Clover and Blue Grass Part 13

David stared at his wife in unveiled amazement. Was this his wife, who a few short weeks ago was weeping over unwelcome riches and longing for a life of poverty? Sarah's face crimsoned with the confusion of the woman who is suddenly called upon to explain a change of mind, and she began her explanation, speaking slowly and hesitatingly.

"You remember I told you about that Mrs. Emerson who came to see me and ask me to join her club,--the Fortnightly, I believe they call it. Well, the day after you left, I dressed myself in my best and went to see her.

And I told her that if the place was still open, I believed I'd join.

She was real pleasant about it, and said she was so glad I'd changed my mind, and that they'd all be glad to have me for a member. And I said to her: 'Now, Mrs. Emerson, I'm not an educated woman, but I've got sense enough to know what I can do and what I can't do. I can't write papers and make speeches, but maybe there's some kind of work for me to do, if I join the club;' and she laughed and said that if I have sense enough to know what I could do and what I couldn't do, I'd make a fine club woman. And she said they had been studyin' _The Ring and the Book_, whatever that is, but now they've concluded to change their plan of work, and they were lookin' into the conditions of workin' people, especially workin' women, and she was sure I could help in that sort of work. And I said: 'That's very likely, for I've been a workin' woman myself, and lived with workin' women all my life.' And she said that was something to be proud of, and that every woman ought to be a workin'

woman, and it was just for that reason they wanted me in the club."

Sarah paused here and bent over to straighten out a tangle in her worsteds. David was holding a paper open before him, but his wife's social adventures were of more interest to him than any page of the _Inventor's Journal_, and he waited patiently for Sarah to resume her story.

"The next day was Wednesday, and the club met at Mrs. Morton's--she's the president."

"What Morton? Alexander Morton's wife?" interrupted David.

Sarah nodded. "Yes, Mrs. Alexander Morton. They live in the big white stone house over on First Avenue."

"He's president of the bank and about everything else in this place."

David stated this fact in an un-emotional way, but his eyes gleamed with triumph. His wife and Alexander Morton's wife members of the same club!

"When Mrs. Emerson said the club met at Mrs. Morton's, I declare, Dave, my heart stood still at the thought of goin' by myself to that club. But Mrs. Emerson said she'd come by in her carriage and take me there, and she did."

David laid down his paper and straightened himself in his chair. "How did they treat you?" he asked eagerly.

"Just as nice as they possibly could," said Sarah. "I won't mind goin'

by myself next time."

David's face expressed a satisfaction and pride too deep for words.

"What did they do?" he asked with the curiosity of the masculine mind that seeks to penetrate the mysteries of a purely feminine affair.

"Well, they talked mostly, and at first I couldn't see what they were drivin' at, but I kept on listenin', and at last I began to understand what they intend to do. They're lookin' into the conditions of workin'

women and girls and children, and they're tryin' to get laws pa.s.sed that will make things easier for people that work in mills and factories.

They asked me about the hours of work at the mills, and the wages and how the mill people lived, and, David, they said when the Legislature meets this winter, they'll have to go up to the capital to get some bills pa.s.sed, and they want me to go with them."

It was impossible for Sarah to stifle the note of triumph in her voice.

There was a red spot on each cheek, her eyes shone with enthusiasm, and though she might not be able yet to define the word "civic", evidently she had caught the spirit of civic work. As for David, he was speechless with astonishment and delight. If long residence in Millville had qualified Sarah for membership in the Fortnightly Club, then, after all, the world of the rich and the world of the poor were not very far apart.

"I told them about Agnes Thompson, how she lost her thumb and finger in the mill this spring, and what the Company offered her for damages, and how hard it is for mothers with little children to leave home and work; and they want to build a day nursery where the babies and children can be looked after, and that's why I said I'd learned what to do with money." She paused and looked at David, who nodded sympathetically. "One thing that helped me to see things right," she continued, "was a sermon I heard the Sunday you were away. You know that little church just three blocks down the street back of us? Well, Sunday morning I dressed and started out, and I said to myself: 'I'll go to the first church I come to;' and it happened to be that little church down the street with the cross on the steeple and over the door 'Church of the Eternal Hope.'

