“Oh, yea,—an artist!”
Her tones conveyed an understanding that unto artists all forms of lunacy were possible.
And so the man who had run away took possession of four rooms, a big stone fireplace, a rusty stove, a table, three rough chairs and a decrepit pine bureau. He made an expedition to a neighboring town, bought a comfortable willow chair, some cushions and linen, a few dishes and cooking utensils, a broom, and a couch hammock. With the broom he made a clumsy, half-hearted, masculine attack upon the accumulated dirt of years. He hung the hammock in the living-room where it served in lieu of bed, knocked up some shelves for books, set an easel by the north window, built a fire on the hearth, pulled the willow chair up in front of it, lighted his pipe, and was at home—but not at peace. The place was haunted by ghosts he had brought with him. Beneath the night noises of wood and meadow he heard the muffled throb and roar of city streets. In every corner lurked a shadowy face—an alluring, heartbreaking face, with lying promises in its eyes and lying smiles on its lips.
In the open, with the sun and wind and trees and sky for comrades, he could forget; but, when the violet dusk closed in and the friendly, green-gold world fell a-dreaming and lost itself in faint silver lights and creeping shadows, the old longing stirred, the old fight began again. It always ended by his flinging out into the night and tramping the roads and paths under the still stars or through the storm. It is hard to be strong within four walls.
He painted in a desultory way and he made friends with shy, wood creatures who finally accepted him as a harmless and well-meaning neighbor, and he fished a little and read a little and cooked a little and roamed the woods and fields a great deal, and June was kind to him in her bountiful, burgeoning way; but she worked no sudden cure. Nature does not hurry, even in her healing.
Yet, on the stormy morning when the Very Small Person appeared at the shack, John Archibald, standing before a window and watching the rain sweep down the Valley like a gray veil, through which the glooming hills peered, shadow-like and shivering, had admitted to himself that he was nearer in tune than he had been in many a day.
The silver flails of the rain, beating against the swaying young birches, made his fingers itch for a paint brush, the low-hung cloud masses tangled in the wind-tossed locks of the pines brought a smile to his lips, a clump of mountain laurel blurred to misty rose by the rain curtain set his memory groping for some half-forgotten melody. Yes: there was beauty in the world and he still had eyes for it, and there were worse things than a leaping fire on a hearth and a summer rain against the window panes.
He sat down before his easel and went to work with a whistled tune on his lips. After the Very Small Person had appeared and disappeared, he took up the work and the tune where he had left off; but when it occurred to him that he was whistling, he stopped abruptly. No man likes to admit to himself that he is convalescent from a heart malady he has believed fatal.
A particularly happy experiment with madder made him forget that he was a passion-racked soul and set him whistling gaily once more. The Very Small Person interrupted a carefully executed bit from Rigoletto when she came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray load much too big for her and went about setting the table.
Archibald looked up from his sketch, stared at her blankly, remembered, and laughed.