books are being
+written to prove that parents' love for their children is only
+self-love, hypocritically disguised, and sometimes even sexual love
+camouflaged; and that anybody is better for the children to be with than
+their mother; and that married people, after the first flare-up of
+passion is over, hate each other instead of loving?"
+
+"I daresay there's a certain amount of truth in that, occasionally. It
+would certainly explain some of the inexplicable things we all see
+happen in family life," he remarked.
+
+Marise started and cried out piercingly, "Neale, how can you say such
+things to _me_!"
+
+He looked at her keenly again, keenly and penetratingly, and said, "I'm
+not one of those who think it inherent in the nature of women to take
+abstract propositions personally always. But I do think they will have
+to make a big effort to get themselves out of a mighty old acquired
+habit of thinking every general observation is directed at them
+personally."
+
+She flashed out indignantly at him, "How can you help taking it
+personally when it shakes the very foundations of our life?"
+
+He was astonished enough at this to suit even her. His face showed the
+most genuine amazed incapacity to understand her. "Shakes the . . . why,
+Marise dear, what are you talking about? You don't have to believe about
+_yourself_ all the generalizing guesses that people are writing down in
+books, do you, if it contradicts your own experience? Just because you
+read that lots of American men had flat-foot and were refused at the
+recruiting station for that, you don't have to think your own feet flat,
+do you? If you do think so, all you have to do is to start out and walk
+on them, to know for sure they're all right. Heavens and earth! People
+of our age, who have really lived, don't need somebody in a book to tell
+them what's happening to them. Don't you _know_ whether you really love
+Elly and Mark and Paul? If you don't, I should think a few minutes'
+thought and recollection of the last ten years would tell you, all
+right. Don't you _know_ whether we hate each other, you and I?"
+
+Marise drew a long breath of relief. This was the sort of talk she
+wanted. She clutched at the strong hand which seemed at last held out to
+her. She did so want to be talked out of it all. "Oh good! then, Neale,
+you don't believe any of that sort of talk? You were only saying so for
+argument."
+
+He withdrew the hand. "Yes, I do believe a good deal of as a general
+proposition. What I'm saying, what I'm always saying, dear, and trying
+my best to live, is that everybody must decide for himself when a
+general proposition applies to him, what to believe about his own life
+and its values. Nobody else can tell him."
+
+She approached along another line. "But, Neale, that's all very well for
+you, because you have so much withstandingness in you. But for me, there
+are things so sacred, so intimate, so much a part of me, that only to
+have some rough hand laid on them, to have them pulled out and pawed
+over and thought about . . . it frightens me so, sets me in such a quiver!
+And they don't seem the same again. _Aren't_ there things in life so
+high and delicate that they can't stand questioning?"
+
+He considered this a long time, visibly putting all his intelligence on
+it. "I can't say, for you," he finally brought out. "You're so much
+finer and more sensitive than I. But I've never in all these years seen
+that your fineness and your sensitiveness make you any less strong in
+the last analysis. You suffer more, respond more to all the implications
+of things; but I don't see that there is any reason to think there's any
+inherent weakness in you that need make you afraid to look at facts."
+
+He presented this testimony to her, seriously, gravely. It took her
+breath, coming from him. She could only look at him in speechless
+gratitude and swallow hard. Finally she said, falteringly, "You're too
+good, Neale, to say that. I don't deserve it. I'm awfully weak, many
+times."
+
+"I wouldn't say it, if it weren't so," he answered, "and I didn't say
+you weren't weak sometimes. I said you were strong when all was said and
+done."
+
+Even in her emotion, she had an instant's inward smile at the Neale-like
+quality of this. She went on, "But don't you think there is such a thing
+as spoiling beautiful elements in life, with handling them, questioning
+them, for natures that aren't naturally belligerent and ready to fight
+for what they want to keep? For instance, when somebody says that
+children in a marriage are like drift-wood left high on the rocks of a
+dwindled stream, tokens of a flood-time of passion now gone by. . . ." She
+did not tell him who had said this. Nor did he ask. But she thought by
+his expression that he knew it had been Vincent Marsh.
+
+He said heartily, "I should just call that a nasty-minded remark from
+somebody who didn't know what he was talking about. And let it go at
+that."
+
+"There, you see," she told him, "that rouses your instinct to resist, to
+fight back. But it doesn't mine. It just makes me sick."
+
+"Marise, I'm afraid that you _have_ to fight for what you want to keep
+in this world. I don't see any way out of it. And I don't believe that
+anybody else can do your fighting for you. You ask if it's not possible
+to have beautiful, intimate things spoiled by questioning, criticisms,
+doubts. Yes, I do think it is, for young people, who haven't learned
+anything of life at first hand. I think they ought to be protected till
+they have been able to accumulate some actual experience of life. That's
+the only weapon for self-defense anybody can have, what he has learned
+of life, himself. Young people are apt to believe what older people tell
+them about life, because they don't know anything about it, yet,
+themselves, and I think you ought to be careful what is questioned in
+their presence. But I don't see that mature people ought to be protected
+unless you want to keep them childish, as women used to be kept. Nothing
+is your own, if you haven't made it so, and kept it so."
+
+"But, Neale, it's so sickeningly _hard_! Why do it? Why, when everything
+seems all right, pry into the deep and hidden roots of things? I don't
+_want_ to think about the possibility of some dreadful dry-rot happening
+to married people's feelings towards each other, as they get older and
+get used to each other. It's soiling to my imagination. What's the use?"
+
+She had so hoped he would help her to sweep them all back to the cellar
+labeled "morbid" and lock them down in the dark again. Any other man
+would, she thought, amazed at him, _any_ other husband! She focussed all
+her personality passionately to force him to answer as she wished.
+
+He fell into another thoughtful silence, glanced up at her once sharply
+and looked down again. She always felt afraid of him when he looked like
+that. No, not afraid of him, but of the relentless thing he was going to
+say. Presently he said it. "What's the use? Why, the very fact you seem
+afraid of it . . . I can't imagine why . . . shows there would be some use.
+To turn your back on anything you're afraid of, that's fatal, always. It
+springs on you from behind."
+
+She cried out to him in a sudden anguish that was beyond her control,
+"But _suppose you face it and still it springs_!"
+
+Her aspect, her accent, her shaken voice gave him a great start. He
+faced her. He looked at her as though he saw her for the first time that
+day. And he grew very pale as he looked. Something wordless passed
+between them. Now he knew at last what she was afraid of.
+
+But he did not flinch. He said desperately, in a harsh voice, "You have
+to take what comes to you in life," and was grimly silent.
+
+Then with a gesture as though to put away something incredible,
+approaching him, he went on more quietly, "But my experience is that it
+doesn't dare spring if you walk right up to it. Generally you find
+you're less afraid of everything in the world, after that."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had been frightened, stabbed through and through by the look they
+had interchanged, by the wordless something which had passed between
+them. But now she wondered suddenly, passionately, amazedly, if he had
+really understood all the dagger-like possibilities of their talk.
+
+"Neale," she challenged him, "don't you put _any_ limits on this? Isn't
+there _any_where you'd stop out of sheer respect? Nothing too hallowed
+by . . ."
+
+"Nothing. Nothing," he answered her, his face pale, his eyes deep and
+enduring. "It's lying down, not to answer the challenge when it comes.
+How do you know what you have to deal with if you won't look to see?
+You may find out that something you have been trusting is growing out of
+a poisonous root. That does happen. What's the use of pretending that it
+couldn't to you, as to anybody else? And what's the use of having lived
+honestly, if you haven't grown brave enough to do whatever needs to be
+done? If you are scared by the idea that your motherhood may be only
+inverted sensuality, or if you think there is any possibility that the
+children would be better off in other hands, or if you think . . . if you
+think there is any other terrifying possibility in our life here, for
+God's sake look into your own heart and see for yourself! It all sounds
+like nonsense to me, but . . ."
+
+She snatched at the straw, she who longed so for help. "Oh, Neale, if
+_you_ think so, I know . . ."
+
+"I won't _have_ you taking my word for it!" he told her roughly. "_I_
+can't tell what's back of what you do. And you oughtn't to take my word
+for it if I tried to. Nobody on earth can make your decision for you,
+but you yourself." The drops stood out on his forehead as he spoke, and
+ran down his pale face.
+
+She quivered and was silent for a moment. Then, "Neale, where shall I
+get the strength to do that?" she asked.
+
+He looked full in her face. "I don't know anywhere to go for strength
+but out of one's naked human heart," he said.
+
+She shrank from the rigor of this with a qualm of actual fear. "I think
+I must have something else," she told him wildly.
+
+"I don't know," he returned. "I don't know at all about that. I'm no
+mystic. I can't help you there, dear. But I know, as well as I know
+anything on earth, that anything that's worth having in anybody's life,
+his parent-hood, his marriage, his love, his ambition, can stand any
+honest challenge it can be put to. If it can't, it's not valid and ought
+to be changed or discarded." His gaze on her was immeasurably steady.
+
+She longed unspeakably for something else from him, some warming,
+comforting assurance of help, some heartening, stimulating encouragement
+along that stark, bleak way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Somehow they were standing up now, both pale, looking profoundly into
+each other's eyes. Something almost palpable, of which not a word had
+been spoken aloud, came and stood there between them, and through it
+they still looked at each other. They had left words far behind now, in
+the fierce velocity of their thoughts.
+
+And yet with the almost physical unity of their years of life together,
+each knew the other's thoughts.
+
+She flung herself against him as though she had cried out to him. He put
+his arms strongly, tenderly about her, as though he had answered.
+
+With no words she had cried out, silently, desperately to him, "Hold me!
+Hold me!"
+
+And with no words, he had answered, silently, desperately, "No one can
+hold you but yourself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A shouting babble of voices rose in the distance. The children crying to
+each other came out of the house-door and raced down the flag-stone
+walk. "There they are! In the garden! By the onion-bed! Father! Mother!
+We've been looking for you everywhere. Toucle says if you'll let her,
+she'll boil down some maple syrup for us to wax on ice for dessert."
+
+They poured into the garden, children, cat and fox-terrier, noisy,
+insistent, clamorous. Mark, always frankly greedy of his mother's
+attention, pushed in jealously between his parents, clinging to his
+mother's knees. He looked up in her face and laughed out, his merry
+peal, "Oh, Mother, what a dirty face! You've been suspiring and then
+you've wiped your forehead with your dirty hand, the way you say I
+mustn't. How funny you look! And you've got a great, long tear in your
+sleeve, too."
+
+Behind them, tiny, smooth and glistening, Eugenia Mills strolled to the
+edge of the garden, as far as the flag-stones went, and stood waiting,
+palpably incapable of taking her delicate bronze slippers into the dust.
+
+"You've missed a kitchen call from that lively, earthy old Mrs. Powers
+and her handsome daughter-in-law," she announced casually. "Toucle says
+they brought some eggs. What a stunning creature that Nelly is! There's
+temperament for you! Can't you just feel the smouldering, primitive fire
+hidden under that scornful silence of hers?"
+
+"Mother, may we tell Toucle to put the syrup on to boil?" begged Elly.
+Her hair was tangled and tousled, with bits of bark sticking in it, and
+dried mud was caked on her hands and bare legs. Marise thought of the
+repugnance she must have aroused in Eugenia.
+
+"Mother," said Paul, "Mr. Welles is going to give me a fishing-rod, he
+says. A _real_ one. Boughten."
+
+"Oh, I want one too!" cried Mark, jumping up and down. "I want one too."
+
+"You're too little. Mother, _isn't_ Mark too little? And anyhow, he
+always breaks everything. You do, Mark, you know you do. I take _care_
+of my things!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Someone in the confusion stepped on the fox-terrier's toes and he set up
+a shrill, aggrieved yelping. The children pawed at her with dirty hands.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Marsh," said Eugenia, looking over her shoulder at
+the dark-haired figure in flannels approaching from the other house. She
+turned and strolled across the grass to meet him, as white and gleaming
+as he.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sick qualm of self-contempt shook Marise. For, high and clear above
+everything else, there had come into her mind a quick discomfort at the
+contrast between her appearance and that of Eugenia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+HOME LIFE
+
+
+July 20.
+
+The heat was appalling even early in the morning, right after breakfast.
+There were always three or four such terrific days, even up here in the
+mountains, to remind you that you lived in America and had to take your
+part of the ferocious extremes of the American climate.
+
+And of course this had to be the time when Toucle went off for one of
+her wandering disappearances. Marise could tell that by the aspect of
+the old woman as she entered the kitchen that morning, her reticule bag
+bulging out with whatever mysterious provisions Toucle took with her.
+You never missed anything from the kitchen.
+
+Marise felt herself in such a nervously heightened state of
+sensitiveness to everything and everybody in those days, that it did not
+surprise her to find that for the first time she received something more
+than a quaint and amusing impression from the old aborigine. She had
+never noticed it before, but sometimes there was something about
+Toucle's strange, battered, leathery old face . . . what was it? The idea
+came to her a new one, that Toucle was also a person, not merely a
+curious and enigmatic phenomenon.
+
+Toucle was preparing to depart in the silent, unceremonious,
+absent-minded way she did everything, as though she were the only person
+in the world. She opened the screen door, stepped out into the torrid
+glare of the sunshine and, a stooped, shabby, feeble old figure, trudged
+down the path.
+
+"Where does she go?" thought Marise, and "What was that expression on
+her face I could not name?"
+
+Impulsively she went out quickly herself, and followed after the old
+woman.
+
+"Toucle! Toucle!" she called, and wondered if her voice in these days
+sounded to everyone as nervous and uncertain as it did to her.
+
+The old woman turned and waited till the younger had overtaken her. They
+were under the dense shade of an old maple, beside the road, as they
+stood looking at each other.
+
+As she had followed, Marise regretted her impulse, and had wondered what
+in the world she could find to say, but now that she saw again the
+expression in the other's face, she cried out longingly, "Toucle, where
+do you go that makes you look peaceful?"
+
+The old woman glanced at her, a faint surprise appearing in her deeply
+lined face. Then she looked at her, without surprise, seriously as
+though to see what she might read in the younger woman's eyes. She stood
+for a long moment, thinking. Finally she sat down on the grass under the
+maple-tree, and motioned Marise to sit beside her. She meditated for a
+long time, and then said, hesitatingly, "I don't know as a white person
+could understand. White people . . . nobody ever asked me before."
+
+She sat silent, her broad, dusty feet in their elastic-sided, worn,
+run-over shoes straight before her, the thick, horny eyelids dropped
+over her eyes, her scarred old face carved into innumerable deep lines.
+Marise wondered if she had forgotten that anyone else was there. She
+turned her own eyes away, finally, and looking at the mountains saw that
+black thunderclouds were rolling up over the Eagle Rocks. Then the old
+woman said, her eyes still dropped, "I tell you how my uncle told me,
+seventy-five years ago. He said people are like fish in an underground
+brook, in a black cave. He said there is a place, away far off from
+where they live, where there is a crack in the rock. If they went 'way
+off they could get a glimpse of what daylight is. And about once in so
+often they need to swim there and look out at the daylight. If they
+don't, they lose their eyesight from always being in the dark. He said
+that a lot of Indians don't care whether they lose their eyesight or
+not, so long's they can go on eating and swimming around. But good
+Indians do. He said that as far as he could make out, none of the white
+people care. He said maybe they've lost their eyes altogether."
+
+Without a move of her sagging, unlovely old body, she turned her deep
+black eyes on the flushed, quivering, beautiful woman beside her.
+"That's where I go," she answered. "I go 'way off to be by myself, and
+get a glimpse of what daylight is."
+
+She got up to her feet, shifted her reticule from one hand to the other,
+and without a backward look trudged slowly down the dusty road, a
+stooped, shabby, feeble old figure.
+
+Marise saw her turn into a wood-road that led up towards the mountain,
+and disappear. Her own heart was burning as she looked. Nobody would
+help her in her need. Toucle went away to find peace, and left her in
+the black cave. Neale stood. . . .
+
+A child's shriek of pain and loud wailing calls for "Mother! Mother!
+_Mother!_" sent her back running breathlessly to the house. Mark had
+fallen out of the swing and the sharp corner of the board had struck
+him, he said, "in the eye! in the eye!" He was shrieking and holding
+both hands frantically over his left eye. This time it might be serious,
+might have injured the eye-ball. Those swing-boards were deadly. Marise
+snatched up the screaming child and carried him into the kitchen,
+terrible perspectives of blindness hag-riding her imagination; saying to
+herself with one breath, "It's probably nothing," and in the next seeing
+Mark groping his way about the world with a cane, all his life long.
+
+She opened the first-aid box on the kitchen-shelf, pulled out a roll of
+bandage and a length of gauze, sat down with Mark in her lap near the
+faucet, and wet the gauze in cold water. Then she tried in vain to
+induce him to take down his hands so that she could see where the blow
+had struck.
+
+But the terrified, hysterical child was incapable of hearing what she
+said, incapable of doing anything but scream louder and louder when she
+tried to pull down those desperately tight little hands held with
+frantic tenseness over the hurt eye. Marise could feel all his little
+body, quivering and taut. His shrieks were like those of someone
+undergoing the most violent torture.
+
+She herself responded nervously and automatically to his condition, felt
+herself begin to tighten up, and knew that she was equally ready to
+shake him furiously, or to burst into anguished tears of sympathy for
+his pain.
+
+Wait now . . . wait . . . what was the thing to do for Mark? What would
+untie those knots of fright and shock? For Paul it would have been talk
+of the bicycle he was to have for his birthday; for Elly a fairy-story
+or a piece of candy! For Mark . . .
+
+High above the tumult of Mark's shrieks and her own spasmodic reactions
+to them, she sent her intelligence circling quietly . . . and in an
+instant . . . oh yes, that was the thing. "Listen, Mark," she said in his
+ear, stopping her effort to take down his hands, "Mother's learned a new
+song, a _new_ one, awfully funny. And ever so long too, the way you like
+them." She put her arms about him and began, hearing herself with
+difficulty through his cries.
+
+     "On yonder hill there stands a damsel,
+     Who she is, I do not know."
+
+("How preposterous we must sound, if Eugenia is listening," she thought
+to herself, as she sang, "out-yelling each other this way!")
+
+     "I'll go and court her for her beauty.
+     She must answer 'yes' or 'no.'"
+
+As usual Mark fell helpless before the combination of music and a story.
+His cries diminished in volume. She said in his ear, "And then the Lady
+sings," and she tuned her voice to a young-ladyish, high sweetness and
+sang,
+
+     "My father was a Spanish Captain,
+     Went to sea a month ago,"
+
+Mark made a great effort and choked down his cries to heaving sobs as he
+tried to listen,
+
+     "First he kissed me, then he left me;
+     Bade me always answer 'no.'"
+
+She told the little boy, now looking up at her out of the one eye not
+covered by his hands, "Then the gentleman says to her," she made her
+voice loud and hearty and bluff,
+
+     "Oh, Madam, in your face is beauty,
+     On your lips red roses grow.
+     Will you take me for your lover?
+     Madam, answer 'yes' or 'no.'"
+
+She explained in an aside to Mark, "But her father had told her she must
+always answer just the one thing, 'no,' so she had to say," she turned
+up in the mincing, ladylike key again, and sang,
+
+     "Oh no, John, no, John, no."
+
+Mark drew a long quivering breath through parted lips and sat silent,
+his one eye fixed on his mother, who now sang in the loud, lusty voice,
+
+     "Oh, Madam, since you are so cruel,
+     And that you do scorn me so,
+     If I may not be your lover,
+     Madam, will you let me go?"
+
+And in the high, prim voice, she answered herself,
+
+     "Oh no, John, no, John, _no!_"
+
+A faint smile hovered near Mark's flushed face. He leaned towards his
+mother as she sang, and took down his hands so that he could see her
+better. Marise noted instantly, with a silent exclamation of relief that
+the red angry mark was quite outside the eye-socket, harmless on the
+bone at one side. Much ado about nothing as usual with the children. Why
+_did_ she get so frightened each time? Another one of Mark's hairbreadth
+escapes.
+
+She reached for the cold wet compress and went on, singing loudly and
+boldly, with a facetious wag of her head, (how tired she was of all this
+manoeuvering!),
+
+     "Then I will stay with you forever
+     If you will not be unkind."
+
+She applied the cold compress on the hurt spot and put out her hand for
+the bandage-roll, singing with an ostentatiously humorous accent and
+thinking with exasperation how all this was delaying her in the thousand
+things to do in the house,
+
+     "Madam, I have vowed to love you;
+     Would you have me change my mind?"
+
+She wound the bandage around and around the little boy's head, so that
+it held the compress in place, singing in the high, sweet voice,
+
+     "Oh no, John, no, John, NO."
+
+She went on with a heavy, mock solemnity, in the loud voice,
+
+     "Oh, hark, I hear the church-bells ringing;
+     Will you come and be my wife?"
+
+She pinned the bandage in place at the back of Mark's head,
+
+     "Or, dear Madam, have you settled
+     To live single all your life?"
+
+She gathered the child up to her, his head on her shoulder, his face
+turned to her, his bare, dusty, wiry little legs wriggling and soiling
+her white skirt; and sang, rollickingly,
+
+     "Oh no, John, no, John, NO!"
+
+"There, that's all," she said in her natural voice, looking down at
+Mark. She said to herself rebelliously, "I've expended enough
+personality and energy on this performance to play a Beethoven sonata at
+a concert," and found she was quoting something Vincent Marsh had said
+about her life, the day before.
+
+There was a moment while the joke slowly penetrated to Mark's
+six-year-old brain. And then he laughed out, delightedly, "Oh, Mother,
+that's a beaut! Sing it again. Sing it again! Now I know what's coming,
+I'll like it such a lots betterer."
+
+Marise cried out in indignant protest, "Mark! When I've sat here for ten
+minutes singing to you, and all the work to do, and the sun getting like
+red-hot fire every minute."
+
+"What must you got to do?" asked Mark, challengingly.
+
+"Well, the very first thing is to get dinner ready and in the fireless
+cooker, so we can turn out the oil-stove and cool off this terrible
+kitchen."
+
+Mark looked up at her and smiled. He had recently lost a front tooth and
+this added a quaintness to the splendor of his irresistible smile. "You
+could sing as you get the dinner ready," he said insinuatingly, "and
+I'll help you."
+
+Marise smothered an impulse to shout to the child, "No, no, go away! Go
+away! I can't have you bothering around. I've got to be by myself, or I
+don't know what will happen!" She thought of Toucle, off in the green
+and silent woods, in a blessed solitude. She thought of Eugenia up in
+her shaded room, stretched on the chaise-longue in a thin silk
+room-gown, she thought of Neale and his stern eyes . . . she looked down
+on the dusty, tanned, tousle-headed little boy, with the bandage around
+his head, his one eye looking up at her pleadingly, his dirty little
+hand clutching at the fold of her skirt; and drearily and unwillingly
+she summoned herself to self-control. "All right, Mark, that's true. I
+could sing while I peel the potatoes. You could wash them for me. That
+would help."
+
+They installed themselves for this work. The acrid smell of
+potato-parings rose in the furnace-like heat of the kitchen, along with
+the singing voice, asking and answering itself. Mark listened with all
+his might, laughing and wriggling with appreciation. When his mother had
+finished and was putting the potatoes into the boiling water, he said
+exultantly, "He got around _her_, all right, I should say what!"
+
+Paul burst in now, saying, "Mother, Mother!" He stopped short and asked,
+"What you got on your head, Mark?"
+
+The little boy looked surprised, put his hand up, felt the bandage, and
+said with an off-hand air, "Oh, I bunked my head on the corner of the
+swing-board."
+
+"I know," said Paul, "I've done it lots of times." He went on, "Mother,
+my pig has lice. You can just _see_ them crawling around under his hair.
+And I got out the oil Father said to use, but I can't do it. It says on
+the can to rub it on with a stiff little brush. I don't see how ever in
+the world you're going to get your pig to stand still while you do it.
+When I try to, he just squeals, and runs away."
+
+His mother said with decision, from where she stooped before the open
+ice-box door, "Paul, if there is anything in the world I know nothing
+about, it is pigs. I haven't the slightest idea what to do." She shut
+the heavy door with a bang more energetic than was necessary to latch
+it, and came back towards the stove with a raw, red piece of uncooked
+meat on a plate.
+
+"Oh, how nasty meat looks, raw," said Mark, with an accent of disgust.
+
+"You eat it with a good appetite when I've cooked it," remarked his
+mother, somewhat grimly, putting it in a hot pan over the fire. An odor
+of searing fibers and smoke and frying onions rose up in the hot, still
+air of the kitchen.
+
+"If I could have guessed we'd have such weather, I'd never have ordered
+a pot-roast," thought Marise, vexed.
+
+"Please, Mother, _please_," begged Paul.
+
+"Please what?" asked his mother, who had forgotten the pig.
+
+"Henry!" said Paul. "If you could see how he scratches and scratches and
+how the behind of his ears is all scabs he's so bitten."
+
+"Wouldn't Eugenia and Vincent Marsh love this conversation?" thought
+Marise, turning the meat in the pan and starting back from the spatters
+of hot fat.
+
+"Mother, don't you see, I agreed to take care of him, with Father, and
+so I _have_ to. He's just like my child. You wouldn't let one of _us_
+have lice all over, and scabs on our . . ."
+
+"Oh stop, Paul, for Heaven's sake!" said his mother.
+
+Through the smoke and smell and heat, the sensation of her underclothing
+sticking hotly to her limbs, the constant dogging fear and excitement
+that beset her, and the causeless twanging of her nerves, there traveled
+to her brain, along a channel worn smooth by the habit of her thought
+about the children, the question, "What is it that makes Paul care so
+much about this?" And the answer, almost lost in the reverberation of
+all those other questions and answers in her head, was, "It comes from
+what is best in Paul, his feeling of personal responsibility for the
+welfare of others. That mustn't be hindered." Aloud, almost
+automatically, she said, in a neutral tone, "Paul, I don't think I can
+do a single thing for you and Henry, but I'll go with you and look at
+him and see if I can think of anything. Just wait till I get this and
+the potatoes in the fireless cooker."
+
+Paul made a visible effort, almost as though he were swallowing
+something too large for his throat, and said ungraciously, "I suppose I
+ought to help you in here, then."
+
+"I suppose so," said his mother roughly, in an exact imitation of his
+manner.
+
+Paul looked at her quickly, laughing a little, sheepishly. He waited a
+moment, during which time Mark announced that he was going out to the
+sand-pile, and then said, in a pleasant tone, "What can I do?"
+
+His mother nodded at him with a smile, refrained from the spoken word of
+approbation which she knew he would hate, and took thought as to what he
+might do that would afflict him least. "You can go and sweep off the
+front porch, and straighten out the cushions and chairs, and water the
+porch-box geraniums."
+
+He disappeared, whistling loudly, "Massa's in the cold, cold ground."
+Marise hoped automatically that Elly was not in earshot to hear this.
+
+She felt herself tired to the point of exhaustion by the necessity
+always to be divining somebody's inner processes, putting herself in
+somebody's else skin and doing the thing that would reach him in the
+right way. She would like, an instant, just an instant, to be in her own
+skin, she thought, penetrated with a sense of the unstable equilibrium
+of personal relations. To keep the peace in a household of young and old
+highly differentiated personalities was a feat of the Blondin variety;
+the least inattention, the least failure in judgment, and opportunities
+were lost forever. Her sense of the impermanence of the harmony between
+them all had grown upon her of late, like an obsession. It seemed to her
+that her face must wear the strained, propitiatory smile she had so
+despised in her youth on the faces of older woman, mothers of families.
+Now she knew from what it came . . . balancing perpetually on a tight-rope
+from which . . .
+
+Oh, her very soul felt crumpled with all this pressure from the outside,
+never-ending!
+
+The worst was not the always recurring physical demands, the dressing
+and undressing the children, preparing their food and keeping them
+clean. The crushing part was the moral strain; to carry their lives
+always with you, incalculably different from each other and from your
+own. And not only their present lives, but the insoluble question of how
+their present lives were affecting their future. Never for a moment from
+the time they are born, to be free from the thought, "Where are they?
+What are they doing? Is that the best thing for them?" till every
+individual thought of your own was shattered, till your intelligence was
+atrophied, till your sensibilities to finer things were dulled and
+blunted.
+
+Paul came back. "About ready for Henry?" he asked. "I've finished the
+porch."
+
+She put the two tightly closed kettles inside the fireless cooker and
+shut down the lid. "Yes, ready for Henry," she said.
+
+She washed her hot, moist face in cold water, drank a glass, put on a
+broad-brimmed garden hat, and set out for the field back of the barn.
+The kitchen had been hot, but it seemed cool compared to the heat into
+which they stepped from the door. It startled Marise so that she drew
+back for an instant. It seemed to her like walking through molten metal.
+"Mercy! what heat!" she murmured.
+
+"Yes, ain't it great?" said Paul, looking off, down the field, "just
+what the corn needs."
+
+"You should say 'isn't,' not 'ain't,'" corrected his mother.
+
+"But it'll be cooler soon," said Paul. "There's a big thunderstorm
+coming up. See, around the corner of the mountain. See how black it is
+now, over the Eagle Rocks" He took her hand in his bramble-scarred
+little fingers, and led her along, talking proudly of his own virtue.
+"I've moved Henry's pen today, fresh, so's to get him on new grass, and
+I put it under the shade of this butternut tree."
+
+They were beside the pen now, looking over the fence at the grotesque
+animal, twitching his gross and horribly flexible snout, as he peered up
+at them out of his small, intelligent eyes, sunk in fat, and almost
+hidden by the fleshy, hairy triangles of his ear-flaps.
+
+"Don't you think Henry is a _very_ handsome pig?" asked Paul.
+
+"I think you take very good care of him," she answered. "Now what is the
+matter about the oil you can't put on? Doesn't he like it?"
+
+"He hasn't felt it yet. He won't even let me try. Look!" The child
+climbed over the fence and made a quick grab at the animal, which gave
+an alarmed, startled grunt, wheeled with astonishing nimbleness, and
+darted away in a short-legged gallop.
+
+"Look there, that's the way he always does!" said Paul in an aggrieved
+tone.
+
+Marise considered the pig for a moment. He had turned again and was once
+more staring at her, his quivering, fleshy snout in the air, a
+singularly alert expression of attention animating his heavy-jowled
+countenance.
+
+"Are there any things he specially likes?" she asked Paul.
+
+"He likes to eat, of course, being a pig," said Paul, "and he loves you
+to scratch his back with a stick."
+
+"Oh, then it's easy. Come outside the pen. Now listen. You go back to
+the barn and get whatever it is you feed him. Then you put that in the
+trough, and let him begin to eat, quietly. Then take your oil and your
+brush, and moving very slowly so that you don't startle him, lean over
+the fence and begin to brush it on his back where he likes to be rubbed.
+If he likes the feel of it, he'll probably stand still. I'll wait here,
+till you see how it comes out."
+
+She moved away a few paces, and sank down on the grass under the tree,
+as though the heat had flung her there. The grass crisped drily under
+her, as though it too were parched.
+
+She closed her eyes and felt the sun beating palpably on the lids . . .
+or was it that hot inward pulse still throbbing . . . ? Why wouldn't Neale
+do it for her? Why wouldn't he put out that strength of his and crush
+out this strange agitation of hers, _forbid_ it to her? Then there was
+nothing in her but intense discomfort, as though that were a universe of
+its own. A low, distant growl of thunder shook the air with a muffled,
+muted roar.
+
+After a time, a little voice back of her announced in a low, cautious
+tone, "Mother, it _works!_ Henry loves it!"
+
+She turned her head and saw the little boy vigorously rubbing the ears
+and flanks of the pig, which stood perfectly still, its eyes half shut,
+rapt in a beatitude of satisfaction.
+
+Marise turned her head away and slid down lower on the grass, so that
+she lay with her face on her arm. She was shaking from head to foot as
+though with sobs. But she was not crying. She was laughing hysterically.
+"Even for the pig!" she was saying to herself. "A symbol of my life!"
+
+She lay there a long time after this nervous fit of laughter had
+stopped, till she heard Paul saying, "There, I've put it on every inch
+of him." He added with a special intonation, "And now I guess maybe I'd
+better go in swimming."
+
+At this Marise sat up quickly, with an instant experienced divination of
+what she would see.
+
+In answer to her appalled look on him, he murmured apologetically, "I
+didn't know I was getting so _much_ on me. It sort of spattered."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was, of course, as she led the deplorable object towards the house
+that they encountered Eugenia under a green-lined white parasol, on the
+way back from the garden, carrying an armful of sweet-peas.
+
+"I thought I'd fill the vases with fresh flowers before the rain came,"
+she murmured, visibly sheering off from Paul.
+
+"Eugenia ought not to carry sweet-peas," thought Marise. "It ought
+always to be orchids."
+
+In the bath-room as she and Paul took off his oil-soaked clothes, Mark's
+little voice called to her, "Mother! Mo-o-other!"
+
+"Yes, what is it?" she answered, suspending operations for a moment to
+hear.
+
+"Mother, if I had to kill all the ants in the world," called Mark, "I'd
+a great deal rather they were all gathered up together in a heap than
+running around every-which-way, wouldn't you?"
+
+"For goodness' _sakes,_ what a silly baby thing to say!" commented Paul
+with energy.
+
+Marise called heartily to Mark, "Yes indeed I would, dear."
+
+Paul asked curiously, "Mother, how can you answer him like that, such a
+_fool_ thing!"
+
+Marise felt another wave of hysterical laughter mounting, at the idea of
+the difficulty in perceiving the difference in degree of flatness
+between Mark's remarks and those of Paul.