That's a pretty name for a church, ain't it? Church of Eternal Hope. I went in while they were singin' the first hymn, and when the preacher read his text and begun to preach, it seemed to me that something must have led me there, for that sermon, every word of it, was just meant for me. The text was: 'I know both how to abound and to suffer need,' and he said life was a school, and every change that life brought to us was a lesson, and instead of complaining about it, we ought to go to work and learn that lesson, and get ready for a new one. He said if poverty came to us, it was because we needed the lesson of poverty; and if riches came, it was because we needed another lesson; and he said the lesson of poverty was easier to learn than the lesson of wealth. Oh, David!"--Sarah's face was glowing with repressed emotion and her voice trembled,--"I wish you could have heard him, I can't remember it all, but it seemed as if he was preaching just to me, and I sat and listened, and all my troubles and worries just seemed to leave me, because I began to see the meaning of them; and when you know what trouble means, it's not a trouble any longer. And he said that there was a purpose in every life, and it was our duty to find out what the purpose was and do our best to carry it out. Now, I believe, David, that I see why all this money's been put into our hands. We were happy without it, and it made us pretty miserable at first, but it was given to us for a purpose, and we must carry out the purpose. Both of us were born poor, and we've lived with poor people all our lives, and I can see the purpose in that.

We know how poor people live, we know what they need, and now we've got money"--she stopped abruptly. "Don't you see the purpose, David?"

David was silent, but Sarah knew that the silence did not mean dissent.

His wife's narrative had started a train of thoughts and emotions that would be henceforth the mainspring of all his acts. Of late the sleeping ambition that lies in the heart of every man had begun to stir, and he had dared to think timidly and doubtfully of a time when he should be, to use his own words, "something and somebody" in the world. As he listened to the story of Sarah's social adventures, his heart swelled proudly. His wife had found her place among her fellow women; he would find his among his fellow men. Before him were the doors of opportunity all "barred with gold", but he held in his hand the "golden keys" that would unlock them, and the finger of Divinity was pointing out the way he should go. Could it be that the Infinite Power had planned his life for a certain end? That he had come into the world for something more than daily toil, daily wages, and, at last, old age and death? Were his mortal days a part of some great, immortal plan? A thrill of awe shook the man as he caught a momentary vision of the majesty in a human life that expresses a divine purpose. He had no words for thoughts like these, and the silence lasted a long time. When he spoke, it was of practical affairs.

"The club will have to meet with you one of these days, won't it?" he asked.

"It meets with me the last of the month," said Sarah, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way.

David looked critically around the room. "This furniture's pretty nice," he said, "but I don't know how it compares with other people's."

"The furniture's all right," said Sarah hastily. "Of course, this house doesn't look like Mrs. Emerson's. Her parlor looked as if everything in it had grown there and belonged there; this room looks as if we'd just bought the things and put them here. Maybe after we've lived here a long time, it'll look different, but there's no use tryin' to make my house look like Mrs. Emerson's or Mrs. Morton's."

"Are your clothes as good as the other women's?" inquired David solicitously.

"Suppose they're not," argued Sarah st.u.r.dily. "I'm not goin' to try to dress like other women. My clothes suit me, and that's enough."

Sarah's st.u.r.dy independence pleased David, but like a good husband, he wanted his wife to look as well as other women. "Oughtn't you to have some jewelry, Sarah? Some rings and chains and--things of that sort?" he added vaguely.

"David! David!" cried his wife half in anger, half in love. "Do you want to make me a laughing stock? My hands are not the kind for rings; and what would Molly and Annie say if they saw me wearin' jewelry? We've got enough things between us and our old friends without jewelry.

Instead of rings, you can give me a check for the day nursery."

Sarah was rolling up her work now and smiling softly. "Two weeks ago,"

she said, "it seemed as if everything was in a tangle just like this worsted gets sometimes. But I've picked and pulled and twisted, you might say, till I've straightened it out. You see, David, there's some things you can't understand till you get 'way off from them. As long as I was in this house, I thought I was out of place, but I hadn't been in the cottage long, till I saw that this house was just as much my home as the little cottage was. I never could have seen it, though, if I hadn't gone back to the old house."

Wise Sarah! It was well for her that the club had changed its plan of work. She would never be able to write an a.n.a.lysis of _The Ring and the Book_, or throw an interpretative flashlight into the obscurity of _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_, but like the knight of the Dark Tower, she had learned that

"One taste of the old time sets all things right."

