The Brimming Cup

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

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.