+
+But it suddenly occurred to her that this was the time for Elly's hour
+at the piano, and she heard no sound. She hastily laid out the clean
+clothes for Paul, saw him started on the scrub in the bath-tub, and ran
+downstairs to see if she could find Elly, before the storm broke,
+turning over in her mind Elly's favorite nooks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The air was as heavy as noxious gas in the breathless pause before the
+arrival of the rain.
+
+In the darkened, shaded hall stood a man's figure, the face turned up
+towards her, the look on it meant for her, her only, not the useful
+house-mother, but that living core of her own self, buried, hidden, put
+off, choked and starved as she had felt it to be, all that morning. That
+self rose up now, passionately grateful to be recognized, and looked
+back at him.
+
+Thunder rolled among the distant hills.
+
+She felt her pulse whirling with an excitement that made her lean
+against the wall, as he took a great stride towards her, crying out,
+"Oh, make an end . . . make an end of this. . . ."
+
+The door behind him opened, and Elly ran in, red-faced and dusty.
+"Mother, Mother, Reddy has come off her nest. And there are twelve
+hatched out of the fourteen eggs! Mother, they are such darlings! I wish
+you'd come and see. Mother, if I practise _good_, won't you come
+afterwards and look at them?"
+
+"You should say 'practise well,' not 'good,'" said Marise, her accent
+openly ironical.
+
+The wind, precursor of the storm falling suddenly on the valley, shook
+the trees till they roared.
+
+Over the child's head she exchanged with Vincent Marsh a long reckless
+look, the meaning of which she made no effort to understand, the abandon
+of which she made no effort to restrain.
+
+With a dry, clattering, immediate rattle, without distance or dignity,
+the thunder broke threateningly over the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+MASSAGE-CREAM; THEME AND VARIATIONS
+
+July 20.
+
+The hardest thing for Eugenia about these terribly hard days of suspense
+was to keep her self-control in her own room. Of course for her as for
+any civilized being, it was always possible to keep herself in hand with
+people looking on. But for years she had not had to struggle so when
+alone, for poise and self-mastery. Her room at the Crittendens', which
+had been hers so long, and which Marise had let her furnish with her own
+things, was no longer the haven of refuge it had been from the bitter,
+raw crudity of the Vermont life. She tried to fill the empty hours of
+Neale's daily absences from the house with some of the fastidious,
+delicate occupations of which she had so many, but they seemed brittle
+in her hot hands, and broke when she tried to lean on them. A dozen
+times a day she interrupted herself to glance with apprehension at her
+reflection in the mirror, the Florentine mirror with the frame of brown
+wood carved, with the light, restrained touch of a good period, into
+those tasteful slender columns. And every time she looked, she was
+horrified and alarmed to see deep lines of thought, of hope, of
+impatience, of emotion, criss-crossing fatally on her face.
+
+Then she would sit down before her curving dressing-table, gather the
+folds of her Persian room-dress about her, lift up her soul and go
+through those mental and physical relaxing exercises which the wonderful
+lecturer of last winter had explained. She let her head and shoulders
+and neck droop like a wilted flower-stem, while she took into her mind
+the greater beauty of a wilted flower over the crass rigidity of a
+growing one; she breathed deeply and slowly and rhythmically, and
+summoned to her mind far-off and rarely, difficultly, beautiful things;
+the tranquil resignation of Chinese roofs, tempered with the merry human
+note of their tilted corners; Arabian traceries; cunningly wrought,
+depraved wood-carvings in the corners of Gothic cathedrals; the gay and
+amusing pink rotundities of a Boucher ceiling. When she felt her face
+calm and unlined again, she put on a little massage cream, to make
+doubly sure, and rubbed it along where the lines of emotion had been.
+
+But half an hour afterwards, as she lay stretched in the chaise-longue
+by the window, reading Claudel, or Strindberg, or Remy de Gourmont, she
+would suddenly find that she was not thinking of what was on the page,
+that she saw there only Marise's troubled eyes while she and Marsh
+talked about the inevitable and essential indifference of children to
+their parents and the healthiness of this instinct; about the
+foolishness of the parents' notion that they would be formative elements
+in the children's lives; or on the other hand, if the parents did
+succeed in forcing themselves into the children's lives, the danger of
+sexual mother-complexes. Eugenia found that instead of thrilling
+voluptuously, as she knew she ought, to the precious pain and
+bewilderment of one of the thwarted characters of James Joyce, she was,
+with a disconcerting and painful eagerness of her own, bringing up to
+mind the daunted silence Marise kept when they mentioned the fact that
+of course everybody nowadays knew that children are much better off in a
+big, numerous, robust group than in the nervous, tight isolation of
+family life; and that a really trained educator could look out for them
+much better than any mother, because he could let them alone as a mother
+never could.
+
+She found that such evocations of facts poignantly vital to her
+personally, were devastatingly more troubling to her facial calm than
+any most sickening picture in d'Annunzio's portrayal of small-town
+humanity in which she was trying to take the proper, shocked interest.
+Despite all her effort to remain tranquil she would guess by the stir of
+her pulses that probably she had lost control of herself again, and
+going to the mirror would catch her face all strained and tense in a
+breathless suspense.
+
+But if there was one thing which life had taught her, it was persevering
+patience. She drew from the enameled bonbonniere one of the curious,
+hard sweet-meats from Southern China; lifted to her face the spicy-sweet
+spikes of the swamp-orchid in her Venetian glass vase; turned her eyes
+on the reproduction of the Gauguin _Ja Orana Maria_, and began to draw
+long, rhythmic breaths, calling on all her senses to come to her rescue.
+She let her arms and her head and her shoulders go limp again, and fixed
+her attention on rare and beautiful things of beauty . . . abandoning
+herself to the pictures called up by a volume of translated Japanese
+poems she had recently read . . . temples in groves . . . bells in the
+mist . . . rain on willow-trees . . . snow falling without wind. . . .
+How delicate and suggestive those poems were! How much finer, more subtle
+than anything in the Aryan languages!
+
+She came to herself cautiously, glanced at her face in the mirror, and
+reached for the carved ivory pot of massage cream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She decided then she would sew a little, instead of reading. The frill
+of lace in her net dress needed to be changed . . . such a bore having to
+leave your maid behind. She moved to the small, black-lacquered table
+where her work-box stood and leaned on it for a moment, watching the dim
+reflection of her pointed white fingers in the glistening surface of the
+wood. They did not look like Marise's brown, uncared-for hands. She
+opened the inlaid box and took from it the thimble which she had bought
+in Siena, the little antique masterpiece of North Italian gold-work.
+What a fulfilment of oneself it was to make life beautiful by
+beautifying all its implements. What a revelation it might be to Neale,
+how a woman could make everything she touched exquisite, to Neale who
+had only known Marise, subdued helplessly to the roughness of the rough
+things about her, Marise who had capitulated to America and surrendered
+to the ugliness of American life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But none of that, none of that! She was near the danger line again. She
+felt the flesh on her face begin to grow tense, and with her beautiful,
+delicate fore-fingers she smoothed her eyebrows into relaxed calm again.
+
+She must keep herself occupied, incessantly; that was the only thing
+possible. She had been about to have recourse to the old, old
+tranquillizer of women, the setting of fine stitches. She would fix her
+mind on that . . . a frill of lace for the net dress . . . which lace? She
+lifted the cover from the long, satin-covered box and fingered over the
+laces in it, forcing herself to feel the suitable reaction to their
+differing physiognomies, to admire the robustness of the
+Carrick-Macross, the boldness of design of the Argentan, the complicated
+fineness of the English Point. She decided, as harmonizing best with the
+temperament of the net dress, on Malines, a strip of this perfect,
+first-Napoleon Malines. What an aristocratic lace it was, with its
+cobwebby _fond-de-neige_ background and its fourpetaled flowers in the
+scrolls. Americans were barbarians indeed that Malines was so little
+known; in fact hardly recognized at all. Most Americans would probably
+take this priceless creation in her hand for something bought at a
+ten-cent store, because of its simplicity and classic reticence of
+design. They always wanted, as they would say themselves, something more
+to show for their money. Their only idea of "real lace," as they
+vulgarly called it (as if anything could be lace that wasn't real), was
+that showy, awful Brussels, manufactured for exportation, which was sold
+in those terrible tourists' shops in Belgium, with the sprawling
+patterns made out of coarse braid and appliqued on, not an organic part
+of the life of the design.
+
+She stopped her work for a moment to look more closely at the filmy lace
+in her hand, to note if the mesh of the reseau were circular or
+hexagonal. She fancied that she was the only American woman of her
+acquaintance who knew the difference, who had the least culture in the
+matter of lace . . . except Marise, of course, and it was positively worse
+for Marise to have been initiated and then turn back to commonness, than
+for those other well-meaning, Philistine American women who were at
+least innocently ignorant. Having known the exquisite lore of lace, how
+could Marise have let it and all the rest of the lore of civilization
+drop for these coarse occupations of hers, now? How could she have let
+life coarsen her, as it had, how could she have fallen into such common
+ways, with her sun-browned hair, and her roughened hands, and her
+inexactly adjusted dresses, and the fatal middle-aged lines beginning to
+show from the corner of the ear down into the neck, and not an effort
+made to stop them. But as to wrinkles, of course a woman as unrestrained
+as Marise was bound to get them early. She had never learned the ABC of
+woman's wisdom, the steady cult of self-care, self-beautifying,
+self-refining. How long would it be before Neale . . .
+
+No! None of that! She must get back to impersonal thoughts. What was it
+she had selected as subject for consideration? It had been lace. What
+about lace? Lace . . . ? Her mind balked, openly rebellious. She could not
+make it think of lace again. She was in a panic, and cast about her for
+some strong defense . . . oh! just the thing . . . the new hat.
+
+She would try on the new hat which had just come from New York. She had
+been waiting for a leisurely moment, really to be able to put her
+attention on that.
+
+She opened the gaily printed round pasteboard box, and took out the
+creation. She put it on with care, low over her eyebrows, adjusting it
+carefully by feel, before she looked at herself to get the first
+impression. Then, hand-glass in hand, she began to study it seriously
+from various angles. When she was convinced that from every view-point
+her profile had the unlovely and inharmonious silhouette fashionable
+that summer, she drew a long breath of relief, and took it off gently,
+looking at it with pleasure. Nothing gives one such self-confidence, she
+reflected, as the certainty of having the right sort of hat. How much
+better "chic" was than beauty!
+
+With the hat still in her hand, her very eyes on it, she saw there
+before her, as plainly as though in a crystal ball, Marise's attitude as
+she had stood with Marsh that evening before at the far end of the
+garden. Her body drawn towards his, the poise of her head, all of her
+listening intently while he talked . . . one could see how he was
+dominating her. A man with such a personality as his, regularly hypnotic
+when he chose, and practised in handling women, he would be able to do
+anything he liked with an impressionable creature like Marise, who as a
+girl was always under the influence of something or other. It was
+evident that he could put any idea he liked into Marise's head just by
+looking at her hard enough. She had seen him do it . . . helped him do it,
+for that matter!
+
+And so Neale must have seen. Anybody could! And Neale was not raising a
+hand, nor so much as lifting an eyebrow, just letting things take their
+course.
+
+_What could that mean except that he would welcome_ . . .
+
+Oh Heavens! her pulse was hammering again. She sprang up and ran to the
+mirror. Yes, the mirror showed a face that scared her; haggard and
+pinched with a fierce desire.
+
+There were not only lines now, there was a hollow in the cheek . . . or
+was that a shadow? It made her look a thousand years old. Massage would
+do that no good! And she had no faith in any of those "flesh-foods."
+Perhaps she was underweight. The hideous strain and suspense of the last
+weeks had told on her. Perhaps she would better omit those morning
+exercises for a time, in this intense heat. Perhaps she would better
+take cream with her oatmeal again. Or perhaps cream of wheat would be
+better than oatmeal. How ghastly that made her look! But perhaps it was
+only a shadow. She could not summon courage enough to move and see.
+Finally she took up her hand-mirror, framed in creamy ivory, with a
+carved jade bead hanging from it by a green silk cord. She went to the
+window to get a better light on her face. She examined it, holding her
+breath; and drew a long, long sigh of respite and relief. It _had_ been
+only a shadow!
+
+But what a fright it had given her! Her heart was quivering yet. What
+unending vigilance it took to protect yourself from deep emotions. When
+it wasn't one, it was another, that sprang on you unawares.
+
+Another one _was_ there, ready to spring also, the suddenly conceived
+possibility, like an idea thrust into her mind from the outside, that
+there might be some active part she could play in what was going on in
+this house. People did sometimes. If some chance for this offered . . .
+you never could tell when . . . a word might be . . . perhaps something to
+turn Marise from Neale long enough to . . .
+
+She cast this idea off with shame for its crudeness. What vulgar raw
+things would come into your head when you let your mind roam idly . . .
+like cheap melodrama . . .
+
+She would try the Vedanta deep-breathing exercises this time to quiet
+herself; and after them, breathing in and out through one nostril, and
+thinking of the Infinite, as the Yogi had told her.
+
+She lay down flat on the bed for this, kicking off her quilted satin
+_mules_, and wriggling her toes loose in their lace-like silk stockings.
+She would lie on her back, look up at the ceiling, and fix her mind on
+the movement up and down of her navel in breathing, as the Vedanta
+priest recommended to quiet the spirit. Perhaps she could even say,
+
+"Om . . . om . . . om . . ."
+
+as they did.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No, no she couldn't. She still had vestiges of that stupid, gross
+Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness clinging to her. But she would outgrow
+them, yet.
+
+She lay there quiet and breathed slowly, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
+And into her mind there slowly slid a cypress-shaded walk with Rome far
+below on one side, and a sun-ripened, golden, old wall on the other. She
+stood there with Marise, both so young, so young! And down the path
+towards them came a tall figure, with a bold clear face, a tender
+full-lipped mouth, and eyes that both smiled and were steady.
+
+Helplessly she watched him come, groaning in spirit at what she knew
+would happen; but she could not escape till the ache in her throat
+swelled and broke, as she saw that his eyes were for Marise and his
+words, and all of his very self for which she . . .
+
+So many years . . . so many years . . . with so much else in the
+world . . . not to have been able to cure that one ache . . . and she did
+not want to suffer . . . she wanted to be at rest, and have what she
+needed. The tears rose brimming to her eyes, and ran down on each side of
+her face to the pillow. Poor Eugenia! Poor Eugenia!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was almost broken this time, but not entirely. There was some fight
+left in her. She got up from the bed, clenched her hands tightly, and
+stood in the middle of the floor, gathering herself together.
+
+Down with it! Down! Down! Just now, at this time, when such an utterly
+unexpected dawn of a possible escape . . . to give way again.
+
+She thought suddenly, "Suppose I give up the New-Thought way, always
+distracting your attention to something else, always suppressing your
+desire, resisting the pull you want to yield to. Suppose I try the Freud
+way, bringing the desire up boldly, letting yourself go, unresisting."
+It was worth trying.
+
+She sat down in a chair, her elbows on the dressing-table, and let
+herself go, gorgeously, wholly, epically, as she had been longing to
+ever since she had first intercepted that magnetic interchange of looks
+between Marsh and Marise, the day after her arrival, the day of the
+picnic-supper in that stupid old woman's garden. That was when she had
+first known that something was up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Why, how easy it was to let yourself go! They were right, the Freudians,
+it was the natural thing to do, you did yourself a violence when you
+refused to. It was like sailing off above the clouds on familiar wings,
+although it was the first time she had tried them. . . . Marise would fall
+wholly under Marsh's spell, would run away and be divorced. Neale would
+never raise a hand against her doing this. Eugenia saw from his aloof
+attitude that it was nothing to him one way or the other. Any man who
+cared for his wife would fight for her, of course.
+
+And it was so manifestly the best thing for Marise too, to have a very
+wealthy man looking out for her, that there could be no disturbing
+reflexes of regret or remorse for anybody to disturb the perfection of
+this fore-ordained adjustment to the Infinite. Then with the children
+away at school for all the year, except a week or two with their father
+. . . fine, modern, perfect schools, the kind where the children were
+always out of doors, Florida in winter and New England hills in summer.
+Those schools were horribly expensive . . . what was all her money for?
+. . . but they had the best class of wealthy children, carefully selected
+for their social position, and the teachers were so well paid that of
+course they did their jobs better than parents.
+
+Then Neale, freed from slavery to those insufferable children, released
+from the ignoble, grinding narrowness of this petty manufacturing
+business, free to roam the world as she knew he had always longed to
+do . . . what a life they could have . . . India with Neale . . .
+China . . . Paris . . . they would avoid Rome perhaps because of
+unwelcome memories . . . Norway in summer-time. Think of seeing Neale
+fishing a Norway salmon brook . . . she and Neale on a steamer
+together . . . together . . .
+
+She caught sight of her face in the mirror . . . that radiant, smiling,
+triumphant, _young_ face, hers!
+
+Yes, the Freud way was the best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+THE SOUL OF NELLY POWERS
+
+July 20.
+
+The big pine was good for one thing, anyhow, if it did keep the house as
+dark as a cellar with the black shade it made. The side-porch was nice
+and cool even on a hot summer day, just right for making butter. If it
+wasn't for the horrid pitch-piny smell the tree wouldn't be so bad. The
+churning was getting along fine too. The dasher was beginning to go the
+blob-blob way that showed in a minute or two the butter would be there.
+It had been a real good idea to get up early and get the work out of the
+way so that the churning could be done before it got so hot. A
+thunder-storm was coming, too, probably. You could feel it in the air.
+There, perhaps the butter had come, now. Nelly pushed the dasher down
+slowly and drew it back with care, turning her ear to listen expertly to
+the sound it made. No, not yet, there wasn't that watery splash yet that
+came after it had separated.
+
+She went on with the regular rhythmic motion, her eyes fixed dreamily on
+the round hole in the cover of the churn, through which the
+dasher-handle went up and down and which was now rimmed with thick
+yellow cream. She loved to churn, Nelly thought. She loved to have milk
+to look out for, anyhow, from the time it came in from the barn, warm
+and foamy and sweet-smelling, till the time when she had taken off the
+thick, sour cream, like shammy-skin, and then poured the loppered milk
+spatteringly into the pigs' trough. She liked seeing how the pigs loved
+it, sucking it up, their eyes half shut because it tasted so good. There
+wasn't anything that was better than giving people or animals what they
+liked to eat. It made her feel good all over to throw corn to the hens
+and see how they scrabbled for it. She just loved to get a bag of stick
+candy at the store, when she went to town, and see how Addie and Ralph
+and little 'Gene jumped up and down when they saw it.
+
+And then it was so nice to be fore-handed and get the churning out of
+the way before noon. She would have time this afternoon after the dishes
+were done, to sit right down with that sprigged calico dress for little
+Addie. She could get the seams all run up on the machine before
+supper-time, and have the hand-work, buttonholes and finishing, for
+pick-up work for odd minutes. She just loved to sit and sew, in a room
+all nice and picked up, and know the house-work was done.
+
+That would be a _real_ pretty dress, she thought, with the pink sprigs
+and the pink feather-stitching in mercerized cotton she was going to put
+on it. Addie would look sweet in it. And if it was washed careful and
+dried in the shade it wouldn't fade so much. It was a good bright pink
+to start with. Only Addie ought to have a new hat to wear with it. A
+white straw with pink flowers on it. But that would cost a couple of
+dollars, anyhow, everything was so dear now. Oh well, 'Gene would let
+her buy it. 'Gene would let her do most anything.
+
+She thought with pity of her sisters, mill-hands in West Adams still, or
+married to mill-hands, men who got drunk on the sly and didn't work
+regular, and wanted a full half of all they made for themselves. 'Gene
+and his mother were always scolding about the money they could have had
+if they'd kept that wood-land on the mountain. They'd ought to ha' been
+really poor the way she had been, so's you didn't know where the next
+meal was coming from, or how the rent was going to be paid. She had been
+awfully lucky to get 'Gene, who let her decide how much money ought to
+be spent on the children's clothes and hers, and never said a thing, or
+scolded or bothered. He was kind of _funny_, 'Gene was, always so sober
+and solemn, and it was a _sort_ of bother to have him so crazy about her
+still. That had been all right when they were engaged, and first
+married. She had liked it all right then, although it always seemed sort
+of foolish to her. But men _were_ that way! Only now, when there were
+three children and another one coming, and the house to be kept nice,
+and the work done up right, and the farmwork and everything going so
+good, and so much on her mind, why, it seemed as though they'd ought to
+have other things to think about beside kissings and huggings. Not that
+'Gene didn't do his share of the work. He was a fine farmer, as good as
+anybody in the valley. But he never could settle down, and be
+comfortable and quiet with her, like it was natural for old married
+folks to do. If she went by him, close, so her arm touched him, why
+then, if nobody was there he'd grab at her and kiss her and rumple her
+hair, and set her all back in her work. With all she had to do and think
+of, and she did her work as good as anybody if she did say it who
+shouldn't, she had her day planned before she turned her feet out of bed
+in the morning. And she liked to have things go the way she planned
+them. She _liked_ 'Gene all right, only she had her work to get done.
+
+She churned meditatively, looking off towards the mountain where the
+Eagle Rocks heaved themselves up stiff and straight and high. 'Gene's
+mother came to the door, asked if the butter was coming all right,
+looked at her, and said, "My! Nelly, you get better looking every day
+you live," and went back to her bread-baking.
+
+Nelly went on with her reflections about 'Gene. It was more than just
+that he bothered her and put her back with her work. She really didn't
+think it was just exactly nice and refined to be so crazy about anybody
+as that. Well, there was a streak in the Powerses that wasn't refined.
+'Gene's mother! gracious! When she got going, laughing and carrying-on,
+what wouldn't she say, right out before anybody! And dancing still like
+a young girl! And that hateful old Mrs. Hewitt, just after they'd moved
+back to Ashley, didn't she have to go and tell her about 'Gene's being
+born too soon after his father and mother were married? 'Gene took it
+from his mother she supposed; he wa'an't to blame, really. But she hoped
+Addie and Ralph would be _like_ her folks. Not but what the Powerses
+were good-hearted enough. 'Gene was a good man, if he was queer, and an
+awful good papa to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. None of her sisters
+had got a man half so good. That sprigged dress would look good with
+feather-stitching around the hem, too. Why hadn't she thought of that
+before? She hadn't got enough mercerized thread in the house, she didn't
+believe, to do it all; and it was such a nuisance to run out of the
+thread you had to have, and nobody going to the village for goodness
+knows when, with the farmwork behind the way it was, on account of the
+rains.
+
+She shifted her position and happened to bring one of her feet into
+view. Without disturbing a single beat of the regular rhythm of the
+dasher, she tilted her head to look at it with approbation. If there was
+one thing she was particular about it was her shoes. She took such
+comfort in having them nice. They could say what they pleased, folks
+could, but high heels _suited_ her feet. Maybe some folks, that had
+great broad feet like that old Indian Toucle, felt better in those
+awful, sloppy old gunboats they called "Common-sense shoes," but _she_
+didn't! It would make her sick to wear them! How they did look! Was
+there anything so pretty, anyhow, as a fine-leather shoe with a nice
+pointed toe, and a pretty, curved-in heel? It made you feel refined, and
+as good as anybody, even if you had on a calico dress with it. That was
+another nice thing about 'Gene, how he'd stand up for her about wearing
+the kind of shoes she wanted. Let anybody start to pick on her about it,
+if 'twas his own mother, he'd shut 'em up short, and say Nelly could
+wear what she liked he guessed. Even when the doctor had said so strict
+that she hadn't ought to wear them in the time before the babies came,
+'Gene never said a word, when he saw her doing it.
+
+There, the butter was just almost there. She could hear the buttermilk
+begin to swash! She turned her head to call to her mother-in-law to
+bring a pitcher for the buttermilk, when a sound of galloping hoofs
+echoed from the road. Nelly frowned, released her hold on the dasher,
+listened an instant, and ran into the house. She went right upstairs to
+her room as provoked as she could be. Well, she would make the bed and
+do the room-work anyhow, so's not to waste _all_ that time. She'd be
+that much ahead, anyhow. And as soon as Frank had finished chinning with
+Mother Powers, and had gone, she'd go back and finish her churning. She
+felt mad all through at the thought of that cream left at just the wrong
+minute, just as it was separating. Suppose Frank hung round and _hung_
+around, the way he did often, and the sun got higher and the cream got
+too warm, and she'd have to put in ice, and go down cellar with it, and
+fuss over it all the rest of the day? She was furious and thumped the
+pillows hard, with her doubled-up fist. But if she went down, Frank'd
+hang around worse, and talk so foolish she'd want to slap him. He wa'n't
+more'n half-witted, sometimes, she thought. What was the _matter_ with
+men, anyhow? They didn't seem to have as much sense as so many calves!
+You'd think Frank would think up something better to do than to bother
+the life out of busy folks, sprawling around all over creation the way
+he did. But she never had any luck! Before Frank it had been that old
+Mrs. Hewitt, nosing around to see what she could pick fault with in a
+person's housekeeping, looking under the sink if you left her alone in
+the kitchen for a minute, and opening your dresser drawers right before
+your face and eyes. Well, Frank was getting to be most as much of a
+nuisance. He didn't peek and snoop the way Mrs. Hewitt did, but he
+_bothered_; and he was getting so impudent, too! He had the big-head
+because he was the best dancer in the valley, that was what was the
+matter with him, and he knew she liked to dance with him. Well, she did.
+But she would like to dance with anybody who danced good. If 'Gene
+didn't clump so with his feet, she'd love to dance with him. And Frank
+needn't think he was so much either. That city man who was staying with
+the old man next to the Crittendens was just as good a dancer as Frank,
+just exactly as light on his feet. She didn't like him a bit. She
+thought he was just plain fresh, the way he told Frank to go on dancing
+with her. What was it to him! But she'd dance with him just the same, if
+she got the chance. How she just loved to dance! Something seemed to get
+into her, when the music struck up. She hardly knew what she was doing,
+felt as though she was floating around on that thick, soft moss you
+walked on when you went blue-berrying on the Burning above the Eagle
+Rocks . . . all springly. . . . If you could only dance by yourself,
+without having to bother with partners, that was what would be nice.
+
+She stepped to the door to listen, and heard 'Gene's mother cackling
+away like an old hen. How she would carry on, with anybody that came
+along! She hadn't never settled down, not a bit really, for all she had
+been married and was a widow and was old. It wa'n't nice to be so lively
+as that, at her age. But she _wasn't_ nice, Mother Powers wasn't, for
+all she was good to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. Nelly liked nice
+people, she thought, as she went back to shake the rag rugs out of the
+window; refined ladies like Mrs. Bayweather, the minister's wife. That
+was the way _she_ wanted to be, and have little Addie grow up. She
+lingered at the window a moment looking up at the thick dark branches of
+the big pine. How horrid it was to have that great tree so close to the
+house! It shaded the bedroom so that there was a musty smell no matter
+how much it was aired. And the needles dropped down so messy too, and
+spoiled the grass.
+
+Frank's voice came up the stairs, bold, laughing, "Nelly, Nelly, come
+down here a minute. I want to ask you something!"
+
+"I can't," she called back. Didn't he have the nerve!
+
+"Why can't you?" the skeptical question came from halfway up the stairs.
+"I saw you on the side-porch, just as I came up."
+
+Nelly cast about for an excuse. Of course you had to have some _reason_
+for saying you couldn't see a neighbor who came in. She had an
+inspiration. "I'm washing my hair," she called back, taking out the
+hair-pins hastily, as she spoke. The great coils came tumbling down on
+her shoulders. She soused them in the water pitcher, and went to the
+door, opening it a crack, tipping her head forward so that the water
+streamed on the floor. "Can't you ask Mother Powers for whatever it is?"
+she said impatiently. She wished as she spoke that she could ever speak
+right out sharp and scratchy the way other people did. She was too easy,
+that was the trouble.
+
+"Well," said Frank, astonished, "you be, for a fact."
+
+He went back down the stairs, and Nelly shut the door. She was hot all
+over with impatience about that butter. When it wasn't one thing to keep
+her from her work, it was another. Her hair all wet now. And such a job
+to dry it!
+
+She heard voices in the kitchen, and the screen-door open. Thank
+goodness, Frank was going away! Oh my! Maybe he was going to the
+village! He could bring some of the pink mercerized cotton on his way
+back. He might as well be of _some_ use in the world. She thrust her
+head out of the window. "Frank, Frank, wait a minute!" she called. She
+ran back to her work-basket, cut a length from a spool of thread, wound
+it around a bit of paper, and went again to the window. "Say, Frank, get
+me two spools of cotton to match that, will you, at Warner and Hardy's."
+
+He rode his horse past the big pine, under her window, and stood up in
+the stirrups, looking up boldly at her, her hair in thick wet curls
+about her face. "I'd do anything for you!" he said jokingly, catching
+at the paper she threw down to him.
+
+She slammed the window down hard. How provoking he was! But anyhow she
+would have enough thread to feather-stitch that hem. She'd got that much
+out of him. The thought made up to her for some of the annoyance of the
+morning. She put a towel around her shoulders under her wet hair, and
+waited till he was actually out of sight around the bend of the road. It
+seemed to her that she saw something stir in the long grass in the
+meadow there. Could the woodchucks be getting so close to the house as
+that? She'd have to tie Towser up by her lettuce, nights, if they were.
+
+Gracious, there it was thundering, off behind the Rocks! She'd have to
+hustle, if she got the butter done before the storm came. When Frank had
+really disappeared, she ran downstairs, and rushed out to her churn. She
+felt of it anxiously, her face clearing to note that it seemed no warmer
+than when she had left it. Maybe it was all right still. She began to
+plunge the dasher up and down. Well, it had gone back some, she could
+tell by the feel, but not so much, she guessed, but what she could make
+it come all right.
+
+As she churned, she thought again of Frank Warner. This was the limit!
+He got so on her nerves, she declared to herself she didn't care if he
+_never_ danced with her again. She wished she had more spunk, like some
+girls, and could just send him packing. But she never could think of any
+sharp things to say to folks, in time. She was too easy, she knew that,
+always had been. Look how long she had put up with Mrs. Hewitt's
+snooping around. And then in the end she had got cold feet and had had
+to sick 'Gene on to her, to tell her they didn't want her sitting around
+all the time and sponging off them at meal-times.
+
+But somehow she didn't want to ask 'Gene to speak to Frank that way. She
+was afraid somehow it would get 'Gene excited. Mostly he was so still,
+and then all of a sudden he'd flare up and she never could see a thing
+to make him then more than any time. The best thing to do with Gene was
+to keep him quiet, just as much as she could, not do anything to get him
+started. That was why she never went close up to him or put her arms
+around his neck of her own accord. She'd _like_ to pet him and make over
+him, the way she did over the children, but it always seemed to get him
+so stirred up and everything. Men were funny, anyhow! She often had
+thought how nice it would be if 'Gene could only be another woman. They
+could have such good times together.
+
+Why, here was 'Gene himself come in from cultivating corn right in the
+middle of the morning. Maybe he wanted a drink. He came up on the porch,
+without looking at her and went into the house. How heavy he walked. But
+then he always did. That was the trouble with his dancing. You had to
+step light, to be a good dancer.
+
+There was a crack of thunder again, nearer than the first one. She heard
+him ask his mother, "Frank Warner been here?"
+
+And Mother Powers say, "Yes, he come in to ask if we could loan him our
+compass. He's going to go up tomorrow in the Eagle Rock woods to run out
+the line between the Warner and the Benson woodlots. The Warners have
+sold the popple on theirs to the Crittenden mill, and Frank says the
+blazes are all barked over, they're so old."
+
+Oh goody! thought Nelly, there the butter was, come all at once. The
+buttermilk was splashing like water. Yes, even there around the hole you
+could see the little yellow specks. Well, she needn't have got so
+provoked, after all. That was fine. Now she could get at that sprigged
+dress for Addie, after all, this afternoon.
+
+'Gene came out on the porch again. She looked at him and smiled. She
+felt very happy and relieved that the butter had come so that she could
+finish working it over before noon.
+
+'Gene glowered at her smiling face and at her hair curling and shining
+all down her back. How cross he looked! Oh bother! Excited too. Well,
+what could the matter be, _now_? She should think any man would be
+satisfied to come in, right in the middle of the morning like that,
+without any warning, and find his house as spick and span as a pin, and
+the butter churned and half the day's work out of the way. She'd like to
+know what more he wanted? Who else could do any better? Oh bother! How
+queer men were!
+
+Yes, it would really be lots nicer if there were only women and children
+in the world. Gracious! how that lightning made her jump! The storm had
+got there quicker'n she'd thought. But the butter had come, so it was
+all right.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+BEFORE THE DAWN
+
+July 21.
+
+Neale had lain so long with his eyes on the place where the window ought
+to be, that finally he was half persuaded he could see it, a faintly
+paler square against the black of the room. Very soon dawn would come in
+that window, and another day would begin.
+
+At the thought the muscles of his forearms contracted, drawing his
+fingers into rigidly clenched fists, and for a moment he did not
+breathe.
+
+Then he conquered it again; threw off the worst of the pain that had
+sprung upon him when he had wakened suddenly, hours before, with the
+fear at last there before him, visible in the darkness.
+
+What was this like? Where before had he endured this eternity of
+waiting? Yes, it was in France, the night when they waited for the
+attack to break, every man haggard with the tension, from dark till just
+before dawn.
+
+He lay still, feeling Marise's breathing faintly stirring the bed.
