Hid i’ the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wildgrape
cluster,
Gush in golden-tinted plenty——”
“Ellinor!”
But Ellinor was in deadly earnest. Her eyes were full of tears. “Child,” she said, “get away from here. Love, marry, fulfil your destiny.”
For just a moment I stopped and shut my eyes, pretending that a brier had caught my skirt. With shut eyes I knew that deep in the emerald world about me the black gum flaunted its crimson leaves—emblem of change; that the corn in long, straight rows stood hardening in the ear; that the mountains, glistening chain on glistening chain, were shimmering in the morning light. Standing there, I saw more: October’s pageant; November’s dull, soft tones; the desolation and the grayness that is December mountains’ dim forms seen through curtains of rain; January’s white, white world—and then the surprise of a snowdrop, the warm, fragrant spring breath of the south wind shepherding flocks of snowy clouds.
“I love it all,” I said. And I spoke the truth. Since that August Sunday now a month past, since that earthquake upheaval, I have basked in peace. “I am busy. Most of the year I wake with just the thought of scrambling into my clothes, swallowing my breakfast, and getting to the schoolroom in time. When it is winter it is almost dark when I get home; when it is spring I have my flowers. And there’s always John’s clothes to mend and my own to make and——”
But with a gesture that was passionate Ellinor Baxter stopped me. “All this may satisfy at thirty, but it won’t feed a woman’s heart at forty. Then she feels the need of love—contact with a man’s broader life. The monotony, the emptiness of life as she lives it alone tortures at forty. I know, for I am thirty-eight. And if she finds this out at forty it is mostly too late. Men pass us by for fresher faces.”
I did not know this new Ellinor Baxter who had lifted her mask and given me a peep at the real woman behind it, but for the first time in my life I loved her.