ONE DAY IN SPRING

According to the calendar, it was the last day of March, but for weeks the spirit of April and May had breathed on the face of the earth, and those who had memories of many springs declared that never before had there been such weather in the month of March.

In the annals of the rural weather prophets, the winter had been set down as the coldest ever known--a winter of many snows, of frozen rivers, and skies so heavily clouded that there was little difference between the day and the night. Wild creatures had frozen and starved to death, and man and beast had drawn near to each other in the companionship of common suffering. Then, as if repenting of her harshness to her helpless children, Nature had sent a swift and early spring. It was March, but hardly a March wind had blown. The rain that fell was not the cold, wind-driven rain of March; it was the warm, delicate April shower. The sun had the warmth of May, and all the flowers of field, forest, and garden had felt the summons of sun and rain and started up from the underworld in such haste that they trod on each other's heels. Flowers that never had met before stood side by side and looked wonderingly at each other. The golden flame of the daffodils was almost burnt out, and the withered blossoms drooped in the gra.s.s like extinguished torches; but hyacinths were opening their censers; tulips were budding; the plumes of the lilacs showed color, and honeysuckles and roses looked as if they were trying to bloom with the lilac and the s...o...b..ll. March had bl.u.s.tered in with the face and voice of February, but she was going out a flower-decked Queen of May.

The fragrant air was like the touch of a warm hand. Fleets of white clouds sailed on the sea of pale blue ether, and the trees, not yet in full leaf, cast delicate shadows on the gra.s.s. On a day like this in ancient Rome, young and old clad themselves in garments of joy and went forth to the festival of the G.o.ddess of grain and harvests; and under such skies, English poets were wont to sing of skylarks and of golden daffodils. But in the calendar of the Kentucky housewife there is no Floralia or Thesmophoria, and no smile or breath of song was on the lips of the girl who was climbing the back stairs of an old farmhouse, with a bucket of water in one hand and a cake of soap in the other, to celebrate the Christian festival of spring cleaning. The steps were steep and narrow, and every time she set her foot down they creaked dismally, as if to warn the climber that they might fall at any minute.

She toiled painfully up and set the bucket on the floor. Where should she begin her work? She went into the nearest bedroom, opened the door of a closet, and looked disgustedly at the disorder within,--coats, hats, trousers, disabled suspenders, a pair of shoes caked with mud, an old whip-handle, an empty blacking box, a fishing-pole and tangled line, a hammer, and a box of rusty nails. It was not an unfamiliar sight. She had cleaned the boys' closet and the boys' room every spring for--how many years? It made her tired to think of it, and she sat down on the edge of the slovenly bed and stared hopelessly around the low-ceiled, dingy room. The mouldy wall paper was peeling off, the woodwork was an ugly brown, dirty, discolored, and worn off in spots; the furniture was rickety, the bedclothes coa.r.s.e and soiled; and walls, floors, and furniture reeked with a musty odor as of old age, decay, and death. All houses that have sheltered many generations acquire this atmosphere; nothing but fire can wholly destroy such uncleanness, and some vague idea of the impossibility of making the old house wholesomely clean crossed the girl's mind as she sat listlessly on the side of the bed and stared out of the window.

There are two kinds of homesickness. One is a longing for home that seizes the wanderer and draws him across continent and ocean back to the country and the house of his nativity. Men have died of this homesickness on many a foreign soil. The other kind is a sickness of home that draws us away from ordered rooms, from sheltering walls and roofs, to the bare, primitive forest life that was ours ages ago. It was this homesickness that made Miranda sigh and frown as she looked at that room, gray and dingy with the acc.u.mulated dirt of the winter, and thought of the task before her. While she sat, scowling and rebellious, a breeze blew in, scattering the sickly odors of the bedroom, and at the same moment she heard two sounds that seem to belong specially to the spring of the year, the bleating of some young lambs in a near meadow and the plaintive lowing of a calf that had been separated from its mother. Yes, spring was here. How she had longed for it all through the long, cold, dark days of winter! And now she must spend its sunny hours in house cleaning! A weariness of all familiar things was upon her; she hated the old house; she wanted to go,--somewhere, anywhere, and her soul, like a caged bird, was beating its wings against the bars of circ.u.mstance. She went to the window and leaned out. A branch of a maple tree growing near the house almost touched her cheek, and she noticed the lovely shape and color of the young leaves. Farther on was a giant oak whose orange-green ta.s.sels swung gaily in the breeze, and through the trees she had a glimpse of a green meadow bordered by an osage orange hedge that looked like a pale green mist in the morning sunshine.

