The next spring he got the call, just as the Voice had said he would. He drew his pay and, now that he knew a bit of what was required of him, he laid in a fair supply of what he should need. Then he was off into the hills. And one day there came the birds riding up on the winds like cavaliers with feathers dancing about; and when they began their keen bugling it pierced here and there and everywhere and made the walls of Winter to tumble down the same as Jericho’s did. And sure enough, there a new babe teetered on her toes in the midst of the grass. Naked as a flower she was, and she smiled up at him.
So he wove for her with the lightest heart you can ever imagine. But, afterward, she went away in tears, the same as the other had done and as all Summers do; and Andy picked out a new pine tree and guessed she was keeping it green.
“Shall I be weaving this lass her shroud?” he had asked again. But again the Voice had made no answer.
So, naturally, the Summers came and came; and Andy wove and Worked and clad them. In time he became, as you may well believe, the finest hand-weaver (of Summer things, I mean) that was on earth in his day. He became so good at his hand-work that in winter, at the mill, he was actually clumsy at his machine! So it was just ’tother way round, as you see, from what it was when he started. He was so clumsy then with his hands that he thought everything had to be done by machine you remember. But now he could outdo with his mortal hands anything that was ever done by machine.
And another queer thing happened to him; he got so he had a totally different idea of what work was. For his mates down in Glastonbury told him, “You work only during the winter, don’t you?”
Whereas, he found himself answering: “Why, no. ’Tis just the other way around. I can work only during the summer. I can’t work at all during the winter. I’m dead all winter long—like all the Green Things.” Then his comrades spoke wildly of him and touched their heads. They had learned the American idea, you see. Andy was crazy and he was lazy; and he didn’t know when he had a good job; and there was no money in loafing. And all that sort of thing.
Now, I could keep you here all night telling you what all went on with Summer after Summer, and Summer after Summer, and Summer after Summer; until Andy grew old and wrinkled and ugly and very sweet in his mind and cleverer and defter and finer in his finger-weaving. But the main carry of it all is just as I’ve been telling you—So we have him coming along, year after year, loving his little lasses and his blues and greens and yellows and the way he could put ’em together and make Beauty.
That was the way he lived. And now this is the way he died.
Always, I think I told you, Andy asked the question: “And shall I be weaving this lass a shroud?”
And never had the Voice answered him.