CHAPTER VII.
"Yet love, mere love, is beautiful indeed,
And worthy of acceptation."
Next day the village was stirred to its depths when Hiram Green passed through the streets, bringing from his pasture his white horse, striped with purple paint, or dye, until it looked like an exotic zebra.
With this horse he brought his groceries from town; behind it many a school-teacher had driven in vainglorious ease. Hiram had gone for it that day with intent to do the little Methodist parson honour, by taking him for a drive, a plan necessarily postponed by the hilarious appearance of the horse, which looked out from a pair of artistically drawn purple spectacles upon the excitement which its appearance created.
Hiram was furious, the Misses Green were rampant, the parson piously indignant, and even meek Mrs. Green lifted up her voice in wrath.
The horse was escorted to the barn-yard, to be subjected to such a course of scrubbing as never fell to the lot of an Ovidian horse before; but aniline dyes are hard to eradicate. That day, and for many days after, the horse went about contentedly in a pale purple coat.
There was no direct evidence to convict any one of the prank; but Hiram had refused to give the Slick family any further credit at his store, and from the clothes-line of the Slick house, some garments, dipped in purple dye, flaunted derisively in the breeze. Tommy Slick and Nip went about looking as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths; and all Mrs. Slick was ever heard to say about the matter was:
"Let 'em come to me and just as much as hint that Tommy done it! I'll—but just let 'em once, that's all."
And whilst nobody showed a disposition to hinder any one else from making the accusation, still no one volunteered to voice the general opinion regarding the matter to Mrs. Slick. Besides, secretly, every one felt a sort of sneaking satisfaction over the matter.
Andrew and Judith, to confess the truth, thought it a huge joke, and at Judith's instigation, they made a long journey across the fields to Hiram's pasture lot, to see the horse; and when they beheld him placidly purple, munching away in supreme content, they laughed till their voices rang out through the wood.
Judith recalled the purple smears on Tommy's pail the day she had met him, and felt an unholy joy of participation in the plot. Judith didn't like the Greens. As she and Mrs. Morris passed them going to Andrew's, one sentence had rung out clearly to Judith's ears: "My! Ain't she pinched!" That was enough. The Greens never found favour in the eyes of Judith.
Andrew, as he had promised to do, went to see Judith's bird's nest the day after her visit to his farm. At that meeting, and in many more such sweet hours which followed, Judith and Andrew lived in the joy of the moment. Their hearts were young, the world was fresh and fair; the one loved deeply, and the other—well—for the time she had forgotten her ambition, forgotten the marvellous gift that made holy the air she breathed, or only remembered it for the pleasure it gave this young countryman; she had forgotten that her name was famous, whispered from lip to lip throughout the musical world; she had forgotten the intoxication of success, the wine of applause; she had forgotten the great debt she owed the man who had made her what she was, a debt that she could only requite in one way, by singing. So surely she must have sipped some Nepenthe of present happiness or future hope! Lotos lands are very sweet, but rarely so satisfying as these two found them.
It seems to outrage our sense of proportion, to think of a young farmer aspiring to the hand of one who showed every promise of being the world's prima donna. To us it seems grotesque almost, and Andrew seems ridiculously egotistical in hoping that this song-bird would abide in his love-woven cage of rushes, when the doors of so many golden nets were open to her. But Andrew's daring was perhaps excusable.
It is true, her voice had led him to her first, and he always heard it as a devotee might hear the voices of angels strike through his prayers; but after that first meeting, Andrew had always seen the woman in her, not the songstress. He did not love her for her singing, her beauty, nor her gentle breeding. He loved her for herself—the truest love of all. For a love founded upon any gift is a frail thing, a banner hung upon a reed. The reed may break, and the banner no longer lifted up may not care to enwrap the broken stem which before upheld it. What does England's greatest woman poet say?
"If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only."
"For love's sake only"—that should be the supreme reason of every passion. Love, "the fulfilling of the law," the beginning and end of all things.
And thus, inasmuch as this great justification was his, Andrew was justified.
Nor did he seek with rude hands to snatch his happiness hastily. As one pauses with hushed heart, when he comes in woodland places upon some new sweet flower, or sees through a cleft of the mountains the glory of the sun, or gathers to his breast some soul-satisfying truth, so Andrew paused ere raising the cup of this great joy to his lips. He felt he must purify his hands ere he advanced to stretch them forth for the draught. And should it be denied him?
Thought ceased there—beyond was chaos.
And Judith gathered the flowers of the hour with eager fingers, trembling with new joy, finding in their perfume complete satisfaction, looking neither before nor after, as a butterfly revels in the sunshine, forgetting the chill of by-gone days, unrecking of the bitter blasts to come.