+
+There in France it had been a strain almost beyond human power to keep
+from rushing out of the trenches with bayonets fixed, to meet the
+threatened danger, to beat it back, to conquer it, or to die and escape
+the suspense. Now there was the same strain. He had the weapons in his
+hands, weapons of passion, and indignation and entreaty and reproach,
+against which Marise would not stand for a moment.
+
+But there in France that would have meant possibly an insignificant
+local success and the greater victory all along the line imperiled. And
+here that was true again. There hadn't been anything to do then but
+wait. There was nothing to do now but wait.
+
+Yes, but it was harder to wait now! There in France they had at least
+known that finally the suspense would end in the fury of combat. They
+would have the chance to resist, to conquer, to impose their will. And
+now there was no active part for him. He must wait on, and hold back his
+hand from the attack which would give him the appearance of victory, and
+which would mean everlasting defeat for him, for Marise, the death and
+ruin of what they had tried to be for each other, to build up out of
+their life together.
+
+What did he mean by that? Wasn't he fooling himself with words, with
+priggish phrases? It was so easy to do that. And he was so mortally
+fatigued with this struggle in the dark. He had been thinking about it
+so deeply, so desperately, ever since he had faced it there, squarely,
+those endless black hours ago. He might have lost his way.
+
+Now, once more, slowly, step by step, once more over the terrible road
+that led him here. Perhaps there was another way he had overlooked.
+Perhaps this time it would lead him to something less intolerable. Quiet
+now, steady, all that he had of courage and honesty and knowledge of
+Marise, and of life, and of himself, put to work.
+
+His brain began again to plod up the treadmill it had labored on for so
+many black hours. He set himself to get it clear in his own mind,
+forcing those fierce, burning thoughts of his into words, as if he had
+been speaking aloud. "Now, now here I am. What must I do? What ought I
+to do? There must be some answer if I can only think clearly, feel
+aright. _What is it that I want?_"
+
+The answer burst from him, as though in a cry of torture from his brain,
+his body, his passion, his soul, "_I want Marise!_"
+
+And at this expression of overmastering desire, memory flooded his mind
+with a stream of unforgotten pictures of their life together; Marise
+facing him at the breakfast table; Marise walking with him in the autumn
+woods; Marise with Paul a baby in her arms; Marise, almost unknown then,
+the flame-like divinity of her soul only guessed-at, looking into his
+eyes as the Campagna faded into darkness below them. "What was it she
+asked me then? Whether I knew the way across the dark plain? I was a
+confident young fool then. I was sure I could find the way, _with her_.
+I've been thinking all these years that we were finding it, step by step
+. . . till now. And now, what is it I am afraid of? I'm afraid she finds
+herself cramped, wants a fuller existence, regrets . . . no, that's
+dodging. There's no use lying to myself. I'm afraid that Marise is in
+love with Vincent Marsh. Good God! no! It can't be that . . . not Marise!
+This is all nonsense. This is something left over from sleep and a bad
+dream. I must wake up. I must wake up and find it not true."
+
+He lay perfectly still, his fists clenched tight, perspiration standing
+out on his rigid body. Then sternly he forced his mind to go forward
+again, step by step.
+
+"I suppose it's possible. Other women have. There's a lot in her that
+must be starved here. I may not be enough for her. She was so young
+then. She has grown so greatly. What right have I to try to hold her if
+she is tired of it all, needs something else?"
+
+He hesitated, shrinking back as from fire, from the answer he knew he
+must give. At last he forced it out, "I haven't any right. I don't want
+her to stay if she wants to go. I want Marise. But even more I want her
+to be happy."
+
+The thought, with all its implications, terrified him like a
+death-sentence, but he repeated it grimly, pressing it home fiercely, "I
+want her to be happy."
+
+He realized where this thought would lead him, and in a panic wildly
+fought against going on. He had tried to hold himself resolute and
+steady, but he was nothing now save a flame of resentment. "Happy! She
+won't be happy that way! She can't love that man! She's being carried
+away by that damnable sensibility of hers. It would be the most hideous,
+insane mistake. What am I thinking of . . . all these _words_! What I must
+do is to keep her from ruining her life."
+
+On the heels of this outcry, there glided in insinuatingly a soft-spoken
+crowd of tempting, seductive possibilities. Marise was so sensitive, so
+impressionable, so easily moved, so defenseless when her emotions were
+aroused. Hadn't he the right, the duty, he who knew her better than
+anyone else, to protect her against herself? Wasn't he deceiving himself
+by fantastic notions? It would be so easy to act the ardent, passionate
+young lover again . . . but when had he ever "acted" anything for Marise!
+No matter, no matter, this was life or death; what was a lie when life
+and death hung in the balance? He could play on her devotion to the
+children, throw all the weight of his personality, work on her emotions.
+That was what people did to gain their point. Everybody did it. And he
+could win if he did. He could hold her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Like the solemn tolling of a great bell there rang, through all this
+hurried, despairing clutching at the endurable and lesser, a call to the
+great and intolerable. The immensity of his love for Marise loomed up,
+far greater than he; and before that sacred thing he hung his head, and
+felt his heart breaking.
+
+"No, that won't do. Not when it is Marise who is in question. The best,
+the very best I can conceive is what I must give to Marise. A cage could
+not hold her, not anything but her body, and to force her decision would
+be to make a cage. No, I mustn't use the children either. They are hers
+as much as mine. If all is not right between us, what would it avail
+them to be with us? They must take what life brings them, like the rest
+of us. If the years Marise and I have passed together, if what we have
+been to each other, and are to each other, if that is not enough, then
+nothing is enough. That would be a trick to play on her . . . to use my
+knowledge of her vulnerable points to win. That is not what I want. What
+_do_ I want? I want Marise to be happy."
+
+He had advanced a step since the last time he had told himself this, for
+now he said it with a dreadful calm, his heart aching but not faltering.
+
+But he could go no further. There were limits to what he could endure.
+He fell into a trance-like state of passivity, his body and mind
+exhausted.
+
+As he lay thus, fallen and prostrate, there soared up out of a part of
+him that was neither mind nor body, but was nevertheless himself,
+something swift and beautiful and living, something great enough at last
+to measure its greatness with the immensity of his love for Marise.
+
+What was it?
+
+It was this . . . for a moment he had it all clear, as though he had died
+and it were something told him in another world . . . he did not want
+Marise for himself; he did not even want her to be happy; he wanted her
+to be herself, to be all that Marise could ever grow to be, he wanted
+her to attain her full stature so far as any human being could do this
+in this life.
+
+And to do that she must be free.
+
+For an instant he looked full at this, his heart flooded with glory. And
+then the light went out.
+
+He was there in the blackness again, unhappy beyond any suffering he had
+thought he could bear.
+
+He lay still, feeling Marise beside him, the slow, quiet rhythm of her
+breathing. Was she awake or sleeping? What would happen if he should
+allow the fear and suffering which racked him to become articulate? If
+he should cry out to her, she would not turn away. He knew Marise. She
+would never turn away from fear and suffering. "But I can't do that. I
+won't work on her sympathy. I've promised to be true to what's deepest
+and truest in us both. I have been, by God! and I will be. If our
+married life has been worth anything, it's because we've both been free
+and honest . . . true with one another. This is her ordeal. She must act
+for herself. Better die than use my strength to force her against her
+own nature. If I decide . . . no matter how sure I am I'm right . . . it
+won't be her decision. Nothing would be decided. I must go on just as
+before . . ." he groaned, "that will take all the strength I have."
+
+It was clear to him now; the only endurable future for them, such as
+they were to each other, would come from Marise's acting with her own
+strength on her own decision. By all that was sacred, he would never by
+word or act hamper that decision. He would be himself, honestly. Marise
+ought to know what that self was.
+
+He had thought that this resolve would bring to him another of these
+terrible racking instants of anguish, but instead there came almost a
+calm upon him, as though the pain had passed and left him in peace, or
+as though a quiet light had shone out in the darkness. Perhaps the dawn
+had come. No, the square of the window was still only faintly felt in
+the blacker mass of the silent room.
+
+Then he knew why the pain had left him. It had been driven away by the
+certainty that there was a worse fear than any he knew, or ever would
+know. No matter what risk or catastrophe lay before them, Marise would
+never look at him out her clear eyes and act a thing that was not true.
+Marise would always be Marise. Why then, whatever came he could bear it.
+
+Life might be cruel and pitiless, but it was not base, when it had among
+its gifts such a certainty as that, rock-like under his feet, bearing
+him up in his pain.
+
+He moved to her in the bed, felt for her hand and put it gently to his
+lips.
+
+Then, holding it in his, on his breast, he turned his eyes towards the
+window, waiting for the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE
+
+
+July 2.
+
+That early morning talk with Mr. Welles had left Marise trembling with
+helpless sorrow and exasperation. She sat on the bench where he had left
+her, and felt the nervous tears stinging her eyes. When she looked up
+and saw Vincent Marsh was standing there, extremely pale, as visibly
+shaken as she, as visibly little in control of himself, she burst out,
+"So you too know. He has just told me that he is really going. The very
+date is set. His cousin has a room in her boarding house engaged for
+him. He's going to work as a clerk to pay for the extra expenses of the
+life there. _Oh!_" She struck her hand on the back of the bench.
+
+Vincent Marsh sat down beside her, his eyes on hers. He said in a
+curious, low voice, rough and husky, "I wish you would do something for
+me. I wish you would think with all your might, deeply, just why you are
+so opposed to his doing what evidently seems to him a very saintly and
+heroic action; and then tell me why it is."
+
+Marise felt this as a challenge. He was always challenging everything.
+This time she was more than ready. "I don't need any time to think of
+reasons!" she cried. "It's obvious to anyone with any sense for the
+reality of human values, who isn't fooled by threadbare old words. It's
+one of those wasteful, futile, exasperating tricks people play on
+themselves in the name of 'duty.' He's throwing away something real and
+true, something that could add to the richness of human life, he's
+throwing away the happiness that comes of living as suits his nature,
+and so creating a harmony that enriches everybody who touches him. And
+what's he doing it for? To satisfy a morbid need for self-sacrifice.
+He's going to do harm, in all probability, mix up a situation already
+complicated beyond solution, and why is he? So that he can indulge
+himself in the perverse pleasure of the rasp of a hair-shirt. He doesn't
+really use his intelligence to think, to keep a true sense of
+proportions; he takes an outworn and false old ideal of self-sacrifice,
+and uses it not to do anybody any real good, but to put a martyr's crown
+on his head."
+
+She became conscious that her words were having a singular effect upon
+Vincent. A dark flush had come over all his face. His gaze on her was
+extraordinary in its intentness, in its eagerness, in its fierceness.
+She stopped suddenly, as though he had broken in on what she was saying.
+
+He did not stir from his place, but to her he seemed to tower taller.
+Into his dark, intent face came an exultant look of power and authority
+which fell on her like a hot wind. With a loud knocking of her heart she
+knew. Before he spoke, she knew what he would say. And he saw that.
+
+He opened those burning lips and said in the same low voice, rough with
+its intensity, "You see what you have done. You have spoken for me. You
+have said at last what I have been silently and desperately calling out
+to you. You know what has happened. You have said it, it is obvious to
+anyone with any sense of human values. Make an end! Make an end! Come
+away from a position where only an outworn old ideal holds you to
+futility and waste. Come away where you will really live and know the
+fullness of life. Come away from that false notion of duty which makes
+you do for the children what you know is not best for them, only because
+it is the traditional thing to do, only because it gives you a martyr's
+crown to wear. I don't say anything now, as I would to any other woman
+in the world, as I would have said to you weeks ago before I knew all
+that you are . . . I don't say anything about the imbecility of keeping
+such a woman as you are here in this narrow, drab hole, this sordid
+prison . . . you born, if ever a human being was, to rich and warm and
+harmonious living! It is your birthright. Let me give it to you. All
+that, even that, a whole world of beauty and fullness waiting for you to
+create it to glorious being, all that is nothing compared to what has
+come to pass between us, you and me; compared to that other world of
+impassioned living existence that is waiting for you. Come away from the
+man who is nothing more to you than the house you live in . . . nothing
+but a habit."
+
+She started at this, moving out of the stony immobility in which she
+gazed at him, listened to him. She did not know that she had moved, was
+incapable of willing to do so. It had been a mere reflex start as though
+she had been struck. But at the sight of it, the flame in his eyes
+leaped up. "No, no, no!" he cried with an insistent triumph, "he is
+nothing more to you than a habit. And you are nothing more to him. You
+were right, on that evening when you shrank away from the sight of the
+place in Italy where in your ignorant youth you made the mistake of
+trying to join your life to his. There is not a breath you draw, not a
+turn of your head or body . . . I know them all . . . that does not prove
+that he is nothing to you now. I have seen you take a handkerchief from
+his pocket as you would take it from a bureau-drawer. I have seen him
+set you on one side, to pass through a door, as he would set a chair on
+one side. You don't even see him any more when you look at him, and he
+doesn't see you. Whatever there may have been between you, if there was
+ever anything real, it is dead now, dead and buried . . . and you the most
+living woman who ever wore flesh and blood! And I am a living man! You
+know, I don't need to say it, you know what happens when our looks meet.
+Our looks only! Life flares up like a torch in both of us. You know if I
+but brush against your skirt, how I cannot speak! You know how when our
+hands touch, every drop of blood in our two bodies burns! You are a
+grown woman. You know life as well as I do. You know what this means.
+You are no longer even a part of his life. You are all of mine. Look at
+me now."
+
+He flung out his hands, shaking uncontrollably. "Do you see how I show
+this, say this anywhere, tell this to you here, now, where anyone could
+hear me? I am not ashamed of it. It is not a thing to hide. It is a
+thing to glory in. It is the only honestly living thing in all our
+miserable human life, the passion of a man and a woman for each other.
+It is the only thing that moves us out of our cowardly lethargy of
+dead-and-alive egotism. The thing that is really base and false is to
+pretend that what is dead is still alive. Your marriage is dead. Your
+children do not need you as you pretend. Let yourself go in this flood
+that is sweeping us along. I had never thought to know it. I could fall
+down and worship you because you have shown it to me. But I will show it
+to you, that and the significance of what you will be when you are no
+longer smothered and starved. In all this scrawling ant-heap of
+humanity, there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live.
+And we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing,
+to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny. But
+we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the only
+truth. That . . . and you and I!"
+
+In the distance, someone called Marise's name. He thought she made a
+move, and said, leaning towards her, the heat of his body burning
+through to her arm where he touched her, "No, no, none of those trivial,
+foolish interruptions that tie you hand and foot, can tie us any longer.
+They have no real strength. They can't stand for an instant against
+something alive. All that rattles in your ears, that keeps you from
+knowing what you really are . . ."
+
+Someone was hurrying down the walk towards them, hidden by the hedge.
+Marise could not have turned her head if her life had hung on the
+action.
+
+Vincent looked straight at her, straight and deep and strong into her
+eyes, and for an instant his burning lips were pressed on hers. The
+contact was terrible, momentous.
+
+When he went on speaking, without haste, unafraid although the hurrying
+steps were almost there, she could scarcely hear his voice, although it
+was urgent and puissant as the impact of his eyes. "You can't get away
+from this now. It is here. It has been said. It lives between us, and
+you are not strong enough, no power on earth is strong enough, to put it
+down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then the outer world broke in on them, swept between them with an
+outcry. Someone was there, someone who drew short sobbing breaths, who
+caught at her and clung to her. It was Cousin Hetty's old Agnes . . . why
+in the world was she here? . . . and she was saying in a loud voice as
+though she had no control of it, "Oh, oh! Come quick! Come quick!"
+
+Marise stood up, carrying the old woman with her. She was entirely
+certain now that she was in a nightmare, from which she would presently
+awake, wet with cold sweat.
+
+"Come! Come!" cried the old woman, beating her hands on Marise's arm.
+"Perhaps it ain't too late. Perhaps you can do something."
+
+"What has happened?" asked Marise, making her voice sharp and imperative
+to pierce the other's agitation.
+
+"I don't know. I don't know," sobbed Agnes. "She didn't come down for
+breakfast. I went up to see . . . oh, go quick! Go quick!"
+
+She went down, half on the bench, half on the ground.
+
+Marise and Marsh stood for an instant, petrified.
+
+There was only the smallest part of Marise's consciousness which was
+alive to this. Most of it lay numbed and bewildered, still hearing, like
+a roll of thunder, the voice of Vincent Marsh.
+
+Then she turned. "Look out for her, will you," she said briefly. "No,
+don't come with me. I'll go by the back road. It's the quickest, but
+it's too narrow for a car. You drive to Ashley and bring the doctor in
+your car."
+
+She ran down the path and around the house to the road, not feeling the
+blinding heat of the sun. She ran along the dusty road, a few steps from
+the house before the turn into the narrow lane. She felt nothing at all
+but a great need for haste.
+
+As she ran, putting all her strength into her running, there were
+moments when she forgot why she was hurrying, where she was going, what
+had happened; but she did not slacken her pace. She was on the narrow
+back road now, in the dense shade of the pines below the Eagle Rocks. In
+five minutes she would be at Cousin Hetty's. That was where she was
+going.
+
+She was running more slowly now over the rough, uneven, stony road, and
+she was aware, more than of anything else, of a pain in her chest where
+she could not draw a long breath. It seemed to her that she must be now
+wholly in the bad dream, for she had the nightmare sensation of running
+with all her strength and not advancing at all. The somber, thick-set
+pines seemed to be implacably in the same place, no matter how she tried
+to pass them, to leave them behind, to hurry on. Everything else in the
+silent, breathless, midsummer forest was rooted immovably deep in the
+earth. She alone was killing herself with haste, and yet futilely . . .
+not able to get forward, not able to . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then, fit to turn her brain, the forest drew aside and showed her
+another nightmare figure, a man, far away to her right, running down the
+steep incline that sloped up to the Rocks. A man running as she had been
+wishing she could run, a powerful, roughly dressed man, rapt in a
+passion of headlong flight, that cast him down the rough slope, over the
+rocks, through the brambles, as though his flight were part of an
+endless fall.
+
+Marise stopped stock-still, shocked out of every sensation but the
+age-old woman's instinct of fear and concealment.
+
+The man plunged forward, not seeing her where she stood on the road
+across which he now burst, flinging himself out of the pines on one side
+and into the thicket of undergrowth on the other.
+
+Far from him as she was, Marise could hear, through the forest hush, the
+terrible sound of his breathing as he ran, as he stumbled, as he
+struggled to his feet, fighting crazily with the thick undergrowth.
+Those loud hoarse gasps . . . it was as though he were being choked to
+death by a hand on his throat.
+
+He was gone, down the slope towards the valley road. The leaves closed
+together behind him. The forest was impenetrably silent again. Marise
+knew who he was, then, recognized him for 'Gene Powers beyond any doubt.
+
+She felt a strange mixture of pity and scorn and envy. To be so
+primitive as that . . . to think, even for an instant's madness, that you
+could run away on your own two poor human feet from whatever life
+brought to you!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She herself was hurrying forward again. What was she going to? What had
+she left behind? The passage of the other runner had not taken a single
+moment's time. She was now at the path which led to Cousin Hetty's
+side-door.
+
+She darted along this, and found herself in the yard before the door,
+open as Agnes had left it when she rushed out for help.
+
+A tea-kettle on the kitchen-stove sang in a low murmur. The clock ticked
+loudly, wagging its pendulum back and forth. The cat, stretched at full
+length on the floor in a yellow square of sunlight, lifted a drowsy head
+and looked at her. There was a smell of freshly made coffee in the air.
+As she stood there for an instant till the whirling in her head should
+stop, a stick of wood in the fire broke and fell together.
+
+Marise went through into the dining-room where the table laid for
+breakfast stood in a quiet expectancy. The old house, well-kept and
+well-loved, wore a tranquil expression of permanence and security.
+
+But out in the dusky hail, the white stairs stood palely motioning up.
+There Marise felt a singular heavy coolness in the stagnant air. She
+went up the stairs, leaning on the balustrade, and found herself facing
+an open door.
+
+Beyond it, in a shuttered and shaded room, stood a still white bed. And
+on the bed, still and white and distant, lay something dead. It was not
+Cousin Hetty. That austere, cold face, proud and stern, was not Cousin
+Hetty's. It was her grandmother's, her father's, her uncle's face, whom
+Cousin Hetty had never at all resembled. It was the family shell which
+Cousin Hetty had for a time inhabited.
+
+Marise came forward and crossed the threshold. Immediately she was aware
+of a palpable change in the atmosphere. The room was densely filled with
+silence, which folded her about coldly. She sank down on a chair. She
+sat motionless, looking at what lay there so quiet, at the unimaginable
+emptiness and remoteness of that human countenance.
+
+This was the end. She had come to the end of her running and her haste
+and her effort to help. All the paltry agitations and sorrows, the
+strains and defeats and poor joys, they were all hurrying forward to
+meet this end.
+
+All the scruples, and sacrifices, and tearing asunder of human desires
+to make them fit words that were called ideals, all amounted to this
+same nothingness in the end.
+
+What was Cousin Hetty's life now, with its tiny inhibitions, its little
+passivities? The same nothingness it would have been, had she grasped
+boldly at life's realities and taken whatever she wanted.
+
+And all Cousin Hetty's mother's sacrifices for her, her mother's hopes
+for her, the slow transfusion of her mother's life to hers; that was all
+dead now, had been of no avail against this nothingness. Some day Elly
+would lie like that, and all that she had done for Elly, or could do for
+her, would be only a pinch of ashes. If she, if Cousin Hetty, if Cousin
+Hetty's mother, if Elly, if all of them, took hotly whatever the hours
+had to give, they could not more certainly be brought to nothingness and
+oblivion in the end. . . .
+
+Those dreams of her . . . being one with a great current, sweeping forward
+. . . what pitiful delusions! . . . There was nothing that swept forward.
+There were only futile storms of froth and excitement that whirled you
+about to no end, one after another. One died down and left you becalmed
+and stagnant, and another rose. And that would die down in its turn.
+Until at the end, shipwreck, and a sinking to this darkly silent abyss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A PRIMAEVAL HERITAGE
+
+
+July 21. Evening.
+
+Cousin Hetty lay coldly dead; and Marise felt herself blown upon by an
+icy breath that froze her numb. The doctor had come and gone, queerly,
+and bustlingly alive and full of talk and explanations; Agnes had come
+back and, silently weeping, had walked endlessly and aimlessly around
+the house, with a broom in her idle hand; one after another of the
+neighbors had come and gone, queerly alive as usual, they too, for all
+their hushed and awkward manners; Neale had come, seeming to feel that
+cold breath as little as the others.
+
+And now Neale was gone, after everything had been decided, all the
+incredibly multitudinous details that must be decided. The funeral was
+set for the day after tomorrow, and until then, everything in
+everybody's life was to stop stock-still, as a matter of course. Because
+Agnes was in terror of being left alone for an instant, Marise would not
+even leave the house until after the funeral, and one of the thousand
+petty unescapable details she and Neale had talked of in the hushed
+voice which the house imposed on all in it, was the decision as to which
+dress and hat were to be sent to her from the wardrobe at home.
+
+She was to stay there with Agnes, she, who was all the family old Cousin
+Hetty had left, for the last watch over what lay up there on the bed in
+her bedroom. Neale would look out for the children (there was no one
+else for the moment, Toucle was gone, Eugenia quite useless), would
+telegraph the few old friends who would care to know the news, would
+see Mr. Bayweather about the funeral, would telephone the man in West
+Ashley who dug graves, would do what was to be done outside; and she
+would do what was to be done inside, as now, when she sat on the stairs
+waiting in case the undertaker needed something.
+
+She was glad that the undertaker was only quiet, white-bearded old Mr.
+Hadley, who for so many, many years had given his silent services to the
+dead of Ashley that he had come to seem not quite a living figure
+himself, hushed and stilled by his association with everlasting
+stillness. Marise, cold and numbed with that icy breath upon her, knew
+now why the old undertaker was always silent and absent. A strange life
+he must have had. She had never thought of it till she had seen him come
+into that house, where she and Agnes waited for him, uncertain, abashed,
+not knowing what to do. Into how many such houses he must have gone,
+with that same quiet look of unsurprised acceptance of what everybody
+knew was coming sometime and nobody ever expected to come at all. How
+extraordinary that it had never occurred to her that Cousin Hetty, old
+as she was, would some day die. You never really believed that anybody
+in your own life was ever going to die, or change; any more than you
+really believed that you yourself were ever going to grow old, or
+change; or that the children were ever really going to grow up. That
+threadbare old phrase about the death of old people, "it always comes as
+a shock," that was true of all the inevitable things that happened in
+life which you saw happen to everyone else, and never believed would
+happen to you.
+
+This was the last tie with the past gone, the last person disappeared
+for whom she was still the little girl she felt herself now, the little
+girl who had lost her way and wanted someone to put her back in the
+path. She had a moment of very simple, sweet sorrow, sitting there alone
+in the hall, warm tears streaming down her cheeks and falling on her
+hands. Cousin Hetty gone, dear old Cousin Hetty, with her bright living
+eyes, and her love for all that was young. How much she owed her . . .
+those troubled years of her youth when Cousin Hetty and the old house
+were unfailing shelter. What shelter had she now?
+
+The pendulum of her mind swung back . . . of course this was silly
+traditional repeating of superstitious old words. There was no shelter;
+there could be none in this life. No one could show her the path,
+because there _was_ no path; and anyone who pretended to show it was
+only a charlatan who traded on moments of weakness like this.
+
+Mr. Hadley opened the door quietly and asked in that seldom-heard voice
+of his for a couple of soft, clean towels. Where did Cousin Hetty keep
+her towels? In the chest of drawers at the end of the hall. An odor of
+cloves came up spicily into the air as Marise opened the drawer. How
+like Cousin Hetty to have that instead of the faded, sentimental
+lavender. She had perhaps put those towels away there last night, with
+her busy, shaking old hands, so still now. All dead, the quaintness, the
+vitality, the zest in life, the new love for little Elly, all dead now,
+as though it had never been, availing nothing. There was nothing that
+did not die.
+
+She handed in the towels and sat down again on the stairs leaning her
+head against the wall. What time could it be? Was it still daylight? . . .
+No, there was a lamp lighted down there. What could she have been doing
+all day, she and Agnes and the doctor and Mr. Hadley? She wondered if
+the children were all right, and if Neale would remember, when he washed
+Mark's face, that there was a bruise on his temple where the swing-board
+had struck him. Was that only yesterday morning! Was it possible that it
+was only last night that she had lain awake in the darkness, trying to
+think, trying to know what she was feeling, burning with excitement, as
+one by one those boldly forward-thrusting movements came back to her
+from the time when he had cried out so angrily, "_They_ can't love her.
+They're not capable of it!" to the time when they had exchanged that
+long reckless gaze over Elly's head! And now there was the triumphant
+glory of security which had been in his kiss . . . why, that was this
+morning, only a few hours ago! Even through her cold numbed lassitude
+she shrank again before the flare-up of that excitement, and burned in
+it. She tried to put this behind her at once, to wait, like all the
+rest, till this truce should be over, and she should once more be back
+in that melee of agitation the thought of which turned her sick with
+confusion. She was not strong enough for life, if this was what it
+brought, these fierce, clawing passions that did not wait for your
+bidding to go or come, but left you as though you were dead and then
+pounced on you like tigers. She had not iron in her either to live
+ruthlessly, or to stamp out that upward leap of flame which meant the
+renewal of priceless youth and passion. Between these alternatives, she
+_could_ make no decision, she could not, it would tear her in pieces to
+do it.
+
+The pendulum swung back again, and all this went out, leaving her
+mortally tired. Agnes came to the foot of the stairs, a little,
+withered, stricken old figure, her apron at her eyes. From behind it she
+murmured humbly, between swallowing hard, that she had made some tea and
+there was bread and butter ready, and should she boil an egg?
+
+A good and healing pity came into Marise's heart. Poor old Agnes, it was
+the end of the world for her, of course. And how touching, how tragic,
+how unjust, the fate of dependents, to turn from one source of commands
+to another. She ran downstairs on tip-toe and put her arm around the old
+woman's shoulder. "I haven't said anything yet, Agnes," she told her,
+"because this has come on us so suddenly. But of course Mr. Crittenden
+and I will always look out for you. Cousin Hetty . . . you were her best
+friend."
+
+The old woman laid her head down on the other's shoulder and wept aloud.
+"I miss her so. I miss her so," she said over and over.
+
+"The thing to do for her," thought Marise, as she patted the thin
+heaving shoulders, "is to give her something to work at." Aloud she
+said, "Agnes, we must get the front room downstairs ready. Mr. Hadley
+wants to have Cousin Hetty brought down there. Before we eat we might as
+well get the larger pieces of furniture moved out."
+
+Agnes stood up, docilely submitting herself to the command, stopped
+crying, and went with Marise into the dim old room, in which nothing had
+been changed since the day, twenty years ago, when the furniture had
+been put back in place after Cousin Hetty's old mother had lain there,
+for the last time.
+
+The two women began to work, and almost at once Agnes was herself again,
+stepping about briskly, restored by the familiarity of being once more
+under the direction of another. They pulled out the long haircloth sofa,
+moved the spindle-legged old chairs into the dining-room, and carried
+out one by one the drawers from the high-boy in the corner. From one of
+these drawers a yellowed paper fell out. Marise picked it up and glanced
+at it. It was a letter dated 1851, the blank page of which had been used
+for a game of Consequences. The foolish incoherencies lay there in the
+faded ink just as they had been read out, bringing with them the
+laughter of those people, so long dead now, who had written them down in
+that pointed, old-fashioned handwriting. Marise stood looking at it
+while Agnes swept the other room. Cousin Hetty had been ten years old in
+1851, just as old as Paul was now. Her mother had probably left
+something she wanted to do, to sit down and laugh with her little
+daughter over this trivial game. A ghostly echo of that long-silent
+laughter fell faintly and coldly on her ear. So soon gone. Was it worth
+while to do it at all? Such an effort, such a fatigue lay before those
+children one tried to keep laughing, and then . . .
+
+Someone came in behind her, without knocking or ringing. People had been
+coming and going unannounced in that house all the day as though death
+had made it their own home. Agnes came to the door, Marise looked up
+and saw Nelly Powers standing in the door-way, the second time she had
+been there. "I come over again," she said, "to bring you some hot
+biscuit and honey. I knew you wouldn't feel to do much cooking." She
+added, "I put the biscuits in the oven as I come through, so they'd keep
+warm."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Nelly, that's very kind and thoughtful," said Marise. As
+she spoke and looked at the splendid, enigmatic woman standing there,
+the richness of her vitality vibrating about her, she saw again the
+nightmare vision of 'Gene and heard the terrible breathing that had
+resounded in the Eagle Rock woods. She was overwhelmed, as so often
+before in her life, by an amazement at the astounding difference between
+the aspect of things and what they really were. She had never entirely
+outgrown the wildness of surprise which this always brought to her. She
+and Nelly, looking at each other so calmly, and speaking of hot
+biscuits!
+
+She listened as though it were an ironically incongruous speech in a
+play to Agnes' conscientious country attempt to make conversation with
+the caller, "Hot today, ain't it? Yesterday's storm didn't seem to do
+much good." And to Nelly's answer on the same note, "Yes, but it's good
+for the corn to have it hot. 'Gene's been out cultivating his, all day
+long."
+
+"Ah, not all day! Not all day!" Marise kept the thought to herself. She
+had a vision of the man goaded beyond endurance, leaving his horses
+plodding in the row, while he fled blindly, to escape the unescapable.
+
+An old resentment, centuries and ages older than she was, a primaeval
+heritage from the past, flamed up unexpectedly in her heart. _There_ was
+a man, she thought, who had kept the capacity really to love his wife;
+passionately to suffer; whose cold intelligence had not chilled down to
+. . ."
+
+"Well, I guess I must be going now," said Nelly in the speech of the
+valley. She went away through the side-door, opening and shutting it
+with meticulous care, so that it would not make a sound. . . . As though a
+sound could reach Cousin Hetty now!
+
+"I don't like her biscuits," said Agnes. "She always puts too much sody
+in." She added, in what was evidently the expression of an old dislike,
+"And don't she look a fool, a great hulking critter like her, wearing
+such shoes, teeterin' along on them heels."
+
+"Oh well," said Marise, vaguely, "it's her idea of how to look pretty."
+
+"They must cost an awful sight too," Agnes went on, scoldingly, "laced
+halfway up her leg that way. And the Powerses as poor as Job's turkey.
+The money she puts into them shoes'd do 'em enough sight more good if
+'twas saved up and put into a manure spreader, I call it."
+
+She had taken the biscuits out of the oven and was holding them
+suspiciously to her nose, when someone came in at the front door and
+walked down the hall with the hushed, self-conscious, lugubrious tip-toe
+step of the day. It was Mr. Bayweather, his round old face rather pale.
+"I'm shocked, unutterably shocked by this news," he said, and indeed he
+looked badly shaken and scared. It came to Marise that Cousin Hetty had
+been of about his age. He shook her hand and looked about for a chair.
+"I came to see about which hymns you would like sung," he said. "Do you
+know if Miss Hetty had any favorites?" He broke off to say, "Mrs.
+Bayweather wished me to be sure to excuse her to you for not coming with
+me tonight to see if there was anything she could do. But she was
+stopped by old Mrs. Warner, just as we were leaving the house. Frank, it
+seems, went off early this morning to survey some lines in the woods
+somewhere on the mountain, and was to be back to lunch. He didn't come
+then and hasn't showed up at all yet. Mrs. Warner wanted my wife to
+telephone up to North Ashley to see if he had perhaps gone there to
+spend the night with his aunt. The line was busy of course, and Mrs.
