A Woman of Yesterday

by Caroline Atwater Mason

The limpid clearness of the air, the fragrance of the forest and the earth, the musical flow of the little river, the wonderful brilliancy of the sky, with the vast uplift of the mountains, gave a sense of wild perfection to the ensemble. Such was Fraternia in the morning of its second spring.

It was during that decade which saw the sudden springing into life of so large a number of communistic organizations and settlements throughout the country, mainly in the south and west. Many of these experiments were crude and obscure; most of them were shortlived. They were founded on widely different social conceptions, ranging from those of unlimited license and rank anarchism up to the high ideals of the life of Christian brotherhood set forth in the early church.

The latter was the foundation of John Gregory’s colony in Fraternia. Inflexible morality and blamelessness of Christian living were his cardinal laws. Built upon them was the superstructure of economic and social equality, of labour sharing, and of domestic simplicity.

Thus far unusual promise attended the adventure, and peace and good will reigned in the little community.

Toward the upper end of the village half a dozen men were at work around a circular excavation not more than five or six feet in diameter, which had been lined with irregular slabs and blocks of stone patched together with clay. In blue overalls thickly bespattered with red mud and the sticky clay, a man was working on his knees at the edge of this basin. It was Keith Burgess. Near him, measuring with rule and line and marking out the width of the coping, stood the artist, Pierce Everett. Their fellow-workmen were two Irishmen—big, active fellows, with honest eyes—and a wiry little black-a-vised Jew, a quondam foreman in a New York sweat-shop. He was mixing clay and laying the stone of the coping, while the Irishmen were at work in an open trench through which ran the pipe which was to conduct the water from a spring in the ravine above into the new reservoir.

Emerging from the woods below the dam a little crowd of children came straying up the valley, laughing and shouting, and jumping gayly over the pools of red mud in the road. Their hands were full of wild flowers,—bloodroot, and anemones, and arbutus; their hair was blown about in the wind; their eyes were shining. Among them, giving her hand to a little girl who walked with a crutch, walked Anna Burgess, her face as joyous as theirs, and a free, unhampered vigour and grace in every line of her figure. She was the head teacher in the village school, and was known to her scholars, and, indeed, quite generally in the little community, as “Sister Benigna.”

This name, “Benigna,” which had come down in Anna’s family for generations, and had been given her as a second name, had not been used for many years, save by her mother, who still clung loyally to the full “Anna Benigna.” Who it was in Fraternia who had revived the beautiful old Moravian name was not known, but the use of it had been quickly established, especially among the children and the foreign folk.

The habit of using “Brother” and “Sister” with the given name in ordinary social intercourse was common, although not universal, in Fraternia. Anna’s assistants in the school—a pale, little English governess, who had apparently never known stronger food than tea and bread until she came to Fraternia, and a rosy-cheeked German kindergartner—were among the little flock, their hands overflowing with wild flowers, and their faces with the high delight the spring day brought them. It was Saturday morning, and a holiday.

Suddenly there was a shout from some boys who were foremost in the company, and they came scampering back to Anna exclaiming that the “fountain” was almost finished, and, perhaps, the water would soon be turned into it. By common consent the whole party hastened on and soon encircled the workmen at the basin with noisy questions and merry chatter. It was to be so fine not to have to go up to the spring in the ravine with pails and pitchers any more. Could they surely have the water here for Sunday? Then Fräulein Frieda told them how the girls in her country came to such fountains with their jugs, and carried them away full on their heads. She showed them with a tin pail, found lying in the clay, just how it was done, walking away with firm, balanced step, the pail unsupported on her pretty flaxen-haired head, on which the sun shone dazzlingly. The little girls were greatly delighted, and all declared they should learn to carry their water pots home on their heads from the Quelle, as Fräulein Frieda called it.

Anna stood at the edge of the basin, Keith at her feet, on his knees, with the trowel in his hands, smiling up at her, the little lame girl still at her side, a trace of wistfulness in her eyes as she watched the others.