The days became weeks, and the earth grew glad with fruits and flowers and growing grain. During all this time Judith was learning of the people about her, prying with her tender eyes into the pathos of their narrow lives, appreciating keenly the unconscious humour displayed in their processes of thought, marvelling at their stolid disregard of the Beautiful.
Rufus and the grey cat knew her well, and Miss Myers was devoted to her.
Mrs. Morris and Miss Myers had grounded her thoroughly in the family history of the villagers, and she knew as much about them as about the others, for Miss Myers told her about Mrs. Morris, and vice versa.
And Judith had developed a keen interest in all the doings of the village people, of whom old Sam Symmons was her favourite, the redoubtable Tommy Slick being a good second. Old Sam liked her, and prophesied freely that she would soon be mistress of Andrew Cutler's house. Suse pretended not to be much impressed with Judith; it was not to be expected that any marriageable girl in the neighbourhood would particularly admire the strange woman who had led away captive the most eligible man for miles around, and, besides, Suse had a love affair of her own upon her hands. The rest of the village girls contented themselves with giggling when Andrew and Judith passed, whispering among themselves that "There didn't seem to be much sign of Miss Myers moving out, and if she was going to live with Andrew and his wife, it was as well he hadn't chosen any of them, for they wouldn't stand that"—reflections which consoled them very much evidently, and which, being entirely harmless to any one else, were quite admissible.
Judith thought this rustic life very quaint and idyllic to look at—like one of Hardy's stories, only hearing the same relation to a story that a game of chess, played as they play it sometimes in the East, with living pawns, does to the more prosaic pastime pondered over upon a table.
The village appealed to her as a skilfully set scene, begirt by a beautiful background of changing fields and sky—a stage whereon was enacted an interminable drama, in whose scenes all the constituents of humble life were blended.
It never occurred to her that she was the heroine of the story—the queen of the animated chess board, an actress in the life play. Poor Judith! She thought herself only a spectator, and, as such, deemed herself secure from all the pains and penalties of the play.
Judith always laughed, though sometimes for shame she strove to hide the laughter when Tommy Slick was before the footlights. Tommy had been making a hilarious record for himself at school. To begin with, Tommy was nearly ten years old, and had been allowed to run wild at home, hence he was utterly ignorant of the world of letters, but wide awake to the vital facts in the world of men: for Tommy's intellect was precocious and practical.
Tommy's father was wont to say of this, his youngest hope, "Tommy hain't much of a letter sharp, but he'd be good on a horse trade," and his judgment was about correct. His mother, as a preliminary to Tommy's appearance, called upon Suse, and informed her that "Tommy was a right smart young un, but delikit." Of the first fact Suse was well aware: of the truth of the latter statement she never could convince herself. Did she not, in common with the rest of the village, remember well the day when Tommy and his father furnished forth entertainment for the whole community? The fashion of it did not suggest any extreme debility upon Tommy's part. It was in this wise:
One day Tommy, having incited his irascible father even more than usual, perceived blood in his parent's eye, and concluded to run. The chase led up the village street, to the vacant lot where the old store had been burned down. The fleet and flying Tommy, turning here, had perceived his father in full pursuit, and, evidently doubting his own staying powers, had taken to a tree, shinning up a tall, slender, swaying poplar with precocious celerity. He climbed to the very top, and, undaunted by the slenderness of his perch (for the tree bent beneath his weight as a stalk of grain beneath a bird), clung comfortably there, whilst his father, unable to follow up the slender stem, stood at the foot, and alternately threatened, cajoled and cursed. When he resorted to swearing as a safety valve for his wrath, Tommy exchanged oaths genially and freely with him, until Slick, Sen., in a paroxysm of rage, shook the tree continuously and violently, so that Tommy took an earthward flight, fortunately for him landing on a pile of old straw.
His father, somewhat cooled down by the spectacle of Tommy shooting through the air, approached him, and as a preliminary, asked him if he was hurt. This gave Tommy an opportunity which he at once improved. He made no reply.
And thereupon Suse and the rest of the Ovidians were regaled by seeing Tommy's father carrying his son home tenderly, stepping carefully so as not to jar the presumably broken bones.
This progress Tommy rendered as arduous as possible, by lying perfectly limp in his father's arms; in fact, making himself dead weight, and letting his long legs dangle helplessly down, to meet his father's knee-caps, or shins, at every step, with the brass toes of his heavy boots. It was not reported that Tommy suffered much from this experience.
Tommy had a fine fund of profanity, which served as a spicy garnish to his deep sense of humour, a genial and easy self-possession, unfailing confidence in his own powers, and a dog he was willing to back against any other in the village, except Hiram Green's brindle bull pup.