+Bayweather was still trying to get them on the wire when I had to come
+away. If she had no special favorites, I think that 'Lead, Kindly Light,
+Amid th' Encircling Gloom' is always suitable, don't you?"
+
+Something seemed to explode inside Marise's mind, and like a resultant
+black cloud of smoke a huge and ominous possibility loomed up, so
+darkly, so unexpectedly, that she had no breath to answer the
+clergyman's question. Those lines Frank Warner had gone to survey ran
+through the Eagle Rock woods!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Or would you think an Easter one, like 'The Strife Is O'er, the Battle
+Won,' more appropriate?" suggested Mr. Bayweather to her silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Agnes started. "Who's that come bursting into the kitchen?" she cried,
+turning towards the door.
+
+It seemed to Marise, afterwards, that she had known at that moment who
+had come and what the tidings were.
+
+Agnes started towards the door to open it. But it was flung open
+abruptly from the outside. Toucle stood there, her hat gone from her
+head, her rusty black clothes torn and disarranged.
+
+Marise knew what she was about to announce.
+
+She cried out to them, "Frank Warner has fallen off the Eagle Rocks. I
+found him there, at the bottom, half an hour ago, dead."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The savage old flame, centuries and ages older than she, flared for an
+instant high and smoky in Marise's heart. "_There_ is a man who knows
+how to fight for his wife and keep her!" she thought fiercely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE COUNSEL OF THE STARS
+
+
+July 21. Night.
+
+It had been arranged that for the two nights before the funeral Agnes
+was to sleep in the front bedroom, on one side of Cousin Hetty's room,
+and Marise in the small hall bedroom on the other side, the same room
+and the same bed in which she had slept as a little girl. Nothing had
+been changed there, since those days. The same heavy white pitcher and
+basin stood in the old wash-stand with the sunken top and hinged cover;
+the same oval white soap-dish, the same ornamental spatter-work frame in
+dark walnut hung over the narrow walnut bedstead.
+
+As she undressed in the space between the bed and the wash-stand, the
+past came up before her in a sudden splashing wave of recollection which
+for a moment engulfed her. It had all been a dream, all that had
+happened since then, and she was again eight years old, with nothing in
+the world but bad dreams to fear, and Cousin Hetty there at hand as a
+refuge even against bad dreams. How many times she had wakened,
+terrified, her heart beating hammer-strokes against her ribs, and
+trotted shivering, in her night-gown, into Cousin Hetty's room.
+
+"Cousin Hetty! Cousin Hetty!"
+
+"What? What's that? Oh, you, Marise. What's the matter? Notions again?"
+
+"Oh, Cousin Hetty, it was an _awful_ dream this time. Can't I get into
+bed with you?"
+
+"Why yes, come along, you silly child."
+
+The fumbling approach to the bed, the sheets held open, the kind old
+hand outstretched, and then the haven . . . her head on the same pillow
+with that of the brave old woman who was afraid of nothing, who drew her
+up close and safe and with comforting assurance instantly fell asleep
+again. And then the delicious, slow fading of the terrors before the
+obliterating hand of sleep, the delicious slow sinking into
+forgetfulness of everything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Standing there, clad in the splendor of her physical maturity, Marise
+shivered uncontrollably again, and quaked and feared. It was all a bad
+dream, all of it, and now as then Cousin Hetty lay safe and quiet,
+wrapped in sleep which was the only escape. Marise turned sick with
+longing to go again, now, to seek out Cousin Hetty and to lie down by
+her to share that safe and cold and dreamless quiet.
+
+She flung back over her shoulder the long shining dark braid which her
+fingers had been automatically twisting, and stood for a moment
+motionless. She was suffering acutely, but the pain came from a source
+so deep, so confused, so inarticulate, that she could not name it, could
+not bring to bear on it any of the resources of her intelligence and
+will. She could only bend under it as under a crushing burden, and
+suffer as an animal endures pain, dumbly, stupidly.
+
+After a time a small knock sounded, and Agnes's voice asked through the
+door if Miss Marise thought the door to . . . to . . . if the "other" door
+ought to be open or shut. It was shut now. What did people do as a
+general thing?
+
+Marise opened her own door and looked down on the old figure in the
+straight, yellowed night-gown, the knotted, big-veined hand shielding
+the candle from the wandering summer breeze which blew an occasional
+silent, fragrant breath in from the open windows.
+
+"I don't know what people do as a rule," she answered, and then asked,
+"How did Miss Hetty like best to have it, herself?"
+
+"Oh, open, always."
+
+"We'd better open it, then."
+
+The old servant swayed before the closed door, the candlestick shaking
+in her hand. She looked up at Marise timidly. "You do it," she said
+under her breath.
+
+Marise felt a faint pitying scorn, stepped past Agnes, lifted the latch,
+and opened the door wide into the blackness of the other room.
+
+The dense silence seemed to come out, coldly and softly. For Marise it
+had the sweetness of a longed-for anaesthetic, it had the very odor of
+the dreamless quiet into which she longed to sink. But Agnes shrank
+away, drew hastily closer to Marise, and whispered in a sudden panic,
+"Oh, don't it scare you? Aren't you afraid to be here all alone, just
+you and me? We'd ought to have had a man stay too."
+
+Marise tried to answer simply and kindly, "No, I'm not afraid. It is
+only all that is left of dear Cousin Hetty." But the impatience and
+contemptuous surprise which she kept out of her words and voice were
+felt none the less by the old woman. She drooped submissively as under a
+reproach. "I know it's foolish," she murmured, "I know it's foolish."
+
+She began again to weep, the tears filling her faded eyes and running
+quietly down her wrinkled old cheeks. "You don't know how gone I feel
+without her!" she mourned. "I'd always had her to tell me what to do.
+Thirty-five years now, every day, she's been here to tell me what to do.
+I can't make it seem true, that it's her lying in there. Seems as though
+every minute she'd come in, stepping quick, the way she did. And I
+fairly open my mouth to ask her, 'Now Miss Hetty, what shall I do next?'
+and then it all comes over me."
+
+Marise's impatience and scorn were flooded by an immense sympathy. What
+a pitiable thing a dependent is! Poor old Agnes! She leaned down to the
+humble, docile old face, and put her cheek against it. "I'll do my best
+to take Cousin Hetty's place for you," she said gently, and then, "Now
+you'd better go back to bed. There's a hard day ahead of us."
+
+Agnes responded with relief to the tone of authority. She said with a
+reassured accent, "Well, it's all right if _you're_ not afraid," turned
+and shuffled down the hall, comforted and obedient.
+
+Marise saw her go into her room, heard the creak of the bed as she lay
+down on it, and then the old voice, "Miss Marise, will it be all right
+if I leave my candle burning, just this once?"
+
+"Yes, yes, Agnes, that'll be all right," she answered. "Go to sleep
+now." As she went back into her own room, she thought passingly to
+herself, "Strange that anyone can live so long and grow up so little."
+
+She herself opened her bed, lay down on it resolutely, and blew out her
+candle.
+
+Instantly the room seemed suffocatingly full of a thousand flying,
+disconnected pictures. The talk with Agnes had changed her mood. The
+dull, leaden weight of that numbing burden of inarticulate pain was
+broken into innumerable fragments. For a time, before she could collect
+herself to self-control, her thoughts whirled and roared in her head
+like a machine disconnected from its work, racing furiously till it
+threatens to shake itself to pieces. Everything seemed to come at once.
+
+Frank Warner was dead. What would that mean to Nelly Powers?
+
+Had there been enough bread left in the house till someone could drive
+the Ford to Ashley and buy some more?
+
+Ought she to wear mourning for Cousin Hetty?
+
+What had happened on the Eagle Rocks? Had Frank and 'Gene quarreled, or
+had 'Gene crept up behind Frank as he sighted along the compass?
+
+How would they get Cousin Hetty's friends from the station at Ashley,
+out to the house, such feeble old people as they were? It would be
+better to have the services all at the church.
+
+Had anything been decided about hymns? Someone had said something about
+it, but what had she . . . oh, of course that had been the moment when
+Toucle had come in, and Mr. Bayweather had rushed away to tell Frank's
+mother. Frank's mother. His mother! Suppose that were to happen to Mark,
+or Paul? No, not such thoughts. They mustn't be let in at all, or you
+went mad.
+
+Was it true that Elly cared nothing about her, that children didn't, for
+grown-ups, that she was nothing in Elly's life?
+
+She was glad that Toucle had come back. There would be someone to help
+Neale with the children. . . .
+
+_Neale_ . . . the name brought her up abruptly. Her mind, hurrying,
+breathless, panting, was stopped by the name, as by a great rock in the
+path. There was an instant of blankness, as she faced it, as though it
+were a name she did not know. When she said that name, everything
+stopped going around in her head. She moved restlessly in her bed.
+
+And then, as though she had gone around the rock, the rapid, pattering,
+painful rush of those incoherent ideas began again. Queer that nobody
+there, Mr. Bayweather, Agnes, Toucle, none of them seemed to realize
+that Frank had not fallen, that 'Gene had . . . but of course she
+remembered they hadn't any idea of a possible connection between Frank
+and the Powers, and she had been the only one to see 'Gene in that
+terrible flight from the Rocks. Nelly had thought he had been
+cultivating corn all day. Of course nobody would think of anything but
+an accident. Nobody would ever know.
+
+Yes, it was true; it was true that she would touch Neale and never know
+it, never feel it . . . how closely that had been observed, that she could
+take a handkerchief from his pocket as from a piece of furniture. It was
+true that Neale and she knew each other now till there was no hidden
+corner, no mystery, no possibility of a single unexpected thing between
+them. She had not realized it, but it was true. How could she not have
+seen that his presence left her wholly unmoved, indifferent now? But how
+could she have known it, so gradual had been the coming of satiety,
+until she had to contrast with it this fierce burning response to a
+fierce and new emotion? . . .
+
+Had she thought "indifference"? and "satiety"? Of whom had she been
+thinking? Not of _Neale_! Was that what had come of the great hour on
+Rocca di Papa? _Was that what human beings were?_
+
+She had gone further this time, but now she was brought up short by the
+same blankness at the name of Neale, the same impossibility to think at
+all. She could not think about Neale tonight. All that must be put off
+till she was more like herself, till she was more steady. She was
+reeling now, with shock after shock; Cousin Hetty's death, 'Gene's
+dreadful secret, the discovery no longer to be evaded of what Vincent
+Marsh meant and was. . . .
+
+She felt a sudden hurried impatient haste to be with Vincent again, to
+feel again the choking throb when she first saw him, the constant scared
+uncertainty of what he might say, what she might feel, what they both
+might do, from one moment to the next . . . she could forget, in those
+fiery and potent draughts, everything, all this that was so hard and
+painful and that she could not understand and that was such a torment to
+try to understand. Everything would be swept away except . . .
+
+As though she had whirled suddenly about to see what was lurking there
+behind her, she whirled about and found the thought, "But I ought to
+tell someone, tell the police, that I saw 'Gene Powers running away
+after he had killed the man who wanted to take his wife from him."
+
+Instantly there spoke out a bitter voice, "No, I shall tell no one.
+'Gene has known how to keep Nelly. Let him have her for all his life."
+
+Another voice answered, "Frank's mother . . . his mother!"
+
+And both of these were drowned by a tide of sickness as the recollection
+came upon her of that dreadful haste, those horrible labored breaths.
+
+She sat up with a great sweeping gesture of her arms, as though she must
+fight for air. The little room seemed palpably crammed with those
+jostling, shouting, battling thoughts. She slid from the bed and went to
+the window, leaning far out from it, and looking up at the sky,
+immeasurably high and black, studded thick with stars.
+
+They looked down disdainfully at her fever and misery. A chilling
+consolation fell from them upon her, like a cold dew. She felt herself
+shrink to imperceptible proportions. What did they matter, the struggles
+of the maggots who crawled about the folds of the globe, itself the most
+trifling and insignificant of all the countless worlds which people the
+aimless disorder of the universe? What difference did it make? Anything
+they did was so soon indistinguishable from anything else. The easiest
+way . . . to yield to whatever had the strongest present force . . . that
+was as good as any other way in the great and blind confusion of it all.
+
+After she had gone back to bed, she could still see the silent multitude
+of stars above her, enormous, remote beyond imagination, and it was
+under their thin, cold, indifferent gaze that she finally fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN
+
+
+July 22.
+
+Agnes brought upstairs an armful of white roses. "The lady that visits
+at your house, she brought them from your garden and she wants to see
+you if she can."
+
+Eugenia of course. That was unexpected. She must have made an effort to
+do that, she who hated sickness and death and all dark things.
+
+"Yes, tell her I will be down in a moment. Take her in a glass of cold
+water, too, will you please, Agnes. The walk over here must have been
+terribly hot for her."
+
+The roses showed that. They were warm to the touch and as she looked at
+them intently, at their white clear faces, familiar to her as those of
+human beings, bent on her with a mute message from the garden, she saw
+they had begun to droop imperceptibly, that the close, fine texture of
+their petals had begun ever so slightly to wither. She sprinkled them,
+put their stems deep into water and went downstairs, wiping her moist
+hands on her handkerchief.
+
+Eugenia in mauve organdie stood up from the deep Windsor chair where she
+had sunk down, and came forward silently to greet her. They kissed each
+other ceremoniously in token of the fact that a death lay between them
+and the last time they had met . . . was it only yesterday morning?
+
+"Were you able to sleep at all, Marise? You look shockingly tired."
+
+"Oh yes, thanks. I slept well enough. Are the children all right?"
+
+Eugenia nodded, "Yes, as usual."
+
+"Did their father tell them the news of Cousin Hetty's death? How did
+they take it? Elly perhaps was . . ."
+
+Eugenia did not know about this, had not happened to hear anybody say.
+But old Toucle was back, at least, to do the work.
+
+"I knew she must be," said Marise. "She was here last night. It was she,
+you know, who found Frank Warner's body at the foot of . . . of course
+you've heard of that?"
+
+Eugenia made a little wry face. Of course she had heard of that, she
+said with an accent of distaste. Everybody was talking about the
+melodramatic accident, as probably they would still be talking about it
+a hundred years from now, up here where nothing happened. People had
+come all the way from North Ashley to look at the place, and some of the
+men and boys had gone around up to the top of the Eagle Rocks to see
+where Frank had lost his footing. They found his surveyor's compass
+still set upon its staff. It was where the line ran very near the edge
+and Frank must have stepped over the cliff as he was sighting along it.
+They could see torn leaves and stripped twigs as though he had tried to
+save himself as he fell.
+
+She stopped speaking. Marise found herself too sick and shaken to
+venture any comment. There was rather a long silence, such as was
+natural and suitable under the circumstances, in that house. Presently
+Marise broke this to ask if anyone knew how Frank's mother had taken the
+news, although she knew of course Eugenia was the last person of whom to
+ask such a question. As she expected, Eugenia had only lifted eyebrows,
+a faint slow shake of her head and a small graceful shrug of her
+shoulders, her usual formula for conveying her ignorance of common
+facts, and her indifference to that ignorance.
+
+But Marise, looking at her, as they sat opposite each other in the
+twilight of the closely shuttered room, was struck by the fact that
+Eugenia did not seem wholly like herself. Her outward aspect was the
+same, the usual exquisite exactitude of detail, every blond hair shining
+and in its place, the flawless perfection of her flesh as miraculous as
+ever, her tiny white shoe untouched by dust through which she must have
+walked to reach the house. But there was something . . . in her eyes,
+perhaps . . . which now looked back at Marise with an expression which
+Marise did not understand or recognize. If it had not been impossible to
+think it of Eugenia, Marise would have imagined that her eyes looked
+troubled, excited. Was it possible that even in her safe ivory tower of
+aloofness from life, she had felt the jarring blow of the brutally
+immediate tragedy of the Eagle Rocks? Or perhaps even Cousin Hetty's
+disappearance . . . she had always hated reminders of death.
+
+As Marise, surprised, looked at her and wondered thus passingly if she
+felt any reverberation from the tragedy-laden air about them, Eugenia's
+face hardened back into its usual smooth calm; over the eyes that had
+been for an instant transparent and alive with troubled brightness, slid
+their acquired expression of benignant indifference. She answered
+Marise's faintly inquiring gaze by getting up as if to go, remarking in
+a clear low tone (she was the only person who had come into the house
+who had not succumbed to that foolish, instinctive muffling of the
+voice), "I forgot to give you a message from Neale. He is obliged to be
+away today, on business, something about a deed to some wood-land."
+
+Marise was slightly surprised. "Where is he going?" she asked. "In the
+Ford? On the train?" How little she had thought about the mill of late,
+that she should be so entirely blank as to this business trip.
+
+"Oh, I didn't even try to understand," said Eugenia, smoothing the
+shining silk of her parasol. "Business finds no echo in me, you know. A
+man came to supper last night, unexpectedly, and they talked
+interminably about some deal, lumbering, lines, surveys, deeds . . . till
+Toucle came in with the news of the accident. The man was from New
+Hampshire, with that droll, flat New Hampshire accent. You know how they
+talk, 'bahn' and 'yahd' for barn and yard."
+
+The words "New Hampshire" and "deeds" stirred a disagreeable association
+of ideas in Marise's mind. The shyster lawyer who had done the Powers
+out of their inheritance had come from New Hampshire. However, she
+supposed there were other people in the state besides dishonest lawyers.
+
+Eugenia went on casually. "It seemed quite important. Neale was absorbed
+by it. He told me afterward, Neale did, that the man had acted as agent
+for him some years ago in securing a big tract of wood-land around here,
+something that had been hard to get hold of."
+
+Marise was startled and showed it by a quick lift of her head. She had
+never known Neale to employ an agent. She looked hard at Eugenia's
+quiet, indifferent face. The other seemed not to notice her surprise,
+and returned her look with a long clear gaze, which apparently referred
+to her hair, for she now remarked in just the tone she had used for the
+news about Neale, "That way of arranging your coiffure _is_ singularly
+becoming to you. Mr. Marsh was speaking about it the other day, but I
+hadn't specially noticed it. He's right. It gives you that swathed
+close-coifed Leonardo da Vinci look." She put her handkerchief into a
+small bag of mauve linen, embroidered with white and pale-green crewels,
+and took up her parasol.
+
+Marise felt something menacing in the air. Eugenia frightened her a
+little with that glass-smooth look of hers. The best thing to do was to
+let her go without another word. And yet she heard her voice asking,
+urgently, peremptorily, "What was the name of the man from New
+Hampshire?"
+
+Eugenia said, "What man from New Hampshire?" and then, under Marise's
+silent gaze, corrected herself and changed her tone. "Oh yes, let me
+see: Neale introduced him, of course. Why, some not uncommon name, and
+yet not like Smith or Jones. It began with an L, I believe."
+
+Marise said to herself, "I will not say another word about this," and
+aloud she said roughly, brusquely, "It wasn't Lowder, of course."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Eugenia, "you're right. It was Lowder. I _thought_ it
+was probably something you'd know about. Neale always tells you
+everything."
+
+She looked away and remarked, "I suppose you will inherit the furniture
+of this house? There are nice bits. This Windsor chair; and I thought I
+saw a Chippendale buffet in the dining-room."
+
+Marise, immobile in her chair, repeated, "It wasn't Lowder. You didn't
+say it was Lowder."
+
+"Yes, it was Lowder," said Eugenia clearly. "And now you speak of it
+once more, I remember one more thing about their talk although I didn't
+try to understand much of it. It was all connected with the Powers
+family. It was their woodlot which this Mr. Lowder had bought for Neale.
+I was surprised to know that they had ever had any wood-land. They have
+always seemed too sordidly poverty-stricken. But it seems this was the
+only way Neale could get hold of it, because they refused to sell
+otherwise."
+
+She looked again at Marise, a long, steady, and entirely opaque gaze
+which Marise returned mutely, incapable of uttering a word. She had the
+feeling of leaning with all her weight against an inner-door that must
+be kept shut.
+
+"Did Neale _tell_ you this man had secured the Powers woodlot for him,
+for Neale, for our mill?" she heard her voice asking, faint in the
+distance, far off from where she had flung herself against that door.
+
+"Why yes, why not? Not very recently he said, some time ago. We had
+quite a talk about it afterwards. It must be something you've
+forgotten," said Eugenia. She took up a card from the table and fanned
+herself as she spoke, her eyes not quitting Marise's face. "It's going
+to be as hot as it was yesterday," she said with resignation. "Doesn't
+it make you long for a dusky, high-ceilinged Roman room with a cool,
+red-tiled floor, and somebody out in the street shouting through your
+closed shutters, 'Ricotta! Ricotta!'" she asked lightly.
+
+Marise looked at her blankly. She wished she could lean forward and
+touch Eugenia to make sure she was really standing there. What was it
+she had been saying? She could not have understood a word of it. It was
+impossible that it should be what it seemed to mean,--impossible!
+
+A door somewhere in the house opened and shut, and steps approached. The
+two women turned their eyes towards the hall-door. Old Mrs. Powers
+walked in unceremoniously, her gingham dress dusty, her lean face deeply
+flushed by the heat, a tin pan in her hands, covered with a
+blue-and-white checked cloth.
+
+"I thought maybe you'd relish some fresh doughnuts as well as anything,"
+she said briskly, with no preliminary of greeting.
+
+Something about the atmosphere of the room struck her oddly for all the
+composed faces and quiet postures of the two occupants. She brought out
+as near an apology for intruding, as her phraseless upbringing would
+permit her. "I didn't see Agnes in the kitchen as I come through, so I
+come right along, to find somebody," she said, a little abashed.
+
+Marise was incapable of speaking to her, but she made a silent gesture
+of thanks, and, moving forward, took the pan from the older woman's
+hand.
+
+Mrs. Powers went on, "If 'twouldn't bother you, could you put them in
+your jar now, and let me take the pan back with me? We hain't got any
+too many dishes, you know."
+
+Marise went out to the pantry with the older woman, feeling with
+astonishment the floor hard and firm under her feet as usual, the walls
+upright about her. Only something at the back of her throat contracted
+to a knot, relaxed, contracted, with a singular, disagreeable,
+involuntary regularity.
+
+"You look down sick, Mis' Crittenden," said Mrs. Powers with a
+respectful admiration for the suitability of this appearance. "And there
+ain't nothing surprising that you should. Did you ever see anybody go
+off more sudden than Miss Hetty? Such a good woman she was, too. It must
+ha' gi'n you an awful turn." She poured the doughnuts into the jar and,
+folding the checked cloth, went on, "But I look at it this way. 'Twas a
+quick end, and a peaceful end without no pain. And if you'd seen as many
+old people drag along for years, as I have, stranglin' and chokin' and
+half-dead, why, you'd feel to be thankful Miss Hetty was spared that.
+And you too!"
+
+"Marise," said Eugenia, coming to the pantry door, "your neighbors
+wanted me, of course, to bring you all their sympathetic condolence. Mr.
+Welles asked me to tell you that he would send all the flowers in his
+garden to the church for the service tomorrow. And Mr. Marsh was very
+anxious to see you today, to arrange about the use of his car in meeting
+the people who may come on the train tomorrow, to attend the funeral. He
+said he would run over here any time today, if you would send Agnes to
+tell him when you would see him. He said he wouldn't leave the house all
+day, to be ready to come at any time you would let him."
+
+Mrs. Powers was filled with satisfaction at such conduct. "Now that's
+what I call real neighborly," she said. "And both on 'em new to our ways
+too. That Mr. Welles is a real nice old man, anyhow. . . . There! I call
+him 'old' and I bet he's younger than I be. He acts so kind o' settled
+down to stay. But Mr. Marsh don't act so. That's the kind man I like to
+see, up-and-coming, so you never know what he's a-goin' to do next."
+
+Eugenia waited through this, for some answer, and still waited
+persistently, her eyes on Marise's face.
+
+Marise aroused herself. She must make some comment, of course. "Please
+thank them both very much," she said finally, and turned away to set the
+jar on a shelf.
+
+"Well, you goin'?" said Mrs. Powers, behind her, evidently to Eugenia.
+"Well, good-bye, see you at the funeral tomorrow, I s'pose."
+
+Marise looked around and caught a silent, graceful salutation of
+farewell from Eugenia, who disappeared down the hall, the front door
+closing gently behind her.
+
+Mrs. Powers began again abruptly, "Folks is sayin' that Frank Warner
+must ha' been drinking, but I don't believe it. He wa'n't no drinker.
+And where'd he git it, if he was? It was heedless, that's what it was.
+He always was a heedless critter from a little boy up. He was the one
+that skated right ahead into the hole and most drowned him, and he was
+fooling with his gran'father's shot-gun when it went off and most blew
+him to pieces. 'S a wonder he lived to grow up: he come so nigh breaking
+his neck, before this."
+
+Marise was surprised to hear Eugenia's voice again, "Marise, I stepped
+back to ask you if there are any errands I could do for you, any
+messages to take. I pass by the door of Mr. Welles' house. I could
+perfectly easily stop there and tell Mr. Marsh he could see you now, for
+instance."
+
+Marise seemed to see her from afar. She heard what she said, but she was
+aware of it only as an interruption. There was a question she must ask
+old Mrs. Powers. How could she think of anything else till that had been
+answered? She said to Eugenia at random, using the first phrase that
+came into her mind, "No, no. Later. Some other time."
+
+Eugenia hesitated, took a step away from the door, and then came back
+in, deliberately, close to Marise. She spoke to her in Italian, very
+clearly, "He is not a man who will wait."
+
+To this Marise, wholly engrossed in her inner struggle, opposed a stupid
+blankness, an incapacity to think of what Eugenia was saying, long
+enough to understand it. In that dark inner room, where she kept the
+door shut against the horror that was trying to come in, she dared not
+for an instant look away. She merely shook her head and motioned
+impatiently with her hand. Why did not Eugenia go away?
+
+And yet when Eugenia had gone, she could not bring the words out because
+of that strange contraction of her throat.
+
+"My! but you ought to go and lie down," said Mrs. Powers
+compassionately. "You're as white as a sheet. Why don't you just give up
+for a while? Agnes and I'll tend to things."
+
+Marise was filled with terror at the idea of not getting her answer, and
+spoke quickly, abruptly. "Mrs. Powers, you never heard, did you, you
+never thought, in that trouble about losing your wood-land . . . nobody
+ever thought that Mr. Lowder was only an agent for someone else, whose
+name wasn't to be known then."
+
+"Oh sure," said Mrs. Powers readily. "'Gene found out from a man that
+had lived in his town in New Hampshire that Lowder didn't do no
+lumbering of his own. He just makes a business of dirty deals like that
+for pay. He always surmised it to be some lumber-company; somebody that
+runs a mill. Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing, darn
+'em!"
+
+Marise leaned against the pantry shelf. The old woman glanced at her
+face, gave a cry, and pushed her into a chair, running for water. At the
+sound, Agnes came trotting, and showed a scared rabbit-like face. "She's
+just beat out with the shock of Miss Hetty's going off so sudden,"
+explained Mrs. Powers to Agnes.
+
+Marise got to her feet angrily. She had entirely forgotten that Cousin
+Hetty was dead, or that she was in her house. She was shocked that for a
+moment she had relaxed her steady pressure against that opening door.
+She flung herself against it now. What could she do next?
+
+Instantly, clearly, as though she had heard someone saying it to her,
+she thought, "Why, of course, all I have to do is to go and ask Neale
+about it!"
+
+It was so simple. Somehow, of course, Neale could give the answer she
+must have. Why had she not thought of that the instant Eugenia had begun
+to speak?
+
+She drank the glass of water Agnes gave her and said, "Mrs. Powers,
+could you do something for me? I promised I would stay here till the
+funeral and I know Agnes is afraid to stay alone. Would you mind waiting
+here for perhaps half an hour till I could get to the mill and back?
+There is something important I must see to."
+
+Mrs. Powers hesitated. "Well now, Mis' Crittenden, there ain't nothing I
+wouldn't do for you. But I'm kind o' _funny_ about dead folks. I don't
+believe I'd be much good to Agnes because I feel just the way she does.
+But I'll run over to the house and get Nelly and 'Gene to come. I guess
+the four of us together won't be nervous about staying. 'Gene ain't
+workin' today. He got a sunstroke or something yesterday, in the sun,
+cultivatin' his corn and he don't feel just right in his head, he says."
+
+She went out of the door as she spoke, calling over her shoulder, "I
+wun't be gone long."
+
+Marise sat down again, there in the pantry, leaned her head against the
+door and looked steadily at the shelves before her, full of dishes and
+jars and bottles and empty jelly glasses. In her mind there was only one
+thing, a fixed resolve not to think at all, of anything, until she had
+been to Neale's office and had Neale explain it to her. Surely he would
+not have started on that trip whatever it was. It was so early still.
+She must not think about it at all, until she had asked Neale. Eugenia
+had probably made a mistake about the name. Even if Neale had gone she
+would be able to ask about the name and find that Eugenia had made a
+mistake. That would make everything all right. Of course Eugenia had
+made a mistake about the name.
+
+She was still staring fixedly at the shelves, frowning and beginning
+again to count all the things on them, when Mrs. Powers' voice sounded
+from the kitchen. "I met 'em on the way is why I'm back so soon," she
+explained to Agnes. "Nelly had some flowers to bring. And they've been
+down by the river and got a great lot of ferns too."
+
+Marise started up, for an instant distracted from her concentration on
+what Eugenia had said. This was the first time she had seen Nelly and
+'Gene since Frank's death. How would they look? How did people go on
+living? How would they speak, and how could they listen to anything but
+their own thoughts? What had Frank's death meant to Nelly?
+
+She turned shrinkingly towards Nelly. Nelly was bending down and
+flicking the dust from her shoes with her handkerchief. When she stood
+up, she looked straight at Marise. Under the thick-springing,
+smooth-brushed abundance of her shining fair hair, her eyes, blue as
+precious stones, looked out with the deep quiet which always seemed so
+inscrutable to the other woman.
+
+She held out an armful of flowers. "I thought you'd like the white phlox
+the best. I had a lot of pink too, but I remembered Mrs. Bayweather said
+white is best at such times."
+
+Marise drew a long breath. What superb self-control!
+
+"Were the biscuits good?" asked Nelly, turning to Agnes. "I was afraid
+afterward maybe they weren't baked enough."
+
+Marise was swept to her feet. If Nelly could master her nerves like
+that, she could do better herself. She took the flowers, carried them to
+the kitchen, and set them in a panful of water. She had not yet looked
+at 'Gene.
+
+She went to find an umbrella to shield her hatless head from the sun,
+and on her way out only, cast a swift glance at 'Gene. That was enough.
+All the blazing, dusty way to the mill, she saw hanging terribly before
+her that haggard ashy face.
+
+At the mill, she paused in the doorway of the lower office, looking in
+on the three desk-workers, tapping on their machines, leaning sideways
+to consult note-books. The young war-cripple, Neale's special protege,
+seeing her, got to his feet to ask her what he could do for her.
+
+Marise considered him for a moment before she answered. _Was_ there
+anything he could do for her? Why had she come? All she could remember
+for the moment was that singular contraction of her throat, which had
+come back now.
+
+Then she remembered, "Is Mr. Crittenden here?"
+
+"No, he was called away for the day, urgent business in New Hampshire."
+
+Marise looked about her helplessly. "May I sit down for a moment?"
+
+The young stenographer ran, limping and eager, to offer her a chair, and
+then, shyly, swung his swivel chair towards her, not wishing to go back
+to his work, uncertain what to say to his employer's wife.
+
+"When will Mr. Crittenden be back?" asked Marise, although she knew the
+answer.
+
+"No later than tonight, he said," answered the stenographer. "He spoke
+particularly about coming back because of Miss Hetty Allen's funeral."
+
+"Yes, of course," said Marise.
+
+There was nothing more to be said, she knew that, nothing more to be
+done, until Neale came back. But it seemed physically impossible for her
+to live until then, with the clutch in her throat.
+
+She ought to get up now, at once, and go back to Cousin Hetty's. The
+Powers were waiting for her return. But her consternation at finding
+Neale really gone was a blow from which she needed a breathing time to
+recover. She couldn't have it so. She could never endure a whole day
+with this possibility like a threatening powder-mine under her feet,
+ready to go off and bring her inner world to ruin and despair. She put
+her hand out to take her umbrella and struggled up.
+
+"Any message to leave for Mr. Crittenden?" asked the stenographer,
+seeing her ready to go.
+
+She shook her head. Her eye fell on the waste-paper basket beside the
+desk. On one of the empty envelopes, torn in two, the words, "Return to
+C.K. Lowder," stood out clearly. She turned away and stood motionless,
+one hand at her temple. She was thinking to herself, "This is simply
+incredible. There is some monstrous mistake. If I could only think of a
+way to find it out before it kills me."
+
+She became aware that the young cripple was looking at her anxiously,
+and saw in his startled, agitated face a reflection of what hers must
+be. She made an effort to speak quietly, and heard herself say, "Do you
+happen to remember if Mr. Crittenden was alone as he drove away?"
+
+"Oh no," said the other. "He had had someone with him ever since the
+afternoon train came in yesterday. Mr. Crittenden drove the car in
+himself to the Ashley station to meet him. Somebody here on business."
+
+"What sort of a man, do you remember?" asked Marise.
+
+"Well, a clean-shaven man, with a queer thin long mouth, like the
+pictures of William Jennings Bryan's. And he talked out of one corner of
+it, the way . . . see here, Mrs. Crittenden, you look awfully tired.