She saw and felt the glory and sweetness of the spring with her physical senses only, for in her heart there was a "winter of discontent." But while she leaned from the window, looking at the trees and sky, came one of those unexplained flashes of consciousness in which the present is obliterated and we are s.n.a.t.c.hed back to a shadowy past. What was the incantation that made her feel that she had lived this same moment ages and ages ago? Was it the voice of the wind and the voice of the bird in the tree-tops? Was it the shimmer of morning mist and the gold-green oak ta.s.sels against the blue sky? Or was it a blending of all these sights and sounds? Her gaze wandered farther and farther on till it reached the horizon line where stretched a fragment of the primitive wood, bounded by smooth turnpikes and fenced-in fields and meadows.

Serene and majestic these forest remnants stand in every Kentucky landscape, guardians of the Great Silence, homes for the hunted bird and beast, and sanctuaries where the stricken soul of man may find a miracle of healing. A wild, unreasonable longing possessed the homesick girl as she looked at that line of trees, softly green and faintly veiled, and thought of what lay in their secret deeps. All her life had been spent in the country, and yet how many years it had been since she had seen the woods in spring. _The woods in spring!_ The words were like a strain of music, and as she whispered them to herself, something rent the veil between childhood and womanhood, and she saw herself a little girl roaming through the forest, clinging to her father's hand and searching for spring's wild flowers. She saw the blue violets nestling at the foot of mossy stumps, columbines and ferns waving in damp, rocky places, purple hepaticas, yellow celandine, the pinkish lavender bells of the cowslip, Solomon's seal lifting its tiers of leaves by lichened rocks around a dripping spring, and that strange white flower, more like the corpse of a flower than the flower itself, that she had found once--and then no more--growing by a fallen log and half buried under the drift of fallen leaves. Suddenly she started up, hurried from the room, and ran swift-footed down-stairs and into the kitchen, where her mother stood at a table washing the breakfast dishes.

"Mother," she said breathlessly, "I'm going over to the woods awhile. I want to see if the violets are in bloom yet. I'll be back after awhile."

Ellen Crawford paused in her work and looked helplessly at her daughter.

The mind of her child had always been a sealed book to her, and she was never without a feeling of apprehension as to what Miranda would do next. "For mercy's sake!" she said weakly. Going to the woods to look for violets in house-cleaning time, when each day's unfinished work overflowed into the br.i.m.m.i.n.g hours of the next day! There were no words to fit such folly, and the mother only stood stupefied, looking through the open door at the flying footsteps of her errant daughter.

Miranda ran through the back yard where the house dog lay basking in the sun, and two broods of young chickens were "peeping" around in the wet gra.s.s, led by their clucking mothers. The cat came purring and tried to rub herself against Miranda's garments, but she thrust her aside and hurried on. These creatures belonged to the house, and it was the house from which she was fleeing. As she pa.s.sed through the sagging garden gate, a casual gust of wind stirred the boughs of a water-maple tree near by, and scattered a shower of petals over her hair and shoulders, while a robin in the topmost branch sang a G.o.dspeed to the pilgrim who was hastening to the altars of spring. Down the garden path she sped with never a glance aside at the trim rows of early vegetables bordered by clumps of iris and peonies, with now and then an old-fashioned rose that looked as if it were tired of growing and blooming in the same spot so many years. If one had stopped her and said: "Where are you going?"

she could not have told him where. If he had asked: "What do you seek?"

again she would have been at a loss for a reply. But she had heard a call more imperative than the voice of father or mother, more authoritative than the voice of conscience; something had pa.s.sed out of her life with the pa.s.sing of childhood and first youth; she was going to find the precious lost joy; and the power that guides the bird in its autumnal flight to the south and brings it north again was guiding her feet to the woods in spring.