The first day Tommy went to school, Suse had the "infant" class up before one of the alphabet tablets by the window, and Tommy, affable and completely at ease, came with them. Most children—Ovidian children—when they came to school for the first time, were somewhat abashed by the novelty of their surroundings, given to starting at every sound, stumbling over the legs of desks, and getting hopelessly entangled with the other pupils, in their efforts to obliterate themselves from the teacher's notice. Not so, Tommy. No teacher ever born had terrors for him; the legs outstretched to trip him on his way up the aisle, were withdrawn, tingling from the kicks of Tommy's brass toes. When he was half-way up the aisle, it occurred to him to take a short-cut, so he wriggled between two desks, and landed with a slide over the third, to find most of the class assembled. A sharp pinch of an arm, his elbow applied vigorously to a side, a vicious kick upon a shin, cleared his way of three boys. Then he planted himself at the head of the class, next Suse, and prepared to receive the seeds of knowledge.
But his eyes wandered, first with a look all about, then abstractedly to the window. But the abstraction vanished, and a look of intense eagerness made his eyes bright, as they bent in absorbed interest upon one spot, where his disreputable dog, who had followed him to school, à la Mary's sheep, was harassing the life out of a fat and grunting pig, which he had, in his own proper person, surrounded: for, heading off the pig in whatever direction she turned, he seemingly converted himself into twenty disreputable dogs. Having bewildered the pig with a few lightning rushes round it, with a sharp nip at its tail, ears, or nose, as he could best get in a flying bite, he planted himself like a lion in the way, and yelped red-mouthed derision and insult at the impotent foe, who was too fat to follow, either mentally or bodily, the gyrations of its agile tormentor.
"Tommy!" said Suse. (Tommy paid no heed.) "Tommy!" repeated she, more imperatively. (No sign from Tommy.) "Tommy Slick!!" accentuating her voice by a sharp rap of her pointer on a desk. Just then the owner of the pig came along, kicked Nip, and Tommy came back to sublunary affairs.
"All right, Suse," he said obligingly, "I'm yer man."
At that Suse felt the foundations of her throne tottering.
In the afternoon, mindful of the temptations of the window, she had Tommy's class up before the blackboard, where, printing the alphabet a letter at a time, she made the class name them. Tommy kept his attention pretty closely fixed until N was reached; then he became absent-minded. He was meditating his revenge upon the pig's owner for kicking Nip. The only step he had decided upon was to try conclusions, immediately after school, with the man's son. The latter was two years older than Tommy, and a good half-head taller, but Tommy never considered such paltry details when an affront to Nip was to be wiped out.
Tommy's mind was engrossed with further plans when Suse, after elaborately executing a capital S upon the blackboard, addressed him, not without some trepidation.
"Tommy, that's S." (No response.)
"Tommy," she said with angry dignity, "you must look at the blackboard. That letter is S."
"Oh, is it?" said Tommy, in a pleasantly interested tone, "I always did wonder what the little crooked devil was." For the remainder of Tommy's first day at school Suse felt that her glory was a delusion and a snare.
Judith carefully concealed from Mrs. Morris her enjoyment of Tommy's pranks, the former having no patience with "them two imps," as she designated Tommy and Nip. For, once, Mrs. Morris had been expecting company, and the better to entertain them, had baked a batch of pumpkin pies, it being the season when such delicacies were in order. She set them out on a bench in the front porch to cool, taking the precaution to make sure that the collie and the cat were safe in the kitchen.
When Mrs. Morris returned, some half-hour later, she found a row of empty pie plates, and sitting beside them, looking at them with the dissatisfied expression of a dog still hungry, was Tommy Slick's dog Nip. Nip fled from the face of Mrs. Morris towards Andrew's woods, where Tommy was gathering hickory nuts, sped upon his way by an earthen flower pot flung with a vigorous but inaccurate hand. Ever since that day Mrs. Morris had cherished a deep hatred of Tommy and his dog.
Judith, as the days passed, was very happy; but happy in a blind, unreasoning fashion. With persistent self-delusion she put behind her the fact that this dream-like summer was but an interlude in her life. True, at first she persistently took short views, and only interested herself in matters a day or two beyond the present, but gradually she slipped into the habit of speaking and thinking as if she were to be there always.
Now and then there were times when the colder light of reason showed her plainly how factitious this evanescent happiness was. These moods came upon her like so many physical shocks, leaving her feeling much older, much quieter, robbing her life of radiance and giving her almost a distaste for the simple scenes which had created delusions which bade fair to cost her so dear. Sometimes when the clear radiance of the moon shone in upon her at night, she lay and thought of the brilliant scenes, the well-nigh certain triumphs which awaited her—for, immature as she might be in some things, she was mistress of her art and knew it, but her cheeks no longer flushed as they had wont to do, her eyes no longer kindled at the dream: instead, her face set into a cold dignity and her eyes looked out in the moonlight, out into the future with a look of prescient martyrdom—the martyrdom of lonely Genius! The look of those whose brows smooth themselves for the crown of solitary success, that coronal which has so often crushed its wearer, so often obscured the eyes it overshadowed, so that they no longer beheld peace and joy!
