“I think it’s the lonesomest thing to go on cooking and sweeping and dusting and making jam and nobody to do it for but each other and God. Just think of the fun all those old ladies could have if the top floor was plumb full of babies growing up into nice Shakers. I guess it’d have to be grandbabies but then if they had grandbabies they’d have had babies sometime so that would be all right.
“I told Sister Jane how I felt about it She’s the pretty one with pink cheeks that tends the bees,—and she said they couldn’t very well have babies of their own, but that she could find it in her heart to wish they had a top floor of real cuddly orphan babies. She loves to cuddle things. That’s one reason why we’re such great friends; and, do you know, she’s got twelve dresses all as good as can be. They all have to be gray but there aren’t any two the same shade and she gets a little change that way. I do love Sister Jane. She and I have splendid times together and she sort of spills over to me, when she isn’t feeling so awfully religious. When we went to see the kittens, after Brother Paul said his poem to us, she told me the Eldress didn’t like his writing poetry that wasn’t religious, and spending so much time out in the fields and woods instead of working when he’s the strongest, youngest man in the family. They were going to call him up about it; but Eldress Martha said ‘no’ she’d attend to the matter, and that settled it. I tell you when Eldress Martha says ‘no’ the Elders just pick up their coat tails and go away on their tippy toes. But Sister Jane says she thinks Eldress Martha’s worried about Brother Paul herself. She’s terribly fond of him and he isn’t very frequent in prayer lately and he doesn’t testify at all—but he certainly does write scrumptious poetry.”
“What was that you said about his meeting a poem in the orchard?” Archibald asked.
“Oh, that’s the way the Shakers always talk about their poetry. Lots of them write hymns. Eldress Martha writes lovely ones—and they always say they met them. They think the Lord gives them the poetry ready made, you know.”
“Direct inspiration: I see—Poor Brother Paul with his world beauty!”
Archibald looked as if he too were worried about the young poet. Little by little he was learning that the Happy Valley teemed with drama. This neighboring with Pegeen was interesting, extraordinarily interesting.
Day by day he grew more dependent upon this child’s companionship. Whether he rode or tramped or loafed or gardened or neighbored, he wanted her near. Even when, he painted, she usually sat beside him dreaming or busy with some quiet work but always ready with smiles and eager interest if he looked from his canvas to her face or spoke to her; and it was not possible to feel that the world was an altogether disappointing and lonely place when one had such a comrade. Wiggles, too, did his dog best in the line of companion plays and a yellow dog’s best of worship is a thing to warm the cockles of even the heaviest heart. There was a curious likeness between the child’s deep blue Irish eyes and the pup’s liquid brown eyes, during those long August days. Passionate devotion welling up from child heart and dog heart made the eyes kin.
The little garden in front of the shack was ablaze with August glory now and Pegeen’s face, as she bent over the flowers or knelt beside the borders making war on weeds, was a pleasant thing to see; but a sadness came into it, whenever she looked at the clumps of perennials striving lustily in preparation for another year. Archibald had said that he would come back to watch them bloom; but he had said that before Richard Meredith’s coming, and back in the darkest pigeonhole of Pegeen’s mind was a suspicion that she and Wiggles and Spunky and Mrs. Benderby and the horses and the neighbors and the garden all added together would never be able to make him happy, with Nora Moran away. She would not admit to herself in the daytime that the suspicion was there; but sometimes when she happened to waken in the night, she would take it out and cry over it a little, very quietly.
She and Archibald rode often to the Shaker village where Eldress Martha was in her element with work and responsibility, pouring upon her torrent-wise. Even on her busiest days she had time for Archibald. The friendship between the two, whose lives had run in grooves so different, was a real thing and the man went away from his hours with the tender-hearted, steel-willed old woman with an uplift of spirit. After all the needs of brave souls were much the same. Whether it was Eldress Martha with her religious faith and her life of the spirit or Dr. Fullerton with his agnosticism and bluff materialism, the test of the soul was its sincerity and courage. The doctor had put it in a nutshell, the night he had fought for Ezra Watt’s life and won. Playing the game was the thing. To choose a game in which one believes there was good and to play it for all there was in it—that was the life worth living. If love and laughter walked with the player, so much the better. If not,—still there was the game.
And the more Archibald went the Valley ways, the more he realized that, in one form or another, neighboring was the great game.—There in the valley—out beyond—wherever men and women worked and hoped and loved and suffered, there was call for players stout of heart, strong of will, great of soul, wise of brain. Once when a baby’s hand had curled round his finger, he had said to himself that neighboring was not the last word, that a man’s own meant more; but, during those Summer days when Pegeen and he went up and down the Valley, knocking at the doors of hearts and lives, he came to realize dimly that a man’s own reaches out beyond the doors of his home and that if he follows it to the soul heights and the love limits, he will find himself, walking there with the brotherhood of Man.