Tiverton Tales

by Alice Brown

At first, after closing the door behind her, she felt only the great blessedness of being alone. She put out the light and threw herself, as she was, face downwards on the bed. There she lay for long moments, suffering; and this was one of the few times in her life when she was forced to feel that human pain which is like a stab in the heart. For she was one of those wise creatures who give themselves long spaces of silence, and so heal them quickly of their wounds, like the sage little animals that slip away from combat, to cure their hurt with leaves. Presently, a great sense of rest enfolded her, a rest ineffably precious because it was so soon to be over. It was like great riches lent only for a time. Outside this familiar quiet was the world, thrilled by a terrifying life pressing upon her and calling. She longed to put her hands before her eyes, and shut out the possibility of meeting its garish glory; she did cover her ears, lest its cry should pierce them and she could not resist. And so she lay there shivering, until a strange inviting that was peace and not commotion seemed to approach her from another side, and her inner self became conscious of unheard voices. They were not clamorous, but sweet, and they drowned her will, and drew her to themselves. She got softly up, and, going to the darkened window, looked out across the orchard. There, in the greenness, lay the old house. It called on her to come. It seemed to Dilly that she could not make haste enough to be there. She slipped softly down the narrow stairway, and across the kitchen, where the shadows of the moonlit windows lay upon the floor. A great excitement thrilled her blood; and though quite safe from discovery, she was not wholly at ease until she had entered the orchard path, and knew her feet were wet with dew, and heard the whippoorwill, so near now that she might have startled him from his neighboring tree. No other bird note could have fitted her mood so well. The wild melancholy of his tone, his home in the night, and the omens blended with his song seemed to remove him from the world as she herself was removed; and she hastened on with a fine exaltation, fitted her key again in the lock, and shut the door behind her.

As soon as Dilly had entered the sitting-room, where the old desk stood in its place, and the clock was ticking, she felt as if all her confusion and trouble were over. She smiled to herself in the darkness. She had come home, and it was very good. They had begun with the attic, in their rearranging, and this room remained unchanged. It had been her wish to keep it, in its sweet familiarity, unaltered till the last. She drew forward her father's chair, and sat down in it, with luxurious abandonment, to rest. Her mother's little cricket was by her side, and she put her feet on it and exhaled a long sigh of content. Her eyes rested on the dark cavern which was the fireplace; and there fell upon her a sweet sense of completed bliss, as if it were alight and she could watch the dancing flames. And suddenly Dilly was aware that the Joyces were all about her.

She had been sure, in her coming through the woods, that they knew and cared; now she was certain that, in some fashion, they recognized their bondage and loyalty to the place, as she recognized her own, and that they upheld her to her task. She thought them over, as she sat there, and saw their souls more keenly than if she had met them, men and women, face to face. There was the shoe-maker among them, who, generations back, was sitting on his bench when news came of the battle of Lexington, and who threw down hammer and last, and ran wildly out into the woods, where he stayed three days and nights, calling with a loud voice upon Almighty God to save him from ill-doing. Then he had drowned himself in a little brook too shallow for the death of any but a desperate man. He had been the disgrace of the Joyces; they dared not think of him, and they know, even to this day, that he is remembered among their townsmen as the Joyce who was a coward, and killed himself rather than go to war. But here he stood—was it the man, or some secret intelligence of him?—and Dilly, out of all his race, was the one to comprehend him. She saw, with a thrill of passionate sympathy, how he had believed with all his soul in the wickedness of war, and how the wound to his country so roused in him the desire of blood that he fled away and prayed his God to save him from mortal guilt,—and how, finding that he saw with an overwhelming delight the red of anticipated slaughter, and knew his traitorous feet were bearing him to the ranks, he chose the death of the body rather than sin against the soul. And Dilly was glad; the blood in her own veins ran purer for his sake.

There was old Delilah Joyce, who went into a decline for love, and wasted quite away. She had been one of those tragic fugitives on the island of being, driven out into the storm of public sympathy to be beaten and undone; for she was left on her wedding day by her lover, who vowed he loved her no more. But now Dilly saw her without the pathetic bravery of her silken gown which was never worn, and knew her for a woman serene and glad. That very day she had unfolded the gown in the attic, where it had lain, year upon year, wrapped about by the poignant sympathy of her kin, a perpetual reminder of the hurts and faithlessness of life. It had become a relic, set aside from modern use. She felt now as if she could even wear it herself, though silk was not for her, or deck some little child in its shot and shimmering gayety. For it came to her, with a glad rush of acquiescent joy, that all his life, the man, though blinded by illusion, had been true to her whom he had left; and that, instead of being poor, she was very rich. It was from that moment that Dilly began to understand that the soul does not altogether weld its own bonds, but that they lie in the secret core of things, as the planet rushes on its appointed way.

There was Annette Joyce, who married a Stackpole, and, to the disgust of her kin, clung to him through one debauch after another, until the world found out that Annette "couldn't have much sense of decency herself, or she wouldn't put up with such things." But on this one night Dilly found out that Annette's life had been a continual laying hold of Eternal Being, not for herself, but for the creature she loved; that she had shown the insolence and audacity of a thousand spirits in one, besieging high heaven and crying in the ear of God: "I demand of Thee this soul that Thou hast made." And somehow Dilly knew now that she was of those who overcome.

So the line stretched on, until she was aware of souls of which she had never heard; and she knew that, faulty as their deeds might be, they had striven, and the strife was not in vain. She felt herself to be one drop in a mighty river, flowing into the water which is the sum of life; and she was content to be absorbed in that great stream. There was human comfort in the moment, too; for all about her were those whom she had seen with her bodily eyes, and their presence brought an infinite cheer and rest. Dilly felt the safety of the universe; she smiled lovingly over the preciousness of all its homely ways. She thought of the twilights when she had sat on the doorstone, eating huckleberries and milk, and seeing the sun drop down the west; she remembered one night when her little cat came home, after it had been lost, and felt the warm touch of its fur against her hand. She saw how the great chain of things is held by such slender links, and how there is nothing that is not most sacred and most good. The hum of summer life outside the window seemed to her the life in her own veins, and she knew that nothing dwells apart from anything else, and that, whether we wot of it or not, we are of one blood.

The night went on to that solemn hush that comes before the dawn. Dilly felt the presence of the day, and what it would demand of her; but now she did not fear. For Jethro, too, had been with her; and at last she understood his power over her and could lay it away like a jewel in a case, a precious thing, and yet not to be worn. She saw him, also, in his stream of being, as she was swept along through hers, and knew how that old race had given him a beauty which was not his, but theirs,—and how, in the melancholy of his eyes, she loved a soul long passed, and in the wonder of his hand the tender lines of other hands, waving to fiery action. He was an inheritor; and she had loved, not him, but his inheritance.

Now it was the later dusk of night, and the cocks crowed loudly in a clear diminuendo, dying far away. Dilly pressed her hands upon her eyes, and came awake to the outer world. She looked about the room with a warm smile, and reviewed, in feeling, her happy night. It was no longer hard to dismantle the place. The room, the house, the race were hers forever; she had learned the abidingness of what is real. When she closed the door behind her, she touched the casing as if she loved it, and, crossing the orchard, she felt as if all the trees could say: "We know, you and we!"

As she entered the Pike farmyard, Eli was just going to milking, with clusters of shining pails.

"You're up early," said he. "Well, there's nothin' like the mornin'!"