At the head of the stairs were the soap and water still waiting to be used, but she could look at them now without any of the irritation she had felt that morning, for she knew the hidden meaning of the work that lay before her. Was not Nature cleaning the whole earth, purifying it with her sunshine and her wind, and washing it with her dew and rain? If men and women could only live in the wind and sun with no shelter but the branches of the trees! But since they must have houses, these, too, must know the wholesome touch of wind, sun, and water. Lovely pictures of clouds, trees, fields, birds, and flowers filled her brain and made more apparent the ugliness of her room. Her sense of smell, sharpened by breathing forest air, took instant note of the musty odors that came from walls, floors, and clothing. She pushed the bedstead near the window so that she might feel the night air blowing over her face as she slept and resolved that the next night should find that room as like to a nook in the woods as she could make it; and when the scrubbing and whitewashing were over, she would go again and again to the woods and gather the flowers of spring, summer, and autumn to sweeten the air of the old house. As she blew out the lamp, there was a rumble of thunder from the west; a wind with the smell of rain swept through the dark room, and, laying her head on the pillow, she smiled to think how the creatures of the forest would look and feel in the scented night and the falling rain. All the spring landscape on which she had gazed that day seemed imprinted on her brain, and when she closed her eyes, it passed like a panorama before her inner vision: wind-swept trees whose leafy branches waved against the pale blue sky; tremulous shadows on the fresh greensward; flowers of the garden and flowers of the forest flushing, purpling, paling, flaming, glowing in orderly beds or in wild forest nooks; long grey fences outlining farms and roads; sunlight glinting on the wings of flying birds; misty hills and little valleys sloping down to the level of the fertile fields; glory of midday and greater glory of sunset softening into the quiet, star-lit evening skies.
What need of the painter's canvas and brush when the soul can thus imprint on its records Beauty's every line and every color to be recalled instantly from the shadows of time by Memory's magic art?
The thunder muttered fitfully, and presently the rain came, dashing against the roof like a rattle of musketry, then quieting to a steady downpour that promised to last all night. She lay still, listening drowsily to the music of the storm and seeing through her closed eyelids the flashes of lightning. She was not tired, only sleepy and happy. The same calm that enveloped her in the forest was around her now, and soon she was sleeping as deeply and sweetly as she had slept in the afternoon. And while she slept, the man who had guarded her forest slumber sat in the darkness, dreaming, and gazing at a picture that would never fade from his brain: In the midst of the living forest a dead tree, and at its foot a sleeping girl holding a bunch of withered violets.
Ah, well! The perfect day was over and never again would come another like it. To-morrow the sleeper and the dreamer would wake and rise to the old, dull routine of daily toil and daily weariness, but though the day was gone, its grace would abide forever, and life could never be quite the same to the one who had met face to face with the True Romance, and to the other who had lived, for a few charmed hours, the life of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field.
By the author of "The Land of Long Ago."
AUNT JANE OF KENTUCKY
By ELIZA CALVERT HALL