Clover and Blue Grass

by Eliza Calvert Hall

The sun was just on the horizon line, when Miranda reached the garden gate, and the splendor of light all around made her pause and look back to the glowing West. Clouds were gathering for a storm; every cloud was a mount of transfiguration, golden-hued or rose-colored, and the evening sky was pierced by long arrows of light that grew brighter and more far-reaching as the great central light sank lower behind the little hills. The wind was blowing across the fields, carrying with it the fragrance that night draws from the heart of the forest. One moment the sad magnificence of dying day held her spellbound, then conscience spoke again, and she hurried into the kitchen. The golden light was streaming into the room, bringing out all its ugliness and disorder, and her mother was standing by the table just where Miranda had left her that morning.

"This is a pretty time of day for you to come home. Where have you been all this time?" She looked at her daughter with cold displeasure, but under the displeasure Miranda saw the expression of despair and weariness that comes of unrecompensed toil, and a pang of remorse went through her heart. She took her mother by the shoulders and gently pushed her away from the table.

"Go out and sit on the porch, Mother, and look at the sky. I'll get supper, and to-morrow I'll begin the house cleaning."

There was something in the girl's voice that checked the rising anger in her mother's heart and stilled the upbraiding words that were on her lips. She looked searchingly at her daughter and then turned silently away. Miranda went to work with a willingness that surprised herself. All the weariness and disgust of the morning were gone. She had voluntarily resumed the shackles of duty, but as she worked she looked out of the window to catch glimpses of the fading splendor that was rounding out her flawless day, and in her heart she resolved that as long as she lived, no spring should pass without a day in the woods. She had eaten nothing since morning, but the mood of exaltation was still upon her, and even the odor of the food she cooked roused no sense of hunger. She thought of a Bible text learned when she was a child: "Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Perhaps all the splendor of color and light, all the opulence of perfume and warmth and music that make spring are words of God. All day she had been living by those words, and she knew the meaning of another occult saying of Christ: "I have meat to eat that ye know not of."

She placed the evening meal on the table, called the family, and served them more cheerfully than ever before; and when they had eaten, she cleared the table and washed the dishes, while her mother rested again on the porch. Her hands moved mechanically over the work. She could hear the voices of her father and brothers; they were talking about crops and the weather, and the planting that must be done that week. Now and then her mother put in a word of querulous complaining over the hardship of the day just passed and of all those that were to come. She heard it as in a dream for still "the holy spirit of the spring" possessed her, and it seemed strange and unbelievable that people could be troubled over such trifles as sweeping and cleaning and cooking, when there were the woods and the great, deep peace of the woods in which all such cares might be forgotten.

After she had set the table for breakfast, she went out on the porch. Her mother and the boys had gone up-stairs to bed, and her father was knocking the ashes from his pipe and yawning loudly. She sat down on the bench beside him and laid her hand on his knee. Such a thing as a caress had not passed between father and daughter since the latter had outgrown her childhood, and the man turned in surprise and peered through the gloom at the face of the girl, as if seeking an explanation of that familiar touch.

"Your mother says you been roamin' around in the woods all day, Mirandy," he said awkwardly. "That ain't safe for a girl. Don't you know that?"

"I wasn't afraid," she answered; "and, Father, I want to ask a favor of you." Her voice had the eager pleading of a child's. "I want you to go walkin' with me in the woods next Sunday, just like we used to do when I was a little girl." Something in her voice and the words "when I was a little girl" touched a chord of memory that had not vibrated for many a year. Perhaps the tired, hard-worked man had a glimpse of the meagerness of his child's life, for he laid his rough hand over hers and spoke with the voice she remembered he had used when she was "a little girl."

"Why, that's a curious notion, Mirandy," he said. "What'll the preacher say, if he hears we've gone walkin' in the woods on Sunday instead of goin' to church? But I'll go just to please you, provided the weather's suitable. Now, le's shut up the house and go to bed. It's time everybody was asleep."

They went in together, and while her father closed the doors and put down the windows in anticipation of the coming rain, Miranda lighted her lamp in the kitchen and went softly up-stairs. She still felt the delicious sleepiness that comes from breathing outdoor air all day, and her nap in the woods seemed only to have given her a longing for more sleep.