The Brimming Cup

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Had she thought that Neale was nothing to her because he had become all in all to her so that he penetrated all her life, so that she did not live an instant alone? Had she thought the loss of the amusing trinket of physical newness could stand against the gain of an affection ill massy gold? Would she, to buy moments of excitement, lose an instant of the precious certainty of sympathy and trust and understanding which she and Neale had bought and paid for, hour by hour, year by year of honest life-in-common? Where was real life for her? Had she not known? Where were the real depths, where the real food for the whole woman she had grown to be? Neale had opened the door so that she could go away from him if that was what she needed, or go back to stand by his side; and through the open door had come the flood of daylight which had shown her that she could not go back to stand by his side because she had been there all the time, had never left it, never could leave it, any more than she could leave half of her body in one place, and go on to another.

II

There was other feeling and doing now, too, before her, this instant, which she had forgotten, idling here in her much-loved forest, as much a part of her home as her piano or her own roof-tree. She had been trying to understand what had been happening that summer. Let her try first of all to understand what she must do in that perfectly definite and concrete dilemma in which she had been placed by that strange sight of 'Gene Powers, fleeing back from the Eagle Rocks. She must look squarely at what she supposed was the legal obligation . . . she instantly felt a woman's impatience of the word legal as against human, and could not entertain the thought of the obligations of the situation. She must see, and think and try to understand, with Neale to help her. She had not yet had time to tell Neale.

But not today. Today she was only the bearer of the good tidings to Nelly and 'Gene, tidings which would wipe out for her the recollection of a day which was shameful to her, the day when she had conceived the possibility of believing some thing base against Neale. It was not that she had believed it,—no, she had stood it off till Neale came back. But there was shame for her in those recurrent spasms of horror when she had conceived the possibility that she might believe it. There had been proof of it, of course, Eugenia's positive statement . . . strange how Eugenia could have so entirely misunderstood the affair! . . . But what was mere proof against human certainty? No, she had been attacked suddenly and for an instant had failed to rise to defend what was hers to defend. It was a failure to live down.

She stood up and moved forward along the path, changing the thick envelope in one hand to the other. She had already lost time. She ought to have been by this time through the forest and out in the edge of the Powers pasture.

She became aware that for some time she had heard a distant sound, a faint toc-toc-toc, like the sound of chopping. This being associated in her mind with snow and winter woods, she had not thought it could be the sound of the axe which it seemed to be. Nobody could be felling trees in the height of the farming season, and on this day of swooning heat. But as she came to the edge of the woods and turned into the path along the brook, she heard it more plainly, unmistakable this time, not far now, the ringing blows delivered with the power and rhythmic stroke of the trained chopper. It came not from the woods at all, she now perceived, but from the open farming land, from the other side of the pasture, beyond the Powers house.

But there were no woods there, only the Powers' big pine which towered up, darkly glorious, into the shimmering summer haze.

As she looked at it wondering, it came into her mind had somebody told her, or had she overheard it somewhere? . . . that 'Gene had promised Nelly at last to cut down the big pine he and his fathers had so cherished.

Could it be that? What a sacrifice! And to a foolish whim of Nelly's. There had been no musty smell in the house till Nelly came there to keep the shutters closed so that the sun would not fade the carpets. The old pine was one of the most splendid things of beauty in the valley. And it was something vital in 'Gene's strange, choked, inarticulate life. She stopped to listen a moment, feeling a chill of apprehension and foreboding. It was dreadful to have 'Gene do that. It was as though he were cutting at his own strength, cutting off one of his own members to please his wife. Poor 'Gene! He would do that too, now, if Nelly asked him.

The resonant winter note rang out loud, strange in that sultry summer air. She looked from afar at the tree, holding its mighty crest high above the tiny house, high above the tiny human beings who had doomed it. So many winters, so many summers, so many suns and moons and rains and snows had gone to make it what it was. Like the men who had planted it and lived beneath its shade, it had drawn silently from the depths of the earth and the airy treasures of the sky food to grow strong and live its life. And now to be killed in an hour, in attempted expiation of a deed for which it bore no guilt!