But at the first sound of Andrew's footsteps, always eager, hasty, hopeful as they approached her, these shadows vanished, and in their place shone the dawn of a newer light.
She had never before been considered as a woman, but always as a singer; and her womanhood recognizing the tribute paid to it, stirred into life, responded to the feeling which evoked it, and demanded right of way.
There is something dominant in the woman-heart when roused. Judith's nature held deeper depths than she herself wot of—sweet springs for the lilies of love to grow in; reservoirs of feeling, long unsuspected, but now brimming to the brink, threatening to break every barrier, and flood their way over the ruin of her life schemes, her painfully constructed temple of Art, the airy fabric of her ambition; but one obstacle could not be swept aside—the benefits received. When Judith thought of what she owed her manager, then her heart grew faint within her; but, as excessive pain at length numbs sensation, so this thought became one of the accepted facts of her life, the life she was enjoying so much.
And the days were so long, and so sweet, that it seemed impossible that the end would ever come. But it was already midsummer, the harvest fields were brightening beneath the sun, the little school-house was closed for the summer holidays; from the orchards came the odour of ripe harvest apples, and the sun-bonneted women gathered wild raspberries from the fences, or picked currants in the garden.
And Judith had herself grown infinitely charming; for she was not letting all the sunshine slip from her. As the ruby crystal holds the rays which gives it its roseate charm, so Judith was absorbing the beauties about her, and giving them forth in a gentle radiation of womanly graces.
When one part of a nature is nurtured to the exclusion of the rest, it is not strange that the whole suffers somewhat. Judith, taught only to sing, to look well, to win applause by merit, or clever finesse, had known perhaps too little of real womanliness, save the intuitional impulses of her strong, sweet nature. She was wont to be a little petulant, a little self-absorbed, and a little, just a little, arrogant. These blemishes had been chastened into a sweet womanliness, capricious perhaps, but charming. Not but what there were tempests in her summer. As the summer showers swept across the fields, so tears crossed her happy dream.
The interest she took in every detail of his daily occupation amused and touched Andrew very much, but now and then he, in a measure, misunderstood her, which was not wonderful, considering how widely severed their modes of life and methods of thought had been. Once he laughed at some views she was expressing, grave conclusions she had arrived at after long thought and minute observation. Andrew laughed outright. Her remarks related to one of the simplest facts of outdoor life, always so well known to Andrew that he hardly apprehended the marvel of it. At his laugh the colour flooded her face, tears sprang to her eyes, she was wounded to the quick. She tried to disguise her feelings as bravely as possible, fighting off a burst of hysteric tears, making commonplace remarks in a tone strained and muffled by reason of the lump in her throat. Andrew's heart ached with regret. He wanted to take her in his arms, and holding her to his breast win from her a silent pardon, offer her a mute but eloquent apology. He dare not yet. A quick sense of her childishness in some matters came to him, a knowledge that if ever he won her, he must be prepared to be patient, prepared to learn much, to teach her many things. Judith saw that he had noticed her distress, knew he was sorry, and tried in an unselfish woman's way, to make him think that she had not minded. The very tenderness which Andrew's voice and manner assumed, pressed home the sting of that laugh. As they parted that night, the tears were heavy beneath Judith's lids. For a fleeting moment as they said good-night, she looked at him. She was standing within the shadow of the porch, but the star-shine revealed those tears.
"My poor little girl, I'm so sorry," said Andrew, his dark face pale in the dusk.
"It doesn't matter, really. I think my head aches—I mean—good night," she said.
"You are not angry?" Andrew's voice was chill with despair, regret.
"No, no—oh, I'm not angry, not a bit, I—" He caught her hands, her composure was failing her.
"Oh, do let me go," she half whispered, "you are bad to me." Then she fled. Andrew turned away, white to the lips.
When they met again, the joy of seeing each other made them happy. Judith was so lovingly eager to make him forget her last words to him, he was so tenderly anxious not to wound her, and each was a little in awe of the other. For they had learned one of the most sacred lessons of love, learned what a terrible power to inflict suffering each held over the other. But their love was sanctified by this dual illumination, and as their eyes met, a little shyly, now and then, there seemed to pass between them a two-fold message, a promise and a plea.
And they parted again, with definite words of love still unspoken.
But the time was not far off. Andrew's arms were yearning for their birthright, and Judith's head was weary for his breast.
Yet fears assailed her, too. One's head may be sore aweary for the pillow, yet the thought of frightsome dreams may make one tremble on the verge of rest, and hesitate ere yielding to the sweetest slumber.