She pushed aside some loose palings and crept through the opening into the pasture that lay back of the garden. The cows stopped feeding and stared at her in mild surprise as she stood, irresolute and wavering, looking back at the house, where her mother was lifting the burden of the day's toil, and then at the orchard on one side, where the peach trees were faintly flushed with pink. In the middle of the pasture stood a group of elms. When the wind pa.s.sed over them, their branches swayed with the grace of willows, and against the blue sky their half-grown leaves were delicate as the fronds of the maidenhair fern. The elms seemed to beckon her, and she crossed over and stood for a moment looking up at the sky "in a net",--the net of leafy branches. While she gazed upward, a sudden wind came blowing from the direction of the forest, and on its breath was the mysterious sweetness that is one of the surest tokens of spring. It is as if every tree and plant of the forest had sent forth a premonition of its blooming, a spirit perfume waiting to be embodied in a flower. Miranda drew a long breath and looked across the meadow to the freshly plowed field whose western boundary line was "all awave with trees", each clad in its own particular tint of verdure, from the silver green of the silver poplar to the black green of the cedars. The dogwood, that white maiden of the forest, was still in hiding; the wild cherry, that soon would stand like a bride in her wedding veil, was now just a shy girl in a dress of virginal green; the purplish pink of the red-bud flower was barely visible on its spreading limbs. The Great Artist had merely outlined and touched here and there with his brush the picture which later on he would fill in with the gorgeous coloring of summer's full leaf.a.ge and full flowering.

She hurried across the meadow, climbed the old rail fence, and plodded her way over the plowed ground, stepping from ridge to ridge and feeling the earth crumble under her feet at every step. It was a ten-acre field, and she was out of breath by the time she reached the other side. There was no fence between field and forest; the only boundary line was the last furrow made by the plow. On one side of this furrow lay civilization with its ordered life of cares and duties. On the other side was the wild, free life of Nature. She stopped and looked doubtfully into the sunlit aisles of the forest, as we look at old familiar places, revisited after long absence, to see if they measure up to the stately beauty with which our childish imagination clothed them.

She stepped timidly through the underbrush at the edge of the wood and looked above and around. So many years had pa.s.sed, and so many things had pa.s.sed with the years! Perhaps the remembered enchantment had pa.s.sed too. She recalled the song of the birds, and how the voice of the wind in the tree-tops had sounded against the fathomless stillness that lies at the heart of the forest. She held her breath and listened. Wind and leaf and bird were making music together as of old; and under the whisper and the song she felt the presence of the eternal, inviolable calm against which earth's clamor vainly beats. She recalled the rustle of the dead leaves under her feet, and the odor that the heat of the sun drew from the moist earth. There were dead leaves to-day in every path, and Nature was distilling the same perfumes and making beauty from ashes by the same wondrous alchemy she had used when the earth was young.

Nothing had changed except herself. She looked around for an opening in the underbrush, some trace of a path, and then hastened fearlessly on to find the main path that led through the heart of the woods, and made a "short cut" for the traveler on foot. Besides this central path, there were numerous little by-paths made by the feet of cattle that had pastured here for a few months of the previous summer. Each one of these invited her feet, and each one led past some fairy spot--a bed of flowers, a bower of wild vines, a grapevine swing, a tiny spring from which she drank, using a big, mossy acorn cup for a goblet. She wandered from one side of the main path to the other, and thrice she walked from road to road. All winter she had been snow-bound and ice-bound within the walls of the old farmhouse, and now spring had unlocked the doors of the prison. Lighter grew her footsteps the longer she walked, and in every muscle she felt the joy of motion that the fawn feels when it leaps through the forest, or the bird when it cleaves the sunny air on glistening wing.

Gone was the thought of time, for here were no tasks to be done, no breakfast, dinner, and supper; and the day had but three periods,--sunrise, noontide, and sunset. The house she had left that morning seemed a long way off, almost in another world; and the forest was an enchanted land where there was no ugly toil for one's daily bread. Duty and fear alike were lulled to sleep, and while the sun climbed to its zenith she roamed as care-free as any wild creature of the woods. Suddenly a cloud darkened the sun and melted into a soft, warm mist that the wind caught up and blew like a veil across the face of spring. Miranda paused, lifted her head, and held out her hands to catch the gracious baptism. It was only a momentary shower, past in a burst of sunshine, but it left its chrism on her forehead and hair and made her feel more akin to flower and tree. How many gifts were falling from the hand of spring! To the birds the joy of mating and nesting; to the roots and seeds in the dark, cold earth warmth and moisture and a resurrection morn; and to the ancients of the forest a vesture as fresh as that which clothes the sapling of the spring.