The day has been hot. It has rained somewhere and there is a superb sunset display. It seems that all the golds and crimsons and purples in the world have been pounded and mixed in a vast mortar and flung in one magnificent wave of colour on the western sky. The mountains are wine drenched. The garden riots in colour. Everywhere colour, warmth, perfume. The glory fades, but the warmth remains. Oh, the moon! Big as a wagon wheel it wavers on the hill, hesitating about its plunge into space. I must go in. Mammy is calling me to supper. Yes, blessed old coloured lady, I am coming! Her eyes are dim. She could not have seen that it was my bedroom rug I put under the cherry tree.
Midnight.
Was it I who put the rug under the cherry tree? Was it I who crept down the stairs in such delicious stealth? And did it all happen just two hours ago when John’s light went out? I had dressed in my tinkling finery, with my hair done like hers on page 131, and I went down to see myself full length in the big old mirror brought from the childhood home. I did not mean to go outside, but the moonlight lay in silver splashes on the portico, and as I stepped into it it swept over me in one great delirious wave, not just ordinary moonlight—sorcery. Standing there in my shimmering gown and satin shoes, I lost all sense of the real me. Drawn by that compelling light that lay on the world beyond the door in a still white flood, I stepped into the fragrant night and sped to the big old cherry tree. No, not I—a red-lipped, shining-eyed, radiant young creature that bore only a physical resemblance to me. Not a leaf dropped to fret the stillness. Nothing stirred, and yet the whole world seemed afloat. I heard the gate’s click as it opened. The man’s soft felt hat was pulled down low on his brow, shading the features, but I knew him—that is, I divined who it was. Just for a moment I thought him a vision breathed into the night by its magic and my desire to have him there. Just for a moment the solid earth, the misty hills lost foundation. He did not see me so still in the shadow of the cherry tree. Halfway up the walk he stopped, perhaps with the realization that the house was dark, for I had blown out the lamp I carried down. He stood there very still. When he turned he walked rapidly down the walk and out the gate. I made a swift little rush from under the tree, a swift little rush that sent out a myriad of tiny sounds—that pagan thing in me alive, clamouring for its woman’s birthright. I think the gate’s sharp click drowned the tinkling call of my finery. He did not glance back. After what seemed an æon of time I heard voices—the faint roll of wheels.
Perhaps I would think the whole fantastic thing a dream were it not for the wicked glitter of the baubles on my poor little frock that lies in a neglected heap there in the moonlight where I stepped out of it.
October 26th.
Twenty days since I wrote those last words—twenty warm, still, sun-drenched days as like one to another as peas in a pod. The oldest inhabitant fails to remember such another October. But this morning, without the warning of a frost, it has come. The sun floods my desolated and blackened garden. It always hurts me to give up my flower children. I should hear only the pleasantest things at breakfast the morning of a freeze, but this morning after John had gone mammy brought my hot cakes in and told me that Lucius Blake was the author of a story that was spreading over the village like fire. Lucius said that he had driven the finest sort of a dude down to our house Sunday night, October 8th. Lucius said he came inside the gate, stood there like a stone, and that when he came back to the buggy he said: “I should have warned my friends of my arrival. I suspect from the darkened house that they are absent at Grand Opera.” He then offered Lucius ten dollars to drive him to town, and they rode through the night in silence. I should think the silence would have killed Lucius, but he has lived to tell the tale. I am not in the least comforted that mammy, on the pretense that we need sugar, has hurried up to the village to tell everybody that Lucius is a liar—in the language of the mountains a master liar. I am not in the least comforted with anything. Fate, you are a cruel jade to let me put the light out, and I hate you. I have snatched the poor innocent-of-offence gown from its hanger, if it is innocent—I remember that night it twinkled so wickedly—and I have flung it into the fire. I feel wildly happy that Bobby’s book smoulders on it. But I have turned my eyes away as a wicked, yellowish-red, forked tongued flame leaps at the wavy lock of hair that always I know escapes Bobby’s brushes because it likes to lie on his broad, thoughtful brow.
How odd the room feels without the picture. I’ve got in the way of looking for the greeting from those watchful eyes, in the way of seeing the mocking smile on those pictured lips, the minute I open my door. No simple maiden in her charm for you, Mr. Robert Haralson! Do I see you this minute motoring down your brilliant Avenue? And do I see her, the pride of your Avenue? Our uplands do not breed such exotics.
November 15th.
The days drift by like dull-hued birds. There’s not a song in the throat of a single one. Dull-hued is the word, for the rains have washed the colour from the hills. And like a giant graystone prison wall the mountains, desolate, rattlesnaky things, stand against the sky. Jack the Giant Killer himself couldn’t scale them. Mammy watches me anxiously. She says I am sick. I am—sick for a bigger life. Teaching is routine after twelve years. I haven’t any worry. Dicky since her “Personal” escapade is being good, unless some mischief is brewing she has not yet got into trouble over. Some day—not this dull-eyed day—I mean to put to myself the question, “Why have you never said one word to Robert Haralson about Dicky—poor, cooped-up, lonely little Dicky?” And I mean to get an honest answer.
Friday. December 21st.