+Wouldn't you better sit down and rest a moment more?"
+
+Marise shook her head with an impatient gesture. Now she needed to get
+away from that office as much as she had wished to go to it. The place
+was hateful to her. The young man's eyes were intolerable. He was one of
+the people, one of the many, many people who had grown up trusting in
+Neale.
+
+She swung suddenly to a furious incredulity about the whole thing. It
+was nonsense! None of it could be true. What were all these people
+saying to her, Eugenia, Mrs. Powers, this boy . . . ? She would never
+forgive them for trying to do such an infamous thing. They were trying
+to make her believe that Neale had been back of Lowder in the low-down
+swindle that had been practised on the Powers. They were trying to make
+her believe that for seven years Neale had been lying to her with every
+breath he drew. Because other men could lie, they thought they could
+make her believe that Neale did. Because other women's husbands had done
+base things in business, they thought she would be capable of believing
+that about Neale. They didn't know how preposterous it was, how close
+she and Neale had always been, how deeply a part of the whole aspect of
+life to her, Neale's attitude toward his work had become. Those people
+did not realize what they were trying to make her believe, it was not
+only that her husband had been the instigator of a mean little cheat
+which had cost years of suffering to helpless neighbors, it was the
+total destruction of all that she had thought Neale to be . . . _thought_
+him? Known him to be.
+
+"I must get back at once," she said, with a resentful accent and moved
+towards the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE STARS
+
+
+July 22.
+
+She passed out from the office into the yellow glare of the sun, her
+feet moving steadily forward, with no volition of hers, along the dusty
+road. And as steadily, with as little volition of hers, march, march,
+came . . . first what Eugenia had said, the advance from that to Mrs.
+Powers' words, from that to the stenographer's, to the name on the
+envelope . . . and then like the door to a white-hot blast-furnace thrown
+open in her face, came the searing conception of the possibility that it
+might be true, and all the world lost.
+
+The extremity and horror of this aroused her to a last effort at
+self-preservation so that she flung the door shut by a fierce incapacity
+to believe any of those relentless facts which hung one from another
+with their horrible enchaining progression. No, she had been dreaming.
+It was all preposterous!
+
+The heat wavered up from the hot earth in visible pulsations and there
+pulsed through her similar rhythmic waves of feeling; the beginning . . .
+what Eugenia had said, had said that _Neale had told her_ . . . what Mrs.
+Powers had said, "Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing" . . .
+what the stenographer had said . . . the name on the envelope . . .
+_suppose it should be true_.
+
+She was at Cousin Hetty's door now; a give-and-take of women's voices
+sounding within. "Here's Mrs. Crittenden back. Come on, Nelly, we better
+be going. There's all the work to do."
+
+Marise went in and sat down, looking at them with stony indifference, at
+'Gene this time as well as at the women. The drawn sickness of his ashy
+face did not move her in the least now. What did she care what he did,
+what anyone did, till she knew whether she had ever had Neale or not?
+The women's chatter sounded remote and foolish in her ears.
+
+If Neale had done that . . . if that was the man he was . . . but of course
+it was preposterous, and she had been dreaming. What was that that
+Eugenia had said? The descent into hell began again step by step.
+
+The Powers went out, the old woman still talking, chattering, as if
+anything mattered now.
+
+After they were gone, Agnes ran to the door calling, "Mis' Powers! You
+forgot your pan and towel after all!" And there was Mrs. Powers again,
+talking, talking.
+
+She had been saying something that needed an answer apparently, for now
+she stood waiting, expectant.
+
+"What was that, Mrs. Powers? I was thinking of something else."
+
+"I was just tellin' you that there's going to be a big change over to
+our house. 'Gene, he told Nelly, as he was setting here waiting for you,
+how he was going to cut down the big pine one of these days, like she
+always wanted him to. You know, the one that shades the house so.
+'Gene's grandfather planted it, and he's always set the greatest store
+by it. Used to say he'd just as soon cut his grandmother's throat as
+chop it down. But Nelly, she's all housekeeper and she never did like
+the musty way the shade makes our best room smell. I never thought to
+see the day 'Gene would give in to her about that. He's gi'n in to her
+about everything else though. Only last night he was tellin' her, he was
+going to take something out'n the savings-bank and buy her an organ for
+Addie to learn to play on, that Nelly always hankered after. Seems
+'sthough he can't do enough for Nelly, don't it?"
+
+Marise looked at her coldly, incapable of paying enough attention to her
+to make any comment on what she said. Let them cut down all the trees in
+the valley, and each other's throats into the bargain, if Neale had . . .
+if there had never been her Neale, the Neale she thought she had been
+living with, all these years.
+
+Mrs. Powers had gone finally, and the house was silent at last, so
+silent that she could now hear quite clearly, as though Eugenia still
+sat there, what the sweet musical voice was saying over and over. Why
+had they gone away and left her alone to face this deadly peril which
+advanced on her step by step without mercy, time after time? Now there
+was nothing to do but to wait and stand it off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was sitting in the same chair, her umbrella still in her hand,
+waiting, when Agnes came in to say that she had lunch ready. She turned
+eyes of astonished anger and rebuke on her. "I don't want anything to
+eat," she said in so strange a voice that Agnes crept back to the
+kitchen, shuffling and scared.
+
+She was still sitting there, looking fixedly before her, and frowning,
+when Agnes came to the door to say timidly that the gentleman had come
+about using his car to meet the train, and wanted to know if he could
+see Mrs. Crittenden.
+
+Marise looked at her, frowning, and shook her head. But it was not until
+late that night that she understood the words that Agnes had spoken.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was still sitting there, rigid, waiting, when Agnes brought in a
+lighted lamp, and Marise saw that evening had come. The light was
+extremely disagreeable to her eyes. She got up stiffly, and went
+outdoors to the porch, sitting down on the steps.
+
+The stars were beginning to come out now. The sight of them suggested
+something painful, some impression that belonged to that other world
+that had existed before this day, before she had conceived the
+possibility that Neale might not be Neale, might never have been Neale,
+that there was no such thing for her as human integrity. Was it she who
+had leaned out from the window and felt herself despised by the height
+and vastness of the stars? From the height and vastness of her need, she
+looked down on them now, and found them nothing, mere pin-pricks in the
+sky, compared to this towering doubt of her, this moral need which
+shouted down all the mere matter on the earth and in the heavens above
+the earth. Something eternal was at stake now, the faith in
+righteousness of a human soul.
+
+She had thought childishly, shallowly last night that she had had no
+faith, and could live with none. That was because she had not conceived
+what it would be to try to live without faith, because she had not
+conceived that the very ground under her feet could give way. At that
+very moment she had had a faith as boundless as the universe, and had
+forgotten it. And now it was put in doubt. She could not live without
+it. It was the only vital thing for her.
+
+Was she the woman who had felt forced into acquiescing when Vincent
+Marsh had said so boldly and violently, that she loved her husband no
+more, that he was nothing to her now? It seemed to her at this moment
+that it was a matter of the utmost unimportance whether she _loved_ him
+or not; but she could not live without believing him. That was all. She
+could not live without that. Life would be too utterly base . . .
+
+Neale nothing to her? She did not know _what_ he was to her, but the
+mere possibility of losing her faith in him was like death. It was a
+thousand times worse than death, which was merely material. This
+mattered a great deal more than the physical death of someone's body . . .
+it was the murder, minute by minute, hour by hour, month by month, year
+by year of all her married life, of all she had found lovable and
+tolerable and beautiful and real in life.
+
+Of course this could not be true . . . of course not . . . but if it were
+true, she would find the corrosive poison of a false double meaning in
+every remembered hour. She did not believe any of those hideously
+marshaled facts, but if they were true, she would go back over all those
+recollections of their life together and kill them one by one, because
+every hour of her life had been founded on the most unthinking, the most
+absolute, the most recklessly certain trust in Neale. To know that past
+in peril, which she had counted on as safe, more surely than on anything
+in life, so surely that she had almost dismissed it from her mind like a
+treasure laid away in a safe hiding-place . . . to know those memories in
+danger was a new torture that had never before been devised for any
+human being. No one had the safe and consecrated past taken from him.
+Its pricelessness shone on her with a blinding light. What if it should
+be taken away, if she should find she had never had it, at all . . . ?
+
+The idea was so acute an anguish to her that she startled herself by a
+cry of suffering.
+
+Agnes' voice behind her asked tremblingly, "Did you call me, Miss
+Marise?"
+
+Marise shifted her position, drew a breath, and answered in a hard tone,
+"No."
+
+She knew with one corner of her mind that Agnes must be terrified. What
+if she were? Marise's life-long habit of divining another's need and
+ministering to it, vanished like a handful of dust in a storm. What did
+she care about Agnes? What did she care about anything in the world but
+that she should have back again what she had valued so little as to lose
+it from her mind altogether? All of her own energy was strained in the
+bitterness of keeping her soul alive till Neale should come. She had not
+the smallest atom of strength to care about the needs of anyone else.
+
+She looked up at the stars, disdainful of them. How small they were, how
+unimportant in the scheme of things, so much less able to give
+significance to the universe, than the presence of integrity in a human
+soul.
+
+If she could have Neale back again, as she had always had him without
+thinking of it, if she could have her faith in him again, the skies
+might shrivel up like a scroll, but something eternal would remain in
+her life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to her that she heard a faint sound in the distance, on the
+road, and her strength ran out of her like water. She tried to stand up
+but could not.
+
+Yes, it was the car, approaching. The two glaring headlights swept the
+white road, stopped, and went out. For an instant the dark mass stood
+motionless in the starlight. Then something moved, a man's tall figure
+came up the path.
+
+"Is that you, Marise?" asked Neale's voice.
+
+She had not breath to speak, but all of her being cried out silently to
+him the question which had had all the day such a desperate meaning for
+her, "Is that _you_, Neale?"
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+NEALE'S RETURN
+
+July 22. Evening.
+
+He stooped to kiss her and sank down beside her where she sat cowering
+in the dark. Although she could not see his face clearly Marise knew
+from his manner that he was very tired, from the way he sat down, taking
+off his cap, and his attitude as he leaned his head back against the
+pillar. She knew this without thinking about it, mechanically, with the
+automatic certainty of a long-since acquired knowledge of him. And when
+he spoke, although his voice was quiet and level, she felt a great
+fatigue in his accent.
+
+But he spoke with his usual natural intonation, which he evidently tried
+to make cheerful. "I'm awfully glad you're still up, dear. I was afraid
+you'd be too tired, with the funeral coming tomorrow. But I couldn't get
+here any sooner. I've been clear over the mountain today. And I've done
+a pretty good stroke of business that I'm in a hurry to tell you about.
+You remember, don't you, how the Powers lost the title to their big
+woodlot? I don't know if you happen to remember all the details, how a
+lawyer named Lowder . . ."
+
+"I remember," said Marise, speaking for the first time, "all about it."
+
+"Well," went on Neale, wearily but steadily, "up in Nova Scotia this
+time, talking with one of the old women in town, I ran across a local
+tradition that, in a town about ten miles inland, some of the families
+were descended from Tory Yankees who'd been exiled from New England,
+after the Revolution. I thought it was worth looking up, and one day I
+ran up there to see if I could find out anything about them. It was
+Sunday and I had to . . ."
+
+Marise was beside herself, her heart racing wildly. She took hold of his
+arm and shook it with all her might. "Neale, quick! quick! Leave out all
+that. _What did you do?_"
+
+She could see that he was surprised by her fierce impatience, and for an
+instant taken aback by the roughness of the interruption. He stared at
+her. How _slow_ Neale was!
+
+He began, "But, dear, why do you care so much about it? You can't
+understand about what I did, if I don't tell you this part, the
+beginning, how I . . ." Then, feeling her begin to tremble uncontrollably,
+he said hastily, "Why, of course, Marise, if you want to know the end
+first. The upshot of it all is that I've got it straightened out, about
+the Powers woodlot. I got track of those missing leaves from the Ashley
+Town Records. They really were carried away by that uncle of yours. I
+found them up in Canada. I had a certified copy and tracing made of
+them. It's been a long complicated business, and the things only came in
+yesterday's mail, after you'd been called over here. But I'd been in
+correspondence with Lowder, and when I had my proofs in hand, I
+telephoned him and made him come over yesterday afternoon. It was one of
+the biggest satisfactions I ever expect to have, when I shoved those
+papers under his nose and watched him curl up. Then I took him back
+today, myself, to his own office, not to let him out of my sight, till
+it was all settled. There was a great deal more to it . . . two or three
+hours of fight. I bluffed some, about action by the bar-association,
+disbarment, a possible indictment for perjury, and seemed to hit a weak
+spot. And finally I saw him with my own eyes burn up that fake
+warranty-deed. And that's all there is to that. Just as soon as we can
+get this certified copy admitted and entered on our Town Records, 'Gene
+can have possession of his own wood-land. Isn't that good news?"
+
+He paused and added with a tired, tolerant, kindly accent, "Now Nelly
+will have fourteen pairs of new shoes, each laced higher up than the
+others, and I won't be the one to grudge them to her."
+
+He waited for a comment and, when none came, went on doggedly making
+talk in that resolutely natural tone of his. "Now that you know the end,
+and that it all came out right, you ought to listen to some details, for
+they are queer. The missing pages weren't in that first town I struck at
+all. Nothing there but a record of a family of Simmonses who had come
+from Ashley in 1778. They had . . ."
+
+Marise heard nothing more of what he said, although his voice went on
+with words the meaning of which she could not grasp. It did not seem to
+her that she had really understood with the whole of her brain anything
+he had said, or that she had been able to take in the significance of
+it. She could think of nothing but a frightening sensation all over her
+body, as though the life were ebbing out of it. Every nerve and fiber in
+her seemed to have gone slack, beyond anything she had ever conceived.
+She could feel herself more and more unstrung and loosened like a violin
+string let down and down. The throbbing ache in her throat was gone.
+Everything was gone. She sat helpless and felt it slip away, till
+somewhere in the center of her body this ebbing of strength had run so
+far that it was a terrifying pain, like the approach of death. She was
+in a physical panic of alarm, but unable to make a sound, to turn her
+head.
+
+It was when she heard a loud insistent ringing in her head, and saw the
+stars waver and grow dim that she knew she was fainting away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then she was lying on the sofa in Cousin Hetty's sitting-room, Neale
+bending over her, holding a handkerchief which smelled of ammonia, and
+Agnes, very white, saying in an agitated voice, "It's because she hasn't
+eaten a thing all day. She wouldn't touch her lunch or supper. It's been
+turrible to see her."
+
+Marise's head felt quite clear and lucid now; her consciousness as if
+washed clean by its temporary absence from life. She tried to sit up and
+smile at Neale and Agnes. She had never fainted away in all her life
+before. She felt very apologetic and weak. And she felt herself in a
+queer, literal way another person.
+
+Neale sat down by her now and put his arm around her. His face was grave
+and solicitous, but not frightened, as Agnes was. It was like Neale not
+to lose his head. He said to Agnes, "Give me that cup of cocoa," and
+when it came, he held it to Marise's lips. "Take a good swallow of
+that," he said quietly.
+
+Marise was amazed to find that the hot sweet smell of the cocoa aroused
+in her a keen sensation of hunger. She drank eagerly, and taking in her
+hand the piece of bread and butter which Neale offered to her, she began
+to eat it with a child's appetite. She was not ashamed or self-conscious
+in showing this before Neale. One never needed to live up to any pose
+before Neale. His mere presence in the room brought you back, she
+thought, to a sense of reality. Sometimes if you had been particularly
+up in the air, it made you feel a little flat as she certainly did now.
+But how profoundly alive it made you feel, Neale's sense of things as
+they were.
+
+The food was delicious. She ate and drank unabashedly, finding it an
+exquisite sensation to feel her body once more normal, her usual home,
+and not a scaring, almost hostile entity, apart from her. When she
+finished, she leaned against Neale's shoulder with a long breath. For an
+instant, she had no emotion but relieved, homely, bodily comfort.
+
+"Well, for Heaven's sake!" said Neale, looking down at her.
+
+"I know it," she said. "I'm an awful fool."
+
+"No, you're not," he contradicted. "That's what makes me so provoked
+with you now, going without eating since morning."
+
+Agnes put in, "It's the suddenness of it that was such a shock. It takes
+me just so, too, comes over me as I start to put a mouthful of food into
+my mouth. I can't get it down. And you don't know how _lost_ I feel not
+to have Miss Hetty here to tell me what to eat. I feel so gone!"
+
+"You must go to bed this minute," said Neale. "I'll go right back to the
+children."
+
+He remembered suddenly. "By George, I haven't had anything to eat since
+noon, myself." He gave Marise an apologetic glance. "I guess I haven't
+any stones to throw at your foolishness."
+
+Agnes ran to get him another cup of cocoa and some more bread and
+butter. Marise leaned back on the sofa and watched him eat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was aware of a physical release from tension that was like a new
+birth. She looked at her husband as she had not looked at him for years.
+And yet she knew every line and hollow of that rugged face. What she
+seemed not to have seen before, was what had grown up little by little,
+the expression of his face, the expression which gave his presence its
+significance, the expression which he had not inherited like his
+features, but which his life had wrought out there.
+
+Before her very eyes there seemed still present the strange, alien look
+of the dead face upstairs, from which the expression had gone, and with
+it everything. That vision hung, a cold and solemn warning in her mind,
+and through it she looked at the living face before her and saw it as
+she had never done before.
+
+In the clean, new, sweet lucidity of her just-returned consciousness she
+saw what she was not to forget, something like a steady, visible light,
+which was Neale's life. That was Neale himself. And as she looked at him
+silently, she thought it no wonder that she had been literally almost
+frightened to death by the mere possibility that it had not existed. She
+had been right in thinking that there was something there which would
+outlast the mere stars.
+
+He looked up, found her eyes on him, and smiled at her. She found the
+gentleness of his eyes so touching that she felt the tears mounting to
+her own. . . . But she winked them back. There had been enough foolishness
+from her, for one day.
+
+Neale leaned back in his chair now, looked around for his; cap, took it
+up, and looked back at her, quietly, still smiling a little. Marise
+thought, "Neale is as _natural_ in his life as a very great actor is in
+his art. Whatever he does, even to the most trifling gesture, is done
+with so great a simplicity that it makes people like me feel fussy and
+paltry."
+
+There was a moment's silence, Neale frankly very tired, looking rather
+haggard and grim, giving himself a moment's respite in his chair before
+standing up to go; Marise passive, drawing long quiet breaths, her hands
+folded on her knees; Agnes, her back to the other two, hanging about the
+sideboard, opening and shutting the drawers, and shifting their contents
+aimlessly from one to the other.
+
+Then Agnes turned, and showed a shamed, nervous old face. "I don't know
+what's got into me, Miss Marise, that I ain't no good to myself nor
+anybody else. I'm afraid to go back into the kitchen alone." She
+explained to Neale, "I never was in the house with a dead body before,
+Mr. Crittenden, and I act like a baby about it, scared to let Mrs.
+Crittenden out of my sight. If I'm alone for a minute, seems 'sthough
+. . ." She glanced over her shoulder fearfully and ended lamely, "Seems
+'sthough I don't know what might happen."
+
+"I won't leave you alone, Agnes, till it is all over," said Marise, and
+this time she kept contempt not only out of her voice, but out of her
+heart. She was truly only very sorry for the old woman with her foolish
+fears.
+
+Agnes blinked and pressed her lips together, the water in her eyes.
+"I'm awful glad to hear you say that!" she said fervently.
+
+Marise closed her eyes for a moment. It had suddenly come to her that
+this promise to Agnes meant that she could not see Neale alone till
+after the funeral, tomorrow, when she went back into life again. And she
+found that she immensely wanted to see him alone this very hour, now!
+And Agnes would be there . . . !
+
+She opened her eyes and saw Neale standing up, his cap in his hand,
+looking at her, rough and brown and tall and tired and strong; so
+familiar, every line and pose and color of him; as familiar and
+unexciting, as much a part of her, as her own hand.
+
+As their eyes met in the profound look of intimate interpenetration
+which can pass only between a man and a woman who have been part of each
+other, she felt herself putting to him clearly, piercingly, the question
+which till then she had not known how to form, "_Neale, what do you want
+me to do?_"
+
+She must have said it aloud, and said it with an accent which carried
+its prodigious import, for she saw him turn very white, saw his eyes
+deepen, his chest lift in a great heave. He came towards her, evidently
+not able to speak for a moment. Then he took her hands . . . the memory of
+a thousand other times was in his touch . . .
+
+He looked at her as though he could never turn his eyes away. The
+corners of his mouth twitched and drew down.
+
+He said, in a deep, trembling, solemn voice, "Marise, my darling, I want
+you always to do what is best for _you_ to do."
+
+He drew a deep, deep breath as though it had taken all his strength to
+say that; and went on, "What is deepest and most living in you . . . that
+is what must go on living."
+
+He released one hand and held it out towards her as though he were
+taking an oath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+MARISE'S COMING-OF-AGE
+
+
+July 23. Dawn
+
+Even after the old child, Agnes, had been soothed and reassured, over
+and over, till she had fallen asleep, and the house lay profoundly
+quiet, Marise felt not the slightest approach of drowsiness or even of
+fatigue. She lay down on her bed, but could not close her eyes. They
+remained wide open, looking not at a wild confusion of incoherent images
+as they had the night before, but straight into blackness and vacancy.
+
+It was strange how from the brawling turmoil of impressions which had
+shouted and cried out to her the night before, and had wrought her to
+frenzy by their insane insistence, not an echo reached her now. Her mind
+was as silent and intent as the old house, keeping its last mute watch
+over its mistress. Intent on what? She did not know. On something that
+was waiting for her, on something for which she was waiting.
+
+In an immense hush, like the dusky silence in a cathedral aisle or in
+the dark heart of the woods, there was something there waiting for her
+to go and find it.
+
+That hush had fallen on her at the sight of Neale's face, at the sound
+of his voice, as he had looked at her and spoken to her, at the last,
+just before he went away back to the children. Those furiously racing
+pulses of hers had been stilled by it into this steady rhythm which now
+beat quietly through her. The clashing thoughts which had risen with
+malevolent swiftness, like high, battling shadowy genii, and had torn
+her in pieces as they fought back and forth, were stilled as though a
+master-word had been spoken which they must all obey.
+
+The old house, silent under the stars, lay quiet in its vigil about her,
+but slept no more than she; the old house which had been a part of her
+childhood and her youth now watched over her entry into another part of
+her journey.
+
+For as she lay there, wide-awake, watching the light of the candle, she
+felt that she knew what was waiting for her, what she must go to find.
+It was her maturity.
+
+And as she lay quiet, her ears ringing in the solemn hush which Neale's
+look and voice had laid about her, she felt slowly coming into her, like
+a tide from a great ocean, the strength to go forward. She lay still,
+watching the candle-flame, hovering above the wick which tied it to the
+candle, reaching up, reaching up, never for a moment flagging in that
+transmutation of the dead matter below it, into something shining and
+alive.
+
+She felt the quiet strength come into her like a tide. And presently, as
+naturally as a child wakes in the morning, refreshed, and feels the
+impulse to rise to active effort again, she sat up in bed, folded her
+arms around her knees, and began to think.
+
+Really to think this time, not merely to be the helpless battle-field
+over which hurtling projectiles of fierce emotions passed back and
+forth! She set her life fairly there before her, and began to try to
+understand it.
+
+As she took this first step and saw the long journey stretching out
+before her, she knew on what staff she leaned. It was Neale's belief
+that she was strong and not weak, that she could find out, if she tried,
+what was deepest and most living in her heart. With this in her hand,
+with that great protecting hush about her, she set forth. She was afraid
+of what she might find, but she set forth.
+
+She must begin at the beginning this time, and go steadily forward from
+one step to the next, not her usual involuntary plunge, not the usual
+closing over her head of those yelling waters of too vivid impression.
+
+The beginning had been . . . yes, the first conscious beginning had been
+the going away of little Mark, out of his babyhood into his own
+child-life. He had gone out and left an empty place behind him, which
+till then had been filled with the insistent ever-present need for care
+for the physical weakness of babyhood. And she had known that never
+again would Mark fill that place.
+
+Emptiness, silence, solitude in the place of constant activity; it had
+frightened her, had set before her a vision that her life had reached
+its peak, and henceforth would go down the decline. Into that empty
+place had come a ringing, peremptory call back to personal and physical
+youth and excitement and burning sensations. And with that blinding
+rebirth of physical youth had come a doubt of all that had seemed the
+recompense for the loss of it, had come the conception that she might be
+letting herself be fooled and tricked out of the only real things.
+
+There had been many parts to this: her revolt from the mere physical
+drudgery of her life, from giving so much of her strength to the dull,
+unsavory, material things. This summer, a thousand times in a thousand
+ways, there had been brought home to her by Vincent, by Eugenia, the
+fact that there were lives so arranged that other people did all the
+drudgery, and left one free to perceive nothing but the beauty and
+delicacy of existence. Now, straight at it! With all the knowledge of
+herself and of life which she had gathered,--straight at it, to see what
+this meant! Did their entire freedom from drudgery give them a keener
+sense of the beauty and delicacy of existence? Were they more deeply
+alive because of the ease of their lives?
+
+She cast about her for evidence, in a firm, orderly search among the
+materials which life had brought to her. Had she seen anything which
+could give evidence on that? There was Eugenia; Eugenia and her friends
+had always lived that life of rich possessions and well-served ease.
+What had it made of them? Was their sense of beauty deeper and more
+living because of it? No, not in the least.
+
+She turned her inward eye on Eugenia's life, on the lives of the people
+in that circle, in a long searching gaze. Was it deep in eternal values?
+Was it made up of a constant recurrence of sensitive aliveness to what
+is most worth responding to? Odd, that it did not seem to be! They were
+petulant, and bored, and troubled about minute flaws in their ease, far
+more than they were deep in communion with beauty.
+
+Another piece of evidence came knocking at the door now, a picture of
+quaint and humble homeliness . . . herself standing before the stove with
+the roast on a plate, and little Mark saying fastidiously, "Oh, how
+nasty raw meat looks!" She recalled her passing impatience with the
+childishness of that comment, her passing sense of the puerile ignorance
+of the inherent unity of things, in such an attitude of eagerness to
+feed on results and unwillingness to take one's share of what leads up
+to results. Yes, it was more there, than in looking at Eugenia, that she
+could find evidence. Did she want to be of those who sat afar off and
+were served with the fine and delicate food of life, and knew nothing of
+the unsavory process of preparing it? It had seemed to her this summer,
+a thousand times with Vincent's eyes on her, scornful of her present
+life, that she did want it, that she wanted that more than anything
+else. Now let her look full at it. She was a grown woman now, who could
+foresee what it would mean.
+
+She looked full at it, set herself there in her imagination, in the
+remote ivory tower and looked out from its carven windows at the rough
+world where she had lived and worked, and from which she would
+henceforth be protected . . . and shut out. She looked long, and in the
+profound silence, both within and without her, she listened to the
+deepest of the voices in her heart.
+
+And she knew that it was too late for that. She had lived, and she could
+not blot out what life had brought to her. She could never now, with a
+tranquil heart, go into the ivory tower. It would do her no good to shut
+and bar the golden door a hundred times behind her, because she would
+have with her, everywhere she went, wrought into the very fiber of her
+being, a guilty sense of all the effort and daily strain and struggle in
+which she did not share.
+
+She saw no material good accomplished by taking her share. The existence
+in the world of so much drudgery and unlovely slavery to material
+processes was an insoluble mystery; but a life in which her part of it
+would be taken by other people and added to their own burdens . . . no,
+she had grown into something which could not endure that!
+
+Perhaps this was one of the hard, unwelcome lessons that the war had
+brought to her. She remembered how she had hated the simple comforts of
+home, the safety, the roof over her head, because they were being paid
+for by such hideous sufferings on the part of others; how she had been
+ashamed to lie down in her warm bed when she thought of Neale and his
+comrades in the trench-mud, in the cold horror of the long drenching
+nights, awaiting the attack; and she had turned sick to see the long
+trains of soldiers going out while she stayed safely behind and bore no
+part in the wretchedness which war is. There had been no way for her to
+take her part in that heavy payment for her safety and comfort; but the
+bitterness of those days had shocked her imagination alive to the shame
+of sharing and enjoying what she had not helped to pay for, to the
+disharmony of having more than your share while other people have less
+than theirs.
+
+This was nothing she had consciously sought for. She felt no dutiful
+welcome that it had come; she bent under it as under a burden. But it
+was there. Life had made her into one of the human beings capable of
+feeling that responsibility, each for all, and the war had driven it
+home, deep into her heart, whence she could not pluck it out.
+
+She might never have known it, never have thought of it, if she had
+been safely protected by ignorance of what life is like. But now she
+knew, living had taught her; and that knowledge was irrevocably part of
+the woman she had become.
+
+Wait now! Was this only habit, routine, dulled lack of divining
+imagination of what another life could be? That was the challenge
+Vincent would throw down. She gazed steadily at the wall before her, and
+called up, detail by detail, the life which Vincent Marsh thought the
+only one that meant richness and abundance for the human spirit. It hung
+there, a shimmering mass of lovely colors and exquisite textures and
+fineness and delicacy and beauty. And as she looked at it, it took on
+the shape of a glorious, uprooted plant, cut off from the very source of
+life, its glossy surfaces already beginning to wither and dull in the
+sure approach of corruption and decay. But what beauties were there to
+pluck, lovely fading beauties, poignant and exquisite sensations, which
+she was capable of savoring, which she sadly knew she would live and die
+without having known, a heritage into which she would never enter;
+because she had known the unforgettable taste of the other heritage,
+alive and rooted deep!
+
+This faded out and left her staring at the blank wall again, feeling old
+and stern.
+
+Nothing more came for a moment, and restless, feeling no bodily fatigue
+at all, she got out of her bed, took up the candle, and stepped
+aimlessly out into the hall. The old clock at the end struck a muffled
+stroke, as if to greet her. She held up her candle to look at it.
+Half-past two in the morning. A long time till dawn would come.
+
+She hesitated a moment and turned towards the door of a garret room
+which stood open. She had not been in there for so long,--years perhaps;
+but as a child she had often played there among the old things, come
+down from the dead, who were kept in such friendly recollection in this
+house. Near the door there had been an old, flat-topped, hair-covered
+trunk . . . yes, here it was, just as it had been. Nothing ever changed
+here. She sat down on it, the candle on the floor beside her, and saw
+herself as a little girl playing among the old things.
+
+A little girl! And now she was the mother of a little girl. So short a
+time had passed! She understood so very little more than when she had
+been the little girl herself. Yet now there was Elly who came and stood
+by her, and looked at her, and asked with all her eyes and lips and
+being, "Mother, what is the meaning of life?"
+
+What answer had she to give? Was she at all more fit than anyone else to
+try to give Elly the unknowable answer to that dark question? Was there
+any deep spiritual reality which counted at all, which one human being
+could give to another? Did we really live on desert islands, cut off so
+wholly from each other by the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea? And if we
+did, why break one's heart in the vain effort to do the impossible, to
+get from human beings what they could not give?
+
+Her heart ached in an old bitterness at the doubt. Did her children . . .
+could they . . . give her the love she wanted from them, in answer to her
+gift of her life to them? They were already beginning to go away from
+her, to be estranged from her, to shut her out of their lives, to live
+their lives with no place for her in them.
+
+She sat there on the old trunk and saw the endless procession of parents
+and children passing before her, the children so soon parents, all
+driven forward by what they could not understand, yearning and starving
+for what was not given them, all wrapped and dimmed in the twilight of
+their doubt and ignorance. Where were they going? And why? So many of
+them, so many!
+
+Her humbled spirit was prostrate before their mystery, before the
+vastness of the whole, of which she and her children were only a part, a
+tiny, lowly part.
+
+With this humbling sense of the greatness of the whole, something
+swollen and sore in her heart gave over its aching, as though a
+quieting hand had been laid on it. She drew a long breath. Oh, from what
+did it come, this rest from that sore bitterness?
+
+It came from this, that she had somehow been shown that what she wanted
+was not love from her children for herself. That was trying to drive a
+bargain to make them pay for something they had never asked to have.
+What she wanted was not to get love, to get a place in their lives for
+herself, to get anything from them, but to give them all that lay in her
+to give. If that was what she wanted, why, nothing, nothing could take
+it away. And it was truly . . . in this hour of silence and searching . . .
+she saw that it was truly what she wanted. It was something in her which
+had grown insensibly to life and strength, during all those uncounted
+hours of humble service to the children. And it was something golden and
+immortal in her poor, flawed, human heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A warm bright wave of feeling swept over her . . . there, distinct and
+rounded against the shadowy confused procession of abstract ideas about
+parents and children, there stood looking at her out of their clear
+loving eyes, Paul and Elly and little Mark, alive, there, a part of her;
+not only themselves but her children; not only her children but
+themselves; human life which she and Neale had created out of the stuff
+of the universe. They looked at her and in their regard was the clear
+distillation of the innumerable past hours when they had looked at her
+with love and trust.
+
+At the sight of them, her own children, her heart swelled and opened
+wide to a conception of something greater and deeper in motherhood than
+she had had; but which she could have if she could deserve it; something
+so wide and sun-flooded that the old selfish, possessive,
+never-satisfied ache which had called itself love withered away, its
+power to hurt and poison her gone.
+
+She had no words for this . . . she could not even try to understand it.
+It was as solemn a birth-hour to her, as the hour when she had first
+heard the cry of her new-born babies . . . she was one mother then, she
+had become another mother now. She turned to bless the torment of
+bitter, doubting questioning of what she had called mother-love, which
+had forced her forward blindly struggling, till she found this
+divination of a greater possibility.
+
+She had been trying to span the unfathomable with a mean and grasping
+desire. Now she knew what she must try to do; to give up the lesser and
+receive the greater.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This passed and left her, looking straight before her at the flickering
+shadows, leaping among the dusky corners of the dark slant-ceilinged
+room. The old clock struck three in the hall behind her.
+
+She felt tired now, as she had after the other travail which had given
+her her children, and leaned her head on her hand. Where did she
+herself, her own personal self come in, with all this? It was always a
+call to more effort which came. To get the great good things of life how
+much you had to give! How much of what seemed dearly yourself, you had
+to leave behind as you went forward! Her childhood was startlingly
+called up by this old garret, where nothing had changed: she could still
+see herself, running about there, happily absorbed in the vital
+trivialities of her ten years. She had not forgotten them, she knew
+exactly the thrill felt by that shadowy little girl as she leaned over
+the old chest yonder, and pulled out the deep-fringed shawl and quilted
+petticoat.
+
+It had been sweet to be a little girl, she thought wistfully, to have
+had no past, to know only the shining present of every day with no
+ominous, difficult future beyond it. Ineffably sweet too was the aroma
+of perfect trust in the strength and wisdom of grown-up people, which
+tinctured deep with certainty every profoundest layer of her
+consciousness. Ineffably sweet . . . and lost forever. There was no human
+being in the world as wise and strong as poor old Cousin Hetty had
+seemed to her then. A kingdom of security from which she was now shut
+out.
+
+And the games, the fantastic plays,--how whole and rounded and entire,
+the pleasure in them! She remembered the rainy day she had played
+paper-dolls here once, with little Margaret Congdon . . . dead, years ago,
+that much-loved playmate of past summer days . . . and how they had taken
+the chest for the house for Margaret's dolls, and the hair-trunk where
+she sat, for hers; how they had arranged them with the smallest of
+playthings, with paste-board furniture, and bits of colored tissue paper
+for rugs, and pieces of silk and linen from the rag-bag for bed-clothes;
+how they had hummed and whistled to themselves as they worked (she could
+hear them now!); and how the aromatic woodsy smell of the unfinished old
+room and the drone of the rain on the roof had been a part of their deep
+content.
+
+Nothing had changed in that room, except the woman who sat there.
+
+She got up with a sudden impulse, and threw back the lid of the trunk. A
+faint musty odor rose from it, as though it had been shut up for very
+long. And . . . why, there it was, the doll's room, just as they had left
+it, how long ago! How like this house! How like Cousin Hetty never to
+have touched it!
+
+She sat down on the floor and, lifting the candle, looked in at the
+yellowed old playthings, the flimsy, spineless paper-dolls, the faded
+silk rags, the discolored bits of papers, the misshapen staggering
+paste-board chairs and bed, which had seemed so delightful and
+enchanting to her then, far better than any actual room she knew. A
+homesickness for the past came over her. It was not only Margaret who
+was dead. The other little girl who had played there, who had hung so
+lovingly over this creation of her fancy, was dead too, Marise thought
+with a backward look of longing.
+
+And then the honest, unsparing habit of her life with Neale shook her
+roughly. This was sentimentalizing. If she could, would she give up what
+she had now and go back to being the little girl, deeply satisfied with
+make-shift toys, which were only the foreshadowings of what was to come?
+If she could, would she exchange her actual room at home, for this, even
+to have again all the unquestioning trust in everyone and everything of
+the child who had died in her heart? Would she choose to give up the
+home where her living children had been born, at no matter what cost of
+horrid pain to herself, and were growing up to no matter what dark
+uncertainties in life, for this toy inhabited by paper-dolls? No, no,
+she had gone on, gone on, and left this behind. Nor would she, if she
+could, exchange the darker, heavier, richer gifts for the bright small
+trinkets of the past.
+
+All this ran fluently from her mind, with a swiftness and clarity which
+seemed as shallow as it was rapid; but now there sounded in her ears a
+warning roar of deeper waters to which this was carrying her.
+
+Before she knew what was coming, she braced herself to meet it; and
+holding hard and ineffectually, felt herself helplessly swept out and
+flung to the fury of the waves . . . and she met them with an answering
+tumult of welcome. That was what Vincent Marsh could do for her, wanted
+to do for her,--that wonderful, miraculous thing,--give back to her
+something she had thought she had left behind forever; he could take
+her, in the strength of her maturity with all the richness of growth,
+and carry her back to live over again the fierce, concentrated intensity
+of newly-born passion which had come into her life, and gone, before she
+had had the capacity to understand or wholly feel it. He could lift her
+from the dulled routine of life beginning to fade and lose its colors,
+and carry her back to the glorious forgetfulness of every created thing,
+save one man and one woman.
+
+She had had a glimpse of that, in the first year of her married life,
+had had it, and little by little had lost it. It had crumbled away
+insensibly, between her fingers, with use, with familiarity, with the
+hateful blunting of sensitiveness which life's battering always brings.
+But she could have it again; with a grown woman's strength and depth of
+feeling, she could have the inheritance of youth. She had spent it, but
+now she could have it again. That was what Vincent meant.
+
+He seemed to lean over her now, his burning, quivering hand on hers. She
+felt a deep hot flush rise to her face, all over her body. She was like
+a crimson rose, offering the splendor of its maturity to be plucked. Let
+her have the courage to know that its end and aim and fulfilment lay in
+being plucked and gloriously worn before the coming of the inevitable
+end! Thus and thus only could one find certainty, before death came, of
+having lived as deeply as lay in one to live.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the glowing pride and defiance with which she felt herself rise
+to the challenge, felt herself strong to break and surmount all
+obstacles within and without, which stood in the way of that fulfilment
+of her complete self, she had heard . . . the slightest of
+trivialities . . . a thought gone as soon as it was conceived . . .
+nothing of the slightest consequence . . . harmless . . .
+insignificant . . . yet why should it give off the betraying clink of
+something flawed and cracked? . . . She had heard . . . it must have
+come from some corner of her own mind . . . something like this, "Set
+such an alternative between routine, traditional, narrow domestic life,
+and the mightiness and richness of mature passion, before a modern, free
+European woman, and see how quickly she would grasp with all her soul for
+passion."
+
+What was there about this, the veriest flying mote among a thousand
+others in the air, so to awaken in Marise's heart a deep vibration of
+alarm? Why should she not have said that? she asked herself, angry and
+scared. Why was it not a natural thought to have had? She felt herself
+menaced by an unexpected enemy, and flew to arms.
+
+Into the rich, hot, perfumed shrine which Vincent's remembered words and
+look had built there about her, there blew a thin cool breath from the
+outside, through some crack opened by that casual thought. Before she
+even knew from whence it came, Marise cried out on it, in a fury of
+resentment . . . and shivered in it.
+
+With no apparent volition of her own, she felt something very strong
+within her raise a mighty head and look about, stirred to watchfulness
+and suspicion by that luckless phrase.
+
+She recognized it . . . the habit of honesty of thought, not native to
+Marise's heart, but planted there by her relation with Neale's stark,
+plain integrity. Feeding unchecked on its own food, during the long
+years of her marriage it had grown insensibly stronger and stronger,
+till now, tyrant and master, with the irresistible strength of conscious
+power, it could quell with a look all the rest of her nature, rich in
+colored possibilities of seductive self-deceit, sweet illusions, lovely
+falsities.
+
+She could no more stop its advance now, straight though it made its way
+over treasures she fain would keep, than she could stop the beating of
+her heart.
+
+A ruthless question or two . . . "Why did you say that about what a
+modern, free European woman would do in your place? Are you trying to
+play up to some trumpery notion of a role to fill? And more than this,
+did you really mean in your heart an actual, living woman of another
+race, such as you knew in Europe; or did you mean somebody in an
+Italian, or a French, or a Scandinavian book?" Marise writhed against
+the indignity of this, protested fiercely, angrily against the
+incriminating imputation in it . . . and with the same breath admitted it
+true.
+
+It was true. She was horrified and lost in grief and humiliation at the
+cheapened aspect of what had looked so rich before. Had there been in
+truth an element of such trashy copying of the conventional pose of
+revolt in what had seemed so rushingly spontaneous? Oh no, no . . . not
+that!
+
+She turned away and away from the possibility that she had been
+partially living up to other people's ideas, finding it intolerable; and
+was met again and again by the relentless thrust of that acquired
+honesty of thought which had worn such deep grooves in her mind in all
+these years of unbroken practice of it. "You are not somebody in a book,
+you are not a symbol of modern woman who must make the gestures
+appropriate for your part . . ." One by one, that relentless power seated
+in her many-colored tumultuous heart put out the flaring torches.
+
+It had grown too strong for her, that habit of honesty of thought and
+action. If this struggle with it had come years before she could have
+mastered it, flinging against it the irresistible suppleness and
+lightness of her ignorant youth. But now, freighted heavily with
+experience of reality, she could not turn and bend quickly enough to
+escape it.
+
+It had profited too well by all those honest years with Neale . . . never
+to have been weakened by a falsehood between them, by a shade of
+pretense of something more, or different from what really was there.
+That habit held her mercilessly to see what was there now. She could no
+more look at what was there and think it something else, than she could
+look with her physical eyes at a tree and call it a dragon.
+
+If it had only been traditional morality, reproaching her with
+traditional complaints about the overstepping of traditional bounds, how
+she could have overwhelmed it, drowned out its feeble old voice, with
+eloquent appeals for the right to growth, to freedom, to the generous
+expansion of the soul, of the personality, which Vincent Marsh could
+give. But honesty only asked her neutrally, "Is it really growth and
+freedom, and generous expansion of the soul?" Poor Marise felt her arms
+fall to her side, piteous and defenseless. No, it was not.
+
+It was with the flatness of accent which she hated, which was so hard
+for her, that she made the admission. It was physical excitement,--that
+was what it was. Physical excitement, that was what Vincent Marsh could
+give her which Neale no longer could. . . . That and great ease of life,
+which Neale never would. There was a pause in which she shivered,
+humiliated. She added lamely to this, a guessed-at possibility for
+aesthetic sympathy and understanding, perhaps more than Neale could . . .
+and broke off with a qualm of sickness. How horrid this was! How it
+offended a deep sense of personal dignity and decency! How infinitely
+more beautiful and gracious those rolling clouds of vagueness and
+impulsive illusion!
+
+But at least, when it had extracted the plain, bare statement which it
+had hunted down through the many-recessed corners of her heart, that
+stern sense of reality let her alone. She no longer felt like a beetle
+impaled on a pin. She was free now to move as she liked and look
+unmolested at what she pleased. Honesty had no more power over her than
+to make sure she saw what she was pretending to look at.
+
+But at what a diminished pile she had now to look, tarnished and faded
+like the once-loved bits of bright-colored silk and paper. She felt
+robbed and cried out in a pain which seemed to her to come from her very
+heart, that something living and vital and precious to her had been
+killed by that rough handling. But one warning look from the clear eyes
+of honesty forced her, lamenting, to give up even this. If it had been
+living and precious and vital to her, it would have survived anything
+that honesty could have done to it.
+
+But something had survived, something to be reckoned with, something
+which no tyrant, overbearing honesty could put out of her life . . . the
+possibility for being carried away in the deep full current of passion,
+fed by all the multitudinous streams of ripened personality. If that
+was all that was left, was not that enough? It had been for thousands of
+other women. . . .
+
+No, not that; honesty woke to menace again. What thousands of other
+women had done had no bearing here. She was not thousands of other
+women. She was herself, herself. Would it be enough for her?
+
+Honesty issued a decree of impartial justice. Let her look at it with a
+mature woman's experienced divination of reality, let her look at it as
+it would be and see for herself if it would be enough. She was no girl
+whose ignorance rendered her incapable of judging until she had
+literally experienced. She was no bound-woman, bullied by the tyranny of
+an outgrown past, forced to revolt in order to attain the freedom
+without which no human decision can be taken. Neale's strong hand had
+opened the door to freedom and she could see what the bound-women could
+not . . . that freedom is not the end, but only the beginning.
+
+It was as though something were holding her gripped and upright there,
+staring before her, motionless, till she had put herself to the last
+supreme test. She closed her eyes, and sat so immobile, rapt in the
+prodigious effort of her imagination and will, that she barely breathed.
+How would it be? Would it be enough? She plunged the plummet down, past
+the fury and rage of the storm on the surface, past the teeming life of
+the senses, down to the depths of consciousness. . . .
+
+And what she brought up from those depths was a warning distaste, a
+something offending to her, to all of her, now she was aware of it.
+
+She was amazed. Why should she taste an acrid muddy flavor of dregs in
+that offered cup of heavy aromatic wine, she who had all her life
+thanked Heaven for her freedom from the ignominy of feeling it debasing
+to be a woman who loved? It was glorious to be a woman who loved. There
+had been no dregs left from those sweet, light, heady draughts she and
+Neale had drunk together in their youth, nor in the quieter satisfying
+draughts they knew now. What was the meaning of that odor of decay about
+what seemed so living, so hotly more living than what she had? Why
+should she have this unmistakable prescience of something stale and
+tainting which she had never felt? Was she too old for passion? But she
+was in the height of her physical flowering, and physically she cried
+out for it. Could it be that, having spent the heritage of youth, she
+could not have it again? Could it be that one could not go back, there,
+any more than . . .
+
+Oh, what did that bring to mind? What was that fleeting cobweb of
+thought that seemed a recurrence of a sensation only recently passed?
+When she had tried to tell herself that full-fruited passion was worth
+all else in life, was the one great and real thing worth all the many
+small shams . . . what was it she had felt?
+
+She groped among the loose-hanging filaments of impression and brought
+it out to see. It seemed to be . . . could it have been, the same startled
+recoil as at the notion of getting back the peace of childhood by giving
+up her home for the toy-house; her living children for the dolls?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, for the great trial of strength. Back! Push back all those
+thick-clustering, intruding, distracting traditional ideas of other
+people on both sides; the revolt on one hand, the feeble resignation on
+the other; what other women did; what people had said. . . . Let her wipe
+all that off from the too-receptive tablets of her mind. Out of sight
+with all that. This was _her_ life, _her_ question, hers alone. Let her
+stand alone with her own self and her own life, and, with honesty as
+witness, ask herself the question . . . would she, if she could, give up
+what she was now, with her myriads of roots, deep-set in the soil of
+human life, in order to bear the one red rose, splendid though it might
+be?
+
+That was the question.
+
+With no conscious volition of hers, the answer was there, plain and
+irrefutable as a fact in the physical world. No, she would not choose to
+do that. She had gone on, gone on beyond that. She was almost bewildered
+by the peremptory certainty with which that answer came, as though it
+had lain inherent in the very question.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now another question crowded forward, darkly confused, charged with
+a thousand complex associations and emotions. There had been something
+displeasing and preposterous in the idea of trying to stoop her grown
+stature and simplify her complex tastes and adult interests back into
+the narrow limits of a child's toy-house. Could it be that she felt
+something of the same displeasure when she set herself fully to conceive
+what it would be to cramp herself and her complex interests and adult
+affections back to . . .
+
+But at this there came a wild protesting clamor, bursting out to prevent
+her from completing this thought; loud, urgent voices, men's, women's,
+with that desperate certainty of their ground which always struck down
+any guard Marise had been able to put up. They cried her down as a
+traitor to the fullness of life, those voices, shouting her down with
+all the unquestioned authority she had encountered so many times on that
+terribly vital thing, the printed page; they clashed in their fury and
+all but drowned each other out. Only disconnected words reached her, but
+she recognized the well-known sentences from which they came . . .
+"puritanism . . . abundance of personality . . . freedom of
+development . . . nothing else vital in human existence . . .
+prudishness . . . conventionality . . . our only possible contact with
+the life-purpose . . . with the end of passion life declines and dies."
+
+The first onslaught took Marise's breath, as though a literal storm had
+burst around her. She was shaken as she had been shaken so many times
+before. She lost her hold on her staff . . . _what had that staff been?_
+
+At the thought, the master-words came to her mind again; and all fell
+quiet and in a great hush waited on her advance. Neale had said, "What
+is deepest and most living in _you_." Well, what _was_ deepest and most
+living in her? That was what she was trying to find out. That was what
+those voices were trying to cry her down from finding.
+
+For the first time in all her life, she drew an inspiration from Neale's
+resistance to opposition, knew something of the joy of battle. What
+right had those people to cry her down? She would not submit to it.
+
+She would go back to the place where she had been set upon by other
+people's voices, other people's thoughts, and she would go on steadily,
+thinking her own.
+
+She had been thinking that there _was_ the same displeasure and distaste
+as when she had thought of returning to her literal childhood, when she
+set herself fully to conceive what it would be to cramp herself and
+simplify her complex interests and affections back to the narrow limits
+of passion, which like her play with dolls had been only a foreshadowing
+of something greater to come.
+
+She spoke it out boldly now, and was amazed that not one of the
+clamorous voices dared resist the authenticity of her statement. But
+after all, how would they dare? This was what she had found in her own
+heart, what they had not been able, for all their clamor, to prevent her
+from seeing. She had been strong enough to beat them, to stand out
+against them, to say that she saw what she really did see, and felt what
+she really did feel. She did not feel what traditionally she should
+feel, that is what a primitive Italian woman might feel, all of whose
+emotional life had found no other outlet than sex. . . .
+
+Well, if it was so, it was so. For better or for worse, that was the
+kind of woman she had become, with the simple, forthright physical life
+subordinate, humble; like a pleasant, lovable child playing among the
+strong, full-grown, thought-freighted interests and richly varied
+sympathies and half-impersonal joys and sorrows which had taken
+possession of her days. And she could not think that the child could
+ever again be master of her destiny, any more than (save in a moment of
+false sentimentality) she could think that she would like to have her
+horizon again limited by a doll-house. To be herself was to go on, not
+to go back, now that she knew what she had become. It seemed to her that
+never before had she stood straight up.
+
+And in plain fact she found that somehow she had risen to her feet and
+was now standing, her head up, almost touching the rafters of the slant
+ceiling. She could have laughed out, to find herself so free. She knew
+now why she had never known the joy of battle. It was because she had
+been afraid. And she had been afraid because she had never dared to
+enter the battle, had always sent others in to do her fighting for her.
+Now she had been forced into it and had won. And there was nothing to be
+afraid of, there!
+
+She spread out her arms in a great gesture of liberation. How had she
+ever lived before, under the shadow of that coward fear? This . . . this
+. . . she had a moment of vision . . . this was what Neale had been trying
+to do for her, all these years, unconsciously, not able to tell her what
+it was, driving at the mark only with the inarticulate wisdom of his
+love for her, his divination of her need. He had seen her, shivering and
+shrinking in the shallow waters, and had longed for her sake to have her
+strike out boldly into the deep. But even if he had been ever so able to
+tell her, she would not have understood till she had fought her way
+through those ravening breakers, beyond them, out into the sustaining
+ocean.
+
+How long it took, how _long_ for men and women to make the smallest
+advance! And how the free were the only ones who could help to liberate
+the bound. How she had fought against Neale's effort to set her free,
+had cried to him that she dared not risk herself on the depths, that he
+must have the strength to swim for her . . . and how Neale, doggedly sure
+of the simple truth, too simple for her to see, had held to the
+certainty that his effort would not make her strong, and that she would
+only be free if she were strong.
+
+Neale being his own master, a free citizen of life, knew what a kingdom
+he owned, and with a magnanimity unparalleled could not rest till she
+had entered hers. She, not divining what she had not known, had only
+wished to make the use of his strength which would have weakened her.
+Had there ever before been any man who refused to let the woman he loved
+weaken herself by the use of his strength? Had a man ever before held
+out his strong hand to a woman to help her forward, not to hold her
+fast?
+
+Her life was her own. She stood in it, knowing it to be an impregnable
+fortress, knowing that from it she could now look abroad fearlessly and
+understandingly, knowing that from it she could look at things and men
+and the world and see what was there. From it she could, as if for the
+first time, look at Vincent Marsh when next she saw him; she would look
+to see what was really there. That was all. She would look at him and
+see what he was, and then she would know the meaning of what had
+happened, and what she was to do. And no power on earth could prevent
+her from doing it. The inner bar that had shut her in was broken. She
+was a free woman, free from that something in her heart that was afraid.
+For the moment she could think of nothing else beyond the richness of
+that freedom. Why, here was the total fulfilment she had longed for.
+Here was the life more abundant, within, within her own heart, waiting
+for her!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old clock in the hall behind her sounded four muffled strokes and,
+as if it had wakened her, Agnes stirred in her bed and cried out in a
+loud voice of terror, "Oh, come quick, Miss Marise! Come!"
+
+Marise went through the hail and to her door, and saw the frightened old
+eyes glaring over the pulled-up sheet. "Oh . . . oh . . . it's you . . . I
+thought. . . . Oh, Miss Marise, don't you see anything standing in that
+corner? Didn't you hear. . . . Oh, Miss Marise, I must have had a bad
+dream. I thought . . ." Her teeth were chattering. She did not know what
+she was saying.
+
+"It's all right, Agnes," said Marise soothingly, stepping into the room.
+"The big clock just struck four. That probably wakened you."
+
+She sat down on the bed and laid her hand firmly on Agnes' shoulder,
+looking into the startled old eyes, which grew a little quieter now that
+someone else was there. What a pitiable creature Agnes' dependence on
+Cousin Hetty had made of her.
+
+Like the boom from a great bell came the thought, "That is what I wanted
+Neale to make of me, when the crucial moment came, a dependent . . . but
+he would not."
+
+"What time did you say it is?" Agnes asked, still breathing quickly but
+with a beginning of a return to her normal voice.
+
+"Four o'clock," answered Marise gently, as to a child. "It must be
+almost light outside. The last night when you have anything to fear is
+over now."
+
+She went to the window and opened the shutter. The ineffable sacred
+pureness of another dawn came in, gray, tranquil, penetrating.
+
+At the sight of it, the dear light of everyday, Marise felt the thankful
+tears come to her eyes.
+
+"See, Agnes," she said in an unsteady voice, "daylight has come. You can
+look around for yourself, and see that there is nothing to be afraid
+of."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+MARISE LOOKS AND SEES WHAT IS THERE
+
+
+_A Torch in a Living Tree_
+
+July 24.
+
+Not since his fiery, ungovernable youth had Vincent felt anything like
+the splendid surge of rich desire and exultant certainty which sent him
+forward at a bound along the wood-road into which he had seen Marise
+turn. The moment he had been watching for had come at last, after these
+three hideous days of sudden arrest and pause. The forced inaction had
+been a sensation physically intolerable to him, as though he had been
+frozen immobile with every nerve and muscle strained for a great leap.
+
+He felt himself taking the leap now, with such a furious, triumphant
+sense of power released, that he came up beside her like a wind in the
+forest, calling her name loudly, his hands outflung, his face glowing,
+on fire with joy and his need for her.
+
+For an instant he was dumfounded by the quiet face she turned on him, by
+his instant perception of a profound change in her, by an expression in
+her long dark eyes which was new to him, which he felt to be ominous to
+him. But he was no untried boy to be cast down or disconcerted by sudden
+alterations of mood in a woman. He was a man, with a man's trained
+tenacity of purpose and experienced quickness of resource.
+
+He wasted no time. "What has happened to you?" he demanded, peremptorily
+as by right to know, and with the inner certainty of over-riding it,
+whatever it was.
+
+She did not seem tacitly or otherwise to deny his right to know, but
+she seemed to have no words for it, continuing to look at him silently,
+intently, with no hostility, with a sort of steady, wondering attention
+in her face, usually so sensitively changing. He felt a resentment at
+its quiet, at its lack of that instant responsiveness to his look which
+had given him such moments of exquisite pleasure, which had been her
+own, her wonderful gift to him. She was looking at him now as she might
+have looked at any one else, merely in order to see what was there.
+
+Well, he would show her what was there! The will to conquer rose high
+and strong in him, with an element of fierceness it had not had before
+because no resistance had called it out. He did not show this, indeed
+only allowed it the smallest corner of his consciousness, keeping all
+the rest tautly on the alert for the first indication of an opening, for
+the first hint of where to throw his strength.
+
+But standing in suspense on the alert was the last role he could long
+endure, and in a moment, when she did not answer, he took a step towards
+her, towering above her, his hands on her shoulders, pouring out with a
+hot sense of release all his longing into the cry, "Marise, Marise my
+own, what has happened to you?"
+
+How he hated the quiet of her face! With what hungry impatience he
+watched to see it break. How surely he counted on its disappearance at
+his touch. For he had the certainty of his power to kindle her left
+intact from the last time he had seen her, tinder to his spark,
+helplessly played upon by his voice.
+
+But now it was as though he had held a torch aloft into the green
+branches of a living tree. A twitch of surface agitation on her face and
+that was all.
+
+And when she spoke, as she did at once, the sound of her voice was
+strange and alien to him. With an extreme directness, and with a deep
+sincerity of accent which, even to his ears, made his own impassioned
+outcry to her sound inflated and false, she said earnestly, "I don't
+believe I can tell you what has happened. I don't believe you could
+understand it."
+
+He did not believe a word of this, but with his brilliant suppleness of
+mind he perceived that he was in the wrong key. She was not, for the
+moment, to be kindled to flame, she who miraculously was never the same.
+Perhaps it was the moment for a thrust of sheer power, straight at the
+obstacle, for of course he knew the obstacle.
+
+"I know what has happened," he said, "without your telling me. Your
+husband has made a scene, and overborne you, and is trying to force you
+back into the hen-yard of domestic virtue. . . ." He changed his manner. He
+said in a low, beautiful, persuasive voice, his eyes deeply on her, sure
+of himself with that sureness that no one had ever resisted, "But you
+can never do that now, you bird-of-paradise! You would only . . ."
+
+He was brought up short by a change in her. This time his words had had
+the power to move her face from the quiet he hated. It was suddenly
+alive with a strong emotion. But what emotion? He could not guess at its
+meaning, nor why she should step quickly away, shaking his hands from
+her shoulders, and looking at him sadly, her eyebrows drawn up as if in
+pain. He hung uncertain, daunted by his inability to read her face,
+feeling for the first time an instantly dismissed doubt of his mastery
+over her.
+
+She said very quickly, with the accent and manner of one who, shocked
+and pitying, tries to save another from going on with an involuntary
+disclosure in him of something shaming and unworthy.
+
+"No, oh no! Not that. Neale has done nothing . . . said nothing . . .
+except as he always has, to leave me quite free, all free."
+
+As he was silent for a moment, watchful, not especially moved by her
+words, which seemed to him unimportant, but alarmed by some special
+significance which they seemed to have for her, she went on with the
+single, only note of blame or reproach which was to come into her voice.
+"Oh, how _could_ you think that?" she said to him, with a deep quavering
+disappointment, as though she were ashamed of him.
+
+He knew that he was the cause of the disappointment, although he could
+not imagine why, and he regretted having made a false move; but he was
+not deeply concerned by this passage. He did not see how it could have
+any importance, or touch what lay at issue between them. These were all
+womanish, up-in-the-air passes and parries. He had only not yet found
+his opening.
+
+He flung his head back impatiently. "If it is not that, what is it?" he
+demanded. "A return of hide-bound scruples about the children? You know
+that they must live their own lives, not yours, and that anything that
+gives you greater richness and power makes you a better mother."
+
+"Oh yes, I know that," she answered. "I have thought of that, myself."
+
+But he had a baffled feeling that this was not at all the admission the
+words would make it seem.
+
+His impatience began to burn high, and a dawning alarm to translate
+itself into anger. He would not be played with, by any woman who ever
+lived! "Marise," he said roughly, "what under the sun is it?" In his
+tone was all his contemptuous dismissal of it, whatever it might be . . .
+outworn moral qualms, fear of the world's opinion, inertia, cowardice,
+hair-splitting scruples, or some morbid physical revulsion . . . there was
+not one of them which he knew he could not instantly pounce on and shake
+to rags.
+
+Marise stood very still, her eyes bent downward. "Aren't you going to
+answer me?" he said, furious.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, I'm going to answer you," she said, without raising
+her eyes. He understood that he must wait, and stood opposite to her,
+close to her, looking at her, all the strength of his passion in that
+avid gaze.
+
+She was stamped on his mind in every detail as she looked at that
+instant, infinitely desirable, infinitely alluring, in her thin white
+dress, her full supple woman's body erect and firm with a strong life of
+its own, her long sensitive hands clasped before her . . . how many times
+in his dreams had he held them in his . . . her shining dark hair bound
+smoothly about her head and down low on each side of her rounded
+forehead. Her thick white eyelids, down-dropped, were lowered over her
+eyes, and her mouth with its full lips and deep corners . . . at the sight
+of her mouth on which he had laid that burning kiss, Vincent felt a
+barrier within him give way . . . here he was at last with the woman he
+loved, the woman who was going to give herself to him . . . Good God! all
+these words . . . what did they mean? Nothing. He swept her into his arms
+and drew her face to his, his eyes closed, lost in the wonder and
+ecstasy of having reached his goal at last.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did not make the startled virginal resistance of a girl. She drew
+away from him quietly . . . the hatred for that quiet was murderous in him
+. . . and shook her head. Why, it was almost gently that she shook her
+head.
+
+How dared she act gently to him, as though he were a boy who had made a
+mistake! How dared she not be stirred and mastered! He felt his head
+burning hot with anger, and knew that his face must be suffused with
+red.
+
+And hers was not, it was quiet. He could have stamped with rage, and
+shaken her. He wanted to hurt her at once, deeply, to pierce her and
+sting her back to life. "Do you mean," he said brutally, "that you find,
+after all, that you are a cold, narrow, cowardly, provincial woman,
+stunted by your life, so that you are incapable of feeling a generous
+heat?"
+
+As she remained silent, he was stung by the expression on her face which
+he did not understand. He went on vindictively snatching up to drive
+home his thrust the sharpest and cruelest weapon he could conceive,
+"_Perhaps you find you are too old?_"
+
+At this she looked away from him for an instant, up to the lower
+branches of the oak under which they stood. She seemed to reflect, and
+when she brought her eyes back to his, she answered, "Yes, I think that
+is it. I find I am too old."
+
+He was for years to ponder on the strangeness of the accent with which
+she said this, without regret, with that damnable gentleness as though
+to hide from him a truth he might find hard to bear, or be incapable of
+understanding.
+
+How could any woman say "I find I am too old" with that unregretting
+accent? Was it not the worst of calamities for all women to grow old?
+What was there left for a woman when she grew old?
+
+But how preposterous, her saying that, she who stood there in the
+absolute perfection of her bloom!
+
+He found that he did not know what to say next. That tolerant
+acquiescence of hers in what he had meant to sting intolerably . . . it
+was as though he had put all his force into a blow that would stun, and
+somehow missing his aim, encountering no resistance, was toppling
+forward with the impetus of his own effort. He recovered himself and
+looked at her, choking, "You don't mean . . ." he began challenging her
+incredulously, and could go no further.
+
+For she nodded, her eyes on his with that singular expression in them
+which he did not understand, and which he intensely resented.
+
+He was so angry that for a moment he could not speak. He was aware of
+nothing but anger. "It's impotence and weakness on your part, that's all
+it is!" he cast out at her, hating her savagely as he spoke, "no matter
+what fine words you've decided to call it to cloak your own feebleness.
+It's the littleness of the vital spark in you. Or it's cowardly inertia,
+turning from the real fulfilment that calls for you, back to chips and
+straw because you are used to them. It's being a small, poor, weak,
+cowed creature, traditional-minded, instead of the splendid, brave,
+living woman I thought I loved. I am _glad_ to leave you behind, to have
+no more of you in my life. I have no use for thin-blooded cowards."
+
+She made no answer at all, not a word. His flaming eyes fell away from
+her face. He turned from her abruptly and walked rapidly away, not
+looking back.
+
+Then he found he had ceased to advance rapidly, had stopped and was
+standing still, wrung in so dreadful a pain that his hand was at his
+side as though he had been stabbed. With no thought, with no awareness
+of what he was doing, he ran back to her, his hands outstretched,
+suffering so that he must have help. He did not mean to speak, did not
+know what he was to say . . . he cried out to her, "Marise, Marise . . . I
+love you! _What can I do?_"
+
+The cry was desperate, involuntary, forcing its way out from unfathomed
+depths of feeling below all his anger and resentment, and tearing him to
+pieces as it came. It was as though he had taken his heart out and flung
+it at her feet.
+
+Her face changed instantly and was quiveringly alight with a pale and
+guilty agitation. "No . . . oh _no_, Vincent! I thought you only . . . I
+had thought you could not really . . . Vincent, forgive me! Forgive me!"
+She took one of his hands in both hers . . . the last unforgotten touch
+he was ever to have of her. . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came to him through those words which he did not understand that she
+was pitying him; and stung to the quick, he drew back from her,
+frowning, with an angry toss of his head.
+
+Instantly she drew back also, as though she had misinterpreted
+something.
+
+He stood for an instant looking full at her as though he did not see
+her; and then with a wide gesture of utter bewilderment, strange from
+him, he passed her without a look.
+
+This time he did not turn back, but continued steadily and resolutely on
+his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FALL OF THE BIG PINE
+
+
+August 2.
+
+I
+
+When Marise reached the place on the wood-road where she had had that
+last talk with Vincent Marsh, she stopped, postponing for a moment the
+errand to the Powers which she had so eagerly undertaken. She stood
+there, looking up into the far green tops of the pines, seeing again
+that strange, angry, bewildered gesture with which he had renounced
+trying to make anything out of her, and had turned away.
+
+It remained with her, constantly, as the symbol of what had happened,
+and she looked at it gravely and understandingly. Then, very swiftly,
+she saw again that passing aspect of his which had so terribly
+frightened her, felt again the fear that he might be really suffering,
+that she might really have done a hurt to another human being.
+
+This brought her a momentary return of the agitation it had caused in
+her that day, and she sat down abruptly on a tree-trunk, her knees
+trembling, her hands cold.
+
+That fear had come as so totally unexpected a possibility, something
+which his every aspect and tone and word up to then had seemed to
+contradict. Strange, how unmoved he had left her, till that moment!
+Strange the impression of him, that first time after she had known
+herself strong enough to stand up and be herself, not the responsive
+instrument played on by every passing impression. Strange, how instantly
+he had felt that, and how passionate had been his resentment of her
+standing up to be herself, her being a grown woman, a human being, and
+not a flower to be plucked. How he had hated it, and alas! how
+lamentable his hatred of it had made him appear. What a blow he had
+dealt to her conception of him by his instant assumption that a change
+in her could only mean that Neale had been bullying her. It had been
+_hard_ to see him so far away and diminished as that had made him seem,
+so entirely outside her world. It had dealt a back-hand blow to her own
+self-esteem to have him seem vulgar.
+
+How strange an experience for her altogether, to be able to stand firm
+against noise and urgent clamor and confusion, and to see, in spite of
+it, what she was looking at; to see, back of the powerful magnetic
+personality, the undeveloped and tyrannical soul, the cramped mind
+without experience or conception of breadth and freedom in the relations
+between human beings; to be able to hear Vincent cry out on her with
+that fierce, masterful certainty of himself, that she was acting from
+cowed and traditional-minded motives and not to believe a word of it,
+because it was not true; not even to feel the scared throb of alarm at
+the very idea that it might be true; to have it make no impression on
+her save pity that Vincent should be imprisoned in a feeling of which
+possession was so great a part that failure to possess turned all the
+rest to poison and sickness.
+
+What had happened to her, in truth, that she had this new steadfastness?
+She had told Vincent he could not understand it. Did she understand it
+herself? She leaned her chin on her two hands looking deep into the
+green recesses of the forest. High above her head, a wind swayed the
+tops of the pines and sang loudly; but down between the great brown
+columns of their trunks, not a breath stirred. The thick-set,
+myriad-leaved young maples held all their complicated delicately-edged
+foliage motionless in perfect calm.
+
+It was very still in the depths of Marise's complicated mind also,
+although the wind stirred the surface. Yes, she knew what had happened
+to her. She had seen it completely happen to three other human beings,
+miraculously, unbelievably, certainly; had seen the babies who could
+not tell light from dark, heat from cold, emerge by the mere process of
+healthful living into keenly sensitive beings accurately alive to every
+minutest variation of the visible world. It must be that like them she
+had simply learned to tell moral light from dark, heat from cold, by the
+mere process of healthful living. What happened to the child who at one
+time could not grasp the multiplication table, and a few years later, if
+only he were properly fed and cared for, had somehow so wholly changed,
+although still the same, that he found his way lightly among geometric
+conceptions, and only a few years after that was probing with expert
+fingers at some unsolved problem of astronomy? He had grown up, that was
+all. By calling the miracle a familiar name we veiled the marvel of it.
+Insensibly to him, with no visible change from one day to the next, he
+had acquired a totally different conception of the universe, a totally
+different valuation of everything in life.
+
+That was what had happened to her. She had grown up . . . why should not a
+woman grow up to other valuations of things as well as her comrade in
+life?
+
+And it had happened to her as it did to the child, because someone
+stronger than she had protected her while she was growing . . . not
+protected from effort, as though one should try to protect the child
+from learning his lessons. . . . Back there, such ages ago in Italy, in her
+ignorant . . . how ignorant! . . . and frightened girlhood, she had begged
+Neale, without knowing what she did, to help her grow up, to help her
+save what was worth saving in her, to help her untangle from the
+many-colored confusion of her nature what was best worth keeping. And
+Neale had done it, had clung steadily to his divination of what was
+strong in her, in spite of her clamor to him to let it go.
+
+But Vincent had not grown up, was back there still in confusion, holding
+desperately with all that terrific strength of his to what could not be
+held, to what was impermanent and passing in its nature. Why should he
+do that? Neale knew better than that. Then she saw why: it was because
+Vincent conceived of nothing but emptiness if he let it go, and horribly
+feared that imaginary emptiness. Out of the incalculable richness of her
+kingdom she wondered again at his blindness. . . . And made a pitying guess
+at the reason for it . . . perhaps for him it was _not_ imaginary. Perhaps
+one of the terms of the bargain he had made with life was that there
+_should_ be nothing later but emptiness for him. Yes, she saw that. She
+would have made that bargain, too, if it had not been for Neale. She
+would have been holding terrified to what was not to be held; with
+nothing but that between her and the abyss. Who was she to blame Vincent
+for his blindness?
+
+That, perhaps, had been the meaning of that singular last moment of
+their talk together, which had frightened her so, with its sudden plunge
+below the surface, into the real depths, when, changed wholly into
+someone else, he had run back to her, his hands outstretched, his eyes
+frightened, his lips trembling . . . perhaps he had felt the abyss there
+just before him. For an instant there, he had made her think of Paul,
+made her remember that Vincent himself had, so short a time ago, been a
+little boy too. She had been so shocked and racked by pity and remorse,
+that she would have been capable of any folly to comfort him. Perhaps
+she had seen there for an instant the man Vincent might have been, and
+had seen that she could have loved that man.
+
+But how instantly it had passed! He had not suffered that instant of
+true feeling to have space to live, but had burned it up with the return
+of his pride, his resentment that anyone save himself should try to
+stand upright, with the return of the devouring desire-for-possession of
+the man who had always possessed everything he had coveted. There was
+something sad in being able to see the littleness of life which
+underlay the power and might of personality in a man like Vincent. He
+could have been something else.
+
+She wondered why there should slide into her mood, just now, a faint
+tinge of regret. . . . Why should there be anything there but the bright
+gladness of thanksgiving for the liberation from the chains which her
+own nature might have forged about her? She had at last stepped outside
+the narrow circle of personal desire, and found all the world open to
+her. And yet there was room in her heart for a shade of wistful wonder
+if perhaps all this did not mean that she might be sliding from the
+ranks of those who feel and do, into the ranks of those who only
+understand.
+
+But one glance at the life that lay before her scattered this hanging
+mist-cloud . . . good heavens! what feeling and doing lay there before
+her!
+
+Had she thought that Neale was nothing to her because he had become all
+in all to her so that he penetrated all her life, so that she did not
+live an instant alone? Had she thought the loss of the amusing trinket
+of physical newness could stand against the gain of an affection ill
+massy gold? Would she, to buy moments of excitement, lose an instant of
+the precious certainty of sympathy and trust and understanding which she
+and Neale had bought and paid for, hour by hour, year by year of honest
+life-in-common? Where was real life for her? Had she not known? Where
+were the real depths, where the real food for the whole woman she had
+grown to be? Neale had opened the door so that she could go away from
+him if that was what she needed, or go back to stand by his side; and
+through the open door had come the flood of daylight which had shown her
+that she could not go back to stand by his side because she had been
+there all the time, had never left it, never could leave it, any more
+than she could leave half of her body in one place, and go on to
+another.
+
+
+II
+
+There was other feeling and doing now, too, before her, this instant,
+which she had forgotten, idling here in her much-loved forest, as much a
+part of her home as her piano or her own roof-tree. She had been trying
+to understand what had been happening that summer. Let her try first of
+all to understand what she must do in that perfectly definite and
+concrete dilemma in which she had been placed by that strange sight of
+'Gene Powers, fleeing back from the Eagle Rocks. She must look squarely
+at what she supposed was the legal obligation . . . she instantly felt a
+woman's impatience of the word legal as against human, and could not
+entertain the thought of the obligations of the situation. She must see,
+and think and try to understand, with Neale to help her. She had not yet
+had time to tell Neale.
+
+But not today. Today she was only the bearer of the good tidings to
+Nelly and 'Gene, tidings which would wipe out for her the recollection
+of a day which was shameful to her, the day when she had conceived the
+possibility of believing some thing base against Neale. It was not that
+she had believed it,--no, she had stood it off till Neale came back. But
+there was shame for her in those recurrent spasms of horror when she had
+conceived the possibility that she might believe it. There had been
+proof of it, of course, Eugenia's positive statement . . . strange how
+Eugenia could have so entirely misunderstood the affair! . . . But what was
+mere proof against human certainty? No, she had been attacked suddenly
+and for an instant had failed to rise to defend what was hers to defend.
+It was a failure to live down.
+
+She stood up and moved forward along the path, changing the thick
+envelope in one hand to the other. She had already lost time. She ought
+to have been by this time through the forest and out in the edge of the
+Powers pasture.
+
+She became aware that for some time she had heard a distant sound, a
+faint toc-toc-toc, like the sound of chopping. This being associated in
+her mind with snow and winter woods, she had not thought it could be the
+sound of the axe which it seemed to be. Nobody could be felling trees in
+the height of the farming season, and on this day of swooning heat. But
+as she came to the edge of the woods and turned into the path along the
+brook, she heard it more plainly, unmistakable this time, not far now,
+the ringing blows delivered with the power and rhythmic stroke of the
+trained chopper. It came not from the woods at all, she now perceived,
+but from the open farming land, from the other side of the pasture,
+beyond the Powers house.
+
+But there were no woods there, only the Powers' big pine which towered
+up, darkly glorious, into the shimmering summer haze.
+
+As she looked at it wondering, it came into her mind had somebody told
+her, or had she overheard it somewhere? . . . that 'Gene had promised Nelly
+at last to cut down the big pine he and his fathers had so cherished.
+
+Could it be that? What a sacrifice! And to a foolish whim of Nelly's.
+There had been no musty smell in the house till Nelly came there to keep
+the shutters closed so that the sun would not fade the carpets. The old
+pine was one of the most splendid things of beauty in the valley. And it
+was something vital in 'Gene's strange, choked, inarticulate life. She
+stopped to listen a moment, feeling a chill of apprehension and
+foreboding. It was dreadful to have 'Gene do that. It was as though he
+were cutting at his own strength, cutting off one of his own members to
+please his wife. Poor 'Gene! He would do that too, now, if Nelly asked
+him.
+
+The resonant winter note rang out loud, strange in that sultry summer
+air. She looked from afar at the tree, holding its mighty crest high
+above the tiny house, high above the tiny human beings who had doomed
+it. So many winters, so many summers, so many suns and moons and rains
+and snows had gone to make it what it was. Like the men who had planted
+it and lived beneath its shade, it had drawn silently from the depths of
+the earth and the airy treasures of the sky food to grow strong and live
+its life. And now to be killed in an hour, in attempted expiation of a
+deed for which it bore no guilt!
+
+Marise was coming closer now. The axe-strokes stopped for a moment as
+though the chopper drew breath. The silence was heavy over the
+breathless summer field.
+
+But by the time she had arrived at the back door of the house, the
+axe-blows were renewed, loud, immediate, shocking palpably on her ear.
+She knocked, but knew that the ringing clamor of the axe drowned out the
+sound. Through the screen-door she saw old Mrs. Powers, standing by the
+table, ironing, and stepped in. The three children were in the pantry,
+beyond, Ralph spreading some bread and butter for his little brother and
+sister. Ralph was always good to the younger children, although he was
+so queer and un-childlike! Nelly was not there. Mrs. Powers looked up at
+Marise, and nodded. She looked disturbed and absent. "We're at it, you
+see," she said, jerking her head back towards the front of the house. "I
+told you 'bout 'Gene's sayin' he'd gi'n in to Nelly about the big pine."
+
+Marise made a gesture of dismay at this confirmation. The old woman went
+on, "Funny thing . . . I ain't a Powers by birth, Lord knows, and I never
+thought I set no store by their old pine tree. It always sort o' riled
+me, how much 'Gene's father thought of it, and 'Gene after him . . . sort
+of silly, seems like. But just now when we was all out there, and 'Gene
+heaved up his axe and hit the first whack at it . . . well, I can't tell
+you . . . it give me a turn most as if he'd chopped right into _me_
+somewhere. I got up and come into the house, and I set to ironin', as
+fast as I could clip it, to keep my mind off'n it. I made the children
+come in too, because it ain't no place for kids around, when a tree
+that size comes down."
+
+Marise demurred, "'Gene is such a fine chopper, he knows to a hair where
+he'll lay it, of course."
+
+"Well, even so, who knows what notion a kid will take into his head?
+They was playin' right there on a pile of pole-wood 'Gene's brought in
+from the woods and ain't got sawed up into stove-lengths yet. I didn't
+want to take no chances; maybe they wouldn't ha' moved quick enough when
+their papa yelled to them. No, ma'am, I made 'em come in, and here
+they'll stay. Nelly, she's out there, walkin' round and round watchin'
+'Gene. She's awfully set up havin' it come down. 'Gene he's told her
+he'll give her the money from the lumber in it. There'll be a sight of
+boards, too. It's the biggest pine in the valley."
+
+Marise went to the window and looked at the scene, penetrated by the
+strangeness of the difference between its outer and inner aspect: 'Gene,
+his faded blue overalls tucked into his plowman's heavy cow-hide boots,
+his shirt open over his great throat and chest, his long corded arms
+rising and falling with the steady effortless rhythm of the master
+woodsman. Nelly, in one of her immaculate blue ginghams, a white apron
+over it, a white frilled shade-hat on her head, her smartly shod small
+feet, treading the ground with that inimitable light step of hers,
+circling slowly about, looking at 'Gene as he worked, looking up at the
+crown of the tree, high, so insolently high above her head, soon to be
+brought low by a wish from her heart, soon to be turned into money for
+her to spend.
+
+"I came over to talk to 'Gene and Nelly about some business," Marise
+said, over her shoulder, to Mrs. Powers, not able to take her eyes from
+the trio in the drama out there, "but I'd better wait till the tree is
+down before I speak to them."
+
+"'Twon't be long now. 'Gene's been at it quite a while, and he's
+stavin' away like all possessed. Seems as if, now he's started in, he
+couldn't get it over with quick enough to suit him. He acted awful queer
+about it, I thought."
+
+She left her ironing and, looking over her shoulder at the children,
+came closer to where Marise stood. Then she stepped back and shut the
+door to the pantry. "Mis' Crittenden," she said in an anxious troubled
+voice, "'Gene ain't right these days. He acts to me like he's comin'
+down with a sick spell, or something. He ain't _right_. Today Nelly told
+me she woke up in the night last night and 'Gene wasn't there. She
+hollered to him, and he didn't answer. It scared her like everything,
+and she scrambled out of bed and lighted the lamp, and she said she
+'most fainted away, when she see 'Gene, rolled up in a blanket, lying on
+the floor, over against the wall, his eyes wide open looking at her. She
+said she let out a yell . . . it scairt the life out of her . . . and 'Gene
+he got right up. She says to him, 'For the Lord's sake, 'Gene, what
+_ails_ you?' And what do you suppose he says to her, he says, 'I didn't
+know whether you wanted me there or not, Nelly.' What do you think of
+that? She says back, 'For goodness' sake, 'Gene Powers, where _would_
+you be nights, except in your own bed!' He got back and for all Nelly
+knows slept all right the rest of the night. She says she guesses he
+must have had some sort of funny dream, and not been really all waked up
+yet. But it must ha' gi'n her a turn, for all she ain't one of the
+nervous kind."
+
+Marise turned sick with shocked pity. The two women looked at each
+other, silently with shadowed eyes of foreboding. Mrs. Powers shook her
+head, and turned back into the pantry, shutting the door behind her.
+Marise heard her speaking to the children, in the cheerful, bantering,
+affectionate, grandmother tone she had always had for them. She was
+brave, old Mrs. Powers, she always said she could "stand up to things."
+She was the sort of woman who can always be depended on to keep life
+going, no matter what happens; who never gives up, who can always go on
+taking care of the children.
+
+Marise herself did not feel at all brave. She sat down heavily in a
+chair by the window looking out at the man who for his wife's sake was
+killing something vital and alive. He had done that before, 'Gene had.
+He went at it now with a furious haste which had something dreadful in
+it.
+
+Nelly, who had sat down to rest on the pile of brush and poles, seemed a
+carved and painted statuette of ivory and gold.
+
+She took off her ruffled pretty hat, and laid it down on the white-birch
+poles, so that she could tip her head far back and see the very top of
+the tree. Her braids shone molten in the sunshine. Her beautiful face
+was impassive, secreting behind a screen all that Marise was sure she
+must have been feeling.
+
+'Gene, catching sight of her now, in a side-glance, stopped abruptly in
+the middle of a swing, and shouted to her to "get off that brush-pile.
+That's jus' where I'm lottin' on layin' the tree."
+
+Somewhat startled, Nelly sprang up and moved around to the other side,
+back of him, although she called protestingly, "Gracious, you're not
+_near_ through yet!"
+
+'Gene made no answer, returning to the fury of his assault on what he so
+much loved. The great trunk now had a gaping raw gash in its side. Nelly
+idled back of him, looking up at the tree, down at him. What was she
+thinking about?
+
+Marise wondered if someone with second-sight could have seen Frank
+Warner, there between the husband and wife? 'Gene's face was still gray
+in spite of the heat and his fierce exertion. Glistening streams of
+perspiration ran down his cheeks.
+
+What did the future hold for 'Gene? What possible escape was there from
+the tragic net he had wrapped stranglingly around himself?
+
+Very distantly, like something dreamed, it came to Marise that once for
+an instant the simple, violent solution had seemed the right one to her.
+_Could she have thought that?_
+
+What a haunted house was the human heart, with phantoms from the
+long-dead past intruding their uninvited ghastly death's-heads among the
+living.
+
+The axe-strokes stopped; so suddenly that the ear went on hearing them,
+ghost-like, in the intense silence. 'Gene stood upright, lifting his
+wet, gray face. "She's coming now," he said.
+
+Marise looked out, astonished. To her eyes the tree stood as massively
+firm as she had ever seen it. But 'Gene's attitude was of strained,
+expectant certainty: he stood near Nelly and as she looked up at the
+tree, he looked at her. At that look Marise felt the cold perspiration
+on her own temples.
+
+Nelly stepped sideways a little, tipping her head to see, and cried out,
+"Yes, I see it beginning to slant. How _slow_ it goes!
+
+"It'll go fast enough in a minute," said 'Gene.
+
+Of what followed, not an instant ever had for Marise the quality of
+reality. It always remained for her a superb and hideous dream,
+something symbolical, glorious, and horrible which had taken place in
+her brain, not in the lives of human beings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nelly, . . . looking down suddenly to see where the tree would fall,
+crying out, "Oh, I left my hat where it'll . . ." and darting, light as a
+feather, towards it.
+
+'Gene, making a great futile gesture to stop her, as she passed him,
+shouting at her, with a horrified glance up at the slowly leaning tree,
+"Come back! Come back!"
+
+Nelly on the brush-pile, her hat in her hand, whirling to return, supple
+and swift, suddenly caught by the heel and flung headlong . . . up again
+in an instant, and falling again, to her knees this time. Up once more
+with a desperate haste, writhing and pulling at her shoe, held by its
+high heel, deep between the knotty poles.
+
+'Gene, bounding from his place of safety, there at her feet, tearing in
+a frenzy at the poles, at her shoe. . . .
+
+Above them the great tree bearing down on them the solemn vengeful
+shadow of its fall.
+
+Someone was screaming. It was Nelly. She was screaming, "'Gene! 'Gene!
+'Gene!" her face shrunken in terror, her white lips open.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then, that last gesture of 'Gene's when he took Nelly into his great
+arms, closely, hiding her face on his shoulder, as the huge tree,
+roaring downward, bore them both to the earth, forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+TWO GOOD-BYES
+
+
+August 10.
+
+Marise welcomed the bother about the details of Eugenia's departure and
+Mr. Welles', and flung herself into them with a frightened desire for
+something that would drown out the roaring wind of tragedy which filled
+her ears in every pause of the day's activities, and woke her up at
+night out of the soundest sleep. Night after night, she found herself
+sitting up in bed, her night-gown and hair damp with perspiration,
+Nelly's scream ringing knife-like in her ears. Then, rigid and wide-eyed
+she saw it all again, what had happened in those thirty seconds which
+had summed up and ended the lives of 'Gene and Nelly.
+
+But one night as she sat thus in her bed, hammered upon beyond
+endurance, she saw as though she had not seen it before what 'Gene had
+finally done, his disregard of possible safety for himself, his abandon
+of his futile, desperate effort to free Nelly from the tangle where her
+childish vanity had cast her, the grandeur and completeness of his
+gesture when he had taken Nelly into his strong arms, to die with her.
+Marise found herself crying as she had not cried for years. The picture,
+burned into her memory, stood there endlessly in the black night till
+she understood it. The tears came raining down her face, and with them
+went the strained, wild horror of the memory.
+
+But the shadow and darkness hung about her like a cloud, through which
+she only dimly saw the neat, unhurried grace of Eugenia's preparations
+for departure and far travels, and felt only a dimmed, vague echo of the
+emotion she had thought to feel at the disappearance of Mr. Welles,
+poor, weary, futile old crusader on his Rosinante.
+
+On that last morning of their stay she drove with them to the station,
+still giving only a half-attention to the small episodes of their
+departure. She did see and smile at the characteristic quality of an
+instinctive gesture of Eugenia's as they stepped up on the platform of
+the station. Two oddly-shaped pieces of metal stood there, obviously
+parts of a large machine. Paul stumbled over them as he climbed out of
+the car, and held tight to Mr. Welles' hand to save himself from a fall.
+Eugenia saw them instantly from afar as an element in life which
+threatened the spotlessness of her gray traveling cloak, and as she
+passed them she drew the thick folds of velvet-like wool about her
+closely. Marise thought to herself, "That's Eugenia's gesture as she
+goes through the world."
+
+Neale turned off his switch, listened a moment to see if the Ford were
+boiling from the long climb up the hill to the station, and now made one
+long-legged step to the platform. He started towards Eugenia with the
+evident intention of making some casual pleasant remarks, such as are
+demanded by decency for a departing guest, but in his turn his eyes
+caught the curiously shaped pieces of metal. He stopped short, his face
+lighted up with pleasure and surprise. All consciousness of anyone else
+on the platform disappeared from his expression. "Hello!" he said to
+himself, "those mandrels here." He picked up one in his strong hands on
+which the metal left a gray dust, and inspected it. He might have been
+entirely alone in his shop at the mill.
+
+Marise noted with envy how he gave all of himself to that momentary
+examination, entirely escaped from any awareness of that tyrannical self
+which in her own heart always clamored like a spoiled child for
+attention. The impersonal concentration of his look as he turned the
+metal about between those strong dusty hands, gave to his face the calm,
+freed expression not to be bought for any less price than a greater
+interest in one's work than in one's self. "They'll do," pronounced
+Neale. This was evidently a thought spoken aloud, for it did not occur
+to him to make any pretense of including the two women in his interest.
+He set down the casting he held, and went off into the freight-house,
+calling loudly, "Charlie! Charlie! Those mandrels have come. I wish
+you'd . . ." his voice died away as he walked further into the dusky
+freight-shed.
+
+Marise happening to glance at Eugenia now, caught on her face an
+expression which she took to be annoyance at a breach of manners. She
+reflected, "Eugenia must find Neale's abrupt American ways perfectly
+barbaric." And she was surprised to feel for the first time a rather
+scornful indifference to all that was involved in Eugenia's finding them
+barbaric. Heavens! What did it matter? In a world so filled with awful
+and portentous and glorious human possibilities, how could you bother
+about such things?
+
+There was a silence. Mr. Welles and Paul had been standing near,
+aimlessly, but now, evidently taking the silence for the inevitable
+flatness of the flat period of waiting for a train, Mr. Welles drew the
+little boy away. They walked down the cinder-covered side-tracks,
+towards where the single baggage truck stood, loaded with elegant,
+leather-covered boxes and wicker basket-trunks, marked "E. Mills. S.S.
+Savoie. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique." Among them, out of place
+and drab, stood one banal department-store trunk labeled, "Welles. 320
+Maple Avenue. Macon, Georgia."
+
+The departure of the old man and the little boy left the two women
+alone. Eugenia stepped closer to Marise and took her hand in her own
+gloved fingers. She looked at it intently, with the expression of one
+who is trying to find words for a complicated feeling. Marise made an
+effort to put herself in the receptive mood which would make the saying
+of it easier, but failed. The fall of the big pine roared too loudly in
+her ears. She looked without sympathy or admiration at Eugenia's
+perfection of aspect. "To look like that, she must care for looks more
+than anything else. What can she know about any real human feeling?"
+Marise asked herself, with an intolerance she could not mitigate.
+
+And yet as she continued to peer at Eugenia through that dark cloud of
+tragedy, it seemed to her that Eugenia showed signs of some real human
+emotion. As she gazed at her in the crude brilliance of the gaudy
+morning sun, she saw for the first time signs of years in Eugenia's
+exquisite small face. There was not a line visible, nor a faltering of
+the firmness of the well-cared-for flesh, but over it all was a faint,
+hardly discernible flaccid fatigue of texture.
+
+But perhaps she imagined it, for even as she looked, and felt her heart
+soften to think what this would mean to Eugenia, an inner wave of
+resolution reached the surface of the other woman's face, and there was
+Eugenia as she always had been, something of loveliness immutable.
+
+She said impulsively, "Eugenia, it's a stupidly conventional thing to
+say, but it's a pity you never married."
+
+As Eugenia only looked at her, quietly, she ventured further, "You might
+really be happier, you know. There is a great deal of happiness in the
+right marriage." She had never said so much to Eugenia.
+
+Eugenia let Marise's hand drop and with it, evidently, whatever
+intention she might have had of saying something difficult to express.
+Instead, she advanced with her fastidious, delicate note of irony, "I
+don't deny the happiness, if that sort of happiness is what one is
+after. But I think my appetite for it . . . that sort . . . is perhaps not
+quite robust enough to relish it."
+
+Marise roused herself to try to put a light note of cheerfulness into
+this last conversation. "You mean that it seems to you like the coarsely
+heaped-up goodies set before a farmhand in a country kitchen . . . chicken
+and butter and honey and fruit and coffee, all good but so profuse and
+jumbled that they make you turn away?"
+
+"I didn't give that definition of domestic life," corrected Eugenia,
+with a faint smile, "that's one of _your_ fantasies."
+
+"Well, it's true that you get life served up to you rather pell-mell,
+lots of it, take-it-as-it-comes," admitted Marise, "but for a gross
+nature like mine, once you've had that, you're lost. You know you'd
+starve to death on the delicate slice of toasted bread served on old
+china. You give up and fairly enjoy wallowing in the trough."
+
+She had been struck by that unwonted look of fatigue on Eugenia's face,
+had tried to make her laugh, and now, with an effort, laughed with her.
+She had forgotten her passing notion that Eugenia had something special
+to say. What could she have? They had gone over that astonishing
+misconception of hers about the Powers woodlot, and she had quite made
+Marise understand how hopelessly incapable she was of distinguishing one
+business detail from another. There could be nothing else that Eugenia
+could wish to say.
+
+"How in the world shall I get through the winter?" Eugenia now wondered
+aloud. "Biskra and the Sahara perhaps . . . if I could only get away from
+the hideous band of tourists. They say there are swarms of
+war-profiteers from Italy now, everywhere, low-class people with money
+for the first time." She added with a greater accent of wonder, "How in
+the world are _you_ going to get through the winter?"
+
+Marise was struck into momentary silence by the oddness of the idea.
+There were phrases in Eugenia's language which were literally
+non-translatable into hers, representing as they did ideas that did not
+exist there. "Oh, we never have to consider that," she answered, not
+finding a more accurate phrase. "There won't be time enough to do all
+we'll try to do, all we'll have to do. There's living. That takes a lot
+of time and energy. And I'll have the chorus as usual. I'm going to try
+some Mendelssohn this year. The young people who have been singing for
+five or six years are quite capable of the 'Elijah.' And then any of the
+valley children who really want to, come to me for lessons, you know.
+The people in North Ashley have asked me to start a chorus there this
+year, too. And in the mill, Neale has a plan to try to get the men to
+work out for themselves some standards of what concerns them especially,
+what a day's work really is, at any given job, don't you know."
+
+What an imbecile she was, she thought, to try to talk about such things
+to Eugenia, who could not, in the nature of things, understand what she
+was driving at. But apparently Eugenia had found something
+understandable there, for she now said sharply, startled, "Won't that
+mean less income for you?"
+
+She did not say, "_Even_ less," but it was implied in the energy of her
+accent.
+
+Marise hesitated, brought up short by the solidity of the intangible
+barrier between their two languages. There were phrases in her own
+tongue which could not be translated into Eugenia's, because they
+represented ideas not existing there. She finally said vaguely, "Oh
+perhaps not."
+
+Her pause had been enough for Eugenia to drop back into her own world.
+She said thoughtfully, "I've half a notion to try going straight on
+beyond Biskra, to the south, if I could find a caravan that would take
+me. That would be something new. Biskra is so commonplace now that it
+has been discovered and exploited." She went on, with a deep, wistful
+note of plaintiveness in her voice, "But _every_thing's so commonplace
+now!" and added, "There's Java. I've never been to Java."
+
+It came over Marise with a shock of strangeness that this was the end of
+Eugenia in her life. Somehow she knew, as though Eugenia had told her,
+that she was never coming back again. As they stood there, so close
+together, in the attitude of friends, they were so far apart that each
+could scarcely recognize who the other was. Their paths which in youth
+had lain so close to each other as to seem identical, how widely they
+had been separated by a slight divergence of aim! Marise was struck by
+her sudden perception of this. It had been going on for years, she could
+understand that now. Why should she only see it in this quiet, silent,
+neutral moment?
+
+An impalpable emanation of feeling reached her from the other woman. She
+had a divination that it was pain. Perhaps Eugenia was also suddenly
+realizing that she had grown irrevocably apart from an old friend.
+
+The old tenderness felt for the girl Eugenia had been, by the girl
+Marise had been, looked wistfully down the years at the end.
+
+Marise opened her arms wide and took Eugenia into them for a close,
+deeply moved embrace.
+
+"Good-bye, Eugenia," she said, with sadness.
+
+"Good-bye, Marise," said Eugenia, looking at her strangely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Neale came back now, frankly consulting his watch with Neale's bluntness
+in such matters. "Train's due in a minute or two," he said. "Where's Mr.
+Welles?"
+
+Marise said, "Over there, with Paul. I'll go tell them."
+
+She found them both, hand in hand, sitting on the edge of the truck
+which carried the leather-covered boxes and wicker basket-trunks, bound
+for Biskra or beyond, or Java; and the square department-store trunk
+bound for Maple Avenue, Macon, Georgia.
+
+"Mother," said Paul, "Mr. Welles has promised me that he'll come up and
+visit us summers."
+
+"There's no house in the world where you'll be more welcome," said
+Marise with all her heart, holding out her hand.
+
+Mr. Welles shook it hard, and held it in both his. As the train whistled
+screamingly at the crossing, he looked earnestly into her face and tried
+to tell her something, but the words would not come.
+
+As she read in his pale old face and steady eyes what he would have
+said, Marise cried out to herself that there do not exist in the world
+any things more halting and futile than words. She put her arms around
+his neck and kissed him. "Good-bye, dear Mr. Welles," was all she said,
+but in the clinging of his old arms about her, and in the quivering,
+shining face he showed as they moved down the platform together, she
+knew that he too had not needed words.
+
+Paul clung to his hand till the last moment, gazing up at him
+constantly, silently. Marise looked down on the little boy's tanned,
+freckled, sober face and strained, rapidly winking eyes, and had the
+intuition, "This is one of the moments Paul will never forget. He will
+always be able to shut his eyes and see this old Don Quixote setting
+forth." With a rush of her old, jealous, possessive mother-love, she
+longed to share this with him and to have him know that she shared it;
+to put her arms around him and _make him let her in_. But she knew
+better now. She yearned over him silently, and did not touch him.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Paul," said Mr. Welles, shaking hands with him.
+
+"Well, good-bye," said Paul dryly, setting his jaw hard.
+
+"Oh, this is the day-coach!" cried Eugenia. "Where is the drawing-room
+car?"
+
+"At the far end," said the conductor with the sweeping gesture of a man
+used to talking with his arms.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Welles," said Eugenia, giving him for an instant a small,
+pearl-gray hand. "Boa voyage! Good luck!"
+
+"Same to you," said the old gentleman, scrambling up the unswept,
+cinder-covered steps into the day-coach.
+
+At the front end of the train, the baggage man was tumbling into the
+express car the fine, leather-covered boxes and the one square trunk.
+
+Neale carried Eugenia's two small bags down to the drawing-room car and
+now handed them to the porter.
+
+The two women kissed each other on both cheeks, hurriedly, as someone
+cried, "All aboard!"
+
+Eugenia took Neale's outstretched hand. "Good-bye, Neale," she said.
+
+With the porter's aid, she mounted the rubber-covered steps into the
+mahogany and upholstery of the drawing-room car.
+
+"Good luck, Eugenia! Bon voyage!" called Neale after her.
+
+She did not turn around or look back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise noted that characteristically Eugenia had forgotten Paul. But
+Paul had forgotten her, too, and was now back near the day-coach
+searching one window after another.
+
+The conductor signaled widely, the whistle shrieked, the wheels groaned.
+Neale drew Marise a little back out of the whirl of dust and stood
+holding her arm for an instant.
+
+It seemed to Marise as they stood thus, Neale holding her arm, that she
+caught a last glimpse of Eugenia behind plate-glass, looking at them
+gravely, steadily.
+
+Paul suddenly caught sight of Mr. Welles' face at a window, snatched off
+his cap, and waved it frantically, over and over, long after the train
+was only an echoing roar from down the tracks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the mountain-silence settled down about them calmly, and they could
+hear their own hearts beat, and knew the thoughts in their minds.
+
+As they went back to their battered Ford, Marise said thoughtfully,
+"Somehow I believe that it will be a long time before we see Eugenia
+again."
+
+Neale permitted himself no comment on this, nor showed the alteration of
+a line in his face as he stepped into the car and turned on the switch,
+but Marise cried out to him accusingly, "You might as well say it right
+out, that you can support life if it is."
+
+Neale laughed a little and put his foot on the starter. "Get in the back
+seat, Paul," was all he said, as the little boy came up silently from
+the other side of the station.
+
+He added as they started up the hill road, "First time in my life I was
+ever sort of sorry for Eugenia. It seemed to me this morning that she
+was beginning to show her age."
+
+Marise hid the fact that she had had the same idea and opposed, "Eugenia
+would laugh at that from you, the husband of such a frankly middle-aged
+thing as I."
+
+Neale was silent for a moment, and then, "You'll always look younger
+than she. No, not younger, that's not it, at all. It's _living_, you
+look. I tell you what, she's a cut flower in a vase, that's beginning to
+wilt, and you're a living plant."
+
+"Why, _Neale_!" said Marise, astonished and touched.
+
+"Yes, quite a flight of fancy for me, wasn't it?" commented Neale
+casually, leaning forward to change the carburetor adjustment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise felt Paul lean over her shoulder from the back of the car. "Say,
+Mother," he said in her ear, "would you just as soon get in back with me
+for a while?"
+
+Neale stopped the care. Marise stepped out and in, and seated herself
+beside Paul. He had apparently nothing to say, after all, looking
+fixedly down at his bare brown feet.
+
+But presently he moved nearer to his mother and leaned his head against
+her breast. This time she put her arm around him and held him close to
+her, the tears in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+VIGNETTES FROM HOME LIFE
+
+I
+
+
+August 20.
+
+Paul had been sent for blue-berries through the Eagle Rock woods to the
+high upland pasture where the Powers cows fed during the day. On the
+upper edge of that, skirting a tract of slash left from an old cutting,
+was a berry-patch, familiar to all the children of Crittenden's valley.
+
+When at four o'clock there was no sign of him, and then at five still
+none, Marise began to feel uneasy, although she told herself that
+nothing in the world could happen to Paul on that well-known
+mountain-side. He had taken Medor with him, who would certainly have
+come for help if Paul had fallen and hurt himself. She excused herself
+to the tall, awkward lad from North Ashley come to try over his part in
+a quartet, asked Toucle to help Elly set the supper things on the table
+if she should be late, and set off at a rapid pace by the short-cut over
+the ledges.
+
+As she hurried over the rough trail, frankly hastening, now frankly
+alarmed, she thought that probably for all the life-time of the people
+in the valley the death of Frank Warner would set a sinister element of
+lurking danger in those familiar wooded slopes. Nothing _could_ have
+happened to Paul, but still she hurried faster and faster, and as she
+came near the upper edge of the pasture she began to shout loudly,
+"Paul! Paul!" and to send out the high yodel-cry that was the family
+assembly call. That act of shouting brought her a step nearer to panic.
+
+But almost at once she heard the little boy's answer, not far from her
+saw his dog bounding through the bushes, and as she emerged from the
+woods into the open pasture she saw Paul running towards her, pail in
+hand, evidently astonished to know her there. But there was about him
+something more than astonishment, something which Marise's mother-eye
+catalogued as furtitve, that consciousness of something to hide which
+always looks to grown-ups like guilt. She gave no sign of seeing this,
+however, stopping short to catch her breath, smiling at him, and
+wondering with great intensity what in the world it could be. He looked
+a little frightened.
+
+He came up to her, answering her smile uneasily, and she saw that he had
+only a few berries in his pail. At this she was relieved, thinking that
+possibly all that had happened was that he had lingered to play. But
+when she glanced back at his face, she had the impression that there was
+something more, very much more. He had received some indelible
+impression and it was his instinct to hide it from his mother. Her heart
+sank forebodingly.
+
+"What is the best thing to do?" she asked herself. "To speak about it
+first, or to wait till he does?"
+
+She sat down on a stone, fanning herself with her hat, watching him,
+trying to make out the meaning of every shift of expression, turn of
+eye, position of his hands, carriage of his head, bringing to this all
+her accumulated knowledge of Paul, afire with the sudden passion to
+protect him which had flamed up with her intuition that something had
+happened to him.
+
+(Come and gone with the dry rapidity of fingers snapped, she had
+thought, "The point is, that other people may be more clever than
+mothers, but nobody else _cares_ enough, always, always to try to
+understand!")
+
+"I thought I'd come up and walk back with you," she offered.
+
+"I haven't got very many," said Paul, abashed, looking down at the few,
+blue, bloom-covered balls in the bottom of his shining tin pail. "I was
+trying to hurry up and get enough for supper, anyhow."
+
+Marise in spite of herself, moved by pity for his confusion, offered him
+a way out. It always seemed to her too dreadful for anyone not to have a
+way out, even if it implied a fib. "Weren't there very many on the
+bushes?" she asked.
+
+But he refused it with a characteristic integrity. "Oh yes, there were
+lots there," he said.
+
+A silence fell. The little dog, sensitively aware of something wrong,
+whined uneasily, and pawed at Paul's hand. But Paul did not look down at
+him. He stood, his bare feet wide apart, the empty pail in his hand,
+looking down the beautiful green slope of the pasture, golden now in the
+long rays from the sun poised low on the line of the mountains opposite.
+
+Marise looked at him, seeing nothing in all the world but that tanned,
+freckled, anxious little face. With what an utter unexpectedness did
+these moments of crisis spring on you; something vital there, and no
+warning, no chance to think.
+
+"Anything the matter, Paul?" she said gently.
+
+He nodded, silent.
+
+"Anything you can tell Mother?" she asked, still more gently.
+
+Paul said gruffly, "I don't know: it's about Ralph Powers. He was up
+here this afternoon." He looked down at his brown, bramble-scratched
+legs.
+
+Marise's imagination gave an unbridled leap of fear. She had always felt
+something strange and abnormal about Ralph. But she thought, "I mustn't
+tyrannize over Paul, even by a too-waiting expectant silence," and
+stooped over with the pretext of tying her shoe. A lump came to her
+throat. How terribly, helplessly, you _cared_ about what came to your
+children!
+
+When she lifted her head, Paul had come nearer her and was looking down
+at her, with troubled eyes. "Say, Mother, he didn't _say_ not to tell
+you. Do you suppose it would be fair?"
+
+She made a great effort at loyalty and said, "I can't tell, Paul. You
+saw him. You know better than I, if you think he meant you not to tell.
+Try to remember if he said anything about it."
+
+Paul thought hard. "You wouldn't tell anybody?" he asked.
+
+"Not if you don't want me to," she answered.
+
+Paul sat down by her and drew a long breath. "I don't believe he would
+care, your knowing it, if you never told anybody else, nor said anything
+to him. Mother, I was going along, up there by the big rock where the
+white birches grow, and I saw Ralph. . . . He was in front of a sort of
+table he'd fixed up with a long piece of slate-stone, and he had some
+queer-shaped stones on it . . . oh, _Mother_ . . . he was crying so, and
+talking to himself! And when he saw me he got as mad! And he told me
+about it, just as mad all the time, as though he was mad at me. Mother,
+it's an altar!
+
+"An altar!" said Marise, stupidly, utterly disconcerted by the word, so
+totally other than what her fears had been foreboding.
+
+"Yes, an altar, and he says the stones on it are idols, and he bows down
+and worships them, the way the Bible says it's wicked to."
+
+Marise was too much astonished to open her lips.
+
+Paul said, "Mother, Ralph says he hates God, and isn't going to say his
+prayers to him any more. He says God let his father and mother both get
+killed, and he don't know what the devil could do any worse than that.
+He said he started in having an altar to idols because he thought from
+what the Bible said that if you did you'd be so wicked lightning would
+strike you dead. But it didn't, and now he doesn't believe _any_thing.
+So he's going on, having idols because the Bible says not to."
+
+Marise's first rounded and exclusive emotion was of immense relief.
+Nothing had happened to her own son, and beside this relief, nothing for
+the moment seemed of any consequence. She drew Paul to her with a long
+breath of what was, she recognized it the moment afterward, her old,
+clear, undiluted, ferocious, hateful mother-egotism. For that instant
+she had not cared an atom what happened to another woman's child, so
+long as hers was safe.
+
+But the next instant, the awareness of her hard heart cut across her
+like the lash of a whip. She shrank under it, horrified. She hung her
+head guilty and ashamed, divining the extremity of the other child's
+misery.
+
+As she sat there, with her living arms around her own little son, the
+boy whose mother was dead came and stood before her in imagination,
+showing those festering, uncared-for wounds of sorrow and bitterness and
+loneliness, and furious, unavailing revolt from suffering too great to
+be borne.
+
+She felt the guilt driven out from her narrow heart as it swelled larger
+to take him in. Any child who needed a mother so much, was _her own
+child_. He had no longer any mother who would care enough to try to
+understand, but _she_ would care enough.
+
+"He bowed down and worshiped," said Paul, in a shocked, frightened
+voice. "He knocked his head on the stones and cried like anything. He
+said he hated God."
+
+"Oh!" cried Marise, intolerably stung by sympathy and pity. She started
+up to her feet, her heart burning, the tears on her cheeks. Her arms
+ached with emptiness till she should have drawn that suffering into
+them.
+
+Paul said shyly, "Say, Mother, it's _awful_ hard on those Powers kids,
+isn't it, not having anybody but their grandmother. Say, Mother, don't
+you think maybe we could . . . we could . . ." He turned his freckled,
+tanned, serious little face up to hers.
+
+His mother stooped to kiss him, furiously, burningly, passionately, as
+she did not often kiss Paul, and he clung to her with all the strength
+of his strong little arms. "Yes, yes, you darling, you darling," she
+told him brokenly. "Yes, yes, yes."
+
+
+II
+
+September 10.
+
+Marise was slowly going through a passage of Scriabine, which had just
+come in the mail. She was absorbed in the difficulties and novelties of
+it, her ear alert to catch a clue to the meaning of those new rhythms
+and progressions, her mind opened wide to understand them when she heard
+them.
+
+It was with an effort that she brought her attention back to Elly, who
+had come in behind her and was saying something urgently. Marise turned
+around on the piano-stool, her head humming with the unfamiliar,
+tantalizing beauties and intricacies of the page she had left half
+unread, and considered the little girl for an instant before she heard
+what she said. How Elly did grow! That dress was already much too small
+for her.
+
+Well, Elly was not the only one who had grown out of her old clothes
+this summer . . . the old garments that had been large enough and now must
+be laid aside! . . . Elly was saying, "Mother, one of my chickens looks
+sick, and I don't know what to do. I _wish_ you'd come!"
+
+Marise began a process of mentally weighing which was more important,
+Scriabine or Elly's chicken. Elly looked at her mother with imploring
+eyes. "Mother, he looked awfully sick. And he is my nicest little
+Downy-head, the one I've always loved the best. I've tried to take such
+good care of him. Mother, I'm _worried_ about him."
+
+Marise decided that Scriabine had at least the capacity to wait, while
+the chicken might not. She got up, saying, "All right, Elly, we'll see
+what we can do."
+
+Elly pulled her along rapidly to the chicken-yard where grossly
+self-satisfied hens scratched in trash and filth undiscriminatingly,
+and complacently called their families to share what they had found
+there, or indeed at times apparently to admire them for having found
+nothing. Marise stood regarding them with a composed, ironic eye. It was
+good, she reflected, to be able to know that that was the way you looked
+from the outside, and not to care a bit because you knew firmly that
+there was something else there that made all the difference. All the
+same, it was a very good thing to have had the scaring thought that you
+were like that . . . "there but for the grace of God. . . ." Was it
+complacent to say that? Oh, what did it matter what you called
+it,--complacent or not, if you knew! It all came back to not caring so
+much about what things could be called, if you knew what they were.
+
+Elly had disappeared into the chicken-house and now came back with a
+perplexed face. "Downy-head was there, by the nests, and now he's gone."
+Marise caught in the child's eyes the realness of her anxiety and
+thrilled to it, as she always did to any real emotion. "I'll help you
+look," she said, turning her eyes about the chicken-yard, crowded with
+voluble, intently self-centered, feathered personalities. "Which hen is
+his mother, Elly?
+
+"This one, Old Speckle. Oh, Mother, there he is, lying down. He must be
+feeling worse!" She ran forward and stooped over a little panting yellow
+ball. Across the intervening space and beyond all those carelessly alive
+bodies, Marise's eyes caught the unmistakable aspect of death in the
+tiny creature lying there.
+
+"Mother!" cried Elly, "his eyes look so! He can't get his breath.
+_Mother!_" Marise felt the child's agitation and alarm knock at her
+heart. She looked down helplessly at the dying creature. That tiny, tiny
+scrap of down-covered flesh to be alive, to contain the miracle and
+mystery of life, and now to be struggling, all alone, with the miracle
+and mystery of death!
+
+The little thing opened its glazing eyes once more, drew a long breath,
+and lay still. An age-old inherited knowledge and experience told Elly
+what bad happened. She gave a scream, picked it up and held it in her
+cupped hands, her little face drawn in horrified incredulity. She looked
+up at her mother and said in a whisper, "Mother, he's _dead_."
+
+Marise nodded silently. Poor Elly! She wished she could think of
+something comforting to say. But what is there to say? For her there had
+never been anything but stoic silence. The mother hen clucked
+unconcernedly at their feet, and with coaxing guttural sounds called the
+rest of the chickens to eat a grain. The strong ammonia smell of the
+chicken-yard rose in the sunshine. Elly stood perfectly still, the
+little ball of yellow down in her hand, her face pale.
+
+Marise looked down on her with infinite sympathy. Her child, flesh of
+her flesh, meeting in this uncouth place the revelation of the black
+gulf! But she remained silent, not knowing what to say.
+
+Elly spoke in a low voice, "But, Mother, how _can_ he be dead, just so
+quick while we were looking at him? Mother, he was alive a minute ago.
+He was breathing. He looked at me. He knew me. And in just a minute like
+that . . . nothing!"
+
+She looked around her wildly. "_Mother, where has his life gone to?_"
+
+Marise put her arm around the little girl's shoulders tenderly, but she
+still only shook her head without a word. She did not know any more than
+Elly where his life had gone. And surely loving silence was better than
+tinkling words of falseness.
+
+Elly looked up at her, glistening drops of sweat standing on her
+temples. "Mother," she asked, urgently, in a loud, frightened whisper,
+"Mother, do we die like that? Mother, will _you_ die like that? All in a
+moment . . . and then . . . nothing?"
+
+It came like thunder, then, what Marise had never thought to feel. With
+a clap, she found that this time she had something to answer, something
+to say to Elly. Looking deep, deep into Elly's eyes, she said firmly
+with a certainty as profound as it was new to her, "No, Elly, I don't
+believe we do die like that . . . all in a moment . . . nothing."
+
+She was astonished by what she said, astonished by the sudden
+overflowing of something she had not known was there, but which was so
+great that her heart could not contain it, "comme une onde qui bout dans
+une urne trop pleine." And she was as moved as she was astonished. Elly
+came into her arms with a comforted gasp. They clung to each other
+closely, Marise's ears humming with the unfamiliar beauty and intricacy
+of that new page at which she had had that instant's glimpse. Here was a
+new harmony, a new progression, a new rhythm to which her ear had just
+opened . . . heard here in this uncouth place!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, after the children were in bed, she stopped her reading of
+the new music for a moment to say to Neale, "You know those ideas that
+other people are better for children than their parents are?"
+
+"Yes," said Neale, laying down the baseball page of his newspaper,
+instantly all there, looking at her intently.
+
+"Well, I don't believe a word of it," said Marise.
+
+"I should say it depended on which parents and on which children were
+meant," advanced Neale guardedly.
+
+Marise had at first an affectionate smile for this, and then a laugh.
+She got up from the piano-stool and went to kiss him. He said with a
+whimsical suspicion of this, "Why so?"
+
+"Because you are so entirely you," she told him, and went back to
+Scriabine.
+
+
+III
+
+September 22.
+
+It was the half-hour of pause after lunch. The children played idly with
+the fox-terrier and lounged on the steps of the side-porch, strong and
+brown, living cups filled to the brim with life. Neale had pushed his
+chair back from the table, lighted his pipe, and sat meditating.
+Presently he put out his hand and laid it on Marise's, who had turned to
+look down the sun-flooded valley.
+
+It was high-noon, dreamy, entranced, all the world golden with the
+magnificent weather as a holly-hock is golden with pollen. From the
+brook came the living voice of the water, with the special note of brave
+clarity it always had for brilliant noons.
+
+It seemed to Marise that she too was all gold-powdered with the
+magnificence of life, that in her heart there sang a clear living voice
+that did not fear high-noons.
+
+
+IV
+
+October.
+
+Would Vincent come back at all? Marise had wondered so often. Not
+Vincent in the flesh; that last angry bewildered gesture had finality in
+it. He had given her up then, totally. But would he come back to haunt
+her in those inevitable moments of flat ebb-tide in life, when what
+should be moist and living, withered and crisped in the merciless
+drought of drudgery and routine? She feared it, frankly dreaded it at
+first, and tried to think how to brace herself against it. But it was
+not then that tie came, not when she was toiling with dishes to wash, or
+vegetables to pare, or the endless care of the children's never-in-order
+clothes. Instead she found in those moments, which had been arid before,
+a curious new savor, a salt without which life would seem insipid,
+something which gave her appetite for the rest. "This is all Tolstoyan
+nonsense and sentimentality," she told herself mockingly, "there is
+nothing sacred about scrubbing the floor." Or on another day, "I wonder
+if it's a twist of the absurd mediaeval ascetic perversity left over?"
+Or again, "All it does for me is to take off the curse of belonging to
+the bourgeoisie." But no matter what skeptical name she called it, nor
+how much she minimized the reality of it, she felt some odd value in it
+which she would not have gone without. Once she said to herself, "It's
+ballast, to a person like me," although she did not know exactly what
+this meant. And another time she said, "Perhaps it's that I'm making an
+honest effort to do my share." But it was true and real, the fact that
+after such work the reading of the day's news of the world brought her a
+less oppressive sense of guilt. And stranger than this, music had
+greater vitality for her. She felt it a deeper, richer soil than even
+she had dreamed of, and struck her roots profoundly into depths which
+kept her whole complicated organism poised, steady, and upright.
+
+And here it was that Vincent came back. Not the Vincent of the hawk-like
+imperious face, or burning eyes of desire, which had seemed to him his
+realest self. But the Vincent who had come in from the porch that day in
+March when she had first played to him, who had smiled at her, the good,
+grateful, peaceful smile, and had said to her music, "Go on, go on." It
+was the same Vincent of the afternoon in Cousin Hetty's garden when the
+vulture of the desire to possess had left him for a moment in peace.
+Often and often he came thus as she played and leaned his head back and
+said, "Go on." And thus Marise knew he would always come. And thus she
+welcomed him.
+
+This was what was left of him in the house he had so filled with his
+smoky, flaming brilliance.
+
+
+V
+
+December.
+
+They had been talking around the fire of the stars and their names and
+stories, she and Neale and the children. Presently interest overcoming
+inertia they decided to go out and see if the clouds had blown away so
+that the stars could be seen. They huddled on hastily found wraps,
+thrust their feet into flapping, unbuckled overshoes, and leaving the
+still, warm, lamp-lit room, they shuffled out, laughing and talking,
+into the snow which lay thick and still before the house.
+
+At first they carried out between them so much of the house atmosphere
+that it hung about them like warm fog, shielding them from the fiercely
+pure, still cold of the air, and from the brilliant glitter of the
+myriad-eyed black sky. They went on talking and laughing, pointing out
+the constellations they knew, and trying to find others in the spangled
+vault over their heads.
+
+"A bear!" cried Mark. "I could draw a better bear than that any day!"
+And from Paul, "They can call it Orion's belt all they want to, but
+there's no belt to it!" And from Elly, "Aldebaran! Aldebaran! Red-eyed
+Aldebaran!"
+
+But little by little the house-air began to be thinned about them, to
+blow away from between them in wisps and wreathes, off into the
+blackness. The warmed, lighted house dwindled to nothing. There were
+only the great cold black sky and the small cold white earth. Their
+voices were lowered; they stood very still, close together, their heads
+tipped back, their faces and hearts upraised silently to receive the
+immensity above and about them.
+
+Elly murmured under her breath, "Doesn't it seem funny, our world being
+just one of all those, and such a little one, and here we are, just
+these few of us, standing on the world and looking at it all."
+
+Marise thought, "We seem to be the only living things in all creation."
+In that huge, black, cold glittering universe how tiny was the little
+glow of life they made!
+
+Tiny but unquenchable! Those myriads of hard staring eyes could not look
+down the immortal handful of human life and love which she and Neale had
+created between them.
+
+There was a silence, filled with still, breathless cold; with enormous
+space, with infinity.
+
+Marise felt a rigorous shudder run over her, as though something vital
+were coming to her, like the rending pang of pain which heralds
+child-birth. After this, did she close her eyes for a moment, or did it
+come to her while she continued to gaze wide-eyed at the stern greatness
+of the universe? What was this old, familiar, unknown sensation?
+
+. . . as though, on a long journey in the dark it had grown light, so that
+she had suddenly recognized which way she was going.
+
+Then she knew what it was. Conscious and awake, she was feeling herself
+one with the great current, advancing with an irresistible might,
+majesty and power, in which she shared, to which she gave her part.
+
+
+VI
+
+January.
+
+She was putting away the clean sheets from the washing on the shelves at
+the end of the hall, upstairs, her mind entirely on the prosaic task,
+wondering when she would have to replace some of the older ones, and
+wishing she could put off buying till the outrageous post-war prices
+went down. Someone stirred behind her and she turned her head quickly to
+see who was there. It was Neale, come in early. He was standing, looking
+at her back; and in the instant before he saw that she had turned, she
+caught the expression on his face, the tender fathomless affection that
+was there.
+
+A warm gush of happiness surged up all over her. She felt a sudden
+intense physical well-being, as though her breath came more smoothly,
+her blood ran more sweetly in her veins.
+
+"Oh, _Neale_!" she said, under her breath, flushing and turning to him.
+He looked at her, his strong, resolute face and clear eyes smiled, and
+opening his arms he drew her into them. The ineffable memory of all the
+priceless past, the ineffable certainty of the priceless future was in
+their kiss.
+
+That evening, after a long golden hour at the piano, she chanced to take
+down the Largo in the Chopin sonata. As she began it, something stirred
+in her mind, some memory that instantly lived with the first notes of
+the music. How thick-clustered with associations music became, waking a
+hundred echoes and overtones!
+
+This was the memory of the time when she had played it, almost a year
+ago, and had thought how intimacy and familiarity with music but
+deepened and enriched and strengthened its hold on you. It was only the
+lower pleasures of which one grew tired,--had enough. The others grew
+with your growing capacity to hold them. She remembered how that day she
+had recalled the Wordsworth sonnet, "A beauteous evening, calm and
+free," and had thought that music took you in to worship quite simply
+and naturally at the Temple's inner shrine, that you adored none the
+less although you were at home there and not breathless with adoration
+like the nun: because it was a whole world given to you, not a mere pang
+of joy, because you could live and move and be blessedly and securely at
+home there.
+
+She finished the last note of the Largo and sat silent. She was thinking
+that her marriage was like that, too.
+
+Presently she got up, took out the old portfolio of photographs, and
+pinned upon the wall over the piano the view taken from Rocca di Papa.
+
+
+VII
+
+February 24.
+
+Marise had been drilling the chorus in the Town Hall of Ashley after the
+men's working-hours, and now in the dimming light of the early evening
+was going home on snow-shoes, over the hill-path. She liked to use
+snow-shoes and occasionally said that she could walk more easily and
+more lightly on them than on bare ground. She trod over the tops of the
+deep drifts with an accentuation of her usual strong free step.
+
+The snow fell thickly and steadily, a cold, finely-spun, straight-hung
+curtain, veiling all the muffled sleeping valley. There was an
+inconceivable silence about her as she drew her snow-shoes over the
+velvet-like masses of the snow. But within her were ringing echoes of
+the rhythms and cadences of the afternoon's struggle, imperfectly sung
+most of them, haltingly, or dully, or feebly, or with a loud
+misunderstanding of the phrase. At the recollection of these failures,
+she clenched her hands hard inside her fur gloves with an indomitable
+resolution to draw something better from her singers the next time.
+
+But mingled with them was a moment of splendor. It was when the men had
+tried over the passage she had explained to them the week before. She
+had not known then, she did not know now, how clearly or definitely she
+had reached them with her summary of the situation of the drama: the
+desperate straits of the Israelites after the three-year drought, the
+trial by fire and water before the scorning aristocracy, Elijah stark
+and alone against all the priesthood of Baal, the extremity of despair
+of the people . . . and then the coming of the longed-for rain that
+loosened the terrible tension and released their hearts in the great
+groaning cry of thanksgiving. She had wondered how clearly or definitely
+she had reached their understanding, but she knew that she had reached
+their hearts, when suddenly she had heard all those men's voices pealing
+out, pure and strong and solemn and free, as she had dreamed that phrase
+could be sung.
+
+[Illustration: Thanks be to God! He laveth the thirsty land.]
+
+The piercing sweetness of the pleasure this had brought to her came over
+her again in a wave. She halted on the crest of the hill, and for a
+moment in place of the purples and blues of the late snowy afternoon
+there hung before her eyes the powerful, roughly clad bodies of those
+vigorous men, their weather-beaten faces, their granite impassivity,
+under which her eye had caught the triumph of the moment, warming them
+as it did her, with the purest of joys this side of heaven, the
+consciousness of having made music worthily. The whole valley seemed to
+be filled to its brim with that shout of exultation. It had taken all of
+her patience, and will-power, and knowledge of her art and of these
+people to achieve that moment. But it had lifted her high, high above
+the smallness of life, up to a rich realm of security in joy.
+
+The snow fell more and more thickly, covering her as she stood with a
+fine, soft mantle of white. She had heard the men that afternoon saying
+they had seen signs of the winter break-up, and she wondered at it now,
+looking about the frozen, buried, beautiful valley and up to the frozen
+towering mountains, breathing in the cold air, as pure as the ether
+itself. It seemed to her that spring was as remote and unreal and
+impossible an imagination of the heart as a child's fairy-tale.
+
+Then suddenly, bursting out of the dimming distance, close in front of
+her, flying low, silently, strongly, a pair of wild geese went winging
+off towards the north, their gray shapes the only moving thing in all
+the frost-held world.
+
+Marise drew a great breath of delight in their strong and purposeful
+vitality. She looked after them, her heart rising and singing with
+comradely pride in them. She would have liked to shout an exultant
+greeting after them, "Hurrah!"
+
+They went beating off, fast and straight, for their unseen destination,
+while, treading the velvet-like snow-drifts with her strong free tread,
+Marise went home.
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+
+VIII
+
+March 2.
+
+It was the first warm day of the year. The hard-frozen ruts of the road
+thawed on top and glistened. The snow-banks shrank visibly from one hour
+to the next under a warm wind and a hazy sun. The mountains were
+unbelievably beautiful and seductive in a shimmer of blue and silver.
+The children had brought home a branch of pussy-willows, and as Marise
+and Neale stood for a moment at the open door breathing in the new
+softness, they saw Toucle, old and stooped and shabby, her reticule bag
+bulging, her flat feet in enormous overshoes plodding up the road
+towards the mountain.
+
+They smiled at one another. It was in truth the first day of spring.
+Marise said, after a pause, "Do you know what she goes off for?"
+
+Neale shook his head with a wide indifference as to the reason. "Because
+she's an Injun," he conjectured casually.
+
+"She told me once," said Marise, with a sudden wonder what Neale would
+think of that glimpse into the old mystic's mind, how he would (for she
+knew beforehand he would) escape the wistfulness which struck at her
+even now, at the thought of that door to peace. She repeated to him word
+for word what Toucle had told her on that hot August day.
+
+Neale gave her his usual careful attention. Marise thought to herself,
+"Neale is the only person I ever knew who could listen to other people's
+ideas." But when she finished he made no comment. She asked him, "Did
+you ever think that old carven-image had that in her? How profound a
+disdain for us busy-about-nothing white people she must have!"
+
+Neale nodded. "Most likely. Everybody has a good deal of disdain for
+other people's ideals."
+
+"Well, you haven't for hers, have you?" challenged Marise. Neale looked
+thoughtful. "I'm no mystic. Their way of managing life often looks to me
+like sort of lying down on the job. I'm no mystic and I'm no fish. Looks
+to me as though the thing to do isn't to go off in a far corner to get
+your momentary glimpse of daylight, but to batter a hole in the roof of
+your cave and let daylight in where you live all the time. I can't help
+being suspicious of a daylight that's so uncertain you have to go away
+from life and hold your breath before you can see it for a minute. I
+want it where I do my work."
+
+Marise looked at him, thinking deeply. That was just what Neale did. But
+when she looked back at the old Indian woman, just now turning into the
+wood-road, she sighed wistfully, and did not know why.
+
+There was so very much growing always to be done in life.
+
+
+IX
+
+March 10.
+
+(_A letter from Eugenia_:)
+
+". . . I'm planning perhaps to make the trip to the temples in the Malay
+jungle. Biskra was deadly, and Italy worse . . . vulgarity and commonness
+everywhere. What an absolutely dreary outlook wherever one turns one's
+eyes! There is no corner of the modern world that is not vulgar and
+common. Democracy has done its horrible leveling down with a vengeance
+. . ."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(_A letter from Mr. Welles_:)
+
+". . . The life here is full of interest and change, and it's like dew on
+my dusty old heart to see the vitality of the joy-in-life of these
+half-disinherited people. I'm ashamed to tell you how they seem to love
+me and how good they are to me. Their warmness of heart and their zest
+in life. . . . I'm just swept back into youth again. It makes me very much
+mortified when I think what a corking good time I am having and what
+sanctimonious martyr's airs I put on about coming down here. Of course a
+certain amount of my feeling younger and brisker comes from the fact
+that, working as I am, nobody feels about me the laid-on-the-shelf
+compassion which everybody (and me too) was feeling before. I _am_
+somebody here and every time I say 'Dr. Martin' to a well-educated Negro
+physician whom another white man has just hailed as 'Andy' I feel not
+only a real sense of righteous satisfaction but the joyful mischievous
+fun that a small boy has. Give my love to Paul (speaking of small boys)
+and tell him I'm saving up for the fishing-pole I am going to use when I
+go fishing with him next summer. He said in his last letter he wanted to
+come down here and make me a visit; but you tell him I think he'd better
+get his growth before he does that."
+
+
+X
+
+March 15, 1921.
+
+From a profound sleep, serene warm infinity of rest, Marise was wakened
+by a little outcry near the bed, a sobbing voice saying through
+chattering teeth, "Mother! Father!"
+
+Still drowned in sleep, Marise cried out, "What? What's that?" and then,
+"Oh, you, Elly. What's the matter, dear? Notions again?"
+
+"Oh, Mother, it was an awful dream this time. Can't I get into bed with
+you?"
+
+"Why yes, come along, you dear little silly."
+
+The fumbling approach to the bed, Marise holding the sheets open and
+stretching out her hand through the cold darkness towards the little
+fingers groping for her; the clutch at her hand with a quick anguish of
+relief and joy. "Oh, _Mother!_"
+
+Then the shivering body rolling into bed, the little cold arms tight
+around her neck, the cold smooth petal-like cheek against hers.
+
+Marise reached over beyond Elly and tucked the covers in with one arm,
+drew the child closer to her, and herself drew closer to Neale. She
+wondered if he had been awakened by Elly's voice, and the little stir in
+the room, and hoped he had not. He had been off on a very long hard
+tramp over mountain trails the day before, and had been tired at night.
+Perhaps if he had been wakened by Elly he would drowse off again at once
+as she felt herself doing now, conscious sleepily and happily of Elly's
+dear tender limbs on one side of her and of Neale's dear strong body on
+the other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The strong March wind chanted loudly outside in the leafless
+maple-boughs. As Marise felt her eyelids falling shut again it seemed to
+her, half-awake, half-asleep, that the wind was shouting out the refrain
+of an old song she had heard in her childhood, "There's room for all!
+There's room for all! What had it meant, that refrain? She tried
+drowsily to remember, but instead felt herself richly falling asleep
+again, her hands, her arms, her body.
+
+"There's room for all! There's room for all!"
+
+She was almost asleep. . . .
+
+Someone was speaking again. Elly's voice, calmer now, wistful and
+wondering, as though she were lying awake and trying to think.
+
+"Mother."
+
+"Yes, dear, what is it?
+
+"Mother, aren't you and father afraid of anything?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marise was wide-awake now, thinking hard. She felt Neale stir, grope for
+her hand and hold it firmly . . . Neale's strong hand!
+
+She knew what she was saying. Yes, she knew all that it meant when she
+answered, "No, Elly, I don't believe we are."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Brimming Cup